#oh there’s also a docu series that you can check out of us!!!! called ‘all or nothing: toronto maple leafs’

[nylwnder]

new to the leafs fandom. what are the key things to know?

well first off, hellooooooooo and i hope you’re well 🥰💘 welcome to this chaotic ass world!!!

well getting into the leafs fandom isn’t that hard. some things to know is you’ll cry, and get mad and want to live in a hole a chunk of the time but then they’ll make your day ✨✨ and everything seems like it’ll be alright. (this means we’ll sometimes lose to shit teams and win against good teams). (this also means we actually haven’t passed the first round in a while and well um that’s a whole other pain).

i’ll walk you through the boys just quickly incase you already know the vibez: AM34 is your main scoring man, last years rocket richard winner (what’s given to the highest goal scorer). mitchy (#16) is his right hand and that man will give u some sexc plays!!! bunts is an absolute godly fit into the first line and you’ll love him for his rat-like personality because he always pisses someone off with simply his presence. you got ✨✨ william nylander ✨✨on your second line makinh all of us fall on our knees for VARIOUS reasons that would take days to talk about. john tavares is our lovely captain and he’s just our precious robot man and we adore him!!!!!! great goal scorer and person whole and whole. you got kerfoot, underrated af but an absolute icon for making sweet plays. kase and kampf are you czech besties who normally accompany ilya mikheyev and yet again they’re just like kerfoot — the third line serves!!!!! then you got SPEZZ <3333333 who is our precious veteran who would die for our team no doubt. you’ve got wayne simmonds, an absolute icon and legendary scrapper. MORGAN RIELLY. you’ll love him (and if you already do, you’ll love him even more every day). he’s just amazing. also dating the most decorated figure skater, tessa virtue, and they’re a power couple!!! RASMUS SANDIN. ouuu bestie he’s a fan favourite and just an amazing baby and i love him and yeah ahsksjqkjdwobdmskakdkje. muzz n hollsy are chaotic icons who do funny things that makes you love ‘em but then can also make you wanna pull your hair out. depends the time. you got brodie, created the sprawling defensive play that you will see in every leafs game — it makes you smile. oh soupy!!!!!!!!! aka. jack campbell, aka. the sweetest man you will ever see and he’s an adorable cat dad. ummmm oh well he’s still on the roster 🥴 and that’s right, it’s petr mrazek. we love him but ummm yeah the hockey, hmmm not the vibe. THERES ERIK KÄLLGREN WHOS OUR NEW SWEDISH BABY GOALIE AND HE GOT THE SHUTTY ON HIS FIRST OFFICIAL START SO WE ALL LOVE HIM NOW. there’s joseph woll too, another baby goalie whos now playing really only for the marlies but he got hurt rn so give him good vibez :((( who am i missing??? well i guess the new guys from the trade deadline period who we’ll learn about together: giordano (from seattle tho originally from calgary and was friends w brodie), blackwell (from seattle, truly have no idea who he is) and then lybushkin who’s already been playing and who’ll you’ll appreciate!!

just to put it out there, some honourable mentions of past leafs that have sadly departed from us (no they’re not dead they’re just not playing here anymore) is travis dermott (who just got traded but he was a one of a kind man), zach hyman (that made everyone sad when he left), frederik andersen (he was sweet, but people ripped him apart, smh) and nazem kadri (oh god that trade was hell).

if you haven’t already and want to get to know more about the guys i suggest watching highlights to learn about them as a player and then interviews to just vibe with them (we have good ones so just search up the leafs on yt and go through their leaf to leaf series!!)

THEYRE ABSOLUTE CHOAS. every man on the team. CHAOS. but you’ll eat it all up cause that’s just a reason why you’re staying here for life!!! you’ll see lots of weird ass haircuts, interesting clothing, ummm ‘no thots head empty’ meme worthy pictures and some spicy pictures as well!!!

if you ever go to the game, well the arena is absolutely insane and i hope you have fun!!!!! that’s if you’re willing to spend some big bucks on them (or if you’re feeling lucky, @thefordfanatic_offical on instagram has ticket giveaways for home games so u can def enter cause i won and it was so cool!!)

[scarletwinterxx]

why, oh why does god keep bringing me back to you?

So I was just watching the new preview for Ariana Grande’s docu film and it happens to be a performance of one of fave track of hers then this scenario popped up in my head. Next thing I know I was typing away😂 i know i just wrote a scenario also using an Ari song for inspo but i just really really like her songs okay hahah I hope you enjoy reading this one!

Also I’m thinking about opening for requests maybe? or just scenarios you guys would like to read about. Send me a message then I’ll see what I can do😉

For my other works you can check them out here, and for my other story series’ you can check them out here.

All works are copyrighted ©scarletwinterxx 2020 . Do not repost, re-write without the permission of author.

The last time you saw Mark was when you broke up, With tears in your eyes, a smile that didn’t quite reach your eyes and a half hearted goodbye. 

It would be a lie if you say you didn’t miss him, these past six months have been hell for you. How do you go from having the most wonderful boy in your life then not? It’s was a struggle to say the least. 

The first week was hell. You didn’t even leave your room. Food tray abandoned that your bestfriend courteously left in hopes that you would eat, boxes and boxes of tissues littered around the trashbin, You made no effort in making yourself feel better, you spent that time just wallowing in pain and self pity. After the first month, you finally were trying to get back to normal. You tried not to cry so much, tried cleaning your place and even made plans with your bestfriend in hopes that it will cheer you up. 

There are moments of course when you can’t help but wonder what he’s doing right now. Mark was a busy guy, if he wasn’t halfway across the world he would be too busy to come and see you. To an extent you understood that. You knew that it was going to be the tough but you still chose him anyways. 

Loving him might have been complicated but he was worth all of it. 

Until one day you realized that you haven’t seen your boyfriend, well now ex boyfriend, in a good six months. Given that he wasn’t even in the same country as you half the time but still, you sent a total of 9 messages back and forth over the past three weeks. NINE. 

Mark was beyond tired, if there was anyone who knew this it would be you. There were far too many nights when he came to you, crashing straight into your arms and saying only a few words because he just didn’t have the energy in him. You just hugged him a bit tighter because you know he’ll understand what you were trying to say without using any words. 

You should’ve never let it get to that point, the point where it felt like you didn’t know how to talk to each other anymore. You were angry at yourself and Mark too. 

As your gaze fall on him from across the room, you can see the usual smile he had on. The look in his eyes as if they hold all the stars in the universe. 

You try not to stare too long but you were a second too late before his gaze was on you. 

Quickly you looked away, pretending to be interested at the cup in your hand before making your way out of the room and into the second story of the house you were in. 

You found yourself at an empty balcony, the booming bass from downstairs could be felt through the floor. You set your cup down on the bannister, just taking this moment to take a deep breath and collect your thoughts. 

“You okay?” the sudden voice from behind you made you jump in surprise, looking back to see Mark holding up both of his hands “Sorry sorry I didn’t mean to scare you” he said

You just looked at him for a few seconds, he feels nervous under your gaze he didn’t even know why is that. Maybe because it’s the first time he’s seen you in months. Or maybe because you looked as beautiful as ever and he wanted nothing but to tell you this. Or maybe because he just missed you too much. 

Of course he didn’t say any of those things, instead he felt awkward around you. Rethinking his choice of following you up here, but in his defense he just wanted to check if you were okay

“It’s okay, I was just trying to get some fresh air” you answered, Mark had one hand on the back of his neck. Something he did when he’s nervous. 

Why was he nervous? you thought

“Uhm.. well... okay. I was just checking to see if you were okay” he mumbled, not sure what to say next

“I’m alright, thanks” you shoot him a quick smile before turning your back to him, too afraid that he might see you’re just as nervous as him. 

You hear his footsteps get closer then he was standing next to you, looking over at the view infront of you. 

“You used to hate going to parties” Mark remembered you telling him how you really didn’t like large crowds after he invited to a party that one of his friends threw, you only said yes because he looked like he really wanted you to come with him so you did. But after an hour, you admitted to him just how much you disliked it. 

At that time you thought he was going to be mad ad you but it was Mark, so instead he just smiled down at you before saying a quick goodbye to his friends. You found yourselves at a 24 hour diner sharing a plate of cheese fries and two chocolate milkshakes.

“I still do” your answer made him look over at you, confused as to why you were here tonight. He was glad he saw you again but also baffled at what you just meant by that

“I go out to forget, hoping the drink would help me get over it” you mumbled, you can’t but give him the honest answer

“it?”

you chuckled before speaking, “Think of it as a way of me self-destructing, I don’t like being here but I also hate being at home wallowing in my loneliness every night”

Your answer broke his heart. He knew he was the reason why you were hurting so much and he hate himself for it. He promised he would never ever do anything to make you feel that way, he clearly broke that promise. 

“Sorry” him suddenly apologizing made you look over at him, a sullen expression taking over his face

“Don’t be, you don’t have to be sorry anymore”

“But I am, it was my fault why we ended up like this” Mark said, frustration, anger and sadness lacing his voice. He so badly wish he could go back and change how things turned out.

“It was bullshit when I said I was over it” he mumbled under his breath, not having the strength to look at you anymore

“Me too”

“Why did we ever break up again?” he asks, this time looking over at side to you. You can get lost in his stare forever but you know you don’t have that luxury anymore.

“Because we’re tired, the no-shows, few text, no calls. That’s not how we want to be together” you answered, a sad smile making its way on your lips

“And yet fate keeps bringing us back together” he mumbled, you don’t miss the quick gaze he had on your lips before looking back up into your eyes

“Maybe because I’m such a headcase and I don’t want to get over you no matter how many times people say I should” your admission made Mark’s heart beat faster than it already was. Hearing how you were still not over him made him want to jump over to the moon because he felt the exact same way about you.

“You don’t have to say anything, Mark. I don’t want to get my hopes up for nothing. It was nice seeing you tonight” you said before he could even utter another word, then you stepped closer to him. 

Putting a hand on his arm, you stood on your tippy toe then landing a quick kiss on his cheek. 

You shoot him one last smile before walking away without another word. 

Just like the time you two broke up, Mark was rendered speechless. The feeling of your lips on his cheek still lingering. 

He shook his head then took a quick breath, steadying the pace of his heart before going back downstairs.

You both knew this isn’t the last time, there’s never a last time for the two of you know you’ll always come back to each other everytime. 

[oh-so-scenarios]

Loose Ends | two

⇢ ᴡʜᴀᴛ ᴀ ʟᴀsᴛɪɴɢ ɪᴍᴘʀᴇssɪɴɢ ʏᴏᴜ ᴍᴀᴅᴇ...ᴛᴏᴏ ʙᴀᴅ ʏᴏᴜ ᴅɪᴅɴ'ᴛ sᴛɪᴄᴋ ᴀʀᴏᴜɴᴅ ᴛᴏ sᴇᴇ ᴛʜᴇ ᴅᴀᴍᴀɢᴇ ʏᴏᴜ ᴄᴀᴜsᴇᴅ.

⇢ᴄᴇᴏ! ᴋɪᴍ ɴᴀᴍᴊᴏᴏɴ x ᴀᴅᴍɪɴ ᴀssɪsᴛᴀɴᴛ! ғᴇᴍᴀʟᴇ ʀᴇᴀᴅᴇʀ, ᴇx-ғɪᴀɴᴄᴇs!ᴀᴜ, ᴀɴɢsᴛ, ᴇɴᴇᴍɪᴇsᴛᴏʟᴏᴠᴇʀs

**A/N: There are errors! Please ignore them! This chapter is a little awkward(imo), but it’s just laying down the foundation but it will pick up.  (Word Count: 4.9K)

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《 PAST 》

Y/N:

“So we’re partners?” I said, sitting down at the empty desk. I glanced over at the quiet boy sitting beside me. His head was down and he focused his attention on the black sheet of paper in front of him. 

Maybe he was shy? I couldn’t be sure, but what I did know was that I wasn’t planning on slacking off. 

They say your freshman year of high school will determine the rest of your years and I will not get off to a bad start. I was already a push-over in middle school, letting myself get tricked into doing all the work. But I am entering high school with a new confidence. I will keep my head high and speak up when I feel wronged. 

“Your name is Namjoon right?” I called softly. I leaned over, trying to catch his eye. I knew he could hear me, seeing him side eye me momentarily. He finally lifts up his head and looks my way, showing a shy smile. 

As I finally got a good look at him, I couldn’t help but smile. He has high cheekbones, kind eyes that were behind thick circular glasses and his hair is jet black, brush forward and covering his forehead. There are a few pimples on his face, but he’s a cute guy. 

“Hi.” He says quietly, his ahead falling back to his desk. He’s shy. I can’t help but giggle, noticing his eyes widen at me. My giggles stop short, my eyes also widening. 

“I’m not laughing at you or anything!” I rush out, “I just think you’re...cute.” My giggles start up again, a blush growing throughout his face.

“I’m Y/n.” I stretch my hand out and he shakes it briefly. He opens his mouth to speak but is interrupted by the teacher.

“Alright! I gave you some time to get familiar with your partner! Don’t worry you’ll have time to talk some more! They will be your writing partner for the rest of the school year!” The teacher gives everyone a big smile before turning back to the board. 

I settle into my seat, leaning back into the chair and smiling. I can’t help but glance over at the shy boy was didn’t speak much.

《 PRESENT 》

This is cruel. This is unforgiving and devilish. Why should I have to see Kim Namjoon again, let alone work for him?

My gut was telling me to turn down this job, and it wasn’t wrong. I shouldn’t be here. It should have been someone else. Fate couldn’t be this cruel. It just couldn’t. I thought I could have gone another 10 years before I had to lay my eyes on that man again. 

I lean my head against the cold metal wall of the elevator. I watched the elevator doors close, leaving me to stare at my own reflection. It’s now day 2. Only 238 more days till this contract is over. I can’t help but chuckle at how ridiculous this situation is. 

I finally reach for and press the button for the 23rd floor, the elevator pings and shifts as it went upwards. 

I didn’t let my emotional breakdown yesterday stop me. I went to the bathroom, cleaned myself up and walked back into the office, doing the work that was expected of me. I am grateful that I didn’t have to see Mr. Kim again till he was leaving his office for the day. He didn’t spare a look my way.

Maybe he doesn’t recognize me? How much can a person change in 3 years? Or he counts our time together as a different phase of life? He probably doesn’t see the need to mention the elephant in the room. Rather let sit there, and bother both of us. He thinks it bothers me more and if he does, he’s right.

Today I wore a long sleeved mustard yellow blouse that was tucked in into my black and white houndstooth pattern pencil skirt. It’s not a look I usually go for, but I wanted anything to distract from the dread that was clear on my face. The outfit was cute and the colors worked wonderfully, so I praise myself for that.

 I looked down at my peach-nude heels and thanked god that it matched. I was practically a zombie as I walked out the house today. I couldn’t remember what shoes I put on. My hair was down and I kept my make-up natural. 

My purse hung on my shoulder, only carrying my schedule book for Mr. Kim, my phone, keys and wallet. The elevator dinged once more, and the doors slid open to show the pearl white walls. It’s day two. Another fresh start. The past doesn’t matter here. Just work performance. 

I stepped through the doors and started down the hallway. As I hear the clicking of my heels, my nervousness vanishes. I am simply an assistant. As long as Mr. Kim plays it cool, so should I. He doesn’t owe me anything. 

“Good morning.” I called as I walked in. My words stopped short as I realized that Sana wasn’t there. I look at the watch on my wrist. It’s twenty to eight. I guess I am a bit early, but that’s better than late. Most employees don’t start coming in till about 8:30. Mr. Kim arrives somewhere between 8 am and 8:30am.

I grab my schedule book and set my bag under the desk. I wasn’t too out of it yesterday to forget to write my to-do list. I turn on the computer and my desk and look through my email to find the needed documents. I want to have them done before anyone else can get in my way. 

I sent the documents to the printer and soon found myself moving back and forth in the office. I walk through the double doors that lead to the cubicles of the employees and go to the copy room. I’m making copies and finding folders to pack them into. It didn’t feel strange with it being just me in the office. 

It feels better to work in silence, with less people around me.  After printing, copying and organizing all the documents, I made my way towards the empty conference room and spread the folders out. 

Mr. Kim has a meeting with some employees about the books that were to be published in the next 3 months. That meeting is followed by another meeting on authors to sign with. I printed and copied the documents for the second meeting. I took those folders back with me. They were stacked in my arms, and blocked my view. 

I managed to waltz into the lobby area and to my desk just before they started slipping out of my hands. I grabbed the empty white box that once held my belongings and dropped the folders in there.

I stood up straight, smoothing my skirt and reaching for my schedule book on what to do next.

I took a seat and started sending out emails. It wasn’t long before I heard footsteps approaching, Heels clicked in a speedy matter, the jiggling of keys mimicking the quick movement. Sana comes around the corners in sand colored dress pants and an ivory white blouse. Her keys are in her hands and her bag is clutched in the other hand. 

“Oh you’re here!” She wails, through her hands up as if saying thank you to a higher power.

“I forgot I’m not the only secretary anymore.” She mutters as she walks towards the desk. I resume typing up the emails, giving Sana a pointed look as she plopped into her seat. 

