Why the Customer Experience Is Your Best Referral Strategy w/Dani Whitestone

Hi Danny. Welcome to the Powerful Women Rising Podcast. Hi, Melissa. Thank you so much for having me.

Yes, I'm so excited to chat with you. Well, we've been chatting for a while before we even started recording because that's how we are. So I hope everyone has had at least one cup of coffee before they listen to this podcast. I want to talk first.

I'm going to have you introduce yourself, but I want to talk a little bit first about how you and I met. And I don't even remember how we met. Do you? No, no, but that's the nature of so many great connections.

I'm like, okay, well, great story. Nobody knows how we met. But the point is, I feel like you're somebody that has just always kind of been in my circle and I don't even know where I found you. I did a networking challenge several years ago when I went to a networking event every day in January.

It was horrible. Zero out of five stars, do not recommend. But I think that might be when I found you. And one of the reasons that I wanted to have you on the podcast, I wanted you to talk about your customer journey and hospitality and all the things that you love to talk about.

But I also wanted to just touch on before we started into all of that, our relationship. Because I think it's so interesting that you run a networking event for entrepreneurs. I run a networking event for entrepreneurs. I know I've told you and the listeners before the story about the networking event that I signed up for.

It was $15. And a couple of days before the event, the lady refunded my $15 and sent me an email and said, I refunded your $15 because you are my direct competition. And basically, like, you can't come to my networking event. And you and I have a relationship that is so on the opposite end of that spectrum.

Like people who are on my email list have seen me talk about your event like probably more times than they've seen me talk about my own. So I want to hear from you what is your philosophy like when it comes to your relationship with me or with other people who have similar offers to you? Why are you like you are and not more like the like you can't come to my event because you're my competition lady? That's a great qu it's a great question.

And I think it's just because, like, even if you do the same thing, you're always gonna do it in a slightly different way because we're completely different people. And someone might resonate with one person's style versus another person's style. And really at the end of the day, I don't think that anything bad can happen when you get carrying smart people in a room together. Like sometimes you don't know exactly what's gonna happen.

Like, like if and and I and then never look at it like that in terms of like you're awesome, great, let's meet and let's support each let's support each other. And uh so it's it's almost baffled. It's it's such a foreign concept to me, which I'm grateful for, I guess, in terms of like you saying that, I'm like, oh my gosh, I wouldn't it that would be that would be to me, that would be a difficult way to go through life. Yeah.

Um because and you'd miss out on a lot of opportunities, you know, in meeting amazing, amazing people. Uh so yeah, I think so, yeah, in terms of summarizing on that point, when you have two, you know, caring, awesome people that are smart or anybody, that's why like the networking event. You bring amazing, smart, awesome people together, like great things are gonna happen. So I just kind of, and for the rest of it, I just kind of leave it up to the universe of what's gonna, you know, of what comes up for that.

And that's kind of how I go after, you know, look at everything. Yeah, yeah. No, I totally agree. I think part of it too is an abundance thing, right?

Like when we have that idea, and this is something I talk a lot about in networking, because when you have that scarcity mindset, you are gonna show up as a salesy weirdo when you're networking. Like it's just inevitable. When you have the mindset of there's enough for everybody, there's enough clients, there's enough money, there's enough business, there's enough friendship for everybody, you're gonna show up in a very different energy. And I think that's a lot of what it comes back to too.

Like, I'm not an I'm not so egotistical that I think like my community is the only community anyone ever needs, right? Like, or my networking events are the only ones you need to go to. Like, that's literally not how networking works. And so I don't know.

I just think like the more the merrier. And I go to yours and I never feel weird coming to yours. When you come to mine, I'm never like, oh, what's she doing here? Like, it's just yeah, I don't know.

I would rather be us than them. That's what I'm saying. I yeah, I I I love being this way. It's a really nice way to, it's a really nice way to go through go through life and all you know, growth and just goodness come from it.

