Let’s talk about sex: Insights in the telehealth sector

Ryan Barry:

Hi everybody. Welcome to this episode of Inside Insights, a podcast powered by Zappi. My name is Ryan, but I think you already knew that. And I'm joined as always by my co host Patricia and our producer Kelsey. What is up ladies?

Patricia Montesdeoca:

Hey dude. How's it going?

Ryan:

It's going, everybody who's listening, we're in some crazy times aren't we? We are running fast. Markets are changing. It's crazy out there. I mean, there's been some big layoffs this week in the world. We are in an election cycle. It's going to be decided by runoffs. It's going to be a very interesting time in these markets.

Patricia:

And the devaluation of the Colombian peso is like out of the roof, beyond the stratosphere. We've never had this exchange rate in our lives, ever. So yeah, the world is crazy.

Ryan:

It's a crazy time. It's a crazy time. But businesses that innovate and that focus on their customers are going to be fine.

Patricia:

Oh yeah.

Ryan: Going to be fine. We'll all be a little bit leaner, we'll be a little smarter, but we're going to be fine. 

And today's episode is with Lauren Governale. She is the head of customer insights for Hims & Hers, which is a booming category in the telehealth space, selling in areas of consumer health and kind of previously stigmatized topics, mental health, sex, other areas. And they're booming. And Lauren is an incredibly adaptable, innovative, forward thinking insights leader who I had the pleasure to sit down with. And this is going to be a breath of fresh air. This conversation, Lauren is making a huge impact. Lauren's business is flying. And Patricia, surprise, surprise, the founders and the CEO prioritize the customer at the center of their growth strategy, novel concept.

You'll learn also from talking to Lauren, that she is an empowered insights leader. She is a connected insights leader. So novel concept companies that are going to grow through this time have a good product that solves a problem, and their customers are at the center, and their employees are empowered to make moves. I can't wait to get into this conversation. Before I do, I have to come clean. I like to not mispronounce people's names. I met Lauren when she was onboarding to Zappi. I like to try to meet with people when they buy the Zappi platform, just to try to learn a little bit. Immediately blown away with her story and what they're doing. And I took away that her name was Lauren Governale.

Lauren, I'm sorry. Some of Lauren's former colleagues work at Zappi and they were like, dude, what are you talking about? So I'd like to officially apologize to Lauren, but without further ado, I'd like to get into this conversation because Lauren, you are incredible. And everybody who's listening, you're in for a treat.

[Music transition to interview]

Ryan Barry: 

All right, everybody. Very excited to bring to you today's discussion with Lauren Governale, the Head of Customer Insights from Hims & Hers. Hi, Lauren.

Lauren Governale:

Hi. How's it going?

Ryan:

Good. It's always funny, we start these interviews with, "Hey, how's it going?" But the truth is to everybody listening, we've been chatting for 15 minutes already.

Lauren:

I know.

Ryan:

We've already had a chat.

Lauren:

It's just a natural thing that comes out of my mouth, even though we just had this whole conversation.

Ryan:

It's true. Now, so you used to work at C Space, did you live in Boston at that time?

Lauren:

Yeah, I started at C Space when I was living in Boston. Eventually I made the move to New York, but I spent a few years there, yeah.

Ryan:

Okay. So how are you is natural everywhere. But in New England, you know what we actually say here, "How are you?" You're walking around Boston is a little, "Hey, how are you?"

Lauren:

I miss the accent.

Ryan:

So there's so much I want to talk to you about. So the reason I, for everybody's benefit, I wanted to have Lauren on the podcast because Lauren has a lot of experience in our industry and took a really cool leap and we're going to hear her story to join what was a very small business that happens to be growing at a novel 87%. To be the insights person, is now building a customer-centric company.

And I'm just fascinated by your story, we had the chance to meet in Austin, Texas when Lauren was sort of onboarding to our system. And I just was really excited to talk to you. We were just remembering we planned to do this in April and it's November 3rd. Wow. So you started at C Space in your career, correct?

Lauren:

Yeah.

Ryan:

So I happen to know quite a few people that you know from C Space. So I know that you earned a rockstar, everybody wanted you on your team moniker there. But take me through some of the learning there. I mean, I'm always fascinated by people who are C Space alum because I think it's a classic example of a market disruptor with all due respect that perhaps stops disrupting at some point. But I'd love to know some of the roles you had there, but also what are some of the things you learned in that environment, which was for many, many years an incredibly customer centric, high growth, disruptive environment.

Lauren:

Yeah, definitely. So I actually started my career. I did one year in PR and that was just not a good fit for me. So I was right out of college, I had a degree in PR, I'd worked a PR job and I came across this Boston company called C Space or it was Communa Space at the time. I applied, I got the job, I had actually no idea what the company did. 

And so that started my career in research and I really grew up there. I was there for I think over eight years really moving from learning literally everything about research as a junior researcher to leading these really big accounts all during this time where there was a lot of disruption going on from the company. And the industry was changing a lot, moving from a very in-person research model to shifting into digital research, community research, agile research.

So I think that it was a great place for me to be and learn a lot about research in a lot of different ways. And I think I'm so grateful for the experience and I've brought so many things I learned into Hims and Hers, which is also a very disruptive, innovative company and a lot of those pillars really transferred over, I think. Ultimately when it comes to that disruptive and innovative philosophy and mindset of a company that really needs to be throughout all parts of the organization. And that was what C Space had. I worked with such smart, incredible people who were really all on board to the work we were doing. We're all holding hands saying this might be hard but we're going to figure it out. And I think that helped us create things within insights that hadn't been created before.

I think the biggest thing I took away from my experience there is like it's okay to mess up. It's okay to try things for the first time and it doesn't have to be perfect and if it fails, that's okay. And I think that was really a lot of the mindset that we were encouraged to have, which I think then ultimately led to us doing a ton of really cool work.

Ryan:

Wow. So you know this about me from the first time we met. Can we just pour one out for Diane Hessan? What a cool environment. Diane, love you. I hope you're listening to this.

Lauren:

Love her.

