What We're About

After decades in a variety of service and marketing-related industries, striving to stand for quality customer service and the best interest of the customer, I grew tired of big corporations and marketers putting their own demands for profits before the interest of the customer. Putting up an image of providing some benefit to the customer, while manipulating marketing tactics and inflating their own profits.

So I decided to build a business based on different principles. I decided I wanted to help small businesses that do great work provide that great work to more people.

We look for businesses that do great work, but don't show up on Google like they should. We're looking for the kind of owner who's committed to what he believes is right. And what he believes is right is hard work, and doin' it right. Every job. Whether anybody's watching or not.

We developed a model that utilizes the power of AI to take the time-consuming, day-to-day tasks of business off the plate, along with the details that distract from the real work. It develops new ways to create new sales opportunities, while focusing on excellent customer experience. Without asking the business owner to buy some new-fangled software system that he has to learn how to use.

My story

I grew up working in retail. At my small, rural hometown drugstore, before I was even a teenager. I didn’t like my boss very much. He was a bit of a hardass. But I did learn a little about what a good work ethic should be, even if I wasn’t such a good example as a teenager. When I got a little older, as a young man, I found myself in retail again, learning some hard lessons about life. It was a time that stereo and TV were evolving into digital technology and home theater. I thought I was good at what I did. I knew the technology. I knew the equipment. I was good at helping people choose equipment that was suited for their needs and designing a great system. What I was not so good at, was getting people to buy things. So, the hard lessons I learned were, even if I was good at helping people find what they needed, if I didn’t make sales, I didn’t get paid.

For a while, as I got a little older, I tried to find other ways to get paid, like driving for a delivery service. I found out about working long hours for not much return. And things like being treated as an undesirable, not allowed inside the front of the big fancy office buildings, but, go around back at the delivery entrance. For a number of years, I did part time assignments for mystery shop companies. The folks that go into a business and pretend to be a customer, while secretly evaluating the performance of the staff. Over time, I developed a strong sense of what is good quality customer service, and what’s not. I developed a sense of what is good service from the perspective of the customer experience. I also developed a recognition that much of the survey report contents asked on the questionnaire that I was required to answer, had little to do with the customer experience. Often, the questions were about whether the staff were abiding to certain behaviors, designed by someone in an office somewhere, who had no real sense of what the customer experience was. And, often, the questions had very little to do, with actually providing a real quality experience for the customer. In other words, I learned, that these mystery shopper services were made up by some marketer, that sold a program to the business, about quality customer service, which was not relevant to the customer’s actual experience.

Then some time later, as I got older, I found myself in retail again, at a large regional supermarket chain owned by a national corporation, for the last ten years before I retired. For the first several years, I stocked groceries. I tried to live by a principle of do good work. Do it right. Thinking (naively) that doing a good job, doing things right, would earn appreciation, and respect. I did not find that to be the case. I found that the company priorities were more about doing more faster, rather than accuracy and quality. And, during the last five years or so, I moved into customer service, because my personality style was about customer service, provide good customer service. So, I ended up as the self-checkout attendant. I took pride in standing in quality service for the customer. I learned the complicated checkout system back and forth, and was determined to provide the service that best served the customer’s needs. Again, thinking that devotion to quality work, would result in honor and appreciation. However, I eventually found that not to be the case. I found that the company’s priorities and the best interest of the customer were not aligned. In fact, were often opposed. Which I struggled with. And, eventually left because of the fundamental difference of principles.

As I began considering the idea of forming a business based on providing services to small businesses, I became determined to provide services based on the principles of offering the best possible services, and helping small businesses provide the best service experience to their customers. Which then becomes a service to the best interest of all concerned, and a principle of prosperity.

Gary Brookins
Starlight Advantage

starlightadvantage.com