EntreLeadership - #175: Jonah Berger–The 6 Secrets of Making Your Brand a Household Name

Episode Date: November 28, 2016

Jonah Berger, author of Contagious, explains the science behind why some products go viral while others don’t. Learn how to make your brand spread like wildfire without breaking your budget. Also, podcast listener and EntreLeadership Master Series attendee Brett Fischer shares his heart behind founding Victory Lane Camp, a support and therapy community for children with disabilities and their families. Get inspired by his passion and learn how EntreLeadership has helped him carry out his goal of spreading hope to those in need. entreleadership.com/podcast Free Tool: "5 Habits That Kill Team Unity" Infusionsoft's Office Automation Guide Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

helping business leaders grow themselves, their team, and their profits. This is the Entree Leadership Podcast. Now here is your host, Ken Coleman. Broadcasting from the Music City, this is the podcast of leaders, by leaders, for leaders. Thank you so much for joining the conversation. Here's what we got coming to you. Our future conversation is with Jonah Berger. He wrote the book Contagious, Why Things Catch On.

This is fascinating stuff. This is must understand content. for anybody that's trying to make anything happen. And so you're going to really enjoy that very, very practical stuff. And this is always fun when we spotlight one of our listeners, men and women like you, who are listening to this podcast and who are winning. It is Brett Fisher for this episode, so that will be a lot of fun. And don't forget, here we are, it's unbelievable, the final week of November.

And we have some great giveaways. Our Entry Leadership tool that is absolutely free for you this month. It's called The Five Enemies of Unity. We've been telling you about it. And so I want to make sure that you grab that PDF. It's absolutely free. All you have to do is text the word enemies. Enemies to 33444.

That's 33444. Or of course, you can go to Entryleadership.com, click on the podcast page and go to this episode. We've got a link for you there. And then, of course, InfusionSoft gave us a great tool this month. I want to make sure again that you don't miss this if you haven't gotten. And yet, the Small Business Office Automation Guide, 68% of business owners spend their time managing daily tasks. You need to be automating.

It's going to make your life easier. They tell you how to do it and so much more. Infusionsoft.com slash office dash automation. Infusionsoft.com slash office dash automation. And you can get both of these tools at episode 175 at entreleadership.com slash podcast. So I get a lot of books. I tell you that.

I get a lot of books mailed to us. Eric, the producer, does as well. I don't know if it's 50-50, but you know, we look at them. I peruse them. And it's kind of a fun process, you know. I just let it happen. If it connects with me or makes me a little bit more curious than I dive into it. And this book Contagious by Jonah Berger. Why things catch on? I think this is really important. And here's why. Jonah has spent over 15 years studying how social influence works. How does it drive products? How does it lead to ideas that just take off? And when you're a marketing professional, from Wharton School, you're smart guy. But again, this is research and it's applicable, no matter how large or small your business is. This is really going to help you. It's going to make you think. It's going to make you grow. Let's get right to it. Here's my conversation with Jonah Berger. Well, Jonah, this is a treat because I actually saw this book on Eric the producer's desk. It jumped right out at me. Just the word contagious. And so first of all,

congratulations on what I think is probably one of the most provocative book covers in a good way. By the way, provocative has become a bad word. I don't know why, but it provoked my attention. And so congratulations, because I think it's a wonderful title. And I'm just curious, what led to this particular book? What was the driving force to write this? You know, I've been doing research on word of mouth for a long time. And I think we all know that word of mouth is a powerful tool, that it's much more effective than traditional advertising. But the question is, how do we get more of it? You know, how do we? get people talking about our stuff, our products, our services, our businesses. And I realized there

was some books out there on social media, but there wasn't really any books about the behavioral science of word of mouth. And so decided to take some of this great research and share it with the world. All right. And so you address this in the introduction. Why do things become popular? I think everybody wants to know the reason for that. And that really sets up the six areas that you focus on, six key steps. But before we start to walk through some of those, the question is, Can you make anything contagious? That's the big question. Certainly.

