Podcasting Secrets

"Personal relationships are the fertile soil from which all advancement, all success, all achievement in real life grows." -Ben Stein, American writer, lawyer, actor, comedian, and political and economic commentator

Relationships aren’t just important in our personal lives. 85% of positions are filled through networking, and 70% of people found a job through connections in a company (Source: review42.com). So how do we build strong relationships in our business? 

Craig Earnshaw started off as the founder of LifeLink. He sold the company in 2004 and currently works as a startup investor. He is also currently a professor of entrepreneurship at Brigham Young University in Provo, UT, specializing in teaching IT entrepreneurship.

In this episode, Craig and I will discuss the secrets of successful business relationships.

When Craig first started his company, they only had about 40 employees. With each employee, Craig would sit down and talk to them. One of the things he talked to employees about was honesty. He would specifically talk to them about being honest with themselves, their team, and their customers. 

By being honest with themselves, Craig means that if an employee is not capable of the job, Craig would ask that they tell him, not covering it up or faking it. He promised that if they came to him for help he would help them. He’s hired people with geology degrees and, through working together, has made them into developers. 

Along the same lines, Craig asked his employees to be honest with their teams. Being honest with our teams creates an understanding that helps us to create camaraderie in a working environment. We shouldn’t fake it with our teams either and should ask for help if we need it. 

Third, and probably most important for the company, is absolute honesty with our customers. LifeLink sold to all of the biggest life insurance companies in the country; it was a dangerous world to work in, with giant companies trying to help them sell a complicated product. All kinds of mistakes could be made, and the liabilities were quite large. In the 25 years that Craig worked at LifeLink, he was never involved in a lawsuit. He attributes this to the fact that he was always honest with his customers and knew how to manage expectations.

“The most important thing you can do in your life is to manage expectations” -Craig Earnshaw

Craig didn’t start out his career as a salesman, but as he and the company became more sophisticated they learned how to sell better. Many of their competitors were telling insurance companies “We are the smartest guys on the planet. We have the coolest software. We always deliver on time, and we don't have any bugs.” This kind of approach set their clients’ expectations extremely high, too high for them to meet. Then, it harmed the relationship when they were not able to meet the expectations.

Craig and his company, on the other hand, loved to tell insurance companies “This only works if we have a partnership with you. You have to tell us what you need, and then we have to try to deliver that to you. We’ll do our best, but I want you to remember that we’re just the dumb software guys.” It was Craig’s favorite line to tell them, and he’d say it to every client at least 10 times. 

When we set expectations that low we can always over-deliver. That was Craig’s goal: under-promise, set the bar low, and then over-deliver. We must be transparent and honest but do it immediately. As soon as we start promising the moon, we’ll be in big trouble because nobody has control over that.

Along the same lines, saying no is one of the best ways to give us credibility. If we’re able to say no when people ask for new features or ask us to do new things that are not our core competency, it actually gives us more credibility because we’re not over-committing.

When Craig teaches his class, he often draws a pyramid and tells his students that it represents the number of life insurance agents, the worst agents are at the bottom and the best agents are at the top. Then Craig will ask his students “Who am I trying to sell to in that pyramid?” Almost everybody will pick some place in the middle of the pyramid and draw lines, saying he’s selling from here up. Craig will then explain to them that he doesn’t really want to be selling to the very bottom or the very top of the pyramid. 

Those at the bottom of the pyramid are often too casual. They’re usually not full-time agents and not worth the time or trouble. Those at the top of the pyramid can also be a lot of trouble. They’re often super demanding, accustomed to having things like custom illustrations done for every presentation. They probably have a staff of six or eight people, and they look to Craig as another member of their staff. No matter how hard we might try to make those guys happy, we just can’t. Craig tried to focus on the sweet spot or ideal customer in the middle of the triangle.

When I asked Craig who the most credible person in his life is, he quickly responded by telling me about his father. His dad has never let Craig down. The whole time Craig was growing up, his dad was a bishop (the unpaid minister of their local congregation), and Craig was always proud of that. When Craig’s dad was released as bishop, there was a meeting where everybody said what a wonderful guy Bill Earnshaw was, and Craig says that was one of the proudest moments of his life.

