Posted on Monday, September 30, 2019

Find Joy in Choosing to Miss Out with Tonya Dalton

Episode 109

Tonya Dalton is a productivity expert, speaker, the author of The Joy of Missing Out, and the CEO and Founder of Inkwell Press; a company that’s centered around productivity tools and training. She has been featured in Real Simple, Entrepreneur INC., Apartment Therapy, and several other places.

In this episode, Tonya shares how she came up with the perspective and title for her book, why she refers to herself as a “recovering perfectionist” and how she accomplished that, the difference between actually wanting something and only wanting it because you think you’re supposed to, the importance of finding a balance between doing something well and letting perfection stop you from moving forward, her advice for making decisions with your ultimate mission for your business in mind, the negative impacts of overwhelm, why she wants you to throw away your to-do list, the main thing she wants people to understand after reading her book, and more!

Mentioned in this episode:

Play here (the red triangle below), on iTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio (Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Transcript

Hey, hey! It’s Andrea and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast. Today, I have with me Tonya Dalton. She is the CEO and founder of inkWELL Press and the author of; get this, The Joy of Missing Out. I’m so excited to talk with her about her book today. Tonya is a productivity expert, writer, speaker, and as we previously mentioned, the founder of inkWELL Press. It’s a company that centered around productivity tools and training. She has been featured on Real Simple, Entrepreneur, Inc., Apartment Therapy, and bunch of other places.

Andrea: So, excited to talk with you, Tonya, about your book today, The Joy of Missing Out.

Tonya Dalton: I am excited to be here. I can’t wait.

Andrea: So first of all, I want to start with the title because it is such a great reframe of that familiar FOMO kind of a feeling that people have all of the time. We’re always worried about missing out on things. And at the very beginning of your book you define it as JOMO. I love that. And you say “It is about intentionally choosing to live in the present moment by embracing open spaces of unrushed time.” Tell me about how you first of all came up with The Joy of Missing out as the title of your book and why you think it matters to people? Why this reframe?

Tonya Dalton: Well, I think you’re so right when you say so many people have this fear of missing out, and I feel like I see again and again where people are overwhelmed. They’re stretching themselves so incredibly thin because every single time that opportunity knocks, they feel like “I got to answer that door,” right? “Opportunity only knocks once, so I got to answer it.”

And so, here they are opening that door again and again and again not even necessarily the things that are meaningful to them or things that feel good. We just opened that door to opportunity because we think we’re supposed to and we fear missing out that if we let this go by that it’s never going to come back again.

And so, really, for me as an entrepreneur, as a mom, as a wife, as a CEO, and as a former perfectionist; I like to call myself a recovering perfectionist because it is something I struggle with as well, I found myself in that same situation where I was saying yes to too many things. I was not really actively choosing how I spent my days because I was in this fear of missing out. So, when I really started to reframe my life and make it so I was living more intentionally, both in my business and in my personal space, I found that I was so much happier.

I was doing less, but I was feeling so much happier. And I was actually achieving more because I was able to give my time, my energy, and my focus to these fewer tasks that were more meaningful and were really more important driving me closer to that North Star. And so when it was time to name this book, I was thinking about, you know, we obviously went through a lot of different titles and what could this be called. I thought about playing on that word overwhelmed because I hear that so much from so many people.

But really when it came down to it and I thought about it, it really is about the joy of missing out. That when we think of our ideal day, when we daydream while we’re in the shower or we’re standing in line at Starbucks waiting for our coffee, we think about this ideal day and there’s a lot of amazing things in it. But there’s also some key things that are missing, stress, overwhelm, feeling stretched too thin, saying yes out of obligation and guilt instead of saying yes out of, you know, happiness and excitement.

So, to me, there is joy in those missing pieces, in those things being gone. So, let’s really structure our life so we can actively choose to miss out and then focus our life on what we really want to do and what’s truly important to us.

Andrea: Oh, I love that. One of the tools that you use is this idea of, is it clear, is that what it’s called?

Tonya Dalton: Yes, the clear framework?

Andrea: The clear framework. I mean, it’s connected to your North Star, linked to a goal, having been essential, advantageous and reality-based. And I’ll let the listener actually read your books to find out most of that. But I lived the last one, in particular I wanted to pull this out, you talked about asking yourself if it’s really reality-based and you say on page 98, “Oftentimes we feel something is important because we believe it’s something we are supposed to do even if it’s not something we really want.”

Tonya Dalton: Yes.

Andrea: That is so true. OK, why do we do this? Why do we think that we are supposed to want things?

Tonya Dalton: Well, I think there’s this whole obligation. If you pay attention and you look around you and you check out the social media, it feels like everybody’s doing it all and doing it extraordinarily well, right? I mean that #allthethings that’s on a lot of posts and then we see this glorification of busy.

You know, I’ve seen posters and bags and I’ve seen notebooks that say “I am very busy.” Like, that’s a badge of honor, because I feel that when we are not busy, we somehow worry that we are failing, that we’re not doing enough, that we should be filling our days running from things to things.

And so in order to do that, we just cram our day full without really paying attention to what we really truly want to do. So, we have all of this, you know, pressure from society and from these stories that we tell ourselves. You know, a lot of us have these stories about what a good mom always does. A good is always there when her kids get off the bus or a good boss always stays later than their team. A good entrepreneur never stops working.

So, it’s these ideas that are so unrealistic, but they become this truth to us. There are these stories that we tell ourselves that often are not really stepped in our own values, but things that other people have kind of pushed onto us. And because of this, we lean into a lot of our perfectionism tendencies. And that’s what I question, is this reality based comes in because when that clear framework is designed to help you really discern whether something is important or unimportant.

Because that line becomes really blurred and it’s easy when it’s black or white, you know, good or bad. It’s harder when it’s good, better and best, when that area becomes gray. So, this question of is it reality based is really are you telling yourself a story that you are supposed to do this even though it’s not really tied to the life you want?

I feel like we go through life and we see these pictures and these images in magazines and on Pinterest. And we scroll through Facebook and we see these people with these exquisitely designed desks, you know, and these office spaces and we think, “Oh my gosh, I cannot start a podcast until I have this beautiful space to do my podcast because that’s what everybody else has.” I’m going to be honest with you, those people who have those pictures of those beautiful spaces probably cleared out a lot of stuff.

Andrea: They definitely are not looking at me right now in my husband’s closet.

Tonya Dalton: Well, you know, I have a podcast with over a million downloads and I still record it in my closet. You know why, because _____ are so good and it’s readily available.

Andrea: Exactly.

Tonya Dalton: So, yeah, it’s not Instagram worthy but it is working and that’s really what’s important. So, the reality I could tell myself is “Oh, I can’t podcast because I don’t have this beautiful space or I don’t have like a studio or having a studio,” when really I just drag a table and a chair and I go down in my closet just like you do. And you’re able to create something amazing because you didn’t wait, because you didn’t get caught up in that story of what you were supposed to have it look like or what we really want in life when really what you really wanted was to have a podcast.

Andrea: Absolutely.

Tonya Dalton: You know it’s not about the fancy office; it’s really about what are we creating and putting forth into the world.

Andrea: I think that that you’ve brought up another really important point that’s almost like an extension of this idea of what do you really want, and that is that we put things in between ourselves and what we really want in the pursuit of perfection, in the pursuit of doing it really well. There are times when we need to be careful. I’ve noticed, I was just listening this week and I tweeted something out, I was like, “There are a lot of podcasts out there put together by people who are selling really high end programs who don’t edit their podcasts and it just absolutely drives me crazy.”

Tonya Dalton: Yeah.

Andrea: So, there is a sense of like “But we need to do what we’re doing well.” Where do you see the harmony or the balance of wanting to make sure that we actually, you know, pursue the goal and actually execute on it versus putting something in between ourselves and that whole idea of not doing it well enough? Where should we find our balance there?

Tonya Dalton: Right. You know, I’m not going to start to, “I have to have it perfect.” Where is that middle ground of where it’s good enough, yeah? I love this question because you’re right, I mean, yes, it’s OK to do the podcast in your closet but take the time and the care to really edit it. And I think probably what ends up happening for a lot of these people who are not really editing their podcasts is there’s not that care behind it.

To me, taking the time to edit your podcast presented in a way that’s professional that represents you and your brand that shows a lot of meaning. It shows a lot of thoughts and intention behind it. And I think that’s where we really need to draw the line is what is your intention with whatever it is you’re putting forth. If your intention that it’d be absolutely positively flawless, because if that’s your intention, I’m sorry, but that’s not going to happen because perfection does not exist.

So, we don’t want to get stymied by this idea that it has to be perfect, but what’s in that middle ground? What’s really acceptable? And to me, all of this comes down to this idea of your North Star, which we talked about in the first section of the book, but it’s essentially your mission, your vision, and your core values. So, everything that I do, everything that I present, everything; whether it’s writing a book or a course or it’s a podcast or whatever it is, does this work with my North Star? I use that as my filter.

And so, if it really does filter through this North Star, if it’s why I do what I do, which is my mission, where I want to go with my business, which is my vision and how I want to get there, which is one of my core values, that’s really what helps me make those decisions. So, for example, one of the parts of the North Star for the inkWELL Press brand is our core value is excellence. That I’m not going to put something out there unless I feel like this is a benefit to my customers and it’s presented in a way that’ll be meaningful to them.

So, perfection is not one of my core values. Having things to be absolutely, you know, flawless or with no mistakes. That’s not really part of my brand because there needs to be an element of authenticity there that we are humans and it’s OK to show some softer sides of ourselves. But two, because everything is filtered through your North Star, you’re not trying to do so much that you don’t have time to edit the podcast.

If you want to do a podcast, do the best podcast you can. That doesn’t mean being perfect but what’s the best vision of what that could look like for you and sit down and map that out. Does it mean that you have to have, you know, some fancy editor editing your podcast? Probably not. You can use GarageBand on your Mac and edit your podcast. It doesn’t take a lot of work to really, you know, take the time to Google up a couple of, you know, YouTube videos on how to edit your podcast. So again, if it’s meaningful, you’re going to do it right. And I think that’s really where this comes into play this idea of whether you want it to be perfect or just start finding that middle ground of what’s acceptable for you and your North Star.

Andrea: Mission, vision, values, this North Star, this is something that we don’t necessarily call it North Star but we talk about this a lot. And so, I am so curious when you talk about actually applying it, how does this work when you are making decisions? Do you have it like put up someplace on some board on your wall and you go to that and say, OK, does that fit this, this and this? Or is it just now ingrained in your head? Or how do you recommend that people who are really just starting out trying to make sure that everything fits their North Star? How do you recommend that they do this, like what is the practical application of that?

Tonya Dalton: Yes, so what I would say is when you’re first starting with your North Star to write it out because you want to put it in a place where it becomes really easy to integrate into your everyday life. Now, what you know, one of the things that’s really key I think with your mission and your vision statement especially is that they’re short. They should be concise. They should be kind of to the point. You don’t want these long fancy words that don’t really have any meaning. You want that to be meaningful to you.

So, really making sure that it’s concise and short enough that you could memorize it so that when an opportunity comes up you can say, “OK does this really fit why I do what I do?” Your mission statement, “Does this really fit what I’m wanting our company to do?” Then you look at the vision of “Is this going to get me closer to my vision of where we need to go?” So, having that written out to start really does help because you can actually literally ask yourself the question that’s written out on the page.

You know, for example, the inkWELL Press North Star is to provide productivity tools and trainings that empower you to achieve your goals and dreams. So, when an opportunity comes up, I ask myself, “Is this really going to help people empower them to get closer to their goals?” If this is not going to get them closer to their goals and this is just in some way to elevate myself or something that’s, you know, extra then that doesn’t really fit that mission statement. So, you just turn it around and make it work for you. But eventually that mission statement, that vision statement of your core values become just so internalized that those questions become a little more natural.

But here’s the thing that I think is important too is those things are always evolving. Your mission statement that you had two years ago may not apply now. So, I think it’s really important to make sure that you are revisiting that mission and the vision and the core values to see if it really does still fit with where you want to go and how you want to get there.

Andrea: OK, I totally agree, re-evaluating is so important; question though, what about the person who is saying to themselves “Yeah, but this would still really help people.” They see something that would be good for them to do and even though it doesn’t quite fit the mission, it still would really help people and I feel this obligation to help people. What do you say to them?

Tonya Dalton: Well, here’s where we get into that thing with opportunity knocking, “Oh but this would somehow be good because of…” We can always make up excuses why something is good. Here’s what I would say to you, every time you say yes to an opportunity, to a project, to a task, you are saying no to something else.

Andrea: Bingo!

Tonya Dalton: So, yes, this opportunity that comes up that may help other people, but could I help people better if I was not spending my time on this and instead spending it on what is truly part of my mission, my vision, and my core values. So, really thinking that through every time you say yes you’re saying no to something else. Take that time to really pour your time, energy, and focus into that North Star because that’s really when you will help people the most.

Andrea: I think that it’s really a muscle that people have to kind of build up because it’s often people who are really creative and caring who have the hardest time with this, like they want to do so many things. They want to help in so many ways and it’s hard for them to recognize that; wait a second, I need to stop for a second and ask that question that you just, you know, presented which would help people more. And it’s a hard question to ask. It’s a hard question to answer, but it’s so important and I’m really glad that you are helping people with that.

Again, I encourage people to get the book to be able to really help themselves think through these things.

All right, let’s shift gears just slightly. So on page 111, I want to go to that as well. You talked about overwhelm and you kind of give this example from a Stanford University study. Can you tell us a little bit about that and how overwhelm really affects us?

Tonya Dalton: Well, you know that feeling when you get to the end of your day and it’s time to eat dinner and you think, “All right, what do we want for dinner?” And then you can’t think of a single thing.

Andrea: Oh yes!

Tonya Dalton: You can’t even think of a single restaurant or anything that you make out of the pantry. Like there’s just no thought in your mind and you feel just literally brain dead. That feeling is a reality. That’s a real feeling. It’s actually called decision fatigue. And what happens is our brain is burning all of its calories, making all these little minute decisions in our day.

You see, our brain is literally 2% of our body and yet it burns 20% of our calories every single day. Your brain is this calorie burning machine. So, every time we make a decision, whether it’s a big decision or a small decision, we’re burning calories.

So, when you get to the end of the day, when you’ve made all these like little minute decisions where you’re spreading yourself really thin, making all these choices instead of using habits and routines and automations to your advantage, we end up burning through all those calories. And your brain is like, “Nope, I’m done. I’m not making any more decisions.” And it quite frankly can’t. This is why, you know, even though we’ve eaten healthy all day, we’ll eat that cookie that’s been sitting in the break room for two days at the end of the day, right?

Or when we’ve gone on a shopping trip why we would buy three pairs of shoes at the very end of the shopping trip instead of at the beginning because we’ve ran out of calories for our brain to make decisions. And this is when that feeling of overwhelm really does start to settle in over us because we cannot make good choices if we’re spending our day all day on lots of menial things, on lots of things that are insignificant.

We really want to focus our brainpower on those big things, on the goals, on the passion project, on the things that do drive you towards that North Star. And there’s so many great ways to do that. And we walked through that in the book through habits and routines and automations and different processes that you can do so that those things happen seamlessly without a lot of thinking. I like to say you can bring home the bacon and fry it up in a pan, but if the kitchen is burning down around you, it does you no good.

So, we want to make sure all those things are still happening in the background. You know, laundry still needs to happen, bills need to be paid. You need to do, you know, yard work. You need to, you know, make sure you call your mom. All those things need to still happen, but we don’t want to spend all of our brain energy and all of our calories on that. We really want to spend our brain focus on the things that are most important.

