The One About Creating Dream-Come-True Experiences - I Love Marketing With Joe Polish And Dean Jackson - Episode #69

I'm dean jackson, he's joe polish, and this is the I love marketing podcast. Hey, everybody.

It's Dean Jackson and Joe Polish.

Joe Polish, like nail polish.

That's what some people say. Including me every once in a while just to remind people of how to say my name.

And look at us sitting two feet away from each other.

I'm not even gonna look at you. I'm just gonna look at GarageBand.

He's averting his eyes.

I'm gonna look at this. You're gonna look like a heartball.

This is an opportunity for us to, like, share an intimate moment here. Because normally, who knows what you're doing.

When we're staring at a regular podcast?

I'm just gazing in your eyes.

Yeah, it's really uncomfortable, actually.

Okay, so we have intimacy issues, I think. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, maybe. So. We have a Platinum 2.0 meeting tomorrow. People flying in from all over the.

All over the world and other places too.

Mostly, you know, spend time with me and have to suffer their way through listening to you. And they're gonna. They're coming into town and we're gonna basically have some hot seats, some speed masterminding. We're going to, you know, share useful business processes. I wouldn't even say useful. I'd say life changing. Awesome. Phenomenal. So we really appreciate all of the people that are coming here, virtually all of them listen to. I love marketing and realize that taking some time every three, four, five months to come and spend time really working on growing and building their business, dealing with things that are causing them to have challenges, reaching their opportunities and get to there faster, eliminating problems and just, you know, putting intense focus on building and growing their business using, you know, direct response marketing.

I'm excited to see the results that people have gotten since January, when we did our meeting in January.

But how do I know you're excited?

Can't you tell? Look in my eyes. No, Come on, look right in my eyes.

All right, so we went to Frank Lloyd Wright's Italies and West, I guess home today. Although the guy that gave tours the architecture camp.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That was kind of. That's the third time that I went to Taliesin, and it's a pretty cool place. You ever come out to Scottsdale, Arizona, highly recommend it. And it's. It's a neat tour. It's about 90 minutes. It's a little warm today, but it was pretty cool. And you know, you know, it's an.

Interesting contrast because I think one of the things that we talking about today is client experiences of. Experiences of what happens when you experience a business. And we've had two now remarkable experiences since I got here yesterday. One remarkable in a not so good way and one remarkable in. I thought. I thought a pretty good way. I thought that they really ran the show at. At Taliesin pretty masterfully. It was really orchestrated well, it was a good experience. Yeah.

And here we are talking about.

And here we are talking about it. But the experience that we had last night with the I told you not to smoke cigars while with the movie. With the movie experience.

Right.

To talk a little bit about that because here, you know, we had the thought that we would go to the IPIC Theater, which we love because we've talked about that before. The really high end theater in. Is it in Scottsdale? Yeah, yeah, in Scottsdale. And we put a video about that up on I love marketing. The last time we went. Yeah.

Because it was really cool.

It is a really cool experience when you go there. But the experience that we had was it was Saturday night and we were thinking that we might like to go to a movie and have dinner there at the theater.

And it wasn't. Let me clarify, it wasn't just me and you were a wonderful girlfriend and mother and me and you. Because I want people thinking, you know, because you're not my date.

No, no. There were four of us. And so the thing that we thought was that we would go, we would try and call ahead to avoid the, the situation of exactly what happened to us. So, you know, tell them what happened when you.

What happened. So we, you know, we are literally on hold. We were doing this just kind of as a joke because, you know, I mean, we do courses and stuff on marketing and client service and creating a, you know, a dream come true experience. And we talk about all of this through the, you know, the eight profit activators. And, you know, we're continually talking about different ways to impress Bond. You know, create and exceed expectations in the way that you actually do run your business. Right. And so this is a, you know, company that I got to imagine in, you know, Scottsdale Quarter, where they're located in this center where the Apple Store is.

And true, it's a beautiful environment, high end environment, really great.

They had to put in millions of dollars in order to build this theater. And so we literally call in. We don't get any. I mean, literally, it's on. We're on hold for over.

Well, you're in a voice system where you. We never did speak to A live person ever.

Ever.

We called in and it was for this, press 1 To see what movies are playing, press 2 To make a reservation, press 3, or whatever the option was. And we did that. And then for probably the next 12 minutes, we ended up in a loop of ringing to a phone that then a voicemail would say, we're experiencing an unusually high call volume. And your call will be answered in the order it was received. And then it would play music again and then it would ring into that again that you'd think that you were going into this.

But here's the challenge is like, I was on the first time for 10 minutes, right. After about 10 minutes, maybe 10 and a half minutes. Because, you know, I'm looking at my eyes, I can see how long I'm on hold.

And so, I mean, we're driving there.

Yeah. And so. And I'm. It's on the speakerphone in my car because I have this lovely speakerphone and because honest to God, texting and talking on the phone is just. I think I'm just getting really scared of the whole world right now because we were talking about this today, driving next to young car, and you look over and you're like, I wonder people in their generation even know what it's.

Like to drive without texting while they're driving. I mean, this young girl was, you know, probably like 21, 20 years old, and she was driving, but the whole time was. She was staring at her phone, texting away. Yep. Yeah.

So anyway, she's probably going to plow into you later driving around, but nonetheless. All right, so, you know, I eventually hang up and then I call back because I wanted to go through another voicemail system and to see if we.

Can get through through one of the.

Catering option, which was like number four. And so that goes to a voicemail that's answered just by one person. Is someone's name even, you know, so like some person. So I left a message.

We still haven't had a call back.

