Mahesh Ram is a serial founder and entrepreneur and he's currently the founding CEO of Solvvy, a leading SaaS provider of conversational self-service and automation solutions to leading global companies with over 550 million end users. Prior to Solvvy, he was the CEO of GlobalEnglish which pioneered online business English education for learners in over 120 countries. GlobalEnglish was later acquired by the Pearson PLC. He previously held CTO roles at Thomson Reuters.
Questions
Highlights
Mahesh’s Journey
Mahesh shared that he thinks the whole area of customer experience is one that always fascinated him, his entire career has been about automating complexity. And by taking very complex things and turning them into easier, better, more frictionless experiences and that's been true for whether that's online education or legal and tax compliance. But when he thinks about customer experience, it's the thing that impacts every single one of us, all of us have great experiences we can talk about with brands and we have those very poor experiences we talk about with brands and we make decisions based on those things. And he’s no different than everybody else, than their customers.
And so, when he saw the potential for the technology to truly deliver a better experience at scale, he was hooked. When he saw that the incredibly powerful PhD work that his co-founders had done that enabled the ability to deliver this incredible customer experience at scale, he just couldn't resist because as a CEO, he has often seen that they're just not good enough at this. So that's what motivated him and that's what excites him about what they're doing.
What is Solvvy About?
Me: All right. So can you tell us a little bit about Solvvy? I know you mentioned in your bio that you are currently at Solvvy and Solvvy is about CX automated platforms and basically powering customer experiences. Just in in real word terms so our listeners that are listening, whether they are managers, or business owners of small or medium businesses, they can get a better understanding of what you do could possibly influence what they do to enhance frictionless experiences for their customers.
Mahesh shared that there's a famous book called The Effortless Experience that he thinks described very nicely what they're trying to do, but at Solvvy, they built a powerful SaaS platform, it's a solution that takes machine learning and natural language processing, natural language understanding at its core, but delivers an end user or consumer experience that allows every one of us as consumers to interact with the brand in a way to get self-service automation sometimes, other times get the right journey, be able to get to the right agent at the right time. But the way they like to think about it is allowing any brand in the world at scale to deliver what they think of is like concierge level journey. Imagine if the system understood you, it knows what you want, you just talked to it and it tells you where you need to go. Sometimes it provides you an immediate answer, other times it has to ask you some follow up questions because it needs a little more information from you in order to pinpoint either the right answer or get you to the right agent.
And you can imagine how this can be scaled across a global footprint, across the world. Their customers are B2B and B2C companies that have hundreds and millions of end users. But they’re serving two customers, if you will, they're serving the companies that buy and implement them but ultimately, their end customer is their consumer, their end user and can they (Solvvy) deliver an intelligent solution like sometimes it's in the form of a chatbot, other times it's in the form of taking them on a journey and taking them to the right agent. But that's what they do. They made it really simple to implement something that's very complex under the hood, but it's very simple for companies to implement and it delivers an immediate ROI to the business and better experience for the user.
Me: Does your company primarily work with a particular type of industry like retail? Or is it more service based kind of organizations? Could you give an example of maybe one of your clients that has seen success as a result of this approach?
Mahesh shared that first of all they work across a wide number of verticals, both B2B and B2C. But he would say some of their strongest verticals are things like ecommerce, not so much pure physical retail, but oftentimes the ecommerce arm of a retail business, FinTech. So consumer FinTech and banking, a good example would be a consumer finance banking application stash, which many people have used, millions of users use them. They work with brands like Ring - the home doorbell, home alarm, home security company, which is now part of Amazon. These are some of the companies. So it's a wide spectrum of companies but typically it's a situation where he as an end user of a product or service, have adopted that product or service, but have questions about how to get the most out of it. And sometimes that can be simple, that can be he’s an ecommerce customer and he has ordered something and he wants to cancel something or he wants to see where it is, he’s wondering why there's a delay.
Other times, it might be something like he bought a device and he doesn't know how to make it work with his iPhone, we've all had that experience. And in both those situations, Solvvy can understand the issue as expressed by the user in everyday natural language, and then be able to connect the user to the right solution that could be a stepwise guide an answer, it could be in some cases, collecting more information and giving it to the agent who can then help you 3 to 10 times faster than they could. So that those are some examples of companies they work with, that it's a pretty broad spectrum. They even work in healthcare, they work with Calm, which is one of the leading meditation apps, many of your users, entrepreneurs may be using that to do meditation and peace of mind. Wonderful application, they support their end users. So it ranges across a wide range of industries.
What is Natural Language Processing?
Me: So a big part of artificial intelligence is natural language processing. And I know for the average person, that may sound like really high level, could you just break down what that really is to our listeners so that they can understand and maybe even get a better connection with maybe how this could work in their business?
Mahesh shared that the way to simplify the complex, obviously, natural language processing is a deep science and there's 10s of 1000s of research papers and PhD thesis on this, but he'll simplify it because he thinks at the end of the day, as consumers, it boils down to one thing is the ability to understand, in the customer experience space, it's the ability to understand when a user expresses an issue or what we think of as an intent.
So, you might say, “I bought the jeans last week, they don't fit me, please help.” And if you have enough data about prior examples of that, you can quickly learn, the machine learning can actually learn that the natural language expression in that case is likely a call to say, “Hey, can I return or exchange this?” Nowhere is the word return or exchange used. So he thinks natural language understanding in context of customer experience is about understanding how people in that business or in that problem area express issues, they often don't use the words that the companies use, they may not use the word return or exchange, they say, “I want to give this back.”
So NLU (Natural Language Understanding) is the technology that allows you to move away from that kind of keyword dependency and understand the core intent of what the user is doing.
And the way you do that is you actually train on the prior data, because chances are most businesses have had 1000s, if not hundreds of 1000s of people asking similar questions before. And the machine learning can actually learn how real users express real issues and start to get better at detecting that as soon as they finish typing something in or speaking something.
And we're all familiar with Alexa, and it has a specific set of natural language understanding where you can ask what's the weather and it's been trained to understand those words, is it going to rain today? And it knows to answer you with an answer and tell you to take an umbrella. So that's an example of NLU that most people would understand but in the context of customer experience, it's very much about understanding that businesses specific natural language.
Tips for Implementing Automation in Your Business
Me: So let's say we have some listeners who their business, let me give you an example. Let's say for example, it is a pastry business and she or he may have an outlet where customers can come and pick up little pastries like cupcakes or a slice of bread pudding or whatever the case is. And they're really looking to try and find a way to have more automation in their business. What's maybe one or two things that you think they could start off doing if they're at ground zero, they have no automation. Where can they start to try to get their business on level one of trying to get automated and have their customers come on board?
Mahesh stated that he thinks the first thing he thinks if you think about foundational principles, it's first of all, let's make sure that we collect all that information in a place where you make sure that you answer it, that you keep track of it, that you have some history of what's happened with that user.
And so typically, you would use some sort of a simple support CRM business. They partner with companies like Zendesk, Freshdesk, and others. And those are pretty simple to implement, they don't really require a lot of deep technology to implement a simple implementation.
And that allows you to then say, “Okay, Yanique called me on Tuesday asking about the status of her pastry order. And I need to get back to her.” It keeps track of it and if you come back a week later, he might know that you asked about this last week. And so, he might start his conversation with you by saying, “Is this about the pastry order you placed last week?”, So he has some context.
So he thinks first thing is to put a simple system in place, there's lightweight systems, there's inexpensive systems, they don't cost a lot of money. And typically, you can scale up or down depending on how many resources you have. So that, he thinks is first things first.
Second thing is, he thinks a lot of businesses would just benefit from writing some simple content, and other things on their websites to be able to answer the most frequently asked questions. So pay attention, once you're starting to track what people are asking, you should then be able to go back and say, let me write an article about how do I customize a cake. Or if I order a bulk order of pastries, do I get a discount? These might be common questions that you see in the data that you see, after you see this is coming up over and over. So that would be like a starting point, you'd start with some sort of a knowledge base so people can find the answer for themselves because most people don't want to wait for your team, especially if you have a small team, it might take 24 hours for you to answer that question about a bulk order, well, you might have lost the order by that time.
So you're better off letting the customer get the help they need. And that goes to the third thing, which is then the third thing is they work with OpenTable. You're familiar with OpenTable, people make reservations at any restaurant, hundreds of 1000s of restaurants around the world. And they serve two audiences, as a consumer if you want to book a table at a fancy restaurant, perhaps in San Francisco, but also the restaurant owner who has to then control some of those back end tools. And they provide a whole range of tools.
But imagine an experience where that restaurant owner can interact with technology to be able to change their hours or modify frequently asked questions. So, that's where they often come in is that they end up giving brands a way to automate even more complex things.
So if you say, “Hey, I want to customize my cake.” the Natural Language Understanding can actually understand that or maybe you don't say customized, “I want to order a special cake for my niece. And I want it to say something very unique.” Something like that and nowhere would he use the word customized. I could come up to you and say, “Great, looks like you want to customize the cake. We have these options for you, which one do you want.”
And take you down the path and actually collect all that information and say, “I've got everything I need, somebody will get back to you within an hour with an ETA on when this cake will be ready for you. Does that make sense?”
And imagine that experience in 35-40 seconds, he might have actually gotten your order right. And he’ll still handed off to a human being because somebody still has to bake the cake. But at that point, he’s such a delighted consumer that maybe he’ll order a little extra. Maybe at that point, you present him with an offer and say, “If you want to order a dozen cookies for the other guests, there's a special offer 10% off right now.” So he thinks if you think about automation, it's not about putting a blocker in front of the user, it's about automating things that otherwise they'd have to wait too long for.
App, Website or Tool that Mahesh Absolutely Can’t Live Without in His Business
When asked about an online resource that he cannot live without in his business, Mahesh stated that that's a great question. He thinks for them, because they've gone completely virtual right due to the pandemic, so everybody's virtual. So he thinks it would be tempting to say an online meeting tool like Zoom. But he actually thinks that the most indispensable tool is probably something like Slack because it's a communication vehicle for everyone to share information and ideas.
And what they've done which is nice with Slack is they've used some of the third party bots and applications inside Slack to do things like give praise to someone. It makes it easy to give praise and it shows up in Slack, everyone can read it, it also then writes it automatically to the performance management system. So it's a great way to motivate your employees or help people motivate one another for great work, “Hey, Yanique did a great job today on this, she made it possible for me to help this customer.”
