The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 251: Joey Coleman - How To Never Lose A Customer Again

Episode Date: April 1, 2018

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk Episode 251: Joey Coleman - How To Never Lose A Customer Again Joey Coleman is the Chief Experience Composer at Design Symphony - a customer experience branding firm that specializes in creating unique, attention-grabbing customer experiences. His clients include individual entrepreneurs, start-ups, small businesses, non-profits, government entities, and Fortune 500 companies. For over a decade he's worked with clients that include NASA, Network for Good, Hyatt Hotels, Zappos, the Save Darfur Coalition, and the World Bank. Joey is a recognized expert in customer experience design, an award-winning speaker at national and international conferences, and has taught business and creativity courses at both the college and graduate school level. Past appearances include presentations at the M.I.T. Sloan School of Management, Google, the Georgetown University School of Business, Stanford University, Zappos, YouTube.  Joey's first book is titled Never Lose A Customer Again: Turn Any Sale Into Lifelong Loyalty In 100 Days. Subscribe on iTunes  or Stitcher Radio The Learning Leader Show "The best way to say thank you to someone is to show love to the people they love." Show Notes: The 3 things a great keynote speaker does: Change how you think Change how you feel Change how you act The 60 second SPEED pitch from Joey (this is something Joey has never done before and it was incredible!) He speed talks what happens following a purchase you make and how you can secure a customer for life The stages: Assess, Admit, Affirm, Activate, Acclimate, Accomplish, Adopt, Advocate The importance of your messaging within the first 100 days Research and science back -- From Harvard, Bain, Stanford "People who get promoted most and fastest are those who positively impact the business." "People we like get promoted" Why write this book? -- Needed to work out all the kinks, document the 46 case studies and the people/companies who have implemented "the first 100 days" strategy Why do companies lose customers? Selling to human beings - people are skeptical and get buyers remorse Fear, uncertainty, and doubt The new business sales people are not aligned with the account managers More energy spent on getting new clients instead of taking care of the current ones "For a marriage, it requires a lot of work, continually building, communicating, growing." A client should be treated in the same manner Why are the first 100 days so important? Must be on-boarded properly If your customer gets to day 101, they will be with you for at least 5 years The Garrett Gunderson experience "When I showed up, he had a 6 pack of root beer for me and said, 'I wanted you to feel like you are home." -- A preview of what it would be like to be a customer of theirs The $35,000 golf ball -- Pebble Beach Pay attention Record small details that could help you later "When you talk, I listen" Strategic appreciation -- How to say thank you.  The use of gifts, presents, and pictures The best way to say thank you to Joey -- "Do amazing things for my wife and kids."  -- Delta did this for Joey and he is a customer for life As John Ruhlin would say, "The best way to say thank you to someone is to show love to the people they love." Don't send gifts for the holidays when everyone else does.  It's about timing "If you're going to host someone, welcome them at the door... Offer them a glass of water." "A great speaker can: change how you think, change how you feel, and change how you act." Social Media: Follow Joey on Twitter: @thejoeycoleman Read: Never Lose A Customer Again Connect with me on LinkedIn Join our Facebook Group: The Learning Leader Community To Follow Me on Twitter: @RyanHawk12

You've delivered your product or service hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, millions of times. For the typical new customer, this is the first time they've ever done business with you. This may be the first time they've ever done business in this category that you operate in. So what are you doing to make them feel comfortable? What are you doing to make them feel like they matter and that they don't feel, for lack of a better way of putting it, stupid for not knowing what comes next? Welcome to the Learning Leader Show. I am Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here.

It is Mindful Monday. Text learners to 4-4-222 in order to join thousands of other fellow learning leaders from all over the world. Text learners to 4-4-222. Now, on tonight's featured leader. It's with my friend Joey Coleman. He helps companies keep their customers. a world-class keynote speaker, workshop leader, consultant, and his latest book is titled Never Lose a Customer Again,

Turn Any Sale into Lifelong Loyalty in 100 Days. A few of the topics we got into. His 60-second speed recap. This is something Joey typically does at the end of a keynote, which I've been fortunate to see a few times, and it's incredible, and I asked him to do this off-the-cuff on this episode. He's never recorded it on a podcast before, but agreed to do it,

And he crushed it. It's within the first six minutes of this conversation. You'll really like it. And then why do companies lose their customers? And what is the science behind the first 100 days? Followed by how to create powerful moments and shock in all your customers with great and thoughtful experiences. Ladies and gentlemen, you're going to love this one with Joey Coleman. All right, Joey, so excited, man.

have you back on a learning leader. So welcome back, man. Thank you so much. I'm absolutely thrilled to be here. You know, I remember being one of your very early on guest, and I've been such a fan of yours, Ryan, for many years and watching your journey as the learning leader continues to grow and develop. And I know the audience can't see me, but to get myself super psyched up for our session today, I'm actually wearing my Learning Leader podcast t-shirt that you were kind enough to send me after the last show. It's funny. I wear it out. out and about from time to time. And I'll have people come up to me and say, oh, my God, I totally love Ryan Hawk.

I've heard the show. And I'm like, I am thrilled to be a walking billboard for Ryan Holic in the learning show. So thrilled to be back. Thanks for having. You wore that at Mastermind Talks. I remember that one night. We got a cool picture.

We got a cool picture together. It was a neat moment because I, I've, you've been a supporter for such a long time. And I really appreciate that. I hope you know that. And I've told you, but I really do because one of the coolest things, I think I was talking to Austin Cleon about this. One of the cool things about this is when you are able to produce work that people you really look up to like and respect, it's a, it's such a beautiful feeling, man.

Like you do this all the time too. You know, you're doing things that are impressing your, your heroes in a way. And that's such a cool feeling about doing this type of work. Well, I absolutely feel that way. I hear what you're saying. And yeah, I'm a big fan excited to mutually be tracking each other's growth and development as we both continue to take things to new and fun places. So absolutely, absolutely thrilled to be back. I will say this when I was thinking about doing some podcasts around the launch of my book, when I made the list of shows that I really hope that I'd have the chance to get on, I kid you not. The first one that went down on my list was learning leader because I love your style. I love your approach and my perception of your

audience. And again, I don't know. I've met, I know a lot of people that listen to your show. I haven't met everyone who listens to your show. But my perception is that their growth and learning mindset individuals, right? They're the kind of people that are going to hear a podcast and say, wow, there's some actionable elements of what was just shared that I can apply in my business starting tomorrow. And that's the piece that's most exciting to me. You know, I'm sure it's nice to have go, oh, well, that was an interesting thought or that was an interesting observation. But I believe there are three times. types of speakers, speakers that make you think differently, speakers that make you feel differently, and speakers that make you act differently. And while I certainly try to be a speaker who makes my audiences think and feel in ways that they haven't thought and felt before, if they don't act differently, I feel like I haven't done my job. So I really love your audience and kind of everything you stand for about taking action on these ideas. Thank you. I've used the think, feel, and act, by the way, in video interviews I've done, just so you know. I always say, I heard this from Joey

Coleman. He's the man and I, as Austin and Clean, again, would say, I've stolen that from you to say, I learned this from Joey Coleman and it means so much, especially the third part of the acting part. And the other, the other, the, the, to comment on what you just said, when it comes to the audience, I think that's another aspect that I'm extremely proud of is the emails that I get. And I know you, you, you probably experience as well. The emails I get are so thoughtful and the questions people ask are, it just, they're just really well done. And it makes you even more proud to have a platform or to produce something when the people who are listening are very impressive leaders. I have this little community, this learning leader circle of 11 people,

Joey, that I've sourced from the audience. And it's essentially a paid mastermind group. And the people in this group, every one of them smarter than me. They really are, like, in a big way. And so I've been somehow lucky enough to surround myself with people who I'm the least smartest person in the room. And so when we meet over Zoom, I learned so much from them. And as I'm facilitating this meeting, so it's really neat. But to get on with a little bit, I have this, you know, I've been very lucky to see you speak multiple times in person. And I've gone on record on many different episodes of saying that you're probably the best public speaker I've ever seen when it comes to not only the message, but how you deliver the message. And so one of the cool things that you do typically at the end of a speech,

that I've seen is you do this recap really fast and usually around 60 seconds where you're able to recap about an hour's worth of material in 60 seconds. And I have not seen anyone else who's able to do this in an impressive way. And I'm not trying to put you on the spot, but you are, you are a professional speaker. And so to talk a little bit about your book and your message, you know, the first hundred days, never lose a customer again. Could you do the, The standard 60-second-ish recap, but do it at the beginning this time? You know, I'd be happy to. I'll give a little caveat to the listeners.

