The real reason your clients don’t stick around has to do with decisions and decisiveness.
Why Decisions Matter
This is something that the more people you get to meet who are high performers, you realize what everyone is in the business of is decisions. And being decisive is the differentiator between the successful and the unsuccessful, because there’s so many decisions to make for every single thing we do.
The strategy that we’re putting into place, the strategy for this podcast, is a whole litany of decisions that we had to make to get here.
So now how does this apply? Why are we even talking about decisions? Of course we have to make decisions.
The Paradox of Choice
You may have heard about the paradox of choice. Having too many decisions to make will instantly make us sort of tighten up and not make any decision whatsoever. Also known as analysis paralysis.
And so that’s the big thing—as service providers, as content creators, as whatever it is, we need to be decisive for the people who are paying us.
How many decisions do you think you make on average each day when you have so many businesses and companies that you are running?
So we have MAVEN together. I have SPYR, my brand agency. I have Kidney Stone Diet, which is all about kidney stone prevention. And then The Minimalists are a really close partner in everything that we do as well.
So helping them with things, and then a few other things. Those aren’t our clients—those are our direct business arrangements and business partnerships. So there are a lot of decisions to make all the time.
I don’t have an answer for how many. I don’t even want to estimate because when you make a lot of decisions, you don’t consider your decisions.
Do you ever hit a decision wall?
Oh yeah.
When Decision Fatigue Hits
Where do I hit my wall for decisions? It’s ancillary things. It’s the same things where I’m just like “I don’t know, I don’t care.”
Like dinner. We literally were just talking to somebody that we just saw yesterday about this, where it’s like I have a million different decisions. The last thing I want to have to think about is something kind of stupid like that.
To us, dinner doesn’t matter. Maybe it matters to you because you love dinner—it’s your family time, you get to cook. And our food quality matters. That is what I make the decisions on. That’s where our decision starts and ends.
But exactly what we’re eating right now, at what time—that’s the decision we don’t need to make and we don’t want to make.
Decisiveness Versus Rudeness
This is the thing—we confuse decisiveness with rudeness and optionality with kindness. But being decisive is the opposite of rude. It’s actually being kind to someone.
Giving a bunch of options for someone else to choose from—I would say is rude because you’re giving them an assignment.
If I reach out and I say “Oh, would you like to get coffee?” and then you say “Sure,” and I say “When do you want to go and where should we go?” and you say “I don’t know”—this sounds like your problem.
Because it is. Because I’m the one asking for your time. And this sounds so silly to have to talk about, but I know to a lot of people it feels like “I would love to have coffee with you. I will go anywhere, whenever you want.”
But that’s not kindness when we have hundreds of decisions to make probably every single day.
The Research Problem
I get the thought of it as well, because we’re very busy people. People know we’re very rarely home, so they think “Oh, this is a huge service to you. You tell me where we meet, you tell me what time.”
That is the biggest ask because now I’m trying to do so many things at one time. The last thing I want to have to do is do research on a place.
Even with dietary things, then people are like “Oh, well where do you want to go?” And it’s like “We can always figure whatever out. I’ll eat an asparagus plant.” But it’s just one more thing for us to have to think about.
So if you want to see someone, just be like “Does Tuesday at 10 a.m. at XYZ coffee shop work?” And if that doesn’t work, then what do you do?
Start with Small Decision Trees
You want to give—and we’re saying this in a friendship context of reaching out to a friend, but really what we’re applying this to is projecting onto your business and your relationship with customers and clients and potential clients.
Start with the smallest decision tree possible. A tree of options—a decision tree—with one branch.
If you have one branch on your decision tree, like “would you like to grab coffee together on Tuesday at 10 a.m. at XYZ coffee shop on Main Street?”
“Sorry, I can’t at 10, but how about noon?” And that works. Or “Oh, that day doesn’t work for me, but we should definitely find another time.”
Then expand your decision tree a little bit. Don’t say “Oh great, just tell me what works for you.” Say “Oh, that’s no worries, but how about Thursday at noon, or I could even do next Wednesday at 3 p.m.?”
Give a couple options, maybe three. But don’t just suddenly lose sight of the fact that it’s rude to put it on the other person to do it.
