DENNIS GEELEN show Notes Page

In this episode of the Fast Leader Show, Dennis Geelen shares his insights on the importance of customer-centric innovation and why you should apply it in your call center or business.

According to research, 75% of businesses don’t make it past year 15. Dennis Geelen believes that the cause for this is that companies are too inward-focused and too stubborn. In order for a call center or business to survive and thrive, they must become outward focused or customer-centric, and they must deal with their stubbornness by being innovative. Listen to this episode as Dennis Geelen shares more about customer-centric innovation.

CUSTOMER-CENTRIC INNOVATION

Dennis Geelen grew up in rural Ontario as the youngest of 3 boys and his parents, who were hard working honest people. Before retiring, his mother was a lifelong school teacher and his father worked in management in the agriculture service and supply industry.

Growing up, Dennis loved to play sports, mostly baseball and of course hockey (being from Canada). As the youngest of 3 boys, it meant he had to work extra hard to keep up with his older brothers Jim and Dave.

Early in his career, fresh out of school with his computer science degree, Dennis started out working in the software development world. Working for both major corporations as well as start-ups throughout his career gave him tremendous exposure to both best practices as well as innovative thinking.

Dave would eventually move into senior management roles where he honed his project management and strategic thinking skills. It was while in the position of Director of R&D and Professional Services at OpenText (the largest software development company in Canada) that he began to understand the need to combine a healthy balance of customer centricity and innovation in order to create a foundation for long-term business success.

This would eventually become the backbone of the services he would provide through his company Zero In and the inspiration behind the best-selling book The Zero In Formula.

Zero In’s mission is to help as many businesses become more customer centric and innovative as possible. Regardless of company size or the industry they operate in, whether through consulting engagements, workshops, speaking engagements, or the book, Dennis hopes to leave an impact by setting thousands of businesses up for long-term success.

Geelen currently resides in the small town of Lindsay, Ontario along with his wife Cindy with 3 kids, 2 cats, and 1 dog.

Tweetable Quotes and Mentions

Listen to @dennis_geelen get over the hump on the @FastLeaderShow – Click to Tweet

“The two reasons that 75% of businesses don’t make it past Year 15 is because they’re too inward-focused and too stubborn.” – Click to Tweet

“Being customer-centric and being innovative, when done in isolation, are not good, but when you put them together, they are amazing!” – Click to Tweet

“You don’t have to follow the script that society has laid out for everybody.” – Click to Tweet

Hump to Get Over

Throughout Dennis’ career, he was working in the R&D side of a particular company and was very innovation-minded. When he transferred to a different company, he became the director of professional services, working strictly with the customer. He was forced to see software from the customer’s eyes, and he spent several years purely on the customer-centric side of the fence. Eventually, he was promoted to become both the director of professional services and the director of R&D. There he realized that being customer-centric and innovative, when done in isolation, are not good. When you put them together, they are amazing!

Advice for others

You don’t have to follow the script that society has laid out for everybody.

Holding him back from being an even better leader

More self-awareness and working on things where he is not good at.

Best Leadership Advice

Know yourself to grow yourself.

Best tools in business or life

Communication skills.

Links and Resources

Dennis’ website: https://www.zero-in.ca/

Dennis’ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dennis-geelen-5a95703

Fast Leader Show on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/FastleaderNet

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Show Transcript

[expand title=”Click to access unedited transcript”]

