A “quick and dirty” guide to social media marketing with Adam Forgione.

Episode Transcription

Den Lennie (0s):
Hey guys! It’s Den Lennie here with the How to Scale of Video Business podcast. And today I’m talking to an old friend of the show, Adam Forgione from PennyLane Productions in New York. Now, Adam was on the show probably three years ago and shared some incredible insights around structuring your business and wearing different hats as like the CEO, as the operations person, and as the kind of marketing, the CMO, CEO, COO. And so I wanted to get Adam back on the show to share more about his business philosophy. He’s a powerful contributor if you’ve ever come across Adam.

Den Lennie (42s):
He’s a great guy, incredible character, has strong views, and I absolutely love talking to him on this Week. In fact, he’s one of my favorite people to interview on this podcast. Today, we’re gonna go into some real depth around customer service and how important it is to deliver exceptional customer service in a world where customer service is automated. So, I think you are really gonna enjoy this episode. So, Adam, I was just saying in the intro, it’s been three years since we had you on the podcast, and the last time you were on, you were sharing some incredible information about the idea as a business owner wearing the hats of a, CEO for the kinda strategic direction, the COO for operations and the CMO for marketing.

Den Lennie (1m 29s):
And we reconnected because I saw you doing a ton of stuff on social. And so I guess the best place to start is there, like your back very much focusing on your social campaigns. Why is that? And welcome back for a start.

Adam Forgione (1m 51s):
Thanks man. It’s great to see you. Always great to see you. I love our conversations and I know organically we just go to great places, you know, I love business. So yeah, I mean, I guess the way I look at it is, you know, the CEO top level, but then obviously for the three CMO or I’ll just say sales and marketing, so could be sales and, and marketing, but CMO, Pperations, COO and finance, which I put finance and analytics in that bucket, so CFO, so I always look at it with three Blocks and just say sales and marketing operations and admin, just running the business day to day.

Adam Forgione (2m 32s):
And then the third box, you know, finance and analytics and you know, I actually just put one of those social posts out, but you know, in a nutshell, the basics of how I look at it is we all start out, you know, when we, when we create a business, we all start out cuz we fall in love with the thing that we do, you know, but that’s always operations. So we put all our energy in the operations and you know, before you know it, you wake up and you’re like, I don’t, I don’t, I’m not putting any energy in sales and marketing. I don’t even know how to read a balance sheet or a profit and loss statement. You know, am I doing the right thing? But the reality is, what I’ve learned is that you need to put equal energy in all three.

Adam Forgione (3m 13s):
I mean, you personally will outgrow it and hopefully you’ll have, you know, somebody to run each of those departments. But, I’m very much putting equal energy in all three right now. And it what the cool part about it is, I’m really every day taking a step away from operations because, you know, if I’m in operations all day long, I’m working in my business and not on my business, you know.

Den Lennie (3m 39s):
Exactly. So look for anyone who doesn’t know you, and I can’t believe there’s that many people that don’t know you, but let’s assume that there’s people out there who still don’t know who you are and what you do. Give us a bit of an insight into Adam Forgione and PennyLane Productions.

Adam Forgione (3m 58s):
I mean, the short story is in 2000 I got married and I shot, you know, cam quarter footage. I wasn’t a professional And, we got married in Long Island. All my friends use video cameras, you know, that were, you know, handy cams. And then I, I called them all up and I said, Hey, can you send me a footage? I’m playing with this software called Final Cut One, and I’m checking it out, you know, and I’m, so, I got all this footage and I just, you know, played on Final Cut for a while and I edited my own wedding video, you know, and I can’t even imagine looking at it now, but I loved it back then, you know, all black and white. And anyway, that gave me the bug for video for you know, for the visual side.