And this applies to your business too.
What We’ve Been Up To
This week we filmed with our plumbing company, which is always very fun. We don’t own it, but we don’t film with just realtors. We filmed with them, which was very fun.
I always like watching the progression of people as we film with them more. Camera shyness is a very real thing. I have it and I’ve had it, but now because I’ve done so much instructing on the back end of the camera, I feel like I’m so much more proficient at being on camera now.
And you have a lot of experience. Before we started this, you sort of worked your way through the camera shyness, but you do get better and better.
Watching People Find Their Groove
What I like watching with people that we work with is giving them that confidence to be even better each time on camera. So then it’s like “okay, now you’re doing this”—figuring out different systems that work for certain people.
Some people they can’t move from their spot because they’ll lose their train of thought. That’s how I am. I can’t be doing things while I’m talking on camera because I’ll lose my train of thought.
So I need to be stationary and look straight down the barrel of the camera because I’m trying to remember what I’m saying. I do a lot of art history content, so it’s fact-based and things like that.
So many other people though are so much better when they move through space, and that’s totally fine. It’s just different skill sets.
Long story short, watching everybody that we film with find their groove and us helping them find that—it’s like crack to me. I love it. I’m addicted to it.
The Transformation Process
When someone will be like “I was dripping in sweat and so nervous the first time,” usually what always happens is they’re like “but once I saw the videos, I was like ‘wow, they actually turned that into something.’”
And then the next time they’re less nervous. They’re not not nervous—they’re still nervous to a degree—but each time it’s lesser and lesser.
We find that especially if someone’s very nervous—because it’s natural to be very nervous—but by that third session they’re like old pros. They’re just like “Oh wow, I know exactly what we’re doing. I don’t know what I’m talking about, but I know my topic so well.”
Whether it’s real estate, whether it’s plumbing, or gardening, or whatever it is—I know my topic. I can talk about it, and I know that I don’t have to worry. There’s no gotchas. We’re trying to make it easy.
New Art Acquisition
You can’t see this in frame yet, but you will see it now. We just came from an art fair and got this new piece, which is really fun. It is a black light paint UFO.
Once we get a little black light to put at the base of it, this glows. We found an artist at an art fair who makes these and carves—not just this, he is very impressive in his sculptures, and they’re all wood-based and he has really fun characters.
Our Different Art Tastes
Something that we discovered in talking—I love the art that is truly handmade and you can see it’s very imperfect. The paintings—there’s a painting on the wall you can’t see in frame, but there’s a painting on the wall that has all the touches. It is ripped out of a newspaper. Someone painted on that.
So it has the date, it has all these things that make it real and touchable. But what did we discover about your taste?
I still love that because I love seeing the humanness of it. But because I’ve made art for a very long time, seeing somebody have the technical skill to paint a perfect crisp line—that’ll just do something to me. I think until the end of time.
I love color blocking. I love seeing bold graphic stuff. And when it’s done so well that—turning the human into a machine—I think I always love because it’s like “wow, that’s a very mechanical way that they did that.”
But I do still love the handmade quality of something. But because you come from a very technical, digital design world, if it’s too perfect by hand, it actually doesn’t appeal to me.
The Control Factor
I think it’s purely just painting and graphics. If you can get that perfectly—because I know the amount of control you need to have for that—I think that’s what it is where it’s like “oh, they’ve mastered this. They put in 400 hours to get that perfect line.”
I think I just realized a deeper thing—control. I can make anything that looks crisp and perfect digitally. I am not good at making anything look imperfect. That is a struggle of mine. So that’s what I respect so much.
The way that I create is creating for pixel perfection. I think that’s interesting because you can have the creative vision to create something that is imperfect in perfect ways, but I feel like I lack the ability to create something that has that extra life to it.
How to Apply Decisiveness in Your Business
So how do we apply decisiveness and decision making and reduce decisions for our clients and to make our business a better business?
First, I could talk about our personal business. What we do—with MAVEN we film video content with real estate agents, but also other small businesses. Our niche is real estate, but we realized we need to start articulating that we do organic video marketing.
This is marketing. It’s what we do. It doesn’t matter what the industry is. We just happen to choose real estate.
