I was asked to give this presentation on the Royal Caribbean Cruise Oasis of the Seas during the Worth It! Female Mastermind Conference. This is an excerpt from my presentation that I’ve been given permission to share on my podcast. You’ll discover:
- Two foundational elements for business success
- How to sell without selling
- Why we’re afraid to do the things that create raving fans
- How to trust in the principles to overcome that fear
- How to turn upset critics into raving fans, and
- 13 tips for creating raving fans
Click here to listen to the song (made up of only hate comments) mentioned on the audio.
TRANSCRIPT:
Welcome to the Rare Faith podcast, where the solution to every problem is only an idea away, and where the same activity with just a little more awareness always yields better results. Award-winning best-selling author Leslie Householder brings some of her best information to this inspiring series of life-changing episodes, that you won’t want to miss. Show notes for this episode can be found at ararekindoffaith.com.
FEMALE SPEAKER: Let me tell you a little bit about Miss Leslie Householder, if you don’t know how awesome she is. She is the award-winning, international best-selling author of the Jackrabbit Factor. Who’s read Jackrabbit?
MALE SPEAKER: Multiple times.
FEMALE SPEAKER: Yeah like how many times you read Jack Rabbit factors? It’s like a classic right? Jackrabbit Factor: Why You Can, Portal to Genius, and Hidden Treasures: Heavens Astonishing Help With Your Money Matters. That’s actually my favorite one. Since 2002 she has helped people all over the world discover and apply the rare kind of faith that causes things to happen for powerful life changes. Through humorous story, and shifts of perspective, Leslie aims to help women of all ages crush every challenge, achieve every goal and vanquish every monster under their beds. Above all, Leslie is a dedicated wife, and mother of seven children. Bring up Leslie Householder! Yaayy!
LESLIE: Okay, we’ll wait till Kristi moves over one ‘cuz I’m gonna be parked here most of the time. And I’ll tell you why I’m gonna be parked here… whatever you want to do… I am going to be a little bit glued to my notes over here because if I’m not, I will go off on tangents and we won’t end for about four hours. So, I’m glad to be here. I am so glad to be here. This is my very first cruise, ever! Thank you so much for allowing me to be a part of this. I am just so thrilled. It’s been great. And starting in about an hour I’m gonna go on my vacation.
So first of all we’re gonna talk about “raving fans”. What are they and why do we want “raving fans”. In just a minute… I need to get to my presenter mode… oh, I thought I had this ready. Pardon me a minute. There it is. Thank you. Okay, good. Last presentation I did, it was flip-flop. Like, you could see my notes and all I saw was the presentation over here. All right, so, what is a “raving fan”? What do you think when you hear that term? What do you think of… and you’re going to need to be loud because I, by the way, am recording the audio of this. I want you… I’m gonna be going so fast I don’t want you to worry about taking notes feverishly, ‘cuz you’ll miss stuff. Like, after we get home and I get it all ready, I’ll give you access to the audio of this presentation. Okay? So, what’s a “raving fan”? Yeah…
[INDISTINCT FEMALE SPEAKER]
LESLIE: “Someone who is so pleased with your services that they continue over and over to talk about it with other people.” Cari.
CARI: They talk about it with other people and they actually take your advice. They become like your billboard.
LESLIE: Okay, so they become like a billboard for you. They tell people about you and they take your advice, so they are a product of what you’re teaching. I like to say that a raving fan is someone who is shocked and amazed by the level of service or care that they receive from you. They become your loyal evangelists. You’ll see them responding to your social media posts and they’ll show up at your events bringing others with them. They will respond when you need volunteers for live events, for post likes, announcements, shares, etc., and their referrals keep coming for years. Who doesn’t want some of that, or more of that? So, just to kind of give you a little bit of background of who I am, why I’m here, I’m gonna… This is going to be like the total Reader’s Digest version of it because I don’t want to cut too much into the meat.
My story: financial struggles, desperation, depression, so stressed I called the cops on a kid who broke my broom, a seven-year long search for answers, found some principles, followed the principles, tripled our income in three months using those principles, and started teaching the principles to others. That’s who I am and what I do, and why I still do it now. I’ve been doing it now for about 20 years, and what I love about the material is that it never gets boring to me. It only expands, it only grows. Even preparing this presentation I learned some new things that I’m super excited about. This is where we were when I called the cops on the kid who broke my broom. This is where we lived. After we had our breakthrough and started living by the principles we ended up here. This is where we lived for nine years while we were raising our littles. So now, let’s get to the meat. I co-authored a book with a man by the name of Garrett Gunderson.
This was during the recession when we were living in that home and we had invested in too much real estate at the top of the market and everything was crumbling. We ended up selling that home to downsize and try to get our life back in order, but in the meantime, Garrett Gunderson was our mentor in helping us understand how to use the principles that we’ve been living and teaching, on a whole new level, because it’s one thing to use the principles to create the life you want, it’s another thing to use the principles to respond to setbacks and to bounce back from the ups and downs that we will all experience, no matter how good we are. And he said this, that we sabotage our business when we worry more about the money side of this equation. What is this? This is his prosperity equation. That financial capital is a byproduct of mental capital and relationship capital. In other words, mental capital could be you learning and gaining mental capital from other people or it could be creating mental capital that others can benefit from.