Jim Rembach (00:00):
Okay, fast leader Legion today. I’m excited because we’re going to have somebody on the show today. Who’s going to give us some practical tools to help us with our customer centric innovation. Dennis Galen grew up in rural Ontario as the youngest of three boys and his parents who were hardworking, honest people before retiring. His mother was a lifelong schoolteacher and his father worked in management in the agricultural service and supply industry. Growing up, Dennis loved to play sports, mostly baseball. And of course, hockey being from Canada as the youngest of three boys and meant he had to work extra hard to keep up with the, his older brothers, Jim and Dave early in his career, fresh out of school with his computer science degree. Dennis started out working in the software development world, working for both major corporations, as well as startups throughout his career.
Jim Rembach (00:47):
He gave the gait and tremendous exposure to both best practices, as well as innovative thinking, Dennis would eventually move into senior management roles where he honed his project management and strategic thinking skills. It was while in the position of director of R and D and professional services at OpenText, that he began to understand the need to combine a healthy balance of customer centricity and innovation. In order to create a foundation for long-term business success, this would eventually become the backbone of the services he would provide through his company, zero in and the inspiration behind the best selling book. The zero in formula zero. His mission is to help as many businesses become more customer centric and innovative as possible, regardless of company size or the industry they operate in, whether through consulting, engagements, workshops, speaking engagements, or the book, Dennis helps to leave an impact by setting thousands by setting thousands of businesses up for longterm success. Galene currently resides in the small town of Lindsay, Ontario, along with his wife, Cindy, with three kids, cats and one dog, Dennis glean, are you ready to help us get over the hump? You bet. Now I’ve given my Legion a little bit about you, but if you could let us know what you’re going to help us solve today and how that affects the customer experience.
Dennis Geelen (02:11):
Yeah, well, today we’re going to be diving into customer centric innovation. First of all, what the heck is that? Why is it important? And then how does that improve your customer experience? So hopefully we’ll be able to, to dive into quite a bit of that today on the podcast,
Jim Rembach (02:26):
We have several models and frameworks and multiple tools and methods in order to help an organization go through that transformation. And one of the things that you’ve been talked about is that, you know, 75% of businesses fail, um, and that there’s a lot of questions as to why that happens. And then you have a customer centric innovation formula. That is the answer for that. So if you could, yeah,
Dennis Geelen (02:54):
Yeah, like you said, I’ve got lots of formulas and, and, and graphs and stuff in the book. I think, uh, roughly what it means is I’ve got a lot of opinions, but, uh, in my opinion, the reason, or the two reasons that seventy-five percent of businesses don’t make it past the year 15 is because of two major challenges or mistakes or temptations may be that they fall into one they’re too inward focused. Um, so let’s focus on ourselves, our product, our processes, you know, our revenue quarter, uh, quarterly revenue, um, and those things are important, but if that’s your main focus, you’ve got a problem. So that’s, that’s issue. Number one, the other major issue or challenge that I see is that they’re too stubborn, right. Too stuck in their ways. Um, it’s, uh, this is the way we’ve always done it. If it’s not broken, don’t fix it. So the antidote to those two challenges is, uh, you know, instead of being so inward focused, make sure you’re as outward focused as customer centric as possible. And then instead of being so stuck in your ways and complacent and know this is how we do it, be as innovative as possible. So you put those two together, you, you, you have customer centric innovation, which I believe needs to be the foundation of any business in order to survive longterm.
Jim Rembach (04:15):
No, as you’re talking, Dennis, I, I started thinking about, you know, pre COVID and postcode. So in other words, a lot, I’ve heard a lot of organizations saying, well, you know, we were thinking about doing this. And then when the whole COVID thing hit, we were forced into doing that. And, and so when I think about stubbornness and when I think about inward focus, I mean, we’re talking about behavior change and that we have to force, unfortunately, sometimes people to do or take a very different direction. So how, how often do people just willingly say, okay, we’re going to be less stubborn and we’re going to be less inward focused and we need to use these systems and formulas in order to make that happen.
Dennis Geelen (04:56):
I, I think by nature, none of us do, you know, human nature is to have, get into our comfort zones, get into our routines, get into, you know, this is how we do it. So that’s why I believe it’s so important that you have to build the foundation of your business on being the opposite. How do we intentionally put principles and practices in place to not allow us to go down that road? Because that’s where we are all, all headed eventually. Right. We find the comfort zone. So let’s be intentional to build our business model around making sure that we are intentionally customer centric and innovative.
Jim Rembach (05:30):
