Joanne Bolt: All right, everyone, welcome back to the B-Word. Today is so, so special, at least it is for me, and I know that it's going to be for you. I have brought in my guest, Brittany Hodak, and she just wrote a book called Creating Superfans, which I know you can't see it, but I'm holding it in my hand right now.

It's bright blue and bright yellow. Got some pink thrown in there, so you know that those are my color schemes. So of course, right from looking at the book, it attracted my attention and we're talking superfans, which is a client experience, which is right up my alley. So I had to grab the book and start reading a copy. And you guys, not only did I read the book in print, I then went and got it on Audible because I like to hear her voice as she reads it as well. And I am so in love with this book. I had to bring her in. So Brittany, thank you, thank you, thank you. Welcome to the B-Word podcast. I am super excited to have you here today.

Brittany: Well, thank you Joanne, for all of those kind words. I really appreciate it, and I am super excited to be here. 

Joanne Bolt: All right. So you are an expert at creating client experiences. That is what you help organizations do. Tell me a little bit about your, you know, the story behind the book, what got you going on writing the book, and a little bit about your journey.

Brittany: Yeah, well, so my journey started in the entertainment industry very, very plainly. Was not a super exciting first job, although I thought it was pretty exciting. I was a radio station mascot, like that was my, my grand foray into the, to the world of entertainment. And I went to a lot of events because the radio station had, you know, tickets for just about everything. And I became really fascinated with fandom why some bands and artists became really popular and others sort of faded away. They would become one hit wonders or they would never have a hit. And I was trying to figure out like, what's the correlation? What are the commonalities? And what I started to see again and again and again were that without fail, the artists who saw the most success were the ones who had best connected with their audience. They were paying attention to their fans. They were taking the time to do the meet and greets. They were inviting their fans into the process of creating, you know, merch and choosing album covers and things like that. They are showing their fans that they cared.

And so what I started to see was that super fandom is a two-way street. If you want people to care about you, you need to show them that you care about them. They're not just another concert ticket sale, they're not just another purchase order. They're not just another number or order or package that, that you're shipping out. So I was fascinated by this idea and as I progressed in my career, I worked for record labels, I worked for music magazines, I worked for entertainment agencies. I started to work with brands who had, you know, six and seven figure sponsorships that they were doing for artists. And as I was trying to figure out what were things that we could borrow from the entertainment world to use for the brands, I started to see that all of those principles were exactly the same.  Like those same things that made someone care for an artist or have an amazing experience with an artist were true of brands. And so I really started to, you know, focus on that and try to understand it more. Try to understand was it different between a little brand and a big brand between an old brand and a new brand between a brand with tons of money to spend and one with no budget at all.

And I kept coming back to, no, it's not. It's exactly the same. The secret is creating superfans. Yep. The secret is getting people to care about you so that they want to come back and experience what you do again. And they wanna tell their friends. So your customers are creating more customers, your fans are creating more fans. And you think about even the language we use when we talk about things going viral, how does that happen? It spreads through word of mouth. It spreads through people having an experience with something that makes them say, I've got to share this. So what I like to talk about is creating the types of experiences that your customers can't help but share. They can't help but talk about because they've been wowed or they've had such an amazing experience that they have to tell somebody or they feel compelled to leave a review or a rating or reach out and say, Hey, I wanna learn more. And so that's the idea of creating superfans and my mission in life. And the reason I wrote the book is to try to get every single person who has a business or has customers aligned around that mission.

Joanne Bolt: I love that. And you know, here's the thing, whether no matter what industry you're in, so in the real estate world, we call them referral partners or VIP clients. I don't care if they're your ambassadors, if they're your referrals, if they're your repeat clients. But the super fan concept is you're correct. It's the same in any industry.