“Sana, get in the habit of coming in early. I was able to do the needed work for the morning on my own, but it won’t always be like that.” 

She nods, still catching her breath, “Or course! I don’t want to slack off! I want to learn from you.” She lazily tosses her bag on the floor and switches her computer on. Her acrylic nails tap against the desk as she hums a tune to herself.

“Let me help prepare the meeting docu--”

“Done.” I deadpan. She narrows her eyes at me and a small smile pulls at the corners of her lips.

“Seriously?” She was in disbelief.

“Yes,” I answered, sparing a glance.

“And the deadline emails?” She questioned, leaning over to sneak a glance at my computer screen. 

“That’s what I am doing now.” 

“Wow, Y/n! You’re killing it!” 

I try to keep from rolling my eyes, “The sooner you do things, the smoother they run. Once Mr. Park arrives, I’m going to get the financial report of the previous quarters and make copies for the meeting with Jung Hoseok of Jung Funding.”

“That meeting isn’t till 3.” Sana points out like I’d forgotten.

“Do we have to wait till 2 pm to get started on that?” I raise my eyebrows at her as she shakes her head no. 

“Exactly.” I answer back. 

“What if Mr. Kim changes something at the last minute?” She leans back in her seat, a grimace appearing on her lips while she looks off to the side. She must have dealt with something like that previously. 

I sigh, “Then we just go with it. It happens, there is nothing that can be done about it.” 

I press send on the last email, check the time on the computer. It’s 8:20 am. Mr. Kim should be on his way in--

“Get started on the documents for the first meeting. It’s been moved up 30 minutes.” His voice cut through the lobby like a knife. The light weight atmosphere created by small talk was stepped on by his demanding presence. 

“They have been completed sir.” I stood up from my seat as he walked in, walking like he was taking a stroll in the park. 

His steps stop, and he puts both hands into the pocket of his pants. His outfit today was missing the coat. He wore a white dress shirt with a dark grey vest and pants that matched. He kept his head down, giving us a view of his profile.

I try to ignore the pounding in my ears as I stare at him, waiting to hear what he says. I work to keep my breathing under control since it felt like my heart slamming itself against my rib cage.

“You’ve done that already?” 

“Yes sir--”

“And the paperwork for the potential authors meeting?”

“That is done as well.” I answered back, keeping my tone neutral while giving a friendly smile. I hope it didn’t look as stiff as it felt. 

He doesn’t say anything else and trods into his office. 

“He was totally looking for something to be angry about.” Sana says in an annoyed tone.

I don’t reply but sit back down in my seat, sorting through emails. I can’t be sure how much time goes by before I hear footsteps coming down the hallway. This time it’s accompanied by chatter and laughter. The sounds get louder and a big group of employees turn the corner. 

Did they all wait to come up at the same time? There were about 9 of them. They were chatting among themselves but it seems there was on person who was the center of all that talk. A man I haven’t seen before.

“Mr. Park?” I called out. It was a guess, but I wasn’t left feeling stupid as the man stops mid laugh, He looks around then meets my questioning expression. The two women that stood around didn’t hide their glares. I ignored them, looking at my computer screen for a moment before standing up from my seat.

“Good morning Mr. Park, I am--”

“Y/n L/n.” He cuts me off, a smile pulling at the corner of his lips. Wow. What a good looking man. He must be a charmer, and with how the women of the office flock around him...he’s trouble. His hair was jet black and parted to the side and slicked back. He wore a sharp black suit with a white dress shirt underneath.

He carried a suitcase that he handed to one of the women that were clinging to him. The woman gladly takes it.

“You’re the new administrative assistant right? I’ve heard a lot.” He says while flirtatious light comes to his eyes. I don’t miss the way his eyes move along my face and body. His attention is brought back up to my eyes and he smiles innocently like he wasn’t just checking me out. 

“I need the financial reports for the last eight quarters. If you could please gather that up and email it to me.” I sat back down to grab a sticky note, jotting down my email and holding it out. 

He takes slow steps towards the desk, and since my patience is short this morning, I simply stick the note to the desk surface. 

When he takes the note from the desk, I can feel his eyes on me. I look up from the computer screen to see the smile on his lips widen.

“I am Park Jimin, but you can call me Jimin.” 

I exhale, taking my hands off the keyboard and leaning back in my seat, “Mr. Park, I need those reports quickly.” 

“Don’t let his smile fool you, Mr. Park is not a man to get wrapped up in.” Sana mutters from beside me. I noticed the women that were glaring at me earlier entering into the employees area, through me another stank look before letting the doors close behind them. More employees were slowly making their way in for work, not of them batting an eye at Mr. Park who was leaning against the desk. 

“It takes a lot more to fool me than a smile.” I said to Sana. 

“You heard her Mr. Park, you’d be wasting your time.” Sana jeers. Mr. Park doesn’t acknowledge her words at all, only slowly stepping away from the desk then turning around to walk into the employees area.

“Looks like Mr. Park has set his eyes on you.” Sana says, still looking through some paperwork.

“That doesn’t feel like a good thing.” I sneer. 

She chuckles, “It’s not.” 

The next hour goes by smoothly. Not instructions or emails from Mr. Kim and Mr. Park sent the reports over. I am in the process of printing and copying them when I hear a booming voice.

I step out of the copy room just in time to see other employees shying away from the voice. I can’t help but sigh as I realize it’s probably Mr. Kim. Ugh. He’s found something to be angry about and it isn’t even noon. 

“Ms. L/n!” A voice roars. I roll my eyes knowing what’s coming. I’ve been yelled at many times, so there is nothing Mr. Kim could do to faze me.

“Yes?” I call out delightedly. I keep my voice light as I round the corner to see him stalking down the aisle.

The angry look on his face with the hands on his hips tells me all I need to know. His ears are turning red, as they usually do when he’s angry, and his brows are furrowed. The creases in his forehead as he glares at me, ages him a bit.

“Why am I getting phone calls from angry authors?” He yells. Everyone around me flinches as he shouts. I can only stare up at him with a blank facial expression, not moving an inch as he yells at me. 

He steps closer, a familiar cologne whisking off of him. Not overbearing, but present enough that you want to lean in to smell more.

“I am not sure sir. I do not have a complete understanding of the situation.” I answered calmly. Employees around us were pretending to work, but it was clear that they were listening in. I notice Mr. Park watching from a distance, his facial expression unreadable.

“The deadlines you emailed were incorrect! These dates are impractical! 2 weeks? Come on Ms. L/n! Use your head! I thought you were supposed to be smart.” He hisses. I can say, I have never seen Namjoon like this. The Namjoon I knew would never raise his voice like this, at least not in front of other people.

I cleared my throat and answered back confidently, “I will send the deadlines to you for correcting sir.” 

I watched his face contort in confusion, “Excuse me? To me?”

“Yes sir.” 

“Why the hell would you do that?”

“Well, those are the deadlines you wrote up for me sir. I was not aware that the dates were incorrect, for it was only my first day. I am so sorry for the stress that was caused to your authors. I will email each other apologizing for the mix up.”

“You have some nerve. Ms. L/n, are saying this is my fault?” His voice is quieter this time, but the menacing tone didn’t flatter. 

I smile sweetly, “Of course not sir! I will simply issue apologies to the authorities and make sure the correct deadlines are given to them.”

“Don’t even email them. Call them personally.” He adds.

“Of course, sir.” I nod. The whole office I silent as I keep the appearance of my small smile, holding the folders close to my chest as he glares at me in silence. Though it isn't showing in my face, it felt like my heart could explode in that moment.

Who is this man? So familiar but so foreign. 

“When you’re done with your paperwork, come to my office.” It felt like he was towering over me, and for once I can feel the difference in levels. This is not Kim Namjoon, the dorky boy I knew in 9th grade English. This is Mr. Kim, wealthy CEO of KM-Moonchild Publishing.

“Of course sir.” I reply before he turns around and exits the way he came in. I simply shrug and turn around to go back into the copy room when someone calls out to me. 

“You really talked back to er. Kim like that?” It was a female voice. I groaned, spinning around to face the voice. It was a woman with dark red hair and a black and white jumpsuit. She was pretty. Her figure was slim with an hourglass shape. Her hair was in gracious waves that effortlessly rested on her shoulders and down to the middle of her. I'm certain that she’s one of the girls that were gossiping about me yesterday.

I stared at her, and I’m sure my gaze came off as bored, because I was. I don't care what this lady has to say. It’s nothing of use.

“I was just having a conversation with Mr. Kim. A conversation requires two people to speak.” 

She crosses her arms over her chest, “You have no respect! It’s one thing to think you’re better than us, but can your ego relax. Mr. Kim isn’t someone to--”

“I am not here to be lectured. I have work to do. I haven’t been fired yet,when I am I will make sure to come and cry that you were right so that your ego can get the boost it needs.” I try not to laugh at the expression on her face but a slight chuckle leaves my lips as I turn into the copy room. 

I hum to myself as the copy machine does it’s job, being and humming as it does so. I’m tapping my fingers against the buzzing machine when I sense a presence behind me.  

“Yes?” I called out, looking over to spot Mr. Park leaning against the doorway with a smug smile.

I bit my tongue to keep back the groan that wanted to leave my lips. Not this guy again. I already feel the need to have HR on speed dial.

“Are you here to bother me?” I say out, and turn my back to him again. It’s quiet for a while before I heard a soft sigh. 

“I’m not here to start any trouble, I just think it’s very cool the way you handled things back there.” His tone was different from when we spoke earlier. 

“I always handle things. Mr. Kim is no different from the other people I have worked for. I have been yelled at many times.” I grab the newly printed papers and turn to face Mr. Park just so I could place the papers on the table. I started my second batch of copying before he spoke again.

“You’re not worried about being fired?” 

I shrug, pushing another button on the machine, “I’ve already been paid 50%  of my contract payment, so I could care less. Mr. Kim only has me for eight months.”

“Eight months huh? That’s too bad.” He mutters to himself. 

~!~

“He’s so gonna fire you.” Sana whispers to me. I don’t look away from my computer, typing up the emails for the new deadlines that were sent to me by Mr. Kim. He must have realized he was in the wrong, seeing how the corrected deadlines were sent to me before I could return to my desk from the copy room. But when I returned to the desk, Mr. Kim was in his first meeting of the day. So here I sat with Sana who had heard about what happened as one of the women were giggling about it on their way out the office.

“Let’s hope he does.” I mumble. Sana hears me, looking my way and pouting.

“Do you not like it here?” 

“It doesn’t matter if I hate it here or not, it’s my work.” I didn’t think much of it when Sana didn’t say anymore. I was finishing up the email with the new deadlines when some heavy footsteps came from the employee area, and the double doors opened to reveal Mr, Kim who was being trailed by some employees. 

I could see them out of the corner of my eyes. I focused on the computer screen once more, pretending I didn’t notice the glance my way from Mr. Kim. The two men stand in the middle of the lobby speaking about the meeting that just ended. 

I spend the last deadline email and turn to another page in my scheduling book to begin the apology phone calls. That doesn’t go far because Sana nudges me with her arm.  When I look at her, she’s looking forward. I follow her gaze to see Mr. Kim practically glaring at me. 

“Ms. L/n, my office please.” He says. His voice was too neutral for the scowled that was burned onto his face. I didn’t get the chance to respond before he spun around and zoomed into his office. 

I stood up, smoothing my skirt and grabbing my scheduling book. I ignored Sana’s puppy dog's eyes, seeing as she was scared for me.

I strolled to the heavy wooden doors, knocked and opened it to see him standing behind his desk.He hands were behind his back and he was zoned out. His attention was elsewhere and his mind was far off somewhere else.

I closed the door behind me and fought back the smile curling at the corner of my lips. The lost look on his face reminds me of Namjoon from high school. The smart boy who would daydream in class. 

“Mr. Kim?” I call out. His neck snaps up and his eyes grow hard and dark. The gentle expression on his face was no more. 

I approached his desk, holding the schedule book close to my chest. 

“You wanted to speak to me?” I say, feeling nervousness bubbling up in me. Something about the atmosphere has shifted. By the look in his eyes, I know what he's going to do.

“Why are you here?” He asks in an icy tone. I raise an eyebrow at him, pretending to be clueless.

“What do you mean Mr. Kim? If this is about the deadline--”

“Y/n, cut the shit.” He deadpans. I press my lips into a tight line, gripping the schedule book tighter and clear my throat. 

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Did you come here to torture me?” He says quickly, ignoring my attempt at feigning ignorance. My face scrunches up in offense. I took a step back before shaking my head in disbelief. 

What the fuck? He thinks I came here on purpose?

“I came here to work.” I hiss, “I didn’t know a damn thing about this job when I got the offer. You think’d I take the job I knew I would see  you?”

He runs his fingers through his hair and I watch him intently, waiting for him to speak again. When he doesn't voice my thoughts.

“I came here to work. Not to torture you, not to bug you. I couldn’t care less about you and what you’re doing. Separate work from personal and keep it moving.”

“Of course that’s easy for someone as heartless as yourself.” He jeers, laughing humorless. My breath catches in my throat and I take a second to collect myself. That one stung a little bit.

“Insulting me isn’t going to change anything.” I kept my voice level, hoping that the trembles that were starting to climb up my body wouldn’t show in my voice. 

His eyes narrow at me, one corner of his lips turning up in a sinister smile. The loathing touch to his sharp eyes made me feel small in that moment.

“You’re standing here talking to me like a fucking robot. Does seeing me not invoke any sort of emotion?”

“I am just here to work, Mr. Kim.” I repeat for the third time, mustering a strained smile. I try not to think back to the crying fit I had the day before. The shock of seeing Namjoon truly took everything out of me, but it doesn’t matter. Things couldn’t go back to normal even if we wanted it to. Too much damage has been done.

“If that’s all sir, I’ll be taking my leave. I have authors to call and apologize to.” My legs feel shaky when I take the first step to turn around, and I stumble a bit. I catch myself, and just pray that Namjoon chucks it up to losing the balance of my heels. 

“How is your sister doing?” He rushes out,  like he wanted to keep me from leaving the room. I put my hand on my doorknob debating what to reply. 

“I’m not going to pretend to care about the current state of your life, so don’t pretend to care about mine.” 

“I am not--” I open the door and step out quickly, letting the door close on it’s own. My quick trot to the desk made Sana gaze at me with sad eyes.

“That was quick. It was probably a rough lecture wasn’t it?”

I plop down in my seat, “Nothing I can’t handle.” I lied. 

I’m lying. I can’t handle this.

∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ❣

Things are a bit awkward, in terms of the writing but it’ll get there. More info will be revealed later. 

Let me know what you thought of this chapter! How do you feel about this story? 

[weekendwarriorblog]

The Weekend Warrior Home Edition May 15, 2020 – S.C.O.O.B., CAPONE, CASTLE IN THE GROUND and more!

I have to admit that I’m getting a little weary of writing this weekly column covering movies that would barely have gotten a theatrical release BEFORE COVID, but I’m gonna do my best to stay motivated, even if it might be two months or more before we get any sort of theatrical experience again. I have a feeling this will be a shorter column than usual (Hallelujah!), and honestly, I really didn’t find any movie I liked enough to feature this week, so…

I wasn’t able to get the screener for Warner Bros’ new animated S.C.O.O.B. in time to review before this column sees the light of … inside people’s homes … on Wednesday, but the studio is taking the approach of Universal with its PVOD hit, Trolls World Tour. Hopefully, they won’t awaken the ire of AMC and the National Association of Theater Owners (NATO) as Universal has, but this updated and animated origin story for Scooby Doo will be available to buy for $19.99 vs. renting for $14.99.

 If I do get a chance to watch before Friday, I’ll add a review here (so check back!), but I’m looking forward to seeing it, especially knowing it will include a few other Hanna Barbera characters like the Blue Falcon, voiced by Mark Wahlberg. (Plus Shaggy is voiced by Will Forte, who is always hilarious.) Oh, and the film is directed by Tom Cervone, who has produced and directed so many great TV cartoons, including Duck Dodgers and the Looney Tunes Show.

REVIEW: Check back soon!

Tom Hardy plays famed Chicago mobster Al Capone in Josh Trank’s CAPONE (Vertical), which follows Capone late in his life, after he’s been released from prison and is quarantined at his palatial Florida mansion where he slowly descends into dementia while the FBI tries to uncover where he’s hidden a huge amount of money that seems to have gone missing. I was rather mixed on this film, which I’m sure is gonna be seen as this year’s Gotti. I didn’t think Josh Trank, who famously fucked up the last Fantastic Four movie, does a bad job with the material, but it’s just not the greatest point in Capone’s life to make a movie about. I had been looking forward to seeing Tom Hardy as Capone, especially knowing what he puts into every role since I first saw him in Bronson, but I don’t think I needed to see him stumbling around and mumbling incoherently with a carrot in his mouth … and yes, he deliberately shits in his pants under questioning at one point in the movie and accidentally a few other times. (Anyone who has been through medical treatment, like for cancer, will realize that being unable to get to a bathroom fast enough is a recurring problem, particularly in dementia sufferers, so it’s a little infuriating this has become the #1 pejorative against the movie.)

