How client-centric models are disrupting the norm in pharma marketing - #60

Ben: Welcome to the Consulting Pulse, a podcast by cemap. CEMAP is an operations and intelligence platform purpose built for consulting firms. Let's dive into today's episode. Okay, so delighted this week to be joined by Maven. Guys. If you could each give an intro first to let the audience know a little bit about who you are, the business, um, maybe a little bit about the markets that you serve, that would be a great starting point.

Dave McCarowich: Yeah, thanks, Ben. Thanks for having us on. My name's Dave McCarowich. I'm the founder of Maven. Uh, we are a professional services firm located in Canada. And specifically what we do is that we are an agency partner that delivers strategically aligned marketing materials faster for brand managers at leading pharmaceutical companies. And how we do that is we use our, uh, custom brand Maven team approach to help navigate the regulatory labyrinth more effectively.

Ben: Very good, Chris.

Chris Rieger: Yeah, I'm Chris Rieger. I'm the CEO of Maven. And to expand a little bit on what Dave M. Mentioned. So we are a team of, uh, just under 30 people at this point and servicing exclusively Canadian pharmaceutical manufacturers. This is an area that Dave and I both worked on the manufacturer side for a number of years and had, uh, some experience with agencies. Some of them were fantastic. Some of the experiences left something to be desired. And we both felt that by fundamentally changing the way the agency worked, we could improve upon that client experience. And so that's strictly where we're focused right now is pharmaceutical brand managers in Canada and just helping them navigate that regulatory labyrinth and get approval for materials faster.

Ben: Nice. It's come from a place where you've both experienced some pain as the end customer. And, um, the obvious answer to this question would be a yes, but how have you managed to change the experience that people like you were, uh, facing when they were in industry and now you are helping support them from the agency side.

Dave McCarowich: Why don't you take a crack at that one, Chris? I've answered that question so many times.

Chris Rieger: Absolutely happy to. So. So I think the main challenge when I was a product manager and Dave's definitely mirrored this response. Dealing with large agencies, we never felt like the person that we were talking to actually owned the material that we were working on. And it presented itself in a number of challenges. One was it was always a question of we would talk to our account manager, but then that account manager would go talk to a medical writer or that person. Person would go talk to, uh, a creative director. And then it was a lot of broken telephone in terms of the actual material we were Trying to produce the messages and the things we were asking for in the way that those things got delivered. And because the agencies were so siloed in the way that they worked, it felt like consistent broken telephone. It felt like too many people were touching the project, and it felt like they were incentivized to have too many people touch the project, because that's all time and materials. Every time someone touches it, they can bill us for it. And so that resulted in scope creep, that resulted in projects taking too long, that resulted in us giving direction and getting something back that wasn't aligned with the subtleties of what we were trying to achieve. I mean, pharmaceutical marketing is a very precise endeavor, and when there's too many people involved in the loop, it can really lose that precision. And I mean, ultimately, it was also just delays in terms of. I can't remember the number of times we would be working on a project, and I would say, okay, I think we're. We're close here. Just change these three words, and then let's get it into regulatory and let's get it approved. And they would say, well, I'm not allowed to touch the copy deck. And so I've got to send this to the medical writer to change those three words. And I'm not allowed to touch the layout. So I've got to send it to studio to change those three words. So I'll be back to you in four days. And I'm like, it's three words. Why is this taking so long? So all of that structure and the way that the agencies were set up really led to a lot of pain, led to a lot of delays, led to a lot of increased costs. And so in, uh, putting Maven together, in the way that we structured it, our idea was, let's try and address all those pain points. I know what pissed me off. Let's set things up in a way that can minimize that amount of pain for our customers and get materials out faster, make it a better client experience, and show them that the people working on their materials have skin in the game and are accountable for how these things are moving forward.

Ben: I only played devil's advocate early. Um, so no doubt you went into that with the ambition quite easy when you're relatively small, but you're scaling and you're growing quite fast. And, um, how do you manage to keep that speed to value, which was part of Dave's really nice, succinct pitch, is part of your more deeper, uh, uh, evaluation that first question, because that's going to Be a challenge, I would imagine.

Chris Rieger: Yeah, absolutely. So there's two parts to speed to value. One is how can we keep the speed to the customers in the way that the people are doing the work? And the second part of your question is, so how do you scale that? How do you take all of that material and, and make it easy to bring on new people and in full transparency? It's been a challenge. It actually is one of our rate limiting steps. Um, we have seen in our industry many examples of people like Dave and I who were on the client side who started an agency. We had our fingers in everything and because of our experience we're doing great work. And you know, there is a market to be had here. And there have been some agencies that have come in and created a good reputation, seen the, the opportunity that existed within the market, hired a whole bunch of people, didn't train them very well, and within a year and a half, everything, the wheels completely fell off and they ruined that reputation that they built. And they were kind of starting from step, uh, one. And so Dave and I were very conscious of that from the beginning and made a very deliberate point of not wanting to do that. And, and so to answer your question, how does it scale? It's slowly, um, it's been really deliberate in terms of the way that the people that we've brought on, um, it took us a little while to find the right source, um, of young talent to bring into the agency. And we've now partnered with an excellent program at the University, uh, of Toronto called the Masters of Management of Innovation. And uh, it just dovetails so perfectly for us because it's people with a science degree who've decided they want to go into business and it's like a little mini MBA for them. And that's just perfect for us. And one of our uh, key drivers is we ensure that everybody on the accounts team has a science degree. Because if you're speaking about pharmaceuticals, that's an important part of having that conversation. So the first step was figuring out where to find the right people to bring into the agency. The next step was how do we try and mentor and teach these people and bring them on and teach them the way that we want them to do things. And you're right, the traditional agency approach is significantly easier to scale because you're only teaching one skill set. You're only teaching medical writing, you're only teaching, uh, design. But our approach has always been to have what we call T shaped individuals which you've got a core competency and then you've got side competencies which addresses that pain point earlier of uh, there's only three, the only three words in the uh, layout. Can you please just go in and change this? Well no, I've got to send it to studio. If someone has a cursory understanding of InDesign or Figma, they can go in and do that themselves. So how to scale this up was slow and deliberate and it was a lot of one on one training. Um, and in honesty we could have grown this business faster if that was not the way that we decided to focus on it. But we made the decision to take our time in terms of the scaling and the growth and ensure that we've built a team for first of all under us, who are now our senior people who learn directly at our right hand of the way that we want these things done. And then now that is scaling out in our pod approach where now those people are mentoring the people within their pods and training them on the processes and our approach and the way that we do things. And then finally, I think the technology has come into it in terms of everything that we do is documented internally. We have an internal wiki of all of our SOPs, all of our trainings, we have an internal LMS that we've been working on. And the goal there is to try and create a technology based system where people can learn a little more asynchronously. So you're not drawing on the resources of your, of the people that you're working with and can learn on your own and then bring questions and that kind of reduces the burden on the senior team members and helps people come up a little bit faster. So does it scale quickly? No. Has it scaled effectively? Yes. And we're consistently working on technology to try and help us make that move a little bit faster.

