#31: Terence McCarron (OpinionRoute)

(Disclaimer: AI-Generated)

Terence R. McCarron (OpinionRoute) [00:00:00]: We really are about empowering the research company to enter into this new tech world, right? They can't make a multimillion dollar investment and they they do have a knowledge gap because they haven't been in it The the same way as their vendors have over the last 10 years. So we really believe we can be the vehicle that helps give them very simple tools that have a ton of power that will help bridge them to introduce immediate efficiency, immediate profit enhancement, but also bridge them into a more automated world that has that foundation of data quality and quality overall.

Jeffrey Stern [00:00:38]: Let's discover the Cleveland entrepreneurial ecosystem. We are telling the stories of its entrepreneurs and those supporting them. Welcome to the Lay of the Land podcast where we are exploring what people are building in Cleveland. I'm your host, Jeffrey Stern. And today, I had the pleasure of speaking with Terence McCarron, who is the CEO and Founder of Opinion Route based here in downtown Cleveland. Opinion Route, which Terrence has now bootstrapped his way to over 8 figures in revenue, Is a market research data collection services and sample technology firm, which at a high High level means opinion route helps market researchers produce accurate results. But we'll do a much deeper dive here into the terminology Land business over the course of our conversation.

Jeffrey Stern [00:01:28]: Terrence's career spans 20 plus years in the market research industry, but he sees the entrepreneurial opportunity to build his own company in the space Back in 2013 when he moved his family specifically here to Cleveland in order to start opinion route. I can say with confidence that we are Quite lucky to have Terrence here in the land as both a founder and as a mentor to others. So please enjoy our conversation. So before we dive into your background and and the work you're doing at opinion route, I I thought it would be actually useful to start with some kind of terms and definitions because market research is one of those concepts where, At least personally, I feel like it's easy to wager a guess into what it entails, but there is some opacity around what it actually is. So I'd love to start if you could just provide us some context on what is market research Land what does this industry look like?

Terence R. McCarron (OpinionRoute) [00:02:30]: Yeah, I'd love to. So market research is actually a sector, it's been around for about a 100 years. I don't think a lot of people realize The, but The context is we're sort of in an era of data driven decision making on a corporate level and the way I look at it is market research is sort of the industry that fuels all of that. Okay? So, there are a variety of different methods, techniques, technologies that can lead to some more insights into a target audience or a market. And our sector is about an $80,000,000,000 global sector that houses a real diverse subgroup of professionals and technologies. It's comprised of, you know, everything from a lot of smart people, PhDs, statisticians, big data analytics technology platforms, BI tools, survey tools. So, a big one that's been in the news a lot lately from a business standpoint is Qualtrics, then there's SurveyMonkey, and all kinds of service companies that wrap around all those technologies, to really help corporations understand their strategy or derive better strategy as a result of just understanding their audience.

Jeffrey Stern [00:03:44]: And what drew you to this world of market research?

Terence R. McCarron (OpinionRoute) [00:03:49]: Yeah. I wish I had some purpose driven story to really, you know, make it sound like it was manifest destiny. But my story is, a little simpler, and I tell it because I think it's comping for a lot of people in our world. You know, when I was in college, there wasn't, like The is now, there wasn't a lot of analytics or market research degrees that people could pursue. So for me, I had my heart set into getting to the management consulting world, my old senior year in college, turned out not to work out, and I found out about 3 weeks before graduation, and I was sort of in scramble mode. All my friends had jobs, so I was on an abbreviated hunt. And I wound up finding this, company called survey sampling, which was about a mile and a half from my campus, Fairfield University in Connecticut. And, I was able to land a job as an account manager just in time for graduation.

Terence R. McCarron (OpinionRoute) [00:04:41]: So I very much stumbled into the sector, which is a pretty common story. And, it's been so good to me, I've never left.

Jeffrey Stern [00:04:49]: Yeah, it's just grown on you over time.

Terence R. McCarron (OpinionRoute) [00:04:52]: For sure, for sure. You know, there were some parallels like The political polling side was always fun, I studied a bunch of that in college. So The were premises from my coursework that definitely applied, which made it work. But, yeah, it was just happenstance, and that's as simple as it was.

Jeffrey Stern [00:05:10]: Yeah. I didn't realize the Stern of the industry. You know, you mentioned as far back as a 100 years Land just with an understanding of How much technology and data has to be involved now compared to what it must have looked like back The? What what did it look like back then? I'm struggling to even like think about what it How it worked.

Terence R. McCarron (OpinionRoute) [00:05:30]: Yeah, I laugh because no one thinks much about it but like Nielsen TV ratings, right? There was actually a guy named Nielsen, right? Gallup, which is one of the most preeminent political polling companies, which is much bigger than that now, but there was actually a guy named Gallup, right? So The original market research companies were founded with really niche offerings, Things like when the initial market research companies was really just keeping an inventory of pills that were on the shelves of pharmacies around the country. So that was a pharmaceutical index, if you will, that every company subscribed to to see trends in inventory and products being moved all around the country. There was a publication called Life Magazine, you know, for decades. And Life Magazine started the initial, you know, sort of online or not online, but offline magazine advertising, reader surveys. Right? To do recall of the different ads and products that got featured in the magazine. So, when you think about it from a consumer communication standpoint, wherever there was product being sold or ads being Lay, there was always someone behind the scenes trying to figure out how to quantify what was actually happening in the market.

