971: Mastering The Three Keys to Getting Noticed with Jay Baer

Pete Mockaitis

Jay, welcome.

Jay Baer

Pete, thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it. Looking forward to it.

Pete Mockaitis

Oh, I’ve been looking forward to it, too. You are so fun, and you have so much good stuff. I have to pick and choose within the ocean of your wisdom where to dive in.

Jay Baer

Well, I don’t know about that.

Pete Mockaitis

And I’m going to go with two books, actually, Talk Triggers and Hug Your Haters. I kind of see them as two sides of a similar coin. You might conceptualize them differently. But just to orient us, for starters, what’s the big idea behind these two books?

Jay Baer

So, the big idea for Hug Your Haters is that people who are unhappy about you or your business are not your problem, ignoring them is, and that you can win the day by being disproportionately kind even to, and perhaps especially to, those who are unhappy. So that book is really about retaining your relationships, retaining customers.

Talk Triggers is almost the opposite. Talk Triggers is a book about differentiation and word-of-mouth. The concept is that word-of-mouth is and will always be the greatest way to grow any business, to accomplish anything. It’s also the most cost-effective, but individuals and organizations are often loath to do anything that stands out because they think it’s risky, or they just don’t have a framework for how to do it. So that book provides the framework. A talk trigger is defined as an operational choice that you make so that conversations are created.

Pete Mockaitis

That’s so cool. Yeah. And so, in terms of we’ve got great wisdom to be gleaned from haters, as well as for raving fans.

Jay Baer

Yeah, absolutely.

Pete Mockaitis

Or, soon to be raving fans, with a little tweak. And I’d love to hear your take, if we’re talking to professionals who, and some are maybe not customer-facing, client-facing, marketing-driven, how do you think some of these principles apply to these sorts of folks?

Jay Baer

I think universally, because it doesn’t matter whether your job is customer-facing, you are still customer-adjacent. This happens all the time. I was talking to a CEO the other day of a Fortune 100 company, you know, it’s many tens of billions of dollars a company, and she was saying that one of the things they struggle with is their actual customer service department, if you will, is fine. Like, they’re good and they’ve got good policies, and they got good software, it’s all good. But she was like, all the time, customers are contacting people who are not “customer-facing.”

They’re a manager, they’re an executive. All you gotta do is look on LinkedIn and be like, “Hey, check it out. Here’s where Pete works. Let’s just send that person a message.” So, you don’t get to decide whether customers can think of you as customer-facing or not. And the reality is if you carry the business card and you’re associated with a logo, you are customer-facing.

Now, whether you’re talking to 100 customers a day might be a different story, but I think the right way to think about it is everybody is customer-facing at some point. Consequently, wouldn’t you want to be really good at that? Like, wouldn’t you want to be really great at working with customers when they’re unhappy, and also be great at explaining to customers why you are the only solution for them?

Pete Mockaitis

Absolutely. And I also think about “internal customers” in terms of another person inside our organization relies on me, or our team for these reports, or this information, or this key enabling stuff, and so, yeah, you’re going to have some folks who are doing some talking about you and your team and maybe some hating about you and your team.

Jay Baer

Absolutely. And I’ll tell you, I ran a correlation study a long time ago on the relationship between sort of employee culture and customer experience. So, we looked at companies that were awarded Best Places to Work designations versus Net Promoter Score, which is a measure of customer satisfaction, and the correlation is almost the same.

So, what that means is that it is essentially impossible to be great at outwardly-facing customer experience unless you are first great at inwardly-facing employee experience. So, you’re exactly right, Pete, like you’re going to have workplace conflict, and how you handle that can really separate you from other professionals in your organization.

And also, some of the people who go on to the greatest successes inside organizations are those where there is a consistent story told about them. And so, there’s like sort of an earned wisdom about, “You know, when you work with Pete, what’s great about working with Pete is X, right?” And that same kind of value statement gets attached to you throughout your entire career, and that can be a huge, huge advantage as you’re looking to advance in that organization or even move along to a different. organization.

Pete Mockaitis

Boy, that’s so powerful, that notion that the customer satisfaction and employee satisfaction are almost the same with regard to correlation. And, in some ways, this kind of makes sense, like, to the extent to which you are a jerk who doesn’t care about people, customers, your colleagues, or a sweetie who cares a lot is, like, I could see like that’s one dimension there, but there’s also some particular practices associated with things that make for excellence on both these dimensions.

