The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 101: Jay Baer – Why You Should Hug Your Haters

Starting point is 00:00:00 So my best friend became my brother-in-law, which I totally recommend, if you can sort that out. It's a fantastic bit of social engineering. And so it was awesome, right? So the four of us spent all our time together. This is before we had kids. And it was really terrific. And then I was 32 at this point, and he was 32. And he was diagnosed with brain cancer.

Starting point is 00:00:20 And the day he was diagnosed and told me what was going on. It was pretty serious. I walked in the next day and quit. And I said, you know, what a, am I scared of? Like, what's the worst thing that could possibly happen? I start a company and it doesn't succeed. So I go get a job as a vice president at some other company. Like, what's really the downside here? And his diagnosis kind of reframed risk and fear for me in a really powerful, meaningful way. And so I walked in the next morning and quit and haven't worked for anybody a day since.

Starting point is 00:00:49 Are leaders born or are they made? Our host, Ryan Hawk, believes that leaders can be made through determined, focused work on learning the art and science behind the makeup of other successful leaders. Now it's time to inhale knowledge and exhale success. You're listening to The Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk. Hey guys, before we get to this great conversation, I want to let you know that this episode was brought to you by Mizan and Maine. You'll probably remember from episode 64, I spoke with the CEO of Mizden and Maine, Kevin Lavel. And we promised to continue that dialogue as we both progressed on our journeys. And we certainly have, and we formed a partnership. And Kevin and his great companies and support and people that he works with have agreed to

Starting point is 00:01:43 sponsor my podcast. But for me, I'm very picky when it comes to this. I only wanted to work with people who I truly believed in their products. So this is not just a sponsor to me. This is an endorsement. I absolutely believe in everything that Kevin and his company stands for. I love who they partner with, whether it's Tony Shea's Vegas Tech Fund or the Loans Survivor, Marcus LaTrell's Fund, or Chris Kyle Frog Foundation. I love that, but I also most importantly love the product. Their shirts are my absolute favorite shirts. They feel very similar to the clothes that I wear when I go and work out, and I didn't really believe that was possible until I tried one. But the four-way stretch fabric is literally like nothing I've ever felt before. And so originally I bought one just to try them out to see if this is really true.

Starting point is 00:02:33 A button-down shirt that looks great with a suit or in business casual. I'm like, there's no way this thing is going to feel like people tell me it will. Well, it felt even better than that. And so after I bought that first shirt, I ended up buying six more shirts and two Henleys. And so we've set up a deal for you guys to go to Ryan. dot mizzen and mane.com. So that's Ryan. Misen and Main.com.

Starting point is 00:02:58 Pick your favorite shirts. I love the button downs. You'll see on that site my favorite shirts. And when you're checking out, use the code Ryan Hawk to get free shipping if you're only buying one shirt. If you happen to want to buy three button downs like I've done a couple times,

Starting point is 00:03:14 use the code Ryan Hawk 3 and you'll get $50 off. Again, I love Mizan and Maine. I love everything they stand for. And I promise when you try the search, you will too. Hey, and welcome. to the Learning Leader Show. I am Ryan Hawk excited about tonight's featured leader. It's Jay Bayer. Jay runs and writes the number one content marketing blog in the world. He's the founder

Starting point is 00:03:42 of Convince and Convert, which is a strategy consulting firm. Over the course of his career, Jay has helped over 700 companies from an advisory perspective. Jay is also the author of five books, including Utility, a New York Times and Amazon bestseller. His most recent book, Hug Your haters. How to embrace complaints and keep your customers will release March 1st, 2016. Love this conversation with Jay is a very, very intelligent and engaging guy. A few of the things we got into. Sustained excellence is boiling down what you're great at and focusing on doing those specific things and farming out the other tasks to others who are great at those things. And then what is an honesty audit and why we all should do one on a regular basis? Why?

Starting point is 00:04:30 even the best performers in the world need a coach. The best all invest in someone to help them, critique them, tell them what they're doing well, tell them what they need to improve upon. Jay and I spoke about the fact that he invests in a speaking coach. It happens to be Michael Port, former guest of the show, and how Michael specifically helps him from a speaking perspective. Ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, it's Jay Baer. Jay, so excited to have you here on the show.

Starting point is 00:05:10 the Learning Leader Show. Quick question to get us rolling. That's around sustained excellence. And you have spent time around a lot of people. You're networked with a lot of great world-class performers, people who have sustained excellence over time. And you obviously have done the same. I'm curious from your perspective.

Starting point is 00:05:29 What are some of the common characteristics that those people all seem to share? Thanks, Ryan. I appreciate you having me on the show. Let me tell you two things. One, I think people who have sustained excellence are particularly good at boiling down to its essence their particular skill set. I'll give an example for my own business. So I have a consulting company and a media company.

Starting point is 00:05:52 And when we meet, it's virtual, so we only get together once a year. And when we get together, one of the things that we work on as a business is to audit all the ways that I spend my time and to remove 15% of those things that I do. And when you do that 15% a year every year, eventually over a period of time, what you're left with is that I focus only on the things that I am uniquely qualified to do. Ryan, all high performers are capable of doing lots of different things, but you're only uniquely capable of doing a few things. And the faster you can figure out which things you are uniquely capable of doing and focusing the preponderance of your time on those few things, the better off you'll be. Wow, that's an interesting answer. It's one I actually have not received.

Starting point is 00:06:33 Are there immediate people that come to mind when you think of sustained excellence over extended periods of time? Oh, sure. There's tons. It depends on the industry. But you look at somebody like Jim Collins, right? Good to Great, a terrific author and speaker who I've had the good fortune of meeting on a couple of occasions at different events. I mean, that's somebody who has been providing advice to businesses for 20 years. Look at somebody like Tony Robbins on a similar style, similar type of a career trajectory, but more on the individual advice and counseling.

