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Leading a Culture of Trust with Laura Boyd

April 14, 2023February 9, 2023 Brent W. Peterson

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
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Laura explains that to build trust, you need to have competence, compassion, integrity, and an emotional bank account. #Trust #Compassion @LeadershipLaura
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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
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Laura: We want this open conversation, but you don’t have to be an ass, if I can say that. #Conversation #Culture @LeadershipLaura
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Laura: We have a Fresh Start program that you can sign up for at the beginning of every year. #FreshStart @LeadershipLaura
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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.

How to Cope with Grief as an Entrepreneur with Sherry Walling

April 14, 2023February 7, 2023 Brent W. Peterson

Sherry helps smart people solve complex problems. Sherry Walling is the one you call when you’re in burnout, feeling isolated, need to make a difficult decision, embroiled in a messy situation, out of ideas, and in need of a fresh perspective.

Her superpower is bringing calm to crisis and insight to chaos. Sherry has a Ph.D. in clinical psychology and two master’s degrees. Sherry has been an academic, researcher, psychotherapist, and best-selling author.

Traveling with Cats with Emily Miethner

April 14, 2023January 17, 2023 Brent W. Peterson

Have you seen pets on planes? Are you creating connections between your customers? Today we interview Emily Miethner, who is the founder of Travel with Cats.

Emily has built a brand around traveling with cats and a community around cat travel. Emily talks about the ladder of engagement. It doesn’t stop at the sale. She cares about her customers and constantly improves her products to meet her customer’s needs. She started a Travel Cat Summit focused on cat topics, including how to grow your cat’s Instagram account.

Connect, engage, and grow your community with Rani Mani.

April 14, 2023December 31, 2022 Brent W. Peterson

In the last episode of Talk Commerce for 2022, we speak with Rani Mani, the Digital Media Customer Communication Lead at Adobe. We talk about all things community and why some companies get community wrong.

Rani Mani is deeply passionate about making customers successful and harnessing the power of customer feedback to improve the overall customer experience.

Rani does this at scale over social media and is constantly looking at new and exciting ways to pinpoint areas where companies are making it especially difficult to do business with them.

Rani is skilled at working with cross-functional teams across the company to figure out ways of reducing customer effort. In addition to being keenly interested in reducing customer effort, she is equally schooled in strategies for providing exemplary support over social channels and cultivating and nurturing community engagement so the company can be a community-driven business.

Links from the Podcast

https://www.projecthired.org/

https://medium.com/@brentwpeterson/how-i-talked-my-way-into-creativity-eeb1481ebbaa

Transcript

Brent: Welcome to this special New Year’s Eve version of Talk Commerce. Today I have Rani Mani. Rani, tell us your role, what you do daily, and maybe one of your passions in life.

Rani: Yeah. Hi Brent. So my day-to-day at Ajovy is telling the story of our individual customers, so predominantly our customers using Creative Cloud. I’m incredibly passionate about doing amazing things in the world just because people are truly changing the world. Adobe happens to power that, so that’s been super satisfying to be a part of.

Brent: We met through the Adobe Insiders Program in 2019. Can you believe that? At the Adobe Summit, right? Or Yes. Yeah. So we met right around that time. And you are no longer with that group, so you’ve moved on to a group, but you’ve so graciously been involved in our little mini insider group that you’ve so kindly come on to the podcast today.

Rani: Oh yes. No, there’s no way that I could be too far away from the group with so many friends, and it’s so much more about the people than anything programmatic about the program. So yeah, I thrill to be here, Brent.

Brent: Good. Thank you. Before we get into our content, I think one of the things we’re going to talk about is community.

Brent: You have graciously said that you would participate in the #freejokeproject, so I’m just going to tell you a joke, and all you have to do is say, should this joke be free, or can somebody charge for it at some point? All right, here we go.

Brent:

What's a sea monster's favorite food, Fish and ships. #FreeJokeProject @ranimani0707 Share on X

Rani: Yeah, I think that should be free, Brent.

Brent: Thanks. I was going to preface it with that. Most of my jokes are not worth saying, but free is very liberal. Thank you so much; all right. Community in our green room, you just mentioned briefly about that it’s sometimes community gets lost and how people do community is lost.

Brent: Can you expand on that?

Rani: I think people lose sight of the fact that community is all about the individual, right? And what’s in it for them, what makes their heart sing, and how they can band together to support and share with one another. That it’s not meant to be transactional.

Rani: And a lot of companies, and even individuals, even nonprofits that I see trying to rally the community, make it about other things other than the individual. And I often wonder Brent is it not the most obvious thing that the community should be about the people that are in it? And why are we making so much of a big deal around the cause?

Rani: or the corporation or whatever the external thing is, as opposed to diving into the people. Because I feel like once you dive into the people and they are loyalists, and they’re bound to one another, no matter what the thing is, they will stay intact. Which I think is a real testament to how our insider program.

Rani: I could come in and out of it. Adobe may or may not be a part of it, but I feel like that group will forever last. Now the way we’ve set it up, I feel very confident about that because you are all so connected to one another that it’s a real thing of beauty to watch.

Brent: Yeah, I like what you said about not transactional, and I think leaders in positions that look for ROI want to figure out how can this transaction give us value.

Brent: And I think that’s the first mistake anybody would make in building community. Maybe just tell us a little bit more about how you feel and what you think about it being about the person. How focusing on that person helps build community. Cause some might think that’s backward like it should be focused on the community.

Brent: But I agree with you that it is about the people in the community and focusing on each of those. People help the community to become stronger.

