Chick-fil-A's Secret to 15% Growth for 37 Years Straight

Summary

Perpetual Traffic Podcast Summary

Episode: Chick-fil-A's Secret to 15% Growth for 37 Years Straight

Host: Ralph Burns (Tier 11)
Date: May 12, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode dives deep into the secrets behind Chick-fil-A’s remarkable 37-year streak of at least 15% year-over-year growth. Host Ralph Burns and the guest (industry growth expert and former Chick-fil-A leader, referred to herein as B) explore why Chick-fil-A outpaces rivals like McDonald's, not just in sales, but in customer loyalty, repeat patronage, and fanatical brand advocacy. The discussion centers on actionable strategies for creating “legendary brands” with raving fans, focusing on three central gears: Operational Excellence, Personalized Service, and Memorable Moments—and how these principles apply far beyond fast food, including B2B settings.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

What Makes a Legendary Brand?

[01:21–02:50]

• Legendary brands aren’t defined by what they say about themselves, but by what customers say about them.
• Raving fans exhibit three behaviors:
  1. Buy more, more often: Genuine advocates return regularly and increase their engagement.
  2. Pay full price: True loyalty isn’t built on discounts.
  3. Refer others: They actively tell others about their positive experiences.
• “If you have raving fans, you can track how many of your customers are raving fans ... If you hit a certain threshold, like 50% raving fans, you’re a legendary brand.” (B, [05:46])

Chick-fil-A vs. McDonald's: A Tale of Two Brands

[06:00–10:38]

• McDonald's spends ~$1.5B/year on U.S. advertising, yet only grows 2% annually—with few raving fans despite world-class marketing.
• Chick-fil-A, a fraction of the size in ad spend (3%-5% of McDonald’s), achieves 8x the growth rate: 15–17% a year, for 37 consecutive years, nearly doubling every five years ([08:14]).
• Chick-fil-A’s average location outperforms McDonald's: $8M vs. $2.6–3M/yr, and Chick-fil-A closes one day a week ([12:06]).
• "McDonald's is a standard brand. ... But there’s another level where, man, it’s killer. It’s the kind of stuff people write books about." (B, [10:38])

The Three Gears of Customer Experience

1. Operational Excellence

[12:17–22:24]

• This is the foundation: operational consistency and reliability breed trust.
• "You cannot out party, out market, or out creative a lack of trust." (B, [13:54])
• Trust is all or nothing—partial excellence earns zero trust. Inconsistent performance breaks loyalty, even if you excel most of the time (McDonald's ice cream machine example, [21:52]).
• "Inconsistent excellence creates the same amount of trust as consistent failure." (B, [20:25])

2. Personalized Service

[22:31–29:32]

• Goes beyond transactional interactions. Customers want to feel seen, valued, and cared for personally—not as faceless buyers.
• Personal touches: know your client, acknowledge milestones, reference kids/family/interests.
• Don’t leave this to chance: systematize reminders for little touches (e.g., sending three handwritten notes a month) ([27:39]).
• “It’s not a sales email ... This is just, ‘thinking about you.’ It's proactive and it's personal.” (B, [25:41])

3. Memorable Moments

[30:03–46:49]

• Raving fans “rave”—they tell stories, not stats. The brand’s job is to create story-worthy, shareable moments.
• Key insight: "People want to be the hero of the story; your job is to make your customer feel like the Jedi, while you play Yoda or Obi-Wan—the mentor, the guide." (B, [33:29])
• “The question your customer is asking: How do I feel about myself when I’m with you? Not, how do I feel about you.” (B, [34:00])
• Chick-fil-A’s approach: Every location aims to deliver one memorable moment every month for customers—small, personal, and story-worthy, leading to massive aggregate buzz ([37:14]).
• "You also could just get every customer to tell 10 of their friends. ... That could drive more business value than spending billions of dollars trying to get famous people to talk about you." (B, [38:12])

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• On Customer Trust:
  • “Partial excellence earns no trust. Inconsistent excellence creates the same amount of trust as consistent failure.” (B, [20:25])
• On Legendary Brands:
  • “Legendary marketing does not make for a legendary brand.” (B, [05:42])
• On Making Customers the Hero:
  • “If you want to get them to talk, you have to create a story where your customer feels like the hero. You celebrate your customers. You don’t celebrate yourself. You highlight them. You honor them.” (B, [33:15])
• On Systematizing Personal Touches:
  • “If I don’t have a reminder, I’ll send three a year because I get busy and forget.” (B, [27:39])

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Applying These Principles in B2B and Industrial Businesses

[39:53–46:49]

• Don’t default to “We just invoice them” after delivery—celebrate project launches or customer milestones.
• Host launch parties, appreciation dinners, or public celebrations that make the customer’s success the story.
• Example: A steel provider hosts post-project steakhouse dinners, gives out awards (funny and serious), and circulates drone footage of the finished building, celebrating the client team ([41:07]).
• Track and publicly honor clients’ wins, e.g., top-performing users of your tool, or "number one sales growth last quarter" ([44:12]).
• “Your end is their beginning. ... Throw a party and celebrate their launch.” (B, [40:12])

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Defining Legendary Brands: [01:21–02:50]
• Three Behaviors of Raving Fans: [03:10–05:46]
• McDonald's vs. Chick-fil-A Growth Deep Dive: [06:00–10:38]
• Operational Excellence & Trust: [12:17–22:24]
• Personalized Service Tactics: [22:31–29:32]
• Creating Memorable Moments: [30:03–46:49]
• How B2B & Industrial Brands Apply These Ideas: [39:53–46:49]

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Conclusion

This episode unpacks the true drivers of exceptional, sustainable business growth and shows that legendary status isn’t reserved for consumer-facing brands like Chick-fil-A. With commitment to operational reliability, personal touches, and intentional creation of customer-centered stories, any business—including highly technical B2B firms—can inspire raving fans and achieve exponential growth, all while spending less on advertising and more on genuine customer connection.

