Jason Feifer is the editor in chief of Entrepreneur Magazine, a nonstop optimism machine, and a widely recognized authority on business and how people navigate change. He is the author of the best-selling book Build For Tomorrow, a startup advisor, and host of the podcast Help Wanted and Problem Solvers. LinkedIn name him a “Top Voice in Entrepreneurship”. 

Jason has also had decades-long career in national media, which included working as an editor at Men’s Health, Fast Company, Maxim, and Boston magazine, and writing about business and technology for the Washington Post, Slate, New York Magazine, and others. 

Questions

• We always like to give our guests an opportunity to just share in their own words, a little bit about their journey, and how they got from wherever they were to where they are today. So, could you share that with us?
• So, Build For Tomorrow, a book that focuses on startup advisory, and I just kind of want you to take a little time to share with our listeners, what the book is about? Who is the book targeted towards? And how do you believe the book has been helping others in their different careers and businesses?
• Now the book focuses on four phases of this change. The first is the panic, then you have the adaptation and the new normal and then that phase where we're never going back. So, could you just elaborate just a little bit, maybe give an example of each just to kind of cement that information across to our listeners.
• What are three-character traits that you found has to really be intrinsic to organizations or persons who lead organizations to help them really be customer centric?
• Now, could you share with our listeners, what's the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely can't live without in your business?
• Can you also share with us what's the one thing that's going on in your life right now that you're really excited about? Either something you're working on to develop yourself or your people.
• Where can listeners find you online?
• Now, before we wrap our episodes up, we always like to ask our guests, do you have a quote or a saying that during times of adversity or challenge, you will tend to revert to this quote if for any reason you get derailed or you get off track, the quote kind of helps to get you back on track. Do you have one of those?

Highlights 

Jason’s Journey

Me: We always like to give our guests an opportunity to just share in their own words, a little bit about their journey, and how they got from where they were to where they are today. So, could you share that with us?

Jason shared that in brief, he started in media, he was a community newspaper reporter fresh out of college. Eventually, he got into magazines, he moved to New York City to work for Men's Health magazine, pretty different from Entrepreneur, and bounced around to a lot of different national magazines until he got to Entrepreneur. 

And at first, he really treated Entrepreneur like a media project. His job was to do what he had done everywhere else, which was to be an editor and to tell great stories and to think about the media brand. 

But over time, two things happen. Number one is that people because of the title, Editor in Chief of Entrepreneur Magazine, they started to treat him as an authority in entrepreneurship, which frankly, he was uncomfortable with for a while because his background was in media, until he came to realize that so much of business is not about the fundamentals of business, but it's really about the fundamentals of human thinking, and logic and reinvention, and the kinds of things that he had put himself through in his own career. 

He thinks that we all have to recognize what our incredible skill is, and it's going to be different for everybody. His belief is that every human being has the same fundamental skill, and that is pattern recognition. 

The difference among us is that some of us are better at recognizing different kinds of patterns, right. And so, his pattern is how people think and how people tell stories and how people understand the world. And he came to realize that by spending an immense amount of time with entrepreneurs, he was starting to absorb their way of thinking, starting to act like that, he’s starting to launch his own businesses, starting to advise startups, and that he could lean into telling their stories, processing their insights in a way that would be incredibly useful for other entrepreneurs. And that has led him to the career that he has now.

About Jason’s Book – Build For Tomorrow

Me: So, I was lucky enough to actually read your article in Entrepreneur Magazine. I think it was the February issue that I purchased when I was travelling, how failure can feel good, and it really intrigued me. So, I reached out to you on LinkedIn, and graciously, you accepted my request and here we are today having you on our podcast. So, amazing. So, in your bio, it was also mentioned that you recently published a book that would have been September of 2022. So, Build For Tomorrow, a book that focuses on startup advisory, and I just kind of want you to take a little time to share with our listeners, what the book is about? Who is the book targeted towards? And how do you believe the book has been helping others in their different careers and businesses?

Jason shared that Build For Tomorrow is a book for anybody who's going through change, particularly going through any kind of career change though. 

He’s heard from a lot of readers that it applied well to personal changes as well. And the book is rooted in this philosophy that he’s developed, which is that when he meets the most successful leaders and entrepreneurs, he finds that they have all developed a unique personal relationship with change, they understand who they are in times of change, they understand how change can impact them in a positive way. And that unique relationship with change enables them to grow and build in ways that others can't. 

And he wanted to write a book that distilled the experiences and the wisdom of people who have successfully navigated change and help others with a roadmap for how to do it too. That is just simply the most important thing that any entrepreneur can do is to be adaptable, to recognize that the things that are changing around them are great opportunities, and then to understand how to systematically approach that and that's the book that he wrote. And he’s had a really tremendous feedback from it, it's really gratifying.

Navigating Change – Understanding the Four Phases

Me: Awesome! Now the book focuses on four phases of this change. The first is the panic, then you have the adaptation and the new normal and then that phase where we're never going back. So, could you just elaborate just a little bit, maybe give an example of each just to kind of cement that information across to our listeners.

Jason shared that he found that everybody goes through change in the same four phases listed them out panic, adaptation, new normal, wouldn't go back. Let's focus on panic and wouldn’t go back. Panic, you know when you're panicked, you know when you're feeling that, you maybe are feeling that right now as he’s talking because something massive has changed in your work, because you feel like your industry is shifting underneath you. Who knows. And the reason why we panic is because decades of psychological research have confirmed what's called loss aversion theory. Loss Aversion theory is the recognition that our human brains are programmed to protect against loss more than to seek gain. 

So, when something changes in our lives and or in our work, the first thing that we do is we identify the things that we're comfortable and familiar with and then we start to think about how we're going to lose them, we're acquainting change with loss. And then we start to extrapolate it, well, because I've lost this thing, I'm going to lose that thing because I lost that thing, then I’m going to lose that other thing. Now, everything starts to feel like it's disappearing, now, we are panicking. But you can't do that forever, you can't panic forever, it's too exhausting. 

Eventually, you start to look around and say, well, what do I have to work with. We get to adaptation. We start to build a new normal, a new foundation, something comfortable and familiar, again, a new normal. And then we get to wouldn't go back, that moment where we say I have something so new and valuable that I wouldn't want to go back to a time before I had it. 

And he can give examples of that. But the pattern that he’s seeing is that people are often forced into or sometimes are proactively making changes that force them to reconsider the fundamentals of the work that they do. And what they discover is that the way in which they were working before or the thing that they were doing, or the way that they were delivering value to their clients or their customers, that that wasn't the only way to do it. They thought that it was…..but it wasn't. 

And in fact, it was a lesser version of a better way to do it that had never been explored because oftentimes people don't feel incentivized to scrap something that's working, or that sort of working, and take the risk of figuring out how to build something better.

But when change comes along, when you are disrupted, when you're forced to react to the things that are shifting around you, you start to ask yourself some really fundamental questions about whether or not the things that you thought wouldn't work maybe are worth trying. And some of those are going to become the best opportunities for you going forward.

Me: All right, so change. I remember over the years, even going to university and starting my working life and starting a business, I've always heard the phrase that change is constant. And I haven't engaged in the book, I did download it on Audible, and I've started listening to it but I haven't completed it as yet. But what your four phases reminded me of was that change is constant. So, regardless of a pandemic emerging across the world, or kids coming into the play or getting new employees, like change is constant, we're constantly going through change in different aspects of our lives, so your phases definitely reminded me of that.

Jason stated that that's something that you can operationalize. 

So, the idea that change is constant is a familiar one for many people. But he thinks often you hear that and you don't know what to do with it. Okay, change is constant, so what? 

Here's the starting point. What would happen if you made decisions today based on the knowledge that the thing that you're working on now will have to change tomorrow? 

What decisions would you make when you know that? 

It starts to shift the way in which you work, you start to for example, do a thing that he calls change before you must where you start to make decisions that are hard today because they will benefit you when things change tomorrow. 

A story that he’d love to tell, he won't tell it in full here, because it takes a while but divided in the book is of a brewer, a guy who started a Beer Brewery in Delaware named Sam, his company's called Dogfish. And he had a runaway hit product in a beer called 60-minute IPA, people love this beer, it was on track to become 75% to 80% of all sales of his company, and he artificially limited supply. 

So, this thing was on track to become 75% to 80% of all sales at Dogfish, he capped that at 50% and that meant that people were furious at him, restaurants couldn't get his beer stocked, bars couldn't get his beer stock. And he says, “Sam, why would you do that? Why would you limit sales of your best-selling product?” And the answer that he gave me was because tastes change. And he knew that if he allowed this one beer to be a runaway hit so that everybody who ever went into a bar or a restaurant encountered just this beer of his, just this one 60-minute IPA. Well, then at some point IPAs, India Pale Ale, popular bitter style appeals is going to become less popular than it was at that one moment. 

And if people's impressions of his company were shaped by one beer by an IPA, then he was going to be known as a hot IPA brand. And that's fine until tastes change, they will change at which point he won't be a hot IPA brand, he will be an old brand, he'll be a dead brand. And so, he wanted to do something that was painful today for the benefit of tomorrow, anticipating that change will come. 

And the payoff for the story is amazing, which is that Sam limited sales of his best-selling beer when people would order it, he would try to get them to buy or stock or serve other styles of beer that he made. And as a result, he shaped perception of his company Dogfish not as a hot IPA brand, but as an innovative brand. And you know what you can do with an innovative brand is you can sell it for $300 Million Dollars, which is exactly what he did. 

That's not something you could have done if he had just thought about how to profit today, how to only succeed based on what was working today. That's what it means to build the reality of constant change into the decisions that you make today, know that they will require change tomorrow. So, how can you anticipate that and be proactive about it.

Me: Brilliant. I love that story, Jason Awesome! Thank you so much for sharing. 

Essential Character Traits for a Leader

Me: Now, Jason, as Editor of Entrepreneur Magazine, I'm sure that you interface with a lot of CEOs and a lot of business leaders across different industries across the world. And so, I wanted based on your expert opinion and your exposure to persons of this nature, what do you believe are maybe three, it's a kind of a generic question. But I like to hear from the subject matter experts, three let's say character traits that you found has to really be intrinsic to organizations or persons who lead organizations to help them really be customer centric, because we're all about navigating the customer experience. And the reality is, if you don't have the right people doing the things that your customers want and creating value, you're not going to have a successful business. And if your customers don't feel like they're getting value, and they choose to do business with your competition or not do business with you at all, over time you will not have a successful business. So, it's twofold and you want that person who can navigate the personalities and navigate as you said, the change and the many different things that will come forth, what would you say are three-character traits that you think someone like that would need?

Jason shared that the first thing that comes to mind was a conversation that he had with this guy Matt, who at the time was the president of Reebok, Reebok the athletic wear company. And he told him (Jason) and this was the first time he'd heard this phrase then he started hearing it everywhere, which was customer obsession. 

He said, “We're really obsessed, we're completely customer obsessed at Reebok and we want to understand them, and we don't want to understand their needs.” And he’s heard that from a lot of people, but he had never heard the next thing that he told me, which was this metaphor that he uses, he says, “Look, we are in a moment in business where quality is assumed.” 

Where if you let's say, wanted to start a scissor company making scissors, you could not advertise yourself as the sharpest scissors. Because every scissors is the sharpest scissors right? It's easy enough now to manufacture scissors that every scissors is the sharpest scissors. 

So, if you want to be successful selling scissors, you can't lean on quality alone. Quality has to be table stakes, quality is what people take for granted, it's what they expect. The next place that you need to go is who exactly are you serving? 

And how do you relate to them? 

How do you tell a story that makes them proud to use your scissors, that makes them feel like when they use their scissors, they're exploring a version of themselves. 

That's what it means to be customer obsessed is to understand the way in which your customers thinks to the degree to which you can tell your story in a way that relates directly to them. 

Now, he’s not telling you something that you don't know based on serving customers, but that scissors metaphor really stuck with him because he thinks a lot of people, their starting point is, well, because I make the best….. But if you take that away from yourself, and you say, “Being the best at whatever is not enough, because quality by itself doesn't sell, then what else am I doing here?” 

He has a friend and he’ll make this kind of point number two. Her name is Rochelle DeVos. And she is a Consumer Insights Research Specialist and is brilliant and understanding consumer psychology and has taught him a lot but the framework that she shared with him and again has really stuck with him the most is so much so that he actually has it on his desktop and he’s looking at it right now to read from Rochelle's thing. 

So, she says, “Look, if you want to understand how to relate to customers, then you need to fill out the following sentence. “When (context) I want solution so that (benefit) from the perspective of the consumer.” So, give you an example that she uses from a compression sock company, a company that makes kind of tight socks for people who have foot pain. 

So, she says alright, when context I want solutions so that benefit. When context, when my feet hurt from standing all day, it's the context in which there's a need for a solution. I want a solution. I want to feel comfortable while still looking cute. 

Her example is a company that makes compression socks for women. So, that's something that they are concerned about. 

So, that benefit, so that I can do my job, be present for my family, enjoy my life while not standing out because of my foot pain. 

What's so important about understanding this when context I want solutions so that benefit is that most entrepreneurs get stuck at solution. 

They talk about the solution that they have, I've made compression socks, I've made compression socks for when your feet hurt. 

But the real conversion, the real connection to the audience comes at the benefit. It comes at being able to articulate the value that your customer is going to get from using your solution. 

Customers don't care about solutions, nobody wakes up in the morning and they're like, I want compression socks. What they think is I want to do my job and be present for my family and enjoy my life. That's what they want. So, how do you understand the benefits that they want enough that you can have a conversation with them that is benefit oriented, because that is where you win. 

And Rochelle suggests the way to do this is, is to be constantly in touch with and survey your consumer so that you understand how they think and how they talk and the language that they use. And he finds that perspective to be incredibly powerful. 

So, if we're making a list here so that you know number one he thinks is to be customer obsessed to the point where you recognize the quality itself is not going to connect to your customer. 

Point number two is to be benefit oriented, to understand your consumer at a level that is deep enough that they will, that they can articulate the benefit of that consumer is seeking. 

And if he had to come up with a third one, qualities of leaders who are customer centric.

He’d say that there is a level of inefficiency that leaders are willing to tolerate, to learn from their customers. 

A conversation that always stuck with me is a woman who had started, he can't remember the name of the company, but it was a paint company, she makes like, really cool paint colors, and it had been quite successful. And the company has grown, it's actually been acquired, she's still running it. 

She has a large team, she still is in her brand's Instagram DM’S every day, corresponding with customers, if somebody DM’S that brand on Instagram, the CEO responds, and that is deeply inefficient. 

But it has helped her stay in touch with her consumer in a way that she feels she would lose if she retracted from that and she just focused on all the operations of the business. 

She wants to be in touch in a way that is inefficient. She has a tolerance for inefficiency, because that is the thing that is ultimately enabling her to understand her customers’ needs today and where those shifts are tomorrow.

Me: Wow, that's amazing, a CEO that's in the DM’S. That's brilliant.

App, Website or Tool that Jason Absolutely Can’t Live Without in His Business

When asked about online resource that can’t live without in his business, Jason shared that these days, he has been absolutely loving Fathom. So, you can get at www.fathom.video and Fathom is a AI note taking tool. 

He has it in all of his calls and meetings now. And it just does a great job of contextually summarizing what was said, provides a transcript, it's not a perfect transcript, but it's close enough so that you can go back and find what somebody said, and then it's very searchable. 

So, he found that to be an excellent way of passively collecting all the information that is being shared and discussed so that he has now a kind of catalogue of it and an easy way to go back and find it. He strongly suggests just having something like this running in the background of all your meetings now. So, again, it's just www.fathom.video is the company's website.

What Jason is Really Excited About Now!

When asked about something he’s excited about, Jason shared that he’s been working on a newsletter for the last year, it's called One Thing Better. And the tagline that he has for it is, “One way each week. One way to be more successful and satisfied at work and build a career or company that you love.” 

And each week is him sharing a strategy. Usually it's a story that articulates it, and then an exercise that people can use to think more adaptively, to be more open minded, to find opportunities in places you're not looking, to just feel better about work. 

His wife refers to this newsletter as work therapy. And he’s been just incredibly gratified by the response that he’s getting to this newsletter, it pretty quickly grew to 50,000 subscribers. 

And he just gets these emails from people telling him that they print out his emails, and they keep them on their desk to read regularly, or they forward it to their friends who are struggling with something. 

And he’s so excited to have created something that can have that kind of personal connection. If you want to check it out, it's www.onethingbetter.email, that's the web address. And he just thinks there's a lot of potential in exploring the newsletter space and in creating things that are both connecting with people on a business but personal level as well. That's a space he really like to live in. So, he’s been excited to be building that and to see where it goes. 

Me: So, we'll definitely have the link to the newsletter in the show notes of this episode. And I imagine once they subscribe, they can have access to previous newsletters that were published, correct?

Yes, as soon as you visit the website, you will see the back catalogue.

Where Can We Find Jason Online

Newsletter – www.onethingbetter.email 

LinkedIn – Jason Feifer

Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Jason Uses

When asked about a quote or saying that he tends to revert to, Jason shared that he’s not big on motivational quotes, he doesn't get driven that way. But he’s had a lot of people say really impressive things to him that stick with him. 

One of them came from Malcolm Gladwell, who is a best-selling author and podcaster, and so on. And they were talking about work and so on and he had said this line to him which he loved, which was, “Self-conceptions are powerfully limiting.” 

The idea being that if you have too narrow vision of yourself, then you will limit all the opportunities that could come your way, that don't fit that narrow definition of self. So, self-conceptions are powerfully limiting and that is something he thinks about a lot as he pursues things that takes him out of his earlier conceptions of himself.

Me: Thank you so much for sharing. All right, Jason, we will just want to extend our deepest gratitude to you for taking time out of your very busy schedule and hopping on this podcast with us today, talking about your best-selling book Build For Tomorrow, and the four phases that are connected to that book, also giving us three of the strong character traits that you believe will help leaders to really build an organization that will not just provide value for their customers, but also for their employees so it can be a win-win on both ends. And the insights, the knowledge, the experiences that you’ve shared with us today, the stories, they were just extremely insightful. And I just want to say thank you so much.

