Episode Transcriptions Unedited, Auto-Generated.

Tyson: [00:00:00] Welcome to the social community and show where it's our goal to help you learn, grow, and transform, and a person to become today. I'm talking with Ben Baker. Storytelling has been a way of life for Ben from a young age, he realized that through story telling stories, people listened to him, understood him and engaged professionally.

[00:00:31] This is what he's been doing now for over two decades. He helps brands tell, engaging stories that compel their customers to take action. His mission is to have brands stop being a commodity instead, be a brand worth loving. We talk a lot about. Storytelling and the things that kind of encompass it from, from a branding perspective, from a marketing perspective, from a personal perspective, from a leadership, management type, from all kinds of different angles, we talk a lot about this kind of concept of what w in a way, uh, one of the favorite things Ithat Ben said in this interview was, how am I making people around me better? I love this concept. We get into this a few times in the episode. Lots of great nuggets of wisdom. I hope you guys take away one or two great little things. Ben says here. He he's been around the block for quite a while. He's got a lot of great insights and stuff.

[00:01:24] Well, without further ado, let's talk with Ben. Ben, look at the social community show. Thank you so much for joining us. I look forward to our conversation and your nuggets and wisdom. You can. Still upon us. 

[00:01:35] Ben: [00:01:35] It is great being on your show. You know, I've been excited about this show for a while. You know, you and I had a pre-conversation a couple of weeks ago and we just hit it off.

[00:01:45] So I think we are going to, we're going to have a lot of fun with us. 

[00:01:48] Tyson: [00:01:48] Definitely. Thank you so much. 

[00:01:49] I appreciate the, uh, the, uh, the 

[00:01:52] compliment, the complex, maybe a little bit here for me. I appreciate 

[00:01:55] Ben: [00:01:55] that. Give compliments we're called phones are deserved. 

[00:01:59] Tyson: [00:01:59] Definitely. So when looking into you and all your stuff, um, one thing that really stood out to me was, was this.

[00:02:06] I guess this power of storytelling you discovered. Yeah. Can you take us back to that? If you can remember, or some type of thing, when you, 

[00:02:13] Ben: [00:02:13] you were telling a story, you 

[00:02:15] Tyson: [00:02:15] heard a story or whatever it was, and you're like, Whoa, there's something there. Like, can you take us back to that? What would, that was like, what'd you learn?

[00:02:21] Ben: [00:02:21] Well, I've always been a storyteller. I mean, from the time I was a little kid when I was really young and we're probably talking seven, eight, nine years old, one of my dad's friends was the, uh, the head sales guy for a guy by the name of Tommy VU. And I don't know if you ever heard of Tommy VU in the 1980s.

[00:02:43] So actually I probably would have been a little older than that. If we're talking to the 19th late 1970s, beginning of 1980s, I would have been. 1314 years old. So a little bit, a little bit older than that, but Tommy VU was told, sold real estate seminars. Okay. You know, it was YouTube can make a million dollars with no money down.

[00:03:02] You can have big cars and fancy clothes and all this kind of thing. And he'd stand in front of this big house with his. Voted in front of him in a fancy car and two women, one on each arm, in a bikini. And what he did is he sold these real estate seminars. But what he did was he had a team of people that went across North America that did the half day pitch, the free thing with 500 to a thousand people in the room.

[00:03:28] That got you to take the seminar and it was yo bye. And these were 10,000, 20,000, 30,000. I mean, we're talking big money for these things. Well, one of my dad's best friends, Sam Almon was the number one pitch man for Tommy VU. And his brother was number two. The two of them sold more Tommy VU products and then the next 20 guys combined.

[00:03:51] Tyson: [00:03:51] Wow. 

[00:03:51] Ben: [00:03:51] And I learned from Sam at a young age, you know, the power of the story because when he was on stage and I walked through the stage with him many, many times, it was all about the stories and he knew people were leaning in was when he was telling the stories. You know, when he was telling stories from his life and you know, Tommy's life and how this happened and you know, and the good, the bad and the ugly, and this happened, we had a problem and, and you'll, we overcame it and this was the challenge.

[00:04:25] And then we overcame that broke. And because of all that, this is what we learned. And 

[00:04:29] Tyson: [00:04:29] if you take this course for 

[00:04:30] Ben: [00:04:30] $25,000, we too can teach you how to be that as well. And people were, you know, reaching into their back pocket, grabbing their checkbook. And, you know, drinking the Koolaid, uh, you know, 

[00:04:43] Tyson: [00:04:43] it was, 

[00:04:44] Ben: [00:04:44] it was a magical, magical thing from a young age, watching this to sit there and say, you know, all he's doing is getting people to believe.

[00:04:53] He's getting people to trust him. He's getting people to, to be able to put the vision in their minds. I internalize it then. And turn it part of it, something that they need to have, something that they walked in the door, knowing nothing about maybe having a casual interest in, and by the time the door shut at the end of the day, these people were in hook line and sinker, and it was the stories that did it, you know, so I learned from a very early age, the power of telling stories and you'll early on in my sales career.

[00:05:27] I was always told, have three stories at the goal, always have three stories of the goal, whether you're on the golf course, whether you're in a meeting, whether you're with, you know, and be able to relate those stories to the situation that you're in, you know, customize those stories, relate those stories, change, you know, change them around a little bit, keep them authentic, make sure they're truthful, but be able to sit there and augment them in such a way.

[00:05:54] That it teaches a lesson that is relevant to the people that you're in front of because people remember stories far more than they remember marketing, pithy comments and jingles and this and that, their thing know, take the Superbowl, for example, can you, you sit there today and we're only what February was the Superbowl where, you know, we're not that far away from it.

[00:06:17] You know, how many of those commercials can you remember today?

[00:06:24] Not that many, 

[00:06:25] Tyson: [00:06:25] they weren't very memorable to begin with, I think. 

[00:06:28] Ben: [00:06:28] But. That's the truth of the matter. It says that they're, they're designed for the hype of the moment, but they didn't engage with your heart, your body and your soul, and a story. Does that a story does that, and not only that is, it allows for recall.

[00:06:44] And it allows for people to retail, right? And when you can get people to recall your story and retell it to others, that's when the magic happens 

[00:06:53] Tyson: [00:06:53] right on that Superbowl commercial type threat or whatever. Maybe you have some incentives. I see. Notice whatever nowadays these commercials make no sense at all.

[00:07:04] I don't understand 

[00:07:06] Ben: [00:07:06] them. 

[00:07:07] Tyson: [00:07:07] They, I don't understand how they align with the product or 

[00:07:10] Ben: [00:07:10] whatever it is. 

[00:07:11] Tyson: [00:07:11] And it. 

[00:07:12] Ben: [00:07:12] Just 

[00:07:12] Tyson: [00:07:12] baffles me and I don't, I don't get it. Do you have insight into that? Um, Or 

[00:07:18] Ben: [00:07:18] whatever it is, it 

[00:07:19] Tyson: [00:07:19] seems like they're just trying to make some 

[00:07:21] Ben: [00:07:21] viral 

[00:07:21] Tyson: [00:07:21] thing happen no matter what the product or whatever it is.

[00:07:24] I don't know. Do you have insight into that? 

[00:07:26] Ben: [00:07:26] I think that you're trying to say is, is viral. Absolutely. It's sitting there going it's the shock and awe, if you have something that's shock and awe or cute, I mean, Why do bunny rabbit and cat videos go through through the internet like wildfire? 

[00:07:43] Tyson: [00:07:43] I don't understand.

[00:07:44] Ben: [00:07:44] I don't understand. And it either, but they do because it's that, you know, it's that cute and cuddly that, you know, that funny thing, that's stupid thing that somebody does and that people want to see it over and over 

[00:07:55] Tyson: [00:07:55] and over again. 

[00:07:56] Ben: [00:07:56] And these guys who spend $3 million a minute, Or $3 million for 30 seconds.

[00:08:02] I was thinking on, on the Superbowl commercial realize they're never going to get the ROI on that 30 seconds. There's never, you know, they've got a million and a half or, you know, invested in developing this commercial. They got $3 million every 30 seconds. Hopefully they have enough cash to show it three or four times during the super bowl, but where they are going to make their money.

[00:08:27] Is those viral, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, over and over and over and over again because people are now going to see it seven top 10, 20, 50, a hundred, 200 times. Right. And when you've seen this commercial 200 times, you may still not remember the commercial, but you'll be thinking about what you're doing is you're thinking about the product.

[00:08:50] And then you're thinking about the brand. So it's, it's trying to ingrain that thought process of the brand into your psyche by having you see it over and over and over again. But you haven't, you watched something that may seem silly and benign and nothing to do with the brand, but it's getting that brand in front of you.

[00:09:08] It's getting that logo in front of you. You know, time and time again. And then when you're in the grocery store or wherever you are, you're going to reach for that Coca Cola. And so that Pepsi you're gonna reach for that Budweiser instead of cores or whatever, because that logo is psychologically implanted into your brain.

[00:09:27] Right? That's that's playing the big boy game, the big boy game that, you know, that's, that's, that's, omni-channel in its best sense. It truly is, you know, but the problem with that is that's for the big boys, you know, and if you're taking a look at the majority of people out there, the majority of brands out there do not have the capitalization to play that game.

[00:09:55] And, you know, I mean, Gary Vaynerchuk just did something on his birthday. What was that a couple of months ago, or it was a 264 slide deck on how to take one piece of content and cut it up a hundred different ways. And you should be putting out a hundred pieces of content a day. Well, if you're a $400 million corporation with a $30 million budget to support the brand, that is Gary Vaynerchuk, you can do that because you've got 25.

[00:10:24] People whose job it is to cut splice in the send out. But if you're like you and me, that's a one to five, 10, 20 person company. You got to rely on something better. You got to rely on. Let's put out really good content that is sniper focused at your audience. The people that truly care about you need your product and have the capitalization to pay for whatever your services are, you know, because if they don't have all three of those things, They're not a customer.

[00:10:58] Right. And you know, it's playing the game at different levels, depending on what are your objectives, you know, and, and truly who are you as a brand? 

[00:11:09] Tyson: [00:11:09] Do you get people coming to you with that? You know, how do I be Gary Vander, Chuck? How do I, how do I have this thing? I get customers like that clients come through and they're like, how do I be?

[00:11:19] Like, listen, you can't play that game. 

[00:11:23] Ben: [00:11:23] You know what I mean? Here's the thing. Everybody started somewhere. Gary Vaynerchuk started off in his parents' basement doing the wine TV or whatever. I forget what the name of the wine channel TV 

[00:11:36] Tyson: [00:11:36] every month. 

[00:11:37] Ben: [00:11:37] Everybody wide library. There it is. Everybody starts somewhere.

[00:11:41] It's not the fact that you can't do it, but it's it's how do you eat an elephant one bite at a time, right? And it's realizing that you don't go from a hundred thousand dollar company to a $400 million company overnight. There is no hack. There is no simple fix. There is no shortcut for doing it. Gary Vaynerchuk was nobody.

[00:12:06] Yeah, for 10 years before all of a sudden he became Gary Vaynerchuk and people, all of a sudden paid them 50,000, a hundred thousand dollars or whatever. They pay him for a keynote address that, you know, the fact that he is everywhere, he says that he spoke to 20 people on a, on a late night radio show, you know, a thousand times.

[00:12:29] Before he got in front of an audience, that was it. Significant thing, you know? So you gotta be able to put in the time you gotta be able to put in the effort. It doesn't mean you can't be the next day or Gary Vaynerchuk or Richard Branson or whatever. But the people think that, you know, Richard Branson or Gary Vaynerchuk or bill Gates and all those guys got there easy.

