Episode Summary
Luxury isn’t about spending more. It’s about noticing more.
In this episode, Brittany sits down with Neen James, leadership strategist, keynote speaker, and author of Exceptional Experiences, to rethink what “luxury” really means—and why any business, at any price point, can make customers feel seen, heard, and valued.
Neen shares why she believes luxury is about moments, not money, and how the smallest details can often create the biggest impact. She walks us through her Experience Elevation Model and its five luxury levers, designed to help brands capture attention, create connection, and ultimately turn customers into advocates.
They also explore the importance of systemized thoughtfulness: creating repeatable systems that empower every team member to deliver an elevated experience, rather than leaving those moments to chance.
Whether you’re running a five-person business or leading a team of 50,000, this conversation is a reminder that you don’t need a luxury budget to create an experience that feels luxurious. You just need to pay attention to the moments that matter.
You’ll learn:
- Why luxury is a mindset, not a price point
- How to make customers feel seen, heard, and valued
- Low cost, high impact examples from hotels, real estate professionals, and more
- How to systemize thoughtfulness across an organization
- Neen’s five-part Experience Elevation Model
- Why consistency matters across every customer touchpoint
- The power of turning ordinary interactions into “champagne moments”
- How exceptional experiences turn customers into advocates—and superfans
Listen to the conversation with Joey Coleman.
Learn more about Neen James on her website..
Buy her book “Exceptional Experiences” on Amazon.
Listen to the Episode
Listen on Apple Podcasts
Listen on Spotify
Watch on YouTube
Transcription
Brittany Hodak: [00:00:00] Neen, welcome to the show
Neen James: What an honor it is and a privilege to be with you. Look at us in our little matching dresses. I love it
Brittany Hodak: I know. I feel the same way. I have wanted to have you on this show for so long because I’ve admired your work for a very, very long time, long before we were friends, which is honestly my favorite part of getting to know you now. Um, a question I have for you: for years you wrote about attention and focus.
How did Exceptional Experiences grow from that work? Like, how did your body of work evolve into this incredible talk track that you’ve had for the past several years?
Neen James: I thought that you know all of my intellectual property. So Folding Time, the premise of that book was you can’t manage time, but you can manage your attention. And then when I wrote Attention Pays, I realized, huh, so we can manage our attention, but it’s intention that makes attention valuable. And what I realized is attention’s all about connection, and some of the brands that I work with, the top luxury brands in [00:01:00] the world, understand that luxury is about human connection. So as I was thinking and evolving my body of work, and as I was working with so many luxury brands, I realized, oh my gosh, so if you think about creating an exceptional experience, it’s about attention, connection, and human connection. And so when we published Exceptional Experiences, I’m really proud of her, my book, uh, what I realized is that’s the natural evolution of my thinking, and it’s really…
Look, here’s the secret message, Brittany, of all my work. How do you make people feel seen, heard, and valued? that’s the through line. So that’s how it kind of evolved
Brittany Hodak: Well, that’s such a perfect through line, especially in a world that feels like it’s moving so fast toward automation, toward AI. And that part, that scene, making them feel seen, making them feel like they matter, they’re valued, like that’s never gonna go away, right? Like people are always gonna wanna create that as long as we’re humans
Neen James: Yeah, for sure. And I think too, it’s even more important, as you say, in our digital [00:02:00] AI world.
Brittany Hodak: Mm-hmm.
Neen James: clients, Matthew Upchurch, who is the CEO of Virtuoso, has this beautiful phrase I love, and he says, “We need to automate the predictable so that we can humanize the exceptional.” when we think about that, no matter what kind of business you’re in, we can bring that human component so we make people feel seen, heard, and valued, and it’s in those little moments that we do that
Brittany Hodak: I love that. So good. So I know that you are a luxury gal. You love your high-end things. You are, you know, so I love it. You are, like, the most fantastic, luxurious person that I know. But I wanna know, at what point did you figure out that luxury wasn’t just about the high end, and that these very same principles that work for high-end brands could actually go across the board?
‘Cause that’s one of the things that I love so much about your book is you say, you know, you don’t have to spend a gazillion dollars or have a brand that’s super-duper high-end to make people feel luxurious
Neen James: Yeah. And, uh, you know, for [00:03:00] people listening or watching this, you need to know I do not come from luxury. I was raised, uh, by a single mom in a tiny town in Australia, if you’re trying to work out my accent, but we had one traffic light, Brit. And what was interesting about that is my mom, oh my gosh, she worked so hard.
