Fred Reichheld: How to Build a Business Customers Can't Stop Recommending | Entrepreneurship | YAPClassic

23:12So to your point, great businesses. And I agree with Robbins and Abraham. It's just that's where the most that's the fusion right there that energizes success. And I think rather than kidding around with surveys, let's keep track of referrals.

23:31Hala Taha:And to your point, love is so important. When you love someone, you're going to recommend the company that gave you that great service, that gave you that great experience. So it's not necessarily that they love your company. They love their friends and family so much that they're going to recommend your company. Absolutely. Yeah. You know, people say they love their Apple computer. I think this is, but they also say they love their Doxone. They love their favorite ice cream. And the love that actually energizes, inspires is this notion of enriching the lives you touch and your happiness deriving from that success.

24:09And people who live that life live a pretty good life, even if they don't make a ton of money, that they have made a difference in the world and will die proud. This the notion that love is also behind business success, I think, is the radical proposition that I make in winning on purpose. And the evidence is it's really overwhelming. People don't read books anymore much, but this one has the evidence that the company who has earned the loyalty of their customers using NPS as a good proxy for that, measuring it, the highest NPS company in every industry we've looked at has the highest total shareholder return over the decade.

24:48And, you know, that's been a huge moneymaker for me as an investor. But I think it's even more the companies and boards of directors, investors, they got to see the facts here. This flywheel we talked about, it's the only flywheel that keeps spinning through time.

25:03Hala Taha:100%. And to that point, you know, COVID hit, right? Black Swan event. We had no idea what, you know, what the economic impact would be. Nobody saw it coming. And these things can happen. They happen every several years. So talk to us about how customer loyalty and having a high NPS score can kind of mitigate these black swan events. Well, black swans have been going on for a long time. It feels like we have a flock of them landing in the last few years, but that's how the world works. And the companies who have the financial mindset that's very common today, running themselves in the accounting.

25:40And remember, accounting solves for profits. So very quickly, if you use general accepted accounting principles to run your business, which big companies almost have to, then you are teaching your people the purpose of your business is profits. And that's not a good purpose. That goes back to how much can we extract from our customers' wallets as long as it's legal. That destroys energy. Good people don't commit themselves to that. Then if you can make loving your customers this idea of making their lives better and keep track of progress there and recognize and reward people for earning tens, real tens, not begging for tens, then I think you can manage your way to success.

26:28But I suppose the biggest challenge, almost every entrepreneur gets this intuitively. They can't succeed. They can't afford expensive advertising and crazy marketing promotions and big sales forces. They have to turn their customers into their sales force. But as they get bigger, most companies flip over to the dark side where accounting rules the day and the purpose becomes profits. Yeah.

26:51Hala Taha:You know, I think we should do a rebranding of NPS and call it Net Love Score. What do you think about that? I even toyed with that in its early days. And that was a step too far for me. In fact, even using the word love in business, I thought was a stretch until, I mean, think about it as a customer. If you had an organization or a team who was always watching out for your best interests and innovating and striving to put a smile on your face and make your life better, of course you would go there all the, you give them all the business you had and you refer your friends. So it's feeling the love as a customer that inspires loyalty and starts the flywheel spinning.

27:33Hala Taha:Okay. So my next question is how we can turn passives and detractors into promoters. What are the ways that you've seen work in the past? Probably the earliest successes in the net promoter movement were built around fixing detractors and the early adopters. NPS is an open source system. I felt like I had a bigger chance of changing the world, a better chance. If we made it free, everyone can use it, experiment with it. And because of that, companies like Apple grabbed it, Lego, IBM, just thousands of companies experimented and helped it get better. And the mindset that clicked first was, gosh, when I see a detractor, I've got a quality problem.

28:21I have a defect. So zero defections, total quality management. Let's close the loop with that customer, get to the root cause, fix it, do it at the right level of the organization. Don't do it at the headquarters, do it at the branch or the product where this issue occurred so the learning is in the right place in the organization. That was phase one. Where we are now is what innovations not only keep customers delighted, but raise the game so they are nines or tens, and they're referring 10 friends, not just two. So it's innovation. And yes, passives, when you talk to a passive and you say, what could we do better?

