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Navigating the Customer Experience

Join host Yanique Grant as she takes you on a journey with global entrepreneurs and subject matter experts that can help you to navigate your customer experience. Learn what customers really want and how businesses can understand the psychology of each customer or business that they engage with. We will be looking at technology, leadership, customer service charters and strategies, training and development, complaint management, service recovery and so much more!
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Now displaying: 2019
Dec 24, 2019

Christopher Wallace is the Co-Founder and President of InnerView, which is a marketing consulting firm that helps companies effectively transfer their brand strategy to their customer-facing employees and partners. Chris builds upon previous success as an entrepreneur in the sales consulting and coaching space, as well as his more than 15 years of sales, marketing and corporate leadership. Chris’ primary professional focus is to help companies better align the strategies of the board room with the daily execution at the front lines. Beyond his work with clients, Chris is able to apply his passions as a teacher and author. He has taught as an adjunct MBA professor at Temple’s Fox School of Business and has been published in outlets such as Harvard Business Review and Chief Marketer and is a contributor to publications including Inc.com and Forbes.com. Chris received a B.A. in Public Relations from Syracuse University’s Newhouse School and his MBA from Temple University. He lives in Villanova, PA with his family.

Questions

  • Could you share with us how you ended up in this particular field? Marketing and brand recognition and brand consulting.
  • What are some of the key indicators are facets that business owner would need to consider in order to pretty much pioneer, hold or navigate how the shaping of their brand is going to be perceived by others.
  • What is brand dilution?
  • Could you explain to us why is it that you believe that many companies fall into the dilution and are they disillusioned or are they diluted in thinking that there's a communication breakdown or is it that a team members who are actually serving the customers are not clear on what it is that they're supposed to be delivering?
  • Could you give us one or two metrics that organizations could look at even if they're a small business with just say two or three people employed to them versus an organization with two or 300 people and employed to them?
  • Could you share with us how you stay motivated every day as a marketer, as an entrepreneur, as a teacher?
  • Could you share with us what's the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely can't live without in your business?
  • Could you share with us what books have had the biggest impact on you?
  • We have a lot of listeners who are business owners and managers who feel they have great products and services, but they lack the constantly motivated human capital. If you were sitting across the table from that person, what's the one piece of advice that you would give them to have a successful business?
  • What's the one thing that's going on in your life right now that you're really excited about - either something that you are working on to develop yourself or your people?
  • Where can our listeners find you online?
  • What's one quote or saying that during times of adversity or challenge, they like to kind of revert to this quote or saying it kind of helps them to refocus to re-strategize and just remember what they're working towards. Do you have one of those?

Highlights

  • Christopher shared that just like anybody's story, it's a long and winding path, but he’s a salesperson by DNA, not by career, by DNA. It sort of runs in the family and after a career in sales or having a career in sales with a number of big, recognizable brands, he found himself at a crossroads and had the opportunity to essentially work with one of the companies that he had been employed by for a number of years and sort of flipped over into a contract and consulting role. And was sort of an overnight entrepreneur, an accidental entrepreneur as he likes to call it. But what he was asked to do was to take some new products and new services that the company he used to work for was launching to their frontline teams, launching into the market, bringing to market to their customers and really help get their frontline sales teams, their customer service representatives, in a number of different teams really up to speed on what these things were. But it was a lot less training and a lot more just dialogue, how to talk about it, how to position it, how to relay the value and sort of that opportunity being at that crossroads led to this career in really helping organizations to understand how to align the things that they want to bring to market their products and their services with the people who have to talk about them.

 

  • Christopher stated that it doesn't matter if an organization is big or small; your brand is your promise. What is your promise? That's really what it comes down to. What is the promise that you're making to your customers? What value do you bring to them? What makes you stand out? That's the brand story that we're talking about. Occasionally, the word brand can scare people, it sounds like a big concept, and it sounds like something for the Nike's of the world or the Coca-Cola's of the world. But the reality is people have personal brands, smaller organizations have brands and that brand simply comes back down to the what your promise is to the customer regardless of who your customer is and any organization needs to take the time to really sit down and figure out what that promise is before you go out and start advertising it or whatever the case may be. You have to understand really what it is and internalize it first.

 

  • Christopher shared that brand dilution is and thinking about the topic of the show and customer experience, brand dilution is the difference between what you tell your customers you're going to do and what the customer actually experiences. It's really the breakdown in that promise, the breakdown in that message and they did a research study earlier this year with 250 marketing and customer experience executives and what they found was, he would say astonishingly, but it's not really that astonishing. Two thirds of marketers believe that their brands’ messaged, through their key brand story is breaking down between their office and the people to front lines. So, they believe that there's a misaligned message inside their company. People are telling, however, many different versions of that story, of that brand promise. And if the organization promises one thing through their advertising and their marketing and they experienced something different when they show up, that's a big problem for most brands. So, that's really what we talk about with the dilution, it's that gap between what is promised through external marketing and what the customer actually experiences.

 

Yanique shared - It's interesting that you say that it's a breakdown because marketing and advertising costs a whole lot of money and organizations have extensive budgets dedicated to marketing and advertising their businesses every single year. Whether as you said, they're large, medium or even small organizations, you will allocate quite a percentage of your income or reserves or capital to ensure that the business marketed and advertised.

 

  • Christopher shared that he thinks it's both. And the research that they did, the study they published earlier this year with a market research firm called Focus Vision at a consumer insights company called Focus Vision. What they found was it’s really twofold. The organization is attempting to sort of spread this story via the main methods they use are email and product training, those were the top two things that rose to the top of the list each time and how they asked them, they were really communicating and engaging their people. And ultimately when they looked at the data, that wasn't driving results, that wasn't driving alignment, it was a set of other tactics that were really driving the companies who were good at this to be successful and just sending things out via email or doing a product training that's not going to drive the customer experience that you want, it's not getting through, it's not cutting through the noise. So, he thinks that on one hand you have the organization who's probably not doing as much as they should to get it downstream and get the message out to their front lines and then you have the people, the front line to use the phrase disillusion, he doesn’t think they're disillusioned. He just thinks that their organizations have failed to equip them in an interesting and compelling way. And he thinks that people at the front lines, whether you're on the phone, in the retail store, whatever that looks like, you need to be engaged in a new way, you've got a lot of things being thrown at you and if the organization is not treating you as a consumer of the information and just treating you like kind of a link in the chain, then that dilution is bound to be there.

 

Yanique stated that basically you're kind of reinforcing the fact that customer experience starts from within.

 

Christopher agreed and mentioned that their slogan is, “Win From Within.” So, they're big believers that the customer experience needs tremendous attention, it needs tremendous investment and it's an investment that pays off in a big way.

 

Yanique asked - Do you have any statistics, I know you said you used Focus Vision was the name of the company that does insight intelligence. Do you have any research that pretty much supports the ratio of how much companies invest to market and advertise per year versus how much they invest in training and development and customer experience training?

 

Christopher shared that they don't specifically on that, but he can tell you this, when they asked the executives in their study, what they thought the value of a consistent brand message was. So, they asked specifically for those people that thought that their organization was pretty well aligned in their brand message throughout their company, what was that worth to their organization? 62% of those people valued it at more $10 Million Dollars annually. So, nearly two thirds put an actual revenue tag, a revenue price tag on an align brand story at more than $10 Million Dollars a year. So, they look at that and say, “Organizations don't realize necessarily how much money is slipping through the cracks.” One interaction here, one interaction there but when we asked these folks point blank, they said, “Well yeah, actually the success of our marketing plan, the success of our brand really does depend on winning one conversation at a time.” And when you start to add up with the losses, it was more than $10 Million Dollars, that was the category they selected, was more than $10 Million Dollars annually. Who knows how much it could actually be for the organizations they studied, it could be 10 to 20, it could be $50 Million Dollars or more depending on the size of the organization.

 

Yanique stated that not because they're not measuring it doesn't mean that there isn't something slipping through the cracks.

 

Christopher agreed and shared that he thinks that it's one of those things where he’s sure Yanique knows and from the guests that she’s had on measuring it. Measuring it he thinks is perceived to be hard, measuring the impact of customer experiences perceived to be hard. He doesn't think it's that hard, every engagement that they do, they focus on very tangible revenue based metrics around just improving the quality of the interaction between the frontline team member that what they call a brand representative and the customer. If you improve their ability to tell your brand story, you are going to earn more business and if you just measure it the right way and you look at the right metrics, it's not that hard to quantify.

 

  • Christopher shared that metrics; it really depends on the type of business. Conversion is sort of the mother of all metrics that we work with. So, when you think about even as a small business, small business owner or an entrepreneur, looking at your pipeline, regardless of what you sell and really determining what percentage of those deals, what percentage of those opportunities you're able to convert into a sale, and really getting that to be a metric that you track over time. This is all about, like he said, winning one conversation at a time. If you win one more deal here, one more deal there, he knows for him as an entrepreneur that matters but if you think about these larger organizations, and that's really who they work with mostly is these larger organizations. One conversation here, one conversation across, in some cases tens of thousands of representatives or retail employees, that adds up really quickly and it adds up to a lot of money. So, he would say conversion is really the number one metric to be tracking.

 

Yanique asked - Do you think there's one question that you think all companies should ask their customers about their experience?

 

Christopher stated that that's a tough question. He knows the one that they pay a lot of money to ask, “How how likely are you to recommend this product or service to a friend or family?”That’s the NPS. They worked closely with some NPS customers as Fred Reichheld would call it, “The Ultimate Question” that's the title of his book. But in terms of asking, it's so hard to say that one question can actually capture it. He’s going to answer a question with a question. He’s going to say that when they talk to organizations, there's a question that they ask their executives. They asked the question, “How confident are you that the people who represent your brand can tell this story the way that you built it?”And that's sort of their measure of trying to figure out if they have alignment issues with their brand internally. How confident are you that the people who represent your brand can tell this story the way that you built it? And if you're talking to a product owner or a brand owner or somebody in consumer marketing, the answer to that is it's kind of a moment of truth question for them and they rarely hear that there's a lot of confidence. So, he would say to any business owner, if you have other people out representing you, other than just yourself, ask yourself that question. How confident are you that the people representing you can do it the way that you want it done every single time?

 

Yanique shared that that's a very good question, bills a lot of introspect for you to really think about the individual or the company or the set of people that are representing you and the platform that they are representing you on and are they really telling the story that how you built it to be told.

 

  • When asked how he stays motivated, Christopher shared that he’s thought about this a lot so he feels like he has a good answer to this question, at least he knows the answer. The motivation for him and he'll tell a quick story. When he was getting his MBA, he had a project that was being done toward the end of the program that was all about; you had to do a map out, a strategy for your career. You had to treat yourself as the client and you had to map out a strategy for your career and the leader of that class, the professor asked him what he wanted to do what, what his strategy was and he said he wanted to manage people and he said, well, where or how or how many? And I said, he doesn't know, just as many as he can. And so, his answer is he thinks about the team that he’s constructed, the team that he’s built, and what motivates him is the chance to add somebody else to their team, it's really that simple. He’s offering somebody the opportunity to come and work with them, bringing them into the fold for the family that they're building here is really, really motivating to him. That's what he works for every day and when he sell, he look at it as an opportunity to develop a new client and work with a prospect, any new client that he can bring on is a potential chance for him to add more people to his team, so, that's what motivates him every day.

 

  • Christopher shared that he’s going to give his CRM a plug. They have Zoho, Zoho CRM Plus, is their CRM and it's a wide ranging platform for those aren't familiar with Zoho. It’s a great software package, you can do a lot with it beyond CRM things like some sales automation, some marketing automation, but they use that tool and not being a process oriented person himself, he’s really become attached to going in, updating the CRM, working the pipeline, running the reports, things like that. So, adding some discipline around that has made it a pretty indispensable tool.

 

  • When asked about books that has had the biggest impact, Christopher stated that he would say the one that he thinks really motivated him the most to really build around what they're doing as a career and really commit to it was when he read To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others by Daniel Pink. For the listeners who aren't familiar, Daniel Pink is part of the new age authors that's really, really talking about a lot of similar things to like the Malcolm Gladwell's of the world does, Simon Sinek's sort of a new age management thinker and his premise and to sell is human, is everybody is selling in some way, shape or form. And whether it's as an entrepreneur or in your personal life, you're selling all day long and just about every role and really embracing that and figuring out how to tap into the ability that everybody has, to the need that everybody has to be able to influence and reach those around them. He thought it was a very straightforward, easy to digest concept, but one that many, many people in our line of work resist the idea that they're in sales and they try to help, make them a little bit more comfortable with it. That book is a great way to do it.

 

  • Christopher shared that he would say the number one thing and the number one piece of advice that they give to prospects, to listeners, they have their own podcast as well is the best thing you can do if you want to get somebody to do something, the best thing you can do is start by listening to them and you think about sales for those of you who are good salespeople and have gotten some training and consultative selling, everything's about learning, it's about asking questions, it's about identifying needs, it's not about talking. So, he would say it's a simple answer, but the best thing you can do if you want to motivate somebody is start by asking them questions, ask them what they think, ask them what they care about, ask them their viewpoint because if you can understand them, you can find the ways to connect with that individual and get them to really line up behind your mission, behind the tasks that you want them to do.

 

Yanique reiterated – So, listen to the person that you're speaking to whether it's your team member or your employee and after listening, you need to ask really good questions to understand what they want and where they're coming from because those things will help you to be more developed in figuring out what is motivating them, which nine out of 10 times is not only financial.

 

Christopher 100% agreed and stated that there is such a huge misconception that people are, as they say, coin operated. You put in another quarter and people will do what you want them to do. But the reality is, the intrinsic motivation is much higher. When people talk about engagement and engaging employees and things like that, he doesn't think most people know what that actually means. Engagement is that people feel part of something, it's that they feel like they're part of the process, they're part of the mission, they just want to feel like the work that they're doing is impacting something bigger and they want to feel like it's happening with them, not to them. And the best way to build that relationship and that trust is start by asking them things and asking their point of view and genuinely being curious to hear the answer. It can't be, it can't be an outcome in mind, and it has to be with true curiosity.

 

  • Christopher shared that he gets excited about a lot of things that they are doing. He would say that probably the thing that gets him most excited day to day is they are really trying to define the experience. You talk about customer experience, they're a boutique consulting company but they have spent a lot of time as a team talking about what experience they want to deliver for their clients and he and his partner have challenged their team to really look at that and internalize what it is that they want them to say, how they want them to feel and really find ways to deliver that experience and really think outside of the norm. Really think of new ways to do that. And they're developing a new set of sort of criteria for how they interact with their clients. That is probably, he would say that as an entrepreneur the most energizing conversation he has ever had was when they sat down. They had a team offsite earlier this year and they asked the team to think through how they wanted the customer to feel, what they wanted them to say. And then the ideas that came out of that for showing their clients how much they appreciate them, that's going to really take shape toward the end of this year and into next year. And he just can't wait to see that come together because it's all about them being genuine and treating their clients in a way that feels like them and he can't wait to see that come together.

 

  • Christopher shared listeners can find him at –

www.innerviewgroup.com

         LinkedIn @christopherewallace

 

  • Christopher shared that there's a quote that motivates him. So, he’s a big music lover and there's a band that a little bit obscure, probably not the most mainstream band in the world, but there's a quote in one of their songs that says, “It's all been luck until now.”And he really internalized that quote, anytime he looks at successes or challenges that he face as an entrepreneur, as an individual, he really goes back to that idea of treat everything as if you just got lucky to this point because it motivates him to keep working hard. So, it's all been luck until now, maybe the luck will run out and you'll have to rely on your hard work and your skills, so he sort of treat every day as if every day previous to that was luck and now it's time for him to focus on continuing to work hard, so, that motivates him every day.

Links

 

 

 

Dec 17, 2019

If you have ever wondered how there are so many brands that customers can’t live without? And if you’ve ever wondered how it’s possible to make price irrelevant? John DiJulius will show you how to do both. He is the authority on World-Class customer experience. He is an international consultant, keynote speaker, and bet-selling author of five customer service books. His newest book, The Relationship Economy – Building Stronger Customer Connections in The Digital Age (Greenleaf Books October 2019) could not be timelier in the world we are living in. John has worked with companies such as The Ritz-Carlton, Lexus, Starbucks, Nordstrom, Nestlé, Marriott Hotels, PwC, Celebrity Cruises, Anytime Fitness, Progressive Insurance, Harley-Davidson, Chick-fil-A, and so many more.

 

John isn’t just talking about it, he lives it, as a very successful entrepreneur. He is the founder of three businesses: The DiJulius Group, an international customer service consulting firm, John Robert’s Spa, a chain of upscale salons in Northeast Ohio which has repeatedly been named one of the top 20 salons in America, and Believe in Dreams, a non profit that helps make dreams come true for deserving children.

 

John will demonstrate how you can make customer service your single biggest competitive advantage, become the brand customers cannot live without and make price irrelevant!

 

Questions

 

  • Your newest book, The Relationship Economy, focusing on building stronger connections. With so much things happening digitally, how are we really going to be able to tap into that connectivity with our clients?
  • Could maybe just tell us two things that have really stood out to you over the years that really makes that connection human, that you don't feel like you're another transaction or just another button that's being pressed to have something completed.
  • You touched on empathy and compassion; how do you teach someone empathy?
  • Share with us maybe three actionable takeaways that our business owners and listeners of this podcast could take away from the book or even just your years of experience in the different businesses that you have formulated and been successful in that if they went ahead and employed those three tactics tomorrow, they would start to see some results.
  • You've done a lot of research; you've written a lot of customer experience books. I want us to talk a little bit about the future. We are now at 20 years into the 21st century. So, next year we're going into 2020, where do you see customer service in another five years?
  • What’s one thing that’s going on in your life right now that you’re really excited about – either something you’re working on to develop yourself or your people?
  • Where can our listeners find you online?
  • During times of adversity or challenge, is there a quote or saying that you like to draw on that kind of helps to keep you refocus or gets you back centered to be on that journey to accomplish your goal?

 

Highlights

 

  • John stated that he doesn’t think we have a choice, there's a seismic shift happening in the world today. And for all the benefits and conveniences technology has brought us, it's come at a significant cost and that cost is human relationships, human interactions, which is so vital to customer loyalty, employee satisfaction, and just overall happiness. Today's illiterate are those who have an inability to make a meaningful connection with others. The pendulum has swung so far over to high tech, low touch that all of us are starving to be someone, a person with goals and pain points and all those things. And it's the companies that are creating the emotional connections that are reaping the rewards.

 

Yanique stated - I'm glad you touched on emotional connections because I personally, all the research that we've done for customer service in our business, we found that customers have two needs and those two needs are their emotional needs and their intellectual needs. And so, emotions speak to their heart and how you make them feel and intellectual speaks to their mind, what did they understand from that experience with you?

 

  • John stated that first, technology is not the enemy, it's not the devil. He loves technology and using technology to eliminate the human experience is the enemy, he'll give you an example. There's a wireless company in Canada that is forcing its customers to use their self-service channels to the point that if you need to call in and speak to someone for support or a billing question, they charge your account CAD $10.00. So, that's the opposite and that's not going over too well with their customer base. So, that's where you're using technology to eliminate the human experience. What we have to do is, the leaders need to understand the lack of social skills our society has today is the problem of businesses to solve and we need to marry the digital with the human experience and there's ways to do that. First off, we got to use technology for repetitive tasks, the basic tasks to enable employees to focus on what is most important and that's building that relationship, that's the result in higher customer loyalty, retention, lifetime value, and honestly job satisfaction. So, he'll give you one example, Apple is a brand he can't live without, he loves the product and he loves going into the brick and mortar still. He needed some repair work done on his laptop and it was great, he went online and in probably less than 45 seconds, scheduled an appointment at a time that was convenient for him with a genius, that was the technological advantage and quick and easy. He didn't have to call up and wait on hold and go through that maze and then he showed up and they took him right away and they're great to work with. So, the human interaction, which was vital, and he got to ask critical questions about what's wrong, what he needs to do, what he needs to do differently? Most of us, you take our computers away and we could be out of business.

 

Yanique mentioned - in your book, I'm just going to quote one of your sentences. It says, “Chick-fil-A is the most polite chain in the restaurant business of the chain surveyed that company's employees were most likely to say, please and thank you and to smile at customers.” And I know it's very, very simple saying please and thank you and in Jamaica we call it, “You must have manners, because manners will take you a very far away.” Can you just share with us how is it that we're going to get that social shift? Because I find the generation coming up now, they’re may be not as polite and as courteous as maybe our parents and our grandparents gone by.

 

John stated that he doesn’t think at any fault to their own, today we are relationship disadvantaged and it is trickled to all generations. But yes, millennials and Z have it the worst and there's five reasons why we're relationship disadvantage. We're in the midst of the digital age which has caused a rapid decline in people skills. We have high tech, no touch experiences, 40% of employees are working for someone younger than them, they have a boss that's younger than them and very few companies have relationship building training which is needed. It's a critical piece today, we can't skip this generation, the next one will be worst. And again, at no fault of their own, he truly believes the greatest skill any of us could work at every day and teach our family, our kids, our employees, ourselves is the ability to build an instant rapport with others, whether that be an acquaintance, stranger, customer, coworker, friend or someone you've never met in the elevator before. So, there's the art of relationship building and there's five keys, pieces to that and of the five, four of them can be taught and improved. Now obviously, if you can find any of these four or five living in an employee candidate, great, you’ll only move quicker. There is one though that you can't teach. So, the art of building relationships, the first one must be authentic, people have great BS detectors today, must have insatiable curiosity that can be taught and that's something that he has been taught for the last 30 years, must have incredible empathy, compassion and empathy and seeing it from the other person's point of view, must love people and then finally must be a great listener. And some of these may sound obvious but they're not obvious to the new generation and even us, people from the previous generations, we don't do it as well as we used to because we're all have been sucked into the device age and our people skills are eroding. So, of those five, the only one he'd say that can't be taught, that you have to find in your interview processes is must love people. He doesn't think you can train someone to love people, he thinks that has to be a genuine and all the training in world probably isn't going to move the needle too much.

 

  • John stated that there's a reason for a lack of empathy and again, he doesn't think any of this is the employee's fault, but you think about customer facing employees, first off, they don't know what world-class is. Most of us didn't grow up staying at five-star resorts, flying first class, getting a Mercedes Benz when we turned 16, yet the moment we got our first jobs, we were expected to give world-class experience and it's just not practical. If you don't know what it is, how can you deliver it? Most customer facing employees are not the customer, a lot of times they could be young, they could be 18 to 26 serving customers, clients, patients, tenants, whatever you may call them between 40 and 55 and at 25, don't understand what it's like to be a 48 year old female or male professional and work 24 hours isn’t enough time in a day, 36 hours isn’t enough time of the day, it doesn't mean we change who we hire, but we have to make sure we train them to understand what it's like. Employees aren't looking at it from the customer's perspective because the companies aren’t, the companies too often are thinking about what's easiest for us and not thinking about in that training their employees to think about from the customer's perspective. And then the last two reasons why we have a lack of empathy is we compare ourselves too often to the rest of our industry and that's a huge mistake, we'll say, “Oh my God, we're the best salon or travel company or whatever it may be in our industry.” And let's pretend for a moment that's true, he doubts it is but let's pretend, let's go to his salons. The fantasy island right now, let's say we were the best salons, head and shoulders above anyone in Cleveland and we're not, but let's say we are, well, if you're our client and you come in today, you then don't go down the street to compare us to our nearest competitor, you don't need a salon for a few weeks or a few months, so how good we are relative to our competition's really irrelevant to you. Now from here, you're going to the doctor's office, you're going to meet a girlfriend for lunch, you might go shopping, whatever that may be. And that's what you're comparing, saying, your next five experiences that day or that week saying, “God, I wish they treated me as well as my salon.” or you're saying the opposite. And then the final thing that causes a lack of empathy is, we all become numb, you're my 1 o'clock podcast or he has a keynote in Vegas tomorrow, or his 5:30 appointment, or hospitals might refer to their customers as 201B, which is a room and a bed. And we're all guilty of that and we’ve got be careful, we’ve got remember who we're dealing with and how important that is to them and their success and their ease of pain. So, teaching employees, ourselves what it's like to be the customer, what pain they're going through, how we can come to the rescue and make their day by being present and showing genuine hospitality, making an emotional connection and bringing our brilliance.

 

Yanique agreed and to add to that, with all of that trying to understand or trying to display or show someone how to exercise empathy. Then there's a flip side of the social media part of it with the generation that we're dealing with now and generally speaking, I think it affects everyone, even myself. So, a part of your book says, “There is social isolation due to a lack of real contact on connectedness with other people and this is strongest among younger people who use technology the most. So, people are craving human connection, but nonetheless find it easier and simpler to turn to a device than to have a normal conversation.” And I have a 13-year-old and I've actually taken her off of social media. She no longer has an Instagram or a Snapchat account because I find it's too distracting and I don't think they are emotionally intelligent to manage their conversations on this platform and this is my personal view as a parent. And so, when you have employees in an organization that they don't get it, “Why are you asking me to put my phone down? Like, I can't function without my phone if I'm working.” How do you get them to that point where they recognize that work is work and unless the device is being used as a tool to aid you in completing your job, it needs to be put down.

 

John shared that there's some really valuable information in his book, obviously for businesses, but also, he has had his three boys read parts of it and as long as the parts of their reading aren't coming from me and they're from studies that they'll believe it. Some of the things he'll share, so we're all in the midst of the touchscreen age and that is not a generational specific, we've got grandparents on social media and we’ve got five-year-old’s given an iPad and that's kind of their babysitter to keep them occupied for the next few hours. And as a result, we have less face to face interactions and a rapid decline in social skills and they say a lack of social relationships, which we're all suffering from today is equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day, it's the same cause and effect. And a result of heavy users of digital devices of any age and he’s guilty of it too, it's called digital dementia and they do brain scans, people who overuse digital devices and these brain scans look similar to patients who've sustained brain injury. Those are the things he wants his kids to read. Social isolation is not a millennial problem only, yes, why millennials say they have significantly less friends, 30% say they have no best friends, very scary things, but all generations are feeling it and the happiest people are the ones with the most meaningful relationships and they live longer. And so, we’ve got to train our employees, both personally and professionally, how as a customer they hate this, “I want you to know my name, I want you to know that I've been here before. I want you to know my order. I placed the same order three times a week, don't make me tell you what credit card I want to use.” He has no loyalty to an app, you don't build that loyalty to an app, but he does to people, it's hard to fire people that you know, and you’ve got to teach them the benefits personally and professionally and it's also the benefits, the companies that build the best relationships, build it internally with their employees and have less turnover.

 

Yanique agreed - It starts from within. So, as I was listening to a while ago a little light bulb went off in my head and I said, you know, I think one of the also serious characteristics that we're missing is people don't really listen and sometimes you're having a conversation with someone. So, you're talking to them and they're not listening to you and they're listening with the intention to respond, not with the intention of understanding where you're coming from. And I guess that ties also back into understanding and showing empathy because if you're not really listening to what the person is saying to you, paying attention to the emotion in what they're saying, paying attention to how this terrible situation impacted them. So, you can actually respond in a way that shows that you were listening and that you actually care, then you can potentially get them even more upset.

 

John agreed – He stated that one of his favorite parts of the book and it's a section about hving insatiable curiosity that you're dying to learn about others and not only about subjects that interest you, but subjects that you're unfamiliar with and it was very painful doing research on this book because of so many things that he was bad at and didn't realize how bad he was until he read this. John stated that 30 years ago there was only two subjects he wanted to talk about, business and sports. And if someone couldn't carry on a conversation about either one of those, he wanted nothing to do with them, he didn't want to go out socially for dinner with a couple if the husband couldn't carry on either of those which he’s embarrassed to say. Stephen Covey says, “People don't listen with the intent of understanding, they listen to with the intent of replying.” Scientists studied the human brain and said, they found that it takes the brain a minimum of 0.6 seconds to formulate a response to something said to it. And then they studied hundreds, thousands of conversations and found the average gap between people talking was 0.2 seconds. One third the time the brain will allow, we're responding and why? Because to your point, I have my answer ready minutes ago, I'm just waiting for the other person to come up for breath. So, what do we need to do? We need to realize that the greatest gift we can give anyone, an employee, a customer, our family when we get home is that gift of our attention. And so, he loves to ask people, “Who here is good at building rapport with a total stranger?” And most people raised their hands instantly and he said, “Well, you've got to prove it to me just because you spent 15 minutes, 30 minutes at a coffee shop, at a networking party, wherever talking to someone, doesn't mean you built a rapport. You might've been talking about yourself for that length of time.” And our biggest obstacle is we're all genetically coded to be preoccupied and, “It's my flight that was delayed. It's my son that got in trouble at school yesterday. It's my client that’s upset with us.” And so, to resist that urge, he always say, you have to be able to tell him two or more things after any length of conversation of their Ford “F O R D,” if you could tell him two or more things of the other person's Ford, you not only built a relationship, you own the relationship cause in each and every person, their Ford is their hot buttons. So, F stands for family, are they married? Do they have kids? How old are their kids? O stands for occupation, What do they do? How long they've been doing it? What's their title? R, Recreation, What does she like to do with her time off? She does hot yoga three days a week. She's a runner. He coaches little league. And then the D stands for Dreams, What's on their bucket list? What's their encore career? What's their dream vacation? When you focus suddenly on people's Ford, it gets you to not talk about yourself and you really, really build that emotional connection.

 

Yanique agreed that's a good point because as you said, not talk about yourself from Dale Carnegie's book, How to Win Friends and Influence People. It was book was published so many years ago, but in the book, it says, the number one thing that people love to do talk about the most is themselves. It's a powerful book and if you really want to become a better communicator, a better listener, it's definitely a great place to start, it's a good foundation, it really opens up your eyes and makes you aware of maybe some of the things that you were not aware of or were taking for granted for you to just be more conscious and intentional in your interactions so that you can become a better communicator.

 

  • John stated that let's go to how to be a great listener. This sounds so trivial, like everyone thinks you're a great listener but until he did the research, he realized he had a lot of work. They talk about fierce attention, giving someone your fierce attention and one of the comments is if you a question and then don't ask two to three follow up questions, odds aren't, you weren't listening. So, there should be a four to one ratio of questions asked versus the answered and some myths about listening is you should be a sponge where you're just listening and every so often you say, “Uh huh. Uh huh.” And they say that's not a good listener, a listener is more of a trampoline who's amplifying your energy and asking clarifying questions to get you to go deeper in your thought process. And so, it's just taking the soft skills that we think is common sense and isn’t and helping yourself and your existing and future generation employees, how to build better relationships that will benefit them in all areas of their life and that's what's key. His employees are so loyal because of what they teach them that's going to help them at home and in all areas of their life, it's not just about helping us make more money.

 

  • John shared Customer Service Growth and Development is not going to stop, the digital revolution is going to continue and there's a lot of benefits to that. What consumers are buying today….they're buying two things, the first one is they're buying time, the more our personal income goes up, typically it means the discretionary time we have goes down because that means we're working harder. And so, it used to be a do it yourself world, now it's do it for me. And so many businesses that can speed up and save him time. He gives a great example. John stated that he has a carwash that he has a membership to and it's a silly thing that when he goes there, they also sell gas and he never get gas from there. He always needs gas, but he never gets gas because the car wash is like 15 minutes, which seems like forever. And then he’s always late or close to, he needs to get to his next appointment. And then, later on that day, on his way home, he'll have to stop and get gas which is so unproductive that he stopped twice. So, what they're doing is they're adding gas tanks to where they wash the cars and now, they could do this at the same time, it doesn't take him more than 15 minutes to get out of there and he says yes, every time. So, they bought him some time, or they're given him, he bought himself time. So, it's very important to make things faster and easier for people and then the second thing consumers are buying more than ever today is experiences and they do not care what they spend on time and experiences and if you can give them exceptional experiences. So, let's look at some companies that are making price irrelevant. You have these movie theaters are opening up where you can recline and there's a tray and you can order a bottle of wine, it's a dining experience. So, he bought time, so now they don't have to go to movie and then later at dinner, they can go to movie and a dinner in a reclining chair and a bottle of wine. You don't care about how much that cost, that's a great experience. Have you seen the new Starbucks restaurants? the reserve roastery? So, you got to check them out? Look them up. It's called the Willy Wonka of a coffee and they're huge, they're mammoth and just the way they make the coffee and the beans are flying around over your head. The average cup of coffee there is $12.00 and if you’re so bold, they have a $50.00 cup of coffee that you can order. These are places that are bringing theatre and romance back to the brick and mortar and if you can do that, if you can do that, people are willing to spend, making price irrelevant and experiences and time.

 

Yanique reiterated – If you can capitalize on how the experience goes for the customer regardless of the business type and you can cut down on time and make things more flexible and convenient, it will make price irrelevant and it will make your brand an unforgettable brand in your customers mind.

 

John stated that the primary currency is the emotional connection that we create with our customers, employees and vendors and when you do that, you start becoming the brand customers can’t live without and you make price irrelevant.

 

 

  • John shared listeners can find him at –

www.thedijuliusgroup.com

Email: John@thedijuliusgroup.com

Facebook – John DiJulius

Twitter - @JohnDiJullis

LinkedIn @John DiJulius

 

  • John shared that the quote is all over his house and it’s all over his business and it is, “I want to live an extraordinary life, so countless others do.” And so, that’s just not a mantra. The reason he wants to live an extraordinary life is not so that he can have more money, more cars, more vacations, more houses, it’s because of the ripple effect it has on his family, his employees, his clients. And so, it really keeps him grounded when things go wrong or from how he takes care of himself, what he’s feeding his brain, what he’s feeding his body, who he’s hanging out with, who’s influencing him, what he’s listening to. He firmly believes it’s our responsibility and obligation to sow the seeds of our potential and the potential that we don’t reach not only cheats us, but it cheats all the people that are dependent. An easy example to relate to, let’s say he eats junk food at lunch and he didn’t get a work out in today, when he gets home and he gets home he’s tired and just want to collapse in the couch and maybe have a beer and one of his sons wants him to play catch or help him with his homework and he’s just too tired or he’s too crabby. What did that just do to that and you take that to a million different interactions and obligations to the point where you make a poor decision and it has a ripple effect and that’s okay.

 

Taking risks and making poor decisions will happen but what happens as a result is that you want to stick your head in the sand and say, “Whoo me” and feel sorry for yourself. And so, when you think, you have to live an extraordinary life, you can’t do that, you can’t feel sorry for yourself because there are so many people counting on you and you have to suck it up and you have to figure it out and you’re going to have to make it right. And people bought into his vision, your vision and they came to work for him and gave up opportunities elsewhere because of the vision he was telling them, and he can’t bail on them now just because it’s getting a little tough.

 

 

Links

 

 

 

 

Nov 13, 2019

Sky Jarrett is an executive coach and pioneer of 21st century leadership. She has a passion for unlocking human excellence and specializes in using researched-based and neuroscience techniques to support leaders in improving their effectives and thriving in the digital age.

As a leadership and organization development consultant at one of the world’s largest consulting firms, Sky has 12+ years of specialized expertise in large-scale transformations helping organizations transform their culture, leaders, and performance from within.

 

Sky is also a certified instructor, advocate, and change agent for mindfulness and has been instrumental in bring mindfulness to Fortune 500 companies. She is committed to growing the reach of mindfulness across industries and geographies as a way of expanding the human capacity to deal with the relentless and fast-paced challenges of life in the 21st century.

Transcend, LLC is an organization aimed at supporting individuals, groups, and organizations in helping them transcend barriers to maximize their greatness and achieve extraordinary results. Combining unparalleled expertise in Leadership Excellence, Human & Organizational Development, Brain Science, Mindfulness, Positive Psychology, Performance Excellence, and Inclusive & Diversity principles, Transcend specializes in curating experiences, program, and talks designed to inspire and transform.

Questions

  • Tell us a little bit about your background?
  • What are three to four characteristics or traits that you think a leader needs to have in order to really lead an organization that will be customer centric?
  • In terms of as a leader, there is the old adage are saying that says, “Leaders are not born versus leaders can be created.” what are your thoughts on that?
  • How do you stay motivated everyday?
  • Could you share with us what's, what's the one online resource tool, website or app that you absolutely cannot live without in your business?
  • Can you share with us maybe one or two books that have had the biggest impact on you?
  • Could you share with us maybe one thing that's going on in your life right now that you are really excited about - either something that you are working on to develop yourself or your people?
  • Where can our listeners find you online?
  • During times of adversity or times when you feel like you're faced with obstacles that you may have dotes that you are unable to overcome these obstacles. Do you have any quote or saying that during these times you will draw on it to kind of regain your strength and focus and momentum?

Highlights

  • Sky shared that she will start with her background and work her way into mindfulness and how she got into that space. She shared that she and her siblings were very blessed to have a dad who really cared about their future and at the tender age of 9, he had them thinking about who they wanted to be when they grow up. So, he took each of them sat a stone, asked them what they were interested in doing, who they saw themselves becoming. At the time she thought she wanted to go into medicine and when he took her to the hospital to meet with a doctor just to talk about what that career path is like and what it's like to be a doctor, she learned that she’s afraid of blood. So, medicine would not be the path for her, but that led her down a journey to really discovering what and who she wanted to be, and psychology was really intriguing to her. What she found interesting was that we spend majority of our lives at work, for the average person 40 to 60 hours a week or more for some of us and how much quality of that experience really impacts the rest of our lives. And so, for her, really intrigued by that notion, she was compelled to want to make a difference, to somehow improve that life experience, that work life experience. And she felt that approaching it from the perspective of leadership and helping leader to be more effective and more conscious in how they impact their employees and the people that follow them, that she could scale her impact on people and their lives that way. So, she sort of went from wanting to help people from a medical perspective to really, at the end of the day seeking to improve people's life experiences at work and tackling that from a leadership perspective.

Yanique shared that the program is called Navigating the Customer Experience - And I remember in some of our pre conversations you are just trying to align to make sure that you know, what you had to offer would align very well with our audience. Now, leadership is a very big part of customer experience as you would know based on the work that you've done with all of these large organizations. And if the leadership is not mindful and basically not leading their teams in a way that is going to yield the greatest level of productivity in all the dimensions that your life needs leading in, not just in terms of work, but health and wealth and spirituality and emotionally then you're really not going to have a truly successful organization.

  • Sky stated that she thinks of leadership not only as the person with the title, if you will, who is hereby appointed and hailed as the leader. But she thinks of leadership or someone as a leader, as someone who has made a conscious effort to take a leadership role in their own life. So, living their life by design, being intentional about how they live their life and for many of us, we see leadership as sort of a service, having a service orientation. Who are we leading? Who are we serving? Who are we influencing? And that can be in a work capacity or a personal capacity. And so, how she connects that dot from a customer centric perspective, if she thinks of herself as someone who is leading the trade and pioneering 21st century leadership and she thinks about the leaders who she wants to be serving. She has to take a customer centric perspective to really understanding who are those individuals, what are they struggling with, what are their challenges and what it is that she has to offer them that's unique to support their journey. So, number one is having that sort of awareness and having the where it all to think about the customer in that way, to have that customer centric view to begin with she believes is important. And to support that, Sky thinks having the capacity to sort of cultivating a capacity for empathy is very important so that we can put ourselves in the shoes of the people that we're serving, whether that is the end user of our product or service or the employees that we're serving and supporting as well. But cultivating a practice of empathy where we can put ourselves in their shoes, understand their perspective and serve them in that way to her she thinks is tremendously important.

Sky also mentioned, specific to having that customer centricity, she thinks more than just the awareness, but the capacity to sort of think from a systemic perspective, especially in now a 21st century. When you think about the impact of globalization, we're so much more connected now than we were before. And so, you hear the buzzword of thinking about the ecosystem and thinking about all the players, the market landscape is just so much different now than it was before. So, she thinks also having that capacity, obviously awareness more than the awareness, having the capacity to think on that many dimensions. In her world you talk about increased complexity, the more high you get as a leader, the more complexity you have to deal with, thinking about stakeholders and your customers on that many levels. And when you think about how you engage with those customers and the ecosystem that's involved in that engagement, it's not so much indirect, one-to-one, um, business to customer or customer to customer relationship anymore. It's so much more dynamic. So just having more of a capacity to navigate that complexity I think is really important. And a lot of the work that I do with leaders is to help them scale that capacity to build more capacity to deal with more of the complexity that I believe is inherent in the 21st century. So, she would say those are the three things for her. The awareness, cultivating a capacity for empathy and having the capacity to deal with more complexity, to be able to navigate that she thinks is really important.

