Jason Young | Reject Just Okay and How to Create Viral Repeat Customers

Show Notes

The speaker and consultant of choice for Chick-fil-A, Life.Church, Ford Motor Company and other leading organizations shares how to reject just okay and how to create viral customers while breaking down his new book The Come Back Effect.

NOTABLE QUOTABLE – Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.” – Steve Jobs (The co-founder of Apple, the founder of NeXT and the former CEO of PIXAR)

JasonYoungLive.com

  1. Yes, yes, yes and yes! Thrivetime Nation on today’s show we are interviewing Jason Young who is a hospitality, leadership and emotional intelligence coach who has worked with the leaders at Chick-fil-A, Life.Church, Ford Motor Company and other huge organizations…Jason welcome onto the show! How are you sir?
  2. I know that you’ve had a ton of success at this point in your career, but I would love to start off at the bottom and the very beginning of your career. What was your life like growing up and where did you grow up?
    1. Growing up, I wanted to be a Pro Golfer, Sniper, or a physician. I couldn’t do any of those, so I started doing what I do today.
    2. My mom is unbelievably at giving care to people and I grew up seeing this all of the time. I was great at hospitality and I loved it.
    3. My early years were a little rocky with my family but still pretty normal. We were always accepted, loved, and cared for. Eventually, my dad adopted me when I was in 6th grade because my mother had gotten remarried.
    4. I have been married now 18 years and we have adopted our own son.
  3. Z, do members of the Taliban Golf? 
    1. Yes.
  4. When did you first feel like you were truly beginning to gain traction with your career?
    1. When I started narrowing down what actually matters. I knew I had to do a few things right not many things perfectly.
    2. There are a lot of things these huge organizations have in common and one of those things is making their customers feel a certain way. That’s not an easy thing.
    3. You have to make it simple, make it clean, make it clear, and make it unique.
  5. How do you get your employees to have great hospitality?
    1. Great hospitality assumes great leadership
    2. If you want the customer or guest to feel valued, you have to design that in your own house first. 
    3. Do you want your employees to feel valued? You have to make them feel that first before you expect them to deliver that to the customer.
    4. You have to model it before you ask them to do it.
  6. What would you say if you have clearly hired the wrong person?
    1. If you are the leader, you have to own whoever is in your office. Suck it up and own it. But don’t stay there.
    2. Ask: “What are the things that are important to us?”
    3. They need to fit a certain value system that we have set up. If you just hire warm bodies, you will only get… Warm Bodies…
    4. When hiring, you have to ask questions that will pull out the answers to whether or not they fit in with your values and character.
    5. If you have already hired them, you have to either coach them or help them move on.
  7. I understand that you recently rolled off staff as the Director of Guest Experience at Buckhead Church and North Point Ministries where you guys have a weekly attendance of 40,000 people weekly. What do you actually do in this role?
    1. I was responsible for helping to develop the customer experience for many large companies.
  8. In Chapter 1 of your book you write, Focus on Feeling as Much as Function…what do you mean by this?
    1. We train employees to do a function and we can do that every day devoid of any feelings.
    2. What if we didn’t start with function…?
    3. What if we started with “How do we want someone to feel when they use our service…?”
    4. We can use that feeling that we create do deliver that function.
  9. Chapter 3 of your book is titled Know the Guest..what is this Chapter all about?
    1. It is slowing down enough to figure out who the person is in front of you.
    2. You have to know what they are thinking and feeling.
    3. You have to get to know your customers in a deeper way to where they are creating something just for them.
  10. Chapter 4 of your book is called, Be Fully Present, what is this chapter all about?
    1. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/glue/201501/is-your-smartphone-making-you-dumb
    2. You have to be the one to be fully present first. You have to set that example and tell people you have walked through this too. It’s not easy and it’s not supposed to be.
    3. What people need is someone to listen. Give people an ear and be fully present.
  11. Chapter 8 of your book is titled, “Just Okay”…I would love for you to break this down for our listeners?
    1. We don’t even realize that we get sucked into being “just okay” because there is so much less risk.
    2. We have to be excellent in where we are and what we do.
    3. Everyone you interact with deserves your excellence.
    4. You can’t settle.
    5. The moment you decide to cheapen your experience, the moment you devalue your customer.
  12. What action steps do you want people to take.
    1. Pick up the book – https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0801075785/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
    2. Go to the leaders guide on the site – https://www.jasonyounglive.com/resources
Business Coach | Ask Clay & Z Anything

Audio Transcription

Jason Young Thrivetime Show

Imagine for a second that there was a switch that you could flip

That would cause your customers to come back and to buy from you over and over and over again. Imagine there was a button that you could push that would cause your business to go viral. By definition, meaning that your customers would come back and bring friends. Yes. Imagine that you could get to the level of Chick-fil-A. Imagine you could take your customer service experience to the level of Chick-fil-A or to the level of life church. What if you could do that? Well, on today’s show, bestselling author Jason Young, shares with us why it’s important that we must reject just okay, and how to create viral repeat customers. Ladies and gentlemen, today’s guest, Jason Young is the bestselling author of the new book, the come back effect. Yes. Check it out on Amazon right now. It’s the come back effect. You’re going to love the book. You’re going to love today’s interview, strap on a helmet and get ready. Some shows don’t need a celebrity in the writer to introduce a show, but this show does to me. Eight kids co-created by two different women. 13 Moke tie, million dollar businesses. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the thrive time show.

