EP:42 Talk Triggers and Word of Mouth Marketing w/ Jay Baer

SPEAKER_01 0:32

Oh, yeah, what is happening, everybody? It's Sebaster Rusk here, your host. As always, hey, welcome to the show. My guest this week, my good friend, longtime mentor, and just gosh darn it, the smartest guy I know. The always entertaining Mr. Jay Bear out with his sixth best-selling book, Talk Triggers. It's got a picture of two cute little alpacas on the front in this episode. Jay explains what those alpacas are really all about. Jay understands what the customer sees and hears from a brand standpoint and understands from a brand standpoint what you should be saying or doing in order to initiate that process. A talk trigger is something that you have coined for your business that people talk about all the time, regardless of whether or not they do business with you. Man, I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I enjoyed recording it. Here we go. Jay Bear, what's happening, dude? Seb, fantastic to see you as always, brother. It's been too long. Way too long since I've seen your fancy snazzy um plaid suits, of which I can see right here. If you're watching on YouTube, you can see his snazzy uh laser, and of course a flower on the lapel, which is an absolute must. J Bear's flower on the lapel uh uh is is to my uh ongoing love for bow ties.

SPEAKER_03 1:54

Yeah, I've been switching it out. Like, so I had a bunch of different kinds. I had like some uh silk ones and some wooden ones, which are pretty dope. But I found this lady on Etsy that makes these um crocheted ones uh that are really, really cool. Um, so that's gonna be my new thing. And she makes like 50 different colors. So and uh you can just kind of mix and match. So that's my new thing.

SPEAKER_01 2:13

I love it, absolutely love it. If you're listening to the podcast and you're wondering what in the world a crocheted little lapel flower lapel uh lap lapel flower looks like, head on over to uh youtube.com forward slash social buzz TV under the Seb Rush show um replace, you'll be able to see Jay Bear and I's beautiful face. So, Jay, I saw the brand new book came out. Congrats. Uh thanks, man. Talk triggers. I was trying to count up all of your books the other day. I could probably do it on my bookshelf behind me.

SPEAKER_03 2:41

Six is the official number.

SPEAKER_01 2:42

Six. Six is the official number. And I because I know if you you went off on a bit of a tangent with utility.

SPEAKER_03 2:46

Yeah, I did a couple uh vertical books uh on the utility concept, but this is the sixth book, Talk Trigger is the complete guide to creating customers with word of mouth.

SPEAKER_01 2:55

And it's got uh just a just a just a stunning pair of um alpacas on the front cover. And yes, uh, I guess we'll just kick things off right now. By the way, uh Talk Triggers uh was written by Jay Barron. Uh Daniel Lemon co-wrote it together. Jay says all the funny stuff is him, and everything else is is Daniel. Uh, it's available wherever books are sold. You can buy it online, you can buy a Kindle version, walk into your favorite bookstore. Audible, audible, audible. Wherever you're consuming books these days, that's it. That's it. Airport, all the airport bookstores have it now, so you can find it. Yes, you can. So the alpacas on the front cover were brilliant.

SPEAKER_03 3:31

Yeah, so here's the thing, man. Like, all right, it's a book about word of mouth, right? So Daniel and I were like, you know, we should probably do something a little different here because otherwise we're kind of hypocritical about this situation.

SPEAKER_02 3:42

Right.

SPEAKER_03 3:42

And we had an original cover designed by the publisher, and and in fairness, it was partially art directed by us, and it wasn't good. It it really was not good. And we sat around, we said, Man, we gotta do we gotta come up with something. And Daniel just found that image of the two alpacas kind of whispering to one another, and he mocked up this cover, and he sent it to me, and I'm like, I think it's pretty dope. I'm like, let's send it to you know, our publisher, I'm sure they're gonna say no because it's too weird. And we sent it and they're like, Yeah, we love it. And we're like, yeah, and they're like, yeah, and we're like, yeah, and they're like, yeah. We're like, seriously? They're like, yeah. And and boom, boom, boom, uh, there you go. So I I'm pretty, I don't know this to be mathematically true, but I'm certainly uh pretty confident anecdotally that this is accurate, that this is the only major business book out there with alpacas on the cover.