Ryan:

But the space to fail. So tell me how that worked. And I happen to encourage similar things within our business, but you're working with big blue chip logos at C Space, right? And they're investing millions of dollars in those communities. So how did you engage the customer in that same sort of mindset when perhaps some of their organizations weren't as risk averse or innovation centric or what have you?

Lauren:

I think it was really hard, if I'm just going to be really honest. I think that there were a lot of clients who didn't love that approach and there were a lot of clients who loved that approach and were actually coming to C Space for that approach. There's a lot of staleness that can happen in the insights industry and I think that during this time period, people were really looking for a partner who could shake things up and get to the next level with the work we were doing. 

So I think that using that mindset is saying, "We're going to try some new things." We might be doing some things for your client for the first time we've ever done them, but it's all ultimately with the goal of getting you way more strategic insights that can drive your business. And if it doesn't work, we'll figure out a way to make it right.

And I think there was a lot of transparency around that approach and that attitude. And I think C Space really has centered itself around this very human approach. All of the principles of how they taught me to do research is from this very person to person mindset of making sure that you're not treating research participants as research participants. Treat them as people, Talk to them as people. Don't ask weird survey questions that sound like a robot, Ask them in a way that sounds human. All of these different pieces. I think at the time it was very novel for research to be a person. It doesn't have to follow all of the protocols of market research as long as we're getting deep insight. 

And so I think that that approach in research played itself out well with conversations we had with clients. Not to say that was always perfect or went well, but I think when you're coming from that place, if we want to do better for you and this is how we're going to do it, give us a chance to try it out. I think that works really well.

Ryan:

Yeah, I love it. I also just love the principle of you're sort of telling them the why we're going to try crazy stuff because we're going to get you better insights and if we don't we'll figure it out. And I think bringing people under the tent is a good way to drive intrinsic lean in and motivation and help them sell that internally. So thank you for that.

So all right, you're working with these big customers, you then decide, so you move to New York, great career at C Space managing marquee customers, you then decide to not only leave C Space and the supply side of the insights industry, but to go corporate and not just to go corporate, to go work for a startup. 

By the way, Hims is no longer a startup. Hims is an incredible business. I was saying to Lauren before we started recording, I see Hims ads everywhere, which is super cool. I wonder if it was trying to tell me something but make that decision. What were some of the things you were looking to learn at that moment in time?

Lauren:

Yeah, I mean I had a lot to learn. I think, like I said, great opportunities at C Space. I did so many different types of research, so many different types of clients. I felt like I really lived that agency vendor experience and I wanted to go make an impact and a more direct way on the client side. 

With that said, I had spent all of this time really working with these huge clients and for all of the great things that they offer, I did see that at times it was frustrating to be an insights person at these giant companies that are super siloed and matrixed and having that impact could be really hard if you didn't have a seat at the table. And so I thought to myself, "How can I find this in between roles where I'm on the client side and I'm really able to build insights in the way that I think it should really work to be able to have an impact?"

And I got introduced to one of the co-founder that Hims and Hers and after many conversations it felt like it was the right opportunity to bring me on to see what insights could be within this very young, I think the company was two years old at the time, which is very unique place to start an insights function growing insanely quick. At that point it was already unicorn status and went public I think a year, a year and a half into me being there. So yeah, there were a lot of unique challenges that I knew I was going to have. I was very terrified of the whole thing, how am I going to do this? But it was also super exciting, this fresh blank page to make it whatever I really felt was going to work within the organization. And that just felt like an opportunity I really couldn't say no to.

Ryan:

Yeah, it's super exciting. So how many people worked at Hims when you joined?

Lauren:

Ooh, probably like a hundred, maybe over 100, 150, somewhere around there.

Ryan:

Wow, this is crazy. I mean we were at probably 200 people before we even and we're an insights platform even hired somebody. So let's big up your co-founder for a minute. So this is a bold decision for a fast growing business to bring in insights, which is already a good sign for you that this is a cool environment. So what was the thesis of bringing in insights at that early stage from your perspective? Obviously you were on the other side of the table, but what was the reason behind that?

Lauren:

Yeah, definitely props to Hillary Kohls, who is our co-founder.

Ryan:

Hillary, give it up for Hillary. Unbelievable.

Lauren:

Yeah, I think that the industry that we are in, although still very new, is growing rapidly and there's a lot of competitors out there coming into the space. Every day, it's changing. And so I think that the brands were built on really identifying and understanding an unmet consumer need. And that was obviously going great. They were growing very well without insights, but I think that it was a very strategic move to say we're acquiring a certain type of customer right now, but this market is changing really quickly and it's going to get harder.

Also our customer as we grow is going to change pretty drastically. And so in order to stay a leader in the industry, we really need to understand our consumer and our customer today and tomorrow. And we really need to stay aligned to what our customers need because our business can offer so many different things to so many different people. How do you decide what are the right things that are going to drive the business forward and really solve for the needs of our customers? So I think that was what was really encouraging, this idea of building insights into the organization early on.

Ryan:

It's fascinating. So it's like, okay, we're onto something but so are other people. And so this capability from Hillary's perspective was a way to keep the company focused on where the market was going, not necessarily where it is. And for anybody who's listening, that's a leader, what a wonderful principle for that woman to have of yeah, sure we're growing crazy, but we want to be growing crazy in five years. And I think that's why so many big businesses, Lauren, are focused on foresight capabilities or insight capabilities. But it's so rare that that person is being brought in by a co-founder, but has that level of access. 

Well no wonder why your business is performing so well. You listen to customers and you innovate. Novel concept. So the category keeps growing. Your category's growing like crazy. There's emergent players in it at all times. Why do you think the category given where consumers are, is where it is today and seeing the immense saturation that's happening?

Lauren:

Yeah, I think that COVID, it's definitely played a part in this though Telehealth and the kind of healthcare platform in a digital way was already growing before then. And COVID kind of let it take off and become more easily adopted by a more general market. But ultimately I think that the reason the category is growing so much is, and this is not surprising, but our healthcare system is broken and it doesn't make it easy for people to get the help they need right now. 

And so I think in a world where consumers are so in control over so many things in their lives, I want to get a car to the airport, I want my groceries delivered, I want to have dinner here in 20 minutes. We have so much control over all of these different pieces of our lives and the one piece we really don't have any control over is our healthcare. And that's not good. It doesn't feel good.

