Leaders in Customer Loyalty, Powered by Loyalty360
- Leaders in Customer Loyalty: for those looking to deepen customer experience, engagement, and brand loyalty. Each episode features innovative brands, industry experts, and executive leaders who share actionable insights, proven strategies, and real-world experiences designed to help marketers and brand professionals stay ahead in the ever-evolving world of customer loyalty.
Leaders in Customer Loyalty, Powered by Loyalty360
#470: Leaders in Customer Loyalty: Industry Voices | Loyalty Juggernaut’s David Andreadakis on Redefining the Role of Loyalty in Modern Business
Loyalty360 sat down with David Andreadakis, Chief Commercial Officer at Loyalty Juggernaut, for a wide-ranging discussion on the evolution of customer loyalty, the shifting role of providers, and why actionable data — not just data collection — will separate tomorrow’s leaders from the rest.
Andreadakis, who joined Loyalty Juggernaut five months ago, brings a deep appreciation for the intersection of creativity, data, and customer experience. With a personal passion for music and storytelling, he approaches loyalty as both a science and an art — one that requires brands and providers to continually innovate and adapt.
Good afternoon, good morning, Mark Johnson from Loyalty360. I hope everyone's happy, safe and well. I want to welcome you to another edition of our Leaders in Customer Loyalty series, the Industry Voices podcast.
Speaker 2:In these episodes.
Speaker 1:We have the privilege of speaking with leading agencies, technology partners and consultants in customer channel and brand loyalty about the technology trends and best practices that impact a brand's ability to drive unique experiences, enhance engagement but, most importantly, drive customer loyalty. Today, we have the pleasure of speaking with david andreakis. He is the chief commercial officer at loyalty jargonite. David, how are you today?
Speaker 2:hey, mark, always a pleasure, glad to see I'm Good, good.
Speaker 1:First off, we'd like to start these off on a more personal level, get to know the person we're speaking with the current positions. So I'd love to know a little bit about yourself, your background and a little bit more about your current role with Loyalty Juggernaut.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a little bit about myself. Obviously, if you're looking at my background here, you can see some guitars up here. I absolutely love music, I love the way that it drives my life and I love the mechanics of it. In fact, you know, music is something that I think is, you know, quite mathematical, and it's something that really led me to find a good balance with loyalty. You know points, programs and the mechanics of data and things like that as as artistic, and so I I really enjoy that If anybody who, anybody who's worked with me, understands the storytelling and bringing things to life. That's, that's who I am, and Loyalty Juggernaut picked me up about five months ago to to help them advance what I think is the world's most advanced loyalty technology to help tell that story to the market. And I'm glad to have platforms like Loyalty360 to get up there and chat, whether it be at your conferences or sessions like this.
Speaker 1:Loyalty Juggernaut a great platform getting to know them very well. You have some amazing brands that you work with. Can you tell us a little bit about the Loyalty Juggernaut platform and how it supports a holistic customer loyalty effort within the organization?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. In fact, it was really designed by Sham Shah, our CEO, and it's one of the more interesting stories. When you think about founding stories for loyalty platforms, we've seen similar stories like this throughout the years platforms We've seen similar stories like this throughout the years, but what was different about this one is that he had built a loyalty platform a couple of different times prior at Oracle. He did this with Siebel and there came a time where he said I just want to do this for myself and I want to remove all restrictions on the customer experience, like how do I remove every single pain point for the customer and I'm going to work backwards from there Very similar to what Steve Jobs might say or approach a problem with. And that attitude has not left the company. In fact, as we are working with our clients, we see something or we notice that we can make it more efficient or better for the customer. We'll go ahead and fix that and work on that, not try to bring that to the client as an opportunity to upsell or get a change order. We figure that if we do this right, then the program's going to grow and that's how we really want to get paid.
Speaker 2:The other thing that's really unique about Loyalty Juggernaut is when we do come up with a cool innovation and innovation is who I am, to my core. When we come up with an innovation, we put it into the platform. It rolls out to everyone. We have six releases a year and we are constantly updating and upgrading what our customers are getting from us. Whether they ask for it or not, they get these enhancements and these improvements throughout. It is such a joy to work in a company and environment like that, especially when you take a look at our client roster and see who you know who we're, who we're actually doing this with. It becomes a lot of fun very quickly.