Well, from. From. Well, now here's how. I don't know if you notice this. So I left a message of, you know, yeah, I'm leaving this message. And I said, if the sales prevention. Sales prevention department, we're wanting to come to the movie tonight and if there's any way that someone could call us back so we can get tickets, because this is a place where you literally go and you, you know, you can get premium seats that are $27 each, but then they have a waiter and then you order meals. Last time Me and you were there. We spent 180 bucks for me, you.

And for three people, you and Sonny.

So this is a, like for a movie, right?

Yes.

Okay. And so we, you know, I left that message and when we got there, no one ever called back. And this was a 30 minute drive. And so that's what most annoyed me is, you know, we're like, oh, no, we. Because we're thinking, yeah, yeah. So we get up there and we're standing in line and this is one guy and he was actually a nice guy. I mean, you know, and I said, yeah, you know, I called in earlier and he's like, oh, is this your number? So he actually had written it down.

It's not on the caller id.

Yeah, well, he actually wrote it down to call, but he's got a line of people. So this is the only person that is staffed to actually do this, you know, and there was that one girl that.

There were people everywhere there. Yeah.

But here's the thing though. When you, you know, and I don't think it's this guy' fault. I think he's thrust into a position where he has to do too much. But my thinking is, if you're going to spend millions of dollars putting together a theater like this, why on earth on a Saturday wouldn't you have people answering the phone?

And in his, you know, and what he said was, yeah, we're really busy tonight. It's the, you know, I'm doing the best I can, basically, is what he said. Yeah. And, you know, so you look at it and in, you know, on a Tuesday night, maybe we would have had a different experience, but on a Saturday night, I guess it's, I think that the customer experience, the whole client experience timeline, when you look at it, you have to look at it from a place of what happens when the system is under stress. That's what you really have to be careful of because that's when it's the most likely that somebody's gonna have a. A bad experience, you know.

Yeah.

So anyway, we went there and we're trying to get. And by the time we had got there, all of the, the movies that we wanted to see, all the premium plus seats were sold out. There was nowhere. No, none of the movies. We could get four seats.

Yeah.

To, to go and see it. So we ended up not going to the, the movies there. Well, it was the whole, you know, and then.

Well, no, the irony of all this is they are connected to a restaurant. We still ate at their restaurant. We still gave them Money.

And the meal was great. The food was really good.

We, you know, so we spent. I don't know, it's probably like a hundred. And it wasn't a cheap meal. I think it was like about 150 bucks or whatever. But, you know, basically, you know, we still gave them money. But the annoying thing was, yeah, there were no seats left. And the fact is, like, you could have looked at the bar or some of the decor there. There were numerous examples that cost probably five times the amount staffing two or three people full time for the next year, you know, that they could have done. But it's so. It's like spending money in all the wrong places. Like, it's kind of like the analogy we've used before. You can have the nicest decor hotel, but if you have a spring sticking through the mattress or the shower, people go to a hotel. So they.

It's that bad experience. It's one little thing that creates that experience. I don't know whether I told you this, you know, just to have a contrast of that. That was in New York recently for. With Brendan Burchard for his event there. And right across from the hotel with the Marriott marquee there at Times Square, that's where you're.

That's why I'm holding our Memphis in August 25k annual meeting.

And the. So right across from there, there's a restaurant, a diner restaurant that was maybe the single best single diner experience that I've ever had. I went over there for breakfast one morning. Why?

Were they serving with Funyuns or something?

Yeah, Funyuns for breakfast. But I walked in and it was very. The waiting. The lobby was very crowded with groups of four and. And I walked in as a single and the hostess immediately saw that I was single. And she said, is it just you? Would you like to eat at the bar or the counter or whatever? You don't have a bar there? And so I said, yeah. She said, just go ahead and take a seat over there. Then you can go right up to the bar. And I got up there, I was immediately greeted. And the waitresses all had on their name tags and stuff. And so Lisa, I think was her name, greeted me there and I sat down. She said, welcome. Here's the menu. Would you like a newspaper? I'm like, yeah, that would be great. So she gives me a newspaper. While I'm doing that, she brings me these mini pastries that they have, like mini danishes and stuff. Like, this is before I've even ordered. I've sat I walk right in, sit right up at the, at the counter. She asked me if I'd like a newspaper. She gives me these mini danishes that are part of the, you know, everybody gets them as part of the experience. It's a complimentary thing, but you get something right away. Then she took my order and it was out very quickly. While I'm reading the newspaper, they're fixing my food. She brought out the food, sat down the food and you know, if you need anything, I'm right here. And then when she brought the food, she had my, my bill in a little cup that she sat right there along with it. Brought my food and the bill at the same time, which I like when they do. I love that because, you know, you can tell this is a high volume place where people are in a hurry and they have orchestrated that experience so that singles can come in and have their meal and go right away and get through there. And I thought, man, what a great experience that was. It was really like well orchestrated, you know, so somebody. So here's the point of that is that when you're. And this is what I'm going to talk about tomorrow in one of our sessions, you trying to tease everyone here. Yeah, just trying to tease everyone that that experience can only happen because that's not a random occurrence, that's not the way that it is sort of randomly. That seems like an orchestrated process. So the thing that has to happen is somebody has to have a vision for what that experience could be. And when we look at this in our eight profit activators that talk about this in the breakthrough DNA report that the, the client experience is like a timeline. Like if you can experience, imagine an experience unfolding like a theater performance, like, you know, Act 1, Act 2, Act 3. Here's what happens in each of the experiences. So act one of that experience that I just described might be, you know, arriving at the restaurant and so that coming in that they've been trained to identify people who are single diners and offer them the opportunity to sit at the bar rather than wait for a table and go through that whole process. So expediting that process, Act 2 is arriving at the counter and Lisa met me there and gave me the menu. Would you like a newspaper? And here's some pastries. You know, that that experience happened incredibly effortlessly. You know, like it's exactly the way it was designed to happen. And then the taking the order and I'm reading the newspaper, the food arrives and the bill arrives at the same time is another part, another act of that, another scene of that experience, theater performance. And so when you look at it, all of the things that happen on that client experience timeline are divided into two parts. And everything above the line are the experiences that people actually have. If you just imagine it and narrate the experience in a way that doesn't talk about the systems or the processes that make it happen, but just talk about the actual experience that somebody has. And you know, when you look at the process of designing a dream come true experience for your clients, the very best way to get into that mindset is to create the narrative, tell the story of doing business with you, of going through your client experience in the voice of a raving fan client, somebody who's had the experience. So if I were narrating it, it would just be the way that I described it to you, of how that actually happened. When you design it like that, that covers your above the line experience. That's everything that happens. Then when you're going to work on implementing that process, you can go through there and isolate each of the occurrences that happen in there and create below the line the process and the system and the procedure to make sure that that experience is supported every time. Because you have to train that you have to have certain things in place. Like if one of the things of that experience was getting those pastries, that that's an ongoing thing. So there has to be a process in place behind the scenes, below the line of creating these pastries, of getting these pastries prepared, of having them available, of how many pastries to give somebody. The whole process of presenting that really goes in what could be your kind of client experience operation manual, the scenarios of how to make those things happen. When you do those two steps, designing that experience, narrating it from your client's experience, and then going below the line and creating the supporting structure that has to be in place to make it happen consistently. That's really what creating a dream come true experience for your clients is in the during unit.

