Ep 28. Joel Norton CEO of Kalido – The Honest CEO Show

The Honest CEO Show, Episode 28: Joel Norton, CEO of Kalido

Caroline Kennedy (00:20)
Welcome and thanks so much for listening to the Honest CEO Show. The journey to the top for Joel Norton hasn't been what you would usually expect of a CEO. Having worked his way up from the very bottom, Joel attributes his success not to a formal education, but rather to experience.

Starting his career as a marketing consultant in 1988, Joel has been on the long road to the top, progressing through different roles at varying companies from general manager to CMO and finally to CEO of Kalido, a major business within ASX listed IVE group with a turnover in excess of 6.

He's gained immense experience along the way and I look forward to hearing about that journey. Welcome to the show, Joel.

Joel Norton (01:27)
Thank you very much. Great to be with you.

Caroline Kennedy (01:29)
Now, as we've heard in the introduction, you're a CEO of a multi-million dollar organisation, yet you don't have a tertiary education. Now I had a similar journey in when I became a CEO in the private sector, I did so like you without a tertiary education. And a couple of years into my role as a CEO, I decided to pursue a postgraduate degree. But like you, didn't actually have one to advance my career.

Yet there is a, I suppose, a little bit of a element of requirement that people seem to think that that if they don't have a tertiary education, then they can't become a CEO. So tell us a little bit about your journey.

Joel Norton (02:15)
Yeah, so I started effectively in the industry being sort of direct marketing and advertising. And I started in a job basically doing work experience two weeks after I finished my HSE. And I stayed in that job effectively for 17 years. And in a way, it was, I suppose, similar to being involved in a graduate program where when I started with the business I was with, it was a business of about eight people and over a period of 12 years it expanded to about 45 and then it was bought by a multinational advertising group and I stayed with that business for another five years.

So given sort of the growth that the business was having over that sort of period, I was fortunate enough to be promoted and to enter different positions, but also to work in different departments, I suppose, to get a broad overview and understanding of the business that we're in, which is both, I suppose, from a skills or technical point of view of what we were doing, but also through that process also. I was fortunate enough to have two very fantastic mentors that were the owners of the business that I learned a lot from, which is also around, I suppose, the business and management side of things as well.

Caroline Kennedy (03:26)
Yeah. And I think, as you mentioned, getting that broad overview really does help with your career development, etc. And as you said before, you came through the discipline of marketing and you've also worked in other roles throughout the business. So you know exactly what is required and necessary in each of the particular roles and in the departments within the businesses to make them as productive and effective as possible.

Now what is your recommendation for leaders who have not had the exposure to varied facets of a business in their aspirations for career development?

Joel Norton (04:02)
Yeah, I suppose it depends on what stage they're at, certainly my own personal experience was that that was extremely valuable. So I spent most of my time in the account management side of the business and managing some large accounts, but there's no doubt in my mind that ⁓ I suppose my ability to be a great account manager and providing great service came off the back of understanding how the business worked and operated.

So in all the different aspects. So I think it certainly is helpful. I think if you can get an understanding of ⁓ the business, I mean, in my current role, coming into the business here, I've been with dive group and with Kalido now three years. And as part of the business, I've spent probably certainly the first three months. And I suppose even after that, another three months after that, really spending time, not just with my team, but also in other business units across business to get a good understanding of our clients, what we did for our clients, not just in the area that I was managing, but also in other parts of the business.

Because we're part of a large group, providing that context was really important. So I think it would be difficult to manage or lead a business if you don't have that sort of understanding. So I definitely think it's worthwhile trying to gain that experience if you can.

Caroline Kennedy (05:15)
And I think that that's great advice, particularly when you come into a new role and if you are the leader of a business being the CEO or even if you purchase a business, say for instance, and you're going into a new business is to spend that first three months or that first quarter just really understanding the very departments, the elements, the roles that people do, the challenges they face so you can then formalise a strategy for how to move the business forward and then how to bring all of those key elements and the team with you on that journey as well.

Joel Norton (05:50)
Yeah.

Caroline Kennedy (05:52)
Now the numbers, the financial elements in a business is pretty important. How do you gain insights initially into mastering those numbers given your exposure to account management and marketing and then the other side being the financial element?

