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Former Under Armour Marketing Executive And Now Business Founder Shares Marketing Strategies That Get Results (#268)
Former Under Armour Marketing Executive And Now Business Fo…
“Be bold and try different things.” - Miriam Kendall Jeffrey Feldberg and Miriam Kendall discussed Miriam's new consulting company, Kairos …
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Sept. 27, 2023

Former Under Armour Marketing Executive And Now Business Founder Shares Marketing Strategies That Get Results (#268)

Former Under Armour Marketing Executive And Now Business Founder Shares Marketing Strategies That Get Results (#268)

“Be bold and try different things.” - Miriam Kendall

Jeffrey Feldberg and Miriam Kendall discussed Miriam's new consulting company, Kairos Growth Advisors, which offers fractional and interim services for executive positions, traditional consulting projects, and coaching services. They also discussed the advantages and disadvantages that small to mid-sized companies have in terms of marketing strategies, emphasizing the importance of finding a balance between taking risks and being agile, while also having a solid budget and testing strategy in place.

The potential of AI in marketing post-pandemic was explored, while also emphasizing the importance of humanizing marketing and aligning brand values with customers. Miriam advised business owners to start with a clear foundation, including mission statement, value proposition, and understanding of customers and their information sources. They also discussed the benefits and challenges of hiring a fractional CMO, and the common mistakes companies make, including operating in silos and misalignment on the foundation.

The importance of customer feedback and finding a balance in survey frequency and length was also discussed, with Miriam suggesting using short surveys with questions about customer needs and problems, while Jeffrey raised concerns about survey fatigue and suggested using survey tools with decision trees to streamline the process. The meeting ended with Jeffrey offering to walk Miriam through his company's deep wealth mastery program and discussing potential future collaboration opportunities, highlighting the importance of taking risks and trying new things in order to succeed in business.

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SELECTED LINKS FOR THIS EPISODE

Miriam Washington Kendall - Chief Marketing Officer - Kairos Growth Advisors | LinkedIn

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Transcript

 268 Miriam Kendall

 Welcome to the Deep Wealth Podcast where you learn how to extract your business and personal Deep Wealth. 

I'm your host Jeffrey Feldberg. 

This podcast is brought to you by Deep Wealth and the 90-day Deep Wealth Experience. 

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At the end of this episode, take a moment and hear from business owners like you, who went through the Deep Wealth Experience. 

Miriam Washington Kendall is a three time CMO and former Under Armour Marketing Executive with more than 20 years of strategic marketing and business consulting experience. She specializes in hyper growth companies, driving 60 percent plus in annual revenue growth. She's been the Chief Marketing Officer for Nanit, the leader in smart baby monitors, where she was responsible for all aspects of the company's global marketing and e commerce initiatives.

Previously, she was CMO at MakeSpace, the on demand storage solution, helping the company grow from four to 31 markets in under two years. And before that was CMO for the luxury Italian retail brand, M Gemi. Miriam also led global customer relationship management and North American digital marketing for Under Armour.

She's an industry thought leader, a keynote speaker, and a contributing author to an Amazon Top 10 Business Book, Managing Customer Relationships, A Strategic Framework. Throughout her career, Miriam has worked with and for some of the top consulting and marketing service companies, including Peppers and Rogers Group, Wunderman, Y& R, and Ernst Young, and ran her own consulting company, Ratio Consulting.

She has served a wide variety of Fortune 500 clients, including Microsoft, Ford, Nordstrom, Pitney Bowes, Citigroup, BP, and Dell. Miriam is passionate about understanding her customers needs and wants and ensuring her contribution is creating real value in people's lives. 

Welcome to the Deep Wealth Podcast, and we have a fellow business owner, entrepreneur thought leader. You heard all about that in the official introduction. Delighted that you're with us because we are gonna be sharing some strategies from the trenches. Forget that headline stuff, that doesn't work, that click bait stuff.

This stuff works. You probably haven't heard about a lot of it, but you're gonna hear about that today, so I'm gonna put a pause on it. Miriam, welcome to the Deep Wealth Podcast. A pleasure to have you with us. And I'm curious, Miriam, there's always a story behind the story. What's your story? What got you to where you are today?

