Customer experience: the customer is just the beginning with Stan Phelps

Speaker 1:

If you’re going to take the risk of running an agency, shouldn’t you get the benefits, too? Welcome to Agency Management Institute’s Build a Better Agency Podcast, presented by HubSpot. We’ll show you how to build an agency that can scale and grow with better clients, invested employees and best of all, more money to the bottom line. Bringing his 25 plus years of experience as both an agency owner and agency consultant, please welcome your host, Drew McLellan.

Drew McLellan:

Hey gang, welcome to another episode of Build a Better Agency. Really excited to chat with you today and to bring you a guest who I suspect you’re familiar with. But if not, you are going to be running out and buying his books as soon as you’re done listening to the podcast. Let me tell you a little bit about him and why I invited him to the show.

Stan Phelps is, today, the founder of Purplegoldfish.com, which is a think tank of customer experience employee engagement experts based at the Frontier and Research Triangle Park. He’s a TedX speaker, he is an IBM Futurist, he travels all over the globe speaking at keynotes, he does workshops. He’s constantly traveling. One of the fascinating things about Stan is that he always, wherever he goes, the very guys meal he eats in any country is McDonald’s so we’ll dig into that a little bit. We’re social media friends so I’m always seeing, “Ah, Singapore French fries.”

Anyway, prior to focusing on speaking, Stan lived in our world. He had leadership positions at IMG, Adidas and the PGA of America. He also spent seven years as the chief solutions officer at Synergy, which was an award-winning experiential marketing agency. While he was there, he created larger than life brand experiences for brands like KFC, and M&Ms and Starbucks, and other organizations like NASCAR and USTA. So Stan comes from the agency life, so we’re going to talk about lots of things. How things are shifting in the agency world, I really want to dig into his journey in defining and carving out this niche around thought leadership, and much more.

Without no further ado, Stan, welcome to the podcast.

Stan Phelps:

Drew, thank you for having me. Great to be here.

Drew McLellan:

Let’s talk a little bit about the shift for you. You were at an agency for a long time, and in some ways not a huge shift because you were at an experiential agency. At what point did the idea that client or customer experience and how critical that was going to be for brands, when did that really come front-and-center for you?

Stan Phelps:

Well, I probably have to back up one step. The genesis, when I was at this agency, I was the number two at this small, boutique agency, responsible for a lot of the development work. I found that a lot of the great connections and business development happened around events. And, that you were seen in a much different light if you were a speaker at the event as opposed to just an attendee.

Drew McLellan:

Right, absolutely.

Stan Phelps:

Which was really the genesis for me, “I need to start writing, I need to have a point of view on experiential marketing.” That caused me … I spent one year, Drew, and I wrote across the board, every different aspect of marketing. Looking for, across that year, I wanted to find the one thing that I thought really could be a difference maker and that I wanted to go deep on.

Drew McLellan:

Right.

Stan Phelps:

It really came down to, whether you call it the customer experience or the client experience, it was how do you actually do a better job of providing a great experience, so much so that you don’t have to focus so much on the prospect, your customers actually bring you the customers you want.

Drew McLellan:

Right.

Stan Phelps:

That became a real laser focus for me.

Drew McLellan:

Out of that realization came the first book, Purple Goldfish, right?

Stan Phelps:

Purple Goldfish, right.

Drew McLellan:

Can you explain? The books, folks, if you have not read Stan’s work, it starts with Purple Goldfish, and then it goes to Green Goldfish, and then Golden Goldfish, and Blue Goldfish. And then, Purple Goldfish Service Edition. And then, Red Goldfish. Clearly, there’s a story there.

Stan Phelps:

There’s a theme behind each color. The purple one was the one that was really focused on customer experience and client experience.

The background on the colors, Drew, comes from actually Mardi Gras, of all places. The three official colors of Mardi Gras are purple, green and gold.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah.

Stan Phelps:

The reason why New Orleans or Mardi Gras is a focus is that there’s a word that comes from New Orleans that really epitomizes this idea of doing a little more, or a little something extra, as part of the experience.