Yeah. So, you know, what do you think? I love the analogy of looking at the acts, the different. The different acts and looking at the front stage, you know, because the backstage in a business, it's funny, the longer I'm in business, the more I realize that when you part the curtain behind almost any business, there's a lot of moving parts and there's a lot of screwed up things. There was a book. Oh boy. What was it called? It was a book on the myth of excellence, I think, where they talk about like there's five. Hopefully I got the title right, the right book. But they talk about the five stages of business and you're only really going to excel at the very best in two of them. If you try to be excellent at every stage from like price to service or whatever, you're never going to do it. So one of the big takeaways of that is there are some companies that have phenomenal prices and speed, but not really great people presenting you, greeting you, thanking you, that sort of stuff. And there's other people like a four season experience where it's, you know, typically more expensive, but man, do they really focus on service. And there's, you know, different factors of, you know, from the quality of something, you know, etc. Etc. And there are certainly, I mean, I can go into my company and you know, like with laser sighting, I can walk in the door and see a million things that I wish could be improved.

Right. But you know, but that's a brilliant exercise. Like that's the thing of really stepping outside of your own myopia when you're, you know, you're focused on actually the inside or the backstage part of it is just going through the process of experiencing your process, your experience as a client, right through their eyes, looking at it from their eyes.

And let me say this too, because see a lot of people I think get hung up on this where if you don't have enough sales and enough money coming in and you're spending all kinds of time trying to develop this dream come true experience, you've never even sold a, any experience. Your focus is really kind of not in the right place because you do need, you know, to sell something. I mean, Dan Sullivan told me, I don't know how long ago, but he, we're having a conversation and it might have been me interviewing him. I mean, because we've had this conversation multiple times. I'm not sure when we originally, you know, the first thing he, he said this, but he's like, you know, the number one job of the entrepreneur is to go get a check. Is to go get checks. And if you sit and think, okay, is the number one job of the entrepreneur to have a perfect delivery of an experience for their clients. Well, yeah, you want to get that all fixed up, but first you got to sell something. Like when I was first starting my carpet cleaning business, you know, it doesn't matter how good the cleaning job was or what I could deliver if I didn't have anyone to clean for. You know, see, you gotta have someone, you gotta have something to sell and you gotta have someone to buy something and you gotta get out there and actually do it. The thing is though, I think the very best place because, you know, we have a lot of people that listen to I love marketing, that some are established entrepreneurs, some are like running massive businesses. It was so cool because yesterday I had a conversation with Graham Weston, who is the founder of Rackspace. And I'm going to fly to San Antonio because Rackspace took over a shopping mall. I'm going to do it in a few months and do an interview with him for we're going to put up on I love marketing, basically because they have 4,300 employees, public company, great customer service. They call their employees Rackers. Everyone should check out Rackspace. But you know, the thing is, like, there are people, you know, listen to the first episode of I Love Marketing, the most recent one, the episode right before this first episode, he's listened to and you know, he talked, he said, yeah, I thought it was fantastic. And basically, you know, so we got people that are running massive companies and there's a lot of people that run big companies like his that listen to I Love Marketing. There's people that are, you know, big book authors and stuff. But there's a lot of people that are getting inspired by this, wanting to start a business, or they just started it and they're listening to us, kind of giving them advice on what to do, where to start, how to become a great marketer, that sort of stuff. And if you're in that stage, I mean, you really got to get the before unit kind of handled. You know, you need to select a single target market, you need to have direct response marketing offers. I mean, you need to kind of.

Get in there, compel people to call you. You need to educate and motivate them to teach you to get them in there. And, you know, the next level of that though, is the thing that can destroy it is if people have a bad experience. And I agree with you, it's kind of a. It's a balancing act because you have to address the need of getting money, you know, in order to do the like, you can spend all your time working on the experience and not spend any time on the marketing and you're going to go a business. So I get it. But it's an aspirational thing too. I think there's a thing about this isn't something that you're going to get right right away. This is something that you are ongoing in your effort to improve that client experience, to have an incredible client experience.

