Anyone who runs a referral marketing, direct sales, or MLM company can tell you the importance of creating loyalty with your customers, promoters, and internal staff.

On February 18th, 2022, Ben Dixon hosted Travis Garza, the President of Sales & Marketing at Plexus for the Direct Selling Executive Forum’s open forum on loyalty in direct selling.

 

In the session the panel discussed:

1) Companies want to know what it takes to create programs that maximize the lifetime value of retail customers. In your experience, what top 2-3 principles should executives keep in mind?

2) Beyond the retail customer experience, executives are also always asking about creating a culture that attracts and retains long-term promoters in the field. What have you found are the top 2-3 key principles to engaging promoters for a lifetime?

3) Lastly, when you look at an internal team on the corporate side, what do you believe are the principles to lead within your culture to create a staff of A-Players to grow a company long term?
 

Who is Travis Garza?

Travis Garza has served as an executive at a series of billion-dollar direct-selling brands over the last 25+ years. Experiences from Melaleuca, Isagenix, Kyani, and his current role at Plexus all shape the wisdom he shares.

Travis has been leading organizational strategies in the global health and wellness industry and using his extensive experience in direct selling to achieve success. In his 20-year career in sales and marketing, Travis has helped multiple businesses achieve new high revenue targets; two of them reaching nearly one billion dollars in annual revenues.

Travis is an accomplished executive in the direct sales industry. He’s held leadership positions at Melaleuca Inc. and Isagenix International. Most recently, he was President & CEO at Kyani International, where he directed numerous initiatives that led to impressive sales growth and operational enhancements in more than 60 countries. Travis has taken his skills and applied them to Plexus in remarkable ways.

To access more executive forums from the DSEF, register on LinkedIn for free.
 

Transcript:

Ben Dixon, NaXum:

All right, everybody, Ben Dixon here excited to facilitate the Direct Selling Executives Forum February Session 2022 on creating a loyal culture. In the next few moments, it’s going to be my honor and pleasure to introduce you to Travis Garza who’s here on the line with us today. But before I do that, for those of you that are new to DSEF, let me go ahead and walk you through just what the organization is all about and share with you places you can get resources. So if you’re not yet a member on either the LinkedIn group or the Facebook group, it’s free. There’s no politicking lobbying here.

Ben Dixon, NaXum:

This is literally a place that executives around the world come once a month and just share their thoughts on a relevant topic. We created this as a place to share and to grow and to learn and to collaborate with other active direct selling executives in the space. It’s a free community, and it’s invite only. So, those of you that are here on the line who were invited to be here by other executives that are in the group. It’s kind of like Fight Club, except we talk about it. So, but with that gang, if you missed our kickoff session of the year, January session, please go back to the LinkedIn group and check it out. Both Liz Bohannan, founder of Sseko Designs, and we had Rachel Kellogg, fabulous speaker who runs Faberlic, the largest Russian direct sales company in the world. We’re on last week talking about their top piece for 2020.

Ben Dixon, NaXum:

It’s an incredible feedback on storytelling and causes inside of direct sales. And our two speakers that are going to be joining Travis are actually going to move their time to March. So, we actually have our March speakers already, March 11th. You can put on the calendar. We have Katy Holt Larsen, who runs Kyani. Funny, Kyani will come into some of the story of Travis’ story today. And we have a good friend of mine, Kevin Raulston, who ran Origami Owl for a long time, and just wrapped up being CEO of Euphoria in the space. And they’re going to be speaking about onboarding, and just the things you have to do to win in onboarding in direct sales.

Ben Dixon, NaXum:

Now, today is all about a loyal culture. And it’s a special session because even last year, we only did one session last year of the whole year when we had a single speaker. And I love these sessions, they are a little bit shorter, but we get to dig in on some of these questions. And it’s not, you’re not waiting your turn to speak as much as our normal panels. And so, we’re excited. The last speaker we had, who was a solo, Travis, just at the [inaudible 00:02:28]. Yep. Mark Beiderwieden, who ran Amway in Europe and Asia for 25 years. He was our only solo guest all of last year. And so, congratulations on being the solo guest here. Mark did $6 billion a year in sales for over a decade, and then holy cow.

