Fran Biderman-Gross
So, you know, we culminated these 30 minute one way conversations, right? It’s not a lot of questions we could really ask. But we had to validate what we already knew. And we had to be really smart about it. So I said, here’s what you presented. This is what the story you’re talking about. Here are the things that I heard in these conversations and all the things that we read, if I were building the brand, here’s how I would present the story, here are some of the things that I would consider adding, or you know, taking into consideration and the core values, I would, you know, kind of position it you’ve got these strains that you’ve all talked about, but I don’t see represented here. And you talked about your competitive, you know, your competitors, and your aspirate your aspirational competitors and your actual competitors. And I charted sort of where they were from a color component, and found the whitespace picked two different color palettes to give them as many options as possible, warm and cold. And then designed, warm and cold logos and all traditional, non traditional. And we ended up you know, winning unanimously, because that was the rule. And when Don called me to tell me that we won, I was like, great, when can we go out to dinner to celebrate? And as he’s answering me, we can go like, you know, week from Tuesday, cuz I’m in London, I’ll be back. I’m like, just ask a global CEO out to dinner. And I don’t The rest is kind of history, we went out to dinner. And we didn’t talk about business at all, I was really so curious about his journey and all the things that I learned about him when I was doing my research, and I wanted to learn of course more about him. And he was so intriguing. Such a purposeful individual, leading a global organization, it was just it was kind of really fascinating. And we headed off like two peas in a pod. And we just kept going out to dinner and going out to dinner and and he asked me to come You know, help him roll out the brown kind of behind the curtain, which we did. Definitely a couple lessons to do that from that position. Because it was definitely pretty, no, I was not I did not win popularity of coming in and bring the brand company that won the logo right from their incredibly strong talented teams. And I One day, a couple months later, he’s like, you know, this whole framework that you’ve got me thinking about, and God it was a horrible thing, this slog as he affectionately calls it. But you know, David maister wrote this book that’s really very popular and very well done in for professional services and how to manage them and this has really got to be the 2.0 and I’m like I’m a branding and marketing expert because exactly the right approach. And it it you know, purpose unlocks profit in every aspect and in helping as many companies as we do, I really have, I really have the experience and the story is like he does just from a different perspective. So it was a very Ying Yang. opposites attract beautiful story and We’re still friends today. So that’s good.
Jeremy Weisz
So purpose values in story I know. You know, in my research, you’re like, you decided to not just include the greatest story success stories, but there is some, you know, I don’t know, mistake stories or not failure
Unknown Speaker
stories, you
Jeremy Weisz
know, people like filler like learning experiences. But so what’s one of those, you know, quote unquote, failure stories that you decided, listen, let’s be transparent here and open up some of the failures, not the successes.
Fran Biderman-Gross
You know, when we’re writing this, there’s one story that totally pops into my mind, and I’m going to share it. But you always learn more from failure, right, you always learn more from things that you can learn from, so you have to be vulnerable. So that if you’re really truly going to share, that’s the place to share, right? Success is great. And all of this worked. And this is how we do it. And that’s great. But here’s where I realized there was a problem. So one day, I don’t remember exactly what we were meeting on. But I really didn’t behave in the way a leader should. And I really got very emotional. And last, you know, I have this rule ABCDE, no assuming blaming, complaining, defending or excusing. And when you come to meetings, that way, when you’re working, if you’re, you take the emotion out of it, and you’re just dealing with facts, and you’re just dealing with statistics, and you’re just dealing with metrics, you know what to do. And I let my emotion get the better of me, for whatever reason for this particular client. And the client was in a room, and my team was in the room and I just, I just, honestly, I just got it, just probably a D minus. And when the clients left, I was still in the room, because we take pictures of everything we, you know, kind of draw on the boards to create notes. And I’m just taking my few minutes to do that. And there goes, Angelica, walks into the room, slams the door, slams down the water bottle, with water going everywhere, and says you cannot do that ever again. And I’m like, Oh my God, you are right. Like I didn’t get to Oh my god, you’re right. So fast. But I didn’t really get there. I did get there. And I’m like, you are totally right. And I think that’s when we added excuses to the ABCDE. But, um,
Jeremy Weisz
did you come up with that Fran? Or is that some I’ve never heard that before?
Fran Biderman-Gross
Well, I think it’s, you know, this is like part of my life’s work. I think we we hear you know, BCD often blame, complain, defend. And then I was like, a belongs there. You know, when you make assumptions. You’re just an ass. Yeah, it’s like a it’s got to go in there. Yeah, and he was definitely the excuses piece, but I don’t look for. I don’t look for more.
