Call the Damn Customer: The Underrated Growth Hack in an AI World

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Jane. Tom. Welcome back. I'm like welcoming you like this is my,
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this is my home. Like, welcome, welcome. This is,
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I'm really excited about this one because I think there's, we were talking about
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this earlier, right? There's a huge opportunity at
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the moment that I think a lot of businesses don't even realise is like sitting
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right under their nose. And just with,
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you know, all you see anywhere online
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is like AI this, automation that, Claude this, MCP server this.
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And like everyone is like, you know, putting out these tutorial videos
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on how to, you know, connect to this MCP server and how to
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automate this. And I think what a lot of people don't realize,
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and it's funny because I was having this conversation with a client of ours yesterday
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about like, you know, when people zig,
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you zag. Yeah. Right. And this is just like,
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like if you just look everywhere, everybody is doing the
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same thing. It's like automate, AI, streamline,
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like so heavily. And I just think that opens up this huge,
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huge opportunity. And we kind of touched on this last time
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to an extent, right, when we were talking about AI and how, you know,
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like in-person events and in real life events are becoming more of
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a thing. And I think like this is just going to become— people are going
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to crave so much more just
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like genuine human interaction,
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right? And I think that's where there is a massive opportunity. And we were talking
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about one of our old customers, weren't we, yesterday? And You know,
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how, why don't you tell the story about? No, well,
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it's the same conversation you and I just had just now before
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we started recording is about having the live event or live
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webinar instead of a prerecorded ones, the standard
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ones that businesses use out there, you know, actually in
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the world where everything is automated and you just don't know what's real and what's
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not, you know, with the AI morphing, you your image or
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creating an avatar that is not real, having that live event,
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for example, or live recording, live training session,
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you know, it's just such a massive difference.
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People instantly recognize that it's a live human being on
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the other end of the camera. Well, not necessarily.
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But it'd be, yeah. I think the client I'm talking about, you know who I'm
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talking about, right? Yeah. And I think as well, because I
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was actually referring to our good friend Alfred.
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Yep. And, you know, just how—
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He was the first one in his time doing what other
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people weren't doing. Yeah, just like, you know, calling every single
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customer, even like at scale. And I think,
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you know, even that alone, like one from a you know,
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from a,
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well, customer satisfaction for one goes through the roof. Your retention
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is probably going to go up. Those customers are likely to spend way more with
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you. And there's probably also like a built-in
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virality factor there because people are going to share it.
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They're going to be like, oh my God, I bought this thing the other day
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and like the founder just called me. Like they're going to tell the story.
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And if you think about that, if you amplify that, if you're getting, I don't
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know, 50 orders, 100 orders a day, and, you know,
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10% of those people end up telling their friends about that experience,
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which they probably will. That's huge.
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And again, not that— and that's not even to mention,
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like, I would be shocked if you didn't see some form
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of boost in the lifetime value of that customer from
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that small gesture. That's one thing.
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But then the other thing on top of that is then the insights
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that you get from that customer. Yeah, you learn so much more about who
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they are, what's important to them, why they bought service
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or product, you know, and it opens up an idea or
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an opportunity and builds relationship to upsell them something
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else. Totally. Later down the line when they're ready. Exactly.
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And this is, and this is the thing. And again, this comes back to how
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everybody is trying to utilize AI now for market research and things like
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that. And it's amazing, like AI can do incredible things, you know, like crawling
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Reddit forums, which are amazing for, you know, market intel, market research,
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competitor research, groups, um, like this,
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this review mining is another great strategy for getting customer
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insights. All of those, you know, this isn't to discredit
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any of those because they're fantastic, but speaking to customers in real
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time, you are going, and you can just get,
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have so much more depth from those conversations. And people
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say, oh yeah, but a lot of people don't even remember why they bought.
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I don't care. Like even if one person out of the 10 gives
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you something, that will be worth its weight in gold. And this is the thing
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as well. Like people always say this of like, you know,
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things as simple as like user-reported attribution, like just
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asking, how did you hear about us? Whether you're doing that on the phone,
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whether you're doing it in an online form on your website, if it's a checkout
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form or a lead capture form, like people
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just say, oh yeah, most people don't remember. Doesn't matter. Even if most people don't
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remember, if you get the one, and I've seen this before, like you generally will
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see, if you look at like these big exports of like, you know,
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user-reported attribution, it's normally like online,
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Facebook, can't remember. But then you will get one
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where it says, oh, you know, I've been listening to the podcast
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for a while. And then I saw a post online from, you know, John,
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who's the founder or whatever. And they'll go into great detail
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about like all the touchpoints they've had. That like, you cannot tell me
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that is not just like absolute gold intel that you can learn
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from. So it's just, and it's kind
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of like, I don't think businesses can afford not to be getting
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that 1% edge now, you know, to do
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those small things, to get that small information.
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You know, we were talking about another, like this, the client I was having a
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conversation with yesterday and just, he's just got this like attitude.
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He's come from a very like fast growth D2C consumer
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brand. And he has this kind of attitude
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of disruption in like everything. And it's like the way he looks at everything
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is like, why can we not do it differently?
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Right. And he's like, it can be annoying to an extent as
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well, you know, like, because you're just like, Like, but it's
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so— but it's so good. And it's so like, I think, you know,
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one of the things we were talking about yesterday is how if
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you take Meta, for example, and like media buying, this is exactly what we were
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talking about, how all the media buys now, if you go on YouTube, it's Andromeda
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update, and, you know, stop trying to force the algorithm, let the algorithm
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do its thing, you know, the algorithm knows. And, you know, we've,
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we've tested this, we've tried it It's true. Like if you try to
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an extent, but his point here is there
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will be a loophole in the system and someone will find a better way.
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And what will happen is they will then publish a video and then everyone else
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will start making videos on that. There's always like a pioneer
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or a leader in anything, whether it be media buying, whether it be
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conversion rate optimisation, whether it be entrepreneurship,
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business building, there is always somebody who finds this new way or
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this new strategy, or they're at the forefront and they're then
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leading and they then put that video out there. They do that talk at an
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event and everyone else sees it and they're like, oh my God, let's try it.
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Oh my God, it works. And then they're all making videos and you're then the
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laggard. Yeah. Right. And then it becomes less and less and less and less
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effective over time. Well, I guess the question is, how do you
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find that loophole? How do you find that gap?
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Yeah. And one way, like you were mentioning yesterday, is to just maybe
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have a separate budget and just go crazy on it and experiment the wackiest
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ideas. Yeah. The other way is calling your customers and find
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out something that the algorithm can't know,
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can't figure out. And that would be a massive
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revelation for you. And then you take that knowledge, that information, and then experiment
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with that. Which I think a lot of people are missing out.
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And we obviously been doing that, calling customers
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on behalf of our clients and finding out that information. And I think
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The problem with that is that businesses don't see the value in this immediately.
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You know, when you, when you, when you have that as
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a process, you know, and as a marketer,
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you kind of understand that is the thing that nobody's doing anymore.
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You should be doing that. Yeah. But the
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problem right now is a lot of businesses are relying on AI, and so they're
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a little bit skeptical on taking that approach. Yeah. Well,
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yeah, I mean, to your point about not finding it immediately, and that kind of
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comes into the, you know, the bit we were talking about with the separate budget
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as well, because you might be calling customers for, you know,
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6, 7 months and you learn nothing new that you didn't before. But then there
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might be a shift in the market, you know, a shift in sentiment
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of your category, whatever industry you're in,
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that because you are speaking to customers in real time, you pick
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up on that before anyone else does. Everyone else is looking at forums and,
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you know, that's inevitably the lag effect when people start, you know, going on
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online forums and talking about these things. But if you're speaking to customers in real
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time, you get the upper hand there. So that's the thing. It might, it might
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be like 6 months. It might be a year, might be 2 years. You just
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don't know. But if you can be at the forefront, you're going to have that
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advantage, that competitive edge. And this is exactly what we're saying about the,
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you know, the budget as well, because it's funny, like I,
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Um, you know, he was saying like, ah, like people just don't experiment.
