The Architect of Insights: Building Programs and Buy-In with Ashley Hopkins

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Description

Building a successful insights function requires strategic listening, intentional relationship-building, and a clear vision for delivering value across the organization.

In this episode of The Curiosity Current, hosts Stephanie and Matt speak with Ashley Hopkins, an insights leader who has built consumer research functions from scratch at companies like ASICS, Wayfair, and now Resident (home of Nectar and DreamCloud mattresses), about the art and science of establishing impactful insights programs.

Transcript

Ashley - 00:00:00:

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So there are three things that I really probe on in interviews that I think work well with me as their leader. And then with the teams that I'm interacting with on a day-to-day basis. One of those is a founder mentality. I want someone who, when there seems to be a wall that you're hitting, you are an architect of impact. You're finding a way around that wall and coming up with solutions. And I think you can find this in people who maybe have side businesses that aren't necessarily on their resume or hobbies. Just have these like life experiences in which they had to figure this stuff out. And I think that's a really important piece to being successful.

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Stephanie - 00:00:39:

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Hello, fellow insight seekers. Welcome to The Curiosity Current, a podcast that's all about navigating the exciting world of market research. I'm Stephanie Vance.

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Matt - 00:00:50:

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I'm Matt Mahan. Join us as we explore the ever-shifting landscape of consumer behavior and what it means for brands like yours.

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Stephanie - 00:00:57:

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Each episode will get swept up in the trends and challenges facing researchers today, riding the current of curiosity towards new discoveries and deeper understanding.

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Matt - 00:01:07:

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Along the way, we'll tap into the brains of industry leaders, decode real-world data, and explore the tech that's shaping the future of research.

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Stephanie - 00:01:14:

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So whether you're a seasoned pro or just getting your feet wet, we're excited to have you on board.

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Matt - 00:01:20:

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So with that, let's jump right in.

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Stephanie - 00:01:24:

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Today on The Curiosity Current, we're joined by Ashley Hopkins, a powerhouse in the world of consumer insights and marketing strategy. Ashley has spent the past 15 years weaving research into the DNA of brands like ASICS, Wayfair, and Appex, and now she's building the insights function at Resident entirely from scratch.

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Matt- 00:01:45:

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Ashley's journey is one of transformation. At ASICS, she turned a one-person insights effort into a global team. At Wayfair, she shaped go-to-market strategy and loyalty programs. And now at Resident, home of Nectar and DreamCloud, she's embedding insights into everything from product development to digital experience.

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Stephanie - 00:02:03:

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Are going to talk about what it really takes to build an insights program that lasts, how to make smart hires, and how to get even the most data-skeptical executives on board with the power of Consumer Insights. Ashley, welcome to The Curiosity Current.

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Ashley - 00:02:19:

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Well, thank you for having me and thank you for such a kind introduction.

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Matt - 00:02:23:

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Of course. It's easy when we have someone who has such a great and interesting background, really looking forward to this conversation. Let's jump right in. The first 90 days at Resident, you walk into this role, there's no existing insights infrastructure whatsoever. It's a foreign word in space. What did you do first? I'm so curious.

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Ashley - 00:02:45:

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It's a great question. I think a natural inclination when you get into any role is to hit the ground running and show impact immediately. And that is very important. But there's something I learned when I was starting at ASICS, which is to listen before you do anything. And so what I did at Resident and have done in previous roles is what I call a listening tour. And it's spending my time doing three very distinct things. One is getting to know the business. So I think one of the misconceptions with consumer insights is it's all about understanding the consumer, being a champion for the consumer and helping people become more consumer centric, which it absolutely is. But that only works if you understand how the business makes money and why the business exists. And so good insights live at that intersection of consumer needs and business needs. And so to just jump in and try to create impact right away without understanding the business, you're going to set yourself up for failure. So I spend as much time as I can understand why the business exists? Where are we going? How can we make money? What mistakes have we made? And trying to hear that from all different perspectives, because finance is going to have a very different perspective from marketing, from the C-suite. And along those lines is the second thing, which is building trust. And I think this is true in any role, but especially a market research type role. You could have incredible data. You can be like the most methodologically sound researcher. But if people don't trust your interpretation of that data, it doesn't matter. So I'm in a remote first company, so I don't have those water cooler conversations that might happen more naturally. So I spend a lot of time just trying to ask personal questions without it being too invasive. So people know I have good intentions. I want to make your job easier. And a lot of that goes hand in hand with understanding the business. And people are really surprised when you're like, tell me about your job. What do you like? What keeps you up at night? You know, like things like that. So the building trust piece is second on the listening tour. And then the last piece is like what every good market researcher does, which is identifying gaps. So where does data exist that we're not currently connecting dots? Where does data not exist that we should be collecting data? What business problems are we trying to solve on a day-to-day basis that we're finding we're making these decisions without really knowing what we're doing and being able to start to say, okay, here's some consistencies I'm seeing across different functions so that I can build a roadmap. Yes, impact is important, especially at an early stage company. But I think listening is actually the first thing that should be done at any organization when you're standing up a new function and insight specifically. And that's what I spent the first 90 days as a Resident doing.

