009 The Empathy Edge: Unleashing Business Success through Human Connections with VP Bonnie Hargrove

Welcome to the Paid to Create Podcast! Join us in this captivating episode as we delve into the transformative world of building personal connections and fostering customer empathy. Our esteemed guest, Bonnie Hargrove, Vice President of Operations and Customer Experience at Genesis Digital, shares her invaluable insights and expertise on revitalizing businesses through the power of personal relationships.

Discover the secrets to creating a positive work environment and investing in your team as Bonnie reveals her tried-and-true methods for optimizing business processes and reducing customer service challenges. Learn how Bonnie's team successfully implemented change, improved software efficiency, and eliminated backlogs, all while prioritizing the human touch.

In this engaging conversation, we explore the art of pattern recognition and its role in identifying the root causes of issues. Gain practical strategies for effective communication, scaling your business, and convincing stakeholders to embrace change. Bonnie uncovers the benefits of outsourcing and reveals how to create a vibrant sense of community among customers, fostering loyalty and long-term success.

Uncover the power of personalizing customer service and the profound impact it has on building connections and community. Delve into the psychology of emotional buying and the art of humanizing your brand to resonate with customers on a deeper level. Together, we'll uncover the secret ingredients to building a supportive work environment that nurtures growth and empowers your team to achieve extraordinary results.

Don't miss out on this captivating episode that redefines the way we approach business. Tune in now and unlock the potential of personal connections to revitalize your business, create a thriving community, and forge lasting customer relationships. Get ready to be inspired to take your business to new heights through the power of human connection.

Transcript

Bonnie Hargrove (00:00):
I spend a lot of time on personal people connection. When I first enter a company, you don't have to come in and be like this big top executive or this big person that's just now their boss. You invest in them just as much as they invest in you. Respect and respect kind of relationship, because I do demand a lot. I expect people to live up to what I think that they can. And so I'm a little bit hard in that way, but I'm always there. We'd be like, how do I make you get there? I'm not going to expect something that you don't know.
Sarah Jenkins (00:28):
Welcome to the Paid to Create podcast, where we dig into the secret strategies of successful creators making a lucrative living. So sit back, relax, and enjoy the show.
AJ Roberts (00:36):
I just have to tell you about Kartra, the marketing platform that has seriously transformed my business. You know how running a business can be insanely time-consuming, right? Well, Kartra has been a game changer for me. It's honestly like having an entire marketing team in my pocket. And what I love most is that it automates all the tedious daily tasks for me, from marketing, to sales, to even customer experience.
(00:58):
I can't believe how much time and energy I've saved since I started using it. Get this. With Kartra, I can create websites, funnels, courses, membership sites, email campaigns, calendars, surveys, you name it. It's made managing my business so much simpler and more affordable. Honestly, I can't recommend Kartra enough. If you're curious, head to paidtocreatepodcast.com\kartra to start your trial. Trust me, you won't regret it.
(01:24):
Welcome everybody to the Paid To Create podcast. I'm AJ Roberts. Alongside me is the beautiful Sarah Jenkins and our in the studio guest today is Bonnie Hargrove. Bonnie is one of her own. She's our vice president of operations and customer experience. So we got a lot to unpack today because she oversees a lot of stuff in the company for us over at Genesis Digital, and so we're super excited to jump in and really get into kind of building that customer experience, that wow experience.
(01:50):
But let's back up to when you came in the company because you came in when all hell had broken loose. We had probably over 3,000 support tickets that we were behind on. The support team was working around the clock, overtime. Everyone in the company was jumping in and we kind of just threw you into the mix. You met Sarah and Sarah's like, "Hey, I got this amazing person I think's going to really help us in this situation," and you just kind of got dumped in the deep end. So kind of explain that to us.
Bonnie Hargrove (02:18):
Yeah, definitely. So first of all, thanks for having me. So when I came in, it was, again, chaos. I walked into a dumpster fire, as I like to call it, but we had-
Sarah Jenkins (02:30):
Wow, thanks Bon.
Bonnie Hargrove (02:30):
... amazing people working. We had amazing people working. They were all doing the right things. They were working overtime. They were trying to figure out what was going on. So the first thing I had to do was really assess what was happening first. And one of my background pieces was business process optimization. So I was like, "Okay, what processes can we fix first?" Because you don't want to walk in and just be like, "Here, let me just go change everything." So I wanted to get a lay of the land and I found some things that didn't really affect people. So I looked at the software, what softwares were we using, what things were broken.
(03:02):
There was a couple bugs in the system that were actually showing us that we had a lot more backlog than we actually had. And then from there, I just slowly started peeling away the people processes. All of those were wrapped up into years and years of doing things from a smaller company way [inaudible 00:03:20].
Sarah Jenkins (03:18):
[inaudible 00:03:20].
Bonnie Hargrove (03:22):
So I just peeled back the onion basically, and then just started working with the staff, growing the staff, putting them in the right roles, what they were good at, and then, yeah, just kept moving forward and we improved the process from I think seven days backlog to I think four now.
AJ Roberts (03:37):
Yeah, well, I think it was a lot longer than seven days.
Bonnie Hargrove (03:40):
It was longer.
AJ Roberts (03:41):
We had just launched Webinar Jam 4.0 and so we had the typical launch influx of tickets.
Sarah Jenkins (03:48):
The rush.
AJ Roberts (03:49):
And then COVID hit. And so basically, we weren't normally behind that much. I want to say that. But those two events combined with each other, we saw a huge spike in activity. Right? We saw our customers coming back online, we saw new customers coming in and the tickets just started flooding in because people, as you would expect, as they start using the software again and really trying to ramp things up from home, being a home-based business company and really helping people who are small business, home-based business owners, it was just a really weird series of events that happened and we'd never experienced anything like that before.
Sarah Jenkins (04:29):
Well, no. The biggest reason we had the big backlog is we actually moved platforms. Even though we kept the interface and logins, we moved from different ... we totally rebuilt Webinar Jam, so we had to make everybody take their stuff from this Webinar Jam, put it over here. You know? Asking people to move all their assets is a huge, huge ask. And so we didn't even know that that would be an issue until it slammed us in the face. We're like, "Oh no, they're not happy with that. Shoot."
AJ Roberts (04:52):
And so you walked right into that and it was like, oh, here's the-
Sarah Jenkins (04:55):
She seems fine.
AJ Roberts (04:56):
... situation.
Bonnie Hargrove (04:56):
Yeah, it was fine. It was totally fine. Yeah. I mean, no, it was really good. And like I said, the staff really, they all got together and they're like, how are we going to fix this? They were really ready for a change. So walking in that moment, yeah, sometimes it's daunting. Right? You walk into something, you're like, "This is a mess." But really they were really receptive to the change at that point because sometimes you'll come into a company and people aren't receptive to change. That makes things way worse. But the staff, I got to know each one of them. I came in at, I call it 10,000 feet, get to know your whole staff, who's who, what types of ways are they going to interact with change, and then just worked with them and they really did the work.