So can you lay it on us, you say that there are three things that customers or clients really, really, truly care about. What are those things and how do we deliver them well?

Jay Baer

Well, I know three things are the same that your colleagues care about, too. So, we can set the customers aside for now because these three elements of sort of your behavior and your interactions are important to everybody, disproportionate to everybody. So, what you’ve got to focus on in your career is being quick, clear, and kind.

If you can be quick, clear, and kind, and really be demonstrably better at those three things than other people, you are going to be on a rocket ship ride to success in your career, because, yes, there’s a lot of dimensions of success, there’s a lot of dimensions about being a good teammate, and a good colleague, and a good company, and a good friend, and all those, but if you can consistently overdeliver on responsiveness, on clarity, and on empathy, the world is your oyster.

Pete Mockaitis

Now, Jay, there are so many directions I could go with this, but first, let’s hear. I know you are a marketing genius, if I may, I’m just going to bestow that upon you.

Jay Baer

Thanks.

Pete Mockaitis

I’ve admired your work for a while, and you do a lot of research. Could you share with us, when it comes to quick, like there are eye-popping numbers associated with, say, if you have an inbound lead land in your lap, if you respond to them within minutes or hours, it’s like a crazy huge difference? Can you share some of those figures with us?

Jay Baer

Yeah, and we did a lot of research for my most recent book, which is called The Time to Win, and most people, and certainly most organizations, feel like they are fast enough. Like, “I’m getting to it as fast as I can, man.” But what they fail to realize is that people’s expectations for what constitutes fast has changed dramatically in a three-year period. So, yes, you used to be fast enough, sufficiently fast, but you’re no longer sufficiently fast.

Two-thirds of customers say that speed is as important as price. And to your point, Pete, about something landing in your inbox, check this out. Fifty-one percent, more than half, of all customers will hire whomever contacts them first regardless of price. So, if you’re shopping for a car, a sofa, a hamburger, a mate, a job, I did a podcast last week for the manufacturing sector, and one of the things we talked about was they struggled to hire and retain talent.

I’m like, well, one of the reasons that’s so is they put out a job description, and they get some resumes, and then they don’t get back to anybody until they have a sufficient stack of resumes and begin to analyze them. Meanwhile, that person hasn’t heard from me for three weeks and took another job.

Pete Mockaitis

Yeah, that happens. It’s true.

Jay Baer

It’s just about response time and cycles. They’re not nefarious. It’s not like they don’t care about those candidates. It’s just that they haven’t tuned their processes to understand that even though we’ve been saying the words “Time is money” for probably 100 years, it was never true. But it is true now. The relationship between responsiveness and revenue is inescapable now. And you either are good at that, or you are literally losing money, friends, colleagues, every day.

Pete Mockaitis

That’s powerful, and it’s true. I’m thinking, I recently acquired a company, my first one, which is pretty exciting.

Jay Baer

Congrats.

Pete Mockaitis

Ooh, I feel like a deal-maker, a titan of industry.

Jay Baer

Doing some of that M&A, baby.

Pete Mockaitis

And so, I was like, “Oh, man, I’ve never done this before. I should probably have a lawyer and accountant who really know what they’re doing. That’s probably important,” So, I thought, “All right. So, it’s very important for me to select an excellent accountant and lawyer.” And what did I do? I totally went with the first person who got back to me, and said, “Yeah, I can do that.”

Jay Baer

Yeah, and it’s because we interpret speed as caring. We interpret responsiveness as respect. It doesn’t mean it’s true. It’s just how we internalize it. So, if you hear back from a potential attorney in four hours, you feel one way about that individual or that organization. If you hear back from them in two days, you feel a different way entirely, and that matters. It has nothing to do with their competency as attorneys.

But you’re like, “Well, this is going to be a better relationship because they got back to me right away, therefore, they must want my business. They want to work with Pete. They want to be part of this project.” Now, does that mean it’s actually going to be better? No, but we can’t help it. It’s psychology. It’s our need to belong. And when you get back to somebody faster, what you’re actually saying is, “We belong together.”

