Scaling White-Glove Service: Sweetwater's $2 Billion Success Story with Mike Clem

Speaker A: So I just fell into this specialty in building out some of that very earliest e commerce technology. Kind of earned a reputation there, and then found my way to Sweetwater in 2003 when it was just a $4 million website. And now here we are at the doorstep of 2 billion.

Speaker B: Can you achieve extraordinary results while making the world a better place? I'm, um, Bruce Kempkin, and together we'll explore how. Welcome to Humanity at Scale Redefining Leadership podcast. Join me as I speak with visionary leaders and top experts to uncover the secrets of humanity centric leadership. Ready to rethink leadership? Let's dive in. Hello and welcome back to Humanity at Scale. Scaling a business is often treated as a technical problem. More efficiency, better systems, faster execution. But when a company is built on trust, relationships and care, scale becomes something else entirely. It becomes a leadership test. How do you grow without sanding down the very humanity that made the business work in the first place? That question sits at the heart of today's conversation. I'm joined by Mike Clem, the CEO of Sweetwater, the largest online retailer of musical instruments and professional audio equipment in the US Known for building his business around long term human relationships, Sweetwater doesn't just sell gear. It pairs customers with dedicated sales engineers and builds trust over years. Mike stepped into the role, CEO role in 2023, with clear responsibility to grow Sweetwater without breaking the trust, relationships and culture that had taken decades to build. Mike, I'm, um, really looking forward to this conversation. Welcome to Humanity at Scale.

Speaker A: Thanks, Bruce. Looking forward to it as well.

Speaker B: Now, Sweetwater is unusual in today's economy. It's a large scale business built on long term human relationships and deep customer trust and culture, shaped very intentionally by its founder. So I'm wondering before we go in, about your background, what is it that you think is special that the audience needs to know about Sweetwater?

Speaker A: Well, so my personal background. So I grew up in a very musical family. Growing up, I also grew up loving technology. So when it came time for college, I actually turned down a, uh, music school scholarship, ended up at Purdue studying engineering and tech. This is back in the mid-90s, just as the Internet was becoming a thing. And so I just fell into this specialty in building out some of that very earliest, uh, e commerce technology. Kind of earned a reputation there, and then found my way to Sweetwater in 2003 when it was just a $4 million website. And now here we are at the doorstep of 2 billion. And so it's been a lot of fun growing up inside this company. Understanding all the nuance. And then when our founder Chuck, uh, stepped back from the day to day, became the opportunity for me into this seat to continue that innovation, but also to continue this very, very special culture we have.

Speaker B: I'm fascinated because I think it's. You hardly ever see anyone who starts their career and moves all the way up to CEO. So I'm wondering what was that first job and what did you think of the company when you had that first job?

Speaker A: When I joined, my first job would have been uh, I don't know title would have been Director of E Commerce, something like that. But the company was already well established but it was some selling over the phone. And so the unique thing to understand about Sweetwater is all the way back to 1979. Chuck started this company. It was actually never meant to be retail. It was more about serving these musicians. He was a touring pro musician and then he was running a recording studio when he was not out on the road. And he became known for some of this early music tech back in the 70s, the early 80s. Over time it developed into retail but from day one it was about serving, it was about being on the phone with customers. True relationship, more of a boutique kind of sales, uh, motion. And so we can unpack that uh, because that really sets the stage for how we still think about this very true one to one relationship in it for the right reasons, just love of the game and treating these customers as friends. And then you find out, oh, he really means it. Every single customer, every detail. And so there's this just absolute passion for over the top customer experiences. When I joined 2003 we sort of just married that with this world wide web and the innovation and scale that could come with that. And so that really is the magic is, is this sort of story of innovation that you would not maybe expect in Indiana between two corn fields combined with this over the top, almost old school mom and pop customer service model. That's sort of the magic here.

Speaker B: So what made you view this place as something you wanted to commit to long before you got the CEO title?

Speaker A: So you can tell there's sort of a, there's a story of this founder led passion, but there's a integrity, there's a moral compass, there's this high passion industry. And this idea of just wowing these customers just uh, resonated with me at such a personal level. It's just reflecting, refreshing I think in business these days.

Speaker B: That's wonderful to hear. You've been at it for about two years or a little more. How's it going?

