WEBVTT
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So my best friend became my brother-in-law, which I totally
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recommend if you can sort that out. It's a fantastic
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bit of social engineering. And so it was awesome, right?
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So the four of us spent all our time together.
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This was before we had kids. And it was really terrific.
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And then I was 32 at this point, and he
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was 32. And he was diagnosed with brain cancer. And
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the day he was diagnosed and told me what was
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going on, it was pretty serious, I walked in the
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next day and quit. And I... said, you know, what
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am I scared of? Like, what's the worst thing that
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could possibly happen? I start a company and it doesn't succeed.
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So I go get a job as a vice president
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at some other company. Like, what's really the downside here?
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And his diagnosis kind of reframed risk and fear for
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me in a really powerful, meaningful way. And so I
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walked in the next morning and quit and haven't worked
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for anybody a day since.
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Are leaders born or are they made?
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Our host, Ryan Hawk.
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Believes that leaders can be made through determined, focused work
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on learning the art and science behind the makeup of
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other successful leaders. Now it's time to inhale knowledge and
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exhale success. You're listening to The Learning Leader Show with
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Ryan Hawk.
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Hey, guys, before we get to this great conversation, I
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want to let you know that this episode was brought
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to you by Mizzen and Main. You'll probably remember from
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episode 64, I spoke with the CEO of Mizzen and Main,
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Kevin Lavelle. And, you know, we promised to continue that
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dialogue as we both progressed on our journeys. And we
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certainly have. And we formed a partnership. And Kevin and
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his great companies and support and people that he works
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with have agreed to sponsor my podcast. But for me,
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I'm very picky when it comes to this. I only
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wanted to work with people who I truly believed in
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their products. So this is not just a sponsor to me.
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This is an endorsement. I absolutely believe in everything that
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Kevin and his company stands for. I love who they
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partner with, whether it's Tony Hsieh's Vegas Tech Fund or
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the Lone Survivor, Marcus Luttrell's Fund, or Chris Kyle Frog Foundation.
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I love that. But I also, most importantly, love the product.
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Their shirts are my absolute favorite shirts. They feel very
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similar to the clothes that I wear when I go
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and work out. And I didn't really believe that was
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possible until I tried one. But the four-way stretch fabric
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is literally like nothing I've ever felt before. And so
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originally I bought one just to try them out to
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see if this is really true. A button-down shirt that
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looks great with a suit or in business casual. I'm like,
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there's no way this thing is going to feel like
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people tell me it will. Well, it felt even better
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than that. And so after I bought that first shirt,
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I ended up buying six more shirts and two Henleys.
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And so we've set up a deal for you guys
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to go to ryan.mizzenandmaine.com. So that's ryan.mizzenandmaine.com. Pick your favorite shirts.
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I love the button downs. You'll see on that site
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my favorite shirts. And when you're checking out, use the
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code RYANHAWK. to get free shipping if you're only buying
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one shirt. If you happen to want to buy three
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button downs like I've done a couple times, use the
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code RYANHAWK3 and you'll get $ 50 off. Again, I love
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Mizzen and Main. I love everything they stand for. And
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I promise when you try the shirt, you will too. Hey,
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and welcome to the Learning Leader Show. I am Ryan Hawk,
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excited about tonight's featured leader. It's Jay Baer. Jay runs
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and writes the number one content marketing blog in the world.
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He's the founder of Convince and Convert, which is a
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strategy consulting firm. Over the course of his career, Jay
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has helped over 700 companies from an advisory perspective. Jay's
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also the author of five books, including Utility, a New
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York Times and Amazon bestseller. His most recent book, Hug
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Your Haters, How to Embrace Complaints and Keep Your Customers,
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will release March 1st, 2016. Love this conversation with Jay.
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He's a very intelligent and engaging guy. A few of
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the things we got into. Sustained excellence is boiling down
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what you're great at and focusing on doing those specific
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things and farming out the other tasks that you're great at.
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to others who are great at those things. And then
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what is an honesty audit and why we all should
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do one on a regular basis? Why even the best
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performers in the world need a coach? The best all
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invest in someone to help them, critique them, tell them
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what they're doing well, tell them what they need to
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improve upon. Jay and I spoke about the fact that
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he invests in a speaking coach. It happens to be
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Michael Port, former guest of the show. and how Michael
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specifically helps him from a speaking perspective. Ladies and gentlemen,
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without further ado, it's Jay Baer. Jay, so excited to
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have you here on the Learning Leader Show. Quick question
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to get us rolling. That's around sustained excellence. And you
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have spent time around a lot of people. You're networked
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with a lot of great world-class performers, people who have
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sustained excellence over time. And you obviously have done the same.
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I'm curious from your perspective, what are some of the
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common characteristics that those people all seem to share? Thanks, Ryan.
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I appreciate you having me on the show. Let me
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tell you two things. One, I think people who have
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sustained excellence are particularly good at at boiling down to
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its essence their particular skill set. I'll give you an
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example from my own business. So I have a consulting
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company and a media company. And when we meet, it's virtual,
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so we only get together once a year. And when
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we get together, one of the things that we work
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on as a business is to audit all the ways
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that I spend my time and to remove 15% of
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those things that I do. And when you do that
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15% a year every year, eventually over a period of time,
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what you're left with is that I focus only on
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the things that I am uniquely qualified to do. Ryan,
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all high performers are capable of doing lots of different things,
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but you're only uniquely capable of doing a few things.
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And the faster you can figure out which things you
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are uniquely capable of doing and focusing the preponderance of
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your time on those few things, the better off you'll be.
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Wow, that's an interesting answer. It's one I actually have
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not received. Are there immediate people that come to mind
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when you think of sustained excellence over extended periods of time? Oh, sure.
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There's tons. It depends on the industry, but you look at...
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You look at somebody like Jim Collins, right? Good to great,
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a terrific author and speaker who I've had the good
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fortune of meeting on a couple of occasions at different events.
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I mean, that's somebody who has been providing advice to
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businesses for 20 years. Look at somebody like Tony Robbins
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on a similar style, similar type of a career trajectory,
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but more on the individual advice and counsel. I mean,
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he's been doing it every day for decades, right? And
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you think about what it requires to stay that sharp,
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that focused, that motivated and day after day after day
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after day. I mean, just yesterday, I was watching the
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NFL playoffs, and while my Arizona Cardinals did not fare
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as well as I would have hoped, you look at
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somebody like Larry Fitzgerald, right, who is just, you know,
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in his 30s now, continues to be terrific at his
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craft and what it requires to be that good that long,
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or Peyton Manning, for that matter. I mean, here's somebody who's,
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you know, practically as old as I am, and going
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back to the Super Bowl, it's remarkable.
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Interesting. So you mentioned that your team is virtual. I'd
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love to dig in now to you, Jay, your business
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and how you've gotten to the point where you currently are.
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Maybe a little bit about your past and the history
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that's led up to what you're currently doing on a
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day-to-day basis.
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You bet. I started off in politics, so I managed
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political campaigns as a young professional employee. And worked in
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that business for a while and had a measure of
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success in it. But it's a tough business, right? And,
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you know, it's kind of a what have you done
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for me lately business. And it's also not, at least
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at that point, a great family business. And so once
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I got married and started having kids, I'm like, you know,
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this is a little bit rough. So I thought, you know,
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if I can get somebody elected, I can sell soup,
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you know, or houses or shoes. So I got into
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traditional marketing. And so I did marketing and public relations
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for a few years on the corporate side for big companies.
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And then I started my own digital consulting firm in
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2000 and ran that company for a few years and
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sold it and started another one and sold it. And
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then started this company, Convince and Convert, a few years
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ago to really focus on social media strategy, content, marketing strategy,
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and customer experience. And so As I mentioned, my team
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is virtual all over the country, and we're super fortunate
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that we get to advise some of the most noteworthy
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brands in the world. I mean, we work with United
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Nations and Adidas and SAP and Oracle and Cabela's and
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all these great companies. So it is a real honor.
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I spend most of my time personally at this juncture.
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writing books and giving speeches. I don't do as much
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of the consulting firsthand as I once did. I'm more
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on the road and trying to rally business people and
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show them how to get more customers and keep those
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they've already earned.
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Let's go to the year 2000 when you made that
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decision to leave. You know, I was reviewing your background
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prior to us talking. Obviously, you had some big time
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jobs and you decided to leave and do it all
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on your own. I mean, that's... can you take me
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to that moment, the decision-making process? Because that is a
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really tough thing to do, especially when you have a
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good thing going. And if you've got a family, either
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you already have one or it's in the works, that
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means you need money. And so it's to provide for them.
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So talk to me about that decision-making process and how
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it went from being a corporate VP to saying, you
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know what, I'm going to do this on my own
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where I'm not going to have any revenue to start.
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I need to build it.
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Yeah, you probably don't know this story because I almost
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never talk about it. So I come from a long
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line of self-employed people on my dad's side, self-employed for
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seven generations or something. And so that was always kind
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of the assumption. And I'd thought about it since I
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was very young.
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I mean, I started.
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I started as a pretty serious intern at 18, you know,
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working in political consultancies and public relations firms. And so
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by the time I was 23, I was like, yeah,
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I should just be doing my own thing, right? And
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so I wanted to do it for a long time,
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start my own thing, but I was scared, right? I
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was scared to do it. And as you said, I
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had a pretty good job already. It's just like, well,
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why do I want to walk out of a pretty
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good job to start something that could fail? And I
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was scared. I just, I delayed it and delayed it
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and delayed it. And about that same time, Ryan, my
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best friend from grade school married my wife's sister. So
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my best friend became my brother-in-law, which I totally recommend
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if you can sort that out. It's a fantastic bit
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of social engineering. And so it was awesome, right? So
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the four of us spent all our time together. This
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was before we had kids. And it was really terrific.
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And then I was 32 at this point, and he
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was 32. And he was diagnosed with brain cancer. And
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the day he was diagnosed... and told me what was
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going on. It's pretty serious. I walked in the next
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day and quit. And I said, you know, what am
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I scared of? Like, what's the worst thing that could
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possibly happen? I start a company and it doesn't succeed.
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So I go get a job as a vice president
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at some other company. Like, what's really the downside here?
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And his diagnosis kind of reframed risk and fear for
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me in a really powerful, meaningful way. And so I
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walked in the next morning and quit and haven't worked
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for anybody a day since.
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Oh, I did not know that story. That's just impactful, man.
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It leaves me speechless almost to think about that happening.
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So this reminds me of a conversation I had with
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Seth Godin when I told him I described a 35-year-old
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guy who's got a spouse and kids and a mortgage
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and car payments and all these responsibilities. And I said,
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what do you say to him? He's got all these responsibilities.
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He's got these people that depend on him. And he
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used a similar story. So what if tomorrow you got
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a call from your doctor saying you had something, an
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inoperable tumor, and what would you do then? He goes, well,
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then the next day they told you that everything was okay.
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How would you respond? Maybe you would think a little
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bit differently. Your approach to life might be different. So
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to hear you tell a real-life story of that is amazing.
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I don't know. It's crazy, man. So at that point,
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you decide– so what was your process for getting it started, though?
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You still have to– you know, you're obviously– it's an
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emotional time. But then it comes– there's still a lot
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of work. There's the, you know, how do you get
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the revenue going? And then– which ultimately led to selling
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the company twice, it sounds like, before you're at your
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current place. So talk to me about that.
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So– There's no shortcuts, and I know you talk about
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that on this show, and I know you know it
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in your own life, Ryan. Technology has kind of screwed
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us up as entrepreneurs because everybody's looking for the angle. Like,
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how can I succeed more efficiently? How can I optimize
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my success? How can I spend less time for more outcome?
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And it just doesn't really work like that. So I'll
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tell you exactly what I did. I was fortunate that
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I knew a lot of people. I was in Phoenix
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at this time and I knew a lot of people
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in Phoenix because I'd been there a long time and
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I'd had some positions and I'd been president of some
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clubs and organizations and had some contacts in my political
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career and stuff like that. So I knew a lot
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of people. So here's what I did. I quit my
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job and the next day I made a list of
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everybody that I knew, like literally everybody that I knew
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in business. And then I sat down and I called
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every single person I knew. And I called about 300 people.
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And I just said, hey, I'm starting this company to
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do digital strategy. And if you know anybody who needs somebody,
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I'd sure be happy to help. And it took me
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about two and a half weeks to make those calls.
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And I picked up three clients during that period and
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had a profitable month and have had every single month
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has been profitable now 183 months in a row since then.
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Wow. So you did it the old fashioned way of
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just smiling, smiling and dialing and hustling. So once you
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got your customers, though, it became time to deliver, which
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then would would then create the momentum to build and
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create referrals. So then the second part of that, I assume,
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is that that what you did?
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So, yeah, it was it was interesting. And I think
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because anytime you start a business in professional services. You
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always start off saying, like, I'll do anything. Like, you
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want me to wash cars? Yeah, I can wash cars.
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You want me to do your email program? Yeah, I
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can do that. You want me to do your ad campaign?
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Sure.
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And that's very much how I started out. I was like, look,
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I'll do pretty much anything that anybody wants me to
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do because I got to eat. I got to put
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food on the table. I got to start this business.
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And then over time, you start to understand a little
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bit better where the market is and what you're good
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at and what other people aren't as good at. And
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I find that over time, your services mix tends to
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narrow and you focus on things that you can do
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in a more repeatable, more efficient fashion. Because if you're
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reinventing the wheel every single time, it's really tough to
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build a business behind that. But it was just me
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for when I started that company, which is called Mighty Interactive.
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It was just me for six months or so. And
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then I added a person, another person, another person, another person.
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And that's typically how I do it. I'm not a
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big believer in hyper growth. I'm not good at it.
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I can't manage hyper growth. I'm not organized enough. I
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kind of manage from post-it notes and that doesn't scale well.
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So I'm a big believer in let's grow 30 to
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40 percent a year every year instead of let's grow,
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you know, 862 percent a year. I just I can't
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deal with it personally. I just don't have that. I
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just don't have the the the mentality for that kind
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of crazy spikes.
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And you mentioned your teams are all virtual. How do
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you build virtual teams successfully?
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Man, it's all about finding the right people. So not
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only is our team virtual at Convince and Convert, we've
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got folks in New York and L.A. and Portland and
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Ohio and Indiana where I am and Phoenix and Costa
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Rica and all over. But everybody in our team is
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also a contractor. They're all 1099. So nobody's actually employed anywhere.
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Everybody on our team has their own business. So they
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all have their own companies. And it's just that I,
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Convince & Convert, my team is sort of their largest client.
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And so most of the folks that I work with
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spend about half their time working on stuff with me
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and half their time on their own clients. And I
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do that very intentionally, Ryan, because I want to work
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with people. who know what it takes to start and
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run their own business. Because then you don't have to
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teach them entrepreneurship. You don't have to teach them polish.
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You have to teach them follow-up and customer service. They
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already know it. They have to have learned it already.
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And so when you say, look, these are the kind
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of people that we want who want to spend half
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their time with me and half their time doing other
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things and kind of have the gumption and the wherewithal
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to do that, it leads you to the right folks.
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And one of the things I'm most proud of in
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this particular company is in seven years, We had 0% turnover,
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had not a single person leave in seven years. And
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I think that speaks to picking the right folks from
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the beginning.
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How do you do that? What's the magic part of
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picking the right people? Where do you find them? How
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do you interview? Talk to me about that process.
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Yeah, it's not a huge team. And so we don't
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add a lot of people to the team, which helps.
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You're not going through a lot of resumes. And what
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has really been great is that a lot of people
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in the digital marketing world kind of know me and
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my company and how we're set up. And so what
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happens in almost every case now, Ryan, is that people
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call me and they said, hey, I was working with
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this woman and she's great and she's going to start
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her own thing and she only wants to work half time.
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I think she'd be really good. And so typically now
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people refer folks to me, which is spectacular. So I
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have this whole network of colleagues that are kind of
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on the lookout for talent. And that really makes it.
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A lot easier. So if you had to describe what
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convincing divert does in one sentence, what would you say?
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So we help the world's most interesting brands gain and
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keep more customers online.
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Gain and keep more customers online. I know I've watched
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your speeches online, looking through a lot of things you've written,
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which there's a lot of great material out there. And
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then you have a new book coming out called Hug
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Your Haters, How to Embrace Complaints and Keep Your Customers.
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And the interesting stat that you talked about in one
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of your speeches is simply a 5% increase in customer
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retention can increase profits by 25%, meaning take care of
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the ones who are already with you. Focus on those.
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Talk to me about Hug Your Haters and those statistics.
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Yeah, thanks. So the book is out March 1st officially.
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It's going great. People can get it everywhere that books
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can be gotten. And there's a real, it's the right
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time for that book, I think. You know, we've spent
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so much energy in the last few years thinking about marketing,
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including me. I mean, I'm a marketing consultant, but we
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sort of have lost our focus on customer retention. And
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as you said, just a small increase in customer retention
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can have a huge impact on your business. And I think, Ryan,
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everybody knows that, right? So in the first day that
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you're in business, you either learn or you figure out
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that it's actually mathematically smarter to keep the customers you
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have than than to constantly have to get new customers
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and sort of fill the leaky bucket, if you will, right?
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I mean, everybody knows that. It's business 101. There's no
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argument about that. It's true. But here's the thing. Globally,
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each year, we spend about $ 500 billion on marketing and
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$ 9 billion on customer service. That's not going to work
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anymore because customer service is the new marketing. Whatever your
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company sells, whatever you do, whatever your specialty is, your
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competition now in this very fast-paced, hyper-connected world, your competition
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can and will steal marketing. your best stuff. They'll steal
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your best people, your price, your website copy, whatever. But
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the one thing your competitors can never steal from you, Ryan,
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the one thing they cannot take from you, the one
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thing that is yours and yours alone is if you
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genuinely care more about your customers than they do. If
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you are willing to hug your haters and love your
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customers in a way that your competition simply will not,
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that is your competitive advantage. That is your differentiation. And
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that is what will make a company successful now and
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in the future. It's not marketing, it's customer service.
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I love it because you think of some of the
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more well-known companies out there. I think of like Zappos or, well,
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there's a lot of them, but the examples of where
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they give their employees the freedom and sometimes the budget
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to love on their customers. I've heard at Zappos a
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story where somebody found out that Somebody had a death
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in the family. And the person who found that out
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that was working there ended up sending flowers, sending additional
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things to show that customer that they loved them. And
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so some would say, oh, wow, you can't have those
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people continually just spending all this money to love on
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their customers. Well, they show that actually you can. And
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the PR that comes from that is incredible. actually caring
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about your customers to proactively do something that might hurt
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your revenues short term, but will certainly help long term
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if you show them that you're treating them the right way.
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And you nailed it, right? I mean, if you say, hey,
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name a company that's great at customer service, people can say, well,
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Zappos or Ritz-Carlton or Nordstrom's or Southwest in some circumstances, etc.,
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But that makes the point. The fact that we can
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all name them and the fact that we name the
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same ones is an indictment of business in general. Why
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are there so few companies that we can say they're
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great at customer service? Everybody should be great at customer service.
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There's a remarkable stat from Forrester that says that 80%,
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8-0% of companies think that they deliver superior customer service
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and 8% of their customers agree. That's the fundamental problem.
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Like we think, oh, sure, we're great at customer service. Meanwhile,
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you're mediocre at best. And what it requires to be great,
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the recipe in Hug Your Haters, which is at hugyourhaters.com,
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the recipe is to answer every customer complaint in every channel,
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every time. To answer always instead of what most businesses do,
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which is to answer some customer complaints in the channels
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that the company prefers when they get around to it.
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And that's not good enough. It's not going to be
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good enough, especially when you look at the research. And
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I did a tremendous amount of research for this book.
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When you look at the research, you see this huge wave.
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consumer behavior change, where people don't want to interact with
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companies as much anymore on the phone or via email,
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because it takes too long. It's much easier to try
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to interact with a company on Facebook or Twitter or
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Yelp or TripAdvisor or Amazon or discussion boards or forums
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or what have you. It's much, much easier and faster
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to transact in an app environment, in a mobile environment,
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than it is in legacy channels. And you think about
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how many businesses have what they call a call center.
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If you're still calling it a call center, you're going
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to be in for a rude awakening because eventually that
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phone's no longer going to ring.
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So 80% think they're doing a good job and 8% are.
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Where does this start? So when you go to help
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people with this, is this from the CEO down? How
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does an organization get better at this? Talk to me
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about that.
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What we do at Convince & Convert when we work
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with the big organizations and even medium-sized organizations in this
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capacity is we typically start with what we call an
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honesty audit. And the honesty audit is where we dig
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really deep for all the customer complaints and customer contacts
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that maybe the company is missing. And a lot of
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cases like, oh, we didn't know we had all these
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people complaining on Instagram or WhatsApp or WeChat or all
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these weird discussion boards and forums that we typically ignore.
