We are recording live at Qualtrics X4 in Salt Lake City and seeing and hearing all about how to create and enable amazing customer experiences.
If the student experience is the heart of a world-class academy, what happens when you realize there is room for improvement—and what do you do about it?
Today’s guest is Mike Milliron, Chief Operating Officer at IMG Academy Campus. Mike has played a key role in reimagining and transforming the student experience at IMG Academy, aligning student and employee experiences to create a seamless, enriching environment for everyone on campus. We’re going to dive into how they integrated feedback loops, broke down internal barriers, and shifted the entire campus culture toward an experience-first approach.
Resources
IMG Academy: https://www.imgacademy.com/
Qualtrics: https://www.qualtrics.com
Catch the future of e-commerce at eTail Boston, August 11-14, 2025. Register now: https://bit.ly/etailboston and use code PARTNER20 for 20% off for retailers and brands
Don’t Miss MAICON 2025, October 14-16 in Cleveland – the event bringing together the brights minds and leading voices in AI. Use Code AGILE150 for $150 off registration. Go here to register: https://bit.ly/agile150
Connect with Greg on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregkihlstrom
Don’t miss a thing: get the latest episodes, sign up for our newsletter and more: https://www.theagilebrand.show
Check out The Agile Brand Guide website with articles, insights, and Martechipedia, the wiki for marketing technology: https://www.agilebrandguide.com
The Agile Brand podcast is brought to you by TEKsystems. Learn more here: https://www.teksystems.com/versionnextnow
The Agile Brand is produced by Missing Link—a Latina-owned strategy-driven, creatively fueled production co-op. From ideation to creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content. https://www.missinglink.company
Transcript
Greg Kihlstrom:
We are recording live at Qualtrics X4 in Salt Lake City and seeing and hearing all about how to create and enable amazing customer and employee experiences. If the student experience is the heart of a world-class academy, what happens when you realize there’s room for improvement and what do you do about it? Today’s guest is Mike Milliron, Chief Operating Officer at IMG Academy Campus. Mike has played a key role in reimagining and transforming the student experience at IMG Academy, aligning student and employee experiences to create a seamless, enriching environment for everyone on campus. We’re going to dive into how they created integrated feedback loops, broke down internal barriers, and shifted the entire campus culture toward an experience-first approach. Mike, welcome to the show. Thank you. It’s great to be here. I appreciate you having me. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, great. And great to do this in person. It’s always good to be able to meet. I do so many remote interviews here. Good to be able to see you face to face.
Mike Milliron: Absolutely. And thanks again.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, so before we dive in, definitely want to hear about the story here, but why don’t you give a little background on your role at IMG and a little bit about your background.
Mike Milliron: Sure. As you mentioned, my role is Chief Operating Officer for our on-campus operation that we have located in Bradenton, Florida. So we have a little over 1,100 staff members there. We have a lot of tremendous experiences that we provide for our students, for our campers. As you know, we have a world-renowned boarding school, 1,500. student athletes from around the world, robust youth camp program with probably 10,000 campers that come to train with us, and really have a great kind of training destination home for tournaments and events and pro sports. So my role is to somehow work with the team, empower the team to make all of that great and seamless, and as we like to say, unrivaled. So that’s a little bit about me. I’ve been at the Academy. What I will say is that I’ve been there for basically 13 years and have had the opportunity to really start from an entry level type role and work my way up to where I am today as a Chief Operating Officer. So I think that has helped me really kind of understand the business from the bottom up and the top down. And as I said earlier today, from the inside out as well.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, yeah. Well, I would just say, I mean, being able to work your way from entry level to COO, I think that says something about the organization as well. So, yeah.
Mike Milliron: Yeah, that’s without a doubt. And that’s one of the things I love about IMG Academy. With everything that we do, a lot of those elements I had mentioned earlier and our desire and continued growth, you can have multiple careers and never leave the organization, especially with how complex our operation is. So I’ve been the lucky beneficiary of that. I timed it just right as we began to grow and must have done some things OK to continue to earn opportunities. But I’m so grateful for that. And it’s it’s fun to work at a place where you know that that can happen.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, yeah, that’s great. So yeah, let’s let’s dive in here. And I want to start with this idea of integrating customer experience and employee experience. And we all we’ve heard lots about the importance of of each sort of individually. But you know, one of your core priorities was integrating the two of them. And so why was it so important to improve both at once? And how did you approach it?
