The Jordan Harbinger Show - 13: Joey Coleman | How to Ensure Lifelong Loyalty

Episode Date: March 7, 2018

Joey Coleman (@thejoeycoleman) is a customer experience designer, an award-winning speaker, creator of First 100 Days methodology, and author of the upcoming Never Lose a Customer Again: Turn Any Sale into Lifelong Loyalty in 100 Days. "We're not paying attention to maintaining the relationships that we claim are important to us." -Joey Coleman What We Discussed with Joey Coleman: Why everyone has customers -- even if we don't own a business. Why the first hundred days of a customer life cycle are the most important -- and if you can get the experience right within this time frame, you've got a customer for life. The eight phases of a customer journey and how they apply to business and personal relationships. The experience mindset -- why it's important and how we can develop it. Why Joey's only gotten three tickets in spite of being pulled over by the police 81 times. And much more... Sign up for Six-Minute Networking -- our free networking and relationship development mini course -- at jordanharbinger.com/course!  Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider leaving your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally!  Full show notes and resources can be found here.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

If you are in a business and you don't know how many relationships you're losing, you are missing what has the potential to be the thing that kills your business. I think it's the biggest problem in business today. I think it's the biggest problem in personal relationships today. We're not paying attention to maintaining the relationships that we claim are important to us. Welcome to the Jordan Harbinger show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. As always, here with my producer, Jason DeFilippo. So today we're talking with my friend Joey Coleman. This is a true Renaissance man right here. He developed his narrative skills as a criminal defense attorney, so you know what I call him.

And he's also advised the counsel of Fortune 500 companies. He's a business consultant. He's a great speaker, great communicator, worked at the White House, worked with the Secret Service, the CIA. We get into a little bit of that, and we stay away from a little bit of that today. He's also consulted for places like NASA, Whirlpool, the World Bank, Zappos, and today we're going to explore the eight-phase. of a customer journey and how this applies to your business, if you have one, as well as your personal relationships. We always make sure to apply everything just in case you're on your way up to being the boss

and you're not the boss just yet. And we'll learn about something Joey calls the experience mindset, why it's important and how we can develop it. And last but not least, we will discuss the 81 times he's been pulled over by the police. That's ridiculous. He just can't drive 55, Jason. That's got to be the case. No, he can't.

Seriously. But he's only gotten three tickets. It's incredible. Is that ridiculous? So we're going to talk about that. Joey claims it's all about the experience you create for the police officer on the side of the road and knowing your audience. And I'm thinking he's got slight of hand skills, if you know what I'm saying. No, he doesn't bribe the cops.

He convinces the cops. That's even more impressive. Oh, and also, we have worksheets for the episodes. They're not always going to be out right away right now because we're catching up. We've got a volunteer team doing the worksheets. So a special thanks to all those cats. The worksheets will help you solidify your understanding of the key takeaways from every guest, including today's guest, Joey Coleman.

And that link to those worksheets will be in the show notes at jordanharbinger.com slash podcast. Now here's Joey Coleman. So, Joey, I appreciate you coming on the show, man. We've been friends for a while, and it's cool to pick your brain about stuff, but it's really cool when you are my captive and then you have to give me a really complete answer and you're not running past me in the hallway somewhere at an event. A, I'm thrilled to be on the show. B, I'm mostly terrified because I feel like I'm strapped in a chair with a spotlight in my face. Then I'm going to have to answer every question you ask. But I'm up for the game. Let's do it.

Yeah. I mean, this is what you signed up for. This is. I don't, was there a waiver somewhere? I don't believe there was a waiver. You checked a box a long time ago and that was it. I checked a box somewhere and that was it. Yeah. When I accepted your Facebook friend request. Exactly. It comes to the way. Anytime in the future, you could interview me. Exactly. Well, look, I know you've worked with Whirlpool, NASA, Deloite, World Bank, Zappos. And I get Whirlpool and Zappos, but why did NASA and the World Bank care about a customer experience?

That seems like the opposite of what, I mean, this is a tax-based funded and UN sort of organization. It seems like the last place that would care at all, what anybody thinks. Sure. And I totally get it. I mean, I think our mutual friend James Altoucher talks about the fact that everyone has 11 bosses. And I think there's some truth to that in the sense that everyone has customers. You know, NASA has their customers. They have not only the people that they serve, but they have the people on the hill that are voting whether their budget gets approved or not.

They have the president who's signing off on whether or not the budget gets approved. And so with both NASA and World Bank, the work I did for them was to try to create remarkable experiences. in their product offerings. So NASA had this program called the Explorer School Program. They would try to teach kids in rural communities and, you know, run down kind of low economic school systems about science and math and space. And so we helped them create some great experiences

in a way that could package that teaching and present it through the teachers in those schools. And for World Bank, they do an annual report where they pick some big, crazy topic that they do research. on for years and then they publish an annual report. And the goal is to get people to read the annual report. So they brought me in to help advise them on how they could make an annual report that people actually wanted to read. So a lot of fun with both of those because if more people

read the annual report, then more people support the World Bank and their efforts. If more people learn about science and math, NASA has astronauts and scientists for the future. So I believe everybody has customers, regardless of what kind of job you have, there are people that you serve, that if you make the experience better, they will think more highly of you. That makes sense to me. I guess I hadn't thought about that, but sure, everyone has somebody they got to answer to. And I also realize that we just put you on the whole sort of conspiracy, Alex Jones radar. Now, he worked with NASA and the World Bank.

Where's your Freemason Tat? Yeah, wait until I find out I worked for the Secret Service and the CIA, too. Then all hell really breaks loose. I think they just found out about that. Yeah. I think, oh, shoot, I just said it. And this is live. Yeah.

Oh, there you go. Now, I was an overt employee. There's two types of employees, overt and covert. I can publicly share that I work for them. There's not a lot I can share about what I did for them, but that's, I did have the opportunity to work for those organizations. Yeah, those would have been interesting as well. So who does the CIA think is their customer?

Are you able to even comment on anything like that? Yeah, sure. I mean, I think the CIA has a lot of customers, right? They have the people that are going to read the intelligence they produce, whether that's the military, whether those are operatives in foreign countries, whether those are foreign countries, whether those are, you know, the people on the Hill or the people in the White House. So, yeah, they have lots of customers that they're trying to make sure that their message or their positioning or their data or their observations or their analysis get seen read

and followed by those folks that are in more of kind of an execution or kind of an act on the information type position. So yeah, again, similar, every job I've ever had, you know, I was listening to your very first episode of the show, which, as you know, I'm a huge fan of. And you were talking to Mark Garagos. And he said, you know, to be a good trial lawyer, you need to be a constant student of human nature. And, you know, you and I share in common that we both used to be attorneys. I was a criminal defense lawyer. And all throughout my career, every job I've ever had is about human nature.

You know, the things that I learned were about why do humans do the things. they do and what can we do to make them do the things we want them to do. And that common thread has run through every job and every position I've had in my career. I like this thread because first I thought, oh, you know, I'd love to get joy on the show, but a lot of people who are listening, we don't have businesses, we don't care about this. But the point here is everybody in every job has a customer, even if you think, well, I don't have customers. I work in the IT department in the basement and or I work in the middle management level or the C-suite, I don't really have to worry about this.

We have client-facing people who worry about this. And what you're saying from the sound of it is no matter where you are in any organization, you have customers. You just probably need to maybe expand the definition of what you think your customer is or looks like. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I wholly believe that every person on the planet has customers. And if you are more of that kind of internal facing position,

You know, you mentioned the IT person. Well, guess what? Your customers are more internal than external. Your coworkers are your customers. Your boss is your customer. You know, these are the people that you're serving. And if you come at it from a point of view of I'm here to serve, I'm here to create a remarkable experience for you. Not only will you be more successful in kind of the day-to-day task and operations you have to do, but the research shows that your career will skyrocket because we like to do business with people that. we like. We like to promote people who we like. We like to give new job opportunities to people that work for us that we like. And so if you're able to create that level of reputation or experience when interacting with you, it opens up a whole host of opportunities for both your career advancement and your personal advancement. All right. So what are we looking at from the core of your methodology, if I can call it that, is the first 100 days of a customer life cycle. Tell us what that really means.

