From Crisis to Innovation: How Authenticity and AI Are Reshaping B2B Publishing and Field Service | Kris Oldland | UNSCRIPTED Ep. 374

Speaker A: Hello, welcome to the Unscripted podcast where you'll find discussions on what matters most in service leadership and business transformation. I'm your host, Sarah Nicastro. Let's jump in. I'm thrilled to welcome to the podcast today Chris Odland, who is the managing director of 1927 Media. Many of you know Chris from Fields Service News, which to this point, uh, was the core brand of 1927 media, uh, which he sold to Kopperberg in late 2023 and then spent some time helping them integrate that. He then took some time away and is back better than ever, uh, with some exciting new ventures. And Chris, so happy to have you on the podcast. Welcome.

Speaker B: Thank you, Sarah. It's lovely to be back and lovely be chatting to you again.

Speaker A: Yeah, we've missed you. Um, in this space, uh, I'm excited to share with folks, um, what you've been up to in your time away and what's coming. Um, if you'll indulge me though, before we get there in looking back just briefly, I, uh, always think it's fun to consider that in our former lives. So when I was with Field Technologies, you were with Field Service News, um, we were often viewed as competitors, um, and I never really felt that way. Um, and you know, I could explain why, but how did you view.

Speaker B: Oh, I thought you were the devil.

Speaker A: Did you view us as.

Speaker B: No, I'm only joking, I'm only joking. Um, I mean, to put it into context before I come back to Service management, so my career has kind of gone massive, massive, full cycle. Not only has it got lots of wibbly, wobbly lines all the way through, but, uh, way back when, when we were in black and white, uh, I was a quality services manager for one of the largest, um, hospitality and food and beverage chains in the uk, possibly the world at one point, but they kind of become much smaller. Um, and so I kind of went from there and ended up in publishing and it was a complete left turn. I ended up coming back to the service management world and everything just aligned. Uh, but the industry I was in before that was institutional finance and pensions, again from a publishing point of view. But to put it into context, I left an industry where there wasn't just, you know, there were nine titles, just service in the UK and, um, we were all within like a two mile walk from each other. So before I even have to think about, you know, uh, competitors outside of the UK house. So then I kind of arrived in this world at Service Management Online and kind of took that over before I launched fsn, um, so maybe I was spying on you before, before we were particularly visible because I came over as a digital sales manager for sales management online. Um, but I thought, this is crazy, this is crazy. Where are all the companies? Where are all the brands? Um, because you guys, like, basically the pioneers and the standalone people in the market and then you had some little upstart from, uh, Britain, um, come about and kind of throw their hat in the ring. Um, I think is one of the reasons why, you know, here in the UK, why, you know, such a small operation is 1927, where we always maintain that we were never going to grow bigger than. The aim was never to be, you know, a massive, massive publisher, uh, competing with an informer, etc. We knew what we wanted to do. We saw a market, we saw an area that I, I fell in love with in two directions. I've got a service heart, um, and a tech brain. So it was just a natural fit and it was an unloved area. And, and it's funny actually, um, I remember the, the reason FSN came about, it was, it was absolutely crazy. It was. I basically disagreed with the, the, uh, the, the powers that be, a company called ubm, called Informa, um, and they said, yeah, yeah, this field service stuff is dead. You know, it's dead in the water. Conference is getting smaller and it's like, it's not, you know, sometimes you just have a really bad sales guy that sold the, the company. And so when I saw them winding that down, I had to do some stuff to put a roof over my head. But when the opportunity came, I thought, right, I'll go for it. And you know, I did a quick UK tour of everybody that I knew and I had two weeks and I basically had two weeks to put together a, ah, proposal for UDM at the time. And I came away with two things. Um, I came away with, there's a still massive, massive appetite for this. This is when I was talking to companies like ifs, and also some of the UK companies like Solar Vista and uh, Excel Computing and these kind of guys that were the bread and butter of the service management. Um, and there was two things that came out of it. Number one, everyone kept saying, we need a print magazine because that was officially, you've been done. And there was so many people saying, like, we need something in Europe that's similar to fto, you know, that's all people were saying to me, we need a field technologies. Um, and it was like, all right, I'll do it. Uh, I didn't really know what I was doing. I think I designed the first ever cover of, uh, FSN on a cracked version of Photoshop. Probably shouldn't, but, you know, everything was learning on the job. Um, and we looked very fondly over the pond to you guys to see, you know, what directions you were going in. I wouldn't say we were mirroring you. Um, I think that there were some things that we took from you, some things that, uh, I think we ended up giving. Uh, it became quite recipe. But I looked at it as not just me and you, but also, you know, Jody and Jonathan, um, wbr, um, Lisa, obviously. Copperberg. I worked very closely with them in the last two years or so. Yeah, I felt that all of us needed to come together because there was not enough. There weren't enough voices, you know, and even today that's the case.

