From Software Startups to Global Insights: A Conversation with Martin Filz, CEO of Pureprofile

Martin Filz, CEO of Pureprofile, shares his remarkable journey from London’s snowy Christmas traditions to sunny beachside celebrations in Australia, reflecting on the cultural shifts and their impact on his personal and professional life. In a candid conversation with Leonard Murphy for the CEO Series, Filz dives into his career spanning over two decades in data, insights, and market research. From spearheading innovative solutions at Red Sheriff to his leadership roles at Pureprofile, Filz has continuously pushed boundaries, merging large-scale data sets with qualitative insights to revolutionize decision-making processes for global clients.

Under Filz’s leadership, Pureprofile has undergone a remarkable transformation, shifting focus back to core panel businesses, driving international expansion, and embracing cutting-edge AI technologies. His emphasis on people-driven leadership, curiosity, and fostering a collaborative culture has propelled Pureprofile’s growth, doubling revenues and enhancing employee satisfaction. Filz’s reflections provide valuable lessons on building resilient organizations, navigating transformative eras, and the importance of humility, innovation, and a commitment to lifelong learning in achieving sustainable success.

Transcript

Leonard Murphy: Hello everybody, it is Lenny Murphy with another edition of our CEO series of interviews. Thank you for joining us and today I am joined by my dear friend Martin Phils, CEO of Pure Profile. Martin, especially since you're doing that whole Christmas in the summertime thing in Australia, which seems so incredibly odd to me. You're going to the beach on Christmas Day, right?

Martin Filz: We have a barbecue typically on Christmas day in Australia and there's a phrase which is throw another shrimp on the barbie and so for me I'm originally from London northern hemisphere I'm used to cold dark sometimes snowy Christmases you start to get that little Christmasy feeling in about November darkness is coming. Lights start to go up. You can see them. That for me was 40 years of my life. And suddenly, it's Christmas and I forget that we're coming up to Christmas. Apart from I get in calls with you and you've got Christmas lights everywhere. It's the oddest thing ever. But my kids who are fully-fledged Australians,…

Leonard Murphy: Right there.

Martin Filz: for them, they would find the northern hemisphere one way.

Leonard Murphy: Wait. It's dark. It's dark. So early. It's cold.

Martin Filz: My I know we're gonna talk about things, but maybe this is part one or we shouldn't digress, but my wife when we were living in London and you do a tradition, which you also do, which would be you would go for a walk and people would open their curtains and have their Christmas trees out front and pretty lights and stuff like that. And so on one Christmas day, it got to the late afternoon, you're full from the turkey and whatnot, and I said, "Come on, brother. Let's all go for a walk." And they looked at me horrified, "What do you mean we're going for a walk to look in people's windows?" Because you can't do that, but it's dark.

Leonard Murphy: So it's kind of the segue.

Martin Filz: It all looks spectacular, unlike in Australia where it's not going to be dark till, 10 p.m. or something. So you can't see that any cool.

Leonard Murphy: The first thing we start with is your origin story. Now we just heard about, growing up in, a traditional northern hemisphere Christmas and now dealing with, southern hemisphere, but tell the audience more about your background and what you do.

Martin Filz: So I'll talk about market research first, data and insights first. So in about 1999 I first got involved with data and insights and that was with a company Red Sheriff. We did website measurement coupled with qual. We were combining the two. So you saw something quantify and then qual what did it mean?  deep dive and that was my first entrance to market research. Prior to that, I I've been involved in a couple of software companies which we'd done trade sales with. We developed some cool school software that we'd sold to an accounting firm and another one and so I'd done that and then I'd got involved with this little Australian startup Red Sheriff that we ended up selling to Nielson in 2004. But when I joined it in 1999,…

Leonard Murphy: Yeah.

Martin Filz: I was like that's like I discovered chocolate which I said before. I was like my god hang on this insight into what users are doing. Everybody needs this. I'd spent my career up to then sort of 15 years and it's all about features understand the client's needs and then match all your long list of features to actually their needs and so you've got a benefit at the end of it. So yes they need that school software or accounting software or whatever else it was that we were selling. They needed that but actually you're then a little bit shoehorning in what you've got to them data and insights. this is madness. Why doesn't every single company in the world use data on their competitors, on their future clients, etc. And I was hook,…

Leonard Murphy: Yeah.

