0076: The Secrets of Creating a Company of Excellence with CEO Richard Anderson

Ea interviews, episode 77, inspiration, transformation, success stories and the imperfect action round. Seven days a week, join Mario Ficcini for today's Expert Authority Effect interview. Creating a company with a culture that cares is not just something one company should be doing, it's something every company should be doing. I know you've experienced it, I know you've seen it, but hopefully you're not running one that isn't doing it. That's why I'm excited to have Richard Anderson here today. CEO of Imagine It. Two years in a row on the Inc 5000. He has grown subsequently year after year and has a thriving company doing extremely well. And he's going to be sharing these insights with you as to how he's doing it and you're going to love what he has to say. I'm excited to bring him up right after, we think, including yours, would you like to save five plus hours with every prospect, Generate more leads and profit in your business? Now visit. Visit businessbookchecklist.com and learn how you can implement this in your business today.

Here he is, ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Richard Anderson, CEO of Imagine It. Richard, it's great to have you here. How are you feeling?

I'm awesome, man. It's great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Well, I'm excited to learn more about what got you started into this. How did it all come to be? I know you've been doing it since 2000, but what inspired you to start your company?

You know, it's an entrepreneurial curse, I think. You talk about inspiration, sometimes it's just a calling. You know, my parents were entrepreneurs, my wife's family's entrepreneurs, my aunts are entrepreneurs, uncles. I don't think there was ever a question as to whether or not I was going to be in an entrepreneurial venture like this or not. But I've always liked technology. You and I were talking about how many cores are in a computer. I mean, how many? I had a computer back when I was probably 10 years old, and back then they weren't much of a computer, but, you know, we thought they were pretty cool. So I think it was just inevitable I was going to end up in technology in some way, shape or form.

I can totally relate to that. When I was in high school, people say, when did you start your company? And I like to say which time? I know you get that, but it was the same thing because computers have changed. They've gotten better and better. But I knew I was going to have a very expensive hobby or a very profitable business. But I knew the passion was there and I was going to be doing what I'm doing going on a while now, let's say. So let's talk about who you help and how you help them.

Yeah. So, you know, there's the elevator pitch answer, which is small and mid sized companies in the twin cities, Minneapolis, St. Paul area who are in need of IT services. But I think the deeper answer is what you're really asking, right? Who do we help? We help the business owners and the controllers and the HR managers and the operations managers who really are just trying to do their job right. They're trying to get the product shipped or they're trying to get the new employee onboarded. And they're tired of their computer, they're tired of their application not working and they're tired of not knowing how to do things. You know, these, these power user skills that they think are unfathomable, those are who we help. We help the people. It's really not, you know, ironically, not about the technology. You know, we're a technology company, but it's not about that. It's about the people and helping them achieve what it is they're trying to get done. And that's what all of our people are about. That's why we come to work every day. That's why we leave every day feeling good about what we've done is we got to help people.

I think that's so important because it very much is about the psychology and not the technology. It's just a means to an end. People know, here's what you can do and here's how you can help. But I loved what we were talking about and because you're a lot like me and you're taking it a step further than that. So let's go a little bit deeper with when you're saying they just want the stuff to work. Because I know what it's like when all this stuff is working the way it should be, and I'm very thankful for it. But when it's not, what do you do?

It's hard, right?

What's the, what's the biggest problem you see them really having? I'm not talking about building a computer, piecing, piecing together at NASA base station Media Lab. But what are like some of the common things that, when you're saying these advanced things, what is the biggest problem you really have they're having that you help them fix?

