Podcasts about delivering happiness a path

Tony Hsieh visits Google to discuss his book "Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose." Back in 1999, Tony Hsieh sold LinkExchange, the company he co-founded, to Microsoft for $265 million. He then joined Zappos as an adviser and investor, and eventually became CEO. In 2009, Zappos was listed as one of Fortune magazine's top 25 companies to work for, and was acquired by Amazon later that year in a deal valued at over $1.2 billion on the day of closing. In his book, Tony shares the different business lessons he learned in life, from operating a lemonade stand and a pizza business through LinkExchange, Zappos, and more. He shows how using happiness as a framework can produce profits, passion, and purpose – both in business and in life. Originally published in July of 2010. Visit http://youtube.com/TalksAtGoogle/ to watch the video.

Send us a Text Message.Many of my brand agency coaching clients aspire to collaborate with the next big tech ‘unicorn' but struggle with breaking into that space.This is why I was particularly excited to chat with Natasha Lytton, the Head of Brand and Marketing at Seedcamp, Europe's leading seed fund.Seedcamp has provided initial funding to over 360 startups, including four European ‘unicorns': Hopin, TransferWise, Revolut, and UiPath. Natasha's extensive experience makes her a wealth of knowledge on collaborating with tech companies.This conversation was so insightful and impactful that it quickly became one of our top-rated episodes. We're thrilled to feature it again as part of our greatest hits.Tune into this episode to get insights on:Why brand design is often underestimated as a critical asset by tech startupsHow seed-stage brands manage their budget for brand designThe optimal time and strategy to approach startups in the tech spaceWhether startups should prioritize product development or brand development when resources are limitedMentioned during this episode: >> Grab the book Natasha is featured in, you can grab it here to support a good cause.>> Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of NIKE, by Phil Knight >> Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion and Purpose, by Tony Hsieh of Zappos Resources mentioned in this episode:> Lead Flow Sprint > https://www.kaffeen.club/lfs Win Clients Consistently > https://www.kaffeen.club/wcc < > Client Magnet Book > https://www.kaffeen.club/book

This episode is a first.After 35 episodes of the Bulletproof Entrepreneur podcast, I thought it was time we explored the dynamics where a husband and wife set up in business and have to manage two different relationships - the business partners working together and the life partners raising a family and having a quality home life away from the business.Richard and Sonia Dixon met when they were young and started working together at a small travel agent in a less salubrious part of Birmingham where a business partnership blossomed kind of at the same time as a personal partnership.Their story tracks the evolution of the travel industry front the time when the only way to book your holiday was by walking into a shop on the high street through the early days of the internet and online booking and took them to a position where they had a team of over 200 people and a thriving business.Before it all came crashing down.You're going to hear about what it takes to grow a business from almost nothing to become a significant player in a highly competitive sector.You'll learn the meaning of the word Resilient when they explain that they were so close to hitting all-time revenue targets that they were about to take the entire team on a trip of a lifetime to Mauritius when the pandemic arrived, and their company was literally a few days from bankruptcy.And of course, you'll learn how they cracked the code of building a world-class business together whilst building a happily married family life together - so many valuable lessons for all of us.And towards the end, Richard shares insight for all business owners who find themselves in a position of leadership when they haven't actually formally been trained for it - and let's face it, that's most of us.If you work with a family member or simply love to hear an incredible business and life story that encompasses more ups and downs than the average rollercoaster, you're going to enjoy this inspired conversation.Ladies sand gentlemen, I give you…Richard and Sonia DixonLinks:https://www.linkedin.com/in/richard-dixon-4aa76721/?originalSubdomain=ukm Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion and PurposeThe Leadership Book by Neil Jurd: A step by step guide to excellent leadership: Amazon.co.ukThis podcast is produced by GR Media Sponsored by Capital Asset Management

Holly McNamara is a registered Professional Civil Engineer with a Bachelor's degree from Cornell University and a Master's degree from UC San Diego in Structural Engineering. She has more than two decades of experience in project management, engineering design, and due diligence.In addition to her career, she has experience forming and working with 501c3 non-profits, as well as event planning and fundraising for many different groups. In 2010, Holly had the opportunity to work alongside the late CEO of Zappos.com, Tony Hsieh, to launch his best-selling book, Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose. The book launch consisted of a two-month media push that required traveling and coordinating approximately 150 interviews and speaking engagements across the country. The book remained on the New York Times Best Seller List for 27 weeks.In my chat with Holly, we spoke about her decades-long friendship with Tony Hsieh, her time as his colleague at Zappos, and his tragic death in November of 2021. We discussed, at length, the recently published book, Wonder Boy: Tony Hsieh, Zappos, and the Myth of Happiness in Silicon Valley, by Angel Au-Yeung and David Jeans. Holly was interviewed by the authors for over 40 hours for this publication.I hope you enjoy this very special episode.Watch Episode: This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit truethirty.substack.com/subscribe

The way organizations treat their people reflects on their customers - a work culture that is driven by the level of happiness of employees boosts the bottom line of any company. In the book Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion and Purpose, Tony Hsie describes how Zappos defined their culture: Make customer service the responsibility of the entire company-not just a department Focus on company culture as the #1 priority Apply research from the science of happiness to running a business Help employees grow-both personally and professionally Seek to change the world Pay new employees to leave their company if the employee felt - there wasn't a fit Oh, and make money too . . . It sounds crazy? right?  I found a great believer in these principles to be my guest: Claire Boscq About Claire Boscq Claire is an international Award Winning Customer Experience Expert, The BizShui Creator, Keynote Speaker & Consultant Awarded No 3 Top Global Customer Service Guru with three decades of expertise. Claire is an authority in the Customer Experience Industry. Author of 4 books; with a No 1 Amazon Best Seller in 2020. And the great news is that she just moved from her beautiful island of Jersey! to Dubai

Adoubé par certains très grands noms de l'entrepreneuriat autant qu'il est méprisé par d'autres, David Laroche ne laisse pas indifférent. Les industries du coaching et du développement personnel sont très fréquemment malmenées par beaucoup d'experts, alors quand on est l'un des plus grands experts en développement personnel français... forcément ça fait réagir. C'est bien pour ça que je suis plus que ravi d'avoir reçu David sur Génération Do It Yourself et de vous proposer avec lui le plus long épisode de mon podcast à date. Je lui ai posé beaucoup de questions, sans filtre, comme à mon habitude. Il y a répondu sans fard, en assumant ce qu'il fait et qui il est. Jusqu'au bout. Et il revient de loin, lui l'introverti mal dans sa peau, qui a cherché à se transformer dès son plus jeune âge et qui passe sa vie à se mettre en dehors de sa zone de confort. Ni psychologue, ni neuroscientifique ou encore moins chercheur ou médecin, David Laroche n'avait rien qui le prédestinait à devenir le coach de renom qu'il est aujourd'hui, hormis une détermination à en faire pâlir plus d'un ! Il s'est formé sur le tas, s'est inspiré de son histoire personnelle et des grandes stars américaines qu'il a pu rencontrer comme GaryVee, Tony Robbins ou Richard Branson, et il a réussi à changer sa propre vie pour s'en servir aujourd'hui comme levier. Il inspire, réussit et par-dessus tout, il n'a pas peur de se mouiller. Il est la preuve que rien n'est impossible quand on s'y met, et que le succès n'est pas réservé à quelques-uns. Inspirant, contagieux et drôle, cet épisode est une pépite qu'il faut écouter jusqu'au bout ! TIMELINE : 00:28:35 : Devenir le Netflix de la formation 00:53:03 : Comment faire un bon TedX ? 01:23:14 : Adopter la philosophie prémortem pour atteindre ses objectifs 02:05:00 : Pause café - Le levier de la création de contenu 02:40:00 : L'excellence réside dans les paradoxes 03:13:47 : Les échecs réussis, un autre paradoxe On a cité avec David Laroche plusieurs anciens épisodes de GDIY : #52 Stéphanie Gicquel  -Visualiser pour ne jamais abandonner #109 Olivier Brourhant – Mantu – 55 pays, 96% de croissance annuelle, un demi-milliard de CA en 13 ans… tous les secrets pour “Scaler” #158 Edgar Grospiron - Athlète et conférencier - Avance, fais-toi confiance. #195 - Stéphane André - l'Art Oratoire - Changer l'histoire de l'humanité avec des mots #200 - Tristan Vyskoc - Dépasser ses limites, courir à s'en faire péter le cœur #206 - Nicolas Hennion - Libérez la bête - Développement personnel radical ou comment vivre sans contraintes #242 - Camille Morvan - Gobasha - Mieux recruter, de manière scientifique et ludique et sans CV David Laroche vous recommande de lire : The inner game of Tennis : ultimate guide to the mental side of peak performance de Timothy Gallwey Losing my virginity de Richard Branson Tell to win : Connect, Persuade and Triumph with the Hidden Power of Story de Peter Guber L'entreprise du bonheur de Tony Hsieh ou la version d'origine : Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose La règle ? Pas de règles ! : Netflix et la culture de la réinvention de Reed Hastings Osez réussir !: Changez d'état d'esprit de Carol Dweck Avec David Laroche, on a parlé de : Thierry Boiron Ray Dalio Paradox Group Tedx Olivier Brourhant L'épisode de Meta de Choc : Coaching, l'eldorado de la manipulation mentale The Last Dance, la force mentale de Michael Jordan Malcolm Gladwell Marc Aurèle Carol Dweck : Developing a Growth Mindset Anthony Robbins Jean Béliveau et son interview avec David Laroche Oui mais… de Yves Lavandier Steve Wynn Robert Greene La musique du générique vous plaît ? C'est à Morgan Prudhomme que je la dois ! Contactez-le sur : https://studio-module.com. Vous souhaitez sponsoriser Génération Do It Yourself ou nous proposer un partenariat ? Contactez mon label Orso Media via ce formulaire. Pour contacter David : LinkedIn

In this episode, you will learn: Mindy's tips and advice for finding the right therapist for you The collaboration that exists between the movement professional and the bodyworker A powerful reframe for how we should be networking Ways you can start building the bodywork side of business Why bodywork therapists often undervalue their services and what they charge LINKS: https://www.mindytotten.com/ https://www.mindytotten.com/enroll Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose by Tony Hsieh https://www.instagram.com/studiogrowco https://www.boutiquefitnesscoalition.com/ https://www.boutiquefitnesscoalition.com/press https://www.facebook.com/groups/3312618912101211/

Manish Khatta is the President and Chief Investment Officer of the investment management & strategy firm Potomac Fund Management. Manish initially wanted to become a sports agent, but after working at Potomac while waiting for law school to start, he immediately fell in love with the industry. He began his career with the company by programming the initial work on Potomac's mechanical trading systems. A true math geek and quant, Manish worked his way up to his current position, creating and refining trading strategies built on mathematical computations and number crunching along the way.   Manish joins me today to discuss how Potomac doubled its assets in six months under his watch, without a salesperson or wholesaler. He describes his journey in Potomac and its condition from a branding perspective before they implemented his marketing initiatives. He shares his ideas on accessing and integrating technology platforms in an organization's operations and the importance of being patient and committed when creating content. He also reveals why the only thing that matters more than a client is your employees and emphasizes the importance of sharing your story through content.   “If you are yourself and put yourself out there, you'll have clients who'll resonate with you. If you're proud of what you do and what you offer, go out there and tell your story.” - Manish Khatta   This week on The Model FA Podcast:   Manish's career journey from intern to President and CIO The best time for financial advisors to onboard FinTech into their organization Potomac's brandless history and the importance of developing a company brand The benefits of creating content and why content creation needs to be a commitment Cultivating the patience to create content and build an online presence Weaving a spider web of content that catches prospects Delivering happiness to clients and how to build trust with customers Why business owners need to focus on taking care of their employees and making them happy How to go from being a boss to being a leader and avoid employee turnover The value of outsourcing tasks The importance of standing by what you're passionate about and believing in what you do   Resources Mentioned:   Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose by Tony Hsieh The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Timothy Ferris   Our Favorite Quotes:   “No one wants to be sold something. Instead, add value: if you do, everything will come back tenfold.” - Manish Khatta “To make your clients happy, there's nothing else you can do other than doubling down on making your employees happy.” - Manish Khatta   Connect with Manish Khatta:   Potomac Email: mkhatta@potomacfund.com Potomac on LinkedIn Potomac on Instagram Potomac on Facebook Potomac on Twitter Manish Khatta on LinkedIn Manish Khatta on Twitter     About the Model FA Podcast   The Model FA podcast is a show for fiduciary financial advisors. In each episode, our host David DeCelle sits down with industry experts, strategic thinkers, and advisors to explore what it takes  to build a successful practice — and have an abundant life in the process. We believe in continuous learning, tactical advice, and strategies that work — no “gotchas” or BS. Join us to hear stories from successful financial advisors, get actionable ideas from experts, and re-discover your drive to build the practice of your dreams.    Did you like this conversation? Then leave us a rating and a review in whatever podcast player you use. We would love your feedback, and your ratings help us reach more advisors with ideas for growing their practices, attracting great clients, and achieving a better quality of life. While you are there, feel free to share your ideas about future podcast guests or topics you'd love to see covered.    Our Team: President of Model FA, David DeCelle   If you like this podcast, you will love our community! Join the Model FA Community on Facebook to connect with like-minded advisors and share the day-to-day challenges and wins of running a growing financial services firm.

