The Formula For Long-Term Customer-Centric Growth w/ Dennis Geelen @Zero In

There's so much power in this analytics and then if you can tie that back to other things like customer satisfaction and net promoter score, and then you can tie that to stuff like revenue numbers. And how does this all tie together? Now you're truly understanding your customer.

Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of the Account Experience podcast.

And today joined by Dennis Gieland, the founder of Zero In, a boutique consulting.

Firm based out of Ontario, Canada.

In this episode we talk about Dennis fantastic new book, the Zero in Formula. It's a number one best seller on Amazon and a great read for any experienced professional out there listening. This was a super interesting talk filled with case studies, formulas, real life actionable takeaways to help you better engage with your customers. I know you're going to get a ton of value out of this talk.

So let's dive right in. I'm here as always with my co host, Mr. Kerry T. Self. Say hello, Carrie.

Hello everyone.

And today we have a really cool guest. His name is Dennis Gillen. He is a best selling author. He's just released a new book. It's called the Zero in Formula and like I said, it's the number one best seller on Amazon right now in Canada. Dennis, glad to have you on.

Yeah, great to be here. Thanks for having me, guys.

Of course. So what is exactly the Zero in formula? Let's just dive right in. So I know you have this really cool way you approach experience. There's a bunch of different layers to it. So let's just dive right in. What exactly is the Zero in Formula? And why should companies care?

Yeah, so the formula itself is what I use when I'm working with my clients to help them become more customer centric and innovative. Those are the two main things that I believe all businesses need in order to be disruptive and sustainable long term. So the formula is really a combination of two main core beliefs that I have. The first one is just that, that every business should be customer centric and innovative. And the other core belief that I have is that at the foundation of every organization, doesn't matter if you're a business, a church, a school, a not for profit. You need to have a solid purpose and direction. You need to have solid team collaboration. So that's your strategies and your tools for how your teams collaborate. And you need to have the right individual skills and behaviors of your team members. And all three of those things I just mentioned need to be rooted in the concepts of customer centricity and innovation. So I put those two concepts together and that's where I come up with the formula and then the book goes through and explains that formula and how any business can make that their foundation as well.

Yeah, and we really love those pillars that you've put forth because we talk a lot about them on this podcast, specifically team collaboration, individual skills and behaviors, and most certainly purpose. And we've done a lot on culture here already on the podcast. And I really want to get your what is it that you would describe as purpose driven around the customer? What can companies do if they're not already purpose driven? And what would you describe as like the perfect kind of almost like mission statement for a company looking to become more customer centric?

Yeah. So for me it's about being outward focused rather than inward focused. And this is a trap that I think a lot of companies can fall into. Maybe they have the right intentions in the beginning, but over time they start to become much more inward focused and they're about their product, they're about their service, they're about their quarterly revenue numbers.

Right.

Where that's a dangerous trap to fall into. Not to say those things aren't important, but at the root of it, it has to be about your customer and more specifically, what are you doing for your customer? Why would they buy your product or service? So just quick example here then. Let's take Facebook. Their mission statement could be we want to build a platform that connects people and allows them to like and share and comment on each other's posts on social media. And that would you would agree that's Facebook.

We agree.

But that statement is all about their product. Whereas if you actually look at Facebook's mission statement, it says Facebook's mission is to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together. That doesn't say anything about technology, doesn't say anything about social media, doesn't say anything about liking and commenting. It's about building community and connecting people so that the core, that's what their purpose is and they stay that focused and not continue to focus on likes and shares and features and whatever. They're going to be setting themselves up for success. That's the first pillar is what's your purpose and how is it helping and serving others.

Yeah. And it's just interesting. Kerry. So a little background on Kerry for you. Dennis. Kerry's he was a experienced manager champion at a pretty large multinational company previously to joining up with Customer Gauge. He was actually a previous client and we stole him away. But you, Carrie, it sounds like you had a good amount of experience managing A company that maybe didn't have that mission in place.

Right.

And you had to kind of transition them to getting that mission in place. Walk us through what that was like and maybe kind of back up Dennis's theory here or the formula.

And I love the fact that you talk about that purpose and direction because I think it's where you start and it's where you end.

Right?

