The Sales Myth: Why Learning is More Important Than Hustle | Ep 98 | Steve Buzogany

Steve Buzogany  00:00

Start working on the business and you just, the more time you spend working on it, the less time you’ll have, the less time you’ll have to be in it. And then and try and basically make it run itself so that you have like, people that you hire, you want to hire slow and fire fast, like you don’t want to make sure you, you know, you have high quality people and that, and also people that believe in the vision that you set out for the company. And that’s important too. So like people who don’t care. Like for me, I’m a big, big, big gratitude guy. Obviously, I’m a gift giving guy. So I’m my freakin company’s called appreciation advocate.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  00:35

So good morning, and welcome to another episode of Better Business Better Life. Today, I am joined by Steve Buzogany, who is the founder and CEO of the Appreciation Advocate, and Stephens based over in Philadelphia. So he’s joining us from over in the US today. And he’s got quite an interesting story, because what he’s doing right now is not what he was actually trained to do. So Steve, I’d really appreciate if you could share with our listeners how you’ve got to be doing what you’re doing now.

Steve Buzogany  01:01

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me on, too. By the way, Debra, I appreciate it. So when the way I actually got started was I was an accounting major in college. And what happened is, I had an internship and I didn’t like it, I figured that out. Okay, whatever, oh, for one, and then go for the second one. And then I hated the second one even more. And I said, I’m like I can’t do this for the rest of my life. I know I’m a numbers guy, but I’m not a numbers guy nine to five for 30 years of my life, every day of all the time. So I feel like alright, well, there’s only one year of college left. What do I do? Like how do I? How do I come up with something to do? I like my mom still wants me to finish as an accounting major, which I did for her but not you know, obviously, I never set foot in an accounting firm ever. Probably still couldn’t tell you what, what side debits and credits are on. I saw I was like, so I went into as an art. Well, real estate doesn’t require a whole lot of prerequisites, let’s, let’s get my license and go do that. So I ended up doing that. And I started selling really well, I got my Rookie of the Year Award and all those fun little things that give you them when you do really well. Got the recognition. And then after a while, probably reached that Top, I reached that top 10% of real estate agents in the United States. And then after that, that’s when I saw a lot of real estate agents around the office actually started asking me like, Hey, what are you doing? How are you? How are you getting all of these referrals that you’re doing? And I told him I was like are well, I’m just getting them gifts. And then I follow the gift with a phone call. Because you know, it’s a natural icebreaker. And they’re like, Oh, that makes a lot of sense. And then they’re like, Oh, are you wrapping the gifts and everything? I’m like, Yeah, I do. And they’re like, Yeah, I don’t have time for that. I’m like, okay, so I kept hearing, I don’t have time for that. I don’t have time for that. I don’t have time for that. And I was like, well, there’s a market there. Let’s do that. So then that’s how appreciation advocate was born. So now I will actually build a gifting plan for people and do it for them. And all they do is just pay me and then all they have to do after they, they have to get the plan. And I do it for them. They just have to follow up with a phone call. And it’s not easy. It’s like your prospecting now is like it’s not. So do you want to buy a house? It’s more like, oh my god, I love you so much like this is so great. Thank you so much for sending this house, the real estate market, or that’s a now that’s a much easier conversation to have versus like. So do you know anyone selling different thing? So that’s basically that’s how we did it.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  03:22

That’s how you got started. It’s actually really interesting, because I didn’t share this with you when we were talking before. But when I actually first have a conversation with somebody who’s interested in what I do, I actually send them a pack. And within that pack there is a as a stuffed elephant because I talk about uncovering the elephant in the room, and a bar of chocolate and a book and a torch about shining the light on things with a little handwritten note. And as you said, like once you’ve actually sent that out, you’ve got the opportunity to have a conversation where there’s already some kind of relationship going on. And you’ve got something to talk about as opposed to just pay by the way I want to buy EOS.

Steve Buzogany  03:56

Right. Yes. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that’s a that the handwritten note is the most underrated item in the business world that I think that nobody uses. I know, handwritten notes from me and my gift giving studies. I know, handwritten notes are like .7% of all mail in the United States. Yeah. And it’s like, they get read what like 100% of the time, they get kept often. And it shows that you care, and I don’t know what else you want me to do. It doesn’t cost me anything cost like 50 cents. So it’s like what’s false make

Debra Chantry-Taylor  04:31

It does make your head hurt. So I’ve realized I don’t do an awful lot of writing these days. And so when I actually write 100 notes like oh my gosh, that really hurts.