Because it's obvious to me, yeah, I go to Nordstrom, I get a shirt, and then the first hundred days really matter. I understand that. We've all got our little nurture sequences and things like that. Why is it the first hundred days other than it sounds like a nice round number? What are you looking at with this experience? What are you trying to accomplish here? Well, I think there's a couple things.

Number one, the reason why the first hundred days are the most important is because all the research shows that they're most important. You know, I'm a guy who, while I spend a lot of time talking about customer emotions and feelings and experiences, I like to have those ideas and methodologies grounded in science and fact and research. And so what the research shows is that the typical business is going to lose somewhere between 20 and 70 percent of their new customers before they reach the 100-day anniversary. So this time period, right at the beginning of the relationship is the most important time period in the entire relationship. It's where the first impressions are made. It's where the first moments of truth, the first experiences are

had. And the foundation that you lay early on in the relationship determines whether or not you're building on something that is solid and strong and firm or whether you're building on something that is shifty and shaky and kind of wobbly. And so it's really important to focus on this time period. Additionally, the research shows that if you get to day 100, in the typical business, you're going to stay for five years. So this period is more dispositive of the lifetime value of the customer than any other time. And that's a fancy way of saying, if you care about what happens at the beginning, customers will stay around longer. This can be applied to personal relationships as well, right? If we care about establishing a really good

relationship at the beginning of the interaction and doing what we say we're going to do, showing up on time for a meeting or a date, you know, being a little thoughtful in our interaction, not making it all about us, making it about them too. That actually fosters the relationship. And you, you mentioned this phrase, you know, well, we all have our nurturing sequences. What's interesting is most companies sequences that I review are not nurturing at all. They're designed to push you to the next upsell. They're not actually designed to make you feel welcomed. And I think that's the difference between focusing on an onboarding system that's designed to make a new customer or a new relationship feel welcomed, feel special,

feel unique and interesting, as opposed to, great, let me just run you through the process here so that you'll buy some more stuff from us later. Right. Okay. That's interesting because for me, here on the show, I want people to share the show. I want people to review the show and recommend it to friends. The whole idea is making people feel welcome probably because I don't have any upsells. So it's tempting, of course, when I do start launching events and products, which are, of course, in the almost immediate future of the Jordan Harbinger show here, live events and products like that.

It might be hard initially for me to remember, actually, you still need to make these people feel welcome. You still need to make them feel like part of the Jordan Harbinger Show family because they are. And it's tempting, man, as you know, to take that email list and go, oh, you should totally buy this. Thanks for entering your email. Also, you should buy this other thing. And if you don't like those, for some reason, here's another thing. Hey, it's been three days. You didn't buy that thing yet.

Why not? What's going on? Do you have some question? Here's another thing you can buy this cheaper. That's kind of my experience with every internet marketer ever, if it's not even more pushy and annoying than that. Absolutely. Absolutely.

And to be honest, this is a conflict I have with some folks on my team on a regular basis. For example, I've got this new book coming out. And my thought was, well, I want to give an excerpt of the book that people can download for free to get a taste of what they're going to be able to read. And I say this respectfully, you know, publishers traditionally say, oh, great, give them the first chapter, the first two chapters. I'm like, that's fine, but I operate a little differently. I want to give them chapters six, seven, and eight. And people are like, wait, why do you want to give them chapters from the middle? And I'm like, because the first chapters are getting things started.

And if they come to my website, the relationship has already started. they want to get to the substance. They want the meat. So I want to give them the stuff that matters. And so we put on the website that you can download chapter six, seven, and eight. And as you might imagine, our web people were like, great. So we'll do an email opt-in. And then we email them the PDF of the sample chapters.

I'm like, nope, no email opt-in. They just go to the page and they can download the PDF. And it's like, oh, that's going to, we're going to miss so many emails. I'm like, I get it. And I don't care. Because underneath we're going to have a box that says, says, hey, if you like being able to get this excerpt without providing your email and you'd like to get some other cool stuff that we might have too, go ahead and give us your email and we'll

send you book-related specific stuff. But if you don't want to give us your email, you don't have to. There isn't a person I know that spends time on the internet today that doesn't have what I call the dummy email, the fake email that they give out on all these things. And all you have to do is look at your subscriber list and you see like fake email after fake email. And it's so obvious. People, you know, are nasty about it. You know, I'm never giving you an email at gmail.com, you know, and stuff like, and people do all this stuff.

My subscribers, I get their legit email. And the reason is because they access a lot of information for free. And if after all of that, you're like, okay, the rapport is built, the trust is built, now I want to trust you with some access to my inbox, they give it to me. And I trust that and respect that to a great, great deal. and to a great magnitude. I haven't, you know, I haven't actually emailed my list to tell them to buy the book. And I don't intend to do that until, like, right before the book comes out. And on one hand, that is driving people crazy. But I'm like, look, I want to keep providing value. Keep providing value. It's, you know, it's Gary Vaynerchuk's, you know, jab, jab, jab, right hook. I want, I want them to have lost track of how many jabs there are and how many things I've given them. before I finally ask for something. Yeah, I like this methodology myself

because I also, I'm not an email marketer. I like interviewing people. I like getting the knowledge out. And some recent practice that we'd started here on the show is we create worksheets for every episode. So there's going to be a worksheet for this one. There's going to be a worksheet for all the past ones that we may have missed because we were rebooting the show here.

And you have to go to the website and you enter your email because we haven't figured out a great way to put them on the site that doesn't cause all kinds of things. of other issues. That said, if people don't want to give us their email, it's okay. I get it. However, 99% of what you will get from us is here's the worksheet for the episode. Here's something interesting and useful. We very rarely, especially in the newest iteration of the company where we don't have to shill things to keep the lights on, we can really focus on giving tons of value,

which is frankly where my head's at right now anyway. It's just get those. loyal fans back that really loved what we had to offer because we used to get when we did things the other way we used to get a lot of notes that were like hey man um love you but i got like six emails last week and all of them were for sale on this sale on that i'm like yeah i don't have control over that it's a little embarrassing and so that was one of the reasons that we've got this reboot here is it's we just wanted to keep everybody at the level of respect we would have for our real life friends, if that makes sense. Absolutely. No, it 100% makes sense. And you and I have many mutual friends that operate in the internet marketer space. And I think a lot of people when they

hear internet marketer want to run to a shower because it just means you're about to have an interaction with a snake oil salesman, you know, or somebody who just abuses your email and abuses the relationship. I'm not interested in that. And I think the problem, problem is, and I know you well enough to know if you say, hey, well, give us your email and 99% of this is going to be awesome stuff that's not a sale, et cetera. The problem is people have become so jaded because of how the typical business operates. And it's frankly, part of the reason I wrote the book is I'm on a mission to raise the bar for customer experience on the planet. I think the bar for customer experience right now is lying on the ground. I think we live in an era where people have the

ability, courtesy of technology, to be more connected than at any other time in human history, and yet people feel more disconnected than at any other time in human history. I want to get us away from being skeptical that, you know, sharing our email means we're going to be spammed and instead be an environment where if there's somebody that you feel is providing value, giving them your email or giving them, you know, friending them or connecting with them on Facebook Messenger or giving them your phone number so they can text you is a good use of you sharing your private information because they're going to respect it. And while many say they respect it, few actually do in practice. When it's time to scale your business, it's time for Shopify. Get everything you need

