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Are you wondering what you can do to grow your business? You’ve probably heard business gurus say you have to add value. But what does that even mean? There is so much advice out there, but there’s something you probably haven’t considered–creating delight for your customers.
In this episode, Sharran explores why mundane, everyday tasks don’t make you memorable—they’re simply expected. He argues that real growth and client loyalty come from engineering moments of delight. He shares personal stories and practical steps for creating these delightful experiences in your business and personal life, leaving lasting impressions that set you apart.
Learn to map out your client journey and identify key moments to surprise, add value, and evoke emotions. It’s time to go beyond steady effort and transform your relationships by creating memorable moments.
“Here’s what adds tangible value–it’s really simple: Does it increase revenue, does it decrease cost, does it increase joy, does it reduce stress?”
– Sharran Srivatsaa
Timestamps:
01:25 – Why routine tasks aren’t enough to stand out
05:02 – The step-by-step process for mapping your client journey
08:30 – How unexpected actions can surprise and delight
09:41 – Real-life examples of delightful experiences in business
14:03 – The four keys to adding tangible value
Resources:
– Join the 10K Wisdom Private Partner Podcast, now available to you for free
– Join Sharran’s VIP Community
– ARC Multifamily Real Estate Investing
– Sharran’s Partnership Program
– Grab Sharran’s 4-Week MBA for Free
Connect with Sharran:
– YouTube
Transcript:
[00:00:00] Hey, this is Sharran Srivatsaa and welcome back to the business school podcast. And in this episode, I want to tell you about why you don’t get referrals just for doing your job. I want to tell you about why the things that we do day to day, the things that we do on a steady Eddie perspective are gets us are what gets us paid, but doesn’t help us grow.
[00:00:17] I want to talk to you about how you can engineer delight in your lives because our best clients come from our best clients and our best ideas come from our best ideas. So how can we do more? Where we engineer delight, where we insert delight, where we install more delight into our lives. And when you do that, your life will change forever.
[00:00:32] I actually walk you through a step by step way on how you can do this. And it all starts right now. One
[00:00:43] thing is for certain. Just because it’s tried and true doesn’t mean it’s working right now. So the big question is this. Where can you learn what is working right now? The strategies, the tactics, the psychology, and the exact how to. How to [00:01:00] grow your business, how to blow up your personal brand and supercharge your personal growth.
[00:01:05] That is the question. And this podcast will give you the answer. My name is Sharran Srivatsaa and welcome to business school.
[00:01:18] It’s amazing what we can learn from our children. So every night before we go to bed, when I tuck my kids in, I ask them one question, which is, Hey, what’s your rose and what’s your thorn? And that just means that, what is something that was a rose, that was cool, that was positive, that you did today, that happened to you today?
[00:01:35] And what’s a thorn? What is something that was uncool that happened? Right? And it’s a really positive thing because I get to figure out, hmm, What were the things that were positive to my children and what were the things that were irritating to them? so I can give them more opportunities to do more positive things and Find a way to teach them how to get rid of the negative stuff, right?
[00:01:54] And over a long time as I was asking my daughter, especially this She would [00:02:00] often talk about like on the weekends, her Rose doing something cool with me. She’s like, dad, you know, when, when we went to that drive in movie theater, it was amazing. Or dad, when we went to, uh, when we actually played, uh, hacky sack in the driveway, that was amazing.
[00:02:14] Or dad, when you, when I was able to read, uh, the poem that I wrote for you was really cool. And then I started to realize something. I started to realize that my daughter didn’t actually remember or think it was worthwhile. The normal things. Now, it’s not good or bad. The more time you spend, quote, normally, the more cool moments you get.
[00:02:35] But, she didn’t say, Oh, Dad, it was awesome that you picked me up from school. Or, Dad, it was awesome that you helped me with my homework. Or, Dad, it was awesome that you made me breakfast. Or, Dad, it was awesome that you tucked me in at night. Or, Dad, it was awesome that you massaged my feet. Or, Dad, it was awesome that you filled my water bottle.
