The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Steve Buzogany, Founder and CEO of Appreciate Advocate on How to Make More Money in Business Referrals

Episode Date: January 13, 2023

Steve Buzogany, Founder and CEO of Appreciate Advocate on How to Make More Money in Business Referrals Appreciationadvocate.com

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready. Get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. It's Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com, thechrisvossshow.com.

Hey, we're coming here with another great episode. We certainly appreciate you guys coming by. What an amazing time we had at CES. Be sure to see our CES show interviews. About 30 interviews we posted over there. Some of the most brilliant minds, newest technologies, great CEOs, great entrepreneurial companies going

on. Just stuff that you really, really, really want to check out and get into. Today, we have an amazing gentleman on the show. We're talking about him and his website, appreciationadvocate.com. We're going to be talking about who they are, how he does it, and how things work. And we've got Steve. Steve, give me your last name so I get that right.

Steve. Bizzogany. Steve Bizzogany is on the show with us today, and he's going to be talking to us about his business. He has been a small business owner since 2012 who focused his business around one thing, building deep and meaningful relationships. By doing this, he was able to sell

nearly $100 million worth of real estate three to four days a week and working while taking one to two months off per year. Steve teaches other small businesses how they can quickly stand out in the crowd, build deep and substantive relationships, eliminate burnout and take more time off, generate more referrals, increase income and have more fun in their career. Welcome to the show, Steve.

How are you? I'm excited to be here. Thanks for having me. There you go. So what made you, what was some of your upbringing? What brought you into this business over the long term of growing up? So for me, I think my upbringing was, I don't think it had anything to do with my upbringing. Actually, I was more of a shyer, introverted kid, to be completely honest with you.

So for me, I think it was more when I got into real estate for the first time. And then I had a mentor that told me, Hey, Hey, look, you're working way too hard. Stop being transactional. Start being relational. You won't have to work as hard. And I was like, ah, that makes a lot of sense. So let me try that. So I started working by referral and the way he taught me and I, and I was like, this is easy. So like, you know, the average listing appointment for a real estate agent at the time, or even still is today, uh, is about an hour, 45 minutes to an hour. My listing appointment average was about 20 to 26 minutes. So I mean, my clients, I walked in and they were like, yeah, Steve, just give me the

paperwork, go through the house, you know, I'll fill it out while you're up there. You know? And I was just like, they came ready to sign a contract and I didn't have to do that much work to close them. They just came with that preexisting trust factor. So I just like, they came ready to sign a contract, and I didn't have to do that much work to close them. They just came with that preexisting trust factor. So I'm like, well, let's do it. And then after a while, I started getting known because I was doing 73% of my business by referral. A lot of people in the office were like, you're like the referral guy. So what are you doing? And I started telling them what I'm doing.

I'm doing gifts and loving on them this way and that way. And they're like, well, what are you doing? That sounds like so much work. That's a lot. I don't have the time for all that. And over and over, I heard people saying, I don't have time. I don't have time. I can't do it that well. And then I was like, well, there's a market here. And then hence, Appreciation Advocate was born. And I'm like, where I do the client appreciation process for small businesses, at a price they can afford. Emphasis on that part because most gifting companies today, they charge $15,000, $20,000, $25,000 just to talk to them. That's before you even buy a gift. So I'm like, mom and pop and average Joe do not show up for that conversation.

So I need to give them that ability. And that's basically where appreciation advocate is so i like this concept of business instead of being transactionary you're relationary do i have that right yep there you go and so you focus on building long-term relationships as opposed to just like okay one and done you're done see you bye that sort of thing. Is that a correct interpretation of that? Yeah, we basically, long story short, we condemn the find them, fleece them, and forget them method, and we fully embrace the make you a client for life method. Find them and fleece them method?

That sounds like my first nine marriages. I don't know. Sounds like my Tinder dating profile. I don't know. Sounds like my Tinder dating profile. I don't know what that means. But anyway, so when do you launch the AppreciationAdvocate.com? We launched it in early 2022.

It's a relatively, I would even say, I mean, I guess, I don't know. How long are you considered a startup? I don't know how long you stayed at. Gmail said they were beta for like 15 years or something. You can do whatever you want. It's a subjective concept.

