Jay Baer is the founder of Convince & Convert and a 7th generation entrepreneur. He is the author of 6 best-selling books, including Talk Triggers. He is also the founder of 5 multi-million dollar companies and a Hall of Fame speaker.
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Your Big Idea: Successful Entrepreneurs have One Big Idea. Follow JLD’s FREE training & you’ll discover Your Big Idea in less than an hour!
TalkTriggers Guide – Get the 6-step process guide free. This is the same process that Jay’s company uses for big brands!
Talk Triggers book – Jay’s book.
3 Value Bombs
1) If you’re playing “follow the leader,” you will never be anything other than second best.
2) We are physiologically wired to ignore things that are average and discuss things that are different.
3) When you offer experiences to your customers that are too grand, it doesn’t create conversation. It creates suspicion. So, it doesn’t need to be something huge. It has to be something noticeable.
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Show Notes
**Click the time stamp to jump directly to that point in the episode.
Today’s Audio MASTERCLASS: How to Grow Your Business (for free) With Word of Mouth with Jay Baer.
[01:38] – Jay shares something about himself that most people don’t know.
- He sold Budweiser.com to Anheuser-Busch for 50 cases of beer!
[05:12] – A quick preview of what this Audio Masterclass is going to be about.
- Word of mouth is responsible for somewhere between 20-90% of your customers.
- Nobody has a word-of-mouth strategy. We just take it for granted. We will fix that in this Audio Masterclass.
[06:07] – Why word of mouth is more important than ever.
- In a community, we trust each other more than ever, and we trust companies and organizations less than ever.
- 83% of Americans have made purchase in the last 30 days based on recommendation of a friend or a family member.
- Advertising is only the 7th most persuasive form of decision-making when people make a purchase.
- There are 6 more persuasive forms than advertising; a few of those are: Recommendation of a friend or family member; social media posts from friends; news coverage.
- Amongst younger Americans, especially Gen Z, advertising is – so far – a little bit more impactful.
[09:08] – Companies are ignoring word-of-mouth; why is that the case?
- We take it for granted. We just assume that our customers, our supporters, or our tribe will support us. We just figured that if our company is good, people will talk about it because it is good.
[09:51] – Things Jay’s company has done to get word-of-mouth going.
- They do large research studies every quarter.
[12:17] – How to make the story your customer is telling meaningful.
- We believe in business so often that competency creates conversation. But that’s not the case because of two reasons — all of your competitors are good, or they wouldn’t be in business at all; as human beings, we are physiologically wired to ignore things that are average and discuss things that are different.
- Word-of-mouth is an operational choice that you make to do something different in your business. Unfortunately, most companies don’t make that choice because they are playing “follow the leader.”
- If you’re playing “follow the leader,” you will never be anything other than second best.
[16:32] – Why the “follow the leader” strategy is a terrible idea.
- If you’re trying word-of-mouth by doing something that everybody else does, it’s not a story that customers want to pass along because the story itself doesn’t make the customer look good when they tell it.
- You want to make sure the raw materials you’re provide your customers are something that the listener, i.e. the friend of your customer, hasn’t already heard.
[20:46] – Jay breaks down the 4 ingredients to Talk Triggers.
- There are a lot of books about the importance of word-of-mouth, but the problem is there aren’t a lot of books on how to do it.
- The 4 things that must be true:
- It has to be remarkable. It has to be a story worth telling.
- It has to be repeatable. It’s got to be something that every customer is offered every time.
- It has to be reasonable. When you offer experiences to your customer that are too grand, it doesn’t create conversation. It creates suspicion. So, it doesn’t need to be something huge. It has to be something noticeable.
- It has to be relevant. It makes sense in the context of who you are and what you are.
[30:28] – Jay discusses the the 5 types of Talk Triggers.
- Talkable Generosity—the easiest and the only one to conceptualize for businesses.
- Talkable Responsiveness—that’s when you are faster than customers expect.
- Talkable Usefulness—being useful more than your customers expect.
- Talkable Empathy—you must be kinder and more human than your customers expect.
- Talkable Attitude—that’s when you are a little different. Everything about your business is just a little wacky and a little interesting.
[35:14] – Jay’s parting piece of guidance.
- His book Talk Triggers is for anybody who is in charge of making a business bigger.
- Go to TalkTriggers.com/fire and get the 6-step process guide free. This is the same process that Jay’s company uses for big brands!
- Turn word-of-mouth from something that you do accidentally into something that you do on purpose. If you do that, your business will positively, absolutely be on FIRE!
Transcript
0 (2s):
Boom, shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs On Fire brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network with great shows like Gold Digger. Today, we're pulling a timeless EOFire classic episode from the archives, and we'll be breaking down how to grow your business for free with word of mouth to drop these value bombs. I brought Jay Baer into EOFire studios. Jay is a founder of convince and convert and a seventh generation entrepreneur. He is the author of six best-selling books, including talk triggers. He is also the founder of five multimillion dollar companies in a hall of fame speaker.
