Matt Cranney

Welcome back to another episode of Fast Break, where leaders share the plays that drive clarity, alignment, and impact in today’s rapidly changing business world. And since we’re celebrating Small Business Month here at M3, we’re diving into one of the most powerful differentiators any business, big or small, can leverage right now. In a world being reshaped at record speed by AI, automation, and technology, what is it that gives you an edge?

We believe part of that answer is creating rare experiences for your customers. And there is nobody better to break down that idea than today’s guest. He’s the president and CEO of Vortex Optics, one of the most respected brands in the outdoor industry, and the driving force behind a philosophy that’s become a gold standard in customer loyalty and brand experience. They define it as care, C-A-R-E. “Creating a Rare Experience”. I am so privileged to have Joe Hamilton here with us. Joe, welcome back to Fast Break.

01:06 Joe Hamilton

Yeah, well, thanks for having me back. I’m excited to be here. That was one heck of an intro, and so I will do my best to live up to at least half of that.

01:13 Matt Cranney

We’re thrilled, Joe. And again, maybe before we even kind of dive into deep, you know, too deep of the subject we’ve got, let’s kick it off with the origin story. Obviously, Vortex is known for its quality products but I would say you’re equally known, maybe even more known for your customer experience. You took something that most companies treat as a cost center and turned it into a competitive superpower. So take us back. Where did care come from and what does create a rare experience really mean to you and the team at Vortex?

01:45 Joe Hamilton

Yeah, so I’ll try to do somewhat of the origin relatively quickly because I know I could probably go on and on, but my dad used to be a dentist, okay? And roughly over the first 10 years of being a dentist, he discovered he really did not like being a dentist, okay? And so he and my mom and the three older boys, me and my two brothers, and then we’d have a, they’d have a fourth. They frequented a bird store called Wild Birds Unlimited in Indiana. Long story long, my mom liked to get products and put them in the backyard bird feeding. And so my dad didn’t know it at the time, but ended up being the const of an entrepreneur. And he thought, you know what? I think I could have a store like this.

And I think it’d be a lot less stressful and I’d like it more than being a dentist and looking people’s mouths all day. So long story short, made some inroads with the franchise and they said, yeah, we’d love to have you. We have enough stores in Indiana, so you need to head to Wisconsin. As they like to say, got the boys in the covered wagon and came up to Wisconsin and started a bird store. So within being a very small bird store retail, which is a very difficult environment, one of the things that way my dad has always been wired as a person is just live by the golden rule and do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

And so that started in that Wild Birds Unlimited store. And he was able to be very successful with that. So within a couple months of having the Wild Birds Unlimited store, he would have all these customers come in and saying, Dan, I’m getting my bird seed, my feeders from you, but I need something to look at these birds in my backyard or if I’m on my hike or what have you. And so back then, there’s no internet at the time. So he’s sending everybody to camera stores. Okay. But very quickly, he starts to think, hold on a second. I keep sending them somewhere else and they want it from me. I wonder if I was able to sell these.

Could it be a good addition to our business? And he makes a few calls to those brands and they say, they laugh them off the phone. They’re like, I’ve never heard of Wild Birds Unlimited. We sell in camera stores. And so anyways, he goes to actually American TV back at the time who had some binoculars. He buys 12, puts them in his case, clears out the case, puts him in a case, marks him a dollar over what he paid, because he’s just testing Ethereum, I able to sell these things, right? And within a couple of weeks, he sells them. And then he calls those brands back armed with those receipts now.

 And he says, hey, here’s what I did. Here’s what happened. Now will you send your rep out to open me up? And so they laughed and they said, well, you know, Dan, technically you violated every one of our dealer agreements, but that’s impressive. And so we’ll send the reps out. Okay. This is another big catalyst for the service component. So they send the reps out. And so they open him up.