Speaker 1:Excellent when you look at the state of customer loyalty. Where. Where do you think customer loyalty is today? Where is it going and maybe how should things be potentially different?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love, love the question, love this question. You know I, for for years I, looked at loyalty as something that is evolving, it's evolving, it's evolving, it's changing. I think that's the same with most industries, especially when you live in an age like we do, where technology is changing things all the time. But I feel a little bit differently about it lately. I feel like it's doing a hard right turn. Doing a hard right turn, and that right turn is not just in what is being demanded of loyalty. It's an awakening of our brands on what is possible and because of that there's a change that needs to happen among loyalty providers. The technology changes its role and the people who are operating the technology, their role, changes as well.
Speaker 2:And the right turn that I'm talking about is loyalty. You know was always about a program and always about a customer interaction or stringing a series of interactions together, maybe learning a bit more about them so that you could help them with a better product selection or an experience later on. But now more than ever, loyalty is the core to business operations. It's the core to marketing, to advertising. The data that we use gets funneled through all these different integrations that are happening with these SIs Content is getting uniquely challenged and changed, all from loyalty data and I feel like as an industry we're behind in being able to help carry that data and that message forward into all of those areas.
Speaker 1:Absolutely so. How do we change that? Because one of the things that we're very focused on at Loyalty360 is elevating the discussion around customer loyalty, and my perspective is there's kind of bifurcation in the industry on the brand side those who do it well, and those who are very challenged, and our goal is to help elevate the discussion to those who are challenged right, but I think the same thing happens on the customer loyalty provider side. There's a great number of technologies, a number of technologies that are avant-garde, they're progressive, they have great technologies integrations, and then there's some technologies consultants out there that let just say they're dated. And having a kind of more coalesced group is what we're very focused on now, especially on the supplier side, the vendor side, the technology side, to help elevate that discussion. Do you see that same kind of bifurcation, of that dichotomy?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I see it with a lens, so I see exactly what you're talking about, but I've got my own personal lens on it. The first thing I would say is, on the brand side, if the organization is extremely siloed, the data is siloed, the application of the data is siloed and it becomes really hard to really get the most out of what a loyalty program could do versus an advertising program or something that is just a store experience. It's really hard to bring those together if the organization is set up that particular way. But I see a lot of other brands evolving, very smart brands that bring those groups together and center around a customer experience, and they say, hey, how do we make this better? And that's the point at which I'm seeing that bifurcation that you're talking about.
Speaker 2:On the provider side over here, it used to be that I knew a little bit about a lot of things across the loyalty execution. I know a little bit about data, I know a little bit about design, I know a little bit about all these things and I could be a great advisor on how to bring these things together. You are a general manager or an architect of what to do with those things and I think that role is disappearing. That role is actually getting disseminated down into. We're empowering people to be smart and advisory all the way down into the organization.
Speaker 2:And so what happens from a provider perspective? How does that change your role? It comes back to the data, and this is what I believe. If you become an expert not only in data but how it is applied, and instead of sitting here inside of loyalty, you pack your bags and you find who are the consumers of this loyalty data in my organization and you go spend time with them, your job becomes increasingly apparent as to what it needs to be.
Speaker 2:So let me just say one more thing about this meaning you're in a very unique role as a loyalty advisor in this space, not you just as an advisor. Any advisor in the space is in a unique role to help them understand the power of loyalty data. Well, if you're not spending your time with retail media networks, with content developers, with the SIs or the co-brands, then I don't know who you're talking to anymore. Those are the people who are consuming your data and creating immense value for organizations, and they have very little context about what to do with it. And you can be a hero if you just took on that role.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you mentioned hero. I'm a big fan of StoryBrand by Donald Miller, just a series of books about just making the customer the hero of the story. Right, oftentimes the technology partners want to talk about we, we, we, me, me, me, me, not how they're enabling the kind of the the customer, how they don't listen oftentimes. I mean that the whole thing is that you know, and even how they talk about certain platforms. Uh, getting back to story brand, if you force your cat, your customer, to burn calories to understand what you do, they tune out. And that's what I think we've had is you've had a kind of a mass exodus people for and from customer loyalty focus and we need to get back to elevating that for sure.
Speaker 2:I think that's right and you know, I love the way you phrased that If we're forcing them to understand like what we do and how to use us, then we're lost, because it happens in two ways. One is if we put them through a program and say you have to follow our program, we're going to lose customers. Nobody wants to fall in line with any type of program. It has to be conducive to what they're already doing. So your program needs to be built around their experience consuming information and making decisions.
Speaker 2:And the greatest dissonance that I have as an example is think about how much time you spend in email versus how much time you might spend on social media Massive difference, whereas I think 10 years ago that was flipped, completely flipped, but budgets are still largely aligned with email versus activating customers through social channels.
