EntreLeadership - #311: How Talk Triggers Create Customers with Jay Baer

Episode Date: March 25, 2019

While the influence of word of mouth on customer behavior is not particularly surprising, what New York Times best-selling author Jay Baer does find shocking is that few companies bother to build any sort of strategy around it. And that, he says, is a huge missed opportunity. Join us as Jay gets super tactical and breaks down exactly how to create talk triggers, also known as the strategic choices you make to get your customers talking about your product or service. Also joining us is EntreLeadership Senior Vice President Sarah Sloyan with insight on the unexpected power of moments.    entreleadership.com/podcast Buy the book: Talk Triggers Jay Baer's website #81: Jay Baer—Why Smart Marketing Is About Help Not Hype #259: Dan Heath—Moments That Change Lives The Power of Moments Enter to win a coaching session with Sarah Sloyan EntreLeadership Reading Guide 17 Mistakes Leaders Make With Support Staff from Belay Solutions    Want expert help with your business question? Call 844-944-1070 and leave a message or send an email to [e-mail]. You could be featured on a future podcast episode! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the mistake we make in business all the time. We think if we run a good business, people will talk about it. But they don't because they expect you to be good. And your competition is also good or they wouldn't be in business. Helping business leaders grow themselves, their team, and their profits. This is Entree Leadership. Now here's your host, Ken Coleman. Coming to you from the Music City, this is the broadcast of leaders by leaders for leaders.

Thank you so much for joining the conversation. Here's what we've got coming up. Jay Bear is our feature conversation. He's got a new book out entitled Talk Triggers. The book is all about word of mouth marketing, specifically how you can give your customers a memorable story to tell about you. That's how word of mouth takes off. Jay is a return guest. This guy has great content. And I enjoyed this conversation in the book so much, I immediately took it over to my marketing team and said, read this. Let's get back together in a month and let's figure out how to do this. Really, really good stuff. Sarah Sloan will also drop by. Sarah is our senior vice president of Entree Leadership.

And we're going to talk about how a guest, Dan Heath and his book, The Power of Moments, has created moments for us at Entree Leadership. Great practical stuff coming at you. Let's get started with Jay Bear. As I told you, a return guest, a New York Times bestseller. We're going to talk about his new book, Talk Triggers. Jay, it's good to have you back.

I love the title of this new book. and I must tell you that I showed it to my 10-year-old daughter last night who loves llamas. My wife and I don't know where in the world the love of llamas comes from, but she probably has six or seven on her bed of all different variety of stuffed animals. We just had her birthday party, and it was llama-themed. And then I get this book, and I show, I said, I'm interviewing this guy this week. I said, look at his book. And she just, she wants the book.

So I've got to take it from my desk. and take it back home because she wants to put it in her room. And it really is a fun design. Talk triggers the complete guide to creating customers with word of mouth. We're going to dive into the book. But I got to ask, why two llamas nuzzling each other on the cover of this book? Well, first of all, thanks very much. And we'll take readers of any age.

That's right. Singling anybody out. Our animals are actually alpacas. Oh. Similar in many ways. But both llamas and alpacas are definitely having a moment. And of course, now I'm hyper aware of it. But there's all kinds of furniture with patterns and sweaters.

And people are sending me all kinds of alpaca and llama-themed stuff. But it's funny that you ask that. And so many people have wondered, as an alpaca, a llama, there's actually a very detailed infographic that we had commissioned at talktriggers.com on the differences between llamas and alpacas, because it was like a whole thing. But, you know, it's a book about word of mouth, as you mentioned. And so my co-author, Daniel and I, we had an initial book cover that was, the only way I can put it is not good. And we thought, you know, this is a book about word of mouth.

We can't just do something perfunctory and mundane. This needs to be a book that actually is a little different. And we were literally just messing around. And Daniel found that image. And he mocked up that cover. And he sent it to me. And I said, well, I love it. But there's no way penguin's going to sign off on this. It's too bizarre. And I said, well, no. So we just send it to them. So we emailed it to them. And I think some people are on vacation, which is what helped us. and they signed off on it. And so now it's in all the airport bookstores and everything else. So if you see a hot pink book with alpacas or llamas, your choice, on the cover,

it's that's the great book. It really does make you look at it. And that's the whole point of a book cover anyway. So let's dive into this. Some great content here. We're not even going to get to touch at all. That's why you folks need to go buy it. And Jay's been on this program before.

