EE047 – Bill Balderaz – Create the Future

Exceeding Expectations links:

Facebook Group
Twitter
LinkedIn
YouTube

How to leave a podcast review:
https://tonywinyard.com/how-to-leave-a-review-for-the-podcast/

[00:00:00] Exceeding expectations episode 47. Welcome to the podcast where we try to give you ideas on ways you can go above and beyond what your customer was expecting. You can hear some of the guests talk about ways that they’ve exceeded what their client was expecting and maybe you can tweak it in some way to make it work for you and by adopting this mindset. It makes it a much more enjoyable way to do business but there are a number of benefits you tend to get much better reviews the way people write the testimonial for you or better yet more recommendations referrals and re bookings. And it’s just a better way of doing business and you have happier customers as well. Please do leave a review for us on places such as i tunes. If you’ve got any guests that you would like to be heard like to hear being interviewed on this podcast then do let me know you can drop us a line in the Facebook group which is called exceeding expectations. And now for this week’s episode with Bill Balderaz. Exceeding expectations my guess this week is Bill Balderaz. Hiya Bill.

[00:01:17] I am great. How are you doing today.

[00:01:20] I’m very well thank you. And you just said to me you’re in Columbus Ohio.

[00:01:25] That’s correct. We’re right in the heartland of the Midwest in the US and very happy to be talking to you across the ocean there. And is that where you’re from. I spent my whole life in Ohio. So I’ve lived in various parts of Ohio but Columbus has been my home for about twenty one years so. So I considered home at this point.

[00:01:46] And for those listeners who aren’t familiar with Columbus is it known for anything in particular.

[00:01:51] Sure. Columbus Day. There’s a few things here want anyone that cares about American football. We pray about the most dedicated group of college football fans that Ohio State Buckeyes is really defines us. We have one of the universe largest universities in America. Ohio State University I think is the second largest by enrolment so there’s that. Have have several Fortune 500 companies here. So it’s a you know it’s a centre of a lot of. Large corporations because we’re kind of smack in the middle of the US. So logistics. There’s some crazy statistic where where a day’s drive I think half of the US population. So kind of everyone except Texas and California. Most maybe we’re close to Chicago close New York close to D.C. Philadelphia Boston so we’re known as a kind of the Centre a little bit of the United States so it tends to be a lot of. Corporate companies. And the last thing is we’re known as test City USA because our population is a microcosm of the population of the United States. So by age and race and gender and income we basically are the same proportions of. The rest of America. So when a company introduces a new product new fashion new food they test marketing Columbus first to see how the reception is and then politicians spend a lot of times here. Columbus. Ohio often sways the presidential election and the other two large cities in Columbus ones are very democratic ones very Republican. Columbus is a mix of Columbus also gets a lot of attention in presidential cycles.

[00:03:19] Dawes like a place I need to visit my next.

[00:03:21] My next trip to the states when it went over my eyes.

[00:03:26] And say you mentioned about some Fortune 500 companies and so on so you your company member had to finance and now futurity right on.

[00:03:36] So tell us what is it exactly that you do share.

[00:03:40] Great so futurity. We see an opportunity for the role that data can play in people’s lives. So our core promise is we work with organizations to take their data and then predict how their customers are likely to behave and communicate with their customers at or even before the time of need. So the a tangible example if you’ve ever seen an ad on Facebook and you think how does Facebook know I was thing about buying this thing I didn’t search for it. I didn’t talk about it. Know essentially we’re using data to predict how you’re likely to behave and start communicating with you before then. One thing that’s really important is that you hear data. People get scared and they’re concerned about privacy. There’s two things I like to focus on. One is everything we do is as is ethical white hat we never worked with someone who doesn’t give their permission. We we follow the strictest GDP our privacy policies that you can’t follow. And to we have a real focus on using data to solve society’s biggest problems. So many of our clients are working on solving things like malnutrition food scarcity scarcity transportation and mobility health and equity. So we tend to work in industries where we say what if we could communicate with people and help them get to work more effectively help them get healthcare easier help them connect with resources. So we’re not a non-profit but we really do have a focus on using data to solve society’s biggest challenges.

