AJV (00:01): Hey everybody, and welcome to the Influential Personal Brand podcast. This is AJ Vaden here, one of your co-hosts. And today is Uber. Uber, super duper special because I get to interview a very good close personal friend. In fact, we’ve been online together for already 17 minutes, and I just finally hit record. takes it that long to say our hellos. DA (00:24): It’s time for others to join in this conversation just a little bit AJV (00:28): . And I have a formal bio that I will read to Dave Avrin. However, everyone, you’ll see it online, it’s David Avrin. But I think it’s really important to know, like Dave is not only a really good close personal friend, an incredible speaker. He is a multi-time author. But more importantly I think what everyone really needs to know is that much of the genesis of Rory Vaden, you know, my partner in crime, my husband, much of the genesis of his brand, take the Stairs, really came through the work that Rory did. And the conversations with Dave and Rory credits you in so many stories. And I think that what people don’t know is that you, you can’t do for yourself often what other people can pull out of you. Right? And I think so much that’s what we do at Brand Builders Group. AJV (01:22): It’s why books are so important. It’s like you can’t do for yourself what others you can do in community. And that’s what you did for Rory. And Rory still tells everyone that you’re his mentor for it’s a lifelong mentor. But you’re a close personal friend. I think you’re just so wicked talented. You’re the best dad, awesome husband. So anyone who is listening, I would just encourage you, this is kind of one of those episodes that you just wanna stick around for because we’re gonna be talking about what it’s like to become a highly paid professional speaker. What it’s like to write several books and more importantly of what his new book is about is how do you become ridiculously easy to do business with? And it doesn’t matter who you are, where you’re at in your journey, what your business is, we all should want to become ridiculously easy to do business with. AJV (02:11): So this is an episode for you, right? Sometimes I go, here’s what it’s for. Here’s what it’s not for, but today it’s for you. It’s for all of you. So with that, let me give you a little bit of the formal accolades and then we’ll jump right in. All right. Here’s what you need to know about Dave Rin. He’s one of the most in demand customer experience speakers out there. He also does tons of consultings for companies all around the world. He is A CSP, which is a certified speaking professional for the National Speakers Association. He’s a global speaking fellow. He has spoken in 24 countries around the world, and, you know, you have a lot of years left. So I’m, I’m thinking that you could probably hit 50, right? So I think you should be going for 50 countries at minimum. His insights have been shared all across all media, all around the world. And at this point, what, how many, is this your fifth, sixth book? DA (03:06): This is my seventh book altogether. My seventh book, sixth business book. I also wrote a sappy Dad book in there. But yeah, my sixth business book, AJV (03:15): Y’all, DA (03:17): Y’all AJV (03:18): Such a lifelong. And here’s what I would say. It’s like, I think this is like one of the, those great conversations where there’s just a, a firsthand wealth of knowledge, right? Like the co the day’s conversation isn’t gonna be about things that you pulled from other places or things that you learned. It’s what you do. It’s what you live. It’s, it’s how you’ve done this. And that’s kind of where I wanna start. As you might be somewhat newer to some of the people in our audience, and we have a lot of people in our audience who aspire to write a book one day Sure. And speak on stages one day. So what I would love for you to share with everyone is, how’d you get into this? How long have you been doing it? And what should that aspiring speaker or aspiring author know? What do they need to know? DA (04:02): Sure. Well, I, I think first I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge the, the, the lovely introduction and the acknowledgement, you know, it was, or in my careers. I, I look back at, at you and, and Rory and the, the tremendous work and the, and the pride I have welling, welling up inside me. I, I feel very paternal, but, but very proud. I, when I met early or met Rory, he was 19 years old and in incredible potential. And I, I love that line that says, for those of us who have enjoyed a measure of success, it’s important that we send the elevator back down and, and, and to help up. And I watch what you do now, and both of you and the audience and the, and the people and the brands that you’ve built, and the careers that you’ve bolstered is phenomenal. DA (04:44): I mean, my, my background and everybody has a background, right? Everybody starts somewhere. And, and I was in marketing and public relations for many, many years. I helped organizations craft the words they use to better describe what they do. That was the early part of my career. I, I worked for some, some major brands and, and was on staff. I was the PR director of Children’s Hospital in Denver, Colorado in my early twenties. And I had great success in generating publicity and coverage and on Good Morning America and Oprah and today’s show and all the magazines. But the world has changed in a significant way. And what was then back trying to get on magazines on our radio shows. Today, of course, it’s blogs and podcasts and different ways for us to communicate. But I, I made a transition about, about 25 years ago as I realized that that you can actually get paid to teach what you know. DA (05:37): And so after having a, a reasonable career in this work, I, I was invited to speak at an organization and, and it was just, it was to the core who I was. ’cause I think I’m, I’m a teacher at, at the core. And, and it just grew from there. So now we’re in my 25th year. I speak for a living full time, and I leverage that for consulting. And we have a, a variety of others, you know, assessments and, and, and that as well. But, but to the core, it’s, it’s, I I love sharing from the, from the front of the room. As you had mentioned, this is my, my sixth book. And I think all of that’s important because it’s important to stay relevant. It’s important to stay current. And we look back at what we knew 10 years ago and, and