Disneyland isn’t the only place capable of making magical memories for its customers.
Just ask Nike, Adidas, Fleetwood Mac, and a host of other million dollar companies who have a proven track record of success with Jason Friedman.
On today’s episode, Kinsley and Quinn host Jason Friedman, Founder and Chief Experience Officer of CXFormula. Jason has a legendary track record helping brands of all shapes and sizes have unprecedented success with their customer experience. In this episode, they discuss Jason’s background and how his love of theater and stagecraft translated into helping businesses transform their customer experience, how he and his partners increased Foot Locker’s same-store sales by 400% and discover the experiential strategies that raised over $6 billion for the top universities in the world.
FULL TRANSCRIPTION
Mark Kinsley: How did Jason Friedman go from working on world-class productions like Fleetwood Mac and Fiddler on the Roof, to creating customer experiences for brands like Nike, Adidas, Disney, and Harvard? You are about to find out and we are so excited. Yes, we’re fans. Oh, and good news. He’s now focused on helping entrepreneurs.
The Dos Marco show begins right now.
Mark Kinsley: jason Friedman, welcome to the show. We first came across your name when we had Jesse Cole from the Savannah Bananas on the show. This has been years ago now. And something he said that he attributed to you stuck with us and has never left our brains. And actually we’ve been promoting and championing for a long time, and that was the idea that businesses win in the transitions.
Before we get to all that, Jason, welcome to the show. Tell us about
Jason Friedman: yourself. Hey, mark and Mark, thank you both for inviting me to be part of this show. Um, really excited to do that. It’s always nice to, to have a few fans out there that, uh, that you didn’t know about. So, so thank you for that. Appreciate it.
Um, yeah, I mean, my background, um, is, uh, is uh, theater all the way. I started out doing theater when I was eight years old in summer camp. And just learn through that Mr. Miyagi kind of method, be behind the scenes, like how to create experiences because I’d just been doing it for so many years from building sets, lights, sound, you name it.
How do you tell people, how do you help people? Like how do you tell a story to people so that they really feel it so they experience it so they’re present when they consume that story, and hopefully so that story moves them and they want to tell other people. And so kind of just growing up doing that and like loving it, found myself in the world of, of retail and hospitality, helping to bring theater into brands and businesses like you and I have, and everywhere in between.
And it’s, uh, it’s been an amazing journey and a whole lot of fun, uh, getting to meet people like yourself. So, uh, that’s, that’s my quick and dirty background.
Mark Kinsley: I wanna get into it, Jason, because, uh, whenever you think about the business that you’re in and the businesses that you’re helping, something that you said to Jesse and something that you said to me and some of our previous conversations, uh, revolves around this idea and, and this also stuck with me and it, and it goes back to the transitions.
You said in theater and in stagecraft. You spend more time rehearsing the scene changes. Then the actors and the team did rehearsing the scene. That, that kind of blows my mind. Yeah. Talk us through that and why that is.
Jason Friedman: Yeah. Well, the first key thing there is rehearsing, right? Like too many of us that have businesses, we don’t rehearse anything.
We don’t practice anything in our business , and I think we should, right? So I’ll just, I’ll just leave the rehearsal part there for a second. But the idea of rehearsing the transitions is something I learned in theater and, and to what you just said is really true. Like, we spend a lot of time practicing those scene changes, right?
And so imagine like the actors are off doing their thing, they’re learning their lines and practicing with one another. The, the backstage kind of people, the, they’re building the sets, they’re designing the lights, they’re doing the audio, they’re building the props and costumes. And then we bring it all together.
And so everyone kind of has their stuff ready, but now we have to make it work. And what, what I experience and what most people in theater will tell you is like we do these things called Q to Q tech rehearsal. This. And so you go from one, one scene to the next scene and all these things happen. Like, so imagine that you’re in a Broadway show or, or your favorite theater show, and it’s like all of a sudden the lights kind of fade out.
The actors kind of scurry off stage. The sets change. Curtains come in, curtains go out, the music’s playing, and then all of a sudden the lights come up and you’re in a different place. You were maybe transported from one city to another, or one time a day to another, one location to another. And all of that has to happen as quickly as possible.
