On this episode of the NTP Podcast we interview Angela Cobb & Oliver Stewart, Co-Founders at Tortoise & Hare. We talk about their recent rebranding, the ethos of Tortoise & Hare, how customer experience has become an absolute necessity for businesses and key resources they recommend. Hope you enjoy the interview!

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Show Notes

Here you can source all the things we have talked about in the podcast whether that be books, events, meet-up groups and what’s new in the Newcastle tech scene.

• • Angela’s LinkedIn
  • Oliver’s LinkedIn
  • Tortoise & Hare CX Agency LinkedIn
  • Tortoise & Hare’s Website
  • Book-The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph
  • StreamTime
  • Unpaused Podcast
  • Paula Thomas Podcast-Let’s Talk Loyalty

Find all local Newcastle Technology Events

• Event’s Page

Transcription:

James: Welcome to another episode of the NewyTechPeople podcast on today’s episode we have Angela and Oliver from Tortoise and Hare, welcome.
Oliver & Angela – Tortoise & Hare: Thank you thanks for having us.
Ignorantly did not know of you until about a month ago and we started a conversation about you know have you having you both on the podcast so for those of our listeners that might not know who you are um do you want to give us a bit of overview of who you are individually let’s start there and then we’ll go into Tortoise & Hare.
Oliver: I’m Oliver Stewart and you wouldn’t have known about us because we were formally rebranded as a different business before that but went through a very specific exercise of rebranding to Tortoise and Hare a month or maybe a bit longer than that ago now and we’re a cx agency so customer experience agency and the repositioning exercise was all around better representing our business and you know how we add value to the clients we work with and so the the you know tag line if you like that sits below Tortoise & Hare is that we believe that building valuable customer relationships is a marathon and that we help customers run that marathon and you know fundamental to part of who we are as an agency is also you know some of our back story and and the fact that we’ve also worked and all of the team has worked client-side in the past as well as in agency land and that for us you know that also talks to how we operate super pragmatic practical all about getting the best possible client outcomes we can. Yeah for the for the partners we work with who includes you know some big brands like Woolworths cash rewards in the past we’ve worked with the nrl and locally we’re working with nib b2b brands like modern star so you know they’re the some of the brands we’re working with and yeah but now we’re in a new Tortoise & Hare world which which we’re loving.
James: Beautiful.
Angela – Tortoise & Hare: Yeah and I’m Angela and I’m also one of the directors. We have a third director who’s Nick who’s not here today but he’s very much the entrepreneur at heart in the business and the operational genius so he very much keeps the lights on as well but yeah we often laugh about Oliver and my experience because we often feel like we’re the same people in that you know we we kicked off our careers independently and then we crossed paths back in 2007 I think it was all about that and that was uh at the cx lavender which was at that stage a bit of a um you know a direct marketing traditional traditional direct marketing agency yeah from there we went our own ways again and then and then kicked off again at Qantas frequent flight so we’ve very much kind of had our own careers but also been pretty much inseparable from from the very beginning so it made sense but you know however many years ago it was that we that we came together and actually to do our own thing and to yeah build to where we’ve got to today.
James: Yeah I find the CX space really interesting we’re obviously technology focused podcast. I feel like where technology has gone over the past what’s continually going is from a pure technical place to bridging technology in humans and CX is playing a really important part in that space how do you leverage technology to talk to customers what does that customer experience look like. I feel like back in the days it was just about having a website you had to have a website online who are you talking to it doesn’t matter you’ve got a website and that journey and everything has just changed so much and there’s been a real rise in that cx space and I feel like we’re continuing to grow in there from a cx perspective.
You’re obviously both specialists in that space, can you talk about your experience in how cx as a whole is changing and evolving?
Oliver – Tortoise & Hare: Yeah I think first let’s talk about what is cx because I think it’s a bit of a buzzword and a lot of people do and don’t really understand it so when we talk about cx we are talking end to end customer experience and what’s pivotal to that is understanding you know customer needs wants and behaviours at every every point in their customer journey.