Yeah, totally. And that's how you ended up on this podcast. Yeah, our connection here. And if I do my and I and I love bringing you into my world, and if I do my videos again, like you'll be the first person that I bring on to to explain, you know, to help share your journey and how you grew the amazing organizations and the skill set that you bring to the table.

Because it's one of the it's in here's the thing, in terms of also when you step out into coaching, I've kind of found basically how am I going to do something different? Because a lot of these lessons are the same, but we all know it in terms of like you kind of know it, but then you hear it from somebody else, freezed in just a different way. And it's those aha moments. And and I and I love that with people with all, you know, even if they do similar things, they, you know, there's always that like different take, that different twist on it.

And and and it's just and it just benefits, it just benefits everybody. Yeah, totally. Okay, I just wanted to touch on that really quick because it was something really important that I wanted the listeners to hear, just in terms of like when they're out networking and they're out meeting people, if they meet somebody who does the same thing that they do or something similar to what they do. I want them to think about this conversation and be like, gosh, look at all the opportunities and the goodness and the friendship and everything that's come out of us being the way that we are, instead of being like, oh, you're my competition.

I'm not telling anybody about your event or you can't come to mine. And I just wanted everybody to hear that. I love that. Okay, so let's talk about you now.

Tell everybody who you are and what you do. So um, I'm Danny Whitestone and I am a customer experience and growth strategist. And I'm certified in this awesome platform, this awesome framework called Unreasonable Hospitality. And we're going to be talking about that all set today.

But basically, what I do is I help businesses grow by having you intentionally map your customer journey. Because I have found through growing my own, growing my own businesses, that this is a fantastic way to grow and also to make sure that your everyone that you work for, all your clients, become salespeople for you. And they are actively referring you all the time so that you don't have to do these massive like marketing pushes of feast and famine. Your referral source and people are inspired to talk about you.

It just creates a natural ecosystem for you. And we'll talk about how I got there, but like my first um, my one of my first larger companies, my software company, like when we started that, we were broke. So like I couldn't afford salespeople. So I'm like, how do I, how do I get my clients to sell for me?

And that's how I found my way into customer experience. And then I just put the twist on it once I saw the the unreasonable hospitality framework, which somebody listens may have may have read. And if you haven't, it's an amazing book. So that's how I ended up.

It's that's what I do. That's how I kind of in a little bit of a preview of how I ended up here. Love it. Okay, so let's talk about the customer journey because I think some people have heard, some people may have never heard that phrase.

Some people have heard that phrase and think it means something specific. And I think some people have different ideas of what it means. So for someone who has never really looked at their work this way, what is the customer journey and why does it matter? I'm gonna answer it in two parts.

The high level one is how someone feels working with your business at every single touch point, with a touch point being an email or a phone call text the first time they hit your landing page. So top level is how people feel working with with you in your brand. And there's that awesome quote by Mile Angela's like, people will forget, you know, people forget what you said, people forget what you did, but people will never forget the way you made them feel. So that that is the like, even though I said top level, it's like that is like the bedrock foundation of customer experience.

Sometimes also customer experience, customer journey are used interchangeably. And then like from there, you get down to like the you get down to the structural part of it is be is a lot of business owners, they, you know, they could they start, we do the best we can, but the customer, the customer experience and the customer journey is not something that has been intentionally put together. Like maybe you intentionally put together like, oh, I need a follow-up email sequence here, or I, you know what, they there probably should be some sort of like onboarding.

But it's a it's kind of like a haphazard thing that's been put together. And you don't really, you've never really like fully mapped it out and looked at the gaps, saying, oh wow, there might be a bit of time, you know, this might be too far from people to not hear from us and trust might be dropped. So when really customer experience, customer journey, the structural part of it is how you know, making sure making making sure people feel awesome. And I have lots of cool stories regarding that.

And then the structural map of intentionally crafting this, because in terms of why it matters, if you do not do this, you are just losing money for no reason. It's just, and it drives me crazy because as a lot of us small business owners, like every dollar and every hour is so precious. And I look at it in terms of if you have not, if you're not, have you not intentionally and strategically mapped that out to see where you might be where you might be losing people along the customer journey?

