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Barbara Wardell and Ernesto Cullari run an agency that focuses on geofencing. This embraces a growth hacker mindset that strategically focuses on identifying and amplifying their clients' strengths while pinpointing weaknesses in the competition, utilizing GPS location data. This approach results in a significant and measurable impact on foot traffic and online engagement, making their efforts truly game changing and successful.  Questions · Now, we always like to ask our guests in their own words, if you could share a little bit about your journeys, how you got from where you were to where you are today. · Can you share with our listeners in the most simplest layman terms, what exactly is geofencing? · Organizations heavily invest in marketing, but then when the person comes to the organization to do business, case in point, let's say you visited Starbucks, and you had to wait for 20 minutes just to get a cup of coffee. You're extremely frustrated, because it's just a small item, you should be in and out in the shortest possible time. How do you tackle that with your clients? Is that something that you deal with as well? · Do you find that the behavior based on the geographic location or even the culture of the country, impacts how geofencing works? · Now we'd also like to hear from both of you, what's the one online resource, tool, website or application that you absolutely cannot live without in your business? · Can you also share with me maybe one or two books that you've read? It could be a book that you read recently, or even one that you read a very long time ago, but it has had a great impact on you, whether personally or professionally. · Now, can you also share with our listeners, what's the one thing that's going on in your lives right now that you are really excited about, either something you're working on to develop yourself or your people. · Where can listeners find you online? · Now, we always like to wrap our episodes up by asking our guests, do you have a quote or a saying that during times of adversity or challenge, you'll tend to revert to this quote if for any reason you get derailed or you get off track, the quote kind of helps to get you back on track. Do you have one of those? Highlights Barbara and Ernesto's Journey Me: Now, we always like to ask our guests in their own words, if you could share a little bit about your journeys, how you got from where you were to where you are today?    Barbara Wardell: Barbara shared that she and Ernesto met during Covid at a Halloween party, believe it or not, before they started their company together, they became friends. And her journey is she's a mom of two, and she was in the medical industry, specialty medicines for a long time, and then Covid hit, and then she and Ernesto met at a Halloween party, became friends, and then they started Cullari & Wardell, a geofencing ad agency, and a little over two years, they've been killing it, so growing small businesses. So, they're really lucky to do that.  Ernesto Cullari: Ernesto stated that as Barbara said, they met during Covid, they both have a medical background. For years, he was a Surgical OR Med Rep, so he would be working in the operating room with physicians utilizing novel technology to do abdominal body wall repair, post breast reconstruction after cancer and things like that. During the day, he moonlit as a professional songwriter, so he had songs on Disney radio, country radio, that he wrote for other artists. And along that journey, he became a songwriter. So, the mystery during his creative time was always wondering how to sort of growth hack, how to break an artist out into the mainstream. And they had a lot of success doing that. Paulie Litt from the show Hope & Faith, ended up having a number one song on Disney radio, which they wrote for him, and then had a top 100 song, and then top 15 country music song that he wrote for an artist named Bailey Grey.  And so, it does lead them up to Covid, because when Covid struck, part of their content, so he got more into advertising and marketing, and a lot of their clients just dropped off. And the problem that needed to be solved was how do you rebuild foot traffic, particularly in a market where the government won't let you open, when they do let you open, people are going to be slow to come back to retail. So, what do we do? So, putting that growth hacker hat back on to when he was a songwriter, he looked into geofencing, and that was about 4 years ago, and then 2 years into his journey of mastering, doing his 10,000 hours of studying geofencing technology, he and Barbara met, and it became a passion of theirs, and throughout their conversation, to help small businesses, to help them bring people back in.  People like the retail experience, people like the in-person experience, and geofencing is a powerful tool that uses satellite technology to draw virtual fences around locations of interest. It could be your competitors, and they use that to capture their devices to send ads to their devices when they come into one of their locations after seeing one of your ads, the satellite pings them and alerts them that a new GPS verified visit has taken place. And he and Barbara do about 5000 satellite verified visits in the US, Canada and Australia every month.    What is Geofencing? Me: Now, for those of our listeners that are tapping into this episode when it's broadcasted and they're getting a chance to listen into this awesome content, can you share with them in the most simplest layman terms, what exactly is geofencing?   Ernesto Cullari: stated that in the simplest terms, it is a form of advertising that uses your phone and when you walk into a location that they've identified with a satellite, he's drinking a cup of coffee at a coffee shop that he bought it at. And then in his surrounding areas, there's about 7 other coffee shops. Well, if he wants to show why he's better, he would use geofencing to draw a virtual fence around his competition. Once someone walks into a competing coffee shop with their mobile device, he can then capture their device and then send ads to their device. And the wonderful part is, is when after seeing his ad, come back to his coffee shop, he could say, “Wow, because of my ads, because I used geofencing to target their devices in my competition stores, I've therefore just measured 50 visits this month.”  So, it's critical because none of us are made of money, and advertising dollars for the small business is scarce, so we want to use our money wisely. And big companies like Chipotle, Chipotle, by the way, the CEO of Chipotle just got hired at Starbucks.   Me: I saw that yesterday.   Chipotle during Covid, utilized, he thinks it was one of their vice presidents came up with this idea, “Hey, let's use geofencing. I heard it works.” Well, during Covid, Chipotle was able to triple their curb side pickup from using geofencing. They saw where other people were picking up food, and then they decided to target those locations and let them know that, “Hey, Chipotle has curb side pickup.” So, Chipotle did so well that Starbucks needs to learn from them. As you know, a lot of Starbucks locations have been closing throughout the country, and they picked off talent from Chipotle, and he has no doubt that that talented team is going to be helping Starbucks turn around, but geofencing is part of that story.   Me: So, now our listeners have a good idea of what geofencing is and also what your organization does.   How Does Using GeoFencing as a Marketing/Advertising Tool Affect CX? Me: Now let's tie all of that back into the customer experience, right? Because we're all about navigating the customer's experience. So, you have marketed and advertised to the organizations to say, hey, you can come to this organization based on the geofencing marketing initiatives that you've put in place. Now, can you share with me how it is that the customer experience is addressed in this for example, like with your clients, because I find, for example, people spend a lot of money on marketing and advertising, not sure what the cost point is for geofencing compared to traditional media like the radio or newspaper, if it's significantly cheaper. But I find that a lot of times, organizations heavily invest in marketing, but then when the person comes to the organization to do business, case in point, let's say you visited Starbucks, and you had to wait for 20 minutes just to get a cup of coffee. You're extremely frustrated, because it's just a small item, you should be in and out in the shortest possible time. How do you tackle that with your clients? Is that something that you deal with as well?  Barbara Wardell: shared that for their end, it's the advertising end, they don't deal with the customers per se. The places that people go with their smartphones is indicative highly of the products that they buy. So, when they go into a geofence, what they see is they're open on an app, because they're on apps or on the wide-open web, they're not on Facebook, Instagram, Google. So, when they actually go into that geofence and they're on an app, they will see an ad for one of their customers, and from that, if they toggle it or click it, they will see a map how to get there. Once they go into that store, whether it's that day or 90 days later, the satellite will ping them. So, that part is their end. What they go into the store is on the customer itself of how they treat their customer. And Ernesto has some insight on that as well.  Ernesto Cullari: shared that when they do a consultation with a client, one of the first things they ask, they're one of the largest advertisers for laundromats in the world, so small business owners have discovered that owning a laundromat is a very good business, you're serving your community, you're providing a great service, but it's very important to set up realistic expectations. So, he and Barbara, when they consult a company, they want to find out even,  “What kind of doors you have?” “Do you have doors that are particularly when moms and dads are coming in with their kids, are the doors automatic? Are they wide doors?” “Are you operating new machines?”  Because they want to set up realistic expectations for the end consumer. So, when they work with one of their clients, they do ask them how their operations run. They've been very fortunate to attract top operators in communities across the US, but when it comes to restaurants and spirits companies and hotels and HVAC and doctors and things like that, service providers, they do want to make sure that the product that they say they're offering is the end user experience that the customer has. But as Barbara said, it's not their responsibility to make sure they do operations well, but they advise them, “Hey, get your operations down, and let's make sure the promise that we give is matched with the in-store experience.” Barbara Wardell: shared that that's something they think that is very important. So, that's why they do a lot of research before they take on a client. They ask them a lot of questions to make sure that they're doing what they're promising in their ads, because you don't want that customer to come in and say, “Okay, this is not what the promise was, right?” Then they won't come back.  Ernesto Cullari: shared that they're concerned about their numbers; in order to do well for you, they need to be telling the truth. There needs to be truth in advertising, and they don't want their numbers as a company to be impacted because they're committed to delivering as much as 5000 visits a month, and if their clients are not on their end, providing the proper customer experience, it does impact him and Barbara. So, they're very competitive, they want to make sure they uphold the things that they say they're going to do, and they tend to advise their clients 100% of the time to do the same to make sure they're matching the experience with their ad promise.   The Impact of Geofencing Me: So, in the feedback that you just provided, it got me thinking to the fact that, do you find geofencing it's most effective or impactful based on your geographical location. So, is it that you primarily operate in the United States, in North America? And do you find that geofencing would be different based on, let's say, a customer who is in Nigeria, in Africa, or a customer who is in Kingston, Jamaica, in the Caribbean? Do you find that the behaviour based on the geographic location or even the culture of the country, impacts how geofencing works? Is that data that you're able to provide as well to the clients?   Barbara Wardell: Yes. So, they're right now in Australia, Canada and the United States, and there is a culture difference when you advertise in a different country, they found that a lot has to do, they do a lot of studies before they break into another country, to make sure that they understand the behaviours and kind of they do a listening device that kind of listens to the area to see, because they track mobile foot traffic, right? So, that's one of the things that they do to work on their geofencing, so they already know when they go into that area, what the culture is like, and also talking to the customer as well to understand the area. And also, they do a listening device or a foot traffic study to understand the area that they're targeting.  Ernesto Cullari: Agreed, Barbara said it perfectly. They do set up listening campaigns, and it's basically a beacon to measure, he'll give you an example, Australia, for listeners that haven't been there, he and Barbara have not been there, but when they look at it via satellite, you have these communities that are densely populated, and then you have hundreds of 1000s of acres of wide open space. So, they really need to do due diligence and measure the amount of devices that are available in an area before they market to them. So now, they haven't tested yet whether this works in Africa or South Africa, but right now, they're for sure it works all throughout Asia and it's a matter of so say, Nigeria, for example, they would have to set up a listening campaign, they would have to measure the amount of devices that are available and then determine what kind of devices are they. Are they iPhones, Samsungs and Androids, or are they flip phones and some other mixture of devices and that will impact what kind of the ads they use.   Me: All right. So, that definitely answers my question, and I think it will help to guide the listeners as well in terms of if they're small business owners, or even working in organizations with small business owners that they can definitely identify if this is something that would benefit them and benefit creating more traffic for their organization, generating more customers and hopefully impacting their customer experience.   App, Website or Tool that Barbara and Ernesto Absolutely Can't Live Without in Their Business Barbara Wardell: When asked about online resource that they cannot live without in their business, Barbara stated that she thinks it's the foot traffic study only because it gives them a lot of information before they even launch a campaign for any one of their customers. It is something that they can see a half hour before and a half hour after the customers, where they go from that that area, or that specific customer, and also for a year, they can go back for a year to look at that traffic and see where those customers go. Ernesto Cullari: He thinks for himself, he has his hand in a lot of working on the creatives for clients. And even though there are wonderful platforms out there, like the whole Adobe Suite, which includes Premier, Photoshop, Lightroom and all that, and Adobe Illustrator, and he thinks they're all great. But he likes the prosumer which are applications that anybody off the street could use. So, if you're a small business owner or even a big business owner, and you want an application where you don't need to go to your team or your assistant, you want to be able to do something yourself, Canva is a wonderful platform that he has actually, when he works in Canva after working in something like Adobe, his turnaround time sometimes in Canva is so much quicker because it's made for dummies. Canva is made for dummies. So, he loves Canva, and also, they manage designers, and those designers, they work in Creatopy, again, so that's a prosumer, anybody off the street could use that website, it makes great looking html5 ads. And again, as someone who manages creatives, if he doesn't like something, can go into Creatopy, and he could fix it himself. So, he thinks no matter where you are in your journey as a business owner, whether you manage a fortune 100 company and you have to deal with your admin, your marketing men and women, or you own a small business and you have to do it yourself, or you're hiring an agency like them, Canva and Creatopy, in addition to the Adobe Creative Suite, are just wonderful platforms.   Books that Have Had the Biggest Impact on Barbara and Ernesto Ernesto Cullari: When asked about books that have had an impact, Ernesto shared that he read Confessions of an Advertising Man by Ogilvy, which he thinks is one of the greatest books on advertising you can read. But also, it's not just advertising, it's in general, if you're someone who needs to communicate to the masses or to discrete audiences, small audiences, learning the art of communication is important, and he thinks Confessions of an Advertising Man, he have found invaluable.  In addition to Sun Tzu's Art of War, sometimes you have to crush your competition, and you have to be able to have the stomach for it, and strategy is necessary. And Sun Tzu's The Art of War he would also say. And then the Bible.  Barbara Wardell: She has to say one of her favorite is Wabi Sabi Love, it's about being in the present and appreciating everything that's in your life at that moment, because it could be gone tomorrow, and she's had that experience, she's read a ton of marketing books, but that's one that's close to her heart.  Ernesto Cullari: He shared that Yanique asked earlier about cost effectiveness, and the cost per acquisition and things like that. How does this compare to other forms of advertising? So, he's sure a lot of listeners out there have for various reasons, could be for charity, could be for advertising, could be for marketing. They've engaged in Facebook, Google advertising to promote an event or product. So, he can tell you, doing the engagement using Facebook and then starting with other forms of advertising since then, and he can tell you that geofencing, pound per pound is the Mike Tyson, is the absolute Mike Tyson of advertising. Everyone else is a lightweight. There is no censorship.  So, if you run political ads, you will face no censorship of any sort on the geofencing side, unlike Facebook and Google, who will silence you if they don't agree with your viewpoints. And in terms of reach and measurement, dollar for dollar, there's just nothing as effective as geofencing.  So, on a $500, he doesn't recommend only spending this, but on a $500 budget per month, you can end up with 20 people coming through your door. I do recommend for five-mile radius that you spend at least $1,000 on your market, that way, if you know the cost per customer, meaning how much money your average customer spends, you have the opportunity to 10 to 30x your return on investment depending on what the value of a new customer is for you.  In some of their verticals that they work with, the value of a new customer is $40,000 so on the $1,000 ad spend, if you gain one new client a month, that's a quite impressive return on investment. For other clients they have in the laundry industry, some of their clients are worth 1200 to 2500 a year. So, if they send the 30, 40, 50 customers a month, then that again, is quite a handsome return on investment, agreed.    What Barbara and Ernesto is Really Excited About Now! Barbara Wardell: When asked about something that they are really excited about, Barbara shared that they just launched which they're really excited about, their dashboard for their clients so that they can go in and see the reporting instead of them emailing them their reports, so now that they can go into the system and actually on their time and actually look at and see their results of their campaign.  Ernesto Cullari: He shared that he's excited about he and Barbara just got finished running a fundraiser from his mother's orphanage in the Philippines. She operates what's called Street Kids Philippine Missions, and she's been there for 15 years with her husband, Matt, and they have rescued kids that were in danger of being sex trafficked, that were eating out of garbage cans, that were basically destitute. And it's their 15th year, they just successfully raised $20,000 and that was simply an online campaign where they used their podcasting studio to talk about what his mom does, and Matt does there. And they're pretty proud of being able to use their resources to help kids that face sex trafficking that would otherwise be destitute. And he would say he's most happy and proud about that development.   Where can listeners find you online? Website – www.cullarimedia.com   Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Barbara and Ernesto Uses Ernesto Cullari: When asked about a quote to they tend to revert to, Ernesto shared from The Art of War, “He whose forces are of one mind will be victorious.”  Barabra Wardell: She shared that mainly, she always tells herself to be in the present moment and not get sidetracked by other things that are going on. But she can't think of a quote right now.   Me: Thank you so much for taking time out of your very busy schedules and hopping on our podcast and sharing all of these great insights as it relates to geofencing and the impact that it can have on 10x'ing your business, getting new clients, the advantage that it has over traditional media, advertising and just the opportunity for you to understand your customer base a little bit more, get an idea of where they're coming from and why they're coming to you, so you can continue to build on that and even exceed their expectations. So, I think it was a great conversation, and I just wanted to extend my deepest gratitude to you both.    Please connect with us on Twitter @navigatingcx and also join our Private Facebook Community – Navigating the Customer Experience and listen to our FB Lives weekly with a new guest   Links •    Confessions of an Advertising Man by Dave Ogilvy •    The Art of War by Sun Tzu   The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience Grab the Freebie on Our Website – TOP 10 Online Business Resources for Small Business Owners  Do you want to pivot your online customer experience and build loyalty - get a copy of “The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience.” The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience provides 26 easy to follow steps and techniques that helps your business to achieve success and build brand loyalty. This Guide to Limitless, Happy and Loyal Customers will help you to strengthen your service delivery, enhance your knowledge and appreciation of the customer experience and provide tips and practical strategies that you can start implementing immediately! This book will develop your customer service skills and sharpen your attention to detail when serving others. Master your customer experience and develop those knock your socks off techniques that will lead to lifetime customers. Your customers will only want to work with your business and it will be your brand differentiator. It will lead to recruiters to seek you out by providing practical examples on how to deliver a winning customer service experience!

Richard Weylman was orphaned at age 6 and he lived in 19 foster homes and attended 11 different schools. Rather than becoming the victim of those circumstances, he overcame them and he has had remarkable business success, including as an award-winning General Sales Manager of Rolls Royce to Head Sales and Marketing for the Robb Report, a Magazine for the Luxury Lifestyle from its inception until its record liquidity event.  A Hall of Fame inducted Keynote Speaker, Richard has also been inducted into the Customer Experience Hall of Fame for his legendary work helping brands engage with their customers and retain them.   He is the author of two international bestsellers, the latest of which, The Power of Why: Breaking Out in a Competitive Marketplace is in seven languages and is also a CEO Reads best seller.  His next book 100 Proven Ways to Acquire and Keep Clients for Life was released on March 12th, and is available for pre-order on Amazon, or your favorite bookstore. Finally, he is a Horatio-Alger nominee for his philanthropic work on behalf of orphans and widows.    Questions  ·      Could you share with us in your own words a little bit about how you got from where you were to where you are today? ·      This new book that was released almost 3 months now it's been out the book, 100 Proven Ways to Acquire and Keep Clients for Life. Could you share with our listeners maybe 3 overarching themes that the book covers? And who is the book really geared towards? ·     In your research, when you were talking to your different clients about the different ways that you can acquire and keep clients, did you find that there were some industries that were thriving with these four things that you've mentioned, based on the research and others? ·      Now Richard, could you share with our audience maybe one or two books that you've read, it could be a book that you read a very long time ago, or even one that you've read recently, but it had a great impact on you. ·      Now, Richard, could you share with our audience what's one thing that's going on in your life right now that you're really excited about? Either something you're working on to develop yourself or your people. ·       Where can listeners find you online? Highlights  Richard's Journey Me: Now, we always like to give our guests a little opportunity to share a little bit about their journey. Could you share with us in your own words a little bit about how you got from where you were to where you are today?    Richard shared that the key thing is when all of this stuff, he was an orphan, as mentioned in his introduction, and that was very kind. But he was orphaned, and he lived in 18 foster homes, went to 11 different schools. So, you learn just from life experiences, how to understand, how to adapt, how to connect, in his case with the people with whom he was living. But he thinks we all go through this similar journey in life, you learn how to connect or not with individuals. So, that really became the premise for all of his speaking and consulting.  And they are a research-based consulting firm, they do a great deal of research about what the consumers' looking for, why they're looking for it. And most importantly, how salespeople, marketing people, business people can connect with the expectations, let's use that word, expectations of the consumer. So, that's what prompted his first book, Opening Closed Doors, Keys to Reaching Hard to Reach People then The Power of Why: Breaking Out in a Competitive Marketplace, which was mentioned. And those are in seven languages.  And now his recent book, which really manifested itself after about October he would say in 2019, in the fall of 2019, it occurred to him that people were no longer talking about service anymore. They talked to people in their consulting projects, how would you rate the service of this company, and people didn't want to talk, they would say, “Well, the service is good. But let me tell you about the experience I had.” And it dawned on him that what people are really focused on good service is a minimum expectation today, what people really want, really want is an elevated experience, somebody who's thoughtful and kind and caring, and empathetic. So, that became the premise for the current book that's just come out, which is number one on Amazon hot new release. So, is that helpful?   About the Book – Who the Book is Geared Towards and it's Overarching Themes – 100 Proven Ways to Acquire and Keep Clients for Life Me: So, you have this new book that was released almost 3 months now it's been out. And you said it's number one on the hot new list for Amazon. Could you share with our listeners maybe 3 overarching themes that the book covers? And who is the book really geared towards?   Richard stated that that's it's a great question. The book itself is really geared, we'll start there, who reads this book? Anybody in sales, marketing, service, leadership, he's had over 2000 individuals that he knows of that are in either leadership roles or top advisors, top salespeople who have sent him emails because of the epiphany moments they've had in it and the reason he thinks that so many different types of people, it doesn't matter what industry, he's got people in real estate, he got a bunch of emails this morning, people in real estate, attorney, doctors, he had a dentist sent him an email, hairdresser.  So, it really doesn't matter what industry you're in. What really matters is do you want to acquire and keep your clients for life? And he guesses the obvious question is, “Why wouldn't you want to keep your clients for life, given the cost of acquisition?”  So, when he wrote the book, he didn't write it for any industry, he wrote it for individuals that really did want to, shall we say, connect with their customers or their clients in such a way that those individuals would never buy from anyone else in their space. And it really is the premise is to understand the lifetime value of a customer or a client.   And a lot of business owners, and certainly salespeople, we don't often think about the lifetime value, we sell somebody something and we see it as a transaction. When you sell someone, it's not the end of something, it's the beginning of what could very well become a lifetime relationship with that individual every single time they need something that you may offer, they can reach out to you, and they become a customer for life. So, the question is, how do you do it? So, that's where the premise of the book came from and who he wrote it for.   So, one of the overarching themes in interviewing literally hundreds, hundreds and hundreds of consumers. And the number really reaches over 1000 in all of their consulting work over the years from 2019 until now when he wrote the book, he would ask people, “What is something someone can do, or a company can do to get your attention and keep you as a client for life?”   And they would tell him that, and they began to write those down. And that's how he came up with the 100 Proven Ways. He didn't set out to do 100 proven ways, but what they found out is today, there are four things people look for, these are the overarching themes. They want an individual and company that is thoughtful. In other words, they'll go the extra mile, do the extra thing, take the extra moment.   Secondly, someone that's kind, will think about things from their perspective and do things that demonstrate kindness to them as an individual.  Thirdly, someone that cares, cares enough to find out what they really want, what they really need, and what is the right, shall we say, item for them? The right haircut, the right prescription, the right legal advice, the right advisory advice, whatever, they want somebody that cares about them.  And last but not least, they want someone in a company that's empathetic, someone that shall we say, demonstrates that even though I'm saying it's unique to me, my problem, and you've heard it 100 times as a salesperson, you know it's not unique. For me, it is unique. So, I appreciate your willingness to be empathetic. So, four things, thoughtful, caring, kind, empathetic, those are the overarching things.   Industry Insights and Best Practices Based on Research from Book Me: So, they need to be thoughtful, they need to be kind, they need to be caring, and they need to be empathetic. In your research, when you were talking to your different clients about the different ways that you can acquire and keep clients, did you find that there were some industries that were thriving with these four things that you've mentioned, based on the research and others?   Richard stated that it's really interesting Yanique mentioned that, and it's not so much industries, it's companies within that are doing well. Most industries are still in the transaction mode. Go to a restaurant, it's a transaction. If you order something online, it becomes a transaction. And as a result of that, people are looking for other options.   So, what's happened is a few companies have really jumped to the front. And he'll just give you a couple of example, in the United States; they have a company called Chick-fil-A. Chick-fil-A is a chicken sandwich is basically what it is. He knew the founder, his name is Truett Cathy and they did a lot of traveling together, meetings together. And he would often say him, “Richard, now remember, we got to remind the crew here that we're not in a chicken business, we're in a people business.”  So, they're closed every Sunday. So, that means if you want to put a characterize that differently, they're closed 52 days a year, that would mean they closed November 10 and re-open January 1, that's 52 days.  They have the highest revenue per store than any other food franchise in the world. And they're closed from November 10 to January 1, and they're not open 24/7.  So, the question is, why is that happening?  Yes, it's a great chicken sandwich granted, but you get a chicken sandwich pretty much anywhere. What they really are known for is please, thank you, and my pleasure. And people sit in long lines at their drive thru, which are two and three lanes wide because people there say please, thank you, my pleasure. That's one brilliant example of how they do it.  Give me another example, in the food industry, this company, for pets, and that company is called Chewy.  Now, how has Chewy done, this young kid had started he said, when manufacturers and sellers of food products and other products for pets, they need to realize pets are part of the family.  So, they need to take a family orientation and be kind, thoughtful, caring and empathetic with their customers about their pets.  Well, they've done that, and just a quick, he (Richard) was speaking, he speaks all over the world. He's spoken at the Pegasus Hotel there in Jamaica many times for various conferences, and he will tell you that he was speaking at a conference in Nashville, Tennessee, he told the story of a woman who had posted on LinkedIn.  She posted that she had a standing order with Chewy, this was in November when he was speaking, and her order for the cat food had just arrived.  She posted on LinkedIn, “The cat food came, I called Chewy and said my cat has died. And I want to return the cat food. They said absolutely not; donate it to the local shelter. And we'll give you 100% credit on the bill.” The audience goes wow. And he said but that's only half the story. The other half that she wrote about was 3 days later, she got a bouquet of flowers, and a condolence card from the Customer Service Rep at Chewy. At that instant, this woman stood up in the middle of this ballroom of about 1000 people and scream, “That was my cat.” and held up her phone. She said, “I posted that this morning. I've already got 147 likes.” And at that moment, he just stopped and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, what does this tell us about Chewy?”  And the whole room starts chanting, “We're switching to Chewy.”  So, there's a message here. And it's the undercurrent of what's going on in business around the world. And it's not just in the US. He'll be in France again in October speaking in a large conference there; he goes to Asia a lot. And everywhere you go, people are really interested in doing business with individuals that are kind, thoughtful, caring, and empathetic and once he realized that, and then people began to share these ideas, if you would do this, I would be a loyal customer, he just thought it'd be helpful to put that out in the marketplace for anybody, regardless the kind of business you're in. Because it makes a big difference in your life. He heard from a guy that sells hot water heaters to hotels, and he said this book changed his business completely. So, that's the difference.   Books that Have Had the Biggest Impact on Richard When asked about books that have had a great impact, Richard shared that one particularly, there's a series, his name is Bob Burg. And he's written a book, the original book, he was a co-author of a book called The Go-Giver: A Little Story about a Powerful Business Idea that is international bestseller, sold a couple million copies, what a fabulous book for anybody to read. And that would be one he'd recommend.  And another one that he has co-authored with a guy named Jeff West is called Streetwise to Saleswise: Become ObjectionProofÔ and Beat the Sales Blues, it's really a great book, it just came out he would say a few months ago. And it's really a story, they write it in a story format and what he means by that is that it's like you're reading a novel, well, it is a novel. But as you're reading the novel, it's written in a way that allows you to understand various things you can do in shall we say in business to expand your influence, to make a significant impact and to really make a difference.  Now, The Go-Giver book that he wrote, he's done a series Go-Giver Leader, The Go-Giver Sell More, and those are really dynamite books. But The Go-Giver, the original book is just oh my God, what a great book and they've sold millions of copies all over the world.  And then the other one is Streetwise to Saleswise, another great book by he and a guy named Jeff West. That book has been out maybe a couple of months, but it's called Streetwise to Saleswise, and it's really written around the city of New Orleans and sales individual that went out there to shall we say, be in the sales business, it's a fabulous read, particularly people like novels that have read really great nuggets on how to be a better salesperson.   What Richard is Really Excited About Now! When asked about something that he's really excited about, Richard shared that the book is doing extraordinarily well, he's been very grateful for that. It's been selected as the lead book for the London Book Fair and the Frankfurt Book Fair this year, which is a blessing. But what he's most excited about is he's getting in front of more and more audiences, he's in the Keynote Speaker Hall of Fame, and the Customer Experience Hall of Fame, and all of that is wonderful recognition. But what is really wonderful is when he has the privilege of being on the platform, and being able to share with audiences' ways in which they can elevate their client or customer experience, and stand apart from the competition, and that's what he's most excited about. He's got a lot of speaking engagements coming up this fall, and in places all over the world. And just to be a blessing to those people and to bring them some thoughts that perhaps they've never had, or to have reinforced that which is that they're doing so they really feel as though, “You know what, I'm on the right track, and we're going to continue to win more business.” So, those are the things that excites him.    Where can listeners find Richard online? LinkedIn - Richard Weylman Website - http://www.richardweylman.com/ Richard shared that on the website, there you can download a chapter of his book free, you can read it, you can also order the book there of course. There's also, he does a great deal of media, he guesses there's probably 25 or 30, ABC, CBS, NBC and, Fox, both TV and radio segments there, you just click on media and you can listen and watch those on various topics.   And then also under videos, you'll see a link there, you can go to learn services. And he puts up about he's going to guess 25 little video vignettes are a couple of minutes long that you can enjoy, they're all free, just wanted to plant those in your life. You can sign up for his performance tip that's the down at the bottom of every page but every 10 days he sends out researcher tips to about 20,000 people or subscribers, so it'd be wonderful if you subscribed.  So, you want to go to www.richardweylman.com if you want him to speak at your conference, or at your upcoming meeting, whatever the case might be, there's a form there, fill it out, he responds to those. He actually gets those himself, he'd be happy to partner with you, and find a way that they can bring some additional learning to your organization, to your people so that they can elevate their business performance as well.   Me: All right. Thank you so much for sharing, Richard. We just want to extend our deepest gratitude to for taking time out of your very busy schedule and hopping on this podcast. You shared some great insights and nuggets as it relates to some of the keys that you need to focus on in order to acquire and keep your clients for life especially based on the research that you did. And we love the examples that you gave, they were definitely relevant and something that I believe will motivate the audience to definitely go out and get a copy of your book, whether it be in soft or hard copy so they can try and elevate their own client experiences. So, thank you again.    Please connect with us on Twitter @navigatingcx and also join our Private Facebook Community – Navigating the Customer Experience and listen to our FB Lives weekly with a new guest    Links •     The G0-Giver: A Little Story about a Powerful Business Idea by Bob Burg •     Streetwise to Saleswise: Become ObjectionProofÔ and Beat the Sales Blues by Jeff West   The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience Grab the Freebie on Our Website – TOP 10 Online Business Resources for Small Business Owners  Do you want to pivot your online customer experience and build loyalty - get a copy of “The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience.” The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience provides 26 easy to follow steps and techniques that helps your business to achieve success and build brand loyalty. This Guide to Limitless, Happy and Loyal Customers will help you to strengthen your service delivery, enhance your knowledge and appreciation of the customer experience and provide tips and practical strategies that you can start implementing immediately! This book will develop your customer service skills and sharpen your attention to detail when serving others. Master your customer experience and develop those knock your socks off techniques that will lead to lifetime customers. Your customers will only want to work with your business and it will be your brand differentiator. It will lead to recruiters to seek you out by providing practical examples on how to deliver a winning customer service experience!

Alan Williams is the founder of SERVICEBRAND GLOBAL and advises business leaders internationally to deliver value driven service.    Dave Stubberfield is the director of Carter Consultancy and specializes in enabling cultural transformation to help businesses achieve greatness. They are the authors of Supercharging the Customer Experience: How Organizational Alignment Drives Performance.   Questions · We always like to ask our guests if they could share in their own words a little bit about their journey. So basically, how it is that you got from where you were to where you are today. · Now, the both of you teamed up together and wrote this awesome book Supercharging the Customer Experience. Can you share with our listeners a little bit about the book, maybe two or three overarching themes that the book focuses on and who is the book geared towards? · What are maybe two or three behaviors that you believe is critical for customer success in a business both from an employee perspective and from the leadership perspective. · So, could you share maybe just some insight for us on what you believe is the future of AI as best as you can, because AI does cover a lot of stuff. But what do you believe is the future of AI? And how will that impact human interaction? · So, can you also share, and each of you can give me your answer to this particular question. What's the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely cannot live without in your business? · If you could share with me maybe a book that you read recently, or even a very long time ago, but it has still had a very great impact on you, whether from a professional capacity or even a personal development capacity. · Now, can you also share with us what's the one thing that is going on in your life right now that you're really excited about, either something you're working on to develop yourself or your people. · Where can listeners find you online? · Now, before we close off the episode, we always like to ask our guests, do you have a quote or a saying that in times of adversity or challenge you will tend to revert to this quote if for any reason you get the real or you get off track, the quote kind of helps to get you back on track. Do you have one of those? Highlights Alan and Dave's Journey Me: We always like to ask our guests if they could share in their own words a little bit about their journey. So basically, how it is that you got from where you were to where you are today.   Alan Williams: Alan shared that he started off in commercial hospitality management. So, he remembered being at school thinking, he wants to go to university, but he wants to do a degree that's going to help him get a job.  And he really didn't like the idea of what he at that time considered to be really boring businesses like banking, where you're sat in an office all day. And he was lucky enough to get a holiday job in a hotel, and he thought that's it, exciting, looking after people, fun.  So, that was the beginning. And then he moved somewhat later in his career into workplace management. So you might know it as facilities management, so all of the services in workplaces offices, and he referred to them those offices actually, as they're really hotels with desks instead of beds, that's the only difference. And then he set up SERVICEBRAND GLOBAL in 2005, and he's been helping progressive leaders in organizations around the world since then, using what he learned in the hospitality sector.  Dave Stubberfield: Dave shared that for him, he guesses similar to a degree. So, he was just about leaving school and the careers advisor said, you've got the potential to go to university, but he didn't really know what for. So, he decided against it and tried the apprenticeship route in the corporate space, which he loved, and a lot of customer facing roles. Then there was an initiative called Lean, where he became kind of a Six Sigma qualified individual. And then it just kind of spiraled into attaching customer experience to the continuous improvement framework, really. And how changes adapt in organizations. And then, 2020 set up Carter Consultancy, and he hasn't looked back since. So yeah, he loves what he does.   About Alan and Dave's Book – Supercharging the Customer Experience and Three Overarching Themes the Book Focuses On Me: All right, thank you so much, gentleman. Now, the both of you teamed up together and wrote this awesome book Supercharging the Customer Experience. Can you share with our listeners and either of you can answer this question, a little bit about the book, maybe two or three overarching themes that the book focuses on and who is the book geared towards?   Dave Stubberfield: Dave shared that he's known Alan for a few years now. But it just so happens that they were interested in creating a customer experience development programme for the BQF, The British Quality Foundation. And the President kind of joined them together and said, “Look, you're both trying to achieve the same things.” So very, very quickly, during their initial meeting, they realized that they are very aligned in how they think and what they wanted to achieve. And through the development of that programme, and Alan out of the blue turns and he said to Dave, “This has got the makings of a great book. Do you want to write one?” And like a rabbit in the headlights, he just kind of froze, and then said, “Yes, let's do that.”  And so, through Alan's guidance from his previous experience of being an author, he's brought him on that journey with him and he's really, really enjoyed it. And the foundation to the book really stemmed from the training, the development programme they put together, which is really all about putting CX into context. They believe there's a lot of content out there. He's going to leave Alan to drop the question in a second, but they believe there's a lot of content out there. But they believe that the actual application of customer experience doesn't happen as frequently as it should, which led us to the question, Alan?   Alan Williams: Alan shared that's right. When they were thinking about the book, they were thinking, well, how is this book going to be any different to all of the others out there on the topic of customer experience? Because don't know if you've checked, but there's just like so many books on the topic. And they just found themselves with this question, which is, “With all the content on the topic that's out there, why is great customer experience so rare?” It doesn't make sense if there's all that resource out there to guide people.  And that was what Dave's just touched on there that the problem, and the challenge is that so much of the time people are focused on content, and knowledge, rather than the practical application of that knowledge on a day in day out basis. And that's why the great customer experience is so rare. And in the book, they provide a framework that helps you whatever sector you're in, wherever you are in the world, whatever the size of your organization provides you with a framework that can help to guide you create your own customer experience strategy that suits your own particular individual circumstances.   Me: All right, so let's use a use example, a use case, I like the fact that you gentleman said that you want to focus on the practical because you are very correct. There are many, many books out there on CX and EX. And you read the content, and it's focused on knowledge, the definitions, the theory, but how does that really work with an organization, with people, with their behaviour, we getting them motivated with having them intrinsically applying that in every single interaction regardless of the channel that they're serving the customer on. So, you can choose a business, I will leave it up to you in terms of the use case, just give us an example of based on the framework that you have in the book, how does this really apply to a business?   Alan Williams: Alan shared that he's not even going to choose a particular business. He thinks that sometimes when you do that, you're kind of dragged into generalization. So, he's just going to tell you a story. And it was a business that he was working in and they focused really hard on everybody that was in the organization understanding that they were part of delivering a great customer service and their job was to make their customers and clients feel important, that was the reason that they were all there.  And he remembered on reception, they were expecting a guy attending a very important meeting. And so obviously, they knew in advance that he was arriving, and they have pre-prepared a name badge, they also aimed to greet people before they introduce themselves in this particular environment. And so that happened, the receptionist greeted the gentleman by name, but they had not expected one thing, and that is that he brought with him a small terrier dog. Now, the receptionist actually said to him, complimented him on the dog, and then said, “And now Sir, if you could just lift him up in front of the camera.” and produce a name badge for the dog. And the guy went into the meeting room and announced to the people from the client organization, “That is the best welcome I've ever had anywhere in the world.” And then the meeting was a great success, down to that receptionist. So, the reason he loves that story is because it really emphasizes the importance of people understanding the big why they're there, rather than getting consumed and distracted with the small tasks that they might have to do in order to satisfy them.   Behaviours that are Critical for Customer Success in a Business from an Employee Perspective and from the Leadership Perspective Me: Now, based on your research, and your experience, both of you in the CX space, if you were to choose maybe two or three behaviours that you believe is critical for customer success in a business, and I'm not just talking from the employee perspective, but also from the leadership perspective, like what are the three key behaviours that will more than likely lead to a culture where people have that customer centric mindset, regardless of the type of customer, how complex the problem or issue might be, but they're always driven by that because of those core behaviours. Would you be able to identify what those if you were to pick three, what those would be?   Dave Stubberfield: Dave shared that he can start with one for sure. And the one that leaps out with him is Empathy. And that runs from a kind of a customer facing team into the customer, but like you said, it's the leadership into to the rest of the teams and the organization. He thinks having that empathetic understanding of what people might be trying to do, or what they're going through, is so powerful.  And we're stepping into the realms of emotional intelligence here. And to the point that Alan's just made in that in that story, which is fantastic. People have to buy into that, right. So, they have to buy into that culture of trying to achieve and deliver that experience, not once but every single time. And he thinks that starts with a lot of empathy. He knows some leaders that are not very empathetic, shall we say, and don't understand why they can't achieve the results they want to achieve, not only in the business, but in the customer experience space as well. So, he would lead with empathy being one of the most powerful ones because it unlocks so much. Alan, I don't know if you've got anything to add to that at all?   Alan Williams: Alan shared that he'll go with number two, though, which he thinks is about positivity. So, when a customer asks you for something, the answer is yes. And it might not be exactly what they were expecting or had asked for. But how often do you hear, no, can't do that. And that's really not a good start to a conversation. So, he'd follow empathy with Positivity.   Dave Stubberfield: Dave stated that he would go number three is probably Communication. And that he guesses all ties everything up together nicely. He thinks sometimes, again, starting at the top with leadership, they might send a message once, whether it's via email, or it could be in person, it could be a presentation, and some people think that they can just deliver that message once and everyone gets it and understand it, it needs to be reinforced, it needs to become part of the embedded as part of the DNA of the organization. And that message needs to be repeated so it's understood and lived every single day. And he thinks having a great deal of empathy, and positivity, it just needs to be reinforced through communication, he personally believes.   Alan Williams: Alan asked can they give you just one extra one as a bit of added value. So, he'd go with Obsessive Attention to Detail. And this is kind of every person, every day, every minute, because consistency is what makes the great businesses set apart from those that are good some of the time. And that's because everybody in the organization knows the fine detail of what's required, and is then committed to delivering that every single time.   Me: All right, so Empathy, Positivity, Vommunication and Obsessive Attention to detail. Okay, thank you so much, gentlemen.    Insight on the Future of AI and How it Will Impact Human Interaction Me: Now, I liked the fact that most of what you talked about focuses on people, focuses on behaviour, focuses on relationships, practical things that we can see, things that we do every day. I found, and I'm sure you've seen it as well, that in the last, I would say, maybe two or three years or even before but definitely in the last two or three years, there has been a lot of emergence in the space of technology with artificial intelligence. And I find that organizations sometimes may not necessarily be integrating it or using it in the best way possible to ensure that it's not replacing humans, but more so helping humans that can really help the overall experience.  And I'll give you an example. Over the weekend, I had a friend that has a mobile modem and we were having some issues adding some data to it and we called our local telecommunication company, reached out to them through their website. Actually no, we did it through their app that was on the phone, but the app has a Bot at the top and the bots name was Ruby. But Ruby can't answer any questions, Ruby doesn't remember what you told her before. And so, you tell Ruby, I'd like to speak with a representative, Ruby starts a conversation again, “Please provide me with your name and account number. Please tell me exactly what your query is about.” And I told Ruby that before and I felt like I was going in circles, it was just crazy. So, could you share maybe just some insight for us on what you believe is the future of AI as best as you can, because AI does cover a lot of stuff. But what do you believe is the future of AI? And how will that impact human interaction?   Dave Stubberfield: Dave shared that it's really interesting. And they cover a lot of this in the book. And honestly, you could spend hours upon hours doing research. And he kind of immersed himself into this. You're spot on, AI is kind of forefront of technology at the minute, everyone seems to be dipping into it. You've also got augmented reality that people are looking at as well and they are fantastic things, and it's just incredible what some of these things can do. The problem that organizations have today is they see something shiny, something sparkly and go, right, we need that. And they try and integrate it and it's just kind of a lift and shift, kind of slot it into a place, and it fits in just or they've squeezed things around, and they go perfect. We can take our AI integration box off, we've done that.  But like you've just said there, there's not been any kind of sort of thinking or thought process around how we actually integrate that to the all of the other services and ways of communication that we have as an organization, that omni channel element hasn't been considered, we just see AI as a way potentially to do something with generative text, for example. And we go yep, okay, we can we can get that in, we can do that there, and boom, it's done. It's thinking about the entire process.  And he thinks another element to that is, let's say one organization in a certain industry does something that's quite revolutionary. Other companies in the same industry or even outside the industry might try and replicate that and they haven't considered how they operate as an organization, the value they deliver to their customers, and if it actually works. He thinks a lot of people feel like they might miss the boat if they don't sort of get on board with the technology bus, because it's just constantly changing. So, there's a lot of risk when it comes to technology, you need to do your research, your homework and what fits for the business.  And for him, it's thinking about it from a people point of view, technology's forefront of the minute AI, you name it, there's lots it can do. But it needs to work for people. And that's the thing, really, he thinks sometimes isn't considered. So, that would be his thought. Alan, I don't know if you've got anything to add to that at all.   Alan Williams: Alan shared that he thinks that the issue is that people consider technology to be an alternative solution, whereas in fact, it should just be a support to people. So, when you've got predictability and high volume, then sure, he thinks technology can be a massive help in that sort of situation. But where you've got unpredictability, and perhaps volume that is up and down, then it's much less helpful. And it might be that a human being could deal with that much, much better. So, the big thing, though, is this thing about technology being a tool, rather than the be all and end all and he liken it to a scalpel, a scalpel in the hands of a really experienced surgeon can save people's lives. But in the hands of somebody who doesn't know what they're doing can be really dangerous. And it's the same with tech and customer experience.   App, Website or Tool that Alan and Dave Absolutely Can't Live Without in Their Businesses When asked about an online resource that they can't live without in their business:  Dave Stubberfield: Dave stated what a question. He's going to be totally contradictory to what he just said, he going to go ChatGPT. So, he uses that as a bit of a sounding board, really. So, in his organization, it's just him. So, sometimes when he has a bit of an idea, he thinks, “Oh, okay, maybe I should post it on social media or I should do this and have a bit of an idea.” He will often ask Alan because they are very alike, but sometimes he will just put a bit of a question into ChatGPT and asked for maybe what's relevant or how he should do a certain thing. And knowing that it's not always 100% accurate, he uses that as kind of as a gauge really to see if he's on the right track.  It's funny, he will put something into ChatGPT, for example. Let's say he wanted to do a LinkedIn post this week and he might say, “Give me five myths about customer experience that we can debunk.” And he might find one of them, he goes, “Well, that's not a myth at all. That's the complete truth.” So, he might swing it in a way that he thinks is his own personal view and opinion. And he uses that as kind of a something to generate a bit of a conversation with himself rather than just talking to the brick wall. So for him, he quite often uses ChatGPT, he would say he's using it daily, which is, it's mad really how it's become so prominent in people's lives.   Alan Williams: Alan shared that he's going to add to his CV that Dave asked him before ChatGPT that'd go down really well. His, is his Outlook Calendar. He's a bit too reliant on this. Basically, if it's not on the calendar, he's not there. And occasionally, he was telling somebody just the other day how he was just about to go into a lunch meeting and he got a message from somebody saying, “Really looking forward to seeing you for lunch today.” And he had to have a very quick lunch meeting and then get to the other one and not tell the person. But his calendar is his.   Me: So, Calendar and ChatGPT. Excellent.   Books that Have Had the Biggest Impact on Alan and Dave Me: Now, I usually ask the question, what book or books have had the biggest impact on you? I noticed in your book, which I love about how the layout of the book was done, that at the end of each chapter, you have a little box that says, “Want to know more” with resources in the form of articles and books that the reader can access if they want to gain additional information. I think that's brilliant. But I will still ask it. So, if you could share with me maybe a book that you read recently, or even a very long time ago, but it has still had a very great impact on you, whether from a professional capacity or even a personal development capacity.   Alan Williams: When asked about books that have had the biggest impact, Alan shared that his is a long time ago, actually. So, The Balanced Scorecard: Translating Strategy into Action by Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton. So, basically, this is about making sure that your business is balanced and looking after all of the different stakeholder groups, rather than being just focused on generating profit. And over the years, that kind of sentiment he thinks has grown into triple quadruple bottom line ESG, all of the terms that are given to it, but basically a very, very similar message in that you're managing your business holistically, rather than just to generate profits. So, that's his.    Dave Stubberfield: Dave shared that he's got a few that springs to mind. And the one he's going to talk about most prominently is the one he's listened to recently is the One Minute Manager by Kenneth H. Blanchard. This was a recommendation to him, he's heard it and seen the sites all around, but he's never actually taken the time to listen to it. So, that for him was really, really interesting because it talks about trying to do things in a minute, setting goals that people can read in a minute. Having reviews whether it's positive or negative in a minute, so you can redirect people or praise people. And he thinks a lot of us get bogged down in just day to day life, that everything becomes much more intense than it needs to be. So, that One Minute Manager for him, it was talking specifically about managing a team in an organization. But he thinks you can apply it to absolutely anything. So, that's the one he's listened to most recently that has been phenomenal and eye opening for me.   One that he would like to call out that he's previously listened to is The Prosperous Coach: Increase Income and Impact for You and Your Clients by Steve Chandler. So, coaching is a part of what he does and t that was something that really helped him and kind of confirmed to him and validate that he can do what he's doing, which was amazing, because he had a lot of doubt at the time when he started if he's a massive suffer of the imposter syndrome. So, that was really good for him personally.  And the other one he was considering? It was, Who Moved My Cheese?: An Amazing Way To Deal With Change In Your Work And In Your Life by Spencer Johnson, which is just he thinks it's a staple, if you haven't read or listened to that, then go and listen to that. That's phenomenal.   What Alan and Dave are Really Excited About Now! Alan Williams: When asked about something that they are excited about Alan shared that this is going to be boring to some people, because the CX in context development programme, he's thrilled about this, because they've started to deliver to clients, and the feedback has just been fantastic. And people are just saying, this is a real eye opener, because CX cannot just be treated in isolation, it is inextricably connected to other parts of the business. And this framework helps them to do that in a really simple to understand way and a very practical way. When he gets that sort of feedback, it makes him feel that it's been worth putting together what they've put together because it's good to be able to help so many people out there.   Dave Stubberfield: Dave shared that for him, he could quite easily say the same thing. But he's going to be different. So, he would say in the past 18 months, he's been developing an online tool that's called Nova. And Nova is a way and means of teams, organizations to measure how well they are implementing continuous improvement in their business, or in their team or in their organization. And that is something he's done for a long time and he used to do it by an Excel spreadsheet. And talking to a friend of his, he said, “Dave, why on earth are you using a spreadsheet in this day and age?” And he kind of sat back and thought, “Okay, I should practice what I preach here and change what I do.” And it's led to this tool, which he personally believes is cutting edge.  So, basically, it's an assessment that each team would do in an organization, it will give them a score, it will give them actions to do, it will give industry insights as well, based on the information that's been provided, just so that it can help the team progress. That then creates an aggregated score up to the leadership, and that can be viewed across the leadership peers and the group. So, if you've got an entire organization, you've got a continuous improvement score, essentially, for the entire organization with industry insights that help drive the improvement of that organization and with Alan's help, they're going to look at introducing customer experience to that later in the year.  They've also got plans to introduce change management as well, as well as vision values, employee engagement, they see this as a potential game changer tool that can disrupt organizations for the better. So, a lot of positive to come from that. And that's not long been launched really, the start of this year and they've seen some really, really interesting returns on investment as well. So, fingers crossed that's one for the future.   Me: That sounds amazing, Dave. Is that available to anyone in the public? Or it's still in beta?   Dave shared that it's available to absolutely everyone and anyone that might be a little bit unsure, a little bit reluctant to get involved or have a look, there's a free business health check at the very beginning that you can take, an initial assessment that sort of points you in the right direction, ask some leading questions to get you thinking, “Are you doing the right thing?” And at the end of it, it will tell you how you're performing based on that information and their suggestions moving forward. So, there's a bit of a freebie at the front as well.   Me: Now, my next question would be where can our listeners find that resource online?   Dave shared that they can find that at www.thinknova.uk    Where Can We Find Alan and Dave Online Alan Williams - Company website – www.servicebrand.global.com LinkedIn – Alan Williams   Dave Stubberfield - LinkedIn – Dave Stubberfield Dave's company website – www.carter-consultancy.com   Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Alan and Dave Uses  Me: Now, before we close off the episode, we always like to ask our guests, do you have a quote or a saying that in times of adversity or challenge you will tend to revert to this quote if for any reason you get the real or you get off track, the quote kind of helps to get you back on track. Do you have one of those?   Alan Williams: When asked about a quote or saying that they tent to revert to, Alan shared that this relates to the book, actually. So, he created this the end of last year (2023) and that is, “Content without context is toast.”   Me: I saw that in the book, I thought it was kind of cute. So, can you tell our listeners a little bit about how that quote brings you back on track?   Alan shared that it originated really from culture eats strategy for breakfast, it's like that kind of ring and tone to it. And he was just thinking about how so much, especially with social media, it's all about pumping stuff out there. But he thinks it really helps you to recollect yourself if you remember that your particular situation is unique. And you just need to focus on that. Don't get worried with all of the possibilities of all of the content, just think about what situation you're in right now and that will help you deal with it.   Me: All right. Thank you so much, Alan. Dave, do you have one of those quotes?   Dave Stubberfield: Dave shared that he does, his is a bit cheesy, people might hear and go, oh, no. But his one is, “Teamwork makes the dream work.” And he thinks, for him, to put that into context, again, he's spoken that he's solo in the business. But he thinks realizing that collaboration is king, really. So, let's take the book as an example. There would have been days, he's sure, that he would have been not really 100%, and not firing on all cylinders. But he knew that he would have to present something to Alan later in that day to say, “This is what I've done or what I've produced.” So, that would be that factor.  But there would also be helping Alan out. If Alan said, Ok, we've got 10 actions to do, but I'm in meetings for the rest of the week, he would go leave that with me. I'll pick that up. he'll take the strain. And he thinks that's part of that teamwork. And he thinks, again, that's part of why they work so well, because they do have the ability to understand when someone hasn't got the time or the space. The other person just seems to pick it up from somewhere. He doesn't understand how or why, it's a bit of a dark art, but it seems to be working well for them. But that for him is the one, knowing that collaborating with people is often going to be so more advantageous to absolutely everyone. That's the one for him that pulls him out of that pit sometimes where he might not be feeling great.   Me: All right, thank you so much. So, Alan's quote, “Content without context is toast.” And Dave's quote is, “Teamwork makes the dream work.” Now, both quotes are phenomenal. And just to kind of piggyback on what Dave said just now, I say it all the time in customer service trainings, no man is an island, and the reason why an organization has more than one person working in it is we all have to work together. Everyone's role is important. You gentlemen wrote this book and I'm sure that it required a lot of sweat, tears, hard work, focus, just a lot of energy and engagement that you both had to put into it. And it wouldn't be the success that it is today if it is that you didn't put that effort into it. So, I fully, fully, fully endorse both the quotes that you've given to us.  And just want to remind our listeners that customer experience is a journey, it's not something you're going to get to overnight or in an hour. It's not something that you're going to just get from one book. And it's something that we continually work to improve every single day that we get the opportunity to work on it. So, thank you so much for sharing your great insights about your book, about all the different things that you're doing in your organizations, with your own clients. It was really a great interview and I hope you had as much fun as I did.   Please connect with us on Twitter @navigatingcx and also join our Private Facebook Community – Navigating the Customer Experience and listen to our FB Lives weekly with a new guest   Links • The Balanced Scorecard: Translating Strategy into Action by Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton •  The One Minute Manager by Kenneth H. Blanchard •  The Prosperous Coach: Increase Income and Impact for You and Your Clients by Steve Chandler •  Who Moved My Cheese?: An Amazing Way To Deal With Change In Your Work And Life by Spencer Johnson   The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience Grab the Freebie on Our Website – TOP 10 Online Business Resources for Small Business Owners  Do you want to pivot your online customer experience and build loyalty - get a copy of “The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience.” The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience provides 26 easy to follow steps and techniques that helps your business to achieve success and build brand loyalty. This Guide to Limitless, Happy and Loyal Customers will help you to strengthen your service delivery, enhance your knowledge and appreciation of the customer experience and provide tips and practical strategies that you can start implementing immediately! This book will develop your customer service skills and sharpen your attention to detail when serving others. Master your customer experience and develop those knock your socks off techniques that will lead to lifetime customers. Your customers will only want to work with your business and it will be your brand differentiator. It will lead to recruiters to seek you out by providing practical examples on how to deliver a winning customer service experience!

