[INTRODUCTION]

 

[00:02:15] Brad: In this episode, I have the pleasure of speaking with Scott McKain. Make sure to go out and say hello to him on Twitter he’s @ScottMcKain. For those of you unfamiliar with Scott, he’s an internationally known authority on helping organizations create distinction in every phase of business and teaching how to deliver the ultimate customer experience. Scott has written multiple bestselling books, a few of which include All Business Is Show Business, Create Distinction and his most recent, The 7 Tenets of Taxi Terry. He also is one of only 150 living members of the National Speakers Hall of Fame and was recently inducted as one of the only 22 members of the Sales and Marketing Hall of Fame in the world, fellow members of which include Seth Godin, Zig Ziglar, and Dale Carnegie. Obviously, some amazing company there.

 

Here are just a few of the topics we covered in this jam-packed hour long conversation. Right at the beginning we go a little bit off script but this is gold for those of you out there hosting public seminars or client events, Scott covers three ways to cure stage fright, how to recover from telling a joke no one laughs at and two techniques for creating crowd engagement during your presentation. As an added bonus, he throws in two tips for body language while on stage. Next up, Scott shares what a random cab ride from the Jacksonville airport taught him about creating the ultimate customer experience. In fact this story led to him later being contacted by the largest book publisher in the world to write his most recent book on it. The principal shared have actually allowed this taxi driver to thrive as Uber eats the rest of his competition alive.

 

Next the surprising insight Scott and his team found when they surveyed multiple industries on what their clients expectations actually were and how benchmarking against industry competition could actually be the worst thing your company could ever do. Lastly, Scott shares an incredible story about how a dinner with Zig Ziglar was the turning point that lead to him writing his first book and even more personally, what Zig did when Scott’s first wife passed away that left a lasting impression on Scott to this very day. Warning, it may make you cry. I almost did. It was that powerful and a great lesson to be learned from it. So without further delay, here’s my conversation with Scott McKain.

 

[INTERVIEW]

 

[00:04:24] Brad Johnson: So a little bit more information on Scott. First off, Scott and I were chatting right before we hopped on here and went live to everybody. One of the recent honors, he actually is the 22nd member of the Sales and Marketing Hall of Fame. So 22 in the world. Am I right there, Scott?

 

[00:04:42] Scott McKain: Right, yeah.

 

[00:04:43] Brad: Twenty-two in the world, the likes of Seth Godin, Zig Ziglar, Dale Carnegie, the guy that wrote How to Win Friends and Influence People. Obviously, you’re probably familiar with the other names there. Congratulations, Scott. That’s an incredible honor.

 

[00:04:57] Scott: Thank you. Brad, I was saying before I keep on waiting on you would say… Steve Harvey made that announcement there was a mistake. But it was a surprise. I didn’t even know I had been nominated. It was a great thrill to join that group.

 

[00:05:13] Brad: That’s a testament to the years of dedication and work that you’ve put into your craft so congrats. So I was thinking being one of the 150 living members of the Professional Speakers Hall of Fame, which you also are, was a great honor but then you trumped it, right at the beginning of the call. So, Scott is also a bestselling author. For those of you that have not read his books, we will put links in the show notes here. Create Distinction is probably your most well-known book Scott. Correct?

 

[00:05:44] Scott: Yeah. That’s right.

 

[00:05:45]Brad: So for those of you on the call here, Levi just reviewed that book. Actually before we even knew you were gonna be a guest here.

 

[00:05:55] Scott: Oh it’s a good review!

 

[00:05:58] Brad: Yeah, a testament to the fact that it is good stuff because we’re actually reviewing the book before you even decide to be a guest with us on here.

 

[00:06:05] Scott: I appreciate that.

 

[00:06:07] Brad: So keep an eye out for that. I think you all understand here shortly when we get to Scott and some of the content that he is gonna cover how well he knows Creating Distinction in Creating The Ultimate Client Experience. So we’re not gonna waste a lot of time on the front end. We’re just gonna dig right in if that’s cool with you, Scott.

 

[00:06:25] Scott: I’d love it. Let’s go. That’s great, Brad. Thank you.

 

[00:06:28] Brad: Alright. So first off, I’m gonna go just a little bit off script, we won’t go too far off script here but I know a number of our advisors give public events. Seminars, client events, a lot of time on stage although not quite as much as you’ve spent on stage.

 

[00:06:44] Scott: True.

 

[00:06:45] Brad: So I wanted to figure out on your side, obviously as a professional speaker, you do this for a living, and I was curious, do you have any rituals, routines that you go through prior to taking stage that you think may be able to help others out there that are maybe getting nervous or before they hop out there?

 

[00:07:06] Scott: Well first of all, it’s a great question, Brad. I think your attitude about being anxious or being nervous is critical. My mentor many years ago in the speaking business, I just admired him so much because he seems so relaxed any time he stood out in front of a crowd. We were having a conversation, I went to hear him speak, and we were on the car driving home and I said, “Gosh, I get so nervous every time before I speak.” And he said, “Great!” And I went, “No. Help me!” and he said, “No. You only get nervous about things that matter. And if you aren’t nervous then that means, what you’re about to do really isn’t that significant.”

 

So the key is not to teach yourself how not to be nervous. The key is to teach yourself how you deal with that. There’s the old speaker line about, I get butterflies, I’ll just train them to fly in formation. And I think that’s kind of the approach is how do you deal with that. I get anxious, you mentioned I’m here at Atlantis at the Bahamas and doing a program for a thousand people and I’ll promise you I will be nervous before I walk on stage because I care. I want to do a good job but there are things that all of us in speaking can learn about what we need to do. Here’s a couple: Number one, know your opening cold. I say practically the same thing every time I speak to open the speech you know that absolutely cold. I don’t think you should memorize your speech but you certainly need to have both your opening phrase and your closing phrase absolutely solid, absolutely cold.

