Radical Generosity: 12 Moves To Make the Happiest Customers in the World

Brandon Welch: 0:00
I think a lot of companies feel the need or the urge to go ooh, we do this. And it’s like if the restaurant said and when you walk in the door we’re going to hand you a complimentary wine, it would no longer be special. Never advertise it, never speak of it in your presentations. Fire anybody who goes out about talking about it. Let it be folklore. Let it be the mysterious word on the street At which point it becomes expected. Disrupt it and do something else unexpected. Welcome to the Maven Marketing Podcast. Today is Maven Monday. I’m your host, Brandon Welch, and I’m joined by Caleb, Praise the Lord, Agee.

Caleb Agee: 0:43
I don’t know if you ever saw this movie Nacho Libre. You should watch it with your kids. There’s a part where his buddy Steven he’s got a horrible Mexican accent, so pardon me on this, but he’s like you’ve not been baptized and then he goes praise the lord and, like sneak attack, baptizes his buddy. Sorry, when you say that. I don’t know why you’re saying that

Brandon Welch: 0:57
It wasn’t Nacho Libre. I heard that you did an awesome job leading worship at the Kinsmen event.

Caleb Agee: 1:05
Well, I was humbled to be able to do that and I would say leading worship is a joy of mine and I would say also it was a really cool moment about 150 men. It’s just facilitating worship because it’s a loud room and you just start the song and let them take it over and that’s a fun time.

Brandon Welch: 1:27
Well, I missed that one, but I heard awesome things and, caleb, if you didn’t know, there’s many, many, many things, but an awesome musician.

Caleb Agee: 1:36
People call me lots of things.

Brandon Welch: 1:38
Yeah, I’ve called him lots of things, but he’s such a good musician and anyway maybe we’ll get to see that one day on here, maybe that will be our. I don’t know, maybe we’ll sing to you for Christmas or something, maybe. Hey, this is the place where we help you eliminate waste in advertising, grow your business and achieve the big dream we have so much to go over, but I think we have to do the yeah.

Caleb Agee: 2:02
Did you know it’s December right now?

Brandon Welch: 2:04
We have to call that out. It is December.

Caleb Agee: 2:05
It’s December, the last month of the year you’ve got Well, depending on whether you listen to this on the day it drops, I bet I think you do Everybody the 1st of December. Two types of people Brandon Tree before Thanksgiving or tree after. Which one do you guys do in the Welch house Before Before?

Brandon Welch: 2:28
Really as of late before.

Caleb Agee: 2:30
Okay, yep, we put ours up on Friday after.

Brandon Welch: 2:35
Yes, that’s a staple for you.

Caleb Agee: 2:36
That’s how we do it. We decided that early on. You know who we haven’t heard from in a while Nate the camera guy.

Brandon Welch: 2:42
Or you before or after when does your tree go up Before?

Caleb Agee: 2:47
How early before? Are we talking about A couple weeks? Yours have been up for a couple weeks, a day or two.

Brandon Welch: 2:55
Just checking. We can’t wait for that stuff. Actually, we just got other stuff going on, so we just get out of the way the next four weeks. This is super important. We are going to be teaching the absolute, exact process we use to build marketing plans for all of the Frank and Maven clients that have grown by double, double digits. We have some awesome companies that have produced 10, 15x growth with this process.

Brandon Welch: 3:24
We’re going to be teaching. We’re going to do it live. I want to be teaching, we’re going to do it live. When I say live, we’re going to have examples. So it’s not just theoretical, we’re going to go through the exact steps. If you were paying us thousands and thousands of dollars as an engaged client, we’re going to give you that process over the next four weeks so you are going to be able to implement it in your business, in your business and after that, or while we’re doing that, we’re announcing something extremely cool, something we’ve been working on for the better part of two years. Yeah, the Maven Method Mastermind Group is launching in January of 2025, folks, can I get a rap? Wish I had my Bam bam, bam, bam, bam bam bam, that’s the, and Nate just put that in there.

Caleb Agee: 4:05
He made it sound like but I sounded so good too.

Brandon Welch: 4:07
Yeah, It’ll be negligible which one goes in. But hey, the Frank and Maven method mastermind, If you are a person who’s in marketing for really any size of business, or if you are selling advertising, or if you are in an agency, or if you are just generally wanting to get into the space of any kind and you are looking for support, what we find with marketing directors of the world is that they’re going man, I’m really passionate about this one thing, or I love maybe copywriting, or maybe you’re really good at social media ads, or maybe you’re really good at a lot of the things, but it’s a very, very lonely spot it is If you’re running marketing for a company or if you’re in an agency or in the media sales world, where you’re the one in the bunch that’s like.

Brandon Welch: 4:52
I want to know more how this works. I want a community of marketing nerds. That is what the Maven Marketing Mastermind is designed for. Monthly, we are going to be peeling away our team from the work that we do that grows these companies by multi-millions of dollars, and we’re going to be sitting down with you on weekly calls to go through your ad copy, to go through your media plans, to go through your website traffic, to go through SEO. Basically, any topic that you would be hearing on this episode could be a topic of a mastermind, and you’re going to be doing it next to other small business marketers. We have about 20 people already kind of pre-committed for this mastermind launch. You’ll get to interact with some FrankenMaven clients and some people who have seen this stuff happen right in front of their eyes over the last 10, 15 years that we’ve been working with their companies, and it is going to be such a cool community that we’re building.

Caleb Agee: 5:49
It really is.

