Bill Canady: Hey everyone today. It's Bill Canady here with the Thousand Day CEO. Today's guest is Ted Wright, CEO of Fizz and a pioneer in modern word of mouth marketing, something that we all need more of. Ted helped reignite Pabst Blue Ribbon, and he spent more than two decades studying why people voluntarily share brand stories. So today we're going to be turning that knowledge into a CEO playbook for building trust, accelerating growth, and creating enterprise value. Ted, welcome to the show.
Ted Wright: Thanks for having me, Bill. I'm super excited to to be here.
Bill Canady: Well, listen, I'm super excited because this, at the end of the day, we're all about growth. And this is or this is the how we get it, right? It's advertising helps and that, but the trusted recommender is exactly what when someone tells you something and you trust him, you're more likely to do it. So my big question for you is how do big businesses, how do any businesses, B2B businesses, drive this conversation? How do they actually make that happen?
Ted Wright: So, Bill, what you've really got to do is you've really got to think about word-of-mouth marketing as something that's at least 3,500 years old. So everybody's been doing this since literally 2,000 years before Jesus was walking around. So it's been a long time that folks have been relying on other people for recommendations, right? This word of mouth marketing, word of mouth is people talking to people. Word of mouth marketing is taking that and making it explicit on how you're going to do that. And basically systematizing something that everybody already wants to do. So when you're thinking about doing that, from all your listeners are thinking about doing that, they really need to really think about three different pieces. They need to think about their story, they need to think about their target, and they need to think about the activities that they're gonna do to get the story to the target more efficiently. So if you just make a triangle and go story target goal on the outside and put the word activity in the middle. That's the tattoo that after this podcast you should go and get on your forearm so you'll never forget this.
Bill Canady: That's absolutely right. And the key of that, when they're getting that tattoo, what's typically the thing that triggers it? Like, like how do they start asking this question, why am I not doing more meta app?
Ted Wright: Right. So here's the so here's the interesting thing. For everyone who's listening, your total addressable market can be really broken up into two pieces. The 10% piece and the 90% piece. The 10% of that piece are made up of what we call advocates. And those advocates really have three particular qualities to them. They like to try new things because they're new.
Bill Canady: Interesting. Can you enable these folks? Can you empower them? Can or is it just an organic?
Ted Wright: So here's the cool thing. You can enable them, but you cannot create them. So these folks have been this way. They've had this advocate personality. By the time they're basically 10 years old, this is this is how they're thinking about stuff. They're like, hey, I know this about my friend. I know this about this thing, whatever that is. Next time I see my friend, I should totally tell them about that. Not because they want to be popular or not because they want to have. You know, some generator company send them 10 bucks because, hey, Ted bought a generator. They're doing it because I know you, I like you, I see that you're moving down to where there's storms and there's power outages. You need to know how much I like my generator. And if you can, you should totally get one yourself. Right? Advocates have an innate love for sharing stories with other people. So you activate them. By knowing that they're out there seeking information about the thing you're interested in, right? The thing that you're selling. And they're interested in that. And if you'll share stories with them and information in a way that is totally not about selling, but about sharing them, they'll take in all that information naturally and they'll go share that with people that they think that they already know, that they think would find that information relevant and interesting.
Bill Canady: I've seen it. I've seen it. Is this today's modern influence? Is this the the kid I see out in front of the restaurant doing a dance? Is this is it have they figured out how to monetize it?
Ted Wright: So, a couple of things, two questions. Yes, it is influencers, but also it is not influencers. The other thing is they have definitely figured out how to monetize that because
Bill Canady: Mm.
Ted Wright: the systems set up on social media are they'll pay somebody if you can get them to stick on your platform and watch your stuff longer. So they'll go out and do stuff. They'll dance in front of restaurants, they'll say, I'm a lawyer in North Carolina and I'm 60 pounds overweight and I'm gonna move to the middle of Alaska and build my own house. And I'm that's the way I'm gonna lose weight because there's not a lot of food around here and it's a lot of effort for me to build this house. And so I'm either gonna freeze to death or I'm not gonna be fat. Come join me on my journey. And you're like, that's just weird enough where I'll sit here and watch it. Then if it's entertaining, I stay. Okay. Influencers are basically what the kids refer to as cosplaying. So they are pretending they're advocates. Advocates will share stories about all of your audiences' product and services.
Bill Canady: I think you're on to something there. There is a difference between someone who I'm making a living, I'm basically an advertising person. And if you give me a free meal or you pay me money, I'll I'll I'll let my followers know about your restaurant. It does work, and there's nothing wrong with that. But when you've got someone who's a true believer, if you can get your product in their hands, they're gonna play with that product because it's what they do, and it's more authentic. How
Ted Wright: It is.
Bill Canady: does a business find those people? And how do how do they activate
Ted Wright: So, all right, so let's do this. Two things there's find and there's activate. So let's talk about find first. Here's the cool thing you don't find them, they find you. And they
Bill Canady: interesting.
Ted Wright: find you because you're smart and you're thinking, okay, where do my people hang out? Physically or virtually, and what can I go do there that will make them stop what they're doing already and pay attention to me? So I'll give you an example. Everybody who's listening to this goes to a trade show. We've all been behind trade show booths before. You know the where the best place to talk to people on trade shows are? In the coffee line, starting
Bill Canady: Yeah.
Ted Wright: at seven o'clock in the morning, right? That coffee line starts at 7 a.m. And I don't can't even tell you. people
Bill Canady: That's right. Commiserating. gonna be here all day.
Ted Wright: are like, okay. And rope drops not till nine, but they're getting their coffee at seven. They're gonna get another cup, they gotta be at the booth by eight to get everything set up, rope drop is at nine, everyone comes flooding in. How cool is it if Bill and Ted are sitting there in the coffee line at 7 a.m. and we have a model of whatever our thing is, and we're playing with it, with it between each other. Everybody around the us in line, and we're not talking to anybody else, we're just talking ourselves. And they're like, hey, wait, what what do you mean? That generator does this? Or what do mean that pen does this? Or talk to me about that flashlight. What do you mean that flashlight will throw a beam a mile and a half? Like, how do you know it'll go a mile and a half? Like, hang on, let me show you. And you start showing people, and eventually you're having a conversation as the coffee line goes. And people that are there at the flashlight show are interested in flashlights. So they're gonna say, hey, cool. Like, are y'all in here? say yeah, yeah, we're going to our table at booth. You know, 75, 32. Like, here's a little card, here's the QR code on it, you know, whatever. Come see us. And then they order their coffee, they go away. You order your coffee, you go get your coffee, you go away, you go walk around the corner, you throw away the coffee, and you go stand back in line. And they're Bill and Ted standing in the back of the line again, having the same conversation about the flashlight. Because what we are doing is we are sharing the story with each other. We're creating what I like to just call hoopla. Like, let's just do something small. And if people want to join in our conversation, they will. And if they don't want to, they won't. And we're not gonna be obnoxious about like, hey, Bill, this flashlight's really cool. We're just gonna be playing with our flashlight, like we're prepping
Bill Canady: That's
Ted Wright: to go. And it's like and I might have ten of them in my pockets. And I'm like, okay,
Bill Canady: Mm-hmm.
Ted Wright: I gotta turn on this one. Cool. You think it's like it's a mile and a half from here? Yeah. And then you say mile and a half four or five times, and somebody eventually is gonna say, How do you know it's a mile and a half? Like, well, I I Totally like to tell you. And how long does the battery last? And you have a conversation. And then they go and remember that and they're telling their friends as they're walking around the trade show, hey, so I saw this person playing this flashlight. And we got to go talk to them. We got, I just got I got to go show you this flashlight or this generator or this, you know, this cool widget or whatever the thing is. We got to walk over there. And when they walk over to your booth, everybody's already primed. They're predisposed to want to have conversation with you. Because their friend already vouched for this thing they're going to show you is cool. So that's how you activate them. You activate them by being confident enough in your product, in your service, that you're
Bill Canady: Mm-hmm.
Ted Wright: like, if I actually could, if everybody in America knew as much about this thing as I do, I'd have people lined up down the street.
Bill Canady: That makes a ton of sense. How do you do it at scale? There's only one Bill, one Ted. I can only talk to so many people. How do I do this at scale? So, as you know,
Ted Wright: And there are
Bill Canady: our audience is CEOs, private equity, and this is the key of being success, right? Is I got to grow this business. I have my own business, you have your own business, right? We we we lead these businesses. The biggest problem is actually doing this on command. it's powerful when it works. Do you have tricks or stories or examples you can help? that you know, the guy listening to this goes, I come I'm going to do that tomorrow, beyond just doing the coffee.
Ted Wright: All right, so the you you can't you can't do it on command because the command is always on. So you and I cannot decide that we're gonna get everybody to talk about our in home generator.
Bill Canady: Mm-hmm.
Ted Wright: What we have to do is we have to figure out okay, if people are gonna talk about the in home generator, what would they talk about? So all stories that are most likely to get shared between two people who know each other have three particular qualities. They are authentic, they're interesting, and they are relevant. And if you like acronyms in English, do they have AIR? So they are authentic, they're interesting, and they're relevant. So the
Bill Canady: Air.