[00:12:50] None of them got there. Easy. None of them got there without failure. None of them got there without banging their heads against the wall and looking at their, at their bank account at the end of the month, going, am I going to make payroll? I will guarantee you every single one of these guys at some point in their life, you'll look at their bank balance and said, am I going to make payroll this month?

[00:13:12] Right. Yeah. 

[00:13:13] Tyson: [00:13:13] And I said, I wish we 

[00:13:14] Ben: [00:13:14] heard more of those stories. 

[00:13:16] Tyson: [00:13:16] Like, um, I think one of those types of examples, like Steve jobs, I just, I 

[00:13:19] Ben: [00:13:19] really hate when people like, 

[00:13:21] Tyson: [00:13:21] do you even understand how broken bankrupt that 

[00:13:25] Ben: [00:13:25] company was? He was on the 

[00:13:28] Tyson: [00:13:28] verge of bank so many times 

[00:13:30] Ben: [00:13:30] and he got fired from it. 

[00:13:32] Tyson: [00:13:32] He was right.

[00:13:33] Yeah. And they only brought him back as the company was ready to shut the doors 

[00:13:37] Ben: [00:13:37] any day. 

[00:13:38] Tyson: [00:13:38] And, and then like, well, let's give this guy another shot. Like you did go to the pick. So, you know, Pixar, maybe we can turn this around and if you don't see that and it's like, we glorify this stuff and yeah. 

[00:13:49] Ben: [00:13:49] Well, what do you remember the neck who remembers the next computer?

[00:13:52] Tyson: [00:13:52] Yeah. And I 

[00:13:53] Ben: [00:13:53] bet you, most people 

[00:13:54] Tyson: [00:13:54] that love Steve jobs and love apps don't even have 

[00:13:56] Ben: [00:13:56] any idea what that was. Yeah. 

[00:13:58] Tyson: [00:13:58] And I owned, I barely know. I barely got it. I wasn't, I wasn't old enough to, to own one, but I know enough about. I bought that story. 

[00:14:06] Ben: [00:14:06] I like the, I, the failure part of the story. I liked the, 

[00:14:10] Tyson: [00:14:10] that he went and he said, you know, screw you Apple.

[00:14:13] I'm going to show you how I can make this PC. I want to make. And he went and he made the next stuff and it was a huge flop. 

[00:14:19] Ben: [00:14:19] It was huge flop, 

[00:14:20] Tyson: [00:14:20] massive flood, millions and millions. I think I'll say it was a hundred something million, a hundred million dollars just down the drain. Nobody bought them. I mean, barely it was it's horrible.

[00:14:30] And then he went on the Pixar and it was a smash hit. You know, and a lot of people even know he was associated with that or affiliated with that in any way at all. And, but that 

[00:14:39] Ben: [00:14:39] I liked, I liked 

[00:14:40] Tyson: [00:14:40] that he just didn't give up and he kept trying and he kept reiterating and stubbornly. He must have learned something on the way, even though it seems like he never did.

[00:14:49] Um, and then he went to Apple and then, you know, It went back to Apple and it was like, let's try, make colorful PCs. And not just, that just took off. And then it really was what saved their business. 

[00:14:59] Ben: [00:14:59] But it was also the fact that he sat there and said, we have to go get back to basics. Yes, it was, it was the thought processes.

[00:15:06] Do we know our clients? No. Do we know why our clients buy from us? No. Right. You know, if you look at Apple, today is not Apple computers. 

[00:15:17] Tyson: [00:15:17] It's Apple, 

[00:15:18] Ben: [00:15:18] Apple is a brand that talks about innovation. It talks about lifestyle. It talks about FOMO. You know, it talks about all those types of things. You know, the fact that they sell technology.

[00:15:32] You know, the truth of matter is they could get into insurance and if they could make it make sense with the Apple ecosystem, they would be extremely successful with it. 

[00:15:44] Tyson: [00:15:44] Oh, they got a credit card now. So they figured that out 

[00:15:47] Ben: [00:15:47] credit card. And we only have, if all of a sudden they created their own their own while they have their own insurance, you know, they have their own insurance for the Apple products.

[00:15:56] So to be able to move their out to another range of insurance products, Might be the next level, but you never know where a company is going. You know, if you, if you concentrate on your core values and you concentrate on this is what we believe and have your brand be what you believe, not being tied to a specific product or service, you know, customers will go along with you on that ride.

[00:16:24] You know, if people say no, they make hammers, that's it? They're, they're a hammer company. You know, it's a Stanley hammer company. No, but the Stanley tools, but people think of the Stanley hammer first and foremost, you know, and the question is, could they do a set of electrical tools? Probably not. Cause they're not, that's not what people think about the more, you know, so it's a matter of sitting there going, what do you want your brand to be?

[00:16:51] And how, you know, how do you build your core values in such a way that if the market changes as needs change, as your customers change, you can evolve with them and your customers will see that evolution happen with you. How are men believe in you? 

[00:17:09] Tyson: [00:17:09] Yeah. How are you coaching clients or 

[00:17:11] Ben: [00:17:11] customers or whatever it be 

[00:17:12] Tyson: [00:17:12] to craft that story, to think about that story and to make that, you know, not just something they believe in, but something they kind of, they put out there in the world.

[00:17:21] Ben: [00:17:21] Yeah. It's for me, it's getting them to understand why the story is important. You know, first and foremost, your brand story is for your employees. Okay. And most people look at me and go, ha you know, I don't get it. Yeah. If your employees don't trust, believe in and work towards the values of the brand and extol the virtues of the brand, no customer will ever believe in it.

[00:17:50] Plain and simple. It's, it's all about building trust. If your employees understand, this is what we do, this is why we do it. This is where we came from. This is where we are. These are who our customers are. This is the value that we provide to them. And this is where we're going. They'll provide that story and the customer experience along with it, to your customers.

[00:18:13] To go along with it and to your vendors, because all of a sudden, if your vendors buy into your brand story, All of a sudden, they're looking for solutions that are going to help make your brand better. Cause they get it. They get where you're going. You know, they're, they're no longer selling you stuff.

[00:18:31] They're helping you achieve an objective. Your clients are helping you achieve an objective you're you're. It would in most part is helping them achieve their objectives, but your employees understand how they belong and all of a sudden they're engaged. You know, you retain them as employees and they grow with you instead of having this horrific, horrible, circular door of having to hire people over and over from the same position, because employees don't feel listened to understood or valued.

[00:19:03] Tyson: [00:19:03] How, how, how are you? How are you building this trust? What is, I mean, in the most authentic 

[00:19:10] Ben: [00:19:10] way, I can see, I can see people trying to build trust 

[00:19:13] Tyson: [00:19:13] in a, in a salesy kind of scammy kind of way. Like, well, we've got to build trust. Let's just put out a manual and whatever versus something I would think needs to be more authentic.

[00:19:24] How are you doing that? 

[00:19:26] Ben: [00:19:26] It's gotta be authentic. I mean, trust, I was just on the thread this morning with some people. And the question is, do you give trust? Right away to employees or do they have to earn trust and overwhelming is, is that if you hire somebody, you need to trust them. Right. Why are you hiring them?

[00:19:44] If you don't trust them? You know, if you're not willing to give these people the keys and alarm code, the first day they walk into the office. Once they learn, learn how to turn on and off the lights and the alarm code and all that kind of stuff. 

[00:19:57] Tyson: [00:19:57] Why are you hiring 

[00:19:58] Ben: [00:19:58] them? You know, you may not give them access to the bank account right away, but you know, you're trusting them with your clients.

[00:20:06] You're trusting them with your, you know, with your R D with your IP, with you'll. A hundred different things. You need trust the people that work with you. And you know, that comes down to leadership, communication, and culture, your leadership. There's too many companies out there that have it. The cultures versus leadership cultures, and a manager tells you what to do.

[00:20:31] A leader tells you why you're doing it. Right. Okay. You know, and it's, it's really important to work in a culture where you understand why you're doing it. And you have somebody who leads you within your team, whether it's a team, a five, whether it's a team of 110,000, that can show you this, where we're going, and this is why we're going there.

[00:20:53] And this is how you belong, and this is how the work you do matters. And if you make a mistake and you have the best interest of the customer and the company at heart, that's okay, let's work through this. Let's find out what happened, what went wrong, let's figure it out together and let's figure out how we're not going to do this again.

[00:21:13] You know, that's, that's leadership where we're a manager is writing a report on you and telling you that if you do it again, you're fired. No. And so it's really good. Getting rid of the managerial mindset of my job is to, you know, sure that these people with carrot and stick, do the job that they're supposed to do on day in and day out, because that doesn't work anymore.

[00:21:38] Tyson: [00:21:38] You know, 

[00:21:39] Ben: [00:21:39] that just doesn't work anymore. People need to be trusted. People need to be said to say, you know what, this is what we're trying to achieve. I trust you. Go do it. You know, the best leaders I've ever known is somebody walks into their office and says, we have a problem. I said, okay, what are the two solutions you have?

[00:22:01] You know, if you can walk into a leader's office and say, you know what, this happened, a mistake, I own it. Something happened. We have a problem, whatever it is, but here are two different ways that we can fix this. A leader has done their job. Cause what they've done is they've empowered their people to think.

[00:22:20] And the more we can empower our people to think the more engaged they're going to be, the better employees are going to be the buyer customer experience. They're going to give the more loyal the clients are going to give. And therefore guess what? All of a sudden, you stop being a commodity and you start being a brand worth loving.

[00:22:38] Tyson: [00:22:38] It reminds me of a story. I don't know if you've ever heard this story. Uh, there's a guy, uh, the chip processor company. I forgot what he did, but he wanted to cost the company $10 million. He walked his boss' office. He's like, I guess I'm fired. He's like, why would I fire you? I just spent $10 million educating you.

[00:22:56] And then from that moment on, he just was, you know, a loyal customer. And it's kind of that sentiment of like, you're talking about that, that manager versus that leader type mentality. 

[00:23:06] Ben: [00:23:06] Yeah, it's so simple. Some costs you're right. If this employee just costs you 10 million bucks, you're not getting that $10 million out of them.

[00:23:13] You're not, I can get that 10 million bucks out of this. Guy's hide. It's not going to happen. Right. If they had done it with malice and forethought, and we're not thinking of the customer and not thinking of, of the, of the brand and they just did it, you know, Without a chair, one of the world, that's a different story, right.

[00:23:32] But if they sit there and say, you know what, guess what I screwed up, you know, I get it. I made a mistake. You're not lock getting back that money. You consider that money. You've already invested in that person right forward with it and figure out how do we turn those lemons into lemonade? No, if this person goes and does it again, guess what?

[00:23:52] Then you have a different issue altogether, right. But you know, if they learn from this and all of a sudden they go on and be an incredible employee. And all of a sudden that employee says, you know what? They stood behind me when I made this major mistake. And the, you know, there wasn't the finger pointing there.

[00:24:09] Wasn't laying the blame. There was how do we fix this? And how do we learn from this? Guess what? They're going to tell that to every other employee that they know. And they're going to tell the customers, 

[00:24:19] Tyson: [00:24:19] right. And they're going to feel safe and secure at their job and know they can try things and do things.

[00:24:25] And if I make a mistake, it's okay. I'm not going to be fired. I can try to do things and make. Things better, make changes, make waves a 

[00:24:32] Ben: [00:24:32] little bit in a, in a 

[00:24:33] Tyson: [00:24:33] good non malice way. 