And he's a great thinker. He and his co-author put out a fantastic work here. All right, Jay, 50 to 91. percent of all sales, folks, listen, are influenced by word of mouth. So this is not a niche book. This is an important work. That data just drives the message home. Are you shocked that it was 50 to I would have thought it would have been, I thought the data would have been closer to 75 to 91%. I'm a little shocked that it's not a little bit higher. They give a little bit of a range there. Yeah, well, it's higher on the B-to-B side, right? So you get into that 80, 90 percent when you're thinking about

business to business purchases, because everybody double-checks everything in business before you just go off and send an invoice or write a check. On the consumer side, word of mouth massively important, but there are some things that you're not necessarily going to check with people on. If you're going to go buy licorice at the movie store, you're not going to be like, hey, let me go check reviews on these red ropes before I give you my $4. So there are certainly some categories where word of mouth isn't quite as important. But on the whole, it's exceedingly important. But the part that blows us away. And we did a tremendous amount of research for the book. And the thing that really shook us up is not the influence of word of mouth, because most people in business

will acknowledge that word of mouth is important. But the part that's remarkable, and frankly, why this book exists is that it's super important, but nobody has an actual strategy for it. Let's just say it. It's 50 to 90 percent of your business. Yet nobody listening to us right now, probably, has an actual word of mouth strategy. You have a marketing strategy. You have a content, strategy, a social strategy, a PR strategy, a crisis strategy, a sales strategy, but nobody has a word of mouth strategy. We just take it for granted. We just assume, we just assume that our customers will talk about us. We just assume that they will tell our story. But why do we think that? What are we giving them to allow them to tell the story? Nothing. And it's a huge opportunity for everybody.

That's right. And folks, I want to tell you something. This book takes you through what you need to know, the four talk triggers criteria. We're talking about criteria. first, and then Jay goes through the five types. We're going to spend a little bit of time on the five types of talk triggers, and then how to create the talk triggers in six steps. So I just want you folks to understand that this book walks you through. I mean, it's like Jay, it's like you're holding their hand on understanding the criteria. And I just want to overview that real quick and let you just kind of run, okay, because we're not going to be able to cover it all, but we'll give a good summary and let people dive into the book. Let's talk about creating talk triggers. You say

they're four. I'll just run through them and let you. You'll just run through them and let you. you teach, be remarkable, be relevant, be reasonable, be repeatable. So this is the criteria. Teach a little bit. Yeah, let me define a talk trigger real quick before we get into that. A talk trigger is a strategic operational choice that you make in your business that creates conversation, that turns your customers into volunteer marketers, that clones your customers. Look, there's a saying in business you probably talked about on the show at one point called advertising is a tax paid by the unremarkable. Now, that's not entirely true, but it's true enough. I don't know everything, but I do know this. The best way to grow any business is to have your

customers grow it for you. But for that to happen, you need them to tell your story, and a talk trigger is the story. But not every differentiator you can come up with will work as a talk trigger. Not everything you conjure will serve as a reliable word of mouth strategy every day, week, month, quarter, and year, which is what we're looking to do here. So it must be remarkable, which means it must be worthy of remark. It has to be a story worth telling. It has to be repeatable, which means that every customer gets access to this operational differentiator. It's not something that only your best customers get. They don't just get it on their birthday. It's every customer every time. It has to be reasonable, meaning that the way to create conversations,

is not too shock and awe people by doing something giant. Because when you offer a customer something that's too big, it actually creates suspicion, not conversation. And the last thing it must be is relevant. It has to make sense in the context of who you are and what you sell. This isn't about going viral. This isn't about renting an elephant and walking it down Main Street. This is about doing something different in your business

that customers notice and talk about. If I could, I'd offer you an example. Yeah, go for it. There's a business in Sacramento, California called Skip's Kitchen. It's a very simple business. It's a counter-service restaurant. You walk to the front, you order two patty melts and an onion rings and a chocolate shake. And when your food's ready, they're bringing it to your table.

We've all been to a restaurant like this. You've never been to a restaurant that has a talk trigger like this. Before you pay, the counterperson at Skips, pulls out a deck of cards and fans the cards, face down in front of you, they say. And you pick a card. If you get a joker, your entire meal is free, whether we've ordered for just yourself or you and 10 friends. Now, Skip's Kitchen has been in business for 10 years. Skip Wall and his wife started it.

He used to be the regional manager for all the Chili's restaurants in Northern California. Quit that, started his own business. Ten years. They've never spent a single penny on advertising ever. There's a line to get in almost every day. They were just named the 29th best hamburger restaurant in America by USA Today newspaper. And it works so well because about three people on day, average, about three a day win this Joker game. And when they win, they go crazy.