I work with lots of companies and organizations, and almost everyone I work with says, no, no, but we're different. No, no, but it's impossible to get, you know, a B-to-B service to catch on. No, no, it's impossible to get a new pharmaceutical drug to catch on. No, no, it's different in the law environment than it is something else. And, you know, I think we have this notion that the best things always went out,

that if we produce a great product or we have a great service, that by itself will lead it. to win. But unfortunately, it's not always the highest quality things that win. It's the things that do the best job of fitting with us as people. When I give talks, I often, you know, put a couple images up on the screen and I say, which is tastier? You know, broccoli or a cheeseburger. And everyone says, of course, the cheeseburger is tastier. We know we should eat broccoli, but we don't always do what we should do. So just like certain food is tastier than others, well, certain ideas, certain messages are more successful based on the way we as people are built. And so if we understand that

underlying behavioral science, we can get anything, any product, any service, any idea to catch on. Sure, it's more difficult for certain things. In B2B markets, for example, we have to find the right decision maker to get them to make that choice. If it's more expensive, it takes more effort. But same principles apply, and they're very important at changing behavior. Okay, so before you go any further and we walk through this, I'm going to lay out the steps for you folks, because I think this is an absolute must-read, period. If you're listening to this podcast and you do it regularly, you need to trust me on this. But before we go any further, that statement to that question, you know, can we make anything contagious? That has to be,

I think, freeing for people if they choose to believe you on this, and we're going to tell them why. But it begs the question, then if we know this to be true, we believe that things can be contagious and there are steps that work. Why is it that we don't take on the task? Is it still a daunting task in people's mind when they think, okay, maybe it's possible, and they just kind of wither away in the idea of the hard work and everything that has to be done to make something truly go contagious? It's like any scientific discovery. Before it was out there, it didn't seem like you could do it. And then once the discovery happens, it seems more doable. I mean, think about the first time planes existed. Before that, we didn't think flying was possible,

and then someone figured out how to do it. It wasn't that it was impossible. It's just that we didn't understand the science. And, you know, it's not random and it's not luck, and it's not chance. We look at these things, you know, products like Greek yogurt at the grocery store, services that come out of nowhere, apps that catch on, small businesses that take over a neighborhood or a city or a geographic area by storm. There's really a science behind it. And if we understand that science, we can get anything to catch on. And it's not about having a big budget also. And I think that's what's so powerful. If you're a small entrepreneur, you know, you think, God, I need a big advertising budget to get my message out there.

No, all you need to do is turn your customers into advocates. You may have a sales team, you may be your own sales team, but if we can turn our customers into advocates, they're the best sales team we've ever had because people trust their peers much more than they trust advertising, right? Think about the last decision you made. You know what an ad will say. An ad always says the product is great, the service is great, you should buy this, but we don't know whether it's really objective or not. But if a bit of our peers like something, if someone we know like something, we're much more like to trust it and it's much more targeted, and so that word of mouth has a much bigger impact. And so we don't need a big advertising budget. We just need to get

our customers to talk and share. All right. So folks, I'm going to lay out these six steps that, again, Jonah does an amazing job with all the stories, anecdotes, a lot of empirical data in the sense of proving what he's laying out here. So I'm going to lay these out for you so that you know what we're up against here as far as what we have to walk through. And then I have a question on the six steps. The first one, no particular order other than laid out in the book, Social Currency. triggers, emotion, public, practical value, stories. Now, those are the six steps. Before we dive into some of these specifically, Jonah, a question, do you suggest that we employ all six steps? How do they work together? Can you do it with four of the six? That's my curiosity on this.

That's a great question. And I think like any recipe, the more ingredients you put in there, the more of the recipe you follow, the better off it is. But it can still be pretty good. even without all the ingredients. So think about a Cobb salad, for example. You know, usually has the egg and the bacon and the tomato and maybe some blue cheese and some other things. All and all delicious, all tasty, but it's still pretty good if you only have two or three of those things. What I think is really important, though, is that you do at least one well. I work with too many organizations that say, oh, you know, each of these steps were pretty good. And when we talk further, it turns out, you know, on a 10-point scale, they're around a four or a five. You know,

making something remarkable, for example, finding that strong social currency, it's not enough to be a one or a two or a three, right? You really want to do at least one of them a nine out of ten or a ten out of ten. If you really think about the examples that have done this well, they really are highly successful on at least one dimension, and usually even two or three. It's very actually hard to find examples of products or services that are successful on all six. And so you don't need to do all six, but I think in terms of for your own organization, your own business, where to start, you know, pick the one that you're not so good at already. So, you know, if you're ready, it's a very emotional product, for example, it's not going to be very different

