Remember all of those naive resolutions we made this time last year as the new decade rolled in? Things like “eat less calories”, “drink less wine”, “travel the world more”. Well, 2020, we saw your cards and we’re not making those mistakes again! We’re meeting 2021 wiser, hardened and with enough sarcasm to weather whatever sh*tshorm this new year has in store.
This past month, we spent quality time looking back on the last year, writing PinPoint’s five, ten and fifteen year story as well as mapping out 2021’s steps towards making those dreams a reality. Not only was it a cathartic experience, but we left our retreat inspired, encouraged and ready to manifest our future. We’ll call that another ‘2020 excuse’ for an additional glass of wine…
But leading up to our founder’s retreat, we struggled finding frameworks that inspired us to escape from the day to day and actually sit down to dream. After tedious searching, scrolling and article parsing, we ended up crafting our vision setting framework leveraging pieces of famous processes out there in combination with a few of PinPoint’s own.
As believers in the power of mindshare, we want to save others out there looking to envision the future of their company the time Googling ‘how to lead a business goal strategy retreat that isn’t boring or cheesy. So here you go:
Take it, break it, make it your own. By no means do we believe this is the end all be all – there are many frameworks and systems out there that go into much more depth. But we do hope this agenda can serve the purpose of getting your ball rolling and identifying where more depth is needed. One learning for us was the value of having a neutral voice beyond your team to facilitate the process. We encourage you to lean on your peers or experts to play that role and if you are looking for one, we’d love to help! Share your thoughts, your questions, tips and learnings – you know where to reach us (ping@pinpointcollective.com).
We named ourselves PinPoint ‘Collective’, selfishly, to collaborate with some of the most talented and brilliant creatives out there. But more than that, we wanted to share our favorite makers & doers with our favorite clients.
We spent years curating this team – each thoughtfully chosen for their gifted skillset, their ability to turn research insights into action and for the unique perspective they bring to the table. We whole heartedly believe the more we can reflect the audience we design for, the more thoroughly we can solve the problems they have. That is what this Collective was made for. We come from different points of view, different backgrounds, and different sets of experiences – coming together to design the future of our world.
So, world, meet our Collective! We are excited to introduce you to each member more deeply because the world deserves to know these wonderful humans as much as we do. Until we can shake hands in 2021, virtually meet our Collective over the next several months through our Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/pinpointcollective/) and LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/pinpointcollective) channels. We can’t wait for you to get to know the extension of your team!
Looking for a way to geek out with this collective on what the future has in store? So are we! Reach out to ping@pinpointcollective.com and tell us what’s on your mind. We’re ready to hit the ground running.
Which probably brings you to the question – what’s with all the shoes? Well, we believe where we stand influences how we behave, so when our boots hit the ground, they do it on the soil of those we design for. Our feet are a reminder of that perspective & the purpose with which PinPoint was created. Let’s hit the ground together.
It’s hard to start this post without sounding cliche, because everything that can be said about 2020 being “unprecendented” has already been said. By journalists, by politicians, by podcast hosts, by your best friend’s sister’s boyfriend’s brother’s girlfriend who heard from this guy who knows this kid who’s going with a girl who saw Ferris pass out at 31 Flavors last night (guess it’s pretty serious). The point is, everyone has already written about 2020 being challenging.
But we wanted to write this anyway, because it’s helpful for us to share how we’re all getting through this, especially when it comes to small business owners keeping their businesses going. We welcome hearing how you and your business have adjusted to the insanity!
When March hit, and Covid first became a Real Problem here in America, we were just as caught offguard as everyone else (thanks in part to a woefully underprepared federal response, but that’s a whole different post). So, we decided to take a breath. After all, good decisions rarely happen as a reaction to fear or panic. We took a step back, and we did to ourselves what we do with our clients: we took on the challenge of identifying how PinPoint could evolve in this ‘new normal’.