Drew McLellan:

Right.

Stan Phelps:

That word is called lagniappe.

Drew McLellan:

It’s not spelled that way, but that’s how you say it.

Stan Phelps:

Lagniappe, yeah. Phonetically, it would be L-A-N-Y-A-P. It’s hard to say, it’s even more difficult to spell.

Drew McLellan:

It’s got 75 other letters in it.

Stan Phelps:

Right.

Drew McLellan:

You guys will see it in the show notes and know what it is.

Stan Phelps:

Yeah. That was the focus of the first one. I went down the path, Drew, of actually collecting over 1000 examples.

Drew McLellan:

Right. I was going to say the structure of the book is also interesting. Tell folks about that.

Stan Phelps:

Yeah. I really wanted to reach out and see if people in their lives really thought of brands that went above and beyond just the transaction.

Drew McLellan:

Right.

Stan Phelps:

Which I think is so critical here, is a lot of times it’s the zero-sum game of just, “You give me X, I give you Y,” and there’s nowhere to go.

Drew McLellan:

Right. Those customers are satisfied and brands think that’s good enough.

Stan Phelps:

The research will bear out that that’s nowhere near good enough. That customers that say they’re either satisfied or very satisfied, the number can range between 60 to 80 percent of that’s what they feel right at the point of when they defect to go to somebody else.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah.

Stan Phelps:

It took a little over two years, it was while I was still working full-time. But, I was able to see through that, that there were these patterns that developed of how you did that little something extra. Those patterns, each of the 12 patterns, very simply became a chapter in the book. I was able to select the best examples to put forth. That’s how Purple Goldfish came about.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. What’s interesting about that book, and actually all the other books, is … I’m hoping that you guys are listening to this through two lenses. One, this is all very applicable to your agency and how you serve your clients. But two, as you recognize that the work you do, the stuff you make is becoming commoditized, and it’s harder and harder to sell someone a website, or a PPC program, or whatever it is you sell, at a price that you feel good about, because somebody out there does it cheaper.

It is the understanding of what Stan is talking about that I think is one of the magics that you can bring to your clients, that a freelancer, or logosfor99dollars.com cannot deliver. Which is helping them really understand and dig deep into what turns their customer or client and makes them go from satisfied to, “I can’t stop talking about these people because they’re so awesome.” Which is I think what you’re talking about, right, Stan?

Stan Phelps:

Yeah. It’s essentially how do you do the little things when you’re delivering that service to show that you care, to show both what we call warmth and competence.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah.

Stan Phelps:

I’ll give you an example from my agency days. We used to do these experiential marketing programs and events. One of the things that I did, Drew, because I was more on the development and creative side in the beginning. The account management side would take that, and I would then show up, maybe at the activation or the event.

Drew McLellan:

Right.

Stan Phelps:

One of the little things that I would do is just take … Back in the days it was Flip video camera, if you remember the Flip.

Drew McLellan:

I do.

Stan Phelps:

I would just some behind-the-scenes of the event. And right when the event was over, I would go to the nearest coffee shop, and I would download the footage and some stills. I would put together just a quick recap. I was always sure to find a little bit of behind-the-scenes featuring the client and I would send it to them.

I remember the first one I did was for a P&G client. Our true client was actually a PR agency and I sent it to them to thank them. They said, “Would you mind if we sent this on to P&G?” I said, “Mind? I would love for you to be able to share that.” But, it was that little thing that they didn’t expect-

Drew McLellan:

And by the way, you weren’t charging them extra for.

Stan Phelps:

Wasn’t charging them extra, that I gave them just to show hey, I wanted something that was for them that was a little something extra. And, the response and feedback from that was tremendous.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. One of the things that agencies struggle with, and you probably remember this from your agency days, is constant biz dev churn. I think their clients suffer from it, too. It’s constantly chasing after the new win, all of the time.