Or the audience just disappears. Like they lose their focus. And so keeping the audience’s attention in their focus is so important that we have to make sure that there’s no challenges or no hiccups, or it’s as smooth as humanly possible on those scene changes. And people could get hurt, right? Like there’s things moving, there’s scenery moving, there’s stuff flying up and down.
And so throughout that whole process, it has to be safe, it has to be quick, it has to be efficient. And so we, we think through all those transitions, like literally to the point of like, should a costume have snaps or zippers are thought through, because if they have to change the costume quickly, zippers could get stuck.
They’re not as fast as a snap or Velcro or whatever. So like every, every moment is choreographed and thought through, and then we go back and we rehearse it. We go from the cast standing there, and then we go through the scene change, and then the cast is in the next. And we go through that back and forth and back and forth so that we don’t lose people in those transitions.
And those, there’s, there’s different kinds of transitions. Some are visual. You wanna see the transition happen and we want people to pay attention to it. Some they’re blind transitions where we want it to be in the dark, but from, from whichever way you go about it, when we don’t think about the transition.
So a customer goes from you sold them, now they go into production or operations, or a customer goes from one, uh, one lesson to another, or they go from one part of your store to another. Or they just bought their mattress and now they’re waiting for delivery and they have to deal with scheduling or whatever that happens to be in those transitions.
We can make or break the sale. We can make or break the experience. We can make or break what people will talk about later and how they’ll share with everybody how they. About going through that process. So if we took it, so I
Mark Kinsley: think it’s super important if we took it as a truth that, okay, everybody’s gonna rehearse.
Your selling script is gonna be tight. Probably not the case, but we hope that’s gonna be the case. We were talking about transitions over the past couple of years in terms of all those clunky little handoffs where all those clunky and sometimes terrifying transitions that people go through. Everything from the moment that I pull into your parking lot until the moment I grab the handle of your door, that’s a transition.
Going through that threshold and then approaching that which they fear the most, which is the salesperson, that’s a transition and we’re trying to get people to think along those lines. When you imagine even just those two transitions that I mentioned, what are some things that come to mind from your experience that people could be thinking about?
How to engineer that experience?
Jason Friedman: Yeah. Well that’s a, that’s an amazing question. Thank you. Like. The first thing I, I like, imagine anything that you’ve experienced in your own life that just felt like fluid and effortless and frictionless. Like maybe it’s when you were at a theme park, maybe it’s when you went to a park.
Maybe it’s when you, when you were a kid and something happened, like, like find you can, you can steal or borrow ideas from any industry, any place, business or otherwise that, that like inspire those kind of moments. So I wouldn’t start by what they’re doing, I would start by how you want them to feel, right?
So like, when someone’s coming up to your door and they’re about to open it, what do you want them to feel? Do you want them to feel welcome? Do you want them to feel excited? Do you want them to feel scared that a salesperson’s gonna vulture on top of them and like attack them and like they’re, you know, like fresh kill?
Like what do you want them to? . And once you know that, it’s like, okay, what are all the steps that are taking place? And, and how can I help them feel that way? Like, what are the things that I can do? What are the things that I could not do? How can I help get them to have that feeling? And so, you know, what I talk about a lot is people, people are on an emotional journey as much as their physical journey, right?
And, and you can’t necessarily control what happens before they’re in your ecosystem, but you sure as heck can help once they are in your ecosystem. And that experience, it starts long before your front door. It starts long before the parking lot. Like how did they know to come to your parking lot? What was that impetus?
And so how can you start to persuade preframe what that experience is and start set expectations way back, like, I like to talk about onboarding like a customer. Like how do you set them up into this environment where they’re introduced to your brand, to your products, to your services? What, what’s gonna happen for them?
And the earlier you start, the more runway you have, the more you set expectations, the more likely you’re gonna be able to help control that experience. So if you care about how they feel when they’re grabbing that door handle and opening it to come in, You need to back up and like think a little bit earlier, that’s where you start making it better, in my opinion.
Right? J
Mark Quinn: So I, I gotta ask you a question about that because when you talk through this station, it, it’s so like, it makes so much sense and it’s not what people say, it’s how you make them feel. So I’m with you there. What is it, Jason, about guys in business and your website, it says 80% of CEOs think they deliver great customer experience.
