EverydaySpy Podcast - Using Leverage to Get What You Want

Episode Date: May 30, 2023

The Rolling Stones once famously sang, "You can't always get what you want," to a crowd of 1.5 million people in Rio de Janeiro in 2006. And while their lyric has become one of the most memorable musical verses of all time, it is not techincally correct. In today's episode, Andrew shares a CIA tactic that flies in the face of culture, self-help, and social norms. Get ready to learn how you can use leverage to get what you want now and and forever more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My name is Andrew Bustamante, and this is everyday espionage. You know, I've been doing a lot of traveling for business and for clients, but I was actually really excited recently to do some travel for family because we had a wedding in our network of friends and family. And I was actually really excited to go take a couple of days off, spend time with my wife and my kids, and celebrate, celebrate a very special day to a very special person in our lives. And the reason I'm telling you about it is because I wish I had a chance to come here and tell you how awesome their wedding was, how everything went perfectly, how all the providers provided on time and to standards, and everything was spectacular. And now there's one more happy married couple in the world.

But as you can probably tell, that is not the story that I get to share today. Now, the wedding was beautiful in its own right. and we had lots of good things happen, but we also had some absolute disasters happen. And what was shocking to me is that when the disaster happened, the people who were most invested in the weekend, right? The mother, the father, the new mother, the new father, bride and groom sides, plus, you know, all the family, and even the bride and grooms themselves. When all hell broke loose during their special weekend, what was so. surprising to me was how often they did not feel confident or capable to complain about what was

happening to them. Instead, they felt like they had to just kind of suck it up. They had to accept the situation and they had to just move forward. Now, I understand that there is absolutely an element of having to adapt. And I'm not saying anything bad about adaptation or about being graceful when bad things happen. But let's also remember that there is a very valid, very real set of circumstances in which you as a parent, as a customer, as a client, as an employee, there are very real situations where people fail to meet the expectation or the promise that they set for you. And when that scenario happens, you have certain power that you can exercise to get what you want, to get what you paid for, to get what you were promised. And that's what I want to talk about with you today,

is how you gracefully complain so that you can still get what you want in the end. Because we all have situations where we have to complain. But we also have earned the right and we deserve the respect to get the thing that was promised to us. So for the wedding, weekend, let me tell you more specifically what happened. So first, there was, of course, a hotel. There's a hotel where everybody from out of state and everybody from around the world when they were coming to this wedding, there was one hotel where everybody had registered and reserved space to stay. Now, I have no idea what it's like to be in the hotel industry. And for all I know, weddings are extremely complicated and very difficult thing to do for hotels. That may be the case,

but I as a client and a customer, I don't really care because that's what the hotel's there to do. That's part of why they're getting paid. And that's why they were chosen because it's a complicated thing. It's a hard thing. It's a big thing. Now, this hotel was a hotel that I have always liked. I recommended it to the family. I said, you know, I like it every time I stay here.

The staff is great. The facility is great. It's a fantastic hotel. So as soon as I showed up with my family, I immediately started feeling some of the friction of not being served by the service provider who promised me service because my reservation got shuffled. It got jumbled into some larger wedding reservation and they couldn't quite find my room quickly. So now here I am thinking it's going to be an easy check-in, but instead it's a slow check-in and I've driven across multiple states and I've got two kids and a wife and everybody's tired. guys all know how this goes. You ladies all know how this goes when you travel with a family for any

event. And then we find ourselves trying to entertain children in a lobby instead of having our stuff dropped off and entertaining these kids outside at a park or a playground. Now, ultimately, they did find my reservation. They did put me in a room. I had no problems with the room that I was in. Now, fast forward to the next day. Because the next day are when the bride and the groom arrive. Now, when the bride and the groom arrive, the arrangement, the reservation was that the suite, one of the suites in the hotel, was reserved for the bride. And she was going to get a suite. And then the night after they got married, the groom would move into the suite. And then the bride and the groom would have a suite together.