Ryan:

It's ripe for disruption.

Lauren:

It doesn't make people feel good. And most people when they're seeking healthcare, it's because they're not feeling good. So I think that that's really what's ultimately driving this is we enable people to take control over their health and also get very personalized or custom treatment. They don't have to drive to an appointment. They don't need to wait three months to get an appointment, they don't have to wait at the pharmacy, which is super annoying. It's all just super convenient. And we were doing interviews a few weeks ago and something that a customer said to us is she lives in a rural area and she wanted help for mental health concerns and to see a psychiatrist, the wait, was like four months. And the psychiatrist, because he or she is the only one in the area, was charging a premium, hundreds of dollars to see them. So that's a great example of where we can help provide access to healthcare in areas where it's incredibly difficult to actually get that access.

Ryan:

So cool to listen to your reflection because everything you say is grounded in on insight and a customer problem that you're solving and that's super cool. It's really fascinating. You produced a really cool piece of research recently. I love macro learnings of departments. I believe it was called the State of Sex. Great click bait by the way. Did I get the title right?

Lauren:

Let's Talk About Sex.

Ryan:

So because Lauren's here for the first time in the history of Inside Insights, we have an excuse to talk about sex. So what was the impetus behind the research for you and how did you apply it and what are some of the key findings and how did you actually apply it into the business?

Lauren:

Yeah, absolutely. So I've been at Hims and Hers for three years. Sex is a really big category for us. We've been doing a ton of research now for years. And consistently what we see is that people actually don't know very much about sex. 

There is a massive disconnect between the perception people have of what sex is supposed to be like or should be like, and the realities of how that plays out in people's lives day in and day out. And this disconnect is really ultimately fueling a lot of the shame and secrecy around sex. 

So many people just feeling like what's going on in my sex life is so much worse than everyone else. So I think as a brand we are very much so rooted in normalizing health conditions and really being very upfront talking about erectile dysfunction, talking about hair loss, being super straightforward about these conditions that have been very taboo to talk about for many years.

And ultimately we just felt like it was just this prime opportunity to create a source of truth for how people are actually having sex and what they think about sex and really use that to continue to normalize sex in the US and to help people feel like what they're going through is normal and okay. 

So that was really the impetus to all of this research. It wasn't necessarily to drive revenue or anything super business specific. It was really about we're a thought leader in this category and we feel it's our responsibility to put information out there that helps people better understand what they're going through and hopefully long term make the conversation about sex or the ability and need to get help for sex much easier for people.

Ryan:

Thank you for explaining this. I really enjoyed reading it. But part of why I wanted to ask you about this was so we could talk about one thing B2C brands can actually learn from B2B marketing. What Lauren did was a masterclass in content marketing. 

You did a bunch of research to create empathy with your customer to destigmatize things that are uncomfortable to talk about, but there's value inherent in that to your consumer that isn't click here to buy Hims, click here to subscribe, click here to do this. And so much of modern brand marketing is so driven to drive a short term outcome that we forget to create value for people. And I wanted to talk about it really so I could just applaud you for the work. I mean think businesses need to, this is something that B2B is actually doing better than B2C in my opinion. And you're obviously a B2C business that is running like a software company. I mean the way that you move is incredible.

I think the lesson there is you did something that I'm sure that informs some strategy inside, but you speak to consumers about things that they care about and educate them and empathize with them. And whether or not that has direct attribution to subscriptions doesn't really matter because let's all be honest, marketing attribution is a bit of a myth. So I applaud you for the work and I'm assuming you got great feedback from your target customer base, from it.

Lauren:

The feedback has really been fantastic and I should say I definitely can't take any credit for any of the brilliant ways it was marketed. That definitely goes to our marketers and our creatives and all of the people who are on our side are brilliant at doing that type of work. But I think the reception to it has been really incredible. I think it's gotten a lot of press, it's gotten a lot of comments and feedback from actual customers from the industry. I think it's something that people really want. There's so much content out there, but when it comes to sex, a lot of the content that is out there is quite fringe content.

So things that maybe normal everyday people are not really, it's not helping them feel normal to talk about polyamory and BDSM. There's nothing wrong with all of those things, but that content is not helping to make people who might be having sex once a month or less feel better or feel normal. 

So I think that's where this content, none of it's overly shocking, but a lot of it just helps level set, this is how people feel about sex and if you're somewhere within this realm, you are normal and it's all okay.

Ryan:

Yeah, it's okay. See there's people like you and the way that you thread and to give credit to your marketing team, your brand personality, your tone through that to be this accessible brand about this topic. It's a novel concept. Give people that you're trying to sell to value, make them feel heard and just loosely associate your brand with it and they like you more. I mean, yeah. So I'd love to talk a lot more about that but I'm sure you probably can't say much more.

I have one more question if you can't answer, it's all good. What are some of the ways you did go about putting that in front of people? Because I think I'm always fascinated by what changes in marketing, but more so what doesn't change and you're using data and long form content to market to consumers, but you're still, principles of marketing, you're understanding the things that are their pain points, you're speaking to them on their level, you're creating value, et cetera. So I saw it on LinkedIn, but what were some of the ways that you were able to get that in front of your customer?

Lauren:

Yeah, it was used in a ton of different ways. Definitely a lot of email like CRM content. I think it really landed well there. And there is a lot of conversion actually as a result of these emails. 

Because I think again, the content's so relatable that it catches your eyes and you're like, "I want to read this, I want to learn more." We used it all over the place. It was in ads. We got a lot of press, the content and the research and the data was reused by a bunch of different publications. We had a full landing page and website dedicated to the paper. It is in our app. It's kind of been all over the place. We did this incredible launch event for it. We had this very creative space with different press and influencers who came and it was the first time I've actually seen research become the coolest thing ever. 

Ryan:

I was just thinking that.

Lauren:

I was like, "This is the highlight of my career. I'm in a room with hundreds of people looking at the research that my team did." Installations and lots of really interactive things that brought that research to life. And that was a really exciting thing for me personally. But we've been able to use the content in a lot of different ways. And I think what's great about this is it's not just the white paper. 