Brandon Welch: 5:50
So stay tuned for that. We are going to be giving away some really special opportunities for you as a Maven Marketing Podcast listener to join that at a discount. It will be very affordable, no matter who you are. But who doesn’t want a little better price? Right, that’s right? Yeah, and just so you know the reason we’re doing that has nothing to do with us making big money or anything like that. The agency that we have built serves our people, serves us. That is our core vocation, if you will. But our mission is to make every entrepreneur in the world better at marketing, better at growing their business, better at making an impact, better at building culture within their teams, better at delivering the product they do for the people that they serve, and so that’s why we’ve dedicated all the resources to this podcast and our books and the stuff you see us put out. But the mastermind is a way to take that a little further.

Caleb Agee: 6:48
Yeah.

Brandon Welch: 6:49
And we’re bringing our team that we would normally be paying to do other things inside the agency to you, and so not everybody can be a client. We can’t serve hundreds of companies and not everybody is at a level where that makes sense to have an agency in their back pocket. But this is going to be your way to have the knowledge, experience, confidence, camaraderie, collaboration.

Caleb Agee: 7:16
A little slice of Frank and Maven.

Brandon Welch: 7:17
With strategic marketers. That’s right In your back pocket, so that is coming in 2025, and you will be hearing a lot more about that in the next four weeks, while we teach you how to build your own marketing plan.

Caleb Agee: 7:28
That’s right, and look at that.

Brandon Welch: 7:29
We’re like 10 minutes in already and we haven’t even talked about the dagum topic today.

Caleb Agee: 7:33
Yeah, Today we’re talking about generosity.

Brandon Welch: 7:37
Generosity. It’s actually the most abundant thing you could choose to implement in your business abundant thing you could choose to implement in your business, More than marketing and advertising, more than strategy or ad copy or any of the other stuff we talk about here. The concept of generosity far outweighs the impact of anything else you could do. We’re going to share a little bit how that’s been an impact for us and the people we serve. But quick disclaimer yes.

Brandon Welch: 8:10
Generosity is an attitude we have. To make the titles of these episodes like tactical in nature, so you know what you’re going to walk away with. But if you’re here and you’re on board for the topic today, know that this is not a box that you can check that’s right, you have to check your soul, not a box oh, oh Boom. Drop the mic, can’t drop these mics.

Brandon Welch: 8:28
I think the type of people we attract to this podcast already understand this. I think the type of people that want a holistic view of connecting human beings through marketing understand and believe this. This is designed to be maybe an inspiration, or maybe just a little bit of idea generation for how you could pour gas on the fire that already is alive in you. Yeah, but generosity is a worldview. It is a matter of the heart, not a matter of I did something transactionally. However, if you do it, there are some very cool business realities that come from that. That’s right.

Caleb Agee: 9:04
That’s right. You have to really watch how you approach that. So Steve Jobs says it’s not the customer’s job to know what they want. It’s our job to surprise and delight them.

Brandon Welch: 9:17
What better company to lead that thought Apple did not have to build these aesthetically beautiful machines? They didn’t have to disrupt software. They could have played in that game and been one of the IBMs or BlackBerrys.

Caleb Agee: 9:33
Could have done those yellowing plastic. You remember those old plastic computers that had the yellow tan dinginess to them? They could have done that, just like Gateway and Dell and everybody else did, but they didn’t. They made them different and surprised us. They could have done that just like Gateway and Dell and everybody else did, but they didn’t. Yeah, they made them different and surprises.

Brandon Welch: 9:46
They challenged the status quo. Derek Sivers he wrote a book called the 40 Lessons of a New Kind of Entrepreneur. I’m browsing it, I’m skimming through it, but CheatGPT found this quote inside that book the best way to make your customers happy is to surprise them with something they didn’t know they wanted. We’re going to talk about all about that today how to engineer unexpected generosity, what we’re calling radical generosity. Radical, unexpected things inside your customer experience, inside your follow-up, inside your culture, inside your four walls with your team and even your team’s family and the people that they serve.

Caleb Agee: 10:23
Team and even your team’s family and the people that they serve. Yeah, so we spend so much time worrying about getting new customers? Obviously we’re in marketing, that’s a lot of what we have to talk about, and even sales and new customers are sexy man. Yeah it’s. It’s like hey, let me bring in lots of new customers you got. You’re thinking about budgets you know, medias that you’re talking about. You’re talking about which what to do on your social media, your website, all these different things.

Brandon Welch: 10:47
Clicks and conversion rates and landing pages and all that stuff, yeah.

Caleb Agee: 10:50
And we forget to be intentional with the ones who have already said yes, who voted for us with their dollars and trusted us to perform a service for them. Yeah, and so.

Brandon Welch: 11:03
Or maybe they’re about to, and there’s this word on the street that could precede you. That’s right, it was Milton Hershey, I think.

Caleb Agee: 11:12
The Hershey family. The.

Brandon Welch: 11:13
Hershey family. Give them quality. That’s the best kind of advertising. Okay, so all that to say. The big idea is before you start planning your advertising marketing which is what we’re going to be doing next week before you do that, start planning your generosity. No-transcript, we’re leaving an era of like transactional and data-driven excellence and getting back into this excellence of really just hospitality at its best. But there’s a guy named Will Gudara that is probably the most famous talking head about this right now, and he wrote a book called Unreasonable Hospitality.

Caleb Agee: 12:04
Yeah, he did a lot of research specifically to more of the hospitality and restaurant industry, but it applies. It applies so much All the way across and so-.

