S02E59 – Natalie Doyle Oldfield – Trust: The secret sauce to separating yourself from the competition

[00:00:04.090] – Sean

Hey, this is Sean Tepper, the host of Payback Time and Approachable and Transparent podcast on business investing in finance. I’d like to bring our guests to hear authentic stories while giving you actionable takeaways you can use today. Let’s go. There are a lot of ways businesses try to separate themselves from the competition, including price, product, tech features, and service offerings. The often overlooked and the easiest way to truly separate yourself from the competition is to increase trust. The big question is, how do you do that? If you’re a business leader and if you’re an investor, what should you look for? In this episode, we dive into trust and why it is the secret sauce that can separate you from the competition. Please welcome Natalie Doyle. Oldfield Natalie, welcome to the show.

 

[00:00:49.730] – Natalie

Thanks for having me.

 

[00:00:51.140] – Sean

Good to have you here. So why don’t you kick us off and tell us about your background?

 

[00:00:55.350] – Natalie

Okay, well, I am the author of the book The Power of Trust how Top Companies Build, Manage, and Protect It and the founder of Success Through Trust. We started in 2013, and the company got started because I was in a role in an organization It company in a sales role. And I was not called sales. I was the head of marketing, chief marketing officer, and the CEO of the company asked me several times to become the leader of the sales team as well. And I didn’t want to do that, Sean, for a number of reasons. There’s a lot of accountability when you’re in charge of sales and you either do well or you don’t. It’s one month or one quarter after another. And so I kept saying no. And then finally, I decided that I would. And the reality is, I was very poor on market timing. I chose to say yes in August 2008, and a couple of weeks later, the market crashed. And for those of your listeners and clients who watched the markets, you might remember that the hospitality industry was hit very hard, and we were marketing products and software products in that industry.

 

[00:02:14.590] – Natalie

So I had never done sales before. I looked around, tried to figure out, what am I going to do? How am I going to manage this and keep everything going, and tried to find some sales training courses. And everybody I talked to that was very successful said, it’s not about a sales process or taking people through a funnel, if you will. It’s just about building relationships. And I got so interested in this that after focusing on relationships with customers and clients for about three months, our sales started to go back up. And then I got, like I said, so interested that I went back to university as a grown up and did my masters and graduate research on how is it that customers decide to buy. And what I found very quickly is that we all decide to buy based on who and what we trust, we buy from companies we trust, we invest in companies we trust, we use platforms that we trust. And it all comes down to trust. It’s actually the foundation for everything that we do. And I got so excited about it, Sean, that I did a lot of research created while doing my Masters proprietary framework and then I tested it out over four years and here I am now.

 

[00:03:39.420] – Natalie

And now I teach people and business owners and leaders how to build and strengthen relationships of trust with their customers, with their employees, with their stakeholders. And I do that by doing workshops and training sessions and speaking to groups and online courses. And I actually also measure a customer’s trust in a company. So I coined the term Trust Equity and measure trust equity for companies.

 

[00:04:13.470] – Sean

Awesome, thank you very much for that background. And what I’d like to do is just clarify your business model because I always like to know what kind of business people are running or if they work for a company, what is that company, how does it make money? And then I really want to dive into trust, especially how we look at businesses as investors. And then I know there’s entrepreneurs listening to this podcast as well. They’re going to learn how can they leverage trust, how can you create more trust to obviously increase their sales? But first off, it sounds like you’ve got like a coaching consulting business all in one and then you have courses, so you have some kind of leveraged income there as well, is that correct?

 

[00:04:54.220] – Natalie

Yes, I have an online course that I call becoming a trusted advisor. It’s a self paced course with twelve modules. I do tailor it for some organizations that use it as part of their continuing professional development. So we might add a module on ethics for a specific organization. So that’s an online course. And a large part of my business is doing training, so a lot of that nowadays is done virtually. So I have companies that I would have people from all over the world join via Zoom like we are here today. And we would walk through how to build Trust. So we would start with customer experience and then how we decide to trust. And then talk about empathy and listening and all the skills and all the principles of how to build trust. And that program I tailor for companies, I also do it for what I call public audiences. So group programs where it might be just one person or a couple of people joining. And then like you said, I also measure trust for companies. So companies would hire me to survey their customers and stakeholders, maybe dealers, maybe distributors, and then they get a trust equity score.

 

[00:06:13.980] – Natalie

It’s a quantifiable score so that they know where the gaps are, where the opportunities are and what the experience is for their stakeholders.

 

[00:06:23.530] – Sean

I love that and thanks for the context on your business model there and of course, any listeners out there want to get in touch with you and learn how they can really lean into trust and make it. Part of the keyword we’re talking about offline a little bit is the fabric of your business. I think you’re a great resource to reach out to. But let’s pause there on measuring trust because we got a bunch of fun stuff we’re going to talk about leading up to that. So why should businesses really place a high emphasis on trust like the business case?

