I'm excited to finally share my interview with Oliver Banks! Oliver, a retail transformation expert, shares some great insights on navigating change and transforming your business.

Here are 3 takeaways from our conversation:

💡 Personal branding is key: Your personal brand exists in the minds of your target audience, and associating with certain people can enhance it. Your brand capital is a strong marketing and referral tool, and your potential competitors will have to neutralise it in their pitches.

💡 Start before you're ready: Don't wait for the perfect plan before taking action. Launching something like a podcast or YouTube channel generally receives positive feedback, and managing expectations is key. Weak growth at the beginning is normal, and there's a process in podcast growth that people don't understand.

💡 Content is SO important: Content generation offers more room for error than other types of ventures, and it can be a mix of inbound and outbound sales tactics. Referrals are important, but content can also help maintain relationships with past clients or contacts.

About Oliver Banks

Oliver Banks is the founder of retail consultancy OB&Co, helping advise and support retail leaders to drive transformation and realise their strategies and goals. With a background in engineering and mixology, he blends a logical, systematic approach with energy and left-field thinking. His podcast, The Retail Transformation Show, consistently lists as the #1 UK retail podcast and among the top retail podcasts in the world. He hosts his own physical and virtual events and speaks to teach and inspire retailers to successfully navigate transformation. Oliver is recognised as one of the top retail influencers in the world.

https://obandco.uk

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Welcome to.

Amplify.

The personal brand entrepreneur show.

Today on the show.

Bob is speaking with Oliver Banks.

The fact that so many of these digital tools now allow anyone to jump in and get started. You could open up a new e-commerce store this afternoon. You could start a podcast this afternoon. Launch a YouTube channel this afternoon, whatever. And I think that offers huge freedom. But like you say, if you succumb to the fear of failure and redicule, then it's never going to get off the ground.

Hi there and welcome back to the Personal Brand Business Show. My name's Bob gentle, and every week I speak with incredible people who share their secrets to building, marketing and monetizing your expertise and intentionally growing a unique personal brand and the mindset you need for your business to grow and thrive. If you're new to the show, then while you still have your device in your hand and take a second to subscribe. And if you're on YouTube, you could also like the video while you're there. It won't hurt. It will really make my day. And if you are a regular listener, then please share this show with just one person. It's the very best way you can help the show grow and help me reach more people. And again, if you are watching on YouTube, like and subscribe. And a comment will also help the algorithm. So this is an interview I've been trying to get for a long time. Oliver Banks, welcome to the show. There's so many questions I have.

Thank you so much. It is a long time coming, but I can't wait. I'm going to jump into loads of fantastic topics, I'm sure.

One of the reasons I'm really excited about speaking to you is I speak to lots of what I would call internet people and authors of marketing books and things like that. But a lot of my clients are not that. A lot of my clients are mainstream business owners, consultants and coaches who aren't from Internet land or they don't have a digital marketing background. And you're one of a very few guests who's really excelling in what I would call a mainstream consulting business. You don't come from Internet land as such, do you?

No, not at all, really, I would say. So very much focused on consulting in, I suppose, a classic sense of the word, really diving into a client's challenges. The closest I get to internet land is e-commerce because I focus in on retail and retail transformation and change. And it's a fantastic business to be in. It's something that I was in in a corporate job before setting up my own company back in 2015. And I love the industry, the industry of retail, the industry of shopping as well. It's so deep, actually quite complex as well, which is entertaining for someone like myself.

Let's maybe begin with the work that you do with clients. Retail transformation is almost, you could say it's quite a vague description because retail, by definition, is constantly in flux. It's constantly transforming. Yes. Especially, well, I think that's not even true. I'm just thinking back from when I was a kid in the late 70s through until now, it's been a constant process of transformation and evolution. Yes. What's your role within that process?