And relationship capital is serving others, building relationships. And when we get stressed about money or when we’re trying to build a business and we haven’t had a whole lot of experience with the principles that I will touch on, and I’ll point you to where you can get more information about, we end up focusing so much on the financial side of the equation. How are we going to make the money? How are we going to increase the revenue? How are we going to make more sales? How are we going to increase our prices? How are we… We’re focused on the financial side of that equation, and that’s not where it’s produced.
And so it was a real leap of faith to be in the middle of this recession, having to sell off things, selling off our toys, selling off, just really, really getting humble again, and choosing to not fear about the financial, but instead, get focused and busy on what can I do to build a new relationship. What can I do to serve someone? What can I do to create more mental capital for someone else, and at that time I was thinking, you know what I could do is I could take everything that I learned in the process of writing my books. I got frustrated looking for a publisher, I ended up publishing myself. And how to get those to bestseller status. I did outrank “Harry Potter”. The new “Harry Potter”, for six hours on Barnes & Noble.
[Cheering – FEMALE SPEAKER: That’s Awesome!]
LESLIE: You know, six hours, I’ll take it. [Laughter] But everything that I’d learned through that process, I thought, well, I could create some mental capital around how to write a book, get a book out there and have it profitable. And so, as an example of creating mental capital and relationship capital, I created a program called The Profitable Author. Now teaching authors how to do their books, how to publish them, how to profit from them, because let’s be honest, there’s not a huge profit margin in a book. There just isn’t. And there’s other ways that you can financially benefit from having a book, as you probably know. But, The Profitable Author became my program where I shared with people how I earned over a million dollars giving my book away for free. And so, that was a product that I was able to create mental capital in order to work on the right side of that prosperity equation. Trusting that that’s one thing I can do to help increase the financial side of the equation.
Now, helping authors is not my main topic. It’s not what I’m about. I can do it because I’ve done it, but my topic is more about how to overcome challenges and achieve your goals using that rare kind of faith that causes things to happen. But this was something I could do. Now let me tell you a little bit about this program as an example. I’m gonna give you an example on how I create raving fans. So, in this program I share book publishing secrets, whether or not to have a publisher, — I have traditional publishers outside of the country and other languages but I do my own publishing here in the States– how to self publish on a shoestring. How to make your book a best-seller without spending $10,000 or more. Do-it-yourself tricks to save money on editors, typesetters, printers. How to build a team of volunteers who are excited to promote your book.
Isn’t that important? Especially if you want raving fans. Top 10 new author mistakes to avoid. How and when to get into the brick-and-mortar stores, and why you might not want to be in them. Choosing your distributor. How to repurpose your materials in multiple formats for a six-figure income. Basic internet marketing tips and tricks for authors. How to find the time to get your book done and marketed. Your cover design – Do It Yourself, hire it out, or what, and how? Finish it fast, make it amazing. or both. So, how much do you think this program is worth? If I can show someone how I earned over a million dollars giving my book away for free, what would that be worth to a customer? I want you to put on your business owner hat. What would you charge for something like this?
Audience Member: A thousand bucks.
LESLIE: “A thousand bucks”? Anyone else? Everyone is afraid to say.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: 2500
LESLIE: “2500”. Has anybody bought a program like this before? How much did you spend?
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Thirty-thousand.
LESLIE: “Thirty-thousand.” Anyone else?
AUDIENCE MEMBER: I would probably do it for fifteen or twenty thousand.
LESLIE: “Fifteen and twenty thousand”? Alright, this is how much I charge for this program. Now there are some people that are going to look at this and say, “oh, it must not be worth very much if that’s all she’s asking”. How many of you have heard that mentality? There is something to that, I’m not going to discount that. If I value my information I could charge fifty-thousand and get it from the right person, but I’m more interested in creating raving fans. And because there’s so much in this program that teaches you how to have and create raving fans, and because we don’t have time to cover all that in this short hour that I have with you, I’m gonna give you all this free. Anybody who wants this can have this for free. All I need you to do is write your name legibly — my assistant tells me — write your name and email on a piece of paper and get it over to Cari sometime before the end of class. Okay?
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Thank you.
LESLIE: You’re welcome. Now, why would I do that? Why would I make this available for free when I could just say, “oh, it’s $249, but I’ll give it to you this weekend for $180”.
[AUDIENCE RESPONSE] Or we all just think you are the most awesome person of all time.
LESLIE: Or did I just create any raving fans? [Laughter] Now, I could have, I could have. I could have charged five bucks just so that you got some skin in the game. There’s that mentality too, that you know… I don’t want to give you something if you’re not going to invest something. Well, this is going to take some time for you to go through. That’s an investment and I acknowledge that. I also do it because maybe someone in here is going to want to come to my book writing retreat. I hold book writing retreats where I teach people one-on-one, you know, we… the last one I did was between five and ten people, where it’s for a week. We’re together for a week working on our books together and having coaching sessions throughout to help make your books amazing. The kind of books, the kind of information, that will cause raving fans. Maybe none of you will come to my book writing retreat, but it takes nothing away from me to offer a digital product to you for free. Does that make sense?
