EntreLeadership - Are You Creating a Product People Actually Want? with Ellen Bennett

Episode Date: June 21, 2021

As small-business owners, we’re always looking for ways to make our products better. In this episode of The EntreLeadership Podcast, we sit down with Ellen Bennett, the founder of Hedley & Bennett. She discusses tactical moves small-business owners can make if we want to work with our customers to improve our products. (And who doesn’t want that?) Then George Kamel and Ramsey Solutions leader Jeff Stephens talk about how to make a killer product that serves your customers well.   The EntreLeadership Podcast Hedley & Bennett website Dream First, Details Later by Ellen Bennett Ramsey Solutions’ website Rachel Cruze Wallet Download the New Product Assessment Schedule a call with Tim, our producer.   Learn more about the offers from our EntreLeadership Partners: BELAY  |  Gravy  |  Hite Digital   Want expert help with your business question? Call 844.944.1070 and leave a message, or send an email to [e-mail]. You could be featured on a future podcast episode! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The father of advertising, David Ogilvy, once wrote, Great marketing only makes a bad product fail faster. The secret to keeping your business edge is to deliver a great product with excellence. There's no amount of salesmanship or slick marketing that can overcome a mediocre product. From the Ramsey Network, this is the Entree Leadership podcast, where we help business leaders grow themselves, their teams, and their profits. I'm your host, George Campbell, and in today's episode, we've got two interviews on the business driver of product

and how to keep your business edge in the marketplace by delivering better products. First up, we've got Ellen Bennett. Ellen is the founder and CEO of the multi-million dollar apron company, Headley and Bennett, a company born in the restaurant kitchen out of the need for a better working and better looking apron. Today, their aprons are worn by top chefs around the world.

Then our second interview, we've got Ramsey Leader Jeff Stevens on how to make a product that serves your customers well. So stick around for that. Up first, we've got our conversation with Ellen. She got her start by saying, we're going to make the best aprons ever, which was a bold move considering she didn't even have a business.

Yeah, I had a passion about it. I was needing it myself, so it was very much a situation where I wanted to fix a problem I had, and I was also working at two of the best restaurants in L.A., and their uniforms were terrible. Like they were paper-thin aprons. They didn't fit well. Nothing was practical about it.

And yet it was such a commodity. Like nobody thought to make it better. And I wanted to make it better. And so I started with this dream or kind of North Star, which was make the best apron that there can be full stop, period. I wasn't thinking about, is this going to be wholesale? Is this going to be retail? D to C, B-to-B.

None of that was part of the equation. I was simply like obsessive on the idea of making something that worked. And I'm actually really glad that I started it that way because it helped me focus on what was important, which to your point is fantastic product. Like fantastic product lifts all ships, if you will. If you have a great product, you're going to be successful if you're fixing a problem. But if you have great marketing and not a great product, like a little harder to make it happen out there. Yeah, great marketing will just make a bad product fail faster. And I love that idea. You've got to start with a great product. And when you first started,

And you had what you call a grit, a willingness to fail, and the courage to stare errors in the eye. And I love that. There's a theme in all of that. So tell me how all of that connects when it comes to creating a great product. Absolutely. Well, similar to your first point on the humble enthusiasm, I was always willing to talk to people, but also willing to learn. That's my formula for humble enthusiasm. And when you think about success, it includes a lot of failure.

And the failure parts are where you learn the most. So every time I delivered an order that wasn't perfect, I learned something. And I was getting something from it. And my willingness to stare errors in the eye helped the evolution of the product. Because instead of ignoring people and saying, no, it's not. Actually, it's on you. Like, you probably just didn't wash it right. I would say, you're totally right.

We're so sorry about that. We will take it back. We'll fix it. And it made all the difference. because people were excited to share the good and the bad, and we learned every single blow along the way. Yeah, there's this theme that I think you have, and it's this humility and willingness to take feedback and go,

okay, we don't have the best product in the world. And we talk to a lot of business owners that are on the smaller side, you know, maybe they're two to 200 employees, and many of them are service-based, and they all get started with a product, right? every business starts with a product. I want to do this thing. I'm a plumber.

I love to paint, whatever it is. And they get started. And then over time, the team grows, and they get less connected to the product itself. And so I'm curious, as your team has grown into this multi-million dollar brand, and now, you know, I assume you have a head of product, right? Or you're not as connected to it. Yeah.

How do you maintain the quality and maintain that excellence? Yeah, totally. It's such a good question. And it is imperative, capital letters, like so crucial. This is not an optional step in the journey. This is, I think, where people start to get a little complacent. And they're like, we know what people want. It's fine.

We don't need to talk to the customers. And it's like, no, no, no, no. One thing is to get somewhere and the other thing is to get to the next somewhere and to continue to grow and evolve and learn and all that. So the things that we do currently to keep the engine of feedback rolling is we track our NPS. scores pretty religiously. So net promoter score meaning, you know, do people want to talk about your product or not want to talk about your product? If that runs out of an average, this is me getting extremely nerdy here for a second. I love it. Sorry about that, but we're at like an 81 NPS score

on average, which is extraordinarily high. Yeah. And we track it like a hawk. We also have our head of product and our head of restaurant land. He and her talk. frequently face to face with customers, especially when we're trying to solve a problem or trying to expand into something. We will bring fabrics the way that I used to in the old days, where it was just literally me in a bag of aprons and swatches asking for opinions. They'll go and meet with people in person. They'll do on the phone interviews and they will do surveys with our customers. And just a whole combination of that is what kind of keeps us rowing in the right direction. And I also think that it just keeps us humble, right?