Brittany: And what creates them is the same. It's all about the experience. And you know, yeah, I I tell this, go ahead. Oh no, sorry. I was gonna say, I tell the story in the book about when I was getting my very first trademark for a business that I founded when I was 27. Oh, I love that story. Yes. And well, I think it, it speaks exactly to what you were just saying. You know what, what I was filing for this trademark application, one of the questions was, is this a product business or a service business? And I said, it's both. And my attorney said, well, it can't be both. And I said, of course it can. People are hiring me because of the service that I provide and that's why my product is going to be better than anybody else's product. And he said, well, you can't do that. The United States Trademark and Patent Office says that it's either a product business or a service business. And I said, well, they're wrong because that distinction doesn't make sense anymore. I think there's only one type of business and that's the experience business and everybody is in it because we're living in an experienced economy, people pay for things and come back and pay for things again because of the way they feel, because of the experiences they have. And that's true regardless of whether you are, you know, in real estate or you know, rock sales, like whatever it is that you do.

Joanne Bolt: Yeah. Creating an experience is what's going to bring people back. And it's what differentiates you from the masses. Because let's be honest, there's no industry really out there that is a unicorn and unique. I mean, you wrote a book, congratulations. There's thousands of books out there. There's probably thousands of books about the client experience. This one book gave me such a great experience that I'm now a super fan of yours. I loved everything you did. I loved the way it was written from the color scheme to the wording, it used to the analogies. And so yeah, like everything you do is about the experience.

Brittany: Well, thank you for saying that. I tried to be very intentional for exactly that reason. I wanted to show people that you could make anything feel different. So I knew from day one when I started working on this book that I wanted it to feel really different. So I intentionally chose the colors, which I'm so glad you love those colors as much as I do. So the book is fun to read. It feels like a magazine. Every chapter title and every major heading title is a song title. So for anybody who loves music, it's a fun experience to read through. And you know, there's several other intentional decisions that I made in the book, and I wanted to do that to show that you can always choose to do the common thing or the memorable thing. You can always do just enough to satisfy your customer, or you can do more than enough so that they're not satisfied, they're mesmerized, they're thrilled, they can't wait to go talk about the amazing experience they had. And one of the things that I really try to like drill down on and and have people come away with in the book is that these things don't have to cost money.

Like making someone feel good, making them feel, acknowledge, giving them an amazing experience doesn't have to cost anything. I was at Olive Garden with my family like three or four days ago, and my son who's five who, I mean you have kids, so you know, like getting kids to try new foods is sometimes like a battle. And my five-year-old had decided he was gonna finally try a crouton, cuz we had been to Olive Garden, you know, 9 million times. And he was always like, oh no, I don't wanna try those. Those are, those are gross. And so he picks up a crouton from the salad and he's like, this is amazing. This is so good. And our waitress just happened to be walking by about 30 seconds later when he was like, mom, you have to buy me croutons. Like I wanna eat croutons at every meal. I didn't even know she had overheard it, but she showed up at our table a minute later with a bowl full of croutons, like a cup of croutons and then a to-go bag that had like 20 little individual, individual Package croutons Of croutons that they use on their Togo salads. And she's like, here, like, thought you should, you should have these to take home. And I was like, oh my gosh, thank you so much. And she had done that, not because we ask, not because that was something she had planned on doing when we sat down at the table, but because she was paying attention, she overheard a five-year-old say, mom, I love these. I wanna eat them forever. You've gotta buy me a bunch. And she took it upon herself to go to the back to package up some croutons, not just for the table, but also to take home to give to us. Now that Is amazing. It's amazing, right? And so of course, you know, she got an even bigger tip than she would've gotten. I've told this story like five or six times in person in the past three or four days, I'm telling it now on this podcast. And it's things like that that create superfans, things like that, that make your customers feel like you see them, you're paying attention to them and you care about them as an individual. You're not taking care of a table, you're taking care of a family and not just any family. My family. And the magic really happens when as a company or an organization, you have infused that into your people. So it just is natural for them to also wanna create super fans by creating that client experience.

Joanne Bolt: So great. Cause I'm sure that waitress did it, I mean partially because she was hoping for a better tip, but at the end of the day she still didn't have to do it. She didn't have to take notice. But Olive Garden has taught their people, it's kinda like Chick-fil-A, you know, if you've ever been to a Chick-fil-A, like they infuse into their people how the experience needs to happen at Chick-fil-A. And I've, I've run into a lot of people that work at Chick-fil-A, not even in the restaurant, and they still treat people that way. They still say, you know, how can I help you? Thank you. Like they are still super nice and super helpful too because it's just, it's just who they are. It's people. Their culture has taught them that way.