[00:02:49] Or, Dad, it was awesome that you drove me to school. Or, Dad, it was awesome that you gave me a hug every day. No, you know what? She never said that. You know why? Because those are all routine. Routine. Those are all expected. Those [00:03:00] are all not delightful because they’re normal. So the things that we tell ourselves that, Oh, I want to spend more time with my children.
[00:03:07] We caught ourselves into believing that the more time we spend with our children, we feel better about ourselves and that I did too. And many of us do too. And maybe you’re not like that, but I’m like this. So this is my truth. And I realized that the things that my daughter remembers the most and the things that my son remembers the most.
[00:03:21] Are the unexpected experiences, are the delightful experiences, are the out of ordinary experiences. We want to spend the mundane time with them. We want to drive them to school. We want to do carpool. We want to make their lunches. We want to fill their water bottles. We want to, um, make sure we give them Tylenol or put sunscreen on them or what have you.
[00:03:37] If they’re young children, if they’re older children, you’re probably doing the same thing anyway. But my point is that I realized something amazing, which was That the mundane things, the routine things, while we tell ourselves that they’re important, they’re actually normal, they’re expected, they’re a normal course of life.
[00:03:53] The things that people remember are the delightful things, the unexpected things, the things that are insightful, the things that are emotional. That’s what they [00:04:00] remember. And that’s what this episode is all about, is to engineer delight. We, if we can start thinking about how to engineer delight in our lives.
[00:04:07] Our lives and other people’s lives, it’ll change the world forever. And I’ve changed my way of thinking about it completely because I’ve realized that the mundane things, the being there for everybody, the being the steady Eddie, that’s cool. That’s what builds the trust. But what dramatically supercharges the experience is all the other engineer delightful moments, either organically or the things that were planned and designed.
[00:04:32] So how do you actually engineer delight? And I’m going to share this with you on my perspective with you on what I do. And how I think about the world and what it may be helpful for you. And I’ll use a business context in this so you can apply this to any part of your life. The first thing I would offer is you take a piece of paper.
[00:04:48] Now I know you were going to be like, Sharran, you’re making me do work, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. I’m sorry. Like it stuff takes some, it takes a minute, right? Like you got to do work. Success loves work. Here’s all you have to do. You just, most businesses have a [00:05:00] timeline of delivery and most people have not mapped out this timeline for themselves.
[00:05:04] So I want to offer you a very easy way. This will take you no more than two or three minutes to map this timeline. You can actually do this in your head. So this is how it works. You take a piece of paper, just a blank sheet of paper, and you get it horizontal. So you’re getting a landscape. And you’re dividing the piece of paper into halves.
[00:05:20] So you’re drawing a horizontal line to the piece of paper. That is the timeline from left to right. The timeline is from the start Then they’re a prospect with you all the way to when they’re a client, an ongoing client, or when they buy something from you, et cetera. That is the timeline overall, right?
[00:05:35] So all I want you to do is on the bottom. So you would draw arrows. Essentially you would draw an up arrow that essentially says, Hey, a client saw ad. Client opted in everything the client does you put on the top of the line everything that you do you put on Bottom of the line. So everything that you do is on the bottom.
[00:05:53] Everything the client does is on the top now That’s good because now, you know what the client does in this process and how [00:06:00] you react to this process overall So you’ll start to realize in this map that everything that happens at the bottom Is based on some kind of activity from the client that you respond to or you react to to either get them fed Further to the sale or that you deliver the process in some way.
[00:06:15] So you may say client ups in, we do the meeting, we do the meeting. Uh, we then send a client a proposal. We did send a client proposal and the up, you know, the, the arrow up top that says, Oh, the client reviews a proposal. The client sets up another call, ask questions, or you’ll start to realize this back and forth.