[00:05:05] And is that come about do you so choose the clients you really want to work with or how is that come about.

[00:05:10] Sure we do have a little bit of a luxury there and the fact that there’s not a million companies out there that have a team of data scientists. There aren’t a lot of unemployed data scientists in the world. So we’ve done a great job of attracting talent which gives us some flexibility and being really selective with our clients. So we know we do market. We have companies that sell fashion and roofing and things that aren’t necessarily have a direct social impact. All things equal we really the clients we seek out are the ones that we identify and say if we can help this client we’re not just helping them drive revenue and create great jobs and do good things. We’re helping solve some of the issues that we really care about.

[00:05:51] And when did you set a company up.

[00:05:54] About two years ago is when we hired our hired our first employee for about the first I think legally we incorporated in 2014 for about the first three years it was really me and some grad students that I met. We have Ohio State University a stone’s throw away so. I had a group of grad students that would come in and help me on projects. But about two years ago I decided there’s something pretty exciting here. So I hired our first employee and we’ve been growing by bringing on a team member every month or so since then.

[00:06:25] And I presume so this was your background already. This isn’t anywhere you’ve been involved in for a long time.

[00:06:30] That’s what’s quite interesting. So. Entrepreneurship and setting up marketing agencies. Yes. I love that I’ve been an entrepreneur. Most of my career I’ve had multiple businesses in the past. But data analytics. I’m the guy that took statistics pass fail in college because I’m it’s an area I’m fascinated by but I’m terrible at so. So essentially what I did is when starting futurity I just met with a lot of clients. My philosophy on entrepreneurship is that the market’s always right and you talk to people and say what what would you write me a check for today and everyone I met with said We have a lot of data. Help us drive meaning from it help us integrate it. And so I went out and recruited and found the best data talent I could find and we built futurity.

[00:07:14] Because I think I mean what you just touched upon it is an name that really confuses a lot of people doesn’t it.

[00:07:20] Absolutely. It’s overwhelming. You know the reason we don’t win deals if we ever do a pitch and someone doesn’t sign with us is they just they look at us and say we’re not ready for this. You know it feels big. You’re a banker or you’re a hospital and you’ve got just years and years of data some of it’s in paper form sounds and Microsoft Access databases sums online and the cloud. Maybe you’ve grown by acquisition and so every company you’ve acquired every bank or hospital you’ve acquired over the last 20 years has their own system. And so it feels overwhelming. The analogy I use I can usually tell someone’s gonna work with us. There is there’s we have a lot of wildlife here in Columbus. I’ll I’ll start by prefacing that. I call this my dead raccoon theory but there are services that will come to your home and they’ll inspect your roof and your and your house and say you know you’ve got spots where wildlife could get into your basement or your attic. And we’re going to put up screens and fences to keep them out. And now a lot of people buy that because you think really I’m not going to get a raccoon or a rabbit or a squirrel in my house. And so very few people would say I’m going to do this proactively. But the second or raccoon crawls in your attic and dies and your house thinks and you’re just you think of him up there. You think he’s got rabies. You will pay any amount of money you will make any phone call to get that data the same way.

[00:08:33] If I just think I’ve got a lot of data I should do something with it I’m probably not going to call but if my data problems a dead raccoon if I’m not reaching customers like I should be if I have duplicate records if I’m not in compliance if I talk to someone I think see their data problem is putting up fencing around their attic. They’re probably not going to buy if I see they got a dead raccoon.

[00:08:54] They’re going to sign that day when customers come to you and say so typically what is it that they come to you for what kind of problems that I normally identified himself.