I think one of the core teachings that you have is, not that you don’t ever do that, but that we spend so much time chasing after the new that we neglect the ones who we brought to the dance, or that brought us to the dance. And, that there’s A, riches in returning to that relationship, and B, risk in continuing to ignore it. Can you talk about that a little bit?

Stan Phelps:

Yeah, absolutely. I think that there needs to be a lot more focus on the customers you have as opposed to chasing the ones that you don’t. I’ll share a stat, Drew, that really drove this to home.

Of 100% of the services that we offer, what do you think the clients that we actually serve know of the entire 100%? What would be your guess of, everything that you do, what percentage do you think your clients that you already serve know that you can provide for them?

Drew McLellan:

I’m betting it’s 30% or less.

Stan Phelps:

It’s 20%.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah.

Stan Phelps:

Think about it, 100% of what you can do. A lot of times, I think there’s a lot of opportunity just to make sure that you’re making them aware of the other things that you do. But, we think about sampling as something that we do for a prospect.

Drew McLellan:

Right.

Stan Phelps:

We give a prospect a little taste. Well, that’s one of the core tenets of Purple Goldfish.

Drew McLellan:

Right.

Stan Phelps:

How do you actually take that mindset and actually do it with the clients that you have, that already know, like and trust you, and give them a little bit of a taste.

Drew McLellan:

Because we assume that they already know we do that, and they really don’t.

Stan Phelps:

They don’t.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah.

Stan Phelps:

Yeah. A large majority of what you do, they have no comprehension of what you could potentially do for them.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. You know, I think one of the core tenets in your books, too, is one of the things that I always take away from all of the stories you tell in all of your books is that … I don’t know a nice way to say this, but the businesses aren’t ordinary. There’s something about them that’s a little quirky, or a little interesting, that those are the ones that really stand out and that really have something to embrace because they’re aren’t vanilla. I think it’s hard to do something unique that’s that little extra if you look just like everybody else.

Stan Phelps:

Sure, sure.

Drew McLellan:

I think one of the things that certainly agency clients struggle with, but I think agencies struggle with it too, is it’s a little like being in high school where you kind of want to be like everybody else and you don’t want to stand out, you don’t want to be the weird kid. But actually, your books would suggest that there’s literally monetary value in being a little weird.

Stan Phelps:

Yeah. I’m actually working right now on the Pink Goldfish, which is going back to the roots of Purple. That’s all about how do you embrace weirdness within your organization. And believe it or not, how do you amplify weakness.

Drew McLellan:

Tell us more about that.

Stan Phelps:

Most companies try to push down weakness.

Drew McLellan:

Right.

Stan Phelps:

Or, play it down or try to be something that they’re not. If you’re small, flaunt the fact that you’re small and own it. If you don’t provide X, Y and Z, don’t gloss over that. Say, “Look, we don’t do that stuff because we’re ultra focused on A, B and C.”

Drew McLellan:

Right.

Stan Phelps:

“We’re not trying to be everything to everyone.” Because every weakness, Drew, has a corresponding strength.

Drew McLellan:

Right.

Stan Phelps:

The smart companies are the ones that actually don’t try to push it down, they actually shine a light on it and actually amplify that.

I’ll give you a great example that we’re in the process of writing about. There’s a cough syrup from Australia, it’s called Buckley’s. This cough syrup, according to their advertising, tastes like trash bag leakage and sweaty gym socks. They say it “tastes horrible because it works.”

Drew McLellan:

Right, right. It’s medicine.

Stan Phelps:

Right. They don’t try to say, “All right, it’s cherry flavored.” They actually own it.

Drew McLellan:

Right.

Stan Phelps:

Another example, when Mini came to the US 15 years ago, that’s another one. They actually told you, “It’s smaller than you actually think it is.”

Drew McLellan:

Right, right.

Stan Phelps:

It’s this idea of how do you actually encourage a little bit of weirdness, how do you embrace what makes you weak.

I’ll give you just a quick … We touched on the colors, Drew, and each of them have a different reasoning.

Drew McLellan:

Absolutely.

