Jason Friedman, tell me about your vision.
Yeah, so, you know, my background, I was a theater person growing up.
I was a backstage guy.
I was a lighting designer, set builder, the whole nine yards.
And I learned like the Mr. Miyagi way, wax on, wax off, like how to tell stories,
how to bring audiences to this place of transformation.
And I didn't know it until I was kind of at the end of my journey.
And I kind of left the theater world.
I got tired of doing shows night after night.
But I brought all of that into my businesses and every business I ever had,
every client I ever worked with, we brought some of that show business,
learning and experience to it.
And as I started learning more and more about how we can really impact people,
my coach, who was Dan Sullivan of the strategic coach for over 14 years,
in that program said, you know, who do you most want to help?
Who do you want to be a hero to?
And the answer was this resounding entrepreneurs.
Like it was like this like download from the heavens for me.
So whether you're kind of religious, spiritual, whatever your thing is,
it was like, I love working with entrepreneurs.
I love when they have that breakthrough moment,
when I can take all the experience, all the learnings,
all the trials and tribulations that I have and kind of give them a leg up
so that they can create the freedom that they want.
They can create the jobs in their communities.
They can help their audiences and their clients.
And so bringing what I learned in the world of theater
and the kind of ethic that goes into that show must go on.
And how do you tell the story?
And that the focus is always on the audience.
Whenever you're in theater, you play to that audience.
It's been like the focus of my life.
And so my life's work now is helping entrepreneurs
really connect deeper with their customers,
learn how to really keep their customers at the center of what they're doing
and learn how to deliver value in a more like a deeper way.
And a more kind of authentic way.
And so my vision is to have the world be a better place
through the interactions that people have with entrepreneurial businesses.
I want entrepreneurs to create better employee environments,
better customer environments.
And I just see the ripple effects of that every single day of my life.
And I couldn't be happier doing anything else on the planet.
I love that.
All right, Jason.
So you mentioned Dan Sullivan as part of the path.
You also mentioned your background in broadcasting and being...
Is that... Did I use the right term for that?
In theater, like liturgical theater, yeah.
Okay, so more legitimate theater aspects.
And there's a couple of things that really caught my attention on your website.
Sure.
That really make you stand out in my eyes.
One, the branding is very on point.
What I really like is this catchphrase right here.
It's time to stop the random acts of marketing.
I love what you did there with that statement.
And then it was years ago, I just moved back to San Antonio
and went to this little boot camp.
And one of these small business development people
talked about the unfair advantage.
And I hadn't heard that before.
I had heard the unique selling proposition and having your USP,
but she did such a good job of breaking down the unfair advantage and what it was.
This was back, I don't know, it was 2015 maybe, when that finally came across my radar.
And I was like, wow, this is powerful.
So I see you have these super powerful elements on your brand.
How did you go about get started?
What does that process look like?
Bridge some of those gaps for me.
Yeah, well, first of all, thanks for the kind words.
We spent a lot of time trying to figure out what's the best way to tell our story
that's impactful, that gets people to pay attention because we know in our hearts,
we believe for all entrepreneurs, for you, for me, for everyone,
we have this fiduciary duty to help people take action.
If we know something, we want to help them and do everything we can
to support them and challenge them and hold them accountable to making it happen.
And so it's been a labor of love for sure.
And so connecting the dots, it's really about understanding.
We are all taught to chase strangers.
Like every course that's out there, it's how to fill your funnel,
how to get more leads, how to sell more advertising,
how to bring more people into your world.
And we chase these strangers and we wine them, we dine them, we build rapport
and we make an offer, we offer to buy them, sell them something
and for them to buy something or engage in a relationship of some sort with us.
And then once they say yes, we immediately rush back to,
oh my gosh, I got to feed the beast.
Let me get more customers.
Let me get more strangers.
Let me do that.
And we're constantly in this cycle of focusing on what I think is strangers.
And we have this asset, we have this unbelievable, untapped, hidden resource
in our business and it's the people that said yes to us.
Our customers are such an invaluable asset.
They stepped up to the plate.
They liked what we said.
