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Master the Art of Testimonials with John Hubbard

• Jonathan Green : Bestselling Author, Tropical Island Entrepreneur, 7-Figure Blogger • Season 1 • Episode 283

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Welcome to the Serve No Master Podcast! This podcast is aimed at helping you find ways to create new revenue streams or make money online without dealing with an underpaid or underappreciated job. Our host is best-selling author, Jonathan Green.

Today's guest is John Hubbard is a master at overcoming the fear of asking for testimonials. He understands the importance of these endorsements but also recognizes the hesitancy that people have in reaching out for them. John has witnessed firsthand the reasons behind this reluctance, such as the fear of imposing on clients or the belief that they are already paying for the service. However, John firmly believes that businesses that consistently deliver results for their clients often fail to receive testimonials simply because they don't ask. To address this issue, John has developed several techniques to help others overcome this hurdle. By implementing some of these strategies, businesses can see a significant influx of testimonials, thereby transforming their reputation and success.

In this episode John Hubbard discusses the art of obtaining powerful testimonials. They delve into the importance of reciprocity, making the testimonial process easy for participants, and the strategy of reaching out multiple times. They also touch on the challenges of conducting video interviews, specifying quantifiable results in testimonials, and the struggles of scheduling and remembering appointments. Additionally, they explore the fear of asking for help, the significance of ideal results and measurements of success, and tips for creating high-quality testimonial videos.

Notable Quotes

-  "The main reason businesses haven't got testimonials coming in the door is because they just don't ask." - [John Hubbard]

- "Anytime you can get a quantifiable result in there, is really powerful." - [John Hubbard]

- "And one thing that I do right from the start when I'm working with anyone is I set that expectation that if I can get you this result in x amount of, you know, whatever the time frame is, would you be willing to provide a video testimonial?" - [John Hubbard]

-  "If you want me to do something, ask me to do it right now." - [Jonathan Green]

-   " The Importance of Testimonies in Growing Your Business: Sometimes we forget those early milestones that we projected, but, actually, people are excited. So I think it can be good to see people's excitement when they have a result." - [Jonathan Green]

Connect with John Hubbard

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Connect with Jonathan Green

Jonathan Green: gonna get more testimonials with today's amazing special guest, John Hubbard.

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Are you tired of dealing with your boss? Do you feel underpaid and underappreciated? If you want to make it online, fuck hire your boss and start living your retirement dreams now, then you've come to the right place. Welcome to ServeNoMaster podcast, where you'll learn how to open new revenue streams and make money while you sleep. Presented live from A tropical Island in the South Pacific by best selling author Jonathan Green. Now here's your host.

Jonathan Green: Now I'm very passionate about testimonials because they're so hard to get because it feels so uncomfortable because it always reminds me of when I was in high school, and you have to get 3 letters of recommendation for teachers, and then they seal the letter. and you don't know if one of them is poisoned in the envelope. And you're like, it feels like playing Game of clue where your entire life can get ruined. And I had friend who faked all three of his letters and got into an Ivy League School. And I always thought about that because I was like, I wonder what's in those letters. Right? Like, they steal it up so they can say some really bad and it's the same thing about asking for a testimonial or asking it for a review. because sometimes you do that, and then they drop you a one star instead of letting you fix the problem, they come after you. So I wanna start from that point, that fear. There's this fear. Same thing, like, when I work with authors. They're like, what if I get a bad review? I'm like, oh, no. You're going to. Like, every book has a bad review. There's no book with only good reviews in the world. So it's gonna happen, but how did you start by dealing with that fear?

 John Huubard: Yeah. Well, it's that's the thing about testimonials, isn't it? As we all know we need them, but for some reason, we're hesitant to reach out for them. In my experience, it's a There's a few reasons for that, which are all based around fear, but it's one is feeling that you're just imposing on your client by asking for a testimonial, and Most of that comes from that fear of rejection or sometimes people say to me, hey, I'm paying them. Why should they be doing work for me? Things like that. But When it comes down to it, businesses that get results for clients on a regular basis, the main reason they haven't got testimonials coming in the door is because they just don't ask. So I've come up with a a few techniques to get over that hurdle. And when people apply just some of these techniques in their request, they tend to get testimonials. flowing into the business and they turn that around.

Jonathan Green: Well, let's start with that. What's one of the techniques that you recommend? Like, what's the easiest one for people to start with?

