Dyslexia Strategy: How Russell Van Brocklen Builds Confident Thinkers in Business & AI | Ep. 186

Russell Van Brocklen: 00:00:00

They flunked me 15 credits of F because I was dyslexic. But I am the world's biggest super fan. You're like a super fan.

Intro: 00:00:12

Welcome to the Business Superfans Podcast. We will discuss how establishing business superfans from customers, employees and business partners can elevate your success exponentially.

Gain insightful knowledge from the experts who create applications that help you create passionate superfans. This is the Business Superfans Podcast with your host, Freddie D. Ready?

Freddy D: 00:00:49

Hey super fans.

Freddy D. Here in this episode 186, we're joined by Russell Van Brocklin, known as the Dyslexia professor, is addressing a challenge many service based business owners face every day. Talented people underperforming because the way they're taught, trained or coached simply doesn't match how they learn.

Too often, leaders default to wait and see instead of fixing the system.

Drawing on research backed structured literacy and multisensory learning methods, Russell translates complex science into simple actionable strategies leaders can use immediately to improve comprehension, confidence and execution.

If you manage teams, train clients, or build systems that depend on clear communication and learning, this conversation shows you how to unlock progress faster and more effectively.

Freddy D: 00:01:49

Welcome, Russell, to the Business Superfans Advantage podcast. Great conversation that we had before we started recording, so let's continue that conversation on the mic. Welcome to the show.

Russell Van Brocklen: 00:02:02

Thanks for having me.

Freddy D: 00:02:04

So we were talking before we started recording. You're from New York. I'm now living in Arizona and it's 57 degrees in Arizona. It's been raining for three days in a row, which is.

Doesn't happen here. And you're probably a lot warmer than I am here, which is kind of crazy.

Russell Van Brocklen: 00:02:20

Oh, not even close. Our high today was 43 and we're going to be in the low 40s for the rest of the time. I'm in upstate.

Freddy D: 00:02:28

Okay. Because I talked to my daughter, she's in Denver, and she said it had even snowed there and New Mexico got clobbered, Nevada got clobbered.

And she says, oh, it was 70 degrees out today and she's up in Denver. I'm going like, what's going on? This is just crazy.

Russell Van Brocklen: 00:02:45

Yeah. There have been times when my sister used to live in Texas and we would be warming her in January.

I said, hey, if you want to warm up, just come back to New York. Well, it only lasted temporarily, but it was fun letting her know that.

Freddy D: 00:02:57

Sure, sure. So Russell, what's the, you know, you do something quite interesting, which is you help people with dyslexia. And how did you get started in that?

What's the whole backstory? Give us the scoop.

Russell Van Brocklen: 00:03:11

Well, I was never supposed to do this. I was never supposed to be a dyslectic researcher. I was supposed to be a bureaucrat for the state government.

So what happened is it's the late 90s, finishing up college, and I wanted to know how laws were created, not some course I wanted to know. So I signed up for the New York State assembly internship program. I show up and I say, here's my neuropsychological evaluation.

I have a first grade reading and writing level. And the director said, this can't work. He literally brought it to the Speaker's office and they said, you have to accommodate this kid.

We're not sending him away. So they literally pulled me out of the Legislative Office Building and said, we're not sending you there.

They put me over capital to the Majority Leaders Program and Counsel's office. They were, I think, a little scared because I wasn't going to be around any of the other interns.

And I was like, yes, because that was a graduate intern. They had no idea what to do with undergrads. When I walked in, I found out why they placed me there.

There were three administrative assistants who could help me take my horrific writing and turn it into something I could turn in each week and went up with my first assignment. I was like, I'm sorry. They looked and go, okay. But they said, you know, the director has an Ivy League background and we have to do this for him.

Yours is a little more interesting. And they passed me around between the three assistants and it worked out great.

Then for the academic portion, I gave a hours long presentation and Q and A session, which was standard accommodation for me back then. They recommended 15 credits of a minus. Then it goes back to the Political Science Department, the State University of New York center at Buffalo.

They didn't like the accommodations the New York State government came up with, and they lowered my grade from an A to guess what?