if you add a little bit of extra motion. You're already very high on emotion. Work on the cases where you're less good, and that's really where you can see the big improvements. All right, so that's beautiful, folks. Now that sets us up. So again, we're going to walk through these, and Jonah does a great job, even in the table of contents of helping us understand the steps. So let's go with social currency, and you say, we share things that make us look good. I think that's absolutely right, right? We want to be the person who introduces something that we feel pretty strongly that people are going to like. Is that the case?

You know, I did a bunch of research for this book, and one of it was finding really great examples of applying these ideas. And for this particular idea of social currency, it turned out that I went to a hot dog restaurant in New York City. So there's this place called Criff Dogs. You walk in. It's amazing hot dog restaurant. It has every hot dog you can find. But if you look in the corner of the room, outside of the hot dog sort of space, there's a phone booth. And if you walk in the phone booth and pick up the phone, it's an old Rotter Dow phone, and dial any of the numbers on the phone, someone actually pick up the other line, and they'll ask you whether you have a reservation.

And the first time I heard this story, a reservation, I'm in a phone booth inside of a hot dog restaurant. What could I possibly have a reservation for? But if they happen to have space where a friend of yours happen to make a reservation, the back of that phone booth will open and you'll be led into a secret bar called, please, don't tell. And what's so neat about please don't tell is they have been hugely successful with lots of competition. It's not like there's one bar in New York City. There are dozens on that block. But they failed every traditional law of communication. No sign on the street, no sign inside the restaurant. It's really hard to find. And so why was it good for them to be hard to find? And they did something really interesting. They essentially made themselves a secret. When you

think about it, there's a little secret about secrets, which is if you think about the last time someone told you something and they told you not to tell anyone else, What's the first thing most of us then did with that information? And very simply, we tell someone else, right? If something's a secret, if something's really juicy and valuable, we want to share it, right? Because it makes us look good. And so that's the important thing to think about here. Too often as businesses, we think about, do people like my business?

And we assume that if people like my business, if I look good to people, they'll talk about me. But forget me for a second. How does my audience look when they talk about me? When you talk about a hidden bar, you look really cool, like you're an insider, like you know what's going on. And so how can we make our customers, right? Our listeners are the people that work with us, our clients, look really good by sharing our message. How can we make them look special? You think about it online, for example, most posts are positive.

Look at me. I'm on vacation. Look at me. I got a new car. Look at me. Nobody shares things like, you know, hey, look at me. I'm at the office working on Excel spreadsheet. Check out column C.

Nobody shares that because it wouldn't make them look very good. What they share is a signal of who they are, just like the car they drive and the clothes they where. And so very simply, well, how can we give people good signals? How can we give people things that will make them look good to their audience, to their peers, so they'll want to talk about us, and we'll get to come along for the ride. It's so true. The secret has become breaking news, right? It's so we so want to tell somebody about something we discovered. We take credit. See, that's the genius of this, Jonah, is that we take credit for the discovery, right? And that's what you want. That's what you want. You want people taking credit with all their friends as I'm a

tastemaker because I knew about it. I experienced it before you. That's the magic. That I think is what's so powerful about this idea. It's not just about us. It's about our audience. What's going to make them look good to their peers? LinkedIn ran a campaign a couple of years ago where they sent messages out to many of their users saying you have one of the most influential profiles on LinkedIn, top 5% or top 10% of all profiles. Obviously, people who got that felt really good, but they also shared it with everyone else, look at me, I'm an influencer on LinkedIn. But what's so neat about that is LinkedIn gets to come along for the ride, right? They're talking about them being an influencer, but LinkedIn because LinkedIn called them an influencer gets to come along for the ride. And so we can

think about similar things for our businesses. How do we make a community advisory council? Maybe a few of our key clients or key customers. We say, look, we need, you know, we want feedback. You're part of our consumer advisory council. They'd feel special, but they'd tell others about it. And along the way, spread the word about us as well. And so really by bringing people in and by making our customers and clients feel special, they'll spread the word about us to look good to their friends. Yeah, that is so good and it's so free when people are talking about you behind your back. So that's good stuff. Okay, we're not going to get all six folks, but that's why you're going to get the book. But I want to move into Triggers, which is the second one you lay out