Vaishali Dialani is a multi-award-winning Customer Experience professional in the Middle East, has been recognized as a CXPA Emerging Leader, a finalist for CX Leader of the Year 2023, and has been ranked among the top CXMStars worldwide in both 2023 and 2024. She is a firm believer in the power of knowledge sharing to foster growth and awareness within the CX community.  With over eight years of experience as a data-savvy experienced designer, research specialists, and strategic change-maker, Vaishali passionately advocates for the integration of emotions and efficiency through customer experience research, product insights and communication. She currently serves as a Senior CX Strategist at Konabos, a consulting firm specializing in digital transformation.   Her commitment to knowledge sharing is evident through her involvement in podcasts, blogs, guest lectures, speaking engagements, and training programs. Additionally, she conducts leadership training workshops for professionals with low literacy levels, making a positive impact through collaborative efforts across diverse spheres.    Questions · Now, we always like to start off by giving our guests an opportunity as I mentioned before to share a little bit about your journey from where you are were to where you are today. · Can you share with us just a little bit about your culture, how customer experience is. If you were to give it a score, maybe on a scale of one to 10 with 10 being the best, what score would you give it and just any insights that you think would be beneficial to our listeners. · What would you say have been as a leader in the different organizations that you've worked in, maybe one or two things that you believe has made or contributed to your success in driving CX design and CX delivery? ·How have employees across different industries adapted to the integration of technologies, specifically in artificial intelligence, like ChatGPT, to enhance customer service experiences? What future trends do you predict for technology's role in CX, and do you believe human interaction will remain vital in this space? · Can you also share with us what's the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely cannot live without in your business? · Can you also share with our listeners, maybe one or two books that have had a great impact on you? It could be a book that you read a very long time ago, or even one that you've read recently, but it has had a great impact on you. · Can you also share with us what's one thing that's going on in your life right now that you are really excited about, either something you're working on to develop yourself or your people. · What would you say are maybe two or three emerging trends that you believe will continue? Or will emerge over the next couple of months? · Where can listeners find you online? · Now, we always like to ask our guests before we wrap our episodes up, do you have a quote or a saying that during times of adverted adversity or challenge, you'll tend to revert to this quote if for any reason you get the real or you get off track, a quote kind of helps to get you back on track.   Highlights  Vaishali's Journey Me: Now, we always like to start off by giving our guests an opportunity as I mentioned before to share a little bit about your journey from where you were to where you are today.   Vaishali shared that she started her career back in 2015, right after she graduated from Heriot-Watt University in Dubai, and just like any other graduate, she was like, “I don't know what I want to do with my life. I think I'll start with marketing.” Right quickly as she dived into marketing in the advertising world, it was chaotic, busy, a great learning curve, she learned what she liked. But most importantly, she learned what she didn't like. And that's where her analytical journey began from, she understood that it's important to know and work on your skills that you like. She paved her way to get her MBA done, and learn more about research and analytics, and then dived into a CRM officer where she picked up different aspects of what experience means, how you're helping small businesses grow, what is innovation and research, it's a very cool experience.  And then she moved back to Dubai where she joined her FinTech company as the head of customer engagement. Now, this was a whole new world for her while she already knew marketing and analytics, but now running campaigns and media was super interesting. And just like in any other startup, you have to wear many other hats was very interesting, because normally she would play so many different roles, she had different opportunities where you would design experiences for low income migrant workers in the UAE.  It was almost like her postgraduate degree or a PhD, she would say, at no money, where she learned a lot of things. And that's where her curiosity for CX began, when she was designing experiences and working with the ideal. One thing paved to another and then she dived into CX, and she's been in the industry for almost four to five years now.   Me: All right, that is a wonderful journey.   Vaishali's Views on Customer Experience in Her Culture  Me: Now, throughout your journey, Vaishali, could you share with our listeners, I know you mentioned the different industries that you've worked in, but seeing that you've been in the CX space for a while, and our show is about navigating the customer experience, maybe you could share with our listeners a little bit about what your views are on customer experience. And I know you are in a different part of the world. And I know culture and behaviour varies depending on where you are. Can you share with us just a little bit about your culture, how customer experience is. If you were to give it a score, maybe on a scale of one to 10 with 10 being the best, what score would you give it and just any insights that you think would be beneficial to our listeners.   Vaishali shared that for the listeners, she comes from the Middle East from they say the light of gold, which is Dubai, and it's very interesting because it feels like you're always served in a platter. So, over the last few years, she's been travelling a lot, and especially to the West and the East port. And she thinks there's major cultural shock that she almost have is why somebody not serving her enough. Being in Dubai hospitality is huge; services at its peak, people come for the luxury and lifestyle in Dubai. And so, she's never had even if she goes to a restaurant, if she's in Dubai, if she asks anyone to please can you pack this, I need a take away, they'd be like, “Yeah, sure madam”, and all of that. But when she comes to the West, they give her a box, and she's like, “Oh, so am I supposed to pack myself?” So many different experiences that are such culturally different, yet you're working on designing those right kind of experiences is very interesting. Being in the space that she worked across education, FinTech, healthcare, manufacturing, nonprofit organizations, and one thing that she finds, despite no matter where you are, in which part of the world across which culture you have been raised, is that we all are humans, and we all want to feel heard. And we want to all feel listened and feel the emotion that we're feeling whether it's with another person or a brand. So, despite many, many differences, being from the Middle East, one common thing is what kind of human experiences are we really designing?   Effective Leadership Strategies for Driving Customer Experience Design and Delivery Me: What would you say have been as a leader in the different organizations that you've worked in, maybe one or two things that you believe has made or contributed to your success in driving CX design and CX delivery?   Vaishali stated that's a difficult one. But she thinks something that's really helped her, and she truly believes in this is the power of love languages, and how you can mold that and use that in designing experiences, especially customer experiences, whether it is quality time and actually speaking to your customers, making them feel heard, and understanding where they come from, to just simple words of affirmations. And this can be digital affirmations, she's not saying everything has to be in person, it's more about how you make someone feel like, “oh, this person hears me and understands me.” Do simple acts of service you do for them digitally, again, reward them that make them feel loyal to you.  So, when it comes to leadership, every different project is so different from one another despite being in the CX space, because they are spread across different verticals, from governance, to analytics to design, she's had the experience of learning that we need to understand what kind of emotions we want to create, and then create those journeys. So, for her, that's been one of the key things is, drive and understand what emotion you want to create.   AI Integration in Customer Service; Employee Adaptation, Future Trends, and the Human Touch Me: Now, a big part of CX is technology, right? Technology is here to help us and support us in delivering a more seamless and a less friction kind of experience with customers. In your part of the world, how have you seen your employees across different industries and verticals, as you had mentioned, adapting to the technologies, specifically in the area of artificial intelligence, there is ChatGPT and different things that organizations may integrate to enhance the service experience with their customers and cut down the more route type of activities that are very mundane and monotonous, they're investing in a technology to kind of reduce. How have you seen the adoption of that take place? And if you were to be a fortune teller, if you were to look into the future, where do you see this going? And do you believe human interaction will still play a very integral role in CX?   Vaishali stated, wow, what a question. It's very interesting. So, to answer the first part of the question, which is adoption levels. She thinks adoption levels are at its peak right now. We have no option but to keep up because a lot of the CX experiences and designs that they choose to design for their customers is technology driven. You can have the best of the best designs on Figma or Canva, or Miro, but to really bring them to life, you need the right tools in place. And to be able to do that, you will be able to understand which technology or business is actually using at the moment, what kind of architecture do they have in their back end systems, and what is really possible.   And in the ever evolving space, also, she thinks, today, all kinds of businesses, especially in the tech industry, they are coming up with niche tools and technologies across diverse industries specific to different features that allow them to give the best of the best services to their end users. But most importantly, they are very open to saying we'll integrate with another tool, whether it is in the healthcare industry, and you're looking at billing and medical insurance, they're creating their own tools to integrating with personalization tools to understanding when a patient needs to have their next checkup and reminding the patient about it to actually having analytical tool. There's so much that is happening in today's space and the adoption is at its absolute peak to keep up with the industry at the moment. That's the first part of the question.   And then the second part of the question is, there's so much that you can do with today's technology, no matter what you do human intervention can never be impacted directly she feels, they will always coexist in her space, she doesn't think it's going to be one or the other and completely replaceable. They will always need human beings because human beings evolve. And technology is made by humans.   Me: Very true. Alright. I love that.   App, Website or Tool that Vaishali Absolutely Can't Live Without in Her Business When asked about an online resource that she cannot live without in her business, Vaishali shared that she's a very tech person, she loves using her app, she has apps for almost everything. But at work, she uses a lot of Canva; she's creative as a person. So, whether it's the whiteboard or whether it's just designing something that she needs to just throw it out. She loves using Canva.   Me: Amazing. I like when I hear guests talk about using Canva. Recently, I did a presentation skills workshop for a client and they wanted to basically teach the team how to use Canva. And I remember, it was so fascinating, especially for persons who have never been exposed to the platform before, when they looked at the user interface of Canva versus a Microsoft PowerPoint, Canva is just like, it's like the Apple of design. Like in terms of how easy it is, you just drag and drop it, in PowerPoint, you take three steps, in Canva, you take one. And I just I find it so amazing, it really has brought design to the average person; even if you weren't creative Canva would find some way to stimulate your creativity.   Vaishali agreed, and more than anything, even like the guided templates too, they have everything, you can just create a design system in place to be able to do anything with it. Previously, developers used to use draw.io a lot to create the map and the technology flows. And like, guys no, we need to use Canva make it more colourful. And it's so easy to use.   Books that Have Had the Biggest Impact on Vaishali When asked about books that have had a great impact. Vaishali shared that she just finished two books recently, but they are more spiritual, but she thinks one of the books that she's still continuing to read, and she's amazed by it is Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck. That the book is taking her longer to complete in all honesty is because you really need to retrospect and think, is this the way I think.  And it's just the way she would want to think like from growth mindset or fixed mindset and how our childhood, the way we just appreciate it really impacts on the way we work and our personality, or our character. So, there's a lot of retrospective to do. And she thinks she'll have to read the book 2, 3 times. But for now, this has been the biggest impact on the way she's started evolving and thinking, so she'd highly recommend this book.   What Vaishali is Really Excited About Now! When asked about something she's excited about, Vaishali stated that she'll give two things. So, the first one is she's very excited because she's travelling on a personal level. She's travelling to Vancouver tonight to for her brother's graduation. And it's been a journey for their family. So, they're very, very excited for his graduation.  And professionally, what she's very excited about is at the moment, she's working on three different projects across manufacturing, healthcare, and education. And the best part about all of it is, is that all of them are across different verticals of CX, and that really shows the power of a) customer experience, but b) also how vast our growing industry is. And we all have some stuff to do and make an impact across different verticals of CX, so she feels super blessed.   Me: Alright, well, congratulations to you, brother and his graduation. That's awesome.   Emerging Trends Shaping the Near Future   Me: Now, can you tell our listeners, if you were to just think about maybe two or three trends that you believe will continue to grow and emerge as we wrap up on the second and embark on the third quarter of 2024, what would you say those are just based on working with clients, in your own business, listening to podcasts, being on podcasts, writing blogs, interfacing with other CX experts across different industries. What would you say are maybe two or three emerging trends that you believe will continue? Or will emerge over the next couple of months?   Vaishali stated, great question. And we all have been talking about this, start of the year, we were like, what's 2024 going to hold for CX and is AI going to replace but she thinks now conversations have shifted, and everyone agrees, and a lot of the conversations she's hearing about is, we are going to coexist together. So, that trend is kind of going to continue and only emerge, people are not going to lose their jobs because of AI, but they're just going to be supported better and to design better experience. So, that's definitely one.  The second one is what she sees as a shift, based on discussing with clients and having these daily one on one conversations, being the centre front of the industry is that there's a grey area that was first there was digital experience and customer experience, but she sees that becoming a grey area now to becoming actually digital customer experience, and people finding out and learning more about it. And that's a very interesting space, because it makes room for everyone to grow together and learn and share experiences, which she thinks is phenomenal. So, there are no more silos within even the experience design space anymore. And the third one she would say is, she sees extremely authenticating orthodox industries, especially such as manufacturing, or education, which had a certain way of doing certain things digitally, are now ready to evolve and embark on a transformation journey. Because they think it's extremely important to kind of keep up to the industry and the world and the customer needs. And those are massive projects that they're working on internally. So, she thinks it's very, very interesting to see that shift in the industry right now.    Me: Alright, exciting times ahead.   Where Can We Find Vaishali Online LinkedIn – Vaishali Dialani X – Vaishali Dialani    Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Vaishali Uses Me: Now, we always like to ask our guests before we wrap our episodes up, do you have a quote or a saying that during times of adverted adversity or challenge, you'll tend to revert to this quote if for any reason you get the real or you get off track, a quote kind of helps to get you back on track.   When asked about a quote or saying that she tends to revert, Vaishali shared that she does. And it's one of her favourite quotes that she's actually tattooed and it's called, “Fly with full faith.” So, it's always do your hard work and have faith in whatever you do. Because most of the times, it feels like we're doing so much and we still not able to get to the next place, we're stuck in a circle or a rod. And it's important to have faith and while you have faith, always, always do your hard work.   Me: All right, thank you so very much. So, Vaishali, I just wanted to extend our deepest gratitude to you again, for taking time out of your busy schedule, and hopping on this podcast with us and sharing all these great insights, especially as it relates to your culture and what's happening over there. Because the world is very small, even though we are in different continents or different places, human behaviour is still pretty much the same I believe throughout, we are through and through emotional beings. And I liked the fact that that came out in your message in terms of what we should be focused on in CX and ensuring that we're connecting with people on an emotional level, and what kind of feelings do we want them to have after they've interacted with us. So, I thought it was great that you brought that across in a message. So, thank you again.    Please connect with us on Twitter @navigatingcx and also join our Private Facebook Community – Navigating the Customer Experience and listen to our FB Lives weekly with a new guest   Links •     Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck    The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience Grab the Freebie on Our Website – TOP 10 Online Business Resources for Small Business Owners  Do you want to pivot your online customer experience and build loyalty - get a copy of “The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience.” The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience provides 26 easy to follow steps and techniques that helps your business to achieve success and build brand loyalty. This Guide to Limitless, Happy and Loyal Customers will help you to strengthen your service delivery, enhance your knowledge and appreciation of the customer experience and provide tips and practical strategies that you can start implementing immediately! This book will develop your customer service skills and sharpen your attention to detail when serving others. Master your customer experience and develop those knock your socks off techniques that will lead to lifetime customers. Your customers will only want to work with your business and it will be your brand differentiator. It will lead to recruiters to seek you out by providing practical examples on how to deliver a winning customer service experience!

Robert Scarperi, Bob has been a leader in professional services, SaaS, financial services, ad tech mar tech, and management consulting for 32 years. His company, Revenue Vision Partners is the industry's leading data-driven revenue growth consulting firm. Questions · Could you share with our listeners, just a little bit about how you got from where you were to where you are today? · You wrote a book called Data and Diagnosis-Driven Selling with three other gentlemen. So, could you take a minute to kind of just go through maybe three overarching themes that the book focuses on? And just how do you believe this can really help an organization to deliver a great customer experience? · Now, I'd like for you to share with us what's the one online tool, resource, website or application that you absolutely can't live without in your business? · Can you also share with us maybe one or two books that you have read, it could be a book that you read a very long time ago, or even one that you've read recently, but it has had a great impact on your development and even your continued growth. · Now, Bob, could you also share with our listeners, what's the one thing that's going on in your life right now that you're really excited about, either something you're working on to develop yourself or your people. · Where can listeners find you online? · Now, Bob, before we wrap up, we always like to give our guests an opportunity to share. I'm not sure if you have one of these but a quote that you would tend to revert to if for any reason you are faced with some form of adversity, or challenge, but that quote will help to get you refocused, get you back on track, and just help you if for any reason you got the real or you got off track. Highlights Bob's Journey  Me: Now, we always like to give our listeners an opportunity to hear from the guest, in their own words, a little bit about your journey. And it has been quite a long journey, 32 years is a good amount of time to have under your belt in all of these wonderful areas. So, could you share with our listeners, just a little bit about how you got from where you were to where you are today?   Bob shared that right around the time he was finishing college, he had a really strong pull to get into sales, he was extremely lucky to have had a best friend's father was the top sales guy at Automatic Data Processing, ADP, which is sort of known to be one of the best and strongest sales driven cultures in the Fortune 100.  And right from the very beginning, all of their structure, rigor, process, intensity really meshed with his personality and his sort of competitive nature. And so, he was lucky enough to have some early success, he's very, very grateful for how much faith they had in him from an early age, giving him opportunities to run sales teams and move and get to experience new geographies and have really great experiences in such a phenomenally well-run company.  And then without going into too much detail, of course, his journey took him through a number of different industries, early days of ad tech, he worked for a long time as an equity sales and trading person at AllianceBernstein. He was lucky enough also to have some leadership positions, run sales teams internationally.  And then toward the last 10 years of his career, he had three Chief Revenue Officer roles in high growth technology companies where he really started to embrace being a leader who prided himself on installing a systematic data driven approach.  And toward the end of that decade, he decided he really wanted to do that as a consultant for a portfolio of companies so that he could be really working through various kind of company challenges in different industries with private equity firms as their partner. So, that's what brought him to where he is now.   About Bob's Book – Data and Diagnosis-Driven Selling and Three Overarching Themes That Can Help Organizations Enhance Customer Experience Me: Now, Bob, you wrote a book called Data and Diagnosis-Driven Selling: Leveraging insights, intelligence and the power of AI to deliver efficient, durable revenue growth with three other gentlemen, Mark Petruzzi, Ray Rike and Paul Melchiorre. So, could you take a minute to kind of just go through maybe three overarching themes that the book focuses on? And just how do you believe this can really help an organization to deliver a great customer experience? And I'd love for you to maybe segment it for us, because selling covers so many different areas. If you're selling to a business versus if you're selling to a customer….an individual, so maybe you could take one of those areas and kind of just break it down for us. And just give examples of what you wrote about in the book can really help teams that are in sales because sales is critical, it's a lifeline of any business. But how can the sales team really drive a quality customer experience that can drive to a high customer retention rate, because at the end of the day, that's really what all businesses are aiming for, as you're going to be able to keep your customers for life.   Bob shared that regarding who it's written for, it would really be for anyone selling to or trying to persuade a group of decision makers, so, usually an organization where a number of people contribute to a decision that is primarily in B2B sales. But if you find yourself in a position where you are trying to convince a town council to vote your way on a specific issue that's been a problem for the community or anything else where there are a group of people who need to kind of come together to make a decision, their book will help you.  And the way that it helps you is it lays out an approach that is not only proven by some of the most successful people in B2B sales, but it's also modern, utilizing the most high quality available B2B data. And they also talk about systems support, and AI as a tool that can help the modern salesperson navigate this very complex selling environment with multiple decisions in a tough time in the market, the macro environment is currently as complex as it's ever been. And being successful in sales at the moment is also as challenging and complex as it's ever been.   Me: So, I kind of wanted you also to maybe just go into, I would say, as I said, three overarching themes that the book focuses on. So, you mentioned AI and it's a very hot topic right across, I think, across the world, really, since it was introduced, especially since it's so accessible to everyone currently. But what does that really mean when you are selling to someone? Because at the end of the day, you're still dealing with human beings, so, what is the data really going to tell you? Or how is it going to help you to navigate that conversation? Because there has to be some human interaction, right? So, I kind of want you to walk us through that process.   Bob shared that the book talks about two different types of AI and it's really exciting because he doesn't think there is a sales book currently that, again, not only combines improving elements with AI and data approaches, but the two types of AI are generative AI, those would be systems like Chat GPT, who can help you create content in order to be compelling in a sales process. And predictive AI, technologies like and he'll use an example, Clari, which is a tool that helps sales teams understand which of their open sales opportunities have the highest probability of closing, based on a myriad of factors. So, they do get into really solid detail and they also have contributors in the book who are experts in various topics and tell stories about how they've used these tools successfully.   Me: So, that's excellent, very good explanation on the generative and predictive AI. Because I do believe that we throw toward around so much in different industries, especially in the customer experience industry, many people believe that artificial intelligence is going to replace human beings and we're all going to be obsolete and not worth any value anymore. But I'm not there yet. And I live in Kingston, Jamaica, where we use technology here a lot, but we are not going to get to that point anytime soon, definitely not in my lifetime where you're not going to need people because we are still a society that is heavily dependent on people interaction. For example, in our banks here, and I compare it to the United States all the time. The banks are still full, 50….40 people standing in the banks. I travelled to the US quite often and I go to different financial institutions, and they are empty, there's nobody physically standing in there, there are no lines lined up outside or people lined up inside. So, just in terms of the culture and the behaviour of people just don't believe that we're going to eliminate the people component in customer experience, because people still like to deal with people, right?   Bob agreed yes, absolutely. And it's funny because he does feel like and the way that they lay it out in the book, AI can put you in a position to have more and better live human interactions with the right audience, if used properly. It doesn't replace humans; it sets humans up to be the best version of themselves and optimize their approach every day.   Me: I love it. So, it's really supposed to help us to interact better, to get to decisions faster, to understand people's behaviours quicker, to find solutions that are more need based, because a lot of times salespeople sell you stuff, they're driven by the quotas that they need to meet, they're driven by the pressures that their organizations put on them. But when you match value to the experience that the person is having and are they really getting the right solution, a lot of times down the road when there is like let's say a survey that's being done, or some form of focus group, especially if they're losing customers over a period of time, you realize that it wasn't even the right solution that was given to the client, or it wasn't being managed the proper way. And I guess, if they had the right data from day one, and it was being provided in the right way, they wouldn't have lost the customer in the first place.   Bob stated yes, he couldn't agree more. The third theme of the book is utilizing simple data science in order to ensure that your sales approach is driven by your Ideal Customer Profile (IDP). And he'll just briefly state that as a sales leader, he had gotten frustrated by knowing that focusing on the ideal customer profile was the right thing and then defining that and making that approach data driven was impossible. It was a very distant and vague concept. But he believes that they own the very best definition now of what the ideal customer profile is and how to take that definition and identify score and rank specific prospects and clients that are the best match to that ideal customer profile and create an entire commercial approach with that as the foundation.   Me: All right, and what is the definition that you have identified in the book as your ideal customer profile?   Bob shared that it's basically utilizing firmographic traits to know what industry, what sub sector, what size of the company, how much it's growing, what web scraping tells you about a company, when you can build a model that identifies those common traits in your best customers, and utilize expert panels to ensure that the model has picked up on the right signals, that is the best way to create an ideal customer profile, and again, score and rank accounts. That's quite technical, but it's all in the book.   Me: Yes, agreed. And our listeners would have tapped into this episode, and they'd like to put their hands on your book, where can they find it?   Bob shared that the book, it's available in all the major outlets, but he will tell you, he's a huge fan of Amazon and is readily available on Amazon in softcover, hardcover, and they'll have an audio version available within three weeks of today (May 09. 2024).   Me: Oh, okay, that was actually going to be my next question. Do you have it available on Audible? And you better get used to this voice because it's 80% of the narration is done by him (Bob).    App, Website or Tool that Bob Absolutely Can't Live Without in His Business When asked about online resource that he cannot live without in his business, Bob shared ZoomInfo. ZoomInfo provides a backbone to a lot of the data work that they do at Revenue Vision Partners. And when they were in the marketplace to procure data assets, they did a thorough evaluation, they were convinced at the time and four plus years later, he continued to be convinced that ZoomInfo has the best B2B data available in the market.   Books that Have Had the Biggest Impact on Bob When asked about books that have had a great impact, Bob shared that he would say that far and away, Strategic Selling: The Unique Sales System Proven Successful by America's Best Companies by Robert B. Miller and Stephen Heiman is the number one book that has contributed to the way that he has approached sales since the early 90s. He feels it lays out the most logical and powerful and consistent approach or methodology for B2B sales.  What they tried to do with the new book is take methodologies like Strategic Selling, SPIN Selling, The Challenger Sale, and modernize the approach again with Data and Diagnosis and AI and build upon those methodologies.   What Bob is Really Excited About Now! When asked about something that he's excited about, Bob shared that in their firm right now, they're doing one of these ideal customer profile-based data projects for a very large, diversified industrial company who services about a dozen different end markets. They're a multi-billion-dollar organization, they've run a pilot in one of their key divisions and it's been a phenomenally successful data model.  And he's convinced that their are hundreds of salespeople are going to utilize their time better, they're going to sell bigger and better fit accounts, they're going to be more gratified in their jobs, the company's going to gain market share in a more consistent and repeatable way.  And it's thrilling to do that, because this was the promise that they built their company on, and this couldn't be a better group of humans to work with who he just wants to see them succeed for all the right reasons. So, he's so excited about this journey, they're just far enough along where there's proof that it's working and there's so much ahead of them in terms of their ability to empower them to succeed.   Me: All right, I'm excited too, just hearing all of the great opportunities that lie ahead.   Bob shared that in his tennis game, he feels like his backhand is really ready for summer.   Me: Do you play competitively, or do you just play for fun?   Bob stated that he plays intermediate competitively. So, he can be pretty terrible. He has a couple of great shots and feel really good about himself, but it's a blast.   Where Can We Find Bob Online LinkedIn – Bob Scarperi Company LinkedIn – Revenue Vision Partners Instagram – @bobbyscarp Website - www.revenuevisionpartners.com Facebook – Bob Scarperi   Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Bob Uses  When asked about a quote or saying that he tends to revert to, Bob shared that it's quite a long one, so, he's not going to quote the whole thing, but unless he takes up the rest of the time, but it is, The Man in the Arena, quote by Teddy Roosevelt.  And starting a business in one's middle age with lots of financial obligations, including three kids, two step-kids, etc…etc…has been a really bold decision and quite terrifying at times. And every time he wonders if he's done the right thing, he grounds himself in that amazing speech and always feel like he comes back to believing that he was born to do something bold and that living through terrifying entrepreneurial moments are part of that and the victories that one is lucky enough to experience when they make that brave and bold decision are that much sweeter than then any other career related victories in his life. Of course, his highest highs have to do with his kids, but that whole man in the arena concept keeps him going every day. “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”    Me: So, we will have that full quote in the Show Notes of our episode, the Teddy Roosevelt quote, along with what you shared just now as it relates to kind of getting you back refocused on why you do what you do.   Bob shared that and if you saw the Tom Brady roast on Netflix, Matt Damon does a great job of narrating the entire thing.   Me: All right, Bob, thank you so much for jumping on our podcast today and sharing all these great insights as it relates to Diagnostic Selling and Data Driven Selling, as well as Artificial Intelligence and the ICP, it's all great information. I've started consuming a part of the content of the book, but I just believe I'd get so much more from the audible. So, I'm actually going to wait until it's released in the next three weeks to continue, I just believe I get so much more listening to it rather than reading it. But I would recommend for anyone that is a listener to our podcast to tap into this awesome resource that Bob and his team have so graciously given to us in the world, it's a great resource. And I believe that if we continue to try to find ways to add value to people's lives, create opportunities that you're really providing the solutions that your customers want, that will allow them to be your customer for life, through the techniques that you use to ensure that you are selling the right way, making the decisions the right way, your customer experience will take care of itself. So, thank you so much.   Please connect with us on X @navigatingcx and also join our Private Facebook Community – Navigating the Customer Experience and listen to our FB Lives weekly with a new guest   Links •     Data and Diagnosis-Driven Selling: Leveraging insights, intelligence and the power of AI to deliver efficient, durable revenue growth by Bob Scarperi •     Strategic Selling: The Unique Sales System Proven Successful by America's Best Companies by Robert B. Miller and Stephen Heiman    The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience Grab the Freebie on Our Website – TOP 10 Online Business Resources for Small Business Owners  Do you want to pivot your online customer experience and build loyalty - get a copy of “The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience.” The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience provides 26 easy to follow steps and techniques that helps your business to achieve success and build brand loyalty. This Guide to Limitless, Happy and Loyal Customers will help you to strengthen your service delivery, enhance your knowledge and appreciation of the customer experience and provide tips and practical strategies that you can start implementing immediately! This book will develop your customer service skills and sharpen your attention to detail when serving others. Master your customer experience and develop those knock your socks off techniques that will lead to lifetime customers. Your customers will only want to work with your business and it will be your brand differentiator. It will lead to recruiters to seek you out by providing practical examples on how to deliver a winning customer service experience!

Jason Feifer is the editor in chief of Entrepreneur Magazine, a nonstop optimism machine, and a widely recognized authority on business and how people navigate change. He is the author of the best-selling book Build For Tomorrow, a startup advisor, and host of the podcast Help Wanted and Problem Solvers. LinkedIn name him a “Top Voice in Entrepreneurship”.  Jason has also had decades-long career in national media, which included working as an editor at Men's Health, Fast Company, Maxim, and Boston magazine, and writing about business and technology for the Washington Post, Slate, New York Magazine, and others.    Questions We always like to give our guests an opportunity to just share in their own words, a little bit about their journey, and how they got from wherever they were to where they are today. So, could you share that with us? So, Build For Tomorrow, a book that focuses on startup advisory, and I just kind of want you to take a little time to share with our listeners, what the book is about? Who is the book targeted towards? And how do you believe the book has been helping others in their different careers and businesses? Now the book focuses on four phases of this change. The first is the panic, then you have the adaptation and the new normal and then that phase where we're never going back. So, could you just elaborate just a little bit, maybe give an example of each just to kind of cement that information across to our listeners. What are three-character traits that you found has to really be intrinsic to organizations or persons who lead organizations to help them really be customer centric? Now, could you share with our listeners, what's the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely can't live without in your business? Can you also share with us what's the one thing that's going on in your life right now that you're really excited about? Either something you're working on to develop yourself or your people. Where can listeners find you online? Now, before we wrap our episodes up, we always like to ask our guests, do you have a quote or a saying that during times of adversity or challenge, you will tend to revert to this quote if for any reason you get derailed or you get off track, the quote kind of helps to get you back on track. Do you have one of those? Highlights  Jason's Journey Me: We always like to give our guests an opportunity to just share in their own words, a little bit about their journey, and how they got from where they were to where they are today. So, could you share that with us?   Jason shared that in brief, he started in media, he was a community newspaper reporter fresh out of college. Eventually, he got into magazines, he moved to New York City to work for Men's Health magazine, pretty different from Entrepreneur, and bounced around to a lot of different national magazines until he got to Entrepreneur.  And at first, he really treated Entrepreneur like a media project. His job was to do what he had done everywhere else, which was to be an editor and to tell great stories and to think about the media brand.  But over time, two things happen. Number one is that people because of the title, Editor in Chief of Entrepreneur Magazine, they started to treat him as an authority in entrepreneurship, which frankly, he was uncomfortable with for a while because his background was in media, until he came to realize that so much of business is not about the fundamentals of business, but it's really about the fundamentals of human thinking, and logic and reinvention, and the kinds of things that he had put himself through in his own career.  He thinks that we all have to recognize what our incredible skill is, and it's going to be different for everybody. His belief is that every human being has the same fundamental skill, and that is pattern recognition.  The difference among us is that some of us are better at recognizing different kinds of patterns, right. And so, his pattern is how people think and how people tell stories and how people understand the world. And he came to realize that by spending an immense amount of time with entrepreneurs, he was starting to absorb their way of thinking, starting to act like that, he's starting to launch his own businesses, starting to advise startups, and that he could lean into telling their stories, processing their insights in a way that would be incredibly useful for other entrepreneurs. And that has led him to the career that he has now.   About Jason's Book – Build For Tomorrow Me: So, I was lucky enough to actually read your article in Entrepreneur Magazine. I think it was the February issue that I purchased when I was travelling, how failure can feel good, and it really intrigued me. So, I reached out to you on LinkedIn, and graciously, you accepted my request and here we are today having you on our podcast. So, amazing. So, in your bio, it was also mentioned that you recently published a book that would have been September of 2022. So, Build For Tomorrow, a book that focuses on startup advisory, and I just kind of want you to take a little time to share with our listeners, what the book is about? Who is the book targeted towards? And how do you believe the book has been helping others in their different careers and businesses?   Jason shared that Build For Tomorrow is a book for anybody who's going through change, particularly going through any kind of career change though.  He's heard from a lot of readers that it applied well to personal changes as well. And the book is rooted in this philosophy that he's developed, which is that when he meets the most successful leaders and entrepreneurs, he finds that they have all developed a unique personal relationship with change, they understand who they are in times of change, they understand how change can impact them in a positive way. And that unique relationship with change enables them to grow and build in ways that others can't.  And he wanted to write a book that distilled the experiences and the wisdom of people who have successfully navigated change and help others with a roadmap for how to do it too. That is just simply the most important thing that any entrepreneur can do is to be adaptable, to recognize that the things that are changing around them are great opportunities, and then to understand how to systematically approach that and that's the book that he wrote. And he's had a really tremendous feedback from it, it's really gratifying.   Navigating Change – Understanding the Four Phases Me: Awesome! Now the book focuses on four phases of this change. The first is the panic, then you have the adaptation and the new normal and then that phase where we're never going back. So, could you just elaborate just a little bit, maybe give an example of each just to kind of cement that information across to our listeners.    Jason shared that he found that everybody goes through change in the same four phases listed them out panic, adaptation, new normal, wouldn't go back. Let's focus on panic and wouldn't go back. Panic, you know when you're panicked, you know when you're feeling that, you maybe are feeling that right now as he's talking because something massive has changed in your work, because you feel like your industry is shifting underneath you. Who knows. And the reason why we panic is because decades of psychological research have confirmed what's called loss aversion theory. Loss Aversion theory is the recognition that our human brains are programmed to protect against loss more than to seek gain.  So, when something changes in our lives and or in our work, the first thing that we do is we identify the things that we're comfortable and familiar with and then we start to think about how we're going to lose them, we're acquainting change with loss. And then we start to extrapolate it, well, because I've lost this thing, I'm going to lose that thing because I lost that thing, then I'm going to lose that other thing. Now, everything starts to feel like it's disappearing, now, we are panicking. But you can't do that forever, you can't panic forever, it's too exhausting.  Eventually, you start to look around and say, well, what do I have to work with. We get to adaptation. We start to build a new normal, a new foundation, something comfortable and familiar, again, a new normal. And then we get to wouldn't go back, that moment where we say I have something so new and valuable that I wouldn't want to go back to a time before I had it.  And he can give examples of that. But the pattern that he's seeing is that people are often forced into or sometimes are proactively making changes that force them to reconsider the fundamentals of the work that they do. And what they discover is that the way in which they were working before or the thing that they were doing, or the way that they were delivering value to their clients or their customers, that that wasn't the only way to do it. They thought that it was…..but it wasn't.  And in fact, it was a lesser version of a better way to do it that had never been explored because oftentimes people don't feel incentivized to scrap something that's working, or that sort of working, and take the risk of figuring out how to build something better. But when change comes along, when you are disrupted, when you're forced to react to the things that are shifting around you, you start to ask yourself some really fundamental questions about whether or not the things that you thought wouldn't work maybe are worth trying. And some of those are going to become the best opportunities for you going forward.   Me: All right, so change. I remember over the years, even going to university and starting my working life and starting a business, I've always heard the phrase that change is constant. And I haven't engaged in the book, I did download it on Audible, and I've started listening to it but I haven't completed it as yet. But what your four phases reminded me of was that change is constant. So, regardless of a pandemic emerging across the world, or kids coming into the play or getting new employees, like change is constant, we're constantly going through change in different aspects of our lives, so your phases definitely reminded me of that.   Jason stated that that's something that you can operationalize.  So, the idea that change is constant is a familiar one for many people. But he thinks often you hear that and you don't know what to do with it. Okay, change is constant, so what?  Here's the starting point. What would happen if you made decisions today based on the knowledge that the thing that you're working on now will have to change tomorrow?  What decisions would you make when you know that?  It starts to shift the way in which you work, you start to for example, do a thing that he calls change before you must where you start to make decisions that are hard today because they will benefit you when things change tomorrow.  A story that he'd love to tell, he won't tell it in full here, because it takes a while but divided in the book is of a brewer, a guy who started a Beer Brewery in Delaware named Sam, his company's called Dogfish. And he had a runaway hit product in a beer called 60-minute IPA, people love this beer, it was on track to become 75% to 80% of all sales of his company, and he artificially limited supply.  So, this thing was on track to become 75% to 80% of all sales at Dogfish, he capped that at 50% and that meant that people were furious at him, restaurants couldn't get his beer stocked, bars couldn't get his beer stock. And he says, “Sam, why would you do that? Why would you limit sales of your best-selling product?” And the answer that he gave me was because tastes change. And he knew that if he allowed this one beer to be a runaway hit so that everybody who ever went into a bar or a restaurant encountered just this beer of his, just this one 60-minute IPA. Well, then at some point IPAs, India Pale Ale, popular bitter style appeals is going to become less popular than it was at that one moment.  And if people's impressions of his company were shaped by one beer by an IPA, then he was going to be known as a hot IPA brand. And that's fine until tastes change, they will change at which point he won't be a hot IPA brand, he will be an old brand, he'll be a dead brand. And so, he wanted to do something that was painful today for the benefit of tomorrow, anticipating that change will come.  And the payoff for the story is amazing, which is that Sam limited sales of his best-selling beer when people would order it, he would try to get them to buy or stock or serve other styles of beer that he made. And as a result, he shaped perception of his company Dogfish not as a hot IPA brand, but as an innovative brand. And you know what you can do with an innovative brand is you can sell it for $300 Million Dollars, which is exactly what he did.  That's not something you could have done if he had just thought about how to profit today, how to only succeed based on what was working today. That's what it means to build the reality of constant change into the decisions that you make today, know that they will require change tomorrow. So, how can you anticipate that and be proactive about it.    Me: Brilliant. I love that story, Jason Awesome! Thank you so much for sharing.    Essential Character Traits for a Leader Me: Now, Jason, as Editor of Entrepreneur Magazine, I'm sure that you interface with a lot of CEOs and a lot of business leaders across different industries across the world. And so, I wanted based on your expert opinion and your exposure to persons of this nature, what do you believe are maybe three, it's a kind of a generic question. But I like to hear from the subject matter experts, three let's say character traits that you found has to really be intrinsic to organizations or persons who lead organizations to help them really be customer centric, because we're all about navigating the customer experience. And the reality is, if you don't have the right people doing the things that your customers want and creating value, you're not going to have a successful business. And if your customers don't feel like they're getting value, and they choose to do business with your competition or not do business with you at all, over time you will not have a successful business. So, it's twofold and you want that person who can navigate the personalities and navigate as you said, the change and the many different things that will come forth, what would you say are three-character traits that you think someone like that would need?   Jason shared that the first thing that comes to mind was a conversation that he had with this guy Matt, who at the time was the president of Reebok, Reebok the athletic wear company. And he told him (Jason) and this was the first time he'd heard this phrase then he started hearing it everywhere, which was customer obsession.  He said, “We're really obsessed, we're completely customer obsessed at Reebok and we want to understand them, and we don't want to understand their needs.” And he's heard that from a lot of people, but he had never heard the next thing that he told me, which was this metaphor that he uses, he says, “Look, we are in a moment in business where quality is assumed.”  Where if you let's say, wanted to start a scissor company making scissors, you could not advertise yourself as the sharpest scissors. Because every scissors is the sharpest scissors right? It's easy enough now to manufacture scissors that every scissors is the sharpest scissors.  So, if you want to be successful selling scissors, you can't lean on quality alone. Quality has to be table stakes, quality is what people take for granted, it's what they expect. The next place that you need to go is who exactly are you serving?  And how do you relate to them?  How do you tell a story that makes them proud to use your scissors, that makes them feel like when they use their scissors, they're exploring a version of themselves.  That's what it means to be customer obsessed is to understand the way in which your customers thinks to the degree to which you can tell your story in a way that relates directly to them.  Now, he's not telling you something that you don't know based on serving customers, but that scissors metaphor really stuck with him because he thinks a lot of people, their starting point is, well, because I make the best….. But if you take that away from yourself, and you say, “Being the best at whatever is not enough, because quality by itself doesn't sell, then what else am I doing here?”  He has a friend and he'll make this kind of point number two. Her name is Rochelle DeVos. And she is a Consumer Insights Research Specialist and is brilliant and understanding consumer psychology and has taught him a lot but the framework that she shared with him and again has really stuck with him the most is so much so that he actually has it on his desktop and he's looking at it right now to read from Rochelle's thing.  So, she says, “Look, if you want to understand how to relate to customers, then you need to fill out the following sentence. “When (context) I want solution so that (benefit) from the perspective of the consumer.” So, give you an example that she uses from a compression sock company, a company that makes kind of tight socks for people who have foot pain.  So, she says alright, when context I want solutions so that benefit. When context, when my feet hurt from standing all day, it's the context in which there's a need for a solution. I want a solution. I want to feel comfortable while still looking cute.  Her example is a company that makes compression socks for women. So, that's something that they are concerned about.  So, that benefit, so that I can do my job, be present for my family, enjoy my life while not standing out because of my foot pain.  What's so important about understanding this when context I want solutions so that benefit is that most entrepreneurs get stuck at solution.  They talk about the solution that they have, I've made compression socks, I've made compression socks for when your feet hurt.  But the real conversion, the real connection to the audience comes at the benefit. It comes at being able to articulate the value that your customer is going to get from using your solution.  Customers don't care about solutions, nobody wakes up in the morning and they're like, I want compression socks. What they think is I want to do my job and be present for my family and enjoy my life. That's what they want. So, how do you understand the benefits that they want enough that you can have a conversation with them that is benefit oriented, because that is where you win.  And Rochelle suggests the way to do this is, is to be constantly in touch with and survey your consumer so that you understand how they think and how they talk and the language that they use. And he finds that perspective to be incredibly powerful.  So, if we're making a list here so that you know number one he thinks is to be customer obsessed to the point where you recognize the quality itself is not going to connect to your customer.  Point number two is to be benefit oriented, to understand your consumer at a level that is deep enough that they will, that they can articulate the benefit of that consumer is seeking.  And if he had to come up with a third one, qualities of leaders who are customer centric. He'd say that there is a level of inefficiency that leaders are willing to tolerate, to learn from their customers.  A conversation that always stuck with me is a woman who had started, he can't remember the name of the company, but it was a paint company, she makes like, really cool paint colors, and it had been quite successful. And the company has grown, it's actually been acquired, she's still running it.  She has a large team, she still is in her brand's Instagram DM'S every day, corresponding with customers, if somebody DM'S that brand on Instagram, the CEO responds, and that is deeply inefficient.  But it has helped her stay in touch with her consumer in a way that she feels she would lose if she retracted from that and she just focused on all the operations of the business.  She wants to be in touch in a way that is inefficient. She has a tolerance for inefficiency, because that is the thing that is ultimately enabling her to understand her customers' needs today and where those shifts are tomorrow.   Me: Wow, that's amazing, a CEO that's in the DM'S. That's brilliant.   App, Website or Tool that Jason Absolutely Can't Live Without in His Business When asked about online resource that can't live without in his business, Jason shared that these days, he has been absolutely loving Fathom. So, you can get at www.fathom.video and Fathom is a AI note taking tool.  He has it in all of his calls and meetings now. And it just does a great job of contextually summarizing what was said, provides a transcript, it's not a perfect transcript, but it's close enough so that you can go back and find what somebody said, and then it's very searchable.  So, he found that to be an excellent way of passively collecting all the information that is being shared and discussed so that he has now a kind of catalogue of it and an easy way to go back and find it. He strongly suggests just having something like this running in the background of all your meetings now. So, again, it's just www.fathom.video is the company's website.   What Jason is Really Excited About Now! When asked about something he's excited about, Jason shared that he's been working on a newsletter for the last year, it's called One Thing Better. And the tagline that he has for it is, “One way each week. One way to be more successful and satisfied at work and build a career or company that you love.”  And each week is him sharing a strategy. Usually it's a story that articulates it, and then an exercise that people can use to think more adaptively, to be more open minded, to find opportunities in places you're not looking, to just feel better about work.  His wife refers to this newsletter as work therapy. And he's been just incredibly gratified by the response that he's getting to this newsletter, it pretty quickly grew to 50,000 subscribers.  And he just gets these emails from people telling him that they print out his emails, and they keep them on their desk to read regularly, or they forward it to their friends who are struggling with something.  And he's so excited to have created something that can have that kind of personal connection. If you want to check it out, it's www.onethingbetter.email, that's the web address. And he just thinks there's a lot of potential in exploring the newsletter space and in creating things that are both connecting with people on a business but personal level as well. That's a space he really like to live in. So, he's been excited to be building that and to see where it goes.    Me: So, we'll definitely have the link to the newsletter in the show notes of this episode. And I imagine once they subscribe, they can have access to previous newsletters that were published, correct? Yes, as soon as you visit the website, you will see the back catalogue.   Where Can We Find Jason Online Newsletter – www.onethingbetter.email  LinkedIn – Jason Feifer   Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Jason Uses When asked about a quote or saying that he tends to revert to, Jason shared that he's not big on motivational quotes, he doesn't get driven that way. But he's had a lot of people say really impressive things to him that stick with him.  One of them came from Malcolm Gladwell, who is a best-selling author and podcaster, and so on. And they were talking about work and so on and he had said this line to him which he loved, which was, “Self-conceptions are powerfully limiting.”  The idea being that if you have too narrow vision of yourself, then you will limit all the opportunities that could come your way, that don't fit that narrow definition of self. So, self-conceptions are powerfully limiting and that is something he thinks about a lot as he pursues things that takes him out of his earlier conceptions of himself.   Me: Thank you so much for sharing. All right, Jason, we will just want to extend our deepest gratitude to you for taking time out of your very busy schedule and hopping on this podcast with us today, talking about your best-selling book Build For Tomorrow, and the four phases that are connected to that book, also giving us three of the strong character traits that you believe will help leaders to really build an organization that will not just provide value for their customers, but also for their employees so it can be a win-win on both ends. And the insights, the knowledge, the experiences that you've shared with us today, the stories, they were just extremely insightful. And I just want to say thank you so much.   Please connect with us on Twitter @navigatingcx and also join our Private Facebook Community – Navigating the Customer Experience and listen to our FB Lives weekly with a new guest Links Build For Tomorrow by Jason Feifer   The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience Grab the Freebie on Our Website – TOP 10 Online Business Resources for Small Business Owners  Do you want to pivot your online customer experience and build loyalty - get a copy of “The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience.” The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience provides 26 easy to follow steps and techniques that helps your business to achieve success and build brand loyalty. This Guide to Limitless, Happy and Loyal Customers will help you to strengthen your service delivery, enhance your knowledge and appreciation of the customer experience and provide tips and practical strategies that you can start implementing immediately! This book will develop your customer service skills and sharpen your attention to detail when serving others. Master your customer experience and develop those knock your socks off techniques that will lead to lifetime customers. Your customers will only want to work with your business and it will be your brand differentiator. It will lead to recruiters to seek you out by providing practical examples on how to deliver a winning customer service experience!

Darby Vannier, with over 20 years of experience, is a seasoned leader adept at building and growing organizations. As President & CEO of Indispensable Leadership Group, he excels as an executive coach, consultant, speaker, and fractional COO, focusing on strategic and leadership development. He has led effective teams of more than a 100 employees, coached others into their own leadership positions, and created stability during challenging organizational transitions. Darby built his career on the philosophy that developing the right people is the key to success.  Learn more at www.beindispensable.com.   Questions ·      Even though we read a very short snippet of your journey, your little bio, we always like to give our guests an opportunity to share in their own words, a little bit about how you got from where you are to where you are today. ·      Your book titled, The Indispensable Leader. So, could you share with our listeners a little bit about that book? What was your intention when you wrote the book? What is the book about? Who is the book geared towards and kind of what was your sentiment when you were putting it all together? ·      Which role do you think is more effective, the manager's role or the leader's role? ·     Now in the book, you also talk about, which I found this part really fascinating that you should be curious, and you should engage curiosity. Explained to us a little bit about what you meant when you said, engage or encourage curiosity and being curious as a leader. ·      In the book, you also mentioned the whole conscious competence model. So, I'd love for you to kind of just explain that to the audience as well, the four phases and then the example that you gave to reinforce the concept. ·      Could you also share with our listeners, what is the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely cannot live without in your business? ·    Can you also share with our listeners, maybe one or two books that you've read, it could be a book that you read recently, or even one that you read a very long time ago, but it had a great impact on you. ·      Can you also share with us what's the one thing in your life right now that you're really excited about? Either something you're working on to develop yourself or your people. ·      Now, before we wrap our episodes up, we always like to ask our guests, do you have a quote or a saying that during times of adversity or challenge you will tend to revert to this quote if for any reason you get derailed or you get off track, and the quote kind of helps to get you back on track. ·      Where can listeners find you online? Highlights Darby's Journey Me: Now Darby, even though we read a very short snippet of your journey, your little bio, we always like to give our guests an opportunity to share in their own words, a little bit about how you got from where you were to where you are today.   Darby shared that it's kind of a diverse career actually. So, he started off in retail, actually kind of in the entertainment industry, working as a manager at a 22-screen movie theatre, which is an interesting industry, especially back at that time when it was before digital movies and everything, and everything came in on natural celluloid film and everything.  So, yeah, 22 screen movie theatre, they would serve 1000's of people a day and that was an interesting experience getting started because it definitely was jumping right into that retail type environment, bringing in at that point, you're talking about most of their employees were high school or college aged students and, and so that's just a different level of team member that you're managing.  From there, he kind of jumped even further into retail, he actually became a store manager for Kinkos at the time, so the print shop at Kinkos, which is now FedEx Office, but at the time, it was still Kinkos. And at that time, all the Kinkos were 24-hour stores, like they never closed, didn't close on any holidays, didn't close any hours, nothing. So, that was definitely a learning experience he will say, managing a 24 hour a day business from that standpoint.  And he did that about 6 years and then moved into the non-profit world where he took over as CEO of an International Livestock Association, actually for alpacas of all things. And it's always an interesting story because he tells people when he got the interview for the job, he had to look up what an alpaca was because he had a general idea that it was like a llama, but he didn't exactly know what it was, so kind of entered into a whole new realm there. And he did that for about 11 years where he reported directly to a board, grew that organization, fixed a lot of things in that organization, and then grew that organization. And then they actually went through a merger process and merged with another national organization. And he took over as CEO of the newly created merged organization for that industry.  And then from there, he decided, he's kind of ready to be done with this non-profit thing, and he exited non-profit, went back into the for-profit world, joined a company that does leadership development, strategic planning, executive coaching, that sort of thing, because he's always been passionate about leadership, and did that for about 7 years.  And then last year decided he's going to break off and do his own things. He had a company established previously for some consulting and stuff that he had done and he just expanded that and started offering fractional leadership services and executive coaching on his own and have built that up from there. So, still working on that and that's kind of gets us up to date.    About Darby's Book – The Indispensable Leader Me: Now, as part of this journey, you are also an author and your book is titled, The Indispensable Leader. So, could you share with our listeners a little bit about that book, I do have some questions I want to ask specifically, but I kind of just want to hear in your own words, like what was your intention when you wrote the book? What is the book about? Who is the book geared towards and kind of what was your sentiment when you were putting it all together?   Darby shared that the book is really geared towards anybody, he wouldn't even say young leaders, he would say anybody who's really either starting out in leadership, leading other people or even if they have been leading people and they just want to have some experience and some knowledge to refine maybe their leadership style.  And it's kind of one of those things, he's kind of kept stories over the years throughout his career, because he's sure you have experienced throughout your career, you encounter interesting things, he'll just put it that way, some challenging things and some difficult things, and then some really exciting things.  So, he had lots of things that he has accumulated throughout his career that he felt like these were good learning experiences for him at the time, and had he had this information when he was starting out being a leader, it would have been highly beneficial.  So, in the midst of COVID, back in 2020, when everything kind of shut down, and we all had more time, because we were staying home and everything, he decided that seems like a good time to start writing a book. So, that's when he started on the book.  And the book really kind of goes down the path of taking this idea, he started off the book by basically saying, you hear people say this question….”Are you a manager? Or Are you a leader?”  And he really attacks that and he say, we're really looking at that wrong, because he thinks that's the wrong question. It assumes that people who would probably consider themselves managers of things, cannot be good leaders and that's not the case. He knew a fair number of people who definitely consider themselves managers, who are really spectacular leaders as well.  So, he kind of asked people to look at it a little bit differently and what he thinks people mean is actually more of are you more manager oriented? Or are you more visionary and entrepreneurial oriented?   And if you think about that as a spectrum, everybody exists somewhere on that spectrum. And you don't want to be at the far end of either end of that because you don't want to be too high visionary, that you just come up with a lot of ideas and nothing gets done. But you don't want to be too far managerial where you only care about checking off your list, and you don't really care why you're doing it.  So, what he basically asked people to do is think about this more like a Venn diagram, where you have two intersecting circles and let's take the best traits of both manager and visionary archetypes, and create the best possible leader that you can be because there's only a certain amount of things that you have access to yourself, there's only a certain amount of things that you can gain yourself.  So, let's find those best things and then let's try to release the bad things so the bad traits of those archetypes so that we don't fall into those ruts as well. And he kind of goes down that journey and he uses a lot of stories from his career to illustrate various points on leadership and talking about mentorship and some of those things as well so that people can gain that knowledge that he didn't necessarily have at the time as he was going through it.    The Effectiveness of the Manager's Role and the Leader's Role Me: So, I like the fact that you spoke about, are you a leader or a manager, but even outside of that you talk about in the book, just visionary leaders and I'm not sure what was the other term that you had outside of visionary? Managers.   So, can you just differentiate, I know you said, we look on it from a different perspective. But if we were to put it in terms of hierarchy, or better yet, in terms of in an organization, if you really want to motivate people, get them to do what you want them to do without having to literally stand up over them with a stick over their head saying, “If you don't do this, this is the sanction that's going to be enforced.” Which role do you think is more effective, the manager's role or the leader's role? Darby shared that he would actually say both are important and it's good to have a mix of both types of individuals within an organization.  Here's the reason why. So, people with managerial characteristics who fall more on that side of the spectrum are people who are very process oriented, they're usually very organized, they're the ones who are able to look at something and say, here's how it's going to get done. They can outline the 50 steps it's going to take to get there. They're about creating a list and checking off the things and getting stuff done. They're the ones that are talking about, what are we going to do? And how are we going to do it?  And sometimes they don't always care about the why they should and that's what he means by making sure that they try to pull in the best traits of both worlds. But those are the folks who are going to get stuff done for you. And they are the folks who can execute on a vision. So, basically, they can take a vision of a founder or a visionary and they can translate that vision into the action steps that it's going to take to accomplish it.  So, on the visionary side, you have to have visionaries as well, because the high visionary people, those are the folks who are generating lots of ideas, they're coming up with five or ten new ideas every day, they're usually very passionate about their ideas.  Oftentimes entrepreneurs are visionaries, because that is the type of individuals who are drawn to starting a business and taking that risk and everything. Because in their minds, when they think of an idea, when they envision something, it's done like we're there, and it is done. They're the ones that are more going to be talking about why are we doing something, like they want to be able to explain and show their passion for why is it that we want to accomplish whatever it is that they've come up with.  The difficulty you can run into with a visionary though is, is that they tend to move on very quickly, because if you get a very high visionary person, they only love generating new ideas, they don't want to talk about how to get there, they just want it done.  So, that visionary needs to have people who are more managerial in nature so that they can actually get stuff done. And in most companies, you almost have to have two top individuals who are one is one and one is the other.  That's why you often see a CEO whose high visionary and you see a COO who is the person who executes and those two individuals have to have a high amount of trust, because they will piss each other off and that's the bottom line.  Because what will happen is, is that COO who's more process oriented, who's the one going, “Okay, there's these 50 problems we have to solve before we can get there” they are going to be like saying slow down and pump the brakes, we got to back up here.  And the high visionary CEO is the one saying, “No, we got to move forward. And I want to do all these things, and everything.”  So, in order for their company to be highly successful, you almost have to have that mix. You see this with celebrity leaders he'll call him. So, people like Steve Jobs, for example, it's well known that he was very high visionary, brilliant guy, came up with amazing things, had very high expectations, very passionate about his industry.  But he learned very early on, he basically lost his company initially, before he came back many years later, he learned very early on that he needed to have people that could execute those ideas, because he just wanted to spend time on generating ideas, he needed an execution team as well.  So, eventually, he figured out he had to have individuals who worked with him that he trusted, that could execute those ideas that could challenge him and slow him down, he would on the opposite side of that push them forward. So, it's this weird balancing act. So, every company needs to have a good mix of both in order to be successful.   The Art of Being Curious as a Leader Me: Now in the book, you also talk about, which I found this part really fascinating that you should be curious, and you should engage curiosity. And curiosity sometimes I think can be misinterpreted, sometimes, for example, people will think that curiosity I find is being inquisitive, it's a similar adjective but inquisitive for some reason connotates, almost you being concerned or asking questions about things that should not concern you. But I do believe that that's how we learn right? About asking questions, exploring, experiencing. Explaine to us a little bit about what you meant when you said, engage or encourage curiosity and being curious as a leader.   Darby shared that it certainly can mean inquisitive and that is something that it can mean. But when he talks about being curious and when he coaches leaders and encourage them to be curious, what he's really trying to do is encourage folks to be lifelong learners, like he wants you to be curious about new things, go read books, go meet new people, go join a group that you wouldn't necessarily join because by gaining those additional experiences, and that additional knowledge, you're only going to grow as a leader. So, he's very big on making sure that folks that he coaches and himself, do not get stagnant.  And what that means is you have to be engaged, you have to be engaged in what you do. You have to be engaged in your industry, you have to be engaged in life. So, sometimes it's professional development, and you're joining an association or you're reading a book or whatever.  Sometimes it might be personal development where you're learning a new language or travelling to a country that you've never been to so that you can gain that experience because all of those things are important. They are going to make you a much, much better well-rounded leader, especially as he speaks to college students every now and then.  And as he speaks to college students, that's one thing that he talked to them about is gain a broad set of experiences because a lot of us really end up, in the United States, a lot of folks who go to college end up going to college nearby home, so, they're exposed to, yes, a new set of people, but it may be very similar to what they're used to. So, he encourages people to get out of your comfort zone and go do some other things because the more experiences you have, the better leader you're going to be.  Certainly, looking back at his career, he's sure as you look at your career, every single thing that he dealt with and went through, all of that past history really made him into the leader that he is today. And everything that he's doing today will make him into the leader that he is in five years, that's the bottom line.  So, you got to have that curiosity, if you don't, you're going to end up stagnant, you're not going to really grow as a leader, you're probably not getting promoted up very much. In most industries, you really do need to be curious so that you can continue to expand as well.   Me: Yes, I totally agree that you should definitely be open to learning and from everything that you do, it definitely adds to who you are today, as you said, what you're doing now is building for where you're going be five years from now.   Conscious Competence Model and the Four Phases Me: In the book, you also mentioned Darby, and I was exposed to this many years ago when I had done a leadership course myself, the whole Conscious Competence Model. And I liked the example that you gave with the baby. So, I'd love for you to kind of just explain that to the audience as well, the four phases and then the example that you gave to reinforce the concept.   Darby shared that this is something that really helps in coaching as well, because it's something that everybody goes through, but they don't really pinpoint that they're actually going through it.  So, the idea here is there's four phases of competence. And you really start off no matter what it is, in some new experience, in some new activity, you start a new job, you learn how to drive, whatever it is, you start off this idea as being unconsciously incompetent, which means you're incompetent at whatever you're doing, and you don't even know you're incompetent at it. And that's a big problem because then you're doing things and you don't even know you're doing them wrong.  So, the idea is, hopefully somebody will point out to you or you'll eventually move into the idea of conscious incompetence. And that's really where you're still incompetent at it, but you recognize that you're incompetent at it. So, you know, you're doing it wrong, it's kind of a situation, you know that you don't know something.  And then after that, the idea is that you move into conscious competence, which means that you're competent at it, but you have to think about it all the time, it's not become a habit, like you have to actually think about whatever the activity is. So, if you think about when you're learning to drive, this is a good thing. Or this is a thing we encounter, you have to constantly think about turning your turn signal on or stopping at the stop sign or stopping at the light or seeing the light turn yellow, or whatever that is, you are at that point consciously competent. So, you can do it, but you got to think about it all the time.  The last phase is really where you want to get to, especially with regard to leading people, you want to get to unconscious competence, where it is that you are competent at something and you don't have to constantly think about it, it just happens. So, this basically is the idea of it becomes habit.  There's actually an author named Charles Duhigg, he wrote a book called The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business, it's a spectacular book, but he talks about habit loops where your brain is set up so that it creates these habit loops out of things that you do regularly. And that's how you end up, if you've ever driven a car, and then you're driving along, and sometimes you're like, I don't remember the last five minutes, and it kind of freaks you out. That happens because of that, because your brain can handle that sort of thing. And basically, has created a habit loop.  It's the same reason when he left his position last year, and he was no longer going to the office on a regular basis, your habit loop changes. So, normally my habit loop for driving to the office was the same every day, he would do the exact same thing, the exact same route, whatever it was, well, on two different occasions, at the end of the year, last year, he was driving in the direction of where his old office was. And he looked up and pretty soon, like he's driving towards the office, he's going the whole wrong direction for where he was headed. But his brain engaged this habit loop that his brain thought, “Oh, you're doing the habit loop, we haven't done in a while to go to the office.” And then he ended up on the entirely wrong road and everything because he was going to the office. But that's the idea of unconscious competence that you want to get to is be able to create those habits so that things just happen for you on a regular basis.    Me: So, just want to remind our listeners, Darby's book is out, available on all platforms that you would want to purchase a book from, I would definitely recommend that you go and consume some of the great content he has in it. I haven't fully finished reading it, but the parts that I have been able to garner were really, really insightful. And he was able to share a bit of it with our listeners in the conversation today. So, definitely a must have read for 2024. Thank you so much for sharing Darby.   App, Website or Tool that Darby Absolutely Can't Live Without in His Business When asked about online resource that he cannot live without in his business, Darby shared that from his perspective, it's LinkedIn just because of the industry that he's in. It is definitely the one online resource he could not live without. There's a lot of things out there, of course, especially with social media, and everything nowadays, it really depends on the industry individuals are in but for him, LinkedIn is it and definitely those who are listening, you can find him on LinkedIn, he will connect with you just search for Darby Vannier, and he's happy to connect with you on LinkedIn as well.   Books that Have Had the Biggest Impact on Darby When asked about books that has had a great impact, Darby shared that there is lot of books that certainly he has utilized over the years. But there is one book that he has bought and given away more copies of this book than any other book.  And it's a book called Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking, it's by a woman, her name is Susan Cain. And it's about kind of leading as an introvert. And the reason that he liked it is that he knows it doesn't always seem like it to individuals when he does these podcasts that he loves to speak to people and stuff like that. But he's a pretty big introvert. And it was the first book that he read that he was like somebody actually gets him.  So, she kind of talks about what it's like to be an introvert and how it's kind of a spectrum. And there are certainly individuals who are introverts who have no desire to speak to people, for example. Whereas, he loves that, if he gets a group of 1500 people to speak in front of great, he's happy. Now, he doesn't want to step down off the stage and talk to you one on one really, afterwards, he'll do it. And you won't necessarily know that he's uncomfortable. But that's not his comfort zone.  So, every introvert's a little bit different and it's more about how your energy is recharged. So, his energy is recharged by quiet time and being alone. He has no problem going on a vacation for a few days and being by himself the entire time and not talking to anybody, that would freak out an extrovert. But the reason he loves the book is and that he's given it to both introverts and extroverts. And the reason it's important for extroverts to read as well is you work with a lot of introverted individuals and this world we live in is catered to extroverts. And it can be incredibly difficult for those of us who are introverts to live in. And we are forced to adjust to you all.  So, he encourages extroverts to read this book as well, because you really learn a lot, especially as you lead and manage people, it will help you better manage individuals, it will also help you understand how to take advantage of utilizing the skills and the experience of introverts that maybe an extrovert doesn't necessarily have. So, from a professional standpoint, he always recommends, he also recommend it for individuals who are married, who have spouses who maybe are the opposite of them, because it will help you to totally understand your spouse a lot more as well.    What Darby is Really Excited About Now! When asked about something that he's excited about, Darby shared that he's still under a year on totally breaking out on his own and building his own company. So, building his business is what he's really passionate about right now. He's working on a new speaking topic regarding the impact that leaders make in the world and even over interactions that they might have considered insignificant. So, it's kind of like the ripple effect, so he's working on this talk and he's excited about that as well to be able to talk to folks about that.  And then just really working to help each one of his fractional leadership clients be as successful as possible. It is so amazing to be able to work with multiple clients and see individual companies continue to grow and scale and to have a part in that as well.   Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Darby Uses When asked about a quote or saying that he tends to revert to, Darby shared that he doesn't really have a quote, but he kind of have more of a philosophy and his philosophy with this. And he uses this again when he coaches other leaders too is, “Everything is temporary. And the one thing you have to remember is, is that everybody around you is going through their own stuff.” So, he always encourages people to be kind when you're dealing with other individuals, because you don't know what's going on in their lives, no matter how well you think you know them, you don't know everything that's going on. So, as he encounters adversity, he tends to kind of revert back to, “Okay, let's control what I can control. And then I need to let the other stuff go.”  He certainly has had multiple times in his career where he's had some very difficult situations that he's dealt with professionally. And that's what he's come back to is okay, can you control this particular thing that's happening? No. But you can control these other two aspects of it and you can make sure that you do those things really well.  And what he has found is if he does that, and he just remember that this is just one more piece of experience in his life and in his career, part of that past history that he said that makes us all who we are, if he can remember that, then it's usually easy to get through those things. Not that it's not a challenge, still can be a challenge, still can be stressful, but it does definitely help you as you move through those challenging times.   Me: All right. So, we will definitely have that summary of what you shared with us in terms of that, quote, or that thought, that helps to get you from one stage to the next if for any reason you feel derailed.    Where Can We Find Darby Online Website – www.beindispensable.com Facebook - Indispensable Leadership Group LinkedIn – Indispensable Leadership Group LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/darbyvannier/    Me: Now Darby, thank you so much for hopping on our podcast today and sharing all these great insights from your book, as well as all of the experience and exposures that you've had over the years that have crafted the person that you are today and the invaluable knowledge and experience and coaching that you've been able to offer to your clients. And so, the information that you shared with us was extremely valuable. The examples that you gave, the characteristics and the comparison as it relates to having a bit of both is critical to the organization success as a manager and a leader was really, really, really insightful and I just want to extend a great amount of gratitude to you for taking time to share with us today.    Please connect with us on Twitter @navigatingcx and also join our Private Facebook Community – Navigating the Customer Experience and listen to our FB Lives weekly with a new guest Links •     The Indispensable Leader: How to Use Your Inner Manager and Visionary to Achieve Leadership Success by Darby Vannier •     The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg •     Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking Susan Cain   The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience Grab the Freebie on Our Website – TOP 10 Online Business Resources for Small Business Owners  Do you want to pivot your online customer experience and build loyalty - get a copy of “The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience.” The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience provides 26 easy to follow steps and techniques that helps your business to achieve success and build brand loyalty. This Guide to Limitless, Happy and Loyal Customers will help you to strengthen your service delivery, enhance your knowledge and appreciation of the customer experience and provide tips and practical strategies that you can start implementing immediately! This book will develop your customer service skills and sharpen your attention to detail when serving others. Master your customer experience and develop those knock your socks off techniques that will lead to lifetime customers. Your customers will only want to work with your business and it will be your brand differentiator. It will lead to recruiters to seek you out by providing practical examples on how to deliver a winning customer service experience.