When Craig was about 15 years old, he told his dad he wanted to get his pilot's license. His family didn’t have a lot of money, but instead of telling Craig no, his dad told him he’d look around and see if he could find a way for Craig to get it. He found a flight instructor who was building a plane in his garage. The man agreed to hire Craig, giving him one hour of instruction for every two hours of work. Craig got his license for a total of $400, only paying for the plane. 

Craig’s dad connected with his son through a level 10 passion just as we can connect with our customers through their high-level passions. Craig’s father found Craig’s level 10 passion which was becoming a pilot, and he figured out how to help Craig achieve that. By doing that, he associated himself with Craig’s level 10 passion, and his credibility and connection with Craig increased.

“You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.” -Dale Carnegie

Craig’s best mentor in his business life was a man named Walt. He was a customer, and Craig ended up working in Walt’s office because Craig’s company did so much work for them and the insurance company they represented. Walt, in the kindest way, used to tell Craig that he couldn’t sell worth anything, present worth a darn, or manage people worth a darn. Then he helped Craig improve each of those weaknesses. 

Walt took Craig to lunch all the time, never letting Craig pay for lunch. Craig kept trying to pay, but Walt would never let him pay for lunch, saying, “No, you’ll have somebody you’re mentoring later in your life and you can buy their lunch.” Because of that, now Craig takes two or three of his students to lunch every week and pays for it.

The secret to giving advice is first we have to gain credibility. Once we establish credibility, then we can give the most direct advice or the advice that is necessary but hurtful. When we’ve established a relationship, we can really help the people we’re mentoring. When they take that advice and their life improves because of it, our credibility increases. 

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Craig for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

1. We must be honest with ourselves, our teams, and our customers to help each other and build a great working environment.
2. Don’t over-commit. It is much easier to over-deliver on our promises when we set the bar lower initially.
3. Potential customers on the low and high ends of our pyramids often are not worth the effort it takes to sell to them. If we focus on the middle of the pyramid it is often the sweet spot of our ideal customers.
4. Our credibility can increase if we can connect through level 10 passions in our relationships.
5. In order to give good advice, we must first establish a relationship and credibility with those we’re advising. Once we do that, they will be more likely to listen and trust our advice. When the advice works, it helps to further increase our credibility. 

Connect with Craig

If you enjoyed this interview and want to connect with Craig you can find him on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/angelcearnshaw/. 

1. Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business.
2. Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
3. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
4. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher. 
5. Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story 

What are the most successful ways to build business relationships? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/44-5-secrets-to-successful-business-relationships/

Whether it’s starting a business or investing in stocks, our endeavors often come with risks. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), approximately 20% of new businesses fail during the first two years of being open, 45% fail during the first five years, and 65% during the first 10 years. And as much as 90% of people lose their money in stock markets (Source: Research & Ranking). 

These statistics may be discouraging, but risks can yield a big reward too. For example, when Whole Foods Market was created in the 1980s the United States had less than six natural food stores. There wasn’t evidence that there was a large market for natural and organic food. Despite its rocky start, Whole Foods was able to become the industry-leading grocery-store chain for healthy food (Source: Washington State University). Whole Foods Market now operates 472 stores worldwide with a net income of $245 million (Source: Statista).

“The biggest risk is not taking any risk... In a world that is changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.” -Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook

Justin Hatch has taken some risks in his career. Some of them have panned out while others didn’t. However, in both failure and success, he learned from the chances he took, and he used the lessons he learned to create a successful business that helps others understand their endeavors and calculate their risks.

Justin Hatch was a VP for Profire Energy. and helped take the company from 4 employees to 150. He was the CEO of Strategy SMB, an idea development and business planning software company. Justin is now the CEO of Reach Reporting, a software made to absorb complexity and simplify financial reporting. He believes there are innumerable unsolved problems the world contains, and there are equally as many people that are looking at those problems with questioning eyes. In addition, he believes in finding and pursuing your passion.

Here are two experiences Justin had that led to creating Reach Reporting.

Growing up, Justin, like many entrepreneurs, was the kind of person that didn’t mesh well with school. He struggled with focus. He struggled with the system, and because of that, he didn’t plan to go to college. So after high school finished, he wasn’t sure what to do. He was given a lot of counsel and advice, but one piece stuck with him; he was told that he should start a business. Justin took the advice to heart. 