It makes it easy to just go into Slack and give her praise. That's one example. You can share documents; you can even do video calls in Slack. So, it's a pretty powerful tool, he’s sure other people use other things like it. But that's one that he would say it's been very, very crucial for them.
Books That Have Had the Greatest Impact on Mahesh
When asked about books that had a great impact, Mahesh shared that one book is very personal. His grandfather lived in India, grew up in India, he had spent most of his career in the public service. But he's very interested in music and after the age of about 60, he decided to become a music and dance critic. And he started writing and then actually became a well-known critic and musicologist in one of the major newspapers of India.
And at the age of 88, his grandfather decided to write a book. He wrote a book on music and musicians and just his recollections and opinions. And it turned out to be a really, really well received book and got a lot of critical praise at the age of 88. He thinks that to him, it was less about the book and more about the fact that his lifelong passion for learning had never stopped. And so, it's as much the book as the writing of the book as the book itself, it's both. So that was one.
The second one, which he thinks has become more and more relevant as a book he has probably read three times. It's a three volume, very heavy, long trilogy called Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-63, written by a man named Taylor Branch, and it's kind of the entire lifespan of Martin Luther King and it's probably about 2000 pages total.
So it's not light reading. But it talks about all of the ups and downs of the civil rights movement, the great triumphs, and then of course, later in his life some of his regrets and so on, and so on. And he thinks it really comes home when you think about the events of the last couple of years and what's going on in the world, you realize that these struggles, the great struggles don't have easy answers and solutions don't just emerge and everything is great.
Things have a way of taking far longer and being much more difficult than you ever imagined when you started. Ideals are what carry you through but even, there's a lot of frustration you have to overcome whether that through in business or in social life. So those are two. And then for fun, he thinks one that he always like reading, it’s light reading is Calvin and Hobbes a cartoon strip, because he just thinks it reminds him that at the end of the day, we all take ourselves way too seriously.
Me: That's so true. And life is so short, we really have to enjoy laughter.
What Mahesh is Really Excited About Now!
Mahesh shared that they're working on so many incredibly exciting things in the business. He'll choose one or two that he thinks excites him the most. The first thing is what he calls the Omni-Channel experience. Take the example of the pastry shop, he thinks they're just now entering in the United States, the notion of a truly omni-channel experience where businesses have to meet consumers where they live.
It's no longer reasonable to expect customers to come to your website. They live in Instagram, they live in Snapchat, they live in WhatsApp and this has already happened in other markets like in China, you have WeChat and India WhatsApp is very, very strong. And if he wants to order a pizza from Domino's in India, he’s just as likely to use WhatsApp as I am to go to www.dominos.com.
But in North America, that's just now happening, it's just happening where brands have to be creating really strong presence but the problem is there isn't one thing. It isn't like he can just build for WhatsApp, on a Monday, he might choose to interact with the pastry shop mentioned on Facebook Messenger. On Tuesday, he might want to go into WhatsApp and place an order for a cake. On Wednesday, he might go to the store brand to the website and try to order it. And it could change if two users might have two different things.
So brands have to be in all these places. But he can't have different things going on in those sites. If he asked you what's the price to customize the cake, and you give him three different answers on three different channels, that's a real problem, consumers get really annoyed.
So he thinks what they're doing at Solvvy, which is really exciting, is they're making it possible for businesses to build the intelligent layer once in the platform, and then deliver on any of these channels they choose with the same consistency. So if you come in on a Monday and say, “I want to return the shoes that I bought on Facebook Messenger.” They’ll take you through that entire experience and get to get it returned and connect you to an agent. But on Wednesday, you come back and ask “Where's my order on the company's website?” They'll be able to answer that question just as accurately on that thing. So the consistency across platforms.
So it's consistent and personalized so it knows enough to ask Yanique for her email address and look it up and tell you exactly where your order is, that kind of personalization automated is critical.
And then he thinks that goes to the second piece, which is what excites him more than anything is the ability to deliver a truly personalized experience. Think about yourself or anybody in the audience, when you buy a product or service, the experience you have in the first week, maybe the first 10 days, maybe the first 30 days, if it's a piece of software is so crucial. How well you use it, how well you get acclimated to it, determines how happy you are with it. So they think at Solvvy, how do they enable brands to be able to deliver that kind of support and on boarding and guidance to say a first 30-day user, it's different than for a user who has been with the brand for 6 to 12 months and do that at scale, do that for millions of people.
So a good example would be they work with a very large meal kit delivery service, they deliver meals to your home. And he can deliver a different experience for someone who's ordering their very first meal, that's a little bit more hand holding, a little bit more like, “Hey, did everything come as you expected?” Because they're not used to some of the things about unpacking the ice and doing these things. But if somebody who ordered 12 meals in the last 2 months, he probably don't want to waste their time asking them if they know how to unpack the ice, he wants to ask them if they're looking for new recipes.
So the ability to do that at a massive scale, because you can't do that one by one, but technology allows you to say, I'm going to do that for everybody who's a first 30-day user is going to get this experience. So those are the kinds of things, so personalization and omni-channel are the two things that he thinks really, really excites him about the business.
Me: Two things came to mind when you were speaking just now. So the first thing you mentioned was omni-channel and I personally as a customer, I'm trying to wonder if there's no technology out there that let's say, for example, utilities is something we all have to pay every month, let's say our electricity bills, and you may talk to your electricity company, you may not talk to them very often, but there are times when you do have to interface with them. So let's say for example, you reach out to them on Twitter messenger because there was a power outage in your area and they communicated and said, okay, they've sent their engineers to sort it out and we should get service restored within X amount of time. And then four months later, you may need to contact them because you're trying to pay a bill, you're trying to use their platform to pay the bill, but you're having some challenges and when you call them on the phone, you can't get them, it would be good to know that they're able to connect those experiences. So they would say to you, “Oh, hi, Miss Grant, we haven't heard from you in four months, how have things been?” Because then it shows that they're paying attention to the last time someone was in contact with you, even if it wasn't the same agent that you dealt with four months ago. Is that possible?
Mahesh shared that it's not only possible, they're doing that all the time. There's kind of a divide in the middle, which is whether I know who you are, I don't right. Oftentimes, if you're going to an ecommerce site, you go to www.nike.com, you're probably not identifying yourself, and you may not want to identify yourself, you may not want them to know that it's Yanique.
But if you have an existing relationship with the brand, you still might come to the website of the utility company and not identify yourself but based on the type of question you're asking, they might say, “In order to help you, you'll have to identify yourself.” But he doesn't want to give that to you until he realizes you need that.
So, then he might say, “Can you please tell me the email address or can you log in?” And then based on the login, now he can come back and say, “Looks like you came in last week and asked this question. Are you asking about the same thing?”
And if you say no, then he can pop up and give you the more generic menus and say, “Hey, would you like to be able to do it?” So not only is it possible, they're doing it all the time with brands where they're personalizing the experience, this goes back to his notion of personalization is that sure it can understand prior interaction data and ask you if that's the case. Sometimes that can be intrusive, you may not care about something four months ago, it's not that.
But if you've called three times in the last week, chances are it’s about the same issue.
And so at that point, what he needs to do is two things. One is he needs to make sure that every single thing that you told him on the first call or the first technology interaction with Solvvy, for example, it's been recorded properly to the agent, so that the next agent picks who it up, your second call a week later has everything in front of them and that's the key.
The key is not to make you repeat yourself, not make you repeat yourself and that's what technology enables. He'll give you one example. In the example with the meal kit is if you come in and say “Hey, help my mind steak is spoiled. I'm really angry.” Well, first of all, you're probably pretty upset because your dinner just got ruined, that's not a good experience, you might stop using the brand. But if he immediately pop-up and say, “I'm sorry to hear you have a missing or spoiled ingredient, can you just give me the information, this and it pops up your meal and it says which of the ingredients is missing or spoil, tell me what's wrong with it.” And immediately, he'd say he could shoot a credit back to your account. And then you can still talk to the agent if you want and complain more. That's a really good experience.
Unfortunately, it doesn't feed you your meal that night, but it does make you feel like the brand is there for you and really cares about doing something right, they can make an offer and give you two free meals or whatever it might be. But again, even if he passed you to an agent in that case, the agent knows that you called because your steak was spoiled, the ice had melted, that you were expecting to get it with two side dishes and you only got one and they start the conversation with you knowing all this, they’re not asking you to repeat any of this. That's what they do.
Me: Brilliant. It's funny you mentioned the meal delivery service for home because I started using one recently and I find the young lady service to be so poor. When you call her she doesn't return your phone calls, when you send her a message on WhatsApp she takes forever to respond. She sends out her menus the week before like on a Friday and then you indicate to her how many days per week you wanted meals and which items you were interested in. And I think for last week I told her I was interested in the meal for Thursday. The meal wasn't delivered, I tried to call her on Thursday afternoon to ask her, “Weren't you supposed to deliver the meal today?” She hasn't responded to my WhatsApp. I called her twice, she hasn't responded to my call, frankly, I don't think I'm going to order from her again because either she's taken on more than she can chew or she's clearly not ready for this level of business because if you're dealing with people, and you're delivering meals to them and they've indicated to you what they want and when they want it, if you can’t manage the communication portion, then maybe you need to outsource that for the business.
Mahesh stated that he thinks that's a brilliant point. He thinks that oftentimes people take on more than they can handle but they lose sight of the customer. He thinks it goes back to the customer like how often does she talk to you and ascertain how well you like the service, did she check in with you? Does she have a survey?
Because if she loses you, the thing she probably doesn't grasp yet and he thinks some small business owners don't always grasp this is how expensive it is to acquire a customer, to get Yanique to try it for the first time is a really hard thing. And so losing you is much worse than acquiring two new people, because they already gone through the effort of convincing you and you've already done it.
So this does speak to something that he thinks a lot of entrepreneurs can do better, which is to survey and get feedback from customers, because you may well be sympathetic to her if she was talking to you. If she told you honestly, “Hey, look, I'm really struggling with this but I'm really trying to make it work. I'm an entrepreneur and I want to make this work. I'm so sorry about your meal. Let me see what I can do.” You were probably willing to give her the sun, the moon and the stars to get it right. But if you don't hear from her, you just assume that she doesn't care.
Me: I'm actually thinking of deleting her number out of my phone because I don't think I want to do business with her anymore. Her communication is extremely poor and her food, it's not amazing but it's good and it's healthy and it's a better choice than me having to go and have fast food for sure. But the challenge, as I said, is she needs to work out that aspect of it or she's going to lose more than one customer.
