The "Epic" Buyer Experience with Adam Boxman

Elevate your client's journey to epic proportions with the wisdom of Adam Boxman, our insightful guest who unravels the secrets to crafting unforgettable customer experiences.  Discover how to listen deeply and personalize every interaction, turning each client connection into a story worth retelling.  As we peel back the layers of customary service, we uncover the art of thoughtful gifting and the missteps of generic gestures.

Our conversation shifts to the relationship between trust and memorable service, drawing on his own past experience in the restaurant industry.  Picture a server who knows just the right dish to recommend, akin to a real estate agent who can expertly navigate the vast market for their client.  It's this level of personalized guidance that cements relationships and sparks word-of-mouth referrals.  We delve into the responsibilities of guiding our clients clear of pitfalls and the impact of these 'epic' moments on garnering repeat business.

To cap off the episode, a heartfelt thanks are extended to Adam for his invaluable contributions and an open invitation for future visits to the show.  As we ask our audience to engage with us on social media, we also sign off with a personal note of gratitude.  Keep your Thursday evenings free at 7 pm to join us for more casual discussions that blend the essence of real estate with the realities of life. 

"We all want to have an Epic Experience when WE are the Customer.  What does it take to make this happen for OUR Customers?  Are you creating an Epic Experience in your business?  Adam Boxman breaks down a simple way of determining whether an experience is "Epic" or NOT.  You'll want to take notes on this episode!"  - Brad Weisman 

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Welcome to The Brad Weisman Show (formerly known as Real Estate and YOU), where we dive into the world of real estate, real life, and everything in between with your host, Brad Weisman! 🎙️ Join us for candid conversations, laughter, and a fresh take on the real world. Get ready to explore the ups and downs of life with a side of humor. From property to personality, we've got it all covered. Tune in, laugh along, and let's get real! 🏡🌟 #TheBradWeismanShow #RealEstateRealLife #realestateandyou

Credits - The music for my podcast was written and performed by Jeff Miller.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:24

from real estate to real life and everything in between, the brad weisman show and now your host, brad weisman. All right, we are back in the studio and I'm so glad. I'm always loving being in the studio. How about you, hugo? Yeah, I love it. Yeah, so do I.

Speaker 2: 0:42

It's fun, right, that's right except for when stuff doesn't work right.

Speaker 1: 0:46

Special guests. Yes, we do have a special guest today. Actually, this guest is not just special, he's epic.

Speaker 2: 0:52

Oh man, let me just say that he's epic, no pressure.

Speaker 1: 0:54

Yeah, no pressure at all. We got Adam Boxman here. He is the creator of the Epic Homebuyer Experience, but it's going to go into many of the things, not just homebuyers. So if you're listening to this podcast and you're like, hey, you know what I want, I want to know more about just any kind of business, you can use what you're going to hear today in every single business that's out there. So, without me delaying anymore and talking about this person next to me, adam Boxman, how are you doing?

Speaker 2: 1:19

Man, I am very happy to be in this beautiful space with you guys, man, thank you, thank you for having me in this beautiful place.

Speaker 1: 1:25

Well, thanks for making the drive to hear here, cause a lot of times people will you know they'll cop out and they'll do the streaming thing.

Speaker 2: 1:34

But when you're in the studio. That's when you get to see Hugo a hundred percent and that makes it worth it Right. Right A hundred percent.

Speaker 1: 1:38

Yeah, exactly Nobody comes to see me. So let's talk about this epic thing. How you know, I'm seeing even t-shirts with this on. I mean, I saw in the Keller Williams family reunion there was a couple of people wearing the Epic t-shirts and all these things. Where did this come from? Where does Epic home buyer experience come from?

Speaker 2: 1:55

It's just a mindset. I think Epic doesn't mean okay, we create the perfect scenario and we're teaching everybody to do something exactly the same way, right. What I think it is is, if you're working with somebody new, a new client, a new customer, someone you really want to impact in a positive way, why not make it as Epic as possible for that person from the moment you start working with that person? Yeah, and so Epic just is a mindset that says, either working with you is going to be awful, which we don't want- that's a bad thing.