Steve Buzogany  04:37

I know it does. So one of the things that the guy Jocko willing actually really put it really interestingly, he was talking with Brian Buffini on a podcast once and Jocko willing said he’s like to note today is what Brian Buffini proposed. And Jocko was like, wow, that’s a big ask. And it’s not that it’s hard to it’s not that it’s hard to write two personal notes a day. It’s it. It’s easier now too, and that’s why people do it. And so that was the big mind grenade there.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  05:05

Yeah, fantastic. I always ask my guests, you know, what are their professional and personal best? And I mean, obviously getting in the top 10% of real estate agents in in, in US is pretty special. But what are you most proud of in your life so far?

Steve Buzogany  05:17

That’s pretty cool with the real estate stuff. For me, I don’t I think for me, I haven’t really reached my personal best yet I’m, I look back on my real estate career, and I’m not like, nothing like I am this is maybe just me being super high standards, I like look back, and I’m just like, there’s nothing that like really blows me out of the water me personally. And I’m just like, alright, well, you know, just a regular real estate agent. I don’t know why I don’t I don’t think it was all that crazy. Personally, I think I’m really proud of is, you know, I have two and a half year old son and a eight month old. So I’m really proud of those guys. And it’s really cool. To be able to, and my goal that I actually set 10 years ago was I wanted to be a present father in my kid’s life, the way my father was present in my life. And the fact that I’ve been able to do that for the last two and a half years for the firstborn and eight months for the second guy. I love that I’ve been able to do that. So I’m actually kind of living that dream now that because I set that 10 years ago, before I even I think I just met my wife at the time. So like, like, they were the thesis, this was a goal set a long time ago. And it’s finally being able to realize it is really cool.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  06:22

Yeah, that is awesome. And I think that, you know, I see that people, when they go into business, they often kind of go into business thinking they’re getting it all this freedom, all this extra time that they spend time with their kids. And of course, they get bogged down in the day to day stuff. And suddenly they’re working ridiculous hours and, and not really living the life they want to. So it’s really cool to see that you’ve, you’ve committed to that. And obviously your father set a good benchmark, if you like in terms of being there for you.

Steve Buzogany  06:44

Yeah, so he was a My mom was a business owner. And my dad actually ended up quitting his job and working for my mom. So So he, obviously they were around a lot. And that’s I think that was a big deal. Because I know my wife’s father. He was a car salesman, and was not around a lot, because he was always working late. And she told me that, you know, she only really got to see him on like Sundays. And she told she, you know, she’s always told me, she’s like, I really wish that I had my dad around as much as you had yours around. That was a really cool thing. So I’m like, Well, okay, then our guys got to have me around. So we got to make sure that happens.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  07:21

Yeah. And, and you know, the business that you have the appreciation advocate, it’s not a small business, right, which we’re looking at potentially turning over seven figures this year. So it’s a little solid 10 pots of running from the back of the house type business. So tell me how you balance that, you know, in terms of building the business and having time for the family?

Steve Buzogany  07:38

Yep, having systems in place, is really, really important. Making sure that there is a system and sometimes you don’t know what the system is until you go through it once or twice. Sometimes there’s, there’s been a lot of things that I’ve done in both real estate and with appreciation advocate where you don’t even know what problems you’re gonna come across until you actually go through the exercise or the project once. And then after a while, you start to be like, Okay, there’s just, this is how this is going to go, Okay, now we need somebody to do this, this and this. And that’s just going to and then you start to build systems around that. And you start to outsource, what tasks are what tasks are outsourced double, and then you start putting those together. And it basically, it’s kind of like, the E Myth revisited. You ever read that book? Yeah, yes, definitely. Yeah. So that’s basically like, you know, start working on the business and you just, the more time you spend working on it, the less time you’ll have, the less time you’ll have to be in it. And then and try and basically make it run itself. So that you have like, people that you hire, you want to hire slow and fire fast, like you don’t want to make sure you, you know, you have high quality people and that, and also people that believe in the vision that you set out for the company. And that’s important too. So like people who, you know, don’t care. Like for me, I’m a big, big, big gratitude guy, obviously, I’m a gift giving guy. So I’m my freakin company’s called appreciation advocate. So like, so of course, I would want people working here that have that same value system, like I might, you know, people that don’t care about what others who are only in it for themselves, I’m not going to do well here. Narcissism is not going to do well here. So like, that’s why, you know, people who are who share that mission. And that same core values is when those all align everyone’s on the same page, they all have the same vision, they all have the same drivers in them that that’s a super helpful thing, too.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  09:21