[00:24:36] Ben: [00:24:36] Companies don't grow. If mistakes don't happen, right. If you're always doing the same thing, if you're, if things are always perfect, you're not pushing the envelope.

[00:24:46] Right. And you're not innovating and you're not changing, you're not growing. And you're always in sooner or later, you're going backwards as a company. You are absolutely going backwards because if you're not moving forwards, you're going backwards. And, you know, all of a sudden somebody is going to be behind you and it's going to leapfrog you and they're going to eat your lunch.

[00:25:05] So allowing your people to make those mistakes and, you know, and challenge things and push the envelope and, and experiment keeps you at the cutting edge, keeps you strong and keeps you at the forefront of your industry and makes you more valuable to your customers. Yeah. That's your R and D budget, right?

[00:25:30] Tyson: [00:25:30] Is there a way if you know of identifying, let's say myself as a, a manager in that manner we're talking about and saying, well, I'm a manager, but I know I need to become a leader. Can, can you identify yourself as that? And then if you can, how, and then what do I do to become a leader in a sense we're talking about here.

[00:25:54] Ben: [00:25:54] The biggest question is, and I tell people when I'm, when I'm leading workshops or a, my online course and you know, things I do, I have a course that I teach called how to retain people through leadership. And the biggest question that I ask people is when you wake up in the morning, what's your first thought is your first thought, how am I going to make people around me better?

[00:26:19] Or how am I going to make myself better?

[00:26:25] You know, a leader is thinking about the people around them. First foremost, an always it's not about the individual victory. It's not about puffing your own chest and making yourself look better and making yourself look better than your boss. Guess what if your team is kicking ass and taking names, people will notice that you're, that you're the one leading that team.

[00:26:50] No, but if all of a sudden you're the one stealing other people's ideas and taking responsibility for stuff that other people did and all that kind of stuff, you're going to get that reputation real quick. A being that person that is, you know, um, we don't trust this person and you may be a manager for the rest of your life because, you know, if they don't fire you, they're certainly not going to promote you.

[00:27:16] Right. 

[00:27:18] Tyson: [00:27:18] So, I guess you'd have to really probably do a lot of self discovery, self kinda 

[00:27:24] Ben: [00:27:24] ego disillusioned 

[00:27:25] Tyson: [00:27:25] type of thing to say, I'm a manager, I'm this guy. And I need to stop. Is that what I'm hearing that correctly? 

[00:27:31] Ben: [00:27:31] Couple of things that I would suggest doing, um, One, there's something called strength finders by Gallup StrengthFinders, 2.0 by Gallup 

[00:27:40] Tyson: [00:27:40] strike.

[00:27:40] Is, are you saying 

[00:27:42] Ben: [00:27:42] strength? StrengthFinders 2.0 by Gallup Roy and the afterwards I'll say I'll send you the link and you, uh, you can, you can give it to your audience exactly what it is. It's online and either you'll find your top five strengths. Or your top 34 strengths. I think it's 1995, us for your top five strengths and 34 for the entire report and gives you a PDF report that says these are the things I'm good at.

[00:28:09] Okay. And it really, it gives you a good idea of what are the things you are good at. And gives you a real good assessment of who you truly are. You know, too many people focus on the things that they're bad at this test really focuses on. What are the things that are good at? What are my strengths? And by doing that, you get a pretty good assessment of how do you, Neil, what are your, what are your motivations, the motivations behind you?

[00:28:40] And it will give you a pretty good idea of whether you are truly a leader or you are manager. If you're in that situation there, thing is this my book, powerful, personal brands, a hands on guide to understanding yours. I wrote it two years ago. And it's all about getting people to understand codified and communicate their value to others.

[00:29:00] Yeah, because I'm a big believer of, until you love yourself, until you understand yourself, if you understand your own emotions and motivations, you can't lead other people. Right. And what I've done throughout this book, as I I've told stories, I've given the lessons behind them. And I ask a question and then I have two pages of, of lines where you can write in your own thoughts.

[00:29:26] And it's really designed to get you to think about who are you and what matters in your life? You know, there's things like what are the top three movies that you absolutely love and why. You know, why do you love these movies? Who are the people that were influential for you, you know, growing up and why, you know, why, what did you learn from these people?

[00:29:49] What are you passionate about and why are you passionate about it? And when you can really dive into these things, like if you are going to create your own manifesto, What would that manifest to look be by the way here's mine. And I put my manifesto up there and I said, here's my manifesto. Here's the things that I believe in.

[00:30:10] What are the things that you truly believe in? And the more you can understand that the more you have an understanding of who you are as a human being, and until you're comfortable with yourself until you believe in yourself. And until you understand the good, the bad and the ugly about yourself and embrace it all.

[00:30:30] You're never going to be a great leader. 

[00:30:33] Tyson: [00:30:33] Yeah. Absolutely. And then what I'm hearing also in this that I was thinking about is when you have all that information and in whatever capacity, I would think this would help you be able 

[00:30:45] Ben: [00:30:45] to 

[00:30:45] Tyson: [00:30:45] craft this story. Whether it's you as that employee was in a company, or is it.

[00:30:50] Or that's your company and saying, this is what I'm about. This is what we're about then being crafted. Is that accurate? 

[00:30:57] Ben: [00:30:57] Yeah. Yeah. Cause your brand, your brand story is the Genesis of, of either the Genesis of you or the Genesis of your company. Where did you come from? What, what are the things that brought you to, to that aha moment?

[00:31:13] And how did you get from that aha moment to where you are today? Yeah. What are the challenges? What are the things that went well? One of the things that didn't go well, what are you learn around the way to where you are today? Now that you're here, what are the things that we do well? Who do we do them well for?

[00:31:30] Why do these people find us valuable? How do we change their lives? And more importantly, where are we going? And whether that's a personal brand or whether that's a corporate brand, the questions that you're going to ask are very similar, right? Because, you know, it's, it's that. I came from here. This is my history, you know, um, this is what I believe in.

[00:31:52] I, you know, I have a customer, uh, that I worked with a couple of years ago that the family started on a homestead in the 1850s in rural Saskatchewan. Wow. You know, they still own that property. 

[00:32:09] Tyson: [00:32:09] Wow. 

[00:32:09] Ben: [00:32:09] You know, and to them, family is the most important thing. And he owns 150 $200 million company. And to him, family is the most important thing.

[00:32:23] And his employees are family and his customers are family and his vendors are family and everybody gets treated like family, you know, And because of that, that's how know very large projects are done on handshakes. There there's, there's a lot of, I'm going to stare you in the eye. I'm going to shake your hand.

[00:32:45] We're going to say I promise. And this is going to get done. Yeah. And he's been very successful that way, but he can tell that story of Wheeler. You know, I grew up on a farm in rural Saskatchewan and my father and my grandfather grew up on the, and this is what we learned, and this is how, why I got into the tractor business.

[00:33:07] And what he does. He sells tractor equipment like these huge combine tractor equipment across North America, or at least across Canada. I'm not sure if it's across North America, but at least across Canada. And, you know, when you're selling half million million, $2 million pieces of equipment, you know, People said they go, well, if over $50,000 cheaper, maybe, maybe I'll change brands.

[00:33:32] People don't change brands because they deal with, you know, it's a family mentality and that he knows that the family will take care of you. Right. You know, and that's the story they tell as a brand. 

[00:33:43] Tyson: [00:33:43] I like that. I love those handshake deals reminds me of, um, Marcus Limonus, I'm not sure if you're familiar with him.

[00:33:48] He does all his deals on handshake deals. And I liked that, that we. Since we wait, we got away from that trust in the trust and other people. Um, some, some many years ago, I'm not sure how it is in Canada, but that's how it feels like you're in America. You know? Um, I, I can remember last time I signed a contract with a customer or client or whatever, I don't, you don't want to pay, or you don't want to, whatever that's on you, that's on your conscious, that's a new, I'm going to fulfill my end.

[00:34:14] I don't need a contract to. Then we agreed on something. I think we should all follow through. I saw, I like to do business as well. 

[00:34:19] Ben: [00:34:19] Yeah. And, and following up on that, I mean, I would say social media has a lot to do with why we don't trust anybody because there's too many people that are one way on social media.

[00:34:33] Yeah. And another way in, in person. And if that's the case, what do you believe? You know, if somebody shows up one way on social media, you go through their marketing. You you'll, you, you go through all these things. You, you build up a know like trust with these people, you know, and all of a sudden you meet their sales rep or you meet the owner, you go in and visit the company or you go to buy and you have this horrific in-person experience.

[00:35:02] It just blew everything out the door that you just saw in line and he'd go, why would I ever trust you again, if you, if this is your promise online, and this is how your people behave, why would I ever trust you again? And, you know, people have got to get back to the fact that you know what, not everybody is your customer.

[00:35:26] Yeah, not everybody is going to like you, not everybody is going to know like, and trust you. And that's okay. There's seven and a half billion people in the world. 99.9%. Some of those people will a, never know who Ben Baker is. Right. We'll never want to do business with me will never trust me. And that's okay because I couldn't handle their business even if at all walked in the door.

[00:35:53] Right. So we all need to sit there and say, what does success look like to us? What is your personal definition of success? And be able to live your life life and create your brand and create your company based on your values and your ideas of what success is your idea of success. I met a guy last night who makes almost a million dollars a year online doing online courses and gives away about $900,000 a year to charity.

[00:36:24] That's amazing. Yeah. And that that's for him. He's lived in India, he's lived in Bangladesh. He's watched people starve on a dollar a day and his attitude is I don't need to have the big fancy car, the big fancy houses, anything. If I can sell a million, 2 million, 5 million, $10 million of this course. Then I can give away 95% of it.

[00:36:49] Yeah. And you know, and that's how he wants to live his life. And that's, you know, and probably more people buy his course because that story is behind it  they can see the money that he gives and he, and he, his blog is full of stories about all the money that he gives away the charity and how, how this charity has impacted other people's lives.

[00:37:13] So why wouldn't you buy this course? 

[00:37:16] Tyson: [00:37:16] Right? Of course. Yeah. 

[00:37:17] Ben: [00:37:17] Yeah. Even if you didn't want the course, yeah. You might spend 150 bucks or 75 bucks. I didn't tell you five bucks on the course. Cause you know, that this guy is actually taking the money and using it to do good in the world. Right. So it's a matter of understanding what your purpose is and being able to tell the story of that purpose, you know, to the world in a way that, that resonates with them.

[00:37:44] Tyson: [00:37:44] I like that. Some, um, 

[00:37:47] Ben: [00:37:47] you ever, you ever heard of, or read that 

[00:37:49] Tyson: [00:37:49] essay by Kevin Kelly at 1000 troops? 

[00:37:52] Ben: [00:37:52] Yes. 

[00:37:53] Tyson: [00:37:53] This is kind of what this reminds me of. Ah, if you get folks out there having read it, I'll link, I'll link to it or whatever, but it says this, you know, um, 

[00:38:00] Ben: [00:38:00] You know, we, we think we need 

[00:38:02] Tyson: [00:38:02] these hundreds of 

[00:38:02] Ben: [00:38:02] thousands, millions of people 

[00:38:04] Tyson: [00:38:04] to sustain this lifestyle or whatever it was, you know, whatever, but you really don't.

[00:38:08] And, um, I really taken that to heart and I really pass that message down to a lot of clients. I had this one comes to mind was, um, she was new as a therapist. I know how do I do this? And I want to make this big thing. I was like, how many clients 

[00:38:19] Ben: [00:38:19] a year do you need to live the lifestyle 

[00:38:21] Tyson: [00:38:21] you want? I don't know.

