Episode 26 – (Interview) With On-Demand CFO Ken Wentworth

Rob: (00:00)

Welcome, loyal listeners to another episode of the loyalty minute. I’m your host Rob Gallo. And today I’m eager to talk with our special guest, Ken, mr biz Wentworth. Ken is the president of on demand CFO at Wentworth financial partners and he’s a cashflow pro author, speaker and the host of the mr biz radio podcast. Welcome to the show, Ken. Thanks for joining me.

Ken: (00:25)

Yeah, Rob, thanks for having me. I’m looking forward to it.

Rob: (00:27)

Good. And for those listeners out there who don’t know who you are or the podcasts that you have, perhaps you could share a little bit about your background, each story and yourself.

Ken: (00:36)

Yes. I worked for, let’s just call it a 20 plus years in the corporate world at JP Morgan chase. Um, and just came to a point where I decided that I knew I could be making a bigger impact on more folks and I knew it wasn’t going to happen there. So I took the entrepreneurial leap, didn’t even know what I was going to do next, um, and had the, what do you want to be when you grow up? Conversation with my, uh, with my mentor and, uh, came to the fact that I needed to be a on demand CFO. And I said, what the heck is that? I have no cause I was so engrossed in the corporate world. I had no idea. I was so naive to sort of a more of the small business world type thing once he explained it to me, you know, having someone who’s really good at their business, that they’re, you know, they’re making their widgets or their services, they provide professional law firm, for example, something like that. They’re really good at that, but maybe they’re not good business people and there’s nothing wrong with that. Maybe it’s just not in their wheelhouse.

Ken: (01:32)

They’re just really good at making widgets or whatever. Um, and so needing someone that has that business expertise, that financial expertise, but they’re not large enough to need someone full time, et cetera. And so having someone on a fractional basis on an on demand basis, um, seemed to make a lot of sense. So I got my first client and I was off and running. I probably, I don’t know, maybe two weeks in not having my first client, I was coming driving him home and I had that sort of aha, light bulb epiphany moment of this is what I’m supposed to be doing. I absolutely love what I do. Um, it, it’s, it sounds cliched and it, I guess kind of is cliche, but I don’t work a day. I mean, cause I absolutely love what I do. So I’m, I’m very fortunate. I’m very blessed to have found this and, uh, be doing what I’m doing. Really enjoy it.

Rob: (02:21)

Awesome. That’s great. So the types of companies that you’re working for big, small, how, how, what was the range you think?

Ken: (02:27)

Yes.

Rob: (02:27)

all of the above.

Ken: (02:31)

Yeah. So I worked with, uh, anywhere from some startup companies all the way up to, I’ve done projects for, you know, 10 figure businesses where I’ve done, you know, specific projects on, they’re working on something specific and want to have another set of eyes and they want to have someone that’s got the experience, um, you know, a lot more experience and things like that. So, and everything in between. Generally speaking, most of my clients are in the $1 to $15 million annual revenue range.

Rob: (03:01)

So the, the format of the show, what we look to do is really be talk about customer loyalty. So loyalty means a lot of things to a lot of people. And I just want to get your understanding from your particular perspective, what you think customer loyalty means.

Ken: (03:19)

Uh, for me, customer loyalty, I guess sort of word association. I would think when I hear customer loyalty, I think unwavering support. Um, so as estimate, as an example, I, I was a loyal follower. I’ve, I’m a very, I’m a loyalty driven guy. I’ll put it that way. And I’m not just saying that cause I’m on the loyalty minute. Um, I was born and raised in a blue collar town. Entire family is blue collar was the first person in my family to go to college ever. All that good stuff. So it was a steel mill town. And so, you know, we learned a lot of the sort of old school, um, you know, again, blue collar tech mentality. I think we’re really strong and a loyalty. And so I was, I w it was ingrained in me. I was, I was born that way. So, you know, for example, when I got a job, um, coming out of college, I had three job offers and I was looking for a company where I didn’t want to work there for five years.