She would clean houses. She picked lettuce. She sold fruit on the side of the road. But no matter how busy or tired my mom was, at the end of a shift, she would walk through a community garden, and she would pick a flower, and she would bring it home to us, this two little girls. You see, in Australia, we lived in a caravan.
In America, you call that a trailer park. But I remember watching my mom. She would take out a glass, and she’d put this flower in it. We called it a vase because it made us feel so fancy. But it was my mom who reminded us as little girls, like, it doesn’t matter about money or things. And she was the one who said, “We all deserve beauty and luxury every day.”
And so it’s from my mom that I get this belief that luxury is a mindset, right? And so [00:04:00] when I think about regardless of what, you know, business you’re in, I’ve always believed because of my mom that luxury is a mindset. Now, I can’t just walk into one of my CEO’s offices and go, “So luxury is a mindset, okay?”
They’re like, “What are you talking about?” I needed to validate that with research, and so as you know, I have the only research study of its kind into the world into luxury as a mindset, a proprietary research study. But here’s, here’s what the study confirmed that I think everyone listening to this can pay attention to.
Two things. One, luxury is a reward for hard work. But luxury means different things to different people. But the biggest finding of the study that makes me the happiest, regardless of what business or industry you’re in, is luxury is about experiences, not things. So when you really think about that, you could be a five-person firm or a five-star brand.
You can still deliver a luxury experience because luxury is truly how you make people feel. For some, Brittany, it’s the luxury of time. For others, it is the thread count. But I want us to [00:05:00] think about luxury differently than perhaps we have before. So I think luxury is a mindset, and that’s what I love. No matter what organization, product, industry you’re in, I’ve delivered these same principles to the emergency rooms of my hospital clients as I have with the private jet and aviation industry.
So I think it’s applicable to all of us.
Brittany Hodak: Well, I love that answer, and I love that story. And I mean, God bless your mom for doing that and instilling that in you and your sister. And you know, if… One of the things… So, so my boys are six and almost nine, and I’ve noticed things over the past decade of raising them that I had, you know, like I- I’m sure throughout my 20s and 30s there were flowers, there were birds, there were, like, all of these lovely things, but I wasn’t paying a whole lot of attention to them, right?
Like, I wasn’t thinking like, “Oh my gosh, look at that snail,” or like, “Wow, look at, look at this beautiful, you know, bloom on this flower.” And kids notice those things. [00:06:00] And so I love the fact that your mom was so intentional. And with that aligning with you girls being so young at the time, I bet that got instilled in you not just that luxury is everywhere around us, and it’s a mindset, and in the beautiful things like flowers, but I bet you became a professional noticer.
And I wonder how much that set you on the path to knowing that all it takes is that flower in the vase to set the mood and set the intention behind the attention, as you said, which I love.
Neen James: Exactly. And it’s because of my mom. And so I think when you think about this as business owners, entrepreneurs, speakers, authors, consultants, you might be running your own business, you might be part of a corporation. As you start to notice more, as people feel like they have the gift of your undivided attention, of course it’s going to accelerate their experience of you. So whether it is client experience or you say customer experience, right? Or whether it is a team member and experience, if you are a leader of people, the way people experience you [00:07:00] as a leader is you need to be able to close your laptop in the one-on-one so they have your undivided attention, or put your phone down before you walk into a meeting. Being a professional noticer, I love that, Brittany. I think that’s such a really cool term. We can all do that, and you know what? That costs us nothing. luxury is about moments, not money, and we have these opportunity, like you do with the boys, to notice in that moment the snail, the flower, the tree, the wind. You know, that extra five minutes you give yourself having your coffee before anyone wakes up in your house. Maybe that’s your definition of luxury. So we all define luxury very differently
Brittany Hodak: Well, I wanna know how you define luxury since you are an expert with this world-renowned research study on it. How do you, Neen, personally define luxury?
Neen James: I think luxury is how you make people feel. So, and that also means how do I make myself feel? So for example, I, uh, there are things that I am a brat about. I love drinking my water out of a Tiffany cup. I [00:08:00] love being able to have flowers on my desk. There are certain things that I feel e- elevate everything.
