Amy: [00:00:00] If it's not painful enough, then we're not for you. You should go use something free that's good enough. If it's really painful and it's costing you money and, and it's something that is keeping you up at night, that means you're willing to make some investment and put some skin in the game, and I would say we are a good fit for you.

Matt: How does a B-17 bomber shot down over Belgium become the catalyst for one of the world's sharpest personality assessment tools? Meet Amy Shepley, third generation president of Birkman International. From hand-scored- Scantrons to AI powered insights, she's turning her grandfather's war zone revelation into a modern science of fixing people problems before they explode. Stay tuned. Conflict just met its match. Let's jump in.

Ward: Amy, so good to have you here today. Thank you so much for joining [00:01:00] us on our podcast, Rethink Change.

Amy: I'm happy to be here.

Matt: So why don't you just start out, tell me a little bit about yourself, you know, your background, your role at the company.

Amy: I started at Birkman International in 2002, so a very long time ago, and I, I think what's funny is that when I went to work at Birkman, it was like my DNA is made for this company, which makes sense 'cause it's a family company. But, um, I didn't know much about the company before then. So people are, will say, you know, you grew up around this and we really didn't. I didn't have a concept of what Birkman did, or it was always kind of a nebulous business and a nebulous business model.

So when I started working there, I started literally working, filing, and um, then slowly, uh, moved up in the company, started, you know, doing training facilitation. Uh, and today my title is President. So I'm president of Birkman. Um, Birkman is [00:02:00] a personality assessment that's used for the corporate world. Uh, it has applications outside of that, but that's its primary application.

Matt: So tell me a little bit about the history of the business. How did it all get started?

Amy: So, our history goes back to my grandfather. He was a absolute introvert. I think he, he once said that he was one of the most introverted people that he'd ever met. Um, and I think his very, very, what he would describe as painfully introverted style, made him very curious about others. It's like, why am I this way and why am I so obviously different from other people?

And that story really crystallized when he was a bomber pilot in World War II. He flew 18 missions. He was shot down on his 19th mission, um, taken in by the Belgian resistance and was liberated on D-Day. And when he came back, um, the story [00:03:00] that reverberated in his head was, how did this group of men that were flying this plane, that were on this plane together, that flew these missions that were incredibly close, come back and have such different interpretations of what happened on the flight? And to the point that sometimes they would almost get into arguments because their, the way they were called, the events were so different.

And if you really like, take a moment to dial in on that. It's a small group of men in a small plane. There's just not a lot of opportunity for different interpretation, right? And yet every one of them had a completely different experience. And that is where he started realizing that we all have a unique perception and that perception is creating a completely unique experience.

And that really interested him to take that concept and overlay it into the world of corporate America, which back then this was, uh, in the fifties, this was like [00:04:00] unheard of. Um, you know, nowadays personality assessments are a dime a dozen. This was like very outside of what anybody was talking about, uh, to the point that he was almost disbarred from the psychological association because he was trying to measure human behavior, and that to them was completely offensive.

So he came back, he did his dissertation at the University of Texas, and that dissertation's title was The Test of Social Comprehension. So it's how people are comprehending what they're seeing and, and their perception. And that questionnaire that he developed for his dissertation is probably 85% similar to the questionnaire you take today.

Ward: Wow, what a great story.

Amy: Yeah, it is. Well, it's the greatest generation, right? And so there's so many amazing stories, but, um, the fact that that's really where this all started and if you even think about we measure stress and how you manage stress, and I don't know that there is a more stressful situation that you can imagine than being in a B-17 bomber pilot, and, you know, I, I, I can't remember the [00:05:00] statistics, but most of them never got to a 19th mission. I mean, it was unbelievable that they did. And so, yeah, it's a, it's a really fascinating way to start the story of our organization.

Matt: I had no idea.

Ward: Every business goes through an arc of growth and then plateau and growth and plateau. So tell me about the arc of Birkman.

Amy: The biggest change that has happened in terms of the company is how the assessment is delivered. So when it was first started, you obviously filled out a Scantron. Those were hand-scored by my grandparents back in the day. Um, then they got a, a Scantron machine and now they could do more and that was really like a step forward.

My grandfather was very, uh, big on technological innovation. And so when the internet came around, he was one of the first people to have a website and to move the whole assessment online to the point that he was almost too ahead of the curve and consultants didn't have computers and [00:06:00] browsers at that point. So he moved it before, it was almost too soon.

