How Creating Content Led This Company To Acquisition [Endless Customers Podcast Ep. 124]

This transcript has been generated by AI and not checked for accuracy. 

00:00:00:05 - 00:00:08:22

Jim Schultz

And our growth rate was 40% annually over the last five years. So it wasn't like a one year wonder, right?

00:00:08:23 - 00:00:11:12

Alex Winter

It was 40% every year, year over year.

00:00:11:14 - 00:00:25:13

Jim Schultz

You know, I believe endless customers is just a framework that can work for any business. And, you know, if you really care about customers, I know it's something you can get your hands around and implement.

00:00:25:15 - 00:00:43:00

Bob Ruffolo

You're listening to the Endless Customers podcasts, brought to you by the team at impact and its customers, is the proven system to become the most known and trusted brand in your market. You can start to learn the principles of endless customers and how you can implement them in your business. Pick up a copy of Endless Customers, a national bestseller.

00:00:43:00 - 00:01:04:16

Bob Ruffolo

Wherever books are sold. Ready to start implementing endless customers in your business? Talk to impacts about how our coaching program can help you implement enlist customers to success. And if you want experience endless customers in person, do not miss our upcoming conference. Endless customers live in Chicago March 30th through April 1st, 2026. Registration is now open. And now onto the show.

00:01:04:17 - 00:01:06:13

Speaker 3

Here's your host, Alex Winter.

00:01:06:14 - 00:01:26:05

Alex Winter

Today on the show, we're talking with Jim Schultz. Jim is a past client with us here at impact with the company he founded, Applied Education Systems. Jim started using endless customers back in 2014 when it was known as They Ask You to Answer. And through that journey, accomplished incredible success, dramatically changed his business, and ultimately had a life changing exit.

00:01:26:07 - 00:01:43:10

Alex Winter

Jim's also been very active post exit today. He's a vice chair as well as a business coach for small to medium sized businesses. Jim is one of the most successful people we've had the opportunity to work with here at impact, and we're really excited to share his story, so let's not waste any more time. Jim, welcome to the show.

00:01:43:13 - 00:01:45:19

Jim Schultz

Thank you Alex. It's great to be here.

00:01:45:19 - 00:02:02:03

Alex Winter

It's great to have you here. Jim is a previous client of impact and has a pretty incredible story of building his own business. And, I'd love to share that story. And we can set the stage there. You're also a chair of this stage, and you coach other CEOs. We have a lot of ground to cover today.

00:02:02:03 - 00:02:14:20

Alex Winter

So can we start by letting our listeners and our audience know what a year is all about, applied education systems, and just tell people a little bit about your story and your journey with endless customers.

00:02:14:22 - 00:02:53:12

Jim Schultz

Sure, Alex. So I guess I'm going to try to explain this chronologically because it really spans about 15 years, 2010 to, you know, well, 12 years, 2010 to 2022. Wow. So first of all, we had a crisis in 2010. So I founded the company in 1987. So this is 23 years later. And on the outside, you know, we were successful, scaled the company 40 employees, 10 million in sales.

00:02:53:14 - 00:03:30:12

Jim Schultz

And we were selling a perpetual turnkey solution. It was, an upfront purchase by a school district. And it really was, curriculum in the career and technical education area, specifically in high school. Wow. And what we decided to do in 2010, 2011, our choice is we decided to go all in on stop selling that perpetual turnkey solution and going to a subscription model.

00:03:30:14 - 00:03:57:10

Jim Schultz

We were intent to go to 100% recurring revenue. So at that time, SAS had been successful in a number of different verticals. We saw an opportunity to be very different in our market because no one yet was doing a subscription model. So we knew this was going to happen when we went from perpetual license subscription model, we ran from 10 million in sales to 0 in 36 months.

00:03:57:12 - 00:04:33:09

Jim Schultz

Oh my gosh, from 40 employees to five. And we lost $3 million. And I will just say it's something I wouldn't even wish on my enemy. Oh. Wow. Very difficult. So here we are, say 2012. No capital for traditional sales and marketing. No feet on the street salespeople. And up to that point, with the perpetual license we had been selling to independent sales reps that represented us in different states.