We had a connection and we need to learn how to help them really
get the results that they signed up for.
And that's whether you're a brick and mortar, an online business,
offline business, hybrid, between lines, I don't care what it is.
We have this duty.
Like we brought them in and now we have to help them.
And so like the through line in my life is that it's like,
how do we make it better so that they get better results?
How do we make it better so that they feel more excited and stay motivated?
How do we make it better so that they're so excited about what they've achieved
and what they've accomplished and the relationship you've created?
They want to tell other people and not just tell them,
but recruit other people to come to your business.
And so we our whole my whole life, it's about really learning this craft
and honing it.
And we really have like built this operating system that will allow you
to do that consistently and get those results by loving on your customers,
by obsessing over helping them get results.
And they will fill the funnel for you.
And so the through line of my life is all of them.
Yeah.
Yep.
I'm going to hit that.
And I think I have a feeling we're both you might be jarred by this,
but you might also be really excited by this.
I see a lot of SAS programs out there doing what you're talking about,
but they're following the tactic process really well.
And so they create these affiliate programs
and these affiliate programs have such high potential residual incomes.
And it's almost like pseudo multi-level marketing that's happening.
And they get people excited to sell their brand
and tell people all about how exciting the SAS is,
even though nobody's actually winning with that SAS product.
There's zero reason to love the product outside of this glorious
potential residual income that comes in.
That's not the same as building raving fans.
Right.
That's not the same as true.
If my cereal box literally tells me share this cereal
because you'll make X amount of money, if you do,
I'm not sharing that cereal because I liked the cereal.
For sure.
I'm sharing it because I'm being incentivized to sell the snake oil.
Absolutely.
What are your thoughts on that?
That's not what we're talking about.
I love that you brought that up. That's beautiful.
And it's happening all over the place.
Fantastic Food Show.
And so I think what comes across, right?
So we have a technique, if you will, that we use.
I will. I like techniques.
I like techniques.
I like principles.
I like tying them together.
We have the whole thing, right?
So I believe that if you...
I'm going to go back in time.
Cause you didn't wanna see
I was working on a theatrical show.
The Technic.
boom, boom.
I was hair dying in that Studio, right?
Yeah.
right? And so I was the chief electrician, so I was the guy that was in charge of all the lighting
on the tour, and we were in the production stage. So we had the designers, the director, the producer,
the stage manager, and all the key department heads were all there. And we were talking about,
how are we going to tell this story? What's it going to look like? How do we want the audience
to feel? We went through the script page by page. And we started to think about how we would tell
them? What were they feeling at each step along that journey? What was going to make them laugh?
What was going to make them cry? All that kind of stuff. And we staged the show. And I remember,
every single time we had a different audience, it might be in the same city, might be in a different
city, they would laugh at the same moment. They would cry at the same moment. They would jump to
their feet and applause at the same moment. It was intentional. It was by design. And it was an
authenticity. It was an authenticity, like they felt that message. And so that was scripted and
designed to evoke that emotion. When you create an experience for your customers, that has them go
on that emotional journey, and it is about how they're feeling and how they're motivated and
how they're inspired, the authenticity that they share that story with will be so different than
anything you've ever heard from an affiliate that's just getting some dollars for that. The
authenticity of how it's impacted their life will come out now. And so one of our techniques or
tactics or whatever you will, we call it an ideal customer script. So I help our customers script
that amazing reaction. What is the journey? Tell us what you want your customer's journey to look
like. And then we help them reverse engineer that into the pathway that their customers go on, so
that when they are sharing that story, it is so authentic because they had the experience. You can
distinguish the difference between that empty suit and that raving fan through that customer
journey. And we call it a kinetic pathway because what we want to do is we want to turn your
customers with potential, like the old physics lesson, potential energy is energy that has the
ability to work. Kinetic energy is energy of action in motion. And I want your clients to go
from potential to kinetic. And so on that kinetic pathway, it's like a water slide. It's like the
perfect water slide where there's plenty of water and they're able to go up and down and it's
fluidless. We want you to remove all the friction out of that journey so that they're able to get