For all of Hardy’s amazing performances over the years, his take on Capone during this part of his life just goes too far into trying to create authenticity by being even harder to understand than even his original Bane dialogue, and that’s a major problem. I’m not sure if he did this thinking that it might get him an Oscar nomination ala Gary Oldman in The Darkest Hour or other similar portrayals of real people. Again, he should be lucky if it isn’t compared to John Travolta in Gotti.

As far as the rest of the cast, Kyle MacLachlan has the biggest role as Capone’s most trusted confidante, while Noel Fisher plays his son. Blink and you’ll miss Matt Dillon, who isn’t in the movie very much other than one of its few sex scenes. I wanted to like Linda Cardellini as “Fonzo’s” wife Mae, but this was almost the exact same character she played in the Oscar-winning, Green Book, which most will know was one of my favorite movies that year. It’s almost like she’s being typecast as a classic Italian-American period housewife, which is disappointing. Ultimately, it’s a combination of weaker material and Hardy’s method-y performance that causes Capone’s downfall as a movie to be on par with the way the notorious gangster faded away both literally and mentally after being released from prison.

Alex Wolff and Imogen Poots star in Joey Klein’s CASTLE IN THE GROUND (Gravitas Ventures), Wolff playing Henry, a small-town teenager whose mother is fighting cancer. When he befriends his off-the-wall neighbor (Poots), he ends up getting dragged into her world of opioid addiction and violence.

I was generally unimpressed with this movie, since it seemed like another one of those twee indie films we frequently see at Tribeca – in fact, this premiered at Toronto last year. I feel like I should have liked this movie more, since I find Poots to be a fascinating actor, same with Wolff, but this one just doesn’t connect or come together at all. I didn’t find any of the characters particularly compelling, and Klein seems to be trying to jam in  a lot of different elements such as Henry’s Hassidic Jewishness into the movie, but that seems to be an unnecessary tangent that doesn’t fit into the overall narrative. Neve Campbell plays Henry’s mother, Rebecca, and I’m not sure I would have even recognized her if not for the press notes. Otherwise, I don’t have a ton to say about a movie that covers ground that’s been covered far better in many other indie movies. This one is quite forgettable and not really mandatory viewing.

Visual effects animator Eric Demeusy’s directorial debut, the sci-fi thriller PROXIMITY (Shout! Studios), stars Ryan Masson as Isaac, a young NASA JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) scientist abducted by aliens, who becomes obsessed with finding proof of his journey when nobody believes him. It’s the feature debut from the award-winning VFX artist who has worked on Stranger Things and Game of Thrones, and actually, it’s not a bad little sci-fi movie. I mean, it isn’t small by any means, and it has pretty decent production values over all that makes it seem like Demeusy could be ready to direct bigger studio movies, although it does have some issues. I did enjoy that it’s a bit of a throwback to sci-fi movies of the ‘80s like War Games and Close Encounters, plus I’m always up for a decent alien abduction movie, and this one isn’t bad. I had some issues with the writing and the number of clichés pulled out, and it takes some adjusting to the inexperienced Masson and his low-key performance as the lead. (I will admit that the film drifts further and further away from those clichés as it goes along, particularly when it throws in some action and moves the story to Costa Rica.) My bigger problem was with the music, which tended to be so overblown, going between very loud and boisterous orchestral music (almost stock music, more suitable for a ‘50s sci-fi film) and cheesy pop songs. I’m sure these were intentional nods on Demeusy’s part, but it definitely takes the movie into the lamer territory we frequently see from Hollywood studio films and away from the cooler recent sci-fi films like Arrival and Annihilation. If you’re a fan of the sci-fi genre, you should be able to find things to like about Proximity. I’ll certainly be curious to see if Demeusy can use this as a calling card towards bigger things. You can find all the “Watch at Home” links on the Official Site.

Cristóbal León and Joaquín Cociña’s THE WOLF HOUSE (KimStim) was one of the press screenings I saw before everything went to hell. It’s a Chilean stop-motion animated film that puts a spin on the “Three Little Pigs,” tying it into the infamous torture colony, known as Colonia Dignidad, which had been imprisoning, torturing and killing dissidents under the Pinochet regime. It deals with a young woman named Maria who hides in a constantly evolving house in Southern Chile after escaping from German religious fanatics.  This was one of the last press screenings I saw before the NY theatrical shut down, and I found it infinitely fascinating and haunting as the filmmakers used an endless amount of media and formats to create the animation that flows between 2-and-3 dimensionality so easily you’ll often wonder how they did it. I’m not sure I was able to understand all of the political undertones so much, since I know every little about Chilean politics or history but it’s quite an accomplished achievement that is sure to astound fans of animation as an artform. The film is in Spanish and German, and there’s a fantastic introduction that explains how Chile’s European ex-pats contribute to the country’s community and how it differs from other neighboring countries. (This is also definitely more for an arthouse film than something to watch with the kids ala most Hollywood animated films.) Following its NY Premiere at Film at Lincoln Center’s “Neighboring Scenes” program earlier this year, The Wolf House will be available through Virtual Cinema for Anthology Film Archives in New York (where it was supposed to open in March) and the Laemmle theaters in L.A. You can see the full list of participating theaters and get links to watch the movie on the KimStim site.

Doc distributor Abramorama has created a new “mind body soul” imprint called Mangurama, and this week, they’re releasing a 10-part docu-series, The Road to Dharma – Riders of the Himalayas, with the first two episodes offered for free on Apple TV and Prime right now. It’s written, produced and directed by Adam Schomer, which follows a group of people who go on a motorcycle adventure across the cliffs of the Himalayas, led by a Himalayan Master who pushes them to face their own fears. You can learn more about this series at the Official Site.

Film at Lincoln Center continues its Virtual Cinema with another repertory addition with Nanni Moretti’s 1993 film Cara Diario (Film Movement) which played at the 32nd New York Film Festival. Moretti stars in the film himself as he goes on three journeys through Italy, the first on a scooter in Rome, musing on cinema and meeting Jennifer Beals. His next journey takes him and his friend, Renato Carpentieri, looking for a place to write a screenplay, and the third involves Moretti visiting doctors to get a skin rash diagnosed.

STREAMING AND CABLE

Let’s begin with this week’s Netflix options, which includes the David Spade rom-com, THE WRONG MISSY, co-starring Lauren Lapkus as Missy and Sarah Chalke. The premise is that Spade’s character falls for a woman, whom he to his company’s corporate retreat, except that he sent the invite to the… wait for it… WRONG MISSY! Get it? Having just recently seen The Do-Over, I’m not sure how I feel about Spade still having a career thanks to his long-time pal, Adam Sandler, but I’ll probably give this a look when it streams starting Friday. Oh, yeah, and Rob Schneider is in this one, too.. not sure that’s a good or bad thing.

Although I’m way behind on catching up on The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, I’m pretty excited about the longer form “make your own adventure” episode, The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Kimmy vs. the Reverend, which will include guests like Daniel Radcliffe and Jon Hamm.

Hitting Amazon this week is Seberg (Amazon Prime Video), Benedict Andrews’ sadly-overlooked drama, starring Kristen Stewart as French New Wave star, Jean Seberg, as it deals with her involvement in J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI investigation of the Black Panthers in the late ‘60s due to her affair with activist Hakim Jamal, as played by Anthony Mackie. I feel like this movie really didn’t get the push it deserved when it was given a one-week theatrical last year and even less when it reopened earlier this year. This features some of Stewart’s best acting in my opinion, and love hearing about this little known story about American history.

Panama’s first-ever horror film Diablo Rojo PTY debuts on Amazon this week. The debut feature of Sol Moreno, the film deals with the Costa Rican and Panamanian folklore surrounding the legend of La Tuliveja, a cursed woman who drowned her own son and haunts the river where he died. It follows a “Diablo  Rojo” bus driver, his helper, a priest and two policemen who fall under a spell when they get lost in the Chiriqui jungle and have to survive the creatures the face on the road.

Probably the cable show I’m most excited about this week is TBS’s SNOWPIERCER show that will premiere on Sunday night. Based on the Bong Joon-ho adaptation of a French graphic novel, this sci-fi series about a miles-long train speeding through the frozen tundra the earth has some pretty awesome stars in Daveed Diggs, Jennifer Connelly, Lena Hall and many, many more.

Apparently, Hulu also has a new series debuting on Friday called The Great from one of the co-writers of The Favourite, but I haven’t received one Email about this, so yeah, Hulu needs to get better publicity, cause the one(s) they’re currently using kinda suck.

Also, don’t forget that the virtual Oxford Film Festival is still going on and in its fourth weekend of premiering new features and short films! This week’s offerings are Christopher Wesley Moore’s horror-thriller, A Stranger Among the Living, about a young teacher who has a premonition of a school shooting that stops it from happening until phantoms show up to make his omen come true. (Sounds very Final Destination to me, which is very cool!) Also, the “American Lens Narrative Shorts” will premiere with six shorts including a documentary short called “Dick Pics!” as well as the second block of “Fest Forward” shorts, and remember that all of these will have live Q&As, which is not something other virtual fests (like SXSW and Tribeca) have been doing. Most of these will only be available for a week so don’t miss some great filmmaking. You can get tickets for all these movies and their Q&As at Eventive, as well as watch some of previous week’s offerings.

Next week, more movies and shows not in theaters!

By the way, if you read this week’s column and have bothered to read this far down, feel free to drop me some thoughts at Edward dot Douglas at Gmail dot Com or drop me a note or tweet on Twitter. I love hearing from readers … honest!

[riichardwilson]

Transcript of Great Experiences Make for Loyal Customers

Back to Podcast

John Jantsch: This episode of The Duct Tape marketing agency Podcast is brought to you by Klaviyo. Klaviyo is a platform that helps growth-focused eCommerce brands drive more sales with super-targeted, highly relevant email, Facebook and Instagram marketing agency.

John Jantsch: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape marketing agency Podcast. This is John Jantsch and my guest today is Micah Solomon. He’s the bestselling author and one of America’s most popular keynote speakers on building bottom line growth through customer service. And we’re going to talk about his newest book, Ignore Your Customers (and They’ll Go Away), the simple playbook for delivering the ultimate customer service experience. So Micah, welcome back.

Micah Solomon: Oh, it’s great to be here, John.

John Jantsch: I can hear some people snickering saying, “Really, will they go away? Is that’s all it takes is ignoring them and they’ll go away?” But that’s not what we’re here to talk about, is it?

Micah Solomon: Well, I got that reaction once or twice and yeah, it can feel like that at the end of a long day, can’t it?

John Jantsch: It can sometimes, but again, we need those customers. Customers are King. Why is it that this is the part that is so hard for people to get right.

Micah Solomon: I think that by any objective standard customer service has improved over the years, but the thing is our customer expectations have skyrocketed as well. It’s not good enough to just do an okay job. And there’s so much value in doing a fantastic job because we’re no longer in the mad men era where Don Draper and Peggy Olson could convince you that Lucky Strikes were good for your throat, we’re not in that era anymore. We’re still interested in marketing agency, but only if it’s consonant with our experience as customers and the experience that our friends and the people we listen to online are having.

John Jantsch: Yeah, and I think the hard part about it is, I mean, really at the end of the day, businesses love their customers. They want to treat them well. They don’t want to provide bad service. But I think people underestimate just how hard it actually is to do it elegantly.

Micah Solomon: That’s exactly right. And I like to say I might… You’re interested how I’m a keynote speaker, I’m also a consultant. In fact, Ink crowned me the other day, Ink Magazine, as the world’s number one customer service turnaround expert. And then, which was so sweet and then he admitted I’m also the only one he’s ever met. But what I do is I walk into companies and I mystery shop them and see how they’re doing. And then I work with them to transform their customer experience, and what I find is most of the companies that hire me are already doing pretty well. They already understand the value of stuff, but they want to reach that exceptional level that you’re talking about. And it is hard. It is really hard. There’s many aspects to it.

John Jantsch: Yeah, that’s an interesting point because I know over the years a lot of the companies that have hired me to do marketing agency consulting are ones that kind of outwardly look like they’re doing all right. But it’s-

Micah Solomon: Yeah, exactly.

John Jantsch: … it’s the mentality of, but I want to invest in this that I think is really what you’re experiencing probably as well, isn’t it?

Micah Solomon: Yes. That sounds right.

John Jantsch: The kind of phrase or buzzword out there now is to be a customer first company. How do you take that beyond just the-

Micah Solomon: Smiling harder?

John Jantsch: … Team meeting?

Micah Solomon: Customer first, it’s a little bit of a misnomer, at least when I’m talking about it. I would say arguably employees should be first because they’re going to be delivering the service. But what we’re talking about with customer first, if we’re talking about the right way, is to take the customer’s perspective. I call this Micah’s Red Bench Principle, and it’s that the customers really only care about themselves. They care about their kids for sure and their spouse and their dog and so forth, but they don’t care about us as much as we wish they would. We need… Sadly, it’s true. So we need to see things from their perspective and understand they’re not really interested in our organizational chart, they’re not interested in any of that. If you can frame things in your mind and in your processes and in your attitude from a customer’s perspective, you’re going to do a lot better.

John Jantsch: All right, so that leads us right to how do you get in their head? I mean, how do you get that perspective?

Micah Solomon: Well that is an excellent question. You hire someone like me and I mean, there’s many different ways to do it, but you can hire someone like me to be your customer and see how it goes. And I can learn a lot. You could do this yourself as well. I would check all these things that you think are running fine and probably aren’t like… John, you’re like me, so you probably check this. But most companies never check their web forums to see if anyone actually answers those inquiries, the answers usually never. You check all those things. You make sure that it’s working the way a customer would want it to. On the website, you may want to hire a user experience person because that stuff’s really important too.

John Jantsch: Yeah, yeah. Our customers get to publish now. How has that dynamic changed not only customer service but certainly the need to be intentional about it?

Micah Solomon: I think of customer service as the new marketing agency and if you do a great job, if you provide a good customer experience and a warm customer service, then people are going to talk about you and they’ll also talk about you if you’re efficient and you’re in the right location and all that. But one thing they love to talk about is how they’ve been treated, so it’s extremely valuable. It’s also, I mean it’s arguably free. The staffing right, and so forth is not actually free but you do what you’re supposed to be doing and you get this free marketing agency as well, and of course it can go the other direction as well.

John Jantsch: Who in your mind, and I know you profile some bigger companies in particular that are household names in the book, but who do you think’s getting it right? That’s part A, and then maybe talk about a not so well known company that you think has gotten it right and that that’s made a difference.

Micah Solomon: The companies I cover in my book, Ignore Your Customers (and They’ll Go Away) range from ones that we all think about, Nordstrom’s, Zappos, we spent some time with both of them, USAA, which is huge in insurance and financial services and a lot of other stuff. Virgin Hotels, which actually will eventually be an enormous chain, but right now is only just a couple of hotels, we spent some time with them. Safelite Auto Glass, which if you think about it, they come into your life probably on a challenging day. I mean, best case is a rock hit your window and you need a new windshield. Worst case, someone actually intentionally broke your window because they broke into your car and replacing the windshield is only one of your problems. They come into your life on a bad day and they don’t only strive to make things okay, they strive to delight you. I spent some time with Safelite Auto Glass.

Micah Solomon: Some companies that I can see, John, neither of us need this but Drybar, which is for women and maybe men who are in hairbands, they’re the people who have done so well by offering a blow out and styling, we spent a bunch of time with them. MOD Pizza, which is growing like gangbusters and a voice over IP company named Nextiva. All of those, I would say are doing a spectacular job in very different industries.

John Jantsch: I want to remind you that this episode is brought to you by Klaviyo. Klaviyo helps you build meaningful customer relationships by listening and understanding cues from your customers. And this allows you to easily turn that information into valuable marketing agency messages. There’s powerful segmentation email auto-responders that are ready to go. Great reporting. You want to learn a little bit about the secret to building customer relationships? They’ve got a really fun series called Klaviyo’s Beyond Black Friday, it’s a docu-series. A lot of fun quick lessons. Just head on over to klaviyo.com/beyondbf, beyond black Friday.

John Jantsch: Tell me a little bit about Safelite? Because I had one of those experiences where I had to replace my windshield. And I will tell you that I think the entire experience, I wouldn’t… I’d love for you to talk about the delight part, but I will just tell you from a get the job done part, it was delightful. I scheduled, they came out at the scheduled time, they replaced it, everything went great. I mean, from my standpoint it was so convenient, I was able to schedule the entire thing online, pay for it online. The person came out, I didn’t even know they were there and it was done. I mean, from that standpoint it was as frictionless as possible, but what did you find that they do that you feel is over and above that?

Micah Solomon: That’s a lot of it. And to pull that off is harder than I would imagine. They have to have the part ready, they have to marry the part to the work order. And then they’ve worked really hard on the scheduling part. They first did something that was too restrictive where they told you exactly when the driver was show up, but what they found was that the drivers out in the field wanted a little more control over it because maybe another job is going a little longer, they involve the drivers in that. They’ve done some things for people who are really worried about personal safety. You now get a little photo of the person, a little bio and so forth. I guess someone shows up, they’re a totally different person, you could head it off at the pass. The delight part. I think it’s most of those things that you talked about the frictionless, but it’s also the customer service training that they’ve gone into to make sure that they are treating you well on a personal and personable level.