They're like, you know, they're taking selfies with their patty melts and they're calling their mom crying and they're putting reviews on Facebook and Google and Yelp and TripAdvisor. Like a high school marching band shows up. It's a whole thing. And in Sacramento, despite the fact that outside this restaurant, there's a very large neon sign that says, quite clearly, Skip's Kitchen. Sacramento, most people call it that joker restaurant. That's how effective it is as a conversation creator. Now, that's not that hard to do, but it is an operational choice. It's not really marketing. It's an operational decision that creates a marketing advantage. Anybody could do something like that. It's just that, unfortunately, almost nobody does. I love that example.

And so let's contrast that story with something that you say in the book, and I've seen you say this and talking about this topic, which is that competency doesn't create conversation. So what you think might be a trigger, and that's why this book is so valuable, you walk us through, but I just want to put this out here before we move on, that you telling a story about how effective your product is is not necessarily going to trigger anything. Because here's the deal. I'm assuming that there's a good burger there, or people wouldn't go back.

But it's not that the burger's life changing. it's that the burger's good, but the experience and the opportunity to win the food lottery in the form of a $47 meal is what they're talking about. You're exactly right. And that's what we say, that competency doesn't create conversations because we expect competency. And this is the mistake we make in business all the time. We think if we run a good business, people will talk about it. But they don't because they expect you to be good.

And your competition is also good or they wouldn't be in business. Look, I don't know everybody tuning in today. I'm sure I know some of you, but this is, I guarantee you this is true. Nobody has ever said, hey, let me tell you about this perfectly adequate experience I just had. Yes, that's right. That's a really bad story. It's not worth telling it. It's not worth listening to.

So competency keeps your customers, but the story turns those customers into volunteer marketers. And so that's why a talk trigger isn't about making a better burger. it's about doing something that people will actually notice. Okay. Now, again, we don't have time to uncover the whole book, but you've kind of laid out obviously the criteria. Now let's move into the types of triggers. Five types.

Yeah, the five types of triggers. You lay them out in the book. Page 96 is where we dive into this. Empathy, usefulness, generosity, speed, and attitude. Now, before you start breaking them down, we'll just have some fun here. Which one, okay, which type of trigger did our favorite burger place in California employ here. Generosity. Generosity because you can win a free burger. And it's funny

you ask that. Generosity is the type of talk trigger that you see most often in the wild because it is the easiest one to conceptualize and implement in most businesses. Let's just do something that customers would appreciate. Perhaps the most famous case study that we talked about in the book and have done a lot of research on is double tree hotels and the free chocolate chip cookie that they give every guest every day. They give out 75,000 chocolate chip cookies every day. Now, you might think, well, that's neat, but doesn't really build their business. Oh, it does. We did a huge research project. We talked to hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of double tree guests, and we found that 34% of them have told the story of the cookie to somebody else without being prompted or aided in the last 30

day. So if you do the math on that, what it means is that that story of the free chocolate chip cookie is told 22,500 times every single day. Now, on a related point, when's the last time you saw a double tree ad? Yeah, you're right. The cookie is the app. The cookie is the app. And the guests are the marketers. And that's what an effective talk trigger and a genuine word of mouth strategy can do for your business. And that's the challenge. Today, we're all doing word of mouth on accident. We wrote this book so you'd have a system to do word of mouth on purpose for a reason. So generosity is the one you see the most because you can say, oh, free chocolate chip cookie, I can figure out how to do that. But it's by no means the only approach. As you mentioned,

talkable speed is a great one, right? Being faster than your customers expect. It's a tough one to live with because our expectations around speed continue to ratchet up. But sometimes a really unexpected business can own this. There's an accounting firm in Indianapolis called Bogdanov and Dodgers, two-man accounting firm. I got a couple of associates as well, you know, just regular accountants that have a mixed kind of bag of businesses, some personal, some corporate returns. Talkable speed is their talk trigger. They respond to every client via phone and email within five minutes at all times. You know, imagine that, get a call back from your accountant, return to email in five minutes at all times. That's a story you would tell to your friends.

Well, it's interesting when you started talking about speed. I started just racking my brain. GEICO comes to mind, you know, because it's forever they've done the get your insurance quote in less than 15 minutes. And prior to that, until this day, the ads are kind of goofy. They don't even have anything to do with insurance. It's just to entertain you long enough to remind you that they'll give you a quote in less than 15 minutes. Am I right? You're exactly right. Yeah, the 15 minutes bit that thing is their talk trigger.