Speaker A: And I think that that's what it's about really is, um, you know, it's about serving the community. Of course. But what you just said is, you know, to me it's the idea. Um, I just don't have a scarcity mindset in, in that regard. Right. Like it's. The community benefits from hearing different perspectives and from having different voices contributing and, you know, uh, taking different angles and looking at the, the topics and the challenges and the trends through a different lens. So I always appreciated, you know, hearing what your perspective was on things. And um, I also always have liked you as a person and feel like

Speaker B: we have, um, and likewise. But I remember when we first properly. I know we'd met a couple of times when we first properly met up, I think it was Boston. It was one of the IFS world conferences. And I remember you said, let's do a selfie. Like there's. Yeah, there's a. And I remember you saying, like, there's a corner of the Internet, it's going to break. I said, it's a really, really tiny corner. The people that are in that corner, they know.

Speaker A: Yeah, but it's true.

Speaker B: And I've never really understood. Um. Um, I think this is where both of us come at it from. A wanting to help the community, but also a mindset. I think there's a couple of shared things we have and a mindset of continuous learning. And so I'm never going to have, no matter how many conversations I have with people on your side of the pond, which, as you know, I do a lot, um, the majority of conversations I'm going to have and the advantage I'm going to have over you, and it's vice versa. I know you speak and you're here as much as anything, but there is always going to be a little bit home to this advantage.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: And so, you know, some of the stuff that took me a long, long time to learn, like the impact. I'll just think of an example, um, the impact in some of the flyover states or the largest states, you know, where they'll have maybe one category, one city. And, um, like in terms of planning your workforce. Yeah, it's really easy and manageable in that one tier, one city. But as soon as you're getting out to like some dusty road in Nebraska or whatever, you know, you got to start having, uh, you can't have everyone as a bad employee. That's something that's not really a thing over here because Europe is that much smaller. But then at the same time, things like, you know, we have these crazy things, like lots of languages and borders and stuff like that, you know, um, and it's like for the same territory size. And so those are the kind of learnings that, you know, I still find myself learning loads from my German colleagues. I learned so much spending two years in Sweden, you know, and going back and forth across the Nordics. You know, I was there a lot. Um, just culturally as well. I learned so much about, like, you know, we, we kind of look at Europe as like, quite homogenous and we see the Swedes as like, they're kind of similar, they're completely different. Their culture's completely. I mean, you'll know that working with the, the broader IELTS team, you know, a very, very flat culture. Um, there were points where I was like, look, what are we going to do? We're going to invite the, the janitor in to make sure they've got a say as well. It's to what I'm used to in that American approach as well, of like. Right. Well, sometimes you need to make a decision as a leader. So those different things always came across. Um, but I never saw the point in, in seeing it as a game of rivalries. I felt, you know, yeah, there was, there's certainly enough, there's certainly enough revenue in the market for all of us and certainly enough conversations.

Speaker A: Yeah. So, yes. And I have, you know, I've not. Not only always respected your voice in the space and your perspective on things, um, but I also really appreciate how genuine, um, you are and how honestly you, you share. I, um, think the older I get, the more I realize I value that Type of authenticity, maybe above anything else. And so, yeah, and I know that the decision to let go of something you had put so much of yourself into had to be really hard. Um, but it's also been a catalyst for what you'll do next, which is really, uh, exciting. Um, before we share some of that, I wanted to ask, uh, a couple of questions about sort of the time that you've spent, uh, you know, in creation mode. So what have you. What's something you've learned about yourself in this process?