So to me, it could be about, things, but for me it’s more about those experiences. I wanna go, “Oh, that’s amazing.” Like, just like your boys, I wanna be in awe and wonder of the world. So for me, I think the other privilege in the business that I have, Brittany, is I get to do what I love with people I love in places I love. That’s luxury. Because having the choice is luxury. So for me, it is a reward for hard work. It is about the experiences, not the things. But I still think it’s about the moments. I think luxury is about creating moments for yourself, but also for the people that you care about: your team, your clients, your patients, your members, and the family that you are so privileged to have
Brittany Hodak: Well, and for everybody listening, I can confirm as somebody lucky enough to be a friend of Neen that you truly walk this talk. You live this life. You not just being the brat drinking your water out of your Tiffany cup, but I [00:09:00] mean, you have sent me champagne to celebrate little private moments in my life.
You are a professional noticer of your friends and what’s happening in their lives, and you take such great care of everyone you love. I know you absolutely spoil your clients, um, and all of the people in your life that you love. So, um, I, I, I love that. I think… And you, you truly make others feel not only lucky to know you, but more luxurious because of their adjacency to you, which is
Neen James: Oh, I love
Brittany Hodak: a superpower of yours
Neen James: And it’s, it’s really fascinating too, because, like, let’s use the flower example. People will send me a flower that maybe was on their room service tray, and they’re like, “I’m thinking of you and your mom,” and this made it feel even more special, right? And so I think we have this privilege of elevating things for people around us, and maybe they notice, maybe they don’t. But I think if we can show that level of care, this is really that human connection I’m talking about, [00:10:00] right? Because they’re… People are getting a thousand different emails, so many text messages, but if you could maybe pull out your phone and actually do, like, a video message, or you and I send voice notes to each other, that is so personal and so caring, and yet it takes a moment to do that.
It’s just
Brittany Hodak: Yeah.
Neen James: things that are a little different
Brittany Hodak: Well, and so as you know, I, um, I, I’ve been buying a lot of clothes. I’m working with a stylist right now, and so there have been a lot of packages showing up to my house. And there is one, you know, huge name department store that I’ve gotten several shipments from, and a few of them have just been like the clothes are in a plastic bag thrown in a box with, like, no thought, and there are others that are beautifully wrapped, like in the tissue paper with the sticker.
A couple have had the handwritten note from, uh, the, the person working there. And looking at that, it’s, you know, it’s a reminder that if the biggest brands in the world can’t even completely operationalize that compliance of this is what it looks like, because [00:11:00] the variance between two packages arriving from the same store on the same day from the same order but with vastly different execution.
Now, maybe one’s from a distribution center, one’s from a store. But again, every brand has to look at it and say, “How much variance are we comfortable with in the experience?” Because one of these things is not like the other
Neen James: Yes, and this is where I think one of the challenges if you’re trying to really elevate a luxury experience for someone, right? And let me just go back one sec, and that is that I think luxury can be a divisive word because some of you listening to this, you’re like, “I’m not a luxury product, so this doesn’t relate to me.”
But here’s the difference. I think that luxury can be both inclusive and exclusive. So what I mean by that, Brittany, is that I think luxury is inclusive because we all deserve it every day, whatever it means to you. And I think it’s exclusive because you can roll out a red carpet experience for someone, and it doesn’t have to be an expensive experience, right? And so I think one of the things we have to be conscious of, too, as a business owner or [00:12:00] as a person running a Fortune 50 company, that it can’t– this experience can’t be reliant on one person. You might have a team member who has a great day, but unless you have systems of elevation in your business to systemize thoughtfulness so that whether it is a distribution center that is sending you that package or whether it is the actual storefront themselves, there needs to be a consistency in the experience because you and I both say experience is everything.
You say this on your podcast. You say it in your books. You say it as a keynote speaker on stage. I’ve seen you do this, and we both believe that’s everything.
Brittany Hodak: Угу
Neen James: if you have team members who are dropping the ball or if you have partners that are not delivering that same level of experience, it’s then devaluing your brand.
And so I think we’ve got to think about this whether you have a team of five or 50,000. We’ve got to ensure we have the systems of elevation in place.
Brittany Hodak: Absolutely. Yeah, I like to say experience ev- is everything, but everything is [00:13:00] experience. Every single touchpoint matters. Like, that dichotomy, like, that, that is what everybody has to grasp and understand, that, you know, we’re all in the experience department together. Um, you mentioned your experience elevation model.
We are gonna get to that, because I want you to talk about these incredible five levels of luxury that you introduce in your book that everybody can put into play. But first, I, uh, as you said, some people may hear the word luxury and think like, “This doesn’t relate to me.” But as the most on-the-surface un-luxurious person, I don’t even know if that’s, like, the right term, like, I am the opposite of luxury.