It's. You kind of have to have that at the beginning so everyone knows what they're working towards, but you also have to have it on the back to justify all your decisions afterwards. And what I love is getting people like you on, you know, and talking to them. Because it feels like there's a bunch of us that are just like really beating this drum and head in the right direction. And I think the biggest at the core of it was how do you make. And I hate to say this, but it's usually the leadership. It's the C suite. How do you make them stop looking at the product and internal and look outward? Like you said, always the biggest challenge. And some of us are blessed. We have that one visionary on the team that gets it. You know, some of us are, some of us aren't. Some of us get pulled in to fix something and we keep telling them and they don't get it. But I so know that as a pain point of being brought in to say, okay, we seem to have a problem here. What is it? And you never want to tell a group.

It's.

You're a little too hung up on yourself right now. You know, let's get hung up on the people who are. Who are paying our bills and in.

Common to us, it's so important.

Like you say, Kerry, it's got to be at the top. I mean, teams below might be successful within the organization if they are outward focused and they themselves, their team has a good purpose and direction. But ultimately the business is not going to be successful long term if that purpose and direction is not embedded in starting at the top and filtering their way down. And that's an important thing for me when I'm looking to take on a new client. What's the mindset of the leader? Am I going to be ultimately successful helping them? Only if the leader's on board. And if the top leadership team at this company has that mindset that then I know, okay, we're getting off on the right foot. So it's so important.

So, Dennis, the thing that keeps jumping in my mind, though. Cause I keep tackling this and writing about it. Our Whole academy is based on becoming customer centric. But I even see companies who start down that path, who seem to get it. Like you meet that one person and then when times get hard or there's a stumble in the road, they seem to withdraw, they pull back from that and they go back to being product centric or internally. So, I mean, and again, I've read parts of your book, I've gone through and I listened to your podcast now, love your website. But that's, I guess my question for you. What do you see the cause of that? Why does that happen? And you know, I know it's not a magic bullet here or a single button to push and go, this is it. But what are some of the things that you've seen that causes this kind of withdrawal from what we all seem to believe in and we know is best for a company?

Great, great question.

And from my own experience, from, from.

What I've seen and from me myself as a business owner, there's several factors at play here. In a larger organization, there's all kinds of external pressures. If you're a publicly traded company, you got stakeholders and shareholders that you have to answer to and they care about your quarterly revenue, they care about the stock price.

Right?

That's what they're looking for. That's the answers they want. And if you bow to that pressure too much as the leader, you're going to have a very short term view of am I being successful? Is the company being successful? And it's very difficult for them to step back and take that longer term view. There's, there's pressures there. As a smaller business, it's very easy to get tempted with success.

Growth, numbers, scalability, those things are all good.

But if that's your focus, if that becomes your whole priority and reason for being, it's easy to get sucked into that and then you lose that outward customer centric focus that you started with.

So I think there's a bevy of.

Different things at play here. And it's really at the top leadership level to kind of remind themselves this is our purpose. It's not just something we write on the wall and employees are supposed to read when they go, boy, it's something that we live and we remind ourselves of and we embed this in everything we do.

I love that theme though, that you kind of say it really, really well. But it's, it's breaking away from that. What have you done for me lately? You know, everyone is so instant gratification or oh, wow, that worked. Yeah, let's just keep doing that and it's like no, no, wait a minute, that's a blip. That's one piece of a whole. So then let's talk about then that customer centric innovation then. And I think this is like your pillars. How do you then utilize that customer centric innovation? I've heard you called it cci. I might switch over because it's a mouthful, it's powerful.

But how do you just rolls off the tongue better?

How do you use that CCI then to kind of combat or offset that knee jerk reaction to what most companies are doing?