0 (42s):
And today Fire Nation, we'll talk about why, if you're playing follow the leader, you'll never be anything more than second best. And we are psychologically wired to ignore things that are average Fire Nation. So let's discuss things that are different and so much more. When we get back from thanking our sponsors, have you ever thought about what it takes to make you profit by selling content online? Then you need to join amplify with Thinkific. This free event features 30 plus expert creators who will show you how to make revenue selling content online. Visit thinkific.com/amplify to RSVP for free. The, my first million podcast features famous guests, discusses how companies made their first million and brainstorm new business ideas based on the hottest trends and opportunities in the marketplace.
0 (1m 27s):
One recent app was all about how venture capitalists make money. Listen to my first million, wherever you get your podcasts. So Jay, see what's up in Fire Nation, a little details about something that most people don't know about you
1 (1m 43s):
Fire Nation. It is fantastic to be back with you. Always awesome to hang with. JLD look, I have been an entrepreneur now for bro, like 25 years old, Jane I'm deceptively I'm deceptively youthful looking. I don't think I ever told you this story. Some people may know it. Cause I mentioned on stage sometimes my partner and I in my very first internet company in 1993, we sold budweiser.com to Anheuser Busch for 50 cases of beer. That's a true story. We were so psyched. Cause we're like, bro, that is a lot of beers, gazes 50 cases of long neck, Budweiser, regular, but heavy because here's the thing though.
1 (2m 26s):
We registered all these domains when domains were free, right? You didn't have to pay anybody because who would want a website? Like I spent my first five years of my digital career convincing companies that they would want to have a website at all because they would literally say, well, Jay, why would we want to have a website? Because we close at six. So why would we get like stuff about us? Like, this is no joke, man. This, this is not dumb companies. These are like real companies. Right? And, and so yeah, we, we sold it for 50 cases of beer. So then I went on vacation because I was so stoked. And while I was gone, my partner registered some other domain names without me. So one of those was beer.com and he sold that to, he sold that to Molson Bruin for $5.1 million.
1 (3m 12s):
And he hasn't really worked since then, other than just stuff he wants to work on. And I'm here again on, on your show. So, so that's how that worked out.
0 (3m 22s):
Okay. Now I don't want to like rub this in, but just, if you had to estimate, if you'd like waited six years, it's like 99. It's like 2000. It's like the height of the.com. Like what do you think you could have got for budweiser.com?
1 (3m 34s):
And that's when he sold beer.com was at the height. So I don't know. I don't really know. Well, here's the thing though. I don't want to go too far down the rabbit hole here, but when it got into those days, right, 98, 99, 2000, they changed the rules, right? The international numbers and organizations said that, look, if you have the international or even national trademark and copyright on that name, you can't necessarily like squat on it and hold a hostage. So there was a period of time where you, you know, beer.com. It's not a brand, right? It's a thing. So that's a different story. Budweiser's obviously a brand. And so there was a time there where you could have probably extricated a lot more money out of them, but then eventually you would have gotten zero, not even 50 cases of beer, they just would've said, give it back to us.
1 (4m 18s):
It's our trademark. So it's a fine line.
0 (4m 20s):
Okay. Let's just say, let's just be happy with the beer, but heavy. Let's just be happy with it.
1 (4m 23s):
Absolutely.
0 (4m 27s):
Well, I think one reason why you still look so youthful and people would never guess that you've been doing this as 93 and earlier is I think it's the glasses, man. I think really glasses give you that youthful.
1 (4m 36s):
It's also that I'm always endorsed. I think that's part of it. I'm an avid endorsement.
0 (4m 41s):
Oh, Fire Nation. As you can tell Jay, Baer's rocking the mic today and the audio masterclass we're going to be going through is how to grow your business for free with word of mouth. And I'm really fired up about this for a number of reasons. So Jay, we're going to go into a lot of things, but just give us maybe a 15 to 22nd rule, real quick teaser preview of what this audio masterclass is going to be about.
1 (5m 5s):
Word of mouth is responsible for somewhere between 20 and 90% of your customers. I don't care what business you're in. That's true. We have all the research to prove it yet. Nobody listening right now, nobody in Fire Nation actually has a word of mouth strategy. You probably have a marketing strategy. You have a digital strategy, social media strategy, crisis management, strategy, HR and recruiting strategy, you know, nurture sequence strategy, but nobody has a word of mouth strategy. We just take it for granted. And it's crazy. We're going to fix that in this audio masterclass. Wow.
0 (5m 34s):
Going to fix that Fire Nation. And again, talk triggers is Jay's new book. We talked about that in the intro a little bit, but this book is actually so on fire right now that I heard that Amazon is running out of copies in their Kindle store. So just think about that for a second. And Jay, let's just dive in why word of mouth is more important than ever break it down for us?
