The Secret to Building Customer Loyalty Forever

The Secret to Building Customer Loyalty Forever written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast with Micah Solomon

In this Duct Tape Marketing Podcast episode, I interviewed Micah Solomon, an expert on customer service, hospitality, and customer experience. He delves into the unique concept of anticipatory customer service and its powerful potential to enhance brand loyalty and drive business growth. He’s a bestselling author with a fresh perspective on how businesses can transform their customer service strategies to foster enduring loyalty.

In his latest book, “Can Your Customer Service Do This?: Create an Anticipatory Customer Experience that Builds Loyalty Forever,” Micah delves deep into the intricacies of customer service, making it an indispensable read for entrepreneurs eager to elevate their customer relations and propel business success.

Key Takeaway:

Anticipatory customer service is not just about reacting to a customer’s needs but predicting them. By serving even the unexpressed wishes of customers, businesses can create an unparalleled customer experience that fosters brand loyalty and catalyzes growth. In an era where customers crave personalization and a touch of anticipation, this approach is a game-changer in the marketing and customer service sectors.

Questions I asked Micah Solomon:

• [00:50] Define anticipatory customer experience.
• [01:44] Some suggest that loyalty is dead no matter how great your services are. Can you comment on that?
• [02:33] Is providing a great customer experience a referral tactic?
• [02:48] What is the secret shopper’s role?
• [04:38] How did you decide to specialize in this aspect of customer experience?
• [08:35] How do you recommend handling both unhappy and unreasonable customers?
• [12:11] How do you view customer service as a competitive advantage or profit center?
• [14:13] How important is community feedback in enhancing the customer experience?
• [17:22] What impact does AI have on customer service and experience?
• [18:52] How can people reach out to you or get a copy of your book?

More About Micah Solomon:

• Discover the insights and strategies in Micah’s book, “Can Your Customer Service Do This, create an Anticipatory Customer Experience that builds Loyalty Forever”.
• Micah’s website
• Connect with Micah on LinkedIn

 

This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by:

Oracle

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Duct Tape Transcript

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Testimonial (00:00): I was like, I found it. I found it. This is what I've been looking for. I can honestly say it has genuinely changed the way I run my business. It's changed the results that I'm seeing. It's changed my engagement with clients. It's changed my engagement with the team. I couldn't be happier. Honestly. It's the best investment I ever made.

John Jantsch (00:16): What you just heard was a testimonial from a recent graduate of the Duct Tape Marketing certification intensive program for fractional CMOs marketing agencies and consultants just like them. You could choose our system to move from vendor to trusted advisor, attract only ideal clients, and confidently present your strategies to build monthly recurring revenue. Visit DTM world slash scale to book your free advisory call and learn more. It's time to transform your approach. Book your call today, DTM world slash scale.

(01:02): Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Micah Solomon. He's an expert on customer service, hospitality and the customer experience. He's a bestselling author, consultant trainer, e-learning trainer, producer, training producer. It's a lot of training and a keynote speaker, and we're going to talk today about one of his newest books called Can Your Customer Service Do This, create an Anticipatory Customer Experience that builds Loyalty Forever. So Micah, welcome back to the show.

Micah Solomon (01:40): It was so great to be with you last time and this is a pleasure to return.

John Jantsch (01:44): So let's get right down to it. Define anticipatory customer experience.

Micah Solomon (01:50): So the basic, I guess, equation for customer service is you ask for something, I give it to you assuming you paid, but anticipatory customer service is another level. It's where I am serving even the unexpressed needs and wishes that you may have. And it's a great way to bind customers to you to make them feel like this is my place.

John Jantsch (02:16): Yeah, I mean, we've probably hopefully all been like at a restaurant. That's an example I love to use, where the server brought something you didn't even ask for because they knew you were getting, I mean, as simple as water, right? I mean, you didn't have to ask for it. They thought, well, you've drank your water, you're going to want more, and they bring it. I mean, that's a pretty simple example, right?

Micah Solomon (02:36): Absolutely.

John Jantsch (02:38): Go for it. I was going to pile on now using more words out of the subtitle itself. There would be some that would suggest that no matter how great your service loyalty is dead, I'll let you hit that one out of the park.

Micah Solomon (02:51): Well, if you believe that, then it is right. The thing to remember is in the olden days, we would talk about customer lifetime value, and I think it is hard to prove that figure now because John, as you pointed at it, is a lot easier to switch vendors. So I'll suggest you think about something called customer network value. So if you're delighting a customer, you number one, get their business and you number two, get all their recommendations. So it's a pretty big deal.

John Jantsch (03:27): Yeah, yeah. So it's almost like thinking of providing great customer experience, great customer service as a referral tactic almost. Right?

Micah Solomon (03:37): Absolutely. I like to say customer service is the new marketing.

John Jantsch (03:42): Yeah. And I remember from our last conversation, I know this is something you've done for years, but you start this book out with your secret shopper role. Talk a little bit about how you've done that. I mean, maybe even just give a story about doing it like you do in the book. I'll be happy to. You need to put a disguise on though, right? First,

Micah Solomon (04:04): Do you want to show that picture? That would be funny. I can grab it. Hang on. So this is one of the more extreme disguises I might or might not use. I don't mystery shop anyone except my customers and they ask me to do it because they want to know an overall feeling I'm getting for the service. So I start out with this wonderful day that I'm having at a five star resort, one of the greatest places in America, and I will wake up on the 33,000 thread count Egyptian. Hes and I head down to the spa and all the while I'm making notes. Now the spa's a little tricky because to make notes on my iPhone or whatever it is while they're facial me is a little challenging, but it's nice work if you can get it. At the end of the day, I order room service and one of my tests is I ask them for cocoa not too hot. And only the best people will get that. Most hotels won't even notice the instructions. The ones who do either forget to do it or they give me this ridiculous, it seems like they cooled it down with ice. So the not too high, because it's my Goldilocks challenge. Then when I'm done, I send my confidential report to the CEO or whoever the boss of the division is, and they can make use of it.

John Jantsch (05:32): So do you ever find, and again, I know you've done that for years, right? I mean that's something you've kind of made one of your signature applications. How'd you get into this work? I mean, I think a lot of people, you've sort of specialized in one aspect of it. I think a lot of people, customer experience get some talk in marketing, but it's not seen as a whole area. How did you come to find this to be your life's calling?

Micah Solomon (05:58): So there are two stories, two explanations, and both of them are true. So the PR friendly one is, I created a manufacturing company. This is some years ago, and our widgets were no better than anyone else. They were also no worse. So as time went on, I realized that what differentiated ourselves was the customer experience. When I sold the manufacturing company, I thought, well, this is what I do. I called a friend of mine, Leonardo, who did all of this stuff on the hospitality side, and I had done all of it on the business to business and so forth side, and I said, Hey, all this, I know all this. Let's write a book together. And he said, no, I think I'm going to write my own book sometime. So I was like, okay, good luck with that. So maybe a couple months later I call back and I say, Hey, Leonardo has that book coming.

(06:52): And he's like, oh, this is how optimistic, let's say he was. He says, I think I'm going to go off one day and write it all. So I was like, okay, good luck. One minute later he gets back on the phone and he sounds like he has his tail between his legs and he says, Micah Solan overheard my side of the conversation and she said, you absolutely have to write that book with Micah clearly not getting around to it yourself. So that was my first book, exceptional Service, exceptional Profit was co-authored by the two of us. And I kept learning more and more things, writing more and more books, working with more and more companies, and that's what I do. So that is the PR friendly official story. The other story is I was born, or at least from a very early age as an excessively particular person. So in the book, I have a reconstructed letter from my counselors at camp, which tells you a lot, and it's something like, dear Mr. And Mrs. Solomon, we have had the arduous pleasure of having your son Micah at summer camp. Usually the suggestions and complaints we get are along the lines of that old Hello Mara, hello Mudda, hello father song where it's raining too much and there are alligators in the FOD and everything.