we better know something different today if we’re teaching the same things and sharing the same information and strategies that we did 10 years ago. DA (06:28): It’s antiquated how we buy, how we connect, how we learn and pay, and, and, and share is all different. So it’s exciting for me because there’s always something to, to learn. There’s always some new strategies and tactics to share. And I’m fortunate, actually, it’s been 26 countries now that I, that I’ve spoken in around the, around the world. In, in November I’m in, oh boy, here’s some geographic name dropping. I’m really fortunate ’cause I gotta bring my lovely wife with me. We’re, we’re speaking in London, Barcelona, Amsterdam, Malta Vienna and Gdansk. I love that. So it’s just, it’s a tremendous, it’s a tremendous time of life. AJV (07:07): I love that. And you know, one of the things you said that I want you to circle back on, ’cause I remember my early days, and this was Lord, 18 years ago when I was, you know, joined the Nationals of Speakers Association, my early twenties, and was going to all these sessions, learning from people who’d been in the business for 10, 15, 20, 25 years. And I remember sitting in this one particular session, and a question was asked, like, you know, how do you book speaking gigs? Like, how, how do you get on these stages? Like, I want to do that. And I remember one of the speakers was like, well, you know, you just need to answer the phone when it rings. Oh, DA (07:43): Wouldn’t that be nice? AJV (07:45): Why did you make the phone ring? DA (07:48): Oh, yesterday year, AJV (07:49): . So this is a question that still plagues me today. And so I would love for you to share, it’s like, how did you make the transition from like being in corporate marketing to that first invitation to speak to, oh no, like, this is my job now. Like, this is my thing. I am a speaker. How did that happen? DA (08:10): Well, you know, I, I, let me, let me start by saying, here’s what many of us have learned. Speaking is not a business. It’s not getting the gig is the business speaking’s the performance. We love to do that. I, I we talk to countless people who, who have, is something burning in their heart, this passion I wanna share. I want to touch lives. Nobody’s hiring speakers because you want to touch lives. The, the nobody’s hiring speakers because you want a cathartic experience and exercise your demons or your therapy on stage. I’m actually fortunate that I’m on the main stage at, for the National Speakers Association this year in my session, my very first slide is somebody putting on a pair of blue rubber gloves. And I’m gonna say, hang on friends, this is gonna be uncomfortable. You’re gonna feel a little pressure. And there’s just a lot of nonsense in this business. DA (08:57): And I love sharing what it really takes. And I’ll talk about sort of the marketing aspect of it. But one of the interesting things is we have a very interesting profession because arguably, it’s the only profession where most people get into this business because they’re encouraged by somebody who has no idea what it really is. Oh my God, that story about you and surviving cancer, when you climb that mountain and you fell into that crevasse and you say, you should be a professional speaker, I love the way you tell stories. You could touch people’s lives. And I wanna say, I think you should just feed your family. Now, if you can use that story and leverage it to help companies increase their sales and guard against disruption and future proof their engagement or motivate their people, that’s legitimate as well. Then there’s something there. DA (09:39): But the reality is, the business of speaking is, is marketing. I, I, I hear people say, listen, I took a, I took a three day bootcamp on hand gestures, and I can’t get the phone to ring. And I’m like, pick up the phone. You know, or the, here, here, here’s the, here’s the, and I and I go on a rant about this. People say, you know, the world needs to hear your story. They don’t, sorry, they don’t, they need to increase their sales. Now if your story can help them do that, right? And so that’s the mind shift that, that’s so important. For me, it was a, a seminal moment. And it was actually at one of the, the National Speakers Association conferences where I, I had a real learning moment. I had had a new book. My, my book. DA (10:21): It’s not who you know, it’s who Knows You had come out. And I was 20 years ago, and I was doing very well, and I was talking about my speaking business. And I was sitting around with some colleagues and our, our mutual friend, Dave Horse Hager I talked about my business and he said, dude, you don’t have a business. And I looked at him, I said, what are you talking about? I said, this is my best year ever. He said, no, no, no. You have gigs. You don’t have a business. And I said, what’s the difference? He says, what, how much are you gonna make next year? I said, I have no idea. I said, of course you don’t because you have no process. How are you finding contacts and turning ’em into leads? Are you turning leads into prospects? How are you leveraging and converting those prospects into paying clients and, and beating out other speakers for that, for that particular slot? He says, you are so headed for a fall. DA (11:07): He says, I’ve seen this before. I’ve seen speakers make seven figures and they can’t pay their mortgage two years ago because what they were talking about was hot. He says, you need to put a business behind it. And so that’s what we did. And I went home that night and I didn’t sleep. And I went home and I talked to my wife at the end of the conference and we talked about how do we do this? And how do we find a way to hire staff and create systems and process. And to be clear, it’s not an automated system. I don’t automate anything. Yeah, I could, I could hit one click and reach 50,000 prospects to say, Hey, hire David as a speaker, and 99.9% will never be opened. So we have gotten very good at creating a process. We, we find ways, we find organizations that hold meetings. DA (11:51): We look ’em up, we find out who they had for LA last year, when their next meeting is. We know when to pitch. And we try and make it very simple. We know that the, the one behavior that is predictive of our success is if I can get prospects, people who hold meetings to watch my preview video, if I, it’s pretty good. And if they watch that, I have a chance. If they