Speaker 2: 2:24

Right, or it's going to be forgettable to the point where, when they need you again, they forget all about you, or you can give them an experience in me it's been real estate, but in any business you can give them an experience, from the moment you start with them, that they're never going to forget but also believe that they have a trusted person that is committed to them just as much as they're committed. So Epic is just about making it special for an individual so that you can create a lasting relationship.

Speaker 1: 2:50

And special is not the same for all people. Oh man, that's the thing too. It's listening, it's figuring out what is special to them, because what's special to me is different than what's special to you, right?

Speaker 2: 3:04

Yeah. So automation, I think, is great in some instances and will fail you in other instances. So the automation of the same gift for the same person or the same situation for everybody doesn't personalize for the person that you're with and I think too often in all service businesses, especially in real estate, we try to create this automatic system that is going to impact everybody individually all things to all people 100 yeah uh, especially in the buying side of real estate.

Speaker 2: 3:34

Um, you really need to get to know who people are if you really want to impact them, and it starts with listening, like you said yeah, so if a couple likes beer, give them beer instead of wine, right?

Speaker 2: 3:45

yeah, so that's exactly right. And it doesn't you don't know until you actually have a plan to sit down with people, regardless of your business. So for me in real estate, it's sitting down with a home buyer and really knowing how I'm going to impact that home buyer specifically. Right, Because everybody's different. Yeah, Everybody comes to you if you're in a service business and they're all different people. And until you can actually sit down with people and learn how they're impacted and who they are and what they love and what they don't love, how in the world can we just help them in the same way we help everybody?

Speaker 1: 4:20

Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2: 4:21

And I think um it takes listening. You're right.

Speaker 1: 4:24

I guess that's why they offer you when you get a filet. Do you want it medium, medium, well, do you want it rare? You want a medium rare, you know? I mean, imagine if we all went to somewhere and they made us the same damn steak every single time. Yeah, I'd be. If you know what's funny, I would think I didn't like steak if it was always rare. Uh, think about it like. I like my steak medium hugo. What about you?

Speaker 2: 4:41

that's true, no, that's a good point.

Speaker 1: 4:42

You know, I'm saying Like if I went to a restaurant and it was always rare I'd be like, well, I don't like steak, but no, it's just not the temperature that I like it at.

Speaker 2: 4:49

Well, how about this? Like for me, in real estate, people buy knives.

Speaker 1: 4:53

Yes, cutco knives are awesome. Cutco's are great knives. I love Cutco knives.

Speaker 2: 4:57

I'm a chef. I come from the restaurant I have some that are 30 years old for a client that has never been in their kitchen, worked in their kitchen or even touched anything in their kitchen. Am I helping? Am I doing anything for that person?

Speaker 1: 5:10

And the next time you see them, they might look like this Right, because they had no idea what they were doing. Yes, exactly.

Speaker 2: 5:15

For me, it's about finding out, instead of spending whatever I'm spending on that Cutco knife, it's actually saying what actually is going to impact this person's life, that's going to help them, that they're going to say, wow, that person listened to me. And in real estate, we haven't done that for a long time.

Speaker 1: 5:35

I think in any business we're not doing that enough. And the more we automate things, the more social media comes into our lives, the more everything's computerized. We tend to stop listening. We tend to put thing people in categories, whether it be age group, whether it be male female, whether it be age group, whether it be male female, whether it be whatever it is. We put them in these categories and we say, okay, I know how to deal with them because they're this age and they're female. Yep, now I know exactly what they like.

Speaker 2: 5:58

And that's not true. And what we don't do is that we just, whenever we're in conversations with anybody, we actually are sitting there staring at somebody, most of the time contemplating what we're going to say next, instead of actually listening to the person and how we're impacting that person. And in all businesses, if you don't listen to the person, you walk away thinking the conversation went great, when that person has no idea who you are and you don't know who that person is, and most of the time it just takes listening and actually taking great notes.

Speaker 2: 6:32

So for me, if you're sitting down with a new customer and you're taking notes while the person's talking to you, the what you're giving back to that person is that you're listening to them and it's important what they're saying. And, by the way, you can actually find other opportunities later in life or later in the situation with them to connect.