Jeffrey Stern [00:06:43]: Yeah. So as you make your inroads into the the world of market research, at what point is the flip switched from The is Something that I've stumbled into as an industry to The is something where I've recognized a problem Land I want to build something to solve it.

Terence R. McCarron (OpinionRoute) [00:07:00]: Yeah. So I I should start by the industry made a major transition around 2002, 2003, where in The quantitative world, which is where I've always been. I'm a very much a numbers guy. There was a shift that occurred from phone. So the annoying people that would call those landlines at dinner time would say, Hey, I just want your opinion, right? Now everything was moving online. So as the access to the Internet was becoming more mainstream in households across America, you know, research sort of follows where the consumers are. So the shift to online was inevitable. It really crossed, a major, you know, sort of pivot juncture, if you will, around that time, 2002, 2003, and I jumped all in on that trend in our industry Land The What was the phone data collection company at the time and joined, what was, I think, the only online data collection company in existence in Connecticut, which is a firm called Greenfield online.

Terence R. McCarron (OpinionRoute) [00:08:01]: So that was exciting Land and we were a bunch of young people. It was a newer method, a newer way of doing things in a very, you know, traditional conservative, you know, change in first sector. But there was this group of what was a powerhouse of talent that I think we appreciate at the time, but just seeing what happened since, all the people that left Greenfield and went on to do great things. We had a really sort of incredible team that drove a lot of change in The sector. During it was a wild ride, but it was an amazingly fun educational. You know, I always say I had about 20 years worth of businesses experience in my 5 years of greenfield online. And ultimately, that ended when we sold to Microsoft Land I pursued other things. But At that point, that was really where this stopped just being, hey, this sector where I seem pretty smart to a lot of employers to being something that was really ingrained as part of my path and and my journey and my career.

Jeffrey Stern [00:08:57]: Yeah. So how do you leverage that Accelerated 20 years of experience into, you know, post acquisition, just taking stock of where the industry had moved towards With the shift to online and and thinking about, you know, what you wanted to do next within the industry.

Terence R. McCarron (OpinionRoute) [00:09:14]: So, for me, the the one I kind of synthesize as the things that meant most to me in my time at that company was really being on the leading edge of a technology wave of change in the industry. As hard as that was in a traditional sector, traditional mature sector. You know, I saw how wildly successful a business model could be if they leaned into a little bit of change and and innovation. So for me, that was, a lesson that I really kept with me as I as I moved on. Ultimately, I sought out, another sort of early stage, but established technology sort of, disruptor, if you will. And a couple years later, I wind up, leaving North America for a Swedish tech company in our space, and had another sort of really fun 4 year ride there. So me paying attention to sort of what the next wave of change was with a particular eye on technology driven change, really set me up pretty well for the concept behind opinion route, which was just looking at some of the unintended consequences that rapid automation had in our sector and Lay me to sort of create opinion route to help market research agencies bridge into the new world, so to speak.

Jeffrey Stern [00:10:32]: So, what is the problem that opinion route is working to solve Land why this problem of all the problems that you kind of picked up on that pattern recognition?

Terence R. McCarron (OpinionRoute) [00:10:43]: So, the one truth that I've really learned in my career is that there's this sort of really important relationship between 2 stakeholders in market research, and that is the market research company Land their data collection partner or what we would call their sample partner, right? That is sort of a love hate relationship at times, but it's always been really instrumental to the outcomes and the efficacy of market research in the corporate world. What I've really seen over those last decade or so of automation really taking hold in this next phase of technology driven change is that it really was one-sided. So the biggest thing that was different from this Lay versus my previous Lay of in o two zero three There's an o two and o three. Researchers and data collection companies sort of held hands and walked through this wave of change collaboratively. Mhmm. But what I really believed was happening and what I saw through my own experience was The automation was really taking hold in half of the Lay, That was on the sample The the data collection vendor side of the equation. They went all in on automation, they got the benefit of, you know, 100 of 1,000,000 of dollars of venture capital investment, private equity investment, m and a The really shapes, reshape the industry on the fly. But meanwhile, the research companies, many of them still operate like it's 10 years ago.

Terence R. McCarron (OpinionRoute) [00:12:10]: Right? They have the same expectations, the same processes, and in a lot of ways, it it I I was seeing firsthand, it created this huge gap. It was a knowledge gap, it was an opportunity gap, and the power dynamic in that relationship really shifted in favor of the vendor. So now you which is weird because it's sort of like the the tail wagging the dog. Right? So you have this dynamic now where research firms who don't have the resources or the know how to really scale in the same way are now at a major disadvantage with their vendors. Right? Which is affecting everything in in terms of data quality, it's affecting where labor sits in terms of the typical relationship, ton of the labor on the day of questions subside has shifted into the market research house, which is abnormal, but it's the reality of where we are today. So for me, my vantage point in understanding that dynamic between the research agency and the vendor, you know, I kind of felt like I was uniquely positioned to really sit on the side of the research agency and help them bridge that gap into this new complex world.

Jeffrey Stern [00:13:24]: You mentioned sample a few times in The description. Can you just kinda define that in the context of the space?