Len Covello, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at Engage People, leading the long-term technology vision of the company and is responsible for driving continued innovation in the loyalty sector. He is an innovator in the technology space and a thought leader in loyalty.  Len started his first technology company at the age of 18 and most recently was the Director and Chief Technology Officer with Access (formerly LRG Rewards). His passion is web-based application design and development across a wide variety of business applications, particularly in user interfaces and process automation.  He's an active member of Forbes Technology Council, a cornerstone of the Engage People executive team and member of the board of directors.   Questions ·     We always like to give our guests an opportunity to share in their own words, a little bit about their journey, could you tell our listeners how it is that you got to where you are today? ·      Now, could you tell our listeners just a little bit about what Engage People does? ·      What are your views, and you can tell me, since you're a loyalty expert in terms of like cross exchanges. So, let's say for example, you have loyalty points from an airline, but you're able to use those loyalty points from the airline at a hotel, or maybe for an attraction that you'd like to visit. Have you seen those kinds of activities happening, is that something you see happening in the future? ·      If you are to give our listeners maybe one or two trends that you see emerging in 2024 and beyond as it relates to loyalty and rewards and using it as a currency on its own, what would those be? ·      Now could you also share with us what's the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely can't live without in your business? ·      And could you also share with our listeners maybe one or two books that you've read, it could be a book that you read recently, or even one that you read a very long time ago, but it has had a great impact on you. ·      Can you also share with our listeners what's the one thing that's going on in your life right now that you're really excited about? Either something you're working on to develop yourself or your people. ·      Now, if you could choose one word or one attribute or characteristic that you believe a leader needs to have in order to have a team that is intrinsically motivated? ·      Where can listeners find you online? ·      Now, before we wrap our episodes up, we always like to ask our guests, do you have a quote or saying that during times of adversity or challenge, you'll tend to revert to this quote if for any reason you get derailed or you get off track, the quote kind of helps to get you back on track. Highlights Len's Journey  Me: We always like to give our guests an opportunity to share in their own words, a little bit about their journey, could you tell our listeners how it is that you got to where you are today?   Len shared that it's one of those stories, he doesn't think it's a straight line to get here, when he was quite young, as mentioned that 18 he definitely enjoyed working with computers, building applications. But he was always tied to the user experience, he was always tied to that ability to make things run a little more efficiently. So, he started building just web applications, very crude back in the day, so, internet was still pretty young. And started building these solutions for different organizations and eventually met with a company that was in the loyalty space.  And they provided basically legacy loyalty, so, for those of us that remember you used to get a catalogue sent to your house, and it had some items that you could redeem from, and you'd either phone in or potentially fill out a form. And they talked with that organization about all the things they could bring there and that's what really started the precursor to engage was adding first solutions for the redemption and the fulfilment and then understanding more about the space and started as two of them and eventually, they ended up acquiring that company in the loyalty space that became their focus and turned into 150 plus people organization.    About Len's Company - Engage People Me: Now, could you tell our listeners just a little bit about what Engage People does? I know you mentioned that it's focused on loyalty but kind of give us a synopsis of what problem are you really solving for customers?   Len shared that they're a technology company at heart, loyalty just happens to be the discipline they play in. What they really like to do is innovate and impact an industry that they play in, and what they mean by that is in loyalty, it's been a pretty legacy solution based business he'd say where a lot of the advancements that they see in other industries didn't make its way to loyalty. So, what they do at Engage is they provide solutions to help organizations run loyalty programmes, and that can be on the earn side, so when you're a member of a programme and you swipe that credit card or tap that credit card, you earn some points.  They provide the solutions that a lot of financial institutions use to do that. But he thinks the really exciting thing about what they do is on the redemption side, so when a customer looks to use their points, and really a lot of advancements come there, and one of the things they do today is they're one of the leaders in the pay with point space. And what that means for their customer is, instead of ordering from that website, or that catalogue, you can now go on to your favourite ecommerce store or pull up to a BP station, tap that card and use your points as a form of currency, so Engage really services the loyalty industry in those two spaces. But again, the exciting part is the pay with points.   Me: And what companies and industries do you think should consider implementing loyalty points as an alternative payment choice?   Len shared that really anyone that's taking any form of payment today, over the past few years they've seen some alternative forms of payments, whether it's different cryptocurrencies or even the BNPL solutions that exist, a loyalty currency is a funded currency, there's no risk with it, it's got that value, it's funded.   So, any company running a loyalty programme, whether it be a bank, a hotel chain, an airline, they're funding that currency, so if you're looking to accept payments, what you're really doing is exposing your members or your customers to use what effectively is a $200 billion a year currency that gets issued each year, so significant amount of money. So, he doesn't think there's really a specific industry that should accept this, it's all industries that are accepting any form of payment.    Me: And based on your experience in this space Len, could you give our listeners an example of, let's say an industry that the loyalty points works in, and that you found it to be extremely successful and of high value?    Len shared that one of the things that surprised them, so they do this today for companies like Amazon, so the everyday item that you're looking to make that purchase, you can now use your points to check out.  What they were really surprised with and pleasantly surprised is they brought this to the gas space, or the petrol space, depending what area of the world you live in. So, you can go and fill up your vehicle and tap your points and it presents a real time offer to the customer to use their points and they were amazed at the uptake on that because loyalty typically, people think of it as an aspirational type usage of points.  But what they've seen with the pandemic and even the way the economy is looking these days is a lot of people are using this to help subsidise just the increased cost of living or those everyday expenses.  So, it's been a pleasant surprise that through their technology, they allow customers now to offset those everyday expenses that they have. So, he would say those small items, purchasing a coffee that you would every day, and now being able to use your points, that's where they've seen really an incredible impact.   Me: And just listening to you speak, I'm here thinking too with loyalty points, well, at least for the ones that I redeem, for example, at my supermarket, I feel like I patronise this business on a weekly basis, monthly basis consistently and if I'm able to even get two grocery bills paid for fully with loyalty, I almost feel like I'm getting back some investment from doing business with this company over extended and consistent period of time. Is that pretty much how they sell the whole loyalty experience? Because what I found as well is a lot of companies sign you up for loyalty rewards, but then if you don't remember to ask, okay, so can these rewards be redeemed? How does it work? Typically, it just sits there and you don't even know you have points and then you heard they expired.   Len stated that that's really what they're seeing a lot of change in is, especially the programmes you don't interact with every day, like you mentioned, you're visiting that grocery store frequently and that relationship is what loyalty is, it's really a relationship, to use your words, you're going to patronise them by continuously shopping there, and they're going to give you something in return for that.  And that's where the currency really comes into play, it's letting you know that they value you coming back to that location, time and time again, and they want to give you something back, and really treat you a little different than any other customer that would just walk through the door.    Loyalty Programmes – Cross Exchanges Me: What are your views, and you can tell me, since you're a loyalty expert in terms of like cross exchanges. So, let's say for example, you have loyalty points from an airline, but you're able to use those loyalty points from the airline at a hotel, or maybe for an attraction that you'd like to visit. Have you seen those kinds of activities happening, is that something you see happening in the future?   Len shared that it's already starting to pick up and so they're from Toronto, so Canadian organization, there was this thing that really only worked in the country for some reason, which were coalition programmes where a lot of different programmes came together, use a common currency.  And they're seeing a lot more of what you just mentioned, where companies are comfortable with themselves. So, they're saying, “We know you're going to keep interacting and shopping with us, and we're going to issue that currency, but we're going to let you spend it in other places, because you're still seeing the value in where you earn those points.”  So, if he's comfortable with the offer he's providing, and he's confident that he's got a relationship with you, then it really is advantageous to tell you, you know what, you can use those points to book a hotel, even though you earn those points from a grocery store or from an airline. And then when you stay at that hotel, you'll reflect back and say, you know, this trip was covered, either in part or the whole thing was covered, because I shopped with insert any company you want here, whether it was Sephora  or was Hilton, it doesn't matter.   Me: And you would remain loyal to the company that allowed you that affordability to have that vacation, as you mentioned, hotel room paid for because of your purchases with them.  Len agreed absolutely.   In Terms of Loyalty and Rewards – Trends Emerging in 2024 Me: So, in terms of future trends, I know AI I'm sure has some impact on the whole loyalty programmes that are implemented, but as a loyalty expert and seeing that you've been in the space for so long. If you were to give our listeners maybe one or two trends that you see emerging in 2024 and beyond as it relates to loyalty and rewards and using it as a currency on its own, what would those be?   Len shared that he thinks the first one is what Yanique mentioned, it's the ubiquitous nature of those points. So, they're going to be free for you to use and more and more locations and a lot more cross promotions with brands. So, they're going to be very comfortable in their partnerships, they're going to be very forthright with who they want to partner with and you'll be able to fly in on an airline, take a ride share to a restaurant, and that ecosystem will exist to use your points all together. So, he thinks that's the first thing we're really going to see a lot of.   And he thinks some of the things they've talked about in this industry for years, the personalization for a customer that really wants one experience. Although the technology has been there, it's been hard to manage and implement or just kind of onerous, and bringing tools like machine learning and AI into that space will assist with that. So, he doesn't think it'll be anything ground-breaking, like people tend to predict out there, but a lot of utilization of that technology to execute some strategies that have existed for some time.   App, Website or Tool that Len Absolutely Can't Live Without in His Business When asked about online resource that he can't live without in his business, Len shared that he thinks for them, it's Slack. Just that ability to message. So, personally, he uses a tool called Trello a lot and it helps him organize his thoughts, he's a pretty visualized person. But he would say the tool that's probably open the most on the screen on his devices is Slack and it's that ability to message people, especially as they move to a remote work environment, it's really kind of an invaluable tool for them.    Books that Have Had the Biggest Impact on Len When asked about books that have had a great impact, Len shared that they fall into two categories of things that really interests him. So, he likes a lot of documentaries, biographies, things of that nature. And like mentioned early on, he kind of fell into this space, it was something he enjoyed doing and eventually got into a leadership position. So, anything he can read about understanding how to be a better leader, how to run an organization is really big for him.  So, anytime he gets a chance, anything he can read or listen to from Simon Sinek is just helpful for him on how to be that that servant leader, there's a great book that really apply to their organization as they grew from Ben Horowitz, which was The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers. And that taught him some great lessons and exposed the fact that growing a business isn't easy, it's not always a straight line and goes in a perfect direction. So, those are the types of books that really helped him on the leadership side.  And then on the flip side, the artistic side of things is he really admire people that have done some pretty incredible things in whether it's the user experience space, the artistic space, it could be music. So, just recently, he read a book about Jony Ive from Apple, who is the genius behind Apple's greatest products, and he found that to be really inspiring for him.    What Len is Really Excited About Now! When asked about something that he's really excited about, Len stated that that's great question. They've been fortunate to work with some pretty large global organizations.  So, right now there's some things he can't share the details, but things that are transforming kind of the payment ecosystem with some of the largest brands in the world, that's really exciting.  It's that opportunity to be truly impactful and to do something differently. So, on the work side, that's something he looks forward to each day, and they've got a team, product and innovation team that really drives a lot of that change here. So, it's exciting for him to actually interact with their team day to day, they've got a fantastic team and working specifically on this project that he's mentioning, just inspires him.   One Attribute | Characteristic a Leader MUST HAVE to Motivate Their Team  Me: Now, if you could choose one word or one attribute or characteristic that you believe a leader needs to have in order to have a team that is intrinsically motivated? So, they're not inspired by money, you don't have to dangle things in front of them to get them to do the work it but they're intrinsically motivated because as a leader, you inspire them. What would be that one word or that one trait or characteristic?   Len shared that the word for him is Trust. The people they have at Engage really drive the organisation, he always say that on any of these podcasts or interviews to anyone that's listening is they're really driven by their people.  And he thinks the thing that they appreciate the most about the leadership and just others in the organization is that level of trust. So, that's not always the case, organizations have people that come and go that don't necessarily exude those characteristics or those traits. But he would say as a leader, if your team can trust you, they know you have their best interests at heart, and they know you're looking out for them, then they're willing to do the same for you.   Me: Alright, awesome. So, trust, I like it.   Where Can We Find Len Online Website - www.engagepeople.com LinkedIn – Len Covello Twitter/ X – Len Covello   Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Len Uses  When asked about a quote or saying that he tends to revert to, Len shared that he doesn't know that there's a quote, that's a positive quote, they have some funny ones, sometimes probably not appropriate. But he doesn't go to a quote, he tends to go to moments in time that he thought were really beneficial to him.  So, there's always a point in his career and he remembers it vividly to this day where now a mentor to him saw him at a point where he was still at he'll call it immature in his business acumen and sat him down and taught him how to be more measured.  And he thinks that's the best thing you can do that a lot of the leaders that he admires have the ability to not get too up on the highs and not get too low on the lows, and just be measured with things and have that opportunity to take a step back, really evaluate the situation and understand that you'll get through it.   Me: All right, awesome. Well, thank you so much Len for taking time out of your very busy day and hopping on this podcast with us and sharing all of the great insights as it relates to loyalty and having it as a viable currency that you can use in an organization. And also looking at some of the emerging trends that we can look forward to in terms of loyalty rewards and points being something that can be more acceptable across the board regardless of where you are, what part of the region you are in the world that customers can just have greater access to benefits from organizations that they love, organizations that they patronise consistently, organizations that have been a part of their lives for so many years, that they can actually have some value out of it through having it as a viable payment option and getting back something in return. It was a great conversation. Thank you so much.   Please connect with us on Twitter @navigatingcx and also join our Private Facebook Community – Navigating the Customer Experience and listen to our FB Lives weekly with a new guest   Links •     The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers by Ben Horowitz   The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience Grab the Freebie on Our Website – TOP 10 Online Business Resources for Small Business Owners  Do you want to pivot your online customer experience and build loyalty - get a copy of “The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience.” The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience provides 26 easy to follow steps and techniques that helps your business to achieve success and build brand loyalty. This Guide to Limitless, Happy and Loyal Customers will help you to strengthen your service delivery, enhance your knowledge and appreciation of the customer experience and provide tips and practical strategies that you can start implementing immediately! This book will develop your customer service skills and sharpen your attention to detail when serving others. Master your customer experience and develop those knock your socks off techniques that will lead to lifetime customers. Your customers will only want to work with your business and it will be your brand differentiator. It will lead to recruiters to seek you out by providing practical examples on how to deliver a winning customer service experience!

Pete Kusiak is the franchise guru who knows how to bring the fun into business. With a track record of success owning and coaching franchises for over 20 years, Pete's innovative strategies have transformed businesses, boosting revenue and workplace happiness. His passion lies in creating organisations that are not only exciting, but also irresistible. By using his Fun First Strategy, Pete motivates teams, improves company culture, and drive sales and operations to new heights.  When he's not busy making work lively, you can find Pete enjoying quality time with his amazing wife and four kids in Charlotte, North Carolina. Oh, and did I forget to mention he's a seasoned marathon runner and a connoisseur of Rum Punch and Mai Tais! Pete has certification in Happiness Coaching and Human Resources Consulting, making him your go-to-guy for all things fun and business.   Questions ·    Now, we always like to give our guests an opportunity for them to share in their own words, a little bit about your journey. How did you get to connecting fun with business? How did that all come about? ·   So, can you tell our listeners a little bit about your book, Drop the F-Bomb in Your Business and maybe two to three overarching themes that the book focuses on, just like what can they expect from the book? ·    Are there any recommendations you could give to our listeners, like if they wanted to make fun part of their culture, what are some things like from a recruitment perspective you would need to kind of identify in the interview process to kind of pick those persons or at least be able to identify that those persons may have those qualities? ·     Could you share with our listeners what's the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely cannot live without in your business? ·      Can you also share with our listeners maybe one or two books that you've read, it could be a book that you read recently, or even one that you read a very long time ago, but it has had a great impact on you. ·      Now, could you also share with our listeners, what's the one thing that's going on in your life right now that you're really excited about? Either something you're working on to develop yourself or your people. ·       Where can listeners find you online? ·     Now, before we wrap our episodes up, we always like to ask our guests, do you have a quote or a saying that during times of adversity or challenge you will tend to revert to this quote if for any reason you get derailed or you get off track, the quote kind of helps to get you back on track. Highlights Pete's Journey Me: Now, we always like to give our guests Pete an opportunity for them to share in their own words, a little bit about your journey. How did you get to connecting fun with business? How did that all come about? Can you tell us?   Pete shared that his journey really started way back when he graduated college. And he linked up with a franchise, children's fitness franchise called The Little Gym and it is all about creating these great fun experiences with kids and teaching them how to enjoy being physically active. So, that really carried with him as he progressed through his years in corporate America, because he had eventually made a name for himself and got linked up with the corporate headquarters of that franchise, did some training and consulting, to eventually owning his own Little Gyms in the Charlotte market.  So, once they built a successful franchise platform in Charlotte, it was time for him to kind of step back from the day to day operations and got more involved in the coaching consulting realm with different brands, mainly in the service industry, but helped build operations, and trainings and coaching and all sorts of good things over the last few years that ultimately led him to sit back and really reflect about why businesses are successful? Why were his businesses successful? What was the commonalities between the businesses that didn't have success versus the ones that did?  And it came down to one thing, it was really easy, the businesses that had the most fun, were the most successful, and he felt that in my businesses, the days or months or years that they were focused on that grind, they were in that mentality of a grind, they weren't as successful as the years they were just enjoying what they were doing and celebrating with their customers, and just creating a culture that was really good. So, the mindset really made a big difference.  So, what he did was he decided, “Hey, if I could put all of these unique theories and these unique methods into a book, it would really make a great business strategy.” So, a couple years ago, he started writing, and came up with what he called the Fun First Strategy, it's really a way to prioritize making fun, the element in which or the catalyst in which you can have business success. So, kind of a long story there. But it's a wide range from his early beginnings of a teacher and working with kids all the way through working with multiple brands and coaching and consulting, but using those strategies to really propel fun as a catalyst.   Pete's Book – Drop the F-Bomb in Your Business Me: So, then you wrote a book called Drop the F-Bomb in Your Business: With The Fun First Strategy. F of course, standing for fun. So, that book was published on January 23 of 2024, correct?   Pete said yes, he was having fun with a wordplay there. Drop the F bomb and what's so neat is that coming from the children's fitness industry, they didn't use foul language, you're working with kids, you don't do that. So, he thought it would kind of be unique to position it as an eye catcher and you get people curious about what he's talking about. So, having a little fun with words. Me: It was, I will have you know that when your profile was presented to me via email, that's what caught my attention in the email. So, I was like drop the F bomb. I said, I wonder what he's talking about. And then I did some more research. And I was like, Oh, this sounds pretty interesting. I'd love to have him on our podcast as a guest. So, can you tell our listeners a little bit about your book, and maybe two to three overarching themes that the book focuses on, just like what can they expect from the book? Is it more like narratives in terms of examples of using fun in different businesses and you give like case studies and examples, or is it more so you talking more from a strategy perspective of using fun as that trigger that will help to navigate that experience   Pete shared that it's really all of the above, because they have to prove that there's a need for fun in business, because a lot of times when you throw that out there, so you need to have more fun in order to be successful in business, people not necessarily agree, everyone for the most part understands that it's important to celebrate the victories, have fun when you win, achieve goals. But his book is really about how you make fun part of the journey, not just the reward, that's a key element. But you really need to know and flip that mindset to, “If we could have fun along the way. If we could build that into our operations, if we could build that into our business environment, our customer service. If we could attract more like minded individuals that want to have fun, and be part of that process, what would that do for your business?”   So, the book really starts with changing the mindset and can convincing through the philosophy that fun does work, it can create opportunities for more, better problem solving, better creative thought, more work engagement, which is ultimately going to lead to higher profits, better customer service, etc. So, they kind of start there. And then as the book progresses, it takes you through what he calls the playbook.  The playbook, or the PLAY book is really important because that's the actual strategy sets, that's one of his theories is called The Principle of PLAY and that stands for Prioritize, Laughter and Youth, so when you can find a commonality amongst your people, your team, your culture, your business culture, you can start to employ these play principles so that you're having more unique experiences and getting to those points where everything else is a lot easier, because you're having fun along the way. And so then, toward the end of the book, they talk about the strategies in experiences. So, he actually have written some real life examples of how the first strategy actually worked in different businesses. So, those will be fun to read as well. Me: All right, that is awesome. So, PLAY you said stands for Prioritize, Laughter and Youth.   Pete stated that's right. So, if you make fun, obviously, the Fun First Strategy, right, prioritize, make it a priority in your business, to make fun part of your culture. And if you can make it number one, great. But laughter, who doesn't want to laugh when you have to work? So, they do that through gameplay in creating opportunities to be a little silly, and youth, youth comes in because he likes to say, consider the things you did as a child, what did you like to do? What games did you play? What activities did you enjoy? Because it's fun to revisit, it's fun to revisit and think about this as you're a child, you're taught through play, you're taught through music, you're taught through song or games and activities. But as we get older, at least here, the education he received was that they had less and less play, they had less and less singing and things like that.  But why? If we're hardwired to do that, if we're doing that from the beginning, what a neat thing that could potentially shape you as an adult as well if you are hardwired to play and be active and want to take that moment of joy, it's going to change your mindset and everything that you do, right. So, it was important for him that they addressed the grind culture, what he calls the grind culture, and the negativity that happens when you get into a grind culture.  So, this book really helps you to one, recognize if you're in that culture, but two, the real, true strategy on how to get out of that. Ultimately, his goal was to create more workplace happiness, the goal in the Fun First Strategy is to create environments that are very engaging and fun and create workplace happiness.   Me: Amazing, when I opened your bio this morning to prepare for the podcast interview, I had to do a TV interview this morning, I was helping out a friend who has a business that focuses on indoor playground experience [YG1]  . So, it's targeted towards children but because we live in a tropical country and a lot of times when you take the kids outside, you're so exhausted from the heat and sun, she decided that she was going to create this indoor playground experience with like, soft play and sensory activities, and ball pits and live characters like the ones you see in TV shows, so you have them right there dressed up in front of the kids. And we did a game with the hosts where they had two baskets and two sets of balls, one red, one green and each person had a balloon.    And the aim was to get as many of your colour balls into the basket without the balloon falling on the ground. But it was so much fun, they had so much fun. Like I was watching the video after I left the TV studio this morning and I was like, they had so much fun, they were like literally back as kids again. And I always say it. I mean, I believe that as adults, we are really big kids, but I find that we get so serious sometimes we take ourselves too seriously, we don't take time to do fun and exciting things that make us laugh, because I do believe that those are things that help to keep you youthful.  Pete agreed, absolutely. And just think about how that made you feel, right. And that's the principle of play at work, when you can put some silliness into your day, going to be a better problem solver, you're going to be more creative and finding your solutions. Because you're just thinking in that manner, thinking in a playful, creative way. Now, not to say that business is all fun, and not work because he believes that you do have to take business seriously and things that you have to do and reaching goals and measuring your business and all the things that make you financially successful, that's important.  But if there was a way to make it more fun, if there was a way to get to those goals that are less stressful, or are less of a grind, you would probably do it. So, that's what this is all about, it's about making sure that you're allowing yourself the opportunities to have some fun at work, because you're going to open the doors to like-minded individuals, people that want to come work for you, customers that want to do business with you because the experience is wonderful. Think about the amount of hours we spent working days, we don't want to be caught up in a lifestyle that just is beaten up. He wants to have more life experience.  Now the key really to this is the common interest, because what's fun for one person may not be fun for the next and in the book he wrote about that, that there are diverse perspectives on fun. And through the strategy and through the book, you can kind of find common interest in there through icebreaker games and different things that you can do at work to find common interest amongst your team, or even with your customers. And then you kind of start to theme things and make things more enjoyable because he likes to run, Yanique had mentioned in his bio that he's a marathon runner, but that's not fun for everybody. But for him, it's a good opportunity for him to express, move his body, express himself and all the good things that come along with running and staying healthy, to him it was fun. He likes to challenge himself but for the next person it may not be so you have to find those common interests and then build upon those interests as you find them.  And then one really big caveat is you have to remember the rule of grandma, so, the rule of grandma means if you wouldn't do it in front of your grandmother, you shouldn't do it at work because he's heard some interesting stories when it comes to fun at work, we don't want to any HR nightmares. So, if you wouldn't do it in front of grandma, don't do it at all.   Me: As you were talking about loving running, and just being able to express yourself, I'm going to tell you a little secret that unfortunately all of my listeners are going to hear now, but I love to dance, right, now, I'm not a good dancer according to some people who dance really well and see me dance, right? But I believe everybody can dance and everybody can sing. I just believe that maybe they're not doing it to the level or at the capacity or competence that Whitney Houston, or Celine Dion can sing, or Shakira can dance, but I believe I can dance. But I feel so good when I dance, even if it's foolishness I'm doing Pete, it feels good.   Pete stated that that is awesome. And he'll tell you that two things come to mind. One is he spent time in Jamaica when they get the chance to vacation and stuff with his family, they absolutely love the culture, because it is full of life and dancing and movement, joy and singing. And he just loves to be around that type of environment, but he doesn't dance. And what's funny is even in his book he wrote about that as a concept, is that t's okay to enjoy things even if you're not participating.  So, don't always judge a book by its cover when you're creating games or activities or experiences that involve fun at work. If somebody's just kind of standing by watching, don't jump to the assumption that they're not having fun because if you were to kind of outside looking in at him watching a group of people dance, you'll say, “Well, how come he is not dancing, he must not be having any fun” but he's having the time of his life just enjoying you expressing your love for dance, that's a great time, it's a lot of fun for him to be in part of that environment but he's just not going to dance.   How to Select the Right Candidates for a Company with a FUN Culture? Me: I get it. So, I have a question for you. The aim is to ensure that you have a fun culture, right? How do you attract people who like to have fun? Are there any recommendations you could give to our listeners, like if they wanted to make fun part of their culture, what are some things like from a recruitment perspective you would need to kind of identify in the interview process to kind of pick those persons or at least be able to identify that those persons may have those qualities?   Pete shared that it's kind of a lot goes into that because one, once you've established that you're a fun culture, it's one thing to write that on a job ad and he thinks that there's a lot of job ads that he's read recently that promote a fun culture. But again, there's diverse perspectives of fun and if it's a core value in your business, or you're promoting a fun culture, you need to live up to the hype, because he'll tell you, when somebody is bought into your job ad, because you wrote about the fun, talked about that as a core value, and then they show up for an interview or they're ready to start their work and they don't see that culture in play, they're not going to stay or they're not going to show up again for another interview.  So, he thinks that you have to kind have to one, establish the fact that you are going to commit to this type of a culture and you're going to live it, you're going to be an embodiment. And what that fun version is for you, as the leader of the organization, the owner of the organization, the managers of the organization, whatever that model of fun is, it's okay for you to own it, because you're going to have people that may be aligned with your version of fun and there may be some people that don't. So, when you write job ads and you promote the job that you're ready to hire, you want to give very specific reasons of what you're doing to provide that fun culture.  So, if you like to do a lot of outings or if you'd like to do a lot of silly themes during your week, there was one company he worked with, they love everything and any cats. So, they talked about, “Hey, we have a silly, fun culture at our business.” And they would talk about this in interviews because we are qyuirky they love everything cat, if you're a cat person, reach out because you'll fit right in. Now again, if he doesn't like cats, okay, but if he thinks that that's an interesting culture for him to want to be a part of, he can maybe align with that. So, he likes to say, one, establish what fun is for you. Give examples of that in your job ads. But embrace the uniqueness, embrace the uniqueness.   One of the biggest mistakes, especially small business owners make is they don't embrace the charm of small business, there's a uniqueness and a charm in small business that you can do things a little bit outside of work. And when people are interviewing, or people are applying for jobs, what they'll do is they'll apply for a lot of different reasons based on the title or the qualifications, things like that. So, as a hiring manager, he's competing with small business, medium business, large business, corporations and he doesn't want his interview, he doesn't want to his job ads, he doesn't want those things to be exactly like everybody else. And too many times he sees small businesses, especially write their job ads, and shake them like a large corporation and that's okay until the individual comes in to see the environment they're working, oh, well, this isn't the 10 story building they interviewed in last week. Instead, embrace what makes you different, embrace that small charm, because he thinks you're going to attract people that are looking for that type of opportunity, or they know what it is going into. Does that make sense?    Me: Yep, it does, perfect sense.    App, Website or Tool that Pete Absolutely Can't Live Without in His Business When asked about an online resource that he cannot live without in his business, Pete stated that in his business, he loves QuickBooks. So, he can't live without QuickBooks, that's how he does all his bookkeeping, all his invoicing and all his administrative. So, QuickBooks is a great online resource for them.    Books that Have Had the Biggest Impact on Pete When asked about books that have had a great impact, Pete shared that he's been thinking about this a lot, because he's read a lot of business books. And one of the reasons he was so interested in writing a business strategy book was because he's had so many that were multiple steps, or the 50 laws or 100 steps to whatever and they're long and they're cumbersome. So, his book is a little bit more about keeping it short. There is a book though that he read a few years ago it's called David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants, it's by Malcolm Gladwell. And he thought he was picking up a spiritual book at first, spiritual books and different things as a man of faith, but he thought it was picking a spiritual book and it was to a degree, but it was about all these stories and all these examples of how the underdog isn't always necessarily the underdog, but we perceive the smaller, or the weaker, or whatever, as disadvantaged, sort of like David and Goliath.  But why is it that the underdog always excels? It's because sometimes what's perceived as a disadvantage, could actually be an advantage. And it was so compelling to him and the stories were so compelling that it really made him think about how he was raised, and some things because he wasn't raised very wealthy and things like that, and how he had to problem solve his way to get to things, whether it be to sporting events or practices, different things, and if he wanted new shoes, or different whatever, he had to problem solve that as a young child.  And so, as he became a business owner, a business person later on down the road, he started remembered, “Hey, I can figure out pretty much any problem that comes my way because I practice those skills so early on” and growing up, he thought it was a huge disadvantage, he didn't have the things his friends had, they didn't have as much money, but he used those skills every day of his life now. So, that book is a great example of perceived ideas on disadvantages, they actually may be the things that are strengthening. So, it was a really neat perspective.   What Pete is Really Excited About Now! When asked about something he's excited about, Pete shared like he said, the book is out so he's just celebrating his work, he call it his life's work, his big strategy. It's really taking up a lot of his time and he loves it, he loves being able to spread the word about adding fun into work and creating workplace happiness. He thinks it's a movement for sure and he loves being on the kind of the precipice of this new business ideology that if we can add more fun, engaging experiences we can create workplace happiness for everybody. So, he loves being a part of that, so, that's huge for him. So, spreading the word.    Where Can We Find Pete Online Website  - www.funfirststrategy.com   Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Pete Uses  When asked about a quote or saying that he tends to revert to, Pete shared that being a marathon runner, or being somebody that runs, his mantra ever has always been, “Never, never give up.” So, that echoes in his mind a lot as he start a new venture, start a run, especially a long run that he doesn't know if has the energy, just keep moving, keep moving, “And remember to have fun.”    Me: All right, perfect. So, never, never give up. And always remember to have fun. I had fun in this interview.   Pete shared he did as well, he couldn't pass up the chance to chat with somebody from Jamaica. So, love it.    Me: Warm my heart, warm my heart. Thank you so much, Pete, we really appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedule. I know you're busy promoting the book and spreading the message. So, taking a good 30 minutes out of your day to sit with us and share all these great insights and nuggets about what you're doing and just how it can help to improve and increase on workplace happiness and just human happiness, to make people just enjoy life more and not take themselves so seriously. But all while getting the job done and achieving the goals that we're all working towards, it was really a fun and productive conversation. Thank you so much.   Please connect with us on Twitter @navigatingcx and also join our Private Facebook Community – Navigating the Customer Experience and listen to our FB Lives weekly with a new guest Links •     Drop the F-Bomb in Your Business: With The Fun First Strategy by Pete Kusiak •     David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants by Malcolm Gladwell   The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience Grab the Freebie on Our Website – TOP 10 Online Business Resources for Small Business Owners  Do you want to pivot your online customer experience and build loyalty - get a copy of “The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience.” The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience provides 26 easy to follow steps and techniques that helps your business to achieve success and build brand loyalty. This Guide to Limitless, Happy and Loyal Customers will help you to strengthen your service delivery, enhance your knowledge and appreciation of the customer experience and provide tips and practical strategies that you can start implementing immediately! This book will develop your customer service skills and sharpen your attention to detail when serving others. Master your customer experience and develop those knock your socks off techniques that will lead to lifetime customers. Your customers will only want to work with your business and it will be your brand differentiator. It will lead to recruiters to seek you out by providing practical examples on how to deliver a winning customer service experience!  

Ali Cudby, CEO of Alignmint Growth Strategies, which is a dynamic force in business transformation through intentional customer experiences. With a mission to drive growth by architecting superior customer interactions, Ali's expertise aligns strategy and implementation. She is the author of the bestselling book, Keep Your Customers, she offers fresh insights from real-world stories, best practices and CEO-led case studies.  Her MINT Method, outlined in the book, fuels transformational customer loyalty. With 20+ years in corporate planning and strategic marketing, Ali founded Alignmint in 2014, focusing on small to mid-size companies. As a Purdue University entrepreneurship instructor, she shapes the next generation of business leaders. Ali's podcast appearances showcase her wealth of knowledge in customer experience, growth strategies and intentional business success.   Questions ·      If you could share a little bit with our listeners, how you got from where you were, to where you are today? ·      You are the author of the bestselling book, Keep Your Customers. So, could you share with our listeners a little bit about that book? And maybe just two to three overarching themes that the book focuses on. ·      The MINT Methodology. ·     Now, Ali, could you also share with us what's the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely can't live without in your business? ·      Could you also share with our listeners maybe one or two books that have had a great impact on you, it could be a book that you read a very long time ago, or even one that you've read recently, but it had a great impact on you. ·      Now, Ali, could you also share with our listeners what's the one thing that's going on in your life right now that you're really excited about? Either something you're working on to develop yourself or your people. ·      Where can listeners find you online? ·      Before we wrap our episodes up, Ali, we always like to ask our guests, do you have a quote or a saying that during times of adversity or challenge, you'll tend to revert to this quote if for any reason you got derailed or you got off track, the quote kind of helps to get you back on track.   Highlights Ali's Journey Me: So, we always like to give our guests an opportunity to share in their own words a little bit about their journey, even though your bio gives us a formal breakdown of what you've done in the past and who you are, you're an author and the different strategies that you've employed to get to where you are, just in your own words, if you could share a little bit with our listeners, how you got from where you were, to where you are today?    Ali shared that she got into this world of customer loyalty and retention in her first job out of business school. And she was working for The New York Times company in their corporate strategy group, which was kind of like an internal consulting group, and was put on a project in the call centre, which honestly wasn't really considered to be an awesome assignment, it was sort of the call centre was in a warehouse in New Jersey, and not in the very lovely corporate headquarters in Times Square.   And people were coming up to her and saying, “Oh, I'm so sorry that you've got this gig.” And ultimately, it transformed her thinking about the customer experience and created this path for her entire career. Because it showed her this insight, which is that the things that companies do inside their organization are the things that impact the customer experience.  So, you have to be really thoughtful about how do you deliver clear and consistent processes for the customer and make sure that you embed that with your team so that your customers can have this great experience. So, that time at the New York Times company was a really long time ago, and she's had the opportunity now to see this in action in corporate America and in her own path as an entrepreneur and in a very wide range of companies. And so, that's kind of how she started out in this very corporate role.   Keep Your Customers Me: Now, in your bio we also read that you are the author of the bestselling book, Keep Your Customers. So, could you share with our listeners a little bit about that book? And maybe just two to three overarching themes that the book focuses on.   Ali shared that the book was published, and it came out on April 15, 2020, which as you recall was a little bit of a crazy time. And so, she spent two years putting the book together and making sure that it had everything just perfect and all these speaking engagements lined up and all that stuff. And then the month before the book was published, the world changed.  And it was really interesting, because the book really focuses on exactly what she was just talking about, what are the things that you can do in your company, to set your customers up for success.  And she talked about one of the key themes being the balance of heart and smart. And what she means by that is, in order to make customers want to stay with you longer and spend more, and tell all of their friends and colleagues, you have to make people feel seen, heard and valued.  And we tend to think about that emotional connection to our customers as being a little bit fluffy sometimes and that's a real mistake. The fact of the matter is that humans have a real need to feel like they matter and when you build relationships and when you build trust with your customers, it sets you up for a better business relationship. And that's the heart of the customer experience.  And then the smart of the customer experience is that you still have to have data and metrics and process in order to ensure consistency. If you don't capture information and learn from it and have a great single source of truth about your customer information so that everybody inside your company knows what's going on with your customers. If you don't have clear and consistent processes that everybody follows, then it's going to be really hard to set up processes for growth.  So, you can have just like heart-centred employees who really want to do the right thing all the time, but if everybody's doing their own right thing, then you have a mess and what you need is this consistency. So, it's that balance of heart and smart that really drives success in the customer experience.   The MINT Methodology Me: All right, so the heart and smart. Now, you also speak about your MINT Methodology and I'm going to take a quick guess here that MINT is actually an acronym, right?   Ali stated that it is sort of an acronym. It is a four step process. She really tried hard to make it a cool acronym, and it never quite gelled. But she can talk through the four steps of the process. And the name of her company is actually as you said, it's Alignmint Growth Strategies. And the mint part of it is really intentional, not just because of the method, but because of what mint represents.  So, when you plant mint, it grows like crazy and when things are awesome, they're in mint condition. And when you make a lot of money, you make a mint. And so, the combination of aligning and mint is exactly what they're looking for in terms of their customers outcomes.  And so, the MINT method is this four step process where first you are articulating what she calls a bullseye, which is a mission statement effectively for the customer experience. So, companies oftentimes create mission and vision and values for their company, but it's really all about their company. And what people need to do and what companies need to do is also articulate who it is that we want to be on behalf of our customers. Because if you have a goal of being fast and easy, that is going to set you up for a very different customer experience than if you have a goal of being white glove and luxurious.  And so, in the same way that you want to articulate who you are for your company, you need to articulate who you are for your customers. And so, that's the first step of the process, that's the creating of the mantra of the bullseye.  Second is understanding who those customers are, really being clear about who it is that you're serving. ·      Why are they loyal to you? ·      What is it that those best customers want?   So that you are thinking about how you drive more of them. And then she goes into a lot of detail in the book about how do you identify and articulate not just who buys the most from you, but who's the most loyal to you, you can have a really big customer that isn't loyal at all, but they drive a lot of revenue.  And you can have a small customer that would live and die for you and they tell everybody that they know about how awesome you are, you want those people. And then once you know who it is that you're serving and who you want to get more of, then what do you want their journey to look like?  So, being very clear about what that customer journey looks like, what are the key inflection points throughout that journey.  And then finally, the fourth step is identifying clear plays so that everybody inside your company knows exactly what to do whenever a customer gets to that inflection point on the customer journey. So, whether that's the onboarding, kick-off, the business review meeting, or the renewal period, or anything in between, every company has its own unique set of inflection points, some of them follow some level of consistency, onboarding and renewal or repurchase are fairly consistent. But everybody does it a little bit differently, everyone needs to be clear about how they want their company to engage with customers at each of those points along the journey map.  And again, that's how you make sure that you're delivering something that is not just a well-intentioned approach, but a really thoughtful and strategic approach to retention and growth.   App, Website or Tool that Ali Absolutely Can't Live Without in Her Business When asked about online resource that she can't live without in her business, Ali stated that it's probably Zoom. She stated that that's not a very creative answer but she's on Zoom all the time, every day, she works remotely for the most part. And so, that's her rock.    Books that Have Had the Biggest Impact on Ali When asked about books that have had a great impact on her, Ali shared that there's a book called The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work by Shawn Achor, and he is a professor of positive psychology at Harvard. And the whole science of positive psychology is fascinating, the way that we create new neural pathways, the way that we can define in our brains how to be more positive, and how to cultivate happiness. And so, his book is just fascinating and he also has a TED Talk, if you don't feel like reading the whole book, he has a TED Talk that is fantastic, it's funny, he's a great speaker, and he gives you some very clear actionable steps at the end of the TED Talk that are very helpful in helping people stay focused on the positivity and moving forward. And she just thinks that his whole approach and that TED Talk, that's one of her favourites.   What Ali is Really Excited About Now! When asked about something that she's really excited about, Ali shared that she just got a puppy. She stated that she knows that that's not necessarily a business thing. But she will tell you that watching her puppy play and explore and be curious about this new world that she has come into is fascinating.   And it is a great reminder that there's so much that is new and interesting in the world and it's easy sometimes to get into a very fixed mindset about what we do, and the things that we engage with from day to day and moment to moment. You get up and you make your coffee and you sort of go through your rigmarole and sometimes it feels a little bit like, “All right, I'm going to check my boxes, I'm going to do my thing and it's one foot in front of the other” and when you get a puppy who just has this completely new way of engaging with the same old things that you're reacting to every day, whether it's some snow on the ground or a sock on the floor, it reminds you to be open to different ways of seeing the world and she finds that to be helpful in business.   So, she's been trying to be intentional about using this lesson that her little ball of fluff is teaching her and just be open to the fact or to the notion that maybe she can approach things differently, maybe she can rethink things and come at them with more of a sense of wonder and play and excitement.    Me: That's amazing. You'd be surprised to know the many different life lessons we can learn from animals. So, I think it's awesome that your puppy is teaching you so many different new ways and perspectives of looking at things from a different view.   Where Can We Find Ali Online Website – www.alignmintforgrowth.com LinkedIn - Ali Cudby   Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Ali Uses  When asked about a quote or saying that she tends to revert to, Ali shared that there's a quote by Maya Angelou that she thinks about a lot for her personal life, but it's also a real guideposts in her business. And the quote is, “People will forget what you did, people will forget what you said, but people never forget how you made them feel.” And it's so true, the words that we use don't matter. But when you make someone feel seen, heard and valued, whether it is in your personal life, or whether it is in your business, it is transformative.   Me: All right, thank you so much for sharing. Well, I just want to extend our deepest gratitude to you, Ali, for taking time out of your very busy schedule and hopping on this podcast today, sharing insights about your book, Keep Your Customers as well as your MINT Methodology and just a little bit about your overall strategy and execution as it relates to delivering that magical and unforgettable customer experience. We really appreciate all the great insights that you shared with us today. So, thank you so much.   Please connect with us on Twitter @navigatingcx and also join our Private Facebook Community – Navigating the Customer Experience and listen to our FB Lives weekly with a new guest Links •     The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work by Shawn Achor •     Keep Your Customers: How to Stop Customer Turnover, Improve Retention and Get Lucrative, Long-Term Loyalty by Ali Cudby   The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience Grab the Freebie on Our Website – TOP 10 Online Business Resources for Small Business Owners  Do you want to pivot your online customer experience and build loyalty - get a copy of “The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience.” The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience provides 26 easy to follow steps and techniques that helps your business to achieve success and build brand loyalty. This Guide to Limitless, Happy and Loyal Customers will help you to strengthen your service delivery, enhance your knowledge and appreciation of the customer experience and provide tips and practical strategies that you can start implementing immediately! This book will develop your customer service skills and sharpen your attention to detail when serving others. Master your customer experience and develop those knock your socks off techniques that will lead to lifetime customers. Your customers will only want to work with your business and it will be your brand differentiator. It will lead to recruiters to seek you out by providing practical examples on how to deliver a winning customer service experience!

Jason S. Bradshaw, at 14 years of age started his first business by 21. He had started and successfully exited 3 separate businesses. In every instance, he disrupted the marketplace and won by delivering great customer experiences. He has worked for some of the world's most recognizable brands like Target and Volkswagen, helping them transform the experience they deliver and grow profits.   Today he works with businesses of all sizes to super charge their growth, all still with a focus on the experience they deliver.    Questions • You were on our show, I think it was back in 2021. Talk to me about what's happened since then, how have things been for you? • Could you tell us about the book that you had before It's All about CEX!: The Essential Guide to Customer and Employee Experience, some of the key tenants or themes that came out across that book? • As it relates to how to start improving the experience for your customers and your employees without needing to invest in additional money, what's one thing that we can start with? • As it relates to the employee experience versus the external customer experience, which one would you give more attention to? • You spoke a little bit earlier about two books you're currently working on but they haven't been published as yet. Could you share with us what those books are going to be about? • Are there any trends as it relates to customer experience that you're seeing currently that you believe will continue to be big things for 2024? And two things that you believe organisations should be looking to focus on for their organisation as it relates to strengthening their customer experience or growing your customer experience? What would those be? • What's the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely cannot live without in your business? • Can you also share with our listeners, what's the one thing that's going on in your life right now that you're really excited about? Either something you're working on to develop yourself or your people. • Where can listeners find you online? • Now, before we wrap our episodes up, we always like to ask our guests, do you have a quote or a saying that during times of adversity or challenge, you'll tend to revert to this quote, it kind of helps to get you back on track if for any reason you got derailed or you got off track, the quote kind of gets you back there. Do you have one of those? Highlights  What's Happening with Jason Now! Me: Now, I know that you were on our show, I think it was back in 2021. Talk to me about what's happened since then, how have things been for you?   Jason shared that things have been busy. He's finalizing the manuscript on not one but two new books which will come out early in the new year. He's also been working with some really unique organizations, in various ways as interim Chief Growth Officer as a pure consultant. And of course, continuing to do keynote presentations and his work supporting leaders and boards across the globe, transform the experiences they deliver. It's been a really unique time watching organizations of all shapes and sizes, navigate this post pandemic world, and what they've considered a priority and what they haven't.   About the Book – All about CEX!: The Essential Guide to Customer and Employee Experience – Key Tenets from the Book Me: So, for those of our listeners that would not have tapped into your previous episode with us. Could you tell us about the book that you had before It's All about CEX!: The Essential Guide to Customer and Employee Experience, which is one of the top reasons we had brought it on. That book was so amazing, could you tell us about some of the key tenets or themes that came out across that book?   Jason shared that It's All about CEX!: The Essential Guide to Customer and Employee Experience, that was his first walk. And it was a bit of a passion project to start with, because he'd always wanted to write a book. And he finally put the theory into action and wrote a book that was designed to help any individual in an organization understand a couple of key things.  Firstly, the key link between customer and employee experience, you can do some tactical things to improve the customer experience for a short period of time, but if you really want to maintain and differentiate the experience that you deliver to your competitors, then you also need to focus on the employee experience. So, they tackle that in the book.  They also tackle in the book how customer experience is not a soft measure, it's quite often seen as hugging your customers, or something that's rather soft. But actually, in the book, you'll discover that there's some really strong commercial ties and commercial impacts to the work of a true customer experience professional.  And then the third area that they explore in the book is how to actually go about getting started. It always frustrates him, throughout his career where he's worked in 7 different industries, banking, finance, government, automotive, retail, etc.  It's always frustrated him when he's turned up to an organisation and the first thing that he hears is, “We haven't been able to do anything because we don't have the money to start.”  And he's like you can start today, you do not need to throw millions of dollars at a problem to start improving it. And in the book, he gives a really practical step by step guide on how to start improving the experience for your customers and your employees without needing to invest in additional cent or build out a new system. Of course, he talked about some of that stuff as well in the book, but the key message is just get started and here's the way on how to do it.   Improving the Customer and Employee Experience Me: So, I like the train of thought as it relates to so you don't need millions of dollars to start, but let's say you have a CEO in front of you that says, but Jason, it takes money, it costs money to make money and to train the staff, to get them to be customer oriented, to bring in a consultant, we don't have the resources, we don't have an HR department, we don't have a resource person internally that we can use. What's one thing that we can start with then since you're suggesting we can do this without millions of dollars invested?   Jason shared that the first thing is to define what great looks like and measure yourself against that. So, if a CEO came out today and said, “I think the company is successful if all of our phones are pink and I'm going to measure how many of our phones in the company are pink.” Well, all of a sudden without training anybody, without spending a cent on banners or education programmes, or retreats to get people inspired, the sheer fact that you've stated that it's a key goal, this sheer fact that you're measuring, it means that someone in procurement is going to start buying pink phones. And it's the same with customer experience and employee experience, define what great looks like and define how you're going to measure it, and start doing that even in the most rudimentary ways. But the moment you start talking about it, the moment you start putting focus on it, people will start to move towards it.  Now the problem is, most organizations say we want to be known for delivering great customer service or delivering great customer experiences and they stop there.   And then 6 months down the track they say, “Well, we said we wanted to be famous for this. But nothing's improved.”  Well, you've missed the key point. The key point is you've got to define what great looks like. So, what do you mean when you say, we want to be great at customer experience, what defines or represents great in our terms, and then you have to say, and I'm going to measure it this way and this will be the marker of success. When you combine that clarity, you don't need to instantly spend money on new systems or new profiles or training because people will start gravitating towards it. But if you don't have the clarity, people will just fumble around and they won't deliver any improvements. In fact, in many instances, without clarity, you'll go backwards.   Employee Experience Versus External Customer Experience Me: Now, you talk a lot about great customer experiences, and defining what that looks like what great looks like, what are your views, since this is an area that you were practising, and you have a lot of experience in it as it relates to the employee experience versus the external customer experience? Do you believe there's a direct correlation between the two? And if you were to let's say for example, focus on one more than the other, which one would you give more attention to?   Jason shared that that's the million dollar question always. If you have to choose one, the area to start out on is the employee experience. And he says that because try to get a happy employee to deliver a bad experience, it's less likely. Try to get a disgruntled employee to deliver a great experience, almost impossible because they're so caught up in their own drama and their own challenges that they're faced every day.  An organization that gets a specialist to come in, they wrote a 300 step process to deliver a great customer experience. But they don't train their team members, and they don't align their systems to the processes. The team member can't deliver that great customer experience that the process was designed to deliver, because everything is getting in the way. But if you say to an employee, I'm going to invest in you, I'm going to make this a great place to work, and you are going to want to see the company succeed, then they will find a way to deliver a better experience for customers.  Because intrinsically, they're being motivated by the great experience that they have. So, if you have to choose, absolutely go with employee experience first. The caveat he'll put on that though, is yes, you can start with employee experience, but you still have to define what great looks like for the customer.   Books Jason is Currently Working On Me: Now, you spoke a little bit earlier about two books, I think you mentioned that you're currently working on but they haven't been published as yet. Could you share with us what those books are going to be about?    Jason shared that one book is a really practical application book. And what he means by that is you can turn to almost any page in the book, and read just that page, and go and do work that will improve the experience of your customers, of your products, of your employees. It's designed in a way to encourage action, and take away some of the fear of not knowing what to do. So, think of it as a bit of an Experience Management Handbook.  The other book is very similar to his first one in the sense that it's more traditionally, a more traditional business book. And it explores this concept of moving beyond the singular transaction with a customer or with an employee and focuses on what's next. What does a customer really need to see to be fiercely loyal, for example, to your organisation, and again, it will provide some practical guides to how you go about implementing some of the concepts he talked about in the book.  And importantly, it's written in a way that it doesn't matter if you're the team leader of an organization or the CEO, you can see yourself having success and delivering success and growing your business through it.    Me: All right, and when are those books expected to hit the newsstands?    Jason stated that the year's getting away on us. So, both books will come out early next year, towards the back end of January.   Focus for 2024 Me: Now, we're embarking on a new year, as you just mentioned before, we're less than less than 60 days. Are there any trends as it relates to customer experience that you're seeing currently that you believe will continue to be big things for 2024? And if you are to, let's say two things that you believe organizations should be looking to focus on for their organization as it relates to strengthening their customer experience or growing your customer experience? What would those be?   Jason shared that he's going to give three if that's okay. The first one is specifically aimed at the CX professionals in organizations, you have to tie your work to the return on investment, you have to deliver a return on the investment. He's seeing companies all around the world, disinvest in customer experience programmes because the CX leaders in those organizations have been unsuccessful in creating a really robust link between their work and the commercial results of that work. And it's not surprising that CFOs then start to question it, but this work has a commercial element to it, and don't forget it.  Number two, how can you be the most convenient for your customers?  How can you meet your customers where they are, so that you are integrated into the way that they live versus being a transaction? How can you go from being a commodity to be a convenient resource that is part of their life? So, what he means by this is, beyond the sales channels that your customers wanted to be on, offer your customers the communication channels that they want to be on.  If you have customers that are 80 years old, and you have customers that are 20 years old, then yes, you need to have a landline phone number and you also probably need to be able to service them on Tik Tok, to think that you can only do one or the other means that you're going to have disgruntled customers at some spectrum. And of course, he's using some broad strokes here with those ages. But you understand his point.   And the third area is think beyond the purchase, beyond the transaction. If you think of Coca Cola, many people could argue that Coca Cola is a pure transaction product, you go in, you pick up the can of soda at the shop, you pay for it, you walk out, you drink it, and the transaction is over, the experience is done, and you move on.  You have fiercely loyal customers that will only drink Coke, they won't drink Pepsi or any other Cola products, and vice versa for those brands as well. And that's because they create an environment that associates with the consumers lifestyle choices, they have so much money that they spend on marketing to make you believe that drinking Coke is a lifestyle choice, that talks about you.  Now, he mentioned Coke as an example, because quite often the point that he's about to share with people, they say, “Oh, well, we just have a product like Coke and they just buy it and consume it and, there's nothing post the purchase that we can do.” His argument is that post the purchase transaction, you need to find a way to continue to be in the customers conversation, you need to continue to deliver value.  Now, in the sake of a soda, it's about being seen as a lifestyle choice, a successful lifestyle choice potential. But if you're selling someone a fridge or a washing machine or a course or a camping tent, whatever you're selling, how can you help that customer actually leverage the benefits of that product?  Get the most out of that product, so that in six months' time when they are at their barbecue talking about stuff with their friends, they can say, “You know, I bought this mobile phone or I bought this item or I did this course. And they genuinely wanted me to enjoy it, they genuinely wanted me to be able to use every feature to get the most out of it, to get the most value out of it.” And so, to sum up point three, deliver value to your customer, even after the purchase has concluded.   App, Website or Tool that Jason Absolutely Can't Live Without in His Business When asked about online resources that he cannot live without in his business, Jason stated that that would be his survey tool. Now, for him, it doesn't matter what tool you use, there's lots out there. There's no secret of the fact that he's a big advocate of Qualtrics Technology. But Qualtrics is an enterprise grade product is delighted for small businesses. There's a whole range of products out there. But the reason he says his survey tool, is because if you don't invite your customers and your employees and the marketplace in general to provide you with feedback, if you don't make it easy for them to give you unsolicited feedback, well, then, are you really listening? Are you really trying to get a pulse of what's working and what's not working in your business?  And so, for him, it's from a pure tactical perspective. For him, it's that tool and he'd encourage everyone to have that tool that lets them get structured and unstructured feedback from customers, employees and the marketplace at general. And so, he always go to that survey tool. But outside of that, at a personal level, it's not really a tool but he's a big believer in continued personal learning. And so, he read 30 odd books a year, so, you could imagine that audible sits on his mobile phone and always has a book ready for him to listen to when he's in the car or sitting on the plane.   What Jason is Really Excited About Now! When asked about something that's he's really excited about, Jason shared that these two new books that are coming out, they are absolutely one of the passions that he's working on at the moment. And he's not just saying that because he wants people to buy it, of course, he does want people to buy it. But they've taken on a life of their own. One book is actually technically two years overdue, but that's okay. And the reason he says it's okay is because he listened to what was happening in the marketplace and to what his customers were experiencing, and said, “No, the book I was writing is not the book people need.”  And so, he hopes and trust that when people get the actual version that the final manuscript that he's written, that they will see that customer experience isn't an option, focusing on it isn't an option, it is essential to driving your business forward and the book has the tools to help them deliver it. It really is something that's just taken on a life of its own and as he said, it's definitely two years overdue, his publisher, they'd like to have published it quite a while ago.  But it is so important to him that he gets this book right because he wants to really leave a dent in the world and improve the lives of customers, employees, through his work.  And then at a more personal level, he's working on a couple of new projects that he'll be launching in early December, which are online programmes designed to help businesses, specifically small to midsize businesses break through and have business success.    Where Can We Find Jason Online Website – www.jasonsbradshaw.com  Twitter – Jason S. Bradshaw Linkedin – Jason S Bradshaw Facebook – Jason S. Bradshaw   Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Jason Uses When asked about a quote that he tends to revert, Jason stated that he absolutely does. And the quote is, “No matter what, you've got this.” And it's so simple, but it was something a colleague said to him once and it's just is a reminder that whatever the challenge is, it doesn't matter, because you've had challenges before and you've got over them, you've succeeded and you can do it again. So, no matter what, you've got this.  Me: Thank you so much for sharing Jason.  So, Jason just wanted to extend our deepest appreciation and gratitude for you coming back on our podcast as a returning guest, that's an awesome milestone, so grateful that you made the time to come back again, especially seeing that you're literally on the other side of the world. But all of the great insights that you shared with us today, reminding us about the things that were in your previous book, CEX, so those of our listeners that would like to tap into that we'll definitely have the link in the show notes of this episode for our awesome resource. And of course, to keep in touch with you for your new books that are coming out to the latter part of January 2024. So, we are extremely grateful that you decided to come and join us again for a quick conversation on mastering customer experience. It was great, thank you, Jason.   Please connect with us on Twitter @navigatingcx and also join our Private Facebook Community – Navigating the Customer Experience and listen to our FB Lives weekly with a new guest   Links •     It's All about CEX!: The Essential Guide to Customer and Employee Experience by Jason S. Bradshaw •     Episode 145: Understanding The Power of Delivering An Amazing Employee and Customer Experience – Released – October 05, 2021   The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience   Grab the Freebie on Our Website – TOP 10 Online Business Resources for Small Business Owners  Do you want to pivot your online customer experience and build loyalty - get a copy of “The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience.” The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience provides 26 easy to follow steps and techniques that helps your business to achieve success and build brand loyalty. This Guide to Limitless, Happy and Loyal Customers will help you to strengthen your service delivery, enhance your knowledge and appreciation of the customer experience and provide tips and practical strategies that you can start implementing immediately! This book will develop your customer service skills and sharpen your attention to detail when serving others. Master your customer experience and develop those knock your socks off techniques that will lead to lifetime customers. Your customers will only want to work with your business and it will be your brand differentiator. It will lead to recruiters to seek you out by providing practical examples on how to deliver a winning customer service experience!