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For free episode resources and more insights, visit perpetualtraffic.com.

Transcript

[A]

Hey, real quick, before we dive in, if you've got a brand or marketing tool that marketers need to know about, sponsor the show here at Perpetual Traffic. Perpetual Traffic puts you in front of thousands of seasoned marketers, CMOs and agency owners. So head on over to perpetualtraffic.com to apply to be a sponsor of this show.

[B]

The question your customer is asking is this. How do I feel about myself when I'm with you?

[A]

Let's say I sell microchips or I sell heavy industrial equipment and I'm listening to this. How can I create memorable moments like that's.

[B]

If you are more in this technical business to business zone. Well, we have found overwhelmingly the best win is.

[A]

You're listening to Perpetual Traffic. Hey, quick heads up. If you're marketing to marketers, this is where you want to be. Sponsor Perpetual Traffic and get seen and heard by thousands of seasoned marketers, CMOs and agency owners. We get hundreds of thousands in downloads every single month, all to marketers. So go to perpetual traffic.com to apply for a spot on the show in Q1 or Q2 of 2026. But the point is, is like the, the end goal is to become a legendary brand. So yeah, like, if we start from that, like, what in your mind is a legendary brand and why should people be listening?

[B]

So in some categories, there are these people who just like Seth Abarra, like, they define the category. They're, they're. Okay, let me oversimplify this because here's what the legendary brand is not. It's not how good your stuff is. It's not what you say. It's how good your. Your, your fluff is. It's what your customers say about you. You really want to cut through the noise and say, are you a legendary brand or not? Do you have raving fans? Like, that's, that's the game? Yes. We're going to talk all about what we say to create that stuff. But man, if you want to start with how many companies say they're legendary, man, there are a lot of them. A lot of us are like, dude, our stuff's the best. And we're. No, no. What do your customers say about you? And. And we talk about behaviors of a raving fan. So this is. You'll hear this theme all throughout. We already started with it. Right? Move from the, the vague general idea down to something specific and tactical. And man, that, that hard translation work is, man, you start getting the gold. So there are three behaviors of customers or clients in your setting. If your clients do these Three things. They're a raving fan. If they don't, they're not. Right? This is not an opinion. How much did Scott love me and how happy was he like? No. Did he have these behaviors? Right, so here's the three behaviors. They buy more more often, right? They come back. Churn's a huge critical measure in this space. How long do they stay with us? Did he increase the package over time? There's a bunch of ways to measure this and I would challenge every one of you listening. Mark that down like put a number on the. Draw a line in the sand and say how much more and how much more often. And then you start having really interesting conversations because I bet you have some raving fans today. And what's it about them? Like what, what, what are the ones that love you most? Why is it a, a particular team that works with them? Is it a product? Is it, is it a type of customer? Everyone in this space really loves us. Figure out what made them raving fans. That's a lot of your insight right there. But you've also probably got people who were 85, 90% of the way there, right? The way you would market to them would be different than how you'd market to a brand new person who's just figuring you out. So when you get specific, man, there's a such a big oh, I hope our customers love us. Great. Me too. What's your numbers? How much more, how much more often? And, and some of you can be a lot of frequent small deals, right? I've worked with restaurants, you know, Chick Fil A has been one of the brands. I've been one of the leaders at man, they could have weekly daily visits. Let's say you're, it's a whole different. If you're a wedding planner, you don't, you don't want annual repeat business from those customers, right? Like, right, you want bigger packages. Maybe you want to bring them back for their 10 year, you know, renewal of the Vals. I mean there's still ways to do fun stuff with them. But, but again, you're going to need your own measures. But put measures on it. Buy more more often. Second is they pay full price, man. If they're a raving fan, they're not coming to you because you just hit a discount and sales go up. If they're coming to you because you're the cheapest, because your price is better, their loyalty is not to you. And you can't discount you. You can't count that, right? That isn't and by the way, that hurts you in the long run. There's, there's a ton of marketing promotions and things you can do that aren't discount promotions. There's a lot of ways to add value and drive urgency and create scarcity and all sorts of cool stuff. You can do that, that we should do that aren't and our prices and it's because do it now or you'll lose your 20% off. And so that, that, that's a rough place to be that gets you in the race to the bottom where you just kind of grind your margins away. And now we're, we got to go for massive volume to make any money. So I, I, I try to avoid that. Do you want them coming to you and paying full price? That's when it counts. So they come back without a discount and they tell others about you and depends on your channel and your business how you measure that. But this is all measurable like from, from online referrals, how much you talked about to when new customers come in, you can ask them, how'd you hear about us? There's a lot of ways to do this but you stack these things and you say okay, do they, they come back often enough, get a big enough package, Are they doing it without a discount? And, and are they telling people about us? And when you have that dude, they're a raving fan. And if you have raving fans, you can track how many of your customers are raving fans and not and, and when you hit a certain threshold, like if you're 50% or more raving fans, you're a legendary brand. Like they just love you, man. And so yeah, we'll talk a lot about the marketing and how you do that in our conversation here but man, you don't. Legendary marketing does not make for a legendary brand. In fact, let me, let me give you my favorite example. And a favorite's very ironic here. I'm going to pick on McDonald's a little bit as a brand this way. Like honestly, for the record, I've got friends at the headquarters. Guys, you're awesome. They're great people. They make a lot of money. It's not an evil, terrible company. But man, I just keep poking at them for this because they have world class marketing and advertising and, and they are, and they're spending to get that. It's not an accident. Last year, it's not officially reported, but if you kind of read the, the indirect reports, experts say they spent over $1.5 billion in advertising and marketing in just the domestic U.S. that's not global. Just us. I mean it's massive and it's brilliant. It's beautiful. It's catchy, right? Da da da, da da.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Like even if you don't eat McDonald's, you finish that in your head, right? And so. And yet they don't have any raving fans. They have some raving fans. They don't have a majority of raving fans. Their brand promise and brand experience and customer. Client interaction. When you actually measure their customer behavior. Oh, they don't show up on any. And there's tons of, by the way, fast food restaurant measurements. There's tons of these industry measurements. They don't show up as a winner on any of the measurement categories. They have legendary advertising and they don't have raving fans. There's a, there's a separate piece there. Yes, the advertising helps and we'll talk about some of the stuff you can do there. But there's more to the equation and they've thrown part of the equation out and they're getting none of the benefit. And, and man, in my opinion, they're blowing tons of money. They could pull some of that budget back, put it into the client experience stuff we're going to talk about and they'd probably rocket up their sales and process. But they, they've just kind of like thrown all their eggs in the advertising basket and, and I don't think it's working, man.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, they are. They are making a ton of money. But I mean, you know, you don't. It doesn't check the box. Well, let me. Yeah, a lot of your. One, a lot of your three reasons