Okay. So then, alright, so let me flesh this out. So is what you’re saying that really, what we’re talking about is helping the growing organization not start implementing those bad behaviors, or are you talking about taking a legacy organization, transforming getting rid of it?
Dennis Geelen (05:51):
I would say both it’s much easier to do it from the beginning, obviously to form the habits. It’s much harder once you’ve had 10, 15 years of bad habits to transform. But, um, like you were saying a minute ago, a bunch of organizations found during COVID. They have to, so the ones that were already built that way were probably the ones that you’re seeing thriving through COVID they were already built to adjust. They are already in tune with, okay, the customer habits are changing. We change with it. Okay. We need to be flexible while we’re already been innovative. No problem. We already have a bunch of ideas in our back pocket. So the ones that we’re forced to change, probably all of a sudden fell three, six months behind if they survived at all. Right.
Jim Rembach (06:38):
I mean, that makes sense. So then I have to ask the question, do you suspect that because of, you know, having to go through that transition and I was forced to change my business, that it’s going to be easier for organizations to transform where they need to like, okay, well, we did it once we’ve gotten over that. We did get over that hump. So then yeah. Do it again.
Dennis Geelen (07:03):
I think, um, if you look at the word transform itself, that implies that you were something now you had to be something different. Um, if you are one of those organizations, that’s been around for 10, 15 years, and you’re not customer centric and you’re not innovative, I would argue, then you need to transform yourself to become customer centric and innovative, whatever that looks like. If you already are customer centric and innovative, the way you do business might change, but you’re not transforming your company. You’re already there. You’re already a customer centric, innovative company. You’re just, um, being intentional to stay up on things and, and be ahead of the curve.
Jim Rembach (07:42):
Okay. So then that leads me to think that, um, of course there are different organizations, they have different opportunities, they have different constraints. You have to think that the tools for those groups are going to be different. So in other words, I want to stain my customer centricity and I want to obtain my customer centricity.
Dennis Geelen (08:03):
Yes. Everybody’s at a different point in their journey and different strategies and tools don’t fit for every company. It could be like trying to put a square peg in a round hole, right. So where are you at? What are you doing? Well, how customer centric are you and what do you need to do to continue to be more customer centric that could be look very different for company a than company B. Right.
Jim Rembach (08:27):
Well, and I think, okay, so as we’re talking through this and you start looking at these different, you know, uh, organizational types, uh, you even created a tool to help identify that and you call it the quadrant. Please explain that.
Dennis Geelen (08:41):
Yeah. I believe that. Um, if you, if you look at these two things, customer centricity and innovation, and if you subscribe to my theory that long-term successful organizations have a healthy combination of both of those things. And I believe that’s true. If you look at any company that has thrived long-term over time, you dissect them. You’ll probably see, wow, they are extremely customer centric and innovative at the core. So this quadrant says, I imagine you have a horizontal axis and a vertical axis, right? And maybe on the horizontal axis, you’re measuring how customer centric is this company. And on the vertical axis, you’re measuring how innovative is this company, right? So if you look on the left and the bottom, they’re neither, they’re neither customer centric nor they’re innovative. So to me, they’re flying blind. They’re one of those ones. That’s not going to last let alone 15 years.
Dennis Geelen (09:36):
They’re not going to last two years, right? If they’re neither customer centric and are innovative, well, what are they? But then you look at well, what about the companies that are either, or if they’re innovative, highly innovative companies, but they’re not customer centric. Well, that’s, that’s an issue still, too. To me, that’s innovation for the sake of innovation, you could be flexible. You could be nimble. You could be creative. You could be coming up with all kinds of cool and neat ideas. But if they’re not customer centric ideas, if they’re not built on solving a problem and a need that’s out there, if you don’t understand who your customers are and why they buy things in there and their buying habits and your, your target demographics. Well, good luck selling any of this stuff. It might be cool, but it’s probably, if it even sells it all going to be just a fad because people don’t need that stuff.
Dennis Geelen (10:23):
Long-term right. So that’s the innovation for the innovate innovation for the sake of innovation quadrant. And then you’ve got these businesses that are highly customer centric, right? They know their customers, they have great customer service, right? They know their customers by name. Everybody loves doing business with this company, but they’re not innovative. Right? They do things the way they do things. And this is the way we’ve always done it. And this is our recipe for success. And if it’s not broken, don’t fix it. And why do we need to have new ideas? It’s always worked for us, right? If that’s the mentality there, eventually that customer centric company is going to lose their customers, to somebody who finds a new, better, more creative or innovative way of doing things. It’s just, that’s, what’s going to happen over time. But a lot of those companies, I think, fall into that quadrant because Hey, we found success here and it works. And it’s worked for five years or 10 years. But if you look back in history, any sector, any industry is eventually ripe for disruption. So you fall into that customer centric quadrant only you are setting yourself up for, at some point is going to come along and steal our customers. So to me, the, the fix is you need a healthy balance of both. We are customer centric and innovative, and we are intentional about those two things.