Terence R. McCarron (OpinionRoute) [00:13:32]: Yeah. Happy to do so. So sample outside the context of our industry, I think is widely understood as just being, you know, a subset of a broader thing that gives you just a taste of what that thing is. In our world where we're doing opinion surveys, We don't need to speak to the entire US population to get a read on what the population feels about a given product or service. So generally, what's best practice in market research is we just approach a subset of the target audience for that product or service, and then administer the survey to that audience. So, that whole process is referred to as survey sampling. So that's really what we're talking about. And now, you know, Stern based methods are the dominant approach in that way.

Jeffrey Stern [00:14:20]: Got it. So kinda diving into the nitty gritty of Of how these surveys are actually conducted Land and the sampling actually conducted. How do you find the people who are filling up, like, when you talk about target audience, How are they procured, aggregated, sourced, routed to The right people? And how do you think about who is filling out these surveys?

Terence R. McCarron (OpinionRoute) [00:14:43]: Yeah. So important question because I think we've all been hit up to take a survey whether it's time The Dunkin' Donuts, drive through line and the receipt or some other obtrusive Lay, sometimes even.

Jeffrey Stern [00:14:55]: We're in

Terence R. McCarron (OpinionRoute) [00:14:55]: a gap of really permission based, very much double opted in, we're not the bait and switchy type, right? We are in a sector of surveys that compensates consumers, gives them really clear understanding what they're opting into, their time commitment, the topic of the survey, Land the transparency behind that, I think is a hallmark of of kind of what we do and has enabled our industry to keep the trust factor really in place with, consumers in, you know, countries all over the world, really. So who's filling out surveys? It could be anybody. Right? They they might fill out a survey because they were approached to join a survey taking community, The may have responded to an ad on social media, they may have seen an offer in a favorite gaming app on their phone, where they can't quite get to the next level unless The either pay or do some other revenue generating event for the app owner, right? And surveys being a really common one that consumers like because it doesn't cost them anything. So wherever consumers are, there's a way to try and recruit them to see an ad or take surveys, so that's very common, I think, and Land it's pretty ubiquitous for anyone that uses any technology online. So surveys could be anything from about your grocery shopping habits. It could be targeting very senior level IT decision makers at large companies. It could be among your doctor and any audience Land every audience, but if there's a corporation that's trying to sell a product or service, and they wanna take a smarter approach, you know, that target audience could be approached to take a survey.

Jeffrey Stern [00:16:34]: So, getting at the, I think the crux of What I understand OpinionRad is focused on, how do you think about the quality of those results that you're getting? And I'd love if we just introduce the concept of fraud here.

Terence R. McCarron (OpinionRoute) [00:16:48]: Yeah. Yeah. So, 2 2 concepts all all sort of married together. It's fraud and then, it's Lay to this automation trends that I've alluded to. So, one of the most tangible results of the technology wave of innovation that we've seen over the last decade has been the rise of technologies that route fondants from a source to an appropriate survey. Now, a decade ago, we used to call those engines routers, right? But now they're more commonly referred to as programmatic engines, right? Or programmatic marketplaces. And that implies all kinds of things on the The side, but it's basically a really sophisticated algorithm driven tech platform that matches a consumer with the right surveys. So, in these platforms, there are a variety of dollars being transacted.

Terence R. McCarron (OpinionRoute) [00:17:46]: So survey takers get their cut in terms of an incentive, but publishers or website owners that drive their readership or The, members into a survey engine also get compensated. So, there are multiple points of monetary transactions that are occurring. And every time that exists, and every time it's highly automated, you're going to attract the attention of fraudsters, right? And in 2020, as we went through COVID, and we had all kinds of people at home with all kinds of free time, There was an incredible rise in fraud in our sector. So what does that look like? That's sort of a common question I even get asked by researchers. And I I usually tell this story to just illustrate how things have changed from even a few years ago till now in 2021. So a few years ago, I was at an industry conference in a a very, well known company in our sector called JD Power and Associates, which everyone knows from Yep. Car commercials, commercial, and regular yeah. Regular consumer.

Terence R. McCarron (OpinionRoute) [00:18:53]: Right? But JD Power got up Land they gave this presentation where they basically confessed that they had, their data Land all their auto work had gotten infiltrated by bots. And bots are there are good bots, there are bad bots, but this was sort of The new wave of fraud for 4 years ago where there was just these automated scripts that got into a survey, filled out all the The, and it didn't get caught for however many quarters. And The, JB Power really confessed about this, but it gave them A really unique opportunity to sort of open up the conversation in our sector about how big our problem is bots and surveys. And they quantify the problem as being somewhere between 2 3% of all survey starts were by bot activity based on their analysis. So fast forward to now, an opinion route actually has a proprietary fraud prevention tool called Cleveland. And one of the things we do for all our clients in the industry at large is we report in the same way j d power did a few years ago. We report on common fraud trends. What does it look like? It's not bots anymore.

