Customer experience architect Jason Friedman reveals why businesses lose their best clients, and the formula to stop it.
GROWTH PILLAR: Sales & Revenue
WHO THIS IS FOR: SMB owners / Solopreneurs / Coaches and creatives / Leaders building systems
WHAT THEY'LL GAIN: A practical framework for designing customer experiences that drive retention, referrals, and revenue — without spending more on ads.
Most businesses spend everything trying to find new customers. Jason Friedman wants to know why you're ignoring the ones you already have.
Jason is the founder and CEO of CX Formula and the creator of the CXFormula™ — a system that helps coaches, healers, authors, and creatives build businesses that grow through customer experience design, not just acquisition. He has built and sold five companies, generated over two hundred million dollars in sales, made the Inc. 5000 list four times, and won Ernst and Young's Entrepreneur of the Year Award. In 2023 he was diagnosed with stage four cancer. Six months later he was cancer free. That kind of resilience runs through everything he does.
Jason didn't start in a boardroom. He started behind a lighting console on tour with Peter Gabriel, Fleetwood Mac, and Rush. What he learned backstage — that a skilled director can engineer an audience's reaction — he brought straight into business. That single insight became the foundation of the CXFormula™.
In this episode Jason covers:
Jason's upcoming book Addicted to Strangers is available as a free ebook now.
Connect with Jason:
Special thanks to Noemi Beres at Podcast Connections for making this introduction happen.
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Next Steps
Bernie (00:22)
Question to the audience. What are the things you thought was growing your business is actually the thing slowing it down? That's the question that sits at the center of today's conversation. And there is a real answer to it. Our guest has built five companies, sold them, survived something most people don't, and come out the other side.
The framework that changes how you think about your customers and your future. Jason Friedman did not start in a boardroom. He started behind a lighting console and on the road with Peter Gabriel, Fleetwood, Mac, and Rush, and backstage in some of the biggest theatrical productions of their time. What he learned there, that how people feel inside an experience determines everything. He took that straight into business. What followed was five companies, five exits.
Over two hundred million dollars in sales, four trips to the Inc. five thousand list and Ernst and Young's Entrepreneur of the Year Award. Today as founder and CEO of CX Formula, Jason helps coaches, healers, authors,
and creatives build businesses that are profitable without costing them their health or their purpose. His upcoming book Addicted to Strangers is the kind of title that stops you cold
His upcoming book, Addicted to Strangers, is the kind of title that stops you cold. And the free E book will be available soon.
In 2023, Jason was diagnosed with stage four cancer. Six months later, he was cancer free. If that does not tell you something about the way this man operates, nothing will. You can find him at cxformula.com and on Instagram at cxformula. Jason, absolute pleasure to have you here today. Welcome, sir. do you have your favorite quote or saying?
Jason (01:57)
Well, first all, thanks for having me. And my favorite quote is from Napoleon Hill and it is, whatever the mind can believe and conceive, it can achieve, and that's just how I I run my life, So I believe it, and then it comes true.
Bernie (02:13)
So what? I recognize the names Peter Gabriel, Fleetwood Mac, and Rush. And so Well yeah, yeah, yeah. But wow. I I like that's like almost front row seats. Lighting design, how does that end up how do you end up building five companies out of out of those experiences? a whole bunch of directions you gotta go on, man.
Jason (02:32)
Yeah. so I started in theater when I was a little boy. And it was a summer camp. And my buddy was my little friend at the time wanted to audition to be in the show and he was nervous. So I went along just as his like, emotional support doll. And as he was like doing his thing, I was sitting in the back of the room and there was this guy that was like playing with the soundboard and playing with the lights, and I was like, What are you doing? And I just kind of got
kind of hooked into it. And so he joined the show. I joined the stage crew. And from that point on, at like eight, nine years old, I just did it in school in in summers and camps and whatever. And I just kind of grew up doing theater. And when I graduated high school, I went to school for that. I have my Bachelor of Fine Arts and Lighting Design. And went out on the road and as I did did the rock and roll thing for a while, which was amazing. Did the theater thing for a while, traveling all over. And
what you learned, or what I learned, it was very like Mr. Miyagi, like wax on, wax off. Like you, you're learning certain skills that you just don't know that you're learning. And when you come out on the other side, you can do things that you didn't realize you were capable of. And, it was just really interesting. And so I got put in a lot of scenarios where I had a different level of understanding than most of the people in the room I was with. And when I stopped, and so it was a
A friend of mine actually kind of pointed it out to me. He's like, dude, he's like, theater's the thing. And I'm like, what are you talking about? He's like, you have this uncanny way of understanding audience. He's like, and he's like, you just, you just do it. You instinctively are always thinking about the customer, about the audience, about the other person. And when you kind of go back, I remember the day that it all changed for me and and he triggered it.
And I was, I was sitting at a at a design meeting with the director and the stage manager and the all the designers. And it was like when you first stage a show, you you sit down, you do a read through of the script, and you kind of talk through like what do you want to have happen? How's it gonna work? And all those kinds of things. And I remember the director, I was just the young punk kid, and the director was there, and he's like, at this moment, I want them to gasp. And at this moment, I want them to like jump to their feet and start clapping. And I was like,
All dude, like you're out of your mind. Like, how are you gonna make them do that? And I no joke, like I was backstage when we had opening night, and I was running the lighting board and just sitting there hitting go, go, go on the cues when the stage managers was telling me to do it. And the audience did what he wanted them to do from that first conversation. And I was like, my God, he engineered their reaction.