Jeremy Weisz
I feel like you have another. I feel like this other book. They’re like, the ABCDE rules of leadership or something?
Fran Biderman-Gross
Um, I don’t know. I think that’s just a lesson that goes throughout. But just
Jeremy Weisz
planting a seed for you there. There’s your next book. Yeah, thanks. Thanks. So she slammed the water. Did you realize at the time, okay, I did this, it was just, it was so emotional in the moment that you were just kind of, you weren’t even paying attention to it,
Fran Biderman-Gross
I just got lost, I really got I lost myself in it. And I just, I didn’t, I didn’t care. I wanted to just drive my point. And that’s not what team members do. Like, you just you just don’t do that. And you can’t you always have to back your team. But what’s what’s amazing and not defend their work, right? Like, design is subjective. So you just have to nuance what you like what you don’t. And then again, not defending, but when you when you draw research into from trends or colors, or whatever it is, into the conversation, you’re you are not bringing the defense component, you are not getting defensive about your design. It’s it’s not about that, right? So if we always, if we stay true to our mission, and true to our vision, right, we we only care about one thing, and helping CEOs actually realize visions because visions, no matter how big or small they are, if they’re written correctly, and they’re measurable, you can actually achieve them. So if we get if we’re just focused on achieving them through our mission, which is closing the gap between marketing and sales, but rallying everyone around you around this purpose component, because purpose really is your superpower. And when you can, you’re going to get me off on a tangent. So reel me back anytime you want. But engines are good. Yeah, but it’s, you know, it’s, it’s always about these three keys for us. Because it’s just internally externally doesn’t matter if you’re working on a brand component or a marketing and external piece or brand experience. It’s it always starts with, what’s the purpose of it? Why does it exist? You know, what’s the goal? How does it align to your annual goals? Right? Keeping a very CEO centric, as I say, and stop getting lost in this busy likes and Unless Unless it leads to engagement and conversion, it doesn’t mean anything.
Jeremy Weisz
Yeah. Which is, which is, I think, probably rare for someone doing branding to talking about conversion and a, you know, not just engagement, but conversion to leading to something. So your approach is actually taking that, but like, what’s the end? We’ll talk about the lumpy mail, because you like, well, what’s the call to action? Like, what’s the next step? And because there has to be a next step. So we’ll talk about that. But just to for that particular story, that failure story, um, where does that weave into the book? Like,
Fran Biderman-Gross
it weaves into the book on the values piece, right? Because if, if I don’t behave in a way that is driven by our culture, and I act outside of the norm, right, so we have a five core values, and doing what’s needed. Earning trust, there’s, if I don’t back my team emotionally, who’s trust, Am I breaking, and by the way, is I see build trust in core values all the time. I’m like, building trust, you can build trust all you want. But you have to earn it earning it is way harder than building it. And I don’t do a cut knows, everybody knows, I’m always I’m always good for the hard work. But if you can’t, when you can earn their trust. If you earn trust, you really can you can weather almost anything, because they trust you. There’s always outside factors. The question is, if you’ve identified the true goal, and your eye is always there, and you’ve earned your trust of your client, you can pretty much weather anything. And that shows up in the longevity of our client, you know, our client relationships, we like to think of them as a bungee cord, not umbilical cord, we’re not your regular agency. We’re very SEO minded, very transparent, very metric driven. Because let’s let’s be honest, Jeremy, every agency in the planet gets measured on sales and increases sales. And marketing is not sales as a responsibility. It goes hand in hand. But if we can’t positively affect shorten improved qualified leads, and short and close rates, we’re useless. So everything you have to mend measure really unconventional things to actually prove the value. And that’s where we’re focused. Because if you’re not getting good marketing value out of the agency, or the, you know, dichotomy of freelancers, you really should be rethinking what you’re spending your money on, because you’re either spending too much time managing those fragmented components, or it’s just not focused in the way that you need to drive the actual results you need.
Jeremy Weisz
Let’s talk about box experience, you know, because they came to you, and what I love, like you were saying about, you mentioned before being vulnerable, like that’s when we actually make our biggest breakthroughs, because we’re willing to look at the things maybe that aren’t working perfectly, and we can make improvements. And at that point, you know, everyone got hit with the, with the craziness that happened. And people’s businesses were affected in the US, you know, but uh, she was ready to make some pivots and changes in so maybe talk to talk about, you know, your thought process when you started working with her because you really kind of drew this up from scratch and she juiced up from scratch.