Speaker 2:Our customers are telling us here's where I'm acting, here's where I'm interacting with my peers, here's where I'm gathering my news, my information, here's where I'm forming opinions, here's where I'm making purchasing decisions. And if loyalty programs are still catching up to how to find themselves central to that world, then they're just becoming irrelevant. And so so to me that that finding out where the customers are acting, the way that they're acting, interacting the way that they want us to, you'll find you'll find much more success in your programs. And now now marry that to the role of the advisor. That's the stuff we've got to be out there talking about, and it doesn't sound like like somebody who's been doing this for 30 years. It sounds like somebody who's 25. That's where the activity and the action and the no duh starts to come from.
Speaker 1:Well, and that's a final question on this, you know we have a series of roundtables that we do on the brand side and talks about, and in pretty open and candid candid manner, everything right Customer loyalty from the CDPs to organizational alignment, to training within the organization, both the employees from a success planning perspective, but also from the frontline rep who's making sure that you identify yourself as a customer loyalty program member. Customer loyalty is pretty diverse, but you mentioned kind of the social media focus and also the focus on kind of in email. When you look at, how do you make customer loyalty not necessarily cool but of interest, relevant, germane to these younger, younger, uh professionals? Right, because that is a big challenge. There's no training in college. Very few georgetown penn state I mean a few of them have programs. Um, how do we make it cool and of value to these uh, younger audiences?
Speaker 2:yeah, a great question. Um, my, my, my very brash answer is we have to get over ourselves. That's the answer I mean. As a human being, you are 100% equipped to understand belonging. You are 100% equipped to understand that this isn't my tribe. You are 100% equipped to know if somebody's showing you compassion or empathy for a situation that you're in.
Speaker 2:We don't need any training on the things that are going to make customers loyal, like everybody knows what those are. What we need to do is to figure out how do we take that scenario and satisfy or make our customers happy and find a way to drive business profits along with it. And that is an exploration and an art, and anybody who writes a book on it and says this is exactly how you do it, boom, there's a shelf life immediately on the effectiveness of that material. And so I say get out there, innovate, explore, understand your customers, and your training will come in right away how to apply economics, how to apply marketing, how to apply product development. It will happen as soon as you learn enough about your customers to understand the destination for all that information.
Speaker 1:Well, I thought the last one was the last one, but this is kind of this will be the last one. Then we'll get on to more in the interest discussion around technology. But you mentioned we were just talking about customer loyalty and loyalty marketing. This is more my perspective. The industry, this whole loyalty marketing and customer loyalty no one knows what loyalty marketing is right. Everyone has their own take. It's been defined differently. It's not taught in schools like marketing 3P, 4ps, whatever they were right. You know product placement, promotion, pricing, I think it was so. But customer loyalty, everyone knows what it is. You may not be able to have to define it, but you can talk about it because you know when you see. You know what a loyal customer is. Right With me. When I'm driving by Qdoba, I'm stopping there most, all the time. Right Because it has affiliation with all my kids' sports, everything I've been through. So I know where Qdoba is. Literally I could drive there in 40 cities. Right, just because I like the food, like the product, become emotionally attached.
Speaker 1:Loyalty marketing what the hell is that? I know it's the old school vanguard. It's their whole approach. You can't tell me what loyalty marketing is. You're going to have a different definition. Someone else is going to have a different definition. So I think, fundamentally, we need to move away from loyalty marketing. So many people use it and I think it's kind of like the incentive industry right, you have some really good people and some kind of maybe a little more slimy people. Right, I know there's a hard take, but it's the same thing, right? Loyalty marketing no one knows what the hell it is, because there's not a unified definition, but customer loyalty everyone knows what it is right, you want a loyal customer.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you, you know it when you feel it, you know when you see it right, absolutely, and it's I said earlier, we have to get over ourselves and I think that when we put, when we put some constructs in place, that it starts to limit our thinking instead of expanding our thinking.
Speaker 2:I don't think we've actually, even though the loyalty industry has been around for a while, I don't think we've even scratched the surface of understanding of what it really really means to connect with a consumer, how it really changes a life, how it really can invoke all of the emotions. I often say and I was saying this from your event, from the stage just a few months ago it's a pretty special group of people we have sitting in that room. It is, of all the billions of people that work in business, there are only a couple dozen thousand who are charged with understanding how to help consumers make rational transactional decisions versus emotional decisions over here, and understanding that two sides of that coin. There's so few people in the world who understand that that this practice that we get to enjoy is relatively new, even though it has been around since the dawn of time, understanding how to connect people one to another. I'll tell you something interesting. It's this little circle of life moments for me.
