Dave Molenda, Business and Sales Coach, Speaker, Best-selling Author, and Host of the Positive Polarity Podcast, is driven by a mission to help business owners grow intentionally by strengthening their teams and delivering exceptional customer experiences.

We dive into Dave’s journey and his ST+ICE=P Formula, which stands for Strengthen the Team + Improve the Customer Experience = Profit. Dave explains how focusing first on internal team engagement leads to outstanding customer experiences, which then fuels sustainable business growth. We also discuss lessons from his book Growing On Purpose, why most businesses grow by accident rather than design, how to spot hidden blind spots, and when letting go of the wrong customers is the right move for your company’s health and future.

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Cover Your Blindspots with Dave Molenda

Good day, dear listeners, Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint podcast. And my guest here is Dave Molenda, who is a business and sales coach, speaker, best-selling author and the host of the wonderful Positive Polarity podcast. Dave, welcome to the show.

Hi, Steve. how are you today?

I’m doing pretty good because I’m meeting you, so it’s already injecting some positivity in my day.

Well good, I’m honored to be hanging out with you and thanks to you for being on our episode 260. I loved our question, “does your business have Covid?” That was a blast. So that was a great episode. So, for anyone listening, if you wonder if your business has Covid, I’m not going to tell you anything else other than head over and listen to Steve’s answer to that question. It was awesome.

Well, hopefully your business doesn’t have Covid because it’s a potentially lethal malady.

Exactly. For sure.

But it was, it really was a fun episode and we created a lot of snippets that we put on our website, so we definitely are excited about it.

Awesome.

But we’re not going to talk about this because we are going to talk about your stuff and what you are doing because it is at least as good, if not better, and we are going to dive into your frameworks, your book and all your experiences, your “Why” and all that good stuff. So, are you ready?

I’m ready. I got my seatbelt on. I’m all set here so we can go as fast or as slow as you want.

Okay, so let’s fast track into my favorite question. What is your personal “Why,” Dave? And how are you manifesting it in your practice and in your business?

Yeah, for sure. I tell you, it’s interesting, Steve. I love the name of your podcast, using a blueprint as a framework, because I can’t believe how many people start and try to grow a business without a blueprint, without some kind of framework. So I love unpacking that with you on my show. But my “Why” is for all the people that are out there that are so good at what they do, they’re good at their craft, they’re good at their skill, whether it’s building a house, whether it’s selling something, whatever it is, making something, they’re so good at that. But boy, they struggle when asking the question about, how do I grow this business? How do I create a team? How do I develop this team? How do I make this a long-lasting business? So my “Why” is really coming alongside of those people.

Again, genuine people, really good at what they do, but they very often are struggling with what to do once they have gotten to the end so far. They’ve asked all their neighbors and friends, they’ve asked all their acquaintances to buy whatever they have. I don’t know about you, but we get inundated with all the Girl Scout cookies from all your friends and family. But rarely do you get a knock on the door from somebody that you don’t know.

So my whole goal is to help businesses that are struggling, that want to grow.
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And so we come alongside them and help them again and create a blueprint different than yours. Our blueprint a lot of times involves the customer. So that’s kind of where I come in and start to help out the people that are struggling.

Yeah, I mean, customer is king. So definitely, I’m curious about how do you start with the customer and how do you strengthen companies through looking at their customer service?

Yeah, for sure.

Tell me a little bit about that.

Yeah, absolutely. So I mean, and the interesting thing is we’re all customers to somebody in our own as a consumer. So, we know when we’ve been treated bad. We know when we’ve had a great experience. And let’s just look at it from a super simple perspective. If you have a great experience at a restaurant, you’re going to tell a bunch of people. Just like if you have had a bad experience. If I come up and say, Steve, I’m going to be up in your neck of the woods in a week or so, where would be a great place to eat? You’re not going to tell me the place that you had a bad experience unless you don’t like me. You’re going to tell me about the place that you had a great experience with, and then I’m going to go there, and then I’m going to tell people. So having that good customer experience is so crucial to pretty much any business.

