001: The Art Of Attracting Business With Joe Calloway

00:00 Beau Henderson: Welcome back to the richest hour on the radio. I’m Beau Henderson, and we have a very special guest today I’m excited about, because we talk about living your definition of a rich life, many of our rich lifers’ definition is running and making a difference with their own business. And today’s guest has been on a mission for over 30 years to help business leaders and entrepreneurs make their great companies even better. He’s done this as an author, a speaker, a consultant, and has a client list with the likes of IBM, American Express, Coca-Cola, and Cadillac. I would like to welcome our special guest today, Mr. Joe Calloway. How are you doing, Joe?

00:42 Joe Calloway: Beau, I couldn’t be better. I am tickled to be here, buddy.

00:45 BH: Well, I have to tell you, I read, probably about a year ago, “Wealthy Speaker 2.0” from Jane Atkinson…

00:51 JC: Yep.

00:52 BH: And I wanted to meet you even then. She did such a good job talking about how powerful your presentations were, and I was so excited when the opportunity and the connection came for us to do this.

01:03 JC: Well, me too. And I tell you, Jane’s a good friend and boy, she does a great job in her work with speakers.

01:09 BH: Well, this idea… I saw what you were bringing up with this new idea of the book you’re putting out next ‘Magnetic: The Art of Attracting Business’, right?

01:22 JC: Exactly.

01:23 BH: And as a business owner myself, I’ve run a financial planning firm for 15 years, and one of the things that came up for me when I was looking at the topic and looking at the ideas behind the book is, I think most business owners would agree that they want this, they want to attract the client, they want to have clients just drawn to them, but there seems to be a gap, because you go to the consumer and you hear all these horror stories of customer no-service, etcetera. So, do you have any input on… What’s that gap there?

01:55 JC: Well, I think there’s two or three different gaps, Beau, and I think one of them is, when people in business say, “Okay, how can I draw customers to me, or clients to me?”, they think in terms of what they should say about themselves to make people wanna do business with them. And so, they’re thinking about advertising, they’re thinking about their marketing, they’re thinking about what they say on social media. But here’s the deal, and I will bet you that everybody listening to this could raise their hand as an example of it. The way people make buying decisions today, the way people decide who they’re gonna do business with, has really changed.

02:37 JC: Because, the most powerful factor in attracting new business has always been positive word of mouth, positive reputation, but with the internet you can multiply that times 1000. And I wish I had a nickel for every time one of your listeners right now has been thinking about a product to buy, a financial planner to do business with, a hotel to stay in, and they’ve gone on the internet to see what other people say about it. Whether it’s on Yelp, whether it’s on Google Reviews, whether it’s on tripadvisor.com, there are a thousand places where they go… Facebook, where they go to see what people say about them. And so, that’s where the action is, in terms of getting people to be attracted to your business.

03:36 BH: So, we had a couple of things to unpack, just from that first couple of sentences, Joe. One, it sounds almost like fundamental human psychology is coming into play here, where there’s a tendency… And I did this for years. To try to explain, thinking, “Hey, I’m gonna get clients by telling them how impressive I am, the credentials I have,” etcetera, etcetera. But at the end of the day, if we think about ourselves as humans, what we really care about is, “What’s in it for me?” or “How are you gonna help me?”.

04:02 JC: Exactly. Not only “What’s in it for me?”, but if I’m thinking about going to you as a financial planner, I’m gonna listen to what you have to say and that’ll carry some weight. But then its’… But if a friend of mine, or even if on the internet, I see that somebody says, “Let me tell you something. I have more peace of mind than I’ve ever had, because Beau is handling my financial planning now, and it’s meant everything to me.” That is what carries weight. It’s not what you say about you anymore. It’s what your customers and clients say about you to other people that carries the most weight.

04:42 BH: I love it. I love it. One of the things I try to train our new financial advisors on, is that all that effort you spend on attracting a new client, if you spend the effort in the right place, a new client should result in three more in the following 12 months. And we’ve kind of built that system in and… I love this, Joe.

05:00 JC: See, that’s perfect. What you’re talking about is… And here’s the deal. Obviously, what people say about you comes from their experience of doing business with you. So if you want to create new customers, if you want to create a steady stream of new business, then what you need to do is focus your efforts on creating experiences for your existing customers and clients that will then motivate them to say, “These guys are the best thing going. I love doing business with them.” Because that kind of positive word of mouth, there is simply nothing more powerful than that. And so, you bring it back to… And you nailed it, that if you do your job with an existing customer, that ought to bring you three new ones over the course of the next year.

05:49 BH: Now, see, now this is… I’m excited. You’re speaking a language that really resonates with me. So, if we create experiences… Now, there’s a lot of strategy to this and you have to be intentional, but if we create an experience that makes our clients talk about us, then we’re actually spending some time and effort and energy on being very intentional about creating this positive word of mouth.