in the book. And I have learned that you say this is one that surprises a lot of people. And so the idea you give us there with Triggers is top of mind, comma, tip of tongue. What does that mean? How does that look? I think of the six ideas. The triggers is one that most people have never thought of before. And once you hear it, it makes a lot of sense, but ahead of time, we don't really think about it. And I think a fun way to talk about this. A few of your listeners may have seen the Geico campaign recently for hump day. So it's a camel, an annoying camel walking around an office, going, what day is it today? What day is it? What day is it? Everett ignores him. He's a very annoying camel. Finally comes across this poor woman and she goes, it's hump day. And the camel goes,

woo-woo, and the ad goes, you know, how happier are people who save money with Geico? Happy than a camel on hump day. Get it, you know, camel's hump day. So people chuckle. And it's sort of funny. It's not that funny, but it's sort of funny. And this is an insurance ad. Remember, not a beer ad, not a car ad, not a sort of sexy, exciting product, but an insurance ad. Yet, this is the second most shared ad of a couple years ago, right? Not a sexy product category or insurance. So why are so many people sharing an insurance out. Well, I dug a little deeper. I'm a data guy. Found the data, the share data over time for this video. And what you see is really interesting. There's a spike in shares, and then it goes down. And then it goes down and another spike and then it goes down.

If you look closer, those spikes aren't random. They're actually seven days apart. And if you look even closer, you'll notice that they're every, well, Wednesday, or as it's colloquially known, hump day. This content is equally good or bad every day of the week, but Wednesday rolls around. and it provides a ready reminder what a psychologist would call a trigger to make people think about it and talk about it and share it. Because as you nicely mentioned, if something's top of mind, it's much more likely to be tip of tongue. If we're thinking about it, we're much more likely to talk about it. Why do we talk, for example, so often about the weather or what we're doing this weekend? Not because it's the most interesting thing out there, but it's because what we're thinking about. And so as business owners, as entrepreneurs, we think we need to think about, well, how do we create those triggers for our product or our service? And one is certainly using the product. Every time someone's used your product or service, they're thinking about it. But there are other triggers as well. So, for example, if I said, well, okay, peanut butter and blank, what word or phrase might come to mind? Peanut butter or jelly. Yeah. Or if I said rum and you might think of. Coke. Coke, right? Those things are connected in our mind. It's almost like peanut butter is sort of an

ad for jelly, right? Every time peanut butter's around, jelly doesn't have to remind you exist. Peanut butter does all the work for jelly. Well, same thing for us and our brands. What's our peanut butter? What's our thing that when people see that thing or hear that thing, they think about us. Microlabe had an old campaign. Weekends are made for Mickelope. They wanted people to think about the beer when the weekend rolls around. Corona's done the same thing with the beach. You know, Kit Kat linked itself to coffee a few years ago. Kit Kat and coffee, a break's best friend. Having a coffee break, think about Kit Kat. And so what is that situation, that item, that stimulus in the environment that's going to remind people of us, you know, our product, our service, our brand? If we can link

ourselves to something, then every time people see that thing or that peanut butter, they'll think about us. And so it's not, you know, sure, we can send them ads and we can remind them and email them, but after a while, people get annoyed with us and they react against the message. But if we can link our message to some peanut butter or some trigger in the environment, every time they see it or hear it, they'll think about us. All right. I want to pause where we're going here because you said something and it just triggered something in my mind, the idea of data and how important data is. You said, I'm a data guy, and we have many guests on here, probably most notably, Jim Collins, his entire body of work is based on data and spit out four books.

