Entrepreneurs

What are some common mistakes made by startup leaders

What are some common mistakes made by startup leaders?

Starting a new business can be a thrilling and challenging experience, where success or failure is often determined by the decisions made by the startup leader. Unfortunately, many startup leaders make common mistakes that can significantly impact the success of their businesses.

Talk-Commerce-Rick Elmore

What are you doing to build loyalty with Rick Elmore

One of the most effective strategies for building customer loyalty is sending handwritten notes. Handwritten notes show care and attention that any other medium cannot match. Handwritten notes are a powerful way to make a personal connection and can be used to thank your client for their business.

Handwritten notes can be sent as a thank you after a purchase, to celebrate a milestone, or to show appreciation for being a loyal client. The personal touch of a handwritten note will make your client feel like they are being acknowledged and valued.

Rick Elmore shows how to build loyalty and show appreciation to clients by connecting with them personally.

What you will learn

  • Rick Elmore is the founder and CEO of Simply Noted. He played college and professional sports, and then went on to work in corporate medical device sales and marketing until he had an itch that he just couldn’t scratch with what he was doing then.
  • Rick enjoys being outdoors and is training for a half marathon. He enjoys doing physical activity and has a three and a five-year-old now.
  • Quote from Rick “When I was in my sales career, it was really hard to stand out from the crowd, especially in the corporate world where there’s always a competitor in everything that you do. So I started writing handwritten notes to my customers to try and get their attention.“
  • Quote from Rick “When I was doing my MBA class, my professor said that handwritten notes still work. I had a classmate of mine and myself that got to work and sent out 500 handwritten notes that were written by a pen plotter and had a phenomenal response rate.“
  • Rick founded simply noted full-time and has been doing that for the last four and a half years. It’s a powerful tool that can be used in just so many different facets of business, not just sales.
  • Brent: I’ve had conversations with other entrepreneurs who say that handwritten notes are a lost art. One famous guy in the Twin Cities sends out 30 thank-you notes a day.
  • Ricks notest that they are a handwritten notes platform that helps companies automate sending thank you or handwritten thank you notes to their customers. By doing so, their customer lifetime value goes up; they’re gonna be happier, they’re gonna re-refer their friends, and they’re gonna write better reviews.
  • Rick: We’ve invested over $850,000 in the last almost two years developing our own handwriting robot. It’s a real three-access, a pantry-based system that’s auto-fed, and it helps realtors, mortgage professionals, e-commerce businesses, politicians, and nonprofits, to either automate it or scale it.
  • You can create your own handwriting style using our software, and we have a portfolio of about 900 handwriting styles. If you’re a person of influence, we can create a handwriting style for you, but there is a cost associated with that.
  • Rick describes the technology that goes into creating a genuine handwritten note, and how it compares to an e at the beginning of a word versus an e at the end of a word.
  • Rick: Our handwriting engine is Mach machine Learning right now, and it completely varies every single time it writes. So if you put a hundred custom messages into our handwriting software and you wrote out a hundred notes, it’s literally gonna look at 100% different every single time it’s written.
  • The real way to tell if it’s actually pen written or not is the smudge test. We actually built our own pen and developed a weighted pen insert, so when our motor lifts it, it actually lifts the pen, but when it goes down, it has a downward force.
  • Rick explains how his pen works and how he gets a nice little pen and dation plus it’s ink, so it’s gonna smear. However, people are starting to understand that this is a service that is out there and that simply noted is a good product. Rick: I’ve heard that getting handwritten notes has helped other companies get a better response rate on campaigns and outreach. Brent: First handwritten notes have a 99% open rate.
  • If you’re thinking about doing direct mail and you’re doing print, you might as well just throw seven out of every $10 in the trash, cuz it’s not gonna do anything. But if you can retain 5% more each year, you can grow your business.
  • When it comes down to it, it’s about building deeper relationships with your clients. If you have deeper, more loyal relationships, they’re gonna stick around, refer their friends and write better reviews, which really is gonna help you grow your business.
  • Rick: We have a luxury jewelry brand that uses us for customer complaints, but they don’t apologize to the customer. Instead, they automate the message and send hundreds of notes a week.
  • Brent: It’s interesting on the customer complaint, cuz it’s a little bit of a risk, especially if you automate it too much. Rick: I don’t know, I think you want to keep it super generic and give them the opportunity to reach back out to you.
  • Rick: If you’re trying to get super custom, give them the option to contact you again and talk.
  • Brent: I’ve heard that you can overdo handwritten notes, so we recommend sending them three to four times a year at the most, at least once or twice a year. Rick: You still gotta do everything else, too, like email, phone calls, social, etc.
  • Rick: We help you build that strong relationship on an automatic or scaled, you know, level, and we recommend sending something that is as personalized as possible, but short and sweet, because these clients have seven second attention spans.
  • Rick suggests sending three or four sentences, and putting yourself on the receiving end of the message. This is much more impactful than a thank you upsell, hard close, 150 word message, where they’re gonna start skim reading if you don’t have their attention within three seconds.
  • Rick: If you are gonna use email for sales or marketing, you gotta include three things: who you are, what company you’re with, what you can do for them, and how can you make their life better.
  • Rick: We’re primarily focused on helping companies do it, but we still want to help average realtors or mortgage professionals send a card. They can send their first card free so they can see what it’s like, touch it, get it in their mail.
  • Rick: I think it’s Rafiki, and his handwriting is terrible. He says he’ll send a handwritten note or two a day, but he’ll still use our system because his handwriting is so terrible. Rick Elmore’s handwriting style is not enjoyable to read, so he doesn’t want it on the website.
  • Rick says that customers should focus on the relationship rather than the product going into quarter one or just throughout for 2023. He wants to keep the people that have worked with him two years ago or last year. Rick says to get in front of clients early on every single year to get their loyalty stuck to you and your brand.
  • Rick says to stay in front of your clients, do something that others aren’t doing, and get their trust and loyalty. This will help you stay on top of mind 24 7 and get them 100% on your ship every single year.
  • Rick: I think that personal touch is a great way to stand out from the noise of generic social media and generic email. I used a podcasting service that sent me a video thanking me for being a client. Rick and Brent discuss using Zoom to record personal little video responses, and Brent gives everybody a chance to do a shameless plug.
  • Rick: If you go to our website and fill out the business page, we’ll send you a nice sample kit with writing samples, brochures, case studies, handwriting styles, um, basically everything. And usually what happens is that three to six months later a light bulb goes off and they contact us.

Transcript

[00:03:07] Brent: All right. Welcome to this episode, oft Commerce. Today I have Rick Elmore. Rick Elmore is the founder and c e o of simply noted Rick. Go ahead, introduce yourself. Tell us your day-to-day role and maybe one of your passions in life. 

[00:03:23] Rick: Yeah, so, um, my name is Rick Elmore. I’m the owner of Simply Noted, um, it, that is a handwritten notes platform.

[00:03:29] Rick: We, we’ll kind of dive into what that is later, but my background is in athletics. I played college and professional sports. Played at the University of Arizona, which was a three year starter for Mike Stoops and then was drafted in 2010 in the NFL draft. Um, after that, um, was in corporate medical device sales and marketing.

[00:03:48] Rick: First year was Rookie of the year. Next, uh, six years was either top 1% or top five rep in the company. And then 2017 came around. I had an itch that I just couldn’t scratch with what I was doing then. So I went back and did my MBA and, and uh, that’s where the idea for simply Noted began. 

[00:04:06] Brent: That’s awesome.

[00:04:07] Brent: Um, and, um, so passion is still athletics are. playing football still. 

[00:04:14] Rick: Yeah. Oh yeah. I guess, yeah. Then, uh, my passions, you know, I’m a, an avid outdoorsman. Uh, I have a three and a five year old now, so I have to be a lot more calculated, um, in what I do with my time off. You know, I, I can’t do those three and four day adventures anymore, so I have to be a little bit, uh, you know, what’s closer to home.

[00:04:32] Rick: But yeah, I would say, you know, I’m doing a, a half marathon this upcoming weekend, so I, I still try to do a lot of physical activity. That’s what I enjoy doing most outside of work. 

[00:04:42] Brent: Awesome. That’s great. Um, I, I warned you in the green room that, uh, we’re doing this free joke project and you agreed to participate.

[00:04:50] Brent: So I’m just gonna tell you a joke and you can tell me if that joke should remain free or if we could charge for it. And, um, I’m just gonna preempt today that the joke I have found, I’m gonna guarantee your kids are gonna love or at some point. But anyways, here we go. Yesterday my doctor told me my chronic diarrhea is inherited.

[00:05:13] Brent: Runs in the family. 

[00:05:17] Rick: I would say that’s a good dad joke, but , let’s keep that one free . Yeah. 

[00:05:22] Brent: I, I, I agree with you. So . Yeah. Um, alright, so, uh, simply noted, you know, I’m, I’m a big, I’m a big believer in, in handwritten notes. Tell me a little bit about it. 

[00:05:34] Rick: Yeah, so, um, you know, when I was in my sales career, , you know, it was really hard, especially in the corporate, um, like infrastructure seemed to really stand out and, and be different because, you know, in the corporate world there’s always a competitor actually in everything that you do.

[00:05:52] Rick: There’s always competition. There’s a different option. Um, all the customers are being, you know, pulled in every direction by every vendor to try to get their attention. And when I was doing in my MBA class, I had a marketing professor, I was just talking about like success rates and market. and, um, everything was super marginal.

[00:06:11] Rick: Everything was like low single digit percentage, you know, email, cold call, print, direct mail, um, knocking on doors. And I had a professor that said handwritten notes, guys, like at the end, at the end of the lecture, he said, kind of half jokingly said, Hey guys, you know what still works is a good old fashioned handwritten note.

[00:06:28] Rick: Um, it gets opened almost 100% of the time, says it’s actually 99% and there’s just nothing like it. I don’t think he knew what he was doing then because the light bulb started going off and, uh, I had a classmate of mine and myself we got to work. We, uh, worked with the mailing house here in Phoenix, Arizona, flew some technology and from South America, China, and basically it was a pen potter.

[00:06:53] Rick: I, where’s that? I have a, usually have a pen plotter in here to show you. But, um, sent out some really bad handwritten notes that were written by this pen plotter. Uh, it took us about a month to write out 500 of them, and, uh, just had a phenomenal response rate. Just, you know, as a salesperson, having a client call you back.

[00:07:13] Rick: Right. That, that’s a big deal. And, um, what we really noticed, , you know, how powerful they can be, how powerful of a tool. It can be used in just so many other different facets of business, not just sales, um, you know, client retention, um, relationship building, you know, booking appointments, um, saying top of mind.

[00:07:34] Rick: You know, there’s just a bunch of ways that you can use this tool in a, in very valuable ways. But for me, what sparked the idea was outreach, booking appointments, and closing. So, um, had tremendous success in 2017 doing that 2018 and then, you know, the business kind of just grew organically in 2019. We founded, uh, simply noted full-time, and uh, that’s what we’ve been doing for the last four and a half years.

[00:07:58] Rick: That’s awesome. 

[00:07:58] Brent: Yeah, I, I definitely have had conversations with other entrepreneurs and business owners who, uh, especially people that are in an older generation who say, mm-hmm. , that, uh, that’s a lost art, is the, um, is a handwritten note. Um, I, I remember sitting through a meeting or a, you know, a panel with one of the, um, one of the more famous guys in the Twin Cities who had said, Uh, he picks 30 people a day out of his sales.

[00:08:29] Brent: He had a retail and he would send them a handwritten thank you note mm-hmm. , and he would hand write every single one of them. So, uh, I, I, I can certainly appreciate it. And, and so tell us a little bit about your system and how you’re not asking actually everybody to hand write it, like you mentioned 

[00:08:48] Rick: plotters and stuff.

[00:08:49] Rick: Yeah, so what’s simply noted as is we’re a handwritten notes platform. We help companies either automate it, so think of like a new client signs up. We can automate sending a thank you or handwritten thank you note or say it’s, um, after their fifth purchase we can set up some type of trigger using Zap.

[00:09:05] Rick: You’re an API integration of Web Hook. Um, once they hit that milestone to think then, or an anniversary or a birthday, um, we really like. , you know, kind of consult our clients on the relationship side of building, um, these hand uh, sending these notes on a relationship purpose because you know, they’re going, they’re gonna stick around a lot longer.

[00:09:26] Rick: The lifetime value’s gonna go up, they’re gonna be happier. They’re gonna re refer their friends, they’re gonna write better reviews. So we think, you know, the tool of sending a handwritten note should just be simply to thank somebody, um, because just saying thank you, it’s worth its weight in gold. Um, it’s gonna come back to you tenfold over.

[00:09:41] Rick: Um, it just takes time. Um, and all good things do take time. So simply noted. Helps you automate it or scale it. So, um, if you need to send one, if you have all the stuff we always tell our clients, like if you have handwritten notes or notes in your desk and you wanna send one-offs, um, we tell you to do it because, you know, there’s just nothing like a handwritten note from you, but, Just a tiny little speck below that’s simply noted.

[00:10:07] Rick: Everything we do is real genuine pen written. Um, we’ve invested over $850,000 in the last almost two years developing our own handwriting robot. Um, it’s a real. Three access, uh, you know, left, right up, down, uh, forward backwards, you know, three access, pantry based system that’s auto fed. Um, we’ve developed our own handwriting engine, our own software, our own mechanics.