don’t, they don’t. So I don’t wanna go too deep into it. It there, but, but you’re right. It’s a business. It’s a business. And it’s a business that I’m, I’m up at 5:00 AM I go to the gym. I try and be at my desk no later than six 30 or seven. ’cause I wanna get a little bit of work. And because I have a lot of clients internationally. And so, you know, it, it’s a business. And I think the, probably the most elusive thing in the speaking business is longevity, because most speakers starve. We, we like to call new speakers, ignorance on fire. They, they’re so passionate that, and I’m, I’m, I’m on a mission to help speakers feed their families so they can do this for a long time. AJV (12:51): You know what I love about this? And, and I kind of knew what you were gonna say, which is why I asked it. But I think it’s such an important message for everyone to hear, because what people love is creating content, sharing their content, DA (13:05): Performing. Yeah. Performing. AJV (13:06): It’s great. But what you have to become amazing at is the sales, the marketing. Right? Absolutely. I, we had this conversation not too long ago at one of our events, and someone said, well, you know, I’m, I’m running out of, you know, you know, kind of running outta rope before I’m gonna have to go back and get a full-time job. And my question is, well, how many sales calls are you making every day? And they kind of looked at me and I was like, every week. And they kinda looked at me and they’re like, what do you mean by sales calls? And I was like, okay, wow. We need to, we need to talk about actually how you get booked on stages. Yeah. Yeah. And that seems that you’re calling people, you’re emailing people, you’re doing outreach. This is sales. DA (13:54): So much of the conversation is around the passion and the story and, and stepping into your truth and, and or stepping into your power and speaking your truth. It’s nonsense. It’s nonsense. And, and people, that, that’s really hurtful for people. I don’t mean it to be because it’s coming from a good place. People are telling other people, speakers are telling other people their friends and family, oh my God, you have this, you’re so good at telling stories. If you have passion in your heart, if you have a drive, you can be a No. It’s, I mean, that’s, that’s the foundation of it. I mean, you don’t have to be great to make it as, you don’t have to be great. You have to be good. Mm-Hmm. Your content has to be great, but you have to have sales and marketing. And, and I don’t know why that’s scary for people. DA (14:37): I, I think some people are, are reluctant to be, seem overly self-promotional. But the reality is you will touch very few lives. You’ll make a very small impact if you don’t get booked. Yeah. And think of it like any other, other business. And you and Rory have been teaching this for years. People don’t know who they don’t know. Hmm. And I’m not, I’m not famous. I’m good at what I do. There’s a lot of people who are good at what they’re, I’m not on Shark Tank. Right. I don’t have that kind of a platform. So we hustle and we work and we work and and half of the, the presentations, the gigs that I get are from organizations who had no idea who I was until we reached out to them. AJV (15:16): Perhaps. I think everyone needs to pause and let that sink in. It’s like, if you think some bureau is gonna fill up your calendar, or you think some agent’s gonna show up on your door and magically get you booked or any of that, the truth is you’re the agent, DA (15:32): Well, you’re your sales director. Yeah. That’s the other partner as well, is even when I got staff, and this is sort of the, the, the, the quintessential E-Myth, right? It’s Michael Gerber. That, that we feel like as long as suddenly we have help. So we kind of push it to them like, good, finally you go do it. You can’t abdicate, right? We, we, we think that, that we’re delegating. We’re not, we’re abdicating. You go do it. It doesn’t work that way. You have to be the sales director of your own organization until you get big enough to actually hire a sales director. But if you’re big enough to be able to, to have an assistant I I, I love that line. I’m trying to think who said it that if you aren’t, if you don’t have an assistant, you are your assistant, right? . DA (16:11): And so, but, but we also have a responsibility. We can’t bring on that second person until we are confident that we can cover their salary for at least a year. Right? ’cause it takes time, but it’s time, it’s process. But here’s the best part, aj, it’s worth it. It’s worth it because you gotta feed your family while you get to do what you maybe were, were born to do. But, but ultimately it has to be in the service of others. It has to be to help them do what they do. They’re not paying you 10, $15,000 for you to have a cathartic experience and bring joy to people’s lives. Right. and so, and, and, and because I’ve had a measure of success, and I’ve done this for a long time, I’m, I’m approached by a lot of people who want to tell me their story. Right? Here’s what I’ve done. Here’s what I want to do. You know, I survive cancer. I I won this Olympic medal. And, and listen, I’m not mocking ’cause I haven’t done any of those things. But the, your business is not about your story. It’s about how do you leverage your story in the service of others. And, and it has to be unique enough. So there’s a lot to go into, but yeah. Sales and marketing, sales and market, I love that. AJV (17:18): How do you think books play into this meeting? Very DA (17:23): Important. AJV (17:24): So, you know, clearly you think so because every time I talk to you, there’s a new book coming out and maybe we just need to talk more . I feel like you come out a lot of books, right? And it’s like I think it’s, you know, it’s so funny ’cause Rory and I are in the process of writing our next book, which is together. And we were just talking about the writing process. And you know, the last time that we were in the writing process was 2012, 12 years ago. And we’re like, man, like dust off the cobwebs. And I, we know how important it is in terms of just being able to, well, one, we believe in the power of books. I believe the Power book, it has the power to change a life. I think it’s a, a really important component of legitimizing the, all of the thoughts that we have and formalizing them into something that someone else DA (18:16): Absolutely. AJV (18:17): And, you