He knew how to paint, so he started painting apartment buildings. It was grueling work, but it was a lucrative job. He was able to support his young family on the salary it gave him. Over time, people started asking him if he knew how to do other services like repair drywall. Justin usually answered, “No, but I can figure it out.” He bought tools for tasks that weren’t part of his business, and he spent far too much time and money trying to learn how to do these other odd jobs. He could barely make ends meet. It wasn’t a very good business strategy. Because he didn’t have a firm hold on his spending, he was never able to have more than just barely enough.

Not long after, Justin was approached by an oil and gas company. He worked as a VP for them for several years and helped them reach the next level in their business. At the end of 2014, he felt like he didn't fit with this business anymore, so he resigned. He and his wife had some money saved, some stock options, and some equity, so they had enough cash to build a little business. 

After about a year, they lost a lot of value in stock after it plummeted. Justin spent many sleepless nights watching the stock drop. He was losing $75k a day for about a week and a half, and he ended up having to pay just under $400k in taxes. He realized that other people are losing money and don’t have a firm grasp on their financials too, and he wanted to help them.

After this loss, Justin started thinking about what things would have really helped him as a 22-year-old entrepreneur. He realized that if he could have understood the information he had about his finances, he would have been able to make better financial decisions. He brought in a partner, and they started brainstorming ideas for a business, wondering if there was a market for a business that could help, not only young entrepreneurs like Justin but all kinds of business owners. This brainstorming session would eventually lead to the creation of Reach Reporting.

Reach Reporting became something that solved a problem for people that brought them pain, and it solved it in a way that enabled them to be so much more successful. Their goal became doing anything they could with financial reporting to make their customers more successful and to help them grow their business.

“Ignorance is not a bad thing but it is a thing that we need to recognize. We are so much more powerful if we can understand how ignorant we are of something.” -Justin Hatch

Reach Reporting is a dashboard and reporting system that gives businesses the ability to see and understand their data in a way that is unique. Reach pulls the data out of the accounting software and applies it to a series of reports and dashboards. 

If you're looking for a deeper understanding of your business, you can use Reach to help you. Maybe you don't understand the balance sheet as well as you’d like to or you want to have a deeper understanding of it. Reach Reporting’s goal is to absorb complexity so that the customer doesn't have to. They connect to the accounting software you use, pull the data, aggregate it, and put it into beautiful reports and dashboards. You don't have to lift a finger unless you want to. Their customers have built incredible reports with this software. 

Justin went through a lot of hard times on the journey to creating Reach Reporting. Most of us have a long road before we reach success, but we can’t give up. Justin believes that there is something in each of us that we can do that nobody else can. The key is to recognize what two or three skill sets we have that can have a dramatic and meaningful effect on an industry,  market, or person. It’s going to take grit, a good mindset, humility, and a strong work ethic, but we can make it through hard times and accomplish our goals.

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” -Viktor Frankl, Austrian neurologist, psychiatrist, philosopher, author, and Holocaust survivor

According to Deloitte and Touche, customer-centric companies were 60% more profitable compared to companies that were not focused on the customer (Source: Building a Story Brand). People don’t trust what companies say about themselves anymore, but they do trust what customers say. We can seek customer testimonials to not only boost our confidence in our products and services but also to share how customers have used our products and services with potential customers. When we focus on what our customers have done, it makes them the hero of the story and shows potential customers that they can be the hero too.

Thank you Justin for sharing your stories and secrets. Here are some of the key takeaways from today’s episode that stood out to me.

1. We can utilize tools such as Reach Reporting software to understand our business and make informed, data-driven decisions.
2. After we’ve gone through hard times we can use the knowledge we’ve gained to help others in similar situations.
3. Realize and accept that the road to success is going to be a long one.
4. It’s going to take grit, a good mindset, humility, and a strong work ethic to endure hard things.
5. The more knowledge we have the more we will be able to assess the risks before us and make informed decisions. No matter how much we know we can always learn more.
6. Make the customer the hero in your storytelling.
7. Seek testimonials from our customers. Not only do they boost confidence in our products and service, but they are also great for grabbing the attention of potential customers.