29:03They go, I don't know. I'm happy. I got what I paid for. You have to be the innovator and get your promoters to give you interesting ideas. And think about the companies that you buy from for whom you're a promoter and what they did that was so remarkable that turned you into a referring engine, an experiment. And the cool thing about NPS as a survey is you can run these experiments without putting it out for the whole population. You can see what works. Amazon's very good at this. They run experiments. If it doesn't work, kill it. If it creates a lot of tens and repeat purchases, roll it out around the world.

29:40So that innovation, I think, needs to be energized. Step one, go find out when people are referring you, what is it they're saying about you? Get a real clear sense of what is remarkable and then teach your organization that you can't rest on your laurels. Yeah, do more of that, but you have to come up with additional stuff. I mean, Amazon, great example. They did so many things right with the easy purchase and shopping cart and one click. But a few years ago, they said, oh, and when you want to return something, you don't have to put it back in its box and get the label. Just take the thing and bring it to the UPS store and we'll take care of all that stuff and credit your money right away.

30:23It's like, you know, that kind of innovation is why they still have a crazy net promoter score high and why they continue to grow and prosper. and why people have legitimate issues, how they treat their people, all this waste and packaging. But at the core, Amazon's purpose is to make customers' lives better. And if their customers started saying, stop packing, stop the cardboard wastage, they'd respond very quickly to it.

30:54Hala Taha:What's up, young in-profiters? When you start a business, nobody warns you that you're about to become the creator, the marketer, the finance team, the customer support team, and the person who's chat GBT-ing why checkout is not working. That's exactly why I always say start with Shopify. Shopify has been a real business partner for me as I've grown Yap Academy and launched products like my LinkedIn Secrets Masterclass. It powers millions of businesses worldwide and 10 % of all e-commerce in the US. Whether you're a household name or just getting started, Shopify has got you covered. Because let's be real, your business should not require 17 tabs, five logins, and a minor emotional breakdown just to sell a product.

31:35Hala Taha:Shopify lets you build your store, market your products, manage payments, track analytics, and handle shipping returns and inventory all in one place. Shopify does this all so you don't have to do it alone. Start your business today with the industry's best business partner, Shopify, and start hearing. Sign up for your$1 per month trial today at shopify.com slash profiting. Go to shopify.com slash profiting. That's shopify.com slash profiting. I want to take a side track really quick because you brought something up that I meant to bring up in the beginning of the conversation, but we didn't talk about it.

32:09Hala Taha:And that's the fact that you launched MPS as an open source software, which to me was just so interesting and I think pretty innovative back then when you did it. So talk to us about why you decided to launch it as open source. For those who may not know, some of my listeners are on the younger side, what is an open source software? What are the pros and cons of launching something like that? Well, the classic open source software would be a, you know, Google's Android. And I think Wikipedia is a lovely example. These companies build themselves and let others innovate and build plat on top of them.

32:45And while there is a commercial model, there are people who package that software and make it easy to use and easy to understand. Red Hat is a classic example of a firm that has found out how to have a profitable commercial overlay. The core software itself, the core ideas, the IP, are there for everyone to share. And in the case of Net Promoter, you have to have a license if you're using Net Promoter in your business. So if you're a survey firm and you're calculating net promoter scores and using that, you have to pay Bain a small license fee. But the license fee is so modest. It's not a moneymaker.

33:26It just makes it clear that when you say net promoter, when you ask it zero through 10, these things are constant and the brand gets protected. But for users who are just businesses that want to get feedback from their customer, it's free. You might want to hire somebody who has software to do that really in an elegant way. You might want to call people or send them a survey yourself. And I did it because at that point in my life, you know, do you want to be a jillionaire or a quadruple jillionaire? That's sort of stupid. Do you want to have a major impact on the world? That's what seemed energizing to me.

34:06And I thought we would have a bigger impact if we let everyone try it for free.

