Channeling the Consumer Voice with Jordan Cusner

[Bill Gullan]

Greetings, one and all. This is Champions of Purposeful Change. I’m Bill Gullan, President of Finch Brands.

 

We’ve taken a little bit of time in hibernation as we gathered ourselves for ’25, and we’re back with a bang. We’re so excited to have Jordan Cusner with us today, a true Insights inspiration, I suppose, starting with several different professional and academic interests from a business career to law school, and then ultimately into the world of insights, supplier side, Hasbro, McCormick, Burger King, Popeyes, and now into his role at Inspire Brands. It’s a fascinating story, and I think even beyond the interesting tale of his background, it’s his perspective on what it takes to thrive in an insights role, what the wiring needs to be, the level of curiosity, the kind of mindsets that help one build a strong career as Jordan has as an insights leader, but also to adapt to all of the changes that inevitably come across the business world, but this industry is no different. So please enjoy the perspective, and we’re grateful for the time and insight of Jordan Cusner. So excited to be joined by Jordan Cusner.

 

Jordan is the Senior Director of Consumer Insights and Research at Inspire Brands. Thanks for coming on with us. My pleasure, Bill.

 

Happy to be here. We’re so excited to get into your background and your career, starting with your academic interests and all these different degrees you have. It’s fascinating.

 

So why don’t you take us through it, if you wouldn’t mind, just sort of how it began and through the steps along the way.

 

[Jordan Cusner]

What a great question, if only that I can get some ROI out of these degrees. So I started in music, and I’m still a musician. You can see my studio here.

 

[Bill Gullan]

I see Abbey Road. I see Toto. Toto?

 

I see Deep Purple. There you go.

 

[Jordan Cusner]

People don’t often get Deep Purple.

 

[Bill Gullan]

It helps that it’s written there.

 

[Jordan Cusner]

That’s the Yellow Jackets’ debut album. It’s like a jazz thing. And that’s Steve Reich, Music for 18 Musicians, avant-garde, minimalist, classical music.

 

Highly recommended to everybody listening. And there’s more that you can’t see here, but I digress. I started with music.

 

I thought I would hit the road with Steely Dan. They never called. And I went to law school after my wife was looking at me like, dude, get a real job.

 

Unfortunately, I listened to her, and I went to law school. I really didn’t like that. That’s a long story.

 

Short. And I got my MBA at the same time, and I got hooked up with some brand strategists. I did a co-op at an ad agency.

 

I worked in the strategy department there. I really took a liking to that. Brief stint in consulting, like brand strategy, it was like boutique, pharma, brand strategy, consulting.

 

I had the opportunity to stay on in that space or to shift over to insights. And I had a friend who was at Yahoo at the time, and he said, go that route. It’s an opportunity that you don’t always get.

 

It’s a really cool industry. I think you’ll like it. So I did on a lark.

 

And it’s been great, obviously. I’ve stayed that course. I really enjoyed it.

 

But I soon felt like on the vendor side, there was so much energy and excitement. I was working on different things, but I felt a little bit disconnected from how the brand decisions were being made. And in retrospect, I didn’t even understand the context of the reports I was sharing with my clients at Disney and Heinz.

 

LexisNexis was a client. I didn’t really get the full scope of all the things they were working on, and I was pretty early in my career. So I made the transition over to Hasbro, led Insights for Global Gaming, which was as fun as it sounds.

 

I was like Tom Hanks in Big, which is a reference that nobody gets anymore, except for you, thankfully.

 

[Bill Gullan]

We’re dating ourselves. Yeah.

 

[Jordan Cusner]

Oh, my gosh. But I would literally play games all day, and it was really, really fun. We ended up, my family, moving to Baltimore, transitioned to McCormick.

 

And then eventually, I was there for a number of years and then recruited over to Burger King and Popeyes. But what got me in that door, eventually moving over to the client side at Hasbro, I interviewed with a woman there who led the team named Jackie Fraden, who’s an Insights giant. And she asked me, why do you want to do this?