Speaker A: I think we're doing great. Listen, we're, we're um, growing in double digit territory. 2025 was a strong year for us. We uh, set some records. Listen, it's testament to this business model and that caring for customers really, really pays off, especially in, in you know, when there's little pressure on consumers. But our focus really is on how do you continue to scale so even as we get bigger and bigger, how do you continue to protect that heart, put rails around it, put structure around it so that we can stays true into the future.

Speaker B: So that's a good transition into your leadership as sort of a steward of the past and also a uh, framer for the future. Right. Leading after a founder, especially a strong founder, often comes with pressure to modernize or make your mark. How do you think about honoring the past without freezing the company in it?

Speaker A: I love that question. I think there's very few of us that are actually worried about making a personal mark. And I think there's a, it's part of our culture. I think there's an amount of humility, love of the game, maybe even a servanthood, um, or servant mindset. We're really in it to maintain this special business model that you know, we've all kind of refined together over decades and that we're all very proud of. And so I think instead of personal marks, I think we more about how do we steward this thing into the future and pass it on to generations that were all part of this fabric of this company story now, how many

Speaker B: employees do you have right now?

Speaker A: So we have 2,500 employees here, all in Fort Wayne, Indiana and then we have another distribution center in Arizona and then we have handful of folks distributed in key music places throughout the country.

Speaker B: How do you embed sort of your energy and your view of the culture into all of those people?

Speaker A: It starts with hiring the right folks. And so we're very careful to hire people with kind of the mindset that I just said. And then we just put a tremendous amount of training in like we're very, very intentional about setting that culture. We have onboarding, uh, probably a little bit more robust than maybe what others do. For our sales team, we actually have what we call Sweetwater University. Maybe it's worth explaining what makes our business model so unique. Heart and soul of our company. 600 what we call sales engineers. And these are true experts hired from all over the country. Basically hand selected for their musical background, their experience, their pedigree. They come to Fort Wayne, they Go through an immense amount of training, starting with this Sweetwater University. 13 weeks of education before you ever interact with a customer. So super high amount of training. And then as a customer you get matched up with one of these experts who shares your passion, your instrument, your genre. And then every time you interact with the company, you get that same guy or gal. So we are truly building relationship with you over time. Getting to know you personally, your goals, your ambitions, and then not just waiting for the phone to ring, but outbound, we continue to nurture that relationship. Every three, six 12 months, we're checking back in, hey, how's the album going? How can we be helpful? And so there's this level of um, trust and loyalty you can imagine earns for us, this national level reputation for customer service. These follow on sales, you know, where we're driving the business, but also the rich understanding we get to have of you as a customer, not for sales reasons, but just if we're doing it right. We're serving you better as a musician because we've just gotten to know you so much better. And therefore we can be relevant and we can add value more than just a pure play. Transactional e commerce website.

Speaker B: So interesting with that much of a focus of the sales engineers on uh, relationship building and sort of long term trust. What type of goals do they have? Do they have any traditional sales goals or do you have some other measurement that reinforces the behaviors that you're looking for?

Speaker A: Certainly there are sales goals, but the way we talk about growth here, uh, actually very important. We, because we're the white glove customer service model, there is actually such a thing as growing too quickly. And we need to maintain that reputation for service, that reputation for expertise. And so we talk a lot about like, listen guys, we just come in every single day. We take care of one customer at a time, one detail at a time. We do that with passion and precision, over and over and over. Whatever growth that equals is what it equals. Clearly we have goals, but the way we get to those goals is by focusing on here and now and just making sure that every one customer walks away with a amazing experience.

Speaker B: It's interesting because that's a refreshing view on how to grow. But at the same time, I know there's a part of the business and part of people that are pushing, we can grow 5% faster. We could grow. So you're sitting obviously at the crux of those two competing energies. Right? Let's keep the white glove service immaculate. And let's also grow. Can you talk about like A specific decision or time when that tension really showed up and how you navigate that tension between growth and sort of the service of the, the model of the service.

Speaker A: So I think where tension shows up is really in the pace of that growth. I think we know where we're growing towards. I think we, we're blessed to be a company that we kind of joke about our good idea pile. You know, there's companies that don't know where they're going next or don't have the next idea. Sweetwater, um, is, you know, in a position where we're just really comfortable to sort of control our growth and let those other ideas be for a future arc. So when tension slips in, I think it's just more about, hey, uh, should we go do that now, should we do it later? How do you prioritize in that so that you can control that experience, that expertise in you know, really kind of the risk appetite, if you will? When is it time to take big bets? Or when is it time to just stay focused on the here and now?