Brittany: Yes. It becomes ingrained in them. And one of the things that is so important to understand about customer experience, if you are a leader, if you do have a team, your customer experience will never be better than your employee experience. Your employees are never going to treat your customers better than they feel like they are treated right. They're modeling what they see.  So it's so important to treat everybody on your team as if they are the most important part of your brand because spoiler alert they are.

Joanne Bolt: That's right. You know, and I think that one of the, the roadblocks I would say in the real estate industry is a lot of our agents out there, you know, they're solopreneurs, they're by themselves, they're not on big teams, they are running everything for themselves and they're just running themselves ragged and they have that misconception. So I'm gonna ask that you sort of dive into this with me, that, that the customer experience really starts from the time we start working with them to buy or sell a home until the time we hit the closing table. And I've always said, it happens way before they ever contact you for a consultation.

They're reading your emails, they're watching your social media, they're talking to their friends, you know, so how do we really change that mindset that that client experience starts before you even know that person exists?

Brittany: Yeah. Well I'm so glad that you've been preaching that because it is so important for people to understand that. And really that client experience begins when they first have the thought, I should look for a new home, or I should list my home. That client experience begins in their brain and then it comes out into the world. So it's so important that you position yourself in a way to where you are occupying the right space in their brain already so that when they think, oh, I've gotta go find a new house, they think, oh wait, I have a friend who does real estate, or I think I saw somebody post something on social media. And if you can't be there, then you wanna make sure that you're positioning yourself to come into the consideration set very, very early in that journey. When they do that first Google search, when they first ask their friends for a recommendation on social media when they, you know, start looking around town for, you know, park benches and buses and all of the other things that, that people in real estate love to do for, for some of that branding and attention. And if you aren't, if you aren't very intentional about sharing your story and setting yourself apart, something is very quickly going to happen. You are going to get pegged as a commodity provider.  You are going to occupy the space in their brain that's, oh, they're exactly like the other 50 realtors I don't wanna work with. You've got a split second to share your story in a way that connects with them and catapults you from just another commodity provider, just another person who can help them, you know, list their home or take them to open houses and and help them find a home.  You go from a commodity provider to a category of one. You go from a realtor to the realtor that they say, oh, this is absolutely without a doubt who I wanna work with. And all of that happens before they ever reach out to you before you even know they exist.

Joanne Bolt: Amen. Okay, so that brings me to one of my favorite parts of the book. I think it's chapter 16. You talk about pet Yep. Pet sounds, which really cracked me up that you brought in the pets. And I'm gonna just read, Brittany does a great job of giving you an overview of the chapter at the end of every chapter. Cuz if you're like me, you need the cliff notes sometimes. But at the end of this chapter she says she's talking about Chewy the dog company, which really made me laugh because I, I also use Chewy to order Georgia my lab's food from. But Chewy's mission is to be the most trusted and convenient destination for pet parents and partners everywhere. It informs the decision the company makes their obsession with customers helps the brand go from startup to multi-billion dollar i p o in under a decade. Now folks listen up cuz this is the piece that you really need to go ahead and highlight. If people can be passionate about where they order pet food from and medications you can make your customers passionate about whatever you are doing one super experience at a time that really, I think that brought home so much from me, because you're right, if I can, if I can only wanna order my pet from food, from Chewy, not just because they happen to deliver, but because everything about their experience is wonderful, I get text messages letting me know that an auto ship is coming up. Do I wanna change the date? Do I have any questions? I get coupons sent with my chewy order. I mean, they could have just had me on subscriptions, sent me the damn dog food every six weeks, but sometimes I don't need it that often.

I love being able to change it so easily on my, on my cell phone. We as agents can do the same thing. We are a commodity. There's 86,000 realtors or more in the United States. So I think that this is one of those just examples you give that really, really brings it home for everybody.

