The Small Details That Create Massive Business Growth — Neen James

A champagne moment, Nick, is taking something ordinary and making it extraordinary. It's something that makes you smile or brings you joy. Think of all those bubbles in a champagne glass like little bubbles of joy, right? So these joy bubbles, we get to do this every day. It might be as simple as perhaps you choose to meditate a little longer, or maybe instead of a plastic cup, you decide to put your sparkling water in a glass. Or maybe— I love my morning coffee. I love to linger with my coffee, and I have a Tiffany teacup, which sounds so Pretentious, but it is my favorite teacup. I don't have a lot of cups. It's just the one that I grab for every day because I want to make that a moment for me in my day instead of rushing through my day. So, your champagne moment is the practical application of trying to elevate something for yourself, your team, your clients, and you can do it every day.

Neen, welcome to the Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books Podcast. I'm super excited to with you about exceptional experiences. And my first question is about the word luxury, because right off the bat, I want to make sure that the audience knows whether or not this podcast is going to apply to them.

Well, g'day, Nick. What a treat it is and a privilege to serve your community. You know, luxury is a very divisive word. I think people think elite or expensive. What I want to change your listeners' opinion about is this word luxury, because for each of us, Nick, luxury means different things. For some, it might be the luxury of time. It might be about, it might be about something lovely and experience. And so I have a fantastic proprietary research study into luxury as a mindset that we can talk about. But you know what I discovered in all of the opportunities that I've had in serving brands around the world when I was writing Exceptional Experiences, the research that I discovered is you might be surprised how luxury is actually defined and what the words are to define luxury because they apply to every one of your listeners.

Yeah, well, tell us, what are the words that are used to define luxury?

As you're listening to this list, I want you to think about whether this applies to you as a professional in your leadership at home or in your role at work. So here's how luxury is defined by the research study. Luxury is defined— the characteristics include long-lasting, High quality, unique, authentic, and indulgent. Now the indulgent one, you might be, you might be thinking, I don't know about that one, Neen. But for the rest of them, think about that, like high quality, long-lasting, authentic, unique. That's how we want to show up in the world as leaders. And I use the word leader, I don't care how long you've been in business or whether you've been around a long time listening to this or whether you're new in your career. We're all leaders in our community, in our homes, church, temples, wherever you are. And so I want you to think about yourself as perhaps maybe a luxury, a luxury product. Your energy, as Taylor says, is expensive.

Yes. And we will talk about the difference between a concierge leader and a bellhop leader.

Yes, please.

A little bit later. But first, so what you're saying here, to kind of summarize, is that even if you run something that people wouldn't necessarily say is luxury, like a plumbing business, Or an HVAC business. You're saying that terms like long-lasting and exceptional, those can apply to a business like that. Therefore, they can provide a luxury experience.

Nick, you don't have to have a luxury product to provide a luxury service. And so when you think about all those elements of luxury, Nick, we can apply them regardless of the kind of business that we have because it's about elevating the experience. the experience for our clients, members, students, patients, whoever we choose to serve in our professional and our personal life. And so, what I want people to think about is that you don't have to have an expensive product. In fact, it's not about the product. It's about the experience.

It is. And even if you have a product, there are experiences associated to it. I mean, I think about opening an Apple product like a MacBook or an iPhone. I mean, the experience of opening the product is very Exceptional, I would say. It is.

And what they've done is they've been very clever because they made sure in the early days, you might recall, every single component you had to unpack. It was like this gift that just kept— there was the cord and then there was all the different components to it. And what you'll notice is the beautiful, sleek, minimalist design that they chose, because what they wanted to do is get your attention and not have any distractions. So, in the packaging design, it's very elegant. It's quiet. You know, you've heard this term quiet luxury. And it feels so special to open that and to peel off those little pieces of plastic or cardboard. And so they've made it an experience for you, the user, even in the way that you now— and now people unbox them. So like, they literally do it on social media and help become advocates for the brand.

Yes, they do. Absolutely. And so luxury is not about money. It can be about moments and experiences. And I'm thinking about this this example of an HVAC or a plumbing company, you know, when you think about those service providers, you think about people that show up late in dirty uniforms. They don't make eye contact or shake your hand. They just do their work and they leave. And so to become exceptional, to be a luxury service provider in those industries, it doesn't take a ton of effort. You just need to personalize the experience a little bit more, probably follow through on your commitments a little bit. And all of a sudden—

Right.