To learn more about or connect with Justin and his company, please visit: https://www.linkedin.com/in/justinwhatch or

https://ReachReporting.com 

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What have you learned from a risk you or others have taken? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/43-how-losing-750k-led-justin-hatch-to-build-a-successful-software-company/

“What new technology does is create new opportunities to do a job that customers want done.” -Tim O’Reilly, founder of O'Reilly Media

Technology has created a new type of venture, digital ventures. As the internet and technology become more and more part of our lives it is essential that businesses take advantage of them. Brad Pace has been a part of 8 successful digital ventures that we discuss in today’s episode.

Brad Pace is a former business partner of mine. We were partners in SocialNexus, where we did a lot of work creating digital ventures with Brazilian companies. He has also worked on many other successful digital ventures, including Ancestry.com, MyFamily.com, About.com, Finicity, World Vital Records, and more. He is currently the president of TeamDial.

Early in his career, Brad heard about Ancestry and decided to go work there. He was their 30th employee and one of the first developers working on myfamily.com. Myfamily.com became very successful, one of the top ten most-used internet sites. It was one of the first photo-sharing sites. At the time Myspace was one of the only other social networks, but people weren’t sharing photos there, and MySpace didn’t have a lot of the traditional social networking features. Brad and his coworkers made it really easy for users to share photos between them and their extended family. They had more photos shared on their network than anyone else on the internet. At the time, it was the second-largest subscription service on the internet. Also at Ancestry, Brad helped build the first online family tree.

In the year 2000, About.com was very popular. About.com had guides who published content on hundreds of topical sites. They specialized in human-curated content and it was one of the top five internet properties. Brad worked for a company that had been purchased by About.com.

After About.com, Brad worked for Finicity, an online budgeting system. Their system was based on the envelope budgeting system when you have an envelope with your budget for food, an envelope for spending, etc., and can only spend what is in the envelope. When most people stopped using physical money, Finicity was the first to bring the envelope budgeting system online. However, they didn’t have a platform mentality. Finicity thought their value was in the subscription to use their software, but the actual value was in the data they were collecting. A new company called Mint came along, offering the whole thing for free, and then monetized with the data. Mint had a platform mentality and understood the value of the data they were collecting. Brad stressed the importance of entrepreneurs today having a platform mentality.

While Brad was working for Finicity, the founder of Ancestry called Brad and told him about a new business he wanted to start. Brad joined him and they co-founded World Vital Records, a company similar to Ancestry, but instead of owning the content, World Vital Records leased it. With this system, they were able to approach content owners throughout the world who had refused to sell to Ancestry. World Vital Records leased the content, putting it in their database and paying the content owners a percentage based on the content’s usage. World Vital Records monetized the family history records by selling subscriptions to members. 

Around this time, Facebook announced that they were going to let third parties develop on their platform. Brad and his cofounder decided they were going to build an app for Facebook that customers could use to connect with their families. They called the app We’re Related. At the time, you couldn’t go on Facebook and say this is my dad, brother, mom, etc. In a short period of time, the app reached more than 60 million users and became the fourth largest Facebook app based on the number of app installs. They received an offer to buy from The Walt Disney Internet Group because of this success. 

However, this is a perfect example of building a skyscraper on someone else’s land. After Facebook saw the success of We’re Related, they implemented some similar functionality into the core Facebook offering. Then, they implemented new policies to make it very difficult for We’re Related to compete. The parent company of We’re Related ultimately sold their assets for an amount far less than what Disney had been willing to pay. 

We should do our best to build our ventures on land or platforms we can control. If we do build our ventures on someone else’s land, we should also build something on a different piece of land that we own, and working to drive people from the leased land to the land we own. Entrepreneurs almost always underestimate the risk related to building their business on other platforms or leased land, and this often is very destructive. 

After World Vital Records, Brad went on to co-found SocialNexus. At this venture, Brad and I helped build several digital ventures in Brazil and built niche social sites. We funded the business by doing consulting work and put much of the profits back into the business to build our own sites. In our consulting work, we helped Brazilian companies to take concepts that were working in the US and roll them out in Brazil. This is a monetization model called “cool hunting.”

After we sold SocialNexus, Brad became one of the 6 founders of Partner Fusion. Brad and his partners worked in the travel and entertainment space but wanted to pivot into being a platform and product company. Partner Fusion began by working in many different verticals, such as hotel booking sites, airline ticket sites, show tickets sites for Las Vegas, health and nutrition sites, etc. They tested all these sites and ran with the best one which was in the hotel space. After that, they focused on selling hotel rooms and changed their name to TravelPass. They sold hotel rooms to big online travel agencies (OTAs) like Expedia, Priceline, and Booking.com and became an OTA themselves.