Rani: Yep. I feel like there is no community without the individual, and a community happens to be the sum of multiple individuals. And so, to me, the most basic attack.

Rani: Adam of that community is individual. So I need to not. I need to. I want to focus on who you are, Brent, and what makes you sing, right? What lights you up and what are you trying to do in the world, and how can Adobe and how can I be a part of that? And how can this community assist you in that, right? Like when you start with that premise, it’s a win-win for all.

Rani: But I feel like it’s no different, Brent, than anything in life, right? Whatever it is that you’re doing in life, if you don’t start with the individual and what does success look like to them and what gets them out of bed today, and what are their hopes and dreams like, how are you going to get to the heart of anything if you don’t start at that very basic level of the person?

Brent: The flip side would be that some company wants to create community, and they want the community to be about the company, and then everybody loses focus on the people in it because there’s no common bond between the people. It’s all just the company and the.

Brent: Whatever they’re trying to do is driving that community. Where organically community should be built because people want to participate in it,

Rani: And the company should and can be a part of it. Like I feel like our Adobe Insiders Group has and will continue to do Somers results for Adobe, right?

Rani: I feel like this group does amazing things on behalf of Adobe and is very quick to defend and promote and all of that, for which Adobe is incredibly grateful. But in the event, Adobe was to ever step out of that community, I really firmly believe that, Because you all have established such a bond, and there are so many connective tissue threads within the group that, it’s really wonderful.

Brent: Part of the way I got into the Adobe community was through Magento, an Adobe acquisition. And I can say that the Magento community operates in a similar fashion, where the community really is the driver of everything around what the corporation would like to see, but there’s no oversight from some big brother saying you as a community have to do this.

Brent: And I like what you said about, they’ll do somersaults over it cuz they’re passionate about what they’re doing right. Like everybody in the community is passionate about some aspect of what they’re in it for,

Rani: right? Everybody gets something slightly different, and there is no overarching you need to attend this many meetings, and you need to tweet this many times.

Rani: And I very purposely left it that way. Because I just felt like there were many, much bigger things that bound us together as people. That would have a much greater staying power than providing some arbitrary structure like that,

Brent: Talk a little bit about the difference of how we can help to tell each of our own stories rather than a company story.

Brent: As a community, does it really help the community to tell the story about the company, or does it tell, is it help the community to tell the story about individuals who are in the community??

Rani: I don’t see it as a mutually exclusive thing. If you think about it, Brent, our community does both, right?

Rani: Our community gives the name and faith, and personality to the Adobe logo, as you tell different things that you’re doing using Adobe products, it’s your story, but ultimately gets wrapped up into Adobe story as. , right? So I feel like both need to happen for it to be a really compelling, memorable story.

Brent: I can remember in Magento Imagine the last one was 2019 and then the Adobe Summit followed up. But during that, we got Adobe Rush as a free gift for attending blah, blah blah. And I remember sitting there in that Adobe. I attended one of the Adobe Rush specific like there was some kind of a tutorial event or some

Brent: kickoff event and said, Hey, this is what it actually does. And I did CR I, and I remember him creating a short video during the session that said, Hey, I’ve made this while multitasking in my Adobe Rush session on Adobe Rush using Adobe Rush. And then, I published it by the end of the session.

Brent: I think it just, that kind of gives to how we can be passionate about a product and also promote a product while doing a product and sitting in listening about a product. I don’t know where I’m going with this story but was true. It was still fun.

Rani: Very true. But not all products and services lend itself to that, right?

Rani: Adobe is in an absolutely unique position to have such an iconic brand and so many products that are within the fabric of our culture that, it lends itself to exactly what you’re talking about.

Brent: It’s not as exciting to say, Hey, I’ve created an integration using Adobe io. While I was doing my Adobe IO session, and now I can, oh my gosh, make AEM talk to joking.

Rani: Adobe covers, or for the people who are part of what do you call it, washing machines or dryers or, like I, I often, when I first started the group, I was like, this is criminal that I get to do this because, It’s how Adobe set up and what we offer the world, it’s, I feel like people clamor to be a part of it.

Rani: So it’s just, it’s such a natural, dare I say, easy thing to mobilize the community around.

Brent: If you could speak a little bit to how. How you see the storytelling and if there’s anything different. Is there a magic sauce in the Adobe community, or is it something that is just inherently good because the community is building what the community’s building?

Rani: I think the magic sauce is the people, right? Like the love. If any individual within the group were to pull back or new people came in, the ethos would be different. And that isn’t to say that we don’t always welcome or look for new people, but I think there’s something very special about the existing.

Rani: People within the community and the amount of time you’ve all been together, the kind of hopes and dreams and struggles that you’ve all shared. You’ve been in some of our happy hours, Brent. And we get very up close and personal, right? We’re talking about deaths and marriages and divorces and Custody battles,

Rani: We talk about some really milestone real hearts stringing kind of things, and so that kind of vulnerability and that kind of connection with one another, it’s very much driven by the people.

Brent: The key to a good community is just what you were saying about it’s not just about some one thing that there are so many aspects around that. And we all have our own lives, right? And our own lives contribute to the community.

Brent: And whatever we do in our lives helps to build that community and make it stronger. And then, maybe you could speak a little bit about it. each of us in a community has a strong point. Each of us has one little aspect that adds to it and makes it a really strong community.

Brent: How important do you think the diversity in that community is?

Rani: When I think about diversity, I think about it more than just ethnic and cultural diversity, right? I’m thinking about it as diversity of thought, diversity of backgrounds. Perspective, and that’s so important because we don’t. How boring would it be if we’re all like one another?