The list is long, but, you know, to keep it simple. I think a lot of it is people Just don't know what they don't know. And so they, they come to work, they do their deal, they beat their head against the wall, then they rinse and repeat and do it every day. And you know, we'll talk to them and say, hey, I see you're working with this big file of data and you're manually doing this thing and then you're emailing it over to this person who's manually doing this thing. And you see these file folders routing about the office that gets stuck in Nancy's office and then over in Joe's office and you're not sure where they are. And we come in and say, wow, we could automate all that. We could take that data entry, we could make all of that go away. Nobody would have to data enter that anymore. We could automatically routed to Nancy and Joe simultaneously. And I can actually track whether or not they've opened and processed it. And then I can give a status report up to the management team. How would you like that? And they're like, I'm sorry, what? Well, what would I do with my job if you did all that? And I'm like, well, let's find that out. Because that's the fun part, right? You know, we had one client that literally had a full time person entering in credit card data to process their incoming orders from their website. Now all of us who are in the web world now would kind of laugh and think, oh, that's a, that's an issue. So this was a couple years ago, we eliminated that person's job. And I remember when we approached her and she was thinking, the first thing through her brain is, oh my gosh, I'm out of work. And then very quickly she realized this is actually very good because there's so much other things I could do, right? And she could reapply and do other things. All of a sudden her dead end career became an opportunity of possibility, you know, and that's, that's pretty awesome. From our perspective, I would agree with.

That because I hear a lot of people say that that's very common. Oh, the robots are going to replace the, you know, the jobs and that. It's like if you can get replaced, it's probably a job you shouldn't be doing because you're not fully utilizing what you have at your capability, you know, yourself, your brain and all this. And there's, I don't know any business on the planet that doesn't have stuff that they can find someone to help them with. There's always Something that can be done. But like you're saying, do you need to be the one entering credit card numbers eight hours a day? No.

Oh, and can you imagine the monotony of that type of a job? Right. You know, you're happy, you have a job, you're paying your bills, you have benefits. Right. That's great. But you wake up in the morning and go, yeah, I get to enter credit cards. Right. Like, no, there's no fulfillment. Not fulfilling. That's not challenging, that's not inspiring. There's nothing about that. Right. So if we can relieve that burden and give them some, some career opportunity and some challenge. Awesome. Right. And, and then how does the company benefit? Well, they didn't save any money. Right. Because they still, they had the employee and they still have the employee. But the upside of all that untapped potential and that additional value they're able to add is benefits that they weren't able to get before. So then they're happy too. Everybody wins. That's firing.

I don't know any industry that couldn't benefit from better customer support. And you're not going to automate that with, oh, send an email here and support ticket.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, you hear about hold times, right? I called and one of my favorite messages is, we're experiencing an inordinate level of phone calls. Please hold. And I'm thinking, why aren't I experiencing an inordinate number of call answers? Like, you knew that Everybody calls at 9am on a Monday. Why don't you have more people? But you're right, those people facing skills, those hand touches, those, you know, going out and seeing the client, those aren't going to be replaced anytime soon. And if you've got any of those skills, you probably have a good job in front of you for the rest of your life. Yeah.

If you can do customer service. Not customer service, customer relationship. Because that's what customer service is in sales, you'll never be out of a job. And I'd also venture to say that if you're doing some rinse and repeat job, you're replaceable at any point in time, whether you upgrade the system or not. But not only like you're saying the career is, you know, there's no, you switch into these other roles, there's no cap. You might start off doing customer service, then you move up to management, then you move up to somewhere else, but these are, these will never go away.

Well, and I loved your use of the word relationship. You know, people say customer service, but I Liked how you said customer relationships. Because the relationships are things that you need to devote time to, right? They don't just happen. You can't say, hey, Mario Rich, we have this relationship now. Well, we have a little bit of a relationship because we've talked for, you know, an hour, but it's not going to be real deep, right? Customers, many of our customers, really, we get to know them, we go hang out, we have breakfast, we have lunch. We might go golfing. They might, you know, they invite us to our events, vice versa. That takes time, that takes some energy. And if you can do that, forget about sales. Because you say sales and people kind of like freak out. They're like, I don't want to be a sales guy. That's like, you know, slimy, right? Like, and I'm not trying to offend any sales guys. I think salespeople are awesome. But some people just think that it's this evil thing. And yet you take somebody who can develop a strong relationship, a one on one relationship with somebody, they will be your best salesperson in the world because that establishes trust, which creates a great conversation. And so if I go to my friend and say, you really should consider this thing, they're going to consider it. Well, guess what? That's sales. Call it whatever you want.