You are differentiated.

It's so true. I remember when we were having some renovations done in our home, we needed to find someone who would tile our small bathroom area. And the person that we chose was so thoughtful. They arrived on time. They were well-groomed. They put on little booties to slip over their shoes before they walked into our house. They asked me whether they wanted the shoes removed or not. And then they actually laid out some paper before they knelt down to have a look around. And when we chose them, they were not the cheapest. I'll be really clear about that, but they were kind, attentive. They did what they said they would do, and they cleaned up beautifully at the end of each day. Now, I had— I've referred that Tyler to so many people in my neighborhood because what he did was truly exceptional. And how he stood out was being thoughtful, paying attention, doing what he said he would do. And these things, while we think they're just common business, you'd be surprised how often we don't experience that. And so if you really want to elevate the experience, think about putting yourself in your client's shoes and saying, how can personalize this for them? How can I customize this for them? And because I've worked with luxury brands for so many years, luxury brands are genius at that. So I took all the lessons that I had learned from consulting as well as speaking for these brands, and I'm a confidante to so many of these CEOs. I put them all in the book Exceptional Experiences. So no matter what business you're in, you can apply these principles.

I think so too. And highlighting the fact that it's not expensive. It's a little bit more based on your effort in your presentation. I think that that's a big takeaway for the audience today. It's very actionable. This applies to everybody. Now, Neen, earlier in your career, you had learned a lesson from an early boss of yours who said it's easier to upsell an existing client than it is to attract a new one. And so when I read that line, and I agree with it, I was thinking, can you apply a higher level of experience to your existing clients, even if you haven't done so in the past, as a way to refresh the relationship and as a way to upsell new services. So talk to us a little bit about that.

You bet. And this boss was one of my least favorite bosses that you mentioned, right? He was grumpy. And when you're new in your career, some of those grumpy bosses are kind of scary. He was not my favorite, but it's a lesson that I've used For the rest of my career. I think what happens is we invest so much time, energy, and attention in creating new clients, attracting new clients, but once they become clients, we forget about them and we just assume they're going to stay with us. And that's just rubbish. What we need to do is we need to think about retaining the clients and making them realize how important they are to us. So it's never too late to reach out and thank a client. And there's so many ways you can do that for no cost. A handwritten note, a phone call. You could even grab your cell phone, shoot a video message, and send it to them and say, I really love working with you, and it's been a privilege to, you know, clean your air conditioner in your home and press send because you have the contact information from your clients. But imagine if you started to personalize those interactions even more instead of sending out mass emails. What if you did send a very tailored email? You can use obviously the templates, but you might tailor it so that they feel like it's the only person that you are talking to today. My goal of exceptional experiences, the stealth message that you and I were talking about before we pressed record, is I want every person on this planet to feel seen, heard, and valued. And this book, Exceptional Experience, shares with you how to do that. It's never too late to reach out to a client, but maybe you want a system to do it. We talk about systems of elevation in the book, Nick, and one of those is what I call systemized thoughtfulness. We've heard of random acts of kindness. No, no, no. Let's make it deliberate acts of kindness. Let's put a system in place where we make an appointment with ourselves. Maybe it's the first Monday of the month. and you have half an hour allocated in your calendar, no matter what kind of business you run, and you reach out to the top clients you have, your top tier, the ones that are important to you, or maybe you create a list of clients you'd like to have, Nick, and then start thinking about how can I connect with them every month. So make an appointment every month, half an hour, and then just find ways to creatively connect. For me, I do things like send a TED Talk that I just watched. I might, um, our friend Brant Mansoir has a brilliant book, right? And so Black Black Sheep is one of the books. He has a new one, Designing Momentum. I would buy 20 copies of that book and then I would send it to those people with a handwritten note and says, this guy is brilliant. His books are fantastic. And so I'm also then giving them something, that lumpy mail, you know, so it's physical. Thinking about ways you can connect with your clients that are not just digital, but look at the analog communication methodology as well. There's so many ways we can tell our clients we're thinking of them. And sometimes it's as simple as saying, Hey Nick, I was thinking about you. I hope that that job we did together is still doing for you what it needed, or whatever.