Speaker B: Oh, my God. Um, we. I will keep this brief, but this is, this isn't. If ever you go into like a deep psychological, uh, podcast for leaders, business leaders, entrepreneurs, we can do three or four episodes on that because it's been, ah, a hell of a journey. Um, authenticity is something that's really important and I think it's right that you mentioned that, um, I only have one speed. So I'm quite lucky that authenticity has now risen to the. Especially in a world of AI where everyone else like, you know, three out of four posts are, ah, generated and they're all by McKinsey bot. And they all say the same thing. I don't know how many times I've seen that bloody marks in umbrella piece at the moment. That just keeps popping up, you know, and it's like, it's not even very good. Um, and like, it's just driving me mad. But what it does mean is in the world of AI slop, authenticity is surprising to the four. So I'm quite lucky in that, um, I mean, some of your, some of your viewers will, will know me, uh, and they'll know that I didn't shy away from it. Um, I had to. I did everything I could to save my business. I poured 13 years worth of love into it. I've got a young family. Um, and it wasn't necessarily my fault. I think that was something I had, that was something that was really hard to deal with actually. Um, and to let that go on a purely emotional level so I could move forward, that was really, really hard because it wasn't my fault. Um, it was in one sense the blame of an organization that I spent an awful lot of money in to make sure that certain financial bits are sorted. So I won't name check anyone. But, um, yeah, you know, I'm not, I'm not an accountant. And I made a decision very early on to hire a very expensive accountant to make sure that what happened didn't happen, so that that hurt. Um, and there was other things you Know, payroll, our, our, our invoices being put in the wrong column of the wrong month for a massive organization. At the same time everything's, and it's like, look, we just gotta sometimes accept it.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: Move forward. Um, I think, I think what's important to me at the moment is, is, you know, well, not what's important at the moment, what's important to me now. Um, because it would be very easy and very tempting for me to want to come back. And, and I'll be honest, this was. These thoughts have been in my head for a while to come back. Right. I'm gonna prove the entire universe wrong. And I've got a fight to fight with, you know, whoever, I don't care. I'm just gonna look up and take you all because it wasn't fair. Um, but that's not good for me. It's no good for the people around me. And um, I'm not gonna what I'm going to put out into the universe without one San Wishy washy needs to be a value. That's something that's very, very important to me. I don't think I ever uh, I don't think I've ever been somebody that chased a buck. M and I've always been somebody that has done all right financially, to be perfectly honest. You know, last couple of years excluded because there's been a, A, ah, bit of a challenge. But I've always come out on top.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And I think that's because I, I have always tried to do things the right way. I think the hardest, the hardest thing, um, has been when you've always tried to do things in the right way.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: You always try to do it the right way and everything goes wrong for a short period. Um, and you know that even I think I put a post on this on LinkedIn quite recently. You know that you're doing everything right to bring it back. You know that every step is that um, you know that it's a painful long journey back. The hardest bit is when you're 80, 90% of the way there and everyone else around you is losing faith in you and you've got to try and dig a little bit deeper and you've uh, got to talk to yourself and you've got to say, look, you know this. If you were to stop and tell your friend this, this is the advice you would give. You're on the right path and that, that's hard that self belief. Um, and I wish I knew how to bottle it. I really do.

Speaker A: Yeah. Because, you know, there is a lot of acceptance. Right. And there's this idea of, uh, it's kind of like an ego death. Right. In the sense of, um, having to be okay with, you know, knowing the realities, uh, and also accepting that other people might not know all of those and they may perceive things differently and you can't attach yourself to that. Right. Like I. This is. Is true in, um. M. I've had this experience in relationships in my life, right. Where it's really hard to walk away knowing that, you know, at your core you're not in the wrong and, you know, the other person thinks you are.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: But you're going to expend all of your energy trying to change their opinion and it's not worth it. You know, it's like, it's. It's. That's what it's making me think of. Right. Like you.

Speaker B: Yeah. And I would say. Sorry. Yeah, I agree, I agree. And I would say in one way because, because I had a semi public Persona, um, and I panicked a little when, when we got the first winded up order, um, and I wanted to desperately save the business. I didn't really know any, you know, I'd phoned everybody. That ego death, that embarrassment, that final sacrifice, which sometimes is necessary of the ego, that final sacrifice of the carefully curated Persona of this successful businessman, um, it was put to the altar. It was put on the altar. I mean, um, I think something that was. Sorry, it's a slight divergence, but I think something was very interesting for me. Very good friend of mine, this guy called John Lamerton, he's a fantastic author, writes, uh, a lot of really good books over here, um, around the whole concept of, you know, entrepreneurship and small business success. Um, and as I was coming out of it, one probably one of the most healing things that I did was I did a podcast with John because he's got a very good podcast, uh, the one percent Club podcast. Just a plug for you, John. Sorry, um, Sarah, just a hijack, no word, but it's worth. Anyone that's. That's into leadership, uh, it's going to check that. But John's podcast is usually all about like, hey, I'm so great. I did this and not him, but, you know, he, he highlights successful businesses. I said, look, we. You've known me for a long time and um, let's do the opposite. You know, let, let's. I had a 1.8 million pound business, I had to end up. You can find it out elsewhere. But for certainly not that Much for pepper corner mouth. And that was really, actually really a big catalyst in being able to move forward because it was like, okay, it's, it's done. I don't have to chase the blame on anyone. Uh, it is what it is, it's done what it is and that, that's not going to help me. Um, let's make sure that I try and integrate it with Copperberg as well as I can and then after that let's work out what we do next. And that was actually a quite a cleansing process.