 

[00:06:52.950] – Natalie

To me it’s a competitive advantage. It’s the most important asset we should all be managing. So if we look at the raw facts, 80% of people worldwide buy from companies they trust. Almost seven in ten people recommend products and services they trust. It’s a fact that if we can increase customer retention by 5%, it can increase profitability by 25% to 75%.

 

[00:07:27.010] – Sean

Wow.

 

[00:07:27.760] – Natalie

So there’s lots of numbers that point to the business case. It also improves employee engagement, which is really important right now. It’s always important, but I’m finding that companies are having me help them with training programs because they want to retain their employees. So really it comes down to it’s about retention of customers, retention of employees. It’s about engagement of customers, engagement of employees and trusted companies are more profitable.

 

[00:08:02.170] – Sean

Can you give us some practical ways that businesses can increase trust?

 

[00:08:07.530] – Natalie

Well, that’s a really big question. Some practical ways? Well, best practice and a very practical way is for companies to train employees and leaders and front line customer facing people on how to do it. And so when I say that people go, okay, well, trust is a big word. How do you train people? Well, you actually can learn the skill of building trust. It’s like a muscle that you can practice it. And trust is built on interpersonal experiences and relationships that we build. So where the rubber hits the road for all companies, whether you are a healthcare company, you’re a software company providing software as a service, you’re a manufacturing company that makes windows or you’re manufacturing company that makes microphones, it’s all about the people. And what I would call the most critical trust risk point for any company is the people, how they communicate, how they behave and how they serve. So the most practical thing you can do is start with the people. Start with talking about building relationships of trust. Start with talking about the importance of being trustworthy and learning how to be trustworthy.

 

[00:09:36.870] – Sean

Can we drill into that a little more? I want to look at this through the lens of like an entrepreneur and then we’ll tie that to an investor. But what are certain things? Is it certain things we say or how we send emails or how we communicate in zoom calls? I really want to get to some practical takeaways our audience, take action on.

 

[00:09:55.740] – Natalie

Right away so from a practical point of view, as an entrepreneur, someone who’s running a company, think about the relationships that the people on your team have with your customers. Are they open and honest? Are they really listening to the needs and the interest in what matters most to the customers? So building trust actually starts with listening very carefully, with empathy and compassion and then involving the other person in a discussion that affects them. So that’s actually in my framework, that’s principle number one of building trust, Sean. So when I say how to make it practical, you could work on just becoming more empathetic. So that’s one thing a business owner could do is start talking about their customers or their stakeholders, whoever it is that they serve, and have discussions with their team members on what matters to their customers or whoever it is they’re serving, whether it’s a member or a customer or a subscriber or whoever.

 

[00:11:08.210] – Sean

Yes, I want to just make my own comments on that. I love that because we’ve all been in those conversations where you’re talking to somebody and the lights are on, but they’re not really listening, right?

 

[00:11:19.480] – Natalie

Oh, yes, right.

 

[00:11:20.840] – Sean

And you can see it. They’re thinking about the next thing they want to say, or they’re waiting for that interjection point and to interrupt you in some cases. And it’s like, just sit there and just hear me out for a second. And when I’m talking to a company that I’m doing business with and I’m spending money with them, you’re right. My trust in them significantly goes up when I can get them on the phone or on a zoom call, and they’re listening and they’re nodding, and the body language is there, and they’re letting me vent an issue, and they’re like and then the response would be love the feedback. We’re going to take that to our engineering team or take it to our product team or whatever. You’re hearing me? Okay, great. Because there’s a lot of people they don’t do that.

 

[00:12:04.710] – Natalie

Yeah, well, so in one of my programs, in this program that I was saying that takes place over Zoom over several weeks, we actually have a whole module, Sean, on listening carefully with empathy, because it’s so important. And one of the things that I share with companies and with clients is that we all know when people are listening and we know when they’re not. And to your point on Zoom, you can see through the body language, and you can also see if someone has another monitor on, like I’ve turned my monitor off here, right. It’s just you and me here. But you can see when you’re on a call with someone, whether you’re one of five people or one of 100 people, you can look at all the little faces and you can see who’s paying attention. And we all want to be listened to. And if we’re not, it’s a form of disrespect. And when someone that’s a trust buster. In my world, if someone is disrespectful, well, we don’t want to trust them.