In spite of competing with these large OTAs, TravelPass had a lot of success. They were able to compete with companies like Booking.com--which buys more ads from Google than anyone else in the world--because they were scrappy and agile; they had the flexibility that Booking.com didn’t. They were also paying attention to the small details and therefore knew their customers really well. Another key element to their success was their platform. Instead of regurgitating 500 results as other platforms did, their platform pulled hotel inventory in, figured out who had the best price, and gave that price to their customers.

They doubled their growth every year, and in 4 years they grew it to $450 million in annual revenue, doing $1.5 million in bookings every day.

After TravelPass, Brad moved on to Soar.com, a company that helps coaches run their businesses. Brad had never had a coach before, but he quickly learned the value of having a personal coach, whether it’s for your business, personal life, health, etc. Soar.com built their platform so every coach could run their business as a small business. Many didn’t know how to manage their business or understand who their target audience was. To help with this, Soar.com provided master classes, zoom conferencing, billing, and help with marketing.

At the same time, part of Soar.com focused on voice technology with an app for Amazon Alexa and other virtual assistants. One of Soar.com’s customers was one of the top sales training companies in the world who had a lot of content (hours of video, voice, etc.) that would sit on their website unused. Brad and his associates made all of that content available to them by building an app to provide the best info through voice technology. With this app’s great tagging and searching technology, their customers are able to ask their virtual assistant things like, “What are the four sales techniques that I need to use?” and it will play the audio that they are looking for.

Users can also upload their own audio. Brad uploaded a recording of his grandfather from the 1960s singing songs at his 80th birthday party. Brad was able to play this for his day by simply saying “play Grandpa Western.”

Brad’s latest venture is a startup company called Teamdial. A friend of his had been running and building technology for a call center for more than 8 years. Brad came in and suggested that they make this software self-serve. TeamDial allows people to organize and make their outbound calls from their small team. They have realized that even with social media, email, and texting, the best way to connect to customers is still through voice.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Brad for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

1. As Brad did with Finicity, we may be able to take something that works in the physical world and transfer it into the digital world.
2. As with the, We’re Related Facebook app, we should build skyscrapers on the land that we own, and avoid building our skyscrapers on leased land.
3. Brad and I both had connections to Brazil before doing SocialNexus. We can find successful concepts or products from one market and use our connections to take them to another market. This is called “cool hunting.”
4. Just like Partner Fusion/TravelPass tested many different verticals and then decided to focus on hotel bookings, we can also test different opportunities, and then focus on the opportunity that proves the most successful.  
5. We can add new product lines by selling coaching to our existing customers. 

Connect with Brad

If you enjoyed this interview and want to connect with Brad or his business, you can find him on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/radpace or visit his company’s website at https://www.teamdial.com/.  

1. Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business
2. Subscribe to the Monetization eMagazine.
3. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
4. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher. 
5. Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story 

Could “cool hunting” work for you? Is there a product that has proven successful in one market you could take to another market? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/42-how-brad-pace-helped-create-8-successful-digital-ventures-including-one-that-reached-450-million-in-annual-revenue/

In the early days of Eric Farr’s company BrainStorm, Inc. a client came to them about a problem with an order. Their client needed the order for a training meeting the next Monday and Eric’s company promised they would have the order in their European office in time for the training. Later the BrainStorm team discovered that the only way they’d be able to get the order to the client in time was to fly there themselves, bringing the order with them. 

Eric, the company CEO, bought a last-minute flight on the Friday morning before the training with almost too many layovers to count. Eventually, he and the order ended up in Scotland, where the client was. He delivered the order and stayed in Scotland with the client for about two hours before flying back to the United States.

That client then became one of the top five clients of BrainStorm for several years. This story has become company lore at BrainStorm. The company teaches and strives for this kind of dedication to their commitments in dealing with all their clients.