 

And I was put on the spot, and I said, I’m a curious person. I like working on a team. And I don’t think I realized how important those qualities were at the time, but it’s the curiosity that Insights people have day in and day out, not just to learn about their brands and to learn about their consumers, but really to learn about the craft and to just maintain that level of curiosity with how we interact with our brand partners.

 

It’s the lifeblood of our team, certainly, and it’s boded well for me.

 

[Bill Gullan]

Definitely. Thank you for that. And a couple of things just to unpack along the way.

 

I’m a Steely Dan enthusiast, so I appreciate. And had Donald called, I’m not sure what that lifestyle would have been, but he’s an interesting guy, he sounds like, but could have been the night fly.

 

[Jordan Cusner]

He probably would have been very mean to me.

 

[Bill Gullan]

Yes. I would have enjoyed just the same. That would have been a sign that he values you from what we hear about the Dan.

 

But at what point along the way, you mentioned answering that question at Hasbro about being a curious person, but we have found mostly that people don’t dream of an Insights career. It sort of finds them. Was there a moment, was there a set of circumstances, was there a project or a client that really kind of awakened the Insights leader within you?

 

Yeah.

 

[Jordan Cusner]

I think I’m a little bit in that camp where it just kind of happened to me. Certainly, my journey in law school, and I wasn’t really happy doing that. And I luckily hooked up with the right people.

 

So that kind of happened. But I don’t think I saw myself really, really as an Insights person for the first couple of years. And in fact, I remember being at C-Space where I started really on that journey.

 

And someone once said to me that not everybody here really is intending to do this long term. And I was like, oh, interesting. I never really thought of that.

 

It was just kind of a job. In some people, it became a career. And for some people, it was just a stop on their journey to figure out what they wanted.

 

And I think I gave myself more credit than I deserved. I thought, this is my career now. But I don’t think I really felt that way.

 

Certainly not until somewhere in my Hasbro days where I was mentored by Christine O’Connor, who’s still there, and Jackie, who’s now moved on to other things. And I think it was that leadership from them, certainly, that kind of gave me a vision of what this really should and can be. And I had to find my own way.

 

I’ve worked with so many smart people, so many people who are much smarter than I am, certainly. It’s about figuring out what are the parts of this job that I think I can do well. And does that speak to me?

 

Is that something I’m passionate about? And luckily, I’ve found myself on really great teams over the course of my career with really great opportunities and challenges. And it’s just kind of spoken to me in a really unique way.

 

So I think I may be a little bit more of that it found me than more than I found it, or maybe the other way around.

 

[Bill Gullan]

Yeah. So related to that, I mean, you mentioned curiosity. But what is either the wiring that’s either just there or that skills you accumulate along the way to be a sort of really productive and successful insights person?

 

What are some of the characteristics that make one thrive?

 

[Jordan Cusner]

Well, yeah, that’s a great question. For me, it’s maybe two things. It’s I love to learn new things.

 

I think about that in my personal life, in my professional life. I’m really interested. I also get really emotionally invested in stuff.

 

You know, my family, if they were here, they would laugh and they would joke. When I was at Hasbro, we played games all the time. All the time.

 

We should do that more. When I was at McCormick, I was I had all the spices. I had Ethiopian grilling spice and I was bringing home every day new things.

 

I still have literally a dozen bottles of hot sauce in my fridge from the night when we have taste testing or what have you. And the same is true for my time in QSR. I get really passionate. I think, you know, as the stewards of the consumer or the conduit to our consumer voice across the brands, you kind of have to live and breathe it.

 

So there’s an element of curiosity and wanting to learn, but also kind of being really engaged. And I think there’s a really important element of collaboration. And I think sometimes as insights people, you know, we’re put in a really tough spot where we have to tell the brand partner, hey, this doesn’t work.

 

This concept that you’ve got a lot of passion for, the consumer doesn’t like it. Or this commercial that we’ve spent all this energy on developing doesn’t really work. And so I think you have to have courage, but you also have to build that trust with your brand partners so that they know this person understands my business.

 

This all moving in the same direction. And any feedback that we deliver is meant constructively to help advance those primary objectives, even if this particular project is not going to work the way that they wanted it to. So I think it’s a little bit of that building that trust and collaboration, but it’s about building those partnerships and working really well as a team.