[00:09:05] I’ll give a few examples so one I mentioned we really care about mobility and transportation and in our city we’ve got one hundred and eighteen new people moving to Columbus every day. And our infrastructure wasn’t necessarily ready to be where we’re almost the size of San Francisco by population so we’re growing really rapidly here. And so we’re working with some city planners and government agencies to say we’ve our roads our bridges how do we support this population we get all these jobs coming in how do we make sure we can connect people to jobs and healthcare and education using data. So that’s that’s kind of a dead raccoon problem we’ve got people needing to work. We got companies wanting to hire that so we can use data to understand what trips our people commonly take and where are we missing public transportation options. What are the most common routes that you know from what zip code to what zip code. So that’s a problem we can solve in healthcare. There’s a hospitals have a hospital systems we work with and you often hear the story probably a lot of your listeners know the story of the really fit young 30 year old guy. He’s out jogging. He has a brain aneurysm that he passes away very suddenly. And what we’re looking at is can we use data to identify what’s the profile of those patients who’s likely to have a neurology issue that has not been identified. We look at all their you know the patients they’ve served before and then we look at the population of patients that’s undiagnosed with neurology issues and say let’s proactively reach out to them next time they have a physical or next time they do and suggest they have a neurology screening. So so those are things again we can you know literally when the doctor says you know how can I use this to save lives or a city planner says How can I use this to make sure underemployed people are getting great jobs and access to education and health care. Those are the problems we love to solve.

[00:10:54] So it sounds to me like. Correct me if I’m wrong but this piece sounds like there’s a whole load of companies out there who could really do with these kind of services you offer. And I have no idea of what it is that you could do for them.

[00:11:10] That’s very true. We had a phone call yesterday with someone in health care. We’re looking to improve health outcomes across a patient might have a primary care doctor and a behavioural care and orthopedic and they don’t always that data is always communicate to the patient always doesn’t get maybe the level of care that they they need at this company was saying we knew we had this problem we did know it was solvable. So we do hear that a lot of people are. They they kind of accept a fact of life that. The information in my restaurant where I’m selling food and my online ordering at my Web site and my credit card orders and people that pay cash I can’t be connected. They’re often kind of resigned themselves to that. And so a lot of times we’ll have the discussion and you see their eyes light up because we’ve solved a problem that’s really been weighing on their minds.

[00:11:55] Yeah. So it sounds like you exceeded expectations just from the initial meeting before you’ve even done anything.

[00:12:00] I hope so. I wear my heart on my sleeve so I tend to get pretty impassioned and pretty excited. In the initial meetings so yeah we loved even just educating people so that’s that’s a great point. You know that first meeting you know maybe the client think it’s gonna be another marketing marketing or I.T. firm it’s going to teach them and we come and talk about the problems we can solve. It’s great to see their faces light up. You know we really have some great deep relationships with our clients.

[00:12:26] Well and I saw you mentioned that almost 100 percent of your clients are from a firm.

[00:12:32] That’s correct. Usually once we take care of someone well they refer others. So I would you know it sounds kind of.

[00:12:39] Cliche but most of them have become friends now to you and these are people I would hang out with we spend a lot of time together. You know we’re solving problems. They’re referring us to others. So yes. And almost everyone we have. About a hundred percent client retention.

[00:12:53] So when someone has done one project with us they’ll say OK to use data to help solve issues around diabetes or around malnutrition or helping us sell this product line. So it’s you know every client we work with tends to want to do more and then they you know they’ll change jobs and they become vice president somewhere else and they’ll take us with that. And so you know our business has grown very organically by those referrals.

[00:13:17] And it also sounds like you’ve got your employees love working for you because I saw something somewhere on your Web site. People just don’t leave you a company correct.

[00:13:24] We we’ve been recognized as Best Places to Work our very first year we were eligible for the award we apply. We won that we won first place. So there were dozens and dozens of companies here in Columbus and our first year out of the gate we were recognized with Best Places to Work in Columbus super high retention you know when we open a job posting we tend to get lots and lots of applicants because people we have a reputation of as a really exciting place to work. And you know I’m not sure I know your listeners aren’t various parts of the world but in Columbus we have almost almost zero unemployment I think officially it’s three or four percent which that’s if you take in the people that they aren’t looking or whatever it may be. So we have we have more jobs and we have people here. So when we posted the opening and we get lots of good candidates it makes me feel really good and proud because I see many companies I talked to other executives who you know they they can’t get a good resume because we have. We’ve got a lot of talent and we’ve got so many good jobs that it’s you know we can use a lot more talented people so I’m honoured when people really turn out for jobs here.

[00:14:27] And so what’s that a strategy of use to make your employee’s lives really enjoyable.