 John Huubard: Yeah. Perfect. So I've got a a framework that I use. I call it the real testimonial framework, and it's just r e a l. r is for relationship first. So this is the idea of putting the ongoing relationship first with the clients. And I put everything on the line just for getting one video testimonial because we don't know the situation that client might be in at the time. They might have stuff going on at home or they might have deadlines that they're trying to hit. So we wanna save the awkwardness of them having to come up with a lame excuse down the track. So the very first thing that we do is we put something in the request along the lines of, hey, if you're super busy right now, No big deal either way. Just put next time in the subject line, and please no further explanation is necessary. And that what that does is it just one leaves the door open in the future for them to come back. But the big thing it does in my experience is it makes people a lot less gun shy about sending that request in the first place, and so they send a lot more requests. So therefore, they get more testimonials flying in the door. So that's the first kind of check bit check-in the checklist of the real testimony or framework. The e is for easy and fast, and nothing makes a video testimonial easier for your client than a video interview. So rather than just saying to your client, hey, Jonathan. Can you give me a video testimonial and then go, well, what does he want? You know, what if I say the wrong thing? And, of course, you don't know all the hot buttons that I'm trying to hit for my target audience. You don't even know who my target audience is. So that puts all the onus a responsibility onto you to come up with what to say and how to say it. So if we do a testimonial interview, not unlike what we're doing here, just using a podcast software or even Zoom will do, then it just takes all that responsibility off your client, and you can control the content. So that makes it easy and fast. The other thing that it does gets rid of a lot of those quality control problems that you see with video testimonial interviews. Like, for instance, they're backlit or they're right down at the bottom of the frame or all sorts of inappropriate backgrounds like a bedroom or something like that. As you can control, you can say, hey. Listen. Do you mind if we just move into another room and face a window and all of that kind of stuff you can do in an interview? So he is easy and fast. r is an interesting one in the real testimonial framework. That's a reason why. And what's really important is using the word because in your testimonial request. So giving a reason why you're asking for the testimonial, and this goes back to a 1978 Harvard University study that showed simply by adding the word because to request, increase the likelihood of compliance. And they tested this on a bunch of students that were in a line for a busy copy machine a Xerox machine in those days. It's a 70. So they said, excuse me, I have 20 pages. May I use the Xerox machine? And they had low compliance. But if they said, excuse me, I have 20 pages. May I use the Xerox machine because I have twenty pages, because I'm in a rush to meet my class, then they found the compliant shot up. And what was really interesting is It didn't really matter what went after because as long as they gave a reason why they had a higher compliance. The l in real testimonial framework is for a larger contribution. So this is the idea of making it more about not just about your, you know, selfish needs, and let's face it. They know it's for your promotional purposes so that we're not trying to hide that in any way. But you're also saying something along the lines of hey, it would also help a lot of other people in the community. So they're the kind of 4 beats that I want in every testimony request. And what I find is when people just add those into that email reach out and makes it hell of a lot easier for those testimonials to start flowing into the business.

Jonathan Green: You brought up some things that are very interesting because when people ask me for a testimonial, it's a whole production. You can see I got the whole jazz behind me. This only works when I'm shooting at night. I have to because it's too bright in the window, so I have to say, oh, I have to do a certain time or I have to be outside, and you want your hair to look right, and you wanna shave, or if you're a lady, you wanna look nice, whatever it is. Right? Like, there's all these other elements. And if distracted. So sometimes people have to ask me 10 or 20 times. And, like, I'm sorry I bothered you. No. I just keep forgetting. I write it down my note card, but it's not the right time. Things happen. And there's that issue, right, that it's like, well, I wanna be ready for it. So there's and you wanna do a really good job. because nobody wants to be the person And this is me. I'm on a few big companies' home pages with videos I made. And I watched that video. I'm like, I wish it was just, like, 10% better. Like, you always you do I do my best, but I now have better lighting and better lighting and better audio. So you always wanna be your best, and that's what a lot of people I get tons of video test monitors that are so unusable, like, there's no sound or the person says something you just can't include. They use a potty word or whatever. So it's a very good idea about the making it interactive. It makes it more likely to happen because most of the time when I don't do it, it's forgetfulness. I'm really busy. I get so many emails, so many messages. If you saw how many messages in my podcast inbox, I just stopped opening someone on vacation for a month, and it's so many messages. Like, I can't even deal with them. Like, it's a whole day of Yeah. So it's usually that. A lot of times we assume when someone doesn't respond to a message, especially when we're asking for something that it's, like, a massive rejection. But 99% of the time, they didn't see the email. Right? Or they got distracted. Right? Especially when it's a big ass. So I think that's really helpful to go, let's just make it in real time. And then if you remove that performance. Right? Oh, I have to do a great testimony. What's the right thing to say? And it's always tricky because you go. What do you want me to say? They go, just be yourself because they can't tell you exactly what to say because it starts to get into murky waters. Right? And what it's funny because I I ordered something that came in the mail today, and they were like, if you follow us, Make a video and leave a 5 star review and then post a video of all of that to our Facebook page, we'll give you a nickel. And I was like, wow. That's like I mean, guess it worked. It must work on somebody, but it was, like, such a you know, I'm used to the $5 Starbucks gift card. I'm like, why don't go to Starbucks? It's just like, I get those offers all the time, and you we're so used to that. A lot that's so many big company strategies is, like, let's offer something really low value to a huge number of people. and try and incentivize them to give. And especially they say it has to be a 5 star review. I know you're not supposed to do that, but that's out there. And so there is this kind of thing that poisons the well. And I think it's the same reason we're afraid to do outreach at all because we've all had a lot of bad outreach. I get so much bad outreach. Right? Like, You always know your podcast hits a certain point where you start to get, like, 10 requests a day from, like, just getting machine gunned in from labeling 2 different industries, whatever, and it's, like, it does make you gun shy about reaching out to other people. So I think there's a lot of these challenges. So this is very interesting to me the idea of just making an interview have the questions because I've tried a lot of different techniques. So you're like, sometimes you have, like I've tried to think if you have automated video question, then they reply to video, then you video question appears and stuff, and that's okay. Right? That got me some okay stuff. Then you gotta parse it, but it's very sometimes they say something like, can you restate that without that in it or this in it? Right? because it makes sense. So this is all very, very interesting to me. What do you think is, like, the right process? So let's say you ask someone, a, do you think you do a test and there's just no reply?

