ValuClarity

Keith Dorson owns Win-Win Investments, a financial planning firm. He’s not the first financial planning professional on the podcast, but he’s the first to call his clients owners; they own their lives, their journeys, their stories. Keith treats them like that. It’s pretty cool to hear him share his approach to practicing customer intimacy. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

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Carl Kwan is the founder and head of Kwan Multimedia, and helps his clients produce video content that reinforces your value and moves customers through their buying process. He has over 18 years (since the infancy of YouTube), plus years before that as am image coach, making video content that does precisely that. We had a great conversation about not only the (obvious) importance of video, but the importance of well-crafted video messaging. Pretty impactful stuff. Thanks Carl!

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TIm Hyde’s company helps its clients avoid having a customer journey get stuck by understanding various customer journeys and building your sales/marketing activities and asset help customers through those “stuck spots”. TIm and I are kindred spirits and it was a pleasure getting his perspective. Thanks Tim!

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Sky Cassidy founded and runs MountainTop Data, a data company that sells leads — but differentiates by selling 1) guaranteed lead quality 2) a la carte: that is, you buy (not rent) a certain number of leads without an ongoing contract commitment. Seems simple, but that’s the beauty of it. We talked about some of the practices in his industry, and the large competitive white space some major competitors have constructed for him. Thanks, Sky!

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Depending on how it’s measured (“at least one goal met” vs. “most or all goals met”), about 50-70% of projects, especially software projects, FAIL. Holy cow. Joe Pusz leads the PMO Squad, and is a national leader in promoting great project management — which he defines as “meeting client goals”, rather than “successfully installed”. What’s that worth to you? Thanks for a super-educational conversation, Joe!

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Marc Appleman has had a stellar career in the sports and media space. He’s currently in a venture that is leveraging a vast trove of historic sports articles and photographs, but he was also the CEO of SABR, the Society of American Baseball Research (an offshoot of SabreMetrics, of “Moneybag”) fame. Marc transformed SABR into a thriving community of people passionate about baseball, and we talked about what that looks like…and how it applies to any business or association. We also talked about how he’s turning a historical archive into vibrant memories and celebrations of our shared past. Inspiring stuff, Marc! Thanks.

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Brion Crum is an executive with Caliber Investments, one of the country’s fastest growing companies, and a business who differentiates by bringing quality real estate investing to groups who seldom have access to the kind of deals that big institutional investors are able to take advantage of. Caliber partners with experts in specific markets, and specific project types to bring a diversified flow of investment opportunities for its investors. Brion articulated this differentiation pretty clearly for me, and talked about how Caliber gets everyone in the company aligned around delivering great outcomes. Give it a listen!

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TIno Go founded and leads Baru (hellobaru.com), an innovator in the furniture and cabinetry business. He partners with companies around the country (there are quite a few of them) who have purchased computer-aided manufacturing equipment for furniture and cabinetry — machines that only run a small percentage of the time (almost all of those). This means that these items can be manufactured thousands of miles closer to where they will be installed — a cost and time savings in shipping and packaging. Of course, these are all built-to-customer-spec, and can use higher quality materials, so they’re custom. The owners of these machines earn more revenue using an expensive yet underutilized asset. It’s amazing! And furniture and cabinetry are just the beginning for Baru.

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Park Howell believes, just like I do, that customers buy outcomes from doing business with you. He helps his clients compose stories that light up the limbic brain, or as Park calls it, “the movie theatre of the mind”. I’m a big fan of how he simplifies the story format…by studying the art of story from experts in moviemaking, novel writing, and yes, marketing, he’s distilled the art of story building into a simpler formula than I have ever heard. Give this great episode a listen!

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Nelson Griswold leads Next Gen benefits, a consultant-to-consultants who teaches benefits experts how to deliver better healthcare to employee populations at lower cost. We talked about how he does that, how so much of his effort is devoted to selling through a channel of healthcare consultants.

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