John Jantsch (08:12): Shell Silverstein, right?

Micah Solomon (08:14): Yeah. And so one of those guys, I think his one that's similar is I'm being eaten by a boa constrictor, which is a great one also. But Micas were much more specific in advance. They were like the two whistles at the waterfront aren't quite in tune with each other. The sloppy joes doesn't pair well with the orange juice and the mess hall and so forth. We have enjoyed having Micah for this summer, but we were also happy to return him to your care.

John Jantsch (08:42): So that was your, that's when you didn't realize it at the time, but that was your signal that you were meant for. This AI might be the most important new computer technology ever. It's storming every industry and billions of dollars are being invested. So buckle up. The problem is that AI needs a lot of speed and processing power. So how do you compete without cost spiraling out of control? It's time to upgrade to the next generation of the cloud. Oracle Cloud infrastructure or O-C-I-O-C-I is a single platform for your infrastructure, database, application development, and AI needs. OCI has four to eight times the bandwidth of other clouds offers one consistent price instead of a variable regional pricing. And of course, nobody does data better than Oracle. So now you can train your AI models at twice the speed and less than half of the cost of other clouds.

(09:36): If you want to do more and spend less like Uber eight by eight and Databricks Mosaic, take a free test drive@ociatoracle.com slash duct tape. That's oracle.com/duct tape oracle.com/duct tape. So I actually find that Google reviews are really helpful because not just as a consumer, certainly they're helpful for that. Somebody's got terrible reviews, you don't go there. But as a marketer, I really find them helpful because the words that people actually use voluntarily really say a lot about what's going on at that business. However, no matter how good a business is, you see everybody gets one and two star reviews for some reason, and maybe it's deserved every now and then it's deserved, but sometimes people are just odd. You're never going to make everybody happy that nothing is truer than that. So what do you suggest people do? I guess I'm asking a two part question. Obviously with upset and unhappy customers, but then also just with unreasonable customers.

Micah Solomon (10:42): So I spend a lot of time in the book with the first category customers who are upset, unhappy, frustrated, and I have a service recovery framework which all great companies have, whether it's Nordstrom or whether it's Carlton or Zappos, mine, which I'm kind of famous for spells mama MA. And the reason it spells mama, actually going back to Leonardo, my co-author, he's Italian through and through. So we're talking about how companies tend to be too legalistic when they're trying to work with us. They're like just the facts and blah, blah, blah. And we said, well, why don't we make it sound like your mother or a quintessential Italian mother? And he said, well, my mom's really not the right model. She was kind of tough, but let's say the stereotype. And she's like, oh my bambino, you hurt, you're ouchie. Let me put a bandaid on it and maybe here's a lollipop.

(11:35): Rather than just the facts ma'am approach where we're like, well, let me see young man, were you wearing a protective gear before you head it out and so forth. So the first thing is to make time to listen. We are all such good troubleshooters that we kind of think we know the solution before our customers even spoke it. So let them vent and then it has some different aspects, but basically agree with your customer what you're going to do and by when, and then do it. Now I think if you look at the unreasonable Google reviews or TripAdvisor of high percentage of them are from people who never or customers.

John Jantsch (12:15): That's so true.

Micah Solomon (12:17): If I get a one-star review for my book, which thank goodness I haven't yet, it can be like, I ordered this from Amazon and they said it was out of stock,

John Jantsch (12:28): Right? I've gotten some bad reviews. It's like the cover came in tattered. Well, you bought it from a third party, it was used. That's, it's really rough.

Micah Solomon (12:37): So if they're a semi reasonable person and if you are able to figure out how to reach them,

(12:42): Then work with them. And when it's all over, personally, I have no problem say, Hey, do you think you could update that review? And some people will, and some people are just so lazy that they won't. Now, I will tell you, some of my clients, or even people just friends of mine operate, let's say a restaurant and they call me and they say, Hey Micah, I just got this horrible review and I'm sure it was my competitors down the street. So I'm like, okay, let me look at the review. But it's so specific. Clearly this is someone who's eaten at the restaurant. So I'm like, it's never the restaurant down the street, just like on the show a Sherlock, it's never twins. The solution is never that. There's two twins with the same characters. So by and large it's not your competitors. Certainly there are famous examples where it is, there was this horrible thing, the Mark is a wonderful hotel in New York, and there was this kid who was very, very abusive to them and started this social media campaign against them. But those are really easy except,

John Jantsch (13:38): Yeah, I actually over the years, had a business one star review and it was like, that's the competitor's wife. It was a construction company. It was very obvious that it was, and Google to their credit removed it. But yeah, it is goofy what people do.

Micah Solomon (13:56): Oh my

John Jantsch (13:57): Goodness. You talk a lot about, and I know a lot of people who talk about customer experience being a real competitive advantage, particularly in one of those where it's like, you sell this, they sell that you're about the same price, you're about the same price. I mean, talk a little bit about that idea of really viewing it as a profit center almost, or certainly as a true competitive advantage.

Micah Solomon (14:18): It's getting very commoditized out there. So how do you distinguish yourself? Well, maybe you're lucky and you have an astonishing product nobody else has. Maybe you have, let's say suites that are literally over the water in Aura. So you can have a great location or the first frick location for gas station, but most of us don't have that.

(14:38): Most of us, the default is that we're pretty interchangeable with our competitors. So customers will leave because they found a better price because someone else has a better website or seriously for discernible reason at all. So how do you get out of this? Well, you have to become memorable, and you could do that with amazing advertising and marketing. I don't want to dismiss that, but the thing is that great marketing only resonates if it's true. There have been campaigns that were really clever, but the reality of being that customer wasn't like that. So you got to get the customer experience and then they will become ideally loyal. A loyal customer is less price sensitive, and believe it or not, they are more forgiving of your minor foibles, believe it or not. And if something goes terribly wrong, they will give you the courtesy of reaching out to you, right? Yeah. So they're also more open to any line extensions you have and they will be become an ambassador for your brand. They'll do what I like to call word of thumb marketing on their phones. So loyalty is very valuable and the customer experience is one of the ways to get there.

John Jantsch (15:54): Yeah. I know for a fact that you talked about less price sensitive. I mean, I know that in some cases I'm paying more, but I'm like, I don't care because the cost of the hassle or the cost of not having them know my name when I come into the store to me is high and I'm not alone. I've seen surveys as high as 90% of people surveyed saying they'll pay more for a better experience. What role does community feedback, I mean, getting that feedback, just like you went in Secret shop, you told the CEO of this and this, but what role of actively asking your customers are they getting what? Could you do something better? Could you provide a better service? Do you advocate that?

Micah Solomon (16:38): Well, certainly you want to be surveying your customers.

John Jantsch (16:41): Yeah,

Micah Solomon (16:43): But do it. You got to do it really quickly and you have to not hound them if they don't want to reply. In fact, and this may not be true anymore, but a few years ago, Ritz Carlton was not only highest on chip advisor in the luxury category. They were highest in any category. And so she told me, well, our secrets are two, one, we do a great job. Number two, I never hound customers to leave a review. I never solicit that. I don't have a thing on the counter saying, please leave a review. So the people leave a reviews are really passionate about us.

(17:17): Now, if you are going to survey people, number one, 80% of surveys are written completely wrong. If you want to write a perfect survey, look in my book, it's there. If you are so impious or cheap that you don't want to buy my book, then I think the best thing to do. But you probably don't own Apple products either, but if you own a couple products, look at their surveys, they're pretty good. So what makes a survey good? Well, number one, you want to ask the most important question first, how satisfied are you with that?