Brittany: Well, thank you. And it's true.  If you, if you want people to care about you, you've got to give them a reason to. You've got to show them that you're worthy of their loyalty. You've got to convince them that the experience that they're going to get with you is so far superior to that of anybody else that they would never even dream of working with someone other than you.

Joanne Bolt: Yep. Okay. So now earlier in the book, when you start talking through your super process, the S U P E R, and I'm gonna let you dive into that in a minute, but one of the things that I loved about it was you said that the magic really happens when your story and their story overlap. Yes. Walk me through that just a little bit.

Brittany: That's really the secret sauce. So in the book I talk about the fact that I think the most underrated threat to every business, and this is especially true for real estate agents and solopreneurs in general, is apathy. People just don't care that you do what you do. And the reason they don't care is because you haven't, you haven't given them a compelling reason to care, you haven't given them anything to remember to think of. And oftentimes when I work with people, they say, I have an awareness problem, not nearly enough people know what it is that I do. And then when I really dig in, it's not an awareness problem at all. All plenty of people know it's just, as I said before, they don't care.

So if you wanna give people a reason to care, if you wanna overcome that apathy and really win in an experienced economy, you've got to connect your story to your prospects and your customer story in a compelling way. You've gotta make your thing relevant to their life. As you said, there are tens, if not hundreds of thousands of realtors, everybody knows, several realtors. How are you different? Do you have an amazing eye for interior design? If so, are you talking about how that's going to be of service to your clients, whether they're buying or selling a home? Maybe you can landscape like nobody's business. Maybe you are so connected to everyone in your community because you've lived there your entire life that you know every single vendor and you can make things happen so quickly.

Whether it's a remodel or you know, they need to get their roof redone, like you know who they can call and you are gonna be that trusted point of contact for them. Maybe you live in the community, maybe you're gonna be a neighbor. Like what is it, what is it that makes you special and how are you telling that story in a way that's going to resonate with those ideal prospects?

Joanne Bolt: Absolutely. And I love it when I see people start marketing themselves to that, to the story, how they're different and stop posting the same stuff that every other agent is posting or every other loan officer is posting because that becomes white noise. And when we start screaming to the community in a great marketing way about what makes us different, I think that's what really builds that know like and trust factor.

Brittany: Oh, absolutely. It builds a know like and trust factor and it builds the remember factor. Like I still remember, I, I love my realtor, I have like the best realtor in the world, her name is Susie, she's my favorite godmother. We can talk about all of the incredible amazing things that she did both before and during and after the, the home that we purchased with her. But I still take note of what other realtors are doing because you know, I, I work with so many realtors and one of my favorite examples was from like three Halloweens ago at a trunk or treat where a woman named Kim, who lives in my h o a, who was a realtor, decorated her trunk to look like a haunted house and she dressed as a witch and she had out in front her, you know, sign saying for sale with her name and her information and she was passing out bags of candy that said, don't worry, I won't sell you a haunted house. And her like the, she had something on the sign about like, I'll help you sell your haunted house, but I'll never let you move into one. Something like that. Like, it was so cute because she connected her story, she's a realtor, she buys and sells houses to all of our stories. We were all bringing our kids to the h o a trick or treat or trunk or treat and everybody like was decorating their cars. So there are ways to tell your story everywhere, all around you. I have had some realtors share with me in the past few weeks over the holidays they made gingerbread houses and they like tried their best to make them look like the houses that they had helped their clients buy.  And you know, none of 'em did, none of 'em looked very much like, like the houses they sold. But that wasn't the point, right? That point was that they had taken the time to make these really cute gingerbread houses that they, some, one of 'em had even made like little candy family members that that coordinated. And then it was funny, the realtor who posted that, another person was like, oh yeah, I'm gonna take the lazy way out and just buy, make your own gingerbread kits and deliver them to people. And the woman was like, oh yeah, that would've saved a lot of time. But what are the things that you are doing to connect your story to your customer's story?

Joanne Bolt: Amen. I mean we can preach that one all day long. I love it. I love it so much. Tell me, what, what was one of the favorite pieces to you about writing the book or the story that just resonated most with you and why you put it in there?

