Episode Transcript
Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 0:16
Once upon a time, there were 10s of 1000s of makers struggling every day they built for hours and hours but didn't ship and did not earn enough income one day, the no code wealth podcast came to help them find a way because of this, makers became founders and live the lives they deserve. Because of that, founders live lives of abundance, freedom, and creativity. That's what I'm really all about. Hello, my name is Aziz and from being a poor boy born to a single mother in North Africa, with no opportunities just sheer hard work, to failing multiple startups, yet learning a whole lot to barely escaping alive the war in Ukraine, even living as an illegal immigrant. I've lost everything twice. And now I'm rebuilding my life one more time. 1%. Today, sharing the wisdom of luminaries have interviewed on this podcast from Google executives, Goldman Sachs, the Financial Times Forbes, Technology Council, World Economic Forum, Harvard University, and even a priest from the Vatican church. Everyone is welcome here. So let's begin. My guest today is UD ba ba Leblanc. Julie is the Chief Executive Officer at Marriott incentives. She is an award winning CEO and entrepreneur with a demonstrated history of working in Europe and in developing markets. Julie is the founder and CEO of merit incentives, which is a built to be technology company with offices in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Egypt and the United Kingdom. Merit incentives has a network of over 4000 partner brands across 86 countries. Its clients include Riyadh bank, Vodafone HSBC, at the heart, guest and Amazon. She is also the co founder and member of the women incentives network, which really holds the Entrepreneur of the Year incentives award 2019, her company was listed by Forbes Middle East as one of the top 12 Rising companies in the Middle East in 2018. And as one of the top 100 innovative startups in the Arab world in 2017, as well as winner of the French creative entrepreneur award in 2016. Her work is focused on gifting rewards, ie car technology, loyalty and incentives programs. I love this. A lot of achievements, a lot of value that we will share in this conversation. So, Judy, how are you today?
Julie Barbier-Leblan 3:09
I'm very good. And I'm a bit shy, I have to say when you list all these things, because it's a long list. It's always a bit impressive, but I'm very happy to be there. I love talking about our company about achievements. And I'm really excited to share the knowledge and passion behind the company.
Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 3:34
Thank you. And that's why you know, I'm so excited about this interview, as well as is is good for you to remember your achievements, because we keep on being busy with our day to day activity. And we don't take time to appreciate all the effort. And so to ask you, why merit? What's the importance of incentives? And why did you choose to focus on that part of, you know, the services that can be provided.
Julie Barbier-Leblan 4:04
So I think the why behind the company is very important, because it's not my first company. The first time I created a company was in 2011. And my first company was a b2c website for gifting and originally started it in Dubai and I faced all the issues you can face as an entrepreneur. Also excitement as well, but a lot of challenges. And merit incentives has been designed for leaders, for businesses, to help them engage internally with their employees and externally with our customers. One of the big things that I believe in is that companies and businesses especially acts as a pandemic, needs to have tools and technologies that help them align their employee Yungay determines strategy and the customer experience strategy. That's why incentives play a key role. Because that's one way of educating and changing behavior is to provide rewards and incentive when people, which is either customer or employee demonstrate good behavior. So good behavior can be very wide, it can be anything, actually, depending on your business, depending on your objectives. But at least you will now with technology, automation, better processes, and we are able to help businesses to do it faster and better.
Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 5:40
Thank you. I love this. And I know that, for example, Charlie Munger, he speaks about how all business is incentives, and aligning incentives. But I will play the devil's advocate a little bit and ask this question. There is a lot of research and talk about intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation, where if employees love to do something, and you make it a game where they get rewarded for doing it, in the end, they will overwork they will lose the passion, it becomes to them just work rather than something that they love. Do you agree with this? How do you deal with it? What's your perspective on this fact?