Terence R. McCarron (OpinionRoute) [00:20:00]: That's pretty well mitigated, but things like data center activity, click farms, tour browser usage, all kinds of, you know, dark web fraudulent activity that shows up in surveys. And, from April, we could see that from the total universe of survey starts About 16% of them are fraudulent attempts. So in a period of just a few short years, it's more than increased by 5 times. And it's hitting that point from a statistical significant standpoint, where it's a it's a severe problem for researchers and statisticians in our world. So that's really kind of, the backdrop on what it is, what it looks like today, how prevalent it is. But also, there is a correlation like, you know, automation technology has been great for our sector, but there are some unintended consequences that we've been seeing for quite a long time as well. And one of, I feel like our charters at opinion route is to be that voice of balance that really helps market researchers understand, not just that there are benefits, but there are problems, but you don't have to be paralyzed by The. We can help bring you into the new world, take advantage of the good stuff, minimize the bad Stern, and get all the efficiencies that tech offers.

Jeffrey Stern [00:21:18]: What is the incentive for nefarious actors? And just in the evolution of fraud over time from these, You know, scripted programmatic things to the more advanced versions of that that it's evolved into now. What is the honeypot at the end of That rainbow for those kinds of actors. Why is there fraud?

Terence R. McCarron (OpinionRoute) [00:21:41]: Automated payment as a survey taker. So for a 4.99 a month investment, that's $4.99 investment into a VPN that masks your IP address Land geolocation, that Land of thing. You might be able to make a $100 in a week, right? So that's one level, I deem that the lower level, but it's real, and it attracts people, especially since there are 1,000,000,000 of dollars being transacted in online sample globally, just as a direct result of our piece of the industry. But the other side of it is even richer, which is a similar problem that I think digital advertising faces. But a lot of the supply chain for big sample companies when they buy from other websites to drive traffic into their engine, they often pay per click, right? So, all they're paying for is you get a click into our engine, and we're going to pay it. So, there's a big incentive for people to start up a fake website, generate clicks in an automated fashion, run it through, VPN masks Land other kinds of fraudulent activity, and they will be a supplier in the survey ecosystem that might generate 1,000,000 of dollars, right? Hopefully doesn't get that far before it gets caught. But the big difference, I'd like to compare it to digital advertising a lot because we all read in the news about fraud problems at YouTube with their metrics, Facebook Land really any digital ad platform. The big difference in our world is the click into the survey is data, and the data is the product, right? So, in advertising, ultimately, that fraud gets washed out if the sales of the product through the campaign cross that threshold of what fraud impact was, and it's still profitable.

Terence R. McCarron (OpinionRoute) [00:23:31]: But in our world, if 16% of the clicks into the survey are fake, then that data, the results, the insights are really compromised. And that's just something our industry just can't afford.

Jeffrey Stern [00:23:43]: Taking a step back, but running with The, I'm curious when you think about the founding of Opinion Route And the expertise that you have in this space, which it sounds like has evolved pretty significantly just over the last few years. When you were starting it, Was it the same intuition of the direction that the space was headed Land positioning Opinion Route to evolve with the industry? Or what was the initial, you know, vision for opinion route? Land, yeah, I'd love to just hear kinda the the early days, the founding Stern, and, You know, what you were actually selling? You know, how is it that you were making money in The early days?

Terence R. McCarron (OpinionRoute) [00:24:20]: I mean, right now we talk a lot about fraud because of how fast it's growing. And frankly, because we're really good at preventing it on a survey basis. So, it's one of those big problems that actually has a solution, right? But in the early days of opinion, even before we hit this sort of escalation, fraud fits in a broader bucket that's really important in our industry and has been forever. And that's just we call data quality. So data quality is sort of an umbrella concept that the way we explain it, it represents 3 categories. Right? It's what's happening on a respondent's device, what's happening with who the person says they are, right? Land The, How engaged are they Land what are their answers look like actually in the survey? So we call that The person project. So device is the fraud that we've spent a lot of time talking about already. Another rising problem is if you really like taking surveys and you join a bunch of websites that incentivize you to take surveys, you learn pretty quickly that if you take cheeseburger surveys, you're not gonna get paid nearly as much as if you are an IT enterprise decision maker, right, who can speak to Apple and Microsoft about how you make your cloud hosting service decisions.

Terence R. McCarron (OpinionRoute) [00:25:37]: Right? So, that sort of realization from a savvy survey taker has created that person problem, which Is this person really who they say they are? And The, their engagement level in the project itself, in the survey itself. So, When I started Opinion Route I understood there was a data quality issue, I understood that all the automation was increasing that pretty consistently. And mostly, we took a services based approach, we really analyze all the different vendor options Land how they recruited, what their approach was to recruiting survey survey takers themselves. And we really would create custom field plans that optimize the higher validation approaches and minimize or eliminated Those approaches that really didn't know anything about who the survey taker was until they hit the survey. So that was really how we did it. We're able to prove that from a real quantitative data driven standpoint The we Land improve data quality every single time. But as the dynamics evolved and continue to escalate, we had to get better Land not just rely on our know how, but we actually then needed to start investing in our own technologies that would combat some of the complex problems that We're evolving real time in the in the Stern of opinion round.

Jeffrey Stern [00:27:01]: So in that transition from, you know, more of the services offering The to some kind of product of the work that you were doing, was that just capitalized from the initial of of services work that you were doing and and reinvesting that back into the company, or Was there initial funding involved?