John Huubard: If there's no reply, yeah, I guess it depends. It all comes down. I guess the base basis we're working off is did we get the result for the person in the first place? Then there's automatically a reciprocity that kind of takes place there when and people in my experience wanna help you, and they and they wanna and they understand you're using it for your promotional purposes. It's more around are you making it easy for them to provide the testimonial? But, yes, there's gonna be people that aren't in the the circumstances aren't right or they're just too busy, but I would maybe reach out once or twice more. And after that, I would probably leave it alone, to be honest. And I'm I'm hoping that for most people, there'd be, you know, plenty of fish in the sea. There's other people that they've got big results 4. The other thing is sometimes you can reach out for a testimonial too early. because if you think of the spectrum of okay testimonial to outstanding testimonial, The outstanding testimonials have got a couple of elements, and I'll I'll I can talk through this in more detail. But top of the list is there's a big result. There's a big quantifiable result there. It's not just a pleasantry about how good Jonathan is or how much I like the course. It's something that came out of that. I started my online business within 6 weeks. It's a nice quantifiable result, and that's if I'm an you know, someone in the audience, a prospect, and I'm watching that and I want that resolved, then that's really engaging to me. That's what's got me paying attention. So that's top of the list is quantifiable result. So sometimes it doesn't pay to reach out too early. It it's it actually pays to do the work, get the result with the client and then put in the testimony request.

Jonathan Green: Yeah. It's very interesting. Some I was looking at something recently, and all of the reviews were, like, I just got this. Seems great. Haven't tried it yet. And I'm like, that's so and I saw, like, a whole bunch of those And I was like, this is very, very unhelpful. Right? Like, I'm hopeful that it will work. I'm like, this is the same as reviewing it before might as well write the review before it arrives. Right? Like, there's a lot of that. And but the thing is that's when the people are the most excited. And so part of it is, like, when do I hit people on the excitement arc? Because once you complete a project for someone. Sometimes you just never hear from them. Like, the job is done, and then, like, suddenly, you go from very important to them to you've hit the milestone, and they get really unresponsive. And so you go, Do I wanna hit people when they're the most excited, which is usually, like, a few days into a course, then they're most likely to shoot a video or do whatever because they're so excited. Most of the time, if I go through a program and I get results, I might not get results for 6 or 12 months. Most things take time. Like, hate to surprise people with that. Yeah. A business, even if it's online, takes a long time to work because it's still a process. Nothing is as quick as we want, and a lot of people don't wanna hear that. And it gets tricky because if you reach out to me, How do you know? Oh, wait 18 months, and I'll let you know, and then I'll write you a really good one. So it can be a very trick. Right? Like, to know, do I wanna get in when they're the most excited, when they're most likely to have a result?

