INBOUND 2015 I&E: Peter Shankman "Ain't No Customer Like a Zombie Customer"

Thank you. I hate my bio. I hate my bio. I'm technically, I'm on the Dell advisory. I'm not the entrepreneur in residence. I'm part of the group that supports the entrepreneur in residence. The entrepreneur in residence fills the room a lot more than I could. But I don't know, I walk around a lot. So I apologize to whoever's filming this because I'm just going to. I'm going to piss you off. But thank you guys for listening. This is a fun one. I gave a talk here two years ago, which actually was one of the starting points of writing Zombie Loyalist. I gave a talk about letting go of anger, essentially. And you can find it online. It's actually. It's download or viewable. I suppose the basic premise of that talk was that you have two choices. People, especially customers, are gonna piss you off. And you're gonna spend a lot of your life if you let it, being pissed off by customers or clients or people who work for you or work in your way. And you can either spend that time and waste it, be pissed, off, or you can let it go. And I learned that lesson because I had at the time like a six week old daughter. And I was on a conference call. I was watching her and I was on a conference call and I was pissed off about something. Someone had pissed me off and I was cursing into the phone. I was like, hey, suck. Those people don't know what the hell they're talking about. I'm so angry. And my daughter, all she saw was like some weird fat guy making weird faces and just cracked up. And so I was like, you suck. I hate it. The six week old was like loving this. So I realized that you have the ability to let it go. And that sort of led to me exploring the concept of what became zombie loyalists. And what we're going to talk about, which is the basic, the premise is this. Well, first of all, anything I say is tweetable, is postable. You don't have to hide it. I am a professor at a university. I know when you're on your phones because no one in the history of time has ever looked down at their crotch and smiled. So post whatever you want. Say whatever you want. I'm Etershankman on almost all of the socials and you're welcome to. I'm flattered. If you find something I say worth sharing, then feel free to use it. This is the most awkward setup ever because I don't stand here. So I'm gonna stand like here, I guess so the basic premise of what I'm gonna talk to you guys about today is this. I'm not going to sit here and go all Tony Robbins on you. I'm not gonna try to get you to leave here while finding your inner tiger, you know, and embracing that change. That makes you better than, you know, you ever thought humanly. That shit's hard. Okay? I'm not going to do that. What I am going to do is I want to give you guys some thoughts on the fact that as a society, we expect, in any customer service interaction, whether we're buying an airplane ticket or a burger, whether we're checking in at a conference or renting a car, whether we're hiring a designer or whether we're using an email provider, we expect, on principle, to be treated like crap. If you think back to your last customer service, who flew here? Who had a great flight? You. Orange. What made it great? Yeah, right there. You. It was space TVs on every single seat. We left early. We arrived on time. Customer service was great. Okay, where'd you come in from? West Palm. West Palm. So United American, JetBlue. All right, so you signed a contract, what's called a contract of carriage with JetBlue, where you said, I'm going to give you currency, funds, money, and in exchange, you're going to take me from one place to another place, and you're going to do so safely and hopefully nicely. And that's what they did. They didn't let you fly the plane, and they didn't, like, find you a date sitting next to you, anything. They just got you from West Palm to Boston, and you didn't crash into the side of a mountain. Right? But when I asked who had a great flight, that, to me, sounds like exactly what they promised. But when I said who had a great flight? You. Oh, my God. You're, like, over the goddamn moon about how incredible your flight was. Like, literally, I thought they were gonna, like. Like, you discovered MH370. Like. Like, it was that incredible of a flight, but all they did was exactly what they promised, and you're over the moon. So that's the premise of creating zombie loyalists, is that if we expect crap, I don't need you guys to be awesome. I just want you to be one or two levels above crap. Okay. Literally, you're gonna walk out of here. What did you learn? Well, we learned how not to suck as much. That's fine, because here's where that translates into revenue. And this is where people usually trail off in other speeches because let's face it, if you guys are not generating revenue, if the stuff I teach you today doesn't teach you how to make money, how to make more money, how to increase your customer base, how to generate revenue, then I've failed you. And this was a pointless seminar. Okay, you might laugh, you might, it might be fun, whatever, take some photos, you know, selfies. But if you don't walk out of here learning how to increase your revenue, there's absolutely no purpose in you coming here. So I'm going to teach you how to do that because here's my thesis statement. I went to bu, so whenever I'm in Boston, I try to incorporate college terms. Here's my thesis statement. The next 50 years of the economy are going to be run by the customer experience. Advertising, marketing, those things will be important, but nowhere near as important as we think they are today. Okay, There is a thing called, I think it's sales. And any