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The company usually has a pretty decent handle on telephone
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and email, the legacy channels, but they usually have a very,
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very poor handle on online channels. And so when you
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start to demonstrate, hey, by the way, you had 814
476
00:24:15.039 --> 00:24:17.329
customers last month try to reach you online and you
477
00:24:17.380 --> 00:24:20.450
ignored every one of them, that tends to change interior
478
00:24:20.569 --> 00:24:21.950
and internal thinking pretty quickly.
479
00:24:23.329 --> 00:24:24.930
So you do an honesty audit. And how is that
480
00:24:24.950 --> 00:24:25.750
typically received?
481
00:24:27.900 --> 00:24:31.509
It depends on to whom it's presented. So when you
482
00:24:31.569 --> 00:24:35.549
present it to somebody who is not a customer service professional,
483
00:24:35.970 --> 00:24:37.730
they often say, wow, I see that we've missed a
484
00:24:37.750 --> 00:24:42.220
lot of opportunities here to fix a bad situation or
485
00:24:42.680 --> 00:24:47.059
enhance customer loyalty. When you present it, as we sometimes do,
486
00:24:47.559 --> 00:24:50.279
to somebody who is the director of customer service or
487
00:24:50.539 --> 00:24:52.680
that type of a role, it can be a little
488
00:24:52.700 --> 00:24:57.089
tricky because you're essentially saying without saying it that you're
489
00:24:57.140 --> 00:25:00.869
not doing your job very well. And that has to
490
00:25:00.930 --> 00:25:03.869
be delivered in a very special way.
491
00:25:05.339 --> 00:25:07.180
Yeah, I know. I'm not sure if you know him
492
00:25:07.200 --> 00:25:09.460
or if you've spoken with him, but Joey Coleman gives
493
00:25:09.500 --> 00:25:10.220
a great speech.
494
00:25:10.240 --> 00:25:11.240
Sure, I love Joey Coleman.
495
00:25:11.259 --> 00:25:16.440
Yeah, the first 100 days. Yes, it's great. Yeah, I've
496
00:25:16.480 --> 00:25:20.420
watched it multiple times. And for anyone out there who hasn't,
497
00:25:20.480 --> 00:25:23.400
go to just Google Joey Coleman first 100 days. And
498
00:25:23.440 --> 00:25:25.799
he talks about the importance of how you treat a
499
00:25:25.839 --> 00:25:29.549
customer during those first 100 days of having them. What's
500
00:25:29.569 --> 00:25:36.210
your process around the first initial... Yeah.
501
00:25:37.869 --> 00:25:40.690
So one of the things that I talk about a
502
00:25:40.730 --> 00:25:42.650
lot in the book and we try to follow in
503
00:25:42.670 --> 00:25:45.799
my own company, although we're not great at it ourselves,
504
00:25:45.839 --> 00:25:48.599
but we're getting better, is this notion that there's no
505
00:25:48.660 --> 00:25:52.809
such thing as customers that are over-informed. nobody ever says,
506
00:25:53.130 --> 00:25:55.650
stop telling me stuff, right? I mean, now they may
507
00:25:55.750 --> 00:25:58.369
not read everything or listen to everything or watch everything,
508
00:25:59.109 --> 00:26:02.529
but they appreciate the effort. And so what we do
509
00:26:02.589 --> 00:26:04.470
and how we do it requires, there's a lot of
510
00:26:04.509 --> 00:26:06.470
nuance to it and things like that. And so we're
511
00:26:06.519 --> 00:26:08.960
trying to do more at Convince & Convert with educating
512
00:26:09.339 --> 00:26:12.200
customers upfront about how we do and what we do
513
00:26:12.240 --> 00:26:13.599
and what that process is going to be like and
514
00:26:13.640 --> 00:26:15.960
what happens next. One of my favorite case studies in
515
00:26:15.980 --> 00:26:18.160
the book is from a company called Square Cow Movers,
516
00:26:18.200 --> 00:26:21.960
and they're a moving company in Texas. And They talk
517
00:26:22.240 --> 00:26:25.589
a lot about, Wade, who's their CEO, talks about the
518
00:26:25.609 --> 00:26:28.910
fact that moving is really fraught with emotion because people
519
00:26:28.950 --> 00:26:31.170
are moving and that's a big deal usually. And you're
520
00:26:31.230 --> 00:26:33.789
handling their stuff and you're carrying their grandmother's piano and
521
00:26:33.829 --> 00:26:36.690
all that stuff, right? And so people tend to go
522
00:26:36.750 --> 00:26:38.509
on tilt a little bit. And so he said they
523
00:26:38.549 --> 00:26:40.789
used to have a lot of customer service issues until
524
00:26:40.809 --> 00:26:44.630
they realized like, okay, we have to over-communicate. And if
525
00:26:44.690 --> 00:26:47.599
we think it's over-communicating, the customer thinks it's just right.
526
00:26:48.039 --> 00:26:49.740
And I think that's a lesson for everybody.
527
00:26:50.519 --> 00:26:53.299
Communication being the key during those first stages.
528
00:26:53.559 --> 00:26:56.089
And predictive customer service, right?
529
00:26:56.210 --> 00:26:57.190
Yeah.
530
00:26:57.390 --> 00:26:59.150
There's another case study in the book from a company
531
00:26:59.190 --> 00:27:02.589
called Fresh Brothers Pizza, and they've got 14 locations in
532
00:27:02.609 --> 00:27:05.369
Southern California. And Debbie Goldberg is their owner, and she's
533
00:27:05.490 --> 00:27:09.460
super bright. She's really, really bright, is amazing at Yelp
534
00:27:09.559 --> 00:27:12.880
in particular, answers all the positive comments and the negative
535
00:27:12.920 --> 00:27:14.700
comments herself. She's just really good at it. But one
536
00:27:14.720 --> 00:27:17.359
of the things that she's particularly adept at is is
537
00:27:17.480 --> 00:27:20.880
predictive customer service. And so she says that, you know,
538
00:27:20.900 --> 00:27:25.240
in some cases they have a location that's really busy or,
539
00:27:25.269 --> 00:27:27.569
you know, they get a busload of people in. And
540
00:27:27.589 --> 00:27:30.109
so they know when that happens that there's going to
541
00:27:30.130 --> 00:27:32.309
be a ripple effect. And so pizzas that are ordered
542
00:27:32.349 --> 00:27:34.269
now are going to come out slow and maybe delivery
543
00:27:34.289 --> 00:27:36.130
times will be impacted on that. I mean, they just know.
544
00:27:36.720 --> 00:27:39.420
So instead of waiting for those customers to complain or
545
00:27:39.519 --> 00:27:42.740
hoping that they won't complain and She automatically gives them
546
00:27:42.779 --> 00:27:45.279
gift cards and says, look, here's 10 bucks off the
547
00:27:45.319 --> 00:27:47.740
next time you come, because she knows that it'll be
548
00:27:47.799 --> 00:27:50.779
slower than they expect, even if they don't complain. So,
549
00:27:50.799 --> 00:27:53.480
you know, the best complaints are the ones that never happen.
550
00:27:53.589 --> 00:27:55.809
And the way to make that work is to understand
551
00:27:55.930 --> 00:27:58.930
what those potential fracture points are and run ahead of
552
00:27:58.990 --> 00:28:00.549
it instead of being always in reactive mode.
553
00:28:01.210 --> 00:28:03.930
And constantly thinking about them and putting yourself in their shoes,
554
00:28:03.990 --> 00:28:05.990
I think, is so important instead of getting caught up
555
00:28:06.049 --> 00:28:10.039
in the other day-to-day stuff that happens.
556
00:28:10.519 --> 00:28:14.539
Well, and it's hard because, especially in big companies, you
557
00:28:14.619 --> 00:28:19.079
almost are forced to think of customers as numbers. You say, well,
558
00:28:19.119 --> 00:28:20.740
how many calls did we handle today? What was our
559
00:28:20.819 --> 00:28:23.380
average handle time? Those are the kind of metrics. Those
560
00:28:23.420 --> 00:28:25.720
are the customer service success metrics. How long did it
561
00:28:25.759 --> 00:28:28.220
take us to answer a call? How can we answer
562
00:28:28.240 --> 00:28:32.210
these calls more quickly? That's tough. That's not the recipe
563
00:28:32.259 --> 00:28:34.339
for great customer experience, right? How can we get you
564
00:28:34.400 --> 00:28:37.720
off the phone faster? Things like that. But that is
565
00:28:37.799 --> 00:28:40.660
how customer service has been measured over time, and we
566
00:28:40.680 --> 00:28:41.819
just have to flip the script on that.
567
00:28:42.099 --> 00:28:44.000
So how do you do that? So you work at
568
00:28:44.019 --> 00:28:47.720
a big company, and those metrics are definitely realistic as
569
00:28:47.759 --> 00:28:52.700
far as how we measure if our customer support representatives
570
00:28:52.839 --> 00:28:55.559
are acting, how would you measure people? Because some of them,
571
00:28:55.619 --> 00:29:00.160
maybe there's not easy goals set or measurables for having
572
00:29:00.200 --> 00:29:02.609
a great personality and trying to help somebody. You know
573
00:29:02.630 --> 00:29:02.890
what I mean?
574
00:29:02.910 --> 00:29:06.569
No, there's not. So I think the best metric is
575
00:29:06.750 --> 00:29:09.730
effort score. So what you do is you take a
576
00:29:09.950 --> 00:29:12.930
percentage of all the customers you interact with cross-channel. So
577
00:29:13.339 --> 00:29:15.380
a percentage of Facebook and Twitter and phone and email,
578
00:29:15.420 --> 00:29:18.900
et cetera. And you take some percentage of those customers
579
00:29:18.940 --> 00:29:21.549
and you survey them After the interaction, you say on
580
00:29:21.589 --> 00:29:24.710
a scale of 1 to 10, how difficult was it
581
00:29:24.829 --> 00:29:26.710
to get an answer or to get what you needed?
582
00:29:27.150 --> 00:29:31.839
And what you're trying to do is make it easy, easy, easy, easy,
583
00:29:32.039 --> 00:29:37.069
easy for that customer to interact and transact with your organization.
584
00:29:37.730 --> 00:29:40.579
It's the uberization of everything, right? People want to press
585
00:29:40.619 --> 00:29:43.140
a button and magic happens. And right now, if you
586
00:29:43.160 --> 00:29:45.359
have a problem and you have to call a company
587
00:29:45.759 --> 00:29:50.289
and wait on hold, that is the exact opposite of uberization, right?
588
00:29:50.349 --> 00:29:52.630
And so how can you make it simpler and take
589
00:29:52.670 --> 00:29:55.890
away friction? Because when you take away friction, you remove dissonance.
590
00:29:55.930 --> 00:29:58.809
And when you remove dissonance, you create loyalty. So for us,
591
00:29:58.890 --> 00:30:01.960
it's all about effort. How can you make it simpler?
592
00:30:02.420 --> 00:30:05.480
And sometimes that's faster, and sometimes it's not necessarily speed.
593
00:30:06.059 --> 00:30:08.700
It may be just availability or obviousness, or there's a
594
00:30:08.720 --> 00:30:12.410
lot of other micro factors there. But we look at
595
00:30:12.589 --> 00:30:14.150
effort as opposed to time.
596
00:30:15.170 --> 00:30:18.940
Interesting. Okay. I love that. I think there's a lot there.
597
00:30:19.680 --> 00:30:25.029
Another part... Part of you, Jay, as we've mentioned earlier,
598
00:30:25.369 --> 00:30:28.410
is writing and the fact that you've written multiple books.
599
00:30:28.430 --> 00:30:31.369
The New York Times bestseller I was reading through prior
600
00:30:31.410 --> 00:30:35.880
to our conversation today, Utility, and not only the book itself,
601
00:30:35.920 --> 00:30:40.200
which is a great book, but also it's called Utility, Y-O-U-T-I-L-I-T-Y,
602
00:30:40.500 --> 00:30:43.079
why smart marketing is about help, not hype. But in
603
00:30:43.140 --> 00:30:47.119
addition to that, you have this great PowerPoint deck on
604
00:30:47.160 --> 00:30:50.849
your LinkedIn page that shows people how you wrote and
605
00:30:50.910 --> 00:30:54.349
marketed a New York times bestseller. And it's, uh, I
606
00:30:54.410 --> 00:30:56.289
love that you could, you, you pulled back the curtain
607
00:30:56.369 --> 00:31:00.019
completely on showing your process for, for doing that. And
608
00:31:00.059 --> 00:31:02.119
I wanted to immediately when I was looking through that,
609
00:31:02.660 --> 00:31:05.420
I was fascinated and wanted to learn more about not
610
00:31:05.480 --> 00:31:07.900
only the book itself and what it entails, but then
611
00:31:07.920 --> 00:31:12.619
the process behind creating a New York times bestseller. Yeah.
612
00:31:12.640 --> 00:31:13.859
We're right in the middle of it again. Now with
613
00:31:13.900 --> 00:31:15.420
hug your, I was just going to say, you're probably
614
00:31:15.440 --> 00:31:15.809
doing launch.
615
00:31:15.869 --> 00:31:16.980
It's like, Yeah.
616
00:31:17.299 --> 00:31:19.480
Some of the same plays and some different plays because
617
00:31:19.500 --> 00:31:22.380
it's been a couple, two and a half years. And
618
00:31:22.440 --> 00:31:25.680
so some things are different now, especially online. I mean,
619
00:31:25.720 --> 00:31:27.779
Facebook advertising, for example, we're doing a lot more of
620
00:31:27.819 --> 00:31:29.519
that for Hug Your Haters than we did for Utility
621
00:31:29.539 --> 00:31:33.809
just because it's so much farther along from a targeting perspective.
622
00:31:34.589 --> 00:31:36.809
So many more podcasts now this time than last time,
623
00:31:36.849 --> 00:31:39.190
just because there are so many more podcasts that have
624
00:31:39.670 --> 00:31:42.029
so many great listeners like your show does. And so-
625
00:31:42.859 --> 00:31:45.440
The playbook is somewhat similar, but a little bit different.
626
00:31:45.460 --> 00:31:47.730
So I'm sure I'll write another one around this launch.
627
00:31:47.769 --> 00:31:49.049
But you know what's a funny story? I think I
628
00:31:49.089 --> 00:31:51.670
mentioned it in that book, in that SlideShare presentation, is
629
00:31:51.710 --> 00:31:54.990
that remember we talked about when I started my first company,
630
00:31:55.009 --> 00:31:57.869
I just called everybody I knew. I did the same
631
00:31:57.910 --> 00:32:00.230
thing when I did utility and actually have it on
632
00:32:00.269 --> 00:32:02.869
my calendar to do the same thing next week. So
633
00:32:02.910 --> 00:32:04.990
I'm going to spend a lot of next week, because
634
00:32:05.029 --> 00:32:08.390
I'm off the road, emailing essentially every person I know.
635
00:32:09.500 --> 00:32:13.559
And You email every person you know personally, not copy
636
00:32:13.579 --> 00:32:17.329
and paste, not a newsletter. And you say, hey, I
637
00:32:18.650 --> 00:32:21.269
love you and I hope you love me. And I
638
00:32:21.289 --> 00:32:24.470
don't ask you for much, but I'm asking you right now.
639
00:32:24.690 --> 00:32:27.339
I need you to buy a bunch of copies of
640
00:32:27.359 --> 00:32:31.059
Hug Your Haters at hugyourhaters.com right now. And write a
641
00:32:31.059 --> 00:32:35.480
review on Amazon, right? Yeah, eventually, eventually. But the first
642
00:32:35.519 --> 00:32:39.099
thing is buy books. And I learned that from Gary Vaynerchuk.
643
00:32:39.619 --> 00:32:41.799
And Gary and I are old friends since before he
644
00:32:41.839 --> 00:32:45.420
was a thing. And when I started the marketing for Utility,
645
00:32:45.480 --> 00:32:47.529
I called him. I said, Gary, give me a little advice.
646
00:32:47.549 --> 00:32:51.349
He said, look, you've already sold all the books you're
647
00:32:51.369 --> 00:32:53.869
going to sell. You just don't know it yet. He said,
648
00:32:53.890 --> 00:32:55.970
you just need to connect the ask with the people
649
00:32:56.009 --> 00:32:57.970
that you've helped in your career, and the rest will
650
00:32:57.990 --> 00:33:00.940
take care of itself. And so I sent, I don't know,
651
00:33:00.940 --> 00:33:05.140
600 personal emails for utility and sold, you know, 5,000
652
00:33:05.140 --> 00:33:09.220
or 6,000 books just from those emails. And I'll do
653
00:33:09.240 --> 00:33:12.279
the same thing next week. So as I said earlier,
654
00:33:12.319 --> 00:33:16.450
there's no shortcut. I mean, we always seek the shortcut,
655
00:33:16.470 --> 00:33:19.349
but it's not there, right? If you want to achieve
656
00:33:19.369 --> 00:33:21.950
what you want to achieve, suck it up, man. Just
657
00:33:22.609 --> 00:33:25.529
put the effort into it. Is it fun to write
658
00:33:25.529 --> 00:33:28.819
600 personal emails in a row? No. I can tell
659
00:33:28.859 --> 00:33:31.819
you firsthand, it is totally not fun. But if you
660
00:33:31.859 --> 00:33:33.500
care enough, that's what you'll do.
661
00:33:34.900 --> 00:33:39.009
I remember, I love that story because it's just pure hustle.
662
00:33:39.430 --> 00:33:41.430
And I think there's probably a combination of people listening
663
00:33:41.450 --> 00:33:44.650
that are thinking about that, that they're launching something. I
664
00:33:44.670 --> 00:33:46.329
remember when I, and I'm sure a lot of these
665
00:33:46.349 --> 00:33:50.799
people are still listening. When I launched this podcast, I
666
00:33:50.859 --> 00:33:53.799
sat down over the weekend and it took me about
667
00:33:53.859 --> 00:33:56.579
two or three weekends where I would sit in front
668
00:33:56.599 --> 00:34:00.500
of a computer for, four, five, six hours straight and
669
00:34:00.619 --> 00:34:04.190
send notes to just about everyone I could think of saying,
670
00:34:05.059 --> 00:34:08.789
Here is my new podcast and I just launched it.
671
00:34:08.800 --> 00:34:11.469
There's only three episodes. I'd love it if you would
672
00:34:11.510 --> 00:34:14.639
listen to them and then write an honest review in
673
00:34:14.760 --> 00:34:19.210
iTunes for me. You know, thank you. And kind of
674
00:34:19.230 --> 00:34:21.050
shared a little bit more about what went into it.
675
00:34:22.010 --> 00:34:24.329
But I'm thinking about the person because I think that
676
00:34:24.369 --> 00:34:26.889
hustle and it really helped. It launched it to number
677
00:34:27.010 --> 00:34:29.110
one and new and noteworthy in three different categories and
678
00:34:29.130 --> 00:34:30.030
on the front page of iTunes.
679
00:34:30.090 --> 00:34:30.769
And you're up and running.
680
00:34:30.889 --> 00:34:33.190
Yeah, for eight weeks. And then I had random listeners
681
00:34:33.210 --> 00:34:37.119
from all over the world. because it launched properly. And
682
00:34:37.139 --> 00:34:40.019
I studied a lot. I spent a ton of time
683
00:34:40.119 --> 00:34:42.659
learning the algorithm or trying to learn an algorithm in
684
00:34:42.739 --> 00:34:46.269
iTunes to study other successful podcasts and how they launch
685
00:34:46.289 --> 00:34:49.510
and then studying how other people successfully launched anything, books,
686
00:34:50.550 --> 00:34:54.449
any type of career, and then implemented that into my process.
687
00:34:54.489 --> 00:34:56.639
And it took a ton of time. But here's the thing.
688
00:34:56.659 --> 00:34:58.639
I think people forget the time is done. And I
689
00:34:58.679 --> 00:35:00.539
know you've talked about this and written about this and
690
00:35:00.639 --> 00:35:04.809
spoken about this. All of the work is done well
691
00:35:06.070 --> 00:35:08.860
before the launch. You can't just all of a sudden
692
00:35:08.900 --> 00:35:11.980
write your book and put it on Amazon and be like, oh, hey,
693
00:35:12.300 --> 00:35:15.380
do this. You've put in this work over the course
694
00:35:15.420 --> 00:35:18.920
of many years for people to help them so that
695
00:35:18.940 --> 00:35:20.920
at some point when you have an ask, then now
696
00:35:20.940 --> 00:35:23.219
they're coming back to you to say, yeah, of course,
697
00:35:23.260 --> 00:35:26.230
I'm going to buy 50 of Jay's books because he's
698
00:35:26.250 --> 00:35:27.130
helped me so much.
