Building Customer Connections, and Adapting to Trends with Jamaul Ford

Speaker A: Foreign. Presents the Customers first podcast conversations to create customer centric cultures.

Speaker B: Welcome to the Customers first podcast. I'm your host, Tacy Atkinson. I'm a brand experience curator, helping companies create magical experiences to spark brand loyalty. Here in the Customer's first boardroom, we are joined by guests from around the globe to share customer centric conversations to help you create the magic in your organization. Joining us today in the Customer's first boardroom is Jamal Ford. Jamal is an accomplished second generation entrepreneur whose business journey transcends mere commercial success. His mission is rooted in fostering growth, empathy and community. With a profound belief in the power of understanding and connecting with people. Jamal's approach to business has always been centered around helping others thrive. Welcome to Customers First Jamal.

Speaker A: Thanks so much, Tacy. I really appreciate it.

Speaker B: Jamal, could you please share your journey leading to this deepening B2B collaborations and how these partners can contribute to other businesses growth and success.

Speaker A: Yeah, so I really got into B2B really just from growing up in an entrepreneurial space. My mom is an entrepreneur. She's on two daycare, she's owned clothing stores, she's done commercial, uh, sugar cane hauling. And so I kind of grew up in the entrepreneurial space. And when I got my master's degree, I was in corporate wellness doing that. And then I wound up opening up a clinic. Um, and in that clinic, we were able to scale to about 20,000 patients in less than three years. And then once I got out of the clinic, once I sold my portion of the clinic, I was just kind of just hanging out, not really doing that much. And so many people started coming to me and asking me for consulting services and just getting help how to scale their business because they knew my background, they knew my journey, they knew my story. And ultimately I kind of became more of a, uh, mentor to a lot of people just off of them knowing who I am and me wanting to help them scale their businesses. And then finally I decided, okay, I'll just go into consulting full time. And so it's kind of like what I've been doing post sale of that particular business.

Speaker B: That's awesome. Okay, so you have a couple of different things that you just touched on there that I'd like to pick at just a little bit more. One is, you've done enough different types of industries now. How would you best advise someone if they were looking to start a business today? And how should we, before we're looking to start the business, how do we sharpen the ideas in the marketplace before we get started?

Speaker A: Yeah, so for me, microeconomics plays a major part in this. And it's really just supply and demand, understanding what people want and focusing on creating those things and not just looking at what we believe people want. So doing surveys, doing questionnaires, doing waiting lists, really going out and contacting people, depending on what I'm selling is going to depend on how many people I'm going to contact. Let me give you an example. If I'm selling a product or, uh, service that will generate roughly per person, five to six hundred dollars a month, and I'm looking to scale this business to maybe $10,000 a month within the next six months, then I'm probably going to ask about three to 400 people in that industry. Would they be interested in a particular service that I'm setting up to offer. That way, I kind of already have started to generate a market for the product. I'll create what's called a minimal viable product, or mvp, to kind of do a presentation to show them what I have and what I'm planning on doing, and getting them to sign up on a waiting list for when the product actually launched. That way I know If I asked 300 people, maybe 150 told me they would be interested. And then once I launch the product, maybe 75 to 50 sign up, then I know I'm on my way. Um, and I think it's always important to do that. Um, just because you see someone else doing something doesn't mean it's what you should be doing. Uh, I'm really big on empathy and knowing what the people who know you and your surroundings want. And then from there, actually figuring out how to help and serve those people through your knowledge base.

Speaker B: I love it. Now, you talked about a waiting list there, and I happen to know that you, you had the idea of transforming the waiting list into a wealthy list. I'd love to know how that came about. And what specific steps did you make in order to turn that into a reality within your business?

Speaker A: Yeah. So in my original business with doing speech and hearing, it was really big because there was such a shortage of, uh, therapists compared to the people who actually needed therapy. And so not just turning people away, but getting them to actually sign up for services, to actually be able to contact them once someone drops out of therapy or graduates from therapy has always been a key thing in regards to making sure that your cash flow stays steady, transitioning into opening new businesses. I've always seen that the waiting list also can contribute to keeping people in touch, keeping people in the know about what you have going on as you're developing your product or your service. And so I'm really big on systems. And so with most of the people that I do consulting with, I help integrate systems, I help integrate workflows that keep people in the know about where you are with your product and service, what your business has going on, because that is what's going to keep them making transactions with you, whether they're actively working with you or waiting to work with you.

Speaker B: Well, and you talk about how it keeps you engaged. So Jamal, how do we best advise people to. While engaging with people, you also don't want to spam their inboxes. So how do you prioritize how you're staying in touch with them?