Terence R. McCarron (OpinionRoute) [00:27:19]: Yeah. It was absolutely all funded by our clients. So our growth trajectory, which has been pretty consistent Land it it it's been, a source of pride for me, frankly. It's really been our clients that have enabled us to invest in the next wave of data quality assurance, right? So, you know, you could say we bootstrapped it for sure. But along the way, the idea being that it's forced us to be relevant in terms of what we are prioritizing from a data quality and other tech technology advancements too. So our vision is beyond just data quality, but data quality is a is a a core sort of foundational component to everything we build and everything we do. So it made a lot of sense to start there. But, yeah, like, literally, if clients don't think they need it, It it just doesn't make sense for us to invest in it.

Terence R. McCarron (OpinionRoute) [00:28:12]: So our stakeholders, our shareholders in a lot of ways really are our clients Land it's forced us to be constantly up up to speed on their pains, what they're seeing. And but it's led to a really nice dynamic where we have this iterative conversation going with some of the most exciting market research firms in the industry. It's a feedback loop. They're constantly giving us what they're seeing on a trend basis Land give us the opportunity to really iterate and evolve to solve their problems. It's been fun.

Jeffrey Stern [00:28:43]: Yeah. How do you reconcile That kind of immediate relation that you have with the with the customers Land solving immediate needs Land having it being funded by that With some of the ideas you have that are more out there in the future Land building towards that in the way that VC funding typically finances that kind of more future activity. How do you think about that having bootstrapped the company?

Terence R. McCarron (OpinionRoute) [00:29:08]: It's a great question because we're doing both very actively. So there's The premise that we really operate with in that our so we have a tech business, and we have a services business. Our services business is the 1st client for every piece of technology we built. Right? So, in effect, what I've had to do is build a very lean, very tight, profitable business along the way here, right? And the demands on that profitability have grown as we've wanted to get more ambitious and think 5 years, 10 years out into the future with our tech roadmap, right, and then think about how to get there. So there's, there's an interesting component in everything we've built where a technology solves a problem like fraud, but simultaneously, it also enhances our own profitability profile of our services business. So, we are our own case study, in sort of the twofold benefit of our technology in a lot of Lay, and we talk about that pretty openly. So, I'll give you an example. During COVID last year, when revenue dropped industry wide, You know, we had a choice, were we gonna just continue as is and just hope things turned around, or were we gonna use that time to really do something big in our business? And what we were able to do is really, put into action certain Stern products, 2 of them named Cleveland and ValidID.

Terence R. McCarron (OpinionRoute) [00:30:37]: And what it the impact on our p and l was we're able to raise our gross margin threshold by 10 percentage points. Because through all the efficiency and all the fraud suppression, we're able to become a lot smarter and a lot leaner in our purchase pricing along the way. So that's a perfect example of our products in our own business, not just solving a major problem, but actually creating some more investment just from the same and we were flat last year, right? So just from the same revenue line, we were able to create more investment opportunity by just deploying our own solutions.

Jeffrey Stern [00:31:11]: Yeah. No. Eating your your own dog food, I feel like it it pans out in a few ways. Just it forces you to think about that efficiency, but also At least in my experience, it instills some kind of empathy for the people that you're also selling it to Land that who are also going to be using it because you have to use it yourself.

Terence R. McCarron (OpinionRoute) [00:31:28]: And we don't have any, any users that are as demanding as our own employees, right? And they want the best technology we can build, right? And The will have no problem giving feedback, Oh, this is broken, this is terrible. And for us, we feel like that's part of our tech secret sauce because we're able to by the time we allow a client to actually use tech, It's gone through some of the most demanding critics we can ever put it in front of, which is our own employees, you know. So I think it's made us a lot better on multiple angles, but it's also brought efficiency and more balance into the lives of our employees as well.

Jeffrey Stern [00:32:06]: So, just kinda taking stock of where opinion route is today, Can you of paint a picture on the technology front, on the services front? You know, where where is the company? How how big are you? And yeah, just Land of the overview of where opinion rat is today.

Terence R. McCarron (OpinionRoute) [00:32:22]: Sure. We're still very much, if you look at our Our revenue line driven by our services business, which has quadrupled in the last 5 years. So we've undergone rapid growth on that side. Tech, we're about a year into actually licensing our tech products into the market. We'll undergo about a 6x increase on our tech revenue this year. And all of that's been very data quality driven product based. So we have 4 products in the market right now that that generate subscription revenue for us, which we're really excited about, not just what it is now, but what those things can be in the future. But we're also at an interesting pivot point in our technology side of our business.

Terence R. McCarron (OpinionRoute) [00:33:04]: So we have spent the last year and a half really upgrading our internal project management technology platform that we call the navigator, which was first built in 2014 Land we've consistently iterated over time as our needs as a growing business have evolved, but one of the big components, maybe about half of our dev effort over the last year and a half has been dedicated to completely revamping both the front ends and the back end with the navigator so that we Land introduce that into the market. So One of our core things that we've said from the beginning Land I've even mentioned a couple of times here is we really are about empowering the research company to enter into this new tech world, right? They can't make a multimillion dollar investment and they they do have a knowledge gap because they haven't been in it The the same way as their vendors have over the last 10 years. So we really believe we can be the vehicle that helps give them very simple tools that have a ton of power that will help bridge them to introduce immediate efficiency, immediate profit enhancement, but also bridge them into a more automated world that has that foundation of data quality and quality overall.

