50: How Boutique Consulting Firms Scale for a Successful Exit with Martin Mehalchin

How can boutique consultancies scale, diversify, and prepare for exit without losing the culture that made them successful?

In this episode, Professor Joe O’Mahoney speaks with Martin Mehalchin, a former Lenati leader who helped build the Seattle-based customer strategy and experience design firm into a nationally recognised consultancy before its 2018 merger with PK. Martin reflects on the growth journey from a locally anchored boutique to a broader North American player, including the role of clear positioning in customer experience, the importance of client diversification, and the value of developing a more productised niche around loyalty.

The conversation explores how Lenati’s employee-first culture supported client retention, internal promotion, and low churn. Martin also discusses the firm’s PE-backed acquisition, why the fit with PK and Carlyle worked, and how a careful approach to integration helped preserve momentum. The episode closes with Martin’s view on AI in consulting, especially its impact on junior roles and why firms should build AI capability through experimentation rather than top-down mandates.

In this episode you will learn:

• Why clear specialist positioning can drive both sales and talent attraction
• How Lenati reduced dependence on Microsoft by building new verticals
• How employee-first cultures can support client outcomes and firm value
• What made the PK and Carlyle acquisition a positive experience
• How boutique firms should approach AI through team-led experimentation

Chapters:

(00:00) Introduction
(07:22) Building an Employee-First Consulting Culture
(09:00) Scaling From Local to National
(13:00) Turning Local Case Studies Into National Growth
(19:10) Low Churn and Promoting From Within
(20:55) Choosing a PE-Backed Acquisition
(24:50) What Made the Private Equity Experience Work
(29:30) Lessons Learned From Growth and Exit
(33:50) Keeping the Fundamentals While Adopting AI
(35:15) Final Thoughts

Follow Martin on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mehalchin 

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https://www.linkedin.com/in/joeomahoney/

Follow Joe on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/joeomahoney

Visit Joe’s Website:
https://www.equitysherpa.com

Prof. Joe O'Mahoney helps boutique consultancies scale and exit. 

Follow Joe on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/joeomahoney/

Follow Joe on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/joeomahoney

Visit Joe’s Website:
https://www.equitysherpa.com

Transcript

Welcome And Guest Background

Joe 0:00

Welcome to the Consulting Growth Podcast. I'm Professor Joe O'Marley, CEO of Equity Sherpa. We help owners of consultancies quadruple the equity value of their firms over a two to four year period. If you'd like to know how we do this, visit equitySherpa.com. Welcome back to the Consultancy podcast. My guest today is Martin Mahalshan, who is a seasoned executive who's lived the exact journey that many of you are navigating right now. Martin was a core member of the leadership team that built the boutique firm Lenati into a this is based in Seattle into a large nationally recognized customer strategy and experience design powerhouse. So Martin uh helped guide the firm through a successful 2018 merger with PK, which was a PE backed uh firm, after which the team scaled from 120 to 500 people. So quite a significant scaling. And and it's a real pleasure to have you here, Martin. You haven't just had one exit, you've had two successful exits, and you now apply your playbook to advise a variety of firms, but not least small and mid-sized consultancies. So thank you for joining us and welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_01 1:18

Yeah, thank you, Joe. Happy to be here.

Career Path And Key Methodologies

Joe 1:21

And Martin, before we jump into the more uh qu qualitative side of things, how did you how did you get to what what are the key events in your life that took you to Lenati? Or did you join them? Did did did you start it quite young?

SPEAKER_01 1:37

Uh so um basically I'll start the story at you know after I got my uh MBA, which was um at the end of the last century. And I went, you know, as many MBAs do, I went straight into consulting from there one year at KPMG, where I kind of um you know learned the business, learned the big firm model. Uh, and then I jumped from there to a boutique that was based in Boston called Emergence Consulting that was uh focused on bringing um quote unquote academic methodologies and applying them with corporate clients. So the the big one was the balance scorecard.

