Marlana Semenza with Your Iconic Image interviews Frederick Dudek about his book Creating Business Superfans.

Marlana

Frederick Dudek is not turning ideas into millions of dollars in global sales. The award-winning author, speaker and top sales executive spends his time inspiring others to achieve their highest business goals. Now you can receive the benefit of Frederick's mentorship and experience through his book Business Superfans. Welcome, Frederick.

Frederick

Good morning!

Marlana

So first, explain to us what exactly is a superfan? How would you define that?

Frederick

Let's think of a sports team. So, the best way I can explain that is, we've all watched football or European soccer or baseball and stuff, and we'll see the fan that's in there. And it's got their faces painted. They got the jerseys on they got the hats; they got the banners; they got the bumper stickers on their cars. That's a superfan. And, you know, they're enthralled and just energized, and their energy's contagious, and they're promoting their team? And if you think about it, is the sports team paying them for that? No. So are they making money off for their merchandise? Of course.

So, they're getting free publicity. They're getting somewhere that it's talking about the team and all that PR, they're getting other people sucked into the team to watch the team and everything else. So, the idea came about through my sales experience for many, many years was Why can't a business apply the same methodology to create their own superfans for their business to become promoting them? So, you know, there's people talk about brand advocates? Well, you know, I look at it as Okay, brand advocates cool. But a super fan is super cool. Because it's in my mind is supersedes the advocate, because they're in a sense fanatic of the business, and they're going to be promoting it, talking about it telling all their friends and family and everything else.

Marlana

The term ride or die kind of came to mind. So then how do we create these for our business?

Frederick

Well, that's a really good question. Because a lot of people have written books on client retention, client engagement, and all that aspect. But really, if you think about it, that's a silo. Okay, it's strictly about that. Then there's other people that talk about employees and employee motivation, employee retention, and all that stuff. But really, that's another silo. And then nobody talks about the business, what I call business alliance partners, which are complementary businesses that complement one another. Best example I can say, is a painting person and a flooring person, they kind of go together.

So, what I did is, through a multitude of research was that I combined all three, because at the end of the day, all three are intertwined. And that's really the difference. And so business superfans talks about how to engage those, that group of people, which is really how to handle your customers, how to make sure your employees are engaged, how to make sure your business alliance partners are motivated and everything else. Because if you think about it, let's say I'm a painter, and I'm giving the flooring guy a ton of referrals, but they're not going, they're not reciprocated, and a flooring guy's not giving me anything back. After some point in time, I'm gonna say, You know what, this relationship isn't working. It's one sided.

I talk about that kind of stuff. It's the same thing with the employee. You know, Sir Richard Branson says it the best, you know, if you take care of your employees, they'll take care of your customers. So, if you got an employee that's going to do the flooring, the guy that did referred you, the painter to refer to visit and does a poor job, not only does it reflect negatively on your company, but it also reflects negatively on the painter. And so that's the things I talk about is, you know, things to do to motivate people and to engage them but it's a lot more than that. It's not just that part of it. I'm just keeping it short.

Marlana

Is it a different strategy to create these superfans to depending on the category they fall in, whether their business alliance or an employee or customer?

Frederick

yes or no. Because one of the things I did in the book, and here's the cover of the book. I've got to kind of go through some of the chapters. So, one of the chapters is, it all begins with prospecting. So, if you're a new business, how do you go and find new clients? How do you create those relationships with those clients? So that one is focused on really getting business? Because if you don't have business, well, Russ doesn't matter. Right? Then I get into the follow up, why is it super important. And the follow up is with clients as well as employees. So, if you want to make sure that they're doing the things that they need to be doing, either they're motivated and things like that, follow up with them.

Same thing with the business alliance partner, how did the project go? That kind of stuff. So, then we get into, and this is really what I think is really important. One of them is thank you builds a bond of trust. And a lot of businesses forget to say thank you. And people don't say thank you three employees, enough. People don't say thank you for, you know, to their business partners enough. And it's such overlooked, you know, and one of the things I talked about in the book is especially for like the home improvement industry, you know, they're notorious, I mean, we've all had worked on our houses or places, and we never hear from them again. They're gone. I mean, we had a cleaning person that came in, about three or four months ago, we never heard him again, like, they'd never came back reached out and says, Hey, you know, it's been three months. You know, you're interested in having a house cleaned again, zero, nothing. It's mind boggling. So, thank you to me is paramount.

