The Experience Strategy Podcast: Unlocking Customer Loyalty

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Getting a customer is one thing, but keeping them is the hard part. In this episode, Aransas and Dave speak with Heidi Bowman, a 30 year veteran in Marketing and Business Development and the VP of Marketing & Business Development at Silex Financial Group, a residential and commercial mortgage broker, about ways to keep customers connected to companies through experience strategies.

Aransas: Welcome to the Experience Strategy Podcast. I'm  Dave. So often I hear talk from companies about using acquisition cost to measure a customer's value to the business but the way I see it, sustainable growth is really happening through keeping customers and of course, that's where experience strategy comes in. When businesses provide real value to their customers, they're more likely to stick around but what about when the customer no longer needs the business’s services?

I hope that over the course of our conversations today, we can better understand how companies can use experience strategy to help them [00:01:00] grow through referrals, repeat business from their customers, and future scenarios. That's what we're going to explore today with Heidi Bowman, VP of Marketing and Business Development at Silex Financial. Silex is a north Jersey-based residential and commercial mortgage broker.

Dave and I are going to unpack with her, what really matters to her customers, the company's differentiating strengths, and their challenges so that we can help her identify ways her experience strategy can drive sustainable business growth.

Dave: As we talk to Heidi, I'm going to be interested to see what she thinks about the roles of marketing and experiences.

One of the big questions that companies deal with today is what is driving loyalty. Does great marketing drive loyalty or is loyalty kind of like [00:02:00] a by-product of a great experience? Shall we bring her in?

Aransas: Yeah. Welcome, Heidi. Hi Aransas. Thank you so much for being here. I’d like to introduce you to Dave Norton, my cohost.

Heidi: Hey, good to meet you.

Aransas: We're all well acquainted now so Heidi, you and I chatted a little bit about the mortgage industry and I have to admit it's a total mystery to me. So to start off, can you just give us a two-minute summary of how this industry works?

Heidi: I could spend hours on this and it's not the most stimulating, but in its simplest terms the primary mortgage market is the market where borrowers like you and I can obtain a mortgage loan from primary lenders, such as a mortgage broker, like Silex Financial Banks, credit unions, or mortgage banks and a [00:03:00] mortgage is any loan that pledges a piece of real estate as collateral, such as a home, a building or a piece of land. That's as simple as I can make it.

Aransas: Okay. That helps. So everybody's kind of doing the same thing in the mortgage industry. Is that fair?

Heidi: Yes. At this point in time. I was taking a look at the Experience Economy book that you had recommended and talking about what a commodity is, et cetera and the mortgage industry is now considered a commodity because of its wide availability, which has led to much more profit margins. Basically at the end of the day, people select based on price.

Dave: I sure do. I just refinanced a property and it was completely based on price.

Aransas: So how do successful mortgage brokers differentiate themselves?

Heidi: A successful mortgage broker will differentiate themselves through services and education through the loan process and beyond product differentiation, meaning they'll offer different types of products and also make sure that their clients have an experience that they will remember and remember to come back to them for other financing needs.

That's what a good mortgage broker should do. There are not many that do that, but that's how they can differentiate because everybody is paid the same and people are often selecting on price. The experience is going to be what sets them up.

Dave: So [00:05:00] in this particular case, since the price is going to be the lowest, no matter what, in most cases, the only way to differentiate is through the experience itself and so the experience is behaving kind of as your basic approach to differentiate. Is that kind of how you're, how you're seeing it?

Heidi: Yes and it comes in a number of ways. I'll be happy to share those.

Dave: Please.

Heidi: I worked in healthcare for a long time and then switched over to financial services. But they often are basically the same in terms of what they have to deal with. When I joined my company, the one thing I noticed is that there really wasn't a differentiation. We were battling with hundreds of [00:06:00] thousands of mortgage brokers and bankers out there and big banks.

So the first thing to do to set us apart is how we interacted with our clients. I actually feel that in the way I look at it, we have three stakeholders, right? We have the existing client, the prospect, or the person who is doing the loan with us, the person who has done a loan with us, and then our referral partners.