Joel Norton (06:10)
Yeah, so again, because I was part of the business I was in was, I suppose, smaller, you were quite hands on across different areas. So I was ⁓ involved in the numbers really from a fairly early stage, even if it was just around sort of estimating projects and working with clients then through to, I suppose, understanding the profitability for your account and portfolio. And then that sort of expanded then into sort of running departments or divisions.

So effectively, that was when I started to get exposure to the P &Ls for the business. And again, there's nuances in different businesses. So I'm trying to understand how the business operates and what are the key metrics for that business and how does that reflect or play out in the P &L. So look, it can be difficult and it does take time and energy sort of in trying to understand all of those areas, but obviously it's critically important.

Caroline Kennedy (07:03)
Yeah. And I also believe too, as you've mentioned before, that it's not just CEO that has exposure to, for instance, the P &L or the profitability, but also looking at the metrics because the numbers tell you a story no matter what role you're in. so for instance, with marketing or with account management, you know, if you look at forward forecasting in terms of how the department or the business is performing, you really get some insights into the numbers and what story they're telling you, where your weaknesses are, where your strengths are, and what areas you should focus on too. So I think from what you've just described and my experience in business is no matter what level you're at, particularly middle management, senior management, those key metrics are so important or integral to the success of the business moving forward and particularly as innovation occurs within markets and industries.

Joel Norton (08:05)
Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, the group that I'm part of, it's now publicly listed. And so, you know, there's certain metrics that the investors and the board sort of look at. ⁓ But then from a business point of view, each of the different business units will have their own sort of key metrics. ⁓ it is important to understand those and understand what are the levers that are going to impact that positively and negatively. Because you need to make decisions around, from our point of view, we're in a growth.

So adding a lot of additional resources or capability, that sort of stuff. So understanding how that's going to impact ⁓ your performance sort of moving forward. So having a solid understanding of ⁓ the key metrics in the business is critical.

Caroline Kennedy (08:44)
Yeah. And the business that you're in now and that you lead, Kalido, they use a lot of metrics with the customer service elements, etc., with your customers. Tell us a little bit about the business and how you use metrics to help your customers.

Joel Norton (09:01)
Yeah, sure. ⁓ So, Kalido is a customer experience firm. So effectively what we do is we help businesses to ⁓ use data to drive growth and customer value through a combination of web and mobile experiences, marketing automation, and also ⁓ creative content. So a lot of what we do in being a customer experience firm is helping brands to migrate or transform to being customer centric, which is really a shift from, I suppose traditional ways of marketing, which is being product led. We've got a product and we want to try and sell that to a bunch of customers. So actually saying, we've got all these customers, ⁓ let's understand them as unique individuals and what are the products and services that they're after and being able to then respond to that in a more timely way.

So a lot of what we do is around understanding the customers in the first place, a lot of work around data pulling disparate or consolidating disparate data sources together to get more of a single customer view of their customer base ⁓ and trying to understand how those customers, what's their path to purchase or understanding their different customer journeys, if you like. And once we get an understanding of that, then we sort of work with them around developing strategy. How do we plan, execute and optimise ⁓ data-driven customer journeys across different channels?

So that might be across website, mobile, email, SMS, direct mail, whatever it might be, which is ultimately is around increasing customer value, decreasing ⁓ retention, ⁓ increasing cross-seller, increasing customer satisfaction, whole sort of raft of areas. But it all stems from data in the first place.

Caroline Kennedy (10:43)
Yep. And being customer centric in today's day and age is so integral to a business's success given making sure your business is relevant and that ongoing relevance too. know a couple of years ago when I was a CEO in the travel industry and we were disrupted by online as a traditional wholesaler. And I remember that, you know, that, relevance piece was so integral because, using the the data as well, the customer insight into looking at how do we continue to make this business relevant when the industry is declining or how consumers are buying are declining and actually going out and finding out exactly what the customer wanted. What were those insights? How are their buying habits changing? And then implementing strategies based on that. And when all other businesses continue to decline, has actually started to grow and buck the trend exactly what you've just described is so important nowadays because the market shifts so quickly.