Speaker 1: 6:49

Yeah, absolutely, and connecting is what it's all about. You know, John Maxwell says. You know, we all know how to communicate, but few know how to connect. We saw John. John was amazing. Right, he's incredible.

Speaker 2: 7:00

You got to do the did, and that's what I got from that.

Speaker 1: 7:01

He's incredible. So, moving on, so tell me me, so epic came from. You had an experience, uh, before real estate, yep, which was in the, in a service business? Yep, and it was restaurant business. Tell me how you went from restaurant to real estate yeah.

Speaker 2: 7:14

So I was blessed to find my high school sweetheart and marry my high school sweetheart I met her.

Speaker 1: 7:19

She is a sweetheart man. She is jackie, right, yeah, jackie yeah.

Speaker 2: 7:23

So I met jackie when we were teenagers and we went to college together, got jobs out of college and our lives were set like. I was working for marriott big company oh nice, she was working for johnson and johnson another company. We were buying, we bought it, we were buying a home and um in the process of buying the house. This is the the irony thing where sometimes in life things go negative and you don't realize till like 20 years later there's another experience called the crappy experience, which is what he's going to talk about.

Speaker 1: 7:51

That's right.

Speaker 2: 7:52

So in this instance, if you think about a horrible experience that happened to me ended up being one of the best things that ever happened to me in my life, and that happens where you think something's horrible and then all of a sudden it becomes the greatest thing. So in our experience buying our first house, we had a less than stellar representation. We were basically the deer in headlights that were excited about buying our first house but no idea what we were doing, and then we're turned into a transaction.

Speaker 1: 8:19

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 8:20

And went through the process of buying our first house and realizing that it was such a horrible experience and I thought, man, if that guy can be successful in real estate and I love client relationships and all the things that I believe in buying a home is one of those big moments in people's lives.

Speaker 1: 8:38

One of the biggest.

Speaker 2: 8:39

And we I've. That person was supposed to be a guide for the biggest moment in my life and could have turned into a lifetime of business if I was his cheerleader for how he handled it, and so when I realized that that guy is successful, what could I do if I left the restaurant business working 90 hours a week? Another bad thing where I lost my mother right after getting married and buying our house, which propelled me even further to say I can't waste any more time in my life. So it was always buyers, though, and buyers were always the thing that mattered to me and always the thing that excited me.

Speaker 2: 9:13

It was never about sales, and so I started early on in my. When I left the restaurant business and got into real estate, I just found out early on that my passion was going to be buyers, and I believe in life. Restaurant real estate world can be a million different businesses, but you can specialize within it and I just found buyers to be my passion.

Speaker 1: 9:34

Yeah, and we said before this, before we went live, what I was thinking about the whole thing and it just kind of hit me was it's interesting because you went from a service oriented business, which is restaurant business, which basically 90% of restaurant which we kind of talked about as service 10% maybe the food, depending on where you go, but usually the service is very important. We can all cook something, yep. But you went into into this business and I swear you really went right into serving buyers because you were serving buyers before. When I go into a restaurant and I asked for a cheeseburger, I'm a buyer, I'm buying a cheeseburger but I'm also buying you and I'm also. How many times have you been in a restaurant?

Speaker 1: 10:06

And my wife and I do this all the time. My wife does it more than me because she has a lot of trust in their opinion. She goes I'm thinking about this with the salmon or the cod, with this, and the lady, the people will usually go. Oh well, you know what? Definitely go with the salmon. My wife will take that recommendation. That is selling. That is, that is trusting the person, your advisor. She was an advocate for my wife because she tasted it already.

Speaker 2: 10:29

Right. I just wanted everybody when I was in the restaurant business I want everybody to leave with, not just saying it was okay, I wanted them to leave saying you have to go there. In the restaurant business, you thrive on people leaving and telling everybody that they have to go there. So when I got into the real estate world, it was always my focus that if they leave the transaction and there's anything other than them wanting to tell everybody about how well I did or how how much effort or how much care or how much that it mattered to me that they were well taken care of, that has propelled me to, 20 years later, getting referrals.