Angela – Tortoise & Hare: I think for us really like what we’ve seen and everyone’s probably seen this across the industries Covid itself has been meant cx is an absolute non-negotiable you know with Covid everything shifting online you know you don’t want to say it’s the rise of digitalisation because that was obviously happening very much prior to Covid but it it absolutely sensationalised that and fast tracked that for a lot of businesses that probably had it on the back burner and didn’t prioritise it so what we’ve seen is you know that’s been a real shift to contactless payments, whether that’s getting bricks and mortar businesses trying to shift their shops online but what we had seen in cx and what we’re continuing to see is you know especially with Covid and the pandemic is customers are now willing to shop new brands which for that means you know and and having a negative customer experience is the top reason for the traction so if you have a negative experience that’s going to then impact the likelihood of you losing that customer so we’ve seen businesses really shifting over the last couple of years and more focused not necessarily on acquiring new customers but actually focusing on driving more value from existing customers and driving that advocacy and real loyalists within their business.
I feel like lifetime value has become a stat that people are looking at with more and more intent as opposed to top line revenue is looking great but what’s our churn look like what’s our lifetime value of a customer look like? These are conversations especially in the sas field. How do you have that ongoing monthly recurring revenues or the annual recurring revenues which you know that’s where a lot of valuations in tech have played off yeah and it’s not about just getting that initial purchase it’s about how do i keep those customers ongoing and that plays exactly into our marathon analogy which is where the tourism here comes from obviously but that’s exactly right like the ltv lifetime value that’s you know that’s where we’re always having the conversation but it’s got so much more traction recently and what we also say is that which builds into the marathon analogy is that it you know you need to be committed to it and you need to make movement and progress on it now and it might not pay off tomorrow we don’t do the short term quick turnaround sales drive using digital channels just to bump up the bottom line for a target you want to hit tomorrow we’re about that long term incremental growth that you can build within a customer base so that also plays into another space that we do.
Angela – Tortoise & Hare: We spend a lot of time talking loyalty so lifetime value is as a business what you’re trying to drive but really what you’re trying to get is you know loyal customers who have a great affinity free brand advocacy for your product engage with you so there’s a lifetime value there commercially but how do they actually engage with you as a brand as well whether that’s utilising your products digital you know apps whatever it might be how they engage with you on social all of that sort of stuff so that is yeah that’s firmly the space that we play and and see that there being huge value for businesses to to invest in as well.
James: You mentioned digital just then obviously close to my heart being in that tech space as well I want to get into what CX looks like when you would work with a client in a second but just purely that digital space, how has that changed cx as a whole I feel like back in the days especially brick and mortar businesses you could have a loyalty card or something that comes back I feel like digital’s opening up more opportunities for better cx plays or companies to evolve or use different platforms to really improve the customer experience is that true?
Angela – Tortoise & Hare: Yeah well I might quickly talk the platform thing because that’s also a huge enabler right because you’ve got all these different you know tools at your fingertips but it’s also complex because there’s so much so many yeah there’s a great I mean if we just talk in the marketing space there’s a great martech map out there you’ve probably seen it yourself and I think 10 years ago it just maps all the different tools and providers out there 10 years ago they were like 150 maybe globally and now that’s the proliferation of it is massive it was like 10 000 plus and you’ve got a new one popping up every day so there’s it is a huge enabler but being having a really clear understanding of your requirements but also your customers, getting in the customer mindset and understanding what they want and what they need is really important for you to be able to sift through everything that’s out there.
We kind of talked about it earlier around email and maybe that was actually before we started recording, apologies, but you know gone are the days where it is just an email provider or a platform being enough and sufficient for a b2b business for example now a customer expects 10 plus channels to interact and engage with so you know the reason why we’re seeing that big shift is also because these kind of platforms and providers actually now need to be setting themselves up to support multi-channel it’s not just about being good at email it’s about being good at every channel and integrating them to create that seamless experience.