Ken: (04:15)

I wanted to find a company that I could potentially be at the same company for whatever, 30 years and never have to leave because I wanted to loyal to one employer. Now, now we all know that, that the opportunity to do that nowadays is pretty much, you know, few and far in between. But that’s how I made my choice. I had three job offers and I made the choice based on what company would give me the most runway with things like that. So, um, it’s not necessarily customer loyalty, but it was, I was thinking along the lines of loyalty and being able to maintain that. You know, I’ve, uh, uh, there’s an athletic wear company that I literally for 30 years, I refused to buy any other type of shoe, any other type of shirt. Um, I only bought their product because again, to me that’s, that’s part of the loyalty. And I liked the company and I loved it.

Rob: (05:01)

And let me ask you this. So what do you think about the company that gave you that sort of brand loyalty, the affinity to that brand?

Ken: (05:08)

What do I think about them?

Rob: (05:10)

No, no, no. What, what gave you that idea to become loyal to that company? Like was it their brand, their look, their feel of their logo, their design, who they did business with, their corporate culture or whatever. So that’s really what I’m trying to get to. The nuts and bolts of why people make those decisions about their customer loyalty choices to the companies that they’re loyal to.

Ken: (05:31)

Yeah, no, I think I’m, if I’m being honest, um, it’s not necessarily a textbook answer, but I would say back then it was, I was initially drawn to them because they had cool designs. Um, I liked their creativity and the designs they had. And again, I’ve always been taught to be a loyal person. So once I started buying that company’s brand and then it was quality and you know, I had good experience with them. Of course I had bad experience or you know, the stuff last or things like that, I probably would have switched things up. But I think initially that’s probably part what part of what it was easy for me to say. Um, but I think, you know, customer loyalty, there’s a lot of different things that go into that and it’s so important and honestly I think, you know, customer loyalty, customer experience nowadays is something that is being completely overlooked, not completely overlooked, but largely overlooked by a lot of companies and they’re missing a huge opportunity because I actually just read a survey. The timing of, of coming on the show here is perfect. I just read it, uh, within the last week or so that said that, um, only 10% of people will give a four star rating out of five. And only 5% of companies get a five star rating. So basically to be a four or five star, you have to be in the top 15%. So I flip that around and say, so that means that 85% of companies are barely above average or maybe average or below average. Um, it’s kind of the way I look at it.

Rob: (06:57)

Well, I’ll let me, I’m not going to correct you on that. I get what you’re saying, but I think here’s an interesting, uh, concept around that is that most people will complain rather than praise. True, right? Sure. So unfortunately becomes that world of, you know, you diss me, you did me wrong. I’m going to give you a one-star as opposed to you guys did a great job. I think you deserve a five star.

Ken: (07:20)

Yeah, no, I think that’s true. I think that’s true. But there’s a whole lot of, think of the, uh, several examples that come to mind. I mean a brand Chick-fil-A, so think of chick filet. So I have never, and I, I’m not that, I’ve been there a ton of times, but, um, our youngest daughter like would cut off one of her arms have Chick-fil-A. She just absolutely loved it. So that’s why we ended up to end up there when we do. But I’ve never gone to Chick-fil-A when there’s not a line out the door or around the building, like whatever. And it’s not, I mean it’s, it’s, it’s fast food and it’s not particularly inexpensive either. Right? I mean, it’s, you know, it’s not super expensive, but for fast food, you know, it’s competitors. It’s more expensive than its competitors. And there’s always a line, but there’s always a line, right. But loyalty is there. And by the way, they’re not even open on Sundays. No. Right. And so, but people will wait and they’ll pay more because of loyalty, because of the experience they get. And I will say Chick-fil-A sandwich is fantastic. Okay.

Rob: (08:24)

Yeah. Agreed. So I think you can carve it up, put Starbucks in that same category. People will wait online for Starbucks. Overpay, in my opinion. I’m not a coffee drinker, but I get their brand, their experience. It’s also about building a culture around that. I’m a Starbucks drinker. I’m a Chick-fil-A shopper or restaurant. Yeah. That’s, that’s the other important factor about, uh, customer loyalty. Again, when it comes to building brands, it is about that customer’s identification with the group of people who belong to that brand. Yeah. That, I don’t want to say it’s the herd mentality, but easily enough to say everybody, everybody else is doing it. There’s a line around the block, particularly it must be good. Right? Right. The old adage, you walk into a restaurant and it’s empty, you gotta be thinking, Hmm, why is it empty? You know, on a Saturday night.