And that stuck with me. And so I did a bunch of theater for a while, but then I I ended up in business not too long after that. And I was in a situation where they wanted to bring theater into a retail store. And it was the same thing. It was about choreographing the reaction, about deeply understanding who that customer was as the audience. Like if you think about in theater, like it's the sight lines. Like we we we sit in the audience, they say, what can they see from here?
What can they see from here? In business, we don't do that normally. So it's like it's that's outrageous when I start telling people that they're like, my God, I've never I've never seen it through my customers' eyes that way. But in theater, that's the only way we see it. And so it's just such an interesting thing to grow up that way, where it becomes your your it's your love language, it's your second nature, it's just what you do, and other people don't understand that. And so what's so fascinating to me and why like the idea of like addicted to strangers comes into this.
is that we spend so much time bringing strangers into our business, we forget about the people that said yes to us, the customers, the employees, those people. And we don't look at the way that they're experiencing the things. And we don't design the experience to be pleasing to them. We don't focus on how they're gonna feel through that. And theater really just is the most, it's the sharpest tool that I've ever experienced that just teaches you that inside and out.
And so when I brought those worlds together, things worked really, really well.
Bernie (06:36)
When I think a theater or I think of a r a really good concert that I've been to, it's not it's not a flash moment. It's it's a if a set is being played by by a band, it's usually, maybe three to five minutes, depending if they're they're gonna extend it. And it's some really great experiences and and and you're the the effects, et cetera, just just add add flavor to it. But when you're in a retail setting.
You don't necessarily have a half hour to an hour with somebody, typically. depending on what you're what you're doing, less of course you're repairing their car, you might yeah getting your engine overhauled or something that. How do you stage it so that the the the moment the person comes in, they're probably length of time in in that space for a business transaction might be five minutes, might be ten minutes.
How do you orchestrate that so that it flows well and lands the way it should?
Jason (07:25)
Yeah, that's a great question. it's really not about time, It's really not about how long. It's about moments, Moments matter. And when you can create moments that are in contrast with other moments, there's a feeling that's evoked, If everything's like imagine that you have a one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, all the way up. If everything's a ten, then it's
The same. They don't recognize it as a 10 anymore because they don't have the reference point to all the other things. And so, like the difference between moments is what creates the interest. It's what makes it exciting or boring or happy or sad or good or bad. It's in those gaps. And the gaps can be positive gaps where it's better, and they could be negative gaps where it's worse. And so as we think about the moments that people have and the interactions that they have.
We want to have this dynamic range and this fluid motion. Not that we're making it worse, but we may be bringing it back to expectation. And so if expectation is like the five of the one to ten, then that's our baseline. So we s we we live there. And then we have some moments that go up higher from that and then come back. And then we go up higher from there and then we come back. And so what we're doing is we're choreographing moments and we're choreographing interactions. And when you string all them together, they tell a story. And that's really what we're doing.
And each moment could tell its own story and stand on its own. But when they're put together, they tell a much deeper, bigger, broader, more engaging story that pulls people in and connects them to your brand. And so that's how we do it. and and not all moments are created equal. So like first moments matter more. Like so, it's like final moments matter more.
And moments in between that become like the tent poles matter more, So not all moments are created equal. So we have to pick our moments. And so as we're thinking about the journey that people go on and the result, the outcome that they want, we can reverse engineer what the key moments have to be and then what the filler moments have to be to make the key moments matter more. And so it's about looking at it really honestly strategically. Same way was we were sitting in that little group.
With the with the director, and he was saying, This is where I want them to laugh. This is where I want them to do this. It's because he knew that those were that those were the moments that were gonna evoke the emotion and bring them tighter and tighter in. And so, we we talk about different techniques and strategies and things that we need to do. One of the most important ones is we call it time to first value, which is big in software. It's like how quickly from when someone starts the using the software or whatever, they get a result that's positive.
And so in our customer experience, we need that time to first value to be as short as humanly possible from from the moment. And so what is value? It's perception of a win. That's all it is. It's a perception. It's how that person understands it from their context. And so the whole thing, this whole thing is about understanding the audience frame. And if we don't know where they're coming into our world from, then we have to set the frame for them.
So that if they had a bad day and this horrible thing's happen, we have to bring them in there. So if you think about theater, Or even a rock concert, whichever way, like you use theater for this one, you come in, life's busy, you your dog ate your homework and your kid's screaming and you forgot this and the stove burnt that and I did I leave the iron on, all the crazy questions that are running through your head. And you sit down in the seat and the orchestra starts and the lights start fading. And you shut your phone off or put it on silent and you put it away.
And all of a sudden you kind of get sucked in. So they set the frame and they bring you in. And then for the next hour until intermission or whatever, for the most part, everybody's there and they're having a shared experience of some sort. Just like all your customers are kind of having that same thing. Even if it's d individual, it's a shared experience because other customers are going through it. And so the faster you can bring them in, set that frame, and then have that first win, the faster you hook them into.
the next step. And so we just get the stepping stones. We lay out the stepping stones toward the success result that you want that we've reverse engineered. And we can take them there and they can feel really good about it. And that's really how we do it. We engineer that. And most people forget about that. And when you do that first, what ends up happening is those become the advertising, the marketing, the word of mouth, the things that you promote that make the strangers become friends faster.
