[00:00:00.000] - Chris
What's up, man?
[00:00:00.720] - Brandon
How are you doing?
[00:00:01.210] - Chris
Pretty good. I'm surprised at how much summer weather I feel like we're still getting. Almost the middle of October. There's been very little rain. I mean, here in Oregon, it's just incredible. It's what everybody wanted.
[00:00:12.980] - Brandon
This is global warming in its fullest.
[00:00:15.380] - Chris
I don't know. It's best case scenario.
[00:00:18.770] - Brandon
It's global warming. It's some people that might sound like doomsday for the rest of us here in the Pacific Northwest. We're like, Oh, sweet. Three last weeks of doom.
[00:00:28.010] - Chris
Yeah, it's like a little gift from Diego, California, or something.
[00:00:31.770] - Brandon
We'll take it. Yeah, we'll take it.
[00:00:34.040] - Chris
Yeah. So today, actually, last night, as I was going to bed Did you just say Waxley? Yeah.
[00:00:38.540] - Brandon
I think you just said Waxley.
[00:00:40.200] - Chris
I think I just said Waxley.
[00:00:40.950] - Brandon
It was like Waskley Wabbit a little bit there.
[00:00:43.520] - Chris
So last night, I was just looking over my calendar and I saw, oh, we've got Joey Coleman this morning at 7:30. We don't typically have podcast episodes or production days on Tuesday, and we don't typically have it at 7:30. I'm like, whoa.
[00:00:54.940] - Brandon
It's not normally how we start the day.
[00:00:56.440] - Chris
Hot dog. That's a fun way to start the day.
[00:00:58.010] - Brandon
And it was, too. It really was. This is going to be a good show.
[00:01:01.210] - Chris
So many of you, if you haven't, first of all, if this is your first episode of the Head Hard Moods podcast, welcome. Thank you for listening. And thank you to whatever friend, maybe you saw it on their Facebook or LinkedIn feed or however you got here. Thank you to that person. We are Brandon and Chris, and we also run a company called Floodlight Consulting Group. We have clients all over the country. Collectively, they'll do close to a quarter billion dollars worth of revenue this year. And that's our day gig. And then the podcast, this is really It's fun. It's fun, and it's an outlet for us to talk about the things that come up in our consulting work with clients and within our own team. And so anyway.Life. Enjoy. Enjoy. This podcast today is a great place to start. If you're new to the podcast, and if you're one of our faithful friends, you're going to enjoy this, too. This is our third episode with Joey, and he delivers every time. It's just such an incredible teacher and speaker, and also very passionate about this broad space of customer experience And we end up talking about how it relates even to the experiences that we're creating for our own employees.
[00:02:05.660] - Chris
And even found a way for us to talk about it in the context of these storms. Many of you have teams that you're deploying to the Hurricane Zones. Have been. And he gives us some I think, really concrete and practical advice on how we can lead through that. It was a great show. So dig in, and maybe if you're able, take some notes. Go. Wow. How many of you have listened to the Head, Heart, and Boots podcast? I can't tell you that reaction, how much that means to us. Welcome back to the Head, Heart, and Boots podcast. I'm Chris.
[00:02:37.730] - Brandon
And I'm Brandon. Join us as we wrestle with what it takes to transform ourselves and the businesses we lead. This new camera angle makes my arms look smaller than yours.
[00:02:47.160] - Chris
I'm noticing that and I really appreciate it. I thought you did that on purpose.
[00:02:50.400] - Brandon
No, I don't. I didn't, and I am not happy with it. Hey, all, thanks so much for listening to the show. Hey, if you're not already following, please do so. And ultimately share, right? Like the coolest currency that we have in terms of supporting this is share it with a friend, share it with somebody, a colleague, a peer, one of your downline team members. Let them be able to take advantage of the information you're already leveraging in your favor. And finally, guys, if you hear a show that really moves you, that really moves the needle, will you please leave us a review? Those five-star reviews help us a ton.
[00:03:24.420] - Chris
Right on. And listen, if you're trying to grow your business, you might consider checking out Floodlights' business opportunity audit. It's free. We provided it no charge. It's actually what we use to assess new clients as they come in. It's a 110-point assessment for your business, and we've now decided to give access to the general public for it. So go and take our business opportunity audit at floodlightgrp. Com. It's going to help you identify the biggest gaps and opportunities in your business right now. And at the end, it'll assign you a health score to let you know exactly where your business stands right now. So go check it out, floodlightgrp. Com/ audit, and take the boa. It's a great way to get a pulse on your business. Well, welcome to the show, Joey. It's so fun to have you back, man. I guess this is episode number three together, right?
[00:04:11.040] - Joey
I feel honored. I feel honored. I have a three-peed invitation from you, too. I feel that I'm in rarefied air, so I so appreciate the opportunity to be back on the show.
[00:04:20.140] - Chris
Well, it's fun to have you, man. It's interesting, over the last couple of weeks, not necessarily in preparation for this chat, I stumbled into a vein of customer I thought, this will be perfect. I can pick Joey's brain on this, and we can wrap about it a bit together. As I've told you before, I'm endlessly fascinated by customer experience. As somebody who owns a business and has owned other businesses in the past, also, I had a little stint with some retail owning a retail business. I just have always been fascinated with customer experience. Where it really popped off for me was reading, I think it was a Fortune magazine article about Ritz Carlton and their customer experience principles and so forth. But I was giving a talk a couple of weeks ago in Indianapolis, and one of the talks I gave was on bringing Ritz Carlton customer experience into restoration. And what does that look like? And what are some principles that we can abide by and so forth? And the night before, I was doing probably what you do, where I was just going over my notes, and I ended up googling. Then I have thrown up some questions into ChatGPT, and that pointed me here.
[00:05:25.330] - Chris
And I ended up going on these rabbit trails the night before my presentation. And one of the nuggets that I landed on was this research by Daniel Kahneman about the peak-end rule. And as part of his prospect theory, you're shaking your head. And what struck me, it's such a simple concept in many ways. So the basic idea of the peak and rule for the uninitiated is that as people, we catalog experiences in our mind based on the peak emotional or sensory experience that occurred during in that macro experience and the end. I think a lot of times, especially as business owners, we think about customer experience is the average of all the interactions and experiences somebody has while they're doing business with us. And Kahneman's research shows that no, it's actually what's remembered is actually the peak positive or negative experience and the end. That that's really all the human brain catalogs or documents of that experience. I'm curious for your take on this because in the back of my mind, as I was reading, just doing a cursory review of the research, their methodology was cold exposure. The methodology to discern this was a certain protocol of cold exposure with people's hands and cold ice buckets of water.
[00:06:46.420] - Chris
There's part of me that's like, I have a strong confirmation bias on this principle because to me, it's a really practical way of thinking about customer experience. We're trying to educate our clients on how to think about customer experience. I'm like, Oh, this is so useful. But then there's also a part of me is like, is this real? Are there conclusions real? I wanted to pose it to you. You've spent so much time hanging in this customer experience pocket. Have you found the peak-end rule anecdotally to be real? Is it something that you bring into your work and consider as you're working with companies?