00:04:33:09 - 00:04:51:16

Jim Schultz

So going to subscription independent sales reps, we weren't going to use them. We were going to do direct, and we had a number of major problems. But the worst problem we had was we had no way to generate marketing leads. Zero.

00:04:51:18 - 00:05:00:05

Alex Winter

Wow. So you really made this shift and was expecting we're expecting to see it just take off. And it it basically did the opposite.

00:05:00:07 - 00:05:09:11

Jim Schultz

We knew it was really going to be tough the first 3 to 5 years. We we knew we were going to go to, you know, almost nothing in sales.

00:05:09:12 - 00:05:10:01

Alex Winter

Okay.

00:05:10:03 - 00:05:43:18

Jim Schultz

We knew we were going to have to, you know, go really small. It was almost like starting the company again. As some people laughed they said, Jim you should just went out and started a different company. But we did it within the structure of applied educational systems. So okay here we are. Before we made that change I believe in reflection, we had a broken system because we were internally focused on our product, our processes, our systems.

00:05:43:20 - 00:05:59:09

Jim Schultz

We talked about helping the independent sales reps really never talked about the buyers. We didn't even know what questions our customers and potential buyers were asking, because it was all funneled through independent sales reps.

00:05:59:10 - 00:06:00:12

Alex Winter

Right.

00:06:00:14 - 00:06:32:06

Jim Schultz

So I heard this guy Marcus Sheridan speak on Spin Sucks, a Q&A webinar that Jenny Dietrich was holding. And at that point, Marcus was just starting up with the sales line, and the concept clicked in what he was talking about. It doesn't have to be complicated, and all we have to be is transparent. We have to educate customers.

00:06:32:06 - 00:06:59:10

Jim Schultz

We have to create trust by answering their questions in an unbiased and objective way. To me, that just made a lot of sense. So I made I made a call to Marcus right after that webinar, which is totally unlike my personality. And I guess what we realized and what, you know, through working with him, we have to educate our buyers.

00:06:59:12 - 00:07:19:19

Jim Schultz

We need to be educators ourselves. And since we're selling to educators, you know, it just really seemed to fit me a lot more strategically. So, of course, we couldn't afford a sales army. And at that time, it was slow going at first because it was me on content.

00:07:19:21 - 00:07:26:06

Alex Winter

Yeah, I was going to ask, like, did you have the the resources to hire on a sales team? But it sounds like at the time you didn't it.

00:07:26:06 - 00:07:52:02

Jim Schultz

And by speaking to the people in your audience, they'll probably say, why did it take you so long? But you know, the first two years it was hand to mouth. You know, the way we generated our first blog posts were I started talking to customers and I listed out the first 100 questions that I got, and we started to write blog post.

00:07:52:02 - 00:08:07:04

Jim Schultz

Oh, and then we put this thing called a CTA, A Call to Action. Oh, we actually got leads. One thing led to another and I just to jump really to the next point.

00:08:07:04 - 00:08:08:08

Alex Winter

Sure.

00:08:08:10 - 00:08:42:22

Jim Schultz

And I think we'll talk about this later. But we really hit momentum when 20 1617 and then the last five years, you know, 2017 to 2022 before we sold, we learned a ton and we went from zero leads to averaging about 25,000 leads a year in a pretty niche small market. And our competitors.

00:08:43:00 - 00:09:09:04

Jim Schultz

Would just look at us and say, how is that company still in business? And we made the Inc 5000 list five years in a row, starting in 2018 through 2022. And if we hadn't sold the company, I deeply believe we would still be making that 5000 list every year in a row. So that hopefully kind of explains to where we started, but kind of what we went to.

00:09:09:06 - 00:09:29:20

Jim Schultz

And of course we learned lots of lessons along the way. But the biggest thing is it changed our culture, changed our company. And if we hadn't used endless customers, you know, I wouldn't be sitting here having this conversation with you. And certainly for all my employees and all our customers, it'd be a different story for them.

00:09:29:22 - 00:09:51:10

Alex Winter

Wow. That's an incredible, incredible journey. And I have to ask, so when you sold it, what was it like positioning the company to sell and what made you decide to choose it? Because it sounds like you. You implement endless customers. S got into a really great spot. 25,000 leads a year. That's incredible. What was the decision from a leadership standpoint to want to sell?