Yeah, that’s one of the things we teach into EOS is, you know, you really want the right people who share those core values who share your your purpose, who wants to be on that journey with you, in the right seats, doing the right job, so they can actually do the jobs that they have been given to do? Yeah, yes. Okay, so process is a really interesting one, isn’t it? Because I know that a lot of entrepreneurs when they start a business, they go off, it’s just so much easier to do it myself, you know, to try and teach somebody, it’s it’s really hard, and I always joke about the whole, there’s delegation, and there’s abdication. And I think I’m usually quite good at abdicating like, I don’t want to do that you just sorted out, which is really not very fair, because you’re not giving the people a chance. Yeah, exactly. Whereas delegation is about recognizing this is not the good use of your time, but develop Paying for systems and processes somebody else who can actually take it with its outsourced or internally. How did you do that in your business?

Steve Buzogany  10:07

Yeah, God, kind of clever little. And everyone I said I was a numbers guy. So this is how I’m dying to hear it. Yeah. So basically what I did is I calculated the dollar value of what my time is worth. And every time every time I spent an hour on something, I realized, that’s what it costs me to do that. So I think at the time I did that my time was like, $1,300 an hour at the time. And it was like, Okay, if I spent an hour, you know, doing laundry? It was that was $1,300 to do laundry. Versus Thanks, thanks. Yeah, I mean, we have this, we have a company here, they call it they, they, if you sign up, they come pick up your laundry, and then they bring it back tomorrow, it costs like 30 to $60. So I’m like, Okay, well, that’s a lot cheaper than 1300. So go. So like you start outsourcing these things. Even even, there’s a Instacart, which is a great company, I don’t know what they have it where you guys aren’t. But Instacart is basically. So Instacart is they do your food shopping for you. So they and they did this show up at your door with all your groceries and they dropped it off and you pay them like a like the driver, a tip or whatever first and it shipped for shopping for you. So I don’t have to do any of that stuff like that the groceries just show up, like all of the things, you can just slowly start to cut those things out. So the dollar value of your time and then also the dollar value of your assistants time. So think about this, like, let’s just keep it a unit even number if your time is worth $2,000 an hour, and you’re paying your assistant, let’s say $30 an hour. Don’t Don’t put your assistant on completely menial things, too. So like for me one of the biggest objections when someone talks to me, they always say, Well, Steve, I don’t need you to do it for me, I’ll have my system, do it in house. And I’m like, that’s fine. That’s cool. Now don’t forget, yes, you’re paying your system $30 An hour or whatever. But what is your system’s worth, or assistance time worth to you, because it’s actually saving you $2,000. So it’s actually worth $1,970, to have to put your assistant on there. So to your and then over an hour average campaign sometimes can take up to 170 hours to complete. So if you translate that into assistant hours, that’s 22 working days of the of the month, and that’s basically a whole month. So basically, what you’re saying is you’re going to commit one month, time of your assistants time to this, when you they should be doing all of the other things that run your business.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  12:24

So that’s basically that’s, that’s great. I love those numbers. It’s really interesting that often when I work with business owners, I actually say, you know, what do you think your hourly rate is, they often underestimate, they kind of get on probably a couple of $100 You go, No, you’re the owner of this business, you know, you’re easily at seven or 800 potentially more, but like don’t undervalue yourself, because if you’re doing stuff that is actually really adding value, think about the number of years of experience, you’ve got the way that you can do things really quickly that other people will take time to do. And I have to kind of get people to think about what are they really worth?

Steve Buzogany  12:55

Yeah. And once you but once you know, it’s it’s been a time like that. It’s like, oh, you start thinking about things totally different. When there’s $1 amount amount on it. It’s like whoa, okay, how do we change things?

Debra Chantry-Taylor  13:07

It’s funny because I was having this conversation, my husband’s my husband’s an actuary. So he’s a real numbers guy. So So, he is, okay, he’s captain. But he’s also if you can imagine, you know, you’ve got an entrepreneur like myself and an extra we’re kind of at the opposite scales for taking risks for spending money and and, and so we get add, we get our dog food delivery got two little mini Schnauzers, and they get raw food and we get it to live. And the other day, when it’s costing $10 to get the dog food to live, we need to stop doing that and go and pick it up. And I went if you work out my hourly rate that having that stuff delivered for $10 is an absolute no brainer. Yeah, absolute steal, but he couldn’t quite get his head around it. So still working on that at the moment said, Well, I can do it cuz I’m going to salary so it doesn’t matter if I can take the time to do it. I suppose not just the actual amount of your your salary or your hourly rate. But what about the time? Couldn’t you spend that half an hour to an hour doing something that you enjoy more, because it’s not always about earning more money, but he loves music. So imagine that you have an extra hour to go and do something musical as opposed to picking up the dog food? That makes sense to me.