[B]

like for making money. But let me put it this way, they could make more. So Chick Fil A is a wholly private company, so most people won't know the numbers. I'm about to. I'm allowed to share them. They're not actually secret but. But they don't have to publicly report this stuff where like McDonald's and all their big competitors in fast food are. So just give you an idea of what could be done if you build it. So chick fil A, McDonald's, they sell a lot of similar products, right? Direct head to head competitors from chicken sandwiches to salads to milkshakes. Right? Very similar. Okay, so McDonald's on a good year grows 2%, which is pretty awesome. There are $24 billion in sales, last I checked, just domestic. Us. Chick fil a us, they have a tiny bit international footprint, but Chick Fil A is almost all US chick fil A. Last year was their 37th year in a row that they had at least 15% growth. Wow. Yeah. If you're in. If you're in the marketing space, like, start doing the math. Right. In fact, last year was seven. Close. 17% a little over. They're killing it. And they're on track for year 38. Like, there's just. They got this thing dialed in. They just cranking it out, man. They roughly double every five years. A little bit less than that. It just like boom, boom, boom. And so this little bitty regional brand who spends 3 to 5% of McDonald's spend on marketing and advertising has a but 8x growth rate beyond them and just keeps doing it even though they're in multibillion. In fact, if they hit their growth target this year, Chick Fil a could pass McDonald's this year as the largest fast food chain in the US by volume.

[A]

Total volume sales, really over 24 billion.

[B]

Yes. They're on track for 24.

[A]

Oh my God.

[B]

Oh. Oh. And if they don't hit it this year, there's absolutely no reason to think that next year won't be year 39 and they'll just blow them out of the water. Like they just. So McDonald's is making money. If you're okay with, you know, 2% growth, go, good, good job. Or, or you could like, you know, have 15% growth stacking year over year and McDonald's is like zero to two zigzags up and down. Yeah, I, you can. McDonald's is a. Is a standard brand. They're not bad. They're normal. They're regular company with regular customers.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

This is the next level. It's like, you're fine, you, hey, you're making money. Good job. You figured something out. But there's another level where, man, it's killer. It's just like, it's the kind of stuff people write books about and become raving fans of.

[A]

Now all you have to do is, you know, the last time we, we just recently, I'm in Massachusetts, so we have limited amount of chick fil A's, but there is one probably about 10 miles.

[B]

Actually, there's now two.

[A]

About 10 miles each from my house and right across the street from a Wendy's, right across the street from McDonald's. And all you have to do is just look at the lines. Like, the lines tell the story.

[B]

It's not.

[A]

People don't even, like, even if you go into a line, you know it's going to Be so efficient, which is the whole next sort of section which we can talk about. You know, you're going to get the right stuff, everything's going to taste great, and you're going to come back over and over again. The experience is pleasant, which we'll talk about obviously through your book. But whereas, you know, there's maybe one or two people. I mean, maybe at noon, there might be a noontime rush, you know, at McDonald's, but nothing like Chick Fil A. And people always wonder. I remember I looked this up. We did a podcast on this is the value of an individual Chick Fil a franchise like gross sales wise is typically is double that of a McDonald's. It's like 6 million to 3 million.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Or three times. Okay, you've got insider information.

[B]

They have cleared more than 8 million per location on how it's ridiculous.

[A]

Now that's crazy. And it's about 3 million for McDonald's and that.