Sarah Jenkins (05:32):
Well, you're incredibly-
Bonnie Hargrove (05:33):
Just organized it.
Sarah Jenkins (05:34):
... positive as it is. You always walk in happy. I'm like, "What? What' happened in your day? Did you get your lucky charms this morning."
Bonnie Hargrove (05:40):
You just never know. See?
AJ Roberts (05:41):
She's our little boy ball of joy. But let's look at that because I think that's a really interesting thing. A lot of people, whether they're going in as a contractor, whether they're going in as a freelancer, whether they're going in into a position in a company, when they start somewhere, it's very intimidating regardless of what position you're coming in at, right?
(06:02):
When you're coming in a higher position and you're going to oversee people, then it's even harder because these people are looking. Okay, who's this person? Why do they deserve to be here? So maybe talk a little bit about that, the way you approach that, because, since being with us, your roles have changed a little bit and you've taken on more and more people are now under you than before. And each time is the same challenge regardless of whether you are here or you're coming in brand new. So what are some of the first things you do or did when you came in to really start to look at everything but make sure you had the buy-in from the team? Because I think for any company or anyone trying to do anything, if they're building a staff, getting buy-in is a huge part of being successful.
Bonnie Hargrove (06:45):
Yeah. That's a really good question. I spend a lot of time on personal people connection when I first enter a company. I think it's one of my strong suits. I like to create relationships with people and you don't have to come in and be this big top executive or this big person that's just now their boss, a friend in a workplace, and also saying that you want to help them grow and investing in them. You invest in them just as much as they invest in you. A respect-respect kind of relationship, because I do demand a lot. I expect people to live up to what I think that they can. And so I'm a little bit hard in that way, but I'm always there. We be like, "How do I make you get there?" I'm not going to expect something that you don't know.
(07:27):
So the first thing that I do is when I come into the company is I made one-on-ones with every single person. I had think 60 people at that time. So I came in. That was the first month is just meeting with people, I think it was two a day, and met with every single person, got to know them as an actual person. And then I started doing calls.
(07:46):
Even though I had a 24-hour staff, I was getting up at 11:00 PM to have calls with my nighttime staff. And so I spent that time. So it was a lot of working hours when I first started, but I got to know every single person. And even today, moving up in ranks, I still pretty much know every single person that works in all those departments that I oversee. I personally know who they are and what their ambitions are.
(08:11):
I also started a quarterly call type thing when I first started to really understand the growth of the people. What do they want to do? Even if it's not working at Genesis, what do they want to go do in life because that matters just as much as what they do at Genesis. So I really create that personal relationship when I first come in and that creates trust and respect.
AJ Roberts (08:29):
What are some of the things you talk about on those calls to get to know a person and then also learn about them and what you can see as their strengths and maybe weaknesses and those kind of things?
Bonnie Hargrove (08:39):
Yeah. So I kind of do it differently for depending on where they sit and the ranking, I guess you'd call it, or the ...
Sarah Jenkins (08:45):
Org chart.
Bonnie Hargrove (08:46):
Org chart. Yeah. And so people that go direct to me, I have more time with them so I understand them a little bit more, but how I just in general have a conversation with someone that I've never met before is really just, hey, tell me about who you are as a person, not just what you do here at work. And so I kind of approach it in that way. But for quarterly calls, there was some kind of a different approach that I took, and that was really first I asked them just in general. How are they? Just question of, "Hey, before we get started, how are you? And I want you to be honest with me." And they would actually open up and be like, "Well, not great." And I'd be like, "Are you willing to have this conversation today or do you want to maybe reschedule for another day?" And sometimes they would be like, "I'm not feeling this today. I want to do a different day." And I'd be like, "Okay." And just that moment created respect with them.
(09:36):
And then after that, I just ask them a series of questions. What are their goals? I help them understand what smart goals are. We established goals for the quarter. And then at the end I always do some kind of a twist. One time, I actually took this advice from you, AJ, is I use the love languages.
Sarah Jenkins (09:52):
[inaudible 00:09:54].
Bonnie Hargrove (09:55):
[inaudible 00:09:55]. Yeah, so I use the love language concept and had everybody on my team, if they were willing to take it, the love language quiz, and understand how they to use their love languages and help drive them and motivate them to hit their goals.
AJ Roberts (10:09):
Yeah. I first heard of that obviously for relationship, right?
Bonnie Hargrove (10:14):
It's marriage, but-
AJ Roberts (10:14):
It's called the five love languages. And they've branched off and they have that. And what I realized was that throughout your life you meet people and the way they treat you is really how they want to be treated. And if you can understand how they communicate ... people struggle with communication. They say, "Oh, I don't understand my partner. I don't understand my employees." And a lot of times it's because you're not paying attention to what they do. And so the cool thing with the love language is that you can see their personality and how they actually show love. And so if that's how they show love, then you can give love in the same way, so if someone is quality time ... and we're a virtual company, which makes it difficult. We don't do in-person a lot of in-person meetings as a whole company.
Bonnie Hargrove (10:59):
Physical touch. Right out.
AJ Roberts (11:01):
But with virtual, how can you do that? Right? You can give high-fives virtually. You can have meetings. You can do this. Whereas other people that's low on the totem pole. And so words of affirmation, so checking in with them via Slack and saying, "How are you," is going to help. Or giving them praise, right? And we use Bonusly to recognize people, give them stars-
Bonnie Hargrove (11:21):
That makes sense.
AJ Roberts (11:22):
Stuff like that. But everybody responds differently. And so the reason that's so important as a leader is, if you don't understand the way someone receives appreciation and love, you could be telling them all the time with your words, "You're incredible, you're doing a great job." They will not believe you because that's not the language they communicate love in. So that was something that I picked up and the other personality tests. But with that side of it, why do you think the human side is so important to understand? Because I think a lot-
Bonnie Hargrove (11:59):
I'm huge on it.
AJ Roberts (11:59):
Yes.
Bonnie Hargrove (11:59):
It's my number one too.
AJ Roberts (11:59):
Yeah.
Bonnie Hargrove (11:59):
I'm like, "What's your love language, AJ?"
AJ Roberts (12:02):
Mine? I'm a guy. Physical touch.
Bonnie Hargrove (12:03):
No, no, no, not, "I'm a guy. Physical touch."
AJ Roberts (12:04):
Physical touch. No, physical touch is my primary, but quality time. Quality time is the secondary.
Sarah Jenkins (12:07):
What about yours?
Bonnie Hargrove (12:08):
Quality, time and access service.
Sarah Jenkins (12:11):
Oh, fun. I'll be sweeping your porch later.
Bonnie Hargrove (12:14):
Yeah, definitely. And once I understood that by my team, that really took off. I think after we did that, everyone was kind of under more understanding. And I said, "If you want to share your love language with some of the people that are around you, feel free." Because sometimes working with other people on your team, it's going to help you understand who they are. And I know at that time, my management level at the CS team, they all shared it with each other and they realized how much alike they were.