Yeah, well I have a long story, but I'll try to keep it short for the purposes of this. So I've got a 20 year career in marketing and business consulting, including three roles as chief Marketing Officer. Prior to those I was at Under Armour, where I ran the North America direct to consumer digital marketing.

And then before that, I had a long career as a consultant focused on one-to-one marketing and customer strategy. That's where I've been. 

Where I am now is I am the co-founder and chief marketing officer for a consulting company called Kairos Growth Advisors, where we help our clients accelerate their growth through improved digital engagement, use of data and AI to establish sustainable competitive advantages.

I love that. Now I have to ask you, what had you go from, you know, you're working for these companies, gazillion dollar companies. We all know them. They're out there, they're huge, and now you throw your hat in the ring and say, you know what? I'm going to help and get out there, have my own company. Was there a defining moment with that, Miriam, or what happened?

You know, There's just a need in the marketplace. 

So one of the things after I left my last company, I started talking to companies and a lot of them were smaller companies that really couldn't afford what I call a proper Chief Marketing officer and I wanted to help these guys. I knew that there's so much opportunity there 

and then I started talking to other executives and they kind of felt that need and that kind of calling as well.

And so we got together a few of us, and we're now providing fractional and interim services for executive positions. I hold the CMO role, but we do Chief operating officers, chief data officers, things like that, to enable companies who really need that more strategic thinking, that long-term thinking but really can't afford to have a full-time person in that role.

And we also offer traditional consulting projects as well as coaching services.

Terrific, and we'll get into that. But one other question I'm wondering, so I love the name. What was the inspiration for the name what's going on with that? What's the story behind the story on your name for

The story behind the story, it actually, Kairos is the Greek word for opportune moment. 

 and I've been specializing in hyper-growth companies and I think one of the keys to success is really, I. Creating and capturing those opportune moments 

because you know what differentiates one company from the rest is taking advantage and like I say, even creating moments 

that really separate you from the rest of the pack.

And I think that's what success is all about. And especially smaller companies as they're just getting started, it's really tough to just be a me too brand.

Sure. And you know, that's a terrific segue, Miriam. So let's talk about the smaller companies or the small to midsize companies. I mean, after all, not everyone is a multi zillion dollar company, but you've been there. You've led the charge with these companies. And so right off the bat, what I would love to find out, and I'm sure our listeners as well, these bigger companies that have large budgets, they've been around for a while, they have an army of marketers and just a whole team of people.

Outside of the scale that they have, what are they doing or what do they have access to that by and large, generally speaking, until now, you coming along to offer this, what aren't we either knowing about or being able to access that the larger brands have?

Yeah, I think there's a couple of things, but one is a more. Robust test and learn budget 

because as marketing is continues to evolve, there's not one size fits all strategy for any company. And so being able to take advantage to be able to test new markets, new channels, and see what works for your particular industry, for your particular clients 

is really kind of an advantage that some of the bigger companies have.

I will say, even for smaller companies, I do think it's important to carve out some small budget for this because it's really critical to success. But obviously the larger companies have a lot more of that, so, and they can afford to have those dips and learning. I call them learnings, 

not failures. Along the way. But a lot of smaller companies are a little bit more risk adverse 

and they're not willing to take those risks, which are really important. So what I say is make very calculated risks, contain them set caps on things so that it's, it's still a risk, but it's, a very known risk and it's a calculated risk, and it's not gonna damage the business if it doesn't work.

I love that because here at Deep Wealth, we often refer to the cockroach startup mindset where just because you can write the check doesn't mean that you shouldn't. Oftentimes when you're bootstrapping or you have the cockroach startup mindset, You can't write the check Even if you wanted to. So let me ask you this though, because you've come from what I will call the titans of business.

These very large companies, they're out there and they do have the budgets. There's always two sides to a coin. So as great as they are, as many resources that they have for the marketing spend and the budget and the people, what's the flip side of that? What would be the chink in the armor? What would be the area where as a small to mid-size company, we would have the upper hand?