Well, here's. Yeah, see, here's one of the ways that I look at it. So the longer I've been in business, I actually, and I don't think this is a misstatement, I think you can go into any company and find areas where they are completely screwed up, completely hosed up, neglecting some area. There's some area of service that needs to be fixed. I mean, like I said, I can go in my company and certainly we've made mistakes. Certainly we've screwed up. You know, where I like screwing up, though? Not that I like screwing up anywhere, but where I like screwing up if we're going to have mistakes is not when it is a front stage experience, backstage, if we have, you know, mistakes or whatever. I just irks me, though, when the client ever has to wait too long or someone doesn't get back with them, and that's assuming the client is a respectable, decent person. I mean, you, you know, everybody has experiences where someone's expectations are beyond unreasonable and, you know, they've had a bad day and they're just looking for some entrepreneur to take it out on. You know what I mean? So I'm not talking about that sort of thing. I'm talking about really when someone makes an investment, when someone does stuff, that's why we always 100% guarantee what it is we sell. Because I never want someone to buy something and think, oh, I got shortchanged. I never want somebody to ever do business with me and ever have a legitimate reason to say, oh, they didn't treat us well. Because, I mean, we really focus on doing that. Right? And we really focus on delivering good products that are work, that are ethical, all that sort of stuff. It's just that in business, you got to really look at the front stage versus the backstage, but also realize that you're never going to have it perfect. There's always going to be room for improvement. And the reason that we will continually talk about and address things from different angles is this is the stuff you keep thinking about. I mean, if we just talked about delivering a great customer experience once and then we go on to different things, people kind of forget about it. But these are all, you know, like in, in weightlifting, there's you know, three basic moves. There's, you know, squat, bench press, deadlift, these are three. And there are, you know, hundreds of.

Of variations or different ways.

In magazines, literally hundreds of articles about those three things.

Here's the new, hottest way to do squats. Right, right.

You know, and that will happen for is, you know, unless someone invents a different way to build muscles than weight training. So it's, it's one of those sort of things. And so a lot of this may seem redundant. It's just, you know, what, what, what redundancy has, though, is the continual ability to hone and improve. And, you know, I mean, I think designing the experience you think would be awesome. I mean, if you look, if everyone wants to think about what is the worst experience I've had in the last week and what's the best experience and why and how does it apply to my business, that's, that's useful. And one of the reasons why going to events like all the people that are coming to platinum tomorrow, it gets them out of their own heads.

It allows them out of their own location.

Yeah. And they get to talk to other people that are really focused on all that stuff. And I mean, you will get, I mean, Dan Sullivan constantly, you know, I mean, even when he joined my 25k group. I mean, he's got his own, you know, wonderful coaching group and strategic coach, some of the best wisdom on the planet. But he's like, you know, a lot of the very best things that the innovations are not going to come within my company. They're going to come from the outside. And unless you're going out there finding that, you know, it's just not going to make its way in.

Right.

You know, so now, you know, when.

You look at the experiences too that you're able to create for people, one of the things you were kind of alluding to was that, you know, initially, as you're just starting into this, you can't, you're not going to have the ideal experience right from the beginning. This is aspirational, it's evolving, it's continuing, but knowing what level it is. One of the things we talked about at the I Love Marketing conference last year was this idea of choosing on the spectrum which level you're going to do. You know, which level are you going to be at the Four Seasons end of the service delivery? Or are you going to be on the opposite end of that on the Motel 8 or, or the Motel 6? I mean, or whatever. The low end. There's actually, there's a hotel in Amsterdam called the Hans Brinker Hotel, which they bill themselves as the worst hotel in the world. And they've actually. I have a book called the Worst Hotel in the World or the World's Worst Hotel. And it's all, I mean, they pride themselves on doing absolutely nothing you know, they don't clean the rooms. They don't do. It's like a hostel, you know, it's a low price thing. And people from all over the world come to experience the Hans Brinker Hotel. They pride themselves that there's hairballs everywhere. And then it's just like they do the minimum required things for you.

Well, that's terrible. That's funny.

No, but I mean, if you. I'll, I'll put up a link to it on, on. I love marketing.

Are you going to promote this nonsense?

Well, I think it's funny because they've, they've embraced it and they've used it as this. I mean, we know the name of the Hans Brinker Hotel because they're, they pride themselves on being the worst hotel in the world. I mean, nobody's nice to them when you walk in. They're mean to people. They just, they do not care, you know, and it's all part of their. Who they are, you know, they're, they're like, they're for their four travelers, you know, college for kids that are on, on vacation. Oh, man, that is fantastic, you guys.

All right, so here.

You guys are, glad that you are not here. Live in the, in the kitchen studio. That is, that's all I'm gonna say right now. So.

Well, here's the thing. So like say for instance, you go.

My voice might sound a little far away.

Oh, my God.

Okay.

All right, so where were we?

My eyes are watering. Okay. Oh, God.

All right.

Whatever that experience is for you, whatever level of experience you decide is going to be for your business. One of the books that I would really recommend is a book called Raving Fans. Because ultimately that's what you want to create. And I believe that every, every person that starts a business really wants to have. They want people to have a great experience. They want people to be delighted when they do business with you so much. Even just that intention comes through. And a lot of things don't cost money to do. Enthusiasm doesn't cost money. Kindness doesn't cost money. Being pleasant to people doesn't cost money. Being friendly doesn't cost money. Having a clean facility doesn't cost that much money. It costs maybe a little money to keep things clean, but those kind of things go a long way, I think, you know, and paying attention to the, the details, you know.