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And it's kind of like, well, you know, you have to think like you're
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putting pressure on people to hit goals. Like obviously you have performance goals,
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which you need to have. So it's kind of like, and that's
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the way I see it when it comes to budgets. It's like, I think media
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buyer, CRO specialist,
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anyone in a marketing team, they have to have their
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performance targets and their performance goals. Right? Tightly constrained,
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set targets. But then instead of like trying, just giving
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them a budget and saying, hey, you need to hit these goals, but make sure
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you're experimenting. They're not going to experiment because they're scared because,
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you know, their job's on the line. So what you need to do is you
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need to say, hey, this budget is for performance.
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Optimise the hell out of this. Do what you know works. Use your years of
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experience. This budget, like I'm calling it, I'm coining
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this term. I'm calling it a fuck around budget. Like this budget is for you
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to fuck around with and break shit. Like, just go and break stuff. Yeah,
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you know, like actually just try things. And then people have the freedom
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to try. They, they have like a safe— because they know they're not going to
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be punished. Exactly. Yeah. And, and, you know, out of the main
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budget. Yeah. And it's such a short-sighted thing. And I know there's probably a lot
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of businesses listening to this thinking like, oh, I'm not gonna piss like, you know,
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a couple grand up the wall, or like however much you decide to
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put into this. But a really good reframing— I think this was like, um,
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Chris Walker at Refine Labs who used to talk about this, and actually their whole
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positioning of their agency was like marketing R&D,
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which I really liked. It was really smart framing. I mean, the thing
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I used to love about it, you know, even from like a smart retention
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standpoint, is like even just in the word R&D—
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R&D is a long-term investment, right? Yeah. So it's kind of like, it's quite smart
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positioning it like that because the clients they get— anyway, but that's a bit of
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a tangent. The I just like that framing because
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R&D is an investment in your future. It's research and development
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to find new things. And as most businesses know, if you have an R&D
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budget, you're researching, you're developing, you don't know when
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you're going to find something, but you do it because you know
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you need to stay ahead. So it's kind of like,
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I think, you know, maybe calling it a fuck around budget is probably, you know,
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not very attractive to businesses because— Call it R&D budget.
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Whatever you want. We have that. Want to call it
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to, to, to satiate yourself and make yourself feel better about it,
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do that. But like, I, I really do think it's so important
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to again stay ahead and to find those things. And I just think
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it can be so, so powerful. And yeah,
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again, like with where we are right now, with, with this space
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that we're in, it is probably the biggest
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opportunity to, to to be pushing those boundaries, to be trying
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things that others just aren't trying.
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Yeah, it is scary. And like you say, a lot of businesses
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just don't see how that money
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is going to bring the return, you know,
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in a predictable timeframe. Yeah. And I think when you're planning,
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when you're doing your forecasts or you're planning your budgets at the start of the
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year, I think it is important to set that sum per
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month aside and be like, okay, that is what— no matter what, I'm going to
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be using that money to fuck around, to play around,
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to, to do my R&D, not knowing when
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it's going to 100% return. You can't
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have an expectation of like, cool, we're going to try this for 3 months
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and then turn it off. Like, no. Yeah, no. I mean, like, we didn't
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have it at the start of the year, but we definitely have it now.
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And spending a lot doing the research and development
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for new opportunities and ideas.
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And I'm so glad that you actually forced me to agree
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to this. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, 100%. I think
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as well, like one of the other things that is
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kind of dangerous trap that I see people falling into at the
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moment as well is The, especially with MCP
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servers, you know, for AI, like most tools now. And I think we talked about
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this last time we talked about like the Shopify AI Toolkit. And I was like,
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just watch, like, within a couple of weeks, everyone's going to be opening up their
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MCP servers. Now every flipping email we get from like a software vendor or software
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providers, MCP server available, plug into Claude,
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plug into this. And so they're all doing it now. And that
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trend will continue. And I think the The
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dangerous, risky thing there is people are doing that and they're plugging Claude
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into, you know, their Google Ads or their,
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you know, Triple Whale or multi-touch attribution software, whatever it is.
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And they're getting it to read the data. But what you have
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to remember with that is it's effectively reading raw data.
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Raw data. Yeah, it's reading numbers. Numbers. Right.
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AI is great at that. Like it's really good, but you do have to be
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very careful about reading raw numbers alone. And I've seen this so many
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times where what it doesn't have is the context.
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It doesn't understand, like it might see that there's been a drop in,
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you know, conversions or your CPA has increased from a certain
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campaign. And it thinks, oh God, this is, you know,
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fatiguing. What it doesn't realize is you made a change on the website
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that day and this happened, or, you know, like something went out of
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stock or there was an operational issue. In the business. Like,
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it doesn't have all of that context. Um, and, and this is
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the really important thing. This is why we built, um, you know, uh,
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OrbitDeck recently, right? To, to— so people can have— they can add
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in that context on top of all of their existing data,
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MTA platforms, whatever they're using. You know,
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your— all of your revenue data, all of your order data, leads, etc.
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You can add in the context on there as well of all the changes that
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are happening internally and You know, changes to the website, change any
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internal operational changes, market changes.
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And that way you can find those correlations. And I think that's a really
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important point as well. And I just see a lot of businesses right now making
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very reckless, dangerous decisions. And because Claude
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told them to. Yeah. Yeah. And that, to your point,
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that is the dangers because especially if they're just using Claude
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tool. On its own, right? It's not plugged in into anything.
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Yeah. And you're just having a conversation. Oh, my numbers dropped, my sales dropped,
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or my CAC's gone up, etc. And to your point,
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it can give you 100 million ideas or reasons
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why this can be. And a lot of businesses just take that without
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that context, right? I think it's a super dangerous path a
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lot of businesses at the moment trying to find the answers
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because they, they just don't know why. Yeah. Yeah.
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And I, because I think this, this kind of boils down to like,
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you know, when you, when you think about like context or just the things that
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are happening, it's almost like boiling things down to like first principles thinking.
17:25.995 --> 17:28.399
You know, it's like, what, what are the, what are the,
17:28.959 --> 17:32.725
like taking something apart and just looking at all of the individual components
17:33.225 --> 17:36.490
within it? Like the, an ad platform or
17:36.990 --> 17:40.717
whatever platform isn't the only variable in the equation.
17:41.232 --> 17:44.468
There are lots of other parts and components to
17:44.968 --> 17:47.591
this, right? Even, you know, we were talking about,
17:49.110 --> 17:51.641
I think we were talking about this earlier and how like, you know,
17:54.740 --> 17:58.668
some businesses will, you know, they might look at
18:00.937 --> 18:05.268
when they're starting a new marketing strategy, for example,
18:05.284 --> 18:07.699
or they're trying to launch a new acquisition channel and they might not be able
18:08.199 --> 18:12.047
to to figure out why it's not working. So they go hunting
18:12.079 --> 18:15.450
new strategies and new techniques and new this and new that,
18:15.835 --> 18:19.591
but they're not— again, they're not even like— they haven't even spoken to customers.
18:20.008 --> 18:23.042
Like, if you've got an established business, you've been selling for a while, fine.