Wonderful advice. I love how actionable you are, Annine. I think sometimes, sometimes people, they come onto the podcast, they talk about the philosophy of what they do, but they fail to provide actionable examples of it. And so I love these. Keep them coming. It reminds me, in a book that we've talked about before, It reminds me a little bit about the story in Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guidara.

Yeah.

After, after we read that book at Book Thinkers as part of our book club, we, we all thought about different ways that we could apply it. And our podcast booking manager, Evan, he has the highest volume of onboarding calls. We're bringing on 2, 3, 4, 5 new clients every single week. And what he would do as an example of what you're talking about Is he would buy a copy of their book in advance of the onboarding call, and he would always flip to a random page, find something that genuinely resonated with him, and bring that takeaway to the call so that they knew we were paying attention. And it wasn't an expectation that we had set or anything like that, but it was just a way to, to overdeliver. And it was very inexpensive, didn't take a lot of effort, but it really helped our clients feel like we were personalizing the experience. So I can't wait for the team at BookThinkers to read this.

I love that.

And new ways to elevate our experience.

Will and I were talking recently about our books, and he and I were saying his book is like a love letter, like a memoir to the hospitality industry. And we agreed my book is the playbook. This is how you do it.

Yes.

And so what I want listeners to think about is if you wanna know how to do this, there are so many systems of elevation in the book that you can apply regardless of the business. I've applied these strategies to my hospital clients, my manufacturing clients, my media clients. So when you think about whether you are a small business, maybe you are a practice of one, or maybe you're leading a team of people exactly like what Evan's doing— what Evan did is took the initiative to be thoughtful, that systemized thoughtfulness. And there's so many ways we can all do that on a daily basis, not just personally but professionally as well.

Yes, absolutely. It is a system. It feels like every moment is unique, and it is, but it is a system that we have in place. You know, it's part of a process, so it's repeatable. Absolutely.

Right.

Um, transitioning a little bit, I thought one of the fun things about your book that was a little different is you have a champagne moment to end each chapter. So where did that idea come from? And tell us, what are champagne moments?

Champagne has always been my drink of choice. If you're listening to this audio, I know that I sound like I'm 5, but I'm originally from Sydney, Australia. And in Sydney, champagne was always my drink. And so when I moved to the US, what was hilarious, Nick, was I'd go out for lunch with people and they would take the drink order and they'd say, what do you want? People say water, iced tea. That's great. I'd say champagne. And people would say, Nin, what are you celebrating? And I would think life. It's always been my drink. So champagne is something that I love. I think it represents celebration and excitement. And so we talk about champagne. It's a great metaphor for things in the book, which you will also get to see in Exceptional Experiences. A champagne moment, Nick, is taking something ordinary and making it extraordinary. It's something that makes you smile or brings you joy. Think of all those bubbles in a champagne glass, like little bubbles of joy, right? So these joy bubbles, we get to do this every day. It might be as simple as Perhaps you choose to meditate a little longer, or maybe instead of a plastic cup, you decide to put your sparkling water in a glass. Or maybe I love my morning coffee. I love to linger with my coffee, and I have a Tiffany teacup, which sounds so pretentious, but it is my favorite teacup. I don't have a lot of cups. It's just the one that I grab for every day because I wanna make that a moment for me in my day instead of rushing through my day. So your champagne moment is the practical application of trying to elevate something for yourself, your team, your clients, and you can do it every day. And what's been amazing, Nick, is so many people now are finding these champagne moments, and then they're tagging me on social media and using #champagnemoments. So you all can do the same thing, and then I get to share them with the world as well. So wouldn't it be fun if we had this movement around champagne moments where we're all looking for this? Now, if it involves literal champagne, sign me up. Like, I love that. But maybe it's sparkling water if you're being very healthy. But what's your version of a champagne moment you could look for every day? Because all your listeners are about having a bigger, better, amazing life. But if we look consciously for these moments, we will find them.

Yes. If you filter for them, they will reveal themselves to you.

Agree.

Do you have any champagne moments that you've been tagged in that stick out to you? Can you give us a couple of examples?