Agility, right? Hands down. It is, you know, smaller companies can move. Faster and there's less approvals. uh, smaller companies go to the c e O and say, Hey, this is really important, 

you know, And hopefully I've earned their trust to be able to execute on those things. But smaller companies absolutely have the power of agility and to move fast.

And in this environment, leader advantage Just being out there first. is really huge. And so I always tell smaller companies, lean on what you have. Leverage those advantages and then agility and moving quickly is really top of the mind for that.

So let's parlay off of that because two significant things have happened as we talk. That is number one, thankfully, the pandemic's behind us, we're looking back in the rear view mirror on that. And number two, artificial intelligence has just blossomed and we're at the beginning. It's still what I call the beginning of the golden era of ai.

And yes, there's some negatives with that as well as positives. But post pandemic ai. From your vantage point, Miriam, what would you want us to know?

Oh my gosh, there's so much opportunity in AI and in particular for marketing. The generative AI is really becoming The kicker, it's really changing how marketers think and in terms of like search engine optimization, in terms of blogs and just generating content at scale is huge.

And that's true for the big guys as well as the little guys. 

So 

it's really moving fast. So I would say staying on top of that is huge. There's so many different ways to leverage it. Even today, even unpaid versions, 

you can take advantage of chat G B T. It's really fun, if any you haven't played with it.

it's a fun place, even just like for social entertainment as well as serious marketing services. But staying on top of that I think also it's an opportunity to leverage it, but in a careful way. It hasn't fully been regulated yet, and it will, it hasn't fully been monetized yet. And it will.

But it's going to be a major part of the future, and especially in marketing. And so just staying on top of the trends and what you're able to do, I think is really important cuz it will continue to change. 

So Miriam, help us set some expectations as it pertains to marketing, branding our brand, promise our message, and we loop in AI with that because there's so many misconceptions out there. And one of the misconceptions that with your help, we can quickly dispel. I don't need someone like Miriam. I can just go to AI and it'll do everything for me, and I can do a copy and paste and in five minutes I'm done.

And I know I'm over exaggerating here to some extent, but maybe not because some people are like, yeah, AI can do all of that. I just saved. Oodles of time and money is doing everything for me. So what's wrong with that narrative? I just painted?

There's a couple different layers of marketing, I would say, 

right? So, one of the things that I was talking about, like with why we started Kairos Growth Advisors, Is because that top layer, the strategic layer, you're not gonna get from generative ai, you're not gonna get from ai and you don't want it from ai.

If they give it to you, that means that it's available to everybody 

else. So it's not a differentiator whatsoever. The other layers there's a lot on the execution side that you can leverage AI for. Like I was saying, blog posts and content. The other thing is not just text, but imagery. 

So when you're testing on say, Facebook or Instagram, different ads you can easily use generative AI to vary those ads and to be able to test and learn and see what works.

Because a lot of small companies, they don't necessarily have the creative resources to test at scale, but this really gives them those tools. So saying, At the top level, at the strategy level, do not outsource that. Do not trust it to ai, but at the tactical level, absolutely leverage it.

Got it. Okay. And so we're covering off ai and really that could be a whole episode in and of itself, but let me circle back to something. So AI has forever changed landscape, both business, personal, worldwide, everything else. What about post covid? What has changed in the marketing world now that we're.

Out of c o D, but lots of lessons learned there and social rules have been rewritten. So what's going on?

Yeah. The one thing, it's interesting, as I was thinking about this podcast and marketing innovation, there's so many technical advancements that have not just come out of Covid, but that have just kind of gotten on steroids that are just coming so, so quickly. But one of the things that I really go back to and I think that Covid helped.

But the emphasis on this area is really humanizing marketing. 

And so the part where brands connect with their consumers and they align their brand values with their consumers and social responsibility. I think a lot of people during Covid did a lot of thinking about what's important to them and what are their own values.

And do they want to be supporting brands that align with their values or do they wanna support brands that don't align with their values? And I think that's always been there, but I do think that Covid really put a highlight on it.

So my takeaway as a business owner, founder, or thought leader, entrepreneur, you name it, we'll check all those boxes. Practically speaking, what does that mean for me?

