Episode #554 - Selling Strategies: Rejection & Listening to Customer Pain Points with Nathan Hirsch

Welcome to this edition of the Million Dollar Mastermind podcast. This is where we pick the brains of high achievers from all walks of life and get their hard earned real world insights on winning. I'm your host, Larry Wydell. Who explained to you how or how did you figure out how to deal with rejection? Because you said when you get, you know, some people, they run in the first no, and they say, okay, I'm no good at this. I'll never be good at this. I can't do this. You know, there's proof they said no. And so how did you get where you learned? When they say no, they're saying no to the proposition, the product or the timing. You know, bad timing for them for something effect. It's not something you should take personally. They're not saying no to you. We don't like you. That type thing, did someone explain that to you or did you figure that out?

Yeah, I'm sure my parents had a lot to do with it. I know when I had these internships, they would tell me the same thing, like, you're going to get rejected. Don't take it personally. I'm actually going through that right now. So my wife and I are foster parents and we foster teens and we have a teenager and we're helping him to apply for jobs. And he kind of had the mentality that he'd apply for one job, get it, and that would be the end of it. And we had to teach him that's not the case. You're going to get rejected. And we could tell he was getting frustrated and wanted to quit. And it is something that you have to just get over at a young age. I don't know specifically when I got over it or how I got confidence or whatever, but, I mean, my parents were always very supportive. They were always pushing me to do that. They also told me I pretty much had to get a job. I had to pay for my own things. I wanted a car. All the things that I wanted in life as a teenager that were the most important things in the world, I had to buy myself. So failure was not an option. If I didn't get a job, I wouldn't be able to get a car. So nothing pushes you to succeed more than necessity.

And that's how this is how you go about doing the things people will tell you to do. Like Nick Saban, coach at Alabama, is always saying, you know, it's one thing to lose, but don't lose the lesson, you know, and the way you not lose the lesson is you say, you know, what can I take out of that to be better next time and, you know, succeed, you know. And so how did you get the idea about, you know, you say you went on and then you picked up service. Where was service? That was the next company. Where were you?

It's customer service, Firestone Corporation.

So how did you get and how did that stand out? And what do you retain to this day about customer service from that experience?

Yeah. So Firestone, you think of the car service company. I was an intern there, a sales intern. And when you start there, before you do anything, they fly you out or drive you out to their corporate headquarters and you do full day trainings for a week where, where they teach you customer service and that's all they focus on. And I mean, the biggest thing is just make every situation right. Don't let someone leave pissed off, don't let people leave unhappy. And you kind of learn this when you're starting a company. And we try to set expectations. Like when we launched our bookkeeping service last year, we said, hey, we're new. There's going to be hiccups along the way. We're giving you two free months. Like, bear with us, if something comes up that doesn't go the right way, we're going to make it right. And whether that's credit or a free month with Firestone, if we mess something up, we give them a free oil change, we'd give them a refund, we'd give them a credit, we'd do anything possible to keep them as a long term customer. And it worked. I saw it work. I worked there for years. And you get these repetitive customers who didn't have a perfect experience every time, but because you made it right every single time, they would keep coming back. And it was just a big thing about your brand that the customer service is there. Another thing they kind of taught me with it's just kind of a thing between sales and customer service is don't beat the penguin. So what they mean by that is every time a customer comes in, you're not trying to sell them $4,000 worth of car repair. Sometimes people have to go in and just get an oil change and be able to leave. So that's how you kind of build long term trust along with just making it right. And that's something that we applied to our Amazon business. If, if someone wasn't 100% happy with the product that they, that they got, they'd get a refund pretty quickly. It wasn't worth getting a bad Review, it wasn't worth hurting the business. You kind of just take the hit. And with free up, it was the same thing. You got freelancers, you gotta keep happy. They don't want to get chipped out of pay. You got clients, you gotta keep happy. They don't want to get overbilled. And when there was an issue, you had to figure out a way to where both sides left the situation happy and wanted to keep using the platform. And sometimes that meant eating a hundred bucks, eating a thousand bucks, whatever. It was just to make the situation right, to make the situation go away and focus on the long, long term, over the short term. I'd much rather lose a little bit of money short term or break even short term and make money with someone long term. That's a much better, just business strategy. And those are all things that I learned at Firestone.

