The One About Strategic Objectives In Your During Unit - I Love Marketing With Joe Polish And Dean Jackson - Episode #89

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 together again.

Yeah, together. You know, let me mention this. On this episode of the Lovely and luxurious I Love Marketing. I'm tired, man.

Last night, just going to come right out.

I expect this episode to suck because usually I.

It's never. That's. Don't bite your tongue. It's not going to suck.

No, no. You know, it's known that I pretty much carry these things and you're just kind. You know, it's like Batman and Robin show here. But, you know, the, the fact of the. I'm kidding, by the way. You know, Dean always does a good job and, you know, he's probably smarter than me in a lot of areas. But of course, you know, he wouldn't be doing this if it wasn't for me because he's too introverted to just come out to the world and just start talking about marketing strategies. So he needs someone to, you know, kind of be a sidekick. Right?

That's exactly right. I got to ride your coattails.

No, that's not what I was saying. All right, so I'm tired. I didn't get good sleep. And one of the things that I want to mention about that is that as entrepreneurs, some days are great, some days are not so great, some days suck. Now, this day isn't horrible. I mean, obviously I'm just dealing with white people problems right now. I didn't get enough sleep. Big deal. But I'm a little tired. But I wanted to ask you, Dean, so how do you. What attitude do you have towards having success, building and growing a business, implementing strategies when, you know, none of it comes easy to. You know, there are people that have families and they're struggling with finances or they're overwhelmed or they've got health challenges or whatever. You know, how do you keep yourself in a progressive state of mind when things are tough? You know, we've never really talked about that. And of course I'm not going to turn this into a whole self help episode, but, you know, I just want to get your perspective.

You know, it's kind of an interesting thing, but my first thought was that I'm just going to be straight up and tell you my first thought is that I'm thankful that it doesn't matter that, you know, because you and I both have focused so long on. On passive revenue, on building a business that continues to bring in money whether we show up or not. That, that was honestly my first thought that my first thought was it doesn't matter if I go through a period where I don't feel like doing anything, that that's okay. So I never feel like a lot of that I gotta grind through something, you know.

Yeah. So I mean. And that is actually one of the beauties of, from your perspective because you have set that up as have I. I don't spend hardly any of my time in my office. I've got a team of people that, you know, help run a lot of stuff and I've got a ton of automated marketing and I have a model that really does allow a lot of easy, lucrative and fun things to take place. But if you didn't have that, and.

I'll tell you that what you do have. So here's the thing, what I do have is there are periods where there's a crushing amount of things that, that happen all at once. Like you look at just even the last little while here for you, you especially. But for me too, over the summer here, if you look at all the stuff that we've had going on, I mean, you went straight from, we had our platinum meeting and then literally a week later you had your 25k great event in New York. And that was like. So that whole period leading up to that, there was just so much going on. And so I get to a point where there's a lot of stuff that needs to be done and it all seems to have equal priority. And you get going on one thing and immediately your mind is like, well, I got this other thing too and it's all coming at you. And so in moments like that, when I have so much going on, so much on my mind, I will do. You know, I talk about the 50 minute focus finder. That still is the way that I do work. But when I have a lot of stuff going on, I'll take some time and do what is a five minute focus finder. And honestly, when you have so much stuff going on, it's because you don't have a clear priority. You know, you've got, you've, you're working on something, but new stuff is coming in and you've kind of juggling it all in your mind. And so the first thing I do is I take off my watch, I'm doing it right now, take it off and I hold it in my hand and I look at it. So I've got a Rolex and the Rolex has a sweeping second hand. So it just kind of, it doesn't tick Tick, tick, tick. It just kind of sweeps around. And so what I do on my watch, I've got the, it's a dive watch and it's got a rotating bezel. So I take it and I turn it right to where the, wherever the minute hand is right now. And so I can see then that's where it starts. And I look for the five minute mark. And then the very first thing that I do is wherever that second hand is, I just watch it silently and I breathe for 30 seconds. And you'd be amazed at how long 30 seconds is actually if you, if you're just kind of silent and you're just looking at it.

I know how long it is. It's 30 seconds.

And I just, I breathe. And you can take four or five deep breaths in that 30 seconds. And then I take my pen and I just write out the things that I have that are immediately on the front burner of my mind, the things that I have to do right now, the things that I'm kind of. You feeling kind of stressed about. And I write them, I write them out and then I look at them and there's probably not more than 10 things on that list. Because if you can go, I don't want you to focus like on, like in the 50 minute Focus Finder where you're getting everything out. I just want to get the pressing immediate things, the things that you're, you're stressing about right now that are going to be in the next 24, 48 hours kind of thing, and you just lay them all out. And then I look at them and in my mind I'm playing a little tournament, you know, where I'm looking at them and go, what is if I could only get one of these done, what's the thing that I have to do? Or if there's a particular time deadline attached to something, if there's a, if whatever order makes sense that I have to do this first and then I have to do this by then I can let this go a little bit later. So you're kind of sorting them around, prioritizing them as you go. And that only takes a couple of minutes. And when I look at the watch, you know, in five minutes I've got instant clarity and peace because I know that now I can just give my 100% attention to the number one thing on my list and not worry that I'm, you know, trying to do that, judging in my mind and that juggling of what needs to come next or what needs to do first. I know that I've given it, I've given everything. Acknowledgement. It's like, I know they're all there. It's all like those, they're all like screaming for your attention. And I afterwards had heard, I wish I could remember what the name of the book is. I think it was your brain at work. Do you know about that book? Does that sound like the name of a book?