Let's go back to the retail transformation is quite broad. And absolutely, yes, it is. There is so much that I get involved with clients. I work with large retailers, big high street names that I'm sure listeners will have heard of and come across and maybe even bought from as well. And I suppose my focus is not so much on the what of change and transformation. So I don't specialize in, let's say, CRM systems or warehouse processes or whatever, but very much on the how. So working really closely with the organization, making sure that you've got the right aspects of collaboration, for example, across these big, complex corporations that really ultimately focus in and use the expertise that is in and inherent within the business to drive transformation.

I think one of the things I'm always curious about in your business is what is the catalyst in an organization that leads them to hire somebody like you? Because like I said, change is a constant in these organizations. So something must happen in an organization in order for them to decide, Okay, we need to become more intentional about this specific change.

Absolutely. As you said, retail is continually changing. I suppose for starters, there are two types of retail organizations, very broadly. There's those that recognise the change and decide to do something intentional about it, and those that don't. I'm sure we can all think of examples of these companies that have unfortunately gone by the wayside and they have not been able to change and transform and stay relevant. So let's stay with that first group of companies. There could be any number of different challenges that the business is facing. It could be facing, for example, performance issues. So sales lower than target, particular KPIs and metrics not hitting expectations, for example. Or there could be opportunities, positive growth opportunities of we see this particular niche and we want to go after that. So with both of those, there is an element of we've got to do something differently, right? Whether it is maintaining the ground or gaining new ground. And I suppose I come in when a retailer recognizes that we want to do something differently, but A, we don't have the bandwidth or the capability in house, particularly as change and transformation is not the same as, shall we say, day job.

You could be a fantastic merchandiser or supply chain expert, and that's brilliant, but it's not the same as being a transformation expert as well. So it's recognising that actually, we need some help to go about the journey of change and the journey of transformation rather than just trying to cobble our way through. There's so much volatility in the world, as I'm sure we all know, that we're on relatively thin ice as businesses now. We do not have the luxury of lots of trial and error. Trial is absolutely great, but you've got to get the right balance of success as well because unfortunately, we don't have the luxury of oodles of time and cash reserves, et cetera.

One of the reasons I wanted to speak to you is there are lots of consultants out there, many, many of them. I speak to them all the time. They've become accustomed to doing business in a particular way. They maybe go to networking groups or they try and build a little bit of a presence on social media. But it's a hamster wheel that is very difficult to escape. And then there's you who is consistently visible, consistently moving forward, consistently, quite obviously doing something different. And I know what all the moving parts are there to an extent, and I can explain it to people sometimes, but they think this is just Bob making stuff up. Now, I guess what I would like to hear from you is how intentional has that doing things differently? And we'll get into what you do from a sales and a marketing perspective in a minute. But you clearly could see all these traditional routes to market and decided to do something different. What did that process look like for you?

So there's a lot of experimentation that I ended up going through. I remember probably quite early on in my own business, probably 2016, probably, starting to do webinars, for example. And I thought, This sounds great. Let's do a webinar. And running into roadblocks where with Zoom as my platform, it was just blocked by corporate accounts because it's this company called Zoom that we've never heard of. Why are we going to let our users access this to be able to stream video? Why would we want to do that? Actually, it was too early for Web of Dance, right? But I wouldn't have recognized that without trying. And so I've tried several different experiments. Some worked, some didn't. The podcast, my podcast, The Retail transformation Show, which we set up at the same time as this podcast, has been a fantastic experiment that very much was, I want to do something differently. What do I enjoy? What would I value? I enjoy listening to podcasts. So therefore, why don't I do a podcast and see if that works as well? And it has worked well and it's been fantastic. And it's grown me, it's grown my brand, my awareness, my reputation, and done some fantastic things as well.

But still, there's an element of experimentation and trying new things as well. I'm quite naturally innovative, I suppose. So let's go for an example. Right at the beginning of COVID time, I decided to put on a virtual event. Not only nine days into our UK lockdown, I hosted a huge virtual event and was first mover in that place and still get lots of people recognising that actually there was still the cream of the crop for all the other virtual events and aspects like that that they've been to since. And that makes me proud. And I've actually run three of my virtual events now. Each one I've been experimenting and trying different things along the way, which is good. I'm going to be continuing to try and experiment new things with ongoing virtual events now as well.