Joel Norton (11:51)
It absolutely does, yeah. And think it's, it was interesting actually, I was at a breakfast seminar this morning, which was around retail, and there was just some conversation, I suppose, how still some of the Australian retailers are still looking at or concerned about channel conflict. So when they're looking at online, they're talking about conflict with their retail stores, whereas it really should be around sort of thinking on the channel, which is, know, I've got customers going in store, they're going on the website, they're on mobile, they're across all these different channels. They're also calling up, whether it's customer service, whatever, you need to be thinking about the overall customer experience across multiple touch points rather than these sort of isolated channels.

Caroline Kennedy (12:29)
Yeah, absolutely agree. Now I'm a firm believer that the people make a business and when I make that statement, it's related to your employees and your customers. So without them, you don't have a business. So how do you ensure your business is both customer and culture centric?

Joel Norton (12:45)
Yeah, look, it's a good question. I agree 100%. I think one of the things that we're really working hard on at the moment, we've had great growth and with that, through the awesome work that we're doing and sort of results we're achieving, but we need to make sure that we're doing a great job for our clients. So that's always front and centre around, it's not just winning the clients, we're making sure that we're delivering and exceeding their expectations because if you don't, if you're not doing a great job, they won't stay with you. So that's a key area that we're continuing sort of we work with everybody in the team around ensuring that it's not just about project delivery, but it's actually about the business outcomes that we drive. ⁓

And from a staff point of view, again, my experiences around that would be the same where we, you know, the better we are at retaining staff, that all goes to ⁓ increased customer retention. So there's a direct link between staff retention and customer retention and customer value and all the rest of it.

So, ⁓ we're working on a few initiatives at the moment. We're pretty good in both of those areas, but we're working on a couple of initiatives. And one of those is around implementing Net Promoter Score for our business for customers, but also ⁓ employee Net Promoter Score to sort of gauge where we are with staff. There's a number of other initiatives as well that we're sort of working on, to cover both of those two areas.

Caroline Kennedy (14:02)
Yeah. And I think it's something that can always improve. Even if you are hitting the mark continually, it's always about how can we leverage that? How can we better service those customers? How can we create a better culture? It never stops when you're a leader, does it?

Joel Norton (14:20)
No, absolutely not. And I think there's always an opportunity to do more for those customers. So, yeah, I suppose Net Promoter Score gives you an idea, gives you a metric, but nothing replaces spending time with the clients and understanding what are their key challenges in their business. So you can sort of help identify where can you help them with those challenges and how can you add value. to be honest, the same similar with the staff, think spending time with the staff and understanding what are the roadblocks? What are the challenges for them and them being able to do what they need to do every day? So if you can reduce some of those barriers and make their jobs more enjoyable and more collaborative and all the rest of it, then that's also going to be a benefit.

Caroline Kennedy (15:01)
Yeah, I completely agree. And what I find is I work a lot with leadership development and consulting with organisations and there's such a concern with asking staff about, you know, like their engagement, what they'd like to see improve. There's just so much concern around that.

One of the biggest challenges we face is convincing organisations that once they embrace that and empower people, that's where the magic happens, you know, because the people make your business, as I said before.

Joel Norton (15:40)
Yes, 100%. So we've got an initiative that we're working on around exactly that, which is around improving sort of collaboration across the group, but off one of the benefits out of the piece that we're doing is very much around making sure that the employees are empowered to make the decisions and grow. So yeah, it's important for their sort of personal development, but also means they've got greater accountability and responsibility around the business as well, which I think is, which is exciting for them.

Caroline Kennedy (16:05)
Yeah. And I love that the accountability element is so important and then they actually buy into that as well and they become accountable themselves. Now I see fear, particularly fear around making mistakes, holding a lot of people back. However, I believe that from mistakes and failings comes huge learnings and growth. Can you tell us your view on this?

Joel Norton (16:13)
Yeah, I think if you're not failing, you're not trying hard enough would sort of be my thinking on that. Obviously, if you are going to try new initiatives, whatever that may be, whether it's introducing a new product or service or whether it's trying new initiatives with your customers or with staff, there's always a chance that something may fail. But I think you need to do, say with anything, you need to plan for it.

You need to be really clear on what the outcomes are and do your research to make sure that you've got the best opportunity for it to be a success. But I think any learnings, I don't look at it as a failure, I just look at it as learnings and what can we do to improve things sort of next time. I think you always need to be pushing yourself as an individual, but also as a business outside of your comfort zone. And through that, you get, you know, that's where the real growth happens. So I think we should be pushing ourselves and the business and staff, suppose, to feel the opportunity that they can fail because that's where as a business you grow.