CJ Stratte is a highly accomplished female entrepreneur, currently serving as a CEO and President of On The Move Trucks, a successful turn-key truck rental company catering to self-storage and real estate professionals. With substantial experience in the industry, CJ has been instrumental in driving the company's growth and expansion over the years.  As a sought-after speaker at various self-storage events, CJ has shared her extensive knowledge and expertise on topics such as business strategy, marketing and customer service, offering valuable insights to industry professionals.   CJ is a true marketing enthusiast and firmly believes in the power of effective marketing to drive business success. Throughout her career, she has demonstrated a deep commitment to excellence, innovation and providing exceptional value to clients, helping On The Move Trucks establish a strong reputation as a leader in the truck rental industry.   Questions •  So, we always like to give our guests an opportunity to share a little bit about their journey. So, in your own words, how did you get from where you were then to where you are today? •  Could you share with our audience, maybe two or three, I would say lessons that you've learned along the way that you found has been influential in helping the business to become more customer centric. •  What are some ways in which the marketing aspect because I know you mentioned in your bio that you focus a lot on marketing, how have you been able to kind of marry what you're doing with marketing to kind of infuse that into the experience that the customer has. •  Could you share with our listeners, maybe two things that are of great importance to you when do business with an organisation. •  Now, could you also share with our listeners what's the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely can't live without in your business? •  Could you also share with our listeners, maybe one or two books that have had a great impact on you. It could be a book that you read a very long time ago, or even one that you've read recently, but it has had a great impact on you. •  We do have a lot of listeners that tap into this podcast who are business owners and managers, who they have great products and services, but sometimes they like to constantly motivated human capital, if one of those persons were sitting across the room from you right now and they asked you, what's the one piece of advice that you could give them to kind of turn that human capital motivation around, what would that be? •  Can you also share with our listeners, what's the one thing that's going on in your life right now that you're really excited about, either something you're working on to develop yourself or your people? •  Where can listeners find you online? •  Now, before we wrap our episodes up, we always like to ask our guests, do you have a quote or saying that during times of adversity or challenge, you will tend to revert to this quote? It kind of helps to get you back on track if for any reason you got derailed. Do you have one of those?   Highlights CJ's Journey CJ shared that it's been an interesting journey, she originally went to college, she wanted to own a hotel. And so, she went to school to do that and she took a marketing class and changed her whole trajectory of her career and plans that she thought she had, how you do when you are 18 going to school, you think you know it all, but she really grasp into marketing and have enjoyed the career that she's had with it.  She's luckily worked for a family business and so, they had a marketing director when she began working there, but she quit, and her family never replaced her. So, she just kind of stepped in and did the work and taught herself how to do all the marketing for their company and have experimented in all. They didn't have Facebook marketing classes back when she was in school or social media for marketing purposes. So, it's been an interesting change over the years with the technology and all the creepy things we can do in marketing now.   Lessons Learned Helping Her Business Be Customer Centric Me: Could you share with our audience, maybe two or three, I would say lessons that you've learned along the way that you found has been influential in helping the business to become more customer centric.   CJ shared that she is very focused on the customers, we're here to make them great, her product is to make their product better, which is very fun, gives her a lot of passion about what she does. But her biggest thing is that she's trying to make it easier for their customers to do everything, they have a pretty basic product like truck rental, it's not very sexy, there's many things you can do to change it but the technology has changed where they can make it easier for her storage facility owners to make it easier for their customers to book it. Even with you just using simple technology that we have like Calendly and like using that as a tool to book trucks and make it easier for their customers to not have to be so involved with looking at calendars and going back and forth with dates. So, that's been very cool with their customers are a lot happier with the time that it takes to book a rental makes them look more professional.  And so, they provide the whole software for them to be able to do that and she's changed it a couple of times over the last couple years or actually over the last 20 years. So, their software now is it was very old school when she first got a hold of it then, it was like you had to drop down every number for like the time, so you'd have to go scroll down to a one and then go zero and am and all that, it was very time consuming.   So, they are about to launch their newest software that she's been working on for the last year, where they basically just send a link to their customer to rent their truck, and they don't have to worry about it. So, really excited about that. They also do a quarterly magazine for their customers, which they feature different tips and tricks that they've heard from other customers, they have their customers write articles for them for the magazine. So, she really liked the ability to share the success stories, and how the best way to use their truck.  She loves it when they use it for charity. So, they'll donate their truck usage of running their trucks out to maybe the women's shelter or other organizations within the community. So, she loves hearing those stories.   And another way they have really worked with their customers is she actually personally will get on a Zoom, they are a nationwide company, so Zoom has been a whole life changer with getting in front of her customers and being like, “Okay, why is your truck rental not working? How can you rent your truck out more?” And seeing what's going on, and so, she has Zoom calls with customers and like, “Okay, if you want to get your truck out more, maybe we should have a sign outside.” And she's created signs and printed them for customers and just the more successful they are with their products that she supplies, then the better off she is too, so she's just really working with their customers and their successes is what she believes is important to be successful.   Infuse Marketing Into the Experience That Customers Have Me: So, in addition to working with the customers and having that one on one touch point kind of interaction with them, as you mentioned just now, could you share with us, our listeners, what are some ways in which the marketing aspect because I know you mentioned in your bio that you focus a lot on marketing, how have you been able to kind of marry what you're doing with marketing to kind of infuse that into the experience that the customer has, you kind of touched on it a little bit when you mentioned the technology, and customer experience in terms of creating that frictionless, seamless experience. But are there any other things that you've been doing that kind of helps to enhance that?   CJ shared that the fun thing about what they do is they actually help their customers custom design the graphics for their truck, to be able to advertise their business. So, they definitely get asked their advice and make sure that the spelling is correct, that kind of thing. They've come up with helpful marketing phrases to use. And so, that's part of it, like just really working with their customers hand in hand to give them the product that they are looking for. But they also have the expertise to know what has been successful with their customers.  And so, if they see custom graphics that maybe don't look great, she's not afraid to say something to her customers and be like, “Maybe not use so many words, or let's use a different colour, you can't really see that far away,” and that kind of thing.   Aspects of Service Delivery that is Important to CJ as a Customer Me: So, you do get hands on, which is really great. Now, as a consumer yourself CJ, to kind of take yourself out to the situation where you are actually the service provider, but you are the person that the service is being provided to, could you share with our listeners, maybe two things that are of great importance to you when do business with an organiation.   CJ shared that she always believes follow up is always great. She gets super busy, but she really wants a product and she just have a couple more questions, but then she gets another product she wants. And then she has more questions about that and so she forgets about product one, so she just thinks having patience with our customers and realising that they're busy just as she is. And she really wants to buy something, but she forgets about it.  And so, she just thinks follow up is really great with a customer experience, it doesn't mean that they don't want it, it's just they have kids or emergency at work where it just gets put to the backburner. So, she just always like having people being patient with her but keeping in touch about different products that she's looking to buy and keeping it in her forefront with just a polite nudge with an email or a call or whatever. But just not to be forgotten just because she didn't call back doesn't mean she's not interested.    Me: All right, follow up. Very good. So, that's one thing you look out for is there another thing you'd like to share with us that you really look out for when you're doing business with an organization?   CJ shared that she really likes the customer experiences through the website and being able to find the information she needs, being able to check out if she's purchasing something online, and just having a great experience online and making sure that your websites up to date, the links are working, that your checkout process is easy to use still.   App, Website or Tool that CJ Absolutely Can't Live Without in Her Business When asked about online resources that she cannot live without in her business, CJ stated that there's a lot. She thinks Canva is one of her favourite things that has been invented in her tenure as a marketing director, she never had the design gene, she's always just been like the strategy. And so, having Canva has really made her able to show what she's picturing in her head a little bit easier, and help her with her campaigns and really simplify the process, she likes that.  And then she's just looking through her phone real quick, she's like what else does she use, Outlook, having that app and that kind of thing on my phone so she doesn't have to wait until the next day to answer a simple request. She feels like there's an app for everything, she met her husband on an app. She definitely likes Microsoft Teams and that's always great because having the Teams app for Microsoft 365 or whatever it is and being able to quickly answer her employees when they have questions, that's been a life changer.   Books that Have Had the Biggest Impact on CJ When asked about books that have had a great impact, CJ shared that one of her favourite books, she likes to keep things simple and she likes a little bit of cheesiness and that kind of stuff. But she liked Rhinoceros Success: The Secret To Charging Full Speed Toward Every Opportunity by Scott Alexander, but it was a book written by a younger author, and he was just getting into the business world and he was just being like, “You got to be a Rhino, you've got to have thick skin.” And just blast through your career and don't take no for an answer type of mentality in that book.  And it was just a quick 100 page read, but she made all her sales team read it. And just, she got every little Rhinos, they got their first sale after reading that book. So, she kind of had that in here. And then she couldn't do what she does without reading the Bible, that's her go to for solving her issues and keeping strong in her career.   Advice for Business Owners and Managers Who Have Great Products and Services but Lack the Constantly Motivated Human Capital  Me: Now, could you also share with our listeners, CJ how many persons do you have in your organization in total?  CJ stated just about 20. Me: So, I would say it could be classified as a small organization. But regardless, we do have a lot of listeners that tap into this podcast who are business owners and managers, who they have great products and services, but sometimes they like to constantly motivated human capital, if one of those persons were sitting across the room from you right now and they asked you, what's the one piece of advice that you could give them to kind of turn that human capital motivation around, what would that be? CJ shared that she just feels like being kind and patient and understanding. There's so many things going on in the world and in people's lives, she's always had strict bosses that are like, “Okay, be here 9 am to 5 pm.” And then not getting projects done and that kind of stuff. But she feels like if she helps her teammates get to where they're lacking and show them how she would do it. And she gives them the space to do what they need to do. But she tries to be understanding like, “Okay, I can work from home, but my daughter is sick, so I want to be home.” And so, she's pretty lenient with that kind of stuff because she just feels like when you're happy at home, you're more productive at work. So, if she's worried about her daughter all day being sick, then she's not going to get any work done at the office or not.   Me: All right, so be kind and be patient.   What CJ is Really Excited About Now! When asked about something that she's excited about, CJ shared that she's been really excited about listening to more podcasts and being part of them actually, that's been a lot of fun. She's learned a lot from different hosts like yourself (Yanique), and it's helping get her confidence better, like actually saying out loud what she does is very helpful with her growth, and in leadership, and that kind of thing too. So, she's really excited about that.  She's been really working with having more intimate meetings with her leadership team and going off campus she calls it and really just sit out there, sit together just talking like more in private, but they'll be like at a restaurant or something where they're not in front of the team. And they can just kind of say how they're feeling and what strategies they have. And they come up with great brainstorming sessions. And so, she's really enjoyed having some of those meetings and just working closely with her leadership team to nail out some great plans.   Where Can We Find CJ Online Linkedin – CJ Stratte Facebook – CJ Stratte Website – www.onthemovetrucks.com   Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity CJ Uses  When asked about a quote or saying that she tends to revert to, CJ shared that yes, actually, she just texted it to one of her good friends, she's going through some personal issues. And she always just remembers, “Everything's temporary.” Every day goes by and if you survive to the next day, you did great. So, it's just like everything's temporary, it's not always going to be a bad day, it's not always going to be a good day. So, it's just temporary, and go to the next hurdle or the next success and be grateful for your successes and just don't harp too much on your failures.   Me: Thank you so much for sharing that quote, CJ, we will definitely have that in the show notes of this episode.   So, just want to extend our warmest gratitude and appreciation to you for jumping on this podcast with us today. I know you took time out of your very busy schedule, running a company must take up a lot of your time. And so, we want to thank you for your sharing some of the journeys that you've been on, the impact that you've had on the clients that you have as it relates to your trucking business. And just some of the benefits that customer experience can have to organizations across different industries. I do believe that what you shared today will be of great value to our listeners. So, thank you again.   Please connect with us on Twitter @navigatingcx and also join our Private Facebook Community – Navigating the Customer Experience and listen to our FB Lives weekly with a new guest   Links •     Rhinoceros Success: The Secret To Charging Full Speed Toward Every Opportunity by Scott Alexander   The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience   Grab the Freebie on Our Website – TOP 10 Online Business Resources for Small Business Owners  Do you want to pivot your online customer experience and build loyalty - get a copy of “The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience.” The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience provides 26 easy to follow steps and techniques that helps your business to achieve success and build brand loyalty. This Guide to Limitless, Happy and Loyal Customers will help you to strengthen your service delivery, enhance your knowledge and appreciation of the customer experience and provide tips and practical strategies that you can start implementing immediately! This book will develop your customer service skills and sharpen your attention to detail when serving others. Master your customer experience and develop those knock your socks off techniques that will lead to lifetime customers. Your customers will only want to work with your business and it will be your brand differentiator. It will lead to recruiters to seek you out by providing practical examples on how to deliver a winning customer service experience!

Josefine Campbell is a founder of Campbell Company, a top leadership consulting firm for multinational companies. Campbell inspires and coaches leaders, teams, and talents in large organisations such as McDonald's, Deloitte, Maersk, Novo Nordisk, and Carlsberg Group. Her approach combines the practical and the pragmatic. A four-time jiu-jitsu champion, she is particularly interested in developing personal leadership in difficult circumstances, such as is often the case in modern work life.   Questions •  Now Josefine, even though we read a short description about our guests, we always like to give our guests an opportunity to share a little bit about their journey. So, could you share with our listeners a little bit about your journey, how you got from where you were to where you are today? •  A big part of what you do focuses on the power barometer, right. So, can you share with our listeners a little bit about that, and how it is that you are able to implement? What is the power barometer? •  Could you share with us maybe two or three approaches, tactics, tools that you can use to manage energy in work and life? •  Could you also share with us what's the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely can't live without in your business? •  Can you also share with us maybe one or two books that you've read recently? Or even maybe a book that you read a very long time ago, but it has had a very big impact on you? •  Now, can you also share with us Josefine, what's the one thing that's going on in your life right now that you're really excited about? Either something you're working on to develop yourself or your people. •  Where can listeners find you online? •  Now, before we wrap our episodes up, we always like to ask our guests, do you have a quote or a saying that during times of adversity or challenge, you'll tend to revert to this quote if for any reason you got derailed or demotivated, this quote kind of helps to get you back on track. Do you have one of those?   Highlights  Josefine's Journey  Josefine shared that when she was a teenager, she was quadruple national champions in jiu-jitsu, it's Japanese martial arts. And for the last many years, she's been coaching and developing executives, individually and in groups. And at some point in her practice, she has a background in business practice, she's ran businesses herself, she's been in business for plus 25 years, she's also been teaching business school.  And at some point, quite early on actually, in her endeavour of supporting the executives that she was helping the best possible way, she realized that some of the techniques and practices that she brought with her from the jiu-jitsu practice actually had a huge effect when working with executives in modern work life, because being an executive is quite demanding, especially in modern work life, it takes a lot of energy, it requires for you to stay mentally clear under difficult circumstances, it's quite normal to be under a lot of pressure, just like as when you're in a battle, it's the same thing that happens to people when they feel threatened in a battle, and when they feel threatened at work. The circumstances might look different, but what happens inside people can be quite similar. And have you watched Karate Kid?  Me: I have, yes.  So, you remember the Mr. Miyagi? Wax on, wax off. So, he trains Karate Kid and how to be mentally agile, how to stay ready in a battle, right? So, one thing is he trains the techniques, but he also trains how he is with himself, that's a lot of the movie, remember, that's why he has to do the wax on, the wax off. And it's the same for executives, it takes a lot of personal capacity to do the work they do. So, that's how she came across the methods that she's written about, and that she's helped executives put into practice.   What is a Barometer? Me: In reading a little bit about your story, I noticed a big part of what you do focuses on the power barometer, right. So, can you share with our listeners a little bit about that, and how it is that you are able to implement? What is the power barometer? Let's start there.   Josefine shared that the power barometer is an imaginary tool that anyone can apply personally, alone, individually and in teams at work. So, it's a way of checking in on your personal energy level. And checking in on your personal energy level is important because energy is the fuel of the brain. Your brain uses 20% of your personal energy, it's quite a lot because it's only the size of 3% to 4% and if you're low on energy, your brain doesn't run very well. So, if you aren't aware that, you're not capable of performing in the same way as if you have the self-awareness of where your energy is right now.  And the same thing counts for what happens in teamwork. So, one thing is that each and every one of us should take responsibility for our own personal energy, the personal energy that we bring to the table but in a meeting, everybody should take responsibility for the energy at the meeting. So, tell me, have you ever been in a meeting where someone suddenly took out all the energy of the room?    Me: Yeah, that's happened quite a few times.   And what happens to productivity in such a case? It declines? And engagements? And retention? So, performance? Does people come up with creative, innovative ideas? Do they solve difficult task when the energy is out of the room?  Not so much. So, just being aware of personal energy, start to measure it even if it's a subjective quantification, it brings awareness to energy and everybody's responsibility on the energy level. And that kind of behaviour that would bring out energy of a room suddenly becomes unwanted and for many reasons, that is good.   Tactics and Tools Can Be Used to Manage Energy in Work and Life Me: So, it's about balancing, it's about energy, could you share with us maybe two or three approaches, tactics, tools that you can use to manage energy in work and life? Because we all have our personal life, but we also have our professional life and how do we balance having energy in both so that either area is not getting diminishing returns?   Josefine stated that if she may, because Yanique says personal and professional life, actually a point, a very important takeaway from her book is that business is personal. So, there's a difference between private and professional life, so, that's isn't opposition, there's things that happens in your weekend, within your family that's private, but and what happens at work, what do you have to do at work, it's professional, but all of it is personal because it's you as a person who goes to work. It's you as a person who is leading, collaborating, communicating, it's you and I, as people who are talking right now on this podcast, and we cannot take the personal aspect out of the equation.  So, you cannot just put away anything but personal. And that's a key point also, in you addressing the question like what can you do to keep a high personal energy level? And, first of all, and the most important thing is to be aware, to be aware of your own personal energy level. It starts noticing when your energy is high, when it is low, most people would start to care more about it and putting more attention into raising the energy, you will also have more insights about what drains you and try to do less of that, things that gives you energy and it could be work tasks, specific work task you discover, “Oh, I get energy from this type of tasks or this type of meetings, or working with these people, but they also drain me.”  And of course, at the workplace, you cannot always decide who you are meeting with and who you're not. But those relationships which are draining, can you do something about it? This is something you can bring to the table to improve their collaboration. She knows plenty of good examples on how people have addressed bad working relationships and taking them to another level where they can do great work together. There are also situations where you have to avoid, certain collaborations, or certain tasks.  If you're in a team, understand what type of task drains and gives different team members energy. Work division might going to seem more obvious. And then there are the physical aspects, such as getting enough sleep, having a few breaks once in a while, actually just even micro breaks, a few minutes of rest. And rest is not looking at your phone, or just answering email, rest is maybe closing your eyes or leaning backwards on your chair and letting go for a minute. Just these little micro breaks, they can have a huge impact on your energy level.  We're not designed to be productive all the time. The organism, the biological human organism is designed to perform in circles, in waves, the energy, our natural energy will move upwards and downwards in iterations. So, it would be normal that you have some downtime once in a while, at least, but normal, natural, that's the difference, the normal is that people don't have any downtime.   App, Website or Tool that Josefine Absolutely Can't Live Without in Her Business When asked about an online resource that she cannot live without in her business, Josefine shared that she will be reluctant to say, if you go on her website, www.josefinecampbell.com, there's a section with freebies, and go there and grab whatever you think can make a difference for you. There are a couple of tools there and you can try them out, you can write me if you have any questions. And that's plug and play, go check it out, there's no software there.  Josefine shared that Microsoft Teams because all her clients use, most of her clients uses Microsoft Teams. Very often that's where they meet and engage.   Books that Have Had the Biggest Impact on Josefine When asked about books that have had an impact, Josefine stated that that's a wonderful question. So, what to choose from? There're so many wonderful books. She really, really loves books. Well, Stephen Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change, it's an old classic. And she thinks it was the first book on personal leadership that got really big. And it's from the 90s. So, she was pretty young back then. But she got really fascinated with the book and the content of the book, she also started her first business when she was really young. She was 21 when she started her first business.  So, she needed a lot of help, she needed guidance on how to manage herself, and she felt so much wisdom in that book. And she actually thinks it's still valid, it's old, but it still works. So, she often recommends that book, she still does.   And then she thinks Brené Brown's Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversation. Whole Hearts, that's another great book. It's just a few years old and she thinks she took leadership books in another direction, writing a book that is very personal and that has some really nice contributions to how leadership development is being perceived today. She really thinks she made a huge difference. Thank you, Brené Brown.   What Josefine is Really Excited About Now! When asked about something that she's really excited about, Josefine shared that there's so much. So, obviously, there's the book which is just coming out now and she's excited about sharing that with the world. And she has written the next one too and they're still working on the title and she's excited about that one too. She's written another kind of book, she's been quite creative, and she's also excited about finishing that one and putting that one out. So, her books are part of her passion. She gets up 5 o'clock in the morning sometimes to write just because she really feels like writing. She loves it.   Where Can We Find Josefine Online Website – www.josefinecampbell.com LinkedIn – Josefine Campbell    Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Josefine Uses  When asked about a quote or saying that she tends to revert to, Josefine shared that she have not a quote, but an image. The myth of Sisyphus, it's an old Greek myth. It's this man who is being judged by the Gods to push a rock up a hill. And every time he's up the hill, the rock is falling down, he has to push it up again. Have you ever heard that tale? Can you imagine the picture? Me: I can imagine the picture.  So, that's that feeling of this never-ending work and that things just keeps on being tough. Just after the Second World War, there was a French philosopher Camus, who elaborated a little bit on that myth. And he pictured Sisyphus working at the stones on the mountain, as he was pushing the rock up the hill and he would see the sun sparkle in some of the stones, and it will be beautiful. And his attention and his energy, his mind, his being would direct towards the beauty of those sparkles. And that would make the rock and himself feel lighter.   And that's what she tries to do, she tries to find just that little spark, those times where it's really dark, and it's tough, and it feels like it's never going to end, though we know it's going to end, there's always light at the end of the tunnel. But sometimes it just doesn't feel like that. Then she tries to find these little sparks of light that beams in and just give a little more energy to get done whatever needs to get done.   Me: All right, perfect. Thank you so much. I guess another way to look at that is the quote, “This too shall pass.” but you've kind of transformed it into an image, which is way more impactful because then it really focuses on what can you really do to navigate that space and recognize that at the end of the day, you will overcome it, it may seem like it's going to last forever, but there is a solution somewhere down the line.   Josefine shared that, “This too shall pass.” it's a really beautiful quote. She likes that one. Another one comes to her mind, it is the quote saying, “Everything is as it's supposed to be.” Kind of give some kind of peace of mind if you don't try to fix anything, or if you don't try to struggle, if you say okay, things are as they're supposed to be, somehow, it's all going to make sense at the end of the day.   Me: It will, the puzzle will all fit. Thank you so much, Josefine, for taking time out of your very busy schedule and hopping on this podcast and sharing all of these great nuggets and insights with us, a little bit about your journey, your new book that's coming out, the importance of preserving your energy and doing things that will lead to a more productive life, a more balanced life. So, I think our listeners definitely would have gained great information, great value from what you shared with us today. So, we just want to express our appreciation for you joining us on this podcast today.    Please connect with us on Twitter @navigatingcx and also join our Private Facebook Community – Navigating the Customer Experience and listen to our FB Lives weekly with a new guest    Links •     The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change by Stephen Covey •     Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversation. Whole Hearts by Brené Brown   The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience   Grab the Freebie on Our Website – TOP 10 Online Business Resources for Small Business Owners  Do you want to pivot your online customer experience and build loyalty - get a copy of “The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience.” The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience provides 26 easy to follow steps and techniques that helps your business to achieve success and build brand loyalty. This Guide to Limitless, Happy and Loyal Customers will help you to strengthen your service delivery, enhance your knowledge and appreciation of the customer experience and provide tips and practical strategies that you can start implementing immediately! This book will develop your customer service skills and sharpen your attention to detail when serving others. Master your customer experience and develop those knock your socks off techniques that will lead to lifetime customers. Your customers will only want to work with your business and it will be your brand differentiator. It will lead to recruiters to seek you out by providing practical examples on how to deliver a winning customer service experience!

Leslie Pagel is the Chief Evangelist of Authenticx - a conversation analytics company dedicated to improving the way healthcare companies engage with patients. In this role, she creates awareness across the healthcare industry of more efficient and effective ways for healthcare organizations to deliver on their customer objectives. With over two decades of working with customer experience teams, Leslie helps clients actualize the voice of the patient to show how these voices prompt meaningful action.   Questions  •  We always like to start off by asking our guests to share a little bit about their journey. Could you share with our audience a little bit about how you got to where you are today? •  What has your experience been I would say, let's use maybe the last 12 to 24 months, as it relates to what customers are expecting. You mentioned conversational AI as a way to do the data collection and less reliance on surveys. But what have the customers been saying? What are some of the trends that you've been seeing emerging? What are customers really looking for? •  So, in terms of using conversational AI to be a better listening tool with customers, right? Could you share maybe an example, a real-life example for our listeners, that you've seen the conversational AI work in such an impactful way that it transformed somebody's life or group of people's lives? •  What's the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely can't live without in your business? •  Could you also share with us one or two books that have had a great impact on you? It could be a book that you read a very long time ago, or even one that you've read recently. •  Can you also share with our listeners, what's the one thing that's going on in your life right now that you are really excited about? Either something you're working on to develop yourself or your people. •  Where can listeners find you online? •  Before we wrap our interviews up, we always like to ask our guests, do you have a quote or a saying that during times of adversity or challenge, you will tend to revert to this quote if for any reason you get derailed or you get off track, it kind of helps to get you back on track. Do you have one of those?   Highlights Leslie's Journey Leslie shared that her journey in customer experience started over 25 years ago before CX in customer experience was even a thing. She spent 20 years working with large global, primarily business to business organizations on a new strategy for creating competitive differentiation. And that strategy was the customer experience. And over the past several decades companies have grown to create a boardroom conversation around customer experience, because it is a very productive and effective differentiation strategy.  What we see over the over the decades is the pace of innovation has continued to accelerate, which makes it really hard for companies to compete on product alone or services alone and no one wants to compete on price, so companies were looking for new ways of differentiating in the market and they turn to customer experience. And so, she spent 20 years, the first 20 years of her career working with companies on their customer experience strategy, which largely was informed from traditional or historical methods of customer listening through large survey programmes, Net Promoter Score programmes, customer satisfaction programmes.  And as technology has evolved and artificial intelligence has become more mainstream, we're seeing a new method that companies are leveraging for listening to their customers, which then informs their customer experience strategy and that's conversational AI. So, when you take a historical look at customer experience listening or measurement, you see that the way that we capture customer input has changed, but what we capture and listen to hasn't, we're still very survey dependent.  And in the last two years, she's been really focusing on helping business leaders realize a different source of customer insight and that source is not survey data, that source are the conversations that customers are having every day with businesses when they've reached out to ask questions, when they reach out to make purchases, when they reach out to use the website, customers are interacting in moments. And companies have an opportunity to listen into those moments and the technology exists.  So, spent her entire career in customer experience is evolved more into a role today of helping leaders really listen to the moments of customer interactions instead of relying on survey data to keep their finger on the pulse of their customers.   Using Conversational AI for Data Collection – What Are Customers Really Looking For? Me: So, you have quite a wealth of experience in that area. Now you're primarily in the healthcare space, right?  Leslie stated that she is now, prior to working with Authenticx, she worked across industries, primarily focused on B2B. But then have over the past 5 years been really focused within the healthcare industry, working with payers, providers, being doctors, and pharmaceutical, manufacturers, pharmacies, and in that realm of healthcare. Me: What has your experience been I would say, let's use maybe the last 12 to 24 months, as it relates to what customers are expecting. You mentioned conversational AI as a way to do the data collection and less reliance on surveys. But what have the customers been saying? What are some of the trends that you've been seeing emerging? What are customers really looking for? Leslie shared that she would say, and this hasn't changed over the past 12 to 15 months, they've been saying this for decades. But customers, they are saying to the organizations that they do business with that one of the best ways of demonstrating care and concern for the customer. And by the way, in healthcare, caring and concern is essential in that customer experience. But customers have been saying that the best way to show me that you care about me is to listen to me, and to show me that you're listening to me by hearing what I'm saying and taking ownership of it and driving action in the business.  So that's nothing new, that's been there for decades. The other thing that's not unique to healthcare, you can see it in any business is eliminating friction from the journey. But in healthcare, friction in the journey means a lot more, it means delayed care, it means not getting access to the care that you need. So, really looking at pockets where there is friction, and that friction is impacting the patient in their ability to get the care that we need. And that also impacts business and business outcomes as well.  Me: Indeed, because at the end of the day, you're trying to build trust and loyalty and a higher level of retention. And if you're not getting what you're looking for, then they're probably not going to come back, especially if they have options.  Leslie agreed exactly. And there are a lot of options out there, that's kind of why leaders turn to the customer experience to differentiate as companies are innovating fast, your product doesn't stand alone anymore. And so, they are looking towards other ways of building loyalty and the experiences is the way that is where they're turning.   The Impact of Using Conversational IA Me: So, in terms of using conversational AI to be a better listening tool with customers, right? Could you share maybe an example, a real-life example for our listeners, that you've seen the conversational AI work in such an impactful way that it transformed somebody's life or group of people's lives? Leslie stated that the example that comes to mind immediately is they are working with a hospital system, and this isn't unique to hospitals across healthcare, there's a lot of focus on social determinants of health because social determinants research has found that social determinants have more of an impact on our health and wellness than healthcare itself. And so, there's a lot of focus across healthcare organizations on understanding social determinants of health and helping patients overcome those.  And so, they do work with a hospital system and one of the questions that they asked them to explore in their conversational data was related to scheduling and why are there no shows? Or why are there reschedules? And one of the things that they found in studying just a single topic of scheduling appointments was that social determinants of health in 14% of those interactions were having an impact on getting to care, getting to the care that they need, they were impacting, rescheduling or missed appointments, as well.  So, this hospital system through that learning, one, has a different appreciation and understanding when someone is calling in to reschedule, that it might not necessarily be because they're not feeling good, it could be because their caregiver didn't show up and they can't get to the appointment, or they're working three jobs and they're not able to get time off.  So, through that insight, they have been working with their frontline staff to one, help in those interactions when someone is calling around a scheduling appointment or rescheduling to offer services that might help that patient in need. But they're also taking their insights that they've learned to the broader community perspective as well.  Me: All right, so that's data driven decisions there for sure that would help them to enhance the journey of the customer. Leslie agreed, absolutely.    App, Website or Tool that Leslie Absolutely Can't Live Without in Her Business When asked about an online resource that she cannot live without in her business, Leslie stated that there's so many tools and resources that she uses every day. She would say for the work that she does at Authenticx, which one of the things that she does is to take the bird's eye view of all of the healthcare landscape and all of the conversations that are coming through their platform and listen more at an industry level and macro level.  And she relies on their own software to enable that perspective. So, that's one of the things that she wouldn't be able to do her job if she didn't have Authenticx because it's allowing her to listen at scale. This year, they'll have over 200 million healthcare conversations coming in through their platform, yes, 200 million.  And there's no way they would be able to understand that data at scale, a human can't do that at scale. And so, she relies personally on their platform to allow herself and their team to do the research that they do to help the healthcare industry at a macro level. So, that's one she would say.   More on like a personal professional side of it, LinkedIn comes to mind. She relies on LinkedIn to help spread the word to help open the eyes of what they're doing and how conversational AI is being leveraged in healthcare to drive outcomes, to drive business outcomes. So, that's another one that's more kind of on a personal professional side that comes to mind as well.   Books that Have Had the Biggest Impact on Leslie When asked about books that have had a great impact, Leslie stated that she doesn't have the tattoo but if she were going to get a tattoo of a book, it would be this one it's called Conscious Capitalism, With a New Preface by the Authors: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business. Leslie stated that if she was at a networking event, chances are before they were done talking, she would talk about Conscious Capitalism. Conscious Capitalism is a book, but it is a book that articulates a business strategy, that is a proven business strategy with outcomes that benefit, not just the company in terms of profits, but also benefit humanity and help elevate humanity. And there's some principles in Conscious Capitalism as a business strategy that really resonates with her and that drive how she shows up in the world, both professionally and personally.  And some of those are really that for business, purpose, and profit must co-exist. We can't just focus on driving profit without purpose, and we won't have a company if we don't have profit. But the two of those must coexist, it really is the essence of the responsibility of business is to have a higher purpose, and to generate profit for the company, for the employees, and to be able to invest back in the organization for growth, for customers.  The other thing that really resonates with Conscious Capitalism is more of a shift in mindset from short term gains to long term gains, particularly publicly held companies are very focused on the here and the now and they think of the longer term opportunities and Conscious Capitalism is really more about focusing on the long term vision and outcomes and driving decisions in the here and now based on the vision and where the organization is going in the future. So, that would be her one book, Conscious Capitalism.    What Leslie is Really Excited About Now! When asked about something she is really excited about, Leslie stated that she would say the thing that she's really excited about is, she feels like where conversational AI today is it's not known or understood. And so, the thing that she's really excited about is helping organizations and particularly healthcare organizations understand what conversational AI is, and understand how they can leverage it to drive business outcomes and patient outcomes.  And so, they've got several things coming up that they're working on to help kind of spread the word. One is next, next month, they're going to bring together healthcare leaders from across all verticals, to their headquarters city in Indianapolis, Indiana, and have conversation around best practices for leveraging and listening to the voice of the customer. They're going to have conversation around the challenges that are present within the healthcare industry.   So, she's really excited about that. One of the things that they know, in their work is that when they really listen to customers, they'll guide the way and they're bringing their clients and other healthcare leaders together for purposes of listening, so they can help them guide the way and they can help them achieve the outcomes that they're looking for their business and for their customers.   Where Can We Find Leslie Online LinkedIn – Leslie Pagel             Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Leslie Uses When asked about a quote or saying to she tends to revert to, Leslie stated that she doesn't know who to credit for this quote, but she guesses it's more of a mindset and that mindset is to, “Focus more on others than to focus on yourself.” And it's not to say that focusing on herself isn't important, because it is and that's very intentional in her life. But when she's in a place of struggle, or kind of not feeling it, just reminding herself of focusing on others more than she focus on yourself is something that really helps her redirect her attention and re-engage in the work that she's here to do.  Me: All right, perfect. And I think that's even more relevant, that quote that you just shared, especially for the industry that you are in, because when it comes to healthcare, people usually are reaching out to organizations, or hospitals or clinics or doctor's offices because they need help, they're in pain, they're experiencing something that they're uncomfortable with and they need help. So, at that point, it's not about you, it's about them. So, that's a really good quote I think to have and to kind of remind yourself about, especially in the space that you're operating in.  Leslie agreed, exactly.  Me: Well, thank you so much, Leslie, for coming on to our podcast and sharing all of these great insights about the voice of the customer and the importance of listening. I think even as simple as it sounds, and as you mentioned, it's something that customers have want for decades, not just in the last 12 to 24 months, that we really should pay attention to the opportunities that we have, and that the greater tool that exists is conversational AI, and there are ways that we can integrate it into our everyday activities so that we can get a better understanding of what our customers are looking for. And that way we can really deliver that amazing experience that can hopefully help them to return again and again, and bring their friends and family, although we want them all to be healthy and be good and well.   Please connect with us on Twitter @navigatingcx and also join our Private Facebook Community – Navigating the Customer Experience and listen to our FB Lives weekly with a new guest    Links •     Conscious Capitalism, With a New Preface by the Authors: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business by John Mackey    The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience Grab the Freebie on Our Website – TOP 10 Online Business Resources for Small Business Owners  Do you want to pivot your online customer experience and build loyalty - get a copy of “The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience.” The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience provides 26 easy to follow steps and techniques that helps your business to achieve success and build brand loyalty. This Guide to Limitless, Happy and Loyal Customers will help you to strengthen your service delivery, enhance your knowledge and appreciation of the customer experience and provide tips and practical strategies that you can start implementing immediately! This book will develop your customer service skills and sharpen your attention to detail when serving others. Master your customer experience and develop those knock your socks off techniques that will lead to lifetime customers. Your customers will only want to work with your business and it will be your brand differentiator. It will lead to recruiters to seek you out by providing practical examples on how to deliver a winning customer service experience! 

Tom Martin is the CEO at Glance, a CX and contact center strategist, product lifecycle expert, and partnership builder. Tom has led Glance through a successful “pivot,” transitioning from a small business screen share tool to a provider of omnichannel visual engagement solutions for some of the largest enterprises in the world.  Since that pivot, Glance has experienced multiple years of 70% year on year growth. Prior to joining Glance in 2013, Tom spent over a decade at Verizon building and managing strategic partnerships. Outside of the office, Tom is an avid backcountry skier, mountaineer and competitive cyclist.   Questions  •  We always like to give our guests an opportunity to share in their own words, a little bit about their journey, how you got to where you are today. •     Now, could you tell our audience a little bit about Glance and what it is that your company does? •  Can you share with our listeners a little bit about how it is that you can still integrate personal experiences or personal connection with emotion even though we have so much of our connectivity being done in a digital space. •  What is your view on empathy? And do you believe everyone has the ability to exercise it? And if not, what are some tools that you believe can help to strengthen that particular competence in a team member? •  Can you also share with us what's the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely can't live without in your business? •  Could you also share with us maybe one or two books that have had a great impact on you, it could be a book that you read a very long time ago, or even one that you've read recently. •  Could you also share with our listeners, what's the one thing that's going on in your life right now that you're really excited about? Either something you're working on to develop yourself or your people. •  Where can listeners find you online? •  Now, before we wrap our episodes up, we always like to ask our guests, do you have a quote or a saying that during times of adversity or challenge, you'll tend to revert to this quote if for any reason you got derailed or demotivated, this quote will help to get you back on track. Do you have one of those?    Highlights Tom's Journey Tom shared that he's always been fascinated with people which drew him down the path of really understanding what people like, how people buy, he cuts deep into sales and marketing early in his day. And no matter what he was doing, he was always interested to understand how to connect with other people. And the part of like connecting with other people, as you realize that as we have moved from business where we were always together, like you walked into a store you connected with people, you learned a lot of information when someone walks through the door. If you're in a clothing store, you could size them up and be like that person's this size jacket. And you could also recognize all the other cues.  It could be like Valentine's day or the day before, and a gentleman walking in and he's in the women's section. There's all that context that you get. So, you understand, like the challenges that businesses today have when you start to move, sometimes completely into the digital realm.  And so, it's sort of been an area of focus of his, throughout his career, just understanding people. And in today's landscape of customer experiences, where the battleground is no longer a product, it's really the experience that people have.    About Glance and What Your Company Does? Tom shared that they are a in-brand collaboration platform that brings real human beings into a digital space, to be able to provide that personal connection at just the right moment. And that translates into thinking about any type of a journey that a customer is doing, where it could be better served by bringing a human being in, so many people have become more digital native and of course, the familiarity of digital tools has skyrocketed with the pandemic because people, that was the only modality that they had.  But now you realize that, instead of thinking about how do I actually do something, it now comes down to what advice do I need to complete something. And can I reach out to get advice, guidance from someone who can help me understand the inner workings of something, demystified fees, whatever it might be. And that's what they focused on doing is really bringing the digital and the human elements together.   Integrating Personal Experiences or Personal Connection with Emotion Even Though Our Connectivity is Being Done in a Digital Space Me: So, that's what Glance is all about. Now, at the beginning when you were explaining about your personal journey, how you got to where you are today, you mentioned something that piqued my interest, which was the connection that you make with someone, really getting to know that individual and connecting on a personal level.  Now, a big part of customer experience, I believe is an emotional connection that you have with someone and I do believe people buy from organizations that they like and love, and there's some emotion that's there that's driving them to want to do business with that organization.  Can you share with our listeners a little bit about how it is that you can still integrate personal experiences or personal connection with emotion even though we have so much of our connectivity being done in a digital space?  Tom shared that the things that we talk about today and also where things are headed, that are going to be supported by technology is recognizing that today….customers are forced to really be in the driver's seat to go down in many of the different channels.  And many times, if you ask someone, have you had a good experience with a chatbot? If it's outside of something that's very simple, like, what are your hours of operation, oftentimes leads them to switching channels to get somewhere else. And when you think about the emotional component and realizing that if we're able to meet the customer where they are versus forcing the customer to go through many different channels to find out that they can't get what they need done, either abandoned, or they come up with another channel, like making a phone call that maybe goes into a centre, or into a store.  And the part about like emotion is realizing that, what if we want to insert the human being into the journey at a certain spot, or maybe in a couple different spots, where you can provide that level of connection or empathy really demonstrating genuine care and understanding towards the customers' needs and concerns.  And the part of what we've experienced over the past number of years is this idea of we need to deflect away from those channels because they're inefficient. But we also recognise that while digital is becoming better at getting information, at helping people through certain workflows, there are moments in a journey where, “If I could just talk with you to be able to understand something to help me make a decision.” Because oftentimes, you think about what a bot can do, it's going to be doing things based on information it knows. And many people don't necessarily want to share everything about their personal life, they're going to hold it guarded until they actually speak with someone to say, “Hey, this is what my situation is, is this going to meet my needs? Is this going to help me live my best life? Should I go and get this mortgage.”  And so, emotion has a bunch of different components and he thinks of how Forrester thinks about these things, empathy being the most important part, but also having bankers or agents or specialists, be able to not just combine the empathy, but also be given the empowerment to actually solve a problem.  And today, there's a lot of focus on things like personalization, really tailoring interactions to meet a specific customer's preferences and expectations. And also realizing that people take the shortest path, like water, they take the path of least resistance.  And so, finding ways that we can delight a customer, how we can simplify the process and oftentimes, once you get so far, being able to connect with someone, you realize that wow, I am interacting with a real business, with real people, and he likes to say that people want to do business with people that they know, like, and trust, it's an important aspect.  And when he's connecting with you, and he goes, “Gosh, I can have a personal connection with you, I can now have a better relationship with the business because you're now representing the business, you might be better representing the product or service that I'm buying.” And so, it becomes multi-dimensional when you're able to connect with a human being not just personal one on one, but it just changes your view of the business. Me: Agreed. And so, the human connection is even more important now I believe as you were mentioning just now, different interactions that customers have with a business, because then they feel more connected to that business, they feel like somebody's actually listening to them and they're being heard.  Tom agreed and stated that he thinks one of the challenges that businesses today are facing is really going forward is how to infuse that human element into the digital experience and realizing that it's not a oh, digital failed, now we're going to go to a human being. It's how do we bring these things together so that while we're in that immersive experience, while we're in the digital channel, you suddenly have multiple modalities.  And as we start to think about data, and when businesses start to go, oh, yeah, we have a lot of data, but then it becomes, wow, the data lives in so many different places, how do we organize it? And how do we actually take information and insights that suddenly become actionable?   For many businesses, they realise, “Wow, we have some work to do, there's some homework, there some clean-up, there's things that we need to do.” But when you start to think about understanding what your customers are doing, and you can design an action, a journey, an experience for a customer that's informed by data that suddenly says, “You know what, we're going to create that the high speed lane on the highway, we're going to clear all the clutter.”  Because many times when you interface with a business, it's almost like a labyrinth, someone designed these things, you have to go left or right, straight, backwards, it feels like and you realize that they were designed for a variety of different things that require clicks and navigating through different things. But what if that data and some of the design informs a better journey that streamline saves you time, that gets you just what you need, and brings the human being into it? He thinks that's really the future of where we're headed, there's a lot of work to be done to get there.   What is Empathy? And Tools That Can Help Strengthen Empathy in a Team Member  Me: Agreed. So, you also mentioned in your explanation of personal connection, empathy and it's definitely something I believe that is critical for customer experience, especially for organizations, you have some industries that need empathy more than others, I do believe every industry needs it. But I think some needed even more, for example, like the healthcare industry, but what I wanted was your insight as a CEO, you sit at the top, I'm sure you integrate with your team members at all different levels, but it's important to kind of hear from the leader of an organization, what is your view on empathy? And do you believe everyone has the ability to exercise it? And if not, what are some tools that you believe can help to strengthen that particular competence in a team member? Tom stated that it's a really important piece. And he does think empathy is something that you can lead with, it's almost similar to like a value that they have there in the company, which is like assuming positive intent. But having empathy, which is, can you walk a few steps in the other person's shoes, the customer's shoes or a colleague, and he thinks there are people that are higher on the they'll call it the EA spectrum that they just have a higher sort of emotional quotient, EQ is the phrase.  And he thinks the part that we're starting to see is, what if there are things that can fall into the category of having information that based on the conversation that is being had, you can have tips and tricks, you can have information that's being done. And this is where technology, imagine natural language translation is working to listen to the conversation and is helping coach the specialist to have a better conversation. It can listen for tone, it's doing the translation on the actual words, and can bring information in to the conversation to recommend to the specialist how to have a better conversation.   And part of empathy is demonstrating that genuine care, but also, it falls short, if you're not empowering the people that are delivering the empathy. Because empathy without empowerment can work in the opposite direction, it can actually be kind of like a falsehood. You say you're sorry, but you're not willing to actually do anything to help me out and so you really need to couple those things together, and be able to solve problems, to be able to get the customer where they need to go as efficiently as possible.    App, Website or Tool that Tom Absolutely Can't Live Without in His Business When asked about online resource that he can't live without in his business, Tom shared that the thing that he finds with modern day smartphones, is probably he can't live without his smartphone more than anything because he suddenly have access to all the different systems personally at his fingertips. His business phone can ring, he has access into things that need to be HR or finance for approvals. But he feels like we're now in this world where mobility has created this opportunity to be connected wherever you need to be connected. He knows that's a bit of an overarching statement, but he feels like the mobile device has really become a game changer for so many people in business because it gives you access and information at your fingertips. Me: All right, so your mobile phone is your tool. All right, love it.   Books that Have Had the Biggest Impact on Tom When asked about books that have a great impact, Tom shared that one that he read a long time ago that he still thinks today is amazing. An author who we see in the New Yorker, Atul Gawande, he wrote a book called The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right. And it really went through a process of just understanding what are the things that need to be done, and he speaks from the voice of a surgeon and thinking about performing surgery on someone, and to have the right outcomes, there's a checklist, and there's so many things within a business that can be assisted and aided and improved by doing things around a checklist.  Another book that he just finished that he really liked is 10x Is Easier Than 2x: How World-Class Entrepreneurs Achieve More by Doing Less by Dan Sullivan, and the concept of that is pretty simple, in that 2x is very easy to see, you and I can say, “Oh gosh, we need to do 2x more.” It's just a matter of like working harder, a few things that you streamline, but it's something that you can see how to achieve 2x. To achieve 10x, oftentimes, you have to say, “Gosh, we're going to have to do a lot of things differently. And first and foremost, we're going to have to stop doing a lot of things.”  Because to 10x isn't to say we're going to 10x everything, it's one of the most important things we're going to 10x and it means that all the other things don't matter as much. In fact, some of those things can be eliminated, stopped, it can be deferred, you can hand it off to someone else to do but it's really about how to think about 10xing anything, your personal life, your business.  And if you think about the 80/20 principle, it can be applied in so many different ways. You really think about saying, “Gosh, to 10x, I've got to put 100% of my energy on the 20% of my life or my business, which means I've got to figure out how to deal with removing that 80% that gives me that 10x leap.”  And then the last one, this is a fun one. He bought this for his daughters, Kevin Kelly, one of the founders of Wired Magazine, it came out in the beginning of May. Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I'd Known Earlier. He loves this book, it's something that you can open up every day and get a little seed that can grow an idea in your head, it's a fun little book to have on the side of his desk.    What Tom is Really Excited About Now! When asked about something that he's excited about, Tom shared that probably the thing that's the most exciting is something that, you think about the parts of any type of business, they've spent so much time really thinking about how do they build great experiences, but what people want to know more than anything else, is when and where should we have those great experiences. And the part of that is to understand where people need help. And there's a piece of this, which is realizing that oftentimes people and human beings want to be able to do things and they don't necessarily rely on or can understand all the information, all the cues.  And so, if they as a company can figure out how to help businesses know when and where to have experiences that can transform how they compete, and how they deliver an exceptional experience that really puts them at the forefront of where they're going as a business.  And in doing that, a lot of this work that they're doing is really informed by taking a more data centric approach. And so, they're spending a fair amount of time really rethinking how we look at things. They've always looked at them through a few sets of lenses and now they're really taking a step back and saying, “You know what, we're going to look at the same thing. But we're going to look at it through a different set of lenses to really rethink how we approach those things.”  Because oftentimes, inexperience happens because a lot of other things have informed that experience as to like when and where it happens, didn't just happen. It happened because of a lot of other things. And if they can understand what the best things are, then they can inform more frequently and consistently how to have them to deliver the right outcomes.   Where Can We Find Peter Online LinkedIn – Thos Martin              Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Tom Uses When asked about quote that he tends to revert to, Tom shared that there's a quote from Scott Peck. And he's also thinking about one other one, but the one from Scott Peck is pretty simple, and it rings true. But when you talk about adversity, the quote is, “Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. And it's a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult, once we truly understand it and accept it, then it no longer becomes difficult.”  And so, as you realize that there's another part of this about optimism, optimists view challenges and hardship as temporary things that can be overcome. And so, he's a big believer in optimism because to get anywhere, you must first imagine it, you must first dream it and then you can work towards that dream. And then that dream can become a reality. And it doesn't mean that there aren't going to be challenges or pitfalls along the way, but you recognize that if you believe that those things are only temporary, you can continue to thrive.   So, we want to thank you so much, Tom, for taking time out of your very busy schedule and coming on this podcast, sharing all of this great information, what your company does Glance, your views as it relates to creating that personal connection, ensuring that the digital is interceding in a very great way with the human connection, because both need to work together in order to deliver that fantastic, exceptional experience that we want our customers to have. And of course, to be very intentional about designing that experience in a way that our customers actually value the efforts and the experience that we've created for them.   Please connect with us on Twitter @navigatingcx and also join our Private Facebook Community – Navigating the Customer Experience and listen to our FB Lives weekly with a new guest   Links •     The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right by Atul Gawande •     10x Is Easier Than 2x: How World-Class Entrepreneurs Achieve More by Doing Less by Dan Sullivan •     Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdon I Wish I'd Known Earlier by Kevin Kelly   The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience Grab the Freebie on Our Website – TOP 10 Online Business Resources for Small Business Owners  Do you want to pivot your online customer experience and build loyalty - get a copy of “The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience.” The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience provides 26 easy to follow steps and techniques that helps your business to achieve success and build brand loyalty. This Guide to Limitless, Happy and Loyal Customers will help you to strengthen your service delivery, enhance your knowledge and appreciation of the customer experience and provide tips and practical strategies that you can start implementing immediately! This book will develop your customer service skills and sharpen your attention to detail when serving others. Master your customer experience and develop those knock your socks off techniques that will lead to lifetime customers. Your customers will only want to work with your business and it will be your brand differentiator. It will lead to recruiters to seek you out by providing practical examples on how to deliver a winning customer service experience! 

Robert Jordan is the CEO of InterimExecs, which matches top executives with companies around the world. Based on research with thousands of leaders and companies, he and co-founder Olivia Wagner wrote Right Leader, Right Time: Discover Your Leadership Style for a Winning Career and Company, and they've launched the FABS Leadership Assessment, a free assessment at RightLeader.com designed to help leaders and organizations perform better. Jordan also authored How They Did It: Billion Dollar Insights from the Heart of America and help plug publish Start With No, Jim Camp's bestseller on negotiation.    Questions  • Now, we always like to give our guests an opportunity, especially guests that we've been interviewing for the very first time a little bit for you to share in your own words about your journey and how you got to where you are today. • Could you take some time to share with our listeners a little bit about the book Right Leader Right, Time, just some of the core things that the book talks about? • Now, do you believe that there's any examples globally, of a leader who embodies each of the four leadership styles that we would have just looked at the fixer, the artist, the builder, the strategist? • Could you give me one example for each leadership style that our listener could take away, maybe a practical activity that they could do or something that they could do to strengthen them to be a better fixer, a better artist, builder or strategist? • Could you share with us what's the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely can't live without in your business? • Could you also share with our listeners, maybe one or two books that have had the biggest impact on you? It could be a book that you read a very long time ago, or even one that you read recently? • Could you also share with us what's the one thing that's going on in your life right now that you're really excited about? Either something you're working on to develop yourself or your people. • Could you share with our listeners where can they find you online? • Now, before we wrap our episodes up, we always like to ask our guests, do you have a quote or a saying that during times of adversity or challenge, you'll tend to revert to this quote? It kind of helps to get you back on track if for any reason you got derailed?   Highlights   Robert's Journey Robert shared that in some ways, he's your classic entrepreneur. He was in graduate school, but he was not the greatest student and dropped out to start a publishing company and started the first magazine in the world that covered online services and then the internet.  And in the beginning, he made every mistake you could make in business. But eventually, of course, the internet came around, the worldwide web and then he could do no wrong and the business grew very fast to put him on to the Inc. 500 list of the fastest growing businesses in the US. So, that was his first company.  And then he kind of fell into a very weird job title. He was an interim CEO for a number of technology companies, mostly early stage and that led to forming an organization called InterimExecs and he gather they're going to get into this because at InterimExecs, they had about 7000 executives show up who wanted to be placed, they're a matchmaker around the world in organizations that need leadership, and fractional or interim executives. And so, from that, they also wrote the book just referred Right Leader, Right Time.   Me: Amazing. So, this book was published in 2022.    Robert stated yes, Right Leader, Right Time just came out.   About the Book – Right Leader, Right Time Me: Could you take some time to share with our listeners a little bit about the book Right Leader, Right Time, just some of the core things that the book talks about? Robert shared that when you've been asked something a long time, you can spot patterns, and with all these 1000s of executive showing up, they spotted a pattern which was not so good and then another pattern that was really good, and the not so good pattern was that the majority of executives were having career experiences, leadership journeys that you would describe as okay, but you wouldn't say they were remarkable. The flip side was that if you just looked at the top 2%, 3%, 4% of executives, they're having exceptional careers and leadership journeys. And in that exceptional group, they saw 4 distinct styles of leadership, leadership style referring to somebody having a system or an approach or a process. And they gave them 4 labels, Fixer, Artist, Builder and Strategist.   Me: So, Fixer, let's start with that one. Tell us a little bit about what are some of the key skills or competencies that you'd have to be considered in the fixer category.   Robert shared that Fixer is the energy, it's the person that has to run into the burning building time after time. So, they're not trying to pigeonhole any one person into one style, they think all leaders, they bring all their capabilities to bear. But fixer energy is this dominant kind of style that needs crisis. And for a fixer-oriented leader, it may take them 6 months, a year, 2 years to solve the client relationship, to fix a broken division.  When that is done, that person needs to move on to a new crisis. Does that give you a picture?   Me: It does. So, this could be applicable to any type of leader in any type of organization?   Robert shared that it could be, what they're saying is that if you have dominant energy around fixer, it is best for you and for the organizations you're with that most of the time - you need crisis, you need a hot mess. And if things are too stable, or going too well, as one of the leaders put it you'll break it just so you can go fix it.   Me: It's almost like you're self-sabotaging because that's how you perform, that's how you're at your best.   Robert stated that you need to be in those roles so if you look in the world today, as he and Yanique was talking, there's a business called FTX, headquarter's in the Bahamas and of the leading Crypto Exchanges, and it went bankrupt a few months ago, and the CEO who was appointed, who is a classic kind of fixer, because there are a million creditors and there's alleged fraud. Well, that executive prior to FTX, he was at Enron, he was correcting Enron, he wasn't the cause of the problems in Enron, but that's his wiring.   Me: So, we have Fixers, those are the ones that are good at solving problems, and they need things to be broken in order to fix it. What about our Artists?   Robert shared that artist is the energy that sees the world as a blank canvas, or a piece of clay to be molded. So, you think about right now a leader like Elon Musk, he is driven by his innovative ability. Historically, you look at someone like Thomas Edison, or Steve Jobs. This is that kind of creative drive coming out. Artist energy though, the way they put it in the book is sometimes it's at that leader's peril. And he's strongly worried with artist energy and he gets that, which is to say you can't stop thinking up ideas, that doesn't mean they're all going to come to fruition, they're all going to be great, they're all going to be operationally terrific, which is why you need a mix of styles around you.   Me: Agreed. It's almost like that book by John Maxwell, How Successful People Think and there is a thinking activity that he does in there that has a different thinking styles. So, you have big picture thinker, focused thinker, creative thinker. And in order for an organization to really function at its best, you need a blended approach in terms of people's thinking style versus just all of your team members thinking in a particular way.   Robert agreed. Absolutely right. And one of the things exceptional leaders do better is they're better at collaboration. All of us talk about it, and he thinks everyone thinks they're good at it, the problem is that if you're not really confident and directed in your own style, it's less likely that you're actually effectively collaborating with everyone else. Because the primary thing they saw in this average of leaders who were having okay career experiences, but not great. The primary flaw was attempting to be all things to all people, it never works but it is the thing that a lot of people do knowingly or unknowingly.   Me: Yeah, that is crazy. So, we looked at the Fixers, the Artists, what about the Builders?   Robert shared that everyone in organization loves to be a builder, they get that. They mean something specific here with builder, which is the energy that can take the small, the nascent product, service, team, client relationships, and take it to market domination. So, you can think of, for example, someone who creates a new technology, and it grows fast, and they have an IPO, that's builder energy. What you tend to see with builder is that when that person has achieved an IPO or has achieved market domination, in many cases, they need to move to a new company, a new division, a new product, new client relationships, because they need the challenge of taking something small and getting to market domination.   Me: All right. And then we have our Strategist. And it's funny, but would you say that most people believe that in order for you to be a great leader, you need to be an excellent strategist because business is all about the strategy and executing that strategy?   Robert shared that it's a good question. And all leaders have to be good at strategy, strategy, he would say with a small s, the leader label strategist, we could have called pilot, conductor, captain, quarterback, it's referring to the kind of energy that excels within large vast or complex organization, the kind of language that strategists leaders use, it's around loyalty, and being mentored and mentoring other people. It's about longevity, typically within one organization, it's being cross trained, it's about gratitude to an organization. And that kind of language, you're just not going to hear that from typical Fixer, Artist or Builder leaders.   Leaders Who Embodies the Four Leadership Styles – Fixer, Artist, Builder and Strategist Me: Now, do you believe that there's any examples globally, of a leader who embodies each of the four leadership styles that we would have just looked at the Fixer, the Artist, the Builder, the Strategist?   Robert stated that that's a good question. So, when we're talking about Fixer, John Ray, who's now the CEO of FTX, has a massive job to clean up FTX, it's a disaster. The founder is now facing all kinds of criminal charges and there's funds missing and that would be fixer energy. And as they said, he had been at Enron before.  An example of Artist, Elon Musk is a good example. If you think about any friend of yours, and they're highly creative on the team, they may be the renegade, they're the rebel. They're not necessarily the most popular, but they're the one that's capable of these discontinuous leaps for companies, and it's absolutely the energy that a stagnant company needs, that's the artist builder.  So, if your listeners are familiar with Sheryl Sandberg, until recently, she was the number two at Facebook now known as Meta. Sheryl Sandberg's, first 7 years at Facebook were phenomenal, she took an organization of a couple 100 employees. Facebook at the time was probably about $100 Million Dollars in revenue. Seven years later, there were 70,000 employees, it was $70 Billion Dollars in revenue, if that's not the standout example of builder leader in the modern world, he doesn't know what is. Sheryl was also a cautionary example of what were one of the points they make in Right Leader Right Time because she ended up staying at Facebook, Meta for 14 years and what happened in the second 7 years, Cambridge analytical scandal, election scandals, the pivot to VR Meta which might not have suited her as well. Taking tonnes of arrows in the back for writing a best-selling book called Lean In. And it's a little cautionary because again, builder energy tends to be focused on market domination and once market domination has been achieved, that leader really kind of needs to move to a new company, new project, new division. So, strategist leader, great example would be Fred Smith. He just retired from Federal Express, FedEx. He was there 51 years and most leaders, we think, it's not like you have to round the basis, you don't have to have tried everything. In the book, they're fond of this phrase, highest and best use. And that is something we all aspire to as leaders to arrive at a point. There's no arriving but kind of a Zen concept of coming to understand your highest and best use.  Fred Smith started FedEx as a paper he wrote while in college, that's pretty innovative, artistic. He's famous, he's been interviewed many times. When he couldn't meet payroll early on, he went to Las Vegas and gambled just to meet payroll and if that's not fixer energy, he doesn't know what is. Builder, of course, to scale an organization like that was amazing. But he really arrived at a place of being one of the best strategist leaders of the modern era.   Me: Okay. So, we have some real-life practical examples that our listeners can definitely envision or even tap into because they're a part of what we know. They've written books, we've seen their history to see what they've done so that they can really identify what the leadership styles are and what are the qualities that they embody.   Examples of Practical Activity To Strengthen Your Leadership Style Me: Now, let's say for example, you want to develop these skills or want to develop in these four areas. Could you give me one example for each leadership style that our listener could take away, maybe a practical activity that they could do or something that they could do to strengthen them to be a better Fixer, a better Artist, Builder or Strategist?   Robert stated that it's a great question and one thing you also touched on earlier, they've launched at rightleader.com, a free 3 minute assessment is called FABS Leadership Assessment for any of your listeners who want to get a little bit of input and they'll get a result after 3 minutes. And they'd also appreciate feedback to asked whether they got it right, how you're labelled. But they'll also get a free summary in terms of descriptions of each of the styles.  So, each one of the 4 is different. And it's not a generic answer. So, for example, fixer energy, it tends to be the someone in organization, they're smart, they're hardworking, and someone around them throws a problem that nobody else could solve. And that's how fixer energy tends to develop. And it is in the best interest of fixers, if they're hooked and they solve that problem that no one else could solve, the best thing they can do is to seek out the next crisis. You have to pick yourself for these things.  Artist energy, they think, and they're going to see how the research goes based on all the FABS Assessments being done, feels to them a little more like a mode that is internal to you that you cannot help. And what that energy needs within an organization is to be surrounded by people who are more operational. As a way of kind of protecting the ability to keep on doing it. Builder is an energy in a way similar to fixer, it's more linear. A fixer tends to only work on one problem, one company, one crisis at a time, or put it this way. If you have a friend and they say they're a great fixer, but they're trying to put out fires at the three companies at a time, that's not a great fixer, that's probably not going to work. The opposite is you have a friend and they're strongly artists energy, very renegade, rebellious, they need multiple canvases to paint on at the same time. It's not an accident that Elon Musk has SpaceX, Tesla and The Boring Company at the same time. He's also a cautionary example because as he and Yanique are talking, he still has Twitter and Twitter was not his classic playbook, Twitter was a broken or maybe he contributed to making it a broken organization and he's using a playbook there and there's no other fixer on the planet that gets to do what he does. It doesn't tend to work well. But builder energy, what that person needs is to put themselves into situations of maybe not unproven product services, companies technologies, but something that has not yet reached scale, has not reached domination, they need to be in the position of where they're helping the product, the people, the process, the team to grow, their putting system and process in place. And strategist, strategist just needs to be within an organization where cross training and mentorship are going to be those components. So, those are some of the things that people should be aware of, that the overriding thing that they would say is that in observing exceptional leaders, they tend to reject more of what is not for their highest and best use. They reject more of what's not for their highest and best use. And so, it's easy to say, and it's very hard to do, very hard to do. But that's the thing on your career journey is, as you're going along that you become more and more intentional. Your first job, you need the money, you need the direction, your family is looking at you and you can't refuse anything. But what happens over time, as you discover what you like, and what you don't like is you start gravitating in one place or one direction over another, you start making more and more intentional decisions. And decision comes from the Latin word, meaning to kill off. And you have to do that with options that are not right for you, as you got to kill them off. That's very hard because we live in a time of FOMO, the fear of missing out.   Me: Agreed. And, just listening to you speak and explaining that. I've definitely seen my career grow in that way as well, in terms of being more intentional about the jobs that I take, or things that I invest my time into and the ones as you mentioned that don't serve me, I tend to not get involved in, maybe 10-15 years ago, my decision would have been completely different.    Robert agreed. Exactly and hindsight is 2020, it's hard to see at the beginning of your career, it's just easier when you look back. And so, that's the thing to kind of inform where you are now and where you want to go is to look at your journey and not to judge it, just to observe it. No judgement…..just observation.   App, Website or Tool that Robert Absolutely Can't Live Without in His Business When asked about an online resource that he cannot live without in his business, Robert shared that it's an obscure one but he's on the road a lot and he has to send people PDFs and so he uses a TurboPDF app.   Books that Have Had the Biggest Impact on Robert When asked about books that have had the biggest impact, Robert stated that he'll share two books, one is personal bias, because he was involved with it. Yanique mentioned it, Start With No: The Negotiating Tools that the Pros Don't Want You to Know by Jim Camp. It's one of the foundational books on how to be a better negotiator. And they think is something that just stands everybody well, because the foundation of that book is understanding your own mission and purpose. And the clearer you get on that you start getting clear on how it is that you're negotiating with other people and to have a sense of mission and purpose in those negotiations. The other book is more recent, it's a book called The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life by David Brooks. And if you consider first mountain, are the things you do in career that are about money and power and status, fame, whatever. More of the earning your living, as opposed to second mountain, which is when you're going for significance. What is it that you are called to? What are you committed to? He thought that that was pretty powerful.   What Robert is Really Excited About Now! When asked about something that is going on right now that he's really excited about, Robert shared that that's a great question. He has to go back, this assessment has them really energized because they would just love to see what happens as more and more people take it. We are recording this, and it's very new, it just came out and only about 1000 people have taken it so far. So, they're putting forward a lot of ideas here and they may be wrong or right about them, they're going to see as all of the data comes back in how it plays.   Where Can We Find Robert Online Website – InterimExecs.com   Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Robert Uses When asked about a quote or saying that he tends to revert to, Robert stated that that's such a good question. “I fairly sizzle with zeal and enthusiasm as I spring forth with a mighty faith to do the things that ought to be done by me.”  Robert shared that's a recording he heard many years ago, a Minister named Jack Boland and he was quoting his mentor. I can't remember the name of his mentor. But he said that on a number of recordings, and it just hit him between the eyes.  And so, in his spare time he paints, and he actually painted a Canvas at one point with that expression, because it just energizes me.    Please connect with us on Twitter @navigatingcx and also join our Private Facebook Community – Navigating the Customer Experience and listen to our FB Lives weekly with a new guest   Links ·  Right Leader, Right Time: Discover Your Leadership Style for a Winning Career and Company by Robert Jordan ·  How They Did It: Billion Dollar Insights from the Heart of America by Robert Jordan ·  Start with No: The Negotiating Tools that the Pros Don't Want You to Know by Jim Camp ·  The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life by David Brooks   Grab the Freebie on Our Website – TOP 10 Online Business Resources for Small Business Owners  Do you want to pivot your online customer experience and build loyalty - get a copy of “The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience.” The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience provides 26 easy to follow steps and techniques that helps your business to achieve success and build brand loyalty. This Guide to Limitless, Happy and Loyal Customers will help you to strengthen your service delivery, enhance your knowledge and appreciation of the customer experience and provide tips and practical strategies that you can start implementing immediately! This book will develop your customer service skills and sharpen your attention to detail when serving others. Master your customer experience and develop those knock your socks off techniques that will lead to lifetime customers. Your customers will only want to work with your business and it will be your brand differentiator. It will lead to recruiters to seek you out by providing practical examples on how to deliver a winning customer service experience!   Our Next Webinar – May 16, 2023 at 10:00 am   Register Here  