to grow the way you want. Like all the way. Stack more sales with the best converting checkout on the planet. Track your cha-chings from every channel, right in one spot, and turn real-time reporting into big time opportunities. Take your business to a whole new level. Switch to Shopify. Start your free trial today. It seems like whenever you do this, and we're not just talking about email marketing, I hope people are sort of reading between the lines here with customer experience

and with experience with people in general. Once you go down the road of treating people like numbers or treating somebody in your business like a number, whether it's an employee or a customer themselves, it gets easier to treat people like numbers, not just because you're getting used to it, because the marketing has to make a shift. If I've got an email list or a list of customers or people walking into my shop and I'm just trying to do the volume thing, we end up doing business like an airline or something where it's just butts in seats now. And that is always secondary to whether or not people actually enjoyed the experience. Because if you focus on whether or not people enjoy the experience, it's a different

type of work and you go, well, this is hard, maybe it's not working. So then you do the numbers game, and it just kind of doesn't matter if people hate you because you just go, whatever. We just need more numbers of more people and then we'll hit our goals and it doesn't matter. It's like churn, right? This is the churn rate that we see in Silicon Valley where they, I have a million customers. Yeah, well, you're spending a million dollars a day on customer acquisition. And then there's another organization that says, we have 100,000 customers, but we spent a million dollars last year on acquisition and everybody's staying. Exactly. Exactly. I think that if you are in a business and you don't know how many relationships you're losing, you are missing what has the potential to be the thing that

kills your business. I think it's the biggest problem in business today. I think it's the biggest problem in personal relationships today. We're not paying attention to maintaining the relationships that we claim are important to us. You know, there's so many businesses that say, oh, we treat you like family. And the first thing they do when you become a customer is literally assign you a customer number. It is the very first act. And then when customers say, oh, I feel like I'm being, that I'm being treated like I'm a number. Well, no kidding. It's because you are actually being treated by a number. You're smart. You figured it out. You have a customer number. And so I understand that businesses and organizations need to figure out ways to manage their relationships and, you know,

keep track of who their customers are and that sometimes a name alone isn't enough. But you're right. It goes to the philosophy of what kind of relationships do you want to have? What type of interactions do you want to have? And if it's all about churn and burn and get the next one in and fill the seat, here's the thing. It's the modern day version of a Ponzi scheme. You will run out of people. You eventually run out of new prospects. And then you wake up one day and you're like, there are no more new prospects. We've burned every bridge and our company's falling apart, as opposed to nurturing those relationships and saying in the beginning, you know what, we're going to take care of you and we're going to spend even more time keeping you in the fold than we did trying to get you to come in from

out of the cold. Gotcha. Okay. So what is it that's going on here that customers and companies have this sort of desperate need for personal and emotional connection? It's not just customers. This is people in general. And so you're saying it from the sound of it that the customer experience, whether your client facing in your organization or not, as we covered earlier, creates that connection. I think what happens is we live in a time in an era in human history where technology has us connected all the time. You know, the research shows that a huge percentage of people sleep with their cell phone within arm's reach of them, right? That at any given point of the day, their cell phones in arm's reach. I mean, I would ask,

the people listening to the show. You're probably listening to this potentially on your cell phone, right? Or if you're not, your cell phone is probably in your pocket or in your purse or on the counter next to you or on your desk. So we have all this connection all the time. Our email inboxes are overflowing. Our text messages are overflowing. Our social media alerts and updates are overflowing. And there are all these things that supposedly are our friends and the companies we've decided to associate with. And supposedly the conversations they're trying to trigger with us are value-based and relevant to us. But the reality is they're not. And so people more and more are feeling the overwhelm of all this connection. And as a result, it actually

makes them feel disconnection. And so the opportunity for a business or an individual to say, I'm going to actually double down on meaningful relationships is tremendous. You know, I'm a big believer in personal and emotional connections. So personal and emotional connection is connecting with someone in a way that's personal, meaning it's an experience that they had. And emotional, meaning that they have a reaction to it. They feel something about it. So for example, where you went to school, you know, it's a personal connection as to, you know, your alma mater. Now, depending on whether you enjoyed your time in school or not, that could be a positive emotion or a negative emotion. For most people, at least at the college and postgraduate level, it ends up being a fairly

positive experience where they have some pride in where they got their degree. But that's not always the case. So when you make a personal connection, the second thing you need to be paying attention to is, well, is this going to be a positive emotional connection or a negative emotional connection? If you're talking to somebody who's gotten married, oh, is that a, it's a personal connection? Yes. Is it positive or negative? Well, it depends on the marriage. You know, someone who has kids. Oh, that's really personal. It happened to them. Are they excited about it or not? Well, then they're the first few months, they're probably a walking zombie. It feels really not fun. But then you kind of get to these moments where you get a little dose of oxytocin or you kind of feel, you know, you get that first smile or the first mama or dadda. And suddenly things shift. And it's like, okay, wait, maybe this is worth it. And you can go a long way on a little bit, which is, you know, one of the things I've learned throughout my career is these small little touches make all the difference. And everybody always worries about, oh, I need to do some grand gesture. No, if I were to ask you the most meaningful moments of your life, what you remember, nine times out of ten, they weren't the

grand gestures. They were the little things, the little unexpected compliment, the little unexpected, you know, I've got your back, the thoughtful gift, the thoughtful voicemail, whatever it may be, that let that person know, I care about you as an individual. Perfect. And I know that you've done a lot of work on this. I mean, for crying out loud, you did a play on this at Mastermind Talks with Clay A Bear. And it was funny watching it because everyone, everyone watching this was like an airline, what an airline didn't do and then what an airline should do to really wow a customer. And it was like, that's never going to. It was like watching a superhero movie where they're fighting hand-to-hand and you just think, it was like watching The Matrix only it was the customer service version.

You're just like, that's not real. That's not how this works. Well, and part of our goal is to shift that, right? It's to make it so that people actually, and by doing that play, you mentioned, it's to give people a context of, oh, there's a different way to think about this. And the number of people since then, just as an aside, who have messaged Clay and I and said, oh, my gosh, loved your presentation, had this interaction with an airline today and they should have done it the way you guys did it, right? Well, eventually maybe some of that video footage will make it to some of the airlines and they'll say, we need to adjust how we approach our customer. Here's hoping. Yeah, here's hoping indeed. And so you've broken this down to the eight phases of the customer journey, and I'd

love to go through these because, again, when people think customers, you really do have to think about anybody knew that you meet inside work, any sort of personal relationship that you might have, regardless of whether or not your client facing or you own your own business. And I always reiterate that here because occasionally we'll get a message like, oh, this is really interesting. If I ever run my own business, I'll have to relisten to this, or I sent it to people that own their own business because it's useful for them and less so for me. And I'm just thinking,

not really. You know, you work in an office, but you've got, you're working at a law firm. You know, these people, the partners are your customers, the associates are your customers, even if you're not answering the phone. So let's go through these eight phases here that all start with A, so you've just annihilated your chances of creating an acronym out of this. Exactly. The acronym is, ah, right. It's, what do you say at the dentist? So take us through this. So the first phase is assess. This is where the customer considers whether or not they want to do business with you.