Freddy D: 00:05:00

C. F. F. Holy moly.

Russell Van Brocklen: 00:05:03

They flunked me 15 credits of F because I was dyslexic. That's crazy. Oh, you. Especially since the accommodations came from the Speaker's Office of the State Assembly.

Freddy D: 00:05:16

Right.

Russell Van Brocklen: 00:05:17

This wasn't some private company. This was their boss. Yeah, it was fun.

So then I went to my professors that I still liked and I said, how do I force myself to learn to read and write so I can show other dyslexics where do I go for grad school? He said, law school. So I went and audited law classes and then something happened to me that was completely unique out of anybody in the school.

The second day of contracts, my professor called on me and used the Socratic method. He would embarrass kids by asking them questions they don't know and they would keep doing that until you eventually acclimated.

He's crushing everybody. Didn't happen to me. He called me, I answered as an equal. Everything just lined up for the first time in my life and it was organized.

We're a minute in and he's getting kind of frustrated because he's not trouncing me. So he starts getting aggressive, I start getting aggressive. We're shouting at each other. 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, he throws up his hands.

I can't. I simply can't continue. We've run out of time. I have to move on to the next case. You couldn't be any more correct. I learned to read within a month.

I learned to write within a few years. Then I went back to the New York State Senate and I said, I want you to pay for my dyslexia research project, which they don't do.

Finally, after years of going through all the hoops, they funded it for a multi year study. I went to Averill Park High School, which is where I graduated from, right outside of Albany, New York.

We took their best, their most motivated, most intelligent, dyslectic students. We found out juniors and seniors and their best special ed teachers, Susan Ford. I wanted to see what I could do with the best.

They had fourth to fifth grade, so they're reading and writing at the middle school level. One class period a day for the school year. They were writing at the average range of entering graduate school students.

They bypassed high school, bypassed college. They were scoring in the average range of that. They all went to college. They all graduated GPAs at 2.5 to 3.6.

And they did this for under $900 cost to the taxpayer. That's how I got started.

Freddy D: 00:07:20

What a backstory. Interesting background. And you brought up a good point that I want to kind of emphasize there.

Russell is, you know, when that guy was really trying to destroy everybody in business, there's a lot of times where you've got managers that do that and that's the way they seem to manage. And then they wonder why their teams quit on them every, you know, so often.

And they got regular turnover because of the fact that really it's all about them and they want to look themselves as being all powerful versus pulling up their team because that's what a good leader does. He pulls up their team. And so you broke that person's process because they weren't expecting you to go toe to toe with them.

And that type of an individual, when you go to toe to toe with them, they can't handle it. And they.

Russell Van Brocklen: 00:08:12

No, it was the case that his job is to acclimate us with a Socratic method. He was actually very happy afterwards.

He just never saw anything like that in the first year of law school or anywhere people go and toe to him right away. He was proud as heck I could do it. But he was just shocked. His job is to smack me down until I acclimated. I acclimated.

The first time he called me, okay, I misread that.

Freddy D: 00:08:35

That's fine. Because I was tied that into a business.

Because a lot of times you have bosses that will basically talk down to their teams and then they actually have a lot of turnover. So I kind of tie things a little bit to the business aspect. That is because of our listeners. So that's why I'm trying to make sure we blend that in.

Russell Van Brocklen: 00:08:59

But yeah, so I actually wrote up what I did. It was 173 pages. And he said, if I could do half of this, I'd be an A student anyway.

I didn't become a lawyer because I could never keep up with the reading and writing load. I just. No way. So from there, when I presented that in New York City, I thought I did something amazing. I thought I was done. I was wrong.

I had two things that came back. One was they wanted the process. They asked how would that work with normal kids? And I said, it won't.

This was meant for the elite, the super intelligent, the super motivated. And the professors came back and told me, well, we don't care that some of your kids scored in the 70th percentile. Veteran grad students.

We want the craft of Research. The craft of what? The Craft of Research. It's a book that came out in the mid-90s.

PhD students didn't know how to write dissertations, doctoral dissertations. They told me they want kids to be able to do this at the end of high school before they even come to college. And that was 20 years ago.

And they're still very serious about that today. Because the people that can do the craft of research, they can do AI.

And for your business owners, I had a former student who was about to get hired, his first job. The issue with him is he hated AI. So he gets hired, and his boss loved AI.