Starting point is 00:07:03 I mean, you know, he's been doing it every day for decades, right? And you think about what it requires to stay that sharp, that focus, that motivated day after day after day after day. I mean, just yesterday I was watching the NFL playoffs. And while my Arizona Cardinals did not fare as well as I would have hoped, you look at somebody like Larry Fitzgerald, right? Who is just, you know, in his 30s now continues to be terrific at his craft and what it requires to be that good, that long, Manning for that matter. I mean, here's somebody who's, you know, practically as old as I am and going back to the Super Bowl. That's, it's remarkable. Interesting. So you mentioned that your team is virtual. I love to dig in now to you, Jay, your business and how you've gotten to the point where you currently are,

Starting point is 00:07:50 maybe some a little bit about your past and the history that's led up to what you're currently doing on a day-to-day basis. You bet. I started off in politics. So I managed political campaigns as a young professional and worked in that business for a while and had a measure of success in it. But it's a tough business, right? And, and, you know, it's kind of a what have you done for me lately business. And it's also not, at least at that point, a great family business. And so once I got married and started having kids, I'm like, you know, this is a little bit rough. So I thought, you know, if I can get somebody elected, I can sell soup, you know, or houses or shoes. So I got into traditional marketing. And so I did marketing and public relations for a few years on the corporate side for big companies. And then

Starting point is 00:08:31 I started my own digital consulting firm in 2000 and ran that company for a few years and sold it and started another one and sold it. And then started this company convinced and convert a few years ago to really focus on social media strategy, content marketing strategy and customer experience. And so as I mentioned, my team is virtual all over the country. And we're super fortunate that we get to advise some of the most noteworthy brands in the world. I mean, we work with United Nations and Adidas and SAP and Oracle and Cabellas and all these great companies. So it is a real honor. I spend most of my time personally at this juncture writing books and giving speeches. I don't do as much of the consulting firsthand as I once did. I'm more on the road and trying to

Starting point is 00:09:14 rally business people and show them how to get more customers and keep those they've already earned. Let's go to the year 2000 when you made that decision. to leave. You know, I was reviewing your background prior to us talking. You obviously, you had some big time jobs and you decided to leave and do it all on your own. I mean, that's, can you take me that moment, the decision making process? Because that is a really tough thing to do, especially when you have a good thing

Starting point is 00:09:41 going. And if you got a family, either you already have one or it's in the works, that means you need money. And so it's, it's to provide for them. So talk to me about that decision making process and how it went. from being a corporate VP to saying, you know what, I'm going to do this on my own where I'm not going to have any revenue to start. I need to build it. Yeah, you probably don't know this story because I almost never talk about it.

Starting point is 00:10:03 So I come from a long line of self-employed people on my dad's side, self-employed for seven generations or something. And so that was always kind of the assumption. And I thought about it since I was very young. I mean, I started as a pretty serious intern at 18, you know, working in political consultancies and public relations. firms. And so by the time I was 23, I was like, yeah, I should just be doing my own thing, right? And so I wanted to do it for a long time, start my own thing. But I was scared, right? I was scared to do it. And as you said, I had a pretty good job already. It says, well, why do I want to walk out of a pretty good job to start something that could fail? And I was scared. I just, I delayed it and delayed it and delayed it.

Starting point is 00:10:45 And about that same time, Ryan, my best friend from grade school, married my wife's sister. So my best friend became my brother-in-law, which I totally recommend, if you can sort that out. It's a fantastic bit of social engineering. And so it was awesome, right? So the four of us spent all our time together. This is before we had kids. And it was really terrific. And then I was 32 at this point, and he was 32.

Starting point is 00:11:09 And he was diagnosed with brain cancer. And the day he was diagnosed and told me what was going on, it was pretty serious. I walked in the next day and quit. And I said, you know, what am I scared of? Like, what's the worst thing that could possibly happen? I start a company and it doesn't succeed. So I go get a job as a vice president at some other company. Like, what's really the downside here?

Starting point is 00:11:32 And his diagnosis kind of reframed risk and fear for me in a really powerful, meaningful way. And so I walked in the next morning and quit and haven't worked for anybody a day since. Oh, I did not know that story. That is, that's just impactful, man. It leaves me speechless almost to think about that happening. So this reminds me of a conversation I had with Seth Goat and when I told him, I described a 35-year-old guy who's got a spouse and kids and a mortgage and car payments and all these responsibilities. And I said, you know, what do you say to him? He's got all these responsibilities.

Starting point is 00:12:06 He's got these people that depend on him. And he used a similar story. So what if, you know, what if tomorrow you got a call from your doctor saying you had something, an inoperable tumor? And what would you do then? He goes, well, then the next day they told you that it was, everything was okay. How would you respond? You know, maybe you would think a little bit differently. Your approach to life might be different.

Starting point is 00:12:30 So to hear you tell a real life story of that is just, I don't know, it's crazy, man. So at that point, you decide, so what was your process for getting it started, though? You still have to, you know, you're obviously, it's an emotional time. But then, but then it comes, there's still a lot of work. There's the, you know, how do you get the revenue going? and then which ultimately led to selling the company twice, it sounds like, before you're at your current place. So talk to me about that. So there's no shortcuts.

Starting point is 00:12:59 And I know you talk about that on this show. And I know you know it in your own life, Ryan. Technology has kind of screwed us up as entrepreneurs because everybody's looking for the angle. Like how can I succeed more efficiently? How can I optimize my success? How can I spend less time for more outcome? And it just doesn't really work like that. So I'll tell you exactly what I did.

Starting point is 00:13:21 I was fortunate that I knew a lot of people. I was in Phoenix at this time. And I knew a lot of people in Phoenix because I'd been there a long time. And I'd had some positions and I'd been president of some clubs and organizations and had some contacts in my political career and stuff like that. So I knew a lot of people. So here's what I did. I quit my job.