Adam Forgione (4m 43s):
Before that whole thing, I was in music, you know, my music was my whole life. I was a professional musician and I was doing that. So that was like a turning point for me. And then, you know, years went on and I started to edit for, you know, cookie cutter wedding companies. Then I opened up PennyLane Productions probably in like 2002. And I basically did, you know, cookie cutter weddings for a while. Then I started to shoot on my own and then, you know, I just got obsessed with it. It was one of those things. And then, you know, 2005, 2006, 2007, I was really heavy into it by, you know, 2012, I was starting to think about getting out, you know, it was, it was getting to me, but I wanted to go all corporate commercial.

Adam Forgione (5m 31s):
I really love that space. And by 2018, I done my last wedding and I haven’t turned back. And I’m happy about that. I can’t stand weddings. Yeah. I love them back then. I don’t like ’em anymore. And so, you know, PennyLane is, you know, it basically it’s a video company that produces videos for businesses and nonprofits. And that’s really our focal point.

Den Lennie (5m 53s):
So one of the things we talked about in our previous conversations is, is marketing and the importance of marketing and, and what I’ve always loved about, and I can’t remember how we’ve actually met maybe sort of, it might have been Weaver 2009 or something. I, that rings a bell in Florida.

Adam Forgione (6m 10s):
It’s definitely one of those.

Den Lennie (6m 11s):
One of those kind of things. But you, you always stood out as someone who understood that running a video business was not just about the videos you make, but about how you communicate with your prospects and your customers and, and you’ve never been afraid to embrace marketing. And marketing is something that’s like a dirty word around filmmakers, right? You know, it’s like this kind of, Oh, I don’t wanna be sleazy. I, there’s an automatic assumption if you’re gonna do any sort of marketing or sales, you’re like this sleazy car salesman. But, but of course that’s not the case.

Den Lennie (6m 52s):
I mean, marketing is about putting your message in front of the right people at the right time, building awareness, nurturing the relationships so you can build trust.

Adam Forgione (7m 0s):
You’ve just started a kind of new campaign, a new focus. Tell me about what, what’s triggered that and how you’ve sort of decided to simplify your life in some regards by not having too many projects going simultaneously by projects, I mean different business projects. So you’re sort of squarely focused on one thing. Tell me about that journey and that decision. Alright, so you know what, the way I look at goals is it’s, it gets, it gets so overwhelming to think about, I have to reach 150 goals to, to get to this point, this milestone.

Adam Forgione (7m 40s):
And, you know, you really start to go crazy if If you start to really lay out all the goals and, and, and start looking at them every day. So the way I start to look at this is what do I wanna accomplish within the year and what do I wanna accomplish within each quarter? So now I’m looking at goals as annual goals and quarterly goals. And so I knew this, I knew we had a company meeting last quarter, And, we said, you know, for Q3 we need to go nuts on social and on SEO and, and just in general other aspects of our website.

Adam Forgione (8m 22s):
And each one of those is a doorway into, you know, your business. It’s potential lead building in, in all different ways. And they’re very powerful. All three. So for social, at a high level, what we said was, I have a lot of educational material that I’ve taught in the past and, you know, that I’ve been filmed talking and, you know, stuff that I have today that I can just pick up an iPhone or if I’m in the car or you know, I even do local seminars, business seminars. So now I’m just starting to film every possible thing I can and create, you know, cut out gold nuggets of these long form talks that I do and even the stuff from the past.

Adam Forgione (9m 11s):
So I’m basically stockpiling that and putting that out every day on every social media platform. And right now it’s, it’s on TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube. So I made a goal to myself, I’m gonna make sure that this goes out one video once a day for 90 days straight. And then, you know, we’ll see where we’re at. I mean, it’s, it’s a long sprint. I’ll be out of breath, but yeah, I might miss a day here and miss a day there, but that’s, that’s my goal. And I really believe something will come of that. Not sure what, but I really believe in it. SEO, search engine optimization.