Rani: There have been things brought up and new and innovative ideas that have been offered due to the diversity. And we’ve all benefited from it. That’s why I’m so impressed with you, Brent, that in addition to being a part of the Magento community, you still took that leap of faith and became a part of this community that, at first, I’m sure, felt like a bunch of doorknobs, right?

Rani: Because there was no one. Product or one campaign, or one, anything that bounds us together. I brought a group of people together, and my ultimate question was, are these decent human beings? Oh, and of course, who happens to have a decent social footprint who are doing new and interesting things in the world of digital experiences?

Rani: But my ultimate criteria was, Are these people that I admire enough and feel comfortable enough with that I would invite into my own home and expose my four kids to, right? That was my ultimate criteria. And without exception, every single one of you that’s part of this group, it’s a resounding yes to that.

Rani: And so it’s been a great thing, right? We’ve just got a really good group of people. . Like not just the passion, but the level of goodness of the human being, right?

Brent: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And for the kid’s thing, I’m worried more about the community members and my kids, like they’re exposed to my kids because, never mind.

Brent: Yeah. Gonna, I was going down the, a bad joke path there, . Yeah. And I guess when I was thinking about diversity, I wasn’t necessarily thinking. Cultural and ethnic, but that is a good part of it. It is important in a community for people to have different strong points.

Brent: And, I’m part of the commerce community, which gives me a different view on things. And now, for me personally, what I’ve learned from, going to the Adobe Summit when it was live in person, but then attending the virtual ones, was that there’s so much more to the whole experience that a customer would have using something like Adobe, you’re using any kind of platform that we can all become better people or even better in our own personal roles that we’re doing because we’re exposed to this diversity in what everybody’s doing.

Brent: So there could be one person who’s marketing, and there’s one person who’s data or commerce or whatever, like we all get together, and we talk. I think that’s as important in that community as the community itself.

Rani: Yep. No, I agree. I agree. And the ethnic diversity has been a real treat as well because, Adobe really stands for,

Rani: amplifying and elevating the diverse voices that we represent in the community, right? In terms of our customer base. And so that was important to me as well, that we had that right mix of cultural and ethnic diversity within our group because, ultimately, perspective is made up of who you are and where you come from, right?

Rani: And so we, we have a real nice mix of that within our group as well.

Brent: Yeah, absolutely. And just want to applaud you for helping us to tell our stories in the community. You helped me quite a bit. To be able to tell my story to the community.

Brent: And I think I have a blog post out there somewhere. Anyways, it doesn’t matter. That’s hard to hear. Yes. No, there

Rani: is. And it was a beautifully done story as well, Brent. In fact, we should link to that from Oh yeah. This podcast so that people can see it because I, and this. The premise of who Adobe is, we believe that everyone has a story to tell.

Rani: And whatever we can as a company, given our products and services, whatever we can do to empower and enable you to tell your story, then we’ve done our job.

Brent: That’s awesome. Rani, we’re quickly running out of time. I know we wanted to target 10 to 15 minutes. A as we close out the podcast, I give a guest the opportunity to do a shameless plug about anything.

Brent: What would you like to plug today?

Rani: Yes, I would love to plug a nonprofit organization in the Bay Area by the name of Project Hired. I’m a very proud board member of the organization, and the organization is, Focused on providing advocacy and providing employment services for the disabled community.

Rani: Disabled people makeup one in four people in the world are disabled, and unfortunately, disabled people are woefully underemployed. And so this organization. Provides counseling and guidance and all sorts of services to help individuals with disabilities get employment. I would love for the audience to take a look into Project Hired and participate with them in any which way that you feel inclined.

Rani: Obviously, during the holidays and going into the new year, we’re always looking for donations. And donations don’t always have to be in the form of money. It can be volunteering. It can be if you’re a part of a company that has open jobs that you would like to do some matchmaking with our clients, that would be incredible.

Rani: So many different ways to participate and to give.

Brent: Yeah. Thank you for that. And incidentally, I just did an interview with a company that does sim something similar. It’s called John’s Crazy Sox, and they hired a disabled individual in there, and I don’t know what the percentage is, but it’s large, that’s one of their missions, and they talked a lot about the mission of whatever the company is, has to reflect what their customers are wanting.

Brent: And I feel as though Adobe does reflect. In itself and with the employees and people like you that help to promote causes like this and help to amplify their voices. Yes.

Rani: Yes. No, most

Brent: Definitely. Rani Mani, thank you so much for being here today. It’s been such a pleasure talking to you, and I wish you a very happy New Year.

Rani: Oh, a very happy New Year to you as well, Brent. Thanks for having me.

Brent: You’re welcome.

Live streaming your CPG with Lynn Power

April 14, 2023December 29, 2022 Brent W. Peterson

Is the future of consumer packaged goods live streaming? Lynn Power talks about her brand Masami and how she has gone from start-up to success. Make sure your idea is scalable, and you can see your vision through. Lynn helps us see how CPG is changing and what new brands can and should do in our post-pandemic economy. Think through your brand, your content strategy, and your budget.

https://www.lovemasami.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/lynn-power-02b8904/

Reef Safe Sunscreen

OLITA Organic Mineral Sunscreen Lotion SPF 30

Changing the Face of the Marketing Industry with Kelli Williams

April 14, 2023December 13, 2022 Brent W. Peterson

Are you a fearless leader? Do you shy away from hard conversations or dive headlong into them? We interview Kelli Williams, who recently took on the Interim CEO role at The BrandLab in Minneapolis. She is changing the face of marketing one person at a time.