Yeah, it sounds like the name of a book.

I think it's your brain at work. And this was interesting because I've been using this technique for a long, long time. And when I read this book, he describes it that your mind, your conscious attention is like a stage. And all of the thoughts and all the things that are going on in your brain are like players on the stage and they're all kind of, if everybody's on the stage and they're all kind of screaming for your attention and you can't really pay attention to anybody. And if you know who's supposed to be up on the stage first, you give it your full attention, you know, knowing that the others are all that everybody's taken care of, you know, everybody's acknowledged and everything's going to get done. And that, that little process right there, you know, I always, whenever I'm going into a period where I've got, I want to kind of map out the next period of time. If I've got, you know, two weeks or 30 days or whatever, I'll do my 50 minute focus finder and get it all out there and then kind of generally prioritize what I'm going to work on. But during those periods of especially busy times, that, that's the process that I use, that five minute focus finder.

Well, there you go. Thank you for sharing that. And I guess that alone is all someone needs to become a multimillionaire, right?

Probably that and some good ideas and some execution.

Yeah. Following like the eight profit activists, right?

Exactly.

There you go.

So what do you think that would. I think you would enjoy that process probably sometimes, because I know that there's. I know your days, you were just describing even your day today to me. And I've been around you enough that I know that your days get continually evolve with people on your team have something else that they need. There's new input coming in, you've got, you know, things are changing. You're constantly having to readapt and regroup. And that would be a good thing for, you know, for getting all those thoughts together for you too, actually.

Yeah, no, the Focus Finder is always a great solution. Overwhelmed. I've constantly, you know, told people that if you ever get yourself in a stuck situation, watch that Focus Finder video on. I love marketing and as many people have done, and it's very helpful. But yeah, hearing you just describe it that way is really good. Good. All right, so thanks, man. So what are we going to talk about, marketing wise?

So I want to talk about because we haven't really talked about so much in the during unit. And so, you know, I've been going through the breakthrough Blueprint program since July here, getting all of these things, getting everything together. I'm really excited about what we're going to be able to share with people at the conference next week, about all the case study people that we've been working with over the summer here. Some incredible. They're doing some incredible work. And one of the things, by the.

Way, Dean, can I say that if someone, by the time that this episode is going to go up, they're still going to have like just maybe a day or two to actually get registered and watch it via livestream. Right?

Right. That's right.

Okay. So that means that if you, for whatever reason, could not make the conference live in person, which is a shame. But if you still want to experience it, which is awesome, you can go to ilovemarketingthenumber2.com and you can get yourself registered for the live stream. So do that immediately because there's really nothing else going on in the world that's more important than that.

Perfect. And the good news is, along with the live stream, they'll get to take part in the breakthrough Blueprint program too, online. It's almost all built out now, so it's very exciting. But one of the things that I realized when we were.

Wait, let me interrupt one more time. And on top of that, they'll get to see the better. Your best contest winner get chosen. And I'm going to give the person the choice. I just came up with this this morning. I was like, why not do this? I'm going to give the person the choice of winning my Land Rover LR4 or a trip to Necker island in April.

Oh, very cool.

To spend a week with me and Richard Branson and a handful of other people April 12th through the 19th, which we charge $40,000 a person for and which will be sold out the moment we open that thing up because we already got a waiting list. But the thing is, we're gonna let one person, if they choose that, they can either have My Land Rover or they can spend a week on Necker island with Richard Branson.

What do you think they'll choose?

Yeah, so that's gonna be. So everyone's gotta see that, you know, I mean, especially how, you know, and people should be in that contest and you know, getting a chance to win because that's, that's, that's the good stuff.

Very exciting.

Okay, sorry, I'm done interrupting. This is what happens when I'm tired.

Jeez. I need to do a five minute focus finder right now. Let's just start, right?

You should, you should just turn off the. Everyone should just get up, watch for the next five next 30 seconds and breathe while he tries to regroup from all of this interruptions and say for the love of God, will you just talk about some before unit stuff?