[00:07:20.020] - Joey
Well, first of all, Chris, I love the question. I think it's a yes, no, and answer. Let me dissect that a little bit. First of all, Kahneman's He's phenomenal. His work is incredible. I highly encourage anyone to dive into it. It's so insightful in so many ways. And peak-end rule is an element of it. Many people listening or watching might be familiar with the concept of thinking fast and slow. That's a similar vein, similar research, one of his books. That's one that probably got the most notoriety in the mainstream of what he does. But my exposure to peak-end experience and the peak-end rule actually came long before I saw his research. It actually came when I was a lawyer. It came from practicing law with my dad. Because I would watch my dad, he was a trial attorney, and I was a trial attorney. I grew up and then he and I practiced law together. He would always talk to juries about the fact that brain science tells us we remember the first thing and the last thing that happens. In the research, this is often referred to as primacy and recency theory. We remember the first thing and the last thing.
[00:08:29.360] - Joey
When you're a criminal defense lawyer, one of his, I don't want to say tricks, but one of the things he would regularly point out to the jury was, who goes first in a criminal defense trial? The prosecution. The prosecution brings their cross-examination, and then they go to closing arguments. Here's where it gets really interesting. The prosecution goes first, and then the defense goes with their closing argument. And then the prosecution gets another closing argument. Now, if you've never been in the criminal justice system, you don't know this. You don't know that they go first and last, which means they get one more bite at the apple than the defense does. Why? Primacy and recency theory. We remember the first thing, and we remember the last thing. Now, when your life is on the line or your freedom is on the line, a criminal defense case, that's a pretty big- A deal.consequence, right, that is happening. So what I think is fascinating about Kahneman's research, to bring it back to that, is do we remember peak experiences? Absolutely. If I ask you to remember an average Tuesday, you're like, I don't even know what an average Tuesday is.
[00:09:53.400] - Joey
If I ask you to think about the three best meals you've ever had in your life, you start to think of things. If I ask you to think about how you normally celebrate your birthday, if I ask you to think about the best birthday you ever had, you remember the peak. That's not a big revelation in the research, I don't think, with all due respect to Kahneman. What was the revelation was the end aspect that we remember the last thing. So many organizations spend a ton of time thinking about onboarding new customers and no time thinking about offboarding. That is the ending experience. Now, with respect to Kahneman in his research, do I think peak and experience is relevant? Absolutely. Do I think it's the end all be all and that's the only thing they remember? No, I don't. But I think those are two of the highest things they remember. When you're in a relationship with somebody for a long time, You remember the highs. You also remember the lows. There's a peak and valley element. You remember the end, and you also remember the first date. You remember the beginning. I don't think it's a only type scenario, but I do think they are two of the pinnacle scenarios, no pun intended, since it's peak experience in the entire customer journey.
[00:11:07.920] - Chris
The thing that I took away from it really grabbed on to relative to the disaster restoration field You could probably say this about other complex service delivery environments, but there's so many things that can go wrong across the customer experience chain in our business that I think the peak and rule, one of the things it points to for us is that We have to build into our processes and our standards as a company and our training and the equipping we provide our people to proactively create a positive peak experience across the customer experience change somewhere We need to teach our people and we need to become adept at how do we spot an opportunity to create or amplify a peak experience in that customer experience. Then, of course, how do we train and create process around, like you said, the offboarding or the end So we can consistently produce a great end result because there's so many things, many of which are out of our control in the restoration industry. We're dealing with an adjuster. If it's a big job, we've got consultants and people speaking into that job that we don't have control over, direct control over.
[00:12:15.780] - Chris
There's so many things that can go wrong in our business that to me, one of the things that peak and rule points to is just the mandate in a service company to proactively look to create that peak moment in a positive way because you know that there's going to be other things detracting from the experience along the way.
[00:12:32.150] - Brandon
So that was, I think, just the finish strong, too. I think that it's... I mean, even when I was a project manager, it's tough to really be motivated at the end of the project cycle, to come in, swing in, to really It's almost like you just feel like the job peters out and everybody's like, That's good. It's over. Let's get the invoice out.
[00:12:52.640] - Joey
Yeah, Brandon, you're so right. I mean, there's another piece of this that I think really applies to the restoration world is when I was talking about peaks and valleys, you start in a valley. You literally start in the, probably, the worst or one of the top three worst moments of that customer's life.
[00:13:10.380] - Chris
Yeah, for sure.
[00:13:11.440] - Joey
So talk about a peak. I got to dig, or rather climb for days or weeks or maybe even months just to get back to base. Forget about getting above zero for getting to a peak. I've just got to get back to normal. It's going to be an unbelievable task. And so I Do you think with you that there's a challenge in those scenarios of how can we build into our process some peak moments? You talk about finishing strong. The analogy I like to use is lean at the tape. I ran, although ran is a huge stretch of the imagination, folks. Let's be honest. I was on the junior high track team. I was slow as could be. Cursing is probably the way it should be described with some curse words, but I'm not going to do that. But let's just say one time I was running a race and I was so far behind, they turned out the lights in the stadium before I crossed the finish line. I'm not making that up. That is a true story. I was running in high tops, which gives you an idea of just how smart I was at the time, or rather not smart, about how footwear contributed to your speed on the track.
[00:14:21.340] - Joey
But that's a conversation for another podcast.
[00:14:23.710] - Brandon
.
[00:14:24.430] - Joey
Yeah, exactly.
[00:14:25.490] - Chris
But here's the crazy thing.
[00:14:28.900] - Joey
My coach They always taught us, there's this idea of lean at the tape, but we always got taught run through the tape. Imagine the finish line was 10 yards behind the actual finish line. Because most people, and the research shows this, when they're running and they're running towards the finish line, the body naturally slows down and glides across the finish line. That's why runners in the Olympics, you see, they always lean at the tape. It's not only because they're trying to be faster than the person next to them, but because they know the human tendency is going to be to slow down, they're literally pushing through the finish line. I think the same holds true in business. Don't peter out.
[00:15:10.820] - Brandon
Push through.
[00:15:12.220] - Joey
What is the thing on the other side of the project finishing? What is the thank you for your business card that they get sent afterwards? You're pushing towards that. What is the gift that you give them once the restoration is complete? You're pushing towards that. What is the picture that you found in the destruction and desolation that you've reframed beautifully for them, that you're going to present to them after the project's done so that they're like, Oh, my gosh, it's that little cherry on top. It's the peak experience. It's the ending experience. It's the finishing strong. It's the pushing through the tape.
[00:15:51.720] - Brandon
It's funny because I feel like in a lot of ways, we've underemphasized that, not just procedurally, but I'm even thinking from an inspection cadence. I think there's certain things that we monitor, maybe probably not great, but monitor during the job life cycle to keep things on, to make sure we're overcommunicating, we're preemptive about things. But inspecting how we finish a project does not seem to be a super high priority. I'm just thinking from my own experience, there's some, can we close the job stuff, the checking the boxes? Did we administratively do what we need to? But it's more internal, right? It's for our own sake. It's not client-facing. It's not for the client For God's sake.