Ben Dixon, NaXum:

So, with that, let me give everyone a background of Travis who I hasn’t had the honor of meeting Travis before. So, I’m going to read part of the press release, actually, when you took on Kyani, because I think this is such a great intro. But for those who don’t know, Travis has been leading organizational strategies and global health in the wellness industry for over 20 years in a space. I know he looks super young gang, but he’s been over 20 years in the space. Many of you know, he spent almost a decade at Melaleuca, a part of their billion-dollar run. Travis was a part of that team for almost a decade, Isagenix, billion-dollar run, Travis was a part of that team, all right. And then recently served as president and CEO at Kyani International, which had incredible initiatives in over 60 countries.

Ben Dixon, NaXum:

And but today, Travis, is running Plexus as President of Sales and Marketing. And some of you know, because they’re very public about Plexus, just the massive growth that Plexus had in COVID, in 2020. I mean, it’s kind of a public thing. It’s talked about a lot of what companies just knocked it out of the park when this pandemic thing hit all of us. And then, which companies didn’t. And so, when, when we were thinking about this topic of creating a loyal culture, whether we’re unpacking customer principles or principles with your representatives, or principles with your corporate team, I thought who better than Travis? Because when you came on board at Plexus, you had this massive growth thing that happened during COVID. And you’re asking, like, “How do we create loyalty and retention?” That’s a real deal thought you’ve had to wrestle with in a very big way. And so, I’m very grateful for you to be here today and excited just for this panel time. Travis, thanks for joining us.

Travis Garza:

Yeah, well, thank you so much, Ben, and it’s a pleasure to be here. I also want to say thank you to you. I know that the timing and putting these together, you’re running your own business, you’ve got so much going on. And so, I truly appreciate this and the insight that we learn from other executives. I can’t think of a better forum for us to take advantage of this information to help us be better.

Ben Dixon, NaXum:

Well, I appreciate it and thank you for participating. I was on the phone with the executive team that had participated from Shaklee and Norwex last year, and just talked to them about, “Yeah, and Travis is speaking.” It’s amazing how as everyone’s in their own journeys, how maybe different executives worked together for four or five years, but then haven’t seen each other in 10 years. And then they get to come together on forums like this. I had on that forum, the gentlemen, I had Dave Fleming running Norwex. He used to be the boss of Kevin Crandall, who we had on from Shaklee. And they’re both on the forum representing different companies. They’re like, “Yeah, we used to work for each other.” It’s a fun thing, when you put it all together. And yeah, and it’s neat with you, just being the previous one at Kyani. Now, we have Katy coming for the next month. What, now she’s running Kyani. It’s just a small world, how it all comes together.

Ben Dixon, NaXum:

So, with that, let’s go ahead and unpack our first question. So, for everyone who’s listening, we’re going to start with this idea of just loyalty with retail customers. Because as we all know today, the bread and butter of the companies that are just absolutely crushing it, it’s not just internal consumption gang, this is massive retail customer strategy. So, I’ll ask the whole question, then we’ll have to have these unpack. The companies want to know what it takes to create programs that maximize the lifetime value of retail customers. And so just in your experience, and it could be beyond even the time of Plexus, what would you say are the top two to three principles that executives listening here should be keeping in mind as they start looking at how do I maximize the value of the retail customers?

Travis Garza:

Well, it’s such an interesting question. I think overall, as an organization, and as an industry, and a lot of network marketing companies and the companies that I have been with in the last 20 years, retail has been a smaller percentage. Typically, you have your business builders, percentage of that, and then you have your wholesale customers, but then the retail is a smaller percentage. But I can tell you this, being at Plexus for just over a year now. One of the things that we really started to evaluate and, Ben, you and I talked about this a couple of weeks back. I think we’re at a, the industry is at a crossroads. And that we really are at a crossroads and that our competition are not the other direct sellers. Now, the competition is the influencers who are selling certain things and people who are buying retail from them. It could be an influencer selling a protein shake, selling some type of device, and they’re buying there.

Travis Garza:

So, in 2021 at Plexus, one of the things that we did is we created a new outlook on how we were looking at our retail customers, it was really important for us. And as we started to say, “Hey, as we think about the future and we look at Gen Z,” and we start to say, “Hey, what is happening with them?” We came back and said, one, we feel this outlook, we need to look at our retail are really just our wholesale customers that are buying, and then, when you look at those who are building the business. And we took a new approach in that in July of 2021. We came together as a management team and said, “Hey, what are our strategies? How are we moving forward with this? And how are we going to attract to keep our retail customers?”