Okay, so there are two foundational elements for business success. And just a clue, I learned this at the last event I was at; I was feverishly taking notes until I looked over and someone was just taking a snapshot with their phone. I’m like, I’m in the new century I have to catch up with this. Yeah, just take pictures if you want to, I don’t mind. So, we’re gonna talk briefly about these two pieces because they’re important to understand, or you’re gonna have too much fear when you attempt to do some of the things I’m going to suggest for creating raving fans. The first one is you managing you. This was something that was a real epiphany to me, that I was reacting so much to things that were happening to me that I was constantly a victim to my circumstances. I mean, who calls the cops on a kid who breaks their broom? That’s where I was at. I was reacting, reacting, reacting to everything around me that was happening that was negative and it was only perpetuating more of it. And then Part B that we’ll get into in just a little bit is, letting God manage everything else. I am also a God person. You can substitute whatever you need to for your background and come from. So, let’s talk about you managing you. This is the Stickman Diagram, is what I call, or what Dr. Thurman Fleet, founder of Concept Therapy, calls the Mind Model.
This was a diagram that we saw at an event after seven years of trying to figure out what we were doing wrong. Over a hundred seminars we attended. People trying to explain the Law of Attraction, business success, personal development, all of those things that we were taking in and saying, “yeah. I know there’s something to this, but why isn’t anything changing? And when the speaker, the guest speaker at an event, his name was Bob Proctor. Raise your hand if you’ve ever heard of Bob Proctor. Powerful. He shared this diagram. It was originally created in the 1930s, like I said, by a Dr. Thurman Fleet. And he explained the three parts of your mind. This is a mind model. You have your conscious, the conscious part of your mind, your subconscious, and your body, which is a tool of the mind. Now I’m going to have you write this down because I don’t have, I do have it written down. “The Visual Aid That Changed Everything” I have a full-length video about this diagram and why this was the piece that helped us triple our income, on my website. It’s at RareFaith.org. You’ll just have to do a page search for “The Visual Aid That Changed Everything. It’s in the footer, but you can watch the whole video on this piece. But the part we’re gonna talk about today is our conscious mind, because I want you to stay conscious as you’re making your business decisions as you’re creating raving fans. Because, you’re gonna have stuff happen to you that’s going to feel like, “ooh this was bad”, or “oh, that’s uncomfortable”, or “that person said this negative thing about what I do”, and you’re gonna have to stay conscious to respond to it in alignment with the principles.
As you do, then you can be assured that the best possible outcome will transpire. If you react to it emotionally, then you’re just going to get more of the stuff that you’re trying to move out of. So, the conscious part of your mind, it’s where we are aware we’re aware, that we are aware. We know that we’re thinking. We can observe ourselves in our minds eye from outside of ourselves. That’s being conscious. Our conscious mind has the ability to accept or reject ideas, and so as I’m talking to you, I’m going to share things that you’re gonna say, “no, I don’t agree with that”, but that’s a function of your conscious mind and you are entitled to do that; to reject things or accept them. If you accept them and think about them long enough through repetition or through emotion, you’ll turn it over to your subconscious mind.
And the piece that I don’t have prepared for this presentation but I’ll just give you this little nugget, is that the part of your mind that sets a goal, that part of your mind that’s envisioning what you want your business to look like, is not the same part of your mind that accomplishes the goal and we mess it up when we try to accomplish it from the same part of our mind that set it. So, in other words you’re going to set your goals consciously, but the goals that you get emotionally have charged about, emotionally involved with, the ones that you can see it and feel at how it’s going to be, the ones that you think about often, those are going to be turned over to your subconscious mind, and it’s your subconscious mind that’s going to lead you to do and say the things that will help you accomplish that. Again, refer to the full video for that. This is also the part of your mind that’s able to create new ideas and it adds meaning.
That’s the piece we’re going to talk about most right now. I want you to look at this plus and minus, and as data comes into your conscious mind through your five senses, we see here, taste, touch, smell, we take data in and on the conscious level we assign a meaning to it. Everything that happens to us is not inherently good or bad until we decide what that is. You can think of the most horrific thing that’s ever happened to anyone that is obviously negative, but using the principles, you can do a flip on it and assign positive meaning to it. And by doing so, you interrupt the cycle of bondage that we get stuck in and we create a new life.
And so, when you get negative feedback in your business, you have to remember and stay conscious. Don’t get emotionally involved with it or it will produce more, but be conscious and choose to assign a positive meaning to it. And how can we do that? I’m going to share with you one of the principles pretty soon that will explain that. But, I just want to give you an example of somebody, a business owner, who has received negative feedback and assigned a positive meaning to it. It’s not what happens to you. This is a musician who was asked by her fans to write a song using only comments that she had received from trolls on her social media. And so she has taken this negative data input and decided to turn it into something positive, and she has nearly 10 million views on this video. Okay, so there is a seed of equal or greater benefit contained in every, every negative experience, and this is one of them. Let’s see if we can get this to play. “Shout out to all my haters”, she says… Oh.
[Music] [Music]
LESLIE: Now listen to what she says next.
[Music] [Music]
SINGER: That was a song I wrote using only hate comments from YouTube, and after being on YouTube for almost 10 years, I’d say I have accumulated a lot of hate comments. So, thank you to all my haters for helping me write that song. I did blur out all the usernames and the pictures because I don’t want to perpetuate more hate with this video. This is just kind of a way to make fun of the troll culture that exists online, and to make something positive out of something otherwise negative. Anyway, thank you for watching. I don’t know what else to say. Thumbs up. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to say. [Laughing] 10 years on YouTube and I can’t, I don’t even know how to end a video.”