We have so much data that not only helps us understand our target audience on a much deeper level, but we can slice and dice that data in a lot of different ways and continue to use it in blog posts and providing people with more guides and holistic content as they start on treatment. And there's just a lot of different ways to use such a large scale piece of research.

Ryan:

It's so funny you said a cool kid thing. Because my subconscious was like, I think Lauren might be the coolest research person I know. It's like so hey everybody listening, the coveted seat at the table. Help marketing do better marketing, quite literally and then you'll get there. so I can't imagine this didn't also inspire your own product development advertising. Was that an element? I mean you don't need to say what it inspired, but I can't imagine that it didn't have a role to play in like, oh because of this, we can try this in our ads because of this, we might want to launch a new capability…probably served two purposes for you.

Lauren:

It's the first type of initiative, marketing initiative, company-wide initiative that we did like this. So there was a lot of learnings. But I think the other thing is it gave us permission to think about all of the different elements that usually go into our campaigns in a very different way. There wasn't a product launch happening so naturally the go to market plan for this work was very different. It looked different. It sounded different. 

And so it's really helped us in terms of experimenting with different formats and different types of content. And now we're able to see how we can do this in the future. How we can incorporate those learning into the best practices we have already. So yeah, I would say I think it was really incredible that we were able to do this just to begin with. And there's so much we're learning from the result of it that we can take into future projects like this.

Ryan:

Well congratulations, I'm going to crown you the coolest kid in market research. 

Lauren:

Thank you. Such a compliment.

Ryan:

Yeah, no, I mean, you got yourself a seat because you earned it. So I switched the order of the questions on purpose because you've been at Hims for how long?

Lauren:

Going on three and a half years.

Ryan:

Three and a half years. We just told that story. That was recent. The business is growing 87%. You were interviewed by a co-founder when the company was 100 people. The company's a lot more than 100 people now, I would assume. Yeah. You now have five people, a bunch of suppliers, a bunch of capabilities. Take me through the process of how you went about starting creating your agenda, iterating on it, getting headcount in an environment where I imagine it's run any other fast growing business, lean and you got to prove it's going to work to get more cash. 

But take me through that journey because there's so many people who listen to people who have your job, but they work for McDonald's and there's 800 employees in the thing. This is different. So I'd love to codify a little bit of how you went about what you've done in the last three years because it's incredible.

Lauren:

Yeah, it's a great question and I don't know if I did it, but it has worked. So there's learning for sure.

Ryan:

There's nothing else you'll learn, others will learn from where you stepped in poo. So it's all good.

Lauren:

I think when I joined, I came in hot. I was like, "I'm going to have this big team, all this stuff going on, it's going to be great." And I was really humbled very quickly in that it takes a long time to understand a business, to integrate into that business, to figure out how things work, to get to a place where you can actually advocate for the work you're doing and grow it. And I think this is probably obvious, but I just started with a lot of listening. Yes, I did jump into trying to do some research, get some people interesting insights and nuggets in a very scrappy way that they could use. 

But at first I didn't really have much of anything to work with. So job one was just how do I build an insights function within this very fast growing, unique environment? What does that look like? I hadn't done that before, so I had to figure it out day by day.

And I think ultimately what I learned initially was the type of work that was going to go far within the organization. So yes, there's a ton of research I wish I could have done over the last three and a half years that would've been so cool and so fun and great for me as a researcher, really interesting. But I've stayed very lean in terms of the type of projects that I take on and that I have my team take on. And I think that's really been a need because I didn't have an endless budget and vendors and I had to be very picky. But understanding the business objectives, understanding what every single team is working towards and what type of insight they could actually act on, I think that was really my first step as I joined.

And then everything I built was really around that principle of what are the partners I need? What are the type of team members I need? What is the process I need in order to deliver on very business specific projects and objectives? So that was really step one I think with that and staying hyper focused on that, saying no to a lot of stuff, that again would've been great to do, but didn't really play into that agenda that helped prove value really quickly. 

So figuring out what I could work with, being very scrappy in terms of the types of research or the methods and being okay with the fact that it wasn't going to be perfect. It wasn't going to be everything that I would want to do for the research, but if I could deliver insights really quickly that spoke in the language of my stakeholders and enabled them to action on them, that's what really helped open up the door to budget and being able to have more partners and growing my team and tracking it.

And I will say going back to C Space, I think one of the things I learned there was how to track the impact of your work and really follow through. And sometimes it'd be really hard, you'd have to work with clients and be like, "What did you do with that insight? Where did it go?" And you can be really annoying when you're doing that, but what it trained me in is doing the same internally to my stakeholders. "Oh, we delivered this insight, you put it in that landing page and that resulted in X percent conversion, which ultimately led us to X dollars and added revenue." That's a great story to tell. And then you get to tell that story and that's how you start to build out the team and get permission to do more things.

Ryan:

That was like, there's a lot of gold in there. So I'm trying to figure out what I want to unpack first. All right, I'm going to start at the beginning.

Lauren:

Yeah.

Ryan:

So you get in there, you're trying to do discovery, as soon as the Lauren's here announcement goes out, are there people being like, "Yo, can you program a survey? Can you get me an answer?" Were requests coming in on day one?

Lauren:

No, no, not at all.

Ryan:

The company didn't really know what they didn't know at that point. Is that a safe thing to say?

Lauren:

Yes, that's safe. And also I think especially for the age of the company at the time and the types of teams in roles, there wasn't a very large understanding of me and what I did and how it would work. So I don't think a lot of the teams I was meeting and working with education around insights also was a big part of that beginning phase of my work. They didn't know what to ask me. So there's been a lot of, I guess, upskilling across the company in terms of what is insights used for? How do you ask the right questions? What are the right things to come to us for? And that's always going to be a part of it. We're always working on that.

Ryan:

And I can't tell you how many times I've brought in a capability to Zappi, right? And the person succeeds or fails based on their ability to say, "Hey, I got these superpowers and you have these problems and I can help you in." It's tough in a fast growing environment. 