I agree. And I like building relationships, whether it's personal or professional. I was alluding to if you get good at people skills, if you learn the skill set of people skills and the skill set of sales, you'll never be out of a job anywhere.

Fully agreed.

But I do not like salesy. I can't tell you how many people reached out even, even this week that are. There's someone on LinkedIn that connected. I was like, hey, how's it going? And you know, I go to build a relationship. He sent me 13 links in the last two days.

Oh my goodness.

And I'm like, I very politely was like, hey, thanks for the info, but let me get through these before you send any more. I don't know if it's a bot or whatever, but it's like I'm always looking for the in people, but I do. Everyone likes buying, but no one likes being sold.

Agreed. Fully agreed.

I, I don't like sales. Z like bad. And really there's nothing wrong with sales. It's more how people go about it. And most people are doing it wrong. But I'm also not saying to just build a relationship for like, ooh, there'll be some benefit at the end that I can monetize. Like, maybe there is, maybe there isn't. But when you focus on people, you're golden no matter what, you're doing well.

And you just, you just nailed it. It's the go. It's the golden rule, right? If you're being sold to, that doesn't feel good. And if you are selling to someone, that doesn't feel good. But if you are helping somebody and you're investing in a relationship for long term mutual benefit, only good things will happen.

And I loved what you were saying. No, let's dive into a little bit more of that because you're an IT company. You have a very successful IT company. Congratulations on making the Inc.5002 years in a row now.

Thank you.

Yes, that is awesome. But what you told me that you're known for is really, why don't you tell the audience?

Because I think it's awesome happiness. And we really, we. I can't say it enough because you tell someone you're an IT company and you're focused on happiness, they kind of give you that nervous chuckle like, oh, that's cute. That's like puppy dogs, right? Like, but it's real. And for us, it's like a calling. So everybody we interact with, we first of all kind of ask ourselves, do we want to invite them into the circle of happiness or not? Because if you do, then everyone else in the circle must be positively or at least neutrally impacted by that addition. Right. By definition, if we are going to expand the circle of happiness, we cannot introduce toxic elements to the circle. And so the first thing we do, when we look at a new employee or a new client, who we call them partners, or a new vendor or a new relationship of any way, shape or form, we ask, is this going to help or hurt the circle? Right. So it takes every decision we have and puts it through this microscope filter and says, if this isn't going to help us the greater good, then we're not going to do it. So that's, that's kind of like baseline. Well, second thing is, all of our conversations then take a more holistic approach. You know, offline, you and I were talking about work life and professional and personal. And you know, people say, oh, you need good work, life, balance. And then you hear other people saying, you really can't get balance. You just really are just trying to keep them within range of one another. But there is no such thing as balance, at least sustained. And so when we talk to somebody one on one and we meet with our team members, you got to Hear this, because when I tell other business owners this, they don't believe me. Every two weeks we have a check in. One on one, check in with every team member we have, right? And some people are like, I'm sorry, what? Like we meet with our guys like annually. Is this like a compensation review? I'm like, no, no, no. It's a never ending discussion. And if we don't honor it on at least an every two week basis, then we're going to miss out on some of those things that are really important. I mean, life can change at the drop of a hat, right? Somebody's parents could be sick or their kids could be hurt, or their car could have gotten a accident. Like who knows, right? And so we check in very regularly. How are things going? You know, what can we celebrate over these last couple of weeks? What are we, what do we show gratitude for? You know, we find that gratitude if you just take a moment and grab a whiteboard or a piece of paper and you write down some of the things that you feel gratitude towards, all of a sudden you just feel better, right? You could be having a bad day and you think, wow, I have a wonderful marriage and my daughter is excellent and I got to mountain bike last night. Life is pretty good even if somebody cut me off on the way to work. And so we have these very meaningful, like, conversations. And they might only be 15 or 20 minutes long, but they happen so regularly that we get to expand that circle of happiness all the time. Right? You know that we're a support organization. We do it. Support. It's kind of like business psychology or end user psychology. Like a help. It's like you're calling a psychologist and you're saying, oh, my computer's not working again. And you know, it can, it can be exhausting. Nobody calls the help desk and says, hey, Mario, God, I love your show. It's great. It's great talking to you. Have a good day. Like, that's not what happens. Mario would call and say, you know, 13 of my 14 cores on my computer just died. Can't do anything, I'm losing money, life sucks, you better fix it, right? Like that's how it feels. And so we have to work with our technicians and remind them every single caller is asking for help. And every single caller is an opportunity for you to, to expand their circle of happiness. If you can leave them feeling just even slightly better than they felt when they called, you've taken a step forward. If you can solve their problem, they're likely very happy. But Some of the problems are challenging. We might have to research and we might have to do some work. But you get to expand their circle of happiness every single day. And for some of our technicians, that might be 10 or 15 or 20 times a day. What a great opportunity when you look at it from that perspective. Right? So happiness. Happiness is a big deal for us. Thank you for asking.