those results. And that's how we help clients do that. And there's no better feeling for a
customer and for the company. Imagine that your employees were just getting raving like,
I love you guys. You helped me all day long instead of this didn't work. That was a problem. I hate
this. It's not what you said. It changes the culture of your business. 100%. Yeah. Dude,
I love your passion. Jason Friedman, it's going to be such an honor to have your full vision on the
show. The customer journey, what you're talking about with it, the frictionless slide. I often
talk about the wooden slide and how most businesses are like the wooden slide. And if there's even one
splinter on that wooden slide, it's going to ruin it for the entire community. Nobody's going to
want to go down after somebody gets a splinter in there. And there's so many businesses out there
that haven't even bothered to try to sand it down. They just got it and they're moving to get people
onto it versus making sure the experience is frictionless. This book, Moments of Truth,
it's actually better to YouTube. The zero moments of truth these days, thanks to Google,
they put a lot of investment in that. This book, Raving Fans by Ken Blanchard, another phenomenal
resource for those of you who are looking at building your customer journeys. And this is
also one of my favorite books in the subject, Peak by Chip Conley. Those three books, phenomenal
resources to help you double down and prepare to listen to Jason Friedman further from CX Formula
about how we can improve the customer journey experience. Because as he mentioned,
once you have somebody go from, hey, I'm around and hey, I bought to, oh, I'm in this. I'm excited
and I can't wait to share it with others. The whole game for business changes, both internally
for your operation and for those who come in contact with your business. 100%.
Well done. We got those set. Harder questions. Why do you think leaders hide from funding their vision?
That's a great question. I think what I've seen most often, because I coach a lot of entrepreneurs,
it really comes down to two things I think that I've seen. So the first thing that I see a lot
is this, we call it the itty bitty shitty committee inside their head, this imposter
syndrome that comes up for them. And they just don't, they're afraid. They're afraid. They're
afraid that they may, just like our customers are too, right? Like they're afraid, they've tried
something before, they may have had some trials and tribulations, they may have had some failures,
and they're just kind of afraid of taking that next step and making that jump. And the second
piece, which is related is faith. And I'm not necessarily talking religious faith.
I'm just thinking general, right? Yeah. And so, you know, I think when you have a vision,
the clearer you can make it, the more that you can share it, the more that you can articulate
it in a way that puts a picture in people's minds, the more likely you are going to get there. And
the more excited that other people are going to be to join you and help to co-create and execute
and make that vision come to life. For those who are scared of the word faith real quick,
the definition that we're looking for, you got to know the definition of this word, action in your
belief. Faith is action in your belief. It means taking action in what you believe, not just
believing it blindly. So, you know, that applies to science as well. If I believe that these two
chemicals will make this thing happen, then I've got to have the action to test it in order to
know if it works or not. Go ahead, Jason. No, amen. I love that. I actually, I said to
someone earlier today, it's funny that we're having this specific conversation today,
you know, there's a great quote from Napoleon Hill, who I fashion as a mentor of mine, you know,
if you can conceive and believe, you can achieve, right? And I think it really is that like we all,
like a lot of these leaders, they conceive, right? They have the vision, they come up with this great
idea, and they're excited about it. But then that believe part doesn't show up for them. And there's
a really great thing that I learned this from Dan Sullivan, he calls it the four C's, right?
You know, but people, they're expecting that confidence to show up first to take the leap,
to take the step forward. And confidence actually comes at the end, confidence is a result of taking
the action and getting the momentum and doing all those. And so I think it's one of those things,
it's like, we're looking for that sign, that confidence to show up first, to then fund it or
go in and share it more broadly. And the opposite is, I think, what's going to help get you there.
Yes, I agree with that. Sometimes I think a lot of them don't want people to see their dirty laundry,
for instance, and they worry that if people see their dirty laundry, like in my case, just now,
that oh my gosh, nobody's going to want to work with that person. Nobody's going to work with me,
my brand will be doomed. When in reality, your customers are as imperfect as you are, right?
It's not about being perfect. The more you try to pretend to be perfect, the more likely people
won't dive in. So let's combine this with how do leaders then lean into funding their vision?