18:23.315 --> 18:25.979
But we do see this with a lot of like startups, you know, or like
18:26.124 --> 18:29.591
who are launching a new channel or new product or whatever it is, and they're
18:30.091 --> 18:33.524
not speaking to customers. Yeah, they're not running like website visitor
18:34.024 --> 18:37.777
surveys. And I think this is even in itself like just such a
18:40.332 --> 18:43.272
an untapped, you know,
18:43.385 --> 18:46.888
opportunity. Like what? So let's say you've
18:46.920 --> 18:50.198
got, I don't know, you're doing some form of ad. I don't care what you're
18:50.698 --> 18:53.572
doing, like a billboard, a flipping radio ad, a Facebook ad, whatever.
18:54.616 --> 18:58.007
You put a message out there and you are getting clicks to your website.
18:58.746 --> 19:02.168
So there is a message in the ad that people have seen and
19:02.668 --> 19:07.180
they've been interested enough to click. And then people aren't converting on
19:07.680 --> 19:09.720
your website. And what do these businesses do? They're like, let's try different ads,
19:10.220 --> 19:13.340
let's try different platforms, let's try different this. Wow. How about you just actually ask
19:13.840 --> 19:17.020
people a little pop-up survey widget on your website, like a live chat, and just
19:17.520 --> 19:20.710
say, hey, what brought you here? Freeform text field.
19:20.920 --> 19:24.080
Just ask them. And again, businesses will say, oh,
19:24.580 --> 19:27.960
only 10% of people do that. Fine. If you've got 1,000 visits coming to
19:28.460 --> 19:31.560
your website, that's 100 people you're going to get. And that's, that's, that's pretty accurate
19:32.060 --> 19:34.931
from what we've seen when, when you have As long as you're not asking,
19:34.996 --> 19:37.500
like, some people will put like a live chat thing, they'll say, hey, let us
19:38.000 --> 19:39.989
know if we can help with anything, no one's going to respond. If you ask
19:40.489 --> 19:44.276
a very direct question, people will respond and you like 10
19:44.389 --> 19:48.868
to 20% opt-in rates, 10 to 20% response
19:49.368 --> 19:52.096
rates is what you should expect to see on that when you've, when you kind
19:52.596 --> 19:55.436
of ask very specific questions. And you can alternate those questions over time.
19:56.351 --> 20:00.979
You might say, I don't know, let's say you're selling gazebo,
20:01.156 --> 20:04.313
you might say like, like, what's your,
20:04.861 --> 20:07.889
what's your biggest concern? Or do you currently own a gazebo?
20:08.326 --> 20:11.675
Or, you know, have you ever bought a gazebo before kind of thing,
20:12.207 --> 20:17.151
right? And then you can, you can gradually start to piece together more
20:17.344 --> 20:21.158
of those, like an understanding, like what are the friction points?
20:22.530 --> 20:25.713
I'm in big favour for the live chats on the website. Like it
20:26.213 --> 20:29.434
is something that from the very beginning, um, I've been
20:29.467 --> 20:33.057
telling our clients, especially when it comes to building new websites, you know,
20:33.218 --> 20:36.568
or improving their websites, put a live
20:36.584 --> 20:40.287
chat there and put a person behind it. Yeah, I mean, that was before
20:40.787 --> 20:44.631
the AI, um, shopping assistants were there and all that, but like,
20:44.759 --> 20:48.302
have a person, part-time person, a couple of hours a day,
20:48.847 --> 20:52.758
just the real person behind it answering people's questions.
20:52.951 --> 20:56.734
You will find out so much more about why they're there,
20:56.942 --> 21:00.707
why they're not buying, what stopping them, what is the objections
21:00.739 --> 21:04.274
and all that, and then use that to enhance the information on the
21:04.290 --> 21:07.905
website. But start with that. And there's loads of free tools out there that
21:08.405 --> 21:12.256
you can utilize. Now, obviously, with AI live chatbots
21:12.756 --> 21:16.205
and, you know, a lot
21:16.705 --> 21:20.023
of businesses rolling this out, however, they're still
21:20.104 --> 21:22.417
relying on the automated answers.
21:23.513 --> 21:27.157
And what they're missing out is they actually, when they are can't
21:27.657 --> 21:31.372
produce an answer to a question. There isn't a human being on the other end.
21:31.582 --> 21:35.199
Yeah. Only a fraction of businesses who actually then pass it on
21:35.780 --> 21:39.717
to a customer support person sitting on the other side answering
21:39.765 --> 21:45.046
in real life, real time. Right. And then to,
21:45.142 --> 21:49.400
to your point, implementing these little pop-ups,
21:49.544 --> 21:52.962
asking the right questions and then guiding them to the right answer.
21:53.296 --> 21:56.772
And then if that's not found, You know, or the question hasn't been answered,
21:57.273 --> 22:00.636
then I think the live chatbot is just like a super, super helpful
22:00.830 --> 22:04.218
tool. If the business doesn't have the
22:04.234 --> 22:07.910
budget to start calling customers, you know, at least have one person
22:07.942 --> 22:12.947
there for a couple of hours picking up all these blocker
22:13.447 --> 22:16.632
questions or blocker problem conversations from the customers
22:16.972 --> 22:20.189
on your website to then turn that into a solution.
22:22.428 --> 22:26.184
Yeah. Yeah, no, 100%. And I think, you know, the biggest
22:26.249 --> 22:29.326
objection generally here is, I mean, there's 2 things.
22:29.472 --> 22:32.570
There's normally, we don't have time or,
22:32.797 --> 22:34.763
you know, can't afford to hire someone.
22:36.320 --> 22:39.744
And it's normally combined with the, the, the,
22:39.841 --> 22:43.201
um, response of, oh yeah, we tried it before. We didn't really get
22:43.701 --> 22:46.968
any responses. We didn't, nobody really used it. So it's not, it's not worth us
22:47.468 --> 22:50.616
hiring someone. You know, we don't get any responses on it,
22:51.136 --> 22:54.618
or we don't have time, you know, and we don't get any responses anyway.
22:56.233 --> 22:59.803
The biggest thing by far, I'm trying to remember, like, I think
23:00.303 --> 23:03.696
it was like a pet brand or something like years ago that I was speaking
23:03.810 --> 23:08.075
to. And they, they had like a live chat.
23:08.172 --> 23:11.693
And like most live chats, it says, hey, let us know
23:12.193 --> 23:14.633
if we can help with anything, or hey, how can we help? And it's like,
23:14.715 --> 23:17.837
it's such a broad question. And I think they said at the time, they were
23:18.337 --> 23:21.755
getting like maybe 1% or 2%
23:22.353 --> 23:25.981
response rate on there if they were lucky. And then
23:26.078 --> 23:29.862
they changed it, they changed that question to, hey, what's your
23:29.895 --> 23:33.436
pet's name? And then that shot up, I can't remember
23:33.936 --> 23:37.651
what it was like, maybe like 30% or something insane like that, like 30% of
23:38.151 --> 23:41.830
visits. And the great thing about that is sure, not everyone would turn
23:42.330 --> 23:45.790
into a conversation, but a big percentage of them, once you've got people talking,
23:46.154 --> 23:49.682
you can then ask follow-up questions. You could say like, hey, how long have you
23:49.731 --> 23:52.925
had Rex for? And like, what's, what's his
23:52.957 --> 23:56.039
favourite food? Like, and you can, once you've got your foot in the door,
23:56.552 --> 23:59.650
that's all you need. And then that's where the gold can happen. But again,
23:59.698 --> 24:03.486
it's, it's, I always use this analogy of like, if you like saying like,
24:03.775 --> 24:06.809
how can we help? Can I help with anything? It's just like that annoying person
24:06.841 --> 24:09.489
in the shop that comes up to you and the response is always, no,
24:09.505 --> 24:13.101
no, I'm fine. I'm just looking. Yeah. Make it personal. Yeah. The minute you
24:13.601 --> 24:16.311
make it personal. And it's, but it's just easier to respond as well. Yeah.
