083: Breaking through Buyer’s Remorse—Never Lose a Customer Again with Joey Coleman

Hi, this is Charles Michael Davis. Toyotathon is on. So stop by your local Toyota dealer for incredible year end deals on the cars, trucks and SUVs known for their legendary reliability like the stylish and efficient Camry.

The Ready for anything RAV4 or check.

Out a rough and rugged Tacoma or Tundra, all with great financing and lease options available to qualified customers. Visit buyatoyota.com to find out. More Toyota let's go Places.

The more focused we get on who we serve, the better we're able to serve them. The better we're able to deliver those remarkable experiences and those moments of surprise and delight that will keep them coming back for more and telling all of their friends who are like them, who are great fits for our business that they should be doing business with us too.

This is your time. How can we earn twice as much in half the time with joy and ease while while serving the highest good? That is our guiding question here at the Freetime Cafe, your home for heart based business. I'm your host Jenny Blake. Join me for conversations with authors, friends and fellow business owners as we explore ways to free your mind, time and team to do your best work. Now onto today's show.

Hello. Hello my friends. Ooh, are you in for a treat Today I am here with my good friend Joey Coleman, author of the number two Wall Street Journal bestseller Never Lose a Customer Again. Turn Any Sale into lifelong loyalty in 100 days. Joey is one of the most energetic people I know. He also has one of the most interesting careers. He's a former criminal defense lawyer. He is currently co host of the Experience this podcast. And lucky us, he's already working on a new book. Joey, welcome to the show.

Oh Jenny, thank you so much for the kind introduction. Thanks to everybody who's joining in and listening. I gotta say, I get the chance to be on a number of podcasts. I am thrilled to be on this one because I've been such a fan of yours and admired your work professionally and just who you are as a person for so long. So I am thrilled to be a guest. Thanks for the invitation.

Likewise. Joey's kind of famous in our industry. You all have to know for his like creative gifts and he's so thoughtful and he knows everyone. So right back at you. When I read Never Lose a Customer Again so I've been wanting to have you on the podcast for years. It's perfect that now the free time show exists because we could totally geek out. There is this section that haunts me to this day in the best possible way. And it is the section on buyer's remorse that our customers, they go through a period of dopamine and elation upon making a purchase, and then they are going to hit this inevitable moment where even if they know and love and believe in the company that they've purchased from, fear, doubt, and uncertainty will start plaguing them. Did they make the right decision? And that if we as business owners don't consciously design for and address this, that's where things can go sideways and we lose those customers. So could you just dive right in to tell us about this buyer's remorse phase of the customer journey?

Yeah, absolutely. So what's fascinating about buyer's remorse? And for everybody listening, let's just do a little exercise. Even though I can't see you, and it may feel weird or awkward, but just lean in and embrace it, because that'll make the rest of the show so much more fun. So if you are familiar with the phrase buyer's remorse, if you've heard the concept, buyer's remorse, at any point in your business or personal career, go ahead and raise your hand. Literally, raise your hand right now while you're driving, while you're doing laundry, doing dishes, whatever you're doing, exercising, while you listen to a podcast, Go ahead. I can see you. You're doing a good job. Raise your hand. Okay, great. Most of you just raised your hand. That's amazing. Now go ahead and put your hand down. Now, I'd like to ask you to raise your hand if you have a system and a process in your business designed to address the buyer's remorse that we know that every consumer experiences. We scientifically know this, based on brain science, research, and biology, that every consumer experiences this. Go ahead and raise your hand. Now, if you have a system and process that directly addresses the buyer's remorse. Okay? And that sound you hear is the sound of not many hands going up. Okay? Not many hands were raised right there. Crickets, right? Cue the tumbleweed. Here's the thing. The research shows that we make a purchase, our brain floods with dopamine. As you said, we feel joy, euphoria, excitement. This is the product we've been looking for. This is the service that's the answer to our prayers. But almost as immediately as that dopamine fills our brain, it's a chemical that starts to recede. And as it recedes, those feelings of joy, euphoria, you know, delight, are replaced by. By feelings of fear and doubt and uncertainty. What if this product isn't all it's cracked up to be. What if the service isn't what they promised on the website or they promised in the sales pitch? Will I be able to get my money back? How long will I be caught in this? I've made bad mistakes before. Is this another one of those? If you're making it in a business context, you know, is my boss going to be upset that we selected this vendor? What if I get fired? If you're making interpersonal context, what if, you know, my spouse is angry? What if this causes a problem with my kids? We extrapolate to all the bad things that could happen now. Meanwhile, if you're the person that sold the product or service, you're back in the office or back at home, high fiving, celebrating. Maybe there's a bell being run for a new sale being made. Maybe somebody just won a trip to Napa. Who knows what's going on, but you're feeling joy and euphoria and excitement and delight. The delta, or the difference between what we feel as business owners when the sale is made and what our customers feel, our brand new customers. As far as a feeling of buyer's remorse, if we don't close that emotional gap and close it quickly, we never get the chance to recover. So the secret is this all happens in the affirm stage, which was one of the eight phases of the customer journey. In the affirm phase, we want to reaffirm the choice they made to do business with them. We want to directly address their fears and their doubts and uncertainties. Nine times out of 10, all we have to do is let them know that we heard them, that we're there for them, and that this is going to be great. We just need to take that quiet period when they're in a state of doubt and come in with a piece of communication or a touch point or something that lets them know that they matter, that can springboard them to that first kickoff when they open our product or they start to experience our product for the first time or our service. What can we do during that affirm stage to just really address the buyer's remorse?