So, that’s really where this study comes in where you know, these researchers found that when people had to memorize a number and they had two groups, one had a two digit number and the other group had, I think it was a seven digit number, after they had to memorize that number, they walked down the hall and they were offered a snack. The people who had the two digit number most often chose the healthy snack.

The people with seven digits, only five numbers more that they have to memorize yet they shows the unhealthy snack like I think it was, you know, a piece of cake or something like that. They chose the unhealthy snack more often because their brain was tired of making decisions. It was too busy thinking about these numbers, these seven digits, it ran out of calories. Even something as small as that really they can make a difference in how your brain works. That’s why we want to do less and that way we achieve more. When we focus on fewer things, more important things, we really can achieve bigger things in the long run.

Andrea: Love it. OK, what about when someone is kind of prioritized a project, they know that it’s important. They’ve decided that it’s more important than a lot of the immediate things around them, but they continuously do not execute on that project.

Tonya Dalton: Uh-hmm yes.

Andrea: What is getting in the way?

Tonya Dalton: I would tell you honestly, my first thought would be, it’s probably the to-do-list because I think you have to throw away that to-do-list. A to-do-list really just takes you everywhere but where you truly want to go. So, what I really encourage people to do is not to make it to-do-list, but instead make a priority list.

Because what happens is when we have a long list of things that need to happen, even if you know that task is important and it’s just there on that to do list, you know, amongst going to the grocery store or running to Target, you know, picking up the flea medication for the dog and everything else, it gets lost there. And we will naturally go for the easiest win because our brain loves dopamine. We get a little dopamine hit every time we scratch a line through something on our to-do-list. And your brain doesn’t care whether it’s a big task, an important task, or a small task.

So, our brain naturally navigates towards “Hey, let’s get that flea medication for the dog” instead of working on the presentation that really will drive you forward. So, when we make a priority list, we start with our list at the top and we work our way down based on priority, based on whether something is important, whether it’s urgent and we work our way down. And again, we go through that whole system of how a priority list works. But the best part to me is a priority list takes the exact same amount of time as a to-do-list. It’s just a to-do-list with intention.

So, when you start your day at the top and you work your way down that to-do-lists or down that priority list going from top priority down to your lowest priority, that’s when you make sure that you make time for those big things that truly are important. It’s no longer a jumbled mess of, you know, unorganized tasks that are written on a sheet of paper. It’s now organized and intentional making sure that you carve out time for those things that do matter the most.

Andrea: If your readers could make one shift in their lives from reading your book, what shift do you hope that they make?

Tonya Dalton: I want them to understand that they have choices. You know, a lot of times we believe that we don’t have ownership over our calendar. The number of times that people say to me, “Oh, I wish I could do that, but I just don’t own my day.” Or “Oh, I’ve got an overbearing boss and they take over my calendar.” I want to remind people that you do have choices and we talk about choices throughout the entire book.

Truly choices are what helps us discern and stop being busy and move towards being productive. Understanding that even in situations where you don’t think you have a choice, there are still choices there. But we just have to dig for them. We have to use what I call squirrel strategy to approach it at different angles and try to, you know, think outside the box to make this happen, but we have choices. We just have learned helplessness that tells us that we don’t.

Andrea: Oh yes.

Tonya Dalton: So, we go into that quite a bit in the book, but when you understand that you have choices and how you spend your day and where you focus your time and your energy, that’s when opportunities, the true opportunity to move towards that North Star. That’s when that begins to open up and that’s really when you can step into that greatness that you really want in your life and what you deserve in your life.

We all deserve to end our days feeling happy, feeling satisfied, feeling successful, and far too many people right now because we don’t feel like we have ownership because we’re running around trying to check a thousand things off our list, slip into bed at night and think “I didn’t get enough done. Why didn’t I work harder? Why did I do this? Why did I do that?” And we don’t feel satisfied. That’s what I want most for people is to finish their days and to really feel like, “You know what, today felt good and there is a lot to be said for feeling good, feeling happy,” and being productive really does make that happen.

Andrea: That is a incredibly empowering and I think we have a voice of influence and you have a lot of synergy here because we really want to see people realizing their own agency in their lives and being able to realize that they have choices like you’re talking about is such a huge piece of that. And so, I am sincerely grateful that you took time to come be on our podcast and share this message with our listeners and I hope that they get your books. So, tell us about how they can get your book.

Tonya Dalton: Yes. So, if you go to joyofmissingout.com, there’s information about where you can buy. It’s available really anywhere that books are sold. And then really if they’d purchase before October 1^st, I have some really amazing pre-bonuses including a discover your North Star course, which is a $247 value which you get for purchasing the book before October 1^st and you can redeem that at joyofmissingout.com.

But we dive deep into how do you decide what your mission is. Well, how do you decide what your purpose is and your passion and your priorities and we get into that. We peel back the layers of the onion and dive into who you truly are.

So, I’m really excited about that preorder bonus because I think that’s one of the things that people really struggle with is who am I and what do I really want out of this life? So, that is one of the preorder bonuses, but you can get the book at any time at joyofmissingout.com. Get on Amazon or Barnes & Noble or Target. But joyofmissingout.com is the best place to get all the information.

Andrea: And if they want to learn more from you from your podcast, what’s your podcast called again?

Tonya Dalton: Productivity Paradox. You can find information on me at tonyadalton.com, so Tonya with an O and a Y.

Andrea: All right. Thank you so much again for sharing your voice of influence with our listeners, Tonya.

Tonya Dalton: Thank you so much for having me.

Posted on Monday, September 23, 2019

Creating Memorable Experiences with Manuel Christoffel of Woom Bikes

Episode 108

Manuel Christoffel is the (Interim) Chief Customer Officer at Woom Bikes where he manages marketing in customer service for all North America. Prior to joining Woom, Manuel has held global cross-functional customer success, program, marketing and brand strategy roles at ADP, Dell, American Express, Bazaarvoice, Hearsay Social, and his own consultancy business.

In this episode, Manuel explains what he means when he says huis declared goal is to deliver the best possible internal and external customer experience by combining EQ with IQ while cutting the red tape, the importance of realizing that the one purchasing your product isn’t always your true customer, why he believes there’s no such thing as “finding the right person” for your customer service team, why he doesn’t have penalties for team members who make mistakes, how he helps his CEO share their voice of influence, and more!

Mentioned in this episode:

Play here (the red triangle below), on iTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio (Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Transcript

Hey, hey! It’s Andrea and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast. Today, I have with me Manuel Christoffel from Woom Bikes USA. He is the (Interim) Chief Customer Officer at Woom Bikes, managing marketing in customer service for all of North America. Prior to joining Woom, Manuel has held global cross-functional customer success, program, marketing and brand strategy roles at ADP, Dell, American Express, Bazaarvoice, Hearsay Social, and his own consultancy business.

His declared goal is to deliver the best possible internal and external customer experience by combining EQ with IQ while cutting the red tape. Now, we discussed ahead of time Manuel. I gave you a fair warning. I would like to know what in the world you mean by that. Please, please do tell us. Thank you for being here.

Manuel Christoffel: Well, of course, thank you for having me, Andrea. And yes, you did warn me with one minute heads up but as you said, I wrote it. So what do I mean by that? Really, to me there’s a difference. IQ to me does not necessarily mean that you went to an Ivy League school and they gave you a 4.0 GPA. It doesn’t mean people who go to an Ivy League and have a 4.0 are not highly intelligent.

But to me what comes down to is where’s your passion and are you intelligent about articulating that passion or pursuing that passion. Then taking the EQ to it where it’s not just about you and how you get the most out of this passion, but how do you really bond with your customers, whether internal or external, and how do you really make it a win-win along the way, right?

So, for us at Woom, I’ve basically and I’m the third iteration of our team here for customer service. I believe this is the winning team; phenomenal people, very driven, very passionate people, which is challenging for me because I come in and I’m just a little grumpy. I have a 4 year old and a 4 month old, so I’m not getting sleep. And my head of customer service, Sherry is just there. I’m not kidding you; she’s dancing at 8 o’clock in the morning with biggest smile ever and she’s like 20 miles one way to work before I even get there, right?

So, super, super passionate that will be done with the customer service team. I deliberately hired a mix of parents and non-parents and bike people, non bike people because to me it’s very important.

Andrea: Interesting.

Manuel Christoffel: I don’t want a bike specialist. My ultimate customer or consumer is a child. The people buying our product are parents; at least most of them are not hardcore cyclists. They might be bike enthusiasts. They might enjoy family bike rides.

Andrea: Can you just say that again?

Manuel Christoffel: I apologize. Yeah, what I was saying is a lot of our parents are, you know, they’re bike enthusiasts but they’re not hardcore cyclists, right? I live in Austin. Obviously, Lance Armstrong is here. There’s a lot of people that are a very hardcore, you know, race bike community, triathlon community, mountain bike community. So, we have all that.

But then there’s all these other parents, the normal people, and normal parents like myself that say “I have certain fond memories of my childhood riding a bike.” Falling on my face a couple of times until I learned is not one of them. But you know, all said and done, they were certain bonding moments with your parents when you achieved this monumental feet of balancing and propelling yourself forward. So bringing that passion to our brand is phenomenal.

And that’s why I said I don’t want, you know, semi-professional athletes only on my customer service team. I want people who are parents who have gone through some of these anxieties finding the right size, finding the right weight, even the right color, because the color makes a difference. You can buy the best, the nicest bike if it’s not the color the child wants _____. So there are all these aspects.

And so for me, it’s very important that I have an ecosystem of mutually, and I say, complimentary traits and skill sets and personalities. You know, when you start realizing, this is a very emotional purchase or there’s some anxiety around some inquiries around the bike, “Are they more technical in nature?” “Hey, maybe you should talk to my colleague.” “Are they, you know, more emotional in nature?” “You know what; you should talk to my colleague. He has three children.”

He literally started working here. He harassed us so much that I had to hire him you know. He’s phenomenal because almost every question we get in that regard he will say, “Well, you know, when I faced this decision, here’s what I thought about this. Here’s my decision making process. Does this sound anything like yours?” And you know, you have this bond that you can’t script it. You can’t pre anticipate of what is somebody going to ask and how do you, you know, maybe soothe this anxiety.

How do you justify the purchase price of our bikes, which in all fairness are not, you know, the most affordable in the market? They’re a little bit in the upscale side of things, but at the same time, what we hear time and time again from everybody across the board, our bikes are designed for children. They do make a difference.

The reason your 6-year-old girl does not really know how to brake is not because she’s not coordinated. She may not be able to reach the brake lever because she has a kid’s bike but these all shrunken down parts from a grownup bike. They’re not custom designed for a child’s hand at that age, right?

So, some of these attention to details that we put into bikes that ultimately turn people from, let’s say, potentially curious about the product in what they’ve heard into people that will take to social media and share their experiences that will send us pictures, videos, testimonials, you know, and triggered saying, “This is so phenomenal.” “We’re so happy.” “Thank you so much for putting the smile on our child’s face.” “Thank you so much for this experience.” And that, you know, it’s just a validation of what we’re doing and how we’re doing it is the right thing.

Andrea: Hmm. So, you mentioned that you get a variety of people who participate on your customer service team and that they readily refer each other for different causes or different problems that come up. I love that. How do you start the process where they begin to get to know each other well enough to know that this is the person that should handle this call or talk to this person about this particular problem? How do you develop that atmosphere besides, you know, finding the right people, like what’s the other process when it comes to getting to know each other?

Manuel Christoffel: Oh, absolutely. I mean, there is no such thing as finding the right person, right? You find somebody that I would say fits the mold about 80% and then 20% is you hope for the best, you pray for the best. And at the same time, you also hope that this person will take to your atmosphere, your style of management, and your company philosophy, right? And if all this works out, it’s great.

For us, when I started this entire team, it pretty much came on at the same time. I made it very clear, “Look, here’s X amount of _____ discretionary budget that you have to make a customer whole.” I do not want to nickel and dime somebody if a bell breaks or you know, if maybe a grip gets worn or whatever. If they take the time to call us, let us give them a new one, right?” And our people feel empowered doing that. And on the flip side, internally, what I keep preaching is essentially I want us to be reflective, not reflexive.

And by really hearing what a customer is saying, and this is something that’s very hard, our founder here, you know, Mathias, will tell you, he’s been in customer service. He’s meant the phones and he has a deep appreciation for what our people do because he self-admitted he said, “I can’t do it anymore because three seconds in, I know exactly what their problem is. But I also know they will talk for another two minutes and obviously it’s rude to not hear them out.”

So, just listening factually what are they saying and how are they saying it? The more rational person will say, “OK, rationally, I can answer this, but I’m sensing there’s some emotional triggers in this. There’s some anxiety about this.” And then it’s all about probing questions. So, we role play a little bit, but much of what we do, even after a call, you know, see they were transferred or end it, it’s the, “Hey, I heard you say this and that. Can you tell me more about this?”

It’s not necessarily that we police each other, but I want to foster this level of curiosity the way I hear something that “Hmm, I would’ve maybe said something different. Why did you do it this way?” “Oh,” because you know, you only hear the customer service side of things in the office. You don’t hear what the customer’s saying. And like, “Oh, OK, I understand. I’ve been through three bikes and weight is the most important feature.” Not necessarily the custom designed handles, not a different feature that we’re very proud of. It might really be the weight.

So, the entire conversation is around the weight or lack thereof with our product and our bike. And as we kind of have this, our knowledge base expands, and we have huddles every week where we say, “OK what was the best and the worst call you’ve had this week and why?”

Andrea: Love it.

Manuel Christoffel: So, this is sort of what we kind of, I don’t want to say we celebrate our losses because now we have some escalations, we have some unhappy customers. We cannot make all of them happy. And at times we feel it’s our fault, absolutely. But in kind of talking about that, what I see that the point we’re getting to is the team self regulates. I rarely have to step in and say, “Well, maybe you should try this or you should try this.” Because everybody feels comfortable enough to sort of admit their mistakes. They know I’m not going to, you know, publicly demean them or not really a penalty for making a mistake. My big ask is let’s learn from them and more importantly, do you now understand how this mistake came about?

Andrea: OK that is really, really important. I’m not sure how long have you been at Woom and was that already the way that it was?

Manuel Christoffel: So, I’ve been consulting to the CEO for about three and a half years and I’ve been here full time for this year. On the philosophy piece, it definitely always has been that way, but you know, we are essentially still as someone in startup mode. You know, a four and a half year old company started in a garage and moved to the third office, if we count the garage as an office, you know, in Austin growing nicely.

But it is very challenging because our CEO, a collegiate athlete, very, very passionate about the bike, about the product but really more, I’m going to say, from the bike geek point of view. So his passion doesn’t necessarily translates. So has the passion always existed? Absolutely; and our CEO will be the first person that will tell you, “If I’m not been passionate, I can only plead insanity as to why we are still here and why I didn’t give up along the way.” Because there’s definitely been some moments where you’re new to a market, you’re more expensive, nobody knows your brand and it’s difficult.

So, no matter how passionate you are about it, kind of seeing that basically your baby not being appreciated for what it is or being misunderstood, you know, it’s going to be very challenging. So, the passion has always been there. My job sort of is to say, “OK, how do we translate this?” Very similar to, you know, _____.

When I joined Amex early in 2007, I was a very hardcore visa credit card user. And I did not understand why people would pay for a charge card, because in my mind, the message that Amex had at a time was very much, “If you can’t afford this fee, maybe you just don’t make enough money.” That was my perception of the company because their brand messaging, their value messaging was not tailored to a personality like mine.