Yes, yes. Oh yes. Dr Z don’t believe that being

Old or young is really just a state of mind to my friend. It really is. And when you’re seriously it is, if you forgot how old you are, how old would you say you are? Clay Clark? I think I act. Most people say, God, you’re just so energetic. I’m 38 almost 39 but I think most people say that I have the energy level of like someone in the early twenties it’s usually what he’ll say. Yeah, and when you still have, you don’t want to look at it. I mean physically, I mean your, your head is so large. It’s a massive cranium. It, it kind of kind of shocks people a little bit, but when they look at you, they go, you know, you look young, you do it with a half million listeners. See what I wanted to do, what you and I want to do is we want to make sure that the listeners always have a fresh perspective to growing their business. And we want people to maintain a Z, a, a child like attitude towards learning. And so there’s two ways to do it. One, you get an expert on the show who’s taught leadership to groups like Chick-fil-A or life church or Ford motor company or Z. You book a guest with the last name young, or you do the unthinkable. You do both. That does.

Jason Young, welcome onto the thrive time show. How are you sir? What’s going on

My friend? Glad to be here. Thank you.

Hey, you know you’ve had a lot of success. I know that listeners right away, right now are Google searching you. They’re making their way over to your website right now. They’re, they’re looking you up. What’s the best website for our listeners to find out more about you? Cause they, they always like to look at your site as they’re listening.

Yes. So Jason Young, live, L I V E. Dot com. I will say this. If you Google my name, the first thing that’s going to pop up is the murderer, Jason Young. That is not me.

Oh, I just want to get that out there. Let’s start off. Let’s start off right. Okay. I’m putting that on the show notes.

Not a murderer. Good to know. Now, seriously though, you have advised some of the biggest companies, one of the most respected companies on the planet. We’re in organizations, I mean life, church, the biggest Protestant church and on the planet right now, 250,000 plus people a week watch online. Over a hundred thousand people attend the church in person, Ford motor company, Chick-fil-A. Tell us how did, how’d you get started? I mean, where did your career start?

It did not start here and I never intended for it to be here. So I had always thought about wanting to do things like professionally. Now this is all over the place. Professional golfer, Snyder or a physician. So since I couldn’t do any of those, I thought I will do what I do now. And so the, the funny thing about it is on a serious note, I accidentally stumbled into it. I say so, and having other roles, these experience elements always were thrown my way because they have always mattered to me. And even since I was young, I have picked things apart and honestly, clay where I learned it from my mom is unbelievable giving care to people and she protects how they feel. She tries to create these experiences that she, she’s in medicine. And so I thought, Oh well I’m good. Grew up seeing that. So when I couldn’t do all the other things, I ended up in other roles that people are like, Oh Hey, you just do the hospitality and lead teams and dah, dah, dah. So I did it. Well, what I discovered in doing it was I loved it, which is very different than what a lot. I hear a lot of people find your passion and follow it. I did it, I did this and the passion followed me.

So you [inaudible] did you grow up? I mean, were you middle? Were, were, were you poor? Were you a ball boy for the Minnesota Vikings? How, how’d you grow up?

Mmm.

Oh, the a male model. Oh wow. I was a hard model for my mom. Oh, my mom called my Watson cakes. It’s so,

I mean, I grew up with, you know kind of started out as a Rocky family situation and then eventually was redeemed. And so it was, it wasn’t normal. I mean I have two brothers and so like we were normal. I mean we had some struggles and seeing some things of that nature, but I don’t know, the biggest thing I is, we were always accepted. We were always loved. We were always cared for. You know, and so like that’s just what I saw model that by my mom more than anything. And then eventually my dad, he adopted me in sixth grade. Kinda cause my mom remarried. And so that was a beautiful picture of, you know, again, what love and kindness and care everything looked like. So really I think what I did not know is it was forming in me how I should see and treat people simply because of how I was seen and treated.

So Jason, when you talk about the Rocky model that you grew up on, your, is that, would you eat raw eggs and and professional box and meat lockers and run steps in Philadelphia that duh, duh, duh duh duh duh duh. No, it’s surprising. I mean, you’ve said you’ve said enough for a show already, the first three minutes to five minutes. You’ve said what a lot of people experiences that you know you’re doing something you never thought you’d be doing. It wasn’t one of your life goals when you were young. You know, I love, I loved you. It’s, it’s humor, but I love professional golfing sniper and position. I got imagined there’s some truth that’s maybe a little bit of those in there. Each one of them. By the way, there’s a way to do that. I been thinking about this, Jason, since you’ve mentioned it and I T as a doctor, so I’ll ask you, so you use, okay.