Ben: How, uh, much of that is down to solving that core pain that you felt being customers and how much of it is down to like the direction of travel, ambitions for the firm, um, and trying to build something obviously very intentionally or is it sort of like a equal split of both?

Dave McCarowich: I think our guiding light, you know, Maven just had its 10 year anniversary this January and even after 10 years, I think it's fair to say that we're still staying true to our guiding light of we've got to make a decision here. How are we going to, you know, we can either do option A or option B. And that guiding light has always been for us. If we were the client, what would we want? Like what's the best way to do this for the client, not for the company. And I think that's, you know, again, that our overall goal and the overall pain point that we're trying to resolve is that client experience, because that was the main thing that we really felt was lacking. Um, and sometimes, you know, those two things are at odds with each other. You know, doing what's best for the client can put you in a pickle sometimes to say, well, this is going to make it harder on the back end and how to scale this or how to do this. But I think to double down on what Chris is saying, I think fundamentally, I think for the last 10 years we have always been very tech forward, um, and we've always pushed ourselves to be as innovative as possible with technology. And I think just that philosophy and that approach helps us do certain things that wouldn't be possible otherwise. Um, because we do ask a lot of our team and our team members have a much broader scope of, um, responsibilities and accountabilities, but with the overall thinking and, you know, I'm sure AI will come up in this conversation at some point, but the overall philosophy of what can we have the technology do and automate for us and create consistencies for us so that the people can focus on the higher level strategic stuff, the stuff that the clients really want at the end of the day, those high touch points in those, um, strong relationships. So, so yeah, I think, I think that answers your question. Does it?

Ben: Yeah, definitely, yeah. Because, well, plenty of people start a firm with an exit in mind or like an end goal of what they want to have built and the customer journey maybe isn't quite as a priority. Um, so it's interesting to hear that that still is for you.

Dave McCarowich: Um, honestly, I think it's, I've seen that happen, um, you know, where individuals want to start a business and from day one it's all about how am I going to maximize the valuation of my exit. And I think for us, um, we just didn't come into this thinking that at all. Um, and the idea of potentially exiting one day never crossed our mind, um, until a certain point when at a certain point you wake up and you realize, you know, you can't run this business from the grave. You're going to have to let go of it at some point. Like, what's the legacy you're going to leave behind? Are you going to leave behind something there? All of these people that you've been nurturing and helping to grow and develop that, you know, we value so much, like we want to leave something behind. At some point that is going to mean something, it's going to stick around, and they're going to be able to take the baton and continue to move. Right. So, um, so it's certainly, uh, I would say the initial phases, the, the only thing that on our mind was we just want to do this differently. We want to make sure we're maximizing the client experience. You know, we don't care if we've never worked in an agency before. We don't want to learn the wrong way to do things. Let's just, let's just use first principles and say these are the things that absolutely are, uh, immutable and can't change, and let's build up the structure from there and use that guiding light of if I'm still in that seat of the brand manager, what would I want to feel at this point from my agency? What's the decision we should make? And the answer's always been clear. Do what's best for the client. And it's worked for us. Sure, there's been challenges, as there are with any, uh, business, but I, uh, think after 10 years we've definitely landed on a really strong, um, I guess systemization of how we work and have determined who the right people are, what the right structure is. Um, and, and uh, you know, we're still, thankfully in a position where we often have more work than we have capacity to do it. And we're still in the position where we're often telling people no, which is very odd in our line of work. And a lot of other entrepreneurs would tell us that, you know, we're crazy. But I think we believe so fundamentally in making sure that that client experience doesn't get diluted or doesn't get dissolved. Um, that's why we've, uh, taken the approach. We have.

Ben: The other interesting area, having listened to you on other, uh, podcasts and being part of communities, um, in North America, is the structure of the business. The first thing is, Dave, you're the founder. Chris, you're the CEO. Quite often those are a role that is still maintained for one person. Um, and also you've got this POD structure which, unless the listeners had picked that up, uh, but we haven't gone into any detail on that. But we'd love for you to describe the structure in the business, how that came about, because I think, yeah, as you touched on that obviously is a differentiator versus other agencies, plus has enabled you to deliver what you deliver. So that context would probably really useful