 

Second thing is, if there’s any way that you can get some audience participation at the beginning, I think that’s a great thing too. It does two things. Number one, it gets the audience involved because again, part of which you wanna do is walk through your presentation and try to analyze it from the viewpoint of the audience. And one of the things that the audience doesn’t want is to think that some boring person is gonna be lecturing them about you know… I’ve sat through so many meetings of mutual fund wholesalers and “here’s our top 10 holdings and here’s…” they just all run together and so the audience’s perception is here’s somebody, they’re gonna lecture to us, they’re gonna give us this information. Get them involved. Find some way to get them involved.

 

I have a blog. The blog is createdistinction.com and there’s a post on there a couple of weeks ago about 10 things that every speaker, mostly for professional speakers, should know. So that’s there for you if that will help. Here’s the other that I would encourage everyone to know, if in doubt leave it out. If there’s anything that you question that might offend a client or might offend someone in the audience, whether be politically. Here’s the part of thing, most of us that are starting in speaking or most of us don’t speak often think that the way that we’re supposed to do it is to get up and tell a joke and make some kind of humorous comment and then move on. And the fact is, humor should only be used with a purpose. Here’s the reason why. Any humor that you use should illustrate a serious point for two reasons. Number one, is humor’s hard. It’s the hardest thing you can do from the platform.

 

Second thing is, how many meetings have you been to where an advisor or host gets up to tell a terrible joke, nobody laughs and then they go, “Haha but seriously…” Right? If the joke has a point and nobody laughs then all you gotta do is to say, “Now you’re probably wondering why I told you something silly like that. The reason is because…” And then you go in to the point of the story. Whether they laugh or whether they don’t, the story still makes the point. So those are the things that I’d advise you to do. Know your opening and your close absolutely cold. Second, if in doubt leave it out. Be careful about what you’re communicating. And third, everything, every illustration should have a point.

 

One of the things we find is the audiences are different generationally. Millennials listen a little bit different than baby boomers and so forth. But the one thing that unites us is story. We want narrative. Give us an example. I was just reading right before we came on, Brad about Warren Buffett’s most recent letter and talking about how Berkshire Hathaway, what they’ve done over the last year. And part of what he does is to tell you the story of what happened over the last year. And it’s part of why people trust him so much, it’s part of why people have reconnected with him so much. It’s that even if we don’t understand the financial mechanics behind what he’s doing, the story makes us go “Ah!” right? And it builds trust and it helps us understand. So narrative is incredibly important. Focus on the stories that you tell them. I could go on an hour about that but those are just some basics.

 

Oh and one last thing before we move onto another topic. It’s always harder to speak to people that you know than it is to speak to people that you don’t know. I’m from a small town in southern Indiana, Crothersville Indiana it’s my hometown. There’s 1500, 1600 people in our town. I’m about to speak to a thousand people here. It’s easier for me to speak in front of a thousand people here in the Bahamas than it is for me to go back home to Crothersville and get and talk in front of a hundred people. So part of what an advisor needs to understand is when you’re speaking to your clients, when you’re speaking to the people that you know. You are literally doing the hardest job in speaking. And so no wonder you are nervous. No wonder it’s challenging because that’s part of what you’re doing. So understand that, prepare for that and I think you’ll find a great deal of success.

 

[00:13:23] Brad: That’s awesome. I’m glad I asked that question.

 

[00:13:26] Scott: I’m glad you did too. I love it.

 

[00:013:28] Brad: Such a wealth of knowledge right there.

 

[00:13:30] Scott: The thing of it is, speaking is like playing a piano. It really is. Some people have more natural talent than others, some people are more adept physically than others with speakers might be a voice, with piano players might be the dexterity of your fingers. But at the end of the day it’s about practice, it’s about stage time. And just like with the piano, the more you play the better you get but the better you get the more that people want you to play, so it becomes that cycle. And the same is true with speaking.

 

And one of the things that I’ve seen over the many years that I have been working with advisors is that they just don’t practice enough. They expect the speech to be good but they just don’t practice enough to make it good. And I know they’ve got a million things to do but I’ll give a hundred speeches this year. By the end of this week, I’ll give 30 already this year. And I’ll still be working on the slides and getting everything just right and even though I tell the Taxi Terry story at every speech, I tell certain stories every time, I still rehearse every single presentation. I’ll rehearse it here in the hotel room. You wouldn’t think you’d be good at basketball or golf or anything else without practicing. It’s like I’ll never go to the range but I expect to shoot even par. Not gonna happen. And speaking is no different.

 

[00:15:03] Brad: Okay so I’ve got about three questions rattling around my head.

 

[00:15:05] Scott: Sure.

 

[00:15:06] Brad: Body language on stage. You have any tips there? Things you’ve picked up over the years that work well.

 

[00:15:16] Scott: The fundamental thing to remember about body language, I think there’s two points. One is that gestures and your movements should feel very natural. What we really wanna see on the stage is who we think you are out in the hallway. And so I use my hands a lot when I talk. I probably overuse them on the stage but when people then meet me outside of being on the platform, I’m the same guy. I mean, I might be more dramatic on the stage as you need to be, I might be more forceful on stage as you need to be.

 

I’ve done some speech coaching here recently and it’s really been fascinating. I coached the author of the book Freakonomics, I’ve coached the real life Captain Phillips, I coached the president of Keurig, the coffee brewers and things like that. Most of the training they’d been through had been the traditional speech training which is… Here’s your gestures, if you have two points to make you say, “I have two points to make.” But if you and I are sitting at Starbucks, I wouldn’t say, “Hey, Brad, there are three things I wanted to talk to you about this morning.” You don’t do that. And so your gestures should be conversational. People don’t wanna hear a lecture, they wanna hear a speech. They wanna be a part of an extended conversation. And so that’s how you should be in terms of gestures.

 

But the main thing is, you have to know your speech well enough to know where the most significant points. I call it the fly on the wall or the listening in the bathroom principle which is simply, after the speech is over, if I’m a fly on the wall or if I’m in a stall listening to everybody talking in the restroom during the break and someone said, “What did you get from that speech?” and I wanna make certain that when the speech is over, people know A,B,C. Right?