That's so funny. So. Well, there's the end begin. Is that, that's, that's typically what we talk about. We probably talk a lot about before unit stuff. And as I was doing the during unit modules, the, the, you know, especially in profit activator number five and profit activator number six, Deliver a dream come true experience and provide after sales service. Those two. A lot of people don't really realize the gold mine that they're sitting on in their current business. You know, they don't think about the taking a marketing approach to the during unit. Most of the time people think about marketing and they think only about the before unit. And they want to run ads and they want to convert leads and you know, do all the cool stuff, websites and free recorded messages and all those things. But the heart of doing anything is really in the during unit. And when we were talking about, with Mark Thompson, we were talking about the difference between companies that are admired and companies that get the job done. Basically, you know, as a venture capitalist looking at companies and trying to figure out why do some companies sell at a larger multiple of their earnings than other companies in the same industry with the same revenue. And you know, looked at it and across the board, companies that are admired are more valuable. And so that's kind of an interesting thing that it was so resonant with our, with our philosophies. You know, of the, of the eight profit activators, especially the deliver a dream come true experience and provide after sale services being completely outwardly focused on your client experience. And so we talk about it as a timeline, starting from the moment that they decide to do business with you till the moment that the transaction is over, where you get the money. And they get the stuff or the service is done or whatever it is. And then what we do in profit activator number six is extend that dream come true experience by providing after sale service after the transaction is already done. And so when you look at it in that timeline, when we break it down into segments, you break it down into kind of benchmarks along the way. So if you're like, if we were a restaurant, the during unit would start the moment somebody made a reservation for dinner. And so if you were to look at the benchmarks that the time periods that would pass in the, in the during unit there the timeline would include the period of time between the time they make the reservation and their arrival at the restaurant. So they arrive at the restaurant and then coming in and getting checked in at the front, at the front desk or with the maitre d. Then the next phase would be getting to their table and, you know, placing their order. Then the next one would be when the meal comes and then when the check comes and they pay the check and then they leave the restaurant. So that whole timeline, it might be a, you know, it might be a week out for the reservation and the actual experience of being at the restaurant might be a two or three hour experience at the most. And that is where people would consider that the experience has ended. But when you look at it, you know, that period of time, there's so much opportunity that you have in, you know, like you've got a moving current there, you've got a stream of people that are constantly going through that, that process. And if you look at the experience that people have and you consider it like you would consider a play or like, you know, you're, you're creating, you're orchestrating an experience for somebody. And the, you know, the benchmarks are like the different acts in the play and knowing what's going to happen for them. You've got so many opportunities there. And just kind of even looking at it like that makes a big difference, even breaking it down from, you know, what, what's the opportunity that you have at each of these benchmarks and what could happen, most people wouldn't think in the during unit experience if they owned a restaurant, about the arrival at the restaurant as part of the experience. But when we had Anthony Melchori from Hotel Impossible on, you know, if you watch that show, he is completely all about the experience from the arrival at the property all the way through. And one, at one of the episodes, he was arriving at a hotel in Miami and he pulled up and have you been to Miami Beach, Joe? You've been to South Beach?

Yes, it's been a while, but I've been there, yeah.

Oh, actually, you were in. We did that deal with Eben at the Fountain Room. Yeah, that's right. Green room. Well, anyway, on Collins Avenue there, the. You know, there's not parking in the front kind of thing. It's not easy to find parking. So this hotel had a sign that said valet parking right in front of the hotel. So he pulls up, he's on the street, and he's sitting there for 12 minutes, and nobody came. And he went inside and. And said, hey, I'm out here. There's nobody. Is there a valet at the front desk? They said, oh, yeah, just leave the keys with us. So that right there, the whole experience that he had, it says valet parking. He pulls the car up, he's waiting for the valet to arrive, but they don't come. You have to go in and leave the keys with the front desk. And how many people aside from him have had that experience where they pull up and they're sitting there waiting for the valet? So his solution to it was to put a little rider on the bottom of the sign that said leave keys with valet. And now that eliminates that, you know, friction or that bad experience from happening to anybody else. Right? And so little things like that, when you start looking at the experience that people have from the moment they either arrive at your establishment or they push submit on their order on your online digital product that you're delivering to them or whatever it is, they join your gym, whatever would start that experience and looking at it all the way through and seeing where are the opportunities that we have to either eliminate something that could potentially be a bad experience or add something that would really make it a dream come true experience, to make it, you know, friction free, to make it something that would be a delight. And just taking that approach, looking at it through their eyes, is often a breakthrough just from experiencing it differently. You know, we talk about everything falling into one of two sides of that timeline. We've got everything above the line is the client experience, the things that they actually see happening. And then all the things below the line are the things that are the systems and the processes and the checklists and all the things that have to happen largely invisibly, to the prospect or to your. To your client to support that experience. And all of these things take foresight. You know, you have to kind of think ahead of what is your objective along that timeline. And when we really look at it, you've got a core objective, which is to deliver the result that your client is buying whatever it is that they're buying from you. You've got that mandate to deliver on whatever that result is. So if it's a restaurant, you know, your core objective for the restaurant is that somebody gets in, they get their meal, they enjoy it, and they pay their bill and they leave. That. That's the core objective of it, right? They've got to have good food, they got to have a good experience, and. And that's all that often people are focused on. But what you also have in any experience, and I'll just continue with the restaurant experience, is you've also got the opportunity to plan ahead and think about strategic objectives that you have as an opportunity of doing business with somebody. So if we, you know, if we were looking at a restaurant, you know, your core objective would be that they have that good experience, that they enjoy the food and that they had a good time and they pay the bill and they leave. But the strategic opportunities that you have while somebody's there in your restaurant are if you look at all the segments, it might be strategic objective that you have, that more people order appetizers. That could be a strategic objective, Something that's measurable, right? If you don't do anything, if you just give people menus and you come and say, hey, what? What do you want? Then that's going to be. That's going to yield a certain amount in that particular, you know, from following that kind of a system. But if you have a specific way of presenting the appetizers that you almost assume that people are going to start with an appetizer, and you explain what the appetizers are, and you look at, you know, you compare the random approach with a systematized approach where you're. You're saying some particular words to them, and you try that with a hundred, you know, your next 100 diners, and you look at it and you see our strategic objective was that we raised the, you know, the appetizer acceptance rate, you know, and that is an incredible thing. Now when you look at that timeline, there are so many of those type of strategic things that you could do and in a restaurant experience. And it's good that maybe we talk about a restaurant because everybody's had that experience. Another strategic objective might be that you get their contact information. And you and I are always shocked at how few restaurants actually have any sort of way to collect any kind of information from you. You know, they don't Even focus on it. They don't care. Really?