[00:10:31] Rick: It’s, it’s pretty, it’s pretty awesome. Software integrations. So, yeah, so simply known as just a platform that helps, you know, realtors, mortgage professionals, e-commerce businesses, um, politicians, nonprofits, to either automate it or. . 

[00:10:48] Brent: Yeah. That’s awesome. I, I know that we’ve, I’ve talked to other people who’ve done something similar and so you, you have the ability to mimic somebody else’s handwriting and or use a general hand write handwriting to send the 

[00:11:02] Rick: note.

[00:11:03] Rick: Yeah, so we have about 32. Last time we checked 32 handwriting styles available on the website. Um, we have about a portfolio of about 900 handwriting styles. Um, it really becomes analysis paralysis, like if you like, start looking at tons and tons of these handwriting styles. Um, if you’re a person of influence where like, you know, your stuff’s gonna end up online, um, you, you’re a public figure and you want to do your own handwriting style, we absolutely can do that.

[00:11:32] Rick: Um, most people. because there’s a cost associated with that. But we don’t just create a font, we create a handwriting style. And what that means is like we’re actually pulling out like the characteristics of how you write, you know, You like when you write like, like the natural spacing, the kering, you know, of what an A next to a B looks like, an A next to a, you know, a c I mean, everything is like pulled out, you know, ligature styles.

[00:11:58] Rick: What do two T’s look like next to each other? Do you loop ’em? Do you connect ’em? You know, it’s what’s an e at the beginning of a word look like versus an e at the end of a word. I mean, it’s lit. It’s, it’s, it’s pretty intense. You know, the, what has gone into creating, uh, a genuine handwritten note.

[00:12:15] Rick: There’s tons of technology on the, on the back end that allows us to send a simple hand handwritten note on the front end. So it’s, it’s pretty, um, spectacular. 

[00:12:25] Brent: Um, I know ma, machine learning is such a, um, a buzzword right now. Uh, how does machine learning kind of play into this? And does it, and 

[00:12:35] Rick: so our soft, yeah.

[00:12:36] Rick: So it’s, I mean, I would say our, our handwriting engine is Mach machine Learning right now. Um, it completely varies every single time it writes. Um, I wouldn’t say that it’s, it’s a true, smart, like machine learning, but what it does is it, Constantly varies. Every single handwritten note. So if you plugged a hundred custom messages, you know, into our handwriting software and you wrote out a hundred notes and you put ’em all next to each other, it’s literally gonna look at, look 100% different every single time it’s written.

[00:13:05] Rick: So, um, we put a lot of thought in, in research and development to making sure that they look as real as possible. Cuz if not, I mean, there’s really no purpose of our, our service if you know the notes that we are. Don’t look the most authentic. 

[00:13:22] Brent: Yeah, I, I can say that I’ve gotten many realtor email or, uh, physical letters that is, that are clearly just printed out on a printer and mm-hmm.

[00:13:31] Brent: and have some font that, that sort of ties together some cursive . 

[00:13:35] Rick: Yeah. Um, Yeah, so the real way of telling that is the smudge test. You just lick your finger and just like try to smudge the ink. Um, a laser printed hand, like a laser printed font will not smudge, but like, since these are real pens, um, we actually had to build our own pen.

[00:13:50] Rick: Um, we can dive into because we write so many notes, but, um, . If you actually write it with a real pen and you try to smudge it, the will smear. So that’s like the number one way to tell if it’s actually pen written or not. 

[00:14:03] Brent: And you have some kind of, uh, it, it does a little indent on the paper as well. 

[00:14:07] Rick: Yep, yep.

[00:14:08] Rick: And that was another reason, you know, we had to develop room technology. So those actually drop machines. All they have is little lift motor and there’s no downward pressure force. So we actually, we did a weighted pen. Um, we actually developed this pen. Um, we developed our own pen insert. We’re writing capacity, so when our motor lifts it, it actually lifts the pen, but when it goes down, we actually have a right, like a downward force on it.

[00:14:33] Rick: So we actually have a, a spring force that actually pushes the pen into the paper as well. So, um, so you’re gonna get that nice little pen and dation plus it’s ink, so it’s gonna smear. So it really, it’s gonna be really hard, you know, I mean, you really, really have to try to. Some type of, you know, um, woody pattern in these when there, there isn’t, but.

[00:14:55] Rick: That’s, yeah. 

[00:14:57] Brent: Have you ever had anybody ask for Mount Blanc Black blue Ink? 

[00:15:01] Rick: Yeah, when we were like first getting started. That was really funny. Like the early customers would ask for like that crazy stuff. But no more, I think people are starting to understand that, you know, this is a service that is out there.

[00:15:12] Rick: Um, You know, there are a couple competitors out there. There’s really only maybe two serious players in this space. Um, but, uh, yeah, I think, you know, businesses now just want, you know, something that’s easy to use, efficient, um, authentic, a good product. And that’s what we’re trying to do for our clients that we here at simply noted.

[00:15:34] Rick: Do you 

[00:15:34] Brent: have some numbers that you could share that show sort of the uptick, uh, on, at the end of a sales cycle or response rate? I, I’ve heard that, you know, getting handwritten note has helped other companies, uh, get a better response rate on campaigns and. And, and just 

[00:15:49] Rick: outreach. Yeah. Well, first handwritten notes have a 99% open rate.

[00:15:55] Rick: That’s a 300% improvement over print mail. Um, so if you’re thinking about doing direct mail and you’re doing print, you might as well just throw seven out of every $10 in the trash, cuz it’s not gonna do anything. Um, this was actually an American Express study, but they found out that just, you know, this is a client, you know, a client experience, um, study.

[00:16:16] Rick: American Express did, but just a simple 5% improvement in client retention will increase profits year over year by 25 to 95%. They did that on business accounts, but just retaining 5% more each year is gonna help you grow your business or grow your sales by 25 to 95% year over year. For me, I mean, that makes complete sense.

[00:16:36] Rick: If we were able to, you know, keep our current business clients, you know, year over year, um, especially, you know, our, our larger accounts, it would be easier to grow your business. So that makes total sense. Um, also, there’s, you know, customers who feel appreciated, you know, five, they’re five times more likely to make a repeat purchase.

[00:16:53] Rick: So just saying thank you. You’re gonna increase your like repeat purchases from your clients, repeat business by 500%. That was also American Express study as well. So really when it comes down to, it’s like just building deeper relationships with your clients because when you have deeper, more loyal relationships, they’re gonna stick around.

[00:17:12] Rick: You know, they’re gonna refer their friends and they’re gonna write better reviews, which really is gonna help you grow your business. And that’s what we’re really trying to do. Um, yeah. Yeah, I’d say those are some good stats with simply. 

[00:17:24] Brent: Do you have some, um, sort of, you don’t have to say any client names, but, uh, any examples of situations, maybe retail or e-commerce or even just regular B2B type of outreach that have been very successful?

[00:17:40] Rick: Yeah, so we work with a luxury hat brand. Um, what they do is when somebody tries like their. Discounted hat. What they’ll do is they’ll automate a, um, handwritten note with a discount code to try their more expensive hat. So they’re trying to upsell them. So, I mean, they’ve been doing that for over a year.

[00:17:59] Rick: So I think if it was working, they, I mean, if it wasn’t working, they wouldn’t keep doing it. So that’s kind of a cool, unique, um, uh, kind of use case that we’ve seen in the e-com. Also, um, it’s, we have a, a luxury, um, uh, jewelry brand. And it’s really funny. It’s like, you know, their average sale probably is $3,000 or more, but what they use us for is when they get a customer complaint.

[00:18:26] Rick: So we see the, you know, somebody who didn’t have a good experience. We see that message get automated all the time. Um, it’s a global, global company and you know, they’re sending hundreds of notes a week. Um, but you would think, you know, , um, you know, using something like that to just apologize and get them back on board to, you know, get them to like the brand more, um, to try to get that loyalty back.

[00:18:50] Rick: Um, so yeah, we’ve seen them for upselling. We’ve seen them for saying sorry, to try to, you know, earn their trust back. So, yeah, there’s a bunch of ways to use it. 

[00:18:58] Brent: That’s interesting on the customer complaint, cuz it, it is a little bit of a risk, especially if you automate it too much. Is that something worse?

[00:19:05] Brent: Somebody would actually write out, hand write, not handwriting super, but type. I type it out and then it comes to your engine and then gets mailed out. 

[00:19:13] Rick: Yeah. I don’t know. Yeah, I don’t know. I, I think in something like that, you want to keep it super generic, you know, and give them the opportunity to reach back out to you.

[00:19:22] Rick: Um, that’s what this brand does. , um, they just say that they’re really sorry, you know, they’re apologizing for that experience. If you wanna talk, I’d love to talk to you more about it. And they put their a contact number for them so it actually looks, you know, as authentic as possible. They’re trying to be authentic, they’re trying to fix it.

[00:19:37] Rick: I think if you’re trying to get super custom and it’s just like a, um, a use case just to send it and forget it, I wouldn’t say that’s the best case. But if you’re giving them the option to then further contact you again and talk. The authenticity of something like that is, is something that’s extremely powerful.

[00:19:56] Brent: Um, I’ve heard. You can overdo handwritten notes as well, like the, it is something that should be spaced out over time and like, if, if you’re tagging somebody at the end of an e-commerce, uh, sale and you don’t wanna send ’em an handwritten note every week saying, Hey, thanks 

[00:20:13] Rick: for this. No, well, I mean, we would love it if, you know , I can’t send, you know, hundreds to each of their clients.

[00:20:20] Rick: But, um, yeah, we, we try to recommend to our, our, our businesses, you know, three to four times a year at the most, um, at least once or twice a year. You know, we’re in the holidays right now, so it’s our busiest time of the year. That’s when most of our businesses are using us. Um, but I would say, you know, maybe thank you for a purchase, maybe a birthday or an anniversary of a purchase, and then a holiday.

[00:20:42] Rick: You know, just stay top of mind, you know, simply note as just another tool in the belt. That’s what we try to tell ’em as well. You still gotta do everything else. You still gotta have great customer service or great product, email, you know, phone calls, social, I mean, you gotta have all the other elements to build a successful business.

[00:20:56] Rick: It’s just, What we do is help you just build that strong relationship on an automatic or scaled, you know, level. 

[00:21:05] Brent: Um, on the, um, on that, on that experience part and scale, I should say, um, our customers seeing some kind of, uh, um, or, or I should say, are merchants seeing a better uptick when it’s a little bit personalized or.

[00:21:27] Brent: Uh, are, is it, is it still effective if you’re sending out a nice note with a thank you and, and the person’s name at the end? 

[00:21:36] Rick: Well, we always recommend to, uh, personalize it. Um, that’s the power of all the technologies that’s out there right now. Um, you know, using platforms like Zapier, integr, Matt Mat, um, or make, you know, whatever they are now, um, integrate, you know, you can pull information automatically from your software and personalize.

[00:21:56] Rick: The message as much as possible. Um, we definitely don’t recommend just putting a generic message on there cuz it kind of, it can come off as impersonal. Um, when the product that we are trying to provide is a very high level touch personal. So, um, We would absolutely recommend sending something that is as personalized as possible, but short and sweet, you know, these, your clients have seven second attention spans.

[00:22:21] Rick: Three or four sentences. Respect their time. Don’t send them, you know, two paragraphs of a message. It’s just not real or authentic. Um, you know, try to put yourself in their shoes. Be on the receiving end of this. What would you like to receive? . You know, maybe a simple Thank you. We appreciate you so much.

[00:22:38] Rick: You know, you know, please let us know if we can do anything for you. You know, short, sweet to the point is gonna be much more impactful than a thank you upsell, hard close , you know, 150 word message where they’re gonna, you know, if you don’t, if they don’t. You know, I was just listening to a podcast yesterday actually, about something.

[00:22:57] Rick: If you don’t have them hooked within three seconds, they just start skim reading. Like if you don’t have their attention within that first sentence, you know, I was trying to listen to podcasts about developing stronger messaging, and there’s like within three seconds, if you don’t have ’em, they just start, they just start skim reading.

[00:23:11] Rick: So again, short and sweet to the point is what, uh, works the best, but make sure it’s personalized to them. . 

[00:23:17] Brent: And how about hooks in that message to get them to do some action? Is there, is there something in there that you’d, that sometimes you’d like them to do? Or is it some, is it just a, Hey, thanks for, for your 

[00:23:29] Rick: customer?

[00:23:30] Rick: So my, my background’s in sales and marketing, so I’m, we use it to, to grow our business. Um, um, But what I always try to tell people is just say thank you, but if you are gonna use it for like a sales or marketing tool to book more appointments or close more deals, I always say there’s three things you gotta include so you know who you are.

[00:23:52] Rick: Make a quick introduction, one sentence, who you are, what company you’re with. Um, you know, what’s your value proposition? So number two, like what, how can you help them? How are you gonna make their life better? And then just simple, make an ass, you know, um, can we get on the call? You know, can we buy you lunch?

[00:24:08] Rick: Something like that. Just really quick. And to the point, respect their time. If they’re interested, you know, they’ll call you back. But yeah, I would say make an introduction, value proposition, you know, and then they can. , 

[00:24:22] Brent: is there a crossover into the personal space? You know, sending birthday cards and Christmas cards and things like that?

[00:24:27] Brent: Are you primarily 

[00:24:29] Rick: commercial? So our website, simply noted.com, can send just one card for any reason. Um, but that our website was built on purpose. We had to the API first company. Um, so all of our orders, you know, they do go through our website, but they use software to. Um, but if anybody, you know, wants to go in and send a quick birthday card or a holiday card, um, you can do that on our website.