Brandon Welch: 12:13
Everybody understands the restaurant business, though, right. We can all just immediately infer what we should do from that. His book or his restaurant was 11 Madison Park 11 Madison Park 11 Madison Park, michelin star Number one restaurant in the world.

Caleb Agee: 12:29
Yeah.

Brandon Welch: 12:30
By the people that rate restaurants.

Caleb Agee: 12:31
Number one in the freaking world Okay. Yeah, so you should read his book. You should also go see. Netflix has a documentary where they have an episode about reopening after renovations or something like that. It’s called what is it Seven?

Brandon Welch: 12:44
days, Seven days Before seven days prior or something like that. Check that out, too Crazy stuff, nate, just put it up on the screen.

Caleb Agee: 12:52
Okay. His research says 70% of a customer’s dining experience is influenced by how they feel they are being treated, rather than the quality of the food or service.

Brandon Welch: 13:04
We have a restaurant in our town that is very much proof of this Very average food. It’s, I would call it, like slop, very, very famous restaurant, though Thousands and thousands and thousands of people go here.

Caleb Agee: 13:21
Oh okay, I was trying to figure out which restaurant we’re not going to name it. Yeah, it’s fried food.

Brandon Welch: 13:24
It’s Southern food and it’s good, like if you’ve not been, I wouldn’t steer you away.

Caleb Agee: 13:27
When you grow up around it you’re kind of like, eh, okay.

Brandon Welch: 13:30
So, but they have hospitality down. Yes, they do, they have you, you maybe they bring things to your table. Yes. You don’t have to wait you just kind of flag somebody down as they go by, it’s all special and people rave about it because of how they felt. Right Chick-fil-A, right, Fast food.

Caleb Agee: 13:55
It’s a chicken sandwich, right yeah, nothing special about that.

Brandon Welch: 13:58
So he also talks about employee empowerment Over. Also talks about employee empowerment. Over 80% of team members reported feeling more motivated. Would you like to have a more motivated team? Caleb has the most motivated team that I know of, but most people I know would like to have a more motivated team.

Caleb Agee: 14:20
They feel more motivated when they were given the freedom to surprise and delight guests with personalized gestures. Hey, go read the Frankly Friday from not this Friday, but the one before it’s called.

Brandon Welch: 14:24
Pixie Dust.

Caleb Agee: 14:25
Pixie Dust Go check it out.

Brandon Welch: 14:27
Yeah. So takeaway there Disney empowers their team members every day to go out of their way to do something unexpected for a guest. I happen to be, my family happen to be one of those recipients, and it was a really cool story. You should go check it out. They call it spreading pixie dust. But you’re going to do it just under the principle of unreasonable generosity. Radical generosity, right, yeah. But imagine if 80% of your team members were more motivated just because of something cool they got to do.

Caleb Agee: 14:53
You know how hard it is to turn up motivation. It’s nearly impossible.

Brandon Welch: 14:57
You can’t do it.

Caleb Agee: 14:58
Most people can’t self-motivate. Well, you can’t motivate people.

Brandon Welch: 15:01
People have to motivate themselves.

Caleb Agee: 15:02
Yes, well, you can’t motivate people.

Brandon Welch: 15:03
People have to motivate themselves, but it turns out that natural fuel or motivation is giving.

Caleb Agee: 15:09
Yes.

Brandon Welch: 15:09
When you give them the tools and the power to do that to rock somebody’s world.

Caleb Agee: 15:13
That’s fun. That is fun.

Brandon Welch: 15:16
Nobody doesn’t like doing that.

Caleb Agee: 15:17
Is it the Ritz that has? I don’t remember what their dollar limit is it’s Carlton.

Brandon Welch: 15:21
It’s probably changed over the years it’s multiple hundreds of dollars.

Caleb Agee: 15:24
So let’s say each employee has $500 at their disposal to fix any problem that a visitor has.

Brandon Welch: 15:31
That day Check this out. A friend of mine went to the Ritz in one of the islands.

Caleb Agee: 15:37
Okay.

Brandon Welch: 15:38
His golf clubs. He was going there for a golf thing. His golf clubs didn’t arrive.

Caleb Agee: 15:42
Okay.

Brandon Welch: 15:44
He didn’t tell anybody, he didn’t go ask for help. In the line going up to the concierge, the janitor overhears him talking about oh dang it, I don’t have my golf clubs. That’s all he said, okay. Overhears him in the lobby, he checks in and minutes later okay, minutes later. Knock on his door a brand new bag of golf clubs Amazing, not loaned to him, gifted to him by the Ritz-Carlton Nice clubs too. Yeah, nice clubs. Okay, and his name was on the freaking like the bag or something the golf, the little club booty thing or whatever they call those.

Caleb Agee: 16:28
Wow, that’s amazing, isn’t that incredible? So cool, and those employees felt amazing for the generosity they got to bring.

Brandon Welch: 16:35
But that’s part of Rich’s culture, that’s their baseline of generosity.

Caleb Agee: 16:39
What if it was a part of your culture?

Brandon Welch: 16:41
Revenue growth from loyalty says that repeat customers spend 20 to 30% more on average compared to first-time diners. Repeat customers spend more, and how hard is it to get somebody to come back to a restaurant? It’s like been there, done that. I think they have a lot of restaurants I went to once and haven’t been back, right.

Caleb Agee: 16:55
Yep.

Brandon Welch: 16:58
So that also goes to their friends and family. They bring people back and they want to spend more money with you, right?

Caleb Agee: 17:02
Word of mouth impact over 90% of Eleven Madison Park. This is the restaurant he’s writing about. All of their new reservations stemmed from recommendations and stories shared by previous guests. 90% of their bookings.