Fran Biderman-Gross
So it’s such a great story. triumph over
Jeremy Weisz
cheese like Fran you one week, like we’ve one week, like, what can we do?
Fran Biderman-Gross
Literally? literally, literally, we had four weeks to figure out what a new business look like, and I don’t recommend it for many people,
Jeremy Weisz
for anyone.
Fran Biderman-Gross
Yeah, you have to definitely have a certain amount of lecture let’s let’s create a new brand. Let’s pull all the narratives and key messages together. Let’s understand let’s build the product at the same time, as well as launch a website. Okay, got to have your head examined. So on the right type of head examined to do something like that. But I’ll tell you what’s, what’s really incredible about this. About box perience but really about Andrea. So Andrea is probably one of the most and I say this, I said this often but highly purposeful individuals. She brings joy and connection to everything that she does in our in personal relationships. It shows up absolutely everywhere. I know this, because I’ve asked her right and I’ve, I’ve seen her in action. So I definitely had a little bit of a head start. It wasn’t like I didn’t know her before, she kind of called me and said, I’m in Chicago, there is no more events. I mean, this is a woman who cater for Oprah. This is a woman who has an incredibly thriving business, who does really good things for the community, and the community, the entrepreneurial community, as well as her local community. And very, very purpose driven wasn’t really difficult to pull the component the three keys, you know, in a succinct way out of her, and then starts to brainstorming, okay, what can I do? Well, clearly has to involve joy clearly has to involve connection, clearly, it has to involve experience. So what can I do that’s portable? How can I create? How can I pivot my events company into something portable, and there went a lot of very good and bad, and expensive and cheap opportunities. And we landed on creating what we define as box variance, right? A portable connective relationship that reinforces something new reinforces what you have, or starts something new. Because in the world we live in today, literally today, you cannot jump on a plane and take care of your most valuable clients. So what are you going to do? There goes Dinner, Drinks, events, summits, conferences, it’s gone overnight. I don’t know when it’s coming back, maybe 2020, maybe 2021? We don’t know, what are you going to do? So she really, we in this 31 days. We clearly wanted to test some proof of concepts, talk, talk, talk, how to approach sales people, and we really came up with this experience is portable experience that you can send someone that is so personalized, that you can really deepen your relationship. And she’s got a couple of different themes, a couple a couple of different flavors. And the way that she personalizes these things, it is not a gift box, it’s really it’s just not. And it is absolutely a new category. And it is not for marketing, you know, to order 100 for their salespeople, it’s for their sales teams to say, I have travel budget and expense budget. And they have another way to use it. And they they can, you know, it’s your VIP
Jeremy Weisz
VIP clients.
Unknown Speaker
It is for Viagra. If
Jeremy Weisz
anyone sees it. I mean, you could watch it up. And so but it’s a beautiful box, I mean, the box itself, people keep it’s like a nice wooden box. And so it’s like people wouldn’t just throw that out, they actual the box that comes in is really nice, too.
Fran Biderman-Gross
Yeah, the whole thing about it is personalized in a way that actually isn’t about box experience. It’s about the connection. So on the cover of that box, it says, you know, let’s connect. And on the other side of the box, there’s a personalization. And then there’s a great experience, there’s a recipe card, there’s an audio or visual card from you with your voice or your face, saying, Hey, I really miss you, I wish we could have done it out whatever like we used to do, but like let’s just jump on, you know, FaceTime, or zoom and like, let’s have a glass of wine, let’s do some cooking or share the experience of your family and let’s, let’s bond over how that happened. And I mean, I’ve sent a bunch, and I’ve gotten great responses from my VIPs. And I know that she’s really starting to thrive and move into even some more customized, you know, relationships where, you know, she’s dealing with events, and she’s, you know, sending 100 for, you know, in place of an event component. So she’s starting to expand that as well. And it’s really beautiful to see
Unknown Speaker
all of this happen,
Jeremy Weisz
if anyone wants to check it out as box experience, but it’s BOXPERIENCE.net. So you can check out what they have going on there and some of the different boxes, but it is there’s a personalized components. And you know, I’m at lumpy mail, so like everyone loves, you know, when you sent those initial tests out, like, you know, the test the market, what were some of the responses, how did you take that feedback and kind of change a little bit?