Stan Phelps:

I want to touch on the goldfish portion. The goldfish, I picked because it was really small. The entire through line is that little things that you can do can truly make the biggest difference. But, this is what I learned, Drew. The average goldfish is three inches in length.

Do you want to fathom a guess what the world’s largest, just garden variety goldfish, how big do you think? How long?

Drew McLellan:

Not a koi fish or anything?

Stan Phelps:

No, just the average goldfish. It’s in Holland, almost 20 inches.

Drew McLellan:

Wow!

Stan Phelps:

It flipped my head.

Drew McLellan:

That’s a ridiculously large goldfish.

Stan Phelps:

Think about it, that would be like, Drew, you walking out of the hotel you’re in right now and bumping into somebody who’s three stories tall.

Drew McLellan:

Right, right. Which I’m hoping not to do.

Stan Phelps:

How is that even possible?

Drew McLellan:

Right, right.

Stan Phelps:

Well, it turns out a goldfish will grow based on five different reasons. I would argue those same five reasons apply to everyone that’s here on this podcast right now.

The first one we’ve all heard of, Drew. The bigger the bowl or the bigger the pond that you’re in, the more that goldfish will grow.

Drew McLellan:

Right.

Stan Phelps:

I’ll put you on the spot. What do you think the size of the bowl or the pond equates to, in business?

Drew McLellan:

I would think the marketplace in which you work.

Stan Phelps:

The market, right. The bigger the market that you’re in, the more room that’s going to be to grow. If you’re in a smaller market …

The second one is simple. The growth of that goldfish is also determined by the amount of other goldfish that are in the bowl or the pond. That’s a layup, right?

Drew McLellan:

Right, sure.

Stan Phelps:

That’s your competition.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah, right.

Stan Phelps:

Here’s the third thing. Their growth is also affected by the quality of the water. Think about the amount of nutrients that are in the water.

Drew McLellan:

Sure.

Stan Phelps:

The cloudiness of the water. This one’s a little bit more macro. But, what do you think the quality of the water would equate to, the nutrients or the cloudiness?

Drew McLellan:

Internal environment. Culture.

Stan Phelps:

I would say yes, but I’m looking for something more macro and that’s simply the economy.

Drew McLellan:

Okay.

Stan Phelps:

Think about nutrients could be the ability to get capital to grow your business.

Drew McLellan:

Right.

Stan Phelps:

The cloudiness could be things like consumer confidence, people’s willingness-

Drew McLellan:

Or inflation, or whatever. Right.

Stan Phelps:

Right. The fourth one is how a goldfish does in its first four months of life will determine how big it will get.

Drew McLellan:

Okay.

Stan Phelps:

When they’re born, the name for a baby goldfish is a fry. So we know where small fry comes from, now.

Drew McLellan:

Right, right.

Stan Phelps:

They’re minuscule. How they get out of the gate … What do you call yourself the first four months when you’re in business?

Drew McLellan:

Yeah, you’re a startup.

Stan Phelps:

You’re a startup. Or if you have a new service that you provide, how that does in the first four months pretty much is going to be an indicator of how …

Drew McLellan:

Yeah, interesting.

Stan Phelps:

We’ve had the size of bowl, the amount of other goldfish, the quality of the water and the first 120 days.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah.

Stan Phelps:

The fifth one is this. It’s genetic makeup.

Drew McLellan:

Oh.

Stan Phelps:

What that goldfish is born with, what it has that separates it from all of the other goldfish that surround it. If you’re in business, what would you consider genetic makeup?

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. That’s your team, right?

Stan Phelps:

It’s your team.

Drew McLellan:

Your culture, your values.

Stan Phelps:

It’s essentially, how you do your business. In one word, it’s differentiation.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah.

Stan Phelps:

I would argue that it’s very hard to differentiate now. You’d mentioned the word commodity.

Drew McLellan:

Right.

Stan Phelps:

It’s very hard to differentiate on what you offer because we live in an age of almost equality.

Drew McLellan:

Right.

