Welcome And The Wow Question

Tom DuFore 0:01

Welcome to the Multiply Your Success podcast, where each week we help growth-minded entrepreneurs and franchise leaders take the next step in their expansion journey. I'm your host, Tom Dufour, CEO of Big Sky Franchise Team. And as we open today, I'm wondering what would it take for your customers to say you are wonderful? Have you had that happen before? And if you have, what was that situation that created that wow moment? Well, our guest today is Dan Mordub, who shares with us how Wonder is his superpower. Now, Dan is a multi-award-winning entrepreneur with over 20 years' experience in scaling brands through digital transformation. He's worked with global brands such as Pfizer, KLM Airlines, and Hilton Hotels to deliver transformative campaign and digital transformation programs through the power of Wonder. You're gonna love this interview. I had a great chance to meet with Dan while I was studying in Oxford. This is a fantastic interview. So let's go ahead and jump right into

Why Wonder Becomes A Superpower

Tom DuFore 1:02

it.

Dan Maudhub 1:02

Hi, thanks, Tom. Firstly, it's an honor to be on your podcast and to hear some uh fantastic American accents. As you can tell, I'm not from the US. Yeah, my name is Darren Mordab. I am founder and CEO of the wonderful creative agency, and we help to scale ambitious B2B brands.

Tom DuFore 1:20

Excellent. Well, one of the things I wanted to start with, we had a chance to meet over in Oxford here a little while ago. And I was super impressed with you and what you've been doing as a leader and with your business. And so one thing I'd just like to start with is this idea of wonder. And why is wonder a superpower, your superpower?

Dan Maudhub 1:41

Right. Okay. Well, thank you for asking that question. And that probably sounds a bit ambiguous to some of your listeners that are like, Wonder, what's this guy on about? So for us, it was really about when we're going into scale organizations, we're looking for the real keys, the real levers of success, the real multipliers, the real things that are going to move the dial. And so often it's not just the standard metrics because we all know what we should be measuring, we all know what we should be doing at board level, but actually we're looking for the wonder. We're looking for the things that go wow. Because if you look at what wonder is both as an emotion, as as a meaning, as a psychological effect, it's something that makes you stop and go, wow. And it gives you some a sense of awe, a sense of amazement. So for us, wonder was can we go into an organization and create that wow? Create whether it's a digital product, whether it's a campaign, whether it's a growth strategy, but it's something that makes the stakeholders go, wow, that's different. I wasn't expecting that. And the outcome is that we create something wonderful. So we decided to create our whole brand around the word wonderful so that it becomes a verb. It becomes something we're constantly looking to achieve, we're constantly looking to deliver. And obviously, the ultimate telltale sign for us is when a client says to us, that's wonderful, or you're wonderful. So something I asked my wife to do on a daily basis. I'm joking, I'm joking.

Tom DuFore 3:08

That's fantastic. Thank you for giving a little overview on that. And I'd love just to talk a little bit more broadly of how do you get to this concept? I think the level of clarity you were able to give to your team, to your clients, and to everyone around you, just with one word. I mean, it's super clear. It gives a great specificity, also at the same time. It's clear, it's specific. And yet it is a little vague. You know, it's like, well, what is wonderful? When a customer goes, that was wonderful, or you all were wonderful, you pass the test. So dig into that a little bit, how it's been integrating with your team, with your customers, how that whole process

Brand Strategy Versus Business Strategy

Tom DuFore 3:46

has gone.

Dan Maudhub 3:46

Well, I think it comes down to the about your brand strategy work alongside your business strategy. So as a business, you have a clear mission, you have a vision, you have a strategic roadmap, you know, you have your your core, your core KPIs or OKRs that you're measuring month on month, quarter on quarter, however, it works. But actually, what's the brand strategy? What actually makes us stand out and be unique in the marketplace? Where do we add value over and above those core KPIs? And I find that sometimes, particularly in a fast growth scaled up environment, it's very easy to lose that because you're you're measuring the metrics, as I've said a couple of times already. But actually, where are you delivering long-term value? What are you going to become known for in 10, 15, 20 years' time? What's your legacy? What's actually the thing that people go, that's wonderful? Or that, you know, so if you look at other brands, you look at like consumer brands that have done this. For example, the Virgin Group, we understand that you've got an entrepreneur like Richard Branson, a British entrepreneur. He wanted to create, he had a really clear mission. He wanted to challenge the kind of the establishment within the industry. So we took on British Airways with Virgin Atlantic, he took on EMI Records with Virgin Records, he took on the big guys, not only with a business mission, but with a brand mission. And ultimately, 40, 50 years later, we remember Virgin. We remember Richard Branson, we know what he stands for, we know what his values are. So I really believe that there's a there's a real sense of a real power of aligning your brand strategy with your business strategy. And actually, you create a much, much longer-term um business growth, shareholder value, and you know, customers in our experience, customers and clients love it.