I consider it still a startup. We're 13 years old, so I don't know. I am, and I'm still a child at heart, so what the hell. One of these days we'll get this stupid thing right that we're doing, whatever it is that it is. So, yeah, to answer your question, we're a newer, younger company, but an effective one, which is all that matters. There you go.

There you go. And so do you just work with real estate agents? Who are your target market? No, not just real estate agents. I mean, obviously, coming from real estate, that's where I do have a soft spot in my heart for it. But the reason I built this was because I knew that real estate was not the only industry that was having client appreciation problems. Like when I went to my car wash, they didn't do the extra stuff. Or when I went to my car dealer to get my car fixed, you know, it would have been cool if like, hey, what a cool thing would have been would have been to like maybe vacuum my car for me or maybe top off the gas tank for one out of every 10 cars you service or something cool like that.

So we service all industries. And to give you a good picture as to who we are in terms of who we serve, it's three people. We have three client avatars. Those people are first is Average Joe, and then there's Malman Pot, and then there's the Solopreneur. Those are basically the main people we serve. You know, building great relationships are so important. I remember my courier company, when we built it years prior. They really bought me when I first sold myself. They really

bought me as the guy. They're like, we don't know who this guy is and he sounds like an idiot, but we believe in him for some reason. He's charming or something. I don't know. They were sober when you did this? I might have. I don't know. It was probably we were at the bar feeling very Glen Ross. For some reason, they like might have i don't know it was probably we were at the bar like feeling very glenn ross but no for some reason they like me i don't know why um i've been told

i have likable features but no one can find them uh my psychiatrist just laughs when i say that uh he and then when he gets up off the floor we talk more about what's wrong with me but and that's one of them. So there's that. Somehow we've become a psychological podcast here. But no, what was interesting to me was we did a lot of fun things with them in the early years that I was a part of, like we would do pizza parties. We would have a random pizza party, and whoever had these, we had these invoices for the career thing, and we'd be like, we're going to pick a random number out of the hat for the invoices,

and whoever does that, their whole office gets a pizza party. And they loved it. And just the fun of stuff like that. And 13 years later, my business partner had taken over. 13 years later, he leaves the business, and I'm just like, none of these people are going to remember me. None of these people are going to know me. I'm going to be calling him up going, hey, I'm taking over this now.

And they all remember me. They all love me. And that relationship of giving them gifts and sending them pizzas and having fun with them, we kind of hijacked the system so that we made sure everybody got pizzas. The worst in our clientele, we were small. But it wasn't quite the fair lottery that it appeared to be. No one cared. So, you know, it's not like anybody was going like, hey, man, we need two pieces two months in a row.

But they remembered that. So why is this gifting and doing the appreciate advocate important? What does it help really achieve? The end goal is that it's actually funny that you bring that up. So if I were to sell just gratitude, that wouldn't sell. Gratitude by itself is too nebulous, airy-fairy, this holistic lifestyle, whatever. So you can't sell gratitude. But what we do provide, the end result of gratitude, what it does for you is it gives you more referrals. It gives you a higher income.

It gives you clients you like working with. So people buy into that. And they're like, oh, yeah, well, I want all of those things. Yes, what we do is rooted in gratitude. I just don't sell it as gratitude because people wouldn't buy it. Oh, I can't walk into someone's business and be like, you need to be more thankful for your clients. They'll be like, F you, get out of here. I tried to give hugs and then HR

had to have a talk with me. You're a walking HR violation. Pretty much. That's why I work for myself. That's why we're on a podcast and not in person. That's why people want to hire me. I'm a hugger. I'm a good

kind of hugger, though, people. I'm not trying to pull the uncle thing at Thanksgiving on you. Let's see. So you can help people quickly stand up from the crowd, build deep and substantial relationships, eliminate burnout, take more time off, generate more referrals. You know, talk to us about why these are the best referrals to get from someone who's a prior customer as opposed to trying to, you know, get a new one out of the bush. For sure.

