One of the things that can test a good marriage is a big snow storm. Kathleen says we have this particular dynamic between the two of us where, when it comes to big storms, she's like a doomsday prepper. She likes to have every I dotted and every T crossed, and she thinks it is the mother in her who's like, "I want my family to be comfortable," and, "We'll have all the food," and, "We'll have all the alcohol."

We know eleven years into our marriage have figured out that the solution is she makes a list of everything she wants me to do. Then we will survive in the metropolis of Annapolis where there's a Royal Farms two blocks away, countless hotels within a mile. More resources than the entire capitals of third world countries.

The storm wreaked havoc in our part of the East Coast. We're in Annapolis Maryland, and we got 25 inches. The reality is that this region is completely unprepared for it. As a result we're behind on recording podcasts. But sometimes we don't even know what day of the week it is, because our child hasn't been in school for over a week. It's been an interesting week so we're behind.

And now it's after 9 p.m. We've eaten our dinner, we've had a couple cocktails, and we are holed up in the basement hoping for some quiet from kids and dogs, and settling down to record this podcast. So buyer beware - who knows what interruptions will occur.

Why are we talking about this? The "why" – that's why we're here.

THE WHY IS THE PURPOSE BEHIND EVERYTHING

Understanding the why and the purpose of what you're doing. This kind of came to light because last week Kathleen had the opportunity to tend a communications workshop put on by Skyline Technology Solutions. One of the things they talked about was understanding the "why" of why you're doing this.

Why does your company exist?

And as part of this exercise they showed Simon Sinek's famous Ted Talk. (If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it.) It's about how he came to the realization of this is the differentiator. Most people sell on the how and the what, but those aren't the differentiators when you're trying to connect with your audience. Really the only way that you can connect with an audience, and the strongest connection that you could make, is the "why" connection.

Kathleen would argue you can differentiate on who and what, but you can't really establish that strong bond on those – and I agree – and the bond only really comes from the why.

WHY YOU NEED TO FOCUS ON THE RIGHT KIND OF CUSTOMER

We talk about this a lot, because of the stage we're at as a business, we have eleven employees. We're growing quickly. And we're in that sort of existential stage of you know? "Where are we going to go, what are we doing, etc." And we also talk about our why. And at some point your conversation needs to focus on the right kind of customer. I'm not going to just bring on any client, I'm going to bring on the right client. One of the things we've really settled on is that there's, it's not just demographics that define a good client, it's that intangible attitude. That level of buy in.  

As I was going through this class I'm making notes, feverishly writing down questions we can use on forms to qualify people that are coming inbound. What could Rich, our director of sales use to help better qualify prospects as he's networking, and as we're introduced to potential clients?

But if you can get your marketing and sales teams to really understand the power of the why, you're going to ask better questions, you're going to differentiate yourself from the start, and you know the beauty of that is? You're going to separate all of those prospects, and possibilities that are terrible fits.

THREE COMPANIES THAT GET IT RIGHT

Kathleen says three companies that spring to mind who are doing a great job explaining the way.

Patagonia because they've always had a philanthropic kind of environmental mission, and people pay a huge premium to buy their stuff but it's because they totally believe in what they stand for. The second one is Tom's shoes. Look at those shoes, there is nothing fancy or expensive about those shoes, they probably cost like six dollars to make. But the fact that somebody somewhere is getting a pair of shoes because you bought a pair of shoes has absolutely turned them into a humongous company. The third is a tie between two Vermont companies – Ben and Jerry's and Stony Field Farms Yogurt. (Kathleen's partial to Stony Field Farms Yogurt because the founder went to her High School.)

(Who are your favorites? Let us know! We would love to hear from you. And if you do, you'll get a little swag!)

Focusing on us for a moment, we spent the holidays preparing for our annual retreat. We took our entire staff over to St. Michaels, Maryland to the fabulous Five Gables Inn and Spa – which you know, has an awesome little business conference room retreat area. They treated us really well, and when we went there the purpose was to do this retreat and to do our planning for 2016, but as part of it we started the entire meeting with a presentation on what our why is. We've always said that our mission, or our purpose, or our cause, or our passion, however you want to say it, is helping clients win by improving the effectiveness of marketing and sales. That sounds great; it's concise, and it's pretty easy to understand.

