Company: MDRG
Owners: Sondra Brown
Year Started: 1994
Employees: 11 – 25
Welcome to another enlightening episode of “An Agency Story,” a series dedicated to the personal and professional journeys of marketing agency owners worldwide. In this episode titled “Cognition,” we dive into the intriguing world of market research with Sondra Brown, the founder and president of MDRG. This episode promises not only to unveil the unique methods of Sondra’s firm but also to inspire with the story of its evolution.
Sondra Brown introduces us to MDRG, a powerhouse in the realms of branding, advertising, product development, and customer experience. Through their innovative “whole mind approach,” which leverages insights from behavioral economics, MDRG helps clients understand the deep-seated emotional and cognitive factors driving consumer decisions. Sondra shares compelling anecdotes from her shift from academia to the dynamic field of market research, highlighting how serendipitous moments paved her path to becoming an influential industry leader.
Listeners will be captivated by Sondra’s journey from conducting door-to-door surveys to leading a consultancy that influences major brands like Microsoft and Smoothie King. Her discussion on the transformative impact of technology and behavioral economics in market research will provide unique insights into understanding consumer behavior more profoundly.
The episode isn’t just about professional achievements. Sondra opens up about personal challenges and growth moments, such as adapting leadership styles and cultivating a company culture that respects and acknowledges each team member, which, as she shares, has significantly enhanced team dynamics and efficiency.
Join us in this episode of “An Agency Story” to explore how blending scientific rigor with business acumen leads to groundbreaking insights in market research. Whether you’re a budding entrepreneur, a marketing professional, or simply curious about the science of behavior, “Cognition” will leave you pondering how much of your decisions are truly your own. Tune in, and be inspired by the blend of science, business, and personal growth that defines Sondra Brown’s agency story.
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Show Transcript
Welcome to An Agency Story podcast where we share real stories of marketing agency owners from around the world. From the excitement of starting up the first big sale, passion, doubt, fear, freedom, and the emotional rollercoaster of growth, hear it all on An Agency Story podcast. An Agency Story podcast is hosted by Russel Dubree, successful agency owner with an eight figure exit turned business coach. Enjoy the next agency story.
Russel:
Welcome to An Agency Story podcast. I’m your host Russel. On this episode, we have Sondra Brown owner of MDRG, an insights from empowering strategically minded professionals to impact brands, through market research based out of New Orleans, Louisiana. Sondra explains a unique approach of her agency takes in qualitative and quantitative research. While the what of their work may be familiar. It’s the how and why that sets them apart. This episode, delves into Saundra’s journey from a path towards her doctorate degree, turned into a viable business and market research. From the early days of door to door collection, Sondra shares how much the industry of market research has changed in the last 30 years. Enjoy the story Welcome to the show today, everyone. I have Sondra Brown with MDRG with us here today. Thank you so much for joining us, Sondra.
Sondra:
It’s my pleasure.
Russel:
If you don’t mind starting us off, tell us what MDRG is and who do you do it for?
Sondra:
MDRG is the short version of Market Dynamics Research Group. A couple of years ago we rebranded, it was less of a mouthful, but we’re an insights consultancy that is comprised of researchers and strategists who leverage our skills to answer questions for our clients around four big buckets: branding, advertising, product development and customer experience. I’m the president and I’m the founder of MDRG. This firm started in 1994.
Russel:
That is a unique type of service line and approach that we don’t often have on the show. Share a little more about what that looks like in the real world every day.
Sondra:
The what of what we do is probably familiar to you and to many of your listeners, meaning that we are qualitative and quantitative researchers that use our techniques that answer questions that they have in those four areas that I talked about. But what’s interesting and unique about us is the how and the why of what we do. I’m channeling my inner Simon Sinek in talking about the how and the why, but the how is our trademarked whole mind approach. What that means is we have leaned very heavily into behavioral economics and what we know from folks like Daniel Kahneman, who taught us that there’s these two systems at play. When we make decisions there’s this system too, which is that rational side of the brain that’s very language based, that we like to think that we all operate at. What he taught us in this body of work is that 95 percent of our decisions reside in this system 1 side of the brain. That’s the birthplace of emotions and these automatic sort of visceral reactions that we have. This system 1 and system 2 is very heavily influencing the research designs that we bring to the table. It’s a unique approach within the industry, but the why is what we get up in the morning thinking about, and that is, how do we utilize our research jobs to help push our clients businesses forward? We’re painfully aware that our clients don’t pay us for nice to know information, and in fact that’s not even why we chose this career. Our tools and training are the means that we use to answer those hard questions that clients need answers to in order to meet their business goals. We always start any research design with the question, what’s the business decision that you’re trying to make? That means from an internal perspective that we are fully immersed in their business, in their industry and in their strategic plan before designing, much less executing, on any research. Who do we work with? It’s a variety of clients across the US, including health systems like Ochsner Health System. We work with health providers like Florida Blue. We also have a significant group of technology and communications and entertainment clients, including Microsoft, Lumen, AT&T, Sling, and then also CPG and retail clients, think Smoothie King and Fastsigns. And then a small kind of foothold in the financial services sector.