John Jantsch: Let’s talk about silos inside of organizations.

Micah Solomon: Oh, no.

John Jantsch: A lot of organizations have marketing agency and sales and service, as separate arms of the organization. Maybe you’ve not encountered any of these, but I’m told they exist still today. When it comes to the idea of customer service, or a perspective about this customer first thinking, what role do marketing agency and sales play in that? Again, I know that’s a really loaded and big question, but I guess in some ways, another way I could ask that is as how do you get every marketing agency, sales and service kind of all on the same page?

Micah Solomon: Well this is really important and many people have studied this. You don’t want the salesperson who over sells beyond what the customer support team can really bring to life. marketing agency, you don’t want to over sell your product and then have it be beyond what your company can provide either. That’s very important. And then having the salespeople really know the product, really know the team that’s supporting the product. I think all of that’s extremely important. Now, John, you live way out in the country, so doesn’t it potentially get a little bit sick when people talk about silos and it’s entirely a metaphor at this point?

John Jantsch: That is a good point. I grew up on a farm, so we put grain in those silos.

Micah Solomon: Totally.

John Jantsch: All right, let’s talk about generations. I have four millennial aged children and their buying habits or the way that they consider who they’re going to buy from, who they’re going to stay with are substantially different than mine, I think. Or at least a different setup. I wouldn’t say there’s… We have the same values and connection with companies. But I think that, for example, if they go on a website, it doesn’t work the way they think it’s supposed to work, that’s the end of the story. Whereas I might go, ah, this is clunky, but they’re a good brand. I like them and I might fight through. From a service standpoint, how do you work with companies that A, have multi-generational employees maybe or B, certainly customers?

Micah Solomon: I tend to focus on the customer side. And what I would say is that all of us are becoming millennials. If a business can delight John’s kids, are they girls? Are they?

John Jantsch: Yes. All four girls.

Micah Solomon: Four girls and two of them are millennials, that’s awesome. My feeling is if you can delight the millennials, then pretty soon you’ll delight their older brothers and sisters and then you’ll delight John as well. I was talking with Herve Humler, who’s one of the actual founders of the Ritz Carlton Hotel Company and he said that’s how we do it. If a millennial is asking for something, we’ll figure that mom and dad are going to ask for it pretty soon. And I think that’s very important. There’s even a group on Facebook called My Life’s Officially Over, My Parents have Joined Facebook.

Micah Solomon: What do millennials want? They want it to work. They expect it to work. I mean, I think of millennials as technologically savvy is sort of true, but what they really are is what you said John, they’re technologically intolerant. When I describe having a 1984 Mac, yeah, I talked to millennials, they’re like, “Oh, that’s really cool.” And then I say, “Well yes and no. Can you believe that to install Microsoft Word, I had to switch in these floppy disks for five hours?” And they’re like, “No, that computer is dead to me. I like the old rainbow logo, but that’s about it.” They’re technologically intolerant, but I think that really keeps us on our toes. They’re also very interested in what is perhaps incorrectly called authenticity, but they’re okay with businesses with a little bit more of the warts showing because it’s more personable and they are good with what I call an eye level or peer on peer style of service.

Micah Solomon: They don’t want you putting on airs like we see in Buckingham Palace and all those historical shows with the one arm behind the back and stuff. It’s more like… And I was interviewing millennial traveler for one of my books and she said, “What’s comfortable for me is someone who’s serving me, but we are on a level, I understand that next week if I was short on money, maybe I’ll be working as a barista. That’s the style of service that’s most comfortable for them.”

John Jantsch: Couple of great points there. All right, let’s talk about hiring for customer service. I think that some of the best customer service people are just born that way, and you may dispute that. But I mean, how do you keep a… If as your company grows and you’ve built this brand on people love us, we serve them well how do you keep that culture alive with the fact that you have to get bodies in seats, in some cases.

Micah Solomon: Sometimes the reason, and I can speak from experience, having literally started in my basement, sometimes the owner is so great about customer service and not totally because it’s their personality. But because you have a proverbial loaded gun to your head, I mean, because we know the value of every customer. You need to get this across that every individual customer is irreplaceable. I would actually argue that customers in the plural sort of doesn’t exist, that our only customer is the one that’s in front of you right now. Born that way is a very important point. If you can hire for traits, it’s ideal. Now, if you’re in a very technical field, Google, you also have to hire for technical aptitude and maybe even in technical training, but for customer facing positions, if you can hire for traits you’ll do best. Do you have a second for me to tell you the traits you want?

John Jantsch: Yes, I do. I’d love it.

Micah Solomon: All right, so I’m going to give you a rule of thumb. I will, however, say it’s better to go in with one of these great companies like Gallup that has a more involved methodology. But a lot of people aren’t going to do that, so I’ve got a rule of actually all five fingers. Here’s how to remember it. Picture the superstore, Petco. All right? And then outside of Petco, put a big wet dog. All right, so John, what is the superstore?

John Jantsch: Petco.

Micah Solomon: Right. And is the dog dry or is it wet?

John Jantsch: It is wet and in fact it’s getting ready to shake.

Micah Solomon: All right, so you have this big wet… So the reason you want to remember this is because my five traits that make you really good at customer service, spelled wetco, W-E-T-C-O. It’s silly but it works. W is warmth, this just means they like other people. E is empathy, this means they can sort of, well not sort of, they can actually sense what another person’s thinking without them saying it. T is teamwork, this is a willingness to involve your entire team to find a solution for the customer. C is conscientiousness, this means detail orientedness and O is optimism. Specifically, it’s what Marty Seligman calls an optimistic, explanatory style. If you get someone with an pessimistic explanatory style customers they can have a bad day and they can bite your head off and you have to be like, “Oh my goodness, I must’ve done something horribly wrong.” You’re going to call in sick for the rest of the day. Go home, never come back to work. Understandable but not ideal.

Micah Solomon: What you want is someone who will say, “Oh, well that was a challenging conversation. I hope she feels better tomorrow.” Maybe I could have done better. I’m going to talk it over with my manager, but I’m also going to dust myself off, go back to work. Warmth, empathy, teamwork, conscientiousness and optimism. Those are the traits to hire for. However, most of us have already hired, however we’ve hired. And so we’ve got these people, well, what can we do? Well, some of these things can be trained for, there’s a kind of empathy that can’t be trained for, that’s called dispositional empathy. And that’s just the born that way part. But there’s another kind, which is called situational empathy. And this can absolutely be trained for.

Micah Solomon: For instance, in health care, sometimes I consult with hospitals. One of the issues they have is that those nice, hopefully nice people on the phone doing the scheduling, they’re generally in a different building from where the patients are. They don’t encounter a patient all day and almost none of them has ever been an inpatient in a hospital. You have these two barriers to the dispositional empathy that they need. What do you do? Well, you realize it’s a problem, or as we call in the biz, a challenge and then you get working on it. You simulate clinical moments. One thing I’ve always suggested for nurses, and none of them have ever taken me up on this, but with nurses, I say, “Hey, you want to know how long it seems between when that buzzer’s pressed and when you show up? How about this? Drink four liters of water.” No one has taken me up on it. But you get the idea, right?

John Jantsch: Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that’s interesting. I thought you were going to suggest that they were going to inoculate them with some infectious disease or something so that they would all have to spend two weeks in a hospital or something.

Micah Solomon: Oh gosh, no. But there are things like that you can do if you want to think about your customers who have disabilities, there are these heavy boots that you can wear to give you a feeling. And so yes, so some of that, but mostly it’s going to be role-plays and video and in person training.

John Jantsch: Speaking with Micah Solomon, his latest book is Ignore Your Customers (and They’ll Go Away). Micah, tell us where people can find out more about you, your work and your books.

Micah Solomon: Come to my website if you don’t mind, you’re going to have to be masterful at spelling biblical names. It’s micahsolomon.com which is M-I-C-A-H at M-I-C-A-H-S-O-L-O-M-O-N. There’s no a and solomon.com or if that’s just too much for you. Here is my favorite. John, this is very Abby Hoffman, I have a URL just for the book and it is ignorethisbook.com.

John Jantsch: Oh, that’s awesome. Well, Micah, thanks for dropping by and next time you talk to Ira, tell him you were on a show that’s more popular… Probably not more popular, somebody thought was more influential than him. Hopefully we’ll run into you soon next time I’m out there on the road.

Micah Solomon: Thanks for everything John.

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Transcript of Great Experiences Make for Loyal Customers

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John Jantsch: This episode of The Duct Tape marketing agency Podcast is brought to you by Klaviyo. Klaviyo is a platform that helps growth-focused eCommerce brands drive more sales with super-targeted, highly relevant email, Facebook and Instagram marketing agency.

John Jantsch: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape marketing agency Podcast. This is John Jantsch and my guest today is Micah Solomon. He’s the bestselling author and one of America’s most popular keynote speakers on building bottom line growth through customer service. And we’re going to talk about his newest book, Ignore Your Customers (and They’ll Go Away), the simple playbook for delivering the ultimate customer service experience. So Micah, welcome back.

Micah Solomon: Oh, it’s great to be here, John.

John Jantsch: I can hear some people snickering saying, “Really, will they go away? Is that’s all it takes is ignoring them and they’ll go away?” But that’s not what we’re here to talk about, is it?

Micah Solomon: Well, I got that reaction once or twice and yeah, it can feel like that at the end of a long day, can’t it?

John Jantsch: It can sometimes, but again, we need those customers. Customers are King. Why is it that this is the part that is so hard for people to get right.

Micah Solomon: I think that by any objective standard customer service has improved over the years, but the thing is our customer expectations have skyrocketed as well. It’s not good enough to just do an okay job. And there’s so much value in doing a fantastic job because we’re no longer in the mad men era where Don Draper and Peggy Olson could convince you that Lucky Strikes were good for your throat, we’re not in that era anymore. We’re still interested in marketing agency, but only if it’s consonant with our experience as customers and the experience that our friends and the people we listen to online are having.

John Jantsch: Yeah, and I think the hard part about it is, I mean, really at the end of the day, businesses love their customers. They want to treat them well. They don’t want to provide bad service. But I think people underestimate just how hard it actually is to do it elegantly.

Micah Solomon: That’s exactly right. And I like to say I might… You’re interested how I’m a keynote speaker, I’m also a consultant. In fact, Ink crowned me the other day, Ink Magazine, as the world’s number one customer service turnaround expert. And then, which was so sweet and then he admitted I’m also the only one he’s ever met. But what I do is I walk into companies and I mystery shop them and see how they’re doing. And then I work with them to transform their customer experience, and what I find is most of the companies that hire me are already doing pretty well. They already understand the value of stuff, but they want to reach that exceptional level that you’re talking about. And it is hard. It is really hard. There’s many aspects to it.

John Jantsch: Yeah, that’s an interesting point because I know over the years a lot of the companies that have hired me to do marketing agency consulting are ones that kind of outwardly look like they’re doing all right. But it’s-

Micah Solomon: Yeah, exactly.

John Jantsch: … it’s the mentality of, but I want to invest in this that I think is really what you’re experiencing probably as well, isn’t it?

Micah Solomon: Yes. That sounds right.

John Jantsch: The kind of phrase or buzzword out there now is to be a customer first company. How do you take that beyond just the-

Micah Solomon: Smiling harder?

John Jantsch: … Team meeting?

Micah Solomon: Customer first, it’s a little bit of a misnomer, at least when I’m talking about it. I would say arguably employees should be first because they’re going to be delivering the service. But what we’re talking about with customer first, if we’re talking about the right way, is to take the customer’s perspective. I call this Micah’s Red Bench Principle, and it’s that the customers really only care about themselves. They care about their kids for sure and their spouse and their dog and so forth, but they don’t care about us as much as we wish they would. We need… Sadly, it’s true. So we need to see things from their perspective and understand they’re not really interested in our organizational chart, they’re not interested in any of that. If you can frame things in your mind and in your processes and in your attitude from a customer’s perspective, you’re going to do a lot better.

John Jantsch: All right, so that leads us right to how do you get in their head? I mean, how do you get that perspective?

Micah Solomon: Well that is an excellent question. You hire someone like me and I mean, there’s many different ways to do it, but you can hire someone like me to be your customer and see how it goes. And I can learn a lot. You could do this yourself as well. I would check all these things that you think are running fine and probably aren’t like… John, you’re like me, so you probably check this. But most companies never check their web forums to see if anyone actually answers those inquiries, the answers usually never. You check all those things. You make sure that it’s working the way a customer would want it to. On the website, you may want to hire a user experience person because that stuff’s really important too.

John Jantsch: Yeah, yeah. Our customers get to publish now. How has that dynamic changed not only customer service but certainly the need to be intentional about it?

Micah Solomon: I think of customer service as the new marketing agency and if you do a great job, if you provide a good customer experience and a warm customer service, then people are going to talk about you and they’ll also talk about you if you’re efficient and you’re in the right location and all that. But one thing they love to talk about is how they’ve been treated, so it’s extremely valuable. It’s also, I mean it’s arguably free. The staffing right, and so forth is not actually free but you do what you’re supposed to be doing and you get this free marketing agency as well, and of course it can go the other direction as well.

John Jantsch: Who in your mind, and I know you profile some bigger companies in particular that are household names in the book, but who do you think’s getting it right? That’s part A, and then maybe talk about a not so well known company that you think has gotten it right and that that’s made a difference.

Micah Solomon: The companies I cover in my book, Ignore Your Customers (and They’ll Go Away) range from ones that we all think about, Nordstrom’s, Zappos, we spent some time with both of them, USAA, which is huge in insurance and financial services and a lot of other stuff. Virgin Hotels, which actually will eventually be an enormous chain, but right now is only just a couple of hotels, we spent some time with them. Safelite Auto Glass, which if you think about it, they come into your life probably on a challenging day. I mean, best case is a rock hit your window and you need a new windshield. Worst case, someone actually intentionally broke your window because they broke into your car and replacing the windshield is only one of your problems. They come into your life on a bad day and they don’t only strive to make things okay, they strive to delight you. I spent some time with Safelite Auto Glass.

Micah Solomon: Some companies that I can see, John, neither of us need this but Drybar, which is for women and maybe men who are in hairbands, they’re the people who have done so well by offering a blow out and styling, we spent a bunch of time with them. MOD Pizza, which is growing like gangbusters and a voice over IP company named Nextiva. All of those, I would say are doing a spectacular job in very different industries.

John Jantsch: I want to remind you that this episode is brought to you by Klaviyo. Klaviyo helps you build meaningful customer relationships by listening and understanding cues from your customers. And this allows you to easily turn that information into valuable marketing agency messages. There’s powerful segmentation email auto-responders that are ready to go. Great reporting. You want to learn a little bit about the secret to building customer relationships? They’ve got a really fun series called Klaviyo’s Beyond Black Friday, it’s a docu-series. A lot of fun quick lessons. Just head on over to klaviyo.com/beyondbf, beyond black Friday.

John Jantsch: Tell me a little bit about Safelite? Because I had one of those experiences where I had to replace my windshield. And I will tell you that I think the entire experience, I wouldn’t… I’d love for you to talk about the delight part, but I will just tell you from a get the job done part, it was delightful. I scheduled, they came out at the scheduled time, they replaced it, everything went great. I mean, from my standpoint it was so convenient, I was able to schedule the entire thing online, pay for it online. The person came out, I didn’t even know they were there and it was done. I mean, from that standpoint it was as frictionless as possible, but what did you find that they do that you feel is over and above that?

Micah Solomon: That’s a lot of it. And to pull that off is harder than I would imagine. They have to have the part ready, they have to marry the part to the work order. And then they’ve worked really hard on the scheduling part. They first did something that was too restrictive where they told you exactly when the driver was show up, but what they found was that the drivers out in the field wanted a little more control over it because maybe another job is going a little longer, they involve the drivers in that. They’ve done some things for people who are really worried about personal safety. You now get a little photo of the person, a little bio and so forth. I guess someone shows up, they’re a totally different person, you could head it off at the pass. The delight part. I think it’s most of those things that you talked about the frictionless, but it’s also the customer service training that they’ve gone into to make sure that they are treating you well on a personal and personable level.

John Jantsch: Let’s talk about silos inside of organizations.

Micah Solomon: Oh, no.

John Jantsch: A lot of organizations have marketing agency and sales and service, as separate arms of the organization. Maybe you’ve not encountered any of these, but I’m told they exist still today. When it comes to the idea of customer service, or a perspective about this customer first thinking, what role do marketing agency and sales play in that? Again, I know that’s a really loaded and big question, but I guess in some ways, another way I could ask that is as how do you get every marketing agency, sales and service kind of all on the same page?

Micah Solomon: Well this is really important and many people have studied this. You don’t want the salesperson who over sells beyond what the customer support team can really bring to life. marketing agency, you don’t want to over sell your product and then have it be beyond what your company can provide either. That’s very important. And then having the salespeople really know the product, really know the team that’s supporting the product. I think all of that’s extremely important. Now, John, you live way out in the country, so doesn’t it potentially get a little bit sick when people talk about silos and it’s entirely a metaphor at this point?