Speaker 2:I remember when I was a kid arguing with my dad over Tyson versus Ali who is better right? And I was like, oh, but Tyson's so much stronger. And my dad was like, oh, but you never saw Ali the way that he was in his prime and more recently I was arguing with my son over our current basketball players better than 90s basketball players and, man, it was really hard to move me off from this mountain and I had flipped the script. I'm sitting here in my dad's position and I'm realizing that the construct that I grew up in, the familiarity that I had, the things I thought were amazing, were becoming dated, that there's a whole new set of players, there's a whole new set of awesome things that are happening now, and I think that's the final point, right, at the end of the day, customer loyalty takes a commitment.
Speaker 1:Everyone thinks it's easy, right, but when you get into it you've been in this industry, you know 30 years, 20 years for myself, you know it is. It requires continual learning and many people aren't up to that, right. I mean again, there's a bifurcation of smart people and not smart people, and I'm not trying to denigrate individuals holistically, but it takes a lot to understand new technology, right. People are. From a behavioral science perspective, you know, change behaviors. People haven't learned traditionally all throughout their lives. They're not reading constantly in the field, that's. You know every mentor I've had. Read in your field every day, read in your field every day. I do it every day, right, as much as I can marketing business, business week, whatever it may be at age, because you need to stay up.
Speaker 1:But with the rise of AI and what that may or may not mean to individuals, it creates a panic, right. It creates cortisol, it creates dissonance and I think that's what we have, too is in a time where you mentioned we should be bringing people together. I think this dissonance actually is pushing people apart, where the different customer loyalty platforms and we have just launched a survey yesterday in market to understand what brands are using, and that I think that's where we are too is it's this uncertainty, uh, around ai and, and what it might do is creating more distance and dissonance, where people have maybe a little more reticence to truly work together and partner in scenarios. Right, you mentioned earlier when we were talking about you were talking about some of the consortiums that you work with internationally that are buying groups. Right, there's been a great resistance to do that in the US and that's really something we are laser focused on doing, just based on feedback from the vendor side over the last five, six months. But there's reticence, I think.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think, look, I think that the beacon call innovative kid that's out there just starting in this place, or every marketer who feels constrained by their current technology or what their boss is telling them to do, every strategist who feels like I think there's a better way, Just break out and try some cool new things. I'm looking at the Bugatti that you have on the shelf behind you there and I'm thinking about all the amazing car stories from Koenigsegg, Pagani, Lamborghini. They were all told no at one point and they said I'm going to go do something better. And it reminds me of the company I'm working with right now, with Sham Shah, who's just tired of working within the shackles of the company that he was at before and went out to go build a better system. And I love that innovative spirit and I think that the industry needs an improved class of technology, of innovation, of strategists, and I welcome the conversations from all competitor inside my company, outsider alike. I welcome all of that innovation of that innovation, excellent.
Speaker 1:A couple of questions to wrap this up. Metrics are a big area of interest right now, as you mentioned, and we've discussed. What are some metrics brands should be tracking to clearly understand how their program is performing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I am a massive fan of 4DX. Chris McChesney over at FranklinCovey wrote this book and he's a very good personal friend and he distinguishes between I'm not going to get really, really specific. I just want to make one massive distinction between lag measures things that happened sales is something that happened right Versus your lead measures, the things that you know to affect those things right there and in loyalty programs, I'm often seeing things like member migration as a KPI, are we creating or are we retaining high value members? Are we reducing the cost per point, things like that.
Speaker 2:And I say don't focus on those lag measures. Find the two or three things that you know that you can do to affect those measures right, and that's going to be different for every single company that's out there. But the analogy often that I refer to is you know everybody looks at their weight and the scale and they get disappointed. But if you're really tracking calories and food consumption and calories burned, you'll start to affect your weight right. And so I would just distinguish from a KPI perspective. Go one level down and look at what's going to affect all of the outcomes you're hoping for.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree with that horribly. There is some interesting studies around food consumption calories though, too where your body goes into survival mode at certain periods of time too, but interesting take.