Jim Rembach (11:45):
Okay. So what I heard you say is that customer service is a slow road to death. Eventually. I mean,
Dennis Geelen (11:54):
If that’s your only focus, eventually you are going to get disrupted, right? It’s, it’s a great thing. And people love good customer service companies, but somebody is going to find a new and better way of serving them
Jim Rembach (12:07):
Eventually. Yeah, it does make sense. It’s harsh to hear and it’s harsh, but it is a reality because things do shift things do change. And just because I’m only focused on service and I’ve been doing it that well for a very long time, doesn’t mean that I’ll be around forever. And I think when you look at the studies associated with organizations and even say this about civilizations that they’re built to go extinct, it’s like, well, if you look at the S and P 519 70 versus today, how many of those companies are left? Right. And so it’s, you can’t keep doing the same thing. You just can’t. Yep. And I, and I saw, I get that even, like I said, even though it’s not nice to hear it because you think, Oh, customer services will kill you now. Well, yes and no. I mean, and so the quadrant really helps bring that to light. Yeah. I think, um, and this would apply for even those customer service organizations. You talk about finding the ideal client, the ideal customer, and there’s that, because I think there’s, um, a whole lot of less effort on both sides that has to take place. Also get an opportunity for more referrals to come out as a result of that. Talk about building a customer, um, the ultimate cost billing that ultimate customer experience by using a house, what kind of house do we need to use?
Dennis Geelen (13:32):
Right. So in the book, I refer to it as the CX house or the customer experience house. And really it’s because I believe there’s a foundation, there’s some pillars or walls, and then your customer experience, um, just kind of lays on top of that. So I can walk through this quickly, but I believe the foundation that has to be there. You cannot have a great customer experience if you don’t have this foundation already, and that is speed and accuracy, right? If you are not efficient with processing your customer transactions in a timely manner, good luck having a great customer experience, right. If you’re not accurate in your transactions, good luck having a great customer experience. So that is there just as your foundation, right? And if you do that and you do that well, that’s expected you haven’t delivered a great customer experience yet just by doing things efficiently and accurately, that’s expected.
Dennis Geelen (14:30):
So that’s the foundation that has to be there. No, don’t focus on all the bells and whistles. If you have problems with speed and accuracy, but if you’ve got that down, your foundation is laid. Now you’ve got three pillars that you really have to concentrate on to build this amazing customer experience. And I call it, um, well, the acronym would be spa spa. So S would be your services P would be your products and a, would be your atmosphere. How do you make sure that each of those resonate with your ideal customer, your services, your products and your atmosphere resonates. So obviously the key to that there is finding out who your ideal customer is first. So that’s why that’s so important. Who is my ideal customer. And for me, that’s, it resonates with them. And they’re valuable to me as an organization. Now, how do I design my services, products, and atmosphere to resonate with those people?
Jim Rembach (15:25):
Well, and I think it’s important to note that, you know, atmosphere is also virtual, right? Yes. I think that that is, you know, some, some internal brick and mortar type of situation, and we talk about
Dennis Geelen (15:37):
It can be, but it doesn’t have to be
Jim Rembach (15:39):
Exactly. And that’s where I think your frameworks and principles and, uh, and, and theories. And actually they’re, they’re validated with a lot of case studies that are in the book. Uh, I mean, are, are really a scenario that it can be applied regardless of the industry, regardless of geographic location.
Dennis Geelen (15:59):
Yeah. I think customer centric innovation is industry agnostic. It’s just any business. It doesn’t matter whether you’re small business, large business, a church, a school, a not-for-profit like whatever you do, building your foundation on being customer centric and innovative is going to be a great foundation to set you up for success.
Jim Rembach (16:21):
So with that, you know, talking specifically about innovation, you had mentioned that there’s five principles of innovation that, that organizations need to be able to implement. Those five principles are to understand your customers, question your assumptions and biases, implement diversity and inclusion, agile and develop prototypes pilots and MVPs, which is minimum viable products, get feedback and learn fast. So for me, when I look at this, it’s people would say it was common sense, so easy done, boom we’re there.
Dennis Geelen (16:58):
No, if it w if it was easily implemented, everybody would do it. And of course, it sounds good on paper. Sure. We have, we’ll do all those things. Well. How do you intentionally design your organization so that you are doing those things? That’s where it becomes a little trickier and that’s where people don’t usually need help.