Adam Forgione (9m 53s):
You know, I, I knew a lot about it already from many years ago, and then I kind of fell off the horse and I didn’t do anything. The good thing about SEO is you have to do a lot of work to get things to move very slowly, but eventually they’ll move slowly like a big ship in the sea takes like, you know, two miles to make a left turn, but when it, when it turns, when it gets there, it stays there or it’s hard to move, right? So all the work that I did from many, many years ago, still around today, but I knew I wanted to take it to a whole different level. So I went after, you know, even bigger, more competitive keywords and you know, a bigger, bigger space to get more of the line share of the leads that come in through, you know, websites every day.

Adam Forgione (10m 44s):
So that, that was another heavy thing that we went in on Q3 and just in general, the website, you know, If you look at your website and you go through the homepage and you know, like, you know, this always bugged me, What can I do to make it better? So we’re, we’re always improving that. And then If, you start going through each one of your pages, And, we have hundreds of pages, you know, you, what the hell did I write here? Why would I put this online? What the hell’s wrong with me? So you start finding all these pages and you, you fix one at a time and it, it’s gonna Take us a year Yeah. To get it where we wanna get it, but we chip away at it every day. And so those three major vehicles from marketing are really the lanes that we’ve chosen, at least for Q3 and Q4 for this year.

Adam Forgione (11m 28s):
But as you know, there are many other ways to market. We don’t do any paid, you know, advertising right now, but I know we will. I just wanna get these balls in the right place. And I want to get these ducks in a row first and then we’ll probably start to add, you know, PPC into that as well. But, well, the thing is, that’s my marketing efforts right now.

Den Lennie (11m 50s):
You may not be doing any paid advertising, but you are paying to resource this content engine. Cause what you’re doing is creating an omnipresent approach. So you’re on every platform. Tell me about the practicalities of that because that, you know, consistently posting every day on one platform is a job, but to be platform posting on like all the main ones. How are you, how are you managing that on a practical level?

Adam Forgione (12m 14s):
I’m not managing it well. I purposely don’t use any sort of software to manage it. Like both manage it right now because I’m still experimenting. So I’m very new to TikTok, but I, I become obsessed with, you know, consuming content on TikTok and you’d think, Alright, you know, my kids are on it, what are you doing? You know, But you know, I’m, I’m a big fan of crypto investing, so I really got involved with TikTok and, and started following, you know, other content creators in that space. But obviously I started to leak right into the business and the marketing and the sales world and I love it. I mean, there’s so much gold you just, you find good people to follow and there’s always great nuggets and it like, man, I have a lot of this stuff.

Adam Forgione (13m 0s):
I’m gonna be putting this stuff on too. 30 seconds here, 60 seconds here. So now I’m just trying to learn the format, learn, you know, should I use an emoji? How am I writing my hooks for the first couple of seconds before things, you know, come out, you know, on the TikTok video that I’m making or you know, how my captions produced or you know, what’s the, what color of the titles and I’m experimenting right now and that’s just TikTok. So I’m doing exactly the same thing for Instagram. Primarily I’m using Reels for Instagram cause I notice I’m getting a lot more interaction with those than I am with like, say, poster stories.

Adam Forgione (13m 41s):
So I’m just going heavy on Reels. And then YouTube shorts, that’s a pretty, that’s basically like TikTok too is their version. So, you know, I’m, I’m going heavy on those and you know, hit or miss, like I’ll get something that’s got like 50, a hundred views and all of a sudden this thing’s got like 5,000 views. I’m like, whoa. You know, you get lucky. And then, you know, LinkedIn is something that I’ve always believed in and I never put as much energy in it as I’m putting in now. And I think it’s a great resource. Obviously it’s a whole different game. You know, you’re playing with professionals, you don’t have kids on there with hats on backwards in the daddy’s basement, you know, giving you advice about something they really know nothing about.

Adam Forgione (14m 22s):
You got real people on there and you know, real businesses and there’s some amazing connections And, that you can make throughout that network that, that can really change your business. So I’m put putting a lot of energy towards that too as well. I would say for aspect ratio, for the, you know, for video nerds like us right now I’m playing with nine by 16 and one by one, that’s it. So I’ll put 16 by nines on YouTube for long form content, but all the other ones are for short form content. And I will put 16 by nine on, on LinkedIn if it makes sense. But I, I’m putting a lot of one by ones on there, which is like the old school Instagram style now Instagram trying to veer towards nine by 16.