[B]

Okay, yeah, they're like 2.6, 2.7 million per location. So they're, they're almost triple McDonald's size. And by the way, that's in six days to their seven. So it's not a, a triple per day per day. It's like if you did a day to day comparison, it's almost quadruple. And then Chick Fil A takes a day off. Yeah, we got to catch up a little bit, man. Right. You know, there. No, it's crazy. So there's three gears at the heart of the engine. You deliver these three gears, they become raving fans. It's just, this is the heart of the deal. Right. And the first gear is not where anyone expects. And, and don't tune out here because I know the marketing leaders. We got you. Awesome. Yeah, it's operational excellence, man. It's the fundamental. Wait, I'm not an ops guy, right? I'm the, the creative. Right. We don't do. Don't bore me. Like, dude, here's the deal. It's the first question. It's the most crit. We say it's first in sequence and in priority. If we don't get this right, it doesn't matter how fancy. We do the other stuff. This is where McDonald's I think, is struggling the most. It's what's killing their brand and more and better at. They could triple their advertising quality and volume and they would still be held back by this factor. Okay, now I gotta confess, when we talk about excellence, my bias personally is like, I'm thinking about how good it can Be man, I got great people and proprietary tools and a literary of geniuses on my staff. Like, this is going to be awesome. And that's not what my customers care about. Not first. The first question they ask is, can I trust you? And I trust you. And man, trust is a different calculation than how smart and creative and clever you are. There are some fundamentals that we have to deliver on a regular basis or they don't trust us. And if they don't trust us, nothing else matters. You cannot out party out market, out play, or out creative. A lack of trust, like, it's just, it's the first hurdle you gotta clear or nothing else happens. So, yeah, we talk about tactical, systemic things in how you deliver a client experience that gives the client confidence and clarity. Man, I can trust these guys. That's where you start.

[A]

That's, that's a harder one, I think, for a lot of people to wrap their heads around. But I think I always go back to the Chick Fil a analogy. I trust these guys because I'm going to wait in line with the, the, you know, the, the woman or the man that has the iPad in the line. And I know, like, the chicken sandwich is always going to be, you know, it's going to taste good. The nuggets are going to taste like the, you know, the whole thing. Like I, the trust is because I know it's going to be consistent. And I don't really care about the temperature of the oil or how many chefs they have in the kitchen or, you know, I mean, obviously I care about like, the cleanliness and all that. I sort of take all that for granted. But because I've been there four or five times before the same place, I know it's going to be the same. Or if I go to someplace in Atlanta, it's going to be the same down there. Like, that's. I guess when you say trust, like you, they trust in the fact that what you deliver to them is going to be consistent and like, better than just good. Like McDonald's delivers good. Like it tastes good when it's going down, feels like good a half hour later. But, you know, that sort of McDonald's remorse. But Chick Fil A, like, it's consistently good and like, that's really what we're talking about here because I trust the fact that they're going to deliver on operational excellence.

[B]

Yeah. Okay, so this is the key. When the customer, the client centric focus that you talked about, the first layer you want to think about is, as you mentioned, they have goals. It's not just they want really good SEO numbers. They want their business to actually get more clients themselves. They want to see revenue growth. They want to hit their vision. So your first layer is like, are you actually helping me get there? And, man, I wish this wasn't true. But you can't assume they're going to connect the dots. Like, you often have to connect the dots for them. This behavior here turned into this client outcome for you here, which should be driving an extra bit of revenue for you here. And if we don't make that visible, we just assume, look, our numbers went up. I literally was talking to a client of mine a month ago about this, and they're like, ah, I got my. We're talking about their technology. This is an AI consulting gig we're doing with them on their AI. And they just started ranting about their marketing external partner. And they're like, they show me these monthly reports with all our SEO numbers, but I don't see any increase in sales. And so, like, why are we paying these people right now? Maybe it's not working and that they have a conversion problem, or maybe it's just they haven't connected the dots. But either way, I was like, dude, you. Literally, a month ago, a client's telling me, like, I don't see what all these numbers have to do with my business. Why are we paying them, you know, thousands a month to pull this thing off? Like, wow, can they trust that what you're doing is driving value to them? Can you connect the dots? Do you know what they want? Right? What are their outcomes? What are they trying to accomplish? And can you show them how your work connects to that stuff? This is the fundamentals, man. It's basics. It's, it's. I mean, baby basics. Like, hey, we promised you. And you sometimes have to remind him of the promise you hired us to. I'm going to make numbers up here, right? You hired us to get, you know, 10 new ads run this month. 10 new ads were run this month. Here are the ads. You hired us to get an increase of your, you know, your hits in your landing page. Here were your old hits before you hired us. Here's the ones we currently have. Like, just remind them, hey, this was the first set of things you asked us to do. We're doing it. And if you don't, on some of a regular basis, say, we did it. Now, some of the other stuff is like, reply quickly, Come on, It's not sexy. I hate all this hate email, right? That get Flooded. And we do this stuff. Like some. Even if the reply, this was an unlock for me years ago. Sometimes they ask me these long complicated things and I'm deep creative mode. I don't have time to shift gears all the time. I, in fact, I would advise everybody turn your notifications off, don't reply in the instant unless your job is the customer service reply person. Right? But at the end, like every, at lunch and at the end of the workday, like even when I'm in deep maker mode doing creative stuff, I pause and I skim through and I'm like, hey, got it. You know, I can't get to you that today. I'll get back to you tomorrow. Just an acknowledgement of receipt, simple basic communication that says, hey, I got you. I'm not going to let the business day close without letting you know, I got this and I care about you guys. We're going to get the fancy stuff in a minute. But these are all the little markers that are like, you know what? Ralph sees me. Ralph, actually, he's on it. He's reading my emails. You know, we did ask them to do that. They are doing the thing we asked until they trust you, man, your creative process and your cool stuff, that might be fun, but man, if they don't count on you in the basics, nothing else matters, man.

[A]

Right? Those are little chips that eat away at the trust. Like little withdrawals from the trust account. As I always tell my team, and

[B]

here's the hard, painful truth, partial trust, partial excellence doesn't create partial trust. It's an all or nothing proposition. And so we see this a lot. We're like, where most of the time. Every once in a while we're a little. I, I don't always reply quickly, but most of the time, here's what we learned. Inconsistent excellence creates the same amount of trust as consistent failure. You don't get partial for partial.