Speaker 2:Whatever advice you got for me there, I'll take it, man, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1:So when you look at the state of customer loyalty, we do report every year that looks at interviews, brands on kind of where they are, where they're going, what they would like to see Um and uh, it's 50% of the brand response this year said that new reward options are a focus from them. But that's down last year from, I think, 80, some percent mid eighties. So brands are kind of trying to optimize what they have, but new reward options that have high value, high perceived engagement, are a big focus. What are you seeing with regard to kind of new reward options, engagement options for customer loyalty?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think there's two things that are happening here. I think that one is that you know, consumers in general, just especially in the US, are getting a little tired of stuff, like stuff has become very cheap and easy to go get. It's hard to go to a store like a Best Buy and get oh my gosh, I never saw this thing before. I'm really excited about it. Everybody's got a flat screen TV in their home right now, and so it's really hard when you're putting a lot of products out there to say I'm going to really excite my customer on this. And so there's just been a dulling of the excitement and the increased lift that you see from people who burn or or engage in rewards and so more of the emotional side of things, an experience, well, that I can't get enough of get me to a concert, get me to a better parking spot, make my life easier, make it so I don't have to go through many steps to get to the other side of things Time, status, all these things, these emotional components, are really driving excitement much more than the traditional rewards. The problem that brands are having is that the availability of those emotional rewards is less than or less predictable than, the availability of, say, a gift card, and so there's still a mix. Because we have to be consistent as brands, I say do two things with this. One is continually look for providers and expand your reward set to have more emotional benefits. These are things you can provide and other vendors can bring to the table, but also think about how you're presenting the hard rewards that you have already, Because everybody could use a gift card.
Speaker 2:I talk about it like it's not a great thing. It's an awesome thing to have to pay less for something that you have done or to get access to something you might not have had before, but you don't just put it there on your website as a select here. Like, like, like. Create an experience around it. I, um, I, I jokingly and people have heard me speak at any time from the stage. I hear I do this story about about diet Coke, like the, that I drink a lot of it and and how much I'm willing to pay for a can of Coke versus how much I'm willing to pay for that same drink If I'm at the Taylor Swift Eras Tour are very different, but it's the same brown fizzy water that's in these drinks and I'm willing to pay so much more. Do that with your rewards. If you can't bring in additional rewards that are more meaningful to the customer, change the experience around the awards that you're giving them.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. When you look at we talked about technologies, the need for better technologies, better engagement paradigms, ai, gamification, zero first-party data they're all topics that many brands are considering, but we also saw in the State of Customer Loyalty Report that brands are scaling down the number of new technologies or applications they want to engage in. Economic uncertainty right Tariff, no tariff whatever. Optimization of the program is a big focus too. So the average last year was 3.4, 3.5, 2.4, 2.5. It's almost one less technology or process they're considering, or 2.5 is almost one less technology or process they're considering. So, when you look at all these AI, gamification, zero party data, which one do you believe has the greatest impact for customer loyalty in 2025?
Speaker 2:and why. Yeah, I think those two things are slightly different. I do believe that brands are scaling down the number of technologies that they're investing in, and I think that that is because they've gotten so complex. Each one of them have gotten complex and the timeframe by which they need to see a payoff for investing in those is compressing that it's just too hard to go out and get five, six major technologies, invest in a selection criteria and implement these things over 12 months just to see if this thing works. It's too long. It's too long to make those big bets across the board as frequently as I think brands used to do, and so now they're opting for. I'd rather get 50% functionality, but out of one technology that gets me all the way around the track one time.
Speaker 2:If you can find technologies that allow them to see results very quickly without all of that functionality, I think brands are saying, well, at least I can have attribution to my investment there. Our job as providers is to make it easier to get the best of. They shouldn't have to compromise on their features to get to attribution and they shouldn't have to wait a long time to get there. So that's the first part of the question is. I think that that absolutely is happening and what we need to do about it. But the second, which is well, which of these things I think are going to be the biggest bets and winners? I put them in three categories and I think it's a tie for first, in terms of who's going to win, there's technologies out there that give us more information. That's always going to win. There's technologies out there that make life easier for people to get to an insight and I think that those investments aren't going to be from, say, loyalty providers. I think those are going to come from the Googles of the world, right From the big players with hundreds of people dedicated against those, and we get to leverage those tools is how do I get from predictive AI to true agentic AI, where it's taking an action for me and taking it all the way to execution?
Speaker 2:If you can get from descriptive into predictive, all the way to something that's actioning for you, taking that all the way, that's going to be the winner, because then you can just kind of adjust and reprogram it to do what you need it to do. So we're putting a lot of weight in agentic AI. We've been doing it for seven years. We've been working with AI. We're not new to this at all. We have 11 AI modules built into our technology. We have a team that is dedicated to AI. This is not us awakening and trying to figure it out. We are on the third, fourth, fifth generation sometimes of implementing things, and so now our role is how do we take this from being smart to removing, reducing and empowering the efforts that our marketers have to go through? So that's where I place my bets the gathering information and making it actionable.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's interesting we talk about. We often share books that we read that we find of impact. I travel a lot for my kids with their sports, so Audible is kind of my go-to. I just got my 28 book subscription renewed yesterday, so I don't listen to all of them, but I probably spend 30 hours a month listening to books. But one, michael Lewis.