And for those of you considering joining a fast growing environment, it's tough to expect Hillary, the co-founder of a rocket ship to sit there and really plug in everything. So on some level you're like, "Okay, I'm here now I got to figure out if I can connect and integrate," which is, that's not for everybody. I imagine you had some days like, "Oh shit. What am I doing?" I've been there.

Lauren:

It's not for everyone. No, no. I think that if you're really into process and structure, it's probably not the right move. I definitely thrive in ambiguity and in finding solutions to problems and making things for the first time. That's what gets me excited. 

So you're right in that there wasn't anyone holding my hand telling me, "Here's this and here is this and here's this." I had to go figure all of it out and build all of it. And it was really hard. I'm not going to lie. It was hard the first year especially as I came in and there was sort of nothing and I had to build it. But it was also really exciting.

Ryan:

And so many people, Lauren are like, "I want the vibe of a fast growing business." But everything you just said is what comes with it. You have to figure it out. Job changes every six months. You have to be comfortable with ambiguity. You got to be, I guess Lauren, you have to be a certain type of crazy is one way to put it.

Lauren:

I would agree.

Ryan:

So you get there, they don't know what they don't know about the capability. You're like, "Okay, there's a lot of things I could do." So you said the first thing you did was try to create value. How did you go about that discovery process and then being like, "Okay, I'm only going to do things that anchor to why," and take me just me through that a little bit more.

Lauren:

Yeah, I think that we're a very product led organization. And so I think that in terms of delivering value, it had to start, I didn't work at a product led organization. I didn't really understand coming in what teams that are working on things like this really care about. So I think that was really step one was building those relationships. And that's something that I love doing. 

So that part came easy to me in terms of getting there, meeting with as many people as possible and almost doing research on them, really understanding and asking a lot of questions to understand what they need in order to make their job easier, what would that look like? So I think that was really the first thing I did. And then I think that myself included as researchers, sometimes we can get into this, well there's so many options and to do it the best way we should do this and this and this and this.

And I had to really check myself on, well we can't do all of that even though that's the right way to do it. So I came up with a few different ways to do research for cheap and quick and still get really useful insights that I could take to these teams. So I would say the first year, a lot of the projects I was coming up with, I was creating briefs for and I was building consensus around and getting cosign from different stakeholders. 

And then I think a lot about following up with them and working with them, telling them the insights and really drilling down into how I can make this insight better? Is this useful for you? Is it not? Like how can we get this to a place that, And I didn't do it right all the time and I'm very grateful.

I had a lot of stakeholders who were so grateful to be getting any insight, but they worked with me until I was at a place where I could really understand specific things that would be valuable to them. And now it's a very ingrained part of my team and how we work. But it took a lot of time to get to that place of really knowing what was going to be considered value and what was not going to be considered value. 

And I definitely did things that were not considered value. Not to say I did everything great. There were lots of learnings around what lands and what doesn't land. And I'm constantly prioritizing. Constantly. We have more project requests than we could possibly ever do. And so every day I'm prioritizing and the prioritizing has to do with which of these things is going to lead to the most business impact. And that's where I focus my team.

Ryan:

You wanted to focus on understanding where they had problems so you could enable them. And the other thing I liked is you wanted to do it lean, so that you weren't asking for cash right away. You were trying to create value before you were saying "I need money." And so often new people come into environments and they do their discovery. If you don't do that, you're kind of silly. But then they're like, "I need 2 million bucks or I can't do anything." And I commend you on that. 

So you're getting in there and now you now have this prioritization process. Did you sort of macro socialize and contract that with your stakeholders to say, "Listen, this is how I'm going to do prioritization" or is this something you do in the tent of the market research department?

Lauren:

Yeah, At first, no, I didn't share it. And I think it actually took a good amount of time to get to a place where there was a process that really worked. Now everyone knows the process we go through and there's a process for it. We have a very specific brief. We do calls for briefs, people fill them out, we have conversations about them and then ultimately they're reviewed by a handful of people who we all weigh in on what are the business goals now in the next few months, in the next year, and which projects should we really be focusing on. 

So everyone's very aware of that process. And they're also, I think because the process is well known when their project isn't something we can do, they understand it and there's no hard feelings. And I think it helps create a much more positive environment and friendly environment around the things my team can and cannot work on.

Ryan:

I love it. All right, so we started our conversation talking about failure. People are listening to you because they're learning a ton. What's something that you, with the best of intentions tried and to the best you can share this, if you can't think of something, we can move on, but it fell flat. And why in your opinion. I love learning from failure. So you walk me right into this. So I'm sorry,

Lauren:

I can give you an example. It's actually recent, so I'm still failing.

Ryan:

Yeah, I failed today by the way, literally just before this conversation.

Lauren:

That makes me feel better.

Ryan:

Happens every day.

Lauren:

So we have, one of our categories is within mental health and it's a new category, it's growing, it's changing a lot and there's still very little known about it. 

So why would people need to go to a telehealth option for mental health support versus in person that's still shifting a ton. So our stakeholders come to us and it's a new category. So we have very few learnings. They want to learn a ton. I look at it and I go, Okay, there's so many questions here and what it feels like we need just not what they were asking for, but it feels like what we need is this much bigger project, this much bigger segmentation that feels like it would get us the most information about these personas and segments in the quickest way possible, kind of packaged up and still really actionable. So again, they weren't necessarily asking for it, they were saying we need to understand the different types of people who would come to us and would consider us.

So I think I had the best intentions in terms of we need to learn a lot really quickly and how can we do that in a robust way? And it just didn't land. The segments did not land at all. I think it was too market researchy. I could say it was too much, it was too traditional. It didn't end up speaking the language that we speak in the right way. It wasn't easy enough for them to act on and it just didn't work. So we definitely back stepped, we shifted it into something that is way more impactful and we could have actually done much quicker than we did this project. So I think it was a good learning experience in terms of I've been able to grow our team capabilities, our budget to do more advanced types of work and that's great, but sometimes we still don't need those types of projects and we still don't need to do that type of work.

And going back to our bread and butter of quick, scrappy, strategic, that should really still be our first option because that's what works well with our stakeholders and that's how our organization works. So yeah, that was a fail.