(17:49): Then get to the itty bitty Diddy was a bathroom cleaner, so forth. So because if you ask was the bathroom clean and oh my God, you have the most clean bathrooms ever, like McDonald's pride themselves on, then that's going to tint the rest of the survey or especially the next question that you ask. Or if your toilets are horrible, that's going to have excessive weight. So first, ask their overall impression, then get into the smaller areas that you want them to talk about. Only have five or I heard a clever arch for having four or six levels. The idea of using four or six is that there is no middle point, so you can't be lazy in your enhancement. Don't give them 10 and don't ask them on a scale of one to 100 because customers shouldn't have to do math for you. And so there are a few, but one thing I would say is if you are surveying your customers leave at least one blank space where they can vent or they can give very specific feedback. So that's tip number one. Tip number two is you've got to scan them right away because if you've got a really upset customer and they write all about that, you need to get back to them right away. You can't wait until the end of the month when you're batching these and reading them. And that's a mistake that a lot of companies make.

John Jantsch (19:07): Yeah, it is funny. I think most people can forgive a mistake taking care of what they can't forgive is doing a really bad job of taking care of it or ignoring it. It just makes it even worse. We've gotten, I can't believe, 19 minutes into the show and I haven't said ai. That's awesome. I haven't said AI yet. Let's talk a little bit about how you see AI impacting this kind of arm of the marketing world of experience and service.

Micah Solomon (19:34): Well, it's both early days and boy, things are changing quickly. I have a triangular model of AI in customer service. So at one Vertex, I'm going to use up my geometry training in a moment. One vertex is the customer or the prospect, and the next is the agent, and the third one is the ai. So a customer can come in using the ai. In fact, the best search engines on websites are AI powered. That may take care of them. If it doesn't, then they'll reach out to an agent. But when they get there, the mistake is to think no more AI should be involved. The customer's going to keep using ai. I mean, they're going to go on the thing that my mom calls the Google and look around. I know it's really funny if she's not your mom and they're going to keep looking at Google and the agent is going to keep using the ai. AI is great at turning a generalist agent into temporarily a specialist when they're answering a call.

John Jantsch (20:30): Yeah, yeah, I think, I mean I've even heard reports of people saying that they're able to really get less experienced agents, less trained agents necessarily, who have the right sort of spirit, who now have all the answers at their disposal as though they've been there for years. So I think it's a win for everybody. I appreciate you coming by and spending a few minutes with us. How can people contact you, find out about your work? Obviously get a copy of the book, Micah.

Micah Solomon (20:55): So to reach me, you can come to my website or just Google my name, but it is a challenging, extremely biblical name. So it's Micah, MICH at Micah Solomon, M-I-C-A-H-S-O-L-O-M-O n.com. If you want to email me, there are no as in Solomon or my website is a little easier, it's micah solomon.com, but you can just use Google and misspell my name. I'll get you to each, I'll just shoot two weeks, just

John Jantsch (21:24): Customer service expert. There you go.

Micah Solomon (21:27): To buy my book. There'll be a link on my site, which will give you a free sample right away, but if you go to Voldemort site, oh, I'm sorry, Amazon site. It's there, it's available. They are shipping it now, and you can read a pretty long and pretty fabulous sample there before you decide to buy it.

John Jantsch (21:43): Yeah, awesome. Well, Mike, it was great catching up with you, just having you spend a few minutes on the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, and hopefully we'll run into you one of these days out there on the road soon.

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Franchise Secrets to Leading Effectively

Franchise Secrets to Leading Effectively written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

The Ducttape Marketing Podcast with Tiffany Slowinski

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I interview Tiffany Slowinski, an entrepreneur and co-owner of three successful franchises. Tiffany shares her journey in the franchise industry, insights on using the Culture Index to improve team dynamics, and the importance of self-awareness in leadership. She discusses how data-driven information can transform business communication and productivity while addressing common misconceptions about leadership tools. Tiffany Slowinski emphasizes the need for buy-in from leadership and the role of self-awareness in effective team management.

 

Key Takeaways:

• Transforming team dynamics can lead to increased revenue.
• Communication styles can be adjusted based on team data.
• Data can help identify potential leaders early on.
• Misconceptions about leadership tools can hinder progress.
• Self-awareness is key to effective leadership.
• Leadership buy-in is crucial for implementing change.

 

Chapters

[00:00] Introduction to Tiffany Slawinski
[01:34] Franchise Journey and Insights
[03:11] The Power of Culture Index
[05:01] Transforming Team Dynamics
[08:50] Addressing Executive Skepticism
[10:46] Common Misconceptions in Leadership
[12:31] Utilizing Data for Effective Leadership
[17:11] Working with Spouses in Business
[19:57] Self-Awareness in Leadership

More About Tiffany Slowinski

• Check out Tiffany Slowinski’s Website
• Follow Tiffany Slowinski on LinkedIn

 

This episode of The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by:

Try ActiveCampaign free for 14 days with our special offer. Exclusive to new customers—upgrade and grow your business with ActiveCampaign today!

Duct Tape Transcript

Email Download New Tab

Testimonial (00:00): I was like, I found it. I found it. This is what I've been looking for. I can honestly say it has genuinely changed the way I run my business. It's changed the results that I'm seeing. It's changed my engagement with clients. It's changed my engagement with the team. I couldn't be happier. Honestly. It's the best investment I ever made.

John Jantsch (00:16): What you just heard was a testimonial from a recent graduate of the Duct Tape Marketing certification intensive program for fractional CMOs marketing agencies and consultants just like them. You could choose our system to move from vendor to trusted advisor, attract only ideal clients, and confidently present your strategies to build monthly recurring revenue. Visit DTM world slash scale to book your free advisory call and learn more. It's time to transform your approach. Book your call today, DTM World slash scale.

(01:03): Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch and my guest today is Tiffany Slowinski. She's an entrepreneur and co-owner of three successful franchises with her husband. Jake is a mother of four. She draws inspiration from both her family and career through Team Spark Advisors. She uses data-driven insights to help businesses improve communication, productivity, and employee satisfaction. She holds a master's in psychology from Columbia University, enhancing her experience in leadership and team dynamics. So Tiffany, welcome to the show.

Tiffany Slowinski (01:38): Thanks for having me, John.

John Jantsch (01:40): So did I read somewhere it says you have four kids. Do you have four girls? Did I

Tiffany Slowinski (01:44): Read that? Yes.

John Jantsch (01:46): So do I.

Tiffany Slowinski (01:47): Oh, that never happens.

John Jantsch (01:50): Mine are grown and having babies of their own now, but it was fundraising for girls, especially as a dad. I would always get questions like, oh, is that really hard on you? And truthfully, they were way harder on their mother than me.

Tiffany Slowinski (02:03): People are always like, wow, your poor husband. I'm like, I dunno what you want me to do about this right now.

John Jantsch (02:10): I got tired of it. But any rate, so you have and your husband have a lot of history in the franchise industry. In fact, you actually worked corporately for a franchise before getting, tell me a little bit about your franchise background. It seems like you're very drawn to that model, so you must think it's a positive model.

Tiffany Slowinski (02:30): Yeah, well, with franchises it's like just do what you're supposed to and it takes some of the guesswork out of it. Going into franchises was kind of the opposite of most people in that I opened our franchises with my husband. They're magazines that we own and most people leave corporate America to open a franchise. I opened my franchise and our franchisor asked me to come work for them. So I went backwards and that was during the pandemic. And we had just recently opened our first franchise that year and we're having a lot of early success. We were rookies of the year, fastest growing publication the company had seen up to that point. And so they wanted me to come to the corporate level and help do for everybody else what we've been able to do with ours, which unsurprisingly is not exactly how that works. You can't just get everybody else to do what you do.