[LAUGHTER]
LESLIE: Wasn’t that great? [Laughter] Oh, that made me feel so good. If you ever get a hate comment just go watch that again, it’s just gonna flip everything around for you. So, now I want you to notice that she avoided the temptation to be passive-aggressive about it. She could have just been, here, in your face people, you know, but she wasn’t. She could have kept their faces and names visible so that people could be mad with her. She didn’t. And, she wanted to interrupt that cycle and create something positive and leave that with her fans. Does she have raving fans? You know she does. And so, if you get a negative comment and you’re tempted to be snarky back because it’s really easy to do, just stop, be conscious, cool off first, and then look for a way to turn it into something positive, otherwise you’re gonna get hit by the karma bus. [Laughter]
So, I’ve seen people resist, defend, and argue with their detractors. Don’t do it. People, that only makes it grow. Surprise your haters with kindness and their power absolutely melts away. Jesus taught, “whosoever will be chief among you let him be your servant”. He lived 2,000 years ago and people are still talking about him and sharing his book. So, study his life and how he served others. Above all, He genuinely cared and He didn’t serve with a focus on what He would get from them in return, and instead He relied on His father in heaven to provide. He relied on God to bring Him to the right people that He could serve. He lived by the principles to fear not, to consider the lilies of the field, and not worry about the things that you need; to trust in God and to love one another. So, why do we hold back on that?
I know for me, there have been times in my business where I have held back, wanting to give something or to give of myself more, or to share more because I was afraid that maybe, if I do that I won’t have what I need. I might have come to an event like this, with an opportunity to sell Profitable Author, and calculating how much I could make by the number of people in the room and my close rate, and blah-blah-blah. How much I could come away with. But that was really kind of exhausting. I found that I enjoy my work a whole lot more when I can just go and share and give, because I’ve already created mental capital, that people can obtain and get to, if they want it, if they need it.
Now, I want to acknowledge that we do have fear sometimes. That if we give too much we won’t have what we need. And, I don’t have time to address that. I do want to acknowledge it. But, if this is something you struggle with, I want you to read Hidden Treasures: Heaven’s Astonishing Help With Your Money Matters. It is free at rarefaith.org.
So, now let’s get back to Part B: Letting God Manage Everything Else. There are laws that govern everything. Invisible laws of the universe. Gravity is an invisible law. But, we are constantly governed by it, affected by it, and we are safer and we experience less pain in our life if we understand that it exists, and we abide by its parameters. Right? So, this was part of what we learned that helped triple our income, were these seven laws. I don’t know where they started. I’ve heard so many people talk about them. These are the names by which I learned them. I’ve had people say, “well, that comes back from these ancient writings from thousands of years ago.
Like I said, I don’t know where it started but it really had a profound effect on my ability to fear not, to understand these. The Law of Perpetual Transmutation: that’s the one that says that everything is coming or going into or out of form, always. Everything is either on its way in or on its way out of form, and that we have an effect on our surroundings and our circumstances by the way we think. If we have a goal and we’re focused on it and we feel the thrill and the joy we expect to feel when we accomplish it, our thoughts are having an effect on the universe around us to start bringing that into form, as long as we believe. And when we doubt, it starts to dissipate out of form.
And it’s this dance that we don’t see evidence of until the last stage where it’s visible, and just knowing that that is happening helps me to hold on to faith long enough for the Law of Gestation to take part and produce the thing that you’re thinking of. Again, all of these are explained in detail at HiddenTreasuresbook.com, or RareFaith.org. But we’re gonna focus on the Law of Polarity because this is the law that helps me feel really good when I get some bad feedback.
The Law of Polarity says that, contained in every circumstance is a seed of equal or greater benefit. So, if things are just a little bit bad, then really it’s only just a little bit good. So. if something is catastrophic, you can get really excited because they are equal and opposite in nature, and so using your consciousness, remember the stickman, when you get negative feedback, you pause, you think consciously, you say, “all right, I am assigning meaning to this and I’m gonna choose to assign a positive meaning to this”.
Number 1: it gives me feedback so that I can improve. And you thank them for it, and you adjust if needed. If it’s relevant to your progress you want to take those things into consideration, but then you also have an opportunity to create a raving fan out of your negative feedback people. That is probably one of the coolest things that I’ve discovered you can do.
When someone has, and I’m going to show you an example of one soon. I don’t remember where it is, but you get this negative feedback and you think, “okay, how can I make this person a raving fan?” We’ll talk more about that later. So, we are making good time. I’m actually probably going to get through all this. Okay, so, now I’m just going to give you some quick tips on creating raving fans. First of all, build an establishment. I’d like to get some of your feedback on what you think that means. What is an establishment? Can you give me an example of an establishment, and then we’ll talk about what it is and why we want to be one. What comes to mind when you hear that word? Yeah?
FEMALE SPEAKER: I think it means having a book to be out there, but also having your website, having your programs, having your ecourses.
LESLIE: So, having a book, a website, programs, ecourses… It’s having stuff to sell, to share, to offer, right?