Please connect with us on Twitter @navigatingcx and also join our Private Facebook Community – Navigating the Customer Experience and listen to our FB Lives weekly with a new guest

Links

• Build For Tomorrow by Jason Feifer

The ABC’s of a Fantastic Customer Experience

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Steve Cockram is an inspirational communicator, serial entrepreneur, confidant to elite leaders around the world and co-creator of the world's premier “Leadership Toolkit”.

He has co-authored The 100X Leader, 5 Voices and The 5 Gears with his business partner, Jeremie Kubicek. Their new book, The Communication Code, released in November of 2023.  

Questions

·      So, we always like to give our guests an opportunity to share in their own words, a little bit about their journey, how you got from where you were to where you are today?

·      Your book, The Communication Code, you wrote it with your business partner, Jeremie Kubicek, could you share with us a little bit about that book, maybe three overarching themes or tenets that the book focuses on? And kind of who is the book geared towards?

·      Now, you mentioned the five C's in terms of communication code, if I wanted to know or one of our listeners wanted to know what's my primary communication code? How do I know? Is there like a test that you can do? 

·      What do you think is critical in customer experience? If we were to look at the different code, channels that you spoke to us about the five C's, do you think they're all critical? Or do you think there may be one or two that definitely must occur in that interaction?

·  When you're explaining to me the five C's just now and you said in terms of communicating, you have to be really good at asking questions. How can you improve on the ability or the competence of asking the right types of questions? Because that's critical to the whole communication process, if you're not asking the right questions, then you're not going to get the right responses to get to the solution.

·    Now, Steve, could you share with us what's the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely cannot live without in your own business?

·     Now, could you share with our listeners as well, Steve, what's the one thing that's going on in your life right now that you're really excited about? Either something you're working on to develop yourself or your people.

·      Where can listeners find you online?

·     Now, before we wrap our episodes up, Steve, we always like to ask our guests, do you have a quote or a saying that during times of adversity or challenge, you will tend to revert to this quote if for any reason you got derailed or you got off track, the quote kind of helps to get you back on track. Do you have one of those?

Highlights

Steve’s Journey

Me: So, we always like to give our guests an opportunity to share in their own words, a little bit about their journey, how you got from where you were to where you are today?

Steve shared what an interesting question that is, nobody ever in their right mind have done all the things he’s done in the last 30 years. So, he'll give the highlights. He was a school teacher, an entrepreneur, a nightclub owner, a pastor, a coach, consultant, and been running Giant really with Jeremie for the last 11 years. So, he always say if you were to meet his friends at the age of 30, and ask who would be the least likely guru on relational intelligence? Probably, he would be in everyone's top three. 

So, everything they've learned usually has come out of their own personal failure and trying to work out why human beings behave the way they do. And also, how can they help people do relationships better in every area of their life? That's really been the heart and the joy of the last few years.

About Steve’s Book – The Communication Code

Me: So, your new book that was mentioned in reading your bio, The Communication Code, you wrote it with your business partner, Jeremie Kubicek, could you share with us a little bit about that book, maybe three overarching themes or tenets that the book focuses on? And kind of who is the book geared towards?

Steve shared that they kind of say the book is for anyone who is involved in any form of human interaction relationship, i.e., everyone. They write for leaders really, but he honestly believe all the resources they created, this is probably the one that leaders apply most in their home relationships as much as they do anywhere else. 

So, the premise gives you a couple of things. One is that transmission of information is not the same as effective communication. So, just because you've sent information to someone does not mean that they've understood the intent with which you've sent it or your expectations as to how you would wish them to respond. So, they use the analogy of saying, if you think of a communication code for those sort of like the enigma machine or a codebreaker, if I could send to you a communication code in advance of the transmission of information, which shared with you how I would like you to respond, we are more likely to meet each other in the middle and communicate effectively. 

So, the basic premise is there are five communication codes, each come with clues. If he said to Yanique, “I'm going to send this to you, I want you to critique it, I want you to tell me why it's not going to work, you won't hurt my feelings. It goes live in two hours. If there's mistakes, I want to know, full critique invited.”  

Second one is Collaboration, where basically he says, “Yanique, I've been working on something, I think it's pretty good, but I think you can bring things that will make it better.” So, full collaboration, please help make this better, whatever that is. 

Clarify, if he says to you, “Yanique, you know I've got something really important to share, I don't think it's going to come out perfectly first time. Would you ask great questions, don't try and critique or collaborate too soon. Help me get out what I'm really trying to say.”  

Because clarification is usually the ability to ask questions before you launch into something else.  

Care is the fourth communication code, which says, this is what I got wrong many, many times where just because someone is transmitting information to him, doesn't mean they want him to fix them, solve them or be their consultant. Care means, “Steve, I am struggling right now, what I'm going to say to you probably bears no resemblance to what the real issues are. I just need to know that somebody cares enough about me to be present, to listen, not trying to solve me, not trying to fix me.” 

Then the last one was celebrate, which is, he might say, “Yanique, hey, before we go on, this is really important to me, I'd love us to take a moment to celebrate something really special, not move on too quickly and go.” 

So, the idea being is you'd be amazed if you add five communication codes that you send in advance of the transmission of your information, you will find that basically, relationships that you struggle with at work, with the people you lead, even the people you have at home, you will be amazed what happens when you actually give them clues as to how you want to respond. 

So, there you go, that's the quickest overview he’s ever given of the communication code book, so apologies if that was longer than you were hoping, but he hopes it at least wet your appetite.

Me: It did. So, just run back through the five C's for me. You said Critique, Collaboration, and what was the third one?

Steve shared, Clarify, Care and Celebrate.  

So, what happens is that all of us have default communication codes that are wired into our personality. So, when he doesn't think about it, he automatically tries and collaborate but it's experiences critique. His wife, for her care is number one, and clarify is number two. So, when people present to him things that they're struggling with, unless he’s intentional, he will usually try and solve their problems.  

And it's amazing how often that goes wrong because he’s not actually able to meet the expectations, unspoken by the way of the person on the other side of him and just for every leader, every day when you're managing people in different contexts will almost always end up with miscommunication, this is just simple. Children can learn it and understand it, they use it at home the whole time. And it's been transformative, so that's why they share it.

Understanding Your Primary Communication Code

Me: Now, you mentioned the five C's in terms of communication code, if someone wanted to know what was their primary code, right, because you said your primary one is collaboration, but it's received as critique. And your wife’s care and clarify. So, if I wanted to know or one of our listeners wanted to know what's my primary communication code? How do I know? Is there like a test that you can do?

Steve shared that there is, if you go to www.giantworldwide.com, there's a free assessment there. Or it might be actually www.giantos.com. 

So, there's a free assessment. But it's really interesting when actually you begin to think about the transmissions of the miscommunication. So, a lot of people either think by sending an email they've communicated effectively, and the reality is, the moment you grasp as a leader that transmission is not the same as effective communication, you also begin to think, how could I use this, now he'll even use it with people who haven't learned the communication code. He'll say to them, “Hey, before I respond to you this moment, you've asked me for this. Can I just be clear, what do you hope happens here? Are you asking me just to listen and be a good friend or a good boss? Are you asking me to celebrate with you? Do you want to ask good questions, you asked me to help make it better? Or do you want me to tell you why I think it will or won't work?” 

So, if you think about it, you can become intentional immediately and amazingly when people believe that you are more relationally intelligent as a leader, you'll be amazed at how much your influence grows with the teams and the people you lead every day. It's amazing what people do when they feel that they're being listened to, heard and that you're committed to trying to really hear what they're trying to say, rather than what he guesses he used to do, which was just respond with whatever he thought was most appropriate in the moment, or whatever pressure he was dealing with.

The Importance of the Five C’s in Customer Experience

Me: Now, a big part of communication, Steve, and I'm kind of bringing this back to customer experience, right? Typically, a customer will reach out to an organization for primarily two reasons, to make a request, it could be for an existing service that they have with your company or product, or it could be for a new service that they’re seeking to attain. Or they're calling because they have a problem and they would like it resolved. So, primarily those are like the two channels that customers will reach out to you for. What do you think is critical in customer experience? If we were to look at the different code, channels that you spoke to us about the five C's, do you think they're all critical? Or do you think there may be one or two that definitely must occur in that interaction?

Steve shared that it's a really good question. His instinct in EQ is to say that clarify is probably the place to start. Because in a sense, the clarification is what are they really wanting to happen? What are they really hoping happens? And he guess asking the right questions in the beginning, for those of us who are problem solvers, we tend to launch into problem solving quickly. 

And he would say that really understanding, well, is somebody just wanting a rant, does somebody just want to have their pound of flesh and get that off there and he just needs to sit there and care and not try and solve it. Or do they have a specific problem that they really hope he can help them with? 

He thinks it's unlikely that celebrate is going to be the agenda, but it would be nice if they were ringing up to say how amazing they think your product is. But he would say probably the clarify is where you start and making a judgement of whether what this person really wants is just you to listen, or whether they're actually more likely inviting you beyond the initial clarification into a collaborative process, how do I help bring a resolution to the reason that you are contacting customer service? 

Now, he thinks the other one, he doesn't know what it's like in your part of the world, but you'd be amazed how many people will spend an awful long time waiting to get through to a customer service line. So, he thinks sometimes the disarming connection, the saying, “I'm so sorry. I'm aware you've had to wait a long time, I would love to be able to do everything I can to help you resolve whatever the issues are.” He always think that goes a long way with him when someone at least recognizes that he’s probably been on the call longer than he was hoping he would be.

Improve on the Competence of Asking the Right Questions

Me: Agreed. So, I'm happy you said clarify, because the question I really wanted to ask you, but I kind of wanted to hear what you would have said based on the customer experience approach is. When you're explaining to me the five C's just now and you said in terms of communicating, you have to be really good at asking questions. And it has been my experience as a customer service trainer and even as a podcaster, I must say I've gotten much better at doing it over the years, but I find a lot of people who are in customer service practitioner roles struggle with this, like how can you improve on the ability or the competence of asking the right types of questions? Because that's critical to the whole communication process, if you're not asking the right questions, then you're not going to get the right responses to get to the solution.

Steve shared that he thinks you actually master your content and the products of which you are going to be answering people's questions. There's a competency filter which means, “Do you know how to help somebody in that process?” 

And he thinks it's different again, whether you're doing it online, or telephone or whether you're maybe in a physical place, like if he goes to the Apple store, the geeks helped him, there's different things he would say depending on whether it's face to face or whether more likely it's even just over a phone because he thinks you have to remember is that communication, only 10% of communication is the words that are used, 35% is the tone with which the words are offered. And then 55% is the nonverbal communication body language. 

So, you're delivering customer service and all you have his tone of voice and words, you're already having to work hard to really understand what is it this person is seeking to communicate. 

So, for him, he thinks that communication part is potentially really helpful, because it's almost taking the time to clarify and ask the question to really make sure you understand what the intent and the expectation. 

So, there's the two things that he’s always trying to understand when someone's speaking to him, what is their intent really? And what is their expectation of this engagement? Even if he knows they probably won't tell him, or they may be unaware of even knowing what it is in the first place is the reason communication is so difficult to train. 

But it's also how people have tools, it becomes really significant when people are able to begin to decode what is the intent, what is the expectation, in his world, obviously, you alluded to something called five voices, he spent about the last 20-25 years trying to work out why humans behave the way they do and understanding that different personalities react very predictably to different interactions. Now, that's probably a high level of sales skills and customer service is a degree of sales if you think about it.

But actually, there's another piece that if people want to add skills, begin to listen to the words that people use, whether that's in the way that neuro linguistic programme would, programming would start to think about, do they talk about what they see, what they hear? Or are they more kinesthetic and in our language of voices, he’s listening for what type of personality is presenting themselves to him in the way that they engage, in the way they communicate. 

So, he would argue that in any human interaction, the person communicating, transmitting to you is giving you lots of clues. 

The question is, to your point, how much time do we really spend listening and trying to understand, discern who this person is, what their intent, what are the expectations before we launch into probably what they were expecting, which is a more collaborative approach to how do we help resolve their issue, bearing in mind that the presenting issue may not be the real issue.

There's so much in there, here's the thing he'll encourage to anyone who's really interested in developing their skills in this area, he’s your kind of Beacon of Hope, because he’s like 24 years on now into this as one of the least relation intelligent people by nature, sadly, by personality. And actually, now many would say, I think really hard about it because I’ve really had to learn, the things that don't come naturally to you, you often end up being a better teacher and coach, because you've actually had to wrestle and struggle with your own inability at my time to listen. 

They have a tool in their toolbox called the boomerang effect, learn to be interested before trying to be interesting. It's like relational intelligence 101. And he thinks it's amazing how often people want to talk to you about them and whatever you say, it reminds them of them or where they've been, that's another area that he’s not sure where the customer experience particularly, but as a communication tip, it's amazing what happens when you meet people are interested in you, more than trying telling you how interesting they are.

Me: Yeah. Well, it's funny, you said that, because one of my very favorite books, and I try to read it at least once per year is How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. And he talks about that in his book and I mean that book was published from 1933. So, it's amazing that that fundamentally is still the case today, because we are true and true human beings and as you mentioned before, some traits are just predictable.

Steve agreed that they are, and he think that's the bit which human behaviour is more predictable than any of us would ever give it credit for. And he thinks that's the bit where, he doesn't know whether you've watched the film called The Matrix. The moment you begin to understand why human beings behave the way they do, it's a little bit like the green letters and numbers coming down the screen, and you begin to watch a human interaction in different dynamics, in different ways, and you suddenly began to realize, actually is it's more predictable, and therefore if it's predictable, it can be learned. 

And that actually, without it being manipulative, we can actually really work on being far more relationally intelligent and that will help us in every aspect of our leadership, whether we're working with our teams, or whether we're working at home, or whether we're ourselves engaging with clients and customers. But fundamentally, he would argue now that relational intelligence is now become even more important than classic IQ. AI does so much now. I don't know how much you play with it, but in our world is ridiculous how intelligent AI is becoming. But the one thing it doesn't do well, it doesn't do the relational intelligence piece as well as human beings do. 

And he’s not convinced that it will ever replace it. All he knows is it's becoming, he often says that basically, the ability to establish, maintain and develop long term relationships inside and outside your organization is the primary currency of wealth and influence in the new world.

App, Website or Tool that Steve Absolutely Can’t Live Without in His Business

When asked about online resource that he cannot live without in his business, Steve shared that the differences in the geeks who run his business are, he tries to think what for him, he thinks 1Password as a middle aged man is the app that he loves the most he looked in before, and he has 376 logins and very secure pieces of data in one app, which basically means I doesn't have to try and have 357 passwords identical. So, 1Password is the best. He doesn't know what it is USD $3.99 a month. But actually, that makes him feel more secure and safe online, that's him personally. 

The business, he thinks if you were to speak to their team at the moment, they're building an app, they use a software called Framer, but it's a way in which you can see what technology in the app will be and do and look like before you actually have to actually engage in building the coding. So, he’s a massive fan of Framer, even though he’s not the person who actually runs it. There's some far younger, clever UI, UX developers who do all that work. But fundamentally, he’s always massively impressive with what Framer does.

What Steve is Really Excited About Now!

When asked about something that he’s excited about, Steve stated that that’s a great question. Well, he thinks he probably alluded to it in the sense that they have worked for years to try and codify tools to help leaders do a better job in the visual world we live in. What they're working on at the moment and this is the thing which he smiles as he says it. They've run a B2B business up until this point, they've licensed kind of coaches and consultants to use their stuff. 

But they're building a B2C app at the moment, which will take all of the Jedi mind tricks of the last 20 years about why people behave the way they do. They'll take the best of their tools, the best of what AI is able to do, and they will create a five voices out which will come your way later this year, which basically is your personalized coach in relation to, it will know your personality and your wiring. And it will basically customize content and learning for you and allow you to access it in the way that you most love to learn. 

So, if you want podcasts, ebooks, audiobooks, but the idea really of actually rather than having to read one book, and we all read the same thing. He’s watching the ability to customize content in form and style that is unique to you as an individual. And he’s never seen that before. 

So, he thinks communication code will be the last book they write in the late industrial format of a published book. He thinks they will customize content for individuals in formats and voices even and length of time, you'll be able to have your daily version of encouragement that will come straight to you when it comes, so that's what the team is working on at the moment. He gets to see all the progress week by week and minimum viable products is going to be ready for mid-May. So, watch this space for personality driven grows customized to you.

Where Can We Find Steve Online

LinkedIn – Steve Cockram

Email – steve@giantworldwide.com

Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Steve Uses

When asked about quote that he tends to revert to, Steve shared that he’s got plenty of those. But probably the most common one is the Theodore Roosevelt quote when he talks about, “If he's going to fail, he would rather fail while daring greatly than be counted among those cold, timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.” So, that's what he goes back to and just go, “If I'm going to fail, I'm going to fail while daring greatly, going after something big enough, that actually could make a dent and for good in the world.”

Me: Fantastic. So, we will have definitely have that quote in the show notes of this episode. So, just want to extend our deepest gratitude to you, Steve, for taking time out of your very busy schedule and coming on our podcast and sharing about your book, The Communication Code, the five C's that you mentioned, how it works, the inner workings of why it's important to listen, asking the right questions, understanding that relational communication is definitely the epitome of where we're moving forward to in this world. And just how as human beings, we can utilize a lot of the cues and clues that are given to us to improve on how it is that we transmit the communication with each other. So, it was really insightful, and I just want to say thank you so much.

Please connect with us on Twitter @navigatingcx and also join our Private Facebook Community – Navigating the Customer Experience and listen to our FB Lives weekly with a new guest

Links

•     The 100X Leader: How to Become Someone Worth Following by Steve Cockram and Jeremie Kubicek

•     The 5 Voices: How to Communicate Effectively without Everyone You Lead by Steve Cockram and Jeremie Kubicek

•     The 5 Gears: How to Be Present and Productive When There is Never Enough Time by Steve Cockram and Jeremie Kubicek

•     How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie

•     The Communication Code by Steve Cockram and Jeremie Kubicek

The ABC’s of a Fantastic Customer Experience

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This book will develop your customer service skills and sharpen your attention to detail when serving others.