 

You know, we insights people, we’d like to think of ourselves as being the central nervous system of a functioning business. And I think there’s certainly some truth to that. You know, you should think about what your consumer wants, but we’re not the ones who are making data decisions about how we go to market.

 

And we’re not the ones kind of really driving those projects. That’s often our marketers who are commercializing things and working through stage gate and working cross-functionally to kind of shepherd those projects. So we’re ancillary to that, but we play a really key role.

 

And I think we have to fight for our seat at the table, but also make sure that we’re doing it in a collaborative way, such that we’re seen as partners and we’re pulled into those conversations earlier on versus proactively and later down the road. Right. Makes sense.

 

[Bill Gullan]

I’m going to go back to that, but last sort of bio question. As we, as we talk to insights leaders, there’s, I’m always trying to kind of find common threads and we find a lot of people who were liberal artsy. We find a lot of people who came from a psychology background.

 

Is there any through line between sort of your academic interests or things that you grew up passionate about? And in my case, I was a political science major, but it was primarily political philosophy. And I only realized after the fact that the reason I love brands is that their systems of belief in the same way that political theory, you know, it’s the same set of muscles, even if used for different purposes.

 

Curious if you’ve had any, any thoughts about your academic road and beyond sort of the, the law gives you analysis. It gives you questioning. It gives you, but curious as to how you might see that.

 

[Jordan Cusner]

Taking the words out of my mouth. I will, I would say two things. One is when I got my first interview at Hasbro, I think I got that interview because I had this really unique background, even if they assumed certain things about me that may not have been true.

 

I was a very unique candidate, law, business, music. I think for, you know, I often say I credit my law school experience as analytically, I think I’ve, I’ve got some chops there. I think it’s about asking the right questions and being able to kind of cut through the mess of all the, all the different insights or data that are in front of you and figure out what’s the core and how do we really think about, you know, order of operations and thinking through like, what are the data that are most controlling here?

 

And then how do we layer other things on? I think that’s been helpful. I certainly think that law school helped me with my writing and my communication, but those are all kind of, I would say a little bit soft skills relative to like what I do every day, but they certainly, I certainly feel good about it.

 

Now, do I feel great about it when I’m paying my student loan back? Maybe not, but yeah, I think it’s certainly, it helped and it got me where I am. I can’t, I can’t, I love to, I love to talk smack about my, my law school days, but the truth is I don’t think I’d be here, but for some of those experiences, if it was just getting my foot in the door.

 

[Bill Gullan]

Sure. And you have all those degrees and initials after your name and all that stuff. Priceless.

 

I wish. Yeah. Not priceless.

 

[Jordan Cusner]

Yeah.

 

[Bill Gullan]

You mentioned the role that a typical insights team might play within a, within a brand, you know, decision support, providing the right data at the right time in the right way to help people. You also referenced the sort of differences between supplier side and brand side. What, what does it take, whether it’s a supplier who’s, and the answer may be different, delivering a deck that really helps light up decision-making processes and stakeholders within organizations, or whether it’s an internal team who’s doing a similar role.

 

What, what, how can an insights team be most impactful as a, in terms of serving up data, either in the right way or engaging stakeholders in the right way? What, there’s a difference, it seems between a dusty old research binder on a shelf and a piece of work that really has significant organizational impact, either as a gateway to comprehension or to key decisions. Have you sort of rallied around either a set of attributes or, or methods to make insights really sing within organizations?

 

[Jordan Cusner]

So great question. I don’t know if I have a set, set of tenets just yet. It’s something that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately, especially as I step into this new role.

 

So maybe more to come. We can do that in episode two in the sequel. I think it’s a, there’s a couple of things that come to mind.

 

One is, well, you, you kind of compared both like a research supplier and the client side researcher. I think first, when you have a supplier partnership, if my job is the insights person is taking a business question from my brand partners and giving it to my supplier and then getting the data and bringing it back to them, then I’m, I’m useless. I’m being overpaid, right?