8% of their customers do, right? What is it about people running businesses today where they do not value the intangible of what they’re doing? What is it? And, and for those that do, what is the, what are they getting from that, right? So if, if they get there and you can get ’em there, and then they, they value it and then they invest in it and they think through it and they create cool experiences like what, what, what is there for them?
What’s the brass
Jason Friedman: ring? Yeah, I mean, that’s an amazing question. I, I don’t know that I know the right answer to that, to be totally honest with you. I know what I’ve seen, what I’ve experienced, and so what I do know is we are so everything out there, like if you’re gonna, if you’re gonna go out and look for like how to, how to build your business, how to scale your business, how do you grow your business, most of the training is on how to get new customers, how to increase your conversions, how to make things, you know, how to do better advertising, how to like, do better promotions, how to give better sales, how to give better discounts, how to stop re like, it’s, it’s not really focused as much on how to make your customers have an amazing experience, right?
We’ve, we’ve, as a society, we’ve valued sales, traffic, and conversion more than we have valued loyalty, and we haven’t really come to a place. I believe where people understand how important loyalty is. Like loyalty, in my opinion, like, and and beyond loyalty, like brand evangelism, right? Like ambassadors, like people that love your brand are so much more valuable than anything else.
Like if you have people that feel that good, like it, I don’t think it’s worth, and this is gonna sound crazy, I know, but I don’t think it’s worth focusing so much on the advertising and bringing new customers in if you can’t focus on keeping the customers and making ’em happy first. Because, and, and there’s an argument that’s like, look, but if I do 1% and it only costs me this much and I’m bringing that many in, and most of them are okay, I’m gonna make money.
Sure, sure you will. Like, that’s okay. And if you just wanna make some money and you know, you don’t care about being really optimized and growing a really big, scalable, successful business that has raving fans, that’s great. Do that. . But if you really want to scale your business, like if your customer, if every customer that came in told 10 more people about how amazing it was, you’ve got this built in engine that’s bringing your customers in.
So like the, the, the gold ring right for you is if you can make it so great that people love your product, your service, your experience, they’re gonna tell more people. And as you spend money on the front end, as you acquire more customers through ads and traffic and promotions and everything else you do, you’re gonna get more conversions.
They’re gonna, you’re gonna have better testimonials, they’re gonna be better social proof. Of what you’re doing. Right. And I think it’s just we we’re, everything we see out there is so focused on those other things. Right. I was, I was mentioning to you guys earlier when we were chatting, like, you know, you look at the, the big phone companies, you know, wireless carriers, the cable companies, everything is about incentivizing new signups.
If been a customer for five years, you get the worst pricing. You get the worst deal. And to them it’s like, oh, well we were giving a better deal to the new people to try our service, but you like it, so now you’re getting the normal price. You got that benefit. And it’s like, yeah, but I feel punished. I feel punished.
I have literally doesn’t matter if they are actually being punished, but they feel that way.
Mark Kinsley: I’ve literally changed service providers for that very scenario because they would jack up the bill and I would see TV advertisements and I would say to them, wait a minute, what about me? I’ve been paying you money.
Like, shouldn’t I be rewarded for that loyalty? And, and it doesn’t happen. And you know, in our business, especially on the mattress furniture, retail side of things, you know, you’re in a, a durable goods environment and so you have people that are gonna buy a mattress and hopefully, you know, it lasts, you know, 7, 8, 10 years and you’re not gonna have any problems with it.
But really, when you buy that mattress, I think the opportunity for us. Is not to have a transaction, but to begin the process of transformation, transforming their sleep. Because although we know that good sleep is the, you know, the product of a lot of different factors, including small decisions and that, and that one major purchase, if you get a new mattress with the promise of better sleep, you don’t sleep better, they’re gonna blame you.
So I think it’s an opportunity to do what you’re talking about, create the loyalty through creating the conditions and the coaching and the environment for helping them deliver better sleep, and then asking them for a
Jason Friedman: referral later on. Hundred percent. So then, like, here’s the question, right? If you helped them get better sleep, what, what would they say to those, those friends and family members and whatever?
Like if you were having, if you’re struggling with sleep and many of us are, right? Like there’s a, that’s a big freaking problem. , right? If you get that sorted, like you tell a lot of people cuz like, you’re feeling great, your life is better, your relationships are better, so many things snap into a way that’s functional for you.