Speaker A: Mhm. Yeah.

Speaker B: Sorry, go completely off tangent.

Speaker A: No, no. Um, so the other question I wanted to ask about your time, uh, not away. I mean you didn't go anywhere but

Speaker B: your breaking it sound like I've spent some time as a guest of her Majesty or His Majesty.

Speaker A: No, but what I mean is your time away from writing articles regularly and speaking, um, publicly. Um, so what has been most interesting to you about like the goings on in uh, in the industry and anything you, you have watched?

Speaker B: Uh, yeah, I think, I think it's. There's one thing I think that's really fascinating is when you take a step back from our, our universe. Um, sometimes the players change, but the characters remain the same.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: The script remains the same.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: Um, it's a little bit like coming out of a soap opera like Days of our Lives over your side or EastEnders here. Um, it's such a guilty pleasure. In my Days of our Lives, it's such a guilty pleasure. All of those really cheesy Californian based. Um, but you know, so I think maybe you'll, you'll, you'll experience this as well. So you know, sometimes our whole job is talking ahead. Um, our whole job is talking about, you know, the exciting stuff that's coming. Um, and then you get into the real world, you're like, yeah, people are still struggling with preventative maintenance, like non predictive, you know, um, people are still struggling with like how do you know? How do you move from a cost center that's not done? You know, like. And I, I was almost fall from my seat. I'm like, what do you mean? What do you mean? Like there are certain industries that make sense, but most I just kind of my head around it. Um, so that's been interesting in the sense that, you know, nothing massively has changed in that way. And then on the other side you've got, well, there's this big giant evil robot from the future shaped hole that's just kind of AI is changing everything. Um, From a publishing perspective, AI has changed entirely. Um, maybe we touch on that a bit from a field service perspective. It's really interesting. Um, I have a double, I have a dual kind of viewpoint on this. Um, you know, if I think back to ifs purchasing metrics, for example, all the way back there or somebody like Solaris and Fasting Smart or you know, um, service power or of the scheduling engines been around for a long time, even clip software. Go right back. They were effectively, you know, advanced machine learning. They were algorithmic based. They were advanced algorithms. Mhm. That uh, we would call AI today. And we're so comfortable with them. You know, I think NPR Systems, uh, again, another, another one that got absorbed into the uh, ICS machine. Um, I mean that in a nice way.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, but you know, I remember working with them years ago and we were talking about like Darwinian algorithms. That sounds cool. What's that? And it's like, you know, it's an algorithm that teaches itself stuff and learns well. That's AI, you know. So in this one sense we're really, really used to using AI.

Speaker A: Hm.

Speaker B: You know, we've had companies like Quant Flat Ground for Forever, you know, and others in that market. But I can't obviously really own in that kind of space of like the intelligent uh, triage.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: It's not that new. We are seeing for the, for the mom and pop shops, the kind of guys that might work with like the work waves of the world and stuff. M. Yeah. It's now accessible but it's not like new for us. Um, a large part of that then makes it a branding exercise. But what I have seen and I'm seeing some really interesting companies, like a company I've talked to the big field camp, they're coming out of nowhere, punching way above their weight. Really smart guys, really nice guys. I hope they do really well. You know, I really like. They're one of those, you know, when you come across those companies you're like, these guys are just smart. They got it. They, they're switched on. I hope they do really well. They're going out, they, they know their market. They're kind of going at this kind of service titan kind of landscape. Um, and they've just come out of nowhere because they've harnessed AI really quickly so that I like to see and that's, that's kind of where I'm coming from with what I bring back to the market. I couldn't do what I'm about to do if I hadn't Spent. If I, if I A, hadn't worked out what the hell I'm doing with AI, it was, it's integral. Um, and B, I landed in a really, really lucky place. You know, not many people get to have best part of six months and then a year to develop where you can literally just go, all right, I'm on gardening leave. How do we fix the entire universe? And that's kind of what I sat down to do.