Ryan:

Oh it's a good one though, right? It's like, okay, you're trying to say, okay, you want to better understand these customers. I'm going to go deep and give you sub segments. You probably gave me this really great piece of analysis. And they're like, "What does this say?"

Lauren:

Yeah, that's exactly what happened. It's not that the work was bad at all. But great learning and I won't be doing that again.

Ryan:

I love it.

Lauren:

And thankfully I have very nice partners who are like, Yeah, this is just not working. How can we make this better? Not upset or anything, but we needed to shift.

Ryan:

So I'm a big Hims fan. This is a testament of your culture that it's okay to fail. Your culture is that of your stakeholders rooting for you and the customers at the center.

Lauren:

Yes, I'm very lucky, I'll say.

Ryan:

Yeah. And these are things, I mean I talk a lot about modern culture, check, check, check, that's three stars. A safe space for people to say, "Hey, we kind of fucked up today." But that's okay. It's all right.

Lauren:

Yeah. And I think that's such an important part of our culture. And going back to disruption and innovation, I know that it's okay if something I do doesn't work out. And as long as it's coming from a place of being strategic and making smart decisions, sometimes you can do those things and it's still not going to work. And I feel really lucky to work at a place where that's okay and we just need to shift and keep going and keep moving forward.

Ryan:

Yeah. Excellent. Okay. I wanted to ask you two more questions. I don't know if I have time, insights attribution. So you have some definition that is an insight and then some way to track that it's being applied.

Lauren:

Yeah sort of.

Ryan:

Just say a little bit more about this. Because I think a lot of people are trying to do this, but it's hard to do.

Lauren:

Yeah, no, it's incredibly difficult and I definitely don't have a perfect answer for it. And I think if we could figure it out, we would all be doing great. But it's so hard because insight, it integrates into an organization in a soft way at times, in a very fluid way. And it integrates into lots of different pieces of the organization if the organization is using insights the right way. 

So I would say that the caveat I take to how we track impact is it's never, I will never claim that we delivered this exact insight. And the only reason that XYZ was successful was because of that insight. That is not the way to do it.

Ryan:

Which is the problem with attribution in and of itself, right?

Lauren:

Exactly. So I think that there is a way if you have really close relationships with your stakeholders, that they can let you into the process that they take to take your insight and integrate it into the work that they're doing.

I think really that is my process. It's not tracking in any specific way, but on a quarterly basis I do ask my team to check back in with their stakeholders and to see for the projects they worked on with them, what did they do with those insights. And yes, that helps us build really good success stories for our team, but it also helps us evaluate what work is valuable and what work is not valuable and really keep a constant pulse on that. 

So again, it's not a perfect science, but what I love to see is sometimes I'll see stakeholders presenting decks on insights delivered this, and then this is how it showed up in our CRM content or in our landing page or whatever it is. And I think because we have a lot of these conversations around what happened to it, where did it go, I think that helps us create stories around impact.

Ryan:

So thank you for sharing with everybody. I'm out of time with Lauren, which makes me very sad. Lauren, I can't thank you enough for this conversation. I learned a lot. It's funny, we met at a counter in Austin, Texas in April. You were onboarding to Zappi. I just wanted to meet you and I've been looking forward to this conversation ever since. And it lived up exactly to my expectations. 

Lauren:

Thank you.

Ryan:

It's my pleasure. I wish you all the best as soon as you're hiring, put it up on the internet. We will help you get some more people because you're working for an incredible company and holy cow, what an awesome insights leader you are. So it's a privilege to get to talk to you, pick your brain a little bit.

Lauren:

Thank you so much. That's so nice of you and I really enjoyed chatting today.

Ryan:

Absolutely. We'll talk to you soon everybody. Lauren, thank you.

[Music transition to takeaways]

Ryan Barry:  I really enjoyed that interview with Lauren, ladies. I thought she was wonderful. I thought her story, her advice on how to do and how to prove the value of insights, and how to connect insights to strategy is just so wonderful. But Patricia, you always do such a good job of summarizing these chats. What did you take away from it?

Patricia Montesdeoca:

The first thing I want to come clean with is that it was hard for me to pick my favorite highlights because it was all gold. And I thought, okay, okay, focus. So I picked three, picked three that I thought were really actionable on Monday morning. Things that will help our people, our peeps listening in, right?

Ryan:

Three things.

Patricia:

Three things, right? The first one, you asked her a question and she turned it around, and she was telling you her journey, this, that, and the other. And she said, how can I find she asked herself, and in between roles, where I'm on the client side, and I'm really able to build insights in a way that I think they should really work. And I thought to myself, now that's a hell of a question to ask yourself on a Friday night with a glass of wine in your hand. And then she starts telling you in that totally transparent way, and I did an autopsy on her sentence, and I love the words she answered. 

So let me give you the sentence. I got introduced to one of the co-founders after many conversations. It felt like it was the right opportunity to see what insights could be within this very young company, a very unique place to start, insights function, growing insanely quick.

There are a lot of unique challenges that I knew where I was going to have. I was terrified about how I was going to do this, but it was also super exciting. It was a fresh blank page to make whatever I felt was going to work within that organization. I couldn't say no. So this was her sentence. Let's stop for a second. She didn't talk as fast as I do, but that's okay. I got introduced. Network guys, network, network, network, network. It felt like it was the right opportunity. There's no statistics to that. It's going to feel right or it's not going to feel right, and should trust your gut yourself better than anybody else.

And these are all pieces of advice that through Lauren, I'm giving to our listeners and watchers, because this is how you change from one job to the other. When you look for a new challenge, she said, to see what insights could be. Nobody's going to guarantee the future for you. So you walk in knowing that there's no future guaranteed. It's a young, unique place, but you're looking at it that way, right? Growing insanely quick.

Ryan:

Yes. I love how eloquent she was about that.

Patricia:

Oh God.

Ryan:

Everybody wants the fast growing company. Insane. I mean, let's be real. We're in one of them.

Patricia:

Oh yeah.

Ryan:

You worked with me for a long time. You're building one of them yourself. I mean you're building and you're flying and you're running and you're doing.

Patricia:

I think you said one, so we've talked about it before. Building the plane as you're flying, I think you call it.