Speaker 1:We all are familiar with Michael Lewis Moneyball. You know the big short. On and on and on he had a quote and it was about government right and just kind of the debasing government has taken from Trump. This is actually on his last time in office. He has his own political bent, but he talked about data and he said the impulse to collect data preceded the ability to make sense of it.
Speaker 1:People facing a complicated problem measure whatever they can easily measure, but the measurement by themselves don't lead to understanding. It's probably the most impactful quote I've ever heard in that book. I mean I was driving and you listen, listen, listen, you kind of pass it and you hear that and you're like holy crap. I listened to it probably 30 times and I think that's a big problem we have. You know people are not necessarily searching for meaning within the data. They have all this data but they're not doing much with it. And I think that's a big challenge too is to make the data, as you mentioned, actionable, easy understanding where the data, the different data sets, lie within the organization, what data sets are important, and then create some meaning on it.
Speaker 1:People often it's like they throw out all these stats. I'm like what does that mean? I'm like I have no idea what that means. Tell me what that means. And then you ask them to tell you what it means. They're like oh'm not trying to be a jerk, but you throw all these stats. I'm like what do they mean to us? And people 95% of the people stop right.
Speaker 1:Everyone wants to be strategic, everyone wants to talk about how visionary they are. But when you're asking tough questions like what does that mean? Because I don't know, I want to know how to be better informed, and we see that in the technology world, we see it in consulting right. And we see that in the technology world, we see it in consulting right. And you ask them well, what does that mean? And like well, it means what I said. I'm like well, I didn't understand it. So I think that's another opportunity we have too, is just making things a little clearer, more concise, so people understand that right. Getting back to that whole burning calories for customers they don't understand what you're doing. You make them burn calories, they, you make them burn calories, they tune out. You can think you're the smartest guy in the room too, but if you're not actually resonating, I think that's a big challenge we have as well, but that's a whole different discussion.
Speaker 2:No, but I love this discussion and I have a rule of thumb that I use to help me with this, because it used to be how do I get more information to make more differentiated decisions? No-transcript, and we often surpass that information gathering from our actionability, as your quote, and I love that quote, as your quote stated, and my rule of thumb is think about a grocery store. You got a minimum wage employee that's happy to delight a customer but has to get to the next customer in seconds. If I were to flash a message to that person on how to treat this person just slightly differently, if I can't act in that split second that they have to flash it to them, say something nice, ask about this. Would you like, uh, hot dogs this this week, like you did last week?
Speaker 2:Whatever it is, I can't flash it to them in action on it, then the information is not useful. It's just interesting, and so I I often go to that litmus test of how quick is the? Is the lifespan of this information? Is it going to sit here in my database or can I empower somebody to? Is the lifespan of this information? Is it going to sit here in my database or can I empower somebody to change the life of somebody. If I can't move on, get to something that can 100%.
Speaker 1:Last question Any closing advice thoughts? What's next for Loyalty Juggernaut as we move forward in 2025 into 26?
Speaker 2:It is going to be well. I'll answer the second part and then the first part. Man 26 and the rest of 25 is just going to be a banger year for Loyalty Juggernaut. We are moving so fast. We just rolled out our 13th airline. We've got hotels in over 100 countries. At this point, we are investing heavily into sales and marketing because we've got such a cool product In all regions. We're on fire right now. I've never seen a company with a bigger pipeline. We're at a point where we get to choose the clients that we work with and we absolutely love that and we are absolutely hiring the best of in any field within loyalty. So if you're in analytics, if you're a strategist, please give me a call. We're doing big things.
Speaker 2:The advice that I have for the market I actually am going to borrow from something you said, and I'm going to borrow from something that I said Gathering information has to be a discipline. I don't care what level you're at. It has to be a discipline that you, that you, you embark in and then making it actionable is is the thing that you said that I really, really like. The other thing I would say is apply it to the places without the boundaries Like there's. There's so many people working on on so few problems in in our industry and there's a lot of problems that need attention, and so look for some gray space and go explore.
