Jill Grammer Interview --

I have to tell you that Jill motivates me with her "can do" attitude and her grass roots beginnings. My recorder "hiccupped" for some reason during our interview, so this is only part of our interview -.

Kathy: You started this business right?
Jill: Yes. And the one sister that you just saw walk in, she’s my youngest sister, little sister; she was my first employee and so then I hired another sister and my mother worked with me for many years until she passed away.

K: How did you start out? Did you start in your home? What was the business concept? How did it evolve?
J: Actually I probably first, I think technically the story goes that I started in my home; but truly I have to take a step back behind to my mother’s office; I actually started in my apartment where my washer and dryer would have gone, if I’d had one and I operated in my kitchen. I stayed in the four plex and then just went my apartment and then finally got an office I actually got out of my home environment and then when the bedroom that was an office got maxed out; my sisters office was the kitchen table, that’s when we started realizing that we could use more space
K: So you were gathering and selling mailing lists?
J: Gathering – they were actually other people’s; it wasn’t something that we were actually compiling; we would go and find companies that had databases that they wanted to manage; it was their data and we would just kind of rent it out and be their representative and they would contact us. Or if a company wanted to go out and find potential customers, we would help them
K: A lot of people start mailing lists, buying lists from government agencies but you went to the private sector, right?
J: Yes the private sector with the understanding that the private sector is also the public sector; there’s a lot of private companies that go to the public lists and build large databases; so it’s a little bit of both but mostly it’s in the private area
K: And you compensate the companies
J: Right, they get; there’s a rental for the data
K: How many hours do you work a week?
J: I have other businesses
K: Other people or your own?
J: For myself,
K: It said in here you were a “serial entrepreneur” I like that. What kind of other businesses are you involved in?
J: We have garbage, we do construction removal on construction sites and then we also have properties; so we just kind of tried to diversify [recorder hiccup; this may have transcribed weird--but I think it's the "gist" of it....KM]
K: So you buy into other companies that you think have potential?
J: Yes, in those ways, yeah; and I’m writing my book and that is
K: I saw that; that’s exciting; so do you have a title yet
J: The first name we came up with is “ “ While I know from a marketing standpoint, that sells books at the same time my story in my book, I really try to focus on the bigger picture. [major hiccup here - and the name of that book was so cool; maybe if Jill reads this she will fill us in; it was just temporary name until it's finished and somebody comes up with the final name]
..... also I talk to the reader a fair amount of my book identifying what is success and that you can’t just look at one piece of it.
If you were looking at retiring, it can be very troubling, try to identify the bigger relationships that I have ...; I’m able to employ my family, that makes me really happy – It’s where we find our dreams individually; the walls we put up, we need to knock them down; now there is great opportunity... I want to dispel all of those myths; the time is now, it is right now; during crisis.

I was raised to always do something to bring in some money, always. There was never a time that we were not contributing in some way and I talk about this story ; father would bring product home from his company, we would sell them door to door or hold a sale in the parking lot; [major recorder hiccups here too; sorry; again, very cool story that was interrupted]
Lot of opportunity for women – they can be part of the solution;

K: So your book is directed particularly to women?
J: I would say that some of the concepts would apply to both men and women, but it is focused toward women mostly

K: Women have different perspectives, challenges
J: Absolutely

......Abusive relationship; I got out with my life basically; wrapped up in it
People look at me and say how on earth did this happen to you? I was in therapy and counseling all through my divorce so that I didn’t repeat the same pattern; I did not want [to repeat..]; my therapist would say go talk to these women who are in these situations; they want to categorize themselves a certain category of women;[therapist would say] I want them to see you; you tell them that is all women, it is all categories not just a couple over here and it’s true, it’s very true;
[Jill is explaining that women of all walks of life, in any situation at all, can be victims of abuse; no one is immune; no one should be ashamed-KM]
K: It feeds to the idea that they deserved it
J: I went through therapy and learned why it was happening, why I accepted it and once I recognized it, I realized I needed to work on Jill; I’m a human being, you don’t deserve it, it’s not your fault;

K: Is there a group locally?
J: There’s a bunch of little ones but not really a big group; there’s one called the chain breakers

K: So you work with a cancer organization as well?
J: My mother died of breast cancer; my goal, my foundation...; it’s not structurally complete yet; it’s going to be a place for the family to be supported once they have been diagnosed with terminal cancer. She got diagnosed and died six months later and it was like we’d been hit by a train and there wasn’t time to even know what was happening to us. Realizing that there are just no places to talk about it – have a place to have resources to understand what’s going on

K: A support group?
J: A support group

K: Really? There are none?
J: There are none. There are groups that you can go meet like around table through some of the cancer centers but really, there isn’t that much support until you get to the Hospice, then there’s cancer in the body tissue so it’s everywhere, they have more services; but as far as any kind of in house help; stories of what people have been through ; stories of treatment; treatment stories that have been positive, treatment stories that haven’t been positive; all of that;

K: I think you will be very successful with that; that’s definitely a need.
J: I believe that not only needs to be met; if you don’t have the relationship

[Re: Hiring people to work for her...KM]; don’t want them to be resentful and hate coming to work; relationships and balance; as a mom I have two little girls 4 and 6 with my 2nd husband; I was pregnant with my other employees, I was ten years older than they were ; me as a boss understanding; I understood; you’re not making them feel like they have to work more than they can; those things are important [hiccup, hiccup, hiccup throughout this section-KM]