Mike Milliron: Yeah, great question. And I think for us is really a part of our experience commitment overall. As we look at experience at IMG Academy, we really bucketed as campus experience. And it doesn’t matter who come through. We’re a gated campus. So we always say it doesn’t matter who comes through the gates. If it’s an employee member, if it’s a teacher, if it’s a student, if it’s a camper, if it’s a parent, it doesn’t matter. We want to have unrivaled campus experiences. We also know We have really great people. Our people at IMG Academy is what makes us who we are. And we made a commitment when we were really going to begin our journey of creating these unrivaled experiences that EX and CX had to be married and they had to be equally attended to, and we’ve remained committed to that because we know that happy customers equal happy employees, happy employees equal customers. We felt like it was just the right thing to do, and we’re proud of the work that we’ve done in that space.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, so maybe to dive in a little deeper on that, what exactly did improving the employee experience mean for your staff, and how did that influence then the student experience?
Mike Milliron: Yeah, it’s an interesting question. I think there’s a number of areas for our staff that was I’d almost say low-hanging fruit, great opportunities for us to win. We created a program called Mission UCX. It’s all about delivering unrivaled campus experiences. And a big part of that was, how do we make it cool to care for employees? And the answer was actually really simple. Let’s celebrate all the great things our employees are doing. Let’s provide opportunities for our employees to have a voice and a seat at the table, irregardless of where you are in the organization, to drive improvement in the employee experience. And let’s find ways for actually our staff members to celebrate one another and to give each other high fives because we found, and candidly, I found this through some of my own experience, when you get a high five from a colleague or a peer, it just means something different. It feels a little bit different than maybe getting it from a boss. And I felt that a few times, like I even got some high fives and I was like, wow, I’m like, this is great. So those were some of the areas that we really kind of focused on making sure they were celebrated, making sure they were recognized, making sure there was a voice at the table for improvement. And we’ve been able to see some gains now as it relates to our employee NPS, and we’re heading in the right direction. We’re not where we want to be, but we’re heading in the right direction, which is great.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, yeah. And so back to that point of making it cool to care. I mean, I think that’s, it’s, underrated in the sense of, you know, I have a hypothesis at least that I think even, you know, there’s the people that work to live and the people that live to work. And so it takes a mix of both. But even the people that, you know, work to live, they still want to find some value in their work. And they want to know that what they did eight hours a day, sometimes more, is of some kind of value, right? So how, I mean, is that kind of what that’s predicated on?
Mike Milliron: I would say that’s dead on. And the thing about making it cool to care, first of all, with us and our brand and who we are and what we do, if you know anything about IMG Academy, now granted, maybe this is a biased opinion. We are cool. And what we do is cool and what we do is innovative and what we do is special. So if we’re going to improve experience, it better be cool to be to be a part of it. But we have found with our staff, our staff is so purpose driven, like our purpose of empowering student athletes to win their future literally resides in the chest and the heart of a lot of our staff. So it was actually easy for them to get on board and to to see that their work was making a difference. And as we kind of ramped up transparency and alignment, it made it a lot easier And then the momentum just started kind of building across the masses of our staff.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, yeah. And so, you know, culture change or any type of organizational change is driven, it’s certainly driven at the, you know, the front lines, but also driven by leadership example. And, you know, people are looking to those leaders to kind of walk the walk. How did you ensure that leaders were modeling the behavior that was needed to drive this kind of transformation?
