Unveiling the Human-Centric Research Revolution with GoodQues

In this episode of the CEO Series, Lenny Murphy hosts Holland Martini and Maria Vorovich, the brains behind GoodQues.

Together, they share the journey of founding their company in 2019, blending Holland's research expertise with Maria Vorovich's creative flair. Holland, as Chief Insights Officer, and Maria Vorovich, as Chief Strategy Officer, discuss their "human-first" research approach, prioritizing respondent comfort and authenticity. They showcase innovative methods like integrating meditation into surveys and creating genuine environments for qualitative studies. The duo also highlights their use of technology, employing tools like rap cartoon therapy and AI algorithms to enhance objectivity. Despite industry trends towards speed, they emphasize a commitment to quality and human-centric values. Looking ahead, Holland predicts a resurgence of qualitative research and a focus on bias reduction.

They emphasize their dedication to client relationships and maintaining high standards. As the episode concludes, Lenny thanks the guests and invites listeners to connect with GoodQues. Holland and Maria shed light on the evolving research landscape, emphasizing the importance of the human experience in data insights.

Transcript

Leonard Murphy: Hello everybody. It's Lenny Murphy with another edition of the CEO series. And today. I am joined by Holland and Maria from GoodQues. Holly, Maria. Welcome.

Holland Martini: Nice to be here. Thank you, Lenny.

Leonard Murphy: Well, let's see if you think that when we're done but I appreciate the positivity going in. So why don't you tell our audience a little bit about yourselves and then we'll get into the business. Holland since I see you, to my left. Why don't we start with you? And then we'll go to you, Maria.

Holland Martini: Perfect. Yeah, so I'm the chief insights officer of GoodQues and one of the co-founders, I'll give you a little personal background since we're gonna go into the business live in Brooklyn, mom to a 10 month old, lifelong researcher. So it's my whole career. I think in numbers, I think very linearly. And yeah, that's just the brief version of who I am and I'll pass it to Maria since she's next.

Maria Vorovich: Wonderful. Thank you for having us Lenny. I'm Maria Vorovich and the chief strategy officer. I'll go the personal route as well. Since Holland went that route and I'm a lifelong New Yorker but currently living in Colorado. I'm an immigrant from Belarus, Ukraine so we can talk about that as well. I also have a 10 month old, Holland and I had a baby two days apart which is a fun little fact and otherwise, I'm actually a creative through and through I went to art school my whole life. I actually never step foot into research until we started GoodQues. So I always find that to be a very fun fact being a co-founder of a research company. So that's a little bit about me.

Leonard Murphy: Most people in research industry tend to fall into it, Maria. So, that's not although so first question will be kind of what's the origin story of the business, but I please do touch on how did you manage building a business while both having children at the same time? So, tell me the origin story.

Holland Martini: Yeah, so I'll start with the origin story. And like I said, I'll try to keep this brief as well. I think what Maria just ended with is kind of what our origin story was. She was the receiver of research. She was Chief strategy officer at a company and she often was receiving research and didn't know what to do with it wasn't inspired by it. At the same time, I was the research giver. And the researcher so I'll admit it a lot of the times the research that you do is so focused on numbers and getting the answer to the question and not actually inspiring people with the answer to the question and I think the two of us combined realize that there was a huge missing gap in the research world, which was how do we make research more inspiring and we really landed on, we have to make research feel human. We have to make it feel like people really get to know someone in the audience through the research and having two different backgrounds. I think we joke around that she has spaghetti brain and I have waffle brain. I see things in kind of a certain format and very linearly and she's able to take two different points and put them together and so between the two of us trying to focus on how do we make research that's really rigorous and really still follows the traditional norms of research when it comes to numbers that are predictive while still making it creative and exciting like spaghetti? And so yeah, that's that. We launched in 2019 and I think we really hit a white space when we launched. We immediately picked up big clients like PepsiCo and TikTok and the rest is history.

Leonard Murphy: Wow, and the shift that happened in 2020 of oh crap, we need to understand people in a very different way because of the dynamic change. So you, as my dad would say, you stepped in crap that came out smelling like a rose, so alright.

Holland Martini: Yes. yeah.

Leonard Murphy: Very cool. Maria, would you add anything to the origin story? 

Maria Vorovich: No, I think Holland captured it perfectly.

Leonard Murphy: Okay, I expect as business partners you experience that dynamic a lot right of the playing off each other. Alright, so you gave a hint of this but what really does make you different from everyone else? What is that USP that is specific to GoodQues that you've created in the business.

