Appreciation Marketing: Greatness Through Gratitude w/ Curtis Lewsey

Unlock the secret to building extraordinary business relationships with the power of appreciation cards in this must-listen episode!  Join us as we sit down with Curtis Lewsey, the mastermind behind AMcards, and revolutionizing a career through gratitude and personalized communication.  Discover the invaluable insights from his book, "Appreciation Marketing: How to Achieve Greatness Through Gratitude," and how a simple "thank you" can serve as a powerful competitive edge in today's business landscape.

We'll dive deep into the essence of personal connections and the timeless impact of traditional methods like sending greeting cards.  Curtis sheds light on how mailing congratulatory or sympathy cards can substantially boost client loyalty and referrals. Plus, learn how to seamlessly merge these tried-and-true techniques with modern technology, such as transforming your handwriting into a digital font, ensuring you maintain a personal touch without sacrificing efficiency.

This episode is packed with actionable strategies for industries like real estate, financial advising, insurance, and car dealerships.  Curtis shares successful programs tailored for these sectors, highlighting the importance of post-sale appreciation in fostering repeat and referral business.  Unveil the secrets to maintaining a functional database to prevent lost referral opportunities and the profound impact of genuine care and consistent follow-ups on client loyalty and business growth. Tune in for an eye-opening conversation with Curtis Lewsey and elevate your professional success through Appreciation Marketing.

 "Sometimes you have to go backwards to go forwards.  Remember hand written Thank You notes... Remember Snail Mail?  It's BACK!! Technology and good old fashioned Hand Written Notes, merge together with Curtis Lewsey's AMcards.com.  The secret sauce to more referrals... Appreciation Marketing!" - 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: 0:20

From real estate to real life and everything in between. The Brad Wiseman Show and now your host, Brad Wiseman. There we go, there we go Another show. This is awesome. This is going to be a really cool show.

Speaker 1: 0:36

This guy here that we have coming on, he's coming in streaming into the studio and I know his. I know him through his business, I actually use his business, and it turns out he has a company called Amcards and you know, what I found is really interesting about this company and interesting about this concept is, you know, as technology gets, we're more and more into technology and we're more and more into, you know, thinking that we can automate everything, and we can. You know that we don't need to be custom for each person or that we don't have to have something that we specially write for somebody and send it in the mail. And also we just talk about snail mail. We talk about mail not being that relevant anymore. Well, this guy disagrees and I disagree too. You know, there's sometimes where a handwritten note or a mailer or something is better than anything else. So I'm going to bring on Curtis Luzzi he is the owner and I'm going to say founder of Amcards. Is that correct? That is correct.

Speaker 1: 1:29

Yep, and I didn't ask you how to say your last name before we started. So how do you say your last name? I want to make sure I didn't butcher it. Yeah, it's Lucy Lucy. Okay, that would have. Could it be like Lucy Lucy of all? Like Lucy, I got you Okay, so you know. Interestingly enough, I didn't know you, but I was using your services, so isn't that kind of it's kind of wild?

Speaker 2: 1:48

right, I mean you know, and obviously, being in the KW, I mean you guys are all about. This is your culture. You know what we? What's about my book appreciation, marketing, how to talk about exactly that. Wow, very cool.

Speaker 1: 1:58

So yeah, so you wrote a book, and I'm thinking the book was actually before the end cards is that correct?

Speaker 2: 2:05

It was, yeah, it was a national bestseller in 2009. And so it did a lot of speaking and training. And then I realized that a lot of sales professionals are leaving our presentations and our workshops and with great intentions to implement appreciation and gratitude into their business. But without a mechanism or a system, we know that a lot of it fails. So we ended up coming up with AM cards to be able to back up the principles, the philosophies that we teach.

Speaker 1: 2:29

Yeah, it's amazing. And the book was called how it was called appreciation marketing, and it's how to achieve greatness through gratitude, you know. So how do you go from a book to these cards Like what was this? This I did? All of a sudden you're like, okay, I want to have some kind of a company that does direct mail that's more personalized.