 

How do I add value to that exchange? Both on both ends. How do I help my brand team identify what the most important things to chase might be?

 

And that’s working in collaboration with them. How do I help them crystallize their objectives and crystallize their business questions? How do I bring them closer to our consumer?

 

How do I then translate that back to the, to their suppliers so that they understand, you know, they don’t have the same context I have, but they need to understand what my business is trying to accomplish. And, you know, as a, as a quick aside, when suppliers come to me with stories about bells and whistles of their new algorithm, it falls on deaf ears. I I’m thinking about how do I drive business growth for my teams and I need suppliers that are focused on the same thing.

 

So I think there’s a, there’s an important partnership that the three of us play, you know, the, the client that I’m supporting internally, myself, my team, and then the supplier to make sure that we’re all moving in that same direction, working to drive growth for the brand. And so how do I ensure that that’s what’s happened? And listen, I’ve been on the supplier side.

 

Like I said, it’s too easy to, to, to talk to oneself and to live in that bubble and then deliver a report that’s not thoughtful about the broader questions being asked. And I think that’s where the client side liaison and that’s giving us probably not enough credit, but where the client side liaison is kind of making sure that this piece of work actually kind of has the legs to stand on its own and supported by the other things that we know about our business or about our consumer. You know, I heard something once I can pay $10,000 for a hundred slides or $100,000 for 10 slides.

 

I think about that a lot. And I think it’s so easy as curious insights people to get all of this data. And we’re amazed by little bits here and there, but at the end of the day, what really matters and how do we tell that story?

 

And I think story is really important. That’s what makes these insights memorable and actionable. How do we tell that story to our brand partners in a way that ultimately, and this is the key leads to that activation?

 

It’s not strictly, you know, there’s a friend and a colleague, Elizabeth Oates, who just wrote a book about building insights teams. You should talk to Bill. It’s called, I think it’s called, I’m not just here to be interesting.

 

I think when insights people hear that, Oh, that’s interesting. It’s like, Oh no. Right.

 

We want to, you want our brand partners to take action, to change the course of what they’re considering on their project, to pick up some new piece of business or some new challenge as a result of what we’ve learned. And so how do we drive to that action? I think that’s the key.

 

And we’re, we’re, we always think about delivering these insights in a concise, clear way that tells the story in a focused way. And that leads to an outcome of, and therefore my team is going to do the following. I think, you know, that, that makes all the difference in the world.

 

And so to your point, the tenants, I’m not sure if I have all the tenants yet, but we know what the goal is certainly. Yeah.

 

[Bill Gullan]

And I’d imagine back to the thing, to your point about sorting through signals, understanding thresholds of proof, being judicious around, you know, you don’t need every piece of, of data to tell the story. You just need the ones that really tell the story. Absolutely.

 

Yeah. Across the way, you know, Hasbro and, and, you know, then moving into McCormick, these are manufacturers, they work on different product cycles, I would imagine. Then all of a sudden you’re in retail, you’re in restaurants, it’s guests.

 

What is sort of the differences? And some of this may be wonky and methodological, but mindset wise, the, you know, retailers and restaurants have a approval rating that is based on hundreds of thousands of interactions per day. So the cycles are different.

 

Could you compare and contrast those experiences through an insights lens?

 

[Jordan Cusner]

Yeah, sure. So QSR moves really, really quickly. And I think for me, it’s been great.

 

I love doing stuff. I have a bias for action. It’s really exciting.

 

It’s also a challenge into itself because we have our own access. We have access to our own data. We, in many instances, we own some of our restaurants.

 

So on the one hand, we have the ability to test and learn and try new things in a more rapid way. And with that, with unencumbered, you think about, you know, my McCormick days, we had to sell stuff in, we had to partner with retailers. That’s an interesting challenge too.

 

There are some instances where, you know, either you’ve got a really great partnership with a particular franchisee, or we own a few of our own restaurants at Popeyes or what have you, and we can throw something in there and see if it sticks. So that’s really exciting. It gives us the license and the ability to kind of play.