Yeah. No. In as many that I've actually filled out because I have another email address where I put, you know, to see pitches. Like, you know, they'll have an insert to be on their list. I swear, it must be one out of five ever follows up. I mean, like, literally get my contact information and they do nothing with it. It goes into a black hole. And even when they do put it there, rarely. I mean, I'd say I'd probably 1 out of 20 will they'll even mention, would you like to be on the list to get something on your birthday? Right.

So you think about that. That would be the easiest thing to do is present something like that. A birthday club. If you said to somebody, like if they said to you, hey, if you'd like to join our birthday club, you get to celebrate your birthday today, and you get a $20 gift card on your birthday and you get it today. You get a birthday cake or you guys, you know, a birthday brownie or something. You know, that would be something that would make them feel like they're getting something special and something to look forward to on their actual birthday. And if you just said those words in 10 seconds to the next 100 parties that come into your restaurant, you would get more people who have left their name and their contact information, you know, their email address at least.

So, you know, the thing with all the stuff you're talking about, Dean, I mean, you've heard this before where, you know, you don't need to be world class in order to be better than your competition. You just got to do something better than they do. And you take like the whole after dinner mint.

You know, I was just going to get to that, like with Robert Cialdini, right?

Yeah. Without even talking about that. You know, we'll go to that. And the context I'm going to explain it here is different. You know, they give you mints because they want you to leave with a good taste in your mouth. Well, how about if they start you out with a good taste in your mouth? You know, I mean, how many times have you actually been to restaurants where they've done something impressive before you're seated and if you are seated before the meal begins, and there are a few occasions where they actually will bring out an unexpected free trial of something like, you know, a little salad or an appetizer or something without you having to order it. Now you know how weird I am with heating.

Like, I'm. I told Anthony about juniors, Juniors in In New York, right across from the. The Marriott. And, you know, I. It's the single best single diner experience that I've ever had. You know, they, they. Everything was completely orchestrated. They. They recognized that I was a single. In the morning, they suggested that I might like to sit at the. At the counter, which I could take a seat. Would you like a newspaper? When I arrived there, they took my order, but they brought out this little plate with these mini pastries on it, like a little mini Danish and a little mini scone and without just like what you're talking about. Right. Like, I had an incredible experience from the moment I arrived. And that is not a random thing, because when we were in New York again at that same hotel for your 25k event, I went to Junior's several times while we were there and had the same experience. But that. Just like you were talking about surprise and delight. That's the kind of thing, right? Like, where can you surprise and delight people?

Yeah. And I remember once when I got a massage years ago, and, I mean, I do all kinds of bodywork and stuff because I'm like a little girl, you know, going to spas and stuff. I haven't got a new smiley face on my toe ready for.

I got one, too.

You do? You see, you're trying to be like me now. But you did give me the hello Kitty wallet, which I've been carrying around a pink hello Kitty wallet for three weeks now. I've been carrying this thing around. Awesome.

It really is great. You're welcome.

I mean, the way people respond to that. You know, guys look at you like you're a complete freak, but women love it.

They do. I'm telling you, it's a conversation starter.

Yeah, that's a whole other discussion. But I remember going to this massage therapist, and right when I'm laying on the table, she says, you know, this is your time. I just want you to completely relax. You're here to be as relaxed as humanly possible. So just forget about anything that's on your mind and just enjoy yourself. I mean, it was nothing complex. Just like giving a client permission to relax. Which I thought about that a lot because I'm going, well, yeah, you know, of course I'm. You know, you're there to get a massage, and you should. You could relax, but you'd be surprised how many people. Should I have a conversation with the person, Should I say, hi, you know, what do you. You know, that sort of thing? And it just put my mind at ease, and it made me think about how applicable that is to every sort of business sort of experience. Because it doesn't have to be a massage therapist. It's just literally setting the expectation. And I thought, you know, wow, what a trip. You know, and if you're a personal trainer, you know, someone's ready to start. Well, okay, you know, whatever's going on in your life right now, just want to let you know that you are here to exercise and make your body better. And we're going to do some stuff that is going to cause you to exert stuff. But I just want you to realize that you're focusing on bettering yourself. And we're going to, you know, we're going to kick butt and take names today. No matter how you're feeling, we're going to do the best job we can. Okay. You know, I mean, there are little things that you can do just to set the stage, you know, surprise and delight sort of thing like you mentioned, you know, that was huge. And I've never had that experience since where I've ever felt as comfortable as just setting it up that way.