Fran Biderman-Gross
So that’s actually a great question, because we didn’t really have a lot of time to do a lot of testing. So it was like, Okay, let’s send I don’t know exactly how many boxes she sent out. But she sent out a fair amount. And the truth is, it’s very transparent. In today’s day and world. You can actually go on to Facebook and LinkedIn and see many of them. So people actually didn’t know what they were getting and recorded it going oh my god, this was great. Like I love this there was there were some nuances like, hey, this truffles Oh, I wish I had a few more. Oh my god, I love this, but I wish I the recipe car show
Jeremy Weisz
more truffles like? Yeah, okay, thanks for the feedback.
Fran Biderman-Gross
Yes, exactly. Um, but by and large, I think there was a, there was a real, we learned that people really do enjoy alcohol boxes, we enjoyed that they like cooking boxes, we learned that it was it was the price point was right. The level of personalization was right, we thought people would actually want to record more video. And I remember doing this with Well, it wasn’t that long ago, when I said, you know, we should also do just an audio option choose now I think the video will be great. And I’m like, you know what, let’s test it. g big, big surprise there. And we did we tested it and see, it seems that people don’t like want to get like all dressed up or you know, really fast with the video. But they think the audio card is enough. And just having that pop of Hello. And then a really nice message, you know, from her, say, Hey, I started this new thing are really interested in your feedback. So it was really cool to see those as proof of concept pieces. But as far as the language is concerned, I think we really we hit a lot of it. I think the modification came more into like the lead gen and some of the cold calling. That’s really where we took the scripts to another level. Yeah, and yeah, including the follow up, I think we really hit it, we hit it out of the box, kind of really straight away. And of course, it’s evolving. We’re adding now, you know, a buy online, you know, component, we really, we really went up with bare bones, I know that she’s added another four. And we’ll continue to evolve some pure, customized solutions. Maybe you don’t want let’s connect on the front, the one thing you can’t have, I told her as a garden garden rule, you cannot put your logo on the front, it has to be emotional. You could put your logo on the back as your you know, the customer, you know, as your company, but it’s not important first, right? That goes right into the lumpy mail. What do you recommend
Jeremy Weisz
for follow up? I know you you always say the key is a follow up. Don’t just send the gift but like, so what do you recommend? Maybe, you know, because there’s text, there’s call there’s email? And then how, how much after? Do you follow up? What do you recommend, as far as follow up goes?
Fran Biderman-Gross
So this this goes into the wholesale strategy, which Deb Venable is really, really good at. And I want to say there is a triangular piece here. So in building the scripts and trying to understand their frequency, you know, there’s different categories of people and how they respond and what they like. So number one, actually creating a follow up that is multi part, right. So maybe one component is posting something online about the conversation, appreciating the video that they send, or even being honest about the feedback because you really just want this to completely evolve. And Andrew was so great about taking all the criticism and the feedback. And there was there was a few I can’t say there’s an overwhelming like, Oh, this is just like a gift box. I think we honed in some of the messaging. So they really understood that it was meant that we want you to actually, you know, the sender should create the follow up and actually encourage the reach based on the calls to action that they’re reading. So that actually has a lot to do with the verbal message that we suggest you send. And as the sender you, you know, like hey, I don’t know if I was if Jeremy if I sent you a box and you were like, Hey, I got this, I got this, I probably would take a snap of our zoom. And I would probably post it. Yeah, because it’s really what
Jeremy Weisz
I usually do if I get something personally is I will take a picture with it and text it to the person and just like write up personalized text. Thank you and like maybe like an audio in the text to say oh bla bla bla bla bla bla bla.
Fran Biderman-Gross
Yeah, but why not put that why not put that out with like a lesson. Right? Like, why not? Even if it’s like, well, my customer really appreciated this. I just love them. I’m so glad they enjoyed it.