Pete Mockaitis

That’s good. Well, so now let’s zoom into the interior of an organization. Folks like to have their emails and their Slack messages responded to quickly. And you know, hey, we had Cal Newport and other folks on the show, talking about deep work and the importance of focus, and so in many ways the advice, current, more so often in many of these interviews is, “Hey, you know, don’t non-stop be responding to your emails and Slacks, but rather really take some time to have that focus, deep work, high-value, strategic initiatives. Do that, good professional, as a differentiator for your value.” And so, yeah. But at the same time, people love quickness, Jay. How do we navigate this tension?

Jay Baer

Yeah, I don’t believe in deep work during the day. I feel like what you’re doing is telling everybody else that your time is more important than theirs, and I feel like, eventually, that’s going to be a detriment to you and your career. I do deep work outside office hours. I do deep work at night and I do deep work on weekends. Does that hurt my work-life balance? Damn right, but I answer everything instantaneously and have for 30 years, and it has certainly served me well.

And I’ll do deep work later, and I will be as responsive as possible from 8:00 to 5:00, and that’s just the way I’ve always done it. And I think, largely, the research on human behavior bears that out as a very successful system, but I do understand how it can be a problem for people who are like, “Look, I’m not going to do two hours’ time on task from 5:00 to 7:00 o’clock at night.” I get it. I understand. That’s a choice you’re making.

Pete Mockaitis

Understood. So, at the same time, though, there are occasions where, hey, you’re doing a podcast interview here and now. I mean, you’re not emailing or Slacking in this moment but I’m imagining…

Jay Baer

You think that I’m not, but I’ve actually checked email twice since we started talking.

Pete Mockaitis

Is that really true? I had no idea.

Jay Baer

That’s 100% true.

Pete Mockaitis

You’re very slick. You’re very slick. Although, you didn’t respond though, right?

Jay Baer

I turned off my microphone and I typed an email a minute ago when you looked away.

Pete Mockaitis

I can’t tell if you’re joking or you’re not.

Jay Baer

I’m not joking. Why would I lie about it?

Pete Mockaitis

That’s impressive.

Jay Baer

I’m not joking.

Pete Mockaitis

That is impressive. Okay. Well, no, it’s fun to get multiple perspectives and varieties of counterpoints here. Because, yes, you have achieved towering success in your fields, which are pretty darn competitive, if I may add, you know, speaking and marketing and book writing, and you’re crushing it.

Jay Baer

Well, I mean, look at it this way. If somebody sends me an email, and says, “Hey, I’d like to maybe think about having you come do a keynote speech for our organization,” to me, the best way to do that is to build a life and a team and a system where we can respond to that within two minutes because I don’t want them to ever send anybody else a second email.

You never want them to say, “Well, we didn’t hear back, therefore…” and you don’t know how long their fuse is. When do they say, “I haven’t heard back from Jay”? Is it an hour? Is it four hours? Is it a day? Is it two days? I don’t know. I do know a little bit because I’ve done the research on it. But our SLA in our organization is we respond to everybody within 59 minutes, unless there’s like some weird extenuating circumstances, like that’s the deal, right? And, usually, it’s more like two minutes.

And, obviously, we’ve got to sort of build our work style around that, and I am better than most at being able to record a podcast and type an email with one hand, but you train yourself to be able to do that over time.

Pete Mockaitis

And it sounds like you also have teams and systems and processes enabling that.

Jay Baer

Yeah, of course.

Pete Mockaitis

It’s not all Jay email all the time.

Jay Baer

No, and I’d have to tell you, all of this is going to get so much easier because, in the near future, i.e. today, you’re going to be able to just say to Microsoft Copilot, Google Genesis, Meta, whatever AI suite you’re going to use, you just say, “Hey, send a three-paragraph email to Pete asking about what time the podcast taping is going to be and what he prefers in terms of promotional graphics.” That’s it. The email will be created and sent.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. So, quickness, it sounds like the takeaway is do it. Any other nuances to that?

Jay Baer

Hey, I’m not saying it’s good. I just want to point this out. I don’t love it either, man. I don’t love having to write proposals from 7:00 o’clock to 9:00 o’clock at night or whatever the circumstances are. I don’t love it. I’m not saying this is a net positive, either for me or for society. I am saying it will make you a better professional, and it will help your career, and it is the trend that we’re all going on.