John Huubard: Yeah. Well, there's a spectrum, isn't there? because some of those early testimonials that are just about the product or the mechanism, they also help for a newbie that if you hear someone that talks to a fear or a pain that I might have as a prospect, let's say it's a fear or an objection or a false belief around your product, and we can have a testimonial that confronts that from a new buyer that that may talk about, hey. I was worried because this is a business opportunity course, and I took it on, and I'm pleasantly surprised it's five times more value than I thought I would get. That's a good testimonial, but it's not as good in the spectrum or as that quant of, hey. This has changed my life. I'm now making, you know, $15,000 a week or whatever that quantifiable result is. So, yes, you do need both. And I totally agree that you do need to strike while the iron's hot too and keep front of mind. And one thing that I do right from the start when I'm working with anyone is I set that expectation that if I can get you this result in x amount of, you know, whatever the time frame is, would you be willing to provide a video testimonial? So we're setting that that expectation right up front. So it's not coming out of the blue when I ask, you know, that is always in in the plan. And the other thing is, what tends to happen as someone goes cold too if you're only, you know, you haven't spoken to them for 12 months or whatever, and then you reach out of the blue. Sometimes people tend to internalize some of the things that they learned off you and take all the credit for that themselves. So it pays just to remind them of the results you've achieved together occasionally as well, which goes in there's a couple of other things you can do just to keep front of mind, and one is just having some form of regular reach out baked into your whether it be a newsletter or just a regular email sequence or whatever it is, just eliciting those results to people come forward when they get results so you can have those conversations and stuff like that. It's like noticing people when they post results in your Facebook group, if you go to Facebook reaching out to those guys, seeing if they'll take the the next step and turn that into a video testimonial. So those are some of the things you can do. But, yes, you're always gonna have a spectrum of testimonials, and that's not a bad thing because they talk to different people in your audience.

Jonathan Green: Oh, talked about some of the positive. What are some, like, the biggest mistakes you've seen people make in getting testimonials, posting testimonials? What are, like, the biggest craziest things you've ever seen people do? They're don't do this. It's a huge mistake.

John Huubard: Yeah. The one of the things that has really hurt businesses in recent years, and I must admit, I I went down this road too because it's so attractive is essentially outsourcing the testimonial collection to video testimonial software. And It seemed very appealing when it first came, and we've got some good ways of incentivizing. For instance, in a coaching setting or a course community setting. We've got some really good incentives that are not monetary incentives, but get people very excited about giving testimonials. And so we we did this one incentive where we put on a free training if people would give an an in order to get access, they needed to give a provider video testimonial about the current training that they were And so we got about 35 testimonials for that, and we collected it via a video software thing. And we the questions were good. We've been collecting testimonies for a long time. When we got them back, there was only about 5 of those that were actually usable for a whole range of reasons. 1, had the people that were really diligent, and they were trying to do the right thing, and they were clearly reading off notes. So they're turning the whole time, and it's very wooden in the delivery. So any authenticity or believability about that testimonial. It's just blown out of the water. And then you had a range of technical problems, all the normal stuff, backlit, poor audio, mile of room above their head, so the framing was was horrible. all those kind of things. So that's one of the mistakes that I see a lot of businesses making is just hoping that the software is gonna solve some of those problems. Top of the list though for testimonial interviews is just not making the testimonial relevant to the target audience. So it's not speaking to a problem or a fear or a belief that target audience has about products or services like yours. So one of the things that we do in the preparation for a testimonial interview is we do the psychographic analysis on our target audience. And we say, okay. What about what's our target audience's fears and their pains and their desires and their beliefs as it relates to your product. And then when we're doing the preparation for an interview, we say, okay. What in what we know about their story, the interviewee story, Where's the overlap with our target audience? because what we're looking for is the, I guess, the story points that match up with our target audience. Because In a video interview or in a testimonial interview, there's a million threads that we can pull on, conversation threads that we can pull on. And so if I ask and typically, the way that we do an interview is we ask an open ended question, so we allow someone to come up with 4 or 5 different conversation threads. And then we just pull on one of those and we go deep on those ones. And often what we'll do is we'll give what we call a sentence starter so we get a nice clean edit point. So we might say, hey, I'd I'd love you to talk about just that that that first $5000 a month you had after working with Jonathan, if we could just narrow down and talk about that part, if that would be okay. And what I might do is I'll give you a sentence starter. So you might say after working after 1 month of working with Jonathan, we had our first $5000 a month, and then they would start the sentence. And then you go on just to finish that sentence, and they would start the sentence with a sentence starter. what that gives you is a really nice clean edit point because a a little testimonial really only needs to be about 30, forty seconds long. when we're using it at the top of funnel because people won't watch videos that are a minute long and are banging on about all the intricacies of the widget. They just wanna know does it solve the problem they have and does it deliver the result that they want? We can fit that in a little 30 or 42nd video, and we'd really only need 2 or 3 sound bites to make that happen. So if we know the sound bites that are gonna resonate with our target audience, and then we go into the interview knowing on the listening out for those conversation threads as they appear, then we can pounce and go, okay. Let's go down that road. Let's capture that question nice and cleanly. we don't have to spend an hour doing the interview. We can capture the interview, you know, 15 to 20 minutes.