Ken: (09:15)

Yeah, absolutely.

Rob: (09:16)

But so let me ask you this. Can you think of any story? So part of the other idea of this platform is, I understand that stories are really what makes things concrete in people’s minds. Telling them statistics about 57% of the people that stopped using a loyalty program because it takes too long to earn a reward is one way to look at it. But to tell a specific story. So can you think of a story in your mind, both good and bad that you would think of from a customer loyalty standpoint? I have mine with Apple for example, to get $1 billion company on the telephone and have them solve my problems yet I have a mom and pop shop that won’t even answer their phone. I’m thinking how is this possible in today’s world? But I’m hoping for just some sort of story that people could use as concrete evidence towards your idea towards brand loyalty, whether it’s around mr biz solutions or something else that you’re familiar with. Yeah, I think,

Ken: (10:14)

gosh, there’s a whole bunch of examples that pop in my head, but uh, you know, I hate to even bring it up cause it’s, uh, it’s kind of a negative connotation. It’s a negative experience. But, um, you know, I had mentioned before I was low, I was key fact being a keyword there. Being was loyal to an athletic brand for 30 years, um, that I’ve left brand was Nike and I began to what had nothing to do with the product. It had to be do with more social issues. I, I didn’t agree with some of their social stances and finding out some of their labor practices and things like that. Some of those didn’t sit well with me enough so that I thought, you know what, I don’t, I don’t want to give these guys my money anymore. Um, and again, so again, I had nothing to do with the, in this case it was more along the lines of, of, of it as, um, social issues, frankly, that things that they supported or again, some of their labor practices.

Ken: (11:09)

And you hear some of that. And so the, the, the strange part of that story is as I began looking for a new, uh, athletic wear to be, uh, you know, loyal to, I mean a lot of them do some of the same things as far as some of their labor practices and things like that that kind of wanted to stay away from. And so, um, you know, and I think it’s actually a decent example I think because the generations that are, that are younger than me that are growing up I think are more in tuned to social issues. Because maybe when you and I were younger, you know, it wasn’t as prevalent. The internet wasn’t as prevalent, social media wasn’t as prevalent. So you didn’t hear about all of these things. I had no idea. You know, some of these things that come out now about companies have some of the practices and what they do if you don’t do.

Ken: (11:51)

Um, and so I think it’s, uh, that particular social being social issues will be continued to be, I think more and more important for brands as they continue going forward as far as some of those things? Like I said, even labor practices and things like that and treating people fairly and, and all that kind of stuff. So, you know, I literally, I didn’t buy anything and I, and I’m telling you, Rob, I’m not making any money. You can ask any of you guys, my wife and my kids, anyone. I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t let my kids buy anything. But Nike, stuff like that. And it wasn’t against any other brand. It was just if I was pro loyal to one brand, so every pair of shoes, I had tennis shoes for 30 years. It was not, were Nike every athletic shirt, every pair of shorts, I mean socks, like everything like, um, so I mean that was definitely unwavering support, you know, going back to my earlier definition.

Ken: (12:42)

But, um, you know, the social issues just became too much for me over the last couple of years and it’s like I just wanted to distance myself and, you know, try to find another brand. But being a loyalty based person, that’s again, as I mentioned earlier, is I started doing some research on the other companies and saying, okay, what, what brand am I going to go with now? Is there an alternative that fit what I want, you know, socially what I want to support. Um, and it was difficult, you know, to find one because again, a lot of them practiced the same. Same sort of things.