Caroline Kennedy (17:23)
Yeah. And that's a lot of the time where innovation comes from as well, because you try new things that don't work. What was the learning? How could we do it better? And then also, you know, when you embrace that you have an environment that encourages the learning and the development and doesn't view it as a failure, but taking the learnings from it, then you're empowering employees to try new things. And that's where innovation happens, you know.

Joel Norton (17:49)
Correct, yeah.

Caroline Kennedy (17:50)
Now the quality of your leadership and the leaders within your business obviously has a direct impact on the success of your business. Tell us about your thoughts on this and perhaps how you prioritise leadership development.

Joel Norton (18:04)
Yeah, I think it's probably ⁓ something that we haven't done enough of, but unfortunately we've got a couple of direct reports who are very, so has experience around that already, but certainly the level underneath them, that's something we're starting to look at in how we do that.

I think I was just reading an article last week actually about it where a CEO of another business was talking about sort of succession planning. He said he's got no plans on leaving, but he's been in that role I think for five years, but he started thinking about his succession plan the day he started the job, which I really sort of liked. And so it's something that I've been thinking about.

You need to, like anything else, you need to plan for it. I think you need to, it's not something you can expect for somebody to take over sort of straight away, so you need to be working out what are their strengths and weaknesses and where do they need, ⁓ might they need some development I suppose for the future. I think you also need to recognise too that everyone's got a different style of leadership as well. mean you've just got to look at probably one of the best examples is someone like Steve Jobs and Tim Cook, right, so they've got very, very different styles and obviously anyone coming in after Steve Jobs is a hard act to follow, but it does need to be a succession plan it would have been sort of development and things along the way, but accepting that they are different individuals and they've got a different style.

Caroline Kennedy (19:23)
And I think too, as a leader, you have a responsibility to, you know, and the cliche is if I got hit by a bus tomorrow, where would the business be? But you do have to think about that. Is there somebody that just can step into that role and the business continues on without being disrupted in any way, if that was to occur. And I've always believed that as a leader, you have a responsibility to ensure that that can occur at some level. And then also, as you mentioned before, throughout your career, having been mentored by individuals and the importance of that in your development. again, as leaders, have a responsibility to, to mentor others and to teach others because that's what makes successful businesses. used to spend 80 % of my time on developing those individuals within my team.

They're successful, I'm successful.

Joel Norton (20:22)
Yes, 100%. It's interesting because I think ⁓ certainly early in my career when you're at that younger level, you are in many ways, I suppose, threatened by your colleagues because it's all about trying to get promotions and get further up the tree. But certainly my own experience, I suppose, as you get more senior, you recognise that actually you need to surround yourself with people that you can trust and people that are sort of smarter than you in their particular areas as well.

That's certainly something that I've ⁓ tried to support and I've got a very fortunate, I've got a great team of people that are excellent at what they do in their areas of specialty. So think having that right team around you, but yes, you need to sort of coach and develop for the future.

Caroline Kennedy (21:08)
And then also the fact about employing individuals that have varied strengths than you or skills than you, you also learn as a way of developing as well, because you have exposure to that. And I don't believe at any point in your career, no matter what role you're in, that you never stop learning.

Joel Norton (21:27)
I know, yeah, I agree 100%. I'm an avid reader. I read a lot of blogs, I listen to a lot of podcasts, I read ⁓ audio books and read a of books constantly. ⁓ Trying to still sort of educate and as well as educate myself as well as sort of, ⁓ yeah, what you learn from the people that ⁓ work around you as well. Yeah. That's one of the exciting parts of the job.

Caroline Kennedy (21:50)
Yeah, I absolutely agree. Now what do you believe are the critical elements to leadership?

Joel Norton (21:55)
First is around, I think really just being clear on what the, I suppose the vision, vision for the business and where it's going. So that's something we're doing at the moment. We're sort of setting up, to, suppose, ⁓ paint a picture of ⁓ what the business might look like in three years time, both sort of financially, but also capability wise and geographical regions we might be operating in. So part of it's around a vision and being really clear on that. I think another area is then around the culture of the business.