And that's. But there's the thing, like the good news about your during unit and thinking about it in terms of a timeline like this and is that you get to be the creator of the experience. You get to be the architect of that, and you can really put your stamp on somebody's experience, you know, and it's layering on top of all of these things. And you're not going to be able to, you know, have the very best experience that you could deliver for people from the very beginning. You're going to be constantly improving it and you're going to be constantly adding new things to it to make it even better. So you start out with, of course, your first priority is absolutely delivering on the core objective. You've got to deliver the result that people were expecting and beyond what they were expecting. And you can't think for a minute and that all these surprise and delight things are going to smooth over the fact that you didn't actually deliver the core result. You can't have, hey, this is your hour and I really want you to relax and enjoy everything about it and then proceed to give you the worst massage you've ever had. Yeah, right. I mean, you can't do that or you can't have a great experience. The restaurant and then the meal is cold, or it takes forever to get the food, or it's not what you ordered, it's mixed up, or the core things have to be There.

And so what if they. So how does someone think about having the core elements there?

Okay, so there's. The thing is, you have to first of all understand what is the core objective that you're trying to reach in your during unit experience. What is the. What is the core. If I'm selling a house as a real estate agent, that the core objective is that the house gets sold in, you know, a reasonable amount of time at the highest price that we can get right now, you know, that top dollar, that would be the core objective. So you've got to focus all of your attention on making sure that that happens and that that goes smoothly. But when you look at it from a real estate perspective, you know, the core objective is to get the house sold. The strategic objectives, the opportunities that you have as a result of getting that listing are far more valuable than just delivering the core objective. You know, if I list a house I've been using in the. In the breakthrough blueprint program, I've been using the lakefront home sellers as an example. And so, you know, the average commission on the $340,000 house would be $10,000 on just the listing side, right. If I get. If I list your lakefront house and it sells, then I'm going to get half the, you know, the listing, half of the commission, which is $10,000. Now, the strategic objectives that you have, the opportunities that you have by having that listing are you could find the buyer yourself as the listing agent. You know, you do everything you can to find the buyer for that house. You've got an opportunity to do marketing using that house. That finds a buyer who's going to buy another house. You know, maybe they don't buy that one, but they buy another house, there's another $10,000. You've got the opportunity to get the next listing in that neighborhood, because now when you sell that one house, you're all of a sudden the most recent neighborhood expert there, especially to the 50 homes immediately around that listing. And we know that within the next 30 to 60 days, one of those houses at least, is going to come on the market. So if you take advantage of that opportunity, you've got an opportunity to get that one, but you've also got an opportunity to create a relationship with the seller that they would refer you somebody before the transaction is even over. And so if you look at it, those four strategic objectives dwarf what you have available in just reaching the core objective. You know, so if you look at it where in the restaurant situation, you know, the core objective is to just get people seated, take their order, bring them the food, make sure it's cooked right, and they have a good meal and that they pay the bill and they leave. That's just letting it happen. But if you orchestrate that and you have an orchestrated process for getting more people to buy appetizers, more people to have cocktails or to have wine with their meal, or to order the special, you know, that's a premium item on the menu, or to order dessert, or to join your birthday club, so you get their contact information, all of those things. Our strategic objectives. And if you look at the average ticket for a party that comes into the. Into your restaurant, if you conscientiously focused on those strategic objectives one at a time, and at the end of that process, it would be shocking if the average ticket was not 50 or 100% more than what it was if you just randomly let things happen. But it's not going to happen unless you do those things in an orchestrated way.

Yeah. You know, I will say this too, is if I wasn't so tired right now, everything you're saying would actually make sense. No, I'm kidding. No, what I was going to say was, I think what happens a lot of times is people are so busy just running around that they don't even think about how to automate the process and orchestrate it. You know, remember that old Joe, Joe Carbo headline for the book, the Lazy Man's Way to Riches? He used to run an ad that said, and this was, you know, in the 70s, you know, you too busy earning a living to make any real money.

Right.

And so people are so busy running around that just trying to handle the customer, the client, the situation, their email, that they don't sit and think, how do I solve this problem once by taking the time to really think it through so I can repeat it over and over again.

I think that part of it is realizing that you are not going to be able to do it all at once, and that layering on top of it is going to be a tremendous financial gain for you. If you. If I owned that restaurant, for instance, and you, you started with one thing. You start with the appetizers. Let's just train all of our staff, and we're going to spend the first week focused 100% on perfecting our appetizer presentation process so that people, they sit down, you have the, you know, they give you the menus, and maybe there's some words that you say that are going to be the best practice words that get people to buy an appetizer, and then the next week you continue to do that. But now you add on to that, you layer on to that the process for getting people to join your birthday club. So you've presented the appetizer opportunity to them, you bring out the appetizers and then, or while you put in the appetizer order, between the time that happens and the time that they arrive, you present them the birthday club process and you don't explain it to them, then, hey, if you join our birthday club, you get to celebrate your birthday tonight and you get a $20 gift card on your birthday and just have the thing right there on the table. You know, all of those things have to have a architect. There has to be an architect who is consciously creating that experience and then focusing on it from an above the line perspective. What are we going to say to these people? How are we going to deliver this message to them? What are they going to hear, you know, and then what do we need to make that happen? So if you have little birthday club, you know, index cards that are already pre printed that are already there in a little stand on the table, you know, over by the side of the table or something that people can sign, fill it out right there and pick it up when the, when the appetizers come or whatever, that whole process is both above the line architecting it and then below the line of setting up the systems. Well, what do we have to have here to make this happen? We've got to have the, we got to have the cards for everybody. So what are they going to look like? Where are we going to get those printed? How many do we need? Where we put them on the table, thinking that through so that when the server presents them with that opportunity, the tool is right there. Or maybe they have the cards in their little pocket of their vest or whatever to give it to people as they're explaining it to them. That's an incredible. That's a process. And then maybe the next week you focus on the next one, which might be getting people to have a cocktail or have wine with their meal. Presenting these things in a natural way. Just like Robert Cialdini talked about being able to raise people's tips by presenting the mints in a particular way. Once you know what to do and once you know what to say and that becomes the process, then it's easy to kind of layer something else on top of that. And by taking that kind of a concerted effort and really thinking it through ahead of time, that's where you're going to create a breakthrough in your business. That's really what it is. Because this isn't about incremental improvement. These are breakthrough things. When you take a little bit extra on each ticket and you multiply that by the number of people who come into your restaurant, that's a breakthrough. Yeah.