699
00:35:27.940 --> 00:35:30.320
Yeah, that's exactly the formula. I love your story about
700
00:35:30.340 --> 00:35:34.519
the podcast launch. We have the committee to give our media,
701
00:35:34.559 --> 00:35:36.480
which is the media side of our company. We've got
702
00:35:36.519 --> 00:35:39.130
a very, very large blog and we have six weekly
703
00:35:39.170 --> 00:35:42.789
podcasts now that we produce and a daily email newsletter
704
00:35:42.809 --> 00:35:44.889
for marketers and all kinds of other webinars. And so
705
00:35:45.010 --> 00:35:47.590
we're always going through that same process. We've got a
706
00:35:47.610 --> 00:35:49.809
new show launching next week called Influence Pros, which is
707
00:35:50.110 --> 00:35:53.789
all about influencer marketing and brands who do that and
708
00:35:53.829 --> 00:35:56.599
influencers and how that works. And So we're working on
709
00:35:56.619 --> 00:35:58.619
the launch plan right now, and it's the same kind
710
00:35:58.659 --> 00:36:00.639
of thing. It's like, all right, let's just go ask
711
00:36:00.679 --> 00:36:01.940
everybody we know to support it.
712
00:36:02.579 --> 00:36:05.619
Let's say somebody is listening, Jay, who has done a
713
00:36:05.659 --> 00:36:09.599
good job in their career. They work at a big company.
714
00:36:09.659 --> 00:36:14.590
They're in their mid-30s. Again, spouse, kids, house, cars, the
715
00:36:14.610 --> 00:36:18.409
whole deal, all the responsibilities that a lot of people have.
716
00:36:19.269 --> 00:36:22.789
But haven't really done a remarkable job of building up
717
00:36:22.829 --> 00:36:25.269
a network of friends. They've done well within their company,
718
00:36:25.309 --> 00:36:27.440
but outside of that, they've kind of kept their head down.
719
00:36:27.480 --> 00:36:29.820
They go home. They spend time with their family. They
720
00:36:29.860 --> 00:36:31.880
watch TV. They do the normal things. So they don't
721
00:36:31.940 --> 00:36:35.019
have a huge network outside of their company, but they've
722
00:36:35.039 --> 00:36:37.159
got a book inside of them where they want to
723
00:36:37.179 --> 00:36:40.699
be a speaker. They've done some of these things. So
724
00:36:40.949 --> 00:36:44.969
they don't necessarily have this 600-person list of people to
725
00:36:45.090 --> 00:36:47.090
email to say, can you help me? What would you
726
00:36:47.150 --> 00:36:48.809
say to those people who say they want to get
727
00:36:48.849 --> 00:36:51.329
the book out of them? They want it to be
728
00:36:51.369 --> 00:36:53.900
a bestseller. They want to start speaking, doing some of
729
00:36:53.909 --> 00:36:56.030
the things that you do. What would your advice to
730
00:36:56.070 --> 00:36:56.780
those people be?
731
00:36:58.039 --> 00:37:00.059
Speaking is the one area where you can do it
732
00:37:00.099 --> 00:37:03.199
without a network. You really can. There's a saying in
733
00:37:03.219 --> 00:37:06.699
the speaking business that sounds axiomatic, but it's very true,
734
00:37:06.760 --> 00:37:08.440
which is the more you speak, the more you speak.
735
00:37:09.800 --> 00:37:13.519
If you're good and you actually are disproportionately good as
736
00:37:13.599 --> 00:37:15.320
a speaker and you've got a topic that people care
737
00:37:15.360 --> 00:37:19.889
about and you're a professional about it, everybody in every
738
00:37:19.969 --> 00:37:22.869
audience is a potential client. And so everybody I know
739
00:37:22.909 --> 00:37:25.610
who's a successful speaker has grown their business geometrically over
740
00:37:25.670 --> 00:37:28.670
the years. Not because they're particularly good at marketing, because
741
00:37:28.789 --> 00:37:30.949
everybody who sees the speech might need to hire you
742
00:37:31.130 --> 00:37:33.230
for a speech at some point. It happens to me
743
00:37:33.269 --> 00:37:35.610
all the time. I get emails literally every month. It's like,
744
00:37:35.719 --> 00:37:38.579
I saw you speak five years ago. Now I'm ready.
745
00:37:38.639 --> 00:37:40.340
Now I'm in a position in my company where I
746
00:37:40.360 --> 00:37:42.059
get to influence who gets to speak at our annual
747
00:37:42.099 --> 00:37:44.719
conference or whatever. Can you please come and do a
748
00:37:44.739 --> 00:37:47.639
keynote for us? Speaking is the one area where you
749
00:37:47.659 --> 00:37:50.440
can build a business without a pre-existing network if you're
750
00:37:50.480 --> 00:37:53.420
good and you just stay at it, right? I've written
751
00:37:53.440 --> 00:37:55.110
a lot about this in the past, that the speaking
752
00:37:55.139 --> 00:37:57.119
business is the exact same as the music business. It's
753
00:37:57.239 --> 00:37:59.710
literally the same thing. So you start off playing a
754
00:37:59.730 --> 00:38:02.110
fraternity party for free, and then you play for beer,
755
00:38:02.170 --> 00:38:03.750
and then you play for 50 bucks, and then if
756
00:38:03.789 --> 00:38:05.769
you're still good, then you pay for 200 bucks, and
757
00:38:05.789 --> 00:38:08.829
then 500, and then 1,000, and you just work your
758
00:38:08.849 --> 00:38:11.590
way up. It's literally a ladder. And so that is
759
00:38:11.630 --> 00:38:12.809
the one area where you can do it. And then
760
00:38:12.829 --> 00:38:15.699
the nice thing is once... once you are speaking, then
761
00:38:15.880 --> 00:38:19.239
every time you give a speech, you're going to have connection.
762
00:38:19.280 --> 00:38:22.289
People are going to remember you. I designed my speeches
763
00:38:22.329 --> 00:38:25.010
very intentionally to be a series of tweetable things, right?
764
00:38:25.110 --> 00:38:27.989
It's tweetable statements, which is why I was named the
765
00:38:28.250 --> 00:38:31.849
most retweeted person in the world among digital marketers, because
766
00:38:31.889 --> 00:38:34.250
I speak to digital marketers all the time, and I
767
00:38:34.349 --> 00:38:37.199
give them presentations that are very tweetable. And so over time,
768
00:38:37.219 --> 00:38:39.780
that just builds. So speaking is the place to start,
769
00:38:39.820 --> 00:38:42.179
in my opinion. And then based on speaking, then you
770
00:38:42.219 --> 00:38:44.900
build your network from the stage out, and then you
771
00:38:44.940 --> 00:38:45.360
do the book.
772
00:38:46.159 --> 00:38:47.019
How long have you been speaking?
773
00:38:49.210 --> 00:38:51.170
Well, it depends on how you look at it. Theoretically,
774
00:38:51.230 --> 00:38:52.610
most of my life, I was the guy in high
775
00:38:52.650 --> 00:38:55.159
school who was named, this is a true story, most
776
00:38:55.199 --> 00:38:56.280
likely to be a game show host.
777
00:38:56.550 --> 00:38:59.360
I read that, yeah. And a barbecue judge, right?
778
00:38:59.639 --> 00:39:02.460
I am a barbecue judge. That's right. And I was
779
00:39:02.480 --> 00:39:04.559
the guy in high school who was the emcee of
780
00:39:04.599 --> 00:39:07.239
the talent show. Like don't have actually any talent, but
781
00:39:07.260 --> 00:39:10.239
I can emcee the talent show. So from some perspective,
782
00:39:10.280 --> 00:39:13.380
I've been speaking all my life professionally in terms of
783
00:39:13.400 --> 00:39:17.340
somebody writing me a check to do it, like 10 years,
784
00:39:17.420 --> 00:39:18.119
eight years, something like that.
785
00:39:18.670 --> 00:39:21.619
What's the difference between 10 years ago and today? What
786
00:39:21.739 --> 00:39:24.039
type of progress and how and why?
787
00:39:26.360 --> 00:39:30.239
There's a whole book in that. Because the speaking business
788
00:39:30.300 --> 00:39:33.659
is a business, right? And that's the difference. I've got
789
00:39:33.679 --> 00:39:35.119
a lot of different businesses and a lot of different
790
00:39:35.199 --> 00:39:37.400
things that I do. But in terms of how I
791
00:39:37.460 --> 00:39:41.199
spend my time, I am a professional speaker who happens
792
00:39:41.239 --> 00:39:44.860
to own a consulting firm and a media company. 10
793
00:39:44.860 --> 00:39:47.130
years ago, I was a consultant who gave a speech
794
00:39:47.150 --> 00:39:49.460
every once in a while. And there is an enormous
795
00:39:49.500 --> 00:39:52.280
difference in how you handle clients, how you conduct yourself
796
00:39:52.340 --> 00:39:55.210
on stage, the level of polish and professionalism and training
797
00:39:55.250 --> 00:39:57.170
and coaching that you are willing to invest in to
798
00:39:57.210 --> 00:40:01.110
make yourself better on stage. It is night and day.
799
00:40:01.130 --> 00:40:02.320
Do you have a speaking coach?
800
00:40:03.110 --> 00:40:04.119
Yeah, I work with Michael Port.
801
00:40:04.510 --> 00:40:06.530
Oh, he's been on the show. Michael's awesome.
802
00:40:06.550 --> 00:40:08.230
He's a great friend and has helped me a lot.
803
00:40:08.269 --> 00:40:10.750
So do you guys– is it one-on-one? Does he review tapes?
804
00:40:10.789 --> 00:40:12.090
How does that work? I'd love to hear about the
805
00:40:12.110 --> 00:40:15.650
process of how you– phenomenal. By the way, just Google
806
00:40:15.670 --> 00:40:18.070
Jay Baer and you'll see the speeches. But a guy
807
00:40:18.130 --> 00:40:20.690
who is literally one of the best, you go out
808
00:40:20.730 --> 00:40:23.989
there and crush it. But it shows that you still
809
00:40:24.199 --> 00:40:26.070
are willing to invest and pay a coach.
810
00:40:26.199 --> 00:40:28.619
Oh, hey, look, I mean– thank you very much. Those
811
00:40:28.659 --> 00:40:30.940
are kind words. I'm not that good compared to people
812
00:40:30.980 --> 00:40:33.500
who are good. I'm a member of the National Speakers
813
00:40:33.539 --> 00:40:36.050
Association and do a fair amount with that organization. And
814
00:40:36.070 --> 00:40:37.929
the reason I do that is when you go to that,
815
00:40:38.110 --> 00:40:42.150
when you're in an association and everybody is a professional speaker,
816
00:40:42.170 --> 00:40:46.070
you realize how not good you are compared to some
817
00:40:46.170 --> 00:40:50.849
legendary speakers, right? People who could change your life in
818
00:40:50.849 --> 00:40:53.460
20 minutes. And one thing you learn in that organization
819
00:40:53.800 --> 00:40:59.210
is that the more successful speakers... always have coaches. And
820
00:40:59.250 --> 00:41:01.610
the more successful they are, the more they invest in coaches,
821
00:41:01.690 --> 00:41:05.369
not less. And there's a very strong correlation there because
822
00:41:05.409 --> 00:41:07.590
it's not an accident that they're that good, right? Somebody
823
00:41:07.670 --> 00:41:09.849
helped them get that good. You can get, you can
824
00:41:09.929 --> 00:41:11.849
get by on talent. And I did that for a
825
00:41:11.869 --> 00:41:14.510
long time. I mean, I got by on talent for
826
00:41:14.550 --> 00:41:16.730
five years. And then I realized like, look, if I'm
827
00:41:16.750 --> 00:41:18.630
going to really do this, if I really want to
828
00:41:18.670 --> 00:41:19.969
get where I want to go as a speaker, I
829
00:41:21.130 --> 00:41:25.070
need somebody to help me go beyond that. And so
830
00:41:25.110 --> 00:41:27.739
Michael has helped me very much. And Uh, several other
831
00:41:27.780 --> 00:41:31.510
people have, have, uh, have helped me a ton. Rory Vaden, uh,
832
00:41:31.550 --> 00:41:33.349
is a great speaker and a terrific author and friend
833
00:41:33.369 --> 00:41:38.179
who's helped me a lot. Mark Sanborn, Scott McCain, Scott Stratton, um, legendary, uh,
834
00:41:38.230 --> 00:41:40.269
speakers have really helped a lot in the speaking community
835
00:41:40.329 --> 00:41:42.110
is very, very willing to help one another. It's not,
836
00:41:42.309 --> 00:41:45.570
it's not, um, Parochial at all like hey, you're stealing
837
00:41:45.590 --> 00:41:47.489
my gigs. It doesn't really work like that, which is
838
00:41:47.610 --> 00:41:50.409
really fantastic It's a great community But the most recent
839
00:41:50.449 --> 00:41:53.090
time I worked with Michael was last summer and he
840
00:41:53.110 --> 00:41:55.150
did a three-day boot camp and there were six of
841
00:41:55.230 --> 00:41:58.650
us so me and Ian Altman and Marcus Sheridan and
842
00:41:58.670 --> 00:42:01.550
Rohit Bhargava and a couple other guys just got together
843
00:42:01.570 --> 00:42:04.909
and spent three days with Michael and and his wife
844
00:42:05.010 --> 00:42:08.190
Amy on sort of like really hardcore like okay when
845
00:42:08.230 --> 00:42:09.909
you say this take a half step to the right
846
00:42:10.010 --> 00:42:11.780
kind of stuff Which was really.
847
00:42:11.719 --> 00:42:15.469
Amazing I love hearing about that. I want to dig
848
00:42:15.489 --> 00:42:18.110
in there, too. But I think, first and foremost, what
849
00:42:18.409 --> 00:42:21.269
I think of when you talk to me about the
850
00:42:21.329 --> 00:42:23.789
best always have coaches. And I don't know why, but
851
00:42:23.809 --> 00:42:25.929
I think of, and my dad's talked to me about this,
852
00:42:26.010 --> 00:42:29.420
but you think of golfers. For some reason, I do.
853
00:42:29.519 --> 00:42:32.099
And the fact that when Tiger Woods was right in
854
00:42:32.139 --> 00:42:35.179
the middle of his prime, and really all golfers, Phil Mickelson,
855
00:42:35.199 --> 00:42:37.780
whoever you want to go to, Jordan Spieth now, these
856
00:42:37.840 --> 00:42:41.920
guys were invest a lot in a coach. These guys
857
00:42:41.940 --> 00:42:44.219
are the number one player and they're the best, the
858
00:42:44.400 --> 00:42:48.280
absolute best in the world. And they're still investing in
859
00:42:48.320 --> 00:42:51.380
a coach. So it always made me believe if those
860
00:42:51.420 --> 00:42:54.480
guys need a coach, I need a coach in multiple
861
00:42:54.599 --> 00:42:58.099
areas in my life. He's the number one player in
862
00:42:58.119 --> 00:43:00.820
the world, and he's paying to have somebody help him
863
00:43:00.860 --> 00:43:04.730
and review tape and give him the tips that is
864
00:43:04.829 --> 00:43:08.150
needed and the reminders. And I think if you think
865
00:43:08.170 --> 00:43:09.909
about anything you're going to do, whether you're going to
866
00:43:09.929 --> 00:43:14.260
write a book, give speeches, podcast, your relationship with your spouse,
867
00:43:14.699 --> 00:43:19.840
being a parent, I think it's worth it to always
868
00:43:19.920 --> 00:43:21.539
be in a, as I would say, always be in
869
00:43:21.579 --> 00:43:23.949
a beta mode, meaning I'm never going to really peak.
870
00:43:24.409 --> 00:43:26.690
I'm never going to quite get there. I always need
871
00:43:26.710 --> 00:43:29.429
to reach out. And for me, that's why this podcast exists,
872
00:43:29.449 --> 00:43:31.949
to reach out to great guys like you and other
873
00:43:31.989 --> 00:43:36.559
world-class leaders to say, what are they world-class at? And
874
00:43:37.159 --> 00:43:39.619
how can I tease out the tips and tricks behind
875
00:43:39.679 --> 00:43:42.199
why Jay Baer is so great? Why are you a
876
00:43:42.199 --> 00:43:44.139
great writer? Why are you a great speaker? And to
877
00:43:44.199 --> 00:43:48.389
hear that, well, hey, I need coaching as much as anybody,
878
00:43:48.449 --> 00:43:52.730
I think it's a refreshing thing to hear from EJ.
879
00:43:53.610 --> 00:43:55.650
Oh, thanks. And it's different coaches too. Like you look
880
00:43:55.670 --> 00:43:57.969
at Mickelson, I'm a big golf fan. And in fact,
881
00:43:58.030 --> 00:43:59.909
one of the consultants on my team was the head
882
00:43:59.949 --> 00:44:02.099
of social media strategy at the PGA Tour for like
883
00:44:02.179 --> 00:44:04.690
eight years. And so We're still in that. We do
884
00:44:04.710 --> 00:44:06.889
some work with TaylorMade too. And so we're pretty into
885
00:44:06.909 --> 00:44:10.030
the golf game at Commit to Convert. And Mickelson, who's
886
00:44:10.050 --> 00:44:11.829
my favorite player, he and I are the same age.
887
00:44:12.449 --> 00:44:14.050
He went to Arizona State at the same time my
888
00:44:14.070 --> 00:44:16.710
brother did. And I've met him a couple of times
889
00:44:16.800 --> 00:44:19.300
and super great guy. You know, he had the same
890
00:44:19.380 --> 00:44:21.880
coach for a long time. In the last two years,
891
00:44:22.239 --> 00:44:24.420
his performance started to slip. And so he went out
892
00:44:24.440 --> 00:44:26.019
and got a new coach, fired his coach, got a
893
00:44:26.059 --> 00:44:28.260
new coach. And he's had two top threes in the
894
00:44:28.280 --> 00:44:32.739
last two weeks. And so- Sometimes you don't just need
895
00:44:32.820 --> 00:44:36.300
one voice, right? You need multiple voices. You kind of
896
00:44:36.400 --> 00:44:39.079
get what you're going to get out of Particular coach
897
00:44:39.099 --> 00:44:40.429
and then you go get a different coach because they're
898
00:44:40.449 --> 00:44:42.530
gonna tell you something different and that's not a repudiation
899
00:44:42.570 --> 00:44:45.349
of the first coach It's not disloyalty It's it's that
900
00:44:45.750 --> 00:44:47.909
if you believe that you can learn from everybody in
901
00:44:47.949 --> 00:44:51.150
the world and I generally believe that that everybody has
902
00:44:51.190 --> 00:44:52.769
something to teach It's just whether or not you're willing
903
00:44:52.789 --> 00:44:56.230
to listen Then then the more feedback the better which
904
00:44:56.289 --> 00:44:59.090
is why I wrote this book I mean look here,
905
00:44:59.170 --> 00:45:01.289
you know the most overrated thing is in the world
906
00:45:01.329 --> 00:45:03.840
Ryan What's that the most overrated thing in the world
907
00:45:03.880 --> 00:45:08.679
is praise? because praise doesn't teach you shit and Anytime
908
00:45:08.719 --> 00:45:10.679
somebody says you're good at this, you're good at that,
909
00:45:10.719 --> 00:45:14.280
you already know it. It doesn't teach you anything ever.
910
00:45:14.829 --> 00:45:18.230
What teaches you things are complaints. And that's why I
911
00:45:18.429 --> 00:45:21.650
wrote Hug Your Haters, because we're so interested in listening
912
00:45:21.670 --> 00:45:24.300
to positive feedback, but we turn away from negative feedback.
913
00:45:24.360 --> 00:45:27.440
And negative feedback is the petri dish of improvement. And
914
00:45:27.460 --> 00:45:29.579
that's why companies need to embrace it. And frankly, the
915
00:45:29.619 --> 00:45:30.719
same thing is true with individuals.
916
00:45:32.250 --> 00:45:34.889
What a powerful statement. I love it, Jay, man. You
917
00:45:34.909 --> 00:45:37.489
got emotional too. I can sense it. Talk to me
918
00:45:37.570 --> 00:45:40.300
more about Hug Your Haters. I'm excited for this book.
919
00:45:40.380 --> 00:45:41.940
I'm definitely going to be one of the bulk order
920
00:45:41.980 --> 00:45:44.139
guys to then read it myself and give it out
921
00:45:44.980 --> 00:45:47.699
because I love the work that you do. And I've
922
00:45:47.840 --> 00:45:51.099
been studying it for quite some time now. What was
923
00:45:51.139 --> 00:45:54.559
the impetus for this? Why Hug Your Haters with a
924
00:45:54.940 --> 00:45:57.960
cool little title too as well. It's got a picture
925
00:45:58.019 --> 00:46:02.579
of a mad face with a heart around it talking
926
00:46:02.599 --> 00:46:05.480
about embracing complaints and keeping customers. Talk to me more
927
00:46:05.519 --> 00:46:05.940
about that.
928
00:46:07.039 --> 00:46:09.099
Well, I'll tell you how we started on this process, right?