Yeah. I think one of the things is, and this like AI cannot help you 

with, is really getting down to the fundamentals of, what is your business about? What do you stand for, what are your values? Do you have particular social responsibility? Um, Principles that you live by. And what that means is you really define them and it can tell you, do I accept these types of customers?

Do I create these new products? But it becomes a decision making tool for you. And once you have articulated it and your marketing and your collateral is all aligned to that, people will start to know you for what you are and who you are and be able to. I have a relationship with you, and it's funny because I started my career in customer relationship management and there's been so many advancements in technology and data and AI that I keep coming back to.

The relationship with the customer is the most important thing. So I think for business owners, really understanding who you are as a business, 

who your customer is, who you want your customer to be, and how do you get those aligned so that you attract those types of customers. That's really important, right?

we're talking about that, and really you're right, post pandemic people just don't want a logo who's behind the logo. So let me throw two stats your way and don't hold me exactly these numbers. I wanna say it was from ad age or or ad week somewhere around there. But the two stats are this, approximately 92% of consumers.

So. Almost 10 outta 10 people. 9.2 people. Nine. Nine people out of 10. Don't trust ads. So all that money we're spending on ads and putting out there almost unanimously, they're saying, I don't trust you. Yeah, I know you're saying that, but yeah it's not what it is. It's hocus pocus. And then following up to that, nearly three quarters, almost eight out of 10 people know somebody who's been scammed online.

So when you add up those figures, wow, what a negative picture that's painting. So how as really ambassadors for our own companies and for our teams, how do we deal with that, Miriam, what can we do as the antidote to that negativity?

You know, I was saying really understanding who your company is, what you offer, who you offer it to. Aligning on those kind of brand values I think is really important. But also, Also, you know, trying to take marketing to a different level, brand storytelling and also entertainment.

A friend of mine, Megan Wells, does a lot of research into what kind of entertainment we can do to at attract customers to brands 

without interrupting their experiences. So creating docuseries and entertainment versus just ads that appear in your Facebook and your Google.

And so as we take that and we're hearing you say, okay, yeah, Miriam sounds good. I get it. But practically speaking, what does that mean? And, And maybe Miriam, as we're talking through this, we can use that as a segue to your process. Business owners saying, Miriam heard you on the Deep Wealth podcast.

I'm not so sure how we get from here to there. Can you help us with that? So what would that look like as you start working with you?

Yeah, so one of the things that I, always start with is, do you have the foundations in place, right?

Do you have your mission statement? Do you have your principles? What is your value proposition to your customers? Do you know who your customers are today? Do you know who they want to be in the future?

So making sure that you and everyone in your company is completely aligned with the foundation that I think a lot of business owners think that everyone is aligned, and you'd be surprised if you start to talk to other people in the company how people are not quite aligned. But I think understanding that foundation, making sure that that is crystal clear to everyone in the company is the first 

thing. The second thing is looking at knowing who your customers are. Where are they gathering information? Where are they being influenced by messaging or entertainment or sources of information and really being where your customers are. from my perspective, it's never been a company led thing.

It needs to be customer led, right? Your customers are the ones that are paying for things, so they need to be providing you feedback and where they are and how they consume information. So meeting them where they are with messages that are compelling to them.

And then, like when it gets to the tactical stuff, doing a lot of this stuff at scale, but once you figure out who you are, who your customer is, what you're doing, where you're doing it, where you're going to show up, you need to have a strategy of how you consistently show up with the consistent message and a compelling message.

And then you just get into the cycle of customer feedback. Listening, understanding, changing your products and services, adapting and thinking ahead. So sometimes customers don't even know what they want in the future, but once you start that process of gathering that information and you are looking at the landscape, and you're looking at the future and you're looking at your capabilities, you can put those things together.

And try to be one step ahead of your customer in anticipating their needs, and I think that's where the real competitive advantage is.

So before we get to that competitive advantage, big picture wise, Miriam, with what you described from the foundation, okay, what's the mission? Who are the customers? Where are they getting their information? How can we have this client led, not company led, love, all of that. When working with you as an example, how long would that journey take?

Well, it depends on how much prior work has been done, right? Like, so you start from the very beginning, which most companies are not starting from ground zero, right? 