Mahesh agreed and stated that he thinks the other thing that he would say that technology allows us to do with a lot of the brands is to be predictive. So, if for example, Yanique is coming in frequently with questions about certain kinds of issue, they do something that they call category analytics for businesses, where they look at every single question that has ever been asked for that brand and they grouped them into big categories and so they can tell the brand, the food kit company that you're missing ingredient issues have spiked 23% in the last two weeks, something's up, they don't know what it is because they're not in their factory watching.
But they can drill in and they can tap into that, they can double click on it and they can see all the actual expressions by the user and they can do keyword searches, they can say show me everything with the word ice in it. So if the ice is melting, maybe they go back to the warehouse people and say, you need to package the ice better. So those are the kinds of insights that businesses often lack and it's very difficult to do because technology allows you to do it without having to have a human being looked at every single issue, it automatically categorizes all the questions.
Where Can We Find Mahesh Online
Website – www.solvvy.com
LinkedIn – Mahesh Ram
Twitter - @solvvyinc
Twitter - @rammahesh
Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Mahesh Uses
When asked about a quote that he tends to revert to, Mahesh shared that he actually has a bunch of them. But the one that recently came up as he was reading the book by the very, very famous Roman Emperor, Philosopher, Marcus Aurelius, he had written a book 2000 years ago, so it's a long time. But everything in there so timeless because he's really does a lot of reflection on his life.
The quote that he said, which he thoughts was really great was, “Adapt yourself to the life you have been given; and truly love the people with whom destiny has surrounded you.” And he thought that was just such a nice sort of simple way of saying, we're all given something and it's up to us to make the most of it, we keep looking around for something better, chances are you're never going to find it and the people too. So he thought that was a really nice quote.
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Brad Dude has over 40 years and he has been in more than 30 territories and countries around the world. He has provided leadership training, organizational development, program evaluation, workforce training, coaching and project management services to US Government agencies, public and non-profit organizations and private sector enterprises. He specializes in training, group facilitation, process improvement, team building and strategic planning, especially for newly promoted team leaders, supervisors, managers and executives.
Brad brings a leadership and management background to his consulting having served as a senior staff member for the Peace Corps in Micronesia and Samoa. He has also worked in similar positions for other organizations in the Washington, DC area as well as New Orleans, where he now makes his home with his wife Sue. He has one son and three grandsons.
Questions
Highlights
Brad’s Journey
Brad shared that it is kind of a long journey, it gets longer every day, it seems like. He started out doing a management planning for the Peace Corps overseas in a variety of countries, mostly in the Pacific and then in the Middle East. And that got him into working for Westinghouse that brought him more into the middle East doing some project management for USAID projects and West Bank and Gaza. And that got him into the training more in the project management and coaching and counselling and they were doing a lot of executive coaching on management and leadership kinds of issues. Some colleagues of his started their own consulting firm in the DC area and that's where he got to go to Jamaica for the first time in kind of the middle to late 80s doing a management analyst course.
Ministry of Planning and they met that time and it was great. And so he got four different trips down to Jamaica and participants were some of the best he’s ever had all over the world. So as he got older and wanted to jot down some of the things that he would do that seem to be fairly successful with his participants and clients, he started to write books. And so he has now got six books, they're up on Amazon, mostly dealing with leadership and temperament and how new leaders view their world and try to help them out that way.
Brad’s Book “Quick!” What is it About?
Brad shared that his book, it's called Quick!: I Need to Be a Leader in 30 Days!. And it's a title that is focused on newly promoted or newly hired managers, supervisors and leaders. What he found, for example, the last 9 years, he has been teaching a leadership class for NASA, just outside of Washington, DC.
And he found that although when you're in the classroom, face to face, it's great and people seem to get things. But with training, training with organizations, even in government is often the first thing that's cut.
And so, participants might go through one 12-day course or something, and then don't hear from them again, and they maybe come back or write or ask for coaching and they felt there was a need to encapsulate in a handy guide of what somebody can do every day, because a lot of the questions are, “I have the title of leader or manager or supervisor, but what do I do?”
And so, he focused on what to do over a 30-day period and the idea was to help newly promoted folks hit the ground running so they can have some success. And I had Scott Blanchard, who is the now the President of the Ken Blanchard company. He wrote the foreword to their book, and he mentioned that over 50 million millennials are working in North America alone with 10 million in management, he estimates about 2 million new managers every year.
But the first year is very important and people usually don't get trained during their first year. So there's a lot of failure, failure by not meeting their own goals, expectations of their company aren't met. And they thought that's the time to really help them and have a guide to help them be successful. So they put together this book and basically said, how do you be a leader in 30 days?
Well, he has got four steps. First was to understand some of the basic principles of leadership and he subjectively picked the ones that he felt have been most successful for new managers and leaders. And then step two was to look at their followers, learn about who are those folks that are looking to you for guidance. Third step practical applications, you can't just read a book, put it on a shelf and say, “I'm a leader”, you got to go out and do something, and practice. So in his book, he has practical readings and exercises, and especially the fourth step, which is have some reflection and support time. And that means identifying a coach, whether it be your supervisor, or mentor, or a friend, or a colleague, or your minister, whoever that is that you can bounce some ideas off of. And ultimately, they can give you some feedback as well on how you're doing.
Me: Now, as it relates to who are your followers, if this is an employee in an organization, is it persons that look up to that person who now is the manager or leader? Is that what you mean?
Brad agreed. But it's more than that. Ken Blanchard says it the best, he says, “Lead from wherever you are in the organization.” So you don't necessarily have to have a title of manager, supervisor, leader to exhibit leadership behaviours. And so, whoever that is, and so, in the book, they are considering clients, people that report to you, people that you report to as well are all potential followers.
Me: Okay, so those are some really, really good strategies that you can employ for persons, as you mentioned, who are transitioning into that management/leadership role.
The Importance of Customer Experience
Me: Now, leadership is so critical to customer experience and there's a saying that I have “That mud flows from the top of the stream.” When you find something that's going awry in an organization, a lot of times, it's not at the tip of where you're looking at that the problem probably evolved from, but more so, you need to look at the leader and the structure of the organization and what's happening at the top.
And so I wanted to speak a little bit about that for us, what if we have an organization where the leader doesn't see the importance of customer experience, they're not able to connect the two, they're not able to connect the financial, because a lot of leaders, I think, still believe to this day that customer experience is just about making the customer feel good and they're just not able to see that translate into a very tangible and financial way. How as a leader, as a manager, as a business owner over the past couple of decades have you been able to get those leaders on board to recognize that customer experience is so important?
Brad shared that it's a challenge and there are many, many examples where leaders just don't get it, because they are trapped into the idea that their position power is what's important, and not so much their customers or their followers.
So they've done a lot of different ways, it depends on the openness of the leader. He worked with Department of Energy, their nuclear division for a while and they had a leader and oftentimes, these are political types who get in for whatever reason, not necessarily their leadership abilities. And they just don't see it, it's checking the box, “Oh, well, I've had a training. Check. I've had a meeting with a customer. Check.”
And things don't go the way they should. What he typically does is do a series of interviews with the direct reports of such a leader to start to identify what are the true challenges in the organization. He really likes the idea about modelling the way and trying to talk to the leader about trying to be more of an exemplary leader. But also he likes the idea about challenging the process.
They have in the book, this is the Kouzes and Posner five practices of exemplary leadership - Modelling the way, Inspiring a shared vision, Challenging the process, Enabling others to Act and Courage the heart.
He likes to do a lot of process improvement with folks and they get a whiteboard and actually start to draw a schematic of the customer service process and who's supposed to do what to whom. And he doesn't do it as a group, he usually brings in parts because people, oftentimes in such a process are doing it, if they say it's a five-part process, he brings in the folks who are doing part three, and let them do some drawings and say, “Oh, this is supposed to happen, that's supposed to happen.”
And they go away and they bring in people from the first group, for example. So they end up with kind of this gigantic map done by different groups. And what they find is they're in consistencies, expectations are off, somebody expects this group to be able to give them this kind of information, and it's not happening. So then you kind of try to bring that leader in to show him or her what kind of mess they're in and have some ideas, some strategies for helping them improve that process.
App, Website or Tool that Brad Absolutely Can’t Live Without in His Business
When asked about an online resource that he cannot live without in his business, Brad shared that the website he likes the most it's called www.life-changingworkshops.com. And this is out of Chapala Institute. It's based on a new book come out by Ken Nelson and some others, a variety of authors on it called Designing and Leading Transformational Workshops. He thinks for a new leader, outside of his own books, he thinks that's a really good one and that's a great website that they have as well. Another one is called www.ascenddevelopmentgroup.com. And this is run by a friend of his, Jeff Whitehead, they both did training at NASA together. He does outdoor experiential leadership workshops and it's a very interesting website to show videos of how he interjects leadership into rope climbing and things like that.
Books That Have Had the Greatest Impact on Brad
When asked about books that have the biggest impact, Brad shared that there are several, one was called Why Him? Why Her?: How to Find and Keep Lasting Love by Dr. Helen Fisher. Brad is the co-author of a new model on looking at temperament called The Basic Elements of Temperament.
And a lot of their work, his late partner, Jim harden, they did that together. And Dr. Fisher kind of did similar kind of research, but on a larger scale dealing with some of the dating websites to look at how temperament influences the way we look at other people, the behaviours of others. Now, he and Jim, they’re not looking at dating, they're looking at how leaders look at their employees and their managers and their customers.
So that book, Why Him? Why Her? is a really good one by Dr. Fisher to kind of give some basics as well. He also likes John Kotter's work out of Harvard, “What Leaders Really Do.” He's written a number of books on leadership and he just loves those books that really gets him thinking about leadership more.
Advice for Business Owner to Have a Successful Business
Brad stated that the one piece of advice, it's hard to have one, but trust is a big issue and in his leadership courses that he has done in the past, trust is a big issue and that gets into a variety of things, including how to model the way and not making promises that you can't keep and being consistent and things like that.
But he probably would spend time with a leader talking about temperament. His experience has been the difficulties that folks have with being professional, being productive, has a lot to do with their experience with their manager or their supervisor when they're not getting along, when they feel they're not being listened to, that is a de-motivator.
And people leave organizations, they don't leave them because of the job or the work, it's usually because of the relationship with their manager or supervisor. But he would spend some time trying to talk about how they are viewing the world, how they look at their position power. There's three kinds of power, they have it in the book as well.