So, well, I think it's fairly understood across the business world that to retain an existing customer is much cheaper than to acquire a new one. So that's the first point. And then the second thing is a referral is the highest quality lead in the business world. Oh, yeah. So, I mean, they show up ready to sign a contract. They already trust you. You don't have to work as hard. I mean, it's so much easier than like when I first started like in real estate, I, I would have to pitch and work and talk my way into things. And it was such a grind and I call, and that's what many sales position, that's not, not just real estate. So like, why do all that? It's

almost like when you boil water, you don't put cold water on the range. You heat it up with the hot water first. You start at 100 degrees, and then you go to 212. You don't start at 30. Why make yourself wait longer? Why work harder? Exactly. And like you said, instead of being transactionary, to me, I've had, I've told stories over the show and I think some of my book, but I've had times where we've had to give enormous amounts of refunds to a client because we fucked up and I've had to eat it. Sometimes I've had to eat 100% of the commission cost of what we did and then to work on top of that.

Sometimes I've had to eat it. And then on top of that, I've had to pay the salesman regardless because they're going to complain about it. But, you know, it's usually their fault. And so nine times out of ten, I've refunded that money. And, you know, it's usually in the midst of them, what's the right word, redressing me up and down with four-letter expletives about how your company did this, your company did that. I'm really good about taking that down a notch because right away I go,

what do we need to do to make you happy? I'm here to understand you're unhappy. Let's focus on what we need to do to make you happy. What do I need to do to fix this? We fucked up. We own it. And in those times where I've had to do extraordinary, sometimes, uh, refunds or, you know, whatever it takes to make them happy. I mean, some, well, I think my biggest one was like $5,000. I said, look, if I give you $5,000 and they make you happy. Yeah. Okay, great.

Let's, let's just do that. And whatever. Okay. I appreciate that. You know, you guys are blah, blah, blah. But you know, I try and end it on a good note and we make everybody happy. You know how many times those people always come back? I'm like, I'm never going to hear from them.

They really were pissed at us. They'll come back and they remember the good part of what we did. They're like, yeah, you remember how you fixed that problem for me? And I'm like, yeah, but I mostly remember the four letter expletives you were yelling at me at the time. But, hey, I'll take your money now. And those were some of our best returning clients. The people who are the most pissed off at us. Yeah, so that's actually where you make your money, man.

I mean, that was true in real estate too. Whenever I had a problem with a client who had a, I don't know, the lender's not doing what they're supposed to or whatever it is, that was when I made my money. Calming them down, negotiating deals, and basically whenever crap hit the fan, that was when it was time to make money and show them what you're actually worth. You're not just a glorified door opener.

The one place I found where referrals for warm referrals don't really work is if you ask your ex-girlfriends for the numbers of their girlfriends. That does not work. Probably not going to fly very well. Referrals don't work. I haven't tried it, but I will take your word on that.

I've been hit on some from some of my girlfriends' committees. I'm like, oh, so that's why you were telling me to break up with her or her to break up with me. Jokes aside. So, yeah, these make all the difference in the world. The cost of what it takes to find a lead,. Jokes aside. So, yeah, these make all the difference in the world. You know, the cost of what it takes to find a lead, to get a lead. You know, I've been in the room when someone has blatantly lied and said, Chris Voss is a really great guy.

You should really do business with him. And it's always an honor to hear that, even though it's a lie. And it's always an honor to hear that. You feel it. You're like, wow, these people actually like me. Maybe I'm as special as I think I like, wow, these people actually like me. Maybe I'm as special as I think I'm, or maybe that's just narcissism again. I'll talk to my therapy later.

But there's trust there. Trust is a big factor in it because people are saying, this guy is good at what he does. And having that trust form is a thing that a lot of people don't seem to care about anymore. They just don't find it anymore. Well, it just takes a lot of people don't seem to care about anymore. They just don't find it anymore. Well, it just takes a lot of time to do all these gifts and stuff. Sometimes we have this one product we do. It's called Instant Impact. And the reason we call it that is because you can make an impact in an instant. And it's not like a plan.