One of, uh, one of my dear friends is a phenomenal, uh, well, I don't even know how to describe her. She is an athlete that has skied, climbed all the major peaks in the world. She's phenomenal. She was sharing about my book and she happened to be speaking in Tokyo for a client, and one of a friend that she knew from the climbing community actually saw her post about my book Was in Tokyo at the same time, so they had the opportunity to connect and meet. And it was so random, but it was so special. When she sent that message to me, I couldn't—I just couldn't—I couldn't stop like smiling, and it just meant the world to me. So those type of things, when you hear these moments that people are creating, that's pretty special. Now I've been tagged a lot in beachside cocktail. A friend of mine had a big blowup. pink flamingo and they were in this flamingo and they had me and my— and the book, hashtag champagne moments, because they were floating around the pool in the flamingo. I was like, I'm here for that. So, whatever your champagne moment is, whatever makes you smile and brings you joy, I want to see it.

And you even have joy bubbles on the inside of the book. So, talk to us about how did you apply this idea of exceptional experiences to the actual physical book that people can get?

What a great question. No one has asked me that, so thank you for asking. The choice of the font is actually the same font as Vogue, and in the early print press days, the only people who could provide that very, very fine line were those who were the luxury print presses. So even the choice of the font was deliberate. If you slip the dust cover off the book, you'll notice that it is gold. And so the reason I wanted to do that is, what if you're a person who loves— like, look at your bookshelf behind you, beautifully curated. What if you just wanted to stand out. It looks like a little bar of gold just sitting there on your desk. I've chosen to have things on the COVID like it is gold embossed with exceptional because I want you to have this exceptional relationship with this book. But also what you may or may not notice is there's this lovely design behind it which resembles like the back of a champagne label. You'll notice on the front cover I've chosen a museli, which is a fantastic metaphor for so many things. And if you're listening A muselier is just the fancy French word for the cage that holds the cork into the bottle of champagne. And I was very deliberate in who I allowed to be on the back cover for the testimonials. These are clients and people that are important to me. So when I designed the joy bubbles on the inside, I wanted you to open the book for a little tiny surprise where you're like, oh, I like that. And that's to remind you of bubbles. At the end of every chapter, there are champagne moments, and it has its own icon as well. So everything that we thought about in putting this together is so that not only you you would enjoy it and read it, but it's been designed as a gift book for clients that are important to you because you get the opportunity to say to your clients, I think you're exceptional and I love working with you. And that's an easy gifting book as well.

Yes, it is. And so if you're listening to this, if you're a business owner, if you would like to get a gift for your clients, Exceptional Experiences is a great option because the book is beautiful and it has a great, it has a great message behind it as well.

Yeah, right.

Now, coming back to something we referenced a little bit earlier, tell us about the difference between a concierge leader and a bellhop leader.

Sure. I think often managers are like bellhops. Think about it. A bellhop is so important, Nick. We need our bellhops. They are going to move our bags through the lobby so super fast. They're going to get them to our room, and that is important. They are efficient. That is a transaction that we want in our life when we stay at a hotel. But too often, I think managers are thinking like a bellhop. But what I really want them to do is think like a concierge. Because a concierge, think about that, one of the most revered positions in any hotel. They know everything and everyone. They are the go-to person. But not only that, they can get you that, that seat at that restaurant, that ticket to that hot event. But what I love about a concierge is a concierge can anticipate needs you didn't even know you had. And that's what I want our leaders to think about. If you think like a concierge, not a bellhop, you get to anticipate the needs of your team, your colleagues, your family, the people that you stand in service of, because you're constantly thinking, how can I anticipate what they don't even know they need? Because in luxury brands, when you think about it, personalization, it requires information. We all have access to that. We need to be able to grab that from our clients. Customization is about connection, and that's what we want more of— that human connection in our digital AI world. And then I think about fascination. Fascination requires anticipation, and if you really want your clients to be fascinated about working with you, then I want to encourage you to think about how can you anticipate what they don't even know they need. And it could be the simplicity of taking off your shoes or offering to take off your shoes if you are a service professional entering someone's home. It might be offering water when someone comes into your office and able to have a selection of things. Maybe you have sparkling water and flat water, but just think about what is it that the people that I serve could want or need, and then anticipate that. And you will be so glad that you did, and so will they.