These include realtors and lawyers and CPAs and title agencies, et cetera. The way that we approached it was starting with the client. So you Dave have come to, let's say, not in this case refinance, but to purchase a second home is we break it down into a number of things. The first is consultation and advice. Buying a home is not just about an interest rate. You have to come to the table with your finances, your budget, what can you actually afford, et cetera. That [00:07:00] requires taking your financial background, and your history, and doing the analytics so that you can consult. There's a one-to-one that has to happen between the client and the mortgage advisor.

In addition, a lot of people like to work online. They like to do their own thing first before they're forced to speak to somebody so we have provided a lot of digital information. We've got websites dedicated to the home buying process, we have a home buying course that we developed that provides background across the gamut from credit to types of products, to down payments so people can familiarize themselves and it's all in one place. We then also have weekly videos that we throw out on the various social platforms that provide [00:08:00] people information on what's happening in the market. Especially if people are thinking about buying a home, or refinancing. It's all-encompassing, but we run across the digital prep form.

We provide education and then we have this one-to-one consultation where we guide because often people think that they can afford more than they can, and they are not in that position to say they actually can afford more than they thought so we are able to then provide that information to them and then able to guide them.

So when you're a mortgage broker, you have access to differentiation. In products, you have relationships with all kinds of different lenders. So every person, every mortgage is different. Everybody's financial picture is different. So we come at the person as an individual. I'll stop there for a second and see if you have any questions as it relates to that.

Dave: Can you talk about the [00:09:00] differences that exist between first-time buyers and people who have had quite a bit of experience buying?

Heidi: Sure. So a first-time home buyer today has never had to go through the paperwork experience. Often millennials think they know a lot about buying a home because they go on to the various sites that are available to track interest rates.

They have their own credit score, which is different than the credit score that a mortgage broker will run so they feel like they have an understanding until they talk to you and then they realize that there are a lot of inputs that go into determining what can you afford, how much you put down and what the process is going to be like.

They're always stunned by the amount of paperwork. Now [00:10:00] someone who's purchased a home, if they've purchased a home in the last couple of years, they will be familiar with the home buying process but there are many people who haven't bought a home in 10 or 15 years so in many cases, downsizing, or maybe ups or expanding, and they are stunned by the amount of paperwork.

We are doing just as much education for someone who's purchased a home as someone who has never purchased a home often because of the length of time that somebody has been in a home and hasn't had to go through the process. After the great recession, a lot of things changed in terms of regulation, paperwork, et cetera.

Dave: Sure and one of the things that's most interesting about what you're describing is how much educating people want to do upfront in the process. They want to get online. They want to do some research and you're trying to facilitate that and maybe overcome some of the things that [00:11:00] they've read that aren't necessarily true.

Heidi: And consolidated in one place. You know, one of the reasons why we created standalone websites that are not part of our business website and the reason that we created the home buying courses, that those are places that are not pushing business it's we went to all the trouble to put that information in one place and allow people to go through it and learn on their own so that when they come to us, they don't feel they're asking stupid questions. Certainly when it comes to a first-time home buyer that is often the case. It is more important to a first-time home buyer than it would be for someone who hasn't purchased a home in a while. Often those folks will feel like they already know and where it becomes more of a one-to-one relationship with them is [00:12:00] as we go through the process. We took the time to actually break out what the purchasing or the other home was into three key steps.

We step them through it so that we handhold them through from - what it's going to take, analyzing your wants and your wants and needs and your paperwork, then providing them with options and then actually quarterbacking the loan. What ends up happening is that when people get extremely overwhelmed with the one-to-one client experience, the customer experience comes in how we deal with each individual personally.

Now we move away from the digital space and we're now in the actual conversation, we make ourselves available at almost 24 7 to answer questions because sometimes somebody will have to collect a piece of paperwork. They're at work all day and they get home at [00:13:00] six o'clock at night, and then they go, oh goodness.

I have a question I need to ask and were there. So it is when you're actually in the loan process. Looking online and doing those types of things are no longer appropriate. It's now we're in your world are asking you to provide us with things that you never thought you would need to provide and explaining and taking you through it in a simple way.

Aransas: It's a really interesting point. You bring up here, Heidi, because as you started to talk about the experience that you provide, there was, there were a lot of really. Tactical things in there we're providing these self-service resources for continuous education. We're providing consultation and advice, and that is information heavy.