He Said, I'm not going to pay you to do things the old way, the way you did in college, because the AI can get you to a good first draft in 10 minutes and I'm not going to have you do hours on that. We're all about productivity here. And he said, can you come up with anything good that can help the business out? Can you solve problems?

And he calls me in a panic and I say, yeah, I know exactly what he's saying because I keep track of this every Sunday. And he said, well, I don't know what to do.

I said, well, I taught you how to do context, problem, solution, go to the AI, talk to it, type on, I don't care, figure out context. He does. He comes back a few days later, okay, did that Go and do problem. He comes back a few days later. I think this.

And I said, welcome to the adult world. And then I said, go do solution. And he types out, it's a five paragraph essay. His boss is flipping through everybody's thing. Nothing makes any sense.

Comes to his yeah, we've had that problem for a long time. It was never big enough for us to do anything about it. Yeah, that should work.

Within a week after that, he's training his peers in artificial intelligence.

Freddy D: 00:11:42

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All right, let's get back to our conversation.

Freddy D: 00:13:05

He flipped the script on the whole thing.

Russell Van Brocklen: 00:13:07

Well, because I taught him the craft of research in high school. Which means if he wrote an essay on Romeo and Juliet. It was original, like the teacher actually learned something somewhat substantive.

So then he practiced it in college. And then when it came time to AI, he just said, this is how I. It's context, problem solution. This is how I figured out context.

And the people like, what do you mean, context problem solutions, like craft of research. We don't know what that is. He's like, I was taught this in high school. What do you mean you don't know? You went to college?

So he had to teach them what that was all about. And the result was he made them really, really productive with it.

Freddy D: 00:13:46

Sure.

Russell Van Brocklen: 00:13:46

And he kept getting all these compliments. He's like, I don't know a damn thing about AI. I just know this. So it was really interesting that he was one of the few that kept his job.

Now he's doing extremely well because he's considered the AI expert.

Freddy D: 00:14:02

Sure.

Russell Van Brocklen: 00:14:03

And you never had any. He just figured that's what dyslexics do.

So the key thing that what I want your audience to understand is when, if you pick up the craft of research and try to understand context, problem and then the solution. I just took it from the grad level to make it simply so simple so, you know, high school kids could be taught this.

I actually teach context to elementary and middle school kids. Problem solution to high school kids.

Freddy D: 00:14:33

Right. Well, let me share a story here because you make me remember a story.

And in the early 80s, before I transitioned into sales, I was teaching computer aided design classes at a college. And I was in my 20s and the class was 8 o' clock in the morning on Saturdays because of the fact that I was at in demand as a tech guy.

And there's a whole nother story how I got there, but we don't have time for that today.

But the point is, I was teaching Computer Aided Design, so I was teaching people from going 2D design, which is you would think in 3D, then you draw 2D and drafting boards, if you remember drafting drawings and stuff. Okay, well now we're in Computer Aided Design, so you can go from 3D to 3D.

So I gotta teach you how to get out of that 2D thinking and go straight from 3D to 3D in the computer screen. So what I would do is I would assign people homework and stuff like that.

And then because it was Saturday morning and Friday night, I was out hanging out with the guys and gals and all that kind of stuff. So I came up with the clever idea which actually ended up becoming brilliant. I must pat myself on the back and that was that.

From 8 o' clock till 9 o' clock in the morning. Russell, you are not allowed to disturb me. You need to figure it out the problems. You got the manuals, you got your co people that are in the class.

You guys work it out together to solve it and figure out how to do the homework assignment.

And you cannot ask me till 9am Meantime I'm pouring coffee into myself and catching up some latent Z's because I got home probably at 2, 3 o' clock in the morning and I'm teaching a class. But what had happened was they actually, and I'm emphasizing because it's basically the same thing you do with your guy.

I made them self sufficient and my whole approach was to them is you don't want to go up to your boss when you get a job and say hey, you know boss, I don't know how to do this. I can't figure it out. You're not going to last too long.

So now I've made them self sufficient so that they could go and, and to pick up the book, the manual and try to figure it out. And if not, ask somebody that they co work with before they went and asked their manager.

And I had the most people that would sign up for the advanced class because they all learned something.