So that's where it's really key in the formula. Your purpose and direction, like I said, is your number one top. You have to have that. The company has to be built on that foundation. You have to have that purpose and mission. But that alone is not going to make you a CCI company. Then that next layer, that team collaboration layer in the formula, what tools, what strategies, what's your org structure, what are your KPIs, how are you rewarding and incentivizing people to really roll out customer centric innovative ways of delivering value to your customer? So there's several different ways to do that and the number one thing for me is always data and analytics. What information are we tracking about our customers? If you really want to be customer centric, look at what the data is telling you. What are the trends, when are they buying, what are they buying, how are they buying, why are they doing it different ways and what is that telling you? Get to know and understand your customers. You guys would know this better than anybody in customer gauges. There's so much power in this analytics and then if you can tie that back to other things like customer satisfaction and net promoter score and then you can tie that to stuff like revenue numbers. And how does this all tie together? Now you're truly understanding your customers. So that's one example. But like I said, there's your org structure. How have you structured your company? Do you have roles and responsibilities set up in your company around knowing and understanding who your customers are? If that's just somebody's corner of desk job, it's not really all that important to you. If that's somebody's title and they have rewards and recognition and goals and you know your company is around being customer centric, you're going to see that in your org structure, right? And then there's do you, do you make a point of really putting yourself in your customer's shoes? Do you know what it Feels like to be one of your customers and you know, you can do that through observing your customers or being a customer yourself. Try using your own product and service and really understand what does that feel like to be a customer of my own product and service. Very intentional in that next layer of the formula. Beyond just being. This is our purpose. It's how are we living out this purpose and showing it in what we're doing day to day.

I have a terrible story I'm going to tell. So I heard this. It was a while back, but I think it was HubSpot. So HubSpot has a famous culture that I think everybody's somewhat aware of, but one of their founders used to use a stuffed teddy bear and put it in every meeting that he went to and say, this is the customer. And literally remind everybody in a meeting when they're talking about something that could affect the customer, like, oh, what do you think? The bear had a name. You literally address the bear like it was a customer sitting in the room. And it sounds crazy, but at the same time, it kind of backs up. Your point is like, you need to be thinking about the customer when you're doing these types of things, structuring your teams. I mean, it's all. It's all about the customer at the top. You're right. Purpose and direction, 100%. But then you got to get it operational.

Right.

How do you get that spread across your entire org? Put in systems to always bring that back up. Like, what is the customer going to think of this? Why are we doing this? How is the team structured where it can best serve the customer? I think you're spot on, Dennis. I mean, it's a really, really good point.

That example, like, that it makes the customer real. Even though it's a teddy bear, it's something there in the room that reminds you that we are customers. So, yeah, it's a great story, Dennis.

One of the things I really appreciate about, and we try to practice this, I think you've done a good job of it too, is that you really bring this to real life stories, real examples. So. So I'm going to use the teddy bear analogy. Who do you think, or who would you give an award to right now for using that teddy bear of really, truly understanding the customer and their experience?

Yeah, it's interesting you asked that because when I was writing the book, I wanted to make sure there was real life stories and examples in there. I didn't want the book to read like a textbook. Yes, there's strategies and yes, there's tools in there, but to really make it come to life. What are some companies and some businesses that are doing this? What did they learn? What were some of their successes? What are their failures? And one of the ones that I came across that just jumps off the page to me as they live and breathe CCI was Jesse Cole and the Savannah Bananas baseball team. I was introduced to them through the process of writing the book. I had some conversations with Jesse. What an amazing guy. If you follow him on social media, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. He's written his own book called Find you'd Yellow Tux. And it's appropriate because even when I interviewed him, he was wearing his yellow tux and his yellow top hat. But he lives, eats and breathes, knowing his customer and serving his customer. In fact, I think the name of his company is Fans First Entertainment. And he kind of walked me through how they go about understanding everything about the fan. What do they like about coming to a baseball game and what do they hate and how do we fix that? And then they've got all kinds of innovative principles and practices that they implemented within their team so that they're constantly intentionally coming up with new ideas to test out and pilot at the ballpark. And it shows. You look at their attendance numbers from the first year when he took over the team to where they are now, and the fans love it. So it's the proof's in the pudding.

This episode of the Account Experience podcast.

Is sponsored by CustomerGage, the leading B2B account experience software that ties revenue to.

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You won't regret it, Ian, if you see the picture, I don't know if you've seen them or not, but if you see this picture, this guy's picture online, you almost think it's a joke at first. Yeah, it kind of reminds me of the whole fish the fish market story from years back where people didn't get the secret of happiness. And when you said the banana tuck, the yellow tucks, it jumps out, literally. But what I love most about that, Dennis, is that it's all what a lot of businesses would say is reverse engineering going to the customer and working back to improve the product. And I think there's so many companies now that have their heads buried so deep in the product and then they put their head up every few seconds and go, well, how would we do? How did we do? We're gonna, we're gonna throw this widget on here and we're gonna jam this, this, you know, this, this cog in there. Did we work? Is this what you want versus literally being out front and asking the question in reverse.