Well, like the thing earlier with the theater. Okay. Once you make that level of investment in delivering an awesome experience, the one area to not.

I'm having a pretty awesome experience right now.

Actually have. Why is that?

Just this is. This is an awesome live experience right here.

Okay, whatever. Whatever Dean's talking about, no idea. All right, so basically. Oh, geez. You know, we should invite people. We. We. We live cast through livestream. The last I love marketing meetup group for the first time ever. We did that last week at our office. We recorded the whole thing. It seemed to go really well. I was pulling out all these silly toys and people actually got to visually see all the antics and shenanigans that were going on. I think that this was live streamed right now and people actually saw what was going on in this kitchen right now. It would just add to the experience.

It really was.

Maybe one day we can.

Do we need a camera? Yeah.

Yeah, we should.

All right.

So going back to the. And the reason I keep bringing this up is, you know, it's one thing. Okay, so you, you build this incredible place, you deliver a movie experience. That's awesome.

Oh, you're talking about. I pick now.

Yeah. No, but they. They have the money to actually fix the thing, so that didn't have to. Right. Yesterday. And my feeling is, you know, I don't think that was just a one off. I think actually that's happening.

It's a weakness in the thing. But yeah. And you know, and it's almost like it's tough in a lot of ways to, you know, you don't know whether that is out of. I don't want to say arrogance is the right word, but it's almost like it's, oh, well, we're sold out every Saturday night anyway, so it's not, you know, it's not going to change anything. Like, we don't. We didn't lose anything because of not being able to answer the phone and take telephone reservations for people. You know, we didn't. They didn't lose anything like that because they were sold out anyway. But the, you know, and not to say anything in a. In a disparaging way, I guess, but you know, we've had two out of three really great experiences at. I pick I have. You had a great experience the last time we went. It's not going to stop us from going back there because it truly is a superior movie experience. It's a great. It is a great experience. And just knowing now, lesson learned on our part is that on Saturday night you got to think ahead. That's what you're going to do. I don't think that that's unique to that one. I mean, when I was telling Ryan Dice about The one in Austin, that was the first one that I went to the Ipec theater. I was telling him about it. He said, dude, I've never been able to go because every time I want to go, it's Friday or Saturday night and it's sold out. So he lives in Austin, has never been to it. So I don't know. Unless.

Well, see, that goes back to my supply and demand thing, right. If you got supply and demand on.

Your side, right, which they definitely do.

In that situation, then you can get away with certain stuff. The moment that a great competitor comes along, because it's that thing that I say, you know, quite a bit where, you know, the moment you let one of your competitors pay more attention to your customers and clients than you do, you'll lose them to someone else. And so, you know, there's certainly opportunities whenever someone's really dropping the ball and everybody drops the ball. I mean, the point is, you know, you never know. I mean, the manager could have been sick as a dog. Something weird.

Yeah. Who knows?

It could have been a one off.

My forget everything we said. No, but it is like we said, the time that you need to, to design around is the time when that system, the experience, is under the most stress.

Yeah.

Where is it most likely to be a problem? And you know what would be a great thing is I really like, you know, the concept of looking at that and transforming that. You know, looking at the, looking at the experience and seeing what went wrong and how it could be fixed.

You know, so if you were to go into somebody's business and you had an hour to actually help them sit down and design a world class experience.

I'll tell you what, there's a great show on television right now that's just started a few weeks ago on the Travel Channel. And it's with this guy, Anthony Melchori, who is a hotel turnaround expert. And the guy is passionate about hotels and it's really about the client experience. That's everything that, that whole. Everything that that show is about is about aligning everything that the hotel does to create a better client experience. And the guy is like part Seth Godin and part John McEnroe. Like if you imagine those two people combined kind of thing, he's a New Yorker and he's been in the hotel business for years and years and years. And I'm amazed at the show because the things that he does. He comes into a hotel and the first thing he does, he comes in and mystery shops the experience. He comes in and does Experiences it as a patron would and then he shares that with the people. And these are independently owned hotels. These are, you know, it's a great, great lesson in designing client experiences. I've been chatting with him about coming on. On I love marketing as to do an episode with him because it's. The guy really is a masterful client experience architect, really. It's called Hotel Impossible. It's on Monday nights and Thursday nights on the Travel Channel. And it's worth dvring or watching live. You know, it's an incredible show. I'm going to ramp that up and try and really connect with him this week and. And see if we can get him to come on.

Yeah, well, now that you've made that public, let's see if you can see.

If I can actually pull. I have.

See if your front stage promises you follow through with the problem.

Let's tweet him. I think we should Twitter bomb.

This is all you, man.

Yeah, let's Twitter bomb him if anybody is on. So his Twitter handle is Anthony Hotels. So say, listen, we're big fans of I love marketing and we want you on the show. Let's just send a tweet, something like that to him.

So you're asking all our listeners, every.

Single listener to tweet. To tweet Anthony.

What's his name and what's the tweet?

The Twitter is Anthony Hotels.

You sure?

Positive.

Okay.

Because I've had. I already. I invited him the day the show, before the show premiered. And it's a funny story is I actually. The experience that I had in New York, I tweeted about it the day that it happened. And that was the day that I read an article in that newspaper that they gave me at that restaurant about Anthony talking about his new show. So I actually tweeted him and connected with him before the show actually aired. And he said he would be happy to come on the. On the show. So let's just reinforce that with. With everybody. Let's do this. Watch the Hotel Impossible tomorrow night, Monday night, watch the show and then after the show, tweet Anthony and tell him that you'd love to hear from him on I love marketing. That would be a fantastic thing at Anthony Hotels.