[00:24:57] Rick: Um, but we’re primarily focused on helping companies, um, do it because they have the technology and the resources put in place, you know, to leverage a system like this. But we still want to help, you know. Average realtor or mortgage professional, or just anybody who wants to send a card. It’s actually a good reason for a lot of people to just try us out as well.

[00:25:19] Rick: You know, they want to try before they buy, so they’ll go on there and we allow them to send their first card free so they can send it, see what it’s like, touch it, get it in their mail. Um, yeah. 

[00:25:30] Brent: Excellent. Um, do you have a font that is can’t read? So if my, nobody can read my handwriting. So do you have it so they’ll know that, Hey, this is coming from Brent, so Definit.

[00:25:41] Brent: I can’t even read it. . 

[00:25:43] Rick: Yeah. So, um, yeah, I think it’s Rafiki. It’s kind of like a, a doctor’s, I would call it scratch. I mean, it’s super dis disgusting. It’s really hard to read. But, um, I mean, I, you know, I’ll send a handwritten note or two a day just to, you know, people stay in touch or thank them for something they’ve done for me recently, and I’ll still use our system because, you know, if I wrote it, it, it, my handwriting is so terrible that I, I, I’ll write it out and then I’ll try to read ’em.

[00:26:13] Rick: Like, this is just terrible on the. Like, this isn’t even a nice reading experience. Like I’d rather use that handwriting style that we have on our website and put our message in online just to send one or two , because I just, my handwriting is terrible. So, um, there’s just something like that too. I’m trying to put myself in the recipient shoes as well.

[00:26:33] Rick: It’s like, do they wanna read my chicken scratch or they want to have some, you know, handwriting style that does. Like a handwriting style, but it’s actually enjoyable to read cuz mine like will literally hurt your eyes. . . It would be a lot. Sweet. So we can’t go, what is that? Yeah, 

[00:26:48] Brent: we can’t go onto the website and pick the Rick Elmore font.

[00:26:52] Rick: No, no, that, that will never be on the website cuz I don’t think anybody would choose it. 

[00:26:57] Brent: Um, if you had one nugget that you think. Customers should do going into quarter one or just throughout for 2023. What, what do you think is something that people could be doing in both customer experience and uh, and communication?

[00:27:13] Rick: So I would, what do you, you know, there’s a hundred different. You know, competitors to every service, it doesn’t matter. You know, we live in 2022, almost 2023. Um, competition’s so fierce across the board in everything that we do. Um, so what I try to do with my clients is give them 10 times more value, um, and appreciation.

[00:27:35] Rick: So no matter what, you know, they’re gonna be loyal to us, um, because I know they have the ability to go out there and, and shop around and try other people. So what I try to do is just focus on that relationship because I know our product is gonna get better and it’s always going to be improving. But I want the people that have worked with us two years ago or last year to stay with us and come with us and help us.

[00:27:57] Rick: So I would say, you know, early on every single year is somehow get in front of your clients. It doesn’t matter if you’re gonna pick up the phone and call them and thank them for what they did for you last year. Um, do something to engage them in a way. that you’re getting their loyalty stuck to you and your brand.

[00:28:14] Rick: Like what are you doing, um, to build that loyalty on a consistent basis. Because, you know, like I, I’m, I’m a big tech guy and I have, you know, tech brands that I like to follow, but you know, there’s different options, but. I do have one brand that always somehow gets my attention and, um, they’re really good at staying on, on top of, on staying on top of mind.

[00:28:37] Rick: And actually, they, they called me after my last purchase and said, Hey, we saw you like you’re on your seventh purchase. Thank you so much. Like, that’s impactful. You know, what are you doing to stay in front, um, of your clients? Um, because you know that attention span, especially with ads and social and digital, um, it’s really.

[00:28:56] Rick: You know, to stay top of mind 24 7 when everybody, including your competitors, are fighting for that space. So I would say definitely figure out a way to, to get that trust, get that loyalty, you know, get them, you know, 100% on your, on your ship. Every single year. 

[00:29:13] Brent: Yeah, I mean, that’s a really good point.

[00:29:15] Brent: There’s so much noise out there nowadays and, and making sure that, uh, you’re kind of going above the fray. You have to do something that others aren’t doing. And I think that personal touch be it, be it a personal phone call or, uh, handwritten note is such a great way of making sure that you’re up above what everybody else is doing and trying to stay out of that noise of generic social media and generic email.

[00:29:40] Rick: um, Rick, somebody, you know Yeah, go ahead. I have another little nugget here. Somebody. I use a podcasting service, you know, to help us, um, with our outreach. And the owner of this company gave me a phone call and I didn’t answer cuz I didn’t know how it was. And then what he did was recorded a message on Zoom.

[00:29:59] Rick: Just thanking me for being a client on his platform. And he sent me an email and saying, Hey, just sent you this message. Just wanted to, whatever. And it was a video, like a three minute video thanking me of being a client, like , like, am I gonna be loyal to him or go try some different service? You know? So that was a cool, cool way.

[00:30:17] Rick: Somebody just got my attention recently as well. And that takes two or three minutes. You know, it’s really easy to do, you know, on a computer nowadays, everybody knows how to use Zoom and, and do that recording. 

[00:30:27] Brent: Yeah, I think Vineyard is a great tool to use just to give those personal little video responses.

[00:30:33] Brent: Um, Rick, as I close out the podcast, uh, I give everybody a chance to do a shameless plug. You can plug anything you’d like. What would you like to plug today? 

[00:30:44] Rick: Yeah, so what we do is anybody who goes to our website, we’ll actually send them a nice sample kit. So we do a good job of putting together this big 10 by 13 folio, um, with writing samples, brochures, case studies, handwriting styles, um, basically everything.

[00:31:00] Rick: that you, I mean, after four and a half years of doing this, we know what questions people ask and we answer those questions in this sample kit. So if you went to simply noted.com, um, and just go to the business page and you can fill out your information. We’ll send you this nice sample kit. Um, and usually what happens, you know, people request it and then three to six months later, you know, a light bulb goes off and then they’ll contact us.

[00:31:23] Rick: So we highly recommend you just to go to simply no.com and go to the business page and let us send you a free sample. Okay? It’s on us. Um, and yeah, and just see, you know, how great this technology is and simply noted. Really just wants to help automate it and. Um, and you can see how we can do that with this sample kit.

[00:31:44] Brent: That’s awesome. Rick, thanks so much being here today. It’s been a pleasure. 

[00:31:49] Rick: Thank you so much, Brent. It’s great to be here.

Thank you for making it to the end of this episode of Talk Commerce. Please rate this episode wherever you download your podcast. We are actively looking for people to participate in the Free Joke Project. Go to talk hyphen commerce.com and sign up for your free spot on the Free Joke Project. If you are a business, I will do a 32nd elevator.

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The Story of Socks, Socks, and More Socks with Mark Cronin

This week on our podcast, we will discuss the incredible story behind John’s Crazy Socks and our mission to spread happiness. We’ll explore how John, who has Down Syndrome, and his dad, Mark, started this business with a simple mission: to spread happiness.

We’ll talk about how their business has grown and evolved over the years and how they have impacted the lives of so many. Additionally, we’ll discuss the importance of inclusion and how John’s Crazy Socks has created a community of acceptance and respect.

Tune in to learn more about this inspiring story and how you can help make a difference!

What you will learn from this podcast

[00:04:22] Mark: dad.

  • Mark is a fan of Bob Dylan and recently embarked on a project to send out a Bob Dylan song of the day.

[00:05:20] John: son, 

  • Mark and I built a website and got a little inventory, and we were bootstrapping. The only marketing we did was set up a Facebook page.
  • Brent wants to get your feedback on a joke before we get into the regular content, so he’s gonna tell you a joke and then you’re gonna tell me a joke after that.

[00:09:33] Brent: Oof

  • Mark: I don’t know if you’ve ever had to participate in a mission statement writing exercise, but it drives everything we do. We’ve created a social enterprise that has both the social and the business purpose, and they feed off of each other.
  • Mark: It’s about giving back, supporting causes, and creating customer experiences. And so we’re spreading happiness.

[00:12:23] Brent: happiness.

  • Brent: Yeah, I’m a big believer in the entrepreneurial operating system, so we do mission statements and we set up our core values.
  • Mark: I’m familiar with E os and we have our five pillars, and everybody knows that, so if you walk around here and you say, what’s the mission, everybody will be able to tell you and they’ll be able to tell you why their job matters.
  • Mark: work. We have to make this a great place to work, and we can start by making sure people know why their job matters.
  • When you buy socks from us, you are helping us employ people with different abilities, give back, and spread happiness. You get a thank you note from John, and on the packing slip, you see the picture of the person who picked your on.
  • Brent: I agree that happiness has to start with the staff and then bring it out to the customers.

[00:15:51] Mark: happiness?

  • Mark: We believe in what we’re doing and we’re committed to making our customers happy, so we go the extra mile for them. We give things away, we refund money, we give a guarantee of happiness, and it’s good business.
  • Mark: We get happy employees, happy customers, and loyal customer. We have a great website, great selection, great products, and great service, so we frequently hear from new customers how surprised they were and how quickly they got their product.
  • Mark: We do better shipping than Amazon and Jeff Bezos over in Amazon, and we do it because we hire people with different abilities.
  • Brent: I think businesses overlook two of the five pillars, the social and the environmental, and also the community. Maybe you could touch a little bit on the community side of it?
  • Mark: we work with people with different abilities, and we make products that celebrate causes and raise money for those causes.

[00:19:39] Mark: You 

  • Mark: Socks raised money for the National Down Syndrome Society. We work with the local schools, we host school tours, we get involved in the local chamber of commerce, and it turns out to be good for business.
  • Brent: I get that, and I volunteer for a running organization that helps incarcerated, formerly incarcerated people start changing their lives through running. The community aspect is even more important than the running part, and you have to make sure that you’re maintaining that and being part of it.
  • Brent: Leaders should always try to serve others rather than getting something from them. Mark: Leaders should work for everybody else and give them what they need to succeed.
  • Mark said we were going to sell crazy socks, and John’s Crazy Socks became somewhat anachronistic, but it’s about the joy and the passion and the energy.
  • Mark: When you get tossed ass over heels, you got your north star, and your values help keep you on track. So when we got hit by a pandemic, we knew we had to take care of our colleagues’ health.
  • Mark: We moved our tours online, we made socks to say thank you to frontline workers, we sold masks to spread happiness, and we made healthcare superhero socks to raise $50,000 for the American Nurses Foundation.
  • Mark founded SOS to spread happiness and started a Facebook live show and a podcast. He says that if you know what you are really, you can adapt no matter what the circumstances are.
  • John and Mark are the owners of johns crazy socks, which makes great socks and helps people with different ability. By buying from them, you’re also helping them spread happiness.
  • Please rate this episode wherever you download your podcast and sign up for the Free Joke Project to help promote your business.

Transcript

[00:03:35] Brent: Welcome to Tak Commerce. Today I have John and Mark Cronan. They are, uh, the founders of the Crazy Sox. Anyways, John and Mark, why don’t you do an introduction Tell me, uh, a little bit about yourselves, one of your passions in life. Correct. Any of my mistakes, and tell me, uh, tell me everything. , you 

[00:03:55] Mark: wanna 

[00:03:55] John: introduce us?

[00:03:56] John: Um, my name is John. This my partner, my dad, mark Aswan. Uh, we are John and our mission is spreading 

[00:04:05] Mark: happiness spread and happiness. So we help bring a little happiness, friends passions. You got a lot of passions here. I do dancing. Is that one of them? I 

[00:04:14] John: can’t sing and I do. Um, I, I dancing and I, um, I I love my 

[00:04:22] Mark: dad.

[00:04:23] Mark: Well, that’s a passion of yours, so, okay, so what’s a passion of mine? Uh, completely non-business related. I am a fan of Bob Dylan. Fan is short for fanatic . Um, so I have recently. Well, not that recently embarked on one of the more absurd projects I’ve ever taken on Kevin’s son. I, I started selling out, sending out a Bob Dylan song of the day.

[00:04:54] Mark: Um, and I do a little write up, you know, but it frequently like a thousand words or so. 

[00:04:59] John: Um, he’s son about, 

[00:05:02] Mark: uh, uh, whatever Bob Dylan song comes to mind that day, and today I’m on day 211. and I suggest to people try to write something for 200 days in a row. ? . 

[00:05:18] Brent: Yeah. It’s not easy. He has 

[00:05:20] John: son, 

[00:05:21] Mark: right? I have sons, yes.

[00:05:23] Mark: What do you want me to say about my sons? He have son and wife. I have a wife too. Yes. I told them I’m talking about one thing. . Come on now. . So Brent wants to know about John’s Crazy Sox. Um, it’s named for you because it was your idea. Give my idea. Um, we started just over six years ago. We just celebrated our six anniversary.

[00:05:50] Mark: Um, born at an necessity. Right. John, you, where were you six years ago? Uh, 

[00:05:55] John: I was at high. . 

[00:05:58] Mark: He was in his last year of school trying to figure out, I’m last year, what do I do next? John has Down Syndrome. There just aren’t a lot of opportunities for people with Down Syndrome. We know you have a lot of entrepreneurs in the audience.