Speaker 2:In my younger days, I used to want to map every single thing out. Well, first I'm going to go here, and then I'm going to go there, and then I'm going to go there. And if you told Lewis and Clark they had to map the whole thing out before they took off on their trip, they never would have gone right. You just have to be equipped with the right tools and start going West, and that's what they did, and and because of that they were able to to give us an understanding of a very unexplored wilderness and give us a path to move forward. You'll learn along the way and and people will follow you with those learnings. So so get started, put a shovel in and go innovate. That's my advice to the market right now.
Speaker 1:Oh great, I think that's awesome. We do have a few more quick fire questions so we can rock through these. Always good to get these out. We'd like to have a one word or a short phrase answer. I think we're getting into trouble with Ethan and Carly and the editorial team, so keep them short. What is your favorite word? My favorite? What?
Speaker 2:Word, my favorite word, my favorite word concatenate. I love the word concatenate. It's a weird word but it brings together so many things. But concatenate is my favorite word.
Speaker 1:What is your least favorite word?
Speaker 2:I hate words that that make people question what I, what I said. So anything that's a little bit vague, and so any. Any general word is is is something I don't like. I like more specifics on it. I don't have one in particular, but there's many of them for that. What excites you? Innovation, creativity, seeing people come alive, seeing people understand things that they never knew before and change their thinking. Love that.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:What do you find tiresome?
Speaker 1:Redundancy. Is there a book that you've read, that you're a fan of, that you'd like to recommend to colleagues?
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, absolutely. I already mentioned 4DX, four disciplines of execution, so there's that one that I'll put up there. But I love a book by Malcolm Gladwell called Freakonomics. Yeah, it's a fantastic book because it makes you think differently about everything around you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a very good book. Freakonomics 2 is good as well. But you've read Columbia Studies, haven't you that the whole Freakonomics book was pretty much proved to be factually incorrect?
Speaker 2:Well, I'll tell you, the one that I love is the example of the realtors, and that one I'll argue with all of Columbia on. That one is that realtors have an inherent interest in working against you, based on what's motivating them.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, well that's that's agency theory, pure and simple, right, because there's a whole dichotomy and I thought, based on what, the whole suit with the national NRA earlier this year, how it was settled that you know, paying someone 6% of a commission on a half million million dollar, million and a half dollar house ridiculous, right, right, you guys didn't do any work. You control the market, you control the data and but yeah, they, they have a huge disinterest, right, and so that one, I agree with that one, but others it's. I'll find that article and send it to you. Love it, you know, because gladwell is pretty much uh, uh, you know those guys are out yeah, I'll tell you.
Speaker 2:I'll tell you this. And you you were mentioning Trump earlier. When you read I don't care who you like from a business perspective, politics, whatever read, read everything, and that's my advice to people who are reading when you're gathering information, don't just go to what you know and what you like. Go learn about what the other sides are saying and thinking, and that I spend as much time reading and learning about my position on things from people that I don't like and I don't respect than I do from people who I do like and do respect, because it helps me either think through my opinion and articulate it or it helps you understand something I didn't know before.
Speaker 1:And I wholeheartedly agree with that. I find I'm a fairly conservative person. I voted for Trump. I don't like what he's doing right now at all. I have a number of issues with him just regard to, you know, a number of issues and I call him out Right. Same thing with some of the different wars going on right now. I tend to be a little more liberal in my approach there, but the fact is your point you have to be able to look at different data points, right? You can't get your information in an echo chamber because it's just confirmation bias all over again.
Speaker 1:And again, it gets back to what we talked about earlier. Most people and I tell my son this time and time again most people can't think, they can't right. Everyone wants to be strategic, Everyone wants to be tactical. Most people are not right.
Speaker 1:The ability, as you mentioned earlier, input is, you know, it's one of the strength finder things is it's my number two competition input. I'm always I like things like cars, motorcycles, data, books, right. So because it makes you, if you don't, if you go a day and don't learn that that's a wasted day, right. But if you don't have that input and if you're only reading certain things, you're not, you're not, you're not being, you don't want to think Right. And that's where I think that we had a huge problem with people reading people every day. I don't know People's even a thing Right, but they're not reading kind of a disparate set of insight. You're not growing as a person and that's fundamentally. That's one of the biggest challenges we have in society. And get back to that that have or have not. The people who are reading active, growing are the ones who succeed and ones who don't don't.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's right. And when you're telling me that you read every day, I know you read a lot, even more than the business side. So my advice to people out there reading every day is throw in a Jack Reacher every now and then, throw in something that's not about business, to help just expand a little bit of the side of you. That will help provide context to the side that you're actually focused on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a good point too. I think I have 1,200 movies on Apple TV, so I'd rather watch a movie or really get it done quickly, because with attention issues I don't know if I can get through that book. But anyway what profession, other than the one you are currently doing, would you maybe like to attempt?