34:10Hala Taha:And from my understanding, you've done a lot of investments based on NPS score and the companies that are doing it right. And we'll get into that later on in terms of the right and the wrong way. Right. But the customers that are doing right, you tend to invest in those companies. Is there a way for other people to find out what companies have a true, high, accurate NPS score? If you're the target customer, you're the right age group and the right socioeconomic segment. And if you and your friends are just going crazy and referring it, chances are it's a very high net promoter score. So that's just a common sense way.

34:47I've had a little bit of an advantage because at Bain, as more and more of the organization at Bain has seen the power of net promoter and how difficult it is for individual companies to get net promoter scores that are comparable apples to apples. Because the instant you are the one asking for feedback, it biases which of your customers bother responding and what they say. So we've created Bain Prism. And NPS Prism is a classic, monstrously large panel for, I guess, probably a dozen different industries now that gets really accurate, really comparable NPS scores for every brand in the industry.

35:28And with that advantage, I invest in the leader. And if you take the companies that had the highest NPS in my previous book, The Ultimate Question 2.0, I wrote with Rob Markey, I invested in those companies. My total shareholder returns over the decade after the book was published were higher than any mutual fund or ETF tracked by Morningstar, higher than the lion's share of private equity firms and I had the liquidity and the low risk of just investing in public companies. The insight being I could shine a light on the flywheel of each competitor in an industry and see which one had the best flywheel spinning, customers coming back for more and bringing their friends.

36:13And that has been, you know, it's tens of millions of dollars for me personally. And it's available to everyone. But shockingly, there is not yet a big movement to get on accurate NPS scores. The world is still in such an accounting mindset that there's still just a tiny minority of investors who see the power.

36:34Hala Taha:That's why I was shocked, because I was like, well, why isn't there some sort of like tracker that everybody knows about, like top NPS scores? And since there isn't, we've got like the godfather here. What are the top ones? What should we be investing in? What are you investing in? Who's a recent one? You know, NPS Prism, the most recent industry that they added was the grocery business. And the top score was a regional grocer called HEB down in Texas. But it's private. On the other hand, even though if you can't invest, you know where you want to have your kids go work. Chick-fil-A has the highest NPS.

37:10They're a private company. But I'd say then relatives who feel like entrepreneurs and want to be a store manager, And that's a wonderful career path. The Trader Joe's is one of the top handful, but that too is owned by the next one in NPS is Aldi, private still. Then you get Costco. All of these are at superstar levels.

37:34Hala Taha:It's so interesting that so many are private. It just goes to show that if you've got the flywheel effect, you don't need to take on investors, but keep going. Sorry for interrupting you. Yeah, so Costco is a public firm. I invested in Costco the instant I saw that they were top in NPS because my personal experience has been so positive. And I use them heavily as an example in Winning on Purpose, this last book. Their philosophy is customers come first. And they act in a way that makes it clear that they live their philosophy. There's a lot of stories about Costco that I really advise entrepreneurs to read.

38:11They've gone and they're one of the larger companies in the world today. And their formula works in China. It works everywhere, every kind of town. They're just crushing it. And they make people's lives better. I'll give a comparison. I bought an expensive Mercedes-Benz. Great. Just a lovely car. except on my first trip to the airport, I was a little late, I was rushing, it threw its windshield wiper. And so I'm driving, trying to look through the passenger window to get to the airport without having an accident. I was very frustrated. And then when I went to get it fixed, they said, it's my fault.

38:50I must've gone to one of those car washes that dislodges the rubber blade. And I'm thinking, what? And I had to, not just one, I had to buy two because these windshield wipers come and packs a two 200 bucks it just and and and mercedes uses nps they think they do they're just so but they're the you know they're they're begging for scores and pleading and you know if you can't give us a 10 call us not then i go costco and i had a shaver electric shaver forget the brand but stopped working after uh nine months i said that's not right this was expensive shaver So I took it back to the Costco store, not even the one I bought it at.

39:28And I said, listen, it's not working. Can you do anything for me? And they looked, you know, they scanned it. They scanned my membership card. And they said, your account's been credited. I said, wow, no questions about what went wrong? They said, no, customer like you, if you're not happy with it, it's, you know, it's not right. And I thought, oh, my gosh, one of the guys I know, there are quite a few billionaires that I know personally. And one of the early ones was Scott Cook, the founder of Intuit, who was TurboTax and QuickBooks and so forth. And his philosophy, he started at Bain about when I did, and then he left to found Intuit.