John Jantsch (03:37): So the Team Spark Advisors is primarily, you primarily use the Culture Index survey to work with folks. There are, I'm familiar with at least eight. There's probably a hundred of those types of surveys out there. I've taken Strength Finders and Colby and some of the other ones that are out there. Is there something about Culture Index that you think makes it particularly effective for business?

Tiffany Slowinski (04:01): My original background with it was in my time working for our corporate franchise, we were clients of Culture Index. I was the end user and I had done all sorts of surveys, like you mentioned, our CEO was really big on that and I, psych background, I always found them somewhat interesting, but I was never so drawn to something as I was Culture Index. And for me it was kind of for a few reasons. One, it just pegged me and everybody around me that I worked with so accurately I'd never seen anything like it. Some of these other surveys we took, there'd be like half of us in the room would be like, oh, we have the same letters or we're the same. But I'd be like, I don't understand it. I don't see it. I don't think we're similar, but this paper is saying it.

(04:50): This with Culture Index had a lot more depth to it. There were a lot more possibilities. It wasn't just your detailed or your social, there was degrees of things and how those traits played together. The other piece is really what's the differentiating factor? I talked to a lot of businesses. You were like, I've done a million of these things until I start talking to them and they're like, oh, that's different. I'm really a walk alongside you model. I'm a consultant. I'm not selling you a batch of surveys and saying, Hey, here's information on your team. Good luck with that. I've trained you for an hour. I'm there every step of the way because you've got to learn how to actually put it into practice. Otherwise it's not worth anything.

John Jantsch (05:30): I'll put you on the spot a little bit. Hopefully you have one that you can pull up quickly. But do you have a business, a case study that you've actually worked with a business and they've gone through the work and done the work and listened to you and it's completely changed the team dynamics?

Tiffany Slowinski (05:45): It changes beyond even team dynamics. It changes their revenue. It changes a lot of things because when you don't have the right people in the right seats that can really drag down progress, can drag down everything. So when I work with a company, first thing I'm doing is going in and getting a baseline on the current employees because a lot of times it's this whole like, okay, we think we're good over there, just help us with the new people until you start working with them. And then it's, oh, maybe we're not as good here as we thought. And I wound up spending actually more time working with them on their existing teams than the new employees. They always think about the new employees is what they want, but the actuality is it's really helping them define their existing teams. And I've seen this one company I'm working with, they moved people around a little bit. They made some changes that you would've thought, are people going to really accept what could feel like a demotion or when they're going to work basically exploding in their brain every day and it's not working. Nobody likes to go to work and fail. And that's what it feels like sometimes for people to be in the wrong seats. John, the old adage, you take your best salesperson and you make 'em sales manager

(07:04): And they're lousy

John Jantsch (07:05): And they fail.

Tiffany Slowinski (07:07): And that happens a lot. We take our best person and we're like, okay, since they're really good at doing the work, let's make them the leader. And that is a completely different skillset. And you're taking a person who's really good at what they were doing and now are they kind of setting them up to fail?

John Jantsch (07:24): Yeah, I often find that there are definitely people that are good at doing the work, so to speak. I am a marketing agency so that do the execution really in a lot of cases don't like to lead. People don't like to delegate. They love the doing. And then there are people that they want to delegate everything. They want to have a team doing the things. And sometimes it's very difficult because there's work to be done, right? It is like, no, you do this and you do this and you do that. So is there any sort of, I don't know the right trait or term for this. If somebody takes the culture index or one of these index type of tools, I mean, can you start to say, oh, you're going to be better as a leader, you're going to be better as X, or is that actually a mistake to maybe make those assumptions?

Tiffany Slowinski (08:14): It's not a mistake. It's helping putting people into the right roles. So I get it. You can't necessarily take a person with no work experience at all their first job out of college and say, oh, you're going to be the CEO O because you have the right traits. They still need experience.

(08:33): But if you are seeing early signs of we've got data here that supports this person will be good in leadership at some point you can help identify that early. And it doesn't mean they get to skip all the steps, but it's letting them know, Hey, we see potential in you. Hang tight. Yes, you have to learn the role. And I know that might kill you a little bit in the meantime, but if you work with us and do a good job, we could fast track you. So showing them the possibility of what the future could look like

John Jantsch (09:00): When you're out there pitching this sometimes, and I'm sure you run up against some executives that are like, yeah, this is something we're supposed to do, but it's like the feel good stuff. Go ahead. What are some skeptical executives? I mean, how do you convince them the value of using a tool like this for both alignment and recruitment?

Tiffany Slowinski (09:22): So it's really about aligning with the right partners. For me, there are visionary profiles and that's kind of the fun of sometimes having the data people before I talk to them in that I don't really have to pitch or convince them of anything. They realize there's a problem and they're proactive and they want to solve it. They know there's people issues. I've yet to come across a company that says we're 10 for 10 on every employee. It doesn't happen.

Tiffany Slowinski (09:48): We

Tiffany Slowinski (09:48): Like to think we're good at this, but let's be honest, it's really hard because people will present themselves a certain way in an interview process. Social people are four times more likely to be hired. Why they interview? Well, they have those skills. So a skeptic, I'm really not going to come into you. And then we're probably not a good fit because unfortunately a skeptic at the frontline will sometimes continue to be a skeptic through the process and it winds up hindering things. We don't get anywhere unless you come in with an open mind. I ask leadership, come in and come in with an open mind that we're all going to hear things about ourselves we don't like. There's no perfect person. I've had to swallow some of my own pills about who I am and when you can embrace that and say, I've got these gifts and I'm going to work to those, rather than spending all my time worrying about like, oh, I'm low detail, I'm a disaster at organizing things, I knew that, right? So I can have an admin that does those things for me and not beat myself up with a fact. That's not a strength of mine.

John Jantsch (10:55): Alright, so let's throw the skeptical ones out because they're too hard to work with, but there probably are some misconceptions that leaders have. What are some of the common ones that you encounter where people are either not seeing how to use this or seeing it as less than talk about some of the misconceptions that you encounter?

Tiffany Slowinski (11:15): So sometimes there's a bit of an attitude of I just want to pay for something to fix this.

Tiffany Slowinski (11:21): Yeah.

Tiffany Slowinski (11:22): And I don't want to have human involvement just go deal with the HR director and let them do this and it's not going to work. I could take your money, but I'm going to tell you right now, a year from now, you're going to say, that didn't work and I'm not going to continue working with you because this is top down. If there's not buy-in at the leadership level and there's some work to be done

Tiffany Slowinski (11:47): At

Tiffany Slowinski (11:47): The leadership level, and these are busy people who have other things they need to do, but if they invest little bit of time upfront, this starts to become something that's incorporated down. If we try to start this at a lower level, it'll never infiltrate up. It's too easy to go back to our ways. It's too easy to say, well, this person has this great resume. I like them. They came from our biggest competitor. Just hire them and you will take my data and you will throw it in the garbage can because it doesn't say what you want it to say. And so if you haven't worked on this with me, you're not going to have a belief in the product and you're kind of wasting your money at that point.

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(13:31): So what are you waiting for? Fuel your growth. Boost revenue and save precious time by upgrading to active campaign today. Alright, let's say an example internally, a team, a leader says, I'm going to have all my people take this. Even if they're not trying to solve a problem, they just feel like, Hey, I'd like to understand each personality better. How would somebody, and again, I know you're not looking at results, but how would somebody use the fact that they have that information now to adjust how they communicate, adjust how they lead, adjust how they delegate, even what have you seen people that really embrace this do?