But what he learns really quickly is several different things. Thing #1 is he’s just small potatoes. He’s a local store in a local region. So he’s not getting very good pricing. He’s not getting very good service. He’s treating customers really well, but he’s not getting the support of the brand behind him. Okay. And so what happens over the next 10 to 15 years is he ends up just not just selling his store, he ends up creating a mail order company. So he starts sell optics all across the country.

And then he gets into actually getting his own Eagle Optics proprietary brand because all the other Wild Birds Unlimited were saying, hey, Dan, you’re the guy selling optics within the franchise. Can I get them from you? The reason he’s leans into all these things is because he’s paying attention to what customers want. And he’s filling that void, whether it’s the end customer at Wild Birds Unlimited and Eagle Optics, or whether it’s creating his own brand that then wholesales back to other Wild Birds Unlimited and gives them really good margins and gives them really good service and gives them a warranty. It was called the Platinum Class at the time.

Basically, he was really good at seizing on those opportunities and also looking at what was missing in the market, which quite honestly was pretty obvious. But the thing was, and this would be one of my big suggestions, if you want to make service your superpower, and by the way, serving other people is a timeless principle you can lean into. AI, automation, those things aren’t bad. However, they are the flavor of the month. So he leaned into something that was timeless, service, and he leaned into things that people wanted. That’s kind of like the origin story and at least sort of what kicked this thing off that would eventually become Vortex.

06:02 Matt Cranney

Yeah, no, that’s incredible. Thank you for walking us back through that, Joe. And I love going back to the origins of care as beginning from a really simple, is not easy concept, right? You talked about treating people the way that you want to be treated. And I think sometimes in life, in business, we over complex things. And starting with that basis of like, hey, why are rare experiences important, because that’s how we all want to be treated.

And so sort of turning the lens as your mom and dad and you continue to do towards those sort of timeless, because that was another word you used, timeless principles of how can we be of service, I think is incredible. And one of the reasons I love care as a concept is because it’s not fluffy, right? It’s not a poster on the wall. It’s really operational and you guys live it every day.

So hoping you can paint the picture for listeners, especially the small business owners tuning in during small business month who are asking, all right, so I hear about care, I hear about the very important promise, but what does that look like in real life? Is it the warranty? Is it the way your team answers the phone? Is it the way you develop people? Where does the rare part show up?

07:25 Joe Hamilton

I think the first thing, and I’ll tell this story, but this will apply. So it would go like this. It would go lead by example, so actually care for other people. And so it’s like, you’ve got to set the tone. You actually have to actually care for your employees, for your customers. If you have like us, like a dealer in between the customer, you’ve got to actually authentically care. Then you have to hire people who already care, okay? They don’t have to articulate, create a rare experience, but they have to have that spirit. And I think this is one thing we miss a ton, because we hire people who have the skill set we’re looking for, and then we try to jam our values into them.

And so listen, miracles can happen, but once somebody hits probably about 25, they’re kind of who they’re going to be, right? So what we do here is we hire people who love people. We hire people who love serving other people. We hire people like, that’s already part of who they are. Now, it might look different. We got some people who wear that on their sleeve, and we have some other people who are pretty stoic, but they’ve got a big heart. We’re going to hire people like that already. And so in the interview process, we’re looking for that first. Then when we think we have that, then we’ll switch over to the skill portion. We don’t actually want people that are highly skilled who don’t have our values. And then because you’ve hired people who have those shared values, shared vision, then you can get into the creative stuff.

Years ago, kind of in the early 2000s, I had gotten out of college. And if you’re working a family business, you always work in the family business, but now it was a career. So a couple years in and now I’m becoming a manager and I’m manager over the sales customer care. And we have this guy and I’m going to call him Jim. That’s not his name. And he is phenomenal with customers. And he’s been working for us for about 10 years.

But Jim is going through some really difficult stuff personally and his work ethic, not necessarily interacting with the customers, but his work ethic is slipping A lot. The team cannot count on him. He’s missing days. He’s not really showing up. He’s not putting in the effort that everybody else is. And I’d had some conversations with him, but this is escalating. Yeah, And so what I did often back then and still sometimes do, is I went in to talk to my dad before this conversation because I wanted to get his advice on how do I have this conversation? I get the seriousness across, but I still want Jim to know I care about him.