guys. Have any of you guys used the urinals? Sales Academy or something like that has little urinal cake advertisements for women. Essentially, when you stand at the urinal, you have nothing to do for 30 seconds. Well, now you have something to stare at. Have we gotten to the point where advertising is so mundane that we have to advertise in the thing you're peeing on? Because all I can think about is that for the rest of my life when I pee, I'm going to think about this lead generation company. It's the equivalent of if anyone remembers coming to America. When you think of garbage, think of Akim. So what I want to talk to you about today is sort of four or six principles behind the concept that the next 50 years are going to be run by the concept of the customer experience. And here's why I said this about a year ago and we're already seeing it in Google and we're starting to see it on Facebook. In the next 12 to 24 months, the concept of friending, fanning, following and liking is going to disappear. You won't friend anyone anymore. Okay, Friend. If you think about friend requests as a concept, it's the most awkward thing in the world. Okay? The last time we friend requested someone in the real world was second grade. Okay? Will you be my friend? Okay, we don't do that. And my daughter's 2 years old. She's walking around everything. Will you be my friend? She's like, honey, that's a tree. It won't be your friend. We friend request people online. We follow. We like in the real world. It's incredibly awkward because we don't do that in the real world. In the real world, if I hang out with you and you seem interesting and I seem interesting to you, over time, we become friends. That's how the universe works. Imagine if you and I went on our first date, okay. Or met for lunch or whatever. And at the end of the day, I can. I had a really nice time. Will you be my friend? You would run away in such a, oh, my God, he's so creepy type of way. But yet online, we're being asked to do that all the time. We're being asked to like things. We're being asked to follow things. Before you walk out, just hear one thing. Stop chasing the likes. Start doing things that are likable. Okay? Now you can walk out. If you're going to get lunch, bring me back something. I'm starving. I don't know who that was. I'm just ordering random people to get me lunch. But think about that as a concept. Guys, we have been trained for the past five or so years to chase the likes. We've been trained to chase the followers. We have been trained to chase things that have absolutely no monetary value whatsoever. I don't know about you, I have never found a. Like, I can't send. I think it's first, first home, whatever the hell people that have my mortgage, I can't send them a thousand likes and say, this is worth my monthly mortgage, okay? I have yet to be able to pay for anything with follower counts, okay? So what we need to do is we need to stop chasing the likes and start doing likable things. Because as we lose the concept of friending, fanning, following and liking, what's going to occur instead? I thought I shut off the screensaver. Now I don't know how to do it. What's going to occur instead is very simply this. If I have a good experience or if I have a bad experience, my network is going to know about it. Not because I'm tweeting about it, but because of the sentiment of how I live my very existence. What do I mean by that? Right now, if I land in Los Angeles or San Francisco or anywhere in the world really, and I type in steakhouses near me into Google Maps, Google shows me all the steakhouses near me. But you know what else it shows me before those? It shows me any steakhouses that people in my Google networks have gone to who are friends with me, if they've enjoyed it. So if you and I are friends in Google or in Some sort of Google connection, and you type in steakhouses in San Francisco. You're going to see, oh, your friend Peter went to Morton's on Folsom Avenue two weeks ago. Here's his Instagram photos, here's his Facebook posts, here's his Twitter. All the stuff. As long as you're connected, would you like me to make your reservation? All of a sudden, Morton's goes from having to advertise to you to being a friend. Because you have the trusted connection in me now. If I wind up being a shill for Mortons and you go and your steak's cold and everything sucks, well, not only are you never going to trust Mortons again, but you've ruined my friendship with you as well. That's never going to happen. That's self policing. Self policing is the reason that Yelp will be dead soon enough. TripAdvisor will be dead. I went out two years ago and I wrote a piece for Forbes that said that, or Fortune that said that Yelp will be dead within two years. I was slightly off time wise, and I say slightly because their stock price has dropped like 85% since I wrote that piece. They've been called out in criminal court, they've been called out in civil court, they've been called it all over the place as being essentially is running a thievery ring. So why should I trust Yelp if I have a network of people who have done things and, oh, well, I only have 100 people in my network. They haven't done everything in the world. No. But if they each have 100 people in their network, that's 10,000 people that have. So I want you to think about a world where everyone you meet is connected to everyone else you meet, and there is no need for friending, fanning, following, or liking. I'll give you an example, and then I'll talk about ways to take care of that and ways to use that to your advantage. If I hang out with you on a personal level, I say, hey, it was great meeting you at Inbound. You want to grab