Podcast: Kristin Luck joins us to talk about pressures on insights professionals

For this episode, we were joined by Kristin Luck (one of the busiest people we know in the market research industry), who is co-founder of growth consultancy, ScaleHouse, and president of global industry association, ESOMAR, among many other things. As a growth advisor and strategist, Kristin serves a number of cutting-edge marketing and analytics technology and services firms.

She is the founder of two marketing analytics companies that she led to successful exits. Kristin co-founded OTX, an online research business that was named the fastest growing research firm in the world in 2002 and 2003 and was subsequently acquired by Zelnick Media & Pilot Group and again by Ipsos in 2007. She then founded Forefront Consulting Group, a research technology firm that was acquired by Decipher. Decipher was acquired by FocusVision in 2014 after seven consecutive years of double - triple digit growth.

Kristin is a licensed investment banker with Oberon Securities and a founder focused on helping fellow founders and executive teams scale and monetize their businesses. Her deal expertise on both sides of transactions comes from participating in both acquisitions and exits from $30 million to $225 million. She is also passionate about supporting founders in international markets execute their entry into the U.S. Kristin also regularly contributes to both the commercial (Fast Company, Forbes) and academic press (Research World, Journal of Brand Strategy) where she explores emerging marketing and research methods. She is consistently ranked as one of the top 100 sales and branding experts to follow on Twitter. She is also the founder of industry organization, Women in Research (WIRe). 

During this episode, Kristin and Geoff Lowe opened up about some of the pressures facing insights professionals today, including themselves. She said that even when you love what you do, you can still face burnout. Burnout isn't always a result of stress, it can be a combination of many factors. In the market research industry, she said she's seen the number of work hours rise steadily for herself and her peers over the years. It has become the norm, and the expectation for market researchers to work longer hours. 

Kristin says that in the face of all this "busyness", it's critical to also find balance. She talks about the value of learning how to say "no" and push back a little bit on increasing demands on one's time. As a self-proclaimed workaholic, she's starting to try to do this in her own life. "Be very deliberate about about what you're working on, how much time you're going to spend on it, because when you say yes to one thing, it's to 'no' to something else, that 'no' might be just something in your personal life that's really important to you." This is a lesson you don't want to realize too late. 

She goes on to talk about her own work and what drives her in her business - helping companies grow, finding new opportunities and realizing their goals. Helping people with their business is satisfying to her, and she can't do that if she is exhausted and burned out. She advises market research professionals, who are facing incredible pressures in the industry as a whole, to be very intentional in mapping out their career paths and to put boundaries in place to ensure they can achieve their goals and spend more time doing what truly matters. Organizations would do well to focus more on employee wellness, and truly being people-first. 

Want to hear more from Kristin about her first-hand experience with burnout, busyness, and finding balance? Listen here.