Some of the work they do at Brand Labs is what they call fearless work, and it’s all about having fearless conversations. It’s about having conversations that you just started by saying,

“You know what, I have some blind spots. I have some areas of opportunity to learn more to bring additional diverse thinking and to understand areas of bias or areas that I may not be comfortable with so that I can, as a business leader, create opportunities to have conversations and to create safe environments for all people on my team.”

The Secret Sauce for Improving Customer Experience – Back Office Operations with Allie Kern

April 14, 2023December 6, 2022 Brent W. Peterson

Good customer experience is a top priority for any business. It’s the key to driving customer loyalty, acquiring new customers, and, ultimately, improving bottom-line results.

But many businesses overlook that the secret to excellent customer experience lies in back-office operations. By investing in back-office operations and ensuring they are running smoothly, businesses can ensure that customers have a seamless, enjoyable experience – and reap the rewards that come with it.

With the right back-office operations strategy, businesses can create a more connected customer experience, drive customer loyalty, and increase sales. Let’s explore how back-office operations can be used to improve customer experience.

We interview Allie Kern with BrightPearl who helps us understand how an ERP solution like BrightPearl can improve your customer experience.

Learn more about ERP here: What is ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning): What It Is and How It Works

2022 Holiday Season Insights and Shopping Trends with Megan Blissick

April 14, 2023November 25, 2022 Brent W. Peterson

It’s Black Friday, and we interviewed Megan Blissick with Signifyd. We talk about BFCM and the Pulse Tracker. Will the predictions be right?

You can listen to some of the numbers Megan gives us and compare them to what is happening! Signifyd’s Holiday Season Pulse Tracker compiles a live look at online sales with real-time adjusted season projections to bring you the fastest, most immediate insights into season performance.

Powered by Signifyd’s Commerce Network, the Holiday Season Pulse Tracker leverages data from thousands of retailers from a variety of verticals around the world.

Transcript

Brent: Welcome to this episode of Talk Commerce Today, have Megan Blissick. Megan is the head of Global Agency Partnership with Signifyd. Megan, go ahead, introduce yourself. Maybe tell us what you do on a day to day basis and one of your passions in life.

Megan: Ooh, one of my passions was fun. Yeah. Thanks for having mere.

Megan: I’m Megan. I had global agency partnerships at Signifyd e-commerce, fraud prevention and revenue optimization organization. So I’ve been with signify for I think, God, like two and a half years at this point. A lot of experience in the greater e-commerce. E brand management, digital marketing management, and the e-commerce ecosystem up until running partnerships that Signifyd for the past couple of years.

Megan: It’s been a great time. Love it there. And a passion of mine is rock climbing as a lot of folks I believe know at this point. When I’m not at conferences and events, I’m hanging off the side of a cliff .

Brent: And do they call that bouldering?

Megan: Bouldering is when there’s no ropes, but

Brent: Oh, so you don’t do that part?

Megan: No I get all the way up the top yeah, I get to get some really cool views up there.

Brent: I’m assuming you’ve seen the movie where the guy climbs El Capita, Is it called Free?

Megan: Yes I’ve seen a couple of those

Brent: movies. Any aspirations to do free solo for that one?

Megan: No.

Brent: I got super creeped out just watching that movie.

Megan: I definitely enjoy the rope element of rope climbing. I do that part where you fall and you don’t die. . Yeah.

Brent: That’s always a plus, right? Yeah. Cause in that movie, somebody did one of his friends died, I think.

Megan: It’s it can get really intense in the climbing world, but but me and my buddies we like to play it safe.

Brent: Yeah. Good. Before we get into content and after, now we’ve talked about rock climbing. Yes. I do have a project that’s called The Free Joke Project. Okay. And what I’d like to do is just tell you a joke and you can tell me if you think it should continue to be free. Or if we could charge for the joke.

Brent: Okay, here we go. Here we go.

Brent: I was trying to figure out why the ball kept getting bigger and bigger. Then it hit me,

Megan: Is this how this whole podcast is gonna go ?

Brent: Yes. All right. Since you were so good at that one, I’m gonna tell you one more and then we’ll move on

Megan: since, give me one more. Let’s go for it.

Brent: I entered 10 puns into a contest to see which one would win, no pun in 10 did.

Brent: Oh God.

Megan: How long are we doing this ?

Brent: We got another half an hour.

Brent: Okay, let’s go for it. Let’s go to, let’s go to real things now. Yeah. Commerce protection platform. Tell us about that. Yeah. In our green room, we talked about Signifyd being this fraud thing and we fraud protection, at least in my mind. And that’s what I thought about it, but it’s so much more.

Brent: So tell us, give us a little background.

Megan: Yeah. Okay, Brent, you and I have been working together the whole time I’ve been at Signifyd and you’ve actually been working with us longer than I’ve been around. So when Signifyd started, we were actually a fraud scoring tool. So what that really means is when a customer goes to a website they hit the checkout button and

Megan: we gather a lot of information about that customer based on not only the website they’re checking out on, but any other website within Signifyd network. That way if it’s the first time they’re at, REI buying a climbing rope but they’ve already gone to Moose Jaw and they’ve already bought some Caravaners we already understand a little bit about that customer more than the merchant on hand.

Megan: So that lets us make a better decision about whether or not that’s a legitimate customer. What we started realizing was, as we’re doing this scoring we are getting really strong scores getting better information than our merchants so that we could really provide them that value, but, They weren’t always taking us up on it.