[00:16:31.070] - Joey
Yeah. No, and I appreciate that, Brandon. You want to have internal processes, but you also want to look at how do our internal processes line up with our external customer experience. I worked with a home builder years ago, and they were saying, Well, One of the things that is frustrating is we find out long after the fact that the customer wasn't happy with something in the house, but they never told us. What we did is we implemented in their process the 30-day site visit. Here's how it worked. Thirty days after the client moved in, after the customer took possession of their house, there was a scheduled one-hour appointment. The builder came to the house and said, Hey, you've been living here for 30 days now. What's driving you crazy? Oh, I can't stand that this door opens to the left. It would be so much better if it opened to the right. Great. We can rehinge that. We can flip that around. Oh, I'm in here and I keep... For some reason, whenever I plug in my blender, It blows the fuse. Oh, we can look at that. Oh, did you know that this outlet on the left side of the stove and this outlet on the right side of the stove were on the same box?
[00:17:38.950] - Joey
You can't run your toaster and your blender at the same time. You can run either or. But if we move your toaster to the island in the middle of the kitchen and plug in there, those are on separate fuses. If you do need to make your toast and your smoothie at the same time, you can run both at the same time. All of these things that the builder knows because they built it. But the typical homeowner is just going to be like, Oh, these guys are idiots. I can't believe they built our house. Our house is so faulty. We spent so much money on this. Oh, this is the worst ever. It's not that the people aren't willing to share. It's that you're often asking them too early. You're asking them to assess your work before they've had a chance to live with your work. Once they've had a chance to live with your work, then they're like, Oh, there's this thing. 99 times out of what we found when we rolled this out, that north of 95% of the time, it was a fix that could be made during the visit. It was this tiny little thing.
[00:18:36.530] - Joey
Now, let's go back to Kahneman's research. That's the end.
[00:18:40.450] - Brandon
That's the real end.
[00:18:41.400] - Joey
That's the actual end. Exactly. How we define the actual end contributes to whether our customers are going to be happy or not. Here's the thing, we get to define the end. We can define that in our process. We can define that in our contracts. We can define that in our conversations. We can set the expectation for, this is the finish line, 10 yards past what you think the finish line is.
[00:19:05.190] - Brandon
That's super. Okay, so I'm curious now because I'm thinking to myself, any restorers that heard this, oftentimes they're doing extensive remodels as well. They have multiple service lines, those kinds of things. I'm just thinking to myself, they're going, Okay, now we got to monitor jobs for additional 30 days. Then what's that follow-up and follow-through look like, the inspection cadence, all the things. Obviously, you're working with a team that is, I'm assuming, very dialed in on their job costs and what's happening and how this is affecting them, not just fundamentally, but financially, manpower, all the things. Just give us broad strokes. What did you learn? What were the outcomes from it? Was it harder than it sound, easier than it sounded, all the things? I'm just curious now at this point.
[00:19:50.150] - Joey
It required a commitment at the highest level of the organization. Not just, Oh, this is our process. We actually put senior members of the team on the 30-day return visit. Really? Not junior members of the team. Because it also left the customer feeling like the boss cares, not just the frontline workers. What we also found is there was an increase in reviews because we ask for reviews, but so many of the people we ask to write reviews don't write reviews. But we actually found an increase in reviews because there was this after the dust had settled, no pun intended, everybody had a chance to catch their breath and reacclimate. It's like, Oh, yeah, no, this was a really good experience. Now that you mentioned, I should write a review. We built that gently into the conversation. We found that. Then we also found long term an increase in referrals because who makes referrals? People that have had a good experience. Before, so much of the experience was being left to chance. When you just... Here's the thing, we live in an era where doing what you said you were going to do is special and is increasingly rare, but it is still viewed by the customer as basic, as the anti-up chips to sit down at the table.
[00:21:13.380] - Joey
Table stakes, yeah. Yeah, table stakes, Exactly. If you want to go above and beyond, you have to do something that is above and beyond. It's not enough to say, Well, we built the house. Well, we cleaned up the basement. We did what you paid us to do. This is like, and forgive me for a side tangent here, but it's like when I go up to the convenience store and I've gone to the cooler to buy a drink, and I come walking up, and I place the drink on the counter, and they scan it, and they say, All right, it's going to be $4 or whatever it is. The credit card screen pops up and says, 15% tip? I'm like, How about no tip? Because you didn't do anything. If you made it, don't get me wrong, I am more than happy to tip for people providing I'm not excited to tip for a transaction.
[00:22:03.210] - Brandon
Yeah, there you go.
[00:22:04.410] - Joey
Here's the thing. So many businesses are operating as transactions, even when they claim that they're not.
[00:22:10.470] - Brandon
Yeah. Just when you said that, I don't tip for transaction. I'm going, Uh-oh. How many of our experiences that we're creating feel like the transaction? 100%.
[00:22:20.850] - Joey
Cleaning up the basement, redoing the drywall, drying everything out, cleaning up the trash, dehumidifying after the flood, These are the transactions. This isn't special. Don't get me wrong, I don't want anyone to mishear that. The work that is done in the restoration industry is unbelievably important and unbelievably valuable. But the customer is in such an emotional state at that moment, they can't fully appreciate that. You are dealing with the baggage of the situation, not your performance. Those are the transactional pieces. The finding the really special The real thing that they're looking for is the icing on the cake, the getting it even better than it was before, the completing ahead of schedule, getting them back into the unit before they thought they were going to be able to, helping them to get back into the unit. All of these little things are the little extra pieces of the puzzle that lead to reviews, lead to referrals, lead to people sitting in your places.
[00:23:27.030] - Brandon
It's funny, too, because I'm thinking about, like you said, you said more than 95% of the things called out were able to be fixed, educated, talked through while on site. Yeah.
[00:23:39.170] - Joey
I want to point out right now, I appreciate. Forgive me for interrupting. Educated. I didn't make that clear. That was the big thing. The majority of the things were things that were like, Oh, you already have this. People were like, What? I had no idea. Because there's no manual for your house. Right. Even if there was, they wouldn't read it. There's a manual for car. How many people have read every page of the manual? Oh, like 3% of car geeks. Everybody else is like, I don't know. Does it work or does it not work? What's the warning light? The only time I ever go to the manual is when a warning light pops up that I'm like, Is that I need to call on this now or can I wait a while light? Can I wait till much? That's the only time I ever reach to this 400-page manual.
[00:24:27.640] - Brandon
It's almost like a major case of perception management, too.
[00:24:31.640] - Joey
100%.
[00:24:32.380] - Brandon
It's that thing they spin out on and it ultimately clouds the last of the experience that they had. All of it was one conversation and it could have been fixed. That's an unbelievable scenario.
[00:24:46.480] - Chris
The other thing that comes up for me, too, is we talk, you reference Google reviews. I think Google reviews can really give us a false sense of the quality of our customer experience that we're creating. Because if X service Company has an average score of 4.9 on their Google reviews, and they have 120 Google reviews. The reality is that many of our clients do 500, a thousand jobs a year. And on average, they're converting 25 % or less, and in some In our case, it's far less of those jobs into actual Google reviews.
[00:25:18.590] - Joey
If they're getting 25 %, they are world-class. It's very high. Let me be clear. If 25 % of your customers are writing Google reviews, you are world-class. Most research shows it's single-digit percentage at best. At best.
[00:25:35.240] - Brandon
If they're motivated.