[00:14:32] Really for fans so loosely I have found so I’m also an investor so I invest in about 20 or so start-ups and small businesses. And if I had to say what what’s the difference between the ones that are successful and the ones that aren’t. It’s not the product. I’ve seen great products fail I’ve seen okay product succeed. The business model is important. You have a good financial model that has to work but the number one thing is the team and is the team. Not only I don’t want to but he doesn’t have a bunch of these from Ivy League schools. But are they good. And do they care about each other. And when you have that. You can even have an OK product project and an OK business model and be really successful. So on our on our wall here a big mirror we have painted with all of our core values on it and you see it everyday when you come in. You see it everyday when you’re eating lunch. It’s just it’s reinforced it’s when we hire someone we walk them along that wall and we talk about the core values when we promote someone. When someone’s looking for a raise or a change their complaint is based on how they meet those core values. And so you get really like minded people at our office space here. It feels kind of like a home. You know we have. We don’t go over the top with Silicon Valley type features but there a kitchen and there’s couches and people bring their dogs in. And so it’s also a place where we have to spend eight or nine or 10 hours a day here and so it’s a place that. Everyone has a best friend at work. Everyone has kind of a roommate we’re in offices that are kind of set up like rooms and so there’s a very close field here. And I think people want to be part of that.

[00:16:05] And if more companies had that attitude towards their employees they’d be well people would be just generally happier in their jobs.

[00:16:13] Absolutely. It’s interesting. I love our clients and they’re wonderful.

[00:16:18] There are times our team goes to those location oxides and they’ll say you know I don’t like it be hard for me to see myself in that environment because they you know it’s not necessary when excels in a super structured cubicle environment. Sometimes you have to do that and there’s there’s absolutely role for those organizations. But our focus is if you really you provide flexible scheduling and you provide an environment people can have a best friend at work you provide lots of chances for interaction and personal relationships and everyone’s vested it. Otherwise you get a situation where people just say Chase titles and salary and money and that’s unsustainable because there’s always I tell our team members here everyday I know recruiters calling them and telling them hey I can get you a job or you make 10 percent more money and every day some outplacement firm calls me and say hey you can cut your team and I can save 10 percent on payroll and so we can sit here and look at each other. And I’m wondering if they’re going to leave for a 10 percent bump in salary and they’re wondering if they’re going to fire to save 10 percent on payroll or we can all say we all really like working together and let’s trust each other and let’s take care of each other and all that mental energy that goes to politics and titles and salary goes to doing a great job for our clients and building great relationships with each other.

[00:17:32] And that’s when magic happens and so all your clients.

[00:17:37] In Columbus so you know we’re spread out primarily in Ohio. I would say about 90 percent of our revenue and clients are based in Ohio. And we do have some clients in Chicago New York. We have one employee in San Diego California. So we do have some clients outside of Ohio. But right now I at my previous agency we worked with clients all over the world and I spent a lot of time on train planes and hotel rooms and so this time there was a deliberate decision at least initially to really build a wall around Ohio focus on Ohio make sure if anyone sitting on Dayton Ohio that we own that first and then look at really smart growth into other areas.

[00:18:17] And where do you think that growth will be where would you like to expand too in the next 5 10 years we see a lot of opportunity here in the Midwest.

[00:18:24] So we love Chicago. Chicago’s a pretty natural extension but really quite similar to Columbus. It’s a 45 minute plane flight. So. So that’s probably the most this next logical. We also just want to really button down our our presence in Ohio. So we’ve got a really strong presence in Columbus expanding to Cincinnati and Cleveland. Makes sense. Boston is a great hub for health care we love health care so Boston’s probably on the list. And then I mentioned are our person in San Diego. We’re really looking at what’s the opportunity to establish an outpost there with additional team members and some space on the West Coast.

[00:19:04] And how do you think the businesses that you’re in will change in the next five 10 years. Well how do you see a data analytics takes.