Like they've done some work, you know, and sometimes it's just like in the CEO's head and it just hasn't been written down. So the foundation piece can take as little as a just a few weeks, 

you know, Two to four weeks.

Or it can take. I mean, depending on how aligned the stakeholders are, it could take a lot longer, but I mean usually not more than, nine to 12 weeks.

Okay, so really in as little as a month, maybe before a month to perhaps three, four months, then you have that foundation and you're building things out from there. Am I getting that right?

absolutely.

And to set expectations with that, Miriam, so what are you seeing as you begin to work with companies and, really the silver lining from Covid, it took a lot of the social norms.

And of what was really taboo and made it normalized. So what you're doing right now as a fractional chief marketing officer, well now that's more standard than it was before. And so when you're stepping into this role, what expectations are we not having that we should have? I mean, ground us, Miriam, with what you're seeing and what we should know.

No.

Yeah. So the one thing about fractional work, especially like, you know, and you can do one day a week, you can do two days a week, whatever fits your budget and your needs. 

If you're on the like one day a week schedule, you are doing the work of the C-suite. You're not doing the execution, which when I'm in a role as a cmo, I'm high level, I'm low level, I'm diving in, I'm rolling up my sleeves.

But as a fractional, you have to just provide the direction and you have to allow the people that are full time. 

To execute on it. You can lean in and you can guide, but it's not full-time. And I think that's kind of the hardest thing for companies to understand is that you've hired someone to provide this direction, but they're not actually doing all the work.

It's hard, honestly, for me, as an executive to pull back to, 

but it's the only way that it works as the fractional executives.

So I guess an analogy for that would be you'll give the directions. If I'm driving from New York to Los Angeles, you'll give me the directions, but I'm the one that's driving the car. I have to be the one, okay, where's the next gas station? Or where do I charge my batteries? If I have an electric car to get there, oh, this road is closed.

I have to do a workaround. Am I getting that right?

That's right. I will say though, that I'm also there if there are issues, like if a road is closed and you need to call me, that's. Fine. So I'm not, completely hands off, but you are driving the car or the truck yourself, and I'm not there in the seat next to you. You have to raise your hand if you need assistance, but I'm there for block and tackle.

That's what I think all good executives do is they lead the 

way and they clear the way for their teams to be able to succeed.

Absolutely sounds terrific. And for our listeners out there, I hope you're picking up on this because for most companies, perhaps Miriam, maybe she could be someone that you could have full-time in your budget, maybe not. But now you have access to someone like Miriam as a thought leader and someone who can really drive forward your organization in the marketing side and the strategy.

And so I'm wondering, Miriam, When I have a thought leader like yourself, someone who's been in the trenches, you've been there, you've done that. If I can say an overused expression,

let's rely on Pareto's Law that more than likely, and give or take either side of this, 80% of the mistakes that most companies are making regardless of industry, regardless of size, are probably coming from the same, give or take 20% of the root causes.

So what would be the top one, two, maybe three mistakes that are causing so much headaches for the companies out there.

Yeah. The biggest one I see, and this is large companies as well as small companies, is companies operating in silos and not being aligned 

on their fundamentals. I love my work at Under Armour, but there was some disconnects between the brand side 

and the performance side. For example, Michael Phelps is an amazing athlete, but we didn't sell bathing suits 

at the time, and so we invested all of this.

But just the fact that, one side is not necessarily talking to the other It's huge and I do see that across all types of businesses, communication, everybody thinks that they're doing a decent job of it. Most companies are not. So I think silos, misalignment on the foundation. I think on the execution side, and especially small companies, in order to move fast, you don't need to communicate everything all the time.

But when it comes to the basics and the foundation of what the business is and who you're talking to, that stuff needs to be aligned throughout the company.

So let me ask you this, and I know you could easily say, and you'd be right if you said with this question I'm about to ask Jeffrey. It depends on company to company, every company specific and I get that said though, let's call these blind spots or Deep, Wealth, step one, big picture. We call them inflection points.

And maybe they're there but we're not seeing them or maybe we're even doing it. We're not realizing that we're doing that. How do we know when we have that misalignment or in those silos, are there specific questions that we can be asking? Are there exercises that we can be doing to pick this up?