Starting point is 00:13:35 And the next day, I made a list of everybody that I knew, like literally everybody that I knew in business. And then I sat down and I called every single person I knew. and I called about 300 people. And I just said, hey, I'm starting this company to do digital strategy. And if you know anybody who needs somebody, I'd sure be happy to help. And it took me about two and a half weeks to make those calls. And I picked up three clients during that period and had a profitable month and have had every single month has been profitable now 183 months in a row since then.

Starting point is 00:14:08 Wow. So you did it the old-fashioned way of just smiling and dialing and hustling. So once you got your customers, though, it became time to deliver, which then would then create the momentum to build and create referrals. So then the second part of that, I assume, is that what you did? So, yeah, it was interesting. And I think because anytime you start a business in professional services, you always start off saying, like, I'll do anything. Like, you want me to wash cars?

Starting point is 00:14:36 Yeah, I can wash cars. You want me to do your email program? Yeah, I can do that. You want me to do your ad campaign? Sure. And that's very much how I started out. I was like, look, I'll do pretty much anything that anybody wants me to do because I got to eat. I got to put food on the table.

Starting point is 00:14:48 I got to start a little bit better. Where the market is and what you're good at and what other people aren't as good at. And I find that over time, your services mix tends to narrow and you focus on things that you can do in a more repeatable, more efficient fashion. Because if you're reinventing the wheel every single time, it's really tough to build a business behind that. But it was just me for when I started that company, which is called MIT Interactive. It was just me for six months or so, and then I added a person, another person, another person, and that's typically how I do it. I'm not a big believer in hypergrowth.

Starting point is 00:15:23 I'm not good at it. I can't manage hypergrowth. I'm not organized enough. I kind of manage from Post-it notes, and that doesn't scale well. So I'm a big believer, and let's grow 30 to 40 percent a year every year instead of let's grow, you know, 862% a year. I just can't deal with it personally. I just don't have the, I just don't have the mentality for that kind of.

Starting point is 00:15:44 of crazy spikes. And you mentioned your teams are all virtual. How do you build virtual teams successfully? Man, it's all about finding the right people. So not only is our team virtual, I convince and convert. We've got folks in New York and L.A. in Portland and Ohio and Indiana, where I am, and Phoenix and Costa Rica and all over. But everybody in our team is also a contractor.

Starting point is 00:16:08 They're all 1099. So nobody's actually employed. Everybody on our team has their own business. So they all have their own companies. And it's just that I convince and convert, my team is sort of their largest client. And so most of the folks that I work with spend about half their time working on stuff with me and half their time on their own clients. And I do that very intentionally, Ryan, because I want to work with people who know what it takes to start and run their own business. Because then you don't have to teach them entrepreneurship.

Starting point is 00:16:35 You don't have to teach them polish. You have to teach them follow up and customer service. They already know it. They have to have learned it already. And so when you say, look, these are the kind of people that we want who want to spend half their time with me and half their time doing other things and kind of have the gumption of wherewithal to do that, it leads you to the right folks. And one of the things I'm most proud of in this particular company is in seven years, we had zero percent turnover. Had not a single person leave in seven years. And I think that speaks to picking the right folks from the beginning.

Starting point is 00:17:07 How do you do that? What's the magic part of picking the right people? Where do you find them? How do you interview? Talk to me about that process. Yeah. It's not a huge team. And so we don't add a lot of people to the team, which helps, you know, you're not going

Starting point is 00:17:22 through a lot of resumes. And what has really been great is that a lot of people in the digital marketing world kind of know me and my company and how we're set up. And so what happens in almost every case now, Ryan, is that people call me and they said, hey, I was working with this woman and she's great and she's going to start her own thing and she only wants to work half time. I think she'd be really good. And so typically now people refer folks to me, which is spectacular.

Starting point is 00:17:49 So I have this whole network of colleagues that are kind of on the lookout for talent and that really makes it a lot easier. So if you had to describe what convincing divert does in one sentence, what would you say? So we help the world's most interesting brands gain and keep more customers online. gain and keep more customers online. I know I've watched your speeches online, looking through a lot of things you've written, which is a lot of great material out there. And then you have a new book coming out called Hug Your Hators, How to Embrace Complaints and Keep Your Customers.

Starting point is 00:18:23 And the interesting stat that you talked about in one of your speeches is simply a 5% increase in customer retention can increase profits by 25%. meaning take care of the ones who are already with you, focus on those. Talk to me about hug your haters and those statistics. Yeah, thanks. So the book is out March 1st, officially. It's going great. People can get it everywhere that books can be gotten. And there's a real, it's the right time for that book, I think.

Starting point is 00:18:54 You know, we've spent so much energy in the last few years thinking about marketing, including me. I mean, I'm a marketing consultant, but we sort of have lost our focus on customer retention. And as you said, just a small increase in customer retention can have a huge impact on your business. And I think, Ryan, everybody knows that, right? So in the first day that you're in business, you either learn or you figure out that it's actually mathematically smarter to keep the customers you have than to constantly have to get new customers and sort of fill the leaky bucket, if you will, right? I mean, everybody knows that. It's business 101.

Starting point is 00:19:30 There's no argument about that. It's true. Right. But here's the thing. Globally, each year, we spend about $500 billion on marketing and $9 billion on customer service. That's not going to work anymore because customer service is the new marketing. Whatever your company sells, whatever you do, whatever your specialty is, your competition now in this very fast-paced hyper-connected world, your competition can and will steal your best stuff. They'll still your best people, your price, your website copy, whatever. But the one thing your competitors can never steal from you, Ryan, the one thing they cannot take from you, the one thing

Starting point is 00:20:11 that is yours and yours alone is if you genuinely care more about your customers than they do. If you are willing to hug your haters and love your customers in a way that your competition simply will not, that is your competitive advantage. That is your differentiation. And that is what will make a company successful now and in the future. It's not marketing. It's customer service. I love it because you think of some of the more well-known companies out there. I think of like Zappos or, well, there's a lot of them, but the examples of where they give their employees the freedom and sometimes the budget to love on their customers, whether, you know, I've heard they, at Zappos a story where

Starting point is 00:20:53 somebody found out that somebody had a death in the family. And that, the person who found that out that was working there ended up sending flowers, sending additional things. things to show that that customer that they love them. And so some would say, oh, wow, you can't have those people continually just spending all this money to love on their customers. Well, they show that actually you can. And the PR that comes from that is incredible, actually caring about your customers to proactively do something that might hurt your revenue short term, but will certainly help long term if you show them that you're treating them the right way. And you nailed it, right?