Well, well identified, absolutely. Let's go to empathy. Give me an example for empathy. This is one, I tell you, this is one that. wouldn't have made the book maybe two years ago. Because I'm old enough, you're old enough, many people tuning in are old enough to remember a time. I know this will sound crazy when empathy and humanity and kindness and compassion were actually the default state. Yes. But I think I can get you to agree that we are living in an era now of empathy deficit,

where treating customers, each other with compassion and humanity and kindness isn't necessarily always the way it's done. Certainly not in business, not in life, most definitely not in politics. So as a human being, that makes me a little chagrined. But as a business person, it's a tremendous opportunity. Because now when you are empathetic towards your customers in a way they do not anticipate or expect, it stands out like crazy. So my buddy, Glenn Gorab is an oral surgeon in New Jersey, Clifton, New Jersey. So he operates in the New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, tri-state area. There are hundreds of oral surgeons, hundreds. He is the highest rated in all the patient portals, despite the fact that he's not the best

surgeon by his own admission. He's like, I'm really good, but I'm not the best. He's also the only surgeon by his reckoning in the whole region who has never, in a 30-year career, never had a single legal proceeding brought against him, never once, which is saying something in this litigious medical society. His empathy talk trigger works like this. Every Friday, Glenn's office staff gives him a list of names and phone numbers. On Saturday, he calls each of those people. He says, hi, this is Glenn. I'm your oral surgeon. I understand that you're coming into the office, for the very first time next week. Now, before you get here, may I answer any questions that you might have?

And people simply cannot believe it. They are gobsmacked because if you've had an oral surgery procedure, right? Rooke canal, wisdom tooth extraction, whatever, it's entirely possible if you have a good oral surgeon that they will call you the night following the procedure. They always ask the same three questions. They say, how are you doing? How's the pain? Are you bleeding to death?

And so it's not uncommon to be telephoned afterwards, but you have never, ever, ever been telephoned by a physician before you ever set foot in the office. It's just simply not done. But talk about building a bridge and a bond of empathy in advance, Glenn tells me that every single day, every day somebody calls his office and says, I have to drive 10 miles out of my way. I have to pass up a dozen other oral surgeons, but I want you to be my doctor because you're the doctor who called my friend Shirley before she ever came to the office. Now, could everybody listening do that?

Yep. We just choose not to. Boy, that's so true. It doesn't cost that much money either as I'm sitting here running the numbers. It's like a half hour a weekend. Yeah. Because most people don't have questions, right? They don't really know yet, but they are blown away by being asked.

That's exactly right. Let's go to usefulness. This is one that's really grounded in my book Utility that we talked about a couple years ago on on this show, which is the idea of being more useful than your customers expect. There's a realtor in Florida. His name is Joe Manousa. And he published an e-book, free downloadable PDF, 60 pages or so, called How to Sell a Home on Your Own in Florida. Now, usually as a realtor, why would you publish that? Because now you're in I get paid a commission. But he just took everything he knows and he gives it away. But he tells me that people get to about page 19 and they say,

wow, it is a lot harder to sell a home on my own than I thought. And this is his number one source of sales and customers. He gives away the knowledge and he reaps the rewards accordingly. Now, most people don't have the courage to give away what they know because they think they must be paid to do that. But here's the truth. A list of ingredients doesn't make you a chef. And his business is absolute proof of that. He just educates his customers. He is so useful that they reward him time after time after time. That's so true. Boy, I love that illustration. And I think what you just said ought to be a hammer for a lot of people.

I mean, I love cooking. I just mess around, though. If you gave me a world-class chef's ingredients, I couldn't do jack squat with it. Yeah, I mean, it's not the same. Look, I've been in business now for 30 years and been self-employed for most of that time. And look, your results may vary. But my experience is this. If you've got a potential customer who is genuinely deciding between people,

paying you for some sort of service or doing it themselves and they can't decide which is the better approach, that's probably not a customer you actually want. That's usually the case, right? That's right. I believe that's absolutely right. Without selling anybody, he gave them his expertise and they bought into him. That's it. They'll figure it out. And look, some people will take that and we'll go sell their home themselves. But that's okay. You're never going to get that customer anyway. That's right. All right, quick review. So we jumped around. But again, folks, you've got to dive deep here, but I wanted you to just get how practical this book is. Five types of triggers. What we're talking about, we've gone through empathy,

usefulness, generosity, and speed, and then we'll end with attitude. This is the one that is on the surface the most fun, but also perhaps perhaps the least likely because it has to really match the DNA of you and your company. And this is where you're just a little bit more wacky. You're just a little bit more unusual or kind of off-kilter than your customers expect. We're probably all familiar with businesses like that, but it has to ring true, you see. This is one that you definitely can't fake. Here's an example that's not in the book. It's one of our clients, my consulting firm. There's a business called Superior Glove, and they're a manufacturer of work gloves. They're based outside of Toronto. They make hundreds, unbelievable variety of

different work gloves for like every conceivable job. If you're like a left-handed vampire working on like an oil rig. They've got a specialized glove for you. It's crazy this business. They have a very fun-loving culture. And so they brought us on board to help them discover a talk trigger. And the same process that we use in our consulting firm is the exact same process that's in this book. We just took it and gave it away, just like we talked about. Now, we did a bunch of research, talked to a bunch of customers, did all the things that we advise in the book. And we came up with this talk trigger. There are real business challenges that they're competing with a lot of other companies from Asia who sell lower cost gloves, but they're also quite a bit lower quality. So they really want to emphasize to their customers that they are a North American company and creating a quality product.