[00:06:12] Mark: John’s a natural entrepreneur. He couldn’t find anything he wanted. He couldn’t find a job. So what’d you say? I want quit. I wanna make one. I’ll make a job. 

[00:06:22] John: What’d you tell me? I told my dad I was gonna be with him. . 

[00:06:27] Mark: So ultimately we just, he suggested we sell socks. We had, he had won these crazy socks his whole life.

[00:06:36] Mark: We said, okay, let’s go test the idea. So we went the lean startup route. We built a website, got a little inventory. We were bootstrapping. Uh, we recently were talking to some students and they said, well, what does bootstrapping. It means you have no money, um, and you gotta make due with what you have. So the only marketing we did was set up a Facebook page.

[00:07:01] Mark: I would take out my cell phone and we made videos. And who was in those videos? I am, 

[00:07:07] John: I’m talking by socks. Socks on my sock. 

[00:07:10] Mark: And we opened on Friday, December 9th, 2016. Yes. Not knowing what to expect. We got 42 orders the first day. , we did home deliveries to people. Most of ’em were local. Um, and after two weeks, after that first month, or really two weeks, um, we had 452 waters and we knew we could, we could grow something today.

[00:07:38] Mark: How many different socks do we have? We 

[00:07:40] John: have 4,000 d. 

[00:07:44] Mark: 4,000 socks, which means John here owns the world’s largest sock store in terms of choice, right? Not, we’re not out selling Walmart and the like, um, but we just celebrate our six anniversary, just shipped our 400000th package. Um, we’ve been able to create 34 jobs.

[00:08:05] Mark: 22 of those are held by people with different abilities and, uh, giving back is a big part of what we do. And, and. We’ve now raised $600,000 for our charity partner. So, uh, uh, things have been good so far. 

[00:08:22] Brent: Yeah. That’s awesome. Um, uh, one of the things that, uh, that I prepped you with in the green room, and I noticed, uh, you, you have the banner in the background that’s spreading happiness.

[00:08:33] Brent: Um, I did say that I was gonna tell you a joke and I wanted to just get your feedback on the joke. So before we get into the regular content, I’m gonna tell you a. and then, uh, you just have to tell me if that joke should be free or not. And then as I understand it, you’re gonna tell me a joke as well after, after I tell you the joke.

[00:08:52] Brent: All right, let’s go Brent. So, um, I’m hoping I’m gonna spread some happiness. Um, alright, here we go. What does a building wear a dress?

[00:09:07] Mark: So you tell jokes like 

[00:09:08] Brent: John ? Yes. 

[00:09:11] Mark: I didn’t, 

[00:09:13] John: ah, I don’t think you can charge for that. 

[00:09:16] Mark: I’m not sure You can give 

[00:09:17] John: that 

[00:09:17] Mark: away. . 

[00:09:19] Brent: Well, we just gave it away. Should. Alright, should we do one more? Okay. All right. I’ll do one more. Since, since that one, that one was so successful. Um, a storm blew away 25% of my roof last.

[00:09:33] Brent: Oof

[00:09:36] Brent: I know. That was a, that was, that was even worse. 

[00:09:41] Mark: That is upon worthy of James Joyce, you know? Yes, absolutely. Do you have a joke you 

[00:09:47] John: want to tell? I do. That’s here. Why? Why is Don wear, why has thunder 

[00:09:54] Mark: wear, why does thunder wear. , why does underwear, underwear. Underwear. Okay. I’m not sure if I get it. You know, , sometimes I think you’re speaking a different language.

[00:10:11] Brent: All right. Let, let’s talk a little bit about spreading happiness. Um, tell us, tell us some of the background of that. And, and, and I mean, I, I can, I am, I’m also a believer in spreading happiness, but tell us a little bit about that. . 

[00:10:27] Mark: Well, we are believers that if you wanna lead an organization, you gotta know what you’re about.

[00:10:37] Mark: You gotta know what your purpose is about. Um, and ours is spreading happiness. And so, and how do you, what do you say are the keys to spreading 

[00:10:46] John: happiness? It’s gratitude for 

[00:10:48] Mark: others. Gratitude and do for others. And that drives through everything we. , um, I don’t know, Brent, if you’ve ever been, if you’ve ever had to participate in a mission statement writing exercise, I, I hope not.

[00:11:03] Mark: You know, you go away and you parse the language and you come back and people put it on the wall and no one pays any attention to it. We talk about this every day, and it drives our decision making. It drives our budget process. And it has to then infuse everything we do. So what we’ve done to make that happen is we’ve created a social enterprise.

[00:11:31] Mark: So it’s a slightly different type of business model. We have both the social and the business purpose, and they feed off of each other. And, and really the, the keys for us, it’s, it’s like John says, it’s have an attitude of gratitude and it’s due for others and for us. That’s really about showing what we can do, what, what people with different abilities can do.

[00:11:57] Mark: It’s about giving back, you know, supporting causes. Um, and it’s about making those connections with our customers, you know, so we’re always looking for relationships, not just transactions. We’re looking to create customer experiences. And so what we do all. our, we’re spreading happiness and our customers are spreading 

[00:12:23] Brent: happiness.

[00:12:25] Brent: Yeah, that’s great. I, I’m a, I’m a big believer in the entrepreneurial operating system, so as, as we do eos, it’s called, we have to do mission statements and we have to set up our core values, so absolutely. I’ve gone through that and I’m a big believer in living and working towards your core values and hiring for your core values.

[00:12:43] Brent: That, that’s awesome. Yes. So, 

[00:12:46] Mark: yes. Yeah, go ahead. It. I’m familiar with E os and you know, we, we gotta know our purpose. We have our five pillars. Um, everybody knows that, you know, if you walk around here and you say, what’s the mission? Everybody will be able to tell you and they’ll be able to tell you why their job matters and connects.

[00:13:07] Brent: Yeah, that’s good. So tell, tell me a little bit about, uh, the happiness part. What is it that, um, just, so what is it that you’re doing to promote happiness and how, and I’m assuming it’s happiness for employees and for customers, 

[00:13:20] Mark: for everybody. Right. Um, it was the old Milton Friedman line that, you know, companies and corporations only had an obligation as shareholders.

[00:13:31] Mark: Uh, we believe in a different, will we have an obligation to our colleagues, to our customers, to the community, to the environment, and to our shareholders. Um, you know, I mentioned the five pillars we have. What’s our, what are our five 

[00:13:48] John: pillars? Um, it’s present in hope. Give me back five prior, uh, five prior.

[00:13:54] John: You can love, make partner and make it clear to 

[00:13:58] Mark: work. So, you know, you ask how you do that happiness. Well, it’s gotta start here. It’s gotta start with our colleagues. We have to make this a great place to work, and we could dive into how we do that, but much of it is about making sure we offer people mission worthy of their commitment, making sure everybody knows why their job matters.

[00:14:19] Mark: Putting people in a position that succeed, recognizing what they do, um, making it personal. We sell online, but we’re always looking to create a personal connection with our customers. It’s, it’s exemplified by our packaging. What, what do you put in every 

[00:14:38] John: package? Every package Get, uh, taken there from me and Candy.

[00:14:43] Mark: So when you buy from us, right? You, you as a customer, you, you’re gonna get great socks. We’ve got 30,005 star reviews. But you are helping us employ people with different abilities. You help us give back. You help us spread happiness that’s embodied in the package. So when you get a package from us, you see John’s smiling face in the outside, you open it up, you get your socks, you get a thank you note from John.

[00:15:12] Mark: On the flip side of that is the story of John’s Crazy Socks. You get a package of candy and on the packing slip you see the picture and the. Of the person who picked your on. So you are not just getting socks, you’re getting this little dose of happiness. Right. That’s, that’s one, that’s one of the ways we do it.

[00:15:36] Brent: That’s good. I’m also a believer in that, uh, happiness has to start with the organization. It has to start with the staff and the staff then bring it out to the customers. It can’t happen the other way around if. A bunch of crabby staff, you’re, you’re never gonna have happy customers. Now how are we gonna 

[00:15:50] John: spread 

[00:15:51] Mark: happiness?

[00:15:51] Mark: Right. And it’s, and it relates, you know, we see it in the way people work here. Um, they believe in what we’re doing and they’re committed. So they go the extra distance for our customers, right? And it, and it frames the relationship. You know, you, you’ve heard the line, the customer is always right. Nonsense.

[00:16:14] Mark: The customer can be dead. , but we’re not in the business of being right. We’re in the business of making that customer happy, so we’ll do anything we can. We, the people that work directly with customers, their, their title is Happiness Creator. They know they can spend 200 hours on any customer for any reason at any.

[00:16:38] Mark: We give things away. We refund money. Um, we give a guarantee, a two year guarantee of happiness. You know, two years you’re happy with the socks. At any point, you’re not, you don’t have, we don’t want your socks back. We’ll make it up to you and, but here’s the thing. Here’s why it’s good business. What do we get out of that?

[00:16:59] Mark: We get happy employees. We get happy customers, we get loyal customer. and our return rate, our refund rate is less than 0.3 of 1%. Right. It’s good business. So they’re great stocks as well. Yeah, you have to, the social mission matters, you know, when people, frequently they want to talk to us about hiring people with different abilities or the giving back, but at its core we have to be at great e-commerce.

[00:17:34] Mark: You gotta have a great website, you gotta have great selection. The products have to be great, and the service has to be great. So we do same day shipping. An order comes in today, it’s going out today. You’re gonna get it right away. We frequently hear from new customers how surprised they were and how quickly they got their product.

[00:17:53] Mark: We do better shipping than Amazon and Jeff Bezos over in Amazon. He’s not putting a thank you note in candy in his packages. Right? It’s. And we do that in part cuz we want to show why it makes business sense to hire people with different abilities. So we’re able to achieve this because of whom we hire.

[00:18:16] Mark: Um, and we want, we want the world to see that. . 

[00:18:19] Brent: Yeah, I, you mentioned the five pillars, and I’m gonna just point out to ’em from that. Often businesses, I, I feel like businesses overlook at least two of them. The social and the environmental. Certainly there’s a lot of businesses that focus on environmental.

[00:18:32] Brent: I think there’s less businesses that’s focus on the social. And then you did, you mentioned community as well. I think a lot of businesses, especially business owners, tend to overlook the community side of it. Maybe you could touch a little bit. On the community side of it. And then, and we, if we have some time, we could talk a little bit about the environmental and the social.

[00:18:53] Brent: So social. Well 

[00:18:54] Mark: let’s talk about community and defining community. So part of our community are working with people with different abilities and so we’ll do that’s important to. So we make products that celebrate causes, raise awareness and raise money for those causes. And we, and, and that also drives our giving back.

[00:19:18] Mark: So in that community, we started by pledging 5% of our earnings to the Special Olympics. And, and why the Special 

[00:19:26] John: Olympics? I, I pick Athlete 

[00:19:29] Mark: John’s been doing Special Olympics for 21. No Special Olympics. There’s no Johns Crazy socks, but, but we have these awareness socks. What was the first awareness sock?

[00:19:39] Mark: You 

[00:19:40] John: created Down Awareness 

[00:19:42] Mark: Socks. And they raised money for the National Down Syndrome Society. So that’s part of the community. What can we do to advocate? What can we do to support them? But there’s also the local community and we’ve gotta be good. And we call it corporate citizens. So we work with the local schools.

[00:20:03] Mark: We host school tours coming through here in work groups. We’ve had more than a thousand students come through here on tours. You, we get involved in the local chamber of commerce. Um, we get involved in our local towns and the local community cuz we have a presence. This is where we live. And I, I think that’s important, uh, that, that you play that role.

[00:20:28] Mark: It comes back to spreading happiness. , what can we do for others? The more we do for others, the better off we are. And then, oh, by the way, it turns out to be good for business because people know us. So they order direct and we, we, we sell to other businesses. So we get companies calling us up because they want custom socks or they want to give packaging services.

[00:20:51] Mark: We offer, or we’ve created a a, uh, a charity fundraising program. Uh, it was great for, for nonprofits and so PTAs and special education PTAs like that. And I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to sell stuff, but you were asking, you know, why do you do this? Um, that’s why it’s 

[00:21:12] Brent: all of a whole. , you know, I, I get that. Uh, I, I volunteer for a running organization that helps incarcerated, formerly incarcerated people, uh, start changing their lives through running.

[00:21:24] Brent: And one of the things that we’ve noticed is that the community aspect, the fact that you’re talking to somebody and sometimes you’re spending an hour or two hours with them, that that community is even more important than the running part. The running part is just a byproduct of the community. Right. Um, and I, I, I.

[00:21:43] Brent: Y you’re saying you’re, you’re telling the same story that the community is, is maybe as important as the business itself and, and making sure that you’re maintaining that and being part of it. You’re not just sitting there in your own little perch. 

[00:21:58] Mark: No. It’s our, our overall strategy is drive the mission that drives our brand and that drives sales.

[00:22:10] Mark: But it starts with that focus on, on others, you know, on what can we do for others, what can we do for you? If we have that focus, the business will follow and it’s more sustainable. 

[00:22:25] Brent: Um, I I, I just want to key on that. So what can I, what, what can we do for you? I think a lot of times, um, a, a lot of times business leaders often get that back.

[00:22:38] Brent: Especially with their own team, they’re saying to their team, what can you do for me? Right. As a, as a leader, I think the, the trajectory should be, as a leader, you’re always trying to serve others rather than trying to get something from others. It’s, 

[00:22:55] Mark: you know, you talk about servant leadership and if you, if you ask about our role, well, some of our role is to set the vision and the tone in the overall direction, but other.