a drink sometime? You go, sure, I'd love to. I go, great. I text you my number with a smiley face, you text me your number back. The network says, hey, that's a new. What's your name again? I'm sorry, tell me. Jenny. Jenny says, hey, that's a new connection. Peter and Jenny have never touched base before. Let's follow that. I don't know who's going to win the network wars. I don't know if it's going to be Google or Facebook. I'm hoping they merge and call themselves for Google. But whoever it is, imagine that Google. Let's just say it's Google. Imagine Google says, hey, Peter just texted Jenny. And back and forth. That's interesting. Let's watch that. Or Apple says it. Let's watch that connection. A couple days later, I text Jenny again. Hey, it was really great meeting you. Want to grab a drink on Thursday? She goes, sure, I'd love to. Great. I'll meet you at such and such a bar. Well, Google already knows the address of the bar. Once I type in the name and the text, her sentiment was, yes, I'd love to is positive. Mine is, great, I'll see you there is positive. We get to the bar, our phones are both in proximity to each other. The network says, okay, they hung out together. That's touch points five and six. We have a great time that night. A couple days later, I say, jenny, you want to go grab some dinner? She goes, sure, I'd love to. I go to OpenTable. I make a reservation in both our names, TouchPoint 7 and 8 when we show up at the restaurant and our phones are together, Touchpoints nine and ten and touchpoints ten, we're friends. I don't need a friend request you. You don't need a friend request me. We're simply friends. And I see in your network what you allow people with 10 to 1,000 touch points to see and vice versa. As we continue hanging out on a regular basis, more and more the network says, hey, they're hanging out. You're the first thing I see in my network when I wake up. I'm the first thing you see in yours when you wake up. Same thing is true for business. If I go to the taco place near my apartment three times a week, it's pretty fucking obvious I do, okay? So if I go to the taco place near my apartment three times a week, I don't need to like that place on Facebook for them to be able to advertise to me. They already have me, okay? The tequila pours are really liberal and the food is really good, okay? They know that I'm a sucker to them. They know that I'm their bitch. So all they have to do is continue to treat me well. Now, Jenny and I have been dating, let's say now, six months. Okay? Eventually I'm gonna do something stupid and Jenny's gonna break up with me. No, I'm a student of history. This is exactly what Jenny's gonna do now when Jenny breaks up with me in the past, she'd have to unfriend me. Okay. Ever had to unfriend someone where you actually, you have to go and I dated someone for three years, and when we broke up, we stayed friends on Facebook for nine months because neither of us want to do the awkward, rude thing and unfriend the other person. Every night, I'd have to come home and see the first thing in her stream would be her, and she'd be, like, out to dinner with some guy. And every night, she'd have to come home and see the first thing in her stream, which would be me, like, eating pizza on my couch alone. And we had to do that for nine months until she unfriended me finally. Bitch. But the bigger picture is that we don't have to do that anymore. If Jenny and I stop talking, we simply fade away. If I stop going to that Mexican place because all of a sudden their food's turned bad or they have new management and the place sucks, I'll stop seeing their advertisements in my stream. I'll stop seeing the notifications on my phone. It'll simply go away. That is why the customer experience is going to matter so much in the next 50 years. And that's why it's gonna drive the economy, because it's no longer. No one believes how great you are if you're the one that has to tell them, okay, so think about an advertisement that says, we're awesome. Okay? Imagine, take it to a personal level. I go into a bar. I see you. I've never seen you before in my life. Goes, you don't know me, but I am amazing. Seriously, finish a drink and come home with me. I'm that good. You're gonna throw your drink in my face? Go back to talking to your best friend again. I've done a lot of research. That's exactly what she's gonna do. But if she's talking, sitting there talking to her best friend, and I'm just over here playing Words with Friends, not even paying attention, by the way, Words with Friends. Ershankman. Just bring it. But if she's there talking to her friend, I'm over there ignoring her. And her friend says, holy shit, that's Peter Shankman. Oh, my God. I've heard him talk. You need to go listen to him. He is amazing. You should talk to him. At the very least, you're both single. You both like cats. You should. I'm gonna go introduce you. Come here. At the Very least, I'm getting her number. That is a trusted recommendation. And when the network no longer has, when you no longer have to ask or Google for those trusted recommendations, when they come to you automatically when you start typing in flights to Fiji and the first thing the network does is pop up a little window that says, oh, your friend Michelle went to Fiji last month. Here are her photos, here are her posts. Here's the positive stuff she said. Here's the negative stuff she said, would you like to see it? And would you like to book the same flights she had? All of a sudden it becomes about dollars and cents from the customer experience. So what are zombies? Zombie customers are customers that you've treated slightly above crap. They're customers who go in expecting