It's like, it's not perfect yet. You can do better. What else can you do to make that thing better? And we're just listening, listening, listening. So that is just a constant thing. And our customer service team has direct access to our product team. So they're sending through feedback, reviews from our website are taken seriously. And we look at them.

And we just make decisions based on what customers are saying combined with our own intuition on it. Does that make sense or not? It's like art and science jammed together. Yeah, that's interesting because I think a lot of business owners either go 100% into one direction or the other, where they go, I don't care what the customers think. Yeah. I know what's best for them. Or they go, I'm only going to be constantly worried about what every single angry comment on Google reviews said about me and kind of fall on that sort. And so I love having that balance of going, what are the customers saying? Does it match up to what our gut is saying? Yeah, yep, exactly, exactly.

You've got to make sure it's logical and makes sense, but using that humility, that willingness to stare error in the eye, and also just that humble enthusiasm of, hey, every day you wake up and your company still exists, that is one more day that you have the opportunity to show up better and differently. And we just don't sit on our laurels. We're honored to do what we do every day. And every day is a freaking gift.

Like, look at COVID last year. It changed our entire lives, all of us. And it could have wiped the company out. And we pivoted hard and didn't because of the pivot. But nothing is guaranteed. So you've got to earn it all the time. I want to talk about this idea of pivoting like you guys did so well last year. A lot of business owners, they're out there and they're going, well, my service is my service.

My product is my product. And they may not change with the times, right? We all know the blockbusters of the world in the 20. Boys are Uses, who they just couldn't make the pivot as the world change and as things became more modern. So talk to me about what that pivot looked like, not only from a B2B to B2C perspective, but also the products that you guys were making. Totally. So pre-COVID, the company had a 50-50 split between online business and restaurant business, which is B2B, right? We have a sales team. They go out. They talk to chefs. They sell

product, et cetera. And because of the pandemic, we did this radical pivot to making face masks. And this was the day of the shutdown in L.A. We decided we were going to do this. So we didn't wait a month or two or three. We did it the day the shutdown happened. And because of that, we were kind of very ahead of people. And we also had this factory in L.A., right? And as I was shutting the factory down, I thought, gosh, we cannot just go home and not do something about this international, like, crisis that we're all about to leap into. It's wild and nobody knew what to do. I had already gone through so many crazy adventures in my journey that this was just another,

this was the biggest bump in the road I'd ever experienced by far. So let me not diminish it in any way. But I simply rose to the occasion with my team and said, we need to do something. So we pivoted, we changed the factory into a face mask facility, and we made a million masks last year, and we donated half a million masks through like a buy one, donate one model. Yeah, so it was pretty nuts. That's awesome. And you also, it went from, hey, we're kind of making this high-end culinary workwear for, you know, celebrity chefs and high-end restaurants. But you also said, hey, we want to put this in the hands of everyday cooks, people like me who are just,

in my kitchen and I want to feel inspired, you know, when I cook. And I love, I saw this somewhere as part of your mission statement. You want to, let me see if I can find it here. Inspire creativity and confidence in the kitchen. Yes, inspire creativity and confidence in the kitchen. And what I love about that is it's easy to go, you know, for a lot of business owners that are going, okay, we make widgets. I'm a plumber, right? And how does that really inspire people? And so I love that You guys took aprons, right? This very inanimate object piece of fabric. And you went, no, this is way more than that.

So talk to me about the connection between a product and the kind of domino effect it can have as it provides a solution to a customer. Totally. So for me, it was making a product that made people look and feel amazing, no matter if they were the line cook or an executive chef in the kitchen. And it was that feeling and that emotion I had every time somebody's. slip that apron on and held their head up high that I thought, wow, this is really something. And I knew in my heart of hearts, there was this inner gut feeling and passion that this was for people, for all people. And even though it started as a B2B business, one of the big shifts we had because of our pivot during COVID was that we ended up becoming like 80% direct to consumers.

And we started outfitting hundreds of thousands of home cooks on top of, the thousands of restaurants that we've been so proud to outfit for all of these years. But it was willing to let go of old ideas and old ways of doing things that allowed us to do that and to say, you know what, everything might change and everything might go away. But if we don't try, we don't have a fighting chance. So we're going to show up and we're going to try. And that meant reducing our skew count. That meant changing the fabrics we were using to use less fabrics.

There were things that I was very emotionally connected to in our collection and our team loved that we had to cut because from a supply chain standpoint, they were just too complex to keep doing through COVID. And what that allowed us to do was actually focus on doing less better. And we got much better and much more streamlined and started offering way less options to restaurants. Like we used to customize you wanted a purple pony. We'd figure out how to get you a purple pony onto the apron. And now it's like, no, this is what we can offer. And here are the rules that we've had to implement because of COVID.