40:05He was the first adopter outside of Bain of Net Promoter. And he said, my philosophy is we don't deserve a dollar of profit until our customer's happy. We think about what a high-minded philosophy that is. But it worked in software. That's why he's still got a successful software firm. Most 98 % of the others, success stories back in his day, they're gone. Costco has the same philosophy. You're a good customer, and they have my track record as a customer. They know we buy a lot. You are unhappy with that product, and we don't deserve it, and the manufacturer doesn't deserve any profit. What an amazing, common-sense way to run a business.

40:45Yeah, for sure.

40:46Hala Taha:I mean, it's so important to have customer loyalty. So I have a story to share. I have the biggest blip that I ever made with Yap Media, my social agency. So I have a business partner. He owns 10 % and he's totally the numbers guy. He's all financial, super smart guy, very successful. I'm very much like the relationship person. Most of my clients are actually former guests that become my clients and then they become my mentors and my friends and everything like that. And so my business partner is very much about the numbers and we've been growing really fast. And, you know, our rates keep getting higher and higher.

41:20Hala Taha:And we have legacy clients that pay a lot less than our clients now. And so the biggest blip that I ever made in my company was when my executive team convinced me to reach out to all my legacy customers and try to raise the rates. And it messed up some of my relationships. We're fine now, but like it took a while to get it back on track. And it just goes to show that when you have legacy customers, these were clients that were with me for a couple of years. They referred all their friends. They were like my number one advocates. And for a period of time, they were mad at me for trying to raise the rates on them, right?

41:52Hala Taha:Because they felt like they were loyal. And so there is a problem with the way that people think in terms of like the accounting practices and just only looking at the numbers and the profits and not actually evaluating customer relationships. Because I sit in these finance meetings and I get so frustrated. They're like, oh, like, you know, like if it's like some sort of like a negative forecast and I'm like, but you guys don't know about all the conversations I'm having. And like, there's so much bubbling up that's just not calculated, you know? So I'd love for you to talk about, you know, what needs to change in terms of accounting practices and how entrepreneurs can avoid making this mistake of not measuring their customer loyalty.

42:33It's an excellent question. And I've wrestled with that for a long time. I see people misusing Net Promoter the way car dealers do, begging for scores. But with surveys, unless you have a big panel with double-blind research, you can't get honest, accurate, comparable scores. What do we measure that really gets to the heart of customer love? In Winning on Purpose, I introduce a new metric that I think deserves to be the equal of net promoter. Maybe someday it's slight superior. It's called earned growth. and it just it takes the point of view that you have with every customer you have to keep track of are they buying more or less or defecting and are they referring friends and so your earned growth is your total growth the business generates in revenue that comes from existing customers being happy and buying more and the friends they refer great companies will have earned growth rates, 130, 140, 150%.

43:36So you think about their resting growth rate with no sales and marketing. They're just growing like crazy. I think for entrepreneurs and for the serious numbers people, force them to start measuring your earned growth rate and your earned growth component for every customer. And you'll start focusing on the right things. Instead of aggregates like total revenue, which can lead you down the wrong path. If your customer is not buying more, coming back for more and bringing their friends, there's something wrong that needs attention. But if they are growing 150 % a year, don't screw up the decision-making by kowtowing to the accounting mindset.

44:20Now, of course, you have to have cash flow to keep the business healthy. And so finance is vital, but it's not the purpose. And in too many businesses finance, because we can measure it more rigorously and report it and the regulatory system sort of gives it an edge. We give it way too much power in our thought process.

44:40Hala Taha:100%. And I would argue like that little blip, that story that I was telling you about when I went to go raise the rates with my customer, you know, we were trying to raise the rates so minimally 20%. And I always tell my partners now, Like, look, we did that and we lost so many referrals. We could have grown, you know, what we're doing amazing. So don't get the wrong picture. But like we could have grown even faster had we not lost all those referrals for that point in time while my customers were upset with me. So it's just such a cool tool. What's the actual formula behind earned growth rate?