[00:19:12] You know it’s interesting my some of the first agency I started was this search engine optimization agency which today is incredibly cliche but this was in 2006 and there weren’t a lot of people doing it. So we got in we got big we got fast. We’d see very similar growth trajectory doubling revenue year over year. The market got really crowded and commodities. Then I got into more social media marketing same kind of thing we got we started a social media company long before there was an Instagram or Snapchat. It was the early days of Twitter and YouTube when the market got really Belizean our geography did a really great job there. So I’ve been able to repeat patterns like that in my career. And I feel like we’re on the same path with data analytics. We’ve got you know right now the big five consulting firms do it these other agencies that say they do data but it’s a lot of times they’re just Google Analytics they’re not truly doing machine learning and A.I.. And so I think we’ve got a pretty good head start. What I think will happen is you’ll start to see a lot of competition will come in and I think it’ll become more commodities. I think you’ll see technology get less expensive. You know right now that computing power in the software to do machine learning and some of the things we do is not inexpensive. So I think we’ll we’ll see that become less expensive more commodities. I think we’ll see consolidation in the Big Five. Four or five consulting firms are. There in this space it’s hard to tell how serious they are they’ll probably grow by acquisition. So we expect to see a lot of turbulence over the next few years lot more competitive people getting smarter about it. I also don’t think it bodes well for. Agencies that focus just on creative you can never replace the creativity of a human being. But some agencies that get you know maybe a little bit overly confident and just being rely on creativity without having data without having measurements without having some of those tools in place to really ensure that their clients investment is being spent the right way. You know if I were in an agency that was purely creative I’d be a little worried if I wasn’t at least using data to power my creative. Yeah.

[00:21:19] And what about things like that of a CEO and link building and stuff like that. Is that still as important now.

[00:21:27] Would you think that it’s still the next thing you think so. It’s changing drastically so as long as people use Google as CEO will be a thing. Is writing in a great meta tags and doing some of that you know things that as important as it was before. Probably not. I think it’s changing. You know Google’s rank brain is essentially an A.I. tool. It isn’t a tool and it’s meant to understand you know what Tony search is on a bill searches on and what my cousin searches on. We may use the same phrases but based on our geography our search history and remember Google owns YouTube videos we watch Google Google Calendar Google Chat. So if I’m if I’m putting things on my calendar around a vacation to London and I start doing searches around Wells catfish you know I have a pretty good idea that I’m heading to London or that I’m buying. You know my wife bought tickets to London. So these all these things are going to impact my search results versus you who already live in London and you may see you may not see the same results. So yes all those basic things are still super important. What I would encourage anyone who inserts or digital marketing to think about is your site before. No one would say they did this but a lot of search people did they serve their audience and their human members one way but then they did a lot of stuff on the site just to get Google’s attention. Google’s gotten smarter. Google’s A.I. now behaves much more like a human. And so it’s really you’ve got to have an authentic brand an authentic voice. You’ve got to be designed and built for people. And Google’s robot now behaves more and more like a person. And you’ve got a server you’ve got to serve and tax it’s the tricks are over the black hat stuff is over the Games are over. You’ve got to have an authentic brand.

[00:23:07] And as far as going back to the subjects have exceeded expectations I’m just wondering what you know. So we talked about before I said that you know when you first meet clients it’s clear that you’re giving them information I had no idea was even possible that they could do. But how do you generally how are you able to exceed the expectations once you start working with people what is it you able to do.

[00:23:30] Sir it’s so exciting. We we actually do our speaking presentations with clients we’ve done case studies and white papers and podcasts so they tell the stories better than I do but a lot of times you know they go with this expectation of just to see their faces light up. I remember when I was a CMO from a large hospital system and you know she had asked well what if I want to know you know high income millennials who had a dermatology appointment and had a great outcome. How can I see that. And when we go click click click and we show it to her and it happens in seconds. You know that every door in the room drop and I’ll say now I know how I can be serving these patients better now I can see what treatment outcomes are most effective now I can see. So at one point you know they hire us maybe to make a nice dashboard and show them what stuff looks like. But then when we say this now becomes part of your business this is going to help you improve care and get people’s jobs and solve issues around malnutrition and public health. That that’s more than just data a dashboard to cut down on my reporting times which a lot of times that that’s the dead skunk in the attic people will call us and say I spent 40 hours a week making this report can you automate it. And we say yep we’ll do that. But the real power is this is going to help you make smart business decisions. So that’s exciting on our retail clients who are some clients that are for example in the restaurant industry one once that’s at a National Restaurant Group about 600 locations. And you know when they tell us that after Easter Thanksgiving that they’ve it’s literally exceeding expectations here’s the goal of the number of meals they were planning to serve. And we’ve significantly beaten that goal based on using really smart data as power their FCO their SVM their broadcasts all their marketing messages their email by using data. Suddenly they’re spending less on ECM is spending less on email. They’re reaching the right people and they’re they’re beating those numbers. So it’s it’s so rewarding to come in. It was the Monday after Easter and that client said we went home Friday. We said here’s the goal and it was a big number and we came in Monday and we beat that goal. So there was lots of celebrating.