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Matt - 00:05:35:

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It's such great advice and really, especially given you were at the start, presumably an army of one, right? Like that trust becomes even more important because you are the sage. You are the go-to source. They have to have that foundational trust and understanding and who you are as a professional. If they're going to come to you and you're going to be able to work with them effectively, I think that's such a great call out.

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Ashley - 00:06:04:

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Yeah, thank you.

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Stephanie - 00:06:05:

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Well, and I think, too, the part that you said about being remote first makes being intentional about that so much more important than because you would soak that up in an office setting in a way that you just can't remotely. And I think I'm sort of attached to this because Matt and I know it well, very well, because we're remote first as well. So, yeah. And we've had that challenge.

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Ashley - 00:06:27:

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I joked. And when I started Insights at ASICS, I joked that my team were like honeybees, like little pollinators that would go from sitting with one little pod for a day and hearing what they're working on to another little pod and bringing information to other teams. And when COVID happened, I was like, man, Insights is really there, we're going to get hit hard because we're not going to be able to do that. But I've been really surprised with how well it's actually worked at a company like Resident because it was remote first from the day that it was founded. So the overcommunication and sharing just happens really naturally.

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Matt - 00:07:02:

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Definitely. I wanted to go back to one thing you said. I know, you know, after the listening tour is complete, such a great first step, you probably had some sort of thing you were looking for, like an indicator that like, okay, I've got the groundwork, the legwork done that I wanted to have done. Now it's time to shift into execution mode. I know in those early phases, one of the challenges Insights professionals can face is their internal stakeholder clients are bringing to them questions that are great questions, but they're not quite ready for a research project yet. How do you personally kind of manage that discussion? How do you get them to really articulate a research project based on what they're trying to achieve in their business?

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Ashley - 00:07:45:

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It's funny, I feel like people jump to solutions all the time. There's a quote, I think it's by Henry Ford about if I had asked people what they wanted, they'd say a faster horse. It's like people assume that they want this thing that's a solution versus understanding what the problem is that they're really trying to solve. I treat my stakeholders the way that I would treat customers from a business perspective and really doing that sort of in-depth interview of like, well, why? Well, why? Well, why? To get to a place where I'm like, what I'm hearing is you're trying to get this thing done. And this seems like the best solution. We're not quite there yet either because we don't currently have the data internally. We don't have the right tools. What I can do for you is whatever that solution is to try to give them something to work with and then figure out how important this is from an ROI perspective and then figuring out the steps that I need to take in order to get us there or bring other people to the table who might have that information that I now know because I did that listening tour and they're just not connecting. So there's usually some sort of solution to that. It's just a matter of really understanding what that problem is that they're trying to get to, that they're throwing the research project at.

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Matt - 00:08:53:

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Do you ever have to change direction? Have you ever had to go back? And we started down a certain path given the information that we had. Now I want to go back and redo a piece of work or rethink my approach at all. Do you find that occurs when you're in this kind of startup environment?

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Ashley - 00:09:11:

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Yes, all the time. This is probably one of the biggest challenges that I currently have at Resident is one, it's amazing. We retain employees for years. The company has only been around since like 2016, 2017, but so many people have been there since the very beginning. And it's easily forgotten that coming in as a new employee, you don't have this history. So my first few projects, I was like, great, here's the sample. This is who we're going to talk to. This is how we're going to accomplish this thing. And then I would get into a place where we're about to launch and I find out, well, the product that I'm trying to understand, maybe a different type of feature analysis. It was a completely different product six months ago before I joined. But everyone just assumes that I know that because it's like, everyone just knows that they've been here for so long. So there's definitely been a little bit of this retroactive. Now I know what questions I need to ask going forward because of some of the assumptions that are there. So that's just one example. But certainly, I'm pretty humble when it comes to my work and being able to say, okay, I didn't know that. Let's go back. Let's fix this. If someone thinks I should be doing something a different way, but I feel really strongly about it, being able to talk through why the approach that I took was the right one. And maybe we just need to rethink the problem.