And people just kind of respect it. So it's been a really good kind of growing up lesson in business that took something radical to make that shift. I want to repeat what you just said there. Do less better. That's such an interesting phrase because a lot of business owners out there think, well, I got to do more. I have to be all things to all people. and we can get more clients if we start offering this service, and they start to kind of get away from the core of what they wanted to build.

So how do you kind of keep yourself in check and go, nope, we said this is what we're about, and we need to keep it there. Does that come down to mission and values and having those communicated well? Yes, 100%. And that's actually something. Why do you say that? Because we clarified, like, what is our mission, which I said is inspiring creativity and confidence in the kitchen. and if we are not doing that with every product we make,

we shouldn't be making it. So that helped be a big guiding light. But on top of that, it was really recognizing that our teams were stretched in. We were not doing everything the best that we could. And yet we kept sort of dogpiling more and more and more on top. And I realized that was not effective or efficient for anybody. And when you're trying to do everything,

you're doing nothing as well as if you're doing a few things. really well and you go deep into those things perfect it and then add on and that's it helped us because you got to get off the bike to fix the bike and this was one of those times where maybe we still had one pedal going right but we were in so many ways getting off the bike on certain areas of the company where we used to just be pedaling so hard you couldn't see through the trees and you just kept doing it because it was the thing to do is what you've always done so you can't stop just keep going And if you can just stop for a minute and look around and see this doesn't make sense anymore and have that humble moment with yourself, let it go.

And guess what? You grow. Yeah, here at Entree leadership, we talk a lot about the importance of mission and values and process and structure and workflow because we find that so many business owners are working in the business and not on it, which is exactly what you're talking about with the bike analogy where they're going, I'm just on this treadmill and I don't know how to stop to go, hey, this is not a great treadmill. We need to make this thing better, but they're just trying to keep up. And that's why having all those things in place are so important. I love that.

That's right. But also, you know, for all the business owners out there, it takes time to put processes in, right? Like, I'm nine years into my company. So this wasn't overnight and you got to chip away at it in little bite-sized pieces and sometimes you'll be more radical. But don't be afraid to just start making edits chunk by chunk. You built a company chunk by chunk, so you can start editing at chunk by chunk and just be willing to change along the way. Yeah, and using that filter of what is best for the customer and reminding yourself of that. We talk a lot about how the customer should always be the hero. And I love that your mission does that so well. It's very easy to see how you do that by inspiring creativity and confidence in the kitchen, whether you're an everyday chef or

you're working at the top restaurant in LA. So I love what you guys do. And I want to talk about in your book, we've talked about feedback a little bit here. But in your book, you say that not taking feedback is not an option. And we talked a little bit about the NPS score and how you guys are constantly gathering that feedback. What are some of those tricks and what are those some of the best ways you found to gather that feedback regardless of what kind of business you are? I think feedback is one of those things that I learned to really embrace. But, you know, it started externally and then I really turned it internally and our team is now phenomenal at it but it took time and years of failing at getting good feedback and just being like no we're doing

right it's fine just keep running keep running and next thing you know people are exhausted and they're not doing things right but you're not talking about it so it's just you know there's failure that's happening you don't realize and so I think feedback is about having honest candid conversations and making that normal, making that a part of the journey. And when you can listen to the other person, but really listen, not just sit there and nod your head, but actually put yourself in that person's shoes and say, okay, I'm going to just take off my defensive hat right now

and actually listen to the person in front of me and see what they have to say. It was a big skill that took a lot of years for me to sort of have, but it helped so much because then you're actually hearing what the situation is on the other end and you can fix it just like with a customer but internally. And your internal team is your everything, right? Without a great team, it's very hard to make stuff happen out in the world. And I had a very, very small team for a very long time.

And so that was a real challenge. But as the company grew and we had more resources to get more people on the band, wagon, I realized that that feedback loop was just so crucial to growing and growing. So it sounds like there's two parts of this. There's the external, right? Like sending surveys to the customer, getting those net promoters, how are we doing? But also looking internally and saying, hey, how can we be better from the inside out as well? And they're equally as important? And, you know, I'll give you a really honest example here. A few years ago, I think it was like two and a half years ago, we were able to roll out 401ks to our team.

And I thought it was the greatest thing since slice bread. But I hadn't asked anybody if that was actually what they wanted or needed or whatever. And it was kind of met with a little bit of, meh. And I was so upset because I had, you know, busted my butt to get this thing set up and they weren't exactly enthused about it. And it turns out there were a bunch of other things that were smaller that they would have liked to have resolved first or, you know, more time off or more of this or more of that, right? And I assumed that it was 401 case, and I didn't ask. And so that was a mistake on my end as part of the leadership, and I should have asked. And so it's moments like that where you kind of reflect back and think, yeah, should have checked in first.

