Are You Making it Hard for People to Say "Yes"? - Blyth Ellsworth explains how you're losing prospects

If I asked you whether you intentionally made it difficult for people to say yes to your offers, you would be shocked.

Of course you don’t! You want to make it as easy as possible!

Ah, but what you don’t know can hurt you. More specifically there are dozens of hidden choke points people encounter that cause them to ignore your offers.

My podcast guest, Blyth Ellsworth shines a gentle light on those “friction points” and offers clear, actionable steps for finding and removing them. 

Because what you don’t know CAN come between you and customer sales!

If you find the Marketing Root Work podcast valuable, please become a subscriber!

My mission is to change the way small business owners market themselves and it’s very important to me that I reach as many people as possible.

Transcript

Podcast Transcript. Blyth Ellsworth - 12.01.25

Judy Murdoch

Hello and welcome to the Marketing Root Work Podcast. I'm your host, Judy Murdoch, and today I would like to introduce Blythe Ellsworth. Hi Blythe. I love the forties. Look.

Blyth Ellsworth

Thank you.

Judy Murdoch

Yes, please, introduce yourself and talk a little bit about your business, what do you do, who do you help?

Blyth Ellsworth

Yeah, so my name is Blythe. I'm a client experience designer, and I'm basically like Gordon Ramsey meets an Imagineer, so I won't swear at you, and I'll just. Throw some Disney magic in your direction. My goal is to make your tech match your touch by aligning all of your backend with the human connection points that you have on the front end, and not overwhelming you, but delighting and dazzling your clients.

So I usually help solopreneurs or small agencies as there. You know, moving into their next stages of growth, those are the perfect times to start evaluating your systems and then evaluating how your clients move through the system. So I'm just jazzed, I could talk all day about helping clients and keeping all of our decisions client centric, because those are the ones that are gonna lead to like the money centric topic.

[00:01:11] Judy Murdoch: Agreed. I totally agree. You and I we totally geeked out on like user engineering and user interface because I come from not a super duper tech background, but definitely tech writing training and my heart experience has been that if your users cannot use whatever it is that you're asking them to use to get their work done, you're kind of screwed.

[00:01:37] Blyth Ellsworth: Yeah, definitely.

[00:01:38] Judy Murdoch: And it gets even more important when we're talking about clients. 

[00:01:42] Blyth Ellsworth: Yeah. A hundred percent. It really kind of dazzles me in the sense that clients can really move through a system and they can get stuck at so many of the different touch points throughout the entire service from like, who are you?

How do I buy from you? All the way to, totally, okay, I finished my services with you now what? 

[00:02:01] Judy Murdoch: Right. Or it's like the heartbreak of the abandoned shopping cart. Right.

[00:02:05] Blyth Ellsworth: Ugh. Yeah. Right. And it could be a myriad of things that are causing that issue, but then how do we get them back in?

They may have just gotten a d totally and like totally distracted and there are methods and automations that we can import that will help reclaim those dear clients to buy from you. 'cause they'll go, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. I, I had that, I bought that. 

[00:02:27] Judy Murdoch: Right. Yes, exactly. Well, I like how the client experience really is at the center. Of what you do, even though I know you have a very techie background, I love that you are also very client user-centric and so you're always thinking about them and what is their experience. 

[00:02:45] Blyth Ellsworth: Mm-hmm. 

[00:02:45] Judy Murdoch: With our software, with our websites, whatever.

[00:02:48] Blyth Ellsworth: Mm-hmm.

[00:02:48] Judy Murdoch: So one of the things that I was excited to talk to you about is my sort of area of focus is on word of mouth marketing. Marketing referrals is a huge part of that. And one of the things that I find that business owners, we have a tendency to forget about this, is we put a lot of effort into reminding people to send us referrals.

And it's so nice when somebody comes up in our email and what I tried to emphasize with folks is that. This is the beginning of the journey, their journey with you. This is not the end. This is where they are going from being a prospect to turning into a client. And so their experience with you and whatever the tech interfaces are, are really, really important because you can lose people.

It's easy for that to happen. So tell me a little bit, like if I were to come up with a short list to give it to people, business owners and say, Hey, when somebody comes to you, these are some areas you should really pay attention to. So speak to

the specific areas that they should like even maybe do a little audit there and really see

[00:04:04] Blyth Ellsworth: Yeah.

[00:04:05] Judy Murdoch: Like, what's going on. 

[00:04:06] Blyth Ellsworth: Yeah. So I usually break it down into a couple of different spots that I've kind of deemed the hotspot. So the first part is awareness, obviously. Who you are should be unanimous across all your platforms.

And I think people forget about smaller platforms. So we remember LinkedIn, we remember Instagram, we remember Facebook. But do you remember that networking site that you signed up for that you abandoned the messaging of? And it's a little different. And so now people are meeting you going, oh, I thought you were an X and you're actually a Y.

Making sure that we kind of document those spaces and unify it across the board so as our messaging evolves, we can just hit that document and go through and update our messaging everywhere. That's definitely gotten me into trouble when I first started my journey was I noticed. People pay attention to those things and when they're inconsistent.