SPEAKER_01 4:35

I love it. I love it.

SPEAKER_03 4:37

And hopefully, we have another talk trigger too. If you look on the back of the book, we have another talk trigger. It says, satisfaction guaranteed. If you bought this book and didn't like it, go to talktrigg.com and send the authors a note. They will buy you any other book of your liking. And we will. So if you buy the book and you don't like it and you want, like, I don't know, like a first edition Bible or something, we'll figure it out. We will we will track it down. And and that is our talk trigger. So there's literally no risk to buy this book. So if you don't like it, I will buy you any other book you want, period. Daniel said, well, what happens if somebody wants like a $10,000 cookbook? I'm like, well, then we'll buy him a $10,000 cookbook. Like we made the we made the offer. You got to back it up, and I'll also write a press release about it. But uh that being the case, uh, you know, so if you're like, I'm not sure if I want to buy it, you might as well buy it because you literally have no risk.

SPEAKER_01 5:25

Right, right. I love it. I absolutely know I find it really interesting uh how we're able now now, based on technology, we're able to implement or integrate, rather, is a better word. So many of our existing um solutions or specific offers like this one. Hey, listen, if you don't like the book, I'll buy you. Within the book, it's like, hey, listen, for more information on this, I don't want to go off on a tangent because that's not what this chapter is about. But visit bit.ly forward slash the info I'm talking about here and send them elsewhere while they're in the book. I mean, people can literally start making buying decisions while reading your book now.

SPEAKER_03 6:01

Yeah, and there's, you know, look, a book, a book has to be a certain form. It has to be, you know, relatively speaking, a certain length. And so we actually have a ton of content at talktriggers.com, which is dope stuff that's not in the book, right? So we've got infographics, research reports, videos, uh, book club discussion guide, PowerPoint presentations. If you want to pitch this to your boss, like all kinds of stuff at the website that obviously didn't fit in the book, but talktriggers.com is like a playground of stuff.

SPEAKER_01 6:28

That's brilliant. I think most books these days, um, if if you're if the author's smart, um, do have a website attached to them because number one, it's easy to remember a URL. They know exactly where to go, where they can buy it, but they're getting more information. But they're also getting the additional bells and whistles on here. So um, talk triggers, it's a it's a catchy title. You got the alpacas on the front. Shit, just looking at the covers, like, I'll read that. That looks like if you're interested in business and you're interested in figuring out how the customer thinks and acts this day and age, this is going to be a book that you'd be interested in. So, how did the title come up?

SPEAKER_03 7:01

Uh, I've been writing about this premise since 2011. Like I've got blog posts talking about talk triggers going back that far. So I've been I've been you know dancing around this concept for a really long time. I just didn't um think it was going to be a book, and and now it is. Um, and it's a good, it's the best book I've written. Uh it really is. And and and there are people who you and I know and respect. Um, you just go to Amazon, look at the reviews, who say it's the best business book they've ever read. Now, I wouldn't say that, but but some people have. Um we're really proud of it. And let me explain what a talk trigger is. I think that'll be useful. A talk trigger is a strategic operational differentiator that compels word of mouth, something that you do different in your business that customers remember and tell each other about. Because Seb, the best way to grow any business, any business at all, is for your customers to grow it for you. And that's where word of mouth comes in. But what's crazy is that in this sort of modern social media era, we have kind of gone to sleep. We sort of took a nap on the importance of word of mouth and are like, all we need is a good Facebook page. It's like, yeah, you need a little more than that. So the research shows that between 50 and 91% of all purchases are influenced by word of mouth. Massively important. Yet here's the crazy thing: nobody has a word of mouth strategy. You get a desk full of strategies, you got a marketing strategy, you got a content strategy, social strategy, PR strategy, sales strategy, hiring strategy, you got all these strategies. Nobody has a word of mouth strategy. We just take it for granted. We just assume that our customers will talk about us. But why do we make that assumption? And and and what are they gonna say? Like we just figure, well, if we run a good business, people will talk about us and that will naturally occur. That's not a good way to run your business, right? So the whole idea of a talk trigger is finding one thing that you can do different that your customers don't expect. And because they don't expect it, they tell other customers about it, and that's how you grow your business.