Travis Garza:

And we created an NPS score survey. And what we did in that survey, starting in July, going into August, we sent a survey out to our retail customers, to our what we call brand ambassadors, our business builders and these wholesale customers. And it was interesting. And I would say this, more than today, even from the last companies that I was with. More today, I think companies have to be thinking this way. And when we got these survey results, and I’m looking at some of them here, Ben. We had just under 20,000 people who responded to this survey.

Ben Dixon, NaXum:

Fantastic.

Travis Garza:

And these were our customers. Many of them were retail customers and the business builders. But I would say, principle number one is, one we have to understand where they’re at. And in this NPS score what we found, Ben, and it was kind of a punch to the gut that our retail customers were, they are not satisfied with the shopping experience. They came back and they were telling us very clearly, as far as navigation through the website, placing an order, the communication, and we looked at all of these scores. And we started saying, “We knew that we had some challenges, but this really hit us hard to say we need to make some improvements.”

Travis Garza:

So, number one would be, are you really aware, you make sure that you’re truly aware of where your retail customers are at and what they’re doing and how they’re shopping. One of the strategies that we have, we’re looking at possibly building a new building in the next two years. And in one of the segments of our new building, we’re creating what we call a digital experience room. And we’re so committed to this now, that in this digital experience room, literally, we’re going to have this setup where we can have retail people coming in for the first time and they’re looking, and they’re ordering. And we’re going to watch them on how they do this.

Travis Garza:

Big companies are doing this today. Technology companies are doing this today. And if we really want to retain these customers, I think, principle number two is really saying how do you activate them. So, number one is be aware of where they’re at and what their issues are. Number two is get them active to what they are looking for. I think this is so important for us. When we did the survey, we really got to step back to say, we really just got a push back to say, “Hey, we’re not quite there.” And we believe that the future, as we start to look at this, the retail percentage and our business in Plexus is going to grow if we do it right with all of our social channels, with all of our online channels, and how we attract them.

Travis Garza:

We’re thinking about the unawares versus the awares. The people who are aware of Plexus, we’ve got that. But the unawares is so key. So, principle number one, understand really, you know where things are at. Number two is really just saying, “Okay, what are they telling you?” And then, I would say, principle number three is just really have your automated communication set up in a way. And you and I talked about this. And I think companies are looking at what is the best digital platform. Whether it’s a mobile device, it’s email, open rates. We’re looking at all of that, but what is the platform in which you’re communicating to these retail customers?

Travis Garza:

They want it, but I think as an industry, we’re a little bit behind. And at Plexus right now, I will tell you that there is a massive effort right now, a massive effort, and it is a race right now. It is a race for us to say, “Hey, in the next 12 months, we have to have some updates.” Because we can’t afford, the value of a retail customer is growing and growing and growing. And if you don’t think it is, I’m telling you, you need to take a look back at your business.

Ben Dixon, NaXum:

Yeah, I love some of these nuggets you’re sharing just for everyone here. There are so many times we get lost in what we know when we’re running a business as an executive, right? So, we think of everyone is on the line. We know what we know and then we forget what we don’t know. And it just doesn’t get taken care until someone wakes us up. And so, what Travis, you said, is so great, because it’s like, when was the last time you watched someone buy from you on your website. I have an exercise with my own staff, our staff in Asia. My wife is Filipino and so my staff in Asia is Filipino. I ask them, I say, “Who has a Tita?” Tita means your aunt. And so, “Who has a Tita between the ages of 30 and 60?” I take the DSA rule of our average consumer is someone between the ages of 30 and 60 is a woman in America and that’s 80%.

Ben Dixon, NaXum:

And so, I say, “Who is it? Do you have a Tita that’s between the age of 30 and 60? And my staff would say, “Oh, yes. It’s Julie.” And I’ll say, “So when you do your work, I want you to imagine that Tita Julie is the person trying to buy through the website.” And they sit there and say, “Are you sure?” They’re like, “Tita Julie is 58.” And I’m like, “Yeah, I want you to be keeping her in your mind as you’re doing your work.” And it’s a really important thought of what you’re sharing is many times we forget that some of us, on the line your cultures have robust shopping experiences. You have lots of options and with options comes complication. And if you watch how someone moves through your experience, simple is better.

Travis Garza:

Yeah. It really is [inaudible 00:13:57], Ben. It really is.