[A]

No partial credit.

[B]

No, it's, it's a human nature, right? Like he's a great employee. He, you know, he steals from us once or twice a year, but the rest of the year he's a great guy. Like, right? Heck no, man. You trust or you don't. There's no half trust. And so, so I see this. They're like, ah, I'm a creative. And you know, I don't get through all the details sometimes. And like, I'm a creative. Like, that's my natural wiring, my background. I'm the grand visionary, not the, the careful, methodical guy. Which is partly why I'm so passionate about these systems because I have done that my early career. People would tell me, scott, we think you're brilliant, but we don't want to put you in charge of anything because we're not sure you're going to actually follow through on a regular basis. We can't count on you. And those were hard early years because I couldn't argue with them. I was inconsistent. And I'm like, but you should give me credit for that. And eventually somebody realized, like, because I kept saying, hey, every one of those is just a little thing. Who cares? It's just a little thing. That I was five minutes later that it took me a week to reply. Or like, these are just little things. And they said, well, no, one thing's a big deal, but a pattern of little things will break trust. And so I was inconsistently excellent and I didn't have trust in that, that zone. I had to like leave, do some serious soul searching. Started a whole new category, like switch companies and try again. And I finally figured out how to like build trust. But yeah, inconsistent excellence earns no trust.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, it's amazing. You actually, I think in the book, you use an example of the McDonald's ice cream machine and people think that it's down all the time. But the survey was like, it's only down like 20% of the time. But it's only down 10% or whatever. 10% of the time.

[B]

Everyone's still.

[A]

Because it's inconsistent, because you can't rely on it.

[B]

That's it. And, and 90%, like here in school, like, that's a pretty good grade, right? Right. Yeah. 90% excellent is enough to make you famously broken.

[A]

Yeah, it's, it's an all or nothing proposition. So that's operational excellence. Like what are the, what are the other components of the engine?

[B]

Okay, so you, you just buckle down and you earn trust. Can I tell you, that alone will put you in a really interesting brand category where like, oh man, I can count on these guys. Sadly, that is not a given. And a lot of long term relationships just are, man. I just, they count on them. They, they're just reliable. We know they're going to do what they say they're going to do. But if you want to go raving fans, right, Two gears and you see these are small little gears. Um, we don't have to put a ton of time and energy into them. What we actually say is once or twice a year, do one or two things in each category. That's it. So the next gear is personalized service. So if the first question they're asking is can I trust you? The second question they start asking is, do you care about me? Do you see me? Do I matter to you as a person? Not, not just as a transaction here. Um, and this is where these little personal touches that the beyond the basics of like hey, we delivered also hey, how are you doing? Or I see that you're doing this or congrats on that or I'm sorry for this simple thing. You don't have to be lifetime best friends. In fact, once or twice a year, right? You shouldn't do it maybe once a month. Like slow down, that could be a little creepy. But little things. If they have kids, find out their kids names, right? Listen, if you have kids, I feel pretty safe in saying they're one of the most important things in your world. I don't have to know everything, but I should probably know if you have them or hey, what do you do for fun? Or you go on vacation somewhere.

[A]

Just hey, real quick. If you're looking to get your brand in front of growth minded marketers, CMOs, directors of marketing and agency owners, we're opening up our sponsorship spots for Q1 and Q2. Get in front of a quarter of a million marketers every single month at Perpetual Traffic. All you have to do is head on over to perpetual traffic.com for the details or check out the link in the show notes to apply little touches.

[B]

And you can do this for the person. You can do this for a team that says, hey, we get you guys and your goals and congrats on your win. Like we care about your business goals. You guys hit your goals. Yay for you. Right? We see you, we like you. That's really what's going on here. And so there's, there's two basic ways to pull this off again. Let's get tactical high touch kind of white glove concierge stuff. And then high tech tools that allow you to communicate at mass or customize efficiently or react more. So, you know, high touch stuff is going to be phone calls and account reps and you know, personal handwritten notes and all sorts of lovely wonderful things. And then high tech is going to be things like using a CRM. Listen, CRMs are phenomenal if you actually set it up fully and use it with discipline. Like you gotta actually do the work to put it in place. But man, the ability to deal lots of customers at scale, sync it with your advertising, your landing pages, your operations. Like more than just to get the sale, like all the way through the process. They can be beautiful things like Google News alerts to kind of find out what's happening in your industry or if you your business to business especially you can do that where you sink into what's going on with the business and see your clients in the news and congratulate them and then man, this is the AI stuff I alluded to earlier. There's a ton of tools. That's a whole other podcast Ralph talking about what's happening in the AI world. Right now I've got a whole new division and team that we just help people bring in and integrate AI into their company engine. But man, AI has got some phenomenal ways you can do personal touches at scale and ways that are like faster, cheaper and a more high quality than we've ever done before. And so, so it's not either or it's some, some high touch and high tech. But just I listed a ton. Don't do all those once or twice. Do one or two things per customer to say I see you, I like you. If you've done your work in the operational excellence little touches will say oh yeah, I remember these guys. Let me. This can't be a sales email. It's not like sales email and I personalized it for you. You should do that. It can't be a marketing push like and they're yes, you should do all that. Right? We love that. This is the man. I just thinking about you. It's proactive and it's personal. It's not a generic. Hey everybody. Yeah, it's to Ralph and it's about something happening in Ralph's world. That's when this gets like, oh man. Yeah, these guys are awesome. They actually like me. And man, that's just enough. Because you want someone to love you, you love on them first. I mean it just unlocks so much here.