Master your customer experience and develop those knock your socks off techniques that will lead to lifetime customers. Your customers will only want to work with your business and it will be your brand differentiator. It will lead to recruiters to seek you out by providing practical examples on how to deliver a winning customer service experience! 

Darby Vannier, with over 20 years of experience, is a seasoned leader adept at building and growing organizations. As President & CEO of Indispensable Leadership Group, he excels as an executive coach, consultant, speaker, and fractional COO, focusing on strategic and leadership development. He has led effective teams of more than a 100 employees, coached others into their own leadership positions, and created stability during challenging organizational transitions. Darby built his career on the philosophy that developing the right people is the key to success. 

Learn more at www.beindispensable.com.

Questions

·      Even though we read a very short snippet of your journey, your little bio, we always like to give our guests an opportunity to share in their own words, a little bit about how you got from where you are to where you are today.

·      Your book titled, The Indispensable Leader. So, could you share with our listeners a little bit about that book? What was your intention when you wrote the book? What is the book about? Who is the book geared towards and kind of what was your sentiment when you were putting it all together?

·      Which role do you think is more effective, the manager’s role or the leader’s role?

·     Now in the book, you also talk about, which I found this part really fascinating that you should be curious, and you should engage curiosity. Explained to us a little bit about what you meant when you said, engage or encourage curiosity and being curious as a leader.

·      In the book, you also mentioned the whole conscious competence model. So, I'd love for you to kind of just explain that to the audience as well, the four phases and then the example that you gave to reinforce the concept.

·      Could you also share with our listeners, what is the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely cannot live without in your business?

·    Can you also share with our listeners, maybe one or two books that you've read, it could be a book that you read recently, or even one that you read a very long time ago, but it had a great impact on you.

·      Can you also share with us what's the one thing in your life right now that you're really excited about? Either something you're working on to develop yourself or your people.

·      Now, before we wrap our episodes up, we always like to ask our guests, do you have a quote or a saying that during times of adversity or challenge you will tend to revert to this quote if for any reason you get derailed or you get off track, and the quote kind of helps to get you back on track.

·      Where can listeners find you online?

Highlights

Darby’s Journey

Me: Now Darby, even though we read a very short snippet of your journey, your little bio, we always like to give our guests an opportunity to share in their own words, a little bit about how you got from where you were to where you are today.

Darby shared that it’s kind of a diverse career actually. So, he started off in retail, actually kind of in the entertainment industry, working as a manager at a 22-screen movie theatre, which is an interesting industry, especially back at that time when it was before digital movies and everything, and everything came in on natural celluloid film and everything. 

So, yeah, 22 screen movie theatre, they would serve 1000’s of people a day and that was an interesting experience getting started because it definitely was jumping right into that retail type environment, bringing in at that point, you're talking about most of their employees were high school or college aged students and, and so that's just a different level of team member that you're managing. 

From there, he kind of jumped even further into retail, he actually became a store manager for Kinkos at the time, so the print shop at Kinkos, which is now FedEx Office, but at the time, it was still Kinkos. And at that time, all the Kinkos were 24-hour stores, like they never closed, didn't close on any holidays, didn't close any hours, nothing. So, that was definitely a learning experience he will say, managing a 24 hour a day business from that standpoint. 

And he did that about 6 years and then moved into the non-profit world where he took over as CEO of an International Livestock Association, actually for alpacas of all things. And it's always an interesting story because he tells people when he got the interview for the job, he had to look up what an alpaca was because he had a general idea that it was like a llama, but he didn't exactly know what it was, so kind of entered into a whole new realm there. And he did that for about 11 years where he reported directly to a board, grew that organization, fixed a lot of things in that organization, and then grew that organization. And then they actually went through a merger process and merged with another national organization. And he took over as CEO of the newly created merged organization for that industry. 

And then from there, he decided, he’s kind of ready to be done with this non-profit thing, and he exited non-profit, went back into the for-profit world, joined a company that does leadership development, strategic planning, executive coaching, that sort of thing, because he’s always been passionate about leadership, and did that for about 7 years. 

And then last year decided he’s going to break off and do his own things. He had a company established previously for some consulting and stuff that he had done and he just expanded that and started offering fractional leadership services and executive coaching on his own and have built that up from there. So, still working on that and that's kind of gets us up to date.

About Darby’s Book – The Indispensable Leader

Me: Now, as part of this journey, you are also an author and your book is titled, The Indispensable Leader. So, could you share with our listeners a little bit about that book, I do have some questions I want to ask specifically, but I kind of just want to hear in your own words, like what was your intention when you wrote the book? What is the book about? Who is the book geared towards and kind of what was your sentiment when you were putting it all together?

Darby shared that the book is really geared towards anybody, he wouldn't even say young leaders, he would say anybody who's really either starting out in leadership, leading other people or even if they have been leading people and they just want to have some experience and some knowledge to refine maybe their leadership style. 

And it's kind of one of those things, he’s kind of kept stories over the years throughout his career, because he’s sure you have experienced throughout your career, you encounter interesting things, he'll just put it that way, some challenging things and some difficult things, and then some really exciting things. 

So, he had lots of things that he has accumulated throughout his career that he felt like these were good learning experiences for him at the time, and had he had this information when he was starting out being a leader, it would have been highly beneficial. 

So, in the midst of COVID, back in 2020, when everything kind of shut down, and we all had more time, because we were staying home and everything, he decided that seems like a good time to start writing a book. So, that's when he started on the book. 

And the book really kind of goes down the path of taking this idea, he started off the book by basically saying, you hear people say this question….”Are you a manager? Or Are you a leader?” 

And he really attacks that and he say, we're really looking at that wrong, because he thinks that's the wrong question. It assumes that people who would probably consider themselves managers of things, cannot be good leaders and that's not the case. He knew a fair number of people who definitely consider themselves managers, who are really spectacular leaders as well. 

So, he kind of asked people to look at it a little bit differently and what he thinks people mean is actually more of are you more manager oriented? Or are you more visionary and entrepreneurial oriented?  

And if you think about that as a spectrum, everybody exists somewhere on that spectrum. And you don't want to be at the far end of either end of that because you don't want to be too high visionary, that you just come up with a lot of ideas and nothing gets done. But you don't want to be too far managerial where you only care about checking off your list, and you don't really care why you're doing it. 

So, what he basically asked people to do is think about this more like a Venn diagram, where you have two intersecting circles and let's take the best traits of both manager and visionary archetypes, and create the best possible leader that you can be because there's only a certain amount of things that you have access to yourself, there's only a certain amount of things that you can gain yourself. 

So, let's find those best things and then let's try to release the bad things so the bad traits of those archetypes so that we don't fall into those ruts as well. And he kind of goes down that journey and he uses a lot of stories from his career to illustrate various points on leadership and talking about mentorship and some of those things as well so that people can gain that knowledge that he didn't necessarily have at the time as he was going through it.

The Effectiveness of the Manager’s Role and the Leader’s Role

Me: So, I like the fact that you spoke about, are you a leader or a manager, but even outside of that you talk about in the book, just visionary leaders and I'm not sure what was the other term that you had outside of visionary? Managers.

So, can you just differentiate, I know you said, we look on it from a different perspective. But if we were to put it in terms of hierarchy, or better yet, in terms of in an organization, if you really want to motivate people, get them to do what you want them to do without having to literally stand up over them with a stick over their head saying, “If you don't do this, this is the sanction that's going to be enforced.” Which role do you think is more effective, the manager’s role or the leader’s role?

Darby shared that he would actually say both are important and it's good to have a mix of both types of individuals within an organization. 

Here's the reason why. So, people with managerial characteristics who fall more on that side of the spectrum are people who are very process oriented, they're usually very organized, they're the ones who are able to look at something and say, here's how it's going to get done. They can outline the 50 steps it's going to take to get there. They're about creating a list and checking off the things and getting stuff done. They're the ones that are talking about, what are we going to do? And how are we going to do it? 

And sometimes they don't always care about the why they should and that's what he means by making sure that they try to pull in the best traits of both worlds. But those are the folks who are going to get stuff done for you. And they are the folks who can execute on a vision. So, basically, they can take a vision of a founder or a visionary and they can translate that vision into the action steps that it's going to take to accomplish it. 

So, on the visionary side, you have to have visionaries as well, because the high visionary people, those are the folks who are generating lots of ideas, they're coming up with five or ten new ideas every day, they're usually very passionate about their ideas. 

Oftentimes entrepreneurs are visionaries, because that is the type of individuals who are drawn to starting a business and taking that risk and everything. Because in their minds, when they think of an idea, when they envision something, it's done like we're there, and it is done. They're the ones that are more going to be talking about why are we doing something, like they want to be able to explain and show their passion for why is it that we want to accomplish whatever it is that they've come up with. 

The difficulty you can run into with a visionary though is, is that they tend to move on very quickly, because if you get a very high visionary person, they only love generating new ideas, they don't want to talk about how to get there, they just want it done. 

So, that visionary needs to have people who are more managerial in nature so that they can actually get stuff done. And in most companies, you almost have to have two top individuals who are one is one and one is the other. 

That's why you often see a CEO whose high visionary and you see a COO who is the person who executes and those two individuals have to have a high amount of trust, because they will piss each other off and that's the bottom line. 

Because what will happen is, is that COO who's more process oriented, who's the one going, “Okay, there's these 50 problems we have to solve before we can get there” they are going to be like saying slow down and pump the brakes, we got to back up here. 

And the high visionary CEO is the one saying, “No, we got to move forward. And I want to do all these things, and everything.” 

So, in order for their company to be highly successful, you almost have to have that mix. You see this with celebrity leaders he'll call him. So, people like Steve Jobs, for example, it's well known that he was very high visionary, brilliant guy, came up with amazing things, had very high expectations, very passionate about his industry. 

But he learned very early on, he basically lost his company initially, before he came back many years later, he learned very early on that he needed to have people that could execute those ideas, because he just wanted to spend time on generating ideas, he needed an execution team as well. 

So, eventually, he figured out he had to have individuals who worked with him that he trusted, that could execute those ideas that could challenge him and slow him down, he would on the opposite side of that push them forward. So, it's this weird balancing act. So, every company needs to have a good mix of both in order to be successful.

The Art of Being Curious as a Leader

Me: Now in the book, you also talk about, which I found this part really fascinating that you should be curious, and you should engage curiosity. And curiosity sometimes I think can be misinterpreted, sometimes, for example, people will think that curiosity I find is being inquisitive, it's a similar adjective but inquisitive for some reason connotates, almost you being concerned or asking questions about things that should not concern you. But I do believe that that's how we learn right? About asking questions, exploring, experiencing. Explaine to us a little bit about what you meant when you said, engage or encourage curiosity and being curious as a leader.

Darby shared that it certainly can mean inquisitive and that is something that it can mean. But when he talks about being curious and when he coaches leaders and encourage them to be curious, what he’s really trying to do is encourage folks to be lifelong learners, like he wants you to be curious about new things, go read books, go meet new people, go join a group that you wouldn't necessarily join because by gaining those additional experiences, and that additional knowledge, you're only going to grow as a leader. So, he’s very big on making sure that folks that he coaches and himself, do not get stagnant. 

And what that means is you have to be engaged, you have to be engaged in what you do. You have to be engaged in your industry, you have to be engaged in life. So, sometimes it's professional development, and you're joining an association or you're reading a book or whatever. 

Sometimes it might be personal development where you're learning a new language or travelling to a country that you've never been to so that you can gain that experience because all of those things are important. They are going to make you a much, much better well-rounded leader, especially as he speaks to college students every now and then. 

And as he speaks to college students, that's one thing that he talked to them about is gain a broad set of experiences because a lot of us really end up, in the United States, a lot of folks who go to college end up going to college nearby home, so, they're exposed to, yes, a new set of people, but it may be very similar to what they're used to. So, he encourages people to get out of your comfort zone and go do some other things because the more experiences you have, the better leader you're going to be. 

Certainly, looking back at his career, he’s sure as you look at your career, every single thing that he dealt with and went through, all of that past history really made him into the leader that he is today. And everything that he’s doing today will make him into the leader that he is in five years, that's the bottom line. 

So, you got to have that curiosity, if you don't, you're going to end up stagnant, you're not going to really grow as a leader, you're probably not getting promoted up very much. In most industries, you really do need to be curious so that you can continue to expand as well.

Me: Yes, I totally agree that you should definitely be open to learning and from everything that you do, it definitely adds to who you are today, as you said, what you're doing now is building for where you're going be five years from now.

Conscious Competence Model and the Four Phases

Me: In the book, you also mentioned Darby, and I was exposed to this many years ago when I had done a leadership course myself, the whole Conscious Competence Model. And I liked the example that you gave with the baby. So, I'd love for you to kind of just explain that to the audience as well, the four phases and then the example that you gave to reinforce the concept.

Darby shared that this is something that really helps in coaching as well, because it's something that everybody goes through, but they don't really pinpoint that they're actually going through it. 

So, the idea here is there's four phases of competence. And you really start off no matter what it is, in some new experience, in some new activity, you start a new job, you learn how to drive, whatever it is, you start off this idea as being unconsciously incompetent, which means you're incompetent at whatever you're doing, and you don't even know you're incompetent at it. And that's a big problem because then you're doing things and you don't even know you're doing them wrong. 

So, the idea is, hopefully somebody will point out to you or you'll eventually move into the idea of conscious incompetence. And that's really where you're still incompetent at it, but you recognize that you're incompetent at it. So, you know, you're doing it wrong, it's kind of a situation, you know that you don't know something. 

And then after that, the idea is that you move into conscious competence, which means that you're competent at it, but you have to think about it all the time, it's not become a habit, like you have to actually think about whatever the activity is. So, if you think about when you're learning to drive, this is a good thing. Or this is a thing we encounter, you have to constantly think about turning your turn signal on or stopping at the stop sign or stopping at the light or seeing the light turn yellow, or whatever that is, you are at that point consciously competent. So, you can do it, but you got to think about it all the time. 

The last phase is really where you want to get to, especially with regard to leading people, you want to get to unconscious competence, where it is that you are competent at something and you don't have to constantly think about it, it just happens. So, this basically is the idea of it becomes habit. 

There's actually an author named Charles Duhigg, he wrote a book called The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business, it's a spectacular book, but he talks about habit loops where your brain is set up so that it creates these habit loops out of things that you do regularly. And that's how you end up, if you've ever driven a car, and then you're driving along, and sometimes you're like, I don't remember the last five minutes, and it kind of freaks you out. That happens because of that, because your brain can handle that sort of thing. And basically, has created a habit loop. 

It's the same reason when he left his position last year, and he was no longer going to the office on a regular basis, your habit loop changes. So, normally my habit loop for driving to the office was the same every day, he would do the exact same thing, the exact same route, whatever it was, well, on two different occasions, at the end of the year, last year, he was driving in the direction of where his old office was. And he looked up and pretty soon, like he’s driving towards the office, he’s going the whole wrong direction for where he was headed. But his brain engaged this habit loop that his brain thought, “Oh, you're doing the habit loop, we haven't done in a while to go to the office.” And then he ended up on the entirely wrong road and everything because he was going to the office. But that's the idea of unconscious competence that you want to get to is be able to create those habits so that things just happen for you on a regular basis.

Me: So, just want to remind our listeners, Darby's book is out, available on all platforms that you would want to purchase a book from, I would definitely recommend that you go and consume some of the great content he has in it. I haven't fully finished reading it, but the parts that I have been able to garner were really, really insightful. And he was able to share a bit of it with our listeners in the conversation today. So, definitely a must have read for 2024. Thank you so much for sharing Darby.

App, Website or Tool that Darby Absolutely Can’t Live Without in His Business

When asked about online resource that he cannot live without in his business, Darby shared that from his perspective, it's LinkedIn just because of the industry that he’s in. It is definitely the one online resource he could not live without. There's a lot of things out there, of course, especially with social media, and everything nowadays, it really depends on the industry individuals are in but for him, LinkedIn is it and definitely those who are listening, you can find him on LinkedIn, he will connect with you just search for Darby Vannier, and he’s happy to connect with you on LinkedIn as well.

Books that Have Had the Biggest Impact on Darby

When asked about books that has had a great impact, Darby shared that there is lot of books that certainly he has utilized over the years. But there is one book that he has bought and given away more copies of this book than any other book. 

And it's a book called Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, it's by a woman, her name is Susan Cain. And it's about kind of leading as an introvert. And the reason that he liked it is that he knows it doesn't always seem like it to individuals when he does these podcasts that he loves to speak to people and stuff like that. But he’s a pretty big introvert. And it was the first book that he read that he was like somebody actually gets him. 

So, she kind of talks about what it's like to be an introvert and how it's kind of a spectrum. And there are certainly individuals who are introverts who have no desire to speak to people, for example. Whereas, he loves that, if he gets a group of 1500 people to speak in front of great, he’s happy. Now, he doesn't want to step down off the stage and talk to you one on one really, afterwards, he'll do it. And you won't necessarily know that he’s uncomfortable. But that's not his comfort zone. 

So, every introvert’s a little bit different and it's more about how your energy is recharged. So, his energy is recharged by quiet time and being alone. He has no problem going on a vacation for a few days and being by himself the entire time and not talking to anybody, that would freak out an extrovert. But the reason he loves the book is and that he’s given it to both introverts and extroverts. And the reason it's important for extroverts to read as well is you work with a lot of introverted individuals and this world we live in is catered to extroverts. And it can be incredibly difficult for those of us who are introverts to live in. And we are forced to adjust to you all. 

So, he encourages extroverts to read this book as well, because you really learn a lot, especially as you lead and manage people, it will help you better manage individuals, it will also help you understand how to take advantage of utilizing the skills and the experience of introverts that maybe an extrovert doesn't necessarily have. So, from a professional standpoint, he always recommends, he also recommend it for individuals who are married, who have spouses who maybe are the opposite of them, because it will help you to totally understand your spouse a lot more as well.

What Darby is Really Excited About Now!

When asked about something that he’s excited about, Darby shared that he’s still under a year on totally breaking out on his own and building his own company. So, building his business is what he’s really passionate about right now. He’s working on a new speaking topic regarding the impact that leaders make in the world and even over interactions that they might have considered insignificant. So, it's kind of like the ripple effect, so he’s working on this talk and he’s excited about that as well to be able to talk to folks about that. 