Mike Milliron: Yeah, I mean, first of all, I’m not naive. We’re lucky. In addition to myself being in the role that I’m in, but also our CEO, Brent Richard, we’re all in on experience. And I know not every organization has that buy-in from the top. So in addition to ourselves, our senior leadership team is as well. So we knew that if we were going to ask our staff to put experience at the center of everything that they do, we needed to model it. And so we came up with some commitments and the commitments were simple, they were clear, and they held us accountable. And it was everything from initiating customer callbacks. So sometimes when there’s not a great customer experience, the executive doesn’t always call them back. We wanted to make sure that that happened to actually feel and understand the pain points that existed and see if we could learn from it and act. We have an awesome executive shadow program. So we created a program where it’s almost like undercover boss, if you think of it. Our executive team would go and spend a half a day in various departments with the frontline staff to really get a feel and understanding for what are the pains of our staff? Where are we seeing that we can improve the experience for our staff while also seeing what it’s like from the customer vantage point as well? That program has led to a number of changes, a number of investments, which then directly makes our staff feel good because it’s like someone’s noticing and they’re listening and they’re learning. So we have a lot of commitments. In addition to those two, we do executive huddles. And so it was important for us to model and we knew that was the only way it would actually work. If we didn’t model it, it wasn’t going to work and we were going to lose credibility and we’re going to lose trust, which we were not going to do.
Greg Kihlstrom: You know, another component in addition to the leadership component is just the idea of disjointed or disconnected, you know, silos are often talked about and for a reason, right? Because they exist. You know, even departments that are doing great work, but doing great work independently need some more cross, you know, cross campus, in this case, coordination. What were some of the, maybe start with some of the challenges. What were some of the biggest barriers to breaking down some of those silos?
Mike Milliron: It’s a great question. And I would say some of the barriers that needed to be kind of broken down or we needed to push through, honestly, was just building the muscle of making sure that this is how we now operate. Our staff, as I mentioned, our staff has great people, great intentions. Everyone wants to be great in what we do. But sometimes the muscle memory wasn’t there. of actually engaging a broader audience and engaging people, as you say, from across campus, because then there would be situations that we found where there are already great efforts being actioned in one area. The other area wasn’t sure that that was happening. So sometimes one plus one didn’t always equal two. But man, if we could bring everyone together and align on the initiatives and really converge our goals and processes to make meaningful changes, we could amplify all those efforts. And one plus one can now equal three. And then once individuals started seeing that and realizing it and feeling it, it became a heck of a lot easier. Now, we’re a little bit spoiled. We started an experience team led by Lauren Burkle, who’s on our team and does a tremendous job. And her role and her team actually forced and required teams to come together through journey design and through different work groups as well. So, that really kind of helped build that muscle much more quickly than maybe some organizations can. So, that was a little bit of our secret sauce there.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah. So, having that experience role was actually integral to… Without a doubt. Because, I mean, sometimes that can be sort of almost a tacked-on thing to help, and it can be incredibly helpful. So, that experience role is at the center of things.
Mike Milliron: Yeah, that was at the crux of it. So that’s where our experience work, all of our customer needs, customer journeys, insights, everything as it related to experience enhancement, it all was born out of that team. That team worked cross-functionally across academics, athletics, operations. It really didn’t matter which group, but they really were the magnet, if you will, that brought everyone together and started getting people used to working together and having conversations and being honest with one another and aligning on what they’re going to work on. So that’s been that’s been a catalyst for us and allowed us to kind of realize some results much faster than anticipated.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, yeah. And so how does that how does some of that breaking down those silos translate to the student experience then? What have you seen?
Mike Milliron: Well, the hope is and what we’ve seen is directly because what we’ve seen is at the end of the day, all the work that we’re trying to do is with the campus experience at the center of the discussion. So when we bring groups together and we work cross-functionally and we break down silos, it’s with the intent of improving the experience of the student or the parent or whoever it may be, but it’s all about the experience. So we’ve been able to see some gains in that regard. We’ve been able to align work that was maybe already occurring. And now it’s like, wow, we didn’t know that was in place because it was occurring in a silo. Open it up, and it’s like, it’s got some momentum. Let’s build on that. So we’ve seen a number of examples that have come to life to improve the student experience. And I talked about this a little bit earlier. One example is something that we call an IDP, so an Individualized Development Plan. For every student athlete, we have one. And what that is, is it’s really a plan that aligns the organization on that particular student and their growth and their development. So a personalized experience at scale. We have 1,500 students. That was born out of a lot of the work that came from that cross-functional work. So now academics, athletics, and other areas can feed into that. And it’s a much richer experience for that student, for that parent, because it’s so personalized to their development and has a plan in place.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, yeah. So, you know, and that kind of brings back to those teams doing great stuff, but siloed, you know, you don’t quite get that one plus one equals three until they are aligned. Certainly people and process are a big part of that. What about, you know, what role does software and technology and data and understanding play in this?