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Stephanie - 00:10:25:

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Makes sense. If we can switch gears for just a minute, I'm curious, because I'm assuming as part of building an Insights function, you're also doing some hiring and creating some teams here. And for those of our audience who are entering the industry or switching jobs in the industry, I would just love to know when you are hiring, is there ever a moment in a candidate interview where you're like, yes, this person gets it. And I'm curious if there's a kind of answer or a topic that signals the right mindset for you that might not come through in a resume per se.

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Ashley - 00:11:00:

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Great question and super timely. I just had my first hire at Resident start this week, which I'm very excited about. And when you post a market research related role at a remote first company, at a business that's actually doing well, you're getting the best candidates out there. So we had hundreds of resumes. And like you said, it's sometimes hard to look at a resume and know right off of that if this person's going to be a good fit. So there are three things that I really probe on in interviews that I think work well with me as their leader. And then with the teams that I'm interacting with on a day-to-day basis, one of those is a founder mentality. I want someone who, when there seems to be a wall that you're hitting, you are an architect of impact. You're finding a way around that wall and coming up with solutions. And I think you can find this in people who maybe have side businesses that aren't necessarily on their resume or hobbies, just had these life experiences in which they had to figure this stuff out. And I think that's a really important piece to being successful, especially in a remote first company. So that's one of them. I don't know if I'm allowed to say this, but they're like, give a shit attitude. I don't think you can teach that. Like I, we all work for money at the end of the day, right? Like we are trying to have a great livelihood, but there's something about being intrinsically motivated about your work that I want that person on my team because they are driven to uncover things. One of the things I like to ask people is when was the last time you learned something new and how did you go about learning it? Because I think it's so fascinating to think about how people go about investigating things in their own personal life because it translates so well to insights. So that's the second one. And then the third one would be like my own personal motto, which is strong opinions loosely held. So-

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Stephanie - 00:12:54:

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We talk about that a lot.

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Ashley - 00:12:57:

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And I think it translates well on insights. I want someone who's going to show up to the table with a strong hypothesis based on the information that they have already collected, but be willing to have their mind changed when presented with new data. And I think it works really well in the insight space. But I also think that when you start to cultivate a culture around that, people start to mirror that behavior. And so, you know, you have people who've worked at the company for years. This is the way it is. It's always been like this. And when you can start to showcase how that might change with data, they're more likely to do that, too. So that's another really big piece. So another question I usually ask is like, when was the last time you changed your mind on something like a really big thing in your life and like to hear what people have to say? So it's a lot like less work stuff and more philosophical stuff.

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Stephanie - 00:13:42:

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Oh, man, I love that. And I'm going to steal those last two. I definitely try to ask about the agency quite a lot because you're right. It's just in a remote environment, that sense of empowerment and agency is so important. But I love writing them down. Switching topics again to the, I think the one that Matt and I are really curious to kind of get into, we talk about this a lot with our guests and I'm always just so interested to hear the unique perspectives, but. The ever popular topic of Executive Buy-in and how you get it. And I think, you know, because you're in this unique space of having built insights functions. What's different about earning Executive Buy-in when you come in in that way, when you're doing it the first time? Have you developed any kind of go-to strategies for getting leaders to genuinely invest in Insights?