And now I hear you really getting into the felt experience of. Making this sort of purchase and how vulnerable it is for people to share this much information, but also [00:14:00] those feelings of overwhelm and not knowing if they're doing the right thing. Right. I have buyer's remorse is real. And I think you're probably seeing that moment of fear crop up in people's journey with you from the moment they say, Hey, can we buy this house too?

Oh crap. We're buying this house,

Heidi: especially in this market where people are being forced to pay 30, 40, $50,000 over what they can afford. So we become, they have to come back to us consistently in this process to get reassured, should we be doing this? Should we be waiving an appraisal? Should we be waiving the home inspection?

You know, we now become. Their home buyer advisor, and we're right there along with them. And we have to be very, um, they are so invested and we have to sort of be their conscience. So it's not only about all the paperwork they need to provide. It's about [00:15:00] this market in particular and what they're dealing with and, um, people.

Become desperate and, and we'll, you know, sometimes could make foolish decisions. So, and they've got a lot of people chipping in their ears. They've got the realtors, they've got their parents, they've got their friends. And so to keep it all straight, we are like sweets. They can come to us. It's practical.

We get them back to where they started when we did the analytics with them. And we went through there, we went through their paperwork and what they could afford and based on our experience, we share with them what we think they should do. So we, we really become that sort of place to get advice. And that's where that experience is so personal and it's, and in this market, it becomes even more important.

What

Aransas: would you like your customers to feel after buying a home with you?

Heidi: Confident that [00:16:00] they got the best advice and the best rate with the least amount of hassle in the home purchasing process.

Dave: That sounds wonderful. I love that.

Aransas: Exactly it hits on their emotional needs. It also hits on these very practical needs.

And we can't ignore either of those is what I I'm hearing from you.

Heidi: Correct? You can't. We find people who sometimes come to us initially and Dave and we were talking about rates, right. And they will come to us and they say, I've spoken to X, Y, Z, and I can get X interest rate. And we say, okay, well provide us with the paperwork that shows that that will indeed be the case.

Well, I don't have that. Just, you know, Mr. Jones said he could give that to me. And we often find that those people come back to us because the upfront work wasn't done and the upfront analytics were not done. And so now they have to start over and we're often having [00:17:00] to pick up deals in the middle of, and someone's in a crisis now because they only have three weeks and they're closing, but because they push us just on what they thought was right.

And suddenly all these little surprises. They now are in a whole world of hurt and they want the home and they have three weeks.

Aransas: And feeling again, if I go back to the emotional state of this, they're feeling more distraught, more distress

Heidi: And embarrassed right on top of it because they were warned, you know. So I'll stop there, but yeah, that is what can indeed happen.

Aransas: Sounds like you are taking really good care of your customers and that you're really taking care of their needs. It also sounds like the nature of this business is that they engage you for a set period of time and then they move on. And so if your business is growing then through repeat customers and referrals, presumably, how do [00:18:00] you extend that relationship with your customers, Heidi?

Heidi: We employ tools that any savvy business person should have - a customer relationship management tool that, you know, drips out information overload. Periods of time, send, remind, happy 4th of July, those key things, wish them a happy birthday.

On the loan anniversary, we will pick up the phone and call them. We annually have customer appreciation events that people can come to, but the challenge is that we are their lifeblood for 60 to 90 days and then they get on with it. There were so many opportunities they could access us again.

[00:19:00] But if we are not top of mind on that day when they were talking to a person or thinking about something and someone else refers them, they may not think of us. There are so many ways that they could access us from their children buying a home to someone wanting to buy up, downsize, to renovate, once you purchase a second home, a friend or family that's looking to get into the space.

But if we haven't in our communication with them via email, touch them. That time when they're having that thought, we often hear, oh my goodness, I should have called you. I forgot. And so the challenge is we have such happy customers who will say wonderful things about us, but to get them to think about us as their home financing advisor for life so that whenever they're thinking about a purchase in that [00:20:00] type of space, that they would think about us is where I personally, as a person responsible for this, finds it very difficult to set ourselves apart without being alone. Having people actually unsubscribe and unfollow us because we have been so heavy in terms of the communication that we would hit them with.

That's where I personally continue to strive.

Dave: That's a big challenge.

Aransas: Somebody who has been advising companies on experience strategy for years, how have you seen clients think about this effectively?