Jonathan Green: Yeah. because sometimes they give an answer. It's, like, almost perfect, and then there's a spot. space that you can't use in another words almost perfectly great. Maybe they say something that's very personal or individualized. And I tried you like everyone, I tried using the software, and you get all of those things. And if, like, you get more videos than you normally do because you don't have to get in the call with people in it, but you're exactly right. And what's interesting is they've started to try and bring that into the podcast market, and someone had one. And it's awful. It has an automated question, and it's so horrible. I couldn't even do it. Like, I tried to do it for someone. I was like, alright. I'll try it. It's to some of those podcasts, they have the question. Like, oh, just answer your question like you're talking to a person. It's so unnatural. Now I understand why people stink it doing it when they're trying to give a testimonial for me because It's impossible. I have no idea what question I'm gonna ask you next. How could I possibly know? Like, I don't know what you're gonna say. Right? People --

John Huubard: Yeah.

Jonathan Green: -- always ask me. Every like, what questions are you gonna ask on the podcast? I'm like, I don't know. I don't I wait how would I possibly know that? because you could say something crazy. they get that and that's what I wanna talk about. Like, you know, and that's what makes it a dynamic medium, and that's what makes it interesting. Obviously, a testimony wants something more specific, but People want if people wanna give you a test order, they wanna give you what you want, but it's like this guessing game because they don't exactly know what you want. So I think makes sense for the live interview. So I wanna ask about is, like, the request. Right? Do you say, hey. We wanna do an exit interview. Do you say, hey. Do you have time to do a testimonial for me? Do you straight up say, ask for testimonials specifically and let people know in advance? because I feel like that word has this huge weight to it. Right? Or do you say feedback? Do you use the word testimonials specifically? Great.

 John Huubard: No. I don't say feedback because I don't want to get on a call and them giving me you know, trying to help. They might be giving me useful pointers about what I could add to module 2 in my content or something. So I wanna be really clear that it's a case study interview and that will be you know, it's a testimonial interview and we'll be sharing their interview for promotional purposes. So I I never ever hide that because otherwise, you you really risk wasting both of your time. So in the request, when I'm doing that preparation work and I'm thinking about what's a nice quantifiable result if I had my perfect testimonial from this person. What's their quantifiable result look like? So that when copy how we're always trying to specify a specific a number So what I'm always looking for and this can be depending on what kind of business I'm working with. You know, if it was a sleep coach, obviously, you haven't got a I made $5000 in 3 weeks kind of result, but you could say something like I've gone from having 5 hour sleep a night to 9 hour sleep. So anytime you can get a quantifiable result in there is really powerful. So knowing that I'm gonna ask that, I try and seed that really early on in the testimony request process. So I might say let's say I'd help someone with a book launch strategy. I might say, hey, Jonathan. I'd love you to talk about how you doubled your sales using the book launch strategy, if you could share that, I would be truly grateful. So I would be making it very clear that it's a testimonial request very, very early on. And like I say, there's plenty more fish in the sea, and we're trying to leave the door open for people to loop back around. It's not the at time, and we're also making it as easy as humanly possible. We're saying to them, hey. No preparation is necessary. Just show up. It it will be done in 30 minutes. So if that doesn't land and they're not the right person to do it, then we move on.

Jonathan Green: Yeah. because it's interesting because I do a lot of these. I do a lot of podcast because and let me know of nowhere. That's how I meet people. It's very great for me. It's the only time I talk to other people in the business in this way, and I send out, you saw mull because you're on that end. Multiple videos say, hey. It's a video interview. We shoot it in four k. Please do the lighting. All those interview come out for me. Automotive. there's still one in ten people shopping, oh, is this a video interview? Yeah. And, like, 1 in 20, call in from their cell phone and do, like, with no external mic. And I'm like, what? And it's even then. Right? And that's someone trying to promote. Let's be honest. You're here because you hope people peer about your business and wanna use your tools and training, which is fine because it's also helped. Like, I choose who I bring on. Like, it's not a secret, guys. Big surprise. He's gonna say his link at the end. But and yet, people with that intention will still show up and be like, oh, I can't be on camera or the vertical video. Like, there's a time and a place. Like, I who do a lot of vertical video and short video content. I love it. But guess what? you don't want that for a testimonial. Once you get a vertical testimonial, you're like, what am I supposed to do with this? I gotta either add crop it or whatever, and it's all these little things that kind of people do even with when it's for growing their business alone or for growing your own. So there are these hurdles. Like, how do you get people, I guess, prepared for the tech issue, like, to know, hey. I'm gonna put you on camera, this and that. Like, do you send them one of those things that says, oh, set up your lighting. Do you have an external mic and all that stuff?