Adam Forgione (15m 6s):
But I notice, you know, I’m looking at it and the nine by sixteens don’t look good on mobile, on Twitter. No, they don’t look good on, on Instagram sometimes. So I’m, I’m careful, I put, I’m sorry, I’m going around in circles. I do the Reels on Instagram and those work great nine by 16. But if I was doing say a post, I would probably do a one by one on that. So there’s so much of this I’m learning and I’m, I’m messing up every single day. I’m like, well, alright, I’m gonna tweak that next time. So what, 90 days maybe I’ll down.

Den Lennie (15m 40s):
But also this is going to give you such an incredible edge for PennyLane because when your clients come to you, like, I remember not so long ago uproar in the kind of forums and Facebook groups, in the video videographer groups going, Oh, vertical video, this is a disaster. People aren’t doing it properly. But the fact is that’s how people are consuming content on their mobile devices. So you’re, you’re actually testing, and this is really smart, you’re testing by doing every single platform. So you are learning what works and what doesn’t work for your business that you can then say to all your clients, Hey, we’ve actually done a 90 day test on every single platform.

Den Lennie (16m 25s):
Here’s how this works, here’s how that works. And actually, I, I’m in a mastermind in the US And, we were having a conversation yesterday on a call about content needing to be omnipresent. You need a presence on every channel to hook people in to become fans of your work. Because if If you don’t, there’s just too much distraction. And I think what we want is we wanna have a handful of people we go to who are, are experts in a particular field. So that’s very, very, very smart. Also, one thing that I’ve noticed is that the Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, you get instant kinda likes gratification, feedback I’ve noticed on LinkedIn it, it works differently.

Den Lennie (17m 15s):
Have you noticed that? Like you don’t always get as much engagement on LinkedIn as you do on other platforms. And I’ve, I’ve, I’ve learned yeah, through doing that. It’s because business people there, there are a lot more people watching what you do on LinkedIn and not interacting with you. But when they’re ready to do something they’ll say, Oh, actually I’ve seen loads of your content. What’s your experience been like that?

Adam Forgione (17m 39s):
Yeah, I, I think LinkedIn, I mean at least I can only answer all these questions from my perspective. So, you know, if I was in a whole different industry, I might have completely different results, you know, So I don’t think 90 days is nearly enough for me to say, okay, I’m an expert now let me teach you how to do it. But I, I know I’m doing it for PennyLane, I’m doing it because I’m interested in, you know, just creating a bigger base that will eventually come to us in the form of leads. But for LinkedIn, yet, LinkedIn has always been like the, the most difficult platform to get interaction on.

Adam Forgione (18m 19s):
I’ve always found. And when I do see posts that get like crazy interaction, I’m always like, I’m looking at the content, the comments, I’m, I’m, I’m watching the video or I’m reading the, the article that they wrote or something. I’m like, what is it? I think I’ve noticed that very long form content and sometimes opening up like, listen, I’m gonna get real on this. I, I normally don’t say this, but I can’t hold my tongue anymore. I’m gonna say this and you get something out A little controversial. I notice those are the types of posts that really go crazy with interaction on LinkedIn. And I haven’t done any, any of those.

Adam Forgione (18m 59s):
Like, I’m not gonna go on these platforms and just get political. I, if I got political, I’m sure I’d get a lot of likes and I’m getting a lot of hates, you know, cause I, you know,

Den Lennie (19m 8s):
It’s definitely a, there’s definitely a strategy for being controversial. I’ve seen big marketers do this where they’ll drop a really controversial post cuz they get so much engagement that raises awareness. But I’m with you. It’s not, it’s not who I am really. And I, I feel like I wanna balance testing, marketing with, with my own authenticity.