Tiffany Slowinski (14:11): Yeah. So knowing who is working with them, that's why it's important to involve leadership of multiple levels because the CEO is not necessarily spending any amount of time with certain people in the company. So I've got to work with different levels of leadership, but you know that somebody is less likely to take initiative or is going to move a little bit slower. You can set deadlines, you can send reminders. You can say, I'm over my dead body, I'm set a reminder, but I'll have my admin do that or I'll have this other person do that. I know myself is not going to do that. Right? So in understanding how people work, you can modify yourself to a degree. If these are people that you value and that are doing a good job, there's a certain amount of modification to your behaviors that you're going to want to make.

(15:05): If this person is not doing a good job is costing the company money, you're trying to turn yourself inside out to be able to work with them. Maybe this is not the right spot for them to be in because you have to think about, as a leader, how much can I change myself before going crazy as well to accommodate you for the right person. It might be worth it for the wrong person. You're not going to want to spend your time doing that. Simple things, communication styles, somebody who wants all the information and asks all the questions and can be very irritating to someone who's a little bit of a quicker mover, lower detail, good enough to move on. And those two people understanding that, okay, let me at least have some compassion when this person's bombarding me with questions and not flip out. And on the flip side, knowing that person's not going to take to this, so maybe I should just send three bullet points in an email and they're going to be more likely to respond than trying to send them something that's like 17 pages long.

John Jantsch (16:05): How much do you advise people to use this data? For example, we have everybody. We happen to use strength finders, and so we have everybody actually take it, but then we also have them share it with the entire team with the idea that, hey, here's what really irritates me. Here's how I like to work, that we get some of that stuff off. How important do you think it is that people are consistently reinforcing and sharing the styles of how I like to work and really making sure that hopefully uses that in a positive way. But do you find that by reinforcing it, bringing up all the time, sharing it actually makes it more useful? Or is it, do people feel more vulnerable doing that?

Tiffany Slowinski (16:53): So the important thing to note, there's no wrong people. Anything that could be a positive, your greatest strength could also be your biggest weakness, right? It's cliche, but it's true. So there's no person I've yet to come across him that has it all. They could be more equipped for certain roles that they're going to be very ideal, but there's no person who's literally good at everything. So I do think that communication and keeping this front of mind is important because again, if you look at it once, oh, that's so cool. John's just like this. We have this in common, but in this way we're different. You're going to forget about it. And where does this really come up is when there's a dispute or things aren't getting done or falling through the cracks or you bringing in a new person to train and you're realizing they're getting trained the wrong way by constantly having this information out there and being reinforced and talking about it.

(17:48): There's different logic is one that I look at, and that could be really hard for somebody to say, I'm lower logic. Nobody wants to think that about them. But they're also some of the most passionate people who could be amazing presenters and cheerleaders in an organization. I mean, there's a lot of good that comes from being emotional like that, but if you've got a low logic and a high logic person in an argument, they could be basically speaking a different language. They can't relate to why are you so upset right now? And why are you so calm? That's suspect, what do you just not care? And that can cause arguments. So you just even be able to understand their high logic. They're going to be a little bit colder. That's not a reflection on me that says something about them and not me. You can reason with them better and have a more productive conversation.

John Jantsch (18:41): You are in a unique position where you work with their spouse, so spouse and coworker. And there certainly are a lot of folks out there that are in that. And there are also a lot of entrepreneurs where one is very entrepreneurial, one is not at all, maybe stay at home or work in a corporate job. How often do you find that actually having couples participate in using a tool like this generates some interesting insights?

Tiffany Slowinski (19:09): Just about every company I'm with within a day of meeting me, they are surveying their spouse and their children because all of a sudden it's like, my wife, I really want to learn more about that, or My kids are driving me nuts. Let's see what's going on there. So it's so common that even if you don't necessarily work together, you work through life

(19:34): Together. And those roles can look a little different in a household than a business. But in my case, with my husband, some of this was so obvious, I'm super social. Off the charts, social, top 1% of humans walking the earth, he is low social. This will come of no surprise to either of us. We both know this about each other, but now when I'm dragging him to the 19th event of the weekend, he can look at me and he'll say, Tiffany, I'm low social and this is draining my battery right now and I can't just tell him to shut up anymore because the data says it. He's right. So it is helped me to be, even though I always knew that I don't think I ever understood the toll that me dragging him around would take. And so I've become much more cognizant of, okay, you can't skip Christmas, but there's certain things that maybe I don't really need you by my side, it's doing you no good. Let me let you sit this out because he'll be a much happier human and he'll be more productive at work on Monday if I let him skip out some barbecue on a Sunday afternoon that he doesn't feel like being on. Anyway.

John Jantsch (20:46): So sort of along those lines, do you ever find that people either try successfully or unsuccessfully, so they go through this and somebody's in a certain role and they're really great at the role, but there's an aspect of it that they're going to need in order to progress and it's just not there and the data shows it. Can you use a tool or would you even advise using a tool to help somebody improve in an area that is maybe not joyful to them, but important?

Tiffany Slowinski (21:16): Yeah. So it's not to say that we can't modify ourselves at all we can. And so through training, education, experience, wisdom, self-awareness, when I have people who are self-aware, they can more easily say, okay, I'm not exactly showing leadership traits here. In some ways, what can I do to work on that? I can see now exactly where that's needed. But if they can't acknowledge that in themselves, then you're just banging your head against a wall. So there's absolutely ways we can all improve. It just goes to ask how far, I had a business owner recently hopped on a call with him, and I was somewhat surprised, but he said to me, Tiffany, do you think I should keep running my own business?

(22:13): And it's sort of unusual. I looked at his profile, I said, this scares the crap out of you every single day, doesn't it? He's like, yeah, I'm like, you don't like this? He's like, no. I'm like, yeah, you're a really risk averse person. This is really uncomfortable for you. So he's acknowledging that in himself, and if he's even asked me that, okay, so some people could take my information and go, oh, this just says I'm a bad leader. I'm not going to pay attention to that. Or they could look at that information and go, okay, now what can I do about it? Who else is he going to bring into his company? Are there people who can help co-lead with him to take some of that pressure off so he could do what he's good at, but still have other people there?

John Jantsch (22:51): It's interesting. I have done well, I've done thousands of interviews, but I've done hundreds. That leadership is a big part of the conversation. And it's amazing how often the idea of self-awareness comes up as being really, you can't pass go and be a leader if you don't have some level of self-awareness. I'm sure you have discovered that as well.

Tiffany Slowinski (23:15): Yeah. It's integral, right? You can, again, have great traits, but if you don't realize how you come off to others, that can be really challenging. I'm an extraordinarily low patience person, and so understanding now that I think before I speak, I'm a quick mover that there's times I can come across as angry

(23:43): And I'm not really angry. I'm being direct and trying to get something done, but realizing the experience of the person on the other side is she's mad at me. And it's like, oh, I've had employees say that to me. You're a little scary sometimes. I'm like me, right? But with experiences come, wow, that could be perceived as scary, and I don't like hearing that about myself. And it's very easy, again, to just say, I'm not scary. You're crazy. But if people are telling me that, then I need to behave differently because my quest to get things done quickly can't come at the cost of other people, feel like they can't keep up, and that's really what's at play there. I just move very fast and seeing this data points and realizing they're never going to move at my speed. Me expecting that it's driving too hard, it's creating too much friction. So I purposely modify myself to become more patient. Am I always perfect at it? No. But it's only through awareness that I even try to put that in place.

John Jantsch (24:46): Absolutely. Well, Tiffany, I appreciate you stopping by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast to share a little bit. Is there someplace you might want to invite people to connect with you and find out more about your work?