You know, normally as, as Ryan says, this comes at the end of an hour-long keynote. So there may be a little more context for it after having heard me speak for 59 minutes as opposed to jumping right into it. But what I promise is we'll go through everything. And then Ryan, I trust implicitly to pull out. ask any questions about anything I say in this overview that you as the listeners might have. And obviously, you can reach out to me too if you have any questions about what I've said. But yeah, I'd be happy to give that a try. So let's get everybody on our marks get set. Go. Are we ready? You're ready? I'm ready. Let's go. All right. When you make a purchase, your brain floods with

dopamine. You feel excited. You feel thrilled, joy, euphoria, that this is finally going to be the product or the service that answers all your prayers, makes all your dreams come true. The problem is almost as quickly as you make that decision, a clock starts ticking and it ticks faster and faster. And those feelings of joy, euphoria, and excitement are replaced by feelings of fear, doubt, and uncertainty. All the research shows that regardless of what industry you're in, where you operate, no matter how in the world you're serving your customers, somewhere between 20 and 70% of your newly acquired customers are going to decide to quit doing business with you in the first 100 days of the relationship. The first 100 days of the relationship is the

most important time of all. And it's really imperative that you get that relationship and that onboarding process right. Let me ask you this question. How big would your business be if you were still doing business with everyone who had ever been a customer and you kept those people in the fold instead of letting leave out the back door? The problem really stems from the fact that in terms of the customer life cycle, most businesses are focused on the side of the path that is built around building awareness, increasing knowledge, consideration of your product, all the pre-purchase marketing and sales efforts instead of spending their time on the second half of the equation, which is what happens after the sale. How do you make sure your customers are satisfied? How do you build loyalty?

How do you turn them into raving fans? There's six key tools that you can use throughout the first hundred days to interact with your customers, in-person interactions, emails, physical mail, phone calls, videos, and presence. And all of these things are designed to create the touchpoints in the interactions that will really make it special. Now, over the course of the customer journey, there are eight phases they have the potential to go to. The first one is assessed where the customer wonders should they even do business with you. The next one is day one, admit when they say, yes, indeed, I believe that you can solve my problem. Then we have to quickly address that buyer's remorse I mentioned earlier by affirming their relationship. Then we go to the stage of

activate. At the activate stage, we kick things off and really get the relationship off on a great start. Then we move to acclimate, where we're acclimating the customer to our way of doing business so that we hopefully meet the next phase, which is accomplished, where they're able to achieve the goal they had when they originally decided to do business with us. Then and only then do we have customers that will adopt our way of doing business, become loyal customers, and ideally move to the final phase, advocate when they're raving fans. In short, this is why the first 100 days is so important. If you get the first 100 days right, you will have a customer for life. And day one starts today. Joey, how do you do that, man? That is insane. Well, I appreciate it. You know, it's, I'm a big

believer that messaging matters, the entire framework behind the first 100 days. concept that I've developed over the last decade plus is built on this belief that we can do anything for a short amount of time. If I said to you, hey, I'm going to teach you to keep your customers and you can do it in one day, most savvy business owners would say, yeah, I'm totally skeptical. There's no way. There's no way that in one day we can fix all of our problems. But if I say, hey, if you're willing to give me a hundred days and we put in a systematized process and a methodology for effectively onboarding in your new customers, welcoming them into the fold, now it feels like something that is short enough time frame that it feels doable, but long enough

timeframe that we can have a sustainable and significant impact. So that's the goal of the process. That's where it comes from. You know, it's very, I know you're a big fan of research and the science behind it. It's very research and science based. It's been implemented by companies all over the small, medium, and large. And it's something that the people have had great success because the research also shows that if I can help you keep 5%, just 5% of the customers that would otherwise leave your business, it's going to increase the profits in your business 25 to 100%. This isn't just my research.

This is backed up by research from Harvard Business School, Stanford Business School, Bain and company, international consultants. So there's lots of folks that will point to the fact that, you know, retention is really where it's at, despite the fact that most people are focused on the marketing and sales acquisition side of the conversation. So I want to relate this back to people maybe who are not the business owner. Okay. So think about the person who is a middle manager or even an individual contributor within a big company because we have a solid balance of people listening. I mentioned you earlier about the emails I receive. And there are people who are side hustlers and there are people who are just looking to get promoted within their company.

Certainly no wrong answers there. And as far as what people want to do with their career, that's completely up to them. When you think about somebody who is in that middle manager level or maybe individual contributor and they're looking to grow within their company, they don't own the company, how does never lose a customer again and thinking about the first 100 days? I worked in sales. you've worked in sales, but how does this apply to people in that space in their career? It's a great question, and I think it applies in a number of ways. A couple of thoughts on this. Number one, in my experience, the people who get promoted the fastest within a large organization

are the people who make a very clear and obvious impact on the success of the business. Now, the success of the business can be seen as do they get along with their coworkers, do they drive revenue, do they help increase profits, do they help increase efficiencies, et cetera, whatever you're doing to make the business better. It is my personal belief that there is no area that is more ripe for improvement in the business world today and with fewer people focused on it than need to be focused on it than customer experience. I'm a big believer that everyone is in sales, whether you have sales on your business card

and that's your specific function, every time you interact with a customer, you are advancing the sale. You are advancing the relationship. And so I think by focusing on some of these customer experience initiatives, it allows us to set ourselves apart from our coworkers. Additionally, I think the better you get at creating personal and emotional connections with your customers,

which is really a core focus of the implementation of these ideas that are outlined in the book, the better you are at creating personal and emotional connections with your coworkers, which includes your boss and the managers and the people who are further up the food chain for lack of a better way of putting it than you are. The people that get promoted, the people who succeed are the people that we like doing business with. And sometimes it's as simple as that. The person, you know, if we look across a group of middle managers, the one who's going to get the promotion is the one who's friends with the senior manager. Now, sometimes that annoys us, right? And I've been that guy in those shoes where I'm like,

oh, geez, of course, they promote, he promoted his friend. that's not fair look at everything i did well you can you can either take that tact and just be frustrated that you're not getting noticed or you can say well how could i be his friend how could how could i build that relationship and that's really the premise behind the entire book which is developing these personal and emotional connections to people allow the relationship to go to a place that is not as familiar in the business world and as a result it really stands out So why do you write it? You've been a very successful professional speaker. I don't know if I don't think you really needed to write a book for your business to do well. What made you do this? Yeah. No, it's a, it's interesting,

Ryan. I went a long time speaking without a book and people would regularly say, oh, you need to write the book. You have to write the book. There were there were a couple of reasons I didn't write the book, which maybe I'll answer that first and then a couple of reasons I did. Number one, I didn't want to write the book until I knew that I'd worked out all the kinks. My belief around a book is you put down your best work and you put down proven concepts. And when I first came up with this idea more than a decade ago, probably closer to 15, 20 years ago now at this point, I wanted to make sure I had plenty of case studies that proved my point. And not only do I consult with companies and so I kind of built my own case studies in-house, but then I also did external research to the point where in the book, there are 46 cases. studies of people that have implemented first 100 days strategies to great success in their business.