FEMALE SPEAKER: That forms a community…
LESLIE: That forms a community to present, to, that brings in the fans. Excellent! Excellent! Anyone else? Yeah?
MALE SPEAKER: A building with my business name on it.
LESLIE: A building with your what? Your business name on it. Okay. Okay, good. Rosa?
ROSA: Credibility.
LESLIE: Credibility. Good. Yeah?
FEMALE SPEAKER: I think for me it was building or creating my LLC.
LESLIE: Okay. Creating an LLC. Good, good. Yeah?
FEMALE SPEAKER: For me I think it’s just, creating who you are and putting that out there in the world, so when people see you, it’s your brand. What you want comes to mind because of what you’ve put out there, and what you have. Like, you create you…
LESLIE: So, creating you and everything about being a brand…
FEMALE SPEAKER: Consistency.
LESLIE: Consistency. Excellent. We’re going to talk about that. So that when people see you, they feel what you intended for them to feel and think when they see you. Good. Good. Now, do you think there are people in the world right now who have successful businesses, side by side. One is an establishment and the other one is not, both successful. What do you think the difference is between the one, and maybe they all have an LLC, maybe they all have a brick-and-mortar store, maybe you know, you don’t have to, but, maybe they all have products and services, and a website, and a book, and all those things. They both have that, but I would call one an establishment and one is not. What do you think the distinction is?
FEMALE SPEAKER: Consistency.
LESLIE: Consistency. History. Okay.
FEMALE SPEAKER: Relatability.
LESLIE: Relatability. These are all great answers.
FEMALE SPEAKER: Not popularity, but like a knowness.
LESLIE: Popularity. A knowness. Recognition. Yeah, yeah. Okay. If one’s a fad it’s gonna be temporary, it’ll come and go. Good, good. So, when I think of an establishment, I think of something that will always be there, that I can depend on, that when I need it I know where to go. And so, in my business, I kind of turned a corner in it. When I stopped chasing the revenue right now, I learned to relax and rely on the principles; trying to do what Jesus did. Just serving people and letting God provide. Now, that’s going to bring up some fear for a lot of people, and I understand that, and I have tools that will help you with that, that are free. Okay?
But when I shifted gears and I thought, “you know what?” I’m gonna do my newsletter every week, every week, every week, whether or not anybody’s reading it. I’m gonna create an establishment, so that, as people brush up against it and they don’t need it right now, they’ll know where to find it when they need it. To me, being an establishment means I’m here for the long haul. I’m here to stay. My work will outlive me. I’m gonna create ways for people to benefit from what I do, long after I’m gone, and have any way of benefiting back from it.
So, if I create an establishment, then I know that every day when I’m meeting people, that person, I want to leave an impression with them, so that five years from now when they’re in a crisis, they’ll remember me and come back. Does that make sense? Now, doing that takes some faith. It takes some faith. But, to take a deep breath and say, “okay, what can I create for the long haul”, because I want to help my grandchildren’s friends when they need it. What can I provide that will help them? And by doing this, by making that flip, you move from operating in man’s economy to operating in God’s economy And that is a topic that you’re gonna want to pick Cari’s brain about because that is something she has expertise in understanding. By the way Cari is my assistant at my company. Cari, raise your hand. She’s been a Godsend.
Everything that we’ve done this year was made possible because she showed up, and the story on how she showed up is really fascinating. I have a podcast about it, so you follow us long enough you’ll come across that. So again, I do this with my newsletter. Some of my subscribers have been around for over 10 years and I haven’t had any interaction with them, and then they’re like, “I’m ready for the Mindset Mastery program”, because they were connected to the establishment piece of my business.
Number 2: Keep Communication Personal – I’m going to give you an example of an actual letter that was sent to our program facilitators who are coming to be trained. Cari has given me permission to share this. Cari comes from a very professional background. She’s worked in HR at Disney, right. She was an HR at Disney, she’s a neuroscientist, I mean, she’s got credentials that are crazy and she’s very professional. She worked in academia. She was in administration at universities. At least one, right?
Anyway, so she wrote this letter to the facilitators, and it said, “Greetings Facilitator in Training, we look forward to seeing you soon. The purpose of this communication is to prepare you for an in-class exercise by sending the necessary pre-work. Your first assignment is to prepare a welcome document. This welcome will eventually become your Genius Bootcamp kickoff of how you introduce yourself and welcome your Genius Bootcamp participants to your class. The attached document will offer the guidelines and instructions necessary to support what you create.”
Now, that letter is entirely appropriate in the professional world in academia. It’s precise, it’s professional, it’s respectable, and I had her change it up to be my voice, my brand, because I wanted… Why are you laughing?… This was it… it was funny… I’m like… I wrote back and I said, Okay, here’s a translation…
“Hey Susan, we’re excited to work with you. There are just two things we need you to do before you arrive. Please write a welcome. No big deal. This is just a first draft of what you might say when you introduce yourself to the participants at the beginning of your future Genius Bootcamps.”
Do you see the difference in feel? They are both appropriate, but for my brand and for me wanting to create raving fans and have that one-on-one personal connection with my readers, no matter how many readers I have, I want them to feel that personal connection. I’m gonna write it that way. Now, if I were to write a letter like that in an application for a position at the University, it would be kicked out. And I know that. I’m doing this consciously and you’ll also notice, I am, you probably noticed already, I am an introvert. I’m an introvert connector. So, it’s like, try to stay awake.