Speaker 2: 11:05

And it just so happens that I believe it's all happened, because I believe referrals come from buyers in real estate because of the feeling of buying a home is the same type of experience of going and having a great feeling at a restaurant or the feeling you have in other big moments in your life. And I've learned that by giving people these experiences from day one that it's propelled me to referrals and repeat business in our business. There's so much quickness to get the person met at the house and you're not thinking about the experience that person's having and I just felt it's. Having a bad experience buying my first house and having a passion for the restaurant business somehow made the puzzle pieces work well. You don't want it to happen to anybody else.

Speaker 1: 11:49

no, especially if this is your industry, you know. You know as much as we're competitive in this industry. We want the industry as a whole to look good, to do the right things for our clients and for our community. So if we're all just kind of saying I'm going to do it for myself or I'm going to do this, that doesn't make sense because it's an actual, it's a business and if we all look bad, we all do bad.

Speaker 2: 12:12

You know what and what else I think we forget is that we're supposed to be the professionals in the business and the experience the buyer has in any other thing in life when they go to a professional. The professional guides them away from the things that are problematic. And in real estate the process over the last three years has gotten harder and harder to buy a home and I think when you, when the consumer, now, when they have the opportunity to meet with somebody and see what the difference is, that person can give them true representation in that initial conversation. That doesn't happen regularly and in real estate it's lost and I'm excited it's coming back.

Speaker 1: 12:50

It is. It is coming back, and I think we're not trying to make a blanket statement here about all realtors either. I mean, there's many, many realtors out there and we're not trying to say that you know. What we're trying to say is that here's what we should be doing as an industry. We should be doing this and doing it better, because really we serve the public.

Speaker 2: 13:07

It's in their best interest. If you think about it like for real estate and the buyer, it is in everybody's best interest to get to know the consultant or the professional that they're trusting. We know better. Every professional knows sometimes what's better than the customer that's coming to them, and so the doctor knows what's better than the customer that's coming to them, and so the doctor knows what's better for the patient than the patient knows, and that's why the person listens to the doctor and the attorney knows the legal case better than the customer. In real estate, the agent does know that meeting a person at a home isn't in their best interest. It's not going to set them off on a good path and a good plan. We just haven't been doing it and we're going to start doing it with the home buyers and now they're going to have the same type of experience.

Speaker 1: 14:04

So we got to do better we got to.

Speaker 2: 14:07

we know what's in their best interest sometimes and we're there to help them.

Speaker 1: 14:11

Yeah, and for listing, we know how to guide them. Which is which is? Which is exactly what it is, absolutely so. You you said it's part of the make it epic. You have three different things that I saw here, with moments that are unforgettable yeah moments that make you smile, yep moments, that moments you have to tell everyone about yeah.

Speaker 2: 14:26

So when I get down to working with a consumer, customer, client, and for me it's real estate. But in any business, there are three results that come from that experience. No matter what and for me, your the experience is either going to be awful and they're never going to come back to you. We avoid that in all in all businesses. Yeah, awful is not good. However, in businesses where you want to get repeat business and referral business, the forgettable experience is just as bad, because if someone, seven years after buying a home with you, doesn't remember it, you're the agent that's fighting for business. So we're going to leave that as something we don't want either.

Speaker 2: 15:05

So I just decided there has to be something that we can describe that will make it so that it's unbelievably positive. Yeah, and epic just somehow came to my mind a year ago. The word epic for me was just something that was like man. It just elicits positivity. So now that I'm teaching about this experience and not saying, well, I'm teaching the epic experience, it's just the mindset of how can you create this experience for your consumer or the for your customer, right? It just decided there's three ways. Something that's epic in my world. It's not the definition. This is what I believe If you want to go into making something Epic. Nothing that's ever been called Epic has ever been forgotten, right? So Epic always is unforgettable. Yeah, like an Epic storm.

Speaker 1: 15:47

Yeah, epic, whatever it is Hurricane.