So I sit down with my dad and I say, hey, dad, you got to have this conversation with Jim. I want him to know I care about him. I also want to let him know the seriousness of this. What’s your advice? So he goes, when’s that conversation, Joe? And I said, the meeting’s tomorrow. He goes, okay, cool. Let’s move that meeting back a week. Okay. And I’m like, okay. Step one. Step one, move the meeting back one week, right? What’s next? And he goes, all right, here’s what I want you to do. I want you every, every extra minute you have of your day, like driving into work, driving home, eating lunch. I want you thinking about gym.

I want you to think about Jim and about what’s going on in his personal situation. And I want you to think what that’s like. He’s like, I just want you to spend time just thinking about Jim every extra moment you have from now until, you know, the end of that week. And I’m like, okay, I can do that too. Step 2, think about Jim. And he’s like, cool. He’s like, and so you’re going to think about him so much, you’re going to think about to where you get to the place where you really, really deeply care about them.

I’m like, all right, step three, get to the point of caring about them. And I’m like, now what? What’s step 4? And he kind of slaps the table and he goes, well, then you go have the meeting. And I’m like, okay, like what? And so it didn’t quite hit right away. And he’s like, you know, Joe, here’s the thing. He said, You want him to know that you authentically care about him. So the best way to do that, the best way to actually care about somebody is to, in fact, actually care about somebody. And so what I realized in that moment, it did hit. I realized I had walked in looking for tactics to get the outcome that I wanted. Okay? But he gave me a principle instead. And principles are far greater than tactics.

But what he was really getting at was saying, hey, if you get to a place where you authentically care about Jim, deeply care about him, that’s just going to come through naturally. And you don’t have to think about all the tactics. And I’m happy to report. I finally got it. I took his advice. I spent all week thinking about him. I did get to a place where I really cared about him.

We had a great meeting and he’s still here today. But the thing where I’m saying is that progression of care, of creating a rare experience, it has to start from this authentic place of actually caring. If you’re doing it because you’re like, well, I’ve seen Vortex really explode and they’re this really big company. They’re doing great. And I want that outcome. So I’m going to lean into this flavor of the day or whatever he’s talking about. It’s not going to work. You won’t have the staying power. You won’t have the authenticity.

So I think, you know, before you get to the really, you know, creative, unique, bright, shiny stuff, you’ve really got to 1st get to the place where you authentically care about other people. And then you set that example and then you hire people who already have that.

12:45 Matt Cranney

Joe, what I love about that, and I’ve had the privilege of hearing that story before. We had Joe come and address our sales conference here at M3 a couple of years ago. And Joe shared that story. And by far, of any speaker I think we’ve ever had at our sales conference, that part of your discussion, Joe, is what our people still talk about today. And I think it talks to the principle that you’re landing on in your answer, which is if you’re listening today and you’re like, oh my gosh, yes, Joe from Vortex to your point, Joe, like I know that warranty and like, what can I do as a small business owner?

What my takeaway from that answer is all of those other things are built on the foundation of genuine principles. If you don’t have those, no matter what your innovative whiz bang thing is that you come up with to think that it’s a rare experience, it won’t be sustainable. I also loved your call out, our business owners thinking about what do they want to teach and what can they teach? And you guys at Vortex really putting an emphasis in practically in your interview process, driving at values.

To your point about diversity of values, driving to make sure like, does this person enjoy serving people? Because if they don’t, it’s okay, they might be a fine person, but they’re not going to fit with us. If you are listening and thinking about like, okay, practically, what does that look like? Our encouragement so far is think about what are those principles and the basis of your business that you have. What are your values? And then how are you interviewing for them?

Because whether you’re a two-person organization looking to add person three, or a 100-person organization looking to add 20 more, it’s really about those values. So, obviously, right now, it feels like you can’t, you can’t open the newspaper, you can’t open the TV, you put the TV on without hearing stories of AI’s impact or reductions in force due to work place efficiency.