It’s funny, our dear mutual friend, Hannah Pryor, she’s like, “Nobody rocks a high-low like you. You’re like, you know…” She’s like, “I’ve never seen so, somebody, like, so happy to be in their like, you know, $12 Target shirt with, like, a Dr. Pepper logo on it or a space shuttle.” She’s like, “I love that you are so unapologetically you and, like, mixing those things together.”
So as somebody who on the surface is not luxurious by design, until you go deeper and understand the way you are defining it [00:14:00] and hearing about the fact that it is the things and not, you know, not the dollar signs, right? Like, you can have
Neen James: Mm-hmm.
Brittany Hodak: a luxurious experience at the store Five Below, which… Do you know Five Below?
Is that a store that you’ve been to? It’s like a kids’ store. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So like, but, but every… It’s very, it’s very much like the, like a fun take on, like, a dollar store or a Dollar Tree, where everything is low price, but it’s fun and it’s… Anyway, so let’s, before we get into that experience elevation model, I wanna know what is an example of a moment that costs almost nothing but can make a huge impact in making something feel more luxurious that many businesses simply overlook, even though if they were more intentional about the attention, they could completely flip that moment?
Neen James: You know, I think it’s what I call systemized thoughtfulness. Systemized thoughtfulness is about having systems in place to elevate the thoughtfulness. So that means to your, your usage of being a professional noticer, right? Let me give you an example. One of my, uh, clients, KW Luxury, so the real [00:15:00] estate, we know Caroline, and Caroline is a phenomenal gift giver. She had one of her clients who was very, very wealthy, could have bought themselves any Hermes scarf that they ever wanted. Like, this is a person who doesn’t need more things.
Brittany Hodak: Mm-hmm.
Neen James: But she was a widow. She had lost her beautiful husband, and so Caroline was helping her move into a different facility. when she asked her client, are you gonna miss the most?” The widow replied to her, “You know, my lemon tree. My husband and I planted this tree, you know, when we first moved into this house, and I will miss it the most.” So you know what Caroline did? When she moved into that special facility, had, uh, the lemon tree grafted to a branch, and she presented it back to her client so that she would always have lemon tree from her late husband with her. That systemized thoughtfulness. That is having systems in place to listen to what people are saying, to be able to then think, “How can I show this person I saw them, I heard them, I value [00:16:00] them so much?” That she gave her something that probably cost her less than $5, but what it meant to that woman was a lifetime of memories and that someone cared enough to do that. I wanna challenge people listening, how can you be more systemized in your thoughtfulness? A handwritten note, a voicemail on someone’s birthday, a video text message. You don’t have to have a big luxury budget to provide a luxury experience for someone. And so I want us to think really differently about how we see that.
Can I share with you one more example?
Brittany Hodak: Yes, please
Neen James: Okay. uh, I love Alexandria, and there’s a fabulous hotel there. The first time I
Brittany Hodak: Virginia, just so we’re clear, uh, you’re talking about, not, not a woman or man in the audience with you. Okay.
Neen James: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Good point. Oh my gosh, never thought about that.
Brittany Hodak: Good. Alexandria, Virginia.
Neen James: So it’s such an adorable town and, uh, there was a property there called AKA. Uh, it’s a boutique hotel, and it’s now called Satire, but they have a hotel dog. His name is Senna. The first time [00:17:00] I visited, I’m obsessed with any animals when I travel. I’m on the floor, I’m cuddling them. I love a hotel dog. I love a hotel cat.
You should know that about me. So I walk into this hotel. There’s this massive big dog. I jump on the floor. I’m cuddling this dog at reception, and someone thought to take a photo. I love that. So had a great stay. Next time I’m going to stay in Alexandria, Virginia, where do I wanna stay? Well, of course I wanna go back to the AKA ’cause I had this amazing cuddle with this incredible dog called Senna. So when I walked in, oh my God, there’s Senna again. Brittany, I’m dying. I was like, “Oh my God. Hi.” And they said, “Well, Neen, we knew you were checking in, so we made sure Senna was here when you arrived.” Amazing. They’re all smiling, and I got to my room. Wouldn’t you know, when I opened the door, on my bedside table, there is a framed photo of Senna and I from my first visit with a note from Senna and his paw print that says, “Neen, I’m so glad you’re back with us.