With these experiments, with experimentation comes risk. A lot of people, when you look at potentially putting on virtual events and starting a podcast, they like the idea on the one hand, but then there's this fear of ridiculous and what happens if it goes wrong on the other hand. I would say a lot of people spend so much time listening to the negative that they never take action and enjoy the positive? Definitely. What's been your experience around that?

It's a great question. I think I've been at times, quite hesitant to do things and have wanted to get the right planning. The podcast is a good example. I spent best part of the year trying to plan and also a little bit of procrastinating in there, I'm sure, but making sure that I've got a clear view of what it is, what it is not, how am I going to take it and progress it from episode one, so to speak. And I think, as I was saying earlier, you don't have a huge amount of room for errors. I think with content generation is actually probably a little bit more room because you can do aspects like podcasts and even webinars and stuff relatively low cost. I love the fact that so many of these digital tools now allow anyone to jump in and get started. You could open up a new e-commerce store this afternoon. You could start a podcast this afternoon. Launch a YouTube channel this afternoon, whatever. And I think that offers huge freedom. But like you say, if you succumb to the fear of failure and ridicule, then it's never going to get off the ground.

Part of that is just about being brave and courageous. I think you've got to just jump in. I have very rarely seen someone launch something like a podcast or a YouTube channel where you just think, This is awful. Don't do this ever again. Because generally, people are sensible and people do have good experience and they want to share that experience and the intentions are right as well. So I think, recognize what is it you're trying to do? What is the value that you can give to your audience, whoever that audience is, whatever niche you focus in on, and just get started. And my guess is the feedback will come back really positive. And you've got to be honest with what expectations you can prepare for. Is Episode 1 of your podcast going to launch a million downloads? Probably not. I saw really, for the first probably three months of the podcast, was really quite flat. It's me testing it was working. And then suddenly you generate buzz and it would have been easy to stop after two months and think, Oh, there's not that many listeners. Never mind. But then you never get to the scale.

I think it's very interesting because I help a lot of clients. It's just part of the ecosystem of what I do, launch podcasts. And to see how podcasts grow is really interesting. Really weak growth at the beginning is normal, but there's a process that happens in podcast growth that people don't really understand. And time is such an important factor in that process. I'm not going to bore anybody with it just now. Something I absolutely recognize is this waiting for the perfect plan before taking action. Like you, I had my podcast microphone for probably three years before I did any interview. And what I discovered was, and I guess... So you know Philip Van Duzan? Yeah. He's one of my.

First podcast guest.

I remember speaking to him. And when it was about video marketing, or YouTube in particular, video content. But the same principle holds true for podcasting. He said, If you want to be a great tennis player, you can watch people play tennis, you can read about playing tennis, you can take courses, you can hire a coach, you can buy all the best equipment. But until you start playing tennis, you'll never be a great tennis player. And that for me was so applicable in the podcasting space.

But.

There's another really fundamental principle that is that if you want to be good at anything, you have to embrace sucking at it first.

That's the point.

Yes, definitely. And if you can allow yourself the humility to approach your podcast as a service and not as a platform to show off, that makes it so much easier.

Yeah, very much so. And I think the other thing to that as well, think of it as a service to one individual person, right? Do you need to have the proverbial million downloads and subscribers? No, you don't. Actually, depending on your niche, if I had a podcast that went to one perfect, ideal client, that would be a really big success. If it was just one person that was listening and it was the right person, that would be fantastic. And same with YouTube or any other content. If you get the right people and you're delivering the right value to that, you don't need to have the bucket loads of showing off stats and analysis, et cetera.

Well, I think this is an important question because I am fairly certain that the value of your podcast to you is way beyond the people who actually listen to it. How would you describe the value that the podcast has to you? Because I think for the listener who is you of yesterday, this is actually the most important thing. It's the most important thing most people don't understand about podcasting.

