Are you keeping score?

Andrew Berlin’s business card has the Chicago Cubs’ logo in the top left corner, Wrigley Field’s address in the lower right corner, and in the center, below his name, the word Partner. He’s a minority owner of the Ricketts Family’s well-known franchise, and he is the sole owner of the Single A minor-league South Bend Cubs (in Northcentral Indiana), about two hours southeast of their namesake. This summer, I had the honor of enjoying Andrew’s hospitality and listening to business lessons and stories that made a strong impression. He transformed a company, renamed Berlin Packaging, with wildly bold services that made his biggest customers bigger, more successful, and extremely loyal. Now that he’s in the baseball business, he’s still laser focused on doing radical things to ensure massive customer delight and loyalty.

He jokes about a psychological disease he lives with called CDO. “It’s OCD but in alphabetical order,” he chuckled. In other words, Andrew says he likes things just so. In fact, he is indeed obsessed with competitive drive to be the best in all his endeavors.

As you’d expect, businesspeople who want to win and who, as Andrew says, “crush the competition and derive joy while doing so,” are passionate about keeping score. Which is why Andrew loves Net Promotor Score. If you’re not familiar with NPS, it’s a formula that calculates a score based on customer surveys asking just one question: On a scale of 1–10, how likely are you to recommend [Company X] to a friend or colleague? Answers of 10 and 9 are your company’s lovers. Answers 0–6 are your company’s haters. Because 7s and 8s are too vague and noncommittal, Andrew discards them. You then deduct the percent of haters from the percent of lovers to arrive at your score.

In the packaging industry (glass bottles), from whence Andrew emerged victorious, the average NPS is 13 and Berlin Packaging is at 54, he said. At the time he bought the ball club, its NPS was 13, while the average for minor league ball parks is in the mid 50s. Remarkably, his park, Four Winds Field, is at 83 today, though they hit 90 once.

IT TAKES WORK AND CREATIVITY

Andrew left no stone unturned in his massive turnaround of the field and how the community experiences it. From sourcing the No. 1 ballpark hotdog in the nation (according to the Baseball Writers of America), to producing an employee video on how to clean bathrooms (which are cleaned every inning), to creating a splash pad for kiddies and an over-21 Tiki Hut for grownups, to creating a beautiful gift shop inside a once-abandoned synagogue, Andrew is a nonstop idea factory for manufacturing wow-factor. He creates a public-safety environment by serving off-duty, uniformed police officers free food. He has the real grass cut 90 minutes before guests arrive so they enjoy the fragrance. And the park plays the No. 1 ballpark music (copying from the top-ranked Oakland As’ soundtrack): 60s and 70s rock and roll. I could go on and on. Taking a cue from the Rolling Stones, Andrew says, “We are often pleased but never satisfied.”

It doesn’t take a genius to understand why Andrew believes in NPS: “There’s a wonderful correlation: The higher the net promoter score, the more profitable your business is,” he said. “That’s why it matters.” Now it’s up to you to decide if you’re game for this kind of scorekeeping.

Good luck, and thanks for reading!