Archives for 2019

May
10, 2019

9 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Good customer service is crucial to ensuring your business will continue to grow. These nine experienced leaders and Advisors in The Oracles, including Canva founder Melanie Perkins and clothing designers Emily Current and Meritt Elliott, share their secrets for guaranteeing a world-class customer experience.

1. Turn feedback into an actionable list.

There are endless projects our team could be working on, so prioritizing goals is incredibly important. Keeping customers at the core of every decision makes that easier.

It is vital to connect and empathize with our community. As we grow, one of the challenges is ensuring that we have systems to actively listen and respond to our customers’ needs. We’ve had over 800,000 pieces of feedback across all of our channels; so we launched an internal tool to help us turn that feedback into an actionable list. We also host regular in-person workshops that are open to the public, called “Design School After Hours.” That way our team can see how people use Canva, and continually improve the product. —Melanie Perkins, co-founder and CEO of Canva, which is valued at over $1 billion

2. Ensure the entire team knows everything about your products.

We are constantly inspired and influenced by our customers. To best serve them, we ensure that everyone from the e-commerce team to retail staff knows the how, why, and where of our products — from the creative inspiration behind them to the fit, nuances, care, and durability. To disseminate product knowledge to the customer, it’s essential that our team members know everything there is to know.

We strive to be good listeners and keen observers, and use language that is polite, thoughtful, and educated. We tackle the biggest issues first, in a timely manner, and work our way down to small, easier issues. We value all feedback and questions and honor the fact that each person has invested in a piece that we’ve made. —Emily Current and Meritt Elliott, co-founders and creative directors of the global lifestyle brand Emily + Meritt and women’s apparel line THE GREAT; follow Emily and Meritt on Instagram

3. Hire the right employees and be consistent.

Taking care of strangers authentically and habitually day after day requires “customer-centric DNA.” Focus on hiring people with this quality. One of my favorite customer-centric interview questions is, “What is the temperature of the sun?” I don’t expect an exact answer; I’m interested in how they behave when they don’t know the answer. Do they respond with “Um, I don’t know … hot,” or “I don’t know, but I’m going to find out for you”? If they email me later with the answer, I’m interested in hiring them — because that’s how they will treat our customers. I won’t hire a candidate who doesn’t pass this test.

Your customers are looking for familiar, consistent experiences. They want confidence in your brand before, during, and after they do business with you over the phone, email, social media, or in person. Whether it’s your call center or billing process, evaluate which interactions cause pain points for them. Then focus on that area for an entire quarter before moving on to another. —Michel Falcon, entrepreneur and keynote speaker, with expertise in customer experience, company culture, and employee engagement; author of “People-First Culture”; connect with Michel on LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram and Facebook

4. Prioritize positivity, empathy, and resolution time.

Every time a customer contacts you, you have a choice: be like everyone else, or exceed their expectations and leave a lasting impression that turns them into raving fans. After handling tens of thousands of calls, emails, and live chats for our clients, we have found three keys to standing out and building a following: positivity, empathy, and resolution time.

Our customer support agents are trained to smile and use positive keywords to brighten the caller’s day. Empathy is about active listening, reiterating what the customer said, and truly caring. Resolution time is how quickly you solve the issue. When there’s no immediate resolution, communicate an estimated timeline and do whatever it takes to beat it. Making customers happy is about expectations and actual experience. Whether you handle customer support or use a company like ours, your customers will love doing business with you if your support team commits to these principles. —Mike Peters, entrepreneur, philanthropist, XPRIZE Foundation board member, and founder of the Yomali group of companies, which has generated more than $1 billion in sales online

5. Streamline your client onboarding.

At Healthpreneur, our driving metric is not our revenue — it’s the revenue we help our clients generate. Everything we do is based on their goals and how we can help them win. We’re always looking for feedback and ways to better serve our customers.

We continuously improve our trainings so our customers get everything they need. We add to our team when needed to help clients overcome their issues. If a client is stuck in a particular area and there’s a gap in our offering, we bring in a specialist to support them.