But what we do is maybe you just get out of a conversation with somebody and you find out that you know you take someone to lunch and you find out their kid is 18 and they're moving out of the house and they're the last one and now they're empty nesters and you want to do something nice for them and you know now that he's an empty nester so like you can basically tell us hey steve want to use your instant impact um here's my budget here's what i want to do and here's i guess my what i have in mind. And at the very bottom it says, do you want us to come up with a gift for you or do you have something in mind? And then basically you just submit the form,

mis-submit the type form or whatever, and then we just execute it. It shows up with a rap job, professional rap job, and then a personal note and everything, and then you're good. There you go. I like that idea.

Usually the gift that I give my friends when they have an 18-year-old leaving the house to go is as soon as that 18-year-old leaves the house, we fake their deaths, move them to a completely different state, country, or location so that child can never come back and ask for money again. So that's the service we provide. That's certainly my way to approach it, for sure. If we spend 18 years getting these kids out of the house, damn it, don't come back. It's a little unconventional, but hey, to each his own.

I mean, hey, I mean, this client's for it. What are you going to do? Anyway, I just joke inside, people. So what are some rundowns of what your website does, your service does? How does it work? Give us a picture of how people can use you guys. Yeah, so basically if you're like a small business owner that who can't, who doesn't have the time to love on your clients,

but you want to increase your level of referrals, but you have too much going on, or you're a solopreneur and you want to do the same thing, but you don't have perhaps maybe the budget to pay for an assistant full time that, you know, maybe you don't have three grand a month or four grand a month to pay for an assistant.

Like you don't have to pay that. You can just hire up. So like, and we'll handle it for you. And, and no offense, even if you have an assistant, we can probably do it better.

Actually, we do do it better. Uh, your assistant's not going to be able to compete with us. Um, so that's why that's, that's stuff we do. There you. Your assistant's not going to be able to compete with us. So that's why. There you go. That's stuff we do.

There you go. So they can look forward to it. Now, do they have different tiers of gifts they can buy? I see one picture here on the website where a guy got a nice set of elk sticks and barbecue. Yeah. So basically, yeah, you can do all kinds of different stuff. But the thing is we have six qualifications for gifts, so we have a series of different things. And I can give this to you.

We have this thing called the Appreciation Bundle. I can give that to you so you can send it out to your listeners. And it's basically a six-pack. There's six PDFs, and it basically explains all kinds of different ways to gift on your clients. So it's basically an item of value you can give your people. Basically, what we do is one of the six packets is the six things all great gifts have.

You got to make sure you hit on those. Obviously, you got to make the focus on the recipient. It's got to be a good item. It has a personal touch. All these other things. The gifts we send, they aren't usually mid to high class items they're not i mean we're not going to send you a pez dispenser with my branding on it like i'm going

to send a pen with my name on it i actually so yes and no but like we i would you could do it but you would have to do it because we don't send a bit cheap yeah yeah we actually don't do that like we don't send any gifts uh with branding on it. We won't do it. That's one of the things. It's the difference between a promotion and a gift. Plus, no one wants to see a pin from me. They're just going to be like, oh, great, another pin.

By the way it sounds in this conversation, I don't think anybody wants to see anything from you. Pretty much, yeah. You've got to go back to your site. I feel after four straight days of the gauntlet at CES where I've just been doing 30 interviews. Somebody send me some gifts from appreciationadvocate.com, people. I clearly don't feel appreciated enough.

Hit us up. We're going to get like 15 orders. There you go. Hit us up and send us some of the Chris Voss show. I need some love. I need to feel loved, which is another problem my psychiatrist brings up, but that's beside the point. So you guys have different packages, or how do they pick up your service?

There's different products they can decide on? Yeah, so we have like, I guess we have the entry-level stuff, which is like if you were just getting started and you don't have like a massive client base or even a huge budget, like, uh, you could just sign up for instant impact and that's like small, small, small monthly fee for that. Um, then that gives you the ability to give, um, gifts at random. And they, and basically you can give like, if you were buying it, uh, if you, if you were a subscriber to instant impact, you could basically give one off gifts to as many people as you want.

All you have to do is pay the monthly fee and then buy whatever gifts you want. But we're going to execute it. We'll buy the gift. We'll personalize it. We'll do all that stuff. But you don't actually have to do any of it. You just tell us, hey, look, just left this lunch. I need to send something to this guy.

