Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Leah Hacker. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Leah, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What do you think Corporate America gets wrong in your industry? Any stories or anecdotes that illustrate why this matters?
As a research and strategy firm, Rebel works in the industry of consumer insights. At a high level, Corporate America can agree that consumer insights are important. However, organizations often fail to utilize research effectively. When it comes to research, businesses make critical missteps.
First, when business leaders want to move fast—they tend to believe they can cut corners on research. It’s common to hear the pushback that research takes too long, costs too much, and will delay the timeline for the goal. If that’s your experience with research, then you have the wrong research partner. Skipping the research upfront to define the audience, the pain points, and value propositions guarantees you’re going to spend the time and money on the backend of your timeline to define those things—only by then it cost more time and money. Estimates suggest that it can cost companies 100% more time and money to retrofit a brand experience or product once it hits the market.
Second, businesses often rely on research to validate their preexisting ideas. Unfortunately, in today’s world, finding a group of people who will agree with you doesn’t require much effort. But, when research is designed to validate, you are missing the value research delivers to the project. Even more than that, the resulting data won’t scale or create opportunity. The result is businesses are left with a narrow idea that is not representative of the real world they are operating in—and zero direction of how to move forward.
Both of these assumptions and resulting decisions can be avoided when companies understand how to leverage insights to fuel and iterate innovation.
Leah, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
Rebel is a research and strategy firm that helps brands create standout experiences that resonate. We’re rewriting the rules when creating the new. Instead of guesswork that stalls out, we leverage customer insights to define the problem and understand the needs—then we translate those insights into solutions that engage, convert, and scale. The result? Fast-tracked product-market fit, designed to move your brand from chasing the competition to leading it.
Under our roof, we answer a number of critical business questions with custom consumer research, such as: who is our target audience?, what’s our roadmap forward?, how do we differentiate from our competitors?, how does our brand stack up against our competitors?, how do we price our products?, etc. —the type of questions that are mission critical to a business moving forward in saturated markets. And today, every market is saturated.
Personally, my background is studying human behavior. Why people do what they do. My work prior to innovation in business was focused on setting up systems that gave way to success. My focus was understanding how to set up an ecosystem that facilitates the desired behavior and response, and which behavior mechanisms we can encourage and/or discourage through the design of the ecosystem.
These deep behavior and psychology foundations are the foundation of Rebel and is what makes the strategy we create so actionable.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
You know, it’s funny. Outside of being a parent or partner, being the CEO of a small business is one of the most personally refining roles of my life. It is a role that requires the best of me at the table. Those habits that need to be unlearned are spotlighted and often keep you from moving forward.
When I opened Rebel’s door, we took off at lightning speed. We grew so fast. By six months, we were a solid team of six on the payroll. We were 100% bootstrapped, no board, no investors. In the first year of growth, I think I walked around in shock. And, the growth kept coming. The thing is, when life happens at the extremes—good or bad—your coping mechanisms—good or bad—come alive.
As we were working double time to build an infrastructure that scales while moving Mach two with our hair on fire, I started to get small. I stopped taking up space. I stopped giving myself space to think about the future—because I was in a head-down, move-forward mode. The problem is that when I “get small,”—I stop actually moving forward. I start people pleasing. I begin to resort to a knee-jerk reaction of making things easier for everyone around me at the expense of myself. I start second-guessing myself and belaboring details. I’m not an effective leader when I play small.
But, in order for me to unlearn this behavior—I had to figure out what was triggering it. It wasn’t moving fast, I knew I could run. It wasn’t the work, I loved work. I was in full-on survival mode. It took me a minute to figure out that the white space on my calendar—the boundaries and my ability to speak my mind—brought freedom and life. This allowed me to find my voice and learn the very important lesson of boundaries. And, I unlearned that the knee jerk reaction of making things easier for everyone around me at my expense is damaging not only to me but also to what I’m creating. Boundaries ensure that I’m bringing my best to the table and giving the most to those in my charge. Best lesson ever.
How do you keep in touch with clients and foster brand loyalty?
Our clients are our favorite people. And we make sure we tell them. This spirit of reciprocity was intentionally designed in Rebel’s culture. Because I believe we should be more vocal about the people we appreciate in all capacities of our life. I’m a big believer that in order to build brand loyalty, you must first build brand trust. To build trust, we practice consistency—in our work, our deliverables, and the way we show up.
We take our customer experience incredibly seriously. This means it’s not just my job to ensure an exceptional customer experience—it’s every single person’s job. It’s not just my job to follow up, or provide clear next steps, or ensure the client has all the information needed to be successful. Because our clients receive a similar experience with every Rebel they interact with—it’s easy to build trust.
In addition, we lead our client relationships with empathy. Our clients are doing what feels like the impossible—they are solving big challenges or pushing change across their organization. We are a team that leans in and works to create strategies that really deliver on the business goals—making the impossible possible. Empathy is a huge part of understanding which artifacts deliver value, how the data is communicated, and which solutions are the most effective for the specific client we’re working with. In action, this not only builds trust but also fosters brand loyalty.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.rebel-co.com/
- Instagram: @rebel_andco
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leahhacker/