We have a client concierge and a specific onboarding process that starts as soon as they enroll, to ensure they have everything they need and know exactly what to expect. The first seven days are critical for momentum, so we always have an immediate onboarding call with each client. Then we have a check-in call within the next 14 days to make sure they’re on track. —Yuri Elkaim, founder and CEO of Healthpreneur, former professional athlete, and New York Times best-selling author; connect with Yuri on Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube

6. Be your own customer.

Hiring the right people is extremely important. Build a commission plan that aligns them with your vision. The customer’s voice should drive your customer service. They want correct, consistent answers and an easy and quick turnaround. They also want to speak to friendly people who are knowledgeable about your products and how to use them.

If you outsource customer service to another country, prioritize value, not price. I ran call centers around the world and saw how important it is that agents know your customer’s culture, so they can relate, connect, and personalize the conversation.

Finally, inspect your processes. Order your own product; call your customer service team; listen to calls; score them, and even answer some of them so you understand everything going on with your brand. — Craig Handley, co-founder of ListenTrust and author of “Hired to Quit, Inspired to Stay”; read more about Handley: Why These Founders Train Their Employees to Quit

7. Value people over profit.

There are three primary reasons you need customer service: your product or service sucks, you didn’t deliver on expectations, or your systems weren’t thorough. This underscores the simplicity of taking care of customers. They want a quality product or service delivered in line with promised expectations, and with simple processes to handle any challenges that arise.

We truly listen to what our customer wants and needs. If we can offer it, we will. We value people over profit and teach our customer service team to handle issues accordingly. For example, a customer purchased a $150 mala necklace seven years ago. It was so deeply meaningful to her that she wore it every day. When she accidentally broke it, she came to us very distraught. Because she took the time to explain the circumstances, we sent her another for free. It didn’t make the most sense financially, but we earned a fan for life. —Lin Sun, CEO at Tiny Devotions and partner at Crimcheck

8. Constantly improve the client ‘experience.’

“Client service” isn’t in our company’s vocabulary. We call it the client experience because it embodies every interaction we have with others. The entire experience is what people remember and talk about — not an offhand service. 

To remain a top priority, the client experience must constantly improve and evolve. We want our team to think about and explore how they can offer our clients a one-of-a-kind interaction. That doesn’t come from a training manual; it has to be part of their DNA.

We have a specialized “Secret Service Team,” an idea inspired by customer service expert John DiJulius. Team members from each area of our business constantly evaluate ways to improve the experience for our customers and their co-workers. Before your team can provide a one-of-a-kind experience to others, they must feel it firsthand; because if your team is getting a second-rate experience, you can bet your clients are too. —Casey Weade, CFP, retirement planning expert, author, president of Howard Bailey, and host of the “Retire with Purpose” TV and radio shows

9. Anticipate what customers want.

We’ve found that the best way to earn and keep customers is to anticipate what they want and need before they do, and then provide world-class solutions. This helps establish a relationship based on truth and trust. If you say you’re going to do something, do it.

We pride ourselves on being the first to integrate technology and other business advancements into our real estate services for corporate clients; it’s one of the things we’re known for. Our platform integrates these advancements with honesty, transparency, and frequent communication to secure the best deals for our clients and provide an experience that is impossible to get elsewhere. —Gail Corder Fischer, executive vice chairman of Fischer & Company, a leading global corporate real estate firm that provides consulting, brokerage, and technology solutions

Want to share your insights in a future article? Join The Oracles, a mastermind group of the world’s leading entrepreneurs who share their success strategies to help others grow their businesses and build better lives. Apply here.

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May
9, 2019

7 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

This is a guest post by Steve Costello, head of membership and co-founder of The Oracles, a mastermind group composed of the world’s leading entrepreneurs.

Grant Cardone is a top sales expert who’s built an $800 million real estate empire and teaches the 10X principles that led to his own success at the 10X Growth Conference, an event that brings together some of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs to share their top strategies for massive growth in business and in life.

But Cardone doesn’t just preach the concept of 10X. He’s not afraid to take the plunge—literally—when it comes to 10Xing everything he touches.

Grant Cardone is the founder of the 10X Growth Conference and best-selling author of “The 10X Rule.”