This is exactly why I mentioned you. Your books is one of the ones I would have quoted a gazillion times in free time. But, you know, as authors, when we're writing, it's like, okay, pull it back, Jenny. You know, you can't quote the entire book. Just gotta point them to read yours. But that there's such a structure you've created for the customer's first hundred days with all of you Listening within your business, and you're quoted, you're specifically in the chapter of systematizing the spirit of your business. So I find it very interesting what you say at the start of never lose a customer is that businesses are often structured around customer acquisition, not customer experience. And I think that's part of how buyer's remorse comes in because we get so focused on building the products, selling them, marketing them, getting the sale. But then that's where the systems tend to stop or really get gummed up. Why do you think it is that we're so systems deficient when it comes to the life of the customer or the customer experience?

Yeah, I think the short answer, and then I'll extrapolate on the longer version of it, is it happens that way because we're human.

Now some people are listening, going, wait a second, we're human. What does that have to do with anything? So there's a biological imperative, there's a structural imperative, and there's a financial imperative. Let me look at all three on a biological imperative. Let's take this out of the business context and think about dating. When we go on a date, it's exciting. Things feel new, they're interesting. We're exploring all kinds of conversations we've never had before. We're feeling the pheromones. Things are interesting, they're intriguing, they're fun. And as the dating continues, we start to know the answers to some of the questions. So it becomes a little less exciting, maybe a little less interesting. We figure things out. If dating extrapolates out to its full end goal, 9 times out of 10, we're finding ourselves in a long term committed relationship, maybe a marriage, maybe that's going on for years and years. And most people I talk to seem to have a lot more fun in the dating stage of life than in the marriage stage of life. Why? Because as humans, we are taught to chase, not to catch. We are taught to go after instead of hold close. So at a biological point, we've already got some challenges. Now let's look at the structural point in an organization. In most organizations, the senior leader, whether that's the CEO, the president, whoever it is, came up through sales and marketing. In most organizations, the sales and marketing team is who the director of customer service or director of customer experience reports to. They don't report to the CEO. They go through sales and marketing. So is it any wonder when everyone's sitting around the board meeting or having a strategic plan meeting, we're over indexing on sales and marketing because almost Every organization has somebody who's in charge of sales, has somebody who's in charge of marketing, and a tiny, beautiful team. It might be the same person, but there isn't someone in charge of taking care of the customers. Usually that's a tagged on additional responsibility for someone that's doing something else. I was involved with a conversation with a multimillion dollar company the other day that their head of customer service reports to the cfo. And I'm thinking, wait a second, what? To the cfo? That just doesn't make sense to me because what do you think the CFO is going to report to the CEO on numbers? It's going to be all about the numbers, conversion rates, sales, not caring, not looking out for people long term. So there's a structural problem. Last but not least, the financial problem. It is a lot easier if I were to ask anybody listening, okay, how much money did you spend on marketing last month? 9 times out of 10 they can tell you, oh, here's what we spent on Facebook ads. Here's what we spent on, you know, AdWords. Here's what we spent in doing a billboard, you know, or a sign on a bus or whatever it may be. But if I were to ask them, how much money did you spend on taking care of your customers? How much money did you spend on retention? How much money did you spend on gifting and surprise and delight moments? It's like, well, I don't know, Joey, the ROI on those numbers are great. And it's like, no, don't get defensive. Don't tell me why you didn't spend. Tell me what you spent. And nine times out of 10, they can't tell me the number. So there's a biological reason, there's a structural reason, and there's a financial reason, which is why when you start to shift how you think about customer experience, you've got to approach it from all three of those pillars, as opposed to just saying, well, let's throw more money at it. Because if you throw more money at it and you haven't addressed the biological or the structural, I can tell you it's not going to work long term. And nine times out of 10, that's what people do. They're like, well, let's just throw a little extra money. Let's send everybody a surprise and delight care package. It'll be the same care package. It'll be a gift card for everybody, and they'll really know we love them. No, actually, that doesn't work. And that shouldn't be the Reason you turn around and say, caring about your customers doesn't lead to better roi.