In doing so, we noticed something: PinPoint, a year ago, was positioned as a company for anyone. Which is funny, because this is exactly what we advise our clients NOT to be. When your ideal client is everyone, you spread yourself too thin and can’t specialize in helping who you actually are most set up to serve. So, in an effort to get more targeted, we started talking to local business leaders – from Chicago to Milwaukee to St. Louis and Grand Rapids. And we discovered that the Midwest mentality is different than anywhere else out there: having Midwestern roots directly affects the way business owners run their businesses AND relate to their customers. So why not work with our likeminded Midwestern businesses? In the end, we applied our process to our process, and uncovered an opportunity to better help our neighbors. By narrowing our focus to the small & medium sized companies with roots like ours, we can cross-pollinate learnings that will keep the Midwest running and become stronger than ever. Which, in these “unprecented times” (sorry not sorry), is honestly more important than ever.
Why does this matter to you, dear reader? Well, design thinking studios like ours can really help brands thrive, which is incredibly important in these new strange times where the landscape feels vast and unknown. But almost all design thinking studios suffer a similar problem to the one we noticed in PinPoint: they are trying to be everything for everybody. Plus, the barrier of entry is costly, and the uncertainty if ideas will be relevant is unknown, so it can be a scary process to begin. That’s why we’re breaking down those barriers. We’re making human-centered design attainable for all the “below Fortune 1000s” of the world, and we’re sharing learnings across industry lines where it matters most – from a shared Midwest mentality that spans customers & business owners. When the whole world feels like it’s going off the rails, a good place to start putting it back together again is in your own community, and that’s what we’re most passionate about these days: helping our professional community grow and thrive.
Could you use some help getting your business back on track? Reach out to ping@pinpointcollective.com, and tell us a little bit more about yourself. We’d love to work with you, especially if you’re a neighbor (near or far). Together, we will get through this. That much we know. But it’s going to take organizing, some good old fashioned hard work, and maybe a few more Ferris Bueller references. Hang in there, folks. We can do this, as long as we do it together.
Having your own company is like having a kid – you pour your heart and soul into it, you spend all your money on it, you occasionally wonder if you should have named it that… To be fair, we don’t have kids but we assume that’s how it goes. Anyway, with a company, often we’ve found that when you start to consider redoing surface-level things like the logo or the business name, it’s a sign that you should dig a little deeper into your ‘why’.
Don’t get us wrong. A simple brand refresh on its own can be fun, and is one of our favorite things to do! We love good design, and helping our clients figure out their look and feel. But in many cases, wanting a new look can be a symptom of something bigger needing to shift. We found this to be the case with client Tom Van Lente’s TVL Culinary: a Chicago-based culinary team specializing in restaurant-quality catered events for families, friends, and professional groups. TVL Culinary had practically everything they needed: the talent, the drive, and the team were all in place. But they were having a little trouble locating their ideal client, and thought a brand refresh might help.
This isn’t a bad instinct. A lot of our clients come to us with similar requests: whether it’s a new logo, a new website, a new look for social… But what we uncovered from our conversations with Tom was that he wanted more clients, better clients, operational efficiencies and more exciting events to keep his work inspiring, fun and engaging. By applying our design thinking methods, we were able to identify an opportunity to shift TVL’s business model beyond ‘catering’ to something more dynamic. Using qualitative research and trends beyond the food & beverage space, we designed the “AirBnB Experiences” of a night in – making it easier to dream up each event, and far easier to make it come to life.
Once we made this important shift in the business model in phase one, we executed the updated brand identity, along with a website refresh and the new logo, in phase two. Through the combined strength of the new model and new look, within 48 hours of the launch bookings were up 4x what they had been the previous 3 months combined. Those results do a pretty good job of speaking for themselves, we think.
Are you trying to figure out how to get your company to the next level? Let us help! It’s hard to know exactly what you need until you really dive into the research, and that’s one of our favorite things to do. No company is too big or too small for us to get excited about, so reach out and say hello. We’ll be standing by at ping@pinpointcollective.com.