It absolutely is. That's beautiful. Because so many people don't realize that, right? There's. Everyone has something going on behind the scenes and, oh, how are you?

Oh, we're good.

You know, you see them at the parties, you see him at the networking things. Maybe it's the holidays, whatever. Oh, we're good.

Oh, really?

Your life is fantastic. There's never any downside to it. Yet on Facebook, you're complaining about 14 different things. No one ever reaches out, right?

Right.

No one ever reaches out. And we had a guest speaker at church, and I remember seeing what he had on Facebook, and I'll never forget it. And it said, thug, troubled human, unable to grieve.

And I was like, how many thugs are there out there? And I'm like, that's pretty much everyone. Just, you know, Another one is, don't judge me just because I sin differently from you.

I was like, you know, everyone's got their own, oh, they're bad because of this, they're bad because of that. And it's like, okay, and you're bad because of, you know, the other 14 things. So I absolutely loved when you were telling me, you focus on the people and what you're really about, because here's the reality. Any business can do this.

There you have it. There you have it. You know, and we've been very fortunate to be voted top 100 places to work and Healthy Workplace Award by the American Psychological association, the Minnesota Psychological Association, a number of different organizations, and they all almost always ask, you know, what do you do? If we wanted to have a culture like that, what do you do? And I go, well, first and foremost, you actually have to care, right? Like, you actually have to want to have an amazing, caring, collaborative, vulnerable culture. Because if you don't want that, it doesn't matter what you do or what you say, it won't happen. Second thing is, there isn't one thing you can do. What you find is that initiatives or even people have kind of a useful life. You might only have a team member for three, four, five years, but maybe they're the cheerleader, right? They're the person who gets everybody to get up out of their seats and do 10 push ups. You're like, okay, that's weird. But people loved it, right? That gets old. And so if that was my best practice and then you talked to me six months later and said, hey, how's that push up thing going? We're not doing that anymore. Oh, it must suck working there. No, because we replaced it with three other things. Right. So we have a virtual reality gaming system set up in our office. The guys will go over there if they need a break. They got a bad phone call, they're stressed out, they'll go virtual reality and play beat saber or they'll go walk through some haunted house or do something. Then they'll go back to work. We've got a Nintendo Switch gaming center right around the corner from my office and they have some smash beat up your friend game. I don't even know what the heck it's called because I'm not a gamer, but they would go do that. They would go play games. We've got a massage chair over in our lobby area. If they need a break, they'll go get a massage in the massage chair. We've got one of those big campfire sized Jenga games, you know, the big two by four ones. And yeah, we put that on like a three foot high table. And so when that thing comes crashing down, the whole office can hear that somebody just lost Jenga. Right. It isn't one thing, you know, it's not the full time salad bar or the veterans leave policy that we give to folks that are in the active duty. It's. It's 50 of them. And it's the fact that if you ask me again next year what those 50 things are, 10 of them will be different. It's because you care. Anybody can do it.

I love that. What's your thing? You're not a gamer, but I see you got the headset. What's your thing you do? Where do you go when you need a break?

I tell everyone, give me a pair of handlebars and two wheels. It can either have an engine on it or not. I can be mountain biking, road biking, or I can be on a motorcycle and I'm in my happy place. Don't even really don't even need anywhere to go. I'll go around the block.

I was going to ask if you had a motorcycle game in there. I know you like motorcycles.