It's important to differentiate yourself to potential clients, who likely receive dozens of emails each day. Instead of sending long emails, video messaging tools allow entrepreneurs to engage their audience in a personalized, compelling way that sets them apart from others who are still using old techniques. Anthony Milia owns a marketing firm that serves businesses of all sizes: from mom-and-pop to Fortune 500. He launched the business as soon as he graduated from college figuring he could fail fast and learn quick.  Recording video Three primary tools exist for business owners who want to record video or grab screen recordings or share their screens: Loom, Dubb, and Vidyard.  These tools allow you to share videos through email and build it into your sales funnel to monitor how well they're working. Users can monitor how much time the audience is spending with the videos and respond accordingly based on the insights they gain. Anyone within small business can use this kind of tool for training, or for business development.  Video offers a different way to communicate through email, and it can help you get your point across better for your audience.  Being different Anthony previously used regular emails or phone call to communicate with his audience, but he wanted a way to differentiate himself. He discovered that these videos allow him to more thoroughly explain his message in a personalized way that he can also track. He gets notified when the user opens the video, so he can follow up knowing that the user has engaged with the content.  In sales, for example, it's a powerful way to grab your prospects' attention. You can use it before a meeting, or for a follow-up to a meeting where you might share next steps.  Video is underutilized in this way, so your efforts will immediately help you stand out. Streamline your process These videos also work well on your website, allowing you to feature a video on your homepage with an included call-to-action. You can, for example, add a CTA within the video that prompts users to share their email or some other information. Tools like Vidyard can also be integrated with CRMs like Salesforce and Hubspot as well as Zapier to help you further streamline your entire process.  All three of these video tools offer a free plan as well as a monthly subscription that gives the user access to even more features.  Peaks and valleys of entrepreneurship Anthony spent the first couple of years in business building processes and working to get his name out to the public. It was slow, but the key was delivering good work. They work to get things done right the first time, to get it done right on time, and to over-deliver.  Clients don't leave when you're providing what they are asking for and constantly improving the client experience.  Show up every day in your business and identify how you can improve 1 percent every day, either personally or professionally. Identify bottlenecks and find ways to make things more efficient and effective.  It's easy to get caught up in busy work so that you miss the important work.  Digital Marketing The MORE Podcast strives to connect with experts and master users who understand how digital marketing tools work and who can share knowledge with entrepreneurs who aren't tech savvy.  Check out the knowledge Anthony is engaging with now:  Check out The Customer Service Revolution Podcast by John DiJulius and Entrepreneurs on Fire with John Lee Dumas. Grab a copy of Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance and Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose by Tony Hsieh.  Check out Loom, Dubb, and Vidyard to better use videos to engage with your audience.

Bókin Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose kom út árið 2010. Þar er ævintýralegri ævi Tony Hsieh rakin en hann stofnaði tvö fyrirtæki Linkexchange sem selt var til Microsoft og netverslunina Zappos sem seld var til Amazon.  Í bókinni kynnumst við frumkvöðli sem áttar sig fljótlega að leikurinn snýst um annað og meira en að græða peninga. Tony lést af slysförum í nóvember 2020 aðeins 47 ára gamall. Bókina má kaupa á Amazon Og hana má einnig fá á Audible 

Uzair talks to Jarrar Shah about his startup 24Seven.pk, an online Grocery Shopping platform based in Lahore. The 24SEVEN journey started from his farm when he painfully found out how he was getting no premium for growing graded, good quality produce in the off season and consequently decided to create an alternative marketing channel for farmers that would enable them to bypass the middle men. His book recommendations are: - Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose - Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance - Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder - Skin in the Game

Juliana Sarmiento, Envíoclick: Reimagining the logistics industry in Latin America, Ep 131 Juliana Sarmiento always knew she wanted to create value for her community by starting her own company. Raised in a family of entrepreneurs, she knew what she would be getting herself into by choosing this path. Along with the challenges that come with starting a business, she had also been exposed to the positive impact that entrepreneurship could have on society.   Today, Juliana is co-founder and Chief Revenue Officer of Envíoclick, a Mexico City-based logistics platform that connects freight and courier companies with businesses in Latin America. Their clients range from leading e-commerce companies like Mercado Libre to small and medium-sized businesses that need help in running more efficient operations.   I sat down with Juliana to talk about how Envíoclick’s solution is transforming the logistics and delivery industry in Mexico and Latin America. We also discuss how the e-commerce landscape has changed since 2014 and Envíoclick’s decision to expand to Colombia. Educating the market about logtech   Although Latin America presented a huge opportunity for logistics companies, Juliana explains that couriers and delivery companies were skeptical about the value that new technologies could bring. It took a lot of conversations about the logistics gap that exists in the region for their future clients to understand that Juliana’s solution was key to helping the market develop faster.   Listen to this episode of Crossing Borders to learn more about Latin America’s broken logistics industry. The entrepreneurial experience at Linio   Early on in her career, Juliana had the foresight to know that tech would soon take Latin America by storm. So when she was contacted to work at the first pure e-commerce company in Latin America, she immediately accepted and stayed on for five years. As one of Linio’s ealy employees, she describes the experience to be like that of an entrepreneur. She had the freedom to make her own decisions while she educated the market about this new way of buying products.   Check out this episode of Crossing Borders to find out how Juliana’s experience at Linio inspired her to dive deeper into the logistics industry. An organic partnership Juliana explains that choosing a business partner was an easy decision for her. As the Commercial Regional Managing Director for Linio, she worked closely with Rosa who was Regional Head of CRM for the company. They both realized that logistics in LatAm needed to evolve. After forming a strong work relationship at Linio, it only made sense for them to take the leap together.    Find out how Juliana and Rosa overcame their hesitations and thrived as female founders with Envíoclick in this episode of Crossing Borders.   Juliana believes that starting Envíoclick was one of the best decisions in her life. The logistics startup has since expanded into two countries and boasts over 600 clients. With this solution, Juliana is helping bridge the gap between businesses and logistics for more efficient and scalable companies in Latin America.    Outline of this episode: [1:38] - About Envíoclick [3:05] - Reality of logistics in LatAm [5:56] - Choosing to become an entrepreneur [7:12] - Jumping into tech [10:33] - E-commerce in LatAm in 2014 [13:09] - Changes in logistics  [15:47] - Choosing a business partner [18:25] - The ups and downs of the business [21:42] - Advice to other female entrepreneurs [23:49] - Decision to expand to Colombia [26:42] - Envíoclick’s response to COVID-19 [29:05] - Books, blogs, & podcast recommendations [31:03] - Advice to Juliana’s younger self   Resources & people mentioned: Juliana Sarmiento Envíoclick Rosa Ma. Costes Vélez Linio Rocket Internet Innohub Books: Good to Great, Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose

Join us on Growing My B2B Brand to discuss building and maintaining trust in B2B companies. I'm joined by Ryan Squire, a talented marketing executive with a background in healthcare, technology, and media. He has specific expertise in the importance of trust in the workplace. I will ask him what he advises a business to do if they are looking to grow. We'll also discuss marketing's role in building trust in an organization. Listen in and learn more. *One note, Tony Hseih of Zappos is mentioned in this podcast episode. This was recorded before he tragically passed away. We encourage you to read his book Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion and Purpose. It is a bestselling, comic book style memoir. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/growingmyb2bbrand/message

As someone who used to be marketing director at a well funded tech start up, I know the battles involved in getting the brand as visually relevant and polished as the product. I also know many of my brand agency coaching clients dream of working with the next tech ‘unicorn', but don't know how to get an in.Which is why I was thrilled to speak with Natasha Lytton, Head of Brand, Marketing and more at Seedcamp, Europe's most prominent seed fund. Seedcamp has supplied the initial capital to over 360 startups, including 4 European ‘unicorns': Hopin, TransferWise, Revolut and UiPath. So if someone knows how to work with a tech company, it's Natasha. Listen in to this podcast for answers to questions like:Why do you think brand design is so often overlooked as a powerful asset by tech start ups?To what extent do seed stage brands have budget for brand design?What do you see as the best time and way to approach start ups in your space?Given limited time and resources, should a startup prioritise product development or brand development?Show notes:>> Grab the book Natasha is featured in, you can grab it here to support a good cause: https://wordery.com/excerpts-from-experts-marketing-fortune-hill-media-9781913532024?cTrk=MTgwOTAyNzYzfDVmYzY2YThhYzZmZTE6MToxOjVmYzY2YTdmODY0MTA5LjU2MDQzODQ1OmE1YmNkZTZj>> Get the free 5-day mini course: https://kaffeen.club/get-started>> Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of NIKE, by Phil Knight https://amzn.to/2VnojuT>>Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion and Purpose, by Tony Hsieh of Zappos https://amzn.to/3ockDZh

Check it out on Itunes | StitcherIn this all new episode of Get to the Contest Small Business Podcast, we have Melanie Raimundo. She is a relationship coach and generously gives us a bit of her knowledge on how to build better relationships and, therefore, better business.1. Knowing yourselfUnderstanding yourself is critical to relationships. Know your triggers & know what makes you tick. Understanding yourself and how you like to communicate will give clarity that will allow help you to better build your relationships with others. If you don’t understand yourself, then how can others be expected to. 2. Relationships and culture is important in Business. Dysfunctional relationships and poor culture in business will have a cost. Poor team relationships can lead to sub-par performance, team turnover, retraining costs and missed sales opportunities. When relationships are good, the impact will be felt not only in the progress of the business but most importantly, it will be felt by your customers. Customers can sense when a culture isn’t quite right and will be less inclined to deal with you. I highly recommend the book Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion and Purpose by Tony Hsieh which takes a deep dive into why this is so important.3. Write down your version of success and the KPIs of your successAnswer this question: What is your version of success? This doesn’t always mean money or financial growth—success varies for different people. Success could mean being able to go home for dinner every night or being able to walk your kids to school every day. Once you are aware of your definition of success, make sure to document it so that you can work out a plan to make sure it’s successful. Getting clear on what success looks like & documenting this is the key. You can then measure your success and adjust you’re your business accordingly.4. It all comes down to leadershipAs a leader, you will have a team looking for you to set standards. If you can help your team to achieve their version of success, then it is likely that your business will reap the benefits that come from having motivated, appreciated team members. When Melanie referred to Joe Biden’s message to his team when he became Vice President & the importance of family – he was showing leadership that gave his team permission to be able to commit to their respective families.To get in touch with Melanie, visit her website www.melanieraimundo.comFeel free to email me at wjackson@foxgroup.com.au for more on this topic.

Victoria Cirigliano es la creadora de Vicson, una marca de zapatos que nació hace 8 años en Argentina y hace un poco mas de un año desembarco en Estados Unidos. Victoria nos va a contar cómo arrancó con este emprendimiento siendo muy joven y cómo fue creciendo y adaptando su negocio a medida que la demanda de sus productos aumentaba. Hablaremos de: Cómo fueron los comienzos en Argentina. Los canales de venta que utilizaba y que utiliza actualmente. Cómo las redes la ayudaron a crear una marca y reconocimiento. Cómo hizo para expandir su marca al mercado Norteamericano. Su proyectos a futuro. ¡y mucho más! Libros recomendados: Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose: https://amzn.to/3d3XG6s Notas del episodio, contacto de Victoria y todos los links: https://exitoyfinanzas.com/ep21/ ¡No te olvides de seguirnos! Instagram: https://bit.ly/2A4QHdG Página web: https://bit.ly/3cY2d9m YouTube: https://bit.ly/2WviUTZ Facebook: https://bit.ly/3bWfjTs --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/exitoyfinanzas/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/exitoyfinanzas/support