[00:25:36.720] - Chris
And yet we can look at it as a trophy on the shelf of we have 100 Google reviews at 4.9 start, right? And yet not taking into account that that means that 80 plus % of the jobs we're doing are going unreviewed. And I think as you describe the tip, I think in many ways, a Google review today is like a tip because it requires somebody's time to click through and think and construct a some commentary on that. There's a cost to that. And so I think it's interesting you brought up the 15 % tip on that drink. I think a lot of times customers feel the same way about when we're chasing them for Google reviews at the end of a job is in their mind, it really was transactional. It's like, hey, I hired you for a scope of work. You did it. Hooray. And you got paid handsomely. There's a big bill and it got paid. And so I think we think because of the The way that we think about the work is hero work that we deserve credit for a job well done. And the customer is like, Well, I expected a job well done.
[00:26:38.730] - Chris
Exactly. I expected you to show up on time.
[00:26:40.350] - Joey
Those were the table stakes. Yeah, you showed up on time. You get a prize. You want to go- What? Are you kidding me? No. You did what you were supposed to do.
[00:26:49.430] - Chris
Yeah, but there is... When you do that 30-day follow-up like you're talking about, that does change things. I think one of the reasons why that's such a great idea for our listeners and in our business, and certainly for construction people, is in our industry, people are so tired by the end of the job. We have this thing called Claim Fatigue in our business, where they're so tired of the emails from the adjuster. They're so tired of all the things, equipment in their house, everything. They're so tired that they're ready for the transaction quote to be done. They're just like, oh, my God, I'm so thankful this is over. They're not hanging in the afterglow of a really great customer experience.
[00:27:27.500] - Joey
Totally.
[00:27:28.170] - Chris
But then as they start to live in their brand a new house or the newly finished kitchen or bathroom, 30 days later, if we go... I love that idea, but it makes sense to me, too, why all of a sudden they rack up more Google reviews. Because finally, it's almost like they finally get that sigh of relief.
[00:27:45.150] - Joey
Exactly. Here's the interesting thing. If the goal is to get more reviews, and I put a big if at the beginning of that sentence, okay? But let's just pretend for sake of conversation that we see, and in most businesses, you can see a correlation between more reviews equals more leads equals more business. In almost every industry, we see a pretty clear, clean research on that. Many businesses are set up to reward reviews. For example, let's look at a business I'm fairly familiar with, the world of writing books and selling them on Amazon. Part of my business is writing books, selling them on Amazon, hoping that people review them on Amazon because the Amazon algorithm juices the hit results based on the number of reviews you have. The more reviews you have, the more your book comes up at the top of searches. Let me pull the curtain back for a special preview for listeners to the show that you wouldn't be able to find this data anywhere else. If you go look at Never Lose a Customer Again, my book, today, you will see 809 reviews at a 4.7 star rating. Not bad. Pretty good.
[00:28:54.770] - Joey
I have sold over 100,000 books. Wow. Let me do the math for you. For those of you that were told there would be no math on today's show. That is 0.8%. I haven't even gotten to 1% of the readers that are writing reviews. Now, when you dive deeper into the reviews, what you'll find is my book's available in three formats: hardcover, e-book, and audiobook. This is how sales break down. Again, this is stuff that is not public, but I think it illustrates the point. Hardcover represents 55% of my book sales. Does anyone know when someone finishes a hardcover book? No, because they close the book. There's no tracking of that. There's no timing of it. I have no idea when someone finishes a hardcover copy of the book. Number two is audiobook. Audiobook represents about 35% of my book sales. At the end of an audiobook, you may have listened to an audiobook where they say, Oh, how would you review this? And it pops up on the screen to hit a star review. Now, not write a review, but rate it so that I get the stars, but I don't get the text. And then there's the e-book.
[00:30:05.840] - Joey
And the e-book, same thing at the end of Kindle. When you get to the end of a Kindle book, a screen pops up asking you to rate for the stars. But then there's a box where you can type in your review. So the people that are writing reviews, I believe in my world, are one of two people. They are people who are being formally prompted from the e-book or the audio book, or they are people who had such a great experience that they're going out of their way, as you said earlier, Chris, to make the time to go track down the review link, to figure out what they're going to say, to write it up. These are worth gold to me because these are people that really support my work and support my book. But I also know when we go to buy a book, lots of times we look and see, well, how many reviews do they have? How many stars they have? Let me read the top 10 reviews. Let me read the four or five. I'm thrilled that I have one star reviews. Some of the folks listening in the restoration business are like, oh, my God, we got to get rid of the one star reviews.
[00:30:58.870] - Joey
No, no, no, Keep the one star reviews. Because what happens, what would happen if you went to my book listing and saw 809 five star reviews? What's your first thought? Bullshit. Exactly. Exactly. This can't be real. It cannot be real. So if your business has only five-star reviews, I know you lie about other things, too. No.
[00:31:21.070] - Brandon
Interesting. Right? It's like... Yeah.
[00:31:23.960] - Joey
Correct. So when I get a one-star review, I have a one-star review that says something to the effect of, I put this book down in the first chapter because he sounds like a car salesman. Fine. Great. That is your assessment. If that's how you felt and you put the book down, no problem. But when somebody reads that review, they go, So wait a second. You read the intro and you didn't go any further? What a jackpot. Yeah, exactly. They start to judge the reviewer. It used to be when you could have comments on reviews, people would get in fights with the reviewers like, You're an idiot. The next time, read past page seven. Fool. Page eight is where all the magic was. Idiot, blah, blah, blah, and all this stuff. It's just like, oh, my gosh. Humans are fascinating, right? Humans are fascinating. But the point I make for the folks listening, because some people listening are like, Wait, Joey, I don't have a book. What does It doesn't have to do with anything. If you are going to seek reviews in your business, make it easy to give a review and ask for a review close to the peak state.
[00:32:25.660] - Joey
Now, if the peak state came earlier in the relationship and it felt too early to ask for the review, why not create a peak state after?
[00:32:33.850] - Brandon
It's interesting because one of our strategic partners, Liftify, they made some changes, modifications to their process after they had made their way into our industry, specifically into the restoration industry. And one of the things they ran into was basically you want to get your review before invoicing starts. There was just this, for whatever reason, we touched on it a little bit in terms of price sensitivity and someone's opinion what should something cost and what it shouldn't cost. And so they just found in general that that client can have a bit of a declined perspective on the experience once they see the numbers associated with the final invoicing. And so they've found that they're more successful getting a higher review if they get it done prior to that point. They've made some modifications.
[00:33:20.550] - Chris
We're purely predicated on the experience and not the association with the cost.
[00:33:25.050] - Joey
Yeah. Sure.
[00:33:25.760] - Brandon
Reception, right? We're making assumptions, creating stories about what we feel is correct or not correct in that.
[00:33:32.600] - Joey
Yeah. I think that there's so much... We could spend an entire show talking about the psychology around reviews. I went recently to get the oil changed in my vehicle. When I was checking out the service technician, which I thought this was fascinating, it was actually the service manager, it wasn't even a technician. The service manager said, Oh, and by the way, in the next few days, you'll be getting an email from... And then said the brand name of the vehicle I have. I'm not going to say that here because I try not to talk smack about brands, right? When again. He said, You're going to be getting a review request or a survey from them. And anything less than five stars means I might lose my job.
[00:34:13.820] - Brandon
Jeez. I've heard this before. The guilt drop.
[00:34:17.090] - Joey
I was like, Well, that seems extreme.