I include companies that have less than $100,000 in revenue and one employee. I include companies that have hundreds of thousands of employees and billions of dollars in revenue. So it doesn't matter how small or how big you are, how much you have to devote to these types of retention type activities in terms of your investment of time, energy, effort, or money, this stuff can apply to you. when I finally felt that I had proven it in enough scenarios and across, you know, dozens and dozens of industries in companies around the world, then it was time to sit down

and write the book. And writing the book actually happened quite quickly. You were actually in the audience when our mutual friend Tucker Max kind of took me to task for not having a book. And I walked out of that session and said to him, okay, I'm ready to go. from the time I signed the contract with the publisher to publish the book to the time they got the first manuscript was about 60 days. Wow. So when it came time to write the book, I wrote the book very quickly.

And I don't say that from a place of ego, but to say I was ready. I had thought through how I wanted to present it, the structure. I'd shared it in, you know, hundreds of speeches and workshops and private consulting engagements. So I felt like I had a pretty good grasp on how to present it in a way that would not only hopefully open people's minds to why they hadn't thought about taking care of these customers that they worked so hard to acquire, but then also give them a really clear action plan for, okay, Joey, I get it, we should be doing a better job. What do we do now? The book really outlines here are the steps you take to not only make the systematic changes within your organization, but to make the philosophical. changes in how you think about the importance of taking care of your customers. So you and your team were nice enough to send me a copy, an advanced copy.

This episode is going to come out right as the book is launched. And so people will be able to buy the book right as this is coming out. But if you're cool with it, I read through it, obviously, really enjoyed it. And if I may interject, forgive me. But those of you listening, Ryan just said I read through it, obviously. this is not the norm. And I say this respectfully of some of the other podcasts

I've been on. Many, many podcast hosts do not read the book of the author they're interviewing. How do you do the interview, though? How do you do it? I don't know. I mean, and thankfully,

and again, I don't say this from a place of ego, as somebody who spends all day speaking, I'm happy to be the dentist in the relationship, pulling teeth, and trying to do my best to advance the conversation.

But the way you know the difference between a pro host and somebody who is either trust learning or not willing to make the commitment of time and effort to really make their show work is whether or not they read the book when somebody is coming on their show to talk about their book. And so you say obviously, but I just want to thank you for even spending time in the book. I recognize, you know, this is a long book, right? When it's all said and done, we're at north of 350 pages, right? This is a big book. And I was a little bit concerned. And I talked to my publisher and they're like, you know, this is a lot more than we signed on for. And I'm like, great,

what part do you want to cut? And they said, well, we think we need all of it, though. And I'm like, okay, that's my thought too. So the idea really is to our mutual friend Sarah Stibitz, who's been an incredible supporter of mine and helping me with the book and editing the book. You know, she said to me, Joey, the reason I think it's okay is because this is what people will leave on their bookshelves and keep coming back to year after year. You know, No, our goal is, my number one goal in writing this book was to walk onto an airplane 30 years from now and see someone reading my book. That was my number one goal. I wanted to write a book in our friend Ryan Holiday's words is a perennial seller.

Not from a point of view of, oh, I want to make all this money off a book because anybody who does books will tell you you don't make very much, if any, money off of writing books. But I wanted something that would stand the test of time and that it still applied later. Yeah, well, I mean, I appreciate it to kind of words. and also it means a lot to me here. You say that a little mini inside baseball, I think, I guess I got a lot of emails from podcasters, as you would imagine,

Joey, and you're one yourself too. I would say the average amount of preparation for every episode is at least 10 to 15 hours, at least. You know what I mean? I mean, that's just on ends and sometimes more.

So for example, for you, you read the book, right, which it's not a small book. You read the book. You watch every video that's online. and then go through your notes in the book,

outline a potential process to go through, a natural sequential order to have a conversation. It's not too can, I hope people can tell, but there's thought put behind our conversation, right? When I saw you do that, do the fast 60 seconds towards the end of a speech, I put that in my outline. Maybe this would be something that would be good to do on a podcast

because it's great for audio. But I think that's just a little behind the scenes a little as far as what it takes for the people who email about doing a podcast, are you prepared to invest at least 10 to 15 hours for every single interview? And if not, you probably shouldn't do it. You probably shouldn't.

Just don't do an interview show. Right. Like for example, to be candid, my show that I do with my good buddy Dan Gingis, it's not an interview show. And there's nothing wrong with an interview show, but I knew to your point that I wasn't going to be able to spend

10 to 15 hours per show prepping for a guest. Right. Now, that being said, I still spend a boatload of hours prepping for the actual conversation that Dan and I have, but it's a different calculus. So I totally agree with you. Yeah. So as I was saying before, I want to get into some of my notes from your book, from going through, and then have you expand on some of it, share some of the story slash science that because you have, like you said, you mentioned the 46 case studies. So let's, again, in that order, you write, businesses don't catch as well as. they chase. Companies reward acquisition over retention. And I'll talk the little bit from a personal

perspective, Joey, I've worked at big companies in a sales role, both in a account manager role, as well as a new business role. And so when I started, I was an account manager, but I saw all these guys, this is a telephonic organization, by the way. I saw all the guys in the corner that were making like twice as much money. They were the kind of aggressive, loud, competitive group. And I thought, I want to be a part of that group. And that group was known as the outbounders. And the outbounders were the new business acquisition team. They made twice or three times as much money as the account managers.

And you talk about this is why companies lose customers. Can you share more about your studies when it comes to companies losing customers and why it happens? Absolutely. I mean, there's two main reasons why companies lose customers. Number one, they're selling to human. beings and number two, the way their businesses are structured. Looking at number one, you're selling to human beings. Human beings by our very nature are skeptical.

And when we finally make a decision to make a purchase, as quickly as we're feeling excited about that and the dopamine releases that I mentioned earlier, it starts to recede and we start to feel buyer's remorse. In the typical business, there's never any effort made to come back and, you know, address that buyer's remorse and to hold their hand. The company is celebrating and high-fiving. We made the sale. And they're feeling that this is the greatest day ever.

And the customer's like, okay, I made the purchase, but I wonder if it's going to work. I wonder if I'll be able to get my money back if it doesn't. I wonder if I'll get fired if I signed this B2B contract with a vendor and it doesn't work out if my boss will be furious and I'll lose my job. And that delta between what the company's feeling, the joy and euphoria and excitement about the sale and what the customer is feeling, the fear and the doubt and the uncertainty about what comes next, if you don't address that, that difference, that delta never closes. And the gap just keeps getting bigger as the relationship goes on. So there's a problem in that we sell the humans. Then there's

a problem with how our businesses are structured. To your point, the outbound crowd, they're loud, they're exciting, they get more resources, they get paid more, they earn more in commissions. Businesses are structured to reward those people more who bring business in than to reward those who keep business. Now, before any of the salespeople listening to your show say, oh, Joey's anti-sales. No, I'm not. Sales and marketing is really important.