Love research? Not everyone does, but we do. And chances are since you’re here, you do, too. Learning more about a market segment and how to reach them with meaningful information is our version of a raging party. We have to admit, we haven’t been to very many ragers, but we imagine those two things are quite similar.
When it comes to research, many clients have the same initial question. Sure, we know you can do research for us, but what can I do with this research I’ve paid for in the past? As it turns out, if you like research like we do, you’ve probably already gathered some of your own.
Recently we had a big client come to us with this very concern. They had stacks upon stacks of very meticulous, very expensive research, gathered over time with the help of other companies. But they felt deflated, because they couldn’t see where it had gotten them (aside from slightly poorer). Luckily for this situation, here’s where we thrive. We took that research, and dove deeply into the heart of it.
What did we learn from this, you might ask?
They had defined a handful of customer personas and knew exactly how each of those customers engaged with their brand.
They had performed several qualitative interviews before launching their last newest product to influence its go-to-market strategy.
They had generated enough ideas to write an entire book for what to launch next.
However, despite all of this, they still had some very important questions, including:
Why were customers still going to their competitor?
Why wasn’t the newest product performing as expected?
And how do we even begin to prioritize this endless list of ideas to pursue next?
That’s where we helped out. We were able to take their existing research to inform answers to many of their questions, and pinpoint gaps so that we could quickly & effectively get fresh data to answer the remaining ones.
In short, having lots of research is never a bad thing, even when you feel like you don’t know what to do with it. All you need is a partner who can help you work through some design thinking methods to get from the oh no’s of a data dump to the ah ha’s of organized, actionable data that works for you and your company.
Do you have some old research you’d like made new again? Or do you just want to geek out together about design thinking? We’d love to chat about either! Schedule a chat or just email us at ping@pinpointcollective.com.
For those of you who know us, we come from very different backgrounds. Faith – an actor who spent more than half of her life “walking in other people’s shoes”. Stacy – an architect who learned she didn’t want to wear “an architect’s shoes” (the all black thing, it’s just too much). From the outside, we may look like the odd couple, but truth be told it’s our differing yet overlapping perspectives and passions that make PinPoint what it is today.
Where It All Began
The story began, not at a bar, but at one of the most prominent design thinking agencies in Chicago using human-centered research & design to improve the fortunes of the Fortune 500s. Faith was known for her innate ability to guide clients and her team through the art of connecting, researching and storytelling. Stacy was known for her talent to design a future not yet imagined driven by the research findings Faith and team were gathering. Our skills were not only complimentary, they were made for the other. One successful project led to another, followed by another, until we were essentially inseparable.
All that time together got us thinking. What if we could take some of the pain points we witnessed and turn them into PIN points? (Yes – that is actually where we got our name.) Our differing backgrounds crossed paths because of a simple, yet shared objective – get to know this world and the people in it so well that we couldn’t help but make an impact on their lives.
Learning From the Pain Points
As two women, born and raised in Chicago (ok, ok, transparency is at our core, Stacy was in the suburbs – but close enough) the dream was to evolve the design thinking principles we had developed for Fortune 500s and make them accessible for people like us who truly needed them – small & medium sized business leaders who gave up everything to make the world a better place. So what was the first thing we did? We applied our process to ourselves and learned other business owners, like us, had core needs:
They wanted to truly improve the lives of their customers
They wanted their company & teams to be successful for years to come
Cost of ‘entry’ into a design-thinking was thought of as ‘out of reach’ & only accessible to aspirational brands with aspirational budgets
If they did pursue, they were left with inactionable research and a deck that sat on a desk for years
Designing the Pin Points
So what did we do? We turned every one of those pain points into (yes, you guessed it) pin points.