WHERE WILL WE BE IN 10 YEARS?

But it doesn't really tell you the why. It's a what. So we spent some time talking about our why, and we introduced a document that is our Vivid Vision. We could have a whole podcast on just that topic alone, but the short version is that our Vivid Vision is how we see the company in 10 years. We tell the story of what our company looks like, and what physically the space looks like, the type of people that it looks like, etc.

And we prefaced all of this with the why. I think you can talk about what it looks like, and again we'll have a whole other episode on just that. You have to really begin with why does it look like that, what are we trying to leave as a legacy.

When we sat down to do the vision the thing we asked ourselves was, "When we're sitting at the dining room table in 2026, we're looking each other in the eye and we say, like, what do you think? Did we do what we needed to do? Have we been successful? What needs to be in place for the answer to be yes." Behind that is a little bit of why. We talked a lot about, "Wow, we're going to make this much money, and the office will look like this, and we're going to be doing this for charity," but all of that needs to stem from why we are doing it.

Normal businesses have a triple bottom line which is like environment, and profits, and I can't remember the third one. Ours a little different.

A NEW TRIPLE BOTTOM LINE

Our triple bottom line is we want to create opportunities for our employees, we want to create opportunities for our clients, and we want to create opportunities for the owners, or the ownership.

We say our purpose is to help clients win. That can seem very singular, and it can be misinterpreted. It can be seen as, well we have to do anything necessary to help clients win. Really the best formula is, when our clients are winning, we're winning, our employees are winning, our clients employees are winning, our clients employees families are winning, our employees families are winning you know, our family is winning, and the owner of that clients family. It's this trickle down sort of domino effect of really what it means to have small businesses fuel the economy of our country.

We're growing, and when we grow you have more opportunity. Your salary can go up when there's opportunities for advancement, and when all that happens your spouse wins, and your kids win, and you know, there is that trickle down. Kathleen was really excited to see everybody's reaction to it.

I think they all reacted positively to it, and I think that they recognized that we took a lot of time and put a lot of effort into preparing this. I think with anything that people appreciate effort, regardless of what the output is, or whatever the product is. When you take time to do your best work, that's really appreciated in relationships. It goes a long way. I think that doing the work to discover your why, and I'd like to include in these show notes maybe just some resources that people could use to try and uncover or to develop their why. It is, and part of me is, oh this is just fluffy, happy, Kumbaya kind of stuff.

We've just rolled this out to our employees on January 4, but I think now it's time for us to begin to roll it out to the world through our website, and through other collateral. But why this is so important for Quintain is we're a professional services firm? One of the things that we look at when we ask ourselves, "Who is the right client?" is do they look at the relationship as it's a partnership, or do they look at us as a vendor.

THE BEST CLIENT RELATIONSHIPS

There are a lot of factors that go into it but I think when a client understands that the relationship has to be balanced and has to be win-win, that sets the stage for a really productive working relationship for a professional services firm like ours. It also sets the stage for greater longevity, which is really important.

I would say that it also, it sets the stage for probably the most important element in the relationship, and that's trust.

When you really understand your clients why and they really understand your why, you're at a level where you have trust. With trust comes confidence, and you can get through anything when you trust the people that you're working with. I mean you can solve problems, and we all know that as long as there is change there are going to be problems, and problems are going to bring opportunities, and they're going to bring solutions, and those are going to generate more problems. There's going to be a constant state of change, and I think that if you recognize that, and your partnered with somebody you understand their why's, and they understand your why, you're going to have the trust that's going to be successful there.

Alright, we've got to put the kids to bed. Because there's no school again tomorrow.

It's just ridiculous at this point, and actually the other link we're going to put in the show notes is the Anne Arundel County School Board did the best. They have these robo-calls they send out when they decide that school is cancelled, and the last one was a parody of Adele's "Hello" about school being canceled.

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