The lowest level of leadership is the position power; it's having that title. And it seems that's where everybody wants to be, “If I was only the boss, then I would solve all the problems.”
And then they get to be the boss and they realize, “Oh, it's not as easy as I thought.” But they'd say, now I'm there, now they’ve got to do what I'm telling them to do. So that means your followers are following you because of the negative consequences if they don't, that they could be fired, they could be assigned to lousy jobs, what have you. So it's the lowest level, and that's a power that doesn't stay with you, when that manager leaves the organization, that power doesn't go with him or her, it stays for the next person that's coming. So it's not even a power that you take with you.
So that's the lowest level. The second one is that power of competence. That's where followers follow you because of what you've done for the organization, because of what you've done for them. So that gets you into a mindset of “Gee, if I want to be competent, I need to be really sharp and look for opportunities to help my employees.”
And the third, the best kind of power that a leader can get is the power of positive reputation. And that's why no matter what your title is, people follow you because of who you are. They'll do whatever needs to be done if you ask them because of who you are, and what you stand for, and the values that you bring to the organization.
What Brad is Really Excited About Now!
Brad shared that during this pandemic, not a lot of training was going on, especially not a lot of leadership training, he has done a few zoom workshops over Zoom with 50/60 people. And there's just not as many as there used to be. So he has had a lot of time and so he’s writing a novel called “Finding Eden.” And it's based on kind of his travels throughout the Middle East and the issue about asylum seekers trying to find a better life. So he’s writing a novel, just about done. So he’s very excited about that right now.
Where Can We Find Brad Online
Website – www.braddude.com
LinkedIn – Brad Dude
Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Brad Uses
Brad stated that he does have a quote, the one he kind of refers to now and then, not every day, but sometimes. It's says, “Don't let yesterday take up too much of today.” And that was written by Will Rogers. So the idea is, don't get bogged down with what you've done in the past. Today's a new day and we need to go head on into the future.
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Dave Sherwin is a certified fitness nutrition coach, entrepreneur and practitioner of mindfulness and meditation. His passion is helping grownups navigate real world business and live challenges to achieve their best health and wellness at any age.
He is also the creator and host of The Dirobi Health Show which covers everything to do with health and wellness, including the latest in nutrition, exercise, supplements, and clinical studies.
Questions
Highlights
Dave’s Journey
Dave shared that he’s always had a passion for fitness ever since he was young. He was very awkward and shy as a kid, he didn't make many friends and he didn't feel very talented. And one day in elementary school some kids were trying to dunk a small ball on a hoop, maybe it was a golf ball or some small size ball, he doesn't remember but they couldn't do it. And he was a little bit taller than the others and he was able to dunk this ball and they were so impressed.
And at the time, it was his first memory of doing something that other people thought was impressive and it started a passion for basketball. And through that he was able to build more confidence and finally work hard and make the high school team. He was never a great player but it gave him a lot more confidence. It really helped him in those early years and ever since then, he has just loved health and fitness. He continued to play basketball until he was 40, he played basketball three times a week, and he lifted weights three times a week. And that got him through to his 40th birthday in a very healthy way.
After that, he couldn't jump as high, couldn't run as fast or play as well as he wanted to after he turned 40, so he started doing endurance sports. He did a lot of triathalons and running races and bike races and swimming and that kept him going for eight years and then he moved into cross fit and just into general health and keeping up his strength and endurance through cross fit. And so, that was kind of his journey, kind of his fitness journey. And along the way he was a real student, he’s always loved learning about nutrition and fitness and everything to do with the human body fascinates him.
Health and Wellness Tips that will Impact the Quality of the Experience as an Employee and a Leader
Me: So this was your destiny, you've always had a dream and a passion for this. So that's good to know. So our show is Navigating the Customer Experience and I think one of the reasons why I was intrigued to have you on the show. Even though nutrition and exercise is not really directly related to customer experience, I do believe that your health and wellness will definitely impact the quality of the experience that you deliver to persons in any service industry, whether your industry is hospitality, or telecommunication or the financial industry. If you are not well physically, mentally, spiritually, emotionally, then clearly it's definitely going to impact your interactions with others, whether it be internally or externally.
I have a sister who is a dietician, she lives in Canada now and I've always thought that marrying nutrition and just being healthy and wealthy was a good way to really have an all-around wellness approach to customer experience. So you don't just talk about his soft skills, but you talk about all the things that will help you to deliver better soft skills. So I'm not sure if you have any corporate experience, but could you share with us maybe some things that you think are integral for you to be really impactful as an employee in an organization or even as a manager and a leader? What are some of the things that you need to do on the nutrition side or the exercise side that will help you to be able to really be your best self so that you can be able to have better relationships?
Dave stated that that’s a great question and to give a little bit of context here business wise. He has been an entrepreneur since 1993 and he has built and sold multiple businesses and have ran teams of salespeople and customer support and currently own three businesses.
And so, these are things that are near and dear to his heart. So he loves what Yanique mentioned about marrying the physical side with the business side, that's something that he does in his own life and he has had to navigate. And so, he does have a fair amount of experience in business and to this day, like he said, he has his own companies. And for him, I didn't get into the health space as a business person until 2009 when he finally had the epiphany that just kind of alluded to that what he really loves is health and fitness.
And so, why isn't he doing that for a living and he started his first supplement company in 2009. And it went crazy. And one of the reasons he thinks it went crazy is because he loved it. They were doing over US $100,000 a month in sales within 6 months. And it was the easiest business he has ever built and it was because he finally married the passions that he had.
Me: I think that's brilliant. I think it's good that you are able to see the correlation between both of them and you were able to now create that opportunity for others to tap into. And so I think a big part of what our listeners want to hear. We're going through a pandemic globally and I've had these thoughts about nutrition and exercise for a very long time. But I think it's even more important now that people, they're burnt out mentally, they're overwhelmed, they're working from home, they have to be balancing their family life as well as their business lives. And some of them are not adjusting very well to the new normal, for a better way of saying it.
And so, what has your experience been? What are some of the recommendations that you give them?
Sleep is important, how much hours of sleep should we be getting?
How much exercise should we putting in?
What's the best type of exercise?
As human beings working from home, especially for me, for example, you spend so much time seated, and as human beings, we weren't meant to be sedentary.
What's your recommendation in terms of just standing and moving around, should that be done every hour?
Should that be done once or twice per day?
We want your expert advice on how we can just be better overall.
Dave shared that his first answer is one that he'd love for people to get more information of and they give out some information on their website for free, you don't even need to enter your email address, just simple click on it, it’s a PDF, download it.
And he'd recommend two and he’s going to say them and then he’s going to talk about them. So for those of you who want to dive deeper and really get like a guide that you can sink your teeth into, go to dirobi.com and download the 10 page Un-Diet PDF and that's the best answer he has.
Now he’s going to go over the seven points of that here quickly. But he does want people to know there's a resource that they can get so they could just read it, again, you don't even have to enter your email, just grab it, download it and read that.
And the Virtuous Cycle is how to live a healthy 24-hour period. And it's very integrative of our physical, mental, spiritual, social emotional sides of how we live 24 hours in a very healthy way in between those two, those are some more in depth resources.
Now, he’s going to go through the seven health tips that they teach their customers and that he’s a huge fan of and that he currently lives by.
And that is number one, Focus on Water as your Primary Source of Food. Our bodies are made up primarily of water, we all know this but getting dehydrated is quite easy to do, it doesn't take very long without water to get dehydrated and too many people are drinking calorie rich and sugary drinks. So cut down or cut out on unhealthy drinks, even juices, a lot of people think fruit juice is healthy, it's really not, it's quite acidic and usually full of sugar. So, focus on water, drink plenty of water. And there are seven of these and so he wonder would you like him to list one and then give a chance to comment or do you want to just give you the whole list?
Me: I'm sure we can discuss on each level, so after you finish the first one if I have any comments I'll definitely jump in.
Dave stated so that is number one is water and especially for those of you wanting to lose weight.
Now, for some people in the pandemic, activity level has gone up because they're outside more often and they've taken to outdoor exercise as part of the whole social distancing thing and it's one of the things they can do to not go stir crazy.
Others unfortunately, their activity has gone down and so weight loss is currently a challenge.
So getting rid of drinking calories would be hugely helpful if you're wanting to lose some weight.
Number two, Eat All Your Food Slowly and Mindfully. This may not sound like a big and important health tip, but it's number two for a reason. According to multiple PhD scientists and nutritionists who study the human digestive system, we eat too quickly, our stomach is not like a hole in the bottom of our throat that we just dump food into and it just somehow magically gets processed, rather, it has folds and the food has to work its way through the folds.
And not only that, before it even gets to the stomach, we have to chew our food thoroughly working the enzymes to that food. And then it comes to our stomach and slowly works its way through.
When we eat too quickly, we don't give our digestive system a chance to operate correctly, we don't get all of the nutrients out of our food.
And not only that, but the hunger signals and the hormones like ghrelin that trigger fullness are not 100% accurate, they don't trigger our mind that we're full the second that we have enough food, rather, it can be delayed as much as 20 minutes.
And so, if you eat very slowly and mindfully, studies have shown that you also eat less and are less likely to put on weight. So that's number two.
Me: So stick a pin in there, Dave. So eat all foods slowly and mindfully, as you're talking, I actually went to your website and I'm on this document that you have. And so when I was growing up, I don't know if this is applicable to all persons but my mom used to say I'm to chew, I think it was 32 times. And I've tried that, I think by the time you're probably at chew number 16, the food in your mouth is completely liquid.
Just explain that whole concept to me and you're not really thinking about the food when you're chewing it because you're just thinking about, okay, I need to kind of just get eating and complete this activity really quickly, especially if you're on the go like you're driving and eating or maybe you're trying to eat in between meetings because you need to jump back onto a Microsoft Teams call with a client or you're doing a training session.
So how do you suggest persons to overcome this and train their mind because I guess it starts in the mind to be able to eat food slowly and mindfully as you've suggested?
Dave shared that Yanique made a great comment about what not to do, no one's going to do that long term, it's kind of a pain in the neck.
And the fact is that chewing until the food is about the consistency of applesauce is what we're shooting for and for some people, that happens quickly, others take a little more work but it's the whole experience.
Food is a pleasure of life. Now, we may not be able to do it always, there's always a time we have to rush to eat between meetings, as Yanique mentioned, but there are seven days in a week.
And all of us have many meals that we could slow down and be more mindful.