It's like having a bucket with holes in it, and you're just pouring, if you're especially if you're doing any kind of paid ads, you're just pouring money into this bucket, but you haven't looked to see where the leaks are. So it's just you keep pouring, pouring, pouring, and it just keeps leaking out. So by intentionally crafting that customer journey, customer experience, it's making sure your bucket doesn't have holes so that the money and the effort you're putting into your business is paying you back as much as it possibly can.

Is in that's why I am fairly nuts about this because like everyone just works too hard to just be leaking to be leaking money um in their business. Yeah, yeah. So it sounds like part of it is about customer retention, right? And even if you don't have a subscription model or a membership model, you still want customers to consistently want to keep working with you.

Maybe they start out at one level and then you want them to go to the next level with you. And so the customer journey is really important when they're at that first level because the experience they have, the way that they feel, that's gonna determine if they're like, yes, I want to buy whatever this lady sells next, or if they're like, get me out of here, right? And also you mentioned earlier, it's a big part of getting referrals without even having to ask for referrals sometimes, right?

Like we want people to have the best experience with us so that when they are talking to other people about their experience with us, they are, like you said, our best salespeople. It really kind of hits what I say, like the four R's, it's revenue. Because if you take a look at the be you know, the top of your funnel and you find ways to improve it there, you're gonna be increasing your revenue because more leads are gonna be coming into prospects to be coming to convert. So we have revenue.

And then, like you said, we have retention. So this goes beyond, you know, the customer journey goes beyond just that beginning part of your funnel when people are starting to interact with you, of course, which is crucially important, but we have retention. So it, you know, we're gonna be want to retain them in our journey, but we also want to retain them after, you know, after purchase. So we need to keep, you know, keep that relationship alive in any way, like you said, in terms of whether or not they are going to be moving through, you know, moving to another product, or if they're just one, or if it's a continuation.

Like I work with a lot of financial planners and insurance companies. And the goal, you know, the goal there is to keep these customers because if you're an insurance, I have like I have an insurance client and on their street, there's probably 10 different insurance companies that they could go and switch to. Well, what's gonna keep them from switching to one of the one of the insurance companies down the street? It's gonna be how it's gonna be them feeling seen and cared for.

So to mapping that out in terms of retention, but also referrals. I was on I was on one podcast and did simply like, what's the best way to get referrals? And and I just said ask for them. However, we're all busy and sometimes we drop the ball.

So, in terms of revenue retention and referrals, referrals are kind of is twofold is people feeling making sure they feel inspired to refer and also making them making it easy for them to do it and also just kind of reminding them. We're all busy to remind them to refer, like reminding the reminding them to refer. So that's why we grow our revenue, that's how we keep our retention and we build our referral network in because we all like you know, and most businesses know the the absolute best converting lead we could ever get was someone who's referred to us.

Yes, absolutely. So, what do you see in your work with business owners when they start to look at their business through this lens of the customer journey? What are they usually seeing? What surprises them?

What are the things that stand out to them that they're like, oh, I didn't even realize I needed to make a change here? It's really, it's really fun to watch those aha moments because it's almost like when in when I have um, if I'm doing a talk or a sh or like a podcast like this, it's uh it's a bit of a paradigm shift in terms of like once you see it, you can't unsee it. I had one customer that was a service provider, but they also had some people that would come to their facility and I'm like, okay, tell me, you know, let's walk through it from their perspective.

What happens when like they they park their car? I'm like, okay, they come in the door. I'm like, okay. What is the first thing they see?

They're like, okay, the person's sitting there. I'm like, okay, what's around them? Fax machine, copiers. And I'm like, okay, now let's like, let's pause there.

Tell me about the last time you're in a really nice salon or a really nice spa or something like that. What happens when you come in the door? Like, oh, there's it smells good. There's relaxing music.