Our member of the medical community as a doctor, answer the questions. Actually don’t mess around with Jason. Okay. Okay. I’m not doing members of the Taliban Gulf. Yes. So he could combine golfing and sniping. That’s an easy one. And then if he misses, he could go in there and do some medical care. I believe it’s a, it’s a trifecta. It’s a three headed monster that is glorious plan. I think it’s his successful career and not continue to be successful. Yeah, exactly. Okay. I jumped in and interrupted about the rocket, but do you know when so many people come from divorced families, broken families adoption in some form or another and, and the fact that you didn’t let that hold you down and that you let it be a symbol of what can be in the love that is, you know, there is something, I was kind of the same deal. I was, my mom remarried and I was adopted by her second husband. And so, you know, it’s that, it’s that thing of that orphan spirit that can jump on you if you let it that nobody wanted me. Someone, you know, my biological parent said, I don’t want you, which they probably didn’t say it like that, but that’s what you hear as a young person. And then to have someone to say, I want you, I choose you. It’s, it’s a, it’s for a young kid that’s, that’s some heavy emotions.

Yeah, it’s huge. In fact, fast forward a number of years. So this year I’ve been married 18 years. Well, about 10 years ago I ended up adopting, you know, we ended up adopting our own son. And so, you know what, I’ve been as sensitive to it. I don’t know. And so it’s funny how everything works together too. It just, it matters to more people we can count.

Sure. So when did you start to gain traction as a expert in your field? Because right now you’re sort of known as the, the expert in hospitality and in emotional intelligence. And I want to give listeners an example. When you go into Chick-fil-A today, and by the way, if you’re out there Jason Young, you’re not saying this, I’m saying this. If you go out there today and you’re in Tulsa, Oklahoma, I’ve seen this in Tulsa. You’ve seen this. You can verify this. You go to Memorial at a hundred and first there’s a Chick-fil-A right there. Okay, next to it there’s another chicken place side-by-side neighbors. I’m Memorial. Chick-Fil-A always is busy, has a line around it and they have the, the people who take the orders, the drive through attendance, they act extra to go outside now to take the orders to keep up the place next door. If you want to scare the cuss, if you want to scare the employees, go in and order something because they’ve never seen a customer. So there’s a huge difference between Chick-fil-A and the other guys. There’s a big difference between the way life church greets people with two volunteers per door, secular music playing. When you walk in, they have a time, a timed event. They connect with the emotion and they teach the truth. There’s a big difference between great hospitality and bad hospitality. When did you become the expert of hospitality?

Well, I don’t know that I am. I still have a lot to learn. And how some people I admire in my own field, but I think when I started narrowing down what matters, I didn’t feel like I had to do it all perfectly, but I did have to do a few things really. Right. And so I think where it’s like church or Chick-Filet or you know, different organizations, car companies, churches, whatever they may be, there are a lot of things that these institutions, these organizations have in common. And really at the end of the day they are really focused on the person that they are interfacing with. And what matters is how am I making them feel? And you say, well that sounds Uber simple, all be doing if it was, but it, it is simple and it’s not, it’s, it’s hard to do because we fall in love, we are addicted to motion and we fall in love with so many things that we had the ability to do the guest, the customer doesn’t care. Make it simple, make it clear, make it clean and help me and be nice.

When you say fall in love, it just, Oh wow. I mean Z, I’ve always knew. I mean we, we, we love customers. We do love customers. You know, as the owners of business chase and we love them because the customers are our bosses. Right, right. And then I guess the secret though, the secret sauce that you bring or one of the, I mean I don’t want to talk about all your secret sauce is, but one of the sacred sauces you bring has gotta be the ability to get that same feeling down to our employees. Right. I mean cause cause we love, we, our customers,

Because they are our boss. They pay us, they pay us the money, the customer. We don’t have jobs. Right. Thank you customers. Otherwise without you, we would have to go get real jobs.

Give us a few of your, and I may be jumping the gun here because that’s what I kind of do. Cause I have, you know, clay does that mean he does all these, you really jumped the gun as a mass death. He does outlines. He do, you know, he researches hours and days and fast and I mean he, you know, doesn’t sleep and he’ll do all kinds of things. But I guess jumping ahead. So what are some of your secret sauces for having that employee? That I hired, greet and love that customer as much as I do.

So great hospitality assumes great leadership. So if there is bad hospitality, I don’t care. To whom? If it’s bad or great than people assume rightly or wrongly that the leadership that leaves that person is bad or is great.