In a business setting, this is considered to be maybe, you know, the marketing and sales function, prospecting, filling the funnel, trying to convince people that you're a good choice for them. In a more personal context, this could be you meet someone and in the first interactions, you're kind of getting into the conversation, trying to figure out, well, is this somebody I'm going to want to exchange numbers with, get a business card from? continue the conversation after today. Right. So you're assessing how things are going on. And this can last, you know, a couple seconds standing at the checkout line and saying, oh, they have some altitudes there. I should grab one. Your assessment phase is very short. It was a millisecond before you picked it up and said, I'm going to buy these mince and we'll leave. If you sell runways to municipalities, you know, you might turn around and say, oh, to buy a new runway is going to be a multi-year, proposal process to determine who's going to do it. So the assess phase is long or short. It kind of

doesn't matter because then we move to phase two, which is admit. This is in the first 100 day strategy, day one of the relationship. This is where in a business context, the individual admits that they have a problem that they believe your product or service can help them with, right? So they sign up for your service, they buy your product, whatever it may be. In a personal context, It might be where they say, oh, this is interesting. I think I'd like to continue a conversation with this person. Let's exchange numbers. Let's agree to, you know, meet up at some point in the future.

Then we go to phase three, affirm. Now, in common parlance, this is refers to as buyer's remorse. What brain science shows us is right after making a purchase or right after starting a new relationship, the brain fills with dopamine and we're excited. we see the possibility, the potentiality of what is to come. But almost as quickly as that dopamine, you know, coats our brain, it starts to recede. And as it recedes, those feelings of joy, euphoria, and excitement are replaced by feelings of fear and doubt and uncertainty. Well, what if this doesn't work out the way I had hoped?

You know, what if this product doesn't work the way it did in the infomercial when I get it home? What if I sign up for this service and they told us that this stuff was included, but we get into it and now it's nodding. included. The problem is everyone who's listening to your show is familiar with the phrase buyer's remorse. Sure. And yet I ask you to look at your business and say, what do we do to counter buyers remorse? I used to use that term for how a woman felt after she woke up next to me in bed. Well, hey, you know, this stuff has applicability in our personal lives too, right? But it's like, what are we doing to counter that? What are we doing to address the fact that we know science tells us that all humans go through this.

And yet what happens in the typical business setting is the business is high-fiving and celebrating, oh, we got a new customer. This is awesome. This rocks. We made some more money. And the customer's going, I wonder if this is going to work out. I wonder if it goes bad if I'm going to be able to get my money back. And that difference between the high emotional state of the person doing the selling and the low emotional state of the person who just made the purchase, if you don't address that and close that gap.

pretty quickly, you're never going to close it. It's just going to keep getting bigger and bigger as the relationship goes on. We then come to the next phase, phase four, which is activate. And the reason I call it activate is I want the word to feel energetic. I want you to energize the relationship. So this is the unboxing experience of getting your product. I mean, you go on YouTube and you can watch a video after video of people doing unboxing videos, you know, showing what it's like to reveal a product for the first time. Or if you're in more of a service-based business, this is people who come to your office for the first kickoff meeting. What are you doing to make them feel like doing business with you is going to be different than any other experience they've ever had? How can you make it so

special to really get things off on the right foot and activate? This is, you know, again, in a personal context, it's like a first date, you know, or even if it's not in a dating context, the first time that you meet up and, you know, go to a game together or go hang out together or go for drinks or whatever, even in a non-dating context. It's like that, that first experience is going to kind of set the foundation for the relationship to come. So that gets everything activated. Then we move into the phase where usually most relationships fall apart, whether personal or business. This is the acclimate phase, right? This is where the other person is getting used to interacting with you. In a business context, you may have sold your product or

service thousands or millions of times. But for this new customer, this is the first time they've ever interacted with you. And so you need to hold their hand. You need to show them what comes next. People always ask me, they're like, Joey, you know, this sounds fine and dandy, but, you know, we include directions with our products. All they have to do is read the directions. Or in our proposal, we outlined the sequence of phases that, you know, the project would go through with the timeline. Why don't they just refer to that? Why do I have to hold their hand? And what I ask people is, Well, do you read the directions every time? Do you read every contract and proposal you sign?

I mean, I'm a lawyer, but no. But you're a lawyer. But the kicker is even lawyers I know don't read. No, I don't do it. I don't know about you. Like, I always read the contracts and the waivers when I get somewhere because I'm weird that way. And invariably, the people behind the counter will be like, no one has ever read the waiver before. And I'm like, yeah, I know.

It's okay. And lots of times what I was at an event recently in Las Vegas and they had this crazy waiver. read the waiver and I went up to the owner afterwards. I was like, by the way, can I just tell you, you've got a glaring error in your waiver. I'm a recovering attorney. I used to be one. I like this organization. I like what you're doing. Here's a problem. And the guy looked at it and he's like, oh my gosh. And I explained why it was causing an issue. And he's like, well, that's not the way it's meant to work. And I'm like, I get that. That's why I'm talking to you because you think it's working one way, but it's actually working against you. And he's like, I'm comping your entire day at this,

at this experience place. And I was like, I was like, oh, that's not necessary. It's like, no, you just saved me exposure to millions and millions of dollars. Nice. And it's because it's recognizing what needs to happen in that acclimate phase. I like that. When I see a waiver, I'll read the whole thing. But if it's like seven pages, I realize that the person has done that most likely in order to, one, add gravitas to their experience, which I think is a dumb way to do it. I hate that. I'll go to L.A. and I'll go to a party and it's like here's a six-page waiver to get into the party because all these famous people are going to be here and I'm thinking this is baloney you could have handled this in three paragraphs

no photos totally the other thing is if I see a really long waiver I usually will strike out the last part where it says I have read and understand this does that actually do anything because of course it's like I signed the bottom of this but I did strike out the part that said I've read and understand this so it's a little bit dubious usually these waivers are 16 different ways of I can film you when you walk in here. Yeah, it's crazy. I mean, as a recovering attorney, and I know you are as well, neither of us is giving legal advice here.

But yeah, it's fascinating when you cross out a term on a waiver and you put your initials next to it and still sign it. How often they just accept that? And it's like, by the way, I just materially altered the contract and said that it's going to be different now going forward. And you just accepted it. So we're good to go and we're off to the races. Yeah, I agree with you.

I'm a big believer that, you know, this kind of comes back to the experience you're creating for people, right? You're standing outside that party. They have a six-page waiver and you're thinking, do I even want to go to this party now? Right? Because it just feels weird. It feels awkward. It makes people anxious, you know, for a lawyer to get handed a waiver to sign out, we're like, yeah, whatever. These things usually aren't worth the paper they're written on, right?

When you look at how they actually show up in the law. But for the average person, they're looking at this going, oh, man, what am I agreeing to? I'm scared. I'm nervous. It's the same way, you know, you get instructions, you know, IKEA gives out instructions that have no words. They just have pictures. Now, I don't know about you. I've had plenty of, yeah, I've had plenty of terrible experiences where I'm like, oh my God, I'm seven hours into this bookshelf. What the heck is going on? Right. But the flip side of that is their instructions are easier to read and understand than the typical instructions. They still have problems, but they're actually easier because they work to make them as simple as possible. So,

I agree with you. The people you interact with are overwhelmed, whether that's friends or customers. You know, don't send the seven paragraph email when the two-sentence email will get it done. That being said, don't make your communications cold and trite, right? I always start emails off with at least one sentence of friendliness. Like even if it's something, if I'm sending an email on a Monday, hey, I hope you had a great weekend this weekend. Just something that says, hey, I recognize that I'm communicating with a human, not a machine. And I'm going to acknowledge that you're a human, not a machine. Those little things go a really long way. It's funny to hear that from an attorney because I can imagine you sending an email that's like,

Dear friend, hope this finds you well and you had a great weekend. I will be filing my lawsuit for the demand of $187,000 effective tomorrow if you do not immediately cease and desist. Yeah, that's kind of how that would go. Exactly. Yeah, you just, you know, be friendly. It never hurts to be kind, as my mother used to say when we were growing up. It never hurts to be kind. All right.

