In this conversation, Bron McCall, founder of Bricks Advisory and former tech leader at AWS and Extra Space Storage, shares rare insights from his time on both sides of the Customer Advisory Board (CAB) table—as a vendor executive and a customer.

With decades of experience in IT transformation and executive engagement, Bron explains why CABs are more than just annual events. From building competitive moats to co-designing innovation, he explores how CABs unlock peer networking, real-time feedback, and deep customer loyalty. If you're looking to elevate your CAB program into a strategic differentiator, this episode is a masterclass in long-term customer engagement and enterprise growth.

The Secret Power of Customer Advisory Boards - Transcript

Irene Yam  0:00 

What if your best competitive advantage didn't come from technology, but from your customers? Today, I'm talking to Bron McCall, the founder of bricks advisory, and the former tech lead for at AWS, Extra Space Storage and many more companies. Ron's going to share how customer advisory boards and executive relationships that he's built over the years can really unlock growth, build competitive moats and give leaders a serious edge. Brian, really good to see you, and thank you for being here.

Bron McCall  0:35 

Yeah, thanks, Irene. I'm I'm glad to be part of this, and cabs are an interesting topic, and I'm sure there's a lot of great insights in your book that I'm excited to learn more about.

Irene Yam  0:49 

Ron, you've been on both sides of the table when I when I met you. You're at Extra Space Storage, running it, or as the CIO. You're at many other companies, such as AWS. So you've been on both Flying J I'm just curious, you know, What side do you like to be on, on the vendor side or the customer side? Like, and there's no wrong answer. I'm just curious. Yeah,

Bron McCall  1:15 

I actually like being on the customer side, especially when with a cab that's, that's real, well run there's just, there's so much value that you can extract out, extract out of, out of a cab, I found certainly you Get the influence of your voice for you know, product roadmap, direction. I've seen that play out with various cabs that I've been on, for sure, and seeing the value in that you get that executive connection. Reminds me of this quote I love that build relationships before you need them. And that's absolutely true. If you build the relationship with those executives, you're the, you know, whatever cab, the company that you're a cab member of, hopefully you you don't need to leverage those relationships. But I have had times where I've had to, whether it's been a problem or whether it's just to escalate a issue, or whatever it might be, but super, super valuable. You get insight into business trends, your vendor sees much broader scope than maybe you have visibility to so you can learn from that. And I found that valuable. Lastly, I'd say that the peer networking, I've met so many of my peers that are part of these cabs, many of which I am still in touch with today. And I've, you know, at various times, reached out to them, individually, to, you know, maybe on have a challenge that I know that they had went through, and can learn from their experiences. So I have found them to be, you know, really, really valuable from a customer perspective.

Irene Yam  3:12 

And it sounds like you've built your own kind of cab, in a sense, where you have this network, where you've heard their stories too, right? I think that's great that you've leveraged it. So I had a question for you. Love your point of view on this. So from the customer side, how did the cab influence your IT, priorities, timing, roadmap,

Bron McCall  3:33 

yeah. I mean, certainly there's been times where maybe as because I was part of the cab. I got to see a little further ahead. And maybe I accelerate a a priority on my roadmap, because I'm like, oh, I need to get ahead of this. I can see that, hey, this this vendors well down the path, and this is what they're seeing. So I need to accelerate my roadmap. And honestly, there have been a couple of times, too, where I had some big ambition to do something, and with the insights that I gained from the vendor, I just, like, just not possible yet or today, or that might be a little ambitious, and so I've maybe pulled back. So I've done both where I've maybe accelerated initiatives and actually pulled back at certain times.

Irene Yam  4:29 

And then I'm sure you've gone back to your other peers to figure out their how to how to do all that, to kind of start, stop and walk, ask them some questions. So okay, now I want to ask you on the on the vendor side. So from the vendor side, I know you were at AWS. I know you were invited to speak a lot at the cabs. I know you weren't running them, per se, but you were a speaker. Did they help you validate any of your strategies, you your needs as being a. Yeah, someone on the vendor side, did it help you build these long, lasting relationships with your clients?