There's a few things. I mean, one, you can do just kind of surveys 

or you can talk to people, but usually. You wanna talk to people with the largest gap, right? So the management team versus the frontline employees, and make sure that that's aligned, because that's where you usually see the biggest gap.

You'll usually see pretty much alignment, like in the C-suite and maybe a level below. But when you get to frontline employees, and especially in remote environments now it tends to even be more, there tends to be a lot of disconnect. So you can do surveys, you can just talk to people, you can do when I was at Under Armor, they had executive like brown bag breakfasts or lunches just to like, talk with people, which was great.

And that was obviously a large company, but in smaller companies it can also be misaligned too. 

hear you on that with the misalignment and surveys and having meetings. And quick question on that, and then a follow up question. So when we're having those meetings, is that both for our internal team as well as customers externally, or how are we doing that?

Both, I mean, ideally both, and I would do them absolutely separately, right? So internal teams, you need to have people be able to talk openly and freely with the executives and of all levels. That's really,

really important to include people at every different level. And then on the customer side, whether it is focus groups or if it's a survey online, depending on your budget and your appetite and what you're trying to achieve, I think that regular periodic connections with customers is really important, especially when you're defining your kind of roadmap of your products or services.

Getting that customer feedback is really vital on, what are the things we wanna double down on? What are the things that we need to correct? How do we move forward? And really it's not just the feedback on the product or service, it's on the customer's needs. Like what problems do they still need to be solved so that you can get ahead of what their needs are in the future.

Even if they don't tell you, they can tell you about their problems that you can solve.

And Miriam, I love what you're saying at Deep Wealth in our nine-step roadmap, again, I'm going back to step two, X-Factors, that insanely increase the value of your business and everything that you're talking about right now. I would put that into broadly speaking company culture and if as a culture, One of our norms is, okay, we're always in front of our clients, in front of the marketplace.

We're connected with them. We're hearing what they're saying. Just a quick example, people in the Deep Wealth community, they know my story really well. We put ourselves out of business and my e-learning company, Embanet, and we got into a bigger business because it was customer interfacing. Hey, what are your problems today?

What's going on? And one day I heard one problem from one client. It was an area that we had nothing to do with, didn't know anything about that, learned about that, and we jumped into that. And ultimately that's what created the market disruption, which later on led to the nine-figure Exit. So having that communication, being in front of the customers, having that culture, Hey, let's be curious, from your frontline all the way up to the CEO O or President is absolutely huge.

And Miriam, let me ask you this. So speaking of success, to put you on the spot, Are there some success stories that you can share with us of some clients that you started working with that perhaps were lost in the proverbial woods. You came along and began working with them, with your system, with your strategies, and to where they are today?

Anything that you can share?

Yeah. One comes to mind, it's actually a current client but they started as a B2B company and they saw. The needs from individual customers for their products and services. And they pivoted based on this knowledge and based on their conversations with customers, trends in the marketplace and getting that feedback.

And it's a huge pivot to go to from b2b. To b2c. And so they've actually shifted over now and there is a huge market in front of them and 

they're building and they're going to capture it. But they only did that because they paid attention to what's going on in the world. They paid attention to their customers and potential future customers.

You know, If they'd only talked to their business to business customers, they might not have seen that direct to consumer opportunity. But having that broader mindset and that broader level of feedback has really opened up the doors for them, and I'm super excited to see where they go.

Remember talking about that. It reminds me really human nature because it's so ironic within our success today are the seeds of failure Tomorrow. We become to put it out there, no judgments here, we become lazy. Hey, I'm successful. I can stop doing whatever I was doing before that, and the success is going to continue to roll in it.

And we all know that doesn't happen for our customers. Hey, they may love us. They may sing or praise, but when it comes to our customers, we're as only as good to them as what we've done today. Yesterday doesn't count. Tomorrow, hasn't happened yet. And hey, if we're becoming out of touch or obsolete, well we're opening up the door for our competition.

A hundred percent. There's no lazy in today's environment. There's just, there's no room. For it. People have to stay up on everything. They have to stay in touch with their customers. You can't be too busy. It's just too important. it is just not an option, honestly.