And I myself have lived that. My background is in software and one of the jobs I had throughout my career was the director of R and D and professional services at a major software company in Canada called OpenText. And before I really understood the need to know and empathize with our customers, it was we knew our product from the back end. We developed it, we tested it, we were the ones coming up with cool new ideas to put into the product. We would always scratch our heads at some of the features and requests that were coming in from our customers. These guys don't know what they're talking about. Why would they want that? We develop it, we know how it works. Until we decided to be a customer of our own software. We implemented it within our division and started using it. We were no longer scratching our heads. We now knew that just because you develop it this way mean that's the way it's going to be used. And the experience of using the software was so different. We were able to put ourselves in our customers shoes. We were able to empathize with them. And now it was like, tell me more, what other ideas do you have? You know, what is this like for you? What feels good, what doesn't, what else would be resonating with you? And it totally changed our approach to how we designed new features into the software. Moving forward.

Well, you said before, was that your moment? Was that the moment that you finally got to have that epiphany and saw it from the customer perspective, or was it something else?

For me, originally I just wore one hat. I was the Director of Professional Services originally. So I was out meeting with our customers. I was helping them get implemented, I was working with them and it was a bit of a struggle for me to take some of the stuff they were saying and bring it back to our development team. And then eventually I was promoted to also be the director of R and D. So now I was taking care of both sides. And now when I can see what's going on on the customer's eyes, what's going on in our R and D side, and kind of reconcile the two. I was now in a position to say, yeah, we were not customer centric and innovative before. We were more innovation for the sake of innovation. And I talk about that in the book. We need to bridge those two gaps much better. And we started implementing a lot of principles and practices to really infuse the customer's point of view into our software and that changed everything.

So bringing us back to the zero in formula. So we're on basically the team collaboration track.

Right.

There's this other side of your pillar, which is innovation principles.

Yes.

Walk us through what that means and how companies can integrate innovation principles into their business.

Yeah, for me, I guess it's the main difference between being proactive and reactive. I've talked to all kinds of companies or business leaders that would describe themselves as innovative because somebody had an idea and they ran with it. Well, to me, that's reactive or accidental innovation.

Right.

Just because somebody came up with an idea and you decided to test it out, it doesn't really make you an innovative company. Okay, you were open to that idea. To me, an innovative company is one that is intentionally putting principles and practices in place so that ideas aren't accidental, they're intentional. Monthly, weekly, whatever. You have principles and practices in place to generate new ideas to test. And ideally, those ideas are starting with empathizing with the customer. So in the book, I go through all kinds of different principles and practices from what I've done in the past, what I've seen work really well, and just some other great things from other people I've reached out to. Here's what you can do to make sure your company is being intentional so that ideas aren't accidents. They are intentionally coming out of processes that you've put in place to be an innovative company.

I don't want to give the whole book away. Trust me, I know you want to sell this thing, but I have to ask this question because we're dealing with people like you and I, Dennis and Ian in the past. I mean, he's wearing a marketing hat now, but he started what we've been doing. So we've all been there. And everyone that listens to this podcast is always looking to take away that one nugget. Like if I could just go back and flip one thing on its head or try one thing. So I guess my challenge or my question for you is what's one innovation? What's one way to take that and not be an accident, but it be intentional? What's maybe one, don't give me the golden one, maybe give me the silver one for right now, but something that you've seen work or something you stepped back to and went, okay, that can be applied in multiple ways. Is there a takeaway or is there one that really stood out to you?

Well, I guess the one number one.

Advice I could get would be or give would be diversity. So a lot of teams will intentionally have innovation brainstorming meetings.

Great.