Stan Phelps:

The only way that you can stand out in what I would call a Sea of Sameness is actually how do you deliver that service and that experience.

Think about the five things. You don’t have control over the market because you are where you are. You don’t have control over the competition, not unless you’re buying them.

Drew McLellan:

Right.

Stan Phelps:

No one has control over the economy. If you do, please email me after this podcast. And I’m assuming, most people on this podcast have been in business for more than four months.

Drew McLellan:

Right.

Stan Phelps:

The only thing you have control over is how you differentiate that experience.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. No, it makes perfect sense. And yet, one of the reasons why agencies shy away from differentiation is because it limits their prospects and customers.

Stan Phelps:

Right.

Drew McLellan:

Even though they know, and they tell their clients all the time, “We have to differentiate, we have to plant a flag in the ground, put a stake in it, make a claim.” But for some reason, when agency owners look themselves in the mirror, that’s a struggle for them.

Stan Phelps:

Yeah. What I think is important, that there’s two sides. There’s what you do for the customers, but there’s also what you do for your team.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah.

Stan Phelps:

Here’s the truth. The experience that you provide to your clients is never greater than the experience that you provide to your staff and your account team.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

You know what, I want to dig into that deeper. Let’s take a quick break, and then we’ll come back and we’ll talk about engaged client equals engaged team, and some ways that you’ve seen companies do that well. We’ll be right back guys, and we’ll dig into that.

I get that sometimes you just can’t get on a plane and spend a couple days in a live workshop, so hopefully our online courses are a solution to that. Lots of video, hours and hours of video, a very dense, detailed participant’s guide and all kinds of help along the way, to make sure that you get the learning that you need and apply it immediately to your agency.

Right now, we’ve got two courses that are available. We have the Agency New Business Blueprint and we have the AE Bootcamp. Feel free to check those out at agencymanagementinstitute.com/ondemandcourses. Okay, let’s get back to the show.

Okay, I am back with Stan Phelps, author of six Goldfish books of varying colors and themes. We will include the link to all of the books in proper order in the show notes. I do highly recommend that you check them all out. I think you will be quoting Stan and the stories he tells for many, many, many moons.

Stan, before the break we were talking about the idea that an enthused client can never be basically more enthusiastic than the team that serves them. Let’s talk about that a little bit, in terms of you lived in an agency for a while. How do you see that fitting in our world?

Stan Phelps:

Yeah. I think the culture of the agency and how team members are treated is paramount. I don’t think you can invest … Every day, think about it, it’s not like you’ve got an assembly line. Every day, 95% of your intellectual property walks out the door.

Drew McLellan:

Right.

Stan Phelps:

And you hope that they come back the next day.

Drew McLellan:

Right.

Stan Phelps:

Those relationships that have been built, beyond just the business, with your clients are a big part of that.

I came from a marketing perspective, Drew, and I thought the customer was the end all and be all.

Drew McLellan:

Right.

Stan Phelps:

But, what I learned is the companies that really got it, got it even more so for their employees. In fact, they put their employees first, over the customers.

I’ll tell you a great story. This was a classmate of mine, he’s the principle of a very successful agency in the New York metropolitan area called Coin. If you know Tom Coin, by chance.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah.

Stan Phelps:

When I was writing Green Goldfish, I spent a little bit of time with him. He said, “You know what?” He said, “I never sought out to have the best clients or the biggest agency.” He said, “I just sought out to have the best place to work. I knew if I created the best environment and place to work, I would get the best people.”

Drew McLellan:

Right.

Stan Phelps:

“And then, ultimately, I would get the best clients.”

It seems like almost too simple of a formula.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah.

Stan Phelps:

But when I studied it with Tom, there is literally a dozen different things that Coin does that are very unique to how they set up their space, to how they manage the different events and activations with their stuff, all the way down to small, little recognition programs that recognize the team.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. Yeah, I’ve always said, listeners have heard me say this before, but one of the reasons why I can split my time between the agency and AMI is because I’ve always had the philosophy, my whole goal was … I tell them this, I’m blatant about it. My job as an agency owner is to ruin you for all other employment. I know that people are going come after you, I know people are going to try to find you on LinkedIn and offer you a job. Go talk to them, that’s okay, because I want you to go, “Well, what about this? Do you do this? Do you do that?”

