How Advisors Can Easily Connect With Customers (Service Drive Revolution)

How Christian, how could we give our listeners some sort of tool to take away? Like, could we, could we come up with a couple things that advisors could say to customers? Or what do you think? What could we do here and use Andrew to help us come up with something that they can use?

Yeah. What I would say the best thing maybe is to give Drew a scenario. So.

So let's say that we're a service advisor going up to a client that pulls their car and it's in a minivan and it's got, like, dents and dings and there's six kids pouring out of it and everything like that. And you can see that, like, the mother has, like, the stress of having six or seven kids and like, the last thing in the world she wants to do is be in front of you taking care of her car and everything like that. And in my experience as a service advisor, and this was a long time ago, like, my thing was, is I was going to figure something out to say to open that up that was going to make that person immediately laugh and be like, okay, so it's. It's all right that I've got six people dangling from the ceiling in the minivan. Right. So now, like, knowing you, is that I feel like there's probably a system like, how do you start to identify something? And then what's the right amount of humor to inject into it?

Yeah, well, and it's a great question. It starts with, what we focus on is kind of what, what's your goal in that situation? And so like you said, your goal in this situation is to essentially call the moment what we call in comedy call the moment where you're, you're calling out something that everyone is, is able to recognize. The equivalent of this in a comedy club is if you're performing and someone kind of drops a plate or of like a server drops something and a bunch of glass shatters everywhere. As a comedian, you kind of have to address that, because if you don't, people are going to worry the entire time. They're going to be like, did they hear that? Or is someone going to step on it and break or whatever? So you almost want to call the moment. It doesn't have to be, you know, the perfect joke in the world, but in a comedy club, someone drops that, you might be like, see, even the server agreed with that joke, or the server even thought that was hysterical. And so in this moment, by calling it, by addressing it high level and not making it a big deal feel you're going to make that person more at ease. And so I think in that situation, you know, coming up or something like that.

There'S a couple of ways that you could, could go with it. I think you could go the the direction of like wait, only six kids? Where like you don't have like nine. This is easy, right? Super easy. Like I was expecting an entire soccer team to jump out of there, but you only got half the team. You get a basketball team that's way easier to deal with. Like basketball team plus a six man plus. What are you, the Toronto Raptors? Like is who is this coming off the bench? Like you. So like that type of humor there of like making it not as big of a deal at all. You can.

Frame it in like a positive way like, or focus it back kind of like on yourself as well or a pre quote unquote previous person. It's like if you like, don't worry, like this is no problem whatsoever. We had a clown car come in here one day. 87 people inside. 87, right. So you go that exaggerated route out, it's clearly a joke that's coming out. You make them laugh a little bit and you're putting them at ease. What you probably don't want to do in that situation, right? Because humor can be used to build up, it can also be used as a negative is you wouldn't want to punch down what we call punching down in that scenario where you're making fun of someone a little bit lower status. You want it wanted to be like what, six kids in a car? Why don't you can't afford like two cars to drive them around. Where's your nanny to take care of this person, right? So you don't want to necessarily go that route where they're going to feel bad about the situation. But that's kind of that instinct. And what's interesting is, and comedians do this all the time is you can prepare for scenarios, right? Because a lot of times things like, oh, how do you get that witty in the moment? Or if you go and you see a stand up comedian and they like do some crowd work and they immediately react to something like how do they know that was going to happen? They didn't, but they can plan for it, right? As a comedian, I know that at some point in my career the microphone is going to go out on me. I know at some point someone is going to drop a tray of dishes. I know at some point someone is going to heckle. I know at some point there's not going to be any LAUGHS so I can start to pre plan for some of those things. And as a, as an individual you can think this is why like having a humor humor notebook is so valuable as you can think about, okay, what are the scenarios that happen day to day where I should maybe have something ready just in case it happens? And one of those things is like, okay, what should I do if someone comes in and they look really stressed out about the car? What are like three lines that I could go to? Okay, this line about like what, there's no problem, clown car. That's one line. If they're stressed out but they're by themselves, what's another line that I could say where it's like, listen, I know it's been. Luckily you're out of traffic here, right? If you're in the LA area, look, your car stop, but at least you're out of traffic here. You can go and like, you know, relax a little bit, go for a walk or whatever. Like whatever. Those lines are pre planned, then you have them in your back pocket to bring up. Because the beautiful thing is like, it's probably not going to be the same person immediately over and over again. So you can use that line multiple times and still get a good positive result from it.