 

So when you get to those points in your speech, that’s part of the practicing, you gotta know what they are, you gotta plan for that, but when you get to that point that’s where the body language stand and deliver. That’s where you are full frontal on to the audience and you make that point. You’re not moving from side to side, you’re not gesturing what but you stand and deliver that point. For example, one of the points in my presentation is the single most important question that any advisor can be asking right now is, “Why would a client choose me instead of the competition?” So when I say that I’m not walking back and forth, I’m not looking to the slide, I’m not gesturing. That’s the moment that I’m square to the audience and I say to you the most important question you can be asking today. And that serves to drive home those two or three critical points of the presentation. So that’s the time that body language becomes most important.

 

[00:18:13] Brad: Awesome. So earlier, one of your points you said was audience participation, which I’m glad to hear that because we kind of preach that on our side too as far as coaching advisors. Do you have examples? I know your industry is very different than a financial services industry but do you have kind of go to’s for you where you got kind of a dead audience and you’re struggling a little bit to kind of get them involved that are just natural things that will kind of build the energy up. Any ideas you can share about?

 

[00:18:42] Scott: There are some old classics and once in awhile I pull this one out and in our industry today we need some good words. “Everybody stand up. Shake hands with the people around you, say you’ve never looked better in your life.” and people do that and it’s funny. But that’s kind of a get you moving kind of thing. But one of the things we find is that millennials want the speaker to know what they feel about something. More than baby boomers. I go here, a speaker, and I’m taking notes in, taking it all in and that’s what I expect. It never occurred to me that the speaker would even be interested in what I was thinking about. When I’m with the audience, I’m just taking notes in their presentation.

 

Millennials want to give you feedback. And one of the ways you can accomplish that is to say… Even the old cliché question, “What keeps you awake at night? Would you write the one thing about your financial plan, or one thing about your financial future or one thing about the…. What keeps you at night? Whatever, just take a moment a moment and write that down?” then obviously you gotta think ahead. Does everybody have a pen? Does everybody have a pad? Or ask them to pull out their iPhone and  put it in their notes section, right? Now that you got that, get yourself a partner. You and your partner get another pair. So now the four of you, go around and express what’s keeping you awake at night. And then I’ve got a couple of questions for you. So they do that and they talk about that. And then you say, “Okay, how many of you…” As you were talking to someone else… “How many of you is what kept you awake the same thing as what kept someone else in the group awake?” Naturally you’re gonna have half, or 60% to 70% will raise their hand, yeah we shared the same thing. Okay so what were they? You get that feedback from the audience and then you say… You’ve identified this as being critical, so let’s focus on that.

 

Now as a good advisor, you better be able to predict what’s keeping your clients awake at night. You should know that ahead of time. None of these answers are gonna shock you. Be prepared for that. Be ready for that. But then from the audience’s’ perspective, what you’ve just done is get them talking to each other, “Oh, what we think is important”,  and it says to them that what’s going to follow is exactly what they have defined as being important to hear about. So you’ve just raised the interest level of your presentation because you’re talking about what they’ve define as being important to them. Getting them involved…

 

For example one of the things we do that has really helped our business stand out… For example, when I spoke at the World Series of Sales, I said, “Give me the names of three or four of your top people, top advisors and I just like to call them and talk to them before the presentation.” So I did and I don’t know if you remember that but one of the things that I said in the presentation is, John Smith in Montgomery, Alabama said this is really important. Part of the reason I did that, first, I really wanted to know what they thought was important. But the second thing is, I know if I stand up and I say here’s what’s really important, there are gonna be people in the audience go “How does he know? We’re out here every day, how does he know?” But if I say “John Smith in Alabama thought this was important and by the way, Jane Doe in Kansas thought it was important and Fred Johnson in California.” Now all of a sudden I’ve sublimely said to the audience that I’ve done my homework. I know what’s important to you because you’ve defined it for me, this isn’t a canned speech. Finding ways to get your audience involved in that way stimulates interest in what you’re about to say.

 

[00:22:45] Brad: That’s a brilliantly simple idea. Because what’s interesting is most of the people in this call, they’re doing pre-qualifying calls with most of their seminar attendees where they’re asking some of the reasons that they’re interested in coming. So obviously, with permission they could share some of that.

 

[00:23:01] Scott: Absolutely. Or do it live on site. You’re not going to be surprised by what they say because the pre-qualifying call, but to get people talking to each other is good too, because the other thing that you want is after your event, you want these people who might not have known each other previously to feel more comfortable standing in the parking lot going, “That was really good. What did you think?” You get them talking to each other to reinforce… In “financial service” is just like any other major purchase that we make. Every buyer suffers and every client suffers on post-purchase dissonance. Did I do the right thing? Did I make the right choice? Am I with the right advisor? And so stimulating conversation with your group, so that they’ll feel free to talk with each other also lets them support each other. “Man, I’m glad I came to this lunch.” “I’m really glad I came to this dinner.” “That was really interesting. I think I’m gonna do something? How about you?”

 

So you’re stimulating help by instilling that dissonance after the program by getting them to talk to each other during your program. The other thing is we’re so used to being manipulated as an audience, and we hate that. How many times have you been to a meeting we’re the speaker says, “The meaning of life is… well I’m out of time but if you buy my books and my CDs at the book of the room, you’ll learn the meaning of life.” We know we’re being manipulated. So I think part of what happens is sometimes we will attend programs, me as a client, I’ll attend the program and the advisor will say, “I know that your concerns are A, B and C.” and I feel like I’m being manipulated. You’re saying that because that’s what you’re going to talk about. But if you get me to say that, just somebody else in the audience and you get me to say to someone else or someone else in the audience to say to me something then all of a sudden when you start talking about it, I don’t feel manipulated. I feel like you’re being responsive. And so just that little technique changes the audience’s thinking of you’re responding to my concerns as opposed to you’re gonna give us a pitch about what your specialty is. That’s critically important.

 

[00:25:30] Brad: And if you’re doing your best job for your clients or your prospects you’d wanna know that stuff.

 

[00:25:35] Brad:That is so true Brad. That’s a great point. Absolutely.