1 (5m 54s):
Well, there's a few reasons why this is true JLD but I think the one that Fire Nation will really understand because of the nature of the community is that we trust each other more than ever. And we trust companies and organizations less than ever. And that's not just me being hyperbolic that there's data around that. That is true. Everything about that is true. Not to mention the fact, when you hear a recommendation from a trusted person, if JLD says, buy this book, if, if, if your friend says, Hey, this is a great restaurant. If somebody, you know, says, Hey, this is a software company, you ought to think about supporting you, take that seriously. You put those recommendations into action.
1 (6m 36s):
83% of Americans have made a purchase in the last 30 days based on a recommendation from a friend or family member. And, and because of the nature of how we interconnect today, when you get those face to face, kind of word of mouth referrals, like, Hey, we're on the phone, we're on Skype. I see you face to face and Hey, you gotta check this out. Like that carries so much value in our world today because so much of what we've been taught to believe in business and as consumers is that advertising will tell you what to buy. But here's the truth. Advertising is only the seventh, most persuasive form of, of, of decision-making when people go to make a purchase.
1 (7m 17s):
But of course it's, you know, hundreds of billions of dollars worth of effort, but it's not as persuasive as me saying, Hey, JLD I think you gotta do this.
0 (7m 24s):
I mean, Fire Nation, every single show that I've watched over the past five years on Netflix on Amazon has a blade direct recommendation from one of my friends who I know like, and trust their opinion. Literally I will not watch a show that has not been recommended to me by one of my friends period. And that was just a mind blowing number. J when you said that advertise is only the seventh most persuasive, I mean, that is insane. I mean, I don't want to put your feet to the fire here, but what are at least some of the six that are, there are more persuasive than advertising
1 (7m 55s):
Personal experience, recommendation from a friend or a family member face-to-face offline, right? Phone, email, whatever social media posts from friends. Certainly one of them to, to some degree, depending on the, on the product category news coverage. Right? So if you, if you read about it in the newspaper, that kind of thing, you're like, oh, okay. I believe that. So it's that, it's that kind of thing. But then straight up ads is pretty far down the list. However, interesting footnote there, Fire Nation amongst younger Americans, especially gen Z, right? Who are 14 to 24, depending on how you, you cut off your generations. Advertising is so far a little bit more impactful for that group.
1 (8m 37s):
They haven't gotten cynical yet, I guess.
0 (8m 39s):
Fascinating. And one thing that we've kind of talked about and recognize is that companies are just flat out ignoring word of mouth. I mean, why is that the case?
1 (8m 48s):
We take it for granted, you know, everybody knows word of mouth is important, but we just assume that our customers and our, and our tribe, our nation will support us. Right. We just figure, well, I'm a good company. So people will talk about my company because it's good. Right. We just sort of figure that competency creates conversations, but it doesn't really,
0 (9m 10s):
What is something that your company specifically convince and convert has done to really try to get word of mouth going? Like, what are some things that you've seen that have really been awesome? I mean, you're a big proponent of podcasting. You've launched a ton within convince and convert. What are some things like that that really seemed to work for you and your business? Would that word of mouth?
1 (9m 30s):
Like one of the things we're doing now is quarterly really large research studies. Like we did one recently, which was breaking down the social media programs of America's top 50 hospital systems. Right? So, so not just saying, Hey, you should hire us to help you because we're smart. It's, Hey, we've done the research to demonstrate to you that we know what we're doing, and if we can help you great, if not, here's some fantastic information that you will appreciate as well. So it's those kinds of things that get, they get passed along. But, but what we really try and work on the most with our customers is being what we would call talkable responsive. So it's one of the kinds of ways that you can create chatter is by being faster, more responsive than customers expect.
1 (10m 14s):
One of the ways we do that JLD is that you, you probably know Fire Nation may not know that my company's all virtual has been for a decade, totally distributed all over the world. So what we do is we get different time zones and all that. So clients know how to reach me and all the other people on my team, but each client can use the email now in O w@convinceandconvert.com that goes out to everybody in the company immediately. It's like a bat signal. And so if a client sends that everybody drops what they're doing and whoever is the most capable or the most available, we'll jump on that client request immediately. So a lot of professional services companies are relatively responsive and they'll can get back to you same day or next day, or a couple of days later, we get back to our clients in seconds, literally in seconds.
1 (10m 57s):
And so we've put a lot of effort into that operational differentiator of responsiveness.
0 (11m 2s):
Yeah. I find that really interesting Fire Nation when Jay was talking about how ads are actually less effective. And one of the reasons why they're specifically less effective is because guess what we expect as to of course rave about their own product, their own service, whatever that might be, but you just expect that. But then I really thought that was interesting is that you were talking about news coverage. And when we see news coverage, you know, there's like an independent third party there. And so when you're seeing like an independent third-party, they're probably not getting benefited in any direct way by talking positively about a product or a service or a company or whatever it might be. We're like, wow, well, they don't really have a reason to be pumping this company up. So they must be good. So that can be a really effective way when you're getting that news coverage in a meaningful manner and something Jay, that I really feel like you've done great with your company.