Speaker A: Yeah. So tell everyone, um, what you've come up with.

Speaker B: Okay, well, yes, um, depending on when folks are watching this and when it's out, um, as time recording, we're not quite there. Um, I think next week we go live or we start seeing it. We're onboarding clients already. Um, and let me take one step back, if I may.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, so like I said, I, I spent the best part of a decade and a half in publishing. A little bit longer, maybe even two decades. Um, the last 13 years have been under my own steam. And then the last two years, the final two years is with somebody else for a copy of it. Um, and there are some things that I felt we as an industry and everything I'm going to say now is in industry wide from the publishing industry. Um, and this could be true in our world. Terror of manufacturing and field service. It can be true in any complex B2B. So my old stomping ground of insurance and industrial finance, exactly the same. Um, we landed in this place where we were, we had two masters and what we needed to do to serve one wasn't necessarily what we needed to do to serve the other. Um, I think from conversations we've had in the past, you were very much of the same mindset as me, although you were always an editor, whereas, ah, I was just a sales guy that landed in a position where I couldn't afford an editor. So I worked out how to do the writing, uh, as well and kind of evolved into that role. But that point of two masters, you know the model in B2B, regardless of, um, subscription revenue, the model is primarily, you work with a sponsor on this side, they commission, they pay you. They commission an article or a white paper or a webinar and then you sell that. When I say Sal, you present that so that people are going to pay for that with their data. Uh, m. Um, because you're giving these people now you can do that. And that can be completely, perfectly transparent. It's the way that the industries work for forever. Um, but I just felt like you're not an honest broker this goes a little bit back to the authenticity that you said earlier. I think one of the nicest things anyone's ever said to me was, um, a friend of mine, Professor Tim Baines, he said, look, your job in this industry is just, you're the most honest broker I've ever met.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: That's, that's your superpower, that's your strength. That's what you play into. And so those kind of words kind of linger in my head. Um, especially when it's someone as smart as Tim, who probably knows more or forgotten more than I've ever lived my entirety of my life, um, even if he is from Stoke. Sorry. Uh, but, um, so I was looking at this and going, right, actually this, this whole model is just, it's, it doesn't smell right, you know, because I'm saying to my, my value proposition to these guys over here, get there, is the piece that's about the writing and the quality of the writing and have my finger on the pulse. Um, but really what they're paying for is to get these names over here and to give them over here. Um, and when we're all really brutally honest, we know that these guys, even these guys over here know that they're going to get a bunch of names that are going to come on a spreadsheet. And, um, most of them are going to be working with one of your competitors or you or. I'm not interested. You know, there's some really solid data. I think it's like the 3% rule at 3% of your target market are active at any given time. So we're kind of selling smoke and mirrors on this side and then on this side we're saying, hey, look, we. And this is the bit that really, really bugged me, actually. Um, I remember writing a piece for one of my clients with fsm and it was a beautiful piece. And you know, um, it was basically, um, Beth who commissioned, uh, me to write four articles. And she said they don't have to talk about us. You know, they don't have to talk about us at all. Um, we just want to be seen to be associated with great thought leadership.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: Um, and so I did, I wrote four. And I was really proud of this work. It was probably my, my, my finest piece of work. I wrote four essays that were increasingly further away from where the reader was. So the first was like, look, this is stuff that, uh, is keeping us all awake right now. And then, right, the way to like, look, this is the stuff that's going to Set you up for the rest of your, your company's life. And it was kind of, that was the, that was the feat. And I still have people saying to me, yeah, but the thing is, Chris, I read it and it was really good. But all I'm thinking of is how Sponsor X Responsor Y is going, is shaping that force. I was like, that's not actually