From a high level, we spoke about what not to do, and if I can put you on the spot again, and perhaps it's a bit of a harder question to pick one thing, but if there's one thing, if there's one actionable takeaway that a listener. Do right now today. So before they finish our podcast, okay, I'm going to write this down, or I'm gonna voicemail myself or send a note to myself.

I'm gonna do this one thing that can really move the dial. What would that be? If you had to pick one thing?

If they don't have a mechanism of getting customer feedback in place, I would say start there and it can be as simple as a Google form survey. It can be super or Survey Monkey or 

whatever. It can be super cheap and super easy, and if you have people's email addresses, you can send that out. You don't wanna over survey people.

So what you can do is take a random sample and then take the. Same Sam or different sample, maybe six months later. So you're continually talking to customers. But I think getting that customer feedback is so vital to customer success and especially in this environment where everything is changing so quickly.

And then the other thing is, if you're going to do that survey, make sure that you ask questions about their needs and their problems that they want solved, not just feedback on your current products and services.

I love that. So let me ask you something about that, and I know I'm not alone when I say this. It seems as though the marketplace has swung the pendulum too far because now, Every time I have an interaction with a company, I not only get one survey follow up, I get multiple follows. Some of the follows take five or 10 minutes.

And between the frequency and the length of time, it's actually taking what would've otherwise been an amazing experience. And it's like, you know what? I don't think I wanna deal with you anymore because you took something and now you're taking up my valuable time. So where is the goldilock situation?

How do we look at it in terms of number of questions, amount of time, frequency that we send out the these surveys? What does that look like?

Yeah, I mean you do have to be careful because there's so much like survey. And even if you love a brand, you're only gonna give it like a minute or two. So people who want five minute survey, 10 minute surveys, forget it. Even if you pay people. And the problem with incentivizing surveys is you will get the skewed response, right?

So you'll only get the people who are. Looking for an incentive to fill that out, which is not exactly what you want. So keep surveys really short. And I wouldn't survey the same customer more than twice a year, I would say. But that doesn't mean that you don't do customer surveys. I would say maybe once a quarter, 

but don't do the same customers every time.

You can split them up.

And so there is a terrific insight and perhaps when looking at different survey tools, find a tool that can randomize the audience and track who got sent what, so we're not repeating ourselves. 

And.

Terrific. And I know that the technology changes, so maybe we'll keep the names and the logos out of it, but what other kinds of features or services in a survey service should we be thinking about in terms of, okay, I have to pick between these three or five, what am I looking for?

Yeah, I mean, one of the things that I appreciate is the decision 

tree. So if you ask a question and someone answers one way, they get a different next question 

than if someone else answers it in a different way. That way you can keep the number of questions very short because they don't all apply to every single customer.

But you get more information. Let's say one of the questions is, have you used our services before? Or, when was the last time you used our services? If they haven't used them, they're not gonna have feedback on them, right? But if they have, then your next question could be a, about the feedback on their experience.

But if they haven't, you wanna go to your next question, like, have you used our competitors? Or, who have you used?

I love that. So using some of the built-in intelligence to help streamline the process and really get to the gold. Wonderful. Well, Miriam, before we begin to segue into the wrap up, let me ask you this. Is there a question that I haven't asked, or is there a topic that we haven't spoken about that we should.

I think, you know, just the future of marketing and I think the innovation that's going on in marketing is. It's really important for people to keep up on and businesses of all sizes. It's really something, and whether they outsource it to companies like mine or they're just internally curious about what's coming next, I just think it's really important that companies stay on top of the different options that they have for marketing.

And I say marketing and entertainment too, right? 

Because. there are different ways to get your message across, and it doesn't just have to be annoying ads to people, right? It could be your brand out there, maybe part of a movie or a, you know, a docuseries or something like that. But I think keeping up on the options that are available and that are appropriate for your target audience is very important for your listeners.

So stay hungry, stay curious. Always be learning out there.

Absolutely.

Terrific. Well, mi let's do this. Let's go into the wrap up mode. And I have both the honor and the privilege of asking this question for all the guests. And so here's the scenario. Let me set it up. It's a fun question. I want you to think about the movie Back to the Future, and in the movie you have that wonderful DeLorean car that will take you to any point in time.