Dave: Well, first of all, let me say that a lot of the things that you're describing that you do. Absolutely fantastic. And they're their top types of tactical activities to be doing. We've worked with a number of different banking companies over the years and they would describe a very similar process. I would imagine that one of the things. You do [00:21:00] to differentiate yourselves just a little bit is to say we're not one of the big company, right?

We're, very much getting to know you. We're very much a local provider. We're very much a part of the community, perhaps all of the above.

Heidi: I mean, well, yes and no. What we try to do is never a good thing to say. Don't go to your bank, don't do this. We're better than we just signed based on what the value of a mortgage broker is that they have access to many different types of products.

So generally large banks have a vanilla product with great rates, but most people are not vanilla. Nine times out of 10, they are going to need a specific product that most banks won't carry. People don't then don't think they can get a mortgage. They go to their [00:22:00] local bank and they say, sorry.

And they come to us and we go, of course, you can. But, here are some options and we will handhold you through the process. If you go through a big bank, you are being handled through you. You're not getting a personalized experience. You're not getting personalized handling. You’re just dumped into a pile with everybody else.

And if you want that great rate, you'll just stand in line and you'll wait there. We're right here all the time for you to pick up the phone and ask just random questions. So that's how we've set ourselves apart. There is always value. We will even advise some people to go to their big bank. Say, look, that rate, you have such a great school.

It's a straightforward refinance, you know go to your big bank and get the interest rate. It's not worth it for you to do business with us. We will advise that, but in most cases, they will get more value coming to us.

Dave: This challenge that you have of differentiating yourselves and being top of mind, which [00:23:00] is been really important to you, I think is compounded by the fact that the number of mortgage companies out there has just grown over the last 10 years. You've got a lot of different types of innovators in the category. Some who are completely online, some who PR some who make promises that it's just three clicks and it's done. Right. They're getting to the top of their mind by the incredible advertising power prowess power that they have.

All of the money that they're putting into being top of mind. That is a really big challenge that you're having to deal with. I think you're absolutely right. Let me say, in traditional marketing, you start with awareness, right? You start at the very top with awareness and that part [00:24:00] of the funnel has been completely changed by social media, by new types of storytelling that are occurring.

You think about what Geico has done with storytelling and so forth. We got what we often find is that it's really not about who has the biggest budget it's really about who can engage you in the right way. And I'd be a little bit careful about trying to focus just on advice. Being the kind of the trusted partner to provide advice, I would try to emphasize other elements of maybe your company in terms of its personality, and the type of people that work there. Don't be afraid to be involved in different types of social media.

Just for the purpose of being in those different media areas, [00:25:00] you don't necessarily always have to be saying, Hey, we're your friendly neighborhood mortgage company, or we're the ones that give you advice or we've got a wide range of products that are selling on a regular basis and you don't really need to be doing that.

But if you keep a presence.

Heidi: We do Dave, we do. We all have a presence on Facebook, on LinkedIn and on Instagram and we make it general. It's not necessarily pushing silence. Some of its lifestyle, some of it's so we've created brands. I have my own personal getting to know me as the first-time home buying group guru, we have my husband, Joe, who's the expert on the markets.

And then we have made sure that we've made out. We shared some part of who we are as people and as a business. [00:26:00] And so we share that information. People have a connection with us and to the degree that when we are all no longer servicing a relationship anymore, we always ask folks if they will follow us on Instagram or on Facebook, et cetera, so that they can continue to see what's going on and it's not always business related.

We're there. They remember us but again, timing is everything right? So they might forget that I'm watching, Heidi has just done a podcast with Aransas and Heidi, you know, runs bringing it home with Heidi and on that, there's all kinds of home buying and lifestyle stuff there.

They may not make that connection on the day. They're talking to their best friend who just wants to buy a shirt. And maybe it's too ambitious. Maybe that is something [00:27:00] that I should spend less time worrying about. Given the fact that we do these other things and focus on other ways to grow.

It sets such a valuable asset and then we've made ourselves available in all the right places with, I think the right cadence of availability and then types of information. And we were not pushing. It's not silence for instance, front and center.

Aransas: So to me, what's really standing out about Silex and about the way you and Joe have run your business is that the relationship comes front and center.