Brandon Welch: 17:16
Imagine if 90% of your new business came from past customers.

Caleb Agee: 17:20
Yeah.

Brandon Welch: 17:21
Holy smokes, how little would your advertising budget have to be? It would be teeny tiny. Yes, we would actually really love that.

Caleb Agee: 17:28
Yes, wouldn’t that be amazing. Yeah.

Brandon Welch: 17:30
Yeah, last one Personalized hospitality efforts increased guest return rates by more than 40% within two years, so more often repeat customers and they’re spending more money. So we all know generosity is the thing. Let’s walk through some ways. These are Frank and Maven tactics. These are also things we borrowed from other people, and we’re going to start with two principles that every tactic like there’s other things you could be doing here, but no matter what it is, it has to have these two things involved. One is unexpected, I think a lot of companies feel the need or the urge to go ooh, we do this, and it’s like if Disney ever advertised the fact that they are going to do what they did for my family it would no longer be special.

Brandon Welch: 18:12
Yeah, if the restaurant said and when you walk in the door we’re going to hand you a complimentary wine, it’s like it would no longer be special.

Caleb Agee: 18:21
It’s not special.

Brandon Welch: 18:22
Never advertise it, never speak of it in your presentations. Like fire anybody who goes out about talking about it. Yeah, let it be folklore, let it be the mysterious word on the street and at which point it becomes expected, disrupt it and do something else unexpected. That’s great yeah. So it has to be unexpected and it has to be undeniably above average, what we call the bar of average. So that’s expectation. But I’m saying, like quality, it should cost you something, it should be of noticeable value to have that sort of impact.

Caleb Agee: 18:57
Yeah, that’s good.

Brandon Welch: 19:00
Those are the two principles of radical generosity, and here are the 12 ideas Caleb and I are going to trade off on these. Okay, Number one give them more than advertised. So if you’re a restaurant, this is larger than expected portions. Or maybe it is that special cocktail or that hand-prepared dessert that the chef made just for you today when you walk in the door, or maybe this is crazy. I got a quote from this company in town a very good company to redo my floors. Um, and it was an astronomical quote. Lots of money, You’ve heard the number.

Brandon Welch: 19:38
Yes, it was the price of a Mercedes, and then some. And what was crazy is on that quote there’s an $80 little mop, like the Bona mop things, that you can buy to sweep your floors, and I just remember thinking they put that on the quote and it’s like whatever, I’m fine to pay for the mop if I need one.

Caleb Agee: 20:06
Forcing you to buy an $80 mop.

Brandon Welch: 20:07
Yeah, but here is a Mercedes and oh, we’re going to charge you for the air freshener.

Caleb Agee: 20:14
we put in it, right, you could have had a great down payment on a starter home.

Brandon Welch: 20:20
That’s right.

Caleb Agee: 20:20
That kind of money they were asking on.

Brandon Welch: 20:23
And so maybe if you’re in home service, it’s the little doodads, it’s the accessories, yeah, it’s the. If you’re selling a car, you give them the hat. One time I bought a BMW and I went there and they like gave me and my son, like they’re like go in the BMW store and pick up anything you want, right, the ball caps and the. These are expensive shirts and stuff, so it’s give more than advertised.

Brandon Welch: 20:51
Maybe if you’re a roofer, it’s free gutter cleaning, like you just call them up and say, hey, we’re going to come clean your gutters next year for you or whatever. Maybe if you’re in legal, it’s the nice leather bound portfolio that your estate plan comes in or or um, you know some sort of really nice hard drive to keep your stuff on, like the, the a hundred $200, add on the gimme, that’s just like oh, they didn’t have to do that, yes, but I’m so glad they did Right.

Caleb Agee: 21:14
It’s nowhere on the bill, so give more completely generous, give more than advertised.

Caleb Agee: 21:18
So good, um. Second one customize the experience. So you want to make it special for the person. Um, examples would be their favorite music is playing on the way in we’re. We’re letting you in on a couple of our secrets. Um, when we have well, when we have a, when we have a new employee, uh, and we’re meeting with them, we have what we call a coffee interview. It’s usually off-site and part of our interview questions, just because we love music, is what’s your favorite band? Yep, when we drive over to the office immediately after that, brandon and I call the office and say hey, put on U2.

Brandon Welch: 21:54
Said band.

Caleb Agee: 21:55
And then U2 is blaring when they walk in the office and they’re like this is good, like they don’t even realize half the time. They don’t realize it for about two minutes.

Brandon Welch: 22:04
They’re like just jamming and bopping, they’re feeling good and then they’re like wait, did you turn this on?

Caleb Agee: 22:10
We’re like how did that happen? Because it’s on purpose.

Brandon Welch: 22:14
We’ll go to great lengths, we’ll snoop somebody on social media to figure out what their favorite soda is or their favorite sports team, or whatever Coffee drink. Coffee drink That’ll be in the fridge. Or, if you’re the first time they come to you, they’ve got a. They just came from Starbucks. Oh yeah, You’re taking a picture of that Starbucks label so you can have that there for them the next time, right Yep.

Brandon Welch: 22:40
Maybe you have that there for him the next time, right, yeah, um, maybe maybe you’re on a like complete, you know, first impression basis. Maybe you can’t get this intel, uh, but what if you’re? What if you’re going to somebody’s home and you, instead of just bringing your standard slide deck, what if you’re putting a picture of their home in your slide deck presentation or you’re, you know, putting their favorite sports team as like a reference or something in?