[A]

It's such a simple thing. And I will say it's easy to take your customers for granted. It really is. But when you do do those tiny little things, it's incredible. I can think of a half a dozen examples right off the top of my head. It's like people just remind me of something. It's like I forgot that I even did that. But it was like just a tiny little thing. I'm like, man, I should do that more. And it's like, man, does it make a difference?

[B]

Having said that, yeah, I fall down is I care and then I forget. I got warm hearted impulses. I like these. I'm just going to. Yeah. When it shows up, I'll do it, man. This is the creative who's like going to get around to it and then I'm inconsistent. No, I have got a system reminder. I mean literally this morning I had a reminder tick up in my monthly system once a month. It says, hey, send three personal notes. I've got cards that are like, I've got my return address and a stamp on them and a little thank you note or a little how you doing thing. I've got a little variety of them and just guys, three a month and they're kind of pre set up. My assistant helps me set them all up. It's gonna take me three minutes and that's being generous. It might take me one minute if I'm quick at it. Scribble, scribble. It's already stamped, right? It's even got the little sticker. I don't even have to lick them. It's just like stamp close, stamp close, scribble close, scribble close, scribble close. Put it in the mail. That's not hard. But you know what happens if I don't have a reminder? I'll send three a year because I get busy and forget. Because this isn't the something went wrong. I'm trying to apologize for it. This is the nothing went wrong. I was just thinking of you. How you doing? And so setting reminders, setting systems, that little deal, that's a system. Right. I pre buy the cards, I stamp, I do one chunk of time where my sister and I, we go stamp a bunch of them, make a stack, address them all and then they just sit on my, they're right there. Sit on my desk right over there. And when it's time, I'll just pick one up, scribble that system. And the reminder means I'm going to do these little simple things on a regular basis versus oh yeah, I kind of remember to do that sorta. But I forget I'm busy, I'm solving problems, man. The, the power of a simple little reminder system for these basic touches that might be all you need and you start blowing their mind.

[A]

Yeah. And it's proactive and it's unsolicited and it's non transactional. It's like it's all those things. It's like, it's amazing how far little stuff like that goes. And you know, personal notes, I mean obviously there's plenty of chick fil a examples there as well. But going back to the customer experience engine, there's one more component here which I find is even more fascinating and something I kind of blew me away when I first read about it. I'm like, oh, my God.

[B]

Yeah, I love this one. We're really getting into the, the marketing deep. I mean, all of us have to do all this stuff, but this is where you really break away from the pack and do some truly unique creative things. You know, operational excellence. That's not unique. I didn't create that concept. It's like I just got to remind us. But this one's actually one of the more unique ones we end up having to create and be a part of, be part of the process to figure out, how do you do this? Okay, so if you've done everything except this last one, I'm about to talk about, right. Insight and excellence and service and personal touches. Great, great. They love you. They legitimately love you, but they aren't telling anyone about you. What we've learned is there's that just because you have loving fans doesn't mean they're raving fans. Raving fans rave. Right? So. And sadly, people don't tell facts. They don't even tell feelings if you want them to talk about you. What we learned is people tell stories, so you have to create a story that they want to share or what we've termed a memorable moment. That's the last gear, memorable moments. And so you create these little moments that pop that are story worthy and interesting and exciting and that, oh, again, once or twice a year for your customers, you do something that gets them to like, buzz and talk about you. But okay, I'm going to tell you how to do it in a minute, but first let me tell you what not to do. The mistake we made in the early days trying to figure this out. Okay, so, so the question is, who gets to be the hero of the story? And logically, I'm thinking I need to be the hero of this story because I want the outcome I'm after is they talk about me. So I'm going to make this moment that celebrates how good we are at what we do and how awesome we are. And then they're going to be like, check that. Actually, the metaphor I'm going to use will be Star Wars. Hopefully this will work for your listeners here. I might be a bit of a Star wars nerd, so bear with me. I got a, I got a Jedi robe and lightsaber in my closet right there.

[A]

They're all Star wars fans.

[B]

Pretty kids, right?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Thank you. Thank you. Come on, we all want to be Jedi. That's what's going on here, right?

[A]

100.

[B]

You know, I don't know. Hey, pro tip. This. This might be the most fun little tip I'll get out of this. You can figure out which crack on the sidewalk is where your foot lands in front of your grocery store. You know the sliding doors in your grocery store? If you time it just right and you put your three fingers out and you swipe your hand to the side right when you stepped. I'm just saying. I'm pretty sure my kids thought that the only way to get in a grocery was dad used the Force every time we went in the grocery store.

[A]

Dude, I'm totally doing that.

[B]

Next time I got pretty stinking awesome. Yeah, that's pretty cool. Come on. It's a Jedi moment, right? So, okay, so back to the actual marketing here. I keep wanting to create these moments where I get to play the role of Luke Skywalker. I'm the Jedi that's going to save the day, and everyone's going to love me, and it's going to be awesome. And what we found is, it doesn't work, man. Now, we did pretty good storytelling. Like, they actually thought we were pretty awesome. And they might believe you're a Jedi. They're like, check that guy. No, they don't want to tell your story. They want to tell their story. So if you want to get them to talk, you have to create a story where your customer feels like the hero. You celebrate your customers. You don't celebrate yourself. You highlight them. You honor them. Now, we got to be in the story if we're going to get some business value out of this. So who do we play? You read the book. You tell me. I'm guessing you might know the answer to this. Who do we play if we're not Luke, who do we get to be?

[A]

Oh, you've got to be Yoda Or. Or. Or depending on.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Which Obi Wan.

[B]

That's the thing. Which.

[A]

Right.