Starting point is 00:21:35 I mean, if you say, hey, name a company that's great at customer service, people can say, well, Zappos or Ritz Carlton or Nordstroms or Southwest in some circumstances, et cetera. But that makes the point. The fact that we can all name them and the fact that we name the same ones is an indictment of business in general. Why are there so few companies that we can say they're great at customer service? Everybody should be great at customer service. there's a remarkable stat from Forrester that says that 80%, 80% of companies think that they deliver superior customer service and 8% of their customers agree.

Starting point is 00:22:14 That's the fundamental problem. Like we think, oh, sure, we're great at customer service. Meanwhile, you're mediocre at best. And what it requires to be great, the recipe in Hug Your Hators, which is at hug your haters.com, the recipe is to answer every customer complaint in every channel every time, to answer always. instead of what most businesses do, which is to answer some customer complaints in the channels that the company prefers when they get around to it. And that's not good enough. It's not going to be good enough, especially when you look at the research, and I did a tremendous amount of research for this book. When you look at the research, you see this huge wave of consumer behavior change where people don't want to interact with companies as much anymore on the phone or via email because it takes too long.

Starting point is 00:22:58 It's much easier to try to interact with a company on Facebook or Twitter or Yelp or TripAdvisor or Amazon or discussion boards or forums or what have you. It's much, much easier and faster to transact in an app environment in a mobile environment than it is in legacy channels. And you think about how many businesses have what they call a call center. If you're still calling it a call center, you're going to be in for a rude awakening because eventually that phone's no longer going to ring. So 80% think they're doing a good job and 8% are. Where does this start? So when you go to help people with this, is this from the CEO down? How does an organization get better at this?

Starting point is 00:23:38 Talk to me about that. What we do at Convincent Convert, we work with the big organizations and even medium-sized organizations in this capacity is we typically start with what we call an honesty audit. And the honesty audit is where we dig really deep for all the customer complaints and customer contacts that maybe the company's missing. And a lot of cases like, oh, we didn't know we had all these people complaining on Instagram or WhatsApp or WeChat or all these weird discussion boards and forums that we typically ignore. The company usually has a pretty decent handle on telephone and email, the legacy channels, but they usually have a very, very poor handle on online. And so when you start to demonstrate, hey, by the way, you had 814 customers last month try to reach you online and you ignored every one of them, that tends to change interior and internal thinking pretty quickly.

Starting point is 00:24:22 So you do an honesty audit. And how is that typically received? It depends on to whom it's presented. So when you present it to somebody who is not a customer service professional, they often say, wow, I see that we've missed a lot of opportunities here to fix a bad situation or enhance customer loyalty. When you present it, as we sometimes do, to somebody who is the director of customer service or that type of a role, it can be a little tricky because you're essentially saying,

Starting point is 00:24:54 without saying it that you're not doing your job very well. And that has to be delivered in a very special way. Yeah, I know, I'm not sure if you know more if you've spoken with him, but Joey Coleman gives a great speech. Sure, I love Joey Coleman. Yeah, the first 100 days. Yes. When you have, yeah, I've watched it multiple times. And for anyone out there who hasn't, go to just Google Joey Coleman first 100 days.

Starting point is 00:25:22 and he talks about the importance of how you treat a customer during those first 100 days of having them. What's your process around the first initial stages of acquiring a new customer? Yeah. So one of the things that I talk about a lot in the book and we try to follow in my own company, although we're not great at it ourselves, but we're getting better, is this notion that there's no such thing as customers that are over-informed. And nobody ever says, you know, stop telling me stuff, right? I mean, now they may not read everything or listen to everything or watch everything, but they appreciate the effort.

Starting point is 00:26:00 And so what we do and how we do it requires, you know, there's a lot of nuance to it and things like that. And so we're trying to do more convince and convert with educating customers up front about how we do and what we do and what that process is going to be like. And what happens next. One of my favorite case studies in the book is from a company called SquareCal Movers. And they're a moving company in Texas. And, you know, they talk a lot about Wade, who's their CEO, talks about the fact that, you know, moving is really fraught with emotion because people are moving and that's a big deal usually. And you're handling their stuff and you're carrying their grandmother's piano and all that stuff, right? And so people tend to go on tilt a little bit.

Starting point is 00:26:37 And so he said they used to have a lot of customer service issues until they realize like, okay, we have to over communicate. And if we think it's over communicating, the customer thinks it's just right. And I think that's a lesson for everybody. Communication being the key during those first stages. More, and predictive customer service, right? Yeah. There's another case study in the book from a company called Fresh Brothers Pizza, and they've got 14 locations in Southern California,

Starting point is 00:27:03 and Debbie Goldberg is their owner, and she's super bright. It is really, really bright, is amazing at Yelp in particular, answers all the positive comments and the negative comments herself. She's just really good at it. But one of the things that she's particularly adept at is predictive customer service. And so she says that, you know, in some cases, they have a location that's really busy or, you know, they get a busload of people in. And so they know when that happens that there's going to be a ripple effect.