929
00:46:09.159 --> 00:46:11.519
So on the consulting side of my business, we work
930
00:46:11.559 --> 00:46:14.039
with lots of big companies on social media and online
931
00:46:14.059 --> 00:46:17.300
marketing stuff, right? Well, what was happening all the time
932
00:46:18.199 --> 00:46:20.610
and still does is Because we get called in to
933
00:46:21.250 --> 00:46:24.110
help some company with their online marketing. But their biggest
934
00:46:24.170 --> 00:46:28.019
problem isn't actually online marketing. It's online customer service. Because
935
00:46:28.039 --> 00:46:30.440
they don't know how to do it. They're not putting
936
00:46:30.460 --> 00:46:32.579
the same kind of resources into it that they are offline.
937
00:46:32.960 --> 00:46:35.739
And so you're like, hey, buy stuff from me. Meanwhile,
938
00:46:35.760 --> 00:46:38.420
you've got all these customers who have already bought stuff.
939
00:46:38.440 --> 00:46:41.190
And you're like, well, what about us? They're not answering
940
00:46:41.210 --> 00:46:44.190
all those questions. They're answering every 10th tweet based on
941
00:46:44.289 --> 00:46:47.510
somebody's influence score or what have you. And look, as
942
00:46:47.889 --> 00:46:49.429
Dave Kirpin told me.
943
00:46:49.630 --> 00:46:51.570
Influence score. Does that mean by like how many followers
944
00:46:51.610 --> 00:46:52.590
that person has?
945
00:46:52.730 --> 00:46:55.329
Yeah, or clout score or whatever metric they want to use.
946
00:46:55.449 --> 00:46:58.869
Yeah, especially look at airlines real quick. And when a
947
00:46:59.010 --> 00:47:02.329
celebrity complains, not even a celebrity, but somebody who's got
948
00:47:02.349 --> 00:47:04.489
a lot of followers on Twitter, when they complain to
949
00:47:04.530 --> 00:47:07.920
an airline, they always, most of the time, they are
950
00:47:07.960 --> 00:47:11.619
getting a response. But the person who's got 100 followers
951
00:47:11.699 --> 00:47:13.019
on Twitter does not complain.
952
00:47:13.670 --> 00:47:16.219
Yeah, there's some exceptions to that. And I think airlines
953
00:47:16.239 --> 00:47:18.699
have gotten a lot better at it. And we profile
954
00:47:18.739 --> 00:47:21.139
a couple of airlines in the book. In fact, KLM,
955
00:47:21.159 --> 00:47:23.500
which is the Royal Dutch Airlines out of Amsterdam, is
956
00:47:23.579 --> 00:47:26.800
probably the best social media customer service company in the
957
00:47:26.840 --> 00:47:31.070
world in any capacity. I mean, it's truly remarkable. They
958
00:47:31.190 --> 00:47:34.449
answer 60,000 tweets a week, 24 hours a day in
959
00:47:34.449 --> 00:47:37.150
14 different languages. So if you tweet them at 3 a.m.
960
00:47:37.309 --> 00:47:39.110
in Turkish, they'll answer you back by 3.07 in Turkish.
961
00:47:40.800 --> 00:47:43.929
It is spectacular. But when I said earlier that customer
962
00:47:43.949 --> 00:47:46.050
service is the new marketing, I mean that. KLM is
963
00:47:46.070 --> 00:47:48.489
a good example. So this is a social media customer
964
00:47:48.510 --> 00:47:50.889
service team, right? That's their whole point. Last year, they
965
00:47:50.909 --> 00:47:52.789
sold $ 25 million worth of tickets.
966
00:47:53.550 --> 00:47:53.780
Wow.
967
00:47:54.050 --> 00:47:56.260
Just because they're responsive. That's not their job. Their job
968
00:47:56.300 --> 00:47:58.460
is customer service. But they still sold $ 25 million worth
969
00:47:58.539 --> 00:48:00.739
of tickets because they're fast and they're human and they're
970
00:48:00.760 --> 00:48:03.440
personal and they're on it and they answer every single customer.
971
00:48:03.750 --> 00:48:07.070
Because if you don't answer somebody, right, a lack of
972
00:48:07.150 --> 00:48:09.829
response is actually a response. The response that says, I
973
00:48:09.829 --> 00:48:11.090
don't care about you very much.
974
00:48:13.150 --> 00:48:15.929
Wow, that's incredible. I love it. Jay, I want to
975
00:48:15.949 --> 00:48:17.289
wind down here. I know we're up against clock. And
976
00:48:17.329 --> 00:48:21.369
so I got a question for you around, I mentioned
977
00:48:21.469 --> 00:48:26.610
earlier in our conversation, the purpose behind my show is
978
00:48:26.869 --> 00:48:29.260
that for me personally and for the audience to be
979
00:48:29.300 --> 00:48:32.829
able to speak with, for me to speak with, and
980
00:48:32.869 --> 00:48:36.489
for them to learn from world-class performers in a number
981
00:48:36.530 --> 00:48:40.869
of different areas from a leadership perspective. And that obviously
982
00:48:40.949 --> 00:48:43.780
is you. And you've learned a lot along the way,
983
00:48:43.820 --> 00:48:48.139
and you continue to invest in yourself and in learning
984
00:48:48.300 --> 00:48:51.000
to get better. And so I'm just curious, when you
985
00:48:51.019 --> 00:48:54.500
hear the phrase learning leader, what's the first thing that
986
00:48:54.639 --> 00:48:55.679
pops into your mind?
987
00:48:58.469 --> 00:49:02.449
I think it's emphasizing... just what you said, right? So
988
00:49:02.469 --> 00:49:05.389
if you're a learning leader, you're a person that makes
989
00:49:05.530 --> 00:49:11.219
it mandatory, or at least optimal, to commit to a
990
00:49:11.320 --> 00:49:16.369
culture of continuous improvement. And there's a famous saying in
991
00:49:16.409 --> 00:49:19.329
a t-shirt that says, good enough is not enough. And
992
00:49:19.409 --> 00:49:22.489
people who are not learning leaders believe that good enough
993
00:49:22.550 --> 00:49:25.179
is just fine. And it's not, not if you're serious
994
00:49:25.219 --> 00:49:28.219
about whatever it is that you're serious about, right? It's
995
00:49:28.239 --> 00:49:30.800
a curse, right? Because if you are a learning leader
996
00:49:30.920 --> 00:49:32.480
and you're sort of wired the way you are and
997
00:49:32.500 --> 00:49:34.340
the way I am and the way people who listen
998
00:49:34.360 --> 00:49:37.980
to the show are, you're never satisfied. And it's one
999
00:49:38.000 --> 00:49:41.139
of the problems that I have personally And so when
1000
00:49:41.179 --> 00:49:44.480
I go sit with my psychologist, he's like, hey, your
1001
00:49:44.519 --> 00:49:47.880
problem is you're never satisfied, which I always say, yeah,
1002
00:49:47.900 --> 00:49:48.780
but is that a problem?
1003
00:49:48.800 --> 00:49:49.219
Yeah.
1004
00:49:50.000 --> 00:49:51.119
Or is that an opportunity?
1005
00:49:51.300 --> 00:49:51.480
Right.
1006
00:49:51.920 --> 00:49:55.289
And so it's a fine line between being a learning
1007
00:49:55.349 --> 00:49:59.150
leader and and continuously striving to take the next step,
1008
00:49:59.170 --> 00:50:01.869
the next step, the next step, and then never actually
1009
00:50:01.889 --> 00:50:04.050
being satisfied with any of the steps you've taken in
1010
00:50:04.070 --> 00:50:05.760
the past. And that's my personal problem.
1011
00:50:05.780 --> 00:50:05.929
Right.
1012
00:50:05.949 --> 00:50:09.079
Like not only am I never satisfied, I'm also never happy.
1013
00:50:10.380 --> 00:50:13.139
So when Utility became a New York Times bestseller, I
1014
00:50:13.159 --> 00:50:15.820
was proud of that for about 14 minutes. And then
1015
00:50:15.840 --> 00:50:18.239
it was like, okay, what's the next thing? And that
1016
00:50:18.300 --> 00:50:21.469
can be a little bit of a problem when you're
1017
00:50:21.750 --> 00:50:25.610
driven like that and you never take pride or pleasure
1018
00:50:25.630 --> 00:50:27.289
in it because you're just like next thing, next thing,
1019
00:50:27.329 --> 00:50:30.630
next thing. Because most people aren't wired quite like that.
1020
00:50:30.670 --> 00:50:33.289
And so to them, it can be like, dude, how
1021
00:50:33.309 --> 00:50:36.579
about just smelling the roses for 30 seconds? And I
1022
00:50:36.599 --> 00:50:38.940
think a lot of people who listen to this show
1023
00:50:39.219 --> 00:50:41.000
might be afflicted with that. And that's something that I'm
1024
00:50:41.019 --> 00:50:42.389
going to try and work on here in the next
1025
00:50:42.449 --> 00:50:47.289
year is to continuously be a learning leader, but also
1026
00:50:47.349 --> 00:50:48.949
take some sort of pride and pleasure in what I've
1027
00:50:48.969 --> 00:50:49.469
achieved so far.
1028
00:50:50.000 --> 00:50:53.480
Yeah, it's like Nick Saban. He wins a national championship
1029
00:50:53.519 --> 00:50:54.239
and then he complains.
1030
00:50:54.260 --> 00:50:54.760
Next morning.
1031
00:50:56.219 --> 00:50:58.400
And he also complains that he missed out on time
1032
00:50:58.440 --> 00:51:01.320
to recruit because he was busy playing the game and
1033
00:51:01.420 --> 00:51:03.510
other coaches were already on the road. And so it's
1034
00:51:03.530 --> 00:51:07.409
just a guy who you wonder, it's no surprise why
1035
00:51:07.429 --> 00:51:10.030
he's been able to have that type of success because
1036
00:51:10.710 --> 00:51:14.590
I think there are, and I mentioned this actually when
1037
00:51:14.610 --> 00:51:17.219
I was speaking with a mentor of mine recently, that
1038
00:51:17.260 --> 00:51:19.940
I said, I think this is an issue. I recorded it,
1039
00:51:19.960 --> 00:51:22.260
so I will release it actually. But I said, I
1040
00:51:22.280 --> 00:51:24.429
think this is a problem. And I talked to my
1041
00:51:24.469 --> 00:51:28.269
wife about this, the fact that when the success comes,
1042
00:51:29.170 --> 00:51:31.409
in some weird way, and I know you just mentioned this, Jay,
1043
00:51:33.309 --> 00:51:35.920
you're not satisfied enough, or you want just the next
1044
00:51:36.000 --> 00:51:37.840
level up, or the next level up, or the next
1045
00:51:37.880 --> 00:51:39.840
level up, and you'll never really be there. You know
1046
00:51:39.860 --> 00:51:41.260
what I mean? I think that just kind of the
1047
00:51:41.280 --> 00:51:44.409
way some of us are wired, we're regardless of whatever
1048
00:51:44.429 --> 00:51:46.289
it is, if you sell 10 million books, you're like,
1049
00:51:46.309 --> 00:51:48.130
I want to sell 15 million or I need to
1050
00:51:48.170 --> 00:51:51.769
write another one. And so it just never quite gets there,
1051
00:51:51.809 --> 00:51:54.789
even though people from the outside would say, wow, that
1052
00:51:54.829 --> 00:51:57.219
is incredible. Everything you've done, you're like, yeah, yeah, it's
1053
00:51:57.239 --> 00:51:59.000
pretty good, but I need to do this and you
1054
00:51:59.019 --> 00:52:03.840
do that. I think it's just an interesting way that
1055
00:52:03.900 --> 00:52:04.840
some of us are wired.
1056
00:52:05.519 --> 00:52:08.000
One of my problems is I don't set goals. I
1057
00:52:08.059 --> 00:52:08.699
never have.
1058
00:52:09.139 --> 00:52:09.280
Why?
1059
00:52:09.300 --> 00:52:11.539
I always felt like If you set a goal that's
1060
00:52:11.559 --> 00:52:13.019
too restrictive, because then you're like, I'm only going to
1061
00:52:13.039 --> 00:52:14.579
focus on that thing. And it sort of shuts you
1062
00:52:14.619 --> 00:52:17.360
down to opportunities. But the problem is when you don't
1063
00:52:17.400 --> 00:52:20.820
set goals, then you never know you've reached one. And
1064
00:52:20.840 --> 00:52:23.409
so then you never have something to celebrate. And so
1065
00:52:23.530 --> 00:52:25.489
I'm working on that, right? I'm like, okay, well, what
1066
00:52:25.530 --> 00:52:28.329
if I set goals? but also kept myself open to
1067
00:52:28.389 --> 00:52:32.110
other opportunities, which to me seems like anathema, but I'm
1068
00:52:32.130 --> 00:52:32.579
working on it.
1069
00:52:32.789 --> 00:52:34.769
I got you. This is good. We could go even
1070
00:52:35.050 --> 00:52:36.750
much longer on this, but Jay, I definitely want to
1071
00:52:36.909 --> 00:52:41.570
continue this dialogue. Where can everyone go to find you online?
1072
00:52:42.860 --> 00:52:46.380
Uh, convince and convert.com is, uh, our main site with
1073
00:52:46.400 --> 00:52:50.260
all of our podcasts, blogs, emails, jbear.com is the speaking, uh,
1074
00:52:50.349 --> 00:52:53.389
stuff and hug your haters.com is a new book, all
1075
00:52:53.429 --> 00:52:55.469
kinds of crazy special offers for people who, uh, order
1076
00:52:55.489 --> 00:52:57.789
the book from me. We got socks, we got webinars
1077
00:52:57.809 --> 00:53:00.800
with me, live speeches, all kinds of crazy personalized thank
1078
00:53:00.840 --> 00:53:03.119
you videos, content that's not in the book, all kinds
1079
00:53:03.159 --> 00:53:03.719
of shenanigans.
1080
00:53:04.380 --> 00:53:06.300
Awesome, man. I'll be one of those bulk orders like
1081
00:53:06.340 --> 00:53:09.820
I mentioned to you. Absolutely. Again, Jay, thanks so much
1082
00:53:09.860 --> 00:53:12.500
for being here. And I definitely want to continue our
1083
00:53:12.599 --> 00:53:16.940
conversation as we both progress on our never-ending journeys, man.
1084
00:53:17.860 --> 00:53:20.389
Yeah, it is never-ending. Ryan, thanks so much. I really
1085
00:53:20.429 --> 00:53:21.110
enjoyed it. It was great.
1086
00:53:21.250 --> 00:53:21.610
Thanks, Jay.
1087
00:53:21.630 --> 00:53:26.300
Bye. This episode of The Learning Leader Show is over,
1088
00:53:26.400 --> 00:53:28.440
but we have plenty more to keep you locked in
1089
00:53:28.500 --> 00:53:32.920
until next time. Head over to learningleadershow.com for more information
1090
00:53:33.219 --> 00:53:37.480
and to request your favorite entrepreneur, CEO, world-class athlete, or
1091
00:53:37.619 --> 00:53:40.360
anyone else that inspires you. You can also talk to
1092
00:53:40.380 --> 00:53:43.969
Ryan directly by reaching out to him on Twitter at RyanHawk12.
1093
00:53:44.510 --> 00:53:46.550
Thanks again, and we'll see you next time on The
1094
00:53:46.610 --> 00:53:47.449
Learning Leader Show.
1
00:00:00.170 --> 00:00:02.649
So my best friend became my brother-in-law, which I totally
2
00:00:02.710 --> 00:00:05.009
recommend if you can sort that out. It's a fantastic
3
00:00:05.030 --> 00:00:08.320
bit of social engineering. And so it was awesome, right?
4
00:00:08.380 --> 00:00:10.720
So the four of us spent all our time together.
5
00:00:10.740 --> 00:00:13.480
This was before we had kids. And it was really terrific.
6
00:00:13.580 --> 00:00:16.899
And then I was 32 at this point, and he
7
00:00:16.940 --> 00:00:21.160
was 32. And he was diagnosed with brain cancer. And
8
00:00:21.199 --> 00:00:23.949
the day he was diagnosed and told me what was
9
00:00:23.960 --> 00:00:26.030
going on, it was pretty serious, I walked in the
10
00:00:26.050 --> 00:00:29.949
next day and quit. And I... said, you know, what
11
00:00:30.000 --> 00:00:32.399
am I scared of? Like, what's the worst thing that
12
00:00:32.420 --> 00:00:35.579
could possibly happen? I start a company and it doesn't succeed.
13
00:00:35.640 --> 00:00:37.500
So I go get a job as a vice president
14
00:00:37.520 --> 00:00:40.000
at some other company. Like, what's really the downside here?
15
00:00:40.500 --> 00:00:44.359
And his diagnosis kind of reframed risk and fear for
16
00:00:44.399 --> 00:00:46.700
me in a really powerful, meaningful way. And so I
17
00:00:46.740 --> 00:00:48.409
walked in the next morning and quit and haven't worked
18
00:00:48.429 --> 00:00:49.289
for anybody a day since.
19
00:00:50.179 --> 00:00:52.119
Are leaders born or are they made?
20
00:00:52.560 --> 00:00:53.740
Our host, Ryan Hawk.
21
00:00:53.820 --> 00:00:57.250
Believes that leaders can be made through determined, focused work
22
00:00:57.369 --> 00:00:59.969
on learning the art and science behind the makeup of
23
00:01:00.149 --> 00:01:03.549
other successful leaders. Now it's time to inhale knowledge and
24
00:01:03.729 --> 00:01:07.439
exhale success. You're listening to The Learning Leader Show with
25
00:01:07.540 --> 00:01:08.140
Ryan Hawk.
26
00:01:16.659 --> 00:01:18.719
Hey, guys, before we get to this great conversation, I
27
00:01:18.750 --> 00:01:20.930
want to let you know that this episode was brought
28
00:01:20.950 --> 00:01:24.609
to you by Mizzen and Main. You'll probably remember from
29
00:01:24.709 --> 00:01:27.909
episode 64, I spoke with the CEO of Mizzen and Main,
30
00:01:27.969 --> 00:01:31.200
Kevin Lavelle. And, you know, we promised to continue that
31
00:01:31.299 --> 00:01:34.439
dialogue as we both progressed on our journeys. And we
32
00:01:34.480 --> 00:01:37.950
certainly have. And we formed a partnership. And Kevin and
33
00:01:37.989 --> 00:01:41.599
his great companies and support and people that he works
34
00:01:41.640 --> 00:01:45.700
with have agreed to sponsor my podcast. But for me,
35
00:01:45.760 --> 00:01:48.069
I'm very picky when it comes to this. I only
36
00:01:48.129 --> 00:01:50.969
wanted to work with people who I truly believed in
37
00:01:51.010 --> 00:01:53.829
their products. So this is not just a sponsor to me.
38
00:01:54.329 --> 00:01:58.239
This is an endorsement. I absolutely believe in everything that
39
00:01:58.299 --> 00:02:00.680
Kevin and his company stands for. I love who they
40
00:02:00.739 --> 00:02:04.260
partner with, whether it's Tony Hsieh's Vegas Tech Fund or
41
00:02:04.680 --> 00:02:08.439
the Lone Survivor, Marcus Luttrell's Fund, or Chris Kyle Frog Foundation.
42
00:02:08.819 --> 00:02:13.060
I love that. But I also, most importantly, love the product.
43
00:02:13.479 --> 00:02:18.080
Their shirts are my absolute favorite shirts. They feel very
44
00:02:18.219 --> 00:02:20.590
similar to the clothes that I wear when I go
45
00:02:20.710 --> 00:02:22.469
and work out. And I didn't really believe that was
46
00:02:22.560 --> 00:02:26.729
possible until I tried one. But the four-way stretch fabric
47
00:02:26.810 --> 00:02:29.590
is literally like nothing I've ever felt before. And so
48
00:02:29.629 --> 00:02:32.050
originally I bought one just to try them out to
49
00:02:32.110 --> 00:02:34.669
see if this is really true. A button-down shirt that
50
00:02:34.710 --> 00:02:37.449
looks great with a suit or in business casual. I'm like,
51
00:02:37.469 --> 00:02:39.629
there's no way this thing is going to feel like
52
00:02:39.689 --> 00:02:42.629
people tell me it will. Well, it felt even better
53
00:02:42.669 --> 00:02:44.729
than that. And so after I bought that first shirt,
54
00:02:45.150 --> 00:02:48.449
I ended up buying six more shirts and two Henleys.
55
00:02:49.030 --> 00:02:50.830
And so we've set up a deal for you guys
56
00:02:51.490 --> 00:03:00.110
to go to ryan.mizzenandmaine.com. So that's ryan.mizzenandmaine.com. Pick your favorite shirts.