Martin Filz: and sinker Just incredible world. And so we sold 2004 Red Share to stayed around Neielson for a while. I had some earn out or golden handcuffs, whatever.  So stayed there for a while and then from there little bit more of software did a couple of odds and ends a delisting of a public company in Australia still based out of delisting of public company Australia and we sold that to Schneider Electric. So that was quite good fun and I was part of an executive team that went around sort of fixing up companies and then selling them or listing them. We also did a listing of a media company roll up where we bought end to end companies. that was good fun as well. And then my wife by that stage we were living in Amsterdam. she'd come over and she said look let's go and live in Australia for a bit. That'll be fun.  And I'd always headed up Asia Pacific AMIA regions and so I was worked for a company said look I'll keep heading up a MIA why don't you let me head up AP pack as well which was the media company so we went over 2008 we were publicly listed it was all roll up we'll buy something at five times but we're trading eight times so it made sense and the world fell apart because obviously the GFC happens around the world and obviously in Australia. And so a friend of mine that I'd worked with the Red Sheriff he worked for a little company called Research Now. So I'd name the company. I said, " I'm interviewing for another company to be head of APA for that company." He said, "Don't do that. You don't want to work for them. Let me speak to Chris Havman and let's get you over research now." So I joined Research Now 2008, spent a year or so heading up Asia Pacific and then Chris said to me, "Hey, we need you to head up AMIA for us and Asia Pacific. So can you come over head up?" So I went over and that was really good fun. And then we merged with rewards which was sort of weird reverse pay…

Leonard Murphy: Yeah.

Martin Filz: because everything was called research now. So that was really good fun. So we did that and then I got a tap on the shoulder from David Day. So Chris an, David Day, another great guy.  And I got tapped on the shoulder from David Day who was the CEO of Neielson when we sold Red Sheriff and he said, "Hey lights, we're just about to buy GMI. You did the integration and everything for Red Sheriff. So can you come across and do GMI? It's going to be we're doing some really cool fun things." And so I did and graciously deter D is Chris research now let me go and so I went across headed up an Mia and then we'd had a couple of kids in London my wife said what it's a bit cold and I can't appreciate the childhood that my children are having I'm used to just putting on flip-flops or thumbs and going for a walk and here we're wrapping them up I want to go back and it happened to tie in exactly with there was an opportunity back at light speeded head up Apex. So I came over head up light speeded at Apac about till 2018 and then what was interesting Apac Lightseed Cantel was then bought by Bane and then moving head off to Singapore and I didn't need to move to Singapore because I'm old enough and ugly enough not to have to make those choices…

Leonard Murphy: All right.

Martin Filz: Which I'd done in my career. I'd lived in various countries and moved around the world and you get to a point where you go do what I don't necessarily need to do that.  So I joined an AI company out of Indonesia which I headed up really early stage AI. it was a group who had come out of Microsoft and built a really clever AI engine which analyzed huge telco sets of data for telco companies like Ingoat in Indonesia, Selkcom in Malaysia etc.  and across various in the Middle East etc.  So really cleverly and it could also guess the patterns of what consumers were doing and blah blah blah. So that was really exciting. That was my first entrance. I then spent so two 1999 joined research data and insights and then I got absorbed into this world of my god we're so important everything we do is being used and every decision in a company is based on our amazing representative sample of a thousand people and they're making multi-million dollar decisions and I suddenly got involved with these huge hundred million user data sets for example  example with Indoat in Indonesia and I remember I said to a client one day was looking at who's buying data and using data and I said hey as I innocently said what do you do about representity and the guy laughed at me and the guy representity? He said, "I'm looking at a data set of a 100 million people." He said, " I've got a third of the population or whatever. What do I get? I might do deep dives to understand more, but I can make directional decisions based on what I'm doing." And that was the sort of penny again started dropping going, whoa, okay, let's combine the two. How interesting is that to actually start working on these two data sets for clients? and then And so I'm sitting in COVID hit. I've got no teams in Australia. Everybody for me is around the world. My head office is Indonesia. None of us are ever getting on an airplane again. And so I thought, what? I should really do something in Australia. And so as we all know each other in the industry, I've profiles data now we all know each other. I contacted the chair of pure profile and said hey you don't have a CEO let me have a look at the business and pure profile was really interesting in that the founder Paul Chan had done an amazing job in creating company…

Leonard Murphy: Yep.