John Jantsch: That is a good point. I grew up on a farm, so we put grain in those silos.

Micah Solomon: Totally.

John Jantsch: All right, let’s talk about generations. I have four millennial aged children and their buying habits or the way that they consider who they’re going to buy from, who they’re going to stay with are substantially different than mine, I think. Or at least a different setup. I wouldn’t say there’s… We have the same values and connection with companies. But I think that, for example, if they go on a website, it doesn’t work the way they think it’s supposed to work, that’s the end of the story. Whereas I might go, ah, this is clunky, but they’re a good brand. I like them and I might fight through. From a service standpoint, how do you work with companies that A, have multi-generational employees maybe or B, certainly customers?

Micah Solomon: I tend to focus on the customer side. And what I would say is that all of us are becoming millennials. If a business can delight John’s kids, are they girls? Are they?

John Jantsch: Yes. All four girls.

Micah Solomon: Four girls and two of them are millennials, that’s awesome. My feeling is if you can delight the millennials, then pretty soon you’ll delight their older brothers and sisters and then you’ll delight John as well. I was talking with Herve Humler, who’s one of the actual founders of the Ritz Carlton Hotel Company and he said that’s how we do it. If a millennial is asking for something, we’ll figure that mom and dad are going to ask for it pretty soon. And I think that’s very important. There’s even a group on Facebook called My Life’s Officially Over, My Parents have Joined Facebook.

Micah Solomon: What do millennials want? They want it to work. They expect it to work. I mean, I think of millennials as technologically savvy is sort of true, but what they really are is what you said John, they’re technologically intolerant. When I describe having a 1984 Mac, yeah, I talked to millennials, they’re like, “Oh, that’s really cool.” And then I say, “Well yes and no. Can you believe that to install Microsoft Word, I had to switch in these floppy disks for five hours?” And they’re like, “No, that computer is dead to me. I like the old rainbow logo, but that’s about it.” They’re technologically intolerant, but I think that really keeps us on our toes. They’re also very interested in what is perhaps incorrectly called authenticity, but they’re okay with businesses with a little bit more of the warts showing because it’s more personable and they are good with what I call an eye level or peer on peer style of service.

Micah Solomon: They don’t want you putting on airs like we see in Buckingham Palace and all those historical shows with the one arm behind the back and stuff. It’s more like… And I was interviewing millennial traveler for one of my books and she said, “What’s comfortable for me is someone who’s serving me, but we are on a level, I understand that next week if I was short on money, maybe I’ll be working as a barista. That’s the style of service that’s most comfortable for them.”

John Jantsch: Couple of great points there. All right, let’s talk about hiring for customer service. I think that some of the best customer service people are just born that way, and you may dispute that. But I mean, how do you keep a… If as your company grows and you’ve built this brand on people love us, we serve them well how do you keep that culture alive with the fact that you have to get bodies in seats, in some cases.

Micah Solomon: Sometimes the reason, and I can speak from experience, having literally started in my basement, sometimes the owner is so great about customer service and not totally because it’s their personality. But because you have a proverbial loaded gun to your head, I mean, because we know the value of every customer. You need to get this across that every individual customer is irreplaceable. I would actually argue that customers in the plural sort of doesn’t exist, that our only customer is the one that’s in front of you right now. Born that way is a very important point. If you can hire for traits, it’s ideal. Now, if you’re in a very technical field, Google, you also have to hire for technical aptitude and maybe even in technical training, but for customer facing positions, if you can hire for traits you’ll do best. Do you have a second for me to tell you the traits you want?

John Jantsch: Yes, I do. I’d love it.

Micah Solomon: All right, so I’m going to give you a rule of thumb. I will, however, say it’s better to go in with one of these great companies like Gallup that has a more involved methodology. But a lot of people aren’t going to do that, so I’ve got a rule of actually all five fingers. Here’s how to remember it. Picture the superstore, Petco. All right? And then outside of Petco, put a big wet dog. All right, so John, what is the superstore?

John Jantsch: Petco.

Micah Solomon: Right. And is the dog dry or is it wet?

John Jantsch: It is wet and in fact it’s getting ready to shake.

Micah Solomon: All right, so you have this big wet… So the reason you want to remember this is because my five traits that make you really good at customer service, spelled wetco, W-E-T-C-O. It’s silly but it works. W is warmth, this just means they like other people. E is empathy, this means they can sort of, well not sort of, they can actually sense what another person’s thinking without them saying it. T is teamwork, this is a willingness to involve your entire team to find a solution for the customer. C is conscientiousness, this means detail orientedness and O is optimism. Specifically, it’s what Marty Seligman calls an optimistic, explanatory style. If you get someone with an pessimistic explanatory style customers they can have a bad day and they can bite your head off and you have to be like, “Oh my goodness, I must’ve done something horribly wrong.” You’re going to call in sick for the rest of the day. Go home, never come back to work. Understandable but not ideal.

Micah Solomon: What you want is someone who will say, “Oh, well that was a challenging conversation. I hope she feels better tomorrow.” Maybe I could have done better. I’m going to talk it over with my manager, but I’m also going to dust myself off, go back to work. Warmth, empathy, teamwork, conscientiousness and optimism. Those are the traits to hire for. However, most of us have already hired, however we’ve hired. And so we’ve got these people, well, what can we do? Well, some of these things can be trained for, there’s a kind of empathy that can’t be trained for, that’s called dispositional empathy. And that’s just the born that way part. But there’s another kind, which is called situational empathy. And this can absolutely be trained for.

Micah Solomon: For instance, in health care, sometimes I consult with hospitals. One of the issues they have is that those nice, hopefully nice people on the phone doing the scheduling, they’re generally in a different building from where the patients are. They don’t encounter a patient all day and almost none of them has ever been an inpatient in a hospital. You have these two barriers to the dispositional empathy that they need. What do you do? Well, you realize it’s a problem, or as we call in the biz, a challenge and then you get working on it. You simulate clinical moments. One thing I’ve always suggested for nurses, and none of them have ever taken me up on this, but with nurses, I say, “Hey, you want to know how long it seems between when that buzzer’s pressed and when you show up? How about this? Drink four liters of water.” No one has taken me up on it. But you get the idea, right?

John Jantsch: Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that’s interesting. I thought you were going to suggest that they were going to inoculate them with some infectious disease or something so that they would all have to spend two weeks in a hospital or something.

Micah Solomon: Oh gosh, no. But there are things like that you can do if you want to think about your customers who have disabilities, there are these heavy boots that you can wear to give you a feeling. And so yes, so some of that, but mostly it’s going to be role-plays and video and in person training.

John Jantsch: Speaking with Micah Solomon, his latest book is Ignore Your Customers (and They’ll Go Away). Micah, tell us where people can find out more about you, your work and your books.

Micah Solomon: Come to my website if you don’t mind, you’re going to have to be masterful at spelling biblical names. It’s micahsolomon.com which is M-I-C-A-H at M-I-C-A-H-S-O-L-O-M-O-N. There’s no a and solomon.com or if that’s just too much for you. Here is my favorite. John, this is very Abby Hoffman, I have a URL just for the book and it is ignorethisbook.com.

John Jantsch: Oh, that’s awesome. Well, Micah, thanks for dropping by and next time you talk to Ira, tell him you were on a show that’s more popular… Probably not more popular, somebody thought was more influential than him. Hopefully we’ll run into you soon next time I’m out there on the road.

Micah Solomon: Thanks for everything John.

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Transcript of Great Experiences Make for Loyal Customers

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John Jantsch: This episode of The Duct Tape marketing agency Podcast is brought to you by Klaviyo. Klaviyo is a platform that helps growth-focused eCommerce brands drive more sales with super-targeted, highly relevant email, Facebook and Instagram marketing agency.

John Jantsch: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape marketing agency Podcast. This is John Jantsch and my guest today is Micah Solomon. He’s the bestselling author and one of America’s most popular keynote speakers on building bottom line growth through customer service. And we’re going to talk about his newest book, Ignore Your Customers (and They’ll Go Away), the simple playbook for delivering the ultimate customer service experience. So Micah, welcome back.

Micah Solomon: Oh, it’s great to be here, John.

John Jantsch: I can hear some people snickering saying, “Really, will they go away? Is that’s all it takes is ignoring them and they’ll go away?” But that’s not what we’re here to talk about, is it?

Micah Solomon: Well, I got that reaction once or twice and yeah, it can feel like that at the end of a long day, can’t it?

John Jantsch: It can sometimes, but again, we need those customers. Customers are King. Why is it that this is the part that is so hard for people to get right.

Micah Solomon: I think that by any objective standard customer service has improved over the years, but the thing is our customer expectations have skyrocketed as well. It’s not good enough to just do an okay job. And there’s so much value in doing a fantastic job because we’re no longer in the mad men era where Don Draper and Peggy Olson could convince you that Lucky Strikes were good for your throat, we’re not in that era anymore. We’re still interested in marketing agency, but only if it’s consonant with our experience as customers and the experience that our friends and the people we listen to online are having.

John Jantsch: Yeah, and I think the hard part about it is, I mean, really at the end of the day, businesses love their customers. They want to treat them well. They don’t want to provide bad service. But I think people underestimate just how hard it actually is to do it elegantly.

Micah Solomon: That’s exactly right. And I like to say I might… You’re interested how I’m a keynote speaker, I’m also a consultant. In fact, Ink crowned me the other day, Ink Magazine, as the world’s number one customer service turnaround expert. And then, which was so sweet and then he admitted I’m also the only one he’s ever met. But what I do is I walk into companies and I mystery shop them and see how they’re doing. And then I work with them to transform their customer experience, and what I find is most of the companies that hire me are already doing pretty well. They already understand the value of stuff, but they want to reach that exceptional level that you’re talking about. And it is hard. It is really hard. There’s many aspects to it.

John Jantsch: Yeah, that’s an interesting point because I know over the years a lot of the companies that have hired me to do marketing agency consulting are ones that kind of outwardly look like they’re doing all right. But it’s-

Micah Solomon: Yeah, exactly.

John Jantsch: … it’s the mentality of, but I want to invest in this that I think is really what you’re experiencing probably as well, isn’t it?

Micah Solomon: Yes. That sounds right.

John Jantsch: The kind of phrase or buzzword out there now is to be a customer first company. How do you take that beyond just the-

Micah Solomon: Smiling harder?

John Jantsch: … Team meeting?

Micah Solomon: Customer first, it’s a little bit of a misnomer, at least when I’m talking about it. I would say arguably employees should be first because they’re going to be delivering the service. But what we’re talking about with customer first, if we’re talking about the right way, is to take the customer’s perspective. I call this Micah’s Red Bench Principle, and it’s that the customers really only care about themselves. They care about their kids for sure and their spouse and their dog and so forth, but they don’t care about us as much as we wish they would. We need… Sadly, it’s true. So we need to see things from their perspective and understand they’re not really interested in our organizational chart, they’re not interested in any of that. If you can frame things in your mind and in your processes and in your attitude from a customer’s perspective, you’re going to do a lot better.

John Jantsch: All right, so that leads us right to how do you get in their head? I mean, how do you get that perspective?

Micah Solomon: Well that is an excellent question. You hire someone like me and I mean, there’s many different ways to do it, but you can hire someone like me to be your customer and see how it goes. And I can learn a lot. You could do this yourself as well. I would check all these things that you think are running fine and probably aren’t like… John, you’re like me, so you probably check this. But most companies never check their web forums to see if anyone actually answers those inquiries, the answers usually never. You check all those things. You make sure that it’s working the way a customer would want it to. On the website, you may want to hire a user experience person because that stuff’s really important too.

John Jantsch: Yeah, yeah. Our customers get to publish now. How has that dynamic changed not only customer service but certainly the need to be intentional about it?

Micah Solomon: I think of customer service as the new marketing agency and if you do a great job, if you provide a good customer experience and a warm customer service, then people are going to talk about you and they’ll also talk about you if you’re efficient and you’re in the right location and all that. But one thing they love to talk about is how they’ve been treated, so it’s extremely valuable. It’s also, I mean it’s arguably free. The staffing right, and so forth is not actually free but you do what you’re supposed to be doing and you get this free marketing agency as well, and of course it can go the other direction as well.

John Jantsch: Who in your mind, and I know you profile some bigger companies in particular that are household names in the book, but who do you think’s getting it right? That’s part A, and then maybe talk about a not so well known company that you think has gotten it right and that that’s made a difference.

Micah Solomon: The companies I cover in my book, Ignore Your Customers (and They’ll Go Away) range from ones that we all think about, Nordstrom’s, Zappos, we spent some time with both of them, USAA, which is huge in insurance and financial services and a lot of other stuff. Virgin Hotels, which actually will eventually be an enormous chain, but right now is only just a couple of hotels, we spent some time with them. Safelite Auto Glass, which if you think about it, they come into your life probably on a challenging day. I mean, best case is a rock hit your window and you need a new windshield. Worst case, someone actually intentionally broke your window because they broke into your car and replacing the windshield is only one of your problems. They come into your life on a bad day and they don’t only strive to make things okay, they strive to delight you. I spent some time with Safelite Auto Glass.

Micah Solomon: Some companies that I can see, John, neither of us need this but Drybar, which is for women and maybe men who are in hairbands, they’re the people who have done so well by offering a blow out and styling, we spent a bunch of time with them. MOD Pizza, which is growing like gangbusters and a voice over IP company named Nextiva. All of those, I would say are doing a spectacular job in very different industries.

John Jantsch: I want to remind you that this episode is brought to you by Klaviyo. Klaviyo helps you build meaningful customer relationships by listening and understanding cues from your customers. And this allows you to easily turn that information into valuable marketing agency messages. There’s powerful segmentation email auto-responders that are ready to go. Great reporting. You want to learn a little bit about the secret to building customer relationships? They’ve got a really fun series called Klaviyo’s Beyond Black Friday, it’s a docu-series. A lot of fun quick lessons. Just head on over to klaviyo.com/beyondbf, beyond black Friday.

John Jantsch: Tell me a little bit about Safelite? Because I had one of those experiences where I had to replace my windshield. And I will tell you that I think the entire experience, I wouldn’t… I’d love for you to talk about the delight part, but I will just tell you from a get the job done part, it was delightful. I scheduled, they came out at the scheduled time, they replaced it, everything went great. I mean, from my standpoint it was so convenient, I was able to schedule the entire thing online, pay for it online. The person came out, I didn’t even know they were there and it was done. I mean, from that standpoint it was as frictionless as possible, but what did you find that they do that you feel is over and above that?

Micah Solomon: That’s a lot of it. And to pull that off is harder than I would imagine. They have to have the part ready, they have to marry the part to the work order. And then they’ve worked really hard on the scheduling part. They first did something that was too restrictive where they told you exactly when the driver was show up, but what they found was that the drivers out in the field wanted a little more control over it because maybe another job is going a little longer, they involve the drivers in that. They’ve done some things for people who are really worried about personal safety. You now get a little photo of the person, a little bio and so forth. I guess someone shows up, they’re a totally different person, you could head it off at the pass. The delight part. I think it’s most of those things that you talked about the frictionless, but it’s also the customer service training that they’ve gone into to make sure that they are treating you well on a personal and personable level.

John Jantsch: Let’s talk about silos inside of organizations.

Micah Solomon: Oh, no.

John Jantsch: A lot of organizations have marketing agency and sales and service, as separate arms of the organization. Maybe you’ve not encountered any of these, but I’m told they exist still today. When it comes to the idea of customer service, or a perspective about this customer first thinking, what role do marketing agency and sales play in that? Again, I know that’s a really loaded and big question, but I guess in some ways, another way I could ask that is as how do you get every marketing agency, sales and service kind of all on the same page?

Micah Solomon: Well this is really important and many people have studied this. You don’t want the salesperson who over sells beyond what the customer support team can really bring to life. marketing agency, you don’t want to over sell your product and then have it be beyond what your company can provide either. That’s very important. And then having the salespeople really know the product, really know the team that’s supporting the product. I think all of that’s extremely important. Now, John, you live way out in the country, so doesn’t it potentially get a little bit sick when people talk about silos and it’s entirely a metaphor at this point?

John Jantsch: That is a good point. I grew up on a farm, so we put grain in those silos.

Micah Solomon: Totally.

John Jantsch: All right, let’s talk about generations. I have four millennial aged children and their buying habits or the way that they consider who they’re going to buy from, who they’re going to stay with are substantially different than mine, I think. Or at least a different setup. I wouldn’t say there’s… We have the same values and connection with companies. But I think that, for example, if they go on a website, it doesn’t work the way they think it’s supposed to work, that’s the end of the story. Whereas I might go, ah, this is clunky, but they’re a good brand. I like them and I might fight through. From a service standpoint, how do you work with companies that A, have multi-generational employees maybe or B, certainly customers?

Micah Solomon: I tend to focus on the customer side. And what I would say is that all of us are becoming millennials. If a business can delight John’s kids, are they girls? Are they?

John Jantsch: Yes. All four girls.