And I agree with Dave, the armchair expertise is so rampant right now in this industry, but in general, right? You can find anything on the internet. From the time a person is probably about three years old they figured [00:28:00] out how to do it. The thing though, that really seems special about you and about Silex is the authenticity.

And the way that creates space for real relationships. I think for me, what stands out in here is that there is this opportunity to continuously come back to a story. Hey, where are these real people who really care about you and who really want to help you? And you know what, anytime you have a question, anytime anyone you care about has a question, let us know.

Cause that's all we care about is helping you.

Dave: And that's awesome. I think you can be very authentic with that, which is hard for a lot of your competitors to be able to.

Aransas: A bank cannot do that.

Heidi: How do you go about doing that?

Aransas: If Chase Bank told me they cared about me, I'd be like, thanks marketers.

But if Heidi told me, she cared about me, I'd be like, wow, thanks, [00:29:00] Heidi.

Heidi: You know, beyond acknowledging birthdays and those types of things, when you've got hundreds and thousands of client paused clients, you certainly are doing that on the social platforms, but how else could we do that?

Aransas: Well, I think live Q and A sessions would be interesting for you guys on social. Facebook lives where you really invite people to come in with their questions and bring friends events too. I mean, I just feel like there's so much mystery around this and you have a real strength for explaining it in a clear and simple way.

That creates trust, but also again, just like anything that comes back to that relationship feels like it's well, strategically aligned with your strengths.

Dave: How much do you want to grow? I mean, how big do you want your company to get?

[00:30:00] Heidi: Oh gosh. In the back nine that say, so the back nine of life in age, right?

I mean, I, I know Joe and I would like to continue to see double digit growth and then, you know, Decide what we want to do, hand it off to someone sell it all the business. Right. We'd like to continue to say look, last year was an anomaly. It was insanity in the market insanity. A lot of people stopped doing the types of things that we continue to do then now.

So these things now become very important, but I would say in a standard year, we'd like to continue to see double digit growth because of [00:31:00] our expertise and the very strong relationships that we've built with past clients, as well as with our strategic partners who know us to be reliable and to be able to take their precious client and handle them.

Dave: This is where, kind of your approach with employees is going to become really important because based on what you're trying to do, you're, as Aransas says really good at being you. I think that that's what you need to be. You need to be you. Now what you need to really be focused on is how do you get people to work with you.

Those who are really good at being them and being a part of us, right? What the company is about. So a lot of what you need to be focused on is really helping them to [00:32:00] take ownership, to feel comfortable sharing, to be on social media in the, in the right way. So I think that there's a lot that you can do from that standpoint to really sort of support yourselves and to grow.

And you already said you're having low, double digits growth. You don't really want more than that so it sounds to me like you're doing a lot of really good things. And with your experience already, I want to go back to something we kind of talked about earlier. Your seeing this as a marketing challenge with the experience being the differentiator.

I wonder if you would feel more comfortable in your skin and more and get more pleasure out of what you're [00:33:00] doing if you focused instead on the experience itself and stuff. I just want this experience to be the best possible. I'm not going to worry so much if I'm top of mind for everyone instead, I'm going to be authentic about what I'm doing.

If I didn't decide to do these Q and A sessions that Aransas has suggested that you do, I'm just going to be me and we're going to be us. And by being the best possible company that we can be. Yes, we're going to keep our CRM going. We're going to manage to some degree, birthdays and so forth, but we're just going to be us.

And it takes a lot of pressure off of you to try to constantly try to be hitting the goal. Top of mind, top of mind, top of mind, nobody is top of mind all the time, right? I'm not really sure that's really going to be. What's going to drive your full [00:34:00] success?

Heidi: It's a very good point. I mean, I don't sit up at night and wait and think about this.

But when Aransas asked me, what I would be thinking about, that was what came to mind, but I think that you are correct. I believe that as long as I continue to do the things that we're doing, and there are other ways I would love to bring storytelling into what we do. The problem I have with storytelling is that the people who we need to tell the stories, Dave, don't want to tell the stories. First-time home buyers and other purchases, they're not thrilled about, they don't want to have their story told they don't want to talk about why it was such a great experience.