[00:34:20.050] - Chris
Don't destroy my life, Joey. Don't destroy my life. Yeah, exactly.
[00:34:23.770] - Joey
My wife will leave me.
[00:34:24.810] - Chris
My kids will just don't.
[00:34:25.500] - Joey
Exactly. Because I work in the space, as my wife says, the show writes itself. I just lean into these things. I'm like, Well, that sounds a little extreme. I don't think anybody had given him pushback on that line ever. He's like, Well, part of our bonus structure is based on whether we get five-star reviews or not. I said, Great. I totally appreciate that. I said, Do you want to know if something went wrong? He's like, Well, what do you mean? I said, Well, if you're telling me you want a five-star review or you might lose your job, is it more important for you to have the five-star review or is it more important for you to know what maybe I was unhappy about so that you can either A, stop doing that thing, B, explain it, or C, make it better next time? He's like, why? I was like, that's just something to think about for next time.
[00:35:12.390] - Brandon
I got to go.
[00:35:13.300] - Joey
I got to go. And by the way, I'm not going to write the review.
[00:35:16.710] - Chris
The guilt didn't work.
[00:35:19.450] - Joey
It's just like, Just stop. Just stop doing that. I understand, to empathize with the service manager, many car manufacturers are now throttling the commission. Oh, yeah. Oh. Based on that dealerships star rating. Oh, it's real.
[00:35:39.390] - Brandon
Yeah.
[00:35:40.050] - Joey
I can empathize with every part of this story. But here's the other piece. Those brands, if you will, those manufacturers, are getting skewed results because humans will move towards the path of their best interest at every opportunity. This is the human condition. This is where we are, animals. We will move towards the path that is most advantageous, most hedonistic, most celebratory for us at every single opportunity we get. Why? Because we're humans. It's not because we're bad. It's not because we haven't been properly educated or trained. It's because that is what the blood coursing through our bodies wants to do from a point of self-preservation.
[00:36:23.340] - Brandon
Yeah, that's the lizard brain kicking.
[00:36:25.510] - Joey
Yeah, exactly.
[00:36:28.730] - Chris
Liftify. Com on forward/bloodlight. You've heard Brandon and I talk a bunch of times about the importance of Google reviews. Maybe even heard our episode with Zack Garrett, the CEO and founder. Recency, consistency, two of the most important things when it comes to maximizing the benefit from your Google reviews. Why not use an outside partner? Liftify is targeting 20 to 25 % conversion, right? So if you do a thousand jobs a year, you ought to be adding, right now, 200 to 250 reviews a year, every single year. If If you're not doing that, you owe it to yourself to get a free demo from liftify. Com. See their system, see how it works, see how affordable it is. I promise you, you'll thank us. Liftify. Com/bloodlight.
[00:37:13.010] - Brandon
We spend a lot of money and a lot of attention trying to get that first call. And one of the things that we do once it happens is sometimes we leave it to chance, right? Who picks up the phone? How do they respond? How do they walk that client into a relationship with us? Well, one of the benefits of partnering with a team like answerforce. Com is we can systemize that, we can make it more consistent. We can also have backup for when our teams need that help. Somebody goes on vacation, somebody's out sick. We get a storm search, we get cat event. All sorts of things can have an impact on how we receive that client. But the most important thing is they need to know that they've chosen the right team. And so answerforce. Com can support you, be a bolt on partner to help you consistently produce an awesome onboarding experience with that first call with your client. So answerforce. Com/bloodlight.
[00:38:04.220] - Chris
That's great. Cnr magazine, we're friends with all the folks at CNR. Michelle and her team, they do a great job of keeping their ear to the ground and reporting all the important information from our industry. You want to stay up on all the M&A activity and what the latest best practices are for selling your company successfully. She's got that. Great articles about all the four quadrants of our business. Cnr is constantly pushing out great material and leveraging great writers and subject matter experts in our industry. It is the water-cooler of our industry. So if you're not subscribed, go to cnrmagazine. Com. Follow them on LinkedIn. Follow Michelle on LinkedIn. Trust us, if you're trying to stay on top of everything happening in the industry, your best destination is cnrmagazine. Com.
[00:38:48.960] - Brandon
You guys, many of you have already heard about Actionable Insights and the training and the technical expertise that they bring to the industry. But how many of you are already leveraging the Actionable Insights profile for Xactimate? That's the game changer. It's essentially an AI tool that's walking alongside of you as you write your estimate, bringing things to your attention that should be added, that could be considered. All of them items that increase our profitability, increase the effectiveness and the consistency of that scope. It can do anything from helping a new team member assimilate some estimating best practices. It also helps the grizzled vets add back that few % that we've just forgot over time. So actionableinsights, getinsights. Org/ floodlight, and take a look at what the actionableinsights Xactimate profile could be doing for you and your team. Okay, so this is interesting. One of the things that's going on that I'm sure you're well aware of, obviously, is all this storm activity brewing just off the Coast of Florida. Well, we have several clients, and obviously a lot of the industry's attention is just on that whole Southeast sector of the States. Anyways, they're getting ready to get hit again, obviously.
[00:40:03.520] - Brandon
And as part of that, we've just got teams that have tons of employees that have just been running, and they are burning the candle on both ends. They're now getting ready, some of them, several of them, to be faced by a storm that potentially will hit harder than the one that just passed. And so lives and all the things are affected. All right, here's where I'm going. There is this unbelievable amount of grit and dedication that people are going to need to keep their people right now. I know that most leaders, when these types of scenarios come into play, besides the obvious infrastructure technical concerns, we all just get hyper sensitive about the fact that our teams are running at the ragged edges. What's already a difficult industry gets 10X difficult in these types of scenarios. One of the things that you've become a specialist at, obviously, is just thinking through how we create environments for our people that make them loyal, that make them sticky, that make them want to push through hard times in the business, in the service line. One of the things that we were going back and forth before we hit record was you were just talking about these overlaps or these similarities.
[00:41:12.140] - Brandon
You're known for creating two books, obviously being really focused on either the client or the customer or the internal employee experience. Okay, all that to be said, you've been talking about these overlap and how much these two things intersect. I think now on a lot of people's mind is a general concern for their people and the stickiness of their people and burnout and all the things. Talk us through that a little bit in terms of where those two roads begin to intersect. And is there things that owners right now can be thinking through in hard times to potentially affect this and negotiate and be engaged in the relationship they have with their people? That's good.
[00:41:52.610] - Joey
Brandon, I love this question. I love this question for so many reasons, not the least of which is that it is timely and it is It's not personal. When something is both timely and personal, it takes on a new sense of urgency for us. Absolutely. Let's look at the facts and then let's look at the emotions. Facts. There are going to be more storms that are more severe every year going forward. This is a fact. All the data shows this, all the evidence shows this, all the weather scientists are saying this. When you doubt the science, follow the insurance companies.
[00:42:32.540] - Brandon
Sure.