24:16.720 --> 24:20.000
Right? Like if you say, how can I help? I'm kind of like, oh God,
24:20.500 --> 24:23.560
like I can't bother to like, or some people don't even know
24:24.060 --> 24:27.620
how to articulate exactly what they're looking for. And it's just so much cognitive bandwidth
24:28.120 --> 24:31.900
and it just causes friction in the buying journey. People are just
24:32.400 --> 24:35.240
like, they want to go at their own pace, but just asking a very specific
24:35.740 --> 24:39.180
question and like tying it to your brand, for a pet brand,
24:39.680 --> 24:42.420
like what's your pet's name? What's your dog's name? What's your cat's name? Perfect,
24:42.920 --> 24:46.500
right? And there will be examples of that, like other examples
24:47.000 --> 24:51.352
that you can use. Say you sell, I don't
24:51.852 --> 24:55.518
know, gazebos or whatever. Gazebos are like the outside things, aren't they? Yeah. Yeah.
24:55.646 --> 24:58.866
So, you might say like, hey, are you buying for an event or are you
24:59.366 --> 25:03.273
buying for your home? Yeah. Very easy question. Very easy
25:03.773 --> 25:07.343
for me to answer. And I probably will answer that because it's like, yeah,
25:07.423 --> 25:10.755
I want to like, because I'm looking for something clearly. So,
25:11.428 --> 25:15.018
you just need to think about, and this is worth testing as well, because again,
25:15.674 --> 25:19.189
the, responses and the insights that you can
25:19.285 --> 25:22.336
get from this are just so, so, so invaluable. And it
25:22.352 --> 25:25.450
just, it always,
25:25.723 --> 25:29.127
I've always found it baffling how like, we're not
25:29.255 --> 25:33.317
thinking about that. We're not like thinking about speaking to
25:33.333 --> 25:36.801
customers in any way. You know, we started
25:37.301 --> 25:40.702
this conversation talking about like picking up the phone, speaking to customers,
25:40.815 --> 25:44.640
but even through a live chat. Yeah, we should be trying
25:44.737 --> 25:48.536
to speak to people any possible way we can. And I think with the right
25:48.632 --> 25:52.240
initial question, and people love talking
25:52.740 --> 25:55.742
about themselves and their problems and what makes them happy and what makes it like—
25:55.888 --> 25:59.421
I think with the right initial question, to your point, you can
25:59.454 --> 26:02.979
open up the door to such a big revelation.
26:05.082 --> 26:08.825
Right. We just need to think about it from our own perspective.
26:08.890 --> 26:12.298
Like if I was buying this or if I was buying that, Like,
26:13.117 --> 26:16.712
what would be the right question for me to be asked so that
26:17.212 --> 26:20.565
I can reveal why I'm here in the first place? Yeah. Yeah. You know what
26:21.065 --> 26:24.529
I mean? I think people just are scared. However, I think business
26:24.577 --> 26:26.776
owners know their customers.
26:27.787 --> 26:31.945
You know, they're just focused on the wrong thing. Obviously, they're focused on the growth,
26:32.073 --> 26:35.540
minimizing costs, maximizing revenue, sales and whatnot.
26:36.615 --> 26:40.322
And that, that whole customer thing is forgotten. And I think that they
26:40.403 --> 26:44.009
just need to step back a bit and, you know, rethink and
26:44.073 --> 26:48.145
reevaluate and reignite that conversation about their customers.
26:49.139 --> 26:52.889
Right. Because it is about their customers. Yeah. Service or product that
26:53.389 --> 26:57.121
you sell. Yeah. Right. And they know so much more about their customers.
26:57.378 --> 27:01.289
They just outsource that knowledge or responsibility to people
27:01.625 --> 27:03.966
further down the line in the, in the business. Yeah.
27:04.607 --> 27:07.800
But I think the founders, when they started the business, you know,
27:08.784 --> 27:12.427
naturally knew so much more. Yeah. And that knowledge
27:12.927 --> 27:16.366
is just not shared anymore to that extent. Yeah.
27:17.320 --> 27:20.621
Yeah. And even, um, even I remember there was a jewelry,
27:21.236 --> 27:24.630
uh, brand that I consulted with a couple years ago,
27:25.160 --> 27:28.550
and, um, one of the things I got them to do is to have a
27:29.050 --> 27:33.032
question on, um, uh, what do you feel is missing from
27:33.532 --> 27:35.915
the— is there anything you feel is missing from the site? And we just,
27:35.998 --> 27:39.329
we wanted to make it super low friction to begin with, so were going to
27:39.393 --> 27:42.765
do open form field, but then we just did like a multiple choice and we
27:42.829 --> 27:45.864
gave people the option to kind of send an actual message as well.
27:46.442 --> 27:49.862
Um, but it was, it was like such— so interesting.
27:49.910 --> 27:53.684
So like, I think the answers we had were like not enough images, not enough
27:54.184 --> 27:57.698
product description, and overwhelmingly by far people said they
27:57.762 --> 28:01.006
wanted, uh, buyer guides because they didn't know how to pick the right diamond.
28:01.150 --> 28:04.587
Like, because there's a lot of like different diamond options, and especially like
28:05.087 --> 28:08.133
for the— for this, uh, particular company as well. They sold, uh,
28:08.294 --> 28:12.044
kind of like lab-grown diamonds. And I think,
28:12.365 --> 28:16.148
you know, and these are the things that maybe we don't consider, but people often
28:16.648 --> 28:19.898
think it's, you know, it's a good option to have multiple choices, you know.
28:19.979 --> 28:22.800
Oh, we, we let people buy real diamonds and lab diamonds, and,
28:23.104 --> 28:26.310
you know, because we give people choice, they're gonna buy because we've got loads of
28:26.810 --> 28:29.564
options now. And it's like, actually, the opposite often happens, you know. People see lab-grown
28:29.612 --> 28:32.994
and then they're like, should I buy that? Should I not? And how do I
28:33.494 --> 28:36.170
know? And it's kind of like they want to buy a guide. It was like
28:36.670 --> 28:39.980
60%. And this wasn't, this was, you know, this wasn't like insignificant.
28:40.210 --> 28:43.910
We had like 6,000 responses or something in total over
28:44.410 --> 28:48.310
time. And it was a huge majority were saying like they wanted buyer guides.
28:48.810 --> 28:52.330
So we were able to then put that into production as a matter of priority.
28:52.390 --> 28:55.590
And you wouldn't necessarily have known that otherwise. You're just like, no one's
28:56.090 --> 28:59.150
buying. Like, what's going on? And again, like most businesses, they're like, we need to
28:59.650 --> 29:01.850
fix the ads. We need to do this. And it's like, no, people are hungry
29:02.350 --> 29:05.302
for, they want help. They're stuck. Your customers are stuck.
29:05.991 --> 29:07.899
And you wouldn't realise that otherwise.
29:08.813 --> 29:11.505
It's such a crazy thing.
29:12.018 --> 29:15.224
And even, I think Rich and
29:15.724 --> 29:19.344
I were speaking about this before for some businesses.
29:19.392 --> 29:22.085
I don't know if we've actually deployed this yet. And, you know, this is something
29:22.585 --> 29:27.166
that'd be quite interesting to try. But you can do the same thing with social
29:27.666 --> 29:32.654
ads. You know, you can even run Messenger
29:33.154 --> 29:36.946
campaigns, right? And just asking questions
29:36.979 --> 29:40.121
in those Messenger campaigns, just surveying the audience,
29:40.588 --> 29:44.117
just saying like, hey, what's your favourite this? Or how would you feel about
29:44.230 --> 29:48.144
this? Or even, you know, it could be Messenger, it could be like an
29:48.176 --> 29:51.556
engagement thing where you just do a post and you ask a question in that
29:52.056 --> 29:53.809
post, you get people to comment, right?