And going in and having some opportunity to speak with some marketing leaders and getting some feedback, they’ve heard some of that. But we’ve also gotten better as a company just educating and supporting our customers in understanding the value around some of these products.

So, fast forward, what I’ve seen is, it’s not about trying to hit your CEO over the head and saying you’re doing everything wrong, it’s about what matters and what is getting lost in translation and how do we add these pieces back in in a way that it resonates not just with the bicycle community.

And they are very passionate and they’re incredibly supportive. They spread the word. We would not be where we are without the bicycle community, no doubt. But you know, there are also other parents out there who don’t know the single pieces of a bike and why it matters that this is manufactured one way on machine the different way.

So, how do I translate this into a broad set of audience in a way where you understand there’s passion and there’s pride but you don’t feel necessarily like you walk into this high-end boutique and the salesperson will just never leave your aside. I don’t want that impression either. I want you to be able to form your own opinion. That is why we have the up-cycle program where you can return your bike when you buy a bigger one, or you’re a part of our up-cycle membership basically you get 40% of the initial purchase price credited towards the new purchase, the bigger bike that you’re buying.

It’s something where we say, “We do appreciate your initial purchase. We do understand we’re a little bit more expensive than some of these other brands out there. And we want to give you an incentive to stay with us. You know, we do want to acknowledge that that is why we rarely ever ask how did something break.”

But of course, if somebody you know, bought a bike a day ago and says this thing is totaled,” we will ask and say “You ran over it with your truck. I’m sorry. There’s not much I can do. I may send you a shirt just to cheer you up, absolutely but I can’t send you a new bike.” But generally, _____, like what does this mean functionally? This means, you know, we’re not going to nickel and dime our customers. This means now we will really hear them out and if we need to transfer them, not because we’re tired of them, but because we sense that somebody else can support them in a more meaningful way.

Andrea: OK, so you have so much here that we can dive into and I have some questions based on what you were just talking about because there’s so much here. And one of the things that came up here kind of more towards the end of what you were saying was that you really help the CEO kind of apply and act on their vision as it applies to customer service.

Manuel Christoffel: Right.

Andrea: Our company is called Voice of Influence, the podcast that we’re on right now is called Voice of Influence and what you said was that, you know, there are times when you have to be a voice of influence with the CEO in order to help them to translate their vision into something that’s going to make a difference for the customer. So, do you have any specific ideas about what is one of the best ways to communicate that to the CEO themselves?

Manuel Christoffel: It really depends on the personality of the CEO and the relationship that you’re able to establish and the authority that you kind of bring to the table. In my case, the company is extremely fortunate; our CEO does not have what I call “founder syndrome.” He does not have an ego. You could be an intern on your first day and literally radically change an aspect of the business just by asking one question because it just doesn’t make sense to you. In some companies I’ve worked at, you would have probably been scolded for even daring to speak up on day one, let alone talk to the CEO.

Andrea: Right, right. So people have a voice?

Manuel Christoffel: People have a voice, and because he’s always sort of known that it takes a village to build a brand, right? And it takes a community to grow a brand and really, you know, become a brand even in the first place. So, for him, it’s all about how do all these individual pieces, all these things he wants to accomplish, how do we kind of prioritize them? And also, you know, we’re growing quite a bit.

So, we get inundated or he gets inundated with so many increases, so many proposals, so many suggestions, so many tools, and so many partnerships. I’ll say “OK, let’s ignore all that for a second, either you will read through all this tonight or I will do this or somebody else will do it. What matters to you? What are we doing this quarter or this year? Or what’s the single biggest thing you just wish we could change? Then let’s see who can help us on this journey whether that’s internally like hiring the right people, growing the right people.”

It’s important to me that when somebody comes and works at this company, especially on my teams, since I have the most influence over them, that they are more marketable and more knowledgeable than they were before they came to us. Obviously, I don’t want people to leave, but I understand, you know, opportunities are out there and some people, you know, may just want to move to a different city. They want to live by the beach. So, I never want to stop anybody, but I will make sure that we’ve also made your career more noteworthy and meaningful while you were here.

Andrea: So that’s connected to your purpose, it sounds like. You feel that you can make a difference in their lives and so that’s something that’s going to come out in the way that you lead.

Manuel Christoffel: Definitely, I do feel that way, but I have almost unlimited patience and support in pursuing that from our CEO because he does it for you.

Andrea: Yes. That is awesome.

Manuel Christoffel: He understands. You know, as I said he’s a very intelligent person. He’s a very accomplished person. He understands that not everybody is here for the same reason he is here, but it’s his baby. It’s his company, right? So he can’t expect it. So what he’s saying is how can we make this meaningful and at the same time, how can we make this, for lack of better term, how we can make this as a partnership. It’s not an employment.

There are two or three very, very hard rules that I pursue. Aside from that, and these are predominantly related to like, you know, HR and just don’t do silly things. Let’s be PC here, right? But aside from that, you can revamp on almost everything. If there is potential, there’s promise. And we do not want to be that boss that hindered your career, that CEO that just did not even give you a voice.

We want to be, at times, that people that kind of save you from yourself internally. I’ve had that in my career many times when a boss said, “You know, I know you’re really angry, just go take a walk. Don’t say what you want to say right now, just go take a walk.” And it takes some time to realize you just saved me from myself.

Andrea: Yes. That’s awesome.

Manuel Christoffel: So, I kind of want to be that and, you know, some people are very receptive to this, obviously others are not. But what’s just really important for us, we know if we jive, we’ll work well together. We support each other, you know, no matter really what that takes. Our customer service team, at times, comes and helps build bikes. At times, some of our technicians on the up-cycle program come and help mend the phone lines if we have incredible demand.

And there is not really like this, “Oh, I have to go out there and it’s kind of warm and I have to build the bike” and “Uh, I just really want to answer phones.” It’s the “OK, maybe there’s a suboptimal,” if they even think that. But it’s much more, “Hey, you know, let’s just get this going what needs to happen. What do we need to do?”

So that’s what I look for in people. I don’t want people who want a job. I’m looking for people that want a career. I think that’s already a big distinction. And then I very much ask them, “Hey, look, what can I expect from you and what are some things I should look out for?” And some of that stuff I’m hearing, at times, I have heard of people that we have hired, I didn’t love so much, but you got to appreciate the honesty.

Andrea: Yeah, they admitted it.

Manuel Christoffel: Exactly. You’d have to admit it. I mean, you know, I know right before a job interview, “I’m gonna Google this company. I’m gonna Google all the answers. I’m gonna go at Glassdoor. I’m gonna know how I’m gonna be 85% perfect in all my answers.” So, somebody really breaking script and being honest, like this is a phenomenal starting point because that means I can be honest with you and you’re going to tell me whether this resonates or not.

Andrea: And…

Manuel Christoffel: Sorry, go ahead.

Andrea: No, I apologize. Keep going.

Manuel Christoffel: No, no, by all means.

Andrea: Well, I was just going to say, and they’re not going to feel shame. You have created a culture where it’s not about shame. There’s not this penalty for making mistakes, like you mentioned before, and so people can more freely share their voice. They can more freely be authentic and make mistakes but go for it more too.

Manuel Christoffel: Absolutely. You’ll pursue your passion and if you work something, you know, this is an ongoing thing that we’re still working on, at times, especially when you go in like chat on social media. When you get into like, you know, comments you want to respond, you try to be somewhat brief. You don’t want to write a book because, you know, people will just not read a book but you do want to address the comment. So, as you kind of track it that down, at times we some, I want to say, less fortunate phrasings and whatnot.

So, I know, we’ve come across and like “hey” and usually it’s like, “Oh, that last thing. Yeah, I was struggling with this too. I really wanted to say this but you know, we’re trying to keep this below X amount of lines, so that’s why I chose this.” “You know what, make it two lines longer. It’s OK, it’s just really is the better thing.” But we’re getting into such a groove to where it’s not this, “Oh my God, you’re just tearing me down and I can’t do anything perfectly.”

We’re almost in sync already but we’re still kind of, you know, feeling each other out a little bit. Where is that perfect balance of what you said, keep it below X sentences. I’m trying to do that. In my mind though, it would have taken another sentence or two. So we’re compromising, “You know what, use what I’m saying as a guideline.” It means don’t triple the amount of sentences, but if in doubt, if it’s between potentially unfortunate phrasing or really saying what you want to say, say what you really want to say.

Andrea: Hmm that’s really empowering for them too.

Manuel Christoffel: Honestly, it helps me because it helps me understand how they take what they are good at. Some people, on our customer service team, are phenomenal with local customers and walk ins. They’re passionate about it. They really love it and others say rightfully. We know you have a local sales department, but I really was helping our people predominantly under phone or email, like more traditional customer service supports type of role.

So, “OK, where are our personalities?” What do you prefer doing?” I want everybody to be well versed, but it doesn’t mean we can’t try to specialize down a little bit and say, “OK, do we have the bandwidth for, you know, my person who really loves talking with customers and interact with children and share his story about his children and all these other things?” Yeah. If in doubt, I want that person. I want him to speak to our customers. I want him to spend some time with them. And even if they don’t buy a bike, he’s just had a really good time at work giving thoughts about what he’s passionate about, sharing things about his family life, and about his children in our customers.

Even if they don’t buy anything, you know. Again, they don’t have this boutique experience, they’ll come in “What bike do you want? What size? What’s your credit card? Oh, you want to try, what do you mean you undecided? Why? You didn’t do your research?” And that’s the experience that some customers have with some other brands, or you know, just generally when it comes to that type of purchase.

So, we really want to make sure that we do a very good job educating our customers upfront, sharing some of the pride and the passion that we have and being really empathetic and listening to their needs and then kind of making that decision, “OK, you very clearly know your way around bikes and you have a concern about this and that.” We may not even have the right person in customer service, “You know what I have a bike technician that you would really love talking to. Do you mind holding, either you mind holding for a minute or can he call you back within the next five minutes?”

Andrea: That’s got to be like really impactful.

Manuel Christoffel: It makes a difference and this was, you know, my philosophy. I personally would rather exchange 15 emails than pick up the phone once and call customer service. So then the worst thing you can do to me is put me on hold for 10 minutes. So, if you tell me I’m going to call you back within 10 minutes and you call me back into three, by default, there’s almost nothing you can do to upset me at this point.

Andrea: Right? And _____ somebody else and you’re like breaking scripts I can tell. You’re breaking script with the customer.

Manuel Christoffel: It’s the red tape, right? We’re a call center; rep just does not have the authority. I mean they may want to say, “You know what, Pete over there knows so much more about the ins and outs of your fiber line, but unfortunately I can either transfer you to a supervisor if you really want to escalate or you have to hang up and call back.” So, a lot of people in his industry, in customer service don’t have the freedom to kind of say, you know, “May I please transfer you to one of my peers who can help you a lot more.” Or you know, “Hey, you seems really, really unhappy.” And then you got up, “Hey, look, this person is really unhappy. I honestly think they wanna feel heard, you have a good title; if you want to talk to them.” And, you know, it tends to work.

Again, we can’t make everybody happy. We make mistakes, we learn from them, myself included. But to me, what’s important fundamentally is the attitude and really just reiterating, “It’s OK to not be perfect, but let’s be honest along the way.” That to me is important and when we hear, “Hey look, now there’s still some more red tape, or I still don’t have this. I don’t have this.” “Hey, we don’t really know what’s going on in the company.” Our CEO went to the extreme, he set up 15 minute one-on-one every single month with every employee at his company.

And I can tell you, he doesn’t really have all that much free time. He said “If they really don’t know, I could do a town hall, but guess what, some people can’t make it. Some people are stuck on the phone. I will talk to every single person and we’re gonna do this, you know, every month.” For the time being, _____ because it’s not sustainable, right? But it’s the “You’ve spoken, I’ve heard you.” It’s not that “Well, let’s send it to an assistant who then tries to schedule a calendar.” And “Who are you, you have been here two months and you want to FaceTime with the boss?”

Now, we have all this in companies that are a lot smaller than us. And you know, we’re not all that big word, you know, on a good day we’re 50 people in the US. So, it’s not that we’re all that big, but I’ve been at smaller companies and you just did not get FaceTime with, you know, you skip-level, let alone the CEO. So that to me is just very important that really everybody here feels like they have a voice and more importantly they have an opinion, we hear it.

Sometimes it’s, you know, this would be perfect. I have a wish list of tools and infrastructure and people for that matter, “Hey, if I do my job right in three to four years, I’m gonna get all of that. For the time being, well, here’s why you can’t have it, but this is what you can have. What can you do with this?” And that to me, again, is more powerful than just saying no.

Andrea: Yeah. Wow, that’s really, really great. I love this. I love that you and your company are focused so much on helping people to have a voice and utilizing their voice to really make your company better and make your customer service better. And that is a clearly making a difference in the way that your customers experience your brand, so congratulations on that because that’s a huge feat.

Manuel Christoffel: Thank you. I appreciate that.

Andrea: So, Manuel, if people are interested in Woom Bikes or interested in you at all, where should they connect with you or could they?

Manuel Christoffel: Well, absolutely. I mean, you know, I’m a really, really big fan of LinkedIn, although I will say, I sadly do not know every single person in my LinkedIn profile. But you know, that’s Manuel Christoffel on LinkedIn. My Twitter is a little bit harder because that’s manuel_c, apparently there’s another manuel_c out there.

Andrea: We will link to those on the show notes so that people can find you. Go ahead.

Manuel Christoffel: No, thank you. But, absolutely, I mean it’s been a phenomenal journey. It’s a great company. I love talking to people. I like learning from people because what we’re seeing, you know, a lot of the best bits of, you know, I’m going to say food for thought we’ve received from some people, not necessarily in the marketing industry or the customer service industry or even the bike industry. It’s just people who, you know, have lived a life who say, “Well, you know, when I have to scale something or when I had this problem or when I manage people, here’s kind of what I do.”

Those kinds of tips that’s what I’m saying networking is so incredibly underrated. A lot of people only network when they need a new job or they need a reference or an introduction or something. To me, it’s kind of like you kind of pay it forward its service leadership and the networking space in a sense, because one of these days you hope karma is a real thing and somebody else will return the favor. But for the time being at the very least, let me meet some interesting people. And even if we have some opposing views or, you know, tell me really why you think everything we do is so fundamentally wrong.

I’m not saying I’m going to convince you, but at the very least it’s going to potentially help me maybe reevaluate some of the things we do and say maybe we should fine tune this because we will grow and we might hit this particular problem down the road, how can we kind of preempt? And that that to me is very important.

And networking is great. Meeting new people is phenomenal, you know, going to conferences kind of speaking, hearing opposing views. And hopefully, in the process getting some more people to come visit the website, take a look at our bikes and become part of our journey.

Andrea: Hmm. That’s great. Well, thank you so much Manuel. Thank you for sharing your voice of influence with our listeners.

Manuel Christoffel: Thank you, Andrea. I look forward to seeing you in Chicago.

Andrea: Yes!

Posted on Monday, September 16, 2019

Guiding a Team to Take Your Customer’s Perspective with Tim Bay

Episode 107

Tim Bay is the Head of Digital Marketing at Fellowes Brands where he is responsible for building comprehensive strategies and programs to drive greater brand awareness, increased engagement, and profitable growth via digital channels. Before joining Fellowes, Tim had accumulated 20+ years of B2C and B2B digital marketing leadership experiences in roles such as Vice President of Digital Marketing at Wilton Brands and Co-Founder of Shay Digital, an internet marketing consultancy where he developed and executed online strategies for a wide breadth of organizations. In this episode, Tim discusses what he does in his current role, the common challenges he sees between digital marketing agencies and their clients, the balance between automation and utilizing actual people, the role empathy plays in how you market to your consumers, how to integrate empathy in all aspects of your business, and more!