Daniel Rodriguez is the head of marketing at Simplr, which is upending the traditional customer service model by providing premium brands with flexible, 24/7 on-demand specialists for all digital channels. The company's specialists are unique work-from-home pool of highly educated professionals who use Simplr's, AI-powered platform to replicate tone and brand integrity with speed, empathy and precision.   Danielle has extensive marketing and entrepreneurial experience, having served as the VP of marketing for Seismic and the co-founder of multiple companies, including Indivly Magic and PrizeTube. Daniel earned a BA in Economics from Harvard University and an MBA from MIT. Questions Could you share a little bit with us about your history? I know it says here that you are Head of Marketing at Simplr and that you've gained a lot of experience as it relates to digital marketing and also entrepreneurial skill. But just share with us a little bit about how you got to where you are today. Simlpr recently conducted a study, a customer experience study, where it says 27% consumers say their brand loyalty has wavered during the pandemic due to long customer service wait times. Could you share a little bit about some of the insights that you gained from that study? Let's say our audience; they do have some of these issues that we're talking about. What are maybe two or three things that they should do that maybe they're not doing now in a very practical sense, things they should really be focused on to just give that great customer experience? Could you share with us what is the one online resource, website tool or app that you absolutely cannot live without in your business? Could you share with us maybe one or two books that have had the biggest impact on you? It could be a book that you read since the pandemic, or it could be a book that you read many, many years ago. But it still has had a great impact on you. Now, can you share with us what's one thing that's going on in your life right now, something that you're really excited about - either something you're working on to develop yourself or your people? Where can they find you online? Do you have a quote or saying that during times of adversity or challenge, you will revert to this quote, it kind of helps you to move forward, to keep pushing. Do you have one of those?   Highlights   Daniel’s Journey   Daniel shared that he spent the past 8 years of his career running marketing teams at start-up companies, tech companies in the B2B space. So, very high growth companies, they're all venture funded and have high growth expectations. And it's been a really rewarding journey, he thinks, for him, because he started his career on the consulting and finance side, and he had this moment as the wise poet John Mayer once said. He had a quarter life crisis and realized that if he didn't actually be the doer, meaning, be actually on the operating side, he was going to have regrets in his own life about the career choices that he was making.   So that really started him down a path and he’s very thankful to Brad Rosen, who's the CEO of a company called Drink, for taking a chance on him and letting him work for him on kind of a volunteer nights and weekends basis and Drink is a wine app. And for him, it was great to be able to dive into on the operating side, dive into something that he was also passionate about just at a personal level.   So that gave him his first taste, if you will, of actually being at a start-up, super early stage start-up and that really scrappy mode. And once he had that taste, he was completely hooked. So, that started his path then to go to business school, which was giving him an opportunity to learn a lot more about entrepreneurship, experience entrepreneurship himself, try to start a company himself. And it was kind of from there and from some of those failed experiences of his own and trying to get companies off the ground that he was able to then get jobs at more established, albeit still very early stage companies. And so, that's where he has been spending the majority of his career at this point.   Simplr’s Insight on Customer Experience Study Me: So, in preparing for this interview, we were informed that your company Simlpr recently conducted a study, a customer experience study, where it says 27% of consumers say their brand loyalty has wavered during the pandemic due to long customer service wait times. Being in customer service myself, I know that's like one of the biggest pet peeves of customers waiting, whether it be face to face or over the phone or even in a web forum if you have to wait on a chat for somebody to give you feedback, could you share a little bit about some of the insights that you gained from that study?   Daniel shared that they've conducted 3 of these mystery shop reports, the survey that they've gone out, partnered with a third party. They've done 3 of them over the past year. So, they did one in June where they mystery shopped about 800 eCommerce retail brands. And they were looking for areas where they could identify the things that are really important to customers and therefore result in customers having an exceptional experience, an experience that they would want to give somebody a 5-star rating about and tell their friends.   And so they looked at dimensions of Reliability, Relatability and Responsiveness. So, one of the hypotheses that they had was and this was predominantly U.S. based brands, although there are people purchasing products from all parts of the world. And they also then interviewed 500 U.S. customers of those brands, consumers not necessarily specific to any of these brands, but just 500 hundred people that are consumers in the United States.   And they asked them, how did they feel about wait times? How do they feel about brands and their willingness to stick with that brand, if there was going to be a longer wait time?   And their hypothesis was and this was something that they have also been feeling themselves during the pandemic. When the pandemic began in March and April, there was a lot of forgiveness. People were willing to say, “Oh my gosh, the world has just been completely turned upside down. I'm not going to hold it against my favourite brand that things are messed up. And they have shipping delays and they can't figure out where things are. And they might be getting slammed with a backlog because people weren't able to go into the office to answer to these questions.”   So, this idea that he thinks we as consumers were permitting, we were okay with the dreaded backlog happening, consumers don't think of it as a backlog. But we, of course, as the providers of a great customer experience, we think of backlogs and the dreaded backlog, which happens to many companies and for various reasons, he thinks reared its ugly head for many brands.   And what they saw then happen was consumers stopped being as forgiving, basically, they were saying, “Hey, now that we're three or four months into this thing, I've gone back to my previously picky ways and I'm no longer willing to put up with this.” And that obviously is concerning because it's still very difficult for many brands to figure out how to provide a great customer experience.   Me: So, your study focused on ensuring that you are looking at brands that were providing a really fantastic customer experience. And the biggest pet peeve that you picked up in this report was wait times. Why do you think customers as the pandemic got more and more deeper, people got less forgiving or patient as it related to giving brands the breather that they needed?   Daniel shared that what's really interesting about this finding is that he does think that part of this finding is cultural. And by that, he means, Americans are not the same as people from other countries. They had a webinar and they had a couple of guest speakers on the webinar, one of which her name is Alex, she runs customer success at Princess Polly. Princess Polly is an Australian brand. So they have a lot of customers in Australia.   And this idea that felt very validated by an American hypothesis in the data by Americans doesn't actually play out anecdotally anyway, in Alex's experience for their Australian customers. They were just very willing to be forgiving still of things being delayed and challenges, a lot of things relating to shipping and the forgiveness around that.   So, he thinks there's a fair amount of a cultural challenge around this. He thinks the American market; you can probably say that the American consumer has a very high bar. And unfortunately, it's harder than ever before to probably deliver on that high bar.   What he means by that high bar by the way, he thinks that high bar is, he doesn't want to use words that are that are either positive or negative in kind of describing the American consumer here. He is an American. He is an American consumer, but he thinks that the American consumer has been very much influenced by a lot of the existing technology and the way that American consumers have been catered to by that technology.   So Amazon, which is absolutely a ubiquitous company in not just the United States, but as he’s speaking specifically about this has he thinks created an expectation of you get whatever you want, whenever you want it, and it comes fast and that whole idea of hyper catered to.   And so, he thinks that's what we're kind of seeing play out here. There has been a very significant trend that was already happening before the pandemic of both his generation, as well as the generation below us, so the millennial.   He’s a reluctant millennial because sometimes the pejorative to call someone a millennial, he’s like the oldest millennial you can get, he’s like, “No, not those millennials. They're all so young and don't respect their boss and all this stuff.”   But as a millennial and then as Gen Z, there is a there's a pretty significant shift in the way that we want to interact with our brands as consumers away from that kind of unilateral, “Hey, here's the phone and we're available when you need us, if you ever have an issue. And by when you need us, I mean, between the hours of 9:00 and 5:00 Eastern Standard Time, Monday through Friday.” So, that expectation that customers then have, “Well, actually, I want to be able to interact with a brand on a different channel. I want to be able to use email. I want to be able to use Instagram. I want to be able to use chat right on the website. And by the way, I want to be able to do that whenever it's convenient for me and it's convenient for me probably not when it's convenient for you.”   And that expectation has been exacerbated actually by the pandemic. And the data that they collected also reflects this narrative where brands have now recognized because of the pandemic that they need to offer more digital options for people to interact with them.   They just have to, it becomes table stakes and then it becomes punitive if you're not actually playing the game. The problem is most of the brands in the study hadn't quite cracked the nut on how do I actually deliver a customer experience that is expected by this customer. I'm offering something, I have chat, but then, sometimes it takes more than 5 minutes to respond to a chat and 92% of the people who experience a 5 minute wait time on chat give the brand a very poor rating on responsiveness.   Me: Because their expectation is immediate response.   Daniel agreed and stated that 30 seconds or less, “If it's more than a minute, I'm starting to really get mad; I'll give you a minute. I might start wavering, but if it's more than a minute, I'm actually going to get mad.”   And this world of CX that we've kind of immersed ourselves in here, it's an emotional world. He thinks of times in his own life where he can remember either good or bad experiences with brands. And his blood gets boiling, really bothers him. And these are things he can remember from like 10 years ago.   So, he thinks it's so important for us to remember that in a time, particularly in a pandemic, in a time where everyone is feeling kind of raw, actually, and we're willing to then if we put our own feelings on a 10 point scale, he thinks that our capacity to feel at a 10 is actually heightened by the fact that we are in this kind of simmering state of anxiety.   And so, providing somebody with a very good experience can make someone feel amazing, providing something the very poor experience can make somebody maybe kind of tip over. And this will finally be the thing that I feel like I can scream about.   Me: Agreed. So, you touched on a few stuff that I thought was really, really interesting. One was you said that you thought that at the end of the day, even though you did a study and it was primarily reflective of the American consumer, you also think it's very cultural. And it's funny you said that because I do agree with you, but at the same time, you went ahead to then allude to the fact that Amazon has kind of set the bar so high and I'm doing some research for a customer experience management program I'm building for a client.   And in my research, one of the things that I realized was, no matter what industry you're in, whether are you're a bank or you're a supermarket or you're delivering pizza. Because Amazon has created technology or an experience by which you can just go online and press the button and within minutes or hours depending on what it is that you're ordering, you can get the item delivered to you. You can see where it is every step along the way, it's almost like consumers expect that same experience in other types of businesses, even if the business model is not similar to yours.   And I don't think that's specific to country. I don't think it's because Amazon is an American brand. I think Jamaicans have that expectation as well. Two nights ago, my godchildren's father called me and he asked me. So a lot of companies in Jamaica, especially the fast food restaurants, have been doing delivery services now. And companies like Kentucky Fried Chicken, for example, that never used to deliver in Jamaica, that was like something that we never thought we'd live to see. I couldn't understand why they wouldn't deliver just like pizza delivers, because when I did some research, KFC delivers in Trinidad, but it doesn't deliver here in Jamaica.   And I was like, well, if they can do it in Trinidad and population is less, why can't they do it here? Anyhow, he called and said that his wife ordered some food from like 6:30 pm and it was like 9:00 o'clock and the food hadn't come. And when he called the lady, the lady at the delivery place says to him, “Oh, but we told you 30 to 45 minutes.” I don't even know how giving that statement to the customer is relevant because we're now way past 45 minutes. Six thirty to 9:00 is way past what you would have told them to expect.   So at this point, he's so mad he wants a full refund and then they further said to him, it's going to take them 7 to 10 business days to process this refund. And remember when they took his money; I'm sure it didn't take 30 seconds to run that money off of his card or whatever payment, well, it would have to be off his card if it was a digital payment, because he did it through an app that he use on the phone.   But I'm saying this is say Daniel, you are correct because of the experience that Amazon has created for us and as I said, I don't think it's necessarily cultural. I think, generally speaking, regardless of the country that you are from, if you know of Amazon and you've done business with them, it's almost like your brain is saying to yourself, “Well, if Amazon has human beings that work in their organization and they're able to create these technologies that create this type of experience, why can't other businesses think like this and operate like these to create a similar kind of experience to make life less stressful for me, because there are other things that I have to worry about, and this would be one less thing for me to stress about.”   So I thought that was really, really brilliant. And I think all organizations should really be looking at benchmarking themselves, not against companies that are in the same industry as them, but even companies that are outside of their industry because that's what their customers are viewing their businesses.   Daniel shared that he totally agreed with that. And thanks Yanique for just sharing that anecdote as well. They actually we work with a large restaurant, quick serve restaurant. And they have an application and it's a very similar type of thing where you see a lot of times confusion that people have. And what was sad, they saw recently this really great kind of interaction with the brand they're helping out on helping them answer these customer inquiries. And somebody writes in with basically that same story like, “Hey, something got messed up with my order. It hasn't been here for way too long.”   And he thinks that the bar is currently so low, actually. Here's the saving grace. We don't want to give doom and gloom to everybody. But maybe the saving grace is that the bar is actually quite low in terms of reality and if you then are responsive to people and you are empathetic and this was another thing that their data showed is the relatability aspect.   So being empathetic, showing somebody that you're a human, which bots obviously struggle to do, and which is why people get frustrated with bots. And he’s not saying bots should never be used, but he’s saying and in certain instances, if you put a bot in front of somebody and they are unable to get their situation resolved, it will make them even more mad than they would have been in any other situation.   But when we talk about just that bar being kind of low, you give somebody a quick response, you immediately tell them, “Hey, I am so sorry that your food did not get there when it needed to. That must have been extremely frustrating. And you're probably hungry right now.”   You immediately have made the person feel validated because being validated is the cornerstone, he thinks, of being able to make somebody feel open to then working with you and coming back, so you start with that validation, which is, he thinks, the cornerstone of empathy. And then you give them that refund, you get that processed much more quickly and then what does that person do? And this is actually a real example, by the way.   So, they saw this exact example happen and this person wrote back 5 out of 5 star review on the CSAT survey. And then they write in and they say, “I just have to tell you, I didn't even think anyone was going to write me back. And you've totally blown me away.”   But that first initial idea that they had actually written in, they'd taken the time to write in to express their frustration and they still didn't even expect to hear back to him shows that there is a real disconnect between where people's bar is in terms of like, if you can get over this bar, you're going to actually satisfy people. And then if you can really go beyond it to just the expectation that we want to have for our consumers, that there's plenty of 5 star moments out there to be had.   Me: Agreed. So, true. So one of the things your study actually said, which I thought was really very important, reinforcing what you just said. So, “AI driven chatbots are making significant strides in providing Real-Time information to solve simple customer concerns. But it still remains important to the customer experience that a company brings empathy and humanity to each customer interaction.”   Because, as you said, bots are here to help us, the technology is there to help us. But at the end of the day, there are some circumstances that require human interaction. I honestly don't think that even though technology has advanced so much that the human element of a customer experience is ever, ever going to be void and null, it's still going to need some form of human interaction.   Daniel agreed and shared that a couple of years ago, they were living in the rage; AI bots are going to be able to completely take over multiple parts of the organization actually, it was customer success, it was also sales. He remembers hearing we're never going to need sales reps because the bots can do all the work.   And the reality is, we think of ourselves as a human enabled technology company and we think that there is a place for technology and we see companies and he’s not even talking about their own customers. They see big brands, there's a place for bots and it has certain limited scope. And it's an incredibly valuable way for them to reduce their overall cost of service.   And we see companies that then are using people to answer questions in an on brand way. And you really got a nail that kind of tone and brand. And you have to have the knowledge and the people have to have that knowledge. And we play that role; we play that role for companies. But there's different ways that companies do that. And then there's also always this like core team internally where things need to get escalated to, if something is really going bad, you really need to have some people that are inside the organization that might be able to move larger mountains if need be.   And so, that's kind of where things he thinks sit today. And he doesn't necessarily see a lot of companies saying, “What we really need is more bots.” He hears them say, “What we really need is fewer backlogs.” Because the backlogs are what is killing their customer satisfaction. And bots don't necessarily take away the backlog, they might give you an immediate quick responsiveness, but they won't necessarily be able to resolve the issue. And of course, if you don't resolve the issue, you don't really change the situation.   So, they see a lot of companies also really focused on resolution, first time resolution. Just resolving something is obviously important but if it takes you, “Hey, we're on chat and I can't help you, now email us and I'll get back to you in a few days and we'll work on this over the course of the next week.”   That's not okay, that is just not okay. And when he says it's not okay, the data reflects that CSAT scores are not good when that happens. So, they're really focused on and he thinks a lot of companies agree with this, really focused on getting that resolution to happen in that first interaction.   Things to Focus on to Give Great Customer Experience   Daniel shared that yes, he would say the First Time Resolution. And you accomplish a first time resolution by making sure that the people who are responding on your behalf are empowered to be able to resolve the issue that they are being asked to resolve.   So that's critically important. He would say another thing to do is around Relatability. Oftentimes, we have people that are doing the customer service response, they’re writing back and yet for a variety of reasons, whether it's the incentives we're giving them or whether it's a lack of directive, we are taking out their humanity from the interaction.   If we're just telling somebody, just get through this quickly and get it done, which is sometimes the way that we align the incentive, we then just get them to just do something really fast. And you can tell when you get an email when it's kind of fast, somebody is just being quick. And so, when he means relatability, he means empowering people to actually show that they're people and using that personality.   So, giving a potential anecdote, being able to be empathetic like we were talking about before, validating how somebody is feeling, it's hard for bots to do those things, credibly. They can do them maybe in a way that will get it right some of the time and then not some of the time. And that not some of the time is really a disaster, basically. So, this is where human beings, we have this capacity to allow somebody to have an emotional connection to what you're saying because you're showing your humanity and we need to encourage people to do that.   And the last that he’ll say is it is important to be able to be Reliable with your customers and where they want to be, the data does suggest this, and this is also where the world has been going. If you have chat and you cannot respond to people on chat, it's like what is worse, having it in the first place or giving people a terrible customer experience. It's like a two sides of the same thing. It's terrible because you're going to miss out on these presale opportunities by not having it and a lot of people just prefer to go in through chat for even for a post sale inquiry. But if you don't service it properly, it's a terrible experience.   Same thing with email. People offer up email and they should because many people like to email and they recognize that I'm going to send you an email and he thinks the expectation from what we can see, is the expectation is a day. If you're getting back to him in 24 hours on an email, that is about what he would expect. That's how he kind of think about it even in his own life in business. He writes somebody an email; he expects them to get back to him within 24 hours.   Me: Even if it's just an acknowledgement.   Daniel agreed and stated that just to be able to say I hear you right. Oftentimes in our customer service world, we end up giving people an automated response, just let them know I received your email and we will be getting back to you.   But, in the survey that they did, the average response time on email was 48 hours. He thinks that people recognize that that's probably not acceptable. He thinks that the bar for what we should be attempting to provide, it is attainable because where things currently are has plenty of room to get better. And I think that when you impress people, so if you then get back to people every time in less than 24 hours, every time, and you never create a backlog.   So, because you never want to have a backlog and because customers feel the backlog, the backlog means you can't get back to them for days or chat if your chats are piling up and he’s not talking about at 3:00 a.m. when for some strange reason somebody doesn't get back to a chat, maybe you can be forgiving of that. He’s talking about during a time where you expect somebody to be able to chat and they're piling up, that's a chat backlog. That's a disaster and those should be avoided at all costs.     App, Website or Tool that Daniel Absolutely Can’t Live Without in His Business When asked about on online resource that he cannot live without in his business, Daniel shared that they use a technology called Gong to listen to their sales calls. And he will say that it has been very powerful. As somebody on the marketing side where they are really trying to support their sales team, make sure that they understand what their prospective customers are actually saying about their pain, what is that language and their ability to then provide the right information to their sales team so that they can be successful in those selling interactions.   Gong has been amazing because it allows them to asynchronously participate in the sales conversation, because they can listen to the calls, they can listen to them at faster than real time speed. So you can make it play at more than 1X speed, which is great, too, because it allows him to catch up on some things that at a faster pace. He can skip forward and listen, what they've done is within the Gong platform, they're using Natural Language Processing to tag what people are talking about.   So, when somebody is talking about pricing, when somebody is talking about positioning, He can kind of see where that is in the conversation so he can kind of skip forward to the things that are going to be really useful for him. If it's 2 minutes or 5 minutes at the beginning of just kind of set up time, he can see what that is because that's tag there so he can move past it. So Gong has been a real benefit to them, and he’s only assuming that also because of the pandemic, that it's even more useful because he can't easily just kind of hop in a room and join one of his sales teammates on a call.   Books That Have Had the Greatest Impact on Daniel When asked about books that have had the biggest impact, Daniel shared that on the professional side, Tony Hsieh’s book, Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose, which he loved, was 10 years ago. He still loves that book because he thinks in many ways, Tony's way of thinking about the business model as customer centric and obviously he also sold the business to Amazon, which at the time felt like, well, maybe that's not a win and if he's been holding onto that Amazon stock, most of us would think he's probably a billionaire at this point. But they were two companies cut from the same cloth because Amazon also has done the exact same thing and he has listened to podcasts and things where people from Amazon are talking about how do they think about solving business problems.   And they always start with the customer perspective. What will make the customer happier in this circumstance? And he thinks that that ethos and Tony just talks about this basically throughout the entire book, that ethos is what makes the whole discipline of CX a reality, it's not just your customer support function. You have to be thinking about this in every part of the company. Well, what would be better for the customer? And that informs what we do on the marketing side too, what you make this easier for the customer to be able to understand our value, understand what we do, how can we give them more useful information that will make their jobs easier? So, he loves that book.   On the personal side, he recently finished reading How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi and it's an amazing book. It he thinks gave him a lot more language to be able to understand the role that he needs to play in the world and how he’s going to be part of change that needs to happen and the role that policy needs to play and what he needs to do to support policy that is anti-racist so that we can dismantle the systemic racism that has plagued not only this country, obviously, but many parts of the world for a long time for centuries.   And so, he’s incredibly grateful for the scholarship of Ibram X. Kendi. He’s actually attending a seminar that he's putting on. So, he’s very, very excited about that book and if anybody else has read this book and is interested in talking about it, he’s very much looking to connect with people who are interested in this as a topic.   What Daniel is Really Excited About Now! Daniel shared that the funny thing about a pandemic is that it can change a lot of the priorities of what you’re able to try to do or not do. One of the things that he’s passionate about is meditation. He started meditating about 10 years ago and has been meditating on a daily basis for close to 4 years at this point. So he's kind of gone on and off in the past with some different ways of doing it. And one of the things for those who have meditated regularly and have done so kind of alone, one of the things that he was realizing he was doing, he has been doing a guided meditation, a daily 10 minute guided meditation through an app called Calm. And there are different apps for this; Headspace is another app. WakingUp is an app that was recently introduced to him. There are lessons that are being broached and he wanted more opportunities to kind of talk about those, talk about those lessons and to reflect on them and hear other people's thoughts on them.   So, he feels like he has been doing this in kind of a siloed, personal way. And recently he brought this to Simplr and he said, “Hey, does anyone want to do a meditation?” He'll talk about why he’s into meditation and they can do one of these guided meditations through the through the app. And to his pleasant surprise, a bunch of people were very interested. And there were also a bunch of people that have meditated, either sporadically in the past or that meditate quite regularly for longer periods of time even more than he does.   So for now, they're starting a company meditation practice where they get together every couple of weeks, every two weeks, and they have a prompt that they are going to then reflect on and then when they get together, they are going discuss what was covered in that prompt as a way of trying to deepen their own practice and understanding. And also just to get to know people on a kind of a different level. So, really, really excited about the things that they can do that will bring them together while obviously, they can't actually see anybody face to face.   Where Can We Find Daniel Online Daniel shared listeners can find him at – LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/drodriguez4/   Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Daniel Uses When asked if he has a quote or saying that he reverts to in times of adversity or challenge, Daniel shared that in meditation, he thinks so much of what he’s trying to do is actually just come back to the present and come back to the breath. So, he actually really like to remind himself to just breathe and then to actually do it. And oftentimes, if he’s feeling overwhelmed, if he just focuses on that feeling of his breath and just tell himself the word breathe, that it has an incredible effect. So, he will just leave everybody with the single word, “Breathe”   Me: That's brilliant. It's funny you said that because I have an Apple Watch and every now and again I see the breathe thing comes up on it and it says breathe. I guess it's reminding me to breathe. I don't know if it's built into the watch like that or maybe it picks up that my body energy needs to kind of cool down, I have no idea. But yes, breathing definitely does help. I don't know if I intentionally sit down and breathe from time to time because I do meditate sporadically. But breathing, it can definitely create clarity for you; it causes you to kind of just slow down and as you said, brings you back to the present. I have actually experienced that on many, many occasions.   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   Grab the Freebie on Our Website – TOP 10 Online Business Resources for Small Business Owners Links Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose by Tony Hsieh How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi In New State of CX Study by Simplr, 27% of Consumers Say Their Brand Loyalty Has Wavered During Pandemic Due to Long Customer Service Wait Times by Simplr   The ABC’s of a Fantastic Customer Experience 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!

