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I recently got to see Brandi Carlile live in concert, and I want to tell you a little story about that experience. I like Brandi and her music, but my sister is a huge fan. She’s seen Brandi perform since before she was famous, and I’m so glad I joined her because I learned something big that evening.
Brandi had some serious surprises planned for us during the show, telling stories, and creating an amazing atmosphere. This got me thinking about how you can create an amazing experience for your clients, overdelivering, and the benefits of surprising and delighting your customers beyond their expectations.
Tune in this week to discover the value of overdelivering and surprising your audience. I’m discussing why you need to consider the ways you can surprise and delight your audience the Brandi Carlile way, how it benefits your business, the value of abundance in your marketing and sales process, and the importance of avoiding desperation as you overdeliver for your clients.
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What You’ll Learn on this Episode:
- The amazing surprises Brandi had planned for her show.
- How overdelivering helps your business and your reputation grow.
- Why you shouldn’t try to surprise and overdeliver to your clients out of desperation.
- How to think about your marketing and sales from abundance, so you can overdeliver for your clients the Brandi Carlile way.
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- Better Than Happy: Connecting with Divinity through Conscious Thinking by Jody Moore
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- Brandi Carlile
- Gorge Amphitheatre
- Song: Why by Annie Lennox
- Song: Sugar by Maroon 5
- Reese Witherspoon
- Russell Brunson
- Untamed by Glennon Doyle
- Stitch Fix
- I’m Jody Moore and this is Better Than Happy, Entre-Talk: The Brandi Carlile Way.Did you know that you can live a life that’s even better than happy? My name is Jody Moore. I’m a master-certified life coach and a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. And if you’re willing to go with me I can show you how. Let’s go.
Hello, everybody welcome to Entre-Talk. I got to go see Brandi Carlile perform at The Gorge Amphitheatre in Washington last weekend. Was it last weekend? Yes. And I want to tell you a little story. So first of all, I love Brandi Carlile. I like her music but my sister, Lindsey, is a huge Brandi Carlile fan. I think she’s seen her perform in concert, 100 times easily. She’s been seeing her perform since before anyone knew who she was, before she was big and famous. Lindsey’s a true diehard fan.
And at any rate I like her and I know Lindsey loves her and I love going to a concert. And then if you’ve ever been to The Gorge, you know what I’m talking about, but if you haven’t, it’s going to be hard for me to put into words how magical this venue is. It is halfway between the city of Spokane where I live and Seattle. So for me it’s just over two hours, two and a half hours, two and half hours, past that to Seattle. So it draws people from both sides of the state. And it feels like you’re in the middle of nowhere, it really is.
It’s out in the middle of just vast open land, which is part of the magic of it. It is an amphitheater built by overlooking this canyon that is so breathtaking and the mountains behind it. And just everything around makes you feel like you’ve been transported out of the world into someplace truly magical. Sometimes it gets really hot, often in the summer it’s very hot. Sometimes it’s a little cold, it was a little chilly that night but mostly it’s beautiful and as you, of course, go to a concert, they’re always in the evening or well, they do some daytime things but most of what I’ve been to have been evening things.
And so of course the sun is always setting behind the mountains and just lighting up the sky behind this canyon. And that combined with really good music just creates for magic. So long story short, I haven’t been to a concert at The Gorge since I was, I guess in college. I wanted to go because it was at The Gorge, it was Brandi and I wanted to hang out with my sister. So for all those reasons I went and I was so glad that I did because Brandi was amazing and brilliant. Of course she’s an amazing artist, has the most magical voice.
She had a four part orchestra on the stage, it was just a great show. But the part I wanted to highlight, the Brandi Carlile way that I want to point out today, was the surprises she had planned for us that we were not expecting, I was not expecting at least. So, Brandi at one point started telling stories about, she’s from Seattle so she grew up going to concerts at The Gorge as well.