crap and get pleasantly surprised with a little more than just a regular flight. Maybe they get an upgrade. Maybe they get a free drink. Maybe they just get a smile from the flight attendant. Those are in rare form, so maybe a basic smile. Where you headed today? Oh, what's in Boston? Great. Hope you have a great trip. Maybe that's enough. So, four ways to do it. First question. Every time someone comes to your business, you have to start thinking about it this way. Every time someone comes to you to buy something, to utilize your business, whatever it is, whether you're selling something, whether you have a skill, whatever they're hiring you for, whatever they're buying from you, you have to think about it this way. They are coming to you because they have a problem that you can solve. Think about every interaction you have in a customer environment. It's a problem that you need solved. Why do you go to McDonald's? The problem is that you're hungry and you want really crappy food. Okay? Why do you get on a plane? The problem is you're here and you need to be there for whatever reason. Why do you go to the dry cleaners? You have clothing that's dirty, you need it cleaned. If you think about every customer interaction as a problem waiting to be solved, you can then ask yourself this question. What do you have more of as the client, as the, as the person selling? What do you have more of than the customer coming to you to get it? Is it experience? Is it knowledge? Is it money? Is it battery life? What do you have more of that you can offer your customer as an added bonus for free that costs you nothing? Here's the thing about customer service. 88% of all CEOs who were interviewed said that they believe their customer service is top notch. 8% of the customers and clients of those same companies said the same thing. So that is a massive disconnect. And the reason, when pressed, that CEOs say that they won't provide better customer service is because they consider it a cost. Here's the scary thing, though. 99% of customer service is free. 95% of great customer service is free. Because if we expect crap a couple of levels above, that doesn't cost much. You may or may not know the story about Morton's Steakhouse. A few years ago, it was mentioned that I sent out one of those top 10 tweets of the year. It was a joke tweet that I sent out on a flight home. I was starving. And I jokingly sent a tweet before I took off in Florida that said, hey, Morton Steakhouse, I'm landing at Newark Airport in two hours. Why don't you meet me when I land with a porterhouse? I'm hungry. Ha ha ha. The same way you'd tweet, hey, Winter, please stop snowing. I landed two hours later, and Morton, a guy from Morton's was there in a tuxedo with a porterhouse. He was standing next to my driver waiting for me to show up. And there were two schools of thought. The first school of thought was it was a PR stunt, which it wasn't. I swear to God on everything I hold dear, I had nothing to do with it other than sending that tweet. They, Mortons went on their own. They did it. But. But the second school of thought was it wasn't customer service. It was marketing. And I'm more aligned to agree with that. That was not a customer service act. Why? Because Morton's has a job. What is Morton's job? To make you a great steak. When you come to their restaurant, their job is not to go to the airport and serve you. Their job is to get you into the restaurant. So think about what would happen if their customer service sucked and they delivered a steak at the airport. For me, it would be the basic premise of, okay, so they'll deliver an airport to that Shankman guy at the airport, but my steak's cold and my mashed potatoes are running when I went to the restaurant, or they treated me like crap when I walked in and my table wasn't running. So Morton's does something that they have credited with increasing their customer service and increasing their revenues by double digits every year. What is it? When you make a reservation at Morton's, whether you're calling for the first time or the hundredth time, they reach out and they say, before you. Before they hang up, they say, okay, Mr. Shanklin, we'll see you Friday at 8:00'. Clock. Great party for two. We got you. See you then. By the way, are you celebrating anything? They just ask that simple question, say, oh, yeah, it's my wife's birthday. Okay, great. What's her name? Her name is Kira. Okay, great. We'll see you and Kira at 8 o'. Clock. And you think, wow, they took the time to ask my wife's name and they said they personalized it. We'll see you and Kira at 8 o'. Clock. Isn't that special? Because that's like Airplane lady over there. That's what we didn't expect. Okay. Holy crap. They actually called me by my first name. How nice of them. Instead of just being a customer. And that's what we think is awesome. Then we get to the restaurant. Has anyone ever eaten at Morton's and had this happen? You get to the restaurant and they. You sit down at your table and the menus are in front of you. And on the menus at the very top, it says, happy birthday, Kira, welcome to Morton's. You know what happens next. And I have this from experience. Kira sits there Instagramming the shit out of that crap for like 45 minutes and I can't get a drink. Honey, can I. No, no, I have to send this. But think about this, guys. Hannibal Lecter said it best in the movie Sons of the Lambs. He said we covet what we know. What does that mean? Who are Kira's friends? Other people just like Kira. Okay, other 40 something moms who probably don't get out that much, who work and then have a kid and all that. And a celebration at Morton's is a big thing, right? What do their