So assess, admit, affirm, activate, acclimate. We left off at the beginning of Accomplish. What are we doing here? Accomplish is a really interesting phase. To be candid, it's a phase that came up that prior to writing the book was not part of my process. But I realized that I needed to call it out as a separate phase. accomplishes when the customer achieves the goal that they had when they originally decided to do business with you. Most businesses don't pay attention to this. They sell the product or they sell

the service without ever asking the customer. What are you hoping to use this for? So for example, you mentioned earlier in the show, you know, going to Northstrom's and buying a shirt. Let's pretend that I'm the salesperson and you come to buy the shirt and I say, oh, Mr. Harbinger, what is this shirt for? And you say, oh, I'm planning to wear this to my cousin's wedding later this summer. And they're like, oh, great, when's the wedding? And you're like, oh, it's in August sometime. I don't remember. Oh, well, I'm sure you look fabulous in it.

Imagine if in September you got a note from that sales rep at Nordstrom's that said, hello, just wanted to check in and make sure that the shirt looked as good on you at the wedding as it did in the dressing room and when you were trying it on. here in the store. Hope you had a fantastic wedding with your cousin. We look forward to serving you again in the future. A couple things would happen. Number one, you would be astounded. I would not believe I'd go, wow, this automation is phenomenal. Yeah, exactly. You'd be like, how is that possible? Well, it's possible because somebody paid attention in the first conversation. You would probably also say, man, next time I need another shirt, I'm going back to Nordstrom's because they know me, they like me, they take care of me. It's going to be a good experience, et cetera.

Now, some people when I share this kind of stuff, they go, Joey, doesn't that just sound creepy, right? Doesn't it sound like you're being stalked? Not really. No, that's the thing. It doesn't. And are there maybe a small percentage of your customers that will react that way? Absolutely.

But losing their business is so worth it for the lift in business you're going to get from everyone else who goes, oh my gosh, they care. That was amazing. So we have to ask our customers what they're trying to accomplish and then make sure we actually deliver it. Next, we move into the adopt phase. The adopt phase is now they've accomplished what they want and now they've become loyal to you and your brand. They are only going to do business with you going forward, right? So this is, for example, the guy who changes the oil in our vehicle, right?

He does an amazing job. He does an amazing job every time. They're fantastic shop. I will not get an oil change anywhere else. even though for context, I now drive an hour to get to his shop. His shop used to be 10 minutes from my house. I moved and now it's over an hour away and I still go because I know they're going to take great care of me.

And then, and only then do we move to the final phase, phase eight advocate, right? And when somebody becomes an advocate and starts to advocate for your brand, they're a raving fan. They're referring their friends, their colleagues, you know, their family members. this is the holy grail. This is where you get to spend less money on marketing and sales because you have so many new leads and opportunities coming in because you've created these raving fans. So the crazy thing is most businesses, we talked about all eight phases. Most businesses try very early in the process to jump to this stage. They ask for referrals way too early. And they try to

rush the relationship. I, this is the equivalent. to me of, you know, going on a first date and sitting having dinner and saying, you know, right after you order the entree. So when should we schedule a time for me to meet your parents? And it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a second. I'm not even sure if I'm staying through dessert. Calm yourself. Slow your roll. Right. So customers have the chance to go through these eight phases. Our relationships have the chance to go through these eight phases. But that every human being is going to have to stop and spend at least some amount of time in each one. before they can transition to the next one.

And the interesting part about this for me is doing business as a small business that really does care about every single listener except for the crazy people. And I throw that in there because we just had a conversation pre-show about how there's just going to be crazy people that you cannot please no matter what. I really strive to do a lot of these things.

And my wife and I will spend hours each week crafting emails to people that when I tell other entrepreneurs about, how we reply to our audience, they're like, you're dumb. Why are you answering your email from every listener that writes in? And the answer to that is, if somebody writes in and they get a response within a few hours or a few days or even a few weeks, given the current volume of email, my hypothesis here is that they're going to care more about what we do, and they're more likely to continue listening to the show because they feel like they have a

personal connection, well, they do have a personal connection with us. And that makes them much more likely to stick around for years instead of saying, I tried one of these and it was okay. And then I lost track of it somehow. Especially if they listen to a couple duds, I'd like to think we don't put out duds. But who knows, you know, Joey, this could be a dud. You never know, man. This could be a dud. We hope not.

Yeah. If you have a personal relationship with somebody that, you know, they listen to one and they go, I didn't love that. But Jordan's cool. He's all right. Him and Jason are good people. I'll give another one a shot, right? Instead of screw this next.

Totally. Here's the thing. Most businesses, business owners, people in, you know, management positions think that everything has to be perfect. It doesn't. Humanity isn't perfect, right? It just needs to be real. And, you know, your hypothesis has actually been proven time and time again. Taking the time to write those communications, to create those personal interactions, creates a night and day experience. You know, this, I'm sure it comes up for you all the time. It comes up for me. all the time where somebody will say, hey, you did this, what, to be frank, was like a small little thing that lots of times I even forgot that I did that had a huge impact on them. And it's because I took the time to care. And I don't say that to be like, oh, look how cool Joey is. He has all this time in the world. No, I mean, I'll send an email recently to somebody as a thank you for pre-ordering my book. And I said, oh, I really appreciate you getting in there, you know, and supporting me. And they were like,

what are you doing sending your own emails? And I replied and I was like, read, wait to you read the book. You'll understand why. And I have a team and I have people who help me. But if you, if you don't stay close to that, I mean, we mentioned earlier, you know, some of the jobs I've had. One of the jobs, one of the interesting things, I had the opportunity to work at the White House. And one of the cool things about working at the White House is my boss had a rule. I was a lawyer at the White House, you know, working in the Office of Counsel to the President. And my boss had this rule that one hour per month, every lawyer on the team had to go down and work the switchboard. And they have this switchboard at the White House where citizens can call in and air their grievances with their government.

That sounds terrible and bad. No, but, you know, it's crazy. And, you know, like, it'd be funny. You know, somebody would call in and be like, why haven't you told us about the UFOs? Other people would call in and say, you know, this tiny little provision of the tax code is offensive to me. And they'd want to get into like a big deep tax code conversation, which for me personally was never an exciting conversation. But I'd much rather have the UFO conversation. But long story short, the reason that my boss did this is he said, I never want you to forget who were actually serving. Like you work in the White House and you serve at the pleasure of the president of the United States. But your end user, your end customer are the citizens of this country,

whether they voted for this person that we serve or not. And to me, that's why I will always be aware of the emails and the messages that come in through my podcast or through my book or, you know, my website or wherever audience members. I hang around afterwards and talk to audience members at speeches, which a lot of speakers don't do because it's like, you're my customers. I want to know what's working for you. What's not working for you? And I'll ask people, you know, hey, what was your favorite part of the book? What was your favorite part of my speech? You know, what was the part that you wished I would have spent more time on?

What was the part that you thought was kind of a waste of your time? You wish I wouldn't have discussed at all. Because I'm constantly looking for that feedback to hone the experience and make it better for my audience. You say the word experience a lot. And the reason I want to latch on to that is because it seems like you go through, I know you. So I know that you go through life with an experience mindset and that that makes you a happier guy. I don't know, more fulfilled guy. It does. Yeah, 100%. Can you explain this? Is there a practical way that we can kind of wrap our minds around developing an experience mindset?