And then just really working to help each one of his fractional leadership clients be as successful as possible. It is so amazing to be able to work with multiple clients and see individual companies continue to grow and scale and to have a part in that as well.

Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Darby Uses

When asked about a quote or saying that he tends to revert to, Darby shared that he doesn't really have a quote, but he kind of have more of a philosophy and his philosophy with this. And he uses this again when he coaches other leaders too is, “Everything is temporary. And the one thing you have to remember is, is that everybody around you is going through their own stuff.” So, he always encourages people to be kind when you're dealing with other individuals, because you don't know what's going on in their lives, no matter how well you think you know them, you don't know everything that's going on. So, as he encounters adversity, he tends to kind of revert back to, “Okay, let's control what I can control. And then I need to let the other stuff go.” 

He certainly has had multiple times in his career where he’s had some very difficult situations that he’s dealt with professionally. And that's what he’s come back to is okay, can you control this particular thing that's happening? No. But you can control these other two aspects of it and you can make sure that you do those things really well. 

And what he has found is if he does that, and he just remember that this is just one more piece of experience in his life and in his career, part of that past history that he said that makes us all who we are, if he can remember that, then it's usually easy to get through those things. Not that it's not a challenge, still can be a challenge, still can be stressful, but it does definitely help you as you move through those challenging times.

Me: All right. So, we will definitely have that summary of what you shared with us in terms of that, quote, or that thought, that helps to get you from one stage to the next if for any reason you feel derailed.

Where Can We Find Darby Online

Website – www.beindispensable.com

Facebook - Indispensable Leadership Group

LinkedIn – Indispensable Leadership Group

LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/darbyvannier/

Me: Now Darby, thank you so much for hopping on our podcast today and sharing all these great insights from your book, as well as all of the experience and exposures that you've had over the years that have crafted the person that you are today and the invaluable knowledge and experience and coaching that you've been able to offer to your clients. And so, the information that you shared with us was extremely valuable. The examples that you gave, the characteristics and the comparison as it relates to having a bit of both is critical to the organization success as a manager and a leader was really, really, really insightful and I just want to extend a great amount of gratitude to you for taking time to share with us today.

Please connect with us on Twitter @navigatingcx and also join our Private Facebook Community – Navigating the Customer Experience and listen to our FB Lives weekly with a new guest

Links

•     The Indispensable Leader: How to Use Your Inner Manager and Visionary to Achieve Leadership Success by Darby Vannier

•     The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg

•     Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking Susan Cain

The ABC’s of a Fantastic Customer Experience

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This book will develop your customer service skills and sharpen your attention to detail when serving others.

Master your customer experience and develop those knock your socks off techniques that will lead to lifetime customers. Your customers will only want to work with your business and it will be your brand differentiator. It will lead to recruiters to seek you out by providing practical examples on how to deliver a winning customer service experience.

Barry Klein is Vice president of Success and Enablement at Austin-Based Talroo, the data driven job and hiring event advertising platform that helps businesses reach the candidates they need to build their essential workforce. Barry provides leadership to Talroo’s team of Customer Success Analysts who have both revenue and customer service responsibilities for multiple verticals. 

Passionate about establishing “customers” as “partners”, he focuses on long-term relationships, lifetime value and establishing raving fans. With more than 30 years of experience in customer-facing and executive roles, including Vice President of Sales Engineering for Vignette Corp, Barry also spent several years running his own small business and consultancy. Barry holds a BS in Computer Science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Questions

·    We always like to hear from our guests in their own words, how did you get from where you were to where you are today?

· Can you share with our listeners a little bit about why you believe recruitment is so important as it relates to customer service delivery?

· In terms of how do we hire well and focus on cultural alignment? And I imagine this begins in the interview process. What are three main things that you believe if you're tasked with that responsibility for an organization, where would you put your focus, maybe three top areas that you put your focus on if we're trying to get cultural alignment?

· Now, could you share with us what's the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely can't live without in your business?

· Could you also share with our listeners maybe one or two books that you've read, it could be a book that you read recently, or one that you read a very long time ago, but it has had a great impact on you.

· Can you share with us also, what's one thing that's going on in your life right now that you're really excited about? Either something you're working on to develop yourself or your people.

·  Where can listeners find you online?

·  Before we wrap our episodes up, we always like to ask our guests do you have a quote or a saying that during times of adversity or challenge you will tend to revert to this quote if for any reason you got derailed or there was an obstacle or hurdle that was presented to you and it caused you to not be on track but when you thought of that quote or when you recited that quote, it kind of got you back on track. Do you have one of those?

Highlights

Barry’s Journey 

Me: Now, we always like to give our guests an opportunity to share in their own words a little bit about their journey. So, I know we read your bio that gives us formally how it is that you got to where you are today, but we always like to hear from our guests in their own words, how did you get from where you were to where you are today?

Barry stated that he appreciates Yanique asking and thanked her for mentioning his alma mater, RPI. As he said, he was a Computer Science Major and he was in college in the late 80s. So, the world of programming was very different than it would be today. But he wrote a lot of codes, in fact, when he went to his parent’s house years after he graduated, and he saw the Dot Matrix Paper printouts of the code he had written, he was like, who wrote this, he couldn't in a million years, he couldn't have recreated that code.  

But by the time he graduated college, he knew that while he enjoyed coding very much, and it was why he went to get a computer science degree, he done enough. And what he became intrigued about was the intersection of the technology and people.

And his first roles out of college were not really tech support per se but sort of high-end engineering support for customers who are developing with their platform and that led him closer to customers. 

And what he found he really enjoy and what he imagines he’s best that if he has to choose his best skill is, is explaining and painting a picture about technical topics for non-technical folks, that is very gratifying. 

It's allowed him to have experience both with frontline decision makers, frontline influencers at any given customer, as well as executive suite folks who need these pictures drawn and need that insight. And he really enjoyed that, and he especially enjoy not only doing that himself, but enabling teams to do that with best practices, all the nuance that you need when you're in that customer facing role, whether it's pre sales or post sales, not just what you say, but how you say it. All of those things come together to create the kinds of roles that are always dynamic, and no two days are ever the same.

The Importance of Recruitment as it Relates to Customer Service Delivery

Me: So, a big part of what you're doing at your current organization is recruitment, correct? So, can you share with our listeners a little bit about why you believe recruitment is so important as it relates to customer service delivery, maybe connect the dots so that our listeners can have a good understanding of why having good recruitment techniques is critical to ensuring that you are aligned properly to get the kind of deliverables that you're looking from as it relates to customer service.

Barry shared that it is an interesting intersection because the skills and mindset of customer success folks is something that would exist regardless of what the industry you happen to be in is, but in their case, because Talroo is a talent matching platform that strives to match opportunities, especially for frontline workers with having the frontline worker at the right job, in the right place, at the right time, for the right price, so that they get the happy connection between an employer who needs the talent and the person who has the talent, making that connection is very gratifying and their entire platform is aligned around that. 

And it does create an interesting mindset for them because they're helping employers recruit and then you say, “Well, how does that affect our own recruitment? What are we looking for? What are the processes? Everything from how do we source our candidates to how do we interview them to how do we determine their cultural alignment with our organization?” 

So, all things recruitment is really near and dear to their heart. 

And the other thing that makes it fun is, what they do is at an intersection of such a huge part of the economy, he can't read a newspaper or put on CNBC or watch a business channel, and not have them talking about the unemployment rate and the impact. So, they are really in the forefront of all of that.  

But one of the things that they've really been focusing on as they craft where Talroo is going is very personal to him in terms of how he recruits and who he hires and who he looks for. One of the things they're seizing on as sort of their mission is improving the lives of both employers and candidates, one person at a time. And he loves that tagline because it captures how personal it is, it's one person at a time.  

And he believes in a leadership role, the single most important thing that you can do is hire well, that is absolutely the single most important thing, if you hire well, most things take care of themselves, you hire well, you train well and you correct hiring problems quickly, if you've made a mistake, if you don't have that proper connection, that's always very painful, if you have to do that.  

And then really the role he believes of a leader is to create the environment in which these talented people who are motivated and intelligent, where they can succeed. So, he often says he doesn't do any real work, the thing that he’s most proud of is creating an environment in which these folks can succeed, get the political stuff out of the way, and set them up for success. And if we found the right people who are customer success oriented, whether that service-oriented heart, they can then teach them what they need to know about their technology, their solution, but if they are the right cultural fit and the right kind of person, then they're 80% of the way there.

Areas to Focus On To Achieve Cultural Alignment

Me: So, I like the fact that in your explanation just know, you spoke about cultural alignment, and I think I would love for you to go a little bit more granular as it relates to that in terms of how do we hire well and focus on cultural alignment? And I imagine this begins in the interview process. Are there some key questions that you think may need to be asked? Does it boil down to the advertisement that you put out in terms of who you're attracting to apply in the first place? Where do you start? And maybe what are three, I would say main things that you believe if you're tasked with that responsibility for an organization, where would you put your focus, maybe three top areas that you put your focus on if we're trying to get cultural alignment?

Barry stated that it is a huge topic for them and in fact, he was just speaking with her CEO and they were thinking back on some candidates who didn't work out, not his organization per se, but across the company. 

And in every case, when they violated in a sense their own rules, not that there are hard and fast rules, but when they looked past a lack of cultural alignment, the candidate didn't work out. 

And they have a very formal process whereby, typically, it's done by their HR Department as part of the interviewing cycle, where a series of questions that are available are asked, in theory, the same topics would have come up in the other interviews with you want a candidate to meet some peers, of course, he interviews them as the hiring manager, and then they meet with HR. 

And he will tend to focus on interpersonal relationships and problem solving. When you look at their values and we've written them down and he thinks so many companies these days happily have their pillars of their culture on their website, whether they live by them, it's hard to say. He appreciates candidates who challenge them on those things and want to make sure that it's real.

But they talk about things like being customer first, they talk about teamwork, they talk about accountability. He will and others, he will focus very much on the teamwork aspect of things and conflict resolution all with an eye toward, are we doing the right thing for their customer and for themselves, he can become a Johnnie one note around win-win scenarios. He has no interest in someone who is so accommodating of a customer that they might put his company at risk. 

They look for partners and they don't say that in a glib fashion or as a soundbite, it's true. The nature of their business is such that if they have a customer who just wants them to service them and does not want to meet them at an appropriate point, in terms of communication and keeping data flowing and sharing reality, what's going on, if they're not a real partner, they don't do well with them. 

And so, he needs customer success folks who understand that, who understand how to deal with conflict, who can navigate the complexities of those interpersonal relationships. 

So, they'll ask questions around, of course, “Give him a scenario where you and a colleague were out of alignment and in disagreement, what did you do?” And you will hope that the candidate is honest and doesn't just tell you what you want to hear, normally you can figure out if they're telling you what you want to hear. 

But that ultimately leads them to the single most important question in their values alignment survey when they take a candidate and they ask them to meet for half hour with their HR Department, the single most important question came out of a real life scenario with their CEO actually, where it led to the following question, “You go to a restaurant and you have your iPad on the front seat of your car, you park your car, and you don't lock the door, when you come back, the iPad is gone. Whose fault is it?”  

And it's a fascinating question because what they are looking for is, “It's my fault.” 

It doesn't mean the thief doesn't have some accountability. 

And it doesn't mean that the restaurant might not have a more secure parking lot.  

But in the end, you left a valuable item out in the open with an unlocked door, they didn't even have to smash the window, they just opened the door and took your very expensive piece of equipment. How do you not think that was my fault? I live in the real world, I have to have accountability for that kind of thing. 

It leads to interesting discussions; they've had discussions around none of us ever want to blame a victim in the course of a crime being committed. 

And the reason he liked that scenario so much is the car wasn't even violated. Were you a victim? Or were you just dumb? You invited someone you say, “Please rob me!” 

If he leaves his front door unlocked, okay, you blame the thief, you shouldn't be robbed, society shouldn't allow that to happen. But you know what, he lives in the real world, he locked his door when he leaves. 

So, those kinds of questions really matter. And that question in particular, and he will tell you, he’s very pleased, their candidates are honest, and their HR folks take very good notes, offer their own opinions. He'll go into their ITS and read those notes. And that's the question he’s looking for.  

Are you personally accountable for your actions? 

You can give 10% to the thief and you can give 10% to the to the restaurant, but if you're not thinking that you're 70% or 80% responsible for that, you might be looking for excuses as to when things don't go your way. And they're just too small a company too and they wear too many hats for anyone who has that opinion.

Me: Wow, I love that question. Thank you so much for sharing very, very good one.

App, Website or Tool that Barry Absolutely Can’t Live Without in His Business

When asked about an online resource that he can’t live without in his business, Barry shared that it's funny, he hates to have it be the technological death star of our industry that he’s dealt with since he got into technology. But really it's their day to day tools with Microsoft, they are a Teams shop and they are finding more customers who are using Teams, of course you have Teams aficionados, and you have a lot of folks who are passionate about Slack. But they're using Teams and informally don't tell their IT Department they have some Slack channels going too. But that kind of real time communication with themselves because his team is fully remote. And so, their ability to stay in real time communication and in many cases in real time communication with their customers is proving ever, ever more valuable, they couldn't live without it at this point.

Books that Have Had the Biggest Impact on Barry

When asked about books that have had a great impact, Barry shared that it's fun to think about, currently he’s been enjoying reading history, the historian and he is a professor at Vanderbilt University, Jon Meacham is his name. He's the kind of fellow who when he's a guest on a news programme, and he finds him and he sees him, he’s actually glad they're talking about it. He’s hoping there's a way to sign up for when is Jon Meacham going to be on TV so he can go find him. He hangs on his every word and it's the kind of guy you kind of wish he was your grandfather telling you stories about the world in the past. 

His biographies of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson have been his latest readings. And he enjoys that because, a, he enjoys the break from technology and what they do every day, get his brain around something else. But it's the lessons from these great thinkers like a Thomas Jefferson as presented by a great thinker in the form of Jon Meacham where he finds himself reading his books with a highlighter, because it's not just the observations, the historical observations, but his observations when he ties these topics together. So, he always finds that fascinating, especially from a leadership standpoint.  

And it's funny, the other thing that comes to mind is, it's again, he’s so much older than probably many of the listeners, but when he was in high school, he read a book by a gentleman named Roger Kahn, he became famous for his book, The Boys of Summer, which was about the 1950s, 40s and 50s, Brooklyn Dodgers. 

And he wrote a book called Good Enough to Dream. And it was about his ownership stake in a minor league baseball club in Utica, New York. And the opening line has stayed with him, “The first dream full of innocence and sunlight is to play the game.” which he always loved. But early in the book, he says to someone who's associated with the team, “Are these guys any good?” And the response was, “They’re good enough to dream.” And that has always stayed with him. “Am I the best at something? Is my company the best at something?” He doesn't know, but they're good enough to give it a try and see where it leads them. And that's always stayed with him.

What Barry is Really Excited About Now!

When asked about something that he’s really excited about, Barry shared that within his organization, he doesn't mind doing a commercial for the product Gainsight, which is the customer success platform. They recognized about 15 months ago as Talroo was growing both in terms of their customer base and their staff, that as a Salesforce shop and as a Microsoft shop, the needs for customer success weren't being met, in terms of what do they need to record? What do they need to predict? Do they have a sense around who will keep their contracts going, versus who is at risk of cancelling. 

Just as a quick sidebar, Talroo, unlike a typical SaaS company does not have a long-term contract, they have to earn their customers business every month, they can cancel at will.  

And so, it creates unique challenges and a real time need to know what's going on with each customer. And so, about 15 months ago, they embarked upon a project to implement a customer success platform. They ultimately chose Gainsight, he will say for anyone who is looking for a customer success platform, all of the players in the industry who they looked at were terrific, he doesn't think you could go wrong. ChurnZero to Tango, others, they were all first-class organizations, and they happened to choose Gainsight and that became an immediate game changer and continues to be. 

And so, thank you for the question about what he’s focused on? Where are they growing? How are they evolving?  

When they first rolled out Gainsight, it was primarily to support their efforts to track and manage and deal with renewals and even upsells are very important for upsells with their direct customers, employers who come to them and say, “Talroo will work with you directly to please advertise our jobs out in the world.” And that's what they really started with for the majority of their first year with the product. 

But he has other caliber of customers who his team has to look after, including advertising agencies, and including job boards who they've had relationships with for years, who send them their jobs to advertise. And the needs are different across those different caliber of customers, and getting Gainsight rolled out now for the other members of his team and candidly getting adoption of it.  

One of the things they've done very well and that he would encourage anyone thinking about any large software purchases, the people can kill a project. If any given team refuses to use Salesforce, Salesforce will fail. If any team refuses to use Gainsight, Gainsight will fail, people can win, and really torpedo a project. 

So, they've done a really good job of getting buy in, forming a user council, the gentleman who is Andy Trevino, who is their administrator and RCS Ops Manager, who looks after Gainsight is always open to feedback, he's always soliciting feedback, so that they can make the solution match the way they work. He doesn't like software solutions where they have to change their behaviour in order to accommodate the tool, he wants the tool to accommodate the workflow and the processes that they already know work. And as they roll out the usage of Gainsight to this extended team, their needs are very different than their counterparts who work with their direct customers. So, getting that right is important. 

And that accountability is incredibly important, because he no longer could afford and one of the reasons they went with Gainsight and started this whole project was when he wants to ask the very simple or get an answer to what he hopes would be a simple question of what's going on with fill in the blank of the customer name, it shouldn't take him 20 minutes to figure it out. 

He needs all the information in one place and they're doing a terrific job of that with Gainsight with their direct customers, and getting members of his team who aren't used to it and haven't had to use it in the past, he needs to bring them along and their feedback. And he needs to make sure the product gets built out in a way that makes their lives easier, and that they see the value of it and that it's not just busy work, it's not just bureaucracy, it's that they really are using the product to make their lives better and then he gets what he needs in a leadership role, their C suite gets what it needs when they have questions about what's going on with the customer. 