Rob: (13:12)

Yeah. Well, I mean if you look at their competitors in the space, right? I mean every S every time you think of a brand, you think of Puma, Adidas or under armor, et cetera, in that, that sports market, each one of them brings up a mental picture, an image of who’s promoting that brand. Right? So when I think Puma, for me, I think, uh, for, uh, Ricky Fowler, right. As soon as I think of Puma, I think of Ricky Fowler cause he’s their brand ambassador on the golf course. And I watched off almost every Sunday. So along those lines, that is another angle that they try, you know, I mean everyone wants to be like Mike. Right? And that’s why McDonald’s picked up with Michael Jordan. Him, he was a brand in and of itself. But what other sort of things do you think of, let’s say for your business? I’m not sure how it fits with um, you know, the, the CFO and on, uh, on source CFO and outsource CFO with loyalty in that realm. How does that come into play?

Ken: (14:15)

Yeah, I think the most important parts, at least from my perspective of, of having and building them that loyalty with your, with your clients, with their customers is, you know, constant contact and feedback, um, from anyone in your business. That’s a customer facing employee. There needs to be, um, and we have that here. And so there needs to be a means by which people on the front line that are customer facing can provide necessary feedback, negative, positive, doesn’t matter. You need constant feedback. You need to be constantly evolving because in my mind, the customer experience is constantly evolving, right? We’d be, we want different things. What people wanted. Generally speaking, 20 years ago it was much different. I think there’s some core things that are still there. Of course, but why do people 20 years ago, how many people would stand in line to wait to go to Chick-fil-A right every single time and pay a little bit more and things like that?

Ken: (15:17)

I’m probably not as much as people do now. The example you brought up Starbucks, think about this, Rob, 20 years ago, if I would come to you 25 years ago, whatever, if I had to come to you and said, Rob, I’ve got this great idea. I want to start a coffee shop and we’re going to charge $4 for a cup of coffee. You would have laughed at me until like your head fell off, right? You would have said, you’re insane. You can get it back. Then you can get a cup of coffee for whatever a quarter. We talked about $4 a cup of coffee. It’s the craziest idea of her. Wait a minute. Oh, you don’t like that day. I got another idea for you, Rob. How about this? Let’s put water in a bottle and charge people a dollar when you can get it for, you know what?

Ken: (15:58)

I don’t. I don’t know what it breaks down the cost, but you can get it out of the tap or you can get it free all over the place. Right. But I’m gonna charge you a dollar to the bottle. Great idea. You again, at most 90 plus percent of people would have said, that’s the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard. It’s insane. Um, but, and not that I wouldn’t say the bottled water thing is a loyalty thing per se, but I think it goes back to what you had alluded to earlier is that sort of community of, uh, of, of um, bottled water drinker. Cool thing to do. You drink bottled water like, Oh, I literally, and I’m almost embarrassed to admit this, our nine year old during the summer, I forget what happened. Um, we didn’t have any bottled water. I don’t, unless I’m out somewhere and I have to, I don’t drink bottled water. I’ll just drink out tap. I don’t care. Maybe I’m going to die from some craziness. I don’t know, but I’ll take my chance. But our nine year old was like, Ooh, I had the tap. Like I was like, Whoa, wait a minute. Told my wife I go where we were using her the right way. Like what the heck is going on here? You know?

Rob: (17:02)

Yeah. But like you said though, it’s, it’s the prevalence of information that just pours out over the internet that you know is either positive or negative and it creates that sort of mindset of what people should be thinking. And it’s, it’s unbelievable. You’re right. So let me ask you this, not to change the subject, but a pain point for you when it comes to customer loyalty of keeping more customers loyalty. So now like in your specific business, you have a customer that uses your services for X number of months. It’s a short term contract. You know, it might be a little bit different in that instance, but then getting them to refer you to someone else, which I’m sure is a big part of your business, you know, Hey, Ken did a fantastic job for me. You know, you guys should definitely look this guy up.

