“I am a huge believer in teaching and more importantly, apprenticeship in business.” Sean Campell

Information is one of the fundamental aspects that drive organizational success. Getting the right data and communicating it to inform decisions is the goal of marketing research. Our guest today, Sean Campbell, has been helping businesses learn and navigate their environment and stresses on the importance of continuous learning and apprenticeship in organizations.

Sean has been training, mentoring, and educating all his life. An exceptionally well regarded conference speaker and author, Sean has delivered talks for Fortune 50 companies and top tier conferences. He has also been the author of several books on technical as well as business topics. Sean has also been a professional services firm owner for over 20 years. His professional services work has spanned consulting engagements with the Fortune 50 and startups you’ve heard of, the sale of his first professional services company, and the growth of delivery, sales, marketing, and operational practices inside professional services firms. In short, Sean brings a wealth of knowledge when it comes to surviving and thriving as a service firm owner or the leader of a practice area inside a larger services firm.

In today’s episode, Sean talks about the importance of market research for firms and the work his company does to help companies get out of the valleys they are in.

Listen in!

Social Media:

Website http://www.cascadeinsights.com

LinkedIn Page https://www.linkedin.com/in/seancampbell/

Facebook Page https://www.facebook.com/seanallencampbell/

Twitter Handle https://twitter.com/sean_campbell

The word cascade is knowledge that just keeps going on and bumping into other knowledge and growing. [3:31]
Predominantly, we’re a market research firm and we go help our clients learn more about the market which they can use in ways that they find advantageous and we also do a lot of marketing activation. [3:38]
We get hire for two reasons, either pain that is a company is experiencing or opportunity they want to gain from. [3:51]
One of our more popular blog posts for years was how good people deliver bad news. [9:58]
One of the interesting thing about our client base, is that they really need us to tell them bad things. [10:54]
We don’t have the ability to control the message all the way forward and back but I do feel like we’re truth tellers. [12:28]
We very much watch that we bring in people in who have enough empathy that they can marry that with being truth tellers. 13:58]
What we’re trying to do with clients all the time is trying to get them to understand the valley they’re in, but let them see what’s shining on the other side that they can get to. [15:00]
One of the things that’s led us to be really successful is honestly how much we’ve said no. [15:40]
I would say once you are making some amount of money, you need to learn how to say no. [16:04]
Commercial Break. [17:38]
The thing that’s been the biggest driver for my successes, is that I love to learn. [19:39]
Very few people read things that conflicts with what they already believe and business owners do this too. [21:03]
It takes real effort to go find things you disagree with and from a business standpoint, you need that kind of input. [21:19]
I am a huge believer in teaching and more importantly, apprenticeship in business. [22:17]
In the line of work that we do, knowledge workers collaborating is usually a good thing. [24:09]
I realized that by saying apprenticeship it creates a bit of a power dynamic where it forces the idea that someone is more knowledgeable than you. [25:22]
Apprenticeship requires the idea that someone else in the company has more knowledge than you. [25:43]
I think that it is weird to make everybody feel somewhat equivalent in the organization because the gap has to exist for apprenticeship to work. [25:53]

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