Jim Rembach (17:17):
Okay. So talking about the need help. And I think about those five areas. I mean, I started coming to, to think that there’s an issue with the knowledge that we have about our organization and our competition. And I think you and I even had this kind of conversation about having that different set of eyes. Right. You know, what if I think about these five areas of innovation, where do you often find people are really struggling in regards to their own? Self-assessment it’s like, yeah. You, however, that’s not okay.
Dennis Geelen (17:53):
Yep. It’s funny because, um, I, as you mentioned, I’ve got this assessment tool that I use and, um, I encourage any business to fill it out. It’s free to do it on, on my zero in website, but it’s mandatory if you’re going to work with me because I want you to do a selfless self-assessment of your organization. And as many people fill it out as possible. So you get a little more objective view. If it’s just the senior leader himself or herself, filling it out, pretty biased. If it’s just, you know, just the leadership team, it’s still pretty biased. Let’s get 10, 15, 20 people filling out this assessment and let’s really see what people think. Um, but what I typically find is people generally do agree at the end. Yes, these are our strengths and yes, these are our areas of opportunity, but a lot of times they do surprise themselves just by the way, I asked the questions in the assessment. Oh, w w we weren’t even sure we should be doing that. Um, what does that look like? And then they obviously come to the realization themselves. We need help implementing this.
Jim Rembach (18:59):
So, as you’re saying that, oftentimes I, I would struggle with those, uh, those, those word assessments when there were the two words seem quite the same and you can’t be like, wait, wait a minute. Which one, what did that mean?
Dennis Geelen (19:11):
Yeah. Yeah. Hopefully the way the assessment is designed, it’s, it’s, it’s very specific. Do you do this in your company? Or how well do you do this? And it could be, Oh, we don’t do that at all. That’s a, that’s a very low score or yeah, we kind of do it, but not proactively. We kind of do it, you know, by accident or when we think we need it.
Jim Rembach (19:31):
Got it. So it’s more behavior based. So what are you seeing and what are you doing? What are you not doing now? You actually break that down into, um, a couple of different sections or segments. Um, those segments that it’s broken down into,
Dennis Geelen (19:46):
Uh, within the assessment, there’s a knowing your, your customers, how well do you know them? How well do you know who your ideal customer is? Um, do you have good innovation principles in place? Do you have good innovation practices in place? Um, is your purpose and direction of your company built around being outward focused or inward-focused? Um, so it really helps you look at different parts of your organization through some very specific questions to say, do we have these pieces of the zero wind formula in place in our organization already? Or, you know, do we, do we need some help there? Well, you know,
Jim Rembach (20:20):
And as you’re talking, I start, I start thinking about the stereotypes associated with people who are evil and people who aren’t nears. And, and when you start talking about the connection between the customer centricity and all of those processes and procedures and all of that, you know, how did that transition happen for you? How did that realization happened for you? To me, it had to happen for me to say, Oh, you know, I need to change, you know, my behavior and my thinking. Yeah.
Dennis Geelen (20:51):
It’s funny because, um, I guess in my corporate career, um, so I spent 20 some years working in different software companies. I started off on mostly the R and D side. And, and as a, you know, hands-on keyboard, software developer, right? So I was kind of innovation minded, how can I make this better? How can I make this cooler? How can I make this faster? How can I make this look nicer? Um, no real exposure to the customer, but it’s all from my own thinking, what do I think would be better? And of course, when you’re in the tech sector, you automatically think you’re innovative, right. Um, but that was where my brain was at. And then I, I took on a job at a startup company, still software, but I was now the director of professional services working strictly with the customer. I didn’t even work with the R and D team.
Dennis Geelen (21:43):
I didn’t work directly with our development and QA people anymore. I was the customer guy, and I was now forced to see software from the customer’s eyes. So now I spent several years purely on this customer centric side of the fence. And then at that same company, eventually I wore two hats. I was promoted to, to be both the director of professional services, as well as director of R and D. Now I was forced to be customer centric and innovative at the same time. And those two things when done in isolation are not good when you put them together. Now it’s amazing. So really had to rework our processes, our org structure, our key performance indicators, our goals, our metrics, so that we were being both customer centric and innovative. That was a light bulb moment for me in my corporate career, when it comes to zero in, uh, it took a while for me to have the light bulb go off and go, Hey, I need to be doing this too. This is my own company. Am I as zero in being as customer centric and innovative as I can and should be an early on the answer was no. And I had to make some drastic changes on how I was operating so that I was putting myself in that quadrant as well.
Jim Rembach (23:00):