Nave and Phil make their return to the show! They've joined us this go around to give our listeners some insider knowledge into the origins of Gaming Together. We also take a look into the ins and outs of Harmonix Studios and the resulting hit: Rock Band 4! This virtual karaoke machine is something special and a must have if you have plenty of friends  or family who like to perform, sing and have fun together. Don't miss out on this one dear listeners, good times abound with some good friends!(00:50) - Intro(01:56)- Interview with the Phillip & Nave of the Gaming Together Podcast(56:00) - Rockband 4 Review(01:53:30) - OutroI always say this for all our guests, but if you don't click the link below I personally will find you and tie you to a chair and make you play the original Resident Evil games (like 1-Nemesis) if you choose not to follow my buds Phillip and Nave. So go ahead and knock that out to save yourself a lot of heartache :')https://linktr.ee/gamingtogetherIntermission/Game Music: Alabama Shakes, Paramore, Children of Nova, Grouplove, Between the Buried and Me - All songs found as either presets in-game or DLC offeringsMix & Mastered by: Daniel Campolihttps://www.danielcampoli.com/portfolioIf you want to reach out to Nick and Will personally to engage with us about the show, follow us on any link here:https://linktr.ee/FridayNightGamecastSupport the show

Nave and Phil make their return to the show! They've joined us this go around to give our listeners some insider knowledge into the origins of Gaming Together. We also take a look into the ins and outs of Harmonix Studios and the resulting hit: Rock Band 4! This virtual karaoke machine is something special and a must have if you have plenty of friends  or family who like to perform, sing and have fun together. Don't miss out on this one dear listeners, good times abound with some good friends! (00:50) - Intro(01:56)- Interview with the Phillip & Nave of the Gaming Together Podcast(56:00) - Rockband 4 Review(01:53:30) - OutroI always say this for all our guests, but if you don't click the link below I personally will find you and tie you to a chair and make you play the original Resident Evil games (like 1-Nemesis) if you choose not to follow my buds Phillip and Nave. So go ahead and knock that out to save yourself a lot of heartache :')https://linktr.ee/gamingtogetherIntermission/Game Music: Alabama Shakes, Paramore, Children of Nova, Grouplove, Between the Buried and Me - All songs found as either presets in-game or DLC offeringsMix & Mastered by: Daniel Campolihttps://www.danielcampoli.com/portfolioIf you want to reach out to Nick and Will personally to engage with us about the show, follow us on any link here:https://linktr.ee/FridayNightGamecastSupport the show

Rama Sreenivasan is a co-founder and CEO at Blitzz, a live remote video support and inspection platform. Rama has led the company through its initial inception launch and subsequent growth to several million video support minutes per month. Major customers include BMW, Sealy, FedEx, and Rogers Telecommunications. Before founding Blitzz in 2017, Rama spent several years working as a Scientist and Educator. His biggest joy comes from helping others solve their problems and he is passionate about finding effective ways to disseminate knowledge. Rama has a PhD and MS in Chemical Engineering from the University of Maryland College Park. He also did his Postdoctoral research at MIT in Cambridge, Boston.   Questions We always like to give them an opportunity to share in your own words, how you got to where you are today and why you ended up on this journey that you are on? So, could you share with our listeners a little bit about Blitzz? What does Blitzz do? Is Blitzz an acronym for something and may I ask? I'm not sure if you actually have a reason for it. But like, what inspired you to name the company Blitzz? The whole method of augmented reality enabled Smart Glasses that your company is using to enable hands free support, making it even easier to fix a car stereo appliance and more. Could you share a little bit about how that works? And what the process is? And how easy has it been for customers to transition using this new method of resolution? What are some trends that you see emerging in 2023 and beyond as it relates to technology, maybe one or two that you have observed, or you see that are emerging that you'd be willing to share with our audience? Could you also share with our audience what's the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely can't live without in your business? Could you also share with us maybe one or two books that have had the biggest impact on you? It could be a book that you read very recently, or even one you read a very long time ago, but it really has had a great impact on your life, and you just believe it would be a good value to share with our audience. Could you also share with our listeners, maybe one or two things that you do personally to stay motivated every day, despite any challenges or adversities that you may face? Could you also share with our audience, what's the one thing that's going on in your life right now that you're really excited about, either something you're working on to develop yourself or your people? Where can listeners find you online? Do you have a quote or a saying that during times of adversity or challenge you'll tend to revert to this quote, it kind of helps to get you back on track if for any reason you got derailed.   Highlights Rama's Journey   Me: So, even though we read the bio of our guests, the formal constructed background of where our guests history is, and how they got to where they are today, we always like to give them an opportunity to share in your own words, how you got to where you are today and why you ended up on this journey that you are on?   Rama stated that that's a pretty deep question. Start with a little bit about his background, he grew up in India and Indonesia, so two countries far away from here. And always been guided by a lot of the values from his parents, his dad was an engineer. He's retired right now and back in India, and his mom was a teacher as well. So, a lot of great values growing up and the fundamental thing was always trying to care for people, to help them. And his strength in math and science naturally led him to be an engineer, just like his dad.   And he always looks for opportunities to help people out with technology. And that's been his journey so far. But one thing led to another and here he is, running a software company, although, all his education was in chemical engineering, he did my Master's, his PhD post-doc, worked for a couple of semiconductor companies. But it was during that journey that he saw the need to help people with technology, as they struggled to troubleshoot equipment.   And so, the equipment came in through his engineering, the desire to help came through his value system. And then he started looking for technologies, he stumbled across technologies and he puts all these together and that's how Blitzz was born when he met his co-founder, KR, who used to work at Google before he joined him in starting Blitzz.   What Does Blitzz Do?   Me: So, could you share with our listeners a little bit about Blitzz? What does Blitzz do? Is Blitzz an acronym for something and may I ask? I'm not sure if you actually have a reason for it. But like, what inspired you to name the company Blitzz?   Rama shared that he'll start with the name Blitzz. Blitzz with one Z actually means getting something done fast and efficiently. There's also another meaning, which refers to the Blitzkrieg during World War. But the second meaning is what they're referring to here. The reason why they went with two Z's was honestly because one Z the website was already taken, so they went with two Z, that it was also a little cooler with two Z's. So, that's what Blitzz means to get something done fast and efficiently.   And regarding what it does, so they provide a way to have an app free live video call with anyone on the planet. As most people know today, in the video calls are pretty rapid, especially the pandemic got people started on video calling, especially in not just personally but at work as well. But many people don't know that it can be done without an app download.   And there are specific reasons why you want to do it without an app download especially when you're helping out a customer who's calling in into a contact centre, as you very well know, in customer service, you get a call in from someone that you've hardly met, you probably talking for the first time, they're probably frustrated with a piece of equipment, or perhaps their internet router, right? And to get on a video call with that person by asking them to download an app only frustrates them even more. So, there's got to be an easier way and that's what Blitzz is. He hopes that explained clearly what Blitzz is.   Smart Glasses – How it Works and the Process   Me: So, what intrigued me Rama, about interviewing you was this whole method of augmented reality enabled Smart Glasses that your company is using to enable hands free support, making it even easier to fix a car stereo appliance and more. So, I am all into customer experience, as you know, because that's the podcast Navigating the Customer Experience.   But I thought this was so cool that you could literally work with a client to not physically be in the same space but be using that technology to help them get their issue resolved. Could you share a little bit about how that works? And what the process is? And how easy has it been for customers to transition using this new method of resolution?   Rama shared that let him clarify that the Smart Glass hands free use case is, it's a different use case when it comes to someone, a consumer calling a contact centre. So, the Smart Glasses doesn't apply to that. That applies to technicians out in the field who are probably climbing up a windmill or cell phone tower or need their hands free to hold them to the study as they climb a piece of equipment or hold tools in their hands to follow instructions from a remote expert. So, that's the Smart Glass site.   But with consumers calling and say, if you've got a problem with your charger, as you charge your car in your ED vehicle, and you're not able to charge it, and you call the one 1800 number in the US, for example, that's what do you typically call for customer support. Somebody at a contact centre picks up the call and today they want to help you out, the whole idea is to get you going on your way.   But today, most of them operate blind meaning that they can't see your problem. And when they operate blind, they tend to ask a bunch of questions, which is typically aggravating because you're thinking to yourself in front of the car, if only you could see this. Well, that's what Blitzz is. At that point in time, the way it works is as a contact centre agent, you would simply send them a text link, they would get it on their phone.   So, while they had the phone to the air, now they will get a link to look at the phone take it away from their ear and look at the screen, they would click on the link, immediately the back camera turns on and within a few seconds without an app download, the contact centre agent is actually looking at the charging port of the car. So, just cuts down all those extra questions and they could point to things, they can mark images up, they can communicate very clearly as if they were standing right next to the person in front of the car just through remote video.   Me: All right, amazing. And how do you find technology helping customers because a lot of organizations are using technology and I do believe that it really should be used to enhance the experience to make things frictionless or effortless for the customer. But I also believe that the human element is still very critical to the experience that the customer has, because technology can fail. And so, how do you think as we transition and we move forward because I'm sure there's more opportunities for technology to be infusioned into the experience that we have, that we blended in such a way that they complement each other rather than create further frustration and pain and discomfort for customers.   Rama shared that he couldn't have said it any better. But right on point. The blending of technology and the human empathy is very important and that's what they focus on when they take Blitzz to the contact centres. So, the ability to get the customer agent eyes on the problem brings in that technology piece. And because of being able to see the problem and connect with the consumer who's calling in a pain free, frictionless manner, like you just mentioned, make sure that they're in sync, they understand each other. And then as they see the problem, now they can solve it better and perhaps, most of the cases, what happens is they're able to solve the problem and avoid sending out a technician or avoid sending the product back to the manufacturer and saving a ton of trouble by just being able to see it and solve it within a few minutes.   Trends Emerging in 2023 as it Relates to Technology   Me: Have you seen, you're in the whole technology space, I would say trends that you see emerging in 2023 and beyond as it relates to technology, maybe one or two that you have observed, or you see that are emerging that you'd be willing to share with our audience?   Rama shared that yes, absolutely. There are lots of tools that are AI related, even in the case of video, as video's getting more rampant in businesses, not just in personal communication, technologies like Blitzz come in almost every other month and capture more data and that data is fed into machine learning. And you can use that data very effectively to make downstream processes more efficient.   For example, even during a Blitzz call, how do we empower the agent to provide the right solution to the caller? Imagine the agent is able to immediately get access to an instruction manual based on the make and model of the equipment that the agent is supporting to troubleshoot, being able to pull that resolution step or the answer to the problem and giving the agent immediate access so that they can help the customer and have them go about their day, very, very quickly, is very powerful.   So, AI, augmented reality video are all the tools that are coming out with great efficiencies, much like 10 years ago, chat came about for customer experience. So, he would like to say that video is like the new chat, because now your eyes are on the problem.   App, Website or Tool that Rama Absolutely Can't Live Without in His Business   When asked about an online resource that he can't live without in his business, Rama shared that that's a good one. He's been thinking about it for a bit. He would say, for him, the biggest value is just the cloud, even if he loses his laptop today, and there are lots of tools, but all those are cloud based tools. Even if his laptop is lost, he can go get another one and just seamlessly continue working as if nothing was missing. Because all the data, be it Gmail, be it tools, collaborative tools like Slack, or be it a CRM like HubSpot for his business. All these tools are on the cloud and he could just go get another laptop and continue working.   So, he would say, connectivity to the cloud is what he would need absolutely for the business. And they're all cloud-based tools important to migrate. It's really important to migrate to the cloud for businesses who are looking to the future because of the ease of working in the cloud is just incredible.   Books that Have Had the Biggest Impact on Rama   When asked about books that have had the biggest impact, Rama shared that the book that comes to him was The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment. That's more of a personal journey of being very mindfully aware of his strengths and weaknesses, it's kind of a metaphysical book, but it really made him aware of his own thinking process, and who he is as a person. And what does he want to do with his life.   There's also another book, he's actually looking for around as he speaks. It's a more recent book, it's by the author Dan Bapani and he has written a very good book on the ability to concentrate or the power of concentration. And he's really enjoyed reading that book because it again, helps him be very mindfully aware of everything he does on a daily basis and be the best he can be. Both these things have really helped him be very present and live consciously.   How Rama Stay Motivated   When asked about how he stays motivated, Rama shared that he would say that would be definitely some yoga and meditation, that really puts him centre and it makes sure that things that really keep him keep me on track, he doesn't give up on those habits.   The funny thing about great habits is they get you to a spot where you're really enjoying life and that paradoxically also makes you not pursue those habits. So, you have to keep doing what you did to get there in order to be able to stay there. For him that is yoga and meditation.   What Rama is Really Excited About Now!   When asked about something that's going on right now that he's really excited about, Rama shared that he would say being a father of two small kids, 5 and 7. And running a company, trying to scale it. He's always trying to find more balance and one of the other things he's added in his life that he's actually gotten back to because he couldn't do it when the kids were younger, was climbing. So, he loves climbing and what he's really excited about is to get back to Yosemite, which is really close by in the valley and do some multi pitch climbing, which means climbing several pitches of rock. And that is pretty, pretty adventurous and exhilarating for him.   Me: Yes, that sounds very exciting and dangerous. But I suppose it depends on your perspective.   Rama shared that it's actually surprisingly, if you do it well, a joke to people, what typically is more dangerous is driving to Yosemite, rather than climbing because it's easier to get into trouble driving a car too fast than doing something very slow, like climbing, which is actually very controlled, provided you're very mindful.   Me: Yeah, and I do imagine there's some amount of skill involved in climbing as well.   Rama agreed, yes, there is but it does take some time and definitely getting trained with a good teacher is important, but again, what he's realized is being very conscious about everything you do, being very hyper aware of what you do, really helps to be safe.   Where Can We Find Rama Online   LinkedIn – Rama Sreenivasan Website – www.blitzz.com   Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Rama Uses   When asked about a quote or saying that he tends to revert to, Rama shared that he thinks of Bill Watterson, he's the author of Calvin and Hobbes, and he tries and bring in a little bit of humour in the face of adversity, and he said it through Calvin, his quote was, “God put me on this earth to accomplish a certain number of things. Right now, I'm so far behind that I am certain that I shall never die.”   Me: Okay. And would you like to expound on that for our audience and explain what that means?   Rama shared that he just thought it was really funny, he was kind of a self-deprecating humour. I'm here to accomplish a certain number of things. And we all get stuck in the rat race, right, trying to do so much but what when you stop back and think, right now, it's nice to laugh at yourself and say, “Hey, we're so far behind and all the list of things that I have to do that if I have to get all of them done, according to God, I should never die because I'm so far behind.”   Me: Oh, my goodness. Yes, it's quite comical. If only that were true, we all do have an expiry date, we just don't know when.   Rama agreed yes. But sometimes he feels at least his personality, he tends to take himself too seriously. So, he has to remind himself to also lighten up, let go and we're all here to help each other out and have a good time and take care of other people.   Me: Indeed. Well, thank you so much Rama for taking time out of your very busy schedule, to hop on our podcast, Navigating the Customer Experience and just share with us some of the trends that you see emerging in the technology space, why technology needs to still be fused in with the human interaction, the human experience, because at the end of the day, neither of them can function on their own and blended together that will definitely create a better experience for customers. And so, we appreciate you sharing all of the great nuggets and insights in our conversation today and so we just want to express our gratitude to you for that.   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 The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment by Eckhart Toole   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!

Art Harrison is the Co-Founder and Chief Growth Officer at Daylight. He's an experienced entrepreneur and leader with over 20 years of experience developing and delivering production grade solutions. With a background in computer science and software development, Art was previously Vice President at iNTERFACEWARE and previously founded MXD Communities in 2001.   Questions   Could you share a little bit about your journey, how did you get to where you are today? Could you tell us a little bit about Daylight? And what Daylight does and how Daylight is helping their customers achieve their goals? Could you share with us how is it that consumers or organizations are able to increase their overall customer satisfaction and brand loyalty by offering positive and engaging Omni channels CX at scale? Could you share with our listeners what low-code is for those listeners who are not familiar with that? And why do you believe it's disrupting the CX landscape? You're in the CX space, as well as the design space, could you share with us maybe one or two things that you've seen emerge in the last few months that you will see as an ongoing trend, at least for 2023 in this space? Could you also share with us what is the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely can't live without in your business? Could you also share with our listeners maybe one or two books that have had a big impact on you, it could be a book that you read a very long time ago, or even one that you've read recently, but it still left a great impact on you. Could you also share with us what's one thing that's going on in your life right now that you're really excited about? Either something you're working on to develop yourself or your people. Where can listeners find you online? Now, could you also share with our listeners, do you have a quote or saying that during times of adversity or challenge, you will tend to revert to this quote, it kind of helps to get you back on track if for any reason you get derailed.   Highlights   Art's Journey   Art shared that like most people, it's been an interesting journey, it's not one that he would have mapped out in advance. But he'd say he's always been passionate about using technology and building things. And he thinks that's been really the guiding principle of his career. So, he started off very entrepreneurial in the social networking and online dating space when he was in university. And really what he found from that led him to marketing and ultimately led him back to being a founder again, here at Daylight.   And it was just a passion to build things that people want to use, and to find ways to delight customers and end users along the way. And even though his career has spanned technical and marketing and other kind of lanes, the common thread has always been, “What do people need? And how can we make their lives better and delight them along the way?” And so, it's been an interesting journey. But he's always excited about where it's going to lead him next.   About Daylight – What Does Daylight Do and How Daylight Helping Their Customers Achieve Their Goals   Art said absolutely. And kind of an interest of this podcast, Daylight is kind of in the space of customer experience, in that they're a platform that helps large enterprises primarily, but really any organization that knows how they want to improve the experience they're providing, not just to their customers, but to their employees as well.   And they're a platform that allows them to rapidly design, build and deploy solutions that really touch on that interaction between people and process. So, the simplest example he can give you is the TurboTax type of example, where you have the IRS and the United States, the CRA in Canada, any other tax agency, they have a business process, but it's a terrible process for most people to interact with.   And TurboTax and the tax industry exists to create a better on ramp that'll guide people through that process in a way that's intuitive to them and is the way they're used to working with other solutions, not just paper forms and addendums. Daylight is a platform that lets organizations build that kind of an experience for any interaction that their customers or their employees are having and to do it at scale across the entire organization. So, they're touching more places, and then proving that experience at every interaction that people are having with the business and their services or processes.   How Organizations Increase Their Overall Customer Satisfaction and Brand Loyalty by Offering Positive and Engaging Omni Channels CX at Scale   Me: Now, one of the areas that we would love to discuss with you, as we have you on our podcast is could you share with us how is it that consumers or organizations are able to increase their overall customer satisfaction and brand loyalty by offering positive and engaging omni-channels CX at scale? Could you share a little bit about that with us?   Art shared that it's a broad question, but he does think there's a lot of ways. Part of the thesis and a hypothesis when they were starting Daylight was this understanding that most organizations are primarily invest in the major touchpoints that they have with their clients.   So, you think about any lifecycle of a client, there's the research and acquisition phase or the signup phase, whatever you want to call it. So, how are we going to bring this customer in and most people are investing a lot of money to try and make that experience as pleasant as possible.   And then there is the renewal or upsell phase, a lot of investment goes in there. But everything that happens in between that is actually what leads to their satisfaction, their probability of churning or abandoning or leaving that organization and so when you can start thinking about what are all the ways that they need to interact with us, it may be that they're just looking for information, they're looking to change some basic information about themselves, their family, their account. And so, when you start thinking about how do we improve the CSAT scores or the NPS for the employees, it's really looking and saying, “Okay, we know we've got the book ends really well.” But there are dozens of times where that friction, they're leaving friction in place, or they're creating friction for someone just to talk to someone to understand, “Hey, can I change the payment date that I have?”or “I've just got married, I want to update some of my information so that my family is included in my account.”or whatever it may be.   When they can look at that and say, “What are all those touch points? How can we make a bigger impact and improve the experience across all of those areas?” And furthering that to like, how do they want to have that experience? It's one thing to say we're going to make everything available online and self-service and there is a core group of customers that care about that. But you need to also think about, well, sometimes there's a lot of information there, or it's someone that doesn't want it, they just want someone to take care of it for them.   You have to look at the entire lifecycle and all of the interaction points and find ways to create a more natural experience in any of those.   But one of the key things that they talk about at Daylight when they're talking with customers, is changing this mindset of, “I have a business process, I have something that I want to accomplish and so I'm going to push it on to the customer in the way that I need it for them to give me their information.” So, you think about a bank, they have a process for anything, you want to open a new checking account, this is how they need the information. And historically, they would even if they were digitizing it, they take their process and put that online. But that's not how we think, as consumers, we don't think about their business process, we think about the outcome we want to have or the experience. So, you have to kind of evaluate all of those touch points from the perspective of the person doing it and try to make those improvements.   What is Low-Code and Why is it Disrupting the CX Landscape?   Me: Now, in preparing for this interview, I noticed that when you were introduced, it was introduced that you were a good candidate to speak about how low-code is disrupting the CX landscape. Could you share with our listeners what low-code is for those listeners who are not familiar with that? And why do you believe it's disrupting the CX landscape?   Art shared that typically, a low-code, it can mean a lot of things for a lot of people but the simplest description of that is historically, anything that you were building new, a technical task required software developers, designers, people on the technical side of the spectrum, to understand your needs, and build that solution for you to the best of their understanding. And what low-code does is it changes the paradigm so that by reducing the technical bar to build new solutions, you're shortening the distance between the person who actually knows the problem, and most likely even knows what the solution would be. And that solution getting built.   So, low-code exists in just about any category, any industry, he'll think of some brand names he has no affiliation with but, whether it's GoDaddy or Squarespace, or any website builder, 10 years ago, 20 years ago, you had to learn HTML, you had to learn how to code a website.   Now, you can go on to a low-code solution where you're dragging and dropping and building something that is professional grade, that looks amazing, that works on any device, that's low-code transforming, who can build websites. And when you think about the experience realm, whether that's digital experiences, the employee experiences for someone that works in a branch, the tools that are going to make your call centre more effective, any area that typically was relying on a service like an integrator or an SI, or a technology team within their own organization, they were waiting in the queue, depending on the size of their budget to get work done, they might have to wait months and months, they get something done eventually, but it's not what they wanted.   Low-code really changes that because now that person that is on the front line, who knows this is where it's always problematic with a customer, “I wish that I could just automatically do these couple of tasks or I wish I knew what to do when they said that they want to purchase this product or change their account in this way.”They understand that problem and low-code empowers them to build if not 100%, 80%, 90% of their solution directly, and keep changing it when they actually use it in the field. And so, it just means the iteration, the time to value and the bar or the barrier to making these better experiences is dropping. And that means you're going to continue to see improved experiences that are really meeting the needs of employees and customers across all kinds of organizations.   Me: All right, so basically making things more accessible to the average person. And I guess it really boils down to as you were saying, as I was listening to you, it really boils down to, I believe, also ensuring that everybody can have access to do the exact thing. When you were speaking just now, I was thinking of Canva. And I was thinking of back in the day, if you wanted to do a flyer or some form of publication for marketing or advertising, you typically get a graphic artist or even an advertising agency who have the talent in house to get it done. But I mean, you can become your own designer with Canva, they've made it so easy. And I thought of that when you're talking about making the design process and the coding process so easy.   Art stated that that's a perfect example. And he'll tie it back, again, he spends a lot of his time talking to these large enterprises that literally have 10s of 1000s of processes that are happening across the organization and insurance company has all different types of claims and policies and managements and call centres and issues that they're dealing with. The bank has branches and wealth products and everything else, they have so many. And going back to that TurboTax analogy, a lot of them are stressful. Like doing your taxes is inherently a stressful thing. You're worried if I do it wrong, am I going to get audited? Am I going to make a mistake? You kind of feel adversarial, like the person that I'm providing this information to doesn't actually have my best interests at heart.   When you can take all of those processes and reduce the cost to actually make something that's more intuitive, more delightful, you're enabling the people on the business side who know that we can improve the experience, our satisfaction scores, to make that improvement. You're improving the lives of the people that need to provide the information in.   As he said, often stressful experiences, it's like taking a test, you're really changing the dynamic of what can be addressed, how easily, how cost effectively it can be and then dramatically changing the types of experiences that can be built, you can take something like taxes, and turn that into something where it's more conversational. “Hey, did you change jobs this year?” “Great. Tell me about your new job.” “Did you get married?” “Great, there might be a tax benefit for you.” You took something that was previously just here, fill out box 66 and made it into something that now feels like, “Hey, this is working with me, this is a very different emotion, a very different experience that I'm interacting with this organization or this business process.”   In the CX Space and Design Space, What Are Things That Have Emerged in the Last Few Months that Will be an Ongoing Trend in 2023?   Me: So, we're approaching pretty much the end of 2022, I can't believe that we're almost in the final quarter of the year, like it just started. And you're in the CX space, as well as the design space, could you share with us maybe one or two things that you've seen emerge in the last few months that you will see as an ongoing trend, at least for 2023 in this space.   Art shared that for him, and he's only one perspective and as he says to his own clients, the clients of Daylight, he's in the vendors mindset. So, as much as he works hard to stay neutral or to be very open and really help people find the best solution for them, regardless of his organization, he still only sees it from his perspective, so always a grain of salt. But what we are seeing, not just in the last couple of quarters, but really for the last few years, particularly during the pandemic, it's escalated, and it continues to grow, no one is stopping work on the customer experience. But some of the same teams and technologies and approaches that people have really heavily invested in to improve customer experience is shifting to include a lot more on employee experience.   As we've all been remote as we have, as consumers, we are seeing these better experiences, it's really hard to have an amazing experience shopping online or interacting with your Robo Advisor account for your investments, and then going to work and using the worst technology or being stuck to deal with terrible processes, terrible communication channels. So, we're seeing a really increasing push on the need to improve employee experiences to do their job, whether they're directly supporting customers, or whether they're doing internal things, HR, anywhere else.   Because it's becoming essential to retain the teams that you have, people just don't want to, they have the flexibility to work anywhere, because the barriers of geography are kind of breaking down. So, the importance of improving the quote, unquote, customer experience of your employees seems to be always increasing and we're really seeing some exciting changes to how people are supporting their teams across the board.   App, Website or Tool that Art Absolutely Can't Live Without in His Business   When asked about online resources that he cannot live without in his business, Art shared that that is a tough one, he would say it's not a glamorous tool by any means but for him, it is probably, he would say any video conferencing. For him, he spent so much time just talking to people, understanding what their objectives are, what their goals are, whether that's his team, whether that's their customers, whether it's just peers in the industry. And if they didn't have access to that, and the ability to still make connections, even when they're geographically dispersed or kind of on locked down with a pandemic.   He feels like this last couple of years would have felt really isolating, he wouldn't have made the connections and the growth that he's made personally, professionally with his team. So, there's a lot of other way cooler tools that he uses kind of in with his marketing brand, or his technology brand. But if you took away his ability to just connect with people, see their faces and still build meaningful connections, he doesn't know what he would do. So, he thinks that still to him is the most valuable app.   Books that Have Had the Biggest Impact on Art   When asked about books that have had the biggest impact, Art shared that he's going to give a weird one here and it's just because he consumes a lot of information. A lot of it is articles and long form. But there's a book, when you asked him that there's a book, a professor recommended when he was young, and this is not for everyone to read. But it made a big impact on him just opening his eyes in the numbers way.   So, it's not about CX or UX, but there's a book called the One Two Three…Infinity: Facts and Speculations of Science (Dove Books on Mathematics) by George Gamow. And it was a computer science professor that at the time basically said, “If you can read this and understand this, then I want to work with you on some side projects.” So, it became a motivation for him to just expand what does infinity even mean? And for him, the keener in him to want to get in the good graces of that professor. So, that just had a big impact on him. And his wife actually recently purchased that one for him, because he had talked about it. Something that I had read in my university days.   Then the other book that comes to mind, and he's just beginning it right now. And he's had it on his shelf for a long time, someone handed it to him before, it's called The Book of Business Awesome/The Book of Business Unawesome by Scott Stratten. So, that's another book, he can't see the impact it's made on him yet but that's next up that someone has recommended, and he's going to be reading next.   What Art is Really Excited About Now!   When asked about something that he's excited about, Art stated that one of the things he's really excited about, well, he's always excited about his family. He's got two kids that are going through transitions of kind of where they are in life. They did their first year away at a sleepaway camp this year, they're in middle school, one of them is in middle school. So, the keeping up with them, his son actually recommended a podcast to him, a business podcast, he's 11 years old, that he's actually loving.   He's really excited about the changes of, they're giving him interesting things that are stretching his mind now. So, that's pretty cool. And one of the things, he's excited about, it's a little cheesy, but they made a big investment at their organization in a communication framework. It's kind of under a selling framework. It's a little plug for the group there called The Value Selling. What he really likes about it is it really gives a framework for how to have conversations, to understand where people want to go, what's stopping them from getting there? And then what they believe the solution would be and how to attach to that.   Now, usually that's used to sell or to do better by your clients and be aligned, he's really excited about what it's been doing for his organization, for the one on ones. Something he's wanted to get better at is how does he mentor and provide one on ones and coaching to the team? And using that same framework of them saying, where do I want to go? You want to be promoted? You want to get to this point in your career? Well, what's stopping you? And what do you think you could do to further that, and then being able to have them know where they want to go and support them is putting a lot more direction to the one on ones he's having.   And he's really excited about how that's going to make him a better manager, a better leader, and how he's going to help the people on the team that he directly interacts with get where they are ultimately wanting to be in their lives, because that's what breeds a great culture, a great team, and just great people across the board, whether they stay with them or not. So, he's really excited about that.   Where Can We Find Art Online   Website – www.daylight.io LinkedIn – Art Harrison   Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Art Uses   When asked if he has a quote or saying that he tends to revert to, Art shared that he does and he's going to overshare a little bit. It's not a famous quote, it just comes from his dad, and he's the third Art or Arthur, the third, his son is now the fourth. They've been the Harrison family line, they've kept that tradition going and just from an early age, his dad would just kind of like no matter what adversity they were in, no matter what they're going through, he's like, “Don't worry, it would either be intermix, you're either a Harrison or you're an Art, it's going to work out, and it's going to be fine.”   And it's not that he was some wild success, it's just that he really managed stress well, and just knew that life would work out the way that it was supposed to. And it really just embedded in his DNA. And so, whether it's the hardest day, professionally or personally, whether he's struggling with something, whether he's excited about something, it's just in there, and it's kind of repeating in his brain all the time that like, it doesn't matter if it's going to work out, he's going to prevail.   And he would say just to anyone listening, like that was the same philosophy even when he had the new-born babies, he and his wife were stressing about they're not sleeping, he just had that same mantra, it's going to work out, he's going to figure out what it is that's making this baby upset and he's going to prevail. And so, that simple phrase of like it's going to work out is what drives him and it makes you be willing to take on any challenge, knowing that at the end of this, there's a solution. It's going to work out even when it seems like it didn't work out, that is it working out, it's still leading you where you needed to be. So, that is the kind of quote or mantra that is always with him.   Me: I love that, amazing. And I think at some point in our lives, we all need to kind of give ourselves those kinds of affirmations. Because life can become overwhelming and daunting and sometimes it does feel like all the doors are closing around us. But if you do have that mindset, as Rhonda Byrne from The Secret says, “Thoughts become things,” then if you believe it's going to work out, it will work out.   Art agreed that it will and it really lets you look differently at the things that seem to be the roadblock or seem to be the setback is that it's still going to work out, he doesn't know how yet, but he then tends to look back at all of those negative points and know that he wouldn't be where he is today if he hadn't been there. So, you change your perspective on everything when you just know that it's working out the way it ideally can. To him it is his superpower because it really does make everything seem possible.   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   One Two Three…Infinity: Facts and Speculations of Science (Dove Books on Mathematics) by George Gamow The Book of Business Awesome/The Book of Business Unawesome by Scott Stratten   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!   Big RYG Customer Success Leadership Summit October 12-13, 2022 Washington DC Sign Up

We have a return guest Jason Ten-Pow. Jason was on our podcast last year September and he has returned. Jason is the son of immigrants, moved to Canada with his family when he was seven years old. His passion for customer experience was sparked as a teenager while working behind the meat counter of a carnival-themed grocery store in Toronto, Ontario. From there, Ten-Pow co-ran a niche computer technology company, Visionary Enterprises, that built and installed computers and networks.   This venture taught him the basics of running a business and his commitment to customer service sparked the confidence to found ONR, his CX consulting firm in 2001. As the founder and president of ONR, Ten-Pow has expanded his lifelong passion for creating unbreakable customer relationships into an organization with more than 20 years of experience helping renowned brands evolve their customer success stories.   Questions   What is Blockchain? what are you talking about? So, could you share with us a little bit about what Blockchain is and how that even can impact customer experience? Could you give me in real life terms like, I'm a business; let's say, for example, I own a retail outlet, how does Blockchain affect me, I'm selling stuff online, I have a retail store where customers can come in face to face. What does that mean for my customers? Who do you see adopting Blockchain in terms of customer? Could you expound for us as it relates to data transparency and consumer loyalty? Could give them maybe one or two CX tips that you think will allow them to really connect with their customers, build better and stronger and deeper relationships. What would those two tips be for 2022? Could you share with our listeners, what's the one thing that's going on in your life right now that you're really excited about? Either something you're working on to develop yourself or your people. Where can listeners find you online? Do you have a quote or a saying that during times of adversity or challenge, you'll tend to revert to this quote, it kind of helps to get you back on track if for any reason you get derailed? Do you have one of those?   Highlights   What is Blockchain?   Me: So, we're having Jason back on our podcast. As I mentioned, he was here with us last year September talking about his book Unbreakable: A proven process for building unbreakable relationships with customers. And today he's here to share with us a little bit about his release that was released earlier this month. The title of the article was Wider Blockchain Adoption Will Impact Customer Experience. And so, my question to you Jason is for those persons that are listening to me are probably saying to themselves, what is Blockchain? what are you talking about? So, could you share with us a little bit about what Blockchain is and how that even can impact customer experience?   Jason stated that Blockchain can be many things, but at its core, it's the ability of information to be transferred either by the customer or by a product. So, information is tagged and carried along a pathway that can be picked up and shared, but it's also a very secure way of sharing information. And at its core, the value or the benefit for businesses is that it allows them to acquire a lot more information about their customers and more holistic information about the customer. And for the customer, the benefit is they can have a much better understanding of the product itself, where it was created and where it was manufactured and how it ended up in their hands.   So, Blockchain is really about a safe way of transmitting information back and forth amongst various sources. And the benefit for CX is that it allows businesses to have to acquire much deeper knowledge about its customers. And for the customer, it allows the customer to understand the product they're purchasing, and where it came from in a much more deep and meaningful way.   And this is exceptionally important today because, well, you think of movements such as ESG, which is Environmental Impact, Social Responsibility and Governance, which is very important considerations for customers that are purchasing a product, it's good to have an understanding of who's manufacturing, where this product is from, and if it was manufactured in an environmentally, with minimally environmental impact, and in a socially responsible manner. And so, these are very important bits of information that are being transformed.   How Does Blockchain Affect a Retail Outlet Owner?   Me: All right, now, you kind of gave us the book definition just now of Blockchain. Could you give me in real life terms like, I'm a business; let's say, for example, I own a retail outlet, how does Blockchain affect me, I'm selling stuff online, I have a retail store where customers can come in face to face. What does that mean for my customers?   Jason stated that what that means for your customers is that you have a lot more information about your customers when they make a purchase. And you'd mean, not just simply their transaction information, but you can have depending on what's in that Blockchain, you can have much deeper information like their age, if they share that with you, like a whole host of very important demographic information that is now connected to the actual purchase of the product, which allows you to know the customer in a much deeper way, in a much easier manner than you've ever been able to before.   Me: Now, what are some of the industries that you see adopting this new method of payment?   Jason stated that it's funny, he thinks any industry that is transacting online, this will be huge for, financial institutions are going to be right on top of this, retailers are going to really care about this. Why? Because it's an easier way to acquire knowledge, and to know your customer. Now, for example, the types of customers that will care about this, especially customers that are trying to be socially responsible, making sure that their products that they're purchasing are having minimal negative impact on the environment, or that the company that's building this product is being inclusive in their hiring practices, all this type of information can be shared across this Blockchain.   And so, at the end of the day, that's the overall sort of long-term benefit. Now, we're right in the infancy of this new technology so that's what's very exciting. But at the same time, we're seeing a lot of changes in how customers make decisions, where price used to be the primary drivers, and even for companies, revenue used to be their sort of main goal that they wanted to achieve. Now you're seeing much wider, sort of the range of metrics that companies measure themselves against for success, including things like environmental impact, social responsibility, and governance, which the short term for that is ESG, which is a really hot topic right now, because customers are very interested in understanding the impact their products are having, both socially and on the environment.   Customers Who Are Adopting Blockchain   Me: Now, in your release, you had mentioned that Blockchain Adoption has highlighted some customers, how some customers are looking for new different offerings, it's new, and you know for example, as it relates to the different types of buying personas, if that's the best way to describe it, you will have like the millennials, you have the Gen z's, who do you see adopting in terms of customer base because for example, I don't see my mom engaging in this.   Jason stated no, absolutely. This is definitely for the next generation. We know the up-and-coming generation, the young folks, they are much more cognizant of the environment, and of social justice and equality and those are the customers and the ability to have this information will really benefit, not only because they're more likely to purchase online, but also because they care about these things when they're making the purchase decision much more so than previous generations have.   Me: Okay, and when you say they care, is that kind of tying back into where you said, emotion will now take an even larger role in decision making all because of the fact that they're concerned about equality, justice, fairness, those are things that are high on reasons why they buy from a company?   Jason agreed. You better believe it. You're absolutely right. And what we're seeing more and more today is that it's not simply a price comparison, a lot of the products that the younger generation are purchasing, there's deep reasons behind why they're purchasing that's very different than previous generations. And so, absolutely, that's a huge selling point. And that's just literally where the marketplace is going in the future, because at the end of the day, why do companies care about ESG? It's because the customers are demanding that brands be socially responsible, take care of the environment and that has to be taken into account when you're looking at whether your brand is profitable or not.   Data Transparency and Consumer Loyalty   Me: Now, you also mentioned in your article that there in this whole process, it's important for the companies to adhere to industry regulation and improve supply chain management and there are three things that you touched on industry regulation, data transparency, and consumer loyalty. Could you expound for us as it relates to data transparency and consumer loyalty?   Jason shared that this is where you intersect a lot of different new trends that we're seeing. So for example, if you want to be considered environmentally friendly, the government has set up regulations and standards of which to measure your level of environmental impact the company's having, and in the USA, it's now starting to roll out and become more adhered to. However, other standards around for example, social responsibilities really haven't been set. So, how you measure a brand's level of social responsibility is really up in the air.   And so, right now you're having different ways of measuring it. But what is going to happen eventually, is that there's going to be a standardized way of measuring it and this is where it comes back to customer loyalty. Because if these customers care about these things, they'll be looking at these indicators to understand how the brand they want to purchase from measures up across these very important dimensions.   Me: I get you. So, it's all connected. And then the general supply chain, how does that tie back in?   Jason stated that supply chain exactly, where are your products coming from? Is it being manufactured in a place that is not setting socially responsible markers for how they treat employees, there's in terms of wages, in terms of environmental protection in all of these different areas. So in the past, a company could afford to just measure where they're going to manufacture a product simply on which is the cheapest location - that is going to change as well. Because if that information becomes freely available, customers will be thinking, “You know what, I don't want to purchase this shirt that's made in this part of the world where they're using child labour. I would prefer to pay a few dollars more to purchase it from a brand that's socially responsible.” Does that make sense?   Me: Yes, it does, it totally does. But it also, I think, will require a lot of research on the part of the consumer or the way how the Blockchain system is set up now, they will be able to delve and capture that information readily when they're making the purchase.   Jason stated that that's the future and that's the sort of Holy Grail is to be able to look at the product, scan this code, be able to understand exactly where all this information about the product and it's all at your fingertips. So, the customer can make a much more informed decision than they ever have been able to do before.   Me: Over the years I've definitely seen customer experience evolve, at one point, if you look back at how customers made decisions before, it was heavily driven by what the organization told them, especially before the age of the internet where you could do your own research. And it's like the tables have totally turned Jason where I mean, the ball is fully and even more so as you mentioned, this new technology, this new way of decision making, as we go forward, it's even more in the court of the customer, because the customers are given so much more ammunition now and they should be, because at the end of the day, they're the ones that are opening their wallets, and spending to create these astronomical profits for these organizations globally. So why not put the decision-making capability in their hands, so they can really make a choice for the product or service that they want to purchase holistically.   Jason agreed, absolutely. And what it's going to put a lot of pressure on companies to really deliver a bespoke customer experience that's unique to the needs of every customer, so it will be slightly different. Why? Because that's what customers are going to demand, “You're going to care about the things I care about, right? And you're going to tell me exactly how you are manufacturing these things, and you're going to deliver a shopping experience the way I want a shopping experience to be delivered.”   And what that allows companies is to actually be able to build a more customized experience, because they will have that information readily available. And so, the transparency that will be possible will benefit both the brands if they take advantage of it. But it's definitely going to put a lot more power in the hands of the customer especially because it's exactly you said, knowledge is power and the more knowledge the customer has, the more informed decision they can make.   CX Tips That Will Allow Businesses to Connect and Build Better and Deeper Relationships with Their Customers   Me: Now, Jason, I know the first quarter of the year has passed, but we're in the beginning of the second quarter. But could you give our listeners maybe one or two CX tips that you think, outside of this new technology, because as you mentioned, it's still in its infancy stages, but let's say where they are currently in their business, they're just not there yet clearly. But they're looking to ensure that they employ maybe the best, if you could give them maybe one or two tips that you think will allow them to really connect with their customers, build better and stronger and deeper relationships, what would those two tips be for 2022?   Jason stated that 2022 is the year of Listening and here's why, the marketplace has changed coming out of the pandemic, customers have different expectations for shopping and purchasing experiences and it's different than ever before. And the customers are really going to dictate how they want to shop and how they're going to purchase moving forward. There's a lot of companies out there that are just thinking to themselves, “Oh, I'm just going to hold out until we get back to how things were before.” And the truth of the matter is, things are not going to go back to how they were before, things have changed, and they are different.   And unless you start listening more closely to your customers in every interaction, whether you're a restaurant listening to your patrons and their feedback in terms of what they want, and how they want it delivered, to major brands who are selling investments in ESG, stocks and ETFs, all and everywhere in between.   If you're not listening to your customers and understanding how their wants, needs and desires have evolved, you are going to be left behind and that is really his encouragement to companies coming out at the pandemic to start listening to your customers more closely than you ever have before. Because their opinions and their values have changed.   Me: I've heard some organizations say that they think customers are way more sensitive, they complain about the least little thing since the pandemic, what are your thoughts on organizations that view their customer feedback as customers being too sensitive and it's almost like they're not open to being flexible or being adaptable to take the feedback that the customer is giving them.   Jason shared that it's funny, the brands that they work with that they hear this from are brands that are stuck in the past. And he often hears, “This is the way we've always done it.”   And so, those are the brands that that may have been the way you've done it in the past, but if you don't change your focus from short term financial, quarter over quarter goals, to a longer-term view of what success really means beyond just simply your short-term financial metrics, you're going to be in big trouble. And this is really the tug of war that's going on, it's the old sort of dynamic of, okay, near term profits at any cost versus taking a longer view of your brand, and your brand's health. And let's be honest, public corporations are the ones that have been most guilty of that and those are the ones that he believes are going to be at biggest risk if they don't adapt themselves to the evolving customer.   What Jason is Really Excited About Now!   Jason shared that they're working to develop a better understanding of the impact ESG is going to have on decision making over the next 12 to 24 months. So, over that time, they'll be speaking to investors and customers, as well as business leaders to understand who is driving from an organizational point of view, interest in ESG. And what measures companies are taking to implement tactics that address customers ESG concerns? And how important is ESG becoming in the decision making of customers? So, those are the three angles they're looking at. And so, it's going to be quite interesting, because he thinks what we're talking about Blockchain is just one aspect of the bigger evolution that's taking place.   And so, it's going to be interesting to see how these things evolve together, because there's still many that think that this is a fad, it's going away. They're betting against that, they're saying no, these things are here to stay, and these are the changes in evolution and how business is being conducted. So, it'll be interesting to see what business leaders are thinking in terms of these new and various approaches to thinking about the company's success.   Where Can We Find Jason Online   LinkedIn – Jason Ten-Pow Website – www.onrcx.com   Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Jason Uses   When asked about a quote or saying that he tends to revert to, Jason stated yes. First thing is, “Stop” whatever you're doing stop, take a deep breath. If you have a big problem, the first thing you want to do is you want to cut that problem into smaller chunks that are manageable, that are solvable, and then create a pathway ahead, don't just see a problem and dive in and try to solve it. Because that's the biggest issue that companies and that's why they hit the wall, “Oh, I want to improve customer experience. Great. I want this metric up 10%. Let's throw money at the wall and see what sticks.” No, that's never the right approach. You have to take a very strategic approach to these types of problems and these types of challenges, and you have to always have a plan. So, make sure you stop and take the time to plan.   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 Unbreakable: A proven process for building unbreakable relationships with customers by Jason Ten-Pow   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!

Eric Vermillion is the CEO of Helpshift, a San Francisco based company that develops mobile customer support software that helps companies provide better customer support in mobile apps. Before Helpshift, Eric was instrumental in advancing BlueCat to one of Canada's most notable software exits, and also helped grow revenue at NICE Systems to over $1 Billion. He has also held sales and leadership roles at PTC, Tecnomatix and Triad Systems Corporation. Eric holds a Bachelor's degree in management from Purdue University.   Questions   We like to give our guest an opportunity to do their own introduction in their own words, can you just tell us a little bit about how you got to where you are today? Can you tell us a little bit about what Helpshift does? Do you see mobile applications advancing even more in the whole development of customer experience on a global level? Or do you find people are looking for more opportunities where they can have more face-to-face interactions and less interaction with the digital or the technological side of things? Metaverse, there are a lot of people who still have a little bit of apprehension in relation to that whole emergence of that, what it represents, how to interface with it. What are your thoughts on that? Do you think it's something that will become the norm? How do you think people can adjust to it feeling more comfortable because it's so different and generally speaking, human beings just don't adjust to change very readily. Could you share with us what's the one online resource, tool, website, or app that you absolutely can't live without in your business? Could you also share with our audience, maybe one or two books that have had the biggest impact on you? It could be a book that you read recently, or even one that you read a long time ago, but it still has impacted you in a very great way. We have a lot of listeners who are business owners and managers, who feel they have great products and services, but they lack the constantly motivated human capital. If you were sitting across the table from that person, what's the one piece of advice that you would give them to have a successful business? What's the one thing that's going on in your life right now that you're really excited about - either something you're working on to develop yourself or your people. Where can listeners find you online? Do you have a quote or a saying that during times of adversity or challenge, you will tend to revert to this quote, it kind of helps to get you back on track if for any reason you got derailed or just kind of helps to get you back refocused.   Highlights   Eric's Journey   Eric shared that he spent his entire career in the world of software, pretty good chunk of it on the sales end of things. He kind of got lucky coming out of Purdue University, when all his friends were taking jobs at places like John Deere and Caterpillar and Anderson Consulting, I found the Bay area software company to join and kind of fell in love with technology and software. So, he's spent his career helping people use technology to create value. And he's spent a big chunk of it in the world of customer service, he was at NICE for 8 years and got to be a part of things when kind of this whole omni channel trend happened. After he left NICE, he did a couple of other software plays in the world of identity management and IT security with blue cat, he found his way back and spent the last 3 years in Helpshift trying to really redefine what good customer service looks like for mobile apps and using more mobile devices more effectively.   What Does Helpshift do?   When asked about what Helpshift does, Eric shared that if you think of the your mobile phone, you probably engage with a lot of mobile apps on a day to day basis. Most people do and that's a trend that is rapidly increasing. They help brands use that mobile app to create essentially an orchestration tool for consumers to drive a very elegant customer experience. So, when you're in the mobile app you got typically it's the mobile app knows who you are, there's some context to the situation. And so, their customers are able to really provide their consumers with a much more elegant logical flow within the mobile app, allowing them to really self-serve much more effectively and by the time they actually get to an agent or human if they need to, because it's a more complex problem, or they're a blue-chip customer. A lot of the problems already been solved, the context is there for the agents, so they can become a bit more like a concierge or a personal assistant than then the traditional view of what we would think of as a customer service agent.   Mobile Applications Advancing to Develop Customer Experience   Me: Do you see mobile applications advancing even more in the whole development of customer experience on a global level? Or do you find people are looking for more opportunities where they can have more face-to-face interactions and less interaction with the digital or the technological side of things?   Eric stated that those are two separate interesting questions. He thinks after what we've all been through in the last couple of years with COVID, he'd be surprised if there's anyone in the world that isn't craving a little bit more face-to-face interaction. So, he does think people want that, but he's not sure that customer service is the place where they're striving for more kind of face to face, human to human interaction.   People are busy, people's schedules have changed and evolved a lot over the last couple of years, people tend to do a lot more working remotely, they tend to have schedules that are not very standard and typical, so they want to be able to find resolution to their problems whenever they want, wherever they want, at whatever time of day they want and that's something that he thinks companies are going to have to continue to adapt to.   And one thing that we know is true is that there were 2 million mobile apps that were created last year and there'll be more than that that are created this year. People tend to carry their mobile device with them, all the time 24/7, for most of us it's sitting next to our bed even at night. And so, it is this tool that's on our person 24 hours a day and when used properly, it can be an incredibly powerful tool for accessing support and creating a support engagement that really fits your needs and your schedule as a consumer, whenever and wherever you want.   He also thinks that when you think about some of the other trends that are going on in the world, like the emergence of this thing, everyone's calling the metaverse, other kind of distributed commerce technologies, like blockchain and web3, and other digital commerce trends that are happening in the world, most of those actually are accessed through mobile devices and through mobile apps as well. So, it's a trend that he thinks would be hard to find any reason that it's not going to continue to grow and kind of grow exponentially.   Metaverse, How Can People Adjust to it Feeling More Comfortable Because It's So Different   Me: I'm glad you mentioned the metaverse, because there are a lot of people who still have a little bit of apprehension in relation to that whole emergence of that, what it represents, how to interface with it. What are your thoughts on that? Do you think it's something that will become the norm? How do you think people can adjust to it feeling more comfortable because it's so different and generally speaking, human beings just don't adjust to change very readily.   Eric stated that all very good and fair points. He thinks that a lot of people's view of the metaverse is driven by the images, or the headlines that they see about broken virtual reality experiences, they think the metaverse as kind of a 3D VR kind of gaming environment and to a certain extent, it largely is in 2022, but the evolution of it is happening very, very fast.   And for him, he envision this world, not so many years from now, the technology is there to make this happen right now, where maybe he has a meeting with someone who is sitting in Japan, speaks only Japanese, someone who's in Brazil that speaks only Portuguese, someone in France who speaks only French, and himself in a room having a meeting, in a virtual environment in real time collaborating on some project where they all understand each other, and they can effectively communicate and collaborate in a way, that's just not possible today, and kind of a purely physical world.   And so, he thinks there's just so many applications for it like that really impacted us in a positive way, in a professional environment, in an educational environment, from a healthcare perspective that gets taken granted a lot today when people just think of the metaverse is kind of this scary 3D video game. And all of those things that he just described, of course, are also going to have commerce that comes alongside of them and ownership and digital rights that around and a lot of that is being handled today or will likely be handled through blockchain technology.   And so, you have this kind of parallel digital existence that happens with all of this commerce, would be naive to think that that's not going to create a lot of support issues and a lot of support challenges. And jumping from that world, out into the more physical world to pick up the phone and make a phone call or send someone an email is highly impractical when you think about it. So, he thinks support tools are going to have to evolve as well to be able to handle some of those changes.   App, Website or Tool that Eric Absolutely Can't Live Without in His Business   When asked about an online resource that he cannot live without in his business, Eric stated that it's probably pretty boring, but he spent a big chunk of his day in G Suite, from kind of managing the calendar to all the collaboration that happens over the tools. So that's a pretty boring one because they spend a lot of time talking about mobile apps, he would maybe add a bonus that he travels a lot and he'd really struggle if he didn't have his American Airlines app, that's kind of how he gets from place to place anymore. So that's one that he tends to use a great deal as well.   Books that Have Had the Biggest Impact on Eric   When asked about books that have had the biggest impact, Eric stated that he's a big fan of Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don't by Jim Collins, that's just that's one of those timeless books, the concept of the whole hedgehog principle and really having that one thing that you're laser focused on, and the whole organization is laser focused on, that you want to be known for. As well as the concept of having the right people on the bus, even if you don't know where they will sit. Those are just concepts that resonates with him very well with him, and philosophies that he tends to use and in his own management style.   On a more kind of non-business level, he's a big fan of Bob Goff as well. He's got a very fascinating story. His first book, which is called Love Does: Discover a Secretly Incredible Life in an Ordinary World, is still his favourite of the ones that he's written. He's written a few since that he thinks that was probably 10 years old at this point. But he tends to really love experiences, he thinks Bob does a great job sharing interesting experiences and the lessons you can take from each one in an extremely interesting way.   Advice for Business Owners and Managers to Have a Successful Business   Me: We have a lot of listeners who are business owners and managers, who feel they have great products and services, but they lack the constantly motivated human capital. If you were sitting across the table from that person, what's the one piece of advice that you would give them to have a successful business?   Eric stated that you know that you're a coach, you're not just a manager. He saw this clip in the last few days of Nick Saban, the Alabama football coach that's highly regarded and very well known. He stepped in and prevented a player from sharing a piece of cake with another player. So, they have this spring game every year, where they play against their own teammates, and the losing team gets beans and franks and the winning team gets a steak dinner with chocolate cake. And the winning teammate wanted to share a piece of cake with his really good friend that was on the losing team and Saban saw it and shut it down.   And he just loves that because losing hurts, and it should hurt and that's how you know you don't want to do it anymore. And he thinks people sometimes need to realize that they have an obligation as a leader, as a manager, to also be a coach and not just a manager. His job is really to help everyone who works for him to perform at a high level, and to help prepare them for their next job or even help them get their next job. And he thinks too many managers forget that often. And you can't buy your way out of that responsibility no matter how much you're paying for someone.   And then in this world where human capital and good human capital is very hard to come by, and often very expensive, losing sight of that responsibility to really coach and help a person be prepared for whatever's next, it's one of those things you take for granted if you're just trying to sometimes pay top dollar for people because you think that'll automatically make them the best at things, which is not the case.   Me: I totally agree. One of the things that we talk about a lot as well as a customer service trainer is that the most important role of the leader is to grow and develop people because as you mentioned before, you want to have people around you who are robust, who are efficient, who are intrinsically motivated to do what they're employed to do, but at the same time, they feel like they have some purpose and for them to feel like they have some purpose, they have to feel like they're a part of a bigger goal other than collecting a salary. So, I do quite agree with you that leaders are coaches even though a lot of them may not look at themselves as a coach, I like that phrase that you put it as.   What Eric is Really Excited About Now!   Eric shared that from a people perspective, the pandemic has created a lot of confusion around what work looks like and you hear a lot of companies talking about they're going to be remote only or they're going to be office only or they're going to be hybrid or like lots of different things that people are calling this thing. He spent most of his career as a remote employee and it's hard, it is not something that there's a kind of a playbook or a handbook out there to do. And it was harder before Zoom and messaging and always available internet, but it's still hard.   And he believes very strongly that companies need to have a framework for expectations and that's something that they've been continuing to work on a lot as a company. Expectations on what's expected of you as an employee, and that is independent of physical location, that is just what's expected of you as an employee, he doesn't really care where you sit, if you're doing those things, he doesn't care where you sit. He doesn't care if you're physically in an office or remote. If you're following those guidelines and principles of what they stand for as an organization and using the technology to do that, if you're doing it like that, he doesn't really care where you work from. He thinks a lot of companies think that they can kind of hand you a bag of cool technology and software, and it will make you a great remote worker but it just unfortunately doesn't always work that way, you have to teach people what's expected, inspect it regularly and then drag them back into the office when it's too hard or people are just not able to kind of cope with that very unstructured environment that you have at home, not everyone can do it. And frankly, not everyone wants to and so that's professionally.   On a personal level, he did get a Peloton a few months ago so he's been loving that and trying to take off his own COVID-19.   Where Can We Find Eric Online   Website - www.helpshift.com/ LinkedIn – Helpshift LinkedIn – Eric Vermillion   Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Eric Uses   When asked about a quote or saying that he tends to revert to, Eric shared that his favourite quote is the Wayne Gretzky quote, or at least he thinks it's widely attributed to Wayne Gretzky, which is “You miss 100% of the shots you don't take.”   Me: All right. And that's a good one. How do you think people can apply that in this whole environment that we're operating in? As you mentioned, we're emerging out of this global pandemic, even though we're not fully emerged out of it, people are trying to just kind of get their life back into some form of semblance. So, with all of that in play and there's also I think a lot of people are still experiencing a lot of fear and anxiety because they don't know what to expect. How do you think that quote can help people to really raise the bar?   Eric stated that he thinks it can be a motivating factor for you. He's definitely a person that's fairly easily amused and he's very much an experience person, he doesn't particularly care about stuff and things, and he thinks for a lot of people over the last couple of years, they've had to figure out more interesting ways to entertain themselves versus going out and kind of buying stuff and looking more for satisfaction through material things. Every day is really a new opportunity to learn something, pain tends to create intelligence, practice creates perfection and that kind of galvanizes you.   He thinks that every person that he meets is a new lesson, every person that he has had an opportunity to help in some way is literally currency for him, it makes him feel wealthy, even if it doesn't add a penny to his own bank account. And every time he gets a chance to experience a new city or a new restaurant, or make a new friend, it makes him feel wealthier than the day before. And he think that's one of those things that every one of us can remember, every one of us that's above ground and breathing has all those opportunities every single day to like add those experiences, add those things that do make you wealthier in a non-monetary way, and never miss a chance to take one of those shots and being aware of that he thinks is an incredibly motivating thing.   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 Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don't by Jim Collins Love Does: Discover a Secretly Incredible Life in an Ordinary World by Bob Goff   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!