Russell Van Brocklen: 00:17:03

Okay, well that is, that's exactly right with here. Now when you're talking about that's the AI thing.

But I think another area that I'd like to help your audience in is I want you to imagine the biggest request that I get in this area is you own a business and a lot of people are competing where a lot of people do very similar things. Like if you're an auto repair or you're an electrician or any sort of business where there's a lot of competition.

How do you come up with a marketing message that's you that focuses really on what you're really good at. But it's your interpretation of why you're doing this.

Because a lot of business owners, if you're just in it for the check, your customers know you have to be doing this because you're really trying, you're passionate about improving your customer situation. You care really deeply. But how do you communicate that? And I like to convey that, show them how to do that in a universal theme. Are you familiar?

So let me give you an example of that. Do you go to the movies that often?

Freddy D: 00:18:13

Sure.

Russell Van Brocklen: 00:18:14

Okay, so I want you to think about the really important movies that you've wanted to See, over the decades, have you noticed that when Ivy League educated people are doing movie review, there's quite a few of them. They say, this happened, then this happened, then this happened.

And it's kind of like you taped a football game because you're away at the office and you come back and then somebody tells you, oh yeah, that team won by three points. Is really excited until the last 20 minutes or last quarter. It's kind of like, why see the movie now? Why see the game?

So how we get around that, let's start off with a universal thing. So I want you to pick a movie that everybody really has seen. It's one of the best movies of all time you really like. What's that movie?

Freddy D: 00:18:58

Top Gun.

Russell Van Brocklen: 00:18:58

The first one, Top. What is a one word universal thing for Top Gun?

Freddy D: 00:19:05

Great question. And I would say attitude.

Russell Van Brocklen: 00:19:10

Attitude, okay. Now when we're looking at attitude, you see how that's really broad. Mm.

Freddy D: 00:19:22

I don't know.

Russell Van Brocklen: 00:19:25

Universal beings by fellow friend or add.

Freddy D: 00:19:33

Yeah, because I mean, they all had attitude. All the fighter pilots had attitude. That's why, you know, they all had their different levels of attitude and pride.

So that's what I really remember the most about it. Especially, you know, the two guys that went against one another. Hang. Not.

Russell Van Brocklen: 00:19:50

Not hang. Yeah. So what I did is I put this into. Into chat. GPT 5.1. And here's the issue.

When you're talking about attitude, do you see how that's a very broad universal thing? We want to get something much narrower. Okay, I'm going to give you five words.

Let me know if one of these sounds a bit more to what you're thinking about a definition that's in your head. Confidence. Discipline. Respectability. Humanity. Redemption.

Freddy D: 00:20:22

Confidence.

Russell Van Brocklen: 00:20:24

Confidence. Okay. Voice.

Freddy D: 00:20:27

Iceman and Maverick had confidence to the nth degree.

Russell Van Brocklen: 00:20:32

Now do you see how that's a much more specific universal theme?

Okay, so the problem that we start off with is that if we have something too broad, we can't get it really narrow enough for us to come across and to make it so narrow enough so that we can interpret that universal thing to be part of us. So how we do that is we have what I like to call the half circle, the hero, the universal fame and the villain.

So name the hero of that movie for you the way that you foresee it.

Freddy D: 00:21:09

The Maverick.

Russell Van Brocklen: 00:21:11

Maverick. What is it that Maverick wants to do in one sentence?

Freddy D: 00:21:17

Wants to be the badass best fighter pilot, period.

Russell Van Brocklen: 00:21:22

Wants to be the badass best fighter pilot, period. Now we're looking. So just, you know, why I'm doing this. This is dyslexia. The top book in the field. Overcoming Dyslexia by a medical doctor from Yale.

That's dyslexia. See how the back part of my brain has next to no neural activity and yours is going crazy in the back?

Okay, now you see how the front part of my brain's about two and a half times overactive? That overactivity is based on two things. Word analysis followed by articulation. That's what we're about ready to apply. So when we're talking about.

Go ahead and tell me what Maverick wants to do again. He wants to what?

Freddy D: 00:22:04

He wants to be the best badass pilot.

Russell Van Brocklen: 00:22:09

Okay?

Freddy D: 00:22:09

Period.