0 (11m 48s):
And we're really striving for here with Entrepreneurs On Fire is really making the, what the, tell the stories about meaningful and even sometimes more importantly, what they don't tell stories about. So kind of break that down for us.
1 (12m 1s):
Yeah. Yeah. We touched on this a minute ago that that we believe in business. So often that competency creates conversation. That being good is, is enough to spurt shatter. But the research that I conducted for the new book suggests that that's not the case typically. And that's because of two reasons, one, all of your competitors are good, generally speaking, right? Or they wouldn't be in business at all. Now you may very well be better than your competition, but are you so much better that it requires somebody to say, Hey man, you would not believe like these guys are, are so much better maybe, but typically not. The other thing that's important to understand is that as human beings, we are physical.
1 (12m 41s):
We are physiologically wired to ignore things that are average and discuss things that are different. So what we're trying to do when we try to build companies for free, and this is without question, the best way to build any companies, to have your customers do it for you. And the best way to do that is to give them a consistent story, to tell that they will then tell their friends. But that story has to be something interesting because they want to tell their friends and interesting story, you know, just say that right? That that restaurant has good food. That's not a very interesting story. If you're, if the restaurant has a mermaid show from nine o'clock to midnight, like the sip and dip lounge in great falls, Montana.
1 (13m 25s):
Yeah. For real man behind the bar, it's like this. Okay, true story. I want to go. So this bar, this bar is in great falls, Montana. Okay. Which is hard to get to, even by Montana standards. This, this bar was named last year. One of the top 10 bars in America worth flying to by GQ magazine. And it's because every night from nine o'clock to midnight at the sip and dip, they have a giant aquarium behind the bar every night between nine and midnight mermaid show, that's their talk trigger, right? That's their word of mouth generator. That is a story that every single person who walks through that door, it will tell multiple other people.
1 (14m 9s):
It's not about. They have a good Patty melt. It's not about, they have a great piano player, although they do, it's a mermaid show, right? And that's a choice. Like word of mouth is an operational choice that you make to do something different in your business. Unfortunately, most companies don't make that choice. JLD because they're playing follow the leader. They say who's the best company. The biggest company, the most successful company that fastest growing company in our category, what do they do? Let me copy what they do. Let's adopt the quote unquote, best practices. Here's the problem, though. If you're playing follow the leader, you will never be other anything other than second best. And the story that people tell is not your story. It's your competitors story actually.
1 (14m 50s):
So you're a much better off figuring out what your version of mermaids behind the bar, because that's the story that your customers want.
0 (14m 57s):
I mean, there's so many things that I'm pulling out of this Fire Nation. I want to go over a couple right now. I mean, thinking about this in the old days, competency did create conversation, but that's no longer the case because guess what? Everybody is good or they wouldn't be around right now. Everybody got good. You need to be great. You financial need to be great. And I love that phrase you use is that we ignore average and we discuss what's different because think about a Fire Nation. If it's not a threat to our lives or something, that's going to vastly improve our lives. Why are we going to waste our time on it? If it's just average, if it's just, you know, like a snail going across a road, that's not a threat to us, or it's not going to vastly improve our lives. We're just going to step on it or just step over it.
0 (15m 39s):
So you want to be different. You want to be discussed. You want your customers to tell stories like the mermaid show. The mermaid show is a story in Fire Nation. If you think Jay's shopper value bombs. You're right. And we got more of these value bombs coming. When we get back from thanking our sponsor, your customer's experiences, everything. When it comes to building and scaling your business and with multiple customers on board, your marketing team likely has conflicting priorities to juggle. Unfortunately, this means that customer oriented tasks can often fall through the cracks. But what if you had a system that allowed you to bring your customer's experiences to the forefront so that your marketing team isn't stuck in the weeds of operations and can instead focus on building targeted, meaningful campaigns, start giving your customers what they deserve.
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0 (17m 5s):
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0 (17m 48s):
Sign up for free today at thinkific.com/amplify. That's T H I N K I F I C.com/amplify. So Jay we're back and we kind of discussed this a little bit before the break, but I want to dive deeper into why same is lame and why that follow the leader strategy is simply a terrible one. So let's dive into this.
1 (18m 12s):
If you're trying to create word of mouth by doing something that everybody else does, it's just not a story that customers are likely to pass along because the story itself doesn't make the customer look very good when they tell it, see, we tell stories that make us look good. It's just how we're wired, right? So you want to make sure that that what you're giving customers, the, the raw materials for word of mouth that you provide them is something that the listener I E the friend of your customer hasn't already heard, because once they've already heard it, like, oh yeah, I know another business that does that. It takes all the air out. It takes all the air out of the balloon, right? Then the customer feels bad. It's not a good story. And the whole thing falls flat. So it's gotta be a little tweak. And I got to tell you how, how incredibly powerful this is.