And so by mindful he means, the phone is away, if you're with other people, you're with other people, let's make eating a social experience as it has been for millennia with human beings.
And make it a time with your loved ones, whatever that is.
If you're alone, like he mentioned, try to avoid distracting yourself from the food rather than looking at your phone, or your computer, or a newspaper or whatever.
Instead, just take those few minutes to really enjoy the food, to eat it carefully, mindfully savour it, enjoy the smells, enjoy the taste. Too many people worry about what food is going to do to them, instead of thinking about how enjoyable food is and enjoying what they eat.
So it's a human experience that we've kind of lost. We've kind of let our busy lifestyles turn food into like putting gasoline in a car.
And it just is better, our life is better when we enjoy nutritious healthy food slowly and mindfully. So it's a matter of understanding this is not an all or nothing thing, we can’t always do it. But many meals a week we can if we’re just a little bit more thoughtful.
Dave shared that number three is Intermittent Fasting. We do really well when we eat in a certain window of time during the day. And a very practical one for a lot of people is about like nine o'clock in the morning to have their first meal and five o'clock in the afternoon to have their last or maybe it's 10 o'clock and six o'clock or 11 o'clock at seven o'clock, that's about a 10 hour window.
You can experiment with different lengths of window, everyone's different, everyone's at a different stage of life, everyone has a different activity level. But generally speaking, there's a magic that happens when you stop eating any food after dinner for one thing.
For example, once we quit eating, our body gets to digest that food fully before we go to sleep so our digestive system is now done and our body is able to focus on getting rid of pathogens, carcinogens, and getting rid of that food and developing up the hormones and replenishing the brain and doing all those healthy things that need to be done at night.
The hormones work correctly, when we stopped eating at dinnertime, the melatonin starts rising making us drowsy helping us get a better night's sleep. While we're sleeping, the HGH is rising, the oestrogen is rising, the testosterone is rising, and the blood sugar is dropping.
And we wake up in the morning and that's an ideal state for some of our best work. And so, he gives an example of this morning. As he mentioned, he’s an entrepreneur, he gets where you're coming from with the podcast.
And he was asked specifically how things changed with the pandemic?
Well, here's how one thing has changed and this goes also back to the comment Yanique made about standing and about making these adjustments.
So this morning, his workout consisted of four things. So today's a strength day for him and he has a pull up bar out his garage for pull ups, he has a dip bar in his office which is also half gymnasium, he’s got a rowing machine, he’s got some kettlebells and he’s got a dip bar.
And then he did step ups, that's where you have a box, and you just put your leg up on the box, and one leg at a time you very carefully and in a controlled manner, just lift yourself up and it's kind of like a squat, excepted, rather go down, you put one foot up on a box and lift yourself up, which you can also do in a chair.
And then his last one was some core exercises, lying on the floor, stomach work. So each of those he had to do six rounds of each one with a two-minute rest and so, what he did is he went out to the garage and he did the pull ups then he came back to his computer and he checked email.
He has his clock going and he has a little notepad checking off how many sets he’s done he has a terrible time keeping track of that he’s got to check it off, once the blood gets flowing and you got all this stuff going on, it's easy to forget where you're at.
So he’s got a little pad of paper for check marks on his desk, set of pull ups, do some email, set of dips, check email, set of pull ups, check his calendar and his daily MO.
He has what he calls it his daily MO sheet, which is his daily method of operation which has all his to do’s and everything on it.
And so he’s going back and forth, by the time he finishes this workout and this is kind of a long one, it took him an hour and a half. But there was a two-minute break between everything and by the time he gets done his workout, he'd been moving every two minutes for an hour and a half and he had gotten rid of every important email, he had his plan all laid out for the day and had accomplished two or three of his most important tasks.
Some people call those trigger workouts and these are things that you can do, either the way that he described it or on a set schedule.
Here's another one, for example. Many fitness experts do recommend that we get up out of our chair at least once an hour and that was part of the question asked earlier. Once an hour is a good standard.
Guess what if you're not exercising that much, and you want to incorporate exercise into a very busy entrepreneurial lifestyle, there are three workouts that are surprisingly beneficial that you can do during your work day.
One of them is squats, there's nothing like a good controlled, good postured deep squat. And if you had a timer, and after hour one, you simply stepped away from your computer, and did say two sets of 20 squats, the heart rate is going to go up, it feels pretty good, your brain gets kind of cleared after sitting for an hour and focusing on whatever you were doing.
And then you set the timer for another hour. And the next time you do push-ups. Push-ups are great exercise for the chest and strength of the arms, the triceps, the shoulders, and you do some push-ups.
And the third one is any type of core exercise that you like, it doesn't matter, it could be bicycles, it could be some crunches, it could be any type of leg lift, or mountain climbers, it doesn't matter, there's a lot of them.
But if you combine some push-ups and some squats and some core work into your day, by the time you're done and imagine you did some form of that or some little bit of exercise or maybe after you're kind of done enough squats and push-ups and core, after the next hour, you could go for a brief walk, maybe five minutes at a good pace.
If you work in a building, you could walk the stairs kind of aggressively, put something into it, put a little work into it to get the heart rate up a little bit. And so that is a wonderful way to get out of the chair, to get your workout in, even if you didn't get it done, you don't have to get up, you don't have to get dressed in your fancy yoga outfit to go to this, just whatever you're wearing, you just go ahead and do it. And so that's a great tip right there for keeping your fitness going.
Number four is Eat Healthy Macros - carbs, protein and fat are the three macros. And in addition, as part of those, we need to make sure to get five to nine servings of vegetables per day. Now too many people eat too many carbs, and not enough protein. And often the fats that we get are unhealthy. So tip number four is to make sure that you're getting a healthy form of macro - protein, carbs and fat with a serving of vegetables with every single meal as often as possible, breakfast, lunch, dinner, try to work in those all three at the same time to every meal. And if you can do that and by the end of the day, have eaten five to nine servings of vegetables, that's a really great routine. And you'll have phenomenal health if you do that. For most people, that will mean they'll eat less unhealthy carbs, more quality proteins, and higher quality fat.
Number five is Observe a Simple Supplements Strategy. The fact is that even if you eat really, really well, you're going to be deficient on some things, we know this from science, we know this from all the blood work that's being done on people right now.
76% of Americans are deficient in vitamin D. Similar percentages are deficient in things like chromium, many women are deficient in iron, and so on. And so we need to take a good quality multivitamin, a good quality mineral and trace mineral, supplement and those are the very basics. Ideally, you want to get a nutritional blood panel done once a year, he does one once a year, he has for about the last 5 years, they're getting less expensive. The first time he did it he thinks it was $500 for him to get a blood test done to find out his vitamin and mineral deficiencies. Now that $500 a year to him is well worth it but happily, it now costs about $200. By the way, these are available easily and quickly at Amazon, if you go to Amazon and just search for nutritional deficiency test or something like that and there's a variety, some of them you send hair samples, some of them are saliva, some of them are urine and they all have a different way of doing it, some of them is to prick your finger and get a little bit of blood.
And so depending on if you get the “heebie jeebies” about some of those, you pick the one that works best for you. So you just kind of determine how they do their sample and what you want to do and how accurate you want to do it and pay a little bit of money, send it in, and they'll tell you exactly what you're deficient in.
If you're taking the good quality multivitamin and mineral though, hopefully it won't be very much. They have a phenomenal one Mimi's Miracle Multi is specifically designed for what most adults are deficient in, that's why they designed it. And they have Mimi's Miracle Minerals that has over 70 trace minerals and so that's how they answered that for their clients, but those are the basics, a really good multi and a good mineral.
Number six is Exercise Everyday, seven days a week. Now again, this doesn't mean you have to get dressed in your fancy clothes and make a big deal of it and go out to the gym and spend a lot of time, you don't have to become a gym rat.
But what we're talking about as our society has become too sedentary, when he mentioned taking a break and going for a walk, that counts. This does not have to be difficult, our body though is not designed to sit not even for 24 hours, if we don't exercise in a 24-hour period, we're not doing ourselves a favour, we have multiple systems that we need to look after.
We need to look after our strength, our endurance, our general longevity, our balance, our speed, our accuracy, all of these things are part of how our body functions at its best. He’s 55 years old, he’s got grandchildren and he wants to have great grandchildren but he doesn't want to have them if he’s decrepit and unable to get out of the bed, that's not the vision he has.
And so, he knows that the way he takes care of himself now is going to affect how well he is if he’s going to be a healthy great grandfather. And that's true for all of us. What we're doing today is setting the groundwork for how healthy we are in the next decade, and the one after that, and the one after that.
Me: So in relation to move your body everyday, seven days a week, your sheet says make sure even your rest days involve light activity. Can you quantify that for me? Let's say, for example, I normally go to the gym four days a week, that's been my routine for the last maybe three months. So, I go to the gym four days a week, and on the days that I go, that I don't have any pressing meetings in the morning, I’ll also do a three mile walk at a field that's pretty close to my home, just as additional cardio and because I have a back injury, I don't typically do any form of what would you call now heavy impact, like jogging or running or anything like that. I just tried to brisk walk for the three miles as much as possible. That's four days but then there are other three days, now maybe two of those days, I'll do brisk walking alone, because obviously I wouldn't go to the gym. But then on that seventh day, are you suggesting that I do additional activities? And if so, for how long?
Dave stated that this is a great question and the answer is yes. Even if it's yoga, another walk, mobility of some sort, there's all kinds of great videos on YouTube.
Now, for example, if you go to YouTube, you have a back injury, he does as well, he has a condition in his back, actually, that gives him chronic pain and he has to deal with it and so he understands that.
However, he’s dealt with it much better than many other people have been able to do because of this routine. When his back is active and flexible, he has very little pain, it's when he’s not exercising, when he’s not taking care of himself that it flares up.
So if you go to YouTube and you search for exercises for back pain, that is a wonderful search, if you ever heard of foundation training, there's a really good 10-minute foundation training on YouTube for any of you that have back pain, it's fantastic, he highly recommends it.
And there's many others as we know, there's many, many workouts that are available for free on YouTube. So yes, we're talking about light exercise, whether it's working on a pre-existing injury that we have, whether it's just working on general flexibility and mobility to improve our quality of life over time because as we know, if we don't work on our flexibility, it gets worse and worse as we get older.
And as it gets worse, this is why people end up in a wheelchair often, that are otherwise healthy and that's what we're trying to avoid.