57
00:03:00.129 --> 00:03:01.909
I love the button downs. You'll see on that site
58
00:03:01.949 --> 00:03:04.840
my favorite shirts. And when you're checking out, use the
59
00:03:04.879 --> 00:03:08.860
code RYANHAWK. to get free shipping if you're only buying
60
00:03:09.000 --> 00:03:11.159
one shirt. If you happen to want to buy three
61
00:03:11.219 --> 00:03:14.479
button downs like I've done a couple times, use the
62
00:03:14.539 --> 00:03:19.270
code RYANHAWK3 and you'll get $ 50 off. Again, I love
63
00:03:19.770 --> 00:03:21.710
Mizzen and Main. I love everything they stand for. And
64
00:03:21.729 --> 00:03:30.030
I promise when you try the shirt, you will too. Hey,
65
00:03:30.169 --> 00:03:33.210
and welcome to the Learning Leader Show. I am Ryan Hawk,
66
00:03:33.310 --> 00:03:37.610
excited about tonight's featured leader. It's Jay Baer. Jay runs
67
00:03:37.810 --> 00:03:41.400
and writes the number one content marketing blog in the world.
68
00:03:41.419 --> 00:03:44.460
He's the founder of Convince and Convert, which is a
69
00:03:44.500 --> 00:03:47.479
strategy consulting firm. Over the course of his career, Jay
70
00:03:47.520 --> 00:03:53.219
has helped over 700 companies from an advisory perspective. Jay's
71
00:03:53.280 --> 00:03:56.490
also the author of five books, including Utility, a New
72
00:03:56.509 --> 00:04:00.250
York Times and Amazon bestseller. His most recent book, Hug
73
00:04:00.409 --> 00:04:03.849
Your Haters, How to Embrace Complaints and Keep Your Customers,
74
00:04:04.270 --> 00:04:08.830
will release March 1st, 2016. Love this conversation with Jay.
75
00:04:08.849 --> 00:04:13.069
He's a very intelligent and engaging guy. A few of
76
00:04:13.090 --> 00:04:16.730
the things we got into. Sustained excellence is boiling down
77
00:04:16.810 --> 00:04:20.430
what you're great at and focusing on doing those specific
78
00:04:20.509 --> 00:04:22.759
things and farming out the other tasks that you're great at.
79
00:04:22.920 --> 00:04:25.439
to others who are great at those things. And then
80
00:04:25.500 --> 00:04:27.939
what is an honesty audit and why we all should
81
00:04:28.000 --> 00:04:32.300
do one on a regular basis? Why even the best
82
00:04:32.399 --> 00:04:36.459
performers in the world need a coach? The best all
83
00:04:36.600 --> 00:04:39.699
invest in someone to help them, critique them, tell them
84
00:04:39.720 --> 00:04:41.660
what they're doing well, tell them what they need to
85
00:04:41.720 --> 00:04:43.850
improve upon. Jay and I spoke about the fact that
86
00:04:43.959 --> 00:04:46.689
he invests in a speaking coach. It happens to be
87
00:04:46.730 --> 00:04:50.069
Michael Port, former guest of the show. and how Michael
88
00:04:50.089 --> 00:04:54.790
specifically helps him from a speaking perspective. Ladies and gentlemen,
89
00:04:55.170 --> 00:05:09.500
without further ado, it's Jay Baer. Jay, so excited to
90
00:05:09.560 --> 00:05:12.019
have you here on the Learning Leader Show. Quick question
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to get us rolling. That's around sustained excellence. And you
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have spent time around a lot of people. You're networked
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with a lot of great world-class performers, people who have
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sustained excellence over time. And you obviously have done the same.
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I'm curious from your perspective, what are some of the
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common characteristics that those people all seem to share? Thanks, Ryan.
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I appreciate you having me on the show. Let me
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tell you two things. One, I think people who have
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sustained excellence are particularly good at at boiling down to
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its essence their particular skill set. I'll give you an
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example from my own business. So I have a consulting
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company and a media company. And when we meet, it's virtual,
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so we only get together once a year. And when
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we get together, one of the things that we work
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on as a business is to audit all the ways
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that I spend my time and to remove 15% of
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those things that I do. And when you do that
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15% a year every year, eventually over a period of time,
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what you're left with is that I focus only on
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the things that I am uniquely qualified to do. Ryan,
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all high performers are capable of doing lots of different things,
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but you're only uniquely capable of doing a few things.
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And the faster you can figure out which things you
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are uniquely capable of doing and focusing the preponderance of
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your time on those few things, the better off you'll be.
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Wow, that's an interesting answer. It's one I actually have
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not received. Are there immediate people that come to mind
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when you think of sustained excellence over extended periods of time? Oh, sure.
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There's tons. It depends on the industry, but you look at...
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You look at somebody like Jim Collins, right? Good to great,
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a terrific author and speaker who I've had the good
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fortune of meeting on a couple of occasions at different events.
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I mean, that's somebody who has been providing advice to
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businesses for 20 years. Look at somebody like Tony Robbins
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on a similar style, similar type of a career trajectory,
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but more on the individual advice and counsel. I mean,
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he's been doing it every day for decades, right? And
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you think about what it requires to stay that sharp,
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that focused, that motivated and day after day after day
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after day. I mean, just yesterday, I was watching the
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NFL playoffs, and while my Arizona Cardinals did not fare
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as well as I would have hoped, you look at
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somebody like Larry Fitzgerald, right, who is just, you know,
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in his 30s now, continues to be terrific at his
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craft and what it requires to be that good that long,
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or Peyton Manning, for that matter. I mean, here's somebody who's,
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you know, practically as old as I am, and going
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back to the Super Bowl, it's remarkable.
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Interesting. So you mentioned that your team is virtual. I'd
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love to dig in now to you, Jay, your business
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and how you've gotten to the point where you currently are.
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Maybe a little bit about your past and the history
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that's led up to what you're currently doing on a
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day-to-day basis.
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You bet. I started off in politics, so I managed
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political campaigns as a young professional employee. And worked in
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that business for a while and had a measure of
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success in it. But it's a tough business, right? And,
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you know, it's kind of a what have you done
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for me lately business. And it's also not, at least
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at that point, a great family business. And so once
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I got married and started having kids, I'm like, you know,
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this is a little bit rough. So I thought, you know,
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if I can get somebody elected, I can sell soup,
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you know, or houses or shoes. So I got into
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traditional marketing. And so I did marketing and public relations
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for a few years on the corporate side for big companies.
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And then I started my own digital consulting firm in
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2000 and ran that company for a few years and
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sold it and started another one and sold it. And
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then started this company, Convince and Convert, a few years
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ago to really focus on social media strategy, content, marketing strategy,
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and customer experience. And so As I mentioned, my team
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is virtual all over the country, and we're super fortunate
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that we get to advise some of the most noteworthy
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brands in the world. I mean, we work with United
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Nations and Adidas and SAP and Oracle and Cabela's and
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all these great companies. So it is a real honor.
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I spend most of my time personally at this juncture.
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writing books and giving speeches. I don't do as much
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of the consulting firsthand as I once did. I'm more
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on the road and trying to rally business people and
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show them how to get more customers and keep those
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they've already earned.
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Let's go to the year 2000 when you made that
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decision to leave. You know, I was reviewing your background
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prior to us talking. Obviously, you had some big time
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jobs and you decided to leave and do it all
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on your own. I mean, that's... can you take me
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to that moment, the decision-making process? Because that is a
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really tough thing to do, especially when you have a
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good thing going. And if you've got a family, either
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you already have one or it's in the works, that
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means you need money. And so it's to provide for them.
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So talk to me about that decision-making process and how
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it went from being a corporate VP to saying, you
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know what, I'm going to do this on my own
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where I'm not going to have any revenue to start.
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I need to build it.
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Yeah, you probably don't know this story because I almost
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never talk about it. So I come from a long
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line of self-employed people on my dad's side, self-employed for
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seven generations or something. And so that was always kind
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of the assumption. And I'd thought about it since I
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was very young.
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I mean, I started.
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I started as a pretty serious intern at 18, you know,
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working in political consultancies and public relations firms. And so
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by the time I was 23, I was like, yeah,
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I should just be doing my own thing, right? And
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so I wanted to do it for a long time,
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start my own thing, but I was scared, right? I
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was scared to do it. And as you said, I
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had a pretty good job already. It's just like, well,
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why do I want to walk out of a pretty
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good job to start something that could fail? And I
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was scared. I just, I delayed it and delayed it
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and delayed it. And about that same time, Ryan, my
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best friend from grade school married my wife's sister. So
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my best friend became my brother-in-law, which I totally recommend
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if you can sort that out. It's a fantastic bit
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of social engineering. And so it was awesome, right? So
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the four of us spent all our time together. This
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was before we had kids. And it was really terrific.
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And then I was 32 at this point, and he
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was 32. And he was diagnosed with brain cancer. And
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the day he was diagnosed... and told me what was
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going on. It's pretty serious. I walked in the next
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day and quit. And I said, you know, what am
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I scared of? Like, what's the worst thing that could
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possibly happen? I start a company and it doesn't succeed.
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So I go get a job as a vice president
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at some other company. Like, what's really the downside here?
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And his diagnosis kind of reframed risk and fear for
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me in a really powerful, meaningful way. And so I
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walked in the next morning and quit and haven't worked
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for anybody a day since.
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Oh, I did not know that story. That's just impactful, man.
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It leaves me speechless almost to think about that happening.
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So this reminds me of a conversation I had with
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Seth Godin when I told him I described a 35-year-old
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guy who's got a spouse and kids and a mortgage
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and car payments and all these responsibilities. And I said,
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what do you say to him? He's got all these responsibilities.
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He's got these people that depend on him. And he
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used a similar story. So what if tomorrow you got
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a call from your doctor saying you had something, an
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inoperable tumor, and what would you do then? He goes, well,
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then the next day they told you that everything was okay.
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How would you respond? Maybe you would think a little
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bit differently. Your approach to life might be different. So
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to hear you tell a real-life story of that is amazing.
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I don't know. It's crazy, man. So at that point,
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you decide– so what was your process for getting it started, though?
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You still have to– you know, you're obviously– it's an
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emotional time. But then it comes– there's still a lot
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of work. There's the, you know, how do you get
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the revenue going? And then– which ultimately led to selling
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the company twice, it sounds like, before you're at your
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current place. So talk to me about that.
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So– There's no shortcuts, and I know you talk about
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that on this show, and I know you know it
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in your own life, Ryan. Technology has kind of screwed
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us up as entrepreneurs because everybody's looking for the angle. Like,
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how can I succeed more efficiently? How can I optimize
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my success? How can I spend less time for more outcome?
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And it just doesn't really work like that. So I'll
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tell you exactly what I did. I was fortunate that
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I knew a lot of people. I was in Phoenix
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at this time and I knew a lot of people
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in Phoenix because I'd been there a long time and
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I'd had some positions and I'd been president of some
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clubs and organizations and had some contacts in my political
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career and stuff like that. So I knew a lot
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of people. So here's what I did. I quit my
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job and the next day I made a list of
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everybody that I knew, like literally everybody that I knew
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in business. And then I sat down and I called
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every single person I knew. And I called about 300 people.
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And I just said, hey, I'm starting this company to
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do digital strategy. And if you know anybody who needs somebody,
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I'd sure be happy to help. And it took me
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about two and a half weeks to make those calls.
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And I picked up three clients during that period and
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had a profitable month and have had every single month
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has been profitable now 183 months in a row since then.
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Wow. So you did it the old fashioned way of
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just smiling, smiling and dialing and hustling. So once you
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got your customers, though, it became time to deliver, which
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then would would then create the momentum to build and
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create referrals. So then the second part of that, I assume,
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is that that what you did?
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So, yeah, it was it was interesting. And I think
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because anytime you start a business in professional services. You
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always start off saying, like, I'll do anything. Like, you
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want me to wash cars? Yeah, I can wash cars.
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You want me to do your email program? Yeah, I
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can do that. You want me to do your ad campaign?
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Sure.
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And that's very much how I started out. I was like, look,
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I'll do pretty much anything that anybody wants me to
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do because I got to eat. I got to put
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food on the table. I got to start this business.
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And then over time, you start to understand a little
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bit better where the market is and what you're good
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at and what other people aren't as good at. And
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I find that over time, your services mix tends to
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narrow and you focus on things that you can do
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in a more repeatable, more efficient fashion. Because if you're
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reinventing the wheel every single time, it's really tough to
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build a business behind that. But it was just me
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for when I started that company, which is called Mighty Interactive.
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It was just me for six months or so. And
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then I added a person, another person, another person, another person.
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And that's typically how I do it. I'm not a
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big believer in hyper growth. I'm not good at it.
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I can't manage hyper growth. I'm not organized enough. I
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kind of manage from post-it notes and that doesn't scale well.
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So I'm a big believer in let's grow 30 to
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40 percent a year every year instead of let's grow,
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you know, 862 percent a year. I just I can't
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deal with it personally. I just don't have that. I
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just don't have the the the mentality for that kind
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of crazy spikes.
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And you mentioned your teams are all virtual. How do
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you build virtual teams successfully?
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Man, it's all about finding the right people. So not
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only is our team virtual at Convince and Convert, we've
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got folks in New York and L.A. and Portland and
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Ohio and Indiana where I am and Phoenix and Costa
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Rica and all over. But everybody in our team is
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also a contractor. They're all 1099. So nobody's actually employed anywhere.
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Everybody on our team has their own business. So they
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all have their own companies. And it's just that I,
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Convince & Convert, my team is sort of their largest client.
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And so most of the folks that I work with
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spend about half their time working on stuff with me
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and half their time on their own clients. And I
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do that very intentionally, Ryan, because I want to work
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with people. who know what it takes to start and
331
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run their own business. Because then you don't have to
332
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teach them entrepreneurship. You don't have to teach them polish.
333
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You have to teach them follow-up and customer service. They
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already know it. They have to have learned it already.
335
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And so when you say, look, these are the kind
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of people that we want who want to spend half
337
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their time with me and half their time doing other
338
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things and kind of have the gumption and the wherewithal
339
00:16:50.669 --> 00:16:53.750
to do that, it leads you to the right folks.
340
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And one of the things I'm most proud of in
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00:16:56.269 --> 00:17:00.970
this particular company is in seven years, We had 0% turnover,
342
00:17:01.309 --> 00:17:04.720
had not a single person leave in seven years. And
343
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I think that speaks to picking the right folks from
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00:17:07.240 --> 00:17:07.640
the beginning.
345
00:17:07.880 --> 00:17:11.880
How do you do that? What's the magic part of
346
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picking the right people? Where do you find them? How
347
00:17:14.019 --> 00:17:17.069
do you interview? Talk to me about that process.
348
00:17:17.109 --> 00:17:19.690
Yeah, it's not a huge team. And so we don't
349
00:17:20.009 --> 00:17:21.829
add a lot of people to the team, which helps.
350
00:17:21.890 --> 00:17:25.029
You're not going through a lot of resumes. And what
351
00:17:25.049 --> 00:17:26.710
has really been great is that a lot of people
352
00:17:26.849 --> 00:17:30.529
in the digital marketing world kind of know me and
353
00:17:30.549 --> 00:17:33.130
my company and how we're set up. And so what
354
00:17:33.180 --> 00:17:35.420
happens in almost every case now, Ryan, is that people
355
00:17:35.480 --> 00:17:37.759
call me and they said, hey, I was working with
356
00:17:37.799 --> 00:17:40.700
this woman and she's great and she's going to start
357
00:17:40.740 --> 00:17:43.000
her own thing and she only wants to work half time.
358
00:17:43.019 --> 00:17:45.740
I think she'd be really good. And so typically now
359
00:17:45.799 --> 00:17:49.769
people refer folks to me, which is spectacular. So I
360
00:17:49.789 --> 00:17:51.549
have this whole network of colleagues that are kind of
361
00:17:51.670 --> 00:17:54.650
on the lookout for talent. And that really makes it.
362
00:17:54.630 --> 00:17:57.250
A lot easier. So if you had to describe what
363
00:17:57.549 --> 00:18:00.349
convincing divert does in one sentence, what would you say?
364
00:18:01.519 --> 00:18:04.440
So we help the world's most interesting brands gain and
365
00:18:04.500 --> 00:18:05.769
keep more customers online.
366
00:18:06.220 --> 00:18:09.789
Gain and keep more customers online. I know I've watched
367
00:18:10.250 --> 00:18:13.730
your speeches online, looking through a lot of things you've written,
368
00:18:13.789 --> 00:18:16.529
which there's a lot of great material out there. And
369
00:18:16.549 --> 00:18:19.109
then you have a new book coming out called Hug
370
00:18:19.759 --> 00:18:23.079
Your Haters, How to Embrace Complaints and Keep Your Customers.
371
00:18:23.160 --> 00:18:26.599
And the interesting stat that you talked about in one
372
00:18:26.619 --> 00:18:32.150
of your speeches is simply a 5% increase in customer
373
00:18:32.190 --> 00:18:37.539
retention can increase profits by 25%, meaning take care of
374
00:18:37.579 --> 00:18:40.559
the ones who are already with you. Focus on those.
375
00:18:40.660 --> 00:18:44.059
Talk to me about Hug Your Haters and those statistics.
376
00:18:44.740 --> 00:18:47.660
Yeah, thanks. So the book is out March 1st officially.
377
00:18:47.700 --> 00:18:50.619
It's going great. People can get it everywhere that books
378
00:18:50.720 --> 00:18:52.759
can be gotten. And there's a real, it's the right
379
00:18:52.799 --> 00:18:55.019
time for that book, I think. You know, we've spent
380
00:18:55.160 --> 00:18:57.740
so much energy in the last few years thinking about marketing,
381
00:18:57.769 --> 00:19:00.549
including me. I mean, I'm a marketing consultant, but we
382
00:19:00.609 --> 00:19:05.200
sort of have lost our focus on customer retention. And
383
00:19:05.240 --> 00:19:07.759
as you said, just a small increase in customer retention
384
00:19:07.779 --> 00:19:10.279
can have a huge impact on your business. And I think, Ryan,
385
00:19:10.339 --> 00:19:13.759
everybody knows that, right? So in the first day that
386
00:19:13.799 --> 00:19:17.720
you're in business, you either learn or you figure out
387
00:19:18.289 --> 00:19:22.490
that it's actually mathematically smarter to keep the customers you
388
00:19:22.529 --> 00:19:26.140
have than than to constantly have to get new customers
389
00:19:26.200 --> 00:19:28.480
and sort of fill the leaky bucket, if you will, right?
390
00:19:28.519 --> 00:19:30.799
I mean, everybody knows that. It's business 101. There's no
391
00:19:31.400 --> 00:19:37.670
argument about that. It's true. But here's the thing. Globally,
392
00:19:37.849 --> 00:19:44.509
each year, we spend about $ 500 billion on marketing and
393
00:19:44.509 --> 00:19:48.869
$ 9 billion on customer service. That's not going to work
394
00:19:48.950 --> 00:19:52.720
anymore because customer service is the new marketing. Whatever your
395
00:19:52.779 --> 00:19:56.289
company sells, whatever you do, whatever your specialty is, your
396
00:19:56.609 --> 00:20:01.190
competition now in this very fast-paced, hyper-connected world, your competition
397
00:20:01.269 --> 00:20:04.750
can and will steal marketing. your best stuff. They'll steal
398
00:20:04.769 --> 00:20:07.289
your best people, your price, your website copy, whatever. But
399
00:20:07.329 --> 00:20:10.150
the one thing your competitors can never steal from you, Ryan,
400
00:20:10.170 --> 00:20:11.839
the one thing they cannot take from you, the one
401
00:20:11.859 --> 00:20:13.890
thing that is yours and yours alone is if you
402
00:20:14.059 --> 00:20:16.680
genuinely care more about your customers than they do. If
403
00:20:16.740 --> 00:20:19.359
you are willing to hug your haters and love your
404
00:20:19.420 --> 00:20:22.079
customers in a way that your competition simply will not,
405
00:20:22.299 --> 00:20:25.599
that is your competitive advantage. That is your differentiation. And
406
00:20:25.700 --> 00:20:27.799
that is what will make a company successful now and
407
00:20:27.819 --> 00:20:29.940
in the future. It's not marketing, it's customer service.