00:09:51:10 - 00:09:57:07

Alex Winter

Or like, how did you position your company in a way to, to be sold?

00:09:57:09 - 00:10:52:14

Jim Schultz

It's a great question. I, I think one of the things that we looked at was we had we believe this unique culture where we were all about educating our buyers, and we had built up this system, which was very repeatable, very sustainable. And we felt any other company in our market, especially bigger companies, if they could get their hands around this, it would be super beneficial to them and helping them grow because everyone else in the marketplace really were all about, conferences.

00:10:52:16 - 00:10:55:13

Jim Schultz

Google ad.

00:10:55:14 - 00:11:33:06

Jim Schultz

Feet on the street, large sales team. Okay. And in all those areas, a year spent $0. We put all our chips in on producing this content machine, educating customers and trying to be world class and endless customer framework and implementation. So we thought strategically that would put us in a really good position. And when we started to think about this with the leadership team and we went out, we started to talk to people in the marketplace.

00:11:33:08 - 00:12:03:15

Jim Schultz

It was very different. And when we finally went out to market using an investment banker, the interest was very high because when people looked strategically what we were doing, the one thing that stood out was the success we had in using endless customers. As a matter of fact, we would talk to people and we would make a presentation that usually ended up being the bulk of the conversation.

00:12:03:17 - 00:12:17:04

Jim Schultz

How did you do this? Okay, then why does it work? And we always had to laugh amongst ourselves after the people left, because we'd look at each other and say this isn't that complicated.

00:12:17:06 - 00:12:18:19

Alex Winter

00:12:18:21 - 00:12:39:17

Jim Schultz

And I always have to laugh because, you know, a lot of times, especially in private equity or with bigger companies, they're a lot about the tactics and initiatives, and the underlying tech. And I think sometimes they are looking at the tree in the forest and they're not looking at the forest.

00:12:39:19 - 00:13:02:00

Alex Winter

That's a really good point. That does seem to be the case where, like, they're looking for that secret sauce or that secret tool that differentiates you and it's it almost sounds silly to say, but you can really differentiate yourself just by building trust, answering your buyers questions, and working the system. So it's really cool to hear that it actually worked for you and that that was your secret sauce.

00:13:02:00 - 00:13:25:22

Alex Winter

That's really an incredible journey. So so for today, now that you've you've scaled this company, you've had success with all those customers. You sold the company. What are you up to these days? I know you're I know you're very involved in vintage. You're a chair in vintage, you're coaching CEOs. Can you tell people a little bit about what you're doing now and how you're how you're using what you've learned to help coach other leaders?

00:13:26:00 - 00:14:00:07

Jim Schultz

So I'm involved in, central Pennsylvania, small to mid-sized businesses say, you know, 10 million to 300 million. And I deal directly with, CEOs or the business owner. And the structure is I always do 1 to 1 coaching each month with them. And then, with part of the number of clients I work with, we meet in the village platform once a month for a full day.

00:14:00:09 - 00:14:01:10

Alex Winter

Very nice.

00:14:01:12 - 00:14:31:20

Jim Schultz

I think one of the biggest things that I learned through endless customers and the endless customer community knows this. And it's a lot of what impact talks about and what a lot of impact does in their coaching is asking better questions, especially asking questions. Get below the surface to really get into what are the hesitation? What are the fears?

00:14:31:22 - 00:14:36:23

Jim Schultz

What's really causing this pain for you?

00:14:37:01 - 00:15:07:05

Jim Schultz

I think when we really get to bedrock questions and, you know, below the topsoil in anything we do with a customer, with the potential buyer, the way we approach marketing, the way we approach content and the way we approach coaching, or maybe one to once I think you help people gain clarity faster, and then actually they're able to make decisions quicker and it creates momentum.

00:15:07:05 - 00:15:35:12

Jim Schultz

Yeah. I think a lot of CEOs, CEOs and business owners want to be in a peer group or want to get involved in coaching because they're looking for advice. And at least I tell my clients, I'm not here to give you advice. You're the expert, your industry, your business. I'm not here to give you feedback. I'm here to ask questions that no one else is going to ask you.