  • Sky shared that she boils leadership down to influence and how you're able to influence people, again, both in your personal life but also in business and while she thinks characteristics, there are certain personality traits that someone can have that makes it a lot easier for them or somewhat makes them more magnetizing. So, the typical characteristic people think about is, “Oh, they're so charismatic and they're such great people pleaser.”Sky thinks there are assumptions about what makes a leader effective, but she also does a lot of strengths-based work. So, looking at what makes an individual special from the perspective of what their strengths are and how they can maximize and leverage the power of that strength to make them a powerful leader. And there was a lot of research that was done to uncover, “Whoa, is there like a particular ingredient that leaders need to have to be successful?” And they looked at the CEOs across the globe and they found that not necessarily that leaders can approach leadership from the perspective of what makes them special and what makes them shine. You think about Bill Gates, he's not the most charismatic of them, but is he an effective leader? Yes. Is he an effective business businessman? Absolutely, no questions asked. He for her is an example of someone who really understands himself, is very in touch with the things that makes him special and has figured out how to apply his specific ingredients to do what he needs to do to be effective in a way that's authentic to him and to her, that's the most important thing, that element of authenticity.

Yanique agreed and stated - I liked the fact that you touched on authenticity. I think it's so important. I read a lot of Brené Brown's books and 've been following her for maybe about seven, eight years now. I did a workshop with her a couple of years ago that she did read Oprah on scrapbooking, kind of helping you to fine yourself and just talk about shame on the things that we take for granted in our lives that we think other people don't suffer from. We're all actually suffering from some of the very same things, just maybe different experiences. And one of the very strong characteristics or traits that I will speak about in our workshops that we do here in Jamaica is I personally believe that the most important role of a leader is to grow and develop people. Would you agree? And if so, why is it so important? And I guess you'd have touched on it when you mentioned capacity for the leader to ensure that he grows and develops the people around him or her.

Sky shared that this point is really near and dear to her heart. It's sort of the bread and butter of why she do the work that she does, is to help people to grow, to develop, to be their best self, to be their authentic self. And she thinks as leaders we have a responsibility to do that for the people that support us and the people that we support. And one of the things that she thinks is most important part of that journey is to give ourselves and each other the permission to be human because so many of us going to a work environment and we have this expectation of who we want to be at work, the image that we want to project at work as if we're living two different lives, we have a work life and we have a personal life, two different people going to show up for each of the life and we are one person. And the more whole we can be, the more authentic we can be is the more fulfilled we will be. There is a thing of living in congruence, that’s a psychological term where you're living this ideal version of yourself, but it's not who you feel you are meant to be or you're living out of obligation but you're not really connecting with who you are at your core and who you are in your true authenticity. And so, the more misaligned we are, the more misalignment we have between who we want to be and who we're actually showing up as is the more unhappy we are. And that can lead to burnout, it can lead to anxiety, depression, and for sure if not all of those things, you just won't be as happy living that life. So, for her, helping people to create that space, she thinks as leaders we have a responsibility to create that space of safety where people can show up as they are and close that gap of in congruence.

Yanique agreed. It’s awesome that your company is dedicated to transforming that particular area because a lot of organizations need that message, that reinforcement to recognize that their role is to help people really grow and align themselves to who they're truly, truly meant to be and sometimes that requires some soul searching because some of us are working in jobs 30, 40 years and we really don't know what we want. We kind of just on that treadmill going everyday, not really sitting down and questioning ourselves and giving ourselves truthful answers, what really, really makes us happy.

Sky shared that she calls it living by default versus living, but we're just living life by default, just whatever comes our way, we'll go at it versus being intentional about one, getting clear about what we want for our lives, what we want for ourselves, how we want to spend our time, the difference we want to make in this world. She had a moment she was robbed at gunpoint in Jamaica, December 2015. And the thing that she walked away with was thinking, “Okay, so this happened at three o'clock in the afternoon, broad daylight. The gunman knows that I saw his face.” So, really and truly, he had no reason to let her walk. And she walked away thinking, “What if he made a different choice? And he ended my life in that moment. So, what that I'd have lived. So what? What difference have I made in the world that would really warrant the life that I lived up until that point?” And many of us don't have those experiences to help us think about those types of questions. But if you think to live your life with the end in mind, rest assured you're going to be more inspired to be more intentional about how you live your life, the difference that your life makes, the impact that your life has made on this world. And really getting behind that and being more intentional about designing your life in such a way that you can live out the best version of your life, she strongly believes in it. Get off the damn treadmill and live by design, don't live by default.

  • When asked about how she stays motivated everyday, Sky stated that she is committed to living her life by design and with the whole concept of not living. She thinks one of the most important things for her is being in alignment with her truth and having a solid understanding of who she wants to be and really having an intention around that. So, that allows her to wake up every day with clarity of who she is and who she wants to show up as every single day. Because when we don't have that clarity, it's so much easier for us to stray and get discouraged, we feel lost and confused and stuck and who is motivated when they're in that space. When you have clarity of who you want to be and you have this insatiable passion that you wake up everyday feeling like you can't wait to get out the bed, that's when you know that you've tapped into something really special. So, for her, it really helps for her to be motivated, to be in alignment, number one, number two, being committed to living life by design and she can literally wake up every day saying life is so good because she has made it that way, because she has chosen to make life good, that's why she can say life is good. Another more important part for her, or equally important part for her is the success of her clients. So, going back to that customer centricity, having conversations, take her individual coaching clients as an example, she met with one just this morning and she shared a victory with Sky, something that she wouldn't have achieved outside of the journey that she has been on, that Sky has been supporting her with and for her to unsolicited just shared with her, “Oh my gosh, you wouldn't believe what happened last week.” And for her to feel so good about that, they were on video and she could see the happiness and celebration in her face, in her eyes, and she was so excited, so proud of herself, so happy for this success that they were able to celebrate together, that keeps Sky going for sure, it keeps her motivated.

Yanique mentioned that Sky shared one of the oldest types of advertising for any business and it's really what all businesses should aspire for, true word of mouth advertising in terms of really being able to speak about the value and the greatness or impact that on an organization or an individual is able to help them overcome. Because the reality is all businesses go into business to make money, but usually they going to business to solve a problem. So, what problem are you solving for that individual or that company or that set of people and are you consistently doing it? Are you looking for opportunities to make it better each and every time? Are you flexible? Are you accessible? those are all the things that customers are looking for, ease of doing business, convenience. So, I think once you can ensure that you're doing that consistently and your customers can say it for you, not you saying it for yourself, then it speaks volumes to the impact that you have on people's lives.

Sky agreed and stated that here is the dilemma that we're all faced with, every single one of us living in this day and age is that life has changed, the pace of life is so much fast now then it has ever been and sadly is the slowest it will ever be. Listeners thinking about that, that manifests in each of our lives in a very different way. Like for her, it just feels like life is on a rapid seriously and she thinks it creates a very difficult space for many of us to kind of feel like we're keeping our head above water, constantly feeling like we're sinking, constantly feeling like we're falling behind, we may suffer from information overload because news is coming from every which direction, we have news coming out of our ears, we don't know which news platforms to keep up with and, “Did you hear about that? No, you're too lie. What's going on over there feeling?” feeling like we’re always out of the loop. FOMO is so real because there's so many different information platforms and we want to keep track of everything so we don't have FOMO and we keeping up with the Netflix and just keeping up with life in general and the responsibilities and how difficult it is to navigate life. And you think about things land like Airbnb and Uber and social media and how it's changing how we live life. So, to her a lot of people are bringing in 20th century lifestyle skills to the 21st century and it's not going to work. So, that for her is the problem that she’s helping people figure out how do I navigate this new way of living? How do I navigate this new way of living in business and in their personal lives so that people can, to your point, go through life with more of a feeling of ease, much less anxiety, much more fulfillment, being more effective in our personal lives and in our work life and have this general feeling of, “Man, I'm thriving, I am flourishing.” which is very difficult to achieve, more difficult now than ever before. And so, that's what she seeks to offer my clients and she does that in different capacities, both on an individual basis, but also in the corporate context. She works with teams to do that kind of work, so you talk about flexibility, accessibility, those are all things that she brings to the table, she doesn’t do cookie cutter solutions, she does very tailored solutions for her clients and really meet them where they need to be met.

  • In regard to online resources, Sky shared that the two that comes to mind for her but the first one that came to mind was Acuity, which is the online scheduling platform because she has clients who she meets with on a weekly, monthly, biweekly basis. The scheduling, we live in a day and age where taking things off the to do list is one of those lifestyle strategies, the more you can take off your to do list or your thinking list, the better, the easier. So for her, giving them access and this is also one of those customer centricity tools or conveniences that she likes to offer her clients as well, where the scheduling is up to them and they're able to grab time on her calendar that is convenient for them, the day that works for them, the time that works for them based on the options that are available. So, it works for her because she gets to dictate what hours she wants to work, on what days and they get to pick and refuse availability based on what works best for them. So, that's one tool she doesn’t think she could live without. The second would be QuickBooks, it's how she manage her finances, her invoicing, all that good stuff.

 

  • When asked about books that have had the biggest impact, Sky shared that she would for sure say one is The Motivation Manifesto: 9 Declarations to Claim Your Personal Power by Brendon Burchard, this was like a wake-up call, this book was like, “Whose agenda are you living? Girl, reclaim your agenda. This is your life. Let's get it together.” that book was like really help things to snap into gear for her. But then you have all this motivation, you're like, yes, I want a better life for myself. But what exactly does that look like? And so, the second book that she felt really powerful was a book called The Calling and it was a book that really helped her to tap into that inner voice, tap into her authenticity and tap into what is she being called to do in this world really helped her to crystalized that. And funny enough, that journey took her back to what she had aspired to do when she was nine but you know how life has a way of just being distracting and society starts to dictate who you want to be and what you want to be when you grow up, and the more noise you hear is the more confused you become and the more you stray away from that which you're really meant to do. So, that book for her was a way to reconnect to who she really is and what that she really wants to do in this world.

 

  • Sky stated that she has the honor, the pleasure, the benefit, the glory, any insert adjective to really support people primarily in the corporate setting and these people are paying “one begga money” to get these support services and she wanted to figure out a way that she could scale and provide the services and offerings to more people than just those within a corporate context. So, what she’s working on now is an online program which will provide the work that she does for these high paying clients to the average person who might not have the benefits or the luxury of a company paying for this service for them, but they can access it. And essentially what it is, and she’s really timing it around the new year, this is a time when so many of us come up with new year's resolutions, we’re really excited, we’re really pumped, we can see this version of ourselves, we do vision board workshops and we’re fully charged and ready to go and then by February, March all resolutions have a back burner and we are not living our best life. So, this program is really designed to address that problem, why is it that we start off with so much steam and we run out of steam second or third month of the year? And so, she’s certified in a program that was designed by a Harvard professor that looks at what is it that gets in the way, it’s like you’re on the starting block and they say, “On your mark, get set, let’s go and you take off and you just lick up into an invisible wall.” What are those invisible walls that keep getting in our way and how do we transcend those barriers to living our best lives. That's the program she’s launching, it will be an online program and she’s just really excited to make her work and make this work accessible to more people at this scale.

Sky shared that the program is expected to release at the end of November, so in advance of the new year so people can get their engines revving and they're ready to go by the beginning of the new year.

  • Sky shared listeners can find her at –

www.transcendglobal.org

Instagram - @transcendllc

LinkedIn – Transcend, LLC

   

  • Sky shared that her mantra is just a reminder that she has everything that she needs to live the life that she wants and if it's not coherent in her, it’s something just really reminded herself that everything is figure-out-able, she’s resourceful and she can figure it out. So, the quote for her is, “I have everything I need to live the life that I want.” and it's just a really uplifting thing and powering resourceful quote for her to help navigate any uncertainty.

Links

 

 

 

Oct 29, 2019

Suman Sarkar has more than 20 years of international consulting experience. He has a proven track record delivering innovative and strategic approaches to the supply chain and sourcing practices with outstanding results. As an author, he understands the power of creativity that will be unleashed if businesses can harness the talent they already have in-house. He's a partner with Three S Consulting and he holds a Bachelor’s in Mechanical Engineering from ITT Kharagpur, India and a Master's in Industrial Engineering from NITIE in Mumbai, India graduating at the top of his class from both schools. And he's also a holder of an MBA from UCLA in Strategy and Finance. The author of the very popular book, Customer-Driven Disruption: Five Strategies to Stay Ahead of the Curve.

 

Questions

 

  • Tell us a little bit about your background?
  • Could you explain to us what do you mean by disruption? What is your definition of disruption and why do you make the analogy of it possibly being seen like a death sentence?
  • In your book you spoke about generational shifts, are you able to give us some examples of how you think that has led to major changes in the market?
  • Can you also share with us maybe some companies that you think are doing it right? Some of our listeners, if they're saying to themselves, what are some organizations that I could look at that I could benchmark maybe some of their best practices on principles that they're doing to stay ahead of what's happening and to ensure that they’re meeting their existing customer needs, but also trying to exceed those customer needs in the same process?
  • Could you share with us what's one on online resource tool, website or app that you absolutely cannot live without in your business?
  • Could you share maybe one or two books that have had the biggest impact on you?
  • Could you share with us what’s one thing that’s going on in your life right now that you are really excited about – either something that you are working on to develop yourself or your people?
  • Where can our listeners find you online?
  • Is there one quote or saying that during times of adversity you will draw on this particular quote or saying and it helps you to refocus and just remind yourself of why you’re doing what you’re doing and where you’re going?

Highlights

 

  • Suman stated that he grew up in India and there, he came from a very small town and he thinks the only reason I came out from that small town is because he was always interested in figuring out what the root cause of anything and that led him to engineering school. His teachers always used to mention this to him that, “Suman was probably not the fastest kid in the class, but he actually figures out what's the root cause of anything. And so, he essentially comes up with solutions that are great.” Now, he has kept that trade throughout his life, it kind of drove many of his bosses crazy because he took his time to figure things out, but whatever solutions he came up and his customers loved it, his clients loved it. Many of the things he has done are still being practiced, companies still use it. And that's one of the reasons why he has had the opportunity to work with large number of successful companies. One of the things he has learned over the years as he’s been working with these companies is that they are not distinct to be successful or remain successful and the primary root cause of that comes from the fact that companies are not focused on customers, they are focused on investors, they are not doing things that will endear them with the customers. And now, since customers are more informed as you know because of internet and computers, smartphones, they're more informed and they're more likely to change companies than ever before and the lack of focus on customers is really what's driving disruption and failure of many large companies. And what we are seeing is the start of a tsunami, not the tsunami itself and this book is a plea for corporates and startups and everybody else to focus when it comes to business, that that's customers. And the book gets into strategies around how you can meet those needs and what operational capabilities you need and then organizational structure and the details around them, but it gives a background on why he wrote this book.

 

  • Suman shared that disruption is essentially a complete change in direction and what essentially happens is, there was a demand for organic and suddenly, the demand for organic milk vanishes and people are buying now coconut milk or almond milk. For a farmer that produces organic milk, it's a disruption to their business, it completely messes up their business because they have no idea how they can now survive or meet customer demand because this is a complete shift that they don't control, it's not only happening to the farmers, it's happening all around us. Retail, a lot of businesses going out of business, closing shop, they are going bankrupt. UCG in trouble and every industry, for example, packaged food industry going down the drain. Many packaged food companies are in trouble and the companies are changing their CEOs. The problem is not around one or few industries, it's all around us. The question is who is first and who is lost but it's happening all around. It's not only affecting the companies, if you take a step back and look at broader view and take it at a country level, you start to see the impact of customer changing needs on countries. For example, all oil demand is going down, the price is falling and it's already starting to disrupt many economies like Venezuela and other places, we are starting to see that disruption happen. Even Saudi's are now looking to diversify their economy. The changing customer needs could be a death sentence if you don't keep up with those leads but if a company does well in keeping up with those needs, they are very, very successful. For example, Aldi, those companies that are struggling with meeting customer needs, they're all introducing home delivery and sale-driving cars to get products to homes and all that. But Aldi has continued to focus high quality, affordable products and they have captured most of European grocery market, the discount grocers, the biggest grocers in Europe and they are starting to expand footprint in the U.S, they are going to be the third largest grocers in the U.S while grocery companies are focused on delivering to home, Aldi is focused on getting you the better, the best quality product at a very competitive price. And in his town where he lives, he sees a large number of people going to Aldi, where there's very few go to other grocers. And what it basically tells him is that the companies that are focused on customer needs are likely to be successful, the companies that are not focused on customer needs are likely to find it challenging and more so now because people are very, very well informed than ever before. And basically, that's what the disruption is all about. If you can figure out a way to meet the needs, then it works for you, if you are holding onto the past, it's a death sentence.

 

  • Suman stated that he mentioned just before that there is a tsunami happening. And we're just seeing the first tsunami and the driver behind this tsunami or the disruption is really the generational changes, the millennials and gen Z's who are starting to become actually the millennials are becoming the largest buying group in the country, not only in the U.S actually, it's all around the world, while baby boomers are all retiring. Now, the needs of baby boomers are very different from millennials. Millennials are completely different than baby boomers in many ways wanting to be different. They don't buy beer and there are many things, they don't like ownership, they have a large educational debt, so many of them are very conscious about where they spend money and they are essentially looking for solutions that meet their need and they're ready to throw the old norms out of the window. His favorite is actually in Japan, Japan is a very conservative society, but their are millennials like U.S millennials are very different. For example, they don't drink as much, if you have not, if you've been in Japan, you would see that that used to be the norm in our new generation. They don't own cars; they don't like to drive, they don't own watches, they don't work long hours in offices. So yes, millennials are very different and if you want to address millennials, you have to completely rethink the strategies and that work with baby boomers and do very differently with millennials. Millennials are very health conscious. He just talked about package food industries, the reason they're having trouble is because they don't have healthy and fresh food options for a millennials, so, of course, millennials are not buying from them. The traditional grocery companies are challenged because millennials love fresher, locally grown, socially conscious and all that food and they find that primarily in the farmer's market. So, the farmer's market, which is where, the local farmers bring their produce to sell, not the stalls, but these are big markets just like the grocery stores. Millennials go there, it's really popular with them and they're the largest growing category in the country, fresh produce category. So yes, millennials are very different and because their needs are very different, it's a generational change that’s driving the disruption. Millennials are into personalization, and so there are two things that in his mind distinguishes millennials in terms of selling to them. One is clearly they don't have large disposable income because of the debt they carry and the second one is they like to express their individuality much more than any other generation and what happens with that is the whole concept of personalization coming in the play. So, if an apparel retailer doesn’t have stylists and provide advice on how to dress and all that, how to be unique, those retailers are having a hard time. That's why you see so many apparel retailers are actually struggling in the face of it. But retailers who offer some kind of personalization are successful. Look at Sephora. Sephora is doing very well with the younger generation because they provide cosmetics that attuned to skin tone and they use the information system, their database to figure out what's the skin tone of a person and they match the right product and they are doing very well. So, whoever has figured out even a little bit of personalization is doing well in today's world. And personalization is likely becoming bigger and bigger, completely different mindsets from the large companies to how they work. They're still making standardized products and trying to sell it to the masses. Even Apple does it, you get three varieties of Apple products and that's it. And they sell it big based on three cameras or whatever features it is, to sell it to millennials, you have to do things more personalized and you have to talk about how does it help you get the things that you want like photography or things like that, cameras probably don't make sense to them. So, it's probably a 180-degree change in thinking required from businesses and otherwise millennials will kind of disrupt them.

 

Yanique stated that Suman mentioned personalization and the fact that with the generational shift in terms of how baby boomers performed or bought or interfaced with businesses versus millennials and gen Zs. Now, a lot of companies are of the opinion that it's okay if they lose one or two customers because they can attract new ones. What are your thoughts on trying to just keep the ones that they have already happy?

 

Suman shared that this is also kind of a talked about in the book, focus on your current customers before you focus on new. Yanique pointed out a very traditional thinking in business. It's okay to lose in current customers which continue to fill the funnel and that is completely nonsensical because if you look at the research, research shows that current customers are likely to spend more and they are much, much more profitable than the newer customers. And you can look at industry after industry. For example, there was a great article on WSJ on Whole Foods, Whole Foods has grown, what's unique about it is they increased their customer base, but the profitability and sales per new customer has declined quite significantly. And that's true for most businesses, if you look at existing customers are likely to be more loyal and likely to spend more and be more profitable because you're not spending money to acquire them than a new customer. But companies actually do complete reverse way. If you have ever signed up for an internet service in the U.S, you would know the internet companies will give you a discount to the new customer, whereas they will try to increase prices for their existing customers, which is essentially encouraging them to switch or move away and this dislike or dishonesty towards the existing customers is a problem because that kind of creates a disconnect and once the customer moves away, try somebody else's product, they're not likely to come back. And there lies the challenge, keeping existing customers happy first should be the first focus before companies spent a lot of money on acquiring a new one. Having a hole in the bucket is not going to help you, the first thing you should do is to patch up the hole before you pull more water.

 

  • Suman shared that there are many, many companies that do it right. Let's start with the first one, Amazon does a great job, so does many of the large eCommerce companies like Alibaba and others, they do a great job. He just spoke about Aldi, Aldi is a great example. Southwest is another example; Disney is another example. Chick-fil-A, he talked about how Chick-fil-A quality is great, even in the QSR. McDonald's can have a space they do very, very well. He talked about some of the international companies like Haier in China. Haier in China has done an amazing job of creating an organization that keeps involving the customers. In the very beginning of the book, Suman talks about an Indian company called, Patanjali, who have introduced this plant, heart-based chemical, consumable products in India and they have challenged the industry leader, Hindustan UniLever, in all categories, and they are now half the size of Unilever in India and they are competing to become the biggest consumer goods company in India. There are examples in every market to look at like the Zara in Europe, that is in a fast fashion world, but has done a great job of addressing customer needs. There are companies in every niche that does very good job and they're the companies who survive. And all you have to do is to walk around and see where the customers are lining up and buying stuff. Even Apple does a good job, but the problem lately has been Apple hasn't really figured out the changing needs and they have been trying to sell the same old product, but there are a large number of companies out there that do amazing job of being focused on customers and continuing to evolve themselves to meet the needs of the customers as they change.

 

  • Suman shared that the one thing that he always uses, and he can't live without in his businesses is Wall Street Journal. His business is essentially driven on knowing what's happening in his market, in the industry, in general, and Wall Street Journal, it has been the greatest of the resources that he has, frankly. It gives him not only the perspective of the U.S but also shares information from all around the world. And it's timely and also, they do a good amount of data collection and research, so, he likes Wall Street Journal, they don't have a very political bias to it, of course, they have a little bit of political bias, but most of their articles of businesses is very good. And he finds that he spent quite a lot of time reading and understanding what they are sharing about the world and different companies and all that.

 

  • Suman shared that he reads a lot of science fiction, so, as an engineering student, he spent a lot of time reading about robots and iRobots.

 

He shared that Isaac Asimov had a huge impact when he was a kid and he wrote a series of books about the future and how the future society will evolve, how technology will evolve, and we do see a lot of things he said is coming true. So, he has been a great, great influencer on him. The book he really like lately it's called, Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by a group in the University of Chicago. They talk about how economics affects all parts of our society. When we think about economics, we think business, but really that drives everything, whether it's people who are in gangs, whether it's prostitution but they use the concept of economics all throughout the society and how it impacts every aspect of the society was amazing to him. He really liked that book; he was very interested in thinking outside the box and then thinking of the threads of societal problems and how do you go about solving them was very interesting.

 

  • Suman shared that he’s actually working on a startup right now. It's called Pronto Home Delivery and they are in the process of launching this service in Tennessee. It's a completely new way of looking at how you can service customers particularly, there are segment of U.S customers who can't go to grocery stores or different stores to buy and all that. And they're trying to figure out how to do that in a very cost effective and in a very high quality and customer focused passion. And they are launching that service in a few days actually and he’s very excited about it. They had to develop the whole systems and then figuring out the process because it's a very difficult thing to master, the complexity is pretty high and then having to convince customers to use it is also going to be a challenge. So, if they can pull it off, he'll be very proud of it.

 

  • Suman shared listeners can find him at –

www.prontohomedelivery.com

    www.three-s-consulting.com

    LinkedIn – Suman Sarkar

   

  • Suman shared that there's one thing that he believes in and that says, “This too shall pass.” So, whether it's a good time or bad time, he looks at it and says, “Okay, this too shall pass.” One way or another. So, he never presumes or take for granted that the good times will last, or the bad times will last, we just live through it.

Links

 

 

 

 

Aug 27, 2019

Josh Kelly is the Co-Founder of RevuKangaroo, the world’s leading reputation management system, an automated SAAS business that has helped generate countless reviews for businesses on places like Google, Yelp, Facebook and more as well as growing actual revenue for clients, sometimes in the tens of millions of dollars.

 

Before devoting his work fulltime to RevuKangaroo, Josh had an extensive background in marketing, working at companies like Bonneville international, Parker and Sons, Dial (DMG) Inc and Clover Marketing.

 

He helped his own family business, a local heating, cooling, and plumbing company in Phoenix, grow from $7 million in revenue to over $100 million in just over 14 years and he has been featured on stages with the Zig Zigler Foundation, Dave Yoho and EGIA as well as major platforms like CBS, Fox, and NBC.

 

Questions

 

  • Tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey?
  • Could you share with us how you think customer experience is going to manifest an grow over the next 5 to 10 years versus where we’re coming from in the last 5 to 10 years.
  • Could you share with us how do you stay motivated everyday?
  • Can you share with us what isone online resource tool, website or app that you absolutely cannot live without in your business or even your personal life?
  • What are some of the books that have had the biggest impact on you either in a professional capacity or a personal capacity?
  • Could you share with us what’s one thing that’s going on in your life right now that you are really excited about – either something that you are working on to develop yourself or your people?
  • Where can our listeners find you online?
  • During times of adversity or challenge is there a quote or saying that you have that kind of helped you to refocus or just to get back on track so that you can feel energized towards what you’re working on?

 

 

Highlights

 

  • Josh shared that it's kind of a weird story, like everyone thinks he did this purposely, but he didn't. He kind of tripped into reputation management truth as he has tripped into most jobs and most businesses he has owned literally, it was a problem he had with his own business; with clients he was already working with. He works in what he would consider a grudge industry for the most part meaning like a plumber, no one wants to do business with a plumber, no one's excited to see a plumber, you only see a plumber when something's gone wrong and there's water all over your floor. And it's not a positive experience no matter what no matter how great a job you do, you could save the day but you're still walking into a bad experience and because of that it's really hard to get good reviews. No one's excited to do business with you, no one's happy that they did business with you ultimately. So, it was an issue he had, it was an issue a lot of clients he worked with had and he tried to buy it, a system, he tried to hire consultants, he tried to hire software and he couldn't find anything that actually worked. So, he went to a partner of his who was a good back then who runs a large team. And he (Josh) essentially explained the issue, what's going on, he literally locked a whole bunch of business owners he knew and good friends within a room and they started spit balling ideas what it could look like, what it should look like and been running ever since.

 

Yanique shared, so, it's fair to say then that you ended up in this business because of a pain point that you were experiencing, and I mean I'm sure many of our listeners, this will connect with them. Generally speaking, people typically end up in an entrepreneurial position many times because of some pain or discomfort that they felt that they could definitely find a solution for and of course a solution for other people who were experiencing the same pain and discomfort.

 

Josh agreed, literally, in their business like the plumbing HPC company is his first business. They were working their butts off to get reviews and to be positive and they have won awards, they've been recognized by Congress, they won the BBB Torch Award for Ethics, they were doing amazing quality customer service and great work but they were getting like 10 to 12 reviews a month and they're turning hundreds of calls. Now he gets 10 to 12 reviews a day and all are positive, it's totally transformed the business because it doesn't really matter as weird as it sounds you can have amazing customer service, you can have an amazing product, you can have amazing system, you've got amazing software, and if no one knows about it, it doesn't really matter that much. So, they had to find a way to let people know about it and the best way to do that right now is reviews.

 

Yanique reiterated, so, you were saying that you ended up in the reputation management business and it's not very easy.

 

Josh agreed and stated that it's easy now that they have a system and they have software to follow it and they have really simplified procedures it's really almost fully automated. Now, they have ton of reviews and they literally get millions of reviews a month for clients, all positive, driving them out to third party sites like Google, Yelp, Facebook, depends what business that you're in and actually literally driving real revenue and real customers to you. So, now it's easy but it took a long time to get there, not like a month of development work, he’s talking years of development work and then years of refining and then talking to clients and figuring out, so it was not an easy path but now, if you join your RevuKangaroo, it's pretty turnkey. It's pretty simple, pretty fast and their average client grows about 18 percent in revenue with the first six months in the program specifically from them.

 

Yanique stated. So, this particular platform organizes your customers reviews of individual employees and pushes positive reviews to major websites and those websites include Google Plus, Yelp Facebook, Twitter and more. So, pretty much if I let's say I wanted to visit a restaurant that I'd never heard of before that maybe I was out and somebody said, “Oh, there's a new Mexican restaurant that opened up on X street,” and I decided to go on Google and I saw like a Google review, your platform allows that restaurant to be able to have people rate their restaurant to get a good Google percentage rate.

 

Josh agreed and stated that that's the way consumers work right now. So, if you're to go to a restaurant or a hotel or hire a service, the vast majority of people about 87% of people look you up online beforehand. That's the current statistics it's actually growing. And the first thing they look at is reviews, actually 87 percentage people that looked at your reviews. So, restaurants are a great example. If you've never been to a restaurant and you're trying to find a specific type of restaurant, most people are going to google it and or go on Yelp depending on where you're located in the world and look at the reviews. Now here's the problem with that system as a business if you just allowed it to happen. Customers are fickle, they just are, if you had a really great experience at a restaurant and the food was really good that's what you're supposed to do. So, it's actually pretty hard to get positive reviews, however, if you've made a mistake which happens, if someone had to wait or the spice level was off on that dish or whatever it is, any single dish that can happen. It's way easier to get negative reviews and it's just a hard thing, like you have to drive a lot of reviews for it to really make a difference too. If you're a restaurant and you've got 15 reviews that doesn't make him feel really comfortable, he’s sure you're the same way. So, it's a numbers game too. So, what they've essentially done is if you need reviews on Google what they're going to do is they create an online funnel for you on your website. They automatically email and text message all of your customers asking how your service was and they actually tie it just like you said to a team member. So, what he means by that, if you're a restaurant, they're actually going to write a review on your server or maybe a bartender and the reason they do that is it tends to skew a lot more positively and they get way more feedback. It's really hard to get a review on the ambiance of a restaurant or how nice the tablecloths are or whatever. It's much easier to get review on, Jennifer the server because you had a relationship, you talk to them, good or bad right. And they say, “Hey, how is your service with Jennifer from 1 to 5 stars?”If it was an amazing experience they automatically drive it out to those third party sites, they pre populate the stars, they make sure it's landing where they can actually drive business for you. They had a bad experience instead of right now them going out to Google and become a permanent mark on your business, they're instead going to collect that customer's information, find out exactly what happened, find out which team member it happened with and send it to the management team and say, “Hey, this customer had an issue with this team member, here's exactly what happened, why don’t we reached back out to them, make it right.”

 

So, you're getting a chance to recover that negative experience before it kind of firestorms and gets out of control.

 

Josh agreed, and here's what happens, let's say that customer you turn around and now has an amazing experience, if that one-star review is out on Google, good luck changing them. The truth is that customer totally turned around now loves your business, it happens all the time but that one-star reviews stays there and other people they're looking up your business, they don't get the context to that, they don't get to find out that you turned around amazing service or that was a one off or was a weird experience or that's not normal. All they see is a one-star and a bad description. So, it's really important that you take control of your online reviews because the truth is your online reputation is happening with or without you. The customer is in control and they should be, but he thinks you should have a say in it. If there was a bad experience, he would want to know about it and he wouldn't want it to be permanent, if he could fix that and turn it around then leave him a review then. And truthfully, if they had a really bad experience and then you followed up with them and the customer hates you even more because you did a really bad job of following up then that's understandable, then ok maybe this isn't a one off, maybe this is just a bad business. Then it's going to show up on Google anyway, but for so many businesses they do great business and they're great people with great products or services and you look them up online and it just doesn't show it and he doesn't think that's fair.

 

  • Josh shared that he has been in entrepreneur more or less right after college. He has always been in the customer experience business. Anybody who tells you differently like they just don't understand. He guesses there's some commodities like if you're selling spoons, customer service is probably not, and customer experience is not as big a deal. He has never been in a commodity business where he’s selling widgets or spoons or toothpicks or whatever it is where it's just price conscious and nothing else matters. He has always been in service or product businesses where having a good product, having a good service, having great experiences is very important. As far as where it's going, he thinks they're a perfect example of exactly where it's going. There was a time where people spoke to each other face to face, you get to learn what businesses were good for referrals and you talked to your mother about company before you hire them, you called friends, that doesn't really happen anymore. What's happening is your customer experience is moving almost entirely digital, more and more and more there's businesses that are holding out from this and some will always hold out, a lot won’t. So, a good example would be like their customer service experience if you were to join RevuKangaroo, you are going to get a constant touch points always from them and it's an automated system they're reaching out to you by email, by text message but they're checking, it's a combination you can go too far where hey it's only automated and you're like a software company or everybody's dealt with those phone calls where you call in to a robot, he doesn't like that, that's bad. However, he does love the customer experience where you're calling in and they have the menu and that kind helps short cut what you're going to talk about depending on the business or everyone's had that service where you press 5, if we want if you want them to call you back when it's your turn. He thinks that improves the customer experience significantly, you're not sitting there waiting on hold annoyed as annoyed anyway. And that's like an automated system that's drastically improves the customer experience, it's all about automating what you can, handholding what makes sense and then bridging the gap between the two and really, it's also about setting expectations. So, a good example is like when you join RevuKangaroo or do business with Parker and Sons as the home service company or Clover Marketing or Pulse or any of those businesses he’s a part of. Let's say I know on day three for RevuKangaroo, people tend to ask where can I see reporting on email and text messages that are set up so, he knows that they've had a system of this, he knows it comes up often enough, so, day two at the end of the day he sends out an email with a video walking through exactly how they pull that and letting them know if they have any questions let him know, that's proactive customer experience and customer service. So, he thinks the automation side of it and the handholding needs to be combined and he thinks that's the way things are going and he’s actually really excited. Obviously, he’s in that business but even if he’s not, every business should be in that business.

 

Yanique shared, it's interesting you mentioned a little bit of digitization and a little bit of humanization and how I ended up in this business of doing podcasting was, I am a customer service trainer, that's what I do for a living. And so, I figured podcasting would be a great platform for me to reach more people and build more awareness around customer experience but one of the things I've found over the years is I really don't think people are going to want that fully digitized experience at some point. They still want to deal with another human being. I think technology is great and it does definitely help to accelerate the process to make things much easier, it definitely makes your life more convenient freeing your time to do the things that clearly brings you closer to your goals. But for some things especially when you're feeling a pain like as you said there is a plumbing situation or your cable breaks down or there is an issue with your kid at school, you will have to have some interaction with another human being. How do you see that manifesting with this whole digital revolution with chat bots and everybody trying to technologize their businesses? But at the same time as you mentioned still handholding and having that human element in the business that people still feel like they're not a transaction but they're a person.

 

Josh stated that he actually thinks this really kind of depends on your business and your industry. Like he said if you're selling spoons you could pretty much automate stuff. A school is a great example, like that's a personal thing, it's important. That would be in his opinion really horrible to digitalize, that's much more handholding than most others. You could make the argument, “Hey, you could put kids in school, and you make them watch videos and that's consistent.”But he doesn’t think anyone wants to do that. But some people think of business like that, and they shouldn't. He thinks digitizing and systemizing and automating is a beautiful, wonderful tool and he thinks more and more people should use it. He thinks it's like any new technology though, what's going to happen is people are going to overuse it at first, they're going to get excited about it, they're going to go too far which is kind of what people are starting to do now. And then once they go too far, they realize, “Hey, that was too much,”and they'll start dialing back. A good example is like smartphones, everybody loves and uses a smartphone almost across the world. Children are given smartphones now at a young age, he didn't have that technology when he was growing up of course. But now like it was essentially they gave them the phone and they have free access, now parents are very aware of what's happening on their kids phone or more so, they're more restricted, they have hours that they're allowed to be on their phones and they’re not, they're adjusting backwards right and realizing a natural balance, everything works in balance. So, he thinks short term, he thinks more and more businesses are going to move towards automation as a way to save money and then over time they'll move back from the automation some to improve their customer experience.

 

Yanique agreed and stated that everything should be done in balance because at the end of the day we're still human and connectivity is so important. As you mentioned earlier because I'm the mother of a 13 year old and you're right, you give them the phone and you give it to them with no restrictions, no boundaries are set when the phone was presented to them but then over time you recognize that the phone is not taking precedence over the things that will really help them to be more successful. So, now you have to put boundaries in and clearly Apple realized that because they created Screen Time where parents can no shut the phone down, shut down their accessibility to certain apps without even having to have that interaction with the child because they would be on an app or a playing a game and at 9 o'clock the phone shuts down, it's bedtime because failing that you can tell them to shut the phone off but unless you're going to stand over them physically, how do you know that when you close that bedroom door and going to your room to sleep that they're really shut the phone off and they're not playing that game. So, balance is very, very important.

 

  • When asked how he stays motivated, Josh stated that it depends somewhat but he’s a little different than most people. A lot of people are motivated by money, there was a time, fairly recently, within the last few years; he has heard this like a thousand times, he’s sure you've heard it too. But if you chase money, you become its slave, if you let money chase you, it becomes your slave. He really didn't fully understand that until probably a couple, maybe three years ago. So, he’s not really driven by money really at all anymore, he’s driven by helping people. So, his biggest goals in life are really to help other people achieve things that they couldn't do without him, that's his Why. That could mean team members buying a house they never thought they could afford, taking that trip that they always wanted to, buying that new car that they always want and it could be clients sending their kids to college and being able to more comfortably afford it or be able to retire earlier, that could really depend a lot on who he’s talking to but what motivates him is changing the world is such a broad thing, what does that mean? He could change in the individual people's lives in a significant way every day. And that's what excites him and gets him up in the morning and it's why he does everything.

 

  • Josh shared that his business, he’s a big fan of having a CRM, he uses HubSpot, he uses it every day. He’s ridiculous with it, he loves it. He doesn't think Hubspot is the end all be all. He thinks you just have to find a way to organize yourself, your team, your customers in a way that makes sense. So many times he sees businesses and they don't have a CRM and he instantaneously like, how much money and effort and everything you’re leaving on the table, always have a system set up. Some cool systems he uses regularly, Grammarlyis a big deal to him. There is some really cool YouTube stuff if you're posting YouTube. Hemingway Appis amazing if you write any scripts or copywriting, it's a really, really cool app. He would suggest everybody who writes. So, he writes a lot of copy, he writes scripting. He helps people build websites, design emails, text messages Hemingway app is such a cool app. There's a lot of technology he uses every day like he’s in a software business so, he’s probably over the top with software compare to most. But he's sure he could list all day if he wanted to, but he doesn't know if there's one that everyone should be using this. He doesn't think there's a silver bullet for anything in life. It depends on what you're looking for, where you're at, where your business is at, where your personal lives at. It really, really depends, the only one he does suggest everybody be doing is reading books and he doesn't actually read books, he hates reading but he’s done a business book a month since he was 15, he uses Audibleevery day.

 

 

  • Josh shared that there's a lot he’s excited about and it just really depends. He’s not this gigantic goal person, he doesn't think that way, he thinks of goals like a ladder. So, he needs things he needs to reach up and be able to grab and pull himself up, he’s not this big audacious goal guy where he wants to conquer this gigantic thing, that's just not how he works, he just keep climbing and eventually he gets there. So, for him the thing he’s really excited about is just helping individual people, he talks to business owners literally every day, there's a chance when you call on RevuKangaroo you'll get his team for the most part but you can get him and he loves having conversations with people and sometimes when you get an outside perspective and you can see things more clearly and sometimes those 15-20 minute, hour conversations, he could change the whole business, he could change the whole perception. That's what really excites him, it's not like he has this brand-new software that they're building, yeah, they're building really amazing software that he’s excited about but that's like a way for him to help people. So, the helping people is what actually excites him.