Chris Rieger: for everyone listening in, the CEO founder split is actually a very recent thing for us that we just moved into uh, earlier this year. And the reality for a long time was that Dave and I were still very involved in delivering services to clients which is an absolute double edged sword because I love it. I've been doing this for 20 plus years at this point. We have great relationships with our clients. I like nerding out and getting into the middle of delivering awesome campaigns for clients. But the reality is that when you're uh, when you're working in the business, you can't work on the business. Shout out to our C54 colleagues. And uh, that became really challenging. And so it became a very concerted effort over the last two years of firstly to get Dave uh, as much as possible away from client service delivery and being able to focus on working on the business. And then same uh, thing for myself and we're always still available for those clients that do need us. But I think as we've done that work over the last few years uh, our, our people have been able to take over a lot of those relationships and they're always the first point of contact. Sure we can be there if we need to be, but we find that less and less do we actually need to be. And so the most recent development was uh, working towards implementing eos, uh, and the framework into our business. And that was really what drove the founder CEO split. And so that was a change that we brought in in January of this year. So we're now at the end of March. Uh, I can actually say it's been a really great improvement in the way that Dave and I work. And there's a couple of really positive things that have come out of that. One is I think it's become a much more clearer separation of duties. I think as two business owners working together, sometimes working with clients, sometimes not, there was a really overlapping venn diagram of what we were sort of accountable for and doing. And uh, it wasn't always such a clear separation. Um, we've worked towards that and now there's a very clear separation. I think the second part is it has really allowed Dave to dig into those founder type activities of what is the big thinking, what are the big projects, what are the three to five year goals? Um, you know, obviously how can we incorporate AI into what we're doing and what actually makes sense and having someone who can dedicate the their time to that. And for me I now have uh, purview over the uh, entire company which honestly when I had a foot in client services. I didn't because I was kind of part of one of the pods and partly running the business and partly, partly, partly. And it wasn't dedicated time. So now that frees both of us up to be much more focused and our skill sets become much more complimentary and less overlapping in the stuff that we're doing and only where we absolutely need to. So it's really, I think it's been a huge multiplier for us in the last couple months.

Dave McCarowich: Yeah, the velocity at which things can happen goes up too. Because, you know, I think Chris, you and I have always, I mean, we've been business partners for, you know, nearly 10 years with this venture. And we've always had the ability to come together and talk through things and get on the same page. But it's just. That just takes longer for certain things. So, you know, having a, uh, clear swim lanes of. This is, you know, this is your swim lane. This is my swim lane. Just helps speed things up as well.

Ben: Right?

Dave McCarowich: As well as, like you said, open up new opportunities of things that we couldn't do before. So to tie the loop then of the pods piece, because I think for anyone, um, who's listening that isn't familiar with this concept of pods, um, it's essentially the way that we look at it is, um, we have dedicated teams of individuals that, ah, service, um, a, uh, group of clients. And all of the work that we do with those clients is serviced by that particular pod. Um, and so each one of the pods, the easiest way to think about it is kind of its own little mini business where, you know, they are accountable for the health of those relationships. They're accountable for, um, you know, both the financial health as well as just overall client satisfaction, uh, and internal employee satisfaction. Are the people in the pods getting the experience that they need or they feel like they're growing and developing? Um, all that to say is that, you know, in order for Chris and I to move into these roles, you really have to be at a place where you have, um, a structure that is clear enough, where responsibilities and accountabilities are clear enough, that a lot of the things that we used to be accountable for are now pushed down to sort of the next level. So, uh, you know, a lot of, uh, like I said, the client satisfaction, employee satisfaction, financial health, all of that is being managed at the pod level. Um, fires are being managed at the pod level. Like Chris said, we're still there to jump in when needed. But by creating a system of that Accountability within, um, how we work frees us up to be able to do other things that we wouldn't otherwise be able to do.

Ben: Have you found any like pod on pod, um, sort of like competitiveness that has enabled parts of the business to thrive or have a challenge or is there any aspect of that structure that has maybe been a surprising revelation?

Dave McCarowich: I think there is definitely. I mean it's a great question and I think we've seen like, there's probably so many examples we can give of, you know, we, we tried this pod structure, you know, and we learned, hey, when this pod A is, is uh, under capacity and pod B is over capacity, how do we get pod A to help pod B? And then you get the feedback to say, well, there's no financial incentive to do that. So you're like, okay, how do we change it so that there is a financial incentive? Like you're kind of, you don't really know what's going to happen until it happens. Um, so there were some elements that we had to work through where, you know, it wasn't giving us the um, the result that we wanted in terms of overall collaboration, but we worked through those and the team um, is, uh, is aligned. Um, there are. The flip side though, which I think I didn't appreciate was, yeah, you do get like naturally, you know, each pod is, has their own team, they have their own kind of logo. Um, they spend the majority of the time working just within that pod and obviously a lot less time working across pods. And so naturally you get some, I think, competitive, you know, healthy competition. Um, I don't know Chris, maybe you see it more than I do because now, you know, you're seeing the day to day. But, um, I just hear little things in passing or here and there, you know, like, we're the best pod, like we know we are and stuff like that. But I'm sure deep down they're also looking like, how are they performing and how are we performing and how do we get higher? Do you have, do you have any examples, Chris, of that or. I don't know, that's just my own perspective.

Chris Rieger: No, I don't think you're wrong. I mean, I think it's just human nature. Like we are tribal, individual. We are tribal, uh, peoples. And when you're like, hey, my, this is my tribe and this is your tribe, there's going to be competition. I think the goal is to keep it as healthy competition and I think we've been able to do that. And I think that there's an Example that you brought up, Dave, that's very timely right now is, um, we have one pod who is, uh, very much over capacity, um, in terms of they have a ton of work to get done. We have one pod that is currently under capacity just because some timing of some projects changed. And so, you know, does it make sense to change client relationships to move products between one pod to another? Probably not to solve a short term problem, but then we can have a conversation with the pod that has extra capacity to say, are you able to help out? What percentage of your time can you give? How can you help? And how can we adjust the financial rewards to make sure that everyone feels like we're all contributing to the same goal and everyone's being rewarded fairly? And I would say that we've had more, more success with that than pushback. It took a little while to get there and I mean we're a big sort of ship it and fix it kind of culture. We're very big on. Let's try it. It's, it doesn't work, let's get some feedback and then let's fix it. We've been through a few iterations. We actually had to do a pod shuffle last year, which was really interesting, where this current structure wasn't optimal for what we were trying to achieve and where the growth was going to come from. And we had to reshuffle the deck and it's never going to be perfect for everybody. Someone's always going to be in a situation where they feel like, hey, maybe I didn't come out of this as well as other people did. But we tried to be as open as possible in the conversation. We tried to include as many voices at the end of the day, the day as we could. And you know, we tried it. There's a few situations that aren't ideal and we're working our way through those and we shipped it and now we're trying to fix it. And I think all in all it's moving forward in a very positive direction.