I don’t think anybody, Cal Newport, nobody else is going to say, “Hey, you know, I’ve been looking at the trends and it sounds like we’re going to start doing things more slowly.” Like, I don’t think that’s going to happen. So, you either lean into the skid or you end up in the ditch.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. So, quickness, takeaway, do it. Let’s talk about being clear.

Jay Baer

Yeah. Well, look, people hate to wait. We just talked about that. The thing they hate the second most is to be under-informed. This is also something that has been changed over the last few years because, until then, we were under-informed all the time and we were okay with it. We didn’t have any choice. So, the other night, my wife and I were watching TV, and Cher comes on, and so I say to my wife, “Hey, how old is Cher?” She’s like, “I don’t know.” So, we’re like, “Siri, how old is Cher?” Cher is 78 years old, as it turns out, which is kind of impressive. A-plus plastic surgeon for Cher, for sure. A-plus, like incredible.

But then I thought, “Okay, what would it have taken, pre-internet, to figure out how old Cher was?” And I was like, “Okay, you’d have to get in a car, drive to a library, meet with a reference librarian who would maybe have a book on actors and their birthdays or something, and then you’d look it up, and then you’re like, ‘Oh, Cher was born in whatever.’” And so, it would take, I don’t know, a couple hours to decide how old Cher was. And, of course, nobody would do that, no employed person would do that.

So, we used to say, Pete, you might remember this, back in the day, we used to say, “I don’t know,” and people were totally okay with that. That was literally an acceptable answer to almost any query. You could just say, “I don’t know,” and that was fine. We just went about our business. But now you can’t say that because you can know, you can figure it out. So, we’re now in this era where when people are under-informed, where there’s an information asymmetry, where you know more than they do, it creates a ton of anxiety.

So, one of the best things you can do is to literally over-inform your colleagues about what’s going on, what’s going to happen next. Like, be the person who always knows exactly what the next step is, and is always telling other people what’s going on. Because this sort of black box, like, “We gave a thing to Pete. And I guess he’s working on it, but we haven’t heard a status report.” Like, all of that creates a lot of anxiety and really hurts you as a professional.

Pete Mockaitis

It really does, and I’ve been on the receiving end and probably delivering end – sorry, everybody – of that. And so, can you maybe give us an example of what is a disappointment, yet all-too-common demonstration of clear, like, “Not clear enough but you see it all the time,” versus what is exemplary clarity that we’d love to receive?

Jay Baer

I’ll give you an example of exemplary clarity because it really surprised me, and it sort of turned a negative into a positive for me. So, as you may know, my side job is I’m the number two tequila influencer in the world, and I was combining jobs, and I was drinking tequila while shopping online recently, and I don’t recommend that for this reason.

I bought a pair of leather sneakers, and they were super cool, very happy with them. And then I immediately got the confirmation email that said, “Okay, we’re going to make your sneakers. Expect them in eight weeks.” That was a surprise because I thought that the sneakers were ready to be shipped that day. I didn’t know it was a “make a sneaker” thing. I thought it was like, “We have these and we’ll send them to you.” And I was like, “Oh.”

So, then I thought about canceling the order, but I was like, “No, I really do like these shoes. Like, I can wait a couple months. I’ll survive.” But then, every single Wednesday, Pete, for eight weeks in a row, I got an email from my account manager at the sneaker company, saying, “Hey, this week, your shoes are going to the tannery. And this is Manuel. He’s our tannery guy, and he’s been doing this for 20 years. And here’s a video of Manuel doing his job. And then, next week, it’s going to go to the stitching people, and that’s going to be Sheila. Here’s Sheila’s workspace. Here’s what she’s all about.”

So, literally, it was like a week-by-week documentary film of how these sneakers were going to be made. So, the entire time, there was never any question as to, “What are they doing for two months?” Like, I knew exactly what was happening every week, and I could kind of follow along. It was an amazing, amazing experience. And I think we can take that same idea into our own workspace. And every time we’re working on a project, every time we’re collaborating with colleagues, just make sure that, wherever possible, you are over-communicating.