Megan: So we started actually guaranteeing on our orders. So saying, Yes, we think this is a really good purchase. We think this person is correct. There may be, a couple things that look weird. They may be shipping it out of state, or the recipient doesn’t have the same last name. But ultimately we have enough data to stand behind this.

Megan: So we started adding a financial guarantee, and that’s where g. Fraud protection came from. So we said if we’re wrong and if it is fraud signify will pay the merchant back in full cost of product shipping, taxes, fees. And that really took us into another world of e-commerce fraud prevention, because what that did was not only prevent fraud, but we started actually increasing revenue and increasing order approval rate for our customers.

Megan: So we saw that. Getting rid of the fear of fraud, we are actually able to enable more transactions to go through. That really opened a door for our customers to see five to 7% revenue lift just by taking in more orders that they were at first afraid were fraud. So that really changed the conversation for us.

Megan: We are preventing fraud, but we’re really driving most of our value by driving more revenue. So we started looking. Further down in the conversation, what happens once that product gets there? Does the product arrive or does the merchants still have to pay for an item not received claim where they delivered the product got there, but the customer never got it.

Megan: So sometimes, that’s true. We’ve seen porch pirates especially talking to the holiday season. This is something that. It’s unfortunate, but it’s true. People steal things off of porches. I’m sure you’ve seen some of those Ring doorbell videos. But sometimes a customer does get their product and they say they didn’t.

Megan: A merchant busy during the holiday season doesn’t really have time to look into all those claims. They don’t want to insult their customers that are legitimate and are good and are missing their products. So they’re taking a hit there. Signify said, continue down the funnel. Let’s cover item not received claims significantly, not subscribed, subscription cancellations like cancellation errors, order shipping fees.

Megan: So we started really enhancing our commerce protection from just that point of sale, continuing down the funnel. Now Signifyd hosts a variety of different products through our three main modules through our agent console, where you can really tailor your different policies and your orders through insights reporting where you can really understand your customers better.

Megan: And through our decision center, which is, our core product of yes or no, are these orders being approved or not? That allows us to hit into a couple different categories past the traditional fraud prevention chargeback recovery, account takeover protection, author off rate optimization pre off acceptance.

Megan: You’re not paying those credit card fees anymore. Along with that that core of products. So at this point, yeah, signify covers our merchants end to.

Brent: And we talked earlier that right now it’s before Black Friday, but this episode’s not gonna come until after Black Friday. . So you do have something new called a, or maybe it’s not super new, but a sales prediction tool or sales tracking tool.

Brent: Tell us a little bit about that and how that’s gonna play into the holidays. .

Megan: Yes. So this is actually a continuous project that I’ve absolutely loved. It’s been part of Signifyd since I started right at the beginning of the pandemic. When we, we sit right in that payment gateway. We get to see real time transaction data across over 6,000 different merchants in hundreds of different products categories.

Megan: So what that really gives us is a chance. Look at real time e-commerce data. So actually just today we launched our 2022 holiday season insights and shopping trends. So as things happen in real time, we’ll be able to track. Our holiday season projections against what’s actually happening this holiday season.

Brent: All right. Then I’ll make sure, I’ll put all that on the show notes that they can get the link to the report and they can look at it. You had mentioned some things that, that we’re looking at in. The holidays. Can you give us any insights that we might see for Black Friday? And I guess we’re gonna know if you’re right or wrong for Black Friday after this, but we still have Christmas, Hanukkah coming up in Yes.

Brent: As we go forward.

Megan: Absolutely. So we have. Three categories right now of holiday season predictions. We have one on total holiday spend. We have one on product volume, how much is actually going to be purchased, and then we have some cyber week predictions. So I think we touched on this in the green room.

Megan: The the holiday season is not Black Friday anymore. Between pandemic, e-commerce penetration and everything in between. Shoppers are buy. Gifts whenever they want, and and merchants are really catering to that. I think Amazon has two prime days now, or a special exclusive event coming up.

Megan: There’s already holiday sales at some of the major big box retailers. The the holiday shipping window and the holiday returns window has already started where there’s usually extended return windows so that people can buy gifts and then return them once they’ve been gifted and and not received kindly.

Megan: So there’s really a huge window of holiday shopping now. It’s not. Like that small peak that happens in that one week of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and then again in that like Christmas and Hanukkah weeks. It’s really starting now and it’s going to continue until the shipping cutoffs occur in the end of December.

Megan: So we’ve got a long holiday season coming

Brent: up. Yeah, And it’d probably go all the way to July if Amazon takes us there. And then it’ll start again right after July. That’s when the pre-Christmas sales will start. Soon. You had mentioned in the greenroom as well about how you’ve extended, so traditionally Signifyd was that sort of right before the payment happens.

Brent: But now you’re extending it down the funnel even past into the delivery cycle. Tell. Where you see the biggest value for a merchant as you get through that. Let’s just say they, they, that is, it’s a client that, that makes it through or isn’t, It’s a valid client, but , it’s somebody that is trying to gain the system by saying something, I didn’t get something.

Brent: How does Signifyd help there?

Megan: Yeah. Item not received is a really interesting category. As Brent, I live in Brooklyn. I’ve had a couple packages stolen off my doorstep. It happens, there’s a, a couple of my friends happens to it too. But there’s also those merchants or those customers that, they say that they didn’t receive a product when they did.