Ben: I've got a question for you, uh, a little bit of context before I ask the question. So you both clearly have got domain expertise. You both clearly can sell and market. You both do, you can deliver, uh, from the client side. Quite often when I meet like business partners and there's like that, uh, dividing roles, there's very clearly like somebody who is more ops and there's maybe somebody who's more clearly bd. Chris, you almost intimated a bit as well where you were overlapping because, because of that venn diagram was, was probably fairly like overlapped. So, like, what I really want to know is how did you make that decision between who does what and M. Honestly, was there any, like, I really wish I could do a bit of that or I could still do a bit of this going on during that process.

Dave McCarowich: I think there's two things that come to mind. Uh, the first thing is that Chris and I couldn't be more opposite in terms of how our brains work. Um, which is a good thing. We're like the yin and the yang, right? Like, I'm a very detailed thinker, um, whereas Chris is much better at the high level thinking. Right. So I think we've always kind of balanced each other out. Um, and when we, when we put our brains together on things, it helps us, you know, think about both of those aspects. Like, what are we doing the right thing from a big high level? Um, do we have the right approach here? And then, you know, what are the actual nitty gritty details of how we're going to do that? Um, so that's one element. The other element is, I don't know where I heard it, but the first thing you should always do is to just take a minute and write down, what are the things that you're currently doing that you love doing? What are the things that you're currently doing that you wish you didn't have to do? Um, and then compare that list. And so I think it's just because of the nature of who we are. When Chris and I look at the things that we really enjoy, they're just different, you know? Um, so it helped, it helped distinguish. Well, hey, if, if, if doing A is the thing that you feel like isn't work and this is your hobby, then go ahead and do A because I hate it. Right? So, um, so I don't know, maybe it's fate that it kind of lined up so well for us that way. Like, we don't often fight over. I, um, really wish I could do that. Or, you know, I, we just don't get into those situations. And um, and I don't know, maybe, maybe the takeaway there is, you know, it's always great to make sure that you partner and work with people who are different thinkers and who have different perspectives because, you know, it helps you think about things more broadly, but also makes it easier to, uh, I guess align people to what their interests and strengths are.

Chris Rieger: If I can add to that, if, if anyone's keeping score at home and they're saying, wait a minute, the detailed Thinker is the vis and the high level strategy guy is the integrator in eos. What are you guys doing? Like, that's not the way that it should be. It's the exact opposite of what it should be, which we spent a good amount of time talking about as well. And I think one of the things that has been interesting for me getting into this role is I am not a naturally detail oriented thinker the way that Dave is. And I have learned so much from him in terms of how to document, how to set up systems, how to track, um, how to not send him a document where he's like, dude, what is this? Like come on, help me out here, right? And like there was a lot of that at the beginning. We were learning how to speak to each other. But I also think that there's an advantage of having someone in an integrator role who maybe it doesn't come completely natural to because in all actuality I am trying to document and train myself out of a job. We have some very high potential people in the company and I don't want to be doing the CEO role forever. And I think that the future leaders of Maven are already at Maven. And so by the fact that this doesn't come naturally to me means I have to put some effort into thinking about it and documenting it and making sure that it's clear for the next person and that's only going to make them stronger stepping into this role. So while I'm figuring it out, I'm also trying to document and standardize and use technology as much as I can. As we've spoken to is in our culture and set that up for whoever that next person is that's going to come in and do this and whenever that is.

Ben: That's really cool. And I feel personally similar. So like I am not good at the detail. But now working In a twice PE backed SaaS business means that I'm having to learn a ton of things that was previously completely off my radar and probably people look at me and go, uh, why are you doing what you're doing? Probably similar to you Chris, it's because there's like learning it and then figuring out what happens after. Well, it's personally interesting and beneficial and you've got the benefit of that also helping your business longer term, which is also really cool, really interesting. Um, whilst we're on that subject then so talk, talk a little bit about some of the like you've got that recruitment thing through Toronto which also sounds like just. It's not, no doubt, it's not fall on your lap at all. So I'm not saying it has but like what a great, it sounds like a great thing to be like in and around where you're located and you've obviously identified that and then can leverage it. Um, but how are you working with those people to like progress them through. How have you identifying some of those high potential people and what are you doing in the business either within this pod structure or outside the pod structure to help them progress? That sounds really interesting.

Chris Rieger: I think I would go back to a moment where Dave and I kind of got kicked in the teeth a little bit, um, as a bit of a wake up call. And it was, I want to say 5ish years ago, somewhere around there and we were still relatively small, we were still both in the pods and we had brought on um, two people out of that uh, that program, uh, very talented, um, young people. And within two weeks they both left after about a year at the business and, and um, one of them left to go join a family business which there's nothing we could have done about that. That was a great opportunity for them. But the other person very clearly articulated to us that they didn't feel like they were progressing fast, fast enough and they didn't feel like they had a clear roadmap of how they were going to be progressing. And it was a bit of a wake up call for us for two reasons. I mean, one was looking at what we thought was the right structure to move people forward, maybe not appropriate for the way the workplace is now. I mean I grew up in an era where it was like you did a job for three years, the first year you learned it, the second year you did it, the third year you perfected it and then you moved on. And uh, maybe that's dating me because that's not the approach that a lot of people have right now. And they're looking for more structure of I want to advance, how can I advance? Or what do I need to do to advance? And uh, credit to Dave at that point because his detailed brain kicked in and said okay, how are we going to do this? And we created uh, a complete roadmap from sort of day one until you're a pod leader of what are the skills that need to be acquired and mastered in order to move through each of these levels. There's about four levels to get you from day one until you're a, ah, ah, leader of a pod. Um, and then what are the roles and responsibilities within each of the pods and who's accountable for what and who is doing activities that's going to help them grow and develop skills to get them to that next level. And setting up standard performance reviews. We do them every month when someone joins for the first year and then we do them quarterly after that for the entire company. And it's a very clear discussion of here is the roadmap for development, here's where you are, here's some areas that we want to improve your skills or give you more exposure to. Here's what we're going to get you to work on over the next three months. And it gives people a much clearer roadmap of what do I need to do to move to that next level to get the more accountability, to get the raise, to get the bigger bonus opportunity, all of those kinds of things. But it really helped sort of map things out in terms of giving them a sense of ownership and understanding and clearly seeing here's what I need to do to move forward versus some people were, before this system existed were like, I don't know when I'm getting promoted, I don't know what my next step is. I'm just doing my thing. And that didn't feel like it was enough structure for them.