Many folks may have thought of this or use this line, traditionally, it's with Salesforce, they would say, on the sales side, if something isn't recorded in Salesforce, it didn't happen. That's the source of truth and that's where he’s going with Gainsight, if you don't have notes and details and specifics in Gainsight, then it didn't happen. And you don't want to do that for bureaucratic reasons, you want to do it because it makes the organization better and your customers more successful.

Me: Awesome. So, Gainsight is where you have most of your head wrapped around right now and just trying to build that out.

Where Can We Find Barry Online

LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/klein-barry/

Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Barry Uses

When asked about a quote that he tends to revert to, Barry shared that he has two, one is more serious than the other but the other, the funny one was his high school yearbook quote, but he will say plainly, he’s not a praying or religious person by nature, but he will go back to, “Dear God, grant me the strength to change the things I can, accept those that I can't, and the wisdom to know the difference.”  

It really gets hard to know where you need to invest your time and energy.

What should you care about?

What do you need to back off of?

What can't you change? 

So, the wisdom to know the difference between what you can change and what you have to accept is something he thinks about a lot. 

The more fun quote is from the old Mary Tyler Moore Show, in the episode in which the character Chuckles The Clown is tragically killed, because he is the master of ceremonies for a parade. And he gets run over by an elephant dressed as a peanut, which leads to a ridiculous number of jokes and things about a man dressed as a peanut killed by an elephant. But because he was a clown by nature, his quotes, and the things that he did become a big part of the show. And his (Barry) high school yearbook quote was, “A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down your pants.” Moments of stress, you know what, how serious can life be? “A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down your pants.”

Me: I love it. Okay, Barry, thank you so much for taking time out of your very busy schedule and hopping on our podcast today and sharing all of these great insights as it relates to cultural alignment and recruitment, ensuring that you're getting the right fit to ensure that you're able to meet the deliverables and as you mentioned, just mitigating against the wrong fit and mitigating against challenges and issues that could have been prevented had the recruitment been aligned and selected properly from day one. So, I thought it was a great conversation and I just want to say, thank you so much for taking time and sharing with us today.

Please connect with us on Twitter @navigatingcx and also join our Private Facebook Community – Navigating the Customer Experience and listen to our FB Lives weekly with a new guest

Links

•     Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power by Jon Meacham

•     American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House by Jon Meacham

•     The Boys of Summer by Roger Kahn

•     Good Enough to Dream by Roger Kahn

The ABC’s of a Fantastic Customer Experience

Grab the Freebie on Our Website – TOP 10 Online Business Resources for Small Business Owners 

Do you want to pivot your online customer experience and build loyalty - get a copy of “The ABC’s of a Fantastic Customer Experience.”

The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience provides 26 easy to follow steps and techniques that helps your business to achieve success and build brand loyalty.

This Guide to Limitless, Happy and Loyal Customers will help you to strengthen your service delivery, enhance your knowledge and appreciation of the customer experience and provide tips and practical strategies that you can start implementing immediately!

This book will develop your customer service skills and sharpen your attention to detail when serving others.

Master your customer experience and develop those knock your socks off techniques that will lead to lifetime customers. Your customers will only want to work with your business and it will be your brand differentiator. It will lead to recruiters to seek you out by providing practical examples on how to deliver a winning customer service experience!

Cynthia Kay founded Cynthia Kay and Company media production which produces high-quality communications for organizations from Fortune Global 100 to small business. A graduate of Michigan State University, Kay holds a master's in communications from Western Michigan University. 

Cynthia Kay is a passionate spokesperson for small business. For more than 35 years, she has spent significant time speaking to, teaching and coaching small-business owners while running her own award-winning company. She is the Past Board Chair of the National Small Business Association (NSBA). 

Cynthia and the company have been honoured with many awards including many Tellys and Woman Owned Small Business Supplier of the Year from Siemens in 2018. She has been named one of West Michigan's 50 Most Influential Women five times, and is the recipient of over 30 broadcast awards from UPI, AP, and other news organizations. 

CK & CO Cynthia has authored several books. Her newest book, Small Business, Big Success: How to Beat the Odds and Grow a Great Business (Career Press 2024) is available for pre-order and will be on May 6, 2024. She writes for Entrepreneur.com, has been featured in Time Magazine, Entrepreneur Magazine's Ask the Expert and on NPR.

Questions

·    We always like to give the guests an opportunity to share in their own words, a little bit about your journey, how you got from where you were to where you are today. Could you share that with us?

· Your book, Small Business. Big Success: How to Beat the Odds and Grow a Great Business. Can you share with our listeners a little bit about that book that you have coming up? And maybe three overarching themes or tenets that the book represents.

·    You've been in business for 35 years, so you've been through all phases of a business over 35 years, not to mention the different experiences that your businesses would have had as it relates to the different travesties that the world had gone through. If you were to pick, let's say, one characteristic that you believe was critical for you to ride the waves over all those years to the point where you are today, what do you believe that would be?

·     Based on your experience, what would you say are maybe five common mistakes that you find small businesses tend to get themselves into? And if you could give maybe a recommendation for each as to how they could prevent themselves from getting trapped into that common mistake?

·  Now, Cynthia, can you also share with our listeners, what's the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely can't live without in your business?

·  Now, can you also share with our listeners, maybe one or two books that you have read, it could be a book that you read a very long time ago or even one that you read recently, but it has had a great impact on you.

·   Where can listeners find you online?

·  Now, before we wrap our episodes up, we always like to ask our guests, do you have a quote or a saying that during times of adversity or challenge, you'll tend to revert to this quote if for any reason you get derailed or there's an obstacle that comes in your way, the quote kind of helps to get you back on track.

Highlights

Cynthia’s Journey

Me: Now, even though we ask our guests to provide us with a bio, which you did, amazingly, thank you so much. And we do read the bio at the beginning of the show so the audience has a good idea of who we're interviewing and what they’re about. We always like to give the guests an opportunity to share in their own words, a little bit about your journey, how you got from where you were to where you are today. Could you share that with us?

Cynthia shared that for her, it's an interesting story, she hoped it will be for the viewers as well. She actually started her career in broadcasting and was working in the TV business for about 13 and a half years. But she always had in the back of her mind that she wanted to own her own business. And she grew up in a family owned business so she saw her dad and how he worked and how much he loved what he did and his customers. 

And so, one day when she got fired and her dad always said, “Honey, you're no one till someone fires you.” She decided that rather than go and work for another television station and she had some opportunities to do that, she decided she wanted to bet on herself. And so, that's how she started her business.

About Cynthia’s Book – Small Business. Big Success: How to Beat the Odds and Grow a Great Business

Me: Now, you have a new book that's being published in a few months, it's called Small Business. Big Success: How to Beat the Odds and Grow a Great Business. Can you share with our listeners a little bit about that book that you have coming up? And maybe three overarching themes or tenets that the book represents.

Cynthia shared that she really believes that the best way for people to learn about business is by storytelling. And so, the book has not only her story, but stories of entrepreneurs and experts from all over the country. And frankly, that's what makes it so interesting because we all have stories to tell. But she’s segmented the book into stages and it is starting up, because the challenges at starting up are very different than the challenges for those who are in second stage or mature businesses. 

And then she looks at success at operations because she thinks many small businesses, that's a place that's very difficult for them is to really figure out how to become operationally excellent. 

And then success at growth because if we don't grow, we're actually going backwards. 

And then finally success at stepping out. And someone asked her, “Well, why cover such a broad expanse in one business? Why not just talk out starting up or stepping out?” 

And she said, when you take a look at the whole lifecycle of a business, if you understand that, especially at starting up, and you think about where do you want to end up? Are you growing a lifestyle business? Or are you growing a business to sell it? 

If you are in a growth phase, what do you need to really think about? Sometimes it's digging back into what made you successful at start-up and visioning the future? And then also thinking about what kind of legacy do you want? 

So, for her covering that expanse and she’s been in business now over 35 years, so she’s been through many phases of the business. She thinks has been reflective for her to kind of look at each one of those. 

And there's lots of things that she talks about, she’s talked about customers, it's so important that we understand customers and customer services, it doesn't matter if you run a retail operation or a manufacturing plant or a technology company. But she thinks understanding customers, that's a big overarching theme. 

Communications is huge, because it impacts so much of our business, and then also leadership, what does it take to lead a successful enterprise?

One Characteristic That Entrepreneurs Need to Survive Downturns in an Economy

Me: So, lots of very critical components that you mentioned in the book to running a business. Now, I know you told us about the overarching themes that the book represents and in your summary just now, you mentioned that you've been in business for 35 years, so you've been through, if not all, well, definitely all phases of a business over 35 years I'm sure. Not to mention the different experiences that your businesses would have had as it relates to the different travesties that the world had gone through, so the pandemic and before that the recession in 2008. So, you'd have had different experiences that different economies would have experienced, that the world experienced. If you were to pick, let's say, one characteristic that you believe was critical for you to ride the waves over all those years to the point where you are today, what do you believe that would be?

Cynthia stated that that one is easy for her. And she thinks this is something that people don't think about a lot, but it's passion. You have to have passion for what you do. If you don't have passion, you cannot survive all of the challenges that you have. She has experienced at least two downturns in the economy and COVID, obviously was huge. But if you don't love what you do, if you don't get up every day, and say, “Wow, what can I do today to make this business better? What can I do today to serve my customers?” 

If you don't have that passion, it's easy to get discouraged and she thinks it's easy to give up. And frankly, the businesses that she sees that kind of wither away, it's because they've lost that passion for what they do, it becomes routine and ordinary and in this world, especially in the world of business, you can't survive if it's just same old, same old, you must consistently innovate and to do that, you have to have passion.

Me: So, passion is a number one thing that was able to carry you through. Fantastic, thank you for sharing Cynthia.

Common Mistakes that Small Businesses Make and How to Avoid Them

Me: Now, Cynthia, I'm sure in running a business, there are some common mistakes that sometimes business owners will make, right, regardless of the type of business you're in, whether it's product based or service based. Based on your experience, what would you say are maybe five common mistakes that you find small businesses tend to get themselves into? And if you could give maybe a recommendation for each as to how they could prevent themselves from getting trapped into that common mistake?

Cynthia shared that she thinks the first one is not doing their homework. She thinks so often people believe they have a great idea or a great product, but they're somewhat clouded by their own bubble, by their own world. And so, one of the things that she will tell you is not doing your homework, not going out and saying to someone, not just do you like my idea, or do you like my product? But will you pay for it?

So, that's the first one. And the way that you really avoid that common mistake, quite frankly, is to do your research, and to go out and not be afraid to ask the questions. And sometimes she will tell you, she has put in place some efforts that she had to abandon because while she thought it was a great idea, she didn't maybe do enough of the homework to really understand if it was going to be successful. So, that'd be the first one.  

And then the second one is financially, can you really withstand the pressures that it takes. So, when she started her business, the first six months, she didn't even take a salary. And she thinks that's very common for a lot of business owners is that they invest in their business. So, are you able to financially withstand what it takes to be able to get through those first really tough years? So, do you have the financing? Do you have the capital? Can you withstand that interim start-up period where you really need to make sure that you have a lot of cushion maybe is the right way to say it.  

The third mistake that a lot of business owners make is that they take whatever customer comes to the door and she made that mistake when she first got started, she was so concerned about is she going to be able to pay the rent, that she maybe took customers that she shouldn't have taken because they didn't align with the goal and the core products and values that they had and that's a hard one is to say no to a customer. But if you're getting customers in the door that are taking up your time and taking up your energy and not going to help you move forward, then she thinks that that's a big mistake. And as a result of having made that mistake after she was in business for a while, she kind of had to send customers away and that's very difficult. So, having a good idea of who that ideal customer is and really knowing that. 

She thinks communication is a big one. Frankly, she thinks communication is something that business owners don't really spend enough time on, they believe if they have a great product or a great service, that's enough and it's not. You have to be able to articulate your value, you have to be able to communicate that value to your employees because that's so critical because it's not just you, unless you're going to be a solopreneur, which is fine. But if you're going to build an organization, you have to be able to communicate with your employees, you have to be able to educate them, have them understand what the value is of the business, and then being able to communicate to customers. The number one complaint that customers have today is sometimes they lack the communication from businesses, even if it's simply, “I got your phone call and I got your order, and we'll get back to you.” But being able to communicate and being able to articulate is a big one. 

And then she thinks the other mistake that she thinks a lot of small businesses make is they don't build an external team that can help them, because as a business owner, you're an expert in what you do, but that doesn't mean that you're an expert in all things.

And so, building that really critical team of outside resources, she likes to say who can keep you out of trouble because sometimes you get into trouble because you don't know enough. So, having that critical team of people that you can trust and can go to, she thinks that's it. So, those will be she thinks the five things that she would say are really important.

App, Website or Tool that Cynthia Absolutely Can’t Live Without in Her Business

When asked about online resource that she can’t live without in her business, Cynthia shared that when she saw that question, she was like, there's lots of things she can't live without. Cynthia estimated that because of the business that she’s in, they have a tool, it's called Function Point that coordinates all of the efforts. In media production and in communications, consulting, there are so many pieces of every single job that all have to align and being able to track where something is and being able to understand who on the team is doing what, it's a communications tool. 

Now, that may be one that it's for creative agencies, but there are other tools. SharePoint, she thinks is a fabulous tool for keeping people really focused. So much of what we do today, there are so many pieces of information and keeping it organized she thinks is the biggest nightmare or it can be the biggest advantage. So, some sort of a communication tool that allows you to track and be able to measure where you are is really critical.

Books that Have Had the Biggest Impact on Cynthia

When asked about books that has a great impact, Cynthia shared that there are two that she really loves. And the one is Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t by Jim Collins and she’s read that book maybe twice and should go back and read it again. But the reason that she loves that book is that she thinks there is such a difference in just being good and really having a company and growing a company that is excellent. And she thinks today good is just the baseline, everyone expects if you're in business that you're good, but can you be great? So, that's one. 

The other one that she really likes is The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change by Stephen Covey. We as people sometimes think we're effective, but we might be missing something. So, those are two that she really loves. And she'll be honest, she hasn't been doing a lot of reading lately, mostly because she’s been doing a lot of writing, so, she’s been reading her own book. But she does have a list of other books coming up that she would like to read. 

And then there's one other one that over the years she’s kind of steered people to and it's called Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Other Don’t by Simon Sinek. And she thinks so much of the success of organizations and businesses really rests with how effective is the leader, because the business takes on sort of the personality of the leader. So, that's a book that she always recommend because she thinks this idea of servant leadership is one that really can catapult an organization ahead.

Where Can We Find Cynthia Online 

LinkedIn – Cynthia Kay

Website – www.cynthiakaybiz.com

Website – www.thinkck.com

Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Cynthia Uses

When asked about a quote or saying that she tends to revert to, Cynthia stated that it's interesting, there are so many quotes that she loves, but her father was a huge influence in her life and there's a quote that her dad always used to say when she faced adversity, and she was struggling and didn't know what to do and he would always say, “Do what's in your heart.” And she really believes that if you look inside, you often know the answer. And so, that's one that she always remember, her dad always said, do what's in your heart. 

And his second favourite one was, “They can't pay you enough money to do a job you don't love.” And so, that's her second one.

Me: I love it. Is the second one attributed from your dad as well?

Cynthia said absolutely. He was a wonderful businessman. He ran a small business with his two brothers and so much of what she thinks, they learned, they learned by osmosis. She learned a lot about business by watching her dad. 

Me: That's fantastic. So, thank you so much for sharing those two quotes, we'll definitely have them in the show notes of this episode. 

As we wrap up our episode, we would just like to extend our deepest level of gratitude to you for taking time out of your very busy schedule and coming on our podcast today and sharing about your journey, a little bit about your new book that will be released in May of this year. For those of our listeners that would love to tap into that resource, we'll have Cynthia's contact information in the links for the show notes of the episode so you can definitely follow along and just be abreast of when the book is going to be released and the different platforms that it will be available on so thank you again, Cynthia for coming on and we wish you all the very best.

Please connect with us on Twitter @navigatingcx and also join our Private Facebook Community – Navigating the Customer Experience and listen to our FB Lives weekly with a new guest

Links

•    Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t by Jim Collins

•     The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change by Stephen Covey

•     Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t by Simon Sinek

The ABC’s of a Fantastic Customer Experience

Grab the Freebie on Our Website – TOP 10 Online Business Resources for Small Business Owners 

Do you want to pivot your online customer experience and build loyalty - get a copy of “The ABC’s of a Fantastic Customer Experience.”

The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience provides 26 easy to follow steps and techniques that helps your business to achieve success and build brand loyalty.

This Guide to Limitless, Happy and Loyal Customers will help you to strengthen your service delivery, enhance your knowledge and appreciation of the customer experience and provide tips and practical strategies that you can start implementing immediately!

This book will develop your customer service skills and sharpen your attention to detail when serving others.

Master your customer experience and develop those knock your socks off techniques that will lead to lifetime customers. Your customers will only want to work with your business and it will be your brand differentiator. It will lead to recruiters to seek you out by providing practical examples on how to deliver a winning customer service experience!

Serena Chan is a Research Advocate at Dovetail with a background in exploratory and UX research. She plays a pivotal role in crafting memorable experiences for customers, advocating for them within the company and partnering with people who do research to build a community and best practices at Dovetail. 

Before joining Dovetail, Serena held UX design research and product roles across various industries, including health tech, entertainment and social enterprises. Passionate about democratizing research, she champions the importance of prioritizing insights from customer-facing teams to drive the development of truly customer-centric products. 

Serena holds an MBA in Design Strategy from California College of the Arts, though her academic journey started with a Bachelor of Science in Public Health. Her early career spanned roles in public health, during with which she was inspired by the intersection of design thinking and global health at a transformative conference.

A poet and community gatherer, Serena leverages storytelling at work and leisure to facilitate a more deeply connected, equitable, and regenerative future for all. 

Questions 

·     Now, we always like to give our guests an opportunity for them to share in their own words, a little bit about their journey.

·      Could you tell us a little bit about Dovetail and what your company does?

·     Now, as a subject matter expert in the area of customer experience, could you give us maybe two or three, I would say areas that you believe organisations need to focus on as we continue to traverse through 2024 and beyond?

· If you were to pick one organisation, what would be, let's say two or three characteristics that they have that makes you loyal to them and keep going back over and over again?