In this episode, we have a conversation with John Bunch, Lead Organizational Designer and Adviser to the CEO Tony Hsieh at Zappos. John joined Zappos.com in 2009 as a Software Developer and moved on to lead the Public API team. John was the Implementation Lead during Zappos’ shift to Holacracy and self-organization. Coming out of the rollout of Holacracy, John transitioned to leading internal infrastructure and systems design.In the conversation, we talk about how Zappos - through the application of Holacracy and marked-based dynamics - is becoming a thriving entrepreneurial organization. We use the city as a metaphor for the high diversity, high productivity organisation that Zappos strives to be, based on shared enabling services and micro-enterprising. We also explore the concept of the “triangle of accountability” that guides the organizational development and the specific hiring process that helps make sure that people who join the company are aligned with the values and ways of working applied in Zappos.Remember that you can find the show notes and transcripts from all our episodes on our Medium publication. https://medium.com/@meedabyte/a2aaa916663e?source=friends_link&sk=3c1f7e1c2614731316fb0700295f982aHere are some important links from the conversation:Find out more about John’s work> LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-bunch/> Zappos: https://www.zappos.com/> Zappos Expertise: https://expertise.zappos.com/Other references and mentions:> Tony Hsieh, Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose.  https://www.amazon.com/Delivering-Happiness-Profits-Passion-Purpose/dp/0446576220> Zappos Adaptive: https://www.zappos.com/e/adaptive> Nassim Taleb, Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder, https://www.amazon.com/Delivering-Happiness-Profits-Passion-Purpose/dp/0446576220Find out more about the show and the research at Boundaryless at www.platformdesigntoolkit.com/podcastThanks for the ad-hoc music to Liosound / Walter Mobilio. Find his portfolio here: www.platformdesigntoolkit.com/musicRecorded on June 11th 2020

I’m glad to introduce to you our special guest, Ryan Coon. He is a co-founder and the CEO of Avail, an all-in-one software solution designed for do-it-yourself landlords. Before Avail, Coon was an investment banking associate at BMO Capital Markets.   Ryan has a hardworking spirit, and together with his co-founder Laurence Jankelow, they developed the idea for their company on a napkin that now solves the needs of thousands of landlords. His goal is to help the real estate market to become as transparent and as efficient as the stock market is.   Today, Ryan and I talk about his leap from the corporate world to his real passion in life. He also shares his advice on starting a new venture and communicating with investors.     Episode Highlights:   ●      Redirection Towards Entrepreneurship [1:29] ●      Tips for Career Change and Getting Into Business [3:50] ●      What They Do at Avail [7:09] ●      Tools You Can Find on Avail [12:01] ●      Real Estate for First-Timers  [13:20] ●      Raising Capital and Growing Your Business [15:01] ●      Book Recommendations [18:30]     AND MUCH MORE!     Resources Mentioned In This Episode: ●      If you are a future or aspiring business leader who wants to achieve the next level of success in your profession, get started by getting my FREE video short course: The Secret to Unleashing Your Top 1 Percent. ●      Learn more about Ryan, his team, and what they can do for you at www.avail.co. They also have articles, guides, and resources that you can check out! ●      Connect with Ryan: o   LinkedIn o   Twitter ●      Book Recommendations: o   Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose by Tony Hsieh o   Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World with OKRs  by John Doerr o   Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike by Phil Knight   Quotes: “Be creative. There are unlimited opportunities out there. You just have to be willing to go for it.” “The truth is overnight successes don’t really happen.” “There are some things that frankly as an entrepreneur, you do, and you don’t wanna do.” “Raising outside capital is not as glamorous as it sounds. It’s a lot like dating. Going on a lot of dates, you have to find the right match and the right chemistry. ”   Ways to Subscribe to The Top One Percent:   Apple Podcast Stitcher PlayerFM Podtail

When a client refuses a reclean, you may feel like you have a high maintenance customer. As a house cleaner, it is important to clarify expectations with your cleaning client. When a client refuses a reclean it doesn't mean you have difficult cleaning clients. How to talk to cleaning clients is an art every house cleaner can learn. A frustrated client is bad for business and costs money on your customer satisfaction policy. Clean don't reclean. Today’s #AskaHouseCleaner sponsor is Savvy Cleaner Training for house cleaners and maids. *** CALENDAR OF EVENTS FOR HOUSE CLEANING TRAINING *** https://SavvyCleaner.com/Calendar-of-Courses *** MOST REQUESTED LIST OF CLEANING STUFF I USE *** https://www.Amazon.com/shop/AngelaBrown *** MORE VIDEOS ON THIS TOPIC *** How To Make Your Customers Happy & Satisfied - ClickBank University - https://youtu.be/izFHWR8-NUg 5 Steps to Improve Customer Satisfaction - UpsideLearning - https://youtu.be/XK3cNcuvuMs How to Give Great Customer Service: The L.A.S.T. Method - Learn English with Emma [engVid] - https://youtu.be/dnpMqQnt8WY How to Handle Customer Complaints Like A Pro - Valuetainment - https://youtu.be/kx7-S9jvVXM Service Business Examples - How to build a successful service-based business? - Evan Carmichael - https://youtu.be/Eccjx6hJP_U *** GOOD KARMA RESOURCES FROM THIS EPISODE *** These good karma links connect you to Amazon.com and affiliated sites that offer products or services that relate to today’s show. When you click on the links and buy the items you pay the exact same prices or less than if you found the links on your own elsewhere. The difference is that we make a small commission here at the show for sharing these links with you. So, you create good karma by supporting 8 families who work on this show. Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose - https://amzn.to/2Q4bq6D Difficult Conversations: How To Discuss What Matters Most - https://amzn.to/2ICI0sa Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In - https://amzn.to/2W1LXPi Hug Your Haters: How to Embrace Complaints and Keep Your Customers - https://amzn.to/2TE2mI1 The Anatomy of Peace: Resolving the Heart of Conflict - https://amzn.to/334SOsu *** CONNECT WITH ANGELA ON SOCIAL MEDIA *** LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/savvycleaner/ Facebook: https://Facebook.com/SavvyCleaner Twitter: https://Twitter.com/SavvyCleane Instagram: https://Instagram.com/SavvyCleaner Pinterest: https://Pinterest.com/SavvyCleaner *** GOT A QUESTION FOR A SHOW? *** Email it to Angela[at]AskaHouseCleaner.com Voice Mail: Click on the blue button at https://askahousecleaner.com *** HOUSE CLEANING TIPS VAULT *** (DELIVERED VIA EMAIL) - https://savvycleaner.com/tips *** FREE EBOOK – HOW TO START YOUR OWN HOUSE CLEANING COMPANY *** http://amzn.to/2xUAF3Z *** PROFESSIONAL HOUSE CLEANERS PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP *** https://www.facebook.com/groups/ProfessionalHouseCleaners/ *** VRBO AIRBNB CLEANING FACEBOOK GROUP *** https://www.facebook.com/groups/VRBO.Airbnb.Cleaning/ *** LOOKING FOR WAY TO GET MORE CLEANING LEADS *** https://housecleaning360.com *** WHAT IS ASK A HOUSE CLEANER? *** Ask a House Cleaner is a daily show where you get to ask your house cleaning questions and we provide answers. Learn how to clean. How to start a cleaning business. Marketing and Advertising tips for your cleaning service. How to find top quality house cleaners, housekeepers, and maids. Employee motivation tactics. Strategies to boost your cleaning clientele. Cleaning company expansion help. Time-saving Hacks for DIY cleaners and more. Hosted by Angela Brown, a 25-year house cleaning expert and founder of Savvy Cleaner Training for House Cleaners and Maids. *** SPONSORSHIPS & BRANDS *** We do work with sponsors and brands. If you are interested in working with us and you have a product or service that is cohesive to the cleaning industry read this: https://savvycleaner.com/product-review *** THIS SHOW WAS SPONSORED BY *** SAVVY CLEANER - House Cleaner Training and Certification – https://savvycleaner.com MY CLEANING CONNECTION – Your hub for all things cleaning – https://mycleaningconnection.com HOUSECLEANING360.COM – Connecting House Cleaners with Homeowners – https://housecleaning360.com SAVVY PERKS – Employee Benefits for Small Business Owners – https://savvyperks.com VRBO AIRBNB CLEANING – Cleaning tips and strategies for your short-term rental https://TurnoverCleaningTips.com *** VIDEO CREDITS *** VIDEO/AUDIO EDITING: Kristin O https://savvycleaner.com/reviews/kristin-o HOST: Angela Brown https://savvycleaner.com/reviews/angela-brown PRODUCER: Savvy Cleaner https://savvycleaner.com

