The One Where Dean And Joe Discuss Effective Ways To Handle Negative Publicity In Your Company - I Love Marketing With Joe Polish And Dean Jackson - Episode #132

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.

And here we are again at last. 130 something episodes later. Do you know many. Do you know how many hours of my life I've devoted to talking on the phone with you that's recorded? I mean, not even factoring all the times in my Life. I mean, 132, 133, wherever we're at, how many, how many hours that is? I mean, that's more than three full work weeks back when people used to have it easy and only worked 40 hours a week versus like 120 or whatever the average person works today in modern life.

Can you imagine?

Yeah, that's a long time. You know what else I could be doing with this time? Talking to you, Given dispensing free advice to so many people that don't even care. And those are the people that don't listen. I'm not talking about our awesome, amazing subscribers that actually listen to us on a regular basis and for some bizarre reason derive some semblance of value out of these episodes, but just talking to you, I mean, people don't realize the.

Sacrifice that this takes, the joy that you get to experience every single time.

Unbelievable. I mean. All right, so let's talk now. Okay, so we've, we've done a couple episodes on the self milking cow and that was good. Is there any other thoughts you have on that? Because, you know, we've got a lot of comments from people and you know, some good insights have come out of it. I mean, we can, you know, we can do a follow up episode on that. What's a good one to check in on all the time?

But yeah, I think that's the thing is I think we'll give it a little time to see how it evolves. But I think that what we're starting to see just from the comments and from people that I talk to is even the realization of making the distinction for themselves between making the milk and processing and packaging and taking it to market. And I think even that awareness builds some momentum there and realizing that if they can free themselves from the farming, that that frees them up to make more milk. And that's ultimately what the real thing is. It's so.

Hold on, I got to say something and interrupt you here. If this is the first time you've ever listened to. I love marketing and what you just heard Dean Jackson say that this is not a podcast that teaches you how to be a, you know, dairy farmer. It's an analogy. It's a construct. It started on episode 127, which was the first episode we did on self milking cow. And so I don't even consume dairy. So that being said, don't misconstrue what he. Because I was just sitting there thinking, could you imagine if someone heard what you just said for the very first time? They just happened to stumble across. I love marketing on itunes. And they're like, what the hell are these guys talking about? Does that, you know, Are you getting what I'm saying here, Dean?

I'm getting what you're saying.

I mean, go ahead with what you're going to say. Making this assumption that everyone's just got nothing else going on in their life and they can totally just tap right into this conversation without a setup.

Well, I think those two distinctions for yourself, realizing the distinction between the creative work, the adaptive challenges and the processing and then also thinking about it from the point of view, if you have a business that provides services for other people, is really setting things up to allow your clients to embrace their own cow hood. Allow them to fully just be a cow and completely handle it for them. That's what people really want. They, they really would love if somebody would just handle all of it for them rather than just give them buckets and a stool and say, here you go.

Right? Buckets and a stool, here you go. Okay.

We provide tools for cows. Need somebody to stand there and milk them?

Yes. Yes.

Yep.

So to get yourself up to speed on this, if you haven't, go listen to the previous episodes that we did about this subject@ilove marketing.com and so now what I want to jump into, Dean, a couple of things. One, I want to talk about the very first pod Pod podcast. The very first blog written blog post that I made on a new blog which is currently geniusnetwork.com blog about Tesla. From the time people are listening to this episode, it's been a few weeks since there was a fire all over the Internet. Well, the fire wasn't all over the Internet. The video of the fire and news of the fire and talk of the fire was on the news and on the Internet and written up everywhere. And of course Tesla's stock dramatically dropped. And then it went back up because of this amazing letter that Elon Musk basically wrote. And I'd like to, I'd like to read that. And I'm going to go here while I'm recording on GarageBand on my computer and hope that me typing this in does not interfere with the recording quality as my fingers tap on the computer here. All right, so, you know, I should have you read this Steam, because it's kind of weird when someone reads their own stuff. You know what I mean? You should do it. But I'll do it. You want to read it or you want me to read it?

I can find it.