AI is changing things in it’s changing the customer journey, marketing, product discovery, personalization. But what you’re doing at Vortex feels even more relevant because of that shift, right? None in spite of it. So let me ask you, in a world increasingly automated by AI, why does creating rare experiences matter more than ever?

15:04 Joe Hamilton

I think one thing is just really practically speaking, one of the when a company stands out and it has high retention and it has new customers flocking to it, is there’s a component or components that are rare and unique about it. And so one of the things that I notice is that some of the things that are what customers want and what is very rare are the same thing. And a lot of people may not like this, but I’m just going to tell you. So there’s a lot of people who want to call about your service. and they want to talk to a human being who wants to talk to that. Okay. And so a lot of business spend an inordinate amount of time so that they can not talk to a customer.

And so, use the Stephen Covey, begin with the end in mind and work backs. We call it build backwards. Okay. So we want to build backwards from like, what is actually a win with a customer? What about this? So if you give somebody a service window, okay, I’m not saying it’s easy, but is there any customer on the planet who loves to have a four to six hour service window? I don’t know a single person who likes that. So how could you shorten that? That’s actually serving the other person. If you had somebody that was at that store and they all they are at the business and all they did was answer calls and they returned phone calls and that person liked talking to people, that would elevate your business tremendously.

I can tell you what’s not going to make your business rare. And I’m not against AI. I really am not. We’ve got to lean into it in all kinds of unique ways. But when it comes to the human connection component, AI, first of all, is not rare at all. It’s going to be everywhere. And so what I see a lot of times when people, they start immediately with efficiency, automation, and scale. Immediately. And what they do is they scale out anything human connection component. And guess what? People don’t like it. People don’t like your phone tree. I’m sorry, they don’t. They hate it.

And so a lot of times, again, we’re after this bright, shiny lure, this new thing. But the thing that could really make you stand out is actually the thing that probably isn’t going to cost you a lot of money. It is harder, I’m using air quotes, harder because it requires more of you. It requires more of your team.

But it will make you stand out. It will make customers for life. And so you have to start with what they want and build backwards to you. What I see most people do is they start from themselves. We need to do this. We need to do that. This is how we work. And then they work towards the customer and the customer gets what’s ever left over. And that to me is just fundamentally backwards. I get it. When you’re on the phone talking to a person, that feels like it can’t scale. You’re like, I’m on the phone for 30 minutes.

18:01 Matt Cranney

I think about similarly from an M3 and Vortex perspective, I love your call out to start with the client and work back. We will eventually be able to AI almost anything. It becomes a really important piece to think about in your businesses. If you’re listening to this, where can you and where do your customers want you to be efficient? You know, I would imagine we have an example here. If it’s, you know, how we take data from a spreadsheet and input into our system of record. I don’t know if our clients care about how we do that.

What it actually gets to is it becomes, it frees up our team’s time to be able to be on the phone, right? To be able to take those calls. You know, you have to fundamentally decide, do you see AI as enabling your people to deliver better experiences or replacing those experiences?

And we have all of our eggs in the basket of enabling our people. And if we do that, are people then enable the experiences with our clients? You have to talk about, are you after efficiency or effectiveness? They can be complementary, but they are different and effectiveness is always more important than efficiency.

Yes, we are looking at, certainly in our industry from an insurance perspective, organizations putting out press releases going, hey, we’re doing a reduction in force based on the operational efficiencies. And we’re like, gosh, what a misuse of the technology.

Do we want to get more effective? Yes, but we want our people that are effective so that they can drive those experiences. And the last thing I want to call out, you said, that I think was really important. People want to talk to somebody who wants to talk to them. Right. And it’s the second part of that sentence that I think is really, really important.

And if you’re listening to this, it’s those principles that we values that we’ve talked about, Joe, like I think the things that have always mattered, matter way more now.

19:51 Joe Hamilton

And they’re rare.