But if you just have a lot of like minded people around the table, you know, similar background, similar skill set, similar roles within the company, if you just get the leadership team together, are you really bringing in diverse perspectives and backgrounds? Probably not. So be intentional to bring People with different experiences, maybe people who've been with the company different lengths of time, people from the front lines of the company, people from the leadership, people from sales, people from marketing, people from ops. Bring as many different perspectives to the table as possible and then be prepared with some proper, you know, brainstorming techniques. And, you know, there's all kinds of ones that I, you know, give in the book as well. And I myself do that as a consultant. I'll help facilitate all kinds of brainstorming sessions for other companies, but utilize some good techniques, and then with all the different ideas flowing in the room from all those backgrounds, you're going to have more ideas. And more ideas just means better ideas in the end as well.

I love that we throw the word culture around. I always talk about that. It's such an easy word to throw around, but our culture is our people, and our culture is a sum of all of our people, not just 10 people sitting in a room making decisions for everybody. I love that.

The other thing that does as well is not only does it give you more perspectives and better ideas, but now people feel included. If it's just the leadership team doing these brainstorming sessions and coming up with ideas now it's, hey, here's ideas that we came up for you, now go roll them out. That's a whole different feeling from, hey, we want to invite Joe from sales and Sally from marketing and so and so from the front lines. And you have different people at different brainstorming sessions. People feel a part of it, hey, that was my idea, or I was part of that idea. And now they've got more of an invested interest in seeing that idea come to fruition. A whole different culture and mindset at that point.

Yeah, I think that's. That's something we preach on our end as well. Pretty hard. So Kerry's been a great champion of this internally, but also with our clients is that when you include people, it equals engagement.

Right.

And not only that, speaking to your point, Dennis is like, these people go back to their departments. And Kerry had a really great thing that he brought up, I think, a couple weeks ago, where pick people, diverse opinions from different departments, but also try to pick people that have influence.

Right?

Influence in each department, influence in the company. Because what happens is you create these little mini champions for your program, for your ideas across the org, and that has a big effect on sentiment of the program, but also impact and effectiveness of the program because you have those champions that you can rely on.

The only thing worse than not coming up with ideas, is coming up with great ideas and seeing them die. So getting that buy in, getting those champions is so crucial, so great to see that you guys are doing that. I mean, you guys get it, but the, there's companies that aren't there yet. So hopefully the book will help reach some of those and they'll get it as well.

Well, I also like what you did there, Dennis, because you took, I mean, you said something at the beginning. It's not something we write on a wall. It's not something everyone has to memorize. But what you did just now, I love the way you transitioned and did that. You went from that big purpose, our purpose is to be intentionally innovative. And then how do you manifest that into your people? And you did such a good job of marrying those two layers of going from purpose to that team collaboration. And I'm really excited right now. Okay. Okay. You got me. I'm hooked.

That's the job of the leader, right? It's great to have an idea and a purpose, but if you can't communicate it, if you can't get buy in, if you can't set your company up for success with the right tools, the right roles and responsibilities, the right KPIs, the right practices, you're not doing your job as a leader. So that's who the book is for. It's for leaders, for them to understand what is my role in this and how am I playing such a crucial role in making this happen in my business.

Go ahead, Gary.

Well, the only thing I was going to say to that is now we're running these more dynamic companies where, yes, there's an upper level of leadership and we talk about the account experience. We've taken it beyond just one relationship. We have all these relationships bouncing around. And what I loved about your formula in your book is it's almost like you could create that. It's a useful book for not just the top, but for each of these departments, too, to help marry that together and to create that innovation within. But opening it up to breaking. We hate to say it, but breaking silos. Right. I'm so cliche here, but, but, but it really does speak to that. And I, again, I'm just celebrating that a lot. So I really appreciate that.

That's good. I'm glad it resonates and it's, I'm.

Happy to see somebody else that gets it as well.

So, yeah, you're definitely speaking our language. I can back carry up on that. So let's, let's go back to the Formulas, though. So we have one more layer, right. And it's basically, again, we're talking about the zero in formula guys available wherever books are sold. It's individual skills and behaviors. So that's the final layer of your formula. And you just have a couple skills that I think you bring up, like engaging, empathetic, humble, prudent, passionate. Walk us through what that means and why it's integral within your formula.

Sure.