And and I get this, I got eye contact with the person. They immediately greeted me versus where we are, we have this, you know, we have this obstruction. I'm like, okay, in terms of in this was um, and this was financial services, and might not, you know, that might be a little bit stressful, but like, what can we do to for when you walk to set the tone from the moment they step through the door that this is going to be a peaceful, wonderful experience for them where they feel cared for, versus like walking into someone who can't really see them and into you know great copiers and fax machines, which is behind, which is probably like normal and is something that just became part of the day.

But how do we look at it through the lens of what is the experience in the emotional experience of someone walking through that door for the first time? So that's just a visual that I can that I can let you know. And in terms of like a digital experience, some of the things that they recognize is if someone does, you know, someone gets a purchase. Um, and this is when when I work with people in workshops or my mastermind, we map this whole thing out and they can see it.

And I and I and I you call it we call it interrogating the customer journey. And they say, like, oh, they get a thank you email. I'm like, okay, tell me about the thank thank you email. Like, oh, like, thank you for buying from us, thank you for purchasing, thank you for buying this package.

I'm like, okay, right now that's kind of like a nothing burger. It's not exactly a negative experience, it's not exactly a positive experience. But what could we do with this email to get some emotion in there and make it positive? And they'll come up in my my clients will come up with a bunch of ideas, and it's like, oh, and like, well, like what about a video?

It's like, like, oh, that will take a lot of time. I'm like, what if we just did? It doesn't have to be a custom video to this client, it could be, but what if you just, you know, instead of them, instead of them getting a thank you email, what if it's you saying, like, hey, I'm so glad you're, you know, I'm so glad. Welcome to the family.

We're great, you know, so glad to have you here. And something warm and personal, and it's just a link or something you put in an email in terms of taking, you know, a you know, a little sentence and then making the experience up in the experience, even if it's on your iPhone in like 10 minutes. Right. So yeah, those are a couple of examples.

Yeah, I love those examples. And I I love what you're saying too, because one of the things that I talk about with networking and especially with follow-up is there's so many different ways to do it, right? There's no recipe. You're not gonna meet with somebody and tell them, like, okay, the first step when they do this, you want to send them an email that says this, this, here's a template.

Well, next step, you're gonna do this, and here's a template for that, right? Because everybody has a different personality, everybody has a different style, everybody has a different business, everybody has different clients. They're trying to create different feelings for different clients, right? Like, obviously, I'm not going to respond to someone who has asked me to plan a wedding the same way I'm going to respond to someone who has asked me to plan a funeral.

Like, we're not sending the same email, I hope. Um, and so I love that too, that it's very customized, and there's so many different ways to create those touch points along the way with people. Something you just said jogged my memory in terms of a great story about a company who did this incredibly well. Um, I was, I had an amazing cat.

I love my cat. She was elderly, and I got her food through Chewy. And her food would come routinely every single month. And they the the week came where my cat passed away.

And, you know, sad. And then what you know, what happens then, you know, in the next couple of days. I I forgot to call, you know, stopped the delivery. And I open up my door and the box, you know, is there, you know, it's like Natasha's cat food.

And and I'm like, and and and I start to cry. And in other words, like there's a huge negative here. So Chewie recognized this and said, okay, this is you know, this is something that reoccurs. And it's now their company in my mind, now they made my their company just made me sob on my front porch.

Like that is not what we want as business owners. Right. Like bad, bad, bad. However, when I when I caught when I called them, I said, hey, you know, look at my cat died.

I can't, you know, I can't only cat food anymore. You know, she's dead. Um, oh my gosh. So I called them up and they said, Um, you know what, don't, you know, we're so sorry.

You know, take the cat food and um, you know, find someone else who can use it or donate to local cat shelter. You know, we're gonna completely refund you. And I said, All right, thank you. So great.

That so they um that's wonderful. The next day I got a knock on my door and I have someone standing there and is a guy trying to give me flowers, like deliver flowers to my house. I'm like, who the heck is giving me flowers? It's chewy.