Marlana

Let me ask you something in that, do you think that gratitude and follow up are the same thing, or they're just kind of two sides of a coin?

Frederick

There are two sides of a coin. And I'll talk about gratitude in a moment. Then the other part is, you know, get personal with birthday greetings. You know, it's amazing, you know, birthdays are someone's very important day. And if you acknowledge something, and I had this happen, you know, to where I sent somebody's birthday card, and it was the only card they received. And they contacted me with such emotion that was it was just a blew me away, that they were so grateful that I actually thought of them and sent them a card.

I'm coaching a company right now. And today, at lunchtime, I'm going there, we're celebrating an employee's birthday. And, you know, the owners asked me, well, we wanted to have a business meeting afterwards. I said, Are you nuts? You know, this is a birthday, it has nothing to do business, keep it light, keep it fun, let’s acknowledge the person because as soon as you switch from birthday, okay, now we're gonna have a meeting, you just negated the whole birthday. And they went like, oh, never looked at it that way.

So, that aspect of the other one is creating an environment of appreciation. One of my personal quotes is that people will crawl through broken glass for appreciation and recognition. Tell me I'm wrong.

Marlana

Yeah, and I don't think we get it nearly enough.

Frederick

No, we don't. And it's the little things you acknowledge somewhere in the little things, and they go, Oh, wow, and they'll do more. It's recognizing your customers. It's recognizing your team. It's recognizing a business partner that they did a great job. And so, you recommended them, they killed it on a project. Hey, you know, you just made me look good by doing a great job because I recommended you thanks in oncome grateful you knocked it out. So that's important. And the next one is given them what they crave, recognition. So, if I turn around and say, “John, thanks a lot for the effort that you put in on that stuff.” All right, that's fine. John feels great. If I turn around and say, “Hey, everybody, I want to take a moment and I want to acknowledge John for doing this particular project.” Now, I've done it from everybody. I've edified John. Everybody realizes that I appreciate, and I recognize John So they're gonna go, oh, man, I'm gonna do more so I can get that exposure.

Marlana

You know, it's interesting too, because recently, I know something that happened that I'm even recognizing what somebody brings to the table, or the talent somebody brings to the table, or the skill set that somebody brings to the table. Acknowledging that and recognizing that, really goes a long way, instead of, if you're a business owner, thinking that you made it all by yourself, because nobody makes it all by themselves,

Frederick

It takes a village. Those are a couple of things, thank you, the appreciation, the recognition, it's easy to do cost nothing. And the return on that investment is unsurmountable. So, you know, the next thing I get into here is retention saves you money. And, you know, it's basically, you know, the cost of onboarding, the new customers, phenomenal, you know, in cost. Same thing with employee, I mean, if you think of the revenue that's lost, by losing an employee, not only the lost revenue, you'd lost revenue of training that employee, but you also lost the revenue and productivity of the other employee that's training the new employee that nobody ever thinks about.

That's monstered, it's the same thing, if you have a business alliance partner, and that relationship goes out the door, you know, your general contractor, as an example, and you lose your electrician, and you need an electrician. So now you gotta find somebody gotta make sure to qualify, and all that stuff. And so, your project falls behind the minutes. So, it's important to do things that are going to retain the team that you've got put together. And then I get down to is, go beyond expectations with unexpected extras. And this is something that blows my mind how people don't take the time to do that little something extra.

I'll share a story that I put into the book. That is when I really realized the power of it. And it happened to me, we ordered some food from a restaurant, we lived in a nice condo area, and right across the street as a whole shopping restaurants place that was pretty close. We sold our car for eight months and walked everywhere. I go there to pick up the food, no food. So, the hostess gets the manager, and this was called blah, blah, blah. And he says, okay, I'll take care of, we'll get it. So, they goes, and they make the food comes back in buys. And it says go set the bar or buy a beer while you're waiting because you know, it's a mess up. So soon, no comes back to food. We'll look at the food. And Murphy's law comes in. Not only did the order wasn't done in the first time, one of the orders is wrong. You know, so it's like it's tumbling. And so, I'm sitting there, and he goes, Oh my god, he goes out personally make sure that it's time, so I sit there he goes and gets the food comes back. And he says Hang on a second, he runs back, and he brings back on dessert, or he goes to desserts on us and says okay, how much sorry for the food. And he goes, nothing was completely screwed it up. Matter of fact, he goes, here's a couple of tickets for five hours, two of you two tickets for five hours off for both of you for your next meal. And it was just like, No, that was, you know, the unexpected extra. And we're super fans of that place. We call her all the time, because the food's phenomenal, but the service and that little extra that he did. That means a customer for life.