[00:04:53] Judy Murdoch: Yeah, agreed.

[00:04:54] Blyth Ellsworth: That that erodes trust instantly. 'cause it's like, well, you don't know who you are, you don't know who you're supposed to be. So I don't know what you're gonna promise me and if it's gonna be good. So number one is definitely awareness. Number two would definitely be the next step, which is, okay, I'm gonna buy from you. So, is your purchasing process easy? Do you have steps in place that are gonna guide them from the cart to the delivery that feel like, okay, I'm walking with you on this journey? So it could be as simple as, I've purchased products where, I'll use Amazon as a great example. So I purchased a product from Amazon, and then I'm instantly in the delivery tab waiting to see if it's gonna get to my door, if it's gonna experience a delay. And that instant gratification is how a majority of the clients in general are wired is I need instant gratification.

[00:05:44] Judy Murdoch: Yeah.

[00:05:44] Blyth Ellsworth: So if I pay you and I have a receipt, but I don't have next steps, I'm gonna be in your dms asking, what's the next step? What am I supposed to be doing? And it's not because I'm ambitious, but it's because I don't know what's supposed to happen next.

[00:05:57] Judy Murdoch: The question with you there, I know there's like a term for it where, for example, a long time ago I went to an Apple store. There's always a long wait at the Apple store that I go to, and there was something where they were talking about how you want to say like every minute or so you get a little text or you get something where it's like, Hey, stay in queue. This is where you're at. We'll see you really soon, we're letting you know that we know that you're waiting for us, and you're top of mind. 

[00:06:30] Blyth Ellsworth: Yeah. So there's actually a psychological study that was done that people are willing to wait without direction instruction for about eight minutes and beyond the eight minute mark, if they don't have additional direction, they have to decide whether or not, okay, is this worth it or are they gonna start backpedaling and going and doing something else?

And this is very famous. You see it in like long lines at Target. How long are you willing to wait inside of that line at Target before switching to a different queue? And it's eight minutes on general. And so if you don't see progress, if you don't see movement, if you don't see a flashing light, some sort of signal from your environment or from your emails or whatever, then by that eight minute mark, you're making decisions on how you're going to advance differently. And that shows up for us inside of the digital space as well. So if your website is taking too long to load, that's so much faster now because of how instant digital stuff is it's gonna be. If it's more than like five seconds, you've lost them. You know what I mean? Nobody wants to wait. So optimization on all fronts is really important to cut down on that friction of, oh, I don't have time for this, which is where people always feel like they are when they're on their phone or at the computer.

[00:07:48] Judy Murdoch: I love that. And I love how you talk about friction. It makes me think about like having a super conductive customer experience, right?

[00:07:55] Blyth Ellsworth: Yeah.

[00:07:56] Judy Murdoch: Completely friction free. 

[00:07:58] Blyth Ellsworth: That would be so ideal. And I recognize that is literally perfection, right? So everybody's gonna have friction points, and there are some friction points that actually kind of symbolize humanity. For instance, our away messages when we go on vacation. That's gonna be a friction point for some people because they want results right now.

[00:08:15] Judy Murdoch: Mm-hmm.

[00:08:15] Blyth Ellsworth: But there's also compassion that's built into stuff like that where people go, well, I really like working with them and I know that they're gonna get back to me because of all of these other times where they did get back to me, and so I'm willing to endure this friction on their behalf. That's the relationship building part of your client journey. 

[00:08:31] Judy Murdoch: I love that. I'm gonna make one more comment, which is love them or hate them. I've gotta say if you're trying to look for a really good user experience. I mean, Amazon man. Amazon's amazing. 

[00:08:45] Blyth Ellsworth: Yes. And they've come such a long way from the early two thousands when they were just selling books to college kids. And the thing I will say though is they have made the client experience a top 10, but their seller experience is terrible. So there was a gamble that they made. And while us as consumers of Amazon did a great job, we're like, wow, this is top notch. This is the standard. At what cost, right? So I, as a client experience designer, never wanna put that type of relationship on my clients. So if you're a client, we wanna make it easy for you. Unlike Amazon and their sellers, and we wanna make it easy for the client. So we find that balance because we have that time to invest into looking at the stats. We're pulling your previous clients, we're learning about where there might be friction points just from auditing and experience things. We ask your current clients. There's so many ways that we can evaluate your process and compartmentalize. What can be tackled by AI or by automation, and where does your face and voice need to be in order for it to be you? 

[00:09:50] Judy Murdoch: That's a really, really good point. So, going back again, 'cause I kind of asked you for a little bit of an audit list and then I interrupted you, but you were talking about, I think you were talking about once the person let's say that they end up on your website or they send you an email. So they've gotten in touch with you. They have reached out and so that's like a point where we have to have ourselves set up. Like both of us are service providers, so people aren't generally gonna go and put something in a shopping cart. So for service providers, what is some of your high level advice for making sure that the potential client feels very welcome.