It’s such a big deal you’re gonna tell other people. And as if the business, the salesperson, the the store where they. Is really copping to being a, a friend, an advisor, a supporter of that person and helping them do that. They’re gonna pay it back. They’re gonna tell other people, they’re gonna be like, you gotta talk.
Not just the store, but you gotta talk to Mark at this place. Because he literally asked me the right questions. I, I, I was overwhelmed when I came in. I didn’t know where to start or what to do. Like I was freaked out. It’s a one of the biggest purchases I’ve made in my house in a long time, and it’s really important.
And he took all of the problems away. He asked me really good questions and set me up for success. And guess what? Like, it’s literally made my life a million times better.
Mark Quinn: Jason, it’s so funny because we did this research and when we talked to consumers out there and we asked them about, Hey, how do you help solve sleep problems?
Mattresses,
Jason Friedman: were at the bottom of the
Mark Quinn: list. And as I’m listening, which is crazy, right? Because you’re sleeping on the mattress and it can make a big difference. Well, what’s so funny about when I’m hearing you talk is people go, okay, We’re about the mattress and here’s the size and here’s the construction and here’s what’s in it.
And if you’re selling the mattress and then they get it home and they sleep better, you’re never gonna get credit for helping them solve the sleep problem, cuz you were never about sleep
Jason Friedman: to begin with. Does that make sense? Right. Yeah. And so here’s the question, right? Like, if you’re gonna onboard your customers, right?
If you’re gonna help them have a better journey, like I, I’m gonna, I’m gonna, I’m gonna hit pause for a second. I’m gonna go to the restaurant world cause I’m gonna, I’m gonna talk about this in context of something different, right? If I go to a restaurant and I have an amazing waiter, waitress, like that person is really top notch at their job, they probably like.
I, I, I love like people like, Hey, what do you like on the menu? Well, I don’t know anything about you. So what I like is irrelevant. Let me ask you three or four questions so I can actually tell you what I would recommend for you, right? Or I might say, you know, I love the salmon, but let me ask you, like, do you like fish?
Like, what, what are, you know, what are your favorite kind of foods? Oh, here’s what I re recommend, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right At the end of that meal, if that waiter waitress is like, Hey, listen, like we loved having you, um, you know, next time you’re thinking about where to go, come on back. You know, ask to be in my section.
I’d love to have you back again and, and serve you again. It was a, it was my absolute pleasure. You guys are amazing. Whatever, right? All of a sudden, like, they’re gonna like think, oh, well, I should come back. I was invited back and I should ask for Michelle right now. If Michelle says, Hey, you know, like, you know, come back and like, tell your friends.
We’d love to like, you know, um, you know, that’s what we’re here for. We’re here to serve people like you. So invite your friends. , she might actually go tell some other people, because that doesn’t happen every day. Now let’s go to the mattress store, right? Like, if you start having better sleep, I want to help you and all the people in your life.
Like if you’re all having better, you know, sleep, your relationships are
gonna
Jason Friedman: all be better. Like, how can I help other people? It’s like, what can they be asking? What can they be putting in, you know, in the conversations that they’re having with customers that would help them to think about that, right?
Like, I wanna know how you’re sleeping. I want, I’m, is it cool if I call you like one week from now and just check in and see how you’ve been doing? I’d love to make sure that it’s working. Maybe we have to make an adjustment on the pillow you’re using. But let’s get you started. I’m gonna call you in about a week.
I’m gonna check in on. That’s your mattress guy or gal for life. Like you’re never going anyplace else and, and you’re serving
Mark Quinn: people, right? You’re not selling to them. You’re really in it. They feel you. They know that you’re invested in their outcome, and I love that. Okay, so Jason, you’ve been in theater and you’ve helped construct some amazing experiences for people as they watch the shows that you helped build.
So how is it that you took that experience and applied it to business? Can you, can you take us through, I know you, you told us a good story about Footlocker. Can you talk about the application of the experience in, in, in those things and apply it to how you first kind of started inserting it into the business
Jason Friedman: world?
Yeah, sure. And, um, I’ll, I’ll tell a, a quick version of that Footlocker story, but, you know, this was all kind of accidental. I’m, I’m big on intention nowadays, but um, back in the old days when I was first starting out, lots of things just kind of happened. And so I was in that theater world and I was invited by someone I knew to help create what would be a store of the future.