Speaker 2: 2:48

You know. So the story is that when I was right out of college, I worked for a company called Centos Corporation and I was knocking on every door, every store and every floor up in New Haven, connecticut, selling really sexy products like toilet paper, air fresheners. Wow, that sounds fun. Yeah, it was, but it was a multi-billion dollar company. And the reason why I went to work there was because in college I read the book Rich Dad, poor Dad, and if you remember, in that book, robert Kiyosaki's rich dad told him to work for Xerox when he got out of the military not for the money for the training. And so, similar to what you teach and you have systems in a blueprint if you do this, this and this, you can expect to get this, this and this. And so I went in there, didn't realize that most of the sales guys were not doing what the playbook said to do, and I just did what it did and I had amazing results, yet I still wanted to quit. I was about burnt out after three months. And then I realized the number one salesperson was making twice as much money as us and working half the amount of hours, and I thought it was because the company was just feeding him leads. He was there longer, he was getting preferential treatment, you know that kind of stuff and you feel like you know he had more of an entitlement attitude. It wasn't that at all.

Speaker 2: 3:54

What I realized was he was building a referral network and so people were feeding him business. So he was working hard, but he was more of us working smart, and so when I talked to him, he's like you know, curtis, he's like you got to get to know people for who they are, not just what they do. He goes, that guy driving around. They could be your eyes and ears in the marketplace and if you treat them right, they could be feeding you business. And that's part of the reason why my message resonates so much with Ruth, because everything I say is that not any business, really, that relationships are important. So that's what I started doing.

Speaker 2: 4:28

I started focusing on getting to know people, like understanding a little bit more and then also educating them. What would be a great referral? See, we talk a lot about you get a lead by what you do. You earn repeat business by who you are and how you show up in people's lives, and so you need to audit and say what am I doing? How am I showing up in people's lives? And when I started doing that and I start hopping on the trucks, getting to know them a little bit, understand it, educating them, Next thing, you know, I started getting a lot of referrals came in and six months later I was the number one rep out of 1250 sales reps in the country and I realized that I was that the. The probably the number one biggest competitive advantage in business and in life is saying thank you, being appreciative. It separates you. It just straight up does.

Speaker 1: 5:13

Isn't it amazing? And that seems so simple, right, how simple. That's what our parents told us to do. You know, it's like what we didn't. Nobody listens to their parents. Is that what's happening? It's this craziness, and it's just all you said, saying thank you, and, and these cards that you, that you put out, you can put like pictures on them, you can do all kinds of customization on here, and I think that makes people realize that you're, that you're thinking about just them too, I mean absolutely, and so there's a lot of different ways to use something like this.

Speaker 2: 5:41

And you know there's yes, there's that one-off card. You see somebody on Instagram or Facebook just had a grand baby and you want to pull that picture off and pop it on a card and say congratulations. They'll never throw away that card. They're always going to remember you. It's powerful, as long as you're doing it in a more genuine and authentic way. What you never want to do is send a card like that and at the bottom put PS Brad, greatest compliment in the world is a warm referral.

Speaker 2: 6:08

Oh, by the way, then you're mixing messages and you're sending out to get something, but you're disguising it as appreciation and gratitude and being genuine. You're just not. It's what we're sending out to get something. You're disguising it as appreciation and gratitude and being genuine. You're just not. It's what we call sending out poopaganda.

Speaker 1: 6:21

I like that. I'm gonna have to use that term poopaganda. Yeah, and you're right. How many people do that. They end up putting those kind of tags on the bottom and what it does is you read through that whole card, you read through that whole mailer and then at the end it says that and you're like, okay, this is just to get business. This wasn't really them thinking of me or caring about me or having any kind of interest in my life. It was about them getting more business. And it's amazing how many people do that right.

Speaker 2: 6:45

They do. And the chapter five of our book is called chocolate frosted dog crap, and that's what it came up from these. Because you know, Brad, it's your birthday and from afar, you think I have a piece of chocolate cake until I come up and I realize I set it down in front of you. How long do you realize that that's not chocolate cake?

Speaker 1: 7:02

Right.

Speaker 2: 7:02

Right, right, it smells like literally crap. It goes in the garbage. And so it's the same as if I was dressing something up as cake and frosting on it and sending you a birthday card saying happy birthday, hoping everything's going great with your life, your family, your two kids, your business, and then all of a sudden say PS, the greatest compliment in the world is warm. When I do that, it then obviously negates the message. It doesn't land with a warm and fuzzy and if you're in the business of trying to attract repeat referral business people thinking of you and thinking of you fondly, that type of stuff just kind of turns people off and ends up going in the trash and they don't go out of their way to find you business or send you somebody that their coworker needs an extra bedroom because they're having a baby. You know those types of things you want to be that phone call, to be able to have that opportunity to have a conversation.