[00:06:28] And you’ll figure out a couple of very interesting things. You’ll figure out. Some pretty inefficiencies in your processing, why do we do all of these steps to get a sale? Why is it 10 steps to get somebody to buy something and actually have a sale in this process? But the most important thing is you’ll start to realize some points where you can say, huh, how do I engineer some delight?
[00:06:48] So maybe right before the first call, there’s a short video that says, Hey, thank you so much for opting in looking forward to our call tomorrow. This is my dog ruffles and he has the ability to do blah, blah, blah. It doesn’t matter if you want to do that again, it’s just [00:07:00] delight. It’s something that’s unexpected.
[00:07:01] You could look at the timeline and say, where can you introduce delight? Into the client experience into your business experience overall, most people never have time to do this. Most people never even map out the journey, let alone how to do it. You know what people do wrong? They map out the client journey, like it’s a, it’s a road or a path.
[00:07:20] They’re like client does this, client does this, client does this, client does this, that’s the customer journey. What they don’t realize is how we interact with the journey. That’s why I use this timeline based approach where whatever the client does is on top of the line and whatever we do to deliver on that is on the bottom of the line.
[00:07:33] So you will see the interaction between the top and the bottom of the top and the bottom of the top and the bottom. So you will know who’s doing what and who’s interacting with what and why your actions are actually delivering either a good result or a not good result. Either it’s taking too long or not taking long enough.
[00:07:47] And that’s super important to figure out because only then can you understand how you’re. Customer journey works. So your customer journey is useless. The traditional customer journey, the customer canvas that people make is useless just by mapping the client [00:08:00] journey. If you don’t map what you do to implement and influence and enable that journey.
[00:08:05] Now, when you have that, now you can say. Hmm, where in this journey do I actually create delight? Maybe there’s a seven day free trial. On the fifth day of the free trial, do you dramatically delight them with something? I know it’s engineered delight. You may say, ooh, that’s corny to do that or that’s manipulative, but that’s business.
[00:08:22] You’re telling them that you have a great program. They have a 70 trial. They don’t, haven’t gotten a chance to understand you. So you’re doing something special for them, right? It’s pretty cool. So the questions around all of this is to try to figure out how to engineer this delight. So the entire idea is number one, draw the timeline.
[00:08:38] Number two, figure out. Whatever you do on the bottom, whatever they do on the top in a timeline based way. And third, where can you insert the delight? And the best part is this. If you can automate that delight, it’s even more powerful because you know that it’s going to happen every single time. I’ll give you a simple example.
[00:08:54] Now, if this was not an intentional at all, but somewhere in, in our email sequences, when [00:09:00] someone interacts with my piece of content, like the first or second thing, time when they actually interact with the content, and if they’ve done a couple of steps, they get a quick email. From me personally, that says that’s automated that says, Hey, I just want to know what’s keeping you up at night.
[00:09:13] And I will tell you, I get hundreds of responses to this, and this actually becomes the fodder for my content, because I’m like, wow, this is what people are thinking about. This is what keeps them up at night. And I can actually respond to them. Normally I don’t have time to respond to every single one of them, but every time I see an email, if I can actually send out a quick response back, I do.
[00:09:31] But I use all of it as data because it allows. me to email them and then they feel delighted that I asked for that. Now there’s a deeper bond in this process overall. So you may say, well, Sharran, what is this delight? Like what are examples of this delight? There’s four quick things. So let me tell you what they are.
[00:09:45] Then we’ll kind of break those down. So number one is do something that they were not expecting. Number two, do something that is insightful. Number three, do something that made them emotional. And number four, do something that adds tangible value. And I’ll tell you exactly what that means when we get there.
[00:09:59] All right. [00:10:00] So do something that they’re not expecting. So I’ll give you an example of doing something that was that we’re not expecting. Right. So I had a dentist appointment and clearly my dentist had to work through a few things in my, on a root canal. I was in a lot of pain. The next day I get a call from the dentist personally, not from their office, from the dentist personally.