Ted Wright: first thing you've got to do, Bill, is that you've got to figure out if you're trying to get this thing to go viral, why would people really care about the story? Our job as marketers, our job as CEOs is to help our people think, hey, what's the story? And then where can we go share this? And how can we go share this in such a way that doesn't interrupt people? Because nobody wants to be interrupted. Everybody's got more things than they can do on their plate every day, morning till noon, night, the whole thing. They can they do not have time. Some people talk about what's the signal through the noise. I just explained what the signal is. The signal is something that is so interesting to me that I'm gonna stop what I'm doing. I'm gonna pay attention over here to this thing.
Bill Canady: Mm-hmm.
Ted Wright: So you and everybody else who runs a business, me, I have to figure out every day what can I go do to share so that people are gonna come and ask me questions. Because once I get somebody to ask me a question, then I'm having a conversation. And a conversation leads to awareness, and awareness leads to action, and action leads to a sale. You don't get any action if people are unaware. Nobody has time for your broadcast. They just don't have time. They're
Bill Canady: Mm-hmm.
Ted Wright: getting hit with a new ad every five and a half seconds.
Bill Canady: Mm-hmm.
Ted Wright: Lord have mercy. Right? We just we just can't do it.
Bill Canady: I believe it. I'm just I'm inundated. I get this will sound I get a thousand emails a day. About eight hundred of those go in junk. Thank God for that.
Ted Wright: Yes.
Bill Canady: the other 200 make it to my inbox. And then, you know, probably 50% of those should win in junk. But still, that's that is a hundred emails of a specific request of me. It's a lot, right? So we're unundated, inundated with this.
Ted Wright: Hey, every day. All right, so let's just do that. Let's say you work 10 hours a day and you get 100. That's 10 every hour. So you gotta answer, you gotta make a decision to answer the new email every six minutes, and you don't get to do anything else all day. And then tomorrow is a whole new crop of this stuff. So so this is why that's just people who are getting through, right?
Bill Canady: That's just people who are getting through that's not even the real stuff. That's not even my job.
Ted Wright: Yeah, this is by the way, this is not my job. Okay, so my buddy David, I just David, if you're listening to this, hi, he's retired now, but he used to run all the marketing for AT&T. And I totally remember once I was at his house, we were hanging out, our kids all went to the same school together, and he had an accordion file that he had all his notes for the day, and they started at 7 a.m. and they ended at 6 p.m. And his assistant loaded that thing up. And they he gave him a new one every day. And that's he needed to read all that. And then he was that's how he went through his day. And I said to him, How do you get any work done if you're doing
Bill Canady: Work done.
Ted Wright: meetings all the time? And he said, I do my work after the kids go to bed. I'm like,
Bill Canady: Yes, I do the same.
Ted Wright: that is not sustainable, my brother. And he goes, That is correct. I haven't figured out a better system. It's kind of like Churchill said about democracy. It's the worst thing we've ever come up with, except for everything else. Right. So that was
Bill Canady: I
Ted Wright: That was
Bill Canady: love so too.
Ted Wright: yeah. So that's kind of that that's where David was ripping off of that. So in that world, and we're all like this, CEOs to not CEOs to everybody out there, to my son who's 23. We have things that we want to do every day. And if we're gonna have something new, that story has to be authentic, interesting, and relevant. And we have to be able to come to it of our own volition, not have it shoved at us. Cause the first time you try and shove something at somebody, they immediately start rejecting it. Why? Because they're inundated already.
Bill Canady: Yeah, it's just not on the plate today, right? It may, I may truly would be interested. I just don't have the bandwidth. We've talked about a lot of it. We talked about Generac generators. By the way, I love them. I one point was really associated in their early days with them. So I have nothing but the good things they now that's my subliminal message. Say that we're taking sponsors and generac, we'd love the happy as one.
Ted Wright: Right.
Bill Canady: But yeah, but in all seriousness, so I one of the businesses I run today is a part supplier to the power sports industry. So motorcycles, right? And The way that we get our advocates is you're really on to something here. So we can identify, they're self-identifiers through a variety of things. Social media is there already out posting. We will from time to time reach out to them or they'll reach out to us and we make available to them certain things that we care about, like, yeah, a lot of these guys are like bike rebuilders. They want pistons. And we have a very high-end line of pistons. We'll go, hey, try our pistons. And if you like it, talk about it. If you don't, well we prefer you don't, but they'll even talk more about it if they don't like it. But we we put we
Ted Wright: Mm.
Bill Canady: we we put it out there, they take it and run with.
Ted Wright: They take it and remember that. All right, so let me tell you just a little factoid here. These advocates, so that thing about they if they don't like it, actually they don't. So,
Bill Canady: They can work against you sometimes. Yep.
Ted Wright: so here's so here's the numbers. Now, if it's gonna put somebody at their life at risk, yes. And there are also people that are also whine. And they whine professionally or they whine for a living, or they just
Bill Canady: That's right.
Ted Wright: they want to just stir the pot. Again, we're all quoting our Mimas here. Uh-oh, stirring the pot. Actual advocates, if they don't like your thing, won't talk about it. Because that is the unkindest
Bill Canady: It is interesting you say that.
Ted Wright: cut of all. Because they, one, they think talking about stuff is the awesomest thing ever. So they love to do that. And secondly, they have a relationship with their friends, their quote, audience unquote. And if they're always coming in with a bunch of negativity, with a bunch of all the rest of stuff, eventually people won't invite them to their house anymore. Or they won't pay pick up the phone when they call. So if it's if it's light threatening, like, no, you know, this these eggs now have salmonella, so I'm the food person, so let me tell everybody about this. That's that's one thing. But if they just don't like your eggs and they like a different type of egg, they just won't talk about the eggs. It falls off their list.
Bill Canady: That is so insightful. You're exactly right. Well, you know, first of all, I I 100% agree that if they don't like it, just don't they don't talk about it. But they're doing this because they love doing this. This is a
Ted Wright: Yes.
Bill Canady: the thing that I'm sending them or is something that enables them to do what they already like, and they're just gonna play with the tinker toy that I've sent them. So that's a really good so your risk of of of trying to contact them is look, it either works or it's nothing.
Ted Wright: I that has been our that has totally been our experience. So if I'm a bike rebuilder, and especially somebody like your company who like they make the best pistons in the world. So not only am I glad for the free thing, but more importantly, for many of the people you talk to, they're excited to be seen. They're like, wait a minute, you saw my little thing about repairing this dirt bike? my God. And they go and they tell all their friends. And here's the other thing for everyone who's listening. When people talk about, what are we gonna do for digital? All of the stuff we're talking about fits right into the digital world in two ways. Number one, if it happens in real life, people take a picture of it and they share it with their friends. Straight up, period. So if I'm the bike rebuilder and Bill sends me the best piston in the world, I'm gonna go talk to people about it and I'm probably gonna take a picture and I might not do it publicly. I just might send it to my three best bike building friends and say, dude, these guys sent me this and I'm gonna put it in, and they're gonna remember to ask me about it a couple weeks ago. It's like, man, I like the heck out of this thing. In fact, I pulled it out just to see how messed up it got. It's perfect. Looks like it's brand new. I'm gonna put it in there. I don't know if I'm ever gonna use anything else. And they told me.
Bill Canady: an expert to this, what what are the enabling things that a CEO or a business owner can do that when when they when the when the advocate does find them or they find each other, it's ready to go. What are some of the enabling steps they should be taking so that they're prepared?
Ted Wright: So I think you should have invitations ready to do something that's low cost for you, but really interesting for them. And I'll give you an example.
Bill Canady: Mm-hmm.
Ted Wright: We did a bunch of work with this underwear company for a while. And one time I we said to them: it's like, you ought to invite everybody to New York City and come pick out. help you and the head designer, you the owner, whose name is on the underwear, and the head designer to pick out the new colors for next year. And the head designer was like, well what if they pick out the wrong colors? I'm like, I did it's not a democracy. This is an underwear acracy, which they definitely like that I did that quote.
Bill Canady: Yeah.
Ted Wright: it's like we're not asking for their vote, we're asking for their opinion. And so They said, okay, well, nobody's really gonna come to New York and it's gonna be very expensive to fly them out there and all the rest of the. no, we're not flying. We're just saying, would y'all like to come to the actual showroom and work with the actual designer and see how we pick colors? It's this Tuesday on this month. We're gonna and we'll have lunch, but y'all, we're just gonna make it real clear. Y'all gotta figure out your own plane flight and wherever you're staying and all the rest of the stuff. Okay, so we had 280 people send us a note and say we would like to show up in the first hour. We cut it off at a thousand, hoping that a thousand people really didn't come. We figured half of people would come. We had four hundred and eighty people show up. We had four hundred and eighty people.
Bill Canady: My goodness. So it's not really about the money you spend. It's giving access. They get access that the normal person, is that the key to it?
Ted Wright: It's access, it's something it's something that they can't normally get or
Bill Canady: Mm-hmm.