Here's my budget. Get it out to him. Nice. And that's the Instant Impact. That's like the entry level stuff. Then you can obviously go for the big stuff, which is like, you know, we have our door opener package, which is one thing where that's a big, heavier hitter item where you can basically get you access to any person that you want to get a hold of.

We can get you access to them. Now, that will take a little bit longer depending on who it is, but we will eventually get you in touch with that person. So like, for example, getting in touch with Michael Jordan might take a little bit longer depending on who it is, but we will eventually get you in touch with that person. So like, for example, getting in touch with Michael Jordan might take a little bit longer than getting in touch with maybe like the local, you know, CEO or bartender or whatever, you know what I mean? Like the small, you know, so like that's the, that depends on who you're shooting for. Um, we have methods to do that. That's our door opener package. And then lastly is like the referral generator. That's like the big package that includes everything. Um, and that's like a year long, uh, subscription where we basically

build out a full plan for your top 25 people. Um, we can go past 25 too, as well. There's obviously additional charges for that, but, um, yeah, outside of that, that's where you get the whole implementation plan and, uh, full out sign off, you know, at the the end of the day, we create this big plan for you for a whole year, and then you just basically don't do anything. We send you the plan, you sign off on it, and then we execute it. We'll just send you an email every once in a while and be like, hey, just so you know, there's this gift coming in to your favorite people. Just make sure you call them two or three days after to make sure they got it, just to deepen their relationship.

More likely, they're going to call you first. They're going to be like, wow, that's a really high-quality gift. Thank you for doing that. But in the event that they don't, you should reach out anyway. Yeah, it helps build that relationship that you're going to have with them for the future and stuff. Can I send Michael Jordan like a life-size chocolate bust of me? I got to find out about that.

We have not gotten a request for that, but I think that's, I'm going to have some serious homework to do to get that. I think he would probably really call me if he got that. Like, what the fuck, dude, right? Yeah, I mean, especially if you showed up in the bus. You'd be like, what the heck is this guy? Yeah, you're giving me ideas here.

Might want to go meet my favorite band or something with this one. Yeah, there you go. No, I like this. And I imagine, you know, you mentioned the team thing. If you're a real estate agent, you've got a lot of members on your team. If you're a real estate agent team, this is a big thing to have. you know, one of the problems that I used to have with being a real estate agent, being in the mortgage business was you only see your client like every three years, five years, um, you know, in real estate, you know, it's a long time between them, uh, with mortgage clients, it was usually about three years on an usual, depend upon what

the interest rates and the values we're doing. But, uh. And so it's hard for them to remember you. They're like, every now and then they bump into somebody and they're like, hey, I just refinanced again. I'm like, well, it wasn't with me, but I remember you from three or four years ago. And they're like, oh, yeah, sorry, we couldn't remember who we did it with. That's a slap in the face, man.

Yeah, isn't it though? Yeah. People are going to remember that gift, right? Because every time they see that gift, they're going to remember, oh, XYZ plumbing. Yes, exactly. And for me, like I've had a lot of clients come to me where they want to buy a house and they're like, or they want to sell their house. And they're like, oh, don't you want to? I don't ever ask them because I obviously want the sale.

But like I'm thinking in my head, like I've heard so many times. We're like, oh, yeah, we don't remember who our last realtor was. Even when they're working with them. I've had people, like, I come to my open houses and they're like, yeah, so I said, oh, do you guys have a real estate agent yet? Because obviously I want to be that guy if they don't have one. They're like, oh, yeah, we do. And I'm like, oh, cool. Who is it?

Maybe I know them. And they're like, you know, I don't know, actually. Steve B. something or other. Yeah, well, I get it. My last name is like Hungarian, and that might be a hard thing for some people to remember. But like, you know, the regular, you still, I mean, so many times, like, it's one of them, the husband or the wife.

One of them just can't remember the realtor's name. It's usually the husband, because women buy real estate. So the woman usually remembers that one. But the husband is like, where is it? Who is it? What's his name again? There you go. There you go.

Well, you know, it's one of those things. But it's really important to do this because one of the first factors I learned in business was getting referrals, asking for referrals. We asked people at the beginning of the show to refer the show to your family, friends, and relatives because we know they're the best referrals. Plus, they're the people that you can use to get close to their phones and force subscribe them without them usually getting too upset. If you try that at an open restaurant, it doesn't work bad. That's why I can't. The judge won't let me go into restaurants anymore.