00:15:35:17 - 00:15:44:16

Jim Schultz

And I think I learned that from this endless customer framework. And being exposed to what impact and impact coaches have talked about.

00:15:44:18 - 00:16:05:03

Alex Winter

Wow, that's really great to hear. What would you say would the like during your journey? There was an moment, or do you feel like, during your coaching sessions with impact and learning the system? Did you have an moment that helped you see see the light? If you will? And then also when you're coaching other people now, asking tough questions can isn't always the easiest thing to do.

00:16:05:03 - 00:16:13:18

Alex Winter

So like did that did that play into like how you how you handle these conversations nowadays and like what was that like for you?

00:16:13:20 - 00:16:17:20

Jim Schultz

So let me try to think back to an moment.

00:16:17:22 - 00:16:27:21

Alex Winter

Because I remember coming out to visit you. I remember we, we used you as a, as a great customer journey video. You working with one of our coaches and, yeah, I just remember seeing great content with you.

00:16:27:23 - 00:17:28:07

Jim Schultz

And so this is this is going to go back a while, but I do think it does tie in to what impact is doing in their conferences, because this is probably the initial seed. So I think it was early 2014, I went to an event called Remarkable Growth Experience. And at the time, you know, the business was still struggling, but I took my lead software developer, a recent English major hire that was going to be my content person and my loaning site salesperson to this event today, that remarkable growth event with Marcus Sheraton, Jerry Coleman, and you know, and and that two day event for me cemented the fact that what became endless customer framework

00:17:28:09 - 00:18:01:18

Jim Schultz

was a business philosophy and not a marketing and sales initiative. And I saw how it transformed. And these three people who had really no interest in per se, sales and marketing, they were all in. And it reinforced from my perspective, and I could tell how passionate and excited engaged they were afterwards, how we could be truly unique in our industry and not just.

00:18:01:20 - 00:18:23:16

Jim Schultz

Go with the flow, so to speak. Just because people do to a certain way in your industry doesn't mean you have to do it that way. And we realized by getting exposed to conference that I would say in all the impact conferences, it's not about getting more leads, it's about who you're going to become as a company.

00:18:23:18 - 00:18:49:05

Alex Winter

I love hearing that. I really do, and I also think it plays into the buy in piece. Right. And you did a really great job bringing your team to these conferences and bringing, your team to endless customers live. What do you say to other business leaders to try to help build that, that culture and get that buy in and get people excited about using this system and building trust and just really getting everybody, like, on the same team.

00:18:49:07 - 00:19:23:21

Jim Schultz

I think you have to be willing to repeat yourself a lot. You have to be very patient. But I think overall you have to take endless customers or you know, those principles and it has to become part of your vision. So if you're using iOS, you know, it's part of your vision. Traction organizer. If you're using scaling up or you just doing strategic planning, it's got to be part of that vision.

00:19:23:23 - 00:19:50:18

Jim Schultz

And then you as a leader, Priscilla or her business owner, you then need to be able to connect that to people in the company, in the roles that they do and how they can make an impact. And this is where you have to be able to tell stories. And maybe you tell the same story over 100 times.

00:19:50:20 - 00:20:04:04

Jim Schultz

You have to live it. You have to bring the energy and then help people understand the so what?

00:20:04:06 - 00:20:28:16

Jim Schultz

Don't get defensive. Don't tell people what to do, but let them self discover how this is going to not only make the company much more sustainable, but I believe most people come to work if they realize there are buyers out there and customers just like they are in the real world, and we as a company are really there to help them out.

00:20:28:18 - 00:21:04:18

Jim Schultz

I think most people are reasonable in their buy into that. What it can't be is talking about marketing specific terms that people don't recognize in in other parts of the company or sales speak. I think you have to break it down and make it understandable, you know, for hourly people, for people who work in the finance department, for engineers, for software developers, I think sometimes we miss that context, and context is so critical.

00:21:04:20 - 00:21:22:06

Alex Winter

That's so true. And you're right, it things can get jargony. It could be sales, could be marketing jargon. They can get it can get kind of mired and confusing. And then people disconnect or disassociate. And that's when you lose buy in. So to to try to bridge those gaps is is really important. And I know that you do a lot of coaching.