James: So for companies that are managing multi-channels or potentially working with an agency like yourselves managing multiple channels I feel like that role used to sit somewhere inside marketing and now potentially still sits in marketing but potentially in digital as a technology. How does that sit within a company from an internal perspective working with someone like yourself managing multiple channels how have you seen that role change and evolve?
Oliver – Tortoise & Hare: We absolutely see that merging and that where’s that delineation roles responsibilities what’s the operating model and where we often see a crossover is work in the traditional life cycle space yeah which let’s just put that in the marketing corner whether that’s right or not and then you’ve got work in the omni channel space who owns who owns the channel who’s responsible for delivering their experience in that channel let’s put that in the digital space but obviously increasingly there and absolutely they overlap and blur and so what we see is those strategies coming together and a real question mark is cool so how do we still have clear lines of roles and responsibilities and handoffs and pick up points but also a much more coordinated way of working and often that does come down to having real clear definitions of what you know at what point is this particular customer in terms of the life cycle and what are the priority channels that they’re interacting with and when do you pick them up and drop them off and how that all comes together so yeah there’s not a clear answer as to what the solution it is but there’s definitely a need to be much more coordinated.
James: I feel like it’s an evolving space and I feel like technology as a whole with old school technology was just back houses now technology is a real enabler within companies yeah and it just really you know sits and helps and enables other departments and I feel like that overlap between digital marketing or marketing and digital yeah others you know are the same thing because most marketing is digital now but it’s sort of still traditional technology helps enable a lot of those so really it’s just a fascinating space it’s continuing to evolve and often what I’d say is that the bridge between them is often the data.
Angela – Tortoise & Hare: Yeah and so knowing your customer as a person and you know however you do that as a business with degree of you know granularity that gives you real sophistication or maybe it’s a bit more basic but having a consistent way of identifying people and being able to recognise who they are, their behaviour and then respond based on who they are and the context in which they’ve made you know they’ve completed an action or whatever it might be is is often how you can then build that experience across across the two areas.
James: Yeah nice. For my absolute naivety, if I was to start a brand new brand company and wanted to look at cx for the first time, what does a process look like working with Tortoise & Hare or another player in this space or what does that experience look like? What does initial conversation through to having something implemented obviously end game would be a really clear defined definition for my customers and all the data behind that and being able to run channels off the back but how do I go from zero to one.
Oliver – Tortoise & Hare: Yeah so it’s a good question because we’ve actually done this for a number of clients recently so in this example first of all we might take a step back and actually talk about what we offer in terms of our services because that sets the scene of really how then we would tackle a project. For example or an initial conversation so we have three core pillars of our services so strategy brand and creative and digital we find a lot of our work initially starts in that strategic space so that might be a CX audit for example so we would talk in a little bit more detail you know we do quote quantitative research. Which might be building a valuable proposition whether that’s a launch proposition or just a recognition strategy or strategic consulting the thing that really differentiates us is that we might come up with a lot of businesses come up with beautiful brands but whether they come up with compelling brands it’s another story.
So how we really set ourselves apart there is that we not only can come up with a beautiful brand but we can translate that brand across channels and we can stress test that make sure that every execution of that is direct response design as well and then in digital headspace we do ux/ui we do omni-channel campaigns and journeys and seo and content but in the example of what you’re talking about so if we take a step back how do we tackle an initial conversation? For us that’s lighting up that strategy pillar so we would kind of get in there and and we’d do probably do a full cx audit, where we would do a tear down of all comms or channels or interaction points. We often do a lot of one-to-one stakeholder interviews and potentially some customer interviews as part of that as well to get a clear current state of play for that business. Once we do that we then help work with them to come up basically and operationalise that so I think another thing for us is you know because we have work with client and agency side we get the operational execution issues that the back a standard strategy so we then want to be able to make sure that it’s a practical solution for them so that might be coming up with a horizon plan across you know a number of different areas of focus for them that allows it to keep that blue sky vision of yes best in class cx but you know realistically how do you get there is that yeah i don’t like to say bringing at the basics but sometimes that is what you’re talking about for phase one you know setting it up for success and building those foundations.