They are important functions of any business. I just don't think they're more important than keeping people. Right? You spend all this time, money, and effort to acquire customers, and then they're running out the backdoor as quickly as you bring them in the front. And I just believe we should put some resources, time, money, and effort, towards keeping the customers that we've worked so hard to acquire. What about those who would say, but Joey, it takes more skill or more work to acquire a new customer.

And it's, I'm not saying this is accurate, but this is certainly what I've heard. And this is why I made the move to that more higher paying job, more pressure, but certainly bigger rewards if you did well. They'd say, because it's so hard and not many people can do it. and others who are, it's easier in some cases to be an account manager because you kind of, you know, make sure things are running smoothly and hope they are and go that route versus the one who has to go find somebody who's using the competitor and convince them to change. Yeah, I absolutely understand that perspective.

And again, I don't want to diminish the difficulty of working in sales and marketing. But let's take it out of a business context for a moment. is it harder to randomly date people and convince people to go to dinner with you or to maintain a relationship in a marriage? Well, I would posit, and I know you're married, now I'm married, and we're both happily married, I would posit that it requires more work, more commitment, and more effort to keep a relationship going than it does to create one on the outset. Now, again, I'm not saying sales and marketing isn't important, but the fact of the matter is

continuing to build on a relationship year after year, learning each other, knowing where the weaknesses are, knowing where the shortcomings are, and accepting those and figuring out ways to work through it and continue to double down, that I think is actually requiring of more skill. And if folks disagree, all you have to do is look at the divorce rate in this country. You know what I mean? So sometimes I like to take these things out of a business context, because we're in a business context. People get very attached to the functionality. and the role they play. And then I'm like, well, take it to your personal life.

Is it easier for you to meet a friend and become a friend or to maintain a relationship that you've had for 20 years? Well, some people might say, well, Joey, with that 20-year relationship, you know, I can call that person once a year and it's like we haven't missed a beat and we catch on and just start up where we left off. That's amazing. How many of those friends do you have? I bet you can count them on one hand.

For most relationships, it requires consistent effort. It requires consistent communication. It requires that you try to see the world from their perspective. So there's kind of a philosophical bent on this as well about just, you know, what are we doing around personal relationships? And I will also say for the people that are in sales, here's an interesting statistic that I came across in researching for the book. When you look at all industries around the world, regardless of what you're selling products or services, doesn't matter. And you combine the aggregate numbers of likelihood to make a new. new sale and likelihood to make a sale to someone who's already an existing customer.

When you average them all together, you find that your likelihood of converting a cold prospect to become a customer for the first time, statistically on average is somewhere between 5 and 20%. Now, those numbers can fluctuate depending on your industry, but 5 to 20% is how they all average out. To make a sale to someone that's an existing customer, to get them to buy more, sign up for additional product or service, your likelihood of converting is 60 to 70%. Now, some might turn around and say, well, see, Joey, that proves our point. It's easier after they're a customer. Well, if it's that much easier, why aren't the salespeople trying to sell more into the existing customers and focus more on that than chasing new customers?

Interesting. Okay. So first 100 days, you got, you Google Joey Coleman, first 100 days. There's a lot out there. And that's the subtitle of your book. But why are the first 100 days so important? The first 100 days are important because of two things. Number one, all the research shows that you're going to lose somewhere between 20 and 70 percent of your customers in the first 100 days because they haven't been effectively onboarded. And the research also shows that if you get today 101 in the typical business, they'll stay for five years. So nowhere in the customer life cycle, is a period of time more dispositive of the lifetime value of the customer, the lifelong length of the relationship,

than what happens in those first 100 days. Not to mention the fact that if you're going to have any hope of recouping your acquisition cost, see, what's really fascinating is a lot of companies can tell you how much it costs them to acquire a new customer. And with the advent of the internet, that can get defined down to the pennies. We know how many clicks it takes and how much money we have to. to spend on ads to land a new customer. But what they don't spend a lot of time looking at is how long does it take us to recoup that acquisition cost?

Most businesses don't recoup that acquisition cost till after the 100-day mark. And so the problem becomes, if you haven't recouped your acquisition costs before they leave, you never will. And now that's why businesses struggle to build year after year, both in terms of scale of size and scale of profits is because they're digging out of a hole for the customers that they've lost. So what do you think about, you mentioned before that it's a structure problem, right? We mentioned, I mentioned the outbounders, right? Those are the guys who are cold calling and guys and girls who are cold calling and trying to

make it happen. But you talk about the sales structure issue. So in some cases, that means the person who sells the deal is then not the same person you deal with or talk with throughout the course of you as a customer and why and how have what have you learned from the case studies from writing this book about the structure issue and then what people can do to fix that well a couple of things so that to your point let's talk about the issue and let's talk about some solutions the issue to you to your point is usually the person who makes the sale is not the person responsible for maintaining the relationship after the sale you get handed off to an

account manager who you've never met, who you're not sure even knows about the conversations that you had with the salesperson, and now you're expected to have this great relationship with them. The problem is we live in a skeptical time and a skeptical age where people are so used to the handoff not going smoothly that the account manager is in the hole at the beginning of the relationship. Not to mention, and I say this as a former salesperson, most salespeople aren't the best at tracking the notes on every conversation they had with a customer and making sure that information gets transmitted over to the account manager. So as a result, what do we have to do as customers?

We have to repeat ourselves. There is no one who's faced a customer service issue with a company that hasn't had the experience of calling in explaining your issue, then being told that you need to be rerouted to someone else where you get to re-explain the issue. And it drives us insane. And yet that's how most businesses are structured in terms of the relationship. between marketing and sales and customer retention or account management or operations. What can we do to make this different?

No, there's a couple of interesting case studies in the book. One is a company that actually shoots a video where the salesperson introduces the customer to the new account manager proceeds to detail the big takeaways about what the customer is looking for and then provide the information for the account manager in the video. So the customer has this, you know, affirmation that the handoff actually occurred, that it was smooth and it was effective, and that as a result, they feel a higher level of confidence that that new account manager is going to be able to take care of them. Additionally, there are companies that bring the account manager to the sales meetings. Now, I get that that becomes a little difficult because it's another person out of the office, but what it does is it allows the customer to see who they're going to be working with and see if they have rapport or what. with them and build the relationship that way.

So there's lots of different ways that we can do this. You know, if you are a business owner in the senior management team, the other thing you can look at is the very structure of your business of why are you incentivizing people to land new clients, but not incentivizing them as much to keep clients? You know, the outbound team, these are the folks that win the trip to Hawaii for meeting the sales quotas and get the big bonuses and the free iPads or whatever they're giving out. why not have trips to Napa or Hawaii or Paris or wherever you're doing for your cool trip for the account managers who retain the most customers? There's simple things around the structure of that that are worth considering as well.

So one of the other key components of your book that I found interesting and I've learned so much since being a part of this mastermind talks community that our mutual friend Jason Gaynard, which is how we initially became friends, is the power of moments and experiences. And you write a lot about this and never lose a customer again. And I think have improved in this area a lot because I don't know why. I just didn't think of it as much until the guys like John Rulin and you and Jason and others have made me so much more aware of this. And there's another really cool story about Garrett Gunderson.