SPEAKER_01 8:58

And that's it's just it's on steroids now. I mean, it's like, you know, yeah, and social media, social media is what amplifies it, right? Right. I mean, a hundred percent, because we can't, you know, we can't wait to brag about. I heard somebody say the other day if you know, if you compliment um um a woman on her shoes, she's either going to brag about where she got them or brag about the deal that she got on them, how cheap she can be. So there's a graduate again. I I guess men don't really talk about those, you know, getting specific deals. So I didn't mean to specify female there, but that was the context of the uh of the example there. Hashtag disclosure. Um so you use a lot of examples here of brands um that that that take advantage of talk triggers. One that you and I are real familiar with um in our social fresh days of uh Double Tree and those incredible warm chocolate cookies that you are greeted with as soon as you check in.

SPEAKER_03 9:54

Yeah, it's it it's one of the most I will say Double Tree's uh chocolate chip cookie routine is one of the most successful word of mouth strategies of all time because they have been giving every guest a warm chocolate chip cookie at check-in every day for 30 years. Wow. 30 years. Wow. Every day they give out now 75,000 cookies. Okay, unbelievable. We did a whole bunch of research for this book, as I do for all my books, spent a bunch of time, a bunch of money on professional first-party research. One of the research projects, we did four projects. One of the research projects for this book was Daniel and I surveyed hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of double tree customers. And we found that 34% of them, more than one in three, have mentioned that cookie specifically to somebody else without being asked about it in the last 30 days. So, what this means mathematically is about 25,500 people every single day tell somebody else about this cookie. Companion question said, When's the last time you saw a double tree ad? Probably been a while. Yeah. Because largely the cookie is the ad and the customers are the marketing department. And that's when you know you've got a word-of-mouth strategy that works. Like you may have heard this saying, it's not entirely true, but it's at least partially true. And the saying is that advertising is a tax on the unremarkable. There's some truth to that, right? Uh, and and if you have a word-of-mouth strategy, if you give your customers a story to tell, and they tell it over and over and over every day, every week, every month, every quarter, every year for 30 years, you don't need to buy ads. Yeah, customers are doing it for you.

SPEAKER_01 11:44

Yeah, you can buy those on well, and uh you can buy them online. I oh last time I saw them was uh or last time I thought about them was when Vincenzo opened up his box from you.

SPEAKER_03 11:53

Oh yeah, yeah. Uh he and Amy, I sent him I sent him some cookies. We had a small number of uh of tins of cookies that Double Tree gave us uh on a partnership because they're featured in the book and stuff, and so we sent a few of them out. And those cookies are are really great. Now, you know, when you get them, when you get them shipped to you like that, it they're good. I mean, they're still really good cookies, but it's not quite the same.

SPEAKER_01 12:11

I wasn't gonna- that's exactly when you get them in the hotel, they're warm, right?