Julie Barbier-Leblan 6:22
I think it's, it's true. And that's why our our work is is not an easy one. First of all, because you have a different segmentation. Even inside an employee base, you can have different materials, different age, different gender, different position and different expectation. So I agree with you that one rule doesn't apply to all employees. And one game can have a reverse effect as well and achieve some things that you didn't want to do. But the most important thing is to be a driver. So a giant is kind of a distorted words is this you know, like where everyone is using it all the time. But what is important is if you have a tool or technologies that gives you insight, so you get feedback, you can have the feedback from the manager, you can have a feedback on performance feedback among agents, and you can adjust, but you always have a side effect, I will give you an example I have. So in my personal life, I have three kids. And I decided one summer because my kids were not really doing anything. So we're not moving so much. And you know, like they tend to look too much at the screen. And I wanted to encourage them to to exercise. And I told them, okay, you should do a certain number of laps in the pool, then I'm gonna give you points and with the points at some point, you're going to get to gift. Actually, the trick my systems fraud it in one day, because what they did the three of them team together, and they achieved the 100 laps as you were supposed to do in two weeks. They achieve it together in one day. And it only permits us to give us points and the gift you should do is 100 laps. And I had no choice because I sent it but I didn't think that someone can follow the system, I can have a contrary effect. So tools and technologies and incentive and rewards are amazing tools, but you still need the human aspect of things. And you need to be able to address on situation.
Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 8:33
Thank you. So it's very important to understand that whatever tool you have, you have to still use your brain and use human feedback in order to know what happens as well as that gamification comes with the possibility for humans who like to take shortcuts to try to game the system. And therefore it's to find where that could be happening in order to improve, iterate and make things work in the way that you designed unwanted Is this correct?
Julie Barbier-Leblan 9:07
Yes, exactly. And seen as well you have certain segments that will be more receptive. For example, if you look at Gen Z's love insanitary ones they love gamification aspect doesn't mean set the car more naive or whatever is it just that used to it and he likes it, he likes this kind of communication, what we try to do with different segments, for example, HR positions and your management, we give incentives and rewards that speak to them, charity, giving back sharing non monetary, meaningful, so it just sustainable. So there are things that will trigger something in you set could be beyond that will really motivate you and push you to do something.
Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 9:55
Thank you very much. And there are two schools of thought about What you mentioned, like instant rewards or instant gratification, one of them says, Well, in this world, we might be working today for results that we'll see after a year, two years, whatever. So we need rewards on the journey in order to keep ourselves motivated, while other people say, actually, you're destroying the brain by giving, like instant gratification, and therefore people don't know that things take a long time, they want their instant dopamine results. So in many ways, you're becoming like Instagram or a social media platform. What's your perspective on these two things? Which one do you agree with? And how do you do it?
Julie Barbier-Leblan 10:45
I think both are correct. But I think the interesting piece is issue can can offer in the hybrid system, if you can get instant rewards, and at the same time build something meaningful. What we see is that people believe very much in sharing, people will believe very much into building something as a team. So maybe building something on the long term something as a team, not as an individual. And as an individual who expect instant gratification. And you, you can't really grand blame anyone, because it makes a lot of sense. We have now the words that keep changing constantly. There is so much uncertainty and so much difficulty you cannot be graduated from university and say, in 20 years, I'm going to be a senior manager in that company. Because you don't know maybe when people maybe you will change completely carry in the middle. So I think it's it goes with, with the flow, and you just because things are faster, we're more global, we are more connected, we are more aggressive, it's not a bad thing, you just need to be careful. And you need to sink your hand and understand what can be the counter effects of any, any kind of initiative.
Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 12:10
Thank you. I love that answer and to ask you about customer, like gifts and rewards and incentives. There are people who say, of course, reciprocity is one of the most powerful things are forces in the universe, when you give people something that creates goodwill that makes them bond with you, with your brand and want to return, while others say we live in a virtual world where people are hiding behind screens. That's why for example, on YouTube, people can leave mean comments that they wouldn't say in real life. And therefore they say, Yes, like throttling. And therefore there is no more customer loyalty because there isn't like a direct kind of specific relationship where they see you when they're deciding not to buy or to leave, or whatever. So what do you think about this?