He was also at that event that you led in Las Vegas, the personal IPO event. And Garrett was at Mastermind Talks as well and how he took care of you at an event you went to and knew something that was unique to you that I think is different from most people. And I'll let you share the story. But I found that just the story will help resonate with the message and the science so that others could potentially implement this into their life. Absolutely. So what I love about the story of Garrett Gunderson and his,

organization, the wealth factory, is they, at the assess phase, right, before I had become a customer, they previewed what the experience of being a customer was going to be like. Here's how they did that. I went to an event that Garrett hosted where they were going to a three-day workshop. And the idea behind this workshop is you go, you get a lot of value, you get exposed to their way of thinking, their way of doing business. And at the end, they ask you if you want to sign up for an ongoing relationship, which is not an inconsequential investment. It's about $3,000 a year, and it's a multi-year commitment. So it's a big

sale that they're trying to make. And I walk into the event. The event starts at 9 a.m. I walk in about 15 minutes early, and Garrett's there greeting all the guests that are coming. And he comes up and he's like, oh, Joey, we're so happy to have you here at the event. We're really excited. And we're friends, but he's also giving me like the warm feeling of being a new prospect or a potential customer. He says, I have something for you. And he goes behind a desk and he pulls out a six-pack of root beer. Now, here's the interesting thing. I drink water.

I don't drink coffee. I don't drink tea. I don't drink hot chocolate. I don't drink alcohol. I don't drink soda. You know, Coke Pepsi, any of that stuff. If I'm going to drink something other than water, I will occasionally have. a root beer on a special occasion.

It's to call me crazy. It's my thing. It's what I like to do. And Garrett had done his homework to know that. He had done his research to know that by greeting me with something that was really special and really unique that I don't really advertise before the book. Now it's in the book, the story. So I imagine I might be getting more root beers when I go places, which will be fabulous,

by the way. No problem with that. But it was one of those things where he very quickly made me welcomed. And what he said is we wanted you to feel like you were at home while you were at our event. And we know you drink root beer to celebrate things. We hope you're going to celebrate your decision to come and spend some of your valuable time with us. And before the event has even started, I'm interested in becoming a customer. Because if this is the kind of care they show me in the prospect phase, imagine the kind of care they have the potential to show me as a customer.

And it was just a perfect example of, you know, these types of touch points, these type of remarkable interactions you create with your customers don't have to be expensive. I mean, if I had to guess that six pack of root beer was certainly less than a $10 investment and probably closer to a $5 investment. Oh, and by the way, did I mention that their product is a $3,000 a month subscription, right? So it's a really small amount of money to spend to tip a customer or tip a prospect for, from that state of, I wonder if I should do this to, you know what, this makes me feel good. I think I should do this. I actually didn't put this in my notes, but I just thought of the $35,000 golf ball. And I think this was something that you, but I read it.

And I don't know why I didn't write that in my notes. But what, so Garrett Gunterson's root beer for Joey Coleman was something that helped show you that he was thoughtful. And on your website, it's interesting. you have, at the end, you have these 10 questions on Joey Coleman.com that show a little bit more about your personality. And one of the things you put is, one of the questions is, what is your favorite word? And the favorite word you put is a possibility. And one of my favorite words, and maybe my favorite word, is thoughtful. Somebody who thinks, somebody who takes time to reflect, somebody who would be thoughtful enough to buy you root beer,

or somebody who would think about going to Pebble Beach and buying a golf fanatic, a ball, and overnighting it via FedEx. Can you share how the story of the $35,000 golf ball and really the science behind it? Absolutely. So it's a longer story, but I'll give your audience the abbreviated version. I worked in sales years ago and I found myself in the office of a salesperson, of a large energy company that when I walked into the office of this sales. senior executive I was selling to, it looked like I was walking into the pro shop at a top golf course.

Imagine wood paneling all around the walls with pictures of the top 18 holes of the top courses around the world. You know, how sometimes in the movies from the 80s you would see someone, you know, in their office kind of putting on a little mini putting green. This guy had a four whole course going through his office. He had, you know, somebody might have some put a puck, a puddle. in their office. This guy had a bag caddy, like a golf bag caddy, with about four or five bags filled with different putters and different clubs. This guy was a golf fanatic. And long story short, I had an hour-long meeting with him, 59 minutes of which was spent talking about golf because I thought, well, this guy's clearly interested in golf. And to be clear, I'm not a big golfer. I play,

I know what it's like. I've got brothers who are scratch golfers. So I'm usually getting whooped on the golf course when I'm on the golf course with my family. But what I realized is this would be a way to create personal and emotional connection with him. I happened to mention that I was going to Pebble Beach the following week on vacation was going to get a chance to play. And he said, I've never been paid Pebble Beach, which was shocking and saddening to me because, like, I am not of the caliber of golfer who should be on Pebble Beach. This guy clearly was. But, you know, we just, the meeting ended. We barely had any time to talk about what I was there to pitch him on. But I gave him some information about our company and I left and I go on vacation. While I'm walking through the

following week, the clubhouse out at Pebble Beach, I noticed a little golf ball. It said 100th anniversary U.S. Open Pebble Beach. That's where it was being played that year. So I bought one of the logoed golf balls, put it in a FedEx pack, wrote a little note to him that said, hey, sorry that we weren't able to play here together. Maybe we can do it someday. Saw this and thought of you, you know, Joey. Send it off to him. Two days later, I got a call on the golf course. bad etiquette, I know, from my assistant saying, what did you do to this prospect? And I said, well, what do you mean? And she said, his assistant just called me and asked for the wire transfer information and the contract. He's signing up for our $35,000 consulting engagement. And again,

I had spent a minute talking about the product and 59 minutes talking about golf. But then to your point, I sent what I really hoped would be received as a thoughtful gift, a gift that said, I know you've got this amazing office. You can add this to your collection. You've never been here. I'm thinking of you while I am here. You know, this is what the relationship is going to be like going forward in the sense that I'm interested in doing with business with people that I like and people with whom I can

have a personal relationship. And I think that came through. And as a result, he signed the deal. So as the salesperson, I got the win for buying a golf ball and sending it to him. I love that story, man. It's so cool. It reminds me one of the. The first clients I've worked with since making this transition to my role, a guy named Lee,

we're having our first conversation is kind of like a one-on-one mentoring type arrangement. Really quality guy, high achiever, wanting to get even better. And we were talking about books, and I talked to them about the Wright brothers. And the fact that I love this book by David McCullough, it's fantastic. And it helps the fact I live in Dayton, Ohio, the same place where the Wright brothers lived and where they were working in their bicycle shop as they worked to build their flying machine. And so about a month after Lee and I started this relationship, working relationship, which we still are actively working together,

I get in the mail this big picture, so to speak, and it's of the IP, the patent of the flying machine by Orville and Wilbur Wright. And there's a note along with it, and it said, Ryan, remember to take time to watch the birds from Lee. And I thought it was such a thoughtful gift. It made me just love the guy so much because we talked about the fact that one of, one of my problems is not being patient or not ever stopping. But what the Wright brothers did is they would spend hours on the sand dunes in

Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, watching birds and mimicking the flight with their arms. And it was just fascinating story. And Lee and I talked about it very briefly about how much I love that part of the book and how I needed to get better at that personally. And he needed to work on that as well. And that was just such a thoughtful gift that made me think of the $35,000 golf ball or the root beer as you enter the conferences, going above and beyond and thinking about the little 30 seconds of a conversation or sometimes longer that can differentiate you from everyone else.

And think about those moments and actively try to find moments like that so that you can follow up with something as impressive as a golf ball. with a kind, thoughtful note for somebody, regardless of whether it's a prospect or a relationship or whatever it may be, I think that those are good stories and examples to think about for all of us as we're looking to excel in these relationships. Absolutely. And I couldn't agree with you more, Ryan. It's about awareness. It's about paying attention when your prospect or your customer is talking to you and recording

those little tidbits of information that you can feed back to them. later in a way that sends a very clear message of when you talk, I listen. When you share something, I'm paying attention. That's my job in this relationship. And you're right. This comes up in the context often when people say, okay, Joey, I've bought into it. This first 100 days are important. We need to do this.