Russell Van Brocklen: 00:22:10

All right, now, do you see how the action word that brings him closer to what he wants to do is the word wants. Does that make sense? Okay, so this is a Top Gun Maverick wants to be. The best universal thing is badass. I need five that are much more specific.

Badass. Okay, so what I just asked chat btdo is to come up with 5 synonyms that are much more specific than badass.

Do one of these better illustrate what Mavic's trying to do? Fearless, Ruthless. Unstoppable. Defiant. Dominant. Is any one of those better?

Freddy D: 00:23:08

I'd say he was dominant.

Russell Van Brocklen: 00:23:11

Okay, now that is just the first time through. What I would actually do for your business is I really wouldn't use chat. I would use the source.com. you can't use their dictionary.

You need to use Merriam Webster's online dictionary. You see how I came up with an action word and the most important word, and then we ended up going with the most important word.

It's a form of word analysis. What we just did here is we narrowed it down a little bit. If you do that, you want to keep doing that for each word.

If you don't know exactly what the definition is, look it up in the Marion Webster's online dictionary. For my kids, I actually have them type out the word and type out the definition repeatedly until they know it. That's how they learn to read.

All right, keep going down levels until the final level is what I call junk words. They're not as good as the last level. And then that's the best word for the definition.

But then you also want to go through all those words again and find the one that feels right. You just feel it and then kind of balance it between the definition that matches what's in your head and then the one that feels right.

And that's going to be your universal thing. Okay, so go ahead.

Freddy D: 00:24:19

Yeah.

So I wanted you to kind of share a story of how you used this approach with one of the students that you've worked with and you've completely transformed their reading and writing abilities.

And they kind of became a super fan of the work that you did with them, or the parent is a super fan of the work that you did with their child and now is in turn promoting you to other people, which is attracting you more customers.

Russell Van Brocklen: 00:24:47

Well, I'll just tell you my all star student with this. Please, everybody know I have never saw this before, Casey. I will never see this again. This was a one off. Amazing kid.

I met Casey at the end of fifth grade for her. She was 10 years old. She turned 11 over the summertime and she was reading at the second grade level. Casey wanted to do reading first.

I said, casey, I don't do reading first. I do writing first. Because if you can write it, you can read it. And she's like, no, I'm doing reading first.

I said, okay, Casey, here's how you do it. And I told her, mom, do ten 20 minute sessions. You pick the number of times a week. Well, I didn't know Casey.

She was interested in Theodore Roosevelt. So I said, here you go. The rise of Theodore Roosevelt. All 900 pages. 10th grade, death, first year, college level, let's just call it 10th grade.

Casey essentially locked herself in the room, her room, two to three hours a night. And then during the summer, most of the day. Six months later, she's in sixth grade, she's in silent reading. Some of the kids came and took her book.

They couldn't get past the first paragraph. She knew every word in that book, every dictionary definition of every word in that book.

Her mom calls me because the school called her and they said, we thought your daughter was dyslexic. We thought she had a severe reading problem. She's the best reader in her grade by grade level. What's going on?

Her mom calls me and said, what's going on? I said, what do you think she's been doing in her bedroom hours a night? She jumped eight grade levels in six months.

And I worked with her for 15 minutes a week. Then her mom said, is that just for this book? And she said, what happens if there's something she's not like the biggest fan of? So I said, okay.

I assigned her this. The Triumph of the American imagination of 1,000 pages.

And that's my most popular book because the kids love going to Disney and they want to know what the Disney magic Is it says two universal themes. She found both universal themes in three months, typically takes about two years.

And then I said casey in front of her mom, because I knew she'd get a kick out of this. I said, what did you think of Walt Disney's biography? And she said, I hate it. And I said, okay, well, you're done with it.

And she found a very creative way of expressing her frustrations by ripping it to pieces. Why am I spending so much time on that?

Because what it shows when you're dealing with dyslexics is the first thing we have to do in our intervention period until we're at grade level is you have to focus on the kids speciality, their area of extreme interest and ability. And what case I asked Casey, this is the critical question. When you're dealing with a book you really hate, what happened to your motivation?

And it dropped by about 50%.

Freddy D: 00:27:43

Sure.