 

[00:25:37] Brad: It’s allowing you to do your job better. Well, cool. We’ve talked zero about the ultimate client experience before. So this is going great. But that’s incredible information so for those of you on here that are doing live events, definitely you’re gonna want to go back on the podcast and re-listen to that entire section because I was scribbling notes left and right. So if nobody else got any information, I at least did of this. So let’s transition a little bit into the ultimate client experience. I do love the story of Taxi Terry. Actually after your presentation, I don’t know even if it’s still out there, but I went and found some speech on YouTube that they’d clipped out the Taxi Terry story, and I re-watched it a couple times.

 

[00:26:35] Scott: That’s when I started telling the story, like the second or third time I ever told the story. And I was doing a program for all the managers of express stores and they posted that. Well anyway, I thought if they’re gonna post that I better read it. At least had my name on it so I can control the comments and everything. I reposted that, it’s been up there for several years and a couple of things have happened with Terry since then. It’s got 170,000 views. Nothing if you’re Taylor Swift but for a middle-aged guy, standing on stage talking for seven minutes, YouTube tells me that’s really remarkable. So it’s been pretty cool.

 

[00:27:20] Brad: Well if you don’t mind, and I don’t want to take the whole rest of our time here you telling a story that people can probably go out and watch but I do know we have a lot of our offices that have actually invited their staff and kind of their director first impressions on the call. And by the way, if you haven’t guys, now would be the time to like run out and grab them. To me that is summing up the ultimate client experience in a very cool way. So do you mind sharing that Terry story and kind of the lessons that you took from it?

 

[00:27:53] Scott: Sure. I’d’ be happy to. I’d given a speech in Jacksonville, Florida and the flight’s late and I’m tired. We’ve all been there. I got one more meeting and I drag my old beat-up suitcase, my old tired body through the airport and walk out and the line for cabs was really long, I take my place in the back of the line, I’m listening to one of these cab drivers saying. And my head is like a turnstile. I’ve counted how many people are in front of me, I’m waiting for the number to be number one and I finally get to the front of the line. Tired, just the typical beat-up traveler. And all of a sudden, the cab that’s picking me up, the guy pulls up in front of me and he stops. And then the driver jumps out of the cab and points at me in front of the line and shouts, “Are you ready for the best cab ride of your life? Get in!” At this point, I’m afraid.

 

He jogs over and gets my luggage. He jogs back put some of the trunk of his car, jumps in the driver seat, turns around to me in the back and extends his hand says, “Mister McKain!” and I’m like “How did you know my name?” “Saw it on your luggage, figured I might as well use it. I’m Taxi Terry.” Which makes me think why did I  get stuck with the motivational cab driver? So we take off, “Where are we heading out Mister McKain?” “Well the Marriott, downtown.” “Fantastic, Sir. Let’s check out the weather.” That threw me for a loop. I’m so tired, I don’t care what is the weather, just get me to the hotel. He touches his dashboard that lights up and he’s got an iPhone in a very nice rack and a magnifying glass over the screen. I clearly read from the back seat, he’s live real time set the weather.com for Jacksonville. And I now have the instant forecast for my stay.

 

He says, “Hope you’re a golfer Mister McKain. You’re gonna have two awesome days in Jacksonville. Tell me why you’re here.” And I said “ Well I’ve been asked to come down here to give a speech about customer service.” “Customer Service? I’m so into that. Do you mind if I record our conversation?” and he hits a button. I’m like, “Who are you really? Why are you so set up to record conversations in your cab?” And the short version of what he told me was, “Well Doctor Smith, he’s one of my good local clients, and I’m driving to the airport and he says, “His daughter Jill has just enrolled at Vanderbilt University.” He says, as soon as he gets out of the cab I hit my button and I record that.” He said, “Every night when I get home I take the recordings that I’ve made and I enter it into my database.”

 

And I’m thinking even cab drivers now have CRM. And he said, “So the next time the doctor makes a reservation, that information pops up and as I’m driving him to the airport and I turn to him and I say “You know, by the way, Doctor I’m so glad to see you. I’ve been wondering how in the world is Jill doing at Vanderbilt?” He said, “You think he’s going to let anybody else drive him to the airport.” So he gets me to the hotel and we all know the drill ride cab drivers get you. He hands you two things, sometimes printed on the same form, hand you a receipt for our tax or business purpose and they hand you a card hoping you will call them where their company take you back where you came from. Terry gets me to the hotel, jumps out of the cab, gets my bag out of the back, literally carries my bags and hands my bag to the bellman and says, “Presenting Mister McKain.” I’ve never been presented before. Then he turns to me and says, “Mister McKain, I realize that you’ll need a receipt so someone brought you here and someone must return you. I hope that’s me. You can print out your receipt and reserve your return trip on my website taxiterry.com. Cab driver with a web presence. And he said, “One more thing Mister McKain, I hope to franchise this someday. So if you run into it, a cab driver can use some help with customer service.” And I’m thinking, “That’s all of them.” And he said, “You tell them about Taxi Terry.” And the next morning I get up and go to my speech and I started my speech by saying, “Last night at the airport, this guy said, “Are you ready for the best cab ride of your life? And the audience in unison went “Taxi Terry!” He’s the official cab driver for that office at IBM. He’s sold them his service agreement.

 

And now a few years, we’ve had a couple of other things happened that hadn’t even happened when I was there some years ago in San Diego where a few folks of the World Series of Sales.  One is, I made a trip back to Jacksonville, I’ve ridden with Terry three more times not long after that because I made several more visits back there for speaking. But then it was like three years of four years I haven’t been back to Jacksonville.

 

So, I’m back there a couple of years ago and I called for Terry to pick me up as I had before and this time a woman answers the phone. She is very professional, sounds like a dispatcher and that was different. So I give her my name and she says, “I know who you are. You’re the guy that tells that story about Terry.” And I said yes. And she said, “Terry will be the driver picking you up.” So I get off the plane and there he is standing by his beautiful new car and Are you ready for the best cab ride of your life? And I get in the front seat with him this time to catch up. Well, he now owns several cars and employs several drivers full-time because business is so good. He also has a second business called Eazy Airport shuttle because there are some people that are just price sensitive. They don’t care how many stops, they just wanna go as cheap as they can so that’s a good business for him.