And it happened to be for Footlocker, right, right place, right time, knew a couple good people. And I found myself in this. And what they were dealing with was the internet at the time was the big threat to retail. Like, people are gonna start buying online. They didn’t know what was gonna happen and they wanted to create like a store of the future.
What, what could we do to make the retail experience so good that you wouldn’t buy online? And so we were in this, in this opportunity to like really imagine what would be a better thing for people, um, in retail. How would, how would we compete online? And so as we were in the store that they were looking at, we were kind of talking with the executives.
They were like, we wanna put TVs and screens everywhere. We think if it’s like high tech and cool, like, you know, lots of stuff all over, it would be great. And, you know, I was like, okay, why? Like, why do we want the screen? And my, my reason, the question behind the question was, where do I need to put an electrical outlet so that I could make sure that the TV would work?
like, that was my thinking. I was like, how do I make this happen for you? And they started to say, well, you know, we want them to, you know, be introduced to products they might not have purchased otherwise. And so I was like, okay, so where would you think about this? And like, they picked a big empty spot on the wall, and I was like, looking up there.
And I’m like, okay, that seems odd. Like, why is that space empty in the first place? And I said, so like, like what, what would they do right after they saw the screen? They, they’d go buy something. Like they would want to, they’d want to explore that product, see if they have it in their size. Like they’d wanna, they’d wanna, they’d wanna own that.
And I’m like, okay, so like maybe putting this thing out there in this like blank spot on the ceiling is not the best spot. Like, how do we bring this into that journey? Like, and, and so we started thinking more and more about that idea of theater. Like what is the story we’re telling? What is the script?
Of what the story is, and then how do we bring that to light, to life through lights, set sound, the environment, the, the way we tell that story so that there’s, so that it’s captivating so that they, they’re on a journey, they’re on an emotional rollercoaster ride and they’re engaged, right? Theater is about engagement.
The lights go down. You kind of forget about the outside world and you’re present, whether it be the movies or you’re in a Broadway show, you’re v you’re very present in the moment. And so in a retail store, you’ve got all this craziness going on. You got your kids, you’re like, there’s, you know, it’s, it’s nuts.
And you’re not focused and like, it’s like you probably want to get home. I mean, at least if you’re the guy, maybe you wanna get home, I don’t know. Like, I don’t like to go shopping, so like, maybe it’s not where you want to be, but if I can get you to kind of suspend that for a minute and, and focus in and join me and go on a ride.
And go on an adventure, you’re probably gonna buy more stuff. So we started to think, okay, what would actually have to happen for me to spend some more time in the store? And if I did spend more time, what would actually help me enjoy that time that I spent and get me excited about the products and services that I’m, that I’m looking at?
And part of it is like people that are coming in there are already predisposed to wanna buy those things, right? There’s kind of a filter of knowing who that brand was in the first place, but now that they’re there, how do we create more excitement, more energy? So we looked at the different ways that people would go through the store.
Where did media need to be that they would kind of kind of stumble over it or draw them in and pull them through? What would the path look like through the store? What would they see first, second, third, fourth, fifth? And really, by designing that journey and bringing them through that, using all of these like momentum injectors, all these tools that would help keep moving them through that path, all of a sudden we were able to create a massive influx.
We had a 400%. Increase in store sales just from doing our first prototype. And they’re like, holy cow, that’s amazing. That one was in, um, Watertown, Massachusetts, right outside Boston, right? So then they’re like, is that possible? Like, this has gotta be a fluke, right? Like, so then we did a second one, we did it in Oakbrook, Illinois, right outside Chicago.
400% increase, same store sales. Then we did another one in Stanford, right outside of New York City, Stanford, Connecticut, 400% increase. And so we started rolling them out and different levels based on the areas. Some of the big areas were like an A flagship, some of the smaller populated areas might be A, B, a, C, D, whatever.
So that we were, you know, it was relative to the investment that made sense. But we were getting that same result because it was about understanding the customer and giving them like the right experience. And so like as you were talking about earlier, the same idea about going into that store. It’s like maybe the experience is that I don’t want them to open the door.