Geniusnetwork.com here's the deal. I want to get your comments on this because there's been a lot of great comments and a lot of great feedback. And truth be told, I could have never written this article without JR's help because JR put together a fancy. Well, JR puts together a lot of stuff for me. He's our secret person we never talk about and he doesn't ever want to get credit. But I like giving credit because it's the right thing to do. So let me read the article the right way. And this is on my blog. Okay. My new blog, Genius Network Insights. The Right way to deal with public disaster. A case study about Tesla Motors. Okay, if something publicly affected your company or customer's life in a negative way, how would you handle it? If disaster struck your company and it was public, what is your PR plan? Recently, this happened. Warning, there's some vulgar language in this video. And I post a video that's only 32 seconds long. You can watch it there if you'd like. And Dean, put up, put a link to the blog on your, on the I Love marketing website. And then so in this video, it's just basically the fire. There's a fire, the Tesla is on fire, and these guys are walking by. Not walking by, but driving by. And they're filming it. So it says, now imagine your product or service was figuratively or literally being shown up in flames for all the world to see. Well, that's what happened to Tesla. Around 8am on October 1, 2013, the driver of the Tesla vehicle hit some metal debris on the freeway. And soon after, the vehicle caught fire in Tesla stock. The incident caused Tesla to have its biggest one day decline since July 16, sinking more than 6%. Shares of Tesla have risen more than 400% since the beginning of 2013. But investors feared the fire, an accident, might have shown a flaw in the company's battery pack, despite being called the safest car in America. So how did Tesla deal with this? Well, firstly, you should know that Elon Musk has the title of founder, founder, chairman and CEO of three different companies, Tesla being one of them. SolarCity and SpaceX are the other two. And I recently went to SpaceX. He's quite an entrepreneur. We recently had a meeting at SpaceX that was part of the X Prize adventure trip organized by my friend Peter Diamandis. Here are some pictures. And so there was this adventure trip that Peter put together, which was actually my idea, kind of like what I do in Necker island. And we all went there. And one of the things in the adventure trip was a meeting with Elon at Tesla. And so there's pictures that I put up from that meeting. And then I go on to say I'm already impressed with all the things this company does, including how this fire mishap was handled. I want you to read Tesla's response below carefully. It's instructive for your business and life. What you're about to read is incredibly savvy marketing when it comes to dealing with disaster, mishaps and accidents. I want you to notice three things as you read Tesla's response. 1. Details. The first half of the letter is incredibly detailed, complete and thorough. This not only instills cred, but gives you a clear picture of what actually happened. They don't avoid the issue, they face the facts head on in a way that makes sense of the incident. 2. Transform accident into advantage in the second half of the letter, Elon transforms the accident into a positive advantage and actually differentiates the Tesla from normal conventional gasoline cars. He turns disaster into an advantage for Tesla by pointing out the weakness in the competition and proving that Tesla is superior to the competition. And three behind the Scenes in the last part of the letter, the communications between the Tesla owner who who was in the accident and the VP of Sales and Service for Tesla are reproduced. This gives you a behind the scenes look at how the issue is handled with the customer experiencing the issue. Total transparency. This breeds trust. It's actually incredibly masterful when you consider Tesla transformed a PR disaster into an advantage. Tesla's marketing is good, real good, and you can learn from it and apply it to your own business and life. Oh, and Tesla's stock. It's back up. Here's the letter. And so do you want to read the letter, Dean, or do you want me to go on and continue to read? Oh boy. Yeah. And this was on October 4th about the model S fire. This was an email that went out by Elon Musk, chairman, product architect and CEO. Earlier this week, a Model S traveling at highway speed struck a large metal object, causing significant damage to the vehicle. A curved section that fell off a semi trailer Was recovered from the roadway near the where the accident occurred. And according to the road crew that was on the scene, Appears to be the culprit. The geometry of the object caused a powerful lever action as it went under the car, Punching upward and impaling the Model S. With a peak force on the order of 25 tons. Only a force of this magnitude would be strong enough to punch a 3 inch diameter hole through the quarter inch armor plate protecting the base of the vehicle. The Model S owner was nonetheless able to exit the highway as instructed by the onboard alert system, Bring the car to a stop and depart the vehicle without injury. A fire caused by the impact began and the the battery pack has a total of 16 modules, but was contained to the front section of the car by internal firewalls within the pack. Vents built into the battery pack directed the flames down towards the road and away from the vehicle. When the fire department arrived, they observed standard procedure which was to gain access to the source of the fire by punching holes in the bottom of the batteries protective metal plate and apply water. Now I'm going to stop for a moment, Dean, and mention before I go on that in case anyone's getting bored with this in between, which may or may not happen as they listen to me read this. This was a billion dollar letter of what it actually did. Yeah.

So I was just going to say is the masterful way he's handling this, Addressing everything factually and really turning a lot of those things into his favor.

Yeah. So I wanted to do this.

I mean it's, it's a brilliant letter. I think you should. Yeah, read it and then we can highlight certain parts of it because there's some masterpieces.

