Best-selling author, leadership speaker, and entrepreneur Mark Sanborn talks about the many Freds in his life, and covers topics like internalizing responsibility, making a “signature difference”, the tips to delivering an "elevated experience", practicing A.B.C.D., and how you can be seen as an absolute ARTIST, no matter what your job is.

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Be extraordinary. Turn ordinary actions into remarkable results at MarkSanborn.com.

Mark Sanborn

Be extraordinary. Turn ordinary actions into remarkable results at MarkSanborn.com.

Mark Sanborn

Are you in for an absolute treat, we have one of the

world's most brilliant and premier thought leaders as a

guest on today's show. Mark Sanborn is one of the world's

most sought after experts in leadership and customer service.

Mark is in the professional speakers Hall of Fame. He's an

international best selling author of seven books, including

The New York Times bestseller, The Fred factor, which has sold

over a million copies worldwide. Mr. Mark Sanborn, thanks for

being with us.

Thank you, sir. appreciate the kind words.

Yeah, so tell us for those people who don't know who is

Fred, and why does he matter to us?

Fred is a real life postal carrier here in

Denver, Colorado, who takes that ordinary job of putting mail in

a box and makes it truly extraordinary. I mean, the guy

is an artist at creating value for his postal route customers,

or relationship building, and just kind of reinventing what

most people would think would be a pretty dull or redundant or

dead end job. And the point of the matter is, is that if Fred

can reinvent delivering the mail, if he can take a very

simple job and make it extraordinary, then you're I

have no excuse for taking whatever work we do and adding

more to it and doing it differently so that it adds

value to the lives of the people around us. The premise of this

book is how do you keep that momentum going, you know, how do

you sustain it, when, in reality, you don't always get

appreciated or recognized or rewarded for doing a great job.

If we lived in a perfect world, maybe you would. But as I've

talked to people over the years, occasionally, they'll utter some

of the saddest words you'll ever hear. And those are the words I

used to somebody will say, Well, you know, I used to do that. But

then I got burnout, or I used to do that. But I got taken

advantage of. And I think so often people end up putting the

locus of responsibility outside themselves. But what I find is,

is that people that do the extraordinary, they don't do it

necessarily for recognition or compensation. That usually

follows it often does. But at the end of the day, you do it

because A, it's the right thing to do. Be because you can and

see because it ultimately enriches your own life. And

that's really what the Fred factor is about.

One of the things that you you wrote about Mark, which I

love is called your signature difference.

Well, we all have an opportunity to make a

positive difference every day. But the question is, are you

able to add your own unique signature to that difference you

make and what are the great examples is giving someone

encouragement is a difference that we're all pop, we're all

capable of making in the lives of those around us. But a man I

met many years ago named Fred Stork is a world class gardener

and he loves roses. So when he encourages somebody, he sends

him one of his award winning roses. Or if someone's facing a

difficult time, they'll send him a bouquet of his rose. And so he

adds that unique factor. I'm a gardener, I love roses, but I

also like to make a positive difference. So the question I

always ask people is, what is your unique factor? Where are

your talents and passions overlap with the job that you

do? So that you can add kind of a flourish that makes it unique

to you in the book, I talk about a restaurant owner, may Wiggins

who in in the Deep South, who hugs her customers now, you

know, not all of us could get away with hugging our customers.

But she's the kind of woman that just delights people with her

warmth and hospitality. So that's her signature difference.

Sure, that is so powerful, just that uniqueness is nothing

other than where your talents and your passions overlap, where

they where they intersect, that leads to an elevated experience.

How do you know if you really hit the mark, of delivering an

elevated experience for your customers?

In the book I talked about four ingredients,

but there's one that's key. And I say, first of all, you know,

any experience has to deliver value. The second thing and

elevated experience, AWS has an element of surprise. And it's a

good surprise, you know, it's not an unpleasant surprise, like

you expected, wait 10 minutes and waited an hour. But after

you've figured out a way to pleasantly surprise people, the

key is is that they leave happier. And I think in

business, we often look at what we did, and how the person

responded, but we missed the point. And that is an elevated

experience elevates your moods. So the NBA is a little bit

happier than you started the transaction or the interaction.

And when people leave happier, the great thing is an elevated

experience gets them to tell others and they don't just say,

you know, oh, here, here's a place that you might consider

when you need new tires. They say things like Man, you've got

to go to Bob tire you wouldn't believe what they do or in real

life. A Les Schwab Tire you know, Les Schwab has been a

client of mine. They know that one of their their signature

differences is they run out to greet you hear car, I mean they

literally run out to the parking lot and greet you before you get

out.

That is so cool. I mean, it's such a simple idea but how,

like how warm and inviting so simple, I love it. So for

everyone listening What is one thing that you think that we

could do today to start implementing the power of Fred?

Well, here's one simple idea, but it's very

powerful if you do it and that is when somebody makes a request

of you today, whether it's a colleague, or a customer or a

client, or maybe even your spouse and this works, you know,

at home because truth is transferable. Lots of people

read the book who don't have traditional marketplace jobs,

they still get value because they use these principles with

their their spouses and their their kids. That is practice

ABCD. Ask yourself, What can I do to go above and beyond the

call of duty? What's that little bit extra? If somebody asks you

for five minutes of your time, give him 10 minutes and go a

little more in depth. Somebody asked you how to get somewhere,

walk with him and show him.

Mr. Mark Sanborn, thanks for being with us.

Thank you, sir.