How We Eliminate Decisions for Clients
With our business, the whole point is that people have us make the decisions for them. So what we do is we literally decide every single thing.
I didn’t realize it until we were talking about this concept—I only have two questions that I ask people:
- Does this date work for you to film? (Or do these dates work for you to film?)
- Are the videos good to post?
That is literally it. You will not hear from me otherwise.
What we do on purpose is we fly to people in their market every third month for two days, and they’re done. All the content is decided ahead of time by Amara. Everything is directed, everything is edited, everything is published. It’s 100% turnkey, zero decisions.
The Questions We Don’t Ask
There are so many different questions I could ask throughout the process:
- Do these questions work for you?
- Does this sound good?
- How are these thumbnails?
- Does this color work for you?
- What do you think of these captions?
- What do you think of this?
- Does this Airbnb work for you?
- Does this neighborhood work?
- What if I post this on Tuesday and then this on Thursday?
- What about this time?
- And then this on May 17?
There are hundreds and hundreds of questions I can ask people, but I only have two. Because why do you need to hear from me all the time? That doesn’t make any sense.
Trust and Expertise
That’s not what people are paying us for. They’re paying for our expertise. And at the end of the day, MAVEN means literally “expert.” So why would I be bothering somebody who already has a million different decisions?
As a service provider, I have to mitigate all decisions for them and not give them anything else to think about.
I literally had somebody text me this week and they’re just like “I didn’t even look through the videos yet, but I trust you.” And I was like “I’m so flattered,” because it is a trust thing where it’s like “well yeah, I’m never going to let you down. That’s not even remotely an option.”
How to Convey Trustworthiness
How do we convey that you can always trust us? If you didn’t listen to last week’s episode, you can look that one up—we talk all about how we convey that you can always trust us and always rely on us through subliminal messaging.
So how can you do that? How can you do that for your clients?
Even just starting before you even meet your client—something obviously that we’re very keen on is your content. How do you communicate “you can trust me, I’ll take all the decisions off your plate, and you can rely on me—I’m very reliable”? How do you communicate all of that and that you are an expert?
Be Decisive from the Start
If I started this episode with “I’m not really sure what we’re going to talk about today, but let’s figure it out,” why would you stick around? They’d be like “No, you figure that out ahead of time. Why are you taking my time?”
You’re here tuning in. You’re paying us with your time to be decisive. You’re here so we teach you something. That’s decisiveness.
Show Your Expertise Through Content
The more you can do that and show that to a potential client, the better. How do you do that in your content?
One of the things that we’re very keen on obviously is education-based content. Showing people that you even know an iota of anything you’re talking about is honestly huge.
Something that you can—showing people that you are the expert in your field. You can do that through storytelling.
Use Success Stories
Showing “okay, I saved”—something I’ve been very big on lately is getting more of the storytelling in people’s content because that’s huge. We learned through stories as a species. That’s what we’ve loved for thousands and thousands and hundreds of thousands of years, and that’s what we’re going to love into the future.
Sharing with people examples of success stories that you’ve had with clients—that’s hugely valuable. And then it shows “oh cool, this person saved their client $20,000, $5,000, 100 bucks”—whatever it is. Money is money.
They showed them that. Therefore, I trust them already because I know they already have a use case like that. They’ve already done this. They’ve proven that this works.
So showcasing that expertise—or even if you haven’t done any transactions (I keep using real estate just because we primarily work with agents), even if you don’t have any transactions, say what you would do. Provide something like that because then you’re showing “oh okay, I am an expert in this.”
Eliminate Ancillary Decisions
If you have a client, how do you eliminate the decisions for them?
In real estate, legally you have to—if you’re on the listing side—you have to show the listing, the seller, all of the offers. You have to legally, I believe. So you’re like—there are certain legal obligations you have as a real estate professional. So you can’t necessarily take away all decisions for the person because you need them to have autonomy, and also legally speaking, you have to.
What you can do though is eliminate any ancillary decisions.
If it’s even just coordinating a date and time, never ask “does this date” or “choose a date and time.” Never be like “oh, when works best for you?” No. You tell them “Wednesday at 10 a.m., we’re going to do this. Does that work for you?”
And if they say “no, I have work” or “no, I hate you,” then you work it out and then you figure it out from there.