SPEAKER_03 12:15

They take them out of the oven and hand them to you. Now, that's it's actually a big part of the the success of the of the talk trigger because there's 14 brands in the Hilton portfolio, okay? Each of them has their own brand positioning. Double tree's brand positioning is the warm welcome. So they want to own the like eight or nine minutes from the time you step into the hotel until you step into your room. So they spend a lot of time on lobby design, they train their front desk employees more so than most hotels. And this cookie ceremony, and it really is a ceremony, is a big challenge. It's not, it's not a pile of cookies on a counter. It is they turn around, they reach into an oven, they pull out a cookie, they put it in a paper sack, they turn back to you and they hand it to you hand to hand. It's like a Japanese tea ceremony, but it's an American company, so it's a 310-calorie cookie. That makes a lot of sense, right, in the context of the warm welcome. If it was just a pile of cookies, you're like, eh, okay, I'm not quite that interested in it. And that's one of the key things about a talk trigger, is it has to make sense, right? It has to be relevant. It has to, it has to tie back to your larger brand story. So there's another story in the book about a locksmith in New York City. His name's Jay Sofer. And he's the highest-rated locksmith in New York City on Yelp. And he's actually one of the highest-rated businesses in Manhattan of any kind, if you can imagine. That's pretty high bar declear. His talk trigger is dope. So he fixes your locks or whatever. And then before he leaves, he oils every single window and door lock in your house. And he does a security audit of your all your doors and windows, and he does those for free. Totally for free. Just how he rolls, right? Amazing, super great. Now let's imagine those last two stories were flip said. Imagine Jay Sofer finishes working on your locks. And he says, uh, hey Sebastian, would you like a uh a chocolate chip cookie that I made in my locksmith van? He'd be like, bro, no, not at all. Like I don't that sounds that sounds terrifying and uh and unsafe. Uh and imagine the other way around. If you go to Doubletree and they say, Hey, uh Mr. Russ, before you get to your room, would you like us to do a security audit? You're like, is that is that a thing that's necessary? Because if so, I'd like to check out right now. Right. So you're the talk trigger, you can't just like randomly pick something, right? Uh and that's why this book exists. It's an actual, it's an actual playbook, step by step by step by step for how to figure out the differentiator for your business that people will talk about. And it's the exact same process, like the exact same process that we use in my consulting firm, Convince and Convert, to do this work for for for brands, right? So we just took what we do and we wrote a book about it. And that's the key. That the wrong way to do this is to sit in a conference room and brainstorm and say, okay, let's come up with something crazy that we can do. That's not how you do this. It's this is a this is a strategy with testing and math and a process. That's how you make it work right.

SPEAKER_01 15:12

And math. Boy, that's that's warm and fuzzy.

SPEAKER_03 15:16

Well, I mean, here's the thing. I mean, you you you you can't just you can't just assume it's gonna work. So our recommendation is always to come up with uh a handful of what we call candidate triggers, so potential talk triggers that you think might work, and then you test one and then you measure the talkability of it. So you look in social, you look in review sites, you survey your customers, and what you're looking for is a talkability rate of you know one in five, 20%, something like that. And if you get to that threshold, then you know there's a there there, and then you roll it out across the whole company. But you can't just like, hey, starting tomorrow, we march an elephant through the conference room and that's gonna be fun. Like, you know, it's that's that's not a strategy, that's a lottery ticket. And what we're trying to do is convince people that like surprise and delight and shock and awe, like there's a place and a time for that stuff, but that's not a word of mouth strategy, right? Right? You have the same kind of rigor for your word of mouth strategy that you have for your social media strategy or any other strategy, it's just that we typically don't. So that's what we're trying to fix with this book.

SPEAKER_01 16:15

I think I just I I did that um unintentionally with the uh with the shirts. Podcasts suck. If you don't if you don't have one, I mean I to play off of obviously the original, you know, the the OG uh social media sucks book, but this t-shirt, which is all I wear now, if I'm not on stage, I'm not wearing a bow tie. So I just wear this and and and jeans and sneakers because that's just how I roll now. But um, this shirt gets used to dress. It totally is one less thing to think about. Um but um this con this this t-shirt gets so many conversations going because as people are approaching me, they're looking at me like, oh, this guy like podcasts suck and don't know anything about me. Then if you know something about me and you actually know me, you're like, dude, that doesn't add up, kind of like the original title of the book on there. And then as they get closer, they see the text that says, uh, if you don't have a function. If you don't have one, I guess podcasts do suck if you don't have one at the gym. I work out in an equinox, so it's a pretty high, you know, it's a pretty good uh, you know, high profile community. You know, you have lots of attorneys and professionals, and you know, you get these guys in there going, you know, I listen to a lot of podcasts and they're in the, you know, they're in the locker room. I'm like, I'm gonna get a return on an investment on this on this membership here. But I guess that that is the talk trigger. I guess I didn't put those two together, but it's good.

SPEAKER_03 17:24

Um it's really good. Uh no, what I would do is hand them out, right? I'd I'd I'd give them around to lots of people and and spread that uh uh spread that word. Well that's what you have a story that's not in the book, this this uh special exclusive for the uh for the show.