Yeah. So I, first of all, I love this question and I appreciate this question because I think there is a huge opportunity for people to have more happiness, more fulfillment, more meaning in their life by seeking out experiences over things. There comes a point where you can only buy so many more DVDs or so many. more pairs of shoes or so many more cars or whatever, whatever it is that you buy or collect or want or have. What I've found is that by seeking out experiences, it has led to a richer life and more vivid memories. I've had the chance to do some absolutely insane things in my life. I mean, I've jumped off bridges into rushing rivers with Tony Robbins. I've, you know, had lunch or dinner rather in a tent next to the pyramid. I've, you know, I've, you know, had lunch or dinner, rather in a tent next to the pyramid. I've done, you know, behind the scenes tours on stages, you know, with rock stars and done these crazy, crazy things. I mean, even as a kid,

you know, I had the chance when I was, you know, the summer, you know, 15, 16 years old to go to the then Soviet Union. And we were signed KGB agents that would come along with us to make sure we were behaving. And my buddies and I would play KGB tag, right? We'd like go out and You know, we'd see them following us and we'd like run and run around a corner and then stay in there and wait for them to catch up and come around the corner and then act like they weren't following us, which was probably totally ridiculous and stupid. But again, remember, I was a teenager, right? But I had these experiences that have all contributed to these really fun stories that I can tell,

this life perspective that I have. I'm a big fan of travel. I'm a big fan of, you know, when was the last time you did something for the first time? and by incorporating these types of experiences into your life, not only is it richer and more fulfilling, but it gives you a perspective that makes doing the, quote, unquote, more mundane things in life that much easier. So how do we start to adopt this for ourselves?

Because right now people are going, oh, great, well, yeah, if you're some rich Joey Coleman guy's famous author, you can go hang out with Tony Robbins and go to the Soviet Union or something like that, which doesn't exist anymore. So no matter how much money you have, you can't do that. But you can go and do all these crazy things, but it sounds like the experiential mindset or an experience mindset is something that's reserved for the privileged.

Not at all. Not at all. And I can, and I appreciate that because I can understand where it might have come off that way. And that's certainly not my intention. You snob, Joey. Come on. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Not what I was going for. Sorry, friends. But no, I think, I think it's all about perspective, you know, do you want to, you know, what are, and it doesn't have to be travel. It doesn't have to be, you know, hanging out with celebrities. because frankly, hanging out with just average folks on the street is just as exciting and just as eye-opening and perspective building. I think there are all kinds of things you can do around in an experience. You know, look at, you know, what I might say to the listeners is, all right, you've,

you know, what's your typical weekend look like? Oh, well, you know, I work really hard during the week. So I come home and Saturday is kind of like a Netflix and chill day. And Sunday I kind of do a little bit of things, maybe prepare some meals for the week ahead or like start getting anxious about work, whatever, et cetera, et cetera. And, you know, that's my weekend. And it's like, okay, well, what if you looked and found a free fair or a festival or a flea market or, you know, something that's happening in your town that you normally

wouldn't go to and you just went and committed to hang out for at least an hour and observe and experience and see it and try it? you know, one of the things, somebody, we had a babysitter the other night for our boys. I have a four-year-old and a two-year-old. And we came back that night and we're talking to the babysitter. The kids were already asleep. And the babysitter said, you know, it was really interesting. Your boys were willing to try some new food. We had gotten takeout and she had gotten something for herself. And she was like, they were willing to try mine, which was something they said they had never had. And I'm like, yeah, they never have. And she's like, normally kids aren't willing to do that. They just seemed open to.

it. And I have to tell you, like in that moment, I looked at my wife and I'm like, it's working. It's working. You know what I mean? We're trying to instill this type of mindset in our kids of, hey, you don't have to eat the whole thing, but you have to take three bites, not one bite, three bites. Because one bite, that's probably not enough to decide whether you liked it or not. Yeah, I think it's all about trying things multiple times in different ways and seeking out those type of experiences that will lead to that richer, more fulfilled life. How do we evaluate a our experiences because you mentioned the kids taking one or three bites thing something that I've noticed when I watch my friends kids I don't have any yet they say just take one bite and the kid

is already decided that that bite is going to be terrible so before it hits their lips they're like yeah I don't like it and I'm like of course you already decided so that's why I like the three bites because if they've got to actually do three bites they kind of have to suffer through it or they just go oh actually this is not bad and they go and they do it yeah yeah And if they know they have three, lots of times the windup is. So again, brain science and research shows us that if we say you have to take three bites, if you think you're not going to like it, you won't like it the most on bite three. By one and two, you'll kind of be like, oh, so focused on getting to number three that it won't matter.

But the reality is if you actually start to get a little taste for it in your palate, you might go, well, actually it's not as bad as I thought it was going to be. And I hear that from my sons all the time. They'll say, Daddy, that wasn't so bad. I'm like, yeah, buddy, see, sometimes we just have to try new things, even if they seem scary or they seem different or, you know, like things we wouldn't want to do. I think to answer your question in terms of evaluating your own experiences, you know, I'd ask folks that are listening to think of the greatest experience you had in the last year, whether that was as a customer, you know, in a relationship, just something that randomly happened to you,

the best thing that happened to you in the last year. And once you have that, ask yourself, well, why was it so great? What about it? Let's deconstruct it a little bit and see what made it that fantastic or that memorable or that remarkable. And then how did it make you feel? Like what was your, you know, we've kind of looked at what happened, but what was the reaction that you had emotionally to what was going on. And then you take that and say, how do I get more of that? So, For me, you know, lots of times I'll look at an experience and say, wow, the reason I liked that is because it was different. It was unexpected and it was a surprise. And the way it made me feel was alive and engaged and kind of more open to the possibilities that were around us. Okay, now how do I get more of that? Well, I need to put myself into circumstances that are unique or different or unexpected and then be open to what happens. And by doing these things, we're able to develop more of an experienced mindset and lead a more experienced-based life.

Speaking of experiences, man, you've had some incredible ones that we just sort of talked offline about these, but you went to South Africa in 94. You met Nelson Mandela. You hung out. I don't know if you can say hung out. But with, what you did, with Archbishop Desmond Tutu, you hung out with Bono, you've been to the Soviet Union. What's going on here, man? you've had this experience mindset for a while, it seems. This is something that you found through surprise, experience yourself. Yeah, I think it's just about being open to it. I mean, you know,

I had the great opportunity to do a study abroad program that let me sail around the world on the semester at sea program. You know, meeting Bono was an interesting experience. I was walking down the street and I see this guy coming down the street with four beautiful women. And to be candid, I noticed the women before I noticed the guy. Oh, really? I wonder why that happened. Yeah, weird. Funny how that happens. Did I mention that I was 20 at the time? And I was like, this is insane.

And all the sudden as I got closer, it dawned on me that they were all super tall and the dude was a lot shorter than they were. It's because they were models and it was Bono. And so they come up and they get right next to me and I just like, I've got to say something. I've got to say something. And I was like, hey, sorry to interrupt. I just wanted to say, I'm a big fan of your music. love listening to it. Forgive me for, you know, interrupting, but I just wanted to share that.

Thanks so much for everything you do. And one of the women turns to Bono and says, we're actually going to go in this store here and shop. And as if on cue, all the women file off into the store that we're standing in front of. And now I'm standing on the street with Pano. And because he's like, I'm not going in the store. I've been shopping all day with these girls. I'm going to hang out here. And next thing we know, we have like a 45-minute conversation about music.

And, you know, he's like, what are you doing here? And I'm like, oh, well, actually, I'm on tour with the group I sing with. I was a singer in college. You know, I didn't play the flute, but, you know, whatever you can do. I can't believe you remember that, man. That is terrible that you remember. Yeah, I just wanted to bring it up. So the people associate you more with the flute, I think that would be a good thing.