Steve Buzogany  14:06

Essentially, what you’re doing is paying $10 To get an hour of your time to enjoy music. Like yeah, I think like it most people would pay $10 That would pay hundreds of dollars to go to a concert. Yeah. All you do have to do is pay 10 That’s an easy, it’s an easy exchange.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  14:21

Yeah, so I’m gonna look about the money side, but also the opportunity cost because I mean, I, I send something with a cleaner at home. It’s like, actually, first of all, from a money perspective, it’s an absolute no brainer. I’m not spending three hours cleaning my house every week when somebody else can do a fraction of the costs. It also gives me three hours of my time for me. So even though it’s on the weekend, and it’s not I can’t use that time in my work. I get to use it for me and the stuff that I really enjoy outside of work. So that’s again a no brainer. Yeah. Okay, so you’ve obviously learned a lot, I would imagine both through your real estate business but also through running the appreciate appreciation advocate about the psychology and the philosophy of gifting and grad It’s huge. And tell us a little bit about what you’ve learned in that time.

Steve Buzogany  15:03

Ah, so fun stuff. So actually in the term in the, in the spirit of giving gifts, it’s a big thing where there’s three really, really dangerous secrets that deceive you in the gift giving world. And yeah, so there’s that that’s a pretty fun thing. So the the gifting secrets that I’ll that I’ll tell you, basically, there’s the first big problem is that most client appreciation, gifts, events, swag, all that stuff. They only make one impression. So as a marketing expert, we we want we Alright, let’s put it this way. If I went into your business, and I told you, you know, maybe you just took out a client to dinner, and it cost you $200. And I’d say, okay, that’s one impression, you just pay $200. For one impression, if I went into a marketing agency and said, Hey, I’d like to work here, I can get you one impression for $200, they’d say 200 hours one impression, get the hell out here. You ain’t coming here. So they would never give me a job for that. So but people do it, they take people to dinner, they take them out to golf, or whatever. And so here’s the thing as a marketing expert you are your goal is to stay top of mind as long as possible. And you can’t do that with one impression. So that’s the, that’s the first problem with most client appreciation gifts. If they’re doing it at all, that’s the second big problem of the three is that that one impression is usually neutral or negative, which means like, so basically, it’s a one off, it’s like a lazy gift. It’s a flat out bad gift that not only it doesn’t keep you top of mind, but also hard to represent reputation. So like if you have in the minds of the customer. So like, let’s say you have a that maybe you’re one of our clients, we have a lot of coaches who would like to give gifts to their top coaching clients. These coaches, what they’ll do is instead of like before they get to us, they they give their this one guy has a client who pays him $50,000 a year, and and he sends them a $50 gift card. I’m like, Dude, I know, they’re probably the and that leads us right into your third problem is that people lie about the real feelings regarding the gift as like, no one’s ever gonna tell you that your gift sucks as a courtesy just so. So unfortunately, the bad gifts receive the same feedback that only the good gifts should get. So because of this the cycle, the bad gift giving death cycle continues. And no one’s gonna say You know what, Hey, Steve, you know what this gift sucks. You can shove this up here, you know what, like, take that home. Like, no one’s gonna say that. So but also like, so if you, if you give these these, these bad guests, they, you know, you can $50 to a $50,000 per year client. Yeah, they’ll say, Oh, this is so nice. Thank you. Appreciate it, you shouldn’t have. But you really shouldn’t have because because they’re gonna turn around and re gift it if it’s a gift card. And it doesn’t stick around. So like, obviously, to do better with the the appreciation stuff is you have to kind of treat the gift, as a as a symbol of the relationship. So if you’re, if you don’t take the gift, and that essentially, if you give them a gift card, you’re basically telling them you’re too lazy, I’m too lazy to care if I put any time into you. So here’s gift card. It’s like patting him on the head saying alright, Jr. Run along, go get yourself something nice. That’s kind of what you’re saying. Without saying it. So that’s why you want to get something that’s going to stay in a house longer, it’s going to have some staying power, it’s going to be a quality item, something they hang up. Like when I was in real estate, I used to give people watercolor paintings of their house that they every time I go after they bought the house, it was like, Hey, here’s a watercolor painting of the house, you just bought Congratulations on your first home, whatever. And then you can continue with other gifts after that. But that was kind of the first one. And people would appreciate that. Because they’d hang it up and it would stay and they think about me and make impression after impression day after day after day, every time they look at the painting on the wall.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  18:49

I love that. And I suppose that comes down to a lot of people really want to get their brand out there. So when they do promotional gifts, it’s all about getting your logo on there. But in actual fact, you’ve just given a classic example of where you don’t need it because they will remember that picture for a bit that came from you for the rest of their lives.