friends want? What do Kira's friends want? They want the same exact honey. Why haven't you taken me to Morton's where they put my name on the menu? Why isn't my name on the menu? That's what Morton's does. What does that cost them? Absolutely nothing. What does that generate for them? Tons of zombie loyalists who will then go out and tell their friends how great Morton's is. And the beauty of that is that what used to have to be their friends going out and saying, oh my God, I had such a great meal last week at Morton's. You should really go there. Now it's automatic because the network shows it to us. And if you think that's scary, you know, when the network's going to show that to us more. If Kira goes there for her birthday and she types something like, great birthday celebration with the husband at Morton's. You know when that photo's gonna magically reappear in your stream? Maybe four months later, six months later, eight months later, couple weeks before your birthday. The network knows how to do that now. Okay, so what's the experience that you can give? What do you have more of that you can offer? Is it some free advice? Is it a name on a menu? Is it. And for those. Oh, I work in a digital world. I can't do that. The hell you can't. I have a. Is there a. Is Pete check? Is check in the audience? Where is he? Is he here? Yay. Hey, Pete. So this guy runs a company called New Possibilities Group, MP Group. And they design all my websites and everything. And there is not a time when they have not designed my website and thrown in something extra. You know, maybe it's some SEO, maybe it's this, Maybe that's. I didn't ask for it. I didn't pay for it. It just appears. And I sit there and I'm like, when I outsource that to other companies or if they have too much work and they can't take me on, what do you mean you're gonna charge me extra for. Fuck that. I'm just gonna go back to Pete. I'll wait. He has created a zombie loyalism. I tell the world about how great his services are because he adds a little something extra that costs him virtually nothing to do. What do you have extra? That's the first question you have to ask. I'm embarrassed that I have to actually look at my notes because I never. I usually memorize all my speeches, but like I said, I wrote this this morning. How can you use what you have extra to strategically help your clients and your audience? First thing is, what do you have? For me, it's my ability to talk. Okay. I've done a lot. I've started and successfully productized and sold companies. I invest in companies. So I know a lot of stuff. Most of it's probably bullshit, but I know a bunch of stuff. So if you ever email me. And by the way, petershankman.com that's been my email for the past almost 20 years. It's still active. I encourage you to use it. If you're in New York and you want to grab a cup of coffee, you want to talk about marketing, you want to talk about the nets, whatever, email me. Petershankman.com and I will meet you for a cup of coffee. If we're in the same city, I won't charge you for it. I'll do it because it's the right thing to do and because most people don't do it. Okay? The only thing I ask is, for Christ's sake, just be on time. Okay? If you're late, I have absolutely no sympathy for you. I will leave. But be on time. And if you're on time, I'll gladly meet with you because that's what nice people do. Okay, what can you do to strategically help someone with the extras that you have, whatever that is. Okay. I fly about a quarter million miles a year. And several years ago I posted on my blog, if anyone wants to go home for the holidays and can't afford it, let me know. I have a bunch of extra miles. And I sent home like eight people. And the following year I did it. And the media picked up on it and JetBlue donated a whole bunch of flights and I had a whole bunch of flights. And we sent home like 70 people. And we're planning on doing it again this year and we're hoping to send a home close to like 300 people. And it costs nothing, but it gets other people involved. And then people start emailing, oh, yeah, I have miles, let me donate them. And then I mention them and then they get exposure and it's free and it costs nothing and it helps a lot of people. What can you do with the extras you have in your business to help Barry Diller? I tell this story in most of my speeches. Barry Diller was the head of Paramount Pictures. He went to Paramount in the late 70s when everyone said that Paramount was. They were. They were like four inches from bankruptcy. And everyone said it was a mistake to go there. He went there and he did two things. He went there and he got into the office a half an hour early and then he reached out to his Rolodex. For those under 30, a Rolodex is like Outlook, but it has cards. And you'd turn it. And he'd reach out to his Rolodex and he would call 10 random people in his Rolodex every single day and. And 10 random people every day and just say, hey, what's up? It's Barry Diller. How's the weather in New York? What are you working on in Boston? What's going on in London? What are you doing in la? And over the course of three to four months, if you were in. He didn't sell you anything. He didn't want to buy anything. He just simply said, how are you? How can I help you? And if you were in Barry Diller's Rolodex between 1977 and 1988 or 19, yeah, you got a call from Barry Diller about three to four times a year just saying hi. When you had a movie you wanted green lit or you had an actor you wanted sign to a five picture deal, you could have gone to 20th Century Fox or Warner Brothers and, and tried to move up the phone tree or you could have called Barry back at Paramount because Barry