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Ashley - 00:14:31:

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It's interesting because my experience at ASICS is very different from my experience at Resident. ASICS, I was already working there. I was on a marketing team and was like, I'm getting these marketing briefs where people, they're not developed off insights. It's like selling running shoes to runners. To create a great marketing campaign, there has to be some insight baked in there. So they already knew who I was, but it was like, hey, I have this great idea and here's what it looks like. Versus a Resident, there is a job posting. Someone already sold the idea that Insights is an important function and we should have this. Regardless of those two things, the thing that I found works best for executive buy-in is understanding who your sponsors are and who your skeptics are. So sponsors are people who maybe aren't on your team. Maybe you don't interact with them much, but they believe in the mission. They believe in your vision. They believe in you. And they're going to talk and advocate for you when you're not in the room. And a lot of times on the executive team, you're not going to be in that room. So you need people who have that sphere of influence who are going to go to bat for you, which is very much the case at ASICS. I had someone who, once I put together a 30-day roadmap of like, hey, I believe in this, I found out that they were going to try and hire someone to do it, even though it was something that I wanted to do, but I was pretty junior. And someone in the room was like, no, we got to give Ashley a shot. This was her idea. And she has the plan. Let's see how it goes. And if she fails, we'll find someone. But like that sponsor was everything for me. And similarly with Resident, it's like someone sold this idea and who sold that to the executive team? What did they tell them that this Insights person needs to do? Because I should either make sure that I'm aligned with this person because they put their political capital on the line for this role, or at least make sure I'm not contradicting them. And then the skeptic piece is there's always going to be someone that had a bad experience with data or market research or things that's going to slow down their process. And so who are those skeptics? Why are they skeptical? And can I meet them where they're at? And depending on how well I know this person or how well my sponsors might know this person, it's having a direct conversation of, hey, I'm trying to make your job easier. What problems can I solve for you to show you that this is a good thing or just showing up with proof? And so it's a little bit of that investigative work, but having those two things really helps in the Executive Buy-in and the upfront. And then the other thing is just knowing what the executive team is focused on. So early stage company, Resident, it's like we are building the plane while we're flying it. We need insights fast. So a lot of times I'm just inviting myself to meetings. I'm not waiting for someone to invite me in. I'm hearing the debates and I'm like, hey. It sounds like we don't really know what we're doing with this specific decision. Let me do a 24-hour user test and come back to you with some directional feedback. I didn't know Insights could do that. And you give them a little taste to that, and they're like, I want more, I want more. So that's very much the focus on an early stage in getting Executive Buy-in. And then on the flip side with a company like Wayfair, You are a small fish in a huge sea. And it's not necessarily about showing impact right away. It's about getting attention because there's so much other stuff going on. So it's making sure that Insights are hard to ignore. And again, part of that is having those sponsors who are going to continue to layer up and layer up and have those spheres and influence.

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Stephanie - 00:18:04:

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It's so interesting how you've been able to adapt to different strategies for different companies that are just in different phases of their growth or just due to other factors. You're speaking to the power of being adaptive too, which I think is really important.

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Ashley - 00:18:19:

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Yeah, absolutely.

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Matt - 00:18:20:

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I'm so curious, without giving away your trade secrets, your personal trade secrets that have worked for you, what does your strategy look like for recruiting those sponsors and winning over those skeptics? I mean, I sat in a role where that was everything as well in a prior life in an entrepreneurial space where we gave a lot of thought to who we were spending time trying to win over selfishly because of where they sat in the position or whether we thought they were philosophically aligned with our mission. Is it stuff like that? How do you really frame the message to convince these folks that Insights are non-negotiable and you've got to be on board with this mission because it's the right thing? What does that message look like?

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Ashley - 00:19:07:

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I think a big mistake that people make in that and trying to stand that up is talking about themselves. Here's why Insights is great. And here's what I can accomplish instead of flipping it and talking about them, regardless of where you are in the organization, that you have goals, you have things that keep you up at night. And I think, especially if you're a more junior employee, you're afraid to ask your manager or the potential sponsor, like, how are you doing? Like, what are you working on? And when you can start to understand that, people are actually really excited to talk about themselves. And so when you can start to flip that conversation, it's easier to talk about Insights in a way that's directly impactful to that sponsor. And then the light goes off for them. I didn't even think about this person helping me enable this. And if my goals are being achieved, how can you not want to sponsor this person or get them to have a seat at the table because they're making your life easier?

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Matt - 00:20:02:

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That's great. It goes back to the listening tour again.

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Ashley - 00:20:06:

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It's funny, we do this with our customers, right? As market researchers, we spend so much time, but we don't do it for our internal stakeholders who are our customers as market researchers.

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Stephanie - 00:20:16:

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100%, yeah. Going back to something you said earlier, I loved what you were like, so in 24 hours, I turned this around. So that might be part of your answer to this question, but you have mentioned on LinkedIn that you've woven Insights into nearly every facet of Resident. How did you do that without becoming a bottleneck for decisions? And then kind of related to that, I'm curious if there are functions like CX creative, maybe even finance that surprised you by how receptive they are to Insights and research.