SPEAKER_01 17:42

Special exclusive, not in the book by Jay Bear on the Sebras show.

SPEAKER_03 17:46

I would tell you, one of my favorite shirts that I used to have, but I think I outgrew it, uh, is uh your your favorite band sucks, which is one of my favorite shirts I ever had. Um so I like that a lot. Back when I was a DJ, my shirt was your favorite band of sucks. Anyway, so uh I was in Seattle giving a speech about talk triggers. Guy comes up to me. This is like, I don't know, a month ago. Guy comes up to me after he's like, hey, do you know this story from Seattle? I'm like, I don't think so because I I don't have any Seattle stories uh about this yet. But he's like, okay, well, Jay, there's a doctor here in town. I'm like, all right, he's a surgeon. Okay, he only does vasectomies. Only does vasectomies. And his name is Dr. Snip. I'm like, okay, that's amazing. And he's like, but wait, there's more. That's not the talk trick. I'm like, it's not. He's like, no, it gets better. I'm like, what? On the way out the door, every patient is given an engraved silver pocket knife. And on the knife, it says Dr. Snip, vasectomy surgeon. Because so you can imagine you're hanging out with your boys, you're playing golf, you're on the boat, whatever, and you're watching football, and you open a beer, and you get guys like, hey, dude, that's a sweet knife. Where'd you get it? Like, where'd I get this knife? I got it from Dr. Snip, the vasectomy surgeon.

SPEAKER_01 19:09

Like that is a strong talk trigger right there. Very, very much so. Uh, yeah, I guess this gets this gets my mind spinning. I guess the book probably does the same thing. That really is part of the goal of it is to is to get people thinking about talk triggers that we've already identified, which we may not associate as talk triggers.

SPEAKER_03 19:29

It's not marketing. This is the really important point. It's a talk trigger is not marketing, it's an operational decision that creates a marketing advantage. Double tree giving you a cookie is not marketing. Dr. Snip giving you a knife is not marketing. It's something that they chose to do in their operations that then makes your marketing work that much better. So this is not this is not a stunt, right? This is not um, let's do something crazy to get people talking about us and hope it goes viral on Reddit or whatever. That's not what this is. This is something that happens every day for every customer, every time. And as a result, some of those customers will tell other customers about you.

SPEAKER_01 20:13

Which we love to do. We love to tell other people about things that we know like and trust and that we love.

SPEAKER_03 20:18

Most of us. You certainly do. I do, most of us. We actually have another research project in the book that talks about the four types of audiences, four types of customers for each business, and which of them we did a whole project on this. Some types of customers are super into I got a knife. Other customers, even though they got a knife, won't ever tell anybody. It just the way we're wired. Um, and and there are some demographic and and psychographic characteristics that that are markers for those behaviors, but a lot of it's just kind of how you are. So, so the idea that, hey, we're gonna have a talk trigger and 90% of our customers are gonna talk about it, no, you'll you'll never get more than 40%. It's like literally not possible because of the way people's minds work. So, what you want is is for the people who are into this kind of thing to be super into it, and and those who are kind of into it to also talk to some of their people about it, right? So it's it's the nature of any kind of customer group. They just they don't behave homogeneously as much as we would like them to.

SPEAKER_01 21:16

So um your last book um was used to be a talk and it was turned into a book, right?

SPEAKER_03 21:23

Hug Your Haters, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:24

Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_03 21:25

Yeah, this one too. Same thing, same thing here.

SPEAKER_01 21:27

Okay, cool. Yeah, that's so that was my next question. Was that um Oh, I got the what's it called? A hug your haters. We didn't do an interview on that last one, but I got the uh what's it called copy? What were those before the book's out?

SPEAKER_03 21:38

Were they called? Oh, the uh yeah, the the advanced copies, yeah. Yeah, there you go.

SPEAKER_01 21:44

The galley copy.

SPEAKER_03 21:44

Yeah, so yeah, so so talk triggers. I've done dozens and dozens of uh of talks on this uh before the book was out, um all over the world. And it's good. I like I like doing it that way. It it I think it makes the book better because I know you know. I've got the stories refined and I kind of have the sequencing figured out and all that. So um not most people don't write and and do it that way, but that's just how I do it.