James: Yeah nice so understanding sort of where our clients are what they’re trying to achieve breaking it down and seeing what they do and starting phase one.
Angela – Tortoise & Hare: Yeah exactly and then it’s a very collaborative process for us you know it’s not something that we absolutely go in a hole on our on our side but but it’s a collaborative process with the client because obviously it’s their business so yeah I feel like cx sometimes for some people it’s still new.
James: Yeah absolutely and for some people it’s still a little daunting right it’s like do I own a company big enough to tackle that yet? How do I start that journey. I feel like that’s probably CX’s journey as a whole but then also a lot of companies, how do I start? Where does it sit? Whose responsibility is it? It’s an interesting space those in the customer experience journey recognise lifetime value is becoming more and more important how people do that we’ll bear differentiator as we go on.
Angela – Tortoise & Hare: Yeah and no matter how big or small, how sophisticated you are whatever it might be it’s often better if you’re just starting out and if you are smaller it is a bit simpler, you don’t have this huge enterprise framework you’ve got to work within and all the rest of that, all the complexities that come with that sort of thing and I think if you bring it back to like so CX we’re talking about the customer experience but how do you build meaningful journeys yeah as opposed to just one-off tactical touch points and interactions and because as a consumer you think about your experience as a whole with a brand or a service product whatever it might be, you don’t go oh I just had a really good interaction with the app today as I was trying to perform function x you think about the whole the whole package and that’s really what we spend you know we see that being a real shift at the moment is people really understanding the need to actually build into this space where they’re actually managing a journey over time and I think that’s where there’s a lot of value that even on a small scale you can you can make.
James: Yeah I love it.
James: And I feel like technology or companies as a whole all businesses whether it be b to b or b to c it is human right and it’s understanding who that human is that you’re talking to, what their relationship with your brand looks like what that journey looks like to your extent I feel like there is a greater emphasis on that and it’s continued the companies that are having real success are understanding who their customer is, where they’re at, where do I speak to them at? What their journey and experience looks like so I feel like it’s a really interesting space as we continue to evolve and you know a lot of companies move online as you mentioned before people are more open to changing brands probably have less loyalty these days if a brand hasn’t built that real experience with them so that’s growing in an important space.
James: Yeah nice from your perspective you’ve obviously rebranded recently can you talk to me about what brought that?
Angela – Tortoise & Hare: So we have rebranded our agency from ami which was a bit of a legacy for us because our business was Australian marketing initiatives which sounds like a you know a crazy big corporation which didn’t really define us or who we were and it kind of lacked that personality that felt was missing so we rebranded Tortoise and Hare just to better articulate who we are and what we do and you know and the fabled Tortoise & Hare was a real driving force behind that as well and and the story that goes with that around building valuable relations being a marathon not a sprint.
Oliver – Tortoise & Hare: Yeah Ange you mentioned before that we spent time working in Sydney and you know we work with clients in Sydney but we’re also you know as a business in the this space you know in our new rebranded space really focused also on trying to work more locally in Newcastle most of our team is all here we’re looking for people who have that we ideally have that experience of having worked client-side so they get it so in that same mindset that we’re in about how we can really add value to businesses but we are you know we’ve all moved here for a reason we’re bringing our families up here and as part of growing our business we’re also super focused on trying to do that here and and retain the talent here and give other people the opportunities that we’ve had if you know especially if they’re coming out of somewhere like Sydney and they’re looking for something that they can do that will still give them the opportunities that they might you know have had in a big city but of course exists everywhere in Newcastle now so we want to be part of that as well.