And so when we focus on that other side of the of the yes, we win more easily. We make the the the cost basis becomes so much better. It's costs so much more to acquire a new customer than to keep a customer. And yet everyone has an advertising budget, but not a customer success budget or a customer happiness budget. Because we're focusing all our energy on those strangers and none of it on those other people. So when you just start to think about this and put the strategies in place.
You can have such amazing results, it's it's mind blowing what what's possible when you do it.
Bernie (12:22)
You capitalize in all five senses and and the reason I'm asking this, and I I get what you're saying, baseline behavior, all of a sudden everything else, all the distractions, you naturally put them to the side, which is hard, and then have the person focus on on the moment. So a couple of questions come to mind. Like how do you handle online sales versus, in theater, like these
I if you go in into the the movie theater, they'll have subwoofers and they'll have little haptics, something that you'll feel the vibrations, The monster's coming, thump, thump, just and if that doesn't catch your attention, Maybe a hot breath behind you, because the person's getting as all all that is all the joking aside. How do you capitalize in all five senses? And is there a specific
Like once you orchestrate this, once you design this, once you have the director that figures this out, it's one thing if you have their their attention for an hour or thirty minutes, or just two minutes. How do you orchestrate that so that you have that impact?
Jason (13:19)
So the again, amazing questions. So the more senses you can use, the better it's gonna be, Like if I hit you with five senses that are pleasing, I'm gonna have an easier time than if I can only hit you with one sense, I don't look at online versus offline. I look at how the audience is feeling.
And then we translate it into the modality that you're in. Cause you could be doing a video, you could be doing a written thing, you could be doing audio only, you could be in person with someone, you could be at a live event virtually in per so there's all different ways. So that's to me secondary. How? First is really most importantly like what and why. Like what do we need them to feel and why do we need them to feel it? And so when you get really clear on that, then you start asking yourself, how can I? And so for example,
Like if I want them so in many years ago, Macy's was a client and we were trying to sell more swimsuits. And so in the swimsuit area, we had little scent diffusers that would have this scent that smelled just like Hawaiian tropic. And the lights were a little brighter in that area, and you felt it was warmer and it was a little more yellow and amber and had like that kind of golden glow. And you would just smell it just a little bit.
And there was a little bit of air blowing because we had a couple like track lights that had little fans in them. So you felt like a little breeze as you were walking around. And we also had some n sound effects. So it sounded like the air the ocean. We sold more swimsuits because we got people into that mood. You're you can't do that online. But what can I do online? Like I can paint the picture, I can have imagery, I can have sounds on there, I can actually use
I can I can lead them through something with copy or whatever to sm they can they can smell without me having the scent there. Like I could I could probably have a conversation with you or somebody else and and get you to remember a moment that you had where you can get back to that place. So I have to anchor to other things that remind somebody of those moments to get them to in induce those other senses. So I can do that. But most importantly,
Like if I need to grab their attention, I need to do a pattern interrupt of some sort to bring them into that moment. So to me, it's all about the frame for the moment. And each moment leads to the next. Like if you just think of like basic online marketing, You have an email. Like the subject line's job is to get them to click on the thing in the inbox to open it. That's the only purpose of that subject line. And if it does it, then the person opens the email. If it doesn't, then they hit delete or it just sits in there as an unread message.
I've got 14,000 of them in one of my inboxes and more than that in my others. Because the subject line didn't compel me to click on it and open it. That didn't work. And then the next the body of that email is meant to get me to click on a link to then go to the next thing. And if it does it well, I'm going to click on the link and I'm going to get to the next thing. So each part of the journey has its job. And if what you're trying to help people do and you understand why you're doing it.
It makes it so easy. How shows up for you when what and why is clear? And so we spend most of our time understanding what and why, and then we'll figure out the how. And then how is again, if it's online, we'll figure out ways to have people have those feelings and anchor back to something that they did before. Could be the picture. Like if you think about theater, like it's the set, like where it's set and the way the lights work and the costumes and the props, all those are visual cues. They're just visual cues.
To get people to feel something, And then the sound, the spoken word, the music, those are the audible cues. They don't use a lot of scent in and touch and what have you in theater. Sometimes they do, but not always. But but you can start to smell it by the words and the descriptions and how they talk about it. All that's possible online. It's no different. You can have music, you can have video, you can have words, you can have pictures and imagery and colors and so.
It's about thinking about how do you get them to pay attention to it. And if you're really understanding and deeply, deeply serving that audience, that customer, that that prospect, you'll start to understand it differently through their lens and you will be able to have them engage. The people, the fit avatar, the fit client will actually engage because you're speaking to them in a way that they feel that you're interested in helping them and serving them.
Bernie (17:24)
So a lot of us are not savants at this. We don't naturally go, well, I'll just, add some more lumens here and make that little spot brighter and it'll have this hue of yellow and the meanwhile there's someone playing a ukulele and my swimsuit's magically on my body. how how does someone set up or how does someone arrange for this?
'Cause you've you like you've done five businesses you've exited from successfully, And sold businesses. How does someone how does someone set this stuff up? like is that do they play with it back and forth through A B testing or or or is that where they reach out to Jason?