I do like motorcycle. No games. I would rather just ride the real thing.

There you go.

Creating a culture in this type of atmosphere. What's been the Biggest transformation you've been able to give to a client as.

A result of it, to a client. I think the mystique is the thing, right? So when clients come to us, they're immediately defensive, and they immediately think that, oh, it's the IT company. Oh, great, another black hole of a place that won't help me with my problems, right? So the biggest thing that we give them is this friendship and this hope and this belief that we got your back, right? And so they'll call and immediately think, oh, I'm gonna. First of all, I'm gonna hold for 15 minutes. I'm gonna talk to, you know, Joe Idiot, and they're gonna hand me off to somebody else who's not gonna do anything. And that's not how it is. You know, we answer the calls, we get them to a technician. We then actually treat them like people and talk to them and say, hey, how's it going? How's your day? Oh, this is urgent. Well, let's get rid of the small chalk, small talk, and let's get through this, right? Like, we actually address them as people. We get to know them. We know what they're working on. We can almost anticipate why they might call because they're an Excel user. And so, you know, what's the one thing we give them? We give them real people that they get to know, and they can have the same type of relationship they would have with the HR person who sits down the hall and the sales assistant who works at the desk down in the corner. Or we're the IT company that they get to know. Right? That's actually fairly unique in IT support, believe it or not.

What has this done for referrals for your company?

Well, and there you have it. We don't really do marketing. We don't have billboards. We don't go in magazines. We've grown, as you noticed on the Inc. 5000. For two years straight, we've grown by about 25 to 30%. Compounded annual growth now for five years in a row. And our first, second, and third leading lead source are referrals. Referrals and referrals. That's where we get our leads. It comes from friends, it comes from customers. It comes from end users. We have people who leave one company, go to another company, and then pull us into there because they're so frustrated with the IT support and their new company that they're like, just call, imagine it, and they'll take care of it. So referrals are definitely the thing, and they Hear the happiness thing, expanding the circle of happiness, and they kind of roll their eyes. And then once they get here and they know us, they realize that it's real, you know, and they weren't happy before, they are more happy now, and they have friends that are unhappy. It's a natural referral. So it's helped us very well. And to your point, anybody can do this. Anybody can create a very strong culture that is a magnet for great employees. And referring clients has nothing to do with what we do, it's just how we do it and the people that we have in our circle. Right.

I loved when you said the kicker, though. You actually have to care.

Yeah.

You can't just put it as a line item, as care with all the customers a little bit more. I mean, that could be what, send them two emails instead of one. If you don't have that servant's heart, it's not gonna work.

Would you agree? I totally agree. And, you know, you kind of jokingly said that, but how many times do you see those words on a WAL where it's, oh, accountability and integrity and trust and you hear people's core values. I was at a prospect not too long ago and I saw those words and so I brought them up. I thought, well, this is good conversation piece. You know, I'm going to show interest in their core values. And I said, I see that you have accountability on the wall over there. She kind of laughs. Yeah, we're not very accountable. I go, well, isn't it a core value? She says, well, it's more of an aspiration.

So you do, you, you could put care on the wall, but you actually do have to care.

But what if you put some really cool acronyms and C sounds for confidence and A.

That could be very special for you. It might not work.

I, I see so many companies do that. And same thing with their marketing messaging. It's like they're just using these plaid tube phrases and it's like, we care about our customers. It's like, well, everyone says that. Yeah. There's something I saw recently in a show and it was a mockery of It's a comedy show, kind of. But the store, they were replicating. I'm not going to say the name. If anyone knows where I used to work, it was that one. The store in the show was called Buy More and it was an electronics retail giant big box store with a yellow logo. And on. Yeah, you caught it. And on the side they were panning the camera and they had all these pictures. You Know the whole, the corporate people looking all fancy and doing all the right stuff and it's like, we would be proud to help you spend your parents money.

So everything around the store, their marketing was like, look at us, we're the best because of this. And I was like, that's hilarious.

It might actually work.

It goes into the point like you're talking about, if you don't care, it's going to shine through. It might not be that overtly obvious, right, but people can feel it, people can sense it.