So he continues on. For the model S, A lithium ion battery, it was correct to apply water versus dry chemical extinguisher but not to puncture the metal firewall as the newly created holes allowed the flames to then vent upwards into the front section of the model S. Nonetheless, a combination of water followed by dry chemical extinguisher Quickly brought the fire to an end. It is important to note that the fire in the battery was contained to a small section near the front by the internal firewalls built into the pack structure. At no point did the fire enter the passenger compartment. Had a conventional gasoline car encountered the same object on the highway, the result could have been far worse. A typical gasoline car only has a thin metal sheet protecting the underbody, Leaving it vulnerable to destruction of the fuel supply lines or the fuel tank, which causes a pool of gasoline to form and often burn the entire car to the ground. In contrast, the combustion energy of our battery pack is only about 10% of the energy contained in a gasoline tank and is divided into 16 modules with firewalls in between. As a concept, the effective combustion potential is only about 1% of that of the fuel in a comparable gasoline sedan. The nationwide driving statistics make this very clear. There are 150,000 car fires per year, according to the National Fire Protection Associations, and Americans drive about 3 trillion miles per year, according to the Department of Transportation. That equates to one vehicle fire for every 20 million miles driven, compared to one fire in over 100 million miles. For Tesla, this means you are five times more likely to experience a fire in a conventional gasoline car than a Tesla. For consumers concerned about the fire risk, there should be absolutely zero doubt that this is safer, that it is safer to power a car with a battery than a large tank of highly flammable liquid. Elon and so below yeah, so that's the end of his letter. Then he goes on to say below was our email correspondence with the Model S owner that experienced the fire, reprinted with his permission from Robert Carlson, sent Thursday, October whatever to Jerome Gillian, subject Carlson0389 Mr. Gillian, hopefully I'm saying that right, but it's G U I L L E N. Thank you for the support. I completely agree with the assessment to date. I guess you can test for everything, but some other celestial bullet comes along and challenges your design. I agree that the car performed very well under such extreme tests. The batteries went through a control burned, which was the integral images. Really? I'm sorry, the integral. The Internet images really exaggerate. You know, I'm trying to read this computer screen from a distance while keeping my face near the mic. By the way, Dean, so this is why I'm like having trouble reading my stuff here. Anyway, I'm still a big fan of your car and look forward to getting back into one. Justin offered a white loaner. Thanks. I'm also an investor and have to say that the response I'm observing is really supportive of the future of electric vehicles. I was thinking this was bound to happen, just not to me. But now it is out there and probably gets a sign of relief as a test and the risk issue. This doomsday event has now been tested and the design and engineering works Rob Carlson so on October 3rd, Jerome Gillian wrote Dear Mr. Carlson, I am the VP of Sales and Service for Tesla, reporting directly to Elon Musk, Tesla's CEO. I'm sorry to hear that you experienced a collision in your Model S two days ago. We are happy that the Model S performed in such a way that you were not injured in the accident and that nobody else was hurt. I believe you have been in contact with Justin Sampson, our service manager since the accident. We are following this case extremely closely and we have sent a team of experts to review your vehicle. All indications that your Model S drove over a large, oddly shaped metal object which impacted the leading edge of the vehicle's undercarriage and routed into the underside of the vehicle's pole vault effect. This is a highly uncommon occurrence. Based on our review thus far, we believe that the Model S performed as designed by limiting the resulting fire to the effective zones only. Given the significant intens the impact which managed to pierce the quarter inch bottom plate, something that is extremely hard to do. The Model S energy containment functions operated correctly. In particular, the top cover of the battery provided a strong barrier and there was no apparent propagation of the fire into the cabin. This ensured cabin integrity and occupant safety, which remains our most important goal. We very much appreciate your support, patience and understanding while we proceed with the investigation. Just keeps me, just keep Justin, keeps me closely informed. Please feel free to contact me directly if you have any questions or concerns. Best regards, Jerome Gillian, VP Worldwide Sales and Service. Now that's the end of the Tesla letter. And then I go on to say, and this is really proving how badly I need glasses. I just refuse to wear glasses right now. But I'm just speaking to all of our podcast listeners that this is like a little dilemma. I really should have better vision. All right, so here I go. Just to grasp the importance and impact of Elon's letter, I'll add one thing. By Thursday, Tesla lost around 2.5 billion in market capitalization and Elon personally lost 594 million in Tesla with his 23% ownership. So the fact that the stock is back up to roughly 180 from 173 as of Friday, October 4, or back up roughly to market cap of 21.7 billion. From roughly a market cap of 20.9 billion because of a letter. This letter is really a billion dollar letter. From a PR perspective, marketing perspective, market perspective, and a real monetary perspective. That's how marketing can make you a billion dollars or save you from losing a billion dollars. Here's a graph of the stock movement. You got to go see the graph. It's really cool. And read the comments that people posted because there's some really good insights that the people that did comment on. And I would love all of our. To go and read this and comment on it and, you know, just study this letter because it's truly, you know, just a brilliant way to respond to disaster and what could have been disaster and turning lemons into lemonade. So what are your thoughts on this?

You know, the thing that struck me is there's a couple of. We almost should start a file of this. Of handling crises, you know, because we remember when we had Tony Robbins on and, you know, we asked him about how he handled the. All the publicity around the people who got their feet burned on the. At the firewalk. And, you know, this is. There's two really great examples of it here, you know, is don't. Don't run and hide and just address the facts right away. I mean, that's really what. What Elon has done here. And when you really look at what the. The facts are, it's. He's turned them all into his favor, you know.

Right.

Yeah.

And the fact is, if you would have tried to deal with it any other way, I mean, it would. It was already going down that path. So it is the right way to deal with any sort of public disaster and not trying to cover it up, not trying to make excuses, just basically say, here's what happened. And the republishing of the letter also shows not only the front stage, but the backstage, to use Dan Sullivan terminology and strategic coach, you got front stage and backstage, and they let. Let the backstage communications become part of the front stage. Because the front stage experience from the public was, oh, people are selling their Tesla stock or afraid that this is going to tank the company. It's amazing when there's some sort of pr, the world we live in. If someone was to listen to this episode 50 years from now or whatever, they'd be like, what are you talking about? Where news is instantaneously. We'll probably get to the point where someone thinks a thought and then 4 million people. People immediately know what you're thinking about when things are tapped into your head and everything that Ray Kurzweil has predicted is coming true.

Yeah, it's called. Right now. It's called Twitter.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. But see, the thing is, people, way back, way back when we were growing up and there were no cell phones and there was no Internet, I mean, to think that. But something like a fire and someone posting it on YouTube and then millions of people seeing it and news media is picking it up and then having that drop the value of your company by a billion dollars, instantaneously I mean, it's like unbelievable, right? So it's. How do you respond to that? Just seeing models like this is important now. And it's not a matter of if you're going to get someone attacking you fairly or unfair. If you screw up on purpose, intentionally or unintentionally, or worse, you've done nothing at all. But someone happens to target you and tries to make you look bad or tries to expose you for something and how you handle it. When you talked about putting together a file like this. Very smart thing to do. Because there will be a time when your own version of a public disaster and it might be in a small. If you're just a small business and it might be in your community, how do you actually deal with it? Well, the first thing that I have to give Tesla credit for is that Elon in that company pays attention to everything. I mean, they produced a great product so far. I have several friends that own Teslas. If there's any problems with the service, the people are out there right now. They are doing everything to just make sure that talking about the three units of a business before, during and after their after unit is better than any car company that I've ever seen. Not currently being a owner of a Tesla, although I'll probably get one actually. Maybe we should put the videos at some point up on. I love marketing because I actually videotaped the sales process two years ago when I first put a $5,000 deposit down to get a Tesla. You know, I mean, I literally. I was with Mike Klein in trying to think where it was. It was in San Francisco, but it was. Right.