And I’ve done a lot of research on this, Pete. Here’s the way I like to frame it up. If it feels to you like you’re over-communicating, you’re probably communicating just the right amount. Because the truth is, it doesn’t matter whether they’re email, Slack, voicemails, puppet shows, Haiku, it doesn’t matter, whatever you’re creating for your colleagues, they’re not reading all of it. And if they are, they’re not letting it all sink in. Like, they’re skimming it like the rest of us do. So sometimes the best way to separate yourself apart is to just be the one that communicates more.

Pete Mockaitis

That’s really cool. And it sounds like the nature of communications is specifically in the domain of the status of stuff and what’s going on right now. Because sometimes people can feel a little bit of an information overload in terms of, like, you’re doing a report, or, “Hey, our recommended course of action is this. And it’s because if you look at the database, dah, dah, dah.” It’s like people often don’t want all that.

Jay Baer

Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis

But they do want to hear, “Hey, what is going on? What’s the deal with this thing?” And that reminds me of a story. One time, I made a boo-boo and I had a client…

Jay Baer

Hopefully, it wasn’t the buying the company part.

Pete Mockaitis

No, no, that’s been working out great. And I made a boo-boo and so I had a client who was rather upset. I put him in a pickle. And so, I told him, “Okay, here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to reach out to everybody, and I’m going to have a helper also record the status of what’s unfolding with each of those people in this live Google Sheet, so you can see at any moment where do things sit with all of these people, and then I’ll be reachable via…” I was on a camping trip. “I’ll be reachable via satellite phone for dah, dah, dah.”

And they said, “Okay.” And then it was all said and done, they said, “You know, actually, everyone was really pleased with how you handled that.” I was like, “Oh, cool.” So, I was effectively able to get myself out of a tight spot because I was doing that. It’s like, “You could not have more information than this. The status of all of these people and the minute it changes at your fingertips, anytime you like.”

And I also love it when I’m coordinating a big project. I got a lot of ins, a lot of outs, a lot of what-have-yous, to say, “Oh, okay, this is exactly where that is,” so that I could see, “Oh, shoot, we’re getting hung up here. I better get some more help there, pronto.”

Jay Baer

Absolutely. I’ll give you another little life tip for this notion of clarity. This really helps. I’ve been doing this about two and a half years now in my personal life, and not only has it made me a better business professional, but it’s improved relationships with my wife, and my kids, and my friends, and my mailman. Like, I really want everybody to do this because I’m telling you it’s going to work. It’s called reply without answers. So, here’s how it works.

Today, if somebody has a question for you, a work colleague, you don’t know the answer, what do you do? You go look it up. You ask Julie in accounting, you check with the boss, you check with the customer, you Google it, you look in the intranet, like whatever, you do the stuff. And then once you have manifested the answer, you tell the person what they need to know. Yep. Stop doing that. Don’t do that anymore. Because the entire time that you are figuring it out, that person is slowly freaking out.

Pete Mockaitis

All right.

Jay Baer

So, if I send you an email today, so this actually applies to both clarity and speed, if I send you an email today and I don’t hear back for like, I don’t know, two days from Pete, I’m like, “Oh, wow, I didn’t hear back from Pete. Did that go to spam? Did I attach something that would have sent it to spam?”

Pete Mockaitis

“Did I offend him? Is he mad at me?”

Jay Baer

“Did I offend him?” Yeah, “Is he mad at me? Should I now send a call, or a text, or a ping, or does that make me seem sad and desperate?” We play all these mental games, and our own anxiety goes up and up and up. So, what you want to do instead is, if somebody needs something from you, you’re like, “Good question. Such a good question. I have to go figure it out. I’m going to do that, and then I’ll let you know.”

So, the first response is instantaneous, and all you’re saying is, “I got it,” and then you give them what they need. Two huge things occur. First, their perception of how fast you are goes up dramatically, but, second, their anxiety goes way down. Because we studied this exclusively in the research I did for the most recent book, time to response is more important than time to resolution.

This is why, Pete, if you call the phone company, the cable company, whatever, they will say two things. First, they say, “Calls will be answered in the order that they were received,” which always makes me laugh because I think, “What was the second option?” “Calls will be answered by height.” Like, “What did they discard as the backup option?” I’d be like, “Why do you have to tell us that?” I love that.

And then the second thing is, okay, “Estimated hold time like 11 minutes.” So estimated hold time 11 minutes is the automated version of respond without answers. As soon as you say “I got it,” it takes it off of their mental to-do list and puts it on your mental to-do list, and that changes their relationship dramatically, and creates so much clarity around what’s going to happen next.