Well, like I said, people ask me, what do you do? One of my questions back to them is, what have you done so far? And if, and if their list is non existent or very short, what are you going to really tell them that's really going to change? Like they clearly don't care enough to have done anything, much less failed at it. But if you do care, the next thing I will say is this.

People embrace the world that they help create. I didn't make it up. Some other smart person said that. But if you truly grasp what that means is I actually don't have the best ideas and even if I did, they will work more effectively if somebody else comes up with them, right? And so when you ask what should be on your list, don't try to answer the question yourself. Go get a couple people together that you value their opinions, maybe you really want their loyalty, or maybe they're even disgruntled, but get them into a room and say, hey, we'd really like to double down on our culture. We'd like to make this a destination employee or employment opportunity. We'd like people to really love working here. What are the top five, 10 things you think we should do here? I'm not going to promise we'll do them all. I may not be able to afford many of them, but I'd like to start making headway. And you have that open and honest conversation, they give you some feedback and then you actually do one or two of those things and then rinse and repeat. What you find is you have a highly engaged culture that will evolve over time, right? It's going to take a little while for people to buy in and to believe that this wasn't a fad that you saw on some fancy podcast. But if it isn't a fad and if it's real and they get to help create it, it'll last and then it can self refresh. Because again, I went through all of my good ideas probably 15 years ago. I don't have Very many left. But our team does. And every time you bring in a new team member, they bring another idea with them. It's, it's self refreshing if you let it be.

So giving the team the empowerment and the leniency to say, hey, I want to bring this to you. Yeah, I think that sounds fantastic in and of itself and is a great segue for my next question of what is, what was the first thing you did when you started doing this?

Oh, I don't remember the first because you, you were.

What's one that you remember earlier on? Because so a lot of what you're mentioning, you're going, oh, we got the virtual reality room. And you said that sounds fantastic. But I do realize when you're going, hey, go drop all this money on a playroom. Not everyone might be able to start with that. I have something at the top of my mind. But what's one you think anyone could do early on to get the ball rolling?

One of the first things we did, it actually was one of the things on the list that won us an award back in 2006, I believe was called Dream Sessions. It has a nice name. But the idea is this, you pull together a group of folks and you say, we're going to dream together today. The things that we dream about today are things that we can't do tomorrow even if we wanted to. They're going to be too far fetched, they're going to be too expensive, they're going to be too big and too grandiose. But we're going to dream about them today. And it might be opening a new branch or it might be creating that virtual reality gaming room or it might be having unlimited PTO for all of our team members. Like kind of just go big or go home. And we'd invite people and we'd have these dream sessions and they would be an hour and a half, two hours. You know, we'd make sandwiches or we'd cater in, or maybe we do it even in a non food environment. Right, but. But it was not a politically attended event. It was anybody in the company who wanted to dream. Didn't matter what your role, didn't matter how long you'd been here. Come on in. It's a facilitated discussion and I tried to say as little as possible other than just directing traffic. And what you'd find is a whole pile of harebrained ideas that people would laugh about and poke fingers and do whatever. But it was first of all entertaining, highly engaged, very, very open minded. Like once you Kind of throw a couple of those crazy ideas out there. It just gets the avalanche going. And then it happens. Somebody says something that the whole room goes.

And it gets quiet. And we think, huh, we could probably do that. That. What would it take? Wow. How much would that.

Next thing you know, that dream became a reality almost instantaneously within the room. Even if I never said anything more and I left the room on that note, oftentimes it would just happen, right? Because people realize that they have a lot more control over their environment than they thought. You know, you come to work, you have a cruddy day. You know, I had to sit next to Sally and Joe and Mike and Bob, and they were all complaining about their lives, and. And then they go home, and they're a victim. And then in this dreaming session, they realize they actually have power to change some of that. If they could do this or if they could do this or if they could do this, they would like their job better. They would like coming to work more. Why aren't we doing this? Wow, I think I'm gonna go do this. And they do. The other thing that happens is you find out that many of those things don't cost money. And if they do, it's not. It's not a lot. The things that make a big deal of difference are oftentimes just little things. We've got folks on our team that like yoga. We have another group that likes to meditate. We have another group that likes to do taekwondo. That's actually me. And so we have a little exercise room over there that we have a little reservation panel on, and people can reserve the room. And we actively have yoga and meditation and taekwondo sessions in there. You know how much it costs? About a hundred bucks for the maths. That's it. Right? That's not an idea I came up with. It's an idea our team came up with in a session that we had probably three years ago. And before we moved into our new space, we had to move the desks out of the way and dim the lights and kind of, you know, make it work. Now we have a nice space for it, and people love it. So powerful stuff.