Ted Wright: it's something that they've seen, quote, in a movie or something like that. Like it's my gosh, it it
Bill Canady: It's the chef's table at the restaurant. It's working in the factory. It's see it's meeting the brand standards, right? It's getting behind the scenes. Is that is that what you're saying? Yeah.
Ted Wright: Behind the scenes, behind the scenes. I so we have several bands that are clients of ours. And I would just like to tell everybody right now that backstage is not what you think it is. I mean, you've
Bill Canady: No, it's not.
Ted Wright: seen that in movies, and maybe that happened in the nineteen seventies, but basically working musicians now are well into their thirties and beyond. And if they ever did any of that stuff that you think goes on in the background, they don't do it anymore. It's and it once you
Bill Canady: They're exhaust.
Ted Wright: what once you get back. Past 50, you're like, and remember, Rolling Stones are like 82 years old or something like that.
Bill Canady: Eighty. Mick's got it going on.
Ted Wright: Got it going on. But that's about yoga. The backstage is basically pregame, is yoga and meditation and getting with your nutritionist to make sure you have the right amount of protein and all the rest of stuff. And that's that's how somebody's able to be on the road for 130 days in a year. Because being on the road is exhausting. So my My point to bring all that up is it seems like really fun in the beginning, but it is really fun if you're a musician. So once I was on a I was on a cruise boat, so my friend invented the whole music cruise business where the band goes on the boat and that was his idea and it worked. And so once I was there, there's a band called Lynyrd Skynyrd, and it was the it was their it was their cruise. And I go to this, I go to this thing. And the guy who plays bass for them is giving a lecture on how world how Lynyrd Skynyrd plays the bass. And he looked at everybody and says, You know what's great about this song? It's like we sing it in F, but we play it in G. And you would have thought he had brought tablets down from the mountain. Everyone was so excited. Me, who is not a musician,
Bill Canady: They'll tell that story forever.
Ted Wright: tell that story forever. And they were amazed by it because they're super fans of this thing. And they all went out and they made notes and they told everybody and like, my God, and and then the story spread. So you with your pistons, your job is to get people you think who might think this is fun, and also to go to those places. I mean, everybody in the motorcycle world knows about Sturgis. If I was ever going to Sturgis, I would go and I would have one particular story I wanted to tell. And I would make sure people could get as deep into that story as possible. And so many people out there in the motorsports world go to these things and they treat it more like a carnival, like they're trying to get as many people through the Ferris Wheel as possible. You don't want as many people on the Ferris wheel. You want people to have a great Ferris wheel experience and talk about your Ferris wheel for the next year. And if your Ferris wheel is that great, like I can't wait to go back next year and see what they do. That's the job. The job is not the thing. The job is not the experience. The job is the conversation. The experience comes from.
Bill Canady: So they self-identify. You
Ted Wright: Yes, sir.
Bill Canady: have it set up where there is a unique experience for them to participate that they can't get anywhere else. Right. So they're now now they're there. The Ferris Wheel ride went great. What do you do next? How do you keep this going?
Ted Wright: So then, then you just treat them like a friend. You're like, hey, hope y'all had a good time. All right, see you later, you know, and like we're gonna send you, you know, we loved having y'all so much that here is free samples of the next thing that we're gonna do next year. And then you just treat them like your friend and you send them notes like, hey, so great to see you. I know you saw this piston at this thing. we've got the new one coming out. You know, wait till you see our grips that we've got. Using the same technology, you know, whatever else you're doing out there. And then you just treat him as a friend, treat him as like family. In fact, you actually work really hard. So just for a second, we talked about a story is authentic, interesting, and relevant, right? Does it have air? The A and authentic. Let's just talk about that language. So for us in our shop, the difference between authenticity and truth is authenticity is the language of friends. Truth is the language of lawyers and politicians. So you want to continually talk to people like your friend. Like, hey, and let's just say, since we're talking about motorcycles, you know, I am the CEO of Kawasaki. I'm gonna say, hey, I'm I'm gonna say y'all, because that's my if I was the CEO of Kawasaki, that's what I'd say. Hey y'all,
Bill Canady: We wouldn't. It's obvious.
Ted Wright: just thinking about dirt bikes the other day. Blah blah blah. We have this really cool thing. You know, this thing was always a PETA for all of us in the dirt bike. So we've had some guys in in Osaka working on this for two years, and I think they've really cracked the code. And you should totally check this out. We've got a film on LinkedIn that shows the engineering, and we've got this, and we're gonna be do demos here, here, and here. You should totally come check it out. Love Ted, CEO of Kawasaki. Boom. Send that out, right? And just Have a conversation with people and give them an opportunity for s for access for something they think it's talkable. And it doesn't have to be, people are listening, this is like, it doesn't have to be fancy. I don't have to go to the World Cup final. I can go to a fan zone during the World Cup and I can have a great experience and I can be like, this is the coolest thing ever. Who knew? And we're all doing the Norwegian team like rowing thing together.
Bill Canady: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Ted Wright: Or whatever, because there's a bunch of Norwegian people there. And we're doing this in Minnesota. And everybody is from Norway. If you're from Minnesota or know somebody who's from Norway, and so we're all gonna make this rowing thing. Okay, that's fun. I don't get to do that. Doesn't have to cost money, has to be interesting, and it has to be relevant.
Bill Canady: And authentic. I think your point about authentic is key for a variety of re r reasons. So, so so I've self-identified or they found me. We now give them a backstage experience, right? Something behind the scenes that that makes them feel included. And and then from that point on, it's it's just a regular engagement of of of of you know kind of reaching out, hey, we're in town. Would you would you is that is there more? Is that it? Is that as simple as it is?
Ted Wright: So it's just having a conversation and then it's having a relationship and seeing where that relationship goes. Some people peter out, some people want to be your best friend forever. Some people marginally, 2% of them, might be super annoying. You're like, it's a it's okay. I don't need 40 emails a day. You know who does this the best, I personally think about this whole thing? Walt Disney Company. So Walt Disney
Bill Canady: Interesting. Wow.
Ted Wright: started this thing called Disney Moms. And they're like, and it. For all of y'all that have ever had kids that are of Disney age, you were at some dinner party once, and either you or your spouse said, Hey, we're thinking about taking the kids to Disney. And somebody like leaped over the dinner table and said, Okay, wait, okay. So when you go, and then they wanted to plan out with you in front of you, in front of everybody else, your entire Disney vacation there. They're like, okay, this is who I used, or or I did it myself, and I use these three websites and blah, blah, blah. And you're taking notes. Because you know that it's almost as expensive to go to Europe with your kids as it is to go to Disney with your kids. So d
Bill Canady: I think Disney's more expensive now. It's a great experience, but they are not giving that away.
Ted Wright: they are not giving that away and it is a great experience. And so what they did was they said, Hey, there's all these people that are excited about that. And internally they call it Disney moms. They externally may still call it Disney moms. I don't know. I'm neither n mm a mom nor a Disney parent, a Disney person. So Bear with me. And so they just reached out to a bunch of people and said, Hey, would you like to be on our Disney Moms Council? And all these people jumped up and down. And they said, Okay, cool. So we're going to be here in Orlando and we're going to be here this day. And we're going to be here this day. And so y'all should come. And, you know, we have these hotel rooms because we're doing it very much off season. So we'll give you a little bit of deal on the hotel room. Because, and we're still going to make money on the hotel room. That's what they're saying internally, but we're going to give you a little bit off. And they're like, They couldn't get there fast enough, so excited. And so the first year, Disney really didn't know how excited people were. And they're like, no, we want to know everything. And so all those people went away. And then Disney got together with everybody and said, look, we've got 500 people. And we could have more, but we've got 500 people that are coming and whatever we're going to do presentations. So if you've heard of television and the upfronts, Disney now treats that as the upfront to 500 people that are going to go take out. And that message to everybody they know. When Disney Cruise is launched, that's part of their launch strategy was people say, okay, Disney's gonna do a cruise. And people are like, that is the weirdest thing ever. And like, no, no, no, check it out. And then the first people went on the Disney cruise, they all came back and they said, this is fantastic for the parents. Cause the kids go and they have the time or life and we can just hang out. And then we have a lovely dinner. It's all very adult. It's not like the character breakfast at the park. It's all very adult. It's all very fun. Kids had a blast. We had a blast. Low stress. It's great. And all the other parents who are listening to that are like, no. But half of them go on the website and they look. Because remember, word of mouth is not the beginning and the end. It is both there is a middle part, and the middle part is digital. So when you, Bill, send a piston to somebody, they're like,
Bill Canady: Mm-hmm.
Ted Wright: okay, this is cool. But before they take the two hours to install it in that bike, they're gonna go online and they're gonna check out for social proof, what are all the reviews? What are all the pictures? What are the engineers saying? You know, if you did a survey like, my gosh, four out of five dentists say that this is the best thing ever, like how many dentists did you talk to? Five? Or, you know, what's your end value? Because I don't wanna I don't wanna mess up my bike by putting your janky ass part in there. Just because you send it to me, right? So then they go and they say, okay, cool. I I got had the conversation. Then I checked it out digitally. Now I'm gonna go do the thing. And the end of that is when it works, when the story matches the experience they have, they go tell however many people they're gonna tell. And you don't care.