Adam Forgione (19m 30s):
Yes. I mean, so the most daring I’ll go and I, I, you know, I get daring on Facebook, my personal Yeah. Sometimes I’m in and out, so I just get in a mood and I’m like, I can’t hold my tongue. Yeah. But you know, that’s a mix of my everything in my life and everything else. I kind of keep separate and I really keep politics out of it. I mean, if I was even gonna do something controversial and like hit the political chord, I would probably say something like, it’s amazing how much we as a country get nothing done when we decide to pick side and focus on the things we disagree on. But I’m curious how we would do as a country if we all focused only on the things we agreed on.

Adam Forgione (20m 14s):
Yeah. And just leave it at that. Now I’m not saying I’m a Democrat or Republican, I’m just saying, Hey, can’t we all figure this out? And Yeah. And so I’m sure somebody would bring up Trump, somebody would bring up Biden and it would just happen and there’s nothing.

Den Lennie (20m 28s):
And then it becomes territorial.

Adam Forgione (20m 30s):
But maybe bad side’s than you. Yeah. But maybe that’s a post that would go crazy on LinkedIn. I’ll let you know. If I try it, I’ll give you a heads up before I do it and you,

Den Lennie (20m 38s):
I’m sure I’ll see it. I’m sure I’ll see it naturally.

Adam Forgione (20m 42s):
But the whole, you know, we could be controversial in different ways. Like for example, here’s a controversial topic that I’m about to post, I don’t know, sometime within this 90 days, I don’t know when I have it all stockpiled. I don’t really know what I’m gonna post tomorrow. But the one here’s a post that I have no problem talking about because I’m just sick and tired of businesses doing wrong by people. I’m sick and tired of businesses going against the golden rule. You know, I’m sick and tired of business screwing people over. We should have more integrity. So here’s a conversation that I’m about to post at some point.

Adam Forgione (21m 24s):
And, that is customer service on phone. I have a big beef with that. There is not one big large company that you could call up and have a pleasant experience talking to them on the phone. Not one. Yeah. I have yet to hear one large company be brought up where somebody lose looking forward to making that phone call. You’re not gonna talk to a human being and If you do. You gotta work your ass off to get there. This is wrong. This is not how business is supposed to be. Smart businesses know that you always treat the customer with respect.

Adam Forgione (22m 3s):
You treat the customer with integrity. The worst thing you could do to a customer is have a robot answer your phone and have them jump through hoops and actually think that they’re gonna have some automated answer that’s gonna answer their specific unique problem. And they’re okay with spending 15, 30, 45 minutes, 60 minutes on a phone to conduct business. That’s disrespectful. That’s inhumane. That’s what every single large company in the entire world is doing right now, if one company invested millions of dollars, 2, 3, 4 millions of dollars test marketed one area and put human beings on there to answer the phone and literally treat people like that, right?

Adam Forgione (22m 52s):
They would corner the market, they would put everyone in their industry at a business method. But nobody doesn’t. And I don’t understand.

Den Lennie (22m 59s):
You know , there’s

Adam Forgione (22m 60s):
I got a big beef with that.

Den Lennie (23m 2s):
I think there’s also something that’s happening with larger companies. So I have a personal experience with Qantas Airlines, Australian’s, national carrier, and I’m a very proud member of the Australian community that I love Australia. I love Australian culture. That’s why we moved here. But Qantas, the national airline, I was booked to go to ballet on a men’s retreat about two years ago and I’d booked a return ticket and then the pandemic happened and I got a flight credit and I redeemed some of that flight credit to take another flight.

Den Lennie (23m 43s):
And during that time, the flight was to Melbourne. We were about to go into another lockdown. And so I basically left Melbourne to come out and, and the ticket was quite clear that If, you have to change your plans because of a, a government decision to lock down a state. Then we’ll just credit you the remaining of the journey. So to cut a long story short, this happened and I got on the phone to Qantas three and a half hours. I was on hold when I finally got through to someone who was an offshore operative, they were like, Yeah, no problem.