It was the store in a mall.

Yeah. What location is that in San Francisco? What is that called? Yeah, I can't remember what the city is. It's close to Singularity University. But basically I videotaped the whole thing. It's really actually instructional on how Tesla actually sells cars. But they, you know, you gotta be able to produce a good product. I mean, so they already had a great product. This was not, you know, let me just write a really compelling letter and have it, you know, Wordsmith. Right. Because you. There's only so much you can do to cover up shit. You know, if you really sell shit and someone exposes it, then you know, whatever. But if you have a really good product and something like this happens, you know, I mean, how do you. Are you prepared to handle it? So. So anyway, I think I made my point with that. So anything else you want to say on this? Because if not I got plenty of examples of experiences I've had recently that I think are worth talking about for me.

I was just going to say that we kind of talked about making this about experiences, and I'm pretty excited because I am wearing right now, which, what I can say are unequivocally the most comfortable underwear I've ever had in my life.

Oh, my God. I cannot believe this is happening. I'm gonna have to write a letter.

It's really. Oh, yeah, he went there.

Okay.

Oh, yeah, we're going there. There's an online site now called Meundies.com and Meundies.com and there's just a couple of. It's so well done. The site is really well done. They just sell underwear and they will ship it to you, but when you order, they'll give you the option of putting on auto ships. So they'll send them to you every month. You know, you get a new shipment every month or something.

Is this some sort of product placement?

No, but here's the thing. What?

They're.

They're really. It's really brilliantly spreading by word of mouth because they bill themselves as the most comfortable underwear in the world. And I here to tell you that they really are living up to that. Like, I love the fact that it is that it's absolutely true. Like, you can't deny that this is the most comfortable underwear I've ever had.

You know, I mean, look, I mean, picturing you or Evan or Frank Kern or any of your twisted friends, yourself included in underwear is just. You know, I think I'm. I'm gonna have to wash my eyes out with bleach or something here. But. But continue. Let's go on here. Talk to me, chief.

Yeah. Oh, so they're made from. They're made from bamboo.

I thought you were gonna say they're made from coconut husks. So they're made from bamboo.

They're made from bamboo. But they're just. The material is so. It's so great. There's the stitching. There's no binding. It's just like. It's really a great experience. And from a design perspective, they're really fantastic, you know, but they really are the most comfortable underwear I've ever had. But their campaign of doing this, the way that they have gotten the word out about this is they've been sending their underwear to mommy bloggers or to bloggers who review products or membership programs or anything like that, and just sending out the product and saying, hey, try it out and let Us know what you think. And people are saying they can't believe that this really is something that lives up to the hype.

So did they send it to you, or did you just go buy the.

No, I just bought them. I saw them on Facebook or somewhere online, and they're just. I think that it's really well done, you know, and one thing that they did, which is kind of brilliant, is They've got a 365 pack where you can buy 365 pairs of underwear for $3,260 or something like that.

That.

Yes. And so talk about something, you know, being. It's almost like the Neiman Marcus type of thing, you know, where they have something that's, like, so outrageously expensive that somebody's gonna talk about it, you know, that they. That's, like, newsworthy. It's different. It's. It's what Seth Godin would call a purple cow. You know, it's remarkable. It's something that you wouldn't normally think of, but it's. It is something to.

Do you have the polka dot ones? Because I'm at the up to their website right now looking at this.

Well, you know, I wear the same linen shorts every single day.

Right.

So the polka dots would kind of poke through those.

Well, you could be wearing a woman's thong. I mean, I'm thinking that might be.

Yes, that's. That's exactly what I'm wearing. And it is very comfortable.

And then, of course, the woman's tiny tank. They have tank tops and shirts and socks and all that.

Yeah.

Well, you know, the fact that even calling something the world's most comfortable just makes a statement. I mean, because you can somehow convince yourself that something is what someone says it is. You know, it almost has the placebo effect on your brain.

Yeah.

Right.

I think that's true. And it sets the stage for what you can do. I remember thinking that there's a caramel maker. I think it's Annie B. Caramel or something. And it's like amazing caramel. Do they use some kind of adjectives? Actually, I'm going to look it up right now while we talk about it, because I bought one at the. I bought one at the store, you know, and so Auntie B's. What do they call them? Auntie B's. They've got the. In the store, the signs say, you know, amazing caramel or something like that. They use some kind of a descriptor, you know, and caramels. Here we go. Let's see. Let me Go to that song. They don't have it on the website, but they what it said. But the actual like packaging was, you know, the sign that said it was really what got me to, to try it, you know, because if you just said like Caramels 5 cents or 25 cents or whatever it was, but it was Annie B's amazing caramel or something, that was enough of an extra squirt of dopamine or something, you know, that you're going, huh, well, I gotta try that. Like enthusiasm really kind of pays off.

You know what's funny? I was at the Conscious Capitalism event in Austin, Texas. Yeah.

And that was what we.

Well, that was on October.

How did that go?