[B]

You know, Obi's. He's been Padawan to the master to, like, the old man.

[A]

Young Obi Wan was Darth Vader, you know, but then later on. Yeah.

[B]

So Yoda's the always only mentor, so I'll go with him. But, yeah, some. Some Obi. Some Obi. Yeah. So we're the mentor, the guide that helps them.

[A]

Real.

[B]

So this is the story, right? The story is, look. Look how awesome they are. We're so glad we could help. We're going to celebrate them and kind of be like, hey, we're glad we could help these people. Be the Jedi. They really, like, reveal and show the world. They're really that awesome. Hey, everybody, check these guys out. We're so glad we got to help and see. The question your customer is asking is this, how do I feel about myself when I'm with you? Not how do I feel about you. How do I feel about myself when I'm with you? And, man, that is a game changer to the process. Once or twice a year, celebrate each customer and say they make them feel awesome about themselves because they do business with you. That is how you kick raving fans. I mean, this is like the. The next level. It's not you. It's how they. You're just the means that you. You're what they use to prove to themselves in the world they really are awesome. Extremely fun example. This is Harley Davidson Motorcycles, right? Listen, pro tip guys, when they tattoo your logo on their body, they might be a raving fan, right? Like, something's going on there, right? So what is it? Why would they do that? Get the jackets and the bandanas and, like, do all the stuff? It's not Harley's awesome. It's. I'm awesome because I ride a hog right? Now, the hog's gotta be good. But. But all that stuff leads up to, like, well, I'm a bad mamba jamba, right? Not. Not Harley's awesome. I'm the man because of my bike. Like, that's how I would feel on the Harley. If I'm a raving fan. What do you. Now, this is where customer insight so critical. Like, don't forget, what do they want to feel like? What do they guess, right? Some people really want to feel like. Like a wild hog on a Harley. But you know who else is raving fans is Volvo. Yeah, they don't want to feel wild and crazy, right? They want to feel safe. And actually, the researchers say they want to feel a little bit superior, right? Like, I don't know what's wrong with those morons, but I'm driving the safest car on the road, right? So what is it, like, dangerous safe? Like, which one do you. You don't guess. You go back to your insight and you say, what is Charlie? What does Ozzy want? Ozzy might run a ride a Harley, and Charlie might want to drive a Volvo. Which feeling do we want to create? What do we want to celebrate for them? If you come tell Charlie, dude, you're the wildest guy out here. Everybody check him out. He's not going to tell that story you tell Ozzy, dude. You might be. Check this out. Look everyone, how awesome Ozzy will be like, hey, I got. Everyone needs to know this. And that one will go viral. What do your customers actually want? What kind of Jedi do they want to be? What do they want to feel celebrate that in their life?

[A]

Hey, quick heads up. If you're marketing to marketers, this is where you want to be. Sponsor perpetual traffic and get seen and heard by thousands of seasoned marketers, CMOs and agency owners. We get hundreds of thousands of downloads every single month, all to marketers. So go to perpetualtraffic.com to apply for a spot on the show in Q1 or Q2 of 2026.

[B]

And then, man, you're still doing your work, you're showing up, you're doing all this stuff. And then once or twice a year you just make a big deal like, check these guys out. Everybody come look at them. And man, that, that kicks them over the edge. They feel amazing. They attribute that to you. And that story goes viral in their community. You know, if your customers are not, you know, superstars, then the story might not go. Here's Chick Fil A as a good example of this. Do you know Chick Fil A is the most talked about brand on social media? Not most talked about restaurant in the U.S. not global because they're not global. But in the U.S. where they are, they are the most talked about brand in any category by far. No one else can beat them. But they don't often hit national news. And for the record, most of that is actually fake news. That's a different conversation. They, they, I've challenged them like, man, you should go correct the record. And they, they, their policy is anything we say just makes it worse. We're just not going to say anything, right? So they're not in the net. They don't do national ad campaigns very much. Very little. Here's what it is. Every restaurant does one memorable moment every month for their customers. That's the goal. And these little bitty stories their customers tell their friends, that's it. But There are over 3,000 restaurants as a time of this recording and that have a little moment that buzz and tell their friends, and they tell their friends. And every month there's just another little group of them telling their friends. And those little aggregate moments of those people have been like, dude, check this out, check this one thing. That's how you get 15% growth every year. That's how you get this crazy. That's how you become the most talked about brand. You don't need, you know, Drake. Now, if you can get Drake or Beyonce to, like, talk about you, heck yeah, you should do that. But you also could just get every customer to tell 10 of their friends. And that. That actually could drive more business value than spending billions of dollars trying to get famous people to talk about you. Man, it is tremendously powerful what happens when people feel honored because they associate and do business with you.

[A]

So in that, I believe the example you used in the book was like, daddy Daughter Day at Chick Fil A. And. Which is. Which is great. And you're gonna have to go read the book to read more about that. But let's say I'm a. Like, I sell microchips or I sell heavy industrial equipment. And I'm listening to this, I'm like, how can I create memorable moments? Like, that's Harley Davidson. That's Chick Fil A. Like, like, that's actually where I. This is a personal question, too. That's where I sort of stopped in the book. I'm like, I don't really know what it would be like. What would your suggestion be? Like, how do you brainstorm that?

[B]

Because I think this is a key

[A]

component, like operational excellence. Hard to get, really right, by the way. Like, that. That's why it's the biggest gear in your diagram. We'll leave a link in the show notes to the diagram. But these other parts are so integral to it. You got to get it right. But I think people might stumble on this one a bit.