Den Lennie (24m 25s):
That’s all great. And it was like, I think it was something like $1,382. I remember exactly the number that I was due back. So it like, not the kind of money you just go, Hey, no worries. It’s like that was like a decent chunk of change. It never showed up in my account. I had this flight credit for 150 bucks and I’m like, I got confirmation on the phone now. I then wrote to them when I, I could finally find a way to write to them. I wrote to them over 18 months ago and all I’ve had back from them and an organization is we are acknowledging that you’ve written to us. We’ll get back to you when we can.

Den Lennie (25m 6s):
They’ve never responded.

Adam Forgione (25m 7s):
And they’re probably backed up because of the pandemic cuz everybody evidently. Come on, that excuse is sold. And the other one is try to find a phone number on a website. Yeah.

Adam Forgione (25m 19s):
No phone numbers on websites.

Den Lennie (25m 21s):
That’s have been in the news here in Australia about the fact that they’re just literally just not caring and, and it’s meanwhile the CEO’s getting pay rises. He’s, he’s about 10 million a year. Anyway, the long story of it is, is that the outcome of that is that I will never, I mean I’m never gonna get that money back because that’s fine. I’ll have to sit on the phone for another four hours and I might still do it one Sunday. Just log in, have it on speakerphone and just from the point of principles, it’s a part of me that wants to resolve this on the point of principle. Yeah. I’m at the point where my kind of time is so valuable to me that I’m just so done with them that I’ll never fly that airline again.

Adam Forgione (26m 8s):
And that, doesn’t that make you feel disrespected?

Den Lennie (26m 12s):
Oh, hugely.

Adam Forgione (26m 13s):
I mean, do companies realize this? Every company try to call an insurance company, try to call a major electronics company, try to call. I don’t know. You know, I can’t even,

Den Lennie (26m 27s):
There’s, you know, there’s actually, there’s a company in Australia here who we get our home insurance from And, we live in subtropical climates. So there’s a lot of el there’s lots of weather events that make insurance quite expensive here. Buildings insurance. But they have real people and when you call them up, you speak to a real person with a real name and, and it’s amazing. And they’re not the cheapest supplier. But I enjoy the fact that you can speak to a human being. But yeah, I think, I think overall companies of, there’s this culture and I think how we can tie this back to video businesses is that, you know, we are small businesses who, who, who build our businesses on relationships.

Den Lennie (27m 14s):
And it’s really important that we maintain that and don’t look at any bigger company and go, let’s start automating this. Cause I think that’s a slippery slope.

Adam Forgione (27m 23s):
Yeah, it really is. I mean I’m at a loss of thought here. The lesson to be learned here is care about your customer.

Den Lennie (27m 37s):
Yeah.

Adam Forgione (27m 37s):
Give a shit about your customer If you do. First off, it’s gonna, you don’t need to prove it. The customer is gonna know and feel disrespected or feel respected. You treat people the way you’d want to be treated. I can guarantee you that every single stakeholder that’s responsible for these incredibly crazy robotic automated, horrifying systems that everybody uses, I guarantee you there is not one stakeholder that thinks that it’s a good idea and they wouldn’t mind experiencing that themselves. It’s only about money.

Adam Forgione (28m 18s):
That’s it. It’s only about money. I don’t care how you feel. I’m gonna disrespect you Mr. Customer because I know I’m gonna make more money this way and I’m not gonna try to connect with you on any other human way. And by the way, what I did find within my journey of this, and I’m hoping that I can like, I don’t know, get enough people riled up so that some business goes, ah, we make an announcement and we’re gonna try something. I hope one day there’s a website called Get Human and it’s, it’s not perfect, but it’ll get you to a voice and it’ll tell you exactly how to get to the voice. Press two, then three, then one, and then ask for this.

Adam Forgione (29m 0s):
So I’ve used it and it has worked. You still gotta jump through hoops. But it, so

Den Lennie (29m 4s):
This is like, this is like someone who’s researched for each organization what the number numbers are to press on the phone to get to the human quicker.