Steve Buzogany  19:07

Right what’s about them. So that’s the thing. So that’s the next big thing is that’s promotion versus gift. So a promotion is about the giver, which has got stuff it’s got your logo on it stuff that’s pretty much cheap and bulk items. But yes, but but when you’re giving a gift, it should always be about the receiver. Your logo should not be on a gift for the receiver if I gave you a cutting board that said like REMAX all over it, you’d be like alright, cool, but no thanks. Yeah, no thanks. I don’t want to see your freaking name and phone number on my freaking cutting board. What people what what I did do is I did when I did get cutting boards I did spend a little bit extra money on them to get them good grades with a monogram and I would have their last name under the monogram and then I’d have the address of the house they bought and then I’d have the date they bought the house all engraved in this beautiful cutting board and they were like I don’t ever want to cut on this ever. I’m going to hang this up because it’s so beautiful. And they I’ve gotten text message was about them, they’re like, this is the nicest cutting board I’ve ever seen. I’m going to keep this on like, they then they like make it a decorative item in their house. And now they’re i, we call it attacking the kitchen. Because we as human beings spend the most time in the kitchen. So whenever you’re giving, I just want to fill the kitchen with a bunch of stuff. And that stuff that they’re gonna use stuff that is nice. It’s decorative, it’s it’s pleasant on the eyes, it’s an intake functional, yeah, it’s high quality. So anytime they pick up anything, oh, the ice cream scooper, or the pizza slicer or these nice, custom nice set, or the scissors or whatever it is, oh, my real or game that I really I mean that my mother gave me that, like, you can’t go in your house without thinking of me all the time. So that’s basically the whole goal. Every time you touch something in your kitchen, it’s me.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  20:45

Yeah. So now I’m really intrigued. And why your secret sauce per se, but if you like, it’s if you’re working for when you’re doing it yourself, you know your customers really, really well. And so you know what they are their houses, like, you know what their kitchen is, like, you know what you can buy, you can even decide where the paintings gonna go on the wall, for example. But if you’re doing it for other people, how do you get that level of understanding of their clients, so you can actually get gifts that are appropriate?

Steve Buzogany  21:09

Yeah, so for me in real estate, it was I was, I’ll be honest, I was a little spoiled, because I got to tour homes with them. And I got to get to know them. And I imagine it’s probably the same for a financial advisor, we get to know them a little bit more, you get to kind of obviously your knowing their personal finances, that’s like really private information. So like you get that kind of a relationship. So what we call it here in our and this is for every small business owner and implement is we call it collecting the juice. And we call it juice because whenever you gossip about someone, you’re that’s the juicy stuff. Everyone always wants to know what the juicy information is. So like, whenever people talk, they spill juice all the time, all the time. Like, for example, you’ve done a ton already, like you’ve already told me, you have to Schnauzers your husband’s into music, and like you’ve already spelled a variety of other things that I could totally take advantage of and start gifting you based on the things you’ve said. So like, that’s the juice collection. Like, it’s called act, it’s like it’s like a really active, layered listening. So you have to listen like several layers deep. And if you can, like you really, it’s a learned skill, it’s not that I, I have a little bit of a natural talent for it, because I’m more of an introvert and I don’t like to talk. So I always ask open ended questions, because I’d rather listen to you talk than to have me speak. So like, that’s why. For me, it’s easy, like, okay, cool. And every time they say something, the way I the way I taught the skill to a couple other people I work with is I said, Just picture everybody as a new adventure. And like, what does that adventure look like? Like, we’ll learn about what kind of adventure you can go on by just getting to know what that person’s story is because everybody is a really walking story. And it’s like, well, it’s like I go to a wedding. I didn’t know anybody there except my wife and my wife was in the wedding. So I was literally stuck by myself. So I so I’m like, Alright, well let’s, Mr. Introverts gotta walk up to people here and figure out how to hook I’m gonna have somebody to talk to and not look like a, like a little dog in the corner over here by myself. So I started asking people like, open ended question, Hey, man, what do you do for a living? He’s like, Oh, I’m a cop. I’m like, well, that’s cool. What’s the craziest story you’ve ever seen? And then you start going down this line. And then the guy actually, at some point does tell you like, hey, he actually leaned over and said, Hey, look, man, a lot of people do a lot of like, surface level bull crap. And obviously, he’s retired and military as well. So he’s saying this with a lot more swear words. But like, so he’s like that, but I really appreciate the fact that you actually do care. I can tell you actually care. And you’re interested in my story. And like, it’s really cool that to actually talk to somebody. So yeah, let’s get some beer together. I’m like, Yes, I need a friend.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  23:39

As long as this craft beer, right?