(12:38):
And one of the other things I noticed too was all of them had quality time as one of their top two on my management staff. So at that point, I knew that I needed to make sure that I never canceled a one-on-one with them. And still, to this day, I will never cancel one-on-one with one of my staff. I either move it and say, "This is the reason that I have to move your one-on-one. It's not that I'm ignoring you," or I will never cancel this with you. And I still live up to that. And I think it's made a big difference. We don't have one-on-ones, but I definitely love you.
AJ Roberts (13:10):
Well, we're lucky we get to see. Because we're here, we get to see each other in person. Other people don't. So building off of that, foundationally, it's build a relationship. From a business standpoint, coming in, putting the business hat on, looking at it, what's the first thing you looked at to make improvements? Because that's the hardest thing.
(13:30):
A lot of people, oh, we've been doing things this way forever. And so change is not only scary, but it's also a lot of work, right? Especially when you already have a lot of people. So if you have processes and things in place and you come in and you start changing those, people get uneasy and this is isn't, we've done it. So what was that approach? Because you've done it multiple times in different areas in the company and done it successfully. So maybe just break down the thinking there of how you approach that.
Bonnie Hargrove (13:58):
Yeah, sure. So when it comes to certain different types of processes, so you have to look at it from a sense of are you looking at software or are you looking at people process because you have to approach them completely different. I have a background in more of a product development side. So when I first came in, that was my go-to, was looking at what we're using and what made sense and what didn't. Because typically, when you first come into something, you have to look at it and say, "Okay, why is this like this?" So understand your why, and then say, "How do I make this a little bit more efficient? But how do I not interrupt how people are working?"
(14:36):
So the first thing I noticed was the software when I came in, there was a bug in the system because I was used to finding those. So as soon as I looked at that, I said, "Okay, here is a system error that's affecting people process." So I went and said, "Okay, how do I work with the product team, understand what's going on with the product team, and then figure out how to fix it downstream?"
(14:54):
But typically, when you're looking at people process, you can look at what are they doing that doesn't seem to make all the sense in the world. A lot of people when they look at process, they just think it as a whole, but you have to think of it in three segments, as upstream, middle stream and downstream. And where is the dam basically? What's blocking everything and what's causing that? And if you can find the cause and fix the cause, it doesn't really affect the people as much.
(15:22):
So for example, one of the pieces that we had was escalation. When they were escalating. I noticed I was taking a long time and just by general looking at data, okay, it's taking a long time. Why is it taking a long time? It seems like there is a break where they're looking at T1 tickets and they're already putting it in the T2 bucket without even assessing what's happening in T1. So actually, what's happening is not the T2 issue. It's a T1 issue. So let's go look at what's happening in that department and fix it in that area.
(15:52):
In order to not affect people, and because you asked the question about people don't really change and it kind of affects them, is I go to them and explain to them the why of why I'm changing it and ask them if they have any questions of why we're changing it. And if they do, sometimes I'll find that maybe I shouldn't change it. Or they'll say, "That's a really good question," or, "That's interesting that you're trying to look at it that way." And then we can talk about it like they're my equal, not that I'm just sitting over them, I'm going to change something that I want to listen to them and understand why. [inaudible 00:16:23].
Sarah Jenkins (16:22):
Sometimes as a business owner, when you're trying to scale and you're trying to grow, you need other people that have skills that you don't have. I know that sounds obvious to say, but I would've never found a bug. I had tickets escalating to me, which I heard was not the best idea. So you came in and saw the bug, saw the process, fixed the people. I was like, "Wow, we moved our entire company from Skype to Slack." I was like, "Oh, we'll just change." And you're like, "No, no. We have to tell and prep people otherwise they're going to be freaked out." I'm like, "Why? We're just making this change." You're like, "Trust me. People need to know what's going on beforehand." I was like, "Meh." And then you did it. And I was like, "Oh, thank God you did it right."
Bonnie Hargrove (16:53):
Yeah. And I think one of the, I call my superpower, is pattern recognition. If you can see patterns and breaks and patterns, that's typically when you can find what to fix. But telling people is so essential. So a lot of times people skip the people.
Sarah Jenkins (17:04):
I don't even know that. You keep making me tell people stuff and I'm like, "Why?" And you're like, "Trust me. It will go better." And it always goes better.
Bonnie Hargrove (17:10):
So transparency is where it's at.
AJ Roberts (17:13):
So explain what you just said about your super skill is seeing patterns. So break that down. What does that look like to you?
Bonnie Hargrove (17:23):
That's interesting. Yeah. Now you're going to make me really think deep.
Sarah Jenkins (17:25):
[inaudible 00:17:27].
Bonnie Hargrove (17:27):
So that's interesting because I think pattern recognition is something that not everyone has, but when you do have it, you almost don't know how it works. Sometimes I think about how do I know this? And I don't even know how I know it. I'm like, "Do I have life in a past life? I'm not sure."
(17:44):
I think what it comes down to is the way that maybe that you learn. When I was younger, I had to learn in a lot different way than most people because I had a lot of health issues when I was young, so I pretty much skipped two grades. I skipped ... show off ... part of kindergarten and all first grade because I had an appendicitis and I had issues with my eyes. When that happened, I became all auditory learning because I couldn't really see well and I skipped first grade to learn how to read. When I did that, I think that kind of affected the way that I started seeing patterns and I just learned differently. I think maybe that has something to do with it, but I'm not really sure. So when you tell me to break it down, I could probably, if I sat here and thought about it for a while, I could probably say, "Okay, the way I look at patterns is what's broken and let's fix it." But I'm not quite sure to be honest.
AJ Roberts (18:35):
Well maybe try looking at it from the standpoint of ... let's say when you came in and you were looking at the customer support software and you saw all the issues. What led you to start going, "Okay, maybe this is a bug in the software"? Because when I was looking at it, because I was in answering tickets and ...
Bonnie Hargrove (18:54):
You all were.
Sarah Jenkins (18:55):
Yeah.
AJ Roberts (18:55):
We're all answering as many tickets per day. My thing was I don't understand how a lot of our team is not answering more tickets.
Sarah Jenkins (19:06):
Right. Me and him were answering the billing ones. We're like, "We just did 20 and three." Yeah, we got 20 done.
AJ Roberts (19:12):
But thinking, oh, maybe the tickets that are showing is not actually the tickets. So essentially how do you follow these threads and get to the root cause?
Bonnie Hargrove (19:24):
Yeah, definitely. So for that piece, it might have something to do with the fact that I used to be a QA, so I was used to looking at all of that stuff. So when I was given something, even if it was small, I could go in and look at it and identify what was wrong just by looking at it. So that was a learned behavior. I learned it through that job. I had to because if you miss something, like you caused it to go out live, and it was completely your fault. So ...
AJ Roberts (19:50):
It's more like a checklist.
Bonnie Hargrove (19:51):
It was more of checklist.