But, man, it sounds like it's going to cost a lot of money to do this. And to your point, thoughtfulness is not in paris. to expense by any means. You know, the fact that you get this personal note and this picture, you know, I would be willing to bed, with all due respect to Lee and the incredible gift, that it was not an incredibly expensive gift. No. It was a thoughtful gift. And that's the thing. It doesn't, everybody always worries, oh, how are we going to carve out the budget?

You know, a handwritten note that makes reference to something they told you weeks ago or months ago or years ago. and brings back full circle, changes the conversation. You know, I have a buddy who's a financial advisor who recently sent a really thoughtful graduation gift to the parents who he'd been working with who originally had said that one of their goals for their financial savings was to save enough money for their daughter to go to college.

And he wrote, he just wrote a really thoughtful note that said, you know, we've been working working on this for over a decade, you're good, the money's there, she's going to be great, she's going to be well taken care of, you don't have to worry about this, you made sacrifices that she didn't even know you were making so that you can help pay for her to go to college. And, you know, what was fascinating to me is I heard the story from two people. I heard the story first from the client who received the note, who I happened to be friends with as well. And then when I asked the financial advisor, he was like, yeah, it just felt like the right

thing to do. And he didn't realize that it was like the right business move to do. He just knew that it was the right personal thing to do. And to me, that is the core of the thoughtfulness message, you know, that you were just describing, you know, how can you show your, the people that you work with that you actually care about them as individuals outside of any of the, the business interactions you have. Yeah, I mentioned you before recording. I did a live event with James Clear, another mastermind talks guy. James is awesome. So anyway, we do, we do this event in Columbus, Ohio. That's where James lives. Had a ton of people in the room. It was literally one of my favorite nights I've had in years. And it was so much fun. And I love the fact that James enjoyed it too.

But the interesting part. So he writes at James Clear.com. Very successful writer. Got a book coming out later. but at the very bottom of his website, a tiny little link says contact. It's very small in relation to the other links that he has on his website. At the very bottom, if you scroll all the way bottom of this contact page, it says a mailing address, and there's a P.O. box, and this is what James writes. Want to send me a note, a copy of your book, a pair of Air Jordans, size 13, just in case.

Whatever it is, I'd love to hear from you. So the follow-up, my wife, Moran, I are thinking, how can we thank James? Like, what can we do? Because he made just such a great night, an incredible event. And his wife and parents were also at the event, which made it really cool as a family affair. And we hired a professional photographer to take pictures of everything. And I made sure they got pictures of James and his family and him and his wife, good pictures.

You know, everyone's dressed off. It looks nice. Nice. And so we got the pictures. And then I thought, you know what? I'm going to get him a pair of Air Jordans, size 13. Size 13. So we got these pictures framed.

We got them a pair of Air Jordans. We're obviously going to give him some shirts, the ones you referenced before. And his wife is in higher education works at a university. My wife found this great, customized, like a personalized journal for his wife. And this reminds me some of John Rulin, love the people that they love, that are important to them. So when saying thank you, when trying to create an experience, I want James to remember that night is a very successful fun time just like me. I think sending him a pair of Jornes, a few shirts, frame pictures with him and his family, him and his wife, a nice journal for his wife, a nice handwritten note could really help solidify the

fact that I am so grateful for him for doing that for me, for being a part of it. We didn't pay him or anything, right? He did it for free. And I think that trying to say to wow him and go above and beyond when saying, thank you will help solidify that relationship for life. And I don't expect to make money or anything from that. I just value his friend. And I think he's a great writer. So it's nice to build a bounce ideas off him. But I think those types of things remind me of the first 100 days. And remind me of the actions people should take when you get done after something is over

that you really appreciate. Absolutely. And it's interesting. I talk about John a lot in the book. And his book, GIFTology, is fantastic and kind of outlines this idea of strategic appreciation. You know, how do you show your customers that you? you really care and appreciate and love on them in a special way. And it's something that's so often overlooked.

It's why one of the six tools that I recommend in the book that people use are gifts and presents because there is an incredible opportunity. And I understand some people turn around and they say, well, Joey, you don't understand. You know, we have corporate gifting policies. We have rules against how much money we can spend on gifts and how we can give gifts and our clients have rules on whether they can receive gifts. you know, at the end of the day, a gift doesn't have to be something

that's this big expense. You know, and I say this respectfully, you are going to have people take photos of the event anyway. So it's not like them taking some extra photo of James and his family added to the aggregate cost. But what it was is the thoughtfulness of you saying, let's make sure we get some photos of them. Because if you are married and have children,

you know that invariably you reach the end of the night and you say, how did we not take any photos when we were all dressed up? Whether that's on Christmas or at a wedding or shirt, there's this moment where you're like, oh, my gosh, we actually all looked good. That's when we should have taken the photo. So the fact that you thought ahead and then you doubled down and showed that you do the research by getting him the Air Jordans and you show some love towards his wife, who, you know, lots of times the spouse of the person is the best way to connect with your customer because

let me tell you, I'll be really clear. And I'll say it on the podcast. It'll be interesting to see if anybody hears it and does it. You really want to fast track your way to high status in my life. Do amazing things for my wife or my two boys. Like you can send me gifts and that's nice and I appreciate it. But honestly, it does not move the dial one one hundredth as much if you pay attention to my kids or you pay attention to my wife. Because that allows them to feel that the time the husband or daddy spends doing work has a commens.

benefit for them as well. Reminds me of, I love it, man, by the way, this is so cool. But so as a leader in a business, one of the things that I like to do was is get to know you document right when I started the job or when somebody was new working on my team. And I've helped other people incorporate this. But one of the things that you should ask, and this is, this would fall into the assess period probably of the eight phases of customer experience, but thinking of people who work for you as your customers at times is a good thing to do.

But anyway, and the ask, ask them their home address or a mailing address, ask them the name of their spouse and their kids if they have them. And so then when their mom or dad does a great job, send a gift to the kids or the spouse. And so, for example, I would send video games or cookies or something nice to the spouse and say, by the way, and I remember this guy named John Merr is one of my favorite guys I've ever worked with. I did it multiple times. I would send gifts to his family and especially his boys that were into sports and whether it was a soccer goalie gloves that because his kid was playing goalie or something along those lines, we would send in gifts and say, your daddy is a rock star.

He absolutely crushes it on a regular basis. He works his butt off. When he's not here with you, just know, he works so hard to take care of you. And there's, you know, John, we're still friends at this day, good friends, and he talks to me about the feeling that he got when his kids got those gifts. He still remembers it. I think he'll always remember it. And that's something to think about when taking care of customers or if you're a manager or a leader of taking care of the people that support you that work so hard for you as the leader. It's critical that you're thinking about that at all times. And personalize it. Don't do, you know, like, oh, let's just send everybody the same thing, right? Because there's no thought in that. But personalize it. That's how you use some of the

never lose a customer again, 100A's methodology into being a leader. Absolutely. No, I totally agree. And, you know, it's interesting. I know you and I both spend a decent amount of time on the road and we fly Delta. Yep. Or, you know, that's our preferred airline of choice. And I love Delta.