That's good. Well, we worked for Dave Ramsey, who's our CEO. So we love a good 401K around here because we're all about building wealth and being generous. And it's a great. So you did a great thing. I must say if I worked at your company, I would be super pumped about the 401K. So you did a great thing there. While we're talking about feedback, it's interesting, you're saying get constant feedback and feedback can be a hard pill to swallow. I mean, if you are the business owner, you just called my baby ugly, if you just, you know, poked a hole in my product. Yeah. So is there a way to kind of create that culture of honesty, but of also respect and trust? And, hey, I'm not here to punch anyone in the face. with this, I just want a better product. And not making it a personal thing, but making it a, I want the best solution for the customer,

and here's what that looks like. How do you do that well? My head of product and my head of ops have differing opinions on things right now, right? Sometimes ops wants to set things up so that they're efficient and they're only efficient. He's not thinking about design or style or color. He's really focused on efficiency. And my head of product is like, well, customers love this, so you better figure out a way to make it happen.

and they're sometimes a rub there, right? And the way that we get through that, honestly, is whiteboard sessions. And the reason I love a good whiteboard session is it gets everybody out of their head, out of an email, and in a room where you can look people in the white of the eye and hear them, but like really hear them. And when you write things on a board, you're having to put your thoughts out on paper. And sometimes your thought is different than the way you're communicating it. But when you write it out,

you're like, okay, cool. He's talking about a green tree. And then she writes something on the board, and she's like, it's an orange tree. And then you suddenly realize you guys are talking about two different types of trees, even though you thought the entire time, you were talking about the one purple tree,

but it turns out everyone's bringing a different colored tree to the table. And I've seen that a lot. And so whiteboarding it all out just clarifies the confusion and gets you to the bottom of it. And most of the time, Disagreements are based on lack of communication or confusing communication, and you just got to talk it out. So that team has done a lot of talking through a lot of things to get an alignment and then move forward. That's so good.

And it all comes down to communication and having that conversation, being willing to have the conversation, and getting face-to-face with people. That's awesome. Well, in your book, you have these six questions to go. from good to awesome. And I feel like they're so perfect as it relates to creating a great product. So if you don't have the memorized, I have them in front of me. I'd be very impressed if you had all of them memorized. But I wanted to kind of run through these real quick. No, read them off. Okay, perfect. Yeah, let's do it. You're like, I'm on the book tour. It's all mush right now. So you start with this question, what's working? That's question number one,

which it sounds like a positive way to start the conversation, right? What does that entail? Right. Sandwich it. Yeah. It's, It's about just beginning with, okay, how are you doing, essentially? What's working? And then following it with what's not working. But if you start with a negative, it's a little hard to keep the conversation positive. So begin with something a little more positive. And that one's one, honestly, that I'm still working on.

I still have to remind myself that people want to feel appreciated and valued in a way that even when you are trying to get feedback, you want them to feel good so that they're willing to talk about whatever they want to talk about and not get defensive. So start with something positive. Yeah, we have something called the Four Helpfuls that we do a lot around here. Where we have the whiteboard, we're all sitting in the room and we go, okay, what's right, what's wrong, what's missing, what's confused. And doing that really kind of everyone gets their thoughts out and it's not about anyone's feelings. We're just putting it all on the board.

And then we can start to go, okay, if we've got to fix the things that are wrong, if there's something missing, maybe we should think about including that. And so I love that, and especially as you get to question three, where you go, if there's an issue with the product or service you received, what would you consider a successful resolution? So now, again, we're refocusing everything on the positive of how do we make this better? How do we come together and come up with a solution that makes sense? Yep, that's exactly right. You took the words right out of my mouth.

You were being solution-oriented versus saying, what did we do wrong? what did we do wrong with you and kind of like a little bit martyrish right instead you're saying we're going to fix this what can we do to do that and hearing the other person's perspective even if it doesn't align with yours it's so important because then back to my example of 401ks it's not that 41Ks were wrong it's just that they maybe wanted something else before that something different they maybe had a different need and hearing what the person's needs are versus your of their needs is the message there. So getting their perspective on how this can get better is good. And it also puts them in a mentally positive position versus being like, yeah, you guys suck. You did this. You did that. I hate

this. Blah, blah, blah. We like to say you got to get off your assumption. I'll leave it there. Okay. So number four, this is an interesting one. If you're on the fence about our relationship, what would be a deal breaker for you? What do you mean by that question? So it's like what's your non-negotiable? What is the thing that just cannot happen? What is the thing that if this line gets crossed, you've crossed too far and there's a point of no return. And I think most people in circumstances,

there's a little bit of that place. And so when you know where that guideline can be, it helps you know what to do and how to kind of walk around. These are just like really questions that are very emotional intelligence oriented, right? They're not so, they're not anything else other than sussing out how this person standing in front of you is feeling and what their needs are. And that helps you kind of come up with a better solution. Yeah. And it sounds like this question is really about finding out what are the guardrails?

What are the boundaries for this? And especially as it relates to our mission or our values. and it's all so interconnected. And once we have that, we can kind of all get on the same page and start to see the path that we need to go. So I love that question. Exactly. Number five, if there's an issue, what if we can't resolve it specifically?

Is there another way we could make it up to you? Unpack that one. So as you can see, it's still problem-solving oriented. Every single one of these is kind of like you're diagnosing the issue from lots of different angles. First you're going to check it, you know, one way, then you're going to look over here and poke at it another way. So you're really just trying to decipher the need.

And if this doesn't work, like what else can be done to resolve this situation? And, you know, number one through five or six doesn't mean you have to do all of these. You might resolve this at number two. But if you need to, you keep going. And you're like, let me approach this in a different way. I'm going to ask them this question to see what else information I can get out of it. But your North Star for using all of these questions is not to be like a professor about it. It's not like, okay, now I'm on number three.