And this I found is actually a little bit controversial. There's a lot of talk there that, you know, your employees are number one and, you know, just hire smart and great people and they'll teach you how to run your company. And those things sound good on paper, but anybody who's run a company knows it just that's not true. And it doesn't work that way. Your employees are extremely important. But if you don't have a good purpose and direction, great employees aren't going to take your company where you want it to go. If you don't have good collaborative tools and strategies, good employees are not going to take you where you want to go. So that's why they're number three in the formula. Still extremely important, but not number one. Once you have that purpose and direction, once you have those tools, once you have those strategies in place, now you want to find the right people to carry that out. And that's where you want people who are engaging people are empathetic, humble, prudent, passionate, because those are the people that want to understand the customers and do something about it. Those are the people that can relate to the customers and then turn that into ideas. Those are the people that are going to be passionate about your purpose and care about making sure that that comes to fruition. So selecting the right people, I call them the good apples in the book is so important. I mean, there's so much talk about bad apples and how they can ruin your organization. And that's true. So turn that around. Instead of focusing on who are the bad apples, be intentional about finding the good apples. When you're interviewing, when you're rewarding people, when you're trying to build people up, what behaviors and skill sets are you looking for that's going to help take your company to the next level.

I also find it that I like the way you set this formula up. Hopefully we can share the table, too, in the podcast, or at least put a glimpse of it, because I think it's a real good visual. But one of the things that I really liked about it is if you do start from the top, the purpose, direction, team collaboration components. And you make that healthy. You make it what you want it to be. Sometimes what you might find and tell me if I'm wrong here, that who we thought were bad apples, actually, quite honestly, are probably your best damn apples and vice versa.

Or frustrated.

Right?

Yeah. They didn't fit in. They didn't fit into that other purpose. They didn't fit into that other thing. But here we are, we flip it, and now all of a sudden you have this workforce that gets it, like, right out of the gate. And it's not about changing your workforce, it's about changing your environment for your workforce or for your customer.

Right.

And I really liked that when I was looking at the formula and listening to you speak and reading, it was just a big takeaway. So I'm guessing you have seen that as you go through and you do this, even the higher ups, do you find that the leadership you work with, do you think they're a little shocked sometimes too, when all of a sudden the person who was a bad apple is now outperforming?

Yes, for sure. I mean, in the beginning, if you put yourself in that leader's position, you see somebody who's not performing or is disgruntled at work, your original reaction is, oh, well, this isn't the right person for the job. Not realizing that you haven't set them up for success. And maybe you don't have clear vision, you don't have good strategies and tools in place, and you've created a demotivated employee. They might be engaging and empathetic and humble and prudent and passionate, but you're not allowing those things to come out. So if you set those top two parts of the formula in place first, you're going to set those people up for success. I think a great example or great analogy of where we see this a lot is in sports teams.

Right.

How many times have you seen, well, a, the mistake of, let's just go get the best athletes and we'll now have a winning team. Totally not focusing on good strategies and tools and, you know, plays and plays, just get the best athletes. Well, like I said, just like the best employees are not going to take your business where you want it to go without those other parts of the formula in place. The best athletes are not going to make you a championship team without having those other things in place. And then how many times have you seen sports teams that seem to have all the talent in place and not going anywhere, they make some changes at the leadership Level. They bring somebody in who's got a vision, they've got some good strategies and tactics and suddenly, wow, these guys know how to play together and they're an amazing team. So the examples are everywhere of the formula playing out in real life.

I was thinking the same thing too. Like they'll can the coach and almost the next day they're winning. And they didn't put anything new in place. They just remove the obstacle or they remove that noise. You said this one word a couple of times here. So I want to circle back around to. I think it's really important too for our listeners. You keep using the word tools.

Yes.

And again, I know we want to sell the book. Trust me, I'm going to help you there. We're going to make sure people want to read this thing. But share with me a tool, something that you've seen that helps us break through to that third layer, that individual give us one little nugget. What's something out there that a tool that you've seen be very successful in helping?