The talk trigger now is, on the back of all the superior gloves, there's a logo. And if you scratch that logo and smells like maple syrup. Maple syrup-scented work gloves is the talk trigger now for superior glove. And as you can see, that is rooted in attitude, right? That is just a little different, just a little off-kilter. So it's a really, really fun way to create conversations. But as you can imagine, it's not one that every business can do because it just doesn't fit their culture. Folks, this stuff is so rich.

Section 4 of the book is then dedicated to the triggers that you need to create. And there's six steps. gather internal insights, get close to your customers, create candidate talk triggers, test and measure the talk triggers, expand and turn on, amplify your talk trigger, create your next talk trigger. We don't have time to cover all those, and I want folks to really dive into this because I think there's so much you've given us to think about. But here's the question I want to ask as we just barely wait into creating the talk triggers. I look at the first two, and I think it leads into three and four. Gather internal insights, get close, of your customers, create candidate talk triggers, test and measure. I look at those four and I go, this is where a lot of small business people, because they're very, very busy, Jay. You touched on this right out of the gate. You said a lot of you just don't have a strategy and intentionality towards these triggers. Yeah. But I look at those four and I see just jumping off the page, intentionality, listening, and testing. That's what I see there. And those three are just

breakthrough. You want to talk about beating the other small business competition in the world you're in, certainly in your zip code, folks. I think this would be unbelievable to let people get ahead. Don't you think so, Jay? Oh, and we already have hundreds and hundreds of people in a Facebook group that readers of the book get to have access to for free. We've had so many incredible small businesses already create talk triggers. They're helping one another in the group. We're actually rolling out an online course to help people develop their own talk triggers. We've got all the information at talk triggers.com. Let me tell you the worst way to do this. Okay. The very worst way to create a talk trigger is the way that everybody wants to, especially

small business, which is to sit around in a conference room and brainstorm it for 90 minutes. And here's the problem with that approach. If it was that easy, you'd already have one. That's right. You know, it's just not that easy. And the key to the whole system, and look, I'm not going to lie to it. It's a fair amount of work. Like, this takes, you know, this takes weeks to do this right. This isn't like an afternoon thing. The key to the whole system is talking to your customers. So we advise doing between 15 and 18 customer interviews, and you interview five or six each of three different types.

You interview newer customers, long-time customers, and lost customers. And with each of those interviews, you ask essentially the same thing. You say, in all the different ways that you encountered our business, telephone, website, email, what you got in the mail from us, whatever the circumstances are in your customer journey, you ask these people, what did you expect would happen? Because what you're trying to do see is map customer expectations. Because once you know what people expect, you by definition know what people do not expect. And the talk trigger, the conversational gold in the river always lies in the place that people don't expect.

So you have to know what they think is going to happen. If they think it's going to happen, it's no longer a story, is it? No, absolutely not. It's exactly what they expected, therefore it's not memorable, and they're certainly not going to tell anybody else about it. And let me tell you, just as an aside, whether or not you put this into practice, and I certainly hope you will, because I know, for a fact, that this will work for any business of any size and any category. There are hundreds and hundreds of businesses that have already put this into practice and making tons of money as a result. But even if you don't, go talk to 15 customers anyway. you'll be richer for it.

That's so true. He is Jay Bear. The new book is Talk Triggers, the complete guide to creating customers with word of mouth. And if you flip over to the backside, we already told you about the alpacas. I thought they were llamas. Clearly, I don't know what I'm talking about. But I love the guarantee on the back of the book. It says, if you bought this book, and I'm telling you folks to buy it, I'm putting my name on it.

If you buy the book and don't like it, go to Talktriggers.com and send the authors a note. and they're going to buy you any other book of your liking. So this is right on the back of the book. So this is one of my risk-free endorsements. And I'm not just saying it because it's risk-free. I'm telling you the Ken Coleman Show team is going to be going through this book. And we're going to be talking about that because I'm telling you. People don't like the book.

You want like a first edition Bible or whatever. We'll figure it out. We'll take care of you. Oh, now that's a bold statement there. We'll buy any book. I'm not kidding. And, you know, Daniel, my co-opters said when we were putting this together, this offer, we're like, well, we have to have a talk trigger for the book, talk triggers.