"There's a difference between interest and commitment. When you're interested in doing something, you do it only when it's convenient. When you're committed to something, you accept no excuses - only results." -Ken Blanchard, author, business consultant, and motivational speaker

Eric Farr is the owner and executive officer of BrainStorm, Inc., a software company that offers a SaaS platform that helps large organizations manage employee change, providing solutions and methodology that not only help employers train their employees but also enact real change in their organizations. Eric received his Bachelors in economics from Brigham Young University and went on to receive his MBA from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

One of the goals of Eric’s company is to make the value their business provides clients much greater than the cost of their products or services. Because of this goal, they strive not only to follow through with their commitments but also to go above and beyond what their clients expect from their commitments. As in the story above, their client likely didn’t expect Eric to personally haul their order across the world. But Eric had made a commitment, and he was going to follow through with it because it was the right thing to do.

This legendary story has sparked many other stories of how the company has provided value to its customers by exceeding expectations. Because the company has Eric’s story to live up to, they keep going the extra mile because it is a part of the corporate culture. This culture of providing value by exceeding expectations creates meaningful relationships and builds trust with our customers.

Eric has spent thousands of dollars making sure the value was high enough for clients that he was certain weren’t going to come back. He did it because of who he is and not because of the payoff. Eric is all about doing the right thing, regardless of how it can help him.

“Recurring-revenue business models, also known as a subscription or usage-based models, are creating new opportunities across all industries—even in sectors where they haven’t traditionally appeared before. Advances in social media, mobile devices, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, robotics, and the Internet of Things (IoT) are now enabling businesses to leverage these new models to generate entirely new revenue streams... 52% of the CFO Research/Salesforce survey respondents have companies where at least 40% of revenues are recurring” (Source: cfo.com). 

Recurring revenue streams make planning and budgeting easier, raise the value of a company, and create predictability in our revenue. Everyone is jumping on the recurring revenue bandwagon, so it is more important now more than ever to show our clients how we value them through our recurring revenue streams.

Eric doesn’t consider someone a customer until they have renewed with the company. This attitude ensures that he, and everyone in the company, don’t forget about his customers in the time between renewals; he’s thinking about the lifetime value of a customer. When a customer buys something we owe them value the whole time they are using our products or services. Whether we have monthly renewals or annual renewals, we need to take care of our clients through that whole time. This all starts in the sales process when we set expectations and then consistently provide value.

“We want customers. We don’t want transactions.” -Eric Farr

“There doesn’t appear to be a correlation between length of contract and lifetime retention of a client. In fact, there seems to be quite a bit of evidence that month- to- month agreements last longer and have a higher sales close ratio.” -Danny DeMichele, Marketing Consultant

The client that stayed with my company for the longest amount of time was with us for 11 years. Their contract was month-to-month and could be canceled at any time. I believe the month-to-month aspect was the reason for their longevity.  The month-to-month contract forced us to maintain the relationship and keep the client happy every month.

"Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. The ability to direct individual accomplishments toward organizational objectives. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results." -Andrew Carnegie, Scottish-American industrialist and philanthropist

BrainStorm had a deal with a Fortune 10 company to create software for them. It was a great deal because BrainStorm could get paid to create the product for one client and then monetize it through selling it to other clients. Their client, in turn, would be able to give their input on the product so it would be exactly what they needed. In January of that year, their clients said, “We’ll buy this from you now if you can deliver it to us in December.” 

The year went by and they made great progress on the software. In the first week of December, however, their client came to them, saying they needed the software to be ready in about a week. The software was not ready to be delivered that soon, but Eric and the rest of the company came together and decided they were going to try to make it happen. 

They set to work, operating 24 hours a day and staying at the office all night, only leaving to shower or get food. They hired about 40 new people to help. BrainStorm finished the product on time and delivered it to the client, never telling them what it took to get it finished. Now their employees who weren’t there at the time want to have a moment like that where they can all come together with a common goal and work hard to achieve something amazing.

BrainStorm is a software company that offers solutions and methodology not only to help employers train their employees but also to enact real change in their organizations. One way they do this is by focusing on their clients’ goals. If a company wants to reduce costs by $20 million, BrainStorm focuses on that. If they want to get their products to the market faster, BrainStorm shows them how to utilize their technology to do that. BrainStorm finds the client’s highest priority and sells them a solution to that.

For example, they had a client that said they had chosen a specific way to store documents and data to the cloud. BrainStorm gathered data about the company, and they had billions of records of how people were using the company’s software. BrainStorm was able to see in their data that the company’s employees were using 15 different ways to store data on the cloud including using their own personal Dropbox accounts. The client had no idea, but BrainStorm was able to help them standardize their data storage. 