Speaker 2:Oh boy, well, I should have been a musician, right? I should have done that. Instead, my guidance counselor forgot to tell me that that was even a profession. That would have been a whole lot more fun. No, I don't. I actually believe to my core that this is exactly the job that I'm supposed to be in. Right, the behavioral economics of loyalty is the thing I am most passionate about the fact that we get to work I mean, think about the privilege that we have, mark. We get to work in business, helping brands actually make sense of what their customers want, versus just turning a dollar. That is, you get both sides of being able to help humanity and help people live better lives, more convenient lives, happier lives, enjoy each other, be part of a community. We get to do that and help a business figure out how to make some money and continue to do that more. What a privilege, what a joyous thing. I wouldn't trade this for a single job out there.
Speaker 1:No, I agree, A lot of things about my job I love. I love talking to smart people about smart things. You know, we get to see such a great diversity. I mean to talk to brands are doing cutting edge things are so open, honest, and I look at some of these people that don't have rewarding jobs. I feel bad for them. I mean, there's obviously tons of challenges in my job. I'm not the best manager of people, but, you know, getting to talk to CMOs or VPs or individuals like you on a daily basis, I mean there's nothing better. But yeah, I agree, I think I know the answer to this one too what do you enjoy doing that you often don't get a chance to do?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I talked about music enough, but I'll tell you there's something, and that is just taking time to laugh. I'm doing a lot of work right now, doing a lot of travel, and it cuts down on the amount of time that I'm able to spend with people. It's what I thoroughly enjoy about going to conferences like yours is that you get to come together and it's not just about education and moving your job forward, but a chance to laugh and converse and smile a little bit.
Speaker 1:Yeah. What do you typically think about at the end of the day? Say that again what do you typically think about at the end of the day?
Speaker 2:At the end of the day, I often think about okay, what did you learn about today? What can you do differently to make tomorrow a little bit better? And as I reflect, I use that moment to make a correction and give myself some grace that I'm going to be better tomorrow, and to not sit and dwell on the thing that I learned about today and actually embrace the fact that I had the opportunity to do something and improve it. So that's what I think about at the end of every single day. It's a little bit of therapy, but it has served me really well, who inspired you to become the person you are today?
Speaker 2:That is a great question. You know I'm going to. I had an impulse as soon as you asked the question. I had an impulse of an answer and I'm going to go with it for the first time Because it sounds a little self-serving. But I often think about what would my 12 year old self say to me if he ran into me right now? And I I try to impress that kid every single day. I try to go back and show that kid what I've been able to do with the exploration, the fort building, the riding around on bikes, the forming groups and committees and clubs and trying to belong and trying to advance his own standing. I think about that kid a lot and someday I'll run into him and I hope he's impressed. But he's inspired me to become who I am today.
Speaker 1:Excellent. Last question how do you want to be remembered by friends and family?
Speaker 2:I always want to be remembered for the things I was able to do to help somebody else be better at what they're trying to do. I'm not ever trying to say, oh, look at me, look how important I am. I truly want to affect lives and it's bringing that right to the core of what we do. Bringing that right to the core of what we do it's what I love about loyalty is that we get to help millions of people at a time with our decisions, not just help one individual. It just so happens I might be helping a marketer or a technologist or somebody young getting started, and that's great because I get to see that. But the fact that I get to help millions of people get more emotionally connected to a brand or find their path to happiness, boy, there's not a better feeling.
Speaker 1:David, thank you very much for taking the time to join us today. It was great speaking with you on our Industry Voices podcast. It was very unique getting your perspective on customer loyalty, and we look forward to learning more from you and your team at Loyalty Juggernaut for the rest of the year. It was a little different discussion, for sure, but very powerful nonetheless, so thank you very much for sharing.
Speaker 2:I really appreciate it. I was just thinking that myself. I don't think this is what we set it out to be, but you and I have had a few of these, and we talk a lot about shop, we talk a lot about business, but I really appreciate the platforms that you put forward because it allows us to and to put ourselves out there, and I really appreciate it. Thanks, mark, great pleasure.
Speaker 1:Also, I want to thank everyone for tuning in to our Leaders in Customer Loyalty podcast series the Industry Voices podcast. If you haven't already, please subscribe to the Leaders in Customer Loyalty podcast and follow us on YouTube and LinkedIn and make sure you like the podcast. Thank you very much. Have a wonderful day. See you next Tuesday.