Ep. 060 – Dr. Robin Kiera’s best advice: “Love your customers, not your product! And share your knowledge! The time of silence is over.”
Dr. Robin Kiera Show Notes Dr. Robin Kiera is the founder of Digitalscouting, and is known for his market insights. He was one of the earliest persons to discover the Insurtech unicorn Lemonade and predicted the entry of Amazon into the insurance industry. Among other things, this made him one of the best-known and influential persons in the finance and insurance industry, a renown key-note speaker, and sparring partner behind the scenes. Most passionate about I founded DigitalScouting, a platform for entrepreneurs, thought leaders, and senior managers from large companies, and small/medium managers where they can share the best practices and the lessons learned. It started as a hobby, now it’s exploded in a positive way. That’s what I’m doing beside speaking in conferences and helping insurance companies, because insurance is my main industry. I’m scouting new technologies and giving most of them for free. The idea is to look and scout technologies that can help corporations to excite the customers and bring value to them. The researches focus on trends for the next three, five, and seven years and how companies can use it to excite and inspire their customers. I share most of my scouting and research for free, if a corporate ask me to come to them and consult. Robin’s career For years, I’ve been sharing a lot of content and gotten great feedback. I was never afraid to call out “the elephant in the room”. In the insurance industry, there are a lot of elephants in the room… I think that in times where the changes in society are dramatic, the most dangerous thing you can do is nothing. In the insurance and financial industries, most people are very comfortable with not changing anything. I always did that in a very polite and respectful way, and very slowly more users followed me, suddenly a journalist in some blog called me out as one of the influencers in Europe. I actually needed to look up what that meant. That accelerated things, and then I published my home page for DigitalScouting and then things really started to explode. One day, I looked with some social media analytics tool and found out I had 17 million monthly reach! That is outstanding for a small business. Robin’s customers My passion is the audience; corporates’ innovators and hundreds of startups and entrepreneurs. I support them in their endeavor and I’m an authority, which they can quote or get help from when they try to convince their managers and companies to consider new technologies. I support insurance corporates in two ways, first, as their expert partner for their digital strategies, helping them to plan and implement ecosystems of digital services. I also help them in their communication strategy, because the large insurance companies always ask me “Robin, how come you have such huge numbers of followers and fans, much more than my 40 people PR department will ever get…” I always tell them, when you want to win the game with the soccer league’s giants it’s very easy, just don’t play soccer against them; play chess or gymnastics. What I mean by that is if you are a smaller player who wants to win the game in your industry, it’s very important not to play by the rules, and not to do it as it was always done. Robin’s best advice about approaching customers Love your customers, not your product! So many entrepreneurs, R&D managers, and startup companies are convinced at the success of their new venture or product that many times they get lost in it. Love your customers and always ask where the attention of your customers is, what their desires are, and fears or needs that you can address. And then, give most of your knowledge away for free. You should create a whole ecosystem around your company as a brand that helps people with their problem and also generates and shares joy. Share your knowledge! I think the time of silence is over. Biggest failure with a customer I have a whole...