AJ Roberts (19:52):
Okay.
Bonnie Hargrove (19:53):
Okay, how does this work?
AJ Roberts (19:53):
This isn't an issue, this isn't an issue. So you're just going through that mentally.
Bonnie Hargrove (19:56):
Right. Exactly. So you're looking at it like how is this supposed to work? Ideally, if I looked at this, even if it's a process, I want it to work X. It's not working X. Now follow through. How should it work? Okay. Where is the broken piece? And that's kind of how I look at it is what should be the ideal situation? And if it's not working that way, working backwards, determining why.
AJ Roberts (20:18):
It's interesting because I wouldn't have said that my super skills pattern recognition, but the way when I look at a funnel or a web journey, a customer journey, I'm looking at what is broken in that journey, right?
Bonnie Hargrove (20:32):
Yeah.
AJ Roberts (20:32):
Where are the opportunities?
Bonnie Hargrove (20:33):
Sure.
AJ Roberts (20:33):
This is how it's supposed to work. If these are the industry averages, like 30% opt-in on the front end. If we're not getting a 30% opt-in, then what do we need to change to do that? Because if we get that bump, and oh, maybe it's the traffic source, not the traffic. Right? Maybe it's the ad ad that's driving the traffic and there's a mismatch. And so it's a very similar process. And I think Andy used to call it thinking backwards and that was something he passed on to me.
Bonnie Hargrove (20:59):
That's why Kartra was built that way.
AJ Roberts (21:00):
That's how we built Kartra, right?
Bonnie Hargrove (21:02):
Yeah. Think backwards.
AJ Roberts (21:03):
You started with the end in mind and-
Bonnie Hargrove (21:04):
Take the page [inaudible 00:21:06].
AJ Roberts (21:05):
And you work backwards. And I think that the benefit to that is you don't miss any steps. Right?
Bonnie Hargrove (21:10):
Mm-hmm.
AJ Roberts (21:11):
You do get to evaluate each thing. And if it's working good, it's a check. Right? There's no need to go deep on that. It's like this, the process works good. Check. And then you get to that. What's that bottleneck or what's that? I think you called it-
Bonnie Hargrove (21:24):
The upstream issue.
AJ Roberts (21:24):
Yeah. The dam. And then you say, "Oh, there's the problem." And a lot of times, especially creative people don't think like that because we're always in problem solving mode. So we just go, "Oh, more traffic," or ... you know?
Bonnie Hargrove (21:37):
More money.
AJ Roberts (21:39):
Not as analytical. Typically, right? We operate more on emotions and feelings than data. Very few super creative people are data people. I've learned to love the data because it supports a lot of the times.
Bonnie Hargrove (21:51):
It supports your feelings.
AJ Roberts (21:52):
My feelings. But I've also been very wrong with the data, right?
Bonnie Hargrove (21:55):
No.
AJ Roberts (21:56):
And I've thought one thing and the data just says something different and it's very humbling. But I think that's what is important to understand, is that no matter how you think or what your personality is, the reality is you have to see, you mentioned earlier, the 10,000-foot view. You have to be able to zoom out, because a lot of the times, if you're in the day-to-day, which we were at the time when Bonnie came in. We were in the trenches. So we weren't even looking for these things because we were just like-
Bonnie Hargrove (22:25):
No. No. That's fine.
AJ Roberts (22:26):
"How do we answer these tickets?" And I think that, for the listeners who own their own business or they're in a business, no matter what role you're in, that's a key skill that you can say, "I'm going to figure out how to master this and understand the entire process." How does my skill, let's say a copywriter, for example, you're writing copy. Great, but how does that actually go across the entire marketing plan or something like that? And then what are the impacts of that? You know. Each component of that supposed to do a certain thing. And if it doesn't, that's how I can get better or that's how we can get better as a company.
Sarah Jenkins (23:02):
Exactly. When you said zoom out, that's a hundred percent it. You have to be able, even if you're stuck in the day to day and things aren't working right, is taking a second to step back, take a bigger view of what is happening. I think that's kind of when I came in, like you said. You were so in the day-today and stuck that I was coming from a fresh new perspective. And sometimes you need that and that's kind of ... well, you have a totally different skillset than me and AJ.
Bonnie Hargrove (23:26):
Right.
Sarah Jenkins (23:26):
We do the business owner thing, but we got to where there's thousands of tickets and we're like, "Oh no, we need to fix it." We were already stuck before we figured out we had to fix the whole process. So we brought in someone with a different set of skills. You've done QA. You did ... what is it? The ...
Bonnie Hargrove (23:43):
The business optimization.
Sarah Jenkins (23:44):
Yeah, but you did more than that. You built ...
Bonnie Hargrove (23:46):
Oh yeah. [inaudible 00:23:47].
Sarah Jenkins (23:46):
AI stuff or whatever. And I was like, "Holy shit. You've got skills that I need and I know you would know where to put them in my company, so please work for me."
Bonnie Hargrove (23:54):
Too late.
AJ Roberts (23:56):
I think the thinking time is important. And I know since you took over as CEO, like your thinking time has become a lot more important. Whereas, before, it was very day-to-day, very operational. And I think that any leadership role, thinking time almost has to be built into your calendar.
Bonnie Hargrove (24:13):
Well, I was VP when Andy was president. I ran the company and he was resting most of the time, but he was the creative business owner. And I did the operations, I did the accounting, I did the check the vendors, are we paying them? How are the staff? How are they feeling? I operated like you do, but I didn't have some of the skills that you have. So when I actually just became then president, I was like, "Oh no."
AJ Roberts (24:33):
It's a very different thing. So you talked about how you get buy-in from your staffing, those that are reporting to you. How do you get buy-in from above? Because that's another skillset. And a lot of times you can come in. You're gung ho, like, "Okay, we're going to make these changes. This is going to be great for the company." But then you have to go get approval from there, from someone who is like, "Well, it's not broken, so why would we fix that?" Or-
Sarah Jenkins (24:57):
Yep, that's what I said.
AJ Roberts (24:58):
It's going to cost us how much more? Right?
Sarah Jenkins (25:00):
No.
AJ Roberts (25:01):
So how do you approach that? Because that's one thing I've always been impressed in is your ability to get ...
Sarah Jenkins (25:06):
What she wants, people to say yes.
AJ Roberts (25:07):
Things that I never thought would be approved. Yes, people to say yes.
Sarah Jenkins (25:11):
She gets what she wants.
Bonnie Hargrove (25:13):
I was like, "Maybe this is a skillset set in sales." I don't know. So I have a perfect example for this. So one of the processes that were broken when I came in was that we were using three help desks. I know this sounds really insane.
Sarah Jenkins (25:24):
I knew knew you were going to pull that one as an example. I knew it, because I was like, "No, no, no, no. We're not changing, we're not changing. We're not changing."