October 10th. And it was really good. And I of course went. Because I ended up whatever period of time, less than two months ago from the time we're recording this, I had a three hour lunch with John Mackey, the founder of Whole Foods. And of course he started this whole conscious capitalism movement. Has a great book called Conscious Capitalism which I highly recommend. Raj and I can't pronounce Raj's last name, it's his co author of the book. It's definitely worth reading. And I think any form of just capitalism that creates value for other people is conscious. And I don't know if I would call, if it was up to me, call capitalism conscious because I think there's a lot of people that aren't really very conscious people that scam people and don't create value, that get thrown into this category of capitalism. But anyway, that's neither here. And I don't have enough time to probably go on and on with my tangent on this whole thing. But so there's this conscious capitalism movement that they're creating and the website's consciouscapitalism.org and they have a CEO summit and they have chapters in different parts of the United States. And so I think everyone should read the book and check it out. It's pretty cool. And one of the speakers there was this lady named Kat Cole and she is the president of Cinnabar. And the title of her talk was Integrating leadership in Life. And when I first saw that, I was like going, okay, well what is a food like Cinnabon that clearly is fattening, filled with sugar is not good for you. I mean, you know, what's going to be her talk on conscious capitalism? And she won me over as a person in terms of. And she used to be a Hooters girl and then she ended up working for the executive level of Hooters and she, like, talks about all of this, and she was. I thought she was great. Just her story and her talk was fantastic. And, like, how do you. You know, she talked about how she didn't really, you know, think that she would ever join a company like Cinnabon with what they are selling until she actually saw that the leadership that the company behind it and the value that. That they really had, there was a lot more going on than just serving this sort of food. And she's like. And I know it's about indulgence. It's like, no one's going there because this is healthy. I mean, it's an indulgent sort of activity. Now, granted, I just will not eat that stuff. I mean, once in a blue moon, I'll probably eat something like it, But I mean, very rarely. I mean, you know me, I've had a sip of a soda and maybe like two years ago, I just don't consume a lot of bad food. But the point that she made is how she's kind of went through her life. I really think she just likes challenges, because when she was working for Hooters and she was talking about all of these, there's this belief that they exploit women. But when you see what the company was doing, all of these things that they were doing to set up scholarship programs and help women and all, it was just a very fascinating sort of talk. So there was a whole bunch of different conversations about how people run businesses. And she's like, you know, there's a lot of companies that are out there selling stuff, and if you. How do you bridge between all these different organizations doing things and what level of, you know, consciousness and creating value and helping people can you bring to something in spite of the fact that this is what you're selling? So it was quite a fascinating thing that gave me a different way to think about stuff, and it proved to me just how quick people are, including myself, to stereotype, which everyone does. And I'm not saying anyone should not stereotype, because stereotyping is how you actually make sense of. Of the world. People cannot not stereotype, in my opinion and belief and experience, in spite of what they may say. So, that being said, there's a lot of jumping to conclusions before you really know what's going on underneath the surface. Now, I'm still not 100% sold on go out and sell whatever sort of food product or whatever, but I'm also one of these people that believe as long as you're not out putting a gun to someone's head and totally exploiting people. Sell whatever you want to sell. It's just the free market. It needs to be the free market. You start regulating it then you think what you're trying to do becomes a force that eats upon itself. So I want to cover a of couple, couple of the different companies and things that I have experienced that I thought were really good and I wanted to bring up conscious capitalism because I'm going to probably interview some of these people, maybe even Kat. I think I might invite Kat to do an interview with us on I love marketing because I think it would be fascinating for people to hear her perspective. She's very smart, ran Stage who runs Stage Leadership Academy gave a great talk talk. One that I really liked was Brene Brown. She's all over the media right now. She just did a couple of episodes on Oprah. She did a talk on daring greatly. Four and a half hours. I talked with her before she spoke during the time she's speaking after. She was great. I'm hoping that, that we can do an interview with her in the future or me by myself because I don't think I want to expose Renee to you. That might mess with her vulnerability. But no, if someone's not seeing Brene's TED Talk, it's one of the highest viewed TED talks in the world. Brene is spelled B R E N E Brown on vulnerability. If you've not seen it, watch it. It's amazing, truly. And, and her content I thought was mind boggling. And then Tony Schwartz, he has a company called the Energy Project and that was a fascinating talk. John Mackey, we talked about self milking cows over the last couple of episodes. He didn't even talk at this one. This is I think the fifth or sixth year that they've done the conscious capitalism conference and this is the first time John did not actually talk. So he's kind of got, he's got a little thing going, you know, little thing being 80,000 employees in Whole Foods. He's co CEO and he's got, you know they're doing 13 billion in revenue. Let's see, let's see who else? Oh, Frank Blake, he's the CEO of Home Depot and he gave a very interesting talk. So I'm going to write some articles up about what I've learned and got out of this conference and we'll invite some of these people from the conscious capitalism community to probably do some interviews in the future. Play it by ear, we'll see what happens. But I just wanted to make People aware of that because there's a lot of people that are working on really unique and interesting things that some people just may not be aware of. Just like Singularity University. So that's that there. And here's something funny, Dean. You know how much trouble I've been having with this house that I bought, right?

Yes. Okay, what's the latest?

I had to take a. What's that?

What's the latest?