Megan: So that becomes an item not received claim. There’s a couple ways that merchants, if they’re handling this on their own, they can deal with. You might have seen some of the backlash of some of these come up before. For example, on Amazon, if you claim too many items, so it’s not received in a six month window then you’ll start getting a flag of you must provide proof or, like you can’t return any items for the next like couple months.

Megan: Things like that. You can’t make this claim anymore. So there’s that volume approach, right? If it’s the, if then approach of binary rules, if someone returns X amount of items and y months reject. We all know that any binary system is just right for fraud. It’s very simple. If someone can figure out, Oh, I can return four items but not five, or I can return.

Megan: $200, but not 201. Then they’re going to push right up to the boundaries, create another account, anything like that. So there’s always a way to get around those binary rules. You’re also, if you’re managing things on your own, you’re risking an insult rate. And I will tell you there are. Vengeful customers that will let you know if you’ve wronged them.

Megan: We’ve seen them all online, if it, And it’s a terrible customer experience, right? So if I ordered something I was really excited about I get the notification while I’m out at work that, a package arrived at my door and then I go home and that package isn’t there.

Megan: You, you first have that sinking feeling and then, Text your neighbors. You ask if anyone else picked it up or saw it. You wait another day and see if the the shipping thing was just wrong and they hadn’t gotten there yet. And then you ultimately contact the company and say, Hey, I never received my product.

Megan: If they come back to you and say, Hi, we think you’re lying and you’re not getting your product or your money going to raise hell and high water. All over anywhere you can post a review or rating online. There’s a lot of places to do that. So you risk really insulting those good customers because that might also be a really high value customer.

Megan: It can be someone that’s shopping with you guys once a month that is going to go to your competitor and never go back again and actively discourage people from shopping on that site. So what signify does is, first and foremost, if you have our INR coverage, we reimburse our merchants. We say, We got it.

Megan: Don’t worry about it. That’s ours now. So our customers are taken care of immediately. We now also have an internal chargeback recovery team. So they will go and they will investigate that claim. They’ll investigate all claims that they think that there is a reason to look into and will go all the way through the entire process and order flow to figure out if that product actually did get to the intended recipient.

Megan: We’ve had some very funny ways that we found people and we actually now have made that into another series called Crime and Cocktails where every couple months we sit down in a webinar setting and we talk about some of the some of the fraud that we’ve seen in the industry where we actually catch some people that are claiming that they never receive their.

Megan: $5,000 Rolex, but they’re wearing it in their picture, on their Facebook profile. Or where someone says that they never got their above ground pool, but we find it on Google Maps. So we actually get to cover what really goes into some of these fraud attempts and how our teams are able to, trace back the entire supply chain to really find if these are legitimate customers.

Brent: Yeah. That takes a lot of tpa to claim a lost pool, but then set up the pool in your yard. My, I still love that one. . Yeah. My experience recently has been, I received a package from Amazon that was empty and it was also. Point zero one ounces, . So it clearly got through everything. And then Anne got the weight onto shipping and they shipped it.

Brent: It was just a, it was an envelope, but it was supposed to have some clothes in it, huh? And zero weight as well. I didn’t even have to argue with Amazon. They just sent me the new item. But I suppose as a consumer, if you get an, and it was a, one of those envelopes from Amazon that had the, and it wasn’t even sealed yet, so somehow nobody put the thing in it.

Brent: They just sent it to shipping, ran through their UPS thing, and then off to ship. But it’s not, I suppose too, as a consumer, you, if for whatever reason you get the couple of those in a row, you want to make sure. Back yourself up with your ring and all this other fun stuff. You. So I think you mentioned returns.

Brent: How do you go farther besides just the lost packages? Do you go into returns as well?

Megan: Yeah, and that’s actually, I’m glad you brought that up. That’s probably what I consider the most exciting opportunity space is especially going into the holiday season this year. We all know that e-commerce returns happen, but we all pretend like they don’t

Megan: And the really, the biggest bummer of it all is that it’s a much higher rate than in-store returns. Take fashion as a category in-store returns average around 10% of retail sales. eCommerce averages around 30%. And that’s really hard. Especially right now, we’re not in the best spot in the there’s an economic downturn.

Megan: We’re all aware of it. People are still buying, people are still shopping. When you’re really counting on sales and business and 30% of that is coming back in the door. That’s a big hit because that’s merchandise that was off the floor that couldn’t be sold. That’s also merchandise that gets damaged.

Megan: In return, about 25% of returned merchandise goes straight to a landfill. And, that’s just devastating both for the environment and for a retailer’s bottom line. And then seasonal items get marked down. Okay, return that fake Christmas tree, but you can’t sell that again until next year.

Megan: So now you’re sitting. Dead inventory and there’s a lot of companies that are popping up to really start solving returns. It’s making me really happy. Signifyd is partnering with a couple of those to be displayed soon. But what we’re also doing, and the reason that we’re really showing up in that space is actually in terms of, the consumer experience.

Megan: Returns is a one size fit all approach right now, and it’s probably the last thing in the customer journey that applies that. We have loyalty programs that incentivize good customers. We have tailored experiences so that if you have a certain IP address, then you land on a different website version on a homepage than someone else.

Megan: But why are we all doing the same thing when it comes to returns? It’s this blanket return policy of. 30 days or free shipping or something like that. When in reality our good customers should have the benefits of good returns and our abusive customers shouldn’t be able to return things at all.

Megan: Because you know that’s not a customer that you really want shopping on your site. It doesn’t matter if they spend a thousand dollars. If they return that a thousand dollars and end up costing you $300 along the way, that’s not a good customer. So what signify does now is we have a returns abuse api.

