The Power of WOW | Jack Canfield

Hi, I'm Jack Canfield, and today I'd like to talk to you about something called the Power of Wow and how that can help you grow your business and improve your relationships. You know, I'm currently working on a book with my friend Raymond Aaron about the power of wow. The power of doing things in such a way that when people see it, experience it, or hear about it, they say wow. Wow. Now, let me first explain what a wow experience is and give you a couple of examples so you can see the power of it. For an experience to be something that wows you, it has to meet six criteria that spell out the acronym bumper B U M P E R B stands for big. When something is bigger than usual, we are naturally wowed by it. Think Grand Canyon, Mount Everest, a professional football stadium, the largest cruise ship in the world, like the Royal Caribbean Symphony of the Seas, where we held our workshop at sea in 20. Think about the calving of a huge iceberg, the most outrageous chase scene you've ever seen in the movie, the special effects in the movie Avatar, a Super bowl halftime show or the opening of the Summer Olympics in Beijing, China. Yu stands for unexpected and unique. Something above and beyond the norm. Something that makes you stand out. Now I want to tell you about a story from the Ritz Carlton. One of the things we did in writing this book is we interviewed the head of culture for the Ritz Carlton hotels and he shared a story with us that happened in Bahrain at a Ritz Carlton air. And the story is about a six year old girl that was visiting with her family and she was distraught. She would just seem sad all the time. And the staff noticed this and they asked the parents is there anything they could do? And the parents said that she was mourning the loss of her goldfish, Rocky, who had died right before they left to come on vacation. Now that day, after they shared that with the staff, they got back to their hotel room and it was a goldfish in a bowl with this note attached to it said, Dear Susie, I'm Ricky, Rocky's cousin. And although you think Rocky's passed away, he's actually traveling around the world. And he told me that you were going to be here today, so I wanted to spend time with you. Now, although I cannot go back home with you because Bahrain is my home, I had one of the employees take a picture of me so you can always remember me. P.S. i have cousins all over the world. Now, the parents were blown away by that. Susie stopped being depressed because she now had a goldfish that she thought was the cousin of hers. And that's now in the system. They have a system. So anywhere that family goes to any Ritz Carlton in the world, if the daughter's there, there's going to be a goldfish in that room and she's going to see that. Now that was a five or six dollar investment that creates incredible brand loyalty simply because it makes you go, wow. Now in our trainings we give away free gifts. We have snacks brought into the room that are unexpected. We had a singer who was on the Voice come in and sing for free. We have free mastermind groups that we give away with Patty. We have free follow up calls that people weren't expecting. And we have all these exercises, I call them gee whizzy exercises that literally blow people away in an unexpected way. They have major insights and aha experiences as opposed to just talking to people, which is a lot of what workshops are, they're just talking heads. M stands for memorable. I love the quote from poet Maya Angelou who said, people will forget what you said. People will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. Now here's another story from Ritz Carlton in the Grand Caymans. There was a family that had a five year old son and he had a pet giraffe, little stuffed giraffe that he brought with him. And as they got to the airport to go home, he realized he'd forgotten his giraffe, who he called Joshie. And so the parents were upset because Josh, this little boy rather was not. He wouldn't stop crying about Joshie. So they called back to the hotel and they tell the manager, you know, we gotta find this giraffe and can you get him to the airport? Well, there wasn't enough time to get in the airport, but he did find the giraffe. He took a cell phone picture of it, sent it to the family at the airport and said, we've got him. And what we found out is Joshy just wanted to stay a little longer and he wanted to do some things like go golfing and hang out at the pool and get us to go to the spa. So the little boy was consoled and he knew Joshy was going to be coming home in a few days. And while he was there, they took pictures of Joshie at the golf course, at the putting cream. He took pictures of him at the spa, laying on the chaise in the sun with sunglasses on. And the spa, he had cucumbers on his eyes. They showed him at the dinner with some Other stuffed animals they found having dinner in the restaurant. And they put all that in a leather bound album with a picture of Joshie on the front. And they sent that along with toys for his brother so his brother wouldn't feel left out to the family about a week later. And that now is so memorable that that family is not going anywhere except to the Ritz Carlton as a result of that kind of wow behavior. Now another example of memorable is Zappos shoes, which has built an outstanding reputation for amazing customer service by literally wowing their customers. Now here's just one instance of that. There was a man named Jay who purchased his shoes from Zappos for his best man stint because they were the cheapest he could find. Unfortunately, the courier routed the package to the wrong location and they wouldn't be arriving on the day of the wedding when he needed