 

Yanique mentioned which dovetails back into the things that motivate you when you mentioned it's all about helping your people to grow and develop and help them achieve their goals and if they're able to do that then you feel like you've been motivated and it kind of pushes you forward to go on to the next day.

 

  • Josh shared listeners can find him at –

josh@revukangaroo.com

Facebook – Josh Kelly

LinkedIn – Josh Kelly

 

  • Josh shared that there's not necessarily a quote and there's probably a series of quotes and depends what it is. For a business owner, he has a good friend named Ellen Royer, she's actually really, really amazing and a great speaker too who once told him that, “Businesses are like vehicles.”So when his business becomes overwhelming he thinks about that business are like vehicles and what that means is, a business you could sell, you could drive your vehicle, you could sell your vehicle, you can abandon your vehicle, you aren’t your vehicle. So, if that business fails, it doesn’t mean you are a failure it just means that business fail. So, putting some context and perception into that actually helps him a lot. It helps him that nothing that he does is an emergency, no one dies if they don’t get enough reviews today, that’s just not how it works. He’s not a doctor, he’s not working in an emergency room, things he does aren’t emergencies and when he puts that in context it helps him a lot both personally and professionally. Another one he uses all the time is, “I don’t sweat the small stuff,”and in context, it’s all small stuff.

 

   

Links

 

 

 

 

 

Aug 20, 2019

Nick Mehta is CEO of Gainsight, the Customer Success company. He works with a team of nearly 700 people who together have created the customer success category that's currently taking over the SAAS business model worldwide. Nick has been named one of the Top SAAS CEO’s by the Software report three years in a row, one of the Top CEO’s of 2018 by Comparably, he was a finalist for EY’s Entrepreneur of the Year, and holds one of highest Glassdoor approval ratings for CEO’s. On top of all that, he was recently rated the #1 CEO in the world (the award committee was just his mom, but the details are irrelevant). He also co-authored “Customer Success: How Innovative Companies Are Reducing Churn and Growing Recurring Revenue,” the authoritative book on this field. He is passionate about family, football, philosophy, physics, fashion, feminism, SAAS customer success and people have told him it’s impossible to combine all of those interests, but Nick has made it his life’s mission to try.

 

Questions

 

  • Tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey?
  • Could you just explain a little bit more about what Gainsight can do for their company? And you can just use an example, maybe you pick an organization and tell us if they had that type of company, as a client of Gainsight, what would that add value for their company?
  • How do you see customer experience evolving in the next 5 to 10 years versus where we're coming for from in the last 5 to 10 years?
  • Could you share with us how do you stay motivated everyday?
  • Can you tell us if there isone online resource tool, website or app that you absolutely can’t live without in your business?
  • Could you share with us some of the books that have had the biggest impact on you?
  • Could you share with us one thing that’s going on in your life right now that you are really excited about – either something that you are working on to develop yourself or people?
  • Where can our listeners find you online?
  • Do you have a quote or saying that you kind of revert to, to kind of help you to refocus and get back on that path to what you’re workings towards?

 

Highlights

 

  • Nick shared that he is very excited to be in this journey and be with here today. He has been working in business for a few decades, so definitely dates him a little bit. His journey into kind of customer success actually started way back in his childhood, because he does have a memory when he was a kid, he grew up in the East Coast of the U.S in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and his dad was an entrepreneur, but this is back in the days of selling big computers and software that was running on people's servers and all that. He remembers him saying that, if you ever go into business, one of the things you need to do, this was when he was little kid is make sure you're either the person building the product or the person selling the product because once you sold the customer then your job is over, you can move onto the next one. And those two, building and selling are kind of what a lot of companies really focused on for a long time. And in his early part of his career, he worked at a large traditional enterprise software company, a great company but at that time the company was very much focused on building and selling and so the idea of the customer experience and customer success, it was certainly something people would talk about in speeches and you'll say nice things about but if we fast forward into 2008 when he took his first CEO job where he was running a cloud SAAS company. A company called Live Office and he didn't know anything of the new cloud worlds, so he came in with that old playbook of building and selling and just really focusing on sales and kind of customer success, customer experience honestly was more of a necessary evil. Came into this company and ended up with the power of subscription, allows all to come or go anytime they want, every month or every year. He actually as a CEO, his whole schedule changes where he needs to spend the most time on customer experience and customer success and so he got very passionate about it at his last company and actually he got quite curious that nobody's solved this problem. And obviously that inspired Gainsight with customer success, they've been doing this about six and a half years and it's been real joy to see many CEOs kind of wake up to the idea that on nowadays, when you think about the growth of your company and the core of your company, customer success and customer experience is right at that core.

 

  • Nick stated that many folks that are listening probably have had experiences with customers where sometimes your clients are so happy and everything you're doing is great and other times they are not happy and sometimes they leave you or they say not nice things about you and review sites or social media. And so, the question is fundamentally how do we drive customers to be more happy, more successful, and then spend more money with you over time either by coming back to your business or buying more from you or recommending you to a friend. That's what we all aspire to. And the real question is, what's the difference between those ones that go great and the ones that don't, and he'd argue that a core difference is - “Are you waiting for a customer to come to you with their issues, with their problems or are you analyzing and anticipating their needs and are you proactive with that customer?”And in the old world of business, when we didn't have, online interactions and we didn't have a lot of data about our customers, it was hard to be proactive because frankly you couldn't guess what your customer was thinking when they weren't in your store. But nowadays with all this stuff, whether it's loyalty programmes or ecommerce sites or your customer relationship management systems, or maybe a mobile application they're using, there's so much more that you can be seeing about what your customers are doing so you can actually anticipate their needs. That's the core, can you anticipate their needs and be proactive with them. So, Gainsight is all about taking the data that you have about your customers and really anticipating where they are in their journey with you and doing as much as you can to be proactive so that they're likely to stay with you and spend more money over time.

 

  • So, giving an example. Adobe is a big customer of Gainsight and many people on the call probably have used Adobe Photoshop before, which is like the world's leading photo editing software. And Adobe has hundreds of thousands of small businesses that use Adobe's Photoshop in a suite they call creative cloud. Creative cloud is a suite of solutions for designers to basically be able to build better products and experiences. And creative cloud is sold as a subscription, so you sign onto it and you pay a certain amount per year based on the number of people in your company and Adobe had a challenge. We'd said, okay, we sell them that subscription and then at the end of that term, they either stay with us or they go and how do we anticipate how they're doing and what more we should be doing for them. So, they created a team that is working with these customers, looking at the data about how often they're using their software and whether they have kind of gone through the training or not, things like that as kind of signals, think of them as like kind of a footprints of the customer's body language. And you're basically figuring out, okay, where are they in their journey? And then in some cases, do we need to intervene? Do we need to reach out to them and say,

 

…………“Hey, can I help you learn about the product?

………….Can I help you learn how to use this new feature?

…………Can I be more proactive with you?”

 

And so, Gainsight's all about helping our customers use data to be proactive with their customers, to basically help them be more satisfied but also spend more money over time. They do that in a lot of different ways, they can do that if you've got big customers and where you're like managing them in a more kind of a human fashion, they can also do that in a way where Gainsight can be kind of embedded inside your website or your experience kind of like nudging the customer to do the right things in a more digital way. “Humanizing the Digital Experience!”

 

  • Nick shared that there's a few different things that have changed the expectation of customers and that's kind of continuing to drive evolution in their thinking. He thinks comes down to at the end of the day, what people experience in their lives as consumers and kind of that sets the bar for everything we all do. So, obviously when we use applications online, those applications are very personalized to our needs, they're automatically anticipating our needs, they're delightful to use and they have to watch out for privacy, which is obviously the modern issue but they really use data to the advantage both of the company as well as the customer, personalize what you see and what you do. And he thinks that's what we experienced when we work with the big tech companies, whether it's a Lyft or an Uber or it's an Airbnb or anyone else and that sets the bar for a while. “Everyone I work with should know what I need, they shouldn't be asking me, they shouldn't have to ask me how happy I am, they should know that. They shouldn't have to ask me for what products I bought, they should know that.”And so, that's one thing is kind of their expectation on the experience. The other thing is and nowadays when we buy new products and services, at the end of the day we're buying, we'd argue not a product or service, but an outcome.

 

Outcome meaning, “I have a goal, I'm trying to achieve something.” And you can think of car ride as an example. He’s not trying to buy a car, he’s not even trying to rent a car, he’s trying to get from place A to place B, that's the outcome. And Uber, Lyft, other companies helps him achieve that outcome. With Airbnb, he’s trying to have a great experience with his family on travel, Airbnb delivers that outcome. And so, he’s not thinking as much about booking a hotel or booking reservations, he’s thinking about getting this outcome. And so, that concept of the vendor, the company being responsible for both a very personalized experience as well as owning the outcome. And think of the old world with the car, you buy a car and you buy a physical car and at the end of the day, it's your job whether you driving it or not, whether you know how to get to place A to place B, whether you get lost, whether you take the right route, it's your job. But when you hire Uber, Lyft, anyone else, it's their job to own the outcome, they have to make sure you have a good experience, they have to be price competitive, but they own the outcome. So, the thing that's changed is vendors are expected of very personalized experiences and to truly own the outcome in this new world.

 

Yanique stated that that's a mighty revolution there that were experiencing.

 

Nick stated that it’s huge and he thinks it's actually hard because it's a totally different mindset. You used to say like, “Hey, I make this widow, I deliver this service.”But now it's like, “No, I deliver this outcome.”And it's a higher bar, it can be stressful sometimes, but also very rewarding if you do it right.

 

Yanique agreed. Because the flip side is if you're really doing what you're doing right, then it means that your customers will walk and speak great things about you and they're going to talk about their personalized experience, they're going to talk about from top to bottom and everything in between and a lot of times none of your marketing captures all of that.

 

Nick agreed and thinks that that's so much bigger now because that advocacy, that informal word of mouth and because of social digital, it's everything. He'd argue nowadays it's very unlikely that a customer's going to buy from you without having talked to somebody who's worked with you before, either informally or through a review site, like a Yelp or something else. So, your customers are your growth engine now in this new world.

 

  • When asked how he stays motivated, Nick shared that number one is of course is a big pot of coffee, which is on his desk right now. There's no substitute for that. There's a few things that for them keeps them motivated he thinks are probably true for a lot of people. Number one is he does think that there's a lot of purpose in this philosophy of like humanizing business and really not thinking of your customers as a transaction, but thinking of them as a human being on the other end and how you can have a mutually beneficial relationship, a lot of companies do that with their customers. So, there's sort of two layers of that and that's definitely the purpose is very motivating. Now when you talk about our customers and like you said, we have to do all practice what we preach. What motivates him is a few things. Number one, on the constructive side, he loves hearing the feedback on what we can do better because to him, when a client tells you what you can do better versus be silent, they believe that you can be better. It's like anyone that gives you feedback, the thing that they're telling you as well, you can be better. It's actually sad if somebody doesn't give you feedback because they're saying implicitly you can't be better. He thinks that what's motivating, if you listened to it the right ways,is feedback is a gift that's saying that you have a chance to be better, you're not your best yet and he hopes that throughout his life he’s never at a point where he’s at my best because that means there's all this better to be come in the future. Now on the flip side, he thinks it's important to also recognize that the job of working with customers can be tiring and especially if you're in a call center or you're dealing with a lot of customers in some way, it can be tiring to only hear those constructive feedback. So, it's nice to also hear some of the good things that you're doing and that's why he encourages his team and customers to also spend time with customers, their clients that they are doing well because you don't want to get an artificial sample of the challenges. So, he thinks it's really coffee, it's some constructive criticism and it's compliments every now and then. Those three things can, can keep you motivated.

 

Yanique mentioned, customer service, I've picked up what you said a while ago in terms of it's really hard and how I even got into this whole podcasting thing is that I'm a customer service trainer and I figured, okay, podcasting is really becoming popular and so this is a good way for me to have a platform where I can reach more people and bring greater awareness to customer experience. And so, one of the things I say to my participants in the training is customer service is one of the hardest jobs that you can ever do because the biggest part of any organization is the people. And it's funny because yes, data is so important and we're driven by data nowadays and things are digital, but I just don't see us getting to that point in customer experience where people aren't going to want to deal with another human being. Even with the rise of digitization, what's your thoughts on that?

 

Nick agreed, there's these sorts of two trends that are happening that can be kind of at odds with each other, but he thinks they're synergistic. There's this obviously amazing data and automation version of the future where we don't have a role on the planet anymore or we're merged with the robots or whatever, maybe that'll be fun who knows. But he thinks that with any trend, there's a countertrend the end of the Yang and the Yang is that people actually value human connection maybe more than ever, perhaps because it's a little bit more sparse nowadays because he has young kids at home and his oldest is 13, and just as is well documented, you'll see how little time they spend with people face to face anymore and so there's this sort of pure digital experience, which is great, but it means that all the human experiences are so much more special. And so, to him what that means in the field that folks in this podcast are in is that job of humanizing the experience has never been more important. Now you start to leverage the data, leverage the automation, you don't have to do all the busy work anymore, but your ability to put a human being in front of that is he thinks it's still as important as ever and he thinks one of the things that's interesting is as you probably see in your work too, call centers, some of them are switching back to like, “We're going to put a human on that first ray.” The automated stuff is great and sometimes some of that automation is allowing us to have certain customers that we're going to just put a human being there so they can have that human experience and he thinks that that's never been more important. He also thinks that on the flip side, we need to acknowledge that for our workforce, because frankly, otherwise these jobs become super demoralizing and he thinks we have to acknowledge the humanity in our workforce and leverage that and really celebrate that, not just treat them. The expression he loves to try to eliminate is employees are our greatest assets, which is implying that their assets, which they're not, they're not on your balance sheet, they're human beings and so really kind of trying to humanize the relationship with employees, which he thinks in the last 30 years as a society predicament America, we've gotten wrong where we've sort of thought of the employees much more as just a cog in the system.

 

Yanique agrees. Without the employee, the business really cannot function because you need people for the business to function.

 

  • Nick shared that for work, as much as it's sometimes gives him funny and annoying, because you get a lot of spam messages, LinkedIn is actually a really powerful tool because you're talking about human connection and all that. And he thinks it’s allowed a little bit more humanization in business. The reality is that we can kind of look each other up on LinkedIn, understand a little bit more context of who you are, who I am. We can have a better conversation that way, we can find common connections. LinkedIn actually tends to be as a businessperson, a great way to engage socially with your customers, they get a lot of engagement when they post on LinkedIn. So, LinkedIn is probably the one that on a work setting, is sort of invaluable. Of course, I couldn't live my life without my ride sharing apps I also use Uber and Lyft but for work, it's on LinkedIn.

 

  • When asked about books that have had the biggest impact, Nick shared that there's a great book called The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fableand it's pretty interesting because he’s sometimes skeptical of business books, we both had that experience that they can be very high level, you can actually pick up a lot of the information in 5 minutes in a summary and so he gets a little bit skeptical of, “Okay, is this really going to be worth my time?” And so, with some trepidation read this book called The Five Dysfunctions of a Team recommended by a friend, is a very famous business book and it's about this kind of a parable about a management team and isn't able to connect, it doesn't really have trust, that's the foundational issue. And it's funny because you start reading this, “I'm the CEO, I run a 700-person company and I'm like, oh great, this is going to be cool cause I get to see a company totally different from mine.”And he started reading it, he’s like,“Oh my gosh, this is like us. It's not just us, it's not 100 percent us but there's so many parallels.”They had their management team read it and they all felt the same thing, they're like, wow, there's so much we can learn by looking at it, maybe a little bit of an exaggeration, but there's so many things that without trust in a team you can end up really struggling with. And so, that's the one that he thinks is for him, it really stuck with him.

 

Nick shared that he highly recommends it, it's a quick read, but definitely an eye because you realize how much more you can do. He thinks if you open your eyes to how you can create trust in your team. The second book he'd recommend, another one that was very influential from the business side, it's called The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answer, it's by a venture capitalist named Ben Horowitz, who is a CEO as well previously. And it's a great book because he realizes there's not any like book you can write about just being a CEO or being a leader that has transferable lessons because every situation is different. So instead, he talks about basically how everything is hard, and you have to sort of accept that and maybe there's some kind of therapy and he'll talk to you about the challenges. So, he talked about all these challenges in his company as it almost fell apart but ended up being very successful. So, those are two he thinks on the work side that he'd recommend. On the personal side, he will say, admitting something about himself, he’s big on vulnerability and he'll say that one of his many flaws is he has a massive fear of missing out. He’s always wondering what somebody else is doing right now at any given point, whether it's at work or otherwise and FOMO as people call it and there's a very funny book by Mindy Kaling who's a comedian in the U.S called Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns)and it absolutely captures his sentiment at most times, which is, “Is everyone doing something fun and I'm not invited?”So, that's a little bit more into the window of who he is.

 

  • When asked about something that is going on that he’s really excited about, Nick shared that he'll share both. At work, one of the things he really believe if you're a leader and he thinks especially if you're a CEO, but he thinks true for any kind of leader or the leader that the organization needs this year, whether it's a small business or it's a big company is different than the leader it needed last year because every year your business evolves, your strategy evolves, your goals evolve and Gainsight, every year has different goals and strategies. So, every year Gainsight, his company needs a new CEO and he hopes it can be him. So, he hopes that he gets the job again. Now, that's not a formal thing that they do at review every year, but he thinks about it himself, what kind of CEO does our company need now? And they are kind of going through some exciting new things. They've moved into kind of a multiproduct strategies, they have multiple things they do for their customers and they are about 700 people and so, there's a general question of how do you run a company that's almost like a portfolio products instead of just doing one thing or doing multiple things and so, that's something he’s working on is what does it take and how can he learn from other companies to make that transition, that's on the work side. And then on the personal side, he'll say with the three young kids, their daughter literally today just started high school. So, he’s learning what it's like to be the parent of a high schooler, their oldest is a high schooler and that's absolutely a big joy but also a little bit of melancholy at the time passing by.

 

  • Nickshared listeners can find him at –

www.gainsight.com

    Twitter - @nrmehta

LinkedIn – Nick Mehta

 

  • Nick shared that he loves the philosophy that many boxers have espoused of, “It's not about how many times you get knocked down, it’s about how many times you get up.”That concept of resilience is very powerful. So, he thinks that that is probably something that does motivate him and sort of like when you're in those times of challenge that later on you're going to look back on that challenge as one of the proudest moments when you overcame it. And actually, he was talking to another CEO, much, much bigger company, very successful CEO and he said, despite the fact that his company's very successful, the most fond memories he has in the history of the company are the times of challenge because you all kind of work together and hunker down. And so, he thinks that's one of the biggest things that motivates him. And then the other one, which is always remembering that these are the good times, like right now, these are the good times that later on in life we'll look back on and some times in the moment you don't appreciate that, but kind of doing that thought experiment of being 30 years older and hopefully still being around and you're looking at weeks and months, which sometimes can feel like a grind and remembering that those are going to be the things we look back on with fondness and really appreciating that.

 

Yanique re-confirms, so, basically gratitude to appreciate what you're going through and also just to be persistent and resilient in anything that you're doing and just never give up.

    

Links

 

 

 

 

Jun 18, 2019

Inthis episode Yanique Grant, I am speaking specifically about a topic that I think is relevant to helping leaders in an organization to help their team grow and develop. And it has to do with honing the skills and building the potential of your existing team members that you have working in your company.

 

Now potential is someone's capacity to develop their skills with effort and coaching over time. And that's just the point, how can we know where effort and coaching will take someone over a period of time if you don't actually take the time to invest and identify if your investment in this individual will be successful?Now the first step in helping to develop or helping to grow someone to identify their true potential is you have to help them identify the best version of themself. And so, conversations with your employees, one on one conversations where you help them to identify where their strengths and their weaknesses are and what their values are. You can help them write this down, so they have it as a focal point, this is like the foundation of how they are going to move from one step to the next. Then you need to ask them questions, like, “Is there something that they've ever really, really wanted to do and achieve and accomplish?”Such as, you know, if they had a great passion to dance or they had a great passion to speak a second language or they had a great passion to play a particular sport. So, you have to ask these questions to identify what is really in their heart. The next thing is you have to ask them, is there any thing that they think is preventing them from reaching to that milestone?So, do they think they need to be a more assertive person, do they feel like they lack confidence? You have to ask them these questions and read their body language, get them to a place where they feel very comfortable sharing this information with you because it means now, they have to be very vulnerable to share this information. So that's the first step. You want to get them to really identify where they fall in terms of setting themselves up for success.

 

Then after you get to that point, we have to now help them set goals. One of the things that we consistently promote or encourage persons who are in our workshops is the number one rule of a leader is to help people grow and develop. So, if the people grow and develop, then the organization would grow and develop because in every company, the organization is the people. It's not the tagline, it's not the logo, it's not the uniform, it's not the equipment, it's the people and without the people, the company cannot grow and develop.And so, you have to help them set goals. Setting goals is an important part of helping them to achieve success and not success in terms of your financial statement for the business, success in terms of what they view as success. Now, research shows that setting specific goals will help people to get what they want. So, you write it down, and this is where you're going to put in a step by step, strategy, day to day activities that you're going to employ to achieve the overarching goal so you write a list of everything you want to achieve, check over your list and seriously consider what you've written down is realistic.

 

Because sometimes we're so bold and audacious, the goals are amazing and you should reach for the stars or even beyond the stars! I completely support that, but we have to think realistic at the same time. So, let's say the goal is to lose weight, for example. There's no way that you will lose 50 pounds in two weeks, it's just, I mean, maybe you could lose it, but it wouldn't be the healthy way and it wouldn't cause the weight to stay off. So, in setting the goals, you want to ensure that the goals are realistic. When you're setting the goals, you also want to affirmatively or positively affirm in your mind and on paper how you want the goal to be manifested, “I want to be less worried about my appearance.” “I want to be confident about my appearance.”So clearly the former statement sounds a little rocky and you don't want to sound rocky. You want it to sound affirmed, you want to sound confident, you want to sound fulfilled that you believe in what you are saying. In setting the goals, you must also be specific and specific means you have to set down certain timelines. So realistically, “I'd like to lose 50 pounds in the next six months to a year.”So, you give yourself enough time because when you research weight loss, the healthy way to lose weight is one to two pounds a week. So, if we go with the one pound a week, and there are four weeks in a month, realistically you can lose, let's say a minimum of four pounds per month and there are 12 months in the year, so, that's 48 pounds for the year. However, you could accelerate it, there are cases where people lose up to 5 pounds per week, and if you're losing five pounds per week, then that's now 20 pounds per month. And that 20 now is multiplied by 12 months for the year. So, you want to be very specific, but also be realistic in helping your team to set their goals.

 

Now, you set the goal, but you can’t just set the goal and the goal is going to achieve itself, you have to put in the work. So, once you have confirmed your goal is achievable and it's realistic, now is when you have to get to work, so you have to commit to the process, focus on the process rather than the end point. You know what the desired result is, which is to be 50 pounds less than you are now, or to own that home or to own that motor vehicle or to rise to that managerial position, whatever it is that your goal is. Note in your mind though, and also on paper that your long term goals, they don't have to be set in stone word for word because in the process of you achieving this goal, things will change, people will change, even you may change and your goals may change as well and it's not an exact science, so you don't need to treat it like one, just allow yourself some room to grow. Create a checklist, so important, so you can know where you're going and this is what is going to help you stay on track on a day to day basis towards the goal ahead and do those things every day without fail because the biggest thing or the most important thing in goal achievement is consistency. So, it's small incremental steps that you do consistently, regardless of how you feel, regardless of what challenges you are being faced with, you're doing it all the time.

 

So, we move on to we start the journey now, we've set the goal, we have things written down, we have our checklist. Now, we have to put some inspiration in place, we have to align ourself with people who we know will help us to achieve the goal. And this is why as a leader, you have to help your employees. Maybe there's another employee in the organization or another leader in the organization that you could bring in and this person could help this team member that you're trying to grow to achieve that goal. It can be a person, it can be a landmark, we want to help people to find inspiration so that in challenging times or times when they feel overwhelmed there’s something that they can connect to. And that's why it's so important to have some inspiration. A lot of persons nowadays, they try to achieve their goals, they have a vision board and on the vision board they would have the things that they want to achieve. So, they're constantly being reminded of the path that they're on, they don't get deterred and you position vision board somewhere that you can see all the time. It could be a case where you have somebody in your home that you know is going to be the reminder for you or at your office who's going to be a reminder for you or it could be the case where you may be have a coach and that's what we are as leaders.

 

Leaders are coaches, we’re mentors were, we’re there to help people achieve their desires. So, you've set these long-term goals, but you also have to set some short-term goals and short-term goals are the things that you do on a daily basis, on a weekly basis. We have to be confident because believing that we can do it is really a big part of the psychology of whether or not you're going to be successful. And so, negative thoughts will slow down once you're fully confident, you're fully in control of your thoughts, you don't let anything deter you, you focus on what you want to achieve. You have to take care of yourself, dress well, ensure you look good, groom yourself, think positively. When you have a negative thought, rephrase it positively, don't compare yourself to others, everyone is running their own race, we're not in competition with anybody, we're all here to collaborate and compliment each other. So, try not to get into the habit of comparing yourself to others and we can fall into that very easily. Social media, unfortunately, this is some of the negatives of social media that you’ll watch and see what other people are doing and you'll start to compare and think about where you are in your life. But we're all in our own lane, we're running our own race, we're not trying to compete, we're trying to collaborate and compliment. So just change up your mindset and how it is that you view certain things.

 

The next thing is you have to accept changes as they happen because in working to achieve the goal, you will buck upon some obstacles and you have to focus on the things that you can influence, you have to remember that you are engaging in a process, so, it's not about the end results, it's the journey. You have to adapt to new circumstances by setting new goals, so, if a pothole comes up or a little obstacle or hurdle comes that you have to jump over, think about it as, yes, it might be a setback, but the set back is there for a reason and what are you going to do with that to make it better.

 

And always be open to learning new things, even as the coach or the mentor that is helping the employee to grow, you yourself have to be open to learning new things from that individual as well. I do believe it's a two way street for both persons involved, so we really have to be focused on ensuring that we support each other, in support, you want to let your family members know, your friends know what journey you're on so that they can help you. Remember the people in your life - your circle of your friends, your tribe, your circle of greatness. Those are the people who are going to help you, they're going to keep you accountable, they're going to help you to achieve the goal. So, you always want to ensure that you get support.

 

You have to trust your intuition or your gut, that little feeling that you get inside your stomach sometimes when you feel like, “Oh, this is the right thing to do.”Or that little feeling that you get sometimes when you’re in a situation and you say, “No, I don't feel like I should go there, I feel like everything is telling me that I shouldn't go there today.” “No, I shouldn't eat that, no I shouldn't eat it.”Follow your gut because 9 out of 10 times your gut is so correct. Journaling also helps you to trust your intuition. You want to keep a list of the items, the times that your intuition helped you, reference your journal when you're working through a problem because it will help you to refocus.

 

And through it all, never give up. Focus on the fact that it's a process. You're going to achieve many goals along the way. Stay committed to achieving your goals. Be that encourager, be that motivator, be that mentor, be that coach, be the inspiration in that person's life, that when they do achieve that overarching goal, whether it was to sing or to dance or to speak a second language or to move up in the organization, they look back and say, I could never have done it without that manager or that supervisor who was coaching me, always believed in me, never gave up on me, even on days when I never believed in myself, they were my biggest cheerleader.

 

And that's what I want to encourage you as leaders is everyone has potential, there's always potential and you have to believe that a person has potential and you have to encourage and motivate and inspire them to believe that they have the potential as well. We're all working towards the same goal to help each other be better, to help each other do better and the more we can really invest our time, time…..the most precious commodity that you could give to another human being is time.So, when you invest your time and energy into building the potential of another human being, it's priceless. There's no dollar figure that you can put on that. And I'm telling you that the person will value that time and energy that you've given to them to help them be greater and better and you would become great and better as a result. So, I encourage you to be a great motivator, be a great encourager and try to really seek the potential in others and build the potential in others because we all have potential to be great.

 

I believe that these things that we've shared today will help to create that culture in an organization. And remember, service starts from within. If you can build your team members potential from within then it's so easy for them to help to build potential and success in your clients and customers in the interactions that they have with them.

 

Again, if you'd like to follow us on Twitter, feel free it's navigating CXand please feel free to join our Facebook group, Navigating the Customer Experience Podcast.

May 21, 2019

 

Rochelle Gapere is an Attorney, Happiness Coach and Entrepreneur, known for bringing her charismatic personality and share joy for living to every experience and individual that she encounters. She has mastered the art of living life fully and passionately. The release of her first book, One Happy Thought at a Time: 30 Days to a Happier Youcements her lifelong practice of adding more happiness to this world by empowering others with the tools and techniques that help them lead happier, more fulfilling lives. Rochelle believes in living a life that is engaging at every level and utilizes practical techniques to teach audiences her unique approach to living a happy life.

 

Questions

 

  • Tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey?
  • What are some of the maybe three top things that you would share? Would a business owner and entrepreneur, whether in an online space or in a space where they actually have an environment where customers come in and interface with their employees as to how it is that they can use some of these disappointments to propel or pivot their business to the next level?
  • How do you stay motivated every day?
  • How do we get our business owners to the point where they're a little bit more understanding to the fact that it's not just about the profits because the profits have to come from within first in terms of developing the people and if you profit with developing the people's minds and the goals that themselves want to achieve on an emotional, financial, physical level, then it will manifest into financial for the business in the long term.
  • Could you share maybeone online resource tool, website or app that you couldn't absolutely live without in your business?
  • Could you share with us maybe one or two books that I've had the biggest impact on you?
  • Could you share with us one thing that’s going on in your life right now that you’re really excited about – either something that you’re working on to develop yourself or people?
  • What’s one quote or saying that during times of adversity, you draw on this quote or saying to kind of rejuvenate or to just get back on track?

  

Highlights

 

  • Rochelle stated that she would say she has always been a very happy person, as a child she wasvery free spirited, very optimistic and that followed her throughout her life to this point. She practiced law and she’s still practicing law, actually next Wednesday will make it 14 years since she graduated from law school. So, time definitely has flown and so her entire life she has always wanted to be an attorney. She went to school in Jamaica, she went to St. Andrew Prep. School and then she went to Campion College and she left Campion College and went to Nashville for Undergrad, Tennessee State University and then she came to Miami to law school in 2002. She went to the University of Miami School of Law. She remembers being a child and people asking what do you want to be when you grow up? And for her, she always knew she wanted to be an Attorney and even her yearbook, it's written in there, “Oh Rochelle is going to win cases by dancing for the judge or something crazy.”So, it's interesting that even as a 16-year-old student, she was very clear. And so, she always had laser focus on her goals and she knew that was it, nothing could pretty much hit her off course and it wasn't anything that her family told her she had to do, it truly was something that was a deep desire in her heart. When she got to law school in her first semester though. Just to interject a little bit, she graduated a semester early and when she graduated from college, she worked at her aunt's law firm, she was a partner at the law firm. So, it was just like the perfect pairing. She went there bright eyed, bushy tailed and so there was something about that energy in that big law firm setting that was very off putting to her. She would wear very colorful clothes and she was extremely up beat and very happy going to work in the day but the whole environment was just kind of melancholy, just sad. Of course, it was a big firm, they were doing really well, they had excellent cases, but the energy on a whole just was not really light, not what she would have thought this whole law firm experience would have been. And so, from there it shaped her mind that one, she didn't want to practice in big law, at least she went into law school knowing that and one specific really, really resonated with her and it stayed with her pretty much for the rest of her life actually. One afternoon, like a Thursday or Friday, it was a second-year associate and she was scheduled to go to Italy on a vacation with some friends and she was very, very excited, really looking forward to the vacation. And so, when she (Rochelle) was leaving work on a Thursday evening, because she didn't go in on Fridays, she told her to have an amazing trip, hope she has fun and it was her first vacation she was going to take as an associate in a big firm in two years and that's typical. So, on Monday she gets back to work and she's at her desk and Rochelle is like, “What are you doing here? I thought you're supposed to be going to Italy on this long-awaited vacation.”And she pretty much said on Thursday when she was about to work, one of the senior partners came in her office and said to her, “Oh, you need to work on this motion that needs to be submitted.”And she told him, “Yeah, but I have a prescheduled vacation I needed.”And he said, “Well, you could either choose to have your job or to go on this vacation.”And so that was something that stuck with her for a while and she wants a life, she wants work life balance, she knows she wants to have meaningful work, but for her happiness would mean having time to be able to go and be with her friends and family on a vacation. We have 365 days in a year, so for her it only made sense that if she’s going to be working hard, she also would need some balance. She went into law school with that at the forefront of her mind. First semester of law school she realized, “Oh, maybe I don't want to be an attorney, I like the knowledge of law. I'm not necessarily sure if I like the practice of law.”And at that time, she was 21 years old and had no other idea of anything she could possibly do. She wasn't going to drop it to law school, she’s a Jamaican, you start what you finish and not only start what you finish, you have to do it excellently. So, she was just like, “All right, well it's 3 years, I'm just going to do it or whatever.”So, her whole law career, up until this point has been very balanced where she practices, but she has always had a side hustle. So, she has curated and created a life, work life balance where she does law and she enjoy law and the practice of law. She loves the knowledge of it, but it isn't the thing that wakes her up in the morning where she’s justbursting with excitement to go and practice law or research legal matters or whatever. So, the happiness journey, it really is organic because it's who she is truly. She is asking the question why? There has to be a bigger purpose, a bigger purpose, a bigger purpose. And it was in 2016 and she really was getting a little bit, it wasn't anxious, but she was agitated a little bit, when you get to that space where this is just not enough, and she just needed more. And so, life is so incredible how sometimes the things, the doors that close are the doors that sometimes propel us to our purpose, which is what happened to her is that she was in a long-term relationship and she thought she was going to marry the person she was with and the relationship ended. And it was through that relationship ending and friends and family asking her how she was doing, and she told them, “Well, I am sad and I'm disappointed that the relationship ended because of course I'd been with the person for five years.”like up until that point, she had envision and pretty much created a future where he was an integral part of it and he would be an integral part of the actual work aspect of it. So, when that pretty much blew up in her face, it was one of those things where obviously she has had to press forward. And she got to a point where she was just like, “What now?”As she has come in contact with friends, they would ask her and she would tell them, “Well, one area of my life being bad doesn't mean my entire life is bad. I still have a career. I still have family and friends who love me, I still have my health most importantly.” And as she tells people that, they kept saying to her, “Wow, you have a very refreshing perspective. You probably should write a book.”So, she had an Aha moment and she was like, “Okay, maybe I should write a book about this.”And she loves books, she’s obsessed with learning, she still has a library card, she goes and pick up books every week, she reads voraciously, and she has always known she wanted to write a book, but she just didn't know about what. So, the Aha, the bell went off and so that's how she ended up writing the book. But in writing the book she realized she still wanted to dig deeper, why was it that she had this perspective that people kept telling her was refreshing, why wasn't it just something that comes second nature to people on a whole? Aren't we all on this earth wanting to be happy? Most of the things that we're doing, it's because we think it's going to add to our joy, whether it's buying a new car or going on a vacation or dating that person or whatever it is, buying the purse, that is what it is, that constant want or seeking happiness and fulfillment. So, she started studying the science of happiness to get deeper and in studying that science of happiness and just researching, she came across the School of Positive Psychology and she was a psychology major in Undergrad, but at that time, 1998 to 2001, the psychology was more based on, “Okay, what is wrong with you? How are we going to fix it?”But now, this school of psychology, which was birthed within the last 10 years, it's more of a “No, what's right with you? Let's figure out ways to even enhance it.”So, when she’s doing the research, she was just like, “Oh my God, I love it.”She could not stop learning. So, she went along, she got a Positive Psychology Certification through University of Pennsylvania and so from that point on, she has just been studying the science of happiness, she became a Happiness Coach.

 

Now, she coaches people, businesses how to add more happiness in their workspace, individuals how add more happiness in their day to day lives. She has written a book, she’s one of the cofounders of a woman empowerment summit they are called ‘Women Winning Now’where she speaks about happiness and teach audiences how to add happiness into their day to day life. But it truly is a closed door that got her here and so now she jokingly tells people when they tell her, “Oh my God, I'm going through the breakup.” or“I got fired”or the rejection or whatever. She says, “You are in the absolute best place you could be because now you get to create a life that you want, so you take the disappointments or you take the wisdom that you've gained and you now have this blank, clean slate and you could create from that space, which is what I did.”So, she is a walking billboard of how a plan that you have for yourself, the plan A sometimes may not bethe best plan and that you just have to be open to pivoting and just being open to learning some more. She is just using the rejection or the disappointment to propel you in a grateful, more amazing existence, which is truly her story.

 

Yanique stated, this is just truly amazing and it dovetails nicely into the whole podcast theme of navigating the customer experience because I find a lot of businesses, they have people who work with them, they have leaders in organizations, but at the same time they're not using the negatives or the disappointments as positives and pivoting them to a realm where they can really shine.

 

  • Rochelle shared that she thinks of course it depends on the company culture, so, whoever is at the top, the energy trickles down. So, she thinks what has happened, and traditionally so is that people view work as just survival. So, for like somewhere between 55% to 80% of people, it's normal to see work as something to be endured, and not something to enjoy. So it's interesting because we spend the majority of our waking hours at work, so you'd think that you would want to create a company culture where work life balance would be something that you'd make a priority and not only that, we're dealing with human beings, so you have to think the people who work for you, they also are going through their own human experiences before they ever show up in the building. So, for one, of course it's the company culture that you're creating, and everybody definitely has different leadership styles, but there are companies now that realize the happier employees are, is the higher the work productivity. Google is one of those companies that's very, very forward thinking. They have implemented mindfulness programs because the more mindful you are, then you show up at work and you're able to focus on the matter at hand as opposed to coming to work and then you just have a whole million, trillion other things that you're focusing as opposed to what you're supposed to be doing in this space. So, for one, of course a company culture, for two, she thinks it all just keeps going back to the environment and the whole company culture. Have you ever shown up in a review, your performance evaluation and your supervisor or your boss have ever asked you, “Are you happy?”

 

Yanique answered, I don't think so. And I don't think in any of the organizations that I have worked with, they actually have that question in an appraisal.

 

Rochelle agreed. She is going to say what she defines happiness at work to be. So, it's a feeling of overall sense of enjoyment at work. Being able to gracefully handle setbacks, connecting amicably with colleagues, coworkers, clients and customers and knowing that your work matters to yourself, your organization and beyond.So, with that definition in mind, why wouldn't you want to know if the people who are working for you are happy and if they're fulfilled. And so sometimes people just want to know that you that they matter and that you care. And so, it's not that you're saying are you happy and then they are coming and telling you all their life story, it’s just, “Are you happy? I see you; I'm affirming you. What could we do in this environment to make it better?” And a lot of companies, they're just telling their employees want to do, they are not creating a safe space where people feel vulnerable to tell employers what could be better. It's a, “This is the way and you should just operate in our systems.”At the end, everybody has a vision for what it is the business that they're building. But listen, the people who are working for you they are the best parameters of telling you what is working because they are literally on the floor, they're on the ground, which is why that show Undercover Boss works so well because lot of times when you're sitting in an executive office or whatever, you are not necessarily connecting with the person who is really and truly handling your day to day operations. So, what you may think looks good on a manual doesn't necessarily translate to real productivity or an actual experience. So, you would literally have to get down and dirty and on the floor sometimes with your employees and find out what they're thinking. And so, one simple thing to implement to help this is that you could just have an anonymous suggestions box. So, you could just say, oh well, you may not know that, “Okay, you would give us a 35-minute lunch break but then the closest restaurant is 17 minutes.”So, you start building in those kinds of things and you are like, “Okay, this is why that's happening,” or all of a sudden, a couple of people have been showing up to work live, why are they showing up late? Oh, maybe because now what they are doing like construction on the highway that's really like, so now they have to build an extra time. These are just little questions because this is day to day, it's human dynamics. But if you're not asking the questions, how do you know? And so, it's communication and it's not just top down communication, it's also bottom up communication because you need to know what people are feeling. She’d say the communication aspect of it. And another thing is just implementing team building exercises. So, one thing that she does enjoy about her legal space that she works in, they make it a point to celebrate everything. And so, this month, she just got an email this morning they're doing Asian Pacific celebration. They celebrate black history month, Hispanic heritage month, there are always some little celebrations, whether it's ice cream day, it doesn't take anything out of a business to bring in three tubs of ice cream. Maybe everybody won't participate but guess what? When your employees are now seeing each other, not only as my coworker and they have an exchange, how is your mom doing or whatever, you feel more comfortable asking them. One, “Okay, do you have a template on this legal case that I need?”It breaks down the whole just competitive nature of any space and it makes it more familiar. So, that's also an aspect, but lots of times people are thinking, well, the one hour that we take to do this every month, they could be doing more, they could be answering phones. Actually, maybe not. Sometimes that one hour that they use increases the productivity more because now one, they feel more affirmed in the space, they feel like they matter, you did something nice to acknowledge them, it makes them want to be loyal, want to work harder for you. So little things like happiness workshops, building emotional resilience, you asked me, okay, “How is it that you translate the rejection or the failure into productivity?”People don't know what they don't know, they don't know. Rochelle stated that she’s a psychology major and she never even knew the school and positive psychology existed until she went seeking that thing two years ago. So, think about all the employees within your environment that literally just don't know. And so, a lot of us stop formative learning at around the age of 21 to 24 years old, let's say you graduated from Undergrad at 22 years old, 24 let's say you, as an attorney, you have this additional three. So, let's just say most of the formative learning, 25 that’s it, you stop learning if you're not forced to learn. So, all you're doing day to day is the exact thing that you have known before you showed up at this job.Why wouldn't you want to help people expand their minds, bring in different speakers?