I had amazing experiences with them. And they continued to take care of me year after year. Recently, I was flying with my family. And, of course, I, as the one who flies the most in the family, I usually handle the showing the IDs and getting us checked in and everything while the family's kind of standing behind me with the bags. And I went up and I checked in and the gate, not the gate agent, the person that does checking in said to me, oh, Mr. Coleman, thank you so much for being a diamond medallion member on Delta, which for those of you that don't fly Delta means I fly over 125,000 miles a year. So it's a lot of

time in the air and a lot of time being a customer there's. And I like to think a good customer. and without missing a beat, as soon as they had said that, I was like, oh, thank you. He said, would you mind your, Mrs. Coleman, could we have her step forward? And so my wife steps forward and is expecting to like have them match the ID, right, to make sure she's actually the person. And the agent leans in and says, and Mrs. Coleman, I just wanted to thank you for everything you're doing to make it possible for your husband to spend as much time in the air with us. We, you know, we don't necessarily have a status title for you, but in my eyes, you are certainly above diamond status. And my wife gets this huge smile on her face, and I'm thinking, you just made my life so

much easier. I mean, my wife is super supportive of me being on the road, but like that little bit of acknowledgement. And that's where, again, and I love that your favorite word is thoughtful, because it was a thoughtful thing for that agent to say. It didn't cost them anything. And I also guarantee that there's no script that's part of the Delta agent training that says when you're checking in a high-level member, make sure you say something kind to their spouse,

you know, or if there is, they do it in a really effective way that doesn't make it feel scripted. But it was just a tremendous, tremendous experience that cost them nothing and really further affirmed my family's affinity for Delta Airlines. It makes me think of, you write about shock and awe when you least expective, innovative ways to design experiences and trigger emotions. And I think the company's cornerstone retirement out in Las Vegas. But how can business leaders and owners shock and awe? That Delta story certainly wanted, but what are ways this could be implemented into our lives, whether we're a solo entrepreneur, we're a middle manager, or we own a business of what are some innovative ways to design experiences that trigger emotions?

I think there's a couple. Number one, present things, come at your customers, interact with your customers when they don't expect it. Right. There's a story in the book about the Chicago Cubs and this amazing gift that they created through our buddy John Rulin for the people that are their top, like, sweet and box owners and their top sponsors. They send it to them in February. So anybody who is listening and is a fan of baseball knows that nothing is happening in February in the world of baseball, right? Like it's this quiet period. So they send it when it wasn't expected. You know, don't send gifts at the holidays, right?

Because everyone's sending gifts at the holidays. You know, don't, yeah, I would rather see you send a Thanksgiving card that says, I give thanks for you being my customer than to have you send a watered down holiday card that goes to everyone. Right. You know, so I think when it comes to shock and awe, it's about timing. I also think it's about unexpected things that, you can give them that they don't see coming.

So the Cornerstone Retirement example, they send when you become prior to you coming in for your first official meeting. So you become a customer, but it's before your first official meeting. They send you a box. And when I say a box, this is probably three or four inches tall. It's about 11 inches long. It's probably another eight to 10 inches deep. It's a big box.

And when you open it up, it's filled with all sorts of fun little goodies. It's got a blanket and some glasses with their logo and it's like we're raising a toast to you that you're going to have us help you with your retirement. It has a book that's not written by anybody at the organization, but really outlines their philosophy of investing and saving for the future. It includes information from the Better Business Bureau about how they've been ranked and their reviews and that their AAA company. So it basically answers many of the questions they would have before they actually show up for the first meeting. And it's a celebration that way. Sometimes something even is simple. I went to a meeting recently at a corporate office where I walked in and they had a giant TV behind the reception desk.

And I opened the door and it's a picture of me. And it says, welcome Joey. So that's a shock in all moment. I'm like, oh my gosh, this is ridiculous. First of all, where did they get the photo? Where did they, you know, and they had downloaded it from social media and taken the time to put it up and they have it running so that right before I showed up, that was the screen. And then, of course, after I'm done, they switch it to the next person who's coming to their office for a meeting. But it was that little thing that just made me say, I'm in the right place. I feel welcomed. I feel special. This can happen at any point in the customer journey. Before they become a customer, while they're a customer, even after they've quit. being a customer. You can still shock and awe them with things that you come back to them, even if they've decided to walk away. That's kind of a neat way to get a boomerang effect on some of those customers that do leave, how to warm them back up and bring them back to the fold. I got that same idea from you guys. You and Jason, when we went to the first event we did

years ago in Las Vegas, there was a picture of every person up on the board, up on the screen. So you guys had obviously taken time to find our pictures online and put it all in one big slide is that we look up and everyone's like looking at us to look for themselves. I mean, that's just how we naturally are. Even if you're not narcissistic, that's just how we are. We're looking at how's my picture, you know? And so at our event with our live event, we just said with James, that's what we did. So we had, there was more than 100 people there.

And so our marketing team work their butts off to find, without asking, find the pictures of all of those people and then have it scrolling through. So they walk in, they're thinking, what is this all about? That was a live podcast. And I'm seeing this big picture of me, of myself. I love it. I love it. With their name and the company they represent underneath it.

So it took a long time to do it. But I could tell people had that kind of look on their eye thinking, this is different. And that's what I wanted to portray and say, like, we are different about how we're going to do this thing. Like you, we think about you. Like, and we invited you for a reason that you're important to us. And we thought about that. And our marketing team invested hours and hours of their time.

to find your picture and put it on your name and then put it on these slides so that they show it. But those little things, if you're going to host people at your office, why not do that? Put the picture of Joey Coleman up there, a big smiling picture. I mean, there's no way you didn't walk in and feel great about it. Absolutely. And you used a word when you just described it, Ryan, that I think if people shifted their thinking ever so slightly would dramatically change the customer experience. You said if you're going to host someone in your office.

When we think about hosting someone, we think about greeting them at the door, offering them a drink, taking their coat, making them feel comfortable, letting them know where the restroom is if they've had a long journey, preparing some food for them that is food that they like or meets their dietary restrictions, you know, making sure that they have a charger for their phone if they needed, the access to Wi-Fi, all these little things that say, we know that you're in our space and we want to take care of you. You know, I actually have a mutual friend of ours, Clay A Bear, staying at my house right now. And his girlfriend, who I've never met, is along with him. And when she came to the house yesterday, one of the first things I said to her is, I'd like to ask a favor. And she said, what's that? And I said, I would really love it if you would treat this home as if it were your own. That you feel comfortable going to the pantry to get food. You can, of course, ask us things and we'll show you and we're going to give you the nickel to her so you know your way around

and have everything you need, and we had gotten some things that we knew she liked in advance, so she felt welcomed here, but really make you feel at home by thinking of this as your own home. And I think if more businesses did that, retail establishments,

most retail establishments, when somebody walks in the door, it's, what can I help you find today? And it immediately goes to sales mode. Instead of saying, you know, oh, welcome to our store. If I may, in 10 seconds, orient you. If you're looking for the rest,

room, it's in the back right corner. If you're looking, you know, most customers at come are looking for item X, that's in the back right corner. I'm certainly here to answer any questions you have, but I'm also not going to bother you. Feel free to mingle around and look or if there's something specific you're looking for and want to try to move through your time here in the store faster, I'm happy to grab up for you immediately so we can get you checked out.

When somebody says that, then it's like, oh, okay, you're seeing this from my perspective and you're trying to help me achieve my goals, whatever those may be, even if those goals aren't specifically aligned with buying the product or buying the service. So the eight phases you have assessed, admit, affirm, activate, acclimate, accomplish, adopt, advocate. And what you're talking about feels like acclimating. And there's something else you do when you have guests to your house. Because you live in Colorado at altitude and you offer them a lot, not an offer, I believe you said you mandate that they drink a large glass of water, right?