1 (18m 56s):
So you travel all the time, lots of listeners travel. So you might know the talk, trigger that sort of word of mouth storytelling, device of DoubleTree hotels. So DoubleTree by Hilton every day gives everybody who checks in a warm chocolate chip cookie. When you check in that's their thing, they've done it every day for 30 years, they've done this warm chocolate chip cookie, 75,000 cookies a day. They give away. Now that's a lot of cookies. So I talked to a thousand DoubleTree customers recently for the book, and I said, Hey, have you ever told anybody about this cookie 34% of their customers JLD have mentioned the cookie to somebody else without being asked in the past 60 days.
1 (19m 42s):
So if you do the math on that, it's 25,000 cookie conversations, every 24 hours. Now there's a reason why you almost never see an ad for DoubleTree because the cookie and the conversation it creates is their advertising. It is how they grow the business. And everybody listening, everybody in Fire Nation can do the same. If you make a choice to do something different, instead of choosing to try and rip off the good ideas of your competition.
0 (20m 11s):
Now, I do love that phrase. He uses that we tell stories that make us look good. I'm not a hundred percent sure how telling somebody that you ate a chocolate chip cookie makes you look good in this day and age,
1 (20m 23s):
We got a good hotel.
0 (20m 25s):
I totally get it. And I love it. And I can actually, so clearly remember back in 2004, I was in Fort Knox, Kentucky, which is about 45 minutes south of Louisville. And every weekend we'd get off our armor officer basic training, and we'd go up to Louisville for the weekend. And we had, you know, 10 hotels to choose from. And we would just kind of go random, like whichever one would be the cheapest and we'd find our hotel. We'd all bunk up in there. And one of those weekends early on in the training, we stayed at a DoubleTree and we all got those cookies and we walked up and as we kind of unpack, and we're eating the cookies, you know, we're 23, 24 years old, and we never went to another hotel. The rest of the time. It was literally, it was just that they had us for life.
0 (21m 6s):
We went back, you know, 15 weekends in a row to Louisville. And we stayed in DoubleTree every single time because of the cookie. There was no great reason. And also because we could take the hinges off the door really easily in the adjoining room to play beer pong. But that was another reason the cookies were so amazing. And my mouth is literally was watering when you're talking, but I went right back to Louisville, Kentucky that DoubleTree, that chocolate chip cookie. And I've talked about that by the way, multiple times. Now, here we are talking about an altered.
1 (21m 33s):
Well, and here's the thing about that, right? When you think about the other approach, right? Which what are the best practices and, and let's not worry about storytelling or word of mouth. Let's take word of mouth for granted, as we all do. What you would focus on instead is what, what we should have as a comforter bed, or a better location or better food in the bar, or, or some other kind of convenient, better parking, some other kinds of conventional hotel attributes. But what really gets the story told is none of those things, it's the cookie. You made a hotel selection, not based on location, but based on a cookie. So you just got to figure out Fire Nation. What's your cookie, what's your version of that story?
0 (22m 10s):
So we're talking about cookies. Cookies obviously have ingredients in you within your book. Talk triggers have broken down a talk, trigger into four ingredients. So kind of walk us through this for
1 (22m 22s):
Look, there's lots of good books on word of mouth is, you know, the idea of word of mouth has been around since the first caveman sold a rock. And so this isn't like, wow, Jay invented a new way of marketing. No, the problem with word of mouth though. And there's a lot of great books out there. The problem is there's a lot of books out there that say word of mouth is important and it is more than ever as we discussed. But what, there's not a lot of books that say, okay, Jay, I believe you now, how do I do it? So Daniel lemon, who coauthored the book with me, he and I were really intentional about this book to say, look, we want a system that every business can use to repeatably and reliably grow their business at no cost by building a word of mouth wave by using storytelling and talk triggers to do so.
1 (23m 6s):
So it's real specific, right? It's a four or five, six system, four ingredients, five types, six steps. We'll talk about that. But I just want to emphasize that it's, it's not, it is not a workbook. It is a regular business book, but it's almost a workbook because it's so prescriptive. So the first piece of the four or five six system is the four things that must be true that have to be present for your proposed differentiator to really work as a talk, trigger, to work as a reliable, consistent word of mouth generator that will differentiate your business. And, and one of those is it has to be remarkable, right? It kind of goes without saying that, that the story has to be worthy of remark, right? That's what remarkable means. And as we talked about, JLD like, you know, it has to be a story worth telling.
1 (23m 49s):
And, and so it doesn't have to be hard. The operational differentiator doesn't have to be complicated. I mean, making a cookie, isn't really that hard, what it is remarkable, right? So it has to meet that test. It has to be something that the customer and the friends of the customer haven't heard over and over and over. That's the first piece let's go into. Number two. Second piece is it has to be repeatable. What I mean by that is it's got to be something that every customer is offered every time. I'll tell you a little story about this. There's a restaurant in Sacramento called Skip's kitchen, and Skip's is a hamburger counter service restaurant, right? So you go to the yoga or the front, and they have their menu board there. And you say, I want to Patty miles done a chocolate shake and onion rings.