Image credit: 10X Growth Conference

On the first day of the conference, held in Miami in early February 2019, Cardone literally skydived into a stadium packed with 35,000 attendees.

Over the next three days, the best-selling author and business celebrity shared the stage with an impressive speaker lineup—collectively worth billions—including Spanx founder Sara Blakely, Skinnygirl founder Bethenny Frankel, social media master Tai Lopez, rapper Snoop Dogg, Shark Tank’s Daymond John, and more.

Here are some of the top lessons I learned at the event about sales, marketing, and execution.

1. Keep your sales simple.

Everyone is in sales, no matter your job or business, Cardone told attendees. And many entrepreneurs and professionals overcomplicate it.

Sales is a contact sport. It’s about finding the person who can buy, who has the power to decide, and who’s interested. Then you approach them with an offer, talk price, and make an ask. It’s really that simple, though not always easy. The most successful salespeople focus on simplifying their sales process.

2. It’s all about the prospect.

Sara Blakely started women’s foundation company Spanx with just $5,000 and grew it into the global brand it is today, making herself a billionaire in the process.

Clearly, she knows a little bit about how to sell.

Her advice to attendees?

Focus relentlessly on the person on the other side of the table. This encompasses everything from what a prospect says to how they say it, to the body language they use.

So, in any pitch, communicate as quickly as possible what’s in it for the other person—and why you can deliver what they want better than anyone else.

“Focus relentlessly on the person on the other side of the table,” advised Spanx founder Sara Blakely.

Image credit: 10X Growth Conference

3. Pressure is a privilege.

Blakely’s husband, Jesse Itzler, also a successful entrepreneur, sold his company Marquis Jet to Berkshire Hathaway/NetJets. He then invested in ZICO coconut water, which he and his partner sold to The Coca-Cola Company. He’s also the best-selling author of “Living with a SEAL,” a book about his experience enlisting Navy SEAL David Goggins as his live-in life coach.

Itzler says that one of the best ways to succeed in sales is by putting more on yourself, not less.

“Pressure is a privilege,” he emphasizes. “It forces you to work faster and better.” Itzler talked about how he once used the principle to train for an ultramarathon in 90 days—an accomplishment that for many takes at least a year.

For instance, if your sales quota is 20, double it. Then figure it out. You’ll be surprised by what happens. Pressure has a strange habit of turning coal into diamonds—and it’s one of the best gifts you can give yourself if you want to sell more.

Entrepreneur Jesse Itzler said that putting pressure on yourself “forces you to work faster and better.”

Image credit: 10X Growth Conference

4. Your biggest problem is you.

To crush your goals, Itzler said, you need to crush your fear of embarrassment. Self-imposed limitation is the No. 1 thing holding back entrepreneurs and salespeople.

Often, people think they need more experience before they can tackle big goals or take their businesses to the next level. Experience is overrated, Itzler told the crowd. He needed no prior experience to start any of the successful businesses he sold.

Blakely echoed this, pointing out that we often sabotage ourselves because we’re too self-conscious. She recommended entrepreneurs ask themselves a simple question:

“Do you feel you deserve to be successful?” Your answer should give you a gauge of just how much you might be holding yourself back.

5. Money follows attention.

Who knows you is more important than who you know, Grant Cardone told the crowd on the second day of the event.

In fact, money follows attention. Your parents taught you never to talk to strangers, but strangers have everything you want. Learn how to get, keep, and multiply their attention, and expect to get rich, Cardone said.

Cardone advised that it’s impossible to spend too much on marketing and advertising because you can solve almost any business problem with attention. Cardone himself spends $1 million a month on ads alone; and he showed the crowd how his income rose in correlation with his ad spend, topping $55 million a month in 2018.

However, too many people don’t invest in marketing because they’re trained not to, their goals are too small, or they don’t know how to convert marketing into sales.

Don’t be one of them.

6. You’re probably making digital marketing mistakes.

Not investing enough in marketing is a cardinal sin, but even when you do invest, you can make some serious mistakes.

Tai Lopez is an investor, partner, or advisor to over 20 multimillion-dollar businesses—and he has a social media following in the millions across Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube. In the process, he’s seen exactly what works in digital marketing and what doesn’t.