Jeremy Weisz
I mean, as the receiver I do that as like if I receive it, yeah,
Fran Biderman-Gross
but I’m saying flip it right. Like you flip the script on saying flip flip this and you as the sender do the same, because you can actually highlight the fact that they meant so much to you that you
Jeremy Weisz
gotta
Fran Biderman-Gross
do it’s, it’s it does put a different perspective on it and not from a salesy way, right. This is this is relationship building. We are in a relationship economy. So give them value everywhere. Yeah, you know, it’s got value to Boxperience. It’s got value to the sender. It’s got value to you to show how thoughtful you are, how much you care about, you know, the boxes you send for the reasons you sent them. So It really does elevate the relationship. And to be honest, that’s exactly what Andrea’s intention was with Boxperience. So being true to her core and true to who she is. And all of a sudden, by the way, she didn’t think catering was going to open up at all. And now all of a sudden, she’s watching her catering come into small groups, as she’s pivoted that as well. So that poor girl, woman has not slept in a couple of months. But I’m thrilled to see her embrace, you know, the value of the human relationship and the connection. And she’s, she’s just all about it. And I couldn’t be happier. To be part of that, no matter how challenging it was, and maybe continues to be in a good way. And I just want to see that completely thrive. Because
Jeremy Weisz
I appreciate you sharing the story. Let’s go from Boxperience to Jay-Z. Oh, yeah. But what he was talking about how Jay-Z relates to lumpy mail for you,
Fran Biderman-Gross
Jay-Z. Okay, so what happens when you own or open this really swanky, membership driven bar? What do you do? How do you really not just attract people to the bar by going oh my god, there’s a second level of floors with these millions of dollars in paraphernalia with themes and really meant offer private breakouts? How do you solve that? Well, you sell it by membership, right exclusivity, and you deliver it in a way that they are so excited and proud to have forked over that small fortune for this luxurious experience. So if you don’t deliver value for their small fortune, no matter what level they chose, you’re going to be sunk. So not only does the experience the welcome box, if you will, has to be spot on. But it has to be the gift that keeps on giving, right, so you have to create the portable piece that they can carry with them, that they can use as a showpiece that is incredibly special. So in the days where the black card was metal, and it was the only metal credit card, we developed a magnetic stripe on an equally personalized metal card at three different value or membership levels, and created a box that became the container that went into another box. So there was a complete, you know, this was when unboxing start began opening experience. Yeah, this was all about the opening, you had to touch it and feel it. It was like this crazy tactile experience, which by the way, it was a box of an envelope, and you open that to reveal another incredible. It’s like
Jeremy Weisz
one of those Russian dolls things, or you just keep opening it. It’s like
Fran Biderman-Gross
the goodness is inside. But you know, like the Russian dolls. Yes, there was an unboxing component. But it was tactile. And it was experiential through each right. So you open up to reveal another box which you slit out. And then that opened up right? it flipped open. And then there was a personalized like translucent letter that was tucked into a pocket and then that revealed the golden ticket, right? The the black card, if you will, that was by color. So it was easy to recognize it was magnetic, so they can really swipe it. And they could charge drinks to it in their internal systems. So it had a lot of functionality. And then there was a booklet inside this mini kind of like portable box folder that’s laid out all the things that you could do in all the rooms and all the themes and tons of suggestions. So that you could, you know, come and be encouraged to even spend more small fortunes and build great relationships and build your network because the people that were roaming kind of like the floor and those walls in those rooms were new relationships to be had. So from what we we’ve done them for several years. And they haven’t changed it because it is still delivering great with great expectation and great anticipation. So this
Jeremy Weisz
is from one of Jay-Z’s clubs, right in Yeah.
Fran Biderman-Gross
4040 in the heart of you know, in 26th and Broadway right in the heart of the city.
Jeremy Weisz
And how did they hear about you? How did they find you?
Fran Biderman-Gross
How did they find me? Um, I think a lot of it’s about connections. I think we’re, we do a lot of award winning kind of lumpy type. I would say packaging type work. So when we get, you know, the ability to really build the experience, and we get the budgets to do that. We really can build some income credible things as we as we have, and, you know, they just proven right? Like, no, we’re just gonna reorder more just gonna reorder more, that’s when you know, that’s the validation of going, Okay, do you want to change anything, we just update the booklet for different themes. And as they move, so
Jeremy Weisz
yeah, and I encourage anyone Fran, to check out Advantages.net, you know, you have the our work. And there’s a bunch of case studies there, which are really cool. And they can see the 48, they want to look at actually what it looks like, then go to 40/40 VIP experience, and you can actually look through some of the pictures. It just I love looking through those things just to give ideas, even if it’s for something totally separate, just to see some of those ideas. And you remember, I don’t know if you control the send out of it. But does anything stick out of Wow, like we create us and this is getting sent to Xyz people who everyone knows, or, or do you not mess? So you kind of Hand it over? And they do the Sunday?
Fran Biderman-Gross
Um, no, we actually sent it out for for a couple of years, I think up until about last year, year, a year and a half, maybe maybe two years ago. Because remember, each card is personalized. So there’s a bit of a step that goes and, you know, in house there weren’t like, it wasn’t really there weren’t sending out hundreds a week so we could really manage it. And we felt that needed kid gloves. And most of them by the way, were hand delivered. I like
Jeremy Weisz
I’ll deliver this one is going to Will Smith or something.