SPEAKER_01 22:08

Speech first and uh well, of course, but you've I mean you I mean you're putting a significant amount of time into putting your your your talk together.

SPEAKER_03 22:15

So yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_01 22:16

Um absolutely a lot of work that goes into that. I mean, of course, it's not the you know identical process on here.

SPEAKER_03 22:21

No, and you and the thing is you you know, you do the talk different every time. Like that's the idea. Um, at least that's my idea. That's how I do it. Like I never give the same talk exactly. I always like, okay, this one, what if we switched out this story? Or this one, what if we switch the sequencing, or this one, you know, you had a different end. Like it's you know, I I think it's how comics do it too, right? Like you're always inserting new jokes every performance, and that's kind of how I think about speaking too. Um, it's you know, it's gonna be 90% um pretty solid at this point because I've done this talk enough times that it's pretty solid, but but the other 10%, you know, I'm gonna try something different every time, see what happens.

SPEAKER_01 22:59

Yeah, absolutely. Um speaking of speaking, congrats on your uh induction of the speaking hall of fame.

SPEAKER_03 23:07

Thanks. Thanks very much. Uh I was hoping for a bronze bust like uh the Pro Football Hall of Fame or something, but I didn't get any of that. I did get a large crystal trophy, though. So I'll take that.

SPEAKER_01 23:16

That's great. That's great. I uh I haven't been in the loop with uh Wendith NSA for for a few years now, but um I just talked to Ed Rigsby this morning, oddly enough. Yeah, cigar break, yeah. Cigar Bank. So he's doing an intensive in Vegas next month. And I had reached out and I said, Ed, did you have you started a podcast about cigars and speaking for associations yet? And he goes, No, but I've done 13 videos, so we're gonna have a conversation next week. But uh yeah, NSA's uh great. I look forward to getting back to one of their annual meetings.

SPEAKER_03 23:45

Yeah, and a lot of there's a lot, uh there's a ton of new members, like people that you and I know, um you know, sort of uh how to characterize this, a a a younger group of speakers and a group of speakers that tilt more on the marketing side. Um, there's a lot more of that group joining the association now, which is uh great to see. And a really good, really good uh leadership now. Dan Thurman, who's a buddy of mine, is the president uh this year. So it's a it's a there's a really good group of uh of leaders as well. They have a new CEO at the National Speakers Association, so they're making a lot of changes in terms of how they how they do business. So nice to see.

SPEAKER_01 24:24

Absolutely. I look forward to rocking that stage as MC one year.

SPEAKER_03 24:27

So absolutely. Uh this year's uh summer event is in Denver, so get your ass out there.

SPEAKER_01 24:33

That's a good idea. Oh, yeah, Denver. Never a bad idea uh at all. Um uh you used a couple two more examples. I want to touch on one of them. Uh, one was I never even thought about the giant menu at Cheesecake Factory, other than there being a giant factory. I look at when I think Cheesecake Factory, I think they're gonna have great cheesecake. And I yeah, I guess I do think about the menu. I think you know, it doesn't really matter what you want, you can have just about anything at the Cheesecake.

SPEAKER_03 24:56

It's it's absurd. They make chicken 85 kinds of ways, right? Which is like hard to fathom, actually. We did the same kind of research for Cheesecake Factory um and found that 38% of their customers have told somebody about the menu and how giant it is. Worst place ever to be a server, too, right? You're like, hey, you guys ready to order? Like, no, we're totally not ready to order. We won't be for a while. Why don't you go on break? And uh and then uh we'll sort it out later. Uh it's crazy. Uh and and it's funny, if you go to one of my favorite things to do about once a month when I have like five minutes, is I I go on Twitter and I search Cheesecake Factory Plus Menu because there's gold, man. There's just gold. Uh, my favorite one is still we're reading the Cheesecake Factory menu from my book club. That's my favorite tweet. That's that's my favorite one, right? But there's tons and tons of people always talk about how stupid it is. Like the menu is crazy.