So, mobility, flexibility, yoga, very light, low impact exercise, find something that you can do on your non gym days that's very easy but you're still getting your heart rate up a little bit, you're still keeping yourself limber.
Me: And the length of time you recommend for that 20 minutes, 15 minutes, half an hour.
Dave stated that he really doesn't recommend by time, it's really a personal thing. For example, Sunday is a very easy day for him. And he takes his dog, they are lucky to live near a lot of farmland and dirt roads and they'll just walk for an hour and he loves it and she (the dog) loves it. And there's nothing magical about the hour. And so, he would say make anything minimum 20 minutes, under 20 minutes, they know that it's not doing our heart near as much good as it could the American Heart Association encourage us to make sure our exercise is at least 20 minutes. So I'd say 20 minutes is a minimum and of course, there's not really a maximum as well. So, let's just say minimum 20 minutes makes a lot of sense.
And then the final one, Get Seven to Nine Hours of Sleep Per Night. This is what entrepreneurs don't like, a lot of people want to burn the candle at both ends. He’s been self-employed since 1993 and you got to ask yourself this question, “Is your lifestyle for your business or is your business to support your lifestyle?” This is a critical question. To him, when someone says, “Hey family, I'm going to work super hard for 10 years so that we can have a really great life.” To him, that is a terrible thing to ever say to a child or to think. Those 10 years are going to go and you're going to miss piano recitals and football games, and dances and the stuff. And his motto, when it comes to family, his family comes first, his family comes before his business, his health comes before his business. So without his health, he doesn't have a family or a business, he can't serve anybody else.
And the seven to nine hours sleep is foundational to our mind functioning at its best, our body functioning at its best. And so those temptations, when you're thinking, “Oh, if I just get this project done, then I can go to bed.” That's just a lie. As entrepreneurs, we are a personality go getting hustlers.
And we could work all the way up to the day of our divorce. No problem. Because we're wired for work but we got to just step back and understand.
Dave shared a principle that has absolutely changed his life. In your business, there's probably only one and maximum two mission critical things you have to do today.
If you ask this question, what is the one mission critical thing I have to do today, that if I got it done, and then I had a family emergency and had to go to a hospital for the rest of the day, my business would still survive?
That's extreme thinking but you get the idea.
Now, in his business, they use Basecamp, each of their employees, they have this principle baked in. Basecamp pings everyone at 9:00 am in the morning, it says, “What is your one thing?” Every single one of them has to plan their day around the one thing and do the one thing first. And they all have to tell each other what that one thing is.
So that someone else might say, “Oh, hey, did you forget about this? Because I kind of think that in our meeting, we talked about this project. And you're saying this is your one thing, I kind of feel like you ought to do this thing.”
So by having some accountability and having other people do that, it makes sure that each person or business knows what their mission critical, most important thing is, and they get it done first. Once you've done that, it's amazing how much pressure comes off. And then from there, you realize that come 4:00 pm, 5:00 pm, you really don't need to work anymore.
You're never going to get it all done, that's just not reality. There will always be something on your mind that you think is so important that you have to get done. The fact is, most of these things that feel so important, they're just not that important. There's usually just one or two.
Me: I think of all the ones that you've given so far, I talk the most about sleep. I'm a big, big, big supporter of sleep. I believe in the seven to nine hours of sleep. And I can't tell you how many customer service training sessions I've been on for leaders, for supervisors, for frontline staff, and people telling me they're surviving on three hours sleep or four hours sleep and their body doesn't need that much sleep, you only sleep that much when you're a baby.
And I'm like, No, no, like, there's scientific data out there that proves that sleep, your body needs sleep. The reality is, there is no cure for sleep, but sleep. There is no tablet for you to take to replace getting sleep, you have to sleep.
When your body says it's time to sleep, it's time to sleep. And so, I'm so happy that it's on your list and I'm so happy that it matches back with what I've been saying for years. And I just want you to reinforce it again for me, Dave, because I just think people just don't recognize the importance of getting sleep. And as you said, the seven to nine hours of sleep, so important.
Dave agreed and stated that one of the reasons why is because nutritional and fitness science has come so far in the last few years and sleep and intermittent fasting are two of the newest to hit the radar and because of that, many of us were raised to believe that to be successful, we had to burn the candle at both ends, that it was like some badge of honor to not get very much sleep.
There's these groups that were everyone gets on Twitter, like 3:45 am or 4:45 am in the morning or something like that and they feel so terrific because they're getting up earlier than everyone else and getting stuff done. And that's really great short term.
Long term, he doesn't want to be that person and he doesn't need to be that person. No one needs to be that person to be successful, whether with their health or with their business or in their relationships. As a matter of fact, as you mentioned, all the scientific data supports that we need seven to nine hours of sleep, that might be seven for you, it might be seven and a half, it might be eight, might be eight and a half, it might be nine, but don't think you're always the exception to the rule. There are very, very few exceptions to the rule.
So this is the other problem is everyone thinks that they're the exception and in health and fitness, it's usually a lie we tell ourselves, we all want to feel exceptional, that's wonderful.
At the same time, we should have some level of humility and accept scientific research that people do. As mentioned, I have the Dirobi Health Show and one of his favourite interviews was with Molly McLaughlin and her tagline is, sleep is a skill. And he had her on his show and she's just excellent.
And so, for those of you that want more on this, he'd recommend that interviewer that you just look her up, she's got some of the greatest cutting edge information on sleep and really up on all the studies. But the fact is, the other question that he'd ask people is why do you think that you don't need to spend that much time in bed?
What is it you're trying to accomplish exactly?
If you have to work 16 hours a day, the answers why, what are you working for?
What's your goal?
Again, business is supposed to support us, we aren't supposed to support our business. So you're doing something wrong.
In 2015, he took his family to Europe for 90 days. For 90 days, they spent time in Scotland, in England, in Wales and then they spent time in Paris and Brussels, and it was wonderful. And his business grew.
Some people may not believe that but from September to December 2015, his business grew while they were travelling for 90 days in Europe, because they'd created the systems, they had the staff, they had the ideas, they had this one thing concept.
And so, his whole business is designed to support his lifestyle.
He takes every Friday off, he loves to golf and every single Friday, he’s got his little golf group, and they go out and they golf.
And there's literally not been a Friday in the last three years that he can remember where his business took over that golf outing, it just doesn't happen because he doesn't let it happen.
He realizes not everyone loves golf, but you get the idea. If your business isn't supporting the lifestyle you want, change it, do it differently so that you can have the health you want, so you can have the relationships that you want, so you can have a wonderful life where you see the world and do all these exciting things that that life has to offer. And sitting at your desk is not it.
App, Website or Tool that Dave Absolutely Can’t Live Without in Him Business
When asked about an online resource that he cannot live without in his business, Dave shared that he would say the one kind of philosophy or book that has changed his life more than anything else is The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Tim Ferriss. That book, it's a little bit dated now so don't use techniques when he talks about advertising, that type of thing. But the underlying principles of what he (Dave) just said about life and lifestyle and travel, that book teaches you how to create a business that can support a wonderful lifestyle. And he read it years ago, he read it in 2008. And as an entrepreneur, he'd say that book changed his life more than any other business book.
Me: So that would be a resource that definitely helped you to get to where you are today.
Books That Have Had the Greatest Impact on Dave
When asked about books that have had the biggest impact, Dave shared Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, he thinks is a basic self-development book that everyone should read. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey, he believes is one of the best personal development and professional development books ever written. So if he backs up and talk about a resource, one of them would be the one he mentioned earlier, Basecamp. Basecamp is a very inexpensive tool, but he runs his whole business using Basecamp. And so that to him is an absolutely essential tool.
What Dave is Really Excited About Now!
Dave shared that the one thing he’s most excited about at the moment is a transformation programme that he’s doing for their customers. He’s been developing it for a while, it's where he’s getting to take all his years of experience and his health certification and put it into an app that he’s developed.
And they did their first run, it's called the Dirobi Transformation Programme, earlier this year. And it was his first chance to really kind of put together a programme that people took that involved all these principles they've been talking about where every single day they get a ping about a training and then accountability, did you follow the principles.
And for 90 days, they follow this health journey. So that's been something he envisioned years ago but the technology, he’s sure it was there, but he didn't know how to do it. And so finally, this year he was able to develop out a programme to really take his whole business and his customer base to the next level.
And the reason he’s so excited about it is because while he loves making a living in the dietary supplement industry, which is what he does, it's not about him selling bottles to people to make a living, it's about health transformation, it's about the success that they have, it's about filling in those deficiencies, it’s about them. So, for him, he’s never just wanted to be a guy who sells stuff in the health space, he wants to be a guy who helps people raise their quality of life in the health space and he’s been doing it since 2009.
But he feels like just this year, he’s actually getting to where his vision really has been leading him to where he’s able to create something that's more than just buy the bottles, but actually take the bottles, understand how to use them in the context of these principles that we're talking about and develop out the habits so people can go beyond weight loss, beyond yo-yo dieting, beyond thinking of health in terms of such simple measures as that and instead achieve their ideal body weight, great energy, feel their best, look their best in a way that makes sense and that they can do long term. So, that's it, he’s excited about it, it's still a work in progress like he said, he had one group go through it, from that he learned a lot and he’s improving it. And from here on out, he sees that being a real core part of their business.
Where Can We Find Dave Online
Website – www.dirobi.com
Instagram - @dirobihealth
YouTube – Dirobi Health Show
Facebook – @Dirobihealth
Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Dave Uses
When asked about a quote he tends to revert to, Dave stated that he’s going to change the question a little bit. He has a practice, rather, it's not a quote or anything. But he’s a meditation practitioner, he goes to retreats, he meditates every single day in the morning.
And one of the things he does is walking meditation and there is a poem by Thich Nhat Hanh that he recites as he walks slowly. So, if he really needs to get centred, he goes for a walk and he recite the poem. And now that he’s under pressure, he hopes he can get it right but it's very simple.
It goes, “I have arrived. I'm home. In the here. In the now. I am solid. I am free, in the ultimate I dwell.”
And you simply breathe and walk slowly while you recite those words in your head.
And he’s been doing that for years. I did it just this morning and it's a unique kind of a practice, was very grounding. He talks about kissing the earth with your feet as you walk and recite this little poem or couplet. You just recite those words though as you walk very slowly and ideally outside. And it's incredibly grounding, that experience.