Russell Van Brocklen: 00:27:43

Smartest. The most motivated kid I've ever worked with. So when I move that to normal kids, they're down 75, 80%.

So when your parents are asking, why is this not working with my dyslexic kid in school, it's not working because in school they do five, 10 books a year. In English class, these kids have one book, usually for a couple of years.

Then if you ask a dyslectic, this question, do you remember back in school you would take the big picture, then over time you'd get down to the details.

For a dyslectic, that doesn't work because again, we're going back to the science, okay, back part of the brain, that's what typically that evolves in. We got nothing going on back there. We have to do the front part where we have two and a half times the neural activity.

her King's speech have on the: 1960

We have to ask a specific to a general question. What personally compelled Martin Luther King to want to give his famous speech that you look at? You can find that in his biography.

That answer gives you a question which gives you an answer which gives you a question that forces the dyslectic to organize their brain using writing as a measurable output. Because we have so much chaos in the front part of the brain, if we ask a dyslectic in their speciality, do you have ideas flying around your head?

At light speed, but with little to no organization, they're going to say yes. So we have to force the brain to organize itself using writing as a measurable output. And then once they're at grade level, then they're fine.

You do this before that, and it's just like asking you to play a sport that you're really horrible at. Doesn't matter how much good equipment you get, you're still going to be bad at it.

Until we get it corrected and get ourselves up to grade level, that's the important thing. We're dealing with dyslexics.

Freddy D: 00:29:40

I guess it applies to the same thing in business.

You need to really, you know, find what you're really passionate about and then really elevate that to where you become the best at in that field that you so choose versus trying to jack of all trades and master of none. So I would look at it exactly.

Russell Van Brocklen: 00:30:01

Well, so getting back to where I was going with that universal theme of dominance. So what we did there is we have our hero, which is Maverick. Our universal theme, which is dominance.

Now, what was the ultimate villain that would prevent Maverick from being dominant? Is it a person or a concept?

Freddy D: 00:30:20

It was his. The guy that they were fighting against. So it was Iceman. Iceman. Iceman wanted to be the dominant guy.

Russell Van Brocklen: 00:30:28

Right? So then we have. But remember, we have dominance. So then we. I would ask you. Because the reasons. What we did initially was word analysis.

The reasons after. Because articulation. All right. Next thing I would have you do is flip it over and do the same thing with through the villain's eyes.

What does the villain want to do? Same process to get their universal thing. We already have the hero, which is Maverick, and then we have the reasons.

You take that and put it together, you can come up with what your story is because now you've looked at it from both angles. And usually people tell me when they do this, it's a lot of thinking. And I do use artificial intelligence to help out with it.

But the critical decisions have to be yours. And once they get done with that, they can then take that. I personally use Sonic 4.5.

I used to be very heavy into ChatGPT, and then I just found with Sonic 4.5, it's much better at reasoning and writing. And then I'll take what I come there and I'll run it through ChatGPT. Thinking 5. 1. I used to run it through Pro, but it's just not really.

It's not worth waiting an extra 10 minutes for an extra 5 or 10%, right. So I've actually dropped from the pro member down to plus member. And I $100 a month with Sonic 4.5.

And I find that that would maybe a little overflow of under $20 a month. What that allows me to do is to run it back and forth.

And each time I have Sonic 4.5 come up with something, I tell it to look at it eyes and then don't try to correct everything at once. I found the optimum. Number one is saying, tell me the seven things you really don't like about this and exactly how you want to fix it.

Then I'll tell it to fix it. And when it gets starting to get really granular, like it'll go from 90% down to 85. I'd say, I don't want to be editing this forever.

Are these just little micro things or are they real? And then it kind of yells at itself and it says, no. It'll say the last few things. I get all the stupid out.

I run it a couple of times through ChatGPT and then I'll feed it back in. Say, do you agree? Here's some reviews. Do you agree or disagree? It'll agree with about 75%. You as a human have to make that judgment and when to stop.

When you basically got it, you want to get the stupid out of it, which happens a lot, you know, just to get all the obvious. But when you get into really small minutia, it's finally like, we're done. Move on to the next project and.

But that'll give you the base for helping you come up with what you want to say for your own unique identity. Because you're doing what you're doing out of passion. You really love what you're doing.