 

[00:13:11.550] – Sean

I got to tell a funny story for you, and I’ll preface that. You have nothing to worry about, but I’ve had podcast guests come on, and we have a little warm up time, as you saw, with our podcast. And I’d like to get to know you a little bit, tell you about our audience, what they’re looking for. And I started doing that, and there was one guy, he was like, yeah, I’ve done this before. Let’s just hit roll and let’s go. And I was like, oh, okay, I know who I’m dealing with here. I literally went with the flow for maybe 1520 minutes, did a quick wrap up, and that was it. Because in our terms of service, of course, we never promised to promote an episode, so that episode never went live. But every once in a while, I get somebody like that. They don’t want to listen. They don’t want to know who my audience is. They don’t care.

 

[00:14:00.510] – Natalie

And so oftentimes, people forget that at the end of the day, we all want to work with people and have podcasts with people and have conversations with people that we like, people we feel comfortable with, people we understand, people that we have mutual respect for and that we trust. So if someone leaves us with a feeling of, oh, it’s not important, we don’t need to do the pre conversation. It’s very natural, quite honestly. Sean and very common to say, okay, this is probably not going to be a good fit.

 

[00:14:37.240] – Sean

No, exactly.

 

[00:14:39.210] – Natalie

When I share, trust is interpersonal. It’s all about principled behavior. And if we had lots of time together, hours, we could actually break that down and really dissect what that guest did and how he or she destroyed trust. What I find so fascinating about the whole topic of trust is that there’s a lot of science behind it. So the model that I created in my framework is all based on science and evidence. I started this with my business hat on, and I learned very early in my career, we should be able to measure everything, and we should always measure what matters, which is why I created this diagnostic tool called the Client Trust Index. As I was mentioning, when I measure trust equity, what I was going to say is that, you know, we could dissect it all if we had all day. And what’s so interesting is that we decide to trust in 33 milliseconds, sean that’s how long it takes based on facial expression, and then it takes another sort of half a second to say, yeah, I trust or not. So you got the feeling really quickly if this is going to be a good fit for your podcast or not, and subconsciously decided, I don’t trust this guest, and he or she may not be the right fit for my listeners and my clients.

 

[00:16:15.540] – Sean

Right.

 

[00:16:19.610] – Natalie

It’s the most important thing we should be focused on. And it truly is a competitive advantage once you pay attention and be deliberate and realize how important it is.

 

[00:16:32.030] – Sean

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[00:17:41.010] – Sean

But first off, I really like what you said. There is within, you said 33 milliseconds. Yeah, like immediately. And you’re looking at probably like, I’ve known this for a long time. Like a smile is really marketable. Like, smile makes you like, don’t let your eyebrows down. You know, you want to do that. You want to be relaxed in your face. Things like that, I’ve learned, can really open the door because there’s people that they look like, okay, they’re about to punch them up. You’ll walk up to them, you’ll find them at the wrong moment. So little body language tips, I think, can help people go a long way.

 

[00:18:21.600] – Natalie

Absolutely. One of the things that I would say to add to that is you just have to make sure that you’re sincere and authentic. Because the opposite of being authentic is not trustworthy. Right. It’s fake. So some of us are natural smilers, and some of us do smile with making our eyebrows go up with our teeth. But a lot of people actually don’t smile with showing their teeth. And so what I would say to people, and you’re 100% on the body language, is whatever way feels right for you. I mean, some people say to me when I share that in a workshop, they say, well, so this looks fake. Yes. And actually for those who are listening and can’t see my face, if I go like this just to hold my.

 

[00:19:13.630] – Sean

Feet up, that’s a fake smile.

 

[00:19:14.870] – Natalie

It actually is. Fake. Right? You can hear it now. So to your point about how do you do that when you don’t see anything? We actually can hear it. Yes, I believe we can.

 

[00:19:30.070] – Sean

We’re going to look at this through the lens of investing in businesses and looking at that m of management, looking at the four ends, management is key. And looking at a CEO like, I like to see how they interview on YouTube. I’ll go right away to YouTube. Let’s see interviews. You’ll be with some of the analysts, whether it’s with CNBC or Market Watch or Yahoo. Finance, I know, is good about that, but what does their body language look like? How are they answering questions? How are they listening? Are they ready to interrupt the analyst or the interviewer? It’s like those little details really go a long way because then you can kind of gauge on how they’re probably leading people in their organization. Right?

 

[00:20:14.810] – Natalie

Yeah, exactly. I love the model that you and your colleagues use to teach people on how to evaluate companies, because it’s margin of safety. Right? So the margin of safety and the numbers. You can look at the numbers and that’s sort of a definitive what I would call table stakes if I was going to invest in a company like do the numbers work? And I would call that table stakes. And it’s almost like I’m viewing this almost like a hierarchy. And then the meaning well, the business model has to work. And my father actually, early in his career, he was a financial advisor and sold stocks, and he used to say, only ever invest in anything, Natalie, that you understand. If you don’t understand it, don’t invest. Right. So if you understand what Coca Cola does, it’s goodbye. If you don’t understand Bitcoin, don’t invest. That’s what he would say. So I love that, that you have that meaning. And the business model, the moat and what the competitive landscape like, I think is really important. I would also say, what’s the environmental landscape like? What are other companies doing, really? If you think about it, your last m the management, we are all evaluating whether we’re watching, like you said, CNN or MSNBC, we’re all evaluating how is it that they behave?