And I also think we have a large audience, Jonah, who are small businessmen and women, entrepreneurs. And I don't think, I think they like books and authors and speakers like you who give us, you know, great anecdotes that are extremely practical based on data. But I don't know if we use data. I'm saying we collectively, I love data. But I don't know if we as small businessmen and women use data. like we should, and I think it's maybe one of those intimidating things, right? Well, I got to hire this person and I got a hire a firm and it's really expensive. And I'm just pausing the conversation because I want you to address that because I know you love data. How easy is it for the everyday small

business to employ data to help them win? That's a really important question. And I think, as you noted, lots of small businesses struggle with that question. They're so worried about, you know, tomorrow on what's going to happen next and making sure, you know, the business doesn't fall apart, keeping everything together, that they don't always have the time to go dig into the data, whether it's even collecting the data in the first place. And then once you've collected the data, really dig into it to answer a key question. And I think the important thing to think about is, you know, how can we use data to help us make better decisions? How can we collect data about our customers? And there's different versions of data, right? You know, certainly an academic

like myself, I have a lot more time to collect a larger amount of data, look across it, do statistical analyses. And that's maybe not something that every small business has the time or the energy to devote. But, you know, we have time and energy to vote to our customers. And simple things, like even qualitative interviews with our customers to figure out, well, how are things going? What do they like? What don't they like? Where are their opportunities for improvement? You know, I think at the very least, we need to understand our customers well. Even if we're not digging deeply into the data, making sure we're touching base with that. our customers to understand what's working and what's not working. And importantly, to get them to be

honest with us, right? Because at the end of the day, we don't want to hear that we're doing a good job if we're not, because that's not going to help us in the long run. We need to actually understand, well, what are our customer needs and are we meeting those needs? Because the businesses that succeed are the ones that are meeting their customers need. And too often I see, you know, firms, particularly in technology, but really in many industries, are product or service focused rather than customer focused. They think a lot about what they're good at. You know, I'm a bakery, I'm good at baking bread. I'm an accountant. I'm good at dealing with numbers. I'm a software engineer. I'm good at programming. But they don't think about what's my customer and what's that customer need. Because you can spend a lot of time thinking about what you're good at and create a product or service that you love that no one's ever done before. But if it doesn't hit that customer need, it's not going to be very successful. And so rather than selling what you can make, let me sell it, we need to make what we can sell. By understanding our customers, by understanding their needs, make that they need at the end of the day. All right. I think this is so important. And I think you verified that.

So let me press you a little bit further. So we've got some small business people listening in here and they don't know what the first step is. And maybe they say, well, I'm not going to go hire a, you know, a data company to do this. What first couple of practical steps that they can manage, that they can do, Jonah, to begin to maybe sample 500 or a thousand of their top customers or whatever? Give us some practical dip their toe in the water to begin to get valuable feedback. Yeah, I think an easy place to start is either surveying or interviewing your customers and asking them how things are going. And if you're worried they're not going to be honest with you, if you ask them face-to-face, ask them anonymously. Put together just a simple online survey, send it to them their platforms like Qualtricks and others that, you know, can easily and build something, or you can even mail something to them and have them drop it off somewhere anonymously.

But just begin to collect some sense of how happy they are with you. Are they satisfied? Are they not satisfied? what are they more and less satisfied with? And that's just a beginning place to start. There's obviously lots more you can do. But I think at least having that appetite or that interest in understanding your customer will help you get a lot further down the path than you would otherwise. All right.

Thanks for that. That's really good stuff. Okay, let's move forward to the fifth step called practical value. And again, the little theme you give us here is news you can use. We're learning this more and more in this digital age. You've got to give people something that they can use. use, unpack that idea for us? So, social currency is about the sender of a message.

How does it make me look if I'm talking or sharing a message to share it? How do I look to others? But there's also the recipient of that message. And a lot of times people don't just share to make themselves look good. They share to help other people, to help the other people around them. And you see this all the time. You know, around the holidays, there are the best deals of the season that everybody sends around. There are articles about sunscreens you should be using or foods you should be eating

or simple tricks and tips on places like LinkedIn and other to have better interviews. People share these with their friends and colleagues because they want to make those others better off. They want to make their friends and colleagues better off, have them live happier and healthier lives. And so same idea here. Well, how can we get people to share our message, our products and our services, by trying to help others? What's the useful information that we can give people that they'll want to share with their peers? And really, when people talk about content marketing, that's exactly what content marketing is. is rather than putting an ad out there, if no one wants to share an ad, it doesn't make them