Rob: (17:46)

That’s also a part of loyalty building, that sort of brand. Again, I alluded back to Apple, you know, was, it was kind of funny that my chief programming guy, my chief information officer at one of my previous companies, he’s the one that turned me on to Apple and I was, he, he was a staunch Microsoft guy for forever. We had Microsoft servers that ran our casinos, the whole thing. But he said, you gotta check this out. It’s unbelievable. And for him to say it to me that convinced me and now everything I have is Apple product except for my phone. I still am a diehard Samsung guy. But yeah, there you go. Um, so, so again, when it, when it comes to, um, your best story about a brand that you’re loyal to, so like you mentioned Nike. Other than that, is there any other brands in each category that you might think of when you come to, when it comes to loyalty, let’s say, uh, airlines for travel, hotel, uh, gas even, right. What’s your thought process on that? Is it, is it more commodity that it’s easy, it’s convenient or is it, you know, I want to belong to this brand or is it based on price, you know, just to get an idea of how you’re thinking, especially as a CFO when you think about money,

Ken: (18:57)

yeah. Yeah. Um, yeah I think it, I think it depends. Like for me, uh, like gasoline, I used to be a BP only guy. Um, same thing and there’s BP all over the place, right? So it’s pretty easy to find them and all that good stuff. And unless I couldn’t find one and I was running out of gas, I would always go to a BP station. Um, and then I, I think over the years have sort of looked at gasoline for example, was more of a just a commodity. It’s the same everywhere. I don’t care, you know, I don’t have to be loyal. And again, I guess, and this is kind of odd, well, no, I think about it is some of how BP handle their, uh, their, their, uh, such situation they had down in the Gulf left a bad taste in my mouth. So I’m like, eh, it’s not that I’m not gonna use them, but I’m not going to be specifically little enough.

Ken: (19:42)

So I guess it’s kind of another social issue that influenced me. But, um, but things like hotel, um, yeah, I, you know, rewards, things I think are important. But those don’t drive me. Like, especially when I was in the corporate world, you know, I used to drive me nuts when a lot of my colleagues would, you know, well, I only have a member or ship with a Delta, so I only fly Delta if it cost the company more. They didn’t care, which again, my CFO hat, I’m like, Oh my gosh, you’re killing me. Right? Like, you could get United airlines on that same flight cheaper, but you’re going to go Delta just so you can get the reward points, like drove me insane. Um, but you know, things that stand out to me and I don’t, I’m not super loyal on, on the, uh, on the airline side, I’m going, I think, you know, price is very important, but you know, when, when there’s a choice between them Southwest, I mean, yeah, yeah.

Ken: (20:32)

And again, the odd part about that is one of the things I don’t like that Southwest does is the cattle call boarding, right? That’s kind of a pain in the neck or you can pay extra to get, you know, preferential treatment, all that kind of stuff. That kind of drove me nuts. But even with that, I’d rather fly Southwest if given the choice and price was, was not, you know, it was, it will all equal. I would use us to fly on Southwest. Um, hotels. I kind of Marriott-ish. Um, but I’ll tell ya, you know, from a customer experience perspective, I mean, Ritz Carlton, the experience you could get at a Ritz Carlton is amazing. Now, they’re not as prevalent, uh, as, uh, you know, where you could find Marriott, uh, or one of the Marriott brands just about anywhere. And Ritz Carlton’s are a lot more, you know, sparse of course.

Ken: (21:18)

But, you know, again, the experience we were at, uh, my wife and I went to a Ritz Carlton in Cleveland, which is a couple of hours from here. So not even local. Uh, we went up to Cleveland, we went up for a concert or something like that and we stayed at the Ritz Carlton and they remembered we hadn’t been to that Ritz Carlton before ever. Um, we had been at another Ritz Carlton and um, I’m trying to remember what the, it doesn’t matter what the occasion was. We went there, um, they were going to bring chocolate covered strawberries to the room. My wife doesn’t like chocolate. She’s like, what? Like 0.1% of women that doesn’t like chocolate. So, so they brought regular strawberries. Fast forward, it had to been two and a half to three years later where there are different Ritz Carlton, different city, and they knew not to bring chocolate covered strawberries. That is amazing.

Ken: (22:13)

Right. Uh, and that left an impression on both of us. And guess what, to your point earlier about if you have a bad experience, you’ll, you’ll give a one star, right? And you won’t give the four or five as often. I couldn’t tell you how many people I told that story to. Right. And it’s a kind of simple thing, but it was a amazing, he’s like, and I, I can’t imagine how many people my wife has told that story to. Right. Um, because she was directly impacted by it. But you know, little things like that are goes so far and I, and, and reading about like Ritz Carlton, they have, um, they have thresholds that anyone in the company is allowed to make things right. For a customer, a below a certain dollar threshold without question. They don’t have to go to their manager, don’t do anything. And

Ken: (22:55)

obviously it works, obviously. Yeah. Premium price, right? Yeah. Does the same thing. Yup. Yeah. But it’s that experience, that one experience. I mean,

Ken: (23:04)

I’ll probably never forget that and it was a simple thing, but I’ll probably never forget it. It’s amazing.