Mentioned in this episode:

Play here (the red triangle below), on iTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio (Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Transcript

Hey, hey! It’s Andrea and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast. Today, I have with Tim Bay. Tim is currently Head of Digital Marketing at Fellowes Brands, which he’ll explain in a minute, where he is responsible for building comprehensive strategies and programs to drive greater brand awareness, increased engagement and profitable growth via digital channels. Before joining Fellowes, he had accumulated 20+ years of B2C and B2B digital marketing leadership experiences in roles such as vice president of Digital Marketing at Wilton Brands and co-founder of Shay Digital, an internet marketing consultancy where he developed and executed online strategies for a wide breadth of organizations, Gatorade, Ty, etc.

Andrea: So, Tim, we’re thrilled to have you here today on the Voice of Influence podcast.

Tim Bay: I’m excited to be here. Thank you.

Andrea: Well, Tim is also speaking at a conference that I’m also speaking at the end of September, the Digital Experience Summit in Chicago. So, Tim, let’s start with what do you do as head of digital marketing at Fellowes Brands?

Tim Bay: So, I would say at the highest level, it’s looking at how we can leverage digi-channels. That could be website. It could be social. It could be email to achieve our business objectives. You know, these objectives are how do we enhance brand awareness, how do we drive product awareness, and ultimately how do we convert to sales? So, that’s sort of from the business side. You know, thinking about it from a consumer first perspective is what can we do to help people along their journey? And we sell products, everything from shredders to storage boxes, to sit stand desks, to chairs, or to laminators. How can we help people find what they want to find? How can we make it easiest for them to get what they need, to get when they want to get it, and how they want to get it?

Andrea: Great! So, when it comes to digital marketing, you know, you being the head of it, how did you get to that point, like what was sort of the journey that you’ve taken because you mentioned in your bio that you also had a consultancy for awhile? So, we were talking beforehand that it was really interesting that you have been on both sides of agency and client in terms of, you know, this relationship between agency and clients. So, I guess I’m just wondering what has been that path for you?

Tim Bay: So, I actually started out when I was an undergraduate as finance major and accounting minor, and I thought I was going to be a stock analyst or stock researcher at some point. I went back to get my masters and I took my first marketing class for my masters and just fell in love with marketing. And then what led me to digital was I think a little bit of the right brain and left brain and the ability to get the immediate feedback and analyze, you know, what’s working, what’s not working given that sort of real time feedback in terms of what we can do to be more effective. And then from a digital marketing perspective, you know, as you mentioned over the course of my career, I have been on both the client side and the agency side. And largely that depends on where I saw some great opportunities and the ability to learn. And so I like having been on both sides because I think it made me better on the agency side to be able to empathize with the plight of the client and to understand what it’s like to work in an organization. And sometimes there are challenges that you face. And then on the client side, understanding sort of how agencies work and how I can be a better partner from my client perspective, but also understand a little bit of the nuances of agency and helping me in terms of the clients I get the most out of that relationship. I can always feel like, you know, the best relationship, the best partnership is one where it’s mutually beneficial. So, I do feel like being on both sides sort of gives a perspective that allows you to get not only more out of it from your side, but also help be a better partner.

Andrea: Do you think that there are any common mistakes that you’ve noticed, maybe you’ve helped mitigate them so that they don’t happen that when it comes to that relationship between client and agency, when they’re trying to figure out plans and execute plans and all that sort of thing, have you noticed any particular mistakes that kind of pop up quite frequently?

Tim Bay: Yeah. I think the biggest challenge from the client side is believing that you can just offload strategy to an agency and the fact it’s the best relationships and I feel like this from the agency side as well. The best relationships are our partnership and you have to give the right amount of time, you have to be fully vested, you have to be transparent. The more information, the more time that you can spend with your agency, the better ultimately they will be able to be. And I think the other thing too is, and this goes from both sides, is really being honest about what you need in a relationship and what you need in a partnership and what success looks like. Because I think too often you get a few months in and you just realize that things are operating as effectively as you’d like and that comes back sometimes to expectations in terms of how much time, from the agency perspective, they have to spend to manage the account, some of the challenges they might be facing in terms of gaining information or deadlines or things like that. And so I think, you know, going in understanding what is needed from both sides and being committed to doing that and having those conversations up front really helps.

Andrea: So, making sure that the relationship is structured in a way that is going to allow for the time and the energy that needs to be spent in order to establish your goals and get everything in place before you even begin so that you can keep referring back to it?

Tim Bay: Exactly, exactly. And I think part of it too is, you know, you mentioned strategy. Another challenge is if I as the brand can’t communicate a strategy, I can’t expect my agency to actually execute against that strategy effectively. And I think sometimes recognizing that there needs to be some work done first from a strategy perspective before you can engage in agency and in a very effective way. And again, that goes back to just really understanding what you need to do from your perspective to partner successfully with an agency.

Andrea: OK, so at the conference we’re talking about managing and optimizing digital customer experience to drive greater loyalty and profit, and one of the things that I feel like is super important in the managing and optimizing of the experience is the digital piece of, you know, automation and that sort of thing, but then also the people side of things. So, for you, when you’re working at Fellowes or when you’ve worked with other clients in the past, how much energy and effort goes into each side of that equation, the people side versus the automated side?

Tim Bay: I still think the greatest asset that any organization can have is its people. As much as I get excited as a marketer about things like Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence, you know, there’s nothing that replaces a great team of people. And that’s not just from a customer service perspective but it’s also from sort of thinking proactively about how to create that best customer journey. You have to think about the customer first. You have to be proactive in terms of understanding what is it they want and meet their needs before you can sort of, you know, get them to give you what you want in a way. And so, I think the technology has to work hand in hand with people. I don’t think you can certainly, not anytime soon, I imagine a situation where you feel like whatever technology solution you have is going to be as effective in a lot of areas as just our ability to communicate, interact, engage, and strategically think through issues. Now, there are things that obviously technology can do better than us as humans, right? Things like, you know, quick computing and things like, I think personalization. But at the end of the day, you know, I think people want to feel from a customer service perspective, people want to feel like there’s somebody there on the other end that is helping them out and listen to them and understand the nuances of human language. And I think on the forefront it’s being able to, you know, people want to feel like that experience that we’re providing to them via a website, for example, was created with an understanding of what their challenges are. And that is something that, right now, the best way to do that is with really creative and smart people.

Andrea: Hmm. So, when it comes to giving them a good experience from the outset and would you say, it generally starts out with the website and that sort of thing, right?

Tim Bay: Right.

Andrea: So, you’re going to make sure that the websites optimal for people and then they’re going to encounter people. And so, how do you decide as a company? What is the line that kind of crosses into the actual human experience? So what needs to be automated and what needs to be human to human?

Tim Bay: Well, I think that is always a bit of a challenge, because you want to provide the best experience possible, right? Almost like a customized, you know, white glove treatment, but then you have the realities of just staffing and maybe 24 hours and things like that. So, for us, yeah, I think, we’ve always tried to think about is how do we find that right balance. And also recognizing that in today’s world, there are some times that people, you know, they’d rather chat versus call a phone, and sometimes, they want to sort of do self service. And so, I think for us, it’s looking at the situation. It’s looking at what the product or service is and saying based on that, what are the types of help that people are going to need. If it’s, you know, something very basic, they may want to know dimensions or they may want to know a specific product feature. If it’s something that’s maybe more complex or even more expensive, they may want to be able to talk to somebody and be able to ask that person questions. So, in some cases a really good FAQ, a really good _____ on the page, a chatbot, or even a chat that connects to a human might be we think good enough to provide that direct level of service. But sometimes it’s more than that and that’s part of where I think we have to look at the situation and think about it from the perspective of the consumer, you know, what is that thought process, what is that decision tree looked like for her? And at what point might she get stuck and do we feel like no matter what tactic is we’re doing enough to help her get unstuck from a situation that she’s at?

Andrea: So, I love how much you’re talking about getting her perspective and coming from her perspective. What are some of the best ways to actually figure out what her perspective is? How do you actually take her perspective? Do you ask, do you imagine, or do you use a committee to talk about it? What is the process that you guys go through?

Tim Bay: I think to start off with, there’s got to be a mindset. It’s a mindset, and one of my favorite words in marketing beyond that is empathy. And you have to put yourself in a situation of who that consumer is, so one is understanding who is the consumer. And then, you know, we’ve done a lot throughout my career in lots of places, we’re doing this at Fellowes about building a persona, because the danger is you always look at your customer as yourself. I think, especially in organizations, you know, let’s take for example an engineer talking about the product is very different than a consumer buying the product, right? And so, we very much look at who is our consumer and let’s put ourselves in her situation, understand what’s driving her motivations, what is she looking and what concerns does she have. And part of that is just if you build that persona out and you put yourself in that perspective, you can go very far in terms of understanding that person, but then we supplement that with things like focus groups. It could be any type of research that you can do, maybe it’s first party, maybe it’s third party to sort of build out that understanding. And then of course you have an idea, you build something out, you feel like you’ve done everything you can but you need to test that out. And then you continue to listen after you roll something out to see, are they experiencing what we expect them to be? So, I think it, ultimately, has to be a commitment too. You’re always thinking about that consumer and always thinking about who that person is. It’s not necessarily you, in most cases it’s not thinking about everything through that lens of her. And I think if you do that, it’s always keeping you on the right path in terms of whatever you need to do to make sure that you’re providing the best experience for her.

Andrea: Do you find that the people that do this with you, that work together with you to build this empathy and build the persona, does this translate into better relationships in general with them because they’re able to do that? Because this is not something that people do well in general.

Tim Bay: You know, one of the things that I think that’s really important and whether if you’re talking about ecommerce, digital marketing, management, personal relationships, empathy and trust. So, from a team perspective, one of the things that has always been challenging in terms of building a team is building that level of trust, especially as you’re bringing new people together or asking people to do things that they haven’t done before. And so, one of the byproducts of what you just said is that even from a team perspective, you’re sort of learning to put yourself in somebody else’s position. And that works whether or not you’re talking about website visitor or you’re having a conversation with a teammate about creative or a wire frame, a copy or content. And so, I do think that overtime it does help not just in terms of what you’re trying to do with that particular customer journey but overall.

Andrea: Yeah, I would think so. It’s interesting to me this connection between what we’re trying to accomplish in business and selling and having actual relationships, because we’re sort of taking the idea of having a relationship and taking it to a completely different level when it comes to business. And I think businesses are getting more and more aware and becoming more and more aware and more attuned to the idea of, “No, this really needs to be a relationship with the customer not just, you know, a transaction.”

Tim Bay: Absolutely. You know, I love and I’m passionate about and most of my times thinking about the digital world, from a digital marketing perspective. But when we talk about a customer journey, I always think about that website like a store, if somebody were to walk into a store, what would you want that experience? How would you greet that? What would be the first thing that you say to them? How would you help them navigate the store? If they wanted to talk to you then how would enable that? If they wanted to browse and if they’re a tech person and want to do a little bit of researching, exploring on their own, how would you make that really efficient for them? And I think the other point that you talked about is, again, even though it’s a digital relationship, it’s still relationship. And I think any business, whether you’re selling shredders or you’re selling consulting services, you really do want that to be a long-term relationship. And just from a practical perspective, much easier, much more efficient to engage with your current community of folks that already know you and believe in you and like you than going out and finding new people. So, thinking about anything that we can think about from a digital perspective as a relationship and something that we’re trying to, and this is important for our brand at Fellowes because of what our brand stands for, we want that to translate into the digital world. And so even though it’s a digital relationship or a part of it maybe, we always still think about it as you’re still connecting. It’s just the medium that you’re doing it is different than if you were in person.

Andrea: Yeah. I love the analogy of the website being like a store and how you’d welcome them and all that sort of thing. I think that’s really good. So, when you said that Fellowes has, how did you put that, what you’re trying to be about or what you’re trying to communicate as a brand, what is the communication that you’re trying to communicate as a brand?

Timothy Bay: Well, I think part of our DNA, and so Fellowes has been around for 101 years. It is a family owned and run business. John Fellowes who is our current CEO is a fourth generation. And, you know, one of the things that John has mentioned and he has said this in a couple of different settings is he was told by his dad who’s third generation that they are there to serve the business, not the business or the family and part of our DNA is helping people. We’re very much about workplace wellness, how can we make people feel better? How can we make them work better? It’s really part of sort of our tagline. And so that can’t just be, you know, tagline or slogan but that you have to live it. So, going back to that sort of relationship part, we have to think about “Are we providing value to the consumer?” “Are we giving her the right information?” I mean, obviously from a product perspective, we’re thinking about that in terms of “Are we making it easier for her to do better?” “Are we ultimately make her feel better as part of that experience?” And if that’s part of your DNA, you think about that in every single thing that you do, whether it’s part of your feature set or product, it’s building a website, it’s an email communication, or it’s something on social. And so again, going back to, you know, as a company, when you have this notion of what your values are and what’s your purpose is, it needs to permeate every single thing that you do, including digital marketing.

Andrea: Oh yeah, that’s really, really seems to be important. And I’m curious as to how that plays out. So, when you’re talking about your DNA, the values, the purpose and all that, when you’re needing to build out these different things whether it be product, the service, the website or whatever, like practically speaking, do you look at your DNA first and say, “OK, how can we make sure it does that?” Or is it just something that’s sort of in the back of your mind all the time? Practically speaking, how does that workout for how to integrate that?

Tim Bay: So I think, it’s a bit of both. It is always present at the back of our mind, but we can’t forget to explicitly remind yourself of that. I just walked through with the team recently, a playbook that I call on, you know, how we’re thinking about email marketing. And playbook is basically, here’s the things that we think we need to be doing to do the best that we can in a particular channel or particular tactic. That playbook starts with a reminder of the things that we need to be thinking about from that sort of DNA perspective, thinking about the customer first, thinking about how we’re communicating that in everything that we do, whether it’s a LinkedIn post or an email campaign or a banner. And of course there’s always some sort of spectrum in terms of how much you can do that. You can do a lot more with a blog post than you can with a web banner. But I think, again, you want to always be there to remind yourself consistently that you got to be thinking about _____ that’s always in the back of your mind.

Andrea: Hmm, so you integrate that into the playbook itself too.

Tim Bay: Absolutely. You know, one of the things I’ve learned throughout my career is that it’s really difficult to over communicate something. You know, 99 percent of the time, it’s the under communication that takes a lot of time and a lot of enforcement and reinforcement of something before it becomes part of our sort of daily nature and habit. And in a way, you want to always have a top of mind. It takes a lot to do that and it’s really difficult to over communicate.

Andrea: Yeah, yeah. That’s so good. Tim, I can’t believe it’s already about time to wrap up. But when, you know, people are looking to be a voice of influence and when it comes to either on a team, whether that be on an agency or an a client side, whether it be because we’re thinking about our client or our particular customer or our relationships, do you have something that you would like to leave with the listener in terms of a tip or a strategy or one last thought?

Tim Bay: I think that all of us have something to offer and have a unique perspective. And, you know, I think as managers, as leaders, we want to empower folks, we should also feel just a natural empowerment to give our point of view, you know, to recognize that everybody has a different perspectives. And when we talk about diversity of opinion, you know, it’s so important. And so, I think when you talk about voice of influence is, you know, I think we have to on one hand, you know, _____ sometimes and trust a little bit that our opinion matters. And then, I think, again, as leaders we have to enforce and reinforce that we want to have folks voice. We want to have that level of trust and comfort there because, you know, two smart people are always going to come up with a better solution than one person. And we have to create that environment that facilitates folks having comfort and talking about bringing their perspective and bringing different ideas. And that’s something that has to be nurtured. You just can’t say it’s going to happen. It’s something that you have to continually tend to like you would, a flower garden. If you don’t, it runs over with weeds and eventually the flowers die. I can’t overemphasize how important that to me in terms of building good teams and making sure that people feel comfortable with those works of different ideas and opinions.