Speaker 2: 15:49

So but for me, epic the unforgettable experience buying my first house wasn't Epic. So even though it was unforgettable, it wouldn't be something I call Epic. So in sitting down and thinking about Epic, for me, the client has to smile when they think about having the experience with you, working with you, being represented by you, you being their advocate. If they remember it and they smile, you've gotten somewhere. Right now we take it one step further in real estate and any other business, because just because they remember you and they smile doesn't convert that into a lifetime of referrals and repeat business.

Speaker 1: 16:23

It could mean that they think you're a joke.

Speaker 2: 16:24

Yeah, I mean, I've been to a bunch of restaurants. So true, I've been to a bunch of restaurants that I had a good experience and I left it and I smiled, but I didn't tell everybody about it. Right, about it. Right, the experience. That's Epic in my mind. Instead of waiting for seven years or during that seven year period, for someone to say, hey, do you know a real estate agent? And waiting for that person to say, yeah, adam Boxman is a great real estate agent, I needed to create an experience that people left the transaction or the settlement and they were telling everybody and that's hard to do, yeah, so it's that you're not, even if you're thinking about it and working on that, it is.

Speaker 1: 16:59

It's not going to happen with every single person, it's just not. I mean, you can, you can be completely, um, you could be Mr Epic, which is you, Um? And you're still not going to always have everybody leaving the transaction going. Oh my gosh, Adam is amazing and I want to tell everybody.

Speaker 2: 17:15

Actually, what's funny about that is, if I talk about my failures in my career, it's that I always thought that if I was acting this way, I was going to make it Epic for everybody. And in reality, when you, the whole point of leaving the transaction and making it Epic and saying they want to tell everybody is simply how that one person took it. So I've learned in my career that I had a lot of clients that were just like me same characteristics, same personality and I got, I won with those people because they were like me, same here.

Speaker 2: 17:45

The key for success in real estate is to actually sit down with someone who's totally different than you and have them leave the experience and say it was epic chameleon and you were, and it's not that you're not being yourself, right.

Speaker 1: 17:56

No, say it was epic chameleon and you were. And it's not that you're not being yourself right, no, it's just you have to adapt. I mean, in anything, in any business, or even a doctor, he's going to do surgery on engineer as opposed to surgery on me. He's going to give the engineer a hell of a lot more detail about the surgery. Yeah, then he's going to give me, because he starts telling me details again, that's kind of I'm going to like totally wash over and be like you're out of your mind or I'd be like scared to shit, like really scared about the operation. So it's just, it comes down to that. You know my story about that. I have a little story about this. I think I've told Hugo before in another podcast.

Speaker 1: 18:23

When you talk about that, there was a time when I first got into business and it was I was selling a house to an engineer Somebody who was more of an engineer type mind and we went into the room and I'm going in, I'm going man, this is, this is a huge room, this is amazing. Look at the size of this room, cause I'm a touchy feely like that kind of guy, you know, I also can see that a room is large. By just looking at it, you know this is a big room. The engineer said to me what are the dimensions? So I look on the sheet and I said it's 22 by 30. Wow, this is a big room. There's a difference, right there, right? He, he, he or she needed to hear that number to know in their mind that it's a big room. I know it's a big room because I'm in it, I'm standing there, but isn't that funny? But that's the way it is with customers, it's a hundred percent.

Speaker 2: 19:10

So if I sit down. Here's the thing If I meet a random stranger at a house like happens in real estate and I'm in a random kitchen that I've never been in with a random person, how in the world am I going to sit down across from this person, help them buy the most expensive thing they ever bought in their life and impact that specific person? Because in reality, if I do a consultation with them and I learned this person's an engineer and they're going to be sending me spreadsheets and they want to know the square footage and the exact breakdown, yeah, I don't know that about that person. If I sit there in my consultation and I speak about Adam and Jackie and my wife and kids and my personal life and all of those things, that personality is going to be like this person's not for me.

Speaker 1: 19:50

They're going to be like I don't give a rip, yeah, cause they're not. That's not where they come from, that's not where they are and that's also not how they buy, because they always say people will tell you how to sell them, and not that it's all about sales, but it's really not about the sale part. They'll tell you how they function, how they are in life, and once we know that, we can then guide them to the right thing. Hopefully.