Now, you know, our most recent development is moving into a way to access it on your device or on your phone. And of course the next permutation of that will be AI. Right? So kind of going from hand scoring questionnaires and, and moving into this next era of AI.

As far as our growth, we have always, you know, grown very kind of organically and slowly. We are still a small company. Um, we would be considered a micro company and we are, I believe, hands down, the most sophisticated nonclinical assessment in the world. However, we're still very much not known. You know, we're, we're very much, I would say, still a best-kept secret.

Matt: How's the company changed or evolved over the past 75 years? I mean, that's a lot of history.

Amy: So, originally it was my grandfather and a, and a handful of people that could interpret the Birkman, and they [00:07:00] realized that wasn't scalable. And so that's when they moved into the consulting model where they said, well, let's train people on how to interpret, um, Birkman, um, reports.

And so I believe, and you know, now we're in dates that are way beyond my time. Um, I believe in the seventies and the eighties is really where they started to go train people and to now have consultants that would use the, the assessment. You know, that, uh, that piece and technology, I would say are really the only two changes. You know, there's, it, it's almost surprising how the product hasn't changed, especially the questionnaire and the questions that we ask.

My grandfather somehow tapped into something that yields results that all of these other assessments that have come up, they still can't compete with that. Right? He, he tapped into something that, um, even these assessment companies that have investments of hundreds of millions of dollars, their output doesn't yield what the, the Birkman yields. So in a way it, it [00:08:00] hasn't changed very much.

Ward: And who are your clients? What kind of companies sign up for this?

Amy: If you looked at who our clients are, it's literally like Fortune 10 companies and one man shop consultants and everything in between. Um, so we never really figured out our client persona and pursued that.

We've kind of always been open to any company, any industry, any size. I think sometimes that's hurt us because we, we haven't had a, a strong point of view on one audience. However, we feel that the Birkman is so versatile, that if you have people, then you, there's value in you using the Birkman. So, you know, billion dollar pharmaceutical companies, um, large, big box companies, uh, I mean some of the, the biggest names that you can think of use Birkman, all the way down to little tiny family companies.

Matt: What's the [00:09:00] biggest challenge that you face in getting new clients?

Amy: That's probably what has changed the most over the decades. I think when my granddad was starting, he was trying to sell something that people didn't know what it was. Right? It's it, like to me, it's when a browser came out and they were trying to sell, and people are like, I don't know what a browser is, right? So you have to educate them on what it is and why they need it. It, there was just nobody in that space.

So when he was talking about a personality assessment in the fifties and sixties, people would just look at him like he was crazy. There, there was no vernacular for that and there was no frame of reference for that except in a clinical capacity, right? So it was like it, you wouldn't use an assessment if you weren't crazy. So convincing business owners like, no, this is for normal functioning people, uh, I think there was a, a learning curve there that was a challenge.

I would say that the next challenge is, um, most of the Birkman assessments are delivered through our independent consultants and you can't manage [00:10:00] necessarily the quality of that, right? So it's like they're out there doing their consulting and we're not overseeing that. We're not getting feedback on how they're doing. So it's, it's like a carpenter with a hammer, like the hammer's only as good as the carpenter holding the hammer, right? And there's a bit of that element to our business model.

I think what I would say in the last 20 years when I've been at Birkman, our biggest challenge has been that we literally feel like a client is someone that has people. And because that's so broad, coming up with marketing messaging to find those buyers is a challenge, right? I am a big believer that, um, there, I, I don't even know where I heard this statement now, but there's a statement, there's riches in the niches. And when you're really clear about what you do and very specific, the buyer knows you're exactly what I need. Right? It's like that this is my problem, and what you do is exactly that. I think by being so [00:11:00] broad, it's made it difficult for people to know what problems we solve and if that is their problem.

And then I would say our, our issue today is that most of our competitors are just so much larger. And so it, it's now we're just in a position where we're, we're kind of outfunded. They just have the money to pour into marketing and campaigns and, um, really name recognition that it is difficult for us to compete with today.

Ward: Can you tell the story of how you came to us in the first place?