And so she told us all these stories about going to concerts and not having any money and not knowing how she was going to get home and going to all the Lilith Fairs which was when all the really amazing chic artists from the 90s, Natalie Merchant and Sarah McLachlan and Sinead O’Connor and who else? The Cranberries I would put into that category, Alanis Morrissette. All of these great female artists that we had. A lot of them anyway would come and perform at, it was called Lilith Fair.
And that happened at The Gorge quite a bit for many years. Brandi at one point said, “We can’t play at The Gorge without doing a Sarah McLachlan song.” And everybody cheered. And they start the music for the Sarah McLachlan song, Hold On. And just as she’s about to sing the first word, Brandi steps back from the mic but the words keep coming. The song keeps being sung and you’re like, “What’s happening?” And next thing you know, Sarah McLachlan walks out from behind the stage and we all lose our minds. I lost my mind anyway.
I have never seen her live. I’ve been a huge fan for so long. And I was dying, I couldn’t believe it, that she was there. She was singing this song that has really helped shape my heart growing up. And it was amazing. Okay, so then we go on with the Brandi Carlile show and we’re all in heaven. And by the end we do our job of cheering for the encore. Why is this a tradition at concerts by the way? I don’t know, but anyway the artists finished and then we all cheer and then they come back out for the encore and they do a few more songs.
So Brandi starts singing, she does another song or two. And then next thing you know the music comes on for Annie Lennox, Why. Do you know this song, Why? Come on, some of you are young and you may not know this song but you must go look it up and listen to Annie Lennox, Why, after if you’ve not heard it because it’s so beautiful. And as the intro to Why is playing and I’m so excited I just have goosebumps thinking she’s going to sing this Annie Lennox song. I’m so excited, I love this song.
And before you know it, Brandi starts announcing in her magical way that not only are we going to hear that song but that she has brought to The Gorge Annie Lennox herself. And Annie Lennox comes out and sings Why. You guys, I literally had tears streaming down my face at this point. I could not believe this was happening. I never thought in my lifetime I would get to see Annie Lennox perform live. Wow, what an evening.
So, Brandi happened to play two more nights at The Gorge where she continued to bring out Sarah and Annie who sang additional songs. And she also had Joni Mitchell there, but we knew Joni Mitchell was going to be there. That was part of the lineup. I didn’t get to see Joni Mitchell, that was on a different night. But my point is, Brandi over-delivered for us that night, not only with her own singing and her own songs and her own just the show she created. But she curated the most magical experience and none of us knew.
Now, imagine, she could have sold those tickets as Brandi plus Sarah plus Annie. And she probably could have charged more for those tickets had she sold it that way. She didn’t do that. I’m not saying it would be wrong to do that. There’s a time to do that. But what I want to talk about on today’s episode and what I want you to think about is the benefit of sometimes just surprising and delighting your clients or customers beyond what they expected, beyond what they could possibly imagine, because it’s super fun to do.
And especially as your business grows, especially as you become more successful and more well known, you’ll have more opportunity to do it because you’ll have more resources. My guess is that Brandi Carlile had to have significant influence to get those women to come. Maybe she paid them a lot of money. I don’t know. But she probably wouldn’t have been able to pull that off way back when she was just starting out, playing in local bars in Seattle. That would have been outside of her capacity to do. But now that she’s very well known, she’s very successful, she has a lot of clout, she’s built great relationships.
And she has some racehorses, she can do stuff like that. And why do you think she does it, why do it? Because again she could have made more money had she just sold the tickets that way. That wasn’t her intention. Her intention was to surprise and delight her fans, her audience that night and she did that. And what happens afterwards? I have told this story to so many people, some of you as I started telling it were like, “I already heard this, Jody Moore.” I posted it on my social media.
I’ve been telling everyone I can get to listen about how this happened because I can’t believe it and it’s so exciting. I just want to talk about it. So, yes, it does a lot of good things for your reputation in your business. So that’s a win. I’m not opposed to that but it’s also just so much fun. It’s so much fun to get to do things like that on occasion. Now, I want to make sure and clarify that I’m not saying you should do things like this out of desperation and scarcity.