SPEAKER_02 2:15

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 2:16

So that was you know a great education in kind of the you know the fundamentals of business from every angle and how they ladder together to drive customer and financial outcomes. Um, and then a second uh methodology that that we were involved in commercializing was Blue Ocean Strategy and Value Innovation. Um, and that was important for my career because that was really a um methodology and school of thought that was focused on um customer growth and value propositions and really um oriented towards you know working with the front of the house, working with not only strategy teams, but also sales and marketing teams. Um fast forward, we had moved out to Seattle. I'd taken a corporate job for a while, but then was looking to get back into um consulting and found this um little gem of a firm uh that had been founded a few years before I joined, that was focused on that front of the house um aspect, customer growth and and you know what became known as CX, right? So Linati was um early in terms of being a firm that was focused on CX, and that really aligned with what I had enjoyed doing most at Emergence was those those growth strategies and looking at things through the lens of the customer. And that's kind of how I got where uh where I ended up with Linati. And that began a uh you know almost 15-year run um helping to grow that firm and then um leading teams uh in the firms that acquired us.

Joe 3:59

Yeah, great, great. It's interesting you mentioned the methodologies because often I'll I'll say to people, how did you get to where you are? And they'll you know, they'll focus on you know a bit of luck here and there, and then they met the right person, but they rarely emphasize the methodologies that they learn. And that's quite um quite an interesting piece, especially for new consultants coming up through the ranks and having to learn some of these methods.

SPEAKER_01 4:24

Yeah, yeah. And then, you know, by the time I was a partner at Lanati, like we, you know, we had methodologies around specific practices, um, like uh we had a methodology for designing loyalty programs, but in terms of the you know, methodologies earlier or you know, the big frameworks, right? We were more flexible than that, but I had just internalized that learning from earlier in my career, right? So there was you know almost second nature.

Choosing CX And Catching The Wave

Joe 4:51

And and that positioning on what what eventually became CX was that a process that you took the firm through, or was it like we we're doing CX and that's our specialism? And and I guess how did you how did you come to that and how did it evolve over the time you were there?

SPEAKER_01 5:12

Yeah, so um it was you know it was set by the the so the way the partnership at Lanati was structured was there were there were three founders who were the initial partners, and then myself and one other who joined later who became partners during the growth of the firm. So the the founders really set that tone and set that focus around CX. And I, you know, and I think it was basically because, you know, it's what they enjoyed doing and what they felt they were best at. Um, and then that's what attracted me to the firm for for the same motivations. And then it just turned out that we had great timing, right? Because this was like, you know, 2007 is when I joined Lanati. So right around the same time that Forrester declares, you know, it's the age of the customer and gets you know C-suite attention with that. And then the iPhone comes out, and the mobile revolution completely changes uh consumer expectations for what experiences should be like, and companies have to respond, even on the B2B side. The you know, the set the emergence of SaaS completely changed by our expectations and how companies had to respond. So we were just you know, had we did it because it was what we were interested in, but it ended up that we had, you know, fantastic timing in terms of you know being early on the wave.

Joe 6:31

That's that that's great and very uh very foresightful of you. Um or or or lucky, one of the you know, we you know, lucky one or the other. One or the other. Um and and just you know, I'm I I often go into firms and they'll say, you know, they might be organizational psychologists, and they'll say, Oh, you know, we do brilliant organizational psychology work, but we're useless at applying it to ourselves. Or you go into a strategy firm, they do good great strategy work for their clients, but they're useless at doing it for themselves. To what extent did you apply um CX to your own firm? And I guess if you did so, in what how did that manifest itself? Or or was your CX? It couldn't have been that bad because you came to a successful conclusion. So I'm I'm guessing the question is how did that manifest in your firm?

SPEAKER_01 7:22

Yeah, I mean, I think we were we were um very client-centric, but we were actually employee-centric um first. And you know, ironically, um after PK was acquired by Concentrics, the CEO of Concentrics really crystallized our approach and described it, you know, but it was kind of when I realized it was retroactive. But his philosophy, which um, you know, was really what we did too, was um take care of the employees, the employees will take care of the clients, and in the long run, the clients will take care of you. Um, and that works very, you know, very well when you're a private partnership and can kind of ride out some of the variability or inconsistency in that. But you know, that definitely works in the aggregate, works well over time. Um, I think in our industry, you know, as more and more companies become publicly traded, right? It's harder to hew to that line because of the pressures around you know, quarterly earnings and and you know, linear growth to please the markets and all that. Yep. But it's certainly in my mind, it's the it is the the right way to you know build a small to medium-sized firm to have a loyal base of clients and uh a basis upon which you can exit.

Joe 8:39

Yeah, great, great. And you will get onto the PE story later, but it's um, you know, PE is a different beast sometimes, and that can sometimes affect your you know long-term investments, I guess, versus that three, three or four-year horizon. Um, we'll we'll we'll come on to that uh later.