Andrea: So good, so good. Thank you, Tim. How can people find Fellowes or find you?

Tim Bay: They can find Fellowes at fellowes.com and then, you know, you can see our social channels from there and they can find me on LinkedIn and Twitter. So, I’m happy to talk to anybody at any point in time. I always love talking to folks who are interested in talking about anything from customer journeys to culture, to digital marketing. I love talking to people.

Andrea: Awesome! Thank you so much for doing that and for sharing your voice of influence with our listeners, and we’ll be sure to link all of the things that you mentioned here in the show notes.

Tim Bay: Great! Thank you very much. I really enjoyed it, Andrea!

Posted on Monday, September 9, 2019

David Neagle Interviews Andrea Wenburg for the Successful Mind Podcast

In August, Andrea was interviewed on The Successful Mind Podcast with David Neagle. They talked about Andrea’s book UNFROZEN: Stop Holding Back and Release the Real You. Some of the insights discussed include:

The unexpected path to connection and impact
How Andrea learned to take risks
Why gaining the approval and respect of men turned into a need for validation that held her back
How to become “unfrozen”
Why your first purpose may need to die so you can find a purer version of your purpose in life

“The title of the book alone Unfrozen that says so much because I think that people really are there. They really are frozen so to speak in many different areas of their life. But your whole idea about owning your desire and being willing to be vulnerable and whatever is to come of that is extremely powerful, like there’s so much courage in that.” – David

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcast or on David’s website.

Transcript:

Successful people learn how to make their mind work for them. I’m David Neagle and this is the Successful Mind podcast.

Hello, everybody, this is David Neagle, I’d like to welcome you to the Successful Mind podcast. Today, I have an amazing guest, Andrea Wenberg. As a CEO and founder of the consulting firm, Voice of Influence, Andrea Wenbug draws out the best in leaders and teams, helping them develop motivating influence with customers and key stakeholders – a Maverick leader known for her fearless approach to difficult conversations and her ability to rapidly cut to the core of any problem or issue. She serves her clients and audiences with life changing strategy, keynote trainings, and executive retreats. Andrea is the author of the memoir Unfrozen: Stop Holding Back and Release the Real You, and the host of the Voice of Influence podcast.

David: Welcome Andrea!

Andrea: Hey, thanks for having me, David!

David: My pleasure. Tell me about this book. This book is absolutely amazing.

Andrea: Wow, thank you!

David: How did you…because it’s a memoir, right? It’s written very different than most of the books that I have the privilege of reading. How did you come about writing this? Tell us a story?

Andrea: Well, I was in a place in my life where I was feeling stuck. You talk about that all the time and I was in that place. When we moved into a new home and there were…I’m just going to go ahead and case it in a story because that’s what I love and that’s what I realized is really impactful.

So, anyway, we moved into this home and there were these fruit trees in the backyard. When we got here, there were all these apples just nearly dripping off the branches. I mean, it was amazing and it was fall. It was time for harvest. We took our kids to the backyard and were picking all these apples.

Well, having fruit trees in my own backyard kind of made me more aware that there were fruit trees all around town and that other people had fruit in their yards too and how great was it? I would tell my kids, “How great is it that you’re gonna have apple pie like us.” And it was so great and we’d picked all these apples. And then a couple of weeks later after our own harvest, I started seeing all these fruit trees around town just rotting. Their fruit just rotting on the tree or falling down and rotting and I was so upset.

I mean, I was literally yelling at these apple tree owners like from inside car window rolled up my children in the back seat. My daughter was like, “Uh mom, they’re just apples.” And I’m like, “Yeah, but I think there’s more to it than that for me.” And whenever I see that emotional spike inside of myself, I get a real hit to like, “OK, there’s something else going on here.” And especially when it comes to anger, I’ve noticed that at least for myself, that sadness is usually under anger and if I can dig into that, I can figure out what’s going on.

And what I realized was that I was actually sad for these trees whose fruit was getting wasted. And I wonder why am I so sad, because that’s how I feel about myself. I feel like my fruit is going to waste. I’m not able to really share what I know and the things that I’ve learned, and I just felt stuck inside my own head and without a real outlet.

So, fast forward, a couple of months after grieving that waste inside of my own self and I went to the movie Frozen, and didn’t know that I would even enjoy the movie, let alone what it would be about. And it just rocked my world because I could so relate to Elsa and how she was trying to hide and hold back all of her power.

There were number of moments, I kind of cried a lot in the movie. And there was this moment towards the end of the movie where she finally realizes that it’s love that helps her to be able to share her gift with others instead of fear that she’s going to hurt people or fear that she’s going to be judged and keeping that fear and holding it back.

And so when I saw her at the end and she sort of just offering her gift and not worrying about what other people think and it’s just going I thought, “Oh my gosh, I had like this something speaking to my heart saying, Andrea, this is the scene you have not yet played out in your life. You may have played out all these other scenes. You’ve learned all these things, but you’ve not actually gone out, put yourself on the line and really share what you have to offer in a bigger way.” And so it would just felt like a calling.

So, at that point I just decided I really wanted to share something and I thought, “Well, maybe I could just share everything that I learned from Frozen and do it for kids so I could create this little kid book that would sort of be like something parents could use with their kids. This is what it means when Elsa puts on gloves and you can make all those connections for them and how do you cover up and numb yourself and that sort of thing.

And my writing coach, you know, she helped me find my writing voice and eventually after throwing out three drafts, three whole drafts, I really found my voice and ended up with a memoir instead of a little children’s book to study, yeah.

David: So what is that journey that this book takes us on?

Andrea: Well, when I was younger I always felt like I had this something inside, like I really wanted to do something big. I really felt like I really wanted to help other people. But there were things that, you know, seeking other people’s validation in particular men and it was really painful and vulnerable to share that I was really realizing that I was thinking that I needed men’s validation. Like whoever was the most respected person in the room, I wanted their respect. I didn’t need them to think that I was pretty, I wanted them to respect me for my intellect and what I had to offer and my voice.

And because of that, I was seeking validation from men all the time, even though it may not have looked like that, but you know, looking back I realized that’s what it was. I was waiting for somebody to come pick me. So, eventually I realized that I wasn’t going to get picked and that I had to own what I really wanted and own my desire essentially and, so coming to kind of full circle, when you really want something then that makes you vulnerable because you might not get it.

And I wanted to be strong and competent and appear that way to everybody because I thought that was how my voice would matter. But what it turned out was that when I really put that aside that really wasn’t what drew people in it. It was when I really was honest and vulnerable and willing to share those things.

David: What was it like getting to the place where you could do that, where you could step into your vulnerability and how did you do that?

Andrea: Bit by bit by bit. Yeah, just realizing that I need taking a little step, every little step felt like a huge giant leap.

David: Well that is right. I mean, all of those little steps are huge for us internally when we’re making them.

Andrea: Yeah. So, it did. I felt like, “Oh my gosh, I’m going to die.” I actually, talked about it in the book, but I came across a student of mine who was in a group with me. She was a college student. She had painted this huge painting of a woman literally jumping off of a cliff not to kill herself, but in that sense of like, “I’m gonna take this risk.” And I think, you know, finding that every time I took that leap made me more and more confident that I would be okay. That it wasn’t as much of a risk as I thought it was.

And even if I did lose somebody’s respect, even if somebody wasn’t upset with me, it didn’t mean that I didn’t cry about it because I’m a crier. It didn’t mean that it didn’t hurt me, but it meant that I wasn’t destroyed and that my purpose was greater than the fear of this I guess internal sort of death, like “Oh my gosh, I’m gonna die if somebody doesn’t love something that I’m doing.

David: Yeah. Did you have the opposite experience growing up, like were you rejected, you know, when you were like, you know, how we were kids and we haven’t guarded ourselves yet for the pain of rejection or being not being accepted for certain things. Did that start then for you?

Andrea: I don’t recall a time as a young child where I was rejected in that kind of a way. I think I was always very sensitive and aware of my environment and other people. And so a lot went on in my own head that didn’t actually take place in real life.

David: Gotcha.

Andrea: Yeah. So, I would see a little boys laughing at giggling girls and I’d think to myself, “Oh, well then they’re not going to respect girls because they’re giggly.” So, I made all these assumptions in my head about what that meant for me and “Well, therefore I will not be the giggly girl.” And so I would do that over and over with all kinds of different things.

David: So, you were just creating your own narrative around what was happening?

Andrea: I really was. I mean, there were certainly other things that were happening in terms of like, you know, I come from a church background where women were not in great leadership positions. I shouldn’t say ‘great leadership positions,’ but they weren’t in higher up leader leadership positions within church, which was a huge part of my life.

And so seeing that I thought, you know, I just made all these assumptions that it’s the men that have the power. It’s the men that have the authority to say whether or not my voice should matter. And I really felt like I should contribute to some of these conversations because I certainly thought I had insights in my head that would be helpful. But even as a young child or, you know, a teenager, college student, I just didn’t see how I was going to be able to have that kind of voice with people unless somebody, like I said, came around and said, “We need to hear from you, Andrea.” I didn’t want to just offer it.

David: Yeah, you want it to be more invited into it.

Andrea: I did, because if somebody says to me, in fact that happened a number of times in my life I can tell you that someone would invite me to do something that I really wanted to do. But I would say no and then I would wait for them to ask me again, so that I was like “OK, fine. I’ll do what you’re asking me to do.” “Yes!” You know, so that I wouldn’t have to own my own desire so that somebody else, “Oh, well they wanted me to do it so I don’t have to look like I wanted something so bad.”

David: Because you wouldn’t be strong to watch something?

Andrea: It would be certainly vulnerable.

David: Be vulnerable.

Andrea: Well, if I messed up then it wasn’t my fault.

David: Gotcha.

Andrea: If I messed it up, it was well, or if somebody didn’t like what I said, “Well, they asked me to do it.”

David: Yeah.

Andrea: That sort of thing.

David: Yeah, yeah. And how do you find that this book is helping people?

Andrea: Well, that’s a good question. I hear that people say that they realize that they’re holding back or they’re starting to see that there are also a lot of women who are sort of putting men in that position in their own minds that they need validation from them in order to be OK. Some people have written. I know somebody that has written a book.

At least one person has written a book because I wrote the book, deciding to make choices to offer themselves to the world instead of holding back kind of out of that selfish need for validation and need to protect themselves, instead they’re putting themselves out there. I’d like to believe that there are a lot of people doing that, but who knows, you know?

David: Yeah. I think there probably are and I think there probably will be a lot more. I mean, the title of the book alone Unfrozen that says so much because I think that people really are there. They really are frozen so to speak in many different areas of their life. But your whole idea about owning your desire and being willing to be vulnerable and whatever is to come of that is extremely powerful, like there’s so much courage in that.

Tell me about a time when you did this. So, you’re going on this journey. You’re recognizing your desire and you’re owning it. You want to put it forward. You want to be vulnerable and you started doing this for awhile, but then tell me about a time when you were rejected it after you started doing this. How did you handle that? Or how do you handle it now? What does it feel like now?

I think what I’d like the listeners to get an idea of is like when you step into this and you start to go down this journey and you start to really get a sense of self and you start to develop your courage, that doesn’t mean that you’re not going to be rejected again. You’re going to have people that don’t like you or try and manipulate you or whatever, but how do you deal with it now? What is the difference and how you feel about it?

Andrea: I think that the thing that has bothered me the most and the thing that I knew was going to be hardest would be the rejection of or just the people ignoring me, ignoring the fact that I’m doing what I’m doing and not just people, but people that I love and respect. That sometimes relationships turn into a one way interest, like “Why I’m interested in what you’re doing, but you’re not interested in what I’m doing” kind of thing. And for me, that’s the stuff that cuts the deepest.

You know, if somebody goes on the Amazon and puts a bad, you know, negative review or calls out something that they don’t like about my book, that doesn’t bother me. But the people that I love that’s the most painful and how do I deal with that? Honestly, I think I’ve learned that I have to grieve first. I can’t deny the fact that I feel this way. So there has to be like a period of time where I can at least, even if it’s for a few moments, and like I said at the beginning, I’m a crier. So there are times I have to release it.

And so the tears have to come out when they do come out though I can’t dwell on that. I still have to bring my eyes back up and say, “But this is my purpose. I’m here to help other people find their voice and to find agency and that is going to be how they make a difference in the world. It’s gonna be when leaders give other people a voice, that’s when they’re going to actually have their voice of influence.”

So, you know, for the leader themselves, I believe in this stuff. And so when I remember that I believe this, I have to move on. I have to say, “OK that is what it is. I will continue to be here in this relationship as it is and not expect it to be more than what it apparently can be.”

David: OK, you just said a tremendous amount, like you could do it a one day talk on just that part there. You said something that’s important that I want to hone in on. You have to grieve first.

Andrea: Yes.

David: Well, a lot of people just suppress it or try to find a way to numb out from their paint or that discomfort. What are ways that you recommend that people grieve and why is that so important to get that out of you?

Andrea: How do I recommend that people grieve? It is a yucky feeling inside. Most people do not want to feel yucky. If they can see that it’s not going to be the end of the world, that they’re not going to be destroyed by it, it’s OK. So again, starting with something small and admitting…Well, this is what I really do when people are really angry about something, I say, “OK, what are you angry about? OK, what sad about that to you?”

David: That’s great.

Andrea: And slow down. Let’s just slow way down. “OK, so somehow this is sad. How is this sad to you? What about this is sad?” And it was me and the trees. What is sad to me about the trees? It’s sad to me that the apples are not getting to the people who need their nourishment. There are people all around the world that are hungry or even around town, they’re hungry and yet these apples are just rotting on trees. That’s sad to me but it cuts even more personally when I think about the fact that that tree was created to make these apples and nobody’s eating them. That was the personal part. It was even more sad to me.

So, if people can identify “This is what I get angry about, kind of irrationally angry. This is what I get angry about. This is what’s sad to me about that. How does that connect to something in me?” And if people can start to go there and realize that there are people who have gone before you, like me who can say “This is the path. This is the unexpected path to connection and impact.” It’s not what you think it is and if you know that that’s the truth then you’re going to pull up your courage and you’re going to go ahead and enter into that grief.

David: I think one of the most brilliant things that you said so far here is that that apple tree and those rotting apples on the ground that your personal experience of that moment was that you were sad, was reflecting the sadness that was already in you.

Andrea: Yes.

David: And a lot of people see it and they think that it’s the thing and they go after trying to rectify the thing instead of asking what is it about this that is pulling up sadness inside of myself and what is that and what do I do with that? It’s a much more intelligent question for a person to ask of themselves instead of just going around trying to fix everything that’s wrong on the outside, you begin to do the work on the insight first.

Andrea: Hmm absolutely. And then it can open up the possibilities to what your true calling is because you might think that, “OK, my calling is to be a harvester of apples.” “But no, my calling is not that, my calling is to help connect the people’s expertise and gifts with the need in the world.” This is more general, but at the same time that allows me space to backup and say, “OK, so how could I do that in the world? Any way that I choose is fine. It’s all gonna fit and match up with that calling.” And so in that sense then it also frees you to be able to, I guess, find and choose both a calling or a purpose.

David: I think what’s so powerful about that is that in that moment that you do that you’re really have to take into consideration that in order to find the calling or step into it, you have to be vulnerable.