So that's the thing I've been struggling with is that I want to tell the stories, because. I [00:35:00] have no fear, although I did tell Aransas I was nervous about this. I have no fear of telling stories, right? And I would love to get into the business of storytelling around home buying because I think that would resonate across the board.

So that's where I'm struggling because the people who I would love to talk to just don't want to. I understand that you know, not everybody wants to be that. Their lives are their lives. They're happy to give you a good quote, a good testimonial, but they don't want to talk on a podcast for example.

Dave: Sure. I think that if you focused on storytelling for yourself and for your employees, and that became a part, you would find the seamlessness that would kind of occur so that instead of thinking about who's at the top of our bucket, our awareness bucket, and who's at the bottom and making a decision, you would instead have all of these [00:36:00] different stories.

And then all of a sudden the experience becomes continuous and people can tap into that experience anytime that they want. And oh, by the way, we do mortgages too, you know, like it's almost like the mortgage becomes functional. Yeah. It becomes the functional thing that you get done for them. But these stories bring to life who you are and what you're about.

And then you'll find that there are some people. A lot, like Aransas, are willing to share their stories. And they're super great about that type of thing.

Aransas: This is kind of the thing I love about this story idea though, Dave. Is that by asking their customers for their stories, they'll get a better understanding of their customer's stories.

Even if you're telling them in an anonymized way, to protect them. If they're uncomfortable, you were getting a deeper understanding of what customers in general need, but most importantly, what that [00:37:00] individual person needs. I think, again, that just creates this deep trust and relationships so that when they are uncertain again and they will be uncertain, they will associate with you in the back of their mind subconsciously or otherwise, they will associate you with a place to go for confidence, for clarity, for support.

Dave: Absolutely. Absolutely. This is what we're seeing happening with a lot of companies, where maybe historically they thought that marketing was driving loyalty. As they begin to understand how to create experiences for people, they realized that loyalty is actually a by-product of experiences. Loyalty is actually not [00:38:00] something, it's not a program. It's a feeling that you get because of the experience. Now there's one thing that I would warn you about, you're the upfront part of the process, then there's going to be the delivery of the mortgage, right?

And the payments that you need to some degree separate from the delivery of the mortgage because you don't have a lot of control over that.

Heidi: We make sure that the purchaser, the borrower are all with them in the mortgage purchasing process.

So those are our key responsibilities and we are very clear about the responsibility of the realtor out of a title agent, et cetera, by the way, that often doesn't matter because you know, people will throw the baby out with the bath water. But that being [00:39:00] said we are very clear about that. What we do when the deal is finalized, we always say if you have questions, no matter what that is, you can come back to us and ask, but we are very clear about what our role is in the process.

And so I'll give you a very quick example. One of the key questions is how quickly can you close for me on a deal. We'll say we can get the financing to you generally within 30 days. However, you've got sellers, you've got lawyers, you have home inspections.

There are a lot of other things that can affect when you close, but on the pure financing side, we can do that within 30 days. Even though they hear that things will start to happen like they always do and we will have to remind them, that you have the financing. If the following things are cleared up, you'll be [00:40:00] able to close.

So that's an example where your guidance is a hundred percent on. We try to be very clear and transparent about what we can and cannot control. That is part of the relationship during the purchasing process, we try to educate because there are so many hands in this pot. If you looked at the number of people who are pulling a piece out of the mortgage process, it's amazing.

It can be very overwhelming. We try to be very clear and that's why we like to say record. So we have that perspective, but we share that with them. I, and I think the storytelling piece, I know that we're probably short to close, but the storytelling piece I didn't have, um, Baya or past clients who wanted to tell their stories.

I had this idea of telling stories about home buying, but that one that [00:41:00] I'd researched and found some of them funny. Some of them not. We're going to do a podcast on it. And then I thought, no one's going to be interested in that. But maybe if I do it on social media platforms and they're like a minute or two, they're not long, maybe that would still have value.

Aransas knows me well, throwing a little bit of Heidi humor in for good measure. Maybe that will resonate. I don't know. I just sort of step up, stepped away from it because I thought who'd want to hear about that, you know, but if it's done 12 times a year or 24 times a year on Facebook or whatever, or LinkedIn, maybe it would resonate.

I don't know.