And that's where we love to kind of put on the glasses of the customer and see what they're seeing and help business owners understand their business from the customer's perspective.
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Okay. So you have a framework around this, haven’t you?

Yes.

How to strengthen and develop the customer experience. So tell me a little bit about this framework and how that works and how can our listeners visualize what they need to do with it.

For sure. Again, there’s three primary parts to everybody’s business. There’s the product or service that you make or sell or whatever you do. There’s something you do, which is one piece. There’s the customer that buys it, and then there’s the team that actually creates that experience. So I wrote a book called Growing On Purpose and we found the connection between a strong team creates a strong customer experience just like a weak team provides a weak experience. So we created an easy formula of ST, which is strengthen the team, and then plus ICE which is improving your customer experience, equals P for profit.

And it’s pretty safe to say that if you’re looking for profit, the two places that you really need to invest your time in is strengthening your team and improving your customer’s experience. Because all the research that we did shows that those two are very strong. And I’m guessing you probably run into a lot of people, Steve, that they focus a lot on the product or service. They’re a master at what they do, which is great, but they forget to invest time in the team and they forget to invest time in that customer’s experience. So again,

wrote the book to be able to help people to see how they can strengthen the team, some pieces around that, and how to improve that customer experience.
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If those two are there, then profit is a guarantee.

Yeah, and what I think Jeff Bezos speaks about is that you have to start with your team, because if you have a happy team who are being treated well and who are excited about your mission, your “Why,” then they are going to project that out to the customer and then they’re going to take care of the customer and then both of them is going to work. It’s very hard to imagine that you mistreat your team and then they’re going to take care of the customer. It’s probably highly unlikely.

Yeah. And I totally agree with that. And it’s funny because as a consumer, we just switched mobile phone carriers and we went from one company to another, won’t mention names, but interestingly enough, the new company, the gentleman that we were working with, he is actually leaving the company and going to a competitor. So, his experience, my experience as a customer was average to below average. And you could just tell that there wasn’t the engagement, there wasn’t the enthusiasm, there wasn’t the excitement. And I think that happens so much more often than we as business owners.

We think our team is as strong as we are. And I speak all over the country about this, Steve. And it’s funny because Gallup says right now that one in three people on your team show up engaged in their job, which means two out of three people are not engaged. And everywhere that I speak around the country on this, people always come up to me and they’re like, well, that’s not my team. That’s not my team. And I’m like, hey, I’m not saying it is or isn’t, but somewhere there’s a bunch of disengaged people and chances are pretty high that you have some on your team. So

we invest a ton of energy to make sure that team is as strong as possible
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because like I said earlier, a strong team creates a strong experience for that customer. And we’re at the point on that phone like we’re thinking maybe we made a mistake, should we switch back?

And for that, for us as consumers, and we’re one consumer in the grand scheme of things, but how many other people did that individual negatively affect in the business and what does that look like long-term? So my suggestion to business owners is take a good hard look at your team. Secret shop them. We secret shop our clients, they ask us to do that, we videotape, we do everything we can to make sure that they are getting the absolute best experience possible so that they can charge more, they can have people come back more often, they buy more. There’s just no negatives to a great customer experience.

So what are the key ingredients to having, I mean I understand the mystery shopping or secret shopping thing, but that’s more of a control mechanism. But you’re just quality controlling of what they are doing. How do you get them to do it better? What are the key ingredients to great customer experience?

Yeah, no, it’s a great question. And it starts with the engaged employee. Like I said, there’s engaged people, there’s not engaged, and then actively disengaged. I mean, if you don’t treat your team like a customer, I mean, I always tell the people that I run into, there’s an external customer, which is your client, and then there’s an internal customer, which is your team. And it’s crazy how few people really consider and think that way.