Mike Milliron: So a massive part, and we’ve made a lot of progress in that regard. But one of the first things that we did, which was, I think, very, very powerful, was the ability to, as we say, democratize the information that we get from the insights. So years ago, if I turn back the clock two and a half years, we had a quote-unquote listening program that was in place. It wasn’t great. But one of the biggest issues with the program that we had in place is staff didn’t have access to the information. So just through new technology and new listening platform, we were able to train nearly 100 staff on campus to be able to access that information in real time. So that small piece of technology has brought a lot of efficiency in our regards. So now it’s not our staff putting together reports, you know, every single week or various levels of them. Staff is actually empowered to go in there, see it for themselves, realize it, and then act on it as quickly as possible. So that’s certainly one piece of it for sure.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, you’ve got leadership support from the top. You’ve got enabling people to see the data in real time. and the data that they need, and then supported by that CX, kind of in the center. It sounds like a pretty good system there. Yeah.
Mike Milliron: That’s exactly what it is. We have a very powerful system that has everything that you mentioned. It has customer experience items in the middle, employee experience items, all under this umbrella of what we call Mission UCX, and it just feeds off one another. It’s a nice little flywheel, and once it gets spinning, you can do some really cool stuff pretty quickly.
Greg Kihlstrom: Absolutely. So how do you look at measuring success in this?
Mike Milliron: It’s a great question. Right now, there’s a few areas. I mean, you can look at NPS and you can look at our scores across our different journeys or different experiences we have as one area. And I think that directionally starts to show where you’re going. You start to look at business results as well and start to see how are we doing on referrals? How are we doing on customer retention? you know, what do those metrics look like? But also, I think a big part of it is, you know, just looking at the work that we’re doing and making sure that there’s efficiencies and there are alignment across the org, because those types of things will also help drive employee experience, which will help drive employee retention and satisfaction as well, which we know kind of feeds into it. So there’s a number of different metrics across both the employee side and the customer side that we look at as far as success in this area.
Greg Kihlstrom: Well, and I would imagine then looking at them, first aligning CX and EX, and then looking at them holistically, you’re able to see, I mean, there’s revenue gains obviously from new customers, but there’s also savings from employees either not doing redundant work or doing the right thing at the right time. So there’s savings and revenue gains, right?
Mike Milliron: Without a doubt. And within that, what we have found is it’s super interesting. We’re not fully there yet, but I’m on this mission where I think we can unlock it is If we, through those efficiencies and that alignment, what does that then unlock for the other talented staff member that now has a little bit extra bandwidth and can go and attack different areas to really drive impact? And there are probably areas that they’re passionate about. So there’s all sorts of really nice byproducts as a result of doing this that may at times maybe seem hidden, but they come to life and they ultimately, I think, end up driving that employee experience.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, absolutely. So as we wrap up here, two questions for you. First, I know we’re not quite done with the event yet, but what’s been a highlight so far at Qualtrics X4?
Mike Milliron: The energy. This is my first time that I’ve been here, so just the opportunity to be in and around the energy and the commitment and also the forward thinking, you know, some of the sessions I’ve been able to sit in on. It’s just really kind of inspiring and gets you get your mind going. So I would say that that’s been the personal highlight for me.
Greg Kihlstrom: Love it. Well, and last question I ask this to everybody. What do you do to stay agile in your role and how do you find a way to do it consistently? Great question.
Mike Milliron: And I would say for me, what I try to do is I try to be super intentional of having conversations with, I don’t want to call them random staff members, but various staff members that I know across our organization. One of the beauties of being with the team for as long as I have been, I know there’s a few people that think differently. And I love just to pick their brain. And I know how well-researched they are, and I know how creative they are. So I really like to tap into team members. And I have a placeholder, to be honest with you, on my calendar to make sure that I don’t lose it. But just to listen and learn and talk and maybe provoke some conversations to see what the reaction is. And it helps me kind of generate my own thoughts, which then leads to maybe some learning or some additional discussion. So that would be something small. that I try to do in my job on a daily basis just to remain agile. It also helps me really kind of keep a pulse on what’s occurring across our org. So there’s multiple benefits, but that would be one thing I’d highlight.