Jason (17:57)
I mean, like, listen, you want the shortcut, reach out to Jason. But but everyone can do this on their own. It's listen, it's not rocket science, But there is a formula, And we call that the kinetic customer formula. And the way the formula goes is that attitudes, people the way they think and expect, plus behaviors, the things that they do, when you when you add them together and then multiply them by momentum, something that makes it easier, makes it more exciting, makes it more fun.
And then you take away the friction, you get the result. And so we can we can orchestrate it that way. So we get people very clear on what that result wants to be. And that result is how they like it's the difference between Hell Island, where they are now in pain or whatever's not working, and Heaven Island. Like what does the day look like afterwards? What is the transformation that that customer wants? And and or what is that?
functionality they want from the product or whatever. Like what is that result? And we get really clear, and that's like, how does that make them feel? What are the benefits of having that result? Not just what it is, but how does it make them feel? And when you understand that, and then you start to think through what is the, what are the steps that people have to go through to get that? Then we have like what we call the doings, all the things you need to do. Okay. And that's where most people stop. And they're like, okay, how do I, how do I make it
more linear, like how do I make the steps whatever, Here's the problem. People don't move in steps, they move in stories. There's the itty bitty shitty committee inside their head that gets them to not go from step one to step two or from step two to step three. They move in the stories, not in the steps. So we have to figure out the steps and then we have to create the stories that allow them to take the steps. And that's where the attitudes and the momentum boosters and the removal of friction comes in. And so we have to get very
very detailed and very linear first. That's where most people stop. And then they say, let me let me give them a prize or let me, gamify it, which is awesome. I love gamification, but it's like, let me give them a point or a badge or whatever. That's great. That works for some people that are going to muscle through it. That's force, But if we want them to be in flow as well, then we have to start to change the story. We have to understand what they're thinking and expecting at each step.
What's going to stop them from taking action? What are the perceived friction points? And then what are the actual friction points that are going to get in the way? And then how do we remove them or how do we lessen them? Sometimes it's in that moment we can do something for them, or we can soften something, or we can make it easier. Sometimes we have to do something two steps earlier to get them ready and to prep them and have them expecting it so that that friction point feels okay. Sometimes
It's that we have to just rip the band-aid off and tell them this is gonna be the hardest thing you're ever gonna do in your life. But let me tell you what happens on the other side. And we get them so excited about jumping over that friction point that they want that so badly that they will. So it depends on the situation. But we have this formula that we help people go through and analyze their business through this using this formula. And then you can literally choreograph what's gonna happen. And when you understand it from that customer lens, from that perspective.
We can write the stories that help them follow the steps to get to the end result and feel great about it at the end. And they feel so great that they actually tell everybody. And that's the key. So when we think of like we call it the R4 ideal, it's it's when they rave about the experience they had in a positive way, when they return to you to buy more products from you or services or what have you, when they renew the subscriptions and they stay engaged in whatever they're paying you for on a monthly retainer basis.
And not when they not when they like refer you, but when they recruit for you. When they go out there and they're like, Bernie, you have to work with Jason. This guy is amazing. Like, no, no, no. Like, let me let me can I sh can I show you this? Let me like and like they could pull you in, Like you have customers that I'm sure do that for you because you're awesome at what you do. And and I have customers that do that for me. Like I'll get a I'll get a I don't get a warm intro, like hey, you guys should meet. I get a hey, Jason, I told him everything about you.
When can the three of us get on a call? Cause I want to warmly introduce you. And it's like, that's cool. Like they're going to battle to bring someone in because they know the value they're going to get from working with me is so great that and and I'm not even giving them an affiliate commission or whatever. Like, I mean, I would, but that's they're not doing it for that. They're doing it because they genuinely believe in what I did. And they know someone else that has a thing that's going on that I can help them solve. And so
When you do that, it just becomes the way that they they they behave. It be it builds a new operating system of how people bring people into your world. And that's why I want people focusing more on what happens after the yes than all the energy being on what happens before the yes.
Bernie (22:40)
I know in your backstory you have you've helped fundraise for universities and I believe twenty billion dollars.
Jason (22:48)
Yeah, it's been a few bucks, yeah.
Bernie (22:50)
Like, wow. So what charm bracelet did you bring to the to the game, man? that is like that's that's good coin. And and what? Kudos.
Jason (22:58)
Yeah, it's it's the same thing. It's about it's about telling the stories in a way that moves people. and moves people to want to be involved, So like for example, Stanford University is one of our clients that I've been working with for over twenty years. We still we're still doing some stuff with them now. And we mostly work with entrepreneurs, but there's a there's a few there's a few that we just we just love so much and they love us so much that we still do that are the bigger ones.
And what's interesting is, it you see in universities, like people put their names on buildings and they put their names on on scholarships or professor, they endow professorships and things like that. but what we started doing was connecting them more to reasons why, Like things I've been saying all along, like why, And so, like, for example, we were getting people excited about raising funds by talking about how
The interdisciplinary approach at Stanford is so unique, the way they do it, and that they needed to build facilities that have never been built before that put the groups of people together in the same place and and show them that this is how cancer can be cured. This is how this could be possible because it's never happened before. So people are not just, donating money to for the the I don't say the vanity, but like the vanity of it.