Martin Filz: But his vision was if I know the whole population of a country because I panalized the whole population I would then be a better media company because my planning and execution delivery will be better.  So his vision was actually a media company underpinned by these huge panels across the world and they' floated in 2016. They'd made a couple of media acquisitions to move down that route. It hadn't worked out. They had lot of debt. Those businesses weren't doing well. And so when I looked at it, I saw a core panel business that we all know and love that was in five countries that was being used as a cash cow for these other ideas. Business. So I said to the board, let's do a debt to equity swap because we're public to get rid of the debt. Let me shut down all of these media businesses and let's focus on data and insights because that's actually what the world wants. And you're in five countries, but 80% of your revenue is Australia. It's upside down like the world is for you us 54% of our global DNA world and it's about 40 times bigger than the Australian market in the UK 13 times bigger. So I said that's what we're going to go after. So join them shut some businesses down called in loads of friends who said come on we're going to have some fun come and join me at pure profile. and I think 34 new people join which was a net gain of one person.  So really that worked out so well and two things happened. First thing happened was I opened the bonnet to then really get involved with the people and I thought god who's still working for pure profile because they've been through such turmoil and stagnation for a few years they can't be and there were at the time 90 odd people who were amazing who cared passionately about passionately about the clients passionately about data and insights and respondents and everything and they were sitting there going we love this  company. We love what we're doing. It doesn't matter if management's off doing something else. We're going to do our best. We're going to do brilliant. And so this respondent went, "Wow, these incredible people." And so suddenly because of that same group had all of that love and attention that we'll grow bigger panels and we'll be truly global and our systems and processes will be global. They went, "Thank Let's do Hallelujah. Here we go. Let's go." And I fast forward today and threearters of my leadership team are original people from Pure Profile. the majority of our sales leaders around the world are still from Pure Profile old days. And today Pure Profile from then. This is all public data. we're 215 people from 80 odd.  We're physically in 14 countries now from being physically in five countries. Our revenues Our EBIT DAR has more than doubled. Our platform SAS revenue has gone up tenfold. we're profitable. they were lossmaking before then and now we're profitable and we are having such a blast. And what I still love and I did a big presentation about this the other day, our culture is everything we're about. 98% of people will recommend to work at pure profile. We have a 3% voluntary leave rate which is unheard of. We have 84% overall satisfaction and I love the company, love the people and…

Leonard Murphy: That's a hell of a story,…

Martin Filz: we love the clients and we're doing really really cool stuff. There you go.

Leonard Murphy: And after all of our conversations or pieces that I did not know and actually, you and I get along and have similar perspectives on many things, but our stories are actually fairly parallel. I fell into the research industry by accident like you in 2000, hooked, etc. Anyway, so I totally get what you're talking about and for the audience I should add your profile is a special company. I was an adviser back in with Paul in the early days and have always just loved the company. There's something special about you guys and you just helped encapsulate a lot of what all of that is in that great package. and hats off. Congratulations for all the success. So

Martin Filz: Patrick kuma and for us Paul Chan is on those shoulders that we can then take businesses and improve them or make them better or whatever it is and so the culture that exists is because Paul Chan some of the core technology back onto that vision.  We've just been able to globalize it and being able to encou client base we had 600 clients. We've got over 800 clients around the world.  And one of the things that I truly strongly believe in is and we're public and we shareholders go, "God, you go on so much about people and yeah, it's absolutely duty care and it's people's mortgages and lives and future and careers and learnings and all that, but fundamentally clients will buy from happy, engaged, proactive people. So if you've got a curious organization, if you've got people that are empowered, that are given freedom, that are given the right tools to do the right job, then the clients are naturally going to gravitate and work for them. You can't just try and do it the other way Have a really poor culture and then wonder why you're not winning clients.  I also love something Steve Jobs I just saw recently came up in one of my feeds and I'll butcher it, but he basically said, " why would you hire amazing people and then tell them what to do?" God, I love that. Why do you hire amazing people and then tell them what to Hire amazing people and let them go.