But when I write, I try to be upbeat, you know, if I write the way I really think, you’d be asleep already. So, I try to be upbeat so they feel that.
Number 3: Develop Brand Consistency – Be dependable. Build a new establishment. You want to build a brand that is consistent through your work. You want people to be able to depend on you to provide the same great content or service for their friends as what they experienced from you, personally. If they can depend on you to have consistency, then when they have a great experience, they will tell people about it and send people to your work. I’ve been doing this nearly 20 years now, and I only just branded, this year. It’s been a long time in coming, but there’s a story and a reason why we chose this year to do it. But this is a tool that I found; this woman KatCaroy.com.
She is an affordable branding expert, and going through her Instagram makeover course, which was about three hundred dollars, did everything for my business on every level for branding. The way she walks you through it is so simple. It’s a lot of work, but I got it, it made sense to me, and it really made a difference. And so, I would encourage you to go follow her and you’ll see how she creates raving fans, because she does. I am a raving fan of hers. I only paid three hundred dollars to get her best stuff. She comes from corporate. She used to do branding for corporations and she thought, you know, now that she’s got a young family she was looking for a way to share what she learned and what she’s been able to do for corporations, for the small business owner and it was, it was excellent!
Number 4: Create Mental Capital and Then Focus on Creating Fans – So, this is an actor from Hollywood, his name is Russell. He got a hold of my book, The Jackrabbit Factor, from my free download site jackrabbitfactor.com. That was my first book after our breakthrough that I wrote. It’s a story. And what he wrote me, unsolicited, was this: He said, “What separates you from the rest and why you earned my business and respect is, because you offered something of immense value, that would benefit people’s lives immediately and as is. No dangling carrot of, ‘if you want the knowledge that will improve your life you must do something else’. In my perception, when you did offer additional information for a fee, it was presented with no guilt, no fear of loss, manipulation techniques, simply, if you want this information it will accelerate and amplify what you’ve already learned, if not, God bless, and enjoy what you have. Thank you again, Russell”. That’s the kind of feedback I want. That’s how I want people to feel. This feeling is the brand that I’m trying to create.
Number 5: Leave an Impression of Increase – Leave an impression of increase. You must so impress others that they will feel that in associating with you, they will get increase for themselves. See that you give them a use value greater than the cash value you are taking from them. Take an honest pride in doing this and you will have no lack of customers. People will go where they are given increase, and the supreme which desires increase in all, will move toward you; men and women who have never heard of you. Your business will increase and you will be surprised at the unexpected benefits. This is by a man named Wallace Wattles in, The Science of Getting Rich. It’s a hundred-year-old book. I have the entire text of this book free at rarefaith.org. You can read it there. It’s a public domain book you can find it just about anywhere.
Number 6: Under-Promise and Over-Deliver – So, if you downplay what you have and then surprise them with more than they expected, you’ll create raving fans and you’ll get a constant flow of new leads. Now, this is something that I’ve been testing and proving for eighteen years. People ask me if I run ads and what I’m doing for marketing, what is my budget for marketing, etc. And my answer has always been, I plan on doing some eventually but I just haven’t had time. I’ve tried a Facebook ad here and there and whatever, and I’m just like, I know there’s people in this room who know how to do it well. I just haven’t had time to do that yet, and I probably will someday. But I haven’t had to. 18 years, I haven’t had to.
So, I want to tell you about the interrupter. I taught a class in Salt Lake City earlier this year, and during the class, my gift to them, because it was our 10 year anniversary of something really significant that happened 10 years ago, and it’s described in Portal To Genius, which is also free, we were celebrating and I gave my presentation and then I said, “Now, I have this eCourse the Mindset Fundamentals eCourse. It’s $37, I want to give it to all of you, free this weekend. And, everybody’s excited and everything and then this woman stood up and interrupted the class, she says, “Can I just say something?” And there was probably, what, 60 people in the room? It wasn’t, it wasn’t huge. But she stood up and she said, “Can I just say something?” And I have this verbatim because I record my presentations wherever I go and I turned them into podcasts. And so, I have this verbatim.
She said, “I was in Leslie’s mastery program, which is the upgrade to what she’s giving you here, and I cannot say enough about it. I have spent thousands of dollars on training and nothing has given me more value for less, anywhere. I’ve been following her for a long time and she always under promises and over delivers. Her program changed my life.”
Unsolicited in this room, interrupting the class to say that. That’s a raving fan. [Laughter]
FEMALE SPEAKER: I concur with that testimony, by the way.
LESLIE: You concur? Come here.
CARI: While she’s giving her the mic, if that happens to you, give your assistant at the table a heads up. [Laughter]
FEMALE SPEAKER: Cari, I just figured out who you were and I’m like, so excited to meet you. I’ve heard you on the Mastermind calls.
CARI: Oh, wonderful.
LESLIE: Are you in guided? Oh, I thought, how do I know her? Okay gotcha. Okay.
FEMALE SPEAKER: So, I came to know Leslie householder as a result of a mutual friend, I guess. Marnie Pehrson. Is that how you say her name?
LESLIE: Kuhns now, she married. Right, right.