It’s great to see you again.” level of detail cost that hotel like, what? five bucks for like the frame that it was in? [00:18:00] But they had gone to the trouble of making sure they were capturing in their system these moments that were important to me, and I have told that story on podcasts, on stages around the world, and I love that sometimes those little tiny things, what are so much more meaningful to your client, patient, member, guest, student, than some expensive thing
Brittany Hodak: I love that story so much. I’m sure you still have that picture of you and Cinna that you keep with you. Yeah, that
Neen James: And I flew with Senna. He’s in Santa Barbara now, and I’ve stayed with him. Like, I think it’s amazing when you start to have that affiliation with a thing or an experience that you then become an advocate, or to use your words, you become a superfan
Brittany Hodak: I love that story so much. And Again, the intention behind the attention, like that is a takeaway everybody has to take. The other thing that you said that I loved is it’s about the moments, not the money. Mm-hmm. And that moment, to your point, cost almost nothing. There’s… [00:19:00] I had an experience earlier this year that I, again, have told on s- I maybe have told it on this podcast.
I’ve told it on stages so many times. Um, my family and I were staying at the Portofino Resort on Universal Studios property, and when you stay at any of the Universal Studios resorts, one of the benefits is that you get like a FastPass for the rides. So you get a little printed out hotel room key, and it has one of the…
You know, you might get like Back to the Universe or Shrek or like whatever, you know, the Universal properties are on this card. And then every person in your party has their own. So like my little boys get passes with their names on them, which they’re always excited about, and they usually get to pick like, “Do you want Minions or do you want Harry Potter?”
Or whatever. And then you have to, you know, the fun part as a parent is like now your kid can’t lose this for the duration of the stay, so they’re wearing it like on a lanyard around their neck because they scan the code to get you onto the roller coasters at the park, in addition to it being like your room key and, you know, a money fob and things like that.
So anyway, we were at Universal Studios Park. We’re [00:20:00] checking into the hotel. We’d been at the park that day. We’re checking in, and Jones, my six-year-old, who was five at the time, was so excited because he got this little pink, fluffy stuffed animal. I think it’s… I forget what they’re even called. It’s like some…
It’s a Harry Potter thing. It looks like a big like cotton ball puff. And he’s not really a stuffed animal kid. Like he never wants stuffed animals. He never sees it. But for some reason, this like hot pink puff thing, he was like, “I want that so much.” And so he named her Fuzzball, and he’s carrying Fuzzball around and showing Fuzzball at the park and taking her on the rides.
So we get to the hotel, and he’s like, “This is Fuzzball, Fuzzball, Fuzzball,” being very, you know, hyper, overstimulated, sugared at the end of a day at an amusement park to this sweet check-in girl, Katie. And instead of being annoyed, Katie said, “Oh, wow. Fuzzball. Tell me about Fuzzball.” And Jones is like talking about Fuzzball, and by the time he finishes his little 20-second story about Fuzzball, she says, “Well, Fuzzball’s gonna need a pass to go on all the rides then, too.
It sounds like she’s part of the family.” And she had written Fuzzball in a [00:21:00] Sharpie on not just any card, a Harry Potter branded card, and slid it across the desk to Jones and said, “I don’t know if Fuzzball’s gonna be able to wear her pass. Do you think you could keep it safe for her so she can go to the front of the line with you for all the rides?”
And he felt like the most special, most important kid. Talk about feeling seen. Talk about feeling like he mattered. He was so proud. He probably showed that pass to like 500 people, Neve. Like every random person he met, he’s like, “Look, this is Fuzzball, and Fuzzball’s a VIP.” That’s what he kept saying, ’cause those were the words that she used.
He’s like, “Fuzzball’s coming on all the rides with me.” And on the few rides that Fuzzball couldn’t go on because it was like a rollercoaster or whatever the sweet people at Universal Studios. A couple times we were like, “We’re gonna leave Fuzzball back here in the backpack,” but other times the ride attendants were like, “Why don’t I keep Fuzzball safe for you so that you can go on the ride with your family?
I promise I’ll keep her safe.” And so then when we would get back off the ride, it was [00:22:00] like the reunion, and he would tell Fuzzball the ride. It was so sweet, so cute. Obviously Fuzzball is still, like, a member of the family, sleeps with him. But that little VIP card is right by his bed on what he calls his important things shelf, and it’s where he has, like, his little collection of, like, you know, a meteorite from the science museum and a dinosaur tooth and, like, all of these things, and Fuzzball’s VIP pass.
Not his, not the one that says Jones, the one that says Fuzzball.
Neen James: Wow. systems that they would have had in place to ensure every team member has bought into elevating the experience for every person that they come in contact with, that is a beautiful testimony to having a system of elevation that he felt, and he is… We never know where he’s gonna end up in the world.