was this concept of top of mind. He offered something when he didn't need anything back. He offered his extras, how can I help you? And in exchange, people called him when they had something they needed. And between 1977 and 1987, Barry Diller took Paramount Pictures from 4 inches from bankruptcy to the first billion dollar studio in Hollywood with such movies as Flashdance, Footloose, Top Gun, Beverly Hills Cop, Officer and a Gentleman, Three Men and a Baby. He reinvented Paramount Pictures simply by calling people and saying, how can I help you? What do you need? Which in Hollywood was unheard of because kill, kill, kill. Eat your young and all that. What can you do that you have extras that you can get from people? So the concept of Seinfeld fans, any Seinfeld fans in the audience. So I've been watching it religiously on Hulu because they released all nine seasons or whatever on Hulu. So I was watching season nine, the episode called the Walk off, where George learns that if he leaves them wanting more, he learns to become a comedian. He leaves the meeting after making a funny joke and then walks out. And they want more as opposed to if he makes two jokes, they think he's an idiot. And so he's in the middle of a corporate meeting with his boss, who's the Kruger, who's the guy who actually played the bad cop in Basic Instinct, which is weird, but he's in the middle of this meeting and he makes a joke and everyone cracks up and he goes, okay, good night. And he leaves the meeting in the middle of the meeting and everyone's like, I don't know what's up with you, George, but you've been on lately. Well, we all love that as a society. If you can do something great for someone else, whether it's sharing wisdom, whether it's sharing knowledge, whether it's giving them a free drink or whatever it is, do it. Don't accept praise and move on the human condition people that we are, we feel the need to do two things. We need to feel the need to thank, and we feel the need to share. Okay? And if you don't believe me, go read Twitter. Oh, my God. Upgrade on my flight. Thanks so much, Delta. Or oh, my God, flight's three hours late. I hate you. This airline sucks. Okay? We need to thank or we need to share. Essentially, the Internet runs on bragging and drama. Okay, Go look for the hashtag first class, bitches. You know, bragging and drama. Or, oh, my God, Verizon. What the hell is actually a hashtag? So if you can leave your clients, your customers wanting more simply by doing something nice, they will come back to you because they feel the need to close the loop. You want to be able to have a client audience who closes the loop. The best way to do that is to understand a very simple fact. Having an audience, having customers is a privilege. It's not a right. I would. Okay? It's very similar to, like, wearing spandex. I look around the room, and there are about three people in this audience who actually have the right to wear spandex. I'm not one of them. The majority of us have. We have the privilege. Like, if we train for, like, when I ran my Ironman, like, I had the right to wear spandex that day. I earned that privilege. But the second the race was over, they came. Sir, you have to put on this bulky shirt now. Thank you. It's a privilege. Same thing with having an audience. We're granted the right to make cool shit and to do good things, and if we do that, maybe we'll get an audience. But the second you start assuming that your audience should just come to you, you're going to lose your audience. So what can you do to make your audience want you more? And the answer is to do something nice and not ask for anything in return. Leave them wanting more. And so many businesses don't do that. Instead, they do something nice. And you know what you get four days later? A customer service survey. Okay? And the worst part is they do something nice to you. They go, you know what? I'm going to waive the $75 undercoating charge. And. But when you get that survey by email that asks how I did, that's how my bonus is calculated. So please rate me all tens. No, that's you being a douche. That's you doing something because you want something back. Do it, and don't ask me to do it. And I have a much Better chance of doing it. I have a Regis office in New York now because I'm never home and I'm never in New York. So I got a Regis office, and the guy didn't upsell me. He didn't do anything. He's like, yeah, you know, this, do that and that. I know you need to start right away. So it's the 20th of August, but you can get in right away. And I won't start billing you to the first. I'm like, holy shit, thanks. And he's like, no worries. Happy to do it. Glad I could help. And he leaves, and he doesn't tell me there's gonna be a survey. Survey comes two days later. I tend the shit out of him. Seriously. I said, this guy is the greatest person ever in the history of. He should run Regis. He's amazing. He came down to the regis office. He's like, I just want to say thank you. I'm not sure. Did we have sex? I'm like, no, no. You were just really awesome and you didn't ask for anything in return. The worst thing you could possibly do is do something nice and then ask for something in return. Because that, to me, tells me that you're not real. And if you want an example of how that works in the real world. How many of us have ever gotten emails from someone we haven't talked to in five years because they want something? Someone sent me an email on Facebook last month, a message on Facebook, and it was, peter, hope all's well. Loving the photos that you're posting online all the time. Listen, I wrote a blog post, was wondering if you wouldn't mind sharing it with your really big