Amy: Yeah. Um, so we have a, uh, employee at Birkman and she is friends with Matt and, and the Pennebaker family. And one day she was like, I just feel like y'all need to meet. I feel like y'all, you know, y'all have things in common. You both work for a family company. I just like, she's like, I don't know why, I just feel like, um, this is someone that you need to know.

So she brought me over and I met with Matt and we kind of went over his Birkman. And we were sitting in your, what's the conference room [00:12:00] called?

Matt: The Green Room.

Amy: The Green Room, yes. We were sitting in the Green Room and on the Birkman I'm high artistic, so like I love beautiful things. And so being in the office and I was like, oh, this is just like really cool. And there were the boards around the room with all of the beautiful mind scribbles. And uh, Matt kind of mentioned, he goes, well, this is the process that we have, like, this is our proprietary process. It's called strategic guardrails. And like that's, I'm just a naturally curious person. I think that was where I was like, well, I wanna do that. Like, I'm curious what that would look like. Um, and so that is really, you know, what, what kind of got me really interested in it and excited about going through that process with you guys.

Ward: When you decided to go ahead and make a change, what was it that you went back and told the other people in the company that I want to do this because?

Amy: Uh, I think the, the name of it being called Strategic Alignment is, to me, that's where our pain point [00:13:00] was. Everyone in the company had good ideas, but different ideas about the right way to sell and market, and even what products we should be pushing and promoting. And so the idea that we could walk into a room and go through this process and walk out with alignment, I think we were all excited about that.

Matt: Going into guardrails, can you talk about how everyone in the leadership team talked about what Birkman does? If I asked that question to each person, what would they say?

Amy: Yeah. And I think that is part of the issue, is that if you asked, you know, we had 10 people in the room, if you asked each of us to say separately, it would've been a completely different answer, right? It's a, it, the product is hard to explain. Um, and so we would've all talked about it differently. I don't know that the essence of what we would be saying is different. It's more of the how do we get there, right? I think we all believe in like what it's [00:14:00] doing, but like how do we articulate that and, and how do we, how do we get to that, to that end point to where we're all kind of united around one messaging and one clear outcome.

Ward: What was the consequence of not doing something different for change?

Amy: It's energy going into different directions, and that's gonna slow you down. Right? When you take everyone's energy and you pull that together and you point that energy into one clear direction, you're going to go faster. And I think one of the biggest values for me in those two days was how much noise it eliminated. Like there were, there were just so many different ways that we could go about it, and even during those two days, I was like overwhelming myself.

And so to walk out with a clear point of view that didn't feel like we were sacrificing anything about what we were trying to accomplish, and just felt like clarity [00:15:00] and all of a sudden this noise that was a huge distraction and, and, and is a huge distraction was eliminated. It just made it so clear how we were gonna be able to do better work with a more specific point of view and, and to go faster in a strategic way that I had not had that clarity any other time in the 20 years that I've been at Birkman.

Ward: And in the marketplace, what was happening in terms of your market share and the positioning? Are these other companies eclipsing you? What's, what's going on?

Amy: They are, you know, we have a, a challenging business model because we are one of the more expensive assessments that is in the, in the market, and we compete against free assessments, right? So when we're talking to clients and, and they say, well, we use X, Y, Z, well that's a free assessment. So that's a, that's a challenge when you have to compete [00:16:00] against, um, when you're expensive and you have to compete against free. That's a challenge.

There's also been consolidation in the marketplace and there's been large investment that's been made into certain companies and, um, again, being a family company, we've never gotten outside investment. And, you know, when a, when a company is raising a hundred million dollars and, and you're not, that's, it's just gonna be hard to, to keep up and keep pace with that.

Matt: So can you talk a little bit about how this process changed the way that you approach sales historically versus today?

Amy: As I mentioned, we haven't necessarily implemented our strategic guardrails the way I, I think we, we could or should, uh, to, to get the most value out of it. Uh, what I would say is if we, if we could, and if we were, we used to start off saying, you know, we're an assessment and we're nonclinical, and we're psychometrically valid. And you know, in this session, Ward's like, nobody cares about that. Right? [00:17:00] And like, we think that's really important, right?