Tiffany Slowinski (24:55): Absolutely. You can connect with me on LinkedIn, Tiffany Slosky, or you could go to my website, team spark advisors.com.

John Jantsch (25:03): Awesome. Well, again, I appreciate you stopping by, and hopefully we'll run into you one of these days out there on the road.

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Weekend Favs October 12th

Weekend Favs October 12th written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

My weekend blog post routine includes posting links to a handful of tools or great content I ran across during the week.

I don’t go into depth about the finds, but I encourage you to check them out if they sound interesting. The photo in the post is a favorite for the week from an online source or one I took on the road.

• • Tidio – An AI chatbot and live chat solution that helps marketers engage website visitors, automate customer support, and improve lead generation.

  • Scalenut – AI-powered content research and writing platform that assists marketers with long-form SEO blog posts, content outlines, and topic research.
  • CrAIyon – An AI image generation tool that helps marketers create custom visuals and creative assets based on text prompts for use in campaigns, social media, and branding.

These are my weekend favs; I would love to hear about some of yours – Connect with me on Linkedin!

If you want to check out more Weekend Favs you can find them here.

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Why Working Less is the Secret to Earning More With Alyson Caffrey

Why Working Less is the Secret to Earning More With Alyson Caffrey written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast with Alyson Caffrey

Coming in at number four of your favorite episodes lately: In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I interviewed Alyson Caffrey, the founder of Operations Agency and the co-creator of the operations simplified framework, which is aimed at streamlining the backend operations for digital and creative agencies. She also authorizes The Sabbatical Method: How to Leverage Rest and Grow Your Business. With a wealth of experience in helping agency owners find a balance between their work and rest, Alyson sheds light on how the Sabbatical Method can revolutionize how marketing systems are handled.

Key Takeaway:

Working less to achieve more is a paradigm shift in the traditional hustle culture, especially among agency owners in the marketing realm. Alyson Caffrey joins me in elucidating how the Sabbatical Method is transforming the marketing systems landscape. We delve into the concept of “systematic rest,” an innovative approach to interspersing work with adequate rest to prevent burnout and enhance productivity and creativity significantly. By embracing the Sabbatical Method, agency owners are discovering a potent strategy to scale their business while reducing the hours they traditionally grind away, making the notion of working less to achieve more a reality.

 

Questions I ask Alyson Caffrey:

• [00:45] How does rest contribute to business growth?
• [02:31] Can you explain the framework you mentioned?
• [03:43] Is a long sabbatical the goal of your method?
• [05:44] How does your 90-day method alter established work habits?
• [08:28] Do founders grasp your concepts both logically and emotionally?
• [11:10] Can you explain the operation simplified hierarchy?
• [14:37] What daily habits do you recommend for gradual improvement?
• [18:54] How can one develop discipline in creating effective systems?
• [21:54] How should these changes be planned in quarterly planning?
• [24:37] Where can listeners connect with you or learn more?

More About Alyson Caffrey

• Get Alyson’s book –  The Sabbatical Method: How to Leverage Rest and Grow Your Business
• Find out more about the Operations Agency
• Connect with Alyson Caffrey on LinkedIn

Get Your Free AI Prompts To Build A Marketing Strategy:

• Download now

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Connect with John Jantsch on LinkedIn

Duct Tape Transcript

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John Jantsch (00:08): Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Alison Caffery. She streamlines the backend operations for digital and creative agencies, and she's the founder of Operations Agency and the co-creator of the Operations Simplified Framework. We're going to talk about her most recent book, the Sabbatical Method, how to Leverage Rest and Grow Your Business. Allison's also the host of the Growing Pains podcast, so welcome to the show, Allison.

Alyson Caffrey (00:43): Thanks for having me, John. Appreciate it.

John Jantsch (00:46): Okay. I'm probably not the first person to say this, but REST is not often associated with growing a business, so tell me why it should be.

Alyson Caffrey (00:55): Yeah, that's an awesome way to frame that question honestly. So I started thinking about the function of rest after I went on maternity leave with my first son. My business was three years old and it still needed me a lot. And I remember it being a really confronting experience because I thought to myself, well, how can I actually take some time off and also simultaneously grow my business? And I started just considering that growing a business is a high performance effort. We need to be able to put out a high performing output and we need to be able to be really consistent. We need to be really clear. We need to do the specific activities that are going to bring us the highest level result. And one of those activities actually is rest. If you think about someone summiting Everest or training for a marathon or doing anything in the physical high performing nature, rest is woven into every single training plan out there that exists. But for some reason, we as small business owners think that momentum and hustle and grinding and are going to be the answers to a lot of our problems, when in fact implementing rest actually can preserve the longevity of your business and really prevent against burnout, which has unfortunately become such a commonplace in the entrepreneurial spirit,

John Jantsch (02:15): Unfortunately. And I do think that there, unfortunately for good or bad, there are bad examples of everything. I think there's a lot of bad examples of just what you talked about. The whole hustle and grind thing became kind of badge of honor for some people. I do think we're going the other direction. Fortunately we're going to get into the specifics, but maybe since we're calling this a framework or a method, let's kind of big picture, what is it in a nutshell?

Alyson Caffrey (02:42): Yeah, so the sabbatical method is kind of like hard 75 for business owners. It's really supposed to serve two main purposes. First is to give you a hard stop and kind of a reset. If you've been really needing to take a rest from the business, if you feel like you're at the edge of yourself, if you're grinding and at full speed, this is supposed to be your permission because Alison Caffrey says there's a return on investment for rest. This is your permission to take that time. Second is it's a lifestyle. So after you finish hard 75, you're not supposed to just start snacking on the Cheetos right away. You're supposed to consider what can I take from this really challenging disciplined time and how can I weave it into my overall health and wellness in my personal life? And that's what I want you to consider operationally in your business. How can I weave rest into the way that my business performs so that I can see more return on investment and more longevity overall? So that's what the sabbatical method is in a nutshell.

John Jantsch (03:43): Alright, so the end goal then is to, I mean people think of a sabbatical, people leave the country, leave their business for three, six months. I mean, is that really the ultimate goal? However you define that?

Alyson Caffrey (03:57): It's interesting. I get asked that all the time and the short answer is no, it's not a traditional sabbatical. Sabbatical to me is just as simple as closing your computer at 6:00 PM if that's what you've been struggling to do. Everybody needs to begin where they are. And just again, in any physical training plan, we don't go out to run 26.2 miles on day one of our marathon training. We run one mile and then we get nice and rested, then we go out for maybe a two mile run the next day.

(04:26): That's the same position I take with sabbatical planning. A lot of us think that sabbaticals are this Parisian six month, three month time off. And a lot of it feels really inaccessible to business owners and transparently, if you tried to do that at this point in some of our businesses, our business would just fall apart if we just kind of decided to go take this super long vacation. So what I tried to reposition the term of sabbatical is consistent and appropriate rest at different levels of the business. So that might mean closing the computer at 6:00 PM making sure that you're not answering emails or doing specific client projects over the weekends. Making sure that you block in sometimes in your monthly cadence to review your overall goals and consider what are the systems I have in place for the business and how am I systematically going after what I want to achieve and how am I achieving results for clients? So those are kind of the different types of things I would consider as implementing rest into the business. And of course you can leverage these exact tools to build up to a three month sabbatical. That's what I personally did to take my maternity leaves with my sons and I was able to take some really meaningful time off that really did shift the direction and clarify the purpose of a lot of the things we were doing in operations agency.

John Jantsch (05:44): So one of the book's Promises is somewhere buried in there is that we're going to do this in 90 days, right? We're going to correct a lot of bad habits in 90 days. A lot of business owners, the way they work has taken them 20 years to get there. So how do you get the mindset shift? And maybe it's just people, they get burned out enough, they're like, I got to do something, and that alone is enough to make 'em create a difference. But what do you say to those people that really just kind of established this way to work for many years maybe?