·   Now, could you also share with our audience, what is the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely cannot live without in your business?

·    Could you also share with our listeners, maybe one or two books that you have read that have had a big impact on you, it could be a book that you read a very long time ago, or even one that you've read recently, but it's had a great impact on you.

·     Could you also share with us what's the one thing that's going on in your life right now that you're really excited about? Either something you're working on to develop yourself or your people.

·      Where can listeners find you online?

·     Now, before we wrap our episodes up, we always like to ask our guests, do you have a quote or a saying that during times of adversity or challenge you will tend to revert to this quote if for any reason you get derailed or you get off track, the quote kind of helps to get you back on track. Do you have one of those?

Highlights

Serena’s Journey

Me: Now, we always like to give our guests an opportunity for them to share in their own words, a little bit about their journey. I know I read your bio, and it kind of gives us a quick summary of the journey that you did have to get to where you are today, but we'd love to hear from you, in your own words, how is it that you got to where you are today?

Serena shared that one of the earliest jobs she’s ever had was in customer service, customer experience. So, she thinks that's been quite the through line in her career and why she’s also sort of excited to be here today. 

Starting from her first job in private tutoring when she was just in high school, to volunteer work and working in customer service jobs, there's some element of being of service and working with people that she was always drawn to. And after graduating college, it led her into the world of health tech start-up and joining a customer success team for the very first time. 

And for her, that was the first opportunity to really be that bridge between hearing their customer needs, and sharing that back with their product team, helping you have that informer product roadmap and innovation and business strategy. And working in that intersection, that hub really got her quite excited. So, that's kind of led her to continue to pursue her career from grad school to consulting and freelance work to now her work at Dovetail.

About Serena’s Company - Dovetail

Me: So, could you tell us a little bit about Dovetail and what your company does?

Serena shared that Dovetail is a leading customer insights hub, they work with lots of teams of folks, whether they're in user research, or product management, design, innovation, whether you're a software company, or they have some people also building physical products, some people building really large things in the world, like construction, machinery and things that are like tractors that farmers use to all kinds of software that we use in our day to day as well. 

So, they are a platform where these teams are able to really harness the insights they're hearing from their customers, whether it's customer interviews or survey data, things ongoing like CSAT and NPS and sentiment and have that then inform better product and decision making across the business as well. So, the work she does at Dovetail is really closely partnering with their customer teams, and coaching them in best practices from onboarding and being successful in Dovetail to how they can further grow customer centricity and the culture of that at their organizations.

Areas Organizations Need to Focus on As it Relates to Customer Experience for 2024 and Beyond

Me: Now, as a subject matter expert in the area of customer experience, could you give us maybe two or three, I would say areas that you believe organizations need to focus on as we continue to traverse through 2024 and beyond?

Serena shared that we're all navigating so much change. And one thing that she always returned to is just talk to customers, it's easier said than done for a lot of people. In her role, she does work with customers in the day to day, so that makes her job a lot easier. But for other people who maybe it's not the majority of how they spend their days, it can be hard to really remember, oh, yeah, let me go and actually get in front of customers, if you can't talk to customers, that's kind of point one, than two like, really leverage the type of customer data you already have. So, honestly, most of the people at their company who are talking the most customers are sales, customer success and support. 

And so, their product managers and their designers, they'll talk to customers, but they also try to go within their Dovetail workspace and pull from the interviews that they've already had, the customer calls their sales team has already had, the support tickets that have come through. So, if you can't go and talk to customers immediately yourself, then draw from those who are talking to your customers day in day out, that was kind of step two. 

And then point number three is really trying to kind of complete the loop, she’s really lucky that their customers are also some of the best at giving feedback and sharing their insights and their requests, because they're also people in the space of customer experience. And so, trying to really complete that loop and try to bring them along the journey. They're trying to do more ways of running early beta and alpha kind of programmes to test new things. They're building up Dovetail, they're also trying to co design and really do more kind of participatory type of practices with their customers, bring them along the journey and have them be part of that process. 

So, really, those three steps, talk to customers, the second, talk to the people who do talk to your customers, and also leverage the existing data you do have. And then the third being kind of complete that loop and really make sure you're integrating the feedback you're hearing into your product and business decisions, and then share it back to your customers, because they're always super appreciative to hear that you're taking the feedback and how quickly they're moving and iterating on that.

Me: Now, I heard you mention in your feedback just know in terms of the three areas that you believe organization should focus on, that you are blessed to have customers who are very willing and able to give feedback. I'm not sure if that's cultural, but if you could maybe just give us a little insight. 

What if you are in a culture where it's hard to collect feedback from customers?

It's not very easy, they don't voluntarily give it to you and even when you intentionally seek it out, it's hard to kind of pin them down to get the information that you need from them.

What would be your best recommendation to approach if you're in a business like that?

Serena shared that think about kind of what are those first points of contact? Is it that someone is hearing about you through some marketing channels, or maybe they're talking to someone in the sales process, even those are important touch points and opportunities for insights, especially if you're trying to understand your customers motivations, their desires, she thinks those are actually some really powerful touch points that we can leverage more in general. 

Of course, there are teams that go out and do proactive research, whether it's user research or usability testing, things like that. And they tend to rely a lot on that. But there's also so much room to lean on people in other functions as well who are talking to customers day in day out. And even if they're not existing customers, talking to prospectives is really helpful, too. 

So, she learned a lot from sitting in with their sales team and understanding the needs and desires of their prospective customers and seeing how can they currently serve them?

Where are the gaps and opportunities? 

And then how can she bring that back to their product team, their leadership team and say, “Actually, these are the current needs we're hearing from people, people who are interested in buying our software, or have similar visions and wanting to really grow customers centricity and these are the things they are asking for, which we may or may not have at the moment yet.” 

So, she thinks these are some other kind of creative ways to talk to people who, unless you have a completely sales process where no one's talking to anyone, then that's maybe on the more rare side, but you probably have someone that's talking to your customers. 

And then also, her bias too is in the onboarding process, they have a pretty hands off approach as well, you can definitely self-serve and leverage Dovetail Academy and kind of learn at your own pace. But then they also do have a team of customer success managers, and that's kind of where she started at Dovetail was actually in customer success. 

And they work with so many customers in the onboarding process and that's also so much wisdom to learn what are your customers understanding, what is harder for them to understand, what are the common questions and challenges and pain points that are.  

In many ways, empowering their customer success folks to basically be like their frontline design researchers in a way, they're the ones who are often closest to the day to day pain points, as well as their support team that their customers are facing. 

So yeah, really explore kind of what are some ways you're already your current company is already talking to customers and try to get closer to those people sit in, sit along on their calls or watch the calls if they have that uploaded into a central place.

Characteristics of a Loyal Organization

Me: Now, Serena, as a customer, right, so I want you to kind of take yourself out of the role that you're functioning, providing service, but more so service being provided to you. If you were to pick one organization, and it's up to you if you'd like to share the organization, but I’m more focused on the traits or the attributes that the company has, if you were to choose one company that you really, really love? What would be, let's say two or three characteristics that they have that makes you loyal to them and keep going back over and over again?

Serena stated that she loves this question. For her, what's funny is actually, the farmers market came to mind, which isn't necessarily a company in a traditional sense, it's maybe more like a gathering place, a marketplace. But it's a place she loves and she thinks about why she loves it. And there's some amount of structure, you go and you know what to expect, you know what vendors are generally there but you also have options, you have a specific time and place as well. And for her, it's also this sense of community and kind of community gathering place, that's actually a big thing they're working to invest in and grow at Dovetail as well as how do they actually build a gathering place for people in research and design and product to come and gather and learn from each other. And she thinks that's a huge opportunity for a lot of companies to leverage that within their customer base. 

So, for her, she personally as a customer really enjoy being able to just meet other people in a very casual sense and feel that sense of community, whether at a farmers market, they're her neighbours, or as someone in like a customer experience kind of space like that similar to maybe conferences or virtual or in person meetups and events that vendors or companies may hold. So, leveraging that aspect of community, and then also having an element of discovery. There's some things that she knows and she can rely on and there's some elements of novelty that also keep her coming back. So, that's what comes to mind for her.

App, Website or Tool that Serena Absolutely Can’t Live Without in Her Business

When asked about online resource that she cannot live without in her business, Serena shared that she’s going to take it from a bit more of a personal approach to how she shows up in her work. And for her, it can be any kind of app, but for her, it's like a mindfulness practice app and tool, she sees that as very much a part of her professional toolkit. 

She personally have really enjoyed the open app recently. And why she says this is because so much of the work she does is to witness and listen to their customers, to facilitate workshops, whether with customers or internally. 

And she thinks so often, especially in the start-up world we’re really quick to want to fix things and want to solve things and iterate and pivot and all of that. And that's great, and it's necessary and it's important to move quickly. But if we're not taking the moment to pause and to truly listen and understand what it is our customers are sharing with us, and also how the greater industry and world is shifting to, then we can't do all the rest or it'll kind of be done in a haphazard way. 

So for her, actually, her mindfulness practice, her kind of deep listening and meditation practice is a core part of how she shows up in her work and with her customers and also in holding space as she facilitates internally with her teammates as well.

Books that Have Had the Biggest Impact on Serena

When asked about books that have had an impact, Serena shared that she really loves Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert, this is a book all about the art of creative living. And for her, it has impacted both her professional and personal lives. And really the kind of one liner from it is like, “What is creative living, it's a life that is more driven by curiosity than by fear.” 

She thinks one of her strengths and being able to navigate a lot of uncertainty and ambiguity, especially in the start-up world, is her ability to kind of lean into curiosity, and not just operate out of reactivity or fear or all of that. 

And so, the more we're able to flex that and lean into curiosity when we're trying to understand our customers, lean into curiosity when there's a workplace challenge, or a product issue that comes up, lean into curiosity in terms of crafting our own careers and lives. This is kind of how we can apply that creative energy into how we show up in the day to day. So many of the listeners are deeply creative people whether or not you identify as an artist or designer or capital C creative person, but she thinks we as humans are deeply creative and the more we can channel that kind of energy, the better we are able to show up for our customers and our businesses and our communities and for the society as a whole.

What Serena is Really Excited About Now!

When asked about something that she’s excited about, Serena shared that she recently adopted a dog so she’s newly a dog mom. He is actually napping, napping right next to me right now! And something she’s learning is you never really know how it goes when you are trying to love and care and train a rescue dog. 

He's brought so much joy into her life, he's brought a lot of wonderful trail runs and play and novelty and exploration. And she’s also lucky to have a dog friendly office so she brings him into work as well. And they like to joke that he's the Chief Vibes Officer. He's also bringing a lot of joy at work too, so in many ways, even though he is such a personal part of her life, he is also really helping her also build better bonds with her colleagues and he'll also show up in the back of a meeting room as she’s on a customer call. 

And so, sometimes she thinks even just remembering like, we're all humans, we are all trying our best, and people will see her dog and kind of, it just creates that kind of human connection. So, it's been a very special time and she’s learning so much every day and celebrating all their little and big milestones as they go and that helps her remind herself of her capacity to keep growing and learning and adapting to change.

Where Can We Find Serena Online

LinkedIn – Serena Chan

Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Serena Uses 

When asked about quote that she tends to revert to, Serena shared that for her, it's “Ride the waves.” She’s a beginner surfer herself, but someone who's grown up swimming her whole life, so the water is a really restorative place for her but also challenging. She lives in San Francisco pretty close to Ocean Beach and these are some gnarly waves they get out there. And much with the tumultuous lives and professional worlds we live in and the changing world, sometimes all we can do is just show up and practice riding the waves and enjoying when things are calm, but also learning even when it feels stormy, we can get through it and just keep riding the waves.

Me: Well, thank you so much Serena for taking time out of your very busy schedule and coming on our podcast, sharing all of these great insights as it relates to customer experience, some of the things that you believe organizations need to be focusing on for 2024 and beyond. And of course, all the great things that your organization is doing. And we just really appreciate you taking time to share all of this great insight with us today.

Please connect with us on Twitter @navigatingcx and also join our Private Facebook Community – Navigating the Customer Experience and listen to our FB Lives weekly with a new guest

Links

•     Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert

The ABC’s of a Fantastic Customer Experience

Grab the Freebie on Our Website – TOP 10 Online Business Resources for Small Business Owners 

Do you want to pivot your online customer experience and build loyalty - get a copy of “The ABC’s of a Fantastic Customer Experience.”

The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience provides 26 easy to follow steps and techniques that helps your business to achieve success and build brand loyalty.

This Guide to Limitless, Happy and Loyal Customers will help you to strengthen your service delivery, enhance your knowledge and appreciation of the customer experience and provide tips and practical strategies that you can start implementing immediately!

This book will develop your customer service skills and sharpen your attention to detail when serving others.

Master your customer experience and develop those knock your socks off techniques that will lead to lifetime customers. Your customers will only want to work with your business and it will be your brand differentiator. It will lead to recruiters to seek you out by providing practical examples on how to deliver a winning customer service experience!

Len Covello, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at Engage People, leading the long-term technology vision of the company and is responsible for driving continued innovation in the loyalty sector. He is an innovator in the technology space and a thought leader in loyalty. 

Len started his first technology company at the age of 18 and most recently was the Director and Chief Technology Officer with Access (formerly LRG Rewards). His passion is web-based application design and development across a wide variety of business applications, particularly in user interfaces and process automation. 

He's an active member of Forbes Technology Council, a cornerstone of the Engage People executive team and member of the board of directors.

Questions

·     We always like to give our guests an opportunity to share in their own words, a little bit about their journey, could you tell our listeners how it is that you got to where you are today?

·      Now, could you tell our listeners just a little bit about what Engage People does?

·      What are your views, and you can tell me, since you're a loyalty expert in terms of like cross exchanges. So, let's say for example, you have loyalty points from an airline, but you're able to use those loyalty points from the airline at a hotel, or maybe for an attraction that you'd like to visit. Have you seen those kinds of activities happening, is that something you see happening in the future?

·      If you are to give our listeners maybe one or two trends that you see emerging in 2024 and beyond as it relates to loyalty and rewards and using it as a currency on its own, what would those be?

·      Now could you also share with us what's the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely can't live without in your business?

·      And could you also share with our listeners maybe one or two books that you've read, it could be a book that you read recently, or even one that you read a very long time ago, but it has had a great impact on you.

·      Can you also share with our listeners what's the one thing that's going on in your life right now that you're really excited about? Either something you're working on to develop yourself or your people.

·      Now, if you could choose one word or one attribute or characteristic that you believe a leader needs to have in order to have a team that is intrinsically motivated?

·      Where can listeners find you online?

·      Now, before we wrap our episodes up, we always like to ask our guests, do you have a quote or saying that during times of adversity or challenge, you'll tend to revert to this quote if for any reason you get derailed or you get off track, the quote kind of helps to get you back on track.

Highlights

Len’s Journey 

Me: We always like to give our guests an opportunity to share in their own words, a little bit about their journey, could you tell our listeners how it is that you got to where you are today?

Len shared that it's one of those stories, he doesn't think it's a straight line to get here, when he was quite young, as mentioned that 18 he definitely enjoyed working with computers, building applications. But he was always tied to the user experience, he was always tied to that ability to make things run a little more efficiently. So, he started building just web applications, very crude back in the day, so, internet was still pretty young. And started building these solutions for different organizations and eventually met with a company that was in the loyalty space. 

And they provided basically legacy loyalty, so, for those of us that remember you used to get a catalogue sent to your house, and it had some items that you could redeem from, and you'd either phone in or potentially fill out a form. And they talked with that organization about all the things they could bring there and that's what really started the precursor to engage was adding first solutions for the redemption and the fulfilment and then understanding more about the space and started as two of them and eventually, they ended up acquiring that company in the loyalty space that became their focus and turned into 150 plus people organization.

About Len’s Company - Engage People

Me: Now, could you tell our listeners just a little bit about what Engage People does? I know you mentioned that it's focused on loyalty but kind of give us a synopsis of what problem are you really solving for customers?

Len shared that they're a technology company at heart, loyalty just happens to be the discipline they play in. What they really like to do is innovate and impact an industry that they play in, and what they mean by that is in loyalty, it's been a pretty legacy solution based business he'd say where a lot of the advancements that they see in other industries didn't make its way to loyalty. So, what they do at Engage is they provide solutions to help organizations run loyalty programmes, and that can be on the earn side, so when you're a member of a programme and you swipe that credit card or tap that credit card, you earn some points. 

They provide the solutions that a lot of financial institutions use to do that. But he thinks the really exciting thing about what they do is on the redemption side, so when a customer looks to use their points, and really a lot of advancements come there, and one of the things they do today is they're one of the leaders in the pay with point space.

And what that means for their customer is, instead of ordering from that website, or that catalogue, you can now go on to your favourite ecommerce store or pull up to a BP station, tap that card and use your points as a form of currency, so Engage really services the loyalty industry in those two spaces. But again, the exciting part is the pay with points.

Me: And what companies and industries do you think should consider implementing loyalty points as an alternative payment choice?

Len shared that really anyone that's taking any form of payment today, over the past few years they've seen some alternative forms of payments, whether it's different cryptocurrencies or even the BNPL solutions that exist, a loyalty currency is a funded currency, there's no risk with it, it's got that value, it's funded.  

So, any company running a loyalty programme, whether it be a bank, a hotel chain, an airline, they're funding that currency, so if you're looking to accept payments, what you're really doing is exposing your members or your customers to use what effectively is a $200 billion a year currency that gets issued each year, so significant amount of money. So, he doesn't think there's really a specific industry that should accept this, it's all industries that are accepting any form of payment.

Me: And based on your experience in this space Len, could you give our listeners an example of, let's say an industry that the loyalty points works in, and that you found it to be extremely successful and of high value?

Len shared that one of the things that surprised them, so they do this today for companies like Amazon, so the everyday item that you're looking to make that purchase, you can now use your points to check out. 

What they were really surprised with and pleasantly surprised is they brought this to the gas space, or the petrol space, depending what area of the world you live in. So, you can go and fill up your vehicle and tap your points and it presents a real time offer to the customer to use their points and they were amazed at the uptake on that because loyalty typically, people think of it as an aspirational type usage of points. 