Starting point is 00:27:30 And so pizzas that are ordered now are going to come out slow and maybe delivery times will be impacted on that. I mean, they just know. So instead of waiting for those customers to complain or hoping that they won't complain, she automatically gives them gift cards and says, look, here's $10 off the next time you come because she knows that it'll be slower than they expect. even if they don't complain. So, you know, the best complaints are the ones that never happen.

Starting point is 00:27:53 And the way to make that work is to understand what those potential fracture points are and run ahead of it instead of being always in reactive mode. And constantly thinking about them and putting yourself in their shoes, I think is so important instead of getting caught up in the other day-to-day stuff that happens. Well, and it's hard because, yeah. Because especially in big companies, you know, you almost are forced to think of customers as numbers. Yeah. You know, you say, well, how many calls did we handle today?

Starting point is 00:28:20 What was our average handle time? You know, those are the kind of metrics. Those are the customer service success metrics. How long did it take us to answer a call? How can we answer these calls more quickly? That's not the recipe for great customer experience, right? How can we get you off the phone faster? Things like that.

Starting point is 00:28:36 But that is how customer service has been measured over time, and we just have to flip the script on that. So how do you do that? Let's say you work at a big company, and those metrics are definitely realistic as far how we measure if our customer support representatives are acting, how would you measure people? Because some of them maybe there's not easy goals set or measurables for having a great personality and trying to help somebody. You know what I mean? No, there's not.

Starting point is 00:29:04 So I think the best metric is effort score. So what you do is you take a percentage of all the customers you interact with cross-channel. So a percentage of Facebook and Twitter and phone and email, et cetera. and you take some percentage of those customers and you survey them after the interaction. You say on a scale of 1 to 10, how difficult was it to get an answer or to get what you needed? And what you're trying to do is make it easy, easy, easy, easy, easy for that customer to interact and transact with your organization. It's the Uberization of everything, right? People want to press a button and magic happens.

Starting point is 00:29:42 And right now, if you have a problem and you have to call a company, and wait on hold, that is the exact opposite of uberization, right? And so how can you make it simpler and take away friction? Because when you take away friction, you remove dissonance. And we remove dissonance, you create loyalty. So for us, it's all about effort. How can you make it simpler? And sometimes that's faster, and sometimes it's not necessarily speed.

Starting point is 00:30:05 It may be just availability or obviousness or there's a lot of other micro factors there, but we look at effort as opposed to time. Interesting. Okay. I love that. I think there's a lot there. Another part of you, Jay, as we've mentioned earlier, is writing. And the fact that you've written multiple books in New York Times bestseller. I was reading through prior to our conversation today, utility. And not only the book itself, which is a great book, but also it's called utility, Y-O-U-Tility, why smart marketing is about help, not hype. But in addition to that, You have this great PowerPoint deck on your LinkedIn page that shows how you wrote and marketed a New York Times bestseller. And it's, I love that you pulled back the curtain completely on showing your process for doing that. And I wanted to, immediately when I was looking through that, I was fascinated and wanted to learn more about not only the book itself and what it entails, but then the process behind creating a New York Times bestseller. Yeah, we're right in the middle of it again now with Hug Your Honor. I was just going to say you're probably doing it.

Starting point is 00:31:15 It's like, yeah, you know, some of the same plays and some different plays because it's been, you know, a couple two and a half years. And so some things are different now, especially online. I mean, Facebook advertising, for example, we're doing a lot more of that for Hug Your Hators than we did for utility just because it's so much farther along from a targeting perspective. So many more podcasts now this time than last time just because there are so many more podcasts that have so many great listeners like your show does. And so the playbook is somewhat similar, but a little bit different. So I'm sure I'll write another one around this launch. But you know what's a funny story? I think I mentioned in that book in that slide share presentation is that remember we talked about when I started my first company, I just called everybody I knew.

Starting point is 00:31:56 I did the same thing when I did utility and actually have it on my calendar to do the same thing next week. So I'm going to spend a lot of next week because I'm off the road emailing essentially every person I know. and you email every person you know personally, not copy and paste, not a newsletter, and you say, hey, I love you and I hope you love me, and I don't ask you for much, but I'm asking you right now. I need you to buy a bunch of copies of Hug Your Haters at Hug Your Haters.com right now. And write a review on Amazon, right? Yeah, eventually, eventually. But the first thing is buy books.

Starting point is 00:32:36 And I learned that from Gary Vaynerchuk. And Gary and I are old friends since before he was a thing. And when I started the marketing for utility, I called him. I said, Gary, I need, you know, give me a little advice. He said, look, you've already sold all the books you're going to sell. You just don't know it yet. He said, you just need to connect the ask with the people that you've helped in your career. And the rest will take care of itself.

Starting point is 00:32:59 And so I sent, I don't know, 600 personal emails for utility and sold, you know, five or six thousand books just just from those emails and and I'll do the same thing next week. So as I said earlier, there's there's no shortcut. I mean, we always seek the shortcut, but it's not there, right? If you want to achieve what you want to achieve, suck it up, man. Just put the effort into it. Does is it, is it fun to write 600 personal emails in a row? No.

Starting point is 00:33:28 I can tell you firsthand, it is totally not fun. But if you care enough, that's what you'll do. I remember, I love that story because it's just pure hustle. And I think there's probably a combination of people listening that are thinking about that, that they're launching something. I remember when I, I'm sure a lot of these people are still listening. When I launched this podcast, I sat down over the weekend, and it took me by two or three weekends where I would sit in front of a computer for four,

Starting point is 00:33:58 or five, six hours straight and send notes to just about everyone I could think of saying, Here is my new podcast and I just launched it. There's only three episodes. I love it if you would listen to them and then write an honest review in iTunes for me. You know, thank you and kind of shared a little bit more about what went into it. But I'm thinking about the person because I think that hustle and it really helped. It launched it to number one and new and noteworthy in three different categories and on the front page of iTunes. Yeah, for eight weeks.