29:55.156 --> 29:57.805
And the great thing about that is that has, you know, inevitably when you get
29:57.902 --> 29:59.901
comments on the ads, it kind of has this virality effect as well. But you
30:00.401 --> 30:04.688
can get real insights from real people and
30:04.704 --> 30:08.627
see what people are saying. How would you deploy that
30:09.127 --> 30:12.340
strategy for businesses who have a
30:12.437 --> 30:16.519
great or huge, humongous, or even an average-sized
30:17.019 --> 30:19.476
email list of subscribers?
30:21.972 --> 30:26.334
I think this
30:26.834 --> 30:30.213
is in a case where you have a lot of leads who are not converting
30:30.423 --> 30:34.429
for whatever reasons, be it a D2C or service
30:34.929 --> 30:38.733
or course, maybe. How would you find out that from
30:39.233 --> 30:43.001
the— This is, this is really interesting. I'm glad
30:43.501 --> 30:47.057
you mentioned about emails, actually, because this is very often the first place people
30:47.122 --> 30:50.647
think when they hear surveys. Yeah. They think, oh yeah, we'll send
30:51.147 --> 30:55.584
a survey out to our customers and they, you know, flip and make this 12-step
30:55.728 --> 30:58.846
Typeform survey and send an email to
30:59.346 --> 31:01.953
all their customers and say, hey, would you fill out our survey for us?
31:03.800 --> 31:06.880
No one's gonna fill out your survey. Yeah. Why would I?
31:07.080 --> 31:10.680
I get so many of those emails. I hate them. I ignore them.
31:11.180 --> 31:15.320
So boring. Like, and you can increase the response rate
31:15.820 --> 31:19.260
by offering a voucher.
31:19.620 --> 31:23.140
Yeah. The other mistake people make as well is they'll offer
31:23.640 --> 31:25.860
like a, I don't know, like a gift card or something. If you give me
31:26.360 --> 31:29.080
like a £100 Amazon voucher, like, okay, cool. I can kind of get some good
31:29.580 --> 31:33.120
stuff for that, right? But that's expensive. That is expensive to do a £100 Amazon
31:33.620 --> 31:37.480
voucher. So it depends what stage you're at. But I just, I don't
31:37.770 --> 31:40.978
think email is the right place to do
31:41.478 --> 31:44.541
that. Because as well, it's just, it is just hard work.
31:46.680 --> 31:50.102
Maybe, like, I'm not disagreeing with this.
31:50.166 --> 31:53.347
But if you fail to capture the answers
31:53.781 --> 31:56.966
at the initial stage, and now you have the leads
31:56.999 --> 31:59.764
sitting in your, you know, CRM.
31:59.893 --> 32:04.286
Yeah, fair point. Like, how would you then try to start
32:04.786 --> 32:08.518
that conversation to convert them? I would apply the exact same principles we've
32:09.018 --> 32:12.509
just been talking about. Yeah, make it super easy and just ask one question.
32:13.423 --> 32:16.485
And again, this is the problem, is you send an email and you say fill
32:16.985 --> 32:20.428
out our survey. Even just the word survey, it's just horrible. It's like nobody wants
32:20.928 --> 32:24.244
to fill out a survey. Um, so if, if you like, if there's
32:24.744 --> 32:27.963
a specific, like, what is, what is the biggest thing you're trying to figure out
32:28.075 --> 32:31.157
right now? Right? And maybe you've got multiple,
32:31.173 --> 32:33.758
maybe like, I don't really know, maybe there's a couple of things. Pick one,
32:34.111 --> 32:37.002
just pick one of them, and then just email people. And this is what I'd
32:37.502 --> 32:40.438
probably do. And you can set like a reply-to email address, right?
32:40.839 --> 32:44.661
Um, so they don't, you know, bombard one person, but have it come out
32:44.789 --> 32:47.888
because you can do this on most CRMs or most email marketing platforms. You can
32:47.920 --> 32:51.099
have the sender name different from the reply-to
32:51.131 --> 32:53.893
address. So you can have it as if it's coming out from one person,
32:54.601 --> 32:57.679
Um, so I'd have a person in the business and I would say, um,
32:58.678 --> 33:01.321
hey Jane, super curious, like, what may— um,
33:01.660 --> 33:03.960
actually, what made you sign up for our list? Is it even like— again,
33:04.008 --> 33:05.712
that's too broad. But, um,
33:07.319 --> 33:10.244
again, insert whatever brand you're in.
33:10.839 --> 33:14.172
What's— hey, what's your— what's your, um, pet's name? I want to
33:14.221 --> 33:17.363
send them a little gift kind of thing. Yeah, maybe that could be a good
33:17.863 --> 33:20.257
way of starting it. And pet's name, that's not really going to help you,
33:20.274 --> 33:23.668
right? But hopefully that example, it's like, I guess
33:24.168 --> 33:27.843
the point I'm trying to make here is just keep it really simple and easy
33:28.343 --> 33:31.826
for people to respond. Ask one simple question. And again,
33:31.874 --> 33:34.828
if you can tie a gift into that, like I think if you say I
33:34.893 --> 33:38.297
want to send them a little gift, you know, and then you might
33:38.797 --> 33:41.717
send like a personalized voucher with, you know,
33:43.098 --> 33:46.614
like a discount with the little dog's name on it or whatever. How would
33:47.114 --> 33:49.649
you approach that from the online course perspective?
33:51.834 --> 33:55.503
Where people maybe sign up for a lead
33:55.519 --> 33:58.640
magnet, they watch some training, they download some material,
33:59.879 --> 34:02.929
but they're not progressing into purchasing the course.
34:03.449 --> 34:05.528
Depends what the course is. Give me an example.
34:08.190 --> 34:09.920
Pick any from our existing clients.
34:11.970 --> 34:15.743
Vocal training. Yeah. I mean, if you look at like vocal mastery, so the easiest
34:16.243 --> 34:16.801
thing there is like,
34:19.760 --> 34:23.302
Um, uh, what, maybe it's
34:23.802 --> 34:26.699
like something along the lines of, you know, what, what are you,
34:27.920 --> 34:31.043
what challenges are you having with your voice? Or, hey,
34:31.333 --> 34:35.142
hey Jane, um, so you signed up for the training recently. Do you find your
34:35.642 --> 34:39.013
voice often breaks when you're singing? And, and, you know,
34:39.191 --> 34:42.576
if, and there's a very good chance, like if I've signed up to vocal training,
34:42.608 --> 34:46.180
it's probably because I'm having a problem with my voice, and it's probably because
34:46.228 --> 34:49.232
I use my voice for my profession, or maybe it's like a dream or like
34:49.732 --> 34:53.441
something I want to get into. So, if you're asking me a very direct question
34:53.537 --> 34:56.621
like that, you've got my interest because I'm like, oh,
34:56.926 --> 35:00.219
maybe they've got the answer for me. It's such
35:00.719 --> 35:04.701
a directed question. You're gonna have my interest.
35:04.861 --> 35:08.154
Do you know what I mean? But that can go very wrong.
35:08.235 --> 35:11.800
Like the first answer I gave, like if you keep it very broad, Like if
35:11.848 --> 35:15.190
you were to say, why did you sign up for the vocal training? That's then
35:15.318 --> 35:18.692
scary. Because I've then got to go into detail and say, oh,
35:18.772 --> 35:22.705
well, you know, last year I did this and blah, blah. And whereas
35:22.722 --> 35:25.927
if you just say, hey, do you find your voice breaks while you're singing?
35:26.610 --> 35:30.297
Question mark. Nothing else. Nothing else. Just that.