The information that BrainStorm provides allows their clients to make good business decisions about the technology that they’re using in line with their business objectives, whether that be increasing revenue, decreasing costs, or dealing with security. Because of this, BrainStorm’s clients are extremely satisfied with the service BrainStorm provides. Likewise, we can have satisfied customers if we focus on helping them achieve their most important business objectives.

Connect with Eric

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Eric or connect with him, you can find him on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/eric-farr-402141 or visit his company’s website at BrainStormInc.com. 

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Eric for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode to help us provide greater value to our clients:

1. Make the value of our products and services much greater than the cost.
2. Go the extra mile to exceed customer expectations and make them happy, as Eric did by personally delivering the order to Scotland.
3. If you haven’t already, consider implementing recurring revenue streams into your business.
4. Take care of our customers throughout the time between renewals in our recurring revenue streams.
5. Consider using month-to-month contracts so we are motivated to provide value and keep our customers happy every month. We may be able to keep our clients with us longer. 
6. Create a culture that when a client needs something that seems impossible, our team can come together and make it happen.
7. Focus on helping our customers reach their most important goals.

1. Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business
2. Subscribe to the Monetization eMagazine.
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What are some of the best ways you have seen companies provide value to their customers? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/41-5-ways-to-provide-value-to-our-clients/

Bill Crawford owns an amazing pizza restaurant named Righteous Slice, which makes some of the best pizza I’ve ever had. When entrepreneurs own a business like the one Bill Crawford owns it is important to have loyal customers. The probability of selling to an existing customer is 60-70%, while the probability of selling to a new prospect is only 5-20% (Source: Markinblog). In this episode, we discuss some of the ways Bill has developed a strong base of loyal customers.

Bill Crawford graduated from Harvard with his MBA. He is a former Air Force fighter pilot and stealth bomber pilot. He’s a professor of entrepreneurship, and he just may be the coolest pizza restaurant owner ever.

One of Bill’s main focuses with customers is to make a personal connection with customers from the second they walk in the door until the moment they leave. This isn’t common for a business to think about, but it makes a big difference in establishing customer loyalty. That’s why when Bill hires new employees, he looks for people who have a natural talent for talking to customers and making them feel great. Bill says their pizza is good, but what makes people come back is the people who work there and the way the customer felt while they were there.

“Motivating employees to work at their full potential is the main premise of successful management.” -Eraldo Banovac, Croatian author and professor

Bill doesn’t just rely on his employees’ natural outgoing tendencies. As part of the hiring process, Bill puts his employees through what he calls the “secret shopper program.” He asks people he knows to come into the restaurant and test his candidate by acting like they have a problem, then he sees how the trainee reacts.

For example, the trainee will bring them the salad they ordered--the salad that is clearly on the receipt--and then the customer will say that's not what they ordered. They will act like they ordered something else. Then Bill can see how the candidate responds to that kind of situation and select for it in his hiring.

Bill actually had me help them do this type of secret shopper test recently with a new candidate. I hid where the candidate couldn't really find me, and didn’t respond when they called my name to see how they would handle it. The candidate passed with flying colors.

This kind of thing happens all the time, especially in the food industry. We're dealing with humans, both customers and employees, who make mistakes. So it is important to train our employees to be able to handle these mistakes.

To seek reviews, Bill’s company pays for a service that lets them see how their customers are feeling about their experience. This was one of the only services they didn't cut back on when everything shut down when COVID-19 struck. The service sends a text to Bill’s customers asking them to rate their experience on a scale of 1 to 5 stars. If the customer gives 5 stars, it asks if they'll leave a review. If they leave 4 or less the service notifies Bill and his employees so they can try and remedy the situation.

Bill’s goal with this is not to compel the customer to change their rating. He cares that he and his employees sincerely do their best to serve their customers’ needs. He's comfortable with 4 stars or less as long as they delivered on their brand promise. The only time he feels bad is when they don't deliver on their brand promise.

Bill also believes that bad reviews are good for their business. If someone leaves a 1 or 2-star review saying "their pizza is always burnt" that's actually good for Righteous Slice. It is one of the things that makes them special, and the review steers people away that won’t enjoy that. If people complain about things, it lets others know what it is like before they make that purchase decision.