 

But the flip side, on the other hand, is that we have our own POS data. We’re looking at it almost in real time. And so if you lack the discipline or as Insights people, you have yet to build the confidence in our strategy that we’re meant to be rallying around as a team.

 

If it doesn’t return results in a day or in a week, and certainly in a quarter, you know, it becomes very, very challenging to stay the course if you were an organization that lacks that discipline. So whether that’s, you know, reorganizations or more commonly, just trying something new, tearing up your plan and starting anew. Sometimes that’s what has to happen.

 

And you have to kind of balance between getting those data early on and being able to diagnose what’s happening and making a quick decision. Is there an optimization route so we can make this better? Is there something we can do differently in our comms to drive people to the restaurant?

 

Or is this just not going to work? And so we have the ability to make those calls in real time. We’re also, like you said, we’re interacting with our guests every day.

 

And we’re talking to our guests all the time through our comms. And you think about a brand like Popeyes, you know, the best fried chicken, you know, it’s delicious, no question. But to get to a Popeyes, you have to drive past a McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s, Taco Bell.

 

And so, and all of those restaurants that are in between, you know, you and your potential dinner, they’re all talking to you as well through TV, TVCs. And McDonald’s is a great example. They were out spending, you know, Popeyes 10 to 1.

 

And that’s just one of our competitors. So, yes, QSR is like a part of like the traditional American day-to-day life. And so there’s more engagement there, but it’s also very, very competitive and share a voice, share of mind, share, you know, and then making the most of that experience.

 

And it’s, and the other piece I would say, it’s really, really challenging. You know, in CPG, you, we design a product. It’s a thing of a spice blend.

 

It goes out, it puts on, it goes on a shelf, someone buys it. Great. In QSR, we’re manufacturing the food in real time every day over and over and over again.

 

So the operational complexity associated with any particular launch is, cannot be overlooked. And the ops people are always on our case. At Burger King, I remember an example where we were launching a particular, we’re looking at a particular beverage and it was, oh, it’s two squirts of red for cherry and two squirts of blue for blueberry and one squirt of each for tropical blast.

 

And the ops person said that will never work. If you want it to be tropical blast, you need a third bottle that has it already pre-mixed. And I thought that’s ridiculous.

 

And then I, the more I spent time in back of house and I had the opportunity to work in restaurants, the more you realize it, there is just no time for added steps like that. And so the operational complexity and the impact on the guest experience, how does this all play out for our guests? That’s the ultimate goal.

 

And so a very, very different set of challenges, ultimately the same, maybe the same goals, right? You want your consumers to be happy and to come back and to be surprised and delighted by the experience. And it’s just, it’s harder sometimes to design a process that gets you that consistently in a context.

 

And that’s where the rubber meets the road for the restaurants that are really crushing it.

 

[Bill Gullan]

Sure. And to your point, it is, it is a complex value chain operationally and adding when you have a group of, I’m sure opinionated franchisees as well. I mean, there’s a lot of, a lot of ingredients.

 

Did you ever given that retail is this sort of constant laboratory and the data actual behavioral transaction data is not hard to come by. I remember we were working with World Wrestling Entertainment. And I can say this because a couple of regimes ago, there were not, not most, but there were some naysayers within that organization who were more traditional, you know, wrestling people who were like, we get based on cheers and booze, we get thousands of reactions every night.

 

What do we need research for? We can just do these things in that environment where it is data rich and it isn’t sort of an active lab. Do you ever run across insights naysayers who don’t maybe think that primary research is needed in light of how much feedback and how much noise there is?

 

[Jordan Cusner]

Yeah, absolutely. Well, first of all, I think, you know, very, very cool experience delivering insights to WWE. I can’t even imagine.

 

But I think, you know, when we’re brought to mind is how many industries have gone through that exact same evolution. Obviously sports, I was just reading an article in the times about how they’re using data in the NHL to get rookies up to speed. So it’s, and they, I’m sure you’ve read or seen Moneyball, like that was a very big transition moving into the sabermetrics and the data analytics for baseball.

 

So it’s not surprising. In our case, I think, because we have such an analytically focused organization to begin with, in terms of our own data, it’s hard to break in there. And I think what we need to do is think about two things.

