How to rise above the mundane by being different rather than different, with David Brier

Hello and welcome to this episode of The Unknown Entrepreneur with David Brier, who is a native New Yorker. And he says that he's the slayer of the mundane. He's the international bestseller of a book called The Brand Intervention. David, welcome to the show.

Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me, Jim.

Well, it's my pleasure. We've heard a lot about you. Now let's just talk, if we can, about brand intervention and how that helps The Unnoticed Entrepreneur.

Well, in short, we live in a world where there's no shortage of people or companies or services or products saying, we are great, we are the best, we have everything you've been looking for, etc., etc., etc. So we have a lot of background noise that all sounds a lot very similar. So I mean, that's kind of like the, what I call like the sea of sameness. Not sameness as in being sane, but actually sameness as in being similar, similar, similar. It's like, how the heck do I tell the difference between this company and this company and this company and this company? Because there's an enormous amount of similarity to the point where everything seems kind of redundant, which leaves companies and individuals having to compete on price. Because since we're all, since you, my prospect, can't tell the difference between all of these incredible things in front of you. Well, I guess I'll do it by lowering price. A terrible business model, but that's the overarching problem.

You're absolutely right. And companies go down the commodity slide, don't they? Where there's no competition except for price. So David, how do you help people, entrepreneurs, to get off the commodity slide and get into differentiation?

Well, one thing that has to be understood right out of the gate is that Different is better than better, right?

Just repeat that, David, in case people didn't hear.

Absolutely. Different is better than better. Everybody's saying, hey, we're the best. And then you got a very enthusiastic salesperson or customer rep over here said, hey, we're the best. And then you got another one. They go, oh, they've got 12 features. Well, we have 15. Oh, they've got 10 people. We've got 20. And I mean, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And that's nothing. But different will always trump. It's how you and I notice. Why is it we notice that product or that service that does something that no one else quite had? Because they looked at the benchmark of expectation. And I love that as a concept. Get that benchmark of expectation. You know, every potential customer, they've been trained based on what the market has thrown at them to have a certain level of expectation. Above this line is acceptable. Below this line is not even a contender. So the question is, how north of that line, that benchmark of expectation, do you go? And do you push it to the point where someone goes, how come no one else thought of that before? And when you can get into that space, how come no one else thought of it before? Oh, now you are controlling the dialogue. Now you're actually navigating that conversation.

So, Dave, intellectually, I can completely get that, but having worked for many companies over 25 years doing PR, many of them have, in effect, a commodity product. Let's talk about telco, for example, bandwidth and connectivity. Let's say the base product does reach that lowest benchmark. How can they be different? What places in the business do you look for them to be different, to differentiate?

Sometimes it's big, sometimes it's small. Let's take for example, like I actually there's a telco company that I actually branded, and one of the things that we found was you know, and it was enough years ago where everybody was pretty much offering the same sounding package of internet service and this that the other da da da da da da da da da. And I looked at the dialogues that everyone was having, and I was like, well, what are we going to do? We're going to just say, well, with us you get. A few more crumbs of something. And so, I had to look at how we positioned it. And I looked at the assets. I talked more about the outcomes than the technologies. That was one thing that was a point of distinction. It was like I needed to know what to properly talk about. So, it wasn't like, hey, you get so many gigabytes, a lot about people. What does that even mean? It's like, how many shows can I watch? How fast can I upload or download, et cetera? But What we did that also then framed it well was instead of doing the, here's your monthly subscription rate, I said, and you can get all of this for, I think it was like 79 cents a day, right? I mean, so that at least framed it differently. And it's like a little fraction of a cup of coffee, you get the world, right? And so, it was just at least framing it in that way differently. Differently. But one other little side note, you take a company like DoubleTree, that's a very commodity hospitality, you know, hotel chain, nothing special about DoubleTree. They do one thing that no other company does in the space. They make sure when you check in, you get a warm chocolate chip cookie. Last I checked, they give out 80 2,000 chocolate chip cookies a day. Let's see, what's the cost? I don't know. Let's say it's 4 cents a cookie or something. Let's say that's what it is. And all they do is they have to put it in the microwave right before and give it to the person. Mm, they smell the chocolate chip cookie. They feel the warmth. Do you know that they get more free PR just from people taking pictures of that? So, in other words, you need to know these little tipping points, these little triggers, Because what's the level of expectation? Level of expectation is, okay, you're going to a hotel, the person's going to say hello. Hopefully, they're going to treat you somewhat decently. And if you do have maybe more than one package, you know, one piece of luggage, maybe they'll actually offer to help you bring it upstairs or whatever. You know, so, I mean, what's that benchmark? Well, they decided just to do this one little thing. At a glance, it sounds trivial, but it brings back fond memories. A warm chocolate chip cookie. I mean, but again, it's kind of like knowing your audience, knowing your space, that's going to distinguish them. And that was for them enough for people to actually dig going there.