I want someone to open the door for them. Maybe the experience is not that because it feels too threatening that someone’s coming out to greet them. Maybe they wanna open the door, but what do I want them to see first? What is the context? What is the frame? And is there a way to tell them before they even come to the store what they should be looking for?
What they could expect or what the experience could be. So what is that journey and are there different paths that they should go through the store, be depending on what their needs are. If I have back problems go this way, if I have this go that way, if I’m a side sleeper, do this. If I’m a, you know, whatever.
So like there’s different ways. Know the customer and then figure out what is the path that you want to bring. So we use that, that background in theater to get them to be present, to get them to be focused, to use it, to help tell that story for that audience member so that they were, they, they had a great experience and hopefully they give you that standing ovation at the end.
They buy something and they tell other people. Cuz it was amazing. Jason
Mark Kinsley: Friedman we’re talking about customer experience. You can check out more about Jason, Jason, his company@cxformula.com and, and I wanna put a, a big exclamation point and, and a double red underline on something here. Your largest company, uh, was named to the Inc.
5,000 list of fastest growing companies for three consecutive years. And you talked about some of those same store, uh, 400% sales increases. So this is, as you zoom out, this might seem overwhelming for some people. It might seem daunting to try and figure out, uh, all these different things. But, but as you, as you think about how to help people apply some of this in business, I know that you have cx formula.com and you recently launched something called the Kinetic Customer Formula Program, where you’ve really distilled this down.
L let’s, let’s get into that. But I first want, want to talk about something that you mentioned to me a, a while back, which was you want to script the reaction you want and reverse engineer that to create the reaction. Yeah. Let’s start there and then we can get into everything else you’ve created to help
Jason Friedman: people.
Yeah, for sure. Uh, we call that the ideal customer script, and it’s like very basic, right? It’s like what? . If, if someone had a great experience with your store, what would you have them do at the end? Like they were driving home and their best friend calls ’em on the phone and they’re telling them about what just happened.
What would you have them say? Like, exactly what would you have them say with juicy, vibrant, you know, words, adjectives, and like, use, you know, use whatever you can to explain what happened and do it through, like, the journey that you went on. Like what were you thinking and feeling when you came in, and how did that help you and what, what was the outcome?
And like, if you do that, like you’re, you’re, you’re making it up for sure, right? You’re, you’re imagining what it could be. But like, it gives you a roadmap of what kinds of things you need to do to get them to have those reactions. So an example, right? I’m gonna use an event as an example. A good friend of mine, her name’s Victoria Leba, she’s one of the top.
Um, performance artists, and she teaches people how to be amazing on stage. She’s written a, an amazing book called Risk Forward, just amazing entrepreneur, amazing artist, amazing creative person. She was doing a big event and she said to me, Hey, listen, I’ve, I’ve got a lot of workshops. I’ve never done a big event.
Can you help me? Like, it needs to be amazing. And I’m like, yeah, absolutely. Let’s do it. And so the first thing we did was I said to her, we gotta do the ideal customer script. I need to know what you want when people leave, what exactly do you want them to say? And she went through this rant. I turned on the recorder on my iPhone, right?
Nothing high tech. And I was just like listening to the things she was saying and she was going, and I’m like, tell me more about that. Tell me more about that. And she’s, she’s going and going and going. And like, she was saying things like, you know, like every, they anticipated like my every need, like, like when I thought like I, I needed to take notes.
They had pens, they had paper, they had notebooks. Like I, I wanted the, have like a way to like, you know, color code, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So they had this and that. She’s like, I, I have been to so many events. This is hands down the absolute best event I’ve ever been. She’s like, that’s what I want them to say.
Right? And so she gave me all the things that needed to happen, all the, like we needed notebooks and pens and there’s lots of like little knits and nats and details, which is important, right? Cuz you need to know what you need to have. She’s like, when I went into the bathroom, there was like, you know, it was like going into a five star hotel and they had all the stuff, the concierge kind of stuff.
Like there were toothbrushes so that if people are interacting and doing like scene plays and role plays and whatever, then they had lunch. They didn’t have bad breaths, so there were toothbrushes with toothpaste in the bathroom. And she went into every detail. And of course we did all that. And those are all things that people talked about.