408
00:20:31.250 --> 00:20:33.589
I love it because you think of some of the
409
00:20:34.130 --> 00:20:38.720
more well-known companies out there. I think of like Zappos or, well,
410
00:20:38.740 --> 00:20:41.480
there's a lot of them, but the examples of where
411
00:20:41.500 --> 00:20:45.619
they give their employees the freedom and sometimes the budget
412
00:20:46.299 --> 00:20:53.210
to love on their customers. I've heard at Zappos a
413
00:20:53.269 --> 00:20:56.609
story where somebody found out that Somebody had a death
414
00:20:56.640 --> 00:21:00.269
in the family. And the person who found that out
415
00:21:00.289 --> 00:21:03.349
that was working there ended up sending flowers, sending additional
416
00:21:03.390 --> 00:21:06.970
things to show that customer that they loved them. And
417
00:21:07.059 --> 00:21:09.359
so some would say, oh, wow, you can't have those
418
00:21:09.440 --> 00:21:12.640
people continually just spending all this money to love on
419
00:21:12.660 --> 00:21:16.400
their customers. Well, they show that actually you can. And
420
00:21:16.619 --> 00:21:20.630
the PR that comes from that is incredible. actually caring
421
00:21:20.690 --> 00:21:24.240
about your customers to proactively do something that might hurt
422
00:21:24.339 --> 00:21:29.160
your revenues short term, but will certainly help long term
423
00:21:29.579 --> 00:21:32.319
if you show them that you're treating them the right way.
424
00:21:34.259 --> 00:21:37.700
And you nailed it, right? I mean, if you say, hey,
425
00:21:38.940 --> 00:21:42.359
name a company that's great at customer service, people can say, well,
426
00:21:42.380 --> 00:21:46.779
Zappos or Ritz-Carlton or Nordstrom's or Southwest in some circumstances, etc.,
427
00:21:47.849 --> 00:21:50.069
But that makes the point. The fact that we can
428
00:21:50.210 --> 00:21:52.329
all name them and the fact that we name the
429
00:21:52.390 --> 00:21:55.910
same ones is an indictment of business in general. Why
430
00:21:55.970 --> 00:21:58.049
are there so few companies that we can say they're
431
00:21:58.130 --> 00:22:02.029
great at customer service? Everybody should be great at customer service.
432
00:22:02.589 --> 00:22:06.289
There's a remarkable stat from Forrester that says that 80%,
433
00:22:06.289 --> 00:22:11.190
8-0% of companies think that they deliver superior customer service
434
00:22:11.630 --> 00:22:16.230
and 8% of their customers agree. That's the fundamental problem.
435
00:22:16.269 --> 00:22:18.670
Like we think, oh, sure, we're great at customer service. Meanwhile,
436
00:22:18.710 --> 00:22:22.220
you're mediocre at best. And what it requires to be great,
437
00:22:22.319 --> 00:22:25.339
the recipe in Hug Your Haters, which is at hugyourhaters.com,
438
00:22:25.720 --> 00:22:29.779
the recipe is to answer every customer complaint in every channel,
439
00:22:29.940 --> 00:22:33.500
every time. To answer always instead of what most businesses do,
440
00:22:33.539 --> 00:22:36.470
which is to answer some customer complaints in the channels
441
00:22:36.509 --> 00:22:39.210
that the company prefers when they get around to it.
442
00:22:39.710 --> 00:22:41.490
And that's not good enough. It's not going to be
443
00:22:41.509 --> 00:22:43.460
good enough, especially when you look at the research. And
444
00:22:43.480 --> 00:22:46.220
I did a tremendous amount of research for this book.
445
00:22:46.900 --> 00:22:49.890
When you look at the research, you see this huge wave.
446
00:22:51.019 --> 00:22:55.130
consumer behavior change, where people don't want to interact with
447
00:22:55.190 --> 00:22:57.509
companies as much anymore on the phone or via email,
448
00:22:57.529 --> 00:22:59.750
because it takes too long. It's much easier to try
449
00:22:59.769 --> 00:23:02.289
to interact with a company on Facebook or Twitter or
450
00:23:02.329 --> 00:23:06.130
Yelp or TripAdvisor or Amazon or discussion boards or forums
451
00:23:06.150 --> 00:23:08.089
or what have you. It's much, much easier and faster
452
00:23:08.490 --> 00:23:11.630
to transact in an app environment, in a mobile environment,
453
00:23:11.650 --> 00:23:14.259
than it is in legacy channels. And you think about
454
00:23:14.319 --> 00:23:16.660
how many businesses have what they call a call center.
455
00:23:17.180 --> 00:23:18.980
If you're still calling it a call center, you're going
456
00:23:19.000 --> 00:23:20.759
to be in for a rude awakening because eventually that
457
00:23:20.799 --> 00:23:21.980
phone's no longer going to ring.
458
00:23:23.920 --> 00:23:26.839
So 80% think they're doing a good job and 8% are.
459
00:23:27.720 --> 00:23:29.779
Where does this start? So when you go to help
460
00:23:29.819 --> 00:23:34.380
people with this, is this from the CEO down? How
461
00:23:34.400 --> 00:23:39.170
does an organization get better at this? Talk to me
462
00:23:39.210 --> 00:23:39.549
about that.
463
00:23:40.150 --> 00:23:41.910
What we do at Convince & Convert when we work
464
00:23:41.930 --> 00:23:45.319
with the big organizations and even medium-sized organizations in this
465
00:23:45.339 --> 00:23:47.619
capacity is we typically start with what we call an
466
00:23:47.680 --> 00:23:51.200
honesty audit. And the honesty audit is where we dig
467
00:23:51.240 --> 00:23:54.140
really deep for all the customer complaints and customer contacts
468
00:23:54.160 --> 00:23:56.210
that maybe the company is missing. And a lot of
469
00:23:56.230 --> 00:23:57.650
cases like, oh, we didn't know we had all these
470
00:23:57.670 --> 00:24:01.150
people complaining on Instagram or WhatsApp or WeChat or all
471
00:24:01.190 --> 00:24:03.690
these weird discussion boards and forums that we typically ignore.
472
00:24:04.309 --> 00:24:06.839
The company usually has a pretty decent handle on telephone
473
00:24:06.880 --> 00:24:09.400
and email, the legacy channels, but they usually have a very,
474
00:24:09.420 --> 00:24:11.680
very poor handle on online channels. And so when you
475
00:24:11.700 --> 00:24:15.039
start to demonstrate, hey, by the way, you had 814
476
00:24:15.039 --> 00:24:17.329
customers last month try to reach you online and you
477
00:24:17.380 --> 00:24:20.450
ignored every one of them, that tends to change interior
478
00:24:20.569 --> 00:24:21.950
and internal thinking pretty quickly.
479
00:24:23.329 --> 00:24:24.930
So you do an honesty audit. And how is that
480
00:24:24.950 --> 00:24:25.750
typically received?
481
00:24:27.900 --> 00:24:31.509
It depends on to whom it's presented. So when you
482
00:24:31.569 --> 00:24:35.549
present it to somebody who is not a customer service professional,
483
00:24:35.970 --> 00:24:37.730
they often say, wow, I see that we've missed a
484
00:24:37.750 --> 00:24:42.220
lot of opportunities here to fix a bad situation or
485
00:24:42.680 --> 00:24:47.059
enhance customer loyalty. When you present it, as we sometimes do,
486
00:24:47.559 --> 00:24:50.279
to somebody who is the director of customer service or
487
00:24:50.539 --> 00:24:52.680
that type of a role, it can be a little
488
00:24:52.700 --> 00:24:57.089
tricky because you're essentially saying without saying it that you're
489
00:24:57.140 --> 00:25:00.869
not doing your job very well. And that has to
490
00:25:00.930 --> 00:25:03.869
be delivered in a very special way.
491
00:25:05.339 --> 00:25:07.180
Yeah, I know. I'm not sure if you know him
492
00:25:07.200 --> 00:25:09.460
or if you've spoken with him, but Joey Coleman gives
493
00:25:09.500 --> 00:25:10.220
a great speech.
494
00:25:10.240 --> 00:25:11.240
Sure, I love Joey Coleman.
495
00:25:11.259 --> 00:25:16.440
Yeah, the first 100 days. Yes, it's great. Yeah, I've
496
00:25:16.480 --> 00:25:20.420
watched it multiple times. And for anyone out there who hasn't,
497
00:25:20.480 --> 00:25:23.400
go to just Google Joey Coleman first 100 days. And
498
00:25:23.440 --> 00:25:25.799
he talks about the importance of how you treat a
499
00:25:25.839 --> 00:25:29.549
customer during those first 100 days of having them. What's
500
00:25:29.569 --> 00:25:36.210
your process around the first initial... Yeah.
501
00:25:37.869 --> 00:25:40.690
So one of the things that I talk about a
502
00:25:40.730 --> 00:25:42.650
lot in the book and we try to follow in
503
00:25:42.670 --> 00:25:45.799
my own company, although we're not great at it ourselves,
504
00:25:45.839 --> 00:25:48.599
but we're getting better, is this notion that there's no
505
00:25:48.660 --> 00:25:52.809
such thing as customers that are over-informed. nobody ever says,
506
00:25:53.130 --> 00:25:55.650
stop telling me stuff, right? I mean, now they may
507
00:25:55.750 --> 00:25:58.369
not read everything or listen to everything or watch everything,
508
00:25:59.109 --> 00:26:02.529
but they appreciate the effort. And so what we do
509
00:26:02.589 --> 00:26:04.470
and how we do it requires, there's a lot of
510
00:26:04.509 --> 00:26:06.470
nuance to it and things like that. And so we're
511
00:26:06.519 --> 00:26:08.960
trying to do more at Convince & Convert with educating
512
00:26:09.339 --> 00:26:12.200
customers upfront about how we do and what we do
513
00:26:12.240 --> 00:26:13.599
and what that process is going to be like and
514
00:26:13.640 --> 00:26:15.960
what happens next. One of my favorite case studies in
515
00:26:15.980 --> 00:26:18.160
the book is from a company called Square Cow Movers,
516
00:26:18.200 --> 00:26:21.960
and they're a moving company in Texas. And They talk
517
00:26:22.240 --> 00:26:25.589
a lot about, Wade, who's their CEO, talks about the
518
00:26:25.609 --> 00:26:28.910
fact that moving is really fraught with emotion because people
519
00:26:28.950 --> 00:26:31.170
are moving and that's a big deal usually. And you're
520
00:26:31.230 --> 00:26:33.789
handling their stuff and you're carrying their grandmother's piano and
521
00:26:33.829 --> 00:26:36.690
all that stuff, right? And so people tend to go
522
00:26:36.750 --> 00:26:38.509
on tilt a little bit. And so he said they
523
00:26:38.549 --> 00:26:40.789
used to have a lot of customer service issues until
524
00:26:40.809 --> 00:26:44.630
they realized like, okay, we have to over-communicate. And if
525
00:26:44.690 --> 00:26:47.599
we think it's over-communicating, the customer thinks it's just right.
526
00:26:48.039 --> 00:26:49.740
And I think that's a lesson for everybody.
527
00:26:50.519 --> 00:26:53.299
Communication being the key during those first stages.
528
00:26:53.559 --> 00:26:56.089
And predictive customer service, right?
529
00:26:56.210 --> 00:26:57.190
Yeah.
530
00:26:57.390 --> 00:26:59.150
There's another case study in the book from a company
531
00:26:59.190 --> 00:27:02.589
called Fresh Brothers Pizza, and they've got 14 locations in
532
00:27:02.609 --> 00:27:05.369
Southern California. And Debbie Goldberg is their owner, and she's
533
00:27:05.490 --> 00:27:09.460
super bright. She's really, really bright, is amazing at Yelp
534
00:27:09.559 --> 00:27:12.880
in particular, answers all the positive comments and the negative
535
00:27:12.920 --> 00:27:14.700
comments herself. She's just really good at it. But one
536
00:27:14.720 --> 00:27:17.359
of the things that she's particularly adept at is is
537
00:27:17.480 --> 00:27:20.880
predictive customer service. And so she says that, you know,
538
00:27:20.900 --> 00:27:25.240
in some cases they have a location that's really busy or,
539
00:27:25.269 --> 00:27:27.569
you know, they get a busload of people in. And
540
00:27:27.589 --> 00:27:30.109
so they know when that happens that there's going to
541
00:27:30.130 --> 00:27:32.309
be a ripple effect. And so pizzas that are ordered
542
00:27:32.349 --> 00:27:34.269
now are going to come out slow and maybe delivery
543
00:27:34.289 --> 00:27:36.130
times will be impacted on that. I mean, they just know.
544
00:27:36.720 --> 00:27:39.420
So instead of waiting for those customers to complain or
545
00:27:39.519 --> 00:27:42.740
hoping that they won't complain and She automatically gives them
546
00:27:42.779 --> 00:27:45.279
gift cards and says, look, here's 10 bucks off the
547
00:27:45.319 --> 00:27:47.740
next time you come, because she knows that it'll be
548
00:27:47.799 --> 00:27:50.779
slower than they expect, even if they don't complain. So,
549
00:27:50.799 --> 00:27:53.480
you know, the best complaints are the ones that never happen.
550
00:27:53.589 --> 00:27:55.809
And the way to make that work is to understand
551
00:27:55.930 --> 00:27:58.930
what those potential fracture points are and run ahead of
552
00:27:58.990 --> 00:28:00.549
it instead of being always in reactive mode.
553
00:28:01.210 --> 00:28:03.930
And constantly thinking about them and putting yourself in their shoes,
554
00:28:03.990 --> 00:28:05.990
I think, is so important instead of getting caught up
555
00:28:06.049 --> 00:28:10.039
in the other day-to-day stuff that happens.
556
00:28:10.519 --> 00:28:14.539
Well, and it's hard because, especially in big companies, you
557
00:28:14.619 --> 00:28:19.079
almost are forced to think of customers as numbers. You say, well,
558
00:28:19.119 --> 00:28:20.740
how many calls did we handle today? What was our
559
00:28:20.819 --> 00:28:23.380
average handle time? Those are the kind of metrics. Those
560
00:28:23.420 --> 00:28:25.720
are the customer service success metrics. How long did it
561
00:28:25.759 --> 00:28:28.220
take us to answer a call? How can we answer
562
00:28:28.240 --> 00:28:32.210
these calls more quickly? That's tough. That's not the recipe
563
00:28:32.259 --> 00:28:34.339
for great customer experience, right? How can we get you
564
00:28:34.400 --> 00:28:37.720
off the phone faster? Things like that. But that is
565
00:28:37.799 --> 00:28:40.660
how customer service has been measured over time, and we
566
00:28:40.680 --> 00:28:41.819
just have to flip the script on that.
567
00:28:42.099 --> 00:28:44.000
So how do you do that? So you work at
568
00:28:44.019 --> 00:28:47.720
a big company, and those metrics are definitely realistic as
569
00:28:47.759 --> 00:28:52.700
far as how we measure if our customer support representatives
570
00:28:52.839 --> 00:28:55.559
are acting, how would you measure people? Because some of them,
571
00:28:55.619 --> 00:29:00.160
maybe there's not easy goals set or measurables for having
572
00:29:00.200 --> 00:29:02.609
a great personality and trying to help somebody. You know
573
00:29:02.630 --> 00:29:02.890
what I mean?
574
00:29:02.910 --> 00:29:06.569
No, there's not. So I think the best metric is
575
00:29:06.750 --> 00:29:09.730
effort score. So what you do is you take a
576
00:29:09.950 --> 00:29:12.930
percentage of all the customers you interact with cross-channel. So
577
00:29:13.339 --> 00:29:15.380
a percentage of Facebook and Twitter and phone and email,
578
00:29:15.420 --> 00:29:18.900
et cetera. And you take some percentage of those customers
579
00:29:18.940 --> 00:29:21.549
and you survey them After the interaction, you say on
580
00:29:21.589 --> 00:29:24.710
a scale of 1 to 10, how difficult was it
581
00:29:24.829 --> 00:29:26.710
to get an answer or to get what you needed?
582
00:29:27.150 --> 00:29:31.839
And what you're trying to do is make it easy, easy, easy, easy,
583
00:29:32.039 --> 00:29:37.069
easy for that customer to interact and transact with your organization.
584
00:29:37.730 --> 00:29:40.579
It's the uberization of everything, right? People want to press
585
00:29:40.619 --> 00:29:43.140
a button and magic happens. And right now, if you
586
00:29:43.160 --> 00:29:45.359
have a problem and you have to call a company
587
00:29:45.759 --> 00:29:50.289
and wait on hold, that is the exact opposite of uberization, right?
588
00:29:50.349 --> 00:29:52.630
And so how can you make it simpler and take
589
00:29:52.670 --> 00:29:55.890
away friction? Because when you take away friction, you remove dissonance.
590
00:29:55.930 --> 00:29:58.809
And when you remove dissonance, you create loyalty. So for us,
591
00:29:58.890 --> 00:30:01.960
it's all about effort. How can you make it simpler?
592
00:30:02.420 --> 00:30:05.480
And sometimes that's faster, and sometimes it's not necessarily speed.
593
00:30:06.059 --> 00:30:08.700
It may be just availability or obviousness, or there's a
594
00:30:08.720 --> 00:30:12.410
lot of other micro factors there. But we look at
595
00:30:12.589 --> 00:30:14.150
effort as opposed to time.
596
00:30:15.170 --> 00:30:18.940
Interesting. Okay. I love that. I think there's a lot there.
597
00:30:19.680 --> 00:30:25.029
Another part... Part of you, Jay, as we've mentioned earlier,
598
00:30:25.369 --> 00:30:28.410
is writing and the fact that you've written multiple books.
599
00:30:28.430 --> 00:30:31.369
The New York Times bestseller I was reading through prior
600
00:30:31.410 --> 00:30:35.880
to our conversation today, Utility, and not only the book itself,
601
00:30:35.920 --> 00:30:40.200
which is a great book, but also it's called Utility, Y-O-U-T-I-L-I-T-Y,
602
00:30:40.500 --> 00:30:43.079
why smart marketing is about help, not hype. But in
603
00:30:43.140 --> 00:30:47.119
addition to that, you have this great PowerPoint deck on
604
00:30:47.160 --> 00:30:50.849
your LinkedIn page that shows people how you wrote and
605
00:30:50.910 --> 00:30:54.349
marketed a New York times bestseller. And it's, uh, I
606
00:30:54.410 --> 00:30:56.289
love that you could, you, you pulled back the curtain
607
00:30:56.369 --> 00:31:00.019
completely on showing your process for, for doing that. And
608
00:31:00.059 --> 00:31:02.119
I wanted to immediately when I was looking through that,
609
00:31:02.660 --> 00:31:05.420
I was fascinated and wanted to learn more about not
610
00:31:05.480 --> 00:31:07.900
only the book itself and what it entails, but then
611
00:31:07.920 --> 00:31:12.619
the process behind creating a New York times bestseller. Yeah.
612
00:31:12.640 --> 00:31:13.859
We're right in the middle of it again. Now with
613
00:31:13.900 --> 00:31:15.420
hug your, I was just going to say, you're probably
614
00:31:15.440 --> 00:31:15.809
doing launch.
615
00:31:15.869 --> 00:31:16.980
It's like, Yeah.
616
00:31:17.299 --> 00:31:19.480
Some of the same plays and some different plays because
617
00:31:19.500 --> 00:31:22.380
it's been a couple, two and a half years. And
618
00:31:22.440 --> 00:31:25.680
so some things are different now, especially online. I mean,
619
00:31:25.720 --> 00:31:27.779
Facebook advertising, for example, we're doing a lot more of
620
00:31:27.819 --> 00:31:29.519
that for Hug Your Haters than we did for Utility
621
00:31:29.539 --> 00:31:33.809
just because it's so much farther along from a targeting perspective.
622
00:31:34.589 --> 00:31:36.809
So many more podcasts now this time than last time,
623
00:31:36.849 --> 00:31:39.190
just because there are so many more podcasts that have
624
00:31:39.670 --> 00:31:42.029
so many great listeners like your show does. And so-
625
00:31:42.859 --> 00:31:45.440
The playbook is somewhat similar, but a little bit different.
626
00:31:45.460 --> 00:31:47.730
So I'm sure I'll write another one around this launch.
627
00:31:47.769 --> 00:31:49.049
But you know what's a funny story? I think I
628
00:31:49.089 --> 00:31:51.670
mentioned it in that book, in that SlideShare presentation, is
629
00:31:51.710 --> 00:31:54.990
that remember we talked about when I started my first company,
630
00:31:55.009 --> 00:31:57.869
I just called everybody I knew. I did the same
631
00:31:57.910 --> 00:32:00.230
thing when I did utility and actually have it on
632
00:32:00.269 --> 00:32:02.869
my calendar to do the same thing next week. So
633
00:32:02.910 --> 00:32:04.990
I'm going to spend a lot of next week, because
634
00:32:05.029 --> 00:32:08.390
I'm off the road, emailing essentially every person I know.
635
00:32:09.500 --> 00:32:13.559
And You email every person you know personally, not copy
636
00:32:13.579 --> 00:32:17.329
and paste, not a newsletter. And you say, hey, I
637
00:32:18.650 --> 00:32:21.269
love you and I hope you love me. And I
638
00:32:21.289 --> 00:32:24.470
don't ask you for much, but I'm asking you right now.