Employee First Culture That Scales

Joe 8:58

Um so so let's let's talk a little bit about the growth of of Lenati. Um you went from quite a sort of local, and the in in the states this this is the equivalent of going from you know one country to the whole of Europe, I guess. Um so when I say local to regional to national, it's actually a huge shift for uh for firms. What what were the decisions that led to that successful growth? And I guess also what would you have done differently if you'd had that time over again?

SPEAKER_01 9:36

Yeah, so um it's a big part of the story is that we were based in Seattle and founded in Seattle, and Seattle is an interesting market from a consulting perspective because Microsoft is here. Um, and Microsoft spends an enormous amount on professional services, you know, over a billion a year. I think they're probably the largest private sector client in the United States. You know, maybe JP Morgan Chase is close or bigger, but um, you know, definitely one of the top three. Um and so what that means is there's a lot of consultants in Seattle, and there's also a lot of consulting firms that have been started in Seattle. So um, you know, Point B and Slalom were were early firms that, you know, uh were started in Seattle and based around Microsoft and then you know became pretty well known nationally. And you know, their innovation was they pioneered the local model, right? Like you can be a consultant but never get it on an airplane and just you know serve local clients. Wonderful life. Yeah. The way they grew was they, you know, started once Seattle was established, they started stamping out local franchises with the same model in other big cities.

SPEAKER_02 10:46

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 10:47

Um so for us, um, you know, Microsoft was the low-hanging fruit uh in the beginning. Um, we were, you know, in incredibly concentrated there for the first few years, like you know, many firms in Seattle are. Um, but we had that differentiated focus on CX from the beginning. We weren't just, you know, kind of uh, you know, we do project management well, which was the value prop of a lot of the firms that tried to copy uh point B and slalom. And so we had that differentiated focus on CX. Um, and client diversification was on our mind from the beginning. So, you know, when I joined the firm, I brought in, you know, a couple of logos that were not Microsoft. Um, and you know, but that was it was kind of fits and starts, partly because the financial crisis got in the way and some of those smaller clients needed to pull back. And so we kind of you know circled the wagons and focused on Microsoft again for a couple of years. Um, but then uh once that stabilized, we started looking at other verticals. Um and the one uh that I was most involved in um and that you know took off the strongest in the long run was um retail and consumer. And um we picked that one for several reasons. Um, one, there were other anchor accounts in Seattle, Starbucks and Nordstrom, uh among them that were you know well-respected retail accounts and also you know very large companies at the time. Um second, CX is really central to that, right? Like consumer experience is just you know absolutely central to the retail business. Um, and then third, um, we guessed correctly that our knowledge of the tech space from working with big clients like Microsoft um would be be seen uh as valuable by the retail clients. Like we could help kind of translate between the two industries for them. Um, and that became a big piece of what we did. Um and so the the way we grew from there, right, is um local clients first. So we got into Starbucks, we got into Nordstrom, those developed case studies, right? And so we used those case studies to start selling outside the region, and you know, and some of our clients went to um other other uh retailers or brands outside the region, and we were able to follow them. Um and then it was a mix of you know going to conferences, generating more case studies, getting analyst attention, particular, particularly from Forrester, right? And over a three or four year period, um we grew to a place where you know we had clients across across North America and more of a national reputation, um, and where you know Microsoft was still our largest client, but the you know, the other slices of the pie had grown faster than Microsoft's. So the firm as a whole had grown while the Microsoft's share of the overall pie had shrunk a bit. Um and it we could ride out the variability in any one client or any one market, right? And and continue to have a stable firm and and keep everybody on the team and not need to do reductions when one client uh slowed down, those types of things.

Joe 14:17

Right, right. It's it's it it's a it's a wonderful model if you can make it work, sort of getting having the opportunity to really get your methods, practice, and proposition hammered out whilst under the umbrella of a nice big safe client, and then using that to in effect roll out elsewhere. Um I've I've seen a few, not everyone is lucky, lucky enough to be able to do that, but I've I've seen it work very successfully with a few high growth firms, and it really even even if if if you're listening to this, and I guess you you haven't got that umbrella, it does speak to the importance of getting your niche really, really like a well-oiled machine before you start doing dozens of other things.

SPEAKER_01 15:11

Right.