Ryan:

Yeah, That's a kind of crazy metaphor if you think about it. That's what it's like.

Patricia:

But see, I want people to understand people ... I mean I'm OCD, they make charts and Excel sheets about when they're looking for the next job. It's part art and part science, part heart and part head. So make sure that insane is insane. And then she talked about how I was terrified that she couldn't say no. That is such a beautiful connection of words. She was terrified, she acknowledges she was terrified. She jumped anyway because of all the words. I thought that was so brilliant, so special, a sentence that we had to share and make sure people dissected and understood everything she was sharing with us in that sentence and how important it all was. 

So at the end of the day, she said, if you're really into process, I think you said too, if you're really into process and structure, young, high growth, crazy pace, that's not you. If you thrive on ambiguity and finding solutions and making time things for the first time, that is for you because you're a certain kind of crazy.

Ryan:

Well, I'm really glad that you chose the sentence because I think in our intro to the episode, we're acknowledging a unique time that we're in. And Lauren gave us a great perspective of how good companies do it, how good insights are done. 

But for all of you listening as people in careers and jobs, there's something for you to learn from just how she shows up. And this is what an innovator looks like. That comfort, the ability to acknowledge, that imposter syndrome, but say fuck it I got this. I mean, this is the type of person running through a tough time and doing really big tangible things on the other side of it, I love how bold she is. It was really so profound in how she's talking and how natural she comes across. And knowing what she knows and knowing what she doesn't is being super comfortable with that.

Patricia:

When I went to make my choice from big corporate America, I was at Coke and I was looking for my next challenge. I knew a lot about Zappi, and I made my list of pros and cons. And I knew I wanted something very different. I wanted a different pace. 

There were so many uncertainties. Am I going to be good at this? Am I not going to be good at this? Is it going to work? Do I have enough transferable skills? And then my gut and my heart said, go, you fit. I asked who knew me and who knew you guys and they said, go. And so I just jumped and it was the perfect end to my career, like an employee career. It was perfect, perfect, perfect. I couldn't have thought of a better way to wrap that up with a bow. So yeah, jump, be afraid and do it anyway. So the second one, this second one should be titled the best click bait ever. But I'm not going to title it that. I'm going to title it Masterclass in content marketing.

Could either be one of the two. So the best click bait, talk about sex. I mean, who's not going to click, right? She is selling one of the most marketable and commercial topics in the world, but at the same time, one of the most serious and down to earth necessary for the world at large as we see it and if we want to continue. But what I want to talk about with this best click bait, et cetera, et cetera together, is something that all insights people struggle with is foundational research. And if anybody says that's not true, they're lying just saying.

The first thing that was always cut from my budget, including when I was at Zappi, is the stuff for foundational research. Not for a specific product launch or ad launch, but let's think about the future. Let's learn about this. And kind of prepare yourself. That's the first thing that gets cut, because it's not tied to any dollars and cents, no volumes attached to that. But she turned this around and made it the most successful thing ever. So she turned content, she turned foundational research, boring as hell word, phrase, whatever, to something that turned out into the best click bait ever. Now that's a turnaround story, if I ever heard one. 

So you asked her what was the impetus behind it? Great word, by the way, impetus, right? 

Anyway, in a nutshell, she talks about doing the research as in, not the study, but doing the research to find out what you want. Look for creating empathy for the consumer. Destigmatize the uncomfortable stuff. And her world is uncomfortable stuff. You could talk about any other category. You could say destigmatize the boring stuff or destigmatize the growth stuff. Because not all categories are sweetness and flowers. But at the end of the day, it creates value as a B to C, right? 

Create value as your business. And she talks about there's a lot of content in general, but very little value or level setting. And at the end of the day, you need to make your consumer feel heard and then loosely associate your brand in a relevant manner to that topic that you're adding value to. You put that in front of people and there's going to be a conversation where they say, I want to read this. I want to learn more. And every different medium that you send them. 

Now, if you take all this and you apply to Hymns and hers, she found out that people actually don't really know too much about sex. All of you, people who think you're like gurus, you need to get back to the drawing board because you probably don't know as much as you think is what she is saying.

Ryan:

Yeah. And I mean, as a married man, I get to have it every so often. That's about all I know. I love you, Jill.

Patricia:

Jill, we love you. So then there's also a disconnect she found that there's a disconnect between the perception of what people have of what sex should be and the reality. So let's take that out. The difference between perception and reality, I bet it could be applied to every single category we've ever worked with. And she talks about how the reality of how things play out fuels shame and secrecy. 

So you need to put a light on, shine a light on that. And then she found that rooting, normalizing under the health conditions, made it all interesting and helped her help others feel like they were normal and they could ask questions. So this sounds really simple, but she took one of the hardest things in research, which is holding onto her foundational research. And she made foundational research on the superstar protagonist, no product launch, no ad launch. I take my hat off to her for being able to do that. So she was masterful. That was a master class.

Ryan:

It is. And I picked up on this in the interview. I was really enjoying it because I've been in B2B my whole life. And so creating value at the top of the funnel helps bring businesses into the funnel. It was fascinating to see that work with consumers. And I'll be honest with you, since the episode, as we have a lot of customers who sell cheeseburgers and tacos and pizza and cookies and soda and chips and cell phones and whatever else. I've been thinking a lot about what ways that they could do that differently. 

Because so much of their advertising is about a thing that is designed to create, let's call it what it is, incrementality or brand growth and most of their worlds. And so it's like, huh, all y'all are trying to do is that, and how can you enter into a conversation in an intentional way about your category that's either fun or welcoming or in the community or something that you can start a conversation in someone's house.

But for those of you out there, I really do recommend you think about that. How can you, through the understanding of your customers, find ways to create value for them beyond a trial of your cookie or a buy my cookie because my brand's legit at this price. Obviously that's the playbook. But what are other things you could be doing? Because I thought what Lauren did is something that, truthfully, in B2B, you see every day. I mean, we're currently testing every single one of the British Christmas ads. We're doing that because we happen to have a platform that tests ads. 

And so when we test ads in an area that people care about, guess what? People get value from that. They can share our data with their boss. Anyways, any of you try something, let me know what works. I'd love to, well, if anybody, if I start seeing it, I'll be super happy.