Come on now. Oh wow. Wow.

If, if you, if you want to, if you want the customer or the guests to feel, let’s say seeing care for attended to valued, whatever the word is you want to, then you have to design that in your own house first. So do you want your employees to feel seen, care for, attended to valued? You cannot ask them to deliver something that you are not helping them to feel an experience. So start in your own house and then work your way out. There’s no, it’s not a coincidence that the top companies that are most loved by customers, if I said them, you would know what they are. One of the things that they have as a common denominator and they will tell you this, it’s proven in the research. They will prioritize their employees over their customers. And guess what? You and me, we shop at all of them. And so we just have to figure out how do we demonstrate based on what people need, what they want. Like what am I going to create and do I want it to be fun and you know, whatever it is I need to intentionally choose, intentionally create and then they will do the same. You’ve got to model it before you can ask them to do it.

Jason, I want to rightly divide what you said cause I know some listeners out there would like to go. Yeah, well what about this situation? I’m going to rightly divide it and you can pontificate in and clarify for the listeners. Okay, so here we go. You, the listener are let the average listener, we haveZ , the average American business owner has 10 employees or less. Okay. So just so many listening right now who’s a dentist, doctor, lawyer, somebody with 25 employees or less, 10 employees or less small is not. Once you pass 50, you start to move into large business. But it’s under 50 employees. And what they did is they hired the wrong employee. Now I want to make sure we get this because Andrew, you worked at Chick-fil-A, am I correct Andrew? You are correct. You worked there. Now Andrew is an a player there and I and I have two of my very good friends who have gone on to become life church, campus pastors.

They are also very sharp guys. So when you’re a sharp employee you deserve to be treated really, really well. But you also don’t want to hire nefarious employees and then try to coddle them. So could you explain the difference? Cause I think somebody out there right now has a team of pirates. Jason, my first company was called DJ connection.com, which regrettably, we provide a DJ services, people who need a DJ haze. We did 4,000 events a year, clubs, a lot of clubs on a weddings, and any guy in his forties who wants to be a DJ, lives with his mom and has a drug addiction. It was quite a thing. So I’m just saying, cause I mean I managed a team of pirates. It was like a pirates of the Caribbean every day. So those guys, I mean, they would say stuff like things that I shouldn’t read and repeat. But it’s just things where they have a lot of addictions and issues. So Jason, what would you say? First off, and then we’ll get into treating the employees, right? What would you say if you clearly have hired the wrong person, but just start there. What if we’ve clearly hired somebody with a myriad, a laser show of personal issues that rival the character traits of some of the frat boys and animal house, you know, that sort of thing. What do you do if that’s your team? If you’ve assembled right now,

Quit.

Okay?

If you’re the leader, you have to own whoever’s in your office. Okay? I mean, so pointing and blame and like it, look, you’re the leader. Suck it up buttercup and own it. You know, now don’t stay there. So figuring out like what, what do we need? What types of people? So Francis, what’s important to me and working with different companies or churches is what are the things that are important and valuable to us? Sometimes what a company will do is they will hire a body to execute a task. They don’t thinking about a team member, they don’t thinking about a healthy team member. They don’t think. And the person doesn’t have to be, you know, 40 and grown and mature and healthy and emotionally and tell him no, no, no, no. But they do need to fit a certain value system that you have established.

If you hire warm bodies for the purpose of a warm body, then you know what, you deserve what you get. But if you decide, you know what, these are the things that are important, these are the values that are important. So every time, for example, if showing care and being flexible and delivering, wow. And you know, let’s say those are your three things that are important. If you’re hiring somebody that doesn’t show care to the teammate by them or to other people, you got to ask questions that kind of on earth, some of the same ask questions that are value-based to you because you are hiring them to work in your value system. And so it doesn’t mean they have to be like you, but it does have to mean they have to live inside of your ecosystem and they do at least fit the chemistry and the culture in there and you’ve checked their character. So unfortunately there are some people that are, there are some people who are listening that you have people on your team that you should not have hired. Well, you just have to own it. Either you give them a coaching plan or you need to move them on. And that sounds very shortened course, but it’s just a fact. Try to hire people that fit the value system, you know, which is you’ve got to start. What’s your, what’s the values of what’s important to you? What do you want from people? What do you want for them?

No, Z. I. R. E. Z. Have you ever been to the restaurant called Dick’s? Yes, I have. It’s a restaurant in Dallas is the one I had gone to after bridal shows. The DJs would say, we want, I got it decks and I’m like, what’s Dick’s and why would you [inaudible]? And I’m like, well, we’re at a bridal show for two days and you’re saying that the number one carrot you want, if we book a lot of weddings as you want to go to dicks. So we go into Dixon. I didn’t, I was aware of the theme, but apparently Dick’s last resort is a restaurant where the employees there mock you or contain chorus and they basically insult you for the mass. Majority of the time you’re there. And I, and I wasn’t the first time I was there, I wasn’t aware of the theme. Oh, probably should have guessed.