This is where our brilliant friend John Rulin comes in with giftology, his concept of strategic gifting. It's so good. It's like your two books make a good peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

I appreciate that he knows better too. John is a dear friend. I talk about him in the book. He's a case study in my book. I actually am a case study in his book of giftology. So there's a lot of great overlap and friendship there. Yeah. And he is the king when it comes to strategic appreciation.

And not even knowing that I included you both as well on the same page of free time. I love it because. Yeah, I just love what you're saying about the dating Metaphor is so apt. Because it is so exciting in the beginning when both people are really presenting their best selves and trying to form the relationship. But it's so different. We all know people and relationships that crash and burn at three or six or nine months in, when your real self starts showing or the real conflict or realizing, oh man, this isn't the perfect angel from heaven of my dreams that I projected entirely onto them. They're a human being. Oh, no.

Exactly. And we see the same thing happen with businesses, right? Their marketing materials, their sales conversations seem amazing and it's great. And then we get into it and we're like, wait a second, you're not at all who you presented as on the first date. You're not at all what the things that you said mattered to you. Now here we are three months in, ironically enough, about 100 days. Funny how that works. And the wheels are falling off because it's hard to maintain a fiction that long. We start to see the realities. I'm not saying you have to be perfect. None of us are. What I am saying is you should preview the experience of a long term relationship with you during the sales and marketing process. You should give them a taste of what the experience of being a customer is like when they're a prospect.

What do you think some of the red flags are that a customer's experience is waning. So within that first hundred days, how could a business owner. I mean, I know you talk about hard data as well, like actually doing a net promoter score survey or something like that. But what could small business owners like listeners who are here today, what can they do to actually assess the health of these relationships and see where they are in terms of how they're nurturing them?

Yeah. So some of the Things I'm about to suggest. We're listening. People may say, oh, my gosh, that sounds way too easy. And I'm like, awesome, so go do it this week and tell me what happened. Okay, so the number one thing you can do to test and see where the relationship is is to have an honest conversation with the customer about where the relationship is. I know that's a novel idea to actually ask them, but it usually works surprisingly well. But when you ask, make sure that the way you're asking them doesn't pre frame the answer that you want. So here's the way I usually like to do that. I like to do a stop, start, continue approach. Okay, so I asked my customers, hey, we've been working together for about 30 days now. I think it's going really well. But I want to check in on three things. Okay, here's my three questions. Number one.

What have I been doing over the last 30 days that I should stop doing? That either you don't like or it doesn't work, or you feel it's unnecessary at this point. And you got to give me two answers. You can give me more than two, but you got to give me at least two. By the way, as an aside, the reason I asked for that is they're always going to give a layup for the first one. But if you ask them to do a second one, they've got to think a little, and there's a higher likelihood that the honest answer will come out in number two than in number one. Okay, so that's the stop. Then I say, great, now that you told me what I shouldn't do anymore, what should I start doing? Right. So this is stop, start continues, the framework in the START model. And again, give me two things that I should start doing. Again, you're listening for that second one in particular, pay attention to the first one, because now that we've broken them down with that first stop question, they're probably a little more honest in the start. And this is where all the opportunity for your customer experience enhancements come, especially as it relates to that individual customer. Last but not least, continue. So now that you've told me what I should stop doing, now that you've told me what I should start doing, what are some of the things that I'm doing that you love that I should just keep doing? Keep more of? This is where you get reinforcement for your systems that are already working. This is where you get reinforcement for things that you may take for granted, but for whatever reason, your customer is loving them and they don't want them to go away. And nine times out of 10, this last batch of questions that continue is where you get the long term insight as to what the secret to retention with this individual customer is. I did this recently with a client. They said, you know, Joey, to be honest, just keep being friendly. And I was like, wow, what has your life experience been that an interaction with an outside vendor or provider hasn't felt friendly. And that gave me permission to double down on the. How was your weekend? How's your dog? You mentioned you were going on vacation last week before we had this long conversation about the agenda, the things we were supposed to talk about today. Can you give me three minutes of highlights about what you loved about your vacation? And of course, I'm taking notes on these things so that I can refer back to them later and reference them later.

I was just going to ask you the nitty gritty of how you keep these notes clear for every customer.