 

[00:21:51.570] – Natalie

What are they saying, how are they communicating? And then how are they serving people? And those are actually I liken it to a triangle, actually, Sean. Those are how we decide to trust and we do it subconsciously. We are looking at that. So it doesn’t surprise me that when you’re watching or your listeners are a leader or the owner of a company in an interview or on YouTube, that’s what we are evaluating.

 

[00:22:21.060] – Sean

Right.

 

[00:22:21.840] – Natalie

And then if we don’t have that, we’re evaluating, okay, well, what are they doing as a company? Is their purpose or are their values aligned with what’s important? To me, that’s sort of at another level.

 

[00:22:37.090] – Sean

You’re right. There’s a lot of little things, not just the CEO, but what is the company doing and what is the company saying? What are they saying on social media? What is the message? All those things add up kind of like component interest. Speaking of, let’s talk about that because there’s a lot of businesses out there that we don’t see the people and we make purchases. For example, like, I did not pick up my Netflix subscription by going to YouTube to watch Read the CEO on video. I was like, Well, I want to see that series. I know it’s reliable. I’m probably not going to get it right? I’m not going to get a virus from this because so many people are using it. I just add my credit card, we’re off and running.

 

[00:23:17.870] – Natalie

And they protect your data, right? Which is a trustworthy act. They’re acting in your best interest.

 

[00:23:26.100] – Sean

So how do companies do a good job of increasing trust if you don’t have a face out there? For example, with Tykr? We really thank you to all the customers out there who have provided us with a really high trust pilot review. But we really like trust pilot. That platform has helped us out a lot. So do you like platforms like that and getting reviews and just like solid social proof?

 

[00:23:51.050] – Natalie

I do. I think all of that contributes to the trustworthiness and the trust equity a company has. So for a company like yours, or actually for a company like yours? Let’s talk about that. I’m not that familiar. However, I do know that you, as the leader in the company, are being very consistent. I think that I saw about 154 podcasts already, or like it’s an impressive number, like 120 or 154. Well, you are showing how consistent you are, how predictable you are, and how reliable you are with the podcast on. Even if some podcasts you don’t feel that great about and other podcasts, you finish it and you think, I hope this is a good topic. I don’t even know if people would be interested. But consistency, predictability, and reliability combined create trust, right? Because people know what they’re going to get. They know that Sean is going to show up. He’s going to share content and introduce us to guests and concepts that we didn’t know about before. That is a very good example of being trustworthy. Another good example that a company can do is you use Netflix. Well, Netflix, I’m not that familiar other than I am a customer, too.

 

[00:25:26.730] – Natalie

And I actually love Netflix for multiple reasons. But one of the reasons I do is that they serve me up content that they know I will like, okay, so what they’re doing is what I would call principle number five, which is they are acting in my best interest, me, Natalie, as a customer. So they have algorithms and then they have the ability for me to do a review or to say, yes, that worked. And I click on and say yes. They also have different services in there that we can say, add this to our list. All of those different things are acting and doing things to deliver on their promise, which is another principle of building trust. Deliver on your promise. You see every customer, whether they’re a customer of your company or my company or Netflix or Apple, we’re all buying based on what the company promises to deliver.

 

[00:26:36.230] – Sean

Right.

 

[00:26:37.870] – Natalie

The other big thing, and I would say this for all companies, is showing which Netflix does, the commitment to the long term. Always innovating your products, always innovating your platforms, doing what you’re doing now, offering new content and value added content to your customers and your listeners. Right. This builds trust.

 

[00:27:06.230] – Sean

That’s really good feedback. I actually didn’t even think of that as a trustbuilding activity. All honesty. I love meeting new people, learning about their business model, and obviously I like to share the information with audience, but I’m usually learning a lot along the way, too. Like Anthony, I thrive on that. I love that. So, yeah, maybe it is building some.

 

[00:27:27.870] – Natalie

Trust along the way, which is in line with what your company does. Right. You teach people the four M, you teach people that for them to evaluate a company that they would consider investing in, they should look at the people, the moat, the model, and the numbers, the margin of safety. And so you are aligned with what you would teach people to evaluate.

 

[00:27:58.080] – Sean

Yeah. Right on. Yeah. Thank you. Let’s talk about it’s. Got to originate from somebody in the company. Right away, I think, of the CEO, but you have a previous background as CMO. What are your thoughts? Where should it really originate? In an organization?