This week on the Finding Impact Podcast, we are talking about the challenges of maintaining culture as your social business scales, and tactics for how to adapt and scale your culture, with Paul Breloff of Shortlist. Paul's company, Shortlist, helps companies build and develop their teams through a new approach to hiring. Particularly, we'll be talking about Paul's experience as he grew Shortlist's team across two continents and to nearly 100 people and lessons he's learned from the entrepreneurs at companies Shortlist works with. On this podcast you will learn: The definition to the word Shwashbuckle. 0:58. Why why he got into “talent;” his background is mostly in non-talent social enterprise and impact investing after advertising and corporate law. For about 14-15 years now, very focused on financial inclusion and initially was part of a team who set up a community development bank in the US which led to Accion Venture Lab. https://www.accion.org/how-we-work/invest/accion-venture-lab The theme underlying all of this has always been looking at for-profit business models which can expand access to opportunities in different ways. 2:30. Saw a talent gap in companies and how culture could enable or disable teams in doing things.  Realized that investors comfort zone was talking about fundraising and strategy. The messy reality of building teams and getting the right people on those teams are something that doesn't get talked about as much, but they often make or break whether these companies work. So Shortlist emerged from those experiences. 6:12. Shortlist created a platform (now close to 1 million people) that connects skilled professionals to great careers in India and Kenya, using tech tools that automates the collection of data points beyond their CV. 8:08. How Paul came to define Shortlist's culture. 10:10. Culture should come from the co-founders. A key part of defining the culture was setting strong core values, which are: own it, act with intention, find the adventure, be a whole person, and one team. Core values can adapt! Shortlist added “one team” after realizing the importance of this after a merger with another company and now they make it a major priority. 18:56. Challenges he faced maintaining culture across multiple continents and what process or activities he put in place to help develop it. Tried to create consistency, and enough opportunities for exchange so people could get to know each other. But distributed teams is probably the future. 21:15. Things that have worked: 1) Creating global informal places to spark chatter and sharing of personality. E.g. Their global WhatsApp group is quite active, silly, not very professional, but lets people throw emoji's back and forth. 2) Creating face-to-face opportunities for real time connection, ie. making sure the team travels between India and Kenya. 3) Investing in technology that allows you to stay connected remotely. 4) Monthly remote town halls which get the whole office together to say hello to new employees, goodbye to employees moving on, promotions, etc. 24:30. Any pushback from Board members or investors about having too much fun? No. “A startup's most important product is the team, and making sure it works well. I think our stakeholders believe that and want us to invest in that.” 30:45. Resources that Paul would recommend to others: The Culture Code by Daniel Coyle, Setting the Table by Danny Meyer, Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose by Tony Hsieh (Zappos CEO), Primed to Perform by Neel Doshi and Lindsay McGregor. 32:10. Resources from this episode: Shortlist company website https://www.shortlist.net/ The Meta-Culture of Building Great Teams https://medium.com/@paul_53628/the-meta-culture-of-building-great-teams-b08b8daf5023 One Team: A Fifth Shortlist Value Enters the World https://medium.com/@paul_53628/one-team-a-fifth-shortlist-value-enters-the-world-87d6fa7b828b The Power of Swashbuckle: How Shortlist Decided What's Important https://medium.com/@paul_53628/the-power-of-swashbuckle-how-shortlist-decided-whats-important-5ca817efcf51 Connect with Paul: LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-breloff-5638b67/ Twitter https://twitter.com/paulbreloff?lang=en

You’ve heard the folklore time and again: a group of young idealists starts a company in their garage with dreams of one day changing the world. In the case of Fenix International, they too started in a garage, but this garage happened to be in Uganda, and those idealists happened to be a group of ex-Apple engineers. The problem they were trying to solve: Lots of rural Africans just don’t have access to safe, clean energy. As a result, they either burn kerosene or local trees, both of which are polluting and create real hazards in the home, or they simply live in the dark when the sunsets. Well, these engineers wanted to be a source of light for such families, literally. Their goal: create the cheapest possible solar panels and energy storage that could be affixed to roofs, often made of thatch, and help power homes that are too far away from any grid. They called their company Fenix International, and Lyndsay Holley Handler, employee #1, would be their CEO.  As you’ll hear in the interview, Fenix got right to work, raising capital and inventing low-cost solar panels that help transform the lives of their new owners. Not only do test scores for kids improve in homes with the solar panels (since they can study at night), but local entrepreneurs like tailors can receive more income by staying open later. There’s also evidence that these solar panels are helping advance gender equality and even lowering birth rates.  With a profitable business model that’s tangibly improving the lives of rural Africans and employing 1,100 people, Fenix solar panels are now sitting atop hundreds of thousands of homes in six countries, benefiting three million people. Not too shabby for a company that began in a garage in 2009. The startup went through series A and B financings before more recently getting acquired by a larger energy company, allowing for some cofounder exits. This was recorded in October 2019, just a couple days after Lyndsay stepped down as CEO of Fenix. With such an impressive track record behind her, what will Lyndsay do next? Well, as the head of the Ugandan Ultimate Frisbee Association, maybe she’ll have a little more time to play. But then, she’s got new business plans to keep making a difference. Listen to the interview to hear her story! Mentioned in this episode Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose by Tony Hsieh

Since we've recently gained so many new listeners, we wanted to throw it back to one of our favorite episodes! Today, we get to talk to Steve Trang about how he made the (rather quick) jump from electrical engineer to real estate agent and how he’s grown in that role ever since. Steve started out his career earning a Masters degree in Electrical Engineering and working as an engineer for Intel for 3.5 years. In 2007, Steve quit his engineering career to become a real estate agent. Since then, Steve has gone on to create Stunning Home Realty, a real estate brokerage in Phoenix, Arizona that he has grown to 60 licensed agents, selling over 100 houses a year and creating some of the top producing teams in the valley. He’s also gone on to start his own Title company and develop a real estate app. Steve is not only committed to building his successful real estate empire but he also believes in helping others build their dreams too. He recently started a podcast called Real Estate Disruptors, where he interviews other real estate experts on how they’re disrupting their markets. Here is what we chat about in this episode: How getting his Masters degree in Electrical Engineering is really taking the easy route because “someone else lays out the plan and you just follow it” How he always knew that he would eventually leave his engineering job but why it happened so much faster than he expected. - How his irrational confidence allowed him to meet a real estate broker and, within 2 ½ weeks of that meeting, get his real estate license and quit his engineering job. “Real confidence is knowing you’ll figure it out” - Brandon Burchard How the fall of the real estate market in 2007 almost sent him back to his engineering job and how he continued to push through. How he uses self-help to continue to grow his business. How he went from being a real estate agent to owning his own brokerage, title company, real estate app and podcast. Upcoming Events: LFAQ Live Event Sign Up Free Masterclass Sign Up Resources Mentioned in the Podcast Tony Hsieh, Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose. Micheal E. Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It. Pat Flynn’s Smart Passive Income Darren Hardy’s Darren Daily Where to find Steve Realestatedispruptors.com Stevetrang.com