[B]

100%. Okay. So if you are more in this technical business to business zone, what we have found overwhelmingly the best win is. Okay, so your work typically is to set up the customer's new thing. You, your construction, your manufacturing, your industrial. Right. Your microchips, even then, right. You are setting tools up in their hands. The end of your work is the beginning of their productivity. And so there's. There's a couple of moments that are really naturally built into your business cycle. We would go to these companies and be like, okay, what do you do when you're done, it's all over, and the customer leaves with. With your stuff. Like, they take your. You got your building, they got your product. They have. You got your chip in their machine. Like, what do you do? And they're like, well, we're done. Like, I know. We clean up. No, no, it's all done. We invoice them. Like, what are you talking about? Right?

[A]

Invoice them.

[B]

Right. Perfect. Thank you. We. What you do. Not all the time, not for everybody. Every but once or twice a year, throw a party and celebrate their launch. Your end is their beginning. You often exist to get them launching the next level of the new thing. And so maybe it's a private party, maybe it's a public party, depending on their. Their business and their space. Nucor. I'll give you a fun example from Nucor. So they, They've got a variety of different ways they do it. Nucor is a big behemoth with lots of different divisions of products and types and customers. But one of their guys, one of their. Their divisions, they do the steel frames for like Walmarts and Amazon warehouses. Massive industrial buildings. Right? Commercial buildings, okay? So they're the first part of the construction process. Then they're done. And like they're putting up walls and painting floors and like, they're not involved in any of that stuff. And so. So in the part of that process, they just stay in loose touch, right? Personal, just a little bit. Hey, we see you. What's going on? But you know what they do? They come back sometimes, it's six months after they've been off the job site, and they host a dinner, nice place, like a Ruth Chris Steakhouse. They'll get in this nice steakhouse, they'll bring everybody together and they'll just reminisce on the project. It's all the project leaders for their clients, the different subs. And they keep. They're one of the subs. They're not even the main guy, right? And they bring in all the folks and they bring in the main client and they celebrate how everybody did. One of their guys is a really good sense of humor. Hilarious. I love this stuff. He gives out awards, but the awards are things like, hey, most likely to drop your phone down a trash chute. Congrats, Ralph. Because you did. And we're still giving you a hard time, you know, best singing voice, because Scott was always singing on the job and it was terrible. And we're like, oh, you stink. But they have fun. But they're also like little slideshow drone footage they captured throughout. And they're like, man, we just love being on projects with you guys. You're great partners. Look at what you're doing in the world. And then they post a little publicly, so a little bit of public posting. But there's also a very private, like, man, we just want you to know we love working with you. You're doing good things. You did this. We took a rough lot. They visualize it, right? Look at this rough lot. Look at the pretty building. You Ended up with, man, we can't wait. This is our launch dinner to celebrate your launch. They've already been paid. They're out, right? They don't fit. Sour that moment by like and would you sign the next contract right here? It's just a pure dinner to celebrate them. Launch it for Some construction companies have literally bought a red carpet and they'll like roll a red carpet out and the staff show up with cameras, like old flash cameras and all this stuff. And people walk in and they ribbon cut and they make a moment and they're like, check, check out our people. Look community, look who's in the neighborhood. And they make a big deal out of them. So there are ways to do this launch moment that really move in. We're glad we could just be a small part of the process of helping you guys launch and do good things in the world. Ryota, you're the, you're the Jedi. This is going to be great. So that's one of the key ways you can do this. One of the other key ways to do this is you just track their business progress and when they have a business win, you show up and celebrate them for their business win. So this could be far delayed, but they hit their business goal and you're just like, dude, we just want to make a big deal out of you. And so you, you. I'll give you a couple other examples. We worked with a group, the big physicians network, multi state hospitals and, and private clinic, you know, surgery practices and all this big massive health complex. And one of the things they did was institute an award for the top 20% of physicians in each of the major in discipline categories. And medicine's got that, you know, like internal medicine and orthopedics and, and they just, they would track their patient numbers and the client was somebody who ran high data stuff that they did kind of AI data algorithms, this very high tech kind of tracking trends and you know, patient outcomes and efficiencies. And one of the things they did, the key, one of their key people is they needed these physicians to actually engage and use the tool very often. So they just honored the top physicians in the space. And what do you know, Ralph? It just so happened that the vast majority of the top people used their tool to get better outcomes because they're measuring outcomes. And so the people using the tool, they didn't have to say it because it was such a tight correlation. It's like we're just going to celebrate the top. You guys are awesome. We're so glad our system can help call out that Ralph's one of the best physicians in the network. So you just track their business goals. So microchip guy, maybe you're going to have like a launch party, hey, new chip out, new wave out, new business season. Or maybe you're going to come up like say hey, you guys had a banner quarter too. Like we just, we're going to highlight everybody check out these. It's your client, check out these. Because maybe you make microchips, you sell them to people who do the actual, you know, consumer product, computers or consoles or whatever they sell and you're like, you know, number one console in the market or you guys had 30% sales growth this quarter and like we're so great. And of course your chip is a part of what they're selling, but you're celebrating, you guys are having business success. Everybody look at how great they are. That's the kind of stuff you do that honestly Chick Fil A can't do in some ways is more directly tied to the business value you provide and makes it more important. We should keep doing business with these. It's actually better for you on the business to business technical side. You just got to get a little creative or maybe have a bigger delay in that process. But oh man, this is very much for that category.

[A]

The impact is major and I think it's just so like you're obviously, you're evoking the law of reciprocity here without asking for an ask. I mean, once again it's non transactional, like you're legitimately doing it. And oh by the way, it's probably pretty damn good for repeat business. You've been listening to perpetual traffic.

[B]

It.