The value is branding, right? Personal branding and reputation. I've become known as the retail transformation guy. I've actually been called the Retail transformation King. And that would not have happened if I had not secured those two words with aspects like the Retail transformation Show and my virtual event, Retail transformation Live. And I think it just allows you to go in and stay focused, much better than, say, calling it the Oliver Banks Show, which could be a bit, what's that about? Particularly unless you're a celebrity. But it allows you to position yourself as a specialist on a particular topic. I don't like to use the word expert. Expert is what other people W. But if you position yourself as a specialist, they're more likely to think of you like an expert.

And is your show largely solo content?

I go for about 50-50 . Half are guest interviews with a huge selection of different people that either play in or around the retail industry, as well as a few more abstract guests as well. We've had, for example, a Spiderman comic book writer as one of the guests, which has been fantastic. And then the other half are solo shows where it's me getting into a particular challenge, a particular topic, and understanding what's going on, supplementing, I suppose, my own thoughts with new research, building out a bit of a framework, a bit of a structure to how everything fits together. And that has been an enormously useful thinking tool for myself. As you said, retail is big and broad, and there's so many different topics you could dive into. Actually, how do they all fit together and knit together neatly? It's a challenge that I enjoy on a weekly basis.

I'm leading with this question a little bit, and I apologise to the listener for this, but I don't apologise because it's important. I'm curious to know what the compound effect of you speaking to retail experts from around the world week after week, month after month, year after year, what differences does that had on your career and your life? Has that had an impact?

I've met some fantastic people that, frankly, I would never have expected to have met in the past. It's allowed me to gain recognition as well from them and from a huge number of other people as well. One of the elements, Bob, that I love is going to an event and having lots of different people coming up and saying, Are you all over. I listened to your show. It's fantastic. Just engaging in conversation with people I know, people I don't know as well. And it's just a fantastic, I suppose, platform to encourage conversations and to meet new people, frankly, which, like I say, there have been some amazing people that I would never have connected with if it wasn't for the podcast.

I think the reason I was asking that question, and I think you're being a little modest, is we're judged by the company we keep a lot of the time. People say that a brand is what people say about you when you're not in the room, and that's equally true of a personal brand. A personal brand is what people say about you when you're not in the room. But that conversation doesn't have to be between different people. It can be the internal dialogue in somebody else's head. And you exist in the minds of your target audience, but within the context of the people that you're known to associate with. And what I think you enjoy as a result of that that other retail experts, who maybe know what you know, but they're not the Oliver Banks from retail transformation and fame. When somebody's thinking, Who are we going to get to help us? They're going to have to eliminate you before they choose somebody else. And that puts you in an incredibly strong position from a marketing perspective, from a referral perspective, in so many different ways. Your brand capital is something that all your potential competitors are going to have to try and neutralise in their pitches.

You don't even need to do that, which is, for me, from a positioning perspective, it's golden.

Yes, very true. Very true. There's that term of people do business with people, right? And positioning myself as an approachable person, whether you've listened to all of the podcast episodes or one or even none, you're still recognized, actually. I'm a person, I've got lots of ideas which I'm willing to put out in the world. And that opens doors for sure.

Have you ever experienced any negative blowback to the work that you do around personal branding?

Not so much negative. In terms of social media playground, LinkedIn is where I live. And generally, people are nice on LinkedIn, I would say. It's not like on other social media platforms where you get people being a bit arsy. So in that respect, it's been fine. Probably one of the most challenging areas is given my prolific element around content for podcasts and virtual events and stuff, just keeping it in mind that first and foremost, I'm a consultant because it's easy that, Oh, you're a podcaster, right? Well, actually, no, I'm a consultant that does podcasting rather than a podcaster first and foremost. I've very intentionally kept the podcast as a non monetized marketing channel, I suppose we could say. And so if I become just a podcaster, I get very poor very quickly.