Tom DuFore 5:32

There are a lot of people in business today who look at those as one and the same. I'd love for you to kind of help break that down a little bit for someone thinking, well, isn't that kind of the same thing? Is that, well, no, it's two different things. I'd love for you to share about that.

Dan Maudhub 5:44

Well, in one level, there's a lot of similarity and overlap. Of course there is. One needs to feed the other. But let me give you an example. You know, we might have an I mission strategy. We want to be the number one franchise and organization in this industry and this location. What makes that unique and different so that your competitors also saying the same? So you've understand, okay, you've got a business mission. You want to, you want to be top one, top three in your category, in your in your niche, in your in your region or in your location or or industry, whatever it might be. That's great. But that's not a brand strategy. That's that's a that's a business mission. Okay, we know we understand where we want to go. A brand strategy says where are we adding value? How are we gonna get there? What's our tone of voice? What's our proposition? What makes us unique from the other competitors saying the same thing? And what gives us that slight competitive advantage? How do we make customers feel? How do we actually deliver something more than just the core numbers? How do we deliver? And sometimes brand is intangible, it's a feeling, it's an image, it's a tone of voice. But sometimes it's very tangible. It can be delivered through customer service programs, it can be delivered through the our pricing models, it can be delivered in so many different ways. Ultimately, a brand is a perception that your consumer has in the mind about you. That's what a brand is. And so it's really aligned with business strategy, but it sits above it and alongside it as well.

Founder Energy Turned Into Company Culture

Tom DuFore 7:10

You mentioned Richard Branson, which he has a very big personality. So for a founder that's tuning in, an entrepreneur that started their own business, usually as a small business, it's easy for the owners or founder's personality to kind of come through or that kind of seep into all facets of the business. So I think of this brand strategy. I think so much of it sometimes might be the brand of the founder or the CEO of the business. So I'd love for you to talk a little bit about that idea.

Dan Maudhub 7:42

Yeah, that's a great point. And I think there's a there's on one on one level, there's a real strength to that because there's an authenticity, you know, the we we we live in the world of the personal brand, right? So we understand that, you know, people buy from people ultimately is the old adage, but in that sense of, you know, I don't just want to see the corporate face, I want to see the personal face, the human face. So there's a real strength to that. But ultimately, a brand has got to live in each and every stakeholder's lockup. So from right from the front-end customer service team to the finance team to administration team, we've all got to be singing from the same hymn sheets. We've got to be aligned on values, we've got to be aligned on culture, we've got to be aligned on behaviors as if the CEO is in the room or not in the room, the the behaviors, the culture, the values are the same. So there's a real responsibility for us as founders and CEOs to be able to communicate and translate that all the way along the along the value chain so that everyone understands, you know, not just where we're going and what the metrics are, but how we do things, what our culture is, how we treat each other, how we how we work our values out in operation, what our behaviors that are lived out that can be, you know, that can be testified by every single stakeholder. How do we treat our suppliers? You know, we're very easy to focus on customers, but how about our supply chain? How about those people that you know are serving our business? How do we treat them? That's a real test of whether the values are actually lived out, not only on a public persona through the CEO who's doing a podcast as we are now, but actually lived out through the team, you know, throughout the organization. So there's a real job to translate both personal brand value from the founder and CEO, but more importantly, the company brand value all the way through the company.

Tom DuFore 9:32

Dan,

Ditch Corporate Talk And Start With Customers

Tom DuFore 9:33

when you're working with clients, you work with some really exciting brands and leaders of organizations with the work that you do. It seems like an interesting proposition of this brand and business strategy. And you're trying to balance all of this. How do you work through with clients of helping them kind of sort through it or integrate it into this maybe new marketing strategy that's getting implemented?