Fran Biderman-Gross
I can only deny that we actually had a sign and a non disclosure of who the client list was. Yeah, but there is no doubt. We definitely had a lot of smiles and we almost like wished we could have handled it ourselves. But yes, there were a lot of very famous people some of what you would not even you know suspect that you’re just like writers and Broadway. Just really,
Jeremy Weisz
maybe maybe even some of the behind the scenes but they’re very influential in that very room. Yeah,
Fran Biderman-Gross
yeah. Yeah, I would even say some big money Wall Street guys. Some real estate moguls some very interesting names on that list. I definitely wouldn’t win of mine handling that or have been at one of their parties. gatherings. No doubt,
Jeremy Weisz
though. Have you been to the 4040? Have you been to the club before? Or
Fran Biderman-Gross
worse? Yeah, okay. I we are experienced, like anyway, check team out there once. Yeah, once we actually, we went twice, we went once to see all the rooms so we can experience it. Right? How can I build an experience? If I couldn’t get excited about what the experience was?
Jeremy Weisz
Like? We need to try every drink every food item we need? You need? Yeah, exactly. Just
Fran Biderman-Gross
about, um, yeah, we’re there for a couple hours. We didn’t, we didn’t come home walking straight, that’s for sure. Um, we brought, we brought a lot of the experience, you know, into it, when you want to bring something to life, you have to really understand it. And and I’m not saying that we get the opportunity all the time to do things that are local, that we can take things to that level. But you know, no doubt when we take a project like that with somebody, somebody in person, for sure know
Jeremy Weisz
what’s going on the opposite end. So we go by Boxperience Jay-Z, and then we there’s a grant. So talk about that.
Fran Biderman-Gross
Yes, the impossible challenge. What happens when a wall street mogul who is attached to educational experiences, tasks, an organization with a new opportunity, and they have no idea what to do?
Jeremy Weisz
I feel like you know, one of those movie trailers, we need to, like a really deep voice to read what you just.
Fran Biderman-Gross
Yeah, well, I don’t know. For some reason, when you don’t know what to do, they tend to call me I really do get the hard, the hard, the hard things to figure out. But the truth is, we love that. Because we’re very clear, right? When we understand what the true goal is, we can really keep ourselves very focused when we understand what the budgets are. And I don’t mean just money. I mean, like time, labor, you have to really understand what’s involved. So this grant had a had a, had a couple of real, like deal breakers where they had to advertise in the Wall Street Journal. And like, Okay, well, how do I get to if the task of the grant was to convince guys on Wall Street, a specific list of 150 148 to be exact, to actually donate in a 24 month period over a million dollars right out of there. Well bequeath in there. Well, that’s that’s a really interesting, what do you do with that changing
Jeremy Weisz
wills? Yeah, that’s Yeah.
Fran Biderman-Gross
What do you do with that marketing agency? Well, you take that grant, and you abide by the rules. So you call the Wall Street Journal. And you figure out how many over a period of time we can advertise to build some recognition, right? How many, so that ate a good part of the budget. And then we had to figure out how Where are we going to target? Right? So now that that goes to the broader, so how to build a website, right, that drove traffic there, but how are we going to deal with 148? This guy, you know, curated, by the way, some pretty famous names as well. So you got to give them something, a can’t ask them for anything, got to build a relationship got to start somewhere. So you got to tug on something. So this was about education. So we had to do something surrounding education. So we did it around a holiday. And hey, remember, one, you were younger, and this was really important to you, and how you want to create this environment for your children. So we kind of, you know, how to dig into the persona of the of these hundred and, you know, the average of the hundred and 48? And what would be important to them and how we would get to them. And we created two lumpy mail, gorgeous, customized boxes, by the way, I think they’re still on the website.
Jeremy Weisz
Which would it be under all of education?
Fran Biderman-Gross
No, no? Well, if anybody wants to see them, I’ll probably get them back up on the website if they’re not there. National Society for Jewish education, so we sent our first lumpy mail was strategically placed, again in concert with these ads where, you know, what’s your best investment? That was pretty much the theme? Hmm. When you invest in education, right? When you education, when you invest in education, they educate people, when you invest in education, who educate people, good people who have good education, do great things. Right? So we highlighted Beat Buffett was our first one, Trump Trump was another one, and Soar like Soros. And I’m sorry, like Soros was my favorite because we got a cease and desist.