Leonard Murphy: Love that. So that's a good segue to the next question I want to make sure that we cover is you have built an amazing platform with amazing people to do cool stuff and we happen to live in a incredibly transformative era. because of technology just unlocking more efficiencies and capabilities. what are you excited about you've done all this great work. what's got you jazzed going forward?

Martin Filz: So, first things fundamentally as I said, I love the company and what I've been able to do and I encourage all people to do is everything in life's a learning, So, you've had great bosses and I've named a couple. I've also had some awful bosses and I'm not going to name them on this call…

Leonard Murphy: I think I know a couple of them or…

Martin Filz: But you learn…

Leonard Murphy: Least if you come to mind maybe based on your history. Go ahead.

Martin Filz: what I say lazy so you learn from both right I learn from those amazing things of what did that person do to inspire me what did that person do that made me so satisfied in that role that I had and I learned so much whatever and also what did I dislike in that role so the first thing  is by being a true CEO. and another amazing person I'm so glad to work on this part of my life is Dan Fitzgerald of Apollo and Ser Globus and him and again what a great people like that. How do they instill individuals to do more? And so by being CEO the first thing you can do is actually without changing the culture and harm the organization say I want to build a company where everybody has the opportunity to have a good experience from a team leader from a CEO executive member or whatever and so that's the first amazing thing at pure program to keep that going and as we've as gone from 60 70 odd people to 230 odd people the importance is to keep that going so that's exciting I still find the core  business exciting. We haven't at all cracked as I want to the US and the UK businesses. it's still really under indexing from where it can be as an organization. For us, 43% of our business is what we call rest of the world and 57% is a still upside down. So I'm really excited. We just made some announcements of some really cool hires. We're gonna blast out the UK and we've got some cool stuff going on in the US. So that really excites me and so that's fun. Also, as you said, all of the technology that's going on excites for a couple of reasons. It also scares the Jesus out of me, but it excites for a couple of reasons.

Leonard Murphy: Right.

Martin Filz: The first reason is we can finally do all of the internal automation that every company has ever wanted to do forever.  And so we are really automating everything through pure profile. What isn't? we're really technology led anyway, but we are really automating the final bits of manual task. and I was on a call the other day and I said to team members, hey, this isn't because I'm going to be replaced by an AI robot. It's that we this year will finish at about a 57 58 million business. And again, it's public. I can say that with that guidance. when we're a $120 million business, we're not 500 staff. Let's get to a $120 million and let's just be 300 staff and let's be focused on the data and focused on the clients and…

Leonard Murphy: Right.

Martin Filz: focused on being proactive and consultative, not doing a manual task. So, that's the first thing I'm so excited about everything that's coming along with Genai, etc. we can automate internally the business.  The second thing I'm really excited about is external tools and this maring of qual that we're seeing going on. We've launched AI solutions to do that. We've got a road map of other stuff coming out. We just did a release. We've launched a dedicated product team headed up by a chief product officer, brilliant lady called me Patrick who came from Facebook and has been with us about four years. so now we can really innovate on the client perspect front as well. So that's really exciting. What I also love about our CTO, John, ages ago, we're having a meeting and we're talking about AI and John says, "Stop. I don't want anybody to talk about AI. We have problems to solve for clients, for ourselves,…

Leonard Murphy: Yeah. Yeah.