 

He also bought a stretch limousine and he showed me a picture which I copied and use in my speeches now. The Clinton Global Initiative was held at the Ritz-Carlton Amelia Island, Florida and they had to pick someone to drive President Clinton for the week and who do you think they pick? That’s a picture of Taxi Terry and Bill Clinton. So then the YouTube story that you talked so much about got so many views. Just out of the blue, I get this call from McGraw-Hill, the biggest publisher in the world, who said, “We love that story. Would you write a book about what you learned from Taxi Terry?” Until they asked that, I’d learned about the ultimate client experience but I never really broken down the steps. Quick example, these are the 7 Tenets, 7 Lessons I learned.

 

The first one is, the importance of setting a high expectation. Every other cab driver that night said where are you going? How many in your party, cash or credit? Terry said, are you ready for the best cab ride of your life? Now what that did was to set an expectation for me that this was going to be something different than what everybody else had experienced. But the part that I didn’t really realize until I researched it more, talked to Terry more before writing the book, is that Terry also did that to challenge himself. He said, “I can’t say, Are you ready for the best cab ride of your life? And then you get into the cab and I don’t say anything and I just dump you off at the Mariott. I have to something during that time to make you understand that this is distinctive from what you’re gonna get from other cabs.” And so I see that a lot in business obviously from a compliance standpoint. A financial advisor can’t say, “Are you ready for the greatest returns you’ve ever had in your life?” You can’t do that. But what you can do is to create the ultimate client experience. To create something unique, to create something different in terms of how you treat your clients.

 

And that’s why I love so many people from the offices are watching because that client experience is not just the advisor, it is the total experience that the office creates. This is an example I used in the World Series of Sales, if I say think of Indiana Jones, you don’t think of Steven Spielberg. If I say think of Indiana Jones, you don’t think of George Lucas, but yet that’s who owned Indiana Jones. They made the movies, they signed the contracts, they did the deals, they owned Indiana Jones.  But when I say think of Indiana Jones, you think of Harrison Ford, you think of the employee that created the experience for you. So part of what we all have to understand is if I’m a client and I call the office, from the moment that phone is answered, the person I’m talking to is the chief executive officer of my client experience. So every single person in every single office has the critical responsibility of that client’s experience.

 

Second quick tenet, I didn’t quite understand why Terry did the weather. That was kind of a cool thing but later in the research of the book, part of what I found out was, if you think he’s in Jacksonville, Florida which is just near St. Augustine Florida, which by the way the golf tournament this last weekend was played, it’s the home of the PGA, it’s a golf Mecca. So at airport pick-ups, many of Terry’s passengers are folks coming in for a golf weekend and the weather is incredibly critical to those folks. So part of what I learned from Terry is when you can provide help or information that’s totally unexpected, I don’t depend on a cab driver for meteorological information but the fact that he provided it made the experience distinctive.

 

I visited the Corpus Christi, Texas… I guess it’s okay to mention who it was. Merrill Lynch asked me to interview some of their top performers in the entire system. Try to ascertain what were the things that made those financial advisors distinctive from everybody else in the system. And one of the top producers at that particular time was an advisor in Corpus Christi. So I’m in Corpus Christi and I go into the guy’s office, he’s right on the waterfront, one of the most beautiful offices I’ve ever seen and the guy and his CA are stuffing books into a folder. It was a Bill Gates book. So we started talking about what you’re doing? He said, “We have a book club. I find a book every month and send it to my top 25 clients.” And he said, “My goal is not to be your advisor. My goal is to be your concierge. If you want a thought leader in terms of business information, I may not be the thought leader but I can be the thought aggregator. I will send you an incredible book every month. If your kid gets stopped at a traffic stop, I’m the guy who will know who the best attorney in town is that you need to get. I am not here just to be your advisor, I am here to serve you in every way.”

 

Because of that he has more clients than folks who just focus on that. So that was Terry’s purpose. If all I’m doing is taking you from point A to point B then dropping you off, I’m a commodity. But if I can give you weather information, and make the experience unique… and here’s what I’ve learned in the year since, Brad, Uber is not disrupting Taxi Terry. Uber’s putting out of business, all the non-distinctive cab drivers out there. So this time in financial services, we’re worried about Robo-Advisors, we worry about all those kinds of things. That’s absolutely going to disrupt the non-distinctive advisors, the advisor that brings not a lot of information or value to the party. And that becomes the fundamental challenge. How do we find a way to create these kinds of experiences that are gonna make us stand out and decommoditize an industry and a business that in some ways can be commoditized pretty easily.

 

[00:40:09] Brad: Very much so. You’ve actually answered one of the questions I was gonna ask, if the update was he was Uber Terry now. But the nice thing about running your own car service, I’ve seen that a lot, where you can actually coexist with Uber and it actually supplements your business a lot of times.

 

[00:40:28] Scott: Yeah and one of the things too is that, Terry’s viewpoint is, “I’m gonna sell you a transportation solution.” In a commodity price-driven marketplace, the way that you have an advantage is to sell a solution as opposed to the commoditization. And so part of what he’s saying is, he’s calling on businesses saying, “Hey, if you just need a quick ride, a taxi car can pick you up. If you need an executive or a client, the limo can pick you up. If you have ten people that are coming in at the same time, the Eazy Airport shuttle can pick you up.” His goal is to be the person you outsource you transportation to, so he’s providing a transportation solution as opposed to getting in the commodity business of just picking you up, dropping you off.

 

[00:41:19] Brad: It’s interesting how closely that correlates to the financial services industry. A lot of our top advisors, one of their big differentiators is they’ve named and trademarked their process. So it’s not, “we’re going to do a risk and fee analysis on your portfolio” or “We do income planning” It’s, “I’ve got a three step process. It’s called the Retirement Road Map. One, two and three, you go from not being able to sleep well at night, to actually now you’ve got to set rules and plans that’s gonna get you exactly where you wanna go on retirement.” So, it’s interesting how you would think something that doesn’t correlate at all are actually very similar and works just as well in the financial services industry.