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Ashley - 00:20:49:

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I'm going to be the most annoying person because I keep talking about this listening tour, but there's something to this, right? A business functions well because things get handed off from one department to another and there's a connective tissue. And the same can be true with Insights in terms of not being a bottleneck. And it's making sure you're solving these problems that are going to impact more than one team, especially when you're starting out. So for example, we saw a lot of adjustable bedframes. The team came to me and said, we want to understand why people are buying this particular one over this particular bedframe. At the same time, I knew that we had a marketing strategy that was very heavily focused on adjustable bedframes and we were testing all sorts of different messaging. And then at the same time, I knew that we were doing some site optimization around the bedframe PDP. And so it was like, this is a perfect project to weave all of these things together and not be a bottleneck because I'm able to bring this information across all these teams and actually bring them all to the table who might not be talking. And so that we could move together and make sure that the Insights are actually impactful across all these teams. But then the second thing is making sure that your first-party data is available to people to interpret on their own as we go. This was a huge thing at ASICS as we became a more established team of success metric, very much focused on where people were using our dashboards. And we used Tableau at the time and created these dashboards that we could track who was coming in and out. And that was like, I was only successful if people were able to get the data themselves. We're not quite their Resident yet with Consumer Insights specifically, but we're going to get there and that will also help not be a bottleneck. And then the last thing is I try to write all my decks as a story. So ASICS, I established this 15 slide deck rule because I think people tend to tune out after that. And if every single slide has a so what on it, there's only so much so what you can do, but this is too much. I want people to be able to open a deck when I'm not in the room and just read the headlines and know what is the story that I'm getting from this deck. And then all the data, the supporting data and like minor details are underneath. But that also allows it so that I'm not a bottleneck because I don't have to be in the room. They can just read the deck and know exactly what the takeaways are.

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Stephanie - 00:23:09:

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Very nice.

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Matt - 00:23:10:

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It's so true. We've been having a lot of conversations about storytelling and the reemergence of it as a fashionable topic among our peers in the industry, especially in the age of technological revolution. What is the role of the person? I think you hit the nail on the head. It is so critical to have that ability to make a story stick in as few words as possible so that you're right. That way, you don't have to be there. The deck speaks for itself. It's no longer a speaking deck. It is the story beginning to end. Makes a lot of sense. Going after more of your trade secrets. I know another challenge that often comes up, especially in a role that might be new to senior executives, is you're going to bring information that maybe they don't want to see, or it challenges preconceptions, or it challenges the status quo. What is your personal approach to dealing with those situations as they arise?

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Ashley - 00:24:12:

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And it's every marketer, every market researcher has this challenge, right, at some point or another. But it's the same thing that I was just talking about with a customer, a customer who's really frustrated by an experience on the site or a product. It's understanding why they're frustrated by it. And a big thing, like I said, is there's people who've been Resident for years. And so there's a lot of like, I tried, we've tried this before and it didn't work. And there's so many things that can come with that context. What did you try? Was this the exact problem you were trying to solve? There's so many other pieces to the puzzle than just no. And so having that sort of in-depth interview again or like, why is this uncomfortable for you? What's not sitting well? Is it the solution? Is it the problem? Do you not believe the data? And getting to a place where maybe I was wrong. Maybe I used the wrong sample or something like that and be humble and admit when I'm wrong and then go back and find something. Maybe it's the same. And so we're back in the same place. But being able to understand what that friction point is so that we can break through together and also being able to break through it together. It's like, this problem is still going to exist whether or not you believe this data. So how do we solve this in a way that feels more comfortable for you? And then the last thing is, if they still don't get it, making them go through the experience themselves. And there was this problem we had at ASICS with our returns. We were losing customers in the return cycle. And our LTV was going down, but people weren't looking at it as a revenue driver. So it continued to get pushed on the back burner. We kept going to the executive team with user interviews and data. Like, come on, why don't you see this? But it just wasn't a priority until we made all of them buy shoes and try to return them.

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Matt - 00:25:51:

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And return them.

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Ashley - 00:25:54:

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And then they're like, oh, yeah, this is horrible. We got to fix it.

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Stephanie - 00:25:56:

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That's great.