Dan Maudhub 9:57

Firstly, if we're looking at it from an internal stakeholder perspective and we're looking at how do we align brand strategy to business strategy, some of the common problems we come across is trying to break through what I call standard corporate talk. So if we're aligning brand values, are a really good example of this. Where, for example, you we say, well, as a business, we can't we carry a high level of integrity. Okay, great, but then all of your competitors say that integrity should be implicit, they're not necessarily explicit. You know, it should be something that we should we should expect of the people that we work with and for. Okay, so let's take that to another level. What does integrity mean? What does it mean? What we often do is we will ask every single stakeholder in that conversation at C-suite level, what does it mean to you? What does it mean to your team? What where's the validation? Where's the data? And then we build a map. And actually, what comes out of it might not be integrity, it might be a higher level of empathy. Or it could be that our integrity is lived out in the essence of our customer service, or so on and so forth. So, actually, what you've done is you've taken a what you would call a fairly standard corporate value and you've elevated it into something that your brand can own, that your team can own, that your customers can own. When I work with this company, when I work with this person, I feel this way, they treat me this way. And implicitly there's an integrity in it, but explicitly is something more than that. So when we're dealing with clients internally, we're really trying, we're going back to the wonder piece, we're trying to go a level deep and a level further and build in something, pictures and stories and narratives that are rooted in reality, but they're rooted in creating something new, fresh, and dynamic, not just the kind of you know, standard kind of corporate comms. Externally, how do you do that when you're looking at a campaign? Well, you've also then got to understand your customers. And I think sometimes one of the biggest mistakes I see with marketing teams is they get so caught up with their features, their benefits. Yeah, we've got this great idea, we we whiteboarded this, we've had this great, you know, creation session, and this is exciting stuff. And then you how does that resonate with you? Have you asked any customers? Have you do you understand their felt needs? Do you understand what your competitive landscape is doing? And so often the mistake marketers make is not understanding their customer. You know, Steve Jobs was so was was a brilliant example of this. He said you start with a customer experience and then you work backwards to the technology, you work backwards to the campaign. So his whole piece around simplicity was to deliver the best in class customer experience for every pro every heartbeat up hardware, every bit of software he created was all about simplicity for the customer and ultimately work backwards to the technology piece. More often than not, we work from features and benefits outwards and go, we think the customer wants this, we think the customer would like that. And actually, somewhere you kind of lose that alignment.

Tom DuFore 12:52

One

Franchise Growth And Local Brand Translation

Tom DuFore 12:53

thing I always like to just toss in is a franchise-oriented question, and it has an interesting dynamic because you have a corporate where generally there was a founder, someone who started the original idea, and now you have franchisees that start getting scattered across the region, the country, or even around the world. And so now you're taking this brand messaging from corporate where you'd normally have staff and people disseminating to customers, to now other owners that are basically leasing the brand and system from corporate as a franchise. You know, how have you found as the brand starts to spread out into other locations, other regions? At the conference where we met, there were people from all over the world, from North America and Europe and Africa and all over the place. So, what have you seen to either be maybe common pain points, or I'm sure there's not a catch-all solution to this, but I'd love to get your thoughts on it.

Dan Maudhub 13:48

One of one of the, I suppose a real kind of challenge we've seen is the kind of potential gap between the corporate training you have up front, you know, and you know, you're kind of immersed for a period of time. You're trained or mental for a period of time. But then how do you then pass that on to the team as you're scaling your own franchise, as your own business? So it's that kind of multiplication process is often a challenge. So for us, you know, one of the things that we've seen work really well is being able to translate corporate comms into a localized environment. So it's okay, well, here's the deck, here's the framework, here are the guidelines you've got to work within. Okay, but how can we deliver that locally? Maybe we need to create shorter training courses, maybe we need to create more regular touch points. Actually, maybe we need to re-retranslate some of the corporate comms into language and frameworks that our team can understand locally, particularly if you're working into sort of slightly different um cultural geographies or if you're working into slightly different business environments. You might have to translate some of the comms slightly differently. Imagery being a great example of that, you know. So we worked with one of the world's largest components manufacturers who had a very big hub and spoke model. So they had a big, big central team based in Italy, but they had like, I mean, they're not franchises, but large, kind of localized setups all over the world. And one of our jobs was to basically create a hub and spoke model that works two ways. So not only from corporate comms out, but actually what's being fed back into the hub, what information we need these types of images. We can't use this, we can't use these campaigns. Localization becomes massive, translation becomes huge. So actually, we create a two-way model where you can feed the spokes, so to speak, you know, the smaller entities could feed back into the corporate entity in a two-way kind of communication. We saw we've seen that work really, really well.