I do what I do because I really like that want to help dyslected kids, because I went through that. Every business owner I know that does that. This works for where I've seen it fail. Businesses went into it because, well, I just want.

I just want the money, right? And people know that it rarely works out.

Freddy D: 00:33:27

Oh, yeah. Because, you know, one of the things I talk a lot about is, you know, you've got the transactional mindset versus the relationship mindset.

And the relationship mindset is what's going to get you to super fans, which is going to be the people they're going to be telling everybody that they know about the great experience they had dealing with you and your business versus a transaction, which is, okay, I got the cash, I'm done. Goodbye, see you and never hear from you again.

And that's also one of the mistakes that I think a lot of service based businesses, both professional in the trades, they do an excellent job at providing a service. Okay.

They may be the greatest at what they do and they do a great job, but they leave so much money on the table because they never go back to that existing customer and reach out six months later and say, hey, Russell, just it's been six months. Just want to check in on that, you know, garage that we just fixed, the garage door that we fixed for, making sure that's still working. Okay.

And if there's any issues, know that we're always here for you. That little bit is a game changer because now you're staying top of mind within that customer.

And so what happens is all of a sudden a customer is talking to their neighbor, goes, yeah, I got this problem. My garage door, the thing locks up every night. Oh, you know what, you need to talk to my friend. And that's how the verbiage changes.

It's my friend and here's their number. And now you got them being a sales agent for you for free.

Russell Van Brocklen: 00:35:06

When you're looking at applying your universal thing to this, when you're making that callback, the reason that you're doing this, that universal thing that makes so much sense to you, I found when I advise some of my clients who are going into very high level, I mean, not just normal customer service, but they're dealing at the high end of the market where they're expected to be extraordinarily good at that.

I would say take your universal theme and your reasons, like that process I just showed you, here's this, here's the data that you've collected on this customer. Now, how best do I apply this?

And I found the ideas I get out of it, not all of them are fantastic, but a lot of them, there's a few of them that are really good that has made all the difference when I'm applying to those customers and extremely helpful for that. But yeah, you have to really focus on what your customer's really looking for, being there for the long term.

And then especially when you're dealing with the upper echelon of the market, it is all referrals. Yeah.

Freddy D: 00:36:08

Because everything you look at, the people that are ultra successful, it's all done through introductions. And introductions are because you've created a super fan out of that person to be able to be willing to introduce to somebody within their network.

And so that's where A lot of people overlook it and they get hung up and, well, we need more referrals, we need more this.

And I kind of look at it as, wait a minute, if you got a customer base or you've got a supplier, what's the relationship you're dealing with the supplier. What's the relationship that you're creating with the contractor that's doing the work for you?

Because you didn't hire someone to be permanent on your team. You got a contractor. Well, guess what? You need to treat that contractor exactly the same as a team member. There's no difference.

Because at the end of the day, if that contractor is interacting with your customer, your supplier, your distributor, a complimentary business, or the law firm, which is an ancillary business, or your accounting company or whatever, that's the first impression of your company and your business. So you need to take care of that team. And that team creates the energy in a positive way that gets a momentum going.

And that's where I think a lot of people overlook it, is that they don't look at all the dynamics. And you know, I've shared a story many times.

I got divorced, you know, 20 years ago and I had two realtors and worked out because my ex wife didn't like one and she liked the other one. But when we were all done with the transaction, I moved into an apartment. Until everything was done with the divorce. I never heard from them again.

Freddy D: 00:37:54

When it was time for me to.

Freddy D: 00:37:55

Buy a house, I didn't have their business cards. I didn't know where it was because I moved all that stuff.

I ended up going to completely different realtor and had they used what you're talking about a little bit and understood who I was and had. He's going to be in an apartment for a year. Let's reach out to him in six months.

Hey, Freddie D, man, we know that you're thinking of getting a house. We're here for you. Let us know when you're ready. It's all needed to be. How's life going on being single again?

Anything but the fact that they disappeared. They didn't get my business. Yeah.

Russell Van Brocklen: 00:38:30

And a house purchase is the biggest commission sale that most people do in their lifetimes. I just went through that. My sister was looking to buy her first new car. She's a woman.