Bonnie Hargrove (25:30):
Yeah. So we had I think two Kartra ones and we had a live agent one and we had some other thing that people were using. And so I took a look at it and I was looking at how we were using all of them. And the reason we had done it was a really good reason.
Sarah Jenkins (25:44):
Sure.
Bonnie Hargrove (25:44):
I mean we were using our own software. It seemed like the right thing to move over. But with the size of our team at the time, it didn't make sense to fully try to get them to get to move over. And so I was like, "Oh man, I'm going to have to convince my brand new boss that we need to purchase this giant help desk."
Sarah Jenkins (26:02):
Very difficult.
Bonnie Hargrove (26:02):
"To support some of these changes that I'm making." Because I was like, "We can always go back." I was like, "But for right now, because we're in such chaos, I need to make sure that there's no bugs, it's perfect, and all the processes, I can set it up and I can configure it myself." Because again-
Sarah Jenkins (26:16):
Help desk was a bad one. [inaudible 00:26:17] bad on.
Bonnie Hargrove (26:17):
Background configuration. So I was like, "If I get my hands into this thing and I can configure, I can move a lot quicker, and we can make sure that our customer experience is good from the front end. Customers feel like we look the same or all of that stuff's normal."
Sarah Jenkins (26:30):
[inaudible 00:26:32].
Bonnie Hargrove (26:31):
So what I did was I went and did a whole bunch of research on how can customer experience affect your top numbers, how can it affect churn, all of those things.
Sarah Jenkins (26:43):
[inaudible 00:26:44].
Bonnie Hargrove (26:44):
And I made a full analysis of why and how much money that we could save from a CX standpoint by switching to this software. And so I went and did a whole presentation to Sarah. She probably remembers it really well. And I said, "Look, if we spend X amount of dollars, we can get potentially X amount of dollars from this one process change in churn reduction or whatever it is."
Sarah Jenkins (27:06):
No, no, no. She said, "You're losing a million dollars a year."
Bonnie Hargrove (27:08):
Oh yeah. That was it too.
Sarah Jenkins (27:09):
"You don't change to this help desk, it's only going to cost you this much to change. And the happier customers, they'll stay longer. Millions on the table." And I was like, "Well, of course I'm going to do that."
Bonnie Hargrove (27:17):
Yeah. And so she said yes, and then converted it all back over. So that's kind of how you do it. So find the reasoning, even if you have to go and say, "This is in general what it could potentially do to you if you let this bad process," because process can really affect-
Sarah Jenkins (27:31):
You weren't wrong.
Bonnie Hargrove (27:31):
... the cost and expense of your company.
Sarah Jenkins (27:34):
That was a huge move for us. So I didn't even understand what you were saying, but when I look at it, even back up now, I say, "Okay, we had our own help desk, but our own help desk is for coaches, consultants, products, book sales, coaching sessions that you've bought on the internet." Ours is for technical QA data, extra issues that they have in the software. Well, nobody else in our database is selling software through Kartra, so they're never going to need that level of help desk. So we're using our own help desk, but it wasn't best for us, but it is best for our customer, most of our customers.
Bonnie Hargrove (28:04):
Exactly.
AJ Roberts (28:05):
And nobody's selling software like us. Because there's single use software-
Sarah Jenkins (28:10):
[inaudible 00:28:11].
AJ Roberts (28:11):
... customers, but nobody's selling an all-in-one platform. And that was the thing that was hard with that thought process was like, okay, how do we justify using a third party when we're supposed to ... and the reality was, when we looked at the things we wanted to change, and this is something that's important too, is understanding when you should do something versus when someone else should do something.
(28:34):
What it came down to was these changes only affect us. It doesn't benefit our customers whatsoever. It takes up our time, our resources, our investment. And the only people it helps is us. This platform over here has everything we need, doesn't cost us anything from a time standpoint to build, and our customers aren't losing out because we didn't add in certain things. But what's real key, I think, what you said, is turning it from a cost to an investment and showing someone, if you don't invest today, then you potentially are going to lose that. I think that's pretty genius. And I've seen you do it many times.
Bonnie Hargrove (29:16):
Fire Bitcoin.
AJ Roberts (29:18):
Obviously, when you first came in, it was mostly customer service focused. We didn't really have customer experience, right? And I were always talking about it and I was saying, "Man, I wish we could do this for the customer journey." And just sometimes you have to go at the pace you can go at, right? You have to walk before you can run, but now, your role's expanded. You're overseeing customer experience. Let's walk through what a customer journey is and how you build an experience around it. Because one of the things I've seen, especially with content creators, people who sell courses, online coaches like that, they're very heavy on the front end. They're very good at marketing. Lots of great marketing, lots of great content videos out there. They might be excellent on Instagram and YouTube, but then, the customer purchases a product and they get delivered an eight-week course or something. But that's about it. Right? The experience is you've bought the product. The experience is here's your ebook, here's your course, here's the thing you've purchased. But that's not really an experience. That's kind of the bare minimum. Right?
Sarah Jenkins (30:15):
That's what I thought the experience was. If you had customer service, you've been helped go on your merry way. Yeah, great. We have a great experience.
AJ Roberts (30:20):
Yeah. So let's dive into that and kind of walk through that.
Bonnie Hargrove (30:24):
Oh yeah. I was like, "You know how much I can talk about this subject." So man, this is such a big topic, but I think I'm going to start with how we're approaching it just because people that are watching this, if you're an owner, always start with your experience. Don't do it the way we did. I'm just kidding.
(30:42):
So you want to look at it as what kind of connection do you want to create with your audience or the people that come in or your community. And that's the biggest piece is how do I create a community that people want to be about? Because what we're selling is a software, and AJ says this all the time. Kartra is the tool or Webinar Jam is the cool the tool, but how do we make it to where they don't want to go use any other tool because the community is so good or their experience is so good that if they went somewhere else, they wouldn't experience the same type of thing.
(31:12):
So really, I mean, this is pretty brand new of what we're trying to bring into our company, but what we're looking at is segmenting the journey into different pieces and understanding our customers of how they're feeling, what actions that they're taking in the software or what are they doing throughout their experience with us until they leave. And of course we want to keep them as long as possible because we want them to love our softwares and stay with us. And so what we're doing is we're segmenting the journey into different phases, and each one of those phases, we're determining how should someone feel, whether that is that they're still assessing the software, they want to feel connection, they want to, all those different things.
Sarah Jenkins (31:56):
Do you ask them about their love languages though?
Bonnie Hargrove (31:59):
We do not ask them about their love language, but maybe once they're in the community. So when they first come in, what we've changed is looking at creating connection and one-to-one humanistic experience. So kind of like I talked about earlier, how I create connection with my team, trying to take that vision and strategy and push it towards our customers.
(32:21):
What people want to feel is connection. When they come into something, they don't want to just feel like they're another number and no one ever wants to feel that. So what we're trying to create is, hey, welcome to our family really. And we really do want to connect with you. Understand what do you need from us so that you feel like you never want to leave. And that's really what we're creating. And through that, we're trying to create different touch points. You know? Maybe touching them through video or phone calls, text messages, email, hitting them, all different types of touch points in each one of those phases.