639
00:32:24.690 --> 00:32:27.339
I need you to buy a bunch of copies of
640
00:32:27.359 --> 00:32:31.059
Hug Your Haters at hugyourhaters.com right now. And write a
641
00:32:31.059 --> 00:32:35.480
review on Amazon, right? Yeah, eventually, eventually. But the first
642
00:32:35.519 --> 00:32:39.099
thing is buy books. And I learned that from Gary Vaynerchuk.
643
00:32:39.619 --> 00:32:41.799
And Gary and I are old friends since before he
644
00:32:41.839 --> 00:32:45.420
was a thing. And when I started the marketing for Utility,
645
00:32:45.480 --> 00:32:47.529
I called him. I said, Gary, give me a little advice.
646
00:32:47.549 --> 00:32:51.349
He said, look, you've already sold all the books you're
647
00:32:51.369 --> 00:32:53.869
going to sell. You just don't know it yet. He said,
648
00:32:53.890 --> 00:32:55.970
you just need to connect the ask with the people
649
00:32:56.009 --> 00:32:57.970
that you've helped in your career, and the rest will
650
00:32:57.990 --> 00:33:00.940
take care of itself. And so I sent, I don't know,
651
00:33:00.940 --> 00:33:05.140
600 personal emails for utility and sold, you know, 5,000
652
00:33:05.140 --> 00:33:09.220
or 6,000 books just from those emails. And I'll do
653
00:33:09.240 --> 00:33:12.279
the same thing next week. So as I said earlier,
654
00:33:12.319 --> 00:33:16.450
there's no shortcut. I mean, we always seek the shortcut,
655
00:33:16.470 --> 00:33:19.349
but it's not there, right? If you want to achieve
656
00:33:19.369 --> 00:33:21.950
what you want to achieve, suck it up, man. Just
657
00:33:22.609 --> 00:33:25.529
put the effort into it. Is it fun to write
658
00:33:25.529 --> 00:33:28.819
600 personal emails in a row? No. I can tell
659
00:33:28.859 --> 00:33:31.819
you firsthand, it is totally not fun. But if you
660
00:33:31.859 --> 00:33:33.500
care enough, that's what you'll do.
661
00:33:34.900 --> 00:33:39.009
I remember, I love that story because it's just pure hustle.
662
00:33:39.430 --> 00:33:41.430
And I think there's probably a combination of people listening
663
00:33:41.450 --> 00:33:44.650
that are thinking about that, that they're launching something. I
664
00:33:44.670 --> 00:33:46.329
remember when I, and I'm sure a lot of these
665
00:33:46.349 --> 00:33:50.799
people are still listening. When I launched this podcast, I
666
00:33:50.859 --> 00:33:53.799
sat down over the weekend and it took me about
667
00:33:53.859 --> 00:33:56.579
two or three weekends where I would sit in front
668
00:33:56.599 --> 00:34:00.500
of a computer for, four, five, six hours straight and
669
00:34:00.619 --> 00:34:04.190
send notes to just about everyone I could think of saying,
670
00:34:05.059 --> 00:34:08.789
Here is my new podcast and I just launched it.
671
00:34:08.800 --> 00:34:11.469
There's only three episodes. I'd love it if you would
672
00:34:11.510 --> 00:34:14.639
listen to them and then write an honest review in
673
00:34:14.760 --> 00:34:19.210
iTunes for me. You know, thank you. And kind of
674
00:34:19.230 --> 00:34:21.050
shared a little bit more about what went into it.
675
00:34:22.010 --> 00:34:24.329
But I'm thinking about the person because I think that
676
00:34:24.369 --> 00:34:26.889
hustle and it really helped. It launched it to number
677
00:34:27.010 --> 00:34:29.110
one and new and noteworthy in three different categories and
678
00:34:29.130 --> 00:34:30.030
on the front page of iTunes.
679
00:34:30.090 --> 00:34:30.769
And you're up and running.
680
00:34:30.889 --> 00:34:33.190
Yeah, for eight weeks. And then I had random listeners
681
00:34:33.210 --> 00:34:37.119
from all over the world. because it launched properly. And
682
00:34:37.139 --> 00:34:40.019
I studied a lot. I spent a ton of time
683
00:34:40.119 --> 00:34:42.659
learning the algorithm or trying to learn an algorithm in
684
00:34:42.739 --> 00:34:46.269
iTunes to study other successful podcasts and how they launch
685
00:34:46.289 --> 00:34:49.510
and then studying how other people successfully launched anything, books,
686
00:34:50.550 --> 00:34:54.449
any type of career, and then implemented that into my process.
687
00:34:54.489 --> 00:34:56.639
And it took a ton of time. But here's the thing.
688
00:34:56.659 --> 00:34:58.639
I think people forget the time is done. And I
689
00:34:58.679 --> 00:35:00.539
know you've talked about this and written about this and
690
00:35:00.639 --> 00:35:04.809
spoken about this. All of the work is done well
691
00:35:06.070 --> 00:35:08.860
before the launch. You can't just all of a sudden
692
00:35:08.900 --> 00:35:11.980
write your book and put it on Amazon and be like, oh, hey,
693
00:35:12.300 --> 00:35:15.380
do this. You've put in this work over the course
694
00:35:15.420 --> 00:35:18.920
of many years for people to help them so that
695
00:35:18.940 --> 00:35:20.920
at some point when you have an ask, then now
696
00:35:20.940 --> 00:35:23.219
they're coming back to you to say, yeah, of course,
697
00:35:23.260 --> 00:35:26.230
I'm going to buy 50 of Jay's books because he's
698
00:35:26.250 --> 00:35:27.130
helped me so much.
699
00:35:27.940 --> 00:35:30.320
Yeah, that's exactly the formula. I love your story about
700
00:35:30.340 --> 00:35:34.519
the podcast launch. We have the committee to give our media,
701
00:35:34.559 --> 00:35:36.480
which is the media side of our company. We've got
702
00:35:36.519 --> 00:35:39.130
a very, very large blog and we have six weekly
703
00:35:39.170 --> 00:35:42.789
podcasts now that we produce and a daily email newsletter
704
00:35:42.809 --> 00:35:44.889
for marketers and all kinds of other webinars. And so
705
00:35:45.010 --> 00:35:47.590
we're always going through that same process. We've got a
706
00:35:47.610 --> 00:35:49.809
new show launching next week called Influence Pros, which is
707
00:35:50.110 --> 00:35:53.789
all about influencer marketing and brands who do that and
708
00:35:53.829 --> 00:35:56.599
influencers and how that works. And So we're working on
709
00:35:56.619 --> 00:35:58.619
the launch plan right now, and it's the same kind
710
00:35:58.659 --> 00:36:00.639
of thing. It's like, all right, let's just go ask
711
00:36:00.679 --> 00:36:01.940
everybody we know to support it.
712
00:36:02.579 --> 00:36:05.619
Let's say somebody is listening, Jay, who has done a
713
00:36:05.659 --> 00:36:09.599
good job in their career. They work at a big company.
714
00:36:09.659 --> 00:36:14.590
They're in their mid-30s. Again, spouse, kids, house, cars, the
715
00:36:14.610 --> 00:36:18.409
whole deal, all the responsibilities that a lot of people have.
716
00:36:19.269 --> 00:36:22.789
But haven't really done a remarkable job of building up
717
00:36:22.829 --> 00:36:25.269
a network of friends. They've done well within their company,
718
00:36:25.309 --> 00:36:27.440
but outside of that, they've kind of kept their head down.
719
00:36:27.480 --> 00:36:29.820
They go home. They spend time with their family. They
720
00:36:29.860 --> 00:36:31.880
watch TV. They do the normal things. So they don't
721
00:36:31.940 --> 00:36:35.019
have a huge network outside of their company, but they've
722
00:36:35.039 --> 00:36:37.159
got a book inside of them where they want to
723
00:36:37.179 --> 00:36:40.699
be a speaker. They've done some of these things. So
724
00:36:40.949 --> 00:36:44.969
they don't necessarily have this 600-person list of people to
725
00:36:45.090 --> 00:36:47.090
email to say, can you help me? What would you
726
00:36:47.150 --> 00:36:48.809
say to those people who say they want to get
727
00:36:48.849 --> 00:36:51.329
the book out of them? They want it to be
728
00:36:51.369 --> 00:36:53.900
a bestseller. They want to start speaking, doing some of
729
00:36:53.909 --> 00:36:56.030
the things that you do. What would your advice to
730
00:36:56.070 --> 00:36:56.780
those people be?
731
00:36:58.039 --> 00:37:00.059
Speaking is the one area where you can do it
732
00:37:00.099 --> 00:37:03.199
without a network. You really can. There's a saying in
733
00:37:03.219 --> 00:37:06.699
the speaking business that sounds axiomatic, but it's very true,
734
00:37:06.760 --> 00:37:08.440
which is the more you speak, the more you speak.
735
00:37:09.800 --> 00:37:13.519
If you're good and you actually are disproportionately good as
736
00:37:13.599 --> 00:37:15.320
a speaker and you've got a topic that people care
737
00:37:15.360 --> 00:37:19.889
about and you're a professional about it, everybody in every
738
00:37:19.969 --> 00:37:22.869
audience is a potential client. And so everybody I know
739
00:37:22.909 --> 00:37:25.610
who's a successful speaker has grown their business geometrically over
740
00:37:25.670 --> 00:37:28.670
the years. Not because they're particularly good at marketing, because
741
00:37:28.789 --> 00:37:30.949
everybody who sees the speech might need to hire you
742
00:37:31.130 --> 00:37:33.230
for a speech at some point. It happens to me
743
00:37:33.269 --> 00:37:35.610
all the time. I get emails literally every month. It's like,
744
00:37:35.719 --> 00:37:38.579
I saw you speak five years ago. Now I'm ready.
745
00:37:38.639 --> 00:37:40.340
Now I'm in a position in my company where I
746
00:37:40.360 --> 00:37:42.059
get to influence who gets to speak at our annual
747
00:37:42.099 --> 00:37:44.719
conference or whatever. Can you please come and do a
748
00:37:44.739 --> 00:37:47.639
keynote for us? Speaking is the one area where you
749
00:37:47.659 --> 00:37:50.440
can build a business without a pre-existing network if you're
750
00:37:50.480 --> 00:37:53.420
good and you just stay at it, right? I've written
751
00:37:53.440 --> 00:37:55.110
a lot about this in the past, that the speaking
752
00:37:55.139 --> 00:37:57.119
business is the exact same as the music business. It's
753
00:37:57.239 --> 00:37:59.710
literally the same thing. So you start off playing a
754
00:37:59.730 --> 00:38:02.110
fraternity party for free, and then you play for beer,
755
00:38:02.170 --> 00:38:03.750
and then you play for 50 bucks, and then if
756
00:38:03.789 --> 00:38:05.769
you're still good, then you pay for 200 bucks, and
757
00:38:05.789 --> 00:38:08.829
then 500, and then 1,000, and you just work your
758
00:38:08.849 --> 00:38:11.590
way up. It's literally a ladder. And so that is
759
00:38:11.630 --> 00:38:12.809
the one area where you can do it. And then
760
00:38:12.829 --> 00:38:15.699
the nice thing is once... once you are speaking, then
761
00:38:15.880 --> 00:38:19.239
every time you give a speech, you're going to have connection.
762
00:38:19.280 --> 00:38:22.289
People are going to remember you. I designed my speeches
763
00:38:22.329 --> 00:38:25.010
very intentionally to be a series of tweetable things, right?
764
00:38:25.110 --> 00:38:27.989
It's tweetable statements, which is why I was named the
765
00:38:28.250 --> 00:38:31.849
most retweeted person in the world among digital marketers, because
766
00:38:31.889 --> 00:38:34.250
I speak to digital marketers all the time, and I
767
00:38:34.349 --> 00:38:37.199
give them presentations that are very tweetable. And so over time,
768
00:38:37.219 --> 00:38:39.780
that just builds. So speaking is the place to start,
769
00:38:39.820 --> 00:38:42.179
in my opinion. And then based on speaking, then you
770
00:38:42.219 --> 00:38:44.900
build your network from the stage out, and then you
771
00:38:44.940 --> 00:38:45.360
do the book.
772
00:38:46.159 --> 00:38:47.019
How long have you been speaking?
773
00:38:49.210 --> 00:38:51.170
Well, it depends on how you look at it. Theoretically,
774
00:38:51.230 --> 00:38:52.610
most of my life, I was the guy in high
775
00:38:52.650 --> 00:38:55.159
school who was named, this is a true story, most
776
00:38:55.199 --> 00:38:56.280
likely to be a game show host.
777
00:38:56.550 --> 00:38:59.360
I read that, yeah. And a barbecue judge, right?
778
00:38:59.639 --> 00:39:02.460
I am a barbecue judge. That's right. And I was
779
00:39:02.480 --> 00:39:04.559
the guy in high school who was the emcee of
780
00:39:04.599 --> 00:39:07.239
the talent show. Like don't have actually any talent, but
781
00:39:07.260 --> 00:39:10.239
I can emcee the talent show. So from some perspective,
782
00:39:10.280 --> 00:39:13.380
I've been speaking all my life professionally in terms of
783
00:39:13.400 --> 00:39:17.340
somebody writing me a check to do it, like 10 years,
784
00:39:17.420 --> 00:39:18.119
eight years, something like that.
785
00:39:18.670 --> 00:39:21.619
What's the difference between 10 years ago and today? What
786
00:39:21.739 --> 00:39:24.039
type of progress and how and why?
787
00:39:26.360 --> 00:39:30.239
There's a whole book in that. Because the speaking business
788
00:39:30.300 --> 00:39:33.659
is a business, right? And that's the difference. I've got
789
00:39:33.679 --> 00:39:35.119
a lot of different businesses and a lot of different
790
00:39:35.199 --> 00:39:37.400
things that I do. But in terms of how I
791
00:39:37.460 --> 00:39:41.199
spend my time, I am a professional speaker who happens
792
00:39:41.239 --> 00:39:44.860
to own a consulting firm and a media company. 10
793
00:39:44.860 --> 00:39:47.130
years ago, I was a consultant who gave a speech
794
00:39:47.150 --> 00:39:49.460
every once in a while. And there is an enormous
795
00:39:49.500 --> 00:39:52.280
difference in how you handle clients, how you conduct yourself
796
00:39:52.340 --> 00:39:55.210
on stage, the level of polish and professionalism and training
797
00:39:55.250 --> 00:39:57.170
and coaching that you are willing to invest in to
798
00:39:57.210 --> 00:40:01.110
make yourself better on stage. It is night and day.
799
00:40:01.130 --> 00:40:02.320
Do you have a speaking coach?
800
00:40:03.110 --> 00:40:04.119
Yeah, I work with Michael Port.
801
00:40:04.510 --> 00:40:06.530
Oh, he's been on the show. Michael's awesome.
802
00:40:06.550 --> 00:40:08.230
He's a great friend and has helped me a lot.
803
00:40:08.269 --> 00:40:10.750
So do you guys– is it one-on-one? Does he review tapes?
804
00:40:10.789 --> 00:40:12.090
How does that work? I'd love to hear about the
805
00:40:12.110 --> 00:40:15.650
process of how you– phenomenal. By the way, just Google
806
00:40:15.670 --> 00:40:18.070
Jay Baer and you'll see the speeches. But a guy
807
00:40:18.130 --> 00:40:20.690
who is literally one of the best, you go out
808
00:40:20.730 --> 00:40:23.989
there and crush it. But it shows that you still
809
00:40:24.199 --> 00:40:26.070
are willing to invest and pay a coach.
810
00:40:26.199 --> 00:40:28.619
Oh, hey, look, I mean– thank you very much. Those
811
00:40:28.659 --> 00:40:30.940
are kind words. I'm not that good compared to people
812
00:40:30.980 --> 00:40:33.500
who are good. I'm a member of the National Speakers
813
00:40:33.539 --> 00:40:36.050
Association and do a fair amount with that organization. And
814
00:40:36.070 --> 00:40:37.929
the reason I do that is when you go to that,
815
00:40:38.110 --> 00:40:42.150
when you're in an association and everybody is a professional speaker,
816
00:40:42.170 --> 00:40:46.070
you realize how not good you are compared to some
817
00:40:46.170 --> 00:40:50.849
legendary speakers, right? People who could change your life in
818
00:40:50.849 --> 00:40:53.460
20 minutes. And one thing you learn in that organization
819
00:40:53.800 --> 00:40:59.210
is that the more successful speakers... always have coaches. And
820
00:40:59.250 --> 00:41:01.610
the more successful they are, the more they invest in coaches,
821
00:41:01.690 --> 00:41:05.369
not less. And there's a very strong correlation there because
822
00:41:05.409 --> 00:41:07.590
it's not an accident that they're that good, right? Somebody
823
00:41:07.670 --> 00:41:09.849
helped them get that good. You can get, you can
824
00:41:09.929 --> 00:41:11.849
get by on talent. And I did that for a
825
00:41:11.869 --> 00:41:14.510
long time. I mean, I got by on talent for
826
00:41:14.550 --> 00:41:16.730
five years. And then I realized like, look, if I'm
827
00:41:16.750 --> 00:41:18.630
going to really do this, if I really want to
828
00:41:18.670 --> 00:41:19.969
get where I want to go as a speaker, I
829
00:41:21.130 --> 00:41:25.070
need somebody to help me go beyond that. And so
830
00:41:25.110 --> 00:41:27.739
Michael has helped me very much. And Uh, several other
831
00:41:27.780 --> 00:41:31.510
people have, have, uh, have helped me a ton. Rory Vaden, uh,
832
00:41:31.550 --> 00:41:33.349
is a great speaker and a terrific author and friend
833
00:41:33.369 --> 00:41:38.179
who's helped me a lot. Mark Sanborn, Scott McCain, Scott Stratton, um, legendary, uh,
834
00:41:38.230 --> 00:41:40.269
speakers have really helped a lot in the speaking community
835
00:41:40.329 --> 00:41:42.110
is very, very willing to help one another. It's not,
836
00:41:42.309 --> 00:41:45.570
it's not, um, Parochial at all like hey, you're stealing
837
00:41:45.590 --> 00:41:47.489
my gigs. It doesn't really work like that, which is
838
00:41:47.610 --> 00:41:50.409
really fantastic It's a great community But the most recent
839
00:41:50.449 --> 00:41:53.090
time I worked with Michael was last summer and he
840
00:41:53.110 --> 00:41:55.150
did a three-day boot camp and there were six of
841
00:41:55.230 --> 00:41:58.650
us so me and Ian Altman and Marcus Sheridan and
842
00:41:58.670 --> 00:42:01.550
Rohit Bhargava and a couple other guys just got together
843
00:42:01.570 --> 00:42:04.909
and spent three days with Michael and and his wife
844
00:42:05.010 --> 00:42:08.190
Amy on sort of like really hardcore like okay when
845
00:42:08.230 --> 00:42:09.909
you say this take a half step to the right
846
00:42:10.010 --> 00:42:11.780
kind of stuff Which was really.
847
00:42:11.719 --> 00:42:15.469
Amazing I love hearing about that. I want to dig
848
00:42:15.489 --> 00:42:18.110
in there, too. But I think, first and foremost, what
849
00:42:18.409 --> 00:42:21.269
I think of when you talk to me about the
850
00:42:21.329 --> 00:42:23.789
best always have coaches. And I don't know why, but
851
00:42:23.809 --> 00:42:25.929
I think of, and my dad's talked to me about this,
852
00:42:26.010 --> 00:42:29.420
but you think of golfers. For some reason, I do.
853
00:42:29.519 --> 00:42:32.099
And the fact that when Tiger Woods was right in
854
00:42:32.139 --> 00:42:35.179
the middle of his prime, and really all golfers, Phil Mickelson,
855
00:42:35.199 --> 00:42:37.780
whoever you want to go to, Jordan Spieth now, these
856
00:42:37.840 --> 00:42:41.920
guys were invest a lot in a coach. These guys
857
00:42:41.940 --> 00:42:44.219
are the number one player and they're the best, the
858
00:42:44.400 --> 00:42:48.280
absolute best in the world. And they're still investing in
859
00:42:48.320 --> 00:42:51.380
a coach. So it always made me believe if those
860
00:42:51.420 --> 00:42:54.480
guys need a coach, I need a coach in multiple
861
00:42:54.599 --> 00:42:58.099
areas in my life. He's the number one player in
862
00:42:58.119 --> 00:43:00.820
the world, and he's paying to have somebody help him
863
00:43:00.860 --> 00:43:04.730
and review tape and give him the tips that is
864
00:43:04.829 --> 00:43:08.150
needed and the reminders. And I think if you think
865
00:43:08.170 --> 00:43:09.909
about anything you're going to do, whether you're going to
866
00:43:09.929 --> 00:43:14.260
write a book, give speeches, podcast, your relationship with your spouse,
867
00:43:14.699 --> 00:43:19.840
being a parent, I think it's worth it to always
868
00:43:19.920 --> 00:43:21.539
be in a, as I would say, always be in
869
00:43:21.579 --> 00:43:23.949
a beta mode, meaning I'm never going to really peak.