them. So he called Zappos about his dilemma and immediately got his problem solved. Not only did Zappos offer to overnight a replacement pair of shoes at no cost, he was even upgraded to a VIP account and given a full refund. Jay now says Zappos has earned a customer for life. Now P stands for positive. Lots of things could be big and memorable like 9, 11 or a mass school shooting, but definitely not a wow. Which also leads us to talk about unwows. Unwows have to be removed from your business or your relationships. This is really highly important. Hyakoint University actually has a director of WOW whose job it is to discover the unwow experiences and remove them, as well as to think up more ways to wow the students and the parents. Now think about the laundry room. Laundry room is one of the biggest unwows in most colleges. I don't know if you can remember this. For me it was like this. You go down there, there'd be no soap. You had to put money in to get the soap. You had to put money into the machines to make the machines work. If you didn't have the change, then you were screwed. You couldn't get it to work. And then if that was all working, there was like wet laundry in the washer. There was dry laundry in the dryer. Sometimes there weren't enough tables to take stuff out. You didn't want to be in there with someone else's clothes. It was a real big mess. At High Point. What they've done is the washers and the dryers can only be opened with your. Your student ID card, like a credit card. And once you put your laundry in and start it once it ends, you've got 10 minutes to get down there and take it out and put it in the dryer or get it out of the dryer so people could use the dryer. If you don't do that within 10 minutes, you lose your laundry room functions for a month. So there's a consequence. Also, the soap is free, and there's no cost to use the washers and the dryers. Everybody talks about it when they get to school. They're emailing their parents about it. Now, let's say you have a malfunction in the dorm room. These dorm rooms are like hotel rooms. You've got your own sink, and you've got your own restroom, bathroom, and showers sometimes. And if anything malfunctions, when they've come to fix it, because they have a concierge in every dorm, you report the problem, they come and fix it that day. They're going to leave something for you. Because when you enrolled in your application, you had to put down your favorite soda and your favorite snack and your favorite candy bar. So let's say your sink's not working. You come back that day, there's a six pack of Dr. Pepper saying, sorry for the inconvenience. We hope this makes up a little bit for it. Everyone goes, wow. Who expected that? Usually when you want maintenance, it takes days to get it. When they had dust from building new buildings, they literally were giving all the students free car washes. The scholarship students were paid to do car washes for all the rest of the students who had cars. Everyone was talking about that. Enrollments have skyrocketed, and their endowment fund has grown to where they've added so many new buildings since High Point University president Neel Kubain brought the power of wow to the campus. Now, E stands for extra. I'll tell you another Ritz Carlton story. There was a gentleman staying in the Moscow Ritz Carlton in Russia, and he asked the bartender in the bar what would be a great drink that was Russian. He said, well, you should have a Moscow Mule, which is basically vodka, some lime juice, and some ginger beer. And they always serve it in a copper cup. And he had never had that drink before and never seen anything served in a copper cup. And he really liked that idea of the copper cups. And he said, where can I get some of these copper cups? And he told him where he could get them, and so forth. They were easily found online. However, when the man went to check out of the hotel the next day, there were two copper cups in a box gift from the Ritz Carlton for him. And I'm telling you that story because he's telling everyone that story. So that's a wow moment. At High Point University, which I just mentioned, they have a gourmet restaurant on campus. Gourmet restaurant. And it's unexpected. You have a gourmet restaurant. Everybody can eat there. Once every week. You have to dress up in a suit or sport coat. Women have to wear dresses. You have to wear. You have to do nice manners. The people serving you are professors. And, you know, they always have a theme of the month, which might be Italian. They're serving Italian food. The Italian professors are speaking Italian, teaching you how to say Monte Grazzi and Prego and things like that. And it's unexpected. And everyone writes about it and talks about it, and here I am talking about it as well. R stands for relevant. Harvey McKay, who wrote the book how to Swim with the Sharks Without Getting Eaten. He's an incredibly successful entrepreneur and also a great motivational speaker. And he tells a story about trying to get an account. Now, he produces envelopes. Envelopes are pretty much a commodity. You know, you can only charge so much for envelopes. It's very competitive. But if you get a big account, like with MasterCharge, you're sending out millions of bills, you're selling millions of envelopes. And he was going after this one account that he knew would be really lucrative for him. And he had the problem of, like, he couldn't get in to see the guy, and he couldn't convince him to do what he wanted to do, which was change his envelope business over to him. And so what he did was he found out this guy's kid was in the hospital, that his kid was a hockey fan. So Harvey went to the local hockey team. I think it was the Minnesota Red