Micah Solomon: Four girls and two of them are millennials, that’s awesome. My feeling is if you can delight the millennials, then pretty soon you’ll delight their older brothers and sisters and then you’ll delight John as well. I was talking with Herve Humler, who’s one of the actual founders of the Ritz Carlton Hotel Company and he said that’s how we do it. If a millennial is asking for something, we’ll figure that mom and dad are going to ask for it pretty soon. And I think that’s very important. There’s even a group on Facebook called My Life’s Officially Over, My Parents have Joined Facebook.

Micah Solomon: What do millennials want? They want it to work. They expect it to work. I mean, I think of millennials as technologically savvy is sort of true, but what they really are is what you said John, they’re technologically intolerant. When I describe having a 1984 Mac, yeah, I talked to millennials, they’re like, “Oh, that’s really cool.” And then I say, “Well yes and no. Can you believe that to install Microsoft Word, I had to switch in these floppy disks for five hours?” And they’re like, “No, that computer is dead to me. I like the old rainbow logo, but that’s about it.” They’re technologically intolerant, but I think that really keeps us on our toes. They’re also very interested in what is perhaps incorrectly called authenticity, but they’re okay with businesses with a little bit more of the warts showing because it’s more personable and they are good with what I call an eye level or peer on peer style of service.

Micah Solomon: They don’t want you putting on airs like we see in Buckingham Palace and all those historical shows with the one arm behind the back and stuff. It’s more like… And I was interviewing millennial traveler for one of my books and she said, “What’s comfortable for me is someone who’s serving me, but we are on a level, I understand that next week if I was short on money, maybe I’ll be working as a barista. That’s the style of service that’s most comfortable for them.”

John Jantsch: Couple of great points there. All right, let’s talk about hiring for customer service. I think that some of the best customer service people are just born that way, and you may dispute that. But I mean, how do you keep a… If as your company grows and you’ve built this brand on people love us, we serve them well how do you keep that culture alive with the fact that you have to get bodies in seats, in some cases.

Micah Solomon: Sometimes the reason, and I can speak from experience, having literally started in my basement, sometimes the owner is so great about customer service and not totally because it’s their personality. But because you have a proverbial loaded gun to your head, I mean, because we know the value of every customer. You need to get this across that every individual customer is irreplaceable. I would actually argue that customers in the plural sort of doesn’t exist, that our only customer is the one that’s in front of you right now. Born that way is a very important point. If you can hire for traits, it’s ideal. Now, if you’re in a very technical field, Google, you also have to hire for technical aptitude and maybe even in technical training, but for customer facing positions, if you can hire for traits you’ll do best. Do you have a second for me to tell you the traits you want?

John Jantsch: Yes, I do. I’d love it.

Micah Solomon: All right, so I’m going to give you a rule of thumb. I will, however, say it’s better to go in with one of these great companies like Gallup that has a more involved methodology. But a lot of people aren’t going to do that, so I’ve got a rule of actually all five fingers. Here’s how to remember it. Picture the superstore, Petco. All right? And then outside of Petco, put a big wet dog. All right, so John, what is the superstore?

John Jantsch: Petco.

Micah Solomon: Right. And is the dog dry or is it wet?

John Jantsch: It is wet and in fact it’s getting ready to shake.

Micah Solomon: All right, so you have this big wet… So the reason you want to remember this is because my five traits that make you really good at customer service, spelled wetco, W-E-T-C-O. It’s silly but it works. W is warmth, this just means they like other people. E is empathy, this means they can sort of, well not sort of, they can actually sense what another person’s thinking without them saying it. T is teamwork, this is a willingness to involve your entire team to find a solution for the customer. C is conscientiousness, this means detail orientedness and O is optimism. Specifically, it’s what Marty Seligman calls an optimistic, explanatory style. If you get someone with an pessimistic explanatory style customers they can have a bad day and they can bite your head off and you have to be like, “Oh my goodness, I must’ve done something horribly wrong.” You’re going to call in sick for the rest of the day. Go home, never come back to work. Understandable but not ideal.

Micah Solomon: What you want is someone who will say, “Oh, well that was a challenging conversation. I hope she feels better tomorrow.” Maybe I could have done better. I’m going to talk it over with my manager, but I’m also going to dust myself off, go back to work. Warmth, empathy, teamwork, conscientiousness and optimism. Those are the traits to hire for. However, most of us have already hired, however we’ve hired. And so we’ve got these people, well, what can we do? Well, some of these things can be trained for, there’s a kind of empathy that can’t be trained for, that’s called dispositional empathy. And that’s just the born that way part. But there’s another kind, which is called situational empathy. And this can absolutely be trained for.

Micah Solomon: For instance, in health care, sometimes I consult with hospitals. One of the issues they have is that those nice, hopefully nice people on the phone doing the scheduling, they’re generally in a different building from where the patients are. They don’t encounter a patient all day and almost none of them has ever been an inpatient in a hospital. You have these two barriers to the dispositional empathy that they need. What do you do? Well, you realize it’s a problem, or as we call in the biz, a challenge and then you get working on it. You simulate clinical moments. One thing I’ve always suggested for nurses, and none of them have ever taken me up on this, but with nurses, I say, “Hey, you want to know how long it seems between when that buzzer’s pressed and when you show up? How about this? Drink four liters of water.” No one has taken me up on it. But you get the idea, right?

John Jantsch: Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that’s interesting. I thought you were going to suggest that they were going to inoculate them with some infectious disease or something so that they would all have to spend two weeks in a hospital or something.

Micah Solomon: Oh gosh, no. But there are things like that you can do if you want to think about your customers who have disabilities, there are these heavy boots that you can wear to give you a feeling. And so yes, so some of that, but mostly it’s going to be role-plays and video and in person training.

John Jantsch: Speaking with Micah Solomon, his latest book is Ignore Your Customers (and They’ll Go Away). Micah, tell us where people can find out more about you, your work and your books.

Micah Solomon: Come to my website if you don’t mind, you’re going to have to be masterful at spelling biblical names. It’s micahsolomon.com which is M-I-C-A-H at M-I-C-A-H-S-O-L-O-M-O-N. There’s no a and solomon.com or if that’s just too much for you. Here is my favorite. John, this is very Abby Hoffman, I have a URL just for the book and it is ignorethisbook.com.

John Jantsch: Oh, that’s awesome. Well, Micah, thanks for dropping by and next time you talk to Ira, tell him you were on a show that’s more popular… Probably not more popular, somebody thought was more influential than him. Hopefully we’ll run into you soon next time I’m out there on the road.

Micah Solomon: Thanks for everything John.

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John Jantsch: This episode of The Duct Tape marketing agency Podcast is brought to you by Klaviyo. Klaviyo is a platform that helps growth-focused eCommerce brands drive more sales with super-targeted, highly relevant email, Facebook and Instagram marketing agency.

John Jantsch: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape marketing agency Podcast. This is John Jantsch and my guest today is Micah Solomon. He’s the bestselling author and one of America’s most popular keynote speakers on building bottom line growth through customer service. And we’re going to talk about his newest book, Ignore Your Customers (and They’ll Go Away), the simple playbook for delivering the ultimate customer service experience. So Micah, welcome back.

Micah Solomon: Oh, it’s great to be here, John.

John Jantsch: I can hear some people snickering saying, “Really, will they go away? Is that’s all it takes is ignoring them and they’ll go away?” But that’s not what we’re here to talk about, is it?

Micah Solomon: Well, I got that reaction once or twice and yeah, it can feel like that at the end of a long day, can’t it?

John Jantsch: It can sometimes, but again, we need those customers. Customers are King. Why is it that this is the part that is so hard for people to get right.

Micah Solomon: I think that by any objective standard customer service has improved over the years, but the thing is our customer expectations have skyrocketed as well. It’s not good enough to just do an okay job. And there’s so much value in doing a fantastic job because we’re no longer in the mad men era where Don Draper and Peggy Olson could convince you that Lucky Strikes were good for your throat, we’re not in that era anymore. We’re still interested in marketing agency, but only if it’s consonant with our experience as customers and the experience that our friends and the people we listen to online are having.

John Jantsch: Yeah, and I think the hard part about it is, I mean, really at the end of the day, businesses love their customers. They want to treat them well. They don’t want to provide bad service. But I think people underestimate just how hard it actually is to do it elegantly.

Micah Solomon: That’s exactly right. And I like to say I might… You’re interested how I’m a keynote speaker, I’m also a consultant. In fact, Ink crowned me the other day, Ink Magazine, as the world’s number one customer service turnaround expert. And then, which was so sweet and then he admitted I’m also the only one he’s ever met. But what I do is I walk into companies and I mystery shop them and see how they’re doing. And then I work with them to transform their customer experience, and what I find is most of the companies that hire me are already doing pretty well. They already understand the value of stuff, but they want to reach that exceptional level that you’re talking about. And it is hard. It is really hard. There’s many aspects to it.

John Jantsch: Yeah, that’s an interesting point because I know over the years a lot of the companies that have hired me to do marketing agency consulting are ones that kind of outwardly look like they’re doing all right. But it’s-

Micah Solomon: Yeah, exactly.

John Jantsch: … it’s the mentality of, but I want to invest in this that I think is really what you’re experiencing probably as well, isn’t it?

Micah Solomon: Yes. That sounds right.

John Jantsch: The kind of phrase or buzzword out there now is to be a customer first company. How do you take that beyond just the-

Micah Solomon: Smiling harder?

John Jantsch: … Team meeting?

Micah Solomon: Customer first, it’s a little bit of a misnomer, at least when I’m talking about it. I would say arguably employees should be first because they’re going to be delivering the service. But what we’re talking about with customer first, if we’re talking about the right way, is to take the customer’s perspective. I call this Micah’s Red Bench Principle, and it’s that the customers really only care about themselves. They care about their kids for sure and their spouse and their dog and so forth, but they don’t care about us as much as we wish they would. We need… Sadly, it’s true. So we need to see things from their perspective and understand they’re not really interested in our organizational chart, they’re not interested in any of that. If you can frame things in your mind and in your processes and in your attitude from a customer’s perspective, you’re going to do a lot better.

John Jantsch: All right, so that leads us right to how do you get in their head? I mean, how do you get that perspective?

Micah Solomon: Well that is an excellent question. You hire someone like me and I mean, there’s many different ways to do it, but you can hire someone like me to be your customer and see how it goes. And I can learn a lot. You could do this yourself as well. I would check all these things that you think are running fine and probably aren’t like… John, you’re like me, so you probably check this. But most companies never check their web forums to see if anyone actually answers those inquiries, the answers usually never. You check all those things. You make sure that it’s working the way a customer would want it to. On the website, you may want to hire a user experience person because that stuff’s really important too.

John Jantsch: Yeah, yeah. Our customers get to publish now. How has that dynamic changed not only customer service but certainly the need to be intentional about it?

Micah Solomon: I think of customer service as the new marketing agency and if you do a great job, if you provide a good customer experience and a warm customer service, then people are going to talk about you and they’ll also talk about you if you’re efficient and you’re in the right location and all that. But one thing they love to talk about is how they’ve been treated, so it’s extremely valuable. It’s also, I mean it’s arguably free. The staffing right, and so forth is not actually free but you do what you’re supposed to be doing and you get this free marketing agency as well, and of course it can go the other direction as well.

John Jantsch: Who in your mind, and I know you profile some bigger companies in particular that are household names in the book, but who do you think’s getting it right? That’s part A, and then maybe talk about a not so well known company that you think has gotten it right and that that’s made a difference.

Micah Solomon: The companies I cover in my book, Ignore Your Customers (and They’ll Go Away) range from ones that we all think about, Nordstrom’s, Zappos, we spent some time with both of them, USAA, which is huge in insurance and financial services and a lot of other stuff. Virgin Hotels, which actually will eventually be an enormous chain, but right now is only just a couple of hotels, we spent some time with them. Safelite Auto Glass, which if you think about it, they come into your life probably on a challenging day. I mean, best case is a rock hit your window and you need a new windshield. Worst case, someone actually intentionally broke your window because they broke into your car and replacing the windshield is only one of your problems. They come into your life on a bad day and they don’t only strive to make things okay, they strive to delight you. I spent some time with Safelite Auto Glass.

Micah Solomon: Some companies that I can see, John, neither of us need this but Drybar, which is for women and maybe men who are in hairbands, they’re the people who have done so well by offering a blow out and styling, we spent a bunch of time with them. MOD Pizza, which is growing like gangbusters and a voice over IP company named Nextiva. All of those, I would say are doing a spectacular job in very different industries.

John Jantsch: I want to remind you that this episode is brought to you by Klaviyo. Klaviyo helps you build meaningful customer relationships by listening and understanding cues from your customers. And this allows you to easily turn that information into valuable marketing agency messages. There’s powerful segmentation email auto-responders that are ready to go. Great reporting. You want to learn a little bit about the secret to building customer relationships? They’ve got a really fun series called Klaviyo’s Beyond Black Friday, it’s a docu-series. A lot of fun quick lessons. Just head on over to klaviyo.com/beyondbf, beyond black Friday.

John Jantsch: Tell me a little bit about Safelite? Because I had one of those experiences where I had to replace my windshield. And I will tell you that I think the entire experience, I wouldn’t… I’d love for you to talk about the delight part, but I will just tell you from a get the job done part, it was delightful. I scheduled, they came out at the scheduled time, they replaced it, everything went great. I mean, from my standpoint it was so convenient, I was able to schedule the entire thing online, pay for it online. The person came out, I didn’t even know they were there and it was done. I mean, from that standpoint it was as frictionless as possible, but what did you find that they do that you feel is over and above that?

Micah Solomon: That’s a lot of it. And to pull that off is harder than I would imagine. They have to have the part ready, they have to marry the part to the work order. And then they’ve worked really hard on the scheduling part. They first did something that was too restrictive where they told you exactly when the driver was show up, but what they found was that the drivers out in the field wanted a little more control over it because maybe another job is going a little longer, they involve the drivers in that. They’ve done some things for people who are really worried about personal safety. You now get a little photo of the person, a little bio and so forth. I guess someone shows up, they’re a totally different person, you could head it off at the pass. The delight part. I think it’s most of those things that you talked about the frictionless, but it’s also the customer service training that they’ve gone into to make sure that they are treating you well on a personal and personable level.

John Jantsch: Let’s talk about silos inside of organizations.

Micah Solomon: Oh, no.

John Jantsch: A lot of organizations have marketing agency and sales and service, as separate arms of the organization. Maybe you’ve not encountered any of these, but I’m told they exist still today. When it comes to the idea of customer service, or a perspective about this customer first thinking, what role do marketing agency and sales play in that? Again, I know that’s a really loaded and big question, but I guess in some ways, another way I could ask that is as how do you get every marketing agency, sales and service kind of all on the same page?

Micah Solomon: Well this is really important and many people have studied this. You don’t want the salesperson who over sells beyond what the customer support team can really bring to life. marketing agency, you don’t want to over sell your product and then have it be beyond what your company can provide either. That’s very important. And then having the salespeople really know the product, really know the team that’s supporting the product. I think all of that’s extremely important. Now, John, you live way out in the country, so doesn’t it potentially get a little bit sick when people talk about silos and it’s entirely a metaphor at this point?

John Jantsch: That is a good point. I grew up on a farm, so we put grain in those silos.

Micah Solomon: Totally.

John Jantsch: All right, let’s talk about generations. I have four millennial aged children and their buying habits or the way that they consider who they’re going to buy from, who they’re going to stay with are substantially different than mine, I think. Or at least a different setup. I wouldn’t say there’s… We have the same values and connection with companies. But I think that, for example, if they go on a website, it doesn’t work the way they think it’s supposed to work, that’s the end of the story. Whereas I might go, ah, this is clunky, but they’re a good brand. I like them and I might fight through. From a service standpoint, how do you work with companies that A, have multi-generational employees maybe or B, certainly customers?

Micah Solomon: I tend to focus on the customer side. And what I would say is that all of us are becoming millennials. If a business can delight John’s kids, are they girls? Are they?

John Jantsch: Yes. All four girls.

Micah Solomon: Four girls and two of them are millennials, that’s awesome. My feeling is if you can delight the millennials, then pretty soon you’ll delight their older brothers and sisters and then you’ll delight John as well. I was talking with Herve Humler, who’s one of the actual founders of the Ritz Carlton Hotel Company and he said that’s how we do it. If a millennial is asking for something, we’ll figure that mom and dad are going to ask for it pretty soon. And I think that’s very important. There’s even a group on Facebook called My Life’s Officially Over, My Parents have Joined Facebook.

Micah Solomon: What do millennials want? They want it to work. They expect it to work. I mean, I think of millennials as technologically savvy is sort of true, but what they really are is what you said John, they’re technologically intolerant. When I describe having a 1984 Mac, yeah, I talked to millennials, they’re like, “Oh, that’s really cool.” And then I say, “Well yes and no. Can you believe that to install Microsoft Word, I had to switch in these floppy disks for five hours?” And they’re like, “No, that computer is dead to me. I like the old rainbow logo, but that’s about it.” They’re technologically intolerant, but I think that really keeps us on our toes. They’re also very interested in what is perhaps incorrectly called authenticity, but they’re okay with businesses with a little bit more of the warts showing because it’s more personable and they are good with what I call an eye level or peer on peer style of service.