19:52 Matt Cranney

So let’s keep moving, Joe. I got a question for you specifically on Small Business Month. And I want to lean into something that you often talk about, which is care is not a vortex thing. It’s not industry specific. It’s not size dependent. It’s not budget dependent. We’ve talked about that. It’s cultural. It’s A mindset shift. It’s foundational.

So here’s my question. What’s your message to a leader of a five-person, 15-person, 50-person business who wants to differentiate. They want to lean in and really build a business that they’re proud of and that serves people in the way that they want.

20:31 Joe Hamilton

There’s a couple things that I would do. I mean, again, first of all, I’d try to look at it from the customer’s perspective, truly look at it from their perspective, and then work back to you. So that’s the first thing.

The second thing though, and this is a really relatively easy way to get some big wins, okay? And that is look at what people say, unsolicited, who love your business, okay? And then, and get as many of those as you possibly can, and then double and triple down on that thing. Okay, so let me give you an example, okay? I think the technology that we have in our optics is the best in the industry. I believe that.

I get a report every week of all the people who’ve written in essentially kind of like a brand evangelist, message. And there’s, anywhere from like 30 to 50 in a week. And I just comb through there. Okay. And the reason I do that is because I want it to make me stay online as to what is the most critical to our customers. We need to double and triple down on that.

So years ago, I was at a show, a deer and turkey expo in Champaign, Illinois. And we were much smaller. So often you had to do the show by yourself. But this time I took my wife along. Okay. So we go up and we set up at the show and I’m the sales guy. I’m the guy who knows optics. This is the family business. I’m competitive. All right. So I’m thinking I’m going to share the sell the majority of the stuff and my wife can be there and, you know, kind of be the assistant and help.

And about halfway through the show, I noticed a trend. And that trend is she’s outselling me about 5:00 to 1:00. Okay. So I kind of turned her frustrated. And I’m like, hey, what are you doing that you just keep selling? And I’m like selling okay. And I’m the sales guy. And she’s like, Joe, here’s the thing. You keep talking about all these specs and these features and these benefits. And it’s very technical. And you know what I tell them about? I tell them about our VIP warranty. A very important promise. We always have their back.

I say, I love our VIP warranty. It’s great. But the problem is, that it’s highlighting that this product could break. And I don’t want them to thinking that we make, you know, like crummy stuff.

 So then I come back home and I’m reading Switch by the Heath Brothers. And in that book is this section on bright spots. The idea that they highlight in that book did something incredible, even though they were completely up against something that was almost insurmountable.

So when I read that, it finally clicked. Oh, the VIP warranty, that’s what everybody keeps telling me is why they’re choosing Vortex. That’s our bright spot. And so what I started to do is look around on the table and our counter mats, and our merchandising and our boxes and our catalog and everything. And guess what? Nothing on the VIP warranty. Nothing. So what did we change? We changed all that. I knew the VIP warranty was important, but I was taking it for granted. I was taking our bright spot for granted. So we doubled and tripled down on it.

So one of the things I’d say if you’re a leader and you want some quick wins, diagnose what your bright spots are. And here’s the key tip. It may not be what you want it to be. I wanted it to be, well, we’re choosing vortex for the best lenses, edge to edge clarity, brightness under low light, all those things, which we have those things. But what they were choosing us for was we always had their back. And so the bright spot may not be what you want it to be, but then double and triple down at it. I think that’s one of the best quick wins and momentum building things that people can get.

And then the second tip I’ll say is this, don’t get bored with your bright spot. Don’t get bored with your bright spot. Three years down the line, five years down the line, warranty has been our bright spot going on over 20 years. And so sometimes there’s a tendency to say, I’m sick and tired of that. I want to do something new.

24:25 Matt Cranney

Yeah, I love that, Joe. And I think, you know, for anyone listening today, as you think about your business and you think about, you know, the takeaway is clear, right? But go talk to people that care about you and care about your business, whether you’re a one person, 50 person, 25, and ask them, what are the bright spots in the business?