Speaker A: That's a amazing question. It really depends on the product or service. If it's a more high end product, if it's something that someone will possibly pay over $800 for a month. I'm more about being personal with those things, following up, um, calling the person once every two months. Not on trying to sell them, sell them anything, but just following up with them, just seeing how they're doing, seeing how their business are doing and just really keeping in touch with them and being empathetic to what they have going on and being present. I think being present is what makes things not feel spammy, like being able to listen. Because it's not really about me as much as it's about them and their problems and the issues that they're having and making sure that I'm acknowledging those things and they know that I'm empathetic to those things. So I think that that's what keeps things from being spammy.

Speaker B: I like it. So you agree with me. I'm a big proponent of build the relationship. Don't worry about the transactions, they're going to come, just build the relationship with the person. Human to human. Everything else will take care of itself.

Speaker A: Yes, I, I'm a thousand percent a believer in reciprocity, that if you give people knowledge and information and things, it's always going to come back to you. It's just a matter of when it does. And so I'm always communicating with people that I'm not actively working with and giving them suggestions or giving them some level of help to where when I do have availability, I'm there ready to jump on board. I don't see a lot of clients personally. I probably see maybe 8 to 10 clients personally because any client that I have will tell you that I become more or less A part of the company, me and my team becomes a part of the company where we will be in person, we will meet your clientele, we will meet your customers, we'll make sure that we're there to help and support you, not just from looking on the back end but really helping with you, uh, with a lot of the front facing activities that keeps your business thriving. And so for me, if I'm doing that, I can't do that for a ton of people. So I do have a waiting list of people who know that about me and are willing to wait to have me be a part of their business in the same way.

Speaker B: I love it. Now I've heard you coin, um, what I look at it in a different phrase, but I love the way that you come at it. You talk about geographical dominance and I know that it's very important to optimize a business's local presence. So when, what are the key strategies that you employed through geographical dominance in order to optimize the presence in the community?

Speaker A: Well, that comes from two major statistics. The first statistic is Google usually gives people whatever business or ah, service is within a three mile radius of where they live. So someone, Google's dentist, a dentist near me or doctor near me or store near me is usually going to be within a three mile radius of where they are. Right. So that's the first statistic. The second statistic is 60% of people live within 10 miles of where they grew up and 80% of people live within 100 miles of where they grew up. And that becomes super important when it determines the service of that you're giving them. An example would be if someone has a major toothache and they're struggling with that and they live within 10 miles of your office and they Google you and they say doctor or dentist near me and you come in and have a great experience with you. When their cousin who lives 40 or 50 miles away is having trouble finding a quality dentist and they talk to that person and say, hey look, I have a dentist, uh, my dentist is amazing. They're going to be possibly willing to drive those miles to get quality service because they know they've gotten word of mouth that your service is top tier when it comes to services that medical, especially medical services, people want the best quality service and will be willing to drive for that quality service. So it really comes from those two specific things that I've come up with, the geographical diamonds ideal.

Speaker B: I love that. And I would say it goes beyond just medical services. I mean when my father had Restaurants. Back when I was a kid, people would drive for like three or four hours to come and have Saturday morning breakfast or to have a piece of his lemon pie and just sit and have that sense of community that he built there. So I 100% agree with you. I think that when you can establish yourself, the word of mouth will is the best marketing tool out there and it costs you nothing except that relationship that you've built with them.

Speaker A: I really believe, and just to go off of what you're saying, um, I really believe rapport goes a long way. I really never want anyone to work with me with any nervousness or uh, any anxiety. And so I'm really big on getting word of mouth referrals. I even have systems in place to make sure that every one customer that I get, I'm able to get three additional customers through word of mouth referrals. Because I do believe that with, depending on what type of services you're offering, the word of mouth is going to go along much, uh, further than them seeing an ad on social media or ah, seeing a post. Are you cold calling them, asking them to work with you. You really don't want anyone to be reluctant to eat from your restaurant, to get your uh, medical services, to really get anything from you. You want them to have comfort. And the one thing that does bring them comfort is a referral from someone else.

Speaker B: Right? They trust. If you can get, if you can break through someone's trust circle, you already have naturally built in trust with that person because the person they care about already trusts you. Right?

Speaker A: That is 100% true.

Speaker B: I love it. Now, you've been in this entrepreneurial space a long time. What kind of shifts are you seeing or what do you foresee the business landscape is going to look like in the future?