 

[00:42:05] Scott: You’re so right, Brad. My first book was called All Business Is Show Business. As matter of fact we’re getting ready to re-release that as an updated version. The principle is not laughter, song and dance. Schindler’s List was a product of show business. 12 Years a Slave was a product of show business. The intended outcome wasn’t laughter, song and dance. The intended outcome is show business succeeds when it creates the emotional connection with the audience. Our challenge, whether we’re driving a cab or whether we’re a financial advisor is, first of all think about who is our target audience, second, what is the proper emotional response that we desire to receive and third is, how do we create that compelling emotional response.

 

Because what happens in show business is, people what we’re trying to get them do is to repeat the experience. You come back and see the movie again. You do business as if you repeat the experience. Second, you extend the experience. By extending the experience, that means I wanna come for the sequel. I’m not just gonna do the same thing with you again, I’m gonna come and do something else with you again, and third is, I wanna expand the experience. So that’s why you have a Raiders of the Lost Ark Ride at Disney. It’s why we buy licensed products of toys for our kids. We’re expanding the experience, we’re extending the experience, we’re repeating the experience and that’s all engineered into the emotional connection at any  television show success or any movie a success creates.

 

We need to do that in financial services. Who is our target audience? What is the proper emotional response for this? How do we get them to repeat, extend and expand that experience? You’re absolutely right. Those same principles are the ones the highly successful financial advisors are employing. Friends don’t fire friends. I think it’s important to prioritize your book as a financial advisor but I’m not gonna go home at night and say “I need to call my book of friends. Hey, Brad, I’ve got too many friends, I’ve got to let you go.” That’s not gonna happen. So the deeper the emotional connection, the deeper the reciprocity of interest, the more difficult it becomes to terminate or diminish any type of relationship. That’s part of what show business teaches and that’s part of what we all have to learn in our respective businesses.

 

[00:04:46] Brad: So this conversation could go on for… you’d miss your speaking engagement tomorrow. I know you can’t go through all 7 Tenets of Taxi Terry, any others that pop top of mind that could be super useful to the guys on the call today?

 

[00:45:03] Scott: The 7 Tenet is making a joy. It is an absolute joy to ride with Taxi Terry. I look forward to it every time I’m back in the area. One of the things that Terry has really taught me through this whole process is that when you’re making it a joy for your clients, it can’t help but make your own business and your own life more joyful. I know there are times that the economy changes and returns aren’t great and every call you’re getting is somebody complaining and it’s not real joyful during those periods of times. I’m not talking about laughter; I’m not talking about being frivolous. What I’m talking about is the sense of purpose and attaining that purpose really enriches the lives of your clients and your own life as well. And that’s also part of the reason you wanna drill deeper with them than just a specific investment or just a specific transaction because the more that we’re engaged in their lives, the more that we’re a part of what they do, the deeper that joy can be when the kids graduate from college, or they get to go on the vacation they’ve always dreamed of. That becomes something that you can celebrate as well.

 

And one last thing about that, the more that you’re involved in the family, the greater the likelihood is you’re gonna retain the account when there is a transfer of wealth from one generation to another. I see so many advisors that just feel like they’re blindsided because the generational transfer happens and the son or daughter has another advisor or doesn’t wanna talk to it. Well it seems like if you’re planting seeds all along the way that becomes something that should be just a natural extension rather than something that hits us by surprise.

 

[00:47:11] Brad: So I just heard a really cool idea. For everybody on the call, this is a fun one, going to making it a joy. So one of our guys that coaches some of our other offices, Rob up in Ohio, for those that are familiar. I believe it is in their onboarding process for clients, they find out what their favorite musical genre is, and then when they come in every single visit, that goes right up in thee CRM, they have a sonos in the conference room and that genre is playing or that artist is playing.

 

[00:47:42] Scott: I love that. One of the stories I told at the World Series of Sales was about the office that records how they drink their coffee. So when they come in, they put their coffee in front of them and it’s already specific to their taste. I don’t know if it’s subliminal or subconscious, I don’t know which is the right term but if you set a cup of coffee in front of me, that’s already the way I like it… If you know how I drink my coffee, you know me. And the same thing is true with music, if the music that I like is what’s playing when you come in it’s subliminal. If you know my music, you know me. And that’s what we want from advisors. That is what I want from my advisors. I want you to now my risk tolerance, I want you to know my plans for the future, I want you to know me.

 

My second book was called What Customers Really Want. We studied over a thousand customers, asking them basically two questions, What do you want when you do business? What are you getting from the places where you are doing business? I thought that if we could identify the disconnections then if you could bridge that gap then that meant that you’re creating an ultimate experience. When I first started doing the interviews, we segregated it by industry. Here’s what they think of financial services, here’s what they think of automotive, and here’s what they think in retail. The “ah ha” was that the answers were all the same, regardless of the industry. Because clients blend their evaluations based upon every place they’re doing business. They’re not walking out an office saying, “What a great experience for a financial advisor.” They’re just saying it’s a great experience.

 

If the barista at Starbucks knows my name, how come the guy or gal with all my assets under management don’t understand how I feel? It’s not that we’re doing it on an industry specific. Your competition is not just other financial advisors. Your competition is the Ritz Carlton. Your competition is the Lexus Dealership. Your competition is any place that your client is receiving an ultimate experience. So the problem is, we benchmark ourselves against other people in our own industry. The typical thing to do would be to benchmark yourself against other advisors in your area. But that’s not what clients are doing. Your clients are benchmarking you against them but they’re also benchmarking you against the BMW Dealership. They’re benchmarking you against the Four Seasons. That’s where you what your target has to be. Don’t accept that lower standard because that won’t be viewed by your clients as an ultimate experience. Other thing is, sometimes some of our best ideas come not from our own industry but it’s from thinking about from how do we become… The next book that I’m working on now, one of the examples is Warby Parker. Warby Parker said, “how do we become the Zappos of eyewear? It’s not that they pick from one discipline and applied it to another. So if you want to have a great client experience, part of my suggestion to you is, don’t look at other advisors. Think about how we become the Ritz Carlton of… Pick something iconic. How do you become the Uber perhaps of financial advising. Don’t do it in your own discipline because that’s what everyone else is doing.