I think so too. There's a member of my team, his name is Luke. Prior to joining Book Thinkers, back in the day, he actually ran his own coffee shop. And he told me a story about this one time where he said, He, he noticed that I think 2 to 3 minutes after somebody sat down and received their coffee, about 50% of clients would get up and go over and get themselves some water 2 to 3 minutes after they had their coffee. And so they started to anticipate the need. They would bring over the coffee and then 2 minutes later on the dot, his staff would bring over water. And so they anticipated the need and everybody would think, Well, I was just about to go get water. How the heck did you know? And it was just a pattern that he picked up. So how can you apply that in your business? And I'm breaking the fourth wall, I guess is what it's called, and speaking to the audience here. Pause this podcast for a moment and just think about how can I do that in my business or my profession or for my family? Start to recognize patterns and, you know, be fascinated in the world around you and anticipate needs, because I do think that that is is absolutely an example of being exceptional and how to add a little bit of luxury to your brand without spending money.

And I think that it doesn't have to cost a lot of money, Nick. I had the privilege of— there's a hotel that I love in Alexandria, Virginia. It's called AKA Alexandria. And the first time I stayed there, they had a hotel dog called Senna. So the moment that I saw Senna, I was on my knees playing with this dog, and someone grabbed a photo of that. I was obsessed with this beautiful puppy. So then fast forward, I stay there again. But the next time I stayed there, when I checked in, Senna was right there. I was like, oh my God, Senna, it's so great to see you again. I gave him a cuddle. I was so happy to see him. The staff knew that I loved Senna. It must have been on my file. And then they were all like smiling to themselves like they had this little inside secret. So I go to check into my room, Nick. When I go into my room, there is a framed photo of Senna and I at the bedside table.

That's amazing.

But wait, there's more. And then there's a love note from Senna with his paw print on it that says, welcome back, it's so nice to see you. It blew my mind. It cost them less than $5 to pull all of that together. But what they did was they used information about me from their system, knowing my love of any furry baby of any kind. They then took action so that they could customize my visit to connect with me. And I found that fascinating. I probably shared that story. And what's amazing is that was because they were paying attention. We can all pay attention and find little ways like your team does with the guests that they serve and the onboarding calls that they do. But if we just pay attention, that human connection— luxury is about human connection.

It is. And there was a line from— well, number one, that story is amazing. And Because the hotel staff did that for you, thousands of people are hearing about it. How long ago was that that it happened?

I know it was only— oh gosh, was that last year that that happened? And think about, I keynote speak, I am on stages around the world constantly. I don't even know how many times I have told that story. Now, it happened after I wrote Exceptional Experiences, otherwise I promise it would've been in the book. But I think what's really interesting about that too, and Chris has gone on to lead the general manager who is the proud dad of Senna the puppy. He now is at Sunrose in Hollywood, and so I expect this same sort of service. So you can believe that's exactly where I want to stay next time I go to Cali, is I'm going to want to stay at his hotel just so I can see Senna again.

Yeah, that's amazing. And, and thousands of people are listening to you talk about it right now as the show goes live. And it's just, you know, if you want word of mouth to increase, if you want to do more business, personalize these experiences. And you said in the book that every luxury leader that you interviewed for this book pointed out that personalization plays a pivotal role in the luxury experience. And so it's just effort. It doesn't require money. I think that's one of the other main points of today's podcast interview is people want to feel seen and loved and heard. And yeah, it's a, it's a great way to make that happen.

And Nick, Get the team to ideate on what they think is gonna be the best way to do it because your team are full of great ideas. So as you're listening to this, you don't have to come up with all the ideas. Throw a challenge out in your next team meeting and say, how could we pay more attention to our clients? How could we customize things? How could we personalize things more? Make a massive list and then pick something and try it. And then start with the no-cost strategies using someone's name. Like that costs nothing, but it's one of the best attention-grabbing strategies there is. So let's get back to basics. So that people do feel seen, heard, and valued.

Another way that you articulate this in the book is you say that you have to listen but with your eyes, which I thought was a fun way to think about that.

That wisdom is not mine, Nick. I have to give credit to a debate that I was having with my 5-year-old friend. His name's Donovan. And Donovan and I, I don't know if you've ever debated with a child, but Donovan and I were debating. I think at the time we were debating who's cooler, like was it Superman or Batman? And he didn't think I was listening to him. He got so mad at me, Nick. He jumped in my lap. He grabbed my face in his tiny little hands. He turned it towards him and he said, Neen, listen with your eyes. I mean, he was 5. But a good reminder for all of us that we need to listen with our eyes more because we listen with our ears, but we also listen with our heart and our soul. And when people feel like you're listening to them, they're going to tell you things that will allow you to anticipate needs they didn't even know they had. That's how you think like a concierge.