1 (24m 29s):
And then they give you a number and then they bring your food out pretty common, but they have an incredible talk, trigger, an amazing word of mouth generator. Here's how it works. You place your order. And then from underneath the counter, they whip out a deck of cards and they fan all the cards out, face down in front of you. And they say, pick a card and you select a card. And if you get a joker Fire Nation, your entire meal is free. Shut the front door. Now this restaurant Skip's kitchen is 10 years old. They have spent a grand total of $0 and 0 cents on promotion in the entire history of the restaurant. Yet there's a line to get in every day.
1 (25m 10s):
And they were just named the 29th best hamburger restaurant in America, by USA. Today, they can do that because three people a day on average win that joker game. And when they win, they go crazy. They're like taking, taking Patty melt selfies and calling their mom. That is on their Instagram story. No doubt. Yeah, for sure. IgE story is a high school. Marching band shows up. I mean, it's a pretty spectacular deal, right? And so it doesn't matter whether or not you win. It just matters that you get a chance to play. The key is that it is repeatable. Every customer, every time gets a chance to play. It's not just on Wednesdays. It's not only at launch.
1 (25m 50s):
It's not on ladies night. It's not. If you buy five burgers, you get to play. Everybody gets a chance to play. This is important because we are at a place right now in marketing, especially digital, especially social, where many businesses have embraced, what we call surprise and delight, surprise and delight is where you take one customer in one circumstance and you do something amazing for them, right? That's like hotels do this all the time. Right? You check into your hotel and like, oh my God, there's a live Panda bear in my room. That's amazing. I'm going to put that on Twitter. Right. You know what I mean? Like, they're just trying to like, shoot the moon for one customer. Right? But that that's, that's a lottery ticket. That's not a strategy that you can't do that every day.
1 (26m 29s):
And it may not work anyway. So you're much better off making an operational choice, right? To give out cookies, to have a joker game, whatever your thing is and, and give every customer the opportunity to tell that story. Goodness,
0 (26m 44s):
That is such a good story. So we've talked about remarkable. We've talked about repeatable.
1 (26m 48s):
The next third one is reasonable. And one of the other things we do in business today, because it's, it's hard, right? It's hard to get attention. You know, consumers are cynical. There's lots of competition. There's a million podcasts. There's a million, whatever you're doing. So what we try to do sometimes we, we, we, we convince ourselves, we tell ourselves a story, which is, all right, look, man. The only way I'm going to be able to break through is if we do something extraordinary, not just remarkable, but like bizarre. And so it's like, all right, we're going to have a contest. And one of you guys is going to win an island. You're like, wait, what am I gonna win an island? Right? You just, you, you try to make it so big to break through. But the problem is when you offer experiences to your customers that are too grand, it doesn't create conversation.
1 (27m 34s):
It creates a suspicion. You don't want your customers to be hunting down your terms and conditions. You don't want your customers to be saying, there's no way they're going to give me an island. Like, if I say JLD, if I say, and you get a car and you get a car and you get a car and you get a car, who am I? Who am I talking about? Oh, bruh Oprah. Right? Who else can do that? No, bruh. Nobody, nobody else can do that. Right? Because nobody else has that kind of like no one, even, even you, as, as authoritative, as you are to satisfy her.
0 (28m 3s):
And I can not give out cars, Fire Nation, I'm sorry.
1 (28m 6s):
Everybody gets a car fire. And they should be like, wait a second. Just giving us, everybody
0 (28m 10s):
Gets a coconut. I got plenty of those in my front
1 (28m 12s):
Yard. Now you have a coconut. Right. So you can't overshoot it. Right? So when we say that your, your talk trigger has to be reasonable. It's got to be something it's like the Goldilocks zone, right. It's gotta be interesting enough to be talkable, but not so big that it's doubted. And DoubleTree's the perfect example. Right? You know, you're making a hotel selection in Kentucky based on a cookie. And if you go on Twitter and just search DoubleTree, plus cookie, you'll see tweets like that all the time. I only go to DoubleTree because of the cookie, et cetera, et cetera. But bro, it's just a chocolate chip cookie. Okay. Let's keep this in perspective here. It's a cookie. So it doesn't have to be something huge. It just has to be something noticeable. So it's gotta be reasonable.
1 (28m 53s):
And the fourth one unrelated topic is it has to be relevant. You can see these are all ours. If you're playing at home, the fourth ingredient is your differentiator has to be relevant. Which means it makes sense in the context of who you are and what you are, who you are and what you are. So there's a, there's a locksmith in New York city, his name's Jay Sofer. And he's the best locksmith in New York city as rated by Yelp has the highest Yelp rating of any locksmith. He also has one of the highest Yelp ratings of any business at all of any business. I mean, think about what that requires in Manhattan to be one of the highest rated businesses period. It's pretty crazy. Yeah. So one of the reasons, one of the reasons he's so successful is that he has a talk trigger and it works like this.
