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:

• Manuel Christoffel on LinkedIn
• Manuel Christoffel on Twitter
• Manuel Christoffel on Instagram
• Woom Bikes
• Digital Customer Experience Summit

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!