[00:10:33] Blyth Ellsworth: Yeah.

[00:10:33] Judy Murdoch: And safe.

[00:10:33] Blyth Ellsworth: So with services in general, we don't want cookie cutter when we're coming in for coaching or we're coming in for guidance or any of the services provided. As a client of a service provider, we want it to feel like I'm the only client that you have, you're spending all of your time on me. Which as service providers, that's unreasonable, that's an unreasonable expectation. But we can meet that by making sure that they step through. I like to, uh, do call to actions even inside of the emails.

So if I'm sending an email out to somebody, I'm like, Hey, thanks so much for signing up. I got your deposit. Your, you know, here's the next step for you to book a call. Right? That's the call to action. That's the next step they can take when they book the call. The next follow up email I have is, I've got a little bit of homework for you, if you have time.

Let's make sure you're taking action, moving towards that direction. Because what they feel, especially service providers, most of our services are providing confidence or providing experience. It's not necessarily hard results, like when you buy a bag of flour from the store, you're getting a bag of flour, 

right? The sale is the product. But with service providing, it's so much more nuanced, and so we have to provide confidence and connection in like every single step of our journey so that at the end they feel like it was a good value. Even if you're only providing like one single thing. Let's say you promise, like I will give you four calls and you have access to me for Voxer for 30 minutes a week. If you meet that promise and you meet that connection and you're taking initiative and helping pull them in so that you can meet that promise.

[00:12:12] Judy Murdoch: Mm-hmm.

[00:12:12] Blyth Ellsworth: That's good service. 

[00:12:13] Judy Murdoch: Wow. That's great. That is great. That is so helpful. 

[00:12:18] Blyth Ellsworth: Good. 

[00:12:19] Judy Murdoch: Yeah, I love that. I love that idea of putting a call to action in your email, because in a way it gives you that sense of the circle's been closed, and it gives your client that sense of there's progress, something is happening.

[00:12:35] Blyth Ellsworth: Yeah.

[00:12:35] Judy Murdoch: You know, there's motion here.

[00:12:36] Blyth Ellsworth: Mm-hmm.

[00:12:37] Judy Murdoch: Rather than kind of like sitting and waiting for something to come out of the ether. 

[00:12:41] Blyth Ellsworth: Yeah, and you can personalize those so it's not like, hello, sir and or madam, please book a call. You can be like, Hey, and then have a paragraph in your template that says, enter in fun fact that you had on the discovery call or enter in something personal that you found on their Instagram, and you can say, Hey, I love your dog. I hope we get to see them on the call, book the call here. You know what I mean? Like you can keep it personal and even those moments where you take a little bit of time to research or your VA takes a little bit of time to research and bring you those items for your clients, like those matter to the client, right? More so than just, here's your, here's the link. Book a call. Like you feel that connection, that humanity, which AI can't replicate yet, God willing, doesn't replicate anytime soon. 

[00:13:31] Judy Murdoch: No blight. That is so brilliant. That is so, so brilliant. Um, wow. That was great. That was great. I could talk to you for an hour just about really how do you build in those relational moments because what you said about people wanting to feel cared for, they want to feel that you're thinking about them and you didn't give them $500 and now it's sort of like, well, I'll get back to you when I can. Right?

[00:13:55] Blyth Ellsworth: Yeah. I love building in what I call "wow factors" or like "surprise and delight", and they can be so small, like they can be a confetti animation when they purchase. Because it's like, yay, you're taking this next step with me. I have advised people in the past who do like a lot of like reiki somatic work. Like, give them personalized breath work, or give them a mantra that they can do something with. The call to action doesn't have to be admin related, it can be related to your craft. That'll help get them excited, and might not even have anything to do with what you're working on. Really ties back to your mission. What really inspired me was my photographer for my wedding-- when I was in the throes of trying to play my wedding and it was really stressful and I have like a million voices in my head.

She sent me a box with two mugs in it and a bridal magazine and a letter that said, take a moment to have a cup of coffee and remember why you're here. And I loved that. I felt so cared for because not only did she hit my pain point, 

[00:14:55] Judy Murdoch: wow.

[00:14:55] Blyth Ellsworth: She hit my pain point without me talking about it. She recent me into exactly where I should be. Yeah. 'cause that's what wedding planning is about. And I got like a fun, cute little gift that I still use like every single weekend with my husband. So. 

[00:15:10] Judy Murdoch: Yeah. And it was unexpected, right?

[00:15:11] Blyth Ellsworth: It was so unexpected.

[00:15:12] Judy Murdoch: That's really cool. Wow. This is like, so, so interesting. So can you give me an example of like a client, like a solopreneur, a small business owner where they definitely had some friction in their system and you helped them. And if possible, speak to if they got improved results. 