He’s walked for as much as 2 hours reciting that, probably sounds like the most boring thing ever to people listening. But keep in mind though, he started his meditation practice a long time ago and he was terrible. He couldn't sit still for like more than two minutes. His first meditations, literally didn't last more than two minutes, it took him two years to work up to 10 minutes of meditation. And then after going through his first retreat, he really broke through to where he was able to meditate for longer periods of time and generally be more meditative and more mindful in his general living. So, that's his best answer is walking meditation.
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Wayne McCulloch is one of the world's leading customer success experts and a Top 100 Customer Success Strategist, Wayne works with Google Cloud’s entire SaaS portfolio as the Customer Success Leader. He's a keynote speaker and the recipient of multiple industry awards with more than 25 years of experience in customer-focused roles.
Wayne began his software career at PeopleSoft and Vignette before becoming an SVP at Salesforce, the Chief Customer Officer at Kony, Inc., and the VP of the Customer Success Group at Looker.
Questions
Highlights
Wayne’s Journey
Wayne shared that it’s interesting when he looks back, because there's no possible way he could have created a plan to get to where he is today, which made him totally rethink how he thought when he was in the early 20s trying to think about what’s his career going to be? What is he going to do? Where is he going to be?
And it really, really is a journey that hasn't been planned in any way shape or form from a long term perspective, but just made up of a collection of opportunities that have presented itself. But he got into the world of software for a strange reason, it's because he was working in a sort of more traditional space and one of his friends got a job in software, and they said, it's amazing, they have Pop Tarts in the fridge and you can cook up and it's casual clothes, and it's like flexible work from home.
And this is back in the 90s when that was just so foreign to him working in a more traditional business environment. And so he joined a software company for reasons nothing to do with software, and yet it to become part of his life for the last 25 years.
And for him, he started off in the world of education, enablement, adoption of software in the B2B space and really love that for 15 years of his career and then realize that this whole customer experience, customer success movement, especially in the world of software with cloud and the way we can easily download apps and use any product very quickly, which is very unlike software in the 80s and 90s, he realized that that was a space he was very interested in is how to enable people to get success with these investments, with these software applications, and so moved into the world of customer success and that's where he’s been ever since.
Pillars That Business Owners or Managers Need to Focus On Emerging Out of a Pandemic
Me: So Wayne, you have this new book that was released recently. It's called “The Seven Pillars of Customer Success” so could you share with us what those pillars are and maybe if you were to pick maybe one or two of those pillars that a business owner or a manager in charge of customer experience or customer success in their business would need to focus on what would be maybe one or two of those things that you'd recommend they focus on, especially in the climate that businesses are currently operating in, just trying to emerge out of a pandemic.
Wayne stated that it’s a very unique time right now. As an author like Yanique, he has much more respect for people that write books than he did before he embarked on this journey 3 years ago. He was very motivated. It's similar to when you join a gym, you get really excited, you start working out and getting up early, and then you start missing a couple and then eventually you just stop going and writing a book for him was like that, he was so excited.
And then he’s like, “Wow, this is really hard. And it's not what I thought it would be.” But ultimately, they got the book done and launched as The Seven Pillars and it really was a collection of a lot of experiences.
But for him, The Seven Pillars wasn't anything ground-breaking, it was more how do we create or construct a framework by which we can base our business on how we service our customers, because there's lots of great books on why customer service and the customer experience is so critical for a customer's success.
And there's lots of great books on how to execute that as far as like sort of activities, things you need to be thinking about. But for him, he was missing a framework to pull it all together. He knows it's important. He knows there's really cool things about creating customer delight and all these other sort of tactical engagement type things but what he was missing for him to make customers successful was what's a framework that he can build that conflicts with his business as it grows or shrinks but can also accommodate a consistent sort of value proposition, a consistent theme, a consistent what he calls narrative when he’s speaking to his customers.
And so, the book for him was about constructing these seven pillars which really focused in on three main areas. The first one is your company. The second one is your customer. And the third one is sort of the people delivering that experience. And it's funny, he’s talked to people and like, “Why do you start with your company? If this is about customer experience and the customer success and servicing that customer, why do you start with your company?” and he said he has a saying it's, “Customer success equals employee success, and employee success equals customer success.” And it really starts with the employee or employees, and it starts with your organization, you need to build a foundation as a company or as a business that can sustain and deliver a great experience for your customers.
So it actually starts with your own organization. And so, he developed sort of 10 tools, very specific to the B2B world in software, but certainly applicable as a framework in other contexts, which is, how are you going to run your business at scale, having a consistent voice, having a consistent value proposition into the market and that's what the first pillar is all about.
The next 5 pillars are all about the customer’s journey with you as a company. And for him, it starts off with on-boarding.
On-boarding a new customer, a new consumer into your business, and how to go do that right. And he actually has a story in the book, it's about a hurdler in the 2016 Olympics and he was representing Haiti. And he was in the semi-finals so he’s super pumped because such a small sort of population of people can have someone at the Olympics at the highest level, potentially getting into the gold medal race and he was watching with great enthusiasm. And unfortunately, he tripped over the first hurdle fell down and didn't qualify. And he feels like that's kind of like customer service, it's kind of like running a business, if you trip over the first hurdle, it's really difficult to recover, really difficult to come back. And it doesn't mean you can't finish and it doesn't mean you can't have some success but it's really difficult to win. And so, for him, on-boarding was the first pillar.
And then there was the second pillar of the customer journey, which really focused in on the adoption of your product or service, like how do we get true adoption and by adoption they don't mean just using it, but they mean getting full value from it. How do we do that?
The third sort of pillar on the customer journey was really focused in on how do we cement that value proposition in that person's mind? So they've on-boarded well, they're using or leveraging the product in some way and now they're getting maximum value that it can provide because that leads you to the fourth stage, what he calls the fifth pillar, which is around the value expansion. How do we now give that consumer, that customer more value?
How do we create an experience for them even better than what we have done, whether it's through more of the same product or additional products and services?
And then finally, a really important one, which he hopes they talked about later is when Yanique mentioned what the most critical one would be around advocacy. How do we create advocates of our brand, of our products, of our services into the market because that is, in this day and age, one of the easiest, fastest and most scalable ways, certainly the most affordable in order to attract new business.
The final pillar, the seventh pillar is all about the people delivering on that promise, that value proposition, that great experience, and how do we invest in those people.
And he co-created a model with a friend of his, Shane Anastasi who also has written a book on the consulting side, and it's called The KSE Model, which is knowledge, skills and experience and if we think of our people at the frontline delivering service, we think of what knowledge do we give them? What skills can we have them acquire and then how do we give them the experience and the feedback in order for them to improve and be better? And so, that kind of rounds out the whole book, he jokes that no one needs to buy the book now, they almost have it all in a podcast.
Does On-Boarding Includes the Recruitment Process?
Me: So you started off by talking about on-boarding. Does on-boarding include the recruitment process? Or based on how you wrote the book, is the recruitment step before or do you have it all summed up as one with on-boarding?
Wayne stated that it's a great question. And it's funny, because to answer the question, it's after they've acquired the customer. But in the book, he actually has a secret eighth pillar. And it's funny because when he was writing the book and he was at 345 pages long, which is pretty big for a business book, and the publisher is like just get the book published, how much more can you put in there? And he’s like, another 345 pages, there's so much content.
And he said, he actually thinks there's an eighth pillar, potentially, he’s not sold on it yet, but he does believe it exists. And the publisher is like, you can't make it eight pillars of the books called The Seven Pillars and all the graphics and all that, all this work had been done around The Seven Pillars. But in actual fact, he talked about the fact that the eighth pillar is pre boarding, he calls it pre boarding, it’s like getting on a plane, it's called pre boarding which is, how do we set up the customer for success before they're a customer.
And even in this day and age defining what a customer is, is different because you might have a service that you give a free trial, well, they're not paying for the service, so they really not a customer of your business from a financial standpoint, but they're consuming the service, so they are a customer. But it's a trial, so this notion of pre boarding customers, getting them ready to engage with you is something that he definitely added into the book at the end.
Recruiting the Right People for the Right Organization
Me: So one of the things I think is so critical sometimes when we're dealing with customer experience, you definitely need to get the right customers, but you also need to get the right people internally. So, there's an internal customer service.
How do you ensure that in the recruiting process, getting the right people for the organization, it matches back with what you're trying to achieve on an organizational level, at the end because one of the things you spoke about was you want your internal and external customers to become your advocates, your evangelists, your word of mouth advertisers, but how do you know that the people you're hiring can actually love the company they work for so much that they literally walk and speak good things about the company all the time, even when things may not be going so well?
Wayne stated that this is a challenge facing every industry that has service professionals. And he calls them service professionals deliberately, he feels like when people talk about service industry, it's not referred to in a way that he thinks really highlights the importance that the role that service people play, it is so incredibly important to service professionals. The one thing that have been his experience where he’s had successes when he hires people, he doesn't hire for skills, he doesn't care if you're finished high school, he doesn't care if you have a Master's, it doesn't matter to him, in service that's relevant, it does not matter.
What matters is empathy, to him, that is all that matters. If he can find people that can demonstrate the capability of being empathetic, can show examples of how they're empathetic, then you have a winning service person.
And it doesn't matter if you're in a very technical field, if you're in the retail field or whatever, the person has to have that empathy. You can't really teach empathy, it's something that you have, you can amplify it and you can certainly improve through learning and experience.
But ultimately finding people with empathy because they don't just have empathy for the customer, which is so critical to delivering a great experience, but have empathy for your business.
They get it's difficult, they get there are tough times, they get the challenges are going to come that make it necessary to make tough decisions as a company, as a business.
And so empathetic people can work through that in a way that allows them to be comfortable and allows them to also be more appreciative of the environment they're in. And then other things like communication, sharing, listening, collaborate, all those things that we would want to make sure that we provide as an environment from our people are all important, he’s not saying they're not but to him, the critical skill is empathy.
He worked in a software company called Looker, one of the best companies he’s ever worked for, for culture. And there's probably one other company in his whole life called PeopleSoft in the 90s, they had just amazing culture.
And the founder of Looker has this phrase that he uses when he started the company. He said, “Great software is an act of empathy.”
In other words, if you're using software and you can't use it, it's frustrating, you get stuck at breaks, you are ruining that person's day potentially impacting their career. It goes beyond creating a great, in this case - application, it's about people being able to do their jobs and be successful. And so, great software is an act of empathy.
