Transcript
WEBVTT
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Want to expand the reach of your
content? Start a PODCAST, feature industry
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experts on your show and leverage the
influence and reach of your guests to grow
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your brand. Learn more at sweet
phish MEDIACOM. Are you trying to establish
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your brand as a thought leader?
Start a PODCAST, invite industry experts to
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be guests on your show and watch
your brand become the prime resource for decision
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makers in your industry. Learn more
at sweet fish Mediacom. You're listening to
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be tob growth, a daily podcast
for B TOB leaders. We've interviewed names
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you've probably heard before, like Gary
vanner truck and Simon Senek, but you've
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probably never heard from the majority of
our guests. That's because the bulk of
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our interviews aren't with professional speakers and
authors. Most of our guests are in
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the trenches leading sales and marketing teams. They're implementing strategy, they're experimenting with
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Pactics, they're building the fastest growing
bedd companies in the world. My name
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is James Carberry. I'm the founder
of sweet fish media, a podcast agency
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for BB brands, and I'm also
one of the CO hosts of this show.
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When we're not interviewing sales and marketing
leaders. You'll hear stories from behind
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the scenes of our own business.
Will share the ups and downs of our
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journey as we attempt to take over
the world. Just getting well? Maybe
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let's get into the show's hey,
everybody, logan with sweet fish here.
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Before we get straight into today's interview, I wanted to let you know about
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another podcast you might enjoy. If
you were a regular listener of this show,
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you'll probably really like the B Tob
Revenue Executive Experience With Chad Sanderson over
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at value selling associates. Chad is
a good friend of ours here at sweetfish,
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a phenomenal podcast host. I really
liked one of his older episodes from
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probably a year back with type Capony, the author of the transparency sailed.
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Great conversation about leveraging honesty, transparency
and a value added approach in B Tob
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Sales. Check out the B Tob
Revenue Executive Experience With Chad Sanderson on apple
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podcast or anywhere you do your list. All right, now let's really get
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into the show. Welcome back to
be tob growth. I'm Logan lyles with
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sweet fish media. I'm joined today
by Scott Cooking. He is the president
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over at links unlimited. Scott,
how you doing today, sir? I'm
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doing well. Thank you. I
hear the weather's better in Cincinnati. You're
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actually having golfing weather and we got
six inches of snow and single digits out
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here in Colorado. Right. Well, you know, as long as I
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can extend the golf season, it's
good for me. So yeah, I
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hear you there. Well, Scott, we're going to be talking about how
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to make it very easy for your
customers, you were vendor partners, to
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engage with you on a number of
fronts, and you guys do this really
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well and it's a topic that you're
passionate about. I think it's going to
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add a ton of value to listeners
today. But before we jump straight to
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that, I would love for you
to give us a little bit of contacts
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and background on yourself and what you
and the links unlimited team are up to
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these days. Yeah, so,
so, links in a limited. We've
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been in business for twenty three years. Hard to believe, but it has
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been twenty three years and you know, it's hard to explain the company.
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I almost consider ourselves that the filming
company, as in we fulfill different part
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types of product for different types of
industry, and so, of course,
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the promotional product industry, the loyalty
industry, the incentive industry, the event
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gifting industry, and we even gotten
into the three pl our goal is best
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products, period, and so we
believe in the opportunity to provide the best
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products period. But when it comes
down to it, we are a fulfilment
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company and we kind of told ourselves
as the best at it. I love
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it's good. So you guys are
helping oftentimes, event marketers with planning the
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gifts around their events and how they're
going to engage with folks. Right.
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So that's that's why, both for
you guys and for your customers, this
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idea of easy engagement is something that
you're pretty passionate about, right. Yeah,
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so we started out in the in
the name linked unlimited. We start
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out in the golf industry, and
so the goal was to provide golf equipment
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to the promotional products industry, which
is a tough deal because when you think
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about golf, you got to think
about the types of product that you're you're
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doing. You're not selling a golf
club. One golf club has sixty different
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skills it has sixty different products that
you're selling, and so our goal was
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to make that easy, to put
it into these loyalty programs, easy in
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these incentive programs, to manage.