Russel:
I love the science of behavioral economics. How people think is just a very interesting construct. We’re not as rational as we’d like to think we are. And it’s great that you’re out there doing the good work to figure out all those irrationalities as far as consumer and human behavior. Let’s go back in time for a little bit. What did you set out when you were starting your career to do and maybe a little bit about the path before you became agency owner?
Sondra:
Interestingly, I had no idea what market research was. I was on a trajectory to research and teach at an academic level, headed for a PhD program. In this very serendipitous moment, one of my fellow grad students mentioned that companies hire people like us, and what he implied by that is that we would get paid more if we worked in the corporate sector. Never having taken a business course or a marketing course in my academic career, I parked myself at Barnes and Noble for the better part of a week and read as many books on marketing, business and market research as I could and decided that this would be a much better fit for me then an academic career, and in large part because while academic research is extremely important for our collective body of knowledge, it’s very slow and very rigorous. I wanted something that was much more applicable to our everyday life. I ended up landing two opportunities straight after finishing my master’s degree. The rest is history. The only other thing that I would add is I’ve never looked back. I am so fortunate that I still absolutely love what I do after 30 years. I love research and I love impacting the trajectory of brands. It’s been a great ride as serendipitous as it started.
Russel:
Wonderful. Certainly glad to hear that. No regrets that you didn’t become Dr. Brown?
Sondra:
Nope, not at all.
Russel:
Or maybe you got your doctorate in a less official capacity of the school of hard knocks of running a business. Pretty much this has been your career, running this business, doing this type of work.
Sondra:
I started on the client side for about eight years after grad school, which was invaluable to me to get that client side experience before moving over to being a supplier of research. It helped me to understand why we’re doing research and how to ground those insights into application and use of that data.
Russel:
As you were starting out, what was that time period like, if nothing else even emotionally, were you fearful, were you concerned? Were you worried or were you, again, happy and ecstatic to be what you’re doing? What did that look like?
Sondra:
I would say the start of an MDRG was equally as serendipitous as the start of my career. I had six month old twins, and I was working and managing a consumer insights firm for a local health system. I got a call from a former colleague who asked if I wanted to take on a project for a local financial institution. It was an annual study that I was very familiar with, had run at a bank that I had worked at straight out of grad school. While the timing was absolutely ridiculous from a personal standpoint of having such young children, thought this would be a interesting way to start a company because this many years ago, it was a six figure contract. I put together a proposal and won that bid. Within two weeks was incorporated and starting this study and this annual project. From there quickly added two or three very large clients and that was the start of MDRG. I wasn’t looking for it. It fell in my lap, but it has been the best thing that has ever happened to me. I was willing to take the risk, which is part of what it takes to do something like this. Again, I haven’t looked back.
Russel:
Maybe even not a time for a lot of emotions in that, as you said, happened serendipitously on top of having twin boys. I imagine it was quite the whirlwind. How did you scale up from there? When did the transition become just you and the first couple of projects you mentioned working on to bringing people on? What was that process like?
Sondra:
I initially started the company out of a spare bedroom, but I quickly realized that wasn’t necessarily going to be sustainable, having young children and a nanny walking around the house. I got an office in a business incubator and with the addition of that second client, it was a large national utility company, I had to hire my first employee. It was more of kind of a lower level assistant, but within, I would say nine months, it was apparent to me that I needed to bring on another researcher. I will say the emotion for me was not so much starting the business. Was taking on employees and committing to salaries and realizing that I was responsible for these other humans and their welfare to a large extent, because I’ve never laid off an employee. I have always been very loyal and committed. That was a huge undertaking for me. That was probably where the real emotion came in.
Russel:
I think a lot of people speak to that, especially when they start to see that payroll number grow, they’re like, oh crap. Especially a lot of entrepreneurs are used to doing things on their own or having that ability, and at some point that becomes, you can’t just do it and make up the gaps, you have to rely on people. But then, as you said, you’re responsible for those. I think a lot of folks can empathize with that sentiment and feeling. Was there a moment you were worried if this was all going to work out or were you always fortunate enough to have enough clients, it was more about how do we nurture this team that you’re talking about building, on that side of things?