 

Everyone else is gonna look at Here’s the Best Practices from Other Financial Advisors. Do that. I hate the term ‘best practices’, we’ll come back to that. Best, that means it can’t get any better than that. I wanna look for better practices, I wanna be constantly improving that practices. There’s no such thing as best practice, because once it’s the best then it can’t be improved up on. Your words have meaning, your attitude’s important. I’ll go into the Apple store and I’ll think, how can I take something that they’re doing and apply it to what I’m doing? They’re obviously doing something right. So how do I take that and apply it to my business? I don’t want to be looking at every other trainer, speaker, author out there. I wanna be thinking about how do I create that? In fact that’s part of what led me to writing about distinction and what was the focus of all that.

 

[00:52:15] Brad: So that’s positive and negative on that side. The good side is if you look at it that way, you’re gonna be so far ahead of your competition and your own market, it’s gonna be ridiculous, which is what’s cool because I’ve seen that happen in a lot of our offices we work with. The downside is, the bar is always getting raised by somebody, whether it’s Apple, Ritz Carlton. But it’s so cool you’re kind of always be chasing this new client experiences as they get better and better. Obviously, technology makes all of that fun stuff where you can automate some of that stuff, where you can actually archive all of this information that you’re getting.

 

[00:52:51] Scott: Brad, two points to follow up on that because that’s a great point you make. Here’s the first one, let’s savor this second for just a moment. Because this second right now, is the slowest pace of change we will have for the rest of our lives. And so if we’re not willing to continue to change, if we’re not willing to continue to work on the model, improve the model, then somebody else will. I was on a program the other day and the speaker said. It’s the old cliche. The speaker said, “If all you do is all you’ve done, all you’re gonna get is what you got.” And I wanna go, “That’s a lie.” Because if all I do is what I’ve done, I’m gonna get less than what I’ve been getting. The competition is getting tougher and the internet is changing everything.

 

Part of what we have to do is to understand that either we’re gonna play or we’re not. The business world, our clients and everyone else. If we don’t care enough to speed up our rate of change, then they’re not gonna care enough to let us handle their assets. The second aspect of that though, that’s critically important is, I think what people are looking for from us is changing as well. This is the book I’m working on now. The information age is dead. The agriculture leads didn’t end because we ran out of farms. The industrial age didn’t end because we ran out of factories. Those ages ended because the output became so proficient and overwhelming that we naturally moved on to another phase. Right now, our clients have so much information that they don’t need us for information anymore. It used to be, “I talked to my advisor because I needed information. What’s gonna happen?” Right now, I can find 47 viewpoints on what’s gonna happen in the market. I don’t need more information. What I need now is insight; I need wisdom. And so what clients are requiring and needing more than ever before, is not information; it’s insight. They want you to help me make sense of all of this. I’m doing a big project with BMW and we’re having dinner here just a while back with the CEO of BMW for the United Kingdom, and he said, “Scott, six years ago our average BMW buyer made six dealership visits before making a purchase. They go drive a Mercedes, they go drive a BMW, they drive an Audi, they drive sports cars, and they drive a Porsche. They make six dealership visits to get them to where they make a decision. He said, now, today, just six years later, it’s 1.3.”

 

Because they don’t need our sales people for information anymore. They’ve googled the information about the car, They’ve googled the information about about the consumer reports compared… Now the reason they come to a dealership is they want someone there to help reinforce their choice or to help them make sense of this conflicting information that they’re getting; they’re needing advice. And so in this time, that Robo-advising and everything else is to the forefront, what we’re really saying is I think is that many of our clients that might shift to an online type of situation, what they’re really not getting is advice. They’re getting information but they can get that online. So the thing that we can’t get online is wisdom and insight. So that’s the age that we’re entering right now. So to be on the forefront what you’re trying to do is to show how what you talked about earlier, that proprietary system that you have or those ways that will create. Providing insight that provides the solution that they’re seeking. That’s one of the critical ways to stand out in today’s market.

 

[00:56:52] Brad: As you were going through that, I was processing it and something that I’ve seen a lot with media is this rise of the curator. And that’s what that kind is to me. It’s like, all this noises out here. Could you curate it down to the stuff that actually care about and matters? And you’ve seen a lot of media moguls recently with Twitter and all those and they made a lot of money doing that because they want a customer and they wanted to steal that information that’s actually gonna matter to them.

 

[00:57:23] Scott: You’re tracking with me, Brad. That’s an important part of the book. You don’t have to be an insider originator but you do need to be at least and inside aggregator. You have to be a source that can filter through the noise and help them get to what they really need. Doctors are almost becoming that today if you think about it. A doctor buddy of mine said that then he first started he’d diagnose people and now the first part of his conversation is to get  them to unlearn what they read on WebMD. “Doctor I have a headache…” “It’s your sinuses, you’re not gonna die.” It’s to get them to unlearn what they learn online. I’ve talked to financial advisors buddies that feel the same way. Part of what I gotta get you to do is to unlearn some of this junk that you read online and to provide some insight and wisdom about something that’s better for you in the long run.

 

[00:58:23] Brad: Alright so we’re getting to the finish line here.

 

[00:58:26] Scott: We haven’t even gotten to the [inaudible]. That’s cool. We had a great talk.

 

[00:58:32] Brad: This has been fun. I wanna thank you so much because I know you’re carving out some time when you could probably be on the beach, getting a tan or something. Just a couple quick questions in and I’d like to call it rapid fire if you’re good for that. This is the last couple of minutes here. If I ask you a really tough one, I told one of my previous guests, you can just act like your internet coverage went out and you’re good to go. So these are completely off topic just random. Being an author, obviously you’re a well-read guy, also, what’s the favorite book you’ve ever read and how did it impact your life?