You know, you know, saying, you know, thank you for being with us, and you're like, I'm we're so sorry for the loss of you know your cat. So that is how, like, in terms of analyzing the customer journey experience, recognizing that this is a thing that happens, and instead of it just being uh it just being an inconvenient thing, like how do we make this so we have connection and comfort and care with our customer experience? So that's a great example in terms of you said, not, you know, how do we, you know, we're gonna be treating a wedding versus a different a funeral.

That's true, but meeting people where they're at, you know, meeting people where they're at there, with you know, given that it's a death and a sad experience, how to still approach it with caring and connection as a as a business owner and as a business and bringing basically the heart of everything that I do is bringing human connection to uh business. Yeah. Because I I just want to reduce joy, I want to increase joy and reduce suffering. Because, you know, we're on this podcast, people listen to this podcast, and behind the scenes, it's through different seasons of life.

It is hard. It is hard. So maybe that little um, you know, text message that comes into check on you, maybe that little, you know, note you get in the mail could I got it, I got one from a client. I was having a day yesterday, and I got the nicest little email from a, you know, for one of my clients.

And it's just it, it has such an impact that I want to make sure that in having a wide having a having a wider, a wider touch point of how I can bring this to other people to really just uplift everybody is kind of the heart of what I'm doing. Yeah, absolutely. I love that. And that, yeah, Chewy is a great example of that.

They they do a very good job. You mentioned earlier in our conversation the book and your certification through unreasonable hospitality. Can you tell us a little bit about that and what it is and how it's impacted how you teach people the customer journey? I was at so the this is the book for those of you who um either um have read it or would like to read it.

And it was an aha moment for me when I went and I and I saw this and I was inspired to get certified because I looked at it and went, because I was as a coach kind of struggling to find my home. And I'm like, I like I can you know help with messaging and do this. But when I saw that, I said it was the it was that electric light bulb moment that we get every once in a while. I'm like, oh, this is what I do.

I'm able to see where we can put caring into the business in into business and have people really be advocates for your business. So you actually don't have to work as hard. And so I I went and I became certified in this framework. The book is incredibly inspiring.

And it is the story. Um, Will Gadera wrote the book, and it's the story about how he took 11 Madison Park as restaurant from being the to being the number one restaurant in the world, and he did it. And he he was their restaurant was number 50. And he's like, ah, how do I begin to be number one?

So he wrote in a burst of inspiration, wrote down on a napkin like unreasonable hospitality, because he looked at all the other restaurants and he said, Everyone has great food at this level, everyone has great service at this level, but what could we do differently? And he and he coined this phrase unreasonable hospitality, which was being incredibly intentional about the customer experience and bringing and lifting up the sad, you know, the negative moments like getting a giant bill.

How do we, how do we soften this and how do we make this into a win? But also how do we create points of magic in our business? And and it has a frame and it has a structured framework behind it. And I'm like, yep, that sounds good.

Sign me up. I want to bring this to other people. I am uh, I am a giant fan. So that's that's how I ended up, that's how I ended up in um working with in becoming an unreasonable hospitality coach and working with people in this capacity.

Is it's inspiration and also practicality because I've done this in my businesses. I didn't really have a name for it, and I know it works. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so if people are listening to this podcast and they are like starting to have the wheels turning about their customer experience and the connection that they're creating with customers and their the different touch points that they have, or maybe they're like, God, I don't even know if I have any touch points.

What is the best place for them to start um without feeling like, okay, I gotta like tear it down and start everything over? That sounds good. They can go to if they want to get a little um kind of a launch guide, you can go to my website at www.dannywhitestone.

com. I have a um people first profits follow guide that they can download. And also they can um small thing you can do is you can watch the Unreasable Hospitality TED Talk. You can read the book.

But if you be if you if you become into my ecosystem, you will get these things. So and you'll get links too, so that you can learn a bit, a little bit more about the framework and how to apply it and how to apply it to your business because it creates a win-win-win for everyone. You have happier clients, they're happy, you're their clients are happier, you're happier, and you're making more money. So it's really it's a win-win, it's a win-win-win to apply to your business.