Now let me go to number four. It's really having these tools on your tool belt so that if something isn't quite working, you go deeper. And you approach it at a different angle, but you're still really trying to get to the end result, which is get the feedback you need to fix the situation. and walk out of there with a solution. That's huge. And that makes it not about my wants versus your wants. It makes it about the problem.

And it makes it about the product and the solution and how it can help the customer. So your last question here, let's say all five haven't worked yet. We're still on the struggle bus. Your last question is, what else do you wish we had thought of? Yeah. That's basically like you are rounding, you're rounding the park. You are like, all right, I have not been able to crack this nut. I haven't been able to fully get everything I need from this person.

And now you're just straight up asking like, what else did we miss? How else can we make this right? It's just an honest, genuine, not a plea, but it's just you are putting yourself out there. Full humility on the table, full egolessness on the table and saying, I'm here to make this right. My last try. what can we do to resolve this? That's so good. And it's so open-ended because now it's a brainstorm session.

Hey, what did we miss? I'm going to open the floor to you to tell us all of the feelings that we maybe haven't covered and all of the things we maybe haven't been thinking of. So all of these questions have a very humble posture. Yeah. And by the way, by the time you're done doing all this, the other side of the table has gotten to talk and get things off their chest and really feel better because they've gotten to kind of diffuse their feelings.

It's become less emotional because somebody's actually listening to them. So even if you don't feel like it's a monumental change by the end of it, the truth is it is for the other side because they're going to feel better. Therefore, they're going to be less frustrated or upset. And hopefully, hopefully they can come down to a place where they're not defensive anymore and willing to just say, all right, cool. let's like I think we can you know take it from here and I think we have a solution and thanks for listening to me you know and this whole process is question oriented which I think is so important because when you think about great

leadership is asking questions yeah no team wants to just be told what to do they want to feel like they're a part of it and I feel like a way your process does that is it brings the team in it brings the customer in it says hey we want to make the best thing together it's not about me and my ego and my business. It's about how can we build something amazing together. That's right. That's clear that you guys have done that really well. Yeah. And it really started externally. And then over the years, as I had to get off the bike to fix the bike, I realized this is not just an external thing. This is almost more important internally at the same time as dealing with and evolving with your customers and your consumer base. You have to evolve and grow with your team too and get that honest,

candid feedback so that you can grow. As you know, sometimes things don't go right. And there is a failure. We failed to deliver excellence on our product. Do you have a story maybe early on where you experienced that? Yeah. I'm like, let me get my scroll out. So many, so many of the early days of Hadley-Ly and Banning, it was such a trial and error.

And I say that very openly because people need to know that business is a journey. And it's not black and white, which is literally why I wrote a book that is a business book that's very colorful. The inside is colorful because business is colorful. And a lot of those failures were because we didn't quite understand everything a customer needed. And one of the examples that happened that is actually in the book, I break down how there was an order for Brian Voltajou, who's a really famous top chef winner. And he had a restaurant order. He gave me the biggest order I had ever gotten, which was 150 aprons. and I thought we could deliver them on time.

And long story short, we didn't. And we missed their deadline by a day. And we could not get them to them on time. And the sewing team working with me kept saying they were going to be ready and they were going to be ready. And I went from like pleading to yelling like, oh my God, please. And we can't be late for this order. This is like the biggest order we've ever had. And it was of no avail.

We did not get them out on time. I literally drove to L.A. I was thinking I could get them on the FedEx airplane. Like I drove to a chainling fence at the tarmac. I'm like, can I just get in? I just need to drop off a box. I don't know what I was thinking. But those were the wild ideas flying through my head as I was trying to rescue this

terrible, this order gone south. And I had to call him the next day and say, your order to not go out. And I am so sorry. And I spoke to his assistant. And what I actually did was I didn't. charge them for it. I was like, this was such a huge mistake on our part of not having delivered that I'm just not going to charge you for it. And maybe that was a little extreme, but for me, it was my way of making right for the errors that we had made that were really just like

lack of process, right? If I had planned things out and put the timing in and known when certain things had to be ready, I wouldn't have messed that up. And that was just pretty, pretty catastrophic to have done that with our biggest order yet. So I learned a lot from that. And it also humbled me a lot when you have to pay for somebody else's gear and you don't get any money for it. Like that's a big bit of medicine to swallow. Wow. Yeah, a lot of leadership lessons in there.

A lot of humility. A lot of taking ownership, taking responsibility and making it right. That's incredible. So as we wrap here, any final thoughts for the business owners listening who are going, okay, after all this conversation, maybe I do need to take a good look at my product. How do we start to improve our products and really set the bar higher when it comes to an excellent product? Yep.

First of all, make the decision that you are going to be willing to change and that you are going to be willing to adapt and to shift your perspective. That's step one. Can you make that adjustment? And if you're like, no, I already know everything we need to know. Like, good luck making change. it's just impossible. So decide you're going to make the change, right?

And then follow it up with lots of conversations. Start looking at your customer surveys. If you've never done one, do one. Start talking to your customer service team. If you are your customer service team, start looking at the emails and what are people complaining about a lot? Like just start being an investigative inspector Cluoso and gather facts and details about what's not working.