Bron McCall  5:06 

Yeah, certainly, from a vendor perspective, you get the validation of roadmap. You find out what's important most you know, to the customer. I mean, you know, there was times where we were really excited about something, and when we put in front of the customer, they're like, interesting, but we're really more worried about this. So sometimes, you know, just knowing that, hey, yeah, the and I will tell you, if anybody, if you know anything about Amazon and AWS, the customer obsession is absolutely true. The customer does drive so much of the of the product at AWS. It's absolutely true. Listen to the customer a lot, and then, like you were saying, though there's certainly, there's relationships that you build with those customers where you can reach out to them, even, you know, informally outside the cab, just pinging them, asking them, you know, quick questions and get, gain quick insights, rather than waiting till the next quarterly meeting or something. So there are, there is a lot of value from a vendor perspective that I saw, you know, building those stressor relationships with with customers. And then, of course, there's one of the things that I did have some in some visibility to is your customer too, will, often, they'll do a lot of proof of concepts and, like, testing of things, you know, these, these really great customers. They're not afraid to go and try something, you know, they may not, they're, maybe they're not going to put it in their, you know, production system, but, but, but they're all about trying things for you, and, you know, actually helping test some of your things that you're working on.

Irene Yam  7:10 

Yeah, and I often see that cab customers because they've built the trust, and they understand the executives, the mindset on the vendor side, that they're willing to take that time to be beta or even co designers?

Bron McCall  7:27 

Yeah, absolutely. And I've been on both sides of that,

Irene Yam  7:31 

yeah, yeah, I know. I know you have and it's good, because that's why you're here, because I really liked how you called us out politely, of course, in our customer advisory board in Monterey. So thank you for doing that. Okay, so since you've had this rare vantage point of being both on the customer side and the vendor side, has this perspective influenced you how you advise executive your projects. Now, can you share an example of that? Do you have anything that you you wouldn't mind sharing with us?

Bron McCall  8:07 

Yeah, so today, now, as I advise my my clients on their IT strategy, I certainly talk to them about the value in building partnerships with your C technology partners, and to not that you know, to help them understand the value in being. If you're invited to be part of a cab, coaching them on the value that they can extract from that. There's one example where they, you know, I advise them that, look, there's tremendous value. And after he had went and got to fly it to Redmond, let's say, and the connections that he came back and told me about, and what he heard, and those executive relationships that he built, and the insights that he gained were just fabulous. And so, yeah, I I tell them that there's, there's building those relations. Relationships like I've spoken about before are extremely valuable, and it's amazing. What how much free advice you can get, yeah, out of those relationships,

Irene Yam  9:37 

free Yeah, the engineers will get on a call. It's really hard to quantify that, but you can get access to a lot of people that you would have never gained

Bron McCall  9:49 

and free. I mean, I've been part of Cavs where I mean free training for your team. I mean, they're more than willing to spend an hour with your team and. Train them on a particular subject or product or so, yeah, there's, there's a lot of free value you can extract from these, if you, if you put forth the effort to be, to be part of it,

Irene Yam  10:13 

right? So in your past transformational projects, I know at Extra Space Storage. I know this from a fact, because I worked with you while you were on the cab. Were there any aha moments, and maybe even if you want to talk about your clients today, are there any like when you're, when you're building these big projects, you're you're needing to really commune. Being a communicator is so important. How do you communicate back up to management to make these decisions. How you move quick? I just wanted to know, do you have any aha moments that you'd like to share of how you kind of built that together, and how you got everyone to go, oh, we can do this like we didn't know we could really digitally transform this way.