It's the cause. And so then they stay connected. They want to know what's happening. What else can they do? And so they want to give more and they want to stay in a giving mode because it's more about that bigger vision, not just about the name on the wall. And so by telling that story, again, people move in stories, not in steps. And so, like the the the ways that we help them do this, it's like, how can we tell people a story in a way
That blocks out all the outside noise, that brings them into the moment and has them really invest. it's not a donation, it's an investment. And it's a very different way. It's a nuance, but it's a very different way of thinking about it. And so we've helped Duke and Harvard and, Stanford and Yale and like all these like amazing institutions do this kind of stuff by really helping them.
Choreograph that story arc in a different way than they than most than most places fundraise. so it's just it's a different perspective on it. And it's audience first. It's really understanding the audience deeply and what's important to them. And, for years it was about, the I got my name on the building or I gave away a bunch of my wealth or whatever.
And now it's like I am part of the team. I'm with other donors and other people. And as a as a as a team, as a unit, as a community, we are solving the world's most pressing issues. We're coming together and we're doing it through building businesses and endowing scholarships and funding research and bringing capabilities to third world nations and other kinds of things. And they're so excited and empowered by that. I remember the first one of the first conversations I had with one of these schools was.
They said, we really need to re-engage our alumni, our parents, and our friends. And I'm like, why aren't they already engaged? What do have to re-engage them for? And it's because they they had a they had a campaign and they raised a bunch of money and people donated, but it wasn't to that bigger vision cause. It was to the to the moment of put my name on the building and build this thing and accomplish this thing. And it wasn't as big. It wasn't big enough.
And incidentally, that's how I think like why most entrepreneurs don't create bigger businesses, because they don't have a big enough vision. They don't cast a big enough vision that like they they can get there, or it's not as motivating, or on a tough day, that big vision, that bigger why, that mission is not big enough to get them to feel like doing the thing that day. And so the bigger the vision, the bigger the outcome. And so that's how we were able to do it. And it's by understanding the audience and then crafting the journey and creating the container and the space.
For people to have that experience. One of the things that people get confused, I think, about all the time is they feel like, I'm gonna give them an experience. No, you can create conditions for people to have an experience, but they have to have it. And they're having one whether you like it or not. So if you can choreograph it and tweak it to be the one that you would like them to have that would most likely leave to that outcome, lead to that outcome, you're in a good place. But if you just let it happen by default.
You're usually not in such a great place, And so with all these groups, instead of having like just an event and having all these people come in, when they walk in, when they walk through that that initial doorway, we bring them in and we curate every moment, every touch point, every I mean, the amount of choreography that we do, you'd be amazed. Like like we'll we'll have a seated dinner for a thousand people and we have, I mean, not a thousand, but we'll have at least a hundred and fifty.
servers making sure that not a pin drop's when the media is playing so that all the food's served, everything's cleaned, and there's not a pin drop. And then all of a sudden all the people come out and they clear it like everything is choreographed because we want to keep people in the moment and not pull them out. And one of the things that I learned again, learned in theater, You lose people in transitions. This is another key thing we talk to people about. And so like in theater we rehearse the scene changes over and over and over again.
And then when we do these big kind of programs with the university or whatever, the scene changes, the transitions, the going from one space to the next, the the in-between each piece of media or content or speak or whatever, it has to be flawless because we lose their attention. We lose their focus. And we work so hard to get them there. It's the same thing with your Facebook ad for your online. You you you bring them in in the gap between clicking on the ad and the page. If it loads too slowly, you lose them in the transition.
If they go from one part of the page to the other and it doesn't make sense, you lose them in the transition. If they clink on the link and it doesn't, you lose them in the transition. And so we really look at all the transition points too and make sure that it's smooth, it's fluid, it makes sense, it's not jarring, or unless, or we make it jarring on purpose, because that's the emotion we want to evoke. That it's like, what's that? So everything's really thoughtfully done. And y you could do that.
And I think you should do that. I don't like the shit on people, but this is one of those things where I think this is something you should do in your business.
Bernie (29:01)
So a couple of things come to mind as you're describing that journey, the customer journey. Empathy seems to be a part of it. In other words, knowing what the person's going through. So,
Jason (29:11)
Yeah.
Bernie (29:11)
being who I am, if I run a store that services a client who I am not of that generation, not of that orientation, and I and I and I I this is a very broad spectrum, like
I I've never served as a in in the military. So I I don't know what it means to go through boot camp, I've not born a child because my physiology is not wired that way. Ain't gonna happen. Yeah. But if I but if I service any of those any of those particular areas, how do I how do I ensure that I'm meeting the needs? Is this like doing A B testing, going, kind of try something out? Do you hire someone to come in to say, listen?
You have a focus group coming in to help you like sort through it. You you have a mission you want to do. You ha you have a result you're trying to do. there's an appetite for the product or service that you're offering, and you're trying to do the best job possible, And have success. Customer enjoys it and you generate revenue as a business. Or or if you're a non for profit, yeah, like a university, then you're generating accolades at somewhere down the pipe.
How do you how do you get that orientation sorted out that I I can't experience what it is to be that person 'cause I I haven't gone through it or I'm past that age where I could go through it.
Jason (30:22)
That question. Thank you for that. So there's a few different things. So, first of all, we use the techniques that actors would use to get into character. So imagine that you're Al Pacino and you have to become, the godfather. And you don't know that. You actually didn't grow up that way. Like you have to do deep character research and like kind of like figure out how do I become that.