What a wonderful example. What a wonderful example. Well, as we get close to wrapping up the podcast, there's just one or two more things that I wanted to reference from the first half of your book, giving the audience, uh, sort of a little preview for what they might be able to learn inside of Exceptional Experiences. On page 62, you say that our attention span is not declining and that that is rubbish. And I thought, well, that's a different take. I haven't heard that before. So tell us, why is our attention span not declining?

Well, think about it. Have you ever binge-watched a show that you love? Have you ever played a game online for hours without needing any kind of breaks? There's nothing wrong with our attention span. People are claiming that it is declining because they want to answer why they're not getting things done. And that's not true. Our attention span is not declining. There's literally no evidence for that. And I listened to attention researchers and I wrote a book called Attention Pays. So I've researched this. I'm not just telling you that. But here's what's different, Nick. It's not that our attention span is declining. Our attention span is split. And what we're doing is we're constantly context switching in a day. Now, one of the studies that came out of the University of California was that it takes on average 23 minutes for our brain to context switch. Think about that. How many times a day we grab our cell phone, answer our emails, We have 50,000 different tabs open. We're looking on social media, we're replying to text messages, dropping voice notes. Think of the massive amounts of time our poor brains are tired because we are continually context switching. So what I want people to think about, your attention span is something that you get to control. You can't manage time, but you can manage your attention. Sometimes that means thinking about what is not worth your attention. Who is not worth your attention? I always think about my brain as like this beautiful luxury real estate, and I don't want to decorate it with cheap thoughts, and I don't want anyone to live in there rent-free. So I would challenge the people who are listening to this to also think the same thing. Who and what deserves your attention? Everybody wants your attention. Not everybody deserves your attention.

And there's that saying that energy flows where your attention— no, Yeah, where your attention goes, energy flows, or something like that. And yeah, you just don't want to waste it. You know, every single day we have the opportunity to focus on what we choose, and if we don't choose, it will default to things like social media and the news and all this kind of divisive stuff that we don't really like. So I think that that's a great— Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You know, your mind is like a garden, or for you it's like a luxury You know, experience or room and you want to decorate it. And I think that's really cool. Can you kind of wrap up the podcast and then I'll have a couple of rapid-fire questions, but can we wrap up talking a little bit about the experience elevation model? And maybe you could talk about your experiences with Delta because I thought that that was a great way to sort of understand what's happening inside of some of these businesses.

For sure. And look, whether you love a particular airline or not, I don't have a loyalty to an airline because where I live in Tampa, Florida, It's not a hub for anyone, but here's why I chose Delta is because I was privileged to fly at the Delta One service to see my mom when they first opened up that route. Now, what that meant was insane. Like, it spoiled me for the rest of my life in the way that I fly. Nick, the Experience Elevation Model was designed because I consult to so many clients and I'm keynoting and I'm coaching them, and I needed to be able to show people a visual representation of what I believe. What I believe is that we need to be able to capture attention. Let's call that mindshare. share so that we can also create advocates, let's call that market share. Because if we want advocates to drive revenue for us, to be an extension of our sales and marketing activity, we need to be able to really stay top of mind and top of market with them. So that's what the Experience Elevation Model does. Imagine a triangle. If mindshare is at the bottom, market share is at the top. And the 5 luxury levers that we unpack in the book, which has all these systems of elevation behind every one, is when you think about the first one in type, Delta's been very clever in the way that they welcome you and invite you in, looking at the stories they tell and the social media posts that they have. In my case, it was walking into that insane, beautiful Delta One lounge in LA, and it had its own private security check-in. I mean, come on, that's crazy. It was so incredibly cool. The next luxury lever is invite. This is where you allow people to feel like that sense of belonging. And in this sense, what they were able to do was to speak my luxury language, which was about the ease and the the comfort and the luxury of that private exclusive access opportunity. And then we move into the 3rd luxury lever. It's at this point where I love that we get people to really get excited about what we're doing. So this is excite, where you engage all 5 senses. The moments the doors opened at the Delta One Lounge, someone offered me a bottle of sparkling water, and I thought that was fascinating. Not flat water, sparkling water. And people know that is one of my drinks of choice, and so they had done their research even before I was entering. And so I thought that was really interesting too. Then we get up to one that I love, and that is delight. How do you really delight people? This is about showing people that you know them. So they knew my profile. They escorted us over to this lovely place where someone made a meal for us. And what I thought, and this is just the lounge experience. This is not even— this is before we even get on the plane, Nick. It was so crazy. So I was delighting my 5 senses. And this is where all of us, no matter what kind of business we're in, we can think about how do we engage the 5 senses in a deep way, especially our sense of smell, because that's connected so much to our emotional connection to brands. And then the top of the triangle is ignite. This is where we create advocates for our business. This is where we can invite them to exclusive opportunities with us. Maybe they get to sit down with the owner, maybe they get to meet the chef at the restaurant, maybe they meet the head engineer of whoever designs your product. But what we're looking for here is that exclusivity, that opportunity where these Advocates say, you know what, I love working with you. How do I tell the world about you? So the Experience Elevation Model does everything from capture the attention of potential and maybe existing clients all the way through to creating advocates. And you know what, you can start on any of the 5 luxury levers. It's not a linear process. Pick the thing that appeals to you for what you need right now in your business.