James: Yeah I feel like the opportunity also and it happened with technology, five/ten years ago where anyone who was coming out of university in the technology space software engineering for example I had to go to Sydney for a job whereas that’s completely changed. You come out of university of Newcastle right now software engineering degree there’s at least 15 jobs there ready for you to go. I feel like it was the same like I did a bachelor of business major in marketing had to move to Sydney for good opportunities I feel like that providing opportunities for people to work in a cx specialist agency in Newcastle is a bit of a game changer really that specialisation in that space and for that to be local should be really good for you know opportunities for graduates and people to grow their careers in that space.
Oliver – Tortoise & Hare: and that was a key reason why we rebranded as well is to to I mean obviously better position ourselves in the market that we want to play in and grow in but also to attract that talent which we know we need to find.
James: Nice. On that note people coming through university people potentially maybe high school going through university trying to understand okay I quite like the idea of this customer experience getting to know who customers are you know providing value working with clients. How do you build a career in cx? Is there a traditional pathway I’d be keen to maybe get both your individual takes and where you’ve got to and then we’ll break it down that university space which is something I always like digging into so from your perspective and from a career perspective yeah how did you find your way into cx?
Angela – Tortoise & Hare: Well to be honest I mean gosh that feels like a long time ago too and because the industry has changed so much whether it would be the same and right approach now is another question. Like you I did a bachelor of commerce majored in marketing and management and did that at Sydney university and like I said set myself up there and and the first thing I actually did was get some work experience because I didn’t know what I wanted to major in, I didn’t know what I wanted to necessarily focus in, this was halfway through my degree at this stage. I was fortunate enough to get work experience for it was five weeks and I did a week in all areas of a business where accounting not so passionate about but that’s where I really found that passion for marketing which was why I ended up majoring in that space so I think the big thing for me was going broad because I was not really sure what I wanted to focus on and it’s not like I fell into marketing did the absolute due diligence of working out exactly what it was that I wanted to go after and feel confident in that and work experience was a great way to be able to do that.
James: I like that yeah that breadth first and then start to specialise, and for you Oliver?
James: So we’ve already said we’re pretty much the same person when it comes to our career path so I’m not going to repeat everything Angela just said but I started broad narrowed down and that’s how we ended up in the same space but I think part of your other question was around if you’re interested in it? I think you know how do you just choose that that’s a space you want to go into and we often talk about this concept with the team and with clients everyone’s a customer everyone’s a consumer out there in the every day you know out and about and I think if you have an interest in experiences and you’re curious about how it works and you see opportunities for improvement in you know in everyday experiences that you have whether it’s interaction with a brand product or whatever then I think you know potentially you have a natural affinity for it and then there’s there are avenues you can go can follow to sort of find out more about it it’s much more of a you know that need to be able to uh we followed a direct marketing path back in the day as more direct marketing than the cx is how it’s evolved because of digital because of um you know a need to have clear attribution around what was going on and to understand and unpick what’s happening and why it’s happening as opposed to sometimes potentially back in the day a big brand ad that you know may or may not work for whatever reason.
James: I think i’ve seen them in an admin conference back in the days.
Angela – Tortoise & Hare: When we first started out you either went direct or you went above the line like that was it like that was the choice you made and like that was a game changer actually going direct initially.
James: I had a role at one point in my career which was email marketing specialist literally when email marketing first kicked off and it was the first opportunity to talk to a customer outside you know direct mail or something like that and personal nature and email marketing was was the thing now it’s just a small part but that was my specialist role in direct marketing was email.
Oliver – Tortoise & Hare: Yeah but I think that talks to like the sort of you know depending on the sort of profile of person you are and what you like that could help steer you in a direction.
James: Yeah so if we one of the things I like looking at in technology space is continuing to evolve and education continues to evolve and change do you think a university degree is beneficial for people to get like a breadth of experience it sounds like breadth of experience is a really good starting point for for CX do you think your university degree plays a part in somebody getting out of building a career in the CX space.