1 (29m 34s):
So he comes to your house and he changes your locks or re your apartment or let you in because you locked yourself out or whatever, before he leaves, he always every single window and door lock in your premises, not just the one he worked on. And then he also does a security audit of your entire home for no cost before he leaves. That's his thing. There's a, there's a testimonial of him on Yelp. Like one of the reviews it says, I almost want to get locked out again. That's how good my experience was. But it makes sense because he is a locksmith. So oily in the locks and doing a security audit is contextually relevant if Jay, so for the locksmith said, Hey, thanks very much for having me. Recare your place.
1 (30m 15s):
Here's a chocolate chip cookie. You'd be like, all right, why are you carrying these around locksmith? Like it, it just, it doesn't make any sense. Right? And so why, the reason why DoubleTree and the cookie works so well, is that DoubleTree even within the Pantheon of, I think there's 14 other brands inside the Hilton umbrella, their whole thing and has been for decades is warm. Welcome. So DoubleTree, even more so than Hilton. And the other brands focuses on that first 10 minutes and they train their staff really specifically on what happens from the second you walk in to the second, you get to your room for the first time, which includes the cookie ceremony, that whole piece, the warm welcome is there kind of overall brand positioning differentiator and the cookie fits right into that.
1 (30m 59s):
So it makes sense, right? If, if, if Hilton DoubleTree by Hilton said, Hey, when you get home, we'll do a security audit of your home. You're like, wait, what? That doesn't make any sense either. So it's got to be relevant. Your differentiator. Does that make sense?
0 (31m 13s):
It does. And I just want to go over the last two real quick, because I thought they were very powerful because reasonable and the point that you made that I loved was being unreasonable. Doesn't create conversation, Fire Nation. It creates suspicion. So keep that in. Check that Goldilocks can't be too warm. It can't be too cold. It's going to be somewhere in the middle and then relevant. It has to make sense with who you are and what you are. You don't want some locksmith handing you, you know, a grease cover chocolate chip cookie. It just not is going to make, it's just not going to make sense to that level. So Jay, I want to end with the five types of talk triggers. We don't have to go through all of them because of course your book goes in depth through all of them and maybe pick a couple out that you're really powerful.
0 (31m 54s):
If you want to mention them all you can. And then
1 (31m 57s):
The one that we see most often we've talked about it. Here is talkable generosity. That's when you're more generous than customers expect so that the cookie is talkable generosity. Oral in your locks is talkable generosity, giving away food. If you pick the joker is talkable generosity. That's when you see most often, cause it's the easiest to conceptualize for business, but it's by no means the only one. So there, there are four other options. Talk about responsiveness, which is we, we mentioned when we talked about convincing convert, that's when you are faster than customers expect, there's a business in New York. Another one is in New York called Paragon, and it's a car dealership, Honda Acura. And they have this amazing deal where they will pick up your car from work or from your home.
1 (32m 41s):
They'll fix it overnight while you're sleeping and then bring it back to you in your driveway before you leave for work. I like that. Right? How genius is that? Because you know, they're in Manhattan. And so getting the cars to, in front of people, cause the traffic is like insane. Like, well, we'll just do it at night. Like magic elves, horribly responsive. Right? Super good. One talkable usefulness. Right? So being more useful than your customers expect, there's a realtor in Florida. His name is Joe Manasseh and he only represents sellers. He only represents people selling the house and he only represents sellers who are, have homes between like 200,000 and $400,000 us. So in that market segment, it's pretty common that you don't have a ton of upside equity in your home.
1 (33m 24s):
So what happens a lot for those sellers is they think, well, I could work with a realtor or I could try and sell this sucker myself and keep the commission makes sense. Right? Well, most realtors have a website and a content marketing and social media strategy, which tries to convince sellers that, you know what, don't try this on your own. You need to use a realtor because you know, I'm an expert. Joe does the opposite. Joe wrote a 60 page free downloadable PDF on his website. And it's called how to sell a home on your own in Florida. And it's exactly that it's, step-by-step precisely how to sell a home on your own. And I interviewed Joe for a book I wrote and I said, Hey man, I don't get this because it seems like you're telling people exactly what they need to not hire you.
1 (34m 5s):
You say, yeah, but here's the thing they get to about page 19. And they realize that it's way harder to sell a home on your own. And they thought like, nah, dude, I don't want to hassle with this. And it's his number one source of customers. His name and email address are on every page. And not only does it create conversations and customers from those people, but the friends of those people, because if your home is between 200,000 and $400,000, chances are so are your friends. And when your friends go to sell their homes, like, Hey, JLD why aren't you going to sell your house on your own? You're like, bro, don't do it. Don't even think about it. Don't even try it. Then you'll get to page 19 and you'll realize it's a bad idea. Just call Joe. He'll hook you up. Right? It propels his business. It literally grows his business at no cost.