She walks into the place and they're just like, she's buying a bag of Doritos or something. And then I walk in with her all of a sudden, oh, yeah, how do we do this? I Was like, are you kidding me?

I had to ask around in my network to find a female sales rep who actually treats women with respect. And then I had to make an appointment because she's booked out for a week.

Freddy D: 00:39:13

There you go.

Russell Van Brocklen: 00:39:14

She never put any pressure on my sister to buy, but she walked in, she said, okay, I'll take that one. And she wrapped it up and it was a very pleasant thing. Then she went on to her next appointment. But she was so good.

You had to make an appointment or.

The garage that I go to, I had, you know, I was talking to DMV because I had to switch over a vehicle and I said, yeah, the garage I was at that just sold out and now the person who bought it were not happy. I said, well if you travel a little bit more, there's an auto mechanics place called Farah's Garage right Brunt where I live.

I said, you better call ahead because they're booked out for two and a half to three weeks because they're this oxymoron honest mechanic.

Freddy D: 00:40:03

Well.

Freddy D: 00:40:03

And they treat their customers the way customers extraordinary.

Russell Van Brocklen: 00:40:08

I go in just so you know how bad oil changes are here. Our big corporate one is everywhere. For basic oil change is now 86 bucks. A couple of years ago that's what it was for synthetic.

So now I go to Ferris and It was like 50 bucks. I got there at 7am they got me in early and I was gone in about 35 minutes. And they. It's not only that.

It's the same mechanic that just looks at that car. That's all they, you know, that's. It always goes to that one mechanic. They check it over in case there's something stupid going on.

Well, it's a Toyota Corolla so I'm lucky in that aspect. But yeah, he's just the ones like, well, I kind of need to get it done quicker.

I said, well you better call them because they literally booked out two and a half to three weeks all the time.

Freddy D: 00:40:57

Yeah, well they've created super fans of their customers because you keep going back to the same place.

Russell Van Brocklen: 00:41:02

Yeah, the prices are a lot lower in the way they service is fantastic. Yeah, yeah. And I've never had an issue. It's rare because most like I have stories like I'm sure everybody. Yeah, so. So yeah, that's a really key.

Freddy D: 00:41:15

Yeah.

So as we kind of wrap up here, Russell, how can people find and learn more about your dyslexia courses and the things that you do to help people read and write that have dyslexia.

Freddy D: 00:41:27

I mean, there's a lot of people.

Freddy D: 00:41:28

That are held back because of that.

Russell Van Brocklen: 00:41:32

Well, just to give you an example, what I currently do now, I met Kimberly about a year ago, December 27th. I showed her how to work with her son Reed, who was in fifth grade. She took him for six months from reading at the 11th percentile.

He jumped up to the 65th. He was writing at the 4th percentile. Then it was the 64th percentile.

Six months later, she taught him seven times faster than the school district could have. He's now in mainstream public school, and he's doing just fine.

His mother did what every parent dreams of and did it faster than the private dyslexic schools there. 75K. Yeah. She only did an hour and a half a week. And, you know, I spent a half an hour a week showing her what to do.

So if you're interested in learning how to do that. If you go to dyslexia classes, that's with an S plural. Dyslexiaclasses.com. there's a button there that says download free guide.

Just click on that, answer a few questions.

Once you do that, you download the document, the three reasons your child's having trouble in school due to dyslexia, and then what's really important, you actually have to make an appointment to speak to me for half an hour, and then I'll show you what your kid's speciality is. Get their book that they're interested in in the audiobook. Because sometimes parents say, oh, my kid doesn't have a speciality.

One of them I'm working with, he's in eighth grade. He likes watching chemistry videos at the college level. And I swear, this is what it is. It's how to turn paint thinner into cherry soda.

That's what he's interested in. I had ChatGPT create an essay on the video that's at the 12th grade reading level. At 9th grade, 2nd month, and I had him.

His reading helper was from Speechify, which is it'll read text created by a dyslectic. And that's how we're helping him learn to read that document before we move on to the next one. So it's that simple.

Freddy D: 00:43:23

Great. Well, we'll make sure that that's in our show notes. Thank you so much for your time. Great conversation.

Russell Van Brocklen: 00:43:30