Did you catch on quickly? Got on Nikon about five minutes. But I remember I’d go there and the guy says you know, what do you want to get? You know, I said something like, I want to get a let me get a glass of wine and then or whatever and a hamburger, you know, or something. And the guy’s like, Oh well that’s applied to large hedge. You got there, you sure? I remember he looked at me and he said something like, Oh, so a lady, a lady drink, I respect that. I respect that sir. And with all due a non respect that I really shouldn’t give you at all, boom. He comes back and brings me like a blue moon and he’s like, this right here is what a man should drink. But I did get you a hula skirt if you’d put it on please. And I’m like, what? Say no. I mean I’ll kick you right out if you want. And I’m like, what is this place? This is a place where they insult you as part of the theme. Yes. Those people are not working at life church. What I’m saying? Well that might be because they’re good at their job.

Crazy characters at life church.

It’s just like it’s, you’ve got to find people that fit the role I guess is what I’m saying. Find the people fit the values, fit the role. Now somebody might say, you wrote this new book called the comeback effect and I want to know about it, but before I opened the book where I buy the book because it’s an investment of like $19 Ooh, wow. I’m going to have to put Dan, I’m going to put some middle man, dude, go on Amazon right now and buy a copy of it and tell us how much it costs right now to buy the comeback effect, but somebody right now, somebody is out there right now, Amazon going, look, I’m going to have to like say no to the upsell at taco bueno or something. I might not be able to do starches nine 98. Okay. So somebody is going to have to say no to a regrettable purchase at quick trip right now to afford this book or Starbucks. And they’re thinking before I invest nine 99, what gives you the platform or the expertise to speak to me? Can you share a little bit about your background and because I’m, I don’t want to paint you into a corner, make you say where you were last working at, but you had a pretty incredible role there. And I think maybe that would give some credibility to the listeners out there that maybe aren’t as familiar with your background as as we are.

Yeah. And so, you know, I work alongside companies and, and churches you know, worked at North port ministries where, you know, was responsible for the guest experience. I mean, there were a lot of people that made this happen. I think if you were to say why you I think a great question to ask is why not? I think a lot of times what you will read in the book is because over the years I did the opposite of all of these things. Even though I knew what was right, I am so task and results driven, I would just need people to help make things happen. Well, what I didn’t realize, I was delivering something I thought great to the guests, but I was missing the very people that I was wanting to deliver it to the guests and I was hurting them.

And so that’s why that volunteer, that employee experience is so great. So from a creative side, yes, I’ve worked with some great organizations and companies, not just in a coach and consultant, but literally because usually that’s the best. We’re a rub people the wrong way. Oh, you haven’t done it full time? No, no. I have day in and day out created processes and systems and people and yada yada yada. So I feel like I have done it enough where I can be a help. I’m not a master of this. Kind of see myself as a guy who can come along and shed some insight into something that I didn’t create. I’m just adding my thoughts.

Well, your book, when you look at your book Z, we’ve had pastor Craig Groeschel on our podcast. Let me tell you what one of the hardest guys to book. And he actually endorses this book if I’m correct and now I could’ve blacked out Z. I could have, I could have been sleeping, I could have envisioned this, but I believe Jason, we have pastor Craig endorses your book as well as Horst Scholtz, the co-founder of the Ritz Carlton hotel group who we’ve also had on the show. These are people praising your book. Am I making that up or is that real?

That is real.

O Z, Z ma’am. Shoots and scores were not denied. Not denied. Wow. Now, chapter one of your book. Okay. I’m opening up the books. This is how it sounds in my mind when I opened the book. It’s like, are you opening a door book? Yes, it is a door book. It’s a door to the rest of your life with hospitality. That’s what it is. A door that opens the house of hospitality. Come on now, chapter one of your book and chapter one of your book. You write focus on feeling as much as you function. What does that mean, my friend?

So simply put, we typically train employees and volunteers to do to execute a function. And we can do that every day. Devoid of any feeling. But what is

What, where does that start with your sniper stuff comes in place. Are they snipers? A function?

I plead the fifth.

Okay. Sorry about that. Oh, that’s unfortunate. We’re violent by nature. We missed our calling. We apologize. Dream his life dreams. Go ahead. Sorry.

Oh, Oh yeah. Back to this. Sorry. Okay, so function. So the idea is what if we didn’t start with that? Yes, it’s needed. I mean you, you need, you know, team members trained and they need to know what to do that, that’s important. But what if we started with how do we want somebody to feel when they walk in the door, when they place an order, when they buy a car, when they have a conversation, when we answer the phone. If you own a company and you do in a virtual chat, like how do you want people to feel and use the vehicle of our function to deliver that particular feeling? Because people come back to stores, they want to do business with you, they come back to your church. It boosts your likability when you give them a positive feeling. So start with there and on the same time you use the function to deliver.