[00:42:33.830] - Joey
Okay? It's real simple. Anybody who's listening going, Oh, climate change isn't real, Joey, blah, blah, blah. Fine. You don't have to agree with the science. Just look at the insurance companies. Are they willing to insure for flooding? No. Guess what? They're expecting more flooding. This is a math problem. This is not a science weather problem. We know it's going to get worse. This isn't one of those deals where we can say, Hey, guys, we've just got this storm. Just get to the other end of this storm and we're going to be okay. No, because we just finished the last storm, and now we've got an even bigger storm coming. And some people are like, Oh, this is the end of hurricane season. Really? Really? Not by any math I've seen. You know what I mean? We're in the thick of it, and this is only increasing. And you're also having things that are happening in regions where they don't normally happen. Look at the amount of destruction that the last hurricane caused in North Carolina. Deep in North Carolina, not on the Coast, deep in. When people are like, Oh, I thought I'd be okay to not have my house get washed away by a hurricane when I lived inland in the woods.
[00:43:44.020] - Joey
Yeah. Oops. No. No, not the reality. Let me be very clear. I have unbelievable empathy and love for people who are going through this. Everybody in the restoration world knows this. You are hitting people at their most vulnerable place. Am I safe in my home? This is core humanity. This is Maslow's hierarchy of needs. This is bottom of the pyramid. This is food, shelter, clothing. These are the base human condition needs. We are now saying that shelter is being destroyed, food is being limited because roads are washed out and we can't get access to food, and clothing, forget about it because it's all soaked in mud and and water logged, and I've got to wear the same clothes for days on end, and I'm trying to figure out, will I ever get a shower again? We are base of the pyramid struggle. What can leaders do? I think leaders can do a couple of things. Number one, acknowledge the reality. Stop with the, We just got to get through this one, messaging. Your people know it's not true, so you shouldn't be saying it. Let them know how much you care about them and you are a aware of the fact that they are burning the candle at both ends.
[00:45:03.990] - Joey
There is a ton to be said for a manager, a leader saying, I know that we are in the muck and mire. I know that we are in the thick of it, and I can't even begin to express how much I appreciate you're being here with me. Now, notice I said with me. That's another thing. Leaders need to get boots on the ground themselves. Be there, be involved, be taking care of things. Now, I'm not saying that you should, if you're the CEO of a multibillion dollar restoration company, that you should be moving two by four. But what I am saying is show that you're there. There's a reason why elected officials, regardless of what people think of who's elected or who's in charge, there's a reason why so many elected officials go to the disaster areas. They go to the disaster areas to say, hey, physically, I'm here. I'm here emotionally, I'm here physically. I'm here mentally. I am part of the solution. Now, I may go back to the capital or to Washington to drum up some money and get some more resources and do some things. But I want you to know I have a personal vested interest in what's happening here, and I see you, and I hear you, and I care about you.
[00:46:18.300] - Joey
The other thing I think leaders could do is care for the people who are not being cared for while your employees are on site doing work, i. E, their spouses, their children, their parents. That's really interesting. When people take care of people I love, it makes me love them. When someone looks out for my wife or my boys, when I'm away, unable to look out for them, I would walk through fire for those people because they're helping care for and stand in when I can't. That is something that the majority of restoration companies could do. You know you've got a team Team down in Florida for the next three weeks, throw some meals towards the family. Look towards what military families do, especially with special operations groups. If you look at the special operations community, The spouses of that community and the families of those communities are super tight knit, and they support each other, and they help each other, and they get support from the base commander and the base commander staff as well of like, Hey. It's usually men that are They're like, Hey, your guys are in another part of the world where we can't even tell you where they are.
[00:47:34.890] - Joey
They're being shot at. They're in the muck and mire. But you know what? We're going to make sure that your kids are getting to school. We're going to make sure that you've got food on the table. Oh, you've got something that's broken at the house, we're going to send over base maintenance to get it taken care of so that you don't have to wait until somebody comes back from a deployment. If I was running a restoration company right now, I would be building out an entire division of my team that was about caring for the families of my employees while my employees are deployed.
[00:48:05.540] - Brandon
That is a super interesting thought. Our teams run the gamut. We've got several teams that are based out of Florida, obviously, and so it's home-based. But like you're alluding to, many, many of these teams are traveling from all over the US to go support and help folks, business owners and citizens in those communities. I really like this idea of we do a lot of training teaching around the preparedness prior to going to a storm event or responding to cat environments. And what's interesting is I can't point towards a real direct focus on what our team's doing to create systems and processes to support these families when they leave. I think there's some basic thought that goes to it, but the level that you're talking about is super interesting. Maybe the encouragement is take note of what you guys are going right now. It can be difficult to pivot mid-storm, obviously, but for many of us, we're going to have an opportunity to conduct a bit of an after-action review of how our teams did and what we did and what we were able to do to support these communities and where we can make changes.
[00:49:16.230] - Brandon
This might be a really powerful opportunity to audit during that after-action review and really consider what you could have done to do a better job supporting your team, especially seeing scenarios where the environment's gone on, two storms worth back to back. This is really going to open up some of the holes in our armor. And so I think we're going to be able to see very clearly that had we been more proactive in managing how we were going to support families at home, we may have done a better job and create a a slightly different outcome. And so I'm not saying that in judgment. These are hard, difficult times for businesses, period. But this is an opportunity for us to iterate and learn. I just love your perspective there. I think one of the things in general, if this is the first time you've heard any of Joey's stuff, is, he is not afraid to look and be creative. So instead of buying into, I can't, I have to, he really looks at it and says, If experience is the first priority, then we can be very creative in solution finding. And so I just think this is one of those many ideas.
[00:50:16.460] - Brandon
I think same with the 30 days. Is it a harder problem to solve, to find a way to get back on our client's site after 30 days? Yeah, it is. It's a pain in the ass if you're going to do that. But what could the outcome be? Would it earn that five-star? I love the way you approach this stuff, man, because it feels not convenient. You do it for an outcome. Then ultimately, what we probably learn in the process is it wasn't as hard as we thought when you systemize it. It's so true.
[00:50:44.730] - Joey
This stuff doesn't have to be expensive. I want to speak directly to that, too, because so many leaders are like, Joey, you don't understand our margins. You don't understand this would be a bit. Here's something that every leader could do. If you have folks that are in a storm environment right Now, here's something every leader could do today in the next hour, because I'm a big believer in let's get to tactics, let's get to action. You are legally required as an employer in the United States to know the physical mailing address of every one of your employees. That is a legal requirement. And yet most business owners, all they ever use that address for is to send tax information once a year. You know where your people live. You know the address. Do you know whether that person has a partner, significant other, a spouse, someone at home? If you don't know, fix that now. Figure that out now. Someone on your team knows whether there's someone at that address. Then what I would do is I would send flowers or restaurant gift cards or even just a, we're thinking of you, gift basket to every one my employee's family saying, I know that Frank is down in Florida while you're home taking care of the three kids.
[00:52:08.050] - Joey
Please know how much we value him and we value you. We're here to support you. Here is my personal It's a normal cell phone number. If there is anything we can do while he's away to make your life better or easier, which includes picking kids up from practice, coming over to fix the garbage disposal, doing whatever needs to be done, use this number. It will be an honor to help you the way he is helping our company being away right now. Here's the amazing thing, guys. I can almost guarantee that that phone is going to ring very few times. Most people are going to never call it. But the fact that you have opened the door and given them permission to call it, they will be ecstatic. You know what will happen when they do have a phone call or a FaceTime tomorrow night with their loved one? They're like, Hey, how are things going? The kids are like, Daddy, Daddy, we got a huge bouquet of flowers. Mommy got them. It's going to create a small moment of like, Oh, my gosh, I didn't send the flowers. Where did those come from? But then the second piece is going to be, Yeah, I can't believe it.