SPEAKER_01 25:50

It really is. It really is. And they're still in business.

SPEAKER_03 25:52

But again, but again, that's not marketing, right? That's an operational choice. Like they they've got a supply chain that they got to train chefs, they gotta train servers, they've got to print the menus. Like, that's an operational difference. It's not a stunt, and that's the key to the talk trigger system.

SPEAKER_01 26:05

I still use your example from utility about um Columbia uh making an app to teach people how to tie knots and they don't have to sell rope.

SPEAKER_03 26:14

They don't sell rope. Um, yeah, and sometimes your your talk trigger can can work uh like that. Right, it can be it still has to be relevant, right? And so being knowing how to tie knots makes sense if you're an outdoorsman, even though they don't sell rope. So it has to be relevant, but it doesn't have to be spot on. Um, like there's a a company that I just came across uh this week called uh Gulf Coast Um Awnings, and and they make um pool enclosures, which I guess is really popular in Florida, right? You've got like a whole like a like a like a like a cage over your pool. Yeah, um, I guess to keep bugs out.

SPEAKER_02 26:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 26:51

Yeah, right. Yeah, now they don't, but they keep bugs out or kids out or whatever. And so they operate all up and down the coast. So when they finish a new project, they they don't tell anybody about this, they just do it, which is a great talk trigger because nobody expects it. They leave like one of those fake owls on top to kind of scare birds away so birds aren't shitting on the thing. But the customer doesn't know the customer doesn't know about it. So they come out and like, bro, where did this owl come from? And that's their talk trigger. Somebody's always in social media, like, hey, did you guys leave? Did you guys forget an owl? And it's like, no, no, that's for you. That's our gift to you, right? It's a really nice, it's a nice one.

SPEAKER_01 27:21

It's good that's that's fantastic. So um, we're wrapping things up here, and I appreciate you carving some time out of your day here. My pleasure. Anytime. Let's let's uh and that's one thing about you, Jay, and I and I'm gonna tell my audience about that. You can learn from this, uh, from this individual. Number one, he's just been an incredible mentor to me over the past eight, eight plus years. I've been figuring this whole wonderful world of entrepreneurship and branding out. Um, but but somebody said to me one time, you know, that Jay Bear, he always makes time uh for you. And that is true. Now, not just me specifically for people around you. So I appreciate that. You always stay humble, even though you this guy is rushing the speaking game by the way. I I oh that's what I was gonna tell talk about regarding speaking before we wrap up here. I'm reading a book right now called um It's in my gym bag. Uh The Breakthrough Speaker from Smiley. Um, I forget what the kid's name is, but Smiley's something. Anyway, I found it through a post of a post. Anyway, kid's a millennial.

SPEAKER_03 28:18

I know of the book, but I I haven't read it.

SPEAKER_01 28:20

Yeah, so um his whole thing is like, listen, you know, they think uh millennials are just you know self-entitled me mees, but it's a whole different game. I was in a miserable job working for the government, and now kid makes a couple hundred grand a year um, you know, as a keynote speaker, but it's fun to watch um that generation start to develop. And as you said, we're getting a younger generation in NSA, which is great because he really drives the point on. He calls them um uh Bohm Boehm's B-O-W-M that the speaking industry is full of bald old white men and uh he with bad suits and dimples. And uh I tend to I I tend to concur with a lot of that, but a lot of it is changing. I mean, he's talking about everything from bad suits to the PowerPoints with clip art to the whole mind to actually, you know, the the reason the the entire um uh landscape of the speaking industry is changing is because people are actually showing up with real tangible stories and things of matter that are that are changing our world, but also have to do with business and what's going on. So I'm only in the first chapter of reading what's going on, but it's fun to see that I'm kind of you know, I'm getting schooled by a millennial on how to build a speaking business.

SPEAKER_03 29:31

Yeah, it's good. There's a there's a lot of really talented uh young speakers out there, which uh keeps old dudes like me on their toes.