John Huubard: I I do, and it I try and make it in their interests. So one of the things that we do immediately in the in the confirmation email after someone's agreed to give a testimonial, and and I'm talking if I'm doing it from one of the first things we do is we send an email and we say, how to and titled how to shine on camera. So that that's part of the fulfillment. And top of the list is face a light source. So we say we say, hey. One of one of the most flattering things you can do is face a window because natural light's very flattering. The other thing is if you adjust the webcam and have it as close to eye height as possible. That's the most flattering height, and it avoids that awful up the nose shot because you see so many shots that are shot from down low up. and it just looks absolutely awful. So they're the 2 main things, and we say quite room and stuff like that. And then the interview itself gives us a little bit of time to find tune that as well. So we do a bit of preamble at the start, and I might say, hey, listen. Can you just just a favor and just adjust the laptop around this way or that way? Or Is there a blind you can open there or whatever that is? So we just do that quality control. And I personally and I this doesn't happen very often. It it only happen once that I can remember in recent years. But if there's no way of controlling that quality, then I will postpone the interview because it's useless to me or the client if we can't publish publish it. You know, it's like those the which which happens so often when you're doing using that video collection software and so on is you get all of these great testimonials, and sometimes there's great elements to them, but you can't like, you it'll be a job and a half to try and edit those altogether. But yes. So if it's if the quality is not good enough or there's some, like it it and if it's a particularly noisy environment or if it's very dark or something like that, I'd say, hey. Listen. Can we reschedule? Because it's just not worth my while

Jonathan Green: because it's because you're asking for something. It feels like I'm asking her to just move. I'm asking her to show up, and I'm asking her to reset and ask her reschedule. It feels like so much ask in one direction. Right? It feels like when you're text single days, 10 years ago, you're texting someone, and you noticed you sent 10 texts with no replies to a lady. That's what feels like needing this. Like, I'm asking and asking. And so I feel like that's a big part of what holds people back is like --

 John Huubard: -- feeling you're imposing.

Jonathan Green: Yeah. Yeah. It just massively feels like I'm imposing. It feels like I'm asking it. You know, I'm sending all these messages, and there's no reply. And I looked I this happens in my personal life. I recently looked to me, my wife mostly chat on Facebook Messenger. I don't know why we don't text regular, but And 90% of the messages for me, that's because usually I'll send a message, and then she'll come talk to me in person. But it may like, if someone just looked at this, I look so needy. in our relationship with, like, all these other black, white messages. And I was and that's this feeling. I was, like, been together 10 years, so I passed that void, but I was, like, from someone else looking at this looks bad. This looks like we're not even married. Right? And I don't even know if Fintide face we are married because it, like, switched our status one time. It disconnected us. I didn't even know because I never looked, but I was like, this looks terrible. So I just think about that feeling. There's this huge fear, not just of imposing, but also of, like, by the time you finally get them on camera, they are really annoyed. I know that and that's all projection. Right? because --

 John Huubard: Yeah. I think I mean, that's certainly not my experience in actually having interviewed thousands of people that and most of the time, they're happy to do it, and they're happy that they don't have to what to say that they just have to show up and answer some questions. And, look, I I would still say even sending those in instructions. My experience is, like, your experience. Most people don't read those. Like, I'm, you know, maybe couple and 20% might or 30% might So they show up, and we just do that little bit of adjustment before we we start. We have to do that. And then we settle in and do the normal preamble of, hey, Jonathan. This is just a a normal conversation. There's no right or wrong answers, and we're gonna edit this. So feel free to if you wanna start your answer again. go ahead and do that, and I reckon it's gonna take us about 15 minutes.

Jonathan Green: How big of a window do you give people to schedule between, like, when you ask for testimonial? because I've seen this is one of the things that annoys me about my scheduling software. Like, I can't put a limit on it. Like, oh, these days, this week, not these this week or just, like, only these 2 days this week? because sometimes you don't wanna close out forever, but be like, oh, only open it up for the next 3 days. Right? So that people have to schedule this window so there's a sense of immediacy. because I had someone I had something last week where I'm working at ProLogistix. I was like, hey. Can we get on a call today? And they scheduled a call for 6 hours from now. And from right now and I'm like, I 6 day 6 days ago, I was in the zone on it. It was a perfect time, and it was the only time I guess they had available. But, like, calendar, why do you just give people 60 days of availability or ever. Right? And so sometimes that is the thing I wonder about as a kind of annoying is, like, what's because if you give people too much time, then those I've had people schedule up meetings 3 months out. Guess what? I won't remember who you are. Like, I use an app to tell me who people are. I have notes reminding me who you are. Not because of anything to do, I have 4 kids. k? They're in the last hour, 3 different crises where each kid said why do you love to other 3 more than me? 3 different kids in Southerning. So it's not has nothing to do with the other person, but I have to have notes. Like, your name written down, your website written down, not because of lack of interest, but because I wanna remember. But so when people schedule stuff really far out, I go, I don't know who you are anymore. So I need it quickly. So how much time window do you give? Do you give them, like, I need you this week. Right?