Brandon Welch: 23:00
your presentation, customize the experience. There’s a million ways you could do that, but it’s generous, yeah. So third, one of my favorite call just because, okay, you’ve communicated next steps after your proposal, or maybe somebody’s already a repeated customer or whatever, to a non-intrusive level, just call and say, hey, just want to let you know. I just checked in on what we ordered for you. It’s still on track to be here two Fridays from now. Anything else you’re thinking about in the meantime Not to get the sale? You say anything I can do for you now. It’s a 30-second gesture, right? Maybe a minute 30 seconds by the time you get on and off the phone. Possibly that could be a text as well, maybe an email. But check in just because, like all my home service people, you gotta be doing that and dude all my advertising salespeople, all my marketing people. Hey, just want to let you know. Our impressions are running, your ad’s running.

Brandon Welch: 23:57
I want to you fell in a really good spot last night. You know, in the in the news or I saw a you know a really good comment on the ads were running or whatever something like that.

Caleb Agee: 24:09
We switched out your, your billboard design and I just drove by and saw it looks great, yep.

Brandon Welch: 24:15
Yep. These can be textual calls.

Caleb Agee: 24:16
Yep, uh, what’s number four. Number four, an unrelated gift. So think of something. If there’s not something that goes directly along with what you’re selling, come out of left field with something completely off. So Brandon’s talked about, was it a carpet cleaner?

Brandon Welch: 24:32
or what.

Caleb Agee: 24:33
That would his wife would bake bread. Yes, they’d bring a loaf of fresh bread.

Brandon Welch: 24:37
Every time and got nothing to do with carpets.

Caleb Agee: 24:39
Yeah, just bring in some bread.

Brandon Welch: 24:42
Trust me, they charge enough for the carpets that they can bake the bread, but yeah, so this is different than adding value to the nature of your core service. This is an unexpected thing you’re doing. On top of that, what else could it be? You could get them tickets to the local sporting event or a concert or a musical in town, yeah, or you know, ice cream gift cards or some sort of something fun to do with the family, something seasonal yeah, just just something off the wall that would be special, generous, unexpected.

Caleb Agee: 25:18
Yes, yeah.

Brandon Welch: 25:19
Big giant, candy bar, whatever, yeah, okay, fifth, the forever favorite here is the handwritten note For sales, birthdays, all occasions.

Brandon Welch: 25:29
Like if you’ve had an interaction with them or if there’s an important event in their life. The handwritten note Hilarious. My good friend Randy, we’ve been talking about this for years. I literally hit print on the notes for this episode and I can show you the timestamp and he sends me a text. He goes I just finished all my handwritten notes for every one of my customers this year and he has a business that’s growing like wildfire right.

Brandon Welch: 25:53
They are firing on all cylinders and this is just. He didn’t have to do this. He’s like the number one choice in his market right now, but he is just because he’s a generous man and he loves the feeling of doing that and so that happened like 30 minutes ago, right before we did so funny yeah but, dude, sit down, take, take 30 minutes. At the end of your week, look back at your calendar. Write handwritten notes to every person. That was the head you had a significant interaction with yeah, that is.

Caleb Agee: 26:21
That’s such a special thing. People don’t lost art, it’s a lost art. Um, that’s uh how to win friends and influence people. He talks about that a lot in there it’s such a, such a beautiful thing to. There’s some it’s so easy to type right it. Actually it takes extra work to put it in an envelope, to write it with your hands. Put an envelope put a stamp on it, send it to the mailbox. People love getting mail.

Brandon Welch: 26:44
Everybody loves getting mail.

Caleb Agee: 26:46
Yeah, it’s not junk mail real mail, but you don’t get much.

Brandon Welch: 26:50
I got a tax bill the other day. I didn’t like that yeah.

Caleb Agee: 26:53
Yes, number six, all yes, number six. All right, go out of your way to connect them to other people. We love doing this. If you hear somebody is looking for a job, you’re like, oh you know what, what are you looking for? And your next question or somebody’s got an open position, they’re hiring. Looking for those people in your world, in your network, to connect them and you’re genuinely helping both of them, with no secondary motivation.

Brandon Welch: 27:23
Yep, or maybe you know somebody that needs, you know, the service of something you know your clients do, so maybe, like for me, over the years it’s been car dealers, it’s obviously been anything in home service or any attorney. It’s like, instead of just saying, oh you, oh, you should go to so-and-so, go out of your way and say, hey, I want to make a personal connection. You call the person you’re going to connect them to say, hey, I came across somebody who I think you could really help. It’s okay if I either give you your cell phone number or connect you in an email or whatever, but you go out of your way.

Brandon Welch: 27:52
It takes five minutes to make those special connections, you give each one of them an endorsement for each other and say you guys take it from here.

Caleb Agee: 28:01
Yep, yep.

Brandon Welch: 28:02
Such a generous thing to do with your time. How about Saw this Thought of you, our friend Tim Miles?

Caleb Agee: 28:09
Yes.

Brandon Welch: 28:10
Tim is a wise man. He wrote possibly the best book on customer service, called Good Company. You should get a copy of it. But when you encounter like for me, my buddy Greg out in Carolina, when I encounter anything that is Bengals related, I’m snapping a meme and sending it to him. Or it could be some weird car enthusiast or just something that nobody else would pay attention to. Like it’s maybe the thing that makes you go oh, I thought of them because it was something they like. No, capture it.

Caleb Agee: 28:39
Yeah, take a picture of it. Hit that send button, the share button, whatever it looks like.