[00:23:07] Mark: It’s to serve everybody else. I work for everybody else here. My job is to put them in a position to succeed and to give them what they need. Oh man. 

[00:23:20] Brent: That, yeah, I just, 

[00:23:21] Mark: yeah, go ahead. I think that’s the type of leadership we need. It’s, it’s not about self-aggrandizement. It’s not about beating your chest.

[00:23:31] Mark: It’s about what can I do for others because that multipl. The impact. And that’s really what lets us get things done. 

[00:23:41] Brent: Uh, talk, just take a few minutes and talk about just the name John’s Crazy Socks. Where did you come up with the name? I mean, I know John is sitting there. What your name? I’m 

[00:23:53] Mark: John. John. Um, he’s the one who came up with the name.

[00:23:57] Mark: He said, we’re gonna sell crazy socks. John’s Crazy Socks. Um, we have upon occasion, , we thought that a little bit because of negative mental health implications. But in the end, even if it says become somewhat anachronistic, it’s about the joy and the passion and the energy. Um, and it’s John, right? Yeah. Dad, I did suggest Mark’s Murray sauce for Mark Sirius socks, but that was going nowhere.

[00:24:33] Brent: Yeah. Mark Sirius socks doesn’t have the same ring, does it? Um, so if, if you have, um, if you had a little piece of nugget or some kind of advice, I hate the word, we don’t use the word advice usually in entrepreneurship or in our preneur group. We’d like to, we like to say we don’t should on people. We like to share experience.

[00:24:53] Brent: If you could share your experience on helping others understand why those five pillars are so important in your business. Is, is there anything that, that you could offer somebody to get started? 

[00:25:07] Mark: I, I do. I, you have to. I, I, I believe this. You have to know what you are about. You have to know what your purpose is.

[00:25:16] Mark: That becomes your north star and your values help keep you on track. So when you get tossed ass over heels, as you will be, you got your North star, you know where you’re going. Well, here’s a concrete example. So we roll into 2020, and then you may have heard, we get hit by a pandemic, right? It was awful.

[00:25:45] Mark: For our business, it cost us hundreds of thousands of times. What do you do? Well, as long as you know what you are about, you’re gonna be able to steer the weight. . So we knew first we had to take care of our colleagues. We could stay open, but we had to make sure we took care of everybody’s health, particularly because so many of our colleagues were vulnerable.

[00:26:09] Mark: Then you say, okay, how do we adapt to this? Well, we do a lot of speaking engagements. We moved those online. We moved our tours online. Turns out that opened the. . We now have student groups from around the world come and take tours. Um, we make socks. What could we do? Well, we made healthcare superhero socks to say thank you to frontline workers, and those raised over $50,000 to the American Nurses Foundation’s Covid 19 fund, because we knew what we were about.

[00:26:48] Mark: But then you also say, all right, well our mission is spreading happiness. How do we do. In a pandemic. Well, we did something new. We sold mask. But how do you spread happiness? So what do you do every Tuesday 

[00:27:03] John: afternoon? Uh, every Tuesday I hold, I dance, pray every, every Tuesday. Um, Is the time 

[00:27:11] Mark: he hosts an online dance party.

[00:27:13] Mark: Yes. What better way to spread happiness. And we started a Facebook live show. You know, a voter shut down. How can we reach people? How can we share some happiness? And that’s, we still do that. And that’s evolved also, we now have a podcast. Um, so you don’t immediately say you’re a sock company, you should have a dance party.

[00:27:36] Mark: But if you know what you are really. , then you can adapt no matter what the circumstances are. Right? And and for us, yes, we’re the world’s largest sos but at the end of the day, we’re not really a soman. The SOS become the physical manifestation for the mission and the story. 

[00:28:04] Brent: Yeah, I like that. Um, John and Mark, as, as we close out the podcast, they give everybody a chance to do a shameless plug about anything you’d like.

[00:28:14] Brent: What would you like to plug today? 

[00:28:17] Mark: Well, where, ask for your support. Where can people find us? 

[00:28:22] John: I’ll go at john’s crazy 

[00:28:24] Mark: socks.com. Johns crazy socks.com. And here’s the thing, if you buy from us, you’re gonna get great sock. You’re gonna get whenever you want because we have such great choice. But more than that, you’re gonna help us hire people with different ability.

[00:28:43] Mark: You’re gonna help us get back and most of all, you’re gonna help us spread happiness. So that’s as shameless as we get. 

[00:28:51] Brent: That’s awesome. Thank you so much. Uh, John and Mark, I will put all these also in the show notes so they can find john’s crazy socks.com as a link as part of the podcast. And it has been a pleasure to speak to you today.

[00:29:06] Mark: Well, thank you very much. 

[00:29:08] John: Thank you so much.

Thank you for making it to the end of this episode of Talk Commerce. Please rate this episode wherever you download your podcast. We are actively looking for people to participate in the Free Joke Project. Go to talk hyphen commerce.com and sign up for your free spot on the Free Joke Project. If you are a business, I will do a 32nd elevator.

In the spot to help promote your business. That’s talk hyphen commerce.com.

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Talk-Commerce-Laura Boyd

Leading a Culture of Trust with Laura Boyd

We are at a time when organizations are changing, and leadership is changing from a command control environment. Brent and Laura discuss the changing landscape of how leaders lead and how times are changing.

In this episode, we talk about accountability and how important it relates to communication in leadership. The leader has to be accountable to their team. Leaders can learn more about how a culture of trust is one of the most important aspects of today’s work culture.

Business leaders may think that all the recent layoffs are giving them opportunities for more hires, but the truth is that we are still seeing historically low employment. Now enjoy this episode of Talk Commerce with Laura Boyd.

What you will learn from this podcast

It’s about helping people with their resolutions, and it’s about having a culture where we’re helping one another and being accountable to one another.

  • Leadership is changing from a command control environment to a culture of trust.
  • Accountability is just as important as communication.
  • Technology allows for both good and bad connectivity.
  • Leaders need to have the confidence to be vulnerable.
  • Competence, compassion, integrity, and an emotional bank account are important for building trust.
  • Have open conversations and call each other out when needed.
  • External facilitators can help create a culture of accountability. Don’t burn bridges during exit interviews.
  • Use cultural assessments to gauge buy-in.
  • Have a Fresh Start program to help people with their resolutions.

Tweet about it.

Brent and Laura discuss how leadership is changing and how accountability is just as important as communication. #Leadership #Accountability @LeadershipLaura

Laura explains that to build trust, you need to have competence, compassion, integrity, and an emotional bank account. #Trust #Compassion @LeadershipLaura

Laura suggests holding a focus group to find out what is it that we’re doing well and what is it that we’re not. #FocusGroup #Feedback @LeadershipLaura

Laura: We want this open conversation, but you don’t have to be an ass, if I can say that. #Conversation #Culture @LeadershipLaura

Laura: We have a Fresh Start program that you can sign up for at the beginning of every year. #FreshStart @LeadershipLaura

Transcript

[00:00:00] Ruth: We are at a time that organizations are changing and leadership is changing from a command control enviroment. Brent and Laura discuss the changing landscape of how leaders lead and how times are changing. Brent what else did you talk about in this episode?

[00:00:12] Brent (2): Ruth, we talked about how accountibility is just as important as communication in leadership. The leader has to be accountable to their team.

[00:00:20] Ruth: Thanks Brent, I will add that in this episode leaders can learn more about how a culture of trust is one of the most important aspects in todays work culture. Business leaders may think that all the recent layoffs are giving them opprotunities for more hires but the truth is that we are still seeing historic low employeement. Now enjoy this episode of Talk Commerce with Laura Boyd.

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Improve your Google ranking and conversion rates and make your customers happy. Learn more@hyv.io. That’s H Y V a.io. My name is Brent Peterson and I’m your host. Please remember to subscribe wherever you download your podcasts and now talk commerce.

[00:02:52] Brent: Welcome to Talk Commerce. Today I have Laura Boyd. She is the CEO and founder of Leadership Delta. Laura, go ahead and give us a better introduction that I just gave and maybe one of your passions in.

[00:03:04] Laura: Excellent. Thank you Brent. I appreciate it. And I do have to say Brent is my brother’s name, so it should be easy for me to remember. So yes. My name is Laura Boyd, and I can give you a quick background. I have been in sales and marketing basically my whole career. Seven years ago, walked out and was trying to figure out what am I gonna be when I grow up?

[00:03:25] Laura: And what I realized is I have a really strong passion for growing organizations through leadership. And I am a strong believer in the fact that leaders make a difference in the organization and the culture. And so I wanted to build an organization for myself that could help other organizations thrive in a human centered culture.

[00:03:47] Laura: that would help them grow from the inside out. So that’s what we’ve been doing. Great. 

[00:03:53] Brent: Perfect. And one of you, you have a passion that you follow or, oh gosh, 

[00:03:57] Laura: When you own your own business, do you have time for passions? I don’t know. The only thing I could think of is I love working out and now I am a new empty nester.

[00:04:07] Laura: And so pickleball has become, Quite a phenomenon in, in with my husband and I. So I guess I’d say that’s my passion. I don’t know that. No, 

[00:04:16] Brent: that’s great. Yeah, pickleball. I I tried it a couple years ago and it was super fun. I haven’t en, I haven’t embraced it specifically, but I do enjoy playing pickleball.

[00:04:24] Brent: Laura, I know that we, in our green room, we had a quick talk about participating in the free joke project. So I’m just gonna tell you a joke and. And this one is it’s, we’re not going to, we’re gonna do this one as a, is this gonna help our work culture or is this going to lead into a worse work culture?

[00:04:41] Brent: And I found a specific joke just for this, so here we go. Excellent. I phoned my work this morning and said, sorry, boss, I can’t come in today. I have a we cough. He said, you have a, we cough. Really. Thanks, boss. See you next week.

[00:05:01] Laura: Oh, Brent. I’m trying to, I’m gonna see this one. It might hinder the culture. I think it might hinder it. I’m just saying 

[00:05:15] Brent: Yeah. Feel like we need we’ve Yeah, I think you’re right. And I, my, my delivery wasn’t the greatest. And and I think we could have used some kind of dramatic music around that one as well.

[00:05:24] Laura: maybe next time. Next time. The dramatic music. 

[00:05:27] Brent: I agree. All right, so let’s I know today we want to talk about a little bit about work culture and some topics around, around that. Why don’t you tell us your story, give us a little intro on your story and why this has become such a passion for you.

[00:05:41] Laura: , thank you this has become a passion for me because I think that we 

[00:05:46] Ruth: are in this transition of organizations leading from a command and control environment. 

[00:05:56] Laura: And I work with a lot of manufacturers, so I think that is how they have raised the generation of leaders that are there currently.

[00:06:04] Laura: It’s been very much a command and control type of scenario. Not negative or positive, but that’s just how it has been. But yet we have raised the next generations coming up in a different a transformational or more of a high performing type of generat. . So you’ve got leaders within organizations that have grown up in this command and control, and then you’ve got the new generation of leaders that are coming in from a high performing transformation type of background and how they’re raised and there’s a clash.

[00:06:39] Laura: And so it’s really interesting because you’ll have some people in this the current leadership who will call me and they’ll say, Hey, Laura, we have a problem with. Do you think you can come fix Bob? And I love that because we all know it’s never just usually, I shouldn’t say not never, but usually it’s not just Bob.

[00:07:03] Laura: It usually is the culture that has exuded and now there’s this clash. And so they don’t know how quite to deal with some of the consequences of bad behavior or desired behavior. . And so they build these cultures and they say, these are our values. These are the great things that we have in our organization.

[00:07:23] Laura: Oh, except for Bob. And so they don’t know how to reframe Bob and redirect him or say, this is not our desired culture anymore, and so you’re no longer the right fit. Now we can use it in a different capacity maybe, but not to lead other people. So that’s what we’re in is this transit. I got my master’s in organizational leadership in the late nineties, so I was like one of the first classes to get the organizational leadership bandwagon. And I love it because I think leadership hasn’t really changed that much to be honest. You could go back to, from my personal idea is you can go back biblically, right?

[00:08:01] Laura: I All the way. And it hasn’t really changed that much if you look at it. And so that was something that I was very passionate about, is how do you connect that human-centered leadership to move this transitional generation from here to here? That was a really long answer, but that is exactly what I love doing.

[00:08:23] Brent: So have two follow up on that. The first one is, do you think that there’s a, there’s gotta be some kind of a transformation in leading, in how we lead leaders, right? And that new leaders are going to be more in tuned with what the millennials, the people that are signing up for the great Reg resignation.

[00:08:40] Brent: The new leaders are gonna be more in tune to that. Do you think there’s a, there’s gonna be. Is there an issue with how the old guard is now bringing in the new leaders and how those new leaders are seeing what should be done and, but they’re not the original aren’t on board with that?

[00:08:57] Brent: Or do you think there’s a disparity in there? 

[00:09:01] Laura: I think this is the 

[00:09:03] Brent: question ahead. Okay. . 

[00:09:03] Laura: So here’s one thing I will say. So just because somebody has, I think you had said the old guard, but I think more of the command and control type of leaders, many of them are shifting so that transformation is happening.

[00:09:19] Laura: But there are still some that aren’t. And I think those are some of the leaders that the culture is trying to figure out, how do we change this? not possible. Or how do we get this person out? And so there are some transformational leaders within the current leader structure. And so I don’t know if that, if I answered that question the right way, is that what you’re asking me, Brent?