Ben Dixon, NaXum:

Travis, you’re saying, huge, huge, huge. And then, the second piece, right? You won’t know unless you ask. And so, how are you gathering this information? And then, are you taking action on what it’s telling them? Some of you are big enough that this means you’re going to have a chief experience officer and this person is going to pull out this information and they’re going to bring this to your organization. Some of you are not and you just need to put some time in your calendar, truthfully, to block out one hour in your week and ask like, “What does it feel to be a customer of my organization?” And you just need to stop and think about it? [inaudible 00:14:37] Because you’re not.

Travis Garza:

Yeah. I think, Ben, the other thing too is my wife and I took an opportunity to enroll in the [Flexor 00:14:47].

Ben Dixon, NaXum:

There you go.

Travis Garza:

And I said, “Hey, will you just do me a favor?” And she enrolled and she said, “I don’t get this.” Because we are being compared to some giants out there with their shopping experience. And some of the larger businesses in our industry are certainly moving forward. But I would say, this was, I think, as an executive being in this position for some time, you said it best. Sometimes we think we know, but when you really take that back, and doing this NPS survey now, this is our score. This is our benchmark. We know that we have a net promoter score. Now we’re saying, hey, this net promoter score was this. It was at 52%. They weren’t very happy. Now in six months, where is our net promoter score? In 12 months, what is that net promoter score? And if we start increasing that to 70%, 80%, we know that we’re on the right path, but we have to have those benchmarks.

Ben Dixon, NaXum:

Yeah. One last piece as well, to not miss over is this [inaudible 00:15:45] spot automated communication, many times, we all want to jump right to technology, part three that Travis brought up. And I want to slow us down just for a second because, first, when you get into automated technology, first think of responsibility. Because what Travis is leaning on, is that what the world’s changed much since his time at Melaleuca or at Isagenix, we used to have X as our expectations for what a representative did on a daily basis with their customers.

Ben Dixon, NaXum:

And why as what corporate did, and what I hope you’re hearing is that this is shifting rapidly gang, is that the list of what we’re actually expecting the representative to do is so much shorter than it’s ever been, because of all the sales automation, the expectations moving to you as a corporate team that that yeah, you’re going to be sending the followup emails, you’re going to be sending the birthday reminder, you’re going to be sending that oh, my gosh, your auto ship order didn’t ship not only to them because hey, they didn’t make their payment and it didn’t go through, but you’re actually going to notify the person who was the sponsor to say, “Hey, Julie’s ordered didn’t ship. Her card failed, so she can go follow up.”

Ben Dixon, NaXum:

You’re going to be doing those things, even your outbound call centers. When they’re not taking inbound customer service calls, doing outbound calls to help people with failed auto ships, failed subscription payments. Getting a lot of this stuff is real deal things that you can’t say, “Yeah, just give a report to the field. They’ll follow up if someone’s subscription doesn’t go through.” No. Your support team, when they’re not receiving a call is making an outbound call on that list of whose subscription didn’t go through because their card failed. This is real stuff. Don’t let Travis part to skip. Take that extreme ownership position. If you’re a Jocko Willink fan and you’ve read the book, right? I was blessed. Jocko came to Chicago, Travis, right before Christmas. What a Christmas present to me. I got me in like 50 business owners. I got to sit with Jocko for an afternoon here, the author of that book. Just right here in Naperville, Illinois. That’s a little Christmas present, just to have him in town. No one comes to Chicago in the winter.

Ben Dixon, NaXum:

But that concept of extreme ownership, we have to start taking responsibility over every principal you’re hearing from Travis. It means this is responsibly for corporate, you have to decide what that means for your team.

Travis Garza:

Yeah, it really is so important. I mean, Ben, you talked to a lot of executives, and even just from five years ago to where we are today, we do need to take that responsibility. Or I will say this, we at Plexus right now we are taking that responsibly because we know we’re seeing the cycle of attrition, and then the cycle of where people are buying and how they’re buying, the millennials, but the Gen Z’s are changing everything even more, and it’s crazy. It’s just crazy.

Ben Dixon, NaXum:

Yeah. Let’s move into question two for time, gang. So, we’ve talked about retail customers and wholesale customers and that experience of the people buying your product to use it. Now let’s talk about your superfans. There are folks on the line are always asking about creating a culture that attracts and retains long term promoters in the field. In this experience for you, what have been the top two to three key principles you share about engaging promoters for a lifetime? What are you seeing as valuable there?