00:21:22:06 - 00:21:32:07

Alex Winter

So I'm curious how does how did coaching help you along your journey with endless customers, and how does that affect how you coach and train people now, in the role that you're in?

00:21:32:09 - 00:21:37:15

Jim Schultz

So I think it's it's interesting when you use the word coaching.

00:21:37:17 - 00:21:38:16

Alex Winter

Okay.

00:21:38:18 - 00:21:49:22

Jim Schultz

Because to me, coaching and consultants, people lump them together a lot.

00:21:50:00 - 00:22:06:06

Jim Schultz

What I found and what I believe like working with impact. Here are a couple things that really stuck out to me. And people would say, well, why can't you just self implement endless customers?

00:22:06:07 - 00:22:07:01

Alex Winter

00:22:07:03 - 00:22:35:06

Jim Schultz

Or I work with clients that will just, you know, put up their hand and go, you know, that's marketing initiative. Like I'll just have marketing kind of handle it and they'll just go through some agency right. So impact one thing that impact always did no matter what type of result we were getting. So we first started working with the sales line and transferred over to impact.

00:22:35:06 - 00:23:02:06

Jim Schultz

So I think it was and we had the year wrong. But 2017 okay, is impact was working with and continued to build up expertise in the implementation of endless customers so they would see it across 25, 50, 100 companies. They could always bring back.

00:23:02:08 - 00:23:27:11

Jim Schultz

The best things, and why would you have to reinvent it yourself and find out through experimentation, they could get you from first to third much quicker. The second thing is, no matter what results we were doing, impact coaches were always there to say, okay, that's super, and what are you going to do now moving forward to continue this momentum?

00:23:27:11 - 00:23:55:20

Jim Schultz

They were always pushing us and they pushed us not by telling us what to do or what they were going to do, or lending necessarily their tech, not technical expertise. I think they would ask questions to allow us to self discover and allow us the things that we had to do to keep improving and what we were already building.

00:23:55:22 - 00:24:13:11

Jim Schultz

A lot of times at least my limited experience in working now with CEOs and business owners, when they talk about marketing agencies or marketing consultants or sales marketing consultants, is.

00:24:13:13 - 00:24:36:22

Jim Schultz

It always seems to be an adversarial relationship, whereas we never felt that way with impact. We thought it was a partnership. We understood why impact was there. They were there to make us be a better version ourselves. Every day, every week, every quarter, every year.

00:24:37:00 - 00:24:49:21

Jim Schultz

I just don't see that in a lot of other relationships I see with agencies or consultants with companies. So those are a couple things that really stand out for me.

00:24:49:23 - 00:25:12:09

Alex Winter

Yeah. And I'm curious why why is that? Why do you not see that with other like, consultants? And you'd mentioned the difference between coaching and consulting. I'm curious what that means to you because you know that you say it. I mean, I've, I've, I guess I've thought about it, but I've never really clearly defined it because there is a difference there.

00:25:12:11 - 00:25:49:02

Jim Schultz

I mean, that's a great question. I know, I know some people. And again, this is anecdotally just from my conversations with business owners, CEOs or my my individual experiences too, before impact is I think sometimes we don't understand maybe the framework we don't understand what it can do within the entire company. So what we look for quick fixes.

00:25:49:04 - 00:26:17:23

Jim Schultz

Oh. Oh, yes. You can implement my Google ad strategy and we're going to get X number of leads. Oh and then we're going to convert these x number of leads into so many customers. And look after six months or 12 months this should be our ROI on doing Google ads. I think that's takes such a really narrow view of.

00:26:18:01 - 00:26:44:09

Jim Schultz

What again, I'm going to talk about leaders and CEOs and business owners, what we should be thinking, and probably also challenging people in marketing and sales to think about. Two tactics initiatives are great and that's how you make progress. But you have to have something higher aspirational that you're trying to shoot for. So I hope I'm answering this question.

00:26:44:15 - 00:27:09:19

Jim Schultz

I think a lot of consultants just look at it as like, I'm the expert. I've done this 100 times, and here's what I'm going to do. Here's my can of spam for the next company. I'm going to do it. Impact doesn't do that because yes, it's a framework and a system you're putting in. But every company is going to do the implementation slightly different.