Starting point is 00:34:32 And then I had random listeners from all over the world. because it launched properly. And I studied a lot. I spent a ton of time learning the algorithm or trying to learn an algorithm in iTunes to study other successful podcasts and how they launch. And then studying how other people successfully launched anything, books, any type of career and then implemented that into my process. And it took a ton of time.

Starting point is 00:34:55 But here's the thing I think people forget the time is done. And I know you've talked about this and written about this and spoken about this. All of the work has done well. had, I'm sorry, well before the launch. You can't just all of a sudden write your book and put it on Amazon and be like, oh, hey, do this. That work is, you put in this work over the course of many years for people to help them so that at some point when you have an ask, then now they're coming back to you to say, yeah, of course, I'm going to buy 50 of Jay's books because he's helped me so much. Yeah, that's exactly the formula. I love your story about the podcast launch. We have

Starting point is 00:35:32 I'm convinced it of our media, which is the media side of our company. We've got a very, very large blog, and we have six weekly podcasts now that we produce, and a daily email newsletter for marketers and all kinds of other webinars. And so we're always going through that same process. We've got a new show launching next week called Influence Pros, which is all about about influencer marketing and brands who do that and influencers and how that works. And so we're working on the launch plan right now, and it's the same kind of thing. It's like, all right, let's just go ask everybody we know to support it.

Starting point is 00:36:02 Let's say somebody's listening, Jay, who has done a good job in their career. They work at a big company. They're in their mid-30s. Again, spouse, kids, house, cars, the whole deal. You know, all the responsibilities that a lot of people have. But haven't really done a remarkable job of building up a network of friends. They've done well within their company. But outside of that, they've kind of kept their head down.

Starting point is 00:36:27 They go home. They spend time with their family. They watch TV. They do the normal things. So they don't have a huge. network outside of their company, but they've got a book inside of them or they want to be a speaker. They've done some of these things. So they don't necessarily have this 600 person list of people to email to say, can you help me? What would you say to those people who say they want

Starting point is 00:36:48 to get the book out of them? They want it to be a bestseller. They want to start speaking, doing some of the things that you do. What would your advice to those people be? Speaking is the one area where you can do it without a network. You really can. There's a saying in the speaking business that sounds axiomatic, but it's very true, which is the more you speak, the more you speak. If you're good and you actually are disproportionately good as a speaker and you've got a topic that people care about and you're a professional about it, everybody in every audience is a potential client. And so everybody I know who's a successful speaker has grown their business geometrically over the years, not because they're particularly good at marketing, because everybody who sees the speech might need to hire you for a speech at some point. it happens to me all the time. I get emails literally every month. It's like, I saw you speak five years ago. Now I'm ready. Now I'm in a position of my company where I get to influence

Starting point is 00:37:40 who gets to speak at our annual conference or whatever. Can you please come and do a keynote for us? And so speaking is the one area where you can build a business without a preexisting network if you're good and you just stay at it, right? I've written a lot about this in the past that the speaking business is the exact same as the music business. It's literally the same thing. So you start off playing a fraternity party for free and then you play for beer and then you play for for 50 bucks, and then if you're still good, then you pay for 200 bucks, and then 500, and then 1,000, and you just work your way up as literally a ladder. And so that is the one area where you can do it.

Starting point is 00:38:12 And then the nice thing is, once you are speaking, then every time you give a speech, you're going to have connection. People are going to remember you. I designed my speeches very intentionally to be a series of tweetable things, right? It's tweetable statements, which is why I was named the most retweeted person in the world among digital marketers, because I speak to digital marketers. because I speak to digital marketers all the time, and I give them presentations that are very tweetable, and so over time, that just builds.

Starting point is 00:38:37 So speaking is the place to start, in my opinion. And then based on speaking, then you build your network from the stage out, and then you do the book. How long have you been speaking? Well, it depends on how you look at it. theoretically, most of my life. I was the guy in high school who was named, this is a true story, most likely to be a game show host. I read that, yeah. And a barbecue judge, right?

Starting point is 00:38:59 I am a barbecue judge, that's right. And I, you know, I was the guy in high school who, like, was the emcee of the talent show. Like, don't have actually any talent, but I can emcee the talent show. So from some perspective, I've been speaking all my life professionally in terms of somebody writing me a check to do it, like 10 years, 8 years, something like that. What's the difference between 10 years ago and today? What type of progress and how and why? Oh, my God. Just there's a reps.

Starting point is 00:39:26 There's a whole book in that. Because the speaking business is a business, right? And that's the difference. I've got a lot of different businesses and a lot of different things that I do. But in terms of how I spend my time, I am a professional speaker who happens to own a consulting firm and a media company. Ten years ago, I was a consultant who gave a speech every once in a while. And there is an enormous difference in how you handle clients, how you conduct yourself on stage, the level of polish and professionalism and training and coaching that you are willing to invest in to make yourself better on stage. it is night and day.

Starting point is 00:40:01 Do you have a speaking coach? Yeah, I work with Michael Porte. Oh, he's been on the show. Michael's awesome. He's a great friend and has helped me a lot. So do you guys, is it one-on-one? Does he review tapes? How does that work?