Speaker 2: 20:09

Yeah, but here's what's crazy we think we're working hard sometimes for these people, yeah, so in real estate, 87% of people don't go back and use the same agent that helped them buy their previous home. And we, as agents, think we're working so hard for these people and we're wondering they're obviously going to come back to us. Of course they're going to come back to us, and the reality is it's how they felt, yeah, and so it also could be the other thing too, but that's how they fell.

Speaker 1: 20:34

The other thing, too, is we tend to go all right, got our commission check.

Speaker 2: 20:37

We're done.

Speaker 1: 20:38

I'm out of here. I'm not going to talk to him again.

Speaker 2: 20:40

And we send them magnets and we think so. Maya Angelou said.

Speaker 1: 20:44

Oh yeah, I love that. That's a great saying.

Speaker 2: 20:46

This hits home for a lot of service businesses.

Speaker 1: 20:48

It's on your Facebook page.

Speaker 2: 20:50

It hits home for every service business, because in every service business, sometimes you feel like you're working hard for somebody or you're telling them what they need to hear. And Maya Angelou said people will forget what you said, People will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. And so, in all of in the restaurant business, it's how you feel when you leave the restaurant. It's how, even if the food wasn't great, if the service service was amazing or they literally took care of you in the best possible way You're going to tell people about it. Um, in every business, you succeed and fail based on how the people that you're working for feel. Absolutely, in real estate, it's awkward because we think we're working hard for people, we think we're doing exactly what we need to do for them, but if you're working for somebody who has one personality and telling them one way and they are not that personality they don't feel great about it.

Speaker 1: 21:43

No, no, no, you're forcing a circle into a square. It doesn't work. So, before we end the podcast here and see we've done pretty well, we're coming up on 22 minutes and I want to wrap it up. But one of the things that real quick is Epic doesn't mean everything always goes right, so just real quickly tap onto that one.

Speaker 2: 21:58

Okay.

Speaker 2: 21:59

So if you imagine, I think of Epic sometimes as like a superhero story, like if you imagine the superhero, a Superman movie, a Superman movie is only a Superman movie because there's a million ups and downs.

Speaker 2: 22:10

Right, like the whole movie is ups and downs, sure, but at the end of the day it's still an Epic story. And so in real estate especially, or any service business in real estate, in the last three years, if we don't think buyers that I've worked with have struggled, losing houses, not getting the deal done, that they could get done, they might get done, or whatever happens, any experience with a consumer or the client does not mean epic, means everything went perfect the whole time. It's how you handle it and, more importantly, how the consumer feels about whether you're with them. So for me, if a client loses a home, about that I feel for them because they didn't get the house, we're going to do something that's going to lift their spirits because they don't feel great in the situation, or they're going to feel like, at the end of the day, our guide is still our guide, yeah, that's epic, and also, if you build the expectations correctly, it won't be as depressing.

Speaker 2: 23:04

They expect what's going to happen.

Speaker 1: 23:05

Cause you did the consultation saying hey, by the way, there's a possibility you're going to lose four or five homes, possibly before you get the first.

Speaker 2: 23:11

Exactly are prepared and you know what's coming, and even when it happens, that doesn't matter. Epic means you had the guide, so Superman was a guide for Lois Lane through the whole movie and at the end of the day she knew it. That's exactly right. There we go.

Speaker 1: 23:25

Lois Lane is how we end it. That's amazing. And Superman, Well, you are pretty super. I got to tell you thanks so much for coming out. You're welcome to come out again anytime you want, and we can continue this conversation.

Speaker 2: 23:48

Well, I'm easy to find. If everybody wants to find me, you can find me on Facebook, on Instagram, and I'm happy to do it and looking forward to it.

Speaker 1: 23:53

Awesome man, and thanks for calling me on Easter too. That was very nice. Yeah, All right, here we go. Here we go. All right, this is the end of the show. Of course, Come back every Thursday 7 pm. You'll see us on Facebook, Instagram oh where else? Youtube and all those other different places. Thanks so much for being here.