And just know that people are being on. honest and they're not trying to hurt you. They're just telling you what they're not happy about. And when you really, really listen, like a doctor, truly listen. You're like checking the prognosis, right, of your patient. You will be able to identify what are the things that you can do better. And just know that if you don't make those changes, the world will make the changes around you. Somebody else will come in with some fresher, hotter idea and they'll sweep it right from under you. So either you step it up or the world is going to step it up for you. And that's just like the cold, hard truth of life.

You have to always keep getting better, not for everybody else, but really for yourself and your customers. And then it happens to keep you ahead of the curb. Wow. If you don't make the changes, the world will make the changes around you. That's a powerful way to end, Ellen. Thank you so much. You are inspiring entrepreneurs all over the world. and your success is well-deserved.

We're so pumped for you. Pump for the new book. Pump for what you guys are doing. And how you have such a high standard for excellence when it comes to everything you do. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. And if anybody wants to follow along,

you can go to Ellen Ree Bennett on Instagram and Headley and Bennett. Just go to our website. You can get a signed copy of my book from there. And I really truly hope this inspires people to make changes in their life and start dreaming bigger and worrying about the details later. Like Ellen talked about, you have to take a good look at your products and continue to improve them to deliver excellence to your customers. So what are the things you should be looking for when you go, all right, we've got to make a product that serves our customers extremely well.

We'll have a conversation about that right after this. Our second interview is with Ramsey leader, Jeff Stevens. Jeff is the vice president of consumer products here at Ramsey Solutions, and we sat down to talk about how to make a killer product that serves. your customers well? Early on, I didn't think I had a good understanding of what makes a good product at Ramsey. And so part of the kind of onboarding process for me in this position was actually asking people what products have won and what products did we actually like once we actually launched them.

And so we actually made a scorecard for products. And it's not a typical scorecard I think you would see in a lot of businesses. Some of it are, you know, does it fit with our mission? Does it drive the business forward? Does it have strategic value in some of our business units in other areas as well? And so we look at that a lot as part of this. But obviously, a key part is, what does the customer think about this? Does this solve a problem for somebody?

And that's really the paramount question we ask when this product is there's a lot of questions we look at, but really, does this solve a problem for somebody and would they buy it? So it's not just looking at, all right, this can drive some revenue. People will buy this thing, but we're trying to align our mission with the customer's problem with a solution that helps drive our business forward and really has some, you know, synergy between different areas of the company. That's right. So mission is to deliver hope, right? So that's pretty broad. But what type of hope are you trying to deliver? And so a lot of times it's with products, it's not necessarily a new. problem, it's just a problem that keeps coming up or a problem we don't feel like we've actually solved. And so an example of that is we offer a lot of envelope systems here. And over the years, we have evolved from plain, you know, white envelopes that you could pick up at the bank to some really simple kind of coil envelopes to put them together to things that feel more like a wallet. And then we kind of have over time evolved to kind of look at like different parts

and different segments, even in that product range, what makes sense for different consumers? And that's part of the reason we came out with the Rachel Cruz wallet a couple years ago and have been able to make that work. Yeah, and that's a product that aligned with what the customers wanted. It aligned with one of our Ramsey personalities and Dave's daughter, Rachel, and her brand

and what she was all about, which is helping people win with money and making money fun. And you also made a great product in the process, but I won't talk about the word great. Yeah. Because when we first launched it, we had some issues. Right. And just give us the quick take on what happened there.

To kind of take you back in time, it was before I was even here, the idea Rachel said, hey, I think we should make a wallet. And she had a clip system, which she had been using, and was pretty unique. And we thought, would our customers want to buy this, would they like it? And so we kind of did some real light kind of feedback. And we thought there was a product idea there. And so our typical process at that time was we went and talked to our various suppliers and say, hey, can anybody here make a wallet that looks like this? We had a general idea of the concept we wanted to do.

And we got some different people who could make a wallet for us. Unfortunately, and the wallet was honestly, was a good looking wallet and it sold well. But unfortunately, a couple months in, we started getting some customer refunds. feedback that they were having problems with their zippers. And we now call it zipper gate here. At least some people do. But it was really painful. And I think the thing for the business is we realized, not only did we disappoint the customers, which was just so painful to kind of see that, but just the lack of trust or the lost trust that we had in a product was super painful. And so unfortunately, we actually pulled all of those wallets. So we had, I won't tell you,

how many, but we had quite a few. And we just decided we weren't going to sell it anymore. And so that was a really painful day. Some people here refer to some of the most painful time in their career. But certainly we've been able to turn that around over the last couple of months with a new product. Yeah, it was an interesting kind of case study here because we didn't just go, all right, we're just going to fix the zipper and keep it on the market. We made a hard business decision to go, we're taking these off the market, and we're not just going to go make a new wallet all of a sudden. There was a gap from when we took them off the shelves to when we got them into the market. So walk me through that process to where we are today. Right. So I think you, so let's say like there was

that period there where we kind of took them off the site. You kind of have that like three months to six months where you're kind of like let the dust settle and let's kind of see what happens here. And what's interesting is we still got feedback with Rachel's customers that they wanted us to make another wallet. People are like, what happened to the wallet? I wanted to buy the wallet. So we knew that there was still interest there. At that point, we actually kicked off some research. We have a research team here. And we just asked some questions about, probably like a little bit deeper now that we had done a wallet about asking questions to these customers about what they would want in another wallet.