I will say this was the hardest thing for me to learn while growing my first business DJ connection. And I will share with you why and how. If I would’ve had a book like what Jason has just written here, it would have helped me because brides would come in to meet, to plan their wedding nosy. When a bride comes in to book their wedding guests, it comes with them, their mother. There you go. So I catered it to men, black lot of decor, a lot of Darth Vader, much like the studio right now. A lot of just man, Oh I loved your packages were like metallic. They were platinum gold over my PA, my packages, the deejay packages, yet they were very star Wars, earthy, very monster truck, very WCW and everything I did was very transactional. I didn’t sit down and do an assessment to plan out their big day.

I did like, do you want to hip hop as like, do you want to hip hop? Do you want, ah, surely you want O hip hop audio, want to be terrible. You know, and it’s like, I didn’t mean to marginalize the brides, but I didn’t know what I was doing cause I wasn’t catering to my audience. And the brides would leave feeling like they talked to a speaker salesman who was proud of the speakers he owned. Oh yeah. Who didn’t care though. Jbls about, I was pitching to women Cerwin Vega and JBL brand names and talking about the features of the speakers, not talking about me. The emotion of the big day. It only took me about two years to figure out that women wanted an MC and a host to lead the reception and to artfully turn their dreams into reality and to lead people down the timeline. And I thought for everybody wanted to have a club like a 50 cent concert cog machines. Again, this is a huge ask herself. Thrivers what do your customers want? What do they want to feel? Now chapter three of your book, you move on and you talk about know the guest, which is what I clearly didn’t do. What does it mean to know the guest?

Well, I know, right? I did not come up with this. It’s, it’s, it’s slowing down enough to figure out who the person is in front of you. And so, I mean, people do this different way and in business, you know, we talked about voice of the customer and so like, all right, let’s identify the voice of the customer. The thing is this, you have to know what they’re thinking and feeling. You know, we talked about demographics. This is a little bit more, and Disney popularized this, but the psychographic like what are their needs and wants and opinions and which their vibe, you know, all that kind of stuff. You can do this through surveys, assessment. I mean there’s a million different ways you could do that, but this takes effort time. You’ve got to slow down businesses. A lot of them don’t want to do that.

They want to get after it. They want to make numbers. What I’m saying is this, if you would get to know the people you’re going out to after more intimately is not a great word because that conjures up a whole different picture but a little bit more in depth than perhaps the you, you don’t work harder. You’re just the old adage, working smarter, you still got to work hard, but it just feels like, Oh wow, Clay’s creating something for me. You know, so it feels like you get me, you, you know, I did a survey one time for a particular set of volunteers and these are CEOs and physicians and you know, mechanics stay at home, moms, dads, all that kind of stuff. And it was about why they got up to be a volunteer. And so the question was one question, why do you get up to show up?

And what’s amazing was the very thing I had been addressing for so long on the five results that we got was number five. And so when I started asking them, or when I asked them, I started changing how I spoke and I was like, Oh well then we started using it to a broader audience and people were like, it sounds like you get me. Well we do because we slowed down and ask the question. So that way everybody else sets not yet on the team. Now we can use your language. So you will say, Oh, you get me, you’re using words that resonate with me. So it takes time. It takes effort, but it helps so much. People want to feel like you get,

You know, chapter four of your book. You talk about being fully present and to see we have time for three more questions. So I’ll ask the first two. You asked the final one. Okay, so question number one, selling her, cause I’m a Z. I always go last that we’ll say the best for last. Oh, your name’s last alphabetically. There are many reasons you just, so we say here, be fully present. Chapter four. That’s the title of that chapter. Be fully present. See, I want to cue up audio of the average American. According to psychology today, the average American is now interrupted over 90 times per day. Excuse me? What’d you say? So this is the average American. Let’s, let’s have a conversation right

Quick. Okay, here we go. Let’s do that. Let me, let me keep my audio. Come on. Audio to work here. Z.

Hey, real quick. Wait real quick. What do you want to get? Lasagna or, Hey, Z. What? I’m sorry. Sorry. Hey, real quick. Hey, that’s how the average person talks now. It’s a constant data, smog of interruptions. It’s just all this what? What? Excuse me, what do you ask people? What do you want to eat? And they go, yeah, I call it monkey brain. What? Huh? People are chronically distracted. Then I would say a banana. How do you encourage people to be fully present in a time where psychology today is coming out with articles, they have an article now called, is your smartphone making you dumb? Where they showed that the cognitive processing skills, the average adult on their smartphone is less than that of a third grader. How do you get people to be fully present when they’re chronically distracted with their smartphone?