 

[00:28:15.630] – Natalie

I feel very strongly that it needs to start at the top, Sean. It does. It needs to start with the CEO, the business owner, the leader of the company. And it’s a trust. And focusing on it is a leadership imperative, and it starts at the top. And then it’s about building a culture of trust inside your organization. A culture where everybody is focused on the customer, whoever it is that you serve, and I mean the external customer, whoever it is you serve. So once you have a culture of trust inside the organization, then it can cascade out throughout the whole team to the frontline people. And then when the frontline people are focused on it, that’s when or the developers or the engineers, if there are not many frontline people like a Netflix, not many frontline people. But if you think about Netflix, which is a great example, everything they do, all the updates, should be to build a fantastic, extraordinary customer experience.

 

[00:29:24.210] – Sean

Yes.

 

[00:29:25.430] – Natalie

Trust is the foundation of a customer experience. First, we decide to trust. Are they going to feed me the right series or movies? Are they going to protect my credit card and my privacy information? All those things. So it starts at the top and then it goes down to the front line people.

 

[00:29:49.210] – Sean

Right on. I’d like to take or give credit to a company that they really emphasize this and really elevate my expectations. I need to set with myself and how I work with a customer and a previous company, actually, as I speak, work with, which is Kohler. They tried to create a gracious experience from front to back, from the first touch all the way to the sale. And how do you do that? With every touch, every email, every phone call. And I love that because within Tykr we try to do the same. Like every email, we try to talk to somebody as if we’re having a coffee with them. Like, no corporate speak. Use language that’s like, Glad to help. You bet we’ll be here. Got any questions? Keep it fun, keep it light. And then in the platform we try to make it lighter and remove all the $20 words on finance that most people don’t care about. Get rid of that nonsense. So that whole experience along the way, and we know we can do better. We can make Tweaks, but that’s what we’re going for. And I love it when other companies, they do that.

 

[00:31:00.210] – Sean

I’m trying to think of an example. MailChimp has been good. They’ve always been tongue in cheek humor. They get that cute little chimpanzee as their logo. And some of their marketing lingo has been fun. It’s like, we’re not going to take ourselves too serious. We have an email marketing platform. We’re going to try to do the best we can. And boy, they’ve gone places over the last few years. Being bought by Intuit was big, but it’s like companies like that, you can take a note and be like, yeah, they’re doing something right with that gracious customer experience from front to back.

 

[00:31:29.840] – Natalie

Yeah. Again, it starts with having a culture inside the organization that’s focused on the customer and it’s operationalizing that in the whole company. So making sure that everybody is empathetic towards the customer, everybody knows how to be empathetic. Right. A lot of what I do is actually training on empathy. Unfortunately, some people get in jobs that we do for a long time and we forget who we’re serving and why we’re doing it right. It just happens. And so oftentimes when I’m working with companies or people, I’m amazed that light bulbs start going off. And I’ll never forget I was doing a workshop with a company. So it was part of a company’s leadership program where they chose the top 40 people across the country who were sort of the up and coming leaders, and they put them through like a year long program. And there was a whole day on trust and learning how to build trust with colleagues, with teammates, and then with customers. And I had the people in different small groups and we were doing an. Exercise on empathy, and then I get everybody to come back. This was a while ago.

 

[00:32:57.740] – Natalie

It was in person. I do it online now, but it was in person. And I’ll never forget this guy. He came back and reported on to his group, and his name was Will. And he probably doesn’t realize the impact he made on me, so it’s okay for me to say his real name. And he said, you know, we finished this exercise and I learned it. These customers are just like me. They’re actually real people. Will. Yeah. So Will was a project manager and a professional engineer with a construction company, very successful national construction company based in the US. You would have heard of the company up and coming leader. Anyway, I just let the pregnant pause happen, and I didn’t say anything. And then someone else started talking, and I realized that everybody in the back of the room didn’t hear Will. So I asked him, I said, could you repeat that? And he said it again. He said, I never really thought about it, but these customers, they’re just like us. They’re people. And sometimes we forget that.

 

[00:34:06.590] – Sean

Yes.

 

[00:34:07.710] – Natalie

Right.

 

[00:34:09.070] – Sean

Totally. There are a lot of places that look at their customers as numbers, and if we can get X amount of more customers, that means X amount, more dollars. And too many people get in this grind where they’re answering phone calls or answering emails or treating these people as numbers. And it’s like, now pretend you were in person with them. You’re hearing their pain. And I really love getting feedback from our customers. In fact, some of the harshest feedback I actually have to thank customers for, because they took the time to write something that is causing them pain. And that is a teachable moment for all. It is, right?

 

[00:34:50.820] – Natalie

Yeah. I’m so happy that you’re sharing these stories, because, Sean, when I looked at podcast and I listened to a lot of your podcasts, I was thinking that our conversation would go in a different direction. Okay. So I’m just sharing this because I think that it’s pertinent to your guests and your listeners. So I was thinking, you’re going to ask me a little bit ESG.