Rob: (23:09)

Yeah. Well I think you hit the nail on the head. Really. It comes down to personalized individual experiences, especially in today’s world. You think right now there’s data that’s out there on everyone for everything. And if you could use it for better things, then you know, Hey, re-targeting a message to say, you just looked at this now you might want it to see this. To know that I really don’t like chocolate on my strawberries is a powerful statement. It sounds simple. You’re right. But those that get it right, charge those premiums and then are those brands that you end up speaking about. And it’s funny, we had a similar situation at a Ritz Carlton in New York city. We went in the first time down at battery park and they let my son, so we walked out there and there was no skateboarders allowed and he was just so bummed. And he’s like, all right, the guy, the concierge comes out and he, yeah, you could just skateboard a little bit over here. It’s fine. You know, just keep it cool. He didn’t want, I’m going nuts and stuff, but it was an experience that he remembers and you know, it’s again, it was powerful, especially for that, you know, thinking about it from that brand perspective.

Ken: (24:11)

And think of another example real quick is, um, the behemoth out there, right? Amazon, the reason that Amazon, I mean there’s several reasons of course, but the, in my opinion, the reason that Amazon is as grown, so explosively and continues to grow is more so I think on the customer experience side, of course you can buy anything nowadays on Amazon, which makes it obviously convenient. But the customer experience and I don’t mean just the prime and things like that, which are amazing. We had something just, um, over the holidays, my wife had bought something off Amazon, it came in and I don’t even remember what the reason was. We needed to return it. Well, they now you don’t have to like one of the pain in the neck you were online, which I do pretty much almost all my shopping online nowadays. But, um, one of the pain and the next day I’m always concerned about is that, you know, I gotta keep the box, so make sure I want to go, I want to keep it right now, going to boxes dang, anything up, and I got to get it to the post office or ups or I haven’t picked it up or whatever.

Ken: (25:07)

Right. Kind of a nuisance. Well then now they have it to where they’re partnering with different retails stores. So for example, we have a lot of Kohl’s department stores. You can take your Amazon return with it, not in a box or anything. You just go into Kohl’s and like you’re returning something to Kohl’s. So my wife took the Amazon product back to Kohl’s. They literally took the item, scan it and said, okay, you’re good. Thanks Done. Like, super easy. Um, and so to eliminated one of those nuisance hurdles, at least to me, is a nuisance hurdle. I’ll tell you, Rob, there’s times I bought things online that they’ve come in and they didn’t fit right or I just didn’t like it. And I just kept it and I’m like, it’s not, uh, worth the pain in the butt to go through to box the dang thing up and I threw the box away or you know, all that crap.

Ken: (25:55)

And I just kept it and I’m like, Oh, it’s a, it’s a cost of doing business online. They’ve made it so easy. Uh, another Amazon thing that just recently happened that I was amazed by, and again, it sounds simple to say it, but um, you know how there, they’ve been investing significantly over the last 18 months on their doing their own deliveries. Right. You see the, I’m sure you’ve seen him in your neighborhoods coming in here. Yeah. Amazon trucks. It’s constantly, well, um, I was getting a delivery that day. I, you know, you told me ahead of time it’s going to come Tuesday sometime or whatever. I was getting ready to leave the house in the morning and I forget what the heck it was, but it was something that was supposed to rain that day and I was concerned like, is, are they gonna not sitting outside?