Yeah, David, it reminds me of Singapore Airlines, which is, you know, obviously an international carrier based out of Singapore. Every time you get on a plane, they give you a hot towel, you know, and that's amazing. We don't get it on Thai Air, you don't get it on Malaysian Air. So David, if you've got something like the cookies, For the hospitality business. Why don't more companies do something which on the surface seems so simple, not that expensive? Why don't companies do it? What do you see in your expertise in consultancy as the reason why people don't engage in being different?

Well, they confuse efficiency with profits. And margins, which is the short-term thinking, the short-term gain, looking at each transaction rather than the long-term cumulative effects. I mean, how efficient is it for a company to actually have a live person answer a phone? Why is it that we talk about when companies answer the phone, I tell you, I say, hey, Jim, I couldn't believe it. I had a problem with, you know, whether it was for something for my car or something for my credit card. I mean, I hate the majority of my credit card companies because they put me through a 12-minute menu tree, automated. And they're looking, well, this is efficient. You think it's efficient? I think it's stupid business. It's pathetically stupid because humanity is always good quality humanity. Recognition, interaction will absolutely bring back more and higher return and more loyalty for the lifetime of that customer than the little short efficiencies that erode and eat away at our experiences as consumers and people who are patrons of that particular service or business.

So David, would you say then that you think entrepreneurs actually could have an unfair advantage against big companies because the entrepreneurs still care, whereas in the big companies, the shareholders Or the CFO is who's making decisions. Do you think that's essentially then liberating for the small entrepreneur?

Oh, I think it's absolutely liberating. I think it's a muscle that needs to be flexed more often. I mean, years ago, after I'd gotten one of my earlier— once my cell phone, the old flip ones, turned into where you could see who was calling and their name and this, that, the other, I did this as a prank once, and the response was so amazing that I pretty much routinely do it. Anybody that calls me, I'll now answer. Like, if you called me, I'll say, hi, Jim's dedicated hotline. How may I help you? Right? And you will laugh, as does everybody. I mean, I do this with clients and I do it good-heartedly. And I just do it as a matter of almost as a little mockery of the demeanor that we commonly see or experience when calling bigger companies. But it's like, you know, so someone will call and I'll say, hi, Roberta's dedicated hotline. How may I help you? How may I help you? And oh, Roberta laughs her ass off and she loves that. And what did it take me to do that? It took me, let's see, 2.5 seconds. It took me caring. More important than the time, it took me actually caring and realizing if I don't disrupt the norm, if I just answer the phone, hi, it's David, or if I said, hi, Roberta, what is that? That's— I have now basically put myself in the box of ordinary. I would rather be in the pedestal of extraordinary rather than in the box of ordinary.

So David, you explained there an approach which is very much sort of personalization, isn't it? One of the trends is sort of personalization at scale through things like AI and digital empathy. Do you think these things are fundamentally opposed to each other? Do you think it's impossible to offer customer service, which is personalized at scale?

No, put it this way. It's like many companies try it and they do it terribly, really terribly. You know, Apple is one of those few, like when I call tech support at Apple, I don't dread it. And their AI, and this is not including Siri, I hate Siri. Siri is the worst product that Apple has ever put out. It's terrible. It doesn't understand things contextually when you're trying to have transcriptions done, it's dismal. But outside of Siri, when you call up for tech support, It says, hi, David, it looks like you recently called us. Are you calling about that? And it actually is intelligent. That's smart. I don't have to wait too long. And the level of personalization and the use of AI in that works in their favor. They're one of the few in my experience. I have not encountered too many. Most are pretty bad.

I have to agree with you about Siri and also about Apple Care. So what would be some practical steps, David, that an entrepreneur listening to this show could take within their own organization? Maybe they're drifting towards depersonalization at scale, which sounds like one of the problems that people face. What would be some practical steps that perhaps you've addressed in, you know, in your book, The Brand Intervention, or Rising Above the Noise at your website? What, just give us some practical tips.

Well, right. Handwritten notes. Don't just send— I mean, like, for example, there are places where I will personalize. So, for example, there are people, as you can imagine, I get a lot of requests to connect on LinkedIn. Well, one thing that it seems based on the amount of people that are always surprised, not everybody is aware that LinkedIn on your mobile device, that if you have a first-level connection, You can actually leave that person an audio message. And so, it has a little microphone. So, instead of me just doing the usual emoji, smiley face, or thank you, or whatever like that, you know, when someone reaches out, I'll say, hey, Annalise, thank you so much for reconnecting here. I really appreciate it and just wanted to give you a personal thank you. Have an amazing rest of today. Have an amazing rest of the week. And if there's anything I can do to help you, don't hesitate to reach out. I can't tell you the number of people. Now, again, that's just me taking the time to care enough To break through, because 98% of any of us is basically doing the bare minimum to just get it done, quote unquote. For those that are just listening and not seeing my air quotes, let's get it done. Let me check that item off. Well, wait a second. That individual doesn't know you're checking an item off. That individual is either having a great experience A predictably boring experience or, well, another bozo experience. And so, so I break it out. I go, how do I make this singular moment exemplary? And so, I look at those little micro moments and it takes, in many cases, almost the same degree of effort. Now, if, for example, you have a different kind of relationship and you don't have that as one little quick, easy— thing, you might handwrite a note to people. And I'm blown away when someone actually takes the time to drop me in the mail an actual handwritten note that says thank you. And it's just a nice little give from them to me. I mean, it's just memorable. And if you do that and do that and you're known for that, those are the little building blocks to really create your empire.