 

Just the little things to challenge people, to open their mind, one hour of how to increase productivity chat today. One hour of building emotional resilience, one-hour of becoming a better communicator, but even employers, a lot of them don't even know that these things exist. So, they would not even see the importance because she’s very, very clear when she presents, when she talks about happiness, she’s always very clear that the things that she talks about are rooted in science, it's not just “wooo….woooo….woooo.”That's so fleeting. There's no subjectivity but no, there is tons and tons and thousands of research studies about happiness in the workplace. Employers need to be made aware that these services are available and really the importance of equipping themselves with the knowledge in order to help their employees become more productive. Because guess what? That's the point to work. People are at work for productivity, to make money, to get returns on investment, if you're not doing that, then you're are just having a hobby. You want to have an impact of course. So, there are certain deliverables that you know you need. So, if in being there are standard things that you could be doing to get the results that you need for your business. Why aren't you doing it?

 

Yanique stated, lots of powerful nuggets there. Keep happiness workshops, talk about the emotional resilience, having a culture where people feel comfortable and the feel at home at work. Very important to ensuring that you have a strong service culture. And a lot of what you touched on focused on the fact that at the end of the day when a customer has a bad experience is really symptom of something that's happening internally, which means that the staff is not happy, the energy flows from the top down, so probably the leaders themselves have no sense of direction in terms of their own happiness and if you don't know where you're going, then there's no way you're going to be able to lead other people.

 

  • Rochelle shared that there are days when she doesn’t feel motivated. She’s human, so that's one of the things that she is very vulnerable and very clear about. She wakes up and she choose to act. So, sometimes you have to get past the emotion of things, but then there are days when she literally says, “No Ro, you need to just relax because you can't pour from an empty tank.”And she said earlier, work life balance. She is a better Rochelle when she gets adequate amounts of sleep. She is a better Rochelle when she is working out. So, motivation comes for her, comes from the fact that she’s actually doing work that she loves, work that she knows she was put on this earth to do, even when she’s tired, she could talk about happiness. She can teach people or motivate people about ways to infuse their life with more joy. She loves to inspire people to become the best versions of themselves. So, she truly believes that she’s operating in purpose, but it doesn't mean that every day is just wake up and bounce off the wall with energy days. It just means that she makes the choice because one thing that she’s keenly aware of is that our time is finite. And so, she doesn’t know if she’ll have tomorrow or if she'll have next week or the week after that. So, one thing that really keeps her going is that she lives everyday as if it's her last day because it very well could be her last day. And so, with that at the forefront of her mind, it helps her to one, not get bogged down in the small things that really are not edifying or not helping her become better. And then it also helps her get through and process negative emotion sooner. Cause she’s like, “Well, if I only have a finite amount of time, do I really want to spend my energy on this negative thing or this negative person or I'm I going to use my energy to be more solution focused or solution based.”So, it really is a mindset matter for her. So, she renews her mind like in the Bible it says, “Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”She literally tries to renew her mind every morning. One, she doesn't really dwell in the past because she can't change the past. And so that is what a lot of us do as humans, they're just scientific concept rumination where you will just get stuck and bogged down in this thinking and rumination coupled with regret causes us to just be crippled. And we'll just keep thinking, “Oh, I should have done this better.” “I should have done that better.”“If I could just change this.”But really you can't change it, all you have the power to do is changed your present. With that in mind, she’s like, “Okay, I'm going to use the lessons of yesterday and the past to propel me into a greater future and a greater presence.” For her, everything starts in your mind, if you conquer your mind and your thoughts, then it's just sets you back. It sets you back.So, for her, she’s huge on affirmations, she wakes up in the morning, she affirms herself, even when her energy's low, “Ro - You woke up this morning. That's a blessing. You can do it.” And by the time she kind of gets herself hyped up with her affirmations, she feels better and then she also uses different inspirational tools. She reads success magazine, there's an Instagram page that she loves before 5:00 am by Joe Duncan, he always has really good energy. So sometimes the inspiration may not come from her internally, but she knows the sources that she needs to go to get inspired. She’s keenly aware that she’s a human being and that everyday she’s not about to be on firing at 100% cause she’s not that. She gives herself space for that, there are days that she just decided today she’s just going to wake up and if all she did today was survive then that's enough and she celebrates that too. Every day doesn't have to be a winning day, some days she literally woke up, she made it through the today, here she is and she’s alive and some days it’s just sits in the bed and read a good book and have passive thoughts because you need silence in order to activate your creativity.If you're always doing something, then you don't just have the time to just let your mind be clear enough to be able to have creative thoughts.

 

Yanique agreed. As a leader in an organization, you also have to have some of these conversations with your team members whether it’s in group or one on one to kind of get them to that place because the reality is we're all socialized differently and it's clear your parents did a really great job in getting your mind to that point where you are able to just turn yourself around and you know exactly what to do to get to that point. But that's because you've been cultured that way, so it's very easy for you to connect that way. But in an organization where you have so many different personalities, let's say you're leading a team with 50 people. I was at church yesterday and Father said in church, statistics for Jamaica is one in every 40% of Jamaica he said, or one in every five people that you meet are suffering from some psychological disorder. It’s resounding, it would mean then that if you have an organization, it's quite possible that 5% to 10% of the people that work with you are having psychological issues. But do you know, and then mental health is not something that we're just feeling very comfortable to talk about.

 

  • Rochelle then stated that this is where she mentioned earlier about the company culture and it's the feedback. So, this is a thing, when you said you stand in your truth, you liberate others to stand in their truth.She’s speaking generally, but let's say for a business specifically, your employees are going to react to the environment that you have cultivated for them. Which is why she said if you are saying in performance evaluations are you happy or you are also sending out email databases, let's say, you have your company email and small implementation, every month you may have a newsletter. All of a sudden someone reads that and they're like, “Okay, they care about this.”you're not going to hear someone saying, “Hey, do you have mental health issues?”But no, you have now made it okay to talk about these things because you have presented it in the newsletter or you put up a flyer in the lunch room that says that, so now people are assumed that and they're like, oh, they have this in the work room or you may have books in the office library that some are on whatever, like happiness or bipolar disorder or feelings of depression. People want to start seeing that in the environment. They're like, okay, we could talk about this thing and the mere of fact that they put this in here, it means that somebody is one, made aware, two, that we could maybe talk about it and three, that now it's in their conscious mind, but that's the problem is that nobody is really talking about it so, it’s just like if you're in a group full of your friends and you said, “Oh, you know, I went to therapy this week.”All of a sudden we were like, “You went to therapy? I didn't know you go to the therapy girl.”You will make it okay to go to therapy because you have liberated them, “If Yanique can go to therapy and Yanique looks like she has it all together, then I can go to therapy too.”And she says to people, if your tooth is hurting you, you go to the dentist. So, if you're not feeling mentally good and in a good place or you're having thoughts of suicide, seek the help, but you will only seek help that you know is available to you and she thinks that is one of the main things in Jamaica is that we are a society where we don't really talk about mental disease or mental illnesses, it's still very taboo, so, as a result, nobody feels safe to say and speak up because they will feel judged and stigmatized. Whereas now in America, it is very, very, very prevalent for you to talk about it and she'll even use the example, she took 7 weeks off of work, I went on a sabbatical and how that manifested. In 2016 when she went through her breakup, she decided, “Okay, what now?” 2017 she went to her boss and she (Rochelle) has always been a really good employee, high performer, very well-adjusted happy person. And she went to her and said, “I need to have a really honest conversation with you. I'm in a space where I don't know what's next. I feel confused. I feel totally like just underwhelmed. I just don't care about work, you know, it's just like I don't want to be here.”And so, she said to her, “Oh, um, maybe you should move to our DC office or our Irvine Office?”And she was just like, “Oh, I don't think that would help because I'm just going to take the same Rochelle to all these spaces. I truly need a 5 week.” And she went and asked for unpaid leave. She didn’t want to have to think about work. She just wanted to check out of her regular environment, go away somewhere and just be able to be one with her thoughts and just think about what she wanted to do next. And so, Rochelle uses that example all the time because she had a supervisor who was empathetic and understood what she meant by saying, “I needed a moment.”So, imagine if she went to her and she’s just like, “Oh, we don't care, get back to work.” But she felt safe and her workplace created an environment where she felt comfortable enough to go to her to say that. And she ended up getting 7 weeks paid vacation and in those 7 weeks she traveled all over Europe. She was based in Oxford with a friend who was a Dean at Oxford University. She was based there and then she traveled around, that's where she wrote her book and she came back to work feeling one, rejuvenated, refocused, renewed and so, everybody won't necessarily have the opportunity to do what she did but what we hope people have the opportunity to do is feel safe to say that to their boss. That's why she’s a firm believer of allowing employees to have a mental health day, it doesn't necessarily mean that all you have to be sick with chicken pox or the flu. No, you literally took the day off because you just needed to be off to whether you go to the therapist or whether you went to the beach just for a moment to read, re-gather yourself. And so, that's what she’s saying, the conversations just need to be had so people feel safe to be able to talk about it but it’s just little clues that you could start incorporating, the flyer in the break room, the asking are you happy in this performance evaluation, putting the books library at the office, sending out in the newsletter. Maybe just including a positive quote every month, asking employees to submit a positive quote, to be included in the newsletter so they feel like, “Okay, they want to make an effort at this.”Sothen people want to speak up.

 

Yanique agreed. So, we have to have more leaders who are open to being vulnerable and being empathetic and caring enough that you feel safe and you can share information with them. You were speaking a while ago, you reminded me of one of the people that I look up to so, so much. She helped me so much during a time in my life when I needed to get through some family issues. Brene’ Brown and I did a course with her. I can picture the two of you on stage, I think you should. I think you should try and partner with her to do something because I can see the two of you are clearly aligned, I get the same feeling, I get the same message, I get the same connectivity when I hear you speak and when I hear Brene’ speak.

 

Rochelle asked if Yanique had watch Brene’ Brown’s documentary The Call to Courage? People need to feel safe to just be themselves. And so, this is another thing she'll say is it starts honestly with you. When she goes to work, she doesn’t care about the energy that is in the office, she shows up as her happiest, best Rochelle self. She tells everybody good morning, she gives people compliments, people want positive feedback. She tells her coworkers, “I appreciate you.”She brings maybe a $5 Starbucks gift card every once in a while. It's just little things because happiness truly starts within yourself. If you are not happy internally, you will not be able to go to work and just miraculously be this happy employee. No, you have to be happy within yourself and then what you show up as it is what's coming out of you. So, she always, good morning, she talked to the Security Guards at work, every person wants to be seen and feel that they matter. And so, when your boss looks on you and says to you, “How was your weekend?”You feel good because it's not, “Where's the report? What did you do?”No, it literally is, how was your weekend? It took one second and it's your boss so you're not going to sit there and say, “Oh wow. I went to the club and then I got drunk.”No, you probably stop and say, “It was great. How was yours?”That's it. It just like a co-worker last week unfortunately her sister had a stroke and ended up passing. Should come back and it was so sad. And so, she came back to work, we had flowers on her desk, like succulents. So, she'd have to water it and nurturing, that literally didn't cost anything other than $10. But you could tell the gratitude on her face when she saw that we did that and signed a card for her. It's the same, it's little things, it's just being kind. Every person wants to be in an environment that's one, positive, two, where you just feel like you could go there and not feel judged or overworked or overstressed and people actually will work harder for you if you treat them well and it doesn't take a lot to treat people well. She'll use this as an example. Last week she had a rash on her arm randomly, had to go to the doctor on Wednesday and there was a case that she worked on that was time sensitive and she needed to bring it to work. But her boss said to her, “Oh, I know you're having this rash as long as you're okay, don't worry about the time sensitivity of this file.” She ended up going to work Thursday at 2:00 pm to drop it to off.

 

Rochelle made that extra effort because her boss treats her with respect, and she cares about her. When she saw her in the office on Tuesday, she actually saw my arm and she's like, “What's wrong with your arm?” So, it didn't take anything out of her (Rochelle) now on Thursday to go out of her way to go there with this rash still on her hand to drop off this time sensitive file. Before she left the office, she came by and she said to her, “I appreciate you for coming to do this because I know you didn't have to.” And that makes a difference. She will show up for her again and again and again and again because not only does she just look on her as a worker, she looks at her as an actual human being because we can all get a rash, we could all be sick, we could all have a sister who had a stroke.

 

Yanique agreed. And that's what you want. You want bosses are people who you work with who can connect with you on a human level, who care. And they don't just take for granted that because you're being paid, you have to do it. You don't have to, and you have a choice. And the fact that you made the effort and then she actually recognized the fact that you made the effort, you definitely appreciate the fact that she values you.

 

Rochelle stated, exactly and that's what she keeps saying. People just want to feel valued and they'll do more if you are just a kind person. It's small things, when you're in the office, stop pushing the closed door on the elevator, hold the door for somebody to come, just basic things. If you see somebody walked in with the box or the bags I the vows, the little 10 seconds that you will use to open the door for them. It's just the little things, it's not a big thing, but it all starts within you. So, each individual as you show up as your best self in the office, people will also want to show up as their best self.

 

  • When asked about a tool that she couldn’t live without in her business, Rochelle stated Google. Google is every single thing. There is nothing you cannot find out on Google. Simple things as how do I put this new column on a Microsoft Excel Sheet, let's use that as an example. Google, there's a video to show you how to do it. There's an article and a video, whatever your learning style is, it's there for you. But you know what it is, we live in our society now where people don't really want to seek a lot of knowledge, they want you to tell them so it's like our curiosity is just going down, but we have more access to information than we ever had in history. There's no reason why you shouldn't be seeking answers, just like, okay, if your boss says, “Oh I need you to do this one thing.”you don't know how to do it, you don't have to be waiting, you need to be very self-motivated, be self-actualize, be able to find things for yourself. People don’t have to spoon feed you knowledge, go and look for it as simple as Google because guess what, Google will give you the research article, but it will also give you the easily digestible information too, and we all have smartphones. So, gone are the days where like, “Oh, I can only go on the laptop.” No, it's right there at your fingertips. So, for her, she would say Google is one of the things by far every single thing that you need to figure out, it’s there. Even her as a lawyer, she looks up stuff all the time just to get your pulse of what it is, like okay contracts on Blah Blah Blah. Oh, what happened in this circuit court? Easy. But obviously they are the legal databases that have the knowledge, but in Google she gets a wide variety of information, articles, news articles, interviews from people that talk to issues that matter to them. What she will also say that we have to start doing as individuals on a whole, stop seeking information from the same exact sources. So, for instances, open your mind, so if you are someone who watches CNN all the time, why not watch BBC? Or if you always read Huffington Post, why not just go to Fox News to see what they're talking about? So, what happens is that we become so insular sometimes and we just stick to what we know that you're not learning about anybody else or what other people are thinking. How are people doing your exact business in India? Have you thought about that? You could become more efficient. You don't know, let's just say there's really no new, new, new idea, so there’s somebody doing exactly what you're doing somewhere else in the world. But have you ever even taken the time to see what they're doing, what’s the digital agency doing in Russia right now, what’s the digital agency doing in Pakistan, they have a digital agency there. Have you ever thought to research what they are doing? Maybe you'll have a couple of Aha moments.

 

Yanique agreed. Even from a customer service perspective, customers don't benchmark their customer experience and much same businesses anymore. So, you have local companies in Jamaica who are being compared to Amazon even though they're not in the same space. But that's because people are having different types of experiences and they're expecting that, if that company can do it then why can't you?

 

Rochelle agreed and stated that the thing she will say, people are not open to criticism. This is the issue because people take criticism as a reflection of who they are, they get defensive. You could have a $20 bill and you could crush it, you could step on it, whatever, it's still a $20 bill, it doesn't change its value because you crushed it up or threw it against the wall or whatever. So, what a lot of employers could do, especially when you're in a customer service-based industry, you need to be asking your clients and your customers on a regular basis, what could we do better? She'd be open to what they sell. She’s not saying you're going to ask them every day or every week whatever, but you literally can just be like, you know what, April I'm going to have a What Could We Do Better Campaign twice a year. And then whoever you send it out or you ask them and nowadays you have Instagram, it's so easy. And you could easily say, “All right, well when I come in to Tastee or Sugar and Spice during 12:00 pm to 3:00 pm rush hour time, I would hope that you'd have minimum 4 cashiers because I need to get in and out.”But that's just simple. So, all you do is know that during that time you are going to do that, it's not hard, it's not rocket science but you don't know because you're not asking because now you're taking the criticism as an affront to you as an individual and becoming sensitive to the feedback, not realizing that feedback is literally what makes us better. And she has had to work on that because it's easy to be in your head thinking that,“Oh, I have it all figured out.” But guess what? You also only have your point of view and your view of the world. So, you could teach me certain things, you could say, “Rochelle, how have you ever thought about doing it that way?” And all of a sudden, her mind has now expanded, and she could do it that way.

 

And so, with customers, because you're dealing with people on a day to day basis, it is imperative, and it is so important that you ask what could I do better? Where could I improve? And you know what too, you'll start seeing trends, you'll see like 10, 12 people say the same exact thing and then you're like, oh whoa or you may even get really good ideas. It's interesting that recently she announced that she’s going to launch an online course called Happily Single and she has put it out there just randomly, haven’t given much of the course details or anything. She has had so many people one, send her direct messages about little things that they think she should include. She did her filming in two different sittings, so she took their feedback and she implemented some of that and then one random girl said, “Oh, do I smell another book coming?” And she’s just like ding, ding, ding, because she thinks she’s going to write a book about this. But she would never have received that feedback if she wasn't a person who always, when she communicates with the people, her audience, she always ask them, “What do you think I could do better?”or “What do you want to learn more about?”and she doesn’t take it as an affront because guess what? She’s not every single woman living in the world, nor is she every person seeking happiness in the world. So, she needs to know what people need to hear from her, to become successful.

 

Yanique agreed. So, feedback is very, very important and it's not even just from a customer experience perspective, it's just generally speaking. It's funny you mentioned that because I find a lot of businesses and even people generally when they do get criticism, they do get defensive and they get defensive in the weirdest ways. I remember a couple of years ago I went to a fast food chain and I found a cockroach in my box. And the first thing the cashier asked me when she opened the box was if the cockroach was dead or alive. I'm not sure how that question was even relevant because whether or not the cockroach was dead or alive, the point is that the cockroach was in the box. So, the questions that we ask, I'm assuming the question was probably going down the avenue of well maybe if a cockroach was alive, possibly he crawled in there at a different venue not at the venue that they had presented me with the box. But regardless, we do get defensive as people and I put myself into it as well. Sometimes you think, as you said, it's a personal attack against us as a person and if you really just try to take the emotion out of it and look objectively at what a person is saying and just look at the fact that maybe there is some merit in what they're saying and maybe that's something that you could change or do better.

 

Rochelle agreed and stated because how do you become better if you aren’t learning? And a part of learning, it's just like when you're a child, if you got a math problem wrong, then you knew it was an area you probably needed to study more. You didn't study the things that you got right all the time, you tried to also correct the things that you got wrong and it made you better, so the next time we took the math test, you got the question right.

 

  • When asked about books that have had the biggest impact, Rochelle stated that The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom by Don Miguel Ruiz, she will not talk stop talking about this book. The Four Agreements, it is tiny and it maybe short read, but it is the gift that keeps on giving because it's literally 4 topics and her favorite isDon't Take Things Personally, that's agreement number 2 and it goes right into what we just spoke about, about getting the feedback and not making that be a reflection of who you are. It's not a reflection of who you are, it's just information and so, The Four Agreements, it's one of the books she tells all her clients to read it, she tells every friend to read it. She kind of can’t stopped talking about this book. She has a mini version on her nightstand and then the original version on her nightstand also but it's such a good book. So, she would suggest that each person read that book. It's an older book now, it is Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell. So that's one of those books that she really loves and her book One Happy Thought at a Time: 30 Days to a Happier You. But she loves about Outliers is that it's just the truth, it's not rocket science, what you practice and what you do over and over again, you become better at and you're just not going to cheat the system. You're just not going to cheat the system, every single successful person who is operating in a spirit of excellence they’ll tell you, they practice, and they practice more. So, let's even talk about Beyoncé, she recently released her Coachella performance on Netflix. She said she practiced for 8 months for a 2 day; 2 hours isn’t that wow. But people would just look on Beyoncé and be like, “Well, it's Beyoncé.”No, she is Beyoncé obviously because she has natural talent, but she is also Beyoncé because she’s putting in those 10,000 hours. So, Rochelle says to people, you have to do the work, you're not going to cheat the system, you have to do the work. Usain Bolt, he trained hard. Michael Jordan, he trained hard. Lebron James, he trained hard. You know what, at the end of the day things may not go your way and you get back up again, and you keep training hard and you keep working hard. And so, she would say you just have to put in the work, want to accomplish your goals, to accomplish your dreams. We all start at different starting points in life, so it's not saying that, oh, the person who started with the private school education and the access to tutors and all that, may not have more assets up front to mobilize but it just means that you may have to work a bit harder, but nothing is really out of your reach but you have to just try it. So many of us, we just get bogged down in trying to see the entire story and how we're going to make it work rather than just taking the first step. And so, she always says, small wins are still wins and those small wins build the momentum for the big wins. So, she tells clients, so you have a business idea just buy the domain name, you'd be surprised what that $9.99 investment on GoDaddy does for your self-esteem and for your confidence. But if you sit down, you're like, “All right, I have to writing the 20-page business plan, get the funding, build the website that Dah, Dah, Dah.”By the time we think about all the things that you have to do, you just are kind of demotivated, you kill your spirit, but if you just start operating, just putting one foot in front of the other, you'll be surprised and that's why she likes to talk about little tools to help you, which is why she said you'll be surprised what that flyer in the lunchroom does.

 

Are you happy? How could we make the workplace better? Here's the anonymous box, putting your feedback. We just want to hear from you. We value our employees, literally just having even a wall with some positive posts in there, positive quotes on the wall. You may have it in the bathroom stall. So, you walk in and you're like every day you may not feel like being here, but you show up every day, that quote, all of a sudden you see, you're like, okay, I got you. That's true. Every day I don't feel like being there, but I'm showing up, and you reading that, it just triggered something in your brain so it's not big, big things, it's just little things that ultimately that we just all have to start doing individually and then of course as a group that will help increase the customer experience and just ultimately enhance all our environments because a happier employee goes home as a happier parent, as a happier spouse.

 

  • Rochelle stated that Women Winning Now, it is on June 9th in New York, they are so excited. It's a month away. And they're in the throes of planning and the thing about Women Winning Now, for those who don't know, it's a woman's empowerment summit and she love it because she became so much better after each one. So, they've had Miami, Toronto, London so far. And they have all sold out and what is beautiful about it is that women come in that room and you can tell the trepidation, and everybody comes in with different stories. Some women they want motivation to start a business, some people just want to know that they're just not even alone and so, by the end of the day, the transformation that literally takes place in that small amount of time, it's incredible and she always tell people, the best investment you could make is an investment in yourself. So, as much as she imparts knowledge into those ladies, every time she leaves any Women Winning Now, she’s a better Rochelle for having experienced the people, having heard their stories and having their knowledge imparted on her. So, she’s really, really excited about it. Her business partners Rachel and Nicole, all of them, their missions in life is to truly impact others and just make them see that they too are capable of creating the life that they imagine and that they dream of and not only are they able to do that, but to see that it just is a work in progress because we don't have it all figured out and she thinks that's one of the things that most of the women realize is that, “Oh, they're also trying to figure it out too.” Because as long as you're living, you're always growing, and so you'll always be figuring something out. So, if it's not okay now I'm a single woman, but then I'm going to transition hopefully one day into being a wife and a mom, I'll have to figure that out. So, it's beautiful being around other people, hearing their stories, she'd go back to the vulnerability aspect of things when you see other people as confused as you or trying to be great, you don't feel as alone anymore and you're like, “Whoa, she was me 2 years ago. I was, Rochelle went through the breakup, was trying to seek my purpose and here I am. Now, I'm clearer. It doesn't mean I know everything, but I'm a little bit clearer and so now, I share my wisdom.” So even if she could prevent another woman from getting as stuck as she was in that season, that's a huge benefit to her.

 

  • Rochelleshared listeners can find her at –

Instagram - @rochelle.gapere

Twitter - @RochelleGapere

Facebook - @RochelleGapereHappinessCoach

Website - www.rochellegapere.com

 

  • Rochelle shared that her quote is Romans 8:28, “I am a Believer.” That verse has literally sustained her, and she may even get a little teary eyed saying it, “All things really do work together for good, for those who love God and are called according to his purpose.” So, the good things of course, when they are good, it works for her good and she is able to really just appreciate that. But when it’s bad, that’s the hard part and just knowing and repeating that that yes, it may be bad right now, it may be bad in this moment but in the grand scheme of things Rochelle knows that God is using it for the betterment of her in fulfillment of her purpose and so, no matter what season she has ever been in her life, that bible verse it has sustained her. It really keeps her grounded and it just makes you know that no matter how disappointing today may be that tomorrow can always be better and that if she has the right perspective, she knows that it will all be blending together, the good, the bad, the not so good, as this incredible cake and she gets to choose the ingredients that she wants to put in that cake in terms of the memories she attached to the good things or the bad things and she knows it works together for her good and it just really keeps her going. So, even the bad things really, truly aren’t that bad.

 

Links

 

 

Apr 24, 2019

Sandy Rogers is one of the most prolific minds on the topic of customer and employee loyalty. He will change the very way your organization views the topic and will help orient your company towards winning loyal customers and employees for life. Sandy Rogers is a leader of FranklinCovey’s Loyalty Practice, a FranklinCovey offering which helps organizations increase customer and employee loyalty. He was previously the senior vice president at Enterprise Rent-A-Car and during his 14 years there, Sandy managed the turnaround of the London, England, operation and led the teams that developed Enterprise’s marketing and fleet-services strategies, the advertising campaign “Pick Enterprise. We’ll Pick You Up,”and the system for measuring and improving customer service across all branches.

 

Before Enterprise, he worked in marketing at Apple and brand management at P&G. He has a bachelor's degree from Duke and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.

 

Questions

 

  • Tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey?
  • Could you tell us a little bit about this loyal to practice? What does it entail? If a company wanted to take on this venture in their organization, what are some of the things that would have to happen?
  • I want you to talk to us about why it's so important to have a healthy internal customer service culture.
  • Could you share with us, you've been in the customer experience realm for quite a bit of time, how do you feel about customer experience on a global level and where do you see it 5 or 10 years from today?
  • What are some important considerations person who operates in the online space should consider to improve on their customer experience, especially seeing that they're lacking that human element?
  • Could you share maybeone online resource tool, website or app that you couldn't absolutely live without in your business?
  • Could you share with us some books that have had the biggest impact on you?
  • What’s one thing that’s going on in your life right now that you’re really excited about – either something that you’re working on to develop yourself or people?
  • Could you tell our listeners where they can find you online?
  • What’s one quote or saying that during times of adversity or challenge in your life, you tend to revert to that quote or saying to help you to refocus?

 

Highlights

 

  • Sandy shared that he spent most of his career with Enterprise Rent-A-Car and he joined the company and one of his first challenges was to figure out how to help grow the business faster, in the position of leading marketing and they figured the best way to do that was to provide an experience that would get everybody to tell your friends about Enterprise, so they would come back and help the business grow. And they had no measure of customer service, they thought they were pretty good, across the 3000 branches, they had back then, but they had no metric and so they early on measured it, figured out that they're good overall, but there was huge variation across the chain. And over the next 10 years he and his team, the whole group in Enterprise figured out how to dramatically improve customer service and as a result of what they did, Fred Reichheld at Bain wrote up a book and introduced this whole idea of the Net Promoter Score. And so, at Enterprise he had a lot of different jobs, but when he retired about 10 years ago, Franklin Covey, he got in touch with him about launching a loyalty practice under their umbrella to help other companies build a culture like they had at Enterprise that was really focused on delighting customers to help the business grow faster.

 

  • Sandy shared that they do two things. They first help organizations measure the loyalty of their customers today and learn specifically not only what they need to do to improve, but equally important, who on their team needs to improve. They have a real passion for the importance of people in taking an ordinary experience and making it extraordinary. So, you got to know who on your team is terrific and should be studied for best practices and who needs coaching. So, beyond the metrics, the second part of what they do in the Franklin Covey Loyalty Practice is provide training and a method that enabled teams to get better at earning the loyalty of their customers faster.

 

Yanique asked, if you could share with us what you think that difference is between satisfaction and loyalty and why is it so important?

 

Sandy shared that just thinking about our own experiences as consumers, we may be satisfied and said, “How was everything?” “Oh, it was fine. Yeah I was satisfied.” But the difference between that and the loyalty that every organization wants from its customers and its employees is huge. With loyalty, not only are customers giving you all of their business, but in addition, they are enthusiastically talking you up, singing your praises, recommending you to all their friends. You have the double impact of their business plus the business of all the people they talked to.

 

Yanique stated, so loyalty is something that all organizations should aim for?

 

Sandy stated that he thinks almost every organization that is serious wants loyalty, they want loyalty from their customers. And they've learned over the last 25 years working with hundreds of different organizations that the key to increasing customer loyalty begins with improving employee loyalty.

 

Yanique shared that she’s happy he touched on that. As a Customer Service Trainer, because that's how I got into having this podcast in the first place. Companies hire me to come in and train their staff in customer service, leadership development employee and team building. And I have found over the years and I've had it reinforced by so many guests that we've interviewed on the podcast that at the end of the day when your service is poor, it's usually a symptom of something that's deeper within the organization and it stems from the employees and of course leadership.

 

  • Sandy shared that the customer experience rarely exceeds the employee experience. He actually agrees with Yanique’s thought that we've got to, as an organization, treat employees in a way that they will in turn take great care of our customers. And back to his Enterprise experience, Jack Taylor, the founder of Enterprise Rent-A-Car, which is the largest car rental company in North America and perhaps the world now when you combine Alamo and National, which they also own. He said it's really simple. When people walk out of one of the thousands of Enterprise branches, they should feel like, “Wow, that was one of the best experiences I've ever had.” And we realized that that's all about our people and how the people are treating those customers. So, when Jack would go with him to visit some of the branches that he was overseeing in London, England, he would ask the employees, he'd meet, “Are you having fun?”And he (Sandy) would say, “Jack, why are you asking them if they're having fun? Talk to them about their sales, about their customer service scores.”He called him and many other Sport, he says, “Sport, if they're not having fun, nothing else really matters.”And so, when we think about how do we create an environment where people are having fun - very simply, we believe it's putting them in a position to enrich the lives of other people. Not just the customers, but each other, the people they work with every day. And that's what they talk about in this book through these three core loyalty principles.

 

Yanique shared that the book focuses on three core loyalty principles and the book is going to be called, as Sandy mentioned prior to the interview, Leading Loyalty: Cracking the Code to Customer Devotion.

 

The book is going to focus on:

 

  • How it is that you can infuse empathy, responsibility, and generosity into every interaction. Make those interactions warm and authentic.
  • Ask the right questions
  • Listen to learn
  • Discover the real job to be done
  • Take ownership of the customer's issue
  • Follow up and strengthen the relationship
  • Share insights openly and kindly
  • Surprise people with unexpected extras and the bonus, Model, Teach and Reinforce these Essential Behaviors Through Weekly Team Huddles.

 

So, what I'm getting is the book is not only focused on teaching the three principles, but it also is providing the how to as to how you're going to maintain consistency, because that's the challenge in customer experience. So, you go a company and you have a great experience today, but you visit them next month when you travel, if we're to use Enterprise as an example, and the experience you had last month is nothing compared to the one you had this month. And so, how do they maintain being consistent in their behaviors regardless of the location that you've gone to, regardless of the employee that you're dealing with.

 

Sandy stated that that is such an important observation. Every company in the world has pockets of greatness, where you'll get good service. The difference between a good organization and a great customer service organization comes down to the consistency of great experiences across, every week and all their different locations and people in call centers, etc. And to drive that consistency, we believe you've got to do these two things. One, you've got to have good measures that are telling you every month who's doing a great job and who needs coaching. And second, what they talk about in the book Leading Loyalty is a process to make sure that people understand the principles essential to earning loyalty, to bring those to life each week. So, in the book they talk about having a 15-minute huddle each week with your team and first celebrate the people who are living the principle you talk about last week. Then learn the nuances of how to apply the next one over the following week and then making a commitment to each other to do these things and come back next week and talk about what was successful and what didn't work as well.

 

Yanique stated that it's definitely having more conversations and helping people to grow and develop because the more robust your team is, the more knowledgeable they are of their shortcomings and limitations, then the better they'll be able to work at improving on those interactions and not repeating the negative behaviors that will create negative experiences.

 

Sandy agreed and stated that just simply modeling the behavior you want is the first step, but then calling up. We don't need to wait a week to point out, “Gosh Yanique, I just want to tell you. I just saw how you interacted with that customer. That is absolutely fantastic. We just talked about how important empathy is and that was a perfect example.”So, we've got to celebrate every time we see the behaviors that we want to happen more consistently.

 

Yanique agreed and stated that when you do that, it makes people aware of what it is that is correct and they'll want to repeat that behavior because people love recognition, it's not just about the dollar in terms of getting more money, but it's also about how you made them feel in that experience.

 

Sandy stated, underline, underscore, it is not just what we measure that drives improvement, it's what gets celebrated. We want to leave our work each day and feeling like, “Wow, I had a good day. Why was that? Cause I made a difference. I was recognized for doing something great for one of my teammates or one of our customers.” And so, the more celebration the better.

 

  • Sandy stated that in his own experience as a business and a consumer, sometimes it's absolutely dreadful and we all have those stories. And occasionally it's incredible. And when we think about those incredible experiences that each of us have as customers, we're all customers, it often comes down to the people and how they made us feel. Our behavior delivers the emotional experience essential for earning the fierce loyalty of other people. And so, they really talk about in the book Leading Loyalty that you've got to have a loyalty leader mindset. You've got to begin with this idea that “I am responsible”regardless of what your job is in the organization. You can be the CEO or you could be the assistant or the frontline person, you can choose to be a loyalty leader and adopt a loyalty leader mindset, which simply says, “I am going to earn the loyalty of everybody I encounter by having empathy for them, taking responsibility for what it is they're trying to get done and I'm going to be generous with them.”

 

Yanique agreed and stated, I had also asked, apart from how you feel about customer experience, where do you see it 5 to 10 years from today? Do you think it's going to change very much? There's so much technology that's being introduced now, there's chatbots, there's so much things that are replacing that human interaction, but I personally believe that at the end of the day, even though these things are there to aid in the client experience, I think still people want to deal with another human being. Do you think that will change much 5 to 10 years from now?

 

Sandy shared that he thinks increasingly we will see technology used in both positive and negative ways in our experience. If the people designing the technology are doing it with the loyalty principles in mind, if they had empathy for customers, technology is great. We've all learned how to do online banking, we've learned how to check ourselves in for flights, we've learned how to order things from Amazon and when those things are working well, it's terrific. But there are times when we need a human being. He had a problem one time with the Amazon and he actually got a human being and he was blown away by how well that they handled his problem and it gave him tremendous confidence that “Wow, not only did the people who design all of us have empathy for me, but when I do have a problem, there's a human being there that will care and will take responsibility for getting it sorted out.”

 

Sandy thinks it's going to be both over the next 10 years. It's going to be increased technology, but there will always be that human component that Yanique alluded to.

 

  • Sandy shared that every person has a customer, whether they're inside or outside the organization and all of our work directly impacts their experience. The people behind the online customer experience need to ensure that it's fully aligned with the core loyalty principles. So, if he uses whatever brilliant app that has been designed as a customer do you walk away and feel like, “Wow, that was so easy. Whoever designed this is like, they’re a genius. This is so great,”and that comes from having empathy for them as the user. Now, if on the other hand, he’s typing in information that the company should already know, then he’s feeling like, “These people have no empathy for me. What's with that? I've been doing business with them for five years.” So that these principles of empathy, responsibility and generosity have to come through regardless of whether it's a human being interaction or we're using technology to connect with the organization.

 

  • Sandy shared that the online tool that he couldn't live without is Google Maps, that's how he gets everywhere.

 

Yanique shared, this is the first time I've been doing these podcasts as the first guest I've had that said Google Maps.

 

Sandy stated that in the old days they'd say, “Oh, just go take a left here, drive three blocks, take a right here, take a left there.”  Now, he’ll just put in Google Maps.

 

Yanique agreed, Google Maps is amazing. And that's very true. I even use it here in Jamaica if I'm going out of town to somewhere that I'm not very familiar with and I'm just amazed at how well it works. It's really accurate to the point, “You've arrived at your destination on the right,” and when you look over, it's exactly where you're going. So, I totally agree.

 

  • When asked about books that have had the biggest impact, Sandy shared that the book he read back when it first came out, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. That book has just such an enduring value and to just keep revisiting, my children tease me about the seven habits and reminding me, “Oh dad, that doesn't sound very win-win.”You have to live the advice you're preaching to your children.

 

Yanique agreed, and we all need people in our corner, in our tribe to help keep us accountable because we're human and yes, we read these books and we do our best to try and live these behaviors and attitudes on a daily basis, but sometimes we mess up. That's the truth. So, if we have people in our corner that know what those things are and they can call us out on it, it makes us even more aware and just keeps us aligned.

 

Sandy shared that that's one of the things they teach in Leading Loyalty. There are three core loyalty principles. The third one is generosity. You got to have empathy for people, take responsibility for helping them and then be generous with them. And one of the ways that we're generous is we share our insights openly. So, if you see something as my coworker or my friend that would really help me, we have a huddle in the book, chapter nine, which describes how do you share insights with and think about millennials and generation z where we've got a lot of confidence about how to share feedback online, but we want to have just as much confidence doing it face to face, in person where we let people know, “Hey listen, I think you're terrific. Can I just share this thought with you?”And we haven't practiced this one that we're teaching in the book.

 

Yanique stated, a lot of what you've stated since we started this interview has to do with practice and I just want, know if you could emphasize for our listeners how important it is regardless of the industry that you are in or the profession or the roles that you practice on it. You engage in on a daily basis, but in order for you to really master a particular skill or talent, practice is required, that's what builds the consistency.

 

Sandy stated no question, practice what we learn as kids, practice makes perfect. And when people hear things like empathy, responsibility, generosity, they'll say, “Well, come on. I learned that stuff in kindergarten,” and his response is, “You did. We all did.”And hopefully it's ingrained in our psyche, but just because empathy, responsibility and generosity or common sense, unfortunately they're not common practice in so many of my interactions. And so, to practice and to reinforce, they say, have a huddle once a week, bring your team together for just 15 minutes and celebrate the people who are doing these things, teach them in detail and the nuance is “How can I really discover the real job to be done for somebody,”which is our responsible practice, for example. And then challenge everybody to go try it this week and come back and share. And so, they're creating space within the whirlwind of our busy lives to practice these things so that we get better and better.