Jeffrey Stern [00:34:20]: When you think about that vision, How does it translate to the company culture itself Land the company that you're actually building?

Terence R. McCarron (OpinionRoute) [00:34:30]: You know, I think if we, From the biggest thing it does from that vision is give people a shared mission, right? That's a value based toward the client base. I'll just tell a story that I love telling. There is a real human toll associated with a lack of automation in our client's company, yet they live in a highly automated world. And the biggest toll that is is a human toll. It becomes a 20 fourseven job, if you work in our industry, but you don't have the technology to make your job a little easier. So I love telling the story about one of our clients for years named Courtney. Courtney, at one point, had started firing off emails over a weekend, to our team Land it I was copied on the email thread, and come the following Tuesday, I I just sort of reached out to her, got her on the phone. I was like, Courtney, what are you doing on a Saturday and a Sunday where you're sending all these emails, like, happy to help you whenever you need it, but genuinely tell me about your week, like, what is happening in your week that it had to be Saturday or Sunday Land this is something we can do to free up your weekends, right? And what wind up happening was Courtney, actually, she started like her voice started cracking Land she started kind of like taking a moment just to collect herself.

Terence R. McCarron (OpinionRoute) [00:35:44]: And she wanted to tell me what her week was like working in a research company that's really manual in an automated world. Land, look, we we're all used to it. I think it's not just a unique story in research. I think every sector deals with it. But the alerts going off on your phone nonstop, always having email in your inbox, always need to check on projects because if you take your eyes off of it, things can go can go wrong. You know, there's a real human toll associated with the dynamic right now. So we think about Courtney, we we have other little metaphors around the office that our our own team has come up with, like, the Friday night backpack. We're always bringing our laptop to parties on Friday nights in our backpack just in case, just in case.

Terence R. McCarron (OpinionRoute) [00:36:25]: Land, one of our charters, and we talk about this openly, is like, look, we wanna sort of dissolve that on demand 20 fourseven, everyone has to work at all times dynamic, which has been going on for probably close to 20 years. For me, it started with my 1st BlackBerry, I think, in 2003. And and we wanna be part of a wave of change that helps give people back in our industry, you know, some balance, right, that doesn't really exist. And I think That vision that we have connects very intimately to the experience that project managers in our industry, researchers, sample people in our industry really live through in a way that has become accepted, but maybe during COVID has given everyone an opportunity to think twice about, right? Is this really what we want with our lives? Like, kind of enjoy this time with my family, Maybe I should dedicate more more time on a consistent basis to that. So for us, I think it's been it's part of a broader wave of society self evaluation, and I think it's given our people, sort of, a renewed lease on life The not only is my company working to make my life easier, but to have that sort of impact in the industry on a wide basis feels like a worthy mission I think for The right people and certainly we tend to attract those people in our into our

Jeffrey Stern [00:37:49]: team. Yeah. There's a term that is gaining those popularity in in my industry, in in healthcare Called, robotic process automation, the RPA. And it was just this idea that a lot of companies now are building software robots So that people don't have to be robots, Yeah. It resonates a lot.

Terence R. McCarron (OpinionRoute) [00:38:09]: Yeah, I can totally Lay, we talk a lot about DSS, decision support systems, Right? So when you track, which we've done with our team, tell me the top 5 tasks you're doing after hours or on the weekend. And it's all stuff that, literally, is just looking at data and taking an action based on what they're reading. Right? All of that can be automated. So what we wanna do is free up our people to give that next layer of guidance and consultation The clients. Right? How do we make this project finish a little faster, a little cheaper, a little with a little more depth, giving a little more value Land consultation? Let people do the thinking, the value add, the relationship building, and let, you know, The decision support system or the RPA sort of take over and really automate as much as we can that's just rote repetitive task mastering. Right?

Jeffrey Stern [00:39:02]: Yeah. So I I wanna Dive a little deeper on culture and and tie in, you know, the the Cleveland component of this as well. And and how you think about the relationship between Opinion routes and Cleveland's culture, and just the the role that Cleveland has has played in the company. And, you know, Going back to the founding of it, you know, what actually brought you to Cleveland?

Terence R. McCarron (OpinionRoute) [00:39:26]: Yeah, I'm not born and raised here, right? I am an East Coast guy. I grew up in New Jersey. And as a result, I have a lot of opinions Land I have no shame in sharing them. But, you know, I I I think of I love telling The story about my last company, a Swedish company I mentioned earlier. I I worked for 2 just really great guys, great leaders. One was Beau Mattson, the founder and CEO. Another guy's Richard Thornton, who was sort of our head of sales at the time, but went on to bigger things after. And we're in Barcelona one night just having some drinks too late and, Bo had asked me something that I've never been asked before and he he just said, Look, you're running North America for us, I started this years before we found you, you must have a bunch of opinions on what I screwed up, right? What could I have done better? What would you have done differently? And it was an interesting question.