And so there's two schools of thought on on how to do that. And and they kind of merged together. It started out with this guy whose name was Konstantin Stanislavsky in the late 1800s, early 1900s, and he had the Stanislavsky system, and then method acting became a thing later and that kind of morphed that into it. And like McConaughey and De Niro, they're all method actors. And so they do this where they go deep into understanding the character and physically.
Finding a way to become the character, have experiences, draw on experiences, interview people, talk to people, watch movies, study behaviors, smell the roses, Like they go deep in that. And so what I like people to do is to do that. Like become your customer as much as you can. Get into their role, And so if you're if you're talking about like, a thing you cannot yourself do, how could you? How can how closely can you do that? It could be, like you said, you could bring in
a a person that's of that genre in like age or gender or race or creed or geographical location or whatever, interview a bunch of those people, talk to them, build a focus group around it. there's a lot of ways that you can get that information, but it behooves you to deeply understand them. And so like if you just think about some of the questions that we ask, like in the in the in the Stanislavsky World, he had this like
This thing called he called it the magic if. And so we'd ask a series of questions as if you were the customer. So like if I were the person in this situation, if I were the customer in this situation, what would I be doing? What would I be afraid of? What would I be, like, how would I be moving? What would I smell? What would I, what did I do before this happened in my life that made and so you put yourself in all these like what if scenarios and you try and answer as many of those questions as possible.
When people go through our program, we give them all this kind of stuff, so that they can like know what all those questions are. But once you start to do that, you start to get into the mind of what that customer is thinking. And you can literally at that point kind of see through their lens. And that's the most important thing. People need to feel like you understand them. And you don't have to understand everything. There's a great quote, I think it's by Stan Slavsky as well.
And and I'm gonna butcher it. It's a it's a longer quote that I can actually say. I'll send it to you so you can put it in the show notes for the for the episode because I think it's a good thing. But he basically says, like, what does it mean to be truthful on stage? Like, is it is it the real actor or is it like a painter? And a painter, sorry, a photograph or a or a a paint, a portrait, a painted portrait. Like a photograph has every little detail.
It's like high resolution and all the things, but an artist takes only the key things to put on the canvas and you still understand what it is. And so it's about that. It's like, what are the things? And that's why I said like the moments matter. Like, what are the key moments? Every moment doesn't have to be perfect. In fact, if it is, it doesn't work. It actually, you're not about perfection. You're about really the journey that people are on. It's not all about perfection. If everything was perfect all the time.
That becomes expectation. It's not exciting. It's just like, okay, We want variety. We want roller coaster rides, high and low. Like one of the things I do is I have people listen to a symphony. Like I use Beethoven's Fifth. There's like, high notes and low notes. The beat, the tempo goes faster and slower. You have major chords and minor chords, and you you feel something and you feel your heart race and then get slower. And it's a it's a roller coaster ride. And that's what actually people enjoy.
Because they don't want that kind of monotone, monochromatic thing all the time. And so, as you start to think about this, it's like, what is the essence of who that person is? What are they really thinking and feeling? Find the key things that are motivating that person and let them know that you got them. You don't have to know everything. You really don't. The more you get to know, the better you'll get it. But if you hit the notes.
You can have a couple wrong notes in the in the symphony and they won't notice. You got to hit the notes at the times, though. And so that's really what it's about. It's about orchestrating that and figuring out what that needs to be. And and the more you can talk to your customers, like when I have people do this exercise and they work with us, one of the things I like them to do is pick an actual customer. Pick someone that you worked through, worked with that fairly well. And if you don't, like pick someone and go get on the phone and say, Hey, can I?
Can I buy you a cup of coffee and ask you some questions? Like there's nothing wrong with that, And like just talk it through and understand what's going on. Like, I noticed that you stopped watching my my video in about like five minutes in and it's like an hour. Like, what happened? Was I mean, did was it offensive to you? Like what why why did you stop? Like you you can ask them those kind of questions and they'll probably tell you. and but but if you can see like there's patterns in people too.
And so if you start to pick on a specific person like to to to to put yourself in their shoes, you'd be surprised at how much you really can figure out without actually having the gender or geography or all the things that you were saying could be a roadblock for you. You you you can get pretty darn close, even if you don't have those things, is in my experience.
Bernie (35:48)
You compensate for where the client is at in the knowledge of the product. a case in point, the first time you go to buy a car, or you yeah, if you're coming for the early early 19th century, buy your first horse. A horse is a horse. That ain't true. the same with motor vehicles. And then as as you become more wise to a product, more knowledge infused, you make you make more refined choices.
How do you how do you help the customer? first off, I'm looking for this. I just want to buy it. It might be a it might be a chocolate bar, which case, yeah, there you go. I I worked in a in a healthcare institution where they had to put up menus going calorie count, salt content. So you are now informed. And some people would blow past it. Other people, they pay attention because their doctors are going, yeah, you do a bit too much of this, you're not gonna do so well. All
How do you help the person on that journey become more integrated, more wiser to the choices that what you're offering?
Jason (36:43)
Yeah, that's a great question too. So we like to think about this in terms of like two two ideas of like personalization and mass customization. And so if you're offering a one size fits all approach, you're gonna lose, especially in the age of AI, but even before that.
You're gonna lose. Like you're not gonna win long term. We have to tailor to our audience. And so if we go back to the old days before we had technology like the computers and the quizzes and the segmentation funnels and all the things, You'd have a salesperson that would ask some questions. And based on the answers, they would change what they said. It's like, if then if you don't know anything about cars, well, let me ask you how you like to drive, where you like to go, how fast, how many people, all that.