[00:38:23] Do you think you could 

[00:38:24] Ben: [00:38:24] live 

[00:38:25] Tyson: [00:38:25] a hundred clients, like 50 clients? Like what do you need? And, you know, she had no idea. I was like, do you think you could have a good life? If you, you add a hundred, 150 clients and that's all you've ever dealt with. Cause you think you can go out and find those people. 

[00:38:37] Ben: [00:38:37] He said, well, what about the other millions of it?

[00:38:38] I was 

[00:38:38] Tyson: [00:38:38] like, you can't have 

[00:38:40] Ben: [00:38:40] those people. You cannot possibly 

[00:38:42] Tyson: [00:38:42] see these millions of people that have this thing to various, very specific kind of things. Trauma 

[00:38:48] Ben: [00:38:48] doesn't matter, 

[00:38:50] Tyson: [00:38:50] but she was just, she just could not get past the. Yeah, I hear what you're saying, 

[00:38:54] Ben: [00:38:54] but 

[00:38:55] Tyson: [00:38:55] there's millions of people that are suffering from this.

[00:38:56] I'm like, you can't do that. Like you can make a huge impact in a hundred people's lives. Like I also don't understand the, 

[00:39:04] Ben: [00:39:04] the, whatever she's got to change her model. She has to sit there and say, my job in life is to train the people that are going to train the people that are going to train the people, to be able to get this out to the world.

[00:39:16] Tyson: [00:39:16] Yeah, because 

[00:39:17] Ben: [00:39:17] if you're going to just be a solo practitioner, you're right. You can influence a hundred, 150, 200 people, 500 people, maybe a thousand, maybe a thousand peanuts 

[00:39:28] Tyson: [00:39:28] in your life, even as a practitioner, maybe 

[00:39:30] Ben: [00:39:30] if you're a practitioner, but if you want to take your idea and have it as an ideal where spreading take the TEDx, you know, the 10 model, right.

[00:39:39] Then your job. Is to influence others and let them influence others and so on and so on and so on. You know, I love what you're saying because you know, Seth Goden talks about a minimal viable audience, 

[00:39:52] Tyson: [00:39:52] right? Yeah. Right. 

[00:39:53] Ben: [00:39:53] How many people do you need to make this product work? Because if you, you can have, as you said, a thousand true Frank fans, or how do true fans or whatever it is.

[00:40:03] And all of a sudden they said, there's a. I love this. It's not, I like this. I love this. I can't live without this. This is amazing. I got to have this and this is incredible. And I'm going to tell every single person that I know about this and say those thousand people have a thousand people, you know, that they influence all of a sudden you have a million people.

[00:40:27] Tyson: [00:40:27] Yeah. 

[00:40:28] Ben: [00:40:28] Yup go. And all you did was influence a thousand people. Yeah. If you influence a hundred people and they influence a hundred people, that's 10,000, you get those 10,000 to turn around and influence a hundred people, yet a hundred people again, and it grows accordingly. The trick is to make raving fans.

[00:40:48] It doesn't have to be a lot of raving fans. But if you can, if you can create raving fans that sit there and say, I'm always going to go, you know, and I'm going to always do business with Tyson. Tyson's incredible. He always takes care of me. He always knows what I need. He always, you know, is reliable when I call him up.

[00:41:08] He's there on the phone, you know, he, you know, I always get great service. I always get insight that I don't get somewhere else. Oh my God, you have this problem. You have to talk to Tyson. Yeah. And all of a sudden that is worth millions and millions of dollars in Facebook. As in Google, you know, Google ad words and LinkedIn and, and an email funnels and all that kind of stuff.

[00:41:35] One person telling another person, Oh my God, you have this problem. You need to deal with Tyson that is worth a million dollars in advertising every single time. It is. It is. Because you don't have to sell that person they're already sold. All you we'll have to do is take care of that person the same way that you take care of and who, you know, who introduced you to them.

[00:42:00] Tyson: [00:42:00] Yeah. What are some tips maybe you have that you constantly see or share that help craft that story? What did like the couple, two, three top things that really helped people hone in on that? 

[00:42:13] Ben: [00:42:13] I think it's iterations. I mean, honestly, the first time you tell your brand story will never be as good as the 500 at the time you tell your brand story, right?

[00:42:23] You know, you're always going to be tweaking it. And I keep, I can't say this enough, it has to be authentic. It has to be you, you know, your people will not tell your brand story exactly the same way that you do, and you don't want them to. You know, you want them to internalize a story and tell the story from their point of view, not your point of view from their point of view, you know, so here's the basic story.

[00:42:50] Here's what the story is, internalize it, and be able to bring it out and, and, and understand why it matters to you and why it matters to the people that are in front of you. You're going to tell the story differently to a set of bankers than you are to a set of soccer moms. Right. You know, The basic underlying premise of the story is going to be the same.

[00:43:12] But the, but the things that you focus on, maybe different, you know, if it's all true, it's all ed, but you may use certain parts of the story with certain people in different parts of the story, to different people. It's understanding who is the audience and why do they care? You know, what is the problem that they're having?

[00:43:32] Why is the hair coming out of their head? Why is their face about to explode? They've got a problem. People deal with you because they've got a problem. I don't care who you are and what world people come to you with money in their hands or a visa card, you know, burning a hole in their pockets because they have a problem that they can't fix.

[00:43:55] And the reason why they're going to give you their hard earned money. Is because they believe that you can fix that problem effectively in ways that is worth more to them than the money that they have in their pocket. Yeah. 

[00:44:10] Tyson: [00:44:10] That's the key is understanding people that are looking to solve a problem.

[00:44:13] They're 

[00:44:13] Ben: [00:44:13] going to 

[00:44:13] Tyson: [00:44:13] alleviate a pain 

[00:44:15] Ben: [00:44:15] always. 

[00:44:16] Tyson: [00:44:16] Yeah, 

[00:44:17] Ben: [00:44:17] always. I mean, 30 years of sales that, that's the one thing I learned, you know, very early on is what's the underlying problem that people have. And it's never the fact of, you know, it's never the first thing out of their mouth. Yeah, it's absolutely never the first thing out of your mouth and you have to be willing to listen and you have to be willing to dig a little deeper ask why and what, and what does this mean to you and what will happen if this happen?

[00:44:48] Maureen, you can dive into understanding what the real problem is at the end of the day, the better off you're going to be. You're going to be, be able to sit there and say, okay, Now I understand what you're, what the real problem is. Let's see if we can figure this out together, and if you can't solve their problem, Find them, somebody who can absolutely.

[00:45:13] Because even if you don't make a dime off of it, what you've done is you've cemented trust with this person. They say, Oh my God, I went to Ben with this problem. You know what he realized right off the bat, he asked me a bunch of questions, realize that he couldn't help me, but he introduced me to somebody who could fix my problem.

[00:45:33] That was amazing. Yeah. Yeah, and he didn't make a dollar off of it, but he spent an hour with me to find out what my problem was and help me help me solve it.

[00:45:46] Elevated your brand enormously 

[00:45:49] Tyson: [00:45:49] with the, 

[00:45:50] Ben: [00:45:50] when you're talking about tweaking your 

[00:45:51] Tyson: [00:45:51] message. It's something, 

[00:45:53] Ben: [00:45:53] maybe we should go back quarterly, 

[00:45:55] Tyson: [00:45:55] biannually, annually, look at this and say, did we make changes or that too stringent? And we just 

[00:46:02] Ben: [00:46:02] need to sit there and say, what's changed. You know, you, you need to constantly look.

[00:46:07] I'm a big believer of every organization needs to have somebody in the office whose job it is. Even in a company of one, who's got their eyes five years on the horizon. And what are the things that could be coming up that could change my business. What are the, what are the customer's needs? What are the technology changes?

[00:46:28] Who are the new players in the marketplace? You know, other things that are going on and be able to you sit there and say, okay, these are the things I can influence. These are things I can influence. These are the things I know. These are things I don't know. Maybe I need to find out more about this. Even to just have a conversation and say, okay, what does AI really mean to my business?

[00:46:49] Maybe it's worth me spending 500 or a thousand bucks to bring in an AI person to sit there and have a two hour conversation with me to say, what could AI do for me in the longterm eel? Is it worth investing it now? Or is this something that I should be looking at in the next three to five years? And what's the value of doing it?

[00:47:09] You know, so we need to be doing that with our brand as well. We need to be sitting there and saying, does our brand still resonate with our audience? And that's ongoing communication with our people. That's ongoing communication with our employees, with our vendors, with our customers to sit there and say, are we taking care of you in the way that you need to be taken care of?

[00:47:31] You know? And then shutting up. Yeah. And not being offended if they say no, You know, if all of a sudden they say, well, really, no, you're not well, okay. Why not? What's changed. No. Oh, we do that. Well, that's silly. We can fix that in five seconds. And sometimes it is sometimes it's, you know what, the way you guys send us the invoices doesn't work for our accounting system.

[00:48:00] Okay. You're a two and a half million dollar client. We can modify your invoices. Okay. It's going to take us a little bit of time and a little bit of money, but for us to sit there and modify these invoices to make, make it easier for you to be able to read and bring into your system. Yeah. Okay. We'll do that.

[00:48:19] Yeah. We'll, we'll, we'll, that's the time and the energy and the, and the money to do that. If, if, if that's gonna make your life a little bit easier and that's going to cement our relationship, but if you never asked that question, if you're afraid to say, how are we doing? What can we be better? What are some things that you're seeing out there in the marketplace that you'd really like us to be able to do for you?

[00:48:41] You know, if you don't have people that are asking those questions of your customers and asking those questions here, employees as well, because they're, you know, they're talking to their buddies and they're sitting there saying, well, this company does this for their employees, but we don't do this. Then if you don't have a pulse on it, if you're not asking the question sometime you can't do anything about it.

[00:49:02] But if you can, and it's not, you know, Absolutely horrifically expensive to do it in a way that's just not viable. Why wouldn't you at least take a look at it and sit there and say, okay, maybe if we make these small little changes, we can cement this client relationship or this employee relationship or this vendor relationship.

[00:49:24] And all of a sudden we're a stronger company because of it. 

[00:49:29] Tyson: [00:49:29] I like to circle back around to this AI thing, you being in this employee retention type of space. Um, I, from what I see in the market, what's going on is I, a lot of people feel like their jobs will be taken away from AI. 

[00:49:41] Ben: [00:49:41] How do you see that? 

[00:49:43] Tyson: [00:49:43] And then 

[00:49:44] Ben: [00:49:44] how do you talk to 

[00:49:45] Tyson: [00:49:45] an employees or employers about what may or may not be happening with that?

[00:49:53] Ben: [00:49:53] It's a long conversation, but here's the short of it. Um, I could probably talk to you for about an hour on this, uh, AI and machine learning technology, whatever has, is, and will be changing the world the way the world works. That's reality, you know, it's reality. We have two problems, one. Many corporations don't understand how to use the technology effectively.

[00:50:25] And they don't understand the limitations of the, of the technology that when it's time for the digital technology to kick out and create a queue, you'll have a human being let's let's take customer experience for a reason, you call up to a call center. Okay. And. You get the automated voice or the bottom line or your online chat bot or your automated voice.

[00:50:49] And it asks you a bunch of questions. Well, sooner or later, the questions that it's either going to answer the question you need simply and easily, or it can't. Right. And the problem is when it can't do you hang up or does it automatically say, would you like to talk to a human being. Would you like somebody who can answer these questions for you?