Now, here's where the first major issue happened. Because the hotel had chosen to sell the suite that they had promised the bride, the night before the bride arrived. Now, this seems like pretty standard policy. Every time you make a reservation anywhere, if you're making a reservation on an airline, if you make a reservation at a hotel, the fine print very clearly says that the hotel reserves the right to cancel, change, or modify your reservation. Because if they have a chance to sell something for two nights instead of just one night,

then they will. And it makes good business sense. It makes good economical sense. However, it does not make for a good customer experience. And that's exactly what happened at this hotel. They sold the suite that was reserved for the bride, and they sold that suite before she arrived. Now, when she arrived, you can imagine how much of a nightmare that caused, because now the whole wedding plan was built around the bride having a suite, the bride and groom having a suite, a place for all of the wedding junk. to kind of pile up, and that suite was not there. And the hotel staff, the front desk person, the manager, were apologetic, but nevertheless, they said there's nothing they can do. And this is the way it is. We sold the room last night to somebody who came in and reserved it for multiple

nights. That, to me, is an understandable situation, but not an acceptable situation. To the bride, and to the bride's mother and to the groom's mother, the folks in charge of this wedding, they had a different opinion. They decided that there was nothing they could do about it. So instead, they just accepted it and moved on. Now, when that kind of situation happens, I don't know where you land as you hear this story. I don't know if you're the kind of person that's going to go and pitch a fit and talk to the manager, if you're the kind of person who's going to agree with the folks in charge of the wedding and say, you know, it is what it is. We've got to move on. I'm the kind of person that we'll do neither. What I want to do is I want to use the leverage

of the situation. And this is really important for you to understand every time people make a promise or a commitment of any type to you, whether it's in business or personal life. What happens is they have given you something called leverage. It's the same thing that happens when you borrow money from a bank. When you borrow money from a bank, you are in debt to the bank. That's called leverage. The bank has leverage over you. And the same thing happens when somebody gives you a promise. When they give you a promise, they are basically putting themselves in a position where they are in debt to you to fulfill the promise. That happens in business. That happens in life. That happens in careers. So here we have a situation where the hotel is in debt to the family.

But neither of the sides really understood what that leverage meant, what that leverage looked like. I did. That's something that CIA teaches us very early on is to understand when leverage happens and who holds the leverage. So even though the family didn't want to complain, I myself went to the manager after the event. After everybody had complained and everybody had said their piece and the wedding designers and the wedding architects had gone back to their room upset, I went down to the lobby to talk to the manager myself. And when I was talking to the manager, I made it very clear that I saw the situation as unacceptable and that I had personally been the person who recommended their hotel and that I had seen how they've operated in the past. I've seen them be an extremely

stand-up hotel and service provider and that this was outside of the norm. I then went on to make this very simple recipe for them. I was like, look, here's how this needs to work. You made a commitment to this family. You also made a commitment to me by showing me such consistent service in the past that I have decided to recommend you to this family. So you're going to make this right. And how you make this right is very simple. You find a suite that you can give this bride so that their wedding goes on according to plan.

I am still going to call the corporate headquarters for the hotel chain and I am going to complain that you sold her suite on her wedding day. I am going to call and I am going to complain no matter what you do. However, if you can fix this, I will not leave a poor review for the hotel on Google, and I will not leave a poor review on the internet. Instead, what I will do is I will leave a five-star review for the hotel because I will write a review that tells the whole world how the hotel made a mistake and then immediately fixed it because they understood how important this was to the family at large. That's what I want you to do to make this right. So you choose hotel manager. You choose what you do.

You can either make this right or you cannot make this right. And regardless of what you do, you will either get one zero star review from me and a phone call to the corporate headquarters or you will get a five star review from me and you will get a call to the corporate headquarters. Once I laid that out for the manager and I let them know that I was calling me. in the debt that they had made. I was calling in the leverage that we had. Now, keep in mind, I had only paid for my room. I was just a member of the wedding group. I wasn't even important in the wedding. But the manager understood what I was saying. The manager understood the expectation I had laid out. And of course, they understood the consequences if they did not take action with me. The big difference between me talking to the manager and the wedding family,

talking to the manager is that they did not set any kind of consequence and they did not call in the leverage. Now, fast forward a few more hours, about two and a half hours later, it's about 10 o'clock in the morning and the mother of the bride gets a phone call that a suite has been created, has been cleared, cleaned, and prepared for the bride. So they fixed it. They gave the bride her suite. The family was ecstatic. The bride was happy.