Steve Buzogany  23:41

Yes. Right, exactly. So I spilled some juice already. So now, you know, I like craft beer and hydrophobic and all these other cool, yes.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  23:48

Yeah, that’s really cool. I just have to just share a little funny story. So like I said, my husband and actually we actually met on a sort of an online dating site. And so our first date was when we went out to dinner together, and I’m a bit like you, I love asking open ended questions. I love finding out about people. I genuinely love people. And so we went to this dinner, we spent about two hours I asked every single open ended question I could think of to try and get through, you know, get some understanding of him. And I swear he’s the only person I know who can answer open ended questions with one or two word answers. So the whole evening was like saying, so I understand you love photography. He’s like, Yeah, so tell me about the flood redo landscapes. What kind of landscapes Do you enjoy, and just landscapes? That’s torturous. I know. So we obviously were married now. So it worked out in the end. But it turns out he was a little bit nervous. The first day he had Googled me which you should never do. When you’re about to meet somebody said he Googled me and said all this stuff, and he was absolutely petrified of the presence that I had and how he would talk to me. The second date, he had calmed down a wee bit and we just talked for hours and it was great. But yeah, I’ve never ever met somebody who could answer open ended questions with one or two word answers.

Steve Buzogany  24:55

That is my death knell right there. I could I was before I met my wife I It’s gonna take time I talked to a woman that was one word answer. I was like, yeah, no, no, no, no, no, no. Yeah. Often,

Debra Chantry-Taylor  25:05

I think to be fair, at the end of the date, I was like, that’s it. I never wanted this guy again. I hope he doesn’t ask for a second date. Yep, yep. And he asked for a second date. And of course, every inch of my body was screaming No, no, don’t do this, Debra, but I’m British. So I just say, Oh, yes, that would be lovely. Please do call me.

Steve Buzogany  25:23

Oh, my God.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  25:25

Thank goodness, I did otherwise, you know, I discovered the real side of him. But yeah,

Steve Buzogany  25:30

He was was screaming to get after him again. That’s good. Yeah, absolutely.

Debra Chantry-Taylor 25:33

Okay, so yeah, so you got to look for the juice, talk to people really talk with the with the intention of understanding not not because you want to answer them, but because you actually genuinely want to find out more about them. And then you can start to build a profile of the person and know who they are. And gift appropriately. So with your, with your team that does this for other people. So you how do you they can get the juice, if you’d like to, they feed that juice into you. And then you find a gift that is appropriate.

Steve Buzogany  26:01

Yeah. So like, if like, if you were a coach, and you had to like I don’t know, a retreat, maybe you do two retreats a year, you bring your top 10 people or whatever. I’d be like, Okay, who are your top 10? People? What are their names? or their spouses names? What are the dog’s names? Are kids names, pets names? What like, what kind of pets are like, what kind of dogs? Are they? What what what are their occupations? Why are they in your coaching program? What are their goals? Do you have any inside jokes with any of these people that I should know about? What is there any kind of common quote that you have? That’s that the group would know about? Or like, what what do these people like everything about these people? That I want to know I should, I want to know everything that I can. And and if you can’t provide that information, this person is probably not a top 25 or so. So that’s a good way to disqualify people. Like, if you can’t answer these questions, it’s like, oh, well, maybe I don’t know these people. And if you don’t have anyone in your database that you can answer those questions for, then, then now it’s, and now it’s a good reason for you to get up off your butt and start getting to know people more. It’s like, wow, I really don’t know my database. And this is evidence of that. And I should, the reason I’m not getting referrals is because I don’t know as much about them as I thought I did. And then you get to start reaching out, you start connecting with them start taking a few of them out to lunch. And yes, I know, I don’t usually tell people go out to lunch, because it is only one impression. I don’t like to do that. But it’s but building a relationship. Sometimes it does require that kind of thing, until you get to know them a little bit better. And then you can start doing like the gifting and things like that and building those relationships. But you know, breaking bread with people is a good way to to long term to establish that foundational relationship it does. You can have a relationship with somebody, but after you break bread with them, it actually totally changes the dynamic of the relationship because you’ve sat down, you’ve hung out with them. You’ve gotten to know them on a deeper level, you’ve basically broken through that next layer of it’s, it’s no longer a quote unquote, inch deep relationship. It’s now you know, I guess a yard significant relationship. Yeah, it’s something more than that. Sorry. I know. I’m on the imperial system. I know you guys probably the metric system, but whatever the heck, what is it a centimeter or whatever.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  28:04