It used to be an offer. And after living here for about a year, it became a mandate. Yes, I mandate that upon arriving at our house, they drink at least 20 ounces of water to start with. And the reason for that is a significant percentage of people who come to our home get altitude sickness. Our house is at 8,500 feet. And if you don't live at altitude and you've come from sea level or even, you're, you're down in Denver, which is, you know, 3,000 feet lower than we are, it can be a shock to the system. And so we help acclimate them to the environment they are now in by making sure they're hydrated,

because that's the number one that thing that causes altitude sickness. It's actually being dehydrated. So to that point, this is where most companies start to fall apart. Most companies are actually pretty good in the marketing and sales process. They'll do a kickoff meeting or, you know, their original packaging is okay, they kind of get the relationship started. But then once the customer has the product or the service has begun, it's like they move on to autopilot when the reality is this is the most important time in the entire relationship to be acclimating your customer, to be holding their hand, navigating them through what it's like to do business with you. Because you've delivered your product or service hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, millions of times. For the typical new customer,

this is the first time they've ever done business with you. This may be the first time they've ever done business in this category that you operate in. So what are you doing to make them feel comfortable? What are you doing to make them feel like they matter and that they don't feel, for lack of a better way of putting it, stupid for not knowing what comes next. Now, there's no reason that they should feel that. But all the research and expiration of human condition shows that lots of times we feel like, oh, well, I know I should know what comes next, but I don't.

And then the company gets irritated because they're like, well, of course you should know what comes next. We wrote it in the directions for the product or we wrote it in the proposal. And what I often say to people is, do you read directions? Do you read the proposals and contracts you sign? Because my gut instinct is if you're a human being, you often don't. And so why do we expect our customers to be any different? You need to constantly be reminding them of what comes next, how you're going to take care of

them in this moment why we're doing this specific deliverable or this specific step in the process and that helps to reinforce your commitment to the relationship. Joey, I could talk to you for 10 hours, man. I wouldn't get tired. I love this. I thank you so much for being here and investing so much and off the cuff just killing that 60 second to two minute riff that just mind blowing, man. So thank you so much for being here.

Did I miss anything? Is there anything that you really wanted to cover that I didn't get to? No, I think the main thing I would say is whether you, you know, I'd love you to go out and buy the book and that'd be amazing. And I appreciate that. But even if you don't, you've heard enough in this podcast because Ryan's asked enough questions that my hope is you have at least two or three things you could go try in your business. Go try it. Because my personal mission, I believe that the bar for customer experience, on this planet is lying on the ground.

I think most businesses offer a terrible customer experience. It's why the good ones stand out so much. It's because they're so rare. We're not used to having them. If I could get every business to choose to do one or two things to make their business better, it's going to make other companies have to raise their bar too. Not only within their industry, right? Because, oh, my competitor's doing a better job of delivering our product or service.

We need to up our game to at least. match if not exceed them. But it also, I believe that customers are changing their expectations now more than in any other time in human history. And if I have amazing interactions at the gas station and then, you know, the grocery store and then I go to the hospital for a checkup, I'm going to expect an amazing level of interaction there too. And so it starts to make it so that all boats rise together. So I just, I love being on the show. Thank you. you so much. You know, the books available everywhere books are sold. It's, you know, on Amazon, it's at Barnes & Noble. Wherever you like, the local independent bookstore you love to support.

It's available in hardback. It's available in e-book. It's also available in audiobook, which if you like the sound of me chatting it up with Ryan, I do not have the fully bass vibrato, awesome voice that Ryan has. But if you want to hear me telling you the stories of the book, the audio the book's a fun thing to check out too. And Joey doesn't, he never looks for, to speak to the audience now, never looks for this and has certainly not asked me, but you probably don't even remember doing this because I know you do it every day, but I remember it. I sent you the first cut of my first ever speaking sizzle type video, right?

Which I don't think, I don't think is, is anyone could find on the internet anymore. So I send, but I have to tell the story. I send this, this to you. And I said, hey, Joey, and I sent it to a few people, you know, hey, Joey, what do you think? You're a professional speaker. What do you think? Can you give me some feedback? And if I get any response from someone, I'm very grateful like, hey, looks good.

Maybe at minute two, you know, you should switch to this or do that, right? Maybe something's different. Okay. Joey writes me back an unbelievably long and detailed email that is broken down by the second. I'm serious. So it said like second four to second 11. You did this, maybe tweak it to this. And this was done throughout the entire video.

I saved the email. I will never forget it. One of the most kind, caring, giving people I've ever met, man. I'm not trying to make you uncomfortable, but I have to publicly say this, man. Like, you don't just write about this stuff. You live this stuff for real. And that's what's, it's authentic. You actually do it.

And that's why I couldn't be more. I'm thankful and grateful for you and have to urge people. I don't want you just to buy it to support Joey. Buy the book because it will help you regardless of your role, whether you own the business, you work within the business. As we talked about, that's why I tried to relate some of this conversation to people in those middle management individual contributor roles. It will help you. So obviously I want you to buy it to support Joey.

I want this to be a number one New York Times bestseller, whatever. But I also want you to buy it because it will help you. And that's my goal with this show. If you listen to the show that you get some things out of it, people always write me notes saying, now the list on my Kindle or the list that I have of books to buy gets longer and longer, well, you need to add another one to the list. Never lose a customer again, turn any sale into lifelong loyalty in 100 days. You'll love it.

The case studies, just the manner you write, Joey, can't thank you enough, man. Thank you so much again for being here. And certainly it would encourage people to buy this book. Thanks, Ryan. I appreciate the kind words. I'm a big fan of yours and a big supporter. It was an honor to be on the show again. Thanks for having me.

Awesome. Thanks, Joey. As if you couldn't tell, I absolutely love talking with Joey Coleman. I've been fortunate. He's become a good friend over the past few years. This work inspires me to help and serve other people because that's what he does on a daily basis. If you enjoy this show, I would love it. If you would subscribe an iTunes Apple podcast, write a review and rate it.

that subscribe, write to review, and rate the show, hopefully five stars in iTunes Apple Podcasts. It helps spread the message to others all over the world. Thanks again for being here. I will see you next week. Are you still there, man? Yeah, yeah. Oh, thank you.

Dude, you are too kind. Thank you so much. I was so thoughtful what you said at the end there. Well, I mean it. I mean I want these things out there because the, you know, one of the biggest bummers is when you record with some of your, you know, the people you look up to and they are different. when the microphone turns on or when the recording starts.

And obviously you're not. And when you do things like you did with the video, it should be out there because the reason why I also like to share those stories, one, because you deserve to get any love that you get from that. But two, because it could encourage other people to do the same thing. And I think that's how we have kind of a compounding effect. That's how we multiply these things happening as if we share the cool things that these, you know, famous type people do.

that you spent, I don't know how long it had to take you to watch it and literally analyze it by the second. That meant a lot to me and I'll never forget it. And I want other people to know that. And then I want them to think about doing that because it certainly made me do it. Like how many times I've got on the phone for 90 minutes with somebody who's launching a podcast because I think, well, Joey Coleman helped me through this. I should help other people too. So I want you to know too. It has a multiplying effect. It's not just with me. I think about that stuff and it makes me want to want to do it for others. Man, I thank you. Thank you. I like I can't say enough. I greatly appreciate it. And you've been a fan and supporter. And it's really, you know, being totally honest, it's, I so

appreciate hearing that that message had that impact on you because it just reinforces. that time spent on relationships matter. And I know that to be true, but I need to be reminded of it as well. And so I really appreciate it.