Could you not US offering a righthanded ten
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a half degree regular chaft? Yeah, you're giving the obvious several variables in
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there. You got to manage.
Yeah, for sure, correct, it's
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Gott. I love that here in
a little bit about your background. So
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let's dive into today's topic, on
making it easy for customers and really others
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to engage with you. For others
that might mean vendor partners, it might
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mean integration partners, it might mean
investors. This, this idea can go
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a lot of different directions outside your
organization, but let's focus on you know,
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thinking about not just customers but everyone
that you work with. What are
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some steps you guys have taken,
Scott, to create this mentality within your
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team that, hey, we want
to make it easy to engage with us
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on all friends, whether you're a
customer or someone else who's engaging us from
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a different angle. Maybe. Yeah, yeah, so our business philosophy is
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to develop a business strategy and so
we believe in that ease of engagement.
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We believe in the note cookie cutter
approach, and so when our sales people
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go and talk to a customer,
we start off by like what are you
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trying to do? What's the goal? How are you trying to accomplish it?
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What's The in factor? And when
you think about that, it's interesting
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that most companies don't know those answers, and so you really kind of help
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them work through that that process and
then develop a program that is going to
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accomplish what they're trying to accomplish,
and that's looking at the whole big picture.
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It is talking about the right product
selection, talking about the right ordering
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process, is talking about the right
fulfillment is talking about the personalization of the
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experience, and so there's a lot
of programs out there, and I know
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you've seen them, I've seen them, that whatever you do, the experience
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is not a good experience and we
believe in look at that whole picture and
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developing a process that the goals are
accomplished the experience is a good experience.
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Your a customer, your employ your
vendor, whoever you're trying to influence,
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looks back at that and says,
wow, that was in need a neat
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thing. Yeah, and that's what
we look at. Yeah, you touched
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on something there, Scott, that
I want to camp out on for a
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second. You mentioned no cookie cutter
approach. Give some examples there of maybe
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where there was an engagement with a
customer or the way things had been done
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and you kind of took pause and
realize we could make this a better experience,
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we can make it easier to engage
with us if we customize that here.
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I think some examples there would help
other folks kind of visualize. Oh,
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I think we could learn from that
scenario or something like that. Yeah,
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so you know, honestly, if
you take a look at just so
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ordering process, so imagine that you
were given all your employees a jacket and
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the experience of giving that check of
what they got pick sizes, they got
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to take a look at that.
Or imagine that you were given your your
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flannel you employees to an event instead
of travel. And so we try to
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take a look at the ordering process. Product is products. So you're going
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to give someone a product, how
do you make that product personalized? And
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so we try to take a look
at that whole process and personalize that situation.
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So imagine if you were doing instead
of travel and you're bringing your best
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clients over to, you know,
a resort destination. Thirty days before that
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experience we send you out a nice
email that says, hey, we're really
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excited that you're going to join us
on this trip. Thank you for all
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that you've done. Here is a
redemption code to go to this website and
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order a pair of Oak we sunglasses, just to engage at audience before the
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incentive travel. And so what we
try to take a look at is the
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whole picture and most of that time
it is on how you manage handing out
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that product. And it's kind of
funny how people will show up an instead
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of travel or even evank gifting and
they go in their room and there is
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a hat, there's their shirt,
it might be the wrong side, versus
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making that a intimate experience, personalize
that someone has the opportunity to choose what
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they want. And so we try
to take a look at the whole picture.
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fulfillments, fulfillment and as long as
you have the products, as long
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as you can fulfill, but we
look at how do you engage your employee,
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your customer, your winner of whatever
they're doing and make that experience personal
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life. Yeah, I love what
you're saying there, because you talking about
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not just the delivery, but what
is the experience? I heard you mentioned
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the term experience several times and you
know one of my favorite podcast late is
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another one that we produce from the
folks over at Bombomb, the customer experience
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podcast. In one of the themes
I've picked up from that show is that
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what you're talking about here, Scott, that you look at the experience of
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the engagement with whatever you're delivering.
In this case, you know it's a
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it's an item and could be a
pair of sunglasses. I had a t
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shirt, any number of things.
But what's the experience before and after?