Thanks. That's really a part of my personal brand moving forward. How about that? How about that? Yeah. And so he, they, he's like, so what are you doing here? And I said, I'm actually on tour with the group I sing with. And he goes, hmm, me too. Me too. Yeah. Yeah. And it was just, but like, it was so humble about it and so funny about it that then we had this conversation about, you know, what it's like, you know, singing into different city every night and, you know, trying your best to pour everything out for the audience, but then being tired because you're on the bus or, you know, he was on a plane. I was on a bus to the next venue. And then. that kind of thing. And so it's just, again, none of that would have happened if I hadn't been willing to put myself out a little bit and say something to compliment this person, you know, in this case, Bono, who I admired their work. And that's why I think it's really, you know, as I'll say as an aside, one of the things I've noticed, it's very difficult to appreciate

just how much a kind word or a thoughtful comment or a thank you to someone can impact. their life. I mean, here's a guy who's an international rock star celebrity. He's probably still telling that story about that day he met you. Probably the day he met me. Exactly. I've told the story plenty of times. But it's one of those scenarios where even the people and what I've noticed, and I know you, you know a ton of famous people. You have a lot of famous people on the show. I'm sure you've experienced this as well. It's like the, for lack of a better way of putting it, the higher people go in terms of their notoriety or their fame or their fortune or whatever. may be, the less they have normal interactions. And so if you can provide a normal interaction,

like a, hey, I really appreciate your work or thank you so much for what you did, you're able to connect with them in a way that in many ways they haven't connected in a long time. The same goes true for the average person on the street, you know, thanking the average person for opening the, hey, thanks so much for holding the door for me. I really appreciate you doing that. Reinforces to that person, oh, I matter. I do something. And this goes back to the conversation. we were having early about, you know, being more connected via technology, but feeling more disconnected in terms of our emotional relationships with people. So I think there's huge opportunities. All right. I want to wrap with something that really shocked me when I heard this about you.

You've been pulled over 81 times, but you've only gotten three tickets that you've had to pay. So either you're driving around in something that just looks insane and always gets police attention or you are a master of getting out of tickets. But either way, well, actually, it has to be both. 81 times. It's actually both. It's like 75 times more than, no, it's 79 or so times more than I've ever been pulled over in my life. And you're only a few years older than me. What the hell's going on here, man? Yeah. So a couple of things. Yes, you are correct. I've been pulled over 81 times most recently about less than a week ago. I'll confess, I have a little bit of a heavy foot at times, but I've also been pulled over for weird things like evading a police

barricade, failure to heat a direct police command to stop, too many people in the car, wrong way on or one way in Boston at 3 a.m., which if you've been to downtown Boston, you respect the fact that that happened because it's impossible to drive around in downtown Boston as a non-local and understand whether you're on one way or not. So yeah, I've been pulled over a couple times. Six tickets have been written and three of those stuck. I fought the other three in court and was able to get out of them. So yeah, I like to think my batting average is pretty good. So the lesson here is don't get into a car with Julie Coleman. But yeah, or do just know that you might get pulled over. I actually taught a class on getting out of a speeding ticket one time.

And my now wife, we weren't even dating. She came to the class. And not long after that, we started dating and we were driving and we got pulled over. And I'm anxious, right? I'm on a date. I've been pulled over. This is embarrassing. And as the police officer is walking up to the car, my now wife, then date, not even girlfriend, turns to me and says, well, I guess we're going to get to see how well this works in live real time, aren't we? And I'm like, oh, thanks. Nothing like increasing the pressure. This was already a tense moment. And now I feel like I'm being judged based on my performance. Good news is I didn't get a ticket. So it worked out all right. She said she'd marry me and here we are today. Yeah, you'd be single if you hadn't

gotten out of that ticket. I'd be single. I'd be single if I'd gotten a ticket that day. Yeah, exactly. So what's going on here? How are you getting out of that stuff? because I think there's probably a lot of people that are going, yeah, great question, Jordan, wait a minute, how do you get, how is this working for you? I don't care of that you got pulled over and you got out of it. I want to know how I can get out of it. What's happening in these experiences here? So a couple of things. Number one, I mentioned earlier, I take great pride and am very committed to being a student of human nature. And whether you believe it or not, the folks who work in law enforcement are human too. And I have a lot of respect for them. It's a really,

really difficult job. Sadly, what we see a lot on the news is the people who are horrible at doing that job, but I can find any career on the planet and point to dozens of examples of people who are horrible doing their job. The problem is with police, the consequences are higher. To me, the secret is what I refer to as the long walk. From the moment, the police officer leaves their car and walks up to stand by the driver's side window where your part, you have to figure out what type of police officer they are. I believe there are three types of police officers. The first type is the person who becomes a police officer because they really want to give back to their community. They believe in the rule of law. They believe in order. They want a peaceful,

safe community for their neighbors and their fellow citizens. Those are the best kinds of police officers on the planet. I know a lot of them. They're amazing. The other categories are as follows. Number one, it's the bully from high school, right? The person who was always picking on the other kids and was just a total jerk, 99 times out of 100, it's a dude and was just you know, obnoxious as a teenager and is obnoxious now as an adult. And they love the idea of exerting their authority. The third type is the type who was the wallflower in high school, who always got picked on by that bully. And now they want to try to swing the pendulum a little bit by becoming someone in authority and someone with power. And as they're walking up to the car,

you need to try to identify not only during that walk but also by what they say to you, what type of person they are and then respond accordingly. If it's the law, the first category, you know, the kind of just believes in the rule of law wants a safe community. You can just play it honest. Just be totally sincere. The recent time I got pulled over, that's what it was. He was like, hey, did you realize you were speeding in this residential area? I'm like, I'm so sorry. I didn't. You know, we're from out of town. I wasn't familiar with the neighborhood. That's not an excuse, but that's honestly what was happened. Plus, one of my kids in the back was crying and we were trying to calm him down a little.

And I just lost a little track of things. And I'm so sorry, you know, but you're right. I was speeding. I apologize. Guy goes back to the car, comes back, gives me a warning. He's like, look, you really got to familiarize yourself with the streets. If you're driving somewhere where you don't know, calm down. It was perfect.

And the reason I could tell the kind of guy it was is the way he was dressed, the way he walked, the way he carried himself. I knew this is a guy who's just looking at this out of state. vehicle going, what is this guy doing moving too fast to a residential neighborhood? If it's the bully, I do not recommend this one. This is kind of the 301 course on how to get out of a speeding ticket. You end up being a little subservient to the bully in the beginning. And then if they don't yield, you kind of stand up to them and it shocks their system so much that they don't know what to do. And usually they just write you a warning. If it's the wallflower, you be subservient in the

beginning, you give them their their kind of fix of being in control, and then you ask their indulgence for a warning, and nine times out of ten, they'll give it to you because they're like, oh, well, I got the emotional hit that I wanted from this moment. I don't need to rub salt in the wound by writing a ticket. I want to say, though, with all of these, again, it's a really difficult job. And if you pay attention to the emotional state of the officer on the side of the road that's pulled you over and also what time of day it is. You know, the story I explained earlier, this was like two o'clock in the afternoon. I had my wife and our kids in the car. So it was, he was very quickly able to ascertain looking back, oh, this is a family guy driving his family around. This is probably

not a threat. If I was by myself or with two or three of my male buddies and it was three a.m. on the side of the road and we'd been speeding, it would have been a different calculus for that officer. So it's again, it's, it's most of the customer stuff, right? It's experience. What is the experience you're going to create for the officer? They're used to people lying to them. They're used to people being really defensive and, you know, offering a lot of excuses. And some people say, oh, you should never admit to the cop. Man, if I know I'm speeding or if I know I did something wrong, I'll just throw that out right away.

I'll just say, yep, you know what. I'm sorry, officer, you've got me. I was speeding. I know that that's wrong. Here's why I was doing it, but it's not a good excuse. I'm so sorry. They don't get that ever. And what it does is it kind of short circuits their brain on the side of the road.

They're like, wait a second, what? You're not going to be a jerk. You're not going to fight me on this. You're not going to offer some BS excuse. You're not going to threaten me or harass me. And as a result, then they're like, oh, wait, this is just a decent human being. Well, maybe I should respond with reciprocity and be a decent human being back. Here's a warning instead of a ticket.