Julie Barbier-Leblan 13:06
I think that's why our tours are so interesting. And that's why we want an incentive strategy are thriving. Now. It's because businesses are leaders are a bit lost. So many touch points. So many people and you need now to act with your own employees like to speak to your customers, you need to have strategy, you need to acquire talent, you need to make them excited about your future. So even internally, you are never at ease, it needs to be constantly another challenge. I agree that virtual word or digital word has some aspects that are a bit concerning. But if you put a framework and if you have an understanding of what is good and bad and analyze and constantly, I think innovation is the best thing ever. okay for us to be closer to people that we couldn't be close to before, you know, distance situation. I don't know family issues or whatever, can that kind of happen and then prevents you to be connected? So it's the same in business? I think we should we should see the positive aspects of sins. We need to be of course cautious, not go full on. But as long as you have rules and you you are aware that I think is there is no
Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 14:31
harm to it. Thank you. This is really good. And therefore I'll ask you about your journey as a founder, CEO and everything. You had the company before where you said you faced every problem that any entrepreneur could ever face. And now you're a lot more successful with merit incentives, and some people will say, look in the beginning of any journey you need to face a lot of defeat called bees until the moment where there is a breakthrough. And that idea will work. While there are other people and many entrepreneurs who say, actually, when you find an idea that people want already, that when things will market themselves, it's all about the idea. It's not about persevering in the face of adversity, and having a great team that is struggling and all that. Do. I mean, of course, it's possible to say there is a mix of both. But in your experience, is it that either getting lucky or finding a great idea is the biggest thing that makes a company work? Or is it all about being someone who works so hard to build the reputation to force like life to go your way and in the end, to iterate enough to find something that works, but without it, like you make it work work? Or is it the idea that makes everything work?
Julie Barbier-Leblan 15:57
To me the biggest, I would say things that you need to remember if one day you want to become an entrepreneur is that resilience is key. If you don't show not resilience, if you're not willing to persevere, if you are not willing to push your ID, above and beyond, and it's not for you, because you will have more nose and yes, and you will have more faith and success, especially at the beginning. So actually, my first company I still have it is still part of our group. And we just pivoted what we did, we can from B to C, and we created merit incentive as a b2b activity of gifting rewarding and incentivizing people. So yes, it's about understanding listening to the customers, innovation, Cid, you can have an idea you can see your perception or something that could is absent in the market lacking and people are looking for it. But the most important thing is listening to the customers. Because they would be the one giving you the ideas, it will be the one making you push your product to the next level, give you the features that will make the success that you didn't have before. And sometimes it's a combination, of course of market fit, opportunity, a bit of luck. And also understanding risk. And, and attracting opportunities, like making sure that when an opportunity presents itself and you you grab it and you don't let it go. So I think both sides are okay. But the idea is one thing, but it's more about how you're going to implement it and operate.
Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 17:48
Thank you. And to ask you even more about your experience. How important do you find networking to be because there are some founders who believe if I spent all my time improving my product, my service, then people will see the value and it will grow over time through resilience, as you mentioned, while others say you don't really understand that one person could 10x your results in one day. And therefore, networking should be a high priority for you. And it opens doors that you should really make it one of the top if not the number one thing that as a CEO or as someone in the C suite you spend your time on. Do you agree with this? How was your experience with it? Did it open doors for you? And tell me more.
Julie Barbier-Leblan 18:41
So that's and then in my experience, I always use networking a lot, especially in this region. So we are headquartered in Dubai and a series of words that everyone used here all pasta, which means connection and relation. It's something very important. Like, to me, it has always been something such helped me to process an ID to be able to connect with people to be able to talk about the business maybe too much sometimes. And conference, you know, keep talking about your ID talking about the product and so on helps you to define what, what will work. At the same time you have moments in entrepreneurship life, especially when you are not funded enough at the beginning and so on where you need to work really hard. And you need to be entirely focused once you seize the opportunity you grab to deliver. You need to be absolutely focused on just put a hold on networking. If you spend your time on cocktails and being outside and talking to people when are you delivering a new team needs you to be there. It's important as a leader that you spend time with the teams that you spend time talking to them that you show that you are hiding In the business. So it's a combination of both. But its network has been very important. And one more thing in this region, woman network has been very important.
Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 20:15
Thank you. Yes, I understand also, it's about adapting to a culture is about people helping each other. It's about women networks. And I know you're the co founder of one of the organizations for women in incentives. And therefore, let's speak back about merit incentives. Let's say we, I am someone and a decision maker in a company, I want to add more incentives to my employees and to my clients using your what you offer, how is that not going to add more work on my plate? How are the processes going to integrate? What to expect? Can you explain like the process and what happens as well as where can people find more information about merit incentives and explore more possibilities together?