Bill Canady: Is there is there a way to measure the ROI or effect? But even if it's low cost, it still takes time. And they're
Ted Wright: Sure.
Bill Canady: going to want to see the key people, right? So they want to meet Mick Jagger. They want to meet Ted Wright. They want to meet the person. How do you measure the ROI to make sure it's worth the investment?
Ted Wright: All right, let's talk about let's talk about who they want to meet, and then we'll talk about ROI. So I'm gonna tell you fun stories. So we work with a band and they're very famous. They're very famous. And we were gonna do like you should have all your fans come and we should do this barbecue dinner. I think we can
Bill Canady: Mm-hmm.
Ted Wright: get it for like $12 a plate and have everybody, I think we can charge $200 and somebody will come back there. And then the lead singer, very famous dude, says, Yeah, but I don't want to talk to 200 people. It's like, dude. I don't think you're the most interesting person in the room. You're the most famous person. He's like, no, no, who's the most interesting person in the room? Your bus driver. He drove Motörhead for 23 years and drove
Bill Canady: Jeez.
Ted Wright: Led Zeppelin before that. The man has more stories. So I said, dinner time, it's gonna be his name is Bill. It's like it's gonna be stories with Bill. And Bill's just gonna get up there, and somebody from the band is like, Bill, tell that story about the whatever. And they're gonna have a conversation. And yes, and you guys are all gonna listen just like we're all listening, and we're fascinated by this because nobody thinks about the bus driver. And nobody
Bill Canady: Mm-hmm.
Ted Wright: in that room realized the bus driver knows everything because they see everything. And it's super cool. Everybody wants a picture with a star, everyone wants a picture with a band. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Bill, do you have time for one more story? And we're and then people in the crowd go, one more story, one more story. And the band is like, this is the coolest thing ever because we get to have an experience with our fans, but we're having the experience with us. Some people in the band didn't even know Bill, because he's only driving one bus, and a band will generally have eight or nine buses. So there's eight or nine drivers. So if you're not on his bus, you might or might not really know Bill during the tour. And you definitely don't wake up at three o'clock in the morning and need something, or just wake up and like talk to him while he's driving you from one venue to another. All right. So The meeting is not about the most famous people. You've got to really be hardcore about interesting and relevant. So your engineers, Bill, that are making these parts are just as interesting to these motorcycle guys as you are. And and said with love, probably more so. Absolutely. Like they
Bill Canady: more so. More, more, more so. By the way, when I go to a trade show or I go to a factory, I want to talk to the person on the floor. I want
Ted Wright: Yes.
Bill Canady: to hear what they're doing. And they'll tell you, you know, I do this thing. You're like, my God, that's the most amazing thing. That's why it works, right? You know, you
Ted Wright: Yes.
Bill Canady: nobody believes anything the CEO says or anything. Like our jobs are different. That person has got insight you can get nowhere else.
Ted Wright: And they're and it's super fun, like if you're into that thing. So and now I'm gonna get to your R R I question. I we've been in business for 25 years. and and I would just say that people bias on the hope and they renew on the results. And our average client lasts nine years with us. So
Bill Canady: That's amazing. In this day and age, that speaks, you know, a volume to what you guys bring. I'll give you one other thing that we've done. So you get these you know, these advocates, they turn into, I'm just coining a super fan. Like they want more and more. We have found, because this kind of person is unique in that sometimes they actually know more about our product than we know about our product because they're using it in the real world. We will make in certain cases, we'll give them access to product design and input so that next product comes out. It's almost like you get your own testing group. And when you
Ted Wright: For sure.
Bill Canady: do that, you can take it from this nebulous because I forget who said it was some bun famous. You know, 50% of my advertising is wasted. My problem is I just don't know which 50%. You then can tie it to something that has an attributable ROI. Hey, I developed a new product. It has the whiz banger on it that our advocate told us would sell, and it's selling. Right. So you
Ted Wright: Yes.
Bill Canady: can go beyond just, you know, did it rain in Southern California or not? You can actually tie it to concrete things. We found that to be very, very popular. It withstands the bright lights of budget cuts.
Ted Wright: Yes. Unless you want to say Heineken and we can have a discussion about the most interesting man in the world, which was a brilliant advertising campaign because it moved a ton of volume for them. We can talk about that in a second.
Bill Canady: and everybody quoted it.
Ted Wright: Every quote, and just so you know, that's actually why they sold a lot of beer. Cause you could buy a six-pack of beer and you could take to a party and people would quote the ad back and forth and people like, yes.
Bill Canady: Right too.
Ted Wright: I'm going to a party have interaction. I'm going to bring Heineken. Outside of Heineken and maybe a couple other things, most of the brands that have grown from Apple to Crocs to whatever else you want to name have grown significantly. United States have grown because one person shared a story with about that product or service with other people they know and they told you friends and so on and so on. You can trace it every time.
Bill Canady: You said something earlier, you've been doing this for twenty-five years, your average customer tenure, nine years, that's unbelievably strong. All right, be an advocate for yourself. Tell them what do you do? Like like tell about your secret sauce, how you make all this possible to get these brands where they need to be.
Ted Wright: So my job at this point, so I mean I started this, I I was in business school and I just watched Google and TiVo get adopted across campus. And I was like, huh, how'd that work? And I grew up in a family that how things work and why they work that way. We we I grew up in a family of scientists and engineers. So I was like, hmm, let me just go back to how does this work? So the secret sauce for us is having a replicable process. To where you know you can identify in the front end what products services companies are most likely to benefit from this. And then going to the people who are coming to you and saying, Hey, I would like that kind of growth for my company that you've done with PBR for Fireball for this band, for this shoe, whatever all the things we've done. I would like that kind of growth. Sometimes I have to tell people no, because they fail on either the authentic. The interesting or the relevant.
Bill Canady: Mm-hmm.
Ted Wright: And since everybody's listened into carp then to listen to us as a carp as a car person, we're just going to assume that for a second. I'm now going to tell this story of Corvette. So, my dad loved to redo cars when I was a kid. Sadly, he passed away when I was in high school. So, me spending my time with him redoing cars and particularly redoing old Corvettes. Is something that was very important to me. I still have the last car he and I ever redid, 1963 Corvette. She's beautiful, she's lots of fun. Just drove her last week. Corvette calls us and says, Hey. We have a problem. We are the car for the successful plumber. We are not in anyone's conversation about if you're not thinking Porsche, you know, Aston Martin or Corvette. And we're a better product, pound for pound, dollar for dollar, more power, better product, all the rest of stuff. I'm like, you have called the right person. I can talk Arkus-Duntov, I can talk rocker arms. Let's go. Could not have been more excited. Fly up to Detroit. Go to the RenCen Center. Big, big meeting. Go up there, and they say, okay, so what we really want to talk about are basically a couple things that nobody cares about. It was this is the early two, this is the mid 2000s. At this point, nobody cared about that. Everyone really cared about. If it was 1970, they totally would have cared about this stuff. That's
Bill Canady: Yeah.
Ted Wright: what they think is cool. And so I go back home and I'm struggling for a couple weeks, and my wife can see that I'm struggling. And she's like, what's wrong? I was like, I can't help Corvette. And it was good money. It was GM money back when GM had money. So it was good money. It was kind of life-changing money for where we were. Companies about five years old at the time. Had to go back up to Corvette. And this time the meeting was in Kentucky. And I had to say, hey, it isn't Bowling Green. That's exactly
Bill Canady: I think it's bowling green, isn't that yeah.
Ted Wright: correct. I had to go up to them and say, hey, we can't help you. And here's a presentation. Now I'm gonna do a presentation. Like, here's most of your money back. Not all of it, because we spent I kept a little because we'd done a little work, but here's most of your money back,
Bill Canady: Seems very fair.
Ted Wright: which surprised GM. They're like, wait, what? That's a check? I don't even know how to process that. Wait, what? I was like,
Bill Canady: Yeah.
Ted Wright: I'm leaving. I'm not leaving. I'm not taking this back. I can only be this nice once. And I
Bill Canady: Yeah.
Ted Wright: had a presentation and I basically said, here's the things you have to fix. Then the Corvette that you see now is not because of that presentation that I did.
Bill Canady: All right, Ted, tell them how to contact you so they can get all these great things.
Ted Wright: so thank you, Bill, for asking. the company is called Fizz. We are if you Google Fizz and Ted Wright, you'll find us really easy. my email is ted at fizzcorp.com, F-I-Z-Z-C-O-R-P dot com. always glad to have conversation with people. And Bill, thank you for bringing all this fun information to your audience. This is really good.
Bill Canady: Listen, I'm taking away the big lesson for me today is word of mouth is not just something a company can turn on. It's something the company has to earn. And they earn it through being authentic, right? Interesting. It has to be repeatable. They got to get a unique experience. The CEO's job is to make the product and storyline true, help identify them and the people who genuinely care and give them something to pass on, And with your capabilities and experience. You know, there's a way to do this and and really get it right. So thank you for showing us how this conversation becomes about growth. we'll include the include the links to Fizz down below of the show notes so people can click on that, your your LinkedIn profile, everything we've got. Listen, thank you everyone today for listening. Thanks, Ted, for having for coming on the show. It was fantastic. Have a great day.