(32:52):
So let's say you create five phases out of 100 days. You want to have at least five of different touch points in each one of those. So you don't want to just email them or just give them phone calls, but you want to maybe have something that they can print, have something that they can get in the actual, I call it snail mail. Something that they can get a phone call, an onboarding member that's a true person, not just an automated experience. So that's kind of what we've been adding.
AJ Roberts (33:17):
Yeah. What's interesting with that is you mentioned do we ask them to level of languages? We don't. But the touch points cover that. Right? So the different touchpoints, email, text message, phone call, you could do a Zoom or call that, snail mail, all the different touch points, sending gifts, surprise, bonuses, all of those essentially hit those five long love languages. Right?
(33:45):
Even acts of service where it's like how can we help you do this? Right? You're looking at that and I know I'm speaking because I know what you're doing. That is essentially how you eliminate having to ask them. Some stuff will hit and they'll be excited. Some stuff they'll kind of ignore. It's kind like when you build a community, some people like recognition. Some people don't care about it. Right? It's like some people are competitive and want to know how they stack up against everyone else. Some people are in their own lane and couldn't care less. But not to have it, you run the risk of losing those people based on the fact that that's what they need. Right?
(34:22):
And you think to yourself now, a lot of people go, "Oh," well, just for us, we just sell a tool. Right? You know. They should know what their product is, they should know how to deliver it. We don't have to teach them any of that stuff. We don't have to help them. But the reality is a lot of people, they only know a little bit and they need help and they need guidance. And so when you start adding that stuff in, you have kind of the golden triangle with an offer where you've got the tool but you also have the map and you have the guide and you're giving them all the things they need to succeed. And whether they use it or not is irrelevant. It's the fact that it's there.
(34:55):
I think that that goes back to what you've always said. You've always wanted world-class customer experience. That has been something that you've always preached about. And we're moving more and more towards that. And I think that it's interesting seeing what that does to your customer base and how your customers turn into advocates. They go from just using it to basically being a part of-
Bonnie Hargrove (35:21):
Loving it.
AJ Roberts (35:22):
Everything. Yeah, loving it, sharing it, talking about it with people, recommending it to people, and essentially you create this viral word of mouth marketing from actually caring. And I think that that's something a lot of companies, it's not that they don't want to do it. They just haven't seen the ROI from it in their minds. Right? It's one of those things you said. The ROI is not instant. There's an investment, that we have to spend money.
Sarah Jenkins (35:48):
Well, look what you're losing out on if you don't.
AJ Roberts (35:48):
Exactly.
Bonnie Hargrove (35:48):
Yeah. [inaudible 00:35:51] see a trend with me.
AJ Roberts (35:53):
So you mentioned about different personalities and what kind of challenges does that create for an onboarding experience knowing that people are different?
Bonnie Hargrove (36:03):
Yeah, I mean it's truly understanding that people are all different. And I think looking at it from a segment of understanding what are the main ways that people are that we have, so really understanding our community and who's in there and knowing that they're all different. So how do we create an experience that it adheres to all of them? So how do they feel when they get this or how do you segment them into buckets? Because it's hard. You can't really.
(36:31):
People are so different, you can't segment them really easy. So some of the things that we're looking at is more like psychological factors. So what motivates people is really what we're focusing on. And there's a lot of different theories on it, but they have different ways that they're motivated. And so what we're doing is we're putting in buckets of motivation. There's different ways that you can segment your customer experience, but that's the one that we're trying to do. And really it's understanding if this person is motivated by success, are they? Or do they like to work with people or do they other people to tell them how to do it? And if we understand those things and we put all of those pieces into that experience, we should keep people wanting more, really.
AJ Roberts (37:13):
Yeah, it's about that customized experience. I think that's why so many people don't do it, because essentially, what you're creating is kind of a pick your own path adventure. Right? We have to figure out what kind of person you are and then send you on the right path in order to communicate with you in the right way. And that's really, when you look at stick and churn, and that's what a lot of people try to figure out, they say it's nine times more expensive to get a new customer than it is to keep a current one. When you look at that, you go, "Okay, the impact of this is huge," because the first fundamental thing is does the product do what it says it's going to do? And that's something that we always laugh about when people are like, "I can't believe Kartra actually does." It's like, what? Is it not supposed to do what we say it's supposed to do?
Bonnie Hargrove (37:59):
Surprise. It works.
AJ Roberts (38:01):
Exactly. It's like how is that a surprise that we actually function the way we function? We actually do the things we say we do. But it's like when you go to a restaurant and you have good food. Okay. Great, but if the waitress is rude to you, the experience is different. Right? Or if you sit down and you see a rat run across the wall, it doesn't matter how good that food is, you're probably never going back there.
Bonnie Hargrove (38:22):
Unless it's a burrito. Definitely going back there.
Sarah Jenkins (38:24):
The more rats the better.
AJ Roberts (38:26):
Okay we don't need your trips to Tijuana. But I think that's the piece that people need to understand is that your product, whatever you sell, whatever you're creating, isn't the only deciding factor on whether someone is happy, but not just happy. Are they ecstatic? Because that's what keeps people for a long time. And it also buys you grace for when you do have issues we had with the sports stuff.
Sarah Jenkins (38:51):
Never have had that. No.
AJ Roberts (38:52):
When we had all those things, we had loyal customers that were okay, like, "We understand," and they have more patience with you because they've seen the investment you put into them. Obviously, since you started implementing these things, the community and things have shifted. What are some of the cool things you've seen change within the community as you started adding these things in?
Bonnie Hargrove (39:15):
Yeah, my favorite part is seeing the feedback and people acknowledging that things are changing. And that's huge. Right? When people that have been here for a really long time, they're like, "Wow, you guys are having full-on calls with your community now." We have people that represent us in on my team that go into these big calls and they talk to people.
(39:37):
So I kind of talked about the H2H approach, which is the human-to-human type of interaction. And they're starting to say, "We're noticing that you guys are creating connection so much more." And I think that's the most exciting piece because that's really what we're trying to do. So it's like instant gratification from it, is that my amazing staff are sitting there and they're on these calls and people are giving them immediate feedback of, "Wow, Kartra is changing. It's starting to be ... I feel like I'm part of something." Our experts too, they're really contributing to that as well and talking to our staff members and getting on calls and things like that. So ...
AJ Roberts (40:12):
Very cool.
Bonnie Hargrove (40:12):
Yeah.
Sarah Jenkins (40:13):
Oh no, the thing that frustrated me, and I learned to stop looking at other groups on Facebook and the comments like some sort of weird inclusive celebrity or whatever. Because you're saying mean things about the software and nice things about the software and I want to see it all but the mean things, man, the worst thing I ever read was someone said, "Since Andy died, the company's lost heart." And I was like, "Let me at them." I was like, "No way." If anything, we have more. We focus more on the customer and each individual from the janitor to the pilot, to the guard of the airport. Everyone has a very important function and we believe it's important. So we treat it as important.