Cum inside Me ALL inside Me VOl 1 By Jus Oj #Reupload by JusOjIcon

Gadi Shamia is the CEO and Co-Founder of Replicant, a conversational AI platform founded on the belief that machines are ready to have useful, complex conversations that will transform the way they interact with the world. Prior to Replicant, Gadi helped take Talkdesk, a $10B contact centre software market leader from a seed-stage company to a Unicorn startup as its COO, and played a key role in architecting and executing its 20X growth in people and revenue.   Questions   Could you share with our listeners a little bit about your journey? Can you share with us a little bit about how organizations are using AI to enhance customer experience? And have you seen that change more drastically, especially in the last 2 to 3 years? Could you also share with us how the intelligent voice automation is helping to improve business outcomes for companies who don't have enough manpower to keep up with demand? What's the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely can't live without in your business? Could you share with us maybe one or two books that have had the biggest impact on you, it could be a book that you read a very long time ago or even listened to, or one that you have engaged with recently, but has really left a big mark on you. Could you also share with us what's the one thing that's going on in your life right now that you're really excited about? Either something you're working on to develop yourself or your people. Where can listeners find you online? Do you have a quote are saying that during times of adversity or challenge, you tend to revert to this quote, it kind of helps to get you back on track if for any reason you got off track, or you got derailed? Do you have one of those?   Highlights   Gadi's Journey   Gadi shared that he likes this question because it gives him an opportunity to share with people that a lot of one's journey is luck, and maybe early smart decisions. But some of them in some cases no way to predict how one decision will lead to the next opportunity.   He got into tech as an accident actually, he studied accounting and economics. The tech industry at the time in the 90s was not really evolved actually even studying computer science was one of the easiest degrees to get to. And accounting economics management type degrees were really hard to get to at the time, really reverse from what is today.   And he got into tech because his university was on strike, because their tuition was increased. So, all the students went on an almost a semester long strike. And back in Tel Aviv, and a friend of his said, “Hey, you seem bored. Somebody's looking for a quality assurance person, a tech company.” He said, “I don't know what quality assurance is, don't know exactly what tech is but let me give it a try.”   And he jumped in, he really liked it and they really liked him and his journey in technology really started because he was bored during a strike in university, he could have been an accountant by now.   And then from there one thing led to the other, joining a tech company was great, it later on split into two. I stayed was one of the two sides is a Co-Founder and build an ERP and accounting software that is still used today. It's called SAP Business One it was acquired by SAP back in 2002. Had a chance because of its acquisition to spend 6 years as senior executive at SAP. And really one thing led to the other in a way that eventually led him to do what he does today. So, some luck, some hard choices, some easy choices, and you can find yourself in a great career.   Organizations Using AI to Enhance Customer Experience   Me: Now you have a lot of experience working with AI. And of course, there's a growing demand for it globally. Can you share with us a little bit about how organizations are using AI to enhance customer experience? And have you seen that change more drastically, especially in the last 2 to 3 years?   Gadi stated that yes, they actually at very beginning of wider adoption of AI in organizations, AI has been here as an option for several years, but we're just seeing it become more mainstream because in any area, any new technology, the first generation tend to not be great.   If you've compared Google Maps to some of the older versions of navigation software, in almost all cases, the first generation paves the way to better products that are using more advanced technology and some of the learnings of the previous generation. So he thinks we're in the first era of wide adoption of AI because it finally works.   And we see AI used across multiple use cases. The first adoption of AI was actually for quality assurance and call analytics. Traditionally in contact centres, calls were this black box and you record them for quality assurance and training purposes but really no one ever listens to them because the time it takes to listen to a phone call, the time the call takes. So it's pretty hard to listen to call especially on mass.   So what we see is more and more companies were adopting call analytics as a way to listen quote unquote, to many calls at the same time and derive insights but also training materials back to the agents. And this is really helpful because it allows us to train agents and help them learn faster. But it actually doesn't solve the fundamental issue we see today in the customer service space, which is lack of agents.   So it's great that we can train agents better but over the last couple of years, we've seen a problem, it used to be pretty bad becoming almost catastrophical. Agent availability was always an issue in the contact centre space and the pandemic made it much worse. We all heard about the great resignation, where more and more people choose not to participate in this type of job, tends to be entry level, mundane and repetitive. So the available pool of agents decreased quite dramatically.   And an added disruption that the pandemic added was childcare, was people becoming sick themselves, people caring for maybe older parents, and agent availability dropped even further.   So if you talk with customers today, the question they're asking is not how we train agents is how we hire more agents if it's even possible. And then can we train them and onboard them faster, but more importantly, can we start using AI to automate some of the most mundane and repetitive work of those agents, so we can free up these agents to do more meaningful work.   And the reason he's so excited about this change is that it's a triple win to everyone. If you can take away from the agents the most menial, repetitive tasks, their work is going to be more rewarding, companies are going to be inclined to pay them more, they're more likely to stay longer in their jobs, and customers are less likely to wait hours to speak with an agent. So it's a pretty interesting intersection where AI can really create a relief for the first time in a meaningful way. Intelligent Voice Automation Helping to Improve Business Outcomes for Companies   Gadi shared that this is the core of what Replicant does. And they have many, many examples of what the impact of that and he'll give a couple of examples. As he said, they hear constantly from their customers that hiring became their biggest challenge. And they hear quotes like, “I now try hiring 9 people for every five roles because I know that in the first two months, 4 will leave.” So you have to hire more people for the same exact number of openings. People stay for a shorter period of time, it used to be a year to year and a half. Now agents will call it quits after 6, 7 months. So that's an ongoing problem.   And couple of interesting examples. One of them was one of their customers ECSI in a financial service area. So they deal with student loans and other payment products and their hot season is somewhere between January and tax time, which last year was May, this year, hopefully will stay April.   And the first four months of the year, they get the majority of their calls around student loans, tax forms, and so on. So every year the ritual was similar, you have to go and hire extra 20, 25, 30 agents to just help with the seasonal increase and this is a very hard task. Everybody high season agent knows that you have to hire people for a short period of time, they're less committed to the business, they come there to plug a hole, if you train them but then the whole thing goes away at the end of the season and you have to repeat the whole thing every time you have a predicted increase in call volume.   So, for ECSI, this is the first year when they don't have to hire seasonal agents to deal with the tax issues because they're able to automate a majority of their simple calls and repeatable calls around tax and tax forms, “I didn't get the form, please send it again to me.” And so on.   It's created a really interesting experience, for the callers, it used to be or this is the hot season, I have to wait more to speak with an agent just to get the form I probably lost in the mail. Now they get an answer within seconds and the solution was in 2, 3 minutes.   For the company, they don't have to go through the rigmarole of starting somewhere in October to identify, interview agents, hire them in December, train them over the holidays, and make sure they are ready to take calls in January, just to let them go in April.   So, the win here is both on the customer side where the calls don't have to wait on hold anymore. But also on the company side that doesn't have to go through this process which takes a lot of time, effort and energy from management, instead of focusing on continuous improving of customer service. So, that's one example where it's really helpful.   Another one, which he really likes is one of their customers in the roadside assistance space, they are serving large areas of Canada, Canada has a pretty hard winter this year and literally they told them they could not have answered all the emergency roadside service calls they got in some of the coldest days.   Because as you can imagine, a cool day and people try to start that car and they can't and they need roadside assistance and when a day like this happen, all of a sudden, instead of getting X number of calls, 100 calls, you get 300 calls and it's really hard to summon up enough agents in a day like this. Also, because the agent might be stuck at home with a dead battery.   So, the ability to answer any number of calls that came their way and be able to help all their customers in the coldest, hardest days was a big, big change from previous years for them, where some calls had to wait for 20, 30 minutes on hold, sometimes stuck out of the car in 5 degrees weather.   App, Website or Tool that Gadi Absolutely Can't Live Without in His Business   When asked about an online resource that he cannot live without in his business, Gadi shared that he thinks for everyone it would be Google. He really forgets how he looks for information and either way, Google became this notepad that allows you to really get quick answers for questions. But then also got kind of deepen your research. This is one that comes to mind first, but he will say that it's so much easier to consume information today that he can't really name one tool, he thinks if he had to, it's Google.   But he learned a lot from Twitter because of the randomness of that. He follows an interesting selection of people that covers a lot of areas of his interest. And it helps you learn from a less structured way, in Google, you go and seek an answer to a question, in Twitter in a way, you stumble upon topics you may have not thought of often and kind of open a new way of thinking for you. So, he likes the randomness of Twitter, but also a huge fan of audiobooks and podcasts.   And he constantly listened to at least one audiobook and maybe a couple of podcasts that he's excited about and it's interesting. His style of doing that, he likes to walk the dog and listen to a podcast and it helped him think freely about some other areas which may not be directly related to what he does, but can lead to interesting thoughts and solutions at work. So, just a way to provoke thinking much more than maybe learn something new. So if you look at what he's using every day is Twitter, Audible, Google and whatever his favourite podcast platform. Currently, he's using Spotify, but it changes over time.   Books that Have Had the Biggest Impact on Gadi   When asked about books that have had the biggest impact, Gadi shared that he wants to give credit to Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers by Geoffrey Moore, which was one of the first technology books he's ever read. And he's not sure that if the impact of this book, the book is amazing and impactful, he will explain why. But also it was one of the first books that he read so it may have been the transformation he went through was more impactful because it was just one of the first books like the first call you may have had on cell phone in the middle of the desert, it's always more impactful than the new version of the iPhone that seems a little bit more of the same.   But he read the Crossing the Chasm, he worked on his first ever product that eventually is the one that was acquired by SAP and now turned to BSAP Business One. And they had this classic crossing the chasm problem. They launched this product and the first day they launch it, it literally was on DVDs, this is this was mid 90s and literally, they couldn't print enough DVDs to deal with the demand they had. And 30 days later, everybody returned the product, not everybody but 80% of the customers use the 30 days money back guarantee and return the product. And it became much, much harder to sell to mainstream customers and it took them 3 years to kind of crack the code of what a robust ERP product needed to look like until they're able to get to the mainstream and start getting wide adoption that eventually led to SAP acquiring a company and taking this product globally.   And he thinks the reason the book was so impactful was one, it came at exactly the right time, he was in a chasm was his company unable to move from early adopters to more mainstream buyers. The second is, it provide reusable useful tools that he use actually across his career. There's a concept of nine point checklist of product launch that he's still using today even as Replicant, one of the first exercise they've done as a leadership team is use the nine point checklist from this book that he read in 1995 to define the target market, the focus customer, the problem they're trying to solve. So having a reusable tool in the book that you can use 25 years after you read it, is just unique. There are so many books that just talk about small specific topic and they're really no more impactful than an article. And he thinks this book having this long lasting impact on him, is very unique. Now, he has read hundreds of books after that, each one of them left a small mark but this is definitely the most impactful book he has ever read in a business sense.   What Gadi is Really Excited About Now!   Gadi shared that it's a really interesting time when it comes to people development; it's something that he cares about greatly. So, as you said at the beginning, people can start calculating his age just by his years of experience and work in different companies. And his perspective, not shifted but evolved to really believe that the most important thing we can do as business leaders is be accountable and responsible to help our own team develop and grow. When you work in technology, especially when you're young, at least his perspective was that was really cared about the product he built and technology he built and he got a lot of traction from building a product that sold a lot of customers, like he still gets a lot of traction from it. But when you look in retrospect, he doesn't miss the products and now own and run by other people, he misses the people he works with and he feels most rewarded by seeing their career.   The intern that worked with him at ASAP and now CEO of a company that is probably going to be lasting for generations. Or the product manager that he hired 20 years ago and now is a Senior VP in a large public company running their entire product line and she's now by the way, a consultant and helping Replicant as kind of part of the give back programme in the Silicon Valley. So, if this is the most rewarding thing for him, he wants to make sure they as a company, continue to help their team launching their careers and make their stay at Replicant maybe 5 years or 10 years or 20 years a meaningful stop in their career.   So a lot of what he's focused on right now as they kick off 2022 is how do they provide this type of support to their team, being a remote company having people in Canada, in the U.S, some people in Europe. How do they create a platform that allows everybody to launch and improve their career and find Replicant to be a learning and growing experience.   Another area where he's really excited about is finding ways to support people in a more personal way. Companies traditionally stayed away from anything mental health or too personal especially in the U.S culture, we supposed to kind of keep things separated, you only work here, let's not talk about your emotions. And he thinks now, and maybe the pandemic helped with that, it became more normal to talk about mental health in the workplace and the impact of the pandemic and the impact of isolation and the impact of working remotely. So, he's excited to kind of tackle this relatively new problem and find ways to define a new SAT score between companies and its employees, about how might they support people also in their mental health journey and in their mental well being, maybe better than mental health, but their mental well being.   Me: All right, sounds good, very good, very forward thinking of an organization because you really have to take care of the person as a whole.   Where Can We Find Gadi Online   Twitter – @gadishamia LinkedIn – Gadi Shamia Website – http://www.replicant.ai   Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Gadi Uses   When asked about a quote or saying that he tends to revert to, Gadi shared that he doesn't have a quote, but he has a story. Early on in his life, he served in the military and he was in several situations that were really complicated, it's not necessarily a matter of life and death, as much as they were just complicated, where it looks like everything that could have gone wrong, went wrong, and then another time over and another time over and another time over. And the stress was real, and impactful and physical.   He used to remind myself a story a lot when he was younger, and just the fate memory of the story is very helpful by just remembering being stuck in the mud without being able to move at night far away and having series of issues happening one after the other. And then after a couple of days of intense work being able to get out of this mess. And he just reminds himself that, “Most of the issues he faced today are not at the scale.” And they're not really life and death and they could be resolved in different ways.   So, when he feels like he's overwhelmed mainly, he remembers the feeling of being overwhelmed when he was 22, much less experienced with much more severe consequences of a mistake. And he just says, you know what, we can just go through it and just having this peace of mind that he will be able to navigate it because it's not going to be as bad as that helped him a lot, especially early in his career.   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 Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers by Geoffrey Moore   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!

Two things that scare us are corpses and ghosts. Peter Kreeft wrote about this, noting that these scare us because they are separated things that belong together. When apart, dead bodies revolt our senses and spirits terrorize our minds. Horror movie plots depend upon our disturbance at this separation of body and soul, or if not total separation, then the disordering or the dismemberment of bodies and souls. Without the soul the body is not animated, and without the body the soul is as invisible as a passing breeze.Now, I am not a trained philosopher, but it seems fairly straight forward that if God doesn't exist, then our soul fades away with him, and along with those things, so goes our free will. Worse still, in a godless universe where we are happenstances of chemistry, the “do unto others” notion begins to unglue. Things we hold in our minds fall apart quickly once the soul is denied. The soul is like a binding agent, like an egg in a recipe, that keeps the flour of matter held together. Remove either part of the recipe and the whole cookie crumbles.This presented a real problem for me, as the idea of the Golden Rule clung to me even after falling away from faith. The concept of “do unto others” is found in various religions and cultures throughout history. However, the further step of “love your enemy” is unique to only a few. Jesus was quoting the Old Testament in his two commandments to “love God” and “do unto others.” He did not invent it himself, he was quoting Moses and Proverbs, but taking it even further into forgiveness. To make the point stick, he claimed to be God, the actual one and only God, the living God, and then he lived out this practice of loving his enemies, all the way to his final breath on the Cross.This is the trouble with Jesus.He raised the bet so high that even if other books of wisdom say, “love your enemy,” none of them declare that the speaker or author of the phrase was God himself. This claim that he makes cannot be understated. He says he is God in the flesh. Imagine hearing someone say that to you. What is most unbelievable to me is that I believe him when he says it.More strange still is the fact that even non-believers quote and paraphrase Jesus, when they should be rejecting him entirely as a liar. Many atheists are obsessed with Jesus, but only to disprove him or mock him. Yet they can't look away. They can't stop talking about Jesus. The trouble here is that what he says is insane to us, but then he doesn't act insane. Instead everything he says and does becomes convincing that he is not lying, which is why we cannot stop reading and arguing about him, and naturally, those who deny him wind up hating his followers. Oddly enough, Jesus predicted all of this, telling his followers that they would be hated. Wow, was he right about that.If Jesus is not God, then what else would Jesus be but an arrogant and insane person? That's why the response from deniers comes like a hammer. If you don't see the God in Jesus, then the response could only be anger. Really, who could possibly be taken serious saying, “I forgive your sins,” unless the person saying it was God? Who could possibly have the nerve to speak it, and expect to be believed, save God himself?The Thomas Jefferson Bible is an attempt to circumvent this problem of Jesus' divinity, but Jefferson missed the point from the start. Jesus is not only instructing us about God. He is very clearly telling us that he is God. Jefferson cut out all miracles and supernatural events of his Bible, keeping just the teachings of Jesus. As a Deist, Jefferson believed in God, but not in the divinity of Jesus. But why would anyone, let alone the wise Jefferson, keep the teachings of an ordinary flesh-and-bone person that claimed to be God but was lying about it? If Jesus is not God, why would anyone care what he said about anything, on any topic?When I was a non-believer, I thought Thomas Jefferson was onto something, but at some point in my struggle with faith in the Resurrection I realized that if the miracles are not true, then Jesus is not God, and that would make the teachings a complete waste of time. Buddhism has great teachings, so you can get that there. Stoicism has all the morals and self-denial you'll ever need, and a ton of great sayings to use in place of prayer. Greek mythology has more characters and better drama. We don't need or want an “ethical teacher” who says he is God, unless he actually is God. If he is truly the incarnate God, then yes, we want that. We want that very much. More than anything in the world. There are plenty of people in history who have believed they are God. But we don't believe any of those people. We only believe this one carpenter who made the claim.If the miracles and Resurrection did not happen, then Jesus is a fraud. But if the miracles are true, then the teachings matter. No, it's more than that. Then everything he ever said or did matters immensely. Quite honestly I would rather Jefferson had carved a version of the Gospels that kept the miracles instead of the teachings, because while the teachings are wonderful, the Resurrection is why a billion people occupy pews every week. They do not get dressed up for church on Sunday morning because he told the parable of the talents or upbraided some Pharisees about the meaning of the law. The Resurrection is everything. The teachings interpret the rules we are the live by, but they do not provide the reason for belief. The reason for belief is the miracle, not the parables. I don't like rules. But I love the miracle. Thus, I love the parables, too. If the Resurrection didn't happen, then those rules don't matter. But the more I read the Gospels the more I realize that I can not help but see that Jesus is God. There is just no other way around it. I cannot read it any other way.So as a result, if you see that Jesus is the incarnate God, his “do unto others” and “pray for your enemies” become real commands. You don't have martyrs of other faiths praying for their enemies while being tortured and killed, as Jesus did when he cried out, “Forgive them for they know not what they do." Then you have the many saints doing the same thing, like St. Stephen or St. Maria Goretti or Good King Wenceslaus. For a believer the right answer to every situation is to imitate Jesus, but this proves very difficult. This is like reading fan fiction, where the imitator never lives up to the original writer.Sure, praying for your enemies sounds good on paper, but that idea is not natural to us. Love my enemy sounds reasonable when I am comfortable and full and warm. Most of us live in greater comfort than any king who existed before the inventions of refrigeration or indoor plumbing. In a stable society, with well-fed people, in warm houses, and plenty of jobs, then, yes, “love your enemy” seems entirely possible. But many people today can feel how tenuous and fragile this order of our modern society actually is and no prophet is needed to announce that we are likely occupying a temporary state in human history.This problem of being only a creature, only chemistry, is troubling, or should be troubling to us all. If we have intellect but no real free will, with no goal save that of our next meal or personal achievement, hope and charity sink like stones. If we lack souls, then we are solely creatures, and creatures forget “do unto others” when resources grow scarce. When it comes time to eat, a wolf does not think of the good of the pack until its own belly is full, nor does a blade of grass consider its neighbor when searching for water in a drought. Plants and animals do not divest of their resources or pray for their enemies, they merely strive for self-preservation and reproduction. These ideas would sometimes corner me when the “noonday demon” of depression would arrive unannounced, at any hour, not only noon. Then, as a creature, I had few places to turn, but none of those places could really help.Yes, there are pills and therapy, but I could not cry out, "Help me, science!" to answer the deepest longing of my heart, which was never fully satisfied with what this finite world can offer. I could read about Cognitive Behavioral therapy, but that was an arrow still aimed at the self. Mindfulness was another self-buttressing solution, and was a bit warmer to the problem but still faced earthward. Then there was talking to someone, but the talk would give guidance toward lifestyle changes, yoga, hobbies, and offer pamphlets and especially pills. Psychiatry since the time of Sigmund Freud has loathed faith so a nudge never came from there. After making all the lifestyle changes and trying all the suggestions, it always seemed that pills was the actual answer.Doctor: Any tobacco or alcohol or drug use?Me: None.Doctor: So you have a healthy diet and exercise regularly?Me: Yes. Except for daily breakfast cereal with 9 grams of added sugar per serving.Doctor: What about yoga?Me: Yes. I've done that.Doctor: How is your job and family relationships?Me: All very stable.Doctor: And you have hobbies and friends.Me: Yes.Doctor: What about financial difficulties?Me: I have a good job.Doctor: Are you overstressed?Me: Only when I drink too much coffee.Doctor: And you've read those pamphlets I gave you?Me: Yes, and many other books.Doctor: (pensive, coming to the end of his WebMD list of suggestions) Have you tried prayer?I'm kidding. Of course the last comment didn't happen. No, here is what the last comment was:Doctor: (pensive, coming to the end of his WebMD list of suggestions) Well, I guess we can increase your dosage. How many milligrams are you taking? I'll write a new prescription for you.Always pills. Always pills. Hooray for pills! I felt like the scene in the movie Dumb and Dumber where Jim Carrey is stuffing rat poison pills into a man's mouth and telling him, “Pills are good. Pills are good.”Science, that trusty tool to fix all the things, could offer facts and instruct me about neurotransmitters and receptors and synaptic clefts. Better yet, science could do some magic with those pills that seemed to provide a solution. But in the end I realized that pills did not resolve the problem any more than getting high or drunk ever solved a problem. Taking pills to address spiritual problems is like taking Advil to heal a compound bone fracture. It's the wrong treatment.So science wasn't the solution.Nor could I say, “Help me, self!” when the well inside was already dry. The cistern was cracked, my tank was empty, so I could not draw up the strength needed to restore myself, as my self lacked the necessary mortar to seal the drain. In fact, my self was the problem, so I only could pretend for a while to “suck it up” or “man up.” As an employee of large corporations, I was very good at keeping up the adage “Fake it until you make it,” as that is the lifeblood of office culture. But faking takes a toll. At some point, unless you are especially gifted with the twin pillars of pride and vanity, faking it becomes hard to maintain. Along with drinking issues, this is another stop in life where I discovered the flaw in willpower, as the self has its limits. Both science and willpower eventually run into finite walls. What a surprise then when I discovered that the Holy Spirit not only seals the cistern, but it fills it too, and as a bonus it can pass through those finite walls.No knowledge or possessions or status or science or self-assurance could help me with the underlying questions. “If you're felling depressed,” I was told, “it's because there is a chemical imbalance in your brain that requires medication.” Whenever I heard this I could not help but think of Brave New World and the drug called soma, where the characters would take this wonder drug to bury any uncomfortable feelings or questions about their life and the universe. The narrator even says “…that second dose of soma had raised a quite impenetrable wall between the actual universe and their minds.” In fact, various lines from the book says it all. Soma had “All the advantages of Christianity and alcohol; none of their defects.”What I heard from my fellow atheist friends and my doctor was what Huxley's sex-obsessed character Lenina says in the book when Bernard is feeling blue:“…why you don't take soma when you have these dreadful ideas of yours. You'd forget all about them. And instead of feeling miserable, you'd be jolly. So jolly.”So I did. Or I tried to be jolly. I pretended for periods of time to have conquered the problem, but it never truly disappeared. I tried to answer the yearning, to fill the void with sand, to pulverize it, to medicate it, to cure it with therapy, to use mindfulness, and to ignore it through chasing goals. But science and my personal autonomy proved inadequate in fastening any kind of lasting meaning to existence. Science did not satisfy the heart, nor did my own attempts at sculpting truth suffice.Science feeds our need for certainty, for actual answers, and science is excellent for finding truth in certain spaces. I should qualify that; the hard sciences are reliable at finding truth through measurement and experiment. There are various other “sciences” that do not share the same rigor as chemistry and biology and physics, but even these three fields are beginning to have bleed-through from non-scientific political and social ideologies. Yet, even solid science cannot get us all the way to the goal, to the full “why.” The “whys” I am speaking of are all simple sentences: the why of existence, of being, of knowledge, of gravity, of time, of beginnings, of endings, of justice, of truth, of goodness, of beauty, of righteousness, of suffering, of forgiveness, of redemption.The real questions were these subtle “whys.” Like shadows behind a wall, the shapes were papered over, kept in hiding by small talk and distractions. We could all see the shapes but we avoided talking about them. Instead we talked about these things: “Have you seen the ?” “Did you watch the game yesterday?” “Can you believe what President said?” “Have you seen the new ?”Those were not the questions I cared about. The main question underneath, that I was seeking, is encapsulated in this quote:"Man will always yearn to know, at least in an obscure way, what is the meaning of his life, of his activity, of his death." (Gaudium et Spes, 41)I would go to great lengths to find answers to these questions via ideology in a book or through the lens of my self and my experience. But sooner or later, a little tug would come back to me. As it always does, I'd feel the tug, like the nibble of a fish biting a hook.This electric feeling of “the tug” was like that which comes through a fishing pole, when the tug of something on the hook alerts the mind, while simultaneously quickening the heart. Anyone who has gone fishing and had the luck of getting a nibble, or better yet, catching a fish, knows this feeling. The tug of the fish brings full awareness. You become awake to what is happening in the water, where you cannot see, but you know full well something is there because you can feel it. We only have our senses to know anything, but this kind of tug that I'm talking about goes past our usual senses into something deeper, to a sense in the heart that cannot be quantified, captured, or tested like other things.Old ideas would come into motion. Something would hint to me that there is more than just work and paying bills or having sex or drinking beer. But I would shut those thoughts down because I did not want to open those archives. I was worried that what I had denied might be true. That was the real fear. I believed that I had control and that God was not real. But then on occasion the tug became a strike, a direct bite. A fight. Suddenly then I'd be wrestling with the question: what if it is true? What if I am not the creator of my destiny? What if there is something more to life? For anyone who knows what I'm talking about - this feeling of a tug - if you doubt or deny God, you will probably ignore that tug, like I did, and continue onward. No shortage of TV series and movies and hilarious cat videos await, so you can carry on for years with staring into screens. But sooner or later in life you may not want to ignore it. You may not be able to ignore it forever as some event will force the issue. The beauty of free will is the choices we get to make. The path we are being guided to walk is to ignore the tug. That's what we are being told by every part of society: TikTok advertisement: “You are the good thing.” Christina Aguilera: “You're beautiful, in every single way.” L'Oréal Paris: “Because you're worth it.” Nike: “Just do it.” Harley Davidson: “American by birth. Rebel by choice.” Reebok: “Cheat on your girlfriend, not your workout.”I guess the slogan, “Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner,” will just never do well in sales. Memento Mori sounds better as a slogan, but the translation, “Remember one day you will die,” also probably won't sell widgets. “Take up your cross and follow me” will probably not be a Bud Light Super Bowl ad any time soon. Well, I guess these slogans aren't for the short term. In the long run, however, as in eternity, these slogans work wonders.How funny it is to me that I refused to take orders from anyone, but all the while I was being told, guided, instructed what to do by advertisers and businesses and governments and influential people. As the doctor guided me toward pharmaceuticals, the political parties and ad agencies and sports leagues and social media were going to great lengths to keep me distracted from addressing the tug, from calling on the aching question that was raising its hand. While the world was selling me on freedom and autonomy, they were telling me what to do every step of the way. They were telling me, “Don't be a fool. Don't look into it. Whatever you do, do not ask the hard questions.”But the tug was summoning me to something bigger, to this much greater question, far bigger than what Apple product to buy or Netflix show to watch. And I didn't want anything like God to be true. I did not want it to be valid. Because then someday I would have to revisit those rules, those old bronze age edicts that I felt so unfair, so out of touch with our modern world, and that bothered my sense of freedom because they said “No” to my behavior. I didn't want to be challenged. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.whydidpetersink.com

Jason Ten-Pow's passion for customer experience was sparked as a teenager working behind the meat counter of a carnival-themed grocery store in Toronto. Today, Jason is the CEO and President of ONR, the CX consulting firm he founded in 2009. He has a B.A. in political science from the University of Toronto and an M.A. in Quantitative Methods from York University. Jason lives in Toronto with his son Ronin.   Questions   Could you just tell us how it is that you ended up in the whole realm of customer experience? How did you get where you are today? Could you share with our listeners a little bit about the book Unbreakable? What are maybe the key themes that are in the book? And how do you think this book can help a manager or a leader in an organization? Could you share with us based on your research what are some of the things that influences customer's expectations? And then maybe also just touch on why do you think emotions plays such an integral role in somebody making a decision? And are there other factors that come into play? And if other factors come into play, do emotions out-weigh those other factors? Or do emotions always take the greater portion of the decision-making process? Could you share with us what's the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely can't live without in your business? Could you also share with us what is maybe one or two books that you've read, it could be that you read maybe a very long time ago or one that you read recently, that has had the biggest impact on you? Could you also share with us maybe one thing that's going on in your life right now, either something that you're working on to develop yourself, or you're working on to develop your people, but you're really excited about it. Where can listeners find you online? Do you have a quote or saying that during times of adversity or challenge, you'll tend to revert to this quote, it kind of helps to get you back on track, or just get you refocus if you feel derailed for any reason. Do you have one of those?   Highlights   Jason's Journey Jason shared that it's interesting, it's been a long and sort of winding road to get here but it's been fascinating nonetheless and he's learned a lot. It started out just being in customer experience and working customer experience in retail positions at a number of different companies early in my career, even in High School, he'd be looking and as he'd worked at these retail locations, he'd be seeing how different customers were treated and look at how customers responded to different treatment.   And you'd see certain customers that come in every week, and you wanted to know, what was it that got them there? Was it just force of habit? Was it all these other sort of things about their actual experience in the store that brought them back again, and again. And when he went into University, started to study public opinion, voting and decision-making theory and looking at how people made decisions. And it was really interesting to see, you'd always think that people are rational decision makers, that they would think, look at all the options and then choose the best option.   But as he went through a lot of these studies, what stood out for him was that there are just too many options out there and too many options available for individuals when making a decision. So many times, shoppers, or people who are making decisions are forced to take shortcuts. And what he found, what was fascinating is the shortcuts that most people take are ones that are steeped in emotion and it's these emotions that drive through decision making.   And as he did more and more research around that, he just found that that seemed to provide the key explanation as to how people make choices and how they make decisions, especially in today's very fast-moving world. And so, as he started working, he started working after graduate school, he did his graduate work in quantitative methods, which is a really cool name for math basically, and he tried to measure how people make decisions and trying to actually create an algorithm around how to measure the influence of decision making.   And so, his natural progression into the workplace was to actually follow in those footsteps. At first, he worked for a company that did a lot of market research, digital market research, and over time that evolved into really focusing on “Okay, what are the influences of this decision making that customers are making?” And then that naturally came back around 360 degrees and started looking at people's emotions, and what drives people emotions, and what drives them to make the decisions that they do.   And so, founded the company that really was focused on understanding the emotional underpinnings and how to establish and grow and deepen these relationships by delivering on the expectations of these customers. And a lot of these expectations were not sort of just the delivery of a product or service, but actually to make a connection and to deepen a relationship with them was through understanding their wants, needs and desires, and what are the emotional triggers that are associated with these things. And then how to capture their emotion and how to capture their attention, not just their awareness and to be able to build a relationship and to strengthen relationship and how to grow a brand and increase revenue and profits because most people think, falsely so that having good customer experience is just a feel-good movement, it doesn't actually have any sort of impact on the business, but that couldn't be further from the truth.   Great customer experience, actually, is what builds deeper relationships that drive revenue and profit. So, these are the things that they think about, and they talk about, and they help brands as they drive their strategy to deepen relationships with their customers.   The Book Unbreakable – What are the Key Themes and How Can the Book Help a Manager or a Leader in an Organization     Me: Amazing. So, I was lucky enough to get a copy of your book Unbreakable. I am in the process of reading it but I love it, it's been so intriguing since I started reading it last week, it's really, really got some great nuggets in there. So, could you share with our listeners a little bit about the book? What are maybe the key themes that are in the book? And how do you think this book can help a manager or a leader in an organization?   Jason shared that he'll talk a little bit about why he wrote the book and it's really interesting. There's this misconception as he just mentioned that customer experience is a feel-good investment, it has and it's not just a field, but what this book sort of walks through is the fact that it's not a feel-good investment, it's more than that. Only 6% of brands have actually reached the highest level of CX transformation, which means they're building unbreakable relationships with their customers. So, he really wrote this book for the other 94% of organizations out there that are really looking to build these unbreakable relationships with their customers, and aspiring to crack the code of how to link these relationships with increase revenue, profits, efficiency, and employee satisfaction. And finally, how to create a playbook to transform your organization from one that has in its interest, the prioritization of the customer to one that actually lives and breeds prioritization of the customer, and actually is able to see real dividends from deepening their relationships with customers.   Factors that Play an Integral Role in Making Decisions   Me: So, you spoke earlier when you were talking about your journey and how you got to where you are today, that emotions play a very integral role in customers making decisions. And you also mentioned expectations, which I think is so important. Could you share with us based on your research what are some of the things that influences customer's expectations? And then maybe also just touch on why do you think emotions plays such an integral role in somebody making a decision? And are there other factors that come into play? And if other factors come into play, do emotions out-weigh those other factors? Or do emotions always take the greater portion of the decision-making process? Jason shared that that's a really complex question. And he can give you a very logical and very easy to follow example. We go to the store every weekend to buy groceries and we make decisions all the time when we look at the shelf, about things that we want to purchase, things that we need to purchase and things we would like to purchase. What makes us take that extra step of actually going and picking up a product and putting it in the cart.   When we think about that entire process, a lot of it is steeped in emotion, it's like, “Oh, wow, this package looks a little bit more appealing than the next package.” Or “This is something I need today because I need to pick me up.” It's all about our state, we're human creatures, and human creatures, we have wants, needs and desires, but these wants, needs and desires are governed by our emotional state.   So yes, there are real practical implications around the decisions we make, “Hey, I need to buy mustard today but what brand of mustard I will purchase or what type I will purchase?” It's going to be influenced by something above and beyond that. So what is it? Is it I'm looking at all the different options on the shelf, there may be an entire shelf or row of different brands of mustards. Does my past experience play into it? Absolutely. But there's also that immediacy of, “Hey, this looks like an interesting product, this looks more visually appealing.” Those are all aspects of our motion.   Now, when we take that one step further, and think about when we go into a store to shop, if we're greeted at the front by a friendly face, now all of a sudden, you as an individual respond to that, you may be more open to buying. When you're at the checkout, and somebody asks you, how's your day going? How do you feel? Why do companies insist on doing that? Because they know that it plays into our emotional state. And if we're in a happy place, if we're in a good mood, we're more likely to make a splurge purchase. And so also, if we're hitting the right tone, our tonality, if we're talking to people in a certain way, if we're reassuring them, if we're making them feel wanted, needed and desired, then people respond positively to that.   Can you imagine someone makes you feel wanted, needed and desired? How many times will you dismiss them without even having a conversation with them or being thankful about it, it's very seldom that that happens. So as emotional creatures, we are bound, and influenced subconsciously by these sorts of feelings and emotions.   And we try to wrestle against sort of this rational state of being where we want to sort of look at all our options on the table and making sure we're making the right choice. But inherently, in today's day and age, with so many options available to us, we have to have shortcuts, or we could be spending hours, days, weeks, months, before we can actually do the research necessary to make the decision. And as with the way how fast the world is moving, we just don't have that time, time is our enemy. So, we're always trying to figure out faster ways to do things, better ways to do things, more efficient ways to doing. And you know what, at the end of the day, because we're emotional creatures, those are the things that bubble up to the surface and help us create those shortcuts for decision making. Me: Now, as it relates to us being emotional creatures, do you think gender plays our role, or better yet, even our culture? So, for example, Caribbean people versus people who are from North America versus people who live in the Middle East? Do you think those things contribute to people's decision making?   Jasons stated absolutely. Your tribe you belong to has a huge influence on not only what decisions you make, but what emotion govern your decision making. So, he thinks Yanique's hitting on a conversation they can spend hours discussing how Caribbean people are different. They have different emotional triggers versus someone that's North America, South American, European, absolutely, those things absolutely are vitally important, that's what makes us special, that's what makes us unique. If you want to build a relationship with a customer, you have to understand what culture they belong to, what tribe they belong to, because today, more and more, those are the things that are having important impact on our decision making. Me: Well, I've definitely seen it. As you know, as we were talking pre to the actual recording, you mentioned that you're from Guyana, and of course, I'm from Jamaica. But I've definitely seen that in Jamaica specifically, how we make our decisions is based on how we're cultured and how we're socialized. And I find that it's different when I travel to other parts of the world. So, I can imagine how hard it can be for a business, who has customers that are multicultural, because it would mean then that their approaches have to be multifaceted, it can't be one size fits all, because everybody's going to have their unique approach and their unique preferences and set of wanting how something is done, versus just having one thing that's rolled out to everybody.   Jason agreed that Yanique is right. And that's why the approach to customer experience is so important. Many brands see customer experience as a problem that needs to be solved, again, very, very wrong approach. Relationships are not a problem that needs to be solved, they're organic, they need to be nurtured and deepened by understanding the complexity of your customers, understanding who they are, where they come from, what their wants, needs and desires and then using that understanding to actually shape the way what you do and how you do it in order to better bring these folks into the fold, and that's a fundamental mistake that brands make today, because soon as you start with customer experience is a problem that needs to be solved, it takes you down a completely different road, around what matters and what's important and what you need to do to build relationships that are strong, unbreakable relationships with your customer.   App, Website or Tool that Jason Absolutely Can't Live Without in His Business   When asked about an online resource that he cannot live without in his business, Jason stated that he's a little bit biased with this because their company has this product, the solution called Bespoke, and it's absolutely imperative in today's day and age, that you have a product like this, a solution like this, and what it does, it amalgamate, brings together all your different customer experience data into one location, helps you analyze it, and then helps you internally as an organization to build activities and things you can do to train your organization to be more a team to your customers wants, needs and desires. There are so many different tools, there's Eloqua, there's Adobe, you have your voice of customer over here data, but all of these things are in silos.   What Bespoke does, it brings pieces, or elements of all this data together to tell a complete story about the entire customer experience so that you can understand very quickly, and on an ongoing basis how your customer relationships are developing, what are the problems they're experiencing, and how for example, you can train certain types of behaviours amongst your customer service representatives, or how you need to change the journey the customer is taking through the website to make a purchase. All these things are encapsulated into one place so your team doesn't have to go and hunt for all this information around their organization, it's all in one place and it provides not only the data, but it provides recommendations about the actions you need to take in order to build these deeper customer relationships.   Books That Have Had the Greatest Impact on Jason   When asked about books that have had the biggest impact, Jason stated that there's been so many. Paul Snyderman, he's a UCLA, Berkeley, he's written a number of books on decision making, and how people take shortcuts from a sociological and psychological perspective to their decision making. And those have been obviously very influential. We look around today, and we look at how culture plays such an important role and some of the people he spoke to are such great influencers for him in terms of this area as well, he doesn't want to start rattling off names of people. But those writers out there right now that are sort of talking about culture, and the influence of culture and how important it is not only to help us self-identify, but how to help us find our place in the world. Those are really some of the great writings he thinks that are coming out today that are really sort of helping us to move away from this concept that one size fits all solution, as Yanique mentioned earlier, is not the way forward, it's actually a deeper understanding of that complexity that helps you to make better decision making.   What Jason is Really Excited About Now!   Jason shared that the thing that really excites him is helping people understand how important every word they say, every action they make has a greater cascading influence on the overall assessment of a brand than ever before. And one of the things as their company is doing right now is really spending a lot of time training and helping people to understand how important it is to develop deep relationships with their clients that they have in order to not only build firmer relationships, but to understand how unique each individual is, and understanding how each individual is, and taking the time to understand each person not as a sale, or as an opportunity to grow your business but as a human being, how important that is, you'll get to the end, you'll get to the end of that sale, but it's not the sale that you're really after, you're after that relationship.   And the more time you take to understand the other person before you start to talk about what you have, what solutions you bring to the table, you need to start spending time listening and understanding what the other party, what their wants, needs and desires are. Too many times today because we're inundated with so many advertisements that's pushing, you need this, you need this, you need this, nobody is stopping to take the time to actually listen to what people are saying about their wants and needs and desires and just the fact that you take the time to listen, immediately as a brand starts to set you apart.   And these are the things that are really going to allow you to be successful, to build those relationships and even internally, their organization is constantly working to nurture that type of learning, and to share that type of learning across their organization.   Me: All right, that sounds like an adventurous journey. And it can be super challenging because people are such complex characters for sure.   Jason agreed, it is very complex. They're not saying it's easy, but they're saying the ROI for your investment does pay off.   Where Can We Find Jason Online   Me: Our listeners would have tapped into this episode, and they're quite intrigued with you, they're going to buy your book Unbreakable: A proven process for building unbreakable relationships with customers, guy's head on over to Amazon, make sure you get a copy of this book. But more importantly, they want to follow you on your journey, they'd like to connect with you further, where can they find you online?   LinkedIn – Jason Ten-Pow Twitter – @JasonTenPow   Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Jason Uses   When asked about a quote or saying that he tends to revert to, Jason shared that in the book he mentioned CSA (Collect, Share and Act). When you are unsure about the right decision you need to make, what you need to do is, first of all, make sure especially around customer experience, “Make sure you're collecting the right data, you're sharing that data across your organisation, and ensuring that you're taking actions that align with the knowledge you've gained from the data that you've collected.”   If you do those three things, you will guaranteed be better at building deep customer relationships. Why? Because this is the code that the top 6% of brands that lead the way in building unbreakable relationships, this is the code that they have cracked, it comes down to how well they do at collecting customer data, sharing that across their organisation not keeping it in one little silo but sharing it so everyone has this knowledge about who their customers are and what their wants, needs and desires are and make sure that when they're making important decisions and taking actions, they're actually using that knowledge to influence the decisions and the actions they take.   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   UNBREAKABLE: A proven process for building unbreakable relationships with customers by Jason Ten-Pow   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!

Mahesh Ram is a serial founder and entrepreneur and he's currently the founding CEO of Solvvy, a leading SaaS provider of conversational self-service and automation solutions to leading global companies with over 550 million end users. Prior to Solvvy, he was the CEO of GlobalEnglish which pioneered online business English education for learners in over 120 countries. GlobalEnglish was later acquired by the Pearson PLC. He previously held CTO roles at Thomson Reuters.   Questions   Could you just tell us a little bit about your journey? How it is that you ended up in this world of customer experience automation? Can you tell us a little bit about Solvvy? So a big part of artificial intelligence is natural language processing, could you just break down what that really is to our listeners so that they can understand and maybe even get a better connection with maybe how this could work in their business? A business is really looking to try and find a way to have more automation in their business. What's maybe one or two things that you think they could start off doing if they're at ground zero, they have no automation. Where can they start to try to get their business on level one of trying to get automated and have their customers come on board? Could you share with us what is the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely can't live without in your business? Could you also share with us maybe one or two books that have had really great impact on you, it could be a book that you read recently, or even one that you read a very long time ago, but it still has a great impact on you. Could you share also share with us what's one thing that's going on in your life right now that you're really excited about? It could be something that you're working on to develop yourself or your people. Where can listeners find you online? Do you have a quote or a saying that during times of adversity or challenge, you'll tend to revert to this quote, because it kind of helps to get you back on track, or just get you going if you get derailed for any reason? Do you have one of those?   Highlights   Mahesh's Journey   Mahesh shared that he thinks the whole area of customer experience is one that always fascinated him, his entire career has been about automating complexity. And by taking very complex things and turning them into easier, better, more frictionless experiences and that's been true for whether that's online education or legal and tax compliance. But when he thinks about customer experience, it's the thing that impacts every single one of us, all of us have great experiences we can talk about with brands and we have those very poor experiences we talk about with brands and we make decisions based on those things. And he's no different than everybody else, than their customers.   And so, when he saw the potential for the technology to truly deliver a better experience at scale, he was hooked. When he saw that the incredibly powerful PhD work that his co-founders had done that enabled the ability to deliver this incredible customer experience at scale, he just couldn't resist because as a CEO, he has often seen that they're just not good enough at this. So that's what motivated him and that's what excites him about what they're doing.   What is Solvvy About?     Me: All right. So can you tell us a little bit about Solvvy? I know you mentioned in your bio that you are currently at Solvvy and Solvvy is about CX automated platforms and basically powering customer experiences. Just in in real word terms so our listeners that are listening, whether they are managers, or business owners of small or medium businesses, they can get a better understanding of what you do could possibly influence what they do to enhance frictionless experiences for their customers.   Mahesh shared that there's a famous book called The Effortless Experience that he thinks described very nicely what they're trying to do, but at Solvvy, they built a powerful SaaS platform, it's a solution that takes machine learning and natural language processing, natural language understanding at its core, but delivers an end user or consumer experience that allows every one of us as consumers to interact with the brand in a way to get self-service automation sometimes, other times get the right journey, be able to get to the right agent at the right time. But the way they like to think about it is allowing any brand in the world at scale to deliver what they think of is like concierge level journey. Imagine if the system understood you, it knows what you want, you just talked to it and it tells you where you need to go. Sometimes it provides you an immediate answer, other times it has to ask you some follow up questions because it needs a little more information from you in order to pinpoint either the right answer or get you to the right agent.   And you can imagine how this can be scaled across a global footprint, across the world. Their customers are B2B and B2C companies that have hundreds and millions of end users. But they're serving two customers, if you will, they're serving the companies that buy and implement them but ultimately, their end customer is their consumer, their end user and can they (Solvvy) deliver an intelligent solution like sometimes it's in the form of a chatbot, other times it's in the form of taking them on a journey and taking them to the right agent. But that's what they do. They made it really simple to implement something that's very complex under the hood, but it's very simple for companies to implement and it delivers an immediate ROI to the business and better experience for the user.   Me: Does your company primarily work with a particular type of industry like retail? Or is it more service based kind of organizations? Could you give an example of maybe one of your clients that has seen success as a result of this approach?   Mahesh shared that first of all they work across a wide number of verticals, both B2B and B2C. But he would say some of their strongest verticals are things like ecommerce, not so much pure physical retail, but oftentimes the ecommerce arm of a retail business, FinTech. So consumer FinTech and banking, a good example would be a consumer finance banking application stash, which many people have used, millions of users use them. They work with brands like Ring - the home doorbell, home alarm, home security company, which is now part of Amazon. These are some of the companies. So it's a wide spectrum of companies but typically it's a situation where he as an end user of a product or service, have adopted that product or service, but have questions about how to get the most out of it. And sometimes that can be simple, that can be he's an ecommerce customer and he has ordered something and he wants to cancel something or he wants to see where it is, he's wondering why there's a delay.   Other times, it might be something like he bought a device and he doesn't know how to make it work with his iPhone, we've all had that experience. And in both those situations, Solvvy can understand the issue as expressed by the user in everyday natural language, and then be able to connect the user to the right solution that could be a stepwise guide an answer, it could be in some cases, collecting more information and giving it to the agent who can then help you 3 to 10 times faster than they could. So that those are some examples of companies they work with, that it's a pretty broad spectrum. They even work in healthcare, they work with Calm, which is one of the leading meditation apps, many of your users, entrepreneurs may be using that to do meditation and peace of mind. Wonderful application, they support their end users. So it ranges across a wide range of industries.   What is Natural Language Processing?   Me: So a big part of artificial intelligence is natural language processing. And I know for the average person, that may sound like really high level, could you just break down what that really is to our listeners so that they can understand and maybe even get a better connection with maybe how this could work in their business?   Mahesh shared that the way to simplify the complex, obviously, natural language processing is a deep science and there's 10s of 1000s of research papers and PhD thesis on this, but he'll simplify it because he thinks at the end of the day, as consumers, it boils down to one thing is the ability to understand, in the customer experience space, it's the ability to understand when a user expresses an issue or what we think of as an intent.   So, you might say, “I bought the jeans last week, they don't fit me, please help.” And if you have enough data about prior examples of that, you can quickly learn, the machine learning can actually learn that the natural language expression in that case is likely a call to say, “Hey, can I return or exchange this?” Nowhere is the word return or exchange used. So he thinks natural language understanding in context of customer experience is about understanding how people in that business or in that problem area express issues, they often don't use the words that the companies use, they may not use the word return or exchange, they say, “I want to give this back.”   So NLU (Natural Language Understanding) is the technology that allows you to move away from that kind of keyword dependency and understand the core intent of what the user is doing.   And the way you do that is you actually train on the prior data, because chances are most businesses have had 1000s, if not hundreds of 1000s of people asking similar questions before. And the machine learning can actually learn how real users express real issues and start to get better at detecting that as soon as they finish typing something in or speaking something.   And we're all familiar with Alexa, and it has a specific set of natural language understanding where you can ask what's the weather and it's been trained to understand those words, is it going to rain today? And it knows to answer you with an answer and tell you to take an umbrella. So that's an example of NLU that most people would understand but in the context of customer experience, it's very much about understanding that businesses specific natural language.   Tips for Implementing Automation in Your Business   Me: So let's say we have some listeners who their business, let me give you an example. Let's say for example, it is a pastry business and she or he may have an outlet where customers can come and pick up little pastries like cupcakes or a slice of bread pudding or whatever the case is. And they're really looking to try and find a way to have more automation in their business. What's maybe one or two things that you think they could start off doing if they're at ground zero, they have no automation. Where can they start to try to get their business on level one of trying to get automated and have their customers come on board?   Mahesh stated that he thinks the first thing he thinks if you think about foundational principles, it's first of all, let's make sure that we collect all that information in a place where you make sure that you answer it, that you keep track of it, that you have some history of what's happened with that user.   And so typically, you would use some sort of a simple support CRM business. They partner with companies like Zendesk, Freshdesk, and others. And those are pretty simple to implement, they don't really require a lot of deep technology to implement a simple implementation.   And that allows you to then say, “Okay, Yanique called me on Tuesday asking about the status of her pastry order. And I need to get back to her.” It keeps track of it and if you come back a week later, he might know that you asked about this last week. And so, he might start his conversation with you by saying, “Is this about the pastry order you placed last week?”, So he has some context.   So he thinks first thing is to put a simple system in place, there's lightweight systems, there's inexpensive systems, they don't cost a lot of money. And typically, you can scale up or down depending on how many resources you have. So that, he thinks is first things first.   Second thing is, he thinks a lot of businesses would just benefit from writing some simple content, and other things on their websites to be able to answer the most frequently asked questions. So pay attention, once you're starting to track what people are asking, you should then be able to go back and say, let me write an article about how do I customize a cake. Or if I order a bulk order of pastries, do I get a discount? These might be common questions that you see in the data that you see, after you see this is coming up over and over. So that would be like a starting point, you'd start with some sort of a knowledge base so people can find the answer for themselves because most people don't want to wait for your team, especially if you have a small team, it might take 24 hours for you to answer that question about a bulk order, well, you might have lost the order by that time.   So you're better off letting the customer get the help they need. And that goes to the third thing, which is then the third thing is they work with OpenTable. You're familiar with OpenTable, people make reservations at any restaurant, hundreds of 1000s of restaurants around the world. And they serve two audiences, as a consumer if you want to book a table at a fancy restaurant, perhaps in San Francisco, but also the restaurant owner who has to then control some of those back end tools. And they provide a whole range of tools.   But imagine an experience where that restaurant owner can interact with technology to be able to change their hours or modify frequently asked questions. So, that's where they often come in is that they end up giving brands a way to automate even more complex things.   So if you say, “Hey, I want to customize my cake.” the Natural Language Understanding can actually understand that or maybe you don't say customized, “I want to order a special cake for my niece. And I want it to say something very unique.” Something like that and nowhere would he use the word customized. I could come up to you and say, “Great, looks like you want to customize the cake. We have these options for you, which one do you want.”   And take you down the path and actually collect all that information and say, “I've got everything I need, somebody will get back to you within an hour with an ETA on when this cake will be ready for you. Does that make sense?”   And imagine that experience in 35-40 seconds, he might have actually gotten your order right. And he'll still handed off to a human being because somebody still has to bake the cake. But at that point, he's such a delighted consumer that maybe he'll order a little extra. Maybe at that point, you present him with an offer and say, “If you want to order a dozen cookies for the other guests, there's a special offer 10% off right now.” So he thinks if you think about automation, it's not about putting a blocker in front of the user, it's about automating things that otherwise they'd have to wait too long for.   App, Website or Tool that Mahesh Absolutely Can't Live Without in His Business   When asked about an online resource that he cannot live without in his business, Mahesh stated that that's a great question. He thinks for them, because they've gone completely virtual right due to the pandemic, so everybody's virtual. So he thinks it would be tempting to say an online meeting tool like Zoom. But he actually thinks that the most indispensable tool is probably something like Slack because it's a communication vehicle for everyone to share information and ideas.   And what they've done which is nice with Slack is they've used some of the third party bots and applications inside Slack to do things like give praise to someone. It makes it easy to give praise and it shows up in Slack, everyone can read it, it also then writes it automatically to the performance management system. So it's a great way to motivate your employees or help people motivate one another for great work, “Hey, Yanique did a great job today on this, she made it possible for me to help this customer.”   It makes it easy to just go into Slack and give her praise. That's one example. You can share documents; you can even do video calls in Slack. So, it's a pretty powerful tool, he's sure other people use other things like it. But that's one that he would say it's been very, very crucial for them.   Books That Have Had the Greatest Impact on Mahesh   When asked about books that had a great impact, Mahesh shared that one book is very personal. His grandfather lived in India, grew up in India, he had spent most of his career in the public service. But he's very interested in music and after the age of about 60, he decided to become a music and dance critic. And he started writing and then actually became a well-known critic and musicologist in one of the major newspapers of India.   And at the age of 88, his grandfather decided to write a book. He wrote a book on music and musicians and just his recollections and opinions. And it turned out to be a really, really well received book and got a lot of critical praise at the age of 88. He thinks that to him, it was less about the book and more about the fact that his lifelong passion for learning had never stopped. And so, it's as much the book as the writing of the book as the book itself, it's both. So that was one.   The second one, which he thinks has become more and more relevant as a book he has probably read three times. It's a three volume, very heavy, long trilogy called Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-63, written by a man named Taylor Branch, and it's kind of the entire lifespan of Martin Luther King and it's probably about 2000 pages total.   So it's not light reading. But it talks about all of the ups and downs of the civil rights movement, the great triumphs, and then of course, later in his life some of his regrets and so on, and so on. And he thinks it really comes home when you think about the events of the last couple of years and what's going on in the world, you realize that these struggles, the great struggles don't have easy answers and solutions don't just emerge and everything is great.   Things have a way of taking far longer and being much more difficult than you ever imagined when you started. Ideals are what carry you through but even, there's a lot of frustration you have to overcome whether that through in business or in social life. So those are two. And then for fun, he thinks one that he always like reading, it's light reading is Calvin and Hobbes a cartoon strip, because he just thinks it reminds him that at the end of the day, we all take ourselves way too seriously.   Me: That's so true. And life is so short, we really have to enjoy laughter.   What Mahesh is Really Excited About Now!   Mahesh shared that they're working on so many incredibly exciting things in the business. He'll choose one or two that he thinks excites him the most. The first thing is what he calls the Omni-Channel experience. Take the example of the pastry shop, he thinks they're just now entering in the United States, the notion of a truly omni-channel experience where businesses have to meet consumers where they live.   It's no longer reasonable to expect customers to come to your website. They live in Instagram, they live in Snapchat, they live in WhatsApp and this has already happened in other markets like in China, you have WeChat and India WhatsApp is very, very strong. And if he wants to order a pizza from Domino's in India, he's just as likely to use WhatsApp as I am to go to www.dominos.com.   But in North America, that's just now happening, it's just happening where brands have to be creating really strong presence but the problem is there isn't one thing. It isn't like he can just build for WhatsApp, on a Monday, he might choose to interact with the pastry shop mentioned on Facebook Messenger. On Tuesday, he might want to go into WhatsApp and place an order for a cake. On Wednesday, he might go to the store brand to the website and try to order it. And it could change if two users might have two different things.   So brands have to be in all these places. But he can't have different things going on in those sites. If he asked you what's the price to customize the cake, and you give him three different answers on three different channels, that's a real problem, consumers get really annoyed.   So he thinks what they're doing at Solvvy, which is really exciting, is they're making it possible for businesses to build the intelligent layer once in the platform, and then deliver on any of these channels they choose with the same consistency. So if you come in on a Monday and say, “I want to return the shoes that I bought on Facebook Messenger.” They'll take you through that entire experience and get to get it returned and connect you to an agent. But on Wednesday, you come back and ask “Where's my order on the company's website?” They'll be able to answer that question just as accurately on that thing. So the consistency across platforms.   So it's consistent and personalized so it knows enough to ask Yanique for her email address and look it up and tell you exactly where your order is, that kind of personalization automated is critical.   And then he thinks that goes to the second piece, which is what excites him more than anything is the ability to deliver a truly personalized experience. Think about yourself or anybody in the audience, when you buy a product or service, the experience you have in the first week, maybe the first 10 days, maybe the first 30 days, if it's a piece of software is so crucial. How well you use it, how well you get acclimated to it, determines how happy you are with it. So they think at Solvvy, how do they enable brands to be able to deliver that kind of support and on boarding and guidance to say a first 30-day user, it's different than for a user who has been with the brand for 6 to 12 months and do that at scale, do that for millions of people.   So a good example would be they work with a very large meal kit delivery service, they deliver meals to your home. And he can deliver a different experience for someone who's ordering their very first meal, that's a little bit more hand holding, a little bit more like, “Hey, did everything come as you expected?” Because they're not used to some of the things about unpacking the ice and doing these things. But if somebody who ordered 12 meals in the last 2 months, he probably don't want to waste their time asking them if they know how to unpack the ice, he wants to ask them if they're looking for new recipes.   So the ability to do that at a massive scale, because you can't do that one by one, but technology allows you to say, I'm going to do that for everybody who's a first 30-day user is going to get this experience. So those are the kinds of things, so personalization and omni-channel are the two things that he thinks really, really excites him about the business.   Me: Two things came to mind when you were speaking just now. So the first thing you mentioned was omni-channel and I personally as a customer, I'm trying to wonder if there's no technology out there that let's say, for example, utilities is something we all have to pay every month, let's say our electricity bills, and you may talk to your electricity company, you may not talk to them very often, but there are times when you do have to interface with them. So let's say for example, you reach out to them on Twitter messenger because there was a power outage in your area and they communicated and said, okay, they've sent their engineers to sort it out and we should get service restored within X amount of time. And then four months later, you may need to contact them because you're trying to pay a bill, you're trying to use their platform to pay the bill, but you're having some challenges and when you call them on the phone, you can't get them, it would be good to know that they're able to connect those experiences. So they would say to you, “Oh, hi, Miss Grant, we haven't heard from you in four months, how have things been?” Because then it shows that they're paying attention to the last time someone was in contact with you, even if it wasn't the same agent that you dealt with four months ago. Is that possible?   Mahesh shared that it's not only possible, they're doing that all the time. There's kind of a divide in the middle, which is whether I know who you are, I don't right. Oftentimes, if you're going to an ecommerce site, you go to www.nike.com, you're probably not identifying yourself, and you may not want to identify yourself, you may not want them to know that it's Yanique.   But if you have an existing relationship with the brand, you still might come to the website of the utility company and not identify yourself but based on the type of question you're asking, they might say, “In order to help you, you'll have to identify yourself.” But he doesn't want to give that to you until he realizes you need that.   So, then he might say, “Can you please tell me the email address or can you log in?” And then based on the login, now he can come back and say, “Looks like you came in last week and asked this question. Are you asking about the same thing?”   And if you say no, then he can pop up and give you the more generic menus and say, “Hey, would you like to be able to do it?” So not only is it possible, they're doing it all the time with brands where they're personalizing the experience, this goes back to his notion of personalization is that sure it can understand prior interaction data and ask you if that's the case. Sometimes that can be intrusive, you may not care about something four months ago, it's not that.   But if you've called three times in the last week, chances are it's about the same issue.   And so at that point, what he needs to do is two things. One is he needs to make sure that every single thing that you told him on the first call or the first technology interaction with Solvvy, for example, it's been recorded properly to the agent, so that the next agent picks who it up, your second call a week later has everything in front of them and that's the key.   The key is not to make you repeat yourself, not make you repeat yourself and that's what technology enables. He'll give you one example. In the example with the meal kit is if you come in and say “Hey, help my mind steak is spoiled. I'm really angry.” Well, first of all, you're probably pretty upset because your dinner just got ruined, that's not a good experience, you might stop using the brand. But if he immediately pop-up and say, “I'm sorry to hear you have a missing or spoiled ingredient, can you just give me the information, this and it pops up your meal and it says which of the ingredients is missing or spoil, tell me what's wrong with it.” And immediately, he'd say he could shoot a credit back to your account. And then you can still talk to the agent if you want and complain more. That's a really good experience.   Unfortunately, it doesn't feed you your meal that night, but it does make you feel like the brand is there for you and really cares about doing something right, they can make an offer and give you two free meals or whatever it might be. But again, even if he passed you to an agent in that case, the agent knows that you called because your steak was spoiled, the ice had melted, that you were expecting to get it with two side dishes and you only got one and they start the conversation with you knowing all this, they're not asking you to repeat any of this. That's what they do.   Me: Brilliant. It's funny you mentioned the meal delivery service for home because I started using one recently and I find the young lady service to be so poor. When you call her she doesn't return your phone calls, when you send her a message on WhatsApp she takes forever to respond. She sends out her menus the week before like on a Friday and then you indicate to her how many days per week you wanted meals and which items you were interested in. And I think for last week I told her I was interested in the meal for Thursday. The meal wasn't delivered, I tried to call her on Thursday afternoon to ask her, “Weren't you supposed to deliver the meal today?” She hasn't responded to my WhatsApp. I called her twice, she hasn't responded to my call, frankly, I don't think I'm going to order from her again because either she's taken on more than she can chew or she's clearly not ready for this level of business because if you're dealing with people, and you're delivering meals to them and they've indicated to you what they want and when they want it, if you can't manage the communication portion, then maybe you need to outsource that for the business.   Mahesh stated that he thinks that's a brilliant point. He thinks that oftentimes people take on more than they can handle but they lose sight of the customer. He thinks it goes back to the customer like how often does she talk to you and ascertain how well you like the service, did she check in with you? Does she have a survey?   Because if she loses you, the thing she probably doesn't grasp yet and he thinks some small business owners don't always grasp this is how expensive it is to acquire a customer, to get Yanique to try it for the first time is a really hard thing. And so losing you is much worse than acquiring two new people, because they already gone through the effort of convincing you and you've already done it.   So this does speak to something that he thinks a lot of entrepreneurs can do better, which is to survey and get feedback from customers, because you may well be sympathetic to her if she was talking to you. If she told you honestly, “Hey, look, I'm really struggling with this but I'm really trying to make it work. I'm an entrepreneur and I want to make this work. I'm so sorry about your meal. Let me see what I can do.” You were probably willing to give her the sun, the moon and the stars to get it right. But if you don't hear from her, you just assume that she doesn't care.   Me: I'm actually thinking of deleting her number out of my phone because I don't think I want to do business with her anymore. Her communication is extremely poor and her food, it's not amazing but it's good and it's healthy and it's a better choice than me having to go and have fast food for sure. But the challenge, as I said, is she needs to work out that aspect of it or she's going to lose more than one customer.   Mahesh agreed and stated that he thinks the other thing that he would say that technology allows us to do with a lot of the brands is to be predictive. So, if for example, Yanique is coming in frequently with questions about certain kinds of issue, they do something that they call category analytics for businesses, where they look at every single question that has ever been asked for that brand and they grouped them into big categories and so they can tell the brand, the food kit company that you're missing ingredient issues have spiked 23% in the last two weeks, something's up, they don't know what it is because they're not in their factory watching.   But they can drill in and they can tap into that, they can double click on it and they can see all the actual expressions by the user and they can do keyword searches, they can say show me everything with the word ice in it. So if the ice is melting, maybe they go back to the warehouse people and say, you need to package the ice better. So those are the kinds of insights that businesses often lack and it's very difficult to do because technology allows you to do it without having to have a human being looked at every single issue, it automatically categorizes all the questions.   Where Can We Find Mahesh Online   Website – www.solvvy.com LinkedIn – Mahesh Ram Twitter - @solvvyinc Twitter - @rammahesh   Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Mahesh Uses   When asked about a quote that he tends to revert to, Mahesh shared that he actually has a bunch of them. But the one that recently came up as he was reading the book by the very, very famous Roman Emperor, Philosopher, Marcus Aurelius, he had written a book 2000 years ago, so it's a long time. But everything in there so timeless because he's really does a lot of reflection on his life.   The quote that he said, which he thoughts was really great was, “Adapt yourself to the life you have been given; and truly love the people with whom destiny has surrounded you.” And he thought that was just such a nice sort of simple way of saying, we're all given something and it's up to us to make the most of it, we keep looking around for something better, chances are you're never going to find it and the people too. So he thought that was a really nice quote.   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   The Effortless Experience: Conquering the New Battleground for Customer Loyalty by Matthew Dixon Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-63 by Taylor Branch The Complete Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson   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!