know, digest and actually act on. But in terms of the power of a book and how it can help you build your business. Yeah. Like how, how, how would you say that all integrates? DA (18:29): Well, it, it, it doesn’t in a big way. And I’m gonna, and I’m gonna challenge one small thing that you said. First of all, I, I write books not because it’s time for another book. It’s, it’s relevance, it’s gravitas, right? It’s that credibility that they’re the person that wrote that book. But I’m also very cognizant that a lot of people aren’t gonna read it. Larry Wingett is, is is a little cynical about it. He says, I sell souvenirs in the back of the room, , right? And I read all, and I write all I read all of his books. But I do that as well. I mean, it’s, it’s a nice ego boost. I get done speaking and people line up and they wanna take pictures or sign book, but I know a good number of them are never gonna read it. I just say, put it on the shelf next to good to great. DA (19:09): Or take the stairs or atomic habits. So I look like a big deal. I hope people read my books. I put a lot into it. But, but even if they don’t, here’s, here’s the value. And it’s a tremendous value. It’s credibility. They’re the ones who wrote X or Y. We find that in our marketing and in our sales processes, we’re introducing people to me as a speaker and a, a good resource for their next conference. Just the fact that I have a book coming out there in peaks their interest, which is really interesting that it’s just as valuable in the lead up phase as it is to when you publish it. And of course, the time afterwards because you don’t want it to be an event. You want it to be a process and a marathon. But books are really important to legitimize that. DA (19:54): Why are we turning to this person for consulting or speaking another ’cause they’re the ones who wrote blank, right? Most people’s first book tends to be just a compilation of blogs and articles that they’ve written. If like, I’ve written all of this stuff, let’s put it all together in some reasonably linear fashion, but it doesn’t really work. And I’ll freely admit, that was my first book. It was just, here’s a compilation of all my writings. But I try and be much more intentional now. Everybody comes up with a title they think is the, the Cure for Cancer that tastes like chocolate. And then we learn. I learned, I learned from Rory, I learned from Rory when, when he learned the lesson and realized that and what he teaches and, and I took this to heart, was that title has to be something aspirational. DA (20:40): Like I want that. And I didn’t learn my lesson. I had a book I that came out during Covid called The Morning Huddle, which was the physical manifestation of a video series that I had created. And it’s all these great conversations for your morning huddle. Nobody sits around and says, I need the morning huddle. Right? I don’t I need, but do they need to know how to be ridiculously easy to work with? Do they or to to do business with? Do they need to know why customers leave? My book, why Customers Leave and How to Win Them Back is in six languages now because it’s perfectly aligned with Rory’s lesson about that’s aspirational. I want that. I wanna know that. And so there’s a whole process. I’m actually holding a, a, a retreat to help people write their first book. DA (21:24): And there’s so many people, you know, people come up to you all the time saying, how do you do that? God, I wish I could write away. Well, you can. But I think there’s also a, a, a fallacy that writers enjoy writing. I I don’t, I think I’m a good writer. It’s just, it’s agony for me, but I’m disciplined. I do it because I need to feed my family. I’ve got five colleges. I’m paying for five colleges and, and four employees. And so I work, but I, there’s a famous line, A woman was asked, famous author, I can’t remember her name. She was asked if she, she says, they were asked her, do you enjoy writing? And I loved her answer. She says, I love to have written . I’m like, that, yes, that it’s, but there’s also that moment. And you guys know that, that moment when that box arrives and you, and you and you put a knife across the seam and you open it up and you, and you look at it and you grab it and you feel it, and you go, wow, that’s my book. DA (22:18): Like, I, I did this. Like, I, I wrote a book and, and you’ve seen it on the screen and, but now you can touch it and hold it. It’s, it’s powerful. It’s really powerful. And, and it’s something that many millions of people talk about and a much smaller fraction actually do it. So it’s incredibly important. It’s a legacy thing, depending on what it is you wanna write. It’s a galvanization of the content and the knowledge that you’ve learned over the years that you can, you can put down on paper and is there for, for history. It’s an accomplishment. But for a business, it’s credibility. It ab it absolutely helps. They don’t have to buy your book. They don’t have to read your book. But the fact that you wrote it and take some time and write a good book, don’t have ai, write it for you. Write your book. It’s credibility. And that’s really important. It, it drives, it drives your fee structure. It drives your visibility. Very, very important. AJV (23:15): Yeah. You know, one of the things that we talk about all the time is you can actually look at the trajectory of any speaker’s kind of financial path in terms of their fees and literally go no book, book bestselling book, right? A Wall Street Journal, bestselling book, New York Times bestselling book. And it’s like, you can literally watch, you know, the, the escalation percent when it comes to fee structure with the enhancement of that credibility. And so, so I think that’s just a really important conversation also leading up to this new book that you have released, which I think it’s a killer title, and I think everyone wants that. So let’s talk a little bit about this new book, ridiculously easy to do business with. And I think we would all like to know how do we become that, right? So what, what’s, what’s the book about? DA (24:10): Sure. the book is about, I mean, at the, at the core, it’s customer experience. I spent the early part of my career as a speaker and a consultant, probably the first 15 years, talking about marketing and branding. How do we better describe what we do? How do, how do we choose and craft those words? But I saw a significant change happening in the marketplace. And