Tom DuFore 15:53

That's really interesting, Dan. Well, for someone that tunes in and says, Boy, I'd love to connect with Dan, learn more about him, his business, what they're doing. How can someone get in touch with you, learn more about what you're up to?

Dan Maudhub 16:05

In a modern world we live in, LinkedIn is the uh is the uh go-to place. But feel free to connect me on LinkedIn. I'm the only Dan Mordub on LinkedIn, I believe. I have an unusual surname. So yeah, feel free to connect on LinkedIn. Visit our website, bewonderful.co.uk. You'll see a couple of our ways of engaging and creating wonderful clients. We have our own AI tool called Wonder AI, which uh within 30 seconds you can get a performance report on your website just by chatting to our AI for a few seconds. Generally, yeah, we can be found on all the sort of social channels you'd expect.

Tom DuFore 16:40

Perfect, perfect. Well, we'll make sure we include those in the show notes so it's easy for someone to just click. And damn, this is a great time in the show. We make

Misses Wins Multipliers And Success

Tom DuFore 16:48

a little transition. We ask every guest the same four questions before they go. And the first question we ask is have you had a miss or two on your journey and something you learned from it?

Dan Maudhub 16:57

Wow, a miss or two. I mean, how long have you got? Can we do an episode just for the misses? I think one of the one of the biggest things I've learned is is how to build trust, but also build robust contracts that go with it. Trust is a relational equity and one of the strongest relational equities you can have. But also the reality corporate contracts are really, really important as we as we know. Um, we actually launched and incubated a co-working brand off the side of the agency about six, seven years ago. We worked too much on handshakes, should we say. And so by the time we got to scaling the brand, we looked at the corporate contract, and the original investor had put a couple of bits in the contract, which meant we couldn't scale because they'd owned, they owned too much of the IP and the equity. And so we learned a really big model, you know, really big principle there that check all the small details. I mean, our lawyers had checked it, it was all gone legal. But when it came to scaling, we were hamstrung. So I think it's really important that you have the end in mind when you're looking at building contracts, looking to building brands. Now, what does the exit point look like? How big is that? And what kind of structure are you going to need, and make sure you can deliver that from day one.

Tom DuFore 18:10

Very good. Well, let's look on the other side. Let's talk about a make or two, a highlight, a win that you'd like to share.

Dan Maudhub 18:16

Yeah, I mean, the obvious, the obvious place to go there would be client wins, and and we've had some amazing, yeah, we have some amazing wins. We won, you know, we won pitches and against some of the biggest players in the industry. But I think for me, the biggest two of the biggest wins was number one was being able to translate my my own culture, my own values into the agency. So we became B Corp certified in 2022, which means the business is is part of the B Corp movement, which effectively means our business is measured each year, a triple bottom line metric. So on profit and how we how what we do with our profits, our impact on people, our impact on planet. So that became something that we we could translate our corporate values into practical action. When we talk about collaboration and we talk about co-creation, these are some of our values. We were able to be able to actually translate those into every individual staff member. They again without going too much details, no, that was really cool. And then we took that a step further in 2025, early 2025. I actually exited the business via an employee ownership trust, which is a way of being able to sell the majority shares in the business back to the business, which means the majority shareholders become the staff via a trust model. So without going into too much detail, it was a way of basically securing the future of the business, setting up profit share schemes for the staff members, so that as we grow and as we win, everyone wins. So that was really in some ways the ultimate translation of the way that I see business is creating that multiplier effect, creating something that's bigger than yourself. So that's that they've been two real highlights for the business.

Tom DuFore 20:03

That's a great segue into the next question about a multiplier. We ask, have you used a multiplier to grow yourself personally or professionally or any of the organizations you've run?