the first thing is to consider your team as important as your customer and treating them fair and treating them with respect and treating them with being open with them, helping them as much as you can.
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It’s not like rocket science. When we did the research, it wasn’t like these complicated things. I mean, a team member, they want to feel connected to the rest of their team. So that’s a simple piece. They want to feel like they are making a difference. So they want to know what the values and mission are of the company. So if you don’t have those, I always laugh, I tell people that know anything about golf, just imagine going to a golf course that was absolutely beautiful. It’s just the best, prettiest golf course you’ve ever seen. The difference is, Steve, is it doesn’t have a green and it doesn’t have a hole. And so you’re standing at the tee box and they say, go ahead, tee off. And you’re just like, well, where do I tee off? And they’re just like, well, tee off anywhere. And that’s how it is when a company doesn’t have a goal, individual goal, a corporate goal, some kind of goal for that. I’m sure you talk about goals like crazy in your Summit OS, because again, without goals, what good is it?

Well, we need to be able to have goals for our team members as well. And sometimes they’re financial, sometimes they’re behavioral goals. And I think the big goal that a lot of people miss, Steve, is the attitude goal. We really look at the attitude to make sure, because again, we’re all consumers. Think of the last time that you were buying something somewhere and you were not getting a very good experience. Maybe it was a restaurant, maybe it was a clothing store, wherever, but it really caused a negative experience to the point a lot of people, they’re just not gonna go back. So we’re trying to do everything we can to make sure that people come back and it all starts with that engaged employee.

Yeah. Well, yesterday I had one such experience where I decided never to go back. I’m not going to name names, but it was very disappointing. So anyhow, I like your analogy with the green and the hole. I’m thinking maybe the green is the core values, is the foundation where you start. And then the goal is maybe your BHAG, your Big Hairy Audacious Goal, at the end of the fairway. It’s a really good analogy.

Yeah, and hopefully the goal isn’t just to get to five o’clock so I can punch out and go home. Hopefully the goal is not to just get a paycheck so that I can pay my bills. I’m hoping, and we train, there’s gotta be deeper stuff than that. Whatever bad experience you had yesterday probably was because there wasn’t a very good team behind it or an individual behind it or a leader behind it because the best companies today, look at Google, the top 10 customer experience type companies. You’re seeing things going on that 10 years ago you never saw. And because people are going to whatever length they need to improve that customer’s experience. We have some people in different industries that are putting their money where their mouth is, Steve. They’re saying, if you don’t like it, you don’t pay for it, whatever it is, whether it’s a service, a product. And we’re so worried about the 2%, and the research shows like about 2% of people will take advantage of that.

Well, the amount of positive movement and the amount of momentum that you get from the other 98% of people that are gonna get this concept, the 2% ruin it. So I suggest to the companies that we work with and people listening today, don’t worry about those 2%. The 98% are going to more than cover you. There’s so few people that are out there to take advantage of you and yes, they are out there. Maybe you know a bunch of them, but the vast majority of people, they want a good service and the best part is they’ll pay more for good service. Two out of three people that they surveyed said, I would pay more for a better experience. So if you’re listening and you’re struggling with profit, you’re struggling with sales, look internally rather than blame your competitor or the government or the weather. Look internally. You’re going to find a ton of great opportunity right there.

I agree with you. And what people forget when they think about the 2% that maybe cancels or whatever, that those people are not helping themselves. Because if you provide the good experience, then they found someone who can help them. They should treasure you and keep you in their good graces. That they found a reliable someone who’s helping them. Why did they even cancel? It doesn’t make sense. So if you don’t provide good service, then they are right to cancel. So it’s important to provide good service. But I wouldn’t worry about it. It’s not about you. It’s about them. Maybe they have a scarcity mindset or something like that. So Dave, I’d like to switch gears and talk a little bit about your book.

Sure.

A couple of questions I have about it. First of all, the title ,Positive Polarity, which is also the name of your company. And I read a little bit on your website about the polarity, the opposites, and the dynamic. But I’d like you to explain it in your own words. Why did you choose this as the name of your company, your podcast? What’s important about polarity?