[00:15:36] Blyth Ellsworth: Yeah, so, because I moved from my service as a medical software engineer where I helped a lot of doctor's offices build out their software. This is definitely one of my favorite examples. So when I was working in the medical industry, doctors buy software and then they go. Cool, this is great. And shove it onto their team. And their team is still working on paper and they're like, we do not wanna deal with this software. What the heck? Well, in order for me to keep my contract with them, that software had to be successful in the hands of that staff. So I sat down with them and I was like, okay, how are we going to work with you on this?

Because. I know you hate it. Tell me why. Tell me everything you hate about this software. And they went to town. They were not nice about it, but they're my client. Their client journey matters to me. So as they started talking about it in all of their bitter slander and many swear words, like, I got to empathize with why that was a difficulty.

And I ask deeper questions like, why is that difficult? Well, because I'm already filling this out on paper. Why do I have to fill it out twice? Great. That gives me an idea for a solution of how I can cut that friction point down. So what ended up happening was there's a trickle down effect with the doctor's office staff not being able to utilize the software and going too slow working on paper. That means that the front end staff is behind, which means that doctor's appointments are behind, which means that the clients, which are the patients, are leaving terrible reviews on the doctor's website saying like. This office is so slow. I hate it. I hate that I have to go here because they're awful.

No doctor wants to, you didn't go to med school for people to talk smack about your office staff, right? So when we improved the way that the office adopted the software. We improved everything downstream from that. So that meant that their front end worked much faster because they were actually getting used to the software. It meant that the patients were getting in and outta the office faster and their reputation improved. So there was huge payback with just. This one tiny friction point, which was admin were adverse to adopting the software.

[00:17:44] Judy Murdoch: Yeah.

[00:17:44] Blyth Ellsworth: And I thought that was fascinating because it wasn't a skill issue, it was an emotional issue.

And so friction can be emotional issues that you have to sit down with empathy and understand, okay, how am I gonna help this person overcome this aversion? And then when they get to the point where they know, like, and trust even the software or the support or the service provider or whoever.

Then they move and it feels good for everybody. It feels good for the doctor, for me, the staff, the patients, like everyone's happy. And that light bulb, oh, I live for that, Judy. I, I live for that. 

[00:18:19] Judy Murdoch: Yeah. I think that complaints are golden. If you really wanna tackle a problem and come up with a good solution, I would really love to hear people complaining.

Now, I don't necessarily love people complaining about me. But I really do appreciate because like how else will you know, right? Like how to create the best solution. 

[00:18:43] Blyth Ellsworth: Yeah. I agree with you. I don't necessarily like when people attack me. You know what I mean? Like I don't want someone to attack me.

[00:18:50] Judy Murdoch: No. Yeah. But like, yeah, I get it.

[00:18:52] Blyth Ellsworth: If you have criticism on the way that I'm running things, that's data, that's free data, because I'm not gonna get that when I run ads. When I run ads for somebody after I think a product works really great and I think everything's going fine, and I put it out on ads and I'm like, huh, why is nobody clicking on my ads? Why is nobody interested in my product? That's a disconnect that I have with my audience and a silent friction point that is existing in my ecosystem and when someone gets the kaons to speak out and they say, this was really difficult, I had a hard time with this.

[00:19:24] Judy Murdoch: Mm-hmm.

[00:19:24] Blyth Ellsworth: I have the opportunity to correct it right there in the moment. So even on the backend, when people are leaving your services, I always encourage both my doctor's offices when I work there, and now my entrepreneurs, when I work with them, ask those hard questions at the very end. You should be asking them throughout the whole service, but really make sure you ask them at the end because you want them complaining to you directly. You do not want them on your website. You do not want them in your comment section. Give them the platform to complain directly to you and listen. Just listen. Don't rebuttal. Don't defend. 'cause I know it's hard when somebody calls out your hard work, you want to defend them. Listen first, practice listening as much as possible.

[00:20:07] Judy Murdoch: Yeah.

[00:20:07] Blyth Ellsworth: Because that's gonna be such an asset for you as a business owner.

[00:20:10] Judy Murdoch: Yes.

[00:20:11] Blyth Ellsworth: And you have to understand your work is probably still good, but it can be colored by a bad experience 

[00:20:17] Judy Murdoch: For sure. 

[00:20:17] Blyth Ellsworth: And that's all that matters at the end of the day is did they have a good experience?

[00:20:21] Judy Murdoch: Wow.

[00:20:21] Blyth Ellsworth: And is your work beneficial and provides the value at which you charged? So those two things have to match. 

[00:20:27] Judy Murdoch: Wow, that is such a great point. So if you are trying to elicit people to tell you what did not go well. And you know, some people are, are gonna be a little bit averse to like, well I don't wanna hurt your feelings.

Like that type of thing. Yeah. So how would you language that? 

[00:20:45] Blyth Ellsworth: It's asking very specific things. So even in my video testimonials, I ask for very specific. Feedback. Right? So I don't say like, did you have a good time today? That's such a, you're gonna get a generic response, right? But if I'm gonna ask, was your onboarding effortless, right?

[00:21:03] Judy Murdoch: Mm-hmm.