It’s pretty funny. i This always fascinates me because I’m British. And I now live in New Zealand. And we’re very much metric. But we talk about everything in sort of Yeah, kilometres centimeters meters, except for height, I still call myself five foot three and a half. So I don’t actually understand what

Steve Buzogany  28:19

I think we’re messed up.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  28:22

I went to Canada us recently, and it’s even more confusing over there. But anyway, well, he’s okay, cool. So if for the people that are listening in what would be your kind of top three tips to start to really, you know, get a sense of who your customers are, what you could how you could look after them? I don’t know, just just three top tips that they can take away and put into practice, I guess.

Steve Buzogany  28:42

So I actually have your six? because I have I have like a plan for that. So basically what I’ll do, and I’ll fly through them, because I don’t want to suck up the entire night on talking about just these things. But basically what I would do you want to rank your database, basically A plus A, B, C, and D’s. And then you want to determine a budget, like how much do you want to spend on these people over the course of the year to appreciate them? And when I say these,

Debra Chantry-Taylor  29:07

Can I just talk? Yeah, can I just ask? Yeah, can I ask the question here? Because I think that again, people kind of can be a bit stingy on this. And I think you gave a really good example, you know, when a client is worth $50,000, to you, $50 is just not appropriate. How do they how do you work out what I mean? I tend to be quite generous. So for me, it’s quite easy. But for people who maybe aren’t used to this, how would they work out? What’s an appropriate amount?

Steve Buzogany  29:28

Yeah, five to 10% of your net income from that client. Cool. So if it’s a $50,000 client, and you know, whatever 5% of that is 5000. Right now, that’s 10%. Yeah, 10%. Your husband that we need the numbers that we have. Yeah, so basically, you spend about 2500 to $5,000 on that client over the course of 12 months, over the course of the year. So like, okay, you can spread that out, however you want to do it. You could do 1250 dollars per every six months, or you could do $2,500, every six months, whatever you wanna do. That’s how you spread that out. And then the people you’re doing the gifting for is your top 10 to 20%, you’re not doing it for your entire database. That’s why you need to rank them. Because you need what you need to focus, the gifting and the appreciation on the A’s and A pluses first, if you get through them, and then you go to the bees, and if you get through the bees, you get to the C’s, but you should, you should never really have enough time to get to see, you know, A’s and A pluses should be done 1,000% Maybe you get to a few bees. But that’s kind of normally where i i see things most effective it. So there’s ranking database, determine a budget and a budget to build a random timeline. And by random, like when you do appreciate on people don’t send them gifts in December, when everybody else is giving gifts. You won’t stand out. And as marketing experts you take we’re supposed to make you stand out. So we’re not gonna send you we literally won’t send gifts in December. So we kind of just do planning in December, we don’t do actual gift sending. So we’ll do that. Send it in, like, you know, march 24, or something like that some random. Yeah. So build out a random timeline for yourself be a handle on how many times you want to do gifts two to four times a year. So however, pick those dates. And then have a gift list. What do you want to send them build out your plan? What and then know the juice was a one we already went over. And then lastly, put a handwritten note on it. I handwritten note goes with every gift, it should always be with every gift, it adds a level of personalization that can’t really be spoken for.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  31:28

Sure. So now again, I’m being curious. So in terms of when you’re doing it for other people, how do you get those 100 notes? Are you actually asking the client to do those 100 notes? Or?

Steve Buzogany 31:37

No, we did I can do them. We write them you can do? Yeah, we write them. And if we have to do like a massive order, we have we have a little bit of help with a vendor that we work with. But most of the time, we can just write them in house because a lot of people folks that there, they may have two or 300 clients but you know, top 20% of that. So only 20 or 40 people like you, we can write for you.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  31:56

So, they handwritten notes here. It’s interesting. I actually went over to a client’s place of the day they have a they have a business that basically packs up coffee pods, you know, you’ve got the specimen espresso machines with a little coffee buds. They picked them up and they actually put a handwritten note into every single one. What they’ve actually done is they’ve taken a sort of a robot. And they’ve taught it how to they’ve put in like a handwritten program. And it actually physically has a pen, and it writes in handwriting. The paper and I was like, wow, that’s actually quite cool. Because people think it genuinely is a handwritten note. It isn’t. But it kind of is. It’s actually a pen though.