Productising Loyalty For Faster Growth

SPEAKER_01 15:12

And within retail, we discovered that loyalty was a great niche, and that was actually a another uh member of our leadership team who really developed that practice and it meshed so well with the retail practice. And the reason, one of the reasons that was successful is that loyalty is a very defined um service offer offering and niche. Um, so it's almost you know product, it's productizable, right? So it's you know, and um whereas CX is kind of more amorphous, and like you put five people in a room and ask them to f define what the CX space is, and you'll get five different definitions. Loyalty is you know more cut and dried and more um amenable to uh kind of a productized offering. Um, so that really helped the flywheel spin.

Joe 16:03

Yeah, great, great. Yep. And you know, it it doesn't suit every firm, but that you know, productizing, especially these days, you know, getting it down to those steps and the methods and the support and the training to support the people who are doing that, yeah. It's um you know, huge opportunity costs and and and better margins for everyone.

SPEAKER_01 16:26

Right.

Hiring, Promotion And Low Churn

Joe 16:27

Um I wanted to ask a little, you mentioned earlier about when I mentioned value proposition, you gave quite an unusual answer, but not that unusual amongst high performing firms, which is that you talked about the employees as you know, as almost the first the first base. So um that positioning as a talent acquisition tool, how did that work in practice? And what effects did you see on the employees that made it you knew it was working, you it made it worthwhile?

SPEAKER_01 17:02

Right. Um so in the I think in the early days, well, and throughout really, but um that the again the specialist positioning around CX was a talent attractor as opposed to you know large larger firms or even you know compet competitive firms that had a more diffuse focus and couldn't you know articulate like here's the kind of problems you're gonna go solve for clients as crisply as we could. So, you know, it attract we attracted the kind of talent that wanted to work on the problems we worked on. Um and then uh and then in terms of you know, once folks were there, um it again, the people who thrived with us were people who were gonna be, you know, gonna be client-centric and really, you know, um got satisfaction from serving clients well. And um, but we also promoted a very you know entrepreneurial culture. Um, so you know, practices were founded by non-partners, um, key elements of how we operated were established by non-partners. Okay. Our whole training program was called foundations, and that was really it was really run by the manager level of the firm, not the leadership level of the firm. Um so, and there was no fixed like time at level or anything like that. You you know, you could rise up as fast as your performance um dictated. Um, and we also, you know, and we had um associates who had, you know, big pedigrees and MBAs from top schools and all that, but um, we did not use that as a filtering criteria, right? Some, you know, some of our best people went to little regional colleges around Seattle and and um, you know, so we unlike some firms, we didn't really focus on like, you know, how impressive your resume looks on paper. It's like, you know, what have you accomplished and what are you capable of doing?

Joe 19:06

Great. Great. And and what effects did, I mean, what how was churn what did churn look like? Um, did you mostly promote internally? Um, so what were the effects of that investment?

SPEAKER_01 19:19

Yeah, so um churn was churn was you know uh pretty low, very you know, below industry standard, right? Like consistently in that 10 to 15 percent range, um, where you know a lot of firms are more up around 2025. Um and then um with rare exceptions, we pretty much promoted from within. So people you know grew within the firm, um that you know, had a robust manager community. Um and we only really brought in um a couple of senior hires from outside. And usually those were people that were, you know, kind of well known to us from, you know, we we had worked with them inside the same client or had worked with them in previous stops in our career. Um so there were only a few of those.

unknown 20:06

Right.

SPEAKER_01 20:07

And there were, you know, and there were a few actually outside hires that didn't work out that well, which you know made us more uh selective and cautious about senior outside hires as we you know went forward.

Joe 20:19

It's um it I I get I think it's one of the most common what would you do differently, uh, answers to that question. The number of people that appointed senior hires spent a lot of money sometimes and they didn't work out. And sometimes it was, you know, it was cultural rather than just a bad hire, which is hard to predict. But um it's it's tough to get that level, especially when it comes to uh business development, to get that level of person in if they don't if they haven't come up to the firm yes. Okay. Um so I'd like to talk a little bit about that, you know.

Why A PE Backed Deal Won

Joe 20:57

You were acquired by PK, who were backed by uh Carlisle, and it it's interesting. I've I've shifted over the last 10 years, I've shifted my take on PE investments directly. Um it's you know, PE used to have a bit of a reputation, it seems to me that over the last 10 years they've got more sophisticated when they're dealing with people firms. But how was how is that experience? I I guess there's a question actually before we get to the the experience of PE, why did you decide to go for a PE backed firm rather than either a non-PE backed firm or a direct PE investment or an MBO or any other option that you guys would have had?