Stan Phelps:

Right.

Drew McLellan:

And then have them go, “No.” And then you go, “Well, I’m not going anywhere, then.” That’s my job, is to ruin them. I think part of the reason why I have the tenure of staff that I do is because I focus on that.

Walt Disney, as you all know, who I admire, his thing was, “Take care of the cast members, take care of the guests and the money will take care of itself.”

Stan Phelps:

Right, right.

Drew McLellan:

I think he was absolutely right, in that order.

Stan Phelps:

Right. Well, I would actually challenge that, I think a couple of things.

One, I think the old way of thinking about business was profit came first above everything else.

Drew McLellan:

Right.

Stan Phelps:

Maximize shareholder return.

Drew McLellan:

Right.

Stan Phelps:

Then, I think the 2.0 version in the ’80s was, “Hey, wait a second. Maybe we should start paying attention to the customer.”

Drew McLellan:

Right.

Stan Phelps:

That was the 2.0. The 3.0 was, “Oh, yeah. Where does actually all the value get created? It’s between the employee and the customer.”

Drew McLellan:

Right.

Stan Phelps:

Whoever’s in that critical, two foot, what some call the value zone, where all value is generated.

Drew McLellan:

Right.

Stan Phelps:

In the ’90s and the 2000s it was, “Oh, we actually need to pay attention to this thing called culture.” I think in the last 10 to 12 years, I think the idea of purpose, which is what I would call the 4.0 version.

I think the smart companies actually flipped that so they put purpose almost at the bullseye of everything that they do. They try to live that purpose for both their employees and their customers. Then, the next ring is employees.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah.

Stan Phelps:

Take care of the employees that you have. Then, the customers are that next out ring. And then ultimately that biggest ring becomes the profit.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. Yeah, I think you’re right. But, I think you can look at somebody like Disney, who didn’t start with purpose in his sentence, but clearly created and ran a purpose driven company that was very focused on what they did and what they delivered. Whether he articulated it or not, he is an example of your fourth generation of this, he just didn’t say it right.

Stan Phelps:

Yeah. And I think from the get-go, Walt had this vision of making Disneyland the happiest place on Earth.

Drew McLellan:

And, a place where families of all ages could come together.

Stan Phelps:

Right. A clean place.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah, yeah.

Stan Phelps:

It’s amazing. That drove how they created … They were one of the first companies to create a university around that founding principle.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah.

Stan Phelps:

They always know that that’s the main job that you have.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah.

Stan Phelps:

Beyond just the safety, because that’s always paramount.

Drew McLellan:

Right, absolutely. Right. They’ll say to you, “Safety is first.” Absolutely, yeah.

As you have explored all of these aspects of the client experience, because every one of your books looks at a different element of it … And actually, really quickly, just run everybody through the colors and how the books are differentiated.

Stan Phelps:

Sure. The Purple, which was the first one, is all about the client and customer and 12 different ways to do that little extra.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah.

Stan Phelps:

Six of which are things that I would consider added value that you provide. But, the other six are, which I think it’s overlooked, is what I call the maintenance side.

Drew McLellan:

Right.

Stan Phelps:

How easy do you make it to do business with you. Green, which we talked about, is all about the employees. I mentioned there was three colors to Mardi Gras, so my first three books were Purple, customer, Green is employee.

And then, Gold was really interesting. I used to think, Drew, that all employees and all customers were created equal.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah.

Stan Phelps:

You treat everyone the same. I no longer think that.

Most businesses, and this is almost everyone that’s on this call, 80% of your profitability in your agency is attributed to just 20% of your customers.

Drew McLellan:

Right.