[00:53:16.000] - Joey
Your boss, Terry, who normally you're complaining about like crazy, sent flowers and this really thoughtful note and included the phone number on it and said they would help out with anything we needed for the kids. Wow, I really I feel seen. I really feel valued. I was flying recently. I spend a lot of time on airplanes, as you guys know. I was flying recently. I fly on Delta exclusively. The highest level of flights on Delta is Diamond. It means you fly 125 1,000 miles a year. I hit Diamond the last week of April. Just to give you context for how much I'm on airplanes. I'm going to the airport. I've got my wife and my two boys. We check in. The gate attention at the Delta Gate when we're checking in says, Oh, Mr. Coleman, thank you so much for being a Diamond member. We so appreciate your loyalty. Then she physically turns her body, so she's almost turning her back to me, and looks my wife dead in the eye and leans in and says, And, Mrs. Coleman, thank you for making it possible for Mr. Coleman to be a Diamond member on Delta.
[00:54:19.320] - Joey
We know that the real hard work is being done by you while he's flying all over the place. Thank you for everything you do to keep things running while he's away. Delta can delay They can cancel flights. They can kick me off flights. I still will love them for that interaction. That, by the way, cost nothing. Everybody's like, Oh, how are we going to afford this? You're going to tell your people to be human. You're going to show your people to be human. You're going to teach your people with empathy so that they understand there's an opportunity to love on the loved ones of your customers. That's almost more valuable than loving on your customers.
[00:55:00.650] - Chris
That's huge. I think, though, the other thing that is present in that interaction is at some point that person had to have experienced feeling seen, cared for, and appreciated by the people that they work for. I think that's the thing we often overlook is, in some ways, it's really easy to be passionate about great customer experience. As companies, we can get all fired up about our five-star Google reviews and all this stuff and think that that's the pinnacle of company culture and customer focus. But it's not until our people, they know what it feels like to get great service or to be well cared for, that they even have the mental framework of what does it look like for me to do that for others?
[00:55:51.950] - Joey
Chris, you are spot on. When you said earlier that you were doing some research for a speech about Ritz Carlton and the Ritz Carlton experience, How many business leaders have gotten up in front of their teams and said, We're going to do Ritz Carlton experience here. We're going to do white glove five-star service, first class, to an audience of employees who have never flown first class who have never stepped foot in a Ritz Carlton, let alone had a meal there or stayed there, we cannot expect our team members to deliver an experience for which they have no context. We can't We can't expect them to be empathetic if they've never received empathy. We can't expect them to be remarkable if they're not treated in remarkable ways. With all due respect to so many leaders out there who have flown first class, who have stayed at the Ritz Carlton, asking your people to deliver these type of experiences when they have no understanding of what that experience is, is foolish and it's irresponsible leadership.
[00:56:55.500] - Brandon
It really is hard to put that together. For whatever reason, we just subconsciously, our experience is the world's experience, and it's so untrue. So many of our people have never had that opportunity. And in a lot of cases, our people almost wear it as a badge of honor. Our people are real. They're blue collar. They're all the things self-prescribed, right? And ultimately, what that chalks up to is that often they just do not have the context for the experience that we're attempting to create. It was something.
[00:57:29.890] - Chris
It was interesting. Brandon and I rolled out a Ritz Carlton program, essentially at a company that we were leading and empowered all of the employees with, we call them Ritz cards, essentially a company credit card. And it was really interesting as we started to roll this out and teach people how to create Ritz experiences. The first wave of Ritzes that we saw and that we talked about during our all company meetings was people were giving people like Starbucks cards at some point during the service delivery or a bouquet of flowers, just these things that are nice but somewhat pedestrian, right? Like, okay, I'm going to give you a Starbucks card. And it really took a lot of coaching Because I think it is what you said. It's like what you were talking about. Many of them have never experienced somebody giving them a really thoughtful gift. Like, really, many people don't ever feel noticed or seen or appreciated in that way. And so when we empower them to create great experiences for people, getting a Starbucks card is about the extent of kindness that many people have experienced. My wife has worked at a hospital.
[00:58:46.310] - Chris
She's a nurse for the last 22 years. You know what they get for Christmas now? They get a $5 credit in the hospital cafeteria. I think it's a Thanksgiving thing, actually, because, of course, they don't want to be religious or whatever. Seriously, it's a $5 credit.
[00:59:05.840] - Joey
They would be better to not give the gift. I know, right? This is the punchline here. You would be better served to not give the $5 credit and instead give a handwritten card than to give something that feels so cheap and so diminishing. I've got family members that work in hospitals and during COVID, they got a tumbler, a coffee mug, tumbler, not even a Yeti brand or a brand that you'd know, an unknown knockoff brand with the hospital logo on it that says, We care about you. One of my family members came home after what he had lost track of how many days straight he had worked without a break. It was in the month's range. Wow. Seven days a week. He was like, This doesn't really say you care. He wasn't trying to be a jerk. He knows this is the world I operate in. He was like, Look at this. What do you think? I was like, I'm sorry for you. But your employer did that. It would have been better not to give you something. No, I totally agree with you. I think this is where we get an opportunity as leaders, as humans, to practice It's understanding, as you said earlier, Brandon, that our experience is not everyone's experience.
[01:00:35.320] - Joey
Our story is not everyone's story. What can you do to make people feel seen, heard, and valued? Those are three separate things. You can see someone but not hear them. You can hear someone but not value them. These are three separate components. What are you doing to create opportunities for your people to feel seen, heard, and valued?
[01:00:59.820] - Brandon
It's huge. Okay, I know we're getting up on a time frame here, but I got one... If it's okay, I got one last question. I think it would be interesting to hear from you. Chris set the tone a little bit before we jumped on just this mindset around public speaking and the fact that leaders in general, a big part of what you do is relevant to the public speaking space. It really is a tradecraft for most of us, right? Okay, let's create some context. We have people that are tired. We have environments that are fairly It's really difficult right now. We have economy situations that aren't super comforting for the average person on our team. There's lots of stress, lots of anxiety that are being driven by things we can't control, and we need our teams to show up. At the end of the day, we all got to show up. Is there any tools right now that you could share with us two or three things that if I'm a leader and I'm getting ready to have some really intentional communication with my team based on some of these environmental conditions, what are a couple things that I can keep in mind or use or deploy in an effort to communicate effectively with my own team right now?
[01:02:07.940] - Joey
The first thing I would say, Brandon, is recognize how much time you have to communicate. I coach speakers on the side. It's not something I advertise, but they make their way to me sometimes. I was working with a division one college football coach that is coaching at a school that you've heard of. We'll just leave it at that. He came to me and he said, Joey, I want help with timeouts. I was like, Tell me more, coach. He said, When the players come to the sideline or I run onto the field during a timeout, I have seconds to get a message across. Can you help me get better Now see, what's interesting is most keynote speakers think about, I have 60 minutes. How am I going to fill all the time? It's a different perspective for a business leader to say, You have one minute. How are you going to fill the time? Best advice I can give, go for less. Stop trying to cover all of it. You're trying to talk about too many things in too short of a time, which means none of them are hitting. What is the main thing we're focused on today?