Sure, for sure. And we started with positive because again, the only people, Steve, that like to hang out with negative people are negative people. So they all kind of gather somewhere where we don’t want to be, which is fine. I mean, if you’re a negative person and you’re okay with it, you know what, that’s up to you. But I love hanging out with positive people. I love seeing and talking to people that look and see the glasses half full, not half empty. It’s just really a perspective.

The positive piece was definitely something that we wanted. And the polarity is interesting because in today's world, we're looking for the easiest way out.
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Most businesses, most companies, you hear words like low-hanging fruit. You hear words like easy opportunities. I don’t know about you, but I get inundated on LinkedIn and they’re telling me, hey, for five minutes a day, I can make you millions of dollars. And it’s just like, it doesn’t even make sense. There’s gotta be some friction.

There’s gotta be some opportunity where something’s hard. I mean, it’s hard to grow a business in today’s world. So the polarity piece is we try to challenge the natural way to do things, the easy way. The worst words that I hear is, that’s just how we do it around here. My grandpa did it this way. My dad did it this way. I’m going to do it this way. There’s no real challenge there. And it might have worked back then, which is great, but what worked 50 years ago probably won’t work nearly as well today without some type of modification. So we brought the polarity word in just as an opposing force to that natural way of, hey, let’s just take the easy way out on this. And it’s just been a great ride to find people that are buying into that process as well. I like it because I think about this expedition, I’m trying to remember the name of the adventurer in 1911 who went to the South Pole and got stuck in the ice. Before the actual expedition, he put a little ad in the Times and he basically described the challenges of this expedition. They’re looking for people who are not afraid to die and who are willing to be frozen for like two years and be in terrible hardship.

Wait, show me that ad, I’m all in on that. Dying and freezing to death.

A lot of people applied because they just were attracted to this challenge. That was exciting. There was something to work with there. And I’m thinking that you’re probably right. If you want the right kind of clients, then the offer is not that you take the pill and you wake up slim tomorrow. That’s not credible. And you don’t want to attract those people that are hoping for this kind of results. You want someone who’s willing to work hard, willing to get out of their comfort zone and do the work. So tell me, Dave, what is the Positive Polarity book about and what prompted you to write it?

Yeah, so you’re talking about silver bullets and secret sauce. That’s what everybody wants. They want that super easy opportunity and I haven’t found it. So again, if it’s out there, great. And you’re listening here, let us know. We can both learn from it. We wrote the book called Growing On Purpose because it is one of those books that I run into again a lot of people that grow by mistake. They don’t have that blueprint. So you ask them the question, how did you get where you are? And they’re like, you know what, I don’t know, hard work, a lot of hours. Well, what were the steps or can you replicate that if you needed to? Or if somebody was going to give you $10 million to franchise your business, could you walk them through these steps? And so many people couldn’t. So people are growing by mistake. And I said, when we were writing the book Growing On Purpose, it was like, let’s talk about being intentional with our growth. And the two areas that we focused on were the team and the customer. And those are two fixtures in your process that you control them.

You control what the customer does and doesn’t do to a large extent. You control what your team does and doesn’t do. And if you have, like, that’s why I love this podcast, the blueprint, without a blueprint, hey, you know what, who builds a house without a blueprint? Let’s just kind of put a wall here and a wall here and let’s just see what happens. I mean, it’s not how this works, but yet this is how people do it in business all the time. And it’s unfortunate. So I was hoping, and again, we became an Amazon number one bestseller in three different categories. So it was cool to see people are like using these pieces to learn how to treat my team and how to treat my customer. And I thought it was common sense, Steve, I really did. But I realized that we may know it up here, but we’re not actually practicing it. So that’s, I think,

the power is to have a blueprint and follow it and then see what happens.
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Yeah. I love this bipolar focus, the team and the customer, the internal customer, the external customer, or you can even say the internal team and the external team, because your customers can become your missionaries for you if you give them a good product or good service. So that’s a really great perspective. I have a couple of questions to you, Dave, because you’ve been an entrepreneur for a long time and you’ve been through thick and thin and you know that things don’t come easy. What has been the most unexpectedly rewarding part for you of being a business owner?