[00:09:46] Laura: Or is there a follow 

[00:09:47] Brent: up question on that? Yeah, I think a lot of times we look at how we’re leading and we look at the people where we are leading and that we don’t we discount the person who’s the leader because they’re, maybe they’re not in tune with the, I don’t know, the hierarchy of how the organization should happen, but I think the underlying thing that I heard in your, in what you’ve said earlier, , they’re not matching our culture and neither the culture changed or somebody hired him not to match the culture.

[00:10:16] Brent: I think that’s probably more of a root cause in that. . And how would you say to leaders that have that problem and is it a new problem or is it something recurring? 

[00:10:28] Laura: So I do think that every generation you’re gonna have a transformation or a transition technology. , as we all know, it transitions cultures and it transit transitions organizations.

[00:10:39] Laura: I do think that people forget about the culture when they are hiring, and especially today because we need people. And so sometimes wego ah, they don’t really fit, but close enough. And so then we hire ’em and they don’t fit at all. And then they end up leaving and they’re like, oh, why did they leave?

[00:10:59] Laura: I don’t understand. I do think that it is something that happens on a cyclical basis. I do think that cultures do change and the leaders have to change with it. And some of those leaders are able to do it, and some of ’em. One of the things I do want to bring up is that I’m talking more about the current leaders titled leaders, right?

[00:11:20] Laura: I think everybody can be leader, but the titled leaders, I’m talking more about them and we often say cuz they’ve always done it this way. They don’t want to change all of those kinds of things. The, I think part of the challenge is this next generation of leaders doesn’t give grace.

[00:11:38] Laura: They’re not very open to hearing, this is how we’ve done things. So there’s a little bit of a clash because we’ve raised them to push the envelope. Do this, do that. Be perfect. Focus on one thing, go after it. Whatever you want is yours. And a lot of times they don’t give enough grace, I think, to the current titled leaders.

[00:12:03] Laura: And that is a challenge too. And they have to know that too. 

[00:12:08] Brent: Yeah, no, that’s a really good point. On that. Maybe new leadership isn’t listening enough or it doesn’t have the concerns of the higher, I don’t know how to describe them, but the ones that are running the higher ups are setting the tone and there’s a shift, but maybe we need to have a more of a conciliatory view on how that shift is happening.

[00:12:28] Brent: Right, 

[00:12:29] Laura: absolutely. I agree with that 100%. I do call ’em titled leaders because I think you can be a leader wherever you’re at, doesn’t matter where you’re at in the organization, but these are the titled leaders. And so I, but I agree. Just as much as the titled leaders need to have compassion, the next generation of leaders need to have compassion.

[00:12:50] Laura: How do think help We forget about that. 

[00:12:52] Brent: Sorry. Yeah. How do you, no. How do you help people describe their culture? I think a lot of. The leader can’t even describe their culture. How do you get that into everybody? , so everybody is on the same page in terms of culture. 

[00:13:07] Laura: Yeah. So we actually, it’s interesting because when you have worked at an organization, let’s say 30 years, 20 years, 15 years, and you’re at this titled leader position, you see the culture differently than maybe somebody that comes in at more of a entry level position.

[00:13:23] Laura: And so what we do is we talk. if the more you can talk about culture and the more you can talk about desired behaviors, being part of that culture, the openness to doing it isn’t gonna make it be a taboo subject. If I continue to talk about culture and the, I’m working with an organization, we talk about the culture of accountability and leader.

[00:13:46] Laura: because accountability, I swear that comes up number one right next to communication as a challenge for organizations. And so this one organization I’m working with, we talk about culture of accountability and leadership. What does that mean to you? And so what we’ve done is we’ve taken we’re at about 450 employees from the leadership team all the way through frontline Super.

[00:14:13] Laura: and we’ve had that same conversation because we’re trying to create that. It’s not a taboo subject, let’s talk about it. It’s just culture. What is it that we want it to look like? How do we want to treat each other? What are our guiding principles? And so the more we can talk about it, the less taboo it feels and seems.

[00:14:32] Laura: And sorry, Brent, one more thing is there has to be consequences for people that are outside of a desired behavior. , there has to be consequences. Doesn’t mean it’s a termination, but something otherwise it’s not gonna matter. This particular organization, somebody came in and blew a gasket to five of his team members and in an appropriate way, and he actually was terminated and so that’s no longer how they wanted to operate in their culture.

[00:15:05] Laura: Now may it have, it maybe had worked 15 years ago, maybe. But not today. 

[00:15:10] Brent: Let’s just say the leader doesn’t, is talking the talk, but they’re not walking the walk. How do you get some accountability in leadership if they’re saying to be this way, but the leaders are demonstrating something different in a culture?

[00:15:23] Brent: Is that just that, is that just straight up toxic and it’s gonna lead to ruin ? 

[00:15:28] Laura: No, I don’t think it’s gonna lead to. I do think, this is why I think outside consultants or facilitators where there really isn’t any what’s the word I’m looking for? Not fear, but where it gives me the opportunity to say, is that really what you wanted to say?

[00:15:44] Laura: And I will call people on things in an appropriate manner, but I don’t have any skin in the game, so it’s easy enough for me to do. And that’s when we work with the leadership. throughout the process as we’re going from, top down across all of that. But working with that leadership team, cuz it has to start at the top.

[00:16:03] Laura: This is where the decisions get made at the titled leadership, but you have these centers of influence within it. So you’ve gotta figure out who are those people that are influencing either toxic or positive or, so you have to figure out from a social architect standpoint, what that looks like.

[00:16:24] Laura: So yes, I think it’s having those open conversations. I think it’s about the leadership team calling each other on things, and I am seeing that is happening and I think we’ve got a great group of current titled leaders. I think we’ve got a handful that aren’t amazing, but it really takes each person individually.

[00:16:47] Brent: Yeah, I think that’s a great point. We implemented e. Oh sure. About five, six years ago and having an implementer there was key to the success because nobody could push, or nobody could. It’s easy for a leader to not be accountable to something that they don’t want to be accountable to, cuz they’re the top of the food chain.

[00:17:04] Brent: It’s easy for that. If you’re talking about the culture, how do you not, how do you focus on the culture rather. focus on control of the culture. 

[00:17:17] Laura: Tell me more what you mean by that. 

[00:17:20] Brent: So you wanna make sure that you’re watching the culture, but you also don’t want to focus too much on control of the culture because the culture should be something.

[00:17:30] Brent: Built grassroots, right? Ideally your culture would come from the bottom up and the top down. . Is it a problem if leadership is trying to exert too much control over the culture and then in turn pushes a bunch of people out? 

[00:17:44] Laura: And that’s how you’ll know that leadership is trying to control it too much if people are leaving.

[00:17:49] Laura: I do believe though, when you look at high performing organiz. . There are five areas in the middle that they have direct control over, and the leadership team and the senior managers in that group, they actually own the strategy and the culture. It doesn’t mean that nobody has input and collaboration and all of that, but they own the strategy and the culture.

[00:18:11] Laura: That is what they’re responsible for. The rest of the organiz. Focuses on the structure, the systems, and the processes. And what they do is they bring that to the leaders and they allow them to make the choices. So they say, this isn’t working, this is working. Here’s how. It’s that kind of up and down, exactly what you said, but really the ownership for the strategy and the culture belong within the leadership teams. 

[00:18:42] Brent: Just going back to eos and EOS for the people who don’t know is entrepreneur operating system. So it’s a way of running your business or a systematic way. I one of the, it’s a systematic way and it is based on hiring people for their core values. And one thing that we do every quarter is working isn’t working.

[00:18:59] Brent: And I think one thing that maybe we miss out on, and I’ve heard you say this earlier, was how does that not working? tie in with the culture of the company, and then taking that one step further, how does it tie in with the core values? How do you help companies make sure that isn’t working ties in with culture, which should tie in your, to your core values?

[00:19:21] Laura: For one thing, and I know EOS has this too, I, I’m a firm believer that the entire strategy and the values and everything should be on one. , like there’s a focus area. This is how we do things. These are our guiding principles, right? And so I think if everybody has access to that and it’s communicated and there’s alignment and what that looks like, it’s easier to call someone out on something.

[00:19:47] Laura: If there is alignment, it’s been communicated. Then if you don’t really know or, Hey, I heard this is what our strategy is, or our culture is, but if you don’t have that and you’re not actually communicating it and have that alignment, doesn’t matter. So I think a leader’s role is really to set the vision, right?

[00:20:09] Laura: This is where we’re going build the alignment and then the execution. So those are the three pieces. And again, when I say leader, it could be anybody within the organiz. . But when we’re talking about vision, alignment, and execution, those are the three core pieces of top level leaders that need to address that.

[00:20:31] Laura: And again, I think it’s mostly Brent, it’s consequential challenges that people don’t want to deal with because so many people don’t like conflict and so they don’t, they just like what if I just ignore it? It’ll just go. Or they’re gonna retire in a couple years anyway. We’ve all heard this.

[00:20:48] Laura: So it’s that, and I know EOS has the same thing too. Let’s fix it right now. And if this is not the, get it, want a capacity to have it right. If this is not the right person in the right seat, then let’s find a different seat for this person. They’re very valuable, but maybe not today.

[00:21:04] Laura: And where we need them to. Maybe they were 15 years ago in this position, but not to date. We need their expertise to help us build this technical platform or whatever, to write out what the process is or whatever the situation is. 

[00:21:17] Brent: If a leader is struggling with a culture of trust, and you’d mentioned accountability and communication.

[00:21:24] Brent: How is there some simple steps that a leader could, or leadership team could start to assess that trust factor and then start working on building that trust? 

[00:21:38] Laura: ? Yeah, the, that’s a great question and because trust is a foundation of everything, every relationship you. Is the confidence. Trust is really, that’s the definition, right?

[00:21:49] Laura: Trust is my perception. Trust is the confidence you have in your relationship with others. That’s what trust is, the confidence I have in my relationship with you to do X or to do Y, and to break it down even further, when you talk about trust, it really has to start with me. I need to give trust first. As a leader, I have to be trust.

[00:22:16] Laura: And when you talk about trustworthiness, a lot of that comes from vulnerability, right? And I think that’s part of our challenge as leaders is, I know how we grew up. It was you don’t make a mistake and you just work 70 hours a week, 80 hours a week until it gets done. That’s not what we’re dealing with today.

[00:22:39] Laura: And so we have to have that opportunity to be trusting in our virtual environ. , there’s a lot of trust that has to be given. Like I know that this person is working because I trust that person. And so I think, the trust has to be given first and you have to be trustworthy. And I look at trust as in three areas.

[00:23:02] Laura: One is competence, can they do the job? And two is compassion. Do they have compassion for themselves and others? And giving grace And that type of. Competence, compassion, and integrity, right? Do you do what you say you’re gonna do? And then you have this emotional bank account component of it too. The more you can fill someone’s cup or fill up the emotional bank account, the more likely you can make a mistake and it’s gonna roll right off.

[00:23:35] Laura: But if you are in a negative deficit and you make a mistake or you do something, . It’s hard to build that trust back up. And when you talk about emotional bank account, we work on this, it’s just saying, Brent, thank you so much for a job well done. Or Brent, I really appreciate your expertise. Or Brent, I appreciate you giving me a hand when I needed it.

[00:23:55] Laura: Whatever it is, it’s the small things. It doesn’t have to be this grandiose. Here’s your, million dollars Brent for convers. . It could just be small things that add home. 

[00:24:05] Brent: And so that communication part of it you mentioned the company with 400 employees the leadership team can’t possibly talk to every single one of those employees, or they could, I suppose it would take some time.

[00:24:17] Brent: Is there methods in which that, or maybe you start with a one-on-one and then you move into a more of a scaled version of that. Is there ways to. Leadership, communicate some of those things to get feedback from their team? 

[00:24:32] Laura: I do think that it is important for them to have access to the leadership team, people the organization, to have access to ’em. Now, this one-on-one gets a little tricky because it’s just time. Time is of the essence, right? So I think when you do the connectivity, it could just be a town hall. , it could be that opportunity where I’m gonna, there’s three of us this month or this quarter, whatever.

[00:24:54] Laura: We’re gonna do a town hall meeting. Put your, send your questions in. That’s an option. Another one is when we go throughout the organization and build out the leadership development series, we have different leaders come in and do the introduction. So when they’re talking when they’re in front of the hundreds of people that are going through the program.

[00:25:14] Laura: They’re doing the introduction, they’re connecting with everybody at that level. I think that it is a challenge and an opportunity for the leadership team to look at focusing on the business, not in the business. And so when I say that, so many of our leaders tend to be technical experts, and that’s what they enjoy doing.

[00:25:36] Laura: So they like to just stay heads down instead of, that’s not your role anymore. Your role has shift. Where you need to be thinking about the organization as a whole and not just your area. So that’s a shift for some leaders also. But that, I do think that there’s a lot of opportunity. I Technology today has allowed for really nice connectivity and really bad connectivity too, cuz you can take everything out of context and you put your own story, thought or meaning behind something and it could blow up.

[00:26:07] Laura: And that’s oh, that’s not even what I meant. Technology’s good and bad, as always. Kurt Vank talks about that in his books in the fifties. But anyway, don’t get me started on that. 

[00:26:15] Brent: You mentioned a little bit about retention and, how we need to be attentive to the cultural needs.

[00:26:22] Brent: If there’s a high turnover. How do you get the new people involved in culture? 