Otherwise, this is a bit of a hypocritical situation. And so we came up with this offer that they will buy you any book. And so Daniel said, well, what happens if somebody wants? You know, there's like $10,000 cookbooks on Amazon. I said, well, first of all, that would suck. But second of all, we'll write a press release in 10 seconds. It'll be the best advertising in the history of the book. So we're okay with it.

We will buy you any book. So far, we've sold a lot of books, and nobody's taken us up on it yet. We stand by the guarantee. And it's funny you talked about the team going through the book. If you go to Talktriggers.com, there's a ton of resources there, including book club discussion guides, infographics, videos. We sort of take the talkable, useful approach. Obviously, I'd like you to buy a copy of the book.

But folks, even if you don't, there's so much free information on the website that you can probably figure it out without the book. That's right. And I am going to go search for the source of this original photo. I can send it to you, don't worry. And I might just get myself an alpaca coffee table book for my daughter. Who knows? Oh, yeah, that's great. We actually did a video shoot on an alpaca and llama farm for the book promotion. Oh, that's brilliant. I was actually wearing this suit. It's, yeah, it was something. It was both amazing and terrifying because, you know, they spit, which is fun.

That was my wonder is if you got spit on by an alpaca. But, you know, if you're going to be spit on by anybody in this day and age, I'll take the alpaca. And what is the story. It's a story. It's a good story. Hey, Jay, you're great. This book is great. I know you're is viable and I can tell you on behalf of everybody on the Entree leadership team in our audience, we're better for hanging out with you. So thanks for being with us. My pleasure. Thank you. Big thanks to Jay for hanging out with us again. The book is Talk Triggers, the complete guide to creating customers with word of mouth marketing. Coming up next, Sarah Sloy, our senior vice president of Entree leadership, joined me in the studio recently to talk about a book that we featured on this program, The Power of Moments, and how she has translated the truth

in that book here in the office. Sarah, great to have you back with us. And we're going to talk about a book that has impact on you as a leader. And as a result, it's really impacted our Entree leadership team. One of my favorite books. We had Dan Heath on this program, not too very long ago, talking about the book.

So tell us what this is. Yes, I love the Power of Moments book. It's so good. Incredible. It really is. And it was easy to read. You know, I've got three kids. So I love books that really are easy to read.

and I enjoy the stories. It was fantastic. Well, so I'm glad you mentioned the three kiddos. So wife, mom, and I took so much out of that book that was personal, too, like to the family, moments in the family. And as you're raising three little ones, you know, it really is such a practical book. So when you sort of reading that book, how did it start to come into your consciousness about this place, this building with our team?

Well, what I loved about it is it put words to something that I've always valued, but I've never realized was at that level. So it just was wild how when they were telling this story about this hotel in California that has this popsicle hotline and how awesome the kids thought it was at any time of day they wanted, they could pick up that phone and call that popsicle hotline and they would get delivered a popsicle. I thought, man, that is such a neat, unexpected surprise and delight. It didn't take a lot of effort from the hotel. It didn't cost a lot of money. And I thought, that really is the key. It doesn't always have to be something that's expensive, whether it's something that you're surprising, you're spouse with or your kids or our clients or our team, that you can do that with just a little bit of thought and creativity. Well, let's talk about the team first, how you use this and how we are using this, and then we'll move over to our clients. So I know of several moments that I've walked in on at times. I've come in here and didn't realize, and I see the entire team gathered around. I don't know what that's called, but it's like everybody's in a big circle. Yes, stand up. Well, what I was thinking of is we just had this team member. We have several examples at stand up where we celebrate

people. When we have people who leave, of course they are leaving on great terms. If you're not leaving on great terms, you don't get this. But if you're leaving on great terms, which most people are, we like to present them with a confetti canon to celebrate that next adventure in life. And that's just a nice way to send them out. But we just had a team member who transferred internally to be on our sales team. And there's so much pressure that first week, because you're watching all these other salespeople who've been here forever and have built up their pipelines and have these great relationship with clients already, and they're closing deals, and you think, I'm never going to do it. I'm never going to close a deal. What was I thinking? So we had this guy internally transferred our team,

and we knew he was going to be a rock star. But of course, there's a big confidence boost when you make that first sale. So he made his first sale, and we shot off surprise confetti cannons, and it was so fun. He just glowed, so it was fun to watch him be celebrated in that way. that. And then some of the other moments that are in the, whether it be spontaneous or in the regular rhythm, give us another example. And then how does it actually, how do you see the benefit of it? What's the value? Well, I walked in the other day and I realized a sales team was so close to hitting one of their goals. So I went around to the rest of our team. We have about 70 people in our extended team over here. And I said, hey, I want to celebrate the sales team. They are

always plugging away and serving our folks so well, and they're so close to hitting this goal, what if we fill up all these fun, sparkly plastic champagne flutes with sparkling cider? And when they hit it, we all come rushing out. We roll out the table with the sparkling cider. We've got confetti cannons. And it was just a fun shared moment amongst the whole team. Because it really was a win for all of us that they were serving so many clients in such a great way. And it was fun to see them. They are kind of the unsung hero. We don't often take time to brag on them. And it was neat to see the entire team rally around them in that way. One of my favorite moments in how I see entree leadership serve their clients is our