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Matt - 00:25:57:

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It's so true. I think there's like a Toyota way of principle that speaks to that. The importance of going and seeing for yourself is transformative.

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Ashley - 00:26:05:

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Yeah.

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Stephanie - 00:26:06:

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Definitely. And maybe more in the realm of trade secrets. I don't know, but I'm curious. Resident is a portfolio of different mattress brands. And I'm really curious, I think, because, you know, I do Consumer Insights, you do Consumer Insights about the kind of potentially meaty analysis and research needed that's probably there around ensuring that these are well differentiated and that they have different ideal customer profiles and things like that. Is that something that you're working on there that you are? Yeah. Tell us more about that kind of process if you've done that kind of work.

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Ashley - 00:26:42:

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It's more work that's on the horizon than work that's currently being done. We're standing up a lot of foundational research. So having some always on surveys, some always on customer interviews through some amazing AI tools to start to understand who these customers are. We have incredible founders who this is their third, I believe, successful company. And so they know how to create good products. And we've done a good job with differentiation in terms of materials. But we don't necessarily know who the different buyers are from an intimate level. So starting to understand that will help us from a personalization perspective on site, marketing perspective, and then also leaning into new brands, because that's something that one of the things I love about Resident, is we're not afraid to stand off a new brand on a whim and see if there is any attraction. So being able to understand who we currently serve really well, how do we serve them better? Where is there white space that we should be leaning into? And then again, making sure that our brands are differentiated enough, as you mentioned, we're not cannibalizing our own brands. So that work is being stood up as we speak. And I'm really excited because it's like, yeah, I'm intrinsically motivated by this stuff. So I feel like I'm bringing this Easter basket to the team. Like, look at this. Look at this piece of information. Look what we can do with it.

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Stephanie - 00:28:01:

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It's so vital, right? To so many different areas and the go-to-market process more generally. So absolutely.

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Matt - 00:28:09:

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So you're in a really cool space. Residents are direct consumers. It's remote first. You have this evolving consumer landscape. One question we often like to ask is, have you ever had an insight come through any of your projects that just took you completely by surprise? It was totally unexpected. That really made you change the way you were thinking about a particular problem.

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Ashley - 00:28:33:

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This was something that I realized, I think, in the interview process as I started talking. So it's not really an insight from market research, but my own just talking about the challenges that residents had was the realization that the mattress industry and the footwear industry are actually, they mirror one another. You have this product that people typically want to feel in store, and we're trying to convince them to buy online. And you've got your sleep technologists, you've got your elite runners who understand when I throw PCM on a mattress website, they understand what that means from a scientific perspective. When I throw pronation on a footwear website, they know what that means on an intimate basis. But that's not the majority of your customers. And so who are you talking to? What's the halo effect if you talk to that serious person down to the more generalist? Or should you be talking to a generalist and still make sure your elite athlete, your elite sleeper, if you will, is getting what they need? How do you make the return process simple? There's so many parallels, including foam and shoes and foam and mattresses. And so it was really fascinating to me when I started getting into the challenges that these two brands, ASICS and Resident, had and just the parallels between the two.

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Matt - 00:29:51:

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Probably really helpful. I know a lot of times too, for ideation, having a parallel, sort of a metaphor to refer back to can be so helpful, right?

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Ashley - 00:30:01:

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Oh, yeah. Like now when I'm doing some user experience research, I'm bringing in footwear sites like, let's shop this site and see what this is like, because there's got to be something right. Like a shoe guide versus a mattress guide. Those things are similar.

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Stephanie - 00:30:15:

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Yes, I love that.

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Matt - 00:30:17:

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I aspire to be an elite sleeper someday.

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Stephanie - 00:30:20:

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Seriously. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I wouldn't refer to myself as an elite runner, but I will say I've always, always, always been an ASICS diehard and as a runner. So love that you have that background. I was very curious to get to talk to you today. So-

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Ashley - 00:30:36:

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I still make contact before eye contact.

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Stephanie - 00:30:41:

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That's great. Well, to wrap this up and kind of close us out of this part of the interview, something we like to ask a lot of our guests, Ashley, is what's one piece of advice that you would offer to someone who's just starting out in Consumer Insights?