So there's that. Don't be messing with people's phones. So you can basically help transform people's business. How much of a difference do you see in making? Is there any monetary examples you want to cite or different success stories that you can cite? Yeah. So we've had a real estate agent spend, they had a budget of $12,000 for the year.

So maybe roughly $1,000 a month, which is not insane for a small business. I mean, I know some real estate agents were spending five, six grand, even 30 grand a month on certain ads. And I'm like, why don't you spend $1,000 a month and get a 15X? So the realtor, they had a $12,000 budget for the year, spent $10,500 at the end. So under budget.

The ROI, they made $143,000. Holy crap. Yeah. So I mean, basically, it's a money machine at that point. It's a 15X. So that's one example. So that's the kind of stuff that happens. And, you know, people, like, think, oh, my God, I spent $10,000 on gifts for my clients this year.

But, like, here's the thing. You didn't just give them to any clients. You gave them to your top 25. These are the people that have bought into you the hardest and are more willing to appreciate you the most and who are willing to appreciate you the most, and who are willing to refer you the most. So it's not just like relationships, like impressions are not created equal. Like there are some that are ranked A's and A pluses, and some are B's and C's,

and you don't spend the good money on the B's and C's. You spend it on the A's and the A pluses. That's an interesting strategy too. You know, you just never know where good referrals are going to come from in business, and this is great way to seed them and and make them encouraged in the work be be stuck in your in friends head because you know if they're not doing business with you like i said more the mortgage or real estate business you know every few years they come back and see you but in the meantime you know they can refer their family and friends and they come and

hey who's that realtor that you had for that thing over there? And if they can remember your name and oh, yeah, he got us a great set of, you know, knives or whatever. Oh, wow. That guy really seemed to care about you. And my last real estate agent didn't give me anything. Well, there you go. Don't even remember his name.

Yeah. Boom. You're in like Flint. I do remember his name. It was the real estate're in like Flint. I do remember his name. It was the real estate agent who didn't give me knives and appreciate me. So I'm going to go with the guy you're referring. So it just makes all the difference in the world. And it's cool that you guys have a program that we don't really want to think about

because thinking about any more things as an entrepreneur is the last thing we need because we already have to think of everything. We have to wear every hat all the time. Anyway, you do man, especially the janitor hat. I'm always having to clean toilets. Yeah.

That one drives me. That was there. Uh, what, what more on your business and what you guys do have we touched on? Uh, I think, uh,

I think that's pretty much it. I do have, um, I do have a book coming out in, uh, at the end of the year. uh i think that's pretty much it i do have um i do have a book coming out in uh at the end of the year that's that's about that's about as far as other than that i think we pretty much covered it the book i'm writing is called the impression scale basically talks about um it's all surrounding kind of around gifting as well because the gift is designed to make an impression so like you'll appreciate this is that we in-house here we call them fart in the wind gifts. And that's because they only make one impression. So a bottle of champagne at settlement for a real estate agent was the stereotypical realtor. Oh, here's a bottle of champagne. There's $20 for one impression. Or if you take someone out to an expensive dinner,

uh, that's 200 to a thousand dollars on one impression impression. No offense, but I'm not paying that much for one impression. I will pay $125 for 365 days a year impressions. To bring your example, you use knives. If you bought someone Cutco knives with their last name engraved on it, it says handcrafted especially for Chris Voss on the side of the knives, you're going, well, hell, damn, these are effing nice. Or maybe you have your favorite quote, something that's really important to you. knives you're doing well hell damn these are effing nice and then and then or something or maybe you have your favorite quote that's something that's really important to you

um and that's engraved on the side of the knife instead of your name whatever but it's something important to you you're gonna every time you look at those knives you're gonna think consciously or subconsciously of me there you go uh you give me another great idea maybe i could uh look up oj simpson sending those knives and a grave in the side that said, quit the stabbing, people. Quit murdering. Quit doing the murdering. Maybe you should send them some plastic knives instead.