[00:51:12] Yes. 

[00:51:14] Tyson: [00:51:14] Now 

[00:51:15] Ben: [00:51:15] what should happen there? What should happen is all the information that the AI has gathered already should be. Pushed out onto a dashboard. So when the customer person answers the phone, they already know your name, where you're calling and from what you guys have been talking about. And here's two or three possible solutions that, that, that technology could be, you know what, we're having a problem with the shipment.

[00:51:42] Oh, okay. I've got your tracking number. I've got where your thing is all that sitting on a dashboard. So we can start having an intelligent conversation instead of. No somebody answering the phone and say, hi, ma'am my name is Bob. Who am I talking to? And all of a sudden, you've spent 15 minutes online waiting for this customer experience person thinking the bot was taking care of your giving you all this information.

[00:52:03] And you're starting from scratch. 

[00:52:05] Tyson: [00:52:05] Yeah, that's a big pressure. 

[00:52:07] Ben: [00:52:07] So that's an enormous frustration of any company and, you know, companies think that technology can do anything. Oh, well we haven't. We have a customer service email. Everybody can just send anything to email. Well, some people just want to hear a voice.

[00:52:21] Somebody wants to hear a voice and sometimes people just want to vent. They're not there. You know, they just need somebody to hear them. As I said, people want to be listened to, they want to be understood and they want to be valued. Computers will never be able to do that. Never. I don't care how sophisticated the computer will be.

[00:52:42] They will not be able to empathize. They will not be able to extrapolate. They will not be able to sit there and, and be able to problem solve it. A level of say, it says, this is, you know, an outline issue. This is what makes sense for this particular customer. Yo, we can go ahead and do this for this one particular customer technology.

[00:53:03] Can't be programmed for that. What it can be doing is it can give broad generalizations, but you need a human being to sit there and listen to. It says, well, that doesn't make sense. Hang on a sec. Yeah. You need me to wipe out that one penny on your invoices, keep showing up every month. No problem. Hang on.

[00:53:19] It's done. And you know, technology can't do that because technology says, well, you also, penny. Right. Yeah. It's a one and a zero situation. You owe us that penny where a human being needs to be able to look at that and go, yeah, the human being on the end of the thing is being frustrated because they're getting a penny invoice and they're being told that it's 30, 60, 90 days overdue and we're paying 10 bucks or five bucks every time to send somebody an invoice for penny.

[00:53:50] Yeah. Yeah. And that that's where companies need to realize that we need to retrain our people to make them better at dealing with the human issues and being able to empower our people, to deal with human issues as they came up, use technology where technology makes sense. There are certain things where if it's a simple rote thing that people ask over and over and over again, and you can create a video.

[00:54:18] A really, really well done video that explains the situation and shows people step by step by step, how to deal with something great. Send it to them and says, did this video help? Yes, no, no. Boom automatically goes to tech support and a human being takes over. And that tech support person already knows you've watched the video.

[00:54:41] Yeah, that's how technology is Humana and the need to work hand in glove. And I don't think we need less humans. I think what we need is to be able to retrain humans, to be able to do more effective Shuman based work and provide better customer experience and let the computers do what computers do.

[00:55:01] Tyson: [00:55:01] Right. Yeah. Those simple repeated repetitive tasks that we just, as humans don't like to do. Yeah. I like, I like your angle and that's how I think about it too. Is it? It's not about getting rid of the humans. It's about, we're going to have different roles to play that we're not playing now. 

[00:55:18] Ben: [00:55:18] Or do the roles that we're doing now better because we're not focused on the manual minutiae and therefore we can focus on the outlier issues.

[00:55:30] I mean, how good would it be in the insurance industry? To have the technology fill out all the forms, all that kind of stuff. And then the humans just sit there and say, wait a second, this doesn't make sense. Cause their computer goes, hang on. This doesn't make sense. Kicks it out to a human, the human calls up, the person says, you know what?

[00:55:48] This, this and this doesn't make sense. Can we go through this and talk about it? 

[00:55:52] Tyson: [00:55:52] Yeah. 

[00:55:52] Ben: [00:55:52] And work through it together and be able to solve a problem quicker, faster, more effectively in a more human nature. Then all of a sudden sat there going, this is done. It's not completed. 

[00:56:05] Tyson: [00:56:05] Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's really the limitations, um, about that kind of stuff that I like.

[00:56:14] I like how you're thinking about this. And I guess obviously passing this onto the companies that. And that's why I think about this human touch, that human type, empathy, sympathy, caring, understanding those 

[00:56:28] Ben: [00:56:28] social cues. 

[00:56:30] Tyson: [00:56:30] That will be more of what is required. I think in the future as this AI stuff goes on.

[00:56:35] Yeah. 

[00:56:36] Ben: [00:56:36] And being able to problem solve. Yeah, it's been and given the power to problem solve, you know, that's the big thing is that if we give our employees the, the empowerment to make decisions and not have to say, hang on a second, I need to go talk to my manager, or I need to, I need to get back to you.

[00:56:56] Cause I needed to send this up to a committee and the committee, it needs to make a decision, you know, Yeah, people need to be able to have the thing that the person that's on the other end of the phone needs to be able to fix things. It's like when you walk into a car dealership and the salesman says, well, you know, I don't know, I need to go talk to my sales manager.

[00:57:16] And I said, tell you what I'm coming with you. And you can go back to your desk because if, if you can't make this decision, I'd rather deal with them. And I've done that. I've kicked salespeople to the curb and I've gone and talked to the sales manager and, and negotiated the end of the deal with the sales manager.

[00:57:31] You know, I said, you can pay him a commission or not, but you know, what, if he doesn't have the power to make the decision, what do I need him for? 

[00:57:38] Tyson: [00:57:38] Yeah. I hated that game. It's like so silly. 

[00:57:43] Ben: [00:57:43] Yeah. You know, he can make the decision, you know, they just, they just put their feet up on the desk and are trying to make you squirm for a couple of, 

[00:57:52] Tyson: [00:57:52] yeah.

[00:57:52] That's exactly what I flashbacks to the sales managers sitting at their feet, literally in a desk name. What do we get? How close are we? Like how much more can we squeeze? Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:58:05] Ben: [00:58:05] You get the, uh, the, uh, the freight and PDI out. Y'all out of these guys after we closed the deal. Yeah. Oh, I forgot. There's another 1500 bucks in 50 and prayed and PDI.

[00:58:14] I'm sorry. You know, you know, I wish I could split it with you, but you know, it's a cost. We can't, we can't, we can't. 

[00:58:22] Tyson: [00:58:22] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wait till you go into finance and there's more stuff they're going to try and say. Yeah. I know when I bought my last car, my wife always talks about this. The, the guy, the, he had a picture of, what do you think?

[00:58:33] His, his family, him wife, and his 11 children. My wife thinks that's a ploy to suffer. Sympathy is like, look at me and I'm my 11 children. Please, please buy lots 

[00:58:44] Ben: [00:58:44] of, I need to eat. Yes. My children need these. Read me to eat. 

[00:58:50] Tyson: [00:58:50] And I, and I, and I, I, and that's the thing. Um, I guess I worked in car sales, so I want to remember the listen button.

[00:58:55] I know this is where you make your money, but I don't need any of your shit in here. Like, I don't care about your picture. He just like, Oh, this isn't going to go, 

[00:59:02] Ben: [00:59:02] well, it is not going to go well, I've got somebody that's been in the industry and knows how the game is played because you know, and that's the problem is when we play games with our customers, they know it.

[00:59:15] Customers walk into most situations and a lot of situations knowing more about your product than you do. Yeah. We're 

[00:59:23] Tyson: [00:59:23] way more educated now as consumers. 

[00:59:25] Ben: [00:59:25] And because of that, why would you even try to lie to them? Why would you even try to bamboozle them? You know, your job. It is to facilitate the sale and to make things easier to build trust and relationships, you know, features and benefits and all that kind of stuff.

[00:59:42] They can find it on the internet. 

[00:59:44] Tyson: [00:59:44] Right. They already know them. Cause that's why they're here at your product. We already know 

[00:59:49] Ben: [00:59:49] they've already made it that decision now. They just want, they just wanted to find out if, are they buying it from you or are they buying it from somebody else? Yeah. 

[00:59:56] Tyson: [00:59:56] Am I getting here on I'm on Amazon?

[00:59:58] Which 1:00 AM I doing? Yeah, it reminds me, uh, 

[01:00:02] Ben: [01:00:02] I got a 

[01:00:02] Tyson: [01:00:02] beat Pepe headphones as a gift, a few years back and I just wore them on my computer and. I don't even think it was a year. 

[01:00:13] Ben: [01:00:13] Those things are just destroyed. 

[01:00:17] Tyson: [01:00:17] And I was so, Oh, frustrated. I won, I emailed them and I tweeted them and stuff. Nothing. They didn't even give it crap.

[01:00:24] Ben: [01:00:24] I was like 

[01:00:25] Tyson: [01:00:25] the year, these are touted as these, these premium quality things. And all I did was at my computer and I put them down and I take very great care of stuff. 

[01:00:34] Ben: [01:00:34] Especially those 

[01:00:36] Tyson: [01:00:36] headphones work. I think what $300, 

[01:00:38] Ben: [01:00:38] whatever, they're not cheap. 

[01:00:39] Tyson: [01:00:39] And it was a gift to me, you know, it's even more, you know, I was, I would have never buy such a ridiculously priced thing.

[01:00:45] I, you know, I see the value in something like that. But anyway, and I was so disheartened, I will never buy anything from that company ever because the quality of probably was so crappy. And then I said, Hey, 

[01:00:57] Ben: [01:00:57] this 

[01:00:57] Tyson: [01:00:57] are a year old. I don't wear these at the gym. I'm not an athlete. Like you advertise these to be and all of these different stuff, they couldn't even last a year.

[01:01:06] In my home. I think you guys should rethink this. Nothing. I signed it out. I was really shocked. I really thought I would hear back from, 

[01:01:13] Ben: [01:01:13] from a company like that. 

[01:01:15] Tyson: [01:01:15] I just didn't, I'll never do business with them ever. 

[01:01:19] Ben: [01:01:19] And a lot of that comes to the fact that the people want to be listened to. They want to be understood.

[01:01:25] They want to be valued. And if we don't value our customers and we don't listen to them and listen to what their challenges are. No. 

[01:01:34] Tyson: [01:01:34] I had a client, 

[01:01:36] Ben: [01:01:36] um, years ago in the PR when I was selling promotional products and they came back to me a year and a half later. And they told me that the, that, uh, one of the products, the, Oh, I know what it was.

[01:01:51] It's those, those cell phone wallets to go on the back of your cell phone, so things, and you put your visa card in it. They said, well, they're not sticking. I said, okay. So a year and a half later, uh, the glue does dissipate over time. This is what it hasn't had. They haven't stuck for the full year and a half.

[01:02:11] I'm going well, why didn't you tell me? Yeah, if you told me this right away, I could have fit. We would have sent them back. We would have gotten a brand new batch and you guys would have had them. I said a year and a half later, I can't go back to a company. And be able to do this. So we ended up giving them a discount on something else to be able to help them out and make it up.

[01:02:35] But there was no way, like I even talked to the customer and they said, look, Ben, you know, if you would set these things back even 30 days later and said that the glue is failing. We would have fixed it. I said, absolutely. I know it was, but a year and a half later, if nobody tells me that they're having a problem, I can't fix it.