[00:21:03] Blyth Ellsworth: Or did you have friction points? You can also lead the question like, was it difficult for you to make a payment using Stripe? Right? And you get feedback directly because if somebody says yes, it was, you can come back to them and say, I saw you answered yes on this. Can you tell me more about what you experienced. And if they were like, well, you know, the web browser and this and that, you can determine whether it's something wrong with you or tech or something else somewhere entirely different.

[00:21:29] Judy Murdoch: Right.

[00:21:29] Blyth Ellsworth: I do a series on Instagram called Yelp Revival, where I go through one star business reviews and then re like basically reverse engineer it and talk about where their friction point was.

[00:21:40] Judy Murdoch: Wow. 

[00:21:40] Blyth Ellsworth: Sometimes the one star reviews are like. Couldn't find parking. And so this is a one star restaurant, and it's like, okay, clearly that's not the restaurant's fault. 

[00:21:51] Judy Murdoch: Yeah. 

[00:21:51] Blyth Ellsworth: And so most people are pretty reasonable about that. But can you recognize that that person really wanted to go to your restaurant and felt upset about the fact that they couldn't find parking?

And there's ways you can respond to that, which is, I've seen it both ways. Emotional- lED businesses will come forward and go, well that's a you problem.

[00:22:12] Judy Murdoch: Yes.

[00:22:12] Blyth Ellsworth: And other people who are emotionally more intelligent will come in and say, I understand that I'm gonna work on maybe talking with the city and seeing if we can like get some parking on the street. There's so many options that a business owner can do that'll help alleviate the pain points and what it shows is you might not be able to get that particular client to be on board with your solution, but what it shows is for everybody else who's snooping your page, they're looking at those responses. They're looking to see whether or not you are actively addressing complaints and how you're solving those problems. That builds trust, right? Without even you doing any sales, you are building trust with your audience of Snoopers who are like, Hmm, I like the way she handled that. I agree. Parking shouldn't impact the fact that the restaurant, you know, I couldn't sit at the restaurant, but she handled it really nice. 

[00:23:05] Judy Murdoch: Exactly.

[00:23:05] Blyth Ellsworth: Maybe i'll go try that restaurant out.

[00:23:07] Judy Murdoch: Yes, exactly. Exactly. It tells people a lot about who you are. 

[00:23:13] Blyth Ellsworth: Mm-hmm. 

[00:23:14] Judy Murdoch: And how you handle things and can they trust you. 

[00:23:18] Blyth Ellsworth: Mm-hmm.

[00:23:19] Judy Murdoch: And one thing I do wanna talk about with marketing. This, this marketing. It's, I, I mean, what you and I are talking about in a lot of ways there's, it's kind of seamless in some ways, right?

It's a little bit hard sometimes to say, when does what you do and, and when does marketing begin? But one of the things I really try to emphasize with the people. I work with is because our services are expensive. We're not cheap. We're not cheap to work with, and for that reason, building trust fits everything. 

[00:23:55] Blyth Ellsworth: Yeah, absolutely. And with marketing in particular, marketing has its boundaries in pulling people in. It's magnetic and it's enticing. I'm supposed to partner with marketing because once marketing pulls you in, I have to keep you and I have to make you happy the whole way through.

Right? So it's not just getting you to know, like, and trust my business on the front end. It's keeping that know, like, and trust moving throughout your entire visit with my business. 

[00:24:24] Judy Murdoch: Right. No, completely agree. Completely agree with you. I am a solopreneur, as you know, and I'm a small business owner.

If you were to give me maybe one piece of advice in terms of what should I look at, what should I be aware of, what would you suggest? 

[00:24:46] Blyth Ellsworth: I've been pushing the narrative lately of video testimonials. They are hard to get, but when you get a die hard fan who's willing to talk about you, and you get a video testimonial going and you put that on your website or you put that on wherever your.

Current platforms are, they have a 70% addition conversion rate on top of your regular marketing, and they inform your marketing language. So when somebody's like, she's the B'S knees, right? I can use that phrase, even though it's like a little forties. I can use that phrase in my marketing to say. Hey, if you want somebody who's the bee's knees, right?

And it calls in more of that same ideal client that you already experienced, right? So the ranting raving fans will be your better conversions than any ad, than anything that you put out there because they speak about you for you. And people look and they go, oh yeah, I use that phrase. And that's Auto autopilot Trust right there.

[00:25:46] Judy Murdoch: No, I completely agree. In fact, I see people taking testimonials, like written testimonials, and they pull them through ai. And AI will provide some summaries and things like that.

[00:25:58] Blyth Ellsworth: Yeah. 

[00:25:59] Judy Murdoch: I guess kind of my visceral response usually to those testimonials is, I don't feel persuaded. I don't feel convinced. 

[00:26:07] Blyth Ellsworth: Right. 

[00:26:08] Judy Murdoch: Um, I'm not getting a visceral reaction of, wow, this sounds like a person that can help me. This sounds like somebody who'd be a really good fit for what I need.

[00:26:18] Blyth Ellsworth: Yeah.

[00:26:18] Judy Murdoch: Can you speak to that?