I'll send them the Cutco ones. Those things cut. There you go. Stop with the murdering. I don't know what that means. I'm probably going to get a C&D from his attorney or something after that. Probably. That's okay.

I can go into Vegas hotels. He can't. There you go. Nailed it. There you go. So, no, I like the idea because with the knives or something like that or some of the other pictures I see on your website, having like an everyday item like that that you say 365 days of the year, they're going to see that. Every time they use that knife, every time they look at it in their knife board thing there in the kitchen,

they're going to see that, and they're always going to remember you. And then when that time comes, that hit where a friend of theirs goes, hey, you know, I was thinking about selling my home. They go, hey, the knife guy, yeah, you see my friend Steve. And you're constantly in their thing. Maybe I should just put like a sign above their bed. That way they'll always remember me every day. Yeah, so we call it attacking the kitchen because people spend a lot of time in the kitchen.

So we always, we try to, we fill up the kitchen with stuff. That's usually what I do at midnight when I'm really hungry. I was going to say, you're doing attack the fridge. Yeah, attack the fridge. Attack the kitchen. Probably because most people spend a lot of their time in there. Yeah, and that's where they entertain. So not only that, we get them all their cool stuff. I have one of

these, they have these things called cork pops. It's over there on my desk over there. But they're like, that's the fastest way to open a wine bottle. And we get them engraved and you basically can open a bottle of wine and get the cork out in a quarter of a second, as opposed to this whole corkscrew crap. You just go and pulps it right off. And not only do you feel like an absolute boss when you pull this thing out in a quarter of a second,

you tell everybody. When I had this client, her name was Rachel. She's like, I get so excited now to open a bottle of wine because you gave me this. And I can't wait to show my friends. Every time they come over for wine, I can't wait to show them the gift you got. And there's a great conversation piece there. We're opening it right there. Boom.

Damn. See, I live in the house. I'm attacking the kitchen, man. There you go. There you go. I love the ideas. And yeah, referrals are so much greater. We're always looking for better ways to referrals.

Maybe I need to give more stuff to my 20 best listeners on the show or something. You could. So funny enough, we have a package, obviously, for your best clients. But there's a lot of CEOs and small businesses who have small teams. And we do an employee package, too. So we can actually love on your employees for you if you don't have the time to, you know, maybe you've got a ton of business and you don't need to do the appreciation as much. I don't know why you would

not need to appreciate, but maybe you don't want to, and you just want to love on your team. We can do that too. We can create packages for your whole squad. There you go. Well, awesome sauce, man. This is brilliant and smart marketing. and it beats, you know, for, I mean, a lot of people spend money on front end marketing,

you know, to get new clients. You think of the money you spend on this is a, is a pittance of that. And you're probably going to get better results. Yeah. The ROI is higher. I mean,

so we, we always say gratitude is the highest form of, uh, we'll give you the highest ROI better than anything else that you anything else that you'll ever see that no one ever uses. There you go. There you go. So this has been wonderful insights to have on the show. Give us your.com so people can find you on the interwebs.

So basically, you could obviously go to the website, appreciationadvocate.com. But if you really just want to reach out to me and maybe join us and allow us to help you out with your business, just send me an email directly. So Steve at AppreciationAdvocate.com. There you go. There you go. Well, Steve, it's been wonderful to have you on the show. Yes, thanks for having me. This has been a lot of fun, a lot of laughs.

I can't wait to come back. There you go. That's what we try and do. We do what we call the infotainment, comedy and entertainment, and we make people more intelligent. I do the comedy. You guys bring the intelligence. Yes.

God knows there's nothing on the left side of the screen for intelligence over here. So all I have is comedy and entertainment, making people point and laugh and go, look at that freak show, that dude right there, that Chris Voss. So there you go. That's my job. Anyway, thanks for tuning in to my audience. Go to goodreads dude right there, that Chris Voss. So there you go. That's my job. Anyway, thanks for tuning in to my audience. Go to goodreads.com for us as Chris Voss. Go to youtube.com for us as Chris Voss.

LinkedIn.com for us as Chris Voss. See all the videos we did of interviews of all the CEOs of CES. I need a nap for like a year after all that. So there you go. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe. And we'll see you guys next time. I'm still trying to