Episode #5: Customers First: How to Build an Enduring Business with Jeffrey Eisenberg

Change Your Filter with Tall Paul

Key Insights:

1. Customer centricity (focus) is key
2. Don’t work “in” your business, work “on” your business
3. Don’t shackle yourself to your business

Today’s world is more digital & data-driven than ever. For Jeffrey Eisenberg, however, this is old news. In Episode 5 of the Change Your Filter podcast, we had the opportunity to talk to Jeffrey Eisenberg.  Jeffrey has been working in the eCommerce & digital conversion space long before it was mainstream.

First Experience

Jeffrey Eisenberg is a Brooklyn, NYC native. Having blue-collar parents that immigrated from Argentina, Jeffrey now finds himself residing in Austin, Texas, where has lived for 11 years. As a kid, Jeffrey always wanted to be a historian. However, neither Jeffrey nor his parents had the money to support a college education. So, instead – Jeffrey set his sights on making money, and he decided to enter the world of finance.

Initially, Jeffrey was hired as a management trainee in a bank. But because he didn’t like being told what to do (along with the fact that he hated numbers) he left the bank job. Luckily, Jeffrey soon received an opportunity to work on a “foreign exchange desk” as a trader!  This seemed exciting to Jeffrey.

Unbeknownst to Jeffrey, 4 other people before him had failed at this job. Regardless, Jeffrey built the trading desk into a highly successful business. Despite his success as a trader, he left the trading desk in his late 20s with the grand aspiration of becoming a millionaire by age 30. With hard work, Jeffrey reached his desired millionaire status by age 28.

Starting His Own Business

With some cash in his pocket, Jeffrey decided to start his own finance business. Unfortunately, the demands of growing a new business led to divorce.  Suddenly, everything seemed to be falling apart. Jeffrey decided to leave finance and get into sales and marketing. He recruited his brother, who had gone to business school, and they began yet another new journey.

The goal for Jeffrey & his brother was to “understand why people do what they do.” The new business offered sales training via a “success” payment basis. Although they were successful in the work, they quickly found that operating in this manner was neither enjoyable nor feasible.  So, they decided to take another route.

Internet Obsession 

Jeffrey’s brother was obsessed with the internet, and quickly acquired several new clients with this newfound venture. The business, called FutureNow, became the first sales & marketing agency to specialize in “conversation rate optimization” via the web.

Soon, Jeffrey began writing books on what he and his brother had learned. Then, much to everyone’s surprise – several of the books topped the charts on the NY Times and Wall Street Journal best seller lists!  Jeffrey and his brother began to appear in public for speaking gigs due to the popularity of their books. Suddenly, they began attracting several well-heeled and interesting clients, like Microsoft. Jeffrey and his brother began to show CMO’s, CEO’s and business leaders of all types how a business’s existing web traffic could easily be converted into sales.

Next Adventure

Jeffrey stopped working on his company, FutureNow, in 2009 to begin a consulting practice. With alarming quickness, Jeffrey found himself consulting for Fortune 500 companies such as Google and Walmart, to name a few. 

Jeffrey and his brother educated their consulting clients on consistently prioritizing the customer. In doing this, Jeffrey created various “personas” for a business’s “ideal customer profile.” Before long, “personas” were being used worldwide as a vehicle to quickly grow businesses, regardless of industry.

With his newfound experience, Jeffrey started yet another company called “Buyer Legends”, a company specializing in storytelling – from the client’s perspective. While working with a home services client, Jeffrey ran across “Service Titans.” He was not impressed. They had plenty of data, but the firm had no way to translate that data into information. So, Jeffrey created a new platform for home service clients that allowed them to get better information, better insight, and better reporting. The problem was, no one logged into the new platform!

Jeffrey soon realized that these clients wanted data that provided “actionable insight.” They wanted actionable information that would enable their companies to grow quickly.  So, in an effort to get better quality data for the home service industry (allowing businesses to better serve their customers) “DataTurk “was formed!

Customer Centricity & eCommerce

Armed with the data for home service companies, it was time for Jeffrey to get to work. He knew that great and successful companies do two things well:

1. They continuously innovate
2. They put the customer at the center of their universe

When businesses fail at these two things, they decline fast and lose revenue quickly. So, Jeffrey began to educate businesses in the home services industry on the skills needed to become more “customer-centric.” He was toying with the idea of “clubs.”  However, for a customer-centric club model to work, customers had to first “believe that club membership would pay off” and that “club members” would definitely receive priority. Jeffrey knew that if they could pull off this powerful “club membership” concept – customers would tell friends, friends would tell other friends, and the concept would explode.

On any 100-degree August day, there is much money to be made in the HVAC business. However, even more money can be earned in the mid to long term by proving a business’s integrity (branding).  Businesses succeed via integrity – by honestly doing what they say they’ll do.

Businesses need to make the customer’s journey flawless. Customers like and prefer one-stop shopping.  Easy, simple, and seamless customer interactions grow and preserve all client relationships.

Future Vision

Jeffrey predicts that home service contractors will shrink by 80% in the next 10 years. However, because of technological innovation, he predicts that medium-sized businesses ($10-20 million) will get bigger which will allow them to meet the growing “integrity expectations” of new, younger customers.

For the smaller guys, some will stay in business, but most will perish.  It’s really hard running a business, and that level of difficulty will, unfortunately, increase in the coming years.  For the small shop owners, going to work for somebody else will likely become easier.

Without a growth mindset, businesses quickly fall behind. And business is becoming increasingly digitized, and thus faster. Jeffrey believes that successful business owners need to work “on” their business – not “in” their business.  Many owners get so caught up in the actual day-to-day work, they have no chance to improve and grow their company.  Soon they find themselves hitting a plateau – and being too tired to move forward.

In the future, all businesses will increasingly depend on “customer relationships.”  A company’s ability to deliver consistent value to customers will win the day!

Jeffrey is not looking to build an empire. Instead, he’s looking to make an impact in the home services industry. He wants employees to think like owners, not just employees.  Jeffrey wants businesses of all sizes to have the necessary systems and processes in place for the company to run smoothly and successfully – even when the owner is gone!

Jeffrey does not want to just teach people either. He wants to show business owners how simple it is to look at things differently. He wants them to think about their business in a whole new way.  Most importantly, Jeffrey wants business owners to know – they don’t have to be shackled to the business 24/7 to succeed.

Intrigued? Listen to the full episode here.

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