true, but that thought is impossible to break down. Um, so my first thought that I had was I needed to resolve that, that dichotomy, that thing that doesn't work. And so without going into it in huge, huge, huge details again, it's a long, long conversation. But, um, I mapped out the buyer's journey. I spent about two months. I wrote a white paper for myself that I don't think anyone else has read. Um, just because I find it, I've been doing it for so long that that's how I read and that's how I learn now is like, um. And I mapped out and I went right the way back to like, um, Psychology of Advertising and Selling, which was published in 1927, all the way up to kind of Google 741 and 741 processes absorbed everything. And I kind of went right, here is, here is like the, the emotional part of the buyer's journey, here is the diagnosis part that happens simultaneously. And here is like the satisfactor, like, let's overlay these, let's understand these. And I'm a bit of a psychology buff, so I also kind of went, well, let's understand the levers that uh, are being pulled and the levers that are required and what was happening. So I kind of mapped that out for myself whilst I was doing that. I basically hit on the simplest of concepts. It's like there is an inherent value for somebody on this side on the. Read what we term the readership side. There's an inherent value in them being connected to the right people on this side. We always think of it as how do we hoodwink these guys? How do we get them to download our papers? What are we going to bribe them in with? Is it a survey that they got a 50 pound prize? Or is it an amazing piece of content stuff that we're already proud of and we all do, but ultimately we're fishing, we're trying to bring these over. And I stopped and thought, well, what if we just say to these guys, hey, this is the problems that you have. We now know exactly how to what came out of that whole white paper and that whole process was I was able to build a framework. I can effectively now say this person over here. Based on the type of content they're reading and the volume of content they're reading, we can kind of map out where they are so we know where they're going to go next. So I can start helping them on that journey, not guiding them, not, not pushing them, not putting them in a funnel and turning into. I can start saying, right, this is kind of probably going to be the next kind of thing that you need to read.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: Or need to watch or this is where, this is where your learning journey is going to go. And then when we get to a certain point of that we can kind of say to look, okay, this is what your problem is. We've now identified that. Now these are the ways you can solve that problem. You can go about it with software or consultancy or hardware or something else. And so we built in a kind of a wizard, a uh, simple system that allows them to be able to connect outwards to the buyer. At the same time we've also got a similar, similar approach where the buyer, the solution providers can kind of reach out and say, I can see that you're doing this and this might be helpful. It's all very anonymous. It's always. But what we do is we treat the buyer with the equal value that we treat the seller. Which is something that, it seems so stupidly simple. Um, but it's, it's, it's, it's, it's. I'm amazed nobody else is doing it. I um, think I'm in the, going back to that kind of lucky landing. Um, I think, I can't remember who said this. Someone smarter than me said this where you know, if you really want to succeed, get really good at two or three things. Not, not the best, but really good at two or three things and then bringing them together because that's how you carve out something unique. Um, now I naturally seem to be quite good at marketing and that sales piece and the psychology, I've always found that fascinating. So that's easy. I love my industry and uh, I love sharing knowledge. Um, and I'm a bit of a geek. Uh, but the bit that I landed in where I went from being able to be a bedroom coder to somebody who's built a full enterprise platform, M is like, I couldn't do that without being able to embrace AI. We're now in a place where with agentic AI we can build that platform. We see some great things like base 44 or whatever. You know, the ad where they type in, I just made it up. It's like the reality is, it's like I've got a lot more gray hair. Uh, there's big chunks where it gets pulled out of the back. Um, it's not that easy. But what you can do is you can be an architect and um, you can kind of go through this process and if, you know, if you know the business logic and you know the, the what you're looking to do the, the coding bit. I mean I can code, but.

