About This Site

You and your colleagues do amazing work. You make life better for those you serve. More people would benefit if they knew about your offerings.

Elicit & capture great testimonials & case studies. Serve more People. Breathe. Smile.

Annotated transcript from video:

So why am I making this series? Why am I putting together this video training, the PDFs, the online tool that allows you to script out your own testimonials? Why am I doing all this? Well, earlier this year I was asked to go to the area in North Carolina that was devastated by Hurricane Florence. I was asked to go and get some testimonial videos from people who were in shelters there? It turns out that the federal government provides a variety of services in times of disaster being food assistance shelter. They do wonderful things with the Red Cross, and what happens is they want to know how they can improve and how they can do a better job. People respond differently to a written survey that they receive three months later than they do when they are asked the same questions when they’re still actually in the shelter.

So that’s what I went there to do I went there to go and see not only what went right but what went wrong. What could be improved from that perspective? And it was it was very heartening to have people who had literally lost everything sit and share space with me and talk about what their experience had been?

Talk about uniformly almost how good the response had been. It was really it was quite amazing to sit across from somebody who had lost their home and who all of their neighbors had lost their home for miles around and they could talk about the good things they were in pain but they could talk about the good things.

So anyway coming home from that trip I normally carry two 70 pound pelican cases and I can carry them I can wheel them around pretty easily and I can lift each of them on the conveyor belt at the airport without much much problem. On my way home I thought Wow these are these are kind of heavy and getting off the plane. I needed to use both hands to lift one and I thought wow this is I must be really tired or are getting sick or something and I mean we work very very long days. It’s not out of the question that you come down with a little cold or something like that as a result of that work schedule. But finally, I just said you know what I’m going to stop by the quick care because this is this is ridiculous. So I stopped at the quick care and they looked me over and they said you know you’ve got a little infection. Why don’t we just give you some antibiotics? But here’s the thing if you’re not better tomorrow or you need to go into the into the emergency department need to go to the hospital.

So I said All right fair enough. And the next day I noticed that my hands were really weak and so I was in the hospital checked myself into the emergency room and my strength deteriorated over the next 12 hours to the point that my little girl who wasn’t even two at the time she weighs a little over 20 pounds and I couldn’t. Not only could I not even lift her up but my wife placed her on my chest and I couldn’t even keep her there. Mike My wife placed my hands kind of over me over her like that and she was able to just kind of push them off and I’m like you got to grab her because she’s going to fall. And they ran a lot of tests on me. I told them where I had been. And when you have six doctors of varying disciplines in your in the emergency department who are all six of them studying you while someone tries to get reflexes from areas that you didn’t know that that little rubber reflex hammer would actually get a reflex from and they can’t find anything? You know that you’re in for the duration. And so it was at that point that I realized that this was this was going to be more than just a couple of pills to take care of this. And so I spent the next two hours in the MRI tube and they gave me that little ball to squeeze if you have a problem.

And I told the guy running the machine on me. I don’t think I can squeeze this like if I have a problem. Should we test it? Should I try to squeeze this ball before you shove me in this machine? And so he’s like well you know what. You can move your feet still so kick your feet. And fortunately, I was fine in the MRI tube. It was it didn’t have a problem with the claustrophobia but this was where the claustrophobia was at that point in time. And as I sat in that tube you know I thought about a lot of things. And one of the things that I thought about was what the heck is my legacy here. What am I doing? What am I going to be able to use my hands? And what am I going to do for work what am I going to do with my life? If you know if things change dramatically here and I was asking myself what could I do? What would I like to be at least known for as I’m laying in that tube and I said you know well I’m pretty good at getting testimonials from people? I’m pretty good at eliciting case studies especially from people who are in kind of dire situations who have recently either had a tragedy or something? These aren’t like people who won the lottery and you’re getting testimony about how wonderful their life is now.

These are people who receive services and they’re still finding something in their heart to say positive about a service provider even at a very low point in their life.

We oftentimes don’t value things that come easily to us because we think that they come easily to everybody.

And as I was laying there in that tube I thought to myself well you know there’s no way I can teach somebody to do this. There’s a lot of nuances here. There’s a lot of there’s a lot of fine details in terms of getting people to be comfortable and sit down and be comfortable enough to get that story out to you about their experiences. No way I can teach that. And over the course of that two hours, I went from “I can’t do this” to “I might be able to do this” to “yeah you can do this“ to “You have to do this.” This course is structured from the perspective of someone who is laying in an MRI tube who can’t move their hands who could move a lot of weight 24 hours prior to that thinking about OK? I don’t know what’s going to happen from here. But I want to get all the information that I know about this particular subject out not only from an informational standpoint but from an actionable information standpoint.

I want to be able to take a person, put them through this training and start them on the same path that will result in them being a master at eliciting testimonials…
I can give them the information but of course, you have to get the practice. This course will get them both. It’s not so much about running the miles. It’s about knowing which are the right miles to run.

And that’s what I thought about in that too. So it turns out after many many tests they diagnosed me with something called Youngberry which is a creeping paralysis that goes from the extremities to the core. And once it hits the core, of course, your lungs are a muscle and so you have to you have to breathe through a tube into you. Fortunately, they started me on this I.V. drug right. You know prior to that they called it very early and so I started recovering. At that point and so I was on this I.V. infusion for the next five days for about five hours a day I think it was. And during that time my hand started working again. And so first I was using the voice to text feature to write the outline for this course and then I was you know finally I was able to use my thumbs with some level of utility and was able to type very sloppily with my thumbs. And then finally I got my finger on the utility of my fingers back and still clumsily but was able to get that outline out and I have been refining that ever since. And now we’re at a point where I’m ready to share it with you.

And I’m really excited about that because testimonials are so powerful as I’ve come to discover not only for the person who’s receiving the testimonial but it’s powerful for the person who is being interviewed as well? But what I really discovered when I was in that damn MRI tube in the hospital is that really the testimonial is extremely powerful for the person who’s eliciting it. It is an amazing gift to be able to sit down with someone and systematically elicit a testimonial or a case study that comes from the heart and that’s what I want to pass along to you here. And that’s why I made this course.