Ted Wright: Thank you, Bill.
Ted Wright: Thanks for having me, Bill. I'm super excited to to be here.
Bill Canady: Well, listen, I'm super excited because this, at the end of the day, we're all about growth. And this is or this is the how we get it, right? It's advertising helps and that, but the trusted recommender is exactly what when someone tells you something and you trust him, you're more likely to do it. So my big question for you is how do big businesses, how do any businesses, B2B businesses, drive this conversation? How do they actually make that happen?
Ted Wright: So, Bill, what you've really got to do is you've really got to think about word-of-mouth marketing as something that's at least 3,500 years old. So everybody's been doing this since literally 2,000 years before Jesus was walking around. So it's been a long time that folks have been relying on other people for recommendations, right? This word of mouth marketing, word of mouth is people talking to people. Word of mouth marketing is taking that and making it explicit on how you're going to do that. And basically systematizing something that everybody already wants to do. So when you're thinking about doing that, from all your listeners are thinking about doing that, they really need to really think about three different pieces. They need to think about their story, they need to think about their target, and they need to think about the activities that they're gonna do to get the story to the target more efficiently. So if you just make a triangle and go story target goal on the outside and put the word activity in the middle. That's the tattoo that after this podcast you should go and get on your forearm so you'll never forget this.
Bill Canady: That's absolutely right. And the key of that, when they're getting that tattoo, what's typically the thing that triggers it? Like, like how do they start asking this question, why am I not doing more meta app?
Ted Wright: Right. So here's the so here's the interesting thing. For everyone who's listening, your total addressable market can be really broken up into two pieces. The 10% piece and the 90% piece. The 10% of that piece are made up of what we call advocates. And those advocates really have three particular qualities to them. They like to try new things because they're new.
Bill Canady: Interesting. Can you enable these folks? Can you empower them? Can or is it just an organic?
Ted Wright: So here's the cool thing. You can enable them, but you cannot create them. So these folks have been this way. They've had this advocate personality. By the time they're basically 10 years old, this is this is how they're thinking about stuff. They're like, hey, I know this about my friend. I know this about this thing, whatever that is. Next time I see my friend, I should totally tell them about that. Not because they want to be popular or not because they want to have. You know, some generator company send them 10 bucks because, hey, Ted bought a generator. They're doing it because I know you, I like you, I see that you're moving down to where there's storms and there's power outages. You need to know how much I like my generator. And if you can, you should totally get one yourself. Right? Advocates have an innate love for sharing stories with other people. So you activate them. By knowing that they're out there seeking information about the thing you're interested in, right? The thing that you're selling. And they're interested in that. And if you'll share stories with them and information in a way that is totally not about selling, but about sharing them, they'll take in all that information naturally and they'll go share that with people that they think that they already know, that they think would find that information relevant and interesting.
Bill Canady: I've seen it. I've seen it. Is this today's modern influence? Is this the the kid I see out in front of the restaurant doing a dance? Is this is it have they figured out how to monetize it?
Ted Wright: So, a couple of things, two questions. Yes, it is influencers, but also it is not influencers. The other thing is they have definitely figured out how to monetize that because
Bill Canady: Mm.
Ted Wright: the systems set up on social media are they'll pay somebody if you can get them to stick on your platform and watch your stuff longer. So they'll go out and do stuff. They'll dance in front of restaurants, they'll say, I'm a lawyer in North Carolina and I'm 60 pounds overweight and I'm gonna move to the middle of Alaska and build my own house. And I'm that's the way I'm gonna lose weight because there's not a lot of food around here and it's a lot of effort for me to build this house. And so I'm either gonna freeze to death or I'm not gonna be fat. Come join me on my journey. And you're like, that's just weird enough where I'll sit here and watch it. Then if it's entertaining, I stay. Okay. Influencers are basically what the kids refer to as cosplaying. So they are pretending they're advocates. Advocates will share stories about all of your audiences' product and services.
Bill Canady: I think you're on to something there. There is a difference between someone who I'm making a living, I'm basically an advertising person. And if you give me a free meal or you pay me money, I'll I'll I'll let my followers know about your restaurant. It does work, and there's nothing wrong with that. But when you've got someone who's a true believer, if you can get your product in their hands, they're gonna play with that product because it's what they do, and it's more authentic. How
Ted Wright: It is.
Bill Canady: does a business find those people? And how do how do they activate
Ted Wright: So, all right, so let's do this. Two things there's find and there's activate. So let's talk about find first. Here's the cool thing you don't find them, they find you. And they
Bill Canady: interesting.
Ted Wright: find you because you're smart and you're thinking, okay, where do my people hang out? Physically or virtually, and what can I go do there that will make them stop what they're doing already and pay attention to me? So I'll give you an example. Everybody who's listening to this goes to a trade show. We've all been behind trade show booths before. You know the where the best place to talk to people on trade shows are? In the coffee line, starting
Bill Canady: Yeah.
Ted Wright: at seven o'clock in the morning, right? That coffee line starts at 7 a.m. And I don't can't even tell you. people
Bill Canady: That's right. Commiserating. gonna be here all day.
Ted Wright: are like, okay. And rope drops not till nine, but they're getting their coffee at seven. They're gonna get another cup, they gotta be at the booth by eight to get everything set up, rope drop is at nine, everyone comes flooding in. How cool is it if Bill and Ted are sitting there in the coffee line at 7 a.m. and we have a model of whatever our thing is, and we're playing with it, with it between each other. Everybody around the us in line, and we're not talking to anybody else, we're just talking ourselves. And they're like, hey, wait, what what do you mean? That generator does this? Or what do mean that pen does this? Or talk to me about that flashlight. What do you mean that flashlight will throw a beam a mile and a half? Like, how do you know it'll go a mile and a half? Like, hang on, let me show you. And you start showing people, and eventually you're having a conversation as the coffee line goes. And people that are there at the flashlight show are interested in flashlights. So they're gonna say, hey, cool. Like, are y'all in here? say yeah, yeah, we're going to our table at booth. You know, 75, 32. Like, here's a little card, here's the QR code on it, you know, whatever. Come see us. And then they order their coffee, they go away. You order your coffee, you go get your coffee, you go away, you go walk around the corner, you throw away the coffee, and you go stand back in line. And they're Bill and Ted standing in the back of the line again, having the same conversation about the flashlight. Because what we are doing is we are sharing the story with each other. We're creating what I like to just call hoopla. Like, let's just do something small. And if people want to join in our conversation, they will. And if they don't want to, they won't. And we're not gonna be obnoxious about like, hey, Bill, this flashlight's really cool. We're just gonna be playing with our flashlight, like we're prepping
Bill Canady: That's
Ted Wright: to go. And it's like and I might have ten of them in my pockets. And I'm like, okay,
Bill Canady: Mm-hmm.
Ted Wright: I gotta turn on this one. Cool. You think it's like it's a mile and a half from here? Yeah. And then you say mile and a half four or five times, and somebody eventually is gonna say, How do you know it's a mile and a half? Like, well, I I Totally like to tell you. And how long does the battery last? And you have a conversation. And then they go and remember that and they're telling their friends as they're walking around the trade show, hey, so I saw this person playing this flashlight. And we got to go talk to them. We got, I just got I got to go show you this flashlight or this generator or this, you know, this cool widget or whatever the thing is. We got to walk over there. And when they walk over to your booth, everybody's already primed. They're predisposed to want to have conversation with you. Because their friend already vouched for this thing they're going to show you is cool. So that's how you activate them. You activate them by being confident enough in your product, in your service, that you're
Bill Canady: Mm-hmm.
Ted Wright: like, if I actually could, if everybody in America knew as much about this thing as I do, I'd have people lined up down the street.
Bill Canady: That makes a ton of sense. How do you do it at scale? There's only one Bill, one Ted. I can only talk to so many people. How do I do this at scale? So, as you know,
Ted Wright: And there are
Bill Canady: our audience is CEOs, private equity, and this is the key of being success, right? Is I got to grow this business. I have my own business, you have your own business, right? We we we lead these businesses. The biggest problem is actually doing this on command. it's powerful when it works. Do you have tricks or stories or examples you can help? that you know, the guy listening to this goes, I come I'm going to do that tomorrow, beyond just doing the coffee.
Ted Wright: All right, so the you you can't you can't do it on command because the command is always on. So you and I cannot decide that we're gonna get everybody to talk about our in home generator.
Bill Canady: Mm-hmm.
Ted Wright: What we have to do is we have to figure out okay, if people are gonna talk about the in home generator, what would they talk about? So all stories that are most likely to get shared between two people who know each other have three particular qualities. They are authentic, they're interesting, and they are relevant. And if you like acronyms in English, do they have AIR? So they are authentic, they're interesting, and they're relevant. So the
Bill Canady: Air.