Micah Solomon: They don’t want you putting on airs like we see in Buckingham Palace and all those historical shows with the one arm behind the back and stuff. It’s more like… And I was interviewing millennial traveler for one of my books and she said, “What’s comfortable for me is someone who’s serving me, but we are on a level, I understand that next week if I was short on money, maybe I’ll be working as a barista. That’s the style of service that’s most comfortable for them.”

John Jantsch: Couple of great points there. All right, let’s talk about hiring for customer service. I think that some of the best customer service people are just born that way, and you may dispute that. But I mean, how do you keep a… If as your company grows and you’ve built this brand on people love us, we serve them well how do you keep that culture alive with the fact that you have to get bodies in seats, in some cases.

Micah Solomon: Sometimes the reason, and I can speak from experience, having literally started in my basement, sometimes the owner is so great about customer service and not totally because it’s their personality. But because you have a proverbial loaded gun to your head, I mean, because we know the value of every customer. You need to get this across that every individual customer is irreplaceable. I would actually argue that customers in the plural sort of doesn’t exist, that our only customer is the one that’s in front of you right now. Born that way is a very important point. If you can hire for traits, it’s ideal. Now, if you’re in a very technical field, Google, you also have to hire for technical aptitude and maybe even in technical training, but for customer facing positions, if you can hire for traits you’ll do best. Do you have a second for me to tell you the traits you want?

John Jantsch: Yes, I do. I’d love it.

Micah Solomon: All right, so I’m going to give you a rule of thumb. I will, however, say it’s better to go in with one of these great companies like Gallup that has a more involved methodology. But a lot of people aren’t going to do that, so I’ve got a rule of actually all five fingers. Here’s how to remember it. Picture the superstore, Petco. All right? And then outside of Petco, put a big wet dog. All right, so John, what is the superstore?

John Jantsch: Petco.

Micah Solomon: Right. And is the dog dry or is it wet?

John Jantsch: It is wet and in fact it’s getting ready to shake.

Micah Solomon: All right, so you have this big wet… So the reason you want to remember this is because my five traits that make you really good at customer service, spelled wetco, W-E-T-C-O. It’s silly but it works. W is warmth, this just means they like other people. E is empathy, this means they can sort of, well not sort of, they can actually sense what another person’s thinking without them saying it. T is teamwork, this is a willingness to involve your entire team to find a solution for the customer. C is conscientiousness, this means detail orientedness and O is optimism. Specifically, it’s what Marty Seligman calls an optimistic, explanatory style. If you get someone with an pessimistic explanatory style customers they can have a bad day and they can bite your head off and you have to be like, “Oh my goodness, I must’ve done something horribly wrong.” You’re going to call in sick for the rest of the day. Go home, never come back to work. Understandable but not ideal.

Micah Solomon: What you want is someone who will say, “Oh, well that was a challenging conversation. I hope she feels better tomorrow.” Maybe I could have done better. I’m going to talk it over with my manager, but I’m also going to dust myself off, go back to work. Warmth, empathy, teamwork, conscientiousness and optimism. Those are the traits to hire for. However, most of us have already hired, however we’ve hired. And so we’ve got these people, well, what can we do? Well, some of these things can be trained for, there’s a kind of empathy that can’t be trained for, that’s called dispositional empathy. And that’s just the born that way part. But there’s another kind, which is called situational empathy. And this can absolutely be trained for.

Micah Solomon: For instance, in health care, sometimes I consult with hospitals. One of the issues they have is that those nice, hopefully nice people on the phone doing the scheduling, they’re generally in a different building from where the patients are. They don’t encounter a patient all day and almost none of them has ever been an inpatient in a hospital. You have these two barriers to the dispositional empathy that they need. What do you do? Well, you realize it’s a problem, or as we call in the biz, a challenge and then you get working on it. You simulate clinical moments. One thing I’ve always suggested for nurses, and none of them have ever taken me up on this, but with nurses, I say, “Hey, you want to know how long it seems between when that buzzer’s pressed and when you show up? How about this? Drink four liters of water.” No one has taken me up on it. But you get the idea, right?

John Jantsch: Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that’s interesting. I thought you were going to suggest that they were going to inoculate them with some infectious disease or something so that they would all have to spend two weeks in a hospital or something.

Micah Solomon: Oh gosh, no. But there are things like that you can do if you want to think about your customers who have disabilities, there are these heavy boots that you can wear to give you a feeling. And so yes, so some of that, but mostly it’s going to be role-plays and video and in person training.

John Jantsch: Speaking with Micah Solomon, his latest book is Ignore Your Customers (and They’ll Go Away). Micah, tell us where people can find out more about you, your work and your books.

Micah Solomon: Come to my website if you don’t mind, you’re going to have to be masterful at spelling biblical names. It’s micahsolomon.com which is M-I-C-A-H at M-I-C-A-H-S-O-L-O-M-O-N. There’s no a and solomon.com or if that’s just too much for you. Here is my favorite. John, this is very Abby Hoffman, I have a URL just for the book and it is ignorethisbook.com.

John Jantsch: Oh, that’s awesome. Well, Micah, thanks for dropping by and next time you talk to Ira, tell him you were on a show that’s more popular… Probably not more popular, somebody thought was more influential than him. Hopefully we’ll run into you soon next time I’m out there on the road.

Micah Solomon: Thanks for everything John.

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Transcript of Great Experiences Make for Loyal Customers

Transcript of Great Experiences Make for Loyal Customers written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

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John Jantsch: This episode of The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by Klaviyo. Klaviyo is a platform that helps growth-focused eCommerce brands drive more sales with super-targeted, highly relevant email, Facebook and Instagram marketing.

John Jantsch: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch and my guest today is Micah Solomon. He’s the bestselling author and one of America’s most popular keynote speakers on building bottom line growth through customer service. And we’re going to talk about his newest book, Ignore Your Customers (and They’ll Go Away), the simple playbook for delivering the ultimate customer service experience. So Micah, welcome back.

Micah Solomon: Oh, it’s great to be here, John.

John Jantsch: I can hear some people snickering saying, “Really, will they go away? Is that’s all it takes is ignoring them and they’ll go away?” But that’s not what we’re here to talk about, is it?

Micah Solomon: Well, I got that reaction once or twice and yeah, it can feel like that at the end of a long day, can’t it?

John Jantsch: It can sometimes, but again, we need those customers. Customers are King. Why is it that this is the part that is so hard for people to get right.

Micah Solomon: I think that by any objective standard customer service has improved over the years, but the thing is our customer expectations have skyrocketed as well. It’s not good enough to just do an okay job. And there’s so much value in doing a fantastic job because we’re no longer in the mad men era where Don Draper and Peggy Olson could convince you that Lucky Strikes were good for your throat, we’re not in that era anymore. We’re still interested in marketing, but only if it’s consonant with our experience as customers and the experience that our friends and the people we listen to online are having.

John Jantsch: Yeah, and I think the hard part about it is, I mean, really at the end of the day, businesses love their customers. They want to treat them well. They don’t want to provide bad service. But I think people underestimate just how hard it actually is to do it elegantly.

Micah Solomon: That’s exactly right. And I like to say I might… You’re interested how I’m a keynote speaker, I’m also a consultant. In fact, Ink crowned me the other day, Ink Magazine, as the world’s number one customer service turnaround expert. And then, which was so sweet and then he admitted I’m also the only one he’s ever met. But what I do is I walk into companies and I mystery shop them and see how they’re doing. And then I work with them to transform their customer experience, and what I find is most of the companies that hire me are already doing pretty well. They already understand the value of stuff, but they want to reach that exceptional level that you’re talking about. And it is hard. It is really hard. There’s many aspects to it.

John Jantsch: Yeah, that’s an interesting point because I know over the years a lot of the companies that have hired me to do marketing consulting are ones that kind of outwardly look like they’re doing all right. But it’s-

Micah Solomon: Yeah, exactly.

John Jantsch: … it’s the mentality of, but I want to invest in this that I think is really what you’re experiencing probably as well, isn’t it?

Micah Solomon: Yes. That sounds right.

John Jantsch: The kind of phrase or buzzword out there now is to be a customer first company. How do you take that beyond just the-

Micah Solomon: Smiling harder?

John Jantsch: … Team meeting?

Micah Solomon: Customer first, it’s a little bit of a misnomer, at least when I’m talking about it. I would say arguably employees should be first because they’re going to be delivering the service. But what we’re talking about with customer first, if we’re talking about the right way, is to take the customer’s perspective. I call this Micah’s Red Bench Principle, and it’s that the customers really only care about themselves. They care about their kids for sure and their spouse and their dog and so forth, but they don’t care about us as much as we wish they would. We need… Sadly, it’s true. So we need to see things from their perspective and understand they’re not really interested in our organizational chart, they’re not interested in any of that. If you can frame things in your mind and in your processes and in your attitude from a customer’s perspective, you’re going to do a lot better.

John Jantsch: All right, so that leads us right to how do you get in their head? I mean, how do you get that perspective?

Micah Solomon: Well that is an excellent question. You hire someone like me and I mean, there’s many different ways to do it, but you can hire someone like me to be your customer and see how it goes. And I can learn a lot. You could do this yourself as well. I would check all these things that you think are running fine and probably aren’t like… John, you’re like me, so you probably check this. But most companies never check their web forums to see if anyone actually answers those inquiries, the answers usually never. You check all those things. You make sure that it’s working the way a customer would want it to. On the website, you may want to hire a user experience person because that stuff’s really important too.

John Jantsch: Yeah, yeah. Our customers get to publish now. How has that dynamic changed not only customer service but certainly the need to be intentional about it?

Micah Solomon: I think of customer service as the new marketing and if you do a great job, if you provide a good customer experience and a warm customer service, then people are going to talk about you and they’ll also talk about you if you’re efficient and you’re in the right location and all that. But one thing they love to talk about is how they’ve been treated, so it’s extremely valuable. It’s also, I mean it’s arguably free. The staffing right, and so forth is not actually free but you do what you’re supposed to be doing and you get this free marketing as well, and of course it can go the other direction as well.

John Jantsch: Who in your mind, and I know you profile some bigger companies in particular that are household names in the book, but who do you think’s getting it right? That’s part A, and then maybe talk about a not so well known company that you think has gotten it right and that that’s made a difference.

Micah Solomon: The companies I cover in my book, Ignore Your Customers (and They’ll Go Away) range from ones that we all think about, Nordstrom’s, Zappos, we spent some time with both of them, USAA, which is huge in insurance and financial services and a lot of other stuff. Virgin Hotels, which actually will eventually be an enormous chain, but right now is only just a couple of hotels, we spent some time with them. Safelite Auto Glass, which if you think about it, they come into your life probably on a challenging day. I mean, best case is a rock hit your window and you need a new windshield. Worst case, someone actually intentionally broke your window because they broke into your car and replacing the windshield is only one of your problems. They come into your life on a bad day and they don’t only strive to make things okay, they strive to delight you. I spent some time with Safelite Auto Glass.

Micah Solomon: Some companies that I can see, John, neither of us need this but Drybar, which is for women and maybe men who are in hairbands, they’re the people who have done so well by offering a blow out and styling, we spent a bunch of time with them. MOD Pizza, which is growing like gangbusters and a voice over IP company named Nextiva. All of those, I would say are doing a spectacular job in very different industries.

John Jantsch: I want to remind you that this episode is brought to you by Klaviyo. Klaviyo helps you build meaningful customer relationships by listening and understanding cues from your customers. And this allows you to easily turn that information into valuable marketing messages. There’s powerful segmentation email auto-responders that are ready to go. Great reporting. You want to learn a little bit about the secret to building customer relationships? They’ve got a really fun series called Klaviyo’s Beyond Black Friday, it’s a docu-series. A lot of fun quick lessons. Just head on over to klaviyo.com/beyondbf, beyond black Friday.

John Jantsch: Tell me a little bit about Safelite? Because I had one of those experiences where I had to replace my windshield. And I will tell you that I think the entire experience, I wouldn’t… I’d love for you to talk about the delight part, but I will just tell you from a get the job done part, it was delightful. I scheduled, they came out at the scheduled time, they replaced it, everything went great. I mean, from my standpoint it was so convenient, I was able to schedule the entire thing online, pay for it online. The person came out, I didn’t even know they were there and it was done. I mean, from that standpoint it was as frictionless as possible, but what did you find that they do that you feel is over and above that?

Micah Solomon: That’s a lot of it. And to pull that off is harder than I would imagine. They have to have the part ready, they have to marry the part to the work order. And then they’ve worked really hard on the scheduling part. They first did something that was too restrictive where they told you exactly when the driver was show up, but what they found was that the drivers out in the field wanted a little more control over it because maybe another job is going a little longer, they involve the drivers in that. They’ve done some things for people who are really worried about personal safety. You now get a little photo of the person, a little bio and so forth. I guess someone shows up, they’re a totally different person, you could head it off at the pass. The delight part. I think it’s most of those things that you talked about the frictionless, but it’s also the customer service training that they’ve gone into to make sure that they are treating you well on a personal and personable level.

John Jantsch: Let’s talk about silos inside of organizations.

Micah Solomon: Oh, no.

John Jantsch: A lot of organizations have marketing and sales and service, as separate arms of the organization. Maybe you’ve not encountered any of these, but I’m told they exist still today. When it comes to the idea of customer service, or a perspective about this customer first thinking, what role do marketing and sales play in that? Again, I know that’s a really loaded and big question, but I guess in some ways, another way I could ask that is as how do you get every marketing, sales and service kind of all on the same page?

Micah Solomon: Well this is really important and many people have studied this. You don’t want the salesperson who over sells beyond what the customer support team can really bring to life. Marketing, you don’t want to over sell your product and then have it be beyond what your company can provide either. That’s very important. And then having the salespeople really know the product, really know the team that’s supporting the product. I think all of that’s extremely important. Now, John, you live way out in the country, so doesn’t it potentially get a little bit sick when people talk about silos and it’s entirely a metaphor at this point?

John Jantsch: That is a good point. I grew up on a farm, so we put grain in those silos.

Micah Solomon: Totally.

John Jantsch: All right, let’s talk about generations. I have four millennial aged children and their buying habits or the way that they consider who they’re going to buy from, who they’re going to stay with are substantially different than mine, I think. Or at least a different setup. I wouldn’t say there’s… We have the same values and connection with companies. But I think that, for example, if they go on a website, it doesn’t work the way they think it’s supposed to work, that’s the end of the story. Whereas I might go, ah, this is clunky, but they’re a good brand. I like them and I might fight through. From a service standpoint, how do you work with companies that A, have multi-generational employees maybe or B, certainly customers?

Micah Solomon: I tend to focus on the customer side. And what I would say is that all of us are becoming millennials. If a business can delight John’s kids, are they girls? Are they?

John Jantsch: Yes. All four girls.

Micah Solomon: Four girls and two of them are millennials, that’s awesome. My feeling is if you can delight the millennials, then pretty soon you’ll delight their older brothers and sisters and then you’ll delight John as well. I was talking with Herve Humler, who’s one of the actual founders of the Ritz Carlton Hotel Company and he said that’s how we do it. If a millennial is asking for something, we’ll figure that mom and dad are going to ask for it pretty soon. And I think that’s very important. There’s even a group on Facebook called My Life’s Officially Over, My Parents have Joined Facebook.

Micah Solomon: What do millennials want? They want it to work. They expect it to work. I mean, I think of millennials as technologically savvy is sort of true, but what they really are is what you said John, they’re technologically intolerant. When I describe having a 1984 Mac, yeah, I talked to millennials, they’re like, “Oh, that’s really cool.” And then I say, “Well yes and no. Can you believe that to install Microsoft Word, I had to switch in these floppy disks for five hours?” And they’re like, “No, that computer is dead to me. I like the old rainbow logo, but that’s about it.” They’re technologically intolerant, but I think that really keeps us on our toes. They’re also very interested in what is perhaps incorrectly called authenticity, but they’re okay with businesses with a little bit more of the warts showing because it’s more personable and they are good with what I call an eye level or peer on peer style of service.

Micah Solomon: They don’t want you putting on airs like we see in Buckingham Palace and all those historical shows with the one arm behind the back and stuff. It’s more like… And I was interviewing millennial traveler for one of my books and she said, “What’s comfortable for me is someone who’s serving me, but we are on a level, I understand that next week if I was short on money, maybe I’ll be working as a barista. That’s the style of service that’s most comfortable for them.”

John Jantsch: Couple of great points there. All right, let’s talk about hiring for customer service. I think that some of the best customer service people are just born that way, and you may dispute that. But I mean, how do you keep a… If as your company grows and you’ve built this brand on people love us, we serve them well how do you keep that culture alive with the fact that you have to get bodies in seats, in some cases.

Micah Solomon: Sometimes the reason, and I can speak from experience, having literally started in my basement, sometimes the owner is so great about customer service and not totally because it’s their personality. But because you have a proverbial loaded gun to your head, I mean, because we know the value of every customer. You need to get this across that every individual customer is irreplaceable. I would actually argue that customers in the plural sort of doesn’t exist, that our only customer is the one that’s in front of you right now. Born that way is a very important point. If you can hire for traits, it’s ideal. Now, if you’re in a very technical field, Google, you also have to hire for technical aptitude and maybe even in technical training, but for customer facing positions, if you can hire for traits you’ll do best. Do you have a second for me to tell you the traits you want?