Um, and so we lead with all of these things and switching from what we thought our differentiators were and are to the more visceral pain point of do you have people problems? Like it just changes the whole conversation and starting out with connecting with the, the client emotionally. Because if you say like, in, in your time running your company or your time working in a company, what's one person issue that was just, everybody's gonna have one, right? I mean, they're painful, like they're not fun. Um, and especially when you've got an employee that you know is a really great employee and can contribute a lot, but you don't know how to manage that. That's a real conundrum if you're running a company. And I think just changing that script of trying to explain to somebody [00:18:00] what Birkman is and does is so hard. And the only reason that I think it people, they're just fascinated because it's something they haven't really heard.

When you say, I have a personality company, people are like, oh, that's interesting. Right? It's, it's inherently interesting. However, interest doesn't convert to a sale. And that's what I think we had found is like, everybody's interested in what we do like, 'cause what we do is kind of interesting. But how do you convert them from going, wow, that's really unusual and interesting to, I need that. That's the part that we haven't solved.

And I think that journey from, I love that people think, you know, they go through the Birkman and they're, and they're like, that was, it's unbelievable. Right? And, and they'll, it's like a very powerful moment for people that they will remember and you know, they'll pull their Birkman out from 40 years ago that's in their desk and it's, you know, it's amazing that it has that kind of staying [00:19:00] power and impact on a person.

And yet that's easy for us to do. But how do you convert that into a sale? That's the part I think we have always struggled to do, and I, I think, continue to struggle to do. And by changing the conversation to conflict and talking about people problems, I, I think now that's something someone's like, I'm ready to get my wallet out and put my credit card down. Like, if you can fix that, that means something to me.

Matt: For your targets, you know, there are a million companies out there.

Amy: Mm-hmm.

Matt: How, how can you tell if a company who you're talking to is gonna be a good fit or not? Or if they're the right client for Birkman?

Amy: Historically we would say everyone is a good fit, right? That would be our position. It, it is a bit interesting because we are Birkman headquarters and so we sell directly to larger companies, but we have independent consultants that are selling to small companies. So there are kind of these [00:20:00] two different markets that we support.

One thing, uh, that we've been saying in the last two years that I think has kind of changed that, that conversation is if what we are selling you isn't worth a certain amount of money, then you don't have a, a, a, a real problem. Right? If it's not, if it's not painful enough, then we're not for you. You should, you should go use something free that's good enough. Um, if it's really painful and it's costing you money and, and it's, uh, something that is keeping you up at night, I think that that means, um, you're willing to make some investment and put some skin in the game. And I would say I think we are probably a good fit for you.

Ward: When you would go off and do business development, what percentage of people that you could talk to, companies that you talk to, would buy versus not?

Amy: So I would say, and I mean I don't have exact data on this, but I would say over 90% and maybe even more than that, maybe even closer to 99% [00:21:00] is word of mouth. Somebody experienced the Birkman at a, at a company that they were working at, and they saw firsthand the power that it had. And they had a moment at some point where this changed a relationship in a really significant way, and then they go to a new company and, and they're like, we need to use Birkman. I would say 90 to 95% of our sales comes from that.

Ward: From referrals.

Amy: Yeah.

Matt: What are the characteristics of a company that'd be a good fit?

Amy: I, I think it's going to be a company where the people relationships and how the people interact with each other really, really matter. And interestingly, the higher stakes of the company, the more potential there is for like catastrophic problems. I think they're almost a bigger, um, a better fit for us. It's like it, the stakes, the higher the stakes with your people working together well, the more important.

So when you talk about like a NASA or a Boeing, um, you know, these are [00:22:00] people that are working on projects that if they don't go right, like we saw with Boeing, um, it's a, it's, it's life and death, right? And the higher the stakes, the more important it is for people to be working together.

There's a concept that we use a lot that is, is becoming much more mainstream, which is this idea of psychological safety. And so if you are in a company where you need to be able to innovate and move quickly or where the stakes are really high, I would say that's a, a, a client that whether they know it or not, they need us. It's helping them understand that, right? That's where the challenge is, is is helping them understand and connect the dots of how does using this product help me maximize the innovation of the organization or help me minimize the potential risk of the organization.

And I think that's the part that we, we haven't always been great at telling that story and connecting those dots. That it's not just like a fun, wow, that's really [00:23:00] cool. Right. That, that there, there's actually way more to it.

Matt: How's the story changed since we met? Of how you tell the story of Birkman.