Julie Barbier-Leblan 21:12
So merit incentive was originally created in 2016 to serve many enterprise clients. What we wanted to do is to help them like I said, engage internally with employees and externally with our customers. So we have built white label platforms that allows you to launch your own customer loyalty program. So for example, for a bank or airline Telecom, or then gas company governments and the same type of platform for employee engagement. So when we discuss with entreprise companies, and we spend time with them, we're going to do a workshop. We're going to listen to all the stakeholders, and we come back with a program design and helps them to implement it. But the beauty of what we have done recently is that we raised our Series A round, and Cid was based on the name merits. We believe in meritocracy, we believe that any company in the world should have access to any entreprise software. So we turn and pivoted our entreprise software, available for large companies into a self serving self onboarding platform. And we launch this quarter first platform called rewards by.com. It's a platform that helps you to engage your employees and your customer in one place. And you can do it for any country in the world. So we have now 100 countries available in the platform and 5000 merchants. So it's even grow since we presented and for a very reasonable price, it starts at $15 per month, and any company can just connect and try by themself. The second thing we have done is we provide not only the technology to reward and engage but the entire match and network, which means all these companies even if they are based, for example in the UK, so you can have customers in Thailand, in in the US in France, since they will be able just with this platform to send anything.
Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 23:27
Thank you. That's fantastic. And I want to explore this point more as a manager, how will using incentives with merit make me a better manager?
Julie Barbier-Leblan 23:40
I think the fact that you one of the key metrics of the key metrics that we look at is your engagement ratio. And that satisfaction so satisfaction is a bit more subjective, but the engagement ratio is key. How much your team is ready, when you are launching a new incentive and rewards campaign is ready to change your behavior or to continue to have specific behaviors that you want to encourage. I'll give you an example. We launched recently with the company they are employee attendance company. It's a software that allows us to check if your employees are on time if they're you know connecting at the right time especially for customer service, you don't want someone to arrive late because then of course your customer would be impacted. So we decided to launch with them positive campaign. Usually in the company when you arrive late what happened people would deduct from your salary right? So we just give you kind of punishment and tell you okay, you will earn less and you have a one what we decided to do is to do positive campaign. If you always arrive on time for one month or one quarter, then you can points. Resist points you can give access to walls or to an incentive. So we turn actually some positivity of this campaign to change behavior or to encourage behaviors that the company wants to push.
Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 25:12
Thank you so much. This is fantastic. And I want to know, then even more, how was the change of business culture going from Europe to Dubai and the Middle East? What positives or things that you noticed that were totally different to your expectations that were a culture shock and business that you noticed? So someone who might be thinking about going to Dubai or the Middle East to start working, and they come from a totally different culture could no more,
Julie Barbier-Leblan 25:47
I think, what is a person who loves this aspect, but I know it's not easy five. One is the fact that you are confronted, exposed to so many nationalities and so many different capture. So you absolutely need to come with an open mind. And more than an open mind is stretch mind. Because every day you're going to be challenged every day, the way you seem, you were doing things right, actually is not the right way to do in another country. And you need to be able to embrace this culture, to be able to accept and change the way you are working. You bring your own specificity and your own expertise. But at the same time, you should be open to receive. And this is one of the things that I find the most challenging, I can sit with expats that are coming down to first six months one year is extremely difficult. Why people are acting this way? Why are they working so it could be so much more simple. But it's not about judging, it's about noticing, understanding, accepting and then making it as part of your, of your DNA, some things that you should accept. Only in our company, we have more than 90 nationalities as it now. It's not an issue, we celebrate every single religious holiday, we are very open minded and so on. At the same time, one thing that really surprised me as a as a woman, everyone's asking me in time, but isn't it difficult for you? Like how do people accept you? Do you think it's easy. And to be honest, I've been more accepted and more respected in the Middle East, and I've been in Europe. Because people don't judge me. They think that if I'm in my position, it's not important to know if a woman or not actually is respected more, and the value, family values, facts that you do boast that you are able to, to achieve and are proud of you. It's it's kind of an interesting way of seeing things. And that's why when I come back to Europe, everyone is always surprised by the fact that it's been 12 years, I'm here and I'm so happy.
Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 28:10
That sounds really fantastic and interesting and the way that the world is moving to be a small village, but as well as a freedom for you to go where you feel you belong and where you feel you integrate best. And that's a total privilege that we have nowadays. Thank you so much. I will make sure of course to write the details on merit incentive in the description to this episode. And of course, before we finish, thank you so much, Julie, this was my privilege. My honor. I wish you to keep going. You're doing a lot of great things. And I wish you a great day.
Julie Barbier-Leblan 28:53
Thank you so much for inviting