(40:44):
The janitor to the pilot, everyone in the airport, has an extremely important role to play. Every customer and every staff member of my company has an extremely important role and we value it. So now that they're seeing that we value them, that's what I always wanted.
Bonnie Hargrove (40:55):
Yeah, definitely. And even when people, you're always going to have people that say negative things, but how we look at it is if someone's giving a negative something negative, how do we either turn that around or understand it at a deeper level? And we don't take it personally. We're just like, "Okay." I mean that one's hard.
Sarah Jenkins (41:10):
[inaudible 00:41:11].
Bonnie Hargrove (41:11):
That one's hard not to. But when you're looking at it, it's like why is this person feeling this way and getting it deeper and then saying, how do we create a solution? Again, we talked about this earlier of looking at the bigger picture. People have solutions as well.
Sarah Jenkins (41:24):
Well, it made me look at our customer service tickets. I'm like, "Are they answering robotic? Are they not answering like they care?" Like, "Hey, how was your day? We're here to help you fix your ticket." Whatever.
Bonnie Hargrove (41:31):
Exactly.
Sarah Jenkins (41:32):
Why is that more personal? So I did go and start looking around and going, "Why did that comment ever show up?"
Bonnie Hargrove (41:37):
Exactly. Yeah. So it's just looking at the bigger picture, finding solution for it, even if it's people, and deep diving into how do we be better for our customer? Not necessarily better for our tool or for our success, but for our customers because that's who we're servicing.
AJ Roberts (41:49):
Yeah. And I know talking with some of the staff that are implementing it, one of the things they've noticed is sometimes, because we're talking about customer feedback, we're not talking about just random troll comments or anything like that, those you got to ignore.
Bonnie Hargrove (42:02):
Right.
AJ Roberts (42:02):
But when it's a customer saying stuff, that there's an exchange happening between you and if they're unhappy, it's your job to understand. And sometimes, you're not going to be able to make that customer happy because you're not the other software they came from with the feature that they want. But it's about listening to them. The feedback I've heard is that oftentimes they come in really hot, but as soon as they realize someone's willing to listen, the conversation shifts and it ends up being very positive for them. What they're frustrated about is something small. There was a misunderstanding or they didn't get the answer they expected, so the expectation was off.
(42:42):
Because we have that human-to-human connection a lot more now, it seems as if those comments are a few and far between. But when they are there, we do spend the time to understand it and usually that person is happy at the end of it. I think that's something that's important because a lot of business owners shy away from those comments. They either don't want to see them, hear them, or they just say, "It's none." A lot of people ... I heard, I don't know if this is true, but I heard early, when PayPal started up, they had a customer email that you could email and it was just a inbox that nobody checked, right? Because they just didn't care.
Sarah Jenkins (43:20):
Oh my word. Yeah.
AJ Roberts (43:21):
They were just not interested now.
Bonnie Hargrove (43:22):
Oh. That's so funny and horrible.
AJ Roberts (43:24):
You know? And some businesses choose to do that. So I think that's really, really important. What do you think, within a community, is key to building a community? Because a lot of companies go, "Well, we're just a software company. Why would we focus on building a community like building a tribe?" Why is that so important for any business?
Bonnie Hargrove (43:47):
Yeah, it's creating connection between other people and not just with us. So I think that's the most important piece is helping people find their people so that they can be successful and offering different opportunities for people to partake in so that they can meet other people. And so as you create different connections with people, they go off and do other things. Maybe they go start a business together or they go and they're like-
Sarah Jenkins (44:09):
That's harder.
Bonnie Hargrove (44:10):
"I've always needed a page built for me."
Sarah Jenkins (44:12):
That's harder to do.
Bonnie Hargrove (44:12):
"And this guy helped me build my page and you guys connected me." So creating that sense of community, they would've never met that other person if they had never went to Kartra and got Kartra as a software. So that creates a sense of loyalty.
AJ Roberts (44:24):
So you're saying we need to do a live event.
Sarah Jenkins (44:26):
Oh my word. [inaudible 00:44:28].
Bonnie Hargrove (44:27):
Well, we actually had that with our staff. When we started the bonus thing, I started seeing what other people would give these golden stars to if somebody help me come and jump my car. I'm like, "What? You guys are actually meeting in person? That's weird." If somebody sends a pizza to someone in another country, I'm like, "Holy crap, my staff is doing awesome, just caring for each other physically and weird, offsite ways I had no idea about," which makes me really happy. But I think it's way harder to connect your customers with their people outside of you. I have a hard time putting together that game plan.
AJ Roberts (44:59):
If you think about it, we're all sitting at home, oftentimes alone, working on our computer and a circle of friends around us aren't doing the things we're doing. So the conversations you have with them typically aren't around how do you build this funnel or what's the latest hack you've learned to optimize something. And so when you find other people like that, it's one reason I love going to Masterminds and events, is the conversations you have are deep conversations. And when you really think about it, we spend most of our time on this stuff. Right? And so when you find other people that also spend most of their time on that stuff, it's a natural like, "Oh."
Bonnie Hargrove (45:37):
You have a three-hour breakfast.
AJ Roberts (45:38):
Yeah, you are my people, right? You are my friends. And I think that, like you said, when you build those connections between them, they remember that it was through the company. Right? It was because they were Kartra customers. And so that loyalty to you goes a lot further. And you know what it's like. You have a lot more tolerance with friends and family than you do with just random strangers. And the reason for that is because you build a level of trust where you actually feel like they have your best interest. And so if we can constantly show that, then they're going to show that back to us. It becomes this beautiful relationship where you actually benefit each other. It's not just transactional. It's relationships that you're building. And that to me is really ... you can look at business as business, but I think what's really changed in the last two decades is understanding that for the majority of people where they work is where they spend most of their time. So naturally, that's going to be where they build friendships.
(46:46):
Who they do business with is a majority. That's who they're going to build friendships with. And so some of my best friends live across the country and I only see them couple times a year, but when we hang out, it's incredible. I think if you can build those connections and think of ways to harbor those, that is when you start to shift a company's culture, DNA of the company. There is this kind of movement or energy like that, people can sense and feel. They don't know what it is, they can't explain it, but they like it. You know? They want to be on that train. They want to be traveling that journey with you.
Bonnie Hargrove (47:31):
Well, people spend money based on their emotions. If you have two bottled water companies and one is donating 10% to feed hungry children, you'd be like, "You know, I might pick that one." Because you spend money with your emotions, usually. You and I got into fitness to better our bodies and help other people.
Sarah Jenkins (47:47):
Shut up.
Bonnie Hargrove (47:49):
Well [inaudible 00:47:50].
Sarah Jenkins (47:50):
Let me just flex a little bit.