Alyson Caffrey (06:16): Yeah. There's kind of two things I think John that you've asked that are relevant to unpack here. First is that I know a lot of digital agency owners who really struggle to get themselves out of the day-to-Day operations of their business because they have a lot of industry expertise and a specific formula that lives right up here in the brain that they use to approach their client projects and really get some of the best results on projects. One of the things that I position in the book is really being dialed into that over a 90 day period is to understand what am I doing that is actually systematic things that I do day in and day out for every single project? And then what is maybe that 80 20 rule that we can identify that 80% is repeatable and about 20% of my involvement is actually custom.

(07:02): So I think that mindset first and foremost is one of the most challenging to overcome because it forces us to reconcile with the fact that although we do have about 20% of the secret sauce, a lot of what we're doing actually is repeatable and actually can be delegated. So if you want to grow the business and you want to be disciplined about removing yourself, those two things are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they pair really well together. And the second really big thing that I think folks need to understand about running a business at large, I learned this actually from just my very recent years of becoming a mom. My oldest is three. And I think to myself, sometimes I say, look, I can outsource specific aspects of my parenting. I can outsource my child's education to a teacher. I can outsource childcare to a daycare.

(07:48): I can outsource their physical education or fitness to a specific sports team or to a community of folks who could get that outcome. But at the end of the day, it relies on me to be the parent to raise a capable adult in that way. And I think a lot of us as business owners hear this zone of genius and stay in your specialties and all these things, but we forget that businesses actually need a really full spectrum and rich amount of skills that we actually need to develop if we want to see its success. So a lot of owners will say, well, I'm not a systems person. And I'm like, well, that's what your business needs you to be right now that need you to be systematic if you want to grow it to the point that you desire.

John Jantsch (08:28): Well, you were certainly singing my tune. I mean, I've spent the last 20 years actually licensing my agency methodology to hundreds of agencies. And I will tell you that it is so freeing when people realize, oh, I can scope this and I don't have to be the one doing all the work. But probably the biggest challenge for a lot of people is mindset. They actually draw their energy from doing the work or being the savior or being the one who can have the answer. And I think sometimes I think logically everybody gets what you're just saying. I think sometimes emotionally it's actually harder.

Alyson Caffrey (09:08): And it's interesting, a lot of the things I focus on in the book and even with my team, actually just before I hopped on, we were crystallizing our quarterly plan for Q4. And one of the things I do actually to wrap that exercise, wait a minute, Q4

John Jantsch (09:21): Already started and you're just now finally finishing your plan.

Alyson Caffrey (09:24): I'm finalizing it literally today. I was out with my mastermind planning last week, and it's interesting because what we do is we finalize and put the bow on everything with a daily habit tracker.

(09:38): And the reason why I love habit trackers and focusing on activities inside of the business is because it does a great job of removing that emotional element to doing the work that is important to drive you forward. I think all of us can get pulled in to, how do I feel about this? Or I just don't feel like it today, or You know what, it's easier for me to just go back into web work because that's where I'm comfortable and excited to contribute. But at the end of the day, if your business needs you to be in a different seat and it needs you to be doing different activities, identifying those at 30,000 feet inside of your quarterly plan and then really deciding every day to say, listen, I'm going to show up to this activity with no emotion as much as I possibly can come in and do the work. And if I really feel like I'm doing something that isn't bringing me joy and bringing the business value, then we can reassess how that's going. But if it's driving the business forward in the way the direction that you're wanting, that's one of the quickest, most easily implementable things I have found that remove kind of that mindset, emotional element from approaching your daily work.

John Jantsch (10:51): So we've gotten halfway through the episode here, and I haven't really brought up the hierarchy, which is really the foundation obviously of the book. The big idea is of course the sabbatical, but how you get there in stages, and again, I don't know how you want to address that, if you just want to start riffing on that, but unpack the operation simplified hierarchy.

Alyson Caffrey (11:14): So the hierarchy really was birthed by really just considering operationally, what does a business need to survive and thrive? And I rooted it in Maslow's hierarchy of needs because just like any human being, we've got some of the basic stuff that needs to happen like process creation and quarterly planning, really hitting those metrics, the habits, like I just said, that's kind of the big foundation of how we want to operate. The next is really just defining a home and considering that if we're going to invite team members to collaborate on key projects, what do those projects look like and how can I create repeatable, profitable projects at my agency? The third is really driven on metrics. So what measurables do we have in place to tell us what decisions we need to make next? And then how can we scale this thing? How do we invite a community and grow our reach and our impact and really scream from the rooftops now that we have this incredible backend well of procedures, what are our front end procedures for the growth side of the business in sales and marketing? And then finally, profit and prosper is kind of the tip of the pyramid there, which I actually say is custom. We want to be consistently putting profit back into the pockets of the owner and its key stakeholders, but we also want to help our clients and the people that are involved with our business really prosper in whatever way that we've outlined for them. And that looks different, right?

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Alyson Caffrey (13:42): I have some agency owners who really love to work the six months on, six months off schedule. They really love to be at home and working on their business and then take six months in Mexico, so that looks different. Their operations look a little bit different than somebody who really wants to create a strong full stack agency team. That's just a very different model. So I consider those as kind of the foundational elements. Now, something really important that I did also really focus on inside of the book is that first and foremost, these aren't achieved in sequence. I know so many business owners who have the sales and marketing stuff dialed in, they've got really incredible reach and impact and all of that in the marketplace, but then they actually super lack some of that repeatable project and profitability stuff. So it doesn't mean that you need to focus on it in sequence. I do in the book because I feel like each and everyone builds on one another. And the second thing I will also mention is that it's never done right. We're always going to be doing this work just like your physical fitness. You don't work to get a six pack and then eat Cheetos on day 31. It's something that we are consistently working on and refining as the business is growing and as it's breaking the processes that we currently have.

John Jantsch (14:59): And I think that's a key point. Once you get safe fulfillment dialed in, then you have maybe more capacity. So that creates another problem. And so then you have to go revisit sales and marketing. I mean these levels, you're just coming back to 'em. I mean, you're revisiting 'em even once, as you say, you've got 'em dialed in. But I think there is a little bit of just Maslow talks about, I mean, you can't even begin to think about profits if you don't have the basics, right? I mean, there is some order of things that you have to get certain things done, but you're right. I mean, nobody shows up in any perfect stage. We're all one foot in each stage, I suppose, at some point.

Alyson Caffrey (15:40): Yeah, absolutely.

John Jantsch (15:42): You mentioned it already, but I had it on the list here to talk about because I do think that it's crucial to making any of this happen and it's habits, isn't it? And so talk a little bit about the daily habits that you talk about, your daily five, I think it is habits, but then just what are some of the things that you've seen have really helped move people along because they're doing 1% better each day kind of thing?

Alyson Caffrey (16:08): And I have to give a shout out to Atomic Habits by James Clear. That is one of my favorite books of all time. And if anybody listening has not read it, it's worth a read and a reread perhaps every single year because as you grow as a professional and a human being, hearing that information again is just astronomically more valuable every single time you read it. So that's definitely number one. A lot of my thinking around habits is formed from the expertise of James Clear and that specific book. I think one of the big things that I love to focus on when generating habits first and foremost, is understanding the difference between leading and lagging indicators. So habits really apply to the former, what habits can I keep that really will help me be the person or have the business or have whatever it is that I really want?