There you go.

Okay.

All right. So I've got this multiplier mindset card that Dan Sullivan created with David Ogilvy. It's Ogilvy's law and it's on selling and it says it's of no use being an original creative thinker if you can't sell what you create. And I think that's kind of clever. And David Ogilvy was a brilliant direct response guy. He wrote Ogilvy on Advertising Confessions of an Advertising Man. Just smart dude. And he has some questions that Dan came up with is what is the single most important idea you have in your head that you haven't sold to anyone and when will you sell it? And the second question is, what is your company's best idea that is underperforming because of weak sales? How can this improve? And which of your clientele are always the best buyers of your new ideas and how can you maximize their role in your future? And I actually really like this card because it really gets you to think.

Well, I love this whole concept of the cards we now have.

We have which people that are in Platinum 2.0. We have the, you know, the cards with questions that focus on all of them. And if you look at the PDF for the I Love Marketing Meetup groups, there's a list of questions that can be used as themes. If you're not currently attending an I Love Marketing Meetup group or you've not started one, which you're welcome to start. You know, all I say is this. I mean, for the most part, the I Love Marketing meetup groups and everything's going really well. We have had a couple of jackasses that actually start I Love Marketing Meetup Groups very, you know, we've, we've actually had one of them immediately stop because they, you know, use the name, but then they drive people there and then offer to sell them something or do a seminar. Obviously everything we talk about this is designed to be used with integrity. This is designed to help people. And if you genuinely want to get together and have discussions with people, there are some awesome I Love Marketing groups that are going on, put together by great people that just want to help each other and want to have continual discussions. And if you're one of those people that are like that, start your own I Love Marketing Meetup group. Use the curriculum of all of the I Love Marketing stuff that, you know, tell people to read the Breakthrough DNA. And we have a list of all of the different episodes that we've done and questions in just an outline of how you actually can run and start a meeting. And a lot of it is really just built around, you know, great questions like that. And if you, even if you don't attend your own I Love Marketing Meetup group and you just want to take the episodes that we discuss, what you'll notice me And Dean continually talking about are questions. We throw a lot of questions out there. And all of these episodes are transcribed. Sometimes when we put them right up, you know, like, this was an example. We're going to put this thing up tonight. Right. And so the transcription may take a couple of days, but the point is.

That the transcript, these are happening in real time.

Right, right, right. So. And we do that, too, because, you know, a lot of times we actually want things to be, you know, current. We're not gonna. I can never see us recording an episode and then four months later putting it. No, no, we might.

We've. The most we've ever been is like, three weeks ahead when we know for sure we're gonna be traveling or something. There's no chance of us getting together, but we've never been more than. More than two or three episodes ahead.

Yeah, yeah. And so, you know, I mean, occasionally we'll put out interviews that have been done in the past, like classic ones and stuff like that. Just. They're just timeless wisdom and stuff. But for the most part, this is all real time. But the thing is, questions are really, really good. Based on these questions, I really like this one. What's the single most important idea you have in your head that you haven't sold to anyone, and when will you sell it? Until you create a deadline, ideas are a dime a dozen. And everyone's had the experience of like, oh, that person's getting paid tons of money for that ideas. And I had that idea. And the response that is, so what? They sold it. You don't think that people have brilliant ideas. There's brilliant ideas all day long. We point them out all the time. But until you actually execute on it and do something with it, then great. The other area is the second question. What is your company's best idea that is underperforming because of weak sales? And a lot of times the underperforming of weak sales. Sales has to simply do with. They don't have good marketing copy. They don't have a good offer. They're not following the eight profit activators. You can have, you know, a great idea, but you're targeting it at the wrong audience. And so, you know, I think if people go through the eight profit activators just to, you know, kind of have their stuff in order, because there's another card which is from Estee Lauder. Okay. And she, you know, obviously have the cosmetic company, and, you know, one of her laws that Dan put down is based on selling, too, because there was the Ogilvy selling law. And this law is if you don't sell, it's not the product that's wrong, it's you. And her questions are, you know, a. What is your single best approach to selling that always attracts other people's interest? And how can you continually increase the power of this approach? And I love that question. Because if you look at marketing versus selling, you know, what, what marketing allows you to do, it doesn't matter how good you are at selling one on one, you're limited by the clock. But if you could take that persuasiveness of your very best approach to marketing and that attracts other people to you and you can actually replicate that through a sales letter or through a video or through, you know, like you take this podcast, I mean, if we only, if only one person listened to it, great. But you know, tomorrow 2,600 people minimum are going to hear this just off of itunes. Right, Right on the thing.

Yeah, we end up in the first. We have tens of thousands of people in the first week for every episode.

Yeah, absolutely. And what I'm saying is like from the download thing that we have, you know, we're going to, you know, this, this episode by the end of the next, the next seven days will be listened to just on itunes because we can't even track some of the other stuff. The way that we distribute this will be listened to between 30 and 50,000 people within the first seven days. Now that's a replicatable process. So the point is, how can you continually increase the power of your reach? And then the second one are, who are the people in your organization that are the best salespeople for what you offer? And what will multiply the impact of these individuals the most? And then the third question is, what is one aspect of your organization that most prevents sales? What is your deadline for eliminating this sales obstacle? And so going back to what we talked about with Ipix, you know that one thing of not answering the phone is preventing sales. You know, that's.