Stan Phelps:

80% of the ideas, the value that’s generated within your agency is generated by only just 20% of your employees.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah.

Stan Phelps:

I’m not minimizing the other employees. I’m just saying look, when brass tacks, you have a vital-

Drew McLellan:

You have some superstars.

Stan Phelps:

You have a vital few so you need to take care of them.

Blue, which was the fourth book, was all about the idea of how do you leverage technology and data, which is not going away.

Drew McLellan:

No.

Stan Phelps:

To be more responsive, to create a deeper relationship and get to a state of readiness with what you do in business.

The fifth book was a take down of Purple, so it focused on hotels, restaurants, airlines. It was the Service Edition.

My latest one was really about purpose, that was the Red Goldfish. And then now, I’m working on the next color in the series, the Pink Goldfish. That one’s all about weakness and weirdness.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. Yeah, I can’t wait to read that one.

One of the things that’s true about our business is about the time we get comfortable selling what it is we do, everything changes. I was talking to someone earlier today and we were talking about the speed of change in our industry. I’m 54 and I think about what it was like when I started in my career in my 20s, and the rate of change, how much I had to learn and how quickly I had to learn it, was nothing compared to today.

As you look over the spectrum of your work, what about it is evergreen and what about it do you think is going to evolve, and where do you think it’s going?

Stan Phelps:

I think some things that are evergreen is the idea that we’re programed as humans to respond in a very specific way and that’s never going to change. That’s how our brain is hardwired.

Drew McLellan:

Right.

Stan Phelps:

Whether you call it the lizard brain or the caveman brain.

There’s a great book and I always recommend this, it’s called The Human Brand. Are you familiar with that, Drew?

Drew McLellan:

Who wrote it?

Stan Phelps:

Written by a guy name Chris Malone, who used to be the CMO of Choice Hotels and Aramark, and a woman out of Princeton named Susan T. Fisk, who’s a very prominent social psychologist. They figured out that 80% of our impressions of other people come down to just two things, warmth and competence.

To me, that’s the evergreen thing is one, you always have to have competence.

Drew McLellan:

Sure.

Stan Phelps:

That competence piece is brass tacks.

Drew McLellan:

Right.

Stan Phelps:

But, I think where a lot of agencies miss is that they focus so much on the competence bit that they miss that this warmth thing is such a big thing as well.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. Yeah. And probably miss it for their clients, too. They’re so busy with the features and benefits, and all the [inaudible 00:34:06], that they don’t also reflect the culture of the organization.

Stan Phelps:

Right.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah.

Stan Phelps:

They talk about the law of worthy intentions. You always need to be coming across in a way that show that what you’re doing is above board, and people get a sense of both the warmth and the competence. I think that’s evergreen.

I think I’ll agree with you, I think we’re at a point where things are changing really rapidly. You can’t sit by the sidelines and think, “Is that something I want to jump into in 12 months or 18 months?”

Drew McLellan:

Right.

Stan Phelps:

By the time you decide to-

Drew McLellan:

The train is out of the station.

Stan Phelps:

Yeah, the train’s out of the station.

But I think, at the end of the day, it comes down to some critical things. I think purpose is key, taking care of your employees, creating a great workplace. Being able to take care of the customers that you have.

I’ll give you a sense of where I’m going to go next. One, I’m going to spend a little time maybe on the happiness idea. How do you create happiness for both your customers and your employees?

Drew McLellan:

Yeah.

Stan Phelps:

I’m also fascinated on how important storytelling is. And that, in essence, we’re all storytellers.

Drew McLellan:

Right.

Stan Phelps:

But, how do you be able to take maybe one or two significant things that your company or agency has done, and be able to craft a story around it that almost becomes legend?

Drew McLellan:

Yeah.

Stan Phelps:

It imbues the sense of who you are.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. Yeah.

Stan Phelps:

Without having to espouse values, and mission and vision. That’s a couple of the areas I’m going next.

Drew McLellan:

Well, that’ll be fascinating. It’ll be fun to watch you explore them and it will be fun to apply them to our world. Because I think, although you’ve left daily agency life, I think your agency heart still beats.