I think that's actually a really important point that it's very easy for people to assume that you're inaccessible as a podcaster. You can be a victim, potentially, of your own success and people think, Well, he must be far too expensive. We could never afford him. Or, He won't be available because he's so high profile. So making sure that you consistently communicate how people can engage with you is really, really important.

Yes. It's a great opportunity to reiterate the value that you can provide on a regular basis. For a long time, I didn't really touch on that in the podcast. It was like, Here's the podcast episode. And now I make much more of a concern effort to say, Right, here's who I am. Here's what I do and how I can help. So I position that into every episode, for example.

I guess one other thing I'm curious around your personal branding work in particular is family and friends. Have you had any experience where people make fun of you in the pub or anything like that?

No.

The reason I ask is I think...

Maybe I need to get out to the pub more.

I think the reason I asked this question is I'm putting myself in the mind of somebody who's looking at all their bikes and thinking, Maybe I could try something like that. I think the irrational worries that there are around personal visibility and personal branding are endless. But I think what you're demonstrating is that the rewards are extraordinary.

Just picking on that point, I would probably suggest if you are friends with people in particular that you think actually are going to pick you up and make, not just little jokes about it, but actually proper bullying, essentially, then you're probably hanging around with the wrong people, I would suggest. And if they're if that toxic group of people is holding you back, that's no good for anyone, right? It's no good for them. It's no good for you, clearly either. So I might suggest you might move to a different table at the park.

Absolutely. Now, I know you're writing a book at the moment.

I am, yes.

Driving Retail Transformation. I saw the cover of it on LinkedIn, or the internal cover. How far through that are you and what's that been like?

So the manuscript, the words are complete. So it's the longest word document I've ever written. And it's a playbook for how to lead and navigate through the challenging and complex journey of change, really to help retail leaders tackle this big challenge that is in front of them, the changing retail landscape and how you go about evolving a company. And that has been a fantastic process. So I've been really quite heads down on it for the first half of 2023. And then the second half of 2023 is turning that work document into a full book. So working with my publisher to get that out and it will be out in early 2024. But I have loved every moment of this process. Similar to the podcast, I've been thinking about it for quite a while.

I've.

Been doing mind maps and scribbling stuff down. And for a long time, it didn't quite feel right. It was like, I can't quite work out what the key idea is, or there's too many different random elements. And actually that now in hindsight was all part of the process, right? That was part of the process of working out how does this all fit together? What is the book? What is a relevant thing? In the moment, I was being a little bit hard on myself, to be honest. Come on, you got to get writing, right? Open up a new word document and just get onto it. But that thinking has really... I've loved every moment of the thinking. It's really developed my own ideas and concepts and tools and how I go about doing my work as well.

It's really interesting knowing quite a lot of people watching them write books and big creative projects of all different kinds. Something that's really become clear to me is that big ideas don't come finished. Big ideas need time and big ideas need space. And the reason a lot of people never get to writing a book is because they never give it a space to live and let it slowly come into the world, and they never give it time to grow and time to evolve. Both of those things are really important.

Yeah. And the concept of writing a book in its most basic sense is really quite simple. Open up a word doc, tap, tap, tap. 50 odd thousand words later, you're done. But actually that thinking to get this big idea ready is what's most valuable. And it takes time. Like you say, it doesn't just pop into your head. At the end, a piece of content, the scale of a book, you could write a social media post, for example, or even a blog post on an idea that just popped into your head. The depth that is needed for a book is on a whole another level.

One question I would like to ask you, because the answer for this is always interesting, it really comes back to sales and sales process and how opportunity comes to you. Opportunity can come to us through outbound sales knocking outdoors. It can come through inbound inquiries, through content or search. It can come through ads and it can come through relationship. And in most people's businesses, there's a little bit of a mix, but there's an obvious dominance happening. What does that look like for you?