Speaker 1: 7:49

Yeah, yeah, and you have one here like and I think you took about the impact of a personal connection has never been more important, and that's because of Facebook and Instagram and all these things. I mean, we think that in our world today that that is touching somebody or that is being in their lives, when in reality it's really not. And do you think the mailed cards and things do you think that's going to make a comeback? Because we are so. We're so yearning for that, for we're yearning for something that's for us and something that's different.

Speaker 2: 8:22

It is. It is different, and you know, what we like to say is we're kind of just marrying old school proven techniques. I mean, greeting cards go back to the beginning of time. It's just that we're marrying it with new technology and then be able to deliver it without even a higher level impact. And so people say, well, I really like the handwritten card, great, don't ever stop doing that, you're top 1%. People are not doing that.

Speaker 2: 8:45

Yet when you see somebody just runs a marathon and he trained for six months and they raised all this money for a family member who's battling a disease, and like, realize how much work and effort goes into it I mean, I did a couple of half marathons in my life and I passed out at both of them. I need medical treatment at the end of it, and I'm like these people that do put their bodies through this. And then you make a little comment on social media hey, congratulations on that. Well, why don't you take off that picture of them crossing the finish line with their hands up and put it on a card and send it to them? And you make those deposits weekend and week out, month after month, year after year, and you're making deposits into people like that, the way that people perceive you as as a whole, nother level, and you will generate a lot of business. We taught, we call it appreciation marketing, we, I I make reference to the book, the one thing.

Speaker 2: 9:37

I talk about in the one thing Gary Keller talks about time blocking and that you know multitasking is kind of a myth. It's like if you time block, appreciation marketing, say this is my 30 minutes this week, this is my window. Tuesday morning, 9 30 AM to 10 o'clock is my window. But if you don't put something in your calendar to do in those 30 minutes, obviously something else is going to fill that spot right.

Speaker 2: 9:58

Absolutely so what you're going to do is for the next seven days leading up to that, you look for opportunities to congratulate, appreciate or recognize, and so you want to recognize somebody, you want to appreciate somebody. You maybe, maybe just recognize that, hey, I'm so sorry that you lost your grandfather, or, you know, make a mention of somebody's sympathy. You can make those notes. I put the notes in my phone. I haven't, you know, everybody's got a note section, and so I have a nose that says hearts to send and I just added in there.

Speaker 2: 10:27

And so I took a screenshot of us. I'm going to make that into a card and send it to Matt.

Speaker 1: 10:37

That is so cool, that's cool. That is seeing, that's that's, but that's just. It's also. You got to think of it. But, like you said, time block it. If you, if you make it part of your schedule that you have to think about those things, you'll do it, you know. But if you don't make it part of your schedule, you're so. You're so right about that. Cause I say all the time the problem with me doing handwritten notes, the reason I like your services is because if I write a note, I can pretty much tell you you're going to take about an hour to read it. Because I, because I type everything, my handwriting has gotten terrible. My kids like, look at what I write to them on their homework or something like that, and they're like, dad, we can't even read it. They're like that's not even cursive, it's like an in-between cursive and whatever. So that's why I like your service. What if? What if an agent wants to do 100 cards, like in a community? What do you suggest? I mean to make it personable?

Speaker 2: 11:21

Well, a couple of things. Number one is we actually so? I had a car dealership that really the GM really liked his handwriting One of very few, actually, Right and so I tasked my programmers who are absolutely amazing. I said let's figure this out.

Speaker 2: 11:35

I want to be able to have people take their handwriting and turn it into a font and then, they took it one step further and they said well, when you write the word, let's say I appreciate you. Brad, if I write I appreciate you, the P next to the P. When you write it, the two P's are slightly different.

Speaker 1: 11:51

Oh wow, that's wild.

Speaker 2: 11:52

Yeah, so we can use. We can use AI and every other character, which means you fill out the form five different times.

Speaker 1: 11:58

No way, so it takes different characters.

Speaker 2: 12:00

So now, when you write the card, you can't even tell if it's not even your handwriting. Wow, so you can turn your handwriting actually into your own font, we can attach it to your account and then you have multiple signatures, so you can have a signature that says dad.

Speaker 2: 12:12

You can have a signature that says daddy, uncle Brad, you know you can have all different types of signatures and store it in there. You can also put all your business partners, your market center administrators, leadership team leaders. You can put everybody in there. And so now, if you want to send a card out on behalf of everybody, you can save the templates.

Speaker 2: 12:28

Oh my gosh, so you have templates saved so it saves you time. Then if you want to send like, hey, client appreciation, party's coming up, Awesome, let's go in Canva or go into Command or whatever you guys go in there and design up your.