Andrea: Uh-hmm.

David: Because you can’t do it without being vulnerable. Not only, well, it’s our purpose and it’s going to reveal our destiny, but it’s a growth phase that we’re going through where we’re being stretched and the weakest parts of us are coming to the surface and we’re having to learn to deal with them and make sense of them and then find productive ways of handling them. And you said that you have to grieve at first, but then you had to get on with your purpose. You’ve got something to do so you have to be able to then move this pain over here, deal with it, get it out of you and then refocus on where it is that you’re going. Am I right?

Andrea: Yeah. Let it be fuel. Emotion is fuel. Passion is fuel, but it’s not strategy. It’s not actually taking the step to do anything. And so if you don’t actually do something with it then I don’t know. I have a hard time thinking that. I don’t like feeling like the things that I’ve learned are going to waste. So, obviously I want to do something with it and I believe that everybody could and probably should.

David: Right. So, it makes a lot of sense; however, I think that also comes out of your own awareness that you have a purpose. There’s a lot of people that don’t think that they do. They don’t believe it yet, right? I mean, you know, life can be rough for a lot of people. There’s a lot of people that are suffering and _____, you know, you have a purpose but they have an experience along those guidelines, so to speak of there’s a real reason why you’re here not just to be a lump of flesh taking up space. But there’s a real reason. You had the courage to look deeper inside of yourself to pull that out.

Andrea: I would be remiss if I didn’t say that at one point in time and for a period of time I felt like my purpose had been squashed, like I’d lost it. I thought I had a purpose. I thought I’d identified a purpose and then everything that I thought it was just sort of got trampled and it wasn’t all, you know, external but I mean a lot of it was internal but it got crushed. And then I felt like I didn’t have a purpose again and I wanted one.

And so it took me awhile. I mean, I was in depression for definitely a couple of years and maybe struggled with it some before that too. So there were a lot of ups and downs, but definitely a certain kind of death that happened to me in order to be able to find a more…because that first purpose was still seeking validation. It had to die so that I could find the purpose that could outlast any other, you know, now I can’t be destroyed.

David: I’m going to read something that you wrote in your book that I think is really, really powerful. You say, I know now God, my heart is secure evenindestructible. I don’t need to feel pressure and shame if I am not relying on aperson to love me. If you love me, I am free to love others no matter how they feelabout me. Let’s do this. You remember writing that?

Andrea: Yeah.

David: I mean, there is so much personal responsibility in that and ownership. I think that’s absolutely incredible. Is there a moment in time that you came to that realization or was that just over the series of events that were making you more aware of how you were, you know, kind of owning your own agency and stepping into the desire of your heart?

Andrea: Yeah. There was a moment. I was doing what’s called the school spiritual direction with Dr. Larry Crabb, who I consider to be a mentor of mine. He said something and he wrote this diagram and everything just kind of clicked in my head all at the same time where he said, I was feeling like I was distant from God, and he said something along the lines of “In order to experience God, maybe it’s about expressing God, you don’t have to actually feel close to God in order to express the character of God.”

David: I love it.

Andrea: And if I can do that, that I can find purpose in. And it was that moment in time in this class, I’m like, I’m jotting down notes and my leg is just like going like crazy underneath the table. And as soon as he’s done, I like get up, and I still have goosebumps just as I’m telling you, and I just sort of run up to the front of the room and I’m like, “Larry, this I can live for.” I was like, “Oh my gosh, this is it.” And I just gave him this great big hug and he’s like, “This is kingdom relating. This is what he was describing just previously.” And I was like, “Wow, this is it. I can live for that.”

David: And I can see how in that moment the idea of accepting or having your, having the purpose and your desire matchup be kind of verified. It gives it a reason, because I think that a lot of people go through life where they have these desires, but they either feel they’re selfish or they’re self centered or they’re foolish, or “Would anybody really be interested in this?” But when he comes from that perspective of you’re actually expressing God and God is speaking to you through this desire to then put this out into the world or be this person or whatever it is that you’re supposed to be doing.

Andrea: Love like that, yeah.

David: It’s a love like that. Yeah, it makes a huge difference.

Andrea: Yeah, yeah.

David: I think it makes sense to a lot of things.

Andrea: Yeah, it certainly did for me. And that was prior to writing the book, definitely.

David: So where do you go from here?

Andrea: Well, I’ve experimented with some different things and now really settling into building a team of people who are helping me as we build Voice of influence, a consulting firm. And I’ve worked with Angelique Rewers who you know so intimately and know well and have worked with. So, I’ve benefited indirectly from you through her and we were really starting to find our legs in customer service.

So, we’re starting with service and my ultimate goal is that I’d love to speak more and two more executives and that sort of thing. But to be honest, we’re at a place right now where we’re going to start at customer service and build our way up. I know that that’s where we’re headed. But we’re going to do whatever the next step is that’s going to get us there. So, I’m excited to start with customer service where we are talking about service and how to offer and not worry about what other people think of you and all those things.

David: Absolutely. Well, you could be in better hands with Angelique

Andrea: Yeah.

David: That’s for sure. And for everybody that’s listening and though you couldn’t listen to the podcast; I’ll have Brandon put it down in the notes. Angelique was a client of mine for about three years and a really good friend. Now, we joined together on certain projects from time to time. She’s absolutely an amazing coach and mentor. So let’s wrap it up with this. If you could leave everybody with one successful mind tip, what would that be?

Andrea: When you put yourself on the line for others, this is when you really find out what you’re made of and this is where you really find your voice of influence.

David: I love that. It doesn’t get any better right there.

Andrea: Hmm. Thank you so much.

David: You’re welcome. Thanks for coming on the show.

Andrea: Appreciate you.

David: We have to do this again some time.

Andrea: Sounds great.

David: Okay. All right, everybody that’s it. Make sure that you get the book UNFROZEN. Where can they learn more about you? Tell us where we can learn more about you, Andrea.

Andrea: Voiceofinfluence.net is our website. You can find me on LinkedIn or on Facebook, Andrea Joy Wenburg. AndreaWenburg on Twitter. And you can find UNFROZEN: Stop Holding Back and Release The Real You on Amazon.

David: Awesome! And it says on here there’s a free video discussion guide

Andrea: Yes on the website.

David: On the website?

Andrea: Yep. So if you’re wanting to have a conversation with anybody about some of these topics then there are some videos on my website, Unfrozen book discussion guide and that should help. But anybody who wants to reach out, you’re welcome to reach out. I’d love to hear and share what I can.

David: Andrea Joy Wenburg ladies and gentlemen. OK, have a great day. It was so fantastic having you on the show. We’ll talk again soon.

Andrea: Thanks, you too.

David: All right.

Thanks for listening to the Successful Mind podcast. And if you like what you heard and want to know more, go to davidneagle.com/free stuff.

Posted on Monday, September 9, 2019

Become the Person You Want To Be with David Neagle

Episode 106

David Neagle is the founder of the multimillion-dollar global coaching company, Life Is Now, Inc. David helps thousands of entrepreneurs, experts, and self-employed professionals gain confidence and find the right mindset to increase their revenue, turning their endeavors into seven and eight-figure ventures. He is also the author of Millions Within and the host of the Successful Mind podcast. In this episode, David talks about the near-death experience that inspired the name of his company, why having a successful mind should matter to someone who wants to have a voice of influence, how a person can change things when they feel stuck, the power of deciding you’re no longer going to tolerate what your mind tells you about things you don’t want to change or do, why people find it difficult to have conversations about money, why it’s important to pursue making more money on their own, his unconventional perspective of sales, the two main things people need to be clear on in order to make big changes, and more!

Mentioned in this episode:

Play here (the red triangle below), on iTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio (Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Transcript

Hey, hey! It’s Andrea and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast. Today, we have David Neagle on the line with us, and I’m really looking forward to this. He is the founder of the multimillion-dollar global coaching company, Life Is Now, Inc. Life is now, not later apparently. Maybe you can tell us a little about that in a second, David. He helps thousands of entrepreneurs, experts and self-employed professionals gain the confidence, find the right mindset to increase their revenue, turning their endeavors into seven- and eight- figure ventures. He is the author of Millions Within and the host of the Successful Mind podcast.

Andrea: David, welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast.

David Neagle: Thank you Andrea. Thank you for having me. It’s my pleasure to be here.

Andrea: And so just real quick, what does it mean Life Is Now? What’s the meaning of this?

David Neagle: Life Is Now came out of an experience that I had in 1989, I had a near-death experience. I had a pretty bad accident. I was water skiing and I got separated from the boat and I was sucked through a dam and I was one of only two people to survive going through it. And during that time of my life, I was not in a good place. I was having real trouble in my life, but I wasn’t doing anything to fix it and I didn’t know how to fix it.

The experience kind of woke me up to the idea that we don’t know how long we’re going to be here. If we’re going to do something or change something, we really need to do it now. So, fast forward to 1999, when I started to put my business together, I was thinking about what do I want to call this? And, you know, I was thinking everything really is about making decisions now, whether we’re creating something for the future, we’re changing something right now, it’s about what we do right now. So, that was where the name came from.

Andrea: Hmm, and I have listened to your story before about going through the dam and just that whole thing. We’re going to make sure that we link to your story from your podcast here on the show notes so that the listener can go find it there because it’s quite a story.

David Neagle: Yeah and that it is.

Andrea: Do you find that people who have gone through near-death experiences or really intense crises that they tend to be more ready for big changes in their lives?

David Neagle: Not only that, but what’s even kind of sad about it is that very often it takes something like that to precipitate a major change in a person’s life. I went out in my career trying to help people make that change before they hit that kind of a wall or a problem or a catastrophe in their life. But, yeah, I mean very often when you go through something like that, you start to question things.

It’s really fascinating, I think, Andrea, when you go through any kind of a crisis in your life, it shakes up what you know about your world. You know, you start thinking to yourself, “Is any of this true?” “Is it real?” “What’s important?” “What can I count on?” “What do I trust it?” It rattles the foundation of the illusion of safety that most people live in and it causes people to really think about what is true and real and important in their life from a very different place because it rattles their sets of security.

Andrea: Yeah.

David Neagle: And most people walk around in this illusion that we’re safe, everything’s going to be okay, just keep moving forward, not really taking things literally, too seriously. And then something happens to shift that and it could be a death. It could be an illness, it could be a partner has an affair on you that sometimes those things like that are the worst because you’ve trusted certain situations or people to be a specific way. And then you find out that they’re not that or you find out that the business or the job you have is it what you thought it was.

And you start to really question what can I trust in my life? What is actually real? It really shakes the core foundation of a person when they go through that. So, in that questioning, if they’re questioning intelligently and they’re actually really looking for answers, they usually come up with some pretty significant shifts over time for their life.

Andrea: Hmm. I’ve also found that people that have gone through that sort of pain. People who have really experienced pain seemed to be more willing to think about the things that they want to change and actually do something about it. And it does seem like just super significant when it comes to wanting to make a difference, to get out of the status quo and move out of a comfort zone.

David Neagle: Yeah, I agree. I absolutely agree with you.

Andrea: So, what does having a successful mind, your Successful Mind podcast, I guess I’m really fascinated by the titles that I have to work with what you do. Why does having a successful mind matter to someone who wants to have a voice of influence?

David Neagle: Well, I think the reason is this, we’re not taught how to think when we’re growing up, most people weren’t, anyway. And the inability to do so, I mean, we just take mental activity is the idea of thought and I guess clinically it’s thought but really being able to think productively for one’s life is something very, very different. And being able to observe the world in situations that we’re in, evaluate it well and then make solid concrete decisions, plans, and goals for how we’re going to navigate that is extremely important in a person’s life.

But we don’t learn it as children. So, very often we find people making decisions, choices, plans, and setting goals and they’re not aware of the consequences. They’re coming from a place where they’ve never really evaluated the cause and effect of different things in their life. And avoidance is also a decision and that’s a big one because there’s a lot of things like pain that you just mentioned in a person’s life that they will avoid because they don’t want to have to experience what that’s actually like to go through any kind of a significant change. I mean, I think the idea is that if we can learn to think better, we can then make better choices and have better outcomes and live richer and more fulfilling lives.

Andrea: And I know that you see a connection between the way that people think and what they feel and then how they act. How do those three things sort of interplay? Which one should somebody work on first, you know, do they take an action first? Should they work on their mindset first if they’re wanting to get out of a spot where they feel stuck?

David Neagle: Well, if a person is stuck, the first thing to understand is they’re resisting changing something. There’s something in their life they’re resisting because the universe is actually pretty clear for each person. But if we’re stuck, we’re resisting something. And if we’re in confusion, something that we’re evaluating in our thought processes is not true. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be in confusion. So, the idea would be that a person gets clear on what they want or what they don’t want. It could be one of the other, because very often a person’s in their life and you’ll ask them, “What do you want?” They’d be like, “I don’t know.” “Well, what don’t you want currently in your life?”

Well, that they can pretty much tell you. The things that are making them miserable or sad or they’re just not happy with. So, what I was saying was that the thoughts that we think correlate with emotional patterns in our life and that’s generally based on past experience. So, what’s really interesting about this is that the first seven years of our life, we don’t have the ability to critically think. We’re basically coming all from our subconscious mind.

Our conscious mind is not developed yet and that’s the part that gives us the ability to think critically. The subconscious mind doesn’t have the ability to reject anything that’s going around it. It just totally accepts everything in it. And then it creates patterns to navigate through life, to hopefully to keep us safe. In the process of this, we have an emotional correlation with how we see other people experiencing life. What is their emotional state around what they’re experiencing and then we go into kind of a mimicking pattern around our parental figures and people of authority. So, that’s really how most people set up their emotional base through life.

Now, once we get past the age of seven, what’s even more fascinating is that everything that we’re experiencing in life, our subconscious mind it’s already been preprogrammed with how to respond, tells our conscious mind what to do with what we’re experiencing on some level. And because we haven’t had all that many experiences yet by the age of seven, most of it is an emotional response first to what we’re experiencing. And then we tried to make some kind of intellectual sense over it. So, if we’re going to make a change, one of the things that we need to do is to make, create an intellectual truth around what it is that we want to create and then determine how do we create the supporting emotion that goes with that.

So that now we start to really link up a really good thought or idea and a really good positive emotion to go with it that correlates with it well. And then we take the action that we need to take to create the change in our life. When we get the feedback of that, we can either make corrections because it’s not quite right or it’s a good reaction. It’s positive. So we accept that reaction and then we begin to reprogram our subconscious mind for the success that we’re looking for.

Andrea: Could we take that to a practical level of, OK, so somebody wants to make a change in their health. I know that’s something that you’ve been talking about a lot more recently. If somebody is wanting to make that big shift, they know they want to make a change here, but they’re struggling because they may be start and then they end up failing or they start and they fail and that sort of thing. They get into that sort of rhythm of feeling like they can’t take it all the way to the finish line. How do you put what you just said about beliefs, emotion, and action, how do you put all that into play in that kind of a scenario?

David Neagle: So, here’s the reason why people do this, why they’ll say “I’m gonna do this in my life.” And then either they start doing it and fail or they procrastinate, they don’t do it, or they forget to do it. Nothing ever actually changes. The idea is that we have to go through a transformation of who we are. If we just take part of our behavior and say we’re just going to change that one part without changing all the parts that support the thing that we don’t want to be doing or don’t want to be experiencing, we’re pretty much doomed to going back to the old behavior. So, it requires a transformation on all levels in order for us to be able to do that.

