Building Community and Connection in Business with Bo Lowery

**SPEAKER_1** (0:02)
The Bliss Business Podcast, the show about empathy, connection, and consciousness in business. Today's episode is brought to you by Zero Company, your paid search, social media, and programmatic ad experts.

**Stephen Sakach** (0:15)
All right, I've been looking forward to this conversation. Welcome back to the podcast, everyone, where we explore how empathy, connection, and purpose can reshape the business world. I'm Stephen Dan with my co-host, Mike.
How's everyone doing today? We're all doing good. I'm looking forward to this one. A recent Gallup report showed that companies that foster deep emotional connection with their customers outperform competitors by 85 percent in sales growth. In a world increasingly defined by transactional relationships, businesses that prioritize community and belonging are winning customer loyalty in unexpected ways. Our guest today leads such a company. Mike, will you do the honors?

**Mike Liwski** (0:58)
Indeed. I'm super excited, as you mentioned, to have Bo Lowery with us today. She's the Vice President of Marketing at Wild Birds Unlimited, which we've come to appreciate and know that it's a brand that has really built one of the most passionate and engaging customer communities in retail. Bo has been a big driver of that.
She has a deep background in franchise marketing, and so with that, Bo's passionate really about helping connect through nature, shared experiences, and really purposeful business, which we'll hear a lot about today. Her work focuses on building strong franchise relationships, delivering consistent brand experiences, which we know for franchises is a major challenge, and as well, inspiring, meaningful customer engagement. So Bo, we've been looking forward to this conversation for quite a time. Welcome to the show.

**Bo Lowery** (2:00)
Well, thank you so much. I'm glad to be here. Yeah, we tried to get connected on this once before and had to reschedule due to my schedule. So appreciate your flexibility on that and great to be here today.

**Mike Liwski** (2:12)
Yeah, I know, but it's an important topic, and so we want to make sure we get you on because as you said, Wild Birds is a leader when it comes to this space. So Bo, maybe just to kick things off, you can share a little bit with us how your own journey led to this mission of building community through the business there at Wild Birds Unlimited.

**Bo Lowery** (2:36)
Yeah, it really, community and that really, I think goes across everywhere within our organization from our internal support center staff, community with each other, to our franchise store owners, very strong community there, ultimately with our retail customers. And so it's something that Jim and Nancy Carpenter, who are the founders of our company, when they launched the company back in 1981, I believe it was, it's really just been a foundational aspect of everything that they do. And it's carried on all these years, and it's been really neat to be part of an organization. I've been with the company going on 26 years. So it definitely has created a deep connection for even me in a career path as well. But you know, you don't see a lot of companies out there that have the word community and even joy in their mission, vision, values, and we do at Wild Birds Unlimited.

**Stephen Sakach** (3:43)
And you started out as a customer.

**Bo Lowery** (3:46)
I did, yeah. Many years ago, even before Jim had started franchising, he had his, the very first little tiny Wild Birds Unlimited store was in Indianapolis, which is where I was born and raised and still live. And I was a customer of that store. It was a really small thing. I wasn't very much into bird feeding at that point, but it was just kind of interesting. And, you know, my, when I was a little bitty kid, my grandfather had given me a little bird feeder and hung it up in my backyard, and he would come and fill it up occasionally. So I had that, you know, that connection. And then, you know, kind of had other things in my career. But then fast forward a number of years and learned about the company and where it had grown to and still based, you know, here in Central Indiana. And, you know, had a great opportunity to join the team. So it's been a while, but it's been fun so far.

**Stephen Sakach** (4:44)
So we had Jim on the show, he's founder and CEO of Wild Birds Unlimited. We had him on the show almost exactly six months ago. And check out that episode, everyone. It's a great episode. I love that conversation. And what I loved was how connecting the franchise was with people. And it's, you know, it's more than a store, it's kind of this gathering space for nature lovers. And what are some of the key ways you've transformed kind of a traditional retail model into this connection-centered world?