Well, I have to be the one to be fully present first, and so I need to be fully present emotionally so I can empathetically take this journey with people. I could be empathy, I can be fully present physically, so I need to remember my body language says more than my words. You know, I need to be fully present mentally. I press pause and what I’m thinking so I can press play on what you’re saying. So it’s not easy. It’s not supposed to be easy. We’re in a human business, but what people need more than anything perhaps today. And my wife said it best, she just therapists, she said this, she says, Jason, I’ll have a job for the rest of my life. I said, well, aren’t you? Don’t you think you’re all that? You said, no, no, no, no. It’s actually sad. I said, Oh my bad.

Why is it saturated? People will always pay me to listen. And so I thought, wow, the greatest gift we can give people is to listen to them, to give them a moment that’s unhurried, to give them the moment that we’re not distracted by the distractions, that I am literally wherever I am, there I am fully right. And because the last thing I’ll say is this, when I choose to be fully present with you, I literally am holding a megaphone or a horn up everybody out saying the most important person to me right now is the person in front of me. And I want them to know it. And I want everybody else to know it. And it’s time. We need to give people, and it’s going to be hard. But we need to give people our full presence. It’s meaningful and then eventually we’ll become memories.

That’s power that, that right there, that first call, that show time right there. Come on, come on. Give me some sound. Five. Just kidding.

He hit them. All right.

It’s going to keep hitting them.

Oh man.

Wow. Okay. We’re back. Okay. That was my brain exploded inside my head just a little bit. I was going to listen to that twice right there. If you, if you guess, if you grasp that, yup, understand that. Use that super power that that’s like a light saber. That right there. I’m telling you what will advance you further in this day and age than just about anything. Jason. I mean that right there is

Key that people have to understand that know he took the parties. If I was a DJ right now, if I was deejaying at a club, I would say, how many of you want to take this party to what 10 people are already like, woo. How many of you want to take this party to what people already feel like they’re in a tent? Let’s hide. Let’s go to 11. People would get excited. Right now I’m 38 I’m not a club, so he’s going to do it again right now. Chapter eight. We’re going up. We’re going to eight for Greg here. I want him to, I want, I want it to marinate a little bit. You want to marry him when he’d garden? No, we’ve got so many great things we’ve got to get to. I know, but that’s such an important moment right there that people, you know his tub it people get ahold of right now because it’s so easy to have that phone controlling you instead of you controlling that dang phone.

Yeah. Think chapter eight. Okay, go ahead. He says after we move on, the chapter title is called just, okay. Now you talk in your book about rejecting just, okay. I have a phrase that I say a lot that I can’t say on this show because it’s a show we keep clean, but I’ll paraphrase is when you have a half a mentality, your whole life is terrible. I would like for you in a nice way if a couple of the ministry that ground ponder on that word, the word of knowledge coming red jet, they’re just, Oh K, what does that mean?

So there’s a popular commercial that’s out right now that talks about, you know,

Just perfect.

Yeah, yeah, it’s not, it’s really not okay just to have them be okay. So a lot of times what we don’t even realize is we get sucked into this vortex of being okay because the stakes are lower. I’m lazy, nobody will see. I don’t have a passion for it. Like there are all these quote justifiable internally justifiable, but deep down inside we have got to be able to be excellent and who we are and in what we do now you say, well, I like who deserves that? Well look, you the listener, you deserve that. And every person you interact with deserves that. That you can be excellent and who you are. You don’t have to be lazy. The stakes are never lower. People are always watching. Like there are all of these reasons to when a lot of times we’ll spend more time. So you know what?

It’s fine. It’s okay. Like when did that become okay to accept? Okay. It’s not, it’s not. We have got to be excellent in how we present ourselves and how we talk and how we love and how we support and how we lead businesses and employees and level and guests to care for them, et cetera, et cetera. Like excellent, excellent. Because here’s the thing, if you’re a business owner, if you’re a church leader, the moment you choose to cheat them, your experience and where it is no longer excellence is the moment you have decided on what and who you value. And if you want people to come back, if you want people to engage with you, if you want to have an excellent team member experience, you can never cheapen it by being just okay because you cannot what it will cost you.

Amen. I mean, you know, Jason, we’ve all walked into a business where the employees are doing just okay, right? And what I’m hearing from you today, the action step for people that are listening to this show should take home is this, is that as the business owner, as the boss, as the manager or whatever position of authority, those of you listening to this, listening to this right now, understand that it starts at the top and that you save. You’re the business owner. You have to make the hard decision. It’s really an easy decision, but the decision to say, you know what, just okay is not okay. You just to give Jason some context, you own an auto auction, perhaps the largest in the state. You have an optometry clinic, perhaps the largest in the state, and you are one of the few people that owns a bank.