look very good to their peers. It's about how can we put out content that's helpful to others that people want to share with their peers to help their peers out, and we get to come along for the ride. So the financial institution, Vanguard, for example, puts together a newsletter about money-wise, tips and tricks for money that, you know, make you better off and people like receiving that newsletter, but they share it on to others. Companies like 3M put together news articles about the power and the mysteries of science, encouraging people to share them with others, and 3M gets to come along for the ride. And so whatever industry you're in, how can you begin to put together content or information that people can share that's not

about you per se, but it shows your expertise. If you're a real estate agent, for example, maybe it's about putting together a newsletter once a month or once a quarter about some trends that you've noticed in the industry. If you're a financial service representative, somebody who deals with money management potentially, maybe you're sending you, out information that can help people think about the market and think about financial strategy better. And it does even have to be all information that you're putting together. Can you be information you've called from other places? But it's about putting something out there that helps others and that will make people want to share. All right. So before we let you go, and again, folks,

the book is so practical, really, really easy to understand and apply. If we look at the end of the six steps, and it's an acronym, S-T-E-P-P-S, social currency, triggers, emotion, public. practical value stories. Bottom line is, and I'm going to let you have the last word in encouraging us here, Jonah, that if we are trying to make, this was from page 207, I love this sentence. You say, so if we're trying to make a product or idea contagious, think about how to build in these key steps, the ones I just laid out. So again, as we look at these, you started the conversation when I asked you, do we have to employ all six? You said, no, it's very hard to find examples with all six, But what you're saying here at the end of the book is, if you are trying to create something and make it contagious, build it within these steps.

So give us the final thought on how we begin to do that within these six steps that you've laid out. I think that's what's so exciting about the ideas here. You know, to be successful as an entrepreneur, you don't need to have a huge marketing budget. You don't need to have a big team. You don't need to be a social media wizard. At the end of the day, all you have to do is turn your customers into advocates. turn the people that purchase from you, that work with you, that buy from you, get those people to bring just one or one or two people in with them.

Think about each one, reach one. If we could turn each one of our customers and get them to bring us just one new customer or client, will be hugely successful. And the good news is it's not random, it's not luck, and it's not chance. There's a science behind why people talk and share. A dollar spent on word of mouth goes ten times as far as a dollar spent on traditional advertising, and all we have to do is understand how to leverage this tool. And that's exactly what the steps do. The steps teach us and show us how to harness the power of word of mouth, right? How to find our social currency, figure out our peanut butter, trigger people to take action, build stories that carry our messages and ideas along for the ride. If we follow these steps, we can craft contagious content, we can build more effective products, messages, and ideas, and we can get our stuff to catch on.

He is Jonah Berger. The book is Contagious Why Things Catch On. I think this book is a really, really good campaign. into tipping point from Malcolm Gladwell. That has been said. I agree with that. I think this is a must read. This book is going to stay on my desk, and there's several pages I've already made copies of and stuck on a creative board near my desk. So there it is. Really thankful to Jonah for being a part of this. Well, thanks so much for having me. It was an honor to be here and an honor to talk to your audience. Hope you enjoyed that as much as I did. Jonahberger.com. That's j-o-n-a-h-h-h-r------------------------------------. If you want to learn more about what he's do and I highly recommend you go get that book. Hey, I told you about this at the top of the podcast that every once in a while we love to shine the light on you, the listener. Somebody who is more than just

a member of our tribe, but somebody who's winning and winning big and been a part of what we do here. They've used the principles, the things that we teach to win. And Brett Fisher is that guy. We recently had our Entree Leadership Master Series here on our campus in Nashville. We told you about that. And Eric Grad Brett put him in the studio. We wanted to hear a bit of his story. It all starts around a company that he calls Victory Lane Camp. It's for families of children with disabilities. This is honorable work, and he's winning in an area that makes such a difference. Here's what's best about what he does.