Travis Garza:

It’s interesting, I think the evolution of, we all, if you’ve been in this industry, we remember the in-homes, chicken dinners, the hotel rooms, those were all, you keep them engaged, you do these super Saturday’s, and it all worked. And then Zoom came about and COVID. All of this has changed. I can tell you this, after all of this and where we’re at today, principle number one is we’re going back to the basics. And I think, as we looked at this one, what I mean by the basics is oftentimes we are looking for the next incentive and promotion to drive the growth. We’re looking for, “Oh, we’ve got to do this and then we’ve got to implement this,” and we do it too. Don’t get me wrong. But we are going back to the basics in that we are setting a very, very detailed calendar or I should say a roadmap for our leaders to follow.

Travis Garza:

So, I mean, and this is not rocket science. This is not new, but we have certain ranks, all of us have these individual ranks. But for us, for example, we have what we call a silver flying and this literally, the silver flying is a rank. And they are the beginning stages. They’re not even making $500. But if they do, things we’re flying them in, and truly Ben, we are going back to the basics of saying, “Okay, so welcome to the company.” We’re going to sit down with them, talk with them about certain aspects of the business and the business today. Because in network marketing, the direct sales, the way that they may have heard about it, it’s changed so much in the last two or three years. We’re going to go back and teach them.

Travis Garza:

And then we’re we’ve got it to where the roadmap is a specific roadmap on certain ranks. What we found out, Ben, was that at a specific rank, the percentage of people that were getting to this rank was pretty good. What we were finding is the data was telling us that there were drop off, and why they were dropping off. Based on the data, we went back and said, “Okay, we’re going to create some other pieces to this.” And going back to the basics, we are doing more training, not just online. We’re doing more training, we’re flying people in that are going, these are our promoters. These are our loyal business builders, our loyal customers to the business and we have that roadmap there. With that, in that training, we are taking a moment to drive some architecture on what they’re hearing at each of those moments with their customer base.

Travis Garza:

So, let me take a moment here. So, step number two is, one, create a roadmap for your top business builders all the way through, and we’re bringing him in to Scottsdale and having those conversations and it’s going to cost some money. But we’re going back to basics.

Ben Dixon, NaXum:

Yeah, that’s a serious investment. But it’s relationship though. It’s like, “Hey, these guys care. They know my name.

Travis Garza:

Right.

Ben Dixon, NaXum:

We’re getting together.

Travis Garza:

And step number two, within those trainings, we are asking them to train us. So, what we’re doing is we’re finding out, so step number two is understand your business, your top producers, your avid customers.

Ben Dixon, NaXum:

Your raving fans.

Travis Garza:

Raving fans to tell us what they’re going through. And so, what we’re doing is we’re doing almost like a net promoter score within them to say, what are the top three things that they’re hearing from their teams. And we actually go back to that and say, “Okay, now we’re writing it down to say, hey, here’s what we’re hearing from them.” And then we’re sitting down with our digital team, we’re sitting down with our marketing team, we’re sitting down with our sales team and going back to this. Now, this isn’t a long, we just started this. We started this in 2021. We’re really implementing it in 2022.

Travis Garza:

And what we’re finding is that, now it’s helping them understand, here’s what I need to know, here’s my calendar, it’s predictability. You said it before, if it’s simple and they understand it. So now what we’re trying to say is we’re going back to basics. They know with predictability, hey, I know I’m going to be here, I know, I’m going to be here, I know I’m going to be here. It’s going back to the basics, but in that we’re going back and we’re learning, we’re taking the time in these to understand where their customers are at and what their promoter scores are. Again, from mobile apps to digital to website, I mean, we have to use this time to get better.

Ben Dixon, NaXum:

Travis, you brought such an interesting example there. Because many of the folks on the line are not paying to fly in Silver’s into their program. How do you decide on like, “Okay, that was enough activity from the person. They’re not making $500 a month yet.” So how do you say they raised their hand enough, that I’m going to go invest in that relationship as a corporate team. What was that decision like for you? Just because I know a lot of them are going to ask that for themselves or like, “Man, how would you decide the right rank to go make that kind of investment?”

Travis Garza:

Well, I mean, one, we do put some stipulations that they have to hit a rank, and then they have to show some activity. So, whether it’s participating in a training, whether it’s, and now we’re getting into the point where we’re asking them to participate in training for products, product education. So, it’s not just this business building activity. I know a lot of times we say, well, if they enroll this many people, then we’ll allow them. That is great but what we’re going back to is saying, “Hey, listen, not only did you hit this rank, if you hold it for a certain amount of time, go through these trainings.” We got to get them really in it where they’re watching product training, they’re watching certain things and we’re saying, listen, that person is coming. And so, we do. We’re putting some budgetary dollars and we’re evaluating it.