Speaker A: Hm.

Speaker B: I was always somebody like me, M. Me coding was like somebody that's maybe like eight reading, you know, uh, reading a book to you. You know, when you get your kids to read to you and that, it's really sweet. But they then actually, you know, that's slow. That's me coding.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: But now with AI, I can embrace it. So that was the first thing we did. I knew that we had to have a platform that brought it all together.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: Um, the second thing. And that platform had to stop looking at it like the audience is a commodity.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: I think that's probably the most important thing. It's like, and I'm not just saying, you know, that's how I look, that's how every, that's how media is geared. You know, the audience is a commodity and if you stop treating them like a commodity and you stop treating the. And you just say, look, let's treat both of these equally, then you can start matching people, you can bring them together. So that was really important. Um, and I talked about AI and then the other bit, I'll touch the bit that I kind of landed on. Of course the impact of AI massively is in our world is the visibility. That's where it has changed everything hugely. And I had to really work that out. Um, and that leads kind of to the more concrete bit of what we've produced. Um, so back in the FTO and field service news days, the game was who could grab the biggest audience. Uh, you know, because that was again, that was the metric you have a biggest audience and the sponsors want to promote because that's their bigger net. So that's how they're going to get more people in. Um, AI has changed that. Two things have changed that. It's not just AI, it's AI and the fact that the buying cohort now is Millennium.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: Overwhelmingly. I can't remember the last time I bought somebody that uh, I spoke to somebody that had a position of power. Purchasing power. That wasn't when that.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: Um, and the way that millennials ingest media, ingest information, ingest knowledge is so different to baby boomers and us in Gen X like myself just get overlooked. Just get on with it. But um, you know, that's where we've got this concept of uh, the dark funnel. You know, that's where people are going away. And the data on this there is unbelievable. 185% more likely to buy if you are not coerced in the first place. It's something like. And the numbers change depending on the study. But there's so many studies, I reference them all the time in my online presentations. But you're looking between 65 and 85% of your future buyers, which I think is a much better word than prospects. Um, 85, let's go with our upper limit. 85% are going to have done most of their research. They know all about you and all about your competitors before they pick up a phone or reach out and speak to anybody. Um, you know, there's no point in spending ah, millions of wasted pounds on SDRs that are uh, doing a great job, working really hard and getting less and less and less return for your investment. You know, these things have just changed completely so rapidly. Um, and AI has been a catalyst for that change. But I think the, the change is more demographic uh, than anything else. Um, but that made me sit down and think, right, so what does successful publishing look like? Because it's no longer let's get the biggest audience, um, it's now about how do I put that piece of information that's really relevant to this person that's on that journey, on their diagnosis, on their buyer's journey, on, on their knowledge, their m. Maturation of their. Because it's not just about selling them something by the way. You know, quite often it's just like this is where I am in my kind of journey as a, ah, service leader. This, you know, this is where I need to be evolving. That um, and it's like, okay, we can't have the arrogance. We expect them to come to us anymore because like the saturation across the industry is just so broad. So now what we need to do is we need to be able to say we understand that you're going to get most of your information from a zero click search or your chat, your AI chat. We need to make sure that we're referenced in that. So we have to have Geo, uh, baked into the platform that we talk about. So Generative Engine Optimization we need to know that SEO, like traditional SEO, plays its role in that. So we need to optimize for SEO because geo, uh, leans into SEO and then there is still genuine search optimization that is important. Perhaps just the, the most important thing is we need to optimize for people.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: Um, we need to make sure that our content is optimized for people in terms of how they engage with it, how they share it and um, how they, they, you know, making sure it's there. So wherever we go we need to land where whatever they are, we need to go to them, whether it's their inbox, whether it's their feed, whether it's their chat with their AI, etc. Um, and the most important part about that is that flip flop everything around from the game. So we are no longer looking at. Right, let's have one title with everything in it.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: We're looking at having very focused titles. So instead of launching fsn2 and talking about manufacturing, aviation and spare parts, all of the stuff that we do with FSM1, um, I'm launching, we are launching the portfolio. It's called Manufacturing Engineering Portfolio. And the idea is you have five magazines um, that are ah, working on a vertical basis. So we've got Manufacturing, Aviation, Built environment, Heavy industry and uh, energy and utilities. Okay. Now those magazines are all focused on the vertical with a heavier leaning towards true life cycle engineering. M. Um, then we have the five verticals or functional titles that sit directly alongside them. So field service being an obvious one but spare parts, um, E commerce increasingly important especially in the parts of logistics play. Um, pricing which I think is criminally underserved uh, in the B2B sector. Um, so talking about things like you know, not just how do we get the price of how do we leverage rebates, you know, how we, how, how we apply the psychology, how we're using price anchoring, all that stuff I'm really understood as part of the market in our space. Um, uh yeah, pricing, logistics, etc. Etc. So you've got the five, we call it a five by five matrix. And the idea is that uh, some articles will be talking about field service in aviation for example. So that article get a double rewrite here as field service and appearance and aviation title with one having field services the primary and aviation second and we invert them. Uh, the reason for that is it makes, it makes it so much easier for our, our readers to absorb knowledge and to learn from those adjacent industries that they might not think about something that we've always focused on, um, and make it bringing that all together, you know, and allowing them to see where those learnings are, learn from those separate industries, have that guided information so that it becomes a very, very curated feed for them specifically, but also always layering it so it's exactly on topic. Uh, when they need to hear from an industry expert, they hear from an industry expert. That is relative to them, if they're learning from somebody adjacent, then that's really valuable as well. But it basically it's just bringing, just to summarize, we're trying to bring

Speaker A: all

Speaker B: of the learnings of 20 years, enhanced by, you know, all of the techno technological developments of the last two years into one place where it makes it really, really easy, really easy for them to engage and find the solution partners that they need without feeling like they're ever forced into it, you know. And my belief is that that makes it so, so powerful for those uh, solution providers.