Yeah, that’s a great question. I think it’s really, I’m shocked at how simple information revealed in a certain way to people can transform their business, transform their life. I just had somebody on my show the other day and we released it not too long ago and it was interesting because it was somebody that doesn’t normally do podcasts and she was so afraid and she almost cancelled. She was like, this isn’t live, is it? I’m like, no. I mean there was just so much apprehension on the front end and I said we just went through it and it was easy. And then on the back end, she shared it with her family and her family was just so supportive and they were just like amazed at how much this person has grown. And they were so excited. It was so transformational for me to think that I had something to do with this family coming closer together, this person tackling things outside of her comfort zone. I just think the impact on others has been the biggest reward for me.

It’s just in places that you don’t even know. There was another person that came up to me. I was doing a talk on comfort zone and getting outside of it. And somebody raised their hand because I said in the audience, who here is struggling with something in their comfort zone? A lady raised her hand and she said, I want to speak in front of others, but I’m scared to death. I’m like, well, here’s the mic. You want to do it right now? So she gets up and she starts talking. And then I find out a year later at the next conference that I saw her at that she applied to be a speaker and got accepted. And she has been working on conquering that fear. So I just think that impact on others has just been way more helpful for me, and it’s just been way more impactful on me than I ever thought it would be.

Yeah, it’s certainly a very rewarding profession to be a coach. I used to be an investment banker, and we did the deals, and we made some money, and it was very exciting, and it’s very stressful often, but it’s so much more positive to help people in all circumstances and not make it a win-lose. So it’s definitely great.

Yeah.

Okay. So let’s take the flip side of this. So we talked about the rewarding experience. What was the hardest decision you ever had to make in your business, Dave?

I think that we run into this on a regular basis. I have to make this decision about, and it sounds weird, but do I fire a customer or don’t I? Those are really hard decisions and I don’t want to make it from a decision of I’m better than a person, they’re inferior to me. I make that decision based on am I adding value to this particular person? Because if we go and we don’t add value to somebody’s life, it’s really hard for me personally to charge them money for that. I mean, I tell people, whether it’s in a training, a keynote somewhere in the country, whatever it is, if you don’t leave the time with me better than you came, it really wasn’t a success. And it can be small little course corrections. It doesn’t need to be life-altering things that go on, but it’s just really small course corrections. And the best example that I can think of from a course correction is, I live in the Midwest, and if I want to fly to California and let’s just say my destination was San Diego because we live there part-time. So if we are flying from the Midwest to San Diego and up in the air, the pilot decides to make a two-degree course correction, you don’t feel it on the airplane, you don’t see it on the map, but all of a sudden you end up landing in LA at LAX, which is a painful two and a half hour drive south.

So that small course correction at the beginning made a massive impact on the back end. And so that’s what I really like is I’m not looking for people that, oh my gosh, you changed my life, which I love when that happens. But I like when someone walks up and says, I’m gonna do this different. Like that lady, I’m going to jump outside of my comfort zone and I’m going to act to apply to be a speaker. And now she’s doing it. And it was because of something that I said that caused that. So the hardest thing is when do you fire somebody, when don’t you? And again, it’s tough, but it’s something that we as business owners, we probably need to do more of.

I agree with you. I think when you are able to do it and discontinue your relationship with a client who is no longer a fit or no longer gets value. It raises your own self-esteem. You’re holding yourself to a higher standard and then it means that you’re aware of what you’re doing and you’re holding yourself accountable to delivering value. I love it. I think it’s a great concept.

Yep, absolutely. And again, the whole goal, and this should be for anybody listening, that hopefully when somebody leaves your presence, they feel better. They’re farther along. They’re advancing. There’s something that happened that’s not bringing them backwards. And that’s where we need to make sure we understand the importance of our words, our body language, our tone. All of the pieces of communication are just really important when it comes to communicating with your team and communicating with your customer.

Yeah, no doubt. All right. Well, one more question. I have to get it off my chest. We talked about coaching. Coaching is done through questions. It’s creating awareness, creating that little bit of forward movement so that people live different and better than they arrived. So what is the most important questions entrepreneurs should be asking themselves?