And one of the questions that really stood out to us was we said, if we were to make another wallet, and these are people who had bought the previous wallet with the issues. And not all of them had issues, but a lot of them did. we asked, would you buy another wallet from us or would you trust us to buy another wallet if we came out with another wallet? And the number for that was 82% said that they would buy another wallet for us. Wow. And so that was kind of the number that we kind of stuck with us that said, you know, maybe we should give this another try. But let's do it differently this time. So the zipper is the problem here.

How did you guys address this product problem where you went, all right, we got to figure out a solution here and make it better? than ever. Right. So I think at this point, this is where you take a hard look at yourself and take a hard look at your team and say, let's be honest, nobody here knows how to make a wallet. And like being very honest about that, right? We knew we needed to make one, but realizing nobody in this company had that experience. And in the past, we had outsourced that to somebody who could make a wallet, but not somebody who makes wallets. There's a difference in that, right? There's a lot of companies that can do things versus that is what they do. And so we really had two things that we said, if we're going to do this again, we have to do it differently.

One is we said, let's work with somebody who actually designs and makes wallets. And so we found somebody who deconstructed our previous wallet and said, I can see where you had some issues here and why you did. And I can help get you to the next wallet. And the other thing is we said, let's find a company that makes wallets. Not a company that can make wallets or somebody has done it in the past, but somebody who actually does. this day in and day out. And so that's where we kind of were joking earlier. You see these people that once you get in a room with them, they teach you so much. And it's the things that like you didn't even know what questions you should have asked, but we were joking about, you know, we didn't

know that there's brands of zippers, you know, and there's a Rolls-Royce of zippers, which we kind of then decided like, let's use the rolls-rois of zippers, understanding the different terminology of leathers. So what does it mean when something is genuine leather versus full grain leather versus top grain leather. And so we talked to a lot of people about this and they really coached this. And it was kind of that eye-opening moment you realized, man, we didn't know hardly anything when we made this first wallet until we started learning with the people who actually do this day in and day out. And so through that process, we really started understanding, you know, what not only makes a good wallet, but also the potential

of new things we could do with this wallet as we made it. You guys absolutely hit it out of the park with this new wallet. And I'm so proud of the work you guys did and really creating the best product possible for our customers. So talk to me about what that feedback loop looks like because we were talking earlier. And it's not this one time thing where you do feedback and you go, okay, they want a wallet. It's a constant process. So what are the tactical ways that we get that feedback from customers? Right. So I think part of this is we had research that told us that we probably should have made the exact same wallet. If you would have looked at the feedback that we got from the customers that I referred to earlier, you could easily look at that and say, we just need to make the

exact same wallet. But when you dig a little bit deeper and actually look at what the customer are saying, people were saying that really they just needed a way to separate their cash. And our solution for that on the first wallet was these little metal clips. And we came to found out that probably maybe even hurt the integrity of the wallet some as we did that. But I think the thing that we really learned is that mentioning earlier, we're not wallet people. We did some things that were, you know, anybody could do. We actually went to the mall across the street from our office, and we went and talked to the people that sell wallets there. And I'm sure it looked weird, two guys, me and Brian, who worked on this project.

But we literally went and talked to the salespeople. This is like a mall kiosk situation. Well, we went to multiple stores. We went to Macy's. We went to the little boutique stores and we asked the person say, you know, tell us which wallets. We're working on a wallet. Tell us which wallets are popular and what people gravitate towards.

It's kind of the first question. And so I think there's a little bit of just admitting the fact that, like, we did not know this market. And I asked my wife. I asked cousins. I asked anybody that had a wallet, I would ask them about their wallet. So I don't think this necessarily has to be a research project that you kick off. offer, have to do all the survey data. A lot of time the answer is as simple as asking people.

And we'll talk about the wallet for just one second because you mentioned it earlier. You know, one of the things we said is we noticed people wanted a way to separate their cash. And one of the things we did is we built the first cash envelope system that's actually integrated into a wallet. And so when you open up the wallet, you can easily see the dividers there and it's integrated in. And one of the things that we also heard from the customers is with this clip, when you're at the grocery store, dealing with little metal clips is very difficult, right? And so one of the things we did has made it very easy to pull the cash in and out.

And so one of the things that we just constantly do when you're listening to the customers, right? It's understanding what their needs are, but actually kind of asking the question, like, why is that important to you or why do you care about that or tell me more to take it one step deeper to understand this? Talk about join, the company that we worked with.

So when we were going through this wallet process and we said we needed to partner with somebody who makes wallets, that was very difficult. Way more difficult than we thought to find somebody who we felt like was had the right approach, had the right spirit, got us, understood what we were trying to do. We talked to some companies that literally told us this is a dumb idea. Let us just figure this out for you, right? like didn't want us to be part of the process. It's just kind of like, we'll do the work here. But one of the people that works with us, Ken Murray, was at a coffee shop. And on the wall, he saw a wall that kind of looked similar to something that we would make.