 

[00:35:20.910] – Sean

Oh, got you.

 

[00:35:22.570] – Natalie

Okay. And so the reason I was thinking that is because it’s a topic these days, right? And it started the whole topic came up from the financial world looking at should I invest in a company? And then really evolved to make sure when you invest, if you’re publicly traded or having investors, we want to invest in companies that are ESG compliant. And oftentimes people ask me, well, what does that even mean? What does this have to do with trust? And should I pay attention to that? And I always say, of course. Pay attention. Of course. And they say, well, why do we even have to worry about it? And one of the things that I share with them is that companies are facing more scrutiny and more criticism, if you will, from a more informed and critical customer than ever before. And we want to buy from companies that we believe are ethical, are environmentally conscience, have good governance, are socially responsible, and have their purpose and their values aligned with ours. However, at the end of the day, we actually buy from companies and people that we trust. And it really does come down to this experience you and I are talking about.

 

[00:36:50.340] – Sean

Sure.

 

[00:36:52.290] – Natalie

Whether it’s a faceless, meaning Netflix organization, or a company like yours or mine, we’re all searching for, should I invest, should I buy from this company based on how they interact, how they behave, how they communicate, and really how they serve their customers, that’s actually, at the end of the day, what’s most important.

 

[00:37:19.230] – Sean

Yeah, we’re going to tie right to a comment I made earlier. Something you did too, is measuring trust. But yes, I’m big on we do supply ESG data to our customers if they’re interested in that. But I actually look past that. I’m like, I look at it and humility is really big to me. And I’m going to just list what I look at and see if somebody who’s humble doesn’t take themselves too serious, like a CEO, like that. They’re a good listener, they have high integrity, they do what they say they’re going to do. I really respect that with people. If they say they’re going to do something, they execute it. They not only do it once, but they repeat it over and over. That’s a good coworker, that’s a good employee, that’s a good teammate. Those things mean a lot. And that to me, elevates trust significantly.

 

[00:38:13.230] – Natalie

If we just think about the four M that you teach, and if you look at the first M, I have them written down here so I don’t get them wrong. The magic of safety. We want those numbers to be consistent, right? We want those to be consistent and predictable. And then we want them to be reliable, meaning they’re, you know, audited their credible numbers. That comes back to trust. And the other thing that’s really critical is that all over the world, customers, investors, they’re prioritizing their purchases based on who and what they can trust.

 

[00:39:03.280] – Sean

Yes. So how do you measure trust?

 

[00:39:07.790] – Natalie

I love this question. Well, like I said, I created a diagnostic, a measurement tool. I call it the Client Trust Index, and it actually measures a customer’s experience with a company. I say customer, that’s a big word to me. It could be subscriber, it could be member, could be distributor, whoever it is that your customer is. And we survey based on statements and there’s a like heart scale. And then we have an algorithm that comes back and you get a trust equity score based on there are eight measurement dimensions and companies get a score based on what your experience is with the company. It took several years to create it, four years. It went through all the phases of creating a reliable and valid assessment based on scientific method. And when you have this trust equity score, what’s so exciting from a business point of view is that there’s a strong confident correlation with a customer’s propensity to continue to buy products and services. So a lot of clients, a lot of companies don’t have contracts with customers, right? They just buy one time and then maybe not have a contract. And we hope that they buy again.

 

[00:40:39.680] – Natalie

So when you have to high trust equity and it has been found that customers have a higher propensity to buy, it also impacts referrals and recommendations. It impacts loyalty. Customers stay longer. Remember we talked about loyalty and how that affects customer retention. And the bottom line, it also affects the price. So measuring and really understanding where you are is really important, because when you get your trust equity score, then you can focus on where the gaps are, where you need to improve, where the opportunities are, where you maybe need to level up. And it shows you what behaviors you need to focus on or what service areas you need to focus on. Not service areas. Excuse me? Like how you service and how you communicate. And the trust equity score is a holistic view. So it’s not about a department in a company or a function in a company. It’s a holistic view.

 

[00:41:45.760] – Sean

Let’s take a quick commercial break. Hey, this is Sean. I’d like to say thank you for taking the time to listen to this podcast. I know there’s a lot of other podcasts you could be listening to, so thanks for taking the time to listen to this one. I have a quick request, if you have a moment. Could you please head over to Apple podcasts and leave a five star review? The reason is the more ratings we get and the higher those ratings are, the more Apple will shares with the world. So thanks in advance for doing that. And then I have a quick comment. If there are any questions you want me to ask the guests, please head over to our Tykr Facebook group. You can drop a question right there. I’ll go ahead and make a note, and I’ll do my best to ask that question on the podcast. All right, back to the show. If somebody’s listening or if a business wants to call you and get an assessment done, or do you call it an assessment or an analysis?