And here’s the secret tip, Pete. It actually buys you more time to respond. Because once they’re like, “Oh, Pete’s working on it,” then they’re not losing their mind. They know you’re on it. So, does this mean you’ve got to reply to everybody twice? It does. But the first one, you’re just like, “I got it,” right? And then you go figure it out, and then you respond. Do this. Implement it in your life. I’m telling you it’s going to change your relationships.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Now, let’s hear about being kind.

Jay Baer

Look, I wouldn’t have even talked about this a few years ago, this idea of empathy and kindness, because there is no point to it. So, I’m a seventh-generation entrepreneur. My son’s an eighth-generation entrepreneur. My family’s been self-employed since like the 1850s, and the number of conversations I had with my dad or my grandfather about treating people with kindness, respect, dignity, and empathy, literally, never in my whole life beat, not once ever, because it was just the default setting.

Like, that’s just, you know, like it wasn’t that long ago. It’s hard to remember now because we’re in an era of empathy deficit, but it wasn’t that long ago that we treated everybody with respect and dignity and kindness and humanity all the time. It was the golden rule era, like it wasn’t that long ago. But somewhere along the way we kind of lost our way, and now you know everybody’s always kind of angry and at loggerheads, and the sort of level of discourse has dropped dramatically, and it kind of makes me sad, actually, as a person.

But I’m telling you, as a professional, if you can be the hyper-polite, hyper-courteous, hyper-understanding, hyper-kind one, man, it stands out now like it didn’t used to because it is such the exception in the workforce. Be that person. And I want to make sure we define what empathy means here, Pete. It doesn’t mean that you do whatever. It doesn’t mean that the other person’s right and you’re wrong.

Empathy is defined as the ability to understand and share the feelings of another person. What it means is that you’re the person inside your organization who can walk a mile in somebody else’s shoes and behave accordingly. You understand how this colleague is feeling and you change your own behavior accordingly. In an era that’s going to be defined by robots, the most empathetic professional is going to have a massive advantage over everybody else in the organization.

Pete Mockaitis

Jay, I’d love it if you could give us again a demonstration, illustration of what is typical insufficient empathy and the counter example of “And this is what would really be optimal”?

Jay Baer

Well, I think sometimes, when people believe they’re being empathetic, they’re actually being obsequious. They’re being fawning, or just, everybody’s been in that situation where somebody is so supportive that it feels saccharine and artificial, and that’s not what I mean. An empathetic leader is somebody who treats everybody on their team differently, not the same.

And there’s this business wisdom that says, “Treat everybody the same. Be a very consistent manager.” That’s terrible advice because everybody on your team has different needs, different circumstances, different scenarios. They’re motivated by different things. If you’ve got 10 people working for you, you should have 10 different management styles, and you should be adopting your management style to what that person needs at that time. That’s what empathy means.

People think that being an empathetic leader means having good work-life balance and taking people to the happy hour, whatever. No, no, no, no, no. It’s about looking at every situation and every circumstance and using your own innate humanity to make the best possible decisions for that person at that time.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. So those are the principles we’re working with. And so, I’d love it if there’s an example that comes to mind for you in terms of, “Wow, that was super empathetic and I loved it,” versus, “But, usually, I get something much lamer.”

Jay Baer

Well, my favorite example, and it has, fortunately, not happened to me personally, but I think people, some folks will know the tale, is Chewy.com. Do you know this story, the Chewy.com pet supply company?

Pete Mockaitis

The pet food website.

Jay Baer

Yeah. So very successful business, growing like crazy, and, look, it’s a good company. They’ve got good products at a good price, but they don’t have a different mousetrap. They’re selling pet supplies. But they are rooted in empathy. Rooted in empathy. It’s like a core value of the organization. So much so that if you, unfortunately, lose a pet, the pet passes away, in some cases, you might send a live chat or an email to Chewy, and say, “Hey, I’ve got an unopened bag of dog food. I’ve got this rawhide bone I never got a chance to give the dog. Can I return it to you?” And they always respond and say, “No, no. Please just donate it to a local pet shelter.”