Sondra:
I realize this is not every entrepreneur’s story, but I’ve been very fortunate to have had a successful and profitable business from the get go. I will say, though, that I approached it for many years as a lifestyle business. Remember, I had no business background, I had no idea what I was doing in terms of starting or running a business, other than I knew and loved research, and I knew how to execute on research. There did become a point in time, and it was probably 15 years into the business, where I decided that I wanted to scale this. At that point, I had an opportunity to become part of this Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses Program. I leaned into that very heavily when I did that. From there I learned what it meant to scale and become an entrepreneur. There’s a funny story about the first day of that program, you have to get up and introduce yourself and introduce your company, tell a little bit about your story. I stood up and I said my name and I talked about MDRG. I said, so what I want to tell you is I have a successful business and I have no idea why. I am here to learn why, and I was not kidding. I had no idea. That program was the game changer for this company and for me as an entrepreneur. I learned what it meant to work on the business, not in the business, cause for all those years before I’ve been working in the business. I credit that program, what I call a practical MBA, with the trajectory that we’re on today. I’ve talked to a lot of people that kind of done the same program, 10,000 Small Businesses, and I haven’t met a person yet that didn’t speak well to that.
Russel:
Do you feel like that was more impactful for you going through that process, having had a longer experience in the business, or do you wish you would have done that right out the gate?
Sondra:
I don’t think I would have been ready for it out the gate. I think that I had to experience some of the challenges that go with trying to run a business, in that I couldn’t do it all on my own and I needed to bring on other leaders within the organization that brought a different type of expertise to our leadership equation. For me, I don’t think I would have been ready early on.
Russel:
Good insight and takeaway there. One of the things I’m curious about, change direction for a second, is I have to imagine how you approach your business has changed so dramatically from when you started, I think you said 1994, to where we’re at today. From technology to everything else, what has that been like?
Sondra:
Technology has been a game changer. When I talk about the company, if I’m pitching MDRG, I say that there were two major forces that have changed the trajectory of market research and MDRG. One is technology, for sure. Technology has changed the way that we collect data, it changes the way that we deliver reports. Not only has it allowed us to access different groups of people that we wouldn’t have been able to access, but it’s also brought down the price and speed of market research. It’s something that is more valuable and useful to decision making. I started my career when we were doing telephone sampling and door to door data collection. I can’t tell you the last time that we’ve conducted a research study where, first of all, never door to door anymore, but where we’ve even collected data on the phone. It’s very rare. Most of it is via internet panels and other types of sample delivery systems like that, but I’ve watched all of that evolve so that’s been the huge game changer. And then this whole notion that we talked about at the beginning of what do we know about consumer decision making coming out of behavioral economics. That was the second major change that has changed the trajectory of research. I think the other thing that has been apparent in my tenure, in the market research industry, and certainly as an agency owner is bringing on not just researchers to the team, but people who have client side experience, even people who have agency and consulting side experience. When I say agency, like advertising agencies and marketing agencies, because there is such a push to make sure that you’re not delivering data, but you’re delivering insights. Oftentimes what we talk about ourselves as, these days, is less of a market research firm and more of an insights consultancy. People don’t need to see all the data. It needs to be there as backup. What they want to know is, what’s the story that the data told that’s going to help me answer the questions that I’m trying to answer? Again, those questions that are going to help push their businesses forward. Thinking much more strategically these days than when I first started about how the data is going to be used and applied within the organization.
Russel:
We went on a similar journey, and a slightly different tangent. It’s not just, can we build a good website that’s effective, but can we make the experience of that process get the clients educated and bought into what that actually is, was maybe not more important than the net result, but more important in how much they enjoyed and would want to come back than, again, the result itself sometimes it seemed, which maybe sounds like, in a different realm, the same path you’ve been on.
Sondra:
Exactly, and I think you talked about the whole experience. That’s the other thing that has changed dramatically. Brands are competing these days less on brand image and awareness, those things are very important. But where they are competing and differentiating themselves is around the customer experience. That’s another change has been the focus of the work that we do around how do we enhance the experience for the end user?
Russel:
Which I have to imagine too plays so much more into that behavioral economics aspect of, experience is so much emotion driven. Added more variables to even how you approach the research.
Sondra:
Absolutely. We have lots of tools in our arsenal to get at emotion without asking direct questions. For example, if we’re testing a video and we want to understand not just the standard metrics that we would select in a standard, copy test type study, but we also want to understand emotion. What we can do is embed a tool into the survey so it’s seamless to the respondent, but using a webcam on their computer or their camera on their phone, we can measure the micro expression changes of their face as they are exposed to the video. Without asking them what their emotion is, we can map those changes to emotional changes so that, when refining an ad or a video, whatever the content might be, you can enhance the desired emotions and address the ones that are undesired and help create sort of a compelling story arc. That’s just an example of how we are collecting that type of emotion, but again, yes, it’s been a huge change.
Russel:
I probably have a billion more questions I’d want to ask, but as we start to wrap up here, I’ll just have to ask them the ones I’m most curious about. As someone that’s gone through the process of building and growing a team, I’m just curious, what’s your kind of pro tip for the listeners out there, something that’s been successful in that journey for you?