Yeah, I'm a big believer that ink fades slower than memory. Okay. Ink fades slower than memory. So write it down and it can be writing it in a notebook. You don't need some super fancy CRM. People always ask me, Joey, what's the best CRM in the market? Like, oh, this is a really easy answer. And they lean in and they're like, oh my God. Finally an answer to this. I've googled, I've looked all over the website. What's the answer? I'm like, it's the one you're going to use.

That's the best one. If that is a sheet of post it notes, you know, a block of post it notes and that's how you want to do it, Use that. If that's some $400 a month software system, use that. I don't care what you use, just use something. I will tell you listeners what I do. I have an iPhone. In my iPhone, I have everybody's phone numbers. There's interestingly a little notes section. I actually just type the notes right into there. Now I will tell you that is not a searchable function necessarily. It's not a super easy function to use later. But you know what does happen? Anytime someone calls me, I just have to click over to info quickly open the notes and I can see what the last three calls were about. I see the notes right there in real time. Now I have separate systems for tracking where we are in the product development and what's going on. And I take all my notes in just a text file for that client But I love having it right on my phone, especially the personal stuff. So I can say, gosh, isn't there a little one that's having a birthday coming up? How old is Samantha now? She's got to be getting close to 13, right? And they'll be like, oh, my God, how do you remember how old my kid is? Well, because I wrote it down. But they usually don't say, did you write it down? They usually go, gosh, Joey really cares. And I do care. It's not that I don't care. I just use technology to support my ability to show that I care. Right.

And you care enough to open your notes. That's so brilliant to have it. I never know of all my questions, and people often ask me too, what's the best tool for CRM? Oh, man. And it's a tricky one. So I've never heard anybody say, adding notes in their actual phone in the contact. That's so smart. Because you're right. That is one area that we are for sure using every time we communicate with that person. And you care enough to edit and take notes on the conversation and what they're up to. Sometimes it's funny, like with dog owners in New York City. We meet so many, and it's easy to forget either the owner's name or the dog's name.

Totally.

So everyone who has a dog is saved as, like, Joey Coleman, first name, and then dog, pup, pup, whatever in the other field. So it's like just little tricks to remember.

Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. And if there's anything we know about dog owners, they really love their dogs. So if you talk about their dogs, suddenly you're at a different level. I'm not even a dog owner, and I know that about people that own dogs. Guess what? People who own cats feel the same way. People who own snakes, who own birds, people who have kids, people who, you know, have a partner. The more we can get to the personal things in your life that you're excited about and bring those into a business context, the better. Let me rant for 30 seconds if I can on this, Jenny. See, I am furious. I am furious at the behavior of the typical business on this planet for the last, oh, I don't know, that'd be four decades. Because for some reason we decided that, oh, it's not personal, it's business. And for some reason we decided, oh, well, you've got your work life and then your personal life. You should be seeking balance between those two. You know what balance between those two is total integration. That's balance. Balance isn't I'm at work from 9 to 5. I'm at home from 5 to 9, because guess what? Work bleeds into home. Home bleeds into work. No one else cares about these fictitious times on the calendar other than the people that are trying to maintain a hierarchical control that is not grounded in the human condition or reality. The businesses that will be successful 10 years from now, nay, five years from now, are the ones that realize that they employ humans who serve humans. So the more we can embrace the humanity, the personality of these things and let it blur in, the better it is for everyone. All right, I'm done ranting.

Sorry. I love it. I love a good rant.

Yes, yes, yes. And I just. Well, I couldn't agree more. That's the whole. So much of the impetus behind free time is just we're working in these insane ways based on factory systems that are totally outdated and inhumane. The systems of how we work were not designed with humans in mind. They were designed with productivity in mind and output and revenue. And they weren't designed with health in mind. So is it any surprise that our society is sick and burnt out and exhausted? No, it isn't.

Absolutely. Well, and the kicker is we take this as this is the way business has always been. I know that's not the case now.

We have to be neighbors.

Yeah, we used to be neighbors. We used to live in small communities. Agrarian society. Exactly. The significant majority of people who are listening to this podcast, north of 98%, don't work on an assembly line. So why are we pretending that we still work on assembly lines in factories when we don't?