Jeremy Weisz
And what does that mean? So like Soros
Fran Biderman-Gross
or like Soros, Soros on Wall Street, I mean, he’s just like this incredible. mogul just like, these are really very influential Wall Street guys. Yeah. So we started with that with those titles. And, you know, and then spoke about investing in education, you know, and go visit our website. And for the hundred and 48, you know, we send, we took your traditional konica cradle with your traditional box with a magnificent custom brass menorah, just, you know, just evoking the feeling like go off and do celebrate with dysmenorrhea and appreciate the value of Jewish education. So that, that led to a number of conversations. Some people are like, what are you wasting money if you’re trying to do that some of it was great, like, wow, they hit they hit this the heartstring of You’re right, we need to do that. Let’s go to lunch, those lunches became dinners, and relationships where they did hit their target, and beat you know, get the bequeath. I don’t know exactly how or where the goal was, like, sort of through their wills, if you if you will. But I know that that it was a short term, Grant and target it took, again, took a while for those relationships to develop, but they did nurture those relationships properly. We did talk about scripting. What’s the purpose? What are we getting out of the first meeting? What are we getting out of? Secondly, we took it all the way down. So from website to like, almost alternate brand to, you know, having that come alive on these boxes, getting them up, both hand delivered. One was for Passover one was for, you know, Hanukkah, and it was just, you know, it was it was incredible. We didn’t even know there was going to work right for some time.
Jeremy Weisz
So we can have a really long like, talk about a sales cycle. It’s like someone changing their will. Yeah, it’s not like, oh, four weeks later. Sure. Let me just change everything in my, in my will.
Fran Biderman-Gross
Yeah, but so but that was a long term goal, right? So we have to measure unconventional things. So out of the hundred and 40 at hand deliveries, we had a really high we’ll call return touch rate. So we had over 60% good, better and different first measure, they reached back out whether they liked it or not. And then it was okay, out of that 60%. Can we get to 30% in person meetings, whether it was coffee, lunch, whatever it was. And they we really, we really laid out these really strong aggressive metrics. And if we didn’t get on the first one, would we achieve it on the second one? And we really had all the targets so we didn’t we only plan to go it through April but we hit the goals that we set out to do. What we didn’t expect was Soros giving us the season to set what happened. Oh, he just sent us a cease and desist like How dare you advertising name in the Wall Street Journal. I think it was good. I don’t understand.
Jeremy Weisz
There was a nice thing, but he really
Fran Biderman-Gross
Yeah. See sometimes what do they say a good bad PR is good PR. So it was kind of like our proud was our proud moment that that he got noticed. Right?
Jeremy Weisz
notices this, he has noticed
Fran Biderman-Gross
it right. So we’re still valued to get noticed piece, but he did not give us any money.
You know, um, when something oh, you know,
Jeremy Weisz
who does all those meetings? Like? Do they designate certain people to do the call or the in person? You know, dinner? How do you divvy that up from an organization?
Fran Biderman-Gross
Well, typically, when you’re working with a grant, with someone who’s really controlling that grant, and you know, like, it’s not like you had an RFP that you could go get it right. If somebody had an idea and said, I have X amount of dollars, I want this organization to spend that money and to yield this like that doesn’t that happens more often than you realize. But then these organizations don’t know what to do with that, like, how do I build a program? Now, typically, they’re going to have some kind of fundraising department so that that team, and our team and the creative team, strategy, creative writing, we’re all in a room, figuring this out and building the round and building the program, and seeing what works and what doesn’t, because at this point is just all personal relationships, there’s not, there’s not really any more letters that are going to go out, right, if these two lumpy mails, and you get to hit them strategically in the Wall Street Journal about six or seven times. And that’s it. So we went from, you know, the famous people be Buffett to Okay, look, what we’ve invested, we shifted our after the Hanukkah mailing, we said, oh, there was a speaker in the White House, right, who went to a do it, you know, Jewish education and was had this education and look how we elevated him. Right, the chief of the time, I think he still is the chief, one of the Chiefs at NYU, he had a Jewish education, like, this is what Jewish education produces. It was like a, it was a shift. And it was, it was a very intentional experience and the messaging and how we could you know, newspaper touch, you know, once they called us or reach, then we had the opportunity to create different emails or, you know, different touch components in that way.
Jeremy Weisz
So what, what’s the organization, people want to check it out?
Fran Biderman-Gross
Um, so that’s over, so you won’t you won’t find that live anymore? Because it was the national National Society for Jewish Education. God, I don’t think that that website is actually up and live at this point, because it was very, it was like,
Jeremy Weisz
very saturated time.