But what they've seen with the pandemic and even the way the economy is looking these days is a lot of people are using this to help subsidise just the increased cost of living or those everyday expenses. 

So, it's been a pleasant surprise that through their technology, they allow customers now to offset those everyday expenses that they have. So, he would say those small items, purchasing a coffee that you would every day, and now being able to use your points, that's where they've seen really an incredible impact.

Me: And just listening to you speak, I'm here thinking too with loyalty points, well, at least for the ones that I redeem, for example, at my supermarket, I feel like I patronise this business on a weekly basis, monthly basis consistently and if I'm able to even get two grocery bills paid for fully with loyalty, I almost feel like I'm getting back some investment from doing business with this company over extended and consistent period of time. Is that pretty much how they sell the whole loyalty experience? Because what I found as well is a lot of companies sign you up for loyalty rewards, but then if you don't remember to ask, okay, so can these rewards be redeemed? How does it work? Typically, it just sits there and you don't even know you have points and then you heard they expired.

Len stated that that's really what they're seeing a lot of change in is, especially the programmes you don't interact with every day, like you mentioned, you're visiting that grocery store frequently and that relationship is what loyalty is, it's really a relationship, to use your words, you're going to patronise them by continuously shopping there, and they're going to give you something in return for that. 

And that's where the currency really comes into play, it's letting you know that they value you coming back to that location, time and time again, and they want to give you something back, and really treat you a little different than any other customer that would just walk through the door.

Loyalty Programmes – Cross Exchanges

Me: What are your views, and you can tell me, since you're a loyalty expert in terms of like cross exchanges. So, let's say for example, you have loyalty points from an airline, but you're able to use those loyalty points from the airline at a hotel, or maybe for an attraction that you'd like to visit. Have you seen those kinds of activities happening, is that something you see happening in the future?

Len shared that it's already starting to pick up and so they're from Toronto, so Canadian organization, there was this thing that really only worked in the country for some reason, which were coalition programmes where a lot of different programmes came together, use a common currency. 

And they're seeing a lot more of what you just mentioned, where companies are comfortable with themselves. So, they're saying, “We know you're going to keep interacting and shopping with us, and we're going to issue that currency, but we're going to let you spend it in other places, because you're still seeing the value in where you earn those points.” 

So, if he’s comfortable with the offer he’s providing, and he’s confident that he’s got a relationship with you, then it really is advantageous to tell you, you know what, you can use those points to book a hotel, even though you earn those points from a grocery store or from an airline. And then when you stay at that hotel, you'll reflect back and say, you know, this trip was covered, either in part or the whole thing was covered, because I shopped with insert any company you want here, whether it was Sephora  or was Hilton, it doesn't matter.

Me: And you would remain loyal to the company that allowed you that affordability to have that vacation, as you mentioned, hotel room paid for because of your purchases with them. 

Len agreed absolutely.

In Terms of Loyalty and Rewards – Trends Emerging in 2024

Me: So, in terms of future trends, I know AI I'm sure has some impact on the whole loyalty programmes that are implemented, but as a loyalty expert and seeing that you've been in the space for so long. If you were to give our listeners maybe one or two trends that you see emerging in 2024 and beyond as it relates to loyalty and rewards and using it as a currency on its own, what would those be?

Len shared that he thinks the first one is what Yanique mentioned, it's the ubiquitous nature of those points. So, they're going to be free for you to use and more and more locations and a lot more cross promotions with brands. So, they're going to be very comfortable in their partnerships, they're going to be very forthright with who they want to partner with and you'll be able to fly in on an airline, take a ride share to a restaurant, and that ecosystem will exist to use your points all together. So, he thinks that's the first thing we're really going to see a lot of.  

And he thinks some of the things they've talked about in this industry for years, the personalization for a customer that really wants one experience. Although the technology has been there, it's been hard to manage and implement or just kind of onerous, and bringing tools like machine learning and AI into that space will assist with that. So, he doesn't think it'll be anything ground-breaking, like people tend to predict out there, but a lot of utilization of that technology to execute some strategies that have existed for some time.

App, Website or Tool that Len Absolutely Can’t Live Without in His Business

When asked about online resource that he can’t live without in his business, Len shared that he thinks for them, it's Slack. Just that ability to message. So, personally, he uses a tool called Trello a lot and it helps him organize his thoughts, he’s a pretty visualized person. But he would say the tool that's probably open the most on the screen on his devices is Slack and it’s that ability to message people, especially as they move to a remote work environment, it's really kind of an invaluable tool for them.

Books that Have Had the Biggest Impact on Len

When asked about books that have had a great impact, Len shared that they fall into two categories of things that really interests him. So, he likes a lot of documentaries, biographies, things of that nature. And like mentioned early on, he kind of fell into this space, it was something he enjoyed doing and eventually got into a leadership position. So, anything he can read about understanding how to be a better leader, how to run an organization is really big for him. 

So, anytime he gets a chance, anything he can read or listen to from Simon Sinek is just helpful for him on how to be that that servant leader, there's a great book that really apply to their organization as they grew from Ben Horowitz, which was The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers. And that taught him some great lessons and exposed the fact that growing a business isn't easy, it's not always a straight line and goes in a perfect direction. So, those are the types of books that really helped him on the leadership side. 

And then on the flip side, the artistic side of things is he really admire people that have done some pretty incredible things in whether it's the user experience space, the artistic space, it could be music. So, just recently, he read a book about Jony Ive from Apple, who is the genius behind Apple's greatest products, and he found that to be really inspiring for him.

What Len is Really Excited About Now!

When asked about something that he’s really excited about, Len stated that that’s great question. They've been fortunate to work with some pretty large global organizations. 

So, right now there's some things he can't share the details, but things that are transforming kind of the payment ecosystem with some of the largest brands in the world, that's really exciting. 

It's that opportunity to be truly impactful and to do something differently. So, on the work side, that's something he looks forward to each day, and they've got a team, product and innovation team that really drives a lot of that change here. So, it's exciting for him to actually interact with their team day to day, they've got a fantastic team and working specifically on this project that he’s mentioning, just inspires him.

One Attribute | Characteristic a Leader MUST HAVE to Motivate Their Team 

Me: Now, if you could choose one word or one attribute or characteristic that you believe a leader needs to have in order to have a team that is intrinsically motivated? So, they're not inspired by money, you don't have to dangle things in front of them to get them to do the work it but they're intrinsically motivated because as a leader, you inspire them. What would be that one word or that one trait or characteristic?

Len shared that the word for him is Trust. The people they have at Engage really drive the organisation, he always say that on any of these podcasts or interviews to anyone that's listening is they're really driven by their people. 

And he thinks the thing that they appreciate the most about the leadership and just others in the organization is that level of trust. So, that's not always the case, organizations have people that come and go that don't necessarily exude those characteristics or those traits. But he would say as a leader, if your team can trust you, they know you have their best interests at heart, and they know you're looking out for them, then they're willing to do the same for you.

Me: Alright, awesome. So, trust, I like it.

Where Can We Find Len Online

Website - www.engagepeople.com

LinkedIn – Len Covello

Twitter/ X – Len Covello

Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Len Uses 

When asked about a quote or saying that he tends to revert to, Len shared that he doesn't know that there's a quote, that's a positive quote, they have some funny ones, sometimes probably not appropriate. But he doesn't go to a quote, he tends to go to moments in time that he thought were really beneficial to him. 

So, there's always a point in his career and he remembers it vividly to this day where now a mentor to him saw him at a point where he was still at he'll call it immature in his business acumen and sat him down and taught him how to be more measured. 

And he thinks that's the best thing you can do that a lot of the leaders that he admires have the ability to not get too up on the highs and not get too low on the lows, and just be measured with things and have that opportunity to take a step back, really evaluate the situation and understand that you'll get through it.

Me: All right, awesome. Well, thank you so much Len for taking time out of your very busy day and hopping on this podcast with us and sharing all of the great insights as it relates to loyalty and having it as a viable currency that you can use in an organization. And also looking at some of the emerging trends that we can look forward to in terms of loyalty rewards and points being something that can be more acceptable across the board regardless of where you are, what part of the region you are in the world that customers can just have greater access to benefits from organizations that they love, organizations that they patronise consistently, organizations that have been a part of their lives for so many years, that they can actually have some value out of it through having it as a viable payment option and getting back something in return. It was a great conversation. Thank you so much.

Please connect with us on Twitter @navigatingcx and also join our Private Facebook Community – Navigating the Customer Experience and listen to our FB Lives weekly with a new guest

Links

•     The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers by Ben Horowitz

The ABC’s of a Fantastic Customer Experience

Grab the Freebie on Our Website – TOP 10 Online Business Resources for Small Business Owners 

Do you want to pivot your online customer experience and build loyalty - get a copy of “The ABC’s of a Fantastic Customer Experience.”

The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience provides 26 easy to follow steps and techniques that helps your business to achieve success and build brand loyalty.

This Guide to Limitless, Happy and Loyal Customers will help you to strengthen your service delivery, enhance your knowledge and appreciation of the customer experience and provide tips and practical strategies that you can start implementing immediately!

This book will develop your customer service skills and sharpen your attention to detail when serving others.

Master your customer experience and develop those knock your socks off techniques that will lead to lifetime customers. Your customers will only want to work with your business and it will be your brand differentiator. It will lead to recruiters to seek you out by providing practical examples on how to deliver a winning customer service experience!

Pete Kusiak is the franchise guru who knows how to bring the fun into business. With a track record of success owning and coaching franchises for over 20 years, Pete's innovative strategies have transformed businesses, boosting revenue and workplace happiness. His passion lies in creating organisations that are not only exciting, but also irresistible. By using his Fun First Strategy, Pete motivates teams, improves company culture, and drive sales and operations to new heights. 

When he's not busy making work lively, you can find Pete enjoying quality time with his amazing wife and four kids in Charlotte, North Carolina. Oh, and did I forget to mention he's a seasoned marathon runner and a connoisseur of Rum Punch and Mai Tais! Pete has certification in Happiness Coaching and Human Resources Consulting, making him your go-to-guy for all things fun and business.

Questions

·    Now, we always like to give our guests an opportunity for them to share in their own words, a little bit about your journey. How did you get to connecting fun with business? How did that all come about?

·   So, can you tell our listeners a little bit about your book, Drop the F-Bomb in Your Business and maybe two to three overarching themes that the book focuses on, just like what can they expect from the book?

·    Are there any recommendations you could give to our listeners, like if they wanted to make fun part of their culture, what are some things like from a recruitment perspective you would need to kind of identify in the interview process to kind of pick those persons or at least be able to identify that those persons may have those qualities?

·     Could you share with our listeners what's the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely cannot live without in your business?

·      Can you also share with our listeners maybe one or two books that you've read, it could be a book that you read recently, or even one that you read a very long time ago, but it has had a great impact on you.

·      Now, could you also share with our listeners, what's the one thing that's going on in your life right now that you're really excited about? Either something you're working on to develop yourself or your people.

·       Where can listeners find you online?

·     Now, before we wrap our episodes up, we always like to ask our guests, do you have a quote or a saying that during times of adversity or challenge you will tend to revert to this quote if for any reason you get derailed or you get off track, the quote kind of helps to get you back on track.

Highlights

Pete’s Journey

Me: Now, we always like to give our guests Pete an opportunity for them to share in their own words, a little bit about your journey. How did you get to connecting fun with business? How did that all come about? Can you tell us?

Pete shared that his journey really started way back when he graduated college. And he linked up with a franchise, children's fitness franchise called The Little Gym and it is all about creating these great fun experiences with kids and teaching them how to enjoy being physically active. So, that really carried with him as he progressed through his years in corporate America, because he had eventually made a name for himself and got linked up with the corporate headquarters of that franchise, did some training and consulting, to eventually owning his own Little Gyms in the Charlotte market. 

So, once they built a successful franchise platform in Charlotte, it was time for him to kind of step back from the day to day operations and got more involved in the coaching consulting realm with different brands, mainly in the service industry, but helped build operations, and trainings and coaching and all sorts of good things over the last few years that ultimately led him to sit back and really reflect about why businesses are successful?

Why were his businesses successful?

What was the commonalities between the businesses that didn't have success versus the ones that did? 

And it came down to one thing, it was really easy, the businesses that had the most fun, were the most successful, and he felt that in my businesses, the days or months or years that they were focused on that grind, they were in that mentality of a grind, they weren't as successful as the years they were just enjoying what they were doing and celebrating with their customers, and just creating a culture that was really good. So, the mindset really made a big difference. 

So, what he did was he decided, “Hey, if I could put all of these unique theories and these unique methods into a book, it would really make a great business strategy.” So, a couple years ago, he started writing, and came up with what he called the Fun First Strategy, it's really a way to prioritize making fun, the element in which or the catalyst in which you can have business success. So, kind of a long story there. But it's a wide range from his early beginnings of a teacher and working with kids all the way through working with multiple brands and coaching and consulting, but using those strategies to really propel fun as a catalyst.

Pete’s Book – Drop the F-Bomb in Your Business

Me: So, then you wrote a book called Drop the F-Bomb in Your Business: With The Fun First Strategy. F of course, standing for fun. So, that book was published on January 23 of 2024, correct?

Pete said yes, he was having fun with a wordplay there. Drop the F bomb and what's so neat is that coming from the children's fitness industry, they didn't use foul language, you're working with kids, you don't do that. So, he thought it would kind of be unique to position it as an eye catcher and you get people curious about what he’s talking about. So, having a little fun with words.

Me: It was, I will have you know that when your profile was presented to me via email, that's what caught my attention in the email. So, I was like drop the F bomb. I said, I wonder what he's talking about. And then I did some more research. And I was like, Oh, this sounds pretty interesting. I'd love to have him on our podcast as a guest. So, can you tell our listeners a little bit about your book, and maybe two to three overarching themes that the book focuses on, just like what can they expect from the book? Is it more like narratives in terms of examples of using fun in different businesses and you give like case studies and examples, or is it more so you talking more from a strategy perspective of using fun as that trigger that will help to navigate that experience  

Pete shared that it's really all of the above, because they have to prove that there's a need for fun in business, because a lot of times when you throw that out there, so you need to have more fun in order to be successful in business, people not necessarily agree, everyone for the most part understands that it's important to celebrate the victories, have fun when you win, achieve goals. But his book is really about how you make fun part of the journey, not just the reward, that's a key element. But you really need to know and flip that mindset to, “If we could have fun along the way. If we could build that into our operations, if we could build that into our business environment, our customer service. If we could attract more like minded individuals that want to have fun, and be part of that process, what would that do for your business?”  

So, the book really starts with changing the mindset and can convincing through the philosophy that fun does work, it can create opportunities for more, better problem solving, better creative thought, more work engagement, which is ultimately going to lead to higher profits, better customer service, etc. So, they kind of start there. And then as the book progresses, it takes you through what he calls the playbook. 

The playbook, or the PLAY book is really important because that's the actual strategy sets, that's one of his theories is called The Principle of PLAY and that stands for Prioritize, Laughter and Youth, so when you can find a commonality amongst your people, your team, your culture, your business culture, you can start to employ these play principles so that you're having more unique experiences and getting to those points where everything else is a lot easier, because you're having fun along the way. And so then, toward the end of the book, they talk about the strategies in experiences. So, he actually have written some real life examples of how the first strategy actually worked in different businesses. So, those will be fun to read as well.

Me: All right, that is awesome. So, PLAY you said stands for Prioritize, Laughter and Youth.

Pete stated that's right. So, if you make fun, obviously, the Fun First Strategy, right, prioritize, make it a priority in your business, to make fun part of your culture. And if you can make it number one, great. But laughter, who doesn't want to laugh when you have to work? So, they do that through gameplay in creating opportunities to be a little silly, and youth, youth comes in because he likes to say, consider the things you did as a child, what did you like to do? What games did you play? What activities did you enjoy? Because it's fun to revisit, it's fun to revisit and think about this as you're a child, you're taught through play, you're taught through music, you're taught through song or games and activities. But as we get older, at least here, the education he received was that they had less and less play, they had less and less singing and things like that. 

But why? If we're hardwired to do that, if we're doing that from the beginning, what a neat thing that could potentially shape you as an adult as well if you are hardwired to play and be active and want to take that moment of joy, it's going to change your mindset and everything that you do, right. So, it was important for him that they addressed the grind culture, what he calls the grind culture, and the negativity that happens when you get into a grind culture. 

So, this book really helps you to one, recognize if you're in that culture, but two, the real, true strategy on how to get out of that. Ultimately, his goal was to create more workplace happiness, the goal in the Fun First Strategy is to create environments that are very engaging and fun and create workplace happiness.

Me: Amazing, when I opened your bio this morning to prepare for the podcast interview, I had to do a TV interview this morning, I was helping out a friend who has a business that focuses on indoor playground experience [YG1]  . So, it's targeted towards children but because we live in a tropical country and a lot of times when you take the kids outside, you're so exhausted from the heat and sun, she decided that she was going to create this indoor playground experience with like, soft play and sensory activities, and ball pits and live characters like the ones you see in TV shows, so you have them right there dressed up in front of the kids. And we did a game with the hosts where they had two baskets and two sets of balls, one red, one green and each person had a balloon. 

And the aim was to get as many of your colour balls into the basket without the balloon falling on the ground. But it was so much fun, they had so much fun. Like I was watching the video after I left the TV studio this morning and I was like, they had so much fun, they were like literally back as kids again. And I always say it. I mean, I believe that as adults, we are really big kids, but I find that we get so serious sometimes we take ourselves too seriously, we don't take time to do fun and exciting things that make us laugh, because I do believe that those are things that help to keep you youthful. 

Pete agreed, absolutely. And just think about how that made you feel, right. And that's the principle of play at work, when you can put some silliness into your day, going to be a better problem solver, you're going to be more creative and finding your solutions. Because you're just thinking in that manner, thinking in a playful, creative way. Now, not to say that business is all fun, and not work because he believes that you do have to take business seriously and things that you have to do and reaching goals and measuring your business and all the things that make you financially successful, that's important. 