And it also goes back to the holistic approach of the personal side of things, too, because, like those repetitive tasks, we are not machines. Just being able to go take a break. That sometimes can be the difference, let alone doing yoga and taekwondo. And I took it. I took it also. I like it.

You know, there's these things that a lot of companies think you need to spend all this money and you really don't. So I'm great grateful to hear that you're embodying it and giving that leniency and also putting into action and not just having some trite picture on the wall. That would make for a good comedy video for sure.

You know, you mentioned taking a break, so one of the things. I'll just piggyback that last thought. One of the things we did at a couple offices ago, and we had a pool table and we thought kind of long and hard. Me and my business partner at the time, we liked playing pool.

Darts too.

Darts are good too, right? Yeah. And I remember when we were contemplating it, one of the things in the back of our heads were the smokers on our team. I don't have any issue with smokers, but they take breaks, right? They have to go and take a smoke break. And so we thought, well, if we get a pool table, are the smokers now going to take smoke breaks and pool breaks? Like, did we just double their breaks? And it turns out, guess what? They didn't. Smokers are smart enough to know that they want to use their break time having a cigarette. The problem we had was with the non smokers. They weren't taking breaks. They were getting burnt out, they were getting ornery and they were sitting in their cube kind of festering and they had no smoke break. And so we got a pool table and guess what? Those guys stood up and they came and started to play pool. We thought, this is awesome. This worked great. Wow, are we smart. What we didn't realize would happen was that the two people playing pool would then start talking about work and they would start collaborating and they would start free form thinking and they would start being creative and all of a sudden they'd go, oh, you did, that's great. That's right. And off they would go and they would go solve their problem and do their deal. We didn't realize there was actually going to be work, productivity and creativity happening in this smoke break. Right. And so it's, it's kind of interesting how things play out. Like sometimes you get even more benefit than you thought.

That.

How much would you say if. I'm sure you're not tracking it empirically, but what have you noticed from implementing these. When you're saying that productivity increase, if you were to just ballpark, how much do you think it really helped?

You know, like you said, your ballparking, it wouldn't surprise me if it was double digits, 10, 20%. But there's another number that People don't talk about as much either. And it has to do with the retention level. And how much does it cost for you to hire a new person, train them, get them up to speed, and acclimate them with your culture? Verse, how much benefit do you have by retaining somebody who likes their job, enjoys coming to work, refers you other employees who then come and don't leave and help? Right. Like, what's the ROI there? There are people that put on that, but it's high. It's a high number, you know, and.

That'S the thing you attract to you who you are, not what you want.

Right.

And right when I was. The words were leaving my mouth. I didn't want to interrupt, but I was thinking I should have said initially, because if you're trying to calculate it long term, it's pretty much endless. But even the initial boost, I was guessing about 15, 20%, maybe even 25.

Maybe, maybe.

Because if you do that, do those short. I do.

I.

It's personally, what I do is the shorter burst. Like, I'll do a couple of these back to back, and then it's like, whoo, whatever. And then come back because the whole eight 12 hours straight, there's no one. I mean, you can't even run a car. Just. You're gonna have to change the oil, the tires or something. There's. It breaks down over time. You know, computers, the heat, you gotta keep those puppies cooled. Same thing with your brain.

Yep, yep. No. And we tell our guys, you know, it's great that you're on a roll. It's great that you closed two, three, four tickets in a row and you've made four people's day there. But stop for a second, push away from your desk, stand up, go play a game, go get a massage. Just go walk around the floor. If you need to go up enough, do something to reset yourself, because the next person waiting to receive your help will get that much higher level of interaction from you. And for those folks that really can embrace that reset, you find that a. They're happier, they're more productive, they leave feeling more successful, and they're more excited when they come to work in the morning. I mean, it's a really good habit that again, everybody can learn. Right. This isn't an IT thing. Any. Any one of your listeners probably has team members that could benefit from this best practice.