Brett has a passion for what he does. One of the things I've seen this week already is the question about what makes your eyes light up. When I think about that, the eyes of a child lighting up truly starts when a mom and dad. eyes light up. But as a pediatric physical therapist, one of the things I've seen over the years is all these dreams, all these hopes, all this potential in children when faced with disability just leads to brokenness, just leads to isolation. For Brett, Victory Lane Camp exists to offer families both spiritual and relationship needs during their rehabilitation. Brett has been an eyewitness to these needs time and time again.

worked in a hospital setting for over 15 years. Some of the successes happen. No one really knows about it, but this child's five years old, and they're taking their first steps for the first time. And you're like, whoa, that's a big gap of when they're taking their first steps. But it's a huge celebration for that child, for that parent that's seeing that for the first time. And I realized I'm seeing this, but nobody else is seeing this. This is a huge moment that it's going to transform this family.

Chuck Colson challenges to find the hole in our business, to find a hole in our world where we are uniquely created to fill that hole. Solve that problem. So here we are. I launched off onto this journey. I was scared spitless. I didn't want to leave. I had a stable career.

I had stable benefits. I had adopted our children. It was solid. It was great. And from the world's eyes, everybody would say, wow, you got it made. You got a great career. Just sit, obey, and follow through. And I was like, but there's holes.

There's problems that need to be solved that are not being solved. There's families that are broken. And it's not just about the physical child. It's not just about this child walking. This child has so much more potential than just what's happening with what I'm doing physically for this child. So I launched. I really literally got kicked out of my seat to get into this entrepreneurial journey that now I learn I've been bent that way. I've actually been made to be an entrepreneur, but I didn't see it.

I didn't know it at the time because I didn't have the framework, the terminology, the conversation, even in my head to say, this is who I am and this is what I can become. And that's where I'm at now. I'm at a journey where I literally had to step out in faith. and realize that doors that I walk through are opened up as I walk through the next door. Now, Brett was aware of the need, but he was about to find out more about what every business owner faces regarding unknown difficulties. I think when I first stepped out into the journey, the reality of, oh, no, I don't even know what the next word out of my mouth is supposed to be. How's my family going to be provided for?

How are people going to start following me? And the reality was as I looked back over my years, as I looked back over the decades of serving families, is people were looking to me as a leader. But the reality was, is I was messing up so much. And realizing that I don't know, but that doesn't mean I can't lead. I can seek the answers. I can find that. And so the first thing that I had to overcome was literally the scarcity of my own mindset. That it's not that I can't, it's that I will.

And I'll find a way. And ultimately speaking, guys, this Entry Leadership podcast literally was the start. That in my Bible, every single day I would listen, I would change my thoughts. I would be able to fire it up for the next day and solve the problems of that day. And the next morning, I'd get back on. I'd get back on the podcast. I'd be on the treadmill and I'd be listening to the podcast and I'd have my thoughts for the day. And I think one of the things I've learned over this journey with the Entree Leadership team is fail quick, learn quick.

Now here we are year five. We're starting to implement some serious planning as we grow and as we serve more and more families. We're starting to see the rewards. We're starting to see the benefits of the service that we're providing. And we're seeing that it's not about me. It's not about the vision of, oh, this is one child making a physical step, but it's a whole community taking a step together towards serving each other and connecting and realizing there's so much potential that this child can teach us.

There's so much potential that we can help each other and really learning and watching a community come alive around children that have disabilities. Aware that these families need a community who understand the complexity of their needs, Brett could no longer be a one-man operation. Victory Lane Camp would need a unified team. In March of this year, I got the call. that nobody wants to get. I got a call that my mom had a stroke, and she's possibly a stroke, and she's in the hospital. So, of course, everything changes, and you change your plans, and you

go up, and I was actually going to an event for our camp, and that was that day, and boom, plans changed. I'm heading up now to visit my mom in the hospital. Within the matter of the next three days, we realized it wasn't a stroke. It was brain cancer. Literally, life was rocked. Keep in mind, this is March. Our busiest season is literally March through September, October. I mean, my mind was just derailed. My mom fought the fight really well. She ended up going home to heaven on August 3rd of this year.

It's been a rough year. But the team, you say, what's my greatest moment, is seeing that our team has came together. Leading the organization, leading the vision of what God is unfolding through Victory Lane Camp is not through me. It's through a team that has caught the vision, a team that is delivering the vision, and a team that is literally able to do step by step by step

what needs to do to serve these families to do it with excellence. And that's, to me, a moment to celebrate and a moment to be encouraged. And I want to give you guys due credit because entree leadership has been a critical piece of that. You guys don't see this, but you guys are behind the microphone. You guys are behind the screens and producing this content.