Well, I. After four months and, you know, about 60, $70,000, I literally had to remove a designer, decorator, project manager, whatever you would. Would call her friend of mine who I've known for over a decade, who's done great work with me in the past. But I had to take her off the job simply because she was in over her head and there was like, now if you would ask her her opinion, she would of course point it to me and, you know, whatever. So not to getting into blaming. My perspective is it was beyond her capabilities and she's really. It's like Dan Sullivan's term, you know, the skills that get. Get you out of Egypt are not the same skills that get you to the promised land. So this was like a person who's really good at one level. Another level may not be where their best skills are applied. What I learned is that I not only spent a lot of time and a lot of money and had to start from scratch and all over to bring someone else in is the mistake. The ultimate problem was me. I went into something without a process and there was like a. You know, it was going well, but there were three different floods that happened in this house after I bought it, which never happened to the previous homeowners because there was these massive rainstorm in Paradise Valley, which is where the home is located. You know, during the time the house was vacant. So water settled and these drains were clogged up by wood chips ships, and it flooded inside the house three different times. There were floods. It was crazy story. And I won't go into the whole thing, but what I learned is that do not go into something without a process. And I don't know if that'll make sense to everyone. But what I've learned, painfully, and when I say painfully, you know, there's people in the world that have far bigger problems than they bought a new house and all kinds of crap is happening. So I understand. Understand it. So in case anyone thinks that this is just dealing with nonsense that comes with buying shit and the maintenance that's involved with it, but going into something without having a Process. My friend did not have a process. I tried to instill a process and make suggestions of things that I wanted that ultimately she was not following up with, like getting exact design drawings and things versus sketches on paper and, you know, cads and schematics, and none of those were provided to me. But what happened is I went into this without having any sort of process of how things were going to work. What were the expectations laid out, none of that. And Dan Sullivan said to me years ago that we don't like doing business with any vendors that don't have a process, because we have a process at Strategic Coach of how we do things. And it's really hard to work with like a printer or work with anyone that doesn't have a process for how they do work. And I heard it back then, but it didn't dawn on me till this experience that how important it is to literally only work with people that have a process, be it a marketing process, be it a business process. Like when I created a, you know, carpet audit for carpet cleaners so they can go into a home and instead of giving a free quote or an estimate, they would actually give someone a carpet audit and they would go in with the process I created and they evaluate the condition of the carpet, you know, collect all the necessary information, give recommendations, which I called a prescription, you know, that made it really easy for the homeowner or the, you know, the commercial business to decide if they were going to use that cleaner or not or what they even need needed to do in the first place. And, you know, it really struck me that how important it is to have a process. And if you think about all of the stuff that you've created for Realtors, you know, you look at before, during and after profit activators, all of this stuff is a process. The reason people have success with our marketing strategies, like the nine word email, it's a process. In the times in your business where you're having a bad experience with a company, that company probably has a shitty process. You know, Tesla has a really great process of how they sell cars before, during, and after. You know, like lots of things that happened. And so I really wanted to, you know, when I say that to some people, they don't get it immediately. And I'm trying to figure out the best way to articulate it. And I know I babble a lot about it.

No, I mean, and they're mechanically. I mean, you know, you look at all the things that Dan Sullivan talks about, all the things with Strategic Coach, what he's giving you is processes like a strategy circle is a process for creating action steps from a vision that you have. Or the experience transformer is a way of turning things that something that's happened, evaluate evaluating it and looking at it and seeing how you can make that better. The, the client experience timeline is a. Is a process that you can imagine and visualize somebody going through the experience of. Of doing business with you and visualizing it as a. A moving timeline. I. I totally get you. Somebody's got to have, you know, a structure around things.

Right. In a way to do it. If you, if you. If. Here's one way to know you do not have a process is you don't have a name for what you do or how you do it.

Right.

Naming something, you know, I think it's even Dr. Phil in the first book, Life Strategies. I think he talks. I think it's there, it might be somewhere else. You know, you got to name it to claim it sort of thing.

Yeah.

And you got to give something a name. So one thing you can name is you can name the disease. And one of the diseases that. When I was creating some processes for marketing in the cleaning industry, which applies to any industry now, but it was the blind archery trap. I thought about what is the disease that business owners are suffering from? And I would always love the. If you go to a doctor because you have a sore throat and the doctor says, well, you've got strep throat and I'm going to prescribe you a Z Pak or amoxicillin or whatever. Now, you may not instantly feel better physically because you still have the sore throat, but you feel better psychologically if it's at least been named and diagnosed. Like, this is your problem. And here's what, what, you know, I think you, you know, you need to take, you know, some antibiotics, you need to take this medicine, you psychologically feel better. And so by having a process. See, when I was going through the process with the. The process of not having a process with my home. Yeah. Yeah. Because here's the thing. If you don't have a process, you have a process of feeling really fucked up. And so when I was going through that sort of situation, I psychologically was unsettled. I was confused. There was complexity. I didn't know it was going to get better. I didn't have real trust. I had the relationship and the friendship with my friend, but I didn't have the trust that was getting done right. And it needed numerous signs that I should have noticed. And when I Say should have, they were apparent, but I was so blinded by them because I just wanted to believe that it was going to get better, that it was going to get better. And finally I realized we're going down this path that not only has been very long and very expensive, but, you know, the best way to get out of a hole is to quit digging it. And, you know, if you see one cockroach, there's many more where that one came from. And so after I saw these, this evidence that this was not going down the path, I literally had to, you know, I had to stop it. But then I have to now go and find someone who can do it and, you know, the opportunity cost and all that, but it's like if you could just give something the name of the disease and then give it a prescription and so ways to get out of the blind Archery Trap. You need a business bullseye. You need a piranha marketing money map. You need a happy client experience. And I've created. You need the no slow season system. I mean, there's a whole variety of different tools and methodologies and ELF marketing that we have created that are processes in marketing to help people with this. So my point to all the listeners is if you do not have a process that articulates, explains, communicates and lays out the steps of doing business with you, how you do business in all of the different stages of your business before, during and after, then you want to do that. And if you read the breakthrough DNA report again and you read it from this, that's on our website@ilovemarketing.com just download it, it's free. If you read that and you see the eight profit activators and you think about this as, oh, as a process of how you run your business in every stage before, during and after, it will help you and it will help your clients, it will help your prospects, it will help everybody.