Yeah, absolutely. I feel like it makes business more fun and more rewarding too, right? Because you do have that personal connection and you have those opportunities with people. You know, this has changed kind of how I approach people who join um the Powerful Women Rising Connection Network or the masterminds, because I will reach out to somebody now after they've been in the mastermind for a certain amount of time and say, Hey, how's it going?

What's missing? What's working for you? Have you been to the calls? If you haven't been to the calls, why not?

And it's interesting. I I used to have those emails automated. And I got an email from somebody who was newer in the community, and she got that follow-up email. I think it was like three months into her membership.

And she wrote me back and she was like, I don't, I hope you're okay with me telling you this, but this email just hit very weird because you are all about like authenticity and personal connection and, you know, being human. And it's very clear that this email is automated because it said, you know, if you've been to any of the calls, blah, blah, blah. Well, she'd been to every single one of them, right? Like I knew that she'd been to every single one of them, but she was still getting this automated email.

And I was really so glad she told me that because that's one of those things that like you don't really think about. I don't want to be sending out an email that's making people feel gross three months into their membership, right? And so now I've changed the way that I do that. And it's it feels better to me too, because I'm getting more responses to those emails.

So I'm getting the opportunity to hear like what's working for people, what's not working for people. I'm getting positive feedback, I'm getting ideas of how I can change things. And so that really, like, like you said, I think it's better for them, but it's been better for me too. Absolutely.

It's there's nothing like that human connection and weaving in like where can we have the personal touches like that, and where can we systematize? Um, because thing, you know, as a business owner is like we have to be able to scale things. Like um, when my dog goes to the vet, I get an automated text the next day saying, just checking in to see how Holland's doing going, you know, how he's doing, hope all is well. And like, I know that.

So that's an example of like, I know that's automated, but it's still like a point of caring. Yeah. So just and just picking and choosing and creating this beauty, you know, this magical journey for your clients, so that, like you said, like you know problems before you know about problems before they become problems, before they become cancellations, and you have the chance to address them. Because at the end of the day, like we all want to be seen and we all want to be heard.

So just building, you know, just building that into our building that into our business so that we can. So we're again, so everybody, so everybody wins. Yeah, brilliant. I love it.

Okay, so I'm gonna put the link in the show notes for people to get your people first profits follow. I think that's amazing. I'll put the link in the show notes for people to watch the TED Talk on unreasonable hospitality. Of course, I will put the link to your networking events in the show notes in case anyone somehow has missed that in my 5,000 emails.

Um, where else can they connect with you or learn more about what you do? Let's see. I really the um I think the best is just to hop on the networking in the website in my website, because through the website you can find everywhere. Of course, connect with me if you're on LinkedIn, connect with me there.

I'm Danny Whitestone, Instagram, Danny Whitestone, depending on your social, you know, your social media of of of choice. That would be that would be lovely. I would again, you get two awesome people in a room and you share, you know, share connections. It, you know, only good things, only good things come from that.

So yeah, I would love I anybody's listening, I would love to connect with you. Yeah, awesome. And if you are listening and you haven't been to one of Danny's networking events, the reason that I'm always talking about it, first of all, I think it's very hard to find virtual networking events that are high quality and worth your time. And yours are amazing.

But I also was telling you before we started recording, I love the format because whereas mine is more breakout rooms, you're with four or five people for 10 minutes at a time, yours is one-on-one with somebody for 10 minutes at a time. And the cool thing about it is you get to know who's gonna be there ahead of time. So you get to choose, I want to meet this person, I don't want to meet this person, I'm indifferent about this person, and they do the same thing. Plus, it's kind of like speed dating, where afterwards it asks you, like, do you want to share your contact information with this person?

And sometimes you're like, No, I don't. And sometimes you do. And I just think the format of it is brilliant and it's such a great way to um, you know, I talk a lot about networking authentically and like a human, but also being intentional and strategic about it. And I think your events balance both of those things so well.

So if you're listening and you've not been to one, definitely check it out. And Danny, thank you so much for being a guest on the podcast. This has been great. Thank you.

This has been awesome. This is thank you so much.