45:10There's two components to earn growth. The first one is the back for more, which encapsulates both retention, you know, because if somebody diminishes their business or defects, that nets out against it. And customers that expand their purchases and netting those things, there is an existing accounting metric called net revenue retention. That's the biggest component for most companies. And then you add the revenue from customers who came primarily as a result of referrals from existing customers. That set of revenue, that's earned growth. And if you are, you know, if you're well above 100%, that means you've got the flywheel spinning in the right direction.

45:54Hala Taha:So if I've never done any paid ads, no marketing, and everything is referral, then that means I have a high earned growth rate? The very best customer companies I've found have 70, 80, even 90 % of their new customers are coming on referral primarily. That doesn't mean they don't advertise at all. There's a lot of reinforcing publicity and advertising, but yes, your customer, what's the primary reason you came aboard? If they say referral from a friend, or if you have a tech platform that actually it's clear our friend referred them and keeps track of it. Those are the best kind of business you can possibly have.

46:30Those are the assets the accountants don't measure today. And they send you down the wrong path because of that.

46:36Hala Taha:I feel like this is so educational and interesting and helpful for all the entrepreneurs that are out there. So question for you, something like a podcast, right? Nowadays, podcasts can be a lead generation tool for people. Similarly, like having like a webinar where you invite potential clients. Would you consider that being referral-based business or would you consider that being more of like paid promotion? It's on the edge. If you're educating people about what you stand for and what your philosophy is, it's a way of communicating the truth to them. It's not quite as good as an existing customer who really knows you and it's not what you say about you.

47:17It's what their experience has been and what they say about you. That's the highest form of positive marketing. but I think this what you're describing with podcasts and building community it's the next

47:30Hala Taha:best thing yeah I agree I feel like it's like slightly right under is like having like a social media platform where you're known as a thought leader and you're giving away free advice or a podcast where you're building trust with someone it's not quite paid promotion it's sort of like the gray area right well and you know I think reviews are even a step further down if you could get really honest reviews on these sites and curated a little bit so it's the customers that you care about but it's even amazon who is so strong they're it's sloppy when you go in there you star ratings they don't make much difference because you know that what half of those are paid in some way or cheating so yeah you you can read the verbatims and sort of figure out who thinks like me and you can get benefit.

48:20But if people really cared about review sites, they could be so much better than they are today. And a really smart, somebody who runs one of the biggest retailers in the world said, Fred, we don't get the best insights from our NPS surveys. They're good, but they know they're talking to us. So there's social barriers about telling the truth and not hurting our feelings, or maybe they're negotiating with us, but it's a lot of biases there. The way we get to the truth is to listen to our customers talking to other customers or people they're referring on Facebook groups or in some third party platform.

48:57So the real truth is listening in on what people are saying about you in a way that's not creepy and inappropriate. But if you can have an honest way of listening to that, boy, you can learn.

49:11Hala Taha:So are you alluding to like social listening and kind of doing research about what people are saying on social media sites or something different? I would say it's, yeah, when there are message boards of customers talking to customers and it is public space, you're allowed in there, that's really powerful. But I also think the emerging tech platforms, and the one that I'm most excited about is called Mention Me, they are asking people, if you're going to refer, Or if you'll do it this way, we'll make it worth your while with a small donation to charity or something that you'll care about. It's not a bribe.

49:48And we're going to give a warm welcome to the person you're referring. Once again, it's not a bribe, but it's an appropriate recognition. They're finding who is really making referrals there and what they're saying. So if you take that verbatim comment of, you know, why I'm referring to a friend, why? and you read that comment, that's the goal. That is what, in the customer's eyes and their words, it makes you remarkable and makes you something they think would enrich the life of their friends.

50:22Hala Taha:Well, you're definitely making me feel encouraged to send out some sort of an NPS survey to my clients. So I'm excited about that. Let's move on to your latest book, Winning on Purpose. You ended up writing it after you got diagnosed with cancer. So I'd love to understand why you were inspired to write this book. And we've covered a few topics that are in it. But tell us about what people can find in this book. Yeah, when you don't know how many months you've got to live. And when I got the diagnosis, it was one of those, you know, you'll probably make it, Fred, but, you know, there's a 20 or 30 percent chance you won't be around in another year or two.