35:31.940 --> 35:35.531
And it's kind of like, yeah, I think that
35:35.644 --> 35:38.934
the magic is in not overcomplicating it. It. I remember,
35:39.078 --> 35:42.176
um, Ryan Dice, digital marketer, he like talked about this.
35:42.304 --> 35:45.723
And when we were doing like, you know, outreach to begin with in the agency,
35:46.637 --> 35:49.526
and it, and it was so— and I always— he said like, if you're,
35:49.622 --> 35:52.592
if you're going to send an email to like leads who you haven't heard from
35:53.092 --> 35:55.737
in a while, just say like, um,
35:56.989 --> 35:59.477
I mean, there's this— I think Chris Voss talks about this as well. It's kind
35:59.977 --> 36:02.654
of like, have you given up on this kind of thing, to like restart things.
36:03.007 --> 36:06.104
But, but the key What most people do is
36:06.136 --> 36:09.425
they'll say, hey, John, haven't heard from you in a while. Have you
36:09.925 --> 36:12.634
given up on this? You know, just wanted to make sure, you know,
36:13.019 --> 36:16.645
and you ask a question, but then you layer it, you sandwich it.
36:17.126 --> 36:20.977
Yeah. Right. So it's kind of like, but the magic is in just
36:21.477 --> 36:25.068
saying, hey, Jane, have you given up on this? And no, like, you know,
36:25.084 --> 36:28.565
hopefully hear from you soon. Cheers, Tom. Just,
36:28.822 --> 36:31.807
have you given up on this? Question mark. If you want to sign off on
36:32.307 --> 36:34.406
it, if you just want to put Tom, cool. If you— but you can also
36:34.906 --> 36:38.194
just put nothing. Because I think as well, even if you think about
36:38.226 --> 36:41.211
that, right, it's like, if that lands in your inbox, that doesn't feel like a
36:41.711 --> 36:44.983
marketing email now. Like, if there's no even sign-off on it, like, you can see
36:45.483 --> 36:49.220
it's come from Tom because of the sender name or whoever. Um, but that
36:49.364 --> 36:53.248
email feels like a very real email. I remember we,
36:53.713 --> 36:57.307
we had an influx of answers on that, like, crazy. Yeah.
36:57.483 --> 37:00.848
And I was so surprised because I remember when he was
37:01.348 --> 37:04.694
talking about it. It's really scary to do because you feel like naturally inclined
37:05.194 --> 37:09.181
to sign off on certain things, you know, in a professional and nice and
37:09.681 --> 37:13.107
stuff. And it's, yeah. And it's, yeah. And so to your point,
37:13.171 --> 37:16.040
in answer to your question, like, I think that would be the magic. It would
37:16.072 --> 37:19.565
be like, hey, Jane, do you find your voice breaks when you're singing?
37:20.879 --> 37:23.110
Because it's almost like Oh, maybe,
37:23.974 --> 37:27.167
maybe this person's having the same issue I'm having. Because there's
37:27.667 --> 37:31.096
no context. Because I think what people would be inclined
37:31.596 --> 37:34.703
to do, because again, the salesperson hat comes on, is,
37:36.330 --> 37:39.710
hey, do you find your voice breaks when singing? I've helped thousands of
37:40.210 --> 37:43.664
students all— and then you're like, oh, they're trying to sell me something. But if
37:44.164 --> 37:46.397
you just leave it open, there is this kind of like, oh, are you having
37:46.897 --> 37:49.842
the same problem as me? And then you reply back and you say, yeah,
37:50.340 --> 37:53.503
do you have that? There's like this shit and you don't
37:54.003 --> 37:58.015
because you don't know the context. Yeah. And it's such an interesting,
37:58.047 --> 38:03.121
like, fascinating, like, psychological loophole
38:03.185 --> 38:06.557
almost. People just feel inclined to respond to
38:07.057 --> 38:10.459
that kind of like open-ended question with no expectations
38:10.571 --> 38:12.659
to them. Yeah. Yeah. Love it.
38:14.829 --> 38:17.032
But yeah, I think so. Yeah, the whole, um,
38:18.850 --> 38:22.231
just speaking, speaking to customers is like such a—
38:23.183 --> 38:27.153
in, in any way, shape, or form, like, I think that's the main takeaway
38:27.653 --> 38:30.703
that, you know, I want people to kind of take away from this. However you
38:31.203 --> 38:34.664
can do it, if you can, if you can call customers or prospects,
38:34.891 --> 38:38.027
great. I mean, even Mike's been saying this recently, right?
38:38.124 --> 38:41.637
He's been like, you know, like, I wish I'd started like calling people
38:42.137 --> 38:45.280
sooner, like just calling leads and stuff, because it's like And, you know, the response
38:45.780 --> 38:48.876
rate is so much better because no one expects a call. Yeah,
38:48.892 --> 38:52.200
yeah, yeah. Everyone expects an automated response. 100%.
38:52.987 --> 38:55.170
Yeah, 100%. I think the, this, the,
38:56.294 --> 39:00.035
even Stephen Bartlett has that on his podcast, you know, with a lot of guests
39:00.132 --> 39:03.616
who are, you know, specialists in AI talking
39:04.116 --> 39:07.421
about the job losses in here, you know, with progression
39:07.533 --> 39:10.936
of AGI and AI taking over the jobs and things
39:11.436 --> 39:14.077
like that. And over and over again, every single guest says,
39:14.574 --> 39:18.454
what? Human interaction is what will remain.
39:19.624 --> 39:22.990
Right? Yes, automate. Yes, you know, use Claude,
39:23.006 --> 39:26.821
use ChatGPT to churn the numbers, to crunch the data and
39:26.933 --> 39:30.187
all that. But it's the human touch that will remain
39:30.219 --> 39:34.019
because AI can't replace it. So whilst everyone
39:34.131 --> 39:37.839
automates, go back a step. And actually place
39:38.339 --> 39:41.222
a human, like a real human, be it a chatbot,
39:41.624 --> 39:44.846
be it an email response and that kind of thing, you know.
39:44.926 --> 39:49.349
Sure, use your autoresponder, but make it a bit more human than just automated
39:53.768 --> 39:57.278
Yeah. And live events. I'm not talking about like
39:57.892 --> 40:01.450
events, events like, you know, Glastonbury, but show
40:01.466 --> 40:02.647
up live if you can.
40:04.638 --> 40:08.563
Live stream, live webinars, live recordings.
40:08.901 --> 40:11.942
Yeah. And even, you know, even outside, and I think, you know,
40:12.054 --> 40:15.362
there's, this is all very contextual to the, you know,
40:15.443 --> 40:18.951
the kind of business you're in, but like, you know, I've seen
40:18.999 --> 40:22.475
a lot of B2B brands, especially of like,
40:22.782 --> 40:26.722
you know, when you have a very high customer value,
40:27.195 --> 40:30.908
doing things like hosting dinners. For leads,
40:31.004 --> 40:35.148
like paid-for dinners, you know, really, really nice restaurant where people
40:35.164 --> 40:38.441
were going to want to come to it. And I can't remember if it was
40:39.517 --> 40:42.762
Tomorrow.io or there was someone else who'd started doing this.
40:42.826 --> 40:46.826
And they said, like, you know, the— and
40:47.326 --> 40:50.986
this is, you know, Tomorrow.io is a company where they have very long buying cycles.