audience. The thing about Facebook emails, though, is that they just continue like a text. So if you scroll up, you can see what they said six months ago, a year ago. And you know What? I saw 14 different messages over the past four years. You know what they all said? Peter, hey, how's it going? Loving the photos that you've been posting lately. Listen, I wrote a blog post, I was wondering, and so I copied and I screenshot like eight of them. I'm like, just need you to know this has been your communication with me over the past two years. This and absolutely nothing else. So I'm probably not going to mention your blog post, but I might actually turn this screenshot into one of my own. What can you do to seem a little more real? How can you help your audience without wanting anything in return? Then finally, the last point, I want to give you guys A handful of tools that I use. And this is the part where, like, I basically show my hand because I remove the final fig leaf, as it were, because these tools save my life. So they're. And they're mostly free. There's a free tool out there called. And I get no money from any of this shit. I have no connection to these other than the fact that I live and die by these things. There's a website out there called followupthen.com and if you're not using it, you're stupid. What is follow up then? Follow up then allows me to send an email or to bcc an email anytime I want to, any date in the future, ever. So a work example is I am trying to close a deal. I'm trying to work with someone. And he says, you know what? Okay, Peter, let me take a look at that. Why don't you get back and touch me in a week or so? And I email him back and I BCC8daysollowup then dot com. I say, not a problem. I'm going to shoot you a note in about a week. We'll see what we can do. And eight days later, I get that email sent back to me, and all I have to do is send it out. Personal perspective. My wife came to me with some a couple of years ago. We had just gotten married, so about four years ago with some shit about. I don't know, one of her office mates was having surgery for, like, a fucking hangnail. I don't know what the hell. Something that I totally did not care about and with my adhd, like, literally did not care about. But I wanted to make a good impression because I just got married. And so she's like, oh, yeah, My office worker is having surgery on Thursday, and I'm worried about her. I'm like, oh, what is this? I don't know. Something literally, like replace a fingernail or some shit. It was not something to be worried about. But I'm like, all right. So I make a note. The surgery's Thursday at noon. I make a note. Thursday, 4pm I send a note to follow up. Then Thursday, 4pm@followupthen.com, ask Kira about stupid office worker's stupid finger. And it sends me the email back. And I shoot a new email off to Kira. Hey, honey. Just wanted to check in. How's your office mate? Didn't she have her surgery? Oh, my God, you're the greatest husband ever. I'm so glad he married you. It's wonderful for people with adhd, it's free. And it could be any date in the world. It could be six months. So I tweeted out two years ago, right before New Year's. I said, if anyone has any resolutions that they're afraid they won't keep, email me, tell me what they are, and at the beginning of every month, I'll send you an email making sure you keep them. And like 15 people did. And so all I did was I just sent one email. January 1st at followupden.com, february 1st at followupden.Com, march 1st with all of them. And then all I had to do was simply send those emails once a month. It took five seconds and I got 15 people going, Holy shit, Peter's really nice. Plus, I was in their email box 12 times in a year. They remembered me. So that follow up then is a godsend. What else do I love? You guys use newsl. Some people call it newsly n e W-S-L e.com newsl gives you updates on everything that people in your network are doing whenever they hit the news. It's similar to Google News alerts. But the problem with Google News alerts is that is that when Google. So I have a friend named Greg Klayman. He works at Vimeo. Awesome guy. But several years ago, when I first knew him, there was a porn actor, a porn actor named Greg Klayman. I was getting some really interesting updates from the wrong Greg Klayman, you know, And I was like emailing my friend Greg going, you didn't just win an award for like the best guy on. He's like, no. Okay, so newsle only sends you news alerts about people in your network. And it's a very, very smart thing because everyone likes to feel important. Everyone likes to feel like they got congratulated. So when I get these, I take a couple of seconds. Mark, just saw you made the New York Times. Well done. Let me buy you a drink. Michelle saw that you were in Cosmo. That's awesome. Good for you. How is everything going? Simple check ins. Okay? We have a network out there that's only going to get bigger as the concept of friending goes away. Everyone we meet is going to be in our network. Our network is only as strong as the weakest link. Our network is only as strong as the smallest connection we have. And if we're not reaching out to people in our network, why the hell are they there? Okay, think about this. In 24 months, everyone you meet is going to be in your network and it Won't be confusing. It'll actually be easier because the people who you interact with on a regular basis or geographically or whatever will simply rise to the top. The people you haven't talked to in six years, your second grade teacher, your friend from junior high, whatever, they'll just fade away. You won't see them until something connects you to them. It's going to