Martin Filz: and we have opportunities. might be able or it may not be suitable. Let's stop talking about AI." So, we do that as a company.  What I also love about what's happening though with AI and the advent that we've seen for every company in the world is it's made us become innovative. It's made us think more innovatively than we did before because anything's possible. So all of those companies that maybe were using outdated technology or a manual process or a way of working suddenly they're having innovation conversations in leadership teams. why don't we try this or I heard about this and so the whole industry has been lifted up because we're all talking about this new fangled magic that's come out. So, I'm really excited about that. I'm really excited about we can finally get massive data sets, merge them with representative smaller high quality qual quant type data and we can merge that transaction data as we do or social media data or whatever and can make sense of all that really quickly for clients. So that is phenomenally exciting. I'm really excited to learn to keep learning to be curious.  I'm excited for my teams to get more skills and keep learning and be curious. So, there are lots of areas to your question. On the flip side of that, my gosh, wouldn't it been nice just to have had a couple of years of running a business for all of us, We all had 2008 and it was like the world was falling down. So, come on everybody, we've got to do something. And then really quite quickly we then had COVID and the world suddenly changed and it's come on everybody we've now got to focus on that and then we just came out of COVID going okay we've got some normality and along comes AI and generative AI and everything and it's like okay guys here we go do you remember…

Leonard Murphy: I saw something the other day it was a chart of basically Moore's law right that curve…

Martin Filz: What Let's go. Yeah.  No, you

Leonard Murphy: but tied to actual innovation right and yeah it's all clustered up here right I mean it's just slow slope and there's a couple things here and then all of a sudden in the last 1015 years and with the assumption it's only going to keep going. So, I hear and thank God because it keeps me in a job. because that's my job is to pay attention to all these things. and I can't keep up either. I asked the other day "How do you keep up?" I miss stuff all the time comes up like where the hell that come from. I didn't see generative AI coming. so I want to be conscious of your time as well as the listeners. So you have had this varied career. you've worked in different industries and have tackled different issues. what's the key lessons that you could pass on to others that are growing in their career? Advice, key lessons, distill your wisdom, Martin, bestow it upon others, please.

Martin Filz: All right. Couple of things from a business standpoint. don't buy something that's too expensive, You can't get away from an expensive sale. And we've seen that in expensive purchasing.  We've seen that in the R industry where overinflated acquisitions have been made and it fundamentally upsets the organization. So don't do that. That's one massive lesson I've learned. Buy the profit is all in you're buying a house, a car or the second thing from a business standpoint, don't pivot too much. Right. We've seen I think you've got a eye wateringly scary chart…

Leonard Murphy: Mhm.

Martin Filz: which is something like 2,000 or whatever it is AI companies have launched in our space in the last two years whatever 98% will fail because companies fail because of cash flow etc. Do you know why the majority will actually fail is because they're trying to find a problem to solve.  they built something going let's look at a problem right we are established companies with pure profile 24 years old everybody I work with old companies as well just look at actually solving the same problem you serve solve today but do better do it faster do it with a higher quality and try and do it cheaper and then you'll delight your clients so that's the other thing is don't go wow I can now build this let's find a problem look at cheaper higher quality that's from a business standpoint, from a personal standpoint, I think there's from a career and I get asked this a lot. I speak to every new joiner who joins pure profile within the first six weeks of them joining towards the end of the six weeks and I speak to them because one to welcome them, two to ask them from their experience, do they seen we do something that's a bit wonky and we shouldn't do How's their learning process been?  And it's really funny, in some markets, it's the first time ever in their careers that they've spoken to a CEO. And many people think they're going to be fired because they've never spoken to a CEO before. But it's about demystifying this. we're all the same. I've got I've got a dog I've got kids I pick up after. We all do the same thing, we're people that forget our titles. And so, the first thing is which I've always have is have no ego because there is no point. Don't go into a room and come out of a room believing you're the smartest person and acting like you're the smartest person. If I go into room I'm the smartest person in the room. I'm really frightened because I tell you that room is not very clever. But the key thing is even if I am I don't walk out of it going I'm so glad part your ego out the door because it has no presence. It's going to stop you moving forward because you're full of importance. That is The second thing I talk about is  Put your hand up for Volunteer for everything. Ask, "How can I progress?" You own your career. Your manager is busy. their manager Everybody is busy. You own your own career. So, own it and ask, "How can I forward it? What else can I do? Volunteer for tasks, etc." As my dad said to me, when I went for it was my very first job interview. And as I was walking out the door, go I remember this all those years ago. He said to me, "Remember, son, when they say jump, all you ask is how high." That's gone, right? Remember that. I still to this day ask how high. I'm still that 20some kid going for his first interview. So umble nature. Keep Keep that wanting to please. The career is yours. and there's many others. I'm conscious of  The other thing that I think keeps you going and really young and fresh, be curious. Be curious about everything. Be curious about UFOs and about spiritualism and about parallel universes and about what's going politics and what's going on in the world and global warming and where rain comes from and how trees grow and all of that because by being curious you will be a better person but also you're going to be way more interesting because you will not have full knowledge that you will share

Leonard Murphy: Yep.