I think fairly naturally, the content side is quite important, and that drives a lot of inbound conversations. The type of work that I sell is not go to this website and click the Buy Now button. It takes time to develop an individual lead and get to know both one person but also the wider organization as well. A lot of sales tactics talk about who's the decision maker. But actually, often, particularly for selling to big companies, there are many decision makers that all must play into it, different parts. Yes, of course, it's great to have a champion that is there to be your voice in the boardroom, so to speak. But everyone wants to play a part and it's the right thing to do to get to know an organization and for them to get to know me, for example. And I think therefore, it is a bit of a mix. I don't do much advertising, if I'm honest.

I wouldn't have expected you to.

No. Because of that it's not a one click. I couldn't run, let's say, Facebook ads and measure a conversion rate because it just doesn't work like that for me or for those that are running, should we say, more traditional, non internet businesses. I think there's a bit of a mix. If I'm honest, it ebbs and flows, right? So there are times where I think I need to step on it a bit and do more outbound. And there are times where there's loads of inbound as well.

I'm glad that that was the answer because what you've illustrated there is the ROI of the content. Because most consultants listening to this show, if they haven't been content marketing and really leaning into the personal brand, the answer would have been referrals. That's the normal answer you would expect from a consultant. And I'm pretty sure you get referral and relationship opportunity as well. But that isn't dominating. It tells me that you have diversity of opportunity, which most people don't.

Yeah, absolutely. And just on the referral side, referrals are absolutely important. But actually, what content can really help us do is allow that relationship that you may have not worked with someone for even several years, right? But by absorbing content and just seeing the different points of view, etc, that individual is still ready to refer you, maybe years later when there'll be plenty of other people. If you sit and do nothing, it's very easy for that brand of yours, relatively small if you're doing nothing, to just get forgotten about. And the referral goes to the next person who's been more recently in touch with a contact. And I think that content side just allows you to stay front of mind for much longer and actually continue to build that relationship as well.

I think you're right. You're not just front of mind, but you're front of mind and increasingly influential instead of front of mind falling into hindbrain and increasingly diminishing in irrelevance. That's a really useful picture. Oliver, I am aware that I have been taking a lot of your time today. I should probably bring things to a close, but I need to remember to ask you, what's one thing you do now that you wish you'd started five years ago?

Starting the podcast, I have to say, would be the number one thing that... Five years ago, I hadn't actually started the podcast yet, but was in that planning stage. Actually, in hindsight, I would have pressed that go button a lot earlier just getting started. You can evolve an idea as it goes. That has built my confidence as an individual and allowed me to get on to speaking and running my own events, ultimately becoming an author when I'm not being so bashful. I'm one of the world's leading retail influencers, and that would never have happened without starting the podcast. So that absolutely is the thing that I would have done five years ago.

I think just being able to say one of the world's top 100 retail influencers and keep a straight face is extremely powerful because there is a truth to it. And yeah, there might be people out there listening who know more about retail transformation than all of our banks, but nobody knows about them. Yes, very true.

Oliver, you have been awesome. If people want to connect with you, if they want to go deeper with you, how can they find you? And you like LinkedIn, obviously, but what would you like people to do next?

Linkedin is the best place to reach out to me. I'm Oliver Banks. You can see me. I've got a little green circle around my head, which is not to be confused with the hiring or open to work or whatever it is that LinkedIn in particular. So LinkedIn is absolutely the best place to reach out. I do have a briefing as well, a Retail transformation briefing, which is my email newsletter, which gives you a low down as to how the retail industry is evolving every single week. So if people want to reach out on LinkedIn or sign up at obandco. Uk briefing, then those are the best two options.

I will put links in the show notes. And if there's any consultants listening, thinking, I would like to maybe have a look at what Oliver is doing and see what I could do. Just type retail transformation into Apple podcast and you're pretty much number one. It's an honour. Oliver, that's been awesome. Thank you so much for your time. I've had a great time. It's nice to finally catch up with you after.

This pandemic nonsense. It is, absolutely. It's been a fantastic conversation. Thank you so much for inviting me on.

You are very welcome.