Speaker B: So you've mentioned a few times the, uh, innovativeness of the company, which is almost counterintuitive to a model that is sort of built on the past and retaining the past. What type of innovations have you done in the last. Thinking about the last couple years you've been there, what are the things that you're looking to innovate going forward?

Speaker A: We have a reputation for being one of the bigger and more sophisticated e commerce platforms, so well beyond the music industry. You know, our website goes back to 1994. So we have a long history, A, uh, lot of size and scale on our side and just a mindset of being innovative. We talk a lot about our how and our why. I think it's important for companies. We need to stay focused on our mission, our vision. Like, why do we exist? I think for Sweetwater, we're here to fuel creativity. We're here to get you the tools as a musician or a creator to express yourself. And so there's some pillars in there that will never change. But then I think how we go to market and how that evolves over time. I think we think a lot about innovation and how do we wrap technology around that? It's more a question of scale shopping, behavior changes or technologies move around us. How do we continue to take that hard and that sort of core principles and just keep reapplying it into the, into the present and into the future.

Speaker B: Now, if you looked at the model of, of the sales engineer is certainly appealing. To the people who want to have those long term relationships, like musicians, who care about that. Are uh, there segments of your customer base who are more transactional and do you find yourself trying to figure out how you serve multiple customer segments simultaneously?

Speaker A: Great question. Yeah. So when we talk about scale, you know, inside of our 13 million customers, they come in all different levels. Like literally from beginner student in school learning to play trumpet up through name of famous artists. We very likely work with them. About um, a third of our business is actually institutional businesses, houses of worship, schools. So they each have a different purchase cadence, different interests, different goals. So yeah, very much we're thinking about, right, sizing that experience, both the relationship, the expertise, meet the customer where they are. I think about my kids, teenagers and 20 somethings where like seriously talk to a salesperson on the phone. And so generationally I think there's a little bit of movement towards what is the right communication. Is that texting, is it emailing? And so yeah, we do put a lot of thought into not for our sake, but for customers. What is the best way we can serve you, what channels does that show up in, what cadence, what timing? And so we're very thoughtful about that.

Speaker B: Well, interesting. So you brought up the topic of your kids in younger generation. Are you seeing that the younger generation of musicians your target audience. Right. And creators are as interested in the sales engineer model and if not, how do you think that you'll retain those long term relationships around trust and continuity? If they don't want to have a conversation with a sales engineer as often as they do today?

Speaker A: The way we talk about it, we really have two sales motions. So we have this very sophisticated e commerce experience that sort of stands on its own marrow with all the technical innovation. Sweetwater is known for adding more value. So when you shop on our website you get this free shipping, free tech support, free two year warranty, free. Really interesting things we do with guitars, for example, where we take everyone out of the box, goes through a 55 point inspection. We take these high res photos uh, of the guitar so that you can pick the exact guitar that shows up at your door. I want that wood grain pattern at a serial number level. I could keep going but part of our core principles is adding more value. You get more value when you shop at Sweetwater. If you just show up on the website and self serve, you get all that value. You have a great experience, you know, industry leading. Then second sales motion is even if you shop online, we're going to follow up with a phone call. And we're going to say, hey, thank you for that order. Hey, what are you putting those strings on? Or we're going to introduce ourselves in and make sure you understand, hey, there really is a different motion here. We care more. We want to interact with you at a personal level. If that's right for you, we can keep calling. If it's not, we're happy not to. And so at that point we're willing to layer on that additional relationship if it's comfortable and if it's not adding value, we're obviously very happy to let you keep shopping online and still get that value.

Speaker B: So it's interesting. So the, it's almost as if the uh, your model is so robust that even if they didn't want any of those sales engineering interactions, you're still creating the value that keeps them coming back without it.

Speaker A: That's absolutely right. And, but keep in mind it's a high passion industry. Like it's really fun if your phone rings and someone wants to talk about rock and roll, uh, as passionate guitar player. So this. So, so the phone calls are actually appreciated different than maybe they would be in other industries. But also the kind of things we sell there. There's compatibility issues, high complexity, there's long purchase journeys, there's a lot of personal advice needed. And even this generation that, that maybe is drifting away from phone or talking to human scary humans in this particular case, you really do need a lot of advice along the way. And no, I think it is actually very much still appreciated and needed in our industry.