That is fascinating. And when you look at that, like on that hotel, impossible. The number one thing that he always does is go through and look at the experience and you just find the places where, you know, there was one in Miami where he drove up and they have valet parking right in front of the. If you've been to south beach, it's just that strip where the hotels are. It's not easy parking or anything like that, but you pull up, it says valet. But he stood there and there was nobody there to greet him. Nobody to do anything. It was unclear what to do next. He went in finally and asked what to do. And you're supposed to just leave your keys there. But one of the solutions that he had was to put a sign that said valet parking and then below the sign said leave keys at front desk. And it just immediately eliminates the uncertainty. And that's when people are going through a new experience. They feel much better about an experience when they know what's going to happen. You look at the whole thing. There's a restaurant. We used to do a main event, the big real estate seminar in Reston, Virginia every year at the Hyatt there. And attached to it was a Panera Bread. And it was the first time I'd ever been to Panera Bread because it was right when they were just kind of getting started. And I thought about that experience. When you go into a new restaurant for the first time and you don't know the moves and you don't know how things work. Like at Panera, you know, there's two lines and you know, there's the dessert line over here and then there's the. I didn't know that. I've never been there. Okay, so you go in and you kind of like are standing there and it's busy and people who know what they're doing are doing the right thing, but you don't want to look stupid. And you're standing there and you have this little, this low level anxiety about experiencing something for the first time.

It's like going into a yoga class and the yoga instructor doesn't say, have you ever done yoga before? It's like, yeah, like what do you do?

Right, Exactly. And so part of the. Whenever you're thinking about and designing your client experiences, look at the places where there could be any kind of confusion as to what to do. I mean, you know, you look at. We went to brunch today at the Sanctuary in here in Scottsdale and Paradise Valley. And it's a beautiful place and it's quite a ways from the parking lot up the hill to where the actual to the restaurant is on top of the hill. But it was clearly marked at every transition point. Like every time where you're unsure what to do. There was a sign right there that had an arrow pointing to where the restaurant is. And so you'd go that far and then you'd get to a point where you don't quite know where to go and there's a sign that's pointing you in the right direction. So you Felt confident at every, at every level, you know, and 300 stairs later, you reach the top of the hill and you're happy, you're at the place and you have a good experience.

It's like trying to find a yard sale when the signs are just properly aligned, right? Exactly.

Well, it's part of what I'm trying to say.

No, but the point is it's actually.

Leading to remove uncertainty anytime. You know, if you think about. It's the whole process of above and below the line when you look at it. I use the example in real estate that when you go to list somebody's house, you know, you go and you sit at the table, you talk about all the. How the marketing systems are going to work, everything that's going to happen, and you list the house and then you go back to the office and all that stuff is happening below the line that you have, you know, busy, busy, busy, work ahead to get that listing process, to get it in the mls, to get the signs ordered, to create the brochures, to create all the flyers. All that stuff can be happening below the surface without any indication above the line that anything is actually happening. So it could be. If you don't have a process in place for it, then you are creating this sort of uncertainty among people who maybe start to think, well, did we make the right choice? We listed the house and we haven't heard from them in the. In four days. Meanwhile, below the line, all kinds of stuff, they're happening. It's just like what Dean Graziosi was sharing when people would go to their seminars on a Sunday and they would buy something for $3,000, and then it would be two or three days before they would ever get a call because they couldn't overnight all the orders or whatever to the office. And looking at that from the client experience, looking through their eyes, he realized that was broken and set something in place to make sure that within 24 hours they get called. And that's an above the line experience. So, you know, when you start looking at that, eliminating confusion and looking for opportunities, I mean, this is the turbo fuel of all of it. Because the real intangible that is happening in your during unit experience is that it's setting the stage for your after unit relationship with them. Where, you know, when you're talking about creating lifetime relationships with people and orchestrating referrals. So much of that depends on whether they had a great experience in the during unit. That during unit experience is going to set the stage for what happens in the after unit. So you're constantly looking for places to make sure that you're not going to screw up. Look for places where there's any uncertainty that you can remove to add that certainty and confidence. And then the turbo fuel of all of it is looking for places along that line where you can surprise and delight somebody. And when I look at that restaurant experience that I was talking about in New York City, it was nice to get to sit at the counter, but that in itself is not remarkable. What was remarkable are the surprise and delight elements that happened there of getting these little mini pastries without asking for them or having any knowledge that they were coming. That was a surprise and a delight. Asking me if I'd like a newspaper to read while I'm waiting for my food, that was a surprise and a delight. Having my check right there along with the food was a surprise and a delight. Those things combined are what created that experience in a way that. Now I'm talking about it. Yeah, totally. Because how many times you've been to a restaurant and you got to sit at the counter, but there was nothing surprising or delightful about what happened after that.

Yeah. Oh, another thing, too. So we go down to Lululemon yesterday. Yeah, Right. Because they're right downstairs from. I think. And we go into Lululemon, and what do they have? They're like a little water container and someone greeting us at the door and just like, hey, have you guys ever been here before? You know, this is your first time. And I'm like, yeah, I've probably bought $5,000 of the clothes for this place and last six months, not from that.

Particular store, but right from Lululemon itself.

Yeah. Which is your famous joke is like, you guys selling men's clothes yet?

No. Yeah. Yeah.

You think you're.

That's. You got to get it right. Because my favorite thing, disrespectfully to say to Joe is that I think they're going to start making clothes for men next year, even though Joe's got a $5,000 closet full of Lulu.

Well, it doesn't take. You only need to buy three shirts. It. But it's like, the funny thing is that the gal there was so professional, so personal, and I'm like, so, you know, I don't even know how we got on the topic, but she's like, telling me that, yeah, they have a library there where they let people read business books. And Atlas Shrug is up on the wall. Oh, by the way, I took a picture today. Frank Lloyd Wright's bookshelf library.