FEMALE SPEAKER: I somehow met Marnie when I had a radio show years ago and then somehow through Facebook, I met Leslie, and had phoned her for quite a while, and I was like, I’ve read her books and I was absolutely amazed at the metaphor and how easily it was to assimilate into my brain, and then she offered something late last year, earlier this year, and it was six-month course or something ridiculously affordable, and I got started digging into that course and I can, with tears in my eyes, and like, a quiver in my voice, I can tell you that I have paid more for a lot less than what Leslie will give you, and she really, really, over delivers on everything and it’s information that is absolutely life-changing.
CARI: Thank you.
LESLIE: Thank you. [Applause] it’s been really fun to turn that material, that the Mindset Mastery course has been around since 2008, and just this last year we’ve created a guided version of it, you know, it’s always been independent study before, but now we’ve got someone that guides people through it, and I wasn’t ready to do that because I was feeling spread so thin, but God sent people and it helped hearts change, and got us to a place where our team was ready to start providing that, too, as an establishment. You know, we could do one offs, but we just weren’t equipped to create an establishment out of that service.
Number 7: Hold Back and Listen When You Have an Opportunity to Sell to Someone – I want to give you an example: Cari and I were at an event, actually, Dawn was there too. We were at an event and it was an expo, we had our table with books, and a woman came up to us, who was a raving fan, and she just hung out at our table for a long, long time. And before we knew it she was sitting behind the table selling books for us. And, she just kind of found her way in there and she was really good at selling. Really good at selling. But, it was weird because it wasn’t the way we do it, and so we’re watching this, and people are coming by and she’s standing up and she’s talking to him about it, and just telling how amazing this book is and what it did for her, and blah-blah-blah. Which you’d think would be really awesome to have, right?
So, I’m letting this play out because I didn’t know, I didn’t know how this would go and I was willing to find out. And I left to do something, probably to go speak, I don’t know. And it was feeling a little uncomfortable because it was reminding me of a time where we had hired two salesmen to help us sell our Mindset Mastery program, and they were good salesmen, but they misrepresented the work because they hadn’t been through it, they didn’t know what was in it, they just assumed they knew. And so, they sold a lot and we ended up having to issue a lot of refunds because people were like, this isn’t what I bought, you know, or, this isn’t what I thought I was ordering. And so, I was a little bit hesitant of that energy that she was bringing to my table. And so, Cari, she, [laughs] she’s like, “Oh honey, we’re not here to sell books.”
And she looked like, “Whaat?”
Right, you know? ‘Cuz, we’re at a book table, at an expo, talking to people, and she thought our goal was to sell books, and it was not.
She said, we’re not here to sell books. We’re here to listen. We’re here to listen to people and see what they need. And if we have something that will help them, we’ll offer it to ‘em, but that’s why we’re here. And she looked confused, but that’s part of my brand. I want to listen, I want to hold back. You think about those of you who have read The Jackrabbit Factor and those who haven’t, there’s a part in there where a man is saying, like, imagine you have a bathroom key at a gas station and to everyone who comes through the door, you’re trying to give him that bathroom key because everybody needs to use the bathroom, right? Here, you need a bathroom key. No, I don’t need it right now. Everybody needs to use the bathroom.
You don’t want to be that kind of a salesperson. If they need it, they will find you. If you are obvious that you have it, then you’re not going to have to sell them on taking it. Dating. Imagine if you’re at an expo, and it’s like dating, and you’re asking someone to marry you at the first meeting. You got to build a relationship. You’ve got to listen.
What does it look like? The perfect courtship, ladies? The perfect courtship would be someone who listens to you. Someone who gets to know you, someone who finds out what you’re about, what your needs are, whether or not you’re a good match for those needs. Take the time, have the faith and confidence in the principles so that you can approach your sales with that kind of peace of mind. All right, so, why are we afraid to do this? It’s because we are afraid that if we don’t do something, nothing will happen. But I have a belief that, as long as I hold the vision of where I’m going or what I want to accomplish, and I’m creating an establishment, God is going to bring those people who need it. If he can depend on me to provide a service that will help his children, he will bring people to me. And it’s one contact, one connection at a time.
You know, if you’re clear on your vision and you have that belief, then, when you’re in the elevator you’re going to know or know not to open your mouth to that person. It’s that intuition that kicks in when you’re clear. So, how many of you saw this guy in Jamaica? [Music] So, I want to know… let me see if this’ll get back to here… okay, good. Notice how he is selling his services like a good date. His money bucket is behind him. You can’t, you will if I kept playing it, you turn and it’s behind him a bit, but if you are going to be a raving fan of a street performer, what are some of the qualities of that performer? Warmth? Do they love what they’re doing?
That is the thing that makes me most attracted to street performers, is someone who loves what they’re doing and you can see them just enjoying it. Now, do you enjoy your work that way?
Number 8: Let yourself enjoy the work you do in that way, so that you can convey that kind of energy.
Number 9: Shock and Amaze People – Who Do you want to shock and amaze? Let’s shock and amaze your happy customers. Go above and beyond.