Then I can put you into the car. If you're like, hey, I want to afford blah blah blah that blah blah blah and I want to pay 50 bucks. That's a different conversation, And so we used to do it instinctively by asking questions. It's the same kind of thing. We have to figure out how to understand, like like in a funnel, like are they problem aware? Are they solution aware? Are they product aware? Are they brand aware? Like they know who you are, or are they just looking for so it it changes, And so we we have to know that. And we work with car dealerships all the time. Like
And other businesses similarly, like So mattress stores, I'll give you a great example. Like you have people that come in that know nothing about a mattress. You have people that have researched the heck out of it and they want to try and stump you as a salesperson and everywhere in between. And so you have to kind of like understand how to meet them where they are and then service them the way they want to be serviced within the confines of how you want to do business. And that's what's we call mass customization.
We have a a kit of parts of things that we can use to tailor that all funnel into the core fundamentals and frameworks that we want to use. And so, like if you go to buy a Tesla, you can customize a whole lot of stuff about your Tesla and it becomes your Tesla. But at the end of the day, there's a finite number of things that you can tweak and put together. But you might have put seven different things together than I put. And so yours is uniquely yours, mine's uniquely mine. We both feel like we built our own car and we're both happy. But it's still the same stuff that Tesla put together.
Regardless. And so we like to have people think about that. How do you personalize it so it feels that way and utilize mass customization as the the means in which to do that? And so the same thing happens in the sales conversation, same thing happens on a sales page. And now with the use of technology and AI, like behaviorally, just based on where people click on your page, I know so much about them. So if you're using like heat mapping technology and things like that, I know exactly who you are if you spend like
A minute on my page or even less, I know who you are. I can have you like answer two questions and I can have the entire web page tailored to you. And I can let you, so there's so many ways to customize it offline and online now. But the important thing, it goes back to the same thing. You have to know who you're talking to. So the first thing is how do you identify who it is that you're talking to? How do who that avatar is? And so if you really do know who wants to buy your products and services and you understand them.
Then all the count everything else becomes easy. It's like, okay, how do we then at that point? And there's lots of options and lots of great options. I find a lot of people start out with like, I need to buy something that'll make this easier. So they buy a piece of technology and then try and force their experience into it. And that doesn't always work out so well. And so I like people to like, I'd rather people kind of blue sky it a little bit and say, okay, if I know my customer, like what makes this amazing, knowing like our unique process, our unique value proposition.
because like ultimately your experience, the the experience that your company create, allows someone to have, It's your fingerprint. It's what makes you uniquely you. That's what like you can't your competitors can't compete with that. AI can't compete with that. Nobody, if you want to make your business AI proof, that's how you do it. And that doesn't mean you're not using AI to help do that. But that's what makes it where your business is gonna survive and and thrive.
in this kind of a of place. And I've been saying this for 30 years. I've been saying this before AI. It's the same idea. It's just more important now because of the speed of technology. And like anybody can kind of spin up a a competitive business in like less than an hour, And it's like, hey, go build me that guy's business. Copy it. And it's like, oop, I got one. I got a website. I got a functional thing. I, something that someone spent 30 years creating. You've gotten like 30 minutes. And that's okay. Sure. There's the the pieces of it.
But it's not what it is. And so if we don't start focusing on understanding that, the essence is in like how we make people feel and how we support them and that relationship, Because AI is making things more transactional more quickly. And we need to be more relational and build those relationships. And that's the difference, We're we've gone from a relational place to a transactional place and we need to go back to a relational place. And I truly believe and what I see is that the businesses that do that, they're winning.
They're winning every day of the week and they have customers for years and years and years. so that's where it goes. So focus on how to make it be relevant to the actual person. And and the better you get at that, the more sales, the more retention you're gonna have in your business.
Bernie (41:49)
Russell Brunson wrote a foreword for your book. Yeah.
the for the audience that who doesn't know who Russell is, can you enlighten us and what impact is that gonna have on the book?
Jason (41:59)
So Russell's a friend, a mentor, amazing entrepreneur. he he's the founder of ClickFunnels, and a variety of Prime Uber and a variety of other things, secrets of success. and I've been in Russell's world for a while. I've been in his highest level mastermind atlas. I've helped him, I've I've run funnel hacking live as a producer.
And helped them produce that event for years. So I'm I'm part of the community. And the book it's I've been doing this work forever. That book specific, I kind of stopped doing customer experience work, honestly, Bernie. And I was in an Atlas meeting. It was April of last year, twenty twenty five.
And I, the way day meetings work is you do a give and an ask. So you give for like 45 minutes in that room, like where you're given value and actionable tips and strategies and teaching a concept or doing something that's gonna help the other twenty businesses in the room. And then you have fifteen minutes to ask for some help. And one of the guys had to leave early, so he asked me if I would switch places with him. So I went kind of day two of the two days and towards the end and
I had a presentation planned. I had been playing around with this really cool thing and it was working really well in our business for conversions and I thought it was like, it was so cool. And like there's a lot of people that geek out on some of the tech in that space and some of the digital marketing strategies and all that kind of stuff. So I had this whole PowerPoint deck prepared and I had all this stuff ready to kind of I wanted to like blow the I'm a fairly competitive dude, entrepreneur and
So I wanted, I want to have like the coolest thing. I wanted everyone, like when they do takeaways at the end, I'm gonna be like, Jason's thing blew my mind. like I wanted that experience. So like I put a lot of time into this. And as we're sitting there, one person after the next kept talking about client acquisition strategies, ROAS, return on ad spend, on on how they're trying to spend more dollars per day on Facebook ads, how they're having this kind of churn.