We communicated like real people – no fancy language for fancy-sake
We developed a model that met leaders no matter their business was at
We created a pricing strategy that was fair, transparent, and most importantly simple
We not only identified the right thing to do, but we gathered our Collective of designers to make sure we would execute things right
And here we are today, co-founders of the only design thinking studio for small & medium B2C companies. Not a day goes by that we couldn’t be more grateful for this journey, to be able to work with people who want to make a difference in the world. Although our stories started in very different shoes, we are grateful every day that they intersected and gave us the confidence to take the biggest risk of our lives. That risk, as big as it was, has been worth every moment of reward knowing we get to impact those who need it the most.
Want to learn more about our story or how design thinking can solve similar pain points for your company? We’d love to chat about either! Schedule a chat or email us at ping@pinpointcollective.com.
Want More Customer Loyalty? Start With Design Thinking.
Let’s be real: we ask ourselves this question daily, both for our clients and for ourselves. Why? Because having loyal customers means waking up everyday without that pit in your stomach. It means having more reliable profit and being able to grow your business, stability and freedom. And who doesn’t want that?!
While we all wish there was a red Easy Button that magically granted us infinite customers purchasing infinitely, the truth is that button was nothing more than a piece of plastic marketing with an ROI far less than its alleged value of $9.99.
What DOES exist is a process – “design thinking” – that (drumroll please) we built our collective around to attract the most loyal, repeat customers you could ask for. And better yet, it doesn’t take an ounce of magic. Just a little empathy.
When empathy is lost, your customer is another’s to gain.
Story time! We recently found ourselves a customer faced with a choice. To remain an existing client, or leave a company altogether, for a direct competitor no less. Spoiler alert: we left. This loss was preventable for our original vendor that, given the right approach, could have secured or even deepened our customer commitment. In the end, their competition earned our business with ease. What did the Competitor do differently? Simple: they listened. Ah ha…
Rewind to two years ago, when we were searching for PinPoint’s first data storage provider. The company we initially chose kicked off the relationship by coming to our office, meeting face-to-face, showing us their product, and providing a team of engineers to get us set up and off to the races. However, what seemed like a personable and valuable partner soon revealed itself to be a time-consuming, greedy vendor. The final straw came when we reached out to expand our storage capacity. Two emails back and forth led to an invoice. We were being charged for asking if we could pay them more money.
The reason this gets under our skin is simple: as consumers, our last best experience informs our expectations moving forward. In comparison, when we recently had an issue with our Amazon Prime membership, not only was it fully taken care of with an online chat, we also received a discount for the hassle. That type of service is what we all expect at minimum now.
And as human-centered designers, we also recognize the ease with which these types of situations can be circumvented altogether, resulting in a superior customer experience that ensures customer loyalty, retention or even furthers our financial commitment.
The moral: loyalty (or disloyalty) is determined by business design.
So what did the data storage competitor get right? Well, they know many of their target customers often start their data services with their competition and later choose to switch. They know prospective customers are fed up with price gouging. They know new customers are nervous about the time and effort it will take to transfer their existing data. And so they designed their service, their pricing model and their offering with every one of these pain points in mind. They did what we as human-centered designers do:
Specified the demographics of their ideal data customer
Identified the purchasing habits of those customers beyond data storage
Learned what those customers’ “last best experience” is and continue to uphold that standard
Deeply analyzed the competitive landscape in the data storage industry
Determined the gap that needed to be filled
And the important thing about these steps is that any business, including our original vendor, can accomplish all of this as well — they simply hadn’t yet. All it takes is a little design thinking and the determination to reevaluate how to better serve customers with ease.
It will come as no surprise that our new provider holds the second largest market share in their industry. Design thinking is what defines their product, their service, their marketing and their overall customer experience. Long story short, we love them as customers AND as design thinking nerds.
Are you gaining, maintaining or losing customer loyalty?
When a customer base begins to stagnate or shift, it’s important to start with empathy to understand what has changed before you can turn the tides in your favor. That’s the heart of design thinking — a process by which you can better define the relationship between your business, the customer and all points in between.