 John Huubard: I personally give 14 days be because I and I might be wrong. It might be a false belief, but I think I used to do longer than that. And my experience of people that would do 3 or 4 weeks time as that would be the 10 the people that would tend to then reschedule the appointment and just kick it down the the road a little bit. And I think part of that was because they weren't really in like they'd they'd said yes because they felt some kind of obligation. So I make it a 2 week window, and When we're not trying to for most of my clients, and I've worked a lot in the coaching space. Most of those guys have pretty close relationships. with the or or at least they have a a might be group coaching, but they still know the person by name and stuff like that. They have a relation. And So it's not that big. It really just comes down a lot of the time to whether or not they've they're in the position to do it right now. And by saying to them, hey. Listen. If now's the right time, just say, put next time in the subject line. If they put next time, then my client will reach back out to them in 2 or 3 months. and ask them again, say, hey. You're looking at this. So I I guess my point is I'm not most of the time, we're not trying to convince people to do something they don't wanna do. We're just rounding up the people that would be interested in doing it in

Jonathan Green: -- Yeah. I'm actually, when you said 14 days, I was like, wow. That's so long. if you schedule I'm thinking that's so far away because so many things happen. And, like, the further something is out, the more likely Something is to happen or get in the way, and it's not attention. Like, I have so many schedule apps. It doesn't matter. I've even heard people on the show who that's all they do is they help people get, like, oh, whatever you have, I mean, you get a text, you get a fax, you get, like, a Facebook message to your mind because life happens. Right? And That's why I try to have a business where I need as few meetings as possible. I only people are like, why do you only shoot podcasts one day? Because, like, that's guaranteed to remember. Like, I will definitely remember that's the day of the week because otherwise, I missed so many meetings. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I missed a huge meeting last week. And the person sent me a message. Jim has told me I'm really sick. I can't make the meeting. I'm so sorry. I was like, oh, I I saw the message the next day, and I'd forgotten the meeting. And so that's how it is. I think when you give people this large one to exaggerate. The longer it is, the more likely they are to forget or distract, and that's why I try to say, if you want me to do something asked me to do it right now. He's like, I had to shoot a video testimonial for someone who I spent 2 years working with. She's amazing, best cop ever worked with. Of course, I was like, if I wanna shoot a video for you, I gotta be outside in the beach. Kinda live on the beach, and I was like, you have to remind me the right time and all this stuff. So it's like, I want it to be perfect. And so that meant she had to ask it 7 or 8 times because I and it was on my notes where I scheduled for the day for weeks, so I wanted it to be perfect. So sometimes it's that. And we're --

 John Huubard: Yes. Yeah.

Jonathan Green: It's actually some time --

 John Huubard: I wanna help.

Jonathan Green: Yeah. The immediacy and it's kind of that thing is that we're so afraid. I mean, you've sent me so many messages about rescheduling, and it Like, last week, I came in with the the entire website that we used to record was down. And I was, like, shopping with the backups, and none of them could do what I wanted to do. The competitor that I almost went with instead of this brand went got bought out by another company doesn't have the same features and all of this stuff. So I spent 2 hours trying to fix the tech. I was so stressed out, but it can feel, right, from your end. Like, is this guy not want me on a show? Like and that's the thing is that it can right? It can feel that way. Like, is this a game. Fortunately, you had tried to log in and you saw that it wasn't working from your end too. I was like, what if he can log in and I can't? That's like that was my really big fear that it felt like you're it shows you waiting And then, like, I'm, like, trying to log in. I was trying on different computers. I couldn't figure out why the website was down and all this stuff. So it's very much we when we're asking people to do we're afraid to ask too many times because we think it's gonna create this huge thing. And it's usually exactly right. If you give people a good experience and you kind of come in from that mindset of, I wanna match my promise, and that is hard. Let's be honest. When we're when I'm closing a client at the beginning, I'm very excited. Then I get the money. Let's be honest. My excitement goes down. Right? I can tell you right now, some clients pay me all upfront and some do milestones. The milestone ones get a much better experience because there's another carrot in front of me that hate admitting that because I'd rather get the money up front. But there is something about knowing there's more money coming in that keeps you perpetually motivated to keep doing hitting that next milestone. Just I wish I'd, I guess, matured past that, but I'm not. When there's another milestone and keep working towards it, right, keep see that having motivation. And we get so excited. Then by the end of the project, there's this sense of finality. I'm done, and it's never as good at the end as it was at the beginning. Right? Because reality sets it. And I've had projects go really, really, really well, but it there's always something about it that, like and this has been your own head. You're like, oh, I wish this was, like, a little bit different. I wanna change that. I do a lot of book projects, and sometimes they make changes to the cover without that I'm like, oh, this and that. And it's, like, there's tricky pieces. Right? And you're like, that's not exactly what I wanted. I wanted to do a little better, and not everything goes perfectly. Sometimes they go really, really well on Asus, but there's all these pieces. So sometimes it's in your own head. Right? And it's, like, what I try to do when I start a project is, like, what's your ideal result? Like, what's your measurement of success? And when I started asking people this, I found it revelatory. I with my training courses, I said to most I asked this question once, and it changed everything by how I see my business. how many people on an email list would change your life, and the average answer was a 100. And I was like, I could do that. Like, what? because in my head, it's 10,000. Right? In my head at 10 --