Yeah, that's, that's one thing too. You taught us is to keep like, I do it in my notes and my phone, but do you do that, Christian, where you keep a little log.

Of what works every day?

So you try things. So read us some of the ones that are in your, in your notes.

Oh, gosh.

Well, only the appropriate ones though.

That's a very intimate. I'm going to bring up my humor. So to give a little bit of context for the people listening, Humor Notebook is basically a repository for anytime you have like that funny idea or that crazy thing that you see, it goes in the notebook. So like Christian probably wrote down, saw someone doing heroin right down in that notebook. Or the bag thing that we talked about earlier. Right. So you just write it down. And then that way later, if you want to sit down to like actually write or create comedy, you have a spot to go to. The other thing that you can do is you can write down prompts for later. So if you're like, oh, someone came in today, they had six people in the van. What could I have said? Maybe you didn't come up with it in the moment, but by reflecting on it. So what we say is reflection on the past leads to action in the future.

I'm gonna write that down.

Reflection on the past leads action in the future. And so by reviewing what happened and. Or didn't happen, the next time that scenario comes up, you're more. You're better prepared or better equipped to handle it because you've thought about, okay, what would be the ideal scenario of what I could do? So, yeah, you have any. Anything in your. Your humor notebook.

Yeah. So this is so one that I'm. That I've worked on. I've had it stuffed in the notebook for a little while, is that in Los Angeles, downtown, about every maybe 50 yards or so, there's the drains that go down into the sewer system and everything like that. And I always thought it was really interesting. It says, no dumping. And then there's a picture of a. Of a dolphin afterwards. And I always think in my head, well, I've made this commitment. I will no longer throw dolphins down the drain.

So that's the kind of stuff that I'll put in my notebook. But honestly, the heroin people yesterday. Yes, that's 100% in there. And when I told the story, I might have, like, I got way more detailed with it and everything like that. But it's funny, like going down and down the street and seeing a sign that says that, you know, we're the best ever. We do everything right. But the sign's upside down, so you have to read it. Do one of those things. Like, those are the kind of things if you just open your eyes and listen a little bit, like, you can fill a notebook in a couple of days.

Yes, it writes itself right. If you just pay attention.

It does. And then there's so many different applications of those types of things. So, like, the no dumping dolphins is, I think, really funny. As you were saying that, I was kind of also thinking, like, wait, is it dolphins who are doing the dumping? Like, are they the ones that need to be trained? Like, they're the ones coming by. But that, like, that could be. If you take a picture of that, that could then be a slide in your presentation.

So.

And you could talk about communication, or it could be set up something, or just kind of something fun, like, hey, we can use humor for incongruity. Boom. Like, here's an example of incongruity for that. Or the, you know, example of that sign. Yeah, take a picture of that sign. And like, here's someone who, like, they say they're so good at things, but what about this? Right? So you can. When you see humor out in the world, you can also then incorporate it into your work, and it can Become a lesson. It can be a learning point. It can be a moment of kind of like humor inspiration for breaking up the day for me. We. So we were chatting a little bit before the recording is I got married. I. I did a zoom hybrid wedding. And so I've been, like, writing material and thinking about. That's what's in my notebook right now is thinking about, like, okay, what are some of the jokes around that? Like, you know, there are. There are similarities between a zoom meeting and a zoom wedding. Like, in one, you need WI fi, and the other one you need a wifey.