These are real businesses that you have, so you are not just throwing this out there as a charlatan idea of like, Oh wow, this is powerful. This is powerful stuff. That’s powerful stuff and if every business owner took this to heart and practice these things that are being taught on the show today, then all these other businesses we walk into, we wouldn’t feel like, Oh my gosh, we don’t want our competitors to read your book. Well, no, no, no. Everybody bought them. No carpet cleaning franchise, different hair business. Don’t read bat. It’s a bad, it’s not. It’s not even. Okay.

I will say this. Somebody sent me a picture, a picture not long ago, and my book was on the back of a toilet.

Oh well, a lot of free time there. A lot of, a lot of free time right there. If you want to be excellent, a lot of free time. Excellent. And you want to reject just, okay, and you want to recreate, you want to create this viral repeat customer cycle. Get the book right now. I want you to go on to Amazon right now. Z. We’re going to see if we can get the listeners to go right now. There’s some people who have carpal tunnel, totally nine 98 as Andrew pointed out. But my point is, is that you leaders and owners of businesses understand it starts with you. It always does. You set the, you set the pace, you set the paradigm, you set the energy that the atmosphere of your business. And so do not expect one of your employees to do something you’re not willing to do and you need a love on your employees and you need to give them respect and you need to treat them the way you want them to treat your customers.

That is more [inaudible] or more Callow. And I love this book. It encourages you to do that. And the point is, it’s kind of like every time you get a complaint you’re like, ah man, what the, what are they thinking that idiots out? Oh my gosh, what are they thinking out there at the front desk where they think, Oh my gosh, you know, well, you know why? Because they’re modeling the way you’re treating them nine times out of 10 or maybe eight out of, or maybe so. Jason, I want to give you the floor here. You can you have the mic to share with our listeners. We have about a half a million listeners a month that peruse and use and rendezvous with our audio from time to time every month. So I’m, what would be the word of advice or encouragement or the ask the action step that you would ask all of our listeners to take today? Anything at all?

Well, it sounds arrogant or boastful. I do think the book can be helpful. I’m not getting rich. I’m actually sitting on my yacht in Greece doing this this conversation with you. But other than that

Santa Ana fine Island, by the way. Yes,

Yes, yes. So I need you to keep funding those dreams of mine. But I think for you, if you picked up the book and maybe you went through it with somebody else on your team, you could go to my website, Jason Young lot, live.com under resources. There’s a leader’s guide for you that really have created questions that will help you if you’re like, well, you know, what else can I do? I have on my website as well. There’s something called the Saturday rundown. Every other week I send out just some snippets, accurate content on hospitality and leadership. My goal is for you not to feel alone. Our goal is for you to like you have a guide by your side. I’m, I’m not, you know, some Sage on the stage. I’m just trying to figure out some of this too and to learn as I go.

But I think if you’re by the book, if you’ll go through it, if you’ll give it, give it a chance and bike some people to do it with you and just take one thing you don’t have, don’t overhaul the system. Cause that’s too, that’s it’s exhausting and people will get discouraged. Take one thing, begin to use it and then talk about it when you see it, celebrate it. You know, when other people talk about it. And then just slowly, dude, a little at a time. It’s called the aggregation of marginal gains. It’s just 1% at a time. And watch what happens. Watch how you make people feel. Watch more people come back, watch your bottom line increase and just you know what and feel better at the end of the day that you are being a better leader.

Jason Young, thank you for keeping our listeners forever young. I really do mean at new knowledge can absolutely take people. When you start to implement new ideas that work proven best practices that have been proven to work over and over again, it can keep your business fresh. Z, it can take your company to the next level. This was a, this was a great, a great guest. Well, you don’t think about it is I’m according to Forbes, Jason Young, you know, eight to nine out of 10 businesses fail and that’s not a good one and good stat there. And I kind of think that it’s not good. We’re, we’re, we’re about trying to change that narrative. You know, if someone puts a time and effort to doing something, opening a business for them to keep an and going and having repeat customers, having happy customers any more, it’s such an important part of running a business, right?

I mean, we all know that. And yet people are searching for the answers and how to make people happy, how to have them come back to their business and give them more of hard earned money for whatever goods and services that they’re selling. So I love, I love this. I think today show’s awesome. This book I love and I love this man. He’s, he’s a handsome man. I mean, he might come to Tulsa, she go to this website just to get a little eye candy folks. You’re welcome. By the way. Just not give you a little, you’re welcome. Rock. Please drink it. A lot of fish oil athlete. Jason, were you an athlete? Maybe a professional golfer or a sniper? I don’t know. I mean, you looked like you were smart enough to be a doctor. I’d be a physician. I know Jason Young, even though so much for being on the show and before Z gets too intimate with his obsession for you. And is he still your screensaver? Well, I mean outta here. I mean Paris. Well, all right. See, I think it’s time to end the show with the boom. I think that’s true. Are you prepared in the show of the boom? I’m still prepared, Jason Young. We love to count down from three to burn a thing. It’s kind of, are you prepared? Look okay. Here we go.

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