You know, I'd like to explain a little bit about how I did this in the carpet cleaning industry. When I first started as a carpet cleaner and, you know, I, of course, had no real sense or training on how to actually present myself. You know, I never worked for a carpet cleaning company. I never had a friend franchise. I didn't have any, you know, business training in school. I mean, a lot of this is, you know, I'm just some young guy that didn't want to work for anyone and started this business not knowing what the hell I was doing. And, you know, I learned because I needed to. Needed to eat, needed to survive. And after I learned direct response and actually got really good at the before unit, how to actually get people to respond to my offers. You know, I didn't even know what an offer was other than price. And once I learned direct response, I like, wow. The only reason to advertise price is when you don't have any other criteria on how to make a buying decision that you can come up with. And so I created this thing called a carpet audit. So when I was in the home, instead of giving a quote or an estimate, I would give a carpet audit because I didn't want to do what everyone else is doing, offering the same exact things. I wanted to stand out. I wanted to have a usp, a unique selling proposition, not a universal selling proposition, which is what most people have. And so this could be, you know, could be used to actually sell, or it could be used in the during unit once you already have a client. Because even after I acquired people as clients and I would do repeat business, we would always do a new carpet audit for them. And so basically what I the offer that I would make is a free room of carpet cleaning with a free carpet audit. And so what would. What I would do is I'd schedule enough time. If they wanted any additional cleaning done while they were getting their free room, I'd be happy to give them a quote for what it would cost to do that. And I would do a carpet audit first. So I would go into the home and I automated the system so that I would rely on form. So it was kind of like my own form of a checklist. How many rooms? What was the square footage? How many pets were in the house, how many adults? What sort of carpet did they have? What generation of carpet, what was it made out of? Did anyone smoke? Did anyone have any allergy problems? Were there any noticeable installation problems, et cetera, et cetera. And I would keep track of all of this on this piece of paper. And how often is the carpet vacuumed? How often is the carpet cleaned? Was carpet protection applied? A whole series of. Of different questions on this carpet audit form. And then when I was done, I would give them a prescription of how to maintain it so that they could get the most out of it. And I came up with a term called wearage. And wearage was just something I made up. How much based on my professional opinion, and I was certified. I knew what I was talking about. But again, there's no way to say this carpet's going to last. X for, you know, everyone across the world.

It's like those real age tests where you take the test and it tells you what your real age is.

Yeah, yeah, sorta. And what I mean though, is like, what could be, you know, excellent to some person could not be excellent to another person because, you know, someone, if they see a speck on their carpet, they're gonna freak out. And other people, you know, they're fine with traffic lane wear and, you know, whatever. So it's. It's up to someone's standards and their own opinion. But the point is, I'd say, okay, based on the way you're taking care of your carpet right now, here's what you can expect to get out of it, versus, if you. Here's my prescription, here's my recommendation of what I would do. And so I would come up with this whole process. What would happen is it became Socratic selling. It would allow me to engage into a conversation with the client and get valuable information about the condition of their carpet and about how they live so that I could give them useful advice and recommendations on how they could care for it. So it really positioned me as much different, because no carpet cleaner would typically come in and ask them questions, let alone record it and then keep track of it. So the next time that they called, I already had all that information stored on them. And this is again, before the Internet. I mean, doing this stuff now is so much easier than it was when I started. From databases to cloud computing to iPads to all of this stuff. I mean, you can take before and after pictures now and have them instantly available. I mean, none of that stuff Existed back then. This was like, you know, I mean, this was archaic when I first started doing it, but I still thought index.