Brittany: Oh man, that's such a good question. I'll tell you. So I worked on this book for over two years and because I was working on it so long, I kept writing more and more and then I would take out stuff. So I wrote somewhere around 125,000 words for this 60,000 word book. So there's a lot of stuff that's my favorite because I had sort of like weeded out everything else along the way. But probably my very favorite lesson is the one that comes at what I call the exit l at the very end of the book.  I called it the Exit L because interlude and Exit lude are the bookends of my very favorite album by the Killers called Sam's Town. And as I mentioned before, all of the chapters and parts of the book are named after songs. So in the exit l I tell the story about my oldest son Cato and he's five now, but he was like two and a half when I started writing this book.  And a couple days before his third birthday, I was writing my office downstairs, it was a Saturday he was supposed to be with dad. He kept coming into office and I was like gently reminding him like, buddy, mommy's gotta work today. Mommy's really trying hard to finish this book, you know, can you please go back upstairs with daddy? And he said,  mom, what's your book about? And it was the first time he had like expressed any interest or had any curiosity at all. And so I was trying to, you know, explain the concept of creating superfans in 30 seconds in a way that a two-year-old, almost three-year-old would understand. And I fully expected him to say like, you know, that's dumb,  you should write about dump trucks or something. But instead when I said, what do you think, he looked at me and he said, I think you should tell the people to be nice and listen. And then he kissed me and he like ran out of the office. And I was like, okay, well that was a total mic drop moment from Right from a two year old A a two-year-old who just wrote my book in four words.  Like as good as I'm gonna do it in 60,000. So I, I love that story obviously because of the, you know, memory of my, my little guy, but also because it's just objectively great advice, right? If you are a realtor and you want to find success, be nice and listen and listen and you're gonna do pretty well. Like if that's all you do,  you're gonna do pretty well.

Joanne Bolt: There you go. There's your number. Like we could mic drop that right now. You don't need anything else. Just be nice and listen. And the fact that we actually have to tell people that blows my mind, but we do have to remind them that it's gonna get chaotic. It's gonna get crazy. Your clients are gonna go batshit on you at some point because they just do.  You're gonna become a therapist. So just be nice and listen.

Brittany: Yeah. Like you chose a career where you're working with people at like the most stressful moment of their life. Yes. You chose to be the person that people entrust with the largest purchase of their life and all of the stress that comes with moving. Like if you wanna work with happy people, I mean, I don't even, I I don't maybe work in a carnival, I don't know. Right? Like do something where you're like, oh people are always happy. Be the lottery ticket redemption person. If you only wanna work with happy people, the person at the office where you like come to get your giant checks, like there are things that you can do.  But in real estate you're right. You have to be prepared for the fact that you are part therapist, you are part problem solver, you are part like, you know, chaos coordinator and that's just all part of the territory.

Joanne Bolt: I always tell some of my students that work with me, I'm like, listen, at the end of the day you wanna be different than everybody else.  You've gotta stay on top of the game. You want your client experience to be great. Listen for the next five or six deals you do, what questions do you always get asked? And now and after that, make sure that you're answering those questions before they could get asked. That will give a client experience. It's better because you close 14, 15, 32 of these a year.  They might buy one in 32 years. And so if you stay ahead of the game, you will be better than 85% of other agents out there.

Brittany: Oh absolutely. And I would take it a step further and say, once you know what those questions are, don't wait until you're in front of a prospect or a customer to answer them. Right. Record a video.  Put together a PDF, put it out there so that when someone is searching they see that content and say, oh I didn't even think about this. Wow, this person really understands. 

Joanne Bolt:  Right. They don't know. And that makes you, and another one of my favorite words from the book, "uncopyable", you use that, I do like that one. Cause I say stuff like that all the time. If you do something that's so authentic to you in a way that really resonates with you, it doesn't matter if you're doing the same thing that a million other people are doing, they can't copy you because it's got your voice in it, it's got your face, it's got your, you know, your tone and your tonality. It's got your spin on it. And the fact that you threw that in into the book as well, I was like, oh she really just made it a word un-copyable.