But it's worth it because when you do the math, like the fact that they have a we call it a hole in your bucket, you're bringing in a hundred people, you're losing 98 people, but there's two left, Like they have that kind of a scenario, It's like there's a hole in the bucket, but we keep filling the bucket. So like until the music stops, we're okay. But once the music stops, then we got a problem, And I was like, my God, like every single person here is talking about an addiction to strangers. I'm like, this is not.
Good. Like they need to know better. Like they should know better. And so I I threw away the presentation that I was going to do. And I wrote down like 10 things that I needed them to know. One of my mentors, Victoria Labom always says, When you go to present, if you just tell them what you want them to know, what you want them to do and how you want them to feel, like it's a great presentation. So I wrote down 10 things that I wanted them to know, do feel. That's what I did. I had a note card, I went up there.
Just to remind myself of the things. And I started off by saying, hey, listen, like I had a whole presentation prepared for you and I don't think it's what you need to hear. So I threw it away and I'm gonna tell you what I just witnessed and why I think this is the most important thing you could possibly listen to now. And it was like mic drops silent. There were tears from some people, standing ovation at the end kind of thing.
And everyone needed to hear it. Like I knew it in my heart. I you felt it in your gut. Like they're they're doing the wrong thing. And so I'm like, and so I said to them, I was like, stop calling ROAS return on advertising spend, switch it to return on audience success. Like we're we're focusing on the wrong metrics. We're looking at how many people buy, not how many people stay. Like we're optimizing for conversions, we're not optimizing for retention. And like
It's we're we're we're AIing the soul out of our businesses and making it more and more transactional. And we're losing the communities that we care and love and the reasons we started these businesses for in the first place. Like that can't happen. Not to you guys. I love you guys, and I'm seeing you guys struggling. Like, not that you're not making money, but you're like like long term, this is not gonna work. And so, like they they were all like,
like, my God. And like everyone wanted to like hire me to consult with him after the end of that call, that presentation and whatever. We were all in Boise together. And then he had me speak at his mastermind in paradise in in Mexico to a larger audience and I spoke on the funnel hacking live stage about it. And it's just it was just my my my doubling down on how important like I stopped because I felt like everyone knew this already.
And it was just it's one and we'll probably everybody has this, Every entrepreneur has like a a a zone of genius or so, Where they they all this stuff and you think everybody else knows it and you kind of forget, you have the curse of knowledge and you forget. And so I was in that moment. I was in that that chapter, that season, of like I'm I'm I'm I don't need to talk about this anymore because people know it already. And I don't want to keep vomiting the same thing over and over on people. I got tired of it and
People still needed it. And it just kind of like lit me up and woke me up in a way. It's like my best friends are some of the top marketers and and online entrepreneurs on the planet. And they're making all these mistakes. I feel like I have to do something to help. And so, so that's where it all came out of. And Russell was like, Yeah, man, like, let's do this. And and so it's just it's very personal. And and Russell loves his community so much. He's such a good human being and such a great guy. And
I think I I do too. And so it's like kind of part of it, a lot of it, the main reason for it is to give back and to help people. I mean, I you you you get to a point in your life where really it is all about contribution. I'm sure that's a lot of why you do what you do and and you get to that age, you get to that place and and I had the I had the big C, you have you have stage four cancer and you come back from that and you start asking yourself a whole lot of questions like.
Are all the things I'm doing every day the things that I really want to be doing? Like you get a little bit more discerning, I would say, in everything. It just you I have to be. And I I'm I believe wholeheartedly, whether I'm or wrong doesn't matter. I believe it that I'm gonna be here for a really long time. And so that's how I run my life. But it's like now I had that wake up call, I had that little reframe. It's like, wait a minute. I I I talk about being intentional.
But have I been as intentional as I really would like to be? If I was sitting at the end of my life looking back, did I do all the things that I wish I had? And I was like, what? No, like I need to change this. And so for me, that was like a huge wake-up call from that experience. And it's like, I see all my friends struggling with this. I know this. I have to do this. Like it just felt like a the calling, if you will. not to get spiritual or anything, but like it just felt like it was a calling, like I had to do this. And so, yeah, so here we are.
Bernie (48:24)
Jason, I want to say thank you so much. And for the audience, what, he's got a special offer
So grab the free book at strangers.cxformula.com and it'll take a couple minutes and it'll help change the way you think about your customers, and which is really good.
A genuine thank you to Noemi Beres at Podcast Connections for making this introduction happen and we appreciate you. And Jason Friedman helps solve, the problems in businesses and how they carry out the messaging. And and it's more than just hi, here's something flat tone, out comes the door. It's a an experience and that's the experience the customer needs because that's the connection. And it's not about finding even the new customers, about keeping the ones that you have, because that's where the
True success lies. And thank you so much, Jason. And to you, the Knack 4 Business listeners, thank you. And to reach us, it's knack4business.com. That's the word knack, the number four, and then business.com to reach us and use our chatbot. it'll help you find other episodes that we've done in this season and in past.