But if there was a way to make it more fun, if there was a way to get to those goals that are less stressful, or are less of a grind, you would probably do it. So, that's what this is all about, it's about making sure that you're allowing yourself the opportunities to have some fun at work, because you're going to open the doors to like-minded individuals, people that want to come work for you, customers that want to do business with you because the experience is wonderful. Think about the amount of hours we spent working days, we don't want to be caught up in a lifestyle that just is beaten up. He wants to have more life experience. 

Now the key really to this is the common interest, because what's fun for one person may not be fun for the next and in the book he wrote about that, that there are diverse perspectives on fun. And through the strategy and through the book, you can kind of find common interest in there through icebreaker games and different things that you can do at work to find common interest amongst your team, or even with your customers. And then you kind of start to theme things and make things more enjoyable because he likes to run, Yanique had mentioned in his bio that he’s a marathon runner, but that's not fun for everybody. But for him, it's a good opportunity for him to express, move his body, express himself and all the good things that come along with running and staying healthy, to him it was fun. He likes to challenge himself but for the next person it may not be so you have to find those common interests and then build upon those interests as you find them. 

And then one really big caveat is you have to remember the rule of grandma, so, the rule of grandma means if you wouldn't do it in front of your grandmother, you shouldn't do it at work because he’s heard some interesting stories when it comes to fun at work, we don't want to any HR nightmares. So, if you wouldn’t do it in front of grandma, don't do it at all.

Me: As you were talking about loving running, and just being able to express yourself, I'm going to tell you a little secret that unfortunately all of my listeners are going to hear now, but I love to dance, right, now, I'm not a good dancer according to some people who dance really well and see me dance, right? But I believe everybody can dance and everybody can sing. I just believe that maybe they're not doing it to the level or at the capacity or competence that Whitney Houston, or Celine Dion can sing, or Shakira can dance, but I believe I can dance. But I feel so good when I dance, even if it's foolishness I'm doing Pete, it feels good.

Pete stated that that is awesome. And he'll tell you that two things come to mind. One is he spent time in Jamaica when they get the chance to vacation and stuff with his family, they absolutely love the culture, because it is full of life and dancing and movement, joy and singing. And he just loves to be around that type of environment, but he doesn't dance. And what's funny is even in his book he wrote about that as a concept, is that t's okay to enjoy things even if you're not participating. 

So, don't always judge a book by its cover when you're creating games or activities or experiences that involve fun at work. If somebody's just kind of standing by watching, don't jump to the assumption that they're not having fun because if you were to kind of outside looking in at him watching a group of people dance, you’ll say, “Well, how come he is not dancing, he must not be having any fun” but he’s having the time of his life just enjoying you expressing your love for dance, that's a great time, it's a lot of fun for him to be in part of that environment but he’s just not going to dance.

How to Select the Right Candidates for a Company with a FUN Culture?

Me: I get it. So, I have a question for you. The aim is to ensure that you have a fun culture, right? How do you attract people who like to have fun? Are there any recommendations you could give to our listeners, like if they wanted to make fun part of their culture, what are some things like from a recruitment perspective you would need to kind of identify in the interview process to kind of pick those persons or at least be able to identify that those persons may have those qualities?

Pete shared that it's kind of a lot goes into that because one, once you've established that you're a fun culture, it's one thing to write that on a job ad and he thinks that there's a lot of job ads that he’s read recently that promote a fun culture. But again, there's diverse perspectives of fun and if it's a core value in your business, or you're promoting a fun culture, you need to live up to the hype, because he’ll tell you, when somebody is bought into your job ad, because you wrote about the fun, talked about that as a core value, and then they show up for an interview or they're ready to start their work and they don't see that culture in play, they're not going to stay or they're not going to show up again for another interview. 

So, he thinks that you have to kind have to one, establish the fact that you are going to commit to this type of a culture and you're going to live it, you're going to be an embodiment. And what that fun version is for you, as the leader of the organization, the owner of the organization, the managers of the organization, whatever that model of fun is, it's okay for you to own it, because you're going to have people that may be aligned with your version of fun and there may be some people that don't. So, when you write job ads and you promote the job that you're ready to hire, you want to give very specific reasons of what you're doing to provide that fun culture. 

So, if you like to do a lot of outings or if you'd like to do a lot of silly themes during your week, there was one company he worked with, they love everything and any cats. So, they talked about, “Hey, we have a silly, fun culture at our business.” And they would talk about this in interviews because we are qyuirky they love everything cat, if you're a cat person, reach out because you'll fit right in. Now again, if he doesn't like cats, okay, but if he thinks that that's an interesting culture for him to want to be a part of, he can maybe align with that. So, he likes to say, one, establish what fun is for you. Give examples of that in your job ads. But embrace the uniqueness, embrace the uniqueness.  

One of the biggest mistakes, especially small business owners make is they don't embrace the charm of small business, there's a uniqueness and a charm in small business that you can do things a little bit outside of work. And when people are interviewing, or people are applying for jobs, what they'll do is they'll apply for a lot of different reasons based on the title or the qualifications, things like that. So, as a hiring manager, he’s competing with small business, medium business, large business, corporations and he doesn't want his interview, he doesn't want to his job ads, he doesn't want those things to be exactly like everybody else. And too many times he sees small businesses, especially write their job ads, and shake them like a large corporation and that's okay until the individual comes in to see the environment they're working, oh, well, this isn't the 10 story building they interviewed in last week. Instead, embrace what makes you different, embrace that small charm, because he thinks you're going to attract people that are looking for that type of opportunity, or they know what it is going into. Does that make sense?

Me: Yep, it does, perfect sense.

App, Website or Tool that Pete Absolutely Can’t Live Without in His Business

When asked about an online resource that he cannot live without in his business, Pete stated that in his business, he loves QuickBooks. So, he can't live without QuickBooks, that's how he does all his bookkeeping, all his invoicing and all his administrative. So, QuickBooks is a great online resource for them.

Books that Have Had the Biggest Impact on Pete

When asked about books that have had a great impact, Pete shared that he’s been thinking about this a lot, because he’s read a lot of business books. And one of the reasons he was so interested in writing a business strategy book was because he’s had so many that were multiple steps, or the 50 laws or 100 steps to whatever and they're long and they're cumbersome. So, his book is a little bit more about keeping it short. There is a book though that he read a few years ago it's called David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants, it's by Malcolm Gladwell. And he thought he was picking up a spiritual book at first, spiritual books and different things as a man of faith, but he thought it was picking a spiritual book and it was to a degree, but it was about all these stories and all these examples of how the underdog isn't always necessarily the underdog, but we perceive the smaller, or the weaker, or whatever, as disadvantaged, sort of like David and Goliath. 

But why is it that the underdog always excels? It's because sometimes what's perceived as a disadvantage, could actually be an advantage. And it was so compelling to him and the stories were so compelling that it really made him think about how he was raised, and some things because he wasn't raised very wealthy and things like that, and how he had to problem solve his way to get to things, whether it be to sporting events or practices, different things, and if he wanted new shoes, or different whatever, he had to problem solve that as a young child. 

And so, as he became a business owner, a business person later on down the road, he started remembered, “Hey, I can figure out pretty much any problem that comes my way because I practice those skills so early on” and growing up, he thought it was a huge disadvantage, he didn't have the things his friends had, they didn't have as much money, but he used those skills every day of his life now. So, that book is a great example of perceived ideas on disadvantages, they actually may be the things that are strengthening. So, it was a really neat perspective.

What Pete is Really Excited About Now!

When asked about something he’s excited about, Pete shared like he said, the book is out so he’s just celebrating his work, he call it his life's work, his big strategy. It's really taking up a lot of his time and he loves it, he loves being able to spread the word about adding fun into work and creating workplace happiness. He thinks it's a movement for sure and he loves being on the kind of the precipice of this new business ideology that if we can add more fun, engaging experiences we can create workplace happiness for everybody. So, he loves being a part of that, so, that's huge for him. So, spreading the word.

Where Can We Find Pete Online

Website  - www.funfirststrategy.com

Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Pete Uses 

When asked about a quote or saying that he tends to revert to, Pete shared that being a marathon runner, or being somebody that runs, his mantra ever has always been, “Never, never give up.” So, that echoes in his mind a lot as he start a new venture, start a run, especially a long run that he doesn't know if has the energy, just keep moving, keep moving, “And remember to have fun.”

Me: All right, perfect. So, never, never give up. And always remember to have fun. I had fun in this interview.

Pete shared he did as well, he couldn't pass up the chance to chat with somebody from Jamaica. So, love it.

Me: Warm my heart, warm my heart. Thank you so much, Pete, we really appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedule. I know you're busy promoting the book and spreading the message. So, taking a good 30 minutes out of your day to sit with us and share all these great insights and nuggets about what you're doing and just how it can help to improve and increase on workplace happiness and just human happiness, to make people just enjoy life more and not take themselves so seriously. But all while getting the job done and achieving the goals that we're all working towards, it was really a fun and productive conversation. Thank you so much.

Please connect with us on Twitter @navigatingcx and also join our Private Facebook Community – Navigating the Customer Experience and listen to our FB Lives weekly with a new guest

Links

•     Drop the F-Bomb in Your Business: With The Fun First Strategy by Pete Kusiak

•     David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants by Malcolm Gladwell

The ABC’s of a Fantastic Customer Experience

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Ali Cudby, CEO of Alignmint Growth Strategies, which is a dynamic force in business transformation through intentional customer experiences. With a mission to drive growth by architecting superior customer interactions, Ali's expertise aligns strategy and implementation. She is the author of the bestselling book, Keep Your Customers, she offers fresh insights from real-world stories, best practices and CEO-led case studies. 

Her MINT Method, outlined in the book, fuels transformational customer loyalty. With 20+ years in corporate planning and strategic marketing, Ali founded Alignmint in 2014, focusing on small to mid-size companies. As a Purdue University entrepreneurship instructor, she shapes the next generation of business leaders. Ali's podcast appearances showcase her wealth of knowledge in customer experience, growth strategies and intentional business success.

Questions

·      If you could share a little bit with our listeners, how you got from where you were, to where you are today?

·      You are the author of the bestselling book, Keep Your Customers. So, could you share with our listeners a little bit about that book? And maybe just two to three overarching themes that the book focuses on.

·      The MINT Methodology.

·     Now, Ali, could you also share with us what's the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely can't live without in your business?

·      Could you also share with our listeners maybe one or two books that have had a great impact on you, it could be a book that you read a very long time ago, or even one that you've read recently, but it had a great impact on you.

·      Now, Ali, could you also share with our listeners what's the one thing that's going on in your life right now that you're really excited about? Either something you're working on to develop yourself or your people.

·      Where can listeners find you online?

·      Before we wrap our episodes up, Ali, we always like to ask our guests, do you have a quote or a saying that during times of adversity or challenge, you'll tend to revert to this quote if for any reason you got derailed or you got off track, the quote kind of helps to get you back on track.

Highlights

Ali’s Journey

Me: So, we always like to give our guests an opportunity to share in their own words a little bit about their journey, even though your bio gives us a formal breakdown of what you've done in the past and who you are, you're an author and the different strategies that you've employed to get to where you are, just in your own words, if you could share a little bit with our listeners, how you got from where you were, to where you are today?

Ali shared that she got into this world of customer loyalty and retention in her first job out of business school. And she was working for The New York Times company in their corporate strategy group, which was kind of like an internal consulting group, and was put on a project in the call centre, which honestly wasn't really considered to be an awesome assignment, it was sort of the call centre was in a warehouse in New Jersey, and not in the very lovely corporate headquarters in Times Square.  

And people were coming up to her and saying, “Oh, I'm so sorry that you've got this gig.” And ultimately, it transformed her thinking about the customer experience and created this path for her entire career. Because it showed her this insight, which is that the things that companies do inside their organization are the things that impact the customer experience. 

So, you have to be really thoughtful about how do you deliver clear and consistent processes for the customer and make sure that you embed that with your team so that your customers can have this great experience. So, that time at the New York Times company was a really long time ago, and she’s had the opportunity now to see this in action in corporate America and in her own path as an entrepreneur and in a very wide range of companies. And so, that's kind of how she started out in this very corporate role.

Keep Your Customers

Me: Now, in your bio we also read that you are the author of the bestselling book, Keep Your Customers. So, could you share with our listeners a little bit about that book? And maybe just two to three overarching themes that the book focuses on.

Ali shared that the book was published, and it came out on April 15, 2020, which as you recall was a little bit of a crazy time. And so, she spent two years putting the book together and making sure that it had everything just perfect and all these speaking engagements lined up and all that stuff. And then the month before the book was published, the world changed. 

And it was really interesting, because the book really focuses on exactly what she was just talking about, what are the things that you can do in your company, to set your customers up for success. 

And she talked about one of the key themes being the balance of heart and smart. And what she means by that is, in order to make customers want to stay with you longer and spend more, and tell all of their friends and colleagues, you have to make people feel seen, heard and valued. 

And we tend to think about that emotional connection to our customers as being a little bit fluffy sometimes and that's a real mistake. The fact of the matter is that humans have a real need to feel like they matter and when you build relationships and when you build trust with your customers, it sets you up for a better business relationship. And that's the heart of the customer experience. 

And then the smart of the customer experience is that you still have to have data and metrics and process in order to ensure consistency. If you don't capture information and learn from it and have a great single source of truth about your customer information so that everybody inside your company knows what's going on with your customers. If you don't have clear and consistent processes that everybody follows, then it's going to be really hard to set up processes for growth. 

So, you can have just like heart-centred employees who really want to do the right thing all the time, but if everybody's doing their own right thing, then you have a mess and what you need is this consistency. So, it's that balance of heart and smart that really drives success in the customer experience.

The MINT Methodology

Me: All right, so the heart and smart. Now, you also speak about your MINT Methodology and I'm going to take a quick guess here that MINT is actually an acronym, right?

Ali stated that it is sort of an acronym. It is a four step process. She really tried hard to make it a cool acronym, and it never quite gelled. But she can talk through the four steps of the process. And the name of her company is actually as you said, it's Alignmint Growth Strategies. And the mint part of it is really intentional, not just because of the method, but because of what mint represents. 

So, when you plant mint, it grows like crazy and when things are awesome, they're in mint condition. And when you make a lot of money, you make a mint. And so, the combination of aligning and mint is exactly what they're looking for in terms of their customers outcomes. 

And so, the MINT method is this four step process where first you are articulating what she calls a bullseye, which is a mission statement effectively for the customer experience. So, companies oftentimes create mission and vision and values for their company, but it's really all about their company. And what people need to do and what companies need to do is also articulate who it is that we want to be on behalf of our customers. Because if you have a goal of being fast and easy, that is going to set you up for a very different customer experience than if you have a goal of being white glove and luxurious. 

And so, in the same way that you want to articulate who you are for your company, you need to articulate who you are for your customers. And so, that's the first step of the process, that's the creating of the mantra of the bullseye. 

Second is understanding who those customers are, really being clear about who it is that you're serving.

·      Why are they loyal to you?

·      What is it that those best customers want?  

So that you are thinking about how you drive more of them. And then she goes into a lot of detail in the book about how do you identify and articulate not just who buys the most from you, but who's the most loyal to you, you can have a really big customer that isn't loyal at all, but they drive a lot of revenue. 

And you can have a small customer that would live and die for you and they tell everybody that they know about how awesome you are, you want those people. And then once you know who it is that you're serving and who you want to get more of, then what do you want their journey to look like? 

So, being very clear about what that customer journey looks like, what are the key inflection points throughout that journey. 

And then finally, the fourth step is identifying clear plays so that everybody inside your company knows exactly what to do whenever a customer gets to that inflection point on the customer journey. So, whether that's the onboarding, kick-off, the business review meeting, or the renewal period, or anything in between, every company has its own unique set of inflection points, some of them follow some level of consistency, onboarding and renewal or repurchase are fairly consistent. But everybody does it a little bit differently, everyone needs to be clear about how they want their company to engage with customers at each of those points along the journey map. 

And again, that's how you make sure that you're delivering something that is not just a well-intentioned approach, but a really thoughtful and strategic approach to retention and growth.

App, Website or Tool that Ali Absolutely Can’t Live Without in Her Business

When asked about online resource that she can’t live without in her business, Ali stated that it's probably Zoom. She stated that that's not a very creative answer but she’s on Zoom all the time, every day, she works remotely for the most part. And so, that's her rock.

Books that Have Had the Biggest Impact on Ali

When asked about books that have had a great impact on her, Ali shared that there's a book called The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work by Shawn Achor, and he is a professor of positive psychology at Harvard. And the whole science of positive psychology is fascinating, the way that we create new neural pathways, the way that we can define in our brains how to be more positive, and how to cultivate happiness. And so, his book is just fascinating and he also has a TED Talk, if you don't feel like reading the whole book, he has a TED Talk that is fantastic, it's funny, he's a great speaker, and he gives you some very clear actionable steps at the end of the TED Talk that are very helpful in helping people stay focused on the positivity and moving forward. And she just thinks that his whole approach and that TED Talk, that's one of her favourites.

What Ali is Really Excited About Now!

When asked about something that she’s really excited about, Ali shared that she just got a puppy. She stated that she knows that that's not necessarily a business thing. But she will tell you that watching her puppy play and explore and be curious about this new world that she has come into is fascinating.  

And it is a great reminder that there's so much that is new and interesting in the world and it's easy sometimes to get into a very fixed mindset about what we do, and the things that we engage with from day to day and moment to moment. You get up and you make your coffee and you sort of go through your rigmarole and sometimes it feels a little bit like, “All right, I’m going to check my boxes, I'm going to do my thing and it's one foot in front of the other” and when you get a puppy who just has this completely new way of engaging with the same old things that you're reacting to every day, whether it's some snow on the ground or a sock on the floor, it reminds you to be open to different ways of seeing the world and she finds that to be helpful in business.  

So, she’s been trying to be intentional about using this lesson that her little ball of fluff is teaching her and just be open to the fact or to the notion that maybe she can approach things differently, maybe she can rethink things and come at them with more of a sense of wonder and play and excitement.

Me: That's amazing. You'd be surprised to know the many different life lessons we can learn from animals. So, I think it's awesome that your puppy is teaching you so many different new ways and perspectives of looking at things from a different view.

Where Can We Find Ali Online

Website – www.alignmintforgrowth.com

LinkedIn - Ali Cudby

Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Ali Uses