[00:26:30] Laura: So if there is a high turnover, that’s a data. . So that is something where I think immediately some sort of focus group pulling out different people to have that conversation and finding out what is it, if we’ve got this culture laid out on our wall yet, we’re not living by it, we need to figure out what’s the gap.

[00:26:52] Laura: So what is it that we’re doing well and what is it that we’re not? . Right? So we talk a lot about what do you want us to stop doing? What do you want us to start doing, and what do you want us to continue to do? That’s a thousand years ago people have been talking about that, but it’s that ha that’s, it’s actually having that conversation.

[00:27:10] Laura: You’ll learn so much from the team members. But again, I think you need an outside person to come in and do it, because I think if you’ve got somebody from the inside and you’ve lost all these people, there’s a little bit. Fear paradigm they might be living in. I don’t know if I wanna share that. So is it’s easier to have somebody from the outside come in.

[00:27:30] Laura: Sorry, Brent. 

[00:27:31] Brent: No, it’s okay. Is there an easy way in an extra interview to get a leaving employee to talk about some of those? What’s not working? Okay. 

[00:27:41] Laura: So here’s how I think that most people see exit interviews. Most people, some people will share. a challenge, but don’t burn bridges. How often have we heard that?

[00:27:52] Laura: Don’t burn your bridges. Okay. So if that’s sitting in the back of your head, are you going to be truthful in what you wanna share? I don’t know. And quite honestly, the exit interview is passe we need to get in front of these people before they get to an exit interview, before they terminate and get to an exit interview.

[00:28:11] Laura: We need to get to connect with them ahead of. . 

[00:28:15] Brent: Yeah. That’s, that’s a really good point. Getting it before they quit. Is there something in the great resignation that has changed so much that maybe leaders aren’t understanding that?

[00:28:28] Laura: I think the great designation from everything I’ve read, I know that there are a lot of different opinions on it. I think the great resignation was a time when people. Reevaluated their life and what they wanted to be doing. And so a lot of times it wasn’t necessarily about the culture of the organization, but perhaps more about the role or that they wanted to do something different with their lives.

[00:28:58] Laura: Or they decided, I’m done. I’m retiring, we got enough money. This is how I wanna live. I. , I don’t wanna work anymore. It’s too stressful. Whatever the scenario is, I think people got the opportunity to take a step back and look at their lives and evaluate their lives. So that’s my take on it from everything I’ve read.

[00:29:17] Brent: I think that’s a really good point. I think that some leaders have now taken the opportunity as an excuse for high turn. and they just point to that the industry standard is now whatever it is, 60% turnover, some crazy high number . But I do feel as though there’s a place that we can find common ground.

[00:29:38] Brent: A as we, as you started out with, we can find common ground with the whole team to build a culture that. Do you think that we have to start shifting? I guess we, if everybody’s leaving, there has to be, there has to be a shift in culture. And if your attrition rate is so high that it’s affecting productivity.

[00:29:55] Brent: Cause I think also that pro productivity and retention are the two highest things that can lead to profitability. . So having some focus on that is gonna, one of the most important things a leadership team should examine. How would you say that

[00:30:11] Brent: you get feedback from the team and also you mentioned the in it’s too late in the exit interview, anonymizing some of these things. So the old idea of having. Little thing next to the time clock where people can put in their anonymous feedback. Is that a good idea? 

[00:30:30] Laura: I go back and forth on that because I would hope that people are in a culture where they can have those conversations, and that’s what I would say most people would wanna get to.

[00:30:42] Laura: I think this generation of leaders that’s coming. That is gonna be something that’s important to them, and they’re gonna build cultures out like that. I just think of my own kids who are in college and I just, I think they have such a different mindset that it will get to that point where they’re just speaking truth, right?

[00:31:01] Laura: They’re just speaking, but it’s about the delivery, which goes back to the emotional intelligence. It’s about delivery. So we want this open conversation, but you don’t have to be an ass, if I can say that. The air , you just don’t have to be that way. It’s about being curious. It’s about having connection.

[00:31:21] Laura: So I think that hopefully we’ll move to that point where we’re having more conversations and more open conversations where there isn’t that fear paradigm that necessarily living. 

[00:31:34] Brent: All right, we’re running out of time, but one last question is, I know back, going back to us as a people analyzer, it would be great to have a Culture Analyzer tool.

[00:31:44] Brent: Do you know of anything like that to say, so you could, somebody could objectively this isn’t working. How can we apply each of our core values to that not working and run it through the tool and come back with a number? ? 

[00:31:57] Laura: Yeah. What’d be great? There’s a, an analyzer, an assessment for everything, Brent, you know that to be true.

[00:32:03] Laura: So there’s one that, I think it’s university of Michigan I wanna say is working, there’s an Ohio, anyway, sorry. But they’re working on a cultural assessment. There are a lot of ’em out there. Actually, when I started the business seven years ago, I was thinking of going down this path with an organization that, that’s what they did was cultural assessments.

[00:32:24] Laura: They’ve been out there. I think the challenge that I have with that is that leadership component needs to be there if you don’t have buy-in. Cuz I’m this believer, like you have to have awareness of something like our culture’s not working or what we have on the wall is not what we’re seeing here.

[00:32:43] Laura: So you have to have that awareness and then you have to have the desire to change it. So if the leaders don’t have a desire to change, it doesn’t matter what kind of assessment comes. but you have to have the desire to change it. And then the commitment, what does that look like? So is it bringing people in, having focus groups.

[00:33:01] Laura: It’s not just the pinball machines anymore, it’s really about what’s true about the culture, and that’s the commitment and then practicing and failing. So it’s really pretty easy though. Pretty easy. I say that those four steps, awareness, desire, commitment, and practicing it. 

[00:33:16] Brent: That’s very Laura, as I close out the podcast, I give everybody a chance to do a shameless plug.

[00:33:22] Brent: What would you like to plug today? 

[00:33:24] Laura: We have at the, at the beginning of every year, but it’s our Fresh Start program and it is just a micro version of you can sign up and it’s yours. It’s videos, it’s holding you on track. That’s something to consider. And you can go to leadership delta.com and it’s right there is the opportunity to sign up for that.

[00:33:48] Brent: Great. And I will put all those in the show notes. Laura, this has been a very fun conversation. Should I say enlightening is a good word. Fun and enlightening. How’s that? I. Very enjoyable to talk to you today. Thank you so much. 

[00:34:00] Laura: Thank you, Brent. Take care.

[00:34:03] Ruth: Listen, Brent works hard on this Podcast, he would really appreciate it if you could rate it where ever you download your podcasts. Don’t forget to go to Content Basis dot eye oh and sign up for the content creator beta program. It is a great opprotunity.

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Think about the last time you placed an order on an e-commerce site. You get a confirmation email, and what’s in it? Usually, only shipping and fulfillment information.

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Irina Poddubnaia tells us how her solution helps store owners maximize their transactional emails and turn them into marketing contact points.

Transcript

Brent: Welcome to Tak Commerce. Today I have Irina Pad. Please go ahead, introduce yourself. Pronounce your name the way it’s supposed to be pronounced. Tell us your day-to-day role and may be one of your passions in life. 

Irina: All right. Thank you Brent. My name is Irina Pad. I’m from Bulgaria and I’m the founder of Trackage Dot.

Irina: We help entrepreneurs with post-purchase customer experience. So basically everything that happens after the buy button is Preston in eCommerce store. And when it comes to passions right now it’s public speaking and everything that’s related speak, just speaking and speak and singing as well.

Irina: So that’s one of my passions right now. 

Brent: Oh, awesome. Are you gonna sing for us? . 

Irina: It depends. , we’ll do one thing here, . 

Brent: We’ll leave that, we’ll leave it right to the end. So I did warn you that I have a project called The Free Joke Project, and maybe we should, we could do the free song project next, but we’ll do the free Pro Joke project.

Brent: All I’m going to do is tell you a joke and you can tell me if that joke should be free or if it’s one that we could charge. And since you did mention singing, I found a joke that has at least some reference to singing in it. Here we go. Did you know Mortal Combat is based on an old Scandinavian church song?

Brent: It’s a Finn Hymn.

Irina: That’s a good one. I I don’t know about if you should charge for it, but that’s a good. 

Brent: All right I’ll just one more quick one. Why is Pavlov’s hair so soft? Because he conditions it. Yeah, I know. They’re all really bad. I apologize. All right. So wouldn’t say that 

Irina: they’re bad. I’m just saying that Yeah.

Irina: This is like the hi and intellectual humor. It’s not 

Brent: just like it’s only for sas. That’s, it has to be smart people. All right. So let’s talk about PO I, I’m very interested in post transactional data and how you can get people and we are a magenta agency. My day job is work running a magenta agency and we’ve done a lot of work where in the card after they check after they ac even after they pay.

Brent: We like sometimes would the customers would like to hold that transaction and get ’em to buy something more. So tell us a little bit about your. And how it helps people post transaction. 

Irina: So what we do is basically, so I can just start from the beginning. 

Irina: And why they do that, because the conversion is from five to 10% of extra sales just from looking at the order status. So we helped like we literally just took this functionality and made it available outside of Amazon. So you can plug it into your store. That’s built with Shopify Commerce.

Irina: Magenta is in the plans. We don’t have a direct. , but we do have an integration with Zapier. So it’s possible to pass the data. So what it creates is it creates a tracking page where customers can see additional products the actual information about where order and when it’s coming to them and also the brand and social media accounts and the delivery information, whatever you want to put on the page.

Irina: It’s 100% customiz. And you can change all the bits and pieces of it. So it’s a drag and drop builder where you can literally just customize everything. So one other thing that I didn’t mention is that also those pages, they have localization. So if a customer is from a different country or if you are shipping internationally you can just customize the page with specific language.

Irina: That’s that’s region. Because we support customized emails as well. So emails can be in their local language when the tracking page can be in local language. So the entire thing. So what Trackage does is we are helping the customers not only understand with the like the package is coming to them, but also to see additional products while we’re where.

Irina: Browsing for the information they were actually looking for. So that’s how we help e-commerce stores bridge the communication gap and also lower the customer support load because people don’t have to ask the the question, the fail the question, like, where is my order? Where is my package?

Irina: That overloads customer support and e-commerce, so they don’t have to ask because it’s already answered. . 

Brent: So tell us some numbers. Do you have some hard numbers that kind of show how successful this is in terms of, it brings a lift on post transactional purchases by 10% or 15 or whatever that number is?

Brent: Yeah. And then all the secondary part of that question is, do you rely on discounts or coupons or anything else to bring in or do people just buying. 

Irina: Okay. I can tell you about our numbers currently. First thing that we measured is the open rate for the post-purchase emails that talk about the status of the order.

Irina: So basically we’ve seen the open rates around 60%. So that’s way higher than any marketing emails that you. . Another thing is that like from those emails customers, they visit the tracking pages one or two times per day when they are actually actively waiting for the order. Instead of just going through the email every time they just save the link and they go and visit it one or two times.

Irina: So during that time various sliders so what we’ve seen that then the sliders were. The conversion rate wasn’t that high. It was around like four, 5%, like it was on the lower end, but when they made them animated and they started moving the conversion rate raised to around 12, 10, 10, 12%.

Irina: Customers were actually, when we are waiting for the order, they literally have nothing to do. And they want to get the package repair waiting. But they don’t know how to facilitate that process. So instead, they are li left with just some free time and they start browsing the product.

Irina: And if the products are interesting the customers are buying. So we’ve worked with this influencer. They are creating an animated series. And this katoon gathered a very passionate fan base with free million follow. . It’s called Metal Family. If you want, you can check it out.

Irina: Like very cooling. And they have remarkable sense of humor, , so I would say so, and this fan base they were like when they launched their first comic book they were not prepared to handle like the amount of orders they were going to get because they printed the whole batch of 10,000.

Irina: And it was sold instead of two months. How we were projecting it was sold in one week, and after that they had to fulfill everything and what they’ve seen. So from those 10,000 orders like originally, wasn’t there, but we joined in be middle of this process. So from those 10,000 orders we’ve seen around 7% extra sales.

Irina: So that result around like 700 or that’s exactly what it. And so 700 text orders from the tracking page directly, but then we don’t measure the indirect sales. Some of the customers we were going through the logo to the website, we were going through the social media and then back to the website.

Irina: So that’s like the indirect conversion. So maybe it’s around 15% or something like that because we didn’t have the detailed analytics at that point. And what happened then? , the customers were waiting and instead of writing to customer support like they previously did because metal family, they were overwhelmed with the amount of questions they got.

Irina: Because the customers, they were, again, you can imagine this is a Katoon series. What kind of immature customers were there? So very immature customers were sending messages to all the social media accounts. We knew five messages from one customer, like every. . So they had to ease that pain.

Irina: So we had to ease that pain for them because once the emails started get going out and people were getting proactive communication, they stopped asking the questions and the customer support just co I don’t know, side with relief because all that enormous I don’t know, like a ton of sta questions.

Irina: Like it just went. So after that happened and the last bit of functionality and what we also helped metal family with was getting reviews. So at the end of the purchasing experience when the customer actually gets the order they, they experience this I dunno, like burst of enden when they open the package and they finally see the thing that we ordered.

Irina: And it’s the perfect moment to ask for a review. Because in most cases with what I’ve seen with e-commerce stores, they use just timed automation. So in two weeks there is an email that goes out asking for review. But what if in two weeks your customer hasn’t received the order yet?