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Ashley - 00:30:56:

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I would say networking. So Insights teams tend to be smaller teams compared to other functions and organizations. And knowing other people in the Insights world or market research world is so vital to your success as a market researcher. I can't tell you how many times as I was starting at ASICS and even at Resident that I've called someone that I've met in industry and been like, hey, here's this challenge that I'm having. What tools are you using? What methodologies? Even from an Executive Buy-in perspective, how did you convince someone to go along with this thing? And I find that the Insights community is pretty small, but very helpful to one another. And so I'd say the more you can network before you actually need something, just like, hey, what are you working on? It is much better because the other thing is that from a job perspective, you know, there are Consumer Insights jobs that can be hard to find. So if you have these established relationships as a young professional, then you're going to be fine going down the road and keep going deeper into insights because you're going to have these people who want to work with you because they just know who you are. So I think networking, networking, networking is the best thing you can do and making sure you're providing value to other folks in the space as well.

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Stephanie - 00:32:08:

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That is great advice.

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Matt - 00:32:10:

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Great advice. And my final question is, of course, the crystal ball question. If you look forward over the next five years, what are the biggest changes you see coming down that are going to affect you, the way you work in your industry, but Insights in general?

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Ashley - 00:32:26:

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It's hard not to talk about AI when you ask that question.

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Matt - 00:32:29:

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We made it. We made it through the whole conversation. We won. We won the AI game today, guys.

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Stephanie - 00:32:35:

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The first time.

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Ashley - 00:32:37:

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Yeah, I purposely was holding the AI word back. But we talked a little bit about bottlenecking. And I think that it can be a big issue in Insights, especially if you're at a large organization and they don't know what Consumer Insights has to offer. I think AI and the decentralization of Insights in organizations is going to continue to strengthen so that you can make sure that it's brought across every single piece of the organization, whether you're at the table or not. And I think about this even in terms of the dashboards, being able to ask a dashboard and the way you ask ChatGPT, how would you interpret X, Y, Z thing with layering on three different types of first-party data? And so bringing that to the table, I think that's going to continue to evolve. I'm excited because AI is making my job easier in a lot of ways. And I'm not as scared of it as I think other folks might be because of the empathy factor that we talk about. The human aspect, AI is not, at least currently, replicating. So I think it's just going to continue to make market research easier in terms of the tasks that we don't want to do and make sure it's more accessible across the organizations.

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Matt - 00:33:45:

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I think it's a great outlook. All right. So we have invited Ashley to join us for our after show segment called The Undercurrent, which is where, again, we just sort of talk about something that is maybe tangentially, maybe directly, maybe indirectly related to our work in Insights. And we just kind of nerd out a little bit about something that's interesting and fascinating to us lately. Mine is going back to a topic that... I brought up, oh, a number of weeks ago, I've been on this kick looking into the idea of complexity theory, which is at a very high level, this concept that problems need to be evaluated before they are pursued for a solution. At a very high level, you need to make a distinction between whether a problem is simple or a problem is complex. And the ways you go about solving those problems are very different based on that very simple categorization. There's a whole lot more to it than that. But it's got me thinking a lot about limitations and complexity in market research and the work that we do. And I was recommended a book called, it's not a new book, came out in 2013 called Obliquity: Why Our Goals are Best Achieved Indirectly by John Kay, who's a British economist. And I gave that a read and I thought it was really interesting. So what he goes into is really, we achieve complex goals more successfully by not pursuing them directly. For example, companies that focus obsessively on maximizing shareholder value often fail, while those that prioritize things like innovation, customer experience, or culture end up being more profitable as a byproduct. And this is really interesting to me as an Insights pro because it gets back to this question of what is measurable and what is not. And I like things that sort of challenge me as a quantitative oriented research nerd who wants to measure everything. I want to put a metric on everything. And especially now that I'm in a position where doing a little bit more strategy, a little bit more building, it's really interesting to have these ideas put in front of me that sort of cause a bit of a transformation in my thought process to take place. And I've been really enjoying this little exploration of limitations of sort of classical problem solving approaches.