SPEAKER_01 21:44

Yeah, so um so we went through uh a process and kind of you know all of the uh all of the the kind of serious final round bidders were were PE firms or PE backed.

Joe 21:57

Oh, really? Wow, okay.

SPEAKER_01 21:58

So that's just kind of it's just kind of you know where where the market was at the time.

Joe 22:02

Right.

SPEAKER_01 22:03

Um and uh you know and um we and we chose PK and Carlisle obviously for financial reasons but also for for fit reasons that we experienced you know kind of during the the bidding process and the you know the leadership teams getting to know each other. And so um car uh part of the reason it was such a strong fit and we had such a a strong experience was that um car the acquisition of Linati was part of a deliberate Carlisle strategy for PK which was to you know elevate PK and differentiate that firm as a CX focus specialist. So they were you know a digital digital development firm digital outsourcer um and you know grew just kind of by the the grit of the founders and you know uh kind of an amazing growth story on its own which is a you know topic for another day and probably another guest but um but they you know they were didn't have that kind of crisp um value prop focus and um Carlisle thought that you know CX was the direction to head with that and digital experience in particular. So acquiring Linati was part of um elevating PK and um really adding that value prop focus to that firm. So you know we knew we were uh a strategic target not just you know not just adding revenue adding headcount or adding a service line but really you know viewed as a potentially transformational acquisition um so that you know that was a big part of the um appeal in both directions and it reminded me that you I I mean we'd been connected for a while but um you it was a something I wrote about private equity and you reached out and said well actually you know Joe I've you know we had a good really good experience and we had you know a second bite at the cherry as it were because I presume some of your shares rolled over into into PK shares um and and sometimes owners can do better out of the second exit than they can the first so I'm interested as to what made that investment so successful um and you know you're taking a bit of a risk when you when you do that because you kind of you hear the narrative and of course everyone's got a good narrative but it's still an unknown isn't it right yeah so um Carl did a did a number of things that made it a positive experience and I think you know contributed to the the outcomes in the end right so um one was uh we had PK had a had a strong uh board um and a strong group of advisors that knew the business so that the chairman of the board had been the CEO of the corporate executive board so he really understood professional services and kind of high-end strategy work very well um another one of the non-board advisors had been the CEO and CFO of a large um you know in India centric outsourcer before um so he understood you know kind of the the legacy PK side of of the business very well and was very helpful. And then a PK's largest client was a telco and another board member had been on the FCC the on the board of the FCC before Federal Communications Commission. Wow okay you know all those board members like understood the business and were you know super um helpful in both you know advising us and help helping us grow but also you know explaining our business back to the rest of Carlisle and the deal leads at Carlisle and and things like that.

SPEAKER_02 26:11

Right.

SPEAKER_01 26:12

So that was that was one piece.

Post Merger Integration And Rapid Scale

SPEAKER_01 26:29

So they allowed those of us at Lanati especially in the first year to just you know kind of continue to operate as we had and continue the you know rapid growth that we had been experiencing pre-deal, right, which made us an attractive acquisition target. They let us you know kind of keep that going uh which meant that the clients were reassured that you know not much was changing for them right in terms of what was being delivered just broader capabilities available if they wanted to wanted to leverage them. And it also helped us really you know kind of lock in that employee culture and and you know you're gonna continue to have the same uh employment experience and the same opportunities for growth if not more than you know what you had before the the acquisition was kind of the the message that I think the employees received right and then after you know and there were some early early wins there right in terms of joint sales so um we were doing a loyalty program for a large sneaker brand which is something we had done before for other brands but you know in this case because we were now part of PK we were able also to pick up the the development and and maintenance of the of that brand's mobile app which is something we probably you know wouldn't have done as Linati alone. So there were early proof points um and then after a year right we we kind of the retired the Linati brand went with PK as the brand for all firms um under the umbrella and um you know started to drive more back office integration and also you know uh sales integration and delivery integration um and then you know continued to grow from there um and you know when we sold we were about 120 people the the as you mentioned in the intro right the what was what became the strategy and design arm of of PK you know um peaked out around 500 people. And I think you know in that 120 range with plus some some more secure financial backing we were right at that inflection point where you're you know large enough to really start going after bigger and bigger programs and delivering more you know left to right end to end services to clients. And then you know once you win a few of those right that kind of that that growth curve can get really accelerate because you just start you know picking up picking up programs you know 20 heads at a time, five 10 million dollar mandates right and then um that kind of reinforces itself um as long as the market's doing well which it was a a period where the services market was doing very well.