00:27:09:21 - 00:27:30:00

Jim Schultz

And we never thought that impact was showing up. Like, here's how you should do it. And and they were very helpful in providing frameworks. But I think you could take that and implement it for to work within your own company.

00:27:30:02 - 00:27:47:23

Alex Winter

It makes a lot of sense. And I'd like to reference two quick fixes. And I think that's that's very true. Sometimes when you're, you're struggling or there's trouble waters you want a quick fix you. And usually when you implement a quick fix it works for a little bit. But you don't get that longevity, that lasting result that you really are looking for.

00:27:48:01 - 00:27:50:03

Alex Winter

And then I think that that's a big piece there.

00:27:50:05 - 00:28:14:18

Jim Schultz

Yeah, absolutely. And I hey, I know the coaching part of it. And I don't know if impact feels this way, but I just feel it takes longer. But if you're really going to look at vision, you need to be thinking long term, not the next three months, not the next year. It's and where are you going the next 3 to 5 years?

00:28:14:20 - 00:28:17:06

Jim Schultz

And what's the foundation you're building that on?

00:28:17:08 - 00:28:34:13

Alex Winter

Absolutely. I couldn't agree with that. More so for for our listeners and our viewers out there that are implementing endless customers and for our endless customers community, what advice would you give them so that they can get the most out of it? Let's hope they have the vision. They want to go the distance. They want to go a long, long term.

00:28:34:15 - 00:28:46:04

Alex Winter

What what advice would you give to them to be accountable, to continue to be successful, to use and leverage the coaches and and just really, you know, squeeze as much juice out of this as possible?

00:28:46:06 - 00:29:18:20

Jim Schultz

I think the one thing is it kind of goes back. I know I've talked about this before, but Endless Customers was an a tactic. It was to achieve our purpose and wow, it was our purpose in action. And I just don't think I can make it any more complex than that. I think for endless customers really to have the impact that can.

00:29:18:22 - 00:29:44:14

Jim Schultz

Somebody needs to put their full belief in it, and I, I believe it needs to be the CEO and business owner and they need to step up and say, this is going to be part of our vision. This is what we are as a company. And then I think you get away from, well, it is working. It isn't working.

00:29:44:16 - 00:29:49:00

Jim Schultz

Oh, we're going to try this. We're going to try that.

00:29:49:02 - 00:30:26:08

Jim Schultz

I think if you think of it as part purpose and action, you'll be patient, you'll be persistent, you'll have great. And in the long run, I just deeply believe because I see it within the endless customer community. But I also see in businesses that I currently coach where if they were implementing endless customers, I think their path would be far easier in the next 5 to 10 years as opposed to what they're doing right now.

00:30:26:10 - 00:30:47:10

Alex Winter

Wow. And so that's that's a great segue. So what would you say? Because listen business owners, we're all in business. It's we said this before we started the show. It's not just about making money. That's not what this is about. You know, it's about them. It's about scaling a company and eventually doing like, I think the dream scenario is what you did, where you scale a company to a place of acquisition or sale.

00:30:47:12 - 00:31:00:23

Alex Winter

So what would you say to people out there that are maybe trying to do exactly that? And what advice could you give them, maybe even some of your vintage colleagues of like how they can implement the system to get to a place where they can be acquired?

00:31:01:00 - 00:31:18:07

Jim Schultz

I'm going to again, talk about connecting that to the purpose. Okay. I also think again, I've talked about it previously, you know, being patient and persistent because when I talk about our journey.

00:31:18:08 - 00:31:46:22

Jim Schultz

Although some of the journey was before, you know, the framework was articulated, what impact is doing today, they can get people up and running far faster than 2012 or 2013 when we first started. But, you know, I tell people it took us ten years right now, the last five years we had tremendous progress. And that's when the flywheel head.

00:31:47:00 - 00:32:01:16

Jim Schultz

But if you know anything about Jim Collins and you know good degree these things don't happen overnight. So then you start to peel back the layers.

00:32:01:18 - 00:32:11:20

Jim Schultz

If you're continue to do these first principles. The customer's the hero. You're there to educate them.