Nathan Hirsch is a serial entrepreneur and expert in remote hiring and eCommerce. He started his first eCommerce business out of his college dorm room and has sold over $30 million dollars online. He is now the co-founder and CEO of FreeeUp.com, a marketplace that connects businesses with pre-vetted virtual assistants, freelancers and agencies in eCommerce, digital marketing, and much more. He regularly appears on leading podcasts, such as Entrepreneur on Fire, and speaks at live events about online hiring tactics.  Questions Couldyou share with us a little bit about your journey? Could you share with us maybe one to three top tips that has really helped you to choose the right people for these organizations that you recruit for and why do you think it's important to be consistent in these attitudes or behaviors that you look for in these individuals? Could you share with us how you stay motivated every day? What are some important considerations for an entrepreneur or an online business owner to be successful? In an online business when you're not having that interaction with someone face to face. What are some of the tools or things that you need to do differently in an online space when you're not seeing the person? Could you share with us what’s one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely cannot live without in your business? Could you share with us some of the books that have had the biggest impact on you? We have a lot of listeners who are business owners and managers who feel they have great products and services, but for some reason they lack the constantly motivated human capital, the people. If you are sitting across the table from some of those persons, what's the one piece of advice that you would give them to have a successful business? What’s one thing that's going on in your life right now that you're really excited about - either something that you're working on to develop yourself or your people? Where can our listeners find you online? What’s one quote or saying that during times of adversity or challenge times, you revert to that quote?   Highlights   Nathan shared that he started off as a broke college kid. His parents were both teachers and he always had the mentality that he would go to school, get a real job, retire and that was going to be his life. And when he was a little bit younger, his parents always made him have a full time job, all of his friends were outside playing during the summers and he was inside working and he was learning customer service and marketing and management and all the things that go into running a business. But he also learned that he just hated working for other people and he really wanted something better. So, when he got to college, he kind of looked at it as a ticking clock, he had four years to figure out how to start a business or he was going to get thrown into the real world, get a job, and never looked back. So, he started buying and selling people's textbooks, he uses that summer money and the money he made during his summer vacations to buy people's textbooks at the end of the semester and sell them at the beginning of next semester. So, he started a little business there, created a referral program, before he knew it, he had lines out the door of people trying to sell him their books to the point where he actually got a cease and desist letter from his college because he was taking up so much of their business. So, that was his first glimpse into being an entrepreneur. And this was back in 2008, Amazon was just becoming more than a bookstore, no one really knew what Amazon or eCommerce was. There were no gurus or courses or anything like that. So, he started to sell other products on Amazon, and he tried sporting equipment and video games and typical college guy stuff, and he just failed over and over and over. And it wasn't until he branched out of his comfort zone and found the baby product industry that his business really took off. So, if you could imagine him as a 20-year-old single college guy selling millions of dollars of baby products on Amazon, that was him. And he really scaled that business using remote freelancers, remote workers. He remembered meeting with his accountant and him asking him (Nathan) when he was going to hire his first person and he kind of shrugged him off and thinking, “Why would I do that? That's money out of my pocket. They're going to steal my ideas; they're going to hurt my business…”all of that. And he just kind of laughed in his face and said, “You're going to learn this lesson on your own.”   So sure, enough and before for his first hire, he posted a job on Facebook and this guy applied and he barely interviewed him and he hired him and it worked out great and he's his business partner today, amazing hire hard worker, learned quickly. So, there he was thinking that hiring was easy, that you post a job and someone shows up and your life gets easier and he proceeded to make bad hires after bad hires using a lot of the different platforms out there, the up works and the fivers and he just wanted something better and faster. So, three years ago he had the idea to launch his own marketplace FreeeUp where they vet applicants before they get on the platform, they only let the top 1% on, they make them available to clients whenever they need them, with a no turnover guarantee, if they quit for any reason, they cover replacement costs and get them a new person right away. So, that's really the evolution of him working a summer job to go into college, starting his book business, started his Amazon business and then starting FreeeUp.   Nathan stated that just to clarify, they're not recruiting, it's not like they tell them what they need, and they go find it. They’re building a network of virtual assistants, freelancers, agencies that are all the similar mold that they know will do a great job for their clients. And you're right, that vetting is so important. He learned a long time ago that when you've vet someone just for skill, a lot of time it blows up in your face. You hire someone with a five-star review or 10 years of experience and two months later you're like, “What happened? This was awful.”And so, what they realized is it's a combination of all three, you've got skill, you’ve got attitude and you’ve got communication. So, when you're dealing with skill, you don't need everyone to be a 10 out of 10, they can be a five out of 10 or three out of 10, what you care about is that they're honest about what they can and cannot do and they're priced accordingly. On the attitude side, they do one on one interviews, they look for people who are passionate, they do don't get aggressive the second that something doesn't go their way, people who can take feedback and handle it professionally. And then on the communication, obviously you want someone that speaks your language on a high level, but it's so much more than that, it's being able to get on the same page quickly and hitting deadlines and being able to respond within a business day and use whatever clients communication method that they care about. So, they really looked for that trifecta and it's very rare that you hire someone that has all three of those and then down the line, you're like, “Wow, that was a bad hire.” Usually if you get all three, it turns out pretty well and he only hires from his own platform, his internal team is all virtual assistants, freelancers that got through their vetting process, the same people that are available to his clients.   Nathan stated that motivation for him, it's funny, with his Amazon business he kind of grew up in a place where his dad taught in the high school next to him. And he lived in East Longmeadow and his dad was in Longmeadow, so, he went to high school in Longmeadow and all those kids, their parents were doctors, lawyers, dentists, business owners and so money was always a motivation because he was never poor, but he was middle class and he was always hanging out with kids that had so much more than he did. So, at first, money was that motivator and as you get deeper in that entrepreneurship and the honeymoon period kind of ends as he calls it, you realize that money's not everything and the Amazon business he lost passion for because of that reason, he wasn't helping anyone, he was just helping himself and he was helping his manufacturers and maybe his team. And, with FreeeUp, what motivates him is he gets to help business owners from all around the world achieve their dreams and scale their business. And on the flip side, freelancers who are also business owners, he gets to help them scale and provide for their family and do what they enjoy doing instead of having to get a nine to five job, so, for him, that's motivating. He’s a hardworking person regardless, it's tough to say like what is that thing that drives him, but he really found that within FreeeUp just the fact that he gets to help so many people on a day to day basis, that keeps him going. Even on days like today where he’s a little sick and he’s got three podcasts scheduled.   Nathan shared that his mentality is you can't compete with big businesses on everything, you can't. There are always going to have bigger marketing budgets, bigger software budgets and all of that. But what you can always compete is customer service and that's something that he’s always been passionate about and you can always compete with the big players on customer service, treating clients like gold and they kind of take the mentality that 99% of the freelancers do an amazing job on their platform. He spent very little time dealing with issues, but these are human, stuff happens, they're startup, things just happen when you're dealing with businesses, so, when things do happen, they jump in quickly, they don't make excuses, they take responsibility and they just make it right and then they move forward and they built a lot of really great relationships that way. They have lots of clients that come in and have a great experience right from the beginning and that's obviously what they shoot for but they've also had a client that came in and maybe that first hire didn't turn out the way they want and they were so impressed by how they handled it and how they made it right quickly that now they are lifelong client and they got them someone else and now they love that person. So, for him, that mentality that the customer isn't necessarily always right, but it's in your best interest to make the customer happy at the end of the day, if you have that mentality, you can go a long way no matter what business you're in.   Yanique shared - I'm glad you brought up the point that the customer is always right because the statement itself is really incorrect as I'm sure you would have figured out because customers are not always right, we are human beings and we do make mistakes. However, one of the things that we teach in customer service training is that as employees in an organization, it's not our responsibility to prove the customer wrong. I love the saying, “The customer is always right,”and it's a wonderful guided principle but I do think as business owners, managers, leaders, coaches in organizations, we have to get the employees to that understanding that it's just a principle and a guideline because there are times when the customer is incorrect either in what they see, what they do, how they manage a particular process. But our responsibility isn't to say, “Hey Mr. Customer, you are wrong.”It's more to guide them to the correct way of how they are going to achieve success.   When asked about tips for having that interaction with persons in an online space, Nathan shared that it took him years to figure out how to work with people remote. It's a totally different mindset. Some quick tips are using stuff like emojis to actually portray how you're feeling on a day to day basis in different conversations because words get misinterpreted. People fire off emails, he’s guilty of that too and you don't realize how that gets interpreted to people on the other end. So, anything you can do to actually relate to people, not losing the small talk and being able to express how you're feeling and being directed and getting clarity all goes a long way. He likes to keep everything in writing and make it super clear, exactly how he’s feeling, what he likes, what he doesn’t like and that's how he has been able to build relationships. And the other side of it is when he dealt with people remote for the first time, he asked them, “Hey, how can I communicate better? Tell me about your best clients and the relationships you had. How did they talk to you? How did they communicate? How did they build the team?” And he learned from that and he took that information and he feels like most people; they don't go that extra mile to learn from the people that they're working with or to learn a new situation like working with someone remote.   Nathan shared that he uses Skypeevery day, using it now for a lot of podcasts. He slowly moved to Zoom for a bunch of them. He group chat with all his different teams, with freelancers and agencies that he uses. That's how he communicates with his business partner. He does phone calls with clients. It's such a great free tool and it just kind of goes to show that you don't need the most expensive software in the world. He works with 40 people and thousands of freelancers and his business partner and he uses Skype to connect with all of them. He uses other programs like Trelloto keep track of projects, but his primary communication channel is Skype.   Nathan shared that he loves the Jeff Bezos books, he loves the Zappos books. Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose by Tony Hsiehbook is fantastic, but the book that really resonates with him is Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action by Simon Sinek, the reasons he mentioned before where if you're an entrepreneur, you've got to figure out why you do stuff, not just how you do it and how you make money. There has to be a purpose behind it, and if you don't find that purpose, he doesn’t care how successful you are, he doesn't care how good your business is, eventually you're going to lose passion for it and you're going to realize that you wish you did something that you cared about. So that book always resonates with him.   Nathan stated that there's never been a better time to start a business. And he would never say an easier time because starting a business is not easy. But if you go back 20 years, you needed $100,000.00 or more to start a business. Now you can do it from your laptop with a few thousand dollars. So yes, obviously capital gives you a big advantage but he started his Amazon business with a few thousand dollars, he started FreeeUp with $5,000 so we're not talking huge amounts of money and there's so many opportunities out there to make money online without making a big investment. So, he would get out of the mentality that you need a lot of capital and he would focus on learning skills that actually help you start a business with very little besides your laptop and some strong internet.   Yanique stated - if they have people that work in their business that lack constant motivation, because you said what motivates you is you like what you're doing, you love what you're doing, that's what gets you up going every day. What if they don't know what they like or they're doing it just because they need to collect a paycheck, they have to pay bills. How are we going to get them to be constantly motivated so the business can grow?   Nathan shared that he’s in the mentality that you can't change people, here and there you can, but it's just not worth your effort on a big scale to go around trying to change people's mentality. Not that you shouldn't motivate people, you can meet with them, you can find out what does motivate them and that's where being a good leader is. He thinks this is where he and his business partner were for years, they were on different pages because he would find someone that was weak at something and try to turn it into their strength. And for him, he was trying to find people, what people's strengths were, and he was trying to get them to do that strength more, he wasn't trying to change people and the same thing with motivation. He can only spend so much time trying to motivate other people, if he realizes they're not motivated, he knows there's tons of people out there that are, and he'd rather work with those types of people. So, he doesn't have any quick fast hacks to make the light bulb go off it and motivate people, he can tell you that a lot of times it's not just money, it has to do with your leadership style and sharing goals and making them feel a part of something. But at the end of the day, he doesn't go around trying to change people or forcing people to do things and they don't want to do. He surrounds himself with people that want to be where he is and want to work with him.   Yanique reiterate - so then basically you're saying in summary, as a business owner, you have to quickly realize if your time and effort is worth to be invested in this employee and if after trying for so many times it's just not working, you'd probably need to channel that energy into someone else that would be able to yield you that success you're looking for.   Nathan agreed that it's not just employees, it could be freelancers, it could be agencies that you hire and he has an agency that runs his Instagram every month and they're running a business and if he can tell that they don't care about his account or maybe they care about someone else's more than his, then he’s going to find a different agency that will. So, it goes across the board that not just internal employees in your office, it could be virtual systems or freelancers that you're one of 10 clients or agencies too.   Nathan shared that he has been traveling, so let's kind of back up. At the beginning of last year, he had been on a lot of podcasts and he really wanted to get into guest speaking and then by the end of last year he was pretty exhausted by getting into guest speaking. So here we are, that's not for me. But he still enjoys talking with people, he still enjoys kind of having that stage. So, this year he’s actually launching his own podcast called the Outsourcing and Scaling. He’s recording, he has probably about 10 episodes recorded as we talk right now and that'll be launching in the next week or so. So, it's kind of a passion project of his, he’s not sure exactly the business ROI on it, although he thinks they'll have some great guests and it'll lead to great connections. But it's something he has always wanted to do on some level, and he thinks podcasts is a perfect channel to do it.   Yanique shared that now is a great time to be launching a podcast because so many people utilize this platform as an opportunity to learn and grow in different realms and genres and just different topics. You can consume this content while doing so many other things and it's just an amazing time for you to break through into this area. So, I congratulate you and please share with us the podcast name, what platforms are you going to be available on so that at least we can, if when you're launching or one once you've launched, our guests that are listening to this podcast can definitely head on over to those platforms and have a listen in on your podcast as well.   Nathan shared that it's called Outsourcing and Scaling, it'd be available on iTunes, You Tube, and a lot of other channels as well. It will be an audio Podcast and the video will be on You Tube.   Nathanshared listeners can find him at – www.freeeup.com FreeeUp Blog Youtube – FreeeUp Facebook - @nathan.hirsch Twitter - @realNateHirsch   ****Special Note: If you go to www.freeeup.comyou can create a free account, mention this podcast and get $25.00 credit.   Nathan shared that when he was little, his mom always said, “Work hard, play hard.”So, he kind of take that in all parts of his life. When he’s playing sports, I'm going all out. When he’s hanging out with his friends or his girlfriend, he’s focused there. When he’s working, he’s going all out every single day and that's kind of the mentality that he has taken.     Links   Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose by Tony Hsieh Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action by Simon Sinek  

In this episode of the Bombshell Business Podcast Amber Hurdle interviews Bombshell Business Expert Rebecca Barnes Hogg, who reveals how to find the best employees for your business. She explains how to create your recruiting and hiring vision, how to build your employer brand, and how to create a plan of action on how you are going to hire. From financial readiness to legal issues and beyond, Rebecca sets you up for new hire success!   Links & Mentioned Resources   Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose Kindle Edition by Tony Hsieh https://amzn.to/2M3YOrD (Referral link)   The Bombshell Business Woman: How to Become a Bold, Brave, Female Entrepreneur by Amber Hurdle (http://thebombshellbusinesswoman.com/)   The Bombshell Business App   The Bombshell Business App by Amber Hurdle, the premier app for women in business, is live and ready for you to download for free on the App Store, on Google Play or via the web app. I would cherish a rating and review so it can be seen and downloaded by as many aspiring Bombshells as possible! Get access to the Bombshell Business Podcast + show notes and links all at your finger tips, as well as blog posts, educational videos, free worksheets, and more! Chat with the #bbexperts to get your questions answered and find everything you need to be a bold, brave, female entrepreneur or leader even when you’re on the go!   How Do You Download the Bombshell Business App? Simply follow one of these links to download the version that is right for your operating system: App Store/iPhone or iPad: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/bombshell-business-app/id1435397140?ls=1&mt=8 Google Play/Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.app_bombshellbiz284.layout Web App: https://webapp.mobileappco.org/m/bombshellbiz284/ Rebecca Barnes-Hogg YOLO Insights Expert Role: Employee Management, Recruiting, Hiring Rebecca Barnes-Hogg is the founder of YOLO Insights®and author of The YOLO Principle, The Ultimate Hiring Guide for Small Business. Her path to Bombshell Business Woman started 8 years ago when she broke free from corporate with a dream, a cell phone, and a laptop. Rebecca built YOLO Insights®in response to all the frustrated business owners who were wasting time, money, and their sanity hiring the wrong people. She thrives on the hunt for purple unicorns (ideal employees) and watching her clients become more efficient, effective, and profitable when they hire the right employees. Get Social: Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Pinterest | LinkedIn

Today, we get to talk to Steve Trang about how he made the (rather quick) jump from electrical engineer to real estate agent and how he’s grown in that role ever since. Steve started out his career earning a Masters degree in Electrical Engineering and working as an engineer for Intel for 3.5 years. In 2007, Steve quit his engineering career to become a real estate agent. Since then, Steve has gone on to create Stunning Home Realty, a real estate brokerage in Phoenix, Arizona that he has grown to 60 licensed agents, selling over 100 houses a year and creating some of the top producing teams in the valley. He’s also gone on to start his own Title company and develop a real estate app. Steve is not only committed to building his successful real estate empire but he also believes in helping others build their dreams too. He recently started a podcast called Real Estate Disruptors, where he interviews other real estate experts on how they’re disrupting their markets.   Here is what we chat about in this episode: How getting his Masters degree in Electrical Engineering is really taking the easy route because “someone else lays out the plan and you just follow it” How he always knew that he would eventually leave his engineering job but why it happened so much faster than he expected.   How his irrational confidence allowed him to meet a real estate broker and, within 2 ½ weeks of that meeting, get his real estate license and quit his engineering job. “Real confidence is knowing you’ll figure it out” - Brandon Burchard How the fall of the real estate market in 2007 almost sent him back to his engineering job and how he continued to push through. How he uses self-help to continue to grow his business. How he went from being a real estate agent to owning his own brokerage, title company, real estate app and podcast. Resources Mentioned in the Podcast Tony Hsieh, Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose. Micheal E. Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It. Pat Flynn’s Smart Passive Income Darren Hardy’s Darren Daily Where to find Steve Realestatedispruptors.com Stevetrang.com

For most of his life, John Cronin completed his outfits with a pair of wild socks. His older brothers often asked dad, Mark Cronin, to curb their little brother's outrageous style. But John simply ignored them. The 21-year-old Long Island man has Down syndrome. As high school graduation loomed, he began considering what he wanted to do with his future. He knew that he wanted to start a business with his dad but wasn't sure what type. At first, he thought he wanted to have a “fun” store; though he wasn't sure what he would sell. Then John thought a food truck seemed cool. “One of the problems, me and my dad, both can't cook,” John said. “Both of us are good at eating.” But then John realized that he could turn his love of socks into a business. “I wanted to do something fun and creative,” he said. In November 2016, John and Cronin settled on the name of the business, John's Crazy Socks, and designed a website and logo. During 2017, John's Crazy Socks pulled in $1.75 million in gross sales, representing 42,710 separate orders. The online store sells 1,500 different kinds of socks, giving shoppers a lot of options from which to choose. Their inventory includes colorful variants of classic shapes including no-show, ankle, crew, knee high, and above the knee socks. John's Crazy Socks also now employs a dozen full-time staff members, eight of which have some form of diagnosed disability. HAPPINESS THROUGH SOCKS. John's Crazy Socks four principles for business success: 1. Inspiration: Showing what's Possible 2. Giving Back: 5% of earnings donated to the Special Olympics 3. Socks You Can Love: Over 1,2000 awesome socks choices 4. Gratitude: Every package has a thank you note from John and some candy Other Links:  Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose (book) Sponsor/Partnership: Namecheap is a domain name registrar and web hosting company.