Ted Wright: first thing you've got to do, Bill, is that you've got to figure out if you're trying to get this thing to go viral, why would people really care about the story? Our job as marketers, our job as CEOs is to help our people think, hey, what's the story? And then where can we go share this? And how can we go share this in such a way that doesn't interrupt people? Because nobody wants to be interrupted. Everybody's got more things than they can do on their plate every day, morning till noon, night, the whole thing. They can they do not have time. Some people talk about what's the signal through the noise. I just explained what the signal is. The signal is something that is so interesting to me that I'm gonna stop what I'm doing. I'm gonna pay attention over here to this thing.
Bill Canady: Mm-hmm.
Ted Wright: So you and everybody else who runs a business, me, I have to figure out every day what can I go do to share so that people are gonna come and ask me questions. Because once I get somebody to ask me a question, then I'm having a conversation. And a conversation leads to awareness, and awareness leads to action, and action leads to a sale. You don't get any action if people are unaware. Nobody has time for your broadcast. They just don't have time. They're
Bill Canady: Mm-hmm.
Ted Wright: getting hit with a new ad every five and a half seconds.
Bill Canady: Mm-hmm.
Ted Wright: Lord have mercy. Right? We just we just can't do it.
Bill Canady: I believe it. I'm just I'm inundated. I get this will sound I get a thousand emails a day. About eight hundred of those go in junk. Thank God for that.
Ted Wright: Yes.
Bill Canady: the other 200 make it to my inbox. And then, you know, probably 50% of those should win in junk. But still, that's that is a hundred emails of a specific request of me. It's a lot, right? So we're unundated, inundated with this.
Ted Wright: Hey, every day. All right, so let's just do that. Let's say you work 10 hours a day and you get 100. That's 10 every hour. So you gotta answer, you gotta make a decision to answer the new email every six minutes, and you don't get to do anything else all day. And then tomorrow is a whole new crop of this stuff. So so this is why that's just people who are getting through, right?
Bill Canady: That's just people who are getting through that's not even the real stuff. That's not even my job.
Ted Wright: Yeah, this is by the way, this is not my job. Okay, so my buddy David, I just David, if you're listening to this, hi, he's retired now, but he used to run all the marketing for AT&T. And I totally remember once I was at his house, we were hanging out, our kids all went to the same school together, and he had an accordion file that he had all his notes for the day, and they started at 7 a.m. and they ended at 6 p.m. And his assistant loaded that thing up. And they he gave him a new one every day. And that's he needed to read all that. And then he was that's how he went through his day. And I said to him, How do you get any work done if you're doing
Bill Canady: Work done.
Ted Wright: meetings all the time? And he said, I do my work after the kids go to bed. I'm like,
Bill Canady: Yes, I do the same.
Ted Wright: that is not sustainable, my brother. And he goes, That is correct. I haven't figured out a better system. It's kind of like Churchill said about democracy. It's the worst thing we've ever come up with, except for everything else. Right. So that was
Bill Canady: I
Ted Wright: That was
Bill Canady: love so too.
Ted Wright: yeah. So that's kind of that that's where David was ripping off of that. So in that world, and we're all like this, CEOs to not CEOs to everybody out there, to my son who's 23. We have things that we want to do every day. And if we're gonna have something new, that story has to be authentic, interesting, and relevant. And we have to be able to come to it of our own volition, not have it shoved at us. Cause the first time you try and shove something at somebody, they immediately start rejecting it. Why? Because they're inundated already.
Bill Canady: Yeah, it's just not on the plate today, right? It may, I may truly would be interested. I just don't have the bandwidth. We've talked about a lot of it. We talked about Generac generators. By the way, I love them. I one point was really associated in their early days with them. So I have nothing but the good things they now that's my subliminal message. Say that we're taking sponsors and generac, we'd love the happy as one.
Ted Wright: Right.
Bill Canady: But yeah, but in all seriousness, so I one of the businesses I run today is a part supplier to the power sports industry. So motorcycles, right? And The way that we get our advocates is you're really on to something here. So we can identify, they're self-identifiers through a variety of things. Social media is there already out posting. We will from time to time reach out to them or they'll reach out to us and we make available to them certain things that we care about, like, yeah, a lot of these guys are like bike rebuilders. They want pistons. And we have a very high-end line of pistons. We'll go, hey, try our pistons. And if you like it, talk about it. If you don't, well we prefer you don't, but they'll even talk more about it if they don't like it. But we we put we
Ted Wright: Mm.
Bill Canady: we we put it out there, they take it and run with.
Ted Wright: They take it and remember that. All right, so let me tell you just a little factoid here. These advocates, so that thing about they if they don't like it, actually they don't. So,
Bill Canady: They can work against you sometimes. Yep.
Ted Wright: so here's so here's the numbers. Now, if it's gonna put somebody at their life at risk, yes. And there are also people that are also whine. And they whine professionally or they whine for a living, or they just
Bill Canady: That's right.
Ted Wright: they want to just stir the pot. Again, we're all quoting our Mimas here. Uh-oh, stirring the pot. Actual advocates, if they don't like your thing, won't talk about it. Because that is the unkindest
Bill Canady: It is interesting you say that.
Ted Wright: cut of all. Because they, one, they think talking about stuff is the awesomest thing ever. So they love to do that. And secondly, they have a relationship with their friends, their quote, audience unquote. And if they're always coming in with a bunch of negativity, with a bunch of all the rest of stuff, eventually people won't invite them to their house anymore. Or they won't pay pick up the phone when they call. So if it's if it's light threatening, like, no, you know, this these eggs now have salmonella, so I'm the food person, so let me tell everybody about this. That's that's one thing. But if they just don't like your eggs and they like a different type of egg, they just won't talk about the eggs. It falls off their list.
Bill Canady: That is so insightful. You're exactly right. Well, you know, first of all, I I 100% agree that if they don't like it, just don't they don't talk about it. But they're doing this because they love doing this. This is a
Ted Wright: Yes.
Bill Canady: the thing that I'm sending them or is something that enables them to do what they already like, and they're just gonna play with the tinker toy that I've sent them. So that's a really good so your risk of of of trying to contact them is look, it either works or it's nothing.
Ted Wright: I that has been our that has totally been our experience. So if I'm a bike rebuilder, and especially somebody like your company who like they make the best pistons in the world. So not only am I glad for the free thing, but more importantly, for many of the people you talk to, they're excited to be seen. They're like, wait a minute, you saw my little thing about repairing this dirt bike? my God. And they go and they tell all their friends. And here's the other thing for everyone who's listening. When people talk about, what are we gonna do for digital? All of the stuff we're talking about fits right into the digital world in two ways. Number one, if it happens in real life, people take a picture of it and they share it with their friends. Straight up, period. So if I'm the bike rebuilder and Bill sends me the best piston in the world, I'm gonna go talk to people about it and I'm probably gonna take a picture and I might not do it publicly. I just might send it to my three best bike building friends and say, dude, these guys sent me this and I'm gonna put it in, and they're gonna remember to ask me about it a couple weeks ago. It's like, man, I like the heck out of this thing. In fact, I pulled it out just to see how messed up it got. It's perfect. Looks like it's brand new. I'm gonna put it in there. I don't know if I'm ever gonna use anything else. And they told me.
Bill Canady: an expert to this, what what are the enabling things that a CEO or a business owner can do that when when they when the when the advocate does find them or they find each other, it's ready to go. What are some of the enabling steps they should be taking so that they're prepared?
Ted Wright: So I think you should have invitations ready to do something that's low cost for you, but really interesting for them. And I'll give you an example.
Bill Canady: Mm-hmm.
Ted Wright: We did a bunch of work with this underwear company for a while. And one time I we said to them: it's like, you ought to invite everybody to New York City and come pick out. help you and the head designer, you the owner, whose name is on the underwear, and the head designer to pick out the new colors for next year. And the head designer was like, well what if they pick out the wrong colors? I'm like, I did it's not a democracy. This is an underwear acracy, which they definitely like that I did that quote.
Bill Canady: Yeah.
Ted Wright: it's like we're not asking for their vote, we're asking for their opinion. And so They said, okay, well, nobody's really gonna come to New York and it's gonna be very expensive to fly them out there and all the rest of the. no, we're not flying. We're just saying, would y'all like to come to the actual showroom and work with the actual designer and see how we pick colors? It's this Tuesday on this month. We're gonna and we'll have lunch, but y'all, we're just gonna make it real clear. Y'all gotta figure out your own plane flight and wherever you're staying and all the rest of the stuff. Okay, so we had 280 people send us a note and say we would like to show up in the first hour. We cut it off at a thousand, hoping that a thousand people really didn't come. We figured half of people would come. We had four hundred and eighty people show up. We had four hundred and eighty people.
Bill Canady: My goodness. So it's not really about the money you spend. It's giving access. They get access that the normal person, is that the key to it?
Ted Wright: It's access, it's something it's something that they can't normally get or
Bill Canady: Mm-hmm.
Ted Wright: it's something that they've seen, quote, in a movie or something like that. Like it's my gosh, it it
Bill Canady: It's the chef's table at the restaurant. It's working in the factory. It's see it's meeting the brand standards, right? It's getting behind the scenes. Is that is that what you're saying? Yeah.