John Jantsch: Yes, I do. I’d love it.

Micah Solomon: All right, so I’m going to give you a rule of thumb. I will, however, say it’s better to go in with one of these great companies like Gallup that has a more involved methodology. But a lot of people aren’t going to do that, so I’ve got a rule of actually all five fingers. Here’s how to remember it. Picture the superstore, Petco. All right? And then outside of Petco, put a big wet dog. All right, so John, what is the superstore?

John Jantsch: Petco.

Micah Solomon: Right. And is the dog dry or is it wet?

John Jantsch: It is wet and in fact it’s getting ready to shake.

Micah Solomon: All right, so you have this big wet… So the reason you want to remember this is because my five traits that make you really good at customer service, spelled wetco, W-E-T-C-O. It’s silly but it works. W is warmth, this just means they like other people. E is empathy, this means they can sort of, well not sort of, they can actually sense what another person’s thinking without them saying it. T is teamwork, this is a willingness to involve your entire team to find a solution for the customer. C is conscientiousness, this means detail orientedness and O is optimism. Specifically, it’s what Marty Seligman calls an optimistic, explanatory style. If you get someone with an pessimistic explanatory style customers they can have a bad day and they can bite your head off and you have to be like, “Oh my goodness, I must’ve done something horribly wrong.” You’re going to call in sick for the rest of the day. Go home, never come back to work. Understandable but not ideal.

Micah Solomon: What you want is someone who will say, “Oh, well that was a challenging conversation. I hope she feels better tomorrow.” Maybe I could have done better. I’m going to talk it over with my manager, but I’m also going to dust myself off, go back to work. Warmth, empathy, teamwork, conscientiousness and optimism. Those are the traits to hire for. However, most of us have already hired, however we’ve hired. And so we’ve got these people, well, what can we do? Well, some of these things can be trained for, there’s a kind of empathy that can’t be trained for, that’s called dispositional empathy. And that’s just the born that way part. But there’s another kind, which is called situational empathy. And this can absolutely be trained for.

Micah Solomon: For instance, in health care, sometimes I consult with hospitals. One of the issues they have is that those nice, hopefully nice people on the phone doing the scheduling, they’re generally in a different building from where the patients are. They don’t encounter a patient all day and almost none of them has ever been an inpatient in a hospital. You have these two barriers to the dispositional empathy that they need. What do you do? Well, you realize it’s a problem, or as we call in the biz, a challenge and then you get working on it. You simulate clinical moments. One thing I’ve always suggested for nurses, and none of them have ever taken me up on this, but with nurses, I say, “Hey, you want to know how long it seems between when that buzzer’s pressed and when you show up? How about this? Drink four liters of water.” No one has taken me up on it. But you get the idea, right?

John Jantsch: Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that’s interesting. I thought you were going to suggest that they were going to inoculate them with some infectious disease or something so that they would all have to spend two weeks in a hospital or something.

Micah Solomon: Oh gosh, no. But there are things like that you can do if you want to think about your customers who have disabilities, there are these heavy boots that you can wear to give you a feeling. And so yes, so some of that, but mostly it’s going to be role-plays and video and in person training.

John Jantsch: Speaking with Micah Solomon, his latest book is Ignore Your Customers (and They’ll Go Away). Micah, tell us where people can find out more about you, your work and your books.

Micah Solomon: Come to my website if you don’t mind, you’re going to have to be masterful at spelling biblical names. It’s micahsolomon.com which is M-I-C-A-H at M-I-C-A-H-S-O-L-O-M-O-N. There’s no a and solomon.com or if that’s just too much for you. Here is my favorite. John, this is very Abby Hoffman, I have a URL just for the book and it is ignorethisbook.com.

John Jantsch: Oh, that’s awesome. Well, Micah, thanks for dropping by and next time you talk to Ira, tell him you were on a show that’s more popular… Probably not more popular, somebody thought was more influential than him. Hopefully we’ll run into you soon next time I’m out there on the road.

Micah Solomon: Thanks for everything John.

from http://bit.ly/2TB513X

[tamilundauthor]

Yeah, I just made that word up. What do they call that? Click-bait. I wanted you to check out my blog post, so I came up with something to entice you into clicking. That’s it. The only purpose for the word, Docu-diet.

Well, maybe not the only purpose. I mean, I really did start a diet last week, and I am documenting it on Twitter, so maybe I just created a new word? Hmmm….

Anyway, what the hell am I talking about and why do you care that I’m dieting? Well, I’m sure you don’t, other than my dieting woes may create a few chuckles for you. Because let me tell you, the only way I’m going to make it through the next seven weeks is by using a lot of sarcasm. Dieting is not my thing. Wine and too-large portions are more up my alley, and those are apparently big, fat no-no’s in the dieting world.

Let me explain, via my Twitter feed:

Why am I dieting?

(Besides the fact that none of my cute little summer skirts fit right.)

Because there’s a weight loss challenge at the day job and there’s a PRIZE for the winner.

I don’t even know what the prize is but does that even matter??

— Tami Lund (@TamiLundAuthor) April 3, 2019

Diet day 1: not unsuccessful, although not yet asleep, so there’s still time to ef this up.

Also, don’t you DARE come within twenty feet bearing wine or potato chips.

Eight weeks to go…

— Tami Lund (@TamiLundAuthor) April 3, 2019

The Diet – day 2:

It’s 10:44 am and I am STARVING.

This is not going well.

I don’t think I’m cut out for this dieting gig.

Eight ridiculously long weeks to go…

— Tami Lund (@TamiLundAuthor) April 3, 2019

Diet day 2 – made a vegetarian Mexican salad with the most amazing lime-cilantro vinaigrette.

Healthy food really does have a ton of flavor.

But 4 helpings of salad is still too many helpings even if it’s salad.

And this is where I will fail…

— Tami Lund (@TamiLundAuthor) April 3, 2019

Diet day 2: iwantwineiwantwineiwantwineiwantpotatochipsiwantwineiwantwineiwantacadburycremeeggiwantwineiwant….

— Tami Lund (@TamiLundAuthor) April 3, 2019

Diet day 2: Dear God, this sounds heavenly. https://t.co/hKyEab3Mwv

— Tami Lund (@TamiLundAuthor) April 4, 2019

Diet day 3: Last day of bowling league tonight.

So already planning for failure.

On the plus side, it’s also #OpeningDay for the #DetroitTigers, so I figure everyone in the Weight Loss Challenge will fail today.

So that’s a win for everyone, right??

— Tami Lund (@TamiLundAuthor) April 4, 2019

Diet day 3: here’s a pic of a pretty salad…

So I’m starting the day right, but no worries; that will deteriorate as soon as I step foot in the bowling alley… pic.twitter.com/bnq80NH7Ja

— Tami Lund (@TamiLundAuthor) April 4, 2019

Diet day 3

Bowling alley options: Pizza Burgers Fried food **DRINK!

Diet on hiatus…

— Tami Lund (@TamiLundAuthor) April 4, 2019

Diet day 3: we shall not speak of the bowling alley.

Move along, people, move along… Nothing to see here!

— Tami Lund (@TamiLundAuthor) April 5, 2019

Diet day 5: Oh shit, I forgot about day 4!

— Tami Lund (@TamiLundAuthor) April 6, 2019

Diet day 5: So far, so good.

Of course, it’s only 8:45 am…. but hey, I’ll take the win!

— Tami Lund (@TamiLundAuthor) April 6, 2019

Diet day 5 – OMG, the receptionist at my hairdresser’s just asked me which of my books she should start reading first and this has nothing to do with dieting but it sure fills up my heart and soul!

— Tami Lund (@TamiLundAuthor) April 6, 2019

Side note: Based on her reading preferences, this is the series I recommended she start with: TWISTED FATE SERIES ON AMAZON

Diet day 5: it’s the weekend, so yes, there is drinking. But it’s 65 & sunny & I did yard work which is more exercise than I normally do, so that counts, right?

Right?!?

— Tami Lund (@TamiLundAuthor) April 6, 2019

Diet day 6: My body acknowledges yesterday’s yard work with painful protest, while the scale mocks me with laughter.

What do you mean, it doesn’t happen that quickly??

— Tami Lund (@TamiLundAuthor) April 7, 2019

Diet day 6: Mom says I can have the treadmill that’s acting as a clothes rack at her house.

Husband: Hell, no, that thing’s heavy!

— Tami Lund (@TamiLundAuthor) April 7, 2019

  Diet day 7: oh God, the weekly weigh-in is tomorrow!

— Tami Lund (@TamiLundAuthor) April 8, 2019

  Diet day 7: portion control~portion control~portion control…

Also, must perform ritualistic curse on that co-worker who mentioned the basketful of peanut M&Ms at the receptionist’s desk.

— Tami Lund (@TamiLundAuthor) April 8, 2019

Who, I should mention, is also participating in this weight loss challenge.

I smell a conspiracy….

— Tami Lund (@TamiLundAuthor) April 8, 2019

Diet day 7: I want seconds. And dessert. And wine.

Okay, I may have caved with the wine…

— Tami Lund (@TamiLundAuthor) April 8, 2019

Diet day 8: About to do the weekly weigh-in.

If I haven’t lost anything I’m blaming it on the inordinate amount of makeup I used to cover up this zit on my chin.

— Tami Lund (@TamiLundAuthor) April 9, 2019

Diet day 8: OMG I LOST A POUND! I LOST A POUND! THIS DIETING GIG IS AWESOME! . . . Damn, I want chocolate.

— Tami Lund (@TamiLundAuthor) April 9, 2019

Diet day 8: birthday club is today. Key lime pie. Which I’ve learned is a whopping 22 Weight Watchers points.

Clearly, God hates dieters.

— Tami Lund (@TamiLundAuthor) April 9, 2019

Diet day 8: black beans for lunch. My tummy is happy because it’s still full.

Pretty sure my husband won’t be quite so joyous later today.

— Tami Lund (@TamiLundAuthor) April 9, 2019

Diet day 8: whatever we do for dinner, it will involve grilling. Because, 65 & sunny in April in #PureMichigan.

— Tami Lund (@TamiLundAuthor) April 9, 2019

Diet day 8: If I weren’t dieting… https://t.co/iu5ZUAUnV1

— Tami Lund (@TamiLundAuthor) April 10, 2019

Wait, you aren’t following me on Twitter? Click HERE or any one of those tweets above and remedy that, asap.

I’ll wait.

Also, another side note: Guess what I learned today? HOW TO EMBED TWEETS INTO BLOG POSTS. May not be a big deal to you, but I feel a little bit like BuzzFeed right now.

So anyway, back to dieting… Yes, I’m doing it, or at least making more of an attempt than I ever have before. Which likely isn’t saying much compared to real dieters. But I truly do want to lose an inch or so around my waist so all those cute little skirts fit me again, and I figured joining a challenge with other people who are much more aggressively competitive than I am will at least encourage me to try harder than the average Tami.

So if you enjoy watching someone in misery or maybe you actually find my sense of humor amusing, head on over to Twitter and cheer me on. I need all the encouragement–and likes–I can get!

Tami Lund is an author, award-winner, and, apparently dieter. She’s also still a wine drinker, and is trying really hard not to keep Napa Valley in business, at least for the next seven weeks. Until she wins that prize. And then all bets are off.

PS – Yes, this pic is a few years old, and no, Tami isn’t updating it.

Docu-Diet, Twitter-Style Yeah, I just made that word up. What do they call that? Click-bait. I wanted you to check out my blog post, so I came up with something to entice you into clicking.

[remedialmassage]

Yoga as Reality TV? Yoga Girls Documents L.A. Teachers' Search for 'Insta-Fame'

We thought we'd seen it all when Goat Yoga became a thing. But this Sunday the new "docu-soap" Yoga Girls premieres on Z Living, aiming to highlight the dramatic dichotomy in the yoga community.

Does yoga belong on reality television? That's the niggling question we have heading into Sunday's premiere of Yoga Girls on Z Living. The "docu-soap" features a cast of nine yoga teachers on L.A.'s trendy "Westside" and creates drama by pitting "traditional" yoga teachers against social media-driven brand-builders who are searching for "Insta-fame." 

Meet Some of Yoga Girls' Cast Members

Jesse Schein

"I love television. And I love reality TV. And the reason why I was 100 percent comfortable doing it is they let me be 100 percent honest," says cast member Jesse Schein, 43, a senior teacher at YogaWorks in Santa Monica. Schein's studied with Maty Ezraty, Annie Carpenter, and Vinnie Marino and says she's on the "traditional" side of the yoga teacher spectrum. "It presented itself as a study of human relationships, and that has always fascinated me."

Schein says the show naturally uncovers entertaining drama and tension by placing nine dynamic, outspoken, but very different yoga teachers in a gorgeous location, then sitting back and watching what goes down. "There's definitely a huge divide in the community and the industry at large. The brand-building social media superstars are more about a method of teaching that's about performance. They lack background, education, and knowledge...it's not a high quality of teaching," she argues. "Some of the best yoga teachers in the world are in Santa Monica (where the show takes place), and the length of time they've committed [to yoga] is longer than some of the newer [teachers] have been alive. If you really want to build a respected career and study with these more senior teachers, you have to be committed, patient, and exceptionally good...this doesn't happen overnight. It takes 10,000 hours."

However, Schein feels some of her castmates on the "brand-building" side of the spectrum are more concerned with taking the perfect bikini yoga photo to post on Instagram or selling their products than becoming great yoga teachers. "There is an opportunity for so many of the young, beautiful, and bendy to become wildly successful with branding, social media, and building themselves. It's an opportunity for people to be instantaneously famous," she says.

Schein also notes that in this particular Hollywood-centric, cutthroat yoga scene, many yoga teachers are aspiring actors and models, or at least aspiring to do something else beyond yoga (nutrition, life coaching, etc.) "When you say I’m a yoga teacher and you have 10 other things on your resume, my eyes will roll. You can’t be high-quality if you're dedicated to 10 things at once. I’m a yoga teacher—that's it. I don’t clam to be anything else," she says.

See also Patanjali Never Said Anything About...Yoga Selfies

Elise Joan

Elise Joan, 41, is one of these so-called "Insta-girls" who is building a yoga brand as a program creator and expert for Beachbody, Livestrong, Fitbit, and more. She also has her own website, elisejoanfitness.com, with patented tech that allows users to create their own workout playlists. Joan was was originally a singer and dancer in New York, but discovered yoga when a vocal injury cut her career short. She says her most influential teachers have been Rudy Mettia, Jonathan Fields, and Shiva Rea.

"I lost my physical voice, but I've really found my true voice sharing my passion for all of the benefits of yoga with anyone who will listen," Joan says. "There is intimidation around yoga—I wanted to allow everyone to benefit rather than keeping it to an elite group of purists. My belief is to do that effectively, you have to focus on education. [I studied with] some of best yoga teachers in the world...when I felt I had the tools to share yoga in a different way, that's when I started to think about bringing the business and idea of yoga online. I think it's imperative [to use social media to share and promote yoga]. Do you want to reach 60 students in a class or 60,000 on social media? I’ve been able to make my whole career and income come from yoga because I’ve moved on to these media."

And while Joan says she's not the type to post bikini yoga photos, she totally supports her castmates who do. "I love what they are doing. I see them and I think, 'Oh, I want to look that good in a bikini.' They inspire people in their way and I think that's fantastic."

See also 10 Business Secrets to Starting a Successful Yoga Career

Sophie Jaffe

Sophie Jaffe, 33, is one of those bikini-yoga-photo posters, and she's proud of it. Jaffe studied with Baron Baptiste and Tamal Dodge. In addition to being a yoga teacher, she's also a certified raw food chef with her own superfood company, Philosophie.

"The women on this cast, we are all really good humans who can also sell ourselves and sell our products," she says. "Wearing a bikini while doing yoga doesn’t take away from our genuineness and wholeness. The more traditional side is maybe looking at it from a negative perspective, [like we are] selling out in some way or not respecting yoga. I don’t even see how that's possible when I'm sharing yoga in such a digestible way for the mainstream community."

See also The Future of Yoga: 40 Teachers, Only 1 Way to Go

Could Yoga Girls Bridge a Divide in Yoga? 

After wrapping season one of the series, Schein concedes that she now sees some of these "brand builders" in a new light.

"Some of the people I want to puke from because I really believe they are bullshit. Others...I started the series not being able to tolerate Elise, and we ended up being friends. She has the education and background and she went with the times—she didn’t stubbornly reject it and become a purist." 

Schein also admits that the show is helping her do a little brand-building herself. 

"I am very successful with what I do, but it caps off and I stopped making more money. This show is great advertising. I want to fill retreats and I want more offers. I have a kid—I want to send him to college. I want a season two."

Produced by Charlie Ebersol’s The Company, Yoga Girls premieres Sunday, September 24 at 8 p.m. ET on Z Living. Check back here Sunday night to watch the Yoga Girls premiere.

  from Yoga Journal http://ift.tt/2wBdifE