Short version...

When I was growing up in Salt Lake City (Utah) my dad owned his own small business - doing kitchen installations/remodels and selling appliances and other stuff.  It was one of the core pieces of who I am today and was very foundational for why I am so passionate about the CUSTOMER...which leads to WORD-OF-MOUTH and ADVOCACY.

I say it started with my dad because he was one of those special people who cared deeply about people - even to his own detriment.  The "customer was king" (customers also included employees, partners, distributors, etc.) and he did whatever he could to make them happy and so they would talk about him.  This was where I first started to realize just how powerful true "Advocacy" and "Word-of-Mouth" was in business.  While he didn't use these terms to describe what he did, it was exactly what he was creating and building and why people would spread the word about him as "an honest man that you could trust with your business."

Fast forward to some of my roles at IBM, Arthur Andersen, Grant Thornton, Sprint, and my own Customer Obsession/Word-of-Mouth on Steroids strategy consulting business, WOM10. This philosophy and approach has always led me to stay focused on the customer...keeping them in the center of everything I think about and do.  (If you want to see my full resume please visit my LinkedIn Profile).  I learned through these roles what it meant to take care of the customer and what happened when people didn't.  Whether I was in a sales and marketing role, or leading a consulting practice, or providing Strategic Planning for a company, the customer was ALWAYS the center of the universe. This has been the one constant throughout my career. 

All of this led my brother, Gary, and I to write a  book on a subject at the center of becoming “REMARK”able™...the Customer Experience (one of the Cornerstones of The “REMARK”able Triangle™. You can check the book out if you would like, it was called, "Creating and Delivering Totally Awesome Customer Experiences."  We showed how companies can create "consistent and repeatable" customer experiences that created true differentiation and Loyalty.  I learned more about customers writing this book than at any other point in my career!  It was a labor of love (and lots of late hours) and drew me even closer to this world of Customer Obsession and how to create Advocates and Marketing Agents™ by becoming “REMARK”able™.

All this led me to dive deeper and deeper into what it would take for a business to have an audience "dying to do their marketing for them." As I explored the key components we all want, I created a model that will work in virtually any business of any size in any industry. But, most importantly, it is one that can be "executed" and "understood" by every employee in the organization. This was a landmark event in my career. From all my experience, almost all the models I was exposed to were so complex it was impossible for them to drive any meaningful change because the employees struggled with understanding it and their role in it. I eliminated this from my thinking and model. It led me to create The “REMARK”able Triangle™...an easy to understand and implement model that was massively powerful in benefits. 

One last thing you should know about me and what drives me. I am also a Christian and believe this is part of the journey God has for me...finding new ways for people to create trust, how to help each other, and how to give them the best possible experience. If I can help people build these deep, respectful, and honoring relationships, I will feel I have been successful using the gifts I have been given.

That's who I am and why WOM10 is such a passion for me to share with others through my speaking, writing, thinking, and helping them see how this is such a game changer for their business. If I can help their business do better, maybe they can help others be better as well...it's a domino effect. People constantly tell me I am "ahead of the curve" in what I see as the potential in this area so please challenge me along the way.  Help me help you and we can all pay it forward to others by creating advocates instead of just acquaintances, followers, or other less meaningful relationships. 

Longer version...My Story

I grew up with my dad owning his own business. He designed and installed kitchens and all the things that go into making them beautiful. He was an entrepreneur. I worked in that business until I graduated from the University of Utah with a B.S. in Biology and an MBA focused on finance and marketing. Working for my dad taught me many things that worked and didn’t work for a small business owner. Fast forward to the end…his business ended up closing its doors because an employee embezzled a substantial sum of money from him. It was a sad way to end a lifelong enterprise.

On the good side of what worked was his ability to interact with his customers. They loved him. He was over the top helpful and went out of his way to help them out. I can still remember delivering appliances on Christmas Eve for our customers so they could enjoy them on Christmas Day. He was Customer Obsessed and “REMARK”able™. And his customers went out of their way to do his marketing for him. I was fortunate enough to see how this worked firsthand at an early age. I learned a lot about customers from him.

When I graduated from college, I started my new career in sales for IBM in Seattle. This was eye-opening. I spent my entire life in a small business and was immediately thrust into a Fortune 100 company. My MBA prepared me well for how to understand and work in such a behemoth organization. I learned a ton and was quite successful. I learned from my mentors the same thing I learned from my dad…putting the customer first rewarded you nicely.

Since I didn’t want to move from Seattle (IBM meant “I’ve Been Moved” in those days), I took a position running a regional practice for a national search firm. It was eye-opening for me with regard to the customer. In the search business, you have two customers…the employee and the employer. It was a tough business. But if you were Customer focused, you did well. You got great candidates telling their friends, while at the same time, hiring managers were telling others to work with you. Being Customer-focused was key to success.

As it turns out, after being in the search business for several years, Arthur Andersen recruited me to help them build a national sales organization. It was the first of its kind in large public accounting firms. I was part of an initial team of 5 people focused on this new opportunity. Boy do I have some stories to tell about this role, but time and space are too precious…ask me sometime.

I stayed with Andersen for eight years. Four years in the sales organization and four years were starting up and running a small-midsize business consulting practice. The four years spent consulting were at warp speed. I loved it. Helping companies get better at what they do was exhilarating and very rewarding. Taking care of your customers is (or should be) the lifeblood of any consultant or advisor. It is a perfect opportunity to be Customer Obsessed and excel.