50:58And so you think, what do I need to get accomplished? And for me, there were so many people misusing Net Promoter. Two-thirds more, at least two-thirds of the world's large companies use Net Promoter or say they do. But they're using it the wrong way. They don't understand this philosophy. It's a KPI like a handful of others. And I had to get across this idea that, no, no, it's a whole philosophy. it's you know go back to the the days of the world thought of uh it was an earth-centered solar system and he had all these crazy theories about the sun rotating around the earth and then copernicus and a handful of others said no it's it's the sun is the center and and proved it um i believe the customer is the center of the of the of the solar system and we don't most people don't agree with that yet.

51:52And so winning on purpose said, no, the winning purpose, the only winning purpose is to commit your organization to making your customers' lives better and loving customers. So only 10 % of businesses, big businesses believe that today. So it's a radical proposition. But Copernicus was a radical proposition. He was right. I think I'm right. But, you know, time will tell. Will most business people come over to this point of view that customers, You know, it's not just all stakeholders. It's not maximize shareholder value. The purpose of the business is to make my customers' lives better. And if I do that, then I can make my employees happy because they have a life of meaning and purpose and they're part of the flywheel that generates superior economics.

52:38And of course, our investors are better off because of that. But man, customers have to come first. And whether it's Apple or Costco or Lego or Bain & Company, every great business I know has customer front and center and systems to reinforce that because you know you're fighting against the current of financial accounting, which points you in a different direction.

53:00Hala Taha:deep on one aspect of this, because I feel like a lot of people are under the mindset that employees is where it starts, right? Employees are the priority. Happy employees equals happy customers. We hear this all the time. Why do you feel like it starts like the purpose of business is to enrich the lives of the customer and not necessarily that it starts first with employees? There's a lot of things that make employees happy that make customers very unhappy. You know, I don't want to work long hours. I don't want to take on the tough camp. If I see a grumpy customer coming in the store, I'll go to the bathroom and let somebody else take care of it.

53:32And if you don't have your employees inspired to find ways to delight customers and make their life better, not only will it be financially unsuccessful, but you're putting them in a position of being selfish and great leaders help show the power of love. So the leader's primary responsibility isn't to make the customers happy, it's to inspire their teams to take on that mission, embrace that mission of loving customers and help them succeed. And when they do, make sure they get the appropriate recognition and rewards. Don't create a compensation system that makes salesmen rich for over-promising and selling a lot of new business that never turns into customer promoters who come back for more and bring their friends and therefore never become a true asset to the business.

54:19See, you've got to really rethink compensation, hiring, promotion. At Bain, you You can't, it's very hard to get promoted at Bain unless your team thinks you live the values of the company and make our clients succeed. We have built systems that reinforce that. And if you just look at it, Bain is always on the top. You know, whether you pick Glassdoor, Fortune, you know, pick your list, Bain has been at the top. Why? Because all of the reinforcing systems of who we hire, how we train, how we run huddles on a weekly basis, how you get promoted, it has customer value first. And I think no leader is doing their employees a favor if they don't help them understand that their happiness, their employees' happiness is based on making a meaningful contribution that the team values in making customers.

55:13Hala Taha:Well, Fred, this is such an awesome conversation to kind of round this out. And I have a couple of last questions that I ask at the end that I ask all my guests. But to round out this portion of the conversation, you know, you've been doing NPS for 20 years. You've had the privilege of studying so many really well-known businesses. What are the top business lessons that you've learned in your career? At the end of the book, I sort of pull back the curtain and make it clear that this is actually a life advice that I'm trying to give to my grandchildren who are too young to read the book at this point.

55:44But, you know, if you believe this mindset and you want to make the world a better place, it's really hard to do that on your own. You have to team up with others who have similar values, principles, and team up and find a way to help them succeed in living that mission and making it the truth and making it the common practice. So choose the people you hang with really carefully. Don't just hire them because they'll make you money. Make sure these are people who are going to be contributing to teams who are committed to enriching customer lives and who feel like this golden rule idea of love thy neighbor is the center of a well-lived life and purpose.