And your call out. Why do you choose us? Yeah, like why do you do business with us? Whatever that business is. And then work on how you can communicate and really dive deep into that bright spot. And I love your call out, Joe. It’s kind of the theme of our conversation so far, which is this idea of like timeless principles and values, right? In a world where it can be flavor of the day.

In terms of like, hey, we’re able to just pivot over here and we pivot over here. We’re trying this and we’re trying. Again, to your point, innovation is great, but also knowing like consistency matters too. And I wonder, Joe, because I, you know, you and I have had a chance to know each other for a long time. Your call out of you’ve had the VIP warranty for forever, right? Like your mom and dad started that at, you know, wild birds.

Only now is it standing out maybe even more. Like even when people are talking about it online, it’s even more. Why is that? Because it’s so uncommon.

25:38 Joe Hamilton

Yeah. I almost, I know you’ll say, you wish it wasn’t. But that’s true. I do. I wish it was more common. I really do. And I think, again, that’s the opportunity, though, is that I think businesses have this opportunity to lean into these timeless principles and, you know, I actually think Jeff Bezos, who, leads Amazon is a very innovative company. I think he said it is they want to over index on things that don’t change.

More so than things that do. So by all means, it’s admirable to pivot. We’ve pivoted and we’ve added new categories and things like that. But customer service, the customer wanting it to be an easy experience working with you. That is timeless. That has always been something that customers want. And I think it’s always going to be something that customers want.

26:22 Matt Cranney

Yeah, I love that. It’s funny you mentioned the Bezos thing. We talk about that here all the time, Joe. The question that he was asked was, I think somebody in a all-employee town hall or wherever he was asking the question, hey, Jeff, what is going to be different about the world in 10 years? And his response was, to your point, you know what? That’s a good question. And I can give you my response.

But there would be guesses, right? Maybe some educated guesses, but it would be guesses. What I think is more fascinating is to think about what won’t be different in five years. And you all at Vortex and hopefully us at M3, we try and think about what won’t change. Our customers will want to talk to people who want to talk to them.

27:02 Joe Hamilton

Well, and I’ll highlight M3 just real quick. These are so simple, but compounded over time. Less and less people are doing this. If I send somebody an M3 an email, they may need a day or two to get the answer. And so what some people do, and I’m telling people out there, some people who do this out there, you shouldn’t do it. So they just spend the next day or two working on it, and then they email it back. But what every customer on the planet wants is they want an immediate email from a person that says, I got this. It’s going to take about a day or two, and I will get back to you. And guess what? Now I don’t have to have it spinning in my head. Do they get the email? Do they not get the email? Are they working on it? Are they not working on it?

I know that they got it, I know they’re working on it, and I have a rough timeline when they’re going to get back. Those are these little things that really add up for a customer. It makes it easier, it makes it a better experience. It’s right now. That’s a concierge service in 2026.

27:59 Matt Cranney

What an awesome close. You know, we’ve talked a lot about creating those rare experiences and really it being foundational to values and thinking about things that don’t change and identifying your bright spots. And I know people listening today have gotten so much from it. Obviously, Vortex is a phenomenal Wisconsin success story, but what I love most is how universal this message is.

Whether you’re a startup, a small business, a global brand, whether you’re selling optics, insurance, consulting, or anything else, in an AI-driven world where everyone has access to the same tools, the same data, and the same tech, the rarest and most valuable thing left is the way you make people feel. And that’s exactly what care is all about.

Joe, thank you so much for joining us today. We truly appreciate you and everyone at Vortex Optics.

28:47 Joe Hamilton

Thank you. It’s always a fun time, Matt. Appreciate you.

28:49 Matt Cranney

And to everyone listening, happy Small Business Month. We are privileged and proud to serve small businesses here at M3. Go out there and create your rare experiences for someone today.

This has been Fast Break brought to you by M3 Elevate. I’m Matt Cranney, thank you for joining me. Do you want more tips to grow protect your business? Subscribe now and catch all of our episodes and we’ll see you next time.