If you are asking how your company can gain more loyal, repeat customers or are interested in learning more about design thinking, please reach out to us at ping@pinpointcollective.com or schedule a virtual coffee to catch up!
Today we celebrate (albeit apart), with a glass of wine & donut in hand, two full years since PinPoint’s creation.
To say our first 24 months of business has been a rollercoaster would be an understatement of epic proportions (we find ourselves grappling with a global pandemic – just to list one of the many crises our world is facing at this very moment.), but we are grateful to say they are some of the most rewarding, inspirational and enthralling two years of our lives.
So we take a moment to reflect backwards and project forward some of PinPoint’s learnings with our friends, family, collaborators, clients & future partners.
Reflecting Backwards
A year ago today, we shared 12 learnings (one per month) from our first year of business. We didn’t stop there. We used those learnings in year two to progress even further, and this is how:
RETURN TO WHY – At the core of our “why”, the PinPoint model was designed to make meaningful, powerful, and accelerated change in this world. As we wrap up year two, over 88 pins have done just that. But we know we can do more. So we looked back on the most successful pins, and equally so the least successful ones, and found an opportunity to evolve our pins. Welcome in the new twelve!
REMAIN EMPATHETIC – Doing qualitative research allows us to meet some of the most inspiring humans on this planet. One of the most memorable of this past year was a dentist out of Phoenix. As a black female, her undergrad counselor told her she’d never get into dental school, she “then never met another African American dentist that looked like me until I was 20”. This harsh reality fueled her to become a practicing dentist in underserved populations to inspire others like herself. This story, and countless others are why we wake up & innovate. Every. Day.
TRUE COLLABORATION – In year one, we learned the power of surrounding ourselves with people smarter than us. In year two, we made a system for that. We named ourselves PinPoint Collective to be just that, a curated group of honest and hardworking creators that worked together in true collaboration. Our collective is evolving, growing & becoming even more of a powerhouse in our industry – get ready!
LEARN FROM ALL – One of our greatest strengths of year one was taking shared learnings across industry lines. Year two brought even more of that – showing how research for one client directly impacts the next. Working with TVL Culinary (evolution coming soon), we identified how their target customer defined a ‘mid-life crisis’. What was once purchasing a red Ferrari, is now renovating their kitchen into a chef’s dream. Now lean into our work with HeyDay Homes (evolution also coming), a local real estate team, who shared that same target buyer. Our work across industry lines led to innovative solutions for each of their business models to benefit from.
WORK HARDER – At the end of year one, we gave gratitude for hustling harder than the day before to impact the lives of others. In year two, we took that to a new level amid a pandemic. Pins for Purpose allowed us to support clients when they needed design thinking most. To those who believed in us, even when times were tough, we thank you and commend you for investing in your business.
CELEBRATE THE WINS – We admit, we can do better at this one (more wine, please?)! But we’ll start by sharing some of the incredibly thoughtful sentiments of our clients, each a major win in our eyes:
“Notably, their comprehensive interviews with numerous clinicians, prosthesis users, and technologists have exposed findings that may influence what we collectively do as a field and how we advance solutions for all stakeholders.” – CEO, Coapt Engineering
“I can’t thank you enough for believing in this project and being part of this exciting journey with me.” – Executive Director, Highwood Public Library
“Thank you again… I really appreciate all the work you guys have put into this. The info you provided gets me one step closer to getting this accomplished.” – Managing Partner, Columbia Street Roastery
“Can’t thank the lovely and talented women @pinpointcollective for the creativity, positivity and pure love of the game!!” Founder, TVL Culinary
Projecting Forward
Enough looking back, let’s manifest our future! Year three has a lot to live up to, but we’re not letting that hold us back. Year three… we’re coming for you:
MAKE OUR CLIENTS THOUGHT LEADERS – Nothing makes us prouder than seeing our clients rewarded for disrupting their industry. They are experts in their field, but our role is to bring that to the forefront. Through our process, we will continue to put our clients first and champion them to greatness within their team, organization and industry at large.