56:33because, you know, in the end, your loyalties, the people and the principles that they live, and I think, you know, yes, loyalties are to individual people, but loyalty has to be based on how they embody the principles that you believe are central to a well-lived life and your purpose. Those loyalties, they just define your legacy, and they certainly shape your life. Be thoughtful and be loyal. When you found that, I'm at Bain 50, not quite 50 years, but it's a group that I feel is helping make the world better. And there's nothing better you can do with your life than being connected to those kinds of teams and those organizations.

57:24And don't take crappy profit-based purpose as a customer, as an investor. You know, there's so much talk about environmental investing and, you know, pollution has to stop. But seriously, the worst kind of pollution are people mistreating each other and abusing each other in the name of profit.

57:43Hala Taha:I completely agree. So I asked some questions at the end of each episode that and we do some fun stuff at the end of the year with them. So the first question is, what is one actionable thing that our young and profitors can do today to be more profiting tomorrow? Get a sample of your new customers and ask them why they came on board. And for those that said it's a referral, find out who referred them, what it was about what they said that make that referral so impactful, and then go talk to the person who referred and understand what made them so confident in you that they would co-brand their reputation.

58:17Get a root cause set of conversations there. I think that's the most important thing to do. And then make sure your teams feel the responsibility to be remarkable, that their job isn't just to get somebody off the phone on time or to make them sort of happy enough to not be a problem. the job is to do something remarkable that they're going to talk about with their friends. And that's a high standard. But then your people have to help put pressure back on you to let you know what they need in terms of systems and resources and support training tools. That once you get your employees feeling like our job is to enrich the lives we touch and we measure our success that way.

59:05Hala Taha:I am going to make this mandatory listening for all of my 60 employees. and my executive team so that they know what our priorities here are at. Yeah, so our final question here is, what is your secret to profiting in life? Have grandchildren and have them visit a lot. And where can our listeners go to learn more about you and everything that you do? Net Promoter System is a website that has a lot of tools and resources. And just search on Winning on Purpose and you'll start seeing the things that we're developing because I still do have this open source philosophy that I want more people to understand this purpose and put it in practice.

59:45And today it's still a radical philosophy. So go to those two sites or on LinkedIn. There's a newsletter I do on LinkedIn called Customer Obsession that I think is a pretty good dose. I'd like to see teams talking about that one each month to see what lessons there are for them.

1:00:02Hala Taha:Awesome. Well, I'm a big fan of LinkedIn. I'll make sure I follow you on there. We're going to stick all your links in the show notes, your book, all your social sites, your websites. Thank you so much, Fred. This was an awesome conversation. It was my pleasure. Thank you.

1:00:17Hala Taha:Hey, App Fam, we're about to launch something that might be my favorite thing we've ever done on the podcast, a brand new series called How We Profit. Now, I've been doing Young and Profiting podcasts for eight years, and my listeners are successful. We are real entrepreneurs with real businesses, and a lot of you guys are crushing it behind the scenes. You may not be super famous. You may not be a billionaire yet, but you've got a business that you've learned how to scale, and we want to hear from you. One of the best ways to learn as an entrepreneur is from your peers, and I found it super helpful to be in these peer entrepreneurship groups and learn from other entrepreneurs who are at my level, but just in a different industry.

1:00:56Hala Taha:So that's what I want to bring to this podcast. I want this to be our own peer group, but on the podcast. And so I'm going to be interviewing people who are making anywhere from$500 ,000 to$10 million a year. They're not super famous. They're not the typical billionaires that are on my show. These are real entrepreneurs who are crushing it behind the scenes. And we're going to uncover what they do to sell, how they get their customers, what their profit margin looks like, how they market, and so much more. If this sounds like you and you want to be featured on Young and Profiting Podcast for our How We Profit series, just head to youngandprofiting.com slash apply and share your story.

1:01:32Hala Taha:Let me know why you think you should be featured on the show. Again, that's youngandprofiting.com slash apply. And who knows, maybe you'll be our next guest on Young and Profiting Podcast.