Brandon Welch: 28:42
Yep. Grab the link, send it to an email. Saw this Thought of you. Hope you’re having a great day. Yep Right, that’s generous because that’s a gesture, were thinking of them.

Caleb Agee: 28:53
Yep.

Brandon Welch: 28:54
Brought their likeness, like everybody is using or is needing more of their thing in their life. Right, yeah, I talked to a friend of mine the other day. He’s like I haven’t bought a motorcycle in 12 years or whatever it was, but every week I get an email of this motorcycle dealership their new arrivals. I stop and look at it because I like to imagine motorcycles. Right, that’s right. So, whatever their thing is, I don’t think you could do that enough. Dozens of times a week. You could pull that Any time a day, you could do that. So what’s number eight?

Caleb Agee: 29:27
Number eight give them public praise. So there are a lot of ways to give people praise Rhyming right now.

Brandon Welch: 29:35
Yeah, just keep it Ways to give them praise.

Caleb Agee: 29:38
So you can leave reviews on LinkedIn for the person or the company. You could go troll their posts and leave nice comments. Hey, you are awesome at this thing.

Brandon Welch: 29:51
Man, you have the best looking kids. I love how polite your kids are. Whatever, next time you’re in a group in front of anybody where you could acknowledge them, don’t be cheesy.

Caleb Agee: 30:02
Don’t be a butt kisser, no but when you genuinely observe that thing about that person, then say it out loud. We don’t do that enough. We notice great things about each other and then we don’t. We keep them to ourselves, Leave them Google reviews. That’s a big one too.

Brandon Welch: 30:15
other and then we don’t, we keep them to ourselves. Even Google reviews, that’s a big one too.

Caleb Agee: 30:17
Yeah, we had somebody leave us an amazing Google review yesterday.

Brandon Welch: 30:20
Really yeah, joe, oh, wow, left us a Google review. Awesome. Thank you, joe.

Caleb Agee: 30:24
Yeah, thanks, joe. It was unexpected and generous.

Brandon Welch: 30:28
Thank you, joe, you did not have to do that Sweet.

Brandon Welch: 30:31
Nine Undivided attention. This is something, frankly, I did it by accident for years because it’s hard to put me in a box on a calendar. But after a while we started. I said Riley, there’s no such thing as a one-hour meeting. Always put a buffer time to where you’re going to go over. It’s not that you have to go over, but probably there’s an opportunity to go over. Give somebody your undivided attention. If somebody is sitting in front of you, they are the most important thing in your world and you’re advertising, quote unquote.

Brandon Welch: 31:06
The meeting is an hour long, but you are there in your own mind for as long as it takes which could be an hour and a half, two hours, and they leave knowing like everything that was going on for them was addressed right.

Caleb Agee: 31:18
Yeah, that’s great, I think. I heard a story of somebody who was working with us and they said they were at a different agency before us and hopefully it doesn’t sound like a brag, I’m just giving an example. But this other agency had very rigid schedules. If you had a one-hour block or a 30-minute block on their schedule. It was literally, as the clock struck, 12,. They’re closing their laptops, thank you, and they start standing up and gesturing you toward the door because somebody else is waiting and they’re like working it.

Caleb Agee: 31:49
Like you know and and uh, we were sitting, we were coming on two hours in a meeting with them and they’re like oh my gosh is, are you guys okay on time? And they were so thankful. They’re like are you guys okay on time? Like we’ve been here for two hours. I didn’t realize this meeting’s gone so well. Awesome compliment. I take that all day. Didn’t even notice it was two hours in a meeting, that’s a side note, but they were like man at other places it was like we had to get out the door.

Brandon Welch: 32:18
So important note there Do all you’re supposed to do as advertisers within time. Don’t drag it out. But the add-ons, the cherries on top, the icing on the cake, the extra, you know, attention and love and all that stuff you give to them, make room for it.

Caleb Agee: 32:34
Number 10, appreciation events Go over the top. Yeah, throw a party.

Brandon Welch: 32:41
Hire a band, Dude, you’re not getting a sheet cake from Price Chopper and saying come buy for cupcakes and cookies?

Caleb Agee: 32:48
from two to four From the Piggly Wiggly, no, no.

Brandon Welch: 32:50
Yeah, dude, we’re hiring the guy in town that everybody wants to go see on a Friday night.

Caleb Agee: 32:54
Yep.

Brandon Welch: 32:55
We’re paying him his $1,000 fee to come and play music for our guests for 50 people right.

Caleb Agee: 33:00
Mm-hmm.

Brandon Welch: 33:02
We’re calling the cool restaurant in town. It’s not all about money, but it’s about significance. It goes back to that original thing it’s got to be above average. Yes, and you should be doing this. I mean, I’m thinking for, if you’re in retail and you can’t do it for like everybody, do it for your top customers. If you’re in service, gosh, do it for all of them and do it at a place. Do it in a way that is like noticeably generous, at least once a year.

Caleb Agee: 33:28
Yeah, I think the point being they’re not, you’re not expecting them to do anything. There’s not some secret showroom off to the side where you’re pushing your pedal and product or anything like that is generally genuinely generous. I can’t spit that out.

Brandon Welch: 33:44
But that’s that’s. The key is your motivation is not genuinely generous.

Caleb Agee: 33:46
I can’t spit that out. But that’s the key. Your motivation is not I’m going to sell you more stuff because you gotcha, you came in. It is no, I want to feed you good food and entertain you because I’m so thankful that you have given our business.