This makes sense. It goes along with personality archetypes and things like that. I remember the first time I got pulled over. I was probably 16 or something. ran a red light barely. It wasn't an intersection. It was like a red light that had like a T junction. There was no other cars.

So he pulled me over and he goes, oh, wow, that was a close one. You're lucky there were no other cars, man. And he goes, let me guess. Driving Daddy's car doesn't know. You're going to be pulled over. You're going to get in trouble now, man. And I went, yeah, you're right. My dad's going to be super pissed.

I'm on my way to my girlfriend's house for dinner. She's going to be mad at me. I'm not totally sure where I am. And then he goes, Oh, well, where you going? Yeah, and that's perfect. Because he thought he was walking into one scenario. And when you said, yeah, and it's actually even worse than that, he was like, oh, wait, this kid is going to have some challenges with what just went down.

Yeah. In his mind, he went, wow, you really are a screwed up little punk. Yeah. I don't even need to rub salt into this one. And then, of course, I said, by the way, this is weird, but those are really cool sunglasses. What brand are they? He goes, oh, man, these are killer loop. These are so, and he could not shut up about his sunglasses because he was really stoked

about his new cop sunglasses. And then he's like, what are you wearing? And I was like, oh, these are gargoyles. And he goes, oh, the bulletproof ones. This is the 90s. Yep. Nice. Nice.

I like it. And it was just, he was like, oh, man, yo, look, I'm not even going to give you a warning. Just be careful. You know, I don't want to see you get hurt. And I was like, no, you wanted to make me whiz my pants because you're kind of a jerk. But, you know, thanks for letting me go. I didn't say that last part.

Right. But I could tell. He walked up like, I'm going to scare the crap out of this kid. And I just wanted to let him know, wow, I'm so scared. Don't give me a ticket. I don't have any money. My dad's going to kill me. The end of story.

And that was all he needed. Exactly. Exactly. At the end of the day, I think it comes back to what we've been talking about the entire conversation. People are just people. We've got to meet them where they're at. And nine times out of 10, if you're willing to step into the other person's shoes and

try to see what their experience is like. It will help you show up in the interaction even better, create a better experience for them that often is going to lead to even better outcomes for you. So there is a benefit to doing all of this too. Not only is it just make you a better human being and a decent human being, but there are actually some benefits you won't get speeding tickets, for example. Yeah, absolutely. And I just want to be real clear. We're big fans of cops and law enforcement in general here. I want to reiterate that we're talking about. We're talking about. about the archetypes of people here, cops happen to be the example. It's not because we don't like cops. No, absolutely. No, big fan of law enforcement. They play a very important role in our

society and I'm appreciative for what they do. But, you know, this has parallels into other scenarios too. We mentioned earlier in the conversation, Airlines. I spent a lot of time on airlines. And one of the things I've found is that when everybody else is freaking out about their flight being delayed or being canceled, et cetera, if you show up with empathy, the amazing things happen. Not too long ago, I was in a scenario where the flight's canceled, and everyone's going to have to spend the night and go out the next day. That's just the way it's going to be. There's no more flights out. It doesn't matter how much you sweet talk, nothing's going to work. And I'm about 15 people deep in the line. And by the time I get to the front, I've watched

this poor gate agent just be harassed ridiculously. And so we got up there and she says, how can I help you, sir? I said, before we even get started, I just want you to know, you're doing incredible job. I know this is completely overwhelming. I know it is not your fault. I know a lot of these people in the line in front of me have treated you as if it was your fault. And I imagine, regrettably, that a lot of the people behind me are going to treat you the same way. But I want you to know, I think you're doing an incredible job. And the fact that you still have a smile on your face is a testament to how much you actually care about people. And I just want to say how much I appreciate that. And I watch her entire physicality shift. And she was like, I'm sorry,

what was your name again? And I said, it's Joey Coleman. And she's like, can I have your boarding pass? And I was like, yeah, and I hand her my boarding pass. And she goes, hang on one second, print. She goes, here you go. I wasn't able to get you out tonight. As you know, there are no more flights.

But you're on the first flight out tomorrow and you're in first class. She says, and this second receipt is for, is a meal voucher to allow you to get some food tonight. And the third receipt is for a hotel. And I said, you know, because this wasn't your guy's fault, like normally you don't get a hotel. And she's like, no, I know, but I just really appreciate how kind you were to me. And I was like, well, I really appreciate how kind you've been to me tonight. Thanks so much.

It's about caring about people. That's it. It's that complex to do it in the moment and, you know, be aware of your own positioning and messaging and messaging and emotions. But it's also that easy. Well, you're a first class kind of guy, Joey. And I appreciate you coming on the show. Oh, Jordan, it's my pleasure. I really appreciate you having me on the show.

I'm a huge fan of what you're doing. I'm a loyal listener and subscriber and reviewer and all of that, jazz. I'm a big fan, and it's been an honor. And I hope your audience has enjoyed the conversation as much as I have. Jason, I told you Joey's an interesting guy, man, 81 times. How does that even happen? It's ridiculous. I mean, he's got to have a sphincter of steel by now.

because I know when I see those flashing lights behind me, and I've only gotten, like, pulled over three times in my life. It's like I need a new pair of Miundis every time when I see those flashing lights. That's a reason to get a subscription right there. Exactly. Yeah. Subscribe in case you get pulled over a lot. You have a new pair waiting for you when you get home. Meundies.com slash Jordan.

And his book, Joey's book, is coming out real soon. Never lose a customer again. I've seen Joey speak a bunch. We've been friends for a long time. If you run a business at big or small, this book will be great for you. He's got a lot of cool bonuses for pre-order stuff. He's a guy who knows how to deliver content, man.

He really helped me learn how to speak better. Everybody loves his talks. He's one of the nicest people around. This is just one of those guys where if you didn't love him, you wouldn't like him at all because you're like, oh, he highlights everything that's wrong with me, right? Because he's everything I'm not. Go fly a kite, Joey Coleman.

So his book's going to be excellent. I'm really looking forward to it. It's pre-order right now, depending on when you're listening to this. But of course, It's going to be out later this month. So go pre-order it and get the bonuses. You're welcome.

Once again, it's called Never Lose a Customer Again. It's at bonus.jof-joicolman.com slash order. And of course, we'll have that linked up in the show notes as per euse. Don't forget to thank Joey on Twitter. That'll be linked up in the show notes for this episode, his Twitter, that is, which can be found at jordanharbinger.com slash podcast. And also tweet at me your number one takeaway from Joey. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on Twitter.

I'm also on Instagram at Jordan Harbinger. This episode of the Jordan Harbinger Show is produced and edited by Jason DePhilippo. Show notes are by Robert Fogarty, booking back office and last minute miracles by Jen Harbinger. And I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger. Write us a review in iTunes if you use it. Share the show with your friends, though, as well, man. We are rebuilding. As you know, we love having your help, man.

There's been a lot of positivity coming into our Instagram, coming into our inbox at Jordan Harbinger.com. You guys and gals are the bomb. The fans of the bomb, Jason, they are really, really, really, really helpful, really positive and really helping us along here. So I just appreciate all of y'all, a lot. We all do. So much, you have no idea. Yeah, you really have no idea. But please do.

Share the show with those you love, even those you don't. We've got lots more like this in the pipeline. We're excited to bring it to you. Oh, it's occurred to me that some of you are not subscribed. So if you are one of those people that is not subscribed to the show, go to Jordan Harbinger.com slash subscribe. and find the myriad of ways, which you can get this show delivered to your face every single time it's released. And in the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you listen, and we'll see you next time. This episode is sponsored in part by Something

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