Travis Garza:

In the early months that we’ve implemented this, what we’re seeing is that, again, everything is measured. Everything that we’re doing is measured. So what we’re seeing is we took a cohort for those people that we brought in and a cohort of those that are not. And sure enough, we’re starting to see what we believe is the data is saying, Hey, listen, these guys are moving on. Now, for some of these smaller organizations, I’ve been at some smaller organizations, yeah, you may not have the budgetary dollars to do that. You may have to start on a Zoom training, but that easily can be done, but we have to keep engaging them. And again, what you said before is the communication and how we communicate with them, where before, we were relying on the top leaders doing that communication. We’re not doing that anymore. We can’t afford it.

Ben Dixon, NaXum:

It’s so important for everybody to hear that, that’s the big point. I’m so happy you shared that. Because here’s what the view was. I mean, you rewind to 2009, right? We’d all be saying, “Oh, you just got to get yourself some leaders that’ll host their own events. And you just deliver product on time and make sure you pay commissions on time, and you’ll be fine.” That’s not what it is today, gang. What we’re trying to say is regardless of your budget to fly in folks at a certain rank, are you spending the time looking at the data, and then hop in on Zoom, even hop in on Zoom for that personal touch of saying, Yeah, you seven this week qualify. And you have a company with 400 reps here on the line. And you know what? You had seven people this week that should come on that two-hour workshop to get some personal attention, to get some relationship time with you or your director of sales. That’s valuable. But see who’s taking the responsibility there, the corporate team. Because once again, it’s changing who’s responsible for what. It’s just powerful pieces.

Ben Dixon, NaXum:

For our, second to the last question, because I do have a short bonus question for us. But let’s zoom up even more, one of the things I’ve just been amazed by is the types of people you’ve recruited to be on your team over the years and to be a part of the corporate staff. In so many times, we want people who are going to be here for the long haul. We want A players that are going to be on our corporate team that catch the vision and a partner. We don’t want the, they’re here for nine months. And they’ve done that for their last six opportunities, nine months, nine months in and out. We want people who are A players that are going to be long term staff. And what have you found or just the principles you’ve seen of not only tracking A players, but then keeping them on the team? What does that on the inside team?

Travis Garza:

As I shared before, Ben, in July, we as an executive team, we pulled together and we sat down and said, “Hey, what does it look like in the future?” We actually had a consultant come in, and we sat down with him and talk with him about where we would like to go. And we really are, taking a self-reflection of where our gaps are at. We did a survey within the company and one of the survey results that came back, they called it, our employees called it The Crack in the Dam.

Ben Dixon, NaXum:

Oh, no.

Travis Garza:

We were like, “Oh, great.” And so, we listened to this, and the Crack in the Dam was this, and I experienced this with other companies as well. And they were telling us, number one, that we were not making decisions fast enough. And I think a lot of employees and other companies will say, “Hey, we need to make decisions faster. How do we do this?” We don’t feel like we have the autonomy. And there were four key areas that we really started to think about, as we did this off-site executive leadership. And these four areas were this. One, the lack of measurable goals. And what I mean by that is how do we, like an executive team, oftentimes we get in this and we have the goal of, “Here’s our goal for revenue. Here’s our goal for our net customer base, our goal for these certain things, our average order basket.” But oftentimes, we need to make them simple, measurable goals. And what we were hearing is we weren’t providing that as well as we should.

Travis Garza:

So, number one was lack of measurable goals or better clearly defined measurable goals. Number two was roles, responsibility and authority. So, whose role is it? Whose responsibility is it? And whose authority is it? And that’s where we start to sit back and say, hey listen, there’s some questions going on with an organization where they’re saying, well, they’re in a meeting. There’s 15 people in here. We’re having a great meeting. We leave there, but no one knows what the meeting was about and where we’re going. And so, we really took a step back and say, roles, responsibility and authority. Whose authority is it now to make a decision? What are the action items out there?