In his bedroom.

In the bedroom. And there was a freaking copy of Atlas shrugging.

You know what's so funny about this? What was it, 1953, 1957.

We should take a picture that and put it up on.

Well, send me the picture. But here's the thing. The funny thing about that is we're in his bedroom and everybody's around looking at the architecture. You and I are scanning the bookshelf to see what he's. What he was reading, you know. Yeah.

Well, it's interesting because, you know, he clearly was a kind of a hosed up individual. I mean, lots of problems, owed everybody money, you know, this genius, but also left a trail.

Do you remember the quote that the tour guide said about him? He says if you. His, his philosophy was take care of the luxuries and the necessities, will take care of themselves.

Yeah.

Which they never really.

Yeah, it was so funny. All right, so what was I gonna say? Okay, so we go into Lululemon and the gal is like saying, you know, she's reading her current book. She's reading is Good to crazy. Yeah. Jim Collins. That's like, it's fantastic. You gotta love that. So here's the thing, what I want to do, because I know we're gonna, we're coming towards the end.

We've got about four minutes.

All right, so basically there's another law from Edward Deming. And Edward Deming, you know, he is basically did a ton of work in management, you know, process design in Japan. And he wrote a book called out of the Crisis. And he had, you know, theories on management. And one of the laws that Dan Sullivan actually created was. Is based on process and based on everything that you've been saying and we've been talking about. If you. His law is if you can't describe what you're doing as a process, you don't know what you're doing. And so the A profit activators is a process. Selling, it's a track. Selling is not an event, it's a process. Right. And so everything that you're doing in your business, in the before, during and after units, making a sale, there is a process. And everything that you're doing that is creating success that is replicatable, not like one off luck, that sort of thing. The right person just walked in the door and I made a big sale. The things that you are continually doing that are working really well. The more you can really look at, well, what am I doing and how am I doing it and really understand the process. If you can't break it into a process. You're never going to be able to teach it to anyone else. And then the second thing is all of the things that you're doing that are not working. There is a process for failure. There really is. People can successfully replicate failure over and over again because they have a process. And the chain is only as strong as the weakest link. When you improve the strength of those links, the better you're at. One of the questions is, if you were to take your most challenged personal situation right now in and organize it in your mind as a process of smaller challenges, what would it look like? And I think that's a good way to kind of end this, to kind of think about, you know, we talked about designing, you know, a wonderful experience and taking a look at other people's processes and showing examples, good and bad, of what are happening from your diner experience to our IPIC experience to all that sort of stuff. I think it would be good for everyone right now to really think about, okay, you know, what? You know, what are the things that I really want to improve upon and what is the process for doing that? You know, and however you're communicating, however you're delivering, however you're packaging yourself, taking a look at setting all of those things up as a process and continually improving it. And the next time you have a great experience, kind of work backwards, you know, why is that happening? How is it happening? And so I think it's just a. I think it's just a great thing to look at this week.

I think so, too. And that's one of the exercises that we're going to do tomorrow in our platinum group. And I think that everybody who's listening would really benefit from doing this, is taking that process of narrating the dream come true experience that. Not necessarily that you deliver right now, but what would be your vision for the dream come true experience from your client's perspective? How they would comment about the experience that they had and just tell that story. Tell the story of exactly what happened and then look through that and start circling the things that are unique steps, things that could require a process to make that happen. So you're doing kind of a forensic analysis of your narrative to identify the things that would have to be in place to make that experience come true and to map them out on your own. Just take a sheet of paper, 8 and a half by 11, turn it sideways, draw a line across the middle of that page horizontally, and just on the top half of that, put a dot along that timeline and describe those benchmarks, describe those elements. You're dividing it. If you're thinking about it as theater, you're talking about it as acts and scenes of what actually happens when people go through that experience. And then start to think below the line, what would have to be in place to make that happen? What system, what procedure, what processes have to be there to support delivering that experience every time? And that's how you can kind of create the operating manual, the beginning of the operating manual for creating a dream come true experience for people.

Yeah. And if you are providing an awesome dream come true experience for people that is creating tremendous value and they love it, then you really need to sell yourself on the importance of doing this. So last thing I'm going to say is, if you've not seen the Is Selling evil video that we've posted on ilovemarketing.com you can go to YouTube and type in Is selling evil in my name, Joe Polish, and watch it. It's 3 minutes and 40 seconds. And I really. You know, that video is getting a lot of airplay, which is cool. And I'd love for anyone to make comments about that on YouTube and say, whatever you think about it, that would be cool.

So final instructions. We'll remind them one more time. Watch Hotel Impossible tomorrow night, Monday night, or Thursday. Watch it either one on the Travel Channel, set your DVR or watch it live. It's well worth it. I mean, I watched every episode and you get something out of. Out of every episode. And then let's Tweet anthony@anthonyhotels.com or no, not.com nthony hotels. Look at it. It's so funny, isn't it? Nthony hotels at Twitter and just say, loved your show. Love to see you on. I love marketing.

You got it.

Dean Jackson and Joe Polish are great.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yes. That would be good.

How much you like Batman and Robin.

So funny. All right, all right. It's been real. And boy, am I glad this is over now because I am, too. I don't even have to look at Dean anymore. It's terrible.

You made good eye contact there, right through the middle.

That's cute.

Yeah. I thought we had an intimate moment. Oh, Jesus.

All right, so everyone have a great day. Happy week. We'll talk to you next week. Take care.