Maria Vorovich: So I think it does start with the origin story of being able to take, as Holland put it, really really well the waffle brain in the spaghetti brain, right, taking the science and the art. But, what that's turned into what we've actually formalized into a proprietary methodology is what we call human first research and effectively what that means is we are absolutely obsessed with the respondent and with our client. So it's on two sides of the spectrum when we think about the respondent, for us, it's not about research as a means to an end the way it is with everyone else right you buy respondents their commodity right? You just want the data out of them. For us, we think about the respondents truliest s people and we think about what do they need from an experience perspective to feel comfortable to feel that they can open up to us and give us their authenticity and we feel that that's an honor and we think about that in quantitative as much as we think about it in qualitative. Two quick examples, in quantitative, we often integrate meditation into our surveys because we found that just 60 seconds of a breathing exercise before you go into a survey makes you feel three times more calm and 50% more thoughtful in your responses. So wow, right if you think about the person just a little bit that impact on your data. And then from a qualitative perspective, just a quick example, you know say we're testing product, we recently testing a liquid for a taste test and instead of putting people in this, room that has the two-way mirrors, the fluorescent lighting, the day old sandwiches. We actually put people in a bar at happy hour because it was a spirits company, because we said if you're going to be tasting alcohol, you probably shouldn't be doing it at 11 am with a bunch of nerdy researchers watching you from behind a mirror, right? So we created an authentic environment and we got much more authentic data as a result.

Leonard Murphy: Wow, and a lot more fun across the board for everybody then. So, looking at your website before I also noticed that you've leaned into things like gamification, etc., etc. So, certainly get that thematically this focus on the respondent experience. Are there things that you have done? That from a technological because I hear, again, gamification I think that there is a specific form factor. Talk a little bit about that, how you explore different kind of new technologies to help enable this vision of respondent first and equals better data. Whoever wants to tag it. 

Holland Martini: Yeah, I can take that one. So in front in terms of Technology, we're not creating technology, but what we're doing is we're utilizing different platforms might be used for things outside of research for research. So one example, and I'll have Maria chime in here too because she's a little bit closer to it, is actually utilizing cartoon therapy. So, from all of history a lot of times cartoon therapy has been used as a way to get people to really put themselves into the mindset of where they were at a moment when we're trying to help them recall something and oftentimes within our research right? We're trying to recall a product experience or just an experience in general, For healthcare in particular, we are having people recall their time at a doctor's office. There's a fascinating technology that actually allows people to build cartoons. So, quite literally, think about gamification all the way from the background the amount of different boxes that there are the people, the clothing, if there's a tree in the scenery, if there's a bird, if there's other people and so that's an example of technology that we've used to actually have people go back and recreate their environment and it's much more nuance and much more thoughtful than just a typical in-depth discussion an IDI, if you will. So, that's an example of just a technology out there that exists that we use. I know that you're gonna ask a question on AI so I might as well touch on it here a little bit as well. 

Leonard Murphy: Yeah, go ahead.

Holland Martini: We also do utilize AI I think we have a very strong POV on AI and I'll be brief with it. But I think AI is great. Let's date AI, not marry it is my in a sentence and so oftentimes we'll utilize different technological AI platforms to help us see what's truly objective in our research. So we're all biased right we might do a research on chips and say, people really like chips because they're crunchy another researcher might be like people really like chips because they like to put them in a sandwich and I'm sure everyone's saying those things but we hear what's most relevant to us. And when we partner with AI tools we can actually see objectively what the most common themes are. So that's just too small examples of where technology has played a role in what is traditionally more human first research. If that answers your question.

Leonard Murphy: It does and I wish we had more time because there's a lot of places to go with that. Let's date but not get married, but we'll set that. for the moment, it's a great. I'm gonna steal that going forward. 

Holland Martini: Go for it.

Leonard Murphy: So describe your perfect client and use case. Why do folks come to you specifically? Besides just being awesome, right?