Terence R. McCarron (OpinionRoute) [00:40:17]: One, because it showed His humility Land and learning, even with all the success he had in his career, he was still learning and still trying to get that kinda input. And it gave me an opportunity to sort of think in that way. And the answer I came out with, which is really funny, because this is way before I thought about opinion route. But I said to him, well, you know, you made a choice that a lot of startups in our industry make Land is you really chose the most expensive labor markets, the most competitive talent basis in the US to start your offices, right? New York, San Fran, LA, you did it. I mean, I was in New York, right? You hired me, right? And I'm glad you did, don't get me wrong, but you did Lay everyone does. And when you have a limited amount of cash, You know, I really believe there's gotta be a wiener, more effective way to do that without swimming in the most competitive pools Land most expensive people. And he said, wow, that's really interesting. He says, so, where where would you have started things? Land, it took me a good couple minutes and I said to him, you know, a city like Cleveland.

Terence R. McCarron (OpinionRoute) [00:41:21]: I I would've done it in a city like Cleveland. So that was like the first part of the Stern, and I just sort of like Land I didn't stop thinking about that for Lay. Like, did I give the right answer? But the end of the day, it made sense. So fast forward a year later, you know, I sort of caught the entrepreneurial bug myself. And I, You know, I sort of told my wife, broke the news door, Hey, I want to quit my job. But I want to sell the house. I want to move. I want to go start my own company, but I don't wanna bring on capital, so I wanna do this Cleveland I wanna do it in a smart market.

Terence R. McCarron (OpinionRoute) [00:41:53]: You know, she didn't know that whole story about Barcelona, but we went through our whole evaluation process, The story short, she said, Cleveland, Cleveland checks all of our boxes, we should go look at houses in Cleveland. Land, you know, basically everything I hoped Cleveland would be, I sort of proved out pretty quickly in the 1st few years Land I'm still proving out 8 years later. But the premise, the thesis, if you will, was that Cleveland had a lot of great schools, a lot of highly educated people. Even though our industry didn't exist here, I felt like there would be a talent pool that I could really draw from in ample numbers. I felt it was a great place to raise a family, but had a cultural community component The it felt like what I was trying to build would really be synergistic with. And the work ethic, I mean The work ethic just that's embedded multi generationally in Northeast Ohio or Cleveland, I wanted in our business, right? So those were sort of the main points relevant to the business that I thought I'd Land, all while being able to pay people a really nice living wage where they could stretch it a lot farther here, The I'd be able to offer or they'd be able to paid for in the New York market, right? And so that's what I did. I I've I've proven that out. I think within 3 years, I'm like, Land, this The worked out exactly well, But even now that we're in a new era, that technology driven, longer term vision, you know, I think some of our premises of, you know, doing things the right way, adding value at every Stern, I don't really have to teach that with our team here.

Terence R. McCarron (OpinionRoute) [00:43:32]: They show up here with all The kinds of characteristics and attributes Land it's made growing and scaling the business that much easier.

Jeffrey Stern [00:43:40]: When you reflect on some of those initial hypotheses, you know, having seen a lot of them pan out, I'm curious What, you know, with the opinions that you have, with the time that you spend here now, what what are some of the insights that you've gleaned from building and growing a a company here in Cleveland Land With that outside perspective. And what did you maybe get wrong about your initial hypothesis?

Terence R. McCarron (OpinionRoute) [00:44:05]: The first thing I got wrong was not understanding the east side, west side, Dubai. Land I set up our 1st offices deep in the suburbs on the east right? I never realized that driving 35 minutes from the west side into into the heights would feel like, taking a flight to work every day for a lot of people. So that was my first mistake, that was a little, Lay little lesson that I had to Stern. But we're downtown now, so so we Land. We learned from that pretty well. And that, I mean, as much as I kid about that, There is a robust talent pool of, culturally aligned people with diverse skill set that we have been able to really tracked into the company from all around the region, which is great. Even seeing resumes now from the Akron, Canton area, it's even stretching that far, which has been great. The one thing I also didn't really learn until I was in it for about a year, was just how rare my story was, right? Moving from a coast to really do what I think a lot of people in Cleveland want, which is we wanna attract entrepreneurs to Stern up, you know, start up companies, in particular tech companies in Cleveland, like we wanna do that, right? I did that.

Terence R. McCarron (OpinionRoute) [00:45:24]: You know, I did that. I moved here and I started here, but a couple things that I wish were a little bit easier. I'm sort of of to a certain extent now, but still dealing with The way.

Jeffrey Stern [00:45:35]: Yeah. Lay them out, lay them out.

Terence R. McCarron (OpinionRoute) [00:45:36]: Yeah. So, I'm hedging, I'm hedging. But the first thing is, I felt like it took me a while to earn people's trust because people were so skeptical that this guy from the New York area would move from New Jersey into Cleveland to start this business, like, what's this guy's story, right? So I sort of had The prove that I was gonna stick around before that 2nd meeting could ever occur. Right? So we took a good year, year and a half before people realized, wow. Skye, you must be saying. Right? And the second thing is I, in the early days, took full advantage of a lot of the educational components offered in the startup ecosystem in Cleveland, but now I'm at that phase where, you know, we've become an 8 figure revenue company, We're transitioning into much bigger plans. It's I'm finding a hole in the startup or scale up, you know, scene, if you will, to really help entrepreneurs who have crossed that threshold, they have product market fit, they have a nice business, they have rapid growth. The, the ecosystem around supporting that next phase of growth to get us from an 8 figure to a nine figure company.