[00:26:19] Blyth Ellsworth: With proof, it's really challenging to get people to say the exact thing you need them to say, and so sifting it through AI kind of lets you generalize the review. Um, I think it's so much better when it's raw, when it's their actual emotions

[00:26:35] Judy Murdoch: agree

[00:26:35] Blyth Ellsworth: and their information for sure. So I wouldn't, even if it, if they spelled stuff wrong. Posted anyway, if they said the wrong word, post it anyway because those are those human connection points that other humans need to see to validate, okay, this is legit. Like this is good. Like they're typing so fast, they can't even proofread how excited they are about getting started or they have all these emojis and stuff like that, so.

[00:26:58] Judy Murdoch: Right.

[00:26:58] Blyth Ellsworth: The other thing that I wanna add to this as well is that when we're doing reviews or testimonials. Ask leading questions. So don't ask if somebody was friendly and helpful, that's not gonna help you. Because if you say, was my VA friendly and helpful, someone's gonna just generically answer yes.

Now, they might even say no, or are they saying no to the friendly part, or are they saying no to the helpful part? Like we don't know. But if you ask a very specific question like, you know, how was this process before you started with me? What are the solutions you tried to work on?

[00:27:30] Judy Murdoch: Yeah.

[00:27:30] Blyth Ellsworth: And you ask the question several different ways, right?

It's gonna sound ugly and repetitive, but coming at it at these different angles, sometimes I can say like for instance, I could say to Judy like, Hey, how was this podcast for you? But I can also say, how was my energy on the podcast for you? Or I can also say, how was the level of excitement on the podcast for you?

And you're gonna have three different answers, even though I'm asking generally the same question, your thoughts are coming in differently because of the words I chose. That also is super important to switch it up on the same situation. If you're on the call for the video testimonial, ask all three of those iterations of the question, get the results that you have, and then make informed decisions about, Hey, most people, like when I say, how was my excitement versus how was everything? So I should ask that question more often than this other one. It's not yielding good results that I can make informed decisions off of. 

[00:28:28] Judy Murdoch: So Blythe, that leads me to another question for you, which is, can you refer to any resources because I love what you're saying about asking questions.

Are there any good resources that you lean into who help you with that? 

[00:28:46] Blyth Ellsworth: That's so interesting. I will have to make one because honestly, this is kind of stuff that I just picked up. I'm very analytical, so I will go into testimonials, calls, products.

[00:29:00] Judy Murdoch: Mm-hmm.

[00:29:00] Blyth Ellsworth: And I'm always looking at, why do they need this information?

What could they be building? What are they thinking about? Or when I got a survey from like aaa. And it's like, this is awesome. And I'm looking at the questions and I'm peeling them apart and I'm thinking, how would this inform something on the backend for me? And so, all of that, like I can give you a list of like questions that are really fun to ask on testimonial parties.

I like to call 'em parties, so at the end of my product, I invite you to the party and we're gonna celebrate your wins for like the first 10 minutes. Get you in a really good excitable mode to talk about your experience, right? That's the emotional aspect. Then we start talking about the questions, and I detailed to you how these questions are being asked,

what needs to happen to make sure that this works appropriately. And then you ask those questions, you get the answer on cam, and you ask it. I'm gonna give this away. This is a little trade secret. You have to ask the question in full. So for instance, if I say, how is my energy on the call today? Your answer has to be blight's.

Energy on the call today was. But you have to ask that first half because it's really important to keep both segments together. When you cut and splice a video, you want the chunks that have blight energy on the podcast was really good today.

But if I chop that up and I'm just taking oh, so great. Like, great. What was great? Was great. How was it great? You know, what are we evaluating? And so having full context with a full sentence that has proper names, not like, yeah, he was so good, or, yeah, she was fun and funny. Like you have to have, yeah, Blythe was funny. Her business, quick Silk Solutions was this. Like, that's how you have to inform those because when you chop 'em up and you put 'em on your social media or you put 'em on your website, it gives full context right there.

[00:30:47] Judy Murdoch: So, for people who are listening, if you have had the question of how do I get effective testimonials, what is an effective testimonial? You just heard it, so take this and copy it down. Because, honestly in my experience, there's not necessarily really good information out there. And how to create good testimonials. 

[00:31:12] Blyth Ellsworth: Mm-hmm.

[00:31:12] Judy Murdoch: Yeah. It's a very human perception. How could we make those judgements? Which are often quite subconscious.

[00:31:21] Blyth Ellsworth: Yes. And the fear we might have with testimonials is, oh, they might not have the reaction that I'm thinking they would have. So you finished, you delivered everything. You think what you delivered was great. They think it's so, so when you get into that video testimonial and they're like, um, yeah, it was great. It was okay.

That can really hurt because you thought it was great. And there's that disconnect between your thoughts and your reality that breeds pain. The thing we can do for that is throughout your journey with the client, ask 'em those questions ahead of time. Ask 'em when they board, ask 'em during the delivery process, ask those questions so that when it comes time for the testimonial, you're not surprised.