Bron McCall  10:59 

So at Extra Space Storage, really proud of the digital transformation there. And I think the aha moment was when really the full executive team understood the value of what this new customer experience that we were building brought to the organization. When I first got there, the self storage industry, the customer experience was just absolutely horrific. It was, it was, it was very old school and today, and the vision that I presented at the time was that we were seeing in so many other industries of the time was we need to do business on the customer's terms. Prior, we made the customer do business on our terms. And so we we built a strategy and a vision around making the process for the customer frictionless, and we would meet them wherever that was. If they wanted to do it on the mobile app, the website, they could still call us. That was fine, too. If they still wanted to walk in the store to transact. We provided all of those avenues, but we did not force them into one particular channel. We provided them all these channels and made these channels consistent. And it took a long time for that vision to come to fruition, but, but when it did, it was just fabulous. And now today, I mean, the whole industry is really caught on to this new experience. But it was, it was definitely transformational, and has provided great value to the organization.

Irene Yam  12:46 

I, for one, used it. I I was I bought some storage on the side down in Santa Clara to move out some things, to do some renovation. And it was very easy I could. So I use the app. I got texts, you know, when I could, you know, go in, yeah. So it was great. I can attest it was very smooth. And I can pick, just like you said, I could have gone in if I wanted, but I just chose every to do everything over the app.

Bron McCall  13:17 

Yeah, it's, it's, it's frictionless, right? And, and so today, as I work with my clients, that's the type of vision that I like to talk to him about. I like to understand, what are you trying to achieve with your business? What are your business growth goals, or transformational goals? And and how you know, often for these organizations, it is somewhat of a headwind for them to achieve those goals. And so what I come in to do is to help them with the strategy and the operating models, to turn that into a tailwind, to make technology a tailwind. It should be pushing the business forward, rather than holding it back. And so number one thing that I want to understand when I first start talking to a client is is understand their business and their goals and what they're trying to achieve and and then the technology is easy after that. It's it's really understanding where do you want to

Irene Yam  14:21 

go? Well, that makes sense. And I well, I think you also helped us quite a bit when we during the cab with our roadmap. So thank you for that, because I think you were probably one of the second largest customers in the United States who really went to the retail, down into the retail, and also of SMS texting that you are, you built all that out. You were really early on that, and then also the chats that so. So thank you. You know you really helped us there at RingCentral.

Bron McCall  14:55 

Yeah, RingCentral was pivotal to a lot of that transformation. For sure. Irene, I have a question for you. So you've seen, I've been part of a lot of cabs, but you've, you've run many cabs, and I'd be interested, from your perspective, how you know these organizations see, see the value, the competitive value of having a cab,

Irene Yam  15:24 

right? Well, a lot of times people go, Oh, we should have a cab. You know, a VC advisor saying, oh, you should have a cab. And people have a cab. And but I think if you want to look at some of the really bigger companies, the billion dollar companies say, like, service now, Oracle Salesforce AWS, really thinking long tail, really thinking about building a relationship with their customers, is with a cab. And so maybe the first year. Let's just, for example, take a first year. They're trying to, you know, the new executive team roadmap. They're moving fast or growing, so they need to check in, like, hey, Bron, is this the way of validating our strategies? Is this the roadmap? Would you use this? And, you know, the the advisory boards? Yes, no, yes, no. And oh, we've, we've seen your competitor, look at these things are offering. Why aren't you doing that? And then there would be this discussion, and there would be a deeper discussion, and then there would be a lot of aha moments, like, Hmm, the executives might go back and say, well, a lot of people really wanted that, and we were thinking we didn't need to build that. And actually people are saying, why don't you build it? So in other words, that helps with competition. But as you keep building out your program, it's not just a one and done. It's not just every year, people just show up. You think about, how can we build a deeper relationship? How could we build co design? Let's listen to our customers needs. What's keeping them up at night? This could be a formative, strategic partnership with people. It's not just or with customers. It's not like, oh, buy more upsell. I mean, that is very typical, and that that is a metric that to to sponsor the cab. That's what we need to do, is to show those metrics. But it's really that kind of long term thinking. And you know, when you make an investment as a customer, you're thinking, Okay, who is this company? Who's backed behind it? Who are the leaders should I make? Should I spend time? Should I have my team spend time dabbling, using the product, beta testing, and this helps with building the vendors industry dominance, because now they're spending way more time with the vendor than other vendors. So say, a new vendor, maybe a new SAS based product, comes knock on the door, we can do these things better, faster, and they're like, no, sorry, we're, you know, we've been customers for, you know, 10 years with this. No, but this is legacy. And sometimes they've like, they've built these relationships with these technologies, with these vendors, very hard for people to leave and maybe try something else. And that's what I mean about building this competitive moat. What are your thoughts?