That’s a great question. I’m working on my next book about business blind spots and it really actually kind of what we talked about before and the question really is to the entrepreneur listening right now, who is helping you with your blind spots? We all have them. We all operate from them sometimes. And who’s helping you? I mean, the funniest person is one that says, you have blind spots, I have none. That’s like we all have them. It’s proven we all have blind spots. So who’s helping you? Whether it’s a coach, whether it’s someone on your team, whether it’s an advisory group, whether it’s a board of directors, whatever that looks like in your world, I am totally open to whatever.

But that’s the interesting thing, is we all have a blind spot. Who’s helping you with them? In a car, we have a rear view mirror and we have side mirrors because they help us with our blind spots. Who is doing that for you? Because otherwise, you can go your whole life, Steve, and never really address those blind spots. And it’s funny because I work with leaders from around the country and I hear, oh, my team, I can’t keep a good team together. And the first question I always ask is, what are you as the leader, what are you not doing, or what could you do better? Look at it for yourself rather than again blame the team, because it’s super easy to blame the team. It’s super easy to blame the customer, the government, the environment, whatever. It’s easy. It’s really hard to look internal and say, what am I doing? And we don’t know what we don’t know. So there’s plenty of times where people have blind spots. They don’t even know that they’re doing it. So that would be my number one question is who is helping me with my blind spots?

Yeah, I love it. Love this question and actually we do an exercise in our annual leadership team meetings, which is titled “Cover Blindspots,” and we give each other feedback on blind spots and it’s always very powerful.

But think about that, Steve, if I come at you negatively, if I come at you demeaning, if I come at you in disrespect, anything I say, you’re probably going to try to refute. You’re going to build a wall. So we need vulnerability. We need respect because if you’re going to talk about my blind spots or I’m going to talk about yours, I really have to be in a safe place to be able to receive anything that you say. So that’s why I think it’s important to have somebody that you trust, a coach, an advisory board, a partner, whatever it is. But if we’re not in the right headspace, we’re not going to be able to receive that feedback because we’re just going to justify it and blow it off and just go about our day. So, in addition to making sure you’re helping with the blind spot, it’s got to be in a safe place that we can trust who’s sharing that with us. Because let’s face it, if you didn’t trust me, Steve, and I was going to tell you about a blind spot you had, your wall would go up and you probably would have a little bit harder of time receiving that from somebody that was doing it disrespectfully.

Yeah, that’s no doubt a very delicate approach. It’s required. People don’t like to be confronted with their blind spots and they need trusted advisors who they can take it from. So definitely a good point. Dave, we’re coming to the end of the show. So if people would like to learn more about the Positive Polarity Podcast, would like to perhaps apply to be on it, or like to reach out to you and talk to you and figure out how you can help them cover their blind spots, or make those little course corrections that’s going to get them to LA, especially in the film industry, they don’t want to end up in San Diego. Where should they go and where can they find you?

Sure, yeah, positivepolarity.com is the easiest place to go. The podcasts are there, the book is there, Growing On Purpose, everything’s there, our coaching schedule, our training schedule, where we’re speaking, so all that’s there. You just go there, connect with me on LinkedIn. Whatever’s easiest for you, we’re here to serve you any way that we can. And again, thank you for letting me hang out with you. And I’m glad that you didn’t ask me any Covid questions like I asked you.

Awesome. Well, Dave, thank you for sharing your wisdom about growth, about customer service, the importance of it, the team, covering blind spots, making little course corrections and leaving coaching sessions better than when you arrived. These are all very golden recommendations. So, if you’ve been listening to this and you enjoyed the show, then make sure that you follow us on YouTube. You give us a review on Apple Podcasts, please, and follow us on LinkedIn. And stay tuned because every week, I get a wonderful guest who is bringing some golden nuggets to the show. So thank you for coming, Dave.

Thank you.

And thank you for listening.

Important Links:

• Dave’s LinkedIn
• Dave’s website