Terrible, terrible joke. In both you say, I do. Except for in the zoom meeting, you say, I do not hear you because you're on mute. The vowels are different, right? So it's just exploring. Like, okay, and. And this creates. Right. We. We talk about structure. We talked a little bit about a comic triple. Another great structure is what's called an association, where you create two connections. And the. The. The engineering part of it is like, okay, if I'm writing material for that, I can write down and on one list, what are 10 things related to a zoom meeting? Right? People being muted or getting delayed or a weird zoom background or having to kick someone out or whatever they are, right? Being frozen. And then I can say, okay, wedding. What are 10 things related to wedding? The vows and this. Right? I can write those 10 things down. And now I can just look at those two lists to start to try to create humor from that. I can be like, oh, okay, well, what's the equivalent of like, so we had a zoom wedding, but it's like we had both people on the bride and the groom side in the zoom meeting. Should we have had them in separate zoom rooms to be able to sit on different sides of the aisle? Right? Like, there's that. Or what's the flower girl equivalent of this? So, like, we didn't necessarily have a flower girl, but we had someone put their virtual background to a bed of roses. Like, what are. Like, what are those equivalents? And I still haven't, like, finished working on it, but that gives me a process to take the initial observation. Okay, what's the similarity between a zoom meeting and a zoom wedding? And gives me some. Some things to work on as a way to create from there.

That's awesome.

Yeah. I instantly thought about honeymoon. Like, if you have a zoom wedding, what. How does the honeymoon work out?

Like, yeah, that's a good. We just went on to Google Maps.

We.

We went into Google Earth and pretended that we're. We Did a. We did a virtual walk around of the Louvre and Google Earth.

Where do you want to go exactly?

We went all over the world.

Yeah.

We did all seven continents in about six minutes. It was amazing.

Oh, I love it.

It is so funny that weddings have gotten twice as hard during COVID but I also tell you that divorces have gotten four times easier. So I don't know if that means that there's going to be something that happens with the marriage rate in the United States, but also something to be aware of.

Yeah, no, I think it's fantastic. And, like, I don't know, like, it's. It's fitting for us because she and I met. Well, we say that we met through a friend. We met online. We met on Hinge, which we're married now, so that means we're unhinged, I think. But we. We met online, and I say we met through a friend, not because I'm ashamed, but because I consider the Internet my friend. Right. And so it's very fitting that we met. We met online. We get married online. It's a very fitting, kind of like, closing. Connecting piece. Right. So those are the types of humor things that you can build. And this is fantastic. I know you're taking. I need to take notes on that. That Google Earth honeymoon response, because, like, that's. That's something like, that's good to add.

Yeah, it works. But that was funny.

That works.

Yeah. And so the thing that. That I noticed about keeping that little log in your phone is that I was only putting in the things that actually I got a laugh. And so then it does subconsciously train your mind what works.

Mm.

So you're always like, that's one thing that I learned from you is paying attention to what works then trains you to do more of what works. So you get better at it.

Yeah. You. You start to be like, oh, okay, I'm. I just made someone laugh. What was it that I did that made them laugh? You just become more aware of it. And this is a big, I think, valuable understanding for people is because most of the time when I talk about improv or stand up or. Or that kind of thing, there's. There's two responses. Some people. Some are a little bit on the Christian level, where they're like, you know what? I think I could do that. Right. They're like, I. I have some confidence. I made people laugh. I could probably do stand up. But a big majority of people are like, I could never do that. Right. Some. Some of the other coaches on the team Kind of had that when we first started with that mentality of, like, I'm more introverted. I don't think I'm going to do well at this, or whatever. But the reality is that every human. It's a. It's a. We. We say to humor is to human. Right. Because it's a very human trait to do. People have made other people laugh, maybe not intentionally before, but they do have that sense of humor. Everyone has that perspective. And so it. It is having a humor notebook, you start to recognize, like, oh, wait, maybe I do make, you know, my. My significant other or my friends laugh a little bit more than I thought. How can I take that ability and just amplify it a little bit more? How can I be slightly more intentional about it?

Yeah, that's good. Well, I would tell everybody to. One of the best investments you could make is to hire Drew. And the kind of the way the system worked with us was.