Ted Wright: Behind the scenes, behind the scenes. I so we have several bands that are clients of ours. And I would just like to tell everybody right now that backstage is not what you think it is. I mean, you've
Bill Canady: No, it's not.
Ted Wright: seen that in movies, and maybe that happened in the nineteen seventies, but basically working musicians now are well into their thirties and beyond. And if they ever did any of that stuff that you think goes on in the background, they don't do it anymore. It's and it once you
Bill Canady: They're exhaust.
Ted Wright: what once you get back. Past 50, you're like, and remember, Rolling Stones are like 82 years old or something like that.
Bill Canady: Eighty. Mick's got it going on.
Ted Wright: Got it going on. But that's about yoga. The backstage is basically pregame, is yoga and meditation and getting with your nutritionist to make sure you have the right amount of protein and all the rest of stuff. And that's that's how somebody's able to be on the road for 130 days in a year. Because being on the road is exhausting. So my My point to bring all that up is it seems like really fun in the beginning, but it is really fun if you're a musician. So once I was on a I was on a cruise boat, so my friend invented the whole music cruise business where the band goes on the boat and that was his idea and it worked. And so once I was there, there's a band called Lynyrd Skynyrd, and it was the it was their it was their cruise. And I go to this, I go to this thing. And the guy who plays bass for them is giving a lecture on how world how Lynyrd Skynyrd plays the bass. And he looked at everybody and says, You know what's great about this song? It's like we sing it in F, but we play it in G. And you would have thought he had brought tablets down from the mountain. Everyone was so excited. Me, who is not a musician,
Bill Canady: They'll tell that story forever.
Ted Wright: tell that story forever. And they were amazed by it because they're super fans of this thing. And they all went out and they made notes and they told everybody and like, my God, and and then the story spread. So you with your pistons, your job is to get people you think who might think this is fun, and also to go to those places. I mean, everybody in the motorcycle world knows about Sturgis. If I was ever going to Sturgis, I would go and I would have one particular story I wanted to tell. And I would make sure people could get as deep into that story as possible. And so many people out there in the motorsports world go to these things and they treat it more like a carnival, like they're trying to get as many people through the Ferris Wheel as possible. You don't want as many people on the Ferris wheel. You want people to have a great Ferris wheel experience and talk about your Ferris wheel for the next year. And if your Ferris wheel is that great, like I can't wait to go back next year and see what they do. That's the job. The job is not the thing. The job is not the experience. The job is the conversation. The experience comes from.
Bill Canady: So they self-identify. You
Ted Wright: Yes, sir.
Bill Canady: have it set up where there is a unique experience for them to participate that they can't get anywhere else. Right. So they're now now they're there. The Ferris Wheel ride went great. What do you do next? How do you keep this going?
Ted Wright: So then, then you just treat them like a friend. You're like, hey, hope y'all had a good time. All right, see you later, you know, and like we're gonna send you, you know, we loved having y'all so much that here is free samples of the next thing that we're gonna do next year. And then you just treat them like your friend and you send them notes like, hey, so great to see you. I know you saw this piston at this thing. we've got the new one coming out. You know, wait till you see our grips that we've got. Using the same technology, you know, whatever else you're doing out there. And then you just treat him as a friend, treat him as like family. In fact, you actually work really hard. So just for a second, we talked about a story is authentic, interesting, and relevant, right? Does it have air? The A and authentic. Let's just talk about that language. So for us in our shop, the difference between authenticity and truth is authenticity is the language of friends. Truth is the language of lawyers and politicians. So you want to continually talk to people like your friend. Like, hey, and let's just say, since we're talking about motorcycles, you know, I am the CEO of Kawasaki. I'm gonna say, hey, I'm I'm gonna say y'all, because that's my if I was the CEO of Kawasaki, that's what I'd say. Hey y'all,
Bill Canady: We wouldn't. It's obvious.
Ted Wright: just thinking about dirt bikes the other day. Blah blah blah. We have this really cool thing. You know, this thing was always a PETA for all of us in the dirt bike. So we've had some guys in in Osaka working on this for two years, and I think they've really cracked the code. And you should totally check this out. We've got a film on LinkedIn that shows the engineering, and we've got this, and we're gonna be do demos here, here, and here. You should totally come check it out. Love Ted, CEO of Kawasaki. Boom. Send that out, right? And just Have a conversation with people and give them an opportunity for s for access for something they think it's talkable. And it doesn't have to be, people are listening, this is like, it doesn't have to be fancy. I don't have to go to the World Cup final. I can go to a fan zone during the World Cup and I can have a great experience and I can be like, this is the coolest thing ever. Who knew? And we're all doing the Norwegian team like rowing thing together.
Bill Canady: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Ted Wright: Or whatever, because there's a bunch of Norwegian people there. And we're doing this in Minnesota. And everybody is from Norway. If you're from Minnesota or know somebody who's from Norway, and so we're all gonna make this rowing thing. Okay, that's fun. I don't get to do that. Doesn't have to cost money, has to be interesting, and it has to be relevant.
Bill Canady: And authentic. I think your point about authentic is key for a variety of re r reasons. So, so so I've self-identified or they found me. We now give them a backstage experience, right? Something behind the scenes that that makes them feel included. And and then from that point on, it's it's just a regular engagement of of of of you know kind of reaching out, hey, we're in town. Would you would you is that is there more? Is that it? Is that as simple as it is?
Ted Wright: So it's just having a conversation and then it's having a relationship and seeing where that relationship goes. Some people peter out, some people want to be your best friend forever. Some people marginally, 2% of them, might be super annoying. You're like, it's a it's okay. I don't need 40 emails a day. You know who does this the best, I personally think about this whole thing? Walt Disney Company. So Walt Disney
Bill Canady: Interesting. Wow.
Ted Wright: started this thing called Disney Moms. And they're like, and it. For all of y'all that have ever had kids that are of Disney age, you were at some dinner party once, and either you or your spouse said, Hey, we're thinking about taking the kids to Disney. And somebody like leaped over the dinner table and said, Okay, wait, okay. So when you go, and then they wanted to plan out with you in front of you, in front of everybody else, your entire Disney vacation there. They're like, okay, this is who I used, or or I did it myself, and I use these three websites and blah, blah, blah. And you're taking notes. Because you know that it's almost as expensive to go to Europe with your kids as it is to go to Disney with your kids. So d
Bill Canady: I think Disney's more expensive now. It's a great experience, but they are not giving that away.
Ted Wright: they are not giving that away and it is a great experience. And so what they did was they said, Hey, there's all these people that are excited about that. And internally they call it Disney moms. They externally may still call it Disney moms. I don't know. I'm neither n mm a mom nor a Disney parent, a Disney person. So Bear with me. And so they just reached out to a bunch of people and said, Hey, would you like to be on our Disney Moms Council? And all these people jumped up and down. And they said, Okay, cool. So we're going to be here in Orlando and we're going to be here this day. And we're going to be here this day. And so y'all should come. And, you know, we have these hotel rooms because we're doing it very much off season. So we'll give you a little bit of deal on the hotel room. Because, and we're still going to make money on the hotel room. That's what they're saying internally, but we're going to give you a little bit off. And they're like, They couldn't get there fast enough, so excited. And so the first year, Disney really didn't know how excited people were. And they're like, no, we want to know everything. And so all those people went away. And then Disney got together with everybody and said, look, we've got 500 people. And we could have more, but we've got 500 people that are coming and whatever we're going to do presentations. So if you've heard of television and the upfronts, Disney now treats that as the upfront to 500 people that are going to go take out. And that message to everybody they know. When Disney Cruise is launched, that's part of their launch strategy was people say, okay, Disney's gonna do a cruise. And people are like, that is the weirdest thing ever. And like, no, no, no, check it out. And then the first people went on the Disney cruise, they all came back and they said, this is fantastic for the parents. Cause the kids go and they have the time or life and we can just hang out. And then we have a lovely dinner. It's all very adult. It's not like the character breakfast at the park. It's all very adult. It's all very fun. Kids had a blast. We had a blast. Low stress. It's great. And all the other parents who are listening to that are like, no. But half of them go on the website and they look. Because remember, word of mouth is not the beginning and the end. It is both there is a middle part, and the middle part is digital. So when you, Bill, send a piston to somebody, they're like,
Bill Canady: Mm-hmm.
Ted Wright: okay, this is cool. But before they take the two hours to install it in that bike, they're gonna go online and they're gonna check out for social proof, what are all the reviews? What are all the pictures? What are the engineers saying? You know, if you did a survey like, my gosh, four out of five dentists say that this is the best thing ever, like how many dentists did you talk to? Five? Or, you know, what's your end value? Because I don't wanna I don't wanna mess up my bike by putting your janky ass part in there. Just because you send it to me, right? So then they go and they say, okay, cool. I I got had the conversation. Then I checked it out digitally. Now I'm gonna go do the thing. And the end of that is when it works, when the story matches the experience they have, they go tell however many people they're gonna tell. And you don't care.
Bill Canady: Is there is there a way to measure the ROI or effect? But even if it's low cost, it still takes time. And they're
Ted Wright: Sure.