Ben: So.

Chris Rieger: So uh, that really helped us put that together to give our people, um, a roadmap. And it also helps the senior people because now you've got a very clear set of guidelines and roadmap for when you're doing any development or any reviews with people.

Dave McCarowich: Yeah, the opposite side of that too, to just double down on. Yes, it gives the junior person a clear roadmap, but it also creates an accountability structure for the senior because, you know, visibility, um, what's the begets accountability? Does that make sense? Am I making that up? Um, not knowing if somebody is stagnating, you can't hold somebody accountable, you can't fix it. And so there was just no visibility on it. So now having a very clear sort of map that says here's where, here are all the steps, here's where you currently are and here's where we're working to get you in the next three to six months, it's very obvious now if that person hasn't moved and it's very easy now to say, hey, they haven't moved. Why is that happening? Um, so everything, uh, everything is visible, which makes it easier to have those conversations with everybody involved and come up with the right action plans to, to fix the problem. Right.

Ben: I love that. I know not in the market we're in. But in a previous life, plenty of businesses that would have taken a defensive stance had somebody given them that feedback. So it's refreshing. Also what's fascinating is that was two weeks. Like, isn't that incredible? Like the expectation that, um. Am I right? That was. They said that they didn't have that.

Chris Rieger: No, sorry. Within two weeks of each other. Um, so they had been there for about a year, but within two. And the challenge for us, and the reason that was such a wake up moment for us was we were still relatively small at that point, so losing two people was tough. And also they were sort of the, they weren't the most junior, but they were still within a year of sort of arriving. They were finally at the point where, you know, you're, you're contributing to the business and you're able to drive more work. Um, and it was really, um, it was challenging for us because our philosophy has always been we're going to hire and we're going to grow our own talent. And then when you realize the system is broken and you're investing all of this time and energy to train people and then that they're leaving, that's challenging from a pipeline point of view, also from, uh, a crap, who's going to do the work tomorrow point of view. And so that was why having the two of them leave was a very challenging moment. And to your point, we could have said, wow, uh, it's their problem, it's not our problem, we'll just hire two more people. But it was hard. And uh, admittedly I didn't always agree with it at the beginning so much. That's not how I grew up, that's not how I have approached work. But at the end of the day, it's not about how I did it or think it should be done. It's like, what do our people need and how can we put those systems in place? And, and it was worth putting the effort in to do that.

Ben: Sure. A lot of people, I felt the same. I look back on things, decisions, and you feel guilty about how you responded. But, uh, it's the ability to learn and change that means that you can progress and move forwards. And the other thing I always think is a dangerous assumption when it comes to people in boutiques is when you're hiring somebody, you think that they appreciate. This is not a Pfizer, uh, it's not a GlaxoSmith client, it's not a global industry. You're joining a small business. So therefore you have an understanding that you are only able to progress at a certain rate that doesn't shift their expectation. They still want to see that there's that progression that they would associate with a large business. Even when they're in a boutique.

Dave McCarowich: Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I would if I had a, uh, new employee, you know, ask me that question. What are, what are the pros and cons of joining a smaller, you know, boutique pro serve company like Maven versus joining a Pfizer? I would probably say the growth and development opportunities that you'll get here at Maven are going to far exceed what you would get at Pfizer. Uh, we're a fast growing company. We need people to grow and develop as quickly as possible. We're investing a tremendous amount of time and energy in building those training and development platforms. And that, you know, roles and responsibilities map is just one example. Um, so, so that's the first element I think if you're going into like a giant company. I mean I've worked at giant pharmaceutical companies and it's laughable how little training and development is given to their people. I mean, Chris, you, you were a trainer and I'm not slighting you at all. But the amount of resources that are invested in training and developing people, um, relative to just the size of the organization just seems like it's confusingly small. And it's not that I'm confused. Like, I get why, you know, it's hard to make a large impact with training and development quarter to quarter. Uh, and when you're a publicly traded company and you're trying to hit your numbers every quarter and that's all that matters. Spending a lot of money on T and D, that you're not going to see anything in a year or two is obviously makes sense. But just philosophically, like, um, I had a conversation with, uh, with an individual who's um, been in this industry and, and has had very, very high level roles in this industry and, and that was our conversation. This gentleman said, you know, it just baffles me how things have changed so much that you know, back in my day, like there was so much time and attention given to training and development and now all of that is gone by the Wade side. Um, so that's number one. The second element that I think an individual would benefit from coming to a boutique like Maven is just the financial upside. So you're going to get career opportunities, um, faster here. Which means if you do a great job and you work hard, uh, and uh, you're able to progress, you're obviously going to get um, promoted quicker, which is going to get you a higher salary faster. Uh, you're getting more experience faster than you would have otherwise. Uh, and you know, I think we're, we're, we're, we're definitely like a pay for performance culture. Like we, um, we, we believe in the overall idea that Maven is a team. It's not a group of people, you know, or single individual heroes. Uh, philosophically, you know, we win or we lose together. And if Maven wins and we have a good year, um, we try to give back to the employees and share some of the upside with the employees. So the better the teams do and that kind of gets back to the pod structure and gets back to the competition. The better those pods are doing and the more business they're bringing in and the more clients want to work with them and uh, the more healthy, um, their bottom line is for the pod, the more we want to give back to the people as well. So um, I think we're really just trying to build the entrepreneurial spirit, uh, within our people and letting them um, benefit, uh, from the upside of that as well.