06:12 JC: You are using my favorite word in the universe, Beau, which is ‘intentional’. Here’s the thing. Most people say, “Oh, yeah, I totally believe that word of mouth is very powerful and I sure hope my customers are saying good things about me.” Well, hope is not much of a strategy in this case. And so, what you have to do is get intentional, here’s the way I break it down, get really specific. What are the three things that you want your customers to be saying about you? I mean the three specific things. I’ll give you one, and this is one thing, one of the three I want my customers be saying about me.

06:51 JC: I want them to say, “Let me tell you something. Joe Calloway is so responsive to his customers that it’ll make your head spin. He returns emails, phone calls, questions, anything. He does it so fast that it honestly, will leave an impression like you’ve never had before”. Now, that’s not the only thing but it’s one of the three. And then of course the next step is, “Well, okay. What do we have to do to get them to say that?” Well, it’s… In that case it’s self explanatory. I have to be incredibly responsive to my customers in the way I communicate with them. So, you’re right on the money when you say, “It’s not enough to hope it happens, you’ve gotta get intentional, and strategic, and tactical about making it happen.”

07:44 BH: So Joe, are you saying that we need to state that upfront? “This is what you can expect from me”. And then we have the daunting task you gotta back it up.

07:52 JC: Well, you can say it upfront, the bottom line is you gotta do it.

07:58 BH: You’ve gotta follow through.

08:00 JC: You’ve simply gotta deliver on it. And so, see what I recommend is:

“Think of the three things you want your customers to say about you”.

Next step is:

“What are the three things that I have to do or that we have to do, every single day?”. And if we do those three things and do them extremely well, then we will be solid gold.

And there’re some people Beau, that’ll say, “Oh, that’s crazy Joe. I’ve got a thousand things I have to do everyday”. Well, that’s probably your problem. You’re too scattered. You’ve gotta focus on the three… And it don’t have to be three, it could be two, it could be five, I love the number three. Because there’s just something darn near magic about the power of it in terms of, “We’re able to wrap our heads around three things and we’re able to execute on three things”. Let me… Beau, can I give you a real classic real world example of that?

08:57 BH: Please do.

08:58 JC: Okay. One of my clients is a freight company, an international freight line, freight company, and… I mean, come on, that’s a logistics business with a trillion moving parts but they boiled it down to three things. They say, “If we do these three things and do them extremely well, everyday with every customer, then we will be successful”.

• Number one, “Pick it up when you said you would”.
• Number two, “Deliver it when you said you would”.
• And number three, “Deliver it intact and all there”.

Think about it, Beau. If they are better with those three things than any other freight company, they win. And their customers, and it’s really true that their customers do drive new business to them, their customers will talk about them online… See, the thing is, this idea works business to business, as well as it does with consumer retail. It’s getting intentional, strategic and tactical about creating that positive word of mouth.

10:04 BH: That’s… It makes so much sense. If I do these three things, that are the three core things, because there is a million variables that I could disperse my energy into.

10:14 JC: Yeah.

10:15 BH: And they’re just gonna take away from that core things.

10:18 JC: And of course there’re maybe a number of activities involved within those three things, but to simplify it and have it in your mind and everybody in the organization, “Look gang, we’ve got three things. If we nail those, we’re good”. It’s powerful.

10:35 BH: Okay. So, three things I want clients to say about me, three things we need to do everyday.

10:41 JC: That will then cause your clients to say those things about you.

10:45 BH: Right. And what’s the next piece?

10:48 JC: Well, the next piece is simply execution.

10:50 BH: Nice.

10:50 JC: And to do that, whether you’re one person business or 1,000 person business, one of the keys to execution is keeping everybody focused, one of the keys to that is constantly staying focused, getting clarity and quite honestly, it’s repetition. I get up every morning Beau, and I take another look at my three things. Number one is product quality and improvement. Number two, be incredibly easy to do businesses with. Number three, extremely quick, rapid response to customers, prospects and business partners. Those are my three things. And I’m telling you, if I do those three things extremely well everyday [chuckle] man, I’m good to go, I truly, I’ve got no worries.

11:38 BH: Well, for the person that… And I’m speaking a little bit personal. So, a person that has the 20 things going on at any given time, any given day, what kind of advice would you give to getting to those two or three things?

11:54 JC: I heard the best metaphor I’ve ever heard for this. I absolutely love this. I’d give anything if I’d made it up, but I didn’t. Its based on the 2000 Summer Olympics, Sydney, Australia, the British eight-man rowing team. And to get ready for the Olympics, they adopted a filter, basically, for everything they did. And it was this Beau, will it make the boat go faster?

12:20 BH: Wow!