The groom was happy. I was happy. And then I also got a phone call to my room. And the manager was on the phone and told me that they had made the fix. They had gotten the bride, the suite that she deserved. And the hotel also wanted to extend a complimentary evening stay to me anytime in the next 12 months that I want to stay on their property. And then, of course, the manager thanked me for sharing my plans, for sharing my words and thank me in advance for any positive review that I could leave for them. on the internet. That is the first example of how you use, this leverage that happens whenever

someone makes a promise or a commitment to you. That hotel made a commitment to give the bride a certain experience, to give the family of the bride a certain experience. They made a commitment that was literally codified on a reservation, even though the reservation did say they have the right to change it. All of those things exist. But the piece of paper or the or the, or the receipt that you get online is just something created by a computer. A human being is a very different thing. And the manager who was sitting behind the desk, they did not want to have the kind of day. That human being did not want to have the kind of day where their corporate boss was called and the hotel got a negative review on their watch and where they potentially ruined

somebody's wedding day. That manager just didn't want that kind of day. So instead, They got creative, they got flexible, and they fixed the problem because they realized how big a problem it was, how over leveraged they were when they talked to me. They did not get the sense of how over leverage they were when they talked to the family of the bride. Now, later on in the wedding, we go to the rehearsal dinner. Now, the rehearsal dinner, the rehearsal itself was in a separate place. The dinner was in a third place.

It was a different type of rehearsal dinner. But when we get to the restaurant that we've been prepared for, that we reserved for the rehearsal dinner, the reservation was lost. I'm sure, again, you're probably not surprised to hear this after I warn you that this was a disaster of a wedding in many ways. And again, the bride, the bride's mother and the groom's mother find themselves in the situation where all of their planning, all of their best efforts to make things easy and make things beautiful for the daughter and for the son are not working out. And the rehearsal dinner manager, the manager of the restaurant, it came out and apologized. We don't have a reservation for you. We appreciate that you have, I think we had 25 people that were reserved to sit there. We appreciate that you have 25 people. It's a busy, you know, Friday night. And we're going to find a table for you.

But please give us an additional hour to get that table ready. So everybody had traveled to this restaurant. It's a beautiful restaurant and a beautiful place. But it's not near anything. So there's nowhere to spend an hour. So essentially, 25 people who were there for dinner had to go find a way to kill an hour while the restaurant cobbled together a set of tables that was nowhere near the experience that it was supposed to be for the bride, for the groom, or for the bride's family or for the groom's

family. So again, we found ourselves having a clear promise, a clear expectation set by a service provider and then failed in terms of delivery. at least with the hotel, I could kind of understand because they had sold the room to someone else. That's a revenue-based decision. I understand that. The restaurant, on the other hand, seems to have simply just misplaced the reservation. It didn't look like anybody else had come in with a large party.

It just looked like somebody screwed up along the way. So in this situation, I handled it exactly the same way that I handled it at the hotel. And not surprisingly, the bride's mother, and the groom's mother also handled it. handled it exactly like they did at the hotel. They apologized to the bride and the mothers. The mothers all accepted and said, we understand. Can we please fix it? We just want to have a place to eat. Everybody was, of course, frustrated and tired because this is the second major mistake that had happened in the same day. Now, the first mistake at the hotel, they had rectified. But here was a whole separate screw up at the end of the day. So if you can imagine, if you've been to a wedding,

if you've been married yourself, if you were the bride or the groom, you can imagine how much frustration, how much emotion was in the air, right? And then when they sat us in our table, our table was just, it was a Frankenstein table. All the leftover tables from who knows where cobbled together to try to fit 25 people near the bathroom, near the kitchen. It was, it was not pretty. But the fact that the table wasn't ideal wasn't really the problem as I saw it. The problem was, a promise was made, a commitment was made, and that commitment was failed. It was, the leverage was there, but nobody was calling the leverage in. So we had our meal, and needless to say, because it was a Frankenstein table and it was a large group, and nobody was expecting us, apparently, you can