 

[00:42:37.370] – Natalie

I do. Yeah.

 

[00:42:38.770] – Sean

To get that done, this trust equity score, how long does it take? We talk in like a week or two or a month.

 

[00:42:44.710] – Natalie

No, in a perfect world, it might take a week or two, but customers don’t respond that quickly in the real world, in my world, anyway, because it’s a survey, Sean. And so very quickly, it could be a month. It’s usually a couple of months only because the companies take a little while to get their customer list together. Then we go out and survey them and then we collect the data. Then I do a segmentation analysis and then analyze it and provide the client with insights.

 

[00:43:17.540] – Sean

Got it.

 

[00:43:18.220] – Natalie

So it could be done very quickly. If the customer, my client has the customer list, but it’s usually I have done it in a month, but it’s usually eight to twelve weeks.

 

[00:43:31.880] – Sean

Got you. That’s a great expectation because I figured it’s not as simple as like sending out a survey and you’re done. Right. It’s analysis after. And really diving into that. I really see value in that. I love services that you can get something tangible, like something measurable as a result. Like we for example, with Tykr, we’ve got a ton of articles on our front facing site. It’s our marketing site, just Tykr.com. We’ve got a bunch of educational content, stock reviews. Our SEO score was, you could say, less than desirable. But we knew that and we had an audit done to say, hey, here are all the things you’re doing wrong, but here’s what you can do right.

 

[00:44:15.170] – Natalie

And here’s so valuable.

 

[00:44:16.790] – Sean

Oh my gosh. Like to see that comparison between here’s what’s wrong and what you’re doing, and here’s what’s right and what kind of results you can’t give promises, but what could you see by making these corrections? And that to me, that’s huge value. I love that.

 

[00:44:33.080] – Natalie

Yeah, it is. And really what the goal is for all of us is to become a trusted advisor to our client. Because when we’re a trusted advisor, our clients take our advice, do what we suggest with their products, follow our models holder, continue to buy products from us, recommend it. Right. And so when you get a trust equity score, if a company uses the tool that I’m talking about, the client trust index, I show them that score on a continuum. And a high score is whether they’re trusted advisor or not, or they’re trusted or they have established trust. And unlike SEO, and maybe kind of like SEO, but I think unlike SEO, it’s always a work in progress. We can never really take our foot off the gas in that it’s always about deliberate actions, deliberate behaviors and communications. And what I would say it’s constantly applying the principles of trust to every single interaction we have and every single behavior and communication.

 

[00:45:51.230] – Sean

I love that. I’m going to do a quick roll up here before we jump to the rapid fire around. For the listeners out there, both investors and entrepreneurs, it’s like, hey, the businesses we’re investing in, you got to ask yourself the question, do I trust this company? Are they building trust with the consumer audience? Are they doing what they say they’re going to do? And then as entrepreneurs, I think we can all take some nice little tips from you here and how we can apply them to our own businesses. But let’s dive in here to the rapid fire round. This is the part of the episode where we get to find out who Natalie really is. So if you can try to answer each question in 15 seconds or less, you ready?

 

[00:46:31.790] – Natalie

Well, I am ready. I’m not sure how it’s going to go, but I’m ready.

 

[00:46:37.360] – Sean

All right, we got a few easy ones for you. What is your favorite podcast?

 

[00:46:41.810] – Natalie

Oprah’s podcast.

 

[00:46:43.500] – Sean

Oprah’s podcast. Okay.

 

[00:46:45.410] – Natalie

Listen to it all the time.

 

[00:46:48.130] – Sean

What is a recent book you read and would recommend?

 

[00:46:51.490] – Natalie

Well, that’s a tough one for me. I read usually a fiction book at least once, one book a week. Okay. So I love Ken Follett. I’ve read, I think, all of his books. They’re big, fat historical fiction books. Love all his books. And I usually read try to read a business book a week or every two weeks. And so I I turned around, I to look at the books. I just I just read a book about Disney. Love that about service. Can’t remember the title.

 

[00:47:30.430] – Sean

I’m sure we could Google it.

 

[00:47:33.410] – Natalie

And I also read a few years ago and again, reread Culture Code by Daniel Coyle. It’s a really good book, easy to read. I would recommend it.

 

[00:47:43.290] – Sean

Nice. Good recommendation. All right, what is your favorite movie?

 

[00:47:49.990] – Natalie

I like drama. I like suspense.

 

[00:47:54.710] – Sean

I don’t know anything this year you saw recently that jumped out?

 

[00:48:01.850] – Natalie

I watched and loved Wear the Craw Dad Sing that just came out about a month ago. It was so good.