this was of course, with the advent of social media and social proof and, and mobile devices and everything else. And it became very clear that what we say about ourselves while not unimportant, is far less impactful today than what other people say about us. And so that was the research that went into my book, why Customers Leave. And we’re in a time, a really remarkable time. It’s a great time to be a customer or a client. DA (24:54): The, the conveniences are, are off the charts. It’s a tough time to be in business. And so, as I have spoken, because I I’m also a former Vistage chair, I, I led CEO Roundtable groups for years, and I spoke, I’ve spoken to 539 CEO Roundtable groups over the last 15 years. And as I would go around the table, I say, what’s your competitive advantage? Why you, what’s the secret sauce? It’s always some version of the same answer. It’s our superior quality, commitment, caring, trust. It’s about our people. Here’s what the research shows. People are prioritizing. Speed. Customers are prioritizing speed, speed of access, speed of answers, speed of of resolution, speed of delivery simplicity of process, accommodation for unique circumstances. Don’t be rigid. And of course, convenience in many ways. Our, our colleague Sally Hogshead talks about that different is better than better. DA (25:49): And I would submit that convenient is better than better. ’cause We’re in a time of pervasive quality. Everybody’s good, everybody’s good. So where are the real opportunities for, for distinction, for standing apart and standing and standing out. And that’s what drove the book ridiculously easy to do business with. It’s about reducing friction at every point possible in the process. If you have a business process an interaction, a purchasing process, or ordering for your clients that was designed 20 year, 10 years ago, it’s already outdated because we’re used to being able to buy with one click. And, and we can lament the loss of iconic brands. You know, we can lament the loss of, of Bed Bath and Beyond, or Toys Are Us. I guarantee you, nobody’s struggling to find toys. Nobody’s struggling to find toys. Why did they go? They, because we have other better options, better by some measure. DA (26:43): It’s more convenient, it’s more prevalent, whatever that might be. And so in the book, I I, I came up with 28 different ways to to be ridiculously easy. And, and I, on our business, I was on a podcast and somebody was asking me how, why is it that business just doesn’t get it? And I said, I think they get it. Of course they get it. It’s very smart, very good people running businesses. But I think there’s a grand experiment going on, which is, how much can we cut? How much can we push to the consumers? How much self-checkout before it’s that law of diminishing return. And they say, this has gotten so frustrated that frustrating, that now we’re gonna go somewhere else and we’re still figuring out what that is. There, young people I, I heard that somebody said, for the first time ever, we’re serving five generations at the same time. DA (27:30): And I was, and young people want to buy very different than older people, and we have to find ways of serving all of them. Those points of frustration, some of ’em are pretty obvious about being ridiculously easy to reach or to resolve issues. But I even cover chapters. You need to be ridiculously easy to see. Most marketing collateral, material, business cards, and others are designed by people in their twenties and thirties. 65% of all is by people over 50. I can’t see any of that. . I’m 60 years old. I’ve got reading glasses everywhere we go. We go into restaurants now and, and I can’t read menus. They’re, they’re too small or they’re on a QR code and they make us watch it on our, you know, look at the menu on our cell phones. And so I think businesses trying really hard to, to manage that customer journey, to do things that are efficient and effective and profitable. DA (28:23): And my job is to bring an external perspective of saying, here’s what’s frustrating for your customers. And why is that important? Because we have a bullhorn that reaches around the world now. We have Yelp and TripAdvisor and Rotten Tomatoes and, and Glassdoor. Everybody’s good today because if you weren’t, you would be outed very, very quickly. And so in the book, ridiculously easy to do business with, it’s sort of a here’s an outside perspective on all of your systems and processes, and here’s how your customers really feel about it. And it’s also a way to sort of future proof your engagement and say, how do you think business? How do you think your customers want to do business with you? Or will wanna do business with you not 10 years from now, two years from now? What do we need to start doing now to, to make those tweaks and adjustments? DA (29:09): We’re all competing against Amazon and Uber in terms of simplicity of process. And I think there’s a lot of lessons to be learned. I’ve been very gratified. We’ve just been out as of the recording of this, this podcast. We’ve just been out for a couple of weeks. We went to number one very, very quickly in the consumer relations category. I think we were number two in, in entrepreneurialism or something else. And of course that’s Amazon. I mean, let’s talk legitimate. The goal is Wall Street Journal or New York Times or others as well. But it’s a process. And it’s for anyone in business to be not just competent, not just capable, but preferable. And that’s the key that we don’t talk. AJV (29:49): You said this and I’m curious to know in the book, like what are some of the biggest frustrations that customers have with companies? Like what are they? DA (30:00): Yeah. Well, the, some of the frustrations are obvious ones, which is just when we’re literally yelling into the phone. Real person, real person agent, I think you said no. Oh, right. You know, and, and there’s, I unders I’m not naive. I understand that AI and chatbots, and it’s, it’s all part of where we are and it’s all part of where we’re going. But when they make it so difficult to get an off ramp to a real person when you need one I’m, I think I’m the only person on the planet. I’ve never had a a question that’s frequently asked apparently, because I can never find my issue. And one of the things I talk about is, is there’s a strategy, is that if you, if you are really frustrated and you can’t get through, whether you’re typing in a chat bot or you’re on