Starting point is 00:40:11 I'd love to hear about the process of how you, how you, a phenomenal, by the way, just Google Jay Bayer and you'll see the speeches. But a guy who is literally one of the best, you go out there and crush it, but it shows that you still are willing to invest and pay a coach. Look, I mean, thank you very much. just are kind words. I'm not that good compared to people who are good. I'm a member of the National Speakers Association and do a fair amount with that organization. And the reason I do that is when you go to that, when you're in an association and everybody is a professional speaker,

Starting point is 00:40:42 you realize how how not good you are compared to some legendary speakers, right? People who are, you know, who could, you know, change your life in 20 minutes. And one thing you learn in that organization is that the more successful speakers always have coaches. And the more successful they are, the more they invest in coaches, not less. And there's a very strong correlation there because it's not an accident that they're that good, right? Somebody helped them get that good. You can get by on talent. And I did that for a long time. I mean, I got by on talent for five years. And then I realized, like, look, if I'm going to really do this, if I really want to get where I want to go as a speaker, I need somebody to help me go beyond that. And so Michael has helped me

Starting point is 00:41:25 very much and several other people have helped me a ton. Rory Vaden is a great speaker and a terrific author and friend who's helped me a lot. Mark Sanborn, Scott McCain, Scott Stratton, legendary speakers have really helped a lot. And the speaking community is very, very willing to help one another. It's not parochial at all. Like, hey, you're stealing my gigs. It doesn't really work like that, which is really fantastic. It's a great community. But the most recent time I worked with Michael was last summer, and he did a three-day boot camp, and there were six of us.

Starting point is 00:41:55 So me and Ian Altman and Marcus Sheridan and Rohit Bargava and a couple other guys just got together and spent three days with Michael and his wife, Amy, on sort of like really hardcore, like, okay, when you say this, take a half step to the right kind of stuff, which was really amazing. I love hearing about that. I want to dig in there, too. But I think first and foremost, what I think of when you talked me about the best always have coaches. And I don't know why, but I think of, and my dad's talked to me about this, but you think of golfers.

Starting point is 00:42:28 For some reason, I do. And the fact that when Tiger Woods was right in the middle of his prime and really all golfers, Phil Mickelson, whoever you want to go, Jordan Speath now, these guys invest a lot in a coach. These guys are the number one player. They're the best, the absolute best in the world. and they're still investing in a coach. And so it always made me believe if those guys need a coach, I need a coach in multiple areas in my life, right? The best, he's the number one player in the world,

Starting point is 00:42:58 and he's paying to have somebody help him and review tape and give him the tips that is needed in the reminders. That I think if you think about anything you're doing, whether you're going to write a book, give speeches, your relationship with your spouse, being a parent, I think it's worth it to always be in a, as I would say, always be in a beta mode, meaning I'm never going to really peak. I'm never going to quite get there.

Starting point is 00:43:25 I always need to reach out. And for me, that's why this podcast exists, to reach out to great guys like you and other world class leaders to say, what are they world class at? And how can I tease out the tips and tricks behind why Jay Bay are so great? And why are you great writer? Why are you great speaker? and to hear that, well, hey, I need coaching as much as anybody. I think it's a refreshing thing to hear from me, Jay.

Starting point is 00:43:53 Oh, thanks. And it's different coaches, too. Like, you look at Mickelson. I'm a big golf fan. And in fact, one of the consultants on my team was the head of social media strategy at the PGA tour for like eight years. And so we're still in that. We do some work with Taylor Made, too. And so we're pretty into the golf game at Convincyon to Convert.

Starting point is 00:44:09 And Mickelson, who's my favorite player, he and I were the same age. He went to Arizona State at the same time my brother did, and I've met him a couple times, and super great guy. He had the same coach for a long time. In the last two years, his performance started to slip. And so he went out and got a new coach, fired his coach, got a new coach, and he's had two top threes in the last two weeks. And so sometimes you don't just need one voice, right? You need multiple voices. You kind of get what you're going to get out of a particular coach, and then you go get a different coach because they're going to tell you something different.

Starting point is 00:44:41 and that's not a repudiation of the first coach. It's not disloyalty. It's that if you believe that you can learn from everybody in the world, and I generally believe that, that everybody has something to teach. It's just whether or not you're willing to listen, then the more feedback the better, which is why I wrote this book.

Starting point is 00:44:58 I mean, look, you know what the most overrated thing is in the world, Ryan? What's that? The most overrated thing in the world is praise. Because praise doesn't teach you shit. Anytime somebody says you're good at this, you're good at that, you already know it. It doesn't teach you anything ever. What teaches you things are complaints. And that's why I wrote Hug Your Hators, because we're so interested in listening to positive feedback, but we turn away from negative feedback. And negative feedback is the petri dish of improvement.

Starting point is 00:45:27 And that's why companies need to embrace it. And frankly, the same thing as true with individuals. What a powerful statement. I love it, Jay, man. You got emotional too. I can sense it. Talk to me more about Hug Your Hater. So I want to, I'm excited for this book. I'm definitely I'm going to be one of the bulk order guys to then read it myself and give it out because I love the work that you do. And I've been studying it for quite some time now. What was the impetus for this? Why hug your haters with a cool little title too as well. Thanks.

Starting point is 00:45:57 It's got a picture of a mad face with a heart around it talking about embracing complaints and keeping customers. Talk me more about that. Well, I'll tell you how we started on this process, right? So on the consulting side of my business, we work with lots of big companies on social media and online marketing stuff, right? Well, what was happening all the time and still does? Because we get called in to help some company with their online marketing, but their biggest problem isn't actually online marketing. It's online customer service because they don't know how to do it. They're not putting the same kind of resources into it that they are offline.

Starting point is 00:46:32 And so you're like, hey, buy stuff from me. Meanwhile, you've got all these customers who have already bought stuff from me. like, well, what about us? You know, they're not answering all those questions. You know, they're answering every 10th tweet based on somebody's influence score or what have you. And look, as, as Dave Kirpin told me. Influence score. Is that mean by like how many followers that person has?

Starting point is 00:46:52 Yeah, yeah, or clout score or whatever metric they want to use. Yeah, especially look at airlines real quick. And when a celebrity complains, not even a celebrity, but somebody who's got a lot of followers on Twitter, when they complain to an airline, they always, most of the time, they are getting a response. but the person who's got a hundred followers on Twitter does not. Yeah, there's some exceptions to that. And I think airlines have gotten a lot better at it. And we profile a couple of airlines in the book. In fact, KLM, which is the Royal Dutch Airlines out of Amsterdam,

Starting point is 00:47:23 is probably the best social media customer service company in the world in any capacity. It is truly remarkable. They answer 60,000 tweets a week, 24 hours a day in 14 different languages. So if you tweet them at 3 a.m. in Turkish, they'll answer you back. by 307 in Turkish. Wow. It is spectacular. But when I said earlier that customer service is the new marketing, I mean that.

