Connie Burke from GMC hands over the keys to a new Terrain to Mark Horvath
We recently attended SOBCon 2011 – a conference for people with businesses like ours. The organizers, Liz Strauss and Terry Starbucker, are two of the most amazing people you could ever hope to meet.
They manage to put together an exceptional experience every year. There’s the term…
Experience
Listen to George & Mary-Lynn share this experience on The BIGG Success Show podcast. Click the player to listen
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Many small business owners forget they’re in the business of delivering experiences. You don’t sell products or services; you sell experiences. You deliver those experiences through your products and services.
An unforgettable experience
We experienced something at SOBCon this year that we didn’t think we would ever experience first-hand. Before we get into that, a little history:
Last year, we met Mark Horvath from InvisiblePeople.tv. It was one of the non-profits we all put our heads together to try to help.
Mark was just trying to get traction. He’s doing great work and, like a lot of entrepreneurs, he often doesn’t get much recognition.
It was great to see Mark back at the conference this year. But that was just the beginning…
GMC was one of the sponsors of the conference. They gave a Terrain to Mark and his organization!
It was a very Oprah moment.
We never thought we would see something like that in person.
It was incredible.
Mark was speechless.
We all were!
So we’d like to thank Liz and Terry as well as the great people from GMC – Connie Burke and Hugh Milne – for a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
But experiences aren’t enough
SOBCon is THE conference for open hearts and brilliant minds (and yet they still let us in the room!). The experience Terry and Liz delivered was true to the way they wear their brand.
How do you wear your brand?
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If you’re a long time reader of this blog, you know that I am a BIGG fan of the Rat Pack. So we couldn’t resist twisting Frank Sinatra’s song “The Way You Wear Your Hat” for this post.
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It seems only fitting: Terry often sings to get things started. And of course, there’s the now annual karaoke outing.
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In case you’re not familiar with the song, it’s a love song. More specifically, it’s a lost love song. The point is that you can take everything away except for the memories.
It’s also true for your business. We’ve talked about creating experiences before. But here’s something that we hadn’t thought about until this event:
Experiences can be forgotten.
Experiences are ubiquitous.
Positive memories are precious.
You have to do something BIGG now and then to create happy, lasting memories for your customers, your employees and all the people your business serves. It’s the key to BIGG success!
What are you doing to create happy, lasting memories in your organization?
Direct link to The Bigg Success Show audio file | podcast:
http://traffic.libsyn.com/biggsuccess/00696-050511.mp3
Today, we continue our discussion with John Tantillo, 
John, let’s say you have a brand and it’s not working. You need a brand-over. How would you do that if you’re an existing business?
The first thing you have to do is reach out to your customers. This rebranding, or brand-over notion, comes from the marketing concept. It is not “build it and they will come” ala health care that’s being promoted. It’s find out what people want and give them what they want. For example, let’s say you have a car wash and you think hot wax is what everyone wants. But you’re not getting the number of people you want through your car wash. So you ask your customers, “Why aren’t you coming to my car wash?” They say, “It’s the hot wax. It interferes with my paint job.” Ah! What does that tell you? You shouldn’t be using hot wax, even though people in the business have told you that hot wax is great. Ask your customers. Stay in touch with them so you can give them what they want. How do you get somebody to like you? You tell them what they want to hear or give them what they want. That’s the secret.