the phone, just start shouting profanity into the phone and, and AI recognizes that it’s frustrat and they’ll transfer you to a real person or, or just yell, know, cancel membership. DA (30:54): And then you get to, and, and people laugh and, and it’s true. It’s unfortunate. Why, why do we have to yell profanity, right? In order to talk to get mad to get attention. Why do we have to get to that point? And then here’s the thing. ’cause I have a real heart for customer, customer service agents. What a tough job. But now organizations are, are, are frustrating their customers to the point where by the time we talk to a real person, they’re being inundated and abused all day long. I think it’s incredibly unfair that they do that to, to those representatives. What else? It, it’s, it’s an inflexibility that it, that shouldn’t be. Somebody was asking like, how could this possibly be getting worse if we’ve been talking about customer service or experience, whatever for 50 years, how could it be getting worse? DA (31:41): And it is, and here’s why is because we’re getting more rigid. We’re trying so hard in our companies to have some level of predictability in the process. Here’s how they reach out or learn about us and, and, and inquire and buy and negotiate and pay and deliver and, and it works, right? ’cause And if we can have greater level of predictability of that process, we can predict revenue and cash flow, right? And we can plan for that. We can hire for that. The problem is, your customers haven’t read your employee manual. They don’t know how they’re supposed to buy from you. They just know how they want to. But that’s changing. So we get rigid and we say no to stupid things. You know, I was checking out of a hotel and they’re like, sorry, we’re not doing any late checkouts. I’m like, I can’t get out. DA (32:26): I’m going to a And they say, yeah, we’re gonna charge you for a second day if you can’t be open. I’m like, okay, then I just won’t check out of the room. There we go. I just pay for another. And it’s, it was an easy yes, but the manager said, no, they checkouts today. Right? And the pushback I get for this kind of flexibility, I think is really important. I get this pushback and they say, well, if we do it for you or if we do it for him, we to do it for everyone. And my answer is, no, you don’t. It’s your business. They, it, it’s such a crutch. Well, if we do it for you, we have to do it for everyone. You do whatever your works for your customers. Most won’t need the special accommodations. And so when I talk about being ridiculously easy, like I have clients all over the world. DA (33:05): I’ve got clients in Mumbai and Singapore and Johannesburg. When I have a call with a client, a Zoom call, I’m the one talking at two o’clock in the morning or three o’clock every time. It’s never them because I am ridiculously easy to do business with them because my competitors, my colleagues, our friends, they’re phenomenal. I have, we are, we have such great colleagues who are so good at what they do. What’s my competitive advantage? Yeah. I’m gonna knock it out of the park on stage, but I’m also not gonna make you search for a phone number. I’m not gonna make you fill out a contact form in order to reach a real person. I, I, I thank speakers all the time, and I’ve spoken at nine of the international associations. I said, I want to thank you all for putting contact forms instead of emails on your website because you put my kids through college because I’m, I’ve already sent over a a contract by the time they’ve responded to your, your, your contact form. DA (34:03): I, I, and, and to be fair, I’ve got multiple small business, they all have contact forms and I have cell phone numbers for every member of my team. We have email addresses. I’m ridiculously easy to get in touch with. I mean, there’s, there’s some maddening things, AJ of, of companies that make it difficult to reach you. I mean, are are you that good that your customers are gonna put up with that? And, and people say, well, you don’t have life balance if you’re, I’m not talking to three o’clock in the morning every day, but this feeds my family. Hmm. And my, my clients ask, and the answer is yes. What’s the question? Hmm. Right, because AJV (34:39): That’s good. I literally, yesterday as you’re talking, I’m like, this would, like, this literally happened to me yesterday. I signed up for this health portal and I won’t share their name, but it’s like this supposedly amazing thing that was referred by a very good friend, and you do all this blood work and then it’s kind of putting the patient back in control of all of your panels. Yeah. So doctors don’t own it. And it was like a really cool concept. So I’ve been trying to schedule my second round of blood work, right? There’s no email address, there’s no phone number. The chat bot keeps saying, can’t accept request right now. So I’m like, I can’t chat with you. I can’t call you, I can’t email you and it won’t let me schedule my appointment and it has to be in a certain period of time, which now has expired. Now I have to wait 30 more days to use what I’ve paid for. And it was like, I to the point of like, if I can’t use it, I want a refund. I can’t talk to anyone to even request it. Right? And so it’s, but DA (35:35): That, but that’s the other thing. That’s the other thing thing. And you talk about where the frustrations are about organizations that make it ridiculously easy to cancel. Well, they do that on purpose. I think it’s slimy. Or, or here’s the other one is they they give you a free trial, but it’s not a free trial. Right? Sign up for a free trial. What’s the requirement? You have to give ’em your credit card information. Right? And then we have a, that that wall comes up that, that trepidation. It’s the number one reason for abandoned shopping carts in membership trials is a requirement for financial information. So I go through all of that. Yeah. But it’s one of those, it’s like, who designed this process? And that’s the difference between product centric and customer centric. That product centric is, we’re very good at what we do, and so let’s deliver that and sell as many as we can and create market share. Nothing wrong with that. Right. I love that AJV (36:19): Too. One of the things that I love, like we’ve had this conversation so often, and like, one of the things that we’re really big advocates of, and I love, like there’s an entire book about this is give it