And let's talk for a minute, shift gears and talk a little bit about the virtual world out there and virtual business. I just came out of a Scope gallery. We had a booth down there and across the aisle was this nft. Well, they said, I think they call themselves a digital platform. They deal in digital art, which is primarily NFTs. And so I said, well, where are you based out of? And they said, well, I live in Jersey, I live in Seattle, I live here, I live there. And so, you know, I'm in Hong Kong. And you know, the people in the booth, they said we have no physical location, you know, we're virtual. And you see, you know, that's, that's a great idea, not a great idea for everybody and you know, some kind of mix of that. But when you're out there, like I just came out of dropping 50 grand in hard cash for to have, you know, a parade of people, you know, to make a splash in one of the premier things in the world, the super bowl of art down there in Miami. They have every early December Art Basel. But you know, it's a lot of money. And then, you know, to go into New York, there's shows in New York, there's show, you know, we've done shows everywhere. But even if you do a pop up for six months, you know, that's 150 grand minimum. And you know, we've done that in, right in the middle of Aspen, right in the middle of Palm beach. And when you, you're gonna, you know, you're gonna make sales, you're gonna make an inroad, but you're also looking at that big, those big bucks like out in Aspen Right now, retail space. They're wanting you to sign just for a store. Thousand square foot. They're wanting you to put up 40 grand inside a 10 year lease. And so you know, I don't know, I don't know how you look at that with, with a clear conscience and you know there's a lot of people that are, that are gulping when they sign those contracts but you've got to take a look at the virtual world and at least make sure you're taking advantage of that too. And what, what is your insight on that? Because you jumped into it right off the bat with you know, the drop shipping and things like that.

Yeah, I mean NFTs are a little far away from anything I do. But as like kind of a rule of thumb, if it sounds too good to be true, it is too good to be true.

That's the way I look at it.

Yeah, yeah. I try to stay away from all that stuff. Like I have people messaging me about Amazon Automations stores and stuff like that and I just stay away from all of it. Like I pretty much, I. If there's any kind of group think or something that a lot of people are doing or something that's like a get rich quick, I'm out of it. And some people make money on it.

Talk about that because that's what I found. Because you can have. It's seductive because the logic will be there. They can make perfect sense. Perfect logic. But the timing could be wrong. By 20 or 30 years the timing could be wrong, the development could be incomplete, the applications could be off point but conceptually incredible sense. And it's easy to get sucked into that vortex and go right down the commode, you know, and get flushed out. A business with a lot of your money because you bought the idea of it then the reality of it. And that's why, you know, Nathan, that's why I love to talk to people in the real world. Because they have different eyes and different ways of evaluating. Because a lot of the people that are cheerleading this crap are people who work for those companies and they're on a salary, you know, so it makes perfect sense to them. Unbelievable. But they're not out there running a business and going to go, you know, live or die based off the success of that thing. And so you've got those idea, those eyes, you've got those instincts. I operate the same. Same way. You want to have technology working for you but you don't want to, you don't want to get into early and you just don't want to get into it because it sounds good.

Yeah. And we talked a little bit about low risk, high reward. That's the opposite. That's high risk, maybe high reward, I don't know. But yeah, I kind of stay away from, from all of that. And yeah, your reputation's everything too. So I don't want to refer people to something I don't think will treat them well. I don't offer something myself unless I think that people do a great job. And if someone has a bad experience with my company in any way, I just refund them and move on. I'm not down. I'm not trying to argue with people or sue people or do any of that stuff. I'm just trying to run a business and focus on the long term and not the short term.

What would you. In fact, let's just hit a couple of keys about that. If you are selling online and what, what are some keys you found that are absolutes, non negotiables like that? Like if you have a discounted customer, you know, don't, you know, you say people, it's the principle of the thing. I'm not, you know, it's like don't let, forget the principle of the thing, you know, you know, deal with it and move on, you know.

Yeah, I just try to be the bigger person in every situation and look at the big picture in every situation. Like I said, I'd rather lose a little bit of money and keep my reputation, avoid a bad review, get a good review. I've had people in the past that unintentionally, they, they've had a bad experience with, let's say, free up where their VA didn't do a great job. And, and I gave them a full refund. I gave them credit to a new va and a month later they're super happy. They trust me for life and they leave us a good review. So I'd rather take responsibility for, for everything. Even if it's not personally my fault. If it's my employees or my business or my service, it is my fault. And, and I also want to resolve things quickly. If someone's unhappy, I don't want to drag out two weeks. I want to resolve it in one email chain, one phone call and both of us move on with our day and focus on bigger and better things. And there's times I've been rejected, I've been yelled at, I've had people swear at me. I, I mean I've had people told me I couldn't go on their podcast for years and I nicely followed up with them and eventually they let me on and I didn't take it personally. So it all kind of falls in the same category of accepting rejection, not taking it personally, being a better person and focusing on the big picture of your business and not the short term money that you're losing.

Now. What in the world could you say on a podcast that would cause a podcaster to get so pissed off they say you'll never be back? What? What? What?

No, that wasn't. I've never had a podcast host tell me I'd never be back. But I have had people that I've reached out to them and they said, no, like I don't. I'm not interested in having you on. And over time I'd follow up with them and be like, hey, this is what I'm up to. This is what we've done. This is some topics. I'd even send them some reviews of people in their community, people that are customers of theirs and eventually got on. And I've had customers that have been very upset at me from for whatever reason initially and turned into great clients because I just fixed it and made it right going forward. So there's all sorts of situations.

Thanks for listening to the Million Dollar Mastermind. If you felt there were any valuable takeaways from this episode, please take a minute. Leave us a five star review. Your feedback is important and really helps us get the word out to a word wider audience. Remember, we have a valuable webinar that is absolutely free. Register for it right now at whiteallonwinning. Com. Thanks for listening.