So like if a person, if they want to get in better health, they have to look at how do they view health, like what is their belief around health. They have to look at how do they view the things that make them healthy and the things that don’t make them healthy. And then what are the emotions that go with those things? So, very often when a person is not healthy, it’s because they’re doing things to numb out or escape from the world in some way. Some people do exercise in a way that dumps them out for the world, but a lot of people don’t.

And they’ll do things like they’ll watch TV, they will eat things that are not good for them, they will drink too much, they become a couch potato, or they’re doing things to escape in some way. So, it’s not just about changing the behavior but changing kind of the substructure under it of what’s causing that behavior. Like why are we actually doing that when we do know better? So, the ideas that we really take a look at who we are overall and create a person that wants to embody wellbeing.

And so, it’s looking at all of the things that support health and all of the things that don’t support it. Removing the things that don’t support it and completely embodying it from a place of “I’m no longer going to associate with what doesn’t. I’m going to be this new person.” And then you have to be doing an act like that person every day.

Andrea: That is so significant. I just want to pause there for a second because becoming that person is such a huge piece of what I’ve heard you talk about that I think is so important. Can you just reiterate what it means to, you know, think that way?

David Neagle: Well, what it means is that you’re no longer going to tolerate the conversation in your mind about doing something that you don’t want to do. So, when we set a new goal or we decide that we’re going to be something different in our life, having a new experience, or live a different way, then most people start to make that change but they’re battling that voice in their head that says, “You can’t do this.” “Go eat the pizza.” “Go eat the ice cream.” “Don’t work out today,” or whatever. So, they’re always having this argument between the old self and the new self that they want to be. When we transform, we have to go to a place where that we will no longer tolerate the conversation at all.

So it’s much different level. It’s where we sit down and consciously say, “OK, here’s all the things that I want to do to make the change. But what I need to eliminate is this idea that I have this conversation in my head.” And we have the ability to stop that conversation, we just don’t engage. It would be like engaging somebody in your life who’s constantly all they want to do is argue. Well, after awhile you find out that’s all they want to do. They don’t want to be productive. So, you stop engaging that person and if the person doesn’t stop, you remove that person from your life.

So, it’s the same thing with the voice in your head. You stop engaging that argument and you don’t leave things around that will allow you to, in a moment of weakness or being tired, go back to the way that you did things before. So, if you’re going to be healthy, like you don’t keep ice cream in the house so that when you’re tired at 2:00 a.m. and you can’t sleep, you don’t reach for the ice cream. You put something positive that’s going to support the direction that you want to go as a resource to help you get there.

Andrea: Hmm, so good, so good! OK, let’s move this conversation toward money. This is not a comfortable subject for me historically. I’m much more comfortable with it now than I used to be. But what are some of the reasons why people are uncomfortable talking about money, thinking about finding success around their financial success.

David Neagle: One of the reasons is because we have a lot of shame around it. We have a love-hate relationship with money in our society, and very often money is a representative of how we value ourselves, or let’s take this back a little bit. It’s a representative how our parents valued themselves. So, the amount of money that they made or didn’t make really kind of set up their social status in the world.

And you will find that if you have a money problem that there was some kind of judgment that your parents had either around people that had much more money than them or people that didn’t have as much money, in many cases both. So, we have to go in and really tackle what is in our internal money story and how is that connected to the love, the security, the appreciation, and the acceptance that we got from our parents. Because very often people will hit this point in their lives where they struggle with actually making more money than their mom or their dad and I’m not talking about a little bit more. I’m talking about significantly more. And they lose that relationship because they actually saw their parents have the idea that making too much money was not good and they don’t want to be labeled that. So, what’s true is that if you start to make a lot more money than you’re currently making now, people are going to notice that.

They’re going to see you and some people are going to judge you for it. And we instinctively know this, so we move away from it, plus all the things that we have to do to make money cause us to combat the value system that we have, especially if we were raised middle class and not entrepreneurial.

Andrea: So, I’m tracking with you and I totally see this. What do you think is the importance of, I mean, why would somebody choose to pursue making more money? I could tell you my story, but I’m curious about the stories that you’ve heard over the years. Why is it important?

David Neagle: Yeah. I think the number one important reason from a value proposition is this. It teaches a person how to become financially independent. So, if I learn how to earn money and I can do it regardless of whatever situation comes down in my life, I’m free.

Andrea: Yes!

David Neagle: If I’m totally reliant upon other people for money, I’m not free. And then I have to make decisions based on the idea of acceptance or performance, which are not good because they keep me in a creative prison, so to speak, and I don’t get to live my life the way that I want. We all know that more money will give us better vacations and jobs and colleges for our kids and all that kind of, cars, you know, all the material stuff, which is fine in and of itself. If that’s what you want, there’s nothing wrong with those things.

But fundamentally, it’s to set ourselves free so that we don’t become slaves to not understanding how to bring money into our lives. And that’s what I teach people. And it’s not just an interesting idea. I don’t just teach it from the intellect. We actually help people create multi-seven figure businesses and lifestyles and they can replicate it on their own over and over and over again throughout their entire lifetime.

Andrea: I really do think that is just so significant. You know, I even look at our kids, we have a 10 and 12 year old kids. And one of the things that I’ve realized that they’ve begun to do is they’ve begun to think in terms of, “OK, I need money in order to pursue this thing.” “OK, how am I going to do that?” “What business do I want to create?” “What do I want to sell, or what do I want to do that’s gonna…” And I’m seeing them live in more freedom in that regard than I ever did when I was a kid for sure, because just what you said, they know how to bring money into their lives. And I’m like, “Wow, that’s so significant for the rest of their lives.”

David Neagle: It absolutely is. I mean, either we develop the mindset and the skill set to be able to create whatever amount of money that we need whenever we need it, or we live a life in trade and a life where we come up with a perfect reason why we can’t be better or do better or contribute better in the world.

Andrea: Yeah. You know, when you talk about sales and transactions and all that sort of thing, I don’t want to get it wrong, but it seems like what you’re saying is that if I am dependent upon this next sale in order to be okay, then this is going to feel like a transaction, I’m going to be pushy and that sort of thing. But if I know how to bring money into my life in that sense then I can offer what I have as a sale if somebody’s interested without it being as pushy and it’s an opportunity instead. I mean, is that an okay way to describe what you are talking about when you talk about sales?

David Neagle: Absolutely. I mean, most people think that sales is something that you do to someone and for an unethical person or a person that’s under a lot of pressure from an employer to meet a monthly quota or something that would be accurate. But really and truly sales is something you do for someone else. Meaning that if you have someone, like when you make a sale, what we’re really doing is solving a problem for another person. So, it’s important to be influential, not manipulative. And if we’re influential and we meet the other person’s needs and we get them to clarity about their decision, they’re either going to say yes or no. And that’s all sales should be, is that we get them to be clear about their yes and their no. If we do that properly and we understand how to do that, we will never have an issue with sales in our given businesses or employment.

Andrea: Great! So, if somebody is being influential in the sales process, from what I understand you just said, that’s means you’re bringing clarity to their situation so they can see the options in front of them basically.

David Neagle: Correct.

Andrea: Yeah. That makes so much sense.

David Neagle: And that they can make a decision, so that they can make a decision based on what’s best for them.

Andrea: So the influence is in bringing clarity not in pushing them towards a particular answer.

David Neagle: Absolutely not. That’s extremely unethical because that’s all about you…

Andrea: You said because that’s all about you and…

David Neagle: It’s all about you and your agenda and it has nothing to do with them. And sales should not be about you and your agenda, even though you have one, it is about developing your skill set in a way that allows you to communicate with another human being where they have trust and they want to buy from you and you’re looking for the right people to buy your product or your service and you’re helping them become clear about what the benefits are and if it’s something that they want or will help them.

If you look at every salesperson that does something unethical, what’s you say, pushy, right? And let’s not even go unethical, let’s just say they’re pushy. It’s all fear-based. It’s based on, they don’t have enough. It’s based on, they won’t sell enough or it’s based on, they don’t want to talk to as many people as they need to talk to or do the marketing that’s required or do the travel that’s required. It’s all based on what they don’t want to do. If a person’s really coming from embracing that position and skill set in their life for what it is, and salespeople are the highest paid people in the world, they will do whatever is necessary from an ethical perspective to make sure that they’re hitting their numbers, which may mean that they have to see more people. They have to talk to more people. They have to do more instead of pushing people that aren’t sure whether they want your product or service into a decision that they’re not ready for.

Andrea: So when it comes to making changes, and kind of circle back around, so whether that these changes be changes in your life around health or changes in your life around money, money mindset, money success, sales that sort of thing; what are the first steps for somebody who is really wanting to make a quantum leap, like you talked about, what are the very first things that they should be thinking about or doing or feeling in order to really start moving in that direction in making a really big change?

David Neagle: There are two very important things. One is that they’re very clear on what they want. And the second one is what they’re prepared to sacrifice to get it.

Andrea: Hmm.

David Neagle: You have to bring in that part because if you don’t sit down and really consider what the sacrifices, you won’t accept it. And then when you hit the first stumbling block or something that you have to change, it’s going to be the perfect excuse for you not to do it. I think another thing is that one of the things that we do with our coaching clients is we help them unravel their stopping strategy or their failure strategy because it is a strategy for every person. Like how do you stop in life? What causes you to stop?

And what’s important to know about that is that when a person does that, when a person stops, they set a goal, they’re going to go after the goal and then somewhere along that journey, they quit. They’ve actually come into agreement with some situation or circumstance in their life that is in that moment more important than the goal. So, we’re either setting weak or impotent goals that are not strong enough to help pull us through the difficult stages of moving through a goal or we’re letting other things sabotage that because they’d become more important because we haven’t dealt with some internal issue, we’re never going to move forward in our life.

Andrea: Hmm, so good. Alright, David so what are the different offerings that you have through Life Is Now, Inc.?

David Neagle: Well, I mean, there’s a lot of different things. Generally, we work with a business owners and high-end employees to better their life in various different ways, whether that is through coaching or through strategic, business building or a specific skill set. But what people can do is they can go to our website davidneagle.com. There’s a free download there called You Were Born to be a Success, they should read that. They should really take a look at it and see how it resonates with them and where they want to go in their life.

Andrea: Thank you so much for being here and we will make sure to link all of that in the show notes. So, David, one last thing, what would be the parting words that you’d like to leave with people who really do want to have a voice of influence?

David Neagle: Make a decision to embrace the opportunity that’s in front of you currently. That’s the whole Life Is Now concept, like the universe doesn’t hold anything back and there’s something in front of every person right now that would give them the opportunity to do that and have that change in their life, but they have to make a decision to do it.

Andrea: Alright. Thank you for calling us to action for calling us to have a successful mind and to actually move forward in our lives. David, appreciate you sharing your voice of influence with our listeners.

David Neagle: Thank you so much, Andrea! It was great being here!

Posted on Monday, September 2, 2019

Creating Moments of Delight for Customers with Fred Skoler

Episode 105

Fred Skoler is an award-winning digital innovator, product manager and user experience executive who thrives at the intersection of business results and fun, and I really think this conversation is going to be fun. Since founding MGM Interactive in 1994, Fred has produced hit video games, designed simulations for the US Department of Defense, consulted on user-facing UX for digital advertising, wellness, health insurance, and delivered social games for social good.

In this episode, Fred discusses what he did at Sears in terms of gamification, why you need to have empathy for your customers, how he transitioned from a career in performing arts to what he does now, the main tool he uses to help his potential clients see the need for his services, the importance of setting varied goals, doing smaller tests, and getting feedback along the way, how to determine when to set feedback aside, how gamification helps companies meet their customers where they’re at, and so much more!

Mentioned in this episode:

Play here (the red triangle below), on iTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio (Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Transcript

Hey, hey! It’s Andrea, and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast. Today, we have Fred Skoler with us. He is an award-winning digital innovator, product manager and user experience executive who thrives at the intersection of business results and fun, and I really think this conversation is going to be fun. Since founding MGM Interactive in 1994, Fred has produced hit video games designed simulations for the US Department of Defense, consulted on user-facing UX for digital advertising, wellness, health insurance, and delivered social games for social good.

Andrea: I’m so excited to have you here on the Voice of Influence podcast, Fred.

Fred Skoler: Hey, hey, I’m Fred. Hey, I know, I’m very excited to be here too. Thank you for inviting me.

Andrea: Fred, let’s start with what did you do with Sears, because I think that might give us an idea of what exactly you do with gamification?

Fred Skoler: OK, sounds great. I think a lot of people wondered when I was at Sears, what I did for Sears. I think there’s a lot of head-scratching like, “OK, well what is that guy doing?” And then ultimately the results spoke for themselves because there were a lot of leaders who didn’t really follow it.

The great news is I worked in collaboration with the chairman to execute the vision for the gamification of kind of the loyalty program called Shop Your Way. And that involved leveraging all of the resources of this, at the time, very large company with multiple marketing groups, 13 business units, a lot of excitement, a lot of engagement around e-commerce, but a deep need to better understand our customers. So, I was brought on to start to work out some of the gamification of the experience. So, if you are earning points for activities, if you are playing games with your friends, if you’re interacting with product and you are sharing your joy, your love, and your happiness around whatever it is that you bought, all of those things kind of played into the role. And it was my job to kind of take that soup and focus it in ways where we would see the results that the business was looking for. And my initial projects were under a group called Integrated Retail Labs and I worked with them to develop something called Sweeps, which was the gamification of the Shop Your Way e-commerce website. I created 50 behavioral kind of little modules that you could combine in groups and have people do these things so that they could be entered into sweepstakes. And sweepstakes, as we may know is a federally regulated thing. It’s not just something you can just run out there and do. So, there are all kinds of elements to that that have to be tuned and assured that they are compliant with what’s going on in the environment that you’re serving. So, I put that together and the tools to drive the engagement. And in the first year, you know, we had 10,000 different sweepstakes that came out. This came, you know, prior. It was costing them like 30,000 sweepstakes and they could do five or six of them a year, 10,000. That was what we got out there. We had 33 million users. We did our job and that was really exciting.

Andrea: Wow, that’s amazing! So is that kind of what you’re doing now with DigiSnax?

Fred Skoler: You know what, in DigiSnax, I’m the chief product officer. So, I work with clients to help them find more value from their customer interactions by leveraging different types of digital experiences. And digital in this context can be apps, web, smart devices, sensors, and things like that and combining that with physical space to feed data models to produce the business results. And the area where I excel is in finding ways to assure that we don’t lose the empathy for our customers in their journey and that we respect them as much as we gain from having them interact with us.

Andrea: OK, so what does that mean to have empathy for the customer in their experience when you’re talking about a digital experience? How do you have empathy? How do you put yourself in their place or what do you mean by that?

Fred Skoler: That’s a great question. You know, a long time ago, I worked with a company called Whatif Productions and the reason for that company was to let someone walk a mile in someone else’s shoes. And that was a totally digital experience. Today, now, you know, 20 years later, we actually have the tools with augmented reality, virtual reality to give someone an experience that isn’t only screen in front of their eyes, but something that’s entirely immersive. But even in that experience where I’m walking and I’m holding on to my phone, there are lots of things that we need to think about. If my primary user is someone who is a woman who has a baby, then I’ve got to consider she’s holding that phone with one hand she need, because she might have the baby in her other arm or a caregiver. Let’s say I’m a father, I’m going to focus on a female user because of some of the size differentiation, of some of the newer phones and where you might need to put buttons depending on the actions that you want her to accomplish. So, the empathy there is understanding that she is hurried or she is dealing with a million things at once. She doesn’t want a lot of noise and she also wants to be respected. She doesn’t want to feel like you’re using her to get something. She wants to feel like it is a symbiotic relationship. So the way that you do design the user interaction, the way that you create that digital experience needs to take these things into account. And my background is in the arts. I come from performing, writing, and directing and that stuff really matters to me and I think it really matters to our customers. And that’s why we see a lot of, well, you know, we get good results when we put good things out there in front of our customers and we truly listen.