1 (34m 48s):
Your customers will clone themselves. If you give them a consistent story to tell talkable generosity, talkable, usefulness, what else we get? We got responsiveness generosity usefulness. The fourth one. I got to tell you, I wish it wasn't in this list. And in three years ago, wouldn't have been on this list. But the fourth one is talkable empathy where you are more kind and more human than your customers expect. And I wish that was not on the list, but I don't think I'm speaking out of school. When I say that we are currently operating in an empathy deficit environment and the default state of business used to be, to take care of their customers and to be warm and human and caring.
1 (35m 28s):
And that's not the default state anymore for a lot of businesses. So when you are like that, it creates conversation among your customers because they can not believe how awesome you are. The fifth one we touched on a little bit earlier is talk about attitude. That's when you're just a little different, right? Everything about your business has just a little wacky, a little interesting, a little off kilter, male champions, a good example of a talkable attitude. Talk, trigger with the, with the, with the gimp. And we mentioned one of the all-time great talkable attitude, examples with the sip and dip lounge in great falls, Montana with aquarium of mermaids. That's an amazing attitude driven story.
0 (36m 11s):
So Fire Nation, talkable, responsiveness, talkable, generosity, talkable, usefulness, talkable, empathy, talkable attitude. Those are the five types of talk triggers. And Jay, you wrote this book talk triggers like really break down for Fire Nation, who this book is for. And really the massive value they're going to get from reading and consuming this content,
1 (36m 32s):
Anybody who is in charge of making a business bigger should read this book. So if you are at the executive level and owner in charge of sales or marketing, that's the group that should read this book and it will help every single person. The last third of the book is all about how to do it. The six step process for how to create talk triggers. And it says, okay, here's what marketing should do. Here's what sales should do. Here's a customer service should do. If you're a small business and you all of those things, we've got recipes in there for you as well. There's all kinds of worksheets and examples, all kinds of bonus stuff. In fact, if you go to talktriggers.com/fire. talk triggers.com/fire. The actual six step process document for exactly how to do this, which is the same process that we use at my company to do this for big brands, it's right there for free to download it
0 (37m 18s):
So Fire Nation, one thing I love about Jay is he writes complete books. Now I'm not going to lie a lot of business books out there. I feel like after the first 25, 30%, you know, you're like, okay, I've gotten the, these higher value from this book that I'm going to get the entire book, not Jay Baer books. These books are just value pack the entire way through this. Why I loved when you send the in the back third of that book is literally the six steps that you go to follow this process. So Fire Nation, you're going to be getting a book that takes you from a to Z through this entire process is going to be valuable every single page, every single way, every single step throughout talktriggers.com/fire and Fire Nation, you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with.
0 (37m 59s):
You've been hanging out with JB and JLD today. So keep up the heat and head over to EOFire.com type Jay in the search bar. This isn't the first episode he's ever been on. He's been on a bunch of past episodes. So you can listen to those older shows. We also dropped value bombs on different topics in different areas. In fact, the first time I had him on, we talked about his entrepreneurial journey, which is quite a doozy. We never mentioned the Budweiser thing, but it was a perfect
1 (38m 27s):
Love
0 (38m 28s):
It. So Jay, what's the final just parting piece of guidance you want to give to the Fire Nation before we say goodbye,
1 (38m 35s):
You already know everything we just talked about is true. Everybody understands that word of mouth is hugely important to their business, usually important, but yet we're very, very passive about it. We just take it for granted. When I want you
0 (38m 48s):
To do is turn on word of mouth from something that you do accidentally into something that you do on purpose. And if you do that, I can absolutely positively guarantee that your business will be on fire, Fire Nation talktriggers.com/fire. That is your call to action. And Jay, thank you for sharing your truth with Fire Nation today for that brother, we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. Hey, Fire Nation. Hope you enjoyed our chat with Jay today. And if you're ready to finally discover your big idea, I've created an amazing free training for you and it's short, but it's sweet, but it's valuable.
0 (39m 29s):
And it's all the things you need to get to your big idea to get to your north star. So just visit your big idea.io, sit down, take the training, get your north star. You won't regret it. I will see you there. Have you ever thought about what it takes to make you profit by selling content online? Then you need to join amplify with Thinkific. This free event features 30 plus expert creators who will show you how to make revenue selling content online. Visit thinkific.com/amplify to RSVP for free. The, my first million podcast features famous guests, discusses how companies made their first million and brainstorms new business ideas based on the hottest trends and opportunities in the marketplace.
0 (40m 11s):
One recent app was all about how venture capitalists make money. Listen to my first million, wherever you get your podcasts.
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Killer Resources!
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