Bron McCall  18:16 

I mean, it makes a lot of sense. And I and I agree I was, as you were explaining that I was thinking back to the various cabs that I've been on and those relationships and And absolutely, I think they can be, and I'll admit that, you know, with some of these vendors where I was on their cab, and, you Know, I consider them critical partners. I became an evangelist of the company. As I talked to my peers, I would, I would talk, you know, man, you should really consider, you know, this solution. And so I think again, it's it Some of that's probably hard to measure, right? But, but you would absolutely, yeah, but absolutely, there's a, there's a, I like the term competitive moat. It is absolutely that, for sure.

Irene Yam  19:12 

Thank you. But you would have done that like, I know you a little bit Bron like, you're, you are very like, you're very structured, like you would not go out of your way to do it unless you understood, you know, we buy technology, but we buy from who actually creates the technology. So you really got to meet the executive team. You're like, okay, they're focused on me. I can call people. I can get access. Like, I don't just have my CSM help us. I can now ask the PS person to show me a mock up if I want to do custom engineering. So I don't have to do it, right? So, so I'm going to just segue into, I aim for, like, the 50. 50 balance of a technology and business agenda. It shouldn't just be about technology, because this is a C suite customer advisory board. And do you prefer those, or do you prefer more technical? Ron,

Bron McCall  20:15 

so that's a that's a great topic. And the best cabs that I have been in been on absolutely, I don't know if it was exactly 5050, but, but yeah, probably close to that, where there was topics and conversations that, yeah, have nothing to do with, with technology or even the product and and I actually recall one time, this one particular cab that I was on, and really great relationship with his finger. We were, we were, you know, on their cab for years and years. They even one time had us invite one of our other executives. In this case, we brought our, you know, head of of HR, to the meeting as well. And the vendor brought in their leader of that, and we had a whole afternoon discussion around people, around culture, around how they obviously, this was a very well respected vendor, and to understand, and for, you know, for my HR person leader, to really have that connection to was super valuable. So again, had nothing to do with with the product it was. It was talking about business but, but having those discussions and those insights, and just under having a broader business discussion around you know their their view of the world, and and, and us as CAB members, sharing our view, having that, that that conversation is, is absolutely, absolutely, very valuable,

Irene Yam  21:56 

right? I mean, that was one of the reasons why we selected you brawn? Because you understood sort of the the larger impact of a retail right? And then also, like running 24 hours, like, once you're an Extra Space Storage person, you can, you know, put in your keypad in and go into your own storage anytime, right? And then you have actual people, or the franchise, the people that work there, you know, during their business hours. Now that was a very different use case. And why I'm talking about this is that all these different businesses, maybe they're in manufacturing, they still learn from all these different industries, like learning from different industries, listening to different business leaders deepens the relationship and also makes it more collaborative. Like people are exchanging ideas, like, oh, you know, I really never got to ask that HR person, like, I would run something by that person because I met them on the board. That's, that's the value, also of the cap. That's also hard to like, nail down as a metric. I use you said it correctly, but it's that great networking. You just get to expand your your thinking and your innovation. Yeah, well, I got one last question for you, ready? Okay, so what would you say to leaders who think cabs are just a yearly event that they should run. What they should

Bron McCall  23:26 

have these, these business conversations. They should share, how they run their business. They should have the CAB members come prepared, you know, with some, maybe some, some pre work on, hey, we're going to have a discussion around this. We'd love to get everyone's perspective on especially in today, there's so much change going on in the world. You know, have every like a cab that I've that I'm on. Currently, we talk about tariffs, and it's, it's a very broad group of people here, from different companies, and it's very interesting to understand how, how it's impacting different companies, and yes, and that can help form my strategy. So I think having you know, taking it beyond just presenting road maps and making it a discussion is, is probably one of the more valuable things that I've that I've gotten out of out of these, out of these cabs.