Oliver: Personally I would say yes I think there’s some there are probably some great courses and opportunities in tertiary education that you could follow but also you know there’s so much more practical hands-on that you can do where you can build your own website you can set up your own product you can you can turn something on really quickly um and it doesn’t need to be so you can be an overnight millionaire success it might just be to dabble in the space and to learn more about it so I’m sure that courses these days are much more practically orientated around that but I would say that the people who are coming out and being successful aren’t the people who are just relying on what you know what they learn in a course to set them up for success.
James: Agreed. I always lean back this technology I guess that’s where we’ve got most experience same thing there you can do a degree but if you’re building your own site writing some code contributing to projects on your own that’s probably where you’ll learn the most and I guess accelerate their careers a little bit quicker. Nice, outside of university then are there any other courses or online platforms that you’ve found super helpful or that you would recommend to other people trying to figure out whether this space is for them or how to improve their skill sets. Is it youtube videos or is there an online platform or someone provides education outside of that formal education?
Oliver – Tortoise & Hare: Yeah there’s so much stuff out there I would say that it’s about finding those areas that you’re interested in and just going down that rabbit hole and digging into it.
Angela – Tortoise & Hare: Because there’s broad CX courses that you can do like online courses.
Oliver – Tortoise & Hare: Other good spaces loyalty like this there are courses out there that really dig into loyalty whether it’s the psychology of loyalty you know the fundamentals of program mechanics. I’d be specific and I’d look for the specialised content is about that area that you’re particularly interested in.
James: Yeah I like it. You mentioned just before and I’m quite interested in this space and I feel like technology and CX marketing are all sort of involved but with psychology it feels like a psychology or understanding consumers is a big part of what you do is that is that like would you see somebody coming from a psychology background being really helpful in this space or experts in this space that you look into study.
Oliver – Tortoise & Hare: So at uni I did business management and then within that my preference is marketing and so imagine that I also did an arts degree in arts and I single majored in journalism which sort of then led to having interesting content yeah and psychology so all of that ultimately led into you know so without realising I was building that pathway it all went in there and I think psychology has so many applications but absolutely in the consumer mindset is hugely powerful.
James: I completely agree I’m more and more interested in it by the day with obviously recruitment dealing with human beings I understand different motivators and values how that aligns to their jobs. So I’m super interested in Tortoise and Hare and you are a growing agency here in newcastle but it sounds like you’re both in Sydney. I did the same thing personally and they’ve come back newcastle and built a business locally here in newcastle interested to understand how how you underwent that process like how did you start coming back to newcastle and then building locally here?
Angela – Tortoise & Hare: Well when we first started it was actually part of the renew Newcastle effort so we set ourselves up at a shared office space in town and then actually quickly outgrew that and found a great spot just on watt street which is where our office is today many years later.
James: Very nice and for the why. Why come back to Newcastle? why grow locally here?
James: So I think well obviously the need for a sea change but really one of the big things was actually wanting to set up a business from newcastle and that also showcased that you can have great cx talent and work on big big businesses and big brands all from newcastle it doesn’t have to necessarily be in the big city. So we’re really passionate about giving you know local CX specialists the opportunity to not have to feel like they have to go back to the big city to get big agency experience.
James: I love hearing that story from a couple of angles, giving our local talent the opportunities to stay local and really work with those national and international brands but also draw talent from outside of newcastle to have a specialised career working with those large brands. So I love that story from a newcastle perspective and you know wish you all the growth here.
Angela – Tortoise & Hare: Thank you.
James: Last question I like to always ask and try to get the insights of growing business owners or growing professionals is you are obviously both growing a brand and growing a team, working with now many clients. How do you manage your day? So what I like to to try to get out of this is, is there a tip or technique that our listeners could take away from here on how you manage your days? I’ll start with you Ange and then Oliver.
Angela – Tortoise & Hare: Nowadays as a business I mean again you know we we’re always in office one or two days a week and we do that as a as a team because they’re kind of our real you know whether they’re meeting heavy or you know workshop heavy days so if it’s a day like that you’re in the office and that day is usually pretty damn planned out but on the other days they’re usually the days that we leave to really allow ourselves to get the work done and that’s how we plan our days.