(16:54): That those lagging indicators are the outcomes. And I think a lot of folks think that habits are for people who are organized and systematic and have schedules and all of those things, but I'd like to kind of challenge how we think about habits because habits exist. They just do, and we need to reconcile sometimes the first step is really understanding that we do keep habits, but they might actually not be pushing us toward the things that we want, the people we want to be, the businesses we want to have, the lives we want to create.

John Jantsch (17:25): Bad habits are habits, right?

Alyson Caffrey (17:27): Exactly. But I think a lot of folks think habits and then they're like, oh, you're going to tell me some system or some hack about your calendar or whatever else. And really habits just are, they're good, they're bad, they're whatever. And I can't really get any more clear on that. I think a lot of folks need to begin with, okay, what are my habits currently and are they pushing me toward the thing I want? And I think taking a stock of those. So first and foremost, foundational habit kind of creation is to consider what do I literally want? And is every single habit that I keep in my day driving me toward that specific thing? And a lot of that is eliminating some of those things that one of my coaches actually calls it time assassins, and he says it's like drinking alcohol, watching television, eating refined sugars, personal social media.

(18:15): Exactly. Things that literally just rip your time away. And I think a lot of us, as we start to consider, well, I don't have enough time in the day to let's just say serve 50 clients versus 20 clients who don't have the time, the question then becomes is, am I not disciplined enough in developing the systems? Am I not disciplined enough in removing the things that aren't serving me? And so I think starting there with really just being critical and assessing how you're spending your time is wonderful. And then really, again, planning those habits at your quarterly planning. So just saying, Hey, listen, if I'm putting on this side of the equals sign the business, I want the life, I want the health level that I'd love to achieve the family life that I love, what does that look like? And then what habits do I need to keep daily?

(18:57): I was actually just doing this exercise with a client of mine, and he was telling me that he wanted 300 new leads into his pipeline every single month. And I told him, I said, well, with your current strategy on doing lots of one-to-one, I was like, you're going to probably need to do about 900 reach outs every single month. And I was like, here's what it literally looks like in your calendar and here are the habits you'd need to keep. I was like, do you think that this is sustainable? And he first immediately was like, no. And I was like, so this is actually why we don't hit quarterly goals is because we set the goals and then we don't literally create the habits day to day and ask ourselves, is this a life that I would want to live and get excited every single day to wake up and do? And if the answer is no, then we need to start to work backwards from there.

John Jantsch (19:46): Yeah, actually, somebody inadvertently showed me their calendar this week. That was the most scariest thing I've ever seen. Just they from about seven in the morning to seven at night had something every 15 minutes growth. I think it's stage four maybe growth a lot of times happens to people and maybe people you've worked with, they've gotten some of this other clutter out of the way. And so growth happens and then another problem shows up, quality starts to fade. I mean, how do you constantly juggle those two things that are sometimes in opposition?

Alyson Caffrey (20:17): It's interesting, I have an entire section in the book about this because that is by far with agency work. The biggest thing I've seen. So the chapter is called Classic Coca-Cola Quality. And I tell this story about how Coca-Cola launched this thing called New Coke, and it just failed. Epically failed. They tested it, they asked the market, they did all these things around launching this new product, and it was terrible. Folks actually started stocking up on Coca-Cola Classic because they petrified that it was going to go away. Then it's either, I was joking about it, I was like, this is either the best marketing scheme ever, or it was just the biggest classic face plant for Coca-Cola to launch this new thing. And really what it came down to was the quality, right? It came down to, well, people preferred this over that and they thought that they were going in the direction of what people wanted, but ultimately they needed to listen to their people.

(21:13): And so what they did was they launched Coca-Cola Classic. So first and foremost, if you're in a growth stage, keep asking your people for their feedback 100%. That is the best way that you will know and understand and just open up the conversation that, Hey, listen, we're going through a growth period right now and I still really value your feedback and I want to make sure that you continue to get results, even if there are several missteps in your fulfillment process and you're still working out some stuff because you've opened up that loop with your clients and because they know that it's important to you that you hear from them, they're going to be a little bit more understanding if there are a couple of missteps. So that's number one. Just open up that and listen to your clients. Second thing is to make sure that we're defining two types of quality.

(21:57): First is production quality. So that's the timeline through which things are delivered. And the second is outcome, quality. So that's ad spend. That's specific outcomes that you are getting for your clients and quality levels there. So defining those metrics are going to be absolutely instrumental. And then just again, do that little equation, right? Consider to yourself, we have 20 clients right now where we can ship websites in about three weeks time at this level of quality, measurable. If we had 50, here's what that would look like. The clearer you can get on those metrics, the easier it is to run possible resourcing scenarios, and you can kind of hedge these growth points and these friction points a little bit simpler.

John Jantsch (22:42): This is a scary idea for some people, but I'm always telling you have capacity ahead of demand, because that's where I see people really get in trouble is like, oh crap, we just sold a whole bunch of more work. Let's go fix it somehow, as opposed to, oh, we've got the capacity and our normal systems to deliver. Okay, last question. Last idea is profits and prosper. I dunno about you, but I'm just amazed at the businesses I've come across over the years. Were profits in particular just aren't even part of the equation. It's like, I want to get paid a job. And the idea of working profits into it, I don't know if you're familiar with Mike Al's work profits first. That idea is just so foreign to people.

Alyson Caffrey (23:24): Yeah, I love Profit First and I think being disciplined in prioritizing profit, either in distribution to owner and key stakeholders or in early growth years, reinvesting into the business and the professional development of the leaders or both, right? If we've got the margins and they're really is critical. I think it's John Maxwell does Leader Lid. It's like a really famous concept and he talks about that the leader or the organization will only grow to the capacity that the leader has professionally and personally developed. And I think if we leave out profits, not only are we doing our business a disservice because businesses exist to be profitable, we exist to make money and reinvest that money into growth and reinvest that money into our communities and into our families and all those things. Understanding that economically, it's our job to be profitable, I think is first. Second is that we are going to do our business and our community and our teammates a disservice by not reinvesting our profits into our professional development, especially in those early years.

(24:28): And then creating a professional development budget as things start to get a little bit more sophisticated. I mean, hands down has been the absolute leader in why operations agency has been able to grow to the point that it is. And why I've been able to confidently lead and be able to get folks unstuck with their operations is because of the level of professional development that I've done over the years. And I think a lot of folks forget about that and they think, well, I'm just going to discount my prices and tough seasons and I'm just going to take this project or what have you. But being disciplined and saying, Nope, this is our pricing because this is our scoping and this is our profit margin, I promise. Well, sorry, I can't make any financial promises probably on a podcast, but I will say that it has been my experience that the more I say no to projects that are hefty discounts or things that perhaps I'm not excited about or don't fit into our model specifically, I have been rewarded tenfold on the other side with projects that are exactly in our wheelhouse, exactly in our scope, and exactly within the profits that we desire.

John Jantsch (25:29): And had you taken those less than desirable projects, that opportunity may not have come your way. I see that all the time. It's like, I'm busy doing this work over here, so I can't see the real thing, the opportunity that's in front of me. So Alison, you want to tell people or invite people where they might connect with you, find out more about your work, obviously find out about how they can acquire the book.

Alyson Caffrey (25:50): Yeah, of course. Well, the book is on Amazon. I'm most active on Instagram, so you can follow us at Operations agency and if you DM me Duct Tape, I'll send you my five best agency SOPs, absolutely no opt-in absolutely free. So that I think will be the really best way for folks to just see what the power of having really clear standard operating procedures looks like in your agency. And I have been totally victim in the past to not being able to actually see the results of something before I get a tiny taste. So I think that'll be a great place to start.

John Jantsch (26:22): Awesome. Well, again, I appreciate you taking a moment to stop by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, and hopefully we'll run into you only these days out there on the road.

Alyson Caffrey (26:30): Thanks, John.

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