Stan Phelps:

It does.

Drew McLellan:

A lot of your work is very aligned with the world that we live in. That’ll be fun.

This has been awesome. I am grateful that you took the time to do this and that you took the time to share your expertise. I think, at the end of the day, I think one of the things I love about your books is, getting back to the storytelling aspect, is you use stories to illuminate, and to educate and to inspire. That makes the book super easy to read, but they’re stick, you remember those stories for so long. I’m sure that’s why you’re great on stage, but I think it’s why your books have been so successful and I think it’s why we like learning from you.

I want to thank you for telling us the stories and helping us understand what lens we should be looking at those stories through so that we can grow our business, and serve our employees and clients better. I appreciate it.

Stan Phelps:

Thank you so much for having me, Drew.

Drew McLellan:

So Stan, if folks want to track you down, if they want to follow your writing and what you’re thinking about, what’s the best way for them to find you?

Stan Phelps:

A couple of things. The think tank is purplegoldfish.com, so that’s the home for me. I have a bunch of coauthors on these books. And then, my speaking site is stanphelpsspeaks.com.

Drew McLellan:

Okay.

Stan Phelps:

That’s a great place if you want to learn more about the keynotes and workshops that I offer.

Drew McLellan:

Okay, awesome. All right, thank you so much again for your time. Very grateful for having you on the show so I appreciate it.

Stan Phelps:

Thanks for having me.

Drew McLellan:

You bet.

Okay guys, this wraps up another episode. As I said, in the show notes we’ll have links to all of the books. I’m not sure that you have to read them in order. I read them in order because I was reading them as Stan was writing them and there is a certain cadence to all of that. But, I highly recommend that you start with Purple Goldfish and work your way through the whole series because I think it will inspire you to think a little differently on behalf of your agency and your clients. I think it will teach you how to tell stories a little better and I think it’s going to get you thinking differently about how you can remove the commodity part of your world so that you are able to attract and keep customers who value who and what you are. And to Stan’s point, even your weaknesses and your weirdness because let’s face it, we’re agency people so we’ve got a little bit of both of those.

I will be back next week with another guest. In the meantime, you can track me down at agencymanagementinstitute.com. Don’t forget, always grateful if you swing over and leave us a rating and a review, that’s how other folks find the podcast. So always super grateful, we read every one and we take them to heart. I appreciate those of you that have done it. If you haven’t done it yet and you have a couple minutes, that would be awesome. I’ll see you next week. Thanks.

Believe it or not, that wraps up another episode of Build a Better Agency. Man, the time goes by quick. Love sharing this content with you and I love spend the time with you, so thanks so much for listening and sticking all the way to the very end. For those of you that did stick around to the end, I’ve got a special, new twist for you.

So many of our podcast guests have books or other things that really expand upon the information and knowledge that they share with us during the podcast. We’ve reached out to them and we’ve asked them if they would like to give away some of their books or classes, whatever it may be. We’re going to throw some AMI things in there as well, we’re going to have some AMI swag and we’re going to actually give away some workshops. All you have to do to be in all of the drawings, you only have to do this once, is go to agencymanagementinstitute.com/podcastgiveaway. Again, agencymanagementinstitute.com/podcastgiveaway. Give us your email address and your mailing address, and every week you will be eligible for whatever drawing we’re doing. We’re going to change it up every week so we’re going to have a lot of variety, and we will pop an email to you if you are the lucky winner. You can also go back to that page and see who won last week and what they won, so you can see what you’re in the run for.

If you have any questions about that or anything agency related, you know you can reach me at [email protected]. I will talk to you next week. Thanks.

Speaker 1:

That’s all for this episode of AMI’s Build a Better Agency, brought to you by HubSpot. Be sure to visit agencymanagementinstitute.com to learn more about our workshops, online courses and other ways we serve small to mid sized agencies. Don’t miss an episode as we help you build the agency you’ve always dreamed of owning.