870
00:43:24.409 --> 00:43:26.690
I'm never going to quite get there. I always need
871
00:43:26.710 --> 00:43:29.429
to reach out. And for me, that's why this podcast exists,
872
00:43:29.449 --> 00:43:31.949
to reach out to great guys like you and other
873
00:43:31.989 --> 00:43:36.559
world-class leaders to say, what are they world-class at? And
874
00:43:37.159 --> 00:43:39.619
how can I tease out the tips and tricks behind
875
00:43:39.679 --> 00:43:42.199
why Jay Baer is so great? Why are you a
876
00:43:42.199 --> 00:43:44.139
great writer? Why are you a great speaker? And to
877
00:43:44.199 --> 00:43:48.389
hear that, well, hey, I need coaching as much as anybody,
878
00:43:48.449 --> 00:43:52.730
I think it's a refreshing thing to hear from EJ.
879
00:43:53.610 --> 00:43:55.650
Oh, thanks. And it's different coaches too. Like you look
880
00:43:55.670 --> 00:43:57.969
at Mickelson, I'm a big golf fan. And in fact,
881
00:43:58.030 --> 00:43:59.909
one of the consultants on my team was the head
882
00:43:59.949 --> 00:44:02.099
of social media strategy at the PGA Tour for like
883
00:44:02.179 --> 00:44:04.690
eight years. And so We're still in that. We do
884
00:44:04.710 --> 00:44:06.889
some work with TaylorMade too. And so we're pretty into
885
00:44:06.909 --> 00:44:10.030
the golf game at Commit to Convert. And Mickelson, who's
886
00:44:10.050 --> 00:44:11.829
my favorite player, he and I are the same age.
887
00:44:12.449 --> 00:44:14.050
He went to Arizona State at the same time my
888
00:44:14.070 --> 00:44:16.710
brother did. And I've met him a couple of times
889
00:44:16.800 --> 00:44:19.300
and super great guy. You know, he had the same
890
00:44:19.380 --> 00:44:21.880
coach for a long time. In the last two years,
891
00:44:22.239 --> 00:44:24.420
his performance started to slip. And so he went out
892
00:44:24.440 --> 00:44:26.019
and got a new coach, fired his coach, got a
893
00:44:26.059 --> 00:44:28.260
new coach. And he's had two top threes in the
894
00:44:28.280 --> 00:44:32.739
last two weeks. And so- Sometimes you don't just need
895
00:44:32.820 --> 00:44:36.300
one voice, right? You need multiple voices. You kind of
896
00:44:36.400 --> 00:44:39.079
get what you're going to get out of Particular coach
897
00:44:39.099 --> 00:44:40.429
and then you go get a different coach because they're
898
00:44:40.449 --> 00:44:42.530
gonna tell you something different and that's not a repudiation
899
00:44:42.570 --> 00:44:45.349
of the first coach It's not disloyalty It's it's that
900
00:44:45.750 --> 00:44:47.909
if you believe that you can learn from everybody in
901
00:44:47.949 --> 00:44:51.150
the world and I generally believe that that everybody has
902
00:44:51.190 --> 00:44:52.769
something to teach It's just whether or not you're willing
903
00:44:52.789 --> 00:44:56.230
to listen Then then the more feedback the better which
904
00:44:56.289 --> 00:44:59.090
is why I wrote this book I mean look here,
905
00:44:59.170 --> 00:45:01.289
you know the most overrated thing is in the world
906
00:45:01.329 --> 00:45:03.840
Ryan What's that the most overrated thing in the world
907
00:45:03.880 --> 00:45:08.679
is praise? because praise doesn't teach you shit and Anytime
908
00:45:08.719 --> 00:45:10.679
somebody says you're good at this, you're good at that,
909
00:45:10.719 --> 00:45:14.280
you already know it. It doesn't teach you anything ever.
910
00:45:14.829 --> 00:45:18.230
What teaches you things are complaints. And that's why I
911
00:45:18.429 --> 00:45:21.650
wrote Hug Your Haters, because we're so interested in listening
912
00:45:21.670 --> 00:45:24.300
to positive feedback, but we turn away from negative feedback.
913
00:45:24.360 --> 00:45:27.440
And negative feedback is the petri dish of improvement. And
914
00:45:27.460 --> 00:45:29.579
that's why companies need to embrace it. And frankly, the
915
00:45:29.619 --> 00:45:30.719
same thing is true with individuals.
916
00:45:32.250 --> 00:45:34.889
What a powerful statement. I love it, Jay, man. You
917
00:45:34.909 --> 00:45:37.489
got emotional too. I can sense it. Talk to me
918
00:45:37.570 --> 00:45:40.300
more about Hug Your Haters. I'm excited for this book.
919
00:45:40.380 --> 00:45:41.940
I'm definitely going to be one of the bulk order
920
00:45:41.980 --> 00:45:44.139
guys to then read it myself and give it out
921
00:45:44.980 --> 00:45:47.699
because I love the work that you do. And I've
922
00:45:47.840 --> 00:45:51.099
been studying it for quite some time now. What was
923
00:45:51.139 --> 00:45:54.559
the impetus for this? Why Hug Your Haters with a
924
00:45:54.940 --> 00:45:57.960
cool little title too as well. It's got a picture
925
00:45:58.019 --> 00:46:02.579
of a mad face with a heart around it talking
926
00:46:02.599 --> 00:46:05.480
about embracing complaints and keeping customers. Talk to me more
927
00:46:05.519 --> 00:46:05.940
about that.
928
00:46:07.039 --> 00:46:09.099
Well, I'll tell you how we started on this process, right?
929
00:46:09.159 --> 00:46:11.519
So on the consulting side of my business, we work
930
00:46:11.559 --> 00:46:14.039
with lots of big companies on social media and online
931
00:46:14.059 --> 00:46:17.300
marketing stuff, right? Well, what was happening all the time
932
00:46:18.199 --> 00:46:20.610
and still does is Because we get called in to
933
00:46:21.250 --> 00:46:24.110
help some company with their online marketing. But their biggest
934
00:46:24.170 --> 00:46:28.019
problem isn't actually online marketing. It's online customer service. Because
935
00:46:28.039 --> 00:46:30.440
they don't know how to do it. They're not putting
936
00:46:30.460 --> 00:46:32.579
the same kind of resources into it that they are offline.
937
00:46:32.960 --> 00:46:35.739
And so you're like, hey, buy stuff from me. Meanwhile,
938
00:46:35.760 --> 00:46:38.420
you've got all these customers who have already bought stuff.
939
00:46:38.440 --> 00:46:41.190
And you're like, well, what about us? They're not answering
940
00:46:41.210 --> 00:46:44.190
all those questions. They're answering every 10th tweet based on
941
00:46:44.289 --> 00:46:47.510
somebody's influence score or what have you. And look, as
942
00:46:47.889 --> 00:46:49.429
Dave Kirpin told me.
943
00:46:49.630 --> 00:46:51.570
Influence score. Does that mean by like how many followers
944
00:46:51.610 --> 00:46:52.590
that person has?
945
00:46:52.730 --> 00:46:55.329
Yeah, or clout score or whatever metric they want to use.
946
00:46:55.449 --> 00:46:58.869
Yeah, especially look at airlines real quick. And when a
947
00:46:59.010 --> 00:47:02.329
celebrity complains, not even a celebrity, but somebody who's got
948
00:47:02.349 --> 00:47:04.489
a lot of followers on Twitter, when they complain to
949
00:47:04.530 --> 00:47:07.920
an airline, they always, most of the time, they are
950
00:47:07.960 --> 00:47:11.619
getting a response. But the person who's got 100 followers
951
00:47:11.699 --> 00:47:13.019
on Twitter does not complain.
952
00:47:13.670 --> 00:47:16.219
Yeah, there's some exceptions to that. And I think airlines
953
00:47:16.239 --> 00:47:18.699
have gotten a lot better at it. And we profile
954
00:47:18.739 --> 00:47:21.139
a couple of airlines in the book. In fact, KLM,
955
00:47:21.159 --> 00:47:23.500
which is the Royal Dutch Airlines out of Amsterdam, is
956
00:47:23.579 --> 00:47:26.800
probably the best social media customer service company in the
957
00:47:26.840 --> 00:47:31.070
world in any capacity. I mean, it's truly remarkable. They
958
00:47:31.190 --> 00:47:34.449
answer 60,000 tweets a week, 24 hours a day in
959
00:47:34.449 --> 00:47:37.150
14 different languages. So if you tweet them at 3 a.m.
960
00:47:37.309 --> 00:47:39.110
in Turkish, they'll answer you back by 3.07 in Turkish.
961
00:47:40.800 --> 00:47:43.929
It is spectacular. But when I said earlier that customer
962
00:47:43.949 --> 00:47:46.050
service is the new marketing, I mean that. KLM is
963
00:47:46.070 --> 00:47:48.489
a good example. So this is a social media customer
964
00:47:48.510 --> 00:47:50.889
service team, right? That's their whole point. Last year, they
965
00:47:50.909 --> 00:47:52.789
sold $ 25 million worth of tickets.
966
00:47:53.550 --> 00:47:53.780
Wow.
967
00:47:54.050 --> 00:47:56.260
Just because they're responsive. That's not their job. Their job
968
00:47:56.300 --> 00:47:58.460
is customer service. But they still sold $ 25 million worth
969
00:47:58.539 --> 00:48:00.739
of tickets because they're fast and they're human and they're
970
00:48:00.760 --> 00:48:03.440
personal and they're on it and they answer every single customer.
971
00:48:03.750 --> 00:48:07.070
Because if you don't answer somebody, right, a lack of
972
00:48:07.150 --> 00:48:09.829
response is actually a response. The response that says, I
973
00:48:09.829 --> 00:48:11.090
don't care about you very much.
974
00:48:13.150 --> 00:48:15.929
Wow, that's incredible. I love it. Jay, I want to
975
00:48:15.949 --> 00:48:17.289
wind down here. I know we're up against clock. And
976
00:48:17.329 --> 00:48:21.369
so I got a question for you around, I mentioned
977
00:48:21.469 --> 00:48:26.610
earlier in our conversation, the purpose behind my show is
978
00:48:26.869 --> 00:48:29.260
that for me personally and for the audience to be
979
00:48:29.300 --> 00:48:32.829
able to speak with, for me to speak with, and
980
00:48:32.869 --> 00:48:36.489
for them to learn from world-class performers in a number
981
00:48:36.530 --> 00:48:40.869
of different areas from a leadership perspective. And that obviously
982
00:48:40.949 --> 00:48:43.780
is you. And you've learned a lot along the way,
983
00:48:43.820 --> 00:48:48.139
and you continue to invest in yourself and in learning
984
00:48:48.300 --> 00:48:51.000
to get better. And so I'm just curious, when you
985
00:48:51.019 --> 00:48:54.500
hear the phrase learning leader, what's the first thing that
986
00:48:54.639 --> 00:48:55.679
pops into your mind?
987
00:48:58.469 --> 00:49:02.449
I think it's emphasizing... just what you said, right? So
988
00:49:02.469 --> 00:49:05.389
if you're a learning leader, you're a person that makes
989
00:49:05.530 --> 00:49:11.219
it mandatory, or at least optimal, to commit to a
990
00:49:11.320 --> 00:49:16.369
culture of continuous improvement. And there's a famous saying in
991
00:49:16.409 --> 00:49:19.329
a t-shirt that says, good enough is not enough. And
992
00:49:19.409 --> 00:49:22.489
people who are not learning leaders believe that good enough
993
00:49:22.550 --> 00:49:25.179
is just fine. And it's not, not if you're serious
994
00:49:25.219 --> 00:49:28.219
about whatever it is that you're serious about, right? It's
995
00:49:28.239 --> 00:49:30.800
a curse, right? Because if you are a learning leader
996
00:49:30.920 --> 00:49:32.480
and you're sort of wired the way you are and
997
00:49:32.500 --> 00:49:34.340
the way I am and the way people who listen
998
00:49:34.360 --> 00:49:37.980
to the show are, you're never satisfied. And it's one
999
00:49:38.000 --> 00:49:41.139
of the problems that I have personally And so when
1000
00:49:41.179 --> 00:49:44.480
I go sit with my psychologist, he's like, hey, your
1001
00:49:44.519 --> 00:49:47.880
problem is you're never satisfied, which I always say, yeah,
1002
00:49:47.900 --> 00:49:48.780
but is that a problem?
1003
00:49:48.800 --> 00:49:49.219
Yeah.
1004
00:49:50.000 --> 00:49:51.119
Or is that an opportunity?
1005
00:49:51.300 --> 00:49:51.480
Right.
1006
00:49:51.920 --> 00:49:55.289
And so it's a fine line between being a learning
1007
00:49:55.349 --> 00:49:59.150
leader and and continuously striving to take the next step,
1008
00:49:59.170 --> 00:50:01.869
the next step, the next step, and then never actually
1009
00:50:01.889 --> 00:50:04.050
being satisfied with any of the steps you've taken in
1010
00:50:04.070 --> 00:50:05.760
the past. And that's my personal problem.
1011
00:50:05.780 --> 00:50:05.929
Right.
1012
00:50:05.949 --> 00:50:09.079
Like not only am I never satisfied, I'm also never happy.
1013
00:50:10.380 --> 00:50:13.139
So when Utility became a New York Times bestseller, I
1014
00:50:13.159 --> 00:50:15.820
was proud of that for about 14 minutes. And then
1015
00:50:15.840 --> 00:50:18.239
it was like, okay, what's the next thing? And that
1016
00:50:18.300 --> 00:50:21.469
can be a little bit of a problem when you're
1017
00:50:21.750 --> 00:50:25.610
driven like that and you never take pride or pleasure
1018
00:50:25.630 --> 00:50:27.289
in it because you're just like next thing, next thing,
1019
00:50:27.329 --> 00:50:30.630
next thing. Because most people aren't wired quite like that.
1020
00:50:30.670 --> 00:50:33.289
And so to them, it can be like, dude, how
1021
00:50:33.309 --> 00:50:36.579
about just smelling the roses for 30 seconds? And I
1022
00:50:36.599 --> 00:50:38.940
think a lot of people who listen to this show
1023
00:50:39.219 --> 00:50:41.000
might be afflicted with that. And that's something that I'm
1024
00:50:41.019 --> 00:50:42.389
going to try and work on here in the next
1025
00:50:42.449 --> 00:50:47.289
year is to continuously be a learning leader, but also
1026
00:50:47.349 --> 00:50:48.949
take some sort of pride and pleasure in what I've
1027
00:50:48.969 --> 00:50:49.469
achieved so far.
1028
00:50:50.000 --> 00:50:53.480
Yeah, it's like Nick Saban. He wins a national championship
1029
00:50:53.519 --> 00:50:54.239
and then he complains.
1030
00:50:54.260 --> 00:50:54.760
Next morning.
1031
00:50:56.219 --> 00:50:58.400
And he also complains that he missed out on time
1032
00:50:58.440 --> 00:51:01.320
to recruit because he was busy playing the game and
1033
00:51:01.420 --> 00:51:03.510
other coaches were already on the road. And so it's
1034
00:51:03.530 --> 00:51:07.409
just a guy who you wonder, it's no surprise why
1035
00:51:07.429 --> 00:51:10.030
he's been able to have that type of success because
1036
00:51:10.710 --> 00:51:14.590
I think there are, and I mentioned this actually when
1037
00:51:14.610 --> 00:51:17.219
I was speaking with a mentor of mine recently, that
1038
00:51:17.260 --> 00:51:19.940
I said, I think this is an issue. I recorded it,
1039
00:51:19.960 --> 00:51:22.260
so I will release it actually. But I said, I
1040
00:51:22.280 --> 00:51:24.429
think this is a problem. And I talked to my
1041
00:51:24.469 --> 00:51:28.269
wife about this, the fact that when the success comes,
1042
00:51:29.170 --> 00:51:31.409
in some weird way, and I know you just mentioned this, Jay,
1043
00:51:33.309 --> 00:51:35.920
you're not satisfied enough, or you want just the next
1044
00:51:36.000 --> 00:51:37.840
level up, or the next level up, or the next
1045
00:51:37.880 --> 00:51:39.840
level up, and you'll never really be there. You know
1046
00:51:39.860 --> 00:51:41.260
what I mean? I think that just kind of the
1047
00:51:41.280 --> 00:51:44.409
way some of us are wired, we're regardless of whatever
1048
00:51:44.429 --> 00:51:46.289
it is, if you sell 10 million books, you're like,
1049
00:51:46.309 --> 00:51:48.130
I want to sell 15 million or I need to
1050
00:51:48.170 --> 00:51:51.769
write another one. And so it just never quite gets there,
1051
00:51:51.809 --> 00:51:54.789
even though people from the outside would say, wow, that
1052
00:51:54.829 --> 00:51:57.219
is incredible. Everything you've done, you're like, yeah, yeah, it's
1053
00:51:57.239 --> 00:51:59.000
pretty good, but I need to do this and you
1054
00:51:59.019 --> 00:52:03.840
do that. I think it's just an interesting way that
1055
00:52:03.900 --> 00:52:04.840
some of us are wired.
1056
00:52:05.519 --> 00:52:08.000
One of my problems is I don't set goals. I
1057
00:52:08.059 --> 00:52:08.699
never have.
1058
00:52:09.139 --> 00:52:09.280
Why?
1059
00:52:09.300 --> 00:52:11.539
I always felt like If you set a goal that's
1060
00:52:11.559 --> 00:52:13.019
too restrictive, because then you're like, I'm only going to
1061
00:52:13.039 --> 00:52:14.579
focus on that thing. And it sort of shuts you
1062
00:52:14.619 --> 00:52:17.360
down to opportunities. But the problem is when you don't
1063
00:52:17.400 --> 00:52:20.820
set goals, then you never know you've reached one. And
1064
00:52:20.840 --> 00:52:23.409
so then you never have something to celebrate. And so
1065
00:52:23.530 --> 00:52:25.489
I'm working on that, right? I'm like, okay, well, what
1066
00:52:25.530 --> 00:52:28.329
if I set goals? but also kept myself open to
1067
00:52:28.389 --> 00:52:32.110
other opportunities, which to me seems like anathema, but I'm
1068
00:52:32.130 --> 00:52:32.579
working on it.
1069
00:52:32.789 --> 00:52:34.769
I got you. This is good. We could go even
1070
00:52:35.050 --> 00:52:36.750
much longer on this, but Jay, I definitely want to
1071
00:52:36.909 --> 00:52:41.570
continue this dialogue. Where can everyone go to find you online?
1072
00:52:42.860 --> 00:52:46.380
Uh, convince and convert.com is, uh, our main site with
1073
00:52:46.400 --> 00:52:50.260
all of our podcasts, blogs, emails, jbear.com is the speaking, uh,
1074
00:52:50.349 --> 00:52:53.389
stuff and hug your haters.com is a new book, all
1075
00:52:53.429 --> 00:52:55.469
kinds of crazy special offers for people who, uh, order
1076
00:52:55.489 --> 00:52:57.789
the book from me. We got socks, we got webinars
1077
00:52:57.809 --> 00:53:00.800
with me, live speeches, all kinds of crazy personalized thank
1078
00:53:00.840 --> 00:53:03.119
you videos, content that's not in the book, all kinds
1079
00:53:03.159 --> 00:53:03.719
of shenanigans.
1080
00:53:04.380 --> 00:53:06.300
Awesome, man. I'll be one of those bulk orders like
1081
00:53:06.340 --> 00:53:09.820
I mentioned to you. Absolutely. Again, Jay, thanks so much
1082
00:53:09.860 --> 00:53:12.500
for being here. And I definitely want to continue our
1083
00:53:12.599 --> 00:53:16.940
conversation as we both progress on our never-ending journeys, man.
1084
00:53:17.860 --> 00:53:20.389
Yeah, it is never-ending. Ryan, thanks so much. I really
1085
00:53:20.429 --> 00:53:21.110
enjoyed it. It was great.
1086
00:53:21.250 --> 00:53:21.610
Thanks, Jay.
1087
00:53:21.630 --> 00:53:26.300
Bye. This episode of The Learning Leader Show is over,
1088
00:53:26.400 --> 00:53:28.440
but we have plenty more to keep you locked in
1089
00:53:28.500 --> 00:53:32.920
until next time. Head over to learningleadershow.com for more information
1090
00:53:33.219 --> 00:53:37.480
and to request your favorite entrepreneur, CEO, world-class athlete, or
1091
00:53:37.619 --> 00:53:40.360
anyone else that inspires you. You can also talk to
1092
00:53:40.380 --> 00:53:43.969
Ryan directly by reaching out to him on Twitter at RyanHawk12.
1093
00:53:44.510 --> 00:53:46.550
Thanks again, and we'll see you next time on The
1094
00:53:46.610 --> 00:53:47.449
Learning Leader Show.