He might be running theme parks for all we know in his future, right?
Brittany Hodak: Right
Neen James: what a beautiful example of showcasing how not only he felt special, but your whole family felt special
Brittany Hodak: Well, and it’s, it’s exactly like the Senate [00:23:00] example, right? Of this is something that we’re gonna notice, but also how simple to replicate, right? Like, when somebody snuggles the dog, take a picture, save it for the next day. When a kid is excited about a stuffed animal, make a card for the stuffed animal.
Like, those things are rinse, repeat. You can do them 10,000 times, and they will land 9,996 of those times with people. Like, the same thing, and then giving your team the creativity to say, “Make stuff up that’s new. And when it works, like, let’s add that to the playbook. Let’s have this playbook that grows and grows and grows.”
Neen James: I love that
Brittany Hodak: okay, so you don’t just talk about this. You have a system that anyone can implement that they can say, “Okay, how do I do it? How do I infuse more luxury into my brand?” So tell me about the experience elevation model and those five levers.
Neen James: I have been, uh, consulting to clients for decades. I know I sound like I’m five, but a long, long time. And what I realized was so many of my clients don’t [00:24:00] just want to be able to say they create exceptional experiences. They want to know how. So the Experience Elevation Model was designed because all of the CEOs that I work with, you know that I’m a confidant to CEOs of luxury and legacy brands. They’re all driven by two things. How do they drive mindshare? How do they capture the attention of potential clients, great team members, or even elevate existing clients? We call that mindshare, capturing attention. But ultimately, how do they drive market share? How are they gonna grow revenue, right? And so knowing that all my leadership team are measured on mindshare and market share, what I was able to do was unpack for them, through the Experience Elevation Model, how to do that. So imagine a triangle, and think about the bottom is mindshare, the top is market share. Ultimately, we wanna drive revenue. But first we have to capture their attention, which is where we start with entice. With entice, what you wanna be thinking about is the stories that you’re sharing and thinking through what’s those first impressions people have of you and your brand. And then your client, member, patient, guest, whoever you’re serving, is asking, “Why should I even [00:25:00] pay attention to you?” That’s capturing their attention. Then we move into the luxury lever of invite. This is where you can roll out that experience for people so they feel like they belong to your brand. And this is where we’re kind– we’re kinda intriguing them of thinking, “Oh, how do I get access to this brand, this company, this team?” Then we move into the luxury lever of excite. This is one of my favorites. This is where we engage all the five senses. This is where we get creative to create these share-worthy moments that people wanna maybe pick up their phone and talk about what it is that you’re doing and someone saying, “Ooh, I wonder what else they’re going to do.”
That’s where we get people excited about things. And then we move into Delight is where you show people you really know them. This is where luxury brands are exceptional. They personalize and customize everything, just like what Jones experienced, just like what I experienced. So you don’t have to be a luxury product to provide a luxury experience. But if you just use people’s names in your digital signage, you know, [00:26:00] these things, it’s so easy to truly delight clients in that way. Then we move to my favorite of the luxury levers, and that is ignite, the top of the triangle, and this is about creating advocates. And what we’re ultimately trying to do is get people to say, “Oh, who else could I tell about this?” Now, Brittany, you call them superfans in your fabulous book, Creating Superfans. I call them advocates. And I think we need to think about how do you do everything from capturing someone’s attention, them these opportunities to invite them and delight them, and get them excited about what you’re doing so they wanna tell others about you.
Ultimately, creating exceptional experiences is about earning advocates, and that is what the Experience Elevation Model does. There’s twenty-one systems of elevation in the book, all things you can do yourself
Brittany Hodak: I love it. Well, what is one thing that somebody can do themselves tomorrow or next week, even if they have no budget? Like, what’s an example of one thing that anybody listening to can do [00:27:00] an audit and say, “This is what I’m gonna do to make my experience feel more luxurious, to, luxurious, to earn more of those advocates”?
Neen James: I would think about working on your top-tier clients. We all know, if you think about the old Pareto principle of 80/20, right? It almost applies to everything. But think about that top 20 client list that you absolutely love working with. What we know from the research, too, is if just an increase of 12% in customer advocacy can potentially double your revenue growth.
So
Brittany Hodak: Wow
Neen James: about that, right? So we’re all out there chasing new business and all of these things, when in actual fact, if you were to really leverage the advocates who already love you and give them love and attention, the handwritten notes, the phone call just to say, “Hey, thanks for your business.