[01:02:54] And you know, part of that is on me to be able to go back three months later and I do this now. Um, you know, I don't sell promotional products anymore, but still. Let's go back. Did everything work, you know, is everything okay? Are you satisfied? Are you happy with the work that you did? Is there anything that we could have done better and giving your clients the opportunity to tell you that either a they're immensely satisfied or B you know what?

[01:03:24] It was a good job, but you know what, this, this and this we're missing. Okay. How can we fix that? And have the opportunity. So it's not sitting there stewing their mind that, you know, I don't want to, I don't want to contact this person. I don't want to bother them about this. Maybe you'll but it's going to bother them.

[01:03:42] And guess what? If it bothered them enough? They're going to your competition next time, and they're not calling you next time. There isn't yeah. Opportunity for you to fix them because they go, well, you know, I bought this stuff from that in the last time it didn't quite work or, you know, we did this, this, this, uh, this project and, you know, I wasn't really happy with the outcome or, you know, if you don't know, if you don't ask the questions, you know, All of a sudden, you can find that that person who you thought was a loyal, wonderful customer is doing business with your competition.

[01:04:17] Tyson: [01:04:17] Yeah. That's a good point. Is that, that, that followup, how did you get into employee retention? Right. Engagement. I'm sorry. 

[01:04:25] Ben: [01:04:25] You know, I gone into employee engagement is because, you know, I've always been a brand guy. I've I've, you know, from the very beginning, when we started off in direct mail almost 25 years ago.

[01:04:37] It always came down to before we marketed something. What are we marketing? And what, you know, before we can tell the story, we need to figure out what the story is. And it evolved from being very tactical, to being very brand oriented. And from there I started realizing about five or seven years ago is that companies are spending enormous amount of money.

[01:05:01] Communicating their brand value outside the company. Funny, but you know, employees, you sit there and say to the point of, they said that we have this promotion going on. We do, yeah, we have this promotion going on. Well, your customers know about a promotion because your marketing department's been telling everybody about it, but they forgot to tell everybody inside the company that this promotion is going on.

[01:05:24] And how stupid do you feel inside the company when your customers are talking about a promotion that you haven't got a clue exists? Yeah. And what I realized is that it was caught. Those types of things were causing employees to turn over. Really quickly and, and over the last five to seven years, you know, tenure with companies is shorter and shorter and shorter because, you know, employees don't feel valued.

[01:05:51] They don't feel listened to, they don't feel understood and they're not led, they're managed, you know, and they don't feel that what they do matters. And. Because of that. I said, you've got, gotta be able to tell the story inside the brand. You have to be able to communicate more effectively within the brand.

[01:06:09] You have to be able to build leaders. You know, that can lead. And so the management and really that became a passion for me, that became a real passion for me to be able to sit there and say, look, we need to be able to have your people inside the company feel that there's a purpose for them being there.

[01:06:27] You know, they need something that they can hang on to. They can believe in that they can be proud of, because if they're not. How are they ever going to be proud? And how are they ever going to tell your story to your customers? Yeah. Yeah. So I look at it and go, the internal employee engagement is a big deal.

[01:06:44] I mean, inc magazine says that 70% of your employees are disengaged in one way, shape or form in the office. Wow. 50% of employees are either actively or passively out there looking for another job. And this is constantly U S economy. Gallup says about half a trillion dollars. Wow. You know, every employee that you lose costs you a hundred thousand dollars to replace because it's not just the hiring, the firing process.

[01:07:11] It's not just the onboarding process. It's the time spent. By my managers and leaders to read through resumes and interview people when they should be doing other things. It's the fact that, you know, when one person leaves the Slack has to be taken up by other people. So therefore there's inefficiencies within the company jobs.

[01:07:30] Yo, I'm done wrong jobs. Get missed customers leave because they're frustrated employees leave because the person who left. Finds another job and they take two or three people with them. It can easily cost you a hundred thousand dollars every time an employee leaves you that's after tax dollars, 10 employees a year, leave you that could be upwards of a million dollars, you know?

[01:07:57] What could you do with a million dollars? What can you do with a hundred thousand dollars, the average company? Um, you know, so it's a matter of saying our employee is going to leave you. Yes, they are. Eventually they are no employee is there forever today. Don't even the days of the 35, 40 year. Employees within a corporation they're going to happen.

[01:08:18] They're going to be anomalies. You know, they are going to be anomalies. People are going to reach a position and their company where they're going to realize that going. There's no. Where else for me to do there's nowhere else for me, nothing else for me to learn, I can't grow anymore. I need to go find somewhere else where I can grow.

[01:08:33] And at that point in time, you need to celebrate that. And you need to help them find something better for themselves, but leaders do that managers don't right. Yeah. Um, but in the meantime, if, if there are ways that you can help people, uh, move around the office, learn yeah. New skills, do different things, build new experiences and keep them engaged.

[01:08:59] Why wouldn't you? Yeah. Yeah. 

[01:09:03] Tyson: [01:09:03] Is that the main way to keep employees engages is new experiences. 

[01:09:08] Ben: [01:09:08] Yeah. I mean, here's the thing, your brand is only as valuable as your unhappiest employee on their worst day. 

[01:09:18] Tyson: [01:09:18] I 

[01:09:18] Ben: [01:09:18] like that deal. I think that that's probably the best way of putting it. Yeah. And then an employee is, is, you know, your brand is only as valuable as your unhappiest employees on their worst day.

[01:09:29] You know? So if you've got a bunch of unhappy employees running around the office, what is that doing to morale? What is that doing to culture? What is that doing to customer service, customer experience, customer engagement, you know, if all of a sudden you have this surly person that's answering the phone and dealing with customers all day long, You know, what is that doing to people who say they're going, or even the pizza delivery guy, if you've got a pizza delivery guy and they're throwing pizzas at people and they're always late and the pizzas are cold and the boxes are bent, you know, uh, you know, and they're there, they're waiting at the door for the tip and will not leave until, you know, you tip them.

[01:10:08] Right? Know what does that say about your brand? 

[01:10:11] Tyson: [01:10:11] Yeah. Not even that I would, I would expand that to now I get this pizza now I'm pissed off. Oh, well, Hey, guess what? They are my children, not mom knives. I'm going to take it out on you. And now you're not just, 

[01:10:22] Ben: [01:10:22] if you snowballs, 

[01:10:23] Tyson: [01:10:23] it just goes everywhere and next know Sally's mad.

[01:10:26] And then she's mad and she's talking to Bob, my boss, Matt, and all those people they're talking to and all those employees and yeah. That's that, whatever it butterfly effect, whatever it's called. Yeah. That, that is. That's something we're not, I mean, I don't think we capture, we really think about is 

[01:10:39] that 

[01:10:39] Tyson: [01:10:39] other things happen, you know, now you're mad at your neighbor and then you're a shitty driver.

[01:10:43] Yeah. There's this cascade is just immense. 

[01:10:46] Ben: [01:10:46] Exactly. And you know, fortunately in a lot of corporations, there are that one or two. People within the company that are just cancerous for lack of a better word, you know, I'm sure there's a much better word to use, but they're just toxic within, within the office.

[01:11:03] Yeah. And you know, they could be a manager, they could be an employee, they could be the owner of the company, you know? Um, and until you can do something to change those things, Nothing around the office change. That's morale. Morale will focus around that person as long as that person and it's miserable.

[01:11:23] Right. You know, because you know, it just weird everybody down. And when everybody gets worn down, you know, the company suffers because of it. 

[01:11:34] Tyson: [01:11:34] Yeah, that stuff is definitely contagious. Um, I want to go back to, you were talking earlier, um, about, um, valuing employees. What are, what are some, I don't know, techniques or 

[01:11:45] Ben: [01:11:45] strategies or theories or principles that you 

[01:11:49] Tyson: [01:11:49] find that work you use to add, to make an employee feel valuable?

[01:11:53] Ben: [01:11:53] You know, it's gotta be in the moment. Okay. Yeah, there's too many companies out there that do these wonderful evaluations yearly basis. And they said, well, you know, Bob, Bob said that you do this well, when did about, Oh, about 11 months ago. Yeah. How can you fix a behavior that happened 11 months ago? And it's now festered for 11 months, you know?

[01:12:18] And because you don't know that it's, you know, that you've done something good or you've done something bad, you don't know if you've done something to go to dominant band until you know, that review. So if you can catch people in the moment. Um, and be able to, to sit there and say, you know what, great job you'll even great job.

[01:12:36] What are you working on? Do you need any help with that? You know, is there anything I can heal? Do you want to bounce ideas off me? Do you want me to come with you, the client and, and, and, and give you, give you a hand with that. You'll be able to support people. And be able to be able to have that positive viewpoint.

[01:12:54] I think it's called. I'm going to have to look it up and get it for you. His new company called get perks, I think is the name of the company. And what they have is every employee gets an online visa debit card. And they're both in the United States and in Canada. Um, and what it is is that the manager can use an app on their phone and be able to text messaged somebody right away says, great job, thanks for doing blah.

[01:13:22] And it could be just after you saw the person, you didn't say anything and boom, all of a sudden you get a text message and you can get $25 in your, in your, on your account. Wow. That's cool. Yeah. So you automatically know that you're getting that money from that particular, thank you. If not a monthly quarter or quarterly or annual it's in the moment.

[01:13:44] And people want to be recognized in some way, shape or form in the moment and it doesn't have to be monetary. Yeah. A lot of times it can be just great job. No, or I liked the way you did that, or, you know what, we're having a meeting next week. Could you, can you talk about that? Because I really like how you handled that.

[01:14:03] Tyson: [01:14:03] Yeah. It kind of reminds me of that thing you said earlier, it kind of seems like it goes back to, uh, hi Holly. I'm making people around me better. 

[01:14:09] Ben: [01:14:09] Yeah. It's, it's all about how you making people around you better. I mean, as I said, if, if that can be the way you can wake up every single morning as a leader at any level in the company, How can I make either as a person who works within the company or a leader in the company, how can I make the people around me better?

[01:14:31] Yeah. Yeah. Because if we're all thinking about how can we make things, people around us better, first of all, you get a sense of satisfaction, you know, for a job. Well done. You know, be being able to help other people achieve their goals. Those people are living better lives and it just elevates, it just elevates the water for everybody.

[01:14:53] And it doesn't have to be big and complicated and it doesn't have to be, could everybody gathered around, everybody's gathered around, we're going to have a meeting and says, I really want to recognize that Sally may not want everybody around her knowing that it happened, you know, If you have somebody that needs that external Pat on the back by everybody fine, then you do that.

[01:15:15] But for the majority of people, you need to know how do they want to be celebrated? As we celebrate them in that way. 

[01:15:23] Tyson: [01:15:23] Yeah. Knowing each employee and spending that time as 

[01:15:26] Ben: [01:15:26] the, the leader 

[01:15:28] Tyson: [01:15:28] to know each one of your employees, how they respond to things. I like that. So 

[01:15:33] Ben: [01:15:33] it's a lot of coffee. It's a lot of, a lot of five minute meetings or 10 minute meetings or half hour meetings, because that's what your job really should be.

[01:15:43] Yeah. It's helping your team do what they need to do. That's what your job is, your job is to help them achieve their goals and help them do what they need to do as a leader. That's your job. It's not to micromanage. It's not to write reports. It's not, you know, it's not to, you know, create dashboards. Yeah.