K: What are the 3 Cs in your book - [see bottom of this blog entry/Jill's own words]Looking confident and speaking confidently is 99% of the battle;
K: If you believe in yourself
S: Absolutely ; and I’ve been in some meetings with CEOs you have to got to recognize that you are nervous but you’ve got to recognize the nervousness, recognize what you’re dealing with and that is the confidence that people need to see ; now walking into a business meeting, you want this account and you come in walking slowly slouching in your seat; what is that telling these people? People are now making an opinion about you; these guys want you on their team; when you think about the team you think about contributing to this team; is confidence about walking in, getting in, having a great conversation, being a contributor; in many ways the presentation of who you are can be your first step in the door. In incorporate them not only into my business but in my personal life too

K: With the technology these days, how has that changed; how does that affect your business now? What’s the most important to you:

J: Technology – we’ve evolved into a successful technology company; my abilities, my knowledge but at the same time – when technology evolved, if I had not evolved with it, my business would have been dead; developed their own software; talking to their clients; large databases; years ago I never even touched data, I didn’t have the ability to touch it: only dealt with the customers; I couldn’t do anything with the data if I wanted to; I was just the director of traffic, go here, go there; eventually the clients said the campaign is in Australia, so we had to figure out how to get them what they needed, how to build the software and identify and determine it’s availability;

K: So you had to have employees that could actually write software.
J: Write software and build the system;

That’s our competitive edge in the industry is our technology;

K: It’s not an out of the box kind of software that every mailing list company can have.
J; As it relates to Utah county, we have lots of resources here because of the large number of software companies that have been located here and as some left the area, many of their people who developed their software decided to stay here; so we have a great wealth of software engineers here. The business would not be alive today without that.

K: How are your customers finding you? How important is your website:
J: We have a lot of word of mouth because we specialize; we don’t deliver products online; our website is more of a billboard; our products are unique and have to be created on demand;

K: Marketing strategies to share?
J: In the beginning [I was reading the]“gorilla marketing” book – I needed to rent data; I needed sizeable (25,000 records) lists; bought all these publications; gourmet foods, crafts & notions magazines, I understood that industry; they sent out newsletters; I understood this customer; I was the consumer here; I went through the magazines and I sent out a letter to 30 companies that were selling quilting, or gourmet food and I got their data and one was a toll painting, decorative painting company but they were very unique; so these kind of methods didn’t cost me a ton of money but what I did ;..... When I wrote the letter, I have the original letter, it wasn’t the best letter but it was effective; I wrote I want to manage your data, I know there’s a lot of quilters and in a month; there was this company who was struggling financially and I was able to help them earn an extra $1000 a month

J: I would get a percentage of whatever money I would make her; they were thrilled; they could control what they shared

J: People look at list rental and they say “oooh” you’re selling my name, you know, we are but you know what? There’s a lot of good that comes from it; now are you a quilter and you receive a catalog with products in it that you might not be able to get if you live on the outskirts of town, you’re not; you actually appreciate it; at some point if you do become offended by it, let me know and [I take you off the list]

J: It doesn’t mean just one phone call, it means you may call them once a month for six months; following up with a letter; eventually they will take your phone call; that’s what you have to keep doing

K: Are you still specialized or can anybody call you for a list?
J: Yes, we can provide pretty much anything; we’re also going to give them some marketing advice too; you know because for me when their business is going really well, that is satisfying to me; every once in awhile, we don’t have a list but we need to put something at the top of our white paper “the top ten craziest list requests” but we need to keep it PG because I know some of them are out there.

The following are some written responses that Jill was kind enough to provide prior to our meeting:

1 –Jill is Director of American Name Services
Tell us about your organization –
American Name Services is a full service mailing list and data processing company.
When I began 13 years ago I was primarily an advertising service provider focusing on selling data. Today we are a technology resource that manages databases of all shapes and sizes. We also, train many companies on data management efficiencies and implementation.
How long have you been there? What are your responsibilities?
The company was founded in 1995. My main responsibilities is to stay abreast of the direct mail advertising industry and keep my clients on the cutting edge of this advertising medium. I am involved in guiding the innovation in our technology that keeps us competitive and consistently adding value to our services.
Do you belong to any professional associations?
I have been a member of the Direct Marketing Association and NAWBO for over ten years.
How did you get to this point in your career?

Can you share some suggestions for marketing/sales strategies with our readers?
Target your customers. Learn and study who your most potential customer is and then go out and find those people or businesses. When you can target your audience you can minimize the shot gun approach which sprays advertising dollars in directions that are not applicable. Create a dominant presence in a small locale first then grow from there.
2—Personal background
Where are you from? What brought you here? Family?
I was raised in southern California but graduated High School in Orem.
What do you want people to know about you? How would you describe yourself?
I am a serial entrepreneur. I love to be on the ground floor of business creations, which I feel I am doing almost every day. I am highly energetic and passionate about life and all the opportunities that are right within our reach.
3 – Insights
What do you think is necessary for success?
I am writing a book about this s you will have to wait for the 250 page answer to this question. But I will say:
My three components to success—the three “C” ‘s are Communication, Consistency and confidence. These three components are critical to incorporate into your life for maximum success and happiness
How does success in the home compare to success in business?
They are really one in the same. Success in either place builds confidence that will continue to build within you exponentially. Being a great Mom helps me to be a great Boss, I wear both titles proudly.
How do you relax/renew?
I travel and Golf
Why did you get into sales & Marketing? Does it take a certain type of “personality”?
Sales and marketing takes quite a bit of creativity. But my personality is not entirely creative. I am very ananytical and I know that the combination of these two has contributed to my long term success and my clients. We must be result oriented. You cannot get emotional about a creative direction if it does not deliver the response.