Speaker B: I'm interested in some of now your personal routines. You're leading a fairly sizable organization and you have goals around the business results and you also have goals around retaining the essence of this customer trust and the culture you build. What are the types of things do you look at to m make sure you're getting the signals around whether the company's going in the right direction in both of those areas.

Speaker A: Listen, I think it's really important as a leader. You have to have your finger on the pulse. You have to be in the trench. You have to understand your company at a very detailed level. I really think the best leaders, you don't just delegate and get a report back, but you really have to be out there understanding the details at the front end. And for us, in a couple ways, we think about the metrics throughout the company. We have really strong reporting around and we think about metrics in three ways. There's growth metrics, there's efficiency metrics, and there's quality Metrics. And I think sometimes companies don't think enough about the quality. You can grow the heck out of something or make it efficient, but if you're not monitoring the quality by way of net promoter scores or service times or cycle times, you have to keep those in balance. So we put a lot of thoughtfulness there. I would say the other way we think about it is, so my email address goes out on every single package out the door, and customers, uh, reply. And I literally read every single one of them, and Chuck did for decades before me. This is the kind of company that just cares at that level and we respond to each one. Most of them are love letters. You know, hey, thank you for this experience. When there's, uh, something to solve in there, we jump all over it. But the system involved there is. I really have my finger on the pulse at all times of where we're doing a great job or where we're not, and then we turn that back up into coaching or strategy for the company.

Speaker B: So I'm, um, interested. I think you said you had something like 13 million customers. And so that seems to me like that might translate into a lot of inbound emails. How many emails are you reading regularly?

Speaker A: I won't say how many emails, but it's a lot. It's a commitment. And that's the point. It's really easy to not be in touch with your customers, not offer that opportunity or have someone else reply, but we just believe that's part of this company. We care more, uh, we want to serve more. It's become such a core principle. We actually teach it into our culture. It is not okay to ignore that communication with the customer or the nuance of what they're trying to give us. Feedback like, we take that very seriously. And in fact, we celebrate it as a leadership team when we have the opportunity to learn more, get closer to our customers.

Speaker B: Well, great. So I love the. You are demonstrating the behaviors of being customer centric and reading and responding. What are you doing on the side of showing that same type of love for your employees? How do you embed in them the caring that you showcase for your customers?

Speaker A: So we talk a lot about heart. We actually throw the slide on the screen. It's got a heart in the middle. And we have, you know, customers out on one quadrant. We have employees, we have partners, and we have community. And so we've actually been very intentional to say, listen, if you're going to be a company with a heart, you have to actually have a strategy around that. And you have to make it important in the culture, you have to protect time for it. You have to be intentional with time and you have to put structure around it it to make sure it gets done and measure the results. And so, you know, as it relates to employees, we, we do a lot around, um, uh, celebrating employee events and uh, you know, taking everybody out to the, uh, zoo, having a lunch with Santa Claus during the holidays. And so we're very intentional about making a cadence and a calendar and sort of managing it on an annual frame to make sure we're really thinking about each employee and each group and really serving well.

Speaker B: Did you just the whole company watch the IU game together?

Speaker A: No, listen, we did actually have some watch party. Great success for Indiana.

Speaker B: Uh, nice. So it's interesting. I'm picturing that graphic you put up with the heart in the middle and with customers, employees, partners and community. Do you have metrics around all four of those? And is that agenda for your executive team to review each of those and how they're doing relative to hart? If I looked at your executive team, is there a, uh, heart discussion items around those?

Speaker A: It literally is, uh, all the way down into our personal goals. When we set goals on an annual frame, you know, those goals are related to growth and efficiency. But we do literally ask every leader to write down a heart goal which, you know, sometimes points inwardly, personally, sometimes it's, you know, helping to develop company level. Chuck would always talk about you're either adding credibility to the company or you're taking away. So we constantly are encouraging leaders to how do you sort of even in your personal goals ladder that back to be adding to the company culture. We measure each of them individually. You know, for customers, we obviously use a net promoter score. We have other metrics that we're uh, talking about together as a leadership team. Our NPS score is in the 90s off the charts. We celebrate that. We make sure we read back these customer love letters to the employees. So it's really important to hear it in the, in the words and share that broadly. So we're very intentional about that. With community organization, we have a philanthropy, we have budgets. Uh, we're able to serve over 200 organizations a year. Some of that is here locally, some of it is underserved communities throughout the nation getting, uh, music into younger folks hands. So we have a whole strategy measurement around that. We do employee surveying. Uh, I think it's really important for companies to give a safe space for employees to come back and say what's going great and what's not. We take that very seriously. And, and frankly, with our partners, we do too. I think most retailers are used to just grinding their suppliers for the last nickel. We think of it more as true partnership. We're in this together. How do we find mutual growth? And then how do you measure that? And so, yeah, in each quadrant we have very specific conversation, um, around each one.