It's funny you mentioned that because back in the early days when I started, we used to do Christmas cards. You know, hundreds of Christmas cards, if I remember rightly, and send them all one at a time. So we've perhaps lost some of that human touch in this need for scale as well. David, you mentioned the cookies. You mentioned the micro-moments. What do you think people can do to help the team feel empowered to do this? Because you're taking the action one-on-one. But it's an organization that needs to do it, isn't it? It's each individual person who contacts the customer. Any experience or thoughts on how you can engage the team with taking everything personal?

It's educating them on their role. I'll give this example, and everyone's always had this experience. If you or I went to 2 basically similar hotels, let's just figure that for all intents and purposes, what they have to offer is pretty much comparable. If I went to one and there was nobody outside to welcome me, and so I had to kind of let myself through the front doors and I went up and the person at the front was like, hi, can I help you? You know, not particularly friendly, not particularly not friendly. They're talking. Okay, we'll give them a little one checkmark. They're talking. It's not the nicest particular tone. And then they do this, they do that, and that's all fine. I get up to the room. They never asked me, by the way, how long have you been traveling? Are you hungry? Or, you know, do you need anything in the room? You know, and it's just sort of like all they're just doing what they got to do with checking off their items. You know, you don't want to have that check-off mentality. Then you go to the same similar operation. Someone's at the front. They welcome me. Hello, you have a reservation? Oh, you do? Yeah, David Breyer. Oh, hello, Mr. Breyer. Well, let me help you. Let me escort you. And then they actually help me and they bring me to the person at the front desk. The person at the front desk is friendly and they're actually helpful. And then they ask me, by the way, do I need anything? Am I hungry? Do I need anything brought up to the room? Do you like pillows? Is it King-size bed. What do you like? Blah blah blah blah blah. And is this height fine for you? Because we like to put you on a little higher floor because we know that it's actually little less street noise. And that's showing me all care, interest, care, interest, concern, thinking to the future, right? These are all future things they've asked about, not just going through the motions. Which one am I going to feel is the better one? Now again, their offering in terms of their physical amenities were the same. Which one am I going to feel is a better And that is what one has to instill in their team. Are you creating that kind of thing where you are recognizing your role in building those micro-moments of excellence and way exceeding expectation, or are you eroding away at it? And so, it's not everybody's going to rise to that occasion. People have to realize, look, you're part of it. You can either be part of greatness or you could be the erosion eating away at the foundations of what we're trying to build here.

Right. So really getting everyone to take part, making everyone else feel special sounds like an overall message there, David, for entrepreneurs that want to differentiate themselves from the mass market companies.

That's right. And it's like, you know, there's one place in town, I refuse to shop there anymore, because their customer service was so bad. To find someone, sometimes you'd have to walk 5 minutes to actually find someone. So basically, after the last time that I had shopped there, I said, you know, the reason that I don't shop there is because if I happen to die in one of the aisles, They probably wouldn't find me for a week.

Well, David, on that note, on that very nice note, you've got your book, which is Brand Intervention, and in there you've got 10 strategies. So people can find that. How else can they find out about you, David?

Well, the best and most surefire way is obviously going to my site, risingabovethenoise.com. If they go to rising and it's R-I-S- If they go to risingabovethenoise.com, they can get The Lucky Brand, which is a free ebook. There's also tons of articles, before and after examples and such. I mean, I like to be very practical and very real and show the journey that I've helped other companies go through because my job is to basically take individuals and to take companies and to usher them into the next chapter of domination in their space. And that's thankfully, I mean, in my book, that's responsible for well over $8 billion in sales for companies around the world. The strategies that I've outlined there, because I've been doing this for 42 years, basically that's the hindsight. I'd love to say this was all planned out brilliantly because I was such a brilliant child prodigy genius in the beginning of my career.

You masterminded.

Yeah. But it was no, as I mean, it's kind of, I learned as I went, you You know, I mean, yes, I had talent and yes, I had drive and hustle, but I learned like many entrepreneurs. I learned I didn't go to school for business training. I didn't get an MBA, you know, because I come from the creative side. But I've been fortunate to have interactions with good business people, good entrepreneurs, good leaders, and be able to marry ingenuity, innovation, disruption, creativity with the practical experiential side that customers love and appreciate.

David Brier, thank you for joining me on the Unnoticed Entrepreneur Show and sharing this with me today to learn how to rise above the mundane. Thank you so much for joining on the Unnoticed Entrepreneur Show today.

Absolutely. Thank you so much, Jim, for having me. I really appreciate it.

It's been my pleasure to be listening to David Brier. And that's Brier with an E, by the way, B-R-I-E-R. And I will put that in the show notes. Thank you for listening to me, Jim James, on the Unnoticed Entrepreneur Show.