40:51.034 --> 40:54.936
Naturally, you know, they're selling like these weather intelligence platforms to Um,
40:55.097 --> 40:58.623
airlines and things like that. You know, there's not like an easy sell,
40:58.863 --> 41:02.613
but it's just like, it starts conversations with prospects that might have otherwise
41:02.645 --> 41:06.107
gone cold. And the way you position it as well, which is, which is really
41:06.607 --> 41:09.778
smart, is you don't position it as a, hey, come to our dinner so we
41:10.278 --> 41:13.111
can sell, because that's kind of what it feels like. Oh God, they're going to
41:13.127 --> 41:16.252
try and pitch me something. And, you know, even if you're offering me a free
41:16.752 --> 41:19.490
dinner at a nice restaurant, it's like, I don't want to be pitched. So how
41:19.538 --> 41:22.760
you position it is like, hey, we're bringing together like some of the smartest
41:23.260 --> 41:25.968
minds in aviation. We're all going to meet up for dinner so you can meet
41:26.468 --> 41:29.884
your peers. Yeah, that's how you position it. You don't position it
41:30.384 --> 41:32.002
as like, come to our dinner and we're going to do it and do a
41:32.502 --> 41:35.966
network and you don't do a presentation. That's the key thing.
41:36.544 --> 41:40.251
You don't flippin' pull out this slide deck and be like, oh, here's our
41:40.751 --> 41:44.199
software. No, no, you put it in their interest so they can network
41:44.247 --> 41:46.719
with our peers and the conversations will come about naturally.
41:47.553 --> 41:50.972
And the super smart thing you can do as well is you have
41:51.100 --> 41:55.520
some of the people that come to that dinner will be clients. Yeah. And inevitably,
41:56.020 --> 41:59.320
like, you're hosting this dinner, it's going to come up in conversation. Like, what do
41:59.820 --> 42:02.400
you guys— how do you guys know? And, oh, you use Tomorrow? Oh, how do
42:02.900 --> 42:06.860
you find it? It— then you've got prospects selling to themselves.
42:07.360 --> 42:11.040
You've got your clients selling to your prospects. Yeah, that is the ultimate
42:11.540 --> 42:15.100
sale. So like, in a B2B context, amazing. And then even, you know, D2C,
42:15.600 --> 42:18.720
we were talking about— and this is a, you know, obviously Ben Jerry's is huge,
42:19.300 --> 42:23.820
probably like billion dollar, maybe they're owned by One of these conglomerates.
42:24.320 --> 42:27.140
But anyway, Ben Jerry's, you know, doing that festival thing. I think they've done it
42:27.640 --> 42:31.440
for like 2 years running now, right? Um, this music festival, but it's
42:31.940 --> 42:35.600
smart. It's just a brand activation, you know, they're giving out free Ben Jerry's and
42:36.100 --> 42:39.160
people are going there because it's sunny and there's music on and it's like,
42:39.660 --> 42:43.280
but it's smart, you know, it's a smart way of doing it. And, you know,
42:43.780 --> 42:46.620
and the whole wristband situation, do you remember when we talked about it? Yeah,
42:47.120 --> 42:50.430
yeah, yeah. We went to that Yeah. New launch, the launch of a new flavour
42:50.930 --> 42:54.470
that they had. Yes. Yes. Interesting point, actually. I do. It's funny
42:54.970 --> 42:58.250
because I was saying, like, I think there's very these, like, smart, subtle things
42:58.750 --> 43:01.450
that, like, a lot of people don't think about. And I was saying about how,
43:02.010 --> 43:05.290
you know, I think there's a lot of brands out there, they'll do an event
43:05.790 --> 43:09.490
and then they'll be like, the event's like quite expensive. So let's save some costs
43:09.990 --> 43:13.290
and just give people a stamp. Yeah, right. That washes off. Yeah,
43:13.790 --> 43:16.190
that washes off. Or a paper wristband. And that might seem logical. It's like,
43:16.690 --> 43:20.491
yeah, flipping out costs money to put on an event. But they had the
43:21.600 --> 43:25.055
kind of like festival style, like fabric, fabric,
43:25.087 --> 43:27.917
you know, ones like you get at Glastonbury and Boomtown and things like that.
43:29.563 --> 43:32.759
And that probably costs you a little bit more. But it is
43:33.259 --> 43:36.552
so Instagrammable. That's the thing. And it's
43:37.052 --> 43:39.598
like, if you can get thousands of people turning up to this event, who are
43:40.098 --> 43:43.530
then all sharing, like, you know, there's that classic picture everyone does of
43:43.563 --> 43:46.646
their like wristbands or like couples who've got their wristband together, like, oh, look at
43:47.146 --> 43:50.518
us. And everyone's sharing it. Or ice cream holding ice cream. Your brand name
43:50.566 --> 43:54.109
on it. And it's like, it's just such a, again, it's a
43:54.174 --> 43:57.169
perfect example of like one of these small things you can do,
43:57.234 --> 44:00.702
like a small little increase in the budget, but it will
44:01.042 --> 44:04.453
probably, and again, nobody can obviously say this for sure, but it
44:04.502 --> 44:08.301
will probably pay for itself tenfold in the same
44:08.398 --> 44:10.968
way as what I was saying with like calling customers.
44:13.104 --> 44:16.881
People will go away and tell their friends about it. I've mentioned this
44:16.897 --> 44:20.447
book before, but I think it's a really great book because it It's kind
44:20.947 --> 44:24.999
of like the net— it's called Unreasonable Hospitality by— I
44:25.031 --> 44:28.204
can't remember what the guy's name is. And he, you know,
44:28.220 --> 44:31.811
he's worked, I think he, you know, has had his career in
44:31.907 --> 44:35.802
the hospitality industry, you know, restaurants and things like that. So it's
44:35.850 --> 44:39.681
kind of positioned as a hospitality book. But I think in the context
44:40.181 --> 44:43.992
of what we're talking about, it's so worth any business
44:44.168 --> 44:47.711
reading because it is exactly that. And it's talking about
44:48.211 --> 44:52.183
how You know, these little subtle things that you can do that
44:52.683 --> 44:56.511
just get people talking and sharing. And remembering you
44:56.527 --> 45:00.374
as a band. Yeah. And it's like, it always reminds
45:00.438 --> 45:03.789
me of, I feel like I always mention this, but the CD Baby
45:04.382 --> 45:08.341
email, order confirmation email, such a like subtle
45:08.405 --> 45:12.221
thing. Do you remember that? And it was like, you know, we're placing your order
45:12.721 --> 45:16.324
on a satin pillow. Yes. You'll be placing your CD on a satin pillow
45:16.824 --> 45:20.091
and it's been waved off by all of our staff. Oh, of all
45:20.591 --> 45:24.097
the It's such a great email. I'm gonna put it in the link
45:24.597 --> 45:27.109
to this, uh, to this episode, like an image or something.
45:27.622 --> 45:31.883
But that email, like, you cut— like, and especially
45:32.383 --> 45:35.472
now, like, back then social media probably wasn't a thing, but like,
45:36.017 --> 45:39.525
um, but it's the kind of thing people will screenshot it, they'll send it in
45:39.622 --> 45:43.210
their group WhatsApp, they'll be like— and they'll be sharing it on their Instagram stories.
45:43.483 --> 45:46.607
And think how easy that is. It costs you nothing. It's just like going a
45:47.107 --> 45:50.856
little bit wild and crazy with your confirmation emails. Yeah. Right. And it's the
45:50.920 --> 45:53.816
kind of thing that's going to get responses and shares. And, you know,
45:53.833 --> 45:57.753
for these guys, it ended up getting huge media publicity. They had
45:58.253 --> 46:01.862
like PR pieces wrote about them. It's like brands are out there flipping hiring
46:01.976 --> 46:04.298
PR agencies to, you know, get the mentions.
46:05.400 --> 46:09.371
There are just things you can do by being a little bit weird or
46:09.452 --> 46:12.893
being a little bit different or just doing things that nobody
46:12.974 --> 46:16.718
else is doing. Yeah. Like handwritten sign-off cards.