Joe 29:17

Right. But it's it see it sounds like a like a a case study story which is uh which is relatively rare. So yeah well well well done on on managing that um and and in in terms of lessons learned is there anything either that you would do differently around around especially the the growth bit um or around the sales process or almost on the other side is there anything that you that really stands out as something that really worked for you that perhaps people in your position five years ago um could learn from?

Hindsight Lessons On Acquisitions

SPEAKER_01 30:01

Yeah so I mean 2020 hindsight wise I mean there's a couple we had a couple of opportunities to have maybe like you know done tuck-in acquisitions of smaller firms um around uh disciplines like UX and analytics um so you know 2020 hindsight because everything turned out well um and some of the you know the the worries or concerns that stopped us from doing that you know in in hindsight we would have gotten past it fine um those probably would have been worth doing because it just would have you know made us big uh bigger bigger revenue um and more scope so it would have you know led to a a a bigger um acquisition but um also analytics in particular is just uh uh was for us at least was a two super tough space a lot of false starts that those were some of the um external hires that didn't work out so there it was a lot of distraction trying to get you know a solid analytics practice inside the firm so you know an acquisition there may have been a small acquisition there may have been um helpful and reduced that distraction um but uh you know but those those are those the that that's definitely like 2020 um looking back and um you know mine minor minor things in the in the overall picture um in terms of uh the sale process I mean I there's yeah there's not a lot there's not a lot would do differently there um I th thought that you know obviously went very well for us we had a great outcome so hard to hard to uh hard to want to do different there yeah yeah yeah great great and and since since leaving you've you know you've done a lot of um advisory work for professional service firms um I'd I'd be interested in how you're seeing the changes happening because obviously you know you you've you've been uh in the game for a while um and you know I'm I'm I've been uh advising professional service firms for 20

AI Disruption And Learn By Doing

SPEAKER_01 32:20

odd years now and I've certainly especially in the last five years I've seen a lot of changes but I'd be interested especially as you're in a different geography to me and perhaps dealing with a different niche to me what changes are you seeing that you think are affecting the boutique market um in consultancy yeah so I mean the obvious one is AI right and so um you know all the all the firms are are um either struggling or thriving by um working to integrate AI into how they operate um and I think as other guests on this podcast have have articulated right it it um the place that it uh brings the biggest change is in terms of uh onboarding junior staff right more the analyst level because you know ai can do a lot of the kind of uh market and competitive landscape research that you you know you used to assign to an associate and say hey you know spend a week spend a week digging into this right now you can generate it from from AI and just kind of fine-tune it and fact check it and be done in a day um but so the but you know what I've been you know and I don't have a don't have a ton of clients I'm definitely in the work optional phase and just you know working with people I I know and enjoy working with but um you know what I've been telling telling folks is a couple things one like don't let that shiny object distract you from you know the fundamentals of take care of the employees employees will take care of the clients you know and that whole whole narrative and approach right so you still have to have to do the the blocking and tackling of that's always been true in professional services of what you know keeps a firm healthy and growing um but then the second thing is I really believe in um the kind of learn by doing approach to um new step changes like this and and new technologies like this. So um encouraging encouraging um founders that I'm working with to really um uh have their teams be the ones who you know develop the AI capability and do it by experimenting and make you know AI everyone's job just like you make sales everyone's job. Yep. And um rather than you know bringing in like an AI guru from outside and having them try to like you know force it from the top down.

Joe 34:53

Yeah great it's great and and it's it's definitely a competence that firms need to develop themselves so they can understand what it can do for them.

SPEAKER_01 35:02

Right. And what it can do you know what it can do for the clients right and just be you know kind of exactly yeah yeah yeah it's it's it's all change.

Where To Find Martin

Joe 35:11

Um listen martin thank you it's so much so much there um uh where can people where can people find you if someone wanted um to pick martin's brains or or or speak about CX and and the advisory work you're doing where's the best place to find you yeah so the easiest is to just reach out to me on LinkedIn.

SPEAKER_01 35:33

I've got a you know fairly unusual last name so I'm I'm uh easy to find and I assume the spelling will be in the show notes. It will yes folks can just yeah look me up on LinkedIn and and reach out.

Joe 35:45

We'll put a link to you. Martin thanks so much for your time really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 35:49

Yeah you bet. Happy happy to join Joe thanks