all away for free. In fact, give it away. Give everything away to the point where your customer says, man, I feel like I’ve gotten so much value from you, I need to pay you. And that’s so counterculture, right? It’s, and we brought that up and somebody said, well, aren’t you afraid that people are just take advantage of you? And I’m like, no, I’m not at all. Because they could go get this information for free at tons of places, right? They’re not paying for the information at that point. They’re going, I want it from you because that’s who I’ve begun to trust. That’s who I’m gonna, I, that’s who I like. AJV (37:08): Now, this is who I have a relationship with. It’s like the information is out there. Buy a book, listen to a podcast, read a blog, watch YouTube, you know, watch any of the social media platforms. It’s like whatever it is you wanna know, you can go find it. You are not paying for information at this point. You’re paying for experience, relationship, trust, organization, application, execution. You’re paying for those things. So don’t be, don’t be afraid to give things away so that people understand like, there’s real value here. I want to give you my money, not I have to. DA (37:40): You know, I think for many of us, we’ve come to realize sometime back, the biggest competitor out there is free, right? I, I think when, when newspapers stopped running the presses and they thought, we’re gonna just think about how much money we’re gonna save and we’ll have everybody use subscription. I’m reading an article online and all of a sudden I get stopped and something pops up that I have to subscribe to the New York Times to read the rest of the article. I don’t because free is pervasive. But, but I like what you said, but I think it goes even further. And this is where you have to accept the, the compliments and realize that some people, when you’ve built a really strong personal brand, when you are known for the wisdom and the content and the value that you provide, there’s a certain category of people that want to touch the robe. DA (38:24): They wanna be there because it’s you. They want to, to pay more and get a deeper access to you and information because it’s you. And, and you’ve earned that. And you have to earn that, which is the other part. You can be well known and have a great personal brand, but if it’s not a brand of value and that people aspire to be you to some extent there are people who will come to that workshop to learn from you. There’s things that we can learn almost anything online. You can go to YouTube and you can learn how to use YouTube, right? But when you have built that strong service oriented, high content personal brand, there’s a category of people that will only pay that money and do more than what they could do free because they want to touch the robe. And that’s something that, that you build and something to be proud of, and it’s something to leverage. AJV (39:17): Hmm. So if you were going to, you know, kind of summarize some of the highlights of the book and go, all right, everyone who’s listening, clearly we don’t have time to talk about all 28 things, but if there were two or three things that you’re like, hands down, yeah, you love me doing this to be ridiculously easy to ba do business with, what are some of those things? DA (39:38): I, and lemme go a little bit broader and which is the importance of, of sort of the concept. I was about to keynote a conference and the, the CEO was on before I was there was a huge organization. There was probably 800 people in the audience. And the CEO was doing the big rah rah speech. And at the very end, he said, and, and remember, we’re gonna win on quality. At the end of the day, it’s about quality. And everybody cheered and went crazy. And I thought to myself, I could not disagree more. At the end of the day, it’s not about quality. It’s not, everybody’s good. Everybody’s got quality at the beginning of the day. It’s about quality. Quality is the entry AJV (40:13): Requirement for entry. DA (40:14): Quality gives you permission to do business in the marketplace. You better be good or the marketplace will figure it out. But at the end of the day, it’s about competitive advantage. It’s not what do you do? Well, what do you do better than others who do it well? And so back to the book, I I laid out 28 short chapters of here’s all the things that you can do to gain a competitive advantage. Recognize that your competitors are all good. And here’s the worst thing about competitors, and nobody says this out loud. Most of those competitors are very, very nice people. They’re, they’re, they’re not our our enemies. They’re, they’re our, our our colleagues in arms. They’re all, we’re all trying to feed our families. And, and if you, if you believe that you’re so good that, that everybody has to discover you and they’re gonna reject everybody else. DA (41:00): I heard somebody saying that, that they what makes us different is we actually do what we say we’re gonna do. There you go. And I look at ’em, I said, you actually believe that. Don’t you? Do you actually believe that your competitors are consistently underperforming and that they have yet they have, but to discover you, everybody’s good. You need a competitive advantage. And the competitive advantage is eliminate friction. Don’t, don’t make your customers do business the way you want them to do if they want it to do differently. So it’s taking a step back. It’s understanding what customer centricity really means. And all of this, of course, profitably but we’re in a very competitive environment. I think the theme of the book and the examples are all about, here’s how you do it, here’s why. It’s, it’s a challenge for us. And here’s, here’s a different way. DA (41:47): And each one, each chapter has stories and examples and marketplace examples and research to bolster the points. But it’s very, very, I mean, even the, the tagline says it’s a practical guide to giving customers what they want, how and when they want it. And it’s an ongoing process, and it’s of, of reexamination. And it’s also my mantra and my message as I, as I travel the country and travel around the world my presentations are, there’s a lot of humor. It’s very entertaining. But I use that strategically to temper a tough message about what it takes to compete and win today. And whether you’re in small business, whether you’re building your brand, whether you aspire to be a speaker or consultant, it’s