Adam Forgione (29m 13s):
In some cases, in some cases they literally have the right number that you’ll never find on the website. Really. You know, instead of one 800 it’s like, you know, 9 22 like a local number. You’re like, Oh my god, this is gold. Yeah. And then sometimes, you know, you call Verizon and it’s like, good luck. You know, I don’t, I don’t know If you, we have Verizon here, but

Den Lennie (29m 32s):
Yeah, And, we have all sorts of, yeah, it’s always the same.

Adam Forgione (29m 38s):
We wireless companies the worst.

Den Lennie (29m 43s):
So, so that’s a frustration that everyone experiences and knows about How can we as video production companies do it better? How can we, what, what are some of the things you see in the video production space? You’ve done coaching, you’ve done events, you’ve done business strategy sessions and, and tour the country. What are some of the pitfalls you see perhaps video production companies making in the customer service space?

Adam Forgione (30m 19s):
Number one, you know, communication is key. Everything, everything will fall apart with that communication. So first off, communication, when there’s a conversation there are, think about, think about it. There’s a, there’s a bunch of cliff notes that you need to take or you need to retain. And then If, you don’t retain that and you come back to them and you don’t have that information. You know, there’s a chance that they’re sitting there saying, I already told this person this information. And they’re asking again, they sound like they’re not really paying attention. I don’t know if I wanna do business with them. And, and it could be as simple as a, a date or a time or you know, some, the name of their customer or something like that.

Adam Forgione (31m 4s):
So we’re, anytime I have a call with a, a prospect in my crm, I’ll enter in as soon as the call’s done, I’ll take a minute or two and just like, here’s what we talked about. I went over, you know, I, I do chicken scratch notes when I’m on the phone itself cuz I don’t like the typing noise. And then I, I put that all on my crm, boom. And then sure enough, two weeks later I look at the CRM cuz I have to make a call or they’re calling me or I don’t remember any of this stuff. And I’m like, oh my god, thank god it’s there. So communication number one, number two, call people back the same day. You know, If, you can call ’em back at the same hour. That’s, that is huge. Calling

Den Lennie (31m 43s):
People full stop is huge. Calling number people I speak to who, like, I got an inquiry, I sent an email.

Adam Forgione (31m 52s):
If you If you don’t call somebody back the same day, you’re killing your business. It’s okay. Occasionally you have a crazy day all hands on deck. You just couldn’t, you call ’em the next day If, you wait two, three days.

Den Lennie (32m 9s):
Well, what it’s doing, thinking as an inquiry comes into your business, I don’t care enough about you

Adam Forgione (32m 17s):
To call you back. It’s so true. Every, every little thing here screams, disrespect, screams, I don’t care about you. If, if I don’t, if I don’t call back somebody the same day, there’s a really good reason and I’ll even apologize for not calling them back the same day. So there’s that one aspect. And you know, every now and then, I’m not perfect. I’ve dropped the ball and completely forgot. I’m not gonna sit here and say, do it this way. This is, I’m perfect at it. So, you know, I mess up all the time, but I’m aware of it and I practice this. So the, that’s one aspect that, you know, the communication also trying to, I remember a lot of colleagues avoiding customers because now they got their money and now all of a sudden customers are very smart.

Adam Forgione (33m 10s):
They know when they give you money and they’re completely aware of when the level of customer service goes down after they give you money. Yeah. They’re all smart. We all understand how that works. Yeah. So you gotta maintain that, that level of customer experience, you know, you, you really gotta maintain it. I, I think, I think a huge part of, of your question is all related to customer service. And you know what, most companies suck at it. So If, you are good at customer service. You’re already killing your competition on that level. I, I, this is me being blunt. It’s amazing. A lot of bad customer service out there.

Den Lennie (33m 50s):
A lot. I think that’s a great place to hold this interview. I wanna come back and revisit this topic and talk about how to do it well. But Adam for today, thank you.