Behind the Door - Season 3 Episode 10 - All for Me "All these nice, gentle people that had come to see me now looked like the devil's own, waiting to tear this poor old woman to bits. It terrified me, and I tried to hobble faster. Faces went by in a blur, obscured by the creeping darkness and the masks the shadows created." Welcome to the tenth episode of the season for Behind the Door, where we discuss the themes underpinning the writing in last week's story, and have a behind the scenes chat with the author who made it happen. In this episode we are interviewing with Dave Lasota, the mystical author who revealed the ugly celebration behind "All for Me". You are only as good as your last miracle... Featuring: Dave Lasota - Author Brooks Bigley - Host "The Accused" (Music from All for Me) by JM Scherf Artwork by Cassie Pertiet For more information on Dave Lasota, check out our Behind the Door Extended Edition interview in which he describes the perfect way to get that first sentence written down. You can also find Dave Lasota on horrorbound.net   PODCAST CREDITS Jason Wilson - Executive Producer, Host, Audio Engineering, Sound Design, Actor JM Scherf - Musical Composition, Performance Michael Zenke - Season Narrative, Writer, Editor Graham Rowat - Associate Producer, Social Media, Actor Cassie Pertiet - Episode Artwork, Web Design, Merch, Creative Direction Brooks Bigley - Social Media, Patreon, Show Notes, Behind the Door Host/Producer Hail Scherf - Videography Director   EXTRA STUFF • Sonnet is a new podcast app found exclusively on Android devices, designed with YOU in mind. Download Sonnet from Google Play to up your podcast game. You can also listen to The Grey Rooms Podcast on Sonnet by clicking here. • We made it onto a Top 30 Thriller Book Podcasts list at #24 and a Top 15 Horror Story Podcasts list at #6. How cool is that?!? • Listen to us on Spotify or YouTube • Visit our new and improved website at www.thegreyrooms.com • Like what we're doing? Please support us on Patreon for early access to episodes plus more bonus content. • Read about us on our Reddit page • Check us out on Facebook • Join our Facebook Emotional Support Group • Stare at our artwork on Instagram • We're incredibly active on Twitter • Buy our merch at teepublic.com/the-grey-rooms • You can also make a one-time donation at PayPal.me/thegreyroomspodcast • And finally, we have a Discord community. Jump in and have a conversation with us and other fans about the podcast, or anything really. The Grey Rooms team is very active there. The Warden and Bob also drop in now and again to keep their torment game sharp. You’ve been warned. Thank you for supporting our show! A Grey Rooms Production ℗ 2021

Dr. Jackie Noelke Show Notes   Dr. Jackie Noelke is an online entrepreneur and digital marketing strategist who helps entrepreneurs and naturopathic doctors start, grow, and scale their online courses, services, and memberships so they can have the freedom they crave. She's also the founder and CEO of Grateful Ads Co. who helps brands grow their influence, define their voice, and scale their offers through innovative digital ads and sales funnels.   Questions   Could you share with us a little bit about your history, how you got into what you're doing today and just a little bit about your journey to where you are now? In light of COVID, a lot of businesses have had to pivot and go online whether they're let's say for example, they're selling physical items or maybe they're more of a service oriented type of business. How do you balance all of that? How do you know which new business lines you should take up? How do you know which platform is best for your audience, whether it be Facebook or Instagram or LinkedIn? As a marketing strategy, how could you help our audience to get a clearer view of where they should go? Now, COVID has also caused people to be very anxious. And as a result of that, as an entrepreneur, there is no safety net, you're not working for company, although to some extent, when you work with an organization, you don't necessarily have a safety net, especially in this economic environment. So if you're suffering from anxiety, what are some things that you would suggest as an entrepreneur, if you're experiencing these kinds of emotions to help yourself really overcome it and just be focused on what is important? Can you share with us how do you stay motivated everyday? Can you share with us maybe one online resource, tool, website, or app that you absolutely can't live without in your business? Could you also share with us maybe one or two books that have had the biggest impact on you? It could be a book that you read a long time ago, or maybe a book that you read recently that really has impacted you. What's one thing that's going on in your life right now that you're really excited about - it could be something that you're working on to develop yourself or your people. Where can listeners find you online? Do you have a quote or a saying that during times of adversity or challenge you'll tend to revert to this quote, it kind of helps to keep you focused and get you back on track?   Highlights   Dr. Jackie’s Journey   Dr. Jackie shared that she’s not an overnight success, she actually caught the entrepreneur bus about 11 years ago when she was getting her master's in education and she decided she wanted to start up a private school and that's when she first kind of dip her toes into entrepreneurship. She was just kind of toying with the idea and she put up a website, she actually got a lot of people interested in this school, people were wanting to give her money, all this kind of stuff, which is awesome. And then she pivoted a little bit, they wanted to make a move so that didn't work out. But that kind of is what got her started online because she was playing around with the website, all that kind of stuff, she loved it. And then, she was teaching at the time and then a few years later she started to get really bad anxiety.   And she actually was diagnosed with agoraphobia, which a lot of people think of agoraphobia as you won't leave your house. But actually what the doctor just told her was that it's when you're looking for exits all the time, you always have an escape route wherever you are.   And so, that led her because honestly, it was getting hard for her to even go to work as a teacher, that led her super into personal development. And so, she started her own personal development company at that time to help others go through the journey that she was going through simultaneously and she was very transparent about that. And through that she busted through, she’s now completely anxiety free, there's a lot, she was going to a doctor and stuff, there's a lot more involved in that. But she was also getting my doctorate in leadership and she really fell in love with the business side of what she was doing in the personal development space and also what she was learning in my doctorate.   So, she switched gears, did a pivot like a lot of entrepreneurs do. And since her husband was in naturopathic medical school, she decided to start a marketing membership for naturopathic doctors, and that went well, she still has that. And then through that, she fell in love with digital advertising, so she invested thousands and thousands of dollars, hundreds of hours at learning Facebook and Instagram ads and that's how she ended up co-founding an ad agency. And then just last week to add onto that, they also launched an e-commerce store called The SheEO Store for women entrepreneurs that has all kinds of swag for entrepreneurs, office decor, even some digital downloads, all that stuff. So it's a bit of lengthy road but with lots of different parts, but, thinks it's important for other people that are in the entrepreneur space to know that that happens a lot and a lot of times it's not just overnight success, there's a long journey to get there.   Knowing the Best Platform for Your Audience   Me: It says here that you are a marketing expert specifically with Facebook and Instagram ads and building sales funnels. Let's say especially in light of COVID, a lot of businesses have had to pivot and go online whether they're let's say for example, they're selling physical items or maybe they're more of a service oriented type of business. I know a lot of people are also looking into doing online courses and more people are doing webinars and then sometimes you have people who do paid webinars versus free webinars. How do you balance all of that? How do you know which new business lines you should take up? How do you know which platform is best for your audience, whether it be Facebook or Instagram or LinkedIn? As a marketing strategist, how could you help our audience to get a clearer view of where they should go?   Dr. Jackie shared that what she loves about Facebook and Instagram is there's no other platform has the ability to target as specifically as they do on Facebook and Instagram. So, they're able to get very specific with the people they want to see the ads and now, since a lot of people have had to make that pivot, there's that missing face-to-face interaction a lot of times. So instead of that, in lieu of that, you can use Facebook marketing and paid advertising to nurture your customers. So, it doesn't always have to be something that's obviously a pushed to sale, you can use nurturing content and these types of ads, they're actually very cheap, to stay on the top of mind of your customers and build those relationships digitally because you could just simply do that, instead of having people walk into your physical store.   Me: So, when you say nurturing content, let me give you an example. Let's say for example, I am an event planner and let's say before COVID, my event planning business focused primarily on destination weddings. And so in light of COVID with people not traveling as much, how is it that I would be able to provide nurturing ads and stay top of mind to my ideal customer using Facebook and Instagram, What would a nurturing ad look like?   Dr. Jackie stated that she loves that question. So, video ads do really well. So this is something like you might use, kind of the same kind of content you might use in your organic marketing, where you're teaching something super quick, like in a three minute or less video, but that is very beneficial.   So, for your audience, this could be some part of the wedding planning process. This could be teaching them the things that they want to avoid when planning their wedding. This could be the questions that you get asked a lot and you see the issues that come up when you're planning weddings with these people, that's great content for this nurturing content. And yes, you're in a position where obviously, because of COVID people are doing their events, they're traveling less, all that kind of thing, but they're going to get back to that, it's not over. They're going to get back to that.   So, if they've been seeing your content as they're going through this engagement process and starting to think, “Okay, like, what am I going to do? What is this going to look like for me?” you're popping up.   And what's beautiful about this as well is we can start retargeting based on the amount of time they've watched your video. If they've watched your video, they normally do 25, 75 and 90%. So, obviously they know people are engaged at different levels. If they don't watch up to 25, they normally don't use that as a retargeting and put them into a quote unquote, warm audience, meaning they're familiar with you. If they've watched the 25%, they might send them another video, that's the next step or the another thing that is complimentary to what you are teaching on that first video and so on and so on. So, it nurtures just like you might in a nurture sequence through email, you can do the same with paid advertising only with paid advertising, with email open rates you only get about 20%, with paid advertising, you're going to get much higher, much more people actually viewing that content.   Suggestions for Overcoming Anxiety as an Entrepreneur   Me: All right, sounds good. So, those are some practical examples that as I said, listeners would want to capture that kind of information so they know exactly how to navigate. Now, COVID has also caused people to be very anxious. And as a result of that, as an entrepreneur, there is no safety net, you're not working for a company, although to some extent, when you work with an organization, you don't necessarily have a safety net, especially in this economic environment. But it's even more so fragile for you as an entrepreneur because you dictate your income, if you don't prospect, if you don't as you say, put out that content, if you don't try to find ways to get to the customer, then the customer won’t know about you and you won't get any business. So if you're suffering from anxiety, you're like, “Well, other people are doing the same thing I'm doing. Why should I continue? I feel like I'm not getting the results I should be getting based on the effort I'm putting out.”  What are some things that you would suggest as an entrepreneur, if you're experiencing these kinds of emotions to help yourself really overcome it and just be focused on what is important?   Dr. Jackie shared that this has been a wild year, obviously for everyone, brought out anxieties for everyone, so many people have had to pivot, and she gets that that can be extremely scary and uneasy. She thinks that one of the things of being a successful entrepreneur is the ability to pivot, the ability to seek opportunities within any kind of situation. So what opportunities, she thinks if you switch and like flip the script on whatever is going on in your business, what opportunities are actually present right now that might not have been, for example, now we have way more people with their online, like we have way more people online and way more people on Facebook, Instagram, all the social everyday. So can you use that opportunity to get the word out about your business to people that might not have seen it otherwise when you had your physical store, if that's the case.   She thinks that just knowing that you're not in this alone, like so many people are going through this, and it will pass, this too shall pass. So it will pass, we're going to get through this as the human race. And she thinks just being really open to opportunities that you might not have considered before and getting creative with that will help. And then also just know entrepreneurship is a journey, she definitely tries to be as transparent as possible again and say, “I was not an overnight success. I'm pretty successful right now, but it took a while.” So even if you are feeling that in your business, keep it up, keep doing it. And if you're passionate about what you're doing and you actually really love what you're doing, it's going to work out.   Me: I totally agree. I think whatever you’re doing you have to be passionate about it because on the days when you’re faced obstacles and challenges, I feel like it's that passion, it's that little spirit inside you that really loves what you're doing that pushes you to keep continuing, because then it's not just about the money, it's about the satisfaction, that internal emotion, that gratitude that you have within yourself. Because I believe that there has to be that self-satisfaction first, before any level of satisfaction on the outside can be provided from a customer or a prospect or a vendor can be fulfilled. Would you agree?   Dr. Jackie agreed and stated that your customers can feel if you're passionate about it or not. If it's something you're doing just to do to hopefully make money at it and you don't really like doing it, then it might not work out because people are going to be able to feel that, people can tell. So she 100% agreed on that.   How Dr. Jackie Stays Motivated    When asked how she stays motivated, Dr. Jackie shared that this kind of goes off what they were just talking about. She is super into digital marketing, so like anytime, her birthday, Christmas, she’s always asking for different digital marketing ask related things. On her spare time, she’s reading business and, and doing things. So for her, it comes naturally because she’s so passionate about it. And so, it's okay to have certain days where you just don't feel like working as an entrepreneur, but if you're having more days of those than the other way around, maybe you're not in the right business, maybe you need to switch up what you're doing. Because again, this is your life, you want to be doing something, why build a business around something you don't really want to do? When you're building your business, it should be super aligned with who you are, how you want to live your life, the lifestyle you want, what you are passionate about, talking about and doing on a daily basis, that's the key. So, for her, motivation comes very naturally when it comes to her businesses because it's not only what she does for a living, it's also what she does as like a hobby, it's her interest.   App, Website or Tool that Dr. Jackie Absolutely Can’t Live Without in Her Business   When asked about an online resource that she cannot live without in her business, Dr. Jackie shared that she’s a Trello fanatic. She loves Trello because it's so easy for project management and you can share boards with other people. She uses it for everything as far as planning out social media, to planning out our project management for our team, to getting things to her members as far as all kinds of content. She just thinks it's a powerhouse for the price and everything. And she absolutely loves it.   Books That Have Had the Greatest Impact on Dr. Jackie   When asked about the books that have had the biggest impact, Dr. Jackie shared that she loves Jen Sincero and You Are a Badass at Making Money: Master the Mindset of Wealth. It's a great book, the way she writes, she has read several of her books, they're very easy read. So even if you've had a long day, it's like one of those things that it's not super dense. And she knows this, this was what she went through at first too in the beginning of her entrepreneurial journey was a lot of money blocks, a lot of weight, a lot of things she was thinking about money that was getting in her way of success. Like thinking that maybe she didn't deserve to have hundreds of thousands of dollars, that she wasn't qualified enough, all of these kinds of things that get in your head. And also, her other book is Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, which everyone probably talks about, but it made such a big impact on her life. And again, she can have all the strategy, all the training, all the education in the world, but if she’s not willing to accept money into her life, she’s not going to have it. So really working on that money mindset and those two books have really helped her for sure.   What Dr. Jackie is Really Excited About Now!   When asked what’s something that’s going on right to develop herself or her people, Dr. Jackie stated that she loves this question, it's so timely. She and her business partner just launched a brand new e-commerce store called the SHEEO store, it's fabulous. But it has all kinds of swag, like brand photographer approved t-shirts, things like that for entrepreneurs. It also has office decor furniture, they have digital downloads for entrepreneurship on there, and right now they actually have 15% off store wide for their grand opening, but they have had over 200 customers in the last week. So they're kicking it off with a bang and super excited about that.   Where Can We Find Dr. Jackie Online   Instagram - @drjackienoelke Facebook - @drjackienoelke Website – www.thesheeostore.com   Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Dr. Jackie Uses   Dr. Jackie shared that she loves, “Gratitude is the antidote to fear,” by Tony Robbins. And she uses that a lot. But that helped her a lot as she was going through her anxiety and entrepreneurship.   And still, anytime she’s feeling fear or really any emotions that she doesn't necessarily want to feel, it's always okay to feel sad or feel fear if you want to be feeling that. But if you don't and you go into a space of gratitude, your feelings change automatically, you can't feel gratitude and fear at the same time.   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   You Are a Badass at Marketing Money: Master the Mindset of Wealth by Jen Sincero Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill   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!

Mike Welsh is the Chief Creative Officer at Mobiquity, leading a team of experienced architects, experienced designers and conversational designers to deliver engaging and compelling solutions in collaboration with engineers who bring these solutions to life. He has been doing this for over 27 years, having joined Mobiquity near its beginning. Mike notes that what originally drew him to this role is the ability to transform experiences for companies and their customers. What keeps him on the team engaged is the opportunity to find out what truly transforms human experience and then brings it to life. He's a firm believer in the power of a team and its ability to create impact derived from insights.   Mike's time is spent with clients and teams, including working within creative, business and technology fields, bringing many skills to the table including: experience strategy, experience design, product strategy, and product design. His industry knowledge within these functions spans healthcare, retail, ecommerce, and financial services and he has lectured on these topics at the University of Pennsylvania, Drexel University, Moore College of Art and Design and various conferences. Questions Could you tell us a little bit about your journey, how it is that you got into experience strategy and experienced design. Tell us a little bit about that journey over the 27 years, how it got you to where you are today? We're in an era, especially since the global pandemic where a lot of organizations are definitely looking to transform their experiences digitally, even if they weren't in a digital space, they're possibly looking at a digital transformation strategy, regardless of the industry that they operate in. As an expert in user and customer experience design and strategy, could you maybe share with us two or three things that should be top of mind in making that transition if you're a company? What are some of the things that need to be done on the backend to ensure that the user feels like it's personalized to them? How do you stay motivated every day? Could you share with us maybe one personal win that you think working from home has had an impact on your client success? Maybe just one thing that you've been doing differently that has had a greater impact on how you are able to show up for your client. Can you share with us, what's the one online resource, tool, website, or app that you absolutely can't live without in your business? Can you share with us maybe one or two books that have had the biggest impact on you? It could be a book you read recently or something you read a very long time ago, but it still had a great impact on you to this day. Can you share with us what, 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 listeners find you online? What's one quote or saying that during times of adversity or challenge or any obstacle that you may be facing in your life, you'll tend to revert to to kind of help you to stay on track or just keep going. Do you have one of those? Highlights Mike’s Journey Mike shared that he went to Drexel University; he got his degree in Graphic Design and a sort of minor in Sociology. And after graduating, he started out a little shop in Manioc, which is a town just outside of Philadelphia and got to work on some interesting projects and got started and thought, “Wow, this is actually exactly what I want to do.” But he thought he needed to learn about all the pieces that surround the design business, the work that they do, not just making pixels and making things pretty, but how do people think about things? And for those that suffer by what they design, what is it like in their experience? So how can you get into that more directly, more fully, and start to explore that?   So, he had lots of opportunities and mentors along the way, and people that gave him guidance and sort of stumbled and fumbled through the first 5 or 10 years of his career. And then sort of hit his stride when the dotcom boom slash bust happened. That's when he started to get into these entrepreneurial spaces where it was startup time. So he has probably been 4 of the last 6 jobs are startups. And for him, that was the opportunity to really explore how do you actually transform? How do you kind of get up that Maslow pyramid to get unmet need met?   And he thinks a lot of the work that the teams he has been fortunate enough to lead demonstrate that in a lot of different ways, but it's ultimately, can a customer get, can a user, can a patient have silent utility? You don't need 5 star experiences. What you need is, the design has to sort of become part of an experience that's quietly used by folks and it just works, it just works every day. And he thinks that's been a big portion of the journey leading up to the last 7 years at Mobiquity of taking customers, probably 200 or so projects of how do you get somebody to understand their experience enough, give it to you, and then come back with something that gives them sort of a rich, silent utility experience.   Digital Transformation Strategy to Keep in Mind Mike shared that one of the main things that companies that have to approach this sort of new normal, new reality structural change that's going to be with us for a significant period of time is first don't panic. He knows that sounds maybe not like a design thing to think about, but if you're a business trying to survive and get on the other side of whatever this is, a global pandemic, civil unrest, governmental change, all sorts of things that are happening in everybody's country. The first is to not panic and think about how your business grows in an environment like this. In every depression and recession we've ever had, most of the truly sustainable businesses are built out of that crucible of collapse. And so, if you are one of those businesses and you can see this with Facebook and Netflix and Spotify all came out of the great recession.   Well, we're at another point where there's going to be another set of entrepreneurs and business owners and business people that are going to have opportunities. The second big pitfall or the second big sort of caution is “You don't have to boil the ocean; you shouldn't have to solve everything at once.” It is sort of the Kaizen model of take a little bit each time that you go to make a change in your business and do some analysis, try it, if it doesn't work, learn from it and move on. Don't try to do everything at once, like curbside or contactless payments or things like that. There's plumbing and systems that already exist, that are already in the world.   How can you adapt these to your business in a simple, straightforward, working with your customer, dealing with your labour way that can also make you able to meet your bottom line. And then to some extent, the third thing is you have to have a grit, so Duckworth wrote all about it, and you have to have passion and perseverance and you need tons of both to be able to sustain yourself through what is essentially a depression and come out of it with a completely new streamlined, more efficient, more customer focused than you'd ever have in any other time.   Me: So, those are definitely valid integrations that we can take into consideration when we're thinking of our digital strategy. Now, a big part I think of user design and you can correct me if I'm wrong. Seeing that you're an expert is I think personalization and so using whatever platform whether it's for a bank or for a supermarket or a spa, or whatever that at the end of the day, I don't feel like it's generic to everybody, but it's specific to me and what I'm looking for. How can you ensure that you achieve that? Is it by ensuring that you're asking the right questions? Is it maybe from collecting the right kind of customer data?   Personalized User Experience Mike stated that he doesn't know if he’s the expert, expert, but we all use experiences like you use the phone, we're using Skype, we're doing all these things, and we’re accessing technology and adopting it. He thinks one of the things, one of the principle things people have to do if you're trying to personalize is to first understand what the human component is.   So for example, that sort of Maslow example he talked about in the beginning was, at the bottom of the pyramid you can just make an app that sits in an app store and it does a thing and you have to log in and that could be Uber, or it could be Amazon. You get to the next tier and you have to understand what desires exist for a person. What are the desires that people want in an experience. If you understand those, you can create interactions they really want, and that may be a tier above.   So, Uber for example, or house party or some of these other experiences that really do get at interactions you actually want in those experiences and then tier above that is you gotta have a fair exchange of value between the human and the system.   And so that means that you have to construct these systems so they're built around an audience, not around a technology. It's hard for people to understand that when they go to set out and make an app, because they're thinking about a technology, that's looking for a problem, but the reality is you want to make it so that you understand fundamentally what's at stake for that person so that they can have moments of achievement in that fair exchange of value.   And he thinks when you see the 5 star experiences or you think of the apps that you use yourself, or think of the kiosk experiences that you've had, or the experiences with your television set, any technology interaction you have that you feel is meaningful.   Oftentimes, obliquely goes after the unmet need by trying to create fair exchange of value between a human and a system.   The last piece of this and sort of the capper is if you understand how audience management works and how you can steer audiences in different ways, it starts with that one to one knowledge that understanding of the human condition.   Do you really understand anxiety, the uncertainty and powerlessness that people feel today as they go about their business, put on their mask, wash their hands, do these kinds of things are going to fundamentally change the way we act as humans. We don't know what it is yet because we're still in the cauldron.   But ultimately, if you think about that anxiety as an equation for how you can address the more certain people can feel, the more power they have in a transaction and that intuitive emotional awareness of the consumer can change the state of anxiety someone experiences when they're trying to interact with a piece of technology.   And that's a great way to start your sort of personalization conversation. And then on the technology side, there are a million things out there, AWS, Google, everybody's got tons of widgets that can quote….unquote, address personalization, but they're all afterthoughts, it's not until you understand that equation fully and completely. And then you create that exchange, that fair exchange of value between you and someone else.   Me: So, the person who is doing the designing, they're not just have to think about just selling a product, they have to think about the end user. And as you mentioned, how does the human element connect with the technology aspect to ensure that you're actually trying to meet the unmet needs of the client? Because sometimes I guess the customer doesn't even know what their needs are until it has been met.   Mike agreed and shared that it shows up surprisingly in different ways. So, the way that you bought the microphone that you're using to do this podcast had a certain set of things, you had some needs, you had to have really good sort of MPR quality audio, and you wanted some high quality production after you do this podcast.   But the reality is, is that you want to make sure that the quality of your audio gets to your audiences in exactly the right way. There's a sort of a margin that you have, if he understands that, that he’s going to position that microphone in a way that gets you to that end, he’s going to use YouTube influencers, he’s going to use social media, he’ going to have people using the mic mention it. There's a lot of ways that people can do this, where they can actually personalize the experience and make it so that you're making the right purchase with the right kinds of information.   Me: I think information is so critical Mike as you mentioned that, I think sometimes a lot of companies, I know, like for example, in sales, they focus on trying to sell the customer the benefits, like how will it benefit me versus the features, because I think that's where a lot of salespeople go wrong. They're caught up on all of the features that this particular product or service may offer, but maybe some of those features I don't need, I'm not interested, let’s say I was buying a car, I'm not interested in the fact that the RPM can go to whatever number, I'm probably more interested in the softer features, does it have a dashboard with a podcasting app? Does it have bluetooth that it will sync with my phone because those are things that I actually value and use on a daily basis when I'm driving.   And so, it's to understand who you're serving and what the benefit would be to them. For example, you're selling a vehicle to a mom with three children versus a single, a single man who is a bachelor. Clearly your pitch would be a little bit different because she's probably looking for something that will have enough space to accommodate her family, if she has to go on a trip or a vacation, or just up and down every day to take them to soccer practice and ballet recital, you want to know that you can travel with them in comfort. And of course, if you have to carry groceries that there is enough trunk space to facilitate all of that. So, I do think that you really have to focus on the benefits of the product and then knowledge is critical in getting that information across.   How Mike Stays Motivated Mike stated that that's a good question. He shared that there are days he will tell you that we've all been having on lockdown that are difficult, but he thinks two things. He has three daughters and they're teenagers and they keep him motivated every day because every day it's something. But he’s a big fan of sort of audible and listening to audio books and things like that. And he found this one, it's about the two minute mornings and every morning you fill out a journal, you answer three questions. It takes literally two minutes and it has actually been extremely powerful. He thought it was kind of like, “Oh, whatever, I'll do it.” But then after he did it for the 90 days, it actually starts to turn into a way that you can control your day and have a good day.   So, that plus a little bit of yoga, plus he runs a bit, those kinds of things will give you something to look forward to. But he also thinks that the work that they get to do for their clients, he used to travel a lot for work, he would travel 50 weeks a year almost doing workshops and meet with clients and doing pitches and things like that. Having to do all of this stuff at home from a sort of remote space, he has been the most creative he thinks. He has been able to help, he has been able to have the most impact he has had since he has been in this job simply because he hasn't had to go to the airport at 3:00 am in the morning and get home after midnight. It really does put a tax on creativity.   So that motivates him every day. And the fact that hundreds of millions of people use stuff that they've designed every day, that's a huge motivation. Somebody asked him one time for a job search that if you had to tell a candidate coming to work for Mobiquity, what's the reason you'd come here. And he thinks for him, the motivation is if he told you that you could have an outsized impact and that your design could potentially influence saving someone’s life, for example, that will change your whole outlook on your whole life. Because the thing that you thought you went to art school for, which is designing stuff actually influences healthcare outcomes, or it helps someone have some moment of fulfilment that they wouldn't have otherwise had, unless you designed that thing. That is an excellent motivator to get up and get going.   Me: All right. So those are some good things that you used to get motivated every day. One thing that sparked my interest while you were sharing just now is you spoke about things that kind of don't necessarily energize your creativity and definitely traveling, those stressful hours getting to the airport and then getting back. I mean, traveling on a whole is a stressful experience really. But one of the things I wanted to know from you was since you've been home, you said for the past 90 days, and you've definitely been able to be more creative. The Impact of Working at Home Mike shared that the one big thing is, a long time ago he was told by one of his creative bosses that he wasn't that good of a storyteller.   And that was pretty big, a little bit of a punch in the gut kind of thing. And sometimes that's the truth, you have stuff to work on and sometimes people just don't know how to deliver that message nicely. But it was true. And so, what happened was he made that his sort of like, okay, that is going to fuel his hate fire, that is going to make him sort of motivated to be the best storyteller he could possibly be bar none. And so, every day he wakes up in the morning and that for him has been the thing that's changed the most.   Not only his own storytelling is getting better and his practice of doing that is getting better and the techniques that they use to do it remotely is getting better, but it's actually affecting his teams. So, his whole design team is getting better at storytelling and getting more efficient at making these messages meaningful. And he thinks that that's been a big thing for him anyway as a check the box, you're making some progress.   Me: So, that's definitely had an impact on you because I think it's so important for our listeners to realize that even though we're working from home, we can still put out even better work than we were putting out when we were actually in a face to face environment or just doing the things that we're accustomed to doing. Human beings generally don't like change and they put up a lot of resistance to change and I can imagine for an employee who is accustomed to face to face interaction, the up and down busy kind of activity every day. Staying home over and over every day, I guess at the beginning it did seem like a nice thing to kind of get a break from the everyday activities. But after doing it over an extended period of time and now even hearing that this thing is going to continue into 2021.   I was just reading on LinkedIn last night that Google is going to extend their work from home to the end of 2021. And I don't see why it is that it can't be a part of our permanent way of operating because if you can literally pull out opportunities out of it and you're able to see productivity increase, you're able to see people grow, you're able to see people develop and your customers are being satisfied even before. If you can find some measurement metric system to identify the level of satisfaction post COVID versus pre COVID with the same people working, but under different conditions and you're able to prove that it's a better experience, I don't see why we would discontinue what we're doing if it's working better.   Mike shared that the sort of fun fact is the world isn't going to get back to normal until 2023, 2024. If you talk to epidemiologists around the world and virologists, they'll all say, “There is a normalcy bias and a cognitive bias that people have for what's happening to them.” And some people have been tremendously negatively impacted, lost their livelihoods, loss of their businesses, spouses out of work. We're all going to go through a PTSD event. Think of it that way. What you can hope for is that there can be opportunities for people to find a way to express themselves. So, the Maslow that they do for their clients is the same that they do for themselves.   If he can have moments of achievement in his job, in his life and in his work, that's great. But if he can help others do the same thing, the force multiplication that comes along with that is staggering. The amount of impact that you can have.   One of his teammates had to do a presentation for a client. She didn't want him on the call; she just wanted him to coach her through it. And she said to him afterwards, because they went back and forth about one of the slides. He said, “Look, I don't think you should put that on there, but what do I know?” And afterwards she said, “I kept the slide in, despite you not wanting me to.” which he said to her, “It's fine. You can do what you want.” But she had to own the story and she came back afterwards, the client was super excited.   She did a fantastic job. And as a result, she said, “Look, I really appreciate all your coaching and everything. And I kept the slide in, like I said, but a lot of the points that you made ended up in my talk track. And for that I'm grateful.” And she said, “At some point you got to let us spread our wings, boss.” And so, he’s humble enough to know that he’s only good at a very small number of things, the things that he’s terrible at isn't is an extensively long list. And he imagines others have the same sort of imposter syndrome and things like that. So, if you can have focus enough to help somebody else get through this thing and help them have a moment of achievement, it can change that person's impact on the world that they live in. And so there is a little bit of a multiplication effect of being able to kind of help your team get through the things that they're struggling with so they can influence others and then it just becomes this self fulfilling kind of thing.   App, Website or Tool that Mike Absolutely Can’t Live Without in His Business Mike shared that he’ll give one and then maybe a half of another. The one that he really couldn't live without is the Notes App for his iPad. Now, he wouldn't have said that in January, but his Apple pencil and his iPad, when he starts doing meetings, and this is going to be one of these storytelling things, is that, that the ability to sketch during a shared meeting, like you're on Zoom or on Teams or whatever, the minute you start drawing on the screen.   You have the Bob Ross effect, which is sort of there's a happy tree and you sort of get this soothing feeling of someone drawing a tree on a landscape, his experience has been that that is actually something that is super valuable to con their customers and their teammates.   If they can sort of see the whiteboard, the electronic whiteboard effect happening, they oftentimes are more engaged in the meetings that they're in, they don't want to see more PowerPoints or Keynotes, they feel like they're actively doing something and he’s drawing what they're saying.   So, he’s literally sketching out while they're going. Across his own internal teams and with external clients have said in feedback that this was a much more engaged meeting and they felt like they accomplished a lot more because they actually can see a physical result as opposed to a set of slides that he had to spend all week preparing.   So for him, the ability to draw a live in a shared environment with someone or some people has been a ‘Godsend’ for not being physically present, you don't get physical cueing, verbal cueing, you barely get audio cueing. So, you need some other physical aperture to be able to have an interaction with someone and the Notes App has been fantastic.   Me: Excellent. That’s very dynamic tool, Apple has come a very far way with that application.   And there are other apps out there that do it, but the notes one is super simple and it can be shared with others and stuff. So it's his default.   Books That Have Had the Greatest Impact on Mike When asked about books that have had the biggest impact, Mike shared that he'll share two books. Now, if you would talk to the team, they would say, “Oh my God, that’s the question for you.”   In his presentations with clients, he has a thing called the book slide, and you can find it on his website. He goes through a whole thing about all the books he reads. And so, one book that's affected his whole career, his whole life is the Tao Te Ching by Laozi. You can find a version of the Tao Te Ching in lots of translations; it's an ancient philosophy book. And it has spawned lots of different sort of Taoists religion itself and Zen Buddhism came from it.   There are a lot of things that came after, but the Tao Te Ching has been a book that he has been reading over and over again, then audio booking, listening to it over and over again for the last 27 years. And it's fundamentally changed his entire outlook on his entire life.   The other book and he just finished this book, which he thinks everyone should read this book, it is so fascinating. It's the Biography of Frederick Douglass.   It's a long listen on audio on audible; it's like 40 hours or so but he ran a lot of miles listening to it. But the fact that it's so long, it gives you insight into a person that you would never otherwise have.   And then it allows you to draw your own conclusions. The way the book's written, it's fascinating. It takes his life from when he was child in Baltimore, all the way through to the end. And you always think about these characters of people that you learn about in school, but until you actually get into the detail and you start to see how, you know, they're not perfect, everybody wants everybody to be binary, and they’re not binary. There's a gray scale of humanity that this man operated with.   And you just think about how tough your day is, you can take any six chapters out of that book and feel a thousand times better about what you have to do each day. And it's brilliantly written, it’s almost like when Hamilton was like writing all the time, doing the Federalist papers, he wrote like 50 some odd Federalist papers. Everybody else did a fraction.   This guy was writing constantly, failed newspapers started another one writing constantly the sort of suasion sort of principles, then moving into nonviolent stuff. And then moving through freeing himself from slavery and traveling abroad and becoming a writer and sort of a speaker on the circuit, you really do get a sense that one person could change the world. And he found the book to be just super fantastic and The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass is also his own writings, which he thinks are also good. But you get to see a full picture of a human, which he thought was amazing.   What Mike is Really Excited About Now! Mike shared that the one about his people is they do in person training. So, one of his team that same teammate he described the story about the slide that she included that he didn't want her to. She came to him once and said, “Hey, I'm having trouble being confident about how I'm presenting myself and what I'm talking about in the work. And I'd like to be more confident about it. And it seems like my peers and other jobs and other companies have this level of confidence.”   So at that point, he was like, alright, let's get everybody's confidence level up or reduce their imposter syndrome. So they brought in an outside firm to give them training every six months or so, they'll do two classes, one is like how to do UX journey maps and other is how to do usability or heuristic evaluations, expert reviews, how to present UX, storytelling for UX, getting this team certified in each of these areas by a sort of globally known company. Started to build up this confidence level that you would start to see in meetings with clients.   So, that from a rewarding standpoint has been amazing to watch a team of pretty experienced professionals up their games, be more confident about their work, sort of stand on their own two feet. His biggest thing he tells his team all the time is he would love if they had a meeting with a client and they're doing a presentation and he could just sit in the back.   Being the Chief Creative Officer, isn't super easy, there's lots of things about it that are hard, but the most proud moments you can have, or the most rewarding moments you can have is when you see your team have these moments of achievement for themselves, they get up, they do their work and the clients are like people clapping at the end of a meeting come on, that's amazing.   For himself personally, his parents both passed away in the last 3 years. His mother passed away in February just before lockdown. But his mother probably kept him from traveling and in some ways protected him, probably from catching this COVID thing. And so, as a result of that, he sort of said, “Alright, from now on, I'm going to try to live everyday like it's my last.” And he got a teardrop trailer and he’s going tow it across the United States and he’s going to do the 25 top national parks of the United States. He travels all over the world and have been around the world a bunch of times, but it's mostly for work so it's not like he’s vacationing in places, he’s just going into a conference room, but he’s going to take the camper and it’s like a small teardrop, it sleeps one person and he’s going to drag that across the United States and try to see all these wonders that he hasn't seen, so he’s a big camping fan.   Me: That sounds pretty exciting. It's amazing the amount of things that you can do and I think I was reading that recently, actually, it was on an Instagram story. A company had asked one of those polling questions, what's the one thing you've learned since COVID and someone wrote that time is so precious and you really shouldn't take any day for granted, that's what they've learnt since COVID. And I guess it’s because we have so much time to sit still and look at what is really happening. I mean, look at what happened yesterday in Beirut.   We have to be grateful for even the things that we think is standard, breathing, waking up every day, the sun is shining, just having the ability to live and just function. The things that we take for granted that we believe must happen, they don't most happen. And so, I think at the end of the day, if we all approach life as you said, like it’s your said last, you’ll really live a more fulfilling life.   Mike agreed and shared that most people live their lives on the gross level and you'll see that in Tao Te Ching. Most people live their lives on a level that doesn't let them get below the surface of their own existence and that has been broken through for a lot of people in this sort of lockdown.   It's been difficult isolation, depression, all these things are happening. However, on the other side, the bright spot is you can really see people start to get below the surface, they're not just constantly consuming, they're not just sort of keeping themselves distracted or anesthetized from what's actually happening in their own lives. And that's been interesting to see and it has impacted him as well.     Where Can We Find Mike Online Mike shared listeners can find him at – Twitter - https://twitter.com/mikeswelsh/             LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.cn/in/mikeswelsh/             Website – www.mwelsh.com             Instagram -  https://www.instagram.com/mikeswelsh/   Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Mike Uses When asked about a quote or saying that he tends to revert to, Mike shared that it's sort of a hashtag that he has been doing since his father passed away. So, a long time ago he went to his dad, he had a problem.   He said, “Dad, this thing's happening in my life. What do I do about it?” And his father’s advice to him was, you need to keep your head down and you need to keep moving, because if you stand still, everything will take you down. Those things will just eat you alive.”   So, the idea is that you got to keep your head down, you got to keep moving. And that passion and perseverance thing, the grit that you need to have, you need to get it, you're not born with it, you have to earn that going through these experiences and you just have to keep moving.   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 Tao Te Ching by Laozi Frederick Douglass: A Biography The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass   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!

Carlee Myers is an expert at helping professionals who feel overworked, overwhelmed, or on the verge of burnout relieves stress so they can find more joy at work home and beyond. As a founder of The Stress Less Company, Carlee has helped hundreds of professionals across the country take action to reduce stress through coaching. She believes there is no-one-size-fits-all when it comes to stress management. Carlee, a Diplomat of The American Institute of Stress, has had her work most recently featured in media outlets such as Parade, Good Day Philadelphia, FOX 29, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philly Mag and Whoolley Magazine.   Questions   Could you tell us a little bit about your journey, how did you get onto this journey to manifest or understand that you are manifested to help others reduce stress in their lives? Talk to us a little bit about stress and customer experience, to just expound for us why reducing stress in your life can impact your overall wellbeing and of course impact your business regardless of what type of business you're in, whether you're the employee or the business owner. Let's say our listeners that are listening to this episode, they are looking for some tangible takeaways, give us maybe two or three things that they can start doing tomorrow morning to reduce stress. Based on your experience and just working with the different clients that you've worked with over the years, and I know it's a very general question and it may not overlap across many different people, but maybe two or three stress-relating activities that you found works well for busy professionals, low resource, is healthy for you, but generally speaking people tend to enjoy it. Can you share with us how do you stay motivated every day? Can you share with us maybe one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely couldn't live without in your business? Share with us maybe one or two books that have had the biggest impact on you. It could be a book that you read recently or even a book that you read a very long time ago but the principles and tips that you maybe have picked up in there still stay with you to this very day. Can you share with us 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 listeners find you online? What's one quote or saying that during times of adversity or challenge you will revert to it, kind of helps to refocus you and just help you to get back on track. Do you have one of those?   Highlights   Carlee shared that she likes to say whenever folks asked her this question that you've opened a can of worms. But the cliff notes version of her story and how she ended up in this line of work is actually it goes back a really long time. So when she was about 12 years old, her parents had gotten separated and her mom ended up dating again and you're probably thinking, okay, well, what does that have to do with any of this? Well, her mom ended up actually dating a bad apple and as a result, that bad apple, she broke it off and he had never kind of let go of the relationship. And so a few months later that bad apple, that ex-boyfriend broke into her childhood home, killed her mom's new boyfriend and tried to kill her mom.   So, as you can imagine, as a 12 year old girl, she struggled with stress, with PTSD, with overwhelm, with anxiety, with fear, you name it, she was probably struggling with it. And for about 10 years, she really struggled and when she says struggled, she thinks that's probably an understatement. And to be clear for everybody who's worrying about her mom right now, she's alive, she's well, if you saw her today you would have no idea that she was shot three times. All she has is a pair of reading glasses and a slight limp, but it's wild. But for her, she struggled for 10 years with PTSD, with overwhelm, with stress, with everything. And for the first five years of her journey, she didn't tell anybody.   She thought that if she told anybody that she would be the straw that broke the camel's back in her family, that her family couldn't take another problem to deal with, or that she would become a burden to other folks. And so, as a result for the first five years, she didn't tell anybody. And then one night she actually had probably one of the worst night terrors of her life. And she finally opened up to someone and thank goodness she did, because then she started slowly but surely sharing with people in her life. “Hey, I'm kind of struggling right now.” or “I'm feeling a little stressed or I'm feeling a little overwhelmed.”   And she would ask people for advice and it was like clockwork, she would get the same five or so responses every single time. “Hey, Carly, have you tried therapy? Have you tried yoga? Have you tried meditation? Have you tried changing your diet? Have you tried exercising?” Have you tried insert mainstream approach here basically.   And the reality was for her is that she had tried all of that. She was so desperate for change that she had tried all of that and some of it didn't work and some of it worked a little bit, but nothing ever got her over that hump where she was experiencing things like happiness and joy and peace of mind and contentment and silliness and goofiness and all of those beautiful states of mind that she used to roll her eyes at because she thought that they weren't real. She thought people were faking it and all this to say that it took her 10 years to find the thing that worked for her. And at the time it was art, it was creativity.   And now as she has matured and grown, she has learned that more specifically, what she has found is this thing called Creative Stress Reduction and that is any activity that gets us out of fight, flight or freeze mode and into a state of play or flow. And so she spent a few years when she figured out what this was and what it was all about and how it worked. She spent a few years being upset because she was like, “Why isn't anybody talking about this? Like, this is so important.” She struggled for 10 years, she know there's people that struggled for 20, 30 plus years and that's not okay.   And so after she spent a few years throwing a temper tantrum because no one told her, she had to figure it out on her own. She realized, “Oh crap, like I'm supposed to be talking about this.” And so, that's how she ended up here. That's how she ended up with The Stress Less Company, because she don't want anyone to feel like they're stuck or that something's wrong with them because those five or so mainstream approaches that everyone's talking about, isn't quite working for them.   Me: It's so fascinating that you shared how you got on your journey was because of a pain that you were experiencing, a challenge that you were facing that you did the research on your own, you tried different methods, proven methods, not so proven methods and then you decided to come out with this wonderful solution and now you're offering it to other people because all businesses go into operation to solve a problem. And a lot of times it's the entrepreneur, the person starting the business that has the problem first and realizes that, “I'm not alone. This isn't an isolated problem. This is a group problem. This is an aggregate problem. How can I create a solution that will not just fix it for me, but fix it for other people?” so I really thought that was quite insightful. That's what I got from what you said awhile ago, that a lot of times we're solving problems we think is just for us, but a lot of other people are having the same issues.   Carlee shared that she does a lot of speaking and she shares a more extended version of her story and of course she’s sharing tips and tools to manage stress. And she cannot tell you how many times at the end of events, people will come up to her and they'll say, “I'm so sorry about what you went through.” And her response always kind of jars people because her response is, “I'm not, I'm not because if my mom hadn't gone through that, if I hadn't gone through that, if my family hadn't gone through that, then none of us would be doing the work that we're doing today. None of us would be the people that we are today and as a result of that, our lives are so much better.”   Me: That's so true Carlee. It's funny that you say that too, because I was listening to a young lady that I follow on LinkedIn and I'm not sure what type of abuse, but I know she suffered severe abuse in her youth and now she's an influencer on LinkedIn. But one of the things she speaks about as you said is she's not sorry about the abuse that she went through because she doesn't think she'd be the same person that she's today, if that wasn't part of her journey.   And you're so true. Sometimes we wonder how we ended up on the paths that we're on and we don't realize that it wasn't by chance, it was by design why we ended up on the path that we're on and I guess as you get older and you become wiser, the picture is much clearer, there's more clarity.   Carlee shared that managing our stress is so key to having our customer’s experience our businesses and our work in a much better light. One of the key symptoms or a few of the key symptoms of stress, we can start with the mental health side of things, which is irritability, anxiety, depression. And then we go into the physical symptoms, which they can be as slight as headaches and things like that. And then we can go into the more extreme, which is like cardiovascular disease, heart attacks, strokes, and things like that.   And so when we think about stress from the perspective of, “Okay, when I'm experiencing distress, all of these symptoms come along with it, then am I really functioning at my best when I'm showing up in my business and in my work. If I'm showing up with a client irritable, or if I'm showing up with a client anxious, are they really getting the experience that they should be getting?” Her guess is that most folks want to show up with their customers and their clients from a place of abundance and love and care and kindness. But when we're irritable, we can't do that, we're being passive aggressive accidentally, we're being short, one word answers.   And so, that's just a small example of how stress can majorly impact sales, revenue, the relationship that you're building with your clients and that's just irritability, that's not even getting into a lot of the conversations that she’s having with corporate professionals. We are losing millions of dollars every year because of unmanaged stress, because people are getting sick. People are having to call out and they're cancelling important client appointments because what happens when stressor after stressor after stressor builds up is that our body finally, it's like, “Okay, well, if you're not gonna listen to the emotions, if you're not going to listen to all of the warning signals I gave you, I'm going to shut you down.”   And so, noticing and realizing that there is a true correlation between the stress and these outcomes, and that's the difference between you getting behind on your work or getting behind on your revenue and you growing.   She thinks there's a lot of talk about personal brand right now. And she loves the definition of personal brand is, what people say when you're not in the room. And she thinks that when we show up irritable or anxious or even depressed in a conversation, that's what people are talking about. People read energy; they remember how you made them feel more than what you said.   Carlee shared that she is going to give listeners something that they can start right now, at the end of this podcast, they can get started on. It's really about implementing it now because the now leads to tomorrow.  And she thinks there's a great example, her own former business coach used to say to her, “The stuff you're doing today, you're going to see the results tomorrow, 60 days from now, 90 days from now. And so, it's important to get started.”   But she wants to circle back to the concept of Creative Stress Reduction, because she believes that this is the foundation, the very first step that we need to be taking to manage our stress. And so, if we return to creative stress reduction in the definition of this methodology that she has created. Creative Stress Reduction is any activity that gets us out of fight, flight or freeze mode and into a state of play or flow, AKA rest and digest.   And so, the reason why this is so important is because if we're in fight or flight mode, we tend to make some pretty poor decisions, almost always. And so, we need to get out of fight or flight mode so that we can start thinking clearly and strategically about what changes need to be made in our life to address those chronic stressors, the stuff that's coming up over and over and over again.   And the reason she’s going to go one step further. The reason why it's important that we address our chronic stress is because we can't prevent all stress triggers, let's be real. We could not prevent COVID-19, we could not prevent a lot of stuff, but we can better prepare ourselves so that we can move through unpredictable stressors with grace, by removing all of the unnecessary stressors that we're experiencing in our life. But it starts with getting out of fight or flight mode so that we can even be in the head space to do that.   So the first thing that she recommends in order to find the creative stress reduction activity that works for you is to start with back to the basics with the simple piece of paper and a pencil or pen or marker or whatever you're writing utensil you're into. And you're going to start by making a list of at least 50 to 100 activities that you love doing. And yes, 50 to 100, she feels like every time she recommends this, she sees draws drop across the audience, but it's really important that we have a diverse abundant list of activities and anything goes here.   So, she enjoys going on a walk, she enjoys playing with my dog. She likes gardening. She likes meditation, maybe she likes yoga. Or maybe even she loves formatting Excel spreadsheets. If that's what you're into, can be anything. And it's really important not to edit ourselves here. So even the stuff that you're like, “Ooh, maybe I shouldn't be doing this.” You can put that on this list too. So you can put your wine, you can put your cookies; you can put the hanky panky, if that's what you're into.   And really the whole point being that there is no editing in this process because that's where we can get stuck. And that's when we get to the place of, “Oh, I can't come up with 50 to 100 items. I can't do this. This is too hard.” And so once we have that list, once we get through that process, no editing, anything goes, we go and we go to the next piece of the equation. And the next piece is to narrow down that list by asking 4 really important questions.   And so the first question that we are going to ask in this process to narrow down our list is, “Does this item have the potential to put myself or someone else in harm's way, AKA in the world we live in right now?” Could someone else get sick or could I get sick? And if the answer is, yes, we're going to cross that item off our list.   Now, the second question that we're going to ask is, “Does this activity have the potential to trigger me?” Based on my past experience, maybe based on my past trauma, does this item have the potential to trigger me? And so she loves to give this example from a client that worked with her a few years ago, because she cannot tell you probably one of those mainstream approaches that we hear a lot about managing stress is going to get a massage.    And she loves a good massage, but she had a client a few years ago who was a survivor of sexual assault. And she had never gotten a massage before. And so everyone in her life, well, let's say a few people in her life kept telling her, you got to go get a massage, It's going to make you feel so much more at ease, your body's going to feel great, your mind is going to feel great. You should just try it.   They actually went through, before she just went and got a massage. And they said, “Okay, based on your past experience, how comfortable do you feel with this? Are you a hundred percent comfortable that you're not going to go in that room and feel triggered?” And she said, “I'm not sure, I'm not sure, but I can tell you that even if a friend touches me in the wrong way, it makes me feel uncomfortable.” And so, they cross that off her list because creative stress reduction is not the time to explore past trauma, it's not the time to explore, am I quote strong enough or healed enough or whatever for this, it's a time to get out of fight or flight mode.   And so, even the possibility of that triggering her is not going to work for creative stress reduction. So they crossed it off. Another simpler example is, if you have the beach on your list and every time you go to the beach, you see those lovely skinny 18 year olds in their bathing suits. And you're looking at yourself and thinking, “I do not measure up here.” That's a trigger. So, we’ve got to be real about the big and the small triggers. And so if it has the potential to trigger you, you're going to cross it off.   The third question that you're going to ask is, “Does this activity fit into my resources?” And this is a really, really important one. “Does it fit into my financial resources? Does it fit into my social resources? Does it fit into my time resources?” And this is really important, especially for busy professionals, because if we don't have the time to do this, we're not going to do it. We're going to push off our creative stress reduction until we, one day magically have the time, magically have two weeks or a month to backpack around Europe. We're going to keep pushing it off.   Me: If we're really embracing the creative stress process, shouldn't we really be making time for the things that we enjoy. If it is that you said I'm to write down 50 to 100 things that I enjoyed doing, then I need to make the time, I have to be intentional about it. Wouldn't I need to be that way?   Carlee agreed and stated that however, we're not trying to go from 0 to 60 in 3.5. And so we want to be realistic, we're not going to be able to just storm in to our boss’s office or completely upheaval our lives to take a month off. That's not to say, and this is one of the key things that she talks about too, is it's not to say that you can't plan for those things and you can't work towards those things. But the goal is to have an activity that is accessible to you right now, today, without a to do list of, “I have to talk to this person; I have to change this relationship with this client. I have to do all of these other things that may cause more stress before can get to this resource.”   A great example of something similar to this is, when folks write this list, oftentimes they'll write that fancy vacation and they'll say, oh, I want to go to Hawaii. Or I want to go wherever and they'll go to their bank account and it'll say something completely different. They have some big aspirations but the resources might not match the aspiration.   And it's not to say that we can't go to Hawaii or we can't go on that fancy vacation, but it's not accessible to us right now. And so we can add to our list and add to our plan that we're going to save up enough money to make that happen 5 years down the road. But if we make that our creative stress reduction today, what we can do is we can actually cause more stress and put ourselves even more into fight or flight mode because maybe we put that thing on our credit card, now we have credit card payments every month, or we're jeopardizing our client relationships because we don't actually have the time resources to do that based on our past agreements. And so that's why we're really talking about, does it fit into my current resources because we don't want to create more stress, the goal is to get out of fight or flight mode, even if it's 5 minutes that we have right now in our current time.   And so, the last question that we're going to ask ourselves, in terms of narrowing down this list is, “If I did this activity every single time I was stressed out, would it be healthy?” So there goes the wine there goes to the cookies. And oftentimes this last question is probably the one where we're seeing the most lines happening, the most pencil scraping across paper, because this is often our go to. These are the things that usually fit into what we would consider our resources; cookies aren't that expensive, wine is not that expensive in the long run.   And so, that's why we typically go to these things because they typically fit into our resources. And so, we're really looking to expand, what else can I do that's cheap, that doesn't take much time and we're not jeopardizing our financial future, we're not jeopardizing our health, we're not jeopardizing our relationships and things like that.   Carlee shared that probably the three most common. So the ones that are coming up for her that come up with her clients a lot are giving ourselves permission to dance, dance in our home when we're cooking dinner, or when we're folding the laundry, putting on music, singing, these are common, very common, creative stress reduction activities that don't take much time. If we have a really short song, it's less than two minutes. She thinks we all have about two minutes a day and allowing that play to come through you in those moments. She thinks those are really great examples, we might not be playing with Barbie dolls, which is a great example.   She was doing another podcast about two or three days ago. And she said, “Well, what about playing with Barbie dolls? I feel like I should not be doing that.” She (Carlee) said, “Well, if you're into that, you can do that. No judgment here.” But her guess is that your form of play as much different, your form of play might be dancing on hardwood floors and socks in your kitchen or your living room, it's very different, very accessible.   And so, for busy professionals, if we are taking the time to microwave a meal, even if we don't have time to cook it, what are we doing with those two minutes? Her guess is we're probably scrolling through social media for that two minutes. And so, we can replace, we can still hop on our phone, put on a song instead of put on that social media app and take that two minutes.   The other thing that she has a lot of clients do is that they get up and they walk around, especially right now, many of us are in quarantine. They'll get up when they're starting to feel stressed and they'll do a walk around their house. Or if they live in a more urban environment like her, they walk around the block or they just pace from the front to the back. And getting up and getting out of fight or flight mode so that we can separate ourselves from that trigger for a moment, that's another way and that's not necessarily play, but it is getting us to a state of a flow or a state of rest and digest. And so, these are really accessible items as well.   And then she has even more simple activities that some of her clients do, some of her clients just try to get more grounded in their body by rubbing their hands together or rubbing their hands on their thighs. And she mentioned these because oftentimes we think that stress reduction has to be some big grand, like, “Oh, I'm going to take a bubble bath or I'm going to go on a trip or I'm going to do something crazy.” But it can literally just be, “I'm gonna get out of my head. I'm going to move the energy to my head to my hands by just rubbing them together.”   Me: All right. So dancing, I have a crazy side to me I must admit. Every now and again, I'll just get up and start playing music and I'll probably grab my daughter and say, come Summer on let's dance. And she'd be like, mom, but I like to do fun stuff. I like to swing. One of my dreams is to have a swing in my backyard. I feel so almost at peace with nature when I'm swinging. And of course I love to go to the beach, but then I live in Jamaica and I suppose people hear when I live in Jamaica, they probably think I'm at the beach every weekend. Sadly, I don't live in a parish that the beaches are my backyard; I literally have to drive at least 30 to 45 minutes to get to the closest beach.   And so it just based on that, sometimes I don't get to the beach for months, especially with Coronavirus and the government putting restriction on the number of people in any one location. But I totally agree with you. Simple things like playing music that you like to listen to getting up and stretching, especially if you're working from home. I was talking to a client recently and she indicated that she actually puts in way more work when she's working from home, because it's not like she has to pack up and leave at 5:00 pm.   Sometimes she doesn't realize how time has flown until she realizes the news is being read at 8:00 pm on the TV. And she's like, “Oh shoot and I'm still here on my computer.” And that's 13, 14, 18 hour days and you're like, what is happening? You wouldn't have been putting in that if you are physically at work. So, I do agree with you that sometimes stress relief can be very, very simple strategies, but I guess sometimes we think so grandiose, we think it out of proportion instead of just trying to be very simple about it.   Carlee shared that one thing that's coming up for her when Yanique share that, is that a lot of us get to the point where in our stress management journeys that we are working, working, working, like we are hustle, go get it done. And we almost do it to the point of this like subconscious resentment. So when we finally get around to doing stress reduction or creative stress reduction, or to take care of ourselves, we are in this head space of like, “I worked so hard. I deserve something grand.” I deserve insert whatever big thing it is. And so, that mindset can really create a cycle because we say we want this big grand thing and then we realize it's not in our resources and so our coping mechanism can become to just return back to work.   And so, really honoring that creative stress reduction can be multiple times throughout the day. The goal is to not have you be so empty that at the end of the day, you feel, I deserve this big grand thing, which you probably do, but it be that, “I feel slightly exhausted or I feel slightly stressed and I'm going to do this thing to recharge,” versus “I'm completely empty. I'm burnt out and I need to do something yesterday.”   When asked how does she stay motivated every day, Carlee shared that for her, her creative stress reduction is gardening, she cannot even believe it. If you were to ask her 10 years ago if she would be a gardener, she would have laughed at you and told you no way and in heck. But for her, her thing is to get up, go out, check on her garden, even if nothing needs water, if nothing needs repotted, it's just checking and connecting that way, that's for her.   And then she would go a step beyond that. Creative Stress Reduction like she said earlier is just the first step. And so for her, she’s constantly evaluating what stressors are coming up over and over and over again in her life. Or maybe they've come up one or two times and she’s starting to see a pattern. And so, she’s constantly evaluating what's working, what's not, what can she change so that she’s not creating chronic stress or she’s not allowing chronic stress in her life.   And so, whether that's setting boundaries with clients with love, whether that's setting boundaries with family, whether that's allowing herself more downtime, more space, she doesn't know what it would be, but each day she’s really evaluating, “Okay, what could be causing some discomfort in my life and what can I do to move through my life with more joy?” And it's really for her and she thinks for everyone, it's showing up every single day willing to address the hard stuff so that we cannot let it become baggage and so we can move through life so much lighter.   Carlee shared that she would say Insight Timer, she really loves Insight Timer. It is a meditation app which she cannot believe she is recommending it because it's one of those five mainstream approaches. But she has to be honest, she uses it every single day and talk about accessibility. She uses it to meditate for two minute meditations at least once a day. So it's a great app that has tons of free meditations that you can use for all sorts of different reasons, for revenue growth, for anxiety, for sleep. It's a really great, versatile app.   When asked about books that have had the biggest impact, Carlee shared that it's The One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results by Gary Keller. He has a podcast as well. And that book, she has taken a lot of those principles and applied that to her business, to her work life, to her personal life. It's made everything so much simpler, so much easier to digest. It's a really great book.   Carlee shared that she’s super excited about this self care accountability group called The Virtual Stress Less Space that she’s running, it's brand new. It's only two months old at this point. And basically what they do is they hop on Zoom, they go around the room, they share what self care activities or what creative stress reduction or what they're going to do to take care of themselves in the next 40 minutes.   And then they all shut off their cameras, they mute themselves and they do something crazy, which is go do it in the moment and then they return back and they share it. Did we do it or didn't we do it? And if we didn't, what can we change so that we do it next time? And she’s super, super excited about that because oftentimes you were talking about earlier, we shouldn't we be making the time? And the answer is yes. And oftentimes we might make the time, but we don't follow through because there's no one else on the other side. And so she loves this group because they have the accountability with other members of the group that can say, “Hey, did you show up? Did you do that thing?” And all from a place of love.   Me: And so is this a program that you applied to get into or is it a program where anyone can access it?   Carlee shared that anyone can access it if you visit www.stresslessco.com/virtualstresslessspace Carlee shared listeners can find her at – Website – www.stresslessco.com Facebook - @thestresslessco Instagram - @thestresslessco Carlee shared that her mantra is, “I choose calm.” Me: That is very simple, and it's straight to the point, “I choose calm.” And of course, calm can be manifested in many different ways, depending on whatever makes you feel calm.   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 The One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results by Gary Keller 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!