I have a woman in my coaching program. She paid me $3,000 for three months to coach her, and through the course of the program, I recognized that she has a service that I think would be really amazing to provide to my subscribers. She didn’t sign up for coaching to get access to my subscribers, but when I saw that what she had was something I wanted to offer, I told her, I said, “You know what? Let’s get you ready, because I want to introduce you to my readers.” She was shocked and amazed that that would be a part of that, and it’s not all the time, but because it fit, and I could, I was happy to do that. Also she renewed for another three months.
But, upset customers, we want to shock and amaze our upset customers.
Dawn Norton shared a comment in our Mindset Mastery group. She said, she was talking about a company that she had had some bad experience with. She said, “I emailed the company and they started off by apologizing for not communicating well, explaining that there was a backorder and they wanted to offer me a free product. I excitedly chose one. Then they informed me that half the order would still be on backorder, so I could choose another free product. Yes, I’ll take the new product. They gave twice the amount of products I ordered to correct the issue. I never would have asked for that but, boy, was I impressed. Great example for my future business endeavors.”
So, shock and amaze, both.
Number 10: Never let a positive comment go to waste. Capture all your good feedback. Work it into your social media schedule. Follow Trim Healthy Mama on Facebook to see how they effectively do this. I’m only barely doing what they teach right now, it’s good stuff, but I still tell everybody about it because they’re so good at what they do, helping people be healthy.
Never let a negative comment go unresolved, Number 11.
This is an actual comment from a reader:
“Why promise a free copy of a book but don’t deliver? I’m ticked off.”
And so, I got working with him and communicating with him as a human being, from one to another in consciousness, and I told him that “I also unsubscribed you from my newsletter because I can tell you didn’t really want this,” whatever. He’s like, “No! I would like to be on your system. I got what I wanted and now I want more of it. I hope it’s within your means to assist me. Wishing you only the best and may you be blessed in all your endeavors. Kind regards, Goya.”
It’s turning someone who is feeling angry with you, into a raving customer.
So Number 12: Like your audience, your prospects, and your customers. Don’t worry about being liked, just like them. If you’re in front of a group, worried about what they’re thinking, you can just intentionally look at them with love in your heart as your brothers and sisters on this planet, like them and they will feel it, they will feel the difference, they will feel that impression of increase that Wallace Wattles talks about.
I recently started making my podcasts available on more platforms including YouTube. While I’ve had about 100,000 listens on other platforms, some of the episodes haven’t been played much, like, maybe 24 listens on YouTube. Some people might be embarrassed by that, “Oh, there’s only 24 listens. What are people going to think when they see only 24 listens on this?”, and I’ve decided that rather than being embarrassed by that, I can focus on the one person who might not hear it anywhere else. I checked my ego at the door and I say, “I don’t care how it appears, I am serving the one.” That is what Jesus did. That is one way I like the people I serve.
And this last tip I’m going to share with you today is, Number 13: Be Different.
So, I got an email from a woman once and she said, “Hi, my name is Elhan, and I’ve just finished translating your book, The Jackrabbit Factor into Persian. I am from Iran, and I wondered if you can provide me the high-resolution image of the cover because we’re publishing it.”
What are you thinking? I read that, I’m like, well that’s bold, you know. [Laughter] And I took a minute, and instead of reacting emotionally, like, “How dare you? You know you should get permission. Like, what, how do you not know this?” Something told me to stop-and-go research the culture. Copyright laws are not a thing. Iran is publishing all the best books, all the best books, all the books that they think will sell. They’re publishing them in Persian to the Iranian people. Without permission.
And, when I decided how to respond to that, my thought was, number one: that is a market that I will never access anyway, the government may or may not approve it because all the things that they publish have to go through government approval, and I’m like, if they do publish The Jackrabbit Factor in Iran, [this part available in audio only]… but, it’s an allegory, so maybe they don’t, maybe they won’t recognize that. So, I said “Sure, here’s the high-resolution image.” And I looked for the principle. Will it help people? Could it help someone in Iran who wouldn’t otherwise have access to it anywhere else? It changed my life, maybe I could change someone’s life over there, and I’ll never know. I may never know, I should say.
I said yes. I say yes when I can. Sometimes I can’t, but I say yes when I can. I made a friend. We’re connected on Instagram now. It expanded my reach and it opened the door for more raving fans. I’ve just figured out that as long as I keep giving, I don’t have to sell.
Yes, I sell, but I don’t feel like a salesperson. Does that make sense? The right people bubble up and it’s my raving fans who join me in my more expensive programs. Imagine being able to provide your advanced trainings only to people who already love you. You don’t have to prove anything, you just get to serve them more intimately and extensively. So, if you want to see how I build raving fans with my books from the start to finish, go to rarefaith.org, go request one of the books, and then just watch what I do. With that, thank you for listening, and have a great week.
FEMALE SPEAKER: So, something else that happens when you have raving fans, you get invited to come on cruises likes this, which is really awesome, right? ‘Cuz I’m a raving fan of hers and I invited her out, and now you guys get to all come and have fun with the amazing Leslie Householder.
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This concludes today’s episode of the Rare Faith podcast. You’ve been listening to Leslie Householder, author of The Jackrabbit Factor, Portal to Genius, and Hidden Treasures: Heaven’s Astonishing Help With Your Money Matters. All three books can be downloaded free, at ararekindoffaith.com. So, tell your friends, and join Leslie again next time, as she goes even deeper into the principles that will help you change your life.
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