Episode #10 of Leading Matters features the Co-Founder and frequent keynote speaker Oli Gardner.  Oil offers terrific insight into how to increase structure and discipline of a growing company without sacrificing the culture and personality, and how Unbounce focuses on doing and measuring the right things. 

Oli Gardner and his company Unbounce practice their art with courage and selflessness.  Some 6 years into the company’s history it might seem a little obvious that this works, but early on focusing on giving away thought and content was fraught with risk.  The risk was well worth it as Unbounce employs well over 100 employees and partners with the largest marketing automation companies on the planet.  In this 20 minute interview Oli offers great insight into how they decided to focus, how the company works to maintain that focus, the performance measurements that matter to their business, and the truly unique culture that ingratiates them to their customers. 

Do yourself a favor and listen to this one from beginning to end, you’ll be glad that you did.

HIGHLIGHTS

On Selecting and Maintaining Focus

Oli shares how the Unbounce team arrived at selecting what part of the marketing automation problem they would work on, and how they have stayed true to that mission since the company’s inception. 

He offers, with incredible candor, how the company has used one of their greatest challenges – churn – to maintain focus and to intelligently invest in product development to improve the relationship they have with their most loyal customers.

On Resisting the Temptation to Expand Focus

Oli illustrates how their development cycles have moved more towards enabling mature product use without sacrificing simplicity.  The result is a product that addresses the scalability challenges their customers inevitably face as they become more successful with their content marketing approach.

On Aligning the Workforce with Culture and Tactical Performance Metrics

Oli shares that the experience that Unbounce has had in regards to addressing the ability to scale has naturally contributed to increased discipline and structure.  They were able to implement structure while at the same time increasing the adoption of the company’s values by 1) committing to frequent communication and 2) encouraging employees to embrace their individual gifts in the context of their employment with Unbounce.  Oil exemplifies this himself by much of the public speaking he does.