 

[00:48:11.950] – Sean

My wife just read the book, and she’s like, you got to watch this movie. It was fantastic. On Netflix?

 

[00:48:17.730] – Natalie

Yeah. I didn’t even know it was on Netflix. I actually saw it in the theater a couple of months ago, and I read the book. And this movie is very much in line with the book. So if your wife hasn’t seen the movie, she will also really like it.

 

[00:48:36.310] – Sean

We just watched it this last weekend.

 

[00:48:38.320] – Natalie

Yeah, I really liked it.

 

[00:48:41.270] – Sean

Good movie. All right, a few business questions here. What is the worst business or investing advice you ever received?

 

[00:48:50.730] – Natalie

This is tough for me. I didn’t get a lot of business advice early on. So when I was in my early 20s, though, I had someone suggest to me before I had children, before I had a husband, before I had any responsibility, that I should buy a whole life insurance. And looking back, I was sold something that I didn’t need or wasn’t good. I think that was the worst advice, thankfully. Yeah, I think that was the worst. It just pops to mind, really, based on the conversation we’re having, Sean, about trust, because I really believe that none of us want to be sold anything. We all want to buy from someone we trust. And that’s why it pops to mind.

 

[00:49:43.610] – Sean

Yeah, I love that. We’re going to extend this 15 seconds a little longer, but, yes, we totally live in a day and age where we don’t need to be sold. Things we will buy when we want, on our own terms and timing. And yeah, if somebody’s trying to sell you something, immediate red flag. No, not interested.

 

[00:50:09.010] – Natalie

I didn’t know enough to ask any questions. I actually didn’t know anything about it. I didn’t even know enough to say, what does this mean? Why should I do this? What about this? This or this? Or any other option?

 

[00:50:21.930] – Sean

Yeah. There you go. All right, let’s flip the equation here. What is the best business or investment advice you ever received?

 

[00:50:30.090] – Natalie

I got some great advice on investing from my father, and his advice was only ever invest in things you understand. And it kind of comes back to your four hems, really, right? It does. And the other advice that I got was never give up. Like, just do your best and keep going. Just never give up.

 

[00:50:56.160] – Sean

Right. Fundamental. Great advice. All right, last question. Here the time machine question. If you could go back in time to give your younger self advice, what age would you visit and what would you say?

 

[00:51:08.070] – Natalie

I would go back to the age of my early 20s, just finishing university. I think the advice that I would give is to work hard, stay aligned with your values, and always deliver on your promise and show your commitment. I keep thinking about the Phil Knight quote, Just do it. I do. I just keep thinking about that. But just very much aligned with advice. I would say to my younger self, just stay committed and aligned with your values.

 

[00:51:51.250] – Sean

Right on. I see a lot of people today, they compromise. We could go down a whole different rabbit hole and create a whole never podcast on the subject. So many people compromising their values to fit in and get along and make society feel better. And sometimes you gotta put your heel in the ground. Not sometimes, all the time. Put your heel in the ground. Like, no, these are my values. This is what I’m sticking to. That’s me and that’s that.

 

[00:52:16.170] – Natalie

Yeah, exactly.

 

[00:52:18.510] – Sean

All right, last question here for you is where can people reach you?

 

[00:52:23.230] – Natalie

You can reach me on LinkedIn. Comes up under Natalie Doyle oldfield on LinkedIn. You can also find me on my website, which is successthroughtrust.com, and I would love to hear from you again and your listeners. I love working with business owners and leaders to help them build trust. So thanks for having me, Sean. Really appreciate it. Loved all your questions. And it’s great to learn a little bit about your business, too.

 

[00:52:56.150] – Sean

Yeah, I really enjoyed this conversation. And trust again, just really and things on a super high note, which is trust you’re right. Is so important. I think a lot of people overlook it. It can be like the secret sauce to separating you from your competition really creating that mode to lean into trust.

 

[00:53:15.070] – Natalie

It is. And you know what? It is the secret sauce, and it’s the single most competitive advantage we have. When you’re trusted, everything else falls into place.

 

[00:53:27.330] – Sean

Right on. Well, thank you again for your time here, Natalie. This is awesome.

 

[00:53:30.880] – Natalie

Yeah, it’s great. Thank you.

 

[00:53:33.890] – Sean

Hey, I’d like to say thank you for checking out this podcast. I know there’s a lot of other podcasts you could be listening to, so thanks for spending some time with me. Also, if you have a moment, could you please head over to Apple podcast and leave a review? The more reviews we get, the more Apple will share this podcast with the world. So thanks for doing that. And last thing, if you do hear any stocks mentioned on this podcast, please keep in mind this podcast is for entertainment purposes only. Please do not make a buy or sell decision based solely on what you hear. All right, thanks for your time. Talk to you later. See you.