Something for us to think about 100%. And I also, I want to add a tidbit. I just have to add this about dogs and dog owners, or dog guardians, as one of our friends told us. John Rulin, you also talk about gifting. Not just the owner or the customer in charge, but their team, the people around them, their family, and someone my attorney, Francine loves. She sent us a bark box for Ryder, and it was the sweetest gift. It's one that we'll never forget. So not only can you gift the spouse, the assistant, the team members around a person, you. You can even gift their furry friend.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And if they don't have a dog, gift their cat. And if they don't have a cat, gift their kids or their spouse or their partner, their significant other. I will tell you the fastest way to get my attention. When you look at Gary Chapman's Fantastic book, all about the five love languages. Absolutely incredible book and one of the love languages in Gifts and Presents. On the Gifts and Presents Love Language score, I score 0 out of 12 possible points. It just doesn't move the dial. For me personally, it's not that I don't appreciate getting gifts and presents and that's very nice when people do it, but for me, at a deeply personal level, it really doesn't move the dial. You really want to get my attention? Send a gift for my sons. Send a gift for my wife. Now you have my focus and attention, right? It's such a more useful approach than gifting me. But how do you know I have a wife and two sons? Well, you've got to pay attention in the conversations. You've got to take those notes. You've got to have a relationship that transcends the transactional business we're doing to include the what happens in your life between five and nine? What happens when you're not working?

We'll be right back just after this.

Cuando entras a Burlington Encuentras precios increibles y regalos geniales Jesus energia del protagonista porque en Burlington.

When the holidays start to feel a bit repetitive, reach for a Sprite Winter Spiced Cranberry and put your twist orange addition a bold cranberry and Winter Spice Flavor Fusion Sprite Winter Spice Cranberry is a refreshing way to shake things up this sipping season, and only for a limited time. Sprite obey your thirst.

Well, this goes back to the what you call the humid to human concept. I want to go behind the book for a moment because at the start of Never Lose a Customer, you say that if readers disagree with this human to human concept, you say, I don't want you to waste your time reading any further. I'm very serious about this. Email me at refundfromjoeyoeycolman.com and I will arrange for you to receive a full refund. That's how serious I am about this philosophy. And then you say, you don't have to agree with me, but if you don't, this book probably won't help you and I would rather reimburse you than bear your disappointment. So talk about preempting buyer's remorse or author's remorse of having people like rip you to shreds because they don't agree with human to human. I'm just so curious about your logic of putting this into the book. And has anybody written to refund from.

Joey Great question that I have never been asked publicly. Jenny, I love this. My favorite kind of podcasts are where I get asked questions that I never get asked. This is a new one. It's brilliant. I love it. Not surprisingly, you're brilliant. I love it. Here's the thing. All right, so I'm going to disclose things that other folks may not know unless they have a subscription to Bookscan and can actually look up the number of book sales that I have. So I'm going to give specific numbers. So we just crossed 70,000 books sold. On one hand, that's a huge number. On the other hand, it's a small number because I'm friends with amazing people like James Clear and Ryan Holiday who sell millions of books a year. But moral of the story is I feel really good about those numbers and that people. And the other interesting things is we sold more books last month than the previous month, and that has held true for every month since the book came out. So we're continuing to sell more and more books, which I'm super excited about and so appreciate your support.

This figure is top, probably.05% of how many a book will sell. So I just want to give listeners some context because I so appreciate you sharing your numbers with us. It's really special. That's like something I love to share with listeners and to give them context. It's definitely probably top 1% and most likely in the 0.5. So just so you know where that.

Number falls, I appreciate that. So I wanted to share that number, not say, oh, look at me or look how many books I've sold, but to make the number I'm about to share that much more significant. So it is a full refund, no questions asked. I don't ask anything other than do you want me to PayPal you Venmo me you like? How do you want the money? Three times in the last four years, someone has requested a refund. Now, I will tell you that of those three, one requested it because they disagreed with human to human piece where I say, you're not in B2B. You're not in C2C. They were like, no, I am in B2B. And I'm like, okay, fine, here's your money, call it a day. The other two times they requested a refund had nothing to do with that aspect of the book.