Speaker B: If you're enjoying this episode, make sure to follow or subscribe so you never miss a conversation. We've got plenty more great stories coming your way. Little shift in gears, but you took over the company sort of a little bit after Covid, and lots of organizations are still reeling from trying to find the right sort of work pace and work design post. Covid. How did Covid change how you operate and to what degree is the way that you work still being redefined based on those sort of shifts that happen?

Speaker A: Covid for us, I mean, we always say this humbly because there was a lot of pain through that timeframe, but it actually was a huge accelerator for our business because we sell the kind of things you need to stream from your home, school, business, church or bucket list. Always wanted to play guitar or re engage with a passionate hobby. So our challenge through the pandemic really was scaling. Like we had 2.5 million new customers to file through that time frame. And so it stretched every system, every employee. There was a certain amount of just, hey, guys, we got it. We have to maintain this reputation and service level. And so it took a lot of grit and a lot of energy from folks. That was the first leadership challenge, was just making sure everyone was making it through in a difficult time, maintaining our reputation. And then I think what we learned through that time, you know, we all worked remotely from home. We're certainly able to do that and have the tools and systems to do it. But I think what we discovered about ourselves is we really work well when we're in one culture, in office, learning from each other with all the resources and expertise. And, you know, you can tell we're, you know, there's so much hands on training for us, we have our hands on the gear, hearing how it sounds so that we can be experts over the phone. So what we learned about ourselves is, um, even though we do have some distributed folks and we do it well, but we really like being in one place, learning from each other.

Speaker B: Did you have to go through the transition of allowing people to work remotely and then bringing them back? Is that challenge. Are you past that challenge or is that still sort of working its way

Speaker A: through I would say, you know, I don't know if it was ever a challenge. I like I say technology wise, we were equipped to do it. Uh, we were able to, but we were not our best selves working remotely when you just don't have that support system wrapped around you. And so I think everybody was happy to get back to kind of the normal rhythms here. We do have some of our technology folks, we have hybrid relationships because some of that needs to be done from remote locations. And so I think we did. I guess I'm saying we landed in a slightly different place than pre pandemic and that's good and that's healthy. The, you know, our warehouse, we like everyone, we closed down. It was kind of a heartwarming time because we, our governor said, listen, you're, you're actually essential. You need to get these boxes moving out to these churches, these schools. And so we had a team of leaders that came in and we just volunteered and said, all right, we're going to make this happen. We're not going to bring our warehouse employees in, so we'll just do it ourselves. And so I think there was actually a certain amount of camaraderie and culture that was built through that. You go through an adverse time together, it actually strengthens your culture. So I think we experienced that though.

Speaker B: Okay, so I have to a little bit different shift, which is you love music, right? Do you have time in the day with working there to actually show your passion around music? And what do you do with music now in the moments you get free?

Speaker A: I try to play as much as I can. You know, high school and college I played in a bunch of bands. Played out, I missed that. But I still get to play at church and play, you know, sit in with some of my friends or whatever. But, but listen, we're a whole, you can imagine, uh, a whole company full of musicians here. We all find ways to fit uh, it in. Even when we're busy, we really try to celebrate. We have three different performance spaces from a, ah, very small intimate stage in our diner, all the way to a 3,500 seat amphitheater in our backyard where we have major artists playing summer concert series. So we find ways for the employees to find their way together onto a stage. And we really try to celebrate that as a culture.

Speaker B: Picturing just this most musical place where you're working and all of a sudden song breaks out a little bit like that.

Speaker A: And sometimes it's employees and sometimes we have a major artist who happens to be coming through. We Have a world class studio on our campus where we have names coming through. And so it is actually a lot of fun that we in that way we're all just in it for the same reasons. Whether you're just starting or you're a major artist, uh, we're all here for love of the game.