Starting point is 00:47:45 KLM's a good example. So this is a social media customer service team, right? That's their whole point. Last year they sold $25 million worth of tickets. Wow. Just because they're responsive. That's not their job. Their job is customer service, but they still sold $25 million for the tickets because

Starting point is 00:47:58 they're fast and they're human and they're personal and they're on it and they answer every single customer. Because if you don't answer somebody, right, a lack of response is actually a response. The response that says, I don't care about you very much. Wow, that's incredible. I love it. Jay, I want to wind down here. I know we're up against clock.

Starting point is 00:48:17 And so I got a question for you around, I mentioned earlier in our conversation, the purpose behind my show is that for me personally and for the audience to be able to speak with, for me to speak with and for them to learn from world-class performers in a number of different areas from a leadership perspective. And that obviously is you. And you've learned a lot along the way and you continue to invest in yourself and in learning to get better.

Starting point is 00:48:49 And so I'm just curious, when you hear the phrase learning leader, what's the first thing that pops into your mind? I think it's emphasizing just what you said, right? So if you're a learning leader, you're a person that makes it mandatory or at least optimal. to commit to a culture of continuous improvement.

Starting point is 00:49:14 And there's a famous saying and a T-shirt that says, good enough is not enough. And people who are not learning leaders believe that good enough is just fine. And it's not, not if you're serious about whatever it is that you're serious about, right? It's a curse, right? Because if you are a learning leader and you're sort of wired the way you are and the way I am and the way people who listen to the show are, you're never satisfied. and it's one of the problems that that I have personally.

Starting point is 00:49:40 And so when I go sit with my psychologist, he's like, hey, your problem is you're never satisfied, and to which I always say, yeah, but is that a problem? Yeah. Or is that an opportunity, right? And so it's a fine line between being a learning leader and continuously striving to take the next step, the next step, the next step, and then never actually being satisfied with any of the steps they've taken in the past. And that's my personal problem, right?

Starting point is 00:50:05 Like, not only am I never satisfied, I'm also never happy. Right? So when utility became a New York Times bestseller, I was proud of that for about 14 minutes, right? And then it was like, okay, what's the next thing, right? And that can be a little bit of a problem, right? When you're driven like that and you're never, you never take pride or pleasure in it, you know, because you're just like next thing, next thing, next thing. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:50:28 Because most people aren't wired quite like that. And so to them, it can be like, dude, how about just smelling. The Roses for 30 seconds. And I think a lot of people who listen to this show might be afflicted with that. And that's something that I'm going to try and work on here in the next year is to continuously be a learning leader, but also take some sort of pride and pleasure and what I've achieved so far. Yeah, it's like Nick Saban.

Starting point is 00:50:51 He wins a national championship and then he complains. Next morning. And next morning. And he also complains that he missed out on time to recruit because he was busy playing the game. And other coaches were already on the road. And so it's just a guy who you wonder, it's no surprise why he's been able to have that type of success because I think there are, and I mentioned this actually when I was speaking with a mentor of mine recently, that I said, I think this is an issue. I recorded it, so I will release it actually. But I said, I think this is a problem. And I talked to my wife about this, the fact that when the success comes, it almost in some weird way. And I know you just mentioned this, Jay, you, you, you.

Starting point is 00:51:32 you're not satisfied enough or you want just the next level up or the next level up or the next level up and you'll never really be there. You know what I mean? Like I think that just kind of way some of us are wired where regardless of whatever it is, if you sell 10 million books, you're like, I want to sell 15 million or I need to write another one. And so it just never quite gets there. Even though people from the outside would say, wow, that is incredible. Everything you've done. You're like, yeah, yeah, it's pretty good. But I need to do this. I need to do that. It just, I think it's, it's just an interesting way. way that some of us were wired. One of my problems is I don't set goals. I never had. Why? I always felt like if you set a goal that's too restrictive because then you're like, I'm only going to focus on that thing and it sort of shuts you down to opportunities. But the problem is when you don't set goals, then you never know you've reached one.

Starting point is 00:52:20 And so then you never have something to celebrate. And so I'm working on that, right? I'm like, okay, well, what if I set goals, but also kept myself open to other opportunities, which to me seems like anathema, but I'm working on it. I gotcha. This is good. We could go even much longer on this, but Jay, I definitely want to continue this dialogue. I got to, where can everyone go to find you online?

Starting point is 00:52:43 Convince and Convert.com is our main site with all of our podcast, blogs, emails. Jaybear.com is the speaking stuff. And hug your haters.com is a new book. All kinds of crazy special offers for people who order the book from me. We got socks. We got webinars with me, live speeches, all kinds of crazy personalized thank you videos, content that's not in the book, all kinds of this shenanigans. Awesome, man.

Starting point is 00:53:04 I'll be one of those bulk orders, like I mentioned to you. Absolutely. Again, Jay, thanks so much for being here, and I definitely want to continue our conversation as we both progress on our never-ending journeys, man. Yeah, it is never-ending. Ryan, thanks a much. I really enjoyed it.

Starting point is 00:53:20 It was great. Thanks, Jay. This episode of The Learning Leader Show is over, but we have plenty more to keep you locked in until next time. Head over to LearningLeadershow.com for more information, and to request your favorite entrepreneur, CEO, world-class athlete, or anyone else that inspires you. You can also talk to Ryan directly by reaching out to him on Twitter at Ryan Hawk 12.

Starting point is 00:53:44 Thanks again, and we'll see you next time on The Learning Leader Show.

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 101: Jay Baer – Why You Should Hug Your Haters

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