I think that makes sense. I think we all have to go through that assessment to some degree, even when we start looking at just being an overall leader, right. I mean, we look at the areas of focus that we have from a performance perspective, from an engagement perspective from, I mean, all of those, you know, collaborative relationships, exp perspective, business acumen. I mean, all of those areas we have to continue to look at and check. So when I, when I start thinking about, you know, the work that you’ve done, zero and formula, um, you know, what are some of your goals and where do you want to go with this?
Dennis Geelen (23:33):
Yeah, well, I’ve always said my, my mission or my goal is to, is to help as many businesses as possible, become more customer centric and innovative both. Cause I think everybody needs to do that. So one way of delivering that was through the book. Okay. I can obviously reach a lot more people with a book than I can with just one-on-one consulting one, one company at a time. So the book is really allowing it to get out there and it’s, it’s great. I can see people and, you know, countries all over the world, purchasing the book and reaching out to me. Um, so that’s part of the goal being starting to, uh, be realized. Um, but the book itself is not going to be enough. It’s going to give you knowledge. It’s going to give you information, but how do you now practically implement these in your organization? So again, I can only work with so many companies at a time. So I’m now working on putting a course together, an online course, uh, that would go a lot deeper than the book does. Um, so people can have strategies and tools in place to implement the zero inform form of that within their business. So just another way of reaching as many businesses as possible.
Jim Rembach (24:39):
Well, for me, well, and the fast leader, Legion wishes you the very best. Now, before we move on, let’s get a quick word from our sponsor. An even better place to work is an easy solution that gives you a continuous diagnostic on employee engagement, along with integrated activities that will improve employee engagement and leadership skills in everyone. Using this award-winning solution is guaranteed to create motivated, productive, and loyal employees who have great work relationships with our colleagues and your customers to learn more about an even better place to work visit [inaudible] dot com forward slash better. Here we go. Fastly Legion. It’s time for the home. Oh, okay. Dennis, the hump they hold on as the part of our ship. You give us good insights fast. I’m going to ask several questions and okay. Robust yet rapid responses that are help us with onward and upward faster Dennis glean. Are you ready to go down? I’m ready. All right. So what is holding you back from being even better leader today? Ooh. Oh boy. Good. Fast answer to that one. I would say
Dennis Geelen (25:37):
More self-awareness and, and working on things where I know that’s not my strength or outsourcing it if I have to.
Jim Rembach (25:43):
And what is the best leadership advice you’ve ever received?
Dennis Geelen (25:48):
Probably you need to know yourself to grow yourself. A lot of times as a leader, you’re, you’re looking at how do I fix the people on my team, whereas, Hey, look inward first and work on yourself. That’s that’s gonna take you further than anything.
Jim Rembach (26:01):
And what do you feel is one of your best tools that helps you lead in business or life?
Dennis Geelen (26:06):
Probably communication skills. I’ve I’ve had so many people reach out to me and say, wow, you were in it and software. You know how to talk to people like that does that doesn’t compute most, most of the time software engineers are, are not, uh, not the greatest communicator. So that’s, that’s been a plus for me.
Jim Rembach (26:21):
And what would it be? One book you’d recommend to our Legion? It could be from any genre. Of course, we’re going to put a link to the zero in formula on your show notes page as well. Yeah.
Dennis Geelen (26:28):
I’m a big fan of Patrick Lencioni. Um, and just how he talks about leadership and teamwork. So the one book I would say from him, I’ve, I’ve read all of them. I think, um, the five dysfunctions of a team that won a lot of light bulb in that one for me.
Jim Rembach (26:44):
Okay. Fastly religion. You can find links to that. And other bonus information from today’s show, by going to fast leader.net/dennis Galene. Okay, Dennis, this is my last Humpday. Hold on question. Imagine you were given the opportunity to go back to the age 25. You can take the knowledge and skills that you have now back with you, but you can’t take it all. You can only choose one. So what skill or piece of knowledge would you take back with you and why?
Dennis Geelen (27:06):
Oh boy, uh, one skill or knowledge. I would say to know that, um, you don’t have to follow the script that society has laid out for everybody. You know, you go to school, you get a job, you buy a house, you get married, you have kids, you work nine to five for 40 years, and then you retire. That’s kind of, what’s expected. Um, now that I’m 45, I realized it doesn’t have to be like that. You, you can, you can write a different script. And at 25, I wish I had the, the knowledge and the guts to do that.
Jim Rembach (27:39):
Dennis, I had fun with you today. Can you please share with the fast leader Legion, how they can connect with you?
Dennis Geelen (27:44):
Sure. Yeah. Probably the best way is through LinkedIn. I’m very active there. So you can, you can find me on LinkedIn, follow me, connect with me. Or there’s the zero in website, www dot Zed, E R O dash I N. Dot CA
Jim Rembach (27:58):
Dennis Geelen. Thank you for sharing your knowledge and wisdom and helping us get over the hump.

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311: Dennis Geelen – Customer-Centric Innovation