 

  • Sandy shared that he is really excited about all the feedback they're getting from different organizations running these huddles. Ah, I'll tell you a story. They recommend this huddle process, there's 11 different huddles, 11 chapters in the book, and they had this group of Auto Repair Shops and when they described the empathy, responsibility and generosity, they looked at him like, “Are you nuts? I mean come on. I mean this is, this, that, lovey, dovey, Covey's stuff.”These guys, they have been under the hood of cars, you really expect them to get together and talk about this stuff. They ran these huddles for six months and they had their customer service scores because they were providing metrics and both them and Sandy’s team were very pleasantly surprised by how dramatically they were able to improve their customer service. People get stuck in a rut, they want to get better at customer service, but they don't know how to do it. They get frustrated and for these Auto Repair Shops, they improve their scores by more than 10 points on average. The top three or four shops improved by 20 points. So, he gets excited about working on something that makes a difference.

 

Yanique stated, and so when the book is released, now people will have a how to process that they can have, a physical, Bible that they can work with that will help them to achieve those kinds of results.

 

Sandy stated that this is what's different between this book Leading Loyalty and all the other books on Loyalty, which are great by the way. He loves Fred Reichheld’s work on the Net Promoter Score, “The Ultimate Question,” most of the books up until now, talk about the theory of loyalty, about the economics, about what’s the return on investment is by improving. This book talks about a process, they give you the principles, the practices and a process to actually earn greater loyalty. And it's not just from your customers and employees that the principles apply to your personal life too, apply these things to your spouse, your kids, your family and friends.

 

Yanique agreed and stated, as a matter of fact, there is a principal, I think it's from The Eighth Habit. It's called the 90/10 principle that Covey speaks of and regardless of the workshop that I'm doing, whether it's a leadership workshop or it's an employee workshop, it's for low level employees versus in a C Suite employees, at the end of the day I always introduce the principal at the beginning of the workshop because I think it's so important and it ties back to your initial introduction when you spoke to the fact that in order for people to be loyal, there has to be some emotional engagement and connection there. So, if you're familiar with the principal, Covey says that, “90% of everything that happens to you, it's based on your response and your reaction and 10% you have no control over.”And I think as customer service, people, leaders, employees, frontline people, regardless of where you are in the company, if you remember that fundamental principle that customer comes in blazing, mad, steam coming through their ears saying things that are just unconscionable, you're like, “Oh my goodness, why is this customer saying this to me?” If you can think in your mind, just put yourself in a frame of mind where 10% is that customer, I have no control over their own behavior, what I control how I'm going to respond, I control what I'm going to say, I control the thoughts I'm going to have about this customer, it can really transform that whole interaction.

 

Sandy agreed and stated that that's taking personal responsibility. You get to choose your response; you carry around weather to use the Stephen Covey phrase. But that's such an important paradigm or mindset to adopt before that nasty customer comes in the door and yells at you for something that you really had nothing to do it. If we've got that mindset, we can say, “You know what, this is not about me.”And I can have empathy. I can say, “Oh my gosh, wow. That is incredibly frustrating, I would be really angry too, tell me more about this.” And just letting people talk about. Enterprise, one of the best ways to create a fiercely loyal customer is to find a problem and then just hear him out. Just say, “Tell me about what happened.” Offer a sincere apology, say, “Oh my gosh. I mean, I totally get that. It was incredibly frustrating,”and then ask in a very sincere way, “What can we do to make this right for you?” And you know, more than 90% of the time the customer will say, “Nothing,I mean wow. I thank you for listening.”A heartfelt apology.

 

Yanique shared, there are times, as you said, the customer just wants someone to listen, someone to pay attention, someone to not discount or discredit what they're saying by just moving onto the next thing but actually paying attention to this moment now that I'm sharing this experience with you.

 

Sandy loves that the Chinese character for listen, it contains the symbols for the ears, the eyes and the heart. So often we just use our ears but if we're not listening with our eyes, we're missing the emotion that's being expressed through that clenched fist. And if we're not listening to him with our heart, we're not sensing how upset this person really is. Using all three and so much, it's interesting the word listen and silent, they're the same letters.

 

Yanique also shared that then there's also the fact that God gave you two ears, but he only gave you one mouth. So, I'm thinking, maybe there is some reason behind that. And it could be that we really need to spend more time listening and less time talking and unfortunately in our society, people do the opposite. There's lots of talking and less listening.

 

  • Sandyshared listeners can find him at –

Linkedin – Sandy Rogers

Facebook - @SandyRogersFC

 

  • Sandy shared that his stepfather told him when he was in high school, “No risk it, no biscuit.” Whenever you're feeling comfortable in the shallow end of the pool and feel like you've got it under control, throw yourself in the deep end of the pool and keep going deeper because that’s the only way that we grow as people.

   

Links

 

 

Apr 9, 2019

Nathan Hirsch is a serial entrepreneur and expert in remote hiring and eCommerce. He started his first eCommerce business out of his college dorm room and has sold over $30 million dollars online. He is now the co-founder and CEO of FreeeUp.com, a marketplace that connects businesses with pre-vetted virtual assistants, freelancers and agencies in eCommerce, digital marketing, and much more. He regularly appears on leading podcasts, such as Entrepreneur on Fire, and speaks at live events about online hiring tactics. 

Questions

  • Couldyou share with us a little bit about your journey?
  • Could you share with us maybe one to three top tips that has really helped you to choose the right people for these organizations that you recruit for and why do you think it's important to be consistent in these attitudes or behaviors that you look for in these individuals?
  • Could you share with us how you stay motivated every day?
  • What are some important considerations for an entrepreneur or an online business owner to be successful?
  • In an online business when you're not having that interaction with someone face to face. What are some of the tools or things that you need to do differently in an online space when you're not seeing the person?
  • Could you share with us what’s one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely cannot live without in your business?
  • Could you share with us some of the books that have had the biggest impact on you?
  • We have a lot of listeners who are business owners and managers who feel they have great products and services, but for some reason they lack the constantly motivated human capital, the people. If you are sitting across the table from some of those persons, what's the one piece of advice that you would give them to have a successful business?
  • What’s one thing that's going on in your life right now that you're really excited about - either something that you're working on to develop yourself or your people?
  • Where can our listeners find you online?
  • What’s one quote or saying that during times of adversity or challenge times, you revert to that quote?

 

Highlights

 

  • Nathan shared that he started off as a broke college kid. His parents were both teachers and he always had the mentality that he would go to school, get a real job, retire and that was going to be his life. And when he was a little bit younger, his parents always made him have a full time job, all of his friends were outside playing during the summers and he was inside working and he was learning customer service and marketing and management and all the things that go into running a business. But he also learned that he just hated working for other people and he really wanted something better. So, when he got to college, he kind of looked at it as a ticking clock, he had four years to figure out how to start a business or he was going to get thrown into the real world, get a job, and never looked back. So, he started buying and selling people's textbooks, he uses that summer money and the money he made during his summer vacations to buy people's textbooks at the end of the semester and sell them at the beginning of next semester. So, he started a little business there, created a referral program, before he knew it, he had lines out the door of people trying to sell him their books to the point where he actually got a cease and desist letter from his college because he was taking up so much of their business. So, that was his first glimpse into being an entrepreneur. And this was back in 2008, Amazon was just becoming more than a bookstore, no one really knew what Amazon or eCommerce was. There were no gurus or courses or anything like that. So, he started to sell other products on Amazon, and he tried sporting equipment and video games and typical college guy stuff, and he just failed over and over and over. And it wasn't until he branched out of his comfort zone and found the baby product industry that his business really took off. So, if you could imagine him as a 20-year-old single college guy selling millions of dollars of baby products on Amazon, that was him. And he really scaled that business using remote freelancers, remote workers. He remembered meeting with his accountant and him asking him (Nathan) when he was going to hire his first person and he kind of shrugged him off and thinking, “Why would I do that? That's money out of my pocket. They're going to steal my ideas; they're going to hurt my business…”all of that. And he just kind of laughed in his face and said, “You're going to learn this lesson on your own.”

 

  • So sure, enough and before for his first hire, he posted a job on Facebook and this guy applied and he barely interviewed him and he hired him and it worked out great and he's his business partner today, amazing hire hard worker, learned quickly. So, there he was thinking that hiring was easy, that you post a job and someone shows up and your life gets easier and he proceeded to make bad hires after bad hires using a lot of the different platforms out there, the up works and the fivers and he just wanted something better and faster. So, three years ago he had the idea to launch his own marketplace FreeeUp where they vet applicants before they get on the platform, they only let the top 1% on, they make them available to clients whenever they need them, with a no turnover guarantee, if they quit for any reason, they cover replacement costs and get them a new person right away. So, that's really the evolution of him working a summer job to go into college, starting his book business, started his Amazon business and then starting FreeeUp.

 

  • Nathan stated that just to clarify, they're not recruiting, it's not like they tell them what they need, and they go find it. They’re building a network of virtual assistants, freelancers, agencies that are all the similar mold that they know will do a great job for their clients. And you're right, that vetting is so important. He learned a long time ago that when you've vet someone just for skill, a lot of time it blows up in your face. You hire someone with a five-star review or 10 years of experience and two months later you're like, “What happened? This was awful.”And so, what they realized is it's a combination of all three, you've got skill, you’ve got attitude and you’ve got communication. So, when you're dealing with skill, you don't need everyone to be a 10 out of 10, they can be a five out of 10 or three out of 10, what you care about is that they're honest about what they can and cannot do and they're priced accordingly. On the attitude side, they do one on one interviews, they look for people who are passionate, they do don't get aggressive the second that something doesn't go their way, people who can take feedback and handle it professionally. And then on the communication, obviously you want someone that speaks your language on a high level, but it's so much more than that, it's being able to get on the same page quickly and hitting deadlines and being able to respond within a business day and use whatever clients communication method that they care about. So, they really looked for that trifecta and it's very rare that you hire someone that has all three of those and then down the line, you're like, “Wow, that was a bad hire.” Usually if you get all three, it turns out pretty well and he only hires from his own platform, his internal team is all virtual assistants, freelancers that got through their vetting process, the same people that are available to his clients.

 

  • Nathan stated that motivation for him, it's funny, with his Amazon business he kind of grew up in a place where his dad taught in the high school next to him. And he lived in East Longmeadow and his dad was in Longmeadow, so, he went to high school in Longmeadow and all those kids, their parents were doctors, lawyers, dentists, business owners and so money was always a motivation because he was never poor, but he was middle class and he was always hanging out with kids that had so much more than he did. So, at first, money was that motivator and as you get deeper in that entrepreneurship and the honeymoon period kind of ends as he calls it, you realize that money's not everything and the Amazon business he lost passion for because of that reason, he wasn't helping anyone, he was just helping himself and he was helping his manufacturers and maybe his team. And, with FreeeUp, what motivates him is he gets to help business owners from all around the world achieve their dreams and scale their business. And on the flip side, freelancers who are also business owners, he gets to help them scale and provide for their family and do what they enjoy doing instead of having to get a nine to five job, so, for him, that's motivating. He’s a hardworking person regardless, it's tough to say like what is that thing that drives him, but he really found that within FreeeUp just the fact that he gets to help so many people on a day to day basis, that keeps him going. Even on days like today where he’s a little sick and he’s got three podcasts scheduled.

 

  • Nathan shared that his mentality is you can't compete with big businesses on everything, you can't. There are always going to have bigger marketing budgets, bigger software budgets and all of that. But what you can always compete is customer service and that's something that he’s always been passionate about and you can always compete with the big players on customer service, treating clients like gold and they kind of take the mentality that 99% of the freelancers do an amazing job on their platform. He spent very little time dealing with issues, but these are human, stuff happens, they're startup, things just happen when you're dealing with businesses, so, when things do happen, they jump in quickly, they don't make excuses, they take responsibility and they just make it right and then they move forward and they built a lot of really great relationships that way. They have lots of clients that come in and have a great experience right from the beginning and that's obviously what they shoot for but they've also had a client that came in and maybe that first hire didn't turn out the way they want and they were so impressed by how they handled it and how they made it right quickly that now they are lifelong client and they got them someone else and now they love that person. So, for him, that mentality that the customer isn't necessarily always right, but it's in your best interest to make the customer happy at the end of the day, if you have that mentality, you can go a long way no matter what business you're in.

 

Yanique shared - I'm glad you brought up the point that the customer is always right because the statement itself is really incorrect as I'm sure you would have figured out because customers are not always right, we are human beings and we do make mistakes. However, one of the things that we teach in customer service training is that as employees in an organization, it's not our responsibility to prove the customer wrong. I love the saying, “The customer is always right,”and it's a wonderful guided principle but I do think as business owners, managers, leaders, coaches in organizations, we have to get the employees to that understanding that it's just a principle and a guideline because there are times when the customer is incorrect either in what they see, what they do, how they manage a particular process. But our responsibility isn't to say, “Hey Mr. Customer, you are wrong.”It's more to guide them to the correct way of how they are going to achieve success.

 

  • When asked about tips for having that interaction with persons in an online space, Nathan shared that it took him years to figure out how to work with people remote. It's a totally different mindset. Some quick tips are using stuff like emojis to actually portray how you're feeling on a day to day basis in different conversations because words get misinterpreted. People fire off emails, he’s guilty of that too and you don't realize how that gets interpreted to people on the other end. So, anything you can do to actually relate to people, not losing the small talk and being able to express how you're feeling and being directed and getting clarity all goes a long way. He likes to keep everything in writing and make it super clear, exactly how he’s feeling, what he likes, what he doesn’t like and that's how he has been able to build relationships. And the other side of it is when he dealt with people remote for the first time, he asked them, “Hey, how can I communicate better? Tell me about your best clients and the relationships you had. How did they talk to you? How did they communicate? How did they build the team?” And he learned from that and he took that information and he feels like most people; they don't go that extra mile to learn from the people that they're working with or to learn a new situation like working with someone remote.

 

  • Nathan shared that he uses Skypeevery day, using it now for a lot of podcasts. He slowly moved to Zoom for a bunch of them. He group chat with all his different teams, with freelancers and agencies that he uses. That's how he communicates with his business partner. He does phone calls with clients. It's such a great free tool and it just kind of goes to show that you don't need the most expensive software in the world. He works with 40 people and thousands of freelancers and his business partner and he uses Skype to connect with all of them. He uses other programs like Trelloto keep track of projects, but his primary communication channel is Skype.

 

 

  • Nathan stated that there's never been a better time to start a business. And he would never say an easier time because starting a business is not easy. But if you go back 20 years, you needed $100,000.00 or more to start a business. Now you can do it from your laptop with a few thousand dollars. So yes, obviously capital gives you a big advantage but he started his Amazon business with a few thousand dollars, he started FreeeUp with $5,000 so we're not talking huge amounts of money and there's so many opportunities out there to make money online without making a big investment. So, he would get out of the mentality that you need a lot of capital and he would focus on learning skills that actually help you start a business with very little besides your laptop and some strong internet.

 

Yanique stated - if they have people that work in their business that lack constant motivation, because you said what motivates you is you like what you're doing, you love what you're doing, that's what gets you up going every day. What if they don't know what they like or they're doing it just because they need to collect a paycheck, they have to pay bills. How are we going to get them to be constantly motivated so the business can grow?

 

Nathan shared that he’s in the mentality that you can't change people, here and there you can, but it's just not worth your effort on a big scale to go around trying to change people's mentality. Not that you shouldn't motivate people, you can meet with them, you can find out what does motivate them and that's where being a good leader is. He thinks this is where he and his business partner were for years, they were on different pages because he would find someone that was weak at something and try to turn it into their strength. And for him, he was trying to find people, what people's strengths were, and he was trying to get them to do that strength more, he wasn't trying to change people and the same thing with motivation. He can only spend so much time trying to motivate other people, if he realizes they're not motivated, he knows there's tons of people out there that are, and he'd rather work with those types of people. So, he doesn't have any quick fast hacks to make the light bulb go off it and motivate people, he can tell you that a lot of times it's not just money, it has to do with your leadership style and sharing goals and making them feel a part of something. But at the end of the day, he doesn't go around trying to change people or forcing people to do things and they don't want to do. He surrounds himself with people that want to be where he is and want to work with him.

 

Yanique reiterate - so then basically you're saying in summary, as a business owner, you have to quickly realize if your time and effort is worth to be invested in this employee and if after trying for so many times it's just not working, you'd probably need to channel that energy into someone else that would be able to yield you that success you're looking for.

 

Nathan agreed that it's not just employees, it could be freelancers, it could be agencies that you hire and he has an agency that runs his Instagram every month and they're running a business and if he can tell that they don't care about his account or maybe they care about someone else's more than his, then he’s going to find a different agency that will. So, it goes across the board that not just internal employees in your office, it could be virtual systems or freelancers that you're one of 10 clients or agencies too.

 

  • Nathan shared that he has been traveling, so let's kind of back up. At the beginning of last year, he had been on a lot of podcasts and he really wanted to get into guest speaking and then by the end of last year he was pretty exhausted by getting into guest speaking. So here we are, that's not for me. But he still enjoys talking with people, he still enjoys kind of having that stage. So, this year he’s actually launching his own podcast called the Outsourcing and Scaling. He’s recording, he has probably about 10 episodes recorded as we talk right now and that'll be launching in the next week or so. So, it's kind of a passion project of his, he’s not sure exactly the business ROI on it, although he thinks they'll have some great guests and it'll lead to great connections. But it's something he has always wanted to do on some level, and he thinks podcasts is a perfect channel to do it.

 

Yanique shared that now is a great time to be launching a podcast because so many people utilize this platform as an opportunity to learn and grow in different realms and genres and just different topics. You can consume this content while doing so many other things and it's just an amazing time for you to break through into this area. So, I congratulate you and please share with us the podcast name, what platforms are you going to be available on so that at least we can, if when you're launching or one once you've launched, our guests that are listening to this podcast can definitely head on over to those platforms and have a listen in on your podcast as well.

 

Nathan shared that it's called Outsourcing and Scaling, it'd be available on iTunes, You Tube, and a lot of other channels as well. It will be an audio Podcast and the video will be on You Tube.

 

  • Nathanshared listeners can find him at –

www.freeeup.com

FreeeUp Blog

Youtube – FreeeUp

Facebook - @nathan.hirsch

Twitter - @realNateHirsch

 

****Special Note: If you go to www.freeeup.comyou can create a free account, mention this podcast and get $25.00 credit.

 

  • Nathan shared that when he was little, his mom always said, “Work hard, play hard.”So, he kind of take that in all parts of his life. When he’s playing sports, I'm going all out. When he’s hanging out with his friends or his girlfriend, he’s focused there. When he’s working, he’s going all out every single day and that's kind of the mentality that he has taken.

   

Links

 

 

Mar 19, 2019

Jennifer Brown is an award-winning entrepreneur, dynamic speaker, diversity and inclusion expert. She is the Founder, President and CEO of Jennifer Brown Consulting (JBC), a strategic leadership and diversity consulting firm that coaches business leaders worldwide on critical issues of talent and workplace strategy. Brown is a passionate advocate for social equality who helps businesses foster healthier, more productive workplace cultures. Her book Inclusion: Diversity, the New Workplace & the Will to Change will inspire leadership to embrace the opportunity that diversity represents and empower advocates to drive change that resonates in today’s world.

 

Questions

 

  • Couldyou share with us a background of how did you end up in this arena of diversity and inclusion, what was your journey like?
  • As it relates to diversity and inclusion, could you share with us some of the issues that have been may be barriers to preventing a fully diversified and inclusive workplace based on your experience?
  • As it relates to diversity and inclusion, could you share with us maybe one or two strategies that you think small and medium-sized business owners could employ?
  • Now in terms of how this impacts the customer experience, could you share with us some of the best practices that you've seen in organizations and how it has translated into retention and better customer experiences overall?
  • Could you share with us how you stay motivated every day?
  • Could you share with us what’s one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely cannot live without in business?
  • Could you share with us some of the books that have had the biggest impact on you?
  • What’s one thing that's going on in your life right now that you're really excited about - either something that you're working on to develop yourself or your people?
  • Where can our listeners find you online?
  • What’s one quote or saying that during times of adversity or challenge you revert to that quote to help you to become refocus?

  

Highlights

 

  • Jennifer shared, as we like to say in this field not a lot of standard paths towards a career in diversity and inclusion. In fact, if you try to find academic programs that address or degrees that address this topic you probably will come up empty-handed. We all come from different places, for her,she was an activist in nonprofits in her 20s, but she was also always a musician and it was sort of an amateur pursuit in those early days in her life, but it was a huge passion. So, she decided to make it her profession and give it a shot, she moved to New York to become an opera singer and study at a conservatory and get her Masters in voice which was really exciting and heady times for her.But unfortunately, through the course of training she injured her voice and ended up having to get several surgeries on her voice to repair it but ultimately, she realized it wasn't going to work, her voice just would not be an instrument that she could count on for a career where she could make her living.

 

  • It was heartbreaking but it's led her towards where a lot of theater people go because they love the stage and they're so good in front of people, a lot of them become trainers and educators. In fact, we find a home in leadership in the whole kind of field of leadership whether that's as consultant or a learning and development person. So, she ended up getting a second Masters in Organizational Development/ Organizational Change, it goes by a lot of different names but it's basically the HR education realm and she was a corporate learning and development, training and development leader for a while as an employee and then she got laid off and she said, “I think I can have more impact from the outside if I became kind of that third party, that expert.”That really appealed to her, it still appeals to her to this day, it's the best role for her to play which is that agitator, but not the employee which helps give her some authority, gives her some distance, gives her some credibility earned or unearned or deserved but it is what it is. People tend to want to listen to people who've written books on things and people who are external when they don't do a very good job of listening to their employees, which is another maybe we'll talk about that. So she ended up hanging her shingle out about 12 years ago and doing leadership and team development and morphing into DNI because she felt pulled in that direction to specialize because she’s a member of the LGBTQ community and she has been out since she was 22, and yet she had really struggled with being out throughout her life and even in the nonprofit world certainly in the opera music world and then as an entrepreneur where she felt very exposed to bias if she were to be honest and authentic about who she actually is and it's a huge part of our lives to deny and to walk around and do business without talking about it, without kind of leaving that hole and not feeling it's going to be accepted and it's also going to hurt your ability to make a living which is really problematic.

 

  • So, now they do specialize in Diversity and Inclusion, and she’s fully out all the time, you could Google her and it's very plain.It is actually, she considers part of her secret sauce, it's part of where she has cut her teeth on developing her own voice, her bravery, her courage, her resilience has a lot of that has come from that identity and the pain of some of the painful lessons of exclusion that that has allowed her and enabled her to feel, to think about, to empathize with and hopefully made her a more inclusive leader, not just because she’s LGBTQ, but for all communities that needs her voice as an ally. So, it's a very cool place to find herself where she gets to write books and speak about all this stuff and it's particularly timely because the topic is, she would say, there's never been more attention on the topic than there is now.

 

  • Jennifer stated that it has a lot of reasons and a lot of factors, it's rather complex and yet it's kind of simple at the same time because the mandate is simple, the need to reflect your customer base which is diversifying quickly who has the spending power for example that non-white communities are the fastest growing consumer communities with the largest spending power.She thinks the gay community now has a trillion dollars of spending power. So, consumers are getting smarter, they're getting organized, they're finding their voice, they're using it to hold brands accountable which is exciting and make spending choices that reflect their values. And yet companies in terms of their employee mix particularly in the top half or third of organizations really don't reflect that diverse world and companies structures are old school, there is no better way to say it, they have been unchallenged and they haven't challenged themselves in terms of the makeup of their senior leadership in particular and many companies not all but many companies have kind of gone about their merry way trying to make money and really not focused on anything larger than that, whether it's how employees feel, who's succeeding and feels they can thrive in the organization, who may be reaching senior leadership roles and who's not and why they're feeling thwarted in that process up the pipeline. And so, she thinks there's this business as usual, we're here to make money, we’re here to generate shareholder results and there's not been a lot of attention paid to values, the importance of the workforce and what they want and need in order to stay and thrive and there is honestly a lot of bias around, “Well, I worked hard and all you need to do is work hard too and you'll achieve what I've achieved.”So, this belief and meritocracy and it's really easy to believe in meritocracy when people that look like you have benefited from that, it hasn't been a challenge, there haven't been stereotypes that have affected you, you have been pulled forward by others that look like you without even knowing it sometimes, and so there's this willful blindness to the difficulties that are faced by anyone that is not of a certain demographic in workforces, it’s sort of, “I write it off. I don’t take it seriously. I don't listen to it. I don't even know it honestly.”So, there's a lot of education that's needed around micro inequities, unconscious bias, HR processes that are so critical like recruitment, retention, promotion and advancement, all those moments in the employee life cycle where bias occurs, it's in a large part still allowed to kind of continue and so what their job is to interrupt those things and come in as a company and build strategies that help companies wake up, get educated, care about it, honestly have empathy for other people which you shouldn't even need to say but it feels that it's hard, it feels that if I explain something to you and you don't care and then you don't take action, that hurts, there's a ton of research on this it's not even like this is a mystery. It's right there and so the best leaders and the best companies are really forward, they're asking all these great questions, they’re humbling themselves to their own learning, to their own mistakes, they're publishing their data and saying, “Hey, here's our data and I know it sucks and we're working to change it.”That's what courage looks like, that's what leadership looks like these days and she wish she saw more of it.

 

Yanique shared, I like the fact that you mentioned that it's not something that people are accustomed to and change is hard. Unfortunately, human beings don't adapt to change very readily, and I don't think it's based on the geography in terms of where you're from in the world, I think it's just general human nature. So, it would mean that you have to put yourself in a place of being uncomfortable in order to move from one stage to the next.

 

Jennifer agreed and stated that nobody wants to be uncomfortable, but the flip side is it makes you so much better of a leader and a better team member, better colleague and by the way better parent, better community leader, all of these. There's a reason that you open a paper today and diversities in every headline, it's everywhere because institutions are really struggling with it of all kinds for profit, nonprofit,community organizations, church leadership, so there is probably, no area of your life where you can afford to not understand and embrace this conversation and do your work, your kid could come home tomorrow and say, “Mom, I think I'm transgender.”You would be completely ill-equipped to deal with that and to be fair most parents are, it's something that is life and does not prepare you for that but at the same time don't you want to be ready? Even if you're interviewing for jobs, even if you're leading teams at a company that values diversity and you don't or you haven't paid attention to it, you've assumed it's somebody else's job to care about it, none of that is going to work for you in the long run, it's a little bit of a scare tactic but she has to use every tool she has to convince people that this is important which is really tiring and honestly kind of depressing sometimes because you're wondering how they don't get it, “Please have empathy for people that haven’t had as easy of a road as you.” It's just that and then she doesn't know why we have to ask and convince and scare, how many different techniques do we need to basically talk about something that's such a human right and is all about the dignity of everyone in this world to do their best work and to feel their sense of purpose every day.

 

Yanique agreed and stated, and to feel appreciated, a lot of people work in organizations and they just don't feel appreciated and I think they've lost the purpose if there was even a purpose from day one, they've definitely lost it. It comes out in the interactions that they have with customers, it comes out in how they relate to their team members sometimes unconscious of the fact that the customer is observing you in every interaction once they're standing in front of you or you’re on the phone and you ask them to hold but you didn't actually put the phone on hold, so they're hearing everything that's happening in the background.

 

  • Jennifer shared that small companies have a great opportunity, it's actually much easier to shift things than for large organizations, and certainly remembering that if you build it right from the beginning, you will have a much easier time down the road. So, it's very important to think about how you are recruiting and retaining all kinds of talent, how comfortable they feel once they are in your organization and really being open to feedback about when that inclusiveness, the desire for inclusiveness is actually though being interpreted and the impact of an intention is one of exclusion. She thinks that sometimes we don't want to know the answer to that question so we don't ask and so it's very critical, particularly, if you're not a person of a marginalized or underrepresented background yourself, you're going to have some blind spots, your network is going to look a lot like you so you will tend to recruit from that network. You will have blind spots around how people perceive your brand and by even blind spots probably about your desired customers so that to the extent that you can ensure your team that you build reflects the world that you're doing business in, it will allow you to resonate and to see around that corner and to anticipate that audience and that customer and gear your communications accordingly and have kind have a check in balance on how are we coming across in the marketplace and like you said, we're being observed all the time, so your future talent is looking at your current organization and looking at your website and thinking about, “Would I be comfortable there? I don't see anyone that looks like me there.”That's something that's hard to fix in some cases because when you're an entrepreneur you're grabbing warm bodies, you're trying to get work done, it's very fast, you are going to pull from your own network because it's most expedient and that network is going to tend to look like you and so you've got to actively counterbalance that in your outreach, in the talent pools that you're seeking, in the way you talk proactively and very overtly about your commitment to inclusion.Shewould really recommend you have that in all of your marketing materials, it doesn’t matter what business you're in, there's always a way to talk about what inclusion means as a value to you and to what you're trying to build and to the customers you're trying to serve, there are ways to do that and she would recommend you do it because it's a beacon, not only for talent you hope to recruit and to say, “Hey, this is a safe place for you.This is a place that you are wanted and needed not just tolerated or accepted. We need all of you to bring your full self to work, this is a place in which you can do that.”Then we want to best serve the customer and their needs and wants, and companies are at real risk of missing some key….There's just a lot of mistakes that are made because diverse talent is not at the table when creative decisions are made or marketing collateral is designed, we've seen very high level mistakes made by brands like PepsiCo with the ad that they had where there was like a mock black lives matter march and one of the Kardashians was handing a Pepsi across the police line, it’s a nightmare and they pulled it immediately. And it became a kind of a case study that a lot of us talking about where we wonder who was at the table making those decisions, and if they were at the table, were they listened to, were they really considered, was that feedback taken into account?So, she doesn’t know where the error happened in their process because she doesn't have the inside look into them but at a smaller scale this stuff can happen all the time and she thinks you've got to make sure your mentored and coached and you run things by people, you think about the nuances of the diversity conversation because it is really nuanced, languages changing all the time and she gets a lot of complaints about are trans and gender non-conforming friends will say, “Yeah, I identify as they, them.So that's my preferred pronoun.”People will literally say, “Well, I don't feel comfortable referring to you as that, it's grammatically incorrect and I feel uncomfortable.”It's just amazing to her, to the point earlier, it’s a small action on your part that allows somebody to feel seen and heard is that so much work, she thinks it's such a red herring, it's just an excuse to not grow and she doesn't understand it. Jennifer thinks if you're in business, you should want more language, you should want more ways to talk to people in and resonate with them, that's what you should want.

 

  • Jennifer shared that she thinks that companies that are designing products for example for different communities, some of the larger organizations she worked with literally have something called Employee Resource Groups or they're called Business Resource Groups, but they are diversity networks, maybe they're a multicultural talent network, maybe they're a black employee network, maybe there are an LGBTQ network and most companies are trying to reach those diverse demographic so they can sell more to them, but they realize that they don't have the intelligence on the inside to really do this well and effectively, the smart ones realize that so they have these groups or these networks for a lot of reasons, these networks serve a lot of purposes in organizations and these can exist in small companies to by the way. She has worked with 200-person companies that have a full diversity committee, they have several Employee Resource Groups that are literally playing kind of this market intelligence role for the company so you don't have to be big to access this idea and they are at the table informing product design, informing marketing strategies, informing sales, educating the sales team and anyone that's external facing around cultural nuances and behaviors and language.In banks and financial services, a lot of the financial advisors are tend to be white and to be male and yet the biggest growth and wealth is in diverse wealth holders, female heads of households, people of color and yet you have a financial advisor community in all the big banks and insurance companies that doesn't really look like that and they're struggling to diversify those ranks on the inside.So, literally there are certifications you can get for example as a financial advisor, you can get certified in selling to the LGBTQ community, selling financial products to that community and you go somewhere, and you get a designation that you can put after your name and yes, you're an ally, you're a straight ally, you're not in that community but you know and you're investing in how to be culturally competent when you are selling to that community. So, you're listenership probably selling a lot of different kinds of things, we're all in sales all the time, we all have customers and it's all about resonating with them and making sure you're staying up to speed on what their care abouts are and how they talk about themselves and how they kind of getting inside their lives and anticipating what they want and need.It's just that awareness and there's just a lot of examples of brands that have done this really well. Heineken had a great ad that aired a Super Bowl ago that she would encourage everybody to go look at where they introduce people to each other without providing a lot of demographic information about the person and they give them some questions to talk about and they pair somebody who might have very conservative views with somebody who's in the military and who identifies as transgender.But they don't tell them any of these things and then they encourage some conversation and then they kind of reveal later on, “Well, actually this person that you've bonded with, this is who they actually are and how they identify and are you surprised and do you feel your bias is being challenged?”It's really, really neat and there's a lot of interesting ads, Gillette just came out with an incredible ad, she would encourage everyone to go and watch it on masculinity, it was so good and there was a lot of threatened boycotts and she watched it with her partner and they literally cried and it was so moving and to think that something that could move us and touch your soul could make so many people angry is really indicative of the polarized times we live in but by the way, Gillette's sales went up after that ad, by a considerable amount.So, threatened, boycott or not, anger or not and social media, they correctly diagnosed the bump that they would get through putting their values out there and saying, “Here's what we want to be about and we know that as a brand we haven't always been all that hip to the issue, so, we're trying to be.”She thinks it really worked.It definitely burnished the brand for her and a countless other potential customers.

 

Yanique stated, so this is definitely something that's new and of course it's definitely going to continue into another couple of years as you said people are trying to flesh out what does that mean for them based on their organization, based on where they operate in the world, based on who they are trying to target and as you said, how much sales they're trying to increase in what community and if they can connect with these people because as you stated at the beginning of our conversation, people are now buying from brands that represent the values that they hold near and dear to them and sometimes that's very hard to find and it's amazing that consumers are taking this stance because it just goes to show that the power is really in the hands of the consumer and it's going to be continuing even more, social media has given themso much power in terms of the things that they do, the comments and the feedback that they give and so it's not so much about what the brand says about themselves, but what the consumer has to say based on their experiences with the product or the service.

 

Jennifer agreed and stated that it goes beyond the four walls of the company, there is no such thing anymore, there's total transparency as you said, there's a lot of accountability and a lot of communities are diverse communities who are questioning - Do we want to work at a place like that? Do we want to patronize a place like that? What do they stand for? People really now want to hear what do you mean and are you walking the talk?And she’s really excited to see this accountability and the visibility that they have, they can peer into how companies do business and employees are finding their voice and really being public about it like the Google walk out of a couple months ago had 20,000 employees all over the world walking out and protesting their whole process that they handle sexual harassment claims and pay equity.They had his whole list of demands and it was really inspiring to seeing Google had to pay attention. They just had to and they've been kind of on a journey of addressing some, not all of the requests/demands that the employees had, so, we're going to see this is not going away, this accountability and it's exciting because brands have gotten away with a lot in the past, they've gotten away with unfair workplace practices, they've protected their data, they haven't been forced to admit where they're board is entirely white and male but it's never been talked about in the news before, those days are over and if you're in a company where you haven't been called out publicly, it will happen.And so, a lot of their work is actually these days about helping brands and companies make sure they're doing their work internally, and so hopefully that day never comes, hopefully they never mess up but that accountability is fierce and swift and she almost feel like we need to start teaching the art of the apology to our customers because they're going to make mistakes, they are absolutely going to and so the question is, how do you come back from a mistake? How do you apologize, own what happened, say you're learning, talk about what you're going to be recommitting to, what are you going to do differently in the future, even that as something you're prepared for, that's a new idea but she thinks it would behoove all business owners and even all managers to think about when I say the wrong word, do people trust me enough and they know that they can come to me and tell me, that's what you really want, you want to ask for that, you want to earn people's trust because by the way, you can't just one day and once only say, “Hey, can you let me know if I ever make you feel uncomfortable?”It's not a one and done. So, you've got to earn that trust that somebody then will trust you enough to be honest with you and say, “Hey, that joke you say or that saying you say or you know that you stole that person's idea in the room or assigned it to, you took it and you attributed it to somebody else or did you realize that men did 90% of the talking in that meeting?”We've got to be sensitive to these things and we just haven't been in the past and we need help to learn and so it's not just something you do need to do a lot on your own, you need to educate yourself, you need to read a lot of books about bias and team dynamics and being an inclusive leader, her book is helpful she has been told by a lot of people, she hopes it's helpful, so read these books, but they commit to making behavior change in yourself and inviting feedback and then act on that feedback, adjust, be humble be resilient, have that growth mindset which is failing forward.You know you're going to fail, it happens to all of us, we're all bias and it's hard to keep up with this, but you just have to try, that's huge points for trying.

 

Yanique stated, I like the fact that you made a point to the fact that the change starts with you because I find in a lot of organizations, the managers or the leaders are quick to say well they need to do so and so and they're not including themselves in the process because it all starts with them as well and as a leader or a manager, if I'm in an organization, I'm looking to see what you are doing because I'm taking lead from the behaviors that you've demonstrated, the attitudes that you've demonstrated and yes, I may have my own values but in an organization people kind of watch what's happening and they kind of conform to the culture that exists and if they do anything out of the norm, it means that they're going to stand out and because most people don't want to stand out, there kind of just going to go along with whatever is happening there, whether it's good or bad sometimes.

 

Jennifer agreed and stated that the best example of what Yanique is talking about is watching how many men take paternity leave or parental leave. We don't get a lot in this country, some companies are really trying to become much more generous around leave and actually going as far as requiring some employees to take leave because there's such a stigma around taking leave and particularly for men and male parents in any family configuration, it is particularlyshamed to take. Even the leave that's provided, take all of that leave, it's not viewed as a positive, you get pressure, it's spoken and unspoken pressure and men follow other men and follow what they do and they decide what the norms are based on what they see particularly senior people doing so you're right that we take our cues from everyone we watch above us in a way and we say, “Well, that's acceptable, that's not acceptable, that's a boundary I can cross or that's a boundary that I shouldn't cross.”This is why it particularly would leave and also vacation interestingly, there are some companies that are starting to require vacation because we don't take all the vacation we haveand that’s not because we don't want to take the vacation, it’s because we don’t think it's going to be okay to do. So, the norms that are communicated through behavior of others particularly senior people, we are watching, and we are then deciding, “What should I do that's not going to hurt my career in this particular culture?”So, she wouldn't encourage people to think about, it almost needs to be mandated because until such time as we can change this dynamic of pressure and peer pressure and watching these role modeling behavior happen and kind of employees not taking care of themselves and not really doing what they need to do to have a balanced life, we may need to mandate some things. She just interviewed this woman, Erica Keswin, and she really recommend her book called Bring Your Human to Work  and she has so many examples of what companies are doing in this vein to encourage leave, to encourage parenting and to encourage balance and flex and literally power to the employee to really have that balance that is the theme, the theme of women's month is how do we achieve this?But remember men need balance too, we single parents need balance, people without children need balance who are caregiving, we may be doing none of those things, but we may need just balance for our time off. So, let's not be biased in terms of how we set systems up as well and assume that only one group of people needs to manage their work-life balance, but traditionally was spoken of as a sort of women's challengeand that's really changing, and she hopes it's changing. She hopes men are thinking about what they need and they're advocating for themselves, younger men, she has a lot of hopes for millennial generation to say, this is what I need and want whether that's a sabbatical, whether it's flexible work assignments and arrangements, whether it's different career opportunities and moving around a lot more often and she just hopes that employees are in the driver's seat, it's time to assume our more powerful position as you mentioned earlier.

 

  • When asked about how she stays motivated every day, Jennifer shared that she calls it self-care and when you do diversity work, it has to be radical self-care because it can get kind of depressing to have to have these conversations over and over about why empathy matters. We have not succeeded in building healthy workplace cultures and that is wearing us down, it's tiring us, it's actually making us physically ill from stress-related issues when you can't be yourself, it’s harmful. So, talking about this all the time as is equally inspiring and also kind of depressing and makes her angry and frustrated and she has days when she wants to give up but that's also entrepreneurship. You have this passion, you're trying to raise money, you're trying to hire your team, you're trying to get contracts signed. So, how she fills her cup is gathering with people that care about what she cares about and just being able to let her guard down and be real about the frustrations and how it feels every day and for her, that might be in a room of women entrepreneurs as it fills her up to think about how are you growing your business?Just to see herself in them is a way of finding that space where you can say, “I'm not alone.” As she thinks isolation is really dangerous for us. So, who your community, where can you be real and let your hair down and let your guard down, be honest. Where can you go to feel re-inspired to realize the size of the community that's trying to do similar things or that shares your values.There's a lot of conferences on conscious capitalism and so, it's not just diversity conferences, it's conferences about values at work and culture conference, which is about why workplace cultures matter, there's a lot of great HR conferences that are talking more and more about what she does. So, it's this incredible convergence that she’s seeing in her conversation to many other sort of parallel worlds, which is a really cool thing to see. So, she would just recommend find your community, gather with them, put yourself around people that are having the highs and lows and everything in between, find folks you can be really real and honest with where it's off line and so nobody's watching and people who will hold your confidence. But ultimately, to her that has really sustained her. She has an amazing team as well, she doesn't try to do this alone, she has always wanted to build this beyond herself because she knew she wouldn't be able to touch all the lives that she wanted to without a team of people that could be going out and being in those classrooms and building those strategies for the companies and bringing those practices back to their group, so that they could do more of it. So, she has an incredible consulting team that does client work but also has a great marketing team that feels like they are all very aligned in terms of how much they believe in what they're doing every day and they're all sharing articles all the time, they're sending inspirational stuff to each other, they're sending discouraging new data to each other which just fuels the fight. So, she’d say if you're the kind of person that for maybe a team would feel that it would help you do the work and get up every day for a reason, then you might want to build a different kind of organization.There's a lot of us that just want to do it alone and that takes a certain kind of personality, it was never really her so, it's important to know what kind of leader are you? What do you need around you? Who do you need around you to be able to do your work and really find your sweet spot and your voice in that work and then who needs to surround you to enable that so that you can focus on what you do best.