Be Decisive About Property Recommendations
Let’s even just look at showing houses. Like “here’s half a dozen homes—what do you like?” Oh my god.
Or if it’s “I think this is good for you because” and “I think this is not right for you because”—that’s being decisive. That’s being definitive. That’s making a decision that furthers their knowledge of “oh, I didn’t think to look at it that way.”
There’s that line between kindness and rudeness. We’re not saying “you don’t want this house,” but we’re saying “I don’t think that one will be right for you because,” and you’re not saying “we won’t go look at it,” but you’re being decisive to say essentially “that might be a waste of your and my time because of these reasons that I’ve experienced in the past.”
Ask the Right Questions
You get to that point too by asking questions—so many questions ahead of time, which I don’t think enough people ask. Enough questions. Directed questions. Decisive questions.
If you are looking at houses and you look at two of them, let’s say, ask sort of an obnoxious amount of questions—not to be annoying for the person. Maybe cap it at 10 or something. But ask the right questions where you can actually get to the heart of what it is.
Not even just “did you like this house?” but “what did you think of X?” Being very specific:
- Did you like the entryway in this house?
- Did you like the basement?
- How did you feel about the carpeting in the bathroom?
Directed, thoughtful questions. We’re not just saying specific. We want decisiveness. We want results. That’s what we pay for, and that’s what people pay us for.
The Investment Factor
And it’s no small sum. People pay us—they invest in what we do because it’s worth it. And why is it worth it? Because we are decisive. We make decisions that are going to help them if they are willing and ready to improve and build their business.
Decisive enough to—you repeat what I say. I will tell you exactly what to say because I’ve taken the time to study all the tape and all the things. You did 4,000 videos just last year alone.
There’s a lot of experience there. And the experience is in organic video marketing to help you get more leads. It’s not to get likes. It’s not to get subscribers. It’s to get leads. It’s the only thing we care about.
Make Decisions in Your Content
A final point that I want to make too, back to the content before you even get your clients—something I wanted to mention too.
A lot of times people feel very overwhelmed with “what’s the first thing a seller should do before they list their home?” A lot of people kind of crash out and just be like “I don’t know, where should they start?” And get really lost in the sauce.
But it’s like “no, no, no—where do you think they should start?” Because you could go all the way back to 10 years old and it’s like “well, save everything from your lemonade stand, then invest it in VTI.” And it’s like—but if you do that, that’s actually decisive.
If you were to say “how do you buy a house? At 10 years old, start a lemonade stand. By 12 years old, you’ll have $2,347. Invest”—that’s decisive.
But what happens is it’s like “what should—what’s the first thing someone should do when they sell a house?” This isn’t for our Top Bananas. This is for just broadly for people who are like “it’s so hard, I don’t even know what to say.”
It’s because you’re like “well, maybe if you—well, I guess if you blah blah blah, you can blah blah blah.” But instead, just decide. Make the decision for them.
“The first thing you want to do? Get pre-approved. Done.”
I don’t care if that’s right for—maybe you don’t want that, maybe you want something else. But if that’s my decision, I made the decision, and the person watching and consuming doesn’t have to decide. They’re like “first thing: pre-approval letter. Got it.”
That’s what we want, and that’s what we pay for.
Simple Implementation
So that’s what you should do for your client. Be as decisive as possible. Just something as simple as date and time—that’s my biggest thing, I think. Just make the decision for them and tell them “we’re going to meet this day and this time. If that doesn’t work, let me know the next best availability for you.”
Don’t even say “send me all your dates and times,” because I’ve run into that too. And it’s like “no, no, no. Just say ‘what’s the next best availability for you?’” They will have to give you one answer. Done. Simple.
Because everybody’s busy. Nobody has time to be messing around with all these dates and times. And then you just get confused also because it’s like “what did I say? What did they say?”
Just make the least amount of decisions on your client as possible, and they will love you forever because you made it so incredibly simple on them.
Nobody knows how many decisions we make for people. And that’s fine—that doesn’t matter. But don’t do that to your client. Don’t make your client think about anything else that they need to think about, because you will stress them out to hell and back.
And to be decisive, I’m ending the episode right now.