imagine that the service was also bad. The waiter got overwhelmed. The drinks came slow. The food was all over the place. People weren't getting the right thing that they ordered. It was not an easy or fun evening. So at the end of the evening, everybody files out, the groom leaves, the bride leaves, the mothers of the bride and groom leave. And I go up to the manager. And I say the same thing to the manager at this restaurant that I said to the manager at the hotel. Look, this was a very special day for this group of people. I personally recommended this restaurant because this restaurant has a fantastic reputation in the area. I used to live in this area. And I've always, I've had multiple excellent experiences here before. I don't know what happened in this situation.

But what I do know is that the service that we were given, the meal that we were given is of an unacceptable quality, right? That's flat out. There's a standard that that restaurant sets, a promise that that restaurant sets, and it did not meet that promise. So I gave them the exact same set of expectations that I gave the hotel. I told them, you need to make this right. How you make this right is up to you.

But the people who paid the bill paid for a service. and an experience that they did not get. So I'm going to call the controlling managing company of this restaurant, like most restaurants, large fancy restaurants, large luxury restaurants often fall under a managing group. I'm going to call the managing group of this restaurant, and I'm going to formally complain to them. And that's where it will stop if you can fix this for the family. If you do not fix this for the family after I call that managing group and complain to them, I am going to leave a zero-star review online, and I'm going to outline this story.

I am then also going to talk to five or six members of the party that were here tonight, and I am going to walk them through the process of how they also leave a zero-star review for this restaurant. And we will all tell the same story about our experience from our point of view as this happened. So the manager of the hotel was essentially staring down the barrel of an instantaneous four or five, zero or one-star reviews. To them, that means something. Because once you have a one-star review on a restaurant, it doesn't matter how many five-star reviews you have,

your five-star review is lost. Even if it's one person who complains out of 100, you're still going to drop from five stars to 4.99 stars. And that's not something they want to have happen, especially not when you're talking about five people, potentially leaving a one-star review on a restaurant or less, happening in the same weekend. Because then anybody who checks out that restaurant is going to see that the five most recent reviews are all negative. They don't want that. That's something the manager wants to avoid at all costs.

So the manager did, to their credit, the right thing. They said, give me an hour, give me your phone number or your card, and I will call you back. Within an hour, the manager had called the bride. the groom, the mother of the bride, the three people that were in contact with their hotel or the three people that were in contact with the restaurant who had paid all the bills and extended them all a private, complimentary paired dinner with wine tasting for the day after the bride and groom got married. So they told them if they had availability on their schedule anytime after 5 p.m. in the evening that they would create this situation's experience for them

and their most intimate friends and family. They basically let every one of them bring one special person. So it turned into a private dinner for the bride and groom, the mother of the bride, the father of the bride, the mother of the groom, the father of the groom. Really a very sweet, a very sweet thing for the restaurant to do. I was totally blown away when they said they were going to do that. And I love that they offered that. And then they also called me, just like the hotel had called me, to tell me they had

fix the problem and to extend $150 worth of dining credit to me for me to call in any time in the next 36 months. So the same thing happened at the restaurant that happened at the hotel. When the leverage was called in, the manager understood the consequences. They understood the consequences of not fulfilling the expectation. Once they understood the consequences, then they took rapid action to resolve the situation. This is what I need you to understand moving forward. You have to have leverage over every service provider, every company, everybody you hire always. They make a promise and a commitment to you as human beings, but also as a service, as a company, as a business. In that promise, you have leverage over them. If they do not serve you to the level that you

want to be served, you have to know how to call in that leverage. You don't call in that leverage by just complaining. You don't call in that leverage by just leaving a negative review. Those things make you feel better, but you don't actually get anything. You don't get what you want. You lose what you want and you do some lesser thing that makes you feel a little bit better. When you know how to identify leverage and call leverage in, you do so much more than just feel better. You get what you want, you build a long-term relationship with the service provider because guess what now that hotel knows me now that restaurant knows me all of my positive experiences with them in the past i've just been one of the anonymous masses they've never known me they've never known i was there they've

never cared they just did what they said they were going to do and they got paid for it that's how they handle 99% of their clients but there's always one percent of clients that know how to leverage leverage the right way. And when they do that, then they become known to the hotel. They become known to the restaurant. Now, I've been back to that hotel and back to that restaurant twice since the wedding. And both times that I've gone back, the manager has greeted me and recognized my last name, Mr. Bustamante. Welcome back, Mr. Bustamante. Thank you for coming in, Mr. Bustamante. How can we help you? I have done nothing that warrants a manager knowing my name. I'm not a regular at either of these places.