And you don't realize that the little thank you note that you sent to me, the encouragement that you guys build around me with a community and content keeps me going each day. That should motivate you guys to keep doing what you're doing because you guys are changing lives. You guys are changing the culture. you guys are impacting the families that I'm serving back home. And this is why Entree leadership exists to help business owners who are leading others. People's livelihoods are in their hands. The last thing I would say, I believe being coachable is the key piece to what will transform your company.

It'll transform your family. It'll transform yourself as an individual. And when you get better, your team gets better. And I just can't thank Entry Leadership enough, and I can't encourage you guys enough as business leaders to dive into this content because it truly will change the trajectory of what you're doing and how you're serving your customers. We appreciate the kind words that Brett shared, but more importantly, we appreciate the example that he's leaving, not just for us, but for you all. And we want you to be a part of this amazing Entre Leadership community. This isn't just a podcast. I mean, this is a full-fledged business unit that is reaching.

business owners all around the country and helping them, pulling them together in a community called All Access, which is our membership community, where people are getting great content that helps them lead every day through our coaches and more importantly building community with men and women like you who are in this community. And this podcast is just one part of the conversation. Now, we'd love for you to learn more about All Access. We don't talk a lot about it because it really is an engagement level beyond just, hey, I want to listen to the podcast. This is next level stuff and it's winning for so many people. So Eric, the producer, talked to the big shots at Entree Leadership, and he got some

exclusive discounts for you, the audience. One way to dive deeper into our community has come to our Entree Leadership Summit. This is an A-plus event, nothing like it, and he has scored a $300 discount. That's right. $300. Way to go, Eric. Very impressive. This event is unbelievable.

You have until December the 7th. December the 7th is the deadline to get this 300. dollar discount. Now, the event, we've been telling you about it, but real quick review, May 21 through 24, 2017 in Orlando, Florida. John C. Maxwell, Simon Seneca, Pat Lynchione, Lou Holtz, Robert Hershevik from the Shark Tank, all joining Dave Ramsey, Chris Ogan, and Christy Wright, and myself, I get to host this fun event. It's going to be great. You can get your tickets at Entreleadership.com slash summit, or click on the link in this episode's show notes. And don't forget to mention to the sales advisor, you're a podcast listener and you want your $300

savings before December 7th. Can't wait to be there. We'd love to see you there and high-five you. It's going to be big fun. Hey, we love hearing from you folks. I tell you all the time. We'd love to get emails from you. So, hey, it's time, Eric, for another Ken's electronic mail. Ken's electronic mail. You've got mail. This email is from Patrick. He writes, Ken, I had the opportunity to attend an entree leadership one-day event in Kansas City and meet you. It was the perfect way for me to re-energize the principles of Entree leadership. I am sure my story is similar in that I am not a business person or owner, but I am a leader. And certainly an entrepreneur, I'm a middle and high school

principal. I purchased Entree Leadership because I thought it would help me learn how to change my staff for the better, whatever that would be. But from then on, it was more about how I can become better for my staff. This led to the podcast, which led to Dayton Moore's book and another book. The Entre Leadership Experience and Influence changed me in ways I could not believe. Communication in our organization is better. We have implemented weekly reports, and the atmosphere and energy is way up. Thank you and the Entree Leadership team for being at the right spot at the right time. Thank you, Patrick, for the nice, encouraging note.

And thank you, sir, for listening. So thrilled to hear that we are walking alongside of you and adding value to you as you lead the next generation, one of our nation's greatest resources. Hey folks, we would love to hear from you. What principles from this podcast or from an interview or from a book? Are you using? Are you seeing some breakthrough? Podcast at Entreeleadership.com is the email address.

Podcast at Entreeleadership.com. Well, folks, it looks like that's going to do it. I want to thank Jonah Berger and Brett Fisher for being a part of this episode. If you haven't, subscribe to the podcast. We'd love for you to subscribe and share it, rank it. All those things. and like a digital water cooler, we would love for you to spread the word.

On behalf of Eric, the producer, and the entire Entree leadership team, thank you for listening. We'll talk with you again very soon.