Confidence is a part of it, taking the actions is a part of it. What else? What is it that
business owners and entrepreneurs are doing that drives you crazy in this regard?
Let's say you've got past prospects, Jason, who said, yeah, let me take some time to think about it.
You've got past prospects who say, and then they just disappear. Or they say, yeah, no, this isn't great.
It's everything that I need. I can't wait to move in. Or maybe they say, I'm just not sure.
There's lots of spectrums, right? People getting to the point where they might move forward on
whether it's working with you or investing in software or hiring somebody, or maybe they're
not going to hire somebody or even signing a really big deal. Maybe they come across their ideal
prospect and they get nervous and they don't move forward. How do we help them overcome that fear
of success, fear of failure, or that analysis paralysis when it hits?
Yeah, I mean, I think first and foremost, to me, it comes down to your why. What is your mission
on this planet, right? Mission and vision are so aligned, they go hand in hand with one another.
And I think that for many entrepreneurs, as we kind of lean into funding our vision, to use your language,
we get stuck because we're not committed. We're not all in. We're not sure and it's not connected.
We don't have this reason why we're doing it that's really powerful. And so we give up.
We give up very early, very quickly. And sometimes we don't even start. And so I think it's in my
experience that when we find our why, we find our way. And when you can get really clear on that,
like clarity equals energy. Clarity allows you to move forward. Clarity gives you power and confidence
in just in that. And I just think also, you know, the more we share our vision, the more we share
our why, the more we articulate it and have conversations around it, the more people
start to become part of that movement. A movement is not you don't create a movement. It's the first
follower. I'm sure you've seen that great TED Talk. And so, oh, it's a great TED Talk. If you Google it,
it's like, how do you create a movement? It's a short one. It's amazing. And it's that first
follower. And so watch that video. Maybe we can chat about it next time we talk. But like, it's,
if we don't share it, if we don't put it out there, and we don't make it in a way that people can
understand it, it's not going to move forward. And we're going to keep holding back. I'm going to
agree wholeheartedly with the first step. I'm going to bring in a different perspective for
the second step. And I'm probably the third one right where it's at. So the first one you mentioned,
man, if I can remember it, you talked about the why in there. And always the first one was finding
that passion. That's what reminded me of his passion, at least. You got to have that conviction
that this is what you're meant to do, that purpose. For those of you out there looking for that,
passionpro.org. That's my free website, free assessment. It takes 15 to 20 minutes.
Go and check yourself on that. And I mean that in the most respectful of ways. Go and make sure
that your strengths and weaknesses, opportunities, and threats align. It's actually a pretty awesome
assessment. It's free to do. And it can help you make sure that you are on the right track for what
your purpose is in life. Then the second step, the why. I'm a big fan of what I heard quoted to
Les Brown. And I believe he and I, I'm going to butcher it. But he said, there's so many great
songs, great movies, great novels, classics, et cetera, that made it that we never got to hear.
Because the person died before they released it. And the why doesn't get you there fully.
It's certainly part of the process. But I would say so many people end up burying that why because
of fear, because of a lack of mentorship or an environment that has fought against them, or they
just didn't exercise the courage to move it forward. There's a lot of reasons why we may not hit it.
And so if you're listening right now, and you have your own ideas of how the leaders lean in to
finding their vision, definitely share that with us. We're always looking for how do we double down
and move forward our visions when we have it? And how do we not shy away when that imposter syndrome
or analysis paralysis or the little bitty committee in the head tells us, you know, hey, no, no, no,
this isn't something you should do. There's lots of tools to fix that. And I think that's
one of the biggest opportunities to overcome that. So Jason, thank you for sparking that.
This was awesome. And man, the audience is going to be in for a huge treat when we talk about the
fullness of your vision. Thank you for being here today. I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision
Pros Live. I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions as these episodes continue to move
forward. It's going to get more and more fun. We'll have more and more engagement as well. We'll
invite people to participate in the show. And thank you for giving us your time and attention.
And I hope that you'll have an excellent time building out your vision and becoming a Vision Pro yourself.