Patricia:

So let me add to that, and I'd love to if we can, link this TED, again, TED is not a sponsor of this, but I just listened to a TED Talk with Will Guidara, I hope I'm saying his name correctly. This is what he looks like. Just as you know, I pulled it up so I could show you. 

It's called the Secret Ingredient of Great Hospitality. Well, he's a restaurateur, I hope I'm saying that right. And he works in New York City in a four or five star, like a crazy amazing restaurant that I've probably never been to. And he's been looking for ways to be more focused on hospitality and to make his team do better. And he was focused on better food and better servicing, cleaner plates and nice music and comfortable chairs, etc. And I'm not going to do any spoiler alerts on this one, but spoilers on this one.

But he found out that it took him $2 to understand how to do hospitality like nobody else. He serves those taster meals. Again, this is way over my head, way over my pay grade, right about those seven, 10, 12 course taster meals. And so he slipped in, he heard them talking about something that these tourists were on a visit to New York and heard them talking about something that they hadn't had a chance to eat. They were foodies. And so he literally ran out, got them what they wanted, and served it as an extra course. Blew their minds, made the whole entire trip for them the best trip ever. 

So take a listen to that. I'll send you the link Kelsey, if we can, but it's worth the 12 minute listen. But anyway, it's amazing. Number three, usually I don't talk about this one in my highlights, but there were a few things in here that I thought were incredibly helpful for our listeners on Monday mornings. As you know that's my take. I want to make sure that we give you things.

Ryan:

That's the game. That's the goal.

Patricia:

The goal, her journey at Hims & Hers. What was she doing there and how her journey was in. She started it, great. I came in hot. I mean, talk about transparency and honesty. She was like I came in hot. And then she was humbled, right? Then she realized that it takes a long time to understand, to integrate, to figure things out. 

So actually I feel like it took me six months to say, I feel comfortable that I'm working at Zappi now. It takes a while especially when you have these very different places where you used to work from before. And she said, I just started with a lot of listening. Every single one of our amazing podcasts, guests have talked about the importance of listening. She said, the moment she listened, she tried to jump in to do some research to start giving them nuggets of gold.

Maybe it's called sands, little pieces of fairy dust. But it was something important because she realized her job, number one, was to figure out how to build an insights function in this very fast growing environment. And what that looked like. She had no idea. So her story was all about hyper focus, which kind of translates into saying no a lot. Very lean projects, not all the projects, just the important ones. Understanding the business objectives, what type of insights they really want, finding partners, defining team members, designing the process. She's like, all those are the homework things that you do every day, but all this focused on delivering very specific projects and objectives that are actually actionable. So she started out by giving them the gold, giving them the money, giving them the insight, and that helped open the door to more budget, more partners and more team members.

And then she said, remember how we've talked about in the past, a sports analogy that the follow through on the swing is just as important as how hard you're getting it? She's like, track, track what works. And that gives me the end of this, which I thought was the golden nugget, how to figure out how to, what is it called? Track. She goes, okay, you get in the door, you work with your people because tracking insights, as we all know in insights, is a hard, hard thing. Track everything. Everybody says track everything. How do you track?

Ryan:

Well, attribution in any sense is like.

Patricia:

Yeah, so hard.

Ryan:

It's tricky.

Patricia:

So she's like, what did you do with the insight? Where'd you go? And the way that she feels that she does a good job at this is that she is more integrated with the people who use the insight. So she knows, okay, I delivered this to you. Where'd you put it? What did you do with it? What landing page, What website? And she said never ever say I did this. Say the insights helped. The insights contributed. And take your piece. This is how much conversion. This is how much that conversion led to dollars. And that way she's never saying, I did all this myself, but she's saying I contributed to this. And it was a beautiful balance. I just thought that was the best way, because she showed her superpowers that way.

Ryan:

She did. She understood through discovery what her stakeholders are trying to do. She found ways to catch them in stride with value. I mean, how often do you see in businesses, people are trying to enable somebody, but they don't ... It dies in the library, it dies in the PowerPoint deck, it doesn't get utilized. So she caught them in stride and went through building relationships and connecting. She was able to influence them and track what they did. Yeah, it's really ... Yeah, Lauren's a G. I mean, unbelievable.

Patricia:

Yeah. And she actually talked about creating the stories that made everybody shine.

Ryan:

Yeah, yeah.

Patricia:

Not taking the credit, which I thought was just beautiful.

Ryan:

Well, no, I love this balance of empathy, listening, a lot of ambition, but a ton of humility. And I think those ... You both have heard me say this quote internally a lot. You build a whole company around people with those types of traits. Everybody, do me a favor, tomorrow, be more like Lauren, channel your inner Lauren.

Patricia:

Be your own version of Lauren. There you go.

Ryan:

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Well everybody, thank you for this wonderful episode. We have two episodes left.

Patricia:

Unbelievable.

Ryan:

Season five, is that right?

Patricia:

Unbelievable.

Ryan:

Holy cow. I blacked out there for a minute. How many seasons have we had? Season five, I don't want to tell anybody this because I'm not going to leak this, but we already have season six premiere on the calendar, people. We're going to bring the heat here. 

We have Jorge Kavachi, who is the global head of insights for Lazy Boy. I'm not going to give away this story, but I will tell you the punchline so you come back, here's my click bait. Jorge was offered to come in and lead the insights department and he said, I don't want to lead the insights department. I want to lead this business to be customer centric. So when I heard that, the reason he is on the podcast is I heard him say that at a conference and then I chased him down and talked to him for a long time.

And I want to share, I want him to share just the way his mind works with all of you and also particularly those of you in the audience. I think this is mostly an American brand, but most people's grandpa had a lazy boy. And the journey that that brand is on to sort of harness that is quite fascinating. 

And we might as well drop the season finale. What do you think, Kelsey? Season finale, we have Stefani Guillo, the SVP and Chief Insights Officer at Domino's. We're bringing the heat for you guys. We got some great insights to come. I'd like to thank you for listening and have a great day. We'll talk to you soon.

Patricia:

Bye guys.