Fran Biderman-Gross
Yeah, very specific. Nice. But the legacy of that lumpy mail is on
Jeremy Weisz
your, yeah, that’s awesome. I love it. You know, I always ask for him. First of all, thank you, I love hearing your thoughts and everything around lumpy mail, and people can check out you know, the case studies that you have, and actually get great ideas and see what you’ve done. And if they obviously need help, they can contact you through the contact page. Um, I always ask this since Inspired Insider, Fran, what’s been a challenging moment time in the business? And then what’s been a proud moment? On the flip side, for for you in the business? what’s what’s been a challenging point where you’re to push through?
Fran Biderman-Gross
Well, first of all, I’m going to say, Well, which one should I talk about? Like, seriously, um, I think I think what I would still highlight the most, I’m going to highlight two, because I think there’s such there’s learning from one to the other. So when my business partner and husband passed away, just two months before 911, and I lost, you know, really 60% of our business evaporated overnight. You know, I didn’t, I didn’t have my support system, not in my personal life and not in my business life. And, you know, that was really, really hard to navigate and to get to understand how to then put my own spin on it, and how do I make this business my own? And how do I create an environment that I wish I had for myself, which led to, you know, all these incredible things, right, which then took me to 2008 and 2010. We had to do it all over again, because we had some really great divisions doing really great things that were really really profitable, and overnight that dried up and we went on to make the Inc 5550 Best Places to Work. And I didn’t do it to check those lists off. I did it because we were purposeful and intentional. We never took our eye off the ball, about wanting to help CEOs and leaders realize those visions that they really truly want to realize and give them the opportunity to help close the gap between marketing and sales through that effort. I say my proudest moment. And by the way, it’s no sin, no similarity, like there’s no doubt there’s tons of similarities between COVID being in Queens, New York at the heart of ground zero once again, serving primarily a large portion of small business. So we’re definitely rebounding and in incredible ways. So it’ll be, it would be the world’s for forced pause that we’ve we know that we bounced from in a great way. So that was that will prove itself for sure. And I never like lost sight of that optimism. For sure. Not once, even though no matter how hard it was. And that
Jeremy Weisz
was devastating. Yeah. Yeah.
Fran Biderman-Gross
It is pretty devastating. You know, when you’re when you’re attending three funerals a day for 13 days straight, and you’re trying to serve the community as I serve on the executive committee of the Queen’s Chamber. I’m literally from the business community on the heart of it. And as my family is very active, and then in the local and Jewish community, there’s so much I can’t between ventilator ventilators or just food shopping. I can’t, it was just, it was a very difficult time. I still never lost my undeniable positivity, knowing if I’ve survived everything else, really, I can survive this. But not not making light of it and being super scared through it. For me on my team, and a proud moment, I want to say the proudest moment was when
Gosh, I there’s also there’s, there’s two for two different reasons. One is when Cameron Herold, Facebook, messaged me and going, I am so proud of you. I am so proud of the work that you do and the team that you lead. And I was like, What are you talking about? And he’s like, you made the 50 Best Places to Work. And I was like, I was like, What? You’re kidding me. And you that’s not something you apply for. It’s it’s just it, you just don’t know. Like, you just don’t know that it happens. Yeah, obviously, my team was involved, but I didn’t know anything about it. And honestly, Advantages is, is the place where I really just wish it’s the environment that I wish I had for myself when I was younger, to be a place of support, a place of growth, a place of learning, to do great things to celebrate the winds and to work really hard to do it. So I’m super, probably proudest moment, most meaningful and proudest moment was when I absolutely realized in London as my husband handed me this Tiffany box, which a scared the crap out of me because that’s a big blue box that held three little diamond keys. And it was just hours before our London book launch on January 23. And I didn’t realize the magnitude of work and the body of my life’s work that actually culminated in this book. And it was such It was such a it was such a proud moment to share that with my husband and Don, my by really great friend, it was something that we had labored over. And it’s just something to really to celebrate. So those are, you know, from a professional perspective, those are returned to tremendous highlights for me.
Jeremy Weisz
Fran, thank you only the first one Thank you everyone. Check out Advantages.net check out Fran’s amazing podcast, Drive Profit with Purpose Podcast. She has amazing guests amazing insights, check it out. And the book, How to Lead a Values-based Professional Services Firm: The 3 Keys to Unlock Purpose and Profit with Don Scales. Fran Thank you,
Fran Biderman-Gross
Jeremy. It’s been a pleasure. Rise25
Jeremy Weisz
everyone have a good time on the flip side