 

One is how do we use our primary insights and our understanding of our guests to express the why behind what’s happening in market? So how do those two things come together? And we need to make sure that the story we’re telling holds together.

 

And I think what we often see when this isn’t effectively delivered, it’s we have these insights in a bubble. And, you know, going back to my clients, my vendor side days, it’s, you know, I kind of alluded to that as well, but the same is true even here. I deliver a brand equity study, let’s say, oh, your numbers are great.

 

Your awareness is up. Everyone loves your brand, blah, blah, blah. Well, then my brand partner says, well, actually, Jordan, our sales are down last quarter.

 

So you’re telling me my scores are going up and my sales are down. So suddenly I’m telling the story that’s bereft of context. It’s not tied to the ultimate measures, which to your point is sales and traffic.

 

And so how do we make sure that we understand what’s happening and we can help to diagnose and tell a story of why we’re seeing that? And if there are instances where some of our data are moving in opposite directions, why is that as well? So I think when we don’t handle that particular challenge well, we’re not showing how what we are talking about is both enhancing that understanding, the analytical understanding, and correlated to what we know to be true about the experience in our restaurants, then we’re kind of dead in the water.

 

So I think we have to kind of make sure we’re marrying it up that way.

 

[Bill Gullan]

Yeah, makes sense. So speaking of which, there’s obviously a lot of change always in the research world and beyond. Certainly is now a lot of new methodologies and new technologies, as well as just also interestingly a back to basics mentality to some degree, but how are you seeing it?

 

I’m not going to ask you to disclose anything that’s proprietary, but what are the things that you’re sort of looking at or paying attention to that either are or have the potential to reshape aspects of how we do and how we do it and what we do?

 

[Jordan Cusner]

Yeah, I have two thoughts and they’re on opposite ends of the spectrum. One, and I hate to be the guy who says AI today, but one is I’m thinking about AI. Think that’s going to catch on?

 

Well, to be honest, I think there’s so many awesome applications out there and so many, I shouldn’t say that, really impressive companies or brands that are kind of pushing this. I think I’ve yet to figure out what the insights unlock is and I’m working on it. And there are a number of partners that I’m talking to now that I’m really impressed by.

 

So if you’re listening, I don’t mean to discredit those programs, but I think it’s how do we turn that into something that actually drives growth for my brands? And I think we have yet to figure that out. There are some low hanging fruit.

 

How do we use the AI to synthesize data and to run analyses quicker or to draft surveys for us? And all of that’s really great. But I think where rubber meets the road is how is this helping me be a better insights person, helping me understand my guests more quickly?

 

And I’ve yet to figure that out. On the other side, it’s getting my brand partners in front of our guests and being in touch with that experience. One is bringing our guests to life within the organization.

 

That’s an ongoing process every day. And how do we bring our brand partners into that conversation? I think when I was at McCormick, we would often talk about, well, they’re using our products, it’s Thanksgiving dinner, it’s these family occasions.

 

And I would, and near the end of my tenure, I was trying to figure out how do I put my brand partners in the moment? And it shouldn’t be impossible, but if I go to someone’s house and say, hey, listen, I’d like to go to dinner with you with your family on Thanksgiving. It’s a kind of a weird request.

 

We would do that. We would do dine-alongs and we would go to people’s homes and watch them make dinner. But for the real special occasions where we really wanted to show up and we wanted to really be an enhancing part of the experience in a way that enhanced it for everybody, we wanted to be closer to that.

 

I think we have the ability in restaurants to do that. We can go into our restaurants. We can watch, and I do this all the time, watch people order and interact with our crew and eat the food.

 

I’ve talked to many of our guests. I stand in line and just, I did it last night. I was sitting at a bar and I just talked to the guy next to me and he didn’t know initially that I worked in the restaurant space, but I saw him taking the menu and taking pictures of it and sending it to his friends.

 

And I thought, is he crowdsourcing his ordering this evening? And so how do I bring my brand partners into that experience? And I think we often get pitched in all industries, in these online focus groups or the online communities or the message boards.