[00:10:17] And she’s like, Hey, Sharran, I was just going to get started with my day, but I was thinking about, you know, Uh, the appointment yesterday and seeing how, you know, your jaw was doing. If you need another, you know, medication or anything else, just, uh, shoot a quick text to the office. You don’t even have to go to the main line.
[00:10:29] Like that, what I was not expecting that was delightful. That was super cool for her to do that. Right now. You may think that. It’s a easy thing to do because she called me, that was amazing. Now, her staff could have called me, that would have been okay, but her calling me saying that and then telling me just text this number and we will take care of you is simply amazing because it was something that I was not expecting.
[00:10:50] I’ll give you something that was insightful. We have investment property, not in California, somewhere else in the U. S. and I’m on a different agent lists, right? So a real estate agent, this all happened in the [00:11:00] span of one week. This fall and the agent messages me and says, Hey, Sherrod, literally it was an automated email, which is totally fine.
[00:11:05] I actually appreciate that. It said, Oh, it’s time to clean your gutters. And then literally like two, three days later, I get a text message that says, Hey, Sharran , it’s the fall. It’s time to clean your gutters. Would you like me to set up an appointment to one of our gutter experts to clean your gutters?
[00:11:19] Just reply. Yes or no. What was the big difference in those two things? The big difference was one person did the spray and pray, which is a time to clean your gutters. It’s time to get a home valuation. It’s time to get a mortgage rate check. It’s time to do this. Like the dumb things that people say is that they, you know what they’re doing and all of that in the name of information, they’re selling you work.
[00:11:39] That’s what we end up doing a lot in the name of information. We sell people work. Hey, you should go talk to your attorney. You should go get a new insurance policy. You should go start this in insurance account. You should go clean your gutters. They’re selling me work instead. This real estate agent didn’t sell me work.
[00:11:56] You know what she did? She says, Hey Sharran , it’s time to do this. Would you like me to set it [00:12:00] up for you? It was super insightful. If she brought tangible value, it was super insightful. And I responded to her and I said, Hey, yes, thank you. And then she just said, Hey, I have the appointment set up for Saturday or Sunday at two or three.
[00:12:11] Does which one works better? I said, yes. And literally the guy texted me, he showed up, he billed me. He did all of the work. I literally managed everything on text message just because this real estate agent managed and she didn’t sell me work. Most service professionals sell people work. Hey, it’s time for you to do your audit.
[00:12:27] It’s time for you to get on a call with us. It’s time for you to do this. It’s time for you to do that. Do more of this, do more of that. Like our entire inboxes, our entire to do lists are filled with other people telling us to do stuff. No one actually tells us, let me do it for you. And that’s where the big shift happens.
[00:12:41] A lot of things actually make people feel emotional. This is the next one. My wife and I, last year, were able to go to the Super Bowl. It was super, super cool. We hung out with a couple of really good friends. And then, what one of our friends did was, at the end of the game, we took a, of course, my wife and I got a picture taken.
[00:12:56] They sent us this picture. In a beautiful frame [00:13:00] is signed by, you know, one of the people from the Kansas city chiefs who won the game, which was super cool. Cause I got, you know, my wife’s a big fan. We randomly didn’t expect it. The disco was a great experience. We get this box and this box has this picture and a thank you card and, and all of that, and my wife was so emotional and she was like, that’s so cool that they did not have to do that, but they did that.
[00:13:20] They went the extra mile. They didn’t just didn’t send us a screenshot or a picture. They sent us a, a picture frame signed and a card. Like it was a really thoughtful thing to get in the mail because we don’t get a lot of thoughtful things in the mail. There’s only two things that people get in the mail right now are bills and Amazon packages, right?