Martin Filz: You're a curious person who will ask lots of questions. And an example is when Barbara leaves a party and the house sits down and goes, "Cod, what? That Barbara was an amazing person. We love Barbara." And when Bill leaves the party and they sit down go, I didn't like Bill very much. I'll tell you, nine times out, Bill and Barbara have done two things. Bill has only talked about himself, which ironically we've done for a podcast. Barbara has only  Ask questions. Be curious. It makes you more interesting. It helps your knowledge. It will further your career. You're going to have energy and you're going to be a better person for it.

Leonard Murphy: Yeah, you actually just made me have a moment of realization that I have probably gotten by on that curiosity more than anything else in my life, right? So I would always just call it right? My ability to be, but it is an honest desire to actually understand and engage while also coming across as b**. But boy, it's carried me a long way. So you validated that. Thank you, sir. So,…

Martin Filz: Lenny, you are one of the most bad. You're one of the most curious people I know. But for this conversation,…

Leonard Murphy: in all ways, he's a curious guy, isn't he?

Martin Filz: You are full of curiosity in that you share and that you ask questions and you want to deep dive and you want to know more. And we are blessed to have you in our industry that is driving us all as there are other leaders that we can talk about that are in other companies…

Leonard Murphy: Thank you,…

Martin Filz: But you are one of those people Lenny and that's what we need lots of.

Leonard Murphy: Speaking of b**, but I appreciate it very much. where can people find you?

Martin Filz: So people can find me martinpureprofile.com. That's absolutely where They can find me through Martin Phils f i l z has come up on this screen. I'm still doing standup amateur night. So I don't have any professional bookings just yet. but please reach out. We have a chat and if I can help anybody.  And that's the other thing that you get later in your career and some of the biggest buzzes I've had apart from companies doing well and people doing well within companies. It's the biggest buzz I get is somebody that's doing better that progresses that maybe moves leaves a company I'm working for or managing to actually be a CEO or move on their career. And the other thing is somebody that comes back and says, "Hey, do you remember when in 2003 we were in that meeting and you said XY Z?" I'm like, "No, I don't remember what. I've based big part of what I've done on that and thank you. That changed the way I did. And I think anybody who is truly people focused will give time up to ask questions, to help, to whatever. And it might be teaching you your grandmother to suck eggs and they already know it. But I'm also mentor a few young people around the world actually.

Leonard Murphy: It does.

Martin Filz: No nobody in Australia at the moment. So I mentor a few young people and it's just if there's one little thing that I can pass across that can make their lives a little bit make sense or a little bit better then god doesn't that mean we've achieved something?

Leonard Murphy: And yeah, that's doing good is its own reward, isn't it? somebody tell me a long time ago that happiness is a byproduct of right living. and that means doing good, doing my best, all those things you were talking about. Whatever it is I'm doing, I'm trying my best and doing well. And boy, it just makes everything more worthwhile. And I think that's just very evident in you in your life. and it comes across you're exuding that. So, I appreciate it very much. you and I can go on and on for a really long time. you mentioned the buzz topics that, I really want to talk about, but we're not going to do that with the audience right now. That's another time. S soon we'll be able to talk about exo research. That will be a topic that we'll be able to talk about, listeners, thank you so much. I appreciate  Obviously, Martin and I chat, but we wouldn't have recorded this and gone down this path without thinking it was going to be beneficial to you. So, hopefully it has been. Let us know in the comments whether that is true or not. And this will sign off until the next episode of the CEO series. So, Thank you audience. Everybody take care. Bye-bye.