We love working with you.” Like, imagine if you just focused on igniting those advocates more. And what we need to think about is we need to earn that advocacy, right? You can’t just ask someone to be your advocate. They’ve gotta love you. So think about the clients who really love you, and then love on them.[00:28:00]
Think about ways you can show them that you really appreciate their business, their advocacy, the referrals they give you. That’s the first place I would encourage you all to start because it doesn’t matter what kind of business you have. You wanna think about truly creating advocates. Now, you, uh, you and Joey Coleman had a great podcast.
I want everyone to go back and listen to that podcast with Joey Coleman, Brittany, because while it was a couple years ago, it talks about our team as advocates, right? And think about if you were to combine this with what Joey and you talked about, creating your team as advocates and your clients as advocates, your revenue will increase.
It just will
Brittany Hodak: It absolutely will. And thank you. We’ll be sure to link that episode in the show notes. One of the things that, that I love about your book is you tell this incredible story about champagne at the beginning, and then you introduce this idea of champagne moments, and throughout the book you end every chapter with one.
So talk a little bit about what a champagne moment is, and maybe share one that you’ve experienced [00:29:00] recently, either personally or professionally.
Neen James: I love– You need to know this about me. I am a champagne lover. And someone, someone I admire, because of my mom, I’ve always admired these bold women in the world. And Madame Clicquot, if you read her story, which is how I open my book, and some of you may have even seen the movie about Widow Clicquot. But she is a person who not only changed the champagne industry, she saved the champagne industry.
It is because of her that we drink champagne today, and people may not know that. So she was a person who was out there trying to get advocates of the distributors of the crazy government at the time, and she is the reason we drink champagne today. And so I love her. And what I thought was, you know, she is a woman who took something ordinary. She had this bottle of champagne that was very cloudy with a lot of sediment in it, and she thought, “Hmm, how do I elevate this experience?” And then she thought, “Well, what if, I stored the bottles on an angle so that all the sediment from the bottle came to the neck of the bottle?” But there’s no [00:30:00] solution for that at the time.
So you know what she did? She drilled holes into her dining table to store the bottles on an angle, and as a result of that, we have the process we call riddling. You still see champagne bottles stored like that today. Here’s a woman who thought, “How do I elevate this? How do I change this? How…” And so I love her story.
So you’ll learn even more about her in the book. But the reason that I think champagne moments are so important is she took something ordinary and she made it extraordinary. We get to do that every day. So my challenge to you as you’re listening to this is think about what’s something ordinary you do on a daily basis, and how do you make that an extraordinary experience for yourself, for your team, for your clients? And so sometimes that is just a handwritten note. Right? Sometimes that is having someone’s name on a sign when they come into your office for the first time, or maybe putting a sign. One of my financial services, they now have a sign wherever their clients are gonna park that has the client’s name on it, so every time they come for their financial analysis, they do that.
Easy peasy. Costs nothing, but it’s a system. Recently, I had the privilege of working with [00:31:00] Flexjet, and I was working with the interns. And what’s amazing was all of the team read my book. So all the interns got the book, and their capstone project at Flexjet was to be able to think about how do they elevate the experience for team members based on the principles of my book. I had such a fantastic time with them. I’m so proud of all of them. But you know what they did? They made sure they all hand-wrote a note to me, and they sent me the most sweetest cashmere wrap so that they know I fly for a living. I mean, some people drive for a living. You and I fly for a living. It’s just a different form of commute, right? But they knew I spent so much time on planes that that little cashmere wrap is obviously now permanently in my bag, and every time I look at it, I’m reminded of that opportunity to have not so much the cashmere wrap, but that handwritten note that every single one of them took the time to write something special about our time together. That’s a champagne moment.
Brittany Hodak: I love that. And you know, you mentioned before Joey’s episode and your team. Uh, I was talking to a college friend of mine yesterday. His name is [00:32:00] Brad, and he’s an executive at a performing arts center now. And he had reached out to me because somebody on his team read my book and was like, “Oh, you gotta check out this book.”
And he was like, “Brittany and I have been friends for, like, half our lives. Oh my gosh.” And so now their whole team is reading this book. And he said, you know, one of the things that never occurred to me as the CFO is obviously there’s a different experience for executives, you know, within the executive team versus everybody else.
But he said, “What I’ve really been focused on as we’ve been working through this book as a team is how do I affect the experience of the people valet parking the cars, and the concession workers, and the lighting team, and the stage crew?” And he’s like, “We’ve got so many different vendor partners. There’s, you know, different unions, different teams.”