Speaker B: Awesome. Ah, now I want to look a little bit at the future as you look ahead for the company. The clearly AI is changing how a lot of organizations think about their future. Right. Things get either be automated or business models can change. I'd love to know from your perspective what you think of as the greatest opportunity and maybe even the greatest risks that AI have for your business going forward.

Speaker A: The way we think about AI is maybe in three ways. We're finding ways to think about internal workflow, efficiency and um, where can it make us smarter, faster, more capable and so we have some real innovation happening there. Number two, we think about customer facing. And what's unique for Sweetwater is you know, we have four decades of interacting with customers. Not just web behavior, clicks and searches, but like on the phone, like real passion, real emotion. And so what we're able to do now with AI and LLMs with our own data, understanding our customers at such a rich level, we're actually doing some really, really interesting things to be able to turn that back out into some customer facing, um, value, um, but also equipping our sales team with Iron man suits. And how do you take that four decades of the wisdom of those that came before me and turn that into better product training, better expertise, better uh, relationship training. Uh, so we think a lot about not replacing our humans, but how do you augment those humans and can tell we really value those relationships. So the tech only fuels that. But the third way we think about it is it's actually a boon for creativity. There's actually some concern in our industry is like oh, is and everybody's just going to use AI and not learn to play instruments anymore. But, but what we're actually observing is the opposite is that we're all sitting in front of prompts now saying things like, you know, make me music that sounds like this or that. And we're uh, actually finding it's actually a lower bar, it's a new on ramp to creativity. And it's like wait a minute, I'm having fun or now I want to go out and get an instrument and start doing it the right way. Uh, and so we're actually seeing it as, you know, perhaps a entry into a new season of Creativity.

Speaker B: Oh, interesting. On that note, it seems to me that Sweetwater is in a good position to facilitate some of that learning and changing of behavior across the musical field by introducing and sharing the learnings of those people who are creating in new ways.

Speaker A: It's a two edged sword, I'll uh, be honest with you, because we have so many of us are musicians and purists and don't want to see technology come in and take the jobs. And so on one hand it's like, wait a minute, is AI the enemy here? And on the other hand it's what Sweetwater's done for four decades. Really, it's really not about retail. It's really about just wherever music integration and technology is going next, we're there to help understand it, educate you, and then turn that into the tools that you want to have to be creative in that new environment. Whether years ago that was tape to digital to mobile to social, now AI is just the next season in an evolution of music tech evolving. And we're here to help get you equipped to express yourself in that new world.

Speaker B: Great. And now that we're talking about the new world, as you think about your role as CEO and what's going forward, what do you want your legacy to be and what do you have left to achieve it?

Speaker A: You can hear us talking a lot about heart. I think that will end up being part of the legacy. Not just myself, but this whole leadership team I think we're just so proud of. Here's a business model where we've able to just stay focused on customers with these over the top experiences with, with actual care and able to do that at a level that continues to scale and grow. I think, I hope that that will be. The legacy is like, listen, there are ways to grow a company and be a great leader, uh, and still have an actual heart and care for customers along the way.

Speaker B: Great. And that's a great ending to transition into. My closing questions. So these are the questions I ask all of my guests. The first one is what's one leadership skill that you think will become even more important in the future? Sure.

Speaker A: One thing we talk about here is we talk about systematic thinking and I think leaders more and more in the age of technology and innovation, you have to be able to architect growth. You have to be able to think in systems. You know that in your engineering background. I think Bruce. And it's like there's a, uh, even when we talk about creative ideas, organic ideas, we're immediately thinking, how do you scale that? How do you Turn that into a flywheel, a system so that it can pay dividends for years to come. And I think, I think more and more leaders need to, um, think and develop those kind of systematic skills.

Speaker B: Love that. And as you said, I'm an engineer, so system thinking is about as ingrained in me as anything else. Now if you could wave a magic wand and immediately change one thing to make organizations more humanity centric, what would it be?

Speaker A: I think there's, um, a lot of zero sum thinking. I think the magic wand would be, listen, what if in order for us to win or grow, we didn't have to think someone else had to lose? What if we were all building and adding value for customers and growing the whole ocean? I think we could do with more of that thinking.

Speaker B: Oh, I love that. There's a lot of either or zero sum game. Us vs. Them shows up everywhere in human thinking. So that's great. What's one final piece of advice you'd like to leave with our listeners?