00:32:11:22 - 00:32:36:19

Jim Schultz

You're there to answer their questions. Unbiased. You're be you want to be transparent and be vulnerable. You're going to build up trust at the end of the day, you're going to win. Now you can determine what that win is. That win could be, you know, you go to sell your company. The win could be their succession planning that's going to happen.

00:32:36:21 - 00:32:55:06

Jim Schultz

The win could be you do an Esop. The win could be probably 3 or 4 other options. But I do think the one common thread in that is the endless customer framework and principles set you up for success. For any of those options.

00:32:55:08 - 00:33:13:18

Alex Winter

I love that, and I love that you need to clearly define those things and think long term, because you're right to get the flywheel going. It's a slow burn. It takes a bit, but you have to implement these these pillars and these practices. And the ramp up gets exponential once you hit a certain breaking point and then the sky's the limit.

00:33:13:20 - 00:33:44:16

Jim Schultz

Yeah I like here's a and these will sound so simple in some people in the endless customer community because they're living it. And most of them have had tremendous success, especially in the marketing and sales area. But I would say the warning for what I've seen firsthand now the last three years in a lot of direct, 1 to 1 conversations that business owners is.

00:33:44:18 - 00:34:04:20

Jim Schultz

Don't treat it like a marketing campaign because it isn't. It's not even a sales in marketing initiative. I don't think because you hire a content person and you hire a video person, you can just watch your hands and walk away.

00:34:04:21 - 00:34:33:15

Jim Schultz

Don't be inconsistent. It's got to be a common theme through all your strategic planning. And I can look at someone's vision and strategic plan if they're interested in endless customers, and I can tell if they're going to have success or not. And if it is a part of their planning, it's just going to be treated as another initiative here on the side that we might stop if it's not working out or not producing results right away.

00:34:33:17 - 00:34:54:09

Jim Schultz

The companies fail or endless customers doesn't get, traction is not because the system doesn't work. It's because leaders, owners, and CEOs don't come in. They dip their toes in, but they're not willing to dive in all the way.

00:34:54:10 - 00:35:00:10

Alex Winter

Well, that's incredibly well said. Yeah. And from somebody speaking from experience.

00:35:00:12 - 00:35:06:00

Jim Schultz

Yes. All I say is, if I can do it, anyone can.

00:35:06:02 - 00:35:27:16

Alex Winter

I love that. And you know what? There is beauty in its simplicity. I read the first time I read the book, I was almost, almost kind of dumbfounded by how simple the concepts were, but I almost think that's the the funniest part about it is it is so simple that I think people skip right over it and go into the tools, the tech, all the other stuff that distracts them from the fundamentals.

00:35:27:18 - 00:36:04:21

Jim Schultz

Absolutely, Alex. And it kind of goes back to what I said earlier. I think sometimes if you come in with maybe no marketing or, you know, set, maybe not specific tactics and you've been brought up not in the marketing or sales and, and you're open minded and curious, I think that the simplicity will stick faster than sometimes. People who have technical expertise in a functional area tend not to grasp some things that look obvious to other people.

00:36:04:23 - 00:36:24:08

Alex Winter

So I'm curious as your as you're implementing endless customers, through your journey at ease. We also know you worked with a really great content manager. You had a really amazing staff person. Her name was Brie. Can you tell us a little bit about what it was like working with her, building the content, and then like the results you got from said content?

00:36:24:10 - 00:37:10:01

Jim Schultz

It was incredible. And probably one of my prouder career, things that I worked on, Brie. Brie joined as in 2013 as an English major out of college and she really didn't understand anything about marketing, customer sales. And yeah, I mentioned that the remarkable growth event, you know, 2014, she was all in and I got to watch over an eight year period her growth, personal growth, maturation, where.

00:37:10:03 - 00:37:51:06

Jim Schultz

She really not only understood the framework, but she was outstanding in the implementation. For example, we had a sales and marketing alignment, for sales and marketing bi weekly meeting, and she would run those biweekly meetings. And over time, what the sales team saw is marketing was there to help make their job easier, and that we really were developing assignments, selling content that was helping them close orders.