Speaker A: Yeah. On both sides. Right. Because like you said, there's, you know, the, when you introduce transparency into the equation, like you said, then the people that are seeking solutions can find the right partners at the right time. You know, it's this game of kind of cat and mouse of, you know, we'll promise you 300 leads. Really, maybe one of those, if you're really lucky, cares at all about what it is when you make that process more transparent, you allow that ecosystem to benefit from each other when the time is right and when they have the right connection. And so I think that allows you to do your job in a way that feels like we talked about more authentic. Right. You're bringing perspective, you're allowing people to find each other when the time is right. And uh, it makes perfect sense. Um, so you said this will launch next week? Um, correct.

Speaker B: Yes. So we've got a pre launch, we're in pre launch at the moment for onboarding our providers. Um, so the way that it works is the providers, um, have access to our editorial calendar and they can submit their commentary into our work. So again, makes it really easy for them to add value rather than just trying to suck, uh, out leads, you know, and we're, we're really strong on that. Um, so we're in the middle of onboarding that. We've got over 100 across the 10 titles. We've got over 178 articles that will be going live pretty much the middle of September. Um, Ah, yeah, so it goes live middle Of September, all 10 titles will be landing simultaneously. Um, anyone that's watching in between now and um, the middle of September if you follow, the best option is to follow um, 1927's uh, social media because basically so LinkedIn is going to be the, the best point. Um, and it's just 1927 Media Limited. Um, we are going to be introducing free versions of each site. So a couple of articles from each site. Um, there is a free subscription member uh, available. I always think that's important. But we have some paid tiers for subscriptions as well. Um, including one that has really smart AI search that goes portfolio wide. So if there's ever anything you need to know about anything within these adjacent sectors there's one tool that allows you to work out exactly where um, fully rank, optimized, fully set up so you can from a UI interface you literally. It's like having a chat GPT for um, field service and spare parts and manufacturing in one place. It's smart, it's cool, it's easy. Um, and so that's really easy to do. But follow 1927 and you'll start seeing the articles being seeding out. Uh, the other really nice thing about this and the whole setup is sorry and I know we're running close to time and I thank you so much for the time today. Sorry, um, the other thing I would say is you know like I said, we've embraced AI in the build. We haven't, we don't utilize and will not utilize AI in the writing process.

Speaker A: Mhm. Um,

Speaker B: yeah, that's where that authenticity, that's where that real life experience comes from. Um, but what we do is we use, we have a phenomenal. Which has come out of my um, consultant, the consultant side of our business content. Um, we've developed this incredible content gap analysis tool. So that basically allows us to do the kind of research that we would have, would have taken weeks for an article we can now do for an entire suite of content and we can see what's already being talked about. So that's saturated, that's covered. We can see what people are actually asking for. And then we apply our own kind of uh, 360 point algorithms over the top that came out, that white paper process referred to. We said right, so this topic is underserved and now we can look at it and go right, well how do we attack this topic from somebody that's just finding out about it? How do we now take this topic from somebody that knows what the pain points are but they still don't know what to do? So that content is becoming, is growing and the point of the search is that is it directly wired into that, so no matter where you are, that's going to get more and more intelligent. So you can say, look, I'm in this position, this is my maturity. I know this, this is what I'm looking for. What do I do next?

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: And then the content is brought to you, frameworks produced to you, recommendations or solution drives brought to you. Um, that's the cool stuff that we can do with AI. Stop making trap marketing adverts with it, um, and use it.

Speaker A: That's my advice for real value. I love it. Well Chris, I am really excited. Um, I have so much respect for, uh, your journey and excited to see what you're bringing to life. So as Chris said, everyone, the best way to follow along is 1927 Media Limited on LinkedIn. You can also follow Chris on LinkedIn and connect uh, with him there. Um, thank you for coming on and uh, I'll check it out and everyone, um, can come check it out middle September. So thank you.

Speaker B: Thank you so much.

Speaker A: You can find more by visiting the home of unscripted@uh, futureof fieldservice.com the podcast is published in partnership with IFS. You can learn more at ifs.com as always, thank you for listening.