But it’s, it was amazing. And, and so during the event, she would say, you know, I know you all go to a lot of events and we have done everything on our power to craft, choreographed and stage the best event that you’ve ever been to. And I want to know what you think and, and I don’t want to hear about it at the very end.
Like if there’s anything we can do all along the way, at the back table, in the room, there’s a series of yellow forms, let us know if it’s too hot, too cold. You think if we did this, it would be better. We wanna see if we can fix things real time to support you and serve you. So let us know what you think.
I want this to be the best event you have ever been to, even if you’ve been to a thousand events before. And so everyone’s running around saying, oh my God, this is the best event I’ve ever been to. And I’ve been to a thousand events before because we gave them the words we wanted them to say, but put all the things in place to support that experience.
And so when it came time to sell tickets to next year’s event, we had over 80 something percent of the room buy a ticket in advance for like several thousand dollars is not a cheap event. And so it’s, it’s the, the power of being clear, of having a, a, a high resolution image of what you want the result to be is like, there’s nothing like it.
And, and it gives you like permission to then start to think through how to do it. You’re not thinking about how you’re gonna do it when you come up with this whole like, amazing script of what people would say. But it’s also not about like the results. You’re like thinking about one person, pick your best client.
What would they be saying? Write the script as if they were saying it and have fun with it. You don’t have to do it all. You can adjust it, you can edit it, you can change it. But getting that level of clarity, it, so many things become very, very clear, very doable, very actionable, understandable. Um, it’s, it’s a powerful, it’s a powerful exercise.
And something you say me,
it
Mark Kinsley: sounds hokey . It doesn’t sound hokey to me. It sounds like some of the very difficult work for people who haven’t done it and it seems scary whenever it’s foreign to you. And so getting in there and digging in, and sometimes it takes a guide, you know, somebody like, uh, Jason Quinn and I have done, done this with people because we think it’s so important to be clear about who you are and what you want to have happen.
And you said something to me when we talked previously, Jason, you said clarity equals energy. Tell us
Jason Friedman: more about that. Yeah, yeah. That’s from my coach Dan Sullivan. So Dan Sullivan, strategic coach was, I was in that program for over 14 years. And the man. Kind of single-handedly did more for me than any other human on the planet.
So I, I love the guy to death. Um, but one of the things that he would always say is, clarity equals energy and lack of clarity, uh, is it’s tumultuous, right? It adds pressure and stress and anxiety and fear of the unknown and all these other things. Like, you know, whenever, whenever I would feel outta sorts, I would like try and make a list of all the things going on because the clarity of just knowing what it is would immediately snap me out of it.
So like, as simple as like just a head, like a mindset exercise, like that would apply for me, right? And to this day, I still do it. Like, why am I feeling kind of funky right now? Oh, wait, like, here’s the list. Oh, I got that email that I forgot about that one email, like set the whole day, uh, in, in a bad tailspin.
And I didn’t even know why. Now I can compartmentalize that. Now I’m in a better place. So like clarity can equal energy in that context. Clarity can equal energy, like we’re saying, like with this vision of what you want that result to be, right. There’s a lot of power in that. Um, so yeah, I think it’s just, uh, he en he illuminated that for me many, many years ago.
And, uh, as much as I could share, you know, that kind of a message from him, I, I do. Because it’s really, it’s helped me quite a bit.
Mark Kinsley: Well sure. Speaking to help him quite a bit. Tell us about the Kinetic Customer Formula program because when you took me through this previously and we were talking obviously, uh, just for people who missed the very beginning of the show or have forgotten, uh, if I could buy the Jason Friedman jersey and subscribe to Jason Friedman weekly and stock Jason Friedman on Twitter, I’d probably do it.
I probably could do that. That’s an easy one. Um, but I’m a huge fan of just the way that you think about constructing experiences, especially in a world where people. Sometimes hesitate to put on pants, leave their house and stop clicking buttons online to order things. Yeah. So what, what are people gonna leave the house for?
They’re gonna leave the house for an amazing experience. That’s literally remarkable. Somebody they’re willing to, you know, something they’re willing to tell their friends and family about. And so when I, when I look at what you’re doing for people, you’re actually bringing people out into the world in healthy, positive ways to create interactions.