So the fact that those interns were speaking about how do we improve the team member experience versus the client experience is so important. Because when you create those champagne moments for your team, obviously it, I’m gonna say, bubbles over, and that impacts then the [00:33:00] experience that your clients, your customers, your members, et cetera, have.
Neen James: Yeah, and I have the privilege of working with some amazing hotels around the world, and I’m always challenging my hoteliers. Does the front of house match the back of house? Because a lot of investment goes into that lobby and that beautiful restaurant with the view. You know, you and I were talking about how much we love Boca Raton and being in that area, right? what we need to think about is, do our team areas match that level of service that we provide to our clients, patients, members, guests, students, whoever it is you serve? Because it is our ti- it’s our team who’s delivering that client experience. So imagine just refreshing their cafeteria or their lunchroom.
Imagine giving them the spaces and the care that you do for the external, those people that you serve. It just elevates everything. So we need to really think about what can we control, just like your friend Brad, so that everyone on our team feels seen, heard, and valued, and as a result, they want to give an exceptional experience to the people that we serve[00:34:00]
Brittany Hodak: I love that. Well, Neen, your book is truly one of my favorites. I have given dozens and dozens and dozens of copies away. There’s probably some of you listening right now that are like, “Wait, you sent me that book.” And it’s true, I did. Guilty, because it’s so good. And I’m so excited because now, in additional, in addition to the book, you have launched a brand new playbook that is the companion to this.
But companion almost feels like not the right word, because it is so much, it goes so deep. From the little sneak peek I’ve seen, it is so good. So talk a little bit about The Exceptional Experience Playbook, what that is, and where people can get more information.
Neen James: What we did was we took all the 21 systems of elevation in the book Exceptional Experiences, the Experience Elevation Model, and we created a video for everything, downloadable fillable PDFs that you and your team can use, and we even created AI prompts that you can cut and paste into your favorite AI tool so that you can also have the ability to systemize this thoughtfulness, to have these systems of elevation.
We have an activation guide for you. We [00:35:00] have an essential path or an, uh, like a very much an elevator path. There’s so many ways that you can use this with your team. So if you go to exceptionalexperiencesplaybook.com, you can find out more.
Brittany Hodak: And it is so good. Like I said, the prompts are incredible, the videos are so good. Anybody listening who said, “Wow, I wish I had a Neen on my team,” this is one way to make that happen very easily. It’s a little bit like a easy button, like a done-for-you. Like a, you read the book and said, “That is awesome, but it sounds kind of hard.”
Well, you don’t have that excuse anymore because now, uh, somebody literally did your homework and you just get to copy the homework.
Neen James: Exactly. Let me be your personal concierge and help you make it happen
Brittany Hodak: Amazing. Okay, well, Neen, before I let you go, I always like to ask my guests what is one brand you’re a superfan that more people should know about, and tell us why
Neen James: Let’s go back to Veuve Clicquot. And I think part of the reason that I… It’s not even my favorite champagne in the world, let’s be really honest about that. But what I love is the story. I love that LVMH, [00:36:00] Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy, has done a great job of protecting her legacy. And what they’ve done is they’ve activated this brand by creating advocates out in the world who wear the merchandise, who go to the polo matches.
They give bold women awards every year. There are so many ways that they have activated the brand to create advocacy, which has a ripple effect across the planet. And as you’re listening to this, you know Veuve Clicquot. You know why? Because you’ve seen the yellow label in your hotels, at events, and maybe even in your grocery store. And what I love is they continue to tell the story of the founder, and that’s a good story for all of us. Do your clients, do they know the founding story of you and your business? Because I think there’s a lot of people out there, Brittany, who really resonate with understanding the who behind the what.
And so I wanna encourage you, whatever your brand is, learn a little bit more of it. And if you’re an advocate for that brand, understand how you can also tell that story. So that would be one of the ones that I would say
Brittany Hodak: Amazing. Well, Neen, thank you so much for being so generous with your time to come hang out [00:37:00] with us. Um, you already told us exceptionalexperiencesplaybook.com. Beyond that, where can people go? What can they do to get more Neen?
Neen James: The good thing is there’s only one Neen James online. So if you go to neenjames.com, you can find me there. If you want to follow my adventures on Instagram, let’s connect on social media or reach out to me directly on LinkedIn. But when you reach out on LinkedIn, make sure you mention that Brittany and Creating Superfans is the reason we’re connecting
Brittany Hodak: Amazing. Thanks, Zena. I’ll talk to you soon
Neen James: It’s a privilege
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