Speaker A: There's two really big shifts. One we're kind of already in and one is coming that I think a lot of people aren't really knowledgeable about. The first one that we're already in is the offering of products. And many times you have to be pretty aware of the price point of your products because many people are competing with Amazon and Temu in these particular places with selling products. And if you're selling like an example of T shirt or you're selling something like that, you're going to compete heavily for SEO with that particular product. You're not going to outspend Apple when it comes to AirPods. And so it doesn't matter how much money you put in the SEO, it doesn't matter how much money you put into advertising, they're always going to beat you out on advertising with those particular things. So I would, I focus more on productized services. So an example would be I offer CRM, uh, which is my main product and I help because it's a system that helps people retain customers and scale their businesses and but for me it's not just the product of the CRM, it's also the coaching services associated with that that make, that creates the total package of what people receive from me. And when it comes to brand maven, so that's the first thing that I see not just focusing on products but trying to figure out a way to uh, productize our uh, service like comic combined services and products together when it comes to offering that. The second thing that I see is people are no longer going to Google for the answers or what they're looking for. They're going to use ChatGPT. And many people are familiar with SEO but they're not familiar with geo. And GEO is Generative Engine Optimization. It means that when you ask Chad, uh, probably in the next six months when you ask ChatGPT what's the best soap on the market, they're going to tell you the best soap on the market and they're going to send you uh, a link straight to the best soap on the market based on reviews and services to where you don't have to look through Amazon and figure uh, out which one has the best reviews, which one is the best price. People are going to go on tag and be like what's the best price soap with the most reviews on Amazon, Amazon and Chad, GPT is going to list them all and it's going to send you the link and they're going to buy just like that. And so to be able to work has to be done for you to pop up on ChatGPT and that is called Generative Engine Optimization. And a lot of people aren't aware of that. So it's actually best to get into the game of Generative Engine optimization now before the major markets and major companies start to get into the business of making sure that they're popping up more than the smaller businesses on ChatGPT.

Speaker B: If someone, because a lot of people, I uh, mean AI, is here to stay whether we're on board or not on board. So talk about what will happen to small town America if we don't, if business owners don't jump on that train.

Speaker A: Yeah. So unfortunately what will happen and you can see it transitioning now even with the product space you see a lot of real estate that's empty, maybe places that used to sell clothing, apparel, or uh, different products, they're no longer in business. And those people who now own the real estate don't have any tenants because of that. So it's having a ripple effect from that standpoint. It will have an even bigger ripple effect on smaller businesses due to the fact that they're not in competition because people want the answer as fast as possible. And so if you're not one of the fast answers that people are getting, people aren't going. People aren't willing to do the research as long as they were previously because of ChatGPT, because they could just get the answer right then and there. So you have to set your business up to be a quick answer for people. And being able to do generative engine optimization is the key to that.

Speaker B: I like that. And I would say as we're all learning how to accomplish that, it goes all the way back to your building relationships. Because while you're learning all those other things, don't forget to continue to build all the relationships with the people you already have and the new people you meet so that they can continue to spread the word about you and recommend you to other people while you're catching up to this AI world. Yeah.

Speaker A: Yes. And just to go a step further, just from what you just said, I would have anyone. If you own a business or service based business or product based business, I would first focus on building personal brand online first. If you notice many people such as Kim Kardashian are the rock. They have more followers on their personal pages than what they have on their business pages. It'll almost be almost 10x the amount of people that follow them personally than what follows their actual business. So if you have a product based business or service based business, I would first write a book. I would write a book. And really that way people can understand who you are, what your thought process is, your journey, whatever you're trying to tell people in this book for. Then from there I will create a web page for the book and just talk about all the things that you talk about in your book, your services, everything that you kind of do. And I will actually buy the domain, your first and last name com. So that way that kind of sets you up for generative engine optimization whenever people are searching for the solutions that you offer and make sure that whatever URL you buy. So if you buy like example for me, I own Jamal Ford.

Speaker B: Com.

Speaker A: My name is also Jamal Ford on Instagram. Jamal Ford on TikTok. Jamal Ford on Twitter, Jamal Ford on LinkedIn. So now I'm building a whole ecosystem that makes me easy to find that's telling people exactly what I do, how I do it, why I do it, when and where I can do it for them at. Right. Um, so that's really big, and that's super important.

Speaker B: I love it. And thank you for, um, setting me up to be able to say, oh, my goodness, I did it right, because I have my name as everything. I use the same profile picture everywhere to make it easy for people to spot. And I also have the website in my name. So thank you for validating that I made the right choice.