SPEAKER_01 29:38

Absolutely. Brand Brian Fanzo, see you Fanzo out there doing his thing. Um he totally is. Uh so in any business out there, we work with a lot of small, uh, medium-sized businesses locally here in Miami to get their video game on point. And then we work with brands for their podcast stuff. But what, you know, what's your what's your number one bit of advice to small, medium, large-size businesses, entrepreneurs, solopreneurs on identifying their talk trigger?

SPEAKER_03 30:03

Yeah, so there's a whole system in the book, six-step process that you definitely need to follow. Uh, as I mentioned, the worst way to do this is to brainstorm it because if it was that easy, you already have one. So you got to follow the process. And and the key to the process is the first part, which is to actually talk to your customers. So, what we advise is to first create a customer journey map, like figure out all the different touch points you have with your clients, right? So, when do you actually interact with them? Like when they walk in, when you email them back, like you know, you kind of map all that out, right? Then you want to go talk to some customers. We recommend that you talk to three different groups of customers: new customers, longtime customers, and lost customers. Okay. Five conversations in each group is sufficient. Five, five, five. What you're gonna do in that conversation is you're gonna ask them, okay, these are the kind of key touch points that we think. You walked in the office, we sent you a proposal, uh, we had a post proposal phone call, whatever is true in your business, right? For each of those points, Mrs. Customer, what did you expect would happen? What you're trying to create is an expectations map. Because once you know what your customers expect at each stage, then you know by definition what they do not expect. And that gap set between what they expect and what they don't expect, that's where the gold is. That's where the talk trigger lives. In that hole between what they expect and what they don't expect. Because we don't talk about stuff we expect. We talk about things we don't expect. Like I don't know everybody uh listening or watching, I'm sure I know some of you, but I know this for a fact. Nobody ever says, hey, let me tell you about this perfectly adequate experience I just had. Right? Why? Why? Because that's a shitty story. It's not a story worth telling.

SPEAKER_00 31:54

Right.

SPEAKER_03 31:55

So you've got to do something, it doesn't have to be big. It's a, you know, look at Double Tree. It's a chocolate chip cookie. Dude, they're not giving away a plane, it's a chocolate chip freaking cookie, right? So it doesn't have to, it's a it's a silver pocket knife. It doesn't have to be giant. It's a podcast sucks t-shirt, right? It and it doesn't have to be a giveaway either, I should say, but in many cases it is. It doesn't have to be big, it just has to be something that your customers do not expect. One thing. Just do one thing they don't expect and do it consistently, every day, every customer, every time. And if you did it right, they'll talk to you about it, and that will help you grow your business at essentially no cost.

SPEAKER_01 32:33

Boom. Those are nuggets of wisdom right there, business owners, entrepreneurs. It works. I'm telling you, it works. Talk triggers is the name of the book, J Bear. Bear is spelled wrong, as Jay would say. B-A-E-R. You can follow Jay at J Bear. Talk triggers is available wherever books are sold, both online and offline. Run, don't walk to Amazon, which means you're just gonna pull up your browser and buy the book while you're okay. But and go to talktriggers.com. There's tons of free stuff on there. And um, for those of you tuning in on YouTube watching the replay, well, you must be bored because you're flipping through old YouTube videos. But uh for those of you tuning in tuning into the show here, uh, Jay, that sound means that we are uh we're out of time here, but I appreciate you taking time uh to to uh to hang out and talk about the brand new book here. I can't wait to dig into it. I've been I've been reading lately. I've been uh been a reader. I'm a published author, but I've been forcing myself to read lately. How's that work?

SPEAKER_03 33:30

I love it. Uh I think you're gonna like this one. I really do. I we're really happy with it, and the reviews have been incredible. I've just blown away uh by the reaction to this book. So um I think you'll like it.

SPEAKER_01 33:41

Yeah, I'm fired up about it. Hey, remember talk triggers is available wherever books are sold. If I haven't already mentioned that at all, listen, podcasts suck if you don't have one. Keep that in mind too. More information at the podcastlaunchlab.com. In fact, I released my brand new nine module course this week. It's all free. Free podcastlaunchclass.com. Hey, I'm Sebastian Rusk signing off from our studio here in beautiful downtown Miami. We'll talk to you next time.