John Huubard: I love it.

Jonathan Green: Like, in my head, 10,000 is life changing. 10,000, you have mailing us 10,000 people that you can share, rev, and you can quit your job. that's in my head, but so many people what they're looking for is so much less. There these websites that's, like, how much money are you making per day? And the like, this scale, right, how good are you doing? The highest number was, like, a $100 a day. And I was like, that's pretty good. Like, that's great, but that's the there's no higher number. Right? It starts at $1 a day, $10 a day, whatever, and it's like the highest number once you pass that, you're like, oh, for most people, it's not a huge number. Like, you always hear this. Like, for most people, an extra $100 a month is life changing. It goes from increasing debt to decreasing debt. That's the difference. So sometimes we get caught up in our own heads about what the result we want for ourselves is versus what we want for the other person.

John Huubard: Yeah. And also maybe what we need in the testimonial. because what you just described there, if someone was making a $100 a day and you take them to a $1000 a day, then that alone is an outstanding quantifiable result in a testimonial. You don't really need all the other stuff. Because if you imagine to where people are watching testimonials a lot of time at in the landing pages, opt in pages, sales pages, top of the funnel. It's often people that are coming into your world for the first time, And they're not willing to give you a lot of time yet because they just don't know you yet. So they're watching the videos and watching reviews because we all need that social proof before we pull the trigger. But short little testimonials that speak to their pain, and then we the way we structured it is in a before and after picture. So before working with Jonathan, I had this problem since working with Jonathan, I've got this quantifiable result, and then the endorsement is the 3rd kind of beat that we have in these testimonials. If I see that in 30 or 40 seconds, boom. I'm interested. I'm leaning forward if that person's got the same problem that I'm currently experiencing.

Jonathan Green: Yeah. And that I think a lot of it comes from we think about where we are, but we don't remember what it's like to be beginning. Right? We don't remember what it's like to get your --

John Huubard: Yeah.

Jonathan Green: -- 1st testimony or to get the first time you send out an email and $50 comes into your bank account, which is amazing the first time it happens, and then you get used to it. Right? You get a sense of familiarity. It's like, oh, I get excited if it's a $1000 or 10,000, whatever. Right? Everyone has their numbers. And so I think it could be the same thing is that sometimes we forget those early milestones that we projected, but, actually, people are excited. So I think it it can be good to see people's excitement when they have a result. Right? And say, well, what results are you looking -- Yeah. -- when they get it, then that's great. Because that's sometimes, it's just we're projecting our own fears, whatever, our own things inside. So this has been really amazing, and they have given me a lot of your time and I know you have something special that you're giving away to people or people who wanna start learning their testimony process to grow their business because it's so important we need those testimoners to get started. Tell me more about where people can find you online and where you have a special gift for people today.

John Huubard: Yeah. Certainly, if if people would like to learn more, what the thing that I find businesses value most is just the testimonial request script. So I've got a script that you can get at testimonialscript.com, and it's just the same real test emotional framework that I outlined before and just a word for word script that you can copy and paste and and modify it to your own business. So, yeah, you can get that for free at testimonial script.com. If you'd like to reach out to me, probably the best places on LinkedIn if you just search for John Hubbard on LinkedIn, you'll see testimonials plastered all over my profile there and feel free to reach out to me and always happy to have a chat.

Jonathan Green: Wonderful. So I'll make sure you put those in the show notes and blow the video you post on YouTube. And this has been great, John. Thank you so much for joining us for today's episode of the serve master podcast.

John Huubard: My pleasure, Jonathan. Love to be here.

Jonathan Green: Thank you for listening to the serve, no master podcast. Make sure to subscribe so that together, we can achieve true freedom.

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