But then they will find a picture of your pet in social media, they have a staff of 1,011 freelance oil painters working for the company. They will paint an oil painting of your deceased pet. They will FedEx it to you for delivery the next morning with a handwritten condolences note, and you open this box, “Where did this come from? Chewy.” And it’s from the day before, an oil painting of the pet you just lost with a handwritten note, “So sorry for your loss. Thank you for your business. Chewy.”

And there’s a video on TikTok or Instagram, etc., there’s just video after video after video of people bawling their eyes out because the simple kindness and the empathy and humanity that that brings with it. And the question I always have is, “In a situation like that, if you choose to get another pet someday, what are the chances you spend even a penny with any other provider of pet supplies ever in your life?”

Like, minus 50%, I think, is the actual answer. So, it is such a smart business decision and it’s proven to be true in their results. You can use empathy as a unique competitive advantage, both at the company level and certainly at the individual level.

Pete Mockaitis

That is powerful. And it’s intriguing because, okay, pet owners love their pets, and when pets die, it’s very sad. And that’s sort of like emotionally just true and simple and clear. I’m thinking about, and of other businesses that feel far less personal, like podcast production. It’s “How might that be utilized?”

Jay Baer

And some of this is even just something simple. Like, you don’t need to get an oil painting of the podcast host, although, hey, you know, we will take one. A lot of times, what triggers empathy, or lack thereof, is just the language that we use. In many cases, I talk about this a lot in the Hug Your Haters book, especially when somebody needs something from you, or, even more especially, if somehow you have been deficient, you’ve been slow, you’ve been inaccurate, something has gone less than ideal.

What happens in many cases, and it’s not nefarious, it’s just a natural human reaction, we will try to information ourselves out of the jam. So, we’ll start to say, “Well, here’s exactly what happened,” and you start to prosecute the case, and a lot of times we fall back on very specific details and jargon, and it becomes a very stiff, formal response. And I’ve certainly done that, and people have done it to me, especially in a colleague setting where you’re, like, you feel attacked, and so the way you prevent that attack is to put up a shield.

And that shield is very stiff, formal language that uses a lot of sorts of terse and mellifluous phrasing, and so you’re trying to information yourself out of it. The better way to go is to just lean into the empathy first, and just say, “I’m sorry that sucks.” Like, “We’ll make it better.” And so, it really is, sometimes in a colleague setting, it comes down, Pete, to just the words and the language you use when things are going less than ideal.

And the more empathetic professionals, actually, there’s almost a reverse correlation, so the stickier the situation, the more casual and personal their language. Whereas, what most people do is the stickier the situation, the more stilted and formal their language.

Pete Mockaitis

That’s good. That’s really good. In terms of the psychology emotions at work, it’s like you feel attacked and so you’re naturally like, “Well, let me explain why. In fact, I’m not bad. There’s a reason that this thing occurred that you don’t like.” And so, to really just be able to take a breath and shift out of yourself for that moment to do this.

Jay Baer

Yeah, I used to do this exercise in workshops, like the 13 words you should never use in that situation. And it’s things like division, department, per, “Per my last email.” If you’re dropping the “per,” then you know you’re falling into that sort of formal defensive language trap. Like, “heretofore,” that’s a good one. Like, all of these kinds of words that you never use unless you’re in, like, sort of this passive-aggressive kind of conflict thing.

And you see it all the time in tools like Slack. It does tend to drive very short, choppy interactions, which sometimes don’t have as much nuance as might be ideal in that kind of situation.

Pete Mockaitis

That’s powerful. Well, before we hear about some of your favorite things, can you give us any other quick do’s and don’ts for having folks rave about us word-of-mouth style?

Jay Baer

The biggest opportunity for word of mouth is to understand that competency doesn’t create conversations. Being good, even very good, at whatever doesn’t cause people to tell others about it because that’s what the expectation. They expect you to be good or very good. So, we talk about different and we ignore same.

So, if you want people to talk about you and tell your story, either in the workplace or outside the workplace, you need to do something different, and you need to do it different consistently. This is why, and this is a poor example, but it’s one that people will be able to recognize, this is why some professionals are like, “Look, Jillian always has the purple hair.” Now you may or may not like the purple hair on Jillian, but as a word-of-mouth device, it’s actually a sound strategy.