It’s my birthday early next week, so I thought I’d dig around in my records crate and pull out some tracks for an all vinyl episode of 23min of ska. Some of these tracks were later put out digitally, but I don’t have them. So yeah, there’s some clicks and pops and other random record sounds, this is mainly because I do only a small clean up of the music after the transfer. This is because I dig those little imperfections that come with vinyl and I don’t really want to remove that from the final product. 00:00 – the Mighty Mighty Bosstones – I won’t Go Out Like That (What the World Needs Now is Love ’17) 03:24 – Alex Desert & Greg Lee with Western Standard Time – All of Me (All of Me / Free Form ’15) 05:41 – Johnny Too Bad & the Strikeouts – St. Paul St. (Johnny Too Bad & the Strikeouts ’96) 08:35 – Blue Beat Makers – You’ve Been So Nice (You’ve Been So Nice / My Own Way ’14) 11:31 – the Snails – Washington Bullets (I Saved the Snails ’14) 13:55 – Crazy Baldhead – Cutback! (Occupy! ’12) 16:44 – the Kinky Coo Coo’s – Get Ready (Tons of Fun ’11) 19:51 – the Far East – Can We Make it Up (Can We Make it Up / Release Me ’16) Visit the website at http://www.23Ska.com to find links to band websites and songs featured in this episode. Find & follow the show on: Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/23minofSka/ Twitter - https://twitter.com/23minofSka Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/23minofska/ Stitcher - https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/23min-of-ska?refid=stpr 23min of Ska is produced weekly by RJ Phoenix If you'd like to submit your band for a future show email: submissions@23ska.com Any other questions or comments, please email: podcast@23ska.com There's a lot of great ska vinyl out there, so head over to our partners in crime at http://www.GrandpasCasino.com RJ is also the co-host of another ska podcast, check out On the Upbeat at https://open.spotify.com/show/2Dsa1Gmt1Pivxo5sFGaxob Session : Eightteen // Episode : 410 // Airdate : May 21st, 2020

Ever made plans to work on something, get to your work station and not know how to start working? Me? All the time

Pull It Up Show - Episode 35 (Saison 10) - 03 Mai 2019. Playlist : Micah Shemaiah - Rainbow Station Partial Records - Free Again Riddim Ital Horns - Remains of the Day Amelia Harmony - Free Again Jah Marnyah - Freedom Saralene - Joy Black Beanie Dub - Ina Di City - Exo Fam, Vol. 1 Brother Dan - My God - One of a Kind JonnyGo Figure - Revolutionary Youth - Crucial Showcase Brain Damage feat Willi Williams - Fyah Bun - Vibronics RMX - Combat Dub 4 - Revisited Elijah Prophet - I'll Be Myself - Man on a Mission Frankie Music - General A General Riddim Christopher Martin - General Busy Signal - No Way Out Romain Virgo & Kumar - As Long as I Live Anthony B - Born to Win Lutan Fyah - Country Life Qraig - You Got It Javada - How Could D-Major - Champion Sound Christopher Martin & Jesse Royal - Green Grass TiA - Goldmine Naomi Cowan - The Way Balaguero - Sonrie Jah Lil' - Too Late People Shawn Antoine - My Woman Oneness Records - Lioness Order Riddim Kelissa - Lioness Order Queen Omega - Never Trouble No One Aza Lineage - Kill Them with a Sound Sara Lugo - Woman on a Mission Treesha & Queen Ifrica - Fyah Daughter Yeza - Rebel Empress Prinzess Kazayah - Thunder Clap Etana - Ganja Lovers Protoje feat Lila Ike & Assassin aka Agent Sasco - Not Another Word Kim Nain - Marijuana Awa Fall feat. General Levy - Nuff a Dem - Words of Wisdom Blend Mishkin & Roots Evolution feat Skarra Mucci - Mama - Wildfire Richie Campbell - Piece of Bread - Focused Max Rubadub feat LongFingah - Fly Too High - Style & Passion (Remixed) Derrick Parker - All over Me - All over Me Mooncat feat Lasai & Karlixx - Lion (Karlixx Reggae Mix) Bushman - Hear Wah MI Ah Seh

Pull It Up Show - Episode 35 (Saison 10) - 03 Mai 2019. Playlist : Micah Shemaiah - Rainbow Station Partial Records - Free Again Riddim Ital Horns - Remains of the Day Amelia Harmony - Free Again Jah Marnyah - Freedom Saralene - Joy Black Beanie Dub - Ina Di City - Exo Fam, Vol. 1 Brother Dan - My God - One of a Kind JonnyGo Figure - Revolutionary Youth - Crucial Showcase Brain Damage feat Willi Williams - Fyah Bun - Vibronics RMX - Combat Dub 4 - Revisited Elijah Prophet - I'll Be Myself - Man on a Mission Frankie Music - General A General Riddim Christopher Martin - General Busy Signal - No Way Out Romain Virgo & Kumar - As Long as I Live Anthony B - Born to Win Lutan Fyah - Country Life Qraig - You Got It Javada - How Could D-Major - Champion Sound Christopher Martin & Jesse Royal - Green Grass TiA - Goldmine Naomi Cowan - The Way Balaguero - Sonrie Jah Lil' - Too Late People Shawn Antoine - My Woman Oneness Records - Lioness Order Riddim Kelissa - Lioness Order Queen Omega - Never Trouble No One Aza Lineage - Kill Them with a Sound Sara Lugo - Woman on a Mission Treesha & Queen Ifrica - Fyah Daughter Yeza - Rebel Empress Prinzess Kazayah - Thunder Clap Etana - Ganja Lovers Protoje feat Lila Ike & Assassin aka Agent Sasco - Not Another Word Kim Nain - Marijuana Awa Fall feat. General Levy - Nuff a Dem - Words of Wisdom Blend Mishkin & Roots Evolution feat Skarra Mucci - Mama - Wildfire Richie Campbell - Piece of Bread - Focused Max Rubadub feat LongFingah - Fly Too High - Style & Passion (Remixed) Derrick Parker - All over Me - All over Me Mooncat feat Lasai & Karlixx - Lion (Karlixx Reggae Mix) Bushman - Hear Wah MI Ah Seh

Pull It Up Show - Episode 35 (Saison 10) - 03 Mai 2019. Playlist : Micah Shemaiah - Rainbow Station Partial Records - Free Again Riddim Ital Horns - Remains of the Day Amelia Harmony - Free Again Jah Marnyah - Freedom Saralene - Joy Black Beanie Dub - Ina Di City - Exo Fam, Vol. 1 Brother Dan - My God - One of a Kind JonnyGo Figure - Revolutionary Youth - Crucial Showcase Brain Damage feat Willi Williams - Fyah Bun - Vibronics RMX - Combat Dub 4 - Revisited Elijah Prophet - I'll Be Myself - Man on a Mission Frankie Music - General A General Riddim Christopher Martin - General Busy Signal - No Way Out Romain Virgo & Kumar - As Long as I Live Anthony B - Born to Win Lutan Fyah - Country Life Qraig - You Got It Javada - How Could D-Major - Champion Sound Christopher Martin & Jesse Royal - Green Grass TiA - Goldmine Naomi Cowan - The Way Balaguero - Sonrie Jah Lil' - Too Late People Shawn Antoine - My Woman Oneness Records - Lioness Order Riddim Kelissa - Lioness Order Queen Omega - Never Trouble No One Aza Lineage - Kill Them with a Sound Sara Lugo - Woman on a Mission Treesha & Queen Ifrica - Fyah Daughter Yeza - Rebel Empress Prinzess Kazayah - Thunder Clap Etana - Ganja Lovers Protoje feat Lila Ike & Assassin aka Agent Sasco - Not Another Word Kim Nain - Marijuana Awa Fall feat. General Levy - Nuff a Dem - Words of Wisdom Blend Mishkin & Roots Evolution feat Skarra Mucci - Mama - Wildfire Richie Campbell - Piece of Bread - Focused Max Rubadub feat LongFingah - Fly Too High - Style & Passion (Remixed) Derrick Parker - All over Me - All over Me Mooncat feat Lasai & Karlixx - Lion (Karlixx Reggae Mix) Bushman - Hear Wah MI Ah Seh

Pull It Up Show - Episode 35 (Saison 10) - 03 Mai 2019. Playlist : Micah Shemaiah - Rainbow Station Partial Records - Free Again Riddim Ital Horns - Remains of the Day Amelia Harmony - Free Again Jah Marnyah - Freedom Saralene - Joy Black Beanie Dub - Ina Di City - Exo Fam, Vol. 1 Brother Dan - My God - One of a Kind JonnyGo Figure - Revolutionary Youth - Crucial Showcase Brain Damage feat Willi Williams - Fyah Bun - Vibronics RMX - Combat Dub 4 - Revisited Elijah Prophet - I'll Be Myself - Man on a Mission Frankie Music - General A General Riddim Christopher Martin - General Busy Signal - No Way Out Romain Virgo & Kumar - As Long as I Live Anthony B - Born to Win Lutan Fyah - Country Life Qraig - You Got It Javada - How Could D-Major - Champion Sound Christopher Martin & Jesse Royal - Green Grass TiA - Goldmine Naomi Cowan - The Way Balaguero - Sonrie Jah Lil' - Too Late People Shawn Antoine - My Woman Oneness Records - Lioness Order Riddim Kelissa - Lioness Order Queen Omega - Never Trouble No One Aza Lineage - Kill Them with a Sound Sara Lugo - Woman on a Mission Treesha & Queen Ifrica - Fyah Daughter Yeza - Rebel Empress Prinzess Kazayah - Thunder Clap Etana - Ganja Lovers Protoje feat Lila Ike & Assassin aka Agent Sasco - Not Another Word Kim Nain - Marijuana Awa Fall feat. General Levy - Nuff a Dem - Words of Wisdom Blend Mishkin & Roots Evolution feat Skarra Mucci - Mama - Wildfire Richie Campbell - Piece of Bread - Focused Max Rubadub feat LongFingah - Fly Too High - Style & Passion (Remixed) Derrick Parker - All over Me - All over Me Mooncat feat Lasai & Karlixx - Lion (Karlixx Reggae Mix) Bushman - Hear Wah MI Ah Seh

Pull It Up Show - Episode 35 (Saison 10) - 03 Mai 2019. Playlist : Micah Shemaiah - Rainbow Station Partial Records - Free Again Riddim Ital Horns - Remains of the Day Amelia Harmony - Free Again Jah Marnyah - Freedom Saralene - Joy Black Beanie Dub - Ina Di City - Exo Fam, Vol. 1 Brother Dan - My God - One of a Kind JonnyGo Figure - Revolutionary Youth - Crucial Showcase Brain Damage feat Willi Williams - Fyah Bun - Vibronics RMX - Combat Dub 4 - Revisited Elijah Prophet - I'll Be Myself - Man on a Mission Frankie Music - General A General Riddim Christopher Martin - General Busy Signal - No Way Out Romain Virgo & Kumar - As Long as I Live Anthony B - Born to Win Lutan Fyah - Country Life Qraig - You Got It Javada - How Could D-Major - Champion Sound Christopher Martin & Jesse Royal - Green Grass TiA - Goldmine Naomi Cowan - The Way Balaguero - Sonrie Jah Lil' - Too Late People Shawn Antoine - My Woman Oneness Records - Lioness Order Riddim Kelissa - Lioness Order Queen Omega - Never Trouble No One Aza Lineage - Kill Them with a Sound Sara Lugo - Woman on a Mission Treesha & Queen Ifrica - Fyah Daughter Yeza - Rebel Empress Prinzess Kazayah - Thunder Clap Etana - Ganja Lovers Protoje feat Lila Ike & Assassin aka Agent Sasco - Not Another Word Kim Nain - Marijuana Awa Fall feat. General Levy - Nuff a Dem - Words of Wisdom Blend Mishkin & Roots Evolution feat Skarra Mucci - Mama - Wildfire Richie Campbell - Piece of Bread - Focused Max Rubadub feat LongFingah - Fly Too High - Style & Passion (Remixed) Derrick Parker - All over Me - All over Me Mooncat feat Lasai & Karlixx - Lion (Karlixx Reggae Mix) Bushman - Hear Wah MI Ah Seh

Pull It Up Show - Episode 35 (Saison 10) - 03 Mai 2019. Playlist : Micah Shemaiah - Rainbow Station Partial Records - Free Again Riddim Ital Horns - Remains of the Day Amelia Harmony - Free Again Jah Marnyah - Freedom Saralene - Joy Black Beanie Dub - Ina Di City - Exo Fam, Vol. 1 Brother Dan - My God - One of a Kind JonnyGo Figure - Revolutionary Youth - Crucial Showcase Brain Damage feat Willi Williams - Fyah Bun - Vibronics RMX - Combat Dub 4 - Revisited Elijah Prophet - I'll Be Myself - Man on a Mission Frankie Music - General A General Riddim Christopher Martin - General Busy Signal - No Way Out Romain Virgo & Kumar - As Long as I Live Anthony B - Born to Win Lutan Fyah - Country Life Qraig - You Got It Javada - How Could D-Major - Champion Sound Christopher Martin & Jesse Royal - Green Grass TiA - Goldmine Naomi Cowan - The Way Balaguero - Sonrie Jah Lil' - Too Late People Shawn Antoine - My Woman Oneness Records - Lioness Order Riddim Kelissa - Lioness Order Queen Omega - Never Trouble No One Aza Lineage - Kill Them with a Sound Sara Lugo - Woman on a Mission Treesha & Queen Ifrica - Fyah Daughter Yeza - Rebel Empress Prinzess Kazayah - Thunder Clap Etana - Ganja Lovers Protoje feat Lila Ike & Assassin aka Agent Sasco - Not Another Word Kim Nain - Marijuana Awa Fall feat. General Levy - Nuff a Dem - Words of Wisdom Blend Mishkin & Roots Evolution feat Skarra Mucci - Mama - Wildfire Richie Campbell - Piece of Bread - Focused Max Rubadub feat LongFingah - Fly Too High - Style & Passion (Remixed) Derrick Parker - All over Me - All over Me Mooncat feat Lasai & Karlixx - Lion (Karlixx Reggae Mix) Bushman - Hear Wah MI Ah Seh

How Kate Fisher found herself at the brink of death, having to choose between this world and the next. Plus one of the best foods to feel grounded: for keeping a level head and making good decisions(!) Hi everybody, I'm Barbara Fernandez, the Rocking Raw Chef, here with my Clean Food, Dirty Stories: one to entertain, the other to inspire.I help people stamp out stress, depression and fatigue over at RockingRawChef.com, and today's title is:This world...Or AnotherIn addition to this story, at the end of this episode I'll share with you one of the best foods to feel grounded – in other words, to help us stay clear-headed and even make better decisions in our lives.OK enough hints from me, I'm sure you have no idea what that food is...or maybe you do, so let's get on with the story.Our guest, Kate FisherI am super excited to be joined here today for our story by Kate Fisher. Kate is a shamanic practitioner who specialises in helping others to connect with the power that is already within them. She is also an artist, and she works with drums, paint and clay to create shamanic tools, paintings and ceramics. And she works with people not only face to face, but also at a distance which I think is very cool. She has a pretty incredible story to share which I think you're going to love!So Kate, welcome to the Clean Food, Dirty Stories podcast!Kate: Thanks Barbara.Me: Yeah, it's great to have you. I'm looking forward to sharing your story.Kate's storySo you work in Norfolk, you live in Kent, but do you have a lot of trees surrounding you now? Because I know that you spent a lot of your childhood in trees, is that what you told me? Is that where your story begins?Kate: Yeah, it kind of is, I was much more into sitting in trees and hanging out there and not really with the other kids. It just felt calming and I later found out that what was actually happening was that I was speaking with the tree deities and the tree spirits themselves. Me: So like when most kids had imaginary friends, like little playmates and stuff, then you just had your playmates that were like in the trees and nature spirits and everything.That's really cool, when I was little actually, I didn't play with the other kids either. I was with them but I was a tiger roaring and crawling on the floor. So there were no nature spirits for me, just a bunch of crawling around.On to herbalismAt one point you studied herbalism, is that right? How did you come to study that?Kate: Well, I began studying it. After doing my art degree, I actually got a job in Neal's Yard Remedies in Norwich. And so that just kind of brought me back to plants and their uses. The medicinal uses were the sort of thing I was drawn to. I was going to move to Australia to do the whole course of naturopathy. There was something still missing from that for me. So from that I actually found magical herbalism.Me: Okay.Kate: Yeah, so that's kind of like hedge witchcraft. It's understanding that everything has an energy and you can use that energy to help heal and help rebalance.Me: I know about wild plants, you know, and collecting wild plants and just eating them because they taste really good, and I know that nettles for example are really good for arthritis, just little things that you kind of pick up. But that's kind of all I know. So is it like making teas for people and poultices and things like that out of plants and stuff?Kate: No, no, it's purely energetic, so it's basically like spellcasting.Me: OK.Magic herbalism, then on to the PhilippinesKate: So you would use certain herbs and plants that have certain attributes and they often correspond with the medicinal uses as well. And you'd kind of enchant them and then you'd make them into little sachets to hand to people and once they'd got their use from it, they would bury it. It was always just for an energetic purpose.Me: Oh OK.Kate: It's like the old wives' tale of putting certain things above the door so things can't come in.Me: I get it. OK. So you were doing herbalism but then I think you stopped, is that right, and you moved to the Philippines? Is that right?Kate: Yeah, that's right. So magical herbalism still wasn't doing it for me and I still felt there was something more. And I came across a book and it was called Chance Spirit Shamanism, and this just sent me off! I knew that I had to do something with this because it would take me deeper into that plant realm. The way I actually got to the Philippines was through my ceramics, with a job as a teacher over there.Manila and the Saturn returnMe: How did you get that job? That's really cool.Kate: A Filipino lady, her family ran the college there and she approached me and asked if I would teach there.Me: Wow!Kate: Unfortunately it was in Manila and for me that was just too busy. It's a really built city with really rich and really poor areas. I found this place called Bahay Kalipay which means the House of Happiness. So I went there, I volunteered and from there I taught this process called The Inner Dance, and this was precisely when my Saturn return hit. I had just turned 28 and I decided to drop everything, I sold everything that I owned in England basically, and I decided to move to the Philippines.Kate's Saturn ReturnMe: Wow. So can you just...sorry, can you explain to people, some people that may not know, what is a Saturn return and why does it just – cause I've experienced one too – what is a Saturn return and why does it turn your life upside down?Kate: Yeah, well, OK. The Saturn return is...Saturn's in a certain place in the night sky and what happens is when that then comes around which obviously it takes 28 to 30 years to come round in your astrological chart, that changes everything. You're then kind of pushed or encouraged onto a path that you should have been taking that you may have been diverted from. Some people's is really turbulent, other people it can be quite free flowing depending on what their life path life has taken. And then this happens again normally in women's time, it's normally around the menopause.Me: Well it would be like 28 years later, right?Kate: Exactly, yeah, it's on that time scale. So it really can turn your life upside down because Saturn's known as the teacher. If you haven't learned your lessons, you're gonna learn them!Why the PhilippinesMe: Yup! I've experienced that so I know exactly what you mean. Yeah, so it can be quite big life changes and stuff, right? What made you decide to move to the Philippines?Kate: Well, in all honesty a man.Me: (laughs) As so often happens...Kate: And he worked at the retreat center that I went to. Yeah, I kind of knew that it wasn't gonna work out but I'm always this kind of romantic person, I'm just gonna follow my heart...I loved it there anyway because it was just so beautiful and I felt so held there, just on the land.Me: Yeah. So you moved to the Philippines, so if you moved because of him, did you stay with him and then, like, what happened?Releasing inner blocksKate: Well, I think I moved in with him to begin with, him and his family. And then I went back to work at the retreat center for meditation and the inner dance which is kind of meditative. It allows the flow of energy and any blockages to come out, it can be quite cathartic and transformative in itself. So I went back there and lived there, and I did that for 8 months. I was looking for land to buy as well.Me: So you were gonna buy land in the Philippines? That's very cool. You said at one point that you had a kind of like dark night of the soul, was that related to the guy? Or...Kate: It was all, you know, a whole lump of stuff rolled in together (laughs). That's what happens, isn't it?Me: All at the same time, of course, yeah.Crying in paradiseKate: All at the same time. So yeah, for me, I was in paradise but I was crying my eyes out every day.Me: Oh!Kate: Yeah, and it was just this kind of ultimate depression, but this was something different, it was a transformative kind of time. And I ended up not really seeing the point in life, so I went from, you know, being on a real high and feeling the connection between all things and all of this and then just fell apart and thought, “Well, if everything is nothing and nothing is everything, then what's the point?”Me: Oh, yeah, I've felt like that before so I can relate, yeah. Wow.From the Philippines to PeruMe: And so from there, how did you...you said that you then went to Peru, right? So how did you go from the Philippines to Peru? Did you just one day up and decide to leave, or was there a specific incident where you thought 'OK I've had enough, I'm going to leave now'? Or...Kate: Well I, I'd gone to America to visit my friends over there and then while I was there I phoned this person...Me: Somebody in Peru?Kate: No, sorry, I phoned my boyfriend at the time. Yeah, and he ended up going “Oh I've decided I'm going to be a Peace Pilgrim”.Me: A Peace Pilgrim? What's that?Kate: So it's someone who walks around without anything, but just goes spreading peace and basically relies on anyone around them to support them. He said “This is my highest excitement”. So I was like, “OK, fine”. Obviously I was a bit heartbroken because I'd just travelled the other side of the world, but it made me suddenly realize that I wasn't following my highest excitement. So I thought “OK, what's happening right now? Where's the mother of all plant learnings?” And it's happening in Peru, with Ayahuasca, with Huachuma... Ayahuasca and HuachumaMe: What's huachuma? I mean, I know Ayahuasca and in fact I spoke about that in a previous episode, but what's huachuma?Kate: Huachuma is also known as San Pedro. San Pedro was the Catholic name they gave when they kind of came over to the South Americas. Huachuma is the original name for it. It's a cactus that is mescalin-based, so it's similar to the peyote which is a mescalin-based medicine.Me: Oh OK. So it's a similar kind of experience with...like a journey like you would do as if you were taking Ayahuasca but you're taking Huachuma?Kate: It's similar, yeah. Huachuma's much more about the earth and less cosmic. Ayahuasca is out there, attaching to everything that is. Huachuma's about the heart, about connecting back to the earth.Me: Wow. OK, so you did both of those when you were there?Kate: Yeah, that's right, so I spent 6 months being an apprentice to both of those plants.Me: Oh wow! So now are you able to perform Ayahuasca and Huachuma ceremonies for other people?Kate: I believe I can hold ceremony for Huachuma for other people. With Ayahuasca I decided that I'm just always going to be her apprentice (laughs). I just don't see how people hold space for that, it's such a powerful thing.Temazcals (sweat lodges)Me: OK. So you did those, and you also mentioned temazcals, you know, the sweat lodges, what were those like?Kate: It's really magical.So for somebody who doesn't, who doesn't know about a temazcal, can you say a little bit about like what it is? Because I've done one, but not everybody knows about it, right? Could you say a little bit about like what it is and what happens and why you might want to do a sweat lodge?Kate: OK. It's a really sacred ceremony and our ancestors have always used it to cleanse, to rebirth. To go into those sweat lodges is like going back into the mother's womb. You go in there with thanks, knowing what you want to get rid of or what you want to transition into. And you bless the rocks which are put into a sacred fire.Me: Sacred fire?Kate: Yes. They then heat those for several hours and then you will go into the lodge. You normally go through about four, yeah, four rounds. They'll bring in a certain number of rocks, and then water is poured onto the rocks once the door is closed.Me: And it gets really, really hot, I remember.Kate: It does. But it builds, it's not like going into a sauna. Your body gradually kind of gets used to it until it gets so hot that you're just like “Oh no I can't do this!” But quite often, we always say that the heat is your friend. Because that heat is sometimes not physical heat, it's sometimes you know, coming up against maybe a blockage of the energy of the thing that you're trying to shift, so if you can, stay in.The eyebrow of the Peruvian jungleMe: And so how did you...how did you go from doing the sweat lodges and the Ayahuasca and Huachuma ceremonies to the jungle? Cause you said that you were...I know that you mentioned to me that you were in the jungle with some friends and you had a pretty scary experience there. Can you say a little bit about like how you came to be there, and what happened?Kate: Yeah, definitely.I was a, I suppose an assistant to the woman that owned the retreat center. And we'd become really good friends because we obviously worked really closely together. We were offered a piece of land possibly in a part of the jungle called Manu which is known as the eyebrow of the jungle of Peru. So we went to visit, and our friend who also went with us, he was also an Andean priest. He went and hired a boat and took us to this special island which had quite rare breeds of certain animals, mammals and things. So he takes us over there and we're just so excited to see a different part and see rare species. Onto the land, you know you just start walking around and admiring things and I think it was about a third of the way around this island and all of a sudden something hit me.When the jungle gets angryKate: It felt like I'd suddenly started menstruating but it wasn't that time, it felt like all of my guts were just turning around. I just suddenly went white. Me: Wow!Kate: Literally it just felt like, I don't know, I could have eaten something that didn't agree with me, all that kind of stuff. So my friend tried to do an echo cleansing on me. Now all that did - this is the dirty part of the story – was give me diarrhea. It was awful. My body was emptying, everything was too heavy. I was getting rid of everything. It was really quite scary as it progressed.And then this feeling came over me that the jungle was angry. There was always this element of kind of doubt, skepticism I guess.Getting lost in another worldBut I was about to get lost in another world. The jungle felt like it was pulling me. The world that I knew, that part of the jungle that I was seeing with my physical eyes was disappearing. Me: Wow! That's scary!Kate: Terrifying. And interesting at the same time.Me: Yeah, kind of like 'this is really scary but this is really cool!'Kate: I mean I got really scared up until the point where I thought, 'OK, maybe I'm going to leave this other world that I know and I'm gonna be taken to another world'. And when I reached that level of acceptance, you know, that strange place of like 'OK this is just happening', I told my friends to go on without me. I said, “This is where I stop”. And it was like, it was, I don't know, it was like I was disappearing.Me: Wow.Kate: Yeah, I...after feeling scared it was suddenly this peace that took over. But then my friends became scared because they realized how real this had become. You know, they couldn't just leave me in the jungle.Me: Yeah.Kate: And the Andean priest, he was suddenly panicking around me. He was saying in Spanish, in Quechua, panicking about “Oh I haven't done it, I haven't done it, I haven't done it!” He was going on about the ritual or the ceremony that we were supposed to do when we arrived at this land.A hurried ceremonyKate: And so all of a sudden he's scrambling in his pockets to get things out and I was just flopped on the ground at this point and I had no idea what was going on around me other than his scrambling. He got out the cocoa leaves and he made like a little fan of these and he started doing ceremony. And he was doing all these different things around me but I didn't have any awareness to be able to learn or witness or anything, it was like I was being absorbed into the jungle floor.The next thing I know he's yanking me up off the ground saying “Stamp on the floor! Stamp on the floor!” Like this. And I was just like “I can't do it, I can't even lift my leg,” like I had nothing left, no physical ability whatsoever. But he was so persistent I just went and I just, I just kind of just flopped my foot on this space and I later found out that he'd buried the cocoa leaves there.And as I touched my foot down, something happened and I felt a little bit stronger. So then he went, “Again!” I stamped again a little bit harder with the strength that I'd found. And he said, “Again!” I stamped my foot even harder, and every time we did this, my energy started coming back and my color started coming back and I felt myself being drawn in, like my energy bodies being drawn back into this physical body. Until we'd done it enough that they felt comfortable with us making our way away from there.Me: Wow. Yeah, and then you just left at that point? Were you supposed to stay longer?Kate: I had to lay there while they went off in the boat for a while so I had to lay in the jungle for a bit and stop. Just to kind of recoup and make sure that I'd gathered all the parts of me back together I think. Me: Yeah, of course, yeah.Fear as teacherKate: And I gave my thanks and you know, and I said, “Sorry for not knowing better”. I should have known better, that's what I was there to learn, you know. How to respect these places.Me: Yeah, but you were there to learn. I would have thought the Andean priest would have... I mean, I would have been blaming him! (laughs) Right? Wasn't he kind of there to, you know, to guide you and look after you? I mean I would have been like, “Dude you forgot something! Look what happened to me!” No?Kate: Well, I suppose, but I didn't see things that way at that time. I kind of overtook responsibility if that makes sense. But I gave my thanks to the jungle at that point because that's when my skepticism left and I really started to trust that Spirit is there to guide. And it really showed me its strength, and the only way it could do that was through fear.Me: Wow.Kate: Yeah, I was really, really grateful to have learned that lesson because without that I wouldn't be able to practice, you know, the techniques that I do today.Me: I bet the Andean priest learned a lot too, right? I bet he never did that again! (laughs) Right?Kate: (laughs) I don't think so!Me: Almost killed a tourist, can you imagine? Oh my goodness. Wow!What Kate does todaySo then you said that that experience helped you do the techniques that you do today, so how? Like, how come? What was it about that particular experience and what did you take from there I guess is what I want to ask, that you now use? Yeah, that you use now?Kate: Well it's just the level of trust.Me: Ah, OK. That makes sense.Kate: When I'm doing the healings or ceremony or anything, I endeavour obviously – I mean sometimes ego gets in the way and makes you feel small. But that's quite rare these days. I just allow Spirit and the ancestors to guide me.Me: Yup. Yeah, because you have that trust now thanks to your experience in the jungle. I get it, yeah. Wow!So then, yeah, what do you do now to help other people? Because I know you do lots of different things, do you want to say a little bit about that?Kate: Yeah, well the main thing that I endeavour to do, like anyone that I come across I try and support and empower. Even if it's the smallest thing. And give people that different perspective on themselves. I think we're so made to feel belittled and that we think that, you know, to think good of ourselves is to be arrogant. But actually we need to come to a space where we can be comfortable and love ourselves without that. Me: Yeah.Kate: It's really hard to explain! I lead retreats and...Finding the Wild WomanMe: So what kinds of things do you do at the retreats? For example, do you take people on shamanic journeys as a group? Kate: So for the retreats, what I focus on at the moment is women. And I do this alongside a lovely lady called Amy who runs SoulShine social enterprise and we, well we call it Finding the Wild Woman. And it's all about rewilding, so finding that part of you that's been repressed through, you know, all the things that we should and shouldn't do and expressing your authentic self.Me: Oh I like the sound of that, yup!Kate: So we do all sorts of things.Me: Wow, that sounds quite fun.Kate: Yeah, we use all the different elements as well. So you know, we run through kind of water, earth, fire, air, spirit...so people can connect back with those. The very base elements of this world.Me: Wow, that's very cool.Individual help, even at a distanceMe: So you do those at the retreats, and then I think you said for individual people you help them find balance and things? Like what do you do for individuals? Because I know you also said you do some things at a distance as well. Kate: Yeah, so whether it's distance or whether people are there, I'll connect with them and I'll allow Spirit and ancestors again to work through me. I use my drum, rattle, feathers, anything. I always ask if the person's comfortable with it. Yeah, and then I use the vibe to kind of realign, as everything's made of vibration. The intention is to realign those things, on any level that person wants to work.Me: OK. So do people normally come to you...yeah I would imagine people would come to you with a really specific problem, right? Can it be any kind of problem? Like, I don't know, like everything from physical problems like physical ailments to maybe emotional problems or mental problems? Kate: Yeah, definitely.Me: So a bit of everything. Super! OKKate: The most common tends to be physical or emotional, but actually you find out that they're all interlinked so you just follow that path until...Me: Yeah, I know what you mean. Training for the Celtic sweat lodgeMe: So do you run sweat lodges? Do you use that tool in your work at all?Kate: I'm not running them yet, I'm gonna do another 2 years learning the Celtic lodge.Me: So how long does it take then to train to learn the Celtic sweat lodges?Kate: Well, I'm taking three years to do it.Me: Three years, OK. Is that your choice to do it over a longer period?Kate: Yeah, I know that you can learn the practicalities in a couple of weekends, but to have the experience of actually supporting people through that process...Me: Oh yeah, that's the biggest bit, yeah.Kate: It's a very different ballgame.My own experience in a sweat lodgeMe: Yeah, of course, cause I know, I mean I know for me that when I did a sweat lodge, yeah it was years ago now. And at the time I was...I was a total mess!And so when it got really, really hot, I could feel that kind of...how can I describe it? It was kind of like as if there was a well at the bottom of my being that was filled with all these like dark stuff. You know, fears and things like that that never got to come up to the surface, you know? That never got acknowledged.Just like really primal stuff, you know, almost as if you could tap into your most primal fears because there was no cultural barrier. There was no mental barrier, you know.You were just so hot that your mind...I mean for me my mind almost just left my body really because it was just so hot. And I thought that was...that was quite an amazing experience.I mean for me I was like wow! It was scary but it was also really cool and I can imagine that for some people... I mean, I like to think that I'm a pretty strong cookie but I imagine it would be scary for people to come to grips with what they find and to have to kind of, yeah, deal with that. I mean if they uncover something they didn't know about themselves before, maybe something that's super scary, then yeah I would imagine you have to have the tools to deal with that, right?Kate: That's right, yeah. You've got to be able to support people after they've kind of gone through the sweat lodge process. Like you say, sometimes people are left with things that they need to kind of then kind of speak through or go into a bit more.Me: Wow, yeah. But I'd definitely say better out than in, right? All that stuff.Where to find KateKate thank you so much for coming on to share your story. There's a friend of mine that also mentioned that when you hold any kind of retreat or workshop or any kind of event in nature, she said just ask the spirits there for permission so you're on their terrain as it were. So that's a really good example of what can happen if you don't, right? I'll have to tell her about it. Well, I'll have to get her to listen to the episode.But thank you so much for sharing that, I really appreciate it and I'll link to everything that you do below, but do you just want to say where... Where can people find you? What's the easiest way to find you?Kate: Yeah, it's easiest to find me on Facebook at the moment because I'm still working on my website but that's at kfheartwisdom.Me: Super! OK. I'll put the link to your site as well. Is it katefisher.co.uk? Is that right?Kate: Yeah.Me: Thank you so much, I really appreciate it, and I think I'm going to dive into our food tip.Foods to feel groundedAnd it's really funny that there was all this stuff about stamping on the ground and everything because...I mentioned at the beginning of this episode that I would share one of the best foods to feel grounded. And first I do want to kind of emphasize what I mean when we say grounded.When we feel grounded, we feel more connected to the earth. Now this might sound airy-fairy, but it's actually really important. So you can think of feeling grounded as the opposite of scatterbrained. In other words, instead of feeling confused, all over the place, not knowing what to do, when you're grounded you actually have a clarity of purpose. It enables you to not only get things done but to know what those things actually are that you need to do for your own happiness.And believe me, this is really, really important. I speak from very personal experience. The other way that you can think of being grounded is eating foods to feel grounded. It's kind of like getting the benefits of comfort food without gaining weight, if that makes sense. You do get that, yeah, that sense of comfort from these particular foods, but you're eating good food, you know? Rather than junk.And for those of you who want to do some of your own shamanic journeys as Kate did, this particular food that I'm going to talk about can help you stay connected to this world too.So although there are many foods to feel grounded, the ones that I want to mention here, or the one specific one is...squash!Benefits of squashAnd when I say squash, this actually covers a variety of vegetables: so you've got spaghetti squash, summer squash, zucchini, marrow and pumpkin. Those are all types of squash. Gourds as well, those are squash.Squash is one of the oldest foods around – it's been cultivated for at least 10,000 years, and it may look kind of ordinary, but it has a lot of health benefits.Now you may not know this, but squash is listed as anti-fungal, antibacterial and anti-inflammatory! It contains vitamin A, several B vitamins, folates, magnesium, potassium, iron, copper, zinc, manganese, calcium, and beta carotene among other antioxidants.So it's insanely good for a whole host of things, including managing our blood sugar, keeping our lungs healthy, helping keep our eyes sharp and strong, having strong bones, and reducing the risks of many diseases including lung cancer, emphysema and glaucoma, and that's just to name a few.Squash has many other benefits and I'll link to an article in the show notes if you'd like to read more about it.Now however before you decide to start eating bushels of squash, I do have to warn you about one thing. Squash is very good at lowering blood pressure, and if you have low blood pressure already, squash could lower it even further. So if that's you, best to eat other veggies instead. Fortunately there are lots of other alternatives that I do mention in other podcast episodes!How you eat squashNow as to how you eat squash, well there are so many ways to eat it! Most people puree it and make pancakes, or they slice it and fry it. My favorite way to eat it – and if you know me you'll know what that is – it's to spiralize it! I'll link to an article in the show notes where I show you how to do just that. You can make great pasta using squash, and you don't even have to boil it. Plus it's naturally gluten-free, so everyone can eat it!I've also got some delicious recipes that use squash in my 5-Minute Mains recipe ebook that I'll link to as well.So I hope you've enjoyed our story this week!Have YOU got a story to share?And if you've got a crazy, true story to share (and you'd like to know what food could have saved the day or enhanced your particular situation), I'd love to hear from you! Email me at barbara@rockingrawchef.comIf you enjoy my stories and want to hear more, join us and subscribe! I share one amazing, true story a week. And if you've got any questions, just pop them in the comments! And if you're listening on iTunes, do give me a review, that would be awesome.I hope you have an amazing day, thank you so much for being here with me to share in my Clean Food, Dirty Stories. Bye for now!RESOURCESHow to spiralize veggies: http://rockingrawchef.com/what-is-a-spiralizer-and-what-can-it-do-for-me/5-Minute Mains and other recipe ebooks: https://rockingrawchef.com/5-minute-recipes/Foods to feel grounded: https://www.sarahpetrunoshamanism.com/blog/12-foods-for-feeling-grounded/Benefits of squash: https://www.organicfacts.net/health-benefits/fruit/squash.htmlKate's bioKate has studied many esoteric and spiritual practices to a basic level from an early age (13). When her Saturn return began (age 28), Kate moved abroad to study different healing techniques with healers and shaman of Philippines and Peru. She learnt that to know and embrace all parts of yourself is where true healing happens. With a holistic attitude to life and endeavouring to approach life from the heart, Kate believes that all aspects of the self - mind, body and spirit - play a part in the health of the person. Finding balance in all these aspects, we can live to our full potential.Kate's website: http://katefisher.co.ukKate on Facebook, YouTube​

Even after divorce you may find yourself running away with a handsome stranger to a foreign land...complete with happy endings, food and intuition and how to get yourself some more clarity in your life.And at the end of this episode I'll share with you one of my favorite things to eat to help increase your intuition – which could really come in handy if you've got a tough decision to make like our guest Darla did. Our guest, Darla AntoineI am super excited to be joined here today for our story by Darla Antoine. Darla is a soul coach, and she works with the elements of what she calls Sacred Darkness, such as dreamwork, divination and deathwork (which is not as scary as it sounds, she tells me). Darla will tell you a bit more about what she does later on, but first I really want you to hear her story which I just can't wait to share with you because it's gonna be great!So Darla welcome to the Clean Food, Dirty Stories podcast! I'm really excited to have you here today!Darla: I'm excited to be here Barbara!Me: It's really great, I mean, I can't wait to hear your story because when you told me about it, I was like “That could have happened to me!”Darla: I know, right? Me: Because we've both had kind of like crazy pasts. And I know that it starts with a husband and kind of moves on from there with the mysterious stranger. So do you want to tell us what happened?Darla: Sure, OK.Darla's storySo I got married young, I was about 22 years old which was in 2004 and I loved my first husband, obviously. We're both from Washington State and we moved to Iowa.He started going to grad school to become a chiropractor, I started to go to grad school in New Mexico for intercultural communication. The last year of his chiropractic school, he had to work under a chiropractor, so we moved to Spain.Learning Spanish from very youngEver since I was a little girl, I always knew that I'd be moving to a Spanish-speaking country. At 6 years old I was trying to teach myself Spanish, I just knew I needed to learn Spanish.Me: Oh that's so cute!Darla: Yeah, and so this was it. We were moving to Spain and he knew he was gonna work under a doctor in Spain and we were gonna stay in Spain for as long as we wanted, and that whole thing. And I was like “Yes! It's finally happening!” I was about 26 years old at this point.But the long distance...I was living in New Mexico, he was living in Iowa and Spain. And we were only seeing each other every few months, which started to weigh on the relationship and there were other issues...Me: Oh, so you didn't go to Spain with him then?Darla: I did, but I also was going to grad school so in summer breaks or on vacation I'd take time off to go and work on our relationship.Whose dream will come true: mine or yours?But anyway we had a great time in Spain, but the distance was wearing on us and there were other issues about...Have you seen the movie LaLa Land?Me: No, but I know lots of people have.Darla: Yes, lots of people have. And the movie ends not the way you think it's going to end. It's very obvious that if the couple had ended up together, that only one of their dreams would come true. Not both of their dreams would come true.So that's how it was with my ex-husband. If I'd stayed with him, his dreams would have come true but my dreams wouldn't. I would just be the supporting role, and blah blah blah.So I was in a very tough position of walking away from our life in Spain in our relationship and going alone on my own and that's what my gut was telling me. I had a very profound dream that backed that up, and I went to a psychic for the first time in my life. She told me, she confirmed what I was feeling and confirmed that yes there was another life waiting for me if I wanted it, and that soon I would be travelling to Costa Rica for research. And I would meet someone there, and this someone would be involved in sustainability, eco living and such. I thought “OK, that's interesting”.And then I asked her some more questions and I got off the phone and made the tough decision. Not just right then and there, but over the next few weeks I slowly dissolved our marriage. It was very difficult.I left Spain and came back to the States and then I had taken the semester off from grad school. I wasn't in grad school in New Mexico, I was up in Washington State with my parents. You know, 26, 27 years old, living with my parents again.Me: I know what that's like, I did that once, it wasn't fun.Looking for a farmDarla: So it was this time of year, late March, early April, and I thought well I need to keep my focus on the future so I don't go crazy.I was studying intercultural communication and I wrote my masters thesis on how food creates cultural identity and legacy, so I thought “I'm gonna get out of the library and I'm gonna go work and visit farms and talk about how food is affecting people's cultural identity and their cultural legacy.So I started looking for permaculture farms in the Washington State, British Columbia area. And somehow I landed on a site for a permaculture farm in Costa Rica.Me: Uh-oh!Darla: Yeah! The psychic's words from 3 weeks ago? I totally didn't think even about it, it didn't even cross my mind. I'd forgotten what she'd said.So I thought “well this is interesting”. I sent them an email, and they wrote right back and they said “We'd love to have you come and volunteer, we could use you next month”. And I'm like “Next month is 10 days away, I should ask my husband about this” and I thought “I don't have to ask my husband about this, he's not gonna be my husband much longer”.Then I thought, “I should ask my mom about this” and I thought “No, no, I'm 26 years old, I don't have to ask my mom about this!” So I had like almost no money, I booked the ticket and did a happy dance because I was stepping into my own adulthood, making my own decisions, doing what I wanted to do when I wanted to do it, and it felt really good!10 days later I was being dropped off at the end of a road in Costa Rica. And it wasn't until I had booked the ticket and wrote back that yes I'd be there in 10 days...That's when I remembered the psychic's words that I'd be going to Costa Rica for research.Me: Wow!Darla: And I got goosebumps, I thought “Oh my gosh, something's gonna happen!”Life on a hippy farmIt was great! It ended up being like a really disorganized hippy farm. I didn't learn anything about permaculture!Me: That's hysterical!Darla: I was disappointed but then I just embraced it. I was like “You know what? This is like summer camp for adults. This is fine”.I was gonna stay for a month but I ended up extending my stay for two months and I didn't have any money to pay the $300 to stay there for a month. So I made a trade: I would be the cook for the second month in exchange for staying. And so when you're the cook for 20 people, you're cooking all day.Me: Yeah, I know what that's like too!Darla: Yeah! So the first month was all summer camp and the second month was like work. But it was what I needed. I got to be around people who didn't know me as so-and-so's wife. They just were meeting me at face value and embracing me and loving me, and some of the people I met there are still really dear friends today.Me: And how was your Spanish at that time?Darla: It was pretty good. It wasn't as good as I thought it was, but it was pretty good because I'd been living in Spain. And I took Spanish in high school and college because I just always knew that I needed to learn Spanish. It's the only foreign language I've bothered to learn.From summer camp to full time cookSo about 3 weeks into my time there I was cooking. I wasn't officially the cook yet, but I was filling in for someone and I was cooking. And the guy who owns this farm also used to own a tour guiding company. He would bring in mostly college students who were on a tour. They would come in through his farm for a day or two and learn about permaculture and then go on the rest of their tour in the country.So one of these tours was coming through, there were about 18 college students. I was told they would be here at about 8 pm. Now there are two ways to get to this farm: you could hike through the jungle for an hour and a half, or you could take a 30-minute boat ride. It was very isolated which was perfect for me.So I was told that they were going to be walking in and the next day boating out and to have dinner ready by 4, they'd be arriving by 3, perfect. They'd be led by their Costa Rican tour guide. OK.And one day, among the vegetables...I'm in the kitchen and I'm chopping vegetables and all of a sudden there's this redhead standing in my kitchen. He's decked out in all this fancy gear. Fancy outdoor gear. And I'm thinking because he's pale-skinned and redheaded, “He must be one of the professors”. He looked about 30 years old. The group's arriving. And sure enough I see some college students walking in behind him.Well I immediately get super annoyed with him. I'm like “Who is this guy?” I don't see the Costa Rican tour guide anywhere.A friend and I had just gotten lost on that trail between the farm and the nearest town the week before. It's a very difficult trail, you need to know what you're doing.I'm like “Here's some hotshot young professor, he's ditched the tour guide, showing off, he's wearing a whole bunch of gear he's never gonna wear again, it's obviously all brand new...”Me: It's interesting how many assumptions you made though, right?Darla: I made so many assumptions! And I was so annoyed. And then I saw the way he was looking at me. Then I thought “Oh my God, this guy's gonna be a pain, he's gonna want to flirt with me...”So here's the thing, I very seriously thought, “He's gonna want me to move to Michigan to the suburbs and have babies!”Me: Oh that's hysterical!Darla: I don't know why Michigan, but Michigan popped up and I was like “I don't want to move to the suburbs and have babies in Michigan! No offense.”Me: Now I'm laughing because I know what happens afterwards, right?Darla: So yes, but then he thought I was Costa Rican. He opened his mouth to introduce himself and it was in Spanish, in perfect, 'this is my first language' Spanish. Not 'I've learned Spanish really well and I can introduce myself' Spanish. It was perfect Spanish.And OK, well, I stopped, my eyes popped out, my mouth might have dropped open a little bit, and I was like “OK well you just got more interesting!” I was kind of shocked and I didn't say anything, so then he took my shock for not understanding, and he switched to perfect, 'this is my first language' English!He said “Hi, I'm Andy, I'm the tour guide”. And I was like, “OK, hello!”Me: All your assumptions were gone, right?Darla: All my assumptions were gone, which was wonderful! It was nice to be surprised. In less than 24 hours...And there was definitely some attraction between us, but he remained very professional. He was there at the farm for less than 24 hours, so he didn't try to sneak off into the bushes with me...Me: Did you regret that?Darla: Yeah! But then I thought well, he doesn't just hit on every cute girl he comes across, this is something. So it turns out his parents emigrated to Costa Rica when he was in the womb, when his mother was pregnant with him, from Michigan! They came from Michigan in 1978 and moved to Costa Rica and he had been born and raised in Costa Rica by US immigrant parents.And before they left the next day, we exchanged email addresses and he said, “I don't care when you come back to Costa Rica, I don't care if it's next month, next week, one year, two years from now, you let me know the next time you come back to Costa Rica and I'm gonna take you out on a date”.Me: Oh! It's like something out of a movie!Darla: Yeah, it really was! But I thought, “well you're cute but I'm never gonna see you again”. I took his email address and neither one of us were big on Facebook but we eventually added each other to Facebook and I went back to New Mexico to finish my graduate degree, I got another boyfriend and kind of forgot about him, honestly.Two years later...And twice over the course of two years he emailed me via Facebook and all the conversation was “How are you?” “I'm fine, how are you?” “I'm fine” “Good”. That was it. Hardly no conversation at all.Me: Wow.Darla: Yeah. But then I was finishing grad school and I thought “You know, I'm gonna go back to Costa Rica, that's really where I feel like I started to become my own adult. And I'm gonna go back for a few weeks and go visit friends that I made there before I go get a job and have to ask a boss for permission for vacation”.So I was making plans to go back to Costa Rica when he emailed me, Andy, this guy in Costa Rica. He emailed me out of the blue. And I'm like “Oh actually I'm coming to Costa Rica, do you still want to go on that date?” And I thought he could have been married with kids, then, I don't know.Me: Yeah, because it was two years later, right?Darla: Yeah, it was two years later. And he immediately wrote back and said “Let me know when you're coming and I'll pick you up at the airport”.Me: Ohhhhh!Darla: And I thought, “Oh dear!”Falling in love...So it went from being seeing him for a night, going on a date, to spending the entire 3 weeks with him. He drove me all over the country, we fell in love.Now here's the thing: the psychic said I would meet someone in Costa Rica and that they would be involved in sustainable living. And he has an organic sustainable farm, he and his sisters run an eco lodge, so yeah.We live on an organic, sustainable homestead now in Costa Rica, and it's been 6 years. Actually 6 years earlier this week, we celebrated it's been 6 years since I came to Costa Rica to see him, and we've got two little boys, and we're madly in love with each other still.Me: Oh wow! That's such a nice story! And it has a happy ending as well, doesn't it?Darla: It does, yeah.Me: And one of the things that came out when we were talking about this was you were saying how your intuition really helped you to make some of the right decisions. Do you want to say more about that? Were there specific moments when you just tuned into yourself? And how did you do that?Darla: Yes, so my intuition really started picking up at the same time as my marriage started ending. And I've always been a really strong dreamer. Dreaming has always been a really great way to get messages to me from the divine.So one was I had a dream right before I ended it with my husband that confirmed that I needed to end it. Two was right before I came here to visit Andy, speaking of dreams, anyway. A most powerful dreamI woke up in the early morning and I started coughing. Like I'd been sleeping with my mouth open or something and my throat was dry. So I started coughing and I needed to get some water. There was water across my room on my desk, but I was still dreaming. And I had this very vivid image of like my astral body or something in the cosmos. Like I was flying through stars, I've never consciously remembered something like this.And I was zooming to get back to my body because my body needed me, but there were these two orbs of light going with me. Like we'd been out playing in the cosmos. I got back into my body and I woke up, but these orbs of light were laughing at me. They were taunting me. They were like “Ha ha, look who has a body! Look who needs to get back to their body! Ha ha!”And as I got back into my body and I started becoming conscious, I could still see and hear them and the more I woke up, the more they faded. Then I tried to get up out of bed to go get the water and I fell to the floor, like I couldn't operate my body. I still wasn't completely back into it.Me: Wow!Darla: I started laughing and I had to like drag myself across the floor to get my glass of waterMe: Yeah cause you must have been really thirsty!Darla: Yeah! By the time I'd had a glass of water I had regained function of my body, but I just felt that those two orbs were gonna be my children.Me: Oh! Wow!On paper? Insane. But in reality...Darla: Yeah, this was about a month before I came to visit Andy on the trip that we fell in love. So I thought, “OK, things are shifting in my life. Things are changing. A whole new energy is coming”.And then sure enough within like 8 months after we got together, I was pregnant by the end of that same year with my first son. So yeah, so the dreams definitely told me that shifts were coming and that changes were coming.But then also just the gut feeling that I had that “This is crazy, I left one husband and now I'm moving to a foreign country to be with a guy”.On paper it all sounded insane, but in my heart and in my gut I knew that this was right, this was what I'd been preparing my whole life for. I always knew that I needed to speak Spanish. I always knew that my partner, my mate, was far, far away in another country. Ever since I was a little girl, I just knew it.Me: That's really funny that you say that about the Spanish, because I was told years and years ago by a psychic that...I was learning French at the time and the psychic was like, “Well, you really need to learn Spanish” and I was like, “Really?” I was in high school, I was like 18 or something, you know? And I wound up using Spanish when I was 38! But use it I did and, you know, married a Mexican, yeah, all that stuff. So it sometimes takes quite a long time to manifest, right? But it does, it's there.What Darla does now to help othersSo talking about dreams and intuition, I think that links really well to the kind of thing that you're doing now with people. Do you want to say a little bit about that? And then, you know, where people can find you?Darla: Sure. So one of the biggest things I love helping people with, especially women but men as well, I love helping them also tap into their dreams. Even if you haven't remembered a dream in years or whatever, you can regain your dreams.And on my website which is – should I give my website address?Me: Yeah, sure!Darla: OK my website is thecopperscarab.com I've got a whole bunch of blog articles that can help you reclaim your dreams. But I also have a course that will just walk you through everything you need to know about dreams.Death work and transitionsI also help people with death work. This is kind of a new door I've got my foot in, but I really love it. I think death work is something that's present at any time of transition, and it's something that really helped me navigate divorce. It helped me navigate moving to another country, and it helped me navigate becoming a mom. Because the old 'me' had to die. Well, all three of those things. I had to shed an old version of me.And between divorce and moving to another country and becoming a mom, I think motherhood has been the hardest transition for me. Maybe because there's so much joy and love wrapped up in it as well, it's not just that I'm cutting off this part of my life and moving on. You have to keep living and interacting and loving this new life. And it's also very painful. It can be very painful and a very hard transition.Divination for everyoneSo I help women transition through big life transitions with death work, and then I'm a big fan of divination. Dreaming I think is a form of divination, but especially when you've got big decisions to make. It's really easy to get stuck in your head or stuck in your emotions and you kind of need a way to get the clarity without the emotions and without influencing it yourselves, so learning a divination tool is really helpful. Whether it's tarot, or claircognizant - inner knowing - or dreamwork, or anything like that. I think at least a form of divination is really important for everyone to know.Me: Yeah, I'd agree with that, cause I think it's just really empowering, you know? To know that you've got this tool to make really important decisions yourself, right?Darla: Exactly.Me: Yeah, that's really cool. I'll definitely put the link to your website in the shownotes as well, and I'll get into the food tips in just a moment.But first I wanted to thank you so much for being here to share your story cause I love your story and I also love what you do. So I'm gonna encourage people massively to check you out and see what you do because it's just amazing, so thank you for being here with me!Darla: Thanks for having me!Me: You're very welcome!Food and intuitionSo, I mentioned at the beginning of this episode that I'd share with you one of my favorite foods to help with your intuition in case you've got any difficult decisions to make, among other things.This food is very common and I'm sure you've eaten it already without knowing the amazing good that it's doing for your mind!The food is...almonds!Now I'm not talking roasted, salted almonds. I'm talking about fresh, raw almonds.Benefits of almondsAlmonds are a great source of vitamin E, protein and calcium, which are all nutrients that our endocrine glands absorb and which therefore can help bring us clarity of mind, focus and heightened intuition.How you use almondsHow do you use almonds? Well you can eat them raw by the handful, of course. You can sprinkle them on salads or eat them in a trail mix. But no matter how you eat them, one thing I would say is that to get maximum benefit from your almonds, it's best to soak them first for a few hours. I soak mine overnight or while I go out for the day.The reason I say to soak them is because nuts have a natural coating of enzyme inhibitors which can make them heavy to digest. The enzyme inhibitors are natural, and they're the reason you can walk through the grocery store and not a forest. They tell the nuts to wait to become a tree until they've got not just light, but water as well. So when you soak them, you're basically activating them. You're telling them that it's time to release that fabulous growth potential – which you absorb when you eat them soaked. It's kind of like eating the potential of an entire tree with each soaked nut. Pretty cool, right?Think of sprouts – it's the same principle. You're eating the potential of an entire plant in each sprout. That's why you've heard that they're so good for you.Where to find out moreAnyway, if you want some specific recipes for using almonds, I have lots in my 5-Minute recipe ebooks that I'll link to in the show notes.The link between food and intuition is actually one of my favorite topics, so I'll also link to an article of mine that goes into more detail about several foods that you can eat to help improve your intuition.And for those of you who want to read more about the science behind food and intuition, I'll link to an excerpt from the best resource that I found which comes from a book called Nutrition for Intuition, written by Doreen Virtue and Robert Reeves and published by Hay House.I'll also link to an article that has more information on other health benefits of almonds in case you find that useful, because there are a LOT of them!Have YOU got a story to share?Which brings us to the end of this week's story – and if you've got a crazy, true story to share (and you'd like to know what food could have saved the day in your situation),  I'd love to hear from you! Got a question, or a comment?Got a question, or a comment? Pop a note below in the comments, that would be awesome. You can also subscribe to the podcast to listen 'on the go' in iTunes.I hope you have an amazing day. Thank you so much for being here with me to share in my Clean Food, Dirty Stories. Bye for now!RESOURCESDarla's website: thecopperscarab.comArticle on food for intuition: https://rockingrawchef.com/increase-intuition-with-food/Excerpt from article on food and intuition from the book Nutrition for Intuition:  http://www.fourcornersmagazine.com/sedonaconsciousmag/nutrition-for-intuition-by-doreen-virtue-and-robert-reeves/Article on other benefits of almonds: https://draxe.com/almonds-nutrition/5-Minute recipe ebooks: https://rockingrawchef.com/5-minute-recipes/About Darla AntoineDarla is a soul coach who helps women navigate times of transition and dark nights of the soul utilizing what she calls the Elements of Sacred Darkness: Dreamwork, Divination and Deathwork (not as scary as it sounds). She is also the mother of two young boys and lives on a homestead in Costa Rica. By accident.