Speaker 2: 12:40

Yeah, go in there and design it all up. Well, now you can just upload your panels into AM Cards, attach it to a CSV, click one button, it's all in the mail. And if you want to schedule it and say I want to go out 30 days from now, no problem. Hit the 30-day mark and it's all scheduled to go out. You can also what I love like. Those things are cool. I can upload a list and send it to everybody.

Speaker 2: 12:59

You can make it personal. I'll be only a picture. We also I mean the possibilities, because we've been doing this for nine years and I'm really kind of focused on just making the product just just the best you know, number one.

Speaker 2: 13:11

It's always very simple to do. It's also simple not to do, which is definitely a difference. But what you can do also, just to give you an idea yes, you can pick one congratulations card and drop it in the mail. Yes, you can upload a list and send out to everybody. But you also can do a design, a drip campaign. So you sell a home, you can even like attach it to Zapier or something like that. In some cases we're also integrated with Salesforce, hubspot, zoho, monday Pipedrive, followbus, and so when you sell a home, you can click one button and or create an automation and it will trigger, like a three to five year campaign. Happy home anniversary. Can you believe it's already been a year since?

Speaker 1: 13:47

you've been in your home.

Speaker 2: 13:48

Happy birthday. You know checking in on you. You know St Patrick's Day is coming up. Lucky to have you in my life. Thanksgiving is coming up Grateful to have you in my life. Thanksgiving's coming up, Grateful to have you in my life. You know those types of things where it's a set it and forget it, so you pay the money up front.

Speaker 1: 14:01

Gotcha, that's awesome. Now what other industries? I mean you know these kind of things work for most industries. You said you're doing car dealers now. I mean you just started doing that a couple of years ago or recently.

Speaker 2: 14:12

We got started primarily in the real estate space. We have over 25,000 real estate agents on our program. We also have financial advisors and insurance, probably because in your spaces they talk a lot about repeat referral business, taking care of your database, top of mind awareness, important all that stuff right. Yet we have contractors, we have landscapers, we have all kinds of some people just want to send a card every now and then just log in and pay retail. We have that too.

Speaker 2: 14:40

Our biggest clients that we're working with right now are car dealerships and we designed a really slick program where it's completely hands-free and we brand it from the general manager, the owner principal, not the salesperson, because the salesperson has a high-level turnover and the people that are investing and going into their pockets to pay for this it goes. So in the car dealership world, like customer satisfaction index CSI is a big deal Um, they all cause there's, there's a manufacturer kickbacks, um, if they hit certain scores Right, and so that also just making your in the car business. They're kind of notorious for okay, great, just sold the car, where's what's next?

Speaker 1: 15:11

Yeah Right, gotcha.

Speaker 2: 15:13

And you know they kind of forget about them, other than emails that go out or some newsletters or what, trying to get their service or trying to buy back their car in three to five years. So not much love around the appreciation and gratitude side. So I saw a huge opportunity there, so we're jumping into there.

Speaker 1: 15:28

So that's very cool. I'd like one of the other things that you had said here is your customers are more than dollar signs show them. You know, and it's interesting because you know as realtors and not just realtors any business a lot of times, once you made the sale, once the sales over and once you got paid, we kind of just wash our hands Okay, I'm done, I'm out, and we don't, we don't stay in touch anymore. And this is another good place for that, where you know you could keep touching them throughout the year with whatever business you're doing, because a lot of times things especially realtors once we get paid, we disappear. So I think this is a great product for that to stay in touch.

Speaker 2: 16:04

Brad, what would you like in the real estate world? Like somebody makes a sale on a home, let's say they make a $10,000 commission, right, yeah, clearly. Someone goes to the broker. Let's say their take is 10,000, okay, they're the agents. Take home is 10,000 out of that. You got taxes, you got all kinds of stuff, you got business expenses. But what would you say out of the gross that they should reinvest back into their business with? I would say, like back into their database, like back into marketing?

Speaker 1: 16:32

I think marketing is one thing data, your database, your database. You can invest in your database by just keeping a database. I mean, what's amazing to me is how many top producing agents or top salespeople period don't have a functional database and that your database is everything. Because if we're saying that referrals are important, if they're saying that 86% of the people, when asked, would you go back to the salesperson you used before and they say yes. And then they do a poll and say, well, how many did? And it's only 27% did Guess what?