Terence R. McCarron (OpinionRoute) [00:46:48]: Right? Where is that ecosystem approach? And it Lay be it's, networking, maybe it's funding and financing, which who knows could be a part of our future, maybe not. But that part feels like a big gap in the Cleveland ecosystem right now. So much so that a lot of The relationships that I've really valued, and there's been some unbelievable people that have supported me along the way just who I really have become trusted advisors for me just because they think it's fun what I'm doing and it's fun to sort of see us grow, but still most the most common bits of advice I get is, well, go seek, extra resources from the coast, which I find really ironic, right? Because I left the coast to come here and do this here. And I want one of the legacies of opinion route to be that this was a a Cleveland growth story. Right? That this was a Cleveland growth story that really showed that you could do this here. And we have a services story, we have a technology story. It could really be a case study for other like minded entrepreneurs that are really trying to start something exciting for themselves.

Jeffrey Stern [00:47:56]: Yeah. No, it's cool to see The Cleveland chip on your shoulder as

Terence R. McCarron (OpinionRoute) [00:47:59]: a Yeah.

Jeffrey Stern [00:48:00]: Someone who moved to Cleveland.

Terence R. McCarron (OpinionRoute) [00:48:02]: I guess I've inherited that without all the pain of watching The Browns for decades, right? But I guess they do have a little bit of that after 8 years for sure.

Jeffrey Stern [00:48:11]: Yeah, I hope you can tell that story as well And serve as, that example.

Terence R. McCarron (OpinionRoute) [00:48:17]: Yeah. No, I'm trying. You know, to me, I could of built this. I had a great network in New York, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, a lot of relationships out there Stern rooting me on and helping me along the way, particularly industry contacts. But For me, you know, I could have built exactly what I built here in New York, and it wouldn't make any impact at all whatsoever. Right? But the opportunity to do something in an exciting long term growth story itself in Cleveland was just too compelling, right? It was too enticing for me to not try and do both things with opinion round. So, it continues to be fun, I'm not bitter at all, right? Just to clear that up. But there is opportunity that I see Land maybe that'll be my next phase.

Terence R. McCarron (OpinionRoute) [00:49:03]: So as we continue to see success with opinion route. Maybe I'll be part of that wave that helps create those opportunities for The for the next opinion routes.

Jeffrey Stern [00:49:12]: Damn. Well, with, With this focus on Cleveland, you know, one of the things that we do in the podcast is everyone is kind of painting a collective collage of Their favorite hidden gems throughout the city. So not necessarily the favorite things, but things that other people may not know about. And I I am very curious. I feel like you'll have some good Some good insights on some hidden gems here in Cleveland.

Terence R. McCarron (OpinionRoute) [00:49:35]: Yeah. There's so much people from here, it's unbelievable. I

Jeffrey Stern [00:49:38]: know. You're probably the best person to ask this question.

Terence R. McCarron (OpinionRoute) [00:49:41]: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The one thing, I would say, we as a family, we did a lot of hiking. So everyone talks about Lay Metroparks, but I'm gonna be a lot more specific than that, in the Metro Parks, Buttermilk Falls, there's a little spot underneath the cliff, with Creek running through it, that is literally one of the most beautiful Lay. If you're into the outdoors and hiking at all, It's literally one of the most Lay places to go find a little serenity in the madness, and a little bombing time with the kids and the wife alike. So it's this this little gem I think that we keep coming back to. Other than that, I I can, you know, talk about all the restaurants we Cleveland the art scene and Land all of that, but from a gem in a particular specific location, that's one that's our favorite.

Jeffrey Stern [00:50:30]: The sounds like a special one.

Terence R. McCarron (OpinionRoute) [00:50:33]: No doubt.

Jeffrey Stern [00:50:34]: Well, Terrence, I, I really appreciate you coming on and sharing your story. I think it's one that needs to be heard. I'm excited, to see how you guys grow from here.

Terence R. McCarron (OpinionRoute) [00:50:44]: Jeffrey, thank you. This has been a lot of fun. Appreciate the chance to come on Land and tell my Stern. This has been great.

Jeffrey Stern [00:50:49]: Yeah. For sure. If, if folks have anything that they would like to follow-up with you about, where is the best place for them to to reach you, Terrence?

Terence R. McCarron (OpinionRoute) [00:50:58]: LinkedIn, I'm very active on LinkedIn. So obviously just look me up, Terrence McCarron, Land pin you're out. But I'm also A sneaky active Twitter user as well, which would be Stern. And I'm a particular fan of a lot of the local photographers Land in Cleveland City's game. So, if you're into that as well, follow me on Twitter.

Jeffrey Stern [00:51:18]: Awesome. That sounds good. Well, thank you again, Terrence. I really appreciate it.

Terence R. McCarron (OpinionRoute) [00:51:22]: Thank you

Jeffrey Stern [00:51:24]: That's all for this week. Thank you for listening. We'd love to hear your thoughts on today's show. So if you have any feedback, please send over an eMail to Jeffrey at lay of the land dot fm or find us on Twitter at podLayoftheland or at @Sternjefe. If you or someone you know would make a good guest for our show, please reach out as well and let us know. And if you enjoy the podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on or on your preferred podcast player. Your support goes a long way to help us spread the word and continue to bring the Cleveland founders and builders we love having On The podcast.