Speaker A: I'll tell you what, one thing we didn't talk about. We have a saying here that latched onto, uh, when we've talked about it other places we talk about solve the customer, solve the problem, solve the system. And what we mean is, before we ever jump in and solve problems, the first thing we do is solve the customer. We get our arms around you, Hey, I don't know what's wrong, but we're going to figure this out. We got you. Now go solve the problem and then go think about the system. Because if one customer had that problem, there probably are more. And so that framework has served us well and we always try to pass that advice on when we can.

Speaker B: I love that because interesting enough, um, probably about 10 years ago, I created a problem resolution model that had those same three steps. And then I had a fourth one which they weren't named the same, but they were exactly the same thing. The fourth level was to change the strategy, which is once you learn based on all that learning, what are you going to different? Like, you know, for me it was like, if you're a retailer, what business are we going to be in next? Based on the findings of those or what new products are we going to introduce? So great. Awesome. And finally for our listeners who, and many, uh, of them are going to just be so in awe with, I think the discussion, they're going to want to go buy from you and experience the sales engineers. Where should they go to either learn more about you or just to sort of experience Sweetwater?

Speaker A: Well, if you want to learn about me? The best place to follow is on LinkedIn, uh, you know, slash, Mike Klemm. And then the best place to learn about Sweetwater, you know, @sweetwater.com and we would love that because there is just so much more nuance and story. We love to share that every chance we can beyond just the transactional E commerce. And so a lot of that story shows up on our website. We'd love to share.

Speaker B: Awesome. Awesome. Well, thanks for joining me on the show, Mike. This is great. I don't think that there's been guest who has more represented sort of everything we're trying to communicate around humanity at scale. So thanks for joining me.

Speaker A: I had a blast. Thank you, Bruce.

Speaker B: Well, I hope you enjoyed our conversation with Mike Clem. Now let's dive into the After Show, a segment where I'll reflect on key takeaways from the episode. Welcome to the After Show. If there's one thing that really stayed with me from this conversation with Mike Clem, it's this. Sweetwater hasn't just talked about Heart. They built it into how the business actually runs. A lot of companies say they care about customers and culture. Sweetwater has made those ideas operational. Here are five moments from the conversation that really stood out to me. First, relationships aren't a tactic. They're the product. Mike described the heart of Sweetwater as their 600 sales engineers. Customers appeared with one person who knows their instrument, their genre, their goals, and then stays with them over time. That continuity isn't accidental. It's the business model. Second, there really is such a thing as growing too fast. This one was refreshing. Mike was clear that the white glove model creates a real constraint. You scale faster than you can train, support and sustain expertise. You don't just hurt efficiency, you break trust. His framing was simple. Take care of one customer at a time, one detail at a time, and let growth be the result. The third is that culture shows up in training, not posters. Sweetwater University and 13 weeks of training before a sales engineer ever talks to a customer. That's a big investment, and it sends a clear signal. Preparation, credibility, and consistency matter here. Culture isn't something you say, it's something you design. The fourth takeaway was that leaders don't outsource listening. Mike talked about putting his email address on every package, reading every customer response, and using that feedback to guide coaching and strategy. That's not about value. It's about staying close enough to reality to know when things are working and when they're not. And the final takeaway was that AI should give humans superpowers, not pink slips. I loved his Iron man suit metaphor. Sweetwater is using AI, uh, to capture decades of real customer interactions and turn that into better training, better judgment and better service. Not to replace people people, but to equip them. And he made a compelling case that AI may actually be a nude on ramp to creativity. Not the end of it. And then near the end, Mike shared a simple framework that stuck with me. Solve the customer, solve the problem, solve the system, care for the person, fix what's broken, then make sure it doesn't keep happening. So let me leave you with two questions. Where have incentives or performance pressures tort behaviors your values never intended? And if customers, employees, partners and community compared notes, what story would they tell about your heart today? That's all for now. I hope you enjoyed this episode and remember, you are the flame that can spark humanity at scale. One decision, one conversation, one moment at a time. Thanks for tuning in to humanity at scale. Redefining Leadership Podcast Remember, true leadership isn't only about achieving short term results. It's about creating a lasting, positive impact on all of the people you touch. Join me next time as we uncover more insights and strategies for humanity centric leadership. Until then, I'm Bruce Temkin encouraging you to lead with purpose and empathy and to be the spark that elements elevates humanity at scale.