Absolutely. Just giving them more freedom and trust.

Yeah. Yes.

Well, that is a great segue into the second half with the imperfect action round. We're going to come Back with that right after we thank our sponsor. Why every business needs a book, including yours. Would you like to save five plus hours with every prospect? Generate more leads and profit in your business? Now visit businessbookchecklist.com and learn how you can implement this in your business today. All right, Rich, we're back with the implementation imperfect action round. Are you ready to take imperfect action?

Know what this means and I'm ready.

Well, you built a successful company. You'll do fine. What I do Here is three simple questions, 60 second rapid fire answers and no matter what interview I know expert authority world already got tremendous value already without a doubt in my mind. But no matter what interview I'm doing.

This area is something they can the imperfect action round. Something they can take imperfect action and implement today in their business. And the first question is what is the fastest path to the cash?

Fastest path to the cash?

Provide more value than you are charging for. In other words, don't worry so much about what the bill or the invoice or the amount that your proposal is going to have in it. Worry about how much value you can bring to the buyer.

Excellent. Number two, what is the biggest problem you see your prospects making in the fastest way they can fix it?

Biggest problem our prospects are making.

I'm gonna say that they don't know what they don't know. I said that earlier. I'm gonna say it again. There are so many infinite possibilities with technology or culture or people or loyalty or whatever they are. But too often we get into our rhythms. So what's the fastest thing you can do or the easiest way to correct that? Surround yourself with other smart people, reach out, join a peer group, read blogs, listen to podcasts, do what you need to do, Expand your horizons and learn about some of the infinite possibilities that are out there so that you can reset your expectations.

That is a great answer. That is a very great answer. Number three, what's the best way to maximize customer lifetime value?

I'm going to go back to our previous conversation. It's being sincere, caring and establishing a relationship for the long term. If you do that, even if that customer leaves you, they may refer you business, they may come back in a different lifetime or a different employment opportunity. But focus on the people, care about the service and create and invest in that relationship. The rest will take care of itself.

Excellent. What is a book that's made the biggest impact on you?

I would say any of the Patrick Lencioni Series 5 Dysfunctions of a team or any of those. Those are classics Tough to not like them. And then the other one I would probably reference is the EOS traction books. The traction Get a Grip Rocket fuel. Any of those for any small business or even medium sized business. Just a phenomenal way to start making headway on that long list of actions and to dos.

Those are more great recommendations. I've seen him speak a couple times at the Global Leadership Summit and he's, he's phenomenal.

Patrick or Gina Wickman or which one?

She only. Yes. Yeah. Amazing speaker. Yeah.

All right, well, where can people learn more about you and find out more about you and your company?

You definitely can find me on LinkedIn. Richard Anderson. There are many of us, but if you look for the one in Imagine it, that's a good place to land. Otherwise, obviously our website www.imagineiti.com so there's an extra I on there. Otherwise, of course, this podcast, I'm sure we'll have some great links to it and you can find more there.

Absolutely. We'll make sure they're in the show notes@eainterviews.com and Richard, it's been an absolute pleasure. I want to say thanks for coming on. It's great having you and I'm glad we got to do this.

Yeah, thank you for having me. It was a pleasure.

All right, Expert Authority World, we got another great episode here. I know you got a lot out of it. We will see you on tomorrow's. Have a great day and God bless. Why every business needs a book, including yours. Would you like to save five plus hours with every prospect? Generate more leads and profit in your business? Now visit businessbookchecklist.com and learn how you can implement this in your business today. Hey, thanks for listening to today's episode. I hope you got a lot out of it. I know I sure did. If you haven't done so already, I invite you to subscribe to the show and also be sure to check out eainterviews.com for complete show notes, the full interview video experience, links to the resources we mentioned, and more. Have a blessed day and I'll see you tomorrow.