12:21 JC: And so, every decision they made, their diet, their sleep habits, their training, the equipment they used, everything went through the filter of “Will it make the boat go faster?”. So for me, that’s kind of one stage. The next stage is to filter it through those three things. And then, of course… Listen, I got up and looked at my to-do list today, and I wanted to go back to bed. It’s like, this is… It’s too much. But then I thought, “No, wait a minute, Calloway. Get focused. What are your three things? Let’s get it down to what’s most important.” Here’s the thing Beau, if I don’t do, because I’m not gonna get done everything that’s on my list today. I’m just not. But the things that won’t get done are the least important things. I will get done the things that make my boat go faster. And I constantly reinforce that idea to myself, and it serves me extremely well.

13:26 BH: Love it. It’s a prioritization.

13:28 JC: Its absolutely prioritization. There’s nothing new about that. I mean, my gosh. I’m not talking about anything new. All I’m talking about are some ways of looking at it, that I think can be really helpful and really effective and that people can stick with.

13:44 BH: Right. Well, you know, Joe, we talk to a lot of thought leaders and authors. And when I’m looking at things, and to see, is this really gonna work out in the real world? I’m interested in what’s functional. Not what can be necessarily put on a spreadsheet or what… What’s gonna function in real life. One of the things that… A filter I’ve found is, if the principles will work across different areas meaning… Think about this, this doesn’t just apply to business. This applies to your personal life. Your relationships. What are three things I could do today to blank. Right?

14:15 JC: I love that. Well, I tell you what. I’ve got my personal life list in my head, too. The most important thing in my life that overrides everything else is my family. I’ve got two daughters. One’s almost 10. One’s almost 14. I’ve got a wife that I’m crazy about. The main thing in my life is spending time with them. For me, it’s not, “Well, I’ll just spend a little bit of time, but it’ll be quality time.” Nah. That doesn’t do it for me. I wanna spend a whole bunch of time with them. And so that, really, is the biggest driver to me. It affects my business. It affects the way I do my business ’cause I wanna create that time.

15:00 BH: No, that’s great because the relationships. Whether its business or its family, its all about relationships. And at the end of the day, and now, as you were talking about the business, I was thinking about that. What are three things I want my family to say about me? It just put things in that priority order.

15:12 JC: How powerful is that? And you know what? You have hit… It’s become a cliche, but it’s a cliche because it’s true. The older I get, and I tell you what, man, I’m getting some mileage on me…

[chuckle]

15:24 JC: And as the years go by, Beau, more and more and more, I get it. And you said it perfectly. At the end of the day, its the relationships in your life. That truly is what matters most. And for me, there is that is… If I’m clear on anything, I’m clear on that. Its about relationships.

15:47 BH: Yeah, I love it. The principles. I can already tell I’m gonna love this book. So, as soon as the pre-release is ready, I would love to dig into it.

15:55 JC: Its yours.

15:56 BH: So, as we go, kind of, any kind of take away for our listeners, if they need more information or they like this idea of magnetism and wanna follow up, or magnetic, wanna follow up, how do they get in touch with you? Joecalloway.com?

16:12 JC: Absolutely. Everything is on the website. The blog is on the website. I write a ton of stuff. I also have guests that come on the blog, and so you get other perspectives. It’s all good stuff. You can certainly get any of the books from there. I let people order it anyway they want, through Amazon or Barnes & Noble, however. But just joecalloway.com, and it’s C-A-L-L-O-W-A-Y. By the way, if they go to the contact page, it’s got my cell phone number, and my direct email address. So, if they wanna bounce an idea off me or start a conversation, have at it. I’d love to hear from them.

16:49 BH: I love… If you ever want a post from a financial… Somebody that’s running a financial firm, I’ve got a referral for you.

16:56 JC: Outstanding.

[chuckle]

16:57 BH: Just kidding.

16:58 JC: I bet you do. And listen, I’d love to have you.

17:01 BH: Appreciate it, Joe. As we wrap up, what I like to do is… Again, we talk about getting things to the most essential component. If we could talk about magnetic or being magnetic in 60 seconds or less, what would you leave our listeners with?

17:17 JC: I would leave them with this. I would say, “What can I do in my business that will so impress my customers, my clients, that they will tell other people about me?”. That’s it. I’m telling you. That’s the essence of it. But, now, that’s not easy to do because that means you’ve gotta be better than everybody else at the experiences that you create, but that’s it.

17:42 BH: Well, let’s take that piece of advice from Joe, with us today, and whether it’s in your business or in your personal life, let’s create an experience for somebody else that makes them tell other people about you. I think if we do that, we’ve done something good. Thank you so much, Joe Calloway, for being our guest today. Listeners, go to joecalloway.com, follow up with him, and I look forward to… I hope you’ll come back and share some more of your insight and wisdom with us in the future because I think it’s made all of our lives just a little richer.

18:14 JC: I would love to. I’ll come back any time, Beau. This has been a pleasure. Thanks for having me.

18:18 BH: Thanks, Joe.