Yeah, absolutely. So, and you know, you feel, you know it right away when you feel like you've gone through a process. You know, I mean, you look at things where it makes you feel so confident in a way. You know, as you were saying that, I was thinking about CarMax. You know, I had my Mercedes that I sold recently and they just made it so easy to do. You know, you go in and now this here's. This is a car that was a 2006. I got it brand new, a Mercedes SL 500 convertible. And I, you know, had. It was a third car for a while. And I was, you know, getting to the Time where I wanted to get rid of it. And, you know, it was now worth probably $25,000 if I were to sell it, you know, retail, you know, sell it myself kind of thing, or if a dealer were to sell it. And when I was getting my new X5, you know, the dealer was willing to give 18, 18, 5 for it. And I. You. So you think, well, there's some little bit of a gap there. And I went into. I'd heard about CarMax that they'll just buy cars on the spot. So I just, I went in and I wasn't going to buy another car car from them. I just drove in and literally they have a whole process. They give you the checklist, they put a little number on the car, Somebody comes out, they look it over, they take it for a drive. Then literally within, in 20 minutes, they come out with an offer and they offered me 21,500 for it. And you. I accepted that. And you go and they literally write you a check right there. The whole experience took 45 minutes. And I thought about, you know, that compared to, could I have. If I was going to sell that on my own or have somebody on my team sell it, you know, you'd still have to go through all the process of taking the pictures and, you know, putting it on autotrader or online on ebay or Craigslist or whatever, go through the whole thing to try and maybe, you know, get an extra three or $4,000. But just that I could walk in and be completely done with it. And that they have a whole process in place for that is. Is it just made you feel so good.

Yeah, you know, I could actually. There is a car company here called RC Auto and they have one of the coolest processes I'm going to see. The website is me m e and a n d my myrc me and my rc.com and they have a whole process where you go in Roger Camping, who has actually started the company. My financial advisor, who I've had for over a decade, buys all of his vehicles through this person. So I went up there with my girlfriend to look at buying cars. And now of course, the one vehicle that they don't represent or never have done yet, of course is Tesla, which is kind of funny considering I started off with that because I was like, hey, do you buy Teslas? So Tesla has just such a unique process. If you're anywhere near a Tesla store, you should just go in and see. I mean, it's like buying an Apple computer. I mean, George Blankenship whatever his name is. The guy that designed the Apple stores is. I think he's the VP of marketing or something for Tesla. So he designed all the Tesla stores and works for Tesla now, which is pretty cool. And he designed the, you know, the Microsoft stores, too. So when you see those Microsoft. Microsoft stores that look similar to Apple Stores, sort of there's a reason why. But they have this whole process of making it easy to buy a vehicle without having to go through the pressure and the things that you were describing. Just not having to deal with all of the friction that comes with the typical process is fantastic.

What was there? They were brokers or what are they?

Yeah, yeah. Well, what they do is they charge. They have a fee. They charge the same fee if you're buying a $250,000 car or if you're buying, I got you, you know, a Hyundai, whatever. And basically they have videos. You go in and they show you videos of how between leasing and buying and how car companies make money and how, you know, they will take you from one person to another and how. The industry is basically really scummy, which it is, without saying that it's really scummy. I mean, this guy worked in the auto industry and just grew to despise the selling methods, and he tells the whole story. I mean, it's really. I mean, if I had this whole presentation on video, I mean, it would make for a great podcast. Just I'm like, oh, my God. And he's just got a really solid business. And I mean, it would probably be completely scalable, but I don't think that's their goal and objective. But they basically charge a $23 a month fee over, like a period of the lease or over a period of the time that you buy it, just to handle getting the vehicle for you at the lowest price that you can get it at, not dealing with any of the hassles. And if you want to test drive, say, a Toyota or a. A Honda or a Chevy, you got three different cars in mind. They will bring all three of those vehicles there, so you don't have to go to the dealer and test drive them. They'll have all of the vehicles brought there to their location. You drive them, all the paperwork, everything and any car you want. And it's always the same price of what they charge for their service fee. Because he said, it doesn't matter how much the car is. You know, we're still going to put in the same amount of work, no matter whose vehicle it is, and we're not. We don't have any, you know, hidden deals with the dealerships. We're making any other money. This is what we get paid. This is how we get paid. And they have videos that actually explain exactly how they get paid and what they're doing and what you're going to get versus any other experience. And it's pretty unique, brilliant. And yeah, I thought it was awesome. Let me mention this too, because I spent so much time battling in the beginning, Dean that, you know, we went through this hour pretty quickly.

I know.

So let me babble, let me babble some more. I, you know, because of this house situation that I've been going through, I had this, this belief that watching the movie the Money Pit with Tom Hanks and Shelley Long from years ago would be some sort of, it would give me some level of relief because.

Comedy relief. Yeah, yeah.

Do you remember that movie?

I do, yeah. Years ago.

Yeah. I haven't seen it in years. And I'll tell you, it's. It's something, I mean, compared to what I remember, it's, it was like it, I was like really? You know, it was such a huge movie way back when, but just, I mean you can tell it was made so many years ago. And you know, it's, it's funny, it's got its amusing parts of it, but it's like, it was like kind of painful to watch. But I watched about this house that's just falling apart, you know, because I thought it would give me some perspective. And me and my girlfriend watched it like literally last night. But here's the interesting thing. So I order the, like I get it in the mail yesterday, right? And I ordered it the night before on Amazon at 11:30pm okay, are you kidding me? I go to my computer, I order it at 11:30pm the night before and basically like it comes up saying that, you know, free two day shipping and it will be. And it is a weekend right now that we're actually, when we're recording this episode. And so I'm like thinking, okay, it is, you know, so it was delivered to me. I ordered it at 11:30pm on Thursday night. It is delivered to me by noon the next day. And it wasn't supposed to get in till next week, right. To this upcoming week based on what Amazon said. So it said two day shipping. Expect your delivery by so and so date. Which I think would have been on a. I think Monday. Yeah, a Monday. I get the frickin thing the next day. I mean literally.