 

  • When asked about an online resource, tool, website or app, Jennifer stated that it's such a hard choice, there is so many, she has her favorite podcasts, she has her favorite research institutions.She really relies on research by McKenzie and Deloitte are probably her favorite things, her go-to resources for data on the way the workforce is changing. So, there are these amazing think tanks, they very well resourced, they are very cutting edge and a lot of that information fuels their consulting work, they just take that to clients and they hadn't seen it, it's compelling data about the future and they can help kind of flush it out because of their expertise, so it really works well. And then on the personal side, she really loves this woman who runs a daily Facebook live called, Resistance Liveand that's more of a sort of for her personal fuel.It talks about what's happening in our political system, the new generation of democratic leaders and candidates and the whole developing conversation around progressive values is exciting to her and again, kind of feeds her the certainty that she’s going in the right direction and that there is a big community that is asking the same questions that she’s asking so, but there's so many women's podcasts that she listens to, so many where she also gets her education around difference.She listens to code switch which is an NPR Podcastabout race and ethnicity and code-switching which is a critical foundational principle in terms of what we talk about diversity and all of us are code-switching all the time around a variety of aspects. So, that's one of her go to podcasts to learn about how other people experience code-switching and how she can be an ally to lessen some of what people feel that need to code switch every single day, how she can lessen that need and support people to bring their full selves to wherever and not have to put all that energy into hiding and minimizing and shifting and speaking a different language to different people, it's exhausting stuff and we shouldn't have to do it.

 

  • When asked about books that have had the biggest impact, Jennifer shared that she has many favorite authors that are difficult to narrow it down as usual, but there's a new book called Better Allies: Everyday Actions to Create Inclusive, Engaging Workplacesby her friend Karen Catlin and literally she's a woman in Tech.She was a VP in a technology company in a technical role and today she's an author and keynoter and she has a million ideas for how to be a better ally. She's got a hashtag and a handle on Twitter called #betterallies, which she really recommends everybody follows but she has a new book that literally pulls all that together in one place which is so helpful.So, that's one book that she would encourage reading. She doesn’t think there's a lot written on Allyship, so, this is an emerging area. Her new book coming out in August does talk about this a lot as well and sort of the allied journey, how you can get on board, how you can put one foot in front of the other and whether it's adopting one new word and trying to understand what it means and using it all the way to kind of advanced Allyship, which is she’s an advocate in her organization, she’s a big-time voice, she’s challenging the system and everything in between so, Better Allies is great. David Smith wrote a book called Athena Rising: How and Why Men Should Mentor Womenabout why men should mentor women and she really pays a lot of attention to men and there are not many men who are writing about inclusion and men who speak on it because it's so important in so many ways. The (a) that they're involved but (b) other men are going to listen to them and read them in a different way and she thinks maybe many people are used to people who look like me and you speaking about all these things but for a man to speak about it is powerful.So, those are two amazing books she would point people towards that are great reads and full of practical advice.

 

  • Jennifer shared that they are embarking on a big shift in their business strategy at her company, they've been highly like white glove bespoke consulting has been their bailiwick and then she gave a lot of key notes, which is great, and she loves, and she just plan to do a lot more of them. She thinks it's really her sweet spot honestly, but she thinks they're moving into the online product arena and they've launched their first online program in the last couple of months and have their first cohort of students and thinks their programs could be so many things. They're going to launch a new assessment behind the second book that's coming out in August around how inclusive of a leader are you and actually give people a score and then kind of break down their score within 6 different domains. And so, it’s the first assessment they've ever really had like that as a company. She thinks it has a lot of potential because people want to know where they are and then they want resources and tools whether it's a quickie online program that's really affordable or whether it's much longer, six months multi-course program where they can really do a deep dive. They're starting to build all those things on the back end, to get access to their knowledge, you don't need to hire them to come into your company basically, there's going to be a whole way to access what they do online. So, she’s just really excited to investigate that, it's a great revenue generator for them, a different kind of workstream business unit and who knows what's in store for them with the economy, but it's been a long time since they've had a correction and corrections and recessions are really difficult for consulting companies, a lot of us don't make it through and she thinks they're recession-proof now but it's very important and every entrepreneur that listens to you will know this, that we must diversify your revenue, spread out the ways that you make money in as many ways as you can to protect yourself against downturns particularly if you are a service company, and you're attached to corporate budgets.And diversity has been viewed as a nice to have traditionally and so, she thinks a lot of us, it really would behoove all of us to think about how are you going to weather storms? Because we know storms are going to happen and so that's another aspect that she’s really excited about having these online offerings.They're more affordable, they are something that people can do even with in a recession environment to invest in themselves, continue to learn and grow and prepare for the upswing, not to be morbid but it is something that has crossed her mind and she’s sure has crossed everyone's minds that are listening to you if they run a business.

 

  • Jennifershared listeners can find her at –

info@jenniferbrownconsulting.com

Stitcher Radio – The Will to Change: Uncovering True Stories of Diversity & Inclusion

Twitter - @jenniferbrown

Instagram - @jenniferbrownspeaks

Facebook – Jennifer Brown Consulting

LinkedIn – Jennifer Brown Consulting

 

****Special Note: the book is available for pre-order on Amazon in order to get into the flow that way

 

  • Jennifer shared that she likes to think about the quote that was on President Obama's rug in the Oval Office. It says, “The Arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”You talked about like an idea that keeps you working and getting up in the morning and thinking that what you're doing is making a difference, there's no better quote than that. I think Martin Luther King originated it, but she thinks about it a lot because it is a struggle, because progress can feel slow, sometimes it's a real galvanizing idea for her and many others who do the work that she does.

   

Links

 

 

Mar 12, 2019

Sarah E. Toms is an Executive Director and co-founder of Wharton Interactive where she has built award-winning EdTech teams that develop highly engaging games and simulations, which are played by tens of thousands of students globally. Her drive to modernize, transform, and democratize education led her to co-invent simpl.world, an open-source simulation framework. As an entrepreneur for more than a decade and a demonstrated thought leader in the technology field, Toms has founded companies that build global CRM, product development, productivity management, and financial systems. She is dedicated to supporting women and girls in technology through her work with the Women in Tech Summit and techgirlz.org. Follow her on Twitter at @SarahEToms.

 

Peter S. Fader is the Frances and Pei-Yuan Chia Professor of Marketing at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. In 2015, Fader co-founded Zodiac, a predictive analytics firm that was acquired by Nike in 2018. More recently, he co-founded Theta Equity Partners, which focuses on customer-based corporate valuation. His expertise centers on topics such as customer relationship management, lifetime value of the customer, and strategies that arise from these data-driven tactics. Fader is also the author of Customer Centricity: Focus on the Right Customers for Strategic Advantage and he has been interviewed in The Wall Street Journal, APM’s “Marketplace,” NPR’s “Planet Money,” ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Forbes, and more. Follow him on Twitter at @FaderP.

 

Questions

 

  • Could you tell us some of the things that really propelled you to take it a step further especially focusing on the difference between customer centricity and customer lifetime value and how an organization can really identify what that is for them.
  • In the book you also focused on the difference between customer centricity versus product centricity. Could you share with us a little bit about that?And do you find that organizations are shifting more towards customer centricity and less in the product realm?
  • Could you share with our listeners what are some necessary elements that help to support customer centricity in an organization?
  • How is it that you integrate the CLV (Customer Lifetime Value) and align the customer service strategy with a proper CRM solution?
  • Could you share with us a little bit about the loyalty programs in terms of does every organization need a loyalty program in order to have an effective or have a true reflection of what their customer lifetime value is to understand the whole metric process?
  • Based on your experience, your research, your exposure, different interactions that you've had with different people. How do you view customer experience today and what do you think it will look like 5 to 10 years from now?
  • Could you share with us maybe one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely cannot live without in your day to day operations?
  • Are there any books that have had really great impacts on you that you'd like to share with our listeners that you think will help them in their own journey?
  • Could you share with us, maybe one thing that's going on in your life right now that you're really excited about - either something that you're working on to develop yourself or your people?
  • Where can our listeners find you online?
  • What’s one quote or saying that during times of adversity or challenge you revert to that quote to help you to become refocus and to get back on track?

 

Highlights

 

  • Peter shared that they build a bridge from the first book to the new one and to the simulation that was mentioned that Sarah has developed. So, the first book was about this radical idea that a company can potentially make more money and have more sustainable, defendable success by focusing more on the differences among its customers by celebrating heterogeneity, that if we can figure out who the right customers are and kind of double down on them, enhance their value, find more like them, that that could do better than just obsessing over version 2.0 of the product. But the thing about the first book, it was good, and he hopes that if people haven't read it, they will but it was more definitional, motivational, aspirational, here's this concept, here's what it can do for you, here's the problems with a lot of companies out there that are failing to go in this direction. So, it was trying to get people to kind of wake up, but it didn’t really give them specific guidance how to put one foot in front of another and that's one of the things that he and Sarah have tried to do with their simulations and this new book basically takes a lot of those ideas and kind of crystallizes them, goes beyond just the simulation, makes them very real, talk about real companies, real actions.

 

Sarah shared that what was interesting to them was when they started writing the book they actually started to create sort of this Frankenstein, it was a combination of a simulation manual and some interesting stories and interesting content about customer centricity and how to actually put customer centric thinking into action and they brought it to their publisher and they said, “Get rid of the simulation stuff, flush out more about the book, make it a standalone piece if people want to run the simulation and read the book. That's fantastic.” But they really need something that engages folks who are working in the trenches day in day out and give them a clear guideline for how to become customer centric.

 

  • Peter stated that it goes back to some of the concepts in the first book was taking conventional business practices that they just accept as this is just how you run a business, you put the product first, that's all about what product should we develop, how do we fine tune it to meet the needs of the customer, distribution, promotion all about the old four P’s that we talk about in marketing. And we're saying, “Well no, actually let's build a business around the customers, the more valuable customers and have that.”And sort of say what product features will be most appealing, they say, “Here are the most valuable customers, what is it that they want?” And so, they start looking at product development and product management quite differently. Again, when he wrote the first book it was more about just this provocative kind of let’s do a 180 on the way we think about business. But they still stopped short of actually saying, here's an overall playbook which of course is the name of the new one to begin to not only embrace the metrics and all the “mathy” stuff that he likes to do but the thing more about how to build the right kind of organization, how to send the right kind of message, how to establish the right kinds of principles. Again, tremendous credit to Sarah for taking some of the best practices from the software world and bringing them over.

 

Sarah stated that at the end of the book they have a manifesto which really comes from her experience in technology and software development, where she experienced something very similar to what she’s learned now with partnering with Pete over the last four years…..five years that's happening in the marketing science world as well. And that is it, they're being inundated with all this data, there's data insights and data collection and it's becoming cheaper and easier and faster to just collect swathes and swathes of information about their customers and how they behave and what makes them buy etc. And the problem is that a lot of it is garbage and so we had something similar happen in the software development realm in the dot.com heydays where they had this tremendous capability with technology and the problem was they were really weighed down by old bureaucratic bloated software processes, she’s talking about waterfall where they had to write reams and reams of documentation and they weren't able to work leanly and be able to keep up with the technological advances in a way that was in line their our customers and their business users and what they actually wanted from the software that was being developed. And so, this sparked an idea as she was having these conversations with Pete and she said, I think what we really need for customer centricity is we need a manifesto as well. We need something that will really focus business people, it will give them just simple clarity around what is important and what they need to double down on with regards to customer centricity.

 

Yanique mentioned that the book is a playbook, anybody in an organization in a leadership role or non-leadership role can pick up the book and they will be able to have a guideline like step by step as to how they can really master customer centricity in their business, whether they're an organization that has customers that come in or they're an online business.

 

Sarah stated that the way that they've laid out the book from the playbook perspective is to really think about those different functional areas. Our goal with this to most definitely make sure that this was a cross-functional conversation. This playbook is not just for the sales person or the marketing person, this is for the data person, it's for the finance people, it's for the folks in H.R., the folks who are developing the products are indeed, this is for everybody. And it's really again pivoting and pivoting so that your customers are at the center but understanding that this heterogeneity at play within that customer base and how are you really going to focus in on what you need to do. So, when you're thinking about acquiring those customers, when you're thinking about retaining them and developing them, when you're thinking about having conversations with those in your technology team on how to tag them and track them and understand what information is actually important when it comes to figuring out who's valuable today, who will be valuable tomorrow and when I'm acquiring new customers who's more than likely going to be valuable to the organization and then taking all of those conversations and making sure that folks in your finance team understand what that means from the customer lifetime value standpoint.

 

  • Peter stated just to add one other example to that, he thinks Sarah mentioned that one of those elements being retention and development, they look at the array of new tactics that are available to either make your customers more valuable and have them stay around longer. So, things like a loyalty programme or a premium offering or customer experience or strategic account management and the problem is a lot of these tactics are so new, they just weren't done. They didn't exist a generation ago and so, companies don't really know which one to use when. When should be lean towards the loyalty program versus the premium offering? You really need a playbook to kind of lay out all these tactics and come up with a solid framework to give companies guidance about, don't invest in all of them but think strategically and have a good idea of would it makes sense to start one or pivot to another. So, that's just one example where they're starting to get much more tactical and starting to deal with issues that just aren't in what say your traditional marketing one or one type course.

 

  • Peter shared that for him, a big part of it is all about Customer Lifetime Value. And again, he acknowledged it's a bias because that's the kind of research that he has done, those are the kinds of models and activities that he has commercialized in a couple of different ways but to do customer centricity right, you have to be able to have that CLV (Customer Lifetime Value) magic wand, you have to be able to look at a customer's past interactions with you and say here's my best guess about what they're going to be worth in the future and to line up customers in that future looking way and to use those numbers and those differences across customers to really drive all these tactics. So, a lot of companies are eager to get into the tactics, they want to do that customer experience campaign but they're saying it won't be nearly as effective if you don't have a good quantitative assessment of the value of customers before and after you do that kind of campaign.

 

Sarah shared that one of the shining examples that they use a couple of times in the book is Electronic Arts. So, Electronic Arts is really one of the most mature organizations that they've seen with regards to customer centricity. Every day as players are playing their games they are collecting data about behaviours about what they know about who's more than likely going to be a high, medium and low value customer and they're feeding that information back to the game studios, they're letting them know, “For our high value customers, did this part of the game work the way we thought it was going to, did we see this as high engagement as we were hoping and if not why not and what do we need to do to pivot in the actual game development.” They're using information about these customers with how they advertise to them. So, not just saying, “All right well, here's our advertising campaign for this game, we'll put it out there, it'll be out there for a month, three months, five months.”They're using that information about their customers to actually fine tune how they target and attract the customers that they're looking to seek.

 

Yanique mentioned that it is definitely a combination of many different things all in one in terms of an organization looking at how the customer is interfacing with their product or their service, the frequency of them utilizing that product or service and of course to spend.

 

Sarah agreed and stated that RFM (Recency, Frequency, Monetary) is still key. RFM is a marketing technique used to determine quantitatively which customers are the best ones by examining how recently a customer has purchased (recency), how often they purchase (frequency), and how much the customer spends (monetary). To build on what Peter was saying about customer lifetime value in chapter 1, they spend some time delving into problems with CLV that they see that are common out there and mistakes that are being made with the calculation itself. So, CLV itself can be quite complex and there's lots of open source ways to leverage and create CLV calculations within your organizations. But they do spend some time going through the mistakes which should hopefully shine some light on how to be tracking and calculating CLV correctly in your organization.

 

  • Peter stated that on the CLV side, he learned so much not only from the research that he does and interacting with students and executives but through his first startup company called Zodiac where they were working with a wide variety of companies calculating the CLVs for them. And it was surprising because he really thought he is just bringing you the CLVs, “I am the expert here, take the CLVs and make money rain down from the skies.” But it was a great learning exercise for him to see the kinds of use cases that companies would come up with and actually, Sarah basically gave the list of them a few moments ago and she was talking about all of the different tactics that you need to understand and align and do in an accountable way - customer acquisition, retention development, with that customer experience campaign, it's not enough just to give people glasses of champagne when they walk into your store, you have to do the CLV calculation, you have to say how valuable were they before this campaign started, how much more valuable are they afterwards or better yet, more realistically, how many customers meaningfully increased in value and how many of them are the same as ever before. So, CLV gives us a really good lens not only to make decisions but to evaluate decisions after the fact and so again, just seeing the way that companies have been using it very creatively as far as he’s concerned across a wide variety of functions and by the way that includes getting outside of marketing and maybe in a bit we could talk about the idea of customer based corporate valuation. Let's get the CFO into this party as well so we could talk more about that but to the other part of the question, it also goes to having really good CRM systems which is a big part of Sarah's expertise.

 

When asked how do you know which one is the right CRM to go with, Sarah mentioned that unfortunately there aren't any great additions to CRM yet that they've seen. In her conversations with a number of the companies that appear in the book, L.A. Dodgers is a great example, they have had to build their insights outside, so they use salesforce and they're then doing the analytics sort of outside, their tracking all of their customers in their CRM but then they're running a different algorithms etc. in other systems which is unfortunate. So, she thinks Peter would agree that a lot of the companies that he has been working with they're having to kind of roll their own if you will because there isn't a good solution out there yet.

 

Peter agreed and stated that that is unfortunate. They were in the process, they were creating that solution through his company Zodiac, but Nike bought that firm which was of course a wonderful outcome but now it's all under the swoosh. So, he really hopes that companies can learn from those experiences. And again, a lot of that through that they're trying to convey in the book both laying out these frameworks as well as these specific company profiles that Sarah has been referring to.

 

Sarah stated that just to go back to the original question there was the whole point everybody thinks, “Okay well, customer service, it's to turn ugly ducklings into beautiful swans.”This is another point in the book is really think and this was to Peter's earlier point, we've got all of these sort of ways that we engage with our customers, ways to increase CX quality, ways to increase hopefully customer loyalty but it's very rare that you take somebody from your bottom tier from a customer lifetime value standpoint and boost them all the way up to the very top. And so, rather than think that you can do that and expend a tremendous amount of energy trying to achieve that impossible dream, just look at what you're doing and understand who you're serving from a CLV standpoint. So, customer service is really for your lower value customers and the same with loyalty programs like understand that that's who you're really targeting those types of programs to.

 

  • When asked if all organization needs a loyalty program - Peter stated no and a lot of companies are finding that the hard way because there's this lemming like behavior out there that, “Oh, we've got to have one too. It's a box that we need to check, some of our competitors have one.”So that's why they really try to come up with a framework that says, “Under what circumstances do you really need a loyalty program?” Sarah just said, if you think about it logically, a buy nine get one free just kind of a basic loyalty program, that's not appealing to your top platinum customers, they're going to buy from you all the time anyway.They're looking to deepen the engagement not necessarily just to buy more stuff.Whereas for those middle to lower customers if we could get them just to buy a little bit more often that that's how we can create more value out of them. So, a big part of it is that loyalty programmes are aimed more at the middle to lower tier of your customer value pyramid. And if that's where your main strategic focus is at a given time then great, that's the way to go but too often companies are thinking about the loyalty programme as something that would be appealing to or aimed at the tippy top customers. And again, they're with you not because of points, not because of bonuses, put it this way if that's why they appear to be really valuable customers, if it's all because of the goodies that comes from the loyalty programme, then they're not really loyal, then you're kind of bribing them to be with you. So, you want to find ways to appeal to the high value customers that's just a very different kind of thing, something like a premium offering where it's not a matter of giving them stuff, it's actually a matter of getting them to actually potentially pay a little bit more to kind of show their loyalty, to show that they want to have a different kind of relationship with you, that they want to have that kind of badge of honor to show that they're different than most customers. So, they're trying to bring some logic and discipline to things like loyalty programs and customer experience and customer service that they feel just doesn't exist anywhere out there to date.

 

  • Sarah shared that they actually have a new blog post or article coming out very soon that talks about customer experience and the fact that it is not customer centric.And they outlined this in their upcoming article. There are just a few small steps that organizations could be taking to become more customer centric when it comes to see CX. She alluded to this earlier in the conversation when they're talking about CX, they're looking at different ways to really reduce the friction that their customers feel when they're interacting with them, with their brand etc. And there are many different ways to measure CX and how they're doing with respect to CX, whether it be CX quality which is measured by effectiveness, ease and emotion or customer loyalty which is measured by advocacy otherwise known as a Net Promoter Score, enrichment and retention. And one of the problems that Sarah and Peter have is that these CX measurements, these metrics are one dimensional, they don't really tell them anything else that's happening with respect to their customer and that interplay with the brand. And so, what they've done with this article is they've created another framework where they're looking at the CX metrics, again switching costs and switching costs as they know are a way to measure another form of friction that their customers are experiencing. And so, what they've done in this new framework is they've said okay if they're looking at high switching costs against their CX metric and they're doing really well with customers, they've got caged customers but they're very loyal and they're happy to be with them. What they should be doing with them versus customers who have got a low CX metric and low switching can cost. So, those are their revolving doors if and that's where something like a loyalty program might come in. They don't have a lot of friction from the standpoint of staying with them, they want to try to raise that a little bit so they do stay with them more and they can extract a bit more value from them so a loyalty program would be perfect for them and then for anybody who is kind of stuck with them because of high switching costs but they've got high value, let's look at making them happier while they're kind of stuck with them. They want to keep them engaged and then hopefully once competition comes in or those switching costs may be lower, they still are able to retain them as high value customers.

 

  • When asked about tools and apps, Sarah shared that for her and her team, she’s still a technologist, she has had the absolute pleasure and honor of being able to write this book and really double down on the way she thinks about her customers that she’s designing technology for. Agile is what she lives and breathe by. So, she works with teams that are international, she brings the best of the best to the table and she doesn’t really care where their brain is as long as she gets to leverage their brain and being able to run lean teams is very important to her. And so, Slackis her go to and this is a way that she’s able to communicate very quickly and rapidly with her teams. And then also where she’s actually tracking software changes and her sprints and that kind of things, so they use GET Laband Jirato do a lot of that management. And that kind of approach, that lean approach is something that again they talk about in the playbook and the importance.

 

Peter shared that he’s addicted to Twitter, but whether it's for news, sports, entertainment but also just a whole bunch of people that he follows who are always looking for the best practices of how companies are using their customer level data. So, just the million anecdotes a day some good, some appalling but it's just a great way to learn a lot of different stuff and then make up your own mind about which is good, and which is not so good but good to have that kind of broad exposure. Peter shared that he doesn’t read books anymore, Twitter is the firehose that really keeps him attached to the world.

 

  • When asked about books that have had great impacts, Peter stated that he has a couple, but he’s actually very interested to see what Sarah has to say because as she was starting to develop this simulation and then write the book, she took a whole bunch of books off his shelf and kept some of them a little too long actually. So, it would be interesting to hear which one she said were the ones that really shaped her thinking the most, but he'll share which one is at the top of his list. It’s an oldie but a goodie and it’s really one that got a lot of these ideas started, it's a book called The Loyalty Effect: The Hidden Force Behind Growth, Profits, and Lasting Value by Frederick Reichheld. Kind of interesting, he's a Bain Consultant, not an academic and this was a book he wrote back in 1996 which is ‘500 years ago’ for all intents and purposes and basically laid out this idea that not all customers are created equal and if we could figure out who the just right ones are then all of these great things are going to happen, there will be this virtuous cycle once we find those customers because they'll will stay with us longer, they'll buy more often, they'll be cheaper to serve, they'll be strong advocates for us, they'll make a lot of referrals. And so, it was laying out this idea that loyalty manifests in lots of different ways and provides this kind of multiplier source of value, it's just a matter of figuring out who those just right customers are and they kind of stopped short of that, they didn't talk about lifetime value and so on. But he thinks it really was something that started this conversation and a lot of us today especially the younger generation thinks that we've been talking about these ideas forever but really until the mid 90s they were just not part of the conversation.

 

Sarah agreed with Peter and stated that she did so much wonderful reading and thanked Peter for your amazing library and contribution to that. She mentioned at the beginning of the interview that their guiding goal with this book was to land in that cross functional space and to really try to ignite a conversation about really the organizational and cultural changes that must happen cross functionally in organizations in order for customer centricity to really take root and she stumbled on this book called The Silo effect: The Peril of Expertise and the Promise of Breaking Down Barriers by Gillian Tettand it is a fantastic book, it's one case study after another of where breaking down the siloing effect that happens in organizations where that has been good for some organizations and where it's existed, where it's been really perilous and difficult. So that's one book she most certainly recommends. The other book that she recommends is The Effortless Experience: Conquering the New Battleground for Customer Loyalty by Matthew Dixon, but this gentleman has it right, you shouldn’t be trying to overdo it with every single customer, and he has written some incredible books in the CX space as well.

 

Yanique shared, I am familiar with Frederick Reichheld, I read a couple of years ago when I just started this business, The Ultimate Question: Driving Good Profits and True Growth, I haven’t read The Loyalty Effect but he definitely opened my mind up when I read the Ultimate Question.

 

Peter stated that he’s glad that Yanique made the connection. He (Fredrick Reichheld) laid out these ideas but in 1996 but it wasn’t until 5, almost 10 years later that he kind of translated them into the Net Promoter Score, this is the metric that’s going to help us identify companies that have been doing a good job at finding those customers and deepen those relationships. So, a lot of people think that Net Promoter Score just sort of appeared in the early 2000s, but it was really decades of work and thinking and just careful consideration by Fredrick and his colleagues at Bain that made that possible. And again, that revolution he thinks sparked a lot of the work that we’re doing and great admiration for the folks over there and enjoy his own collaboration with them.

 

  • Peter shared that he’s super happy to talk about his new startup.He mentioned the idea of customer based corporate valuation, let's get the CFO involved in this customer centricity thing. So, he has a new company called Theta Equity Partners, thetaequity.comand that's exactly what they're doing. It's a finance play, they're actually working with a bunch of private equity firms, Late-Stage Venture Capitalist, talking to some Hedge Funds to basically say, “Let's value your company from the bottom up, let's look at how many customers you are acquiring, how long are they staying, how many purchases are they making, how valuable those purchases, add all that stuff up and say that will give us more visibility and more understanding of the value of a company than the traditional Wall Street approach.”So, they're doing this for real and it's really working and it's actually creating a meaningful dialogue between CFOs and CMOs that has just never existed before, so it's been just a thrill to expand the conversation in a direction that he never thought he’d even be capable of doing but to see how receptive the finance and investment audiences for the stuff.

 

When asked if there was anything is there anything, she’s working on to develop herself or her people - Sarah shared that she is. About a year ago she launched a new team at the Wharton School called Wharton Interactiveand they are building platforms to transform education. So, when you're looking at creating experiential learning in classrooms, it's expensive, it takes a long time, it's hard to change and fine-tune once you've launched experiences and really what she has discovered over the last six years being in this niche in EdTech is that platforms provide a way that forward where we can start to build truly transformational experiences for less cost and ones that we can then fine tune and learn from and so they're leveraging ultimate reality gaming,they're leveraging even smaller things like text messaging and social media patterns to really create social learning and don't democratizing that educational experience for the learners. So, a lot of the work that she has been doing with Peter in understanding and fine-tuning folks’ eyes to heterogeneity with customers, she has been starting to think about how they bring that into learning space and creating more fine-tuned and tailored experiences for the learners knowing that not everybody learns the same way. So, that she’s very excited about, very proud of you can find out more about what they're doing at www.interactive.wharton.upenn.edu.

 

I'm especially intrigued by Sarah's approach to education, I do think it's something that will definitely impact customer experience in the long term. When I think about my daughter who is 13 years old and some of the challenges that they have in schools, trying to get through to these children with the information that they're trying to simulate. I find that we're teaching children in 2019, but we're using methods that were applicable in 1975 and it's clearly not reaching the audience that we're trying to reach now, they just need to be stimulated in a higher way. And so, I hope some of the work that you are doing, it materializes that it can stretch to different parts of the world like Jamaica. Because I don't know what it's like in the USA, I'm sure you probably have you greater exposure to better opportunities, but here, I can see that the methodology that they are using is definitely not as impactful and I think based on what you are saying if hopefully that can become more widespread in the long term these children who will become business owners or employees in organizations that we’re all going to have to be customers of it would be great for them to have that experience from early, Yanique mentioned.

 

Sarah shared that she has a 10-year-old son, she also has 3 teenage daughters and we're not just teaching the same way we did in the 1970s, we're teaching the same way we did in the 1900s, so there is a lot of work to be done in moving the needle and with a lot of pride.They're doing some amazing work at the Wharton School and it's with great partners like Peter Fader who are willing to take the leap and who are also pushing and challenging teams like hers to think outside the box and bring something new to the table for the learners.

 

  • Peter shared listeners can find him at –

www.petefader.com

www.thetaequity.com

www.customercentricitymanifesto.org

 

Sarah shared listeners can find her at –

Linkedin – Sarah Toms

Twitter – @SarahEToms

www.interactive.wharton.upenn.edu

 

When asked if there is a possibility for the playbook to be developed into an online course, Peter shared that he has some older online courses that are more about the kind of original aspirational, definitional, motivational stuff. The best thing that they have is the new customer centricity simulation, that really brought them together.

 

Sarah shared that they've got the existing simulation, it's usually played in teams and usually played with faculty or teachers who are facilitating the experience and so they've got that experience. Her team is also starting to work on a steam-based game, so folks who are interested in learning can just go to steam and they'll be able to download a single player game from that marketplace. And then she also has designs to work with Peter on creating something in the alternate reality gaming space on their arc platform and that will be a massive online offering, hopefully not too far down the road from now.

 

  • Sarah shared that she has a quote, and this is from the founder of the University of Pennsylvania, Benjamin Franklin. This is a quote she loves, and it is her world, it's “Tell me and I forget, teach me and I remember, involve me and I learn.”

   

Links

 

Mar 5, 2019

Karen Millsap, the CEO (Chief Empathy Officer) of Egency and Founder of The Groflo, began her career in human resources and talent acquisition where she led countless training, new process, and change initiatives. At a young age, she suddenly became a widow when her husband was tragically murdered which completely changed the trajectory of her life. After experiencing a domino effect of other losses, she became acutely aware of the overall lack of support in our society for grieving people. We are all connected through our struggles, from the death of loved ones, to life-altering illnesses, divorce, even job loss. This realization ignited Karen's desire to turn her pain into purpose and pay it forward to help others.

Egency is a leadership development and training firm that helps organizations create a human-centric culture with compassion and empathy. The Groflo is a community that shares mental + emotional growth tips and positive lifestyle inspiration.

 

Karen's client list includes NBC’s Golf Channel, Hubspot, Universal Studio Resorts, Sprint and many more! Her work has been featured in Forbes, SHRM Magazine, on Good Morning America, MSNBC, and many others! She's also a regular contributor to Arianna Huffington's THRIVE Global community.  Karen is a TEDx keynote speaker who inspires audiences to embrace compassion and empathy to help alleviate other’s suffering by becoming advocates for their own adversaries.

She received her undergraduate degree in Communication from George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. She is also a Certified Grief Recovery Specialist through the Grief Recovery Institute in Los Angeles, California.

Questions

  • Tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey?
  • Could you share with us a little bit about empathy?
  • Where does compassion come from?
  • Does compassion come innately?
  • A taboo topic that is found in Jamaica is incest and abuse. When I hear people talk, especially when you're talking to young girls to help them to move from that trauma and that experience because it's something that stays with you for life, how do you respond to them in terms of, you made it through, everything's going to be okay.
  • Do you think that traits of empathy and compassion are required more than the traits of technical competencies of doing the job because those things had to build had to build the relationship?
  • Could you share with us how do you stay motivated every day?
  • What's the one online resource tool, website or app that you couldn't absolutely live without in your business or life?
  • Could you share with us any books that have had the greatest or biggest impact on you?
  • What’s one thing that’s going on in your life right now that you are really excited about – either something that you’re working on to develop yourself or people?
  • Where can our listeners find you online?
  • What’s one quote or saying that during times of adversity you tend to revert to that quote or saying to help you to refocus or recenter so that you can move forward?

 

Highlights

  • Yanique mentioned, I first phoned Karen on Good Morning America when Robin Roberts was interviewing her a couple of weeks back. And I was so impressed that we actually have people out there that are called Grief Consultants. And it was amazing to hear that she was using her pain, she's channeled it into good to go into organizations and train leaders on how to effectively communicate with their team members and build better teams.

Karen shared that unfortunately, this knowledge and this passion came from the tragedy when her husband Richard was killed and at the time she was working in Human Resources and recruiting for a national home building company. So, her background up to that point had been in HR but touched in different pieces of recruiting and training and leadership development and all of that good stuff. So, after her husband passed, when she transitioned back to the workplace, she found that there was just this huge disconnect between the expectations of corporate America and humans, what we are capable of doing and how we process in the midst of such a delicate time. And so, when she experienced this firsthand, her immediate response was, “How can I use this to help other people?”Now, part of it was helping individuals because we definitely need help in navigating grief. It's such a complex journey and it doesn't look the same for everybody, but we also need help interacting with people who are going through their own grief journey. And so, that's where her heart was initially led, although there were one off individuals, who she was helping along the way, she really honed in on creating workshops or training and leadership development tools that would help people to manage grief in the workplace. So, her company, they develop The Four Pillars of Practical Empathy and those are Awareness, Communication, Support, and Productivity. And so, as she started down that journey of talking about grief in the workplace, there was a lot of resistance as you can imagine. First of all, people don't want to admit that there's this elephant in the room, everybody is going through something, grief is a universal human experience. The biggest myth about grief is that we think it only occurs because of a death, but it actually comes from different losses or changes. It could be from becoming a caregiver to an elderly parent or finding out that somebody in your family or even yourself is diagnosed with a terminal illness, there's so many different things. But again, it comes because of a change or a loss when we expect things to be different or better or more and it just doesn't turn out that way. So, as she started to just kind of break down all of these barriers and these myths that are surrounded with grief, again, corporate America was not really receptive because by saying you want grief training would be admitting that you have a problem because brief is kind of looked at it as a problem. And so, she recognized this resistance and most of what she was teaching was really surrounded around compassion and empathy in the workplace. So, she decided to just adjust slightly and instead of leading with the problem, she led now with the solution which is compassion and empathy. And as she was pulling different resources and research articles and studies and all of this that just helps us to create a basic framework for human interaction in the workplace. As she was pulling that, she recognizes, well, it still touches on grief in the workplace because if we are operating with compassion and empathy on a day to day basis, that's mastery preparation for the time of crisis. We're already connecting in this space that's just really vulnerable, we've established trust and respect through kindness, so when somebody does hit a tough life situation, which inevitably happens to all of us, then at least your work family is prepared to walk through those tough times with you and handle that because you guys have already established this kind of workplace. So, it's been a journey to get to this point but she’s super grateful that she learned all that she did throughout this journey because it's helped her to serve her clients at a whole new level, not just the basic leadership development, it really is taking it up a notch.

Yanique shared, I like the fact that you've mentioned that you started to lead with the solution, and you focus on empathy and compassion. And one of the things that we have identified in the whole client or customer experiences, people are driven by how they feel, their emotions play an integral part. I think even more than the intellectual because the emotion drives how the intellectual will respond. 

  • Yanique shared, I personally think that it's not something that you're born with, it's a learnt behavior and it's all dependent on how you're socialized, what you're exposed to, the behaviors that you see, both from your environment that you're in as well as maybe even from things that you're exposed to are stimulated by like the television or even social media. But not everybody knows how to be empathetic.

When asked about empathy, Karen shared yes and no to Yanique’s statement. Yes, it is something that can be learned, but no, it's not something that people are only inheriting that ability through a learned environment. That's not the case. People are born with empathy. There are people who are born with a lack of empathy. As a matter of fact, there's a chemical in the front part of our brain, in our amygdala that triggers our emotions and so you could live and be raised in a very compassionate home, but you were born kind of without feelings, you don't get too riled round up but that doesn't mean that you didn't have an environment that included feelings and emotions and conversations around that, it really is how we're born. But even if people are born without or with a lack of, maybe they don't have a lot of empathy, you still can adopt behaviors and skills and habits that bring empathy into conversations and interactions so that way the person who you are interacting with feels valued. And so, empathy is really being able to feel and understand another person's emotions and respond with care. So again, that feeling part may not be natural for some people, but you can try to understand where they're coming from and respond in an empathic way. So that's how it looks and so as it pertains to their customer experience, you may not be able to completely resonate with where this customer is coming from. And she gave you an example, it's a personal example. She bought a new car at the end of last year and the sales team, they weren't that great but she needed to get out of her car, it had 140,000 miles on it, it was just not safe anymore. Karen said she was kind of in a rush to get into the car and didn't do her due diligence on a few things that she noticed within 24 hours of driving off the lot. So, she immediately contacted the sales team, they were not very responsive. So, then she looked online for customer service team, they were not very responsive. So, being the person that she, she’s just saying, well this isn't okay. So, she’s going to do her due diligence. She contacted the corporate office to say, “Listen, there are a couple of defects and this is actually not safe. So, I just purchased this car and we need to figure out a resolution.”Now up the chain of command, the customer service sucked, it was terrible. And she was telling them like the rear-view camera is not working, that is a safety issue. If she runs over a kid, do you think they're going to say, “Oops, that's our bad, we should have responded quickly to that email.”No, she’s going to be the one who is dealing with the legal ramifications. So, she’s pushing forward and say, no, this is not okay. She felt like there was a disconnect between kind of the first level of customer service and then once you get to the executive office, once she got to the executive office and there was an individual who was assigned to work with her, he followed up, he was patient on the phone, he made sure that the service manager they got her in touch with was timely in his response. He kept Karen in the loop, even if there was going to be a waiting period, he communicated that to her and what he did that was different than the first level of customer service was he empathized with the fact that we have a single mom here who has made a very large investment and she’s not saying she got anything fancy, but when you purchase a car, lease a car, that's an investment, you are putting your credit on the line and all of that. So, it's not something to be taken lightly and so because of his understanding of where she was coming from and her position and her worry and concern, he made sure that he saw it all the way through. Where on the front end, that didn't happen. Now what did he do differently than the first people who may be answered a call or answered an email? He didn't do much in the practical sense, except for the fact that he took his time to patiently understand where she was coming from and communicate in a way that made her feel like she was being heard, that her purchase was valued, her position as a customer was valued and he wanted to make sure that we found a resolution, he responded with care. So, it didn't take him much, but just the way that he was on top of it made a world of difference because she was ready to just blast this company, don't ever buy from them and that's not her character. But she felt like they did not care that we had such a major issue and it was only because, and she told him on their last call, she said, “It is only because of you and how you resolved this, that I feel satisfied.”The first three months of this process, which she didn't mention, it took a long time to get to that point, but the first three months was treacherous and because of this one person who showed compassion, who interacted with empathy and who made sure that a resolution was done in a caring way, she felt like, “Okay, I'm okay. I could come back and buy another car from them.”She knows that sounds bad because it was such a crazy, but he did resolve it with empathy.

 

Yanique stated, so it's more about listening to what the person is saying to you, understanding where they're coming from and why this is a pain point for them. And as you said, responding in a way that, “Oh well, no big deal.”Instead in a way that, “I understand where you're coming from and what can we do to make it better?” Because it would seem from the first level of customer service that they were more concerned about making the sale and less about providing after sales support to you.