So imagine now it's tomorrow morning. Look outside your window, and lo and behold, there it is. A DeLorean car. Not only is a curbside, but the door is open, is waiting for you to hop on in. So you hop in and you can now go to any point in your life. What would you tell your younger self of, Hey, Miriam, do this but don't do that.

Or, here's some life wisdom or some life lessons. What would that sound like?

Oh my gosh. What a great question. I think going back, I think when I was a young consultant, I was more conservative and risk adverse, and I think I would go back to that period of time and encourage myself just to be bolder and to try more different types of things. I started doing that later on in my consulting career and definitely when I'm working for In my C m O roles.

That's one of the things that I think was kind of fun and something that I brought to the table is really pushing the younger generation to try new things and be bold. And I wish I'd done more of that myself when I was their age because I think it is the only way to separate yourself from the crowd like that is all marketing is separating.

Your company from the competition. And so in order to do that, you can't just do what everybody else is doing. You have to do something bold and different. And I think I would encourage myself to do the same for me personally and professionally at a much younger age. So,

Awesome. Terrific advice. And Miriam, let me ask you this. We'll have everything in the show notes for our listeners. Literally, it'll be a point and click for a listener who has some questions, they wanna get in touch, become a client, whatever the case may be, where is the best place online for someone to find you?

Right now it's LinkedIn. I'm a Miriam Washington Kendall on LinkedIn, and soon we'll have our website up and running. But right now, LinkedIn's probably the best way to reach me.

Terrific. And for listeners, it'll be a point and click doesn't get any easier. Well, Miriam, it's official. It's a wrap. Thank you so much for your time, your insights, your wisdom, and as we love to say here at Deep Wealth, may you continue to thrive and prosper while you remain healthy and safe. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Jeffrey. 

The Deep Wealth Experience was definitely a game-changer for me. 

This course is one of the best investments you will ever make because you will get an ROI of a hundred times that. Anybody who doesn't go through it will lose millions. 

If you don't have time for this program, you'll never have time for a successful liquidity 

It was the best value of any business course I've ever taken. The money was very well spent.

Compared to when we first began, today I feel better prepared, but in some respects, may be less prepared, not because of the course, but because the course brought to light so many things that I thought we were on top of that we need to fix. 

I 100% believe there's never a great time for a business owner to allocate extra hours into his or her week or day. So it's an investment that will yield results today. I thought I will reap the benefit of this program in three to five years down the road. But as soon as I stepped forward into the program, my mind changed immediately. 

There was so much value in the experience that the time I invested paid back so much for the energy that was expended. 

The Deep Wealth Experience compared to other programs is the top. What we learned is very practical. Sometimes you learn stuff that it's great to learn, but you never use it. The stuff we learned from Deep Wealth Experience, I believe it's going to benefit us a boatload.

 I've done an executive MBA. I've worked for billion-dollar companies before. I've worked for smaller companies before I started my business. I've been running my business successfully now for getting close to a decade. We're on a growth trajectory. Reflecting back on the Deep Wealth, I knew less than 10% what I know now, maybe close to 1% even. 

Hands down the best program in which I've ever participated. And we've done a lot of different things over the years. We've been in other mastermind groups, gone to many seminars, workshops, conferences, retreats, read books. This was so different. I haven't had an experience that's anything close to this in all the years that we've been at this.

It's five-star, A-plus.

I would highly recommend it to any super busy business owner out there.

Deep Wealth is an accurate name for it. This program leads to deeper wealth and happier wealth, not just deeper wealth. I don't think there's a dollar value that could be associated with such an experience and knowledge that could be applied today and forever. 

 Are you leaving millions on the table? 

Please visit www.deepwealth.com/success to learn more.

 If you're not on my email list, you'll want to be. Sign up at www.deepwealth.com/podcast. And if you enjoyed this episode, if it added value, if you walked away with some new insights and strategies, please leave a review on your favorite podcast channel. Reviews help us reach new listeners, grow the show. And continue to create content that you'll enjoy and as we wrap up this episode as always please stay healthy and safe.