Cards in a recipe box.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so basically what I kept doing, you know, working this through and I kept thinking it through and the first time I did a carpet audit, you know, I'm bumbling around, I didn't know what the hell I was doing, but I was trying something out and I started realizing that, wow, you know, people actually respond really well to it. And there's a lot of factors that go into the condition of someone's carpet. And I could tell them things like, you know, if you put a throw rug outside of your, you know, door, you can, you know, and you probably don't know this Dean, but you take a particular. If you have like a six foot entry mat outside of your house, your office, you can eliminate about 80% of the particle soil that's going to be brought into the home if you just keep it out of the home in the first place. There are little things that you can tell people in. So, you know, I'm doing carpet audits and it's working well. And yeah, you can even hide in an average carpet, you can hide a pound of soil in a square foot of carpet before it becomes visible to the human eye if you just brush it in. I mean, you know, carpets weigh a lot more once they're removed than when they're installed because of all the crap that clean the carpets and because people don't clean them properly. But that being said, you know, some, you know, I have great success with this whole carpet audit system. I'm increasing my average job. I'm instilling so much more value. They're realizing what goes into it. And so I'm doing this and I'm learning things along the way. One thing I learned, a simple thing, you know, to go around orchestrating it is I started wearing, you know, booties on the shoes. You know, so it actually covers the shoes. And so right before I would start, I would slip on the booties. This is when I was cleaning the carpets myself. And the client would actually see me do that and it would look impressive. And then I would leave booties for them when I was leaving, so saying, well, now you know, that I've left and the carpet's drying. You know, wear these. And then in little things like that, something that cost me 20 cents for.

These little plastic booties and a delight. And that's one of those things that's almost exactly what I was talking about. Where you can't focus on those little things like putting on the booties and then do a terrible job of cleaning the carpets.

Right. It's a little thing you continually hone. You continually hone it. And then what happened was then I started teaching all of this stuff to cleaners. And over the years, oh, my God, the stuff that we've come up with. I mean, one of my clients, and it was my idea, I said, you know, you're doing a carpet audit while you're there. Every person in the home, even if they're not conscious of it, has something that they're thinking about, some particular area that really stands out to them. And why put the pressure on you to figure out what about their carpet or their home or their upholstery that's bothering them? So what you do is you give them little stickers and you can get little round stickers like an office supply store. You can order them, and you say to Mr. And Mrs. Jones, Mr. And Mrs. Jones, if there's any particular area that you'd like me to pay special attention to, then I'd like you to put. Put a sticker on it so that I can make sure that I really take care of that area. And while I'm doing a carpet audit and measuring, what I'm going to do is I'm going to place stickers on any area of your house that I actually think that either myself or my technician, you know, needs to really pay special attention to so that we can, you know, if there's any particular spots that we notice. And then they would go throughout the house and they would mark areas and like, people never saw another carpet cleaner do this stuff. And they'd be like, wow, they're so much attention to detail with this company. And now I have cleaners.

It's theater, it's improv.

It's total theater. Yeah. And then while of course they're there, then they have the referral form that I have, where for many, many years, and we have many people that still do it today, where for every referral that they give, they'll send them $10 in the form of five $2 bills as a way of just saying things. Not send them a $10 check, not give them 10, $10 off or whatever percentage off their next cleaning. You literally send them five, two dollar bills, and they put those in their wallet or their purse, and every time that they look at them, most people don't want to spend them because you don't see $2 bills a lot. And sometimes you have to like order them from banks and wait like a couple of weeks for them to come in or, you know, but the fact is figure out how to get $2 bills. It's not that hard and people don't want to spend them. And every time they look at the $2 bills, it just, they are thinking about that carpet cleaner. And so we would, we would do things and then we would put little stickers on the top of vacuum cleaners while we're in the home saying, you know, in case of any emergency, you know, call us for, you know, spots or spills. And you ask them, you know, if you have a vacuum cleaner, I'd like to put this sticker on the top of your vacuum cleaner. Because if you ever lose our business card or you just, you know, anything happens, you know, now of course the people could always run to Google and they could, you know, look you up. But people forget the name of the companies they use. And so I was like, you know, what are, instead of a refrigerator magnet instead of a business card, what are they going to see on a regular basis? Or every time Mr. And Mrs. Jones or someone is vacuuming the carpet, they are seeing a bright fluorescent sticker reminding them of that carpet cleaner. And so all these little things that we figured out over the years that would just work like gangbusters now, you know, the people that use my Perona marketing strategies in that industry have like just dozens of proven completely orchestrated during strategies to deliver the most incredible world class experience ever. And you know, hundreds of millions of dollars of cleaning services have been transacted using these strategies. And a lot of it has to come because it's not just like you said at the beginning, it's not just focusing on getting the job, it's what do you do while you're there that blows people away. So, so they call you back so you get more referrals. I mean there's just so much to this and this is not difficult. The thing is that people, they get so busy just doing what it is they're doing that they don't stop like you were talking about earlier with the watch and just breathe and think about it.

I think that's fantastic. Everything you just talked about there is reaching a strategic objective. I mean you want them, your strategic objective is that you make sure that they're not going to call another carpet cleaner and that they have your number when they need, you know, when they see something that it's time to get their carpets cleaned. And there they are every time they're vacuuming the carpet. But that to make that above the line experience happen that you've got, you know, the above the line experience is that you put a sticker on their, on their vacuum cleaner. You had to go below the line and think about the process and the system that's going to make that happen. You had to go and figure out where am I going to get these stickers? What's the sticker going to say? What's it going to look like? You do all that stuff below the line so that when the time comes, you've got the tool that you need to create that above the line experience.