Their original goal was to get a thousand reviews and then they were planning on dropping the service. But now they see greater value in the ability to engage with customers through this service whether they get a review or not. Because of this service, the restaurant doesn’t spend a lot on marketing because reviews heavily influence the buying decision. When someone is trying to decide where they should go to eat, they look for which restaurant has the most reviews that are above 4 1/2 stars. They don't click on the first thing they see, and they often don't click on the paid ad.

One thing that Bill does with his employees is let them do what it takes to make an unhappy customer happy again and encourage them to take responsibility when things go wrong. They let anyone who works there do whatever it takes to make the customer feel great about their experience.

One day they had a customer give them four stars, saying, "We were charged full price even though we mentioned the Monday deal, and one of the pizzas was burned.” An employee, who was just out of high school, replied to the review, saying, "Hi [customer's name], this is [employee's name] from Righteous Slice. I'm going to include a free Margherita coupon to hopefully make up for the burnt one. Thank you for giving us the feedback. It's awesome customers like you that make this place righteous." The customer responded with "Wow, thank you."

Video marketing continues to become more popular; 84% of people say that they’ve been convinced to buy a product or service by watching a brand’s video. That said, it’s important to make these videos the right way. When we make videos in our marketing, it is crucial to keep the focus on our customers. Don't make videos with an inward focus on what we want our customers to care about. It's not going to work. We should make something funny, interesting, and short. Don’t focus on trying to sell, but focus on being authentic.

One day, Bill made a live video of making pizza as a demo for his students. They shared it on their business channel, and it got more interest than anything they could have made as an ad. It was simply Bill in his home kitchen making pizza dough and showing people how the restaurant does it. It was real, it was authentic, and it was unintentional. But it was more successful, more credible, and more believable than perfectly made videos that corporations create.

When our customers watch a great video, they can emotionally connect. When this happens, it establishes credibility far better than any photo or text ever could.

Bill is a strong advocate for company loyalty, companies being loyal to their customers and treating them well. He loves to give back to his customers. This is the mindset they try to instill in all their employees. This doesn’t mean mass giveaways, those can lead to a lot of unhappy people in the aftermath, but it means thoughtful and deliberate giving back. Here are some examples.

One day some customers came into Bill’s restaurant, and they were dressed up for a special occasion. Bill asked them what the special occasion was, and they said it was for a funeral. Bill gave them his condolences and gave them a free dessert.

There’s another guest that comes in about twice a year. From the way he dresses, Bill can tell that he's not very well off. On this occasion, the customer ordered a lower-priced pizza, and Bill gave him one of their high-end drinks to go with it for free. The customer came back to order dessert and Bill said, "this one's on me." They'd just had a record day, and Bill wanted to give some of that back to someone that would be grateful for it. 

The restaurant also does a Christmas promotion. A customer can come in during December and get an envelope with every purchase. If they bring back the unopened envelope in January they win a prize. The company pays about $3,000 for this, which is a lot considering their typical marketing budget is $300-400 a month. They don't get a lot of sales lift out of it, but they keep doing it because it is a chance to be fun and creative and a chance just to be generous. They do it so they can show their gratitude to their most loyal customers. 

"You don't earn loyalty in a day. You earn loyalty day by day." -Jeffrey Gitomer, American author, professional speaker, and business trainer

Connect with Bill

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Bill or connect with him, you can find him on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/bill-crawford-930aa9 or if you are ever headed to Yellowstone and passing through Rexburg, ID, be sure to stop for some of the best pizza you’ll ever have at Righteous Slice.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Bill for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode to help us build customer loyalty:

1.  Hire friendly employees to connect with our customers and make them feel appreciated.
2. Train our employees to be able to handle difficult situations with customers.
3. Seek reviews through reviewing services.
4. Use reviews to make sure our customers are satisfied. If something went wrong, make it right.
5. Give all our employees the power to make it up to unhappy customers.
6. Connect with our customers through authentic videos.
7. Give back to our customers. Show them we appreciate them. 

1. Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business
2. Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
3. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
4. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher. 
5. Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story 

What great strategies have you seen for building customer loyalty? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/40-6-ways-to-foster-customer-loyalty-from-a-harvard-mba-and-former-stealth-bomber-pilot/