[01:16:03] If it's giving your team the ability and the skills and the opportunities to succeed. Yeah, 

[01:16:10] Tyson: [01:16:10] and I, like you're saying there, it doesn't take a lot to have a two, three, five minute 

[01:16:14] Ben: [01:16:14] conversation with somebody, 

[01:16:16] Tyson: [01:16:16] you know, and really learn about them. Take some notes or whatever, and. I can see, like you're saying, I mean at a hundred grand an employee, I mean to have a five minute conversation once a week, twice a week, three times a week, I mean, does he have to be rigid or scheduled, but that's definitely worth a hundred thousand dollars.

[01:16:34] I mean, if you think, if you think about it from that type of really structured, you know, analytical 

[01:16:40] Ben: [01:16:40] point of view, Now is it's timing. 

[01:16:44] Tyson: [01:16:44] Yeah, definitely. What has been the best failure, uh, in your life? You know, looking back and saying, you know, probably not in the moment, you're like, this is going to be great in 10 years, but can you think of something that was like, man, this is horrible.

[01:17:00] And then looking back, you know, saying, wow, I'm glad I went 

[01:17:02] Ben: [01:17:02] through that. Well, I think there's a lot of things that you do in your life and you sit there going. Well that didn't work out. Um, no question about it. Yeah. Probably one of the biggest mistakes I ever made was I blamed a customer for something that I shouldn't blame the customer for.

[01:17:21] And I said, there says, well, you signed off on this is back in my direct mail days. You signed off on it. You're responsible. You're, it's your problem. You pay for it. And they did. Yeah. And they never came back. Wow. Ever again. So I won a $30,000, you know, a payment and I lost a quarter million dollar a year customer.

[01:17:43] Tyson: [01:17:43] Dang. 

[01:17:44] Ben: [01:17:44] Yeah. So I think what has done is really forced me over the years to look at what do we need to do? To win in the long run, you know, forget about short term pain and short term gain. Let's start thinking a year, five years, 10 years, 20 years down the road. And what, what can you do to do that? I mean, I used to have a customer back when I, you know, back when I was in the printing industry that demanded.

[01:18:15] Demanded that I print the business cards for the CEO and his wife for free. And they had these fancy linen paper, foil stamp. I mean, they were about 500 bucks a piece for these, for these business cards. First of all, what I did is I printed two or 3000 of these things instead of 500 of them. And I put them up on a shelf somewhere.

[01:18:39] So you have the economies of scale. 

[01:18:41] Tyson: [01:18:41] Right, right, right. 

[01:18:42] Ben: [01:18:42] That could have all, I started building them into jobs. 

[01:18:44] Tyson: [01:18:44] Ah, 

[01:18:45] Ben: [01:18:45] absolutely no problem. Happy to do a loop nor email whatsoever. Absolutely. There you are. You need more cards, tell you what I'm going to need. About 10 days to get these cards made up. Let me give the card.

[01:18:56] There's no changes. No problem. Cause they never was. There never was. These people were retired and they, these were the cards that they used when they were on a cruise, somewhere on the world to give to people, you know, um, I probably printed way more cards than I needed when I printed 3000 of them. But, you know, what it came down to is how do you give the customer the illusion that they won?

[01:19:21] Without giving, you know, without giving up your, your soul to do it, you know, and then there's more than one way to skin a cat. There's more than one way, you know, and you look at a customer and you said, there say this customer is giving me 150 or $200,000 a year for me to spend a thousand bucks, you know, to get these business cards made up.

[01:19:46] I probably want another $200,000 worth of business by spending a thousand bucks. Okay. Yeah. Does it make sense? Suspend them. They make them feel that they won. Yeah. Okay. That's fine. No problem. But it's a matter of, of looking at it going, okay. What's the longterm objective and the longterm objective is I want to keep getting invoices and purchase orders from these, from these customers year after year, after year, after year after year.

[01:20:19] And I did because you built up a level of trust in a relationship, and I did their business cards for free. 

[01:20:28] Tyson: [01:20:28] That's that's good. That's that long game. That's hard for people. It's, it's really, really hard, but yeah, when you can break it down, like you're talking about and saying, what, what is this relation we're going to be, how can I make this a 10, 15, whatever, five year relationship, how much more, you know, can I can value?

[01:20:48] Can I provide how much more, you know, is this gonna provide for, for your company, for your whatever? Yeah. That's I like that. 

[01:20:55] Ben: [01:20:55] Yeah, it's it's you gotta think longterm. I think that there's, you know, as the expression goes, North American companies think you'll the end of the month or the end of the quarter, accordingly Asian companies think of the decade or the quarter century.

[01:21:13] And I think that that's where your, where your real benefit is when you're thinking 10, 25 years out. No, the investments that you're going to make and the R and D that you're going to do, and the developments that you're going to do based on I'm going to win over the next 25, 30, 50 years, you know? Make the diff it's a, it's a mind shift switch.

[01:21:36] It really is. It's a mindset shift. I plan on it. I think that we all need to start thinking more that way, instead of worrying about, you know, what did we do this quarter? Or what did we do at the end of this week? You know, what, what was our sales this week and why didn't we, why didn't you sell more of this week?

[01:21:53] Tyson: [01:21:53] Yeah, God like that. Yeah. That's you're, you're playing on. If you're thinking like that, you're acting like that. You're not you're on a different level. You're you're totally are. Excuse me. Um, is there something you wish you've, you wish you always could have learned?

[01:22:09] Ben: [01:22:09] Truthfully, I wish I was better at social media. Yeah. In terms of the funnels and the, and the psychology behind social media, it's just for me, it's this black hole in the bottom of my mind. I I'm great at the one on one engagement, you know, getting people, having one on one conversations with people on social media.

[01:22:34] Perfect. You know, engaging one or two people in a quiet conversation in the corner. Great. But that one to many type of environments where people sit there and say, okay, well, we're going to get them on this, you know, get them into the funnel. Then we're going to get them on the splash page and into the funnel and build them through this system.

[01:22:54] Psychologically. I know how to do it. But the question is I have this thing where I sit there and say, okay, where's the car? Where's the build wheel? Are we truly building trust? Are we truly building the customers that we want? Or are we building a transactional relationship? And I have this mental block.

[01:23:18] About that transactional relationship. You're getting somebody into the system once selling them one thing, and then maybe you'll see them again. Right. Maybe you never will. You know, and you have no relationship with the customer. And I guess those are the type of things that I, I, in some respects I do better because you know, it would, it would, uh, it would sell my online course so much faster, but my attitude is, you know what?

[01:23:44] I want the people who take my course to really, really do it because it's going to make their lives better. 

[01:23:51] Tyson: [01:23:51] Yeah. I hear you on that. I. Oh, social media. I don't get it. I get a winner and then I get a dud and I don't understand it. And I don't want to play in that arena. I just, I don't know. I don't like 

[01:24:01] Ben: [01:24:01] it.

[01:24:04] Tyson: [01:24:04] Um, what are 

[01:24:06] Ben: [01:24:06] the bulk or books 

[01:24:07] Tyson: [01:24:07] that do you most on your journey? Do you have anything that comes to mind? 

[01:24:11] Ben: [01:24:11] Um, no. I mean, they're there. There are books that are older, that are, that really helped me out as I got, you know, getting to yes. And getting past no by Ori. Um, there is the one minute salesperson, uh, the seven habits, you know, the seven habits, uh, you know, how to, when people know win friends and influence people, you know, a lot of the classes, a lot of this stuff that's been around for years and decades.

[01:24:41] No. And I've really seen that. I mean, I'm just rereading the go getter by Bob Burg. Yeah, he's good. He's going to be on my podcast in the next little while. Um, there's a new book out by Cody Bateman who owns send out cards. It's all about relationship management and it's on, it's on my desk. I haven't read it yet, but I know, you know, by knowing Cody and knowing, you know, the premise of the book, it's going to be a great book.

[01:25:08] I've always loved Seth Goden. Yeah, it was purple cow. You know, all, all of these got what? 17 number one bestsellers, pick one, pick three. You'll you'll you won't go wrong. Um, you know, I like, uh, there is a Simon Sinek start with why, right? There's there's a lot of good books out there, but for me, it's, it's reading a diversity to me.

[01:25:32] It's getting a diversity of thoughts. And sitting there and saying, okay, what are the one or two things I can pick out from each particular one? I don't subscribe to any one channel. I'm not a Seth Godin maniac. I'm not a Gary Vaynerchuk maniac. I'm not a Simon Sinek video. I'm not even, you know, a Malcolm Gladwell, a maniac.

[01:25:56] I enjoy them all. I don't think that any of these people own the rights to my soul. Every single one of them have ideas that I can incorporate into me and I can make me better, but it has to resonate with who I am and what I do, and then take those things, modify them. So they, they, they truly know resonate with my soul and how I do business and move forward.

[01:26:23] So I, you know, for me, it's taking a variety of different thoughts and from a different ideas and different channels, and then just saying, okay, how does that resonate with, with what you believe and what you're all about? 

[01:26:37] Tyson: [01:26:37] I, I liked that, uh, I was, it was Tim Ferriss or somebody was talking to somebody else, um, something along the lines of the good shit sticks.

[01:26:46] And I kinda liked that philosophy. And I just looked for, 

[01:26:48] Ben: [01:26:48] I just look for the good Tim Ferris. Yeah. 

[01:26:51] Tyson: [01:26:51] It was somebody else that had told him. I forget who it was. 

[01:26:53] Ben: [01:26:53] Gosh. But 

[01:26:54] Tyson: [01:26:54] it was something along the lines of, you know, how do you, how do you remember stuff from books or whatever it was? And the guy was like, the good shit sticks.

[01:26:59] Like you don't have to, I might have been Malcolm Gladwell that said that I don't remember anyway, 

[01:27:03] Ben: [01:27:03] but great line. It doesn't really matter who said it, you know? I mean, it matters to them I guess, but, you know, but to me the thought behind it is what's beautiful. 

[01:27:15] Tyson: [01:27:15] Yeah. Yeah. And that really opened up my mind to reading in a different way and consuming.

[01:27:22] Content, whatever consuming these ideas in a different way. It's like, 

[01:27:26] Ben: [01:27:26] I always was like, Oh, I got to get everything out of this, 

[01:27:28] Tyson: [01:27:28] whatever book. Yeah. And after that I was like, this, the goodness is going to stick it. I'm just gonna take, I'm going to run with it. How many? Incorporate that into my life, into my teaching, to whatever it is.

[01:27:38] And it sounds like what you're trying to say too. 

[01:27:41] Ben: [01:27:41] Well, I mean, let's take that a little further. I mean, you and I have been on the air for an hour and a half now, or I guess rough, rough numbers. Nobody's going to catch everything that we've talked about. Right? Not everything people are going to hit one or two highlights.

[01:27:55] There are going to be one or two things they're going to go. Okay. That really resonated with me. It's like when I'm on stage for 45 minutes and I'm talking to an audience. You know, I sit there and say, you know, forget about everything else that I talked to you for the last 45 minutes. If you remember this one thing.

[01:28:13] Yeah. That's really what, what it's all about. And it's giving people that one thing and it's allowing them to understand what that one thing means to them. Because everybody's going to interpret it differently. Yeah. You know, and it's, it's it's if you give people too many choices, too much information, too much, you know, too much slop all the same time they become overwhelmed.

[01:28:37] I do. I absolutely do. I become, if you give me too many choices, I'll pick the number 

[01:28:43] Tyson: [01:28:43] four 

[01:28:44] Ben: [01:28:44] on the, on the menu, you know, no, I go into, uh, uh, where do I go into, um, cheesecake factory. You go to cheesecake factory. That menu goes on forever. I'm having, I'm having this chicken dish and I'm having this piece of cheesecake.