Dan Maudhub 20:13

Yeah, I think generosity is a multiplier. I think that it's for me, it's been a real testament in my in my you know career. The more I give, the more I seem to receive, the more that I I want to help others, the more that I'm helped. You know, and and I've looking back at my career, I've realized that so many of the business multipliers that have come, whether it's been access to a larger contract, whether it's been access to teams, whatever it might have become because of a relational network, how do you know, and then if you track it back two or three steps, you realize that you're introduced to someone because you were kind to someone else, because you were generous to someone else. And so for me, generosity has been a multiplier where you're creating something bigger than some of its parts. So you might, you know, you're generous to one person, but you never know what their impact on that is going to be. And we have lots and lots of stories of that. But generosity has been, might not be the answer you're expecting, or kind of maybe a sort of a standard business answer. But that's been something that's not only been a value to me, but I've really seen the multiplication power of it.

Tom DuFore 21:17

And the final question we ask every guest, Dan, is what does success mean to you?

Dan Maudhub 21:21

Success to me means that everyone wins. I think, I think there's it's very easy to go into business with a mindset of extrapolation. I win, you lose. You know, potentially even exploitation, you know, where you say, well, I'm gonna win for my gain, and I don't really care what happens to you. And that's, you know, that's you do the and I'm not speaking against that, but for me, creating environments, whether it's a contract with a new client, whether it's taking on a new staff member, whether it's you know, signing something new, you're creating an environment where everyone can win, where where there's there's the utmost, not only integrity, but the ability for a big upside. So, for us, for example, you know, and we make that very practical. We might say to a client, this is going to cost you more up front. But look at the upside, look at the long-term impact on this. Look at how this is going to grow your business over the next three to five years. Look at the multiplier effect of this contract. The upside for you is exponentially more than it would be if we do a cheaper version of it and don't actually give you what you want. Because the lack of integrity will say, let's get it in cheap, try and get them through the door, and then try. But we're very honest. We say, this is what it's going to cost, this is what this is the outcome that it's going to achieve. And therefore, the and this is why we're going to go on this journey. So for us, you know, we create win-wins in every scenario. That's that's really important. And that's what success looks like for me.

Tom DuFore 22:47

That's fantastic. And that certainly resonates with me as I hear you share that. Our number one value at our company is win-win relationships and trying to foster and build that. Well, Dan, as we bring this to a close, is there anything you were hoping to share or get across that you haven't had a chance to yet?

Dan Maudhub 23:04

That's a great question. That's a great final question, not one I've been asked before. Only that I believe that when we live in challenging economic or political circumstances, maybe, and we look at macroeconomic influences around us, it's very easy to lose heart. It's very easy to worry and let those external factors influence our internal motivations. But actually, I suppose maybe more of an encouragement to CEOs and to founders that to keep digging into the inner voice that drives you and leads you, and to keep believing in the why that you started the business, believing the why of why you do what you do. Because ultimately, those that inner voice and that kind of inner narrative, if it's if it's um you know walked out in a positive way, and in a way that with maximum integrity, you will get the outcomes that you want.

Tom DuFore 23:54

Dan,

Key Takeaways And Win Win Close

Tom DuFore 23:55

thank you so much for a fantastic interview. And let's go ahead and jump into today's three key takeaways. So, takeaway number one is how Wonder has become his superpower. And I love how he asked, what makes you stop and say, wow, or create something wonderful? And he said, to build a business around creating that culmination with customers and clients saying, Wow, that was wonderful, or this is wonderful. What a great approach. Takeaway number two is when he said, brand is a perception of what your consumer has in their mind about you. I thought that was a great quote. Again, it's brand is a perception of what your consumer has in their mind about you. Takeaway number three is when he talked about his multiplier. And he said his multiplier has been generosity and how it seems like the more he continues to give, he continues to receive. And while he's not giving to receive, it just seems to come that way the more generous he is. And now it's time for today's win-win. So today's win-win, you probably could have guessed, or hopefully guessed if you've been listening for a while. And it's when he talked about what success means to him. And when Dan said success to him is when everyone wins. Everyone wins. And isn't that the culmination of a win-win? It's where everyone wins in that situation. So that's near and dear to my heart. And I hope it is to you as you're looking at this. And so that's the episode today, folks. Please make sure you subscribe to the podcast and to give us a review. And remember, if you or anyone you know might be ready to franchise their business or take their franchise company to the next level, please connect with us at BigSkyFranchise Team.com where you can schedule your free no obligation consultation. Thanks for tuning in, and we look forward to having you back next week.