I think, a little different than how you normally do it is you would do once a week, right? You do an hour a week where you coach, and then at the end of the month, that there would be the presentation or whatever. But his website is humorthatworks.com, so humor that works.com. and it will not only add humor to your business, it will help your team, your salespeople, your advisors, whatever it is, to kind of think of things more as a system and understand that something that seems. Seems unobtainable becomes very obtainable when you put a process to it. And you're such a great coach and so patient, and your system is so great. I can't recommend it enough. And I would tell anybody it's a great twist to what you've been doing in training already. That is a pleasant pattern. Interrupt.

Right.

Christian, would you add anything to that?

No, I just think that if you're trying to elevate your level of connection, remember the power of humor and having a strategy and a game plan and not winging it. Just like with everything it's. The work that you put in is indicative of the results that come out and that you can manufacture humor and that it doesn't have to be like, you don't have to be the person that always responds the fastest. You should have to be the most prepared. And I think that identifying those opportunities to inject the right and appropriate amount of humor, that was another thing I thought was really, really important. Understanding humoring up and humoring down in the business situations like that's vital stuff that Drew will teach you too. In those classes, like understanding what the appropriate amount of, of what to do and when, how hard to be on yourself when you're making fun of yourself. Those are all great skills to learn in the business world.

Yeah, well, we appreciate everything you do, Mr. Tarvin. We, you know, we, we love our time with you and what, what you taught us. And once again, his website is humorthatworks.com contact him and set up, you know, some, some ongoing zoom training. He can bring New York to your, to your business through the magic of the interwebs.

That is. Right. Well, yeah, no, I very much appreciate that. I had a great time working with the team. And in general, I would say kind of to Christian's point is whether you work with me or not, it's just being a little bit more intentional about, about it turning it into a habit so that you can develop that and find like, okay, what type of humor am I using each day? How can I incorporate that into my work? Being thinking about ways to use it as a way to solve problems. So I know I was talking with Chris prior to this and we're talking about some examples of like, when might humor be used? And, and diffusing tension is a great one. Like, he was given that example of like, what would you say to like, all right, what if someone is coming in and you have a mask policy and you have to wear a mask and people are kind of a little bit thrown off about that. Like, what would you say? And it's like, one simple example is you can be like, all right, yes, yes, you do have to wear a mask. We, we have to cover at least, you know, the bottom half of our face. But the good news is that we don't have to cover up any of the car. Right. You get to see the full car in here if you're looking at it. Right. Or we're going to take a whole look under the hood, etc. Like, yeah, we can't look under this hood, but we're going to look at your. Under your actual hood. Like just small things like that. Not necessarily going to be like comedy club worthy gold. It's not going to get you a Netflix comedy special, but it's something that will, like, make the per. It's going to relieve a little bit of that tension. It's going to make it a little bit more acceptable. You're going to call, like I said earlier, like calling the moment or whatever, and it's about creating that connection, as Chris said at the very beginning about this. And there's research that shows it that we as humans have mirror neurons in our brain that mirror certain behaviors. Laughter and smiling are two of the biggest ones. Right when we see someone smile, we are primed as humans to want to smile as well. And when we both do that, it creates a little bit more of a connection. It builds that relationship, something that you can still do virtually or that you can do in the room or whatever. So, no, I really enjoyed working with you all. I always enjoyed, you know, conversing with you all because we can geek up, geek out about this. It's not only like, it's like, let's take this, but let's jump into this. Let's see how it works. So I always enjoy being able to do that.

Awesome. Thanks so much, Drew. Thanks for coming on and we'll. We'll talk real soon. Thank you. Thank you so much for watching this clip of Service Drive Revolution. Now you can catch the full episode on YouTube, iTunes or Spotify or wherever you consume your podcast. If you have any questions, go ahead and post them in the comments below. Make sure you subscribe and hit the bell icon so you're notified when we post new episodes. I'm Chris Collins, and you can find me on Facebook and Instagram at Chris Bulldog Collins. And I'll see you again on the next episode.