Brittany: Yes. I had to fight with Alison my proofread on that one because apparently it is not a word. And I was like, well it is now. It is now it's gonna be a word in my book. So that's why it's in, I forget if she made me put it in italics or quotation marks, but it's in one or the other to signify that, you know, the dictionary doesn't recognize it, but I do. Well I think if we start using it a whole bunch, the dictionary will begin to recognize it.

Joanne Bolt: I mean "ish" didn't used to be a thing until a couple of years ago and now it is. And you know, words pop up in the dictionary all the time cuz local culture starts using them. And so I am a big supporter of let's just throw that out into the world that unable is what you strive to be in your client experience. 

Brittany: You heard it dear listener, we're making un-copyable happen. We want you to become un-copyable and also tell everyone about it. That's right. But, but for real it's, you know, I'm always shocked when I talk to a realtor and I say, tell me what you're the absolute best in the world at. What's your superpower? And they don't know.  They just look at me like I'm crazy. And I'm like, well if you don't know how's a customer ever gonna figure it out? How's a prospective customer gonna figure it out? If you don't even know why someone should work with you, why should they like, come on, If you if Can't figure out your story, If you can't get that out there in 30 seconds or less to them, then you really aren't any different than anybody else.

Joanne Bolt: Right. And that, and that's the reality.

Brittany: Like they have, if you can't prove that you are different, people are going to rightfully assume that you must not be. So you've got to be able to showcase your superpower. And the really beautiful thing about this, and I know you know this, Joanne, once you are clear on your superpower, you can stop trying to compete and win in 50 other areas. Yeah. Because when you don't know your superpower, you're like a snowflake. You're going out in every direction trying to win here, compete there, be like, oh yeah, I'm great with tech. Yeah I'm really responsive. Yeah. I work on weekends. Yeah I know this. Yeah I do this. Yeah I do that. Yeah I do that. And in reality you're just like spinning your wheels and running in a bunch of different directions versus when you say, I am the best in the world at this and if you wanna work with the person who's the best at this, then you will be a great client for me and we will be great partners.  And will you get other people? Of course you will. But you're going to start attracting those customers who are the ones that you love to work with the most. And you're gonna have to stop trying to, as you said before, do what you see everybody else doing and try to copy what you see everybody else posting and just like pray that you know you're gonna be in the right feed at the right time and somebody's gonna call you with a listing.  

Joanne Bolt:  And when you, and, and here's another thing I really wanna hone in cuz you touched on this in the book as well, and again, I, I think I just, just like threw it up in the air and yelled, preach it, sister preach it. Even though you weren't here to hear me do that, but my kids did laugh at me.

One of the things you talk about in the book is when you create a super fan and a great client experience, you don't have to start cutting your commissions or your price point. You don't have to fight others on what they're gonna pay you for because they're willing to pay you for that experience because it actually is better than or different than everybody else's.

Brittany: Oh yes.  And there was a, a recent survey from, I think it was Gallup, that 86% of customers are willing to pay more for the exact same product of service if the experience is better. 86% of people, because again, yeah, it's same like they're not looking to work with anyone to buy or sell a home. They're looking to work with the right person because they're buying or selling their home, not any home theirs. So being able to connect your story in a way that's going to quickly explain to someone why you are meant to be working together is going to pay dividends forever. And as you said, then you become, the price becomes irrelevant. It's not about the rate anymore, it's about the experience.

Joanne Bolt: You know, and, and I've told this story before on the podcast, but everything touches into that. Like my husband is a massive Weston snob. He's only gonna stay at Weston's. And I will tell you the number one reason is not actually the Westin bed, which is what they, you know, put in all their commercials and market on. It's because at a point in his life when he was working out a lot and traveling a lot, Weston started this whole program where you could let them know like what size shoe you were and stuff like that. And they already had all of the material there for you to work out. Not just the gym, but the shoes, the workout cl like they had the whole shebang for you so that you didn't have to pack that in your suitcase. Now I have no idea if they still do that program or not cuz he's not traveling as much anymore.  But he converted to a Westin guy because they chose to do something different than every other high level hotel was doing. Nobody else was giving you shoes to go work out in. Nobody else was making it to where you didn't have to pack that stuff in your suitcase cuz they understood the power of that. And so that converted him into being a Westin guy.  And it's, it's the little things like that that are so simple that when you can tell that in 30 seconds or less, like he's willing to this day to pay more for a Westin than staying down the street at any, any other hotel.