You’re, you’re helping people do business in their communities. You’re helping entrepreneurs. And I know that you told me previously you, you’ve got these very intense, robust courses that help people do what you’re talking about doing. And one of the hurdles that you had to overcome you and your team was how do we distill this down into its imperative parts and deploy that into the world?
And I think that’s what you’ve.
Jason Friedman: Well, that’s what we’ve attempted. Uh, we’ll, we’ll see. Um, we’re excited. It’s, it’s gonna be launching soon, very soon. Um, so, uh, keep your eyes peeled if you’re, if you’re interested in learning a little bit more. But, but here’s the thing, right? We’ve, we, we were selling teaching, training, how to create a great experience.
Now there’s a problem with that, right? The first thing is like you can’t create an experience. People have an experience. You can create opportunities for people to have an experience, but you can’t actually create it in and of itself cuz it’s something that people have, right? And so, like, as much as we talk about it that way, like the reality is an experience is something that happens on the side of the customer.
right? And it can be positive, negative, they’re having one, whether you’ve done it by design or default. Like no matter what, they’re having one now, why not give ’em a good one? Right? And so like, that’s how we taught this whole thing. And there’s so many things that you can do and think about and whatever.
And so we had people going through this program and like a lot of them had amazing results, like implemented things and these things had big, big ripple effects, right? Mm-hmm. , that’s amazing. We also have people that went through, loved it, would tell, would tell you to go buy it, go do it today. But they didn’t take a lot of action.
And I hate that. Um, I don’t want people’s money. I want them to get results, right? It’s important to me that people get results. I believe in entrepreneurs. I am an entrepreneur. I want to help other entrepreneurs, like you said. And so I wanted to find. . Part of the way I teach this is like, and I, I always thought about it, is I want people to have as smooth and frictionless in experience as possible.
And if they’re not taking action, then I’ve got a big friction point that’s not helping them. And it’s not always me, right? Like, you’re not gonna solve everybody’s problems. Not everyone’s gonna take action. But I started looking at inside and saying, well, is there something else I could do? Could I make it easier?
Could I, could I simplify it? Can I, can I do more for them? Like in the preparation? Like, what else could I do to make sure that more people got results? And a good friend of mine, uh, another great entrepreneur, Olivier Roland’s, a French entrepreneur, um, he is like the Pareto principal guy. He like is always about what is the 80 20 of this, what is the 80 20 of that?
He asks that about everything. And he’s not lazy. He’s super focused. He gets a lot of work done, but he wants most of his time to be in his personal life, not his business life. So everything’s all like, how do I get the 80 20 out of this in my business? And, and it’s, he asked me the same question. He’s like, dude, he’s like, what’s the 80 20 of everything you teach?
Like how do you, how do I get most of the results with like the little, the littlest amount of work? And so that became the frame to think about revamping like everything we’ve ever done. And it was an amazing question. I, I encourage everyone to ask that question about your business, your life, anything.
Cuz it’s, it’s good and I’ve done it in multiple areas. Um, but I, I don’t have a practice for doing it. He’s got a practice. He is routinely asking that question. I do it sporadically when I’m reminded too, right? But this time I did. And so we started to think, okay, what would that look like? And the first thing we realized is, You know, it’s like the idea of selling people the plane or the destination, like people are buying, getting to Hawaii.
They’re not buying necessarily the travel in its, you know, itself, right? So the, like the plane is not the thing, it’s the destination. And so what we were selling them was this idea of creating a great experience. It really was more of the plane. What they want is more customers. What they want is, um, more engagement.
What they want is people getting results and telling other people. And so we started to understand that really the secret sauce is taking customers who have potential. It’s like the idea of, of a slingshot, right? I have a ball and a slingshot and I pull it. And that’s potential energy. The second I release it, it turns into kinetic energy.
It’s it’s motion, it’s moving forward. It’s always positive. And what we all want is that we want kinetic customers. We want customers who are moving forward, who are active, who are engaged, who are commenting, who are consuming our content, who are doing the work, that are getting the results. And so really what people want is that they want kinetic customers, whether they know the name or the terminology.
That’s what we found all along the way we help them do that is through experience and momentum, and momentum injectors and tools that we have to make the experience better. But ultimately it’s about movement. It’s about positive momentum for customers and taking them from having all this potential and all this opportunity into helping them get those results and tell other people.
And so we’ve put together the program in a very unique way. I think.