Ben: The question I always like to ask as well is, um, you've got the experience now of running a pro Seraphone for 10 years. Um, you mentioned there's been some learnings along the way. If you were to do it again, what would be some pieces of advice that you would share with the audience? And it could be positive, it could be a challenge. Is there anything that strikes you that if you left Maven, you started Maven 2, you're like, right, that's the one thing I am going to do or not going to do ever again.

Chris Rieger: Yeah, it's an interesting reflection. Um, I think that the difference for

Dave McCarowich: me,

Chris Rieger: there's a lot of things I would do the same because I think we've, we've, I would absolutely keep it centered on the client experience because I think that's just such a pillar of what we do. I think I would be deliberate about the growth, um, the way that we were, because the proof is in the pudding in that like we've had very, very few clients leave and decide they want to work with someone else, which in this industry there can be a fair amount of turnover in agencies and we've, I think, been very fortunate. We've had some, we have some great clients and I think we've delivered on that and they want to continue working with us. So I think I would keep that. Um, I think I would Keep that the same. I think for myself, um, I have, I had no idea how to run a business. Um, and I think that's what I would probably do differently and say, start getting into more of the resources of how to run a business. Um, a little bit earlier, um, I mean, I think that we kind of joke around that by virtue of the fact that I was the only person who had ever managed someone at a job. I was the head of HR early. Right. And like that kind of stuff where we were just doing what made sense at the time when we were a five person or a ten person company. And I will give a lot of recognition to the Collective 54 community because we learned a lot from them, uh, in terms of how to set up a business, how, how to scale it effectively, um, how to learn from other people's, uh, dumb taxes. There are people who are very willing to say, hey, I made a mistake, don't make the same mistake that I did. And I think we came in at the right time because we were big enough that learning those things made sense to running the business, but we weren't so big that we couldn't correct the ship. And, and we did done a bunch of work over the last couple years to um, really streamline the management of the business. But I think for me that might have been the thing that would have made a little more difference earlier on is having a bit of a better understanding of how to run a business because I had never done that before.

Dave McCarowich: Yeah, that was the joining the community, in this case Collective 54. But getting access to other people who have been through it and who are in different phases, that would have saved a lot of time. Um, because it's the value of mentorship and the value of just being with other, uh, individuals who are going through the same thing is, I don't know, I don't even think you can put a price on it. Like it's, it's tremendously beneficial. Um, um, from a personal standpoint, I think, I think the coming to the realization, I mean, we just talked about this internally with our senior team. It's like you're always pulled between these, uh, conflicting needs that the immediate needs of the immediate work and uh, the immediate client needs and the needs of, you know, I got to, I got to train the next individual. I got to make sure I'm giving them the opportunities. I got to make sure I'm, you know, moving things along to, to help build the business or build the company. I think, I think it took me too long to realize how important that second part is. And if I was to go and do it again with the insight I have now, I think I would realize a lot sooner that you cannot deprioritize that second element. If you don't put the development of your people and, um, finding ways to push accountability down and find ways to push responsibility down to your junior teams. If you don't invest the time in them, you're going to wake up and six to 12 months and it's going to be exactly the same as where you were. Um, and it's really, really hard to make that mental flip. Um, we see it all the time, even internally, and that's a big coaching moment. Um, but once you've made that mental flip and you see the dividends that can come from that, it's just so clear and so obvious that that was the right decision and you wish you had done it sooner.

Ben: And right. To go back to the start where, Dave, you mentioned we're probably going to touch on AI. No podcast in professional services is complete without five minutes on that subject. So why don't we finish the session on AI? So, uh, broadly, I'd love to know what you're doing with it or not. And then after that, I do have an additional thought based on, uh, how we've had this conversation that I'd love to put to you as well, also slightly, depending on how you respond to this first one. So why don't you give me your high level perspectives on how AI is impacting your business. Where do you see it working? Not working? That'd be a great starting point. Yeah.

Dave McCarowich: The hardest part of answering this question is only talking for five minutes because there's so much to talk about with it. But, um, I mean, at a high

Ben: level, Dave, I've got all day, so you knock yourself out.

Dave McCarowich: You know, again, getting back to the area of work that we're in, we're in pharmaceutical marketing and advertising. Pharmaceutical companies are historically very risk averse. And so immediately, you know, you kind of got this balance of everybody's talking about AI, everybody's talking about how it's going to change the world. There's more investment going into AI than anything else ever. And on the other end you have clients who are saying you're not allowed to use AI at all. So you're like, okay, well, how do I reconcile those two things? So there is, uh, absolutely an element of working with our clients and partners to talk through what the risks are, what the responsible approaches are. Um, and those conversations are ongoing. Um, the question about the opportunities and where we see it, like at the highest level, I think it fits under two categories, right? It's one, how are you as a boutique company or as any company or corporation, how are you using AI internally, um, to either improve efficiencies, to um, give uh, individuals more time back so that they don't have to do the grunt work and they can do more of the high level work like that in and of itself is there's just so many opportunities that for any company that can be explored. And then the second part is, well, you know, we are, we are a professional services firm. We're delivering services for clients. How are the actual services that we're delivering incorporate AI? Like what are the actual tools that we're creating or materials that we're creating for clients that are AI native or um, or have AI incorporated into them at some level? So again, I think for us it's very manufacturer dependent, um, on that second piece, like, how much can we use AI? And I think for the first piece, I think I, um, think the advice that I can give because, and I probably spent the last three months, I know I probably focus 75% of my time experimenting with AI, researching AI, learning about AI, attending, you know, conferences on AI, everything that you can do. And, and that's the challenge. I mean the challenge is there's just so much information and it's changing so fast that any company that's trying to incorporate AI without having somebody focused solely on it, I think is going to be very difficult, um, because it takes a long time to just figure out what opportunities are. I think the key learning for me is that, um, AI in and of itself is, I think I heard it in the Economist podcast called the Jagged Frontier, in that there are certain things that AI does tremendously well, and there are certain things that AI is still atrociously bad at. And so step number one is understanding what are the things that AI does extremely well. And step two is what are the pain points that we are feeling ourselves internally that line up with those peaks? Like you're going to have a whole list of pain points that you want to address with AI, but some of them are going to be really, really good use cases, and some of them aren't. Um, and I think the approach that we've taken is to say, do those two steps figure out what it's good at, what it's not good at, what it's. What it's reliable, you know, where is it reliable? Where is it, um, where can it be used uh, in a trusting way? How does that align to your current pain points that you're experiencing? And then start tackling those pain points one use case at a time and it's not a fast process.