Brittany: Yeah. And that's the kinda loyalty that that lasts forever. And what I love about that story is I guarantee you there are other people who are super loyal to Westin for other reasons.  Yeah. Maybe it's beds, like you said, maybe it's the pillows, maybe it's they're gonna get a cookie when you check in. Although I don't think Westin does that, but whatever it is. And I think a really beautiful takeaway there is you, you don't have to pick just one thing. You can do several things that are all true to you and all umbrella up under the same truth, which is I care about my clients, I'm gonna do everything I can to make you have the best experience ever. And maybe that means that you make Lego sets with your business card on 'em. And when kids come to an open house, you say, Hey, here's some Legos to play with. Like, are you bored? Mom and dad have been driving, dragging you around to a bunch of open houses today here. Why don't you sit down and build the house that you would wanna live in or whatever it is. Thank you. And that doesn't mean that you can't also say like, I wanna make a puzzle for every house that closes and at closing give people a puzzle of their house that they get to work and keep forever that says, you know, has the address at the bottom, it says Jones family, you know, 2023, whatever. Like you can do a bunch of different little things that are all still true to whatever your superpower is and whatever your story is. And in the exact same way that Weston saying, Hey, we've got this great program to help make it easier for you to work out.  Does not cannibalize Westin also saying, Hey, we've got amazing beds and pillows. Because those are going to appeal most of the time to two different sets of people, right? But they can both still be true for the Westin brand. So I don't want anybody to hear this episode and think like, oh, she's saying I've gotta have one superpower. I've gotta pick one thing and do one thing.  No, you've just got to decide what it is that you wanna be known for, what it is that you wanna be the best in the world at. And then think of lots of tactics that all support that one core value or one core truth about you. And especially, there's just so much about this I love and, and then I could unpack this book for days, but I won't keep you online for days. But I think especially as we had or full blown already into a recession economy where their market is shifting and people are really looking at their money in a different way. The only way for any industry, I don't care if you're a real estate agent or you walk dogs for a living, for any industry out there, the only way to be scalable and sustainable is to have that client experience that people are willing to still pay for no matter what, A hundred percent what is it that's gonna make people wanna come back.

Joanne Bolt: All right. So last thing that I wanna touch on in the book is one of the greatest sayings that you've got in here, and I wish that you could like send me the pdf, of it because I'd like to just blow it up all over my office and, and hang it up on the wall is one of the, the pages says, if your customers aren't creating more customers for you, you are in trouble. Walk me through like your thought process behind that and how do you help entrepreneurs start identifying if they're in trouble or not?

Brittany: So there's a quote that I love from a gentleman named Schiff Singh, who is now actually the chief Experience Officer at Lending Tree. And this quote is, several years ago he worked at Pepsi and the Visa, MasterCard, I forget which one, but he said the purpose of any business is to create a customer who creates customers. Customers. And that really, you know, played a role in shaping the way that I think about customer experience and not just customer experience for customer experience sake. Not just putting your customer at the center of your business because it's the right thing to do, but also because it's the very financially smart thing to do. When you can create a customer who creates customers, everything gets easier. Your customer acquisition costs go way down, your marketing costs go way down, your advertising costs go way down because all of a sudden people aren't just auditioning you to be their realtor. They're saying, oh my God, I've gotta work with her. You become that person that they'll wait for, right? Because they wanna work with you because they heard a friend rave about how amazing the experience was, or because they heard multiple friends rave about how amazing the experience is. So I would say if you right now are not tracking the amount of customers that you get from referrals, you need to immediately do that. That needs to be a metric that every single realtor needs to be able to spit out instantly. What percentage of your customers came from referrals? How long did it take from the time that you sold the house to the person who referred them to the time that they were referred to you?  What did that period look like? What was it that happened that was the impetus for that referral? You need to understand all of these things so that you can get more referrals. And the number, like I say, I, I tell the story in the book of when I started working with Feeding America and they asked me if I knew the number one reason people donated to the charity.  And I guessed a bunch of things wrong. And their executive director said, no, it's because we ask the number one reason people give for donating is because we ask them to do it. And they said, okay, so don't be afraid to ask for referrals. It's easy to think, well, of course people should know. I want referral referrals.  Every realtor wants referrals. But if you have a customer who's never worked in sales or never had a commission based job, they're not thinking about that. They don't know that referrals are the lifeblood of your business. So don't be afraid to tell them and don't just wait and ask, like after closing, right. Don't just like send them an email a week later throughout the process, you need to be saying things like, wow, Janet, and it's been such a dream working with you and your family. You are just amazing. If you have any other friends who are as great as you, I would love for you to send them my my way because you are just so fun. And obviously anybody you send to me is gonna get like red carpet, white glove treatment. So just let me know. I can even send you an email with some text if it makes it easier for you to be able to, you know, send my info to any friends that you have in the area or looking to move to the area. Like whatever it is, you've gotta make it easy for them and you've gotta plant those seeds throughout the process.