[00:13:34] That’s all people get. So if you are not a bill or you’re not an Amazon package, And all the other trash marketing that people send, you can do so much great work. Now you don’t have to do tacky stuff, like send people like a video envelope that people think that is really, really cool. It’s not like if I got a little card and I opened it up and I had a video on it, I’m not watching your fricking video.
[00:13:51] I have no idea what it means, but if you can delight me in some way, I want to do more with it. Right. So I talked about something that we’re not expecting, something that is insightful, something that [00:14:00] made them emotional. Or the last part is something that adds tangible value. And here’s what adds to adds tangible value.
[00:14:04] It’s really simple. Does it increase revenues? Does it decrease cost? Does it increase joy? Does it reduce stress? That’s my four filter approach. You can use this for almost any diagnostic ever. Does it increase revenues? Does it decrease cost? Does it increase joy? Does it reduce stress? And so, anything that offers tangible value does one of those four things.
[00:14:23] Increases revenues, decreases cost, increases joy, reduces stress. When you do that, right, you’re now using delight to highlight one of those things. You’re like, Hey Sharran , I want to decrease my stress, right? Hey Sharran , it’s the fall with gutter cleaning season. You should go clean your gutters. Now you’re selling me work.
[00:14:39] You increase my stress, but instead, if you said, Hey, Sharran got a cleaning season, would you like me to send you a couple of people who can actually set up an appointment for you? Awesome. Reduce my stress, tangible value, right? The job for us is to engineer delight. We don’t engineer delight enough. And the people don’t realize this.
[00:14:54] Our best clients come from our best clients and our job is to engineer delight with our best [00:15:00] clients. Our job. When people think about us should always remember that. Those delightful moments. Just like what? Just like they don’t remember the routine moments. Just like my daughter. She doesn’t remember me taking her to school every day.
[00:15:13] She doesn’t remember me putting her to bed every night. She doesn’t remember me putting on sunblock. She doesn’t remember me getting her a croissant every Saturday morning. She doesn’t remember me tucking her in for bed, but she remembers When I take her to the skate park. She remembers when I play water balloons with her.
[00:15:28] She remembers when I, when I have a pillow fight with her. She remembers the special moments, the things that she was not expecting, the things that were insightful, the things that made her emotional and the things that made her think, laugh, cry, et cetera, right? Sometimes you have to organically engineer delight.
[00:15:45] Because our best clients come from our best clients. And the more we can delight our best clients, the more it puts a smile on our face, the more it creates this warmth, this camaraderie, and the more they want to refer you for life. You turn on and you turn loose an evangelistic referral army for [00:16:00] yourself when you delight the people in your life.
[00:16:02] So, it’s time to engineer some delight just by going to this exercise. I know that you’re probably working out, or at the gym, or in the car, or running, or walking with the dog, etc. So, by the time you go, click on this episode, do a five-star review, all that, you’re probably not going to do it. And that’s fine.
[00:16:16] If you do it, great, because it helps other people see the podcast. That’s cool. What I would appreciate is, since I’m spending time making this, I would appreciate knowing that stuff like this is interesting to you. So, if you like this, could you just screenshot this, and tag me on social, and say, make more like this.
[00:16:30] That way, I know that you like this, and I make more like this for you. So, if you like this, please screenshot it, tag me on social, and I will make more like this for you.
[00:16:46] Hey Sharran, I have a cool gift for you. Since you like this podcast, I actually have an ultra-super secret private podcast that I make just for my partner companies and the CEOs and influencers that I advise. [00:17:00] It’s called 10K Wisdom. Because I tried to wrap 10,000 worth of value in every single episode in just under 10 minutes.
[00:17:09] That’s why it’s called 10k wisdom. It’s raw. It’s real. It’s got no intro or outro or anything like that. It’s just straight to the point and to the insights. Since you like this podcast, I think you will like that. So for the first time. I’m making it available to you. Just go to 10kwisdom.com, the number 10kwisdom.com, and my team will activate it for you as my gift. Go to 10kwisdom.com. I’ll see you there.
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