Ben: Do you mind just quickly sharing what for you, for your business that like what, what is maybe like the high trust, bigger type reward where you're starting to see some benefit or you're thinking that's the direction you're going to leverage it?

Dave McCarowich: Well I can give you, I can give you one or two. So you know, in, you know, having talked about our structure, you know, our challenges, like we're giving more responsibility and accountability to our people. It means our people have more to learn. Um, there's always something to learn. Um, and that's just hard. Um, it's just we're asking more of our people. The traditional approach is well we're going to give you the training and development support that you need. It's going to come from your senior people. Um, so senior team members are spending a lot of time, um, coaching, training, mentoring their junior team members. Um, it's very effective but it's very time consuming on everybody having AI. Like one of the things that AI is absolutely great at is looking at large, large data sets of knowledge bases. For example, how do you do certain tasks, why are certain things important? How do you do it, why do we do it this way? I um, think for us step one has been how do we get all of the institutional knowledge that we have, all of those conversations that we're having of why we do things the way that we do them, make sure that we're capturing all of that information internally and then making the answers and making those conversations easily accessible to people through AI. Um, so that's one use case in we're a company that really focuses a lot on training and development. It takes a lot of time and energy. AI uh is uh, the goal is that it's going to help reduce the lift on everybody in that if we've captured all of that and if we've done a good job at um, making sure that institutional knowledge is there in our own proprietary knowledge base, then that becomes accessible to everybody. Right. The senior level thinking that is trapped in your senior team members heads becomes accessible easily to junior team members with the power of a chatbot.

Ben: I think it's a great example. Thanks for sharing that.

Dave McCarowich: Anything Chris, you wanted to add before that? I don't know if I captured everything from your perspective.

Chris Rieger: No, I think that's a great example and it's just when you think about the, the capital that we have in terms of people's time, you go from an old model of trainee speaks to trainer and says why do we do it this way? Or why is this important? And help me understand this. And the new model is trainee can go to the chatbot and say why do we do this? Where's the learning module on this? Where's the video that explains all of this kind of stuff? And they can do all of that learning independently. And now the conversation with the trainer becomes a much more high level of. So I think I get this, but can you clarify this point in this point for me? And so it's just a much more effective use of time across everybody because at the end of the day we are a professional services firm and our capital is people's time. That is what we have. And so the more we can optimize the trainees time to be able to learn more efficiently, the trainers time to really only provide those high value interactions with the trainee, the better we're capitalizing on our resources.

Ben: I don't know if you remember this Dave, but you came up to me after a session that I did and asked about utilization and it always struck me because, well, I don't get, I don't think you shared the exact numbers. Like your investment in training is quantifiably significant. And um, you're not saying oh we invest a lot of time like many people do. Like you're talking about serious hours per week that go into that. And then you were sort of asking, is that right? Does that like level up against benchmarks? And when then you start understanding the pod structure, the intentional growth, the client delivery and then the training piece, it was sort of like, it makes a lot more sense. Which is why sometimes looking at like an industry benchmark can be a bit off because it hasn't got that like context of the specific specificity that exists within your firm. My follow up question was about uh, the initial thought was for like the younger generation coming in because that's where I sense there is greater trepidation around AI because all the media headlines are around how it's taking particularly their jobs. There's a bit less coverage around it taking mid level people or senior people because you know the reasoning being, well, you need to steal people, buy from people. You still need to have like the soft skills, the relationship skills. So my sense is it's at the younger generation. So firstly, are you finding that. And I'm asking you guys, because you're recruiting directly from, in that sort of cohort. And also you've also got more senior people in the business. Have they got any trepidations? How do you deal with that as well? Um, would be great to get some insight there.

Dave McCarowich: I think there's two thoughts that come to mind when you say that. One is, I think our, in a weird way, the structure that we have, this whole idea of pods and T shaped individuals and having, uh, people do more than just a simple silo of work. Right. Um, actually fits in really nicely with AI, uh, in terms of AI not jeopardizing their role. Like if you, if you have a, if you have a job at your company or there's a silo or a team of people that only does task A, and you're like, I want you to do task A for, you know, 30 clients, and then suddenly there's an AI tool that can do task A. It's obviously a no brainer to say, well, this individual's job's at risk. Like, task A doesn't need this individual anymore. Right. But in our situation, what we're saying is individual one is responsible for task A, B, C, D, E, F and G. And the good news is that now AI can help them do task A at a fraction of the time and with higher quality now they can put more time into those other tasks or maybe there's other higher level tasks that they weren't able to do. So I don't think, um, when, when the whole AI train left the station and I started talking about it all the time, for sure, I think we saw fear in everybody's eyes again. We're very, uh, tech forward. We're always looking for ways, uh, to use tech to make our lives easier. Uh, and AI is a natural extension of that. Um, and so trying to explain to the team why are we using transcription software for our internal meetings? Like, people just naturally start to worry, oh, why are we recording this? Are you, why are you thinking about what I'm doing? And, um, all of the negative thoughts naturally rise up. But I think now that it's been a year and a half and we've successfully implemented a number of AI tools internally, I think now it's a completely different perspective. Like the team sees now how it's making their life easier, how it's making them more effective, how it's saving them time. Uh, and if we were to go to them and say, hey, well, let's, let's take away these AI tools, I'm sure we would get a lot More resistance than what we had initially. Um, so yeah, I think, uh, that's why, I think at least particularly at Maven, uh, and with our structure, I think it, it provides uh, even more uh, advantages without creating any potential, you know, employee disgruntlement.