Brandon Welch: 34:02
You’ve paid my paycheck, you have helped us stay in business and that is a beautiful thing we’re going to celebrate, celebrate, celebrate, yeah, so have appreciation events Like just do one man and do it well, levin, give away your secrets. I’m talking about the information. I’m talking about the stuff that they would have to pay your fee to learn. It could be blogs, it could be books or articles you write. It could be a podcast.

Caleb Agee: 34:28
What an idea.

Brandon Welch: 34:30
What an idea it could be in your sales presentations and I’m not saying you have to teach everybody how to build the clock when they just want to know how to read the time. But you are taking those things that make you special. Instead of saying, ooh, I’m going to charge money for those. You have an air of generosity. One of my favorite examples of this is actually the church I go to, which is Life Church, and it’s funny because last Sunday this was actually kind of the theme Something like 1 million I think it was 1.3 million churches around the world are using the content of the church, that is. This church is based in Oklahoma. Yeah, and early, early on, like 20, 30 years ago, when they started this, they had some really great content. They had some really good like music content, they had good like structures and, for whatever reason, like generosity was just their calling.

Caleb Agee: 35:26
And so they started putting all of this stuff, all the thousands of dollars and hours that goes into making a good sermon the slides, the intro video, all the little banners that you would have around the place If you think about our world.

Brandon Welch: 35:36
It’s like stock photography, almost. This is kind of like stock sermon, although it’s really really high quality stuff.

Brandon Welch: 35:43
And so they just said we’re going to put it on a website and we can easily charge 20, 40, 50 bucks a sermon, hundreds probably in some cases. We’re gonna give it away. And so there’s a whole group of pastors around the world. That content isn’t natural to them, like it is probably for this church, or they just don’t have time or whatever. And so if you wanna start a church in your living room, go, steal our slides. That’s all the work’s done for you. You don’t need a staff. That’s an example of just being hugely generous with your knowledge. And it’s like if it’s sunken cost, if it’s something you’ve already got, why not give it away to the world? We say one of our vows to our customers is we will always give our secrets, our best stuff, away for free.

Caleb Agee: 36:25
That’s right.

Brandon Welch: 36:26
That’s a missional vow. It’s part of Frank and Emmett’s vision, values and vows.

Caleb Agee: 36:30
There are no secrets in our office. Our team is trained to give it away. Yes, like the red hot chili peppers.

Brandon Welch: 36:48
Very, very, very often we encounter a company that’s not really ideal or probably a good fit for them or us like to to engage with either, for a number of reasons. But we will always say, hey, probably not the best fit for us to work with you, but here’s what we would do if we were in your shoes and we’ll spend 30 minutes to an hour on the phone with them just saying here’s what you want to go, look and it’s. I mean, I’m not advertising, this is like the insider circle I’m telling here.

Caleb Agee: 37:09
Yeah.

Brandon Welch: 37:09
Because I do not want that to be like perceived as a tactic or things we do, but that is a calling for us yeah, to leave people better than we found them.

Caleb Agee: 37:17
Every time.

Brandon Welch: 37:18
Every time.

Caleb Agee: 37:19
So last drum roll, please Number 12, get your customers together on making the world a better place. So we want to give to other causes.

Brandon Welch: 37:29
Yes, something that makes the world better, that’s undeniably about somebody besides you right, yes, all these other 11, you could argue, or somebody could see some sort of connection, why it helps you. But this is just flat out donations and charity.

Caleb Agee: 37:44
Yep. Be charitable, tell, make. Be charitable, tell. Make sure you know people know you think I think about Tom’s and what’s the sock brand? Bombas Is that? Is that how you pronounce it? Yeah? I don’t feel like I. You know what I’m talking about. One for one, basically. They. They essentially, if you buy a sock, you’re giving one to somebody who doesn’t literally have coverings on their feet and so um, but beyond that, you probably don’t have the ability to like put shoes on kids in Africa. Maybe you?

Brandon Welch: 38:24
can do something in your backyard and and help. Yeah, we have, we have a. We have a friend who’s in the roofing business and he regularly like if he sees somebody in need who just literally can’t fix the roof and it’s leaking into that house or whatever, and it’s you know, the poor old lady or whatever, he’ll just do it, and so he would never want credit for that. However, there’s a, there’s a time and a place where you you’re not doing that for self-serving attention at all You’re saying, hey, um, mr and Mrs Nate, the camera guy, so glad uh, you let us come out to do the service for you today. Just needed to know something really quick. Um, we’re not only going to provide you a good service. Um, we believe it’s our mission, our calling, to give to others, and so when you do business with us, you’re helping, and then insert the story people like Wanda or whoever you know.

Brandon Welch: 39:11
Nate the Camera Guy could say you know, we do videos to help churches and nonprofits. That’s part of our mission. Frank and Maven, we would never want attention for this, but we give websites to causes, we give like large amounts of time and we just and we do that because that’s something we can do.

Caleb Agee: 39:30
Yeah, we keep them up after that Yep and we raise money.

Brandon Welch: 39:33
Yeah. So the story is you’re not just buying quality blank. You’re helping people come out of homelessness or restore families or make children living in foster care less lonely. You’re helping abandoned kittens find a loving home, right.

Caleb Agee: 39:46
Those are actually all things we’ve done.

Brandon Welch: 39:50
So you’re incorporating that as a call to action to get people on board to helping you do something bigger. It’s not look at us in the picture of us donating this, check it’s. You’re saying, hey, come, do this, we did it. You do it with us too. Right, do this. Yeah, we did it, you do it with us too. Right Side thing gobeyondprofitorg had some really interesting research. Employees who consider generosity when deciding where to work has become a huge factor.