But they sort of built on that and said, “Great service is an act of empathy.” That's really what it's about, it's about putting yourself in the other person's shoes. And it's great when things are good, I want to buy something, I've got great experiences and that's great. And we should celebrate and service people with empathy that they lead with can enjoy that and can celebrate and make that a really unique, fun, positive experience for both the consumer and for the service person. But it's also when things are bad is when empathy shines through and that comes through in a genuine way.
We've all been there, he doesn't want to say that the cable company because they always get used. But let's just say we call someone and we get frustrated, we get moved around. “Sorry, that's not the right department, I can't help you.” And we get that in big companies. And that just means they haven't worked out how to intake the questions appropriately or you get a chatbot that just keeps asking you 50 questions.
And you just get frustrated, you're not getting someone who's empathetic, who's saying, “Look, I get it, your time is more valuable than ours. Time is all you have, you can't buy more of it. So every minute you spend trying to solve a problem with us that we've created in your life, a hassle, an issue or problem or difficulty, that's on us not on you. And yet you pay the price as the consumer.”
And so, people who are empathetic can empathize with that. And for him, that creates a different dynamic between people in your company. And then inside your own company. As he said, empathetic people get that sometimes things get tough and they're going to rally, they're going to support because they genuinely know that you as a business owner, or as a company, you believe in that customer centricity, it's not just a moniker, it's not just a mission statement, it's not just something painted on the wall, it's demonstrated by a group of empathetic people trying to make the best experiences possible for their customers.
Me: It's funny that that whole characteristic that you have to have as an individual, empathy, it really as you said, it's something that it just cannot be taught, it has to be something that you have from within. And just on your experience, Wayne, do you feel that as you grow older, especially like as a parent, because I believe empathy is one of those social skills that you should have, just general things like being polite, being courteous, empathy is something that should be a part of your socialization. But what I have found is that because it requires that you tap into your emotional intelligence, at what age do you think persons start to really exercise empathy, maybe in their teenage years to just get a better understanding of connecting with other people, maybe you have a friend who is going through something and you empathize with her, that way when you actually get into the work environment, well, I don't think you'd have mastered this skill, but you definitely would have had some exposure to it. What are your thoughts on that?
Wayne stated that he can be really frank here and say his answer is now different than what it was 5 years ago. Because 5 years ago, he had kids. And so, he was raised by his grandparents and so he was brought up in a more traditional environment when it comes to manners, when it comes to morals, we're talking people born in 1920.
So, the environment he grew up as a child was very polite and actually, in many regards, was very empathetic and so it enabled him to understand the impact that we have on other people when we meet them.
And so, now that he’s had children, he’s like, well, he wasn't born in 1920 and he certainly doesn't have all the morals and manners his grandparents had. Hopefully, he has a lot, hopefully, his grandma would say he still has some. But really, when it comes down to it, he thinks about how does he instill values? And how does he practice empathy with his children when they're in an environment that was very different to his, where he was able to hone that for him.
And it's simple things at Christmas time, is, you know, sponsoring a family that might have financial difficulties in buying presents for their children and so going shopping with your 5 year old kid and saying, “Hey, what would you like for Christmas?” And they're like, “Oh, I'd love this Barbie Set.” And he’s like, you know there's people out there that actually don't have this opportunity to pick out a toy. They're not lucky like we are, they're unlucky.
Does that make you sad that they can't have the fun things you have? And while he gets the comprehension is limited, it's starting to have a conversation and a dialogue, not everyone is on the same playing field, not everyone has the same opportunities, and we can make a difference because we can. And so let's pick up a toy, what sort of toy do you think a girl of your age would enjoy. And she might say, it's a Tonka truck or it might be a tennis racket or something. And so we'll go buy it and wrap it and go give that to a family.
And so, over time we look for opportunities to broaden the thinking of our children, our life, our world, what we have is not the only thing that exists because in the world of customer service, you're dealing with people that have lots of different backgrounds and lots of different challenges.
And having an appreciation that we’re just one more problem they're having to deal with if they're frustrated or one more opportunity to create delight for someone who might not have that. Everyone has that in their life to varying degrees, some worse than others. So in his mind, he thinks you can start exploring and understanding things like empathy as early as 5 years old, because that's where he’s starting. He’s not sure if it has an impact, he'll tell you in 15 years’ time. But he does think it's something we can explore with our children so that as they grow, they can have a broader understanding of how other situations people find themselves in, which in customer service, we touch everybody, from all walks of life, good and challenging.
Me: And it does cement also that there is research out there that says you do form your personality by age five. So it's good that you've started that conversation, because it means then as your kids get older, and you may not be the centre of influence in terms of information that you give them, because now they're exposed to the school system, they have teachers, they have friends, by the time they turn teenagers, what their friend said to them is of greater value than what their parents said to them. And so it's good those core things are built in from early.
App, Website or Tool that Wayne Absolutely Can’t Live Without in His Business
When asked about an online resource that he cannot live without in his business, Wayne shared that for him, it's not really directly for his business, but he lives in LinkedIn. He’s noticed social media person, he’s not on Facebook, he doesn't have an Instagram account. He’s not a Twitter person, that's not for him. They're very private as a family and they'd like to keep it that way. But for him, from a professional and business sense, he finds that networking through tools like LinkedIn enables him to connect with people who have similar situations or been on similar journeys and that's super critical.
Because one thing he learned writing a book and talking to 50 Plus of his peers in the industry is none of us are as smart as all of us. Doesn't know who said that but he heard that one time when he was younger, and he really gets that. We've all faced different challenges and overcome them and have experiences and have had impacts and we can all learn from that. And then one thing that he’s learned on LinkedIn is by connecting with people and either mentoring or getting mentored by or just simply saying, “Hey, I really love your career, I love what you've done, I'd love to grab 30 minutes of your time just to talk about what you've learned, what I've learned.”
More often than not people like absolutely, like, this is great. I can learn from you; you can learn from me. And learning strategies and concepts and ideas and techniques from other people, for him is a powerful way to help the business. So, he would say something like that because it's such a unique way to find people with common backgrounds and explore experiences together which is cool.
Books That Have Had the Greatest Impact on Wayne
When asked about books that have had the biggest impact, Wayne stated that he read his book recently and he thought it was really good. He agrees with everything in the book. But there's a lot of great books out there. And in his book he actually referred to a book from the 80s that talked about moments of truth. And there was a more recent book from Chip Heath and Dan Heath, it was about the power of moments.
And one thing for him in understanding a customer journey, which is really all the touch points a customer will have with your brand, whether it's digital, physical, online, with you present or not like a website, the power of those moments are incredible. So there's a book called The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact, which he thinks helps to highlight that when you're trying to create a great experience for a customer, you really have to understand what are the moments that really require that effort, because you could put a lot of effort into a moment that is not as impactful from an advocacy, a loyalty, a delight kind of experience. And so, understanding that he thinks is really cool. So, he felt like that book was pretty cool.
The other one he really liked, which was a recent book is called Hug Your Haters: How to Embrace Complaints and Keep Your Customers by Jay Baer. So, for him, that was really difficult concept because in your business, especially if you own your business, you love that like you love your children and that makes you a little irrational sometimes.
And so, when people complain or get upset, you immediately become defensive and because you know that that's either not true or this is not fair, or because you're kind of bias. But learning to hug your haters is great. He remembers watching and it was an Apple plus TV show called Ted Lasso, which is an incredibly different show, but wonderful at the same time. And there's a scene where one of the players sort of talks to the coach and basically tells the coach that he doesn't like him and really upset. And the coach, when the player walks away, the coach says to the assistant coach, “Well, he thinks he hates me now wait until he loves me.” And that phrase for him and then later in the show, that player ends up loving him and actually says, “You make it so hard to love you.” Because he's sort of frustrated at something. And then he's like, “Did you hear that, he loves me like.” And that to him is exactly how we view our customers, is when they're upset, like, here's my chance to make them love me. And so, that books great too. There's plenty of others. He can't consume all the books he wants to read just for time purposes but they're the two that have had impacts on him recently.
What Wayne is Really Excited About Now!
Wayne shared that he just released a book, which is very scary, because you're putting out there, this is what I believe, this is what I think, this is what I'm suggesting or advising people to do and that's really scary. And as you write the book, you're often asking yourself saying, “Well, do I believe what I'm saying here? Am I saying it because I read it in a book? Am I saying it because I experienced it? Am I saying it because I truly believe it.”
And so, when you finally put it all down, you send it out in the world. And so, what he’s doing now is he’s talking to people who read the book and saying, “What's missing? What did I leave out? What did I get wrong?” And for him, that's amazing growth opportunity, like, “Oh, did I get that wrong? Actually, you're right. I didn't think of it from that point of view. I don't know everything. I know a lot. And I want to share that but I don't know everything.” And so, that's what he’s working on right now is really uncovering the gaps in the book, the gaps in his knowledge, the gaps in his skills, maybe who knows, one day he'll do a new edition of the book and add some chapters in or make some modifications. But really, that's primarily what he’s focused on.
And he’s just started writing a second book with two other authors. So he’s going to do this with two other people, hopefully, it will make it easier. There'll be more information coming out about that end of the year. But it's really about the fourth industrial revolution and how we're going to displace a lot of workers through AI, ML, robots, that's accelerating. And so, how can we re-skill hundreds of millions of humans on new opportunities in a very coordinated way, which he doesn't think we're doing as a society right now. So it's a little heavier than the book he just wrote, but equally important.
Where Can We Find Wayne Online
LinkedIn - @waynemcculloch
Website – http://www.cspillars.com/
Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Wayne Uses
When asked about a quote or saying that he tends to revert to, Wayne stated that he does but will give a quick background. He went on something called an Outward Bound Standard course which is basically 28 days in the bush in Australia.
And literally you've got a piece of plastic, you pull your shoelaces out of your shoes every night, put a bit of grass in the corner of the plastic and you tie your shoelace around and tie that to a log and that creates this kind of tent they call it a BV whack around Australia and you really live outside for a month with no phone and no electricity, nothing. You're not allowed anything of that. And while he was there, you got one mail drop that sort of day 20. And one of his friends wrote, just literally he opened the letter and it was one piece of paper with this one phrase on it, nothing else, didn't have his name, didn't have “I hope all is well, here's what's happening.” All it had was this phrase, which was “Tough times never last, tough people do.”
And for him, that helps him get through when he’s feeling down, when he’s feeling like things are going to be difficult. He’s like, it won't last, we’ll get through it. And as long as we get through it, we get stronger and we continue. So that's something he always think about and refer to in his professional career as well as his personal life.
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