You've had several times to fix this throughout the client journey. You're not shocked and dismayed when the reality doesn't meet the expectation, because you're seeing it. Like, I'll give a great example for myself. 

[00:32:13] Judy Murdoch: Yeah, for sure. 

[00:32:14] Blyth Ellsworth: I had a client who, loved the product that I got, but one of the elements that we did didn't yield her the results that she wanted.

[00:32:24] Judy Murdoch: Right.

[00:32:24] Blyth Ellsworth: And so she was sad about the fact that the results didn't come through the way she wanted. That has nothing to do with me, but it did color her experience that she had with me.

[00:32:32] Judy Murdoch: Right.

[00:32:32] Blyth Ellsworth: So listening to her talk about how sad she was and how heartbroken she was and how upset she was about the fact that things weren't working and giving her that platform to lament meant that it was out of her system By the time she went to do her video testimonial with me and she could focus on what I did well, what my products provided, and what I was able to do.

So sometimes you have to walk that journey with your client and be there with them while they experienced something they weren't expecting. And then now you're recalibrating. Okay. I can set those expectations differently on the front end. I'm listening, I hear that they're having issues with this.

I understand that this is a roadblock. And you can even install things like, let's take a break, right? Give your client a chance to breathe. And you know this because you're not trying to press them through a potato smasher. 

[00:33:21] Judy Murdoch: Yeah. It reminds me of a situation I had with a client.

This was a while ago. I can't remember what she was wanting help with specifically. She was a band leader, I think for a middle school or a high school. 

[00:33:35] Blyth Ellsworth: Hmm. That's hard. 

[00:33:36] Judy Murdoch: She had ambitions. It might have been She had her own band.

[00:33:40] Blyth Ellsworth: Yeah.

[00:33:40] Judy Murdoch: And she wanted to build that business.

I don't quite remember what the issue was. I also remember in the initial intake, she mentioned that she wanted to write a book.

[00:33:53] Blyth Ellsworth: Mm-hmm.

[00:33:53] Judy Murdoch: But the way it sounded to me, it sounded very offhand sort of like, well, I really, really wanna build my professional business.

Oh, and there's a book. And what was really interesting was at the end of our coaching engagement, she gave me a really, really harsh review and I mean , I had the same sense, but basically what she said was, I told Judy I wanted to write a book and she didn't help me. Now, you know, you and I could say, well, that's on her. She never brought it up during the session. She never said, Hey, can we stop? I wanna talk about this book that I wanna write. Nonetheless, it was a good lesson in that, you know, it is important to check in with clients. 

[00:34:42] Blyth Ellsworth: Yeah. When they speak. I think that's something interesting that you noted because I remember doing something similar, right? So with my doctor, for instance, I would speak up and say, Hey, I, I'm kind of concerned about, you know, breast cancer and my doctor bypassed it for months. And I thought she was gonna assign me to get a mammogram or take my little mention seriously.

[00:35:06] Judy Murdoch: Yeah.

[00:35:06] Blyth Ellsworth: She didn't, she like, just completely bypassed it. So it was a year later it was like, hey, i'm concerned about breast cancer! That she's like, yeah, oh, um, well, I guess we could do like a, a breast tissue examination. It's like, I feel so cared for. Thank you. You know? Yeah. But those tiny little moments. What I think I've learned a lot, just being a person, is that sometimes we feel like we're shouting in those tiny moments. Like that's a small moment where I like very sheepishly said a sentence and that went right in one ear and out the other for my doctor. Because I'm not shouting loudly, but from my perspective in my body, I'm like, it took everything for me to say because speaking it means I might speak it into existence and that I feel like I'm gonna jinx myself.

[00:35:51] Judy Murdoch: Yeah.

[00:35:52] Blyth Ellsworth: So you go through these movements within your body as a client or as a person that you're interact.

It could be even your, your kids or your husband, and they say these soft things. And if you're not listening,

[00:36:02] Judy Murdoch: yeah.

[00:36:02] Blyth Ellsworth: Then you can't come back around and say, Hey, you brought this up last time. Are you still worried about this? And this is stuff by the way, if you have transcripts of your calls, run it through an ai, have them look for those specific points because maybe you weren't listening 'cause you had a thousand things going on in your head. And transcripts can be caught and you can find those personal moments and go, Ooh, I need to follow up with them about that. This is a way that we can use AI or use automation or even use, if you don't wanna do that, use your VA and go through and say, check the transcripts. If you know that's a soft spot for you, then have somebody come in and help catch those moments.

[00:36:41] Judy Murdoch: Mm-hmm.

[00:36:41] Blyth Ellsworth: My husband does it for me all the time 'cause I am robotics sometimes and help he'll be my emotional vibe checker and be like, Hey, that person you were talking to was bored like 10 minutes ago.

And I'm like, huh. Really? Yeah. 