Megan: So what that allows us to do is actually take control. That customer return journey if they go on that. So say you put us in place right now. Holiday season has started. We’re getting all these orders in. Again the benefit of signify that’s. That powers everything is our commerce network. We work with so many brands around the world that we’re able to see 98% of online consumers.

Megan: So if you’ve shopped online you’ve probably shopped at a Signifyd store, which means that we know you. And that can be really good because if you’re a good customer and we’re using a merchant that’s going to say, Okay, we’re gonna prioritize our VIPs. Has a rewards account with us.

Megan: Anyone that’s been a customer for more than three years, you can set all of these rules yourself and say, Megan’s a good customer. She spends over a thousand dollars a year with us. If she initiates a return, immediately refund the money to her account before she even returns the product. Send a prepaid shipping label so that make it really easy on her to send that out.

Megan: Ask if she needs a box or. A mailer or an envelope and send that as well and, make that friction point that’s happening. Cuz no one wants a re I don’t wanna return a product. I didn’t buy it to give it back. But make that friction point something that’s really exciting for your customer.

Megan: Wow, that was incredibly easy. I’m going to buy from here because if something goes wrong, I know they have. So treat your good customers really well. And then, over here, Brent, you’re just returning everything you buy. You’re just, buying it to use it once and then put it back in the box and who cares if it’s broken?

Megan: You’ll just say it arrived that way and then shipping it right back. For customers that are doing, abusive behavior with your products, you can limit them. You can make their order final sale. You can, make it that they have to pay for return shipping. And they don’t get their refund until the item has been inspected back in the warehouse.

Megan: And then everyone else somewhere in between. So what we can really do with actually taking control of returns and looking at different customers, setting these different policies can ultimately create a really strong customer experience for your best customers and can shut out those serial abusers and just get them off of your site.

Brent: Yeah, and to be fair, it’s only because people keep buying me hair care products, but I keep returning them for gifts. It’s not that I’m trying to do it, it’s just that I can’t use it for anything. I guess I could re-gift it. That’s a good idea. You could re-gift it. . We have a couple, we have a little bit of time left and I got thinking that that, let’s put this episode live on Black Friday.

Brent: So let’s just say somebody is sitting there on Black the day after Thanksgiving still sort of stuff, Turkey, and they’re like, Oh, I’m gonna listen to a podcast. Oh, there’s a new episode out. What do you think that, And they’re gonna be shopping as a, as a. It’s too late to do something then. But as a as a shopper, is there ways to figure out, I don’t know how to say with that.

Brent: Is there is there trusted brands that you know that are gonna be a good brand to go to? Or is it is it just the typical trust that you have from a merchant or for the merchant and then as a merchant, this is a better question. As the merchant, before we get to Christmas, is it too late to add Signifyd?

Brent: I.

Megan: Not at all. If you’re a merchant that’s already using Signifyd you can effectively turn on something like our returns of use API or add in any of these additional layers of protection. If you’re not already using Signifyd any major e-commerce platform we’re already pre-built into.

Megan: Adobe Commerce, Shopify Plus Salesforce Big Commerce. Neva, NetSuite, V tags all the good guys. And then, if we don’t have something built, we have we have APIs that connect in to everybody. If you’re working with an amazing agency like Magento they can get you set up and running and really quickly and, just start protecting your orders.

Megan: Start, especially when it comes to these big swings and volume. You don’t have the manpower to be manually reviewing all these fringe cases, especially when it’s 100, 200% the regular daily volume. Having a product like this in place, it’s quick to put in. And it’s quite effective, I would say, especially for the holidays.

Brent: Yeah. I always like to tell the story that we started in Mexico selling e-commerce in 2014 and one of our first clients had a call center that they literally called every client that put an order in cuz they were worried it could be a fraud client. . So they had, 20 or 30 people in a big room that would just make phone calls all day to confirm.

Brent: So that’s a lot of manpower. Yeah. From a volume standpoint, how much that, let’s think how much you can help something like Signifyd and help. And it’s almost at this point, it’s a necessity, isn’t it? Because if you think about the cost to the cost of returns and the cost of fraud and all those things that are around that this is something that is not just an insurance and doing that, but it’s also, I think you had mentioned a couple times just improving the customer journey.

Brent: Yeah. And improving the experience of the customer. And then for, from the merchant side, knowing that the customers are good is always a better way to do

Megan: business. Yeah. There’s a lot more trust in the entire transaction. And you’re right, it is essential because especially right now oh, a lot of companies are having a hard time and have big numbers to hit.

Megan: There’s, you can’t afford to turn down your best customers, so if someone’s hitting the buy button, that’s the highest intent they can really show you. And we can’t afford to turn away four or 5% of those customers because of the fear of fraud. So that’s ultimately how I always see it, is, let those good customers through and, Let them through that first time and they’ll come back, especially if they have a good experience end to end.

Brent: All right. A couple minutes left here. Megan’s prediction on the holidays what do you think we’re gonna be

Megan: doing? All right, so we’ve. Thing. So going back to those three categories, this is what what the amazing team had Signifyd. I had nothing to do with these numbers, but we have an incredible data team.

Megan: So they were really able to pull some of these insights based on what we’ve been seeing over the past, oh gosh, 24 months of eCommerce trends. Our first prediction is that cyber week growth is going to increase by 5% year over year. So we think there’s still gonna be a lot of volume, but we don’t think it’s all going to come from cyber week.