 

And as someone who comes from the community space, I know that’s a big part of what you do. There’s a time and a place for that. But I also think I can put my brand people in the moment.

 

And so how do I balance using those scalable, agile online tools in a way that brings me perspective, but not at the expense of giving my brand partners the exposure they need to my brand and my guests in real time.

 

[Bill Gullan]

Right. Absolutely. It’s funny.

 

I mean, when you look at so many things, it seems like almost the middle is sort of hollowing out in insights. We’re talking about really progressive tech, and we’re also talking about the criticality of these immersive experiences. It’s sort of the dumb stuff in the middle, maybe that we’re doing less of, but you see it in politics.

 

I mean, polarization, you see it in religion. There’s growth on the, you know, sort of more devout end of the spectrum. And then there’s continued secularization.

 

It’s the middle. Like, I wonder what it is about this era or this age that seems to be hollowing out the middle and everything. But that’s a separate.

 

We’ll do that in episode three. Episode two is Steely Dan. Episode three is religion.

 

[Jordan Cusner]

Right. Right.

 

[Bill Gullan]

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But last, I know we need to get you off to a productive day.

 

Not that this isn’t productive. It is. And we’re grateful for it.

 

You started a little bit with we started with sort of those attributes or characteristics that make an insights person love it and thrive in it. I think, again, we don’t have great data actually on this, ironically, but a segment of our listener base are folks who may be starting out or starting over from a career perspective. And any kind of words of wisdom or maxims from your insights career that you’ve built that you think someone in that position might help them to hear it?

 

[Jordan Cusner]

So that’s a really hard one. I can tell you one thing that I’ve thought about and it was helpful for me. And this may not be for everybody.

 

I took a pretty significant pay cut when I went from law and consulting to my first job in insights. And it was a little annoying and humbling. And it was the right thing for me.

 

I think what I learned from that and what I often tell people is, you know, especially if you’re in a position where you’re starting fresh or trying something different, think about what your end goal is. Right. What’s that job that you want?

 

And for me, it was to be on the client. Initially, it was to be on the client side of that insights partnership. Eventually it became I wanted to kind of lead that team and think about what is the one thing I need to do today or the one job that I need to kind of puts me on that path.

 

And it was really hard to it was a tough pill to swallow initially to take that job. And again, I loved it and it was so much fun. I work with great people, but it was a it was kind of a personal sacrifice to be really candid.

 

But I felt good about it and I knew that it was the right thing. And it forced it forced me and it forced someone to work really hard to make it work for them. Right.

 

If you’re making that transition and you’re, in my case, maybe taking a step out of this path that you’ve kind of envisioned for yourself and doing something very different and maybe in some ways, candidly, it was a step backwards for me. And then it ratchets up the challenge and the need to make it work for you every day. But it’s about those small incremental steps that you can take that get you on the path you want to be on and get you to the ultimate goal.

 

So it’s I wanted at the time and I remember finishing my MBA and applying for jobs. And and it was it was 2008, 2009. It was really, really tough out there, just like it is now.

 

And I would look at these applications and I would say, I can do this. Look at my guy. I have an MBA.

 

I blah, blah, blah. There was no chance. There was no chance I was getting any of those jobs because I didn’t have the experience.

 

I think I had to build the experience. And I had to I realized I needed to kind of, you know, tactfully go after the things I needed to build up that toolkit. And the other thing I’ll say is it’s about networking and connecting.

 

And, you know, it’s so, so hard to get your foot in the door anywhere. And but it’s even harder and basically impossible if you’re just sending a resume, you know, into some, you know, bot machine who knows how it works, even. Right.

 

So it’s about, you know, getting yourself out there and asking for help. And personally, I take a lot of pride and maybe prize the wrong word, but I a lot of gratification in helping people. And I know I can think back to when I was 2008, 2009, and there were so many people who offered to help.

 

But the truth is there was only one who did. And I remember Ellie Hauser. He’s watching.

 

He’s probably not watching. There was really only one person who was really helpful and helped me connect with people. So I try to be a connector.

 

And but I think the advice is, you know, you’ve got to put yourself out there and you’ve got to, you know, work. You’ve got to build your network. And I think it’s about paying it forward.