Speaker A: No, that's absolutely correct. And, um, even more so, whatever product or service you're offering, I would write a book about it. Like, I would, definitely, because it's almost the foundational piece that allows people to know what you're doing. Like, I'm currently writing a book called Focus Forward that helps people with processes and systems, whether you are entrepreneur or not an entrepreneur. I'm going to be finished with that book in October. But once I write that book, all, uh, the. There's gonna be products and services that I'm gonna offer that I talk about, not in the book, but that supports what the book talks about. Right. And so now when I do podcasts, when I do these talks, when I do these things, I talk about the book. But then also, once people hear about the book, they'll also get into knowing more about me and see the products and services I have associated with the book. And that all helps with geo.

Speaker B: Absolutely. Well, and congratulations that you'll be done the book in October. I've been working on mine for a while, so I know how much work that is. And I probably will not be able to say that I'm finished until spring, but, uh, I know that it's a lot of work, so that's fantastic. You know what, Jamal? This has been an amazing conversation, and I will be sure to add all of your contact information to the show notes so that people can contact you for more information. Okay?

Speaker A: Thank you so much. I definitely appreciate it.

Speaker B: Oh, gosh, no problem at all. Now, because we're eager to learn more about you and your life experiences, it's time for our speed round, Spill the Tea, where we ask three questions to learn more about you. Are you ready to spill the tea, Jamal?

Speaker A: I'm definitely ready to spill the tea.

Speaker B: Excellent. All right, number one, what's the most common misconception about your area of expertise hmm.

Speaker A: That's a great question. I would say that getting customers or finding new clients is hard. I don't think it's hard. I think you actually can have success. You just gotta know the volume that you have to do. It's a volume game. However many reps you do is what the results you get. So if you need 10 customers, you might need to reach out to a hundred people to get 10 customers. I think that people just don't know the number that they need to reach out to in order to get the results that they're looking for.

Speaker B: I love it. Okay, number two, how has your career choices impacted your personal life?

Speaker A: Well, it's impacted my personal life both positively and negatively. I will say that. I wouldn't say negative. I will say that, you know, you really have to love what you do, and it has to be a part of your life. And sometimes there is no balance. But it's okay if you don't have balance. If you love what you're doing, if you don't really feel like you're working. Um, and I think that's the key part, that sometimes your family or the people on the outside want you to have more balance. But it's kind of like a kid playing a game that they love playing basketball. They never want to come inside from playing basketball. They want to stay out all day and play basketball. So if you love what you do, then, you know, that's super important.

Speaker B: Always stick to, uh, what you're passionate about.

Speaker A: Definitely love it.

Speaker B: All right, and finally, what is one of your goals for this year?

Speaker A: One of my goals this year is to help about 200 entrepreneurs who are just starting their business get the systems that they actually need 100% free. And how I've been doing that is through them being sponsored from larger businesses to actually get their system set up. So I'm super excited about that. I've been working on it. I think I'm roughly at about 25 right now, so I have a little ways to go, but I'm only a little bit past halfway through the year. I think it's going to ramp up towards the back end of the year.

Speaker B: Excellent. I love it. Well, thank you for playing Spill the tea. It's always fun to get to know people on a personal level. Jamal, do you have any final thoughts for us today?

Speaker A: I think I have one final. I have two final thoughts. First final thought is, always remember there's really two big emotions in life, and those two emotions are fear and love. And you always want to make sure that you're doing the things or saying the things that you are telling people out of love and not out of fear. And also make sure that you're living your life out of love. Are, uh, doing the things that you're doing in life out of love and not out of fear. You don't want to be working towards anything in a business for fear of loss. You want to do it because you love it. So that's the first thought I want to leave people with. The second thought I want to leave people with is just be relentlessly consistent. You want to just find something that you can do every day and just be consistent every single day. Because you don't hit a home run every time. But the more singles you hit, the more you're gonna get towards the goal that you're looking to get towards.

Speaker B: Mhm. I love that. Oh my gosh, what a great thing to end the show on. Thank you so much for being here and sharing everything with us. It has absolutely been my pleasure.

Speaker A: Thank you so much. I uh, really appreciate the opportunity.

Speaker B: Jamal's contact information, as I said, will be in the show notes. The show notes will also have all the ways you can inter with me. You can find the customer's first podcast on any of the platforms you might choose to get your podcast from. You can also listen without downloading any software@tacyakinson.com please connect with me on LinkedIn and let me know your thoughts on the show and who we should invite on in the future. Thank you for joining me in the Customers first boardroom and I look forward to your next visit. Until then, remember, customer centric cultures create magical customer experiences. Now go create the magic customer's first

Speaker A: podcast conversations to create customer centric cultures.