Joanne Bolt: Agreed. And here's the other thing I kind of wanna touch on is your super fans may appreciate that Starbucks gift card that you give them or the cup of coffee you take them out for, but you don't have to do that in order for them to refer you. If you're, if, if what you did and the product you provided and the service you gave was so great and the relationship you formed so deep, they're gonna refer you naturally without you having to incentivize them to do so. Well. And a lot of people are also gonna feel icky about it then because then it feels transactional. It feels like you bribed me with a Starbucks gift card to Yep. Open up my Rolodex of friends. Yeah. For anybody who done Rolodex went and we, we analyzed this, right? So we took a two year time span and we looked back over every client we had that was a referral to us. And then who referred them? And then we said, okay, how many of these people did we put on a constant, we're gonna show up at your door with Popbys and gifts and little things and how many people just flat referred us because we called them and we stayed, we stayed in relationships with them and we had 75% of our referrals didn't come from the ones that we were continuously bribing to give referrals. They were the ones that we just stayed in touch with and we formed those relationships with. And so we learned a long time ago that yeah, you can give client appreciation stuff, but you don't actually have to.

Brittany: Yeah, amen. A hundred percent. And if you are doing that client appreciation stuff, you should be doing it with absolutely no expectation in return. Oh yeah. Because then it is not a gift, it is a transaction, it's a bribe. It's you, you Can't do that. RESPA law says you can't. So, you know. Right. Yeah. Well, and even, even not, not a bribe in terms of respa, but like if you were doing it with conditions Yeah. Then it is no longer a gift. Right. It feels very icky for you to leave a pie at somebody's door and then call them a week later and be like, so did you get the pie? Do you have any referrals for me? Like, don't be that person.

Joanne Bolt: Yeah, no, I agree. That is not creating superfans for people. All right. This is kinda amazing. Anything you wanna leave our audience with before I let you get back to your Friday?

Brittany: I would say, you know, thank you so much. I'm so glad that you enjoyed the book, Joanne. I'm so glad that we have all of the same philosophies when it comes to customer centricity and creating amazing experiences. So thank you for inviting me to come on the show and for everybody out There. Joanne Bolt: Absolutely. I mean, girl, you didn't know it, but like we're besties now, so Oh my gosh. Buckle up Buttercup, because we're, gonna get to know each other, we're gonna meet in person at some point. I'm gonna make sure of it. I'll put every way you can get in touch with Brit in the show notes. If you wanna get her book and you can't find the show notes, just text the word superfan to me at 6 7 8 -7 3 6-8 0 5 5.

And I will send you every link that I have straight from my phone because I feel so passionate that every single person needs this book in their life. And no, not an affiliate. So I'm not getting paid by Brittany to do that.

Brittany: Well, thank you Joanne. Yes. I don't have any affiliates  it's so funny if you, people have been like, do you have an affiliate program? And I'm like, did you read my book? I know. Cause if you had read my book you would know that. No, That, no. 

Joanne Bolt: All right. Thanks Brittany. Awesome.

Brittany: Thanks Joanne. Bye-Bye. Bye.