Amy: Definitely for me personally, when we walked out of the strategic guardrails and we had really landed on we are the people problem fixer, right? And, and that it's really conflict and, and focusing in on this concept of conflict and the cost of conflict. And when we landed there, there was like a click because everything we do, it's even individual conflict sometimes. Like, I am in the wrong job and I wanna leave, but I don't know if I should. Right. That's conflict. Um, relationship conflict, uh, conflict on teams. And companies need conflict. So helping them understand why there's conflict, why you need conflict and how to, to, to learn how to manage [00:24:00] conflict in a healthy way.

Um, it just, for me, all of a sudden it was like, yeah, that's exactly what we do. And it's, it's such a succinct way to talk about it, even to the point that someone that was in our strategic guardrails meeting that night was at a hotel and someone said, what do you do? And normally he would say, well, we're, you know, a personality assessment, corporate America non client, like all the things.

And he said, we're people problem fixers? And the guy leaned in and was like, tell me more. Well, no one ever says that when we usually, like, they're curious because it's like, well that's random, but they're like, he, you could see he was like, I have that problem. And um, so even just testing it out, the first day, you know, the, this person came back to the office and shared that story and it was like, yeah, that's, it seems small and that's huge.

Ward: Is any other company in the market talking that way?

Amy: Not specifically around conflict and I think it's because [00:25:00] they are dealing with the same challenges as we are. It's like they're trying not to get too specific. They wanna say, well, we do teams and we do leaders, and we do, and they wanna make it seem like they can do all of these things and, and trying to be all things to all people. They're nothing to anybody or whatever that phrase is. And you know, there, the only one I would say is, um, there are companies that, that are really centered on selection, um, which we are not. That's, that's not an application that we really double down on. But other than that, no.

And if you looked at our marketing versus any of our other competitors, it would be hard for you to differentiate between what they're saying and what we were saying. The, the messaging would, would sound very similar. You could take the logo off, you'd stick a different logo on, and, and it would look like it was the same company.

Ward: Do you see the outcome of this impacting your culture going forward?[00:26:00]

Amy: So I think that when we went through the strategic guardrails, we, you know, have different people in the room and we all walked out really aligned around where we landed and I think we felt good about it. But operationally implementing that is a different ball game. And because I think in the culture of our company, and I, I think this is decades long, and it goes back to my grandfather, we don't like saying we don't do something or that we, we don't, we don't like, that's very hard for us and it's very baked into our DNA.

And so while that characteristic of our organization makes us the most ideal candidate for strategic guardrails, it also means that that muscle is very developed and actually going back and living that is a different story. Um, and so I [00:27:00] think there are people that very much understood it, got it, and were ready to go implement that completely and fully. And I think there were other people that, even though they agreed with where we landed, weren't ready to say no to other things yet.

Ward: Is there any question that you thought we should have asked that we didn't?

Amy: I think, uh, that I wanna answer the question about why would a company go through strategic guardrails? And I think that if you've been doing something the same way for a long time, I think that this would validate that that is exactly what you should be doing or how can you refine that to accelerate your success. Or should you be pivoting into a completely different direction? And again, when you're so close to it, that's a hard, I don't think you can do that on your own, right?

When you live and eat and breathe your business, having, trying to do that on your own, I think is [00:28:00] impossible. And I think we're, we're at a moment in time that's almost like the next industrial revolution, maybe even more significant with the introduction of AI. And it's like, I think every company should be kind of sitting down right now and thinking, is this gonna be the right business in 10 years? Right. Even if it's been the right business for 70 years, like is this still gonna be what works in 10 years because of how the world is gonna change? And, that to me makes it the ideal time for any organization to really sit down and, and have that conversation.

And I would always think that that would be a powerful exercise for an organization. I don't know that there is a more important time than right now because the world is going to change significantly very quickly, um, in ways that most of us will not have experienced in our lifetimes. And that means reducing the noise, gaining clarity, having a better idea of, of your strategic [00:29:00] direction and how you need to be positioning yourself is exponentially more important than it would've been 10 or 20 years ago.

Ward: Thank you so much for joining us today. This has been most, most interesting.

Amy: It's been so fun to be with you guys. Thanks for having me.

Matt: Really appreciate it.

Amy: Thank you.

Matt: Thanks for listening to Rethink Change. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it. And be sure to follow the show so you don't miss a single episode. If you're a disruptor looking to challenge the status quo and don't know where to start or what to do next, Pennebaker can help. Find out more at pennerbaker.com.