James: Yeah nice are there any productivity tools or any tools or technologies that you’ve used that you found super helpful?
Oliver – Tortoise & Hare: Yeah absolutely. Given out team is local in newcastle which is our core team and then we have a peripheral team of absolute experts in our field we really need to be quite dynamic in our approach to make sure that you know the tools that we’re using allows us to be responsive but contactable but also give people their the space that they need as and when they’re not when they’re not working. So we use obviously slack which is a really important channel and tool for us. We also use google drive and we actually were in dropbox and have shifted from there and then stream time is actually a really important tool.
James: What’s StreamTime I’ve not heard of StreamTime?
Angela – Tortoise & Hare: So it’s a great project management tool but it’s also a bit of a resourcing tool for us as well and then Nick I mean he’s not here but he’s the brains behind all of this and we’ve also built a number of tools to help support some of those platforms and integrate them along with Xero so we can do some more of not only project management but forecasting actuals and you know we’ve got a pretty rigorous forecast plan that we’re working kind of six to 12 months out so we know exactly where things are at.
James: Nice we will definitely link up StreamTime in our show notes as well.
Oliver – Tortoise & Hare: Yeah I’d say any any tools that allow you to co-collaborate such as Figma you know all the google suite, Lucid is another tool you can use where you can get in there and you can all work on it at once I think that’s really key. I think about the old days of you know pre-some of these tools where I’d do a version of a powerpoint save it down, you’d look, you’d do it, someone else would pick it up and do some edits and you have 20 versions. That’s obviously archaic and unnecessary anymore but that ability to co-create is is so important and so much more effective.
James: Yeah nice for you both to get where you are. Obviously you’ve done a lot of learning along the way is there a podcast or a book or a you know key part piece of source of information that you’d highly recommend that has maybe been game-changing or highly beneficial for you from a personal development standpoint?
Oliver – Tortoise & Hare: I’m really into almost anything that Ryan Holiday does.
James: Yeah I love Ryan Holiday.
Oliver – Tortoise & Hare: You know just about understanding and getting that focus around what you’re doing and why you’re doing it and having that in your day-to-day life gives you a good perspective. So that’s not marketing related specifically but I think you know in the background that stuff’s really important.
James: Yeah I agree I think the Obstacle is probably on my top five books of all time.I think it holds a tight spot within that top five.
Oliver – Tortoise & Hare: It’s actually sitting next to my bed. I recently read ‘Stillness is The Key’ which yeah as a father of a few kids it’s important for me to channel my inner stillness.
James: Yeah all right I’m following up with you on ‘Obstacle is The Way’ in a month’s time. It is absolutely my top five books. Yeah awesome and then from a podcast perspective?
Angela – Tortoise & Hare:I mean this is a bit more niche but Paula Thomas’s let’s talk loyalty is really great she interviews a specialist what they can be agency client-side but it’s international each podcast and she dives into loyalty and it might be specifically about loyalty program but sometimes she’s doubling a lot more into cx more broadly.
James: I love that that’s good specialist podcast. I think you both mentioned before like just rather than you know an overarching piece of education is finding a specialist so I will link that up in the show notes as well.
Oliver – Tortoise & Hare: I’m totally plugging my mum’s podcast here because it’s specialist and it’s fully related to your career. It’s called ‘Unpaused’ and it’s about the journey that women go on in their careers often when they have to take time out off work and how they get back in and how they follow their passion and what they want to do.
James: So I love that I’m also going to link that up, something super pertinent to you know a lot of our businesses as well so appreciate the recommendation.
Oliver – Tortoise & Hare: So will my mum hopefully.
James: I love it, thanks for your time today. I really appreciate your time and yeah from my perspective it’s really interesting for me to understand more I guess that CX space because I guess it is a growing space and it’s affecting all of our lives and our technology listeners and how that overlaps and supplies there is super interesting so I appreciate it.
Oliver & Angela – Tortoise & Hare: Thanks for having us.