[00:25:35] So if those people I meet is duty and so they show these covers many different industries from very smooth to medium even large if there’s people listening to this and I think and I wonder if I could use like some sort of data analytical analytic company what would you say. They may be wondering how how could they help me with things do you think maybe they they should be thinking about or even how they could be helped.

[00:26:03] Sure. Yes absolutely.

[00:26:05] So at a base level you know we have one client that is two people they probably do a few hundred thousand dollars in revenue and they came to us just for one very specific reason they were spending a lot of money on Facebook ads and they weren’t getting good results. So a pretty simple problem you know pretty simple one to solve. We were able to dig into the data of their current client base their best clients there and repeat clients their most loyal clients. And then we’re able to set up a Facebook campaign that targeted to help them find more clients like their best clients. Very simple problem very specific problem but to them very very important you know getting basically driving directly results of driving revenue marketing spend the revenue all the way up to get up. We have a Fortune 500 retailer that is in the nutrition space who wants to effectively understand who’s buying their product at Walmart Balderaz and CBS online Amazon through their own Web site who’s writing ratings and reviews and identifying who are their best customers. How do they keep that loyalty going. What couponing is necessary what discounts are necessary what messaging what images drive people to the stores and they’re a global organization. So if there’s any problem you’re trying to solve. I would say of the hundreds of people we’ve spoken with their tribe and two or three where we’ve come back it’s that we can’t we can’t solve that problem. Maybe another agency could maybe in a few years we’ll be able to. But you know sometimes there are issues that we’ll be very honest with you about and say that’s that’s when we can’t crack. But it was great to talk to them. But in general you know if you’re looking at getting more buyers getting more customers getting more donors we do a lot of work at nonprofits and advocacy to help people reach their donors. Nonprofits they you know they send out a lot of mail. They do a lot of media but so much of that is going to someone that will never donate. We can help you target your donors. We do a lot in hiring. We probably ran more than 100 programs for colleges and universities. My son’s at that age. He gets a pile of mail every day. Direct mail snail mail he throws it all away immediately or about me made my wife do. But we can help target here is a student that will excel at your college or university not just based on their S.A.T. scores based on all kinds of factors. And we’ll put you in front of them on Instagram or in a text message or I know a website they read and we’re going to reach you where they are with a message that they care about. So so you know whether it’s students voters donors. Volunteers know whatever it is. Generally speaking whether you’re two people or twenty thousand we can probably help you.

[00:28:37] You mentioned about some Facebook advertising and so on and there’s there’s a million among companies claiming to sell that. And the result was pretty yes pretty poor and in some cases amazing in other cases. So what do you think people should look for when they’re looking for someone to do something like that. Looking to have some Facebook advertising no good and a. What should they look for and what should they look to avoid.

[00:28:59] Absolutely. What I would say is you know you want to look for someone that’s really going to be very good at targeting your message and that’s your content your time of day your images your texts to a highly qualified audience. And if if they’re trying to you know promote themselves on those attributes that they can really do a fine degree of targeting that they’re going to be very careful with your investment and really focus on your return. Those are the companies I would have conversations with the two red flags I would look for is anyone that tries to overwhelm you with your creative you want pretty ad you aren’t good looking ads. Absolutely. But anyone that tries to sell you on click bait headlines and really sexy flashy images. Those campaigns may get to terms that impression maybe in tens of clicks but they just don’t convert. So look for an agency that you know we jokingly talk about the skinny jeans agencies that if they if there’s too many like creatives not enough data I would I would stop shy away from that. I would also shy away from agencies that have an incentive to spend more of your money. So some do I like mark-up on the media or you know it’s basically driven by there’s an incentive for them to spend more. And it’s tied to their fees. So look for an agency that’s maybe they’re focussed on some of your goals or around sales conversions or have a flatter fee structure or you know a floor to ceiling on that flea strip fee structure. That’s why I would look at a couple of those things and references results we always want to give the new guy a chance absolutely. But I would also look for who’s got a great reputation great references.