Irene Yam  24:29 

Oh, thank you. No, I have to tell you this one executive that I know did talk about their tariffs situation, because they're mainly they produce in China. But a year ago, they thought about expanding, and so they went to Vietnam and Thailand. And now what they do is, right. They have now their relationships, just like what you said, build your relationships ahead of time. They did that. And once they started hearing in the news. About that, they started to turn on those fab units. And then after that, they went through Canada somehow, and they're actually reducing their chair. So everyone was like, Tell me more, right? So those are the things that a part of a cab that need to come up. And if I may, for me as a practitioner, I really like to look at the slides and make sure that we're not overdoing it. It shouldn't be show, a show a show. It should be discussions. And sometimes vendors want to show so much, but they need to actually kind of slow it down and maybe focus on a few things and get deeper, because then you have the opportunity, after we're talking about physical cabs, after you can have ongoing one hour zoom say, hey, we listen to you. Here's what we're thinking. Here's a mock up, or here's something that we want to show you from the conversation. Or we didn't. We have to park that good conversation. We want to bring that up in the next month, where we come together, and I think that kind of ongoing conversation, not just see you next year, thanks. Bye, and then just have, like, one on one conversations that really does not bloom the the board. It's just sort of like that, that one set time of you were invited to be a cabinet.

Bron McCall  26:18 

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, totally agree with you.

Irene Yam  26:22 

Well, thanks, Bron. I know you're a busy person, and I thank you for your time. Thanks, Irene, thanks you.

FAQ 

1. Why do CABs create a lasting competitive advantage for vendors?

According to Bron, Customer Advisory Boards aren’t just for feedback—they create strategic stickiness. When customers build executive relationships, test early products, and co-design solutions, they’re less likely to switch vendors. CABs foster loyalty, trust, and advocacy, becoming a competitive moat that is difficult for new entrants to breach.

2. What value can customers gain from participating in a CAB?

From the customer side, CABs offer:

• Executive access to influence roadmap decisions
  
  

• Peer networking with industry leaders
  
  

• Early insight into upcoming trends and innovations
  
  

• Opportunities for feedback and beta testing
  Bron emphasizes that free advice, training, and connections gained through CABs often surpass what customers can get through standard vendor relationships.
  
  

3. How do CABs impact IT strategy, product innovation, and roadmap planning?

CAB insights can accelerate or deprioritize internal initiatives, Bron explains. As a CIO, he often adjusted IT roadmaps based on CAB discussions. Customers get to see farther ahead, while vendors receive honest feedback about what’s truly valuable, enabling better product-market fit and informed innovation cycles.

4. What’s the difference between a successful CAB and a superficial one?

Great CABs are not just roadmap readouts. Bron highlights the best ones as balanced discussions (50/50 business and tech), where customers and executives share real-world challenges, like tariffs, AI, or workforce culture. The most impactful boards:

• Involve pre-work and thoughtful facilitation
  
  

• Encourage cross-functional discussions
  
  

• Create space for strategic collaboration, not just sales enablement
  
  

5. How can CABs support ongoing executive engagement and business growth?

CABs should be seen as long-term relationships, not once-a-year check-ins. Bron and Irene discuss using:

• Follow-up 1:1s with exec sponsors
  
  

• Virtual roundtables for deeper dives
  
  

• Customer-led innovation sessions
  These practices ensure continuous feedback loops, making the CAB a living, evolving asset for both customers and vendors.