Travis Garza:

Number three was really the priorities. What are the priorities that we are working on today? Is it a mobile app? Is it a new website? Is that a new promotion? Is it convention? Whatever that is, what are our priorities? And are we sharing that with the team? And then the fourth, and the final one is the changing of priorities. That’s what we were getting away is, and I know a lot of companies go through this. I went through this with other companies. But maybe it’s more years in this, that you’re sitting there. Okay, we’ve got to address that. So, in July, as an executive team, Ben, we sat down and again, with a consultant, we sat down, what is our strategy moving forward. And what we did is we came back with three major strategies that we were going after, which led to outcome measurements. And these outcome metrics went into sales, marketing. They went into our digital side of this as far as e-commerce, web, load speed, everything. And it went into our HR department, everything.

Travis Garza:

We started sitting down, “Okay, how do we do this?” So, three major strategies. The first one of this, and I won’t get into this too deep. But the first one was, employees. And we created these phases that we were going after, and we started looking at what our future state would look like, and what skill set that we would need. And I will tell you this, we’re just about to launch into something where, we’re looking at Agile systems. We’re looking at measurements and how we’re doing this AI. We’re looking at all the skill set, and we’re looking to invest the money now because we know that we have to update. And so at Plexus, you will start to see some new leadership skill sets that probably we didn’t see before in this industry, because that’s how far we have to go and we know it. Our competition is not what we think it is anymore. It’s just not. It is the social sellers.

Travis Garza:

Procter and Gamble has made a comment a few years ago. They said, “Hey, it’s a death by a thousand cuts.” And what they were saying was, it wasn’t their competition anymore. It was these little small companies, Dollar Shave Club that were coming in. They were taking all the share. And for direct sales, what’s taking our shares are these influencers, these quick shoppers. When you think about Uber, you think about all these things, and we have to evolve with our skill set. And I will tell you, it’s taken some time, July of 2021, to where we are today. We are just starting to launch with that skill set and hiring on new people. We’re meeting with our management team and our directors, our managers, and we’re showing them, “Hey, here’s where we’re at.” It wasn’t like a one-month thing, it’s a one off site. This has been many off sites. But I do believe it will help us in the future.

Travis Garza:

Because right now, the first quarter of 2021. I know there’s some businesses that are rocking it, 2020 was amazing. But 2021 is going to give us a real test. It’s going to give us a real test. And if you’re on this call, you know that our industry is, it’s cyclical. And right now, we have to move forward. I have this saying that I stole from, I think a Coca Cola executive once, and it said, “The decisions and activities that we make during good times will make all the difference in what we do.” The decisions and activities we make during bad times will that’s a key thing. And we need to be making the right decisions right now. Maybe it started out a little bit slow. Maybe we’re not hitting the numbers. But if we start with the right strategy, we’ll win.

Travis Garza:

And so again, I don’t know if that really answers the question. I’m telling you for us. One, you have to understand, what your strategy is before you start hiring. If you start hiring people to solve problems and you don’t understand what you’re going, it’s going to be a problem. For us, we said, “We got to understand where we’re going, what our needs are, and then we’ll go from there.”

Travis Garza:

There’s some incredible, incredible, incredible wisdom. If you take the numbers, just the four pieces that Travis just shared everybody from starting with saying, hey, the vision isn’t clear to the organization, so number three. Vision has got to be clear first, and then you got to stop changing priorities. The changing of priorities happening so fast is because the vision wasn’t clear, right? Number four, and then his numbers one and two gang of lacking measurable goals, not clear responsibilities, roles, authority, those things come out of vision.

Travis Garza:

A practical book that changed my life forever that I’ll just offer to each of you, I don’t make any money sharing this, is the author out of Michigan and one stayed over for me named Gino Whitman wrote a book called Traction and he teaches the entrepreneurial operating system, EOS. And if you haven’t read traction yet, he literally teaches exactly what Travis just shared with all of us. He said, “You have to set your vision, your five-year vision, your three-year vision, your one-year vision, what you need in the future. ” And then you set scorecards. You have an accountability chart, right?

Ben Dixon, NaXum:

Accountability chart says is who’s accountable? Not an organizational chart of who reports who but accountability chart. Who’s accountable to who? And what are their duties, their responsibilities? And then what is their scorecard? How is that measured? You get these biggie goals for organization. You get these North Stars or core values at the top of an organization, in your ecosystem, in your vision. But then, how do you make that what the body looks like of your people? Well, your scorecards better reflect that. And if they do, if your scorecards do, if your accountabilities do, the question you get to ask is, this is one of my favorite little three letter acronyms for everybody is, you get when you fill a team that way and you’re clear on scorecards, and you’re clear on the vision, then you get the privilege, as someone running an organization to ask if they GWC. GWC is get it wanted and have the capacity to do it.