One of them, to be candid, didn't like that I used the gender neutral they in the book. They wanted me to use he instead. And I said, business isn't all he's and it isn't all she's. So I'm going to use they, which the grammarians were going crazy when I was writing the book. Since then, you know, the grammar experts around the world have come out and said that they is okay to be a single, you know, a gender neutral pronoun that we can use. And then the other one was just like, there wasn't an example from my industry in the book. And I'm like, you're right, there wasn't. So moral of the story is three refunds, okay? But what I think is fascinating about that request, when I put that into the book, my publishers lawyers wanted to have a conversation. Now I'm a recovering attorney. I'm always happy to have conversations with lawyers. And they were like, you have to sign a release that you'll pay for this. That we're not paying for this because we have no idea how many people will come back. And I went to my wife, who's absolutely amazing human, happily married 11 years, I've known her for almost 20. Incredible, incredible person. And I was like, look, this is a big risk for us to take. And she's like, do you believe in the message of the book? I said, I do. And she said, and I believe in you and the message, let's do it. And I'm so glad we did. And by the way, the same offer will be in my next book because I recognize that the investment of reading a book. Books are really interesting. It's a part of the reason why I love free time. Your book, because I love pivot too. But I particularly love free time because that's the one I'm just in the process of reading right now. When we read a book, we get the opportunity to see what that person has learned over months, years, decades, condensed into something that we can usually fully consume in under 10. Okay, that's pretty remarkable. Pretty crazy. Not to mention that usually the cost for buying that is somewhere between 15 and 25 dollars. Usually. Again, sweeping stereotypes on the pricing. Right. So the moral of the story is we're getting a ton of value for a very small investment of dollars and very small investment in time. That being said, depending on whose research you look at, there are literally thousands, if not tens of thousands of books being published every day. There's not enough time to read all the books. I wish there was. I'd love to read even more than I do. I already read somewhere between one and three books a week. I wish I was reading more, but I want people to know early on in the book. Like, here's where I'm going and if you don't like this, get out now. Just run out right now. It's really okay. I won't hold it against you. Peace out right now. Because I want you to go find a different book that speaks to you more.

Oh, thank you for sharing this, the logic behind it and how fascinating. Only three people. I'm surprised you didn't get a fourth who just wanted to test your process.

Maybe we will after this. Maybe some of the people that will listen, they'll be like, oh, I want to send an email and see what happens.

Right. Like a. Jenny Blank has requested a refund.

I love it.

Well, this is. Now, I don't know if it's like a hotline moment, but I stayed at a Ritz Carlton over the holidays and it was for grandma's 90th birthday and they screwed up so many things. It was unbelievable. So I'm sure you can understand this. As a fellow business owner, I wrote from the heart. I wrote a detailed message. I said, as a business owner, I would want to know if my team was so egregiously failing to live up to our stated values. Because I was so excited to stay at the Ritz. And it was an ungodly amount of money for one night.

Huge.

Huge.

But it was worth it.

It was for grandma's 90th and it's the Ritz.

It's that literally they're known for this globally.

Yes. And I had not seen Grandma since pre pandemic. Oh, my goodness. And the number of flubs. The room was horrible. Room aside, I got there early, 30 minutes early. They wouldn't seat me. I asked them if we could sit next to a window for Grandma's birthday. No. Then we asked for an extra egg sandwich because one of us didn't eat fish. They wouldn't bring it. Then they forgot the cake. They didn't bring the cake.

The whole reason for having the meal in a restaurant.

Yes. So there were so many errors. So I talk about unforced errors when I mentioned it hurts one's heart, you know, like, we're not gonna get this moment back. Apparently, Marriott acquired Ritz because I got this dumb autoresponder. And Joey, nobody ever wrote back to me.

Breaks my heart.

Can you believe it?

Sadly, I can. I can believe it.

And they didn't give me a refund, so.

And that's the problem. Here's the crazy thing. The bar for customer experience globally is lying on the ground. You don't need to deliver a world class experience every time.

You can deliver a slightly better than horrible experience. And nine times out of 10, you will be the leader in your industry. Now that's not permission to half approach it or dial it in, but the moral of the story here is this stuff isn't rocket science. It isn't rocket surgery either. Right? You know, it isn't any of those things. It's so much easier than we think. And here's the kicker, and I would imagine you tell me if I'm close on this. Had you gotten an email back or a call back or a letter back that just said, oh my gosh Jenny, I am so sorry. Your grandmother's birthday comes along once a year. 90 years is a unbelievable milestone on the heels of everything that has happened with the pandemic. I am sure you had expectations that far exceeded a 90 year celebration for having your birthday and trusting us. We broke your trust and we are sincerely sorry. Literally, if the message would have ended there, I'd be willing to bet that you would be telling that story about just the fact that you were heard, let alone what they did. Now, of course there's an opportunity to refund money to invite you back for the 91st to do it. There's all kinds of things that can be done. But nine times out of 10 businesses skip over the acknowledgement of the pain or the disappointment that was caused and immediately go into fix it mode. At the risk of being hugely stereotypical, this has a tendency to skew to be a more masculine approach to business. Thank you for talking. Let's talk about fixing it. Some of your listeners right now are going, oh my gosh, it's like you're in my marriage. Right? Because the moral of the story here is that lots of times men again, sweeping stereotype over index on let me just fix the problem as opposed to acknowledging where you are. We all could do a much better job of acknowledging where our customer is in their feelings, in their pain, in their emotions, in their disappointments, in their frustrations, in their regrets. Fill in the blank. Whatever emotion they're feeling. Before we jump to let's fix it.