IMPACT SMALL BUSINESSES – When we started PinPoint, one of our core principles was the belief that small to medium size businesses would and should benefit from design thinking methodologies. We vow to continue to find ways to make this feasible. Because although in others’ eyes they may be “smaller”, in our eyes they are the ones doing big things by shaking up industries and impacting the world in large ways.
DESIGN THINKING EQUALS ROI – We remain steadfast about the importance of design thinking, because it has proven measurable ROI. We will continue to be fueled by bringing outputs that are viable for our clients. Whether our clients speak in ROI, KPIs, projections, investments or just plain dollars & cents, we can’t wait to blow those metrics away.
STRATEGIC ROADMAP – Our client’s greatest ROI comes when research & strategy is implemented into impactful touchpoints – beit a new offering, revenue stream, website or physical space. So we’re promising to make it even easier, cost effective and efficient to bring the defined strategic roadmap to life through fully designed & implemented outputs.
GROW THE TEAM – Which leads us to growing our team. We are dedicated to expanding our collective of experts so that, together, we can evolve, grow & learn from each other to ideate concepts the world can’t live without.
EXPAND INDUSTRIES – There are a few industries we have on our radar that we can’t wait to tap into 1) because they excite and inspire us and 2) because we are confident our research will greatly impact their industry, as well as knowing their learnings will influence our current clients – it’s a win/win all around. Cannabis might be at the top of the list… introductions welcomed!
We are beyond excited to enter year three! We cannot wait to see our current client’s work come to life, meet the future clients we don’t yet know, grow the relationships with our collective and continue making an impact in the world.
– Faith & Stacy, Co-Founders of PinPoint Collective
This week, we celebrate our one-year anniversary of PinPoint Collective.
It has been a year full of achievement, challenges, successes, roadblocks – but most importantly learnings that will continue to push and grow both our business and ourselves. This anniversary, we took time to reflect on our top 12 learnings (one per month) that we hope can inspire us or others into the next 12.
ALWAYS GRATEFUL – a theme that will continue, but starting first and foremost with gratitude towards those who took the first chances on us. Forever and always, thank you.
RETURN TO WHY – at our onset, we developed PinPoint’s “why” – to make a meaningful impact in the world. We are grateful for coming back to this “why” in helping make every decision the right decision.
REMAIN EMPATHETIC – thank you to our many research participants who have opened up in times of vulnerability to share their experiences and enabled us to design a better future.
STAY FOCUSED – we are grateful for outside forces, beyond our control, pushing our limits and teaching us to stay consistent, poised and focused. It’s this focus that has taught us how strong we truly are.
LOOK FORWARD – remain constantly curious, whether looking inward or beyond ourselves. We are inspired by what is to come.
TRUE COLLABORATION – by surrounding ourselves with people smarter than us and their individual expertise the work has always gone further.
CELEBRATE THE WINS – from large business wins to small personal gains, we are thankful we took the time to celebrate our wins. Everyone needs & deserves them.
SAY “YES” – on even the most tiring of days, we have learned to say yes. We are grateful to those yes-es – they have taken us to places we wouldn’t have otherwise been.
LEARN FROM ALL – we recognized humans interaction is different today than even 5 years ago. We appreciate that we have the ability to share learnings across industry lines to impact human life as a cohesive whole.
SUPPORT IS VITAL – thank you to all of our friends and family for the outpouring of consistent support & guidance we have received. It means we never stand alone.
STAY HUMBLE – we acknowledge that we have and will continue to make mistakes. However, each mistake has empowered our growth and has only changed us for the better.
WORK HARDER – we have gratitude for showing up everyday and hustling harder than the day before. Because of this, we are manifesting our own futures and impacting the lives of others.