a business and you treat it like a business. AJV (42:32): Hmm. So what would you say if I were to ask you, when you say, sure, you know, this cocom competitive advantage, and that’s a part of what you’ve gotta figure out, like what is, as a speaker and an author, what is your competitive advantage? DA (42:46): My competitive advantage is, is a, I’m always relevant. And I, and I am committed to delivering it, knocking outta the park on the, on the stage every time that I think is the entry fee. I I am, I’m really good at what I do, as others are as well. My competitive advantage is I never stop marketing. I never stop selling. Through covid, through all of that as well, I did 87 virtual presentations on a webcam in my home studio because I don’t, I don’t, I don’t have a plan b hmm. And I love what I do, but I don’t get to do it if I don’t have clients to do it for. And so my competitive advantage is that I will outmarket. When we have somebody, we have a, a potential hit, I do a, a BombBomb video message, and I talk to ’em, hi, it’s David Verin, thanks for this. Here’s what we, I can’t wait to work with you. Here’s all the books that I’ve written, and we send ’em a book and here’s what we do on our first email. And here’s what we do on our second email. If they don’t respond, here’s how we put ’em back in the system. We don’t automate anything. My competitive advantage is we are relentless and we are diligent, and we are strategic, and we are ridiculously easy to do business with. AJV (44:01): I mean, honestly, see a great DA (44:03): Way to wrap that up. AJV (44:04): What competitive and competitive advantage should be. I always do outreach, right? It’s DA (44:09): Always that. There’s, there’s, that’s, that’s a good way of synopsis, synopsis, outreach never stops. I’m not famous. I’m good at what I do. The people who I do business with love me. My friends and family love me. You guys love me, I love you guys. But there’s a huge portion of the population who has no idea who, who, who I am and that I exist. I talk to people. If you’re in a, in an auditorium or a conference center and you’re speaking to 600 people, there’s 4.3 million people within a a 60 mile radius who have no idea you’re there. Yeah. So how do we leverage proximity? How do we leverage? So yeah, outreach is incredibly important. It’s probably the most important thing for my longevity. AJV (44:52): I love that. And I think for everyone who’s listening, if you would just take a minute or five or 10, whatever you got and ask yourself like, what is my competitive advantage? And it’s not that I care a lot, and it’s not that I have a superior product. It’s not that it’s a high quality product or whatever else. It’s like, what is your competitive advantage? And I think also asking yourself the question, which hopefully is similar, but what makes it ridiculously easy to do business with me DA (45:24): Or ridiculously easy to choose you, right? That, that’s a whole chapter in the book as well. It’s not even just how you do business. Make it ridiculously to easy to choose you over your competitors. And to do that, you need to be really clear what others are doing. We never denigrate them. We never criticize competitors. I love com. I love complimenting competitors. They’re phenomenal. But this is what I do. They do this and this and this and this. They’re really great. But this is, but I specialize in this, but well, that’s what I need. I I think it’s a better choice. So that market analysis is important. We could talk all day, but I know you have time constraints. AJV (46:02): I know this is so good though. I love it. And y’all, I would highly encourage for you to go pick up the book. I already have the book. It’s on my summer read list. And I’m even more intrigued now to go, what are these, you know, 28 things? And and now I’m like, well, I need my team to know what these 28 things are. And I love that what you said too, it’s like you have to identify the friction points, right? And that just means all of us have to take a step back as a consumer. And I, that would be like a, a great, I think just even for me, I’m just going like, man, I wonder when the last time I, like, I clicked through our website, how easy is it to get in touch with me? And if I wondered if I, like with an anonymous email hit our customer care at email, how quickly people would respond. And it’s like, I’m so curious now to go through our own systems and process. DA (46:52): You could shop yourself. Yeah, that’s a great idea. Where AJV (46:54): Are our friction points as a consumer? And as a, an entrepreneur business owner you should know those, right? And so ask yourself, when’s the last time that I actually went through my own processes the own systems with our team to go, where is it hard? Where is there friction? And how can I make it easier? And I love that. ’cause I think what you said earlier, and I wanna kind of like wrap it with this, is speed is really becoming an increasingly important part of why people do business with you DA (47:25): Very much. Jay Bair did some groundbreaking breaking research on that recently as well. Great colleagues, Jay Bear and Shep Hyken and Roger Dooley wrote a book called Friction that changed my life. I, I, I am so annoyed looking at the world now because he’s made me hyper aware of things I hadn’t even thought of before. So we have wonderful colleagues in this space. But, but yeah, go pick up the book, Amazon, AJV (47:50): Amazon, DA (47:51): Easy to do business with. AJV (47:53): And I will put the direct link to pick up the book and the show notes. And for everyone else, make sure you stick around for the recap version, which will be coming next. Dave, love you, love what you’re doing too. Such a rich conversation. Thank you so much for being here. And if people want to follow you, stay in touch with you. What’s your preferred platform? DA (48:13): My, you can check me out on my [email protected], and then it gets a little complicated. And on Instagram, it’s the real David Aver, and that’s a catfish for another day. But yeah, check me out. Instagram, the real David Rin TikTok, it’s I think real David Rin. But if, if there are hundreds or thousands of followers, it’s the real account. Otherwise, it’s not me. Go to my website, david rin.com. AJV (48:36): So go to his website, david aver.com, go to Amazon, pick up the book ridiculously easy to do business with. Thank you guys for being here. We’ll see you next time.