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Stephanie - 00:36:14:

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So jumping in from my perspective, a little bit different. This is just a piece of news that got me thinking. I stumbled across the news earlier this week that OpenAI is, they use this word because it was used in the article, quietly prototyping a social network. It'll be a feed-based platform built around AI generation. They're going to start with images, likely expanding to text. And I have to say, like, of course, my first reaction was probably along the lines of, is this the 10th circle of hell? Are we just mashing up buzz concepts at this point? But the more I thought about it and read about it, two things emerged for me. One, I get the play strategically. Of course, it does a few things for OpenAI. They get that continuous high signal human data. They get native feedback loops for agents. They get first party context across things like taste and sentiment and behavior that they're getting in more of a third party right now. And it's also like a sandbox to really test how AI feels to people, not just how it performs. So I see a lot of likes... Even though it felt kind of crazy to me, I see a lot of it does make sense as a strategic play for them. On the consumer social side, I also started to think about how, you know, we have these different eras in society. There is the profile era with things like Facebook and Insta.. With identity-driven content, and then the feed era with TikTok and Twitter, the group chat era with Snap and Discord, where it's like valuing intimacy and small conversation. And I feel like all of these phases kind of reflect the technology and the cultural issues of their time. Not that they're not all of this time as well, but...

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Matt - 00:37:55:

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That's a great point.

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Stephanie - 00:37:56:

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Yeah. And it seems like that maybe this next phase is a bigger shift, of course, but just another shift at the same time. And we're not just designing systems for humans anymore, right? We're designing a network that will be built for cognitive collaboration and co-creation between humans and models. And maybe it's the agent era. For me, there's a little fear of the unknown there, but also I have to say I'm a little bit excited the more that I read and thought about it.

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Ashley - 00:38:23:

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I'm going to share something that's very near and dear to my heart, which is actually about how I took some of the things that I've learned through market research and actually brought my own company to life during the pandemic, which is now my side business. I talked about the founder mentality a little bit, and I brought it to life with my sister. So during the pandemic, pretty much everyone I know, including myself, was struggling with anxiety. And it was hard to find something that would help in the middle of the night with that 3:00AM spiral of what's going to happen next. That we thought this was going to be two weeks from two months in what's going on. And I started to learn a lot more about cognitive behavioral therapy. I was a psychology major in school. I thought I was going to be a clinical psychologist, so I had some training in that. But I started thinking about it more through the lens of active participation and being able to do something to help when I was in that of reshaping, restructuring my anxieties and found cognitive restructuring to be incredibly impactful. But I was having all these sheets of paper around my house, which during the pandemic was fine. But if I was traveling again and out with friends, I didn't want that to be something that I had to take with me. And so I went on Amazon, as anyone does, and started searching for anxiety journals. And everything said anxiety journals in big letters or had like rainbows and butterflies, which certainly wasn't my style. So I called my sister, who ironically also worked for Wayfair on the supply side, and said, hey, like, what if we created our own? What if we used this gap in the market? And the conversations I'm hearing with my friends and I have made something that was real and tangible for people to help them get out of this dark place during a dark time. I said, all right, we spent the next six months designing, developing, talking to therapists, interviewing them, making sure that the product was sound. And then bought 500 and threw them up on Amazon and said, okay, worst case scenario, everyone's getting anxiety journals for the next five Christmases and we'll be good.

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Stephanie - 00:40:20:

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Great.

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Ashley - 00:40:21:

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But they sold out really quick. And since then, that was 2020. My sister and I have sold over 75,000 journals. We've partnered with quite a few nonprofits from suicide prevention to grief. We've launched a second journal now, an ADHD journal. And our focus is really on bringing tools that don't exist for people who are motivated but don't necessarily know what to do. So a lot of it is just listening to people in our own lives and starting to connect those dots of what challenges exist. And then how do we solve these for people? So it's something that's near and dear to my heart. And hopefully it helps someone, too, out there.

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Matt - 00:40:58:

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That's amazing.

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Stephanie - 00:40:59:

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I love that. Yeah, that is really amazing. And I love that you even took that sort of your research inclination through the process of development. And we're like, I'm going to do this the right way and sort of have the conversations that need to be had to make sure that this has good product market fit, if you will. So really, really cool stuff.

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Ashley - 00:41:17:

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Thanks.

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Stephanie - 00:41:17:

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Well, Ashley, this conversation with you today has been an absolute pleasure. I loved getting to learn about sort of your approach to how you spin up an Insights org and really how you create that buy-in for yourself. And if I take anything away personally, I'm going to start having listening sessions. I've been here for several years, but it's not too late to start. So-

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Ashley - 00:41:36:

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Yes. I love to hear that. Do them often.

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Stephanie - 00:41:38:

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For sure.

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Ashley - 00:41:39:

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Thanks for having me.