Yeah. And let me mention that too. Lennon and E.T. hume, who are two of our awesome clients that will be at the conference. So if anyone listens to this, make sure you talk to Len in the running.

In the running for the either the car or the necker trip.

The trip to necker. Yeah. And they are a previous, better, your best contest winner. They actually won a Corvette a few years ago and now they're qualified again to enter the contest again. And this is the first time I've had like a winner of a past contest actually enter a again and be a runner up or be in the finalist, that is. And so what's really cool is that they'll be there and they use stickers. And one of the things, the sticker I liked the most was, are you fed up with your dirty carpet? That's what I came up with. And it wasn't just finding out where to get the sticker done, but it's before it'd be like, oh, here, you leave the sticker for Mr. And Mrs. Jones and say, could you put this on your vacuum cleaner? And then I realized that, well, you know, you're asking them to put your sticker on their vacuum cleaner, it comes across as like, oh, you want me? I mean, that's kind of weird. The other thing is if you say, oh, can I put this on your vacuum cleaner? Well, that's not good enough. Because they're like, well, I don't want anything on my vacuum cleaner. So you frame it so it says Mr. And Mrs. Jones, in case you ever have a flood or an emergency spot and spill and you immediately need to remember or know how to get ahold of us. I'm going to place this sticker on the top of your vacuum cleaner so that you always know where to call in case anything, you know, emergency wise happens. And if you say that to them, then all of a sudden putting it on their vacuum is a benefit. But if you just hand them a sticker saying, hey, will you put my sales pitch on the top of your vacuum? It doesn't sound as good.

You know, that reminds me of the whole. It is words matter and how you present things really do, really do matter. You know, it's like, totally.

Yeah, well, so to finish this, the reason I said Lennon, Annette is because they actually took our. You fed up with your dirty carpet. Now they have red standout stickers that have gloss on them. So in case anyone even gets the sticker wet, it is still fine. It doesn't fade, the ink doesn't link. Wait, did I just say that right?

The ink doesn't.

Ink doesn't leak. Leak not link. Dude, I'm telling you, I'm tired, man. I'm brain dead here right now. But anyway, so, you know, they put it. It just says dirty carpets in the phone number and their website, and they put it on every. You know, they have their technicians that they do not call technicians. They call them specialists. They call their carpet cleaners specialists. And when you hear Len and Annette talk front stage and backstage, they literally have trained themselves to refer to their team members as specialists, which is completely different than a carpet cleaner or than a, you know, everything about how they have utilized these strategies and have thought it through. I mean, they're really bright people. They're very smart and they're very, very sophisticated. And I can assure, you know, they're in the Toronto area. And, you know, they, they just basically, you know, they, they are an exception in terms of how a service company delivers a world class experience. They are four seasons of how someone would deliver an experience. Yeah. And they keep growing and they're awesome because they think this stuff through.

And then, you know, here's the thing, though, is that most of the time, people end the process right there. They end it when the transaction ends. Most people would think, okay, you've cleaned the carpets, here's the bill, they give you the check, you shake hands and you leave. And that's when the transaction ends. But that's when we start now providing after sales service, because that's the time that is going to be the time when they don't expect it. You know, anything that you do in the transaction period could be perceived as that you're doing. It's a great experience. But you were doing it because you're getting paid. And now once you get paid, once you're done, anything you do after that is surprising and delightful because nobody expects anybody to do anything after They've already been paid. You must be doing it because you really do care about me or you like me, or you're different or you want me to, you know, you want to have a long term relationship with me. And those are the kind of things. Those are the kind of things where you have the opportunity to really have your clients fall in love with you. You know, if you. If you think about that as your objective, you know, what would it take for your clients to fall in love with you? You hear people say, I love my chiropractor or I love my whatever, you know, I love our pediatrician. What would it take for them to say, I love my carpet cleaner or I love my real estate agent? And you kind of chuckle and you laugh, but that's the big thing. How would that change the way you approach things if that was your objective?

Yeah, exactly. That is the question that everyone would be well served to ask themselves.

I believe it. So, you know, this we have.

You know what I think we're.

At the time I was just gonna say is that I.

Does that mean I can't take a nap?

I was just gonna. You're like, yeah, you know.

You want to hear something really funny about this? All right, so Laurel Langmire, you know, the wild, you know, financial guru, she's flying her private plane into town tonight and I'm going to dinner with her. And so I actually have to stay awake and try to be semi coherent when I'm having dinner with Laurel and talking about whatever we're going to talk about tonight.

That's so funny. Well, say hi to her for me.

So what are your suggestions of when you're really tired? Staying awake and being attentive and giving the impression.

Okay, I think. Do you have any. No do's.

I don't take stuff like that. I can't.

I'm just telling thinking of things for you. What could you do? Do you have any.

No, I'm going to have a cold shower, dude. I'm going to email Tony Robbins and I'm like, dude, just make a video.

Make your move. Make your move. That's what he would say. Your power move. That's what you got to do. It's all about your physiology, Joe. How would you be standing? What would you be doing? How would you be holding your body if you had unlimited energy?

Right now I'm going to work on my physiology.

What's your power move?

Yeah, now I'm done and I'm going to rest.

Perfect. Say hi to Laurel for me. I will.

And everyone have a good night. Thank you.

Okay.