Entree Leadership Master Series. So I call this event kind of like our boot camp or training camp. You think of NFL teams that go in, they'll do three weeks of training camp before the season starts. It's kind of a deep dive. And so at Master Series, is it the last day or the second of the last day where we surprise all, it's the last day? Yes. All of our attendees come in, and I want you to describe what we do. Yes. So we roll out this red carpet before everybody gets there, and our team lines up.

And honestly, every year it gets a little beefier. You know, now we've got Joe Levitt back there with the microphone. We're playing, you know, this hype music. Oh, yeah. Now we have the videos playing on the screens, lights. It's crazy. And so when those clients come in, they spend. The door opens.

The door open, so they don't know. They don't see the red carpet or our team lining the car. Right. Right. So what I love about this is they've just been through an entire week, long days working on their business, hearing the things that they're doing right, but also hearing the things that they're doing wrong. And it's exhausting. It's kind of like camp. You get to the end of the camp and you're exhilarated, but you're exhausted. You're thinking about what's going to happen when you go back. So it's awesome. They open the doors. The folks start walking in. First of all, they're like, what is going on? The team members start cheering for them. They get hit by a wall of, yes. cheering. Energy just gets infused and they're ready to take on the day and they feel celebrated because this is a big deal. I was reading a book the other day that was talking about success is not when you've reached a milestone. It's not when you've graduated. It's every day that you decide to show up, that you decide to take the test, that you decide to study. It's funny, we stop and celebrate people at the end of a journey, but really success is every step in that journey that they take. And I think

that's a fun connection here. Yeah. Well, and then another example is, is when we do our summit event, which is, you know, really a five-star experience all the way across the board. And then we surprised people. And I was involved with, let's see, we've done, we've done boots. Yes. Really nice boots. That's how this all started.

That's right. At Summit anyway. Yeah. And so what we, and tell people how we did it and why we did it. It wasn't just loving on it. What else did we do with that? Right, right. Well, first I have to tell you, I wish that was my idea.

It was my idea to take it to summit with the team, but it was not my idea. What happened was we were on a site visit in San Antonio at this ranch, and we were looking at the ranch as an option to do our opening reception for the event. And we go tour the ranch and we get back into the main ranch house, and there are three pair of cowboy boots on the table. And it was myself and two of our live event folks who really run that event, and they deserve all the credit for that event. And I thought, oh, my gosh, this is so awesome. Who buys you cowboy boots? And they had socks and they had us try them on. And so it was awesome.

I thought, what if we give this away at this year's summit because everybody was going to see in Antonio the next year? And then it was kind of this fun thing to look forward to. They had their boots. It was that kind of instant gratification because a lot of times they'll buy their tickets a year out. That's right. So it's a fun reminder of this is coming.

It's a reminder that we're all a tribe. We flew out these guys who did fittings for the boots. We had a couple different pair for the guys that you. from a couple different pair for the women to choose from. So it was a blast. I loved when Dave rolled that out on stage. It was just fun to love on our clients well. A thing that maybe they would not buy themselves, cowboy boots, but they're awesome.

And it ties you all together as a tribe. Absolutely. So there's a win in a lot of different ways. So having read the book, The Power of Moments, I know it's one of your favorite books that you've read in a while, what would be the challenge to our tribe, to our audience of leaders, people who are leading others? How would you challenge them to really grab the power of? of moments. Yes. You have got to get out there and look across whether you're a spouse or a parent or a

leader of a team and find an opportunity to love that person or that team well and build it a surprise and delight. It doesn't have to cost money. You just need a little bit of creativity and think about how those people like to be loved. Now, you can't go around surprising them with things that don't matter to them. You know, if I bought you, I was going to say a purse, but I did buy you a bag. You bought me actually, it's sitting over to my left. Speaking of surprise and delight. You did surprise and delight. Well, we certainly can.

It is, I'm tethered, so I can't grab it. But you bought me a really nice leather bag from a company. I mean, it was from our team. That's fair. That is fair. Well, you said you, so, you know, I'm just going to. Yeah, I was just trying to take all the credit, I guess. That's not correct.