A hundred percent.

And the reason I brought this up was because I was as curious as a customer how they would handle one team in one location messing up so many times. And at no point, I think what disappointed me the most was that at no point did they correct. And I think that there's a surprise and delight moment in the corrections as well. So they didn't comp our lunch they didn't comp my room. When I wrote to Customer Support, they said, one of our team members will review your inquiry and respond to you as soon as possible with a personal reply. Now they've promised yet another thing that Joey, they failed to do. So at no point I was wondering, if I wrote to national, if I wrote to hq, what surprise and delight moment could they come up with to keep the customer, like you said, even acknowledgement. And I'm so angry. So anyway, none of the above. And I think one thing that's so important that I've taken from your work as well is not just designing the onboarding experience and when everything's going well, but how generous can you be when things are not like you're offering a refund to readers right away. And what I like about that too, to shift gears ever so slightly, is that the refund that you're offering is saying, listen, this isn't going to be a good fit for us. Like, if you don't believe in human to human relationships and this idea, I'm going to spare both of us the angst of you sticking around. And in that you're modeling for us as a business owner how to also almost preemptively repel the wrong people so that we don't end up with the customer service nightmare of trying to placate somebody who is just not a values fit.

Exactly, exactly. People ask me all the time, they're like, joey, your book is all about not losing customers. What if the customer isn't a good fit? We don't want them around. And I was like, okay, absolutely. I 100% agree with you. The title is Never lose a customer again. Not Never fire a customer again. Okay. Because I don't believe in not firing customers. I do think you should fire customers. You should let customers go. You should say, you're not a good fit for us anymore. If you can stop them from even getting in the door, that's even better. To stop customers early on or potential customers early on in the process and say, this just isn't going to work. I think there is such, especially when we're starting out and I started my own business 20 years ago. I get it. Especially when you're starting out, you've got a small team, you're like, oh, we just need the revenue. We just got to keep the lights on. Yeah, I've never done that before, but sure, I can figure out how to do it. And we do all these things. The problem is that energy has a tendency to stay too long in an organization. It has a tendency to be there long after we should have started saying, yeah, that's not a good fit, let me refer you to someone else. Or you know what, it's just not a good fit. I'm sorry, I can't help you if we don't know who to refer them to. Or. Or let me dial down even more specifically on the niche, or niche, depending on how you pronounce it, audience that I'm serving. Because the more focused we get on who we serve, the better we're able to serve them, the better we're able to deliver those remarkable experiences and those moments of surprise and delight that will keep them coming back for more and telling all of their friends who are like them, who are great fits for our business, that they should be doing business with us too.

I have two more questions. Do you have five extra questions?

Absolutely.

Okay, great. There was one other thing I wanted to ask you about the behind the book, how the Sausage Gets Made. I thought it was really interesting. At the beginning of the book, you include a chart of case studies that are in the book, categorized by revenue, I'm guessing to show as you kind of say the text, like, yes, this applies to you because you show companies that are small, medium and large and you actually list all the companies. I thought that was a really interesting choice. I don't see very many business books actually lay out the scale of the case studies that are in there. And I'm just wondering how you chose to do that.

Yeah, so as I mentioned earlier, I'm a recovering attorney, I was a criminal defense lawyer. And so much of my approach to writing, to speaking, to persuading, to convincing, is based on this blend of humans want to feel a certain way and they want proof that what you're presenting is relevant, researched, factual, useful to them. And one of the big criticisms that I have personally when I read a business book is that nine times out of 10, the business books over index on gigantic all too familiar case study stories. Look at what Amazon did. Look at what Netflix has done. And not to say that Amazon and Netflix aren't amazing organizations that have done great things, but for somebody running a two person business, a five person business, it's way too easy for them to say, well, if I had a billion dollar marketing budget, it'd be easy for me too. Well, If I had 10,000 people in the customer service department, it'd be easy for me too. And they come up with all the reasons why it doesn't apply. What I wanted to Create. And it was in my first book, and it's going to be in my next book as well, is the ability very early on for someone to say, you know what? I make less than a million dollars a year and we have three employees. Is any of this going to be relevant to me? And they can go to the chart, they can see which case studies directly align with their revenue or their company size. They see the page number to jump to. And that way, if they're in a bookstore or they're just kind of reading or they've even bought the book and they're trying to figure out, where do I jump at first? They can jump to that page, read that case study that is spot on in their world, and see if it makes sense and is a good fit for them. So one of the challenges I'm having as I think about my next book is, okay, my next book is all about employee experience. Most of the books that have been written about employee experience talk about companies that have more than a thousand employees. Well, we know from all the research globally that 99% of businesses in the world, probably 99.99%, have less than a thousand employees. I'm not saying we can't learn from the greater than a thousand employee companies. I'm not saying we can't have that as a goal. But I'd rather give you tactical advice that's useful when you have two employees, five employees, 15 employees. When you're in that stage, when usually is when we're having some of the biggest HR and team challenges as we don't have someone in the organization who's responsible for hr, we haven't grown big enough to have an HR department. And who's usually doing the HR at that point? The founder, the CEO, or they've decided they don't like managing people, so they've handed it off to somebody else on their team to have in addition to the other role that that person has on their team. Can you imagine saying to your cfo, hey, I know you probably don't have enough on your plate right now, so I'm going to make you in charge of customer acquisition and sales as well. Can you just work that in, in, like your spare time when you don't have anything going on? We think that was an insane way to run our business. And yet that's how a majority of businesses approach their employee experience.