And he saw that it was made by a company called Join, which is based out of India. And a little bit of research on this company, we found out that they were employing some of the people in the darkest, most impoverished areas in India. people who really had no other way to make money or find work. And so this is the type of company we wanted to work with. And when we spoke to them, they were people that just got it. They weren't trying to tell us what to do. They were really trying to coach us on things we could do better and work with us. And they have been a phenomenal organization to work with.

And we're so proud to partner with them to make this wallet. That's an amazing story. And I think the people listening out there, they're going, all right, Jeff, I've got my product, I've got my service, it's good. I mean, I'm making profit. I wouldn't be in this business and where I am today without that. But how do I go about making sure I'm getting the right feedback and constantly making it better? What are those steps that they can take today to do that? Yeah. So you hear it a lot. A lot of people say that your most valuable feedback is coming from the people that don't want to use your product, right? And so I think part of this is finding out the

people that have an objection to want to use your product and find out why that is. But I think the thing is for a lot of these small businesses, I mean, we have the luxury of doing research, having teams that can do that. But one of the things that I feel like we have always gotten the most valuable feedback on, it's just having conversations with people. If you see an opportunity to working into a conversation where they're at the grocery store, at the airport, there's so much feedback to be gained by just the small conversations and asking people, this is a weird question, right? But like, I see you have a wallet. What type of wallet do you use and what do you like about it, right? Now, it's a little bit different for like a guy to ask that. But like, what are the questions that you can work in from your business into your everyday life?

And I think a lot of people think that there's always, it's got to be a survey. It's got to be a research project. You got to do a focus group. But I have found in my career, the best feedback has just come from a simple conversation. And I think a lot of people, it's, you know, we're in our business day in and day out. And it's like, I don't want to talk about my business when I'm at the airport and I'm sitting here waiting. But sometimes it's the best information that you'll ever get about your business because people don't feel like they're performing for you, right? You're just having a conversation. And so the more times that you can have those conversations with just individuals who don't know who you are, don't know what you do, you're going to get the most valuable nuggets out of that. So what I'm hearing is be really curious about your own product.

be willing to have conversations and really get outside of your own bubble and get outside of your own head and go to people out there, people who maybe aren't interacting with your product or service or have an objection to it, or people that love it and ask them what they love about it and how you can make it better. Yeah, so a lot of people I work with here at Ramsey Solutions, we'll go talk to customers, and they feel like there's expected answer they need to give us for something. But if you give them freedom to say, hey, what's your crazy idea that you think we should do, even though it makes you feel a little uncomfortable or maybe it doesn't feel like something we would say yes to, but what's that crazy idea that you think we should be doing?

Or what's your crazy idea for something we should, a product we should launch or something? Sometimes when you give people that freedom to kind of come up with something that feels a little uncomfortable, you might get the best answer out of that. Yeah, I mean, I remember sitting in your office not too long ago sharing my crazy ideas because I was just passionate about it. I said, hey, Jeff, we're not currently doing this. I think it could serve our customers well. What do you think? And I love your openness to that and your generous spirit hearing my crazy ideas.

I still love that crazy idea. Thank you. That's a future episode. Topic for another show, yeah. Yes. Well, Jeff, thanks for what you do here at Ramsey, bringing hope to our fans, our customers, our listeners out there every single day by creating amazing products. Appreciate it.

Thanks, George. Hope you enjoyed that conversation with Jeff Stevens. If you want to put this stuff into practice, we've got a great free resource for you, the new product assessment. This has the 10 questions to ask before you launch a new product, and Jeff and his team put this thing together just for you. It's going to walk you through the process that we use as we develop new products here at Ramsey's Solutions.

To get this free resource, text the word product to 33444. Again, text product to 33444 or click the link in the show notes. Hope you enjoyed today's episode of the show. If you did, leave us a review and subscribe so you don't miss the next one. And if you're a small business owner with 2 to 200 team members, we'd love to hear your feedback on the show and ask you a few questions. Click the link in the show notes to fill out a brief survey to schedule a call with Tim, the producer. As always, you can follow us on social media at Entree Leadership.

This episode was produced by Tim Hull, edited by Zach Bennett, and mixed and mastered by Will Rudder. I'm your host, George Camel, and on behalf of the entire Entree leadership team, thank you for listening. Until next time, keep learning. and keep leading. If you enjoy this podcast, you should check out other great podcasts from the Ramsey Network, like the Christy Wright Show. Hey, y'all, I'm Christy Wright. You know, it's so easy to feel stuck. You live life, just going through the motions, doing dishes, doing laundry, carpool lines,

and a whole list of commitments that bring you no joy. We say yes to what everyone expects of us, and we have no energy or time for what we want. And let's be honest, most of the time, we don't even know what we want. Why do we live like that? God certainly never called us to. You know, I believe that the life God has for us is bigger and more amazing than any of us realize. That's why I want you to check out the Christy Wright Show. Every week, we will fire you up to break through what's holding you back and inspire you to create a life you love and are proud of.

Each episode will help you build confidence in yourself and the God that created you. To hear full episodes, just search Christy Wright wherever you listen to podcasts, or go to ramsysolutions.com slash shows.