One of the areas I introduced into my consulting practice was “Customer Satisfaction Analysis.” Believe it or not, it didn’t exist in our strategic planning methodology. To me, it was (and is) where everything starts. Incorporating this was a real differentiator for us. We started with the customer and built everything else around helping the customer. It was my first opportunity to create a formal process for incorporating everything I had learned throughout my career and building a methodology. It was a breakthrough time for me.

I left Andersen and joined my brother in an international dotcom startup focused on marketing systems. We worked together for a couple of years before we both left. Truth be told, it was a mess. Great software and applications, but definitely not a Customer Obsessed company.

But there is always a hidden lining in everything. It led my brother, Gary, and I to write a book about how powerful Customer Experiences can be for an organization. And, we developed a specific formula for how any company could do it consistently. Our book “Creating and Delivering Totally Awesome Customer Experiences” was a landmark. We didn’t see any other book like it at the time, so we created a methodology to make the Customer Experience a business process. It was also my first taste of being an author.

The book changed everything for me. It gave me a solid foundation to guide and help companies understand how compelling being Customer Obsessed could be for their business. We wrote this book while I was a Partner at Grant Thornton, another public accounting firm. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to use this groundbreaking methodology in the firm. As my brother and I continued to develop it further, I was recruited to help start-up a new role inside Sprint. A few of us came in to create a Strategic Client Advisory position. While the role was interesting, the company wasn’t. It wasn’t Customer Obsessed, and it soon became evident it wasn’t where I belonged.

It was time for me to take this out on my own and start my own company…which I did in 2007. It began, appropriately named, as Customer Experiences Inc. It evolved over the years to become WOM¹⁰ (Word-of-Mouth on Steroids). It had (and still has) one simple focus…

To Inspire and help Businesses become “REMARK”able™ by being Customer Obsessed, creating an army of Advocates and Marketing Agents™ who happily and excitedly do their marketing for them.

WOM¹⁰ started around the same time as the Internet Revolution and the introduction of Social Media. I spent several years helping companies see how powerful Social Media could be when used with their customers. For those leaders who “got it,” it was compelling. They could “help” their audiences, which got them the attention they deserved and needed. During this time, I became an author again and co-authored an e-book, “Business Tools – What Executives need to know about Social Media.”  This book focused on the “mind shift” needed to successfully leverage social media to be a powerful tool in helping an organization become “REMARK”able™. 

My goal was to get companies to STOP MARKETING and START LEVERAGING the most powerful marketing engine available…their audience and customers. As you can see by now, it has been a constant theme with me my entire life and was the genesis behind starting WOM¹⁰…and it hasn’t changed. It has always been in my background. WOM¹⁰ allowed me to put it all together into a straightforward and easy to use methodology…The “REMARK”able Triangle™.

Today, I get introduced as a Nationally Recognized Speaker, which gives me an excellent platform to share this incredible opportunity with thousands of people. Besides my speaking and this book, I also write a lot about how and why you would want to become “REMARK”able™ on my blog. It has been around for a long time and has some gold nuggets you might also enjoy. That’s it. It’s where I am today.

But now, back to where I started in the beginning…God and Cancer.

Let’s start with the cancer portion. In January of 2017, I got the call none of us want from our doctor. The one that says the CT scan showed a mass the size of an orange in my bladder…cancer. That word put just about everything on hold, including my book. I had three surgeries, several immunotherapy treatments throughout the rest of the year, and battled a blood clot in my leg. It was a memorable year. But I got through it with the help of my family and God. Today, almost four years later, I am still cancer-free. I’m truly blessed. Now for the God component…

While I have always been a “Christian,” I wasn’t what I would call a fully committed one. I can admit it today. During my cancer, I saw, felt, and heard from God in many ways, more than I can share here. Hit me up sometime if you would like to hear my story…it’s pretty exciting. During this time, God showed up for me…a lot. He guided me through the most challenging time in my life. And I am eternally committed to him and Jesus Christ for giving me so many gifts.

But there is one other big part of the God story. I know now that he wanted me to put my book on hold. He didn’t want me to finish it…at least not yet. It wasn’t the right time, even though I was ready to get it published. He was right. It wasn’t ready for primetime. The extra time he gave me during my cancer allowed me to create a more straightforward, concise structure to encapsulate this powerful, game-changing methodology. He showed me what was missing and gave me extra time to create what you are reading today. He literally gave me The “REMARK”able Triangle™…the simple and straightforward structure for how anyone can become “REMARK”able™.

It was exactly what I needed to finish the book and give you, the reader, a simple and straightforward formula and recipe any company can execute. It was the answer I needed to pull everything together.

If I hadn’t gotten cancer, you wouldn’t be getting this powerful formula. With this break from writing, God led me to the structure of The “REMARK”able Triangle™ and the centerpiece any company can use to become “REMARK”able™. I can’t describe the feeling of how incredible this was for me…I’m still in shock today.

So, without God, my cancer, and the unbelievable support from my wife and family, you wouldn’t have gotten the most powerful model I have ever created (or seen) to help an organization truly differentiate themselves. And I have God to thank for guiding me to create what will change your business…forever.

That’s my story. That’s who I am. I appreciate you reading through it and taking the time to understand how all this came about. It wasn’t quick, haphazard, or something trendy. It is a lifetime of learning and experiences that allowed me to develop my system and write books. It is something that can genuinely and honestly change your business forever. It can help you be truly unique and differentiated in the eyes of your customers (and audience), so they can be your Advocates and Marketing Agents™.

Thank you for reading...I hope you can look back and say this helped you become incredibly awesome and amazing…and that you became ”REMARK”able™. I wish you nothing but the very best, and if I can ever be of help to you, or you just want to chat, give me a shout.