be the same way with business. You have to reach out to the customers that matter in order for you to stay relevant to them. And that's a huge thing. So newslet follow up then does that trends. One of the greatest things. When I meet people and they give me their business card, I ask them a simple question. What's your favorite hobby? No one ever. The problem with business is that no one ever tends to go out of business in terms of, if I meet you and we're talking, we exchange cards. It takes a long time before either one of us are comfortable enough to ask the other person, hey, what do you like to do for fun outside of work? I like to make people uncomfortable. So that's like one of the first questions I ask them, right? It's like, let's just break the ice right away. So what are you into? You know? But when people tell me that, I write that note down on their card and if there's someone I want to interact with, I simply set up a Google alert. Show me once, once a week. Give me stories on pogo dancing or pogo sticking. Go, go dancing, right? Two different things. Got to make sure you get those correct. But it's like the, the episode of the Office where Michael Scott steals Jim's or something like that. Steals his numbers. How is your gay son? Don't mention that he's gay. You know, he reads this aloud, but you simply ask those questions, what are you interested in? And then when you see an interesting article on pogo sticking or on skydiving or on fly fishing or whatever, email it over. It takes five seconds. Hey, Mark. Saw this article. Know you're into this stuff. Thought this might interest you. It makes you top of mind. And by the way, everyone says, oh, you're just full of shit. And you just do this to get. Actually, I don't, because I don't ask for anything, okay? I actually, if you get that article on fly fishing that you haven't seen yet and you're a huge fly fisherman, you know what, that's actually going to benefit you. If it makes us, if it connects us, we want to do some business in the future, great But I'm not saying, hey, I saw this article on fly fishing, by the way, can you upvote my south by Southwest panel, please? I'm not doing that. I'm actually offering help because I believe at the end of the day that not enough people offer help and not enough people offer benefits. So I like to do that. And then finally, if you're not using ifttt, you're wasting a lot of time. IFTTT stands for if this, then that. So ifttt. And one of the coolest things about IFTTT is that it has. It basically sets, if things happen, they send you emails about them. Right? So it sends me emails if, you know, I'm on the advisory council of NASA. So when NASA does something, I get a news alert. The best thing about IFTTT for me is when someone changes their Twitter bio, it sends me a note and it shows me the old bio and the new bio. Because for whatever reason, people post new shit that they're doing first and foremost in their Twitter bio. So that might give me a 30 minute jump on the person who sees their LinkedIn update. They can say, holy crap, you just got that new job. I see it on your Twitter bar. Congratulations again. Everyone likes to feel recognized. So at the end of the day, it comes down to this. This has to be a culture. If you go back to your company and say, I'm gonna do this stuff, but it's not built in and it's not intrinsic into what your company does, you'll fail. If you're your own boss, great. You'll succeed. At the end of the day, hire people who like people. Hire people who like to do nice things. If you're starting companies, if you're working on companies, I have a. I have a series of masterminds that are starting with the third year in a row we're doing them. They start next week. They're called shankmines. Shankmines.com we're in a bunch of different cities. New York and Detroit and Chicago, all over the country. But I started them because I didn't think there were enough mastermind series for people who didn't have millions of dollars to spend, for startups, for entrepreneurs. And I launched it deliberately to help people. And I think that's why they become successful. So I encourage you guys focus on doing things that are likable, to make the world a better place that will generate the revenue you want. I'll leave you with one final thought. At the end of the day, it takes every single employee you have to keep a customer, but only one to lose it. So it has to be an initiative within your company. I encourage you to focus on the initiative to be nice. Create these zombies. And if you really info on what a zombie loyalist actually is, think about this. Everyone has that one friend or that one office mate or that one co worker who loves the Olive Garden. True or false? Okay, everyone. And sometimes you even don't mention to him that you're all going to lunch together. It's like, hey, you want to go to lunch? Oh my God. Olive Garden, do the breadsticks. He's a zombie loyalist for Olive Garden. They've treated him well at some point in the past and they've carbo loaded him out and he will go out of his way. So I'll leave you with this and I want to take a couple of questions. Write this down. What do zombies eat? Brains. What does brains stand for? Bring random amazement into normal situations. If you can do that, you will win the next 50 years of the economic zombie apocalypse. Bring random amazement into normal situations. Brains. With that, thank you for being victims to my new speech. I hope it was useful. Petershangman.com petershan all the socials I seriously encourage you to reach out and email me and let's connect in person because I like doing that. And if I can ever help you out, don't hesitate to reach out. Thanks guys.