Well, the obvious answer is all kinds of different software tools that allow you to get better insights into your customers. You guys know that better than any. I'm going to take it in a different direction, though. What about the way that you reward and recognize your employees? That's a tool. What KPIs do you have in place and what intrinsic motivators do you have? There's some great examples of this from companies that say, okay, all the bonuses and all the extra vacation and, you know, all those typical extrinsic motivators are not making our people more innovative. And then what they've realized is, you know, most innovation inspiration comes from intrinsic motivators. I want to work on something cool. I want to be able to be part of something and say that I did that so intentionally set that up. There's different companies that have, okay, we're going to pause for a couple days and you have to work with people that you don't normally work with and you have to come up with something that you don't normally work on on a daily basis and present a new idea to us. So they're intentionally saying, get together with a group of your peers and come up with something cool. Wow, there's an intrinsic motivator there to go. I want to, you know, I want to work on something different and new and creative and cool and present it to the leadership team. At the end of the day, that's a tool you can have to inspire innovation within your Company.

I love the way that was said because you talk sports and use that analogy. I'm thinking Bad News Bears right now. One of my favorite movies as a kid. And here's just a really scrappy group of kids who couldn't win a damn baseball game. And what did they do? New leadership. They can. The old coach, unlikely coach, rolls in, picked up and did some unconventional things. And it went from we're not getting much out of this to like, we want to be part of something that's more. It's more than the sum of who we are. And I like that. I like that. You know, I do think, yes, we'll never make as much as we all think we're worth. Our bank accounts will never equal to what we know we are worth. But being part of something, putting a fingerprint on something that will last forever, or coming up with a new concept or idea, that accelerates my company. Wow. You know, so that's my geek out moment for this. For the moment. Thank you, guys.

So speaking of accelerating companies, let's put a big bow tie on this thing, right? So zero in formula. If companies follow this formula, will they grow faster?

I would say maybe. Um, but I would also say fast should not be the motivator or the focus.

Right.

Getting somewhere fast just could mean that you're also, you know, faster to eventually failing. What the, what the foundation should be is rooted in long term success. It might take you a little bit longer, it might take more and more ideas being tried out. But eventually, if you are rooted in the foundation of being customer centric and innovative, you're setting yourself up for long term success.

Right.

So potentially, yeah, you might come up with some great ideas right off the hop because you are customer centric and innovative and you might strike gold early and fast. But that shouldn't be your motivation. It should be long term. And I guess the other part of that too is we see disruptors all the time. We see new competitors come along with new ideas. We see changes in consumer habits, we see economic downturns. Heck, we even see pandemics. Things happen. If you've set yourself up with this foundation of being customer centric and innovative, you've also set yourself up with a much better chance of being able to be flexible and pivotal when a disruptor comes along. So yes, fast is good, but there's so much more to being customer centric and innovative and setting yourself up for long term success if you really have this as your foundation.

Yeah, I love that answer. Thanks for that, Dennis. I think it is really about long term success. But I think your original point of this formula, I think is just to get companies to even realize this is a long term strategy, is that you put these things in place and commit. I think that's, that's the biggest thing we talk about a lot. And Carrie, you kind of alluded to it in your. One of your previous questions is like, what happens when the executive team kind of recoils and fear has to be a long term commitment of serving the customer. And that, that's really the hardest part for I think a lot of companies.

Is like, because it's going to happen.

Yeah.

Disruptors are going to come along and not everything's going to be smooth sailing all the time.

Yeah. Look at the top 10 brands right now. Would you say that those would have been top 10 brands 5 years ago or 5 years ago? Would you say they would be now? There's no way. And you know, it's, you know, go back 10 years. Like, what's Uber? What? Zoom. These words sound made up and now they're, they're verbs, they're adjectives, their ways of life, you know, and even uber interesting. Hit a high. And now they're hurting because nobody's going anywhere, you know, And I like again, continuing to listen to the customer.

Yeah.

Create a channel or a philosophy and spirit of making sure you continue to channel that because they will tell you where to go and what to do and how to do it. So, yeah.

Love it.

So, Dennis, thank you so much for joining us on the Account Experience podcast. Again, everybody, this is Dennis Gillien. He has a best selling book, number one best selling book, the Zero in Formula. He's also the founder of the Zero in consultancy. He's holding it up right now. If you can't see it, go check it out. You can buy it on Amazon and wherever other books are sold. Dennis, thank you so much for joining us today.

Yeah, my pleasure. Thanks a lot, guys.

All right, and again, you're listening to the Account Experience podcast. Please like and share with your friends and we'll talk to everybody soon. Thanks again.

Sa.