Marlana

Yeah. And it also seems that by doing that he also showed appreciation to you. So, in doing all of this, it may be obvious, but it may not be. Let's say we have alliances with various people or businesses. At what point do we cut our losses without creating an issue with that business or company? Let's say if we were working, you know as an Alliance Party.

Frederick

Very good question! At some point in time, I would say that probably the best way to do that is to just say that you're going in a different direction. And so, it's a nice subtle way of just saying, you know, I'm changing my business model a little bit, and someone would be going in another direction. And I appreciate all your efforts.

Again, appreciate you're grateful for the partnership and stuff. But you know, I need to grow, and the growth is taking me to a different direction. And people will appreciate that and understand that, and therefore you've got burned that bridge, you've just simply said, Hey, I'm going into another direction. And our partnership, I value it, but it's not going to go where I'm going.

Marlana

I'm going to use the word confront, but that's not really what I mean. Does it ever benefit us to speak to them about, you know, listen, I've referred 25 people to you, and I've gotten nothing about that.

Frederick

Yes, I completely understand that. I would say that in my experience in the past, I would kind of see what's happening, and have a conversation about their business. I had a reseller that I worked with a long time ago that weren't selling a lot of our products. And so, I flew out, visited them and asked, you know, what's going on? How's your business? Simply just asked, I was cognizant that we get periodic sales, but is there a different focus? And it turned out that their business was really in a different direction. And they had our product, as if somebody asked for it, they wanted to be able to say that they hadn't, but it turned out that that really wasn't their focus.

So, at that point in time, after a while, I didn't do it on that point, but I just said we're going to go in a different direction. Continue where you're going, I wish you much success, but I need to make some changes, and they understood, because I handled it. It wasn't confrontational, it was businesses going, we're going differently, and you're going differently. And so, wish you all the success, and I support you, but I got to do things too.

Marlana

does it benefit us in the beginning to have conversations with whomever it is, whether it be a Business Alliance, or an employee, or to set expectations of this is what I expect to give you. And this is what I expect in return?

Frederick

I think so. Because then you're both walking into the relationship knowing what each other is expecting. And, you know, I had in the past, I set up about 60, resellers around the world, and different cultures, different languages, and all that stuff. But one of the things I always did was, okay, here's what we're going to do. And I'd spend time with them, and how are you going to market our service? How are you going to market our relationship? And during turn date and asked me, how are you going to support us. And so, we defined what it was. So, both of us knew what each other was expecting. And that's what really took the sales for this particular product from zero to about 3 million nets to the company in less than a three-year period. So, it's about 6 million in street sales. But it was because of that we talked about strategies that they could be doing and then, you know, they asked, okay, what kind of collateral are we going to be providing them? And is it going to be localized and in their language and stuff like that? So, yes, it's very important to have those type of conversations with your business lines, partners.

Marlana

So, tell us about some of the resources in the book.

Frederick

Well, some of the things in resources, what's unique about the book, is it's not a book that you just read and say, Okay, thanks, great Facebook, and it sits there on a shelf for the next 20 years. It's designed to be a reference book. So, it's not only telling you about why you need to be doing those things, but then this chapter tells you what to do, how to do it, and the tools to use to do it. So that's where I really made a difference because everybody Got a whole bookshelf of a multitude of books.

I looked at all of them and how many have I gone back to, you know, pretty much none. Like my bookshelf. I read them. So, I did that. And each chapter, there's areas into the book, where we talk about, for example, networking, and then there's steps to hear, you know, are you multisession at that level, blah, blah, blah. Then at the end of each chapter, what's really unique about the book is you have the ability to rate yourself on that particular chapters topic from a zero to a 10.

Marlana

And you have an accelerator community and a podcast. Tell us about those things too.