In a talk to 10X Growth Conference attendees, Lopez analyzed individual and company websites and dished out some tough love. Entrepreneurs and businesses, he said, are making basic mistakes when it comes to digital marketing.

These include not putting all the best content “above the fold” of your website—meaning it’s immediately visible. Websites, he said, should also be fast; so make sure you speed test.

He recommended you add a video to your site explaining why someone should work with you. The more complex your products, the longer the video should be.

7. Work on yourself daily.

To 10X your life and business, Cardone said, you are required to work on your life every day. That means demanding you and your team improve daily through skills training.

Once you have a target for yourself or your employees, then you must insist on reaching it. If the target seems too high, raise your energy. Never lower the target. Target attainment is the one thing that will make you happy.

Skinnygirl founder Bethenny Frankel said that most people don’t work hard, are entitled, and complain and worry about what everyone else is doing. Simply work hard and be better than the person next to you.

Skinnygirl founder Bethenny Frankel reminded the audience of the importance of working hard.

Image credit: 10X Growth Conference

Most people also have the wrong types of role models. Pick role models based on where you’re going and where your role models are in their current cycle.

For instance, Steve Jobs said money wasn’t important, but he was already wealthy at the time he said it. When he was starting out, his priorities were different. Choosing him as a role model when you’re starting out may not serve your goal to grow a business.

The lesson? Choose your role models wisely based on what you’re trying to attain.

Then don’t stop until you get it done.

That’s the 10X way.

Get the official recording of the 10X Growth Conference 3 here or register to attend the next 10X Growth Conference here.

May
8, 2019

2 min read

What’s in a name? When you’re trying to capture the attention of new customers, everything. Here are six cannabis-branding moments we loved — and that consumers won’t soon forget. 

Canna-Daddy’s

Canna-Daddy’s familial name helps it stand out in the competitive Portland, Oreg., dispensary scene, and so does its relationship with growers. Customers praise it as their trusted source of cannabis in a soothing setting. “I’m agoraphobic and only leave my house when my wife makes me. I love to go to Canna-Daddy’s,” reads one customer review.

Pipe Dreams Dispensary

While some fret about the stigma around marijuana, Pipe Dreams Dispensary goes straight for the opium association. Loyal customers of the Lincoln City, Oreg., brand are very fond of the daily specials, with quality flower for as little as $3 a gram.

Starbuds Dabuccino

This isn’t a dispensary sign, but we had to include it. In 2016, Starbucks, revealing it has zero sense of humor, won a judgment of nearly $500,000 against Oregon artist James Landgraf, designer of the Dabuccino. Knockoffs of the Dabuccino remain defiantly for sale online.

Herbal Outfitters

This play on the Urban Outfitters name is doubly fun because Herbal Outfitters (a.k.a. “The first pot shop to open in the Last Frontier”) is in Valdez, Alaska, population 3,936, which is not very urban at all.

High Q

High Q has two Colorado dispensaries — one in Silt, the other in Carbondale — and both offer half-priced grams on Mondays. A half-gram is plenty for a pleasant afternoon of contemplating whether the name High Q is a play on IQ or haiku. Or both? 

The Higher Path

Apparently, medical marijuana can’t cure generations of rivalry between L.A. and San Francisco. Higher Path’s website describes owner Jerred Kiloh as hailing from Northern California and attributes Higher Path’s success — it was named Best Dispensary in L.A. in 2016 — to “a very different mentality of medicine” Kiloh brought “with him to Southern California.”

May
7, 2019

10 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

He lived in a tropical paradise. Surrounded by coconut trees and white sand beaches, 20-year-old Andres Pira seemed to be living a life most his age could only dream of.

But sand doesn’t make a comfortable bed, and palm leaves don’t provide much shelter. The truth is, Pira was homeless. He slept on the beach, with a towel for a blanket and his clothing as a pillow. He was in a foreign country, didn’t speak the language, and he owed money to almost everyone he knew.

Starving and angry, Pira called one last friend at home in Sweden. He asked for money, but the friend sent him a book instead — and it changed his life.