So I suppose off the back of that, having the unified vision, then also the culture of them to support that so that the team are empowered to make decisions and to do what they need to do best. I think that there's also another thing would be around sort of being comfortable in accepting ultimate responsibility and ownership for your decisions. Obviously, as a CEO, you do have to make a lot of decisions and you need to be comfortable with those.

So I think that's something that anyone who aspires to be a leader, they can start doing now big piece which is around sort of the positive impact of rewarding and retaining great staff as well. But also say, know, also there's no substitute for hard work. So I think there's always a lot to do and as the lady, they just sort of set the tone, I think for the business and what you need to be achieving. And I think that's really important.

Caroline Kennedy (23:11)
Yeah, absolutely agree. Lead by example.

Joel Norton (23:14)
And probably the other thing I would just add in there is, is also just around knowing your numbers. And that's from a business point of view. I think, you know, knowing, I suppose in my industry being we're very much B2B. So understanding as much as you can about your customers. Again, that sort of goes around full circle to the more you know about your customers, you know, the better we can better service them. So I think know your numbers as far as how the business performance and metrics, but also try and understand your customers as well.

Caroline Kennedy (23:42)
I think knowing the numbers are so important as well as the other critical elements, but the key metrics that define success because you are, as we talked about before, you're going to try things, they're not always going to work. But if you're measuring it, then you can pivot when it's not working and you can analyse why it's not working. And it just means that you are continually being agile in this, I really dynamic market that's out there but you've got your finger on the pulse in terms of business performance and then you don't end up in a hole whereby in six months time, it's so deep, you can't get yourself out of it. finally, what keeps you awake at night?

Joel Norton (24:30)
⁓ Not much actually.

Caroline Kennedy (24:32)
Lucky you.

Joel Norton (24:34)
I generally sleep pretty well. I think it is all the things we've spoken about just where they were doing the right thing for our customers, that we're on top of everything we need to be doing for our customers, that we're doing the right thing by our staff as far as setting the vision and the culture and everything else. think they're certainly at the moment, they're probably the two sort of key areas ⁓ to me that I'm sort of really sort of focusing on is ensuring that we're doing a fantastic result for our customers and also that we're setting the business up for the future success as far as operationally and the culture and the staff that we've got within the business.

Caroline Kennedy (25:14)
Yeah. And actually I do have one more final question. I don't know. said that one. What advice would you give to anyone that is doubting themselves in terms of feeling like they're not educated enough to continue to progress their career or develop their career? Because I think you're a great example of how you can be successful at that. And I know that.

Self-doubt plagues a lot of people and particularly imposter syndrome plagues a lot of people during their career. Yet if you let that limit you, then it will limit you. So perhaps if you could give us some advice around what your thoughts are on overcoming self-doubt.

Joel Norton (26:02)
Yeah, look, think ⁓ it's natural. think everybody has it. In fact, again, I was reading another article ⁓ a couple of weeks ago by a CEO of a very large national business within Australia. And ⁓ she was, she even referred to the fact that sort of she had self-taught and she's running a business of thousands of employees. But I think that you're always going to have, everyone has that.

I think it's your responsibility, I suppose, as leaders that you've got to have confidence in yourself. If you don't have confidence in yourself and what you're doing for the business, then you can't expect your team to also have confidence in you. So think you need to believe in yourself. Make sure you're doing everything you can also to support that, though. So you can't just have blind faith. ⁓ So I suppose that's where continued education and learning is really important. Support your own personal growth.

And I suppose that's also where the hard work comes in. So from my point of view, that's where no replacement for hard work. So I just sort of making sure that I'm doing everything I can possibly to do the best job I can for the business. I'll take it seriously as far as the people that we employ and making sure that we've got a thriving business for them to go and expand.

But I think you need to kick self doubt to the curb and you've got to push on and be confident.

Caroline Kennedy (27:22)
Yeah, I think they're great tips and particularly around the hard work and the accountability that comes with that. So it's really saying, I take ownership of this role and I'm going to do everything that I can to make sure it's success and that the people around me are a success because I have a responsibility to do that. Well, thank you so much for your time today, Joel. It was really great chatting with you and getting those insights and we wish you all the best for the future.

Joel Norton (27:53)
Thank you very much, it's been great. Thank you very much, Caroline. Appreciate it.