Andrea: Hmm. So, how does your background with the arts, writing, directing, performing have a connection with what you’re doing now? I love it. I come from some of a performing background as well. So, I’m really curious to hear about some of that experience or how did you get into this? How did you get here from there?

Fred Skoler: Oh, that’s a good one. You know, it’s interesting because I started off talking about context. I think context is really everything. I was living in LA and I was working sometimes as an actor, but mostly I was working in, actually, digital engagement. I was a founder of MGM Interactive and that came to me because of the work I’ve done with a group called Synapse Technologies where I was their director of operations, but then became a kind of a producer of little digital experiences. And in talking with their strategy and development lead at MGM, there’s a real opportunity to take the licenses, the movies, and turn them into things that people could relate to in an interactive environment. And that was the primary focus there. So, we started making video games based on movie licenses, things like Golden Eye for the Nintendo 64 and other things. And for me, the moment of truth was I was there. We had a little talk earlier, I had some kids and I was actually in the delivery room when a script came to me for an audition the next day for a major movie with a director I really admired. And it was a moment of reckoning, you know, it was your big break and it was. It was the breakthrough for me where I realized I had to prepare and focus on my family. And it also made kind of that, “How do you bridge the gap between digital and human?” You know, that connection with me, my daughter, my wife and my family and OK, now I’m going to double down on how do we do that. And I started to work with a company where our objective was to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes. You know, what might it feel like to, gosh, I have a diabetes and I have colorblindness associated with that or losing some feeling on your legs or whatever it might be, giving someone that opportunity to have that experience so that they could create for themselves a different context rather than judging, understanding. And so from that perspective, I think the arts are critical. I think the idea of having empathy for the user is critical to being able to drive true experience and something where people just aren’t doing it. They’re doing something because they actually want to because they see value in it and then they see more value in your brand and your services.

Andrea: Do you find that it is difficult for companies to really take that perspective to really empathize to be able to really imagine the other person, that sort of thing? I know that we have to be seeking out big business results. But at the same time, it sounds like you’re saying we have to meet the customer where they are and communicate with them in a way that is going to be helpful for them and possible for them to really interact seamlessly. But yet, is it difficult for companies to really bridge that gap in their own way of thinking?

Fred Skoler: I think that you point out something really powerful. I would say yes, but no, because right now that’s kind of murky. The reality is that there may not be the talent that understands this side of human behavior and action and interaction. There’s a lot of data, but there needs to be context for that data. And because companies are starting to realize and truly understand that they need to know their customers, they’re starting to see the value in this. And I think this is where a really exceptional product manager comes in, and it’s part of what makes a great product manager is being able to be the advocate of all these sides. So, being able to share in terms that leadership understands that value and benefit of doing these things is kind of the bigger role, I think of people like me. I can say, “Look, I got a 47 percent increase in sales from people who are playing these silly games.” “Why is that?” “Well, because I had them in the palm of my hand. I knew exactly what they wanted.” I figured out ways to innovate on basic concepts like sweepstakes in such a way so that we could tune the experience to tell us exactly what someone wanted. Not just, “Hey, here’s something really shiny and cool, do you want it?” “What do you want?” “And if you win that’s what you’re gonna get.” And then take that information and use it in context to then help someone through their journey.

Andrea: So, when you’re having these conversations with the executives or the companies who are wanting this, but they’re having a hard time actually getting there or maybe they’re not sure what they want or they’re not sure how, you know, why it’s important, that sort of thing, what kinds of things do you call upon to help them to understand? So, statistics, you just shared statistics, I mean, in terms of your voice of influence with a company and helping people them to understand it, what kind of things do you employ to do that?

Fred Skoler: One of the big tools that I use is agile, and the agile framework and a lot of different approaches to driving kind of creative discovery, business discovery, and of course production and product management, all can be driven through some of these similar tools. These tools provide a framework by which you can truly focus teams on what’s most important. Because the reality is, you know, if you don’t know what you want and why you want it and what the outcome specific you’re looking for, it’s going to be quite difficult to hone in on what it is that I’m delivering. But those tools help focus these clients so that they know what they’re looking for. And then we have something that’s measurable. So, we have those statistics. We can drive those measurements. We can assure that they’re being tallied from the beginning and we can also do this in an iterative way. We don’t come in and say, “Boom, we got to blow this.” You know, we can do all kinds of little tests.

Andrea: So, iterative changes, not taking on the whole big thing all at once and trying to say that this is the answer, but to have these little tests and say, OK, this one works, this didn’t and that sort of thing, right? Is that what you mean by that?

Fred Skoler: That is, you know, with a lot of experience in road mapping development, you can have goals that are years out. You can have aspirational goals and you can have near term, what are the pieces that you need. One of the ways I like to look at it is, you know, if you’re going to get in a car, you need a few things. Meaning, I need a steer. I need the wheels and I need to be able to sit in this thing, probably I need a motor unless where I’m going is, you know, gravity is going to pull me down that kind of thing. But if it’s four things that I need then I work on those four things first and make sure that those are the things that are going to lead to the outcome that I’m looking for. So, you do a lot of prototyping. You use different types of tools to assure that everyone understands what it is that we’re doing and then you’re able to test it and iterate. I think that whole idea of getting stuff done, sometimes we change stuff to the expletive. You know, that GSD, being able to know what it is that you want and move forward on it rather than trying to do the perfect everything. Get some feedback, get it out there, do it in certain iterative ways and have a genuine discussion with your community at the same time so that you’re not only working from your feedback on what you’re saying, you’re starting to get feedback from real people who really use your product.

Andrea: Hmm. How do you know when the feedback that you’re getting is going to be helpful for the spectrum of folks or if it’s feedback that needs to be kind of put to the side? Or do you ever say, “OK, this particular piece of feedback doesn’t seem to be helpful for where we’re headed.” How do you know when to pay attention to it and when to set it aside?

Fred Skoler: That’s another great one. I think a lot of this comes from experience, but it’s driven by kind of a ruthless prioritization. You know, always looking toward what is it that we really need and going back to, you know, why and some of those specifics. And what we do in product development is we create these user stories. Tell the specifics of what it is we’re trying to do and what the outcome that is expected and what it might be. And so what we do is we leverage that piece of data and we go back to it again and again, “Hey, are we hitting that or is this something new?” And it’s a management challenge as well. But that’s part of why I guess that product manager role is such an important one and that the product manager has the skill set to be able to drive the product forward and make sure that it’s communicated correctly among all of the stakeholders.

Andrea: Hmm. And it sounds like keeping the focus where you want the focus to be, because it’s so easy to get distracted by other things. But if you keep coming back to what you originally set out as what you want and what you’re trying to accomplish, you know, all that clarity that you gained at the beginning. I’m thinking about the entire Voice of Influence audience here who may not necessarily into like gamification but they might be thinking about some of this stuff. And I’m thinking that, you know, it’s easy to get distracted. It’s easy to get distracted by the things, but if you keep coming back to where you started and keep coming back to what you’ve set out to do and accomplish at the beginning, I mean, you have to almost be ruthless with that.

Fred Skoler: You do, you do. And that’s providing the context for what we’re doing. We have to know. And if we don’t know then we haven’t done enough homework, and to jump in without done that homework is inefficient. It wastes, you know, everybody’s time and money, and that’s like the gem. So, coming back to leadership, you say, “Look, do you really want me to waste your time and money on that or do you want to do what you set out to do?” And if they want it in the weeds and you know, micromanaging then they can but they need to know and you need to have the answers as to “Look, this is gonna add number of days to your project.” And in so doing, we are going to be removing these resources that would, otherwise, be working on what you really want and it’s going to be much further down the line or we’re going to add more people to the team and it’s going to cost so much more. But those are kind of logical responses to what sometimes are kind of emotional needs, you know, “Oh, we saw this and we really want that.” “Why do you want that?” “Because we saw it and it looks really cool.” “Well, will it drive your initial need?” “We don’t even have a car yet. We don’t have four wheels. We don’t have a steering wheel.” OK, what we’ll do is we’ll put that on our list of wishes and then we’ll assess it as far as the value it provides to meet our goals, as far as how many resources we need to achieve that goal. And then we’ll look at that in that context and determine whether or not it’s something we want to put effort into, because it may be that the way to achieve that is by doing 10 little things, and each of those things has a cost, but there may be something else that brings more value that only has one or two steps that we can achieve very quickly with the resources we have on board right now. That seems to be from my perspective where we would want to focus. What do you think leadership?

Andrea: That is so helpful and applicable to anybody? I want to get back now before we close this conversation; I want to go back to gamification. What are some reasons why people or companies should use gamification? I know that you care about connecting with a customer? You care about that empathy and actually meeting them where they’re at that sort of thing. How do games do that?

Fred Skoler: Well, I think a lot of it is our understanding of what games are. Marketing is games. It is at its core. It’s finding the triggers that drive your customer forward. Now, if that trigger is an overt activity that has an outcome that is understood then maybe we go, “OK, that’s a little game.” But there are other ways of using these tactics without it being a game. Meaning, as you are going through certain types of content, if I highlight elements in that content, let’s say in a website, so that your eye goes to it and those are the most important features of my product that I want you to know about. I’m leading you. I am using the context of your experience to drive you forward. Now, if I do things there that you start to learn that when you do that, like if you were to click on one of those things, you always get a coupon or you always get a piece of additional insight that I’m teaching you that by clicking on the stuff that I put in front of you, there’s value in it. And by doing that often enough, you’ll start clicking on this stuff that I put in front of you because you know you’re getting value from it, and that’s gamification. This is my perspective because there are gamification platforms that have, you know, ribbons and badges and all sorts of things. There are a limited number of customers who are going to be driven by those pieces. There is value in that and the reality is there’s a very high percentage of us who are considered gamers because of the amount of time that we might touch a game in our day, so many more than we probably thought. My mom was a hardcore gamer. All she did was, you know, she played spider solitaire, but when she had some downtime, that’s what she would do. She was probably playing an hour a day. And some of those factors are part of what we call a hardcore gamer. She’s not the, you know, 70, 80-year-old woman. It might not be what we think of immediately when we think hardcore gamer. But the reason she did that wasn’t because she’s like “Oh, I gotta play a game.” She’s just like, “Oh, I could do better.” In that game there were some very clever tactics, including the sound which would drive activity and the need almost this compulsion to want to come back. Now, those same principles can be used in pretty much any customer journey, whether it’d be delightful colors, whether it be a loading screen, whether it be the way that something sounds or feels. These moments of delight if used to reward at the right time is what I would call gamification. The specific use of games to drive data, which could then be leveraged to kind of increased sales, that sort of thing that’s clear and strong and good stuff. That’s the big part of what I implemented at Sear’s Holdings, but these more subtle elements that we may call, you know, marketing that’s a use of gamification as well.

Andrea: I love the definition that you used or even the phrase that you used, moments of delight. Offering those is what helps people to know to take the next step, to want to take the next step, which does seem very empathetic. At the same time I wonder, could you also help us to know when do we take that too far? When does it become manipulation? How do you navigate that desire to offer something beautiful, delightful, or gratifying? And how can that go too far? Have you seen it go too far?

Fred Skoler: Well, I think it has to do with your customer and your brand identity. So, it would be wrapped up in kind of that and even using technologies like machine learning to drive certain types of information. Some of it, if it’s overused may seem creepy. Some of it may seem fun. That is more about that empathy. That is more about bringing people to the team who has this unique insight because it’s not necessarily something that’s teachable. So, one of the teams that I’ve been on in a large company, they ran a survey and they were basically talking about the archetypes on a team, and one of the things that was missing through their executive team consistently was empathy. And without that, you can’t be driving, in my opinion, a customer focused experience. You can talk the talk, but unless you feel what it’s like, you don’t know. And you know, you can research your butt off, but at the same time, you do need to truly kind of consume yourself with that experience. In my background, that’s what I used to do. You know, that’s part of what it is in comedy and doing improvisational comedy, coming up with characters quickly that sort of thing, that’s the activity. And leveraging that rich experience and bringing it to something that could be seen as just, you know, ones and zeros is what for me is really joyful and why I really liked doing what I do.

Andrea: Love it. I love that so much. I’m glad that you’re out there doing it. I’m glad that somebody with empathy is able to go out there and help companies do this well and bring with you integrity and a desire to truly help the customer. So thank you. Thank you for doing that. Thank you for your voice of influence. Fred, so you are going to be speaking at the Digital Experience Summit for the Strategy Institute in Chicago in September. We’ll link to that in the show notes. I’m also speaking there. What are you going to be talking about?

Fred Skoler: Oh, I’ll be talking about gamification kind of integrating the seamless digital and physical experiences for your customers, why that experience has been kind of a game changer for companies like Sears, where the rich data and that rich intent truly knowing what someone wants has become, you know, super meaningful. And part of, you know, what it really takes to do something to create that loyalty program, something that’s really going to work today. I start going and wanted to talk about it. It’s exciting stuff for me and so I’m talking about those sorts of things.

Andrea: It’ll be great. So, if you are in Chicago, if you’re headed to Chicago, if you’re interested in that conference, it’s going to be a really, really good one. You can come to our show notes and check it out at voiceofinfluence.net. Fred, how can people get in touch with you if they’re interested in working with you or what do you do with other companies?

Fred Skoler: Well, I’ve been working in a word of mouth capacity in my consulting and I’m very happy to engage with the listeners in any way that might be helpful. I’m always happy to lend a hand where I can. You know, you can find me on LinkedIn. Right now, I think I’m using my full name Frederick Skoler, but you can call me Fred with an f, not a ph. And there’s supposed to be a laugh there.

Andrea: I was holding it back. I’m not going to lie. I don’t know if I’m supposed to laugh or not but that was funny.

Fred Skoler: You know, it’s a very quiet room and you can hear the crickets, right? So if you’re interested in bringing a little more fun and joy to your products and if you are looking for someone who can help you do that from a very pragmatic standpoint and someone who understands the kind of the business side in building teams, I’m your guy. You can reach me at fskoler, so F as in Fred, fskoler@digisnax.com byte-size pieces, got it? Byte size, this is a digital goodness.

Andrea: Nice.

Fred Skoler: You know, I can help you do that.

Andrea: That’s fantastic! OK, again, we will have links to all of what Fred just mentioned in the show notes just to make it easy to connect with him if you’d like to. Thank you so much for sharing your voice of influence with our listeners today, Fred.

Fred Skoler: Oh thank you, Andrea, and thank you, listeners, for letting me take a little bit of your time today.

Voice of Influence

Message-Driven Leadership

Monthly Archives: September 2019

Find Joy in Choosing to Miss Out with Tonya Dalton

Episode 109

Play here (the red triangle below), on iTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio (Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Transcript

Creating Memorable Experiences with Manuel Christoffel of Woom Bikes

Episode 108

Play here (the red triangle below), on iTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio (Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Transcript

Guiding a Team to Take Your Customer’s Perspective with Tim Bay

Episode 107

Play here (the red triangle below), on iTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio (Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Transcript

David Neagle Interviews Andrea Wenburg for the Successful Mind Podcast

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcast or on David’s website.

Transcript:

Become the Person You Want To Be with David Neagle

Episode 106

Play here (the red triangle below), on iTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio (Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Transcript

Creating Moments of Delight for Customers with Fred Skoler

Episode 105

Play here (the red triangle below), on iTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio (Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Transcript