Sondra:
My pro tip would be that as an entrepreneur, you have to get to a point where you realize that you can’t do all things well, and so it’s important to bring on talent within your team that bring a different type of expertise to the organization that you may not have. It’s not a knock on your success or even your leadership, it’s rounding out the team to make sure that the collective we is successful. I think so many entrepreneurs, particularly at the beginning, think that they have to do it all and know it all, and it’s impossible. Knowing what you don’t know, gathering people around you that you trust to execute on those things is hugely important.
Russel:
That’s a great takeaway. One of the interesting things doing the work I’ve been doing is I do a lot of personality assessments with the agencies I work with, and one of the resounding things I’m a big fan of the Enneagram. I don’t know if you’re familiar with that.
Sondra:
Yes, I do.
Russel:
Okay. I’d almost be willing, I could guess your number, but the most fascinating thing is most entrepreneurs that I’ve dealt with are threes, which is the achiever, which, that’s how you come up in the world is being successful, taking responsibility, doing things on your own. At some point that very successful tool for you becomes a detriment almost when you’ve got to grow and scale your team, so that’s great advice. Thank you for sharing that. Are you in fact a three on the Enneagram?
Sondra:
I am.
Russel:
Yep. Not surprised at all. Where’s the future of MDRG going? If we’re round two of the podcast 10 years from now, what does that look like?
Sondra:
We are certainly on a growth trajectory, but we are also working toward rounding out this team. I talked about bringing on strategists, not to compete with agencies, but to ensure that the work we are doing is truly actionable. Bringing on and rounding out that strategy team, which is the activation component of research. I like to think that in 10 years, that will be fully ingrained into the organization. I like to think that we will be truly living into this notion that we are insights consultancy, not just a market research firm. That’s what I hope.
Russel:
I’m sure you will get there. Last big question for you, are entrepreneurs born or are they made?
Sondra:
That’s an interesting question. My thought is that entrepreneurs are born with some innate traits, like perseverance and calculated risk taking, even a willingness to tackle the unknown. However, at least from my experience, I was made into an entrepreneur and I would imagine that there’s many entrepreneurs that have a similar story, if they set out to solve for a problem or some situation that they want to solve for, and they have to learn the business of being an entrepreneur. For me it was definitely I learned it, but I am not going to ignore that there are certain character traits that set me up for success and I would imagine are common across all entrepreneurs.
Russel:
Couldn’t agree more. Fascinating answer. If people want to know more about MDRG, where can they go?
Sondra:
The first step, take a look at our website. It’s mdrginc.com. I know that it’s a tough to follow, so it’s the acronym for Market Dynamics Research Group Inc. dot com. You can also look me up on LinkedIn. I’m super active on LinkedIn, it’s a great way to connect. I will always respond to people if they DM me. I love talking to people about what they do, their challenges. It’s part of what I love about being a researcher and so I continue that with some of the relationships and connections I make through there.
Russel:
There you have it folks. No reason not to reach out and have a conversation with Sondra. I know you won’t regret it. Thank you so much for being on the show today, Sondra. It was great to hear your story and all your great insights over the course of time, and can’t wait to see what the future continues to hold for you. Thank you again for being on the show.
Sondra:
Thank you for having me.
We hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of An Agency Story podcast where we share real stories of marketing agency owners from around the world. Are you interested in being a guest on the show? Send an email to podcast@performancefaction.com. An Agency Story is brought to you by Performance Faction. Performance Faction offers services to help agency owners grow their business to 5 million dollars and more in revenue. To learn more, visit performancefaction.com.
Sondra:
I am an introvert by nature. I like going to work, I like putting my head down, I like getting the work done. About 15 years ago, we started focusing on culture within our firm. I hired a consultant, and after interviewing the team and interviewing me, and then prior to issuing his final report he asked me for a meeting. What I remember about that meeting is that he came to me and said, I need to say hello to people in the morning. He explained that when I walk past them without acknowledging their weekends, or just simply acknowledge that them and saying hello that they feel less than. And it was this lightbulb moment because in reality I thought, oh, if I interrupt them, it’s an intrusion that would take them away from their work, which would irritate me. He just shook his head at me and smiled. While that’s embarrassing and I look back on it, I think what was I thinking? It took bringing in a consultant to tell me that something as simple as acknowledging my team members and seeing them as individuals and applying that same level of curiosity to their lives that I do to my research participants is critical. It changed the dynamic of the team, and it sent me on this journey of seeking culture within the firm. That’s my embarrassing moment, but took away a great learning from it and it’s been a game changer for us.
Russel:
All right. So do you, in fact, say hi still to everyone?
Sondra:
I do. I ask about their weekends, their kids, all of those things.
Russel:
Fascinating. You paid a consultant to tell you to tell people hi. But it sounds like it’s worked out well for you, so sometimes it is the smallest things that make the biggest impact.