Bill Canady: going to want to see the key people, right? So they want to meet Mick Jagger. They want to meet Ted Wright. They want to meet the person. How do you measure the ROI to make sure it's worth the investment?
Ted Wright: All right, let's talk about let's talk about who they want to meet, and then we'll talk about ROI. So I'm gonna tell you fun stories. So we work with a band and they're very famous. They're very famous. And we were gonna do like you should have all your fans come and we should do this barbecue dinner. I think we can
Bill Canady: Mm-hmm.
Ted Wright: get it for like $12 a plate and have everybody, I think we can charge $200 and somebody will come back there. And then the lead singer, very famous dude, says, Yeah, but I don't want to talk to 200 people. It's like, dude. I don't think you're the most interesting person in the room. You're the most famous person. He's like, no, no, who's the most interesting person in the room? Your bus driver. He drove Motörhead for 23 years and drove
Bill Canady: Jeez.
Ted Wright: Led Zeppelin before that. The man has more stories. So I said, dinner time, it's gonna be his name is Bill. It's like it's gonna be stories with Bill. And Bill's just gonna get up there, and somebody from the band is like, Bill, tell that story about the whatever. And they're gonna have a conversation. And yes, and you guys are all gonna listen just like we're all listening, and we're fascinated by this because nobody thinks about the bus driver. And nobody
Bill Canady: Mm-hmm.
Ted Wright: in that room realized the bus driver knows everything because they see everything. And it's super cool. Everybody wants a picture with a star, everyone wants a picture with a band. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Bill, do you have time for one more story? And we're and then people in the crowd go, one more story, one more story. And the band is like, this is the coolest thing ever because we get to have an experience with our fans, but we're having the experience with us. Some people in the band didn't even know Bill, because he's only driving one bus, and a band will generally have eight or nine buses. So there's eight or nine drivers. So if you're not on his bus, you might or might not really know Bill during the tour. And you definitely don't wake up at three o'clock in the morning and need something, or just wake up and like talk to him while he's driving you from one venue to another. All right. So The meeting is not about the most famous people. You've got to really be hardcore about interesting and relevant. So your engineers, Bill, that are making these parts are just as interesting to these motorcycle guys as you are. And and said with love, probably more so. Absolutely. Like they
Bill Canady: more so. More, more, more so. By the way, when I go to a trade show or I go to a factory, I want to talk to the person on the floor. I want
Ted Wright: Yes.
Bill Canady: to hear what they're doing. And they'll tell you, you know, I do this thing. You're like, my God, that's the most amazing thing. That's why it works, right? You know, you
Ted Wright: Yes.
Bill Canady: nobody believes anything the CEO says or anything. Like our jobs are different. That person has got insight you can get nowhere else.
Ted Wright: And they're and it's super fun, like if you're into that thing. So and now I'm gonna get to your R R I question. I we've been in business for 25 years. and and I would just say that people bias on the hope and they renew on the results. And our average client lasts nine years with us. So
Bill Canady: That's amazing. In this day and age, that speaks, you know, a volume to what you guys bring. I'll give you one other thing that we've done. So you get these you know, these advocates, they turn into, I'm just coining a super fan. Like they want more and more. We have found, because this kind of person is unique in that sometimes they actually know more about our product than we know about our product because they're using it in the real world. We will make in certain cases, we'll give them access to product design and input so that next product comes out. It's almost like you get your own testing group. And when you
Ted Wright: For sure.
Bill Canady: do that, you can take it from this nebulous because I forget who said it was some bun famous. You know, 50% of my advertising is wasted. My problem is I just don't know which 50%. You then can tie it to something that has an attributable ROI. Hey, I developed a new product. It has the whiz banger on it that our advocate told us would sell, and it's selling. Right. So you
Ted Wright: Yes.
Bill Canady: can go beyond just, you know, did it rain in Southern California or not? You can actually tie it to concrete things. We found that to be very, very popular. It withstands the bright lights of budget cuts.
Ted Wright: Yes. Unless you want to say Heineken and we can have a discussion about the most interesting man in the world, which was a brilliant advertising campaign because it moved a ton of volume for them. We can talk about that in a second.
Bill Canady: and everybody quoted it.
Ted Wright: Every quote, and just so you know, that's actually why they sold a lot of beer. Cause you could buy a six-pack of beer and you could take to a party and people would quote the ad back and forth and people like, yes.
Bill Canady: Right too.
Ted Wright: I'm going to a party have interaction. I'm going to bring Heineken. Outside of Heineken and maybe a couple other things, most of the brands that have grown from Apple to Crocs to whatever else you want to name have grown significantly. United States have grown because one person shared a story with about that product or service with other people they know and they told you friends and so on and so on. You can trace it every time.
Bill Canady: You said something earlier, you've been doing this for twenty-five years, your average customer tenure, nine years, that's unbelievably strong. All right, be an advocate for yourself. Tell them what do you do? Like like tell about your secret sauce, how you make all this possible to get these brands where they need to be.
Ted Wright: So my job at this point, so I mean I started this, I I was in business school and I just watched Google and TiVo get adopted across campus. And I was like, huh, how'd that work? And I grew up in a family that how things work and why they work that way. We we I grew up in a family of scientists and engineers. So I was like, hmm, let me just go back to how does this work? So the secret sauce for us is having a replicable process. To where you know you can identify in the front end what products services companies are most likely to benefit from this. And then going to the people who are coming to you and saying, Hey, I would like that kind of growth for my company that you've done with PBR for Fireball for this band, for this shoe, whatever all the things we've done. I would like that kind of growth. Sometimes I have to tell people no, because they fail on either the authentic. The interesting or the relevant.
Bill Canady: Mm-hmm.
Ted Wright: And since everybody's listened into carp then to listen to us as a carp as a car person, we're just going to assume that for a second. I'm now going to tell this story of Corvette. So, my dad loved to redo cars when I was a kid. Sadly, he passed away when I was in high school. So, me spending my time with him redoing cars and particularly redoing old Corvettes. Is something that was very important to me. I still have the last car he and I ever redid, 1963 Corvette. She's beautiful, she's lots of fun. Just drove her last week. Corvette calls us and says, Hey. We have a problem. We are the car for the successful plumber. We are not in anyone's conversation about if you're not thinking Porsche, you know, Aston Martin or Corvette. And we're a better product, pound for pound, dollar for dollar, more power, better product, all the rest of stuff. I'm like, you have called the right person. I can talk Arkus-Duntov, I can talk rocker arms. Let's go. Could not have been more excited. Fly up to Detroit. Go to the RenCen Center. Big, big meeting. Go up there, and they say, okay, so what we really want to talk about are basically a couple things that nobody cares about. It was this is the early two, this is the mid 2000s. At this point, nobody cared about that. Everyone really cared about. If it was 1970, they totally would have cared about this stuff. That's
Bill Canady: Yeah.
Ted Wright: what they think is cool. And so I go back home and I'm struggling for a couple weeks, and my wife can see that I'm struggling. And she's like, what's wrong? I was like, I can't help Corvette. And it was good money. It was GM money back when GM had money. So it was good money. It was kind of life-changing money for where we were. Companies about five years old at the time. Had to go back up to Corvette. And this time the meeting was in Kentucky. And I had to say, hey, it isn't Bowling Green. That's exactly
Bill Canady: I think it's bowling green, isn't that yeah.
Ted Wright: correct. I had to go up to them and say, hey, we can't help you. And here's a presentation. Now I'm gonna do a presentation. Like, here's most of your money back. Not all of it, because we spent I kept a little because we'd done a little work, but here's most of your money back,
Bill Canady: Seems very fair.
Ted Wright: which surprised GM. They're like, wait, what? That's a check? I don't even know how to process that. Wait, what? I was like,
Bill Canady: Yeah.
Ted Wright: I'm leaving. I'm not leaving. I'm not taking this back. I can only be this nice once. And I
Bill Canady: Yeah.
Ted Wright: had a presentation and I basically said, here's the things you have to fix. Then the Corvette that you see now is not because of that presentation that I did.
Bill Canady: All right, Ted, tell them how to contact you so they can get all these great things.
Ted Wright: so thank you, Bill, for asking. the company is called Fizz. We are if you Google Fizz and Ted Wright, you'll find us really easy. my email is ted at fizzcorp.com, F-I-Z-Z-C-O-R-P dot com. always glad to have conversation with people. And Bill, thank you for bringing all this fun information to your audience. This is really good.
Bill Canady: Listen, I'm taking away the big lesson for me today is word of mouth is not just something a company can turn on. It's something the company has to earn. And they earn it through being authentic, right? Interesting. It has to be repeatable. They got to get a unique experience. The CEO's job is to make the product and storyline true, help identify them and the people who genuinely care and give them something to pass on, And with your capabilities and experience. You know, there's a way to do this and and really get it right. So thank you for showing us how this conversation becomes about growth. we'll include the include the links to Fizz down below of the show notes so people can click on that, your your LinkedIn profile, everything we've got. Listen, thank you everyone today for listening. Thanks, Ted, for having for coming on the show. It was fantastic. Have a great day.
Ted Wright: Thank you, Bill.