I am not special to these people anyway. I haven't spent a great deal of money in their establishment. But they have seen that I know how to use leverage. So it's changed the nature of the relationship that that manager has with me. I'm certain that they looked me up. I'm certain that when I gave them my name, they looked me up to see if I was any person of import. And who knows what they found online? Who knows what they found from past interviews?

Who cares? What matters to me is that now I recognize the last. leverage I have in these two establishments and because of it, I give them more business. I give them more business. I still recommend them more now with confidence that I ever did in the past because I know they will fix their own mistakes. They will fulfill the promises that they made. This is important for you if you're a business owner or a service provider yourself.

When people complain, that is an opportunity for you as well. It's an opportunity for you to fulfill the promise that you made, the commitment that you and leave a long-term lasting positive impression on the customer who's complaining. Complaints are not the loss of a customer. We often think that just because someone complains will never get them back. In reality, when they complain, it's because they care enough about the service you provide to complain at all. So see that for what it is.

See that complaint as an extension of their value and their interest and their investment in you and then use it as an opportunity to demonstrate and redouble that relationship, that investment back to them. Fulfill the promise, fulfill the commitment, communicate to them that you fulfilled the commitment and the promise because you care that much about the service you provide. That is how each of those establishments now see me. And of course, I see them as reliable promise keeping organizations. Is it also nice to know that I have, you know, $600 some dollars?

credits that I can call in for a nice hotel and a nice dinner anytime I want with my wife or with my kids. Absolutely, that's nice to know. But in the grand scheme of both establishments, the few hundred dollars in credit that they extended to me make very little dent in their monthly or weekly revenue. And it makes very little difference to me in terms of my annual salary. But it means everything in terms of keeping the promise that you made. and showing that you appreciate and respect the leverage between the client and the customer. So, folks, from now on, anytime anything goes wrong for you, anytime a car dealership doesn't fulfill their promise,

a restaurant doesn't fulfill their promise, a hotel doesn't fulfill their promise, an airline doesn't fulfill their promise. If somebody fails to fulfill the promise or the expectation, they set for you, or if you're a business owner and you fail to meet the expectation, and promise you made to a customer, recognize the leverage that exists. The leverage that exists to get what you want and fix the problem and build a long-term relationship that's stronger than what existed in the past.

Leverage is a good thing. Leverage is a tool you can use to build more power, more influence, and get what you want out of businesses and out of family and out of everybody you meet. and leverage only exists when you're talking person to person. It doesn't exist when you're reading the clause, the escape clause on a contract, or when you're reading the fine print on a receipt. Leverage happens when you stand face to face and explain to someone the consequences of what happens when they don't meet the promise they made for you.

When you understand leverage, you will win. When you understand leverage, people will want to be beside you. people will want to work with you, people will want to buy from you. When you understand leverage, you have an unfair advantage over everybody out there who sees the world as something they just have to accept. The people who feel like they don't have power, the people who feel like they don't have a say, the people who feel like everyone is against them or that they are the victim. And most importantly of all, when you know how to use leverage to get what you want,

to win influence, to get ahead, to build a client base, to build friends, to live a life that's fun and comfortable and free, that is everyday espionage. Everyday espionage is dedicated to one thing, educating everyday people. I know that not everyone will listen, but those who listen will learn. If you learned something new today, click subscribe, review, and share the podcast with a friend. Find me on social media at Everyday Spy. or on my website, Everydayspy.com. If you are up for a special challenge,

visit Everydayspy.com forward slash operations and join me for an authentic spy training mission. And above all else, remember that knowledge is freedom.