Ken: (26:37)

I don’t want to have to sit outside, you know, if they don’t put a plastic bag or whatever. So I thought let me check and see if a timeframe of when it’s going to be your cause maybe I can be back home or one of our daughters can be here or something like that and meet, maybe you’ve already experienced this or you know where I’m going. But I, so I’ve gotten a click on it. It literally showed me a map and showed me with a little beacon where the truck was and it said your, your delivery will occur in approximately seven minutes. You are two stops away. Yeah. It wasn’t the, it’s going to come on Tuesday and it wasn’t even, it’s gonna come on Tuesday between 8:00 AM and noon or 10:00 AM and noon. It was approximately seven minutes. So I literally got in my truck, drove out to the end of the driveway cause I had to go somewhere and sat there and waited for the guy to show up within seven minutes.

Ken: (27:25)

By the time I got to the end of the driveway. There he was and I got the item and stuck it in the truck and didn’t have to worry about sitting out in the rain. Those types of things. I’m pretty loyal to Amazon as it is because of the convenience factor largely. And because you never have problems with them as far as returning things are, they’re always very, very accommodating. But that even made was amazing to me. Like what the heck? I mean, you know, that type of experience. I just have never had that before. It was amazing.

Rob: (27:51)

Yeah. Medium sized companies and smaller companies need to really learn from that. And it’s simple and it’s very theoretically inexpensive to do, to create that sort of customer experience that people will resonate, talk about and become loyal to.

Ken: (28:06)

Some of the things I do with companies I work with is, as I say, you know, there’s no need to recreate the wheel. Look at companies that are known to deliver, um, amazing customer experience and emulate what they’re doing for your industry. You know, how can you do it? And by the way, you might be able to have a differentiating factor for you because let’s say for example, um, you, uh, you, you study Southwest airlines, but you run upon a company, I don’t know, make up a silly example, and there’s something that you can pull from what Southwest does and apply it to the plumbing industry. Maybe none of your competitors are doing that because they’re just looking at other plumbing companies, right? They’re not thinking outside the box. Um, you know, that Ritz Carlton experience, um, you know, from a plumbing company, it’s really simple. If you have a CRM system and someone calls in and you can say, Oh yeah, Mrs. Jones, I see you called us for the times.

Ken: (28:56)

How’s that hot water heater tank. Those little things. I think there’s a million plumbers around. Why would I come to you? Why do I come to Bob Jones plumbing? Well, here’s why. Because all any other plumbing company, I’ve never had that experience that just at this little extra and it creates that loyalty. Yeah, I agree. I couldn’t agree more. Okay.

Rob: (29:15)

So I think we’re going to leave it on that. Uh, that closing note, one other thing that I wanted to ask is if listeners wanted to get in touch with you, right, for more information, what’s the best way they could do that?

Ken: (29:25)

Um, especially if you’re a business owner and I’m not just saying is follow me on social media, you know, Facebook, LinkedIn, um, Instagram, Twitter. Um, look for mr bays. You’ll find me. I share free content all the time out there.

Ken: (29:40)

Um, so go out there, uh, our websites, mr [inaudible], solutions.com, our websites, financial partners.com. But you follow me on social media, I do a lot of videos, a lot of live videos. So, um, as people request things I’ll say, Hey, I’m having a problem with the cashflow or something specifically about in blue we say, can you give, do a video real quick to show, give us some tips on things like that, any type of business topic like that. And I’ll just go on and do live and I’ll, you know, tag the person and make sure they see it, things like that. So definitely follow me on social media and uh, interacting and let me know what you guys want to see and I’ll help you out if I can.

Rob: (30:14)

Awesome stuff. Not all will be in the show notes and for those of you who happen to be watching, you can notice that I’m standing right for those that are listening, they won’t know, but I, I got this new desk. It’s uh, I got it from Amazon. Believe it or not. There you go. Stand up desk. My daughter says that a sitting is the new smoking, so she says, you’ve got to stand. I said, okay. So I got that.

Rob: (30:34)

I want to thank you guys for being loyal listeners and investing some of your valuable time with us. If you feel you received some value from the show, we’d appreciate a five star review. Even though Ken says they’re very hard to come by, between five to 10% on your favorite podcast streaming service. If you know someone who you think might be a value listening to on the show, please share it with us. We’d love to invite some new and different guests on the show.

Rob: (31:00)

To reference this and other loyalty minute episodes. Please visit the loyalty minute.com. Enjoy.