[01:28:59] Why? Cause I always have this chicken dish and this piece of cheesecake and this appetizer and that's it. There's three things that I eat on that cheesecake factory menu. And that's it. Because the menu overwhelms me, there's too many decisions, so I'm not going to change anything. And that's reality for most people.

[01:29:18] Tyson: [01:29:18] Yeah. I've been there once because of that menu. I was like, I'm never coming back here again. It took us so long to order. It was all of us. That was our first time. I'm not in there, here again. Yeah. But that's the thing. Um, there's a good book. Uh, the paradox of choice to talk about that. And also, um, Daniel Kahneman in his book, thinking fast and slowly, they do get into that, but we can only, you, once you get over about two or three choices, you just make no choice at all.

[01:29:42] I don't know if. They're doing it in Canada, but here in America, a lot of these companies, these becomings Walmarts targets and stuff like that, safe ways and different things. They found out that having 77,000 choices of tomatoes sauce is not doing them any good. 

[01:29:56] Ben: [01:29:56] No, it's not. 

[01:29:57] Tyson: [01:29:57] They're condensing all this down to just the top.

[01:30:00] Few bestsellers in each category and here, um, I, I noticed that most at Walmart. I mean, it used to be before this, the whole one aisle, the whole entire 

[01:30:09] Ben: [01:30:09] aisle was just cake mixes. 

[01:30:11] Tyson: [01:30:11] Now you've got like three choices and it's interesting to see 

[01:30:15] Ben: [01:30:15] that kind of go 

[01:30:17] Tyson: [01:30:17] okay. It's nice in a way you're not overwhelmed with that choice and stuff.

[01:30:21] And you know, I'd like to pass it onto like, , your website has 70,000 choices and 45 different payment options and 17 different plans. And then your, your email has 14 different things. You want people to do? Take that into consideration. You're going to do nothing. We're not going to do anything at all. So yeah, eliminate it.

[01:30:40] One, two. Anything over three choices. We're just not as humans. Just not going to make a choice. 

[01:30:47] Ben: [01:30:47] People, Zuckerberg. Yeah. Same tee shirt and the same pair of jeans. Every single day, he's got 42 or whatever, the same feature and 22 pairs of the same jeans, you know, and that's his uniform. That's what he wears every single day because he doesn't have to think about it.

[01:31:03] You know, it's one less decision that he has to make. You know, it's like me, I get up in the morning and I know I'm having a bowl of cereal. I'm having a cup of coffee and I'm having a piece of fruit. That's it? I know that that's what's happening when I might have yogurt. If there's yogurt in the house, I'll have a yogurt, but that's my breakfast.

[01:31:21] Every single morning. It has been for years. So when we, when we eliminate certain decisions in our lives, it frees us up to make decisions on other things. 

[01:31:32] Tyson: [01:31:32] No, yeah, it does. I, I, I found that to be helpful as well as you know, I wake up in the morning, I open my dresser drawer and I just stick my hand in, in the row and I, whatever shirt that is, that's what 

[01:31:44] Ben: [01:31:44] they've 

[01:31:44] Tyson: [01:31:44] already decided.

[01:31:45] I've already decided the types of colors and styles. I like, I just grab and go every day for lunch, same exact thing. I make the same exact salad. Day. And then just, these were so built on all these can we do is his habits, something like 46 or 43% of the things we've ever day or just habits. 

[01:32:01] Ben: [01:32:01] There's a 

[01:32:01] Tyson: [01:32:01] lot of those things.

[01:32:01] If you can just ingrain those into your life, it really makes things go. And other things you can free up that mental bandwidth or whatever we want to call it for the bigger decisions or the contemplating of things. 

[01:32:15] Ben: [01:32:15] Very true. 

[01:32:17] Tyson: [01:32:17] When people find out 

[01:32:18] Ben: [01:32:18] more about you, 

[01:32:19] Tyson: [01:32:19] your storytelling, your different things you've got going on.

[01:32:22] Ben: [01:32:22] Well, I tried to put everything in one reposit. There, there is your brand marketing.com website. And within that is my speakers page. It's my workshops, my online workshops, my, you know, um, Uh, my podcasts I'll, I'll have this podcast up and running on that as well. I have a list of all the podcasts that I was on.

[01:32:45] Everything sits and even all my eBooks, all my free eBooks are on there as well. Everything sits@yourbrandmarketing.com. You can get to my social media. You look in the top right hand corner. There's my phone number. There's my email address, you know? That's probably the best way to get in touch with me.

[01:33:02] If you desperately want to get ahold of me, call me (604) 512-7174 99. Percent of people will not call me, but those who want to call me, you know, what the cell number is always on. And I always do answer it. 

[01:33:15] Tyson: [01:33:15] Perfect. I don't rush out people. I will link all this in the show notes. And there's a special code for your course.

[01:33:21] Is that okay? 

[01:33:22] Ben: [01:33:22] Yeah. What I've done is the course the how to retain employees through leadership. I've given you a $50 off coupon. It's friends of band 50. So friends of Ben 50, and we'll put that in the show notes as well, but there's, there's a $50. So that's a 10% discount 

[01:33:40] Tyson: [01:33:40] off the course. Thank you very much for that.

[01:33:43] I think I appreciate the sentiment and I think all the listeners and viewers will 

[01:33:47] Ben: [01:33:47] appreciate it as well. Hey, my pleasure. 

[01:33:50] Tyson: [01:33:50] And then, uh, one last thing before we wrap up here on a social community show, I like to do a weekly challenge. Um, something that we talked about on this episode or an idea or concept you want people to implement into their life.

[01:34:02] Um, 

[01:34:02] Ben: [01:34:02] I want to give you 

[01:34:03] Tyson: [01:34:03] the opportunity to issue this week's challenge. 

[01:34:06] Ben: [01:34:06] This week's challenge is I want you, whether you're a leader of an organization you're within an organization. Go up to three people within your, within your company and find out what they're passionate about and why, and that can have absolutely nothing to do with work.

[01:34:24] You, you just say, listen, I want to know what you're passionate about and why you're passionate about it. You'll get to know people, get to know people on a personal level, get to know what, what makes them tick? What, what are the things that are important to them? Because the more we can understand the people that we work with.

[01:34:42] The more, we can have a real rule relationship, and if something goes wrong, you have a, a, a level of trust that you can sit there and say, okay, fine. This is what wrong. Let's stop blaming each other. Let's actually have a conversation about it. Love that challenge. 

[01:34:57] Tyson: [01:34:57] What's some, what's one of yours you're passionate 

[01:34:59] Ben: [01:34:59] about.

[01:35:00] I, you know, I'm a big golf junkie. I am absolutely golf. And for me, golf is a passion because it's the imperfect game. Yeah. Yeah. There is. You could play the same course 50 days in a row. And the game changes. You know, the plan may be differently. The grass may be cut a little bit differently. It may be wet.

[01:35:22] It may be dry. The wind may be coming from the right. The wind may be coming from the left. You may, you know, uh, you may be hitting the ball a little bit smoother one day that you do your you're chipping, maybe beyond you're putting maybe on your, you know, you're driving. Maybe you never know, you know, you're going to find yourself behind a tree that you never found yourself in before.

[01:35:40] It's the unpredictability of life and sitting there and going. Golf is a game of recovery. And that's what I, that's what I believe about life. It's not the situation we find ourselves in. It's how we get ourselves out of it. And that's what the analogy of golf is for me. Because when you find yourself behind that tree, you don't pick up the ball and put it back on the green and go out and you sit there and say, okay, I'm behind this tree.

[01:36:06] How do I get myself out of here? And it, what it may mean is I may have to chip backwards. Yeah, to put myself back on the green so I can go forwards again. But if you understand that, then that's a great analogy for life that sometimes we have to go sideways or we have to go backwards in order to advance, you know, and I think that that's what I really love about Lima golf.

[01:36:31] Tyson: [01:36:31] I love golf and I have a new appreciation for it. Now. I like that analogy. 

[01:36:37] Ben: [01:36:37] Well, there we go. It's just, these are the things that come to my brain. 

[01:36:43] Tyson: [01:36:43] I love it. I love it. 

[01:36:44] Ben: [01:36:44] I love it. I love it. 

[01:36:45] Tyson: [01:36:45] Thank you Ben so much. Like I said, guys, everything will be in the show notes at the social community show. And um, thank you very much, Ben.

[01:36:51] I really appreciate all your time. 

[01:36:53] Ben: [01:36:53] You know what thanks for having me I'll show this. This has been an amazing conversation. I don't think I've don't want a podcast this long. And I love, I love the format. I think that it allows us to get into a lot of different meats and be able to have a lot of very valuable conversations.

[01:37:09] And you know what, hopefully people take out of this podcast. What's good for them. And that they find two or three nuggets. That really speak to them and help them get, make their lives better. Perfect. Thank 

[01:37:23] Tyson: [01:37:23] you so much for the compliment that that's my goal is, 

[01:37:25] Ben: [01:37:25] is to 

[01:37:26] Tyson: [01:37:26] have these a little bit longer form conversations so that we can extract a couple of these things.

[01:37:30] Like you're saying, we probably never would have found some of these things and it's not what we think it's what is pertinent to somebody's life in the moment in the situation that they're in, in, in, in right now. 

[01:37:43] Ben: [01:37:43] True. 

[01:37:43] Tyson: [01:37:43] Like I said, in the beginning of this, I hope you guys really got a lot of good stuff out of this interview.

[01:37:49] I know I did. I got tons of notes on here. Lots of great stuff. 

[01:37:52] Ben: [01:37:52] If you're looking for more 

[01:37:54] Tyson: [01:37:54] great things, you know how we do it around here, we like 

[01:37:57] Ben: [01:37:57] our giveaways 

[01:37:59] Tyson: [01:37:59] and head over to the social community.show/pickney. See what we got going on for this one's giveaway. 

[01:38:05] Ben: [01:38:05] We do 

[01:38:06] Tyson: [01:38:06] books. We do courses. We do all kinds of different things 

[01:38:09] Ben: [01:38:09] to help you folks 

[01:38:10] Tyson: [01:38:10] grow, whether it's that, you know, Growing growing daily, your 1% or more 

[01:38:15] Ben: [01:38:15] that weekly, monthly, 

[01:38:17] Tyson: [01:38:17] quarterly Harvard is you're doing your thing.

[01:38:19] We want to help add value, help find things that we're loving, we're using and pass it onto you guys. 

[01:38:25] Ben: [01:38:25] Um, 

[01:38:27] Tyson: [01:38:27] for everything we talk about, you guys know you guys head over to the social community, indoc show, get all that stuff from Ben easily to get connected with him, see what he's got going on, great courses and all that kind of stuff.

[01:38:37] Will all be linked in the show notes for you guys. If. You know, somebody 

[01:38:42] Ben: [01:38:42] made some else in your team or at work or whatever is looking to 

[01:38:45] Tyson: [01:38:45] help increase their storytelling. Billy, these couple of nuggets you found helpful, shared us with them, share some 

[01:38:51] Ben: [01:38:51] people as the best way to support the show. I feel like we've 

[01:38:54] Tyson: [01:38:54] got going on.

[01:38:55] Don't hesitate to leave a like review review. If you have ideas for show don't. Has the, the email us, uh, in between shows you can visit the social community show on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter for past episodes and links, everything, and talk about your day and visit the social community that show.

[01:39:10] And until next time, 

[01:39:11] Ben: [01:39:11] keep learning, 

[01:39:12] Tyson: [01:39:12] growing, transform into the person you want to become.