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Looking at what is the customer going
through? What is the the receiver of
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this product going through outside of that
direct interaction? Are they in a hurry,
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trying to book their travel while getting
this? Are you making it easy
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for them? If you are giving
them the options to select size, do
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you make it easy for them?
So I imagine for your team it's a
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lot about asking those questions of well, when this happens, what's the next
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step in the experience for the customer? Right, yeah, yeah, and
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and actually it's not even asking and
most of the times we are telling them
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in a lot of people just don't
think about it. So there is an
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incentive, a promotional budget for most
companies, and that budget has spent on
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the product, but no one thinks, I shouldn't say no one, a
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lot of companies don't think about how
to manage that presentation. And even today
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in the loyalty business, thanks for
getting competitive. And so it's offering kitting,
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it's offering gift wrapping, it's offering
birthday cards, I mean everything's getting
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a way that you present to our
customers, ways to differentiate yourselves, ways
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to make sure that the experience is
personalized and at the same point of time,
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we want to do it with the
ease and engagement that doesn't make it
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hard for our customers. Yeah,
because, you know, a lot of
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marketers, not even just when it
comes to gift giving, but just in
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general or dealing with this balance of
you know, how do we make this
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doable? Back to your point of
when you have a lot of different products,
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a lot of different options, that
creates a lot of variables. Yet
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you know, the the bland marketing, the bland gifts, the things that
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aren't personalized. It's like when you
walk out of a trade show and you
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have all these, you know,
swag things that you know are going to
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get thrown away before you even,
you know, make it to your hotel
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room or, you know, maybe
back home after your flight. But those
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items that are personalized, that are
presented well, leave a lasting experience.
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So I can relate to the stuff
that you're talking about in the things that
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you're doing to make it easy for
your customers to engage with you, and
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it's Gott. I think a lot
of marketers listening to this are going to
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take some nuggets away from that in
apply it from their own situation. Another
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thing I'd love to have you share
before we wrap things up today. Scott.
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I ask a lot of our guests
what is a learning resource that's got
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them excited or it's informing their approach
lately, whether that is related to today's
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topic, customer experience, a marketing
in general or a personal or professional development
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resource of podcast you're listening to or
anything like that that you'd like to share
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with listeners today. It's interesting.
Nom will answer this question probably the way
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that you would not want me to
answer the question. But links has done
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a good job of developing our processes
without listening to other people, and so
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we do stuff that people would say
is not the right thing to do.
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We've spend money way too much on
customers, or then we have to.
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We are, I would say,
a competitive priced company. But we also,
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like I said, look at the
big picture. And so me personally,
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I've been invited to a bunch of
business groups. I've had consultants come
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in and take a look. The
company advised us to do is different stuff
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and honestly, we are our own
company. We do our own thing.
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We make a lot of mistakes,
don't get me wrong, but we learn
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from those and it but we believe
in the long run we do things right.
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Yeah, I love it's got.
What you're saying there reminds me of
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a book listeners should definitely check out
on this topic of, you know,
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questioning best practices, you know not
just assuming that, hey, because folks
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in our industry or companies that look
like us or a consultant recommends this as
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a benchmark or a best practice,
we should still question that and that that
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book I'm talking about is a break
the wheel by Ja Conzo. Highly recommend
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people to check that out. It
definitely falls in line with what you're talking
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about. There's Scott, of you
know, questioning the advice that you get
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and really looking at what what's the
best approach for us to get things done.
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It'Scott. This has been a fantastic
conversation. If anybody listening to this
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would like to learn more about links
unlimited or stay connected with you guys,
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what's the best place for them to
reach out? Yeah, I'd say go
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to www dot links for limitcom.
From there you can touch all of our
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social media point our online catalog,
and then I'll to learn a little bit
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more about it it. Scott,
thanks so much for being on the show
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today. Really appreciate it. Okay, thank you. We totally get it.
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We publish a ton of content on
this podcast and it can be a
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lot to keep up with. That's
why we've started the BDB growth big three,
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a no fluff email that wools down
our three biggest takeaways from an entire
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week of episodes. Sign up today
at Sweet Phish Mediacom Big Three. That
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sweet fish Mediacom Big Three