It doesn’t have to be your appearance, it doesn’t have to be your clothes, but even in your own set of colleagues. If there’s somebody who always wears whatever it is. I, not in this particular venue, but when I’m on stage, I always have a very bright plaid suit. It is my thing. Like, everybody knows it’s my thing. I’ve got 20 plaid suits. Meeting planners can pick out which color suit I wear on stage, I’ve got a whole, like, mobile app that they can do it with. Like, it’s my thing.

Pete Mockaitis

That’s distinction.

Jay Baer

Right. So, you just have to figure out what is your thing that you are going to do every day always that’s going to be just the device, the hook that people use to remember you, and it can be almost anything. And this starts to kind of meld over into the category of personal branding. So, what I always tell people is, “Look, your job is not interesting. It doesn’t matter.

Unless you’re like an astronaut or something, what you do for a living, nobody’s going to remember that. It’s your passions and your hobbies that people remember,” which is one of the reasons why in my bio, in my onstage introduction it says “Jay dah, dah, dah seven bestselling books, and also the world’s number two tequila influencer,” because everybody in the audience remembers that more so than, ‘Yeah, the guy wrote a book. Every speaker wrote a book.” But they remember tequila influencer.

And so, it’s understanding that everybody has something unique and memorable about them. It’s just giving yourself permission to put that out in front.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay, thank you. Now, could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Jay Baer

“Remember, some days you’re the pigeon, and some days you are the statue.”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Jay Baer

I think that in the most recent book, “The Time to Win,” one of the things that really surprised me was that the most patient generation of all, like willing to give each other and businesses more grace in terms of response time, Gen Z, the youngest consumers.

And I think it’s because they don’t have as many leases on their time, might not have kids of their own, job might not be as pressure-filled, etc. They’re just like,  “Yeah, it’s okay. You can get back to me.” Conversely, the least patient generation, Boomers. Is this because Boomers have less time left on the planet? Maybe. That seems a little maudlin, but the numbers add up. They’re like, “Hey, I’m retired. I have nothing else to do other than wonder how come this email is taking so long,” and they start freaking out about it. So, I thought that’s kind of funny.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And a favorite book?

Jay Baer

My favorite author, and there’s many, many books, is Bill Bryson, the travelogue writer. Probably my favorite one is his treatise on kind of small-town America. It’s called In a Sunburned Country. I love that one.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. And a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Jay Baer

Right now, I’m really enjoying a tool called ManyChat, which I use in my tequila business to gather email addresses from fans on Instagram, sort of de-anonymize that audience. We do monthly contests with tequila brands, where you can win a custom Yeti cooler or some such.

And we use this tool, ManyChat, so that people just comment “cooler,” etc., on an Instagram post, and then it automatically harvests their email address, which we then use as a contest entry. It’s just a really slick piece of technology that bolts on top of Instagram and solves a pretty sticky kind of data problem for me. It’s great.

Pete Mockaitis

Awesome. And a favorite habit?

Jay Baer

This probably won’t be a surprise based on our previous conversation, I try to be at inbox zero every day.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks; they quote it back to you and retweet it often?

Jay Baer

I’ll go back to my second book Youtility. The thesis is this: helping beats selling. And that if you really focus on being as helpful and useful as possible, you don’t have to sell because people will sell you. And that’s certainly true at the company level, but especially for purposes of this show, Pete, I think that’s great advice for everybody.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Jay Baer

JayBaer.com. J-A-Y-B-A-E-R.com is the main website. You can find me for all things tequila at TequilaJayBaer.com. And the books and the podcasts and newsletter and all that’s pretty easy to find.

Pete Mockaitis

And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Jay Baer

When you’re interacting with a colleague or a customer or anybody in the workplace, I think it’s helpful to take a second in every exchange, and just ask yourself, “What do they really need?” Because often we just take the initial interaction, the initial question as that’s the depth, but there’s usually a lot more going on beneath the surface.

And if we just take a moment, just take a moment to say, “What are they really saying here? What do they really need? Not what they’ve asked for, but what do they really need?” If you can give yourself permission to just take that extra beat and think about that, and then respond and interact accordingly, it will serve you well.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Jay, this has been so much fun. I wish you many more delightful exchanges where folks are saying your name, and everywhere.

Jay Baer

We should do this with tequila next time.

Pete Mockaitis

Oh, it sounds fun.