Steve Buzogany  32:33

It’s actually a real pen. That’s

Debra Chantry-Taylor  32:34

Right. Yeah. Not printed thing. Yeah. And so and when you use a real pen, of course, you get those things that you get when you write with a pen where it’s not absolutely consistent. And you know, sometimes the doesn’t quite go flow as smoothly as it should do. So actually, somebody has handwritten it. Yeah, yeah,

Steve Buzogany  32:47

it’s good. I’ve seen that before. I I’ve looked at it a couple times. I was like, well, that’s interesting. It looks really good. And like this, because you can tell when it’s like printed on like, if it was like somebody printed like a scripts like, this was actually. Yeah, you’re actually written with a pen. That’s like, wow,

Debra Chantry-Taylor  33:03

This is getting close, isn’t it? Yeah.

Steve Buzogany  33:05

We are really getting replaced as human beings on this earth.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  33:10

We’re No, we’re just, we’re just being elevated to a greater value or activity, I would hope but yeah. But I still think handwritten notes. I wrote about them handwriting Christmas cards a few years ago, and it for the local paper. And I was just like, yeah, I didn’t get any. And I got no Christmas cards this year. It’s so weird. And yet, wow, if I had a handwritten digit I didn’t. I know. It’s like, I would love to have got one that would have made my day, you know?

Steve Buzogany  33:33

Wow. Like, yeah, like, well, that’s why we don’t send them in December though, because like, I had, like, 50 if you send me a card, I would have been like, oh, whatever, throw it in with the rest of them.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  33:41

I got lots of presents at Christmas time. They didn’t necessarily.

Steve Buzogany  33:46

I had to get myself something I had to buy myself. So I got the cards. You got the presents?

Debra Chantry-Taylor  33:51

Yeah, they got a good thing. They’re cool. Okay, so now tell me a little about your business then. So tell people about the the business that you’re running and how they can get ahold of you how they can pick your brains. Sure.

Steve Buzogany  34:02

Yeah. So basically, what we do is we put together a some people like want to have their we put together a gifting plan for people, and we can give them the plan. And then if they want, they can do it in house and execute the plan. It’s a proven plan, it’ll work in in generating more referrals and, and keep, you can use it for clients for generating referrals, increasing customer loyalty, you can use it for employees, increasing employee loyalty and to try to keep retaining top talent, you could do it that way to however you want to use it, we’ll give you a proven plan that works and everybody it’ll be customed to you. So everybody has a different business. And or if you don’t want to do it your in house, then you can by the by the plan and pay us to do it for you. And so that’s the other way. Yeah. So like that will save you some time to sew. And it’s not I’ll be honest with you, it’s not much more to have us do it for you. I mean, my whole goal when I started the company was I wanted to be accessible to small business owners. So I wanted to make sure that my Service never cost more than a part time assistant. Part time not a full not a full time assistant. So we are not crazy expensive. We are not a bank breaking service to work. So, but yeah, but it’s a in order to get in touch with me if you want to learn more about it, just email me, that’s the best way to go. I do check it multiple times a day. So you can send me an email at Steve at appreciation. advocate.com

Debra Chantry-Taylor  35:24

Beautiful, and I appreciate it. Appreciation. advocate.com is where the website is as well. So you can find out more information there. Yeah, great. Well, I’m actually taking copious notes, as you probably saw, right. I always love I love doing these podcasts because I think that I always get to learn some stuff myself and you give me some great ideas. So thank you so much for forgiving your time and giving your your information so freely. Really, really appreciate it.

Steve Buzogany  35:47

Anytime.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  35:48

Yeah, and yeah, please put send more send more handwritten notes as my please everybody. I just think it is such a it’s so lovely to actually get something as you said. It just it feels like the person has actually taken the time, which I think is worth more than anything these days.

Steve Buzogany  36:02

Yeah. So I mean, it’s exciting. It’s like, I’ll ask somebody something. Even if it was just a note. It’s like cool. Somebody sent me something.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  36:08

Yeah, absolutely. I say thank you so much for your time. Really, really appreciate it. Look forward to taking a good look through your site and see what you’re up to and, and maybe even doing some business together in the future.

Steve Buzogany  36:18

No problem anytime.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  36:20

Thank you. Great. Awesome.