46:17.408 --> 46:20.578
When you're shipping stuff, yes, it may take
46:20.627 --> 46:23.845
a bit more human resources instead of the printed one.
46:24.266 --> 46:27.620
But even if you do a printed one, if you just get one person or
46:29.662 --> 46:33.535
an owner or someone high enough up
46:33.599 --> 46:37.155
the management chain and just sign the card physically with
46:37.655 --> 46:41.208
the pen, sign every card. Everything else can be printed, but if there could be
46:41.224 --> 46:44.585
like a signature, you know, with the name, that is
46:44.681 --> 46:48.546
already something so different and so personal. Do you remember I used to do that
46:49.046 --> 46:52.796
for Soul Scents? Yeah, yeah, like handwritten note thanking the
46:53.296 --> 46:56.501
customer, and then people would share it on their Instagram. Yeah, you used to put
46:56.549 --> 46:59.788
like the oil on, on it, and I would just like, yeah, I would
47:00.288 --> 47:03.300
spritz it with a bit of a scent. So there's like, yeah, like this is
47:03.381 --> 47:06.331
such a— and people have commented on it, I remember, like reviews and stuff,
47:06.347 --> 47:10.068
and it's like, you know, It's smart. And it, because it
47:10.214 --> 47:13.868
creates an experience. Yeah. And I would do it as an extra effort,
47:13.916 --> 47:17.344
especially when I was utilising Etsy, when people would say it's
47:17.844 --> 47:21.315
a gift for somebody. And you can't, you, again, all of these things,
47:21.990 --> 47:24.289
you can operationalise them at scale.
47:25.205 --> 47:29.185
Of course, it's going to cost you more. Yeah. But in
47:29.218 --> 47:33.109
a highly competitive world,
47:33.593 --> 47:36.919
that is your edge. And you can, you know, and you might say,
47:36.935 --> 47:40.380
oh, you can afford to charge more. People will
47:40.492 --> 47:43.505
pay more if there is an experience behind something.
47:43.761 --> 47:47.271
Yeah. And this is the crazy thing, like whatever it's costing you, you can
47:47.303 --> 47:50.588
probably cover that just by increasing your price a little bit. And people will pay
47:51.088 --> 47:53.873
those increased prices a lot of the time if you can give them a,
47:54.114 --> 47:57.062
like a mind-blowing experience that they just cannot get elsewhere.
47:57.463 --> 48:00.908
Unboxing experience. Yeah. Yeah. And even
48:01.069 --> 48:04.418
to your note of like handwritten, to your note of handwritten
48:04.450 --> 48:07.675
notes, There are companies like Impact.
48:07.932 --> 48:11.535
Yeah, I love that. Yeah. And, you know, so you don't have to,
48:11.712 --> 48:14.800
again, at scale, you don't have to do that. You can work with companies like
48:14.864 --> 48:18.616
Impact. And I think they, you know, I don't know if it was Impact that
48:18.648 --> 48:23.504
does this. There's one company that like, you know, hires ex-convicts,
48:23.665 --> 48:27.694
you know, to help rehabilitate them, get back on their feet
48:27.872 --> 48:30.881
to do the letters because they are all handwritten. It's not like, you know,
48:30.946 --> 48:33.988
they're printed. They are genuinely handwritten letters.
48:36.902 --> 48:40.546
It's, yeah, like you say, it's just, it's such a, it's such a meaningful
48:41.046 --> 48:44.271
touch because you can tell when something's been handwritten, right, as opposed to printed.
48:44.769 --> 48:48.237
Um, and it is a really, really cool touch. Like, if you can write them
48:48.737 --> 48:51.320
yourself, amazing. If you're a startup, you know, you've got the ability to do that,
48:51.448 --> 48:54.965
great. Um, but if not, yeah, using companies like Impact,
48:54.981 --> 48:58.224
and it can just give you a, um, and we're not affiliated with them in
48:58.272 --> 49:02.254
any way, um, but I just think like these are just examples
49:02.302 --> 49:05.863
of the things that are so small that can be done,
49:05.895 --> 49:08.763
but they're just not being utilised enough.
49:09.404 --> 49:13.266
Yeah, I think it's just because everyone is jumping on a bandwagon of automation
49:13.766 --> 49:16.968
and AI and forgetting what the human touch is and what,
49:17.337 --> 49:20.718
how much benefit and growth a human
49:21.218 --> 49:24.163
touch can bring. Yeah. And it, I think like,
49:25.045 --> 49:28.762
I guess the main thing to think about here, because everyone, I think
49:28.971 --> 49:33.025
people You know, anyone watching this is probably feeling pressure of
49:33.121 --> 49:36.758
acquisition costs. And here's the thing, acquisition costs are
49:37.258 --> 49:40.940
always increasing. The cost of platforms is always going up. It's getting more and more
49:41.052 --> 49:43.551
expensive to advertise. And that's probably never going to change. It's just going to get
49:43.631 --> 49:46.996
more and more and more expensive. And, you know, yes, sure, you can find
49:47.496 --> 49:51.082
like new underutilized platforms and, you know, find like an arbitrage
49:51.582 --> 49:54.607
on like, you know, certain new platforms that are coming out fine.
49:54.767 --> 49:57.779
But you can't rely on waiting for that to happen.
49:58.676 --> 50:01.778
So there is always this game of like, and the
50:01.972 --> 50:06.495
businesses that are winning right now are the ones who aren't
50:06.592 --> 50:10.401
like at the mercy of the platforms because their,
50:10.709 --> 50:14.114
you know, their margins are so vulnerable, their order values are
50:14.614 --> 50:18.276
so small that they have to get the lowest acquisition cost possible. Because as
50:18.776 --> 50:21.934
soon as those costs rise, they go out of business, they're screwed. Or they try
50:21.982 --> 50:25.268
to scale, acquisition costs increase a bit, they're screwed. What the
50:25.768 --> 50:29.499
smart businesses do is they find ways to, again, increase their average order value
50:29.999 --> 50:34.115
and increase their lifetime value. And you do that by creating
50:35.429 --> 50:38.810
or retaining customers and by giving them these experiences where
50:39.310 --> 50:43.265
they want to come back. And then the other kind of unforeseen
50:43.765 --> 50:47.496
effect, like we've been talking about, is that you also inevitably, when you do things
50:47.528 --> 50:50.653
like this, you get referrals, people share
50:51.153 --> 50:54.644
things, and people sharing things then brings down your acquisition cost as well,
50:54.660 --> 50:58.110
like inadvertently. Right. And that's the thing, because you'll then start getting more
50:58.610 --> 51:02.285
referral traffic because more people are sharing things. So your overall acquisition costs
51:02.785 --> 51:06.058
end up coming down anyway. And it's just like, but,
51:06.138 --> 51:09.639
but, but again, everybody is so obsessed with the strategy,
51:09.992 --> 51:13.653
the platform, the this, the creative, that, and those things
51:13.669 --> 51:17.057
are all important. Yeah. And I'm not saying they're not important, but it's
51:17.557 --> 51:21.818
like, it's so, I just think If
51:22.318 --> 51:24.630
I, you know, if I look through my Instagram feed and I look through my
51:24.646 --> 51:27.747
YouTube feed, everybody is talking about the strategies,
51:27.859 --> 51:31.057
the platform, the creative. You need more creatives, you need more this,
51:31.138 --> 51:33.626
you need more that. Nobody is talking about these other things.
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Nobody's talking about these other things. And that is where, you know, it's how we
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opened, like when other people are zigging, you've got to zag. Yep.
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Like that is what it comes down to. That sounds like
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a good place to to wrap up. So, totally agree.
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Thank you. You're very welcome. And we will see you guys in the next one.