Maria Vorovich: Yeah, I would definitely say awesome. We're definitely fun in the sense of every company says that their true partner and we really are a true partner. We're not afraid to tell our client if we think that they're misstepping, if they're doing something wrong. So in that way we have great relationships with our clients and in terms of a perfect client, I think it's anyone that really is craving to understand their audience as people and I think that's a wide range of projects right I need to understand my segmentation and personas and who my ideal client is right? That's the one avenue. It could be...I'm launching a new product to market and I really don't understand the category. So instead of getting some broad high-level strokes you really get the nuance of what people are doing or it could be attitudes and usage studies, it could be behavior. So it's anything that's people focused and where we draw the line is, if it's more UX focused, if it's focused on learning about a technology that's where we're not the right company and they're better companies out there. But if it's about people where the perfect company for you and in terms of perfect brand, there really isn't any. It's actually interesting when we rattle off our client list. It really is quite vast where we span everything from pharmaceuticals to spirits to CPG to technology and we do that very purposefully. Because, from a creativity perspective, there's nothing like juxtapositions and taking from one industry and applying it to another is a lot of the time where we see really really fruitful things come about so, taking for meta and applying it to Sherlock biosciences, taking Sherlock biosciences applying it to B&G Foods. So really really kind of mixing and stirring up the pot.

Leonard Murphy: Very cool. So your insghts DJs to an extent. 

Maria Vorovich: I'm going to steal that.

Leonard Murphy: That there you go. Alright turn about is fair play. So, you started 2019 the world's been changing, technology is changing rapidly. So what do you see the trajectory of the business and the industry over the course of the next two to three years?

Holland Martini: Yeah, I think for us the business is slow and steady intentionally. So, Maria and I always talked and we discussed this before we got on but we're both new moms to 10 month olds and we really, value growing a business that is based on quality. And that doesn't supersede our personal lives as well. Right? And so I think for us it's really how can we keep an ear to the ground on what the industry is craving and then reinforcing that with just quality, and to get into what I'm seeing in the industry now is I think there's a huge emphasis on speed and I think I've seen this happen before in the past and I think what speed is going to start doing is pressure test quality and we're gonna go back to the long form quality again, and this is kind of an ebb and flow that you see every five to seven years in the research industry and I think we're in a flow of speed and we're gonna hand away from it. And so, Maria and I we've always discussed and we talked about good class and what our ethos is and what scaling looks like to us. It's scaling with quality. And so most of our clients we have a repeat rate of 87 percent. It's wild...

Leonard Murphy: Wow.

Holland Martini: ...because we really just have a focus on detail and quality to us doesn't just mean that it's rigorous and predictive but it means that it lives in the organization on a much grander scale and so one thing we haven't talked about is that our methodology is quite interesting and quite human, but our outputs are as well. And so when we think about how we deliver the research it's often. How can it be storied? How can it be exciting? Oftentimes maybe our core client is a brand manager or consumer insights team and I've seen research die there, right, because no one's interested in it outside of them. And so how do we make it so that it's interesting to the entire organization and it makes their jobs work harder for them as well. And so that's how we're seeing that steady growth and then in terms of where I see the industry heading outside of speed again AI is such a hot topic. I think if we go to the root of what people are trying to do they're trying to just be less bias and I think AI is the hottest way to do that right now and I think if anything it's gonna be other ways that are going to emerge of how to make research less bias and more predictive and more indicative of what people actually do in the market. That's my personal opinion. So I think AI, right now it's like the hot commodity on how to be less biased and I think at GoodQues, personally, not to plug ourselves. We're working on what other ways can we do that lives beyond technology and is more human.

Leonard Murphy: No, that's fantastic. And I would tend to agree while also it addresses a scale issue. So to your point of getting the industry will look more qualitative in nature. Sometimes how we interact because AI helps with the scalability issues on the back end. Right? So, I think we're heading towards that point of higher quality more human, but also the speed and cost efficiencies of technology. It sounds like you're right there in that sweet spot of driving that. That is my take for what it's worth. Does that resonate with you? Yeah? Okay. 

Holland Martini: Yeah

Maria Vorovich: Yeah.

Leonard Murphy: Alright. We agreed we're going to keep this short. We probably went just a little bit over but we could probably talk for a really long time. Hopefully we'll have another chance to do this. In the meantime, where can people find you?

Maria Vorovich: You can find us at our website goodques.com. You can email us at [email protected], or you can find Holland and I on LinkedIn as well.

Leonard Murphy: Very cool Holly, Maria. It was really a pleasure. Hoping we can chat again. Good luck with your adventures in entrepreneurialship and juggling having toddlers. So it's called the terrible twos for a reason. I'm just warning you. 

Holland Martini: We're warned.

Leonard Murphy: Yeah. but that note. Thank you so much for your time. Thanks to our listeners, and we'll be back with another edition of the CEO series soon. Thanks a lot. Bye