Speaker 1: 17:11

That's our fault. That's our fault. That's the salesperson's fault. That's the person that was supposed to be there for you. So they would have used you if you would have showed up. You just didn't show up. So this what I'm seeing with this product what you're doing is that you are showing up. You're showing up in different ways and sending out things. So I don't know if that answers your question. I kind of went in a rounded circle there. But but no, they typically say 10%, that would be a thousand dollars. That's a little much, I would say. I would say more five percent, three percent.

Speaker 2: 17:38

You know something like that, yeah and then kind of maybe split it up, because I mean I would just say, if you took one to one and a half percent, one percent if you just get one percent gross of that one client and reinvest back into that one client and that could pay you big.

Speaker 2: 17:54

Let's say you get a hundred dollars, yeah, and say, what am I going to do? Well, I'm going to get some type of a closing gift. So, and you know, and it doesn't have to be a crazy expensive gift either you can do something that's more thoughtful. Right, Go out of your way to something thoughtful. And then what if you carved out 20, 30, $40 to be able to say, make sure I'm, I'm making sure that they don't forget me for the next three to five years. See the percent, the thing most people think. Of course they're not going to forget me. I just helped them with the biggest transaction of their life.

Speaker 2: 18:23

Of course they're not going to forget me I took care of them, I helped them, I, but you know, once they're in there, they forget about a lot of stuff and they say don't remember, you Right. Two is perceived indifference, and perceived indifference is just a fancy way of saying that they don't think that you actually care, and you know that you care. Yet if that's the perception, then guess what the reality is. And so that's why it's so important to what, like I said before, is that you show up and you want to show them that you care, and then you, you obviously rank up in their mind and then they're on their top of mind awareness and then hopefully have those opportunities in the future. So you want them talking to behind your back.

Speaker 1: 19:06

Yeah, it's the only time you want somebody talking behind your back, right, is there? Is there anything else you can think of that you wanted to talk about with? About your company, anything new that's coming out that we should know about?

Speaker 2: 19:19

There's always things that were coming out with some new gifting ideas and stuff like that that we have Cause. You know, not only can you send cards, you can send gourmet fudge, brownies, you can send cookies. Amazon gift card, the home Depot, you can send a real $2 bill. We have real roses that have gold plated roses that are absolutely beautiful and like some couple of gifts for kids, like a journal for kids. That's all around gratitude, which is really cool. Those are fun to send.

Speaker 1: 19:44

Um, and that's all through your website. And how? How do we get a whole? How do we get on that website? Tell me, tell me about that quick.

Speaker 2: 19:51

So amcardscom um, you, anybody, can sign up for free. Yeah, so you can go on the website, sign up for free. Yeah, so you can go on the website, sign up for free. There's we don't have contracts or anything like that. We also have. You can sign up for free and you can send your first card anywhere in the United States for free. I pay for it, I pay for the card, the stamp, everything. So you can just send a card, see how you like, send it to your own house, if it's possible. Your mom, you know that you're going to get a call back to say thank you, so do that. And then you can even upload some contacts in there. You can even upload some pictures and play around with it. You know, it's kind of neat too. I put this together. I just haven't marketed it. That much is that we actually have an AM cards app and in the app you can actually send cards via Siri. Oh, wow.

Speaker 1: 20:32

Interesting. So you just say hey, Siri, and then, and then to send it out.

Speaker 2: 20:36

Yeah, and so what you do is you create templates like birthday, nice to meet you, thank you for your business. You know different situations that you might send a card on a regular basis and then it will give you the prompt and you can tell them who you're going to send the card to and check this out. If they don't have it, you can actually. It will send them a text message. They click the link, fill out their name and address and then, when they hit submit, that card will be sent to them.

Speaker 1: 20:59

Get out of here. That's really cool. That's very cool. See you should definitely be pushing that out there, man. I mean, that's important stuff. Well, I want to just say thanks for coming on. I appreciate it. We got some good information and if there's anything else that you start doing and you want to come back on the show, let us know. Anything else you want to say before the end here?

Speaker 2: 21:20

I appreciate you and I appreciate you using our product. It's amazing when it came across to be on your show, I thought it was an honor, absolutely.

Speaker 1: 21:29

You're very welcome, very welcome, awesome. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. We'll be talking to you in the future. There, you had it. We'll be talking to you in the future. Okay, there, you had it. Curtis, lucy, I got it right. This time it's Amcards. They do real estate stuff, they do dealership for cars and things like that. But you want to check out his book too. It's called Appreciation Marketing how to Achieve Greatness Through Gratitude, and that's for around anything, actually, and that's about it. So come to see us every Thursday 7 pm for the latest show. Facebook, instagram, youtube we're everywhere. Thanks a lot.