Bonnie Hargrove (47:52):
Five kids later. No, you get into help people. And so I think some people, like us business owners, we do something that we're passionate about because we're trying to help someone and the dollar follows. So you charge for the value that you're providing, but even for me, it's a stupid software. It's just a tool, right? But it's not. I'm creating this so that I can give other people freedom to build businesses and make money to stay home with their kids, to not have to go to work and commute and leave their wife and kids or their husband and kids to go to a job where they have limited income. I don't like that at all. I want the freedom to build what you're passionate about so you can help others.
(48:23):
If I can help you with your company through the software and that software allows all these people to create companies and products that help all these people, that's where my motivation is at. And the almighty dollar will follow. But that's not what it's about. And I think that's what you're talking about, the new generation, it's coming up with. It's not always about the dollar. It's not always about how much money you can make.
Sarah Jenkins (48:41):
Yeah. Your passions. I was going to say, I was reading this book the other day, and it's one of the brand new books that came out. I can't remember the author, but he was talking about how this next generation that's coming up, I mean, your kids coming up, is the loneliest generation that'll ever be in US history or even the world history. That's because of all of the pandemic and all those things and the boom of the internet has really made people ... they can connect with more people, but they're more lonely.
Bonnie Hargrove (49:09):
Well, it's not real.
Sarah Jenkins (49:11):
Yeah. It's not like a real true connection. And so the companies that shift to more of a connection type, like marketing and experience and all of those things, and they really empower people in that way, are going to be the companies that survive. And the ones that don't, well, they won't. And they talk about how advertising was huge back in the boomer's generation because it was brand new to them. They just got the TV, they got this fancy ad on the TV and they're like, "Wow, look at that ad."
Bonnie Hargrove (49:38):
I want the Power Ranger. That's so cool.
Sarah Jenkins (49:40):
Yeah, I want that Power Ranger. Yeah. But now-
AJ Roberts (49:42):
They also had no restrictions on what they could say.
Sarah Jenkins (49:45):
Yeah.
Bonnie Hargrove (49:45):
Because you didn't get the pink one, it's fine.
AJ Roberts (49:47):
Smoke this cigarette.
Bonnie Hargrove (49:47):
[inaudible 00:49:48].
Sarah Jenkins (49:47):
It's fine.
Bonnie Hargrove (49:48):
I shotgun the pink one.
AJ Roberts (49:48):
It's approved by 10 doctors.
Sarah Jenkins (49:50):
Everyone did it. Right? And so advertisement is not going to be as big they say in 10 to 15 years because now ...
Bonnie Hargrove (49:55):
We don't trust it. We've learned.
Sarah Jenkins (49:56):
It's like ad fatigue. Right? You're on TikTok or Instagram. It's an ad every five seconds. And kids know just to swipe away from it. And so that's going to be the generation that's coming up. And so the people that aren't connecting, they're not going to buy.
AJ Roberts (50:09):
Yeah. It's a different connection relationship. And the reality is a lot of people don't understand our fundamental programming, that there's no control of our own. Right? The subconscious, the desire, what you crave. And people crave human-to-human connection. And I agree with you. I think whatever companies can do to foster that, they're going to be better. Now there's some products obviously that don't serve that purpose, but when you look at it, like you said, the water, buying a water bottle, or a bottle of water from the store that there's no experience beyond that better taste like good water. Right?
Sarah Jenkins (50:45):
The bottle might be prettier.
AJ Roberts (50:47):
If the bottle is ... there's that liquid death that comes in a can, that water. But it's a brand. It's an attitude, but people purchase because they feel like it represents them in a certain way. And so I think the more of that people can lie into and start to think about what do we represent? How do we represent it? Do the people who purchase our stuff, does it invoke motions and feelings, like you said? I think that's the path forward for majority of companies.
(51:17):
I think that what you see is this split because there's the focus on money, like you mentioned, profit, money. But the reality is that's always a byproduct. Right? It's a byproduct of whatever they're getting. And so I was talking with my tattoo artist. There's levels, right? And there's tattoo artists that still charge 75 bucks for a tattoo. You can walk in off the street. And then there's tattoo artists who are charging 2,500, 5,000 a day to go sit and they put art on your body. You know? And there's different levels. Both survive. But eventually, those lower ones, just they fade because the quality and the expectations and everything changes. And you couldn't do that 20 years ago because there was no comparison globally.
(52:08):
Now, any company can start up anywhere in the world and have a global audience. And not only that, the audience can come against other companies without ever experiencing the other company. Just from the outside, you can get a feel for what do they represent, how do they carry themselves, how do they dress, how do they look? What do they talk about? And you can say, "Do I fit in with that group or not?" And people do make purchase decisions.
(52:32):
We can be the best software in the world, but there are some people who just wouldn't do business with us based on the way that our website looks because they have a different opinion on how it should look. And they could say it's not professional enough or it's too professional. Right? And some people love to wear suits. Other people think a suit is a guy looking like a monkey up there. So you have to figure out ways to essentially humanize a brand. I think that's why we've talked about this. People don't follow brands. They follow people. And the companies that are doing the best ... Richard Branson's a great example. Richard Branson is the embodiment of ... well, or I should say Virgin is the embodiment of Richard Branson. His company is an extension of his personality, an extension of his fun, is an extension of the way he does things. And that's how businesses, in my opinion, are going to survive and thrive as we move forward.
Bonnie Hargrove (53:32):
Their airline is really fun.
Sarah Jenkins (53:33):
They have music and stuff. Everyone's happy. I want to be on that airline.
AJ Roberts (53:34):
That's how we hope to develop. That's what we want the feeling around us. It's fun, supportive, it's in parallel. What does success look like? Well, this is a part of what it is. So anything else you want to share?
Bonnie Hargrove (53:48):
I mean, I think we covered a lot. You know? I hope it's insightful and helpful for our audience and they can get something out of it and really focus on building out those aspects for themselves. Because I think it's really important. So ...
AJ Roberts (53:59):
Cool.
Bonnie Hargrove (53:59):
Yeah.
Sarah Jenkins (54:00):
Hire people with different skills than you. Hire people that can argue with you and get what's right for the company and then connect with your audience and your staff. That's what I got out of it.
AJ Roberts (54:09):
Yeah.
Bonnie Hargrove (54:09):
Definitely.
AJ Roberts (54:11):
Very good. All right everyone. Thanks very much. We'll see you on the next episode. I just have to tell you about Kartra, the marketing platform that has seriously transformed my business. How running a business can be insanely time-consuming, right? Well, Kartra has been a game changer for me. It's honestly like having an entire marketing team in my pocket. And what I love most is that it automates all the tedious daily tasks for me, from marketing to sales, to even customer experience.
(54:36):
I can't believe how much time and energy I've saved since I started using it. Get this. With Kartra. I can create websites, funnels, courses, membership sites, email campaigns, calendars, surveys, you name it. It's made managing my business so much simpler and more affordable. Honestly, I can't recommend Kartra enough. If you're curious, head to paidtocreatepodcast.com\Kartra to start your trial. Trust me. You won't regret it.