Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Jennifer Glass. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Jennifer, appreciate you joining us today. One of our favorite things to hear about is stories around the nicest thing someone has done for someone else – what’s the nicest thing someone has ever done for you?
To paint the picture of the kind of thing anyone has ever done for me takes a lot to be able to actually put it down on paper.
Nearly 22 years ago, on September 11, 2001, I was in lower Manhattan on the day of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. I was standing on the corner of Will Street and Broadway watching the Twin Towers, burning and eventually falling down.
Once the towers fell, and I was directed to go towards the Brooklyn Bridge, and away from the area of the World Trade Center, I worked my way zigzagging across Manhattan to go back up to the port authority bus terminal on 40th and 8th in Manhattan.
I have absolutely no idea about what time it was or how long it took for me to get to that place. When I finally did arrive at the port authority, bus terminal, I found it to be locked. Exhausted, I sat down on the curb, and again, without any kind of idea on time, an Armenian gentleman in a black SUV, pulls up and says he has room for four to New Jersey. In one ear, I heard my mother telling me never get in cars with strangers, and I also on the other side was saying there were absolutely no rules today. Along with three others, we climbed into this gentleman‘s car And we drove up Riverside Drive getting away from lower and midtown Manhattan.
As we approach the outbound George Washington Bridge, they had just opened up the upper level roadway going into New Jersey. We crossed the bridge and he let me off at the Teaneck Marriott At Glenpointe hotel.
Where he went after that, I really to this day I have absolutely no idea. I also don’t recall ever getting his name. But, I have been looking for him for the last 22 years.
Every year on the 9/11 anniversaries I post on Facebook and other social media platforms. This story that I am looking to once again thank him. I have called this Armenian gentleman that had whisked me and the three other people out of Manhattan, my guardian angel.
If there is one thing that I would love to be able to do through this interview is amplify that voice, and once again, thank him for getting me to safety.
Jennifer, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I call myself a profit acceleration and business growth coach. (My company is BGSICoaching and we can be found at www.bgsicoaching.com.) What that means to some may be different from what it means to others, but at the end of the day, the idea is still very much there. What I do is I hope businesses figure out their next steps so they stop leaving money on the table and start getting more opportunities in their business.
In my business, one of the things that I often start working on with my clients is figuring out exactly what is blocking them from achieving their ultimate goals, and ideas. Very often, I find that business owners are listening to way too many talking heads that are saying different things that are often contradictory to what they are ultimately trying to achieve. The problem is though is that in school we are taught to listen to the way that certain things have gone in the past, and be paying attention to what others are doing around us. The truth is though, the top 3% of business owners and successful people in this country are not doing what everybody else is doing and they are not really sharing it with many other people. If we keep on doing exactly what everyone else not at the top is doing, how else are we going to change?
The other thing that I do with my clients is, I start looking at one of the easiest strategies that I have found to incorporate into a business. That is joint ventures and strategic partnerships.
Looking at the joint venture in strategic partnerships strategy allows us to start immediately getting low to no-cost options to start seeing more leads coming into a business. One of the problems that business owners have – the lack of new business.
Here’s a perfect example of a client that we were helping incorporate a joint venture strategy. In the bridal event chain, it usually starts with one of two businesses. My client was the florist. The florist happened to be two doors down from a jeweler. We got the florist and jeweler to be cross referring each other when somebody came in, should be purchasing a ring. If someone went into the jeweler, first, the jeweler would recommend that they get flowers next-door. Vice versa, if somebody went to get roses first, and said that they were going to be proposing, the florist sent them over to the jeweler to look for rings.
Following the jeweler and florist, there are many other people that are in the event chain. What we did for the rest of the event chain, was we created a “trusted vendor list”. On this trusted vendor list, there were people that were in the catering industry, officiants, DJs, photographers, etc. We also had back ups for each of the different categories just in case one of them would’ve been unavailable. This helped to avoid some of the bridezilla issues that many of us have come to hear about on wedding days and the preparation for a wedding. The other thing that we did was we created a booklet on how to avoid problems on your wedding day. Things like knowing who not to hire for your wedding (i.e. your brother-in-law to be your photographer.) We also in this booklet had tips and tricks if anything happened on the wedding day to help keep it moving smoothly.
This strategy has paid off so many times up and down the entire event chain, but it is something so easy that any industry and any smart business owner can look at to start getting even more opportunities. The entire cost of the strategy consisted of printing up the guide, and the trusted vendor list. There’s always the opportunity to have a small referral fee, going back-and-forth, up-and-down the event chain, but it is up to the people that are in that particular event chain that will decide whether or not they want to get paid a referral fee or not.
As business owners continue to get more ideas and more opportunities presented to them through the work that I have been doing with them, I have seen them continue growing and giving more to their communities — both through hiring new employees, and donating much needed items, money, and time to those different organizations in their respective towns that need their help.
We’d love to hear about how you keep in touch with clients.
There’s so many different ways to stay in touch with clients and prospective customers in any business. One of the problems that way too many business owners forget about is the importance of remaining top of mind when they are working with their customers.
What I do is I have a newsletter that goes out to my email list, but I also use social media regularly in getting information out to my audience.
It is also important to connect with your client in a deeper level rather than a superficial one. As an example, in my payment processing business, I collect credit information as part of building a credit application. That means that I know what somebody’s birthday is and so every year on their birthday we send them birthday wishes. The same goes for any kind of business – there’s so much that we know about our customers, but for way, too many people, we forget to use the information that we know to our benefit to foster loyalty with those clients.
Think about the last time that your bank reached out to you on your birthday. Did they actually say something to you for your birthday? Better chance is no. This is an extremely important idea for any business who is collecting loyalty, information or customer information to act on it. If you very often or even hearing about their spouses, children, and/or pets, this is information that you can use when you speak with them again the next time. You can always ask her someone’s wife or husband is doing. You can always ask what their kids are up to these days. Each of these touches is another opportunity to continue building loyalty, and, if an event arises where there comes a choice where your product or service is going to be more expensive than someone else’s, because of the loyalty that you’ve built over the years being there, Improving and increasing customer. Trust and loyalty in you, the more likely it is, they’re going to be staying with you, even if you are a little bit more expensive than your competition.
We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?
Back in my undergraduate career, the marketing that I was taught in school is not the same marketing that is being practiced today. Back then, there was no such thing as digital marketing. Marketing was in its basic form now the same.
The lessons that I had to learn now were how to use the marketing principles in a way that allowed me to connect with people online and off-line. In my earliest jobs, I still found it funny that we were advertising in the phonebook. We were very often being solicited to put ads in different phone books simply because it was the way that people did business back then. Today, if you were advertising stolen phone books, it says a whole different thing about the business.
Contact Info:
- Website: Www.Bgsicoaching.Com
- Instagram: thejennglass
- Facebook: thejennglass
- Linkedin: https://www.LinkedIn.com/in/jennyglass
- Twitter: thejennglass
- Youtube: @biz-growth