[00:30:35] Just before we sort of a code and you were telling me an interesting story about you.

[00:30:39] He has a scoop so exceeding expectations. There’s a couple stories I love with this. So a few years ago my little girl was probably six or seven and you know a lot of her friends went to church. So we did we didn’t go to church at the time or we said Let’s let’s go find a local church that we can be a part of and so you know every Sunday we would pick a different one and go to. And we got up nice and early and got all dressed up and were in the pews at eight thirty. And I look at the Bulletin and I realized that there is no Sunday school for the 30 service. There’s one for the 10 o’clock service and I look around and most the people there are I’m in my I was in my late 30s early 40s at the time. Most the people there were probably in their 70s and 80s and I like their offices. I mean the old people service. And the pastor looked right at me I didn’t know or I’d never seen her before. And she was going through the announcement so she said oh you know the ladies quilting club is on Tuesday and on Wednesday we’re going to be down to the homeless shelter. And on Thursday you know the men’s golf league meets Oh and I have an announcement and she looked right at me and said we’re going to start offering Sunday school at the eight thirty service starting today. So no words were great. She suddenly nodded. And someone else they’re not at that woman. And she’s like Aaron is going to take any child here back to Sunday school and of course my little girl didn’t know this was all done for her. She stood up she’s the only kid in the service. I get up I go to the Sunday School room to pick her up and there’s three other little girls with her. And I said I saw what you did that I really appreciate it. And the woman teaching Sunday school said Yeah we have a parishioner who lives across the street. So I will get them up and have them bring their little girls over. So you’re a little girl to have someone to play with. And I just said you know I immediately went to my work and I’m like some how have we done that for a client lately. We had a client come to us and you know it wasn’t it wasn’t the pastor’s fault that I came to that service. It was I went to the wrong service. There was you know there was no reason for her to do this. So we had a client come to us where maybe the client made a mistake and quoted a client the client had expectations that weren’t realistic. And then you met them and I I think about that example a lot of. Can we can we go home at night and say we had an example where we made a Sunday school on the fly and we were wrote letters. There was no question we’d been there every week since and it’s bad. I get six or seven years ago and. I would never go anywhere else.

[00:32:56] So attentive to the attitude of that pessimism.

[00:32:59] Absolutely. I would just shows it. Edit You know it wasn’t that once I got there then they started treating us badly. That’s just that’s part of the culture the DNA of that church that pastors actually moved on and you know the legacy she set up now the. It still is embedded there in that culture that they are very service. You don’t think of churches being customer service driven but they’re very member driven.

[00:33:22] I wouldn’t have a story you’re telling me about of one.

[00:33:26] So yes I think I jokingly told you when I’m not praying I’m drinking which is not true. But I belong to the wine of the Month Club again. They become really popular over the last few years so I’ve been just belong to this one for years and you have to be 21 to sign for the delivery every month. And it showed up one day and I was at work. My wife was gone so no one was there to sign showed up the next day and just my kids were there they couldn’t sign showed up the third day. No one there. So we get shipped back to the wine company and I I wasn’t mad. I sent them a note. I’m so sorry. You tried three times to get shit back. Can I. Can you ship it. I’ll be I’ll play. I’ll pay double for the shipping I’ll make sure someone is here. They wrote back. I really actually think they call it said hey sorry you missed it. This was right around. Fourth of July. Which again probably did not as important to you over there or as a different kind of painting. But obviously we’re getting ready for barbecues and cookouts here right before the holiday. Two cases of my foot up and I was like Oh I’ve been double charge and I guess I wasn’t upset by get online and there was a note saying sorry for the mix up. Enjoy it. Enjoy this free case on us now. Now if they had screwed up and sent me white wine when I wanted reds or they’d missed my order I could see maybe then them wanting to compensate but it was my mistake. I screwed up I wasn’t home to get it and they doubled up on that order. So I had a great Fourth of July. Needless to say but I was so impressed where I think about that in our business is there a case where the client made a mistake and instead of us sitting down saying we tried to do this but the client didn’t get the data to us in time or the client didn’t get their title tags changed so they can’t see results. Can we ship them a free bottle of wine. There is a free Cates wine what can we do. That’s the equivalent of saying hey this bad thing happened and we’re gonna make up for it even though it was in no way our fault.