Today, the 36-year-old is a real estate tycoon who develops some of the most luxurious resorts in the world. Not long ago, he was a high school dropout and gang member who didn’t think he would see his 20s, let alone Thailand. But anything is possible when you find your “secret.”

Waking up dead.

Pira is named after San Andres, the Colombian island where he was born. His Swedish father and Colombian mother met there before moving to Stockholm, Sweden when Pira was 3 years old.

Four years later, his parents divorced. Pira drifted between their homes in one of the worst suburbs in Sweden, where segregation was strong. “Growing up in that environment made me believe the world was cruel,” says Pira. “Youth like me didn’t have a future. I was consumed by the idea that I had no control over my life, confident my parents would never be proud of me.”

Pira and his siblings as children in Sweden.

Image Credit: Courtesy of Andres Pira

Pira acted up as a teenager, with stunts like hiding dead fish in the school’s air duct. The smell was so strong they had to cancel classes for days.

When he was 15, he started partying hard. He dropped out of school and spent his days drinking in the streets of Stockholm with other dropouts. “I didn’t know who I wanted to be, so I chose to be destructive,” he says.

Partying turned into fighting, and Pira joined a gang. “There was one rule: never show weakness or fear,” he says. “I earned my street cred by landing punches. My knuckles were shattered from hitting bone over and over.”

Pira was arrested several times for assault. “I was on my way to becoming an alcoholic, always one mistake away from going back to prison — or worse.”

One day when he was 18, Pira woke up on the steps of an abandoned building, lying in broken glass with a hangover and no idea where he was. “I thought I was dead.”

Waiting for ‘them.’

“When I got home, the look on my mother’s face was indescribable,” says Pira. “It hurt more than any punch ever did.”

He decided to turn things around. He got a job with a telemarketing company and separated himself from his friends on the streets.

Pira was making hundreds of calls a day — and he hated it. He skipped work so much, he was finally fired. Isolated from his friends, with no education and nothing to do, he spiraled into a deep depression.

His doctor prescribed several antidepressants, but the medication made things worse. “I became paranoid that someone was coming for me. I’d stand by the door for hours, waiting for ‘them.’” It was a complete breakdown.

Pira was close to his grandfather; so when he passed away suddenly, Pira realized he needed to do something before it was too late. With the $2,000 his grandfather left him, he decided to leave Sweden and start over. A travel agent recommended Thailand, where the cost of living was cheap. Pira booked the flight.

“How do you tell your parents you’re leaving and you might never come back?” Pira was sick with anxiety about telling his mother, but her reaction was just what he needed. “She told me to follow my heart and do what I felt was right,” says Pira. With her blessing, he left.

Finding ‘The Secret.’

Five days after buying the ticket, Pira boarded a one-way flight to Bangkok with $100 left and dreams of white sand beaches. But when he landed in the busy city full of skyscrapers and smog, there was no beach in sight. Pira realized he didn’t know anything about the country, and he definitely didn’t speak the language.

He spent $50 on a bus ticket to the holiday island of Phuket, where he found a job distributing hotel flyers to tourists. He made the equivalent of around $20 a week — just enough to pay for a small room and a daily serving of noodles. But he was happy.

It wasn’t long before Pira fell into the island’s party scene and started spending money on alcohol instead of rent. He soon owed everyone he knew there, lost his job, and was kicked out of his room.

Pira had started drinking at age 15 and soon fell into Phuket’s party scene.

Image Credit: Courtesy of Andres Pira

With nowhere to go, Pira wandered to the nearest beach, which became his home. He got up at 5 a.m. every day so no one would find him sleeping there. “Some nights I cried myself to sleep, and others I seethed with anger,” he says. “I blamed everyone for my problems but myself.”

Pira was too embarrassed to ask his family for help, so he started borrowing money from friends back in Sweden. One day he called the last person on his list. The friend refused to send him money but offered to email him a book instead: “The Secret” by Rhonda Byrne.

Pira was angry. “I’m homeless, and you offer me a book?” he thought. But it distracted him from his empty stomach, so he read it. The book talked about the Law of Attraction, the idea that you can attract what you want in life through actions like visualization and affirmations.

“I thought it was ridiculous, so I set out to prove the book wrong,” says Pira. He started visualizing a cup of coffee. “I felt stupid, but I kept at it. Eventually, I could see it and smell it.”