It's a manned bag. But now it's a good looking leather. It is, it is manly, it is sturdy. it'll last me a lifetime, and it's just the right size. Well, Ken does so much for us. He loves our guests well. He hosts a lot of our events. Now you're teaching all this amazing content to our folks,

and he is running back and forth, back and forth. And it's exhausting. He doesn't complain once. He's always all in. And the team said, man, we want to thank Ken for all that he's done. He never asks for anything. And we really thought, okay, what is it that Ken would appreciate? Oh, you got it right.

That's where power of moments is so powerful. It has to be something that you. So this bag is, and it's got a great story. So Colonel Littleton lives outside of Nashville. His team makes these beautiful leather goods. And what I love is that every time you use that, hopefully you'll think about how much we appreciate you. Always, absolutely.

I was blown away. I mean, I was truly blown. I was like, wow, this is really, really nice. And isn't that fun to get to do that, whether it's for, you know, somebody who has served your client so well, or whether it's for your significant other? That's exactly right. And even the kids, for heaven's sake, I mean, just the, I will tell you, the book the power of moments, don't just focus in on what you can do in the office. Like, think about what you can do outside the office for the team, but also just in your personal life.

Agreed. Because I think the things that our kids will remember most about us are the crazy surprises. And they're not always like the biggest gifts or the most expensive gifts, but just the big surprises. Yes. You know what I love to do when there's holidays. love to go and ransack the dollar bins at Target because they always have the themed valentines or Easter or whatever, fill in the blank, Fourth of July. So I like to go and ransack just a few dollars of that stuff. And the morning before the kids come down, I usually do it the night before because they get up so early. I will set the table with whatever I find. So maybe it's

special dollar plates, maybe it's just little bubbles, maybe it, but they come down in the morning and they come down to these fun. It feels festive. They each have a little something and it just marks the occasion. And that's been one of our favorite things. I love that. Good stuff. Well, Sarah, thanks for being with us and really applying some lessons from a great book that we've been really privileged to be able to experience through the author, Dan Heath, who was on the program. If you didn't get that interview, just go search it however you listen to the program and search Dan Heath. And that will pop up incredible, incredible conversation with Dan. And of course, we recommend getting the book.

Big thanks to Sarah for hanging out with us. Hey, a couple of reminders. As we mentioned, the power of moments with Chip and Dan Heath was really featured in our conversation with Dan Heath. That was episode 259. Now, don't forget, we've got a chance to win a 45-minute one-on-one coaching session with Sarah. You have until the end of March to enter for your chance to win. Click on the link in the show notes to enter today. I know that you can tell she's delightful and she's also very, very sharp. She'll be able to help you.

This is a one-of-a-kind opportunity to get a one-on-one. coaching session again. Click on the link in the show notes you have until end of March to enter. Sarah and I were obviously talking about the Power of Moments, one of her favorite books and one of mine as well. And one of the things we do from time and time is put a list together. 100 books every leader needs to read. And so the Power of Moments joins 99 other recommended books in our Entree Leaders reading guide. To get the guide, text 100 books, no space, just the number 100 books to 33444. That's 33444. Or click the link in this episode's show notes. Well, we love our friends at Belay. They are longtime friends. They have sat in the events that you sit in on. They've listened to

this program and they have applied it to their company. They're doing great things. The company's growing like crazy. And now they are partnering with us to help you. Got a great resource from our friends at Belay. 17 mistakes that leaders make with their support states. You think about it. As a leader, you're making dozens of decisions every day and you're going to need some help because if you're making those decisions on your own without anybody around you, helping you, it's in a vacuum, mistakes are going to happen. So think about how you can include your support staff on some of these decisions. You need to ask yourself, what mistakes could I be making? This free resource outlines the 17 biggest mistakes they see leaders make with their virtual team members. members and support staff. So go get it. You can click on the link in this episode's show notes. It's a great resource and it's absolutely free. Go get it. We want to thank Jay Bear for being with us, Sarah Sloane for dropping by and our friends at Belay for all the great resources they

provide us and you. On behalf of the entire Entree leadership team, thank you for listening. We'll talk with you again very soon. Hey folks, I want to make sure that you're aware that we have other great podcasts from Ramsey Solutions. Here's a sample of the Chris Hogan show. I am so excited to be able to talk to you all week in and week out. We're going to talk about your money, your life, your dreams, and your goals. You know why? Because I'm your coach.

Whether we're talking about building wealth, paying off your home early, investing, paying for college, and guess what? How to become an everyday millionaire. We're going to focus on taking your calls because you matter to me. Together, we can do this. This is the Chris Hogan. show. If you'd like to hear full episodes, just search the Chris Hogan show in Apple Podcasts, or go to Chris Hogan 360.com.