So today you got it Hours.

What's that?

So today you got it?

No, no, I got it yesterday and I watched the movie last night.

Oh, I see. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Okay.

And so, so I literally got it within a, like, literally half a day. And I ordered 1130 camera. And I was like, how in it and on the envelope it's Amazon local fulfillment. So it was obviously the fulfillment center.

Oh, right, right, right.

And they were able to deliver it. But you know, I said to my girlfriend, I said, you know, I go, what sort of store can compete with this shit? I mean, truly.

Yeah.

11:30Pm I haven't even left the house yet because I didn't, I didn't, it didn't not leave the house yet. I was, you know, I'd been traveling, I stayed home and there, you know, like the, you know, it arrives at my house, you know, before I even leave the house. And I ordered at 11:30pm I was like, that is amazing. I mean that is a process that they have.

Yeah.

So that was a pretty cool experience because my expectation was, you know, I'm not even going to get the damn thing till next week. And so we watched it last night. And another thing which I wanted using because we just don't have enough time for me to go deeply into it is when I was in Chicago, like right after my New York event, I flew to Chicago and I stayed at a hotel. A brand new hotel, had only been open for a little over a month called the Langham. L A N G H A M. The Langham Hotel in Chicago. The website and I want everyone to go check this out. If you ever go to Chicago, stay at this hotel. I've stayed at a lot of Four Seasons. I travel first class a lot. I stay in nice places. This is the absolute best service I've ever had in my life. Bar none of the hotel. It's chicago.langham.com Now Langham, you know, obviously Langham hotels, you can find the Chicago one there, but the direct one to the Chicago one is Chicago Langham. L A N G H A M H O t e l s.com chicago.langhamhotels.com and they have a butler service there. And there's a guy named Carlos Carrera who greeted us when we went to check in. And this guy is the epitome of amazing client service. As soon as we got there, they're like, oh yeah, do you have any shirts? You need press? Do we do up to three shirts for free? And I'm like, you're kidding me. Because I needed to go to a meeting in an event that me and my girlfriend, we dressed nice for the next day. And I was like, if know perfect. And so I literally, you know, he says this while, you know, we're checking in, and I'm. I literally have my luggage there. I'm like, let me take them. He's like, oh, no, take your bags of Remy and give them to me there. I'm like, no, it's right on top. Give them to him there. They literally had the shirts pressed and delivered in my room within 30 minutes of me checking in. And the entire. The entire three days that we were there was. I mean, it was one impressive thing after the next after the next. And I started. Started asking Carlos. I'm like, how in the hell are you guys so good at this? I mean, he was so attentive. I mean, the things that they leave on your. On your bed, they have these little quotes that they would leave. And I'll go through this in a future episode. But he recommended a book. He's like, well, there's this great book called the Butler Speaks, which is written by a guy that Charles McPherson, who runs the only butler school in North America, which is actually located in Toronto. And he's like, yeah, we give this to all of our team members. And so I've read half the book, but I've given it to several of my employees and Lindsay, who's my front stage person that people see when they come into Piranha Marketing, who I'm probably going to turn into one of my assistants, along with Eunice. She read the entire book and just the whole. Everything about etiquette to. About, you know, being anticipating what somebody needs. And this hotel just anticipates everything a person could possibly need. And it's right next to the Trump Hotel, you know, the new Trump Hotel in. Well, not new, but it's relatively new.

And I've stayed at the Trump Hotel.

Oh. And I mean, I'm telling you, the service at Langham was. Was unbelievable.

That's. We should talk about those experiences because, you know, since I've been living at the Four Seasons in Toronto now, there's. It's. It's been some pretty amazing experiences too. So there's. That. That's maybe a good topic for.

For. Yeah, yeah. And I'll actually, I'll. I'll share, like, all of the different touch points off to make a list of. Of the things that happened there. But it was so instructional, and by staying there, I wanted to come back and just implement things into My own company that I got from that hotel. And it's rare that I learned something from an experience. So my point is, when you have an experience like that, it's like pain to get taught. I mean, staying at that hotel and experience Carlos as the butler was as valuable and more valuable than even going to some seminars I've gone to. I mean, it really was. It was like you pay for a room and I got you. Right? Yeah.

Seeing real things in life.

Exactly. And so, you know, and then, and then John Butcher, who's a good friend of mine, he created mylifebook.com he's the owner of Precious Moments, the figurine company. And him and his wife Missy have this amazing relationship that created this great, great, you know, personal development program called My Lifebook, which I highly recommend. And I said, man, for all of your clients that go to Lifebook, you should, you know, go to Langham. So he went down and met with Carlos and met with Elaine. And Carlos just works there. I mean, there's, you know, people that run the hotel, but he's just, I just love Carlos. And I said, you know, go talk to him. And, you know, John left me a message. He's like, place is unbelievable. He's like, we're going to be referring it to all of our, our Lifebook members. I'm like, that's great. So that's what happens when you deliver world class service. People want to talk about it, people want to share it in the ways you handle it. Starting with the Tesla blog, I will be posting things and writing about stuff, and I think you should too, Dean, and just share that. But we'll put a link up on the site for the article with the letter and read it. And if any of you have had any great experiences that are worth commenting about, please go to ilovemarketing.com give us your thoughts on this episode and anything that you think that we should, you know, talk about in the future, anything that you, that you've had an experience that you think is awesome, let us know. And anything else from you, Dean, because I've spent most of the time rambling on here.

No, that's perfect. That's good.

Cool. All right, everyone, till next time, have a good day and we'll talk to you next time on ilove marketing.com Goodbye.

Bye.