Karen agreed and stated that it doesn't take a lot of time, it doesn't even take a lot of effort, you are on the exact same call with the exact same person and literally your tone can change, and your active listening skills can change the trajectory of that outcome. You just have to decide while you were in the midst of that, “How am I going to show up for this person? Am I going to be caring or am I going to be short and curt? Am I going to listen or am I just thinking about the next thing that I need to get done? Or Am I be grudgingly going through the motions?”Either way you have a choice and the energy level is the same.

  • Karen shared that she believes that the major difference between empathy and compassion is one word, Action. We are meant to put compassion into action, it's how you are showing up for people, whether you're showing up for a colleague who's going through something that's difficult or the way, for example, this gentleman responded to her. He made sure that he was calling every four days with an update to let her know what was going on because she was really left in the dark and that was frustrating. So, compassion is what you put into action. Empathy really is kind of the starting point, like she said, being able to feel and understand and then choosing to respond in a certain way but that response is your compassion. Now, one thing that she’s done through agencies, they created a Compassion Action Plan. And what it does is it addresses, if you know somebody who has experienced in the organization, who's experienced a major loss, and they just touched on five because this is usually an activity that they do in workshops but for this eBook, what they did was, they just put five in there. And so, divorce, I'm becoming a caregiver, death, we identified those and how can you put compassion into action?So, if you just thought about it for a second and you thought about, okay, I know a colleague lost their spouse, what is a way that I can show up for them? What would be one or two ideas that come to your mind?

Yanique shared, so they've lost a family member and seeing that I experienced at similar situation last year, what I looked for in people who showed compassion were people who came, they were just there, they were there to support me, it’s simple things like just coming over and sitting and talking just to have the companionship at that point in time because you don't want it to be alone because it's an experience of trauma and being alone, your mind wanders all over the place and you feel more lonely. So, you kind of just want somebody to be there and you want them to know that you want them to be there without you having to tell them, I want you to be there.

Karen agreed and stated that she’s going to ask Yanique for another example but pausing there for a second. That is another example of how it does not take much for you to just show up for somebody, does it? She remembered at my husband's funeral, Karen looked, and she saw at least 20 people from her office who were there, and that just made her feel so supported because you're right. When we go through a major loss like that, somebody close to us, somebody within our inner family, our intermediate family, then we usually go to this place of isolation in our minds because you get on this emotional rollercoaster and there's so many complex feelings, it's hard to keep up with those thoughts. So, you really feel emotionally and mentally drained and so when you have people around you, as you mentioned, they help you to stay connected to life, so you're not just completely caught up in your head, you're not isolating yourself and end up on this negative thought cycle and start spiraling downward but you have somebody who's just present. And she had somebody, her name was Jamie, she actually mentioned her in her Ted Talk because she mean this, she would just show up and just lay on the floor with her or lay in her bed or they would like walk around Target, she is one of her closest friends and she told Karen later after hearing Karen’s Ted Talk, so this was four years after this happened, but she said, “I admitted to my husband almost every night when I came home. I don't know if I'm doing enough, I don't know what else I'm supposed to do.”So, for four years as she is relishing this friendship and it anchored in her mind is something to teach other people, just show up. She didn't even realize that it had made an impact on her healing journey, it made a huge impact. So, you're right, she always tells people, we all need a Jamie. So that's good. So, the first thing is show up, be present but what's something else that you can do for a colleague?

Yanique shared that when she lost her dad last year, it was also important, and I guess that would link back to being present. To assist me with anything, low hanging fruits that would distract me or make me feel not supported.

Karen shared that the difference there is, is that what they did was they stepped in to respond to your basic needs because it could have been like handling bills, it could have been like handling other logistics that when you're in that mental fog, you don't really have the capacity to do so. And so, if you have people who you trust, who are near you, this could be different for colleagues. For colleagues showing up and responding to basic needs is like making sure you have food. Creating a food calendar or just saying, “Hey, it's okay if you need to take longer than five days.”because usually that's the bereavement period, it’s like five days for somebody in your intermediate family but they can say, “You know what? I know you have this project going on, I'll help you with that. What's your client's name? Let me step in, just give me a couple of details and I'll go into the system and I'll figure out the rest. But you don't worry about it.”That's responding to a basic need that's helping them to keep their life afloat and that is putting compassion into action.

  • When asked if compassion come innately, Karen stated that in our world, in our society, it's just awkward. Grief is just awkward, and some people feel like, “Oh, I don't know if I'll say the right thing. I don't know if I have enough time to be there.”We come up with all of these different barriers in our mind and the difference between holding onto those barriers and acting like Jamie will say as a reference point is she just leaned in without knowing if what she was doing was enough, but her heart just led her to do that. What happens is we stop our heart from responding naturally because then our mind starts to take over to think that we need to say the right thing, we have to be perfect on how we show up, what if it's not enough? Our heart and mind starts to battle. But you're right, it is an innate response. It's just our mind can start to suppress that response because we start to feel awkward and that's her mission is to make grief less awkward, let's talk about it. Let's talk about all of this because again, it is a universal human experience, we are all going to go through it. Karen thinks if we have these conversations, for example, Yanique having her on the podcast again, thank you because it's helping to reach different people and to open up a different mindset so we can respond differently. Because right now, we're perpetuating suppression and isolation and that's what's making our journeys unhealthy. If we just opened our heart up to respond in a natural way, that doesn't look perfect and here's an example. If somebody at work tells you, “I just found out that my spouse has cancer, or I have cancer.”Instead of not knowing what to say and then not saying anything, which is actually worse. If somebody didn't acknowledge or say it’s the first time seeing them that Richard had died, she felt like, “Well wow, that was kind of a big deal. Like we're not going to say anything about it.”We don't have to go down the rabbit hole. But anyhow, if somebody shares some tragic news with you, you can say this, you can say, “I am so sorry that you're going through this. We don't know what is going to happen at the end of the day, but I know you are strong. I know that you have this light inside of you that you can just push through and I'm here with you, like anything that you need work related, if you just need to take a walk, if you need to get out of the office or if he just needed somebody to talk to for a few minutes, just know that you're not alone.”That's not giving false hope, that's not saying everything's going to be great or just pray on it, it's not giving any of that. It's just saying, “I'm meeting you where you are and yeah, this is hard. This suck, but you're not alone.”That is enough.

Yanique asked, what do you think about situations when someone shares with you for example, that they had a tragedy and they’re going through grief like a death for example. And the person responds and says, I know exactly what you're going through because I find that grief is different for everyone and you may lose someone, and you respond in a different way. It impacts you in a different way and I may lose someone, and it may not impact me in that way, or it might impact me worse or less. Do you think it's a safe to say, I know exactly what you're going through? How do you know? 

Karen shared that she thinks that this is another uncomfortable yet common response because it's true, it's a common response only because people feel uncomfortable and they're just kind of like, “Ah, what do I say?”And it just comes out so naturally and that's not really what they mean. They're not saying, I know exactly what you're going through because somebody has said that to her and she’s like, “Oh, your husband's been murdered. I didn't know that that happened to you.” And not to even downplay it, because some people will compare losses, they'll say, “Oh, well I went through a divorce and so I know how that feels.”Again, no, you don't know how it feels, but their heart is in the right place. So, the first thing she would say is if you're on the receiving end of that comment is to give that person a little bit of grace because at least they're trying to be there. Do not take offense to that and kind of see through their words to see their heart and their intentions and their heart and their intentions is to comfort you in the moment. But Karen’s advice to the person who wants to say that and guess what? Karen has said that to people before in a different light. And before all of this happened, before she became more aware of some of the myths that we use to comfort people. But if you are about to say that, hold your tongue real quick and then just think about saying something along these lines.

Again, “I don't know what you're going through, but I went through a situation and I know that pain is real. I know that those hard times can come in waves. I know that sometimes it can just feel really consuming and so if you feel anything that is just so painful and it feels hard for you to manage, you can come talk to me. I don't know what you're going through, but I know what pain feels like and I'm willing to just be here for you.”

 It's authentic in the sense that she can relate to your pain even though she hasn’t experienced the same loss. And here's the thing, two siblings could lose the same parent and feel completely different about it. So, imagine the differences of somebody who says, “Oh, I went through a divorce too.”or “Yeah, I also had a miscarriage.”or “Oh, when my mom was sick.”We compare them but there's so many different factors that make that situation so different and unique, but at least being able to relate through the pain, Karen thinks that's the authentic place to be.

  • Karen shared that there are pains like that where, for example, she has a friend and her parents were not kind growing up, they just weren't, and she doesn't have a relationship with them now. Now she doesn’t know that she's experienced any kind of sexual abuse. She knows that has had happened in her family, but it did not happen to her. However, the abandonment of your parents and them not wanting to be with you, it's a pain that stays with you through adulthood. A physical kind of trauma is also something that stays with you through adulthood and sometimes you have to see your abuser. And so, it's like how do you live in that space? So, what she encourages people to do is to create healthy boundaries, they can't always be physical. A lot of times they have to be mental and emotional.So, the person again who is hearing something like that, they're on the receiving end of that comment, you have to create an emotional and mental boundary just knowing that whatever they're saying to me, if it is not resonating with my heart, with pure comfort and peace and, and even empathy, than I'm not going to receive that, you choose if you're going to receive their words are not. Now for the person who is trying to comfort or build them up because a lot of times they're thinking if you've been a victim, what I need to do is pour into you that you are strong, pour into you that you have gotten over it, kind of build up your confidence and resilience but again, sometimes we just fumble over those words and so instead of saying something that is diminishing their past, meet them where they are. Again, the same starting, 

“I can't imagine what you have gone through, but I see who you are today and I see that you are a fighter, I see that you are a survivor and even if those pains are still being held with you, which I'm sure that they are, I can only imagine that they are. There is something in you that is not giving up and I admire that in you.”

That is truth. That is absolute truth. It does not diminish the pain that they have experienced, but it is uplifting them to say, I have seen that you did not give up. And I applaud you for that. But it is okay if you're still feeling and battling all of the wounds, the emotional wounds and mental wounds that you carry with you, but it's still, it uplifts them and it builds them up and that's at the end of the day, what we should be doing for each other is to build one another up so we feel safe, so we feel protected.

  • When asked about traits of empathy and compassion that leaders should have in order to build a team. Karen agreed and shared that one of her favorite Richard Branson quotes is, “When you take care of your people, your people will take care of your business.”And that is the absolute truth. A lot of times leaders are driven by the numbers and the data, but you have to remember there are people behind those numbers and that data it didn’t just magically appear, this is coming from somebody’s knowledge capacity, their relationship building, their goal setting. There are people who are driving these numbers and so you have to get to the source of your success, the source of your success is your people and how you treat people is how they produce at work. Now, a lot of times people, Karen kind of hears two things most often. One is, leader say, “I want to be a better leader, I want to connect with my people, I want to help them in a different way. Basically, build up their personal success but I don't know how.”And that's because we have to kind of get past that old adage of leave your personal stuff at the door and so, she thinks that again, leaders want to, but we are shifting society and we're shifting how we show up at work. So, that's why it's such a great time to really live out her passion because people are more receptive to this message and they need just some structure, some framework behind it. That's the first thing, but then the other thing is there are leaders who are naturally showing up with kindness and they are seeing just amazing, powerful results.

An example of this is, uh, one of her clients from Sprint, this gentleman is the general manager of one of their four business units, and they have been the number one team for the last 15 years straight. Fifteen years they have consistently outperformed the rest of the company and when she met him, she asked him to come onto her podcast, Invest Humanand she said, we just need to talk about what this is and he said, one word, “Kindness.”It is all about how you treat your people. Now when she goes into organizations, she breaks this down through like communication, interactions, conflict resolution, like how do we bring it into that. But it really all has to do with kindness because when you treat people well, then employees become more enthusiastic about their work and if they are enthusiastic about their work, what happens to their performance, it improves. What happens to the customer experience because of the person that they're interacting with. It’s like again a no brainer, it should be a no brainer, but she thinks what the shift that's happening is that people just kind of need permission and they need that framework because for so long we've lived in this space of kind of being robotic at work and only expecting or evaluating someone's performance and not opening up the experience, the actual employee experience.

Yanique shared that the interpersonal skills, the soft skills, showing kindness and ensuring that you exercise empathy and compassion, those are definitely characteristics and traits that as a leader will take you much further than any technical competence.

  • Karen stated that that is such a good question – how she stays motivated daily. She doesn’t live in a constant state of motivation. She has learned through different personality tests and stuff, she does have a natural personality that is drawn to the silver lining. So, she doesn’t stay in a dark place for too long. However, and when you've experienced this kind of tragedy, you can't help but to be in a dark space for a while. So, what she learned during that time, her most trying times so far in her life, it's absolutely critical for us to build a foundation of healthy habits so that we can navigate any hard time when it comes. Life isn't fair so you're not going to go just through one thing, it's not a one and done. And there are every day stressors that we have to work through, relationships, traffic, personalities that are not meshing. There's just so many different stressors that can make us feel weary and burnt out. So, it's not that you can live in this constant state of up because what goes up must come down, but you have to learn to find that balance when you do come down and how do you take care of yourself. So, for Karen, whenever she’s going through a challenging time, smaller or large, it's just a matter of tapping into those habits that she established when she was in the midst of her darkest hours with grief and she wasn't intentional then, she was very set on her why, her why was her son. She knew that she wanted to be a good mom for him and didn't want to be living in this state of like brokenness and in this victim mindset, like it wouldn't have been healthy for him in the long run. And so, as she focused on him, then she started to create these healthy habits that just made a huge impact on her total wellbeing. So, when you are feeling down, take a break, that's okay. Go for a walk, do a breathing exercise. There’re so many different habits on your mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical wellbeing that once you know what those habits are, then you can tap into them regardless of the low that you're feeling because they are tried and true. They helped you in a dark, dark place or they help you in a, I'm frustrated and burnt out place as well.

 

  • When asked about an online app or tool that she couldn’t live without, Karen stated that she thinks she would have to answer two ways. One is she really strive for strong organizational skills. She has very strong organizational skills, but she does that because she has a bad memory. She’s just going to be vulnerable here for a second, but Karen recognizes that her mind being an entrepreneur, being a single mom, having experienced trauma, she just has a bad memory and so she compensates by having really strong organizational skills. And one of the tools that she loves is Google Keep, it helps her because it just allows her to brain dump and when she is able to brain dump all of the different distractions that come into her mind, she’s creating that space of mental clarity so that she can stay focused on her priorities. So, Google Keep has been really helpful. But there was also an app that helped her early on in my grief with mindfulness and meditation and that was called Headspace, and she just signed up for the free version because she wanted to see what it was about, and it helped her because a lot of times we get into negative thoughts cycles at night before we're going to sleep. Our mind is just racing and then we start feeling like, I don't have enough time. What do I do tomorrow? Did I not do this today? And so that on top of any kind of trauma that you may be working through, Headspace taught a breathing pattern that she was even able to teach to her son, that at night if she can't fall asleep, it works wonders. And so it's really simple, it's just a matter of counting your breaths when you inhale and exhale, when you inhale, you count one when you exhale, two inhale again, three and so on up to 10, you don't change your breathing pattern, you're not, you don't have to take long, deep breaths, but when you get to 10 you start back at one and there's something about that Karen said she could do that three, maybe four times at the most, and then she pass out, she’s knocked out. It's taught her such a powerful breathing technique that she shares that with almost anybody she interacts with because she thinks we're all a victim of those nighttime blues when it's kind of hard to fall asleep. 

Yanique then stated, that seems to be a popular app. I've actually downloaded it on my phone, but I haven't clicked on it because things have been so busy. But I had a guest that was on our podcast and maybe two, three weeks ago and that was one of his recommendations. I find it interesting that shortly after, I'm getting the same recommendation, so that app must be really good. So, I think today I'm going to make sure I click on the app since it's on the phone and I haven't actually used it yet to see what it's all about. I have no problems falling asleep though but sometimes I do get distracted, like I'm doing something, and I start thinking about something else and I jump from one thing to the next. So, if Headspace can help me to refocus at times, that would be wonderful.

Karen stated that she thinks that it definitely, what she liked about it most was in the free version, it teaches you where some people just embark on this meditation journey and you're like, “Ah, how do I do this? I'm falling asleep. No, wait, I can't stop these thoughts.”There are so many barriers and she liked how in the free version it actually teaches you some of the techniques that are helpful.

  • Karen was asked about books that have had the biggest impact and she stated that there is a lot. She shared that she was not a reader until she was 30 years old. She hated reading growing up but after her husband died, she became obsessed with reading about heaven because she just needed that confirmation that he was okay, and she would see him again. And that's what kind of got her down this journey. So, she’ll say the two, there really are so many but to that she thinks made such a huge impact one was Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck. It teaches you how you can change your mindset from being a victim or living in a fixed mindset to having a growth mindset. And again, it gives applicable takeaways on how you can teach even children, how you can teach, whether you're a teacher, a parent, a coach, it just helps in that state, how you can also use it in the workplace. So, Mindset by Carol Dweck was amazing. And then also it's kind of a tie between these two, Life's Golden Ticket: A Story about Second Chances by Brendon Burchardbecause it's a fiction book, but it gives you this visualization of you having a choice and kind of revisiting different people or moments in your past that have led you up to where you are today and accept where you are today so that you can move forward. And then the other one is The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, which she knows is a lot of people's favorites, but it's one of hers particularly because it was suggested to her probably almost three years ago now, but she just read it at the end of last year and she believes in just divine timing and at the time it came to her life, she wasn't ready to read it, but when she read it, it was exactly the time that she was supposed to just digest that. So, it's a great book again for people who are just wondering, “Man, does all of this mean something? How do I know I'm headed down the right path.”So, that's why she loves that book so much.

 

  • Karen shared that she’s super excited about launching her new group coaching program. She’s going to be doing a group coaching and it is called, “Soul Care Coaching with Karen”and so she wants to create a network, this specific offer is for women, but she wanted to create a network for women where they are able to just grow, they are able to find healing and just become the best version of their self. And so, just sharing herself and stories but also sharing other coaches along the way. So, she’s really excited about that. But then she also launched her first eCourse, Heal Forwardand that's for anybody who has experienced a major loss or a hardship or they're just feeling depleted in life and they want to heal and move forward. It's a six-week series that just gives a whole bunch of selfcare habits and tips, worksheets, videos, all that good stuff. It loads you up so that you can build that foundation that she talked about of healthy habits. So, she’s excited about those two. The eCourse just launched and the coaching will launch in March 2019.

 

  • Karenshared listeners can find her at –

www.karenmillsap.com 

  • Karen shared that regarding quotes or sayings that she tends to revert to, that ironically, it's like a little plaque that she found and it's on her desk as she’s looking at it right now. It is her favorite, it says, “Everything's going to be all right. Yep even that one thing.”Bob Marley said that. But she likes how it says, “Yep”, even that one thing because it's like yeah, you can get really stuck on something, it's like no, no, no, everything is going to be okay. Even that one thing, and she loves her some Bob Marley, so it resonated right away.

Links

 

Feb 12, 2019

Jon Ferrara is a successful serial entrepreneur, he's top 10 Social Service Salesperson according to Forbes and renown CRM pioneer with a knock for building authentic relationships with customers. Given his shared passion for creating genuine connections and making a positive impact on the lives of others, I believe he would be a very interesting guest for this podcast. And so, he's going to dive in and share with us some of the journeys that he's taken. He's going to share with us some of his core values building products that help others achieve their passion, plan, and purpose and we're going to identify what are those success indicators.

Jon shared that he thinks our purpose on this planet is to help others grow and we do that by giving a little of value to one another. And through this conversation he hopes that we're able to add value to your audience and the people who listen. 

Questions

 

  • Tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey
  • Could you share with us three things that you think help to really build a strong relationship?
  • With things being so technologies, do you still believe that the human experience is still necessary?
  • How do you stay motivated everyday?
  • What is one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely cannot live without in your business?
  • What are some of the books that have had the biggest impact on you in that journey of growth for yourself?
  • What is the one thing in your life right now that you are really excited about – either something that you’re working on to develop yourself or people?
  • Where can our listeners find you online?
  • What’s one quote or saying that during times of adversity or challenge you revert to this quote to kind of helps you refocus and push forward?

Highlights

  • Jon stated that these are all great questions and it really starts with him in some respect his childhood. He grew up with his first computer when he was 16 years old in 1976 and through his journey of understanding technology and his passion for people and relationships, he found himself struggling in his first job in sales, trying to build connections and conversations that drive results and there was no contact management, there was no outlook, there was no CRM, there was no salesforce. In fact, there was no tool that integrated email contact and calendar with sales and more coordination. So, at 29 years old in 1989 he quit his job and he started a company called GoldMine and GoldMine was the first programme that integrated email connected calendar and team relationship platform, they were outlook and salesforce before either existed. He started the company on USD $5,000.00 in his apartment in Los Angeles and grew to about USD $100 Million Dollars in revenue. They're at about 10 million customers worldwide and he sold that when he was 40 years old and retired for 10 years and raised three babies and in that journey, in that experience of entrepreneurship but more importantly as a present father and husband, he came to really understand and value the gift he got of being able to be a present father and husband and how it helped him grow because he thinks if you're present with the people around you, they will reflect your weak points back at you and if you're willing to work on those in life you can grow as a human being. And he thinks that's what we're on this planet to do, is to grow our souls by helping other people grow theirs and the process of social media evolving in 2006, 2007, 2008, he started to use it and he saw it was going to change the way we work, buy and sell and he started looking for a relationship manager that integrated social and he couldn't find it. And then he started looking at CRM systems and he saw they really weren't about social media, they were really about or even relationships, they were really about reporting and commanding control and so he set out to build a new platform, a relationship manager that incorporated contact management and CRM and social sales and marketing and it would be different in the way it would be different is that you don't work for it, it works for you by building itself in the data you already have in your business and everybody has contacts and email and calendar as well as contacts and all kinds of business apps like customer service accounting, social media, sales and marketing. And it would derive the contacts by unifying them all together from all the disparate places from the separate departments so that the company would have a unified relationship manager so that no matter who picks up the phone they know who they're talking to, what's happened, who's done it, what's going to happen, who's going to do it, who is this person, what is your business about, so they could provide the optimal experience and most importantly to follow up and follow through and that that contact would be available to them in all the places that they work so that no matter who touches, no matter what you touch in a company in sales, in marketing and customer service, in accounting that everybody's on one page with that customer and in that you can provide the optimal experience. And so, we called it Nimble and so he seems to be back in the saddle in the relationship management game.

Yanique stated, so you're basically able to have everything all under one roof allowing people to pull information from different sites and being able to connect and also it helps with the sales process.

Jon agreed because he really believes that service is the new sales, that your job as a salesperson is to help other people grow and to do that you need to develop intimacy and trust with that person and so you need to build a connection, a relationship before you can ever get them to open up to you about their business issues which as a professional you can then solve. It's always easier to build a connection with somebody when you share some commonalities. So, you don't typically start a phone call with, “Did you sign the contract?”You start it by, “Good morning” “Good afternoon” “Good evening”how about, “How's the weather in Kingston today?”or some areas of commonality, if he was going to talk to you, he'd talk about some common experiences and he'd share that he saw Bob Marley play when he was 18 years old at UCLA Pauley Pavilion and it was the most wonderful experience he had ever had because he grew up listening to his music and he was inspired by his marching to a different drummer and teaching people to seek out truth in life and freedom and the struggles that people were going through around the world not just African-Americans and that it all unites us, this struggle and this desire for peace and freedom and we would connect on some area of commonality and then we'd dive into learning more about each other, finding ways to add value in business is secondary to all that. So business is just something that we do but friendships last a lifetime and they will get you through any business hiccup and in all businesses hiccups happen but if there's a relationship, there's a tendency for more empathy and more forgiveness and more gratitude in the connections and the interactions and that's really the philosophy behind Nimble, is that relationships are critical to your life’s success and that your network and your brand are so important to that success yet most of us don't really manage our golden Rolodex and Nimble is a tool not just for businesses but for every individual because every individual's life success will be through the connections and conversations, relationships that they develop too.

 

  • Jon shared that he thinks that a company's brand is built on the promises that it makes and the experiences that it delivers. And if you can align those two, you could build a goldmine and a lot of that experience is delivered to your customer facing team members and so you need to empower each of them to deliver optimal experience at the point of connection and conversation whenever they're interacting with the constituency and he says constituency because he thinks that most companies think about prospects and customers and they think about sales and marketing people but ultimately, there is a team of people at your company that's interacting with the constituency around your business and you need to unify all of these people into a team and to empower them to make decisions in favor of the customer. How many times have you gone into a business where we the people just say no that's just the way we do it, we can’t do it. So, he’s going to share an example of that. He was trying to send a gift to somebody who did something wonderful for him, it was a Microsoft team member, they did an interview with a Forbes writer and they talked about how Nimble has evolved into the simple CRM for Office 365 where Microsoft has actually recently Nimble with office globally through all their distributors and resellers and she gave this wonderful interview, she didn't have to do it, she's a very busy person and he wanted to do something special for her. So, he looked all over the Seattle area for a particular bottle of champagne, it's the champagne that he took to dinner when he proposed to his wife 30 years ago. And it's a special bottle to him and he only had it twice when he proposed to his wife and when they celebrated their anniversary 30 years later and so he found a store that had it and he spoke to the store manager he said, “Yes, I have it. I can send it, but you need to call our customer service phone number.”So, he called them, and they said, “Well, you could just go to the app and order it.”So, he went to the app and the app said it wasn't available, it wasn't in. So, he called back to customer service and they said, “Well, our systems don't allow us to sell when there's one bottle. We can only sell if there's more than one. The last one we can't sell online.”He spent four hours that day trying to get somebody to override the system and make a decision in his favor to actually ship the bottle. And they finally got somebody to do that after five hours with them and then when they went to send it, they couldn't deliver it, they could only FedEx it and then FedEx the next day wasn't able to deliver it because the door that FedEx went to was a secure door, they couldn't get through. And the whole process was so painful. And that's an example of a customer cutting their hand on the journey through your company and he thinks that to every customer that your business engages with the person they're talking to is the company, they need to empower team members to make decisions in favor of the customer and he thinks the Apple Store is an example of that. At Apple, he has rarely left the store unhappy, they typically take care of whatever he needs and they're empowered to make those decisions and so, from his experience in building two global technology brands, he thinks that you have to instill a desire of care, of empathy, of the team members to the constituency and he’s say that because it’s not just prospects and customers those influencers and resellers and other people at touch are involved the customer but they need to really care about the customer, the product, and the company and to be able to make decisions in the time that they're engaging with that person that leaves that person not only delighted so they come back and buy again but so that they drag their friends with them.

Yanique stated, I have so many experiences myself as you describe, it's such a painful part of the journey that when you're finished you don't even want to have to call the company back again because when you think about the headache that they put you through it just deters you completely. So, as a business as you mentioned in your experience that it's important to map and to empower the employees. Empowerment is a very, very, big word and it can be a simple act if people know exactly what being empowered means. So, as a leader let's say you went to this wonderful leadership workshop and they brought in Jon and Jon spoke about empowerment and so these leaders go back to their organizations now and they're like, “Okay, I'm going to empower my team members.” What are some of the steps that empowerment entails because it's not just about going back and saying you're empowered there's more to it.

Jon agreed and stated that some of it is empowering them to make decisions even when there's a policy in place that is set. So, he doesn’t think any process should be so rigid that the customer is left unhappy or unsatisfied in some way.Jon thinks that the customer may not always be right but they're always the customer, so, if you have to let a customer know that you can't do a particular thing, let them be wrong with dignity and respect. In other words, part of it is the way you communicate and the attitude that you have, and you felt it before, you could feel him on the phone right now and you feel that customer service person when they're communicating with you, that's why they put mirrors in front of customer service cubicles because people can feel your smile, people can feel your heart and soul. There's an energy that interacts between human beings and he thinks that you need to start by hiring people that have a positive energy, good human being, that are good cultural fit and you need to treat them good because if you don't treat the team members good, they're not going to be able to treat the customers constituency good. So, it starts with hiring great people and then building an amazing culture and then making sure that they're empowered to make decisions that leave the customer satisfied and that might even mean them recommending a competitor's product, it might mean making a slight change in a policy to facilitate a customer in that moment, it might mean taking the feedback from where customers are constantly cutting their fingers on their customer journey with you and making recommendations to change it. So, that connected to your customers journey that they're collecting feedback just like his journey with this liquor store that has a policy that says, “We don't sell the last bottle.”Why is that the policy, that doesn't need to be the policy, that policy could change, it changed by human being making the change and actually selling him the bottle but it could change further by changing the system itself. And so, he thinks it really starts with the people, but he also thinks that our world is getting so automated, it's getting so digitized and he thinks that the more digital we get, the more human we need to be, and it really takes a human touch to create that experienceand he’s going to share a human touch story. Jon asked Yanique if she has ever shopped at Nordstrom and if she likes shopping there?

Yanique replied, it's not something that stands out like when I shop with Apple for example. It just seems like another department store they haven't done anything that really wows me. But yes, I've shopped in there before.

Jon mentioned that one of the things that Nordstrom's does when you buy is, they wrap up your package in the bag and they walk around the counter and they hand you the package, what they're doing, and everybody's caught this. What they're doing is they're entering your space and creating a momentary connection and he thinks in this over connected, over communicated world a simple human connection can work magic and it's a simple gesture but it creates a more human experience as opposed to go to Macy's or someplace else May company but they basically literally fill the bag over the counter at you and that's a completely different experience than shopping at Nordstrom and it's the little things that add up to the ultimate experience. Jon thinks that companies that could instill more humanity in the interactions will stand out and he thinks that there's a lot of companies that do stand out in that experience, certainly Apple Store is one of them but even on a digital basis he thinks that there are companies that have created an experience that really wows him and he thinks Netflix is an example of that. They kind of revolutionized the way we get DVDs and it started with mailing them to you in the way that they did but he thinks their software creates an experience, it just makes it easy to find shows you like and to watch them easily and to catch up where you left off almost to the point where he thinks it's too easy to binge watch shows.

Yanique agreed, they do make it easy and I love the fact that you say we should keep the human side of things because we actually did an interview last week with another guest for the podcast and that's one of the questions I had actually asked her which you tapped into before I even got an opportunity to ask is, with things being so technologized do you still believe that the human experience is still necessary and I mean from my perspective for example, let's take for example the IVR system when you call a company, press one for this and two for that and three for this. And I think at the end of the day when somebody calls whether they're making a request or they're making a complaint they really want to speak to a live human being when the phone rings one time without pressing three, four, five, six, seven and then being disconnected and have to do it all over again.

 

  • Jon agreed and stated, how about when they ask you to enter in your account number and you get to somebody and they ask you for your account number. It's little things like that. There's a lady named Maya Angelo who said, “People will forget what you did but people will never forget how you made them feel.”and he really believes that, another friend of his Shep Hyken. He said, “The greatest technology in the world hasn't replaced the ultimate relationship building tool between a customer and a business, the human touch.”And so, he thinks that customer experience is the differentiator, it is the thing that will set you apart from your competitors and he thinks that the more businesses look at the entire journey that customers have with their business and to find that the more they'll grow, and the experience doesn't just happen when they're buying. He’ll tell you a journey out of him buying a TV set recently. So, he had a TV set that died, it was a Sony TV and it was the second Sony product that died, he had a receiver that died six months before. And so that was the trigger that started his journey and so he went and did a selection set of what he might consider and he didn't do that like going to the websites of the TV companies or even the stores, he started to look online and he read reviews of people that are like him or people that are trusted reviewers or advisers, people that review these things, third party people. He built a selection set and only then to actually go into a store because a TV set needs to be seen and then while looking at the TVs, he saw that Sony actually had the best picture, the best features, the best price and he ended up buying it even though he set out not to do that but after that buying, there was a post purchase experience where he kept looking at reviews because he want to make sure he had the made the right decision and he kept looking and he was using the TV and making sure it was the right thing. Jon then asked, “Have you ever done that after you bought something you continue to read reviews?” So that's the post purchase experience and it wasn't until you get to the point where you have decided that this is something that you really like that you essentially become an advocate and a whole lot of this that he’s talking about is documented in something called, “The McKinsey Customer Journey” and it's a PDF that you can put in this show notes that you can share with your audience. But there is a beautiful diagram that talks about the trigger, the initial consideration set, the active evaluation, the moment of purchase, the post purchase experience and then the loyalty loop. So now he’s in the loyalty loop where he now only tell other people how much he dig the Sony team but he bought two more and he has them in his house and that's what you want to do with your customers is to become a trusted advisor to that entire journey not just in the purchase experience, not just in the post purchase experience but to be involved in the loyalty loop by becoming a trusted advisor to inspire and educate them about how they might become better, smarter and faster because he thinks people don't buy great products, they buy better versions of themselves and that's what you want to be able to do is to communicate your brand story about how you put your customer at the center of that hero story and you can then not only get them to come back and buy from you but to drag their friends with them in the loyalty loop.

 

  • Jon shared that when he was 41 years old, a year after he sold GoldMine and he has been so blessed and successful in selling this large business and his second baby was born the day he sold the business and his life was blessed and he found that he had a head tumor and it was pretty serious, he had to do some very severe treatments and lost a lot of weight. He thinks you don't really value how great it is to be healthy until you're notand it caused him in the process of getting healed to really go on a spiritual journey and in the process of that he really developed a sense of gratitude and empathy towards others that he hadn't had as deeply in the past. And also, a sense of purpose of his life and that purpose is as he shared before that we're on this planet to grow our souls by helping other people theirs, that's it. And so, he does his best on a daily basis to be as present as he can with the people and places around him, to be mindful as much as he can and to try to give something of himself to anyone he’s interacting with even if it's just a smile because the person in front of you deserves your attention even if you're in the grocery line put your phone down and connect with that person for a moment, they're serving you and you need to connect with them. So, whenever he’s interacting with people especially customer service people even salespeople, he tries to connect with them and to just have a moment because we’re all human beings and we're all just doing our best, and so the thing that motivates him every day is that it's another day that he might connect with another human being, to learn enough about them that he might blow a little wind in their sales and when two humans connect there’s an energy that connects and he loves that energy, he loves that connection and he must share another story with you. So, the doctor that saved his life, his ear nose, and throat doctor, the one that found his tumor. He happens to be the ENT to the biggest stars, so he was Whitney's doctor Frank Sinatra’s doctor, Bono's and he also tweets ordinary people like him. He was walking out of his cubicle, the doctors shoving all those little rooms and he bump into this little man and he looked down and said, “Dang, you're Mick Jagger.”He didn't say that to Mick Jagger, but he thought it. And at the same time, he thought, “Gosh, your short and old.” And at the same time, he thought to himself, “Why does this guy get on an airplane 50 times, 100 times a year and go and do a show. He certainly doesn't need the money?.”He does it because he loves to dance with these other human beings, that he loves to give in what he gets is an energy. He gets empowered, he feeds on this. And so, Jon feeds on growing other human beings through the connections with them and he thinks that's all we leave this planet with is the moment we've been truly present with others and places around us and the ripples in the pond that we create through some type of connection and value-adding, so that's what gets him every day.

Yanique stated, I mean it's just like music to my ears. I mean, it's so good to talk to someone who they're deeply connected with connecting with another human being because the reality is many of us go through our days in our businesses, in our personal lives and we are not present like fully present. I mean physically, our body is there but is our mind there, are we fully concentrating on the individual that is standing in front of us whether it's our child or significant other. And I'm guilty of it sometimes, I'm not going to lie, I'm going to stay here and tell you the truth. So, it's good to hear that you're really dedicated to being present, that's a reminder that you tell yourself every day because that's how you get up and push forward.

Jon agreed and told Yanique that it's not her fault, our minds are like little puppies and you know how if you try to teach a puppy to sit and what does a puppy do, you tell to sit on the paper, stay and it goes and runs away, it would skip away and you have to like your mind and your thoughts because you're always thinking about the past or worried about the future instead of being present and that's your little puppy, your mind and it throw these thoughts at you. And so, you can get angry with yourself and say, “Well gosh, why wasn't I present with Yanique, I could have had a better experience. I was thinking about my mortgage or my wife,”whatever it is, you just with kindness say okay, come on back, just come on back and eventually if you learn to put a seat in the room in your mind to observe the thoughts that you have, focus on your breathing and learn to enable those thoughts to go by without getting caught on them because typically thoughts come and you get caught and you get strung away on this thought about the past or the present, if you could just learn how to do that on a daily basis and there is process to do that to meditation, you can learn to be more present and he actually recommend an app called Headspace that does that so you can load that on your phone and it’s free for the first lessons, practice with that, it has this thing where you do 3 minutes a day and he recently got back from a retreat in a place called Big Sur.If you ever come to California, you have to check out Big Sur it’s the coast of northern California and there's a retreat there called Esalen and it's where the native Americans, the Indians used to gathered for this hot spring and it's been there for 10,000 years and you go and he went to this mindfulness meditation retreat for 3 days and it gave him enough tools to get started with this, it's always been something he has been interested in, but he hasn’t made it a daily practice of meditation and mindfulness. So, he’s starting the new year with this to try to make that a daily practice and so he wanted to share that with you and maybe you might find that interesting and practice it yourself.

Yanique then stated, I have heard of the concept of mindfulness, there are people here in Jamaica that I communicate with who actually practice it, but I've never actually engaged in it myself but I'm definitely going to check out Big Sur. I've been to LA once, I used to be a Flight Attendant with Air Jamaica, which was our national airline before I started my company. And I spent a Christmas and New Years in LA and unfortunately because we were laying over for such a short period of time, I didn't really get to enjoy the city that much, but I would definitely return for sure.

Jon shared that if you are interested in exploring mindfulness, that app Headspace is a really easy way to try it out and he highly recommend that you load that on your phone in and give it a whirl.

 

  • When asked about the one online tool that he uses every day, Jon stated that he thinks we all live where we're communicating with other people and that's your inbox but for him, he loves to inspire and educate other people on a daily basis because he thinks that's our purpose in life is to add value to other people's journey. So, he curate content on a daily basis that is in and around the areas of his passion, plan and purpose in life, not just his business stuff, but his personal as well because he thinks that people connect to your heart and soul as much as they connect to your business passions. And then he shares that content on a daily basis. Think of it as dropping fishing lures into the social river around your business to begin connections and conversations that ideally results in relationships. And so, the tool that he uses to queue up content is a tool called Buffer Buffer app enables him to take whatever he’s reading and to share it across his personal and professional identities and he thinks that the biggest struggle that most business people have, whether they're individuals or a business itself, is to be seen because if you aren't seen, then people won’t think of you. And there was an actress who happened to be an entrepreneur, her name was Mae West. She said, “Out of sight is out of mind and out of mine is out of money and honey.” So, you need to be seen to be considered and how many times have you walked by a business and looked in the door and somebody sitting there behind the counter and God forbid on their phone and there's nobody in the shop, you've ever seen that? It breaks his heart because he knows how much it costs to open a store and to pay the rent. What about people? He thinks that your network is your net worth, you branding your network will help you achieve your dreams, yet most people don't really manage the brand in the network effectively.And what he’s talking about is sharing content on a daily basis will help you to build your brand and your network personally or professionally or for your company and so I use buffer to do that but the most important advice he has in regards to content is engagement because imagine if you're dropping fishing lures, which is content, to connections, conversations in the river and somebody bites on it if you don't pull the hook, if you don't wheel it in, then it's just pointless because you're not fully finishing the process and so you need to respond to people responding to you and start conversations and the conversations shouldn't be about your products and services, it should be about how you might add value to that person and if you enter into every connection and conversation with the attempt to serve that other human being, then you can't but help succeed in life because another great that he loves, Zig Ziglar said, “The more people you help achieve their dreams, the more you will achieve your dreams.”He tries to give his knowledge away on a daily basis, so people see him as a trusted advisor, so when they need his products or services, they pick up the phone and call him and drag their friends with them.

 

  • Jon shared that there's one book he read early on which was a book called Siddhartha: A Novel and it's the book of Buddha's journey. It had an impact on him in regard to seeking your own truth. Another one was a book by Thoreau Walden, and it taught him to march to his own drummer and he thinks that if he hadn't marched to his own drummer as a young man that he probably wouldn't have retired at 40 years old. But then beyond that, there's a book called Think and Grow Rich: or Men and Women who Resent Poverty by Napoleon Hill that taught him to figure out what his passion, plan and purpose in life, which is what is your passion? Are you building a plan to achieve it? Are you making it your purpose on a daily basis? And that's what enabled him to build Goldmine. Another book is Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind by Al Ries because ultimately a perception is reality and you need to be able to build a brand and create the perceptions in people's heads, so people see you and your company and your business and then How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie, because ultimately relationships are key to life.