 

[00:59:16] Scott: The truthful but also the typical answer is the Bible because of my faith. But in terms of business, man, that’s a great one because there are so many incredible ones out there. It’s an old one but it’s hard to get better than How to Win Friends and Influence People. Things become a cliché because they’re truthful and repeated constantly. Cliché doesn’t mean it’s invalid; it just means that it’s been repeated so much. I think for anybody that starts, Think and Grow Rich and How to Win Friends and Influence People, the timeless classics became the timeless classics because they’re so god darn good.

 

[01:00:12] Brad: That’s right at the top of my list too. Actually I was looking to buy a first edition on eBay this weekend. They’re not cheap by the way. So when you hear the word successful, who’s the first person that pops in your mind and why?

 

[01:00:30] Scott: Zig Ziglar. Many years ago, I was really just first getting started in professional speaking and my background was in the FFA as a kid, the Future Farmers of America, and so FFA invited me to speak at their national convention. Now this is the largest gathering of youth for a purpose in the world. There’s 20,000 people in the audience and Zig is the other speaker and Zig asked my wife and I out to dinner. He reached out to us and asked us out to dinner which is kind to be in a little league shortstop and Derek Jeter and says, “Hey kid you wanna get a hotdog?” It was incredible. So we’re sitting at dinner and Zig said, “Scott, I looked before dinner and I couldn’t find any of your books.” And I said, “Well, Zig I’ve never written a book.” And Zig says, “Yeah I relate, I haven’t either.” My wife and I looked at each other because we got 10 on the shelf. And he said, “I’ve never written a book. But he said, “I get up in the morning and write three pages and you know what after about three months they tell me I’ve got a book.”

 

And it was just like Tada! And I got up the next morning and I wrote three pages and that was the first three pages of All Business Is Show Business, my first book. And the reason I say Zig Ziglar when it comes to success. There are folks who do what I do that can talk a good game but they don’t exactly believe everything that they talk about. And I’m not saying I agree with every single word that Zig Ziglar ever said from the platform but what I do know is, if he said it, he lived it and he did it. And to me, that’s the successful life. It’s not just, Zig made a lot of money and Zig did a lot of great things but more importantly, the integrity with which he did things. And when my wife passed away, I went out to the mailbox about three weeks later and there was this box and it said Ziglar Corporation on it. I was acquainted with Zig but I wasn’t on his speed dial. We were acquainted. He remembered the dinner. If I saw him,  he called me by name, we would talk but we weren’t close by any stretch of the imagination. But there was a box and I opened it up and it was a book that Zig had written when they had lost a child, on dealing with grieving. And there was a six-page handwritten letter in there from Zig talking about, he’d be thinking of me and praying for me and all those kinds of things.

 

I’ve got people I’ve known for 30 years and they can’t even make a phone call and Zig Ziglar sat down and wrote a six-page handwritten letter. But the funny thing is after Zig passed away and I talked to people about that, there were hundreds of stories like that. I don’t hit that all the time but I’m trying. And to me, to be able to live your life where your word is your bond and you have that kind of integrity, that’s success.

 

[01:03:48] Brad: Wow that’s a high standard right there.

 

[01:03:50] Scott: I get choked up saying it.

 

[01:03:51] Brad: I’m over here getting choked up. That’s powerful. Alright, we’ll wrap with one last question since we’re three minutes over here. I wanna respect your time and I know you’ve got an in-room rehearsal there coming up. For everyone on the call here today, what is the one piece of advice that you could share personally that has led to your success? If there is just one thing.

 

[01:04:22] Scott: After my wife passed away, my business was in trouble. Not that I was going belly-up or anything like that. I’d spent so much time as a caregiver, I hadn’t been actively marketing, I was kind of out of the marketplace. It just was not in a good spot. And so I started calling speakers bureaus and other meeting plan and I said, “When you recommend me, what do you say about me in a recommendation?” And the thing I heard is, great speaker and a really nice guy. It was kind of hard for me to picture like Cody sitting in Kansas saying, “Who should be our speaker for the World Series of Sales? Let’s get a really nice guy.” I wanna be a great speaker, I wanna be a nice guy but there was nothing that would set me apart from what everybody else was doing.

 

And so I started researching why did some groups stand out and others not and why did some financial advisors stand out and others not. What did it take to stand out in the market place? What did it take to create distinction? I was doing that just so my business could survive but through that process I learned about what it would take to stand out in any particular market place. I’ve employed that in my own business. I’ve been doing this for a while, I’m about to do my 30th presentation of the year. It’s bigger than it’s ever been. And it’s only because of what I learned about how to stand out because other groups wanna stand out. I encourage every advisor to follow that same thing. Why would the client choose you instead of the competition? What makes you stand out in the market place? It might be because you’re providing them a book every month and you’re a resource for thought leadership. It might be because you’re playing the music when they come in and the client feels so connected and comfortable. But all I know is if the answer is, “Good advisor and a really really nice gal.” That is not sustainable to make you stand out; it’s just the ticket to be able to play the game. So that’s what I would encourage the most and what has helped me the most, is finding what it takes to stand out from your competition in the marketplace and deliver results with integrity.

 

[01:07:02] Brad: Scott, thank you so much. It’s been an incredible hour and I appreciate you sharing all your wisdom and knowledge. I guarantee it brought a ton of value to everyone.

 

[01:07:11] Scott: It’s been one of the fastest hours of my life. I really appreciate it and I appreciate you. I appreciate what you’re doing to get this information out there because we get so busy doing what we do, we seldom have time to think about how we could do it better. And you’re giving folks a recess to reassess the challenges that they’re facing. Man we need that in today’s marketplace so thank you for providing that. It’s extraordinary.

 

[01:07:40] Brad: I appreciate it. Enjoy the rest of your time in the Bahamas and hopefully you’ll have some time for fun down there too.

 

[01:07:48] Scott: I look forward to staying in touch. I appreciate it my friend.

 

[01:07:50] Brad: Alright Scott. Take care.

 

[END]