Chris Rieger: Can I add to that? You know, Ben, you're asking about the trepidation amongst the younger generation of AI taking their jobs. You did not ask about the trepidation of, of owners of professional services firms saying, oh my God, am I like. Dave and I have had the conversation of like our own, are we at risk of being Kodak in five years? Because professional services are all going to be replaced with AI. And um, I think it's been a really interesting journey in terms of we've made that separation between founder and CEO. As Dave said, he spent 75% of his time in the last three months working on and trying to figure out how we can incorporate a AI into what we're doing. And we've absolutely made some strides, but the reality is that we are nowhere close to being able to replicate ourselves and be able to do all of the work that we do with AI. And you know, I, I have heard people, uh, in our industry say, well, we're not going to need agencies in a year. And I can tell you that no one has a bigger incentive than us to figure out how we can deliver these services more efficiently with AI. And we have someone who's very well versed in it, ah, dedicated almost full time to doing it. And with all of our expertise, we're still not anywhere near to the point where we can replicate our services. And so is it, is it coming? Absolutely. I mean all of this technology is changing so fast, as Dave said, but I think there's trepidation on everybody's side. But the more you can jump in and figure out how can we use these tools in a way that takes that lower value work away from people, keeps the humans, um, humans in the loop. I've heard the term being used in terms of making sure that judgment is still there, the higher value thinking is still there, and trying to be more efficient in the delivery of services while still maintaining what got us here, which is delivering excellent service, um, to our customers, then we're still going to keep moving forward, but we're not quite there yet.

Ben: I think when I read those media headlines or hear people talking about it, they sort of, they put everybody in professional services under one blanket when actually there's niches within professional services. And then you can also slice it not Just vertically, but horizontally by size of firm. And you know, therefore for agencies who are boutique size, who are serving highly regulated and like you're the buyers of your services, expect a 100% accuracy. Like we are still a way to go where something can deliver something that's 100% DE risked. People don't just buy, do they? Because they want like a fantastic marketing campaign. They're buying it because they also like have to have. Huh. Implicit trust in whatever is being created. And also that's kind of. We haven't touched on it. But like I've heard you talk about why you focused on the Canadian market. You know, there's an additional bit of niching there. Fuel. Right. Like you haven't, um. Am I right in that you haven't, you haven't expanded beyond that yet?

Dave McCarowich: So yeah, I think that's been a deliberate choice. I mean we're from Canada. We were familiar with the Canadian regulatory environment and right now that is where our deepest level of expertise is. We've had some opportunities to, to do some work in the US but we haven't spent any resources from a sales and marketing standpoint to try to go to get that. And the simple thinking there is, there's just still like the lowest hanging fruit for us is to continue to build our footprint in Canada first. Um, I think we're making good strides with that and um, you know, the, you know, of the top 10 or top 20 pharma companies, the number of them who are familiar with us and our services has grown a lot over the last two to three years. Um, but certainly at some point down the road I, um, would see that as an opportunity, as the next step. Um, but if you're going to look at those two options and say, you know, what's going to give us the biggest roi? Um, uh, with the time and the energy and the resources that we have right now, the answer is we should continue to focus on Canada because I think we've got a good thing going. Um, we have good momentum and there's still a lot of upside for us.

Ben: Yeah, 100%. It's just that niching, if you niche by size, by location, by service, line, by client, you are just going to be. Your moat becomes tighter and better essentially. Is my thought around AI impacting professional services headlines.

Chris Rieger: Cool.

Ben: Look, uh, I've uh, taken huge amounts of your time, which I'm really grateful for. It's been fascinating. Is there anything that I haven't asked you that I m. Should have done or could have done? Is There anything else that is worth sharing that we've not touched on? Because I feel like we covered a lot of good grounds and certainly lots of things that I've seen and heard you talk about other places. So there's, you know, if people want to know more, I know you've done pods with C54 sessions on C54. There's plenty of material online, your own website details, plenty of this too.

Dave McCarowich: The only thought in my mind right now is just really to close the loop on that last element of the conversation with AI and our proserve firms going to get replaced. The other piece of the equation that I, I don't think is obvious to anyone other than those who are actually doing what we do, um, is the sheer amount of work and energy that just goes into coordination. Um, so let me give you an example. Can AI help you with a marketing campaign or can AI help you write a copy deck? If you're looking at that in isolation, the answer is obviously yes. Um, and so we go to conferences and we often hear, like Chris said, things like, in five years, we're not going to need the agency because AI is going to do the copy decks and the layouts for us. Right? Like, there are tools that can help you write a copy deck and there are tools that can help you do a layout. Um, but if you look at the totality of where we spend our time and energy, I don't know if it's appreciated how much time and energy just goes into, hey, you've got 1,000 projects that you're, you know, that you completed in this year or like, you know, you've got hundreds and hundreds of balls up in the air. And each of those projects takes, uh, on average, um, 70 business days. And there are on average 100 steps per project. And you are working with multiple stakeholders, both at the manufacturer. So like the brand manager, their regulatory team, their marketing materials team, external, uh, review bodies like PAB or asc. Um, are we close to having an AI being able to, or, you know, the terminology of the day would be, well, you just have like multiple agents doing all of those things. Again, probably going to happen at some point. Is it going to happen in the next five years? I don't know. Like, it's just. There's just so much coordination that needs to happen with all of those things. And the answer right now is to have solid systems and solid project management processes and a solid era two, uh, tech stack, um, project management software that's going to help you do those things. But, um, from where we are now and what agents are able to do and AI is able to do. It's very, very, very early days, uh, and, um, being able to get to that level and coordinate the amount of things that need to happen and having that automated. Again, not saying it's not going to happen. I just think we're probably a ways off before it's even close to that.

Ben: Well, Chris, Dave, been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much. There's loads of value in that, um, for everybody who's listened. I hope you've enjoyed it too. Um, in the comments section there'll be a link to the website, the guys, LinkedIn profiles, um, no doubt happy to connect and, um, you can check out more about what they're up to online too. But for now, thank you. CEMAP is an operations platform for consulting firms. The solution is used by hundreds of professional services firms to manage everything from pricing and timesheets to resourcing and billing, enabling you to optimize utilization, drive project margin, get a single source of truth across your firm.