[01:03:11.480] - Joey
The main thing we're focused on today is let's do our best in every interaction we have to show grace to each other. We're in the thick, we're in the muck and mire, we're dealing with this. Show grace to the customers we're dealing with. Show grace to our colleagues, our coworkers who we're in it with. Today's message is, how can we show grace? Then just double down on that for one minute. Give them some specific example. Stop going for as many things and recognize the limited time you have. Number two, take advantage Of the technology you have at your disposal. It doesn't always have to be a phone call. It doesn't always have to be a text message. There is power to shooting a one to two-minute video and texting it to a team member. Because not only does the research show that they will watch that video within 90 seconds of receiving it. I don't know about you. Emails get read on average, 48 to 72 hours after receipt. Video text messages get watched within 90 seconds of receipt.
[01:04:18.930] - Brandon
So interesting.
[01:04:19.140] - Joey
You cut right through the noise, right there, and a personalized video, one-off to each member of the team. If you're like, Joey, I've got 500 people down in Florida right now. I can't do all of them. Great. Then send a personalized video to your team leads with a thought for the day, a message for the day, letting them know you're there, letting them know you're available, letting them know your support. Text me morning, noon, or night. Setting up pathways that they feel that they have support even if you're not there. Hugely, hugely valuable. Then the third thing, I'll go back to the reference that I made earlier, take care of the loved ones they left behind. Because when I'm in it, part of my brain is still at Whether I want it to be or not, it is the human condition that when I am in it and I am dealing with this, I'm worrying about. You mentioned earlier, there are some teams that are based in Florida, right? They may be managing, I'm trying to evacuate my family while staying behind to help other families. How much consideration is being given to the effort to evacuate their family by the company?
[01:05:24.110] - Joey
If I was running a company, I'd be like, Hey, let's get all of your families out of here right now. We're going to set them up. I worked years ago with an amazing law firm in New Orleans that when Katrina hit, they pulled all of their people's families and set them up in a hotel for, I think it was six months. They bought out a hotel for six months and said to all the family, We're evacuating you and your loved ones, we're going to come in. They got schooling set up, they got everything set up, and they took care of their people. I was talking to the CEO and he said, Joey, it's the best money we ever spent as a firm. Because now all of our attorneys, all of our support staff were able to work on processing claims. They do disaster recovery stuff. They were Processing claims, processing insurance, because they didn't have to worry about whether they were going to have water or food. We just took the whole firm to a hotel, eight hours away, and just They bought out the hotel for months, and everybody was good. There are things we can do that are expensive.
[01:06:38.560] - Joey
There are things that we can do that are inexpensive. What we need to do is take action because with all due respect to the conversation about the after-action report, It's hard. Lots of times, if you wait for the after-action, the consequence of your delay makes it that much harder to solve the problem that you've created.
[01:06:55.150] - Brandon
Yeah, the precedence has been set. It's good, dude. It's good as usual.
[01:07:00.880] - Chris
So fun connecting with you, man. That is huge.
[01:07:03.140] - Joey
I love talking to you guys. Thanks so much for having me on the show. I appreciate it.
[01:07:06.760] - Brandon
Of course, dude. Before we let you go, is there any projects on the horizon that people can start getting interested in to know it's coming around the corner? Where are you at right now?
[01:07:16.990] - Joey
Well, I'm always trying to figure out what's the next fun thing. Right now, I'm spending a lot of time in the intersection between my two books. We've got never lose a customer again and never lose an employee again. The intersection of those two is, how does everything you do for your How does everything you do for your customers benefit your employees? How does everything you do for your customers benefit your employees? Really working to try to figure that out. I'm working with a company right now, and there's a challenge that every customer that comes to their place of business has. They all have the same issue with how the service is delivered. Because of some technical reasons, they can't change how the service is delivered. But you know what we can do? We can do better messaging and training for the team to give them better answers to explain why it has to be delivered that way. It's just really looking at what is the intersection between those two. Then as you guys know, because we've talked about it, I'm just really fascinated by this concept of empathy. What are we doing to be more empathetic in our lives?
[01:08:15.620] - Joey
We're in an election year. Before, what those listening may not have noticed, I just saw both Brandon and Chris be like, Oh, gosh, is he going to go political in the last few seconds of the show? We had such a nice conversation, but this is the point I'm going to make. I I grew up in a family of politicians. That might mean that I was raised by wolves. But the point is, it used to be that we would debate policy. I think we should have a strong military. I don't think we should have a strong military. I think we should have after-school programs for working parents, for kids. I don't think we should. We would talk about the issue or the idea or the policy. Now, it's, if you don't believe this, you're stupid. If you vote for that person, you're the Antichrist. If you vote for that person, you might as well just move out of America. We've stopped having empathy for the fact that to your point earlier, Brandon, our experience isn't everyone else's experience. What I would encourage people to do is to lean into the conversations with the people that you want to write off and instead ask yourself, Am I actually seeing them?
[01:09:22.780] - Joey
Am I actually hearing them? Am I actually valuing them? If nothing else, valuing that they have a perspective that I don't have, that I want to get curious before I get critical. I want to try to understand why they have that perspective. Now, let me be clear. You may find yourself, as I have in recent weeks and months, asking someone, so help me to understand why you believe that. You might have the realization in that moment that they haven't really thought through their belief. Before you jump to the place of, see, knew you were an idiot. Instead, maybe create the space where they would feel comfortable thinking through that or talking through that with you. Not with an agenda of, I'm going to get them to come vote the way I want to vote, or I'm going to get them to believe what I believe. But with an idea of, how can I learn more about how you see the world and your life experiences? How can I share more about how I see the world and what my life experiences are, so that we can show empathy towards each other. Even if we never reach the same destination, we will at least have had this moment, this exchange, where we felt seen, we felt heard, we felt valued for who we are intrinsically as a human, not for who we vote for, what we believe, how much money we have, where we live, where we went to school, filling in the blanks of all the other status symbols that somebody might use to create distance as opposed to create commonality.
[01:10:57.940] - Brandon
Yeah, connection. That's It's all-world advice. That's fairly universal in nature. I think that's a good place to land the plane. Brother, as usual, thanks so much, man. We appreciate your time and we love hanging out with you. It's always a really good discussion and we always look forward to the next opportunity we're going to have, my friend.
[01:11:15.290] - Joey
Likewise, guys. Thanks so much for having me on the show. And thanks to everybody for listening in. Hopefully, you got one or two ideas that you can experiment with applying in your business, in your personal life, in just the way you navigate the planet. And always love the work that you two are doing, and and providing a bright light of conversation and education in the restoration space. I so appreciate the opportunity to be on the show.
[01:11:37.690] - Brandon
Thanks, man. I appreciate it.
[01:11:38.820] - Chris
Have a great day.
[01:11:42.650] - Brandon
All right, everybody. Hey, thanks for joining us for another episode of Head, Heart, and Boots.
[01:11:47.290] - Chris
If you're enjoying the show, if you love this episode, please hit follow, formerly known as subscribe, write us a review, or share this episode with a friend. Share it on LinkedIn, share it via text, whatever. It all helps. Thanks for listening.
