About Bill Metcalf
Helping entrepreneurs, marketers, professionals, coaches, and consultants to leverage the power of their best customers to create More and Better Clients.
For over 25 years, I have been interviewing people professionally. During the past 7 years, I formalized this skill into a Raving Fan business. That is, I would interview customers of my clients over the phone and produce very detailed and powerful "success stories" that could be played back over the web or via CD. You can hear many examples of these interviews I have done for people on our Showcase of Testimonials page (Click Here!)
I begin teaching entrepreneurs to have what I call Customer Value Conversations two years ago, on the advice of one my mentors, Sean D'Souza. It was a bit daunting at first. "How can I share this gift? It is intuitive. It is MINE. No one can do this like I do!" Essentially, Sean told me to "get over myself" and dig in to discover how I did my work. That began a long and often painful process to enable me to come up with the techniques and strategies that I used, somewhat unconsciously, to elicit great stories from clients. The results of that discovery is this website, which is devoted to helping you harvest the true value of your greatest resource, your customers.
During the 15 years I spent
traveling the country as the Nation's TechnoMotivator™, I
honed much of my interviewing skill. I offered a program called:
TechnoShift™:
"Are you a 20th Century Thinker in a 21st
Century World?" I spoke to a very wide variety of audiences, helping
them understand how to harness the power of technology. I
was not a techie. I served as a "translator."
I would interview people
from every association or company to whom I would speak. I would
discover how they worked, what their pain was, and then look to see how
technology might serve to alleviate that pain. I spoke to so many
different kinds of groups
(see TechnoShift Client List by Clicking
Here!) That pretty soon I could talk intelligently to just about anyone,
in any field, for at least 15 minutes -- I was very broad, but shallow!
But the interviews I did to prepare for these speeches gave me a
very broad perspective.
But this process of interviewing customers was really a continuation of the 10 years I spent as an
professional spokesperson. I worked as a card
carrying professional actor – a member of the Screen Actors Guild and the
American Federation of Television and Radio Actors. I logged over
3,000 hours on camera in over 600 projects. Since I worked through
agents, rather than vertically through a specific market, I would be a
doctor one week, a farmer the next, a parent the next, and so on.
In
order to appear credible as a spokesman, I would interview customers and
product specialists to determine the real value that the product or
service provided to the customer. So I not only learned about
interviewing, I also learned multimedia skills on both sides of the
camera or microphone that have been very helpful in my new endeavors.
And all of this interviewing process actually started during my years as a
college professor. I earned my PhD in Theatre Arts and taught acting
and directing. During this ten-year period, I learned to help actors dig
out the personal insights they needed to help them "discover" their characters. This is where I really
learned to help people express
their
deepest emotions — freely and without fear. That has proven to be very
useful over the years. And as an actor myself, I often had to dig deep to
discover my own motivations and insights, as I did in one of my favorite
roles -- Jesus, in the Smokey Mountain Passion Play! Yup that is
me with the beard and long hair back in 1978 I have to tell you
that playing that role was a very humbling experience.
Actually, I think my first "interviewing" experience came at age 5! Some kids in my
backyard were having a fight. I broke it up. I told them, "This is
silly! YOU are saying THIS – when you really mean THAT. And YOU are saying
THAT – when you really mean THIS! You aren't really even arguing. You are
saying the same thing, but neither of you are listening!" My bewildered
friends just stared at me. Finally one of them said, "What are you
Metcalf? A Philosopher?" That was a real $10 word for a 5-year-old, but he
really nailed me. I have always had a gift of digging out stories and
sharing them so people could understand something better. Now I hope to
do that for you as well.
Some Basic Background Facts:
| Professional Work Experience | |
| Consultant | Raving Fans Interviews, The Testimonial Guy––8 yrs |
| Speaker | The Nation's TechnoMotivator™ 100s of speeches––15 yrs |
| Spokesman | Logged 3,000 hours on-camera in over 600 projects––7 yrs |
| Professor | Univ of Minnesota & Cal State Univ, Long Beach––6 yrs |
| Manager | Baker Rental Company – Property Management––4 yrs |
| 1st Lieutenant | US Army, Ran an Army Post Office in Vicenza, Italy –– 2 yrs |
| Education | |
| Ph. D. | Theatre Arts, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN |
| M.A. | Directing, Western Illinois University, Macomb, IL |
| B.S. | Communications, Ohio University, Athens, OH |
| Professional Affiliations | |
| SAG | Screen Actors Guild Member — 15 yrs |
| AFTRA | American Federation Radio & Television Artists —15 yrs |
| NSA | National Speakers Association |
Now if you are a really curious person and want to know more of the personal side of me, follow the link to find out more about Bill Metcalf — the family man, soccer coach, and Autism fund-raiser (Bill Metcalf The Rest of the Story! Click Here!)
Where to next?
Depends a bit on where you have been so far!
You never know how people are going to visit any website. But if you have followed my lead so far, and you went through the Home Page, How We Work, Is This You?, and About Bill, then I suggest you next go to see what Services and Products (Click Here!) you can find here to help you – some of which are FREE!
Jim
Muehlhausen
Candy
Gellineau