I just got back from a family vacation that was equally a good life experience and sad at the same time as we were dealing with a death in the family. When an experience like this happens, you really get to thinking about life, happiness and death — it really puts everything into perspective. So, I began researching this concept of happiness — how can you become happy, or, ‘Why aren’t you happy?’   Recommended reading: Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose, by Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh   The four answers people typically give when you ask what their goals pertain to are: building a company, getting a great job, finding a significant other, and being healthy. But why? Why do you want a great job? To make money. Why do you want to make money? Because you believe that will make you happier. Whatever your high-level goal is — whether it’s health, income, spouse, or career — your low-level goal, if you just ask yourself, “Why do I want that?” comes down to this idea that you want to be super happy. So my challenge to you this year is: Make your one — and only — resolution to be as happy as possible.   How Income Impacts Happiness There’s a really good study by Princeton, and what they found was that about $75,000/year is the sweet spot when it comes to financial gain equating to increased happiness. So if you’re making $20,000 a year and you can double it to $40k or increase it to $60k, there’s a tangible increase in your day-to-day mood. But, there’s not much of an increase in happiness beyond that amount of income. Another thing they broke down in that study is that there are two types of happiness. One is your day-to-day mood, and the other is a deeper satisfaction that your life is going the right way. What they found is that even if you hit the magical $75k/year it improves that deeper life satisfaction — but, you don’t wake up in a more jovial mood. So it’s important to understand that if you’re not happy right now, it probably goes a lot deeper than your income.   Overall Happiness Coming from Strong, Interpersonal Relationships This brings me to the second study I took a look at from Harvard. They tracked the same group of men for 80 years. Basically, from 1938, they’ve been meeting with the same group of men every two years. Half of the people that they met with were from the inner-city, with very low income and not many socio-economic advantages, and the other half were Harvard students. So, every two years they would ask this group about their physical and emotional health, employment, family, and friends. What they ended up finding was that it wasn’t money or status that determined a good life. The people that were the happiest and the healthiest stated that it was strong, interpersonal relationships that made them feel better. The people that were isolated were the ones that declined in mental and physical health. So a deep set of personal relationships is actually what led to happiness — and everybody could have that right now. The ability to have great relationships is already there for you!   Here’s a link to the full study: Grant Study of Adult Development, 1938-2000   George E. Vaillant was asked, “Ultimately, over 80 years, what did you learn from this study?” And he said, “The only thing that really matters in life are your relationships to other people.” So I want you guys to think about that — relationships with other people equate to happiness.   There’s a great Ted Talk with 18 million views about this study as well: What makes a good life? Lessons from the longest study on happiness   A Few Other Notes on Happiness I’m sure some of you have some friends on social media where they really want you to think they’re happy. This happens a lot with couples. There’s a great article on Inc. about how the happiest couples rarely post online. It’s a great read — It’s ‘8 Reasons Why Happy Couples Rarely Share Their Relationship Statuses on Social Media.’ Sometimes the more you share, the less you actually care. The last thing I’d like to talk about is: How does all of this impact your work life? And what are some of the action items you can take with you to make 2018 your happiest year ever? I was reading a blog post from Neil Patel, and one of the stats from it was that people that have a best friend at work are 7X more likely to be fully engaged. I really, truly believe that the more effort you put into deep and meaningful relationships with your coworkers, the more you’ll enjoy your job — and there’s a lot of data behind this: 54% of employers feel that strong work relationships improve culture, 36% of people that have a friend of work say that they enjoy going to work and feel more valued and productive, and close work friendships boost employee satisfaction by almost 50%. Think about your happiness as you tackle your goals for 2018.

In today's episode of The Art of Passive Income—Round Table edition, He's back baby! Mark returns from his month long hiatus, well rested and motivated for the next business venture! Joining Mark are: Erik Peterson David Banales Tate Litchfield Mike Zaino Scott Todd Today's Topics: The constant check bouncer—Handling those who are constantly making late payments or bouncing checks. Keeping August rolling—The guys go over different promotions and ways to double down this month to keep the deals flowing. Unplugging—Mark took the month of July to completely unplug and step away from the business. While it was a humbling experience, the wheels ran smoothly without him and revue was up, he was able to find the bottlenecks and fix them. Sometimes you get lost focusing on the destination, you lose sight of how fulfilling the journey can be. -Mark The guys all share their wisdom about taking time away from the business.   Plus, will the hazing commence or will Erik burst Mark's bubble? Listen in now for all the details!  TIPS OF THE WEEK Mark: Check out CrwdBoost.com. For $20 a month, they build up your instagram and twitter accounts by figuring out the perfect audience for you then targets that audience. Scott: Read the book The Science of Getting Rich by Wallace D. Wattles. It's all about mind set. If you understand that everything you want to achieve you can do so and you just have to follow this formula like you would in algebra or math, that's the teachings of this book.  David: Check out Streak.com for Gmail—It's CRM for your inbox. Erik: Read the book Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose by Tony Hsieh. It's about Zappos and basically how you built a business and brought it to what it is today. It's highly focused on customer service. Mike: “I find mucking stalls strangely similar to raking a zen garden.” Automating your systems, automating something in your life that's difficult doesn't have to be dreadful. Take the time, enjoy the process, document what you're doing, and then automate that one small part. Tate: Check out OnRoadMap.com—an outline for managing big projects. Isn't it time to create passive income so you can work where you want, when you want and with whomever you want?

Our Guest Aki Iido is the Head of Mobile at Zappos Family of Companies. He holds lead link roles to the mobile and engineering circles, as well as a CTO role. Here are the highlights of our conversation with our guest: Getting to know Aki’s background from being originally from Japan but born in Guatemala, having a Japanese dad and a mom from Central America. He also shares going to college in the US, getting a job in LinkExchange which was acquired by Microsoft, and his initial hesitations in joining Zappos. How Aki was led by his roommate, who was then a Computer Science major, to the engineering space. The pivots and transitions that he made when he worked in Zappos and some challenging things that they had encountered such as learning new systems and tools, and doing some back end work such as developing workhouses systems. Coming from this, Aki then shares the take aways that he learned from all the experience in modernizing the supply chain. How it is working the full gamut of the business from the internal to consumer-facing facets of the business. The big things that are prohibiting scaling in mobile and how he takes advantage of the new agonies and leverage on these experiences. The exciting aspects in working in the mobile team and the pros and cons in developing in two platforms, Android and iOS. Aki shares the biggest ability that you should have get the biggest return such as the need to look at the data, understanding where the user need is by reviewing your web server logs (how many visitors are checking your site is, what mobile devices do they use and what platform are they in) and using these to improve your user experience and make your decisions. Looking at data and seeing that most of the traffic is coming from mobile, Aki suggests what experiences retail should be natively building for a better web experience and how you should go about planning your strategy to have the least investment impact. Rapid Fire Questions What is your definition of innovation? Always look ahead. Embrace and drive change. Never be scared and try to have fun. Would you put more emphasis on the idea or the execution? How would you weigh each of them and why? If the execution is terrible, no matter how good your idea is, that’s not going to help you. Execution is 99% and 1% is idea. What is your biggest learning lesson on your journey so far? Apart from learning and solving problems, working with folks who are passionate in what they do, that’s when you see great things happen. What is your favorite business book? Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose by Tony Hsieh What is your favorite digital resource? Safari Books iTunes What is your favorite app and why? Zappos Apple TV app What is the coolest thing that you are working on right now that you want everyone to know about? We are excited about all of our apps as we are making big investments and changes in this area so check out Zappos mobile.