[00:36:54] Judy Murdoch: That's great. Boy, this has just been so good. Honestly, it's really interesting in that although you don't promote yourself as being somebody who is a marketing person or as a sales person. So much of what you talk about is so important in the marketing process because marketing is such a relationship driven process.

[00:37:20] Blyth Ellsworth: Yeah.

[00:37:20] Judy Murdoch: It's easy to start thinking about marketing as well, like, how many times did this search term show up in Google? We start looking at these metrics. Metrics are fine. There's nothing wrong with metrics per se. It's just that it's not just metrics and, ultimately it is an internal thing. It's just what is happening with that person that you are in relationship with. How is trust building? What is happening? How do they see you? Do they feel safe? I think these are times we're in where safety's really important. And by safety I don't mean by physical safety so much as like, you're not getting pitch slapped, right?

[00:38:01] Blyth Ellsworth: Yes.

[00:38:02] Judy Murdoch: They see you as a human being. They appreciate you. They're there for you. Like they want you to be successful. They're not looking at you as just sort of like, oh, sweet. Got a gig, got money. Ooh, okay.

[00:38:14] Blyth Ellsworth: Yeah.

[00:38:14] Judy Murdoch: Yeah. I mean, people really want to be seen as human beings.

[00:38:17] Blyth Ellsworth: Yeah. I think that's what really separates entrepreneurs from the corporate world is the corporate gets tied into the metrics and the deliverables.

[00:38:26] Judy Murdoch: Yeah.

[00:38:26] Blyth Ellsworth: For the shareholders. And it all has to come down to a number that they can prove.

[00:38:31] Judy Murdoch: Yeah.

[00:38:31] Blyth Ellsworth: To say, see, we're doing what we're supposed to. And you'll always notice a corporate buyout, the immediate drop in humanity when a corporate buyout happens.

[00:38:41] Judy Murdoch: No, you're right.

[00:38:41] Blyth Ellsworth: I mean, and nobody measures that metric. It's all felt.

[00:38:45] Judy Murdoch: Yes.

[00:38:46] Blyth Ellsworth: Like we all feel it. Like when somebody buys our favorite little restaurant and now it's franchised. We're like, the quality's gone down. They've chipped us on these things. The guy doesn't come out and greet me anymore and like ask how my mom is.

Those moments are gone and those are the connection moments. I am desperate to save like those human moments when my favorite restaurant that I've been going to for like two decades. The guy comes over and is like, how are you? How's the family? I saw your mom the other day.

What's life like for you? How's the business going? They're invested in me and I'm just there to eat some noodles, but that investment is why I keep going to that noodle shop before trying any other noodle shop. 

[00:39:29] Judy Murdoch: Listen, people, did you hear what you just said? I mean, be serious. This is so important. It really is. These little things are so, so important. 

[00:39:39] Blyth Ellsworth: Mm-hmm. 

[00:39:40] Judy Murdoch: So. Question for you. So for people who are listening to you and they're like, I really wanna talk to this woman, you know, like, I need her, I need her now. How do they connect with you? What do they do next? What's the call to action?

[00:39:54] Blyth Ellsworth: Yeah, so their call to action is definitely to find me on Instagram. I'm a chatty Cathy. I. Always on that platform. So I'm at Quick Silk Solutions, or you can just look up my name. I'm probably the only Blythe Ellsworth in the entire world. You can book a call with me.

I have links on my website, which is quick silk solutions.com. Let chat. Honestly, I'm down to just geek out. This is so rejuvenating for me. If you're into client systems or if, honestly, if you even had a bad client experience and you wanna talk about how horrible it was, the first thing I'm gonna do is here's how I would've made it better.

Here's how I would've designed that for you so that you never have those problems. And my goal is to get to all of 'em. Like get me to all of the businesses where you were like, this is a total like cluster. You know moments. Yeah. And I want out so bad.

[00:40:45] Judy Murdoch: I think you've got a YouTube show.

I really do. I really, really do. I think it would be so entertaining for people. 

[00:40:53] Blyth Ellsworth: I would love that. Yeah. I'd maybe I'll turn my Yelp revival series into a YouTube series and we go deeper dive into the businesses, 'cause like some of 'em make the same mistakes over and over again. And I genuinely believe entrepreneurs do not do this to be scammy. Most of them are the most heart-centered, beautiful people that, that I've never walked into a room full of entrepreneurs and had nobody ask me, how can I help you? How can I help you move your business? Like every room I've walked into, somebody's excited to help you get to the next level.

We're all on the same team, and we're splitting the funds between everybody. I'm gonna refer business to you, you're gonna refer it to me. We're gonna make an ecosystem happen and that, I think that's gonna heal the world personally. 

[00:41:37] Judy Murdoch: Amen, sister. Amen. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. This was so much fun. 

[00:41:43] Blyth Ellsworth: Oh, I know Judy. I can do this again every week. 

[00:41:47] Judy Murdoch: Thank you. I love it. 

[00:41:48] Blyth Ellsworth: Yeah. 

[00:41:49] Judy Murdoch: Bye-bye. 

[00:41:50] Speaker 4: Bye-bye.