Dave: Yeah, and I think you can do it throughout your entire process, not just to gain awareness, remember, do it throughout the entire process, and then it will become natural for you. [00:42:00] You'll be surprised what you can accomplish.

Aransas: love that. So as we start to wrap up here, I'll try to summarize some of the big takeaways from this conversation that I've had and invite both of you to add yours as well. I guess the first one is just to reiterate what you said a moment ago, Dave, that while marketing is important for growth, loyalty really is the by-product of the experience both during the home buying process, in this case, as well beyond the home buying experience.

The other thing that really stands out for me is advice. But there's a big difference between advice-giving and understanding and relationships are built on trust and understanding. People need advice, but they're gonna need a feeling of being understood in order to hear that advice. And so I think for me, as I look back on this, I think continuously when you talk about [00:43:00] the employees who are building these relationships during the home buying process, I would want to challenge them to say, I bet this feels a little bit overwhelming right now.

It sounds like you're feeling a lot of pressure to close this quickly to constantly acknowledge and validate the emotional experience of this really vulnerable process. To me feels like, for some of these clients could be game-changing and torrent in terms, of really feeling like they're in the right hands.

Feel a sense of certainty that they'd never want to go anywhere else because these are their friends. These are the people who get them.

Voiceover: Yeah.

Dave: Super exciting. It's a great time.

Aransas: Any other big takeaways here, guys for you?

Heidi: I mean, I think what I need to ponder on [00:44:00] some more is continuing to expand on the storytelling piece in an authentic way that yields loyalty as the by-product and not so much as advice we give but there's plenty of static places for them to go for that.

Our employees have been in the business a long time and they are very good at what they do. They're just not big fans of social media, unfortunately, It just raises my blood pressure through the roof and they had given a lot of access to a lot of information, but what I can go back to them with, and I think is very, very important around this is this continuing to validate and acknowledge the emotions associated, even when the client may not be the nicest or the kindest.

Aransas: And I think that acknowledgment and validation

[00:45:00] Heidi: I know that the team is pretty good at it, which is why we, we do as well as we do. But it's well-worth because people go jaded, right?

Some of these guys have been doing it for 30 years, so it's well worth reminding, I think and the live Q and A. I'll have to talk to you a little bit more about that. You know, I've done enough events in my life where you have two people show up and you just say so…

Dave: um, I have one last kind of wrap-up idea for you, if that is okay.

I really want to encourage you to focus as much of your storytelling on what's going on in the experience itself. Your employees, you've already said there's a number of different things that you've said like that your employees, I can get a little jaded.

They've been doing [00:46:00] this for a number of years. By telling those stories, by letting them tell their stories, it opens them up and makes things possible that weren't possible before positive stories, obviously you would be surprised what that first home buyer does with being by being old school and just telling other people individually that's where organic growth is going to come for you.

I think that's fantastic. Thanks for being with us.

Heidi: It was a privilege and congratulations are extremely valuable to people.

Aransas: Thank you for sharing the stories of Silex. And for those of you listening, Heidi made a quick nod to some of the other really cool work that she's doing. Heidi also manages bringing it home with Heidi brand and that's a web-enabled platform focusing on everything from home buying to a family cooking channel and

[00:47:00] lots more. Bringing it home with Heidi provides really valuable lifestyle and business resources. Heidi writes blog posts. She does podcasts that are available on Spotify and Apple, and so much more. Really inspiring energizing content and you can learn lots more about it. Bring it home with heidi.com. Heidi. I know you're also a mom-special abled man and Alexander, I’m a big advocate of post-21 special needs adults. So thank you for all you were doing for the world and for really living with mission and purpose in everything that you do.

Heidi: It's my pleasure. Dave, do you want to talk about your experiences? Let me tell you that would be a wonderful conversation to have with someone about the experience.

Parents who have to navigate the special needs world for their children and young adults. You want to talk about a very [00:48:00], not fun experience would be wonderful. One day for that to not be such torturous. Thank you both very much for your time and advice. Thank you.

Aransas: Thank you so much for sharing your story with us.

Thank you all for listening. Lots more stories in future episodes, as we all learn together.

Voiceover: Thank you for listening to the experience strategy podcast. If you're having fun, nerding out with us, please like subscribe and share wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Find more episodes and continue the conversation with us at experience strategy, podcast.com.