Frederick

Yeah. Well, the podcast is going to be launching looking at probably September on it. So, I'm still getting all the components put together. And I want to talk about the intent of the podcast, is to talk about people that have implemented different things to the book and bring in experts and technology people as well, to talk about, you know, how they've implemented the things to create their superfans, as well as since my background is in the software industry. bringing in people in a software is okay, how is your particular software app going to help businesses create their own team of superfans? It might be accounting software, it could be a customer relationship software, it could be HR, human resources software, marketing software, etc.

So, I want to be able to be talking about those tools, how they work, how to apply them, and people that have utilized that kind of stuff, and what the results are. So that's the intent of the podcast, and the business superfans accelerator community, I'm in the process of putting that together. And the intent is, okay, you read the book, what are you doing about it? So, it's kind of an accountability. And it's going to be kind of a community to where people can interchange ideas. And then, you know, some people will have access to me personally, for coaching, or group coaching on a particular day for an hour, hour and a half, via video, and he'll Okay, Johnny, what have you done, Suze? What have you done? And that kind of stuff, and really help build people and create my own team of super fans that are out there, growing their businesses and promoting this book and stuff like that.

Marlana

So, let me ask you this, if people don't get anything out of this podcast, or out of the book, except one thing, what do you think the most important thing to get out of it is?

Frederick

The most important thing to get out of this is to, I would say, appreciate and recognize people because like I said earlier, people will crawl through broken glass for that. And I think that that's overlooked. People take especially managers in organizations and business owners. Some of them have the mindset, well, you know, I gave them a job. And it's like, do it, or do that, you know, no employees, you got no business. Hello! I got to put it bluntly, and I think that that's overlooked. In a lot of cases, we end up taking things for granted, just like we do in our personal relationships, we think things we get to the point where things are expected or taken for granted.

You've got To express recognition and appreciation, even if you've been together with somebody for 10/20 years, it's still important.

Marlana

Yeah. And I think people forget that that even though this is business, these are still relationships. And so, you are going to get out of it what you put into it. And if you just like in any romantic relationship, if it's one sided, and it's all about you, that person is not going to stick around very long.

Frederick

That's what I said. I'd say that that's the two most important. And then on top of that, which is the last chapter is gratitude. Be grateful. Be grateful and express gratitude. When someone does something, take a moment to not only appreciate them, but just tell them you're grateful. You know, they made an impact. They did something for you. And we overlook gratitude.

Marlana

Agreed! Couldn't agree more. Okay, with that, my friend, I just have four final questions for you. First one, what is the best piece of advice you're ever given?

Frederick

In my first job I was a gas station attendant back in the day where the pump gas clean the windshield, check the oil. And I met a guy, I recognize them in a book. He taught me and gave me a pamphlet, which I still have 40/50 years later, that was about reading books and certain books to read. And I read them all, you know, the Thinking Grow Rich, and The Magic Of Thinking Big and all that stuff. And it completely changed my life.

Marlana

Would you consider yourself a lifelong learner?

Frederick

Yeah, yep!

Marlana

Share with us one thing on your bucket list.

Frederick

Get a nice big boat, and I'm looking at a solar powered boat, possibly, and cruise around and visit at least 30 to 60 more countries. So, I like to get as close to 100 before I say all of LA

Marlana

Do you have it mapped out yet? Your route?

Frederick

Start on the Caribbean because I haven't been there, done all of Europe. And I've done some of Asia, Australia and New Zealand's that area. So far, I haven't done any of the Caribbean. So, I want to hit the Caribbean first. And then a little bit of some South America and then go from there.

Marlana

Nice! So, when the toy companies finally get around to making an action figure of you, what two accessories will it come with?

Frederick

A laptop and a camera?

Marlana

Perfect! And last one, how do people find you? How do people get the book?

Frederick

they can find me at either frederickdudek.com. Or you can go to businesssuperfans.com. And the book can be purchased on Amazon as well as Apple books as an e book and a multitude of other eBook places. But if they want a physical copy, Amazon is the place to go. And there's a promotion right now going on for 99 cents for the book on Amazon. And if anybody buys the book, and joins the community, they will get three months of free coaching by me.

Marlana

Very nice! Well, thank you so very much for being here and sharing all your expertise.

Frederick

Thank you as well. I appreciate the opportunity to be here.