 

And so people who are in that early stage, you know, in that first career transition, you know, they’re going to be relying on the help and the generosity of others. But when they’re in a position that they can help other people out, I hope that they pay it forward and pay it back. Great.

 

Appreciate that.

 

[Bill Gullan]

One final question, if you don’t mind. I may be getting my chronology wrong, but you were at Popeye’s during the chicken wars, right?

 

[Jordan Cusner]

No. Did you miss it? Well, well, chicken world war two, maybe.

 

[Bill Gullan]

Yes.

 

[Jordan Cusner]

I you know, it’s funny. I it was the sandwich launched in twenty nineteen. I was at McCormick.

 

It was the pandemic.

 

[Bill Gullan]

I don’t think in my head. Yeah.

 

[Jordan Cusner]

Yeah. I don’t think I really heard about the sandwich. I heard about when it launched, but I don’t think I tried it until Mark two.

 

So it initially launched in nineteen. I think if I’m getting my numbers right, they were overrun with guests. I don’t think I got my hands on one.

 

They shut down production for nine months and they brought it back. They needed to solve supply chain challenges because it was in such high demand. I ended up sneaking out of the house once and I said, I got to try this sandwich.

 

And I was blown away. And and then I ended up working for Popeye’s and I was actually recruited by Burger King. And I have jokingly said in the interview, I’m only here to get one step closer to Popeye’s, which means under RBI.

 

And I was only half kidding. Ended up I was at Burger King for about six months and then was able to transition over to Popeye’s. So, no, I missed it.

 

I can’t take any credit for it. But it changed the industry. I think I think at the time I remember seeing some data was something like 30 brands had subsequently launched their own chicken sandwich, because if you didn’t have a chicken sandwich, you just could not survive in QSR because of how how much demand there was for that particular platform.

 

So really interesting.

 

[Bill Gullan]

My question was going to be in it. Sorry. No, not at all.

 

I is what it’s like to be on the inside. Of a brand or a company that is in the middle of that.

 

[Jordan Cusner]

Well, I’ve heard the stories. And one of the funny stories was the morning after it launched or the morning after it really crested and it went from like, you know, we were expecting twenty five units a day and it did like a thousand on the first day. And I talked before about, you know, having, you know, your access to your own data.

 

The story was that the that CMO or the head of marketing ran over and he was actually a Hasidic Jew and he ran over and jumped up in the air and the CMO caught him in his arms, almost like dirty dancing or something. So nice. So I did not see with my own eyes, but it was a very and there was a lot of high fiving and a lot of pride.

 

I think, you know, I wasn’t there, but I work with many of those people when I and it was the labor of love, certainly. But it was it was a really, really challenging thing. I think, you know, I know the culinary team there and they’re as sharp as they come.

 

And I was thrilled to shake their hand. I heard that there were something like twenty eight or thirty different articulations of that sandwich before they got to the final one that, you know, changed that broke the Internet. And so they could have and I’ve been in those stage gate meetings with the culinary team and Popeyes.

 

Everything they serve, I would think would be amazing and it would kill because it’s it’s great. But there’s a lot there is magic to what they ended up coming up with. And there was discipline to stay the course and find that one thing.

 

And then as a result, you know, everybody had a hand in that that launch. And they all were really, really proud of that, of those results.

 

[Bill Gullan]

Yeah.

 

[Jordan Cusner]

Deservedly.

 

[Bill Gullan]

What a ride. And you’ve had quite a ride to Jordan and we’re grateful for you taking us.

 

[Jordan Cusner]

Thank you for it.

 

[Bill Gullan]

And wish you wish you all the best. Can’t wait to see what happens.

 

[Jordan Cusner]

Thank you, Bill. Pleasure to be here. I appreciate the time.

 

Great.

 

[Bill Gullan]

Many thanks to Jordan for his time. We both on the episode and as we were setting up and as we were wrapping down, I really enjoyed talking about about music, about insights, about sports, about all the other things that make life interesting. There’s three ways, as always, to support us here at Champions of Purposeful Change.

 

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