Wings, if I have that right, I might have it wrong, but I think that's right. And what happened was he got the entire team to sign a hockey stick to this kid, and then he delivered it to the kid in the hospital. Well, of course, the father found out about it, was so impressed with Harvey that he transferred his envelope business over to Harvey McKay so it was relevant to that kid in that account. Now, let's look at some of the wows there are in relationships. There was a husband who wanted to wow his wife. And so what he did was he prepared a bath with her favorite bath salts. He got a bunch of roses, took all the petals off so they were floating on the top of the water. And then when his wife come home Home, she found there was like a little path that was leaving, leading from the front door, up the stairs. And everywhere along that path, there was a picture of some memory they had. And he wrote a little note about how important she was to him in his life and how much those memories meant to him. And so she comes home totally wowed by all the memories and his love and then the bath. He then gave her a massage after the bath, and she still talks about that now. There was a wife who wanted to wow her husband. Now, he was a lifetime Notre Dame football fan. And so it was his birthday coming up. I think it was his 50th birthday. And so she wanted to make it really special. So she called up the coach of Notre Dame, whose name is Lou Holtz at that time. And she said, lou, what is your speaking fee? He said, It's $10,000 a day. She said, well, I want to hire you. He said, well, who's the audience? And she said, my husband. And he said, that's strange. What do you mean? He said, you play golf, right? He says, yeah, my husband loves golf. He loves Notre Dame football. So what I want you to do is show up around 9 in the morning, knock on the door. I'll get him to make sure he answers the door. He's going to be totally blown away when he sees you. You're then going to go to our country club, play 18 rounds of golf, have lunch with him during the middle of the 18 rounds, and then basically go back to the airport and go home. That's your. That's your speaking engagement. Lou said, fine. That'll be fun. So here's this guy knocks on the door. There's Lou Holtz. He's totally blown away, totally wowed. Now, let's think about this. Father and children. How can you wow your children? One of my friends is named Hanuk McCarty, and he is a. Or was a professor at the University of Cleveland. He's now retired. And one year he decided that he was going to take his two children who were teenagers, and he wanted to create an experience they would talk about the rest of their life. And so what he did was they drove from Cleveland to the Pacific Ocean and. And every time they saw a body of water, whether it was a pond, a lake, a river, a pool in a Holiday Inn on the side of the road, they had to stop and get in that water, stay as long as they wanted, and get back in the car and keep going. That took them. Took them a long time to get from Cleveland to California, but they still talk about that. And one of the things I say to parents is you want to create a wow experience every year for your kids, whether it's going to Disneyland, going camping, whatever. It might be at least one a year that they'll talk about for the rest of their life because those memories will be really, really important. Now, a wow could be as simply. It could be simply calling home just to say I love you in the middle of the day. You never do that. So all of a sudden you call and say, hi, I just wanted, I was thinking about you. Want you to know I love you. My wife loves flowers and she used to love to arrange flowers. And so what I did was for her, I enrolled her in a flower arranging class with the the person who flower arranged all the big flowers. You come into the lobby of the hotels like the Four Seasons here in California. And also one year bought her a dozen of these gold plated roses that you sometimes see in the airlines. You can get free tickets to an event for a staff person. You know, they like a certain concert, whatever, and all of a sudden you are doing that for them. Now also, anything done with excellence is going to wow people. Walt Disney once said, do what you do so well that people will want to see you do it again and bring their friends. We all know that has worked out for Disney. Think of the movies that you've watched more than once, like Titanic, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Star Wars, Toy Story, especially Toy Story 4. If you haven't seen it yet, it's amazing. Wedding Crashers, Avatar and Harry Potter movies. Or Disney's fireworks display at the end of the day at Disney or Disney World, Disneyland? Ask yourself, how can I do what I do with more excellence, more love, more caring, more attention to detail? All of those things are going to create more WOW experiences. They're going to help your relationships. They're going to grow your business. All right, so I'd like to hear your thoughts about WOW after watching this video. What is one thing you could do to create a WOW experience for your customers, your clients, your friends or family members? And also, if you have something someone has done that wowed you, put that in the comments below too. All right, thank you for watching today. And remember, everything in your life will only change for the better when you change. Now. If you found this video helpful, make sure you like it, share it with a friend who may need it. And subscribe to my channel for more videos like this one and for some additional resources on how to improve your business and your relationships. Make sure to visit my website@jackcampfield.com thanks again for watching.