Brandon Welch: 40:19
Like we’re still in the era of like it’s tough to find good help, and everybody who’s frustrated with that will be like well, everybody wants to be paid too much, or they just want too much. They don’t want to work anymore. It’s like it’s actually not true, they just want meaning and purpose right. But even in 2019, the number was 47% of employees say generosity is something they look for when they’re choosing an employer. In five years, just in that time, it’s 75%. It’s gone up like 50 percentage points.

Caleb Agee: 40:57
Think about generosity as we just defined it, and how many different ways you could show that to your team.

Brandon Welch: 41:05
Yes.

Caleb Agee: 41:05
Because it means all of those things to them. So the 75% of employees who consider the generosity, they’re paying attention to those signals in your job ad, in your interview process, in all of these things. They’re listening because that’s the only time they can right. They’re considering that as part of whether or not they want to work with you.

Brandon Welch: 41:26
Yeah, A lot of ways to do that. Yeah, you could say hey, we give a company I used to work for said we’ll give you X amount of days off of a year just to go serve the cause you’re passionate about. It was extra days, quote, unquote off. Yeah, but that’s cool, right, yeah?

Caleb Agee: 41:42
I like that.

Brandon Welch: 41:44
So we should do that. You can have tomorrow off and go serve. Yeah, sounds great, whatever you want. Okay, so we’ll do a quick recap.

Caleb Agee: 41:53
Yes, bring it on.

Brandon Welch: 41:54
Here’s the 12 tactics Give them more value than advertised. Customize the experience. Call them with an update just because. Give an unrelated gift as gratitude. Send handwritten notes. Always Connect them with other people who can help them, or vice versa. Saw this thought of you articles and memes. When you see something that makes you think of that person, just send it to them. Eight give them public praise, social shout outs and things like that. Nine give them your undivided attention and schedule bandwidth for you to be able to do that. Ten have customer appreciation events at least once a year, if not more often. Eleven give away your trade secrets, your advice, your information, your best knowledge for free. And then twelve give to their causes. Make your community and the world they live in a better place. Guys, I’m so excited for you to go do this. I know so many of you are doing this, but the focus let’s start there. Before we think about the money we’re spending on anything else, let’s think about the money we’re spending on making the world better.

Caleb Agee: 43:00
Yeah.

Brandon Welch: 43:00
Giving more than expected. Yeah, generosity.

Caleb Agee: 43:03
I think when we shift our mindset, unfortunately, business has to be a little bit of a self. It can be a selfish mindset. Right, we have to, because we’re trying to. It takes money to sustain the mission. Right, you have to. Yeah, you have to convince people that you are the best choice to do a thing, right?

Caleb Agee: 43:25
And so there’s a confidence, there’s a pride that you have the best choice to do a thing right, and so there’s a confidence, there’s a pride that you have to say me, come to me. You make it about them if you’re writing good marketing, but it’s still self-serving right when we can acknowledge how blessed we are to have people do that for us.

Caleb Agee: 43:41
All of these things are so freaking easy. They’re so simple, because the generosity just shows up when you’re like. You are paying for my kids to get to go to gymnastics today, you are helping. You know, my kid take drum lessons or whatever it’s like. How, how hard could it be to be generous in that?

Brandon Welch: 43:59
way. So it’s not about what you can get, it’s what you can give.

Caleb Agee: 44:03
Yeah, and look at that. Shift your worldview. Make sure you shift, make sure you know Times are going to be tough. You might have a big tax bill coming up, you might have payroll on Friday, but I promise you can do something.

Brandon Welch: 44:15
You can do something you can do something.

Brandon Welch: 44:17
One of these 12 things you can do. Okay, hey, we’re going to give away three copies of Unreasonable Hospitality, and all we need to hear from you in order for you to get one of those copies, email us mavenmondays at frankandmavencom and tell us which tactic you’re going to put in place and just talk a little bit about it. Just say I like this one, this is the one I’m going to implement and here’s how. That’s all. You’ll get a copy of Unreasonable Hospitality, great book by one of the leading voices today on just like awesome experiences.

Caleb Agee: 44:53
If you’re feeling crazy generous, we would love for you to leave a comment, hit, subscribe, rate our podcast. If you’re on the podcast app, give it some five stars, thumbs up, whatever. If you’re on YouTube, it’s a b. Some five stars, thumbs up, whatever. If you’re on YouTube, it’s a bing, yep, all those things.

Brandon Welch: 45:09
They really help. They help us reach more people. It really does Help us fulfill our mission of making entrepreneurs more confident and more prosperous in their growth, which is what we’re all about. That’s right. That is our mission. That’s why we’ll be back here every Monday answering your real life marketing and advertising questions and generosity. Hey, did we say the email address? Hey, it’s mavenmonday at frankandmavencom. Just making sure, just title it like Radical Generosity. Yes, and tell us what you’re doing. Cool Happy Thanksgiving that you just had. Happy Merry Christmas. If you aren’t planning on listening to us for the rest of the year, tune in next week for the start of our how to Build a Marketing Plan for 2025. It’s going to be awesome, so good. And stay tuned for the Maven Marketing Mastermind coming to you real soon. Have a great week. Oh, we got to do the thing.

Brandon Welch: 45:57
Yeah, I was like Because marketers who can’t teach you why Are just?

Caleb Agee: 46:00
a fancy lie.

Brandon Welch: 46:01
Now have a great week.