Megan: We’re predicting an 8% increase in November and December is total rise in terms of that product volume. We’ve been seeing people buying more recently, which is, it’s still haven’t figured things out in terms of the economy. I’m not even going to pretend to try, but we’re predicting an 8% change in volume of products sold in cyber week and a 5% overall volume in November and December.

Megan: We think people are still just buying more, but ultimately that cyber week, we think it’s gonna be down from last year. We think there’ll. 19% of holiday sales versus 21% of holiday sales last year. So people are spreading out their purchases, they’re starting earlier, they’re shopping later.

Megan: As more companies adopt better transition, better solutions they’re able to extend their shipping windows because, they’re not doing that manual review in house anymore, they’re able to actually approve and process orders faster. So they’re able to accept orders longer into the holiday season.

Megan: Yeah, we think it’s a wider range. People are buying earlier, they’re planning ahead. But there’s still going to be a lot of consolidation in Black Friday, Cyber Monday.

Brent: Yeah. And I think overall I was at the econ forum here in Minneapolis a couple weeks ago, and they gave out some numbers that said, E even though it seems like we’re going into a downturn, We’re coming off of such a hot cycle through the pandemic.

Brent: Everybody had to order online. Yeah, that online is still gonna grow even next year. It’s gonna grow 20% over the year before. It won’t grow 50 or whatever that number was. Maybe it was 10%. Anyways, it’s gonna be a good healthy growth in online no matter what over the year. And so people are still shifting from retail to.

Brent: Online, maybe not even, Or even buying more in the future. Yeah. And that as a merchant, you need to always pay attention to where your customers are buying from and where they’re gonna buy more from. Yes. So that cycle and reducing some of that friction in the. And the checkout and making sure that it’s a quality customer is such a important part of things.

Megan: Yeah. It’s really important. And those customers show up everywhere. They’re showing up online and then they’re returning in store, or they’re window shopping online, and then they’re making a final decision. It’s really important to meet that customer where they are, treat them the same.

Megan: Everywhere that you find them and make sure that they have the best experience with your brand.

Brent: Megan, as they close out the podcast, I get everybody a chance to do a shameless plug. , what would you like to plug today?

Megan: Oh gosh. Am I not plugged enough? I feel like it’s been most of us .

Brent: You can plug anything you want.

Brent: You could plug your climbing. Should I plug rock climbing?

Megan: Oh my, yes. Yeah. Anything you want. No, I would absolutely love to plug the incredible marketing team here because all these insights, all these analytics, all this data it’s, all of my partners know this. It’s something I talk about far too much, but, we have a incredible team of really talented and really thoughtful marketing folks that have really enabled Signifyd partnerships continuously.

Megan: We’re able to create really incredible content. It’s actually thought provoking. I hate how many times I even said pandemic in this presentation. They’re really able to bring this information to the table in a way that’s digestible, easy to use and easy to explain. That’s that’s my plug is when you have a great marketing team, let the entire world know

Brent: As, so we’re gonna close out now, but since it is Black Friday today, and we don’t know if I’m actually gonna get it done by it, but it’s gonna, we’re gonna assume that I have it done already and it is Black Friday. What should I go out or What are you gonna go by on Friday? Black Friday and I’m gonna be in the air, so I won’t be able to buy anything.

Brent: What are you gonna buy on Black Friday?

Megan: What am I gonna buy on Black Friday? You’re gonna laugh at me, but I really want a nice two person tent because I only have a one person tent right now and it’s very tiny.

Brent: Is your two person tent, the kind that sits on the side of a rock face?

Megan: No, but I hang, give you a little education that is called a portal ledge.

Megan: Oh, Portal ledge. Like a portable ledge. Yeah. Very cool. So now you’ve got a cool little lingo term for next time you’re out rock climbing or summiting, lcap .

Brent: Absolutely. Okay. If you don’t get your 2% in, then for the holidays, you’ll want one for a gift.

Megan: Yes. Any, anyone that’s listening that wants to send me a tent, I’m sure you can just provide my information in the comments, . All right,

Brent: perfect. Megan Bick is the head of Global Agency Partnerships With Signifyd. Thank you so much for being here today.

Megan: Thanks for your time, Fred. Always great to see you.

Brent: All right.

Outsource your Inbound Marketing with Dina Buchanan

April 14, 2023November 15, 2022 Brent W. Peterson

It’s getting more and more challenging to hire a great salesperson. Getting those leads, getting that person to make phone calls, getting inbound leads through anything, LinkedIn, social media, paid ads. It’s all a hard slog. We interview Dina Buchanan, who has a guaranteed formula for a fantastic return on investment.

In 14 words or less, Dina can help you gain hundreds of high-end leads and clients monthly from LinkedIn.

She allows you to focus on selling and scaling instead of failing at marketing. Dina will help you to eliminate the stress. Of wondering where your following clients are coming from. Dina shows us the positive side of outsourcing your inbound leads and getting more business.

No-Code Commerce with Kaus Manjita

April 14, 2023November 8, 2022 Brent W. Peterson

Businesses are going online daily worldwide, and it’s getting easier. But running their businesses requires constant two-way communication with users and customers across channels 24/7, year-round. @kmanjita

Today we interview Kaus Manjita with Mason. Kaus is a no-code evangelist, content nerd, and serial product builder. You’ll find her amid entrepreneurs, brand builders, developers, marketers, and designers over Zoom on Hangouts and on this podcast today.

Mason is Zapier made for commerce. It connects data designs and channels to run your product launches, sales documents, discounts, inventory updates, custom reviews in-app, help, funnels, and more, all on autopilot.