[00:35:15] And you’ve probably told that story to so many people and now other people are using that one company is about anonymity.

[00:35:23] I share that. I put it on Facebook. I told you know a lot of my friends are wine kind of sewers.

[00:35:27] So I I hope I’ve generated thousands of dollars of business for a boy your general thoughts on exceeding expectations. Why or why should people maybe should think about it.

[00:35:39] Absolutely. You know we just we can’t think about where the bar is that we’ve got to raise the bar it sounds cliche but you and I will you know people bash millennials and bash younger generation. But this is a this is a reality. You know 20 years ago you went into a restaurant and you order a cup of coffee. And the degree you could customize it was cream or sugar and it was just you just got a coffee or you went to a Mexican restaurant you just got a taco today with Starbucks every order is customized today with simply Every order is customized. So the expectation is I’m being treated to a personal order with every interaction I get in the retail space for all of you out there that own a business or work in a business. That’s the mindset of your buyer. So hitting the bar one size fits all doesn’t work anymore. If I if I go to a restaurant and I ask the employee I said what’s what’s your definition of keeping a customer happy. And they said the food’s on time and it’s hot. And we got the order right. And that should give us you know on a scale of one to five that should be a five. I would say no that’s a three. You’ve met the expectation the very minimum I expect. But I go to a restaurant is my orders out in a timely manner. The food is warm and it’s correct. If I got you know coleslaw instead of french fries or it takes too long. Now you’re at to use that scale slide but if it comes back really fast. If the portions are really big if it’s if it tastes delicious if it’s so crackling because it’s so warm like that those are the things that gets you a 45. So I would say in your business if you say if you’re website design company and you say we’re giving ourselves five out of five with this project because it was on time it was on budget and it had all the features the client wanted and they all worked. That’s not a fire. That’s a 3 5 is we delivered it two weeks early because they had a really important trade show come up. Five is the content was so good and Google love it so much that their search volume increased by 40 percent the first month after launch 5 is the CEO went down to the CMO and said I love this Web site it’s mobile responsive it’s it’s generating more orders more leads more sales more donations that’s a. So don’t hitting your project plan only get to three you’ve got to hit a five because your competitors are out there trying to hit fives every day and they’re hitting on a lot of time so. So raise that bar.

[00:37:50] Well we think if people want to find out more about you and your company where we going to share it they can business at future outcome.

[00:37:57] So that is www.Futurety.com  – its future with a T Y at the end. We’re all over social media. We have webinars of in-person events for those of you that want to come visit us in Columbus see the start started the website learn all about us.

[00:38:16] Fantastic. Well Bill I really appreciate what information you shared a Vissa Dylis has been on it’s been a pleasure speaking to you.

[00:38:21] I greatly enjoy this.

[00:38:23] Have a wonderful day. Thank you. Thanks.

[00:38:27] Next week’s episode is 48 and it’s with Rob and Kennedy. Kennedy is  a mindreader and stage comedian. Rob is a Comedy Hypnotist and together they’ve formed a powerful marketing strategy and they’ve also come up with a something called Response Suite that really helps people. They’ve we’ve a number of different things and so we’re going to find out a lot more about that. All related around marketing and how to make marketing much easier much simpler. So we’re gonna find out more from Rob and Kennedy in next week’s show. Hope you enjoyed today’s episode. Please do leave a review for us. Recommend guests join the Facebook group which is Exceeding Expectations and hope you have a fantastic week. See you next week.