Some of you I see trying to add things to your offer or to what you do for your clients or customers because you feel like in some way what you do is already inadequate. And you’re trying to overcompensate for that or you’re trying to overcompensate for marketing or sales that isn’t quite working yet. Again, I’m all for you implementing strategies and I want you to tweak that stuff to get it working but I don’t want you to keep over-delivering to people. That’s not the solution. This is not a scarcity desperation strategy. This is an abundance type of strategy.
I want you to think about marketing from abundance. If you are marketing from abundance, just because it’s fun to help people, just because you can delight someone in this way, what might you do? How might you add value to people at all points along the way of the marketing and sales process? And I’ll tell you that because I’m constantly trying to get better at taking care of people and growing my business I’m always looking at everything through that lens. I have that experience of the Brandi Carlile concert. My mind goes to what would be the equivalent of that for me in my business?
What could I do that would surprise and delight my clients? And the answers aren’t easy, I don’t know the answer yet. I haven’t come up with a good answer. But I like to let the question live there. It’s a really fun and, I think, useful question to ask myself. I have been thinking about this in general about the entertainment industry. I like to look at industries that are really different from what I do. And again, see what nuggets of what they’re doing that’s working can I take and then make applicable to what I do.
So the entertainment industry in general is so fascinating. And I don’t know a lot about it but from the little bit I can gather by being at this end of it, actors go on talk shows to promote their movies. When you see an actor on Jimmy Fallon, on The Tonight Show, you can bet in most cases it’s because they have a new movie or TV show or something coming out that they’re trying to promote. They are there to promote.
Now, they don’t do a hard sell about the movie but they often will mention it and they’ll talk about some aspect of it, why they took on the project, what was fun about it, what was it like to work with the other people in the movie etc. Maybe they’ll show a little clip from it, but we love feeling like we’re getting a behind the scenes view into an actor’s life. So we like seeing them talk to Jimmy Fallon as their real selves. We like seeing, if you’re like me anyway, I like seeing what they’re going to wear.
I like hearing what they have to say. I like hearing their stories. I like seeing how they are when they interact, what kind of sense of humor do they have. We’re just fascinated with celebrities for some reason. But the whole point of them doing that isn’t because they’re trying to show off their new outfit or they’re trying to be more famous. It’s because it’s usually my guess is, part of their contract, part of their agreement when they agree to do a movie, it’s that yes, then I will go help promote it.
So that is marketing, you guys, that is marketing and yet we enjoy it. We watch them on Jimmy Fallon because it’s entertaining to us. And they’re in the entertainment industry. They’re providing entertainment as they market the movie that they want us to go pay our $15 for. Is that what a movie costs nowadays? I was trying to remember the other day. It’s not cheap. At any rate, actors now are on social media a lot more, actors and musicians and all these ‘celebrities’ are now understanding and have for a few years now, the power of that behind the scenes glimpse into their lives.
If I’m following somebody on social, I like to follow Reese Witherspoon. She’s a darling. I love her work as an actor but I also love her book club. She has a production company now that’s producing other TV shows and movies. And I love how she supports women and I love how she holds onto her southern heritage and I like to follow her. So then now because she has my attention and every now and then I get a behind the scenes video of her talking to her mom or her in her kitchen making breakfast for her kids.
Now, when she has a movie come out, I’m even more interested in going and seeing it because I feel connected to her. So, again I’m just sort of speaking out loud here because I want you to notice what are the things that get your attention? What are the things that are intriguing to you? And how do you take that and use it in your own business? I’m not famous like Annie Lennox or Brandi Carlile or Reese Witherspoon. And so the way I do it is going to have to look different.
But I do have a big enough following now and I have some people that would say they’re pretty diehard fans of mine, some of you out there, thank you very much. I see you. I feel you. I know you. What if I just sent a DM? This is what I’ve started doing on occasion. People will DM me on Instagram, they’ll ask me a question and I will send a recorded voice memo back or I haven’t tried this one yet but I could make a quick video message.