 

  • Jon shared with us his journey on mindfulness and meditation, it really helps him to focus. The other thing is his relationship with Microsoft, which is really incredible and if you think about it, Microsoft is a huge company with billions of customers and hundreds of thousands of resellers and to have evolved their platform as the simple CRM for office where Microsoft signed a resell agreement and is selling Nimble globally through their distributors and resellers to the customers as a bundle with office, and how they become strategic to not only help sell office and make it sticky, but also as a gateway to Azureand dynamics was quite a feat that took their team years to build the relationships. And interestingly enough, it parallels the journey of Goldmine, so Goldmine started, they were able to start that without any venture capital or any bank loans because they figured out who is the trusted advisor for their customer and back in the day it was the Novell reseller. Now you may not remember Novell, Novell was the network operating system that businesses use to tie together their PCs and hard drives and printers and to share a network business applications. There was no Microsoft network operating system or even windows back in the day. So, businesses used Novell and we were a network application to ride on top of that when they got the Novell resellers to use Goldmine and then start reselling it, but then Microsoft came out with anti-servers, sequel server, an exchange server and they hate Novell and we basically partnered with Microsoft by requiring a GoldMine license, a license of anti-server, sequel server, exchange server, and thereby becoming strategic to Microsoft as well as solving our customers' needs of a more scalable business solution and that's how they got to USD $100,000,000.00 in. Interestingly enough, history is repeating itself because they started with Gmail, Gsuite which was the Novella, but if you have PCs and you want to tie them together in the cloud. You started with Gmail and Gsuite, office wasn't there, office 365, but Microsoft came out with office 365 and when they saw the writing on the wall, they built integrations with that and have basically replicated becoming strategic with Microsoft's Office 365 with Nimble the way that Goldmine became strategic with anti-server and sequel server and he thinks that if you understand history, you could understand the present and more easily predict the future. And he thinks it's because of his experience in the past that he was able to see the writing on the wall and to be able to leverage Microsoft in this new era.

Yanique stated, we just crossed over ourselves. We hosted with GoDaddy and they now sell their products with office 365 integration and it was actually a very easy migration and I actually prefer the interface, I was a bit hesitant when they said, office 365 because I'm a Mac user but it works brilliantly with my iPhone and it syncs across all devices. And if I send an email from my phone, I'll see the same sent message from my MacBook Pro or the same sent message from my iPad. So, I don't have any issues with it, I'm actually quite pleased, it's operating better than the platform that GoDaddy had before this integration with Office 365.

Jon stated that before GoDaddy sold IMAP email and before IMAP was pop, these are protocols and most of your listeners today have as their email server, pop or imap, or Gmail or Gsuite or iCloud and maybe a combination of all those things, but ultimately you need a cloud based solution that unifies emailed contacting calendar into a thing that can synchronize across phones, iPads and computers and desktops and both Gsuite and office do that. But he thinks Microsoft has the edge because we all grew up with MS Excel and MS Word and we used to that and so it's easy to sort of pick office because it comes with those things and works well with those things. But there's even better reasons for the office in the future, if we think about traditional businesses, they have servers in closets and those servers, have to be updated with the software and firewalls to protect them and he thinks that there isn't a business today that isn't, hasn't been hacked or won't be hacked if they continue to try to manage all their own IT and that most businesses are going to the cloud. It started with moving their exchange and outlook to the cloud with office, but soon all the other servers well in Azure is a great place for your business systems in the future and that's why they're just so excited to partner with them and in fact GoDaddy is a Nimble customer, they use it for their influencer, marketing, outreach and engagement and they're actually talking to them about bundling Nimble with their office solution sales, when they sell you a domain, they sell you office, the next thing they'll sell you on top of that will be Nimble.

Yanique shared, I love GoDaddy, their customer service is amazing, totally amazing and one of the things I love about them from day one, when I started this company was when you call them, you can actually get a live person. I remember a couple of years ago I had redone my website and the web developer, even though I recommended that he use GoDaddy, you chose to use a different company, I think it was Blue Host or something, but I had an issue with the website and when I tried to call Blue Host, apparently they don't have a telephone number, so you have to go into a live chat and one of the most frustrating things that you could ever do to me is send me to a chat room for me to explain to you in words what I could have done if I was talking to you in a voice call. I find it way more stressful to sit down and type out my issue than if I could just explain it to you verbally and I think I spoke with them maybe twice and I just closed the account and I moved everything over to GoDaddy. I don't know why he didn't take my recommendation in the first place, but it was extremely frustrating, that's another issue I have with Magic Jack to this day. I don't understand if they're a telecommunication company and they provide services for people to call people all over the world, why don't they have an actual phone number when you're having an issue with your Magic Jack?

Jon stated that that brings us full circle to customer journey and experience that we need the human touch because it's just so much more effective and personal.

 

  • Jon shared listeners can find him at –

Twitter – @Jon_Ferrara

Website –www.nimble.com

Code: Jon40 for 40% to sign up for Nimble

 

  • Jon shared a quote, “This too shall pass.”He really believes that life is like a Beethoven symphony, that there are high and there's low notes and that you can't really value the high notes without the low notes and that all of those notes will pass, so don't get too connected to the highs in your life because they won't last forever and don't be so worried about the lows in your life because they won’t last forever too. And he thinks you could learn more from struggles than you can from successes. And so, life is like a Beethoven symphony, don't let whatever is happening to you bother you too much. This too shall pass, you could learn so much from those moments in your life and he thinks that the biggest cause of pain or suffering is grasping onto highs or resisting or averting low's, and if you just accepted them both as part of your journey, that you will be more balanced and happier in your life.

 

Links

 

 

Feb 5, 2019

Highlights

 

In this episode Yanique Grant would like to take a little bit of time and just share with you some key important nuggets that she has gained over the years in the category of commitments. So, we're at the beginning of a new year we're still in the first quarter and in customer experience and customer service when we make promises, or we make commitments to our internal customers or external customers, a lot of time it's because of broken promises, commitments that have not been fulfilled why people tend to have negative feelings towards each other and this may cause them anger, frustration, upset, it may cause a myriad of negative emotions.

 

So firstly, a commitment or promise is not easy in Jamaican terms, when I do customer service training and people will say, “A promises is a comfort to a fool.”No, that's not any definition of what a promise according to any formalized dictionary globally. A promise or a commitment is your verbal word or written word where you say that you are going to actually do something or carry out a particular task. So, for example, you could tell a customer, “I'm going to call you back.”even though you didn't say, “I promise I'll call you back,” their expectation is you will call them back or you tell a co-worker, “Sure, no problem, I'll take care of it,”it could be to complete a bill for a customer, it could be to give a message regarding a customer's order or delivery, that message is going to impact the customer's delivery or order being on time and you didn't deliver that message. Again, it's your word that you've put into it and so people believe that you're going to complete it. Now, if you don't follow through on a promise there are a lot of negative things that come out of it, people don't  trust you, you're deemed as unreliable, you're not dependable and because of that, then less of your co-workers will have faith in the fact that when you say something you're actually going to do it. Now some people in organizations tell you that they are going to do something just because they want to get rid of you or because they really didn't hear what you said, they were not paying attention to when you were asking the question or requesting a particular service or product and so they went ahead and made confirmation with you verbally or in writing that yes they will go ahead and have this done but they didn't really think about whether or not that commitment was realistic. So, one of the things I would like to encourage people in organizations who work as well as business owners, managers, supervisors, everyone from top to bottom, when you make a promise, or a commitment ensure that your promise or your commitment is realistic because if it's not realistic then you are setting yourself up for failure. Let us say with your current responsibilities and your current workload, the person has asked you to do something and it is just humanly impossible for you to complete it, if you have all those other competing activities to do. However, the person doesn't know you have those other competing activities so the responsibility would be on you to ensure that whatever information you are giving to them is realistic. Sometimes it's better we say no and sometimes it's hard to say no but at least when you say no, 1) you're being honest, 2) you’re giving the person that you are making a commitment to or you're telling that you're not able to commit to that you are not able to do it so it willgive them an opportunity to seek someone else who actually can do it because let's say you commit to them that you're going to have the report delivered to them by Monday for example, and they commit to someone else for a meeting they're having on Wednesday that, “Well, I'll have the report by Monday so I'd be able to dial down on those figures by Tuesday and by Wednesday in our meeting I'll have feedback for you.”However, you don't have the report ready for them on Monday, you got caught up over the weekend and you weren't able to complete it and you won't be able to complete it until Thursday but the person who you made a commitment to, their meeting is Wednesday and so your commitment that you made to that individual impacts other people and other decisions and other meetings and other things that have to be happening. So, we have to think carefully about the commitments that we're making, we have to be realistic in managing the expectations of those with whom we make these commitments.

 

I know a promise seems like a simple thing but when you look at organizations and hear about customer service challenges internally and externally and you do the investigations to find out why it is that this person feels this way or why it is that that person is so anger and is so frustrated, when you really get to the root of it many times it boils down to communication and many times it boils down to lack of communication because of a broken promise, a commitment that was not fulfilled, a promise that you made that you were not able to keep…..so it's not hard. Commitments are not hard to be fulfilled but when we're making them, we have to be realistic. In my customer service trainings, when I engage with participants from different industries - health, telecommunications, banking and finance, government, really doesn't matter what industry you’re in, one of the key things that I encourage participants to do is if they must break a promise because the reality is we're all human and we make mistakes and sometimes because we're so overwhelmed with personal obligations and we have professional responsibilities and lots of things that are going on in our life all at once, we may genuinely forget that we made a commitment or a promise to someone else. I know for sure that I fall short where that is concerned many times both in my personal life and my professional life. However, the key to ensuring that when we do break the promise, is to ensure that we communicate with the person that we've broken the promise with or we're going to break the promise with whether it's that we won't be able to do it at all or we're delaying the expectation of the delivery of that promise. And so, two rules that I always encourage participants to employ if we must break a promise include the first rule is an acronym and the acronym is K.I.S.Swhich basically stands for, Keep It Short and Simpleand all I mean by that is, if we must break a promise try not to get into too much detail as to why the promise was broken especially if the details that you are revealing to the customer and this is if it's an external customer, because if it's an internal customer then clearly the quality of theinformation that you release to them is confidential because they work within the organization and so you can share the mishaps with them. However, if it's an external customer you want to keep it short and simple, don't give the customer too much information because if the information that you are giving to them is not relevant to the solution, it can actually be detrimental to your organization. Simple thing, an example, let us say a delivery was to be made and the customer came to pick up their delivery, they were told that the item would be available for pickup on Friday, however, unfortunately the truck that was coming to make the delivery was stopped by the police on the road and the police seized the vehicle because the carrier license on the vehicle had expired and you go now to tell the customer that I'm so sorry but the item isn't here because of all of that, now that makes a company look very inefficient and it makes the team in the organization also look very incompetent. So, think carefully, if the reasons for the problem or the promise not being fulfilled is relevant and if it's not relevant, it doesn't need to be mentioned. A simple statement like, “Due to circumstances beyond our control, unfortunately I'm so sorry.” And of course you say it with a level of engagement that shows that you are apologetic for the fact that there is a delay and you're calling ahead to let them know so that they can probably put other things into play to prepare that they're not going to receive this item or if they were travelling from far they wouldn't need to come to pick up the item because that item would not be there for them to pick up. To take it a step further, if it is that clearly in the example the fault it would be on that of the organization not having their internal business in order, in a case like that probably some compensation could be, “Instead of you coming to pick it up from us, we are going to deliver it to you because we messed up, we made a mistake, the circumstances that are beyond our control are things that we could have prevented from occurring but because of the great inconvenience it's causing you and because we're breaking our promise to you, we're going have it delivered to you.” and you give them a new expectation with a new date and a new time for the time that they can expect the delivery. So, the first rule is K.I.S.S, Keep It Short and Simple if you must break a promise.

 

The second rule is you want to ensure that when you are breaking the promise you are not pointing fingers and casting blame on other members of your team or other departments in your organization. We all work for the same company, if that's X company or Y company or Z company, whichever company you work for, casting blame or pointing fingers and saying, “That's how they are in the accounts department, they're always late, they have no urgency.”or “That's how they are in the sales department, they drag their feet, they take forever.”Whatever the reason is that you believe is the core of the reason, even if you know for sure that your team member messed up, it's not your responsibility to cast blame and it's not right and it doesn't help the solution because the customer when they’re arguing with the company and they're getting upset with the company, many times when they're doing that, they're not casting blame on that one individual or that one department, they're casting blame on the entire organization regardless if that department or that person was even a part of the issue or the problem.

 

So, a promise is a very important practice, it's a very important part of an organization, everybody has to make commitments and promises to each other in an organization and to your customers. So just remind yourself as you embark on 2019 as you are working to exceed your customer's expectations and you're working to map out your customer journey and you're working to satisfy and exceed the expectations and go above and beyond….that a lot of times the reasons why we're not able to achieve these high goals that we've set for ourselves is because of some of these simple little activities that happen day to day in the interactions between employees and customers is that there is dissatisfaction, why it is that there is discomfort, why it is that there is unrest, why it is that our customers and sometimes our employees do not feel completely at ease in an organization where the culture and everyone is pulling their weight in an organization where people are doing the best to ensure that the quality of the experience that they have with each other as well as with the customers are ones that are of quality, are ones that are of care, are ones that really go above and beyond to make sure that your client or your customer leaves feeling good. They feel like you're working with people who care about them, they feel that they're working with people who are ensuring that whatever they said they're going to do they actually do it and if they can't do it they have the courtesy and the decency to pick up the phone or grab their computer or their phone and communicate with them to let them know that unfortunately we're not able to deliver, we're not able to call, we're not able to do whatever it is that's going to be broken so that you can know how to put things in place on your end.

 

So, I encourage you as listeners of this podcast to really think about the promises and the commitments that you're making for 2019 and ensure that whatever you put out there that you verbally speak or that you write as said before, you don't have to say I promise for the person to view it as a promise and even if you say, “I'm going to try,” psychologically most people interpret that as it's going to be done. So, think realistically about the promises that you make:

 

Are they realistic?

Can they be done?

 

Ensure that you follow through and you communicate, communicate, communicate,because people are not mind readers, they don't know the challenges that you have on your end and if you don't tell them that something has changed in that process, they're not going to know. So really think about what I have shared with you and I hope that you will embrace this whole idea of making realistic promises and I hope that as you go through 2019 in your organization that the quality of your experience is improved because your promises are realistic, your promises have people who communicate, communicate, communicate and your promises are ones where you're not blaming your team members and if it's issues that show the organization up in a negative way, you're ensuring that you manage that information by keeping it short and simple and just releasing the information that is relevant to ensuring that you get to the solution which is to satisfy that customers need. So, I hope that this information will help you in 2019. Again, if you'd like to follow us on Twitter, feel free it's navigating CXand please feel free to join our Facebook group, Navigating the Customer Experience Podcast.

 

 

 

 

Jan 29, 2019

Emily Rasowsky Show Notes

 

Emily Rasowsky is Customer Experience Lead for Spark Fund and Spark Fund is an organization that helps companies to upgrade energy technology. So, because that's not really an area of expertise for Yanique, she will allow Emily to explain in the very simplest of terms as we welcome her, what it is that her company really does do and how does this really impact a customer's experience regardless of your business type or industry.

 

Emily shared that Spark Fund and what that actually means, in layman's terms, our job is to make it as easy as humanly possible for energy managers and financial leaders to update their energy technology. So, things like lights, a jack, chillers, boilers, refrigeration, anything that goes into your space and consumes energy. We work with a lot of large organizations that don't have the same sorts of incentives or access to resources to upgrade their technology to be energy efficient. And it's crazy because buildings emit more OCO2 than cars. So, this is a huge problem. And our job, we have an integrated a team of engineers, project managers, and financiers, people who provide everything you would need to do a project. So, we take it off your hands. In essence it really is meant to be a company that makes the experience of owning and operating energy technology no longer an issue because we do this whole process on a subscription. So, we own the technology, people get out of the business of ownership which causes so much heartache and pain and bad experiences. So, we own it and they no longer have to worry about taking care of it.

 

 

Questions

  • Are you the only type of company that offers this service?
  • Could you share with us a little bit of some of the things that your customers have shared in terms of benefits that they've gotten in utilizing the way how your program is set up and structured, both from a financial point of view as well as an emotional point of view, do they feel less stressed, has it improved their productivity?
  • In terms of customer experience innovations and new technologies, is there anything on the brink that Spark Fund is looking to tap into for 2019 or even in the next two to three years that you think will help to revolutionize what you're doing even more?
  • As a technology company and you are in charge of customer experience do you find that you may hire people who are competent leaders in the technical areas that they've been hired to perform in but for some reason they lack that human side. They're so focused on the technicality of a job, they lack the interpersonal side, and do you find that hinders from that whole framework that you're trying to achieve?
  • Could you share with us how do you stay motivated every day?
  • What's the one online resource tool, website or app that you couldn't absolutely live without in your personal life or your business?
  • Could you share with us what are some of the books that have had the biggest impact on you?
  • What is the one thing in your life right now that you are really excited about – either something that you’re working on to develop yourself or people?
  • Where can our listeners find you online?
  • What’s one quote or saying that during times of adversity or challenge you revert to this quote to kind of help you to push through on those days that are challenging or seems a bit overbearing?

 

 

Highlights

 

  • When asked if they are the only type of company that offers this service, Emily stated that right now in the market they're the only one that's integrated in all of the unique ways that they are. So, there are certain types of offerings out there that provide, let's say financing so that you don't have to worry about finding money for it. There are companies out there that provide general contracting so someone to manage the installation of a new piece of technology. But they are the first that does all of these things together. And they are definitely the first that does it on a subscription contract. So, there's also things out there that are similar they look kind of similar, but nothing is quite the setup in the same financial structure that we are.

 

Yanique agreed and stated that because when you do it on a subscription basis it makes it more affordable for the organizations because they pay on a month to month basis.

 

Emily agreed. So, the thing that we're really taking away a lot of financial pain with is when you have a piece of aging technology you never quite know. Even think about even yourself in your home when HVAC unit starts to go you don't know how much that's going to cost or what's going to be wrong with it. We take care of all of that - complete lack of clarity. For example, we have a customer, they're a school and they had to shut down an entire part of their school district, an entire part of their school facility because the heating wasn't working. So, we obviously work with them, they don't have that problem, but you think about all the pain that comes down later down the line. So yes, you're reducing your maintenance costs, you're getting energy savings but you're also reducing these costs that you can't even forecast for. And some companies that are really sophisticated have a budget for that and some companies don't have any budget and that hits them somewhat by surprise. So yes, in a lot of ways we are we're keeping it much more predictable and lower cost which is behavior science tells us when we know what to expect, it feels less painful.

 

  • Emily stated absolutely. So, the way that we work with our customers is that essentially, they can write this off of their to do list maintaining their equipment, managing their equipment. They don't have to worry about that anymore. So, what we really boil this down to and what we've experienced in the market is our customers are seeing and financially they're seeing three core benefits that are aggregated into these themes. One is they're saving money, in most cases we are not pricing in when we share our proposals with them the energy savings they're going to receive because it's very hard for us to predict those. And in the air of transparency we don't want to force them to be tied to those savings which is how a lot of people do that in the market. So, it's based off a function, they don't have to worry about is it going to work or not. We guarantee its function, so it always gets fixed and it always has something, you have a support team behind you. So, you're saving money which is obviously a huge benefit and you're getting energy savings. But emotionally you're saving time because now you don't have to worry. For example, we had one customer who showed us before working with us these are a lot of kind of pre-customers conversations. He said, “How do you know who to call when you're HVAC unit or your backup generation or your lights they break? Who do you call?”He literally pulled up his phone and goes to his contacts and types in HVAC, eight people who could potentially solve his problem. So, right there you have an overload of information, an overload of choice when all the customer wants, truly, think about getting any renovations on your home, you just want it fixed and you want it fixed well, in a timely manner and in a way where you get clear communication on what's happening in your space. So, that is one just small example of something that we do. We are a single point of contact that aggregates all of those key players, so you don’t have to figure out who you call in that situation, we are your point of contact and then we take care of all of that back and forth in detail. So, they're saving time and they're also reducing the risk because when something breaks that's often on the risk of the company, they're actually tracking that financially which we take all of that risk off of their balance sheets literally. So, with schools for example that have certain debt limits right you can't upgrade a building if you have a debt limit or debt ceiling and how much you can borrow being an institution, we can reduce that risk literally off their balance sheet and we make it because it's in a subscription you pay like you would for Netflix or Uber or any of those. It's coming out of your operational budget not your capital budget, so it provides a lot of little flexibility and ease for customers that they're not getting in other financial models.

 

Yanique stated that she thinks it's a wonderful idea. And she like the fact that as Emily said it's aggregated all under one roof and as a customer, I don't need to contact that person and this person because you are the point of contact and then you take care of everything from there and when you really think about it that's what people want. They're willing to pay for convenience and ease of mind and just to know that a responsible organization has this covered, and they can take that as a responsibility off of their plate.

 

  • Emily stated that what's interesting she thinks about the ways CX (customer experience) works at Spark Fund is that they are a relatively small startup. They have about 50 people who work for them and when she thinks about what's happening in the market and the types of technologies people are innovating within. She has two ways that she basically will answer this. One is of course they are investing in technology and in particular in the energy side, monitoring technology because for Sparkfund, they can understand absolutely everything that's happening in someone's building without them ever having to pick up the phone. Then they can deploy a maintenance team. They never have to tell them that there's an issue, they tell the customer, “Hey, we noticed that your machine might need a little tune up. We're going to send someone out, tell us which day in time works most effectively for you.” That is a tremendous pain point that we can alleviate. And something that is tremendously challenging if you are a segmented organization. So, you have monitoring with one company, and you have maintenance with another, you still need that human to call them from the maintenance to the vendor to connect to those two. So, we are to get off of our customers plate with things like monitoring technology and we'll only get more and more sophisticated as that technology gets more and more sophisticated. So yes, absolutely we are investing in full structural changes and by the way, that includes creating an entire new platform, a digital platform that our company will maintain and manage that doesn't give you a crazy chart. So, if you look at with monitoring companies and you're an energy manager you will get a log in that shows you all sorts of numbers and charts and so much information that some people enjoy but others it's a lot to take in and when you’re really are just going from one point to another and you're managing let's say 900 locations which is not a typical, you just want to make sure everything is running okay, nothing is a big flag you got to take care of that morning. So, we're literally on top of these technologies building a very seamless, very easy to understand customer platform and portal so those are some tech staff things that we're investing in but the other side of that is we are really investing a lot of time in and have invested a tremendous amount of time in making our company have some baseline understanding of what it means to really be a CX forward organization and I think that alone is what is driving our innovation. I can't be in every single product meeting, I can't be in every single monitoring meeting but we have people on the organization who understand this is where we're going as a company and they can innovate with this framework of understanding the baseline of behavioral science and how we use it here so this human side is so important and to be honest, one of the biggest challenges she has heard and seen in other organizations is when you don't have that organizational alignment that really moves things forward.

 

Yanique agreed and stated that everybody has to be aligned, everybody has to be singing the same song.

 

  • Emily stated that she thinks that's definitely natural, you have people who their strengths are in different areas of course. But she does feel that one of the things that we truly invest in at Spark Fund is making sure that people we bring on have this vision for where we're going. And one of the biggest reasons that she can say that with confidence is because their product is not just an online product and in fact, it's even more salient than that is an in-person product because you have to go to someone's space and install a piece of really big equipment that requires a huge human element. And so, anyone who is going to come and work for Spark Fund must understand just kind of as a prerequisite that you have to be very aware of what that in-person element is going to do for an online tool. Now, she thinks the benefit of having a very CX forward company is that their hiring structure is one that values obviously people who have specific expertise in particular types of code or particular types of technology build but mirrors that with a product team that understands the customer experience tremendously well and is invested in making sure that that moves forward and a user experience team. So, UI and design team that actually understands how to make these things come to life and they have repeatedly gotten very positive feedback on the experience that we've built because it has a heavy design and UI element. They never build anything that isn't collaborative between both tech and design and experience which she thinks is the benefit of having a small company and you see this in big organizations too. But they have a team that's distinct and aligned and where it needs to go and they wouldn't push something forward if it didn't have that checkbox of thought, Hey, we did think through the experience and how things are actually going to be taken in by the customer.”

 

Yanique added, you've taken it on from a recruitment aspect which is very important. One of the things that she has been hearing buzzing around in the last six months or so is that technology is great, and it has advantages and disadvantages and as a business owner herself, she finds that technology does help to ease the process, increases efficiency, frees up your time, it just makes you a little bit more productive in your day because there are so many hours and the reality is you can't be everywhere at every moment but one of the things that she would love push more for 2019 or she'd like to see organizations push more. Technology is important but do you believe that at some point the human element fades or do you think the human element is always going to still be a part of the customer experience because she finds that human beings still want to speak to another human being especially when something goes wrong?

 

Emily agreed with that sentiment and stated that technology is huge but one of the things that is so clear to her is that as a consumer herself and also someone who really truly cares about customer experience journeys is that she thinks we get too caught up in one singular journey and we don't take a step back and look at all the different journeys that a customer is going through in order to engage with your product. An example with Uber, Uber obviously is a tech platform and they have a tremendous amount of money and resources into building that tech platform. But she thinks the people who are going to win, the customer not just that discrete experience which is one element of technology, but the actual customer are the ones who are going to sit back and think, “Okay, what did the customer have to do to get into the Uber? Where is the customer going when they leave Uber? and how are they going to connect all these experiences together?”And the reality is you do need that human element because she thinks inherently, we are people, we are connected beings, we can't just interact with our phones all day, every day but there is a lot that supports that sentiment that we need this human connection. So, there is this reality that fusing those two worlds together will lead to the winners, what she thinks is most interesting and she have experience with Spark Fund as well and kind of how they've navigated that technology heavy lense. But first start with a bigger picture. So, Amazon obviously has invested a tremendous amount of money in an online platform, but she’s based in DC and they just opened a store, a physical store with actual people who check you out at the front desk and answer your question as you're walking through and reading the titles of these books. So even though they have this amazing online platform they're also investing in in-person experiences and she thinks you're going to see that more and more. She thinks it's dangerous to do too much in tech and not also think about where the human side is and the Spark Fund, they are a small company, she mentioned this a few times and she thinks it is important to note that a lot of CX out there is focused on these big organizations that have processes and lots of resources to make widgets and all that. For Spark Fund, they experienced this very intimately with their proposal process. They were scoping out what platform that would help their customers have better and more seamless experience. And as they were doing the exploration process, the information gathering, customer conversations, one of the things they realized was their goal is to create trust with their customer and also a seamless pretty easy experience where they get the questions they have get answered right away. In talking with financial leaders and the folks that are actually decision makers on these projects, one of the things they realized was that they don't need a tech platform, they have a million of these, what they need is a spreadsheet and she doesn’t hire 6 developers to build a really good spreadsheet that they can toggle and understand how to customize based off of the numbers they want to see in front of them so that has created a lot of trust with their customers and helped them ease a lot of pain in the sales cycle. So, you don't have to always just go to high tech too, she thinks there's a low-tech version that is accessible for companies no matter how big you are, there are two ways to look at it.

 

Yanique agreed and stated that it's in the conversations that you have, are you really listening to what they're saying, are you just trying to sell them something that's just really out there or are you trying to actually meet that immediate need that they're indicating that they're having to you and soothing that pain that they're feeling.

 

  • When asked how she stays motivated every day, Emily stated that for her, she is constantly inspired by companies and organizations that she interacts with on a day to day basis who gets the experience right. She is a big fan of this one solid place that's nearby in DC. called Sweet Green, she's giving them a them a shout out of course. And she sees that every time, so these small things in her personal life that she seeks out because she genuinely cares about the experience and the companies that she’s going to pay money to, they inspire her. She has an insurance company that she loves, she loves the experience they create, and they have this app that when she opens up the app it shows a picture of her apartment, something so small that inspires her to keep going and keep thinking about how she can apply those things to Spark Fund. Sometimes it’s a challenging industry to be in because people are unpredictable but there are things that are universal and for her it's those moments of delight when she can speak to a customer and hear how they really alleviated their pain. Recently they created a little Spark Bot, it's a little robot. It's this little guy that follows people around and it's fun for her to think through, “What are the cute little ways that we can delight our customers?”and something so small like that and she gets that inspiration from other companies that she admire but also this idea that we really can make a difference in someone's day. She experiences it when she gets a salad, you walk out feeling better and happier. So, for her it's making sure that she is surrounding herself with the right types of companies that she wants to emulate and really have be a part of the whole fabric of this CX program at Spark Fund so it is really external for her and of course she has got an amazing team who is constantly thinking about how we can change stuff and move forward in a more positive direction. It helps to have a very customer forward, customer motivated company.

 

  • Emily stated that at Spark Fund they are a huge, huge, huge Slack company and so she would say to her if she didn't have Slack connected with her all the time, she would have missed so much but she also have to say it's allowed her to have a lot of flexibility in the way that she work because it is something that she can access any point in time and she really loves it. It allows her to be autonomous, work from home if she needs to, work at the office if she needs to and constantly being in contact everybody so she really just like the platform they've injected quite a bit of delight into it which is quite fun. And the other thing she'll say is she knows she has to address some of the personal side as well is Evernote. She is obsessed with Evernote, it is her lifeline, she has everything in there, from her to do list to her grocery shopping to little voice notes that she left to herself and if she did not have Evernote with her all the time she thinks she would be a mess because she would never know where she’s supposed to be or what am she’s supposed to be doing. So, a notes platform, a place where I can jot down ideas and it's searchable so she can pull up those things that she forgot about, that she thought of last week.

 

Yanique shared that for those of you that are not familiar with Slack, it's a cloud based a proprietary team collaboration tools and services. So, it's where everybody gets to connect in the organization and you're able to track projects and see how things are going throughout the course of the day even if you aren't physically in the office.

 

Emily agreed and stated that they have a really simple user interface. A lot of community groups that she’s a part of also use Slack.

 

Yanique also shared that Evernote is a note platform and it's brilliant. And it's grown so much, they've really developed that platform so much that it has way more features than it had 5, 10 years ago. You can take pictures as you said, you can send yourself a voice note, you can do scanning and send it to yourself.

 

Emily stated that she has had Evernote since maybe 2015 and to be able to go back that far in time, she has old notes from things she'd never thought that she would need to resurface but when you search for something and it comes out to the same, it's been so cool for her to have all that creativeness in one spot.

 

  • Emily shared that the book that really, truly made CX the thing she wanted to go into was hands down The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg. This book when she read it revolutionized the way that she thought about her own life but also her background is in marketing and communication, so she came from a digital background and also in-person previously helping companies try to move to Washington, DC. “So how do you make that experience something super seamless?” And as she was reading this book it not only had so many “aha”moments from her personal life and personal experiences but also because they talk about how you set up habits for yourself and how you create a good space and habit in time for your own personal life but also in marketing and they have some amazing examples in there like the Febreze, she’s not sure if you read this book and if this is going to go too into the weeds but they talk about this whole theory of how people are emotionally attached or they use their senses to drive emotions towards certain things which is a good argument for creating multi-sensory experiences for companies that they're not just something online to that point earlier. We've even talked about having a certain scent, like can we have people come with a certain sort of cologne or perfume when they come to install something to have a consistent experience but that they talk about Febreze and this is one of the most interesting stories anecdotes around CX stuck with her for a while that they couldn't quite figure out how to get people to adopt this cleaning product, they tried so many different types of messaging, different images, research groups subjects, all of this. And one of the things that they found after many years of this work was that people weren't necessarily interested or addicted to using a cleaning product but what they were most interested in was that sense of relief and release after they cleaned the space so the smell of Febreze and that Ha” moment you see it in the commercials now and they were like “mmmm…..Ha”, it was the “Ha” moment that people were looking for.

 

Yanique shared that's how she feels when she sprays her Febreze.

 

Emily agreed and stated that they nailed it and it's been a very successful product for them comes in all sorts of scents now. Now you're never going to be able to un-see it when you look at those commercials, they always end with the big inhale and the sigh out through the mouth, so it's a relief.

 

Yanique shared that one of the things that she teaches because she’s a Customer Service Trainer and that's what inspired her to start this podcast was that customers have two needs and regardless of the industry, you're in or the product or service that you sell or your ethnicity or whatever your background is. Those two needs are their intellectual needs and their emotional needs. And through the research that she has done, books that she has read, people she has spoken to locally and internationally, people she has trained, it really boils down to how you make people feel and if you can find a way to have your product or your service connect to people emotionally, Febreze clearly figured that out as you said the relief and that's the emotional component. It will tie them to your brand, and they become so loyal to your brand that now they become your brand advertisers.

 

Emily agreed and stated that she thinks we try to figure out ways to do that most creatively and part of that, our structural changes, how do we create ease in the process of course investing in different technologies like monitoring ease is an entire thing. But to your point earlier there is something really important with the human element and something as small as an installation is happening in your space, can we make sure that our vendors show up with a cup of coffee, “Hey, we brought some coffee for you just to make sure that you’re caffeinated and feeling okay throughout this experience.” And obviously we try to use behavioural science any time we can and finishing really strong is something we care a lot about. So once something is over, and it sounds a little old school, but can we send them like a handwritten note and something that's thoughtful that makes them understand that we've been caring about them throughout this process.

 

Yanique agreed and stated that it's really the little things as you said handwritten note a while ago. There is an activity that I do in my training sessions is called a gratitude letter and it's a framework that we created where the participant has to choose an employee in their organization that they’re writing them a letter to tell them thank you for something that they've done for them. It could be something work related or something personal and it doesn't have to be anything big, I've had participants come and say they did surgery on their co-worker came to their house and washed their clothes for them or their kid was sick and they gave them some very good tips or it was the beginning of the year and your co-worker brought him a copy of a daily bread and the daily bread has really helped them to overcome some of their personal challenges, but the reason why she thinks the letter has been so impactful to the point of tears, the way how the letter is designed it forces you to pull details out of the experience, it forces you to choose adjectives to describe how it is that this person impacted you and to really show gratitude and appreciate because one of the things she has found generally speaking is that people complain a lot in life but they don’t actually take time to show gratitude and nobody writes letters anymore, it’s all about the tech, so I’m texting you to say, “Hey, thanks a mil,” through WhatsApp or whatever messaging app you use or through an email but I’m not actually handwriting you a letter or a note and it makes a very big difference.

 

Emily agreed and shared that we get more communication feedback responses when we take the time to write something out than we do, when we send out a mass email, so you can't discount those things. Emily truly believes in the offline experience just as much as the in-person and the more you can create a connection with the organization, the more you're going to have loyalty and for them, they measure that, they look at how many people are coming back and using them for more or more subscriptions and more different technologies they want to procure so for them it is something that they have honestly invested a lot of their marketing in because it's very high touch. They are working with big companies and it's no longer enough just to have one casual conversation, you need to really permeate an entire organization and make an impression. So, she loves that Yanique do those gratitude letters, she feels like she needs to make that a monthly sort of practice.

 

Yanique stated that the gratitude letter is really an amazing activity and every time she does it with an organization over the years, she’s just amazed at how the participants really take it and run with it. She has had one doctor that said the letter meant more to her than her degree as a doctor and she framed it and she put it up in her office because she said nobody has ever done anything like this for her before. So, you'd just be surprised to know, that didn't take anything, it cost nothing just to sit down and write out how you feel about what the person had done for you that you're showing appreciation for.

 

Emily share that what's interesting about this too is we care so deeply about these sorts of moments that we are finding ways to systematize these things, so it just becomes a no brainer, it's just a part of our process and for her they use tools to track customers and their emails and their names and all of that. But there is a note section that they are actually working on building out that has personal details there like a customer who has a daughter who recently has this particular interest or is on a soccer team, so we know these things that we can really customize small things like maybe over the holidays we send them a little ornament with a soccer ball something that is seemingly small but really does matter.

 

  • Emily shared that there's a lot of different things. She’s very excited because at Spark Fund they are beginning to look very intimately at each of the sales and accounts that they have, their customers intimately. They are really big organizations, they're working with Fortune 100 companies that have a thousand, couple thousand people who work with them and one of her jobs at this point is to look at those companies and try to understand the people pretty intimately. So, they’re doing things like elevate the sort of customer intelligence and customer experience to make it really personalized. They talk a lot about personalization and technology but what she is talking about here is personalization in relationships and those in-person relationships and she really thinks it will transform the way that their customers look and engage with them. So, things like mapping out the customers and where they sit in the organization, taking those notes and doing it on a customer and organization to organization basis. So, that's something that they're working on now and it's a slightly hybrid approach to CX, it's definitely not something that she was able to read anywhere that people were doing. So, she’s really excited to figure that out and the other side that she’s most excited about outside of her work with Spark Fund and she also lead a technology, Women in Technology Organization and they're launching a new set of programming around diversity and inclusion, so how do you get people to feel safe and secure in their environments and they are really tied CX and inclusion. She believes this to her core that if people don't feel like they are safe or that they can speak up or that they are valid, or points are valid in a company, you're not going to get really good ideas and you're certainly not going to be able to connect with different types of customers. You can't relate with somebody on a different level, then you're missing out so there's a huge component of how do you actually internalize safety within a company so that people feel like they are equal and she can connect people who have similar values and similar backgrounds with the customers that they do feel like they have someone who's rooting for them and understands them deeply within an organization. So, she’s really excited about both of those things and a lot of it goes to this idea of getting really connected with not just one person but multiple people so that you can create that surround sound experience that everyone's raving about in a company.

 

Emily shared that it’s called Women in Tech Campaign but one of the things that they're doing is these events that we're bringing to folks that help people physically reduce their barriers to conversation so people can relate to one another who are different from them and that's a huge skill and customer service, customer experience especially if you're getting someone who's calling and they're not happy how do you break down those barriers and open that up regardless of background and so that's really what they're focused on. And of course, tech is a very broad term, it's not just developers, it's people who are using tech like we're doing now.

 

Yanique agreed that stated because we're using the podcast to reach out to many different people and share all this amazing information, so yes, technology really does work, it definitely has given her a platform as customer service is something she’s extremely passionate about to reach and connect with people from all different parts of the world. And even though we’re as small as we are here in Jamaica, some of the expectations that our customers have here are no different from the expectations that a customer would have if they were in Paris or if they were in China or if they were in DC., at the at the end of the day we're all human beings at the core with emotions and we do have certain expectations.

 

Emily agreed and stated that to be fair these big companies Amazon, Google all of them that are international, they are training us all to expect a certain level. And it's the companies that really take that on and you don't have to be big, you don't have to be Amazon to care about it in this way. And like I said we are not an Amazon but we've made some strides and investments in making it from the very beginning work and make the experience valuable for customers and she truly believes that the innovators and the disruptors in the market are the ones that are going to look at these tried and true systems and apply a positive experience because as you said at the very beginning, people are willing to pay for that, they're willing to pay, not a huge premium but a premium for service and it's not a new concept, think about how airlines are priced, people are willing to pay for business class. And the more you can make that accessible, the more you can have those intermediate tiers, you see them get leverage and use so there's truth to all that.

 

  • Emilyshared listeners can find her at –

www.sparkfund .com

LinkedIn – sparkfund

Facebook – @sparkfund

Twitter – @sparkfunder

Instagram – @emilyrasowsky

Twitter - @ERasowsky

LinkedIn – Emily Rasowsky

 

  • Emily shared that one the thing that she constantly repeats to herself or when she’s having a moment, it's not necessarily a quote but it's almost a reminder, it's that, “You've been through challenge and you always will get to the other side, that this too will pass.” You will have a moment and then it'll end and it's a reminder of how she has gotten through things that have been challenging before. So, it's less of a quote and more of a reminder, our grounding. “Okay, you've gone through worse.” And to Yanique’s point about gratitude, she finds in those moments to bring up something that she’s really grateful for even if it's really hard to do because sometimes it's really hard. It can just automatically take you to a different space, it’s like things are kind of going awry but it can't be that bad there are people in this world who don't have the same privileges and luxuries that she has right now and that's enough to be grateful for.

 

Yanique agreed and stated that we do need to remind ourselves of that sometimes because we do get caught up in everything that's going on and we're complaining, and we're just frustrated, and things didn’t go the way that we planned but sometimes God has a bigger plan for us and when one door closes another one surely opens. So, we just have to be open for that.

 

   

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