From Chocolate to Wine – Business Turnaround Secrets – Joe Fisch EP84

Joe Fisch: How to Turnaround a Failing Business into a Thriving Business

How do you turnaround a failing business into a thriving business? How about improving the customer experience and adopting a great team strategy? Gaining back the trust of your customers by putting them first is a great way to turnaround a business.

In this episode of the Page One Podcast, Luke Peters speaks with Joe Fisch on how he and his team turned around Wine Access to a trusted brand. Joe is the CEO of Wine Access, a leading direct-to-consumer online wine retailer offering exclusive curated wines from around the world. He’s the former Vice President of Finance and Administration in the same company and has a background in finance, having served in other organizations.

Listen in to learn the importance of focusing on a customer experience strategy when turning around a company. You will also learn the importance of having great personal and professional support to perform at your best as a leader.

Key Takeaways:

• How to transform a failing business into a successful one by focusing on pain points and customer experience.
• The importance of having a great management team to help the business move in the right way.
• How to let go of control as a leader and trust your team to utilize their expertise.

Episode Timeline:

• [2:44] Joe explains how they source the best wine bottles in the world and market through storytelling.
• [5:08] He talks about their team size and their KPIs which are focused on customer experience.
• [8:09] How they shifted their focus to the customer experience at Wine Access after losing their business pillars for 2 years.
• [12:21] How he improved their wine supply by hiring right to make the process smooth.
• [14:37] How they improved the website by focusing on the pain points and upgrading the user experience.
• [16:37] The value of a great team in changing and driving the business forward.
• [18:00] Joe explains how they used their past failures to customers to straighten things out.
• [20:46] The importance of having personal and professional support to help you perform excellently as a leader.
• [23:09] How they’ve been taking more swings to encourage growth without unrealistic expectations.
• [24:53] The infrastructure challenge plus the tools they’re using to help improve operations.
• [27:00] The tools and products they use to manage the financial side of the business.
• [28:08] How Joe transitioned from financial language to understanding all departments’ languages.
• [30:55] Why you should spend more time with people to give you ideas on how to improve your business.
• [32:06] Joe advises maintaining the culture of not getting too high or getting too low.

Quotes:

1. “We’re going to be hyper-focused on what really drives the customer experience and anything that’s not really in that realm we’re going to push aside.”- Joe [11:12]