This week Cut The Crap Podcast features the book, 'Delivering Happiness' by Tony Hsieh. The visionary CEO of Zappos, Tony Hsieh, explains how an emphasis on corporate culture can lead to unprecedented success. I took 4 Golden Nuggets away from this book! ---------- Go to CutTheCrapPodcast.com and signup to receive a summary from each episode that will highlight all of the golden nuggets shared in the podcast. ----------- Follow Ryan on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and SnapChat.    See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Dr. Anissa Holmes is voted one of the top 25 women in Dentistry by Dental Products Report. She has effectively mastered the skill of the use of social media with a Facebook following of nearly 50,000 fans. As a Practicing Dentist, Social Media Strategist, Author, Podcaster and Speaker, Dr. Holmes shows dentists exactly how to create a profitable, thriving dental practice which has motivated, inspired team members and patients who are now raving fans. She does this by providing actionable steps to help dentists develop their business culture, their systems and their brand. Dr. Holmes is the host of the iTunes podcast, The Delivering Wow Dental Podcast and is also the author of the book Delivering WOW: How Dentists Can Build a Fascinating Brand & Achieve More While Working Less.   Questions Tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey Can you share with us how you use some of the strategies and actions to create that delivering wow experience in your practice? In your book you say that there’s a myth that says “To be successful, we must be better than everyone else, we must try harder and work longer” but then further on you say it’s not about being better, it’s about being unique, can you speak a little more about that? On a global level, how do feel about customer experience from the Jamaican perspective, what do you feel are some of the things that are limiting organization from really delivering that WOW experience? Do you think that there is a direct correlation between poor leadership and poor customer experience in a lot of businesses? How do you stay motivated every day? What is the one online resource, website, tool or app that you absolutely cannot live without in your business? Do you offer programmes for persons who may want to take the step a little further, who may want to connect with you and learn how to use Facebook to build their business? What are some of the books that have had the biggest impact on you? What is one thing in your life right now that you are really excited about – something that you are working on to develop yourself or your people? Where can our listeners find your information online? What is one quote or saying that you live by or that inspires you in times of adversity?   Highlights Anissa Holmes is originally from the United States of America and grew up in New Orleans and attended dental school in Alabama. After completing dental school, she met her husband who is an oral surgeon and he grew up in Jamaica. They decided about 10 years ago to move from the USA to Jamaica, he figured that that’s where he could make the biggest difference so she sold her practice she had in Birmingham and she started again in Jamaica. She worked a few years for another dentist who had a really great reputation and about 5 years ago she started a brand new practice in Kingston, Jamaica and the premise there was that the practice would eventually be the number 1 dental practice in the country known for delivering a wow experience to its patients. Anissa Holmes shared the first step of creating an amazing practice; one that people talk about, one that has a fascinating brand is first creating that vision and saying, “What do I want to be known for? At the end of the day, what am I working for? What do I want to achieve?” Her vision was to create the number 1 dental practice in the country known for delivering an amazing wow experience and that was the vision that they would be there and that was the vision before anything was put in place and from there they said “What sort of practice would we need to be? What sort of team members would we have to have? What would have to be our core values?” Before they did anything, they actually thought about what they wanted to be and when she says “we”, it really is “we”. She feels like businesses that are super successful, if you look at Zappos, Amazon, Disney - it’s all about the team and for her when she was creating her core values for her company, she involved the team and they said “What do we want to be known for?” They did things like saying they wanted to be very unique, they wanted to make an impact on the community, they wanted to build strong teams, and they wanted to be known for delivering wow. So they set those core values out and so every decision they make had to be in align with those core values, so pursue growth and learning and so having those luncheon learn session where her team is constantly training and having book clubs where they are reading books together in terms of growing business and personal development with a kindle and that was something she did for her team, she thinks it’s really important, many people create this checklist and just put it down somewhere or hang it up but they don’t live it and once you have that, you know your vision then you have to say what sort of business do we need to be, what sort of team do we have to have and then you have to start creating amazing systems and really just designing how you are going to get there. Anissa agreed that there were team members that weren’t agreeable in her vision. She stated that it’s very interesting because she really believes now that she is in a different realm and working with business owners and dentists and a lot of them have fear. Fear that the team is not going to buy into this whole creating an amazing experience culture and so what happens is that they do nothing. What she always says is that if you are a business owner, it’s your business, it’s your vision and her team is very aware for example if they have 100 things that have to happen to be able to create amazing experiences or to have consistency in the quality of work that they do or to make sure they are seeing people on time. These 100 things have to be done and if she could do them all by herself, she would have no reason to hire someone and she can keep that money in her pocket but she made a decision that all of these things need to be done, so there are different people that need to do it and the job has to be done and this is the vision of this company and it’s okay if you don’t feel like this is the right company for you but at the end of the day this is the company, these are the values, this is what we are working for. Anissa stated that when they first decided that they are going to be known for delivering an amazing experience, some people that was working at the practice said “okay, we are willing to try” they are still there and they are happy and they are making more money than they have ever made. This year January they had the entire team write down what it is that they are going to achieve, she put down her dream to go to Europe and have gone to Europe, 4 of her team members actually got cars this year which is a huge deal for people working in small businesses in Jamaica to be able afford a car. They have had amazing things happening and it’s because she aligned with her team members, she told them from the very beginning, if you they help her grow this business, you are going to develop personally, you are going to impact your family, achieve all your personal dreams and those that bought in with her, they are definitely living their dreams and some people it wasn’t for them and that was okay and she was okay to let them go. Even along the road she has had different people and had to increase her team, just a few months ago they were testing someone for their new Dental Assistant, they needed to add a new Dental Assistant and someone came in, she was an assistant at another practice and she says “You mean I have to give a tour?” And that’s something when they look at their reviews, people constantly mention that – customers say “I can’t believe that I am getting a tour before my procedure”, and so this person was clearly not going to fit into the vision and the culture of the practice and so she just didn’t work out. Anissa Holmes stated that it’s very interesting because when you look at businesses, a lot of time they are focusing on what’s the competition doing, what’s this person doing and in Jamaica for example, her practice has a social media presence that is now over 50,000 fans and they are doing some cool things and as a result of it they see other practices that are doing similar things or posting similar things of what they are doing and she says it’s okay because they are connecting with people and growing their businesses but she is not focused on that. What she’s focused on is really always being innovative, being different and really not looking at what any one else’s doing and every year trying to strive to do something different. For example, 2 years ago they said that their vision, their focus for that year would be to create KPI’s and systems so that everything would be written down and so they created the manuals, they did that to systemize the practice and the next year; they said how can they create customer experiences , so that was their whole focus for last year and that’s when all of their team members were trained in Hand and Arm Massage and now they offer complimentary Hand and Arm Massages, so everything in terms of their brain storming with their team building was, how can we create a better experience, they created a system that at the end of an appointment they were guaranteed that a patient would give them a video testimonial and it’s just creating that system, touch points of giving them a tour, offering them a Hand and Arm Massage, giving them the headphones and the iPads, giving them a warm towel at the end, the Doctor, the Hygienist, the Front Desk saying, “How was your experience?” Guaranteeing that the person is going to say it was great, so that was their focus, just focusing on that. This year their focus now that their system is in place, they have an awesome team, their doing great experiences, this year they are like “How can we be different in our community impact?” So this year they say every month they are giving to different charity, they have done small make over competitions, they have given equipments to Children’s Hospital, their dental clinic, they have done all sort of things and it’s about being unique, not worried about what anyone else is doing, just trying be very innovative, be very different. In their practice they have a guarantee that you’ll be seen within 15 minutes of your appointment time or your next exam is free but you have to have the systems in place and that was done 2 years ago, she could have not given that guarantee then but they have it now and they guarantee that you will have an amazing experience and you get a great quality of work. Just focusing on what can you do that makes people become very drawn to your business. Anissa stated that in marketing, it’s not good for her to go out and say, “I’m a Dentist and I do fillings or I’m a Dentist and we do teeth whitening” doing an advertisement like that is not very effective because Dentists are supposed to do that but when you create an advertising campaign or creating promotional pieces about how you make people feel and how you have been able to change their lives by taking away the fear and giving them an amazing experience, what happens is that people are drawn to your business and you are able to grow. Dr. Anissa Holmes stated that hiring for the right profile, they do that and they look at DISC testing behavioral style, for example, if their Hygienist is very outgoing in terms of her behavioral style, they want someone who has the profile of being a very sensitive, very compassionate type to be her Dental Assistant and so they kind of have that balance, the person who does their training of Dental Assistants has a different style and that’s part of it. The other part is that once you start to be knowing for having a certain type of business, those sort of people are going to be attracted to your business and so they are now finding that a lot of their new hires are actually coming to them saying that they know about their business already, they have been following us on Facebook or people are talking about them in the community and they want to work in their practice and so it’s that sort of the mindset of the people and again, once they come in having that training and so most people are not trained on understating that they way you connect with people is not by necessarily talking, it’s about listening and a huge part of their training with all of their team members is understanding the importance of listening, of asking questions, so you can get to the heart of the matter. For example, in dentistry, a lot of people may say, “I don’t want a crown” some dental offices or dentists around the world will say in their mind, ”They don’t want it because they can’t afford it” or “They don’t want it because they are afraid” but you are not asking them why they don’t want it and you just move on and you miss out on that opportunity to help them. Dr. Anissa Holmes stated that what they do in her practice they will say “Why don’t you want that crown?” and they may say, “The reason why I don’t want it is because my daughter is getting married next month and so I just don’t have any money right now”, and you can say, “Will you be ready in a few months?” and then they say “Sure” and you say “Okay, great, just write it down and when you come back for your next cleaning then we’ll go ahead and have it sorted out then” or they’ll say “I don’t want it because I don’t think I need it” and then you can say “Okay, let’s talk about why or what happens if you don’t do it. In my experience of practicing for so long this is what happens and so if you don’t fix the tooth, what’s going to happen is that you’re going to be out one day and you’re going to bit down and it’s going to break, it’s going to split, you’re going to have to take it out, it’s going to be more procedures, more cost and based on the condition, you are in a 80% chance that that’s going to happen to you, are you okay with that?” The person is going to think and say, “You’re right, I need to do it.” It’s all about training your team, letting them understand how that happens and when they see it happening over and over again, in terms of people making decisions to have a purchase or do treatment because of asking questions, they buy into it.   Anissa Holmes stated that she feels that a lot of organizations and businesses locally and internationally, the challenge is that they don’t understand how valuable it is to help you to grow your business and for her having business, her dental practice is set up on systems, it’s very profitable, it can run without her and a lot of people think that for you to have success, it’s going to take 20 years of you working, 80 hours a week and that is not the formula for her that she wanted to take and for her she said, “How is it that I can create a practice that can essentially run without me?” meaning that she is there because she wants to be there not because she has to be there, she has 2 other dentist that gives her freedom at this stage in practice which is over 17 years to now start teaching other dentist and do other things as well. That’s the key for saying, “What’s going to be the way for me to get there? Is it working for 20 years or is there a smarter way?” Once you start thinking of the smarter way, everything that she does, she likes to break it down and figure out how she’s going to do it. For her, the how of how she was going to get there was looking at creating a unique business, creating something that people would be talking about and it’s because she got it, because she understood the importance of putting in an amazing customer experience and there was an objective there. Also if we do this, this is what will happen to me personally, she can have a more balanced life, better things for her family, for her team as well. A lot of people just think that a business is all about having it for 30 years and you work in it until you can’t work anymore and that’s really what business is all about and people at a higher level realize that that’s really not what business is all about and it’s about serving your customers, being able to solve their problems and also create something that would give you that balance and be able to give you that profitability to do what you want to do for your family, people just don’t know that formula so they just work too hard. Anissa Holmes agreed that there is a correlation between poor leadership and poor customer experience in a lot of businesses and it boils down to leadership and sometimes you have great team members or you have a great product or service but you have no one to really lead that team and a lot of times that vision does come from the leaders. In her practice for example, it was her coming and say, “This is the vision I have for my practice” and getting people inspired to take part and they knew that it would help them to achieve their dreams as well and so she finds that businesses that have the strongest leaders are the strongest businesses so it absolutely boils down to that. Sometimes as a leader, you have to make decisions that may make you uncomfortable, for example, there may be people who are on your team and you have to be the one to says, “Listen, this is not working” or training them again or saying “I’m sorry but we need to shift you to a different position because you’re not able to really give your fullest potential in this position” and being able to shift people around in a way that they understand and not get offended and leaders have to make those uncomfortable decisions but they also have to be there to inspire people to greatness. Anissa Holmes stated that staying motivated it’s really about just creating a culture where you are having fun, where you are solving peoples’ problems. She hears from her team that it’s not like going to work, it’s like you have a family and you build that culture and you see the lives that are being changed, how you’re helping people and that’s really powerful. The other thing that’s interesting is that her team, they all know their strengths and they know their weaknesses and for her, she really great at coming up with strategy and design of different implementation plans that they are going to be doing, she’s really great with helping to inspiring but a lot of the “nitty gritty” details that have to happen and she can’t do everything herself. She is not great at following up with patients every single night for phone calls but that’s something her husband does every night and that’s great but for some reason she can’t do it but it’s important and it has to be done and so one of her team members who is really great at that, she’s one of the assistants, people love her, she’s the one that actually makes all the calls, she does it the next day so by then they have the time to settle and really assess but she calls every single day and she follows up with people and she’s consistent. So they all know their strengths in terms of their behavioral styles and weaknesses so what they do has a team is that they don’t judge, just take the best of everybody and put them in the right spot that way the business can continue to thrive and that boils down to leadership and because of the culture and everybody knows it, no one gets offended, it’s about everybody giving their best so that the business can grow and at the end of the day if the business grows, everybody wins because we are able to have a more profitable business and as a result, salaries can increase and benefits can increase and everybody wins. Anissa Holmes shared that the one online tool she uses everyday is Facebook, she stated that she started using Facebook in 2010 when she first started her Dental Practice in Jamaica and that’s when Facebook was getting started with their business pages and when she first started using Facebook, she said she is going to use this tool because you can share your culture and you can share your practices’ story and it’s very difficult to do that in other forms of paid advertising. You can actually build a community of people that are helping each other that are not even patients, some are patients, people are asking questions and people are answering each other questions and it’s really cool. At that time they started to get 5 new patients a month because people were engaging with them and over the years, is that their audience has grown, they’ve understood what content works, what doesn’t work, they understand how to embrace Facebook Ads and targeting and creating audiences where they can retarget people, for example that have been to their website, people who are similar in their characteristics behavior to their existing patients. Now they are getting 40 or 50 new patients every month just from Facebook marketing and she’s spending only US $500.00 a month for their paid advertising and it’s very interesting because about 2 years ago she was testing the return investment on all of her paid advertising and she actually made a decision to drop every other form of paid advertising, they had a yellow pages ad and so she was spending US$800.00 a month, she’s getting 4 new patients, just speaking in USD and is she’s charging US $200.00 , then she is breaking even. Now she said let’s shift that money over so now she’s spending $500.00 a month and getting 50 new patients and the industry standard is 12-15 a month, they are getting 50 just from Facebook. She loves when people come in from Facebook because that means that they know them already, they know their culture, they’ve been following them, they see what they’ve been doing in the community, they see how they are changing lives, they’ve seen patients video testimonials, they’ve been to their website, they know about their team and to her there is no other form of paid advertising where you can just connect with people like Facebook. Anissa Holmes stated that she currently has an online course and it teaches dental practices, she has students from all over the world; she has several hundred that are in the programme. It’s an online course, the first 3 or 4 modules is teaching you about how to grow your culture and the importance of that and how you have to have that part right before you start creating ads and copy writing, create calls to action and targeting and creating ads and that’s available on her website which is www.deliveringwow.com. It’s created specifically for Dentists but the principles are uniform and where she is now that her practice has grown to the point where she can cut back a little bit and the plan now is for to work 2 ½ days and spend the other time working on training small business owners/ entrepreneurs, so the next step for her is creating an online course which will help local businesses not online entrepreneurs, local businesses where you have a wine shop for example or if you are have a training centre promoted on Facebook so that’s the next step for her. Anissa Holmes stated that there are a lot of books that she reads all the time and a few books for when you’re just getting started are: The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy, Eat That Frog by Brain Tracey, those are some great books, Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion and Purpose by Tony Hsieh - book talking about the story of Zappos and creating an amazing customer experience. What she tells people too is that you have resources in terms of books but podcasts are really great and she use to spend her time with books and now she is also really hooked on podcasts because you are actually able to speak and hear from the authors of what’s going on in their mind and even for herself, strategies she spoke about in her book that was released earlier this year, they have already implemented additional strategies. Things are always evolving, you’re pivoting, you’re testing, you’re growing and so listening to podcasts is another way to get that fresh material as it comes out. Anissa Holmes stated that she is excited about a few things, in her Dental Practice, they just added another Dentist and they are super excited about this and so are the customers. They are at a point now where there is no debt for the practice and that’s where they want it to be and they are now looking to taking the team out of Jamaica for training, getting into that international space with them. They are excited to start that next phase of just taking it to the next level in terms of being able to have other experiences and bringing additional things back to Jamaica to make the Practice even better. Personally, just growing her online business and blogging and as she creates one course, another opportunity opens for her and she is really excited about what’s going on the online space as well. Anissa stated that listeners can find him on:                                                               Twitter @deliveringwow                                                               Facebook @delivering wow                                                               Delivering WOW Website Anissa Holmes stated that her motto, what she is known for is keep “Delivering Wow” “and it’s just two words but to her it means so much, it means always just get to one point, you say what’s next for me? How can I make a bigger impact? How can I inspire more people? How can I change more lives? And once you do that, your business is growing, you are profitable, how can you impact your family, how can you travel more, how can you achieve your dreams?   Links The Delivering Wow Dental Podcast Delivering WOW: How Dentists Can Build a Fascinating Brand & Achieve More While Working Less The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy Eat That Frog by Brain Tracey Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion and Purpose by Tony Hsieh - book talking about the story of Zappos Twitter @deliveringwow Facebook @delivering wow Delivering WOW Website

Warrick and Miguel of REM-Fit spoke with us and provided great insight into how they developed the ZEEQ Smart Pillow. Tune in for helpful tips about prototyping and manufacturing a physical product and developing an app overseas. ZEEQ Smart Pillow: Stream Music, Stop Snoring, Sleep Smarter Key Crowdfunding Takeaways What types of struggles to expect during the prototyping process Why you may need to visit China during product development What challenges to expect if you visit China to meet with manufacturers What challenges to expect if you’re working with Chinese manufacturers while staying in the U.S. Why your product should be perfect before launching on Kickstarter How to accurately create a timeline, from coming up with an idea to launching on Kickstarter What types of feedback to expect from Kickstarter backers How to respond to backer feedback while still keeping your end goal in mind Links ZEEQ Smart Pillow on Kickstarter https://rem-fit.com/ Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose Connect with ZEEQ REM-Fit on Facebook @REM_Fit on Twitter @remfitlife on Instagram REM-Fit Life on YouTube Sponsors Art of the Kickstart is honored to be sponsored by The Gadget Flow, a product discovery platform that helps you discover, save, and buy awesome products. The Gadget Flow is the ultimate buyer's guide for cool luxury gadgets and creative gifts. Click here to learn more and list your product - use coupon code ATOKK16 for 25% off! Transcript

Diva Tech Talk interviewed trailblazer Jing Zhou, a poster child for entrepreneurship.  Born in The People’s Republic of China, Jing immigrated to the United States when she was in her early 20’s and in 2013 started her current breakthrough company: elemoon (www.elemoon.com) which creates, produces, promotes and distributes “wearable tech powered by imagination.”   Jing’s early experiences, being introduced by her journalist father to prominent Chinese female leaders, inspired her and shaped her belief that she could be whatever she wanted to be.  She was the first female Chinese student to graduate from Northwestern University’s Graduate School of Journalism, and went on to cover startups and entrepreneurial ventures for Businessweek magazine. Combining fine jewelry with wearable technology, Elemoon is an elegant bangle that allows a user to customize properties, sync with a smart phone, create a variety of led patterns, and change/modify its look and feel daily.  Jing’s process to get the elemoon bracelet manufactured was arduous, necessitating working with 17 disparate factories, as well as creating a unique design computer, and unique testing processes. But through perseverance long hours, hard work, and determination, Jing and the elemoon team overcame all the obstacles. Jing is now catapulting elemoon, and its next generation of products, by working at the New York Fashion Tech Laboratory, a New York City-funded accelerator program, in Manhattan.  “We are at the starting point of what we are trying to do to inspire women to change their view about technology, and especially empower young women with technology,” Jing simply said. Jing’s advice for aspiring female tech leaders is: Don’t assume you have to be an engineer. Solve problems. Tap your common sense and intuition. Jing Zhou can be reached at jing@elemoon.com. Additionally, if you would like to access Jing Zhou’s favorite book (DELIVERING HAPPINESS: A Path to Profits, Passion and Purpose by Tony Hsieh) or any other free audio book from the over 180,000 titles and engage in a 30 day trial of Audible books, please go to www.audibletrial.com/dt2 to get the Diva Tech Talk trial. Make sure to check us out online at www.divatechtalk.com, on Twitter @divatechtalks, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/divatechalk.

Can a successful company and a run-down downtown vitalize each other? Tony Hsieh, CEO of the phenomenally successful Zappos, is betting exactly that in Las Vegas. He moved his company headquarters into the former city hall and is integrating the Zappos campus into the surrounding neighborhood, meanwhile investing millions to provide a dense urban experience for the locals as well as his employees. His “Downtown Project” declares: “We’ve allocated $350 million to aid in the revitalization of Downtown Las Vegas. We’re investing $200 million in real estate, $50 million in small businesses, $50 million in education, and $50 million in tech startups.” The fantasy is well along into impressive reality, according to a January 02014 article in Wired. What is being learned may change how cities and companies think of themselves---and of each other. Hsieh’s theory of urban vitality comes from Edward Glaeser’s book The Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier. His theory of company vitality he has spelled out in his own book, Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose.

Host Phalana Tiller talks with hotelier Chip Conley of Joie de Vivre Hospitality about his philosophy on workplace satisfaction and his latest book Emotional Equations: Simple Truths for Creating Happiness and Success. Tiller also chats with the CEO of online retailer Zappos, Tony Hsieh, about the culture at his company and his book Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion and Purpose. The conversations explore the notion that work and happiness should be inextricably linked.

Happiness as a business model--you might doubt its effectiveness, but Zappos is proving that it helps drive profit and growth. Listen as Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos and author of Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose, talks about how a strong company culture that centers on employee happiness leads to better customer and client service, which leads to more sales.