Two days later, one of the beach employees approached him. “I’ve seen you here for a while,” he said. “I thought you could use a coffee. You look tired.” Pira couldn’t believe it. He decided to try his luck by visualizing a meal. After a few days of this, he ran into an old colleague from the hotel — who offered to buy him lunch.

Still unsure what to think, Pira decided to try getting a job. He started asking around town and landed a job handing out brochures for a real estate office. Soon he could afford to rent a small house with a garden. For the first time, Pira felt like he had control over his life.

Making sales on a scooter.

Over the next year, Pira incorporated affirmations, visualization, goal setting, and other principles from “The Secret” into his daily routine. He plastered his walls with his goals and photos of what he wanted in life.

One day he gave a brochure to a businessman who was interested in seeing one of the properties. But the man was flying home that afternoon, and all the sales agents were already away giving tours.

The man agreed to hop on the back of Pira’s scooter to go and see the property. Pira showed him around, and he decided to buy it. “My manager couldn’t believe I closed a sale in an hour, on a motorbike, with no training. That was the first time in my life I felt proud of myself.”

Pira was promoted to sales and worked his way up to sales director over the next three years. When he’d saved enough, he launched his own real estate agency — but he had a lot to learn about running a business.

Several months into the business, he started to struggle. Sales were down and debt was mounting. Pira had to declare bankruptcy.

He’d made poor decisions, like renting a big office right away instead of focusing on sales. He’d also lost the habits that made him successful in the first place. “I stopped doing affirmations, meditating, and learning, and started worrying about losing everything I had built,” says Pira. “I focused on scarcity instead of abundance.”

Pira restarted these habits, and things began looking up. He was once again closing sales, and he soon built a network of buyers and investors, who convinced him to become a property developer.

Finding success in the Land of Smiles.

Pira built several successful real estate companies in Phuket over the next few years. By age 28, he reached multimillionaire status in the local currency. At just 32, his net worth had catapulted into the billions.

Today, Pira is a serial entrepreneur who owns 19 companies with more than 250 employees. Blue Horizon Developments, one of his main property firms, is alone worth billions in Thai baht. In addition to real estate, Pira’s investments include a fitness club, law office, gas station, several coffee shops, and an events company. He is expanding his business globally, starting with New York City and Los Angeles.

Pira often brings employees on adventures like spelunking.

Image Credit: Courtesy of Andres Pira

Despite his successes, Pira says he doesn’t want to be remembered as a serial entrepreneur, but as a force for good. He supports Phuket Has Been Good to Us, which improves economic opportunities for local young people. Pira also sponsors other organizations around the world and drove a rickshaw across India for three weeks to raise money for Cool Earth, which protects endangered rainforests.

With his latest company, Success Events, Pira is on a mission to bring others what he calls the most beautiful gift in life: belief in themselves. Headliners at the inaugural two-day event in Bangkok included boxing world champion Mike Tyson and best-selling authors and success coaches Dr. Joe Vitale and Jack Canfield.

Pira’s story came full circle when he met Dr. Joe Vitale from “The Secret” movie.

Image Credit: Courtesy of Andres Pira

Pira’s story came full circle when he met Dr. Vitale, who appeared in “The Secret” movie, which is based on the book that changed Pira’s life. Vitale convinced Pira that his story could inspire others and helped him release his own book in 2019, “Homeless to Billionaire: The 18 Principles of Wealth Attraction.”

“I’m a high school dropout who has been homeless, bankrupt, and clinically depressed,” Pira says. “I came to a country without speaking the language and with no money. If I can change my fortune, anyone can.”

When he isn’t traveling for business or visiting family in Sweden, Pira still spends most of his time in Thailand. With warm weather year-round, unmatched hospitality, and delicious food, Thailand is precisely the paradise Pira dreamed of as a troubled 20-year-old. Now he speaks Thai fluently and lives every day like he’s on vacation — enjoying the beautiful beaches he used to sleep on.

Connect with Andres on Facebook or read his new book, “Homeless to Billionaire: The 18 Principles of Wealth Attraction.”