Well, I'm so happy you're writing this next book. I don't know if we can give away the title yet or not, but.

Let'S oh, we can, we can 100% if you want to. It's up to you. Yeah.

Oh yeah.

It's real catchy when we come up with titles. My first book was called Never Lose a Customer Again. This book is going to be called Never Lose an Employee Again and it's going to be all about focusing on the first 100 days of the employee experience as a way to set a long term foundation for employee engagement and retention. It's something that a lot of businesses are struggling with right now. There's going to be information about how to find the right employees, how to take them through a recruiting and hiring process, how to, to make sure you get the right people into your organization from day one. It's going to talk all about what you need to do to take care of training and onboarding them over time. Typical business spends less than two days training their employees. Let's stop and think about that. Do you want them to stay for more than two days? Then maybe can we spend more than two days getting them up to speed? Yeah. You know, it's kind of like for any of the parents out there, right? I've got an eight year old and a six year old. I've spent literally every day for eight years training. Every day for six years with the younger one. Training. That's what you sign onto if you decide to become a parent. Same way with employees. You can't just say, well, they had their orientation week and now they'll be super productive. Not really the way it works.

I'm so excited for this. Joey's writing as we speak. He's deep in manuscript mode and I asked him. I put in a request for the third in the trilogy of Never Lose youe Mind Again for the owner.

Exactly, exactly, exactly.

So, Joey, I always end with the same question. If you could give fellow business owners permission to do something differently or drop something altogether, what would it be?

That is a really fascinating question. So many things come to mind. Hmm.

Here's the permission I'd love to give all of the business owners. Listening. Be more gentle with yourself.

The number of second chances you give to customers, the number of third chances, fourth chances, fifth chances, the number of second chances, third, fourth, fifth that you give to your employees, to the people you do business with, I'd be willing to guess, pales in comparison to the number of chances you give yourself. Before you pile on heaps of judgment, heaps of self criticism, it is really, really difficult to run your own business. I say that as somebody who's been doing it for 20 years. It gets easier, kinda, but it also gets harder, right? I think if we were more gentle with ourselves, it would allow us to serve our customers and our employees even better. And so that's the permission I'd love to give everyone.

I love this permission. Thank you Joey. Wow, you really have a gift for seeing people and making them feel heard. So thank you on behalf of all of us listening. Thank you Joey Coleman, for your incredible energy and ideas and systems. I learned so much from your book and it inspired a lot of the rigor in free time as well. So thank you Joey and big thanks everybody for this time.

Oh well, thank you.

If you've listened this far, you get a gold star. Thank you. Word of mouth is the most joyful way we can can grow this show and it helps us land interviews with the luminaries and insightful guests that you would most love to hear from. Please send this episode to a friend who might find it helpful and for show notes and related links from this episode, visit itsfreetime.com while you're there, make sure you're subscribed to the Time well Spent newsletter. You'll get instant access to my Tech Toolkit, a continually updated list of all the software software I use, along with the total monthly spend to run my business where no one works full time even me. Visit itsfreetime.com join remember, you are running the show. It's time for radical reimagining and everything is up for grabs. Let it be easy, let it be fun, and build with love.

Hey, Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. You know one of the perks about having four kids that you know about is actually getting a direct line to the big man up north. And this year he wants you to know the best gift that you can give someone is the gift of Mint Mobile's Unlimited Wireless for $15 a month. Now you don't even need to wrap it. Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment of $45 for three month plan equivalent to $15 per month required new customer offer for first three months only. Speed slow after 35 gigabytes if network's busy, taxes and fees extra. See mintmobile.com.