00:37:51:08 - 00:38:29:06

Jim Schultz

And sometimes that's a tricky thing to navigate. You know, especially over time. She went from working with two people to working with ten people and, I would say watching those eight years, I know impact had a tremendous, I was going to say impact on on helping her grow in her personal development, her understanding or her integration, her implementation of endless customers.

00:38:29:06 - 00:38:54:18

Jim Schultz

And I know we couldn't have gotten there without Brie being a central part of that. And Brie's enthusiasm and Brie talking about it. And, you know, we had a book club every new employee had read. They ask, you answer, and Brie ran the book club. And then the book club grew to run twice a year where any employee could join.

00:38:54:20 - 00:39:19:11

Jim Schultz

And these conversations were always focused on endless customers. The principles, what it meant for a yes. Were we doing it well? Where was it not working? What could we improve on? And she led that, and she always led it from a position of how can she be teaching and educating people internally on what endless customers was really all about?

00:39:19:13 - 00:39:34:09

Alex Winter

That's incredible. And she has a strong background, obviously in English and the written language hasn't, but I'm sure just paired perfectly with that. Right. So what are some of the results that you, you saw from the content that she was driving?

00:39:34:11 - 00:39:55:12

Jim Schultz

So, I'll try to talk about some really specific results. Okay. So I said, you know, we had reduced the company down to five people, so we seven next, our growth in terms of number of people. And when we sold in 2022, we are 35 people. Wow.

00:39:55:12 - 00:39:57:05

Alex Winter

Seven seven.

00:39:57:11 - 00:39:58:23

Jim Schultz

You should be. Yeah.

00:39:59:01 - 00:40:01:09

Alex Winter

775.

00:40:01:11 - 00:40:38:16

Jim Schultz

Yeah. So 5 to 35. Some people might say five is a small number to start with. But again, when you're adding that many people on an, you know, period of like five years, you want to make sure that everyone's coming on, buys in to what we're trying to do around endless customers. I mentioned before making the 5000 list five years in a row, our net revenue retention, which is a key metric in a subscription SAS business, ran, at 103%.

00:40:38:18 - 00:41:07:22

Jim Schultz

So it means we are growing 3% just with our current customers every year. Even before we added new customers on Wow, our churn rate was 8% annually or, you know, less than 1% a month. And these are all really good numbers. Now, our net revenue retention was in the range of 120%. But within our industry, it just something was unheard of.

00:41:08:00 - 00:41:16:02

Jim Schultz

Our Net Promoter score went from 37 to 75 over the span of six years. Wow.

00:41:16:07 - 00:41:17:01

Alex Winter

That's incredible.

00:41:17:03 - 00:41:45:03

Jim Schultz

And I think that's just because of we're listening for questions. Were educating building trust. I think that, you know, got us the Net Promoter score of 75, which by the way and selling the company was another key metric that private equity looked at. And our growth rate was 40% annually over the last five years. So it wasn't like a one year wonder, right?

00:41:45:03 - 00:41:47:22

Alex Winter

It was 40% every year, year over year.

00:41:48:00 - 00:41:58:22

Jim Schultz

And that's why we kept making 5000 less than, you know, looking at. If we hadn't I said this before, I believe we would have still been making the list every year.

00:41:59:00 - 00:42:08:18

Alex Winter

That's incredible. Wow. So thank you for sharing that. And thank you for sharing all your insights and, all your knowledge here today on the show. We really appreciate your time.

00:42:08:20 - 00:42:29:19

Jim Schultz

Well, you're welcome. And I hope, people can grab some insights that maybe are a little bit different from this. And, you know, I believe endless customers is just a framework that can work for any business. And, you know, if you really care about customers, I know it's something you can get your hands around and implement.

00:42:29:21 - 00:42:43:09

Alex Winter

Well said. Very well. I said, well, we're going to drop Jim's info in the show notes if you want to reach out to me, have any questions for him? He's, a great resource and just a wealth of knowledge when it comes to business and endless customers. And again, Jim, thank you for your time and for being on the show.

00:42:43:11 - 00:42:45:01

Jim Schultz

Oh, you're welcome Alex. Take care.

00:42:45:02 - 00:42:51:05

Alex Winter

All right. And for everybody there watching and listening. This is endless customers. I'm your host, Alex Winter. We will catch you on the next episode.