Irina: And that happened to me a couple of times when I ordered from China or sometime from us. Like it, literally, like it asked me for a review when I didn’t yet get the product and when I’m fighting with the customs to get it out of , outta the post office. The idea is, so what we did, we configured the automation, the standard one and it started asking for reviews and every fifth customer left the review around five stars.

Irina: So that was 2,150 reviews from 10,000. . That’s enormous, I would say. And those reviews they can be used on the product pages, on the, I mean on the store itself and on social media. So there are a lot of ways how you can capitalize on social proof. 

Brent: So the social is the, is that how you leverage other customers to bring in 

Irina: more customers?

Irina: Yes. And we have one feature that is like the killer feature, but it’s not yet. Then the customer review is four stars and more. I think we’re going to make it configurable so that you can adjust the threshold. So if review is positive we will ask the customer to share it on social media with reach media, for example like video or a photo of them interacting with the product.

Irina: So let’s going to probably get some sales from. I’ve seen some companies that were capitalizing just on oh, you were going to post review anyway. How about you get some like some money from the brand that you’re posting it for? So yeah, there are quite a few companies that are focusing on TikTok commerce.

Brent: Yeah. Are you focusing then on making are, so they get an email and then they go and open up the email to go to this, to, to the custom tracking page or? Custom tracking page that you’re generating automatically there right 

Irina: after checkout. The custom tracking page is going to be available the entire time how it’s set up like technically.

Irina: When the store signs up the trackage and they install one of the apps, or they just configuring integration with like the third party. . We will get the tracking page inside of Trackage and you can create multiple tracking pages. By the way if you are promoting different things or if you have different brands.

Irina: So you can configure tracking pages for every occasion. And the tracking page, it’s standalone. You can put it on your custom domain or you can use trackage domain and you can plug it in anywhere. It’s responsive, so on mobile and on desktop, which works seamlessly. The idea is that page is always there, but the content based on who is looking at that page changes.

Irina: So they can look by the order number or by the tracking number that they got. And if we don’t remember both, they can enter their email and they’re going to get an email from Trackage that’s going to send them their tracking page. So this way we. Just this is a security feature. Because if we were allowing them to just look up any email, that’s not a very secure 

Brent: feature.

Brent: Yeah, that makes sense. I’m interested in your own journey. In your bio that you moved to China without speaking Chinese, and you ran a fulfillment company and then you now. You’ve launched the SAS company remotely without any funding. Tell us a little bit about that journey.

Brent: Like how did you end up in China and then are you back in Bulgaria now? 

Irina: Yes. I’m back in Bulgaria for the last six years. And that journey to China, it started just by me feeling adventurous. I. Because at some point in my life I was just working in an office I was selling frozen berries in bulk.

Irina: So it wasn’t a very exciting job to tell you the, like to tell you the truth. And at that point I thought that I knew everything about commerce and how videos are done because I was selling the. , like ev, everything, like in trucks and even higher amounts. So we, we had never sold any ships, by the way, because that’s a lot but the trucks, yeah.

Irina: And I thought that I understood everything like with bills of lading how the deals are them, how to accept the payments, invoicing, everything. But that wasn’t, When they came to China we found the the variety of suppliers of everything you could imagine. There were literally plazas.

Irina: Those are skyscrapers of like full to the brim with goods of various kinds, like a plaza for smartphone accessories. That’s not an exaggeration where it is a whole city of like smartphone accessories. You could literally just find everything. What we realized at that point was that it’s not about the suppliers, it’s about the customers, because we didn’t have that many customers at that point.

Irina: When when we came to China and we found all the suppliers, we found how to work with them. We figured everything out. We still were forced to understand marketing, to reach out to customers, to do the prospecting selling, and that’s. and that’s how we were surviving. So we figured out the pay dads and it was the full experience because we had to survive based on how well the business performed.

Irina: We didn’t take any funding ever. We didn’t even know what was a possibility. That’s right. . So that’s how my like Chinese adventures came to an end when we lost one of our biggest customers. And then we felt like overwhelmed with all evaporations and like packaging the boxes. Because again, for two and a half years my main occupation was to go to a warehouse to accept the goods, to pack the goods, to ship it to the logistics company, to negotiate with suppliers check.

Irina: And I even stopped speaking English that much just because we were working with Europe and like it wasn’t necessary. And I, like all the time I was exposed to Chinese, so my English kind of went. . So yeah, at some point I realized that’s not what I want to do in life. I wasn’t born to package boxes.

Irina: That’s not something that I want to do. And that’s when this part of with Johnny ended and after that we moved back to Bulgaria. We. like we were. Yeah, at that point we were very discouraged because like we attempted to work, we attempted to create our own business. It wasn’t the next Amazon unfortunately, or even the next early express.

Irina: It wasn’t like. Yeah. And that’s when we realized that we could do something with the tools that we developed for ourselves while we were in. So everything from inventory, acceptance keeping track of all the shipments keeping track of all the orders and yeah, we just wanted to bring all the experience with Beca to a better cause and make it available for our e-commerce entrepreneurs to use.

Irina: So that’s how Trackage was born. And that’s how it’s still there . . 

Brent: Yeah. It’s interesting that a lot of these great there’s a lot of great tools that get developed in-house and then suddenly the entrepreneur who’s selling something realize that they have a great CRM or inventory management or whatever that tool is, that software tool, and suddenly they’ve decided their own, their old business is no good and here’s much better business.

Brent: Do you feel as though. Branching into a whole new culture helped you be more competitive. I just did working in China help you be a better entrepreneur when you went back to Bulgaria? 

Irina: You know what I definitely can say uh, happened is that I lost my like rose tinted glasses. So I started actually looking realistically at the world of business and.

Irina: it’s un like we, like at the beginning of a journey, we lost unfathomable amount of money. Like with just purchasing own goods or just, I dunno, like the logistics partner losing the packages and who knows what else. We experienced all the hardships of working with people that we didn’t know anything about.

Irina: And we didn’t have experience with all those different products that were ordered from us because we literally offered to buy anything from China, from us. And that’s that was probably a mistake right now I realize it was probably a mistake. We should have niche down. We should have just studied with niche, understood the quality requirements found with West suppliers, and then just scaled that.

Irina: But instead, we just went broad and developed the tools instead of developing the. . But again that’s a learning experience. I I will never say that. I’m not glad it happened. And after that I now realize how important that is to understand the customer before the supplier, because there are a lot of suppliers, but the customers, they are the backbone of a business.

Irina: And if you don’t have any sales, you don’t have a. That’s 

Brent: easy. One. One of my experiences with buying products from China is that documentation is often just Google translated. Do you find that same type of, did you find that, say I’m assuming you sold products to Bulgaria and it was maybe they put, they did a Google translate into Bul.

Brent: Into Bulgarian and nobody actually, no humid actually read. read the text. Is that something that is overlooked in China or is it something that that people just don’t think is important? I’m, and I’m just saying specifically language, like we, you get some products that are coming from China that are just translated into English, and it’s clear it was done through a machine.

Brent: It wasn’t nobody actually read it. Who’s an English? 

Irina: Yeah. In case of our deals I was translating everything, so that wasn’t the case. So yes, I did remember when we got some materials, they were very poorly translated. And I did have to, I did have to spend a lot of time to adjust, rewarding and to literally make something out of.

Irina: The cluster of words or keywords that I received as specification. So that was fixed by me, basically. And I remember how we were creating all the documents just because we were requirements of the customs, not because the suppliers provided them from the suppliers. We literally got big thank you and the goods

Irina: That’s all we got from it. So yeah I believe the problem literally exists. But I think with AI tools that are currently on the market, you can adjust that. And the translation tools were also getting better. Then we were in China communication was done just for the mobile phones.

Irina: We were writing in English and showing them some Chinese characters and they underst. I think right now it’s, it would be through Google Speech or something like I’m going to talk to the tool I dunno, Skype maybe. They introduced some on the fly translation. So I think right now it’s much easier to communicate anywhere in the world.

Irina: But at that point it was challenging. 

Brent: So your experience coming outta China and then into Track Ma and. I know one thing you’ve said about Trackage is it helps the merchant put their store more on autopilot. Just can you explain how it, how that works and how it, I know you’ve said that there’s less customer service involved, but it can’t always be a hundred percent autopilot.

Irina: That’s why we’re not saying that 100% of customer support requests are going to be automated because if the customer has a question about the size chart or about the customs clearance or something like something was shipped to wrong location, you still need to have customer support and you need to reply to those customers.

Irina: But all the repetitive questions, the ones that can be answered by robots, Like the, where is my order? The limo request. That that one can definitely be automated. And with automation, literally, nobody’s going to ask you that question because it’s not going to be an issue for the customer.

Irina: They are already going to know when, like, when the order is coming, where is it where is it coming from? I know what carrier it’s shipped through. And also they will have information about the delivery, very funds, whatever information you want to put on the tracking page because the more information you give to your customers will less likely they are going to reach out.

Irina: Whereas some illiterate people who are still going to go to customer support and ask a question, I I totally understand that there is going to be a percentage of people who are still going to not understand what’s going. But that percentage is going to be minuscule compared to the previous amount.

Irina: So that’s just like the customer support side. A lot of automation is also coming from operation side. So for example, with chi, with Chinese suppliers we had to deal with this interesting situation where the supplier is providing you with a tracking number or the information about the.

Irina: But then the tracking number doesn’t have any tracking information, so that means the tracking number is either incorrect or the product has not been shipped. And if for example, this situation is left unattended for a week or two, the customer is going to get anxious, we are going to start asking for very money back.

Irina: So we had to monitor all of that. And that’s how in Trackage we have two counters. They is an idle and they in. So days in I is counting until the package is actually moving. So until the status in transit appears on the package. And the other one days in transit is counting how many days it’s in transit whatever the package got lost in the post.

Irina: So this way the business can proactively reach out to those customers who were unfortunate enough to experience a deliver. And if it’s in the initial stage of communication with the supplier, they can reach out to the supplier and ask like, where is the package, when they’re going to ship it?

Irina: And if a supplier is unresponsive for where is an issue, they can even refund it and find an our supplier to buy product from. That’s specifically handy for a drop shipps for hours. It’s not we handy, but still you can poke your suppliers or even knock at where doors and. what package it should have been shipped three days ago.

Irina: What’s going on? 

Brent: Yeah, a really good point. A lot of ERPs will generate a tracking. They’ll generate, the package has been shipped even before it gets to the post office, or UPS picks it up and UPS doesn’t assign a tracking number until they’ve actually taken possession of the package.

Brent: So that’s a great feature right now, yeah. And if you were to offer some, bit of advice to a merchant going into the holidays right now what could they still do and what should they be doing after the holidays? 

Irina: The holiday season is rather challenging for commerce, so it just literally creates an overload of shipments and overload of everything like processing.

Irina: So I guess , my, like most straightforward advice ladies keep saying keep calm , because this is going to pass, but right now you need to operate at 100% efficiency, 100% capacity. So I guess that’s so that’s wise. But after the holiday season is. You can examine and do some postmortems for some of the problems that you experienced during the holiday season.

Irina: You can see which carriers failed which carriers you might want to replace with an alternative one. . I know that on social media, there are quite a few people who are talking about diversifying the shipment volume between not just FedEx, u Ps like the like the two major carriers.

Irina: You could try our ones and see if this improves your cost per shipment or the cost like the overall margin as well. So another thing would be to evaluate your customer support after the. And see where the customer support might have failed or might have failed the communication with the customers.

Irina: Because usually during holidays people want to buy presents and if they become very sensitive to the timelines of a shipment. So if a person is not going to get their Christmas socks, for example, we’re going to be very upset. And the customer support needs to handle that and be mentally prepared that we are going to be customers with delayed.

Irina: Yeah. And the most interesting part would be to evaluate your systems overall. So once the holiday season is over, once you see over weak points where the systems are not working as you expected them to, you can definitely I dunno. Start evaluating which systems are lacking in your tech stack.

Irina: Maybe tech majors lacking Yeah. Something of a similar fashion where you can see all the orders and all evaporations on one page and understand where you are still not efficient enough. So just basically do the fine tuning when it’s below season in January or in February.

Irina: It’s the best time. Start implementing some new changes because during the holiday season, you will not have the opportunity to do that. 

Brent: Yeah that’s really good advice. Never make changes during the holidays or after October, maybe. code lockdown for people who do on-prem software. Irina. When we close out the podcast, I give everybody a chance to do a shameless plug about anything you’d like.

Brent: What would you like to plug? 

Irina: All right. I would like to gift the listeners of top Commerce Podcast the free resource. It’s called How to Get five to 10% Extra Sales from existing Customers without spending more money on ads or hiring more staff. In this book you can see like all the key ingredients for creating the best post-purchase experience for your customer.

Irina: And definitely you will understand what things are lacking in your current post-purchase experience. And you can either implement them yourself or maybe use Trackage for that purpose. Yeah. And you can find it at trackage.com, slash flywheel dash extra sales. And I hope that in the show notes you can also find.

Irina: . Yeah. 

Brent: Yeah. I’ll put all those I’ll put all the, all your links in the show notes how they can get in contact with you and and and of course track ma.com. Thank you, ARITA. Thank you so much for being here. It’s been such a pleasure. Thank you for staying up late. And thank you.

Brent: It’s my pleasure.

Irina: I love talking about e-commerce and what you can improve in your supply chain and post-purchase experience. Thank you for the opportunity.

Thank you to Podcagent for the wonderful guest!

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