I have done voice messages where I say, “Hey, thanks for your question and I’m so sorry to hear you’re struggling in this way. And I just want you to know that it’s valid.” And then I’ll give them some advice or help. I’ll answer their question. And that makes someone’s day. I know because I’ve had that happen to me actually. Years ago, Russell Brunson sent me a voice memo on my Instagram DMs and I still have it. I was like, “I cannot believe Russell Brunson is talking to me.” So what are the things, the little things that you could do?
I want to give you a couple of other examples. One that’s coming to my mind is back to entertainment industry, Maroon 5. So have you watched their music video? If you haven’t, go watch it, for the song, Sugar. So what they did is they shot a music video but for the video they went and surprised, I don’t know, three or four different bride and grooms at their weddings by being the band playing at their wedding. So obviously somebody in the wedding party had to be in on it because they had to get the stage set up and they had to get the band in the door and everything.
But they show all these examples of the bride and groom getting ready for the dancing part of the celebration. And all of a sudden a curtain drops and it’s Maroon 5 playing live at their wedding. So I’m sure they obviously found Maroon 5 fans and then they set all this up and they recorded it for their music video. So that’s, I love watching that video, it gives me chills. And it wasn’t even my wedding. I still get to experience the surprise and delight of it. So you can take things that are unscalable and scale them in this way.
This is actually, by the way, another interesting point is that music videos are marketing. That’s what music videos are, they are marketing. Interesting to think about. What are you doing in your marketing? How do you make it more entertaining or how do you, we’re talking about entertainment industries, so it should be entertaining. But how do you add whatever value your business adds as you do your marketing? It should be happening along the way.
Two other examples I wrote down I wanted to share. Glennon Doyle, I’m a huge Glennon Doyle fan as many of you know. During the pandemic her book came out, Untamed. It was actually released I think right at the beginning of the pandemic I want to say. And yet still, best selling number one huge success book, even though she probably couldn’t do any of the promotional things that she had planned on. But what she did start doing at one point is she said, “If you’re going to do a Zoom book club meeting, send us the information because sometimes I want to pop in on them.”
So on occasion she would show up at people’s Zoom book club where they were discussing Untamed. Imagine, if you’re not a Glennon Doyle fan this is not a big deal to you. But picture an author that you love and you’re like, “Hey, we can’t get together in person right now because of the pandemic but let’s get together on Zoom and talk about her book.” And then she’s there. I mean that’s pretty mind blowing, pretty awesome, pretty surprise and delight.
And again it’s fun to do but also people are going to talk about it and you’re going to create the good kind of abundant mojo that you want within your business. The last one that’s coming to my mind is because I’m trying to give you ideas but I want you to keep an eye out for them and send them in to me when you find ideas and keep sharing them here. But this company called Stitch Fix, you can pay a fee and then they send clothes that they think you might like every month or two months or however often you choose and you keep what you like and send back what you don’t.
So my mom when she was first diagnosed with cancer, she had signed up to try out Stitch Fix. And she was getting those boxes for a while. Then she wrote in and said, “I need to cancel my subscription.” And she happened to mention that she was going through cancer treatment and so she wasn’t really looking to buy a bunch of new clothes right now. And Stitch Fix sent her flowers. She got this huge bouquet of flowers saying, “We’re so sorry to hear about the cancer.”
And I thought that was amazing because here’s a customer leaving your business. Do you choose to surprise and delight some people when they’re on the way out? Interesting to think about. Alright, Brandi Carlile effect. I’m excited. I’m going to start thinking about what can I do that would surprise and delight people just for fun? It’s got to be scalable. It can’t be something that I necessarily am going to do all the time. But what could we do? This is a fun area to play in. I challenge you to try it out with me.
Alright, thanks for joining me today. I’ll see you next time, take care everyone.
Hey there, if you enjoy this podcast or even if you just find that it sort of piques your curiosity, or it makes you think, you’re going to love the book that I wrote. It’s called Better Than Happy: Connecting with Divinity Through Conscious Thinking. And it’s available now at Amazon in print or kindle version. Or if you want me to read it to you, head over to audible and grab the audio version. And why not grab a copy for your sister, your best friend, or your mom while you’re there too. Just saying.
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