Beautiful description of what everybody can learn if they choose to buy a copy of this book. Tell us one more time, If somebody is like, ah, you know what, I feel like this could be a good fit for me, but I'm not totally sold yet. Tell everybody one more time, who is the target customer for this book and what are some of the expected outcomes if they choose to read and implement it? Of course.

This is a book designed for leaders who are responsible for revenue, whether that is in your role as an individual producer, whether you are an entrepreneur, whether you are running a business, or maybe you're the chief marketing officer of a major brand. brand. So if you are responsible for revenue, you're going to benefit from this book. But not only will it have systems of elevation you can apply no matter what kind of business or industry you're in, you're going to allow the application of all of these systems to make the people around you feel more seen, heard, and valued. And Nick, isn't that what we all want?

It is. Absolutely. I'm sold. For those that would like to buy a copy or learn more about you, your keynote speaking, Or consulting, where can people go? What should they do?

So, let's go to neemjames.com, which is my website. If you want to follow my adventures every day, go to Instagram. I post there all the time, so definitely reach out there. And then if you want to reach out on LinkedIn, please let me know it's because Nick and I were together today that we connected. I would love that. So, please buy the book wherever your favorite books are sold, and I would love it if you could do that. And then don't forget, Don't forget to tag me when you post about #ChampagneMoments.

I will be doing that. Okay, a couple of rapid-fire questions and then we'll let you go. So if the entire book was deleted but you could leave the world with just one simple message from it, what would that message be?

I would repeat again, do what you can to make people feel seen, heard, and valued.

Yes, I love that. Who are— what are some of the books that have had the biggest impact on your life and your career?

Oh my gosh, the list is so long. It's probably as big as your bookshelf behind you. But let me tell you, anything that Adam Grant writes, I love. Brené Brown is my girl crush. I love their brains. I have a crush on their brains. So for them, they would be some of the thinkers that I would gravitate towards, of course. But when I think about some of the modern-day people we've talked about, people like Brent Menswell with the way that he writes, Ron Teit and the way that he talks about purpose and has a fantastic Very interesting way to look at attention. So there's so many people that I love, but yeah, I'm pretty— I mean, they're just some of the books I love. Tamsyn Webster has written so many great books. She's such a smarty pants, another brain crush, but I love her book Say What They Can't Unhear. It will, it will forever change the way you communicate your ideas.

Okay, last question. If you could go back and add just one chapter to this One subject, one extra thought, what would that be?

I would share and unpack the brilliance of the AKA Alexandra example and what Chris, the general manager, who's now the GM at Sunrose, the way that they did that, I would reverse engineer it for the reader so that they could think about how to apply it in their own business.

Yeah, that would be so cool. Yeah, brilliant. Well, maybe there will be an expanded and updated edition of the book after it does super well and sells all over the world and changes everybody's lives.

I love that. I love the way you think.

Well, Nien, thank you so much for the amazing conversation today. I really enjoyed reading your book one more time, Exceptional Experiences. And, uh, yeah, just getting to know you. You're the, you're the kind of person that I want to spend more time, uh, learning from and reading from. So it was a pleasure.

Thank you. It was my privilege.