Ben Dixon, NaXum:

Because now it’s about making sure you have the right people in the right seats. If the vision is clear, if the accountability is clear, if the responsibilities are clear, and the authorities clear, and the scorecards are clear. Now, do we have the right human in the right seat where they get it? They understand all those things we just said? Do they want it? Do they actually desire to be a part of our organization? And to do this? And then see capacity? Do they have the skills and the space in their life? Some of you still have team members working from home. Some of you have people who can do that. Well, some cannot do that well. Some of you are back in the office situation, and some do that well and aren’t that great in an office situation. So, you’re feeling all of it, gang.

Ben Dixon, NaXum:

And if and if you can make your metrics in your scorecard and be able to honestly ask that question GWC, you will have an honest culture, where they have clear expectations, and you have clear expectations. And it makes your monthly reviews with your staff, do you have that monthly reviews, not that annual reviews? It makes your reviews with your direct reports so much better when you have this clarity. I’ll share with you that I have to read that book eight years ago. We literally created in our organization, what we call a G doc. It’s called your greatness document. And it is a real time scorecard. It’s in real time of, do you GWC every time they complete a task or skills assignment or anything in our culture, it gets recorded by our HR team, and people can see their scores in real time. So, it’s pretty darn interesting in our world, because it’s just like super transparent of like, “Is this the right seat for you? Or is it not?” And you would think like, “Oh, is that weird?” I actually love it. It’s clear. It’s like I know what to do.

Ben Dixon, NaXum:

And so, whether or not you create a greatness document, the G doc for everybody at your company, like we chose to, what Travis is saying is right on. The lack of clarity is killing you. It’s not creating a fair culture, it’s not creating a fun culture. If you’re not clear with the vision, if you’re not clear with who owns what, and you’re not clear with real scorecards, it’s your fault. You’re not winning. Okay, this is back to you, as the leader. Hear what Travis shares then. I’m so grateful. He came to share it because even huge organizations like Plexus have to answer it, and so do you. Everyone does. None of us get to abstain from making that role in our life.

Ben Dixon, NaXum:

So, with that, we’re going to wrap up with just one last thought. It’s my surprise question I always ask on these seminars. And so, if you could go back to 2019 Christmas, right before the pandemic happen in 2020, knowing everything you know, today, and tell yourself one thing, what would you tell yourself, Travis? There you go.

Travis Garza:

Oh, my gosh, Ben.

Ben Dixon, NaXum:

That’s why it’s a surprise question. It’s just one thought.

Travis Garza:

One thought, I would just say, in 2019, I witnessed some real tragic things. Not just with COVID. But I would just say that make sure that you have your house in order. And what I mean by that is just make sure that you have things at home taken care of. Whether it’s relationships, trust, make sure that you have your kids set up. I saw some things just changed my life forever in that space. So, I would just say, make sure your house is in order. And again, it’s not just business but make sure your home is in order too. Because I think it’s extremely important and things that come into your life and people come in your life and accidents and things that happen in my life in 2019, I would say just get your house in order.

Ben Dixon, NaXum:

That’s a powerful reminder for each of us. There’s that example we’ve heard personal [inaudible 00:40:00] of the man with the balls. You throw in the ball. Some balls are glass and some balls are rubber. And it’s like family and your own personal health and your beliefs, your faith. Those are the glass balls. You don’t want to drop the glass balls that you’re juggling. And work, right? What we all think is are all important or our career, many times is a rubber ball. It bounces many times and in life there’s another there’s another season ahead of you with your gifts. And I know in our American culture, that one’s a hard one to swallow. But that picture is a healthy one and a powerful reminder for each of us.

Ben Dixon, NaXum:

Yeah, and I can relate. We’ve lost some very close family members during these last few years and I miss them dearly. And at the same time, we remember that like we’re in a season for a reason. So, what can we learn? And how can we serve? I was I just so grateful for your time today. I Appreciate you taking the time to be here with us. Be blessed.

Ben Dixon, NaXum:

For those of you that are new to the session, you can give up high fives or claps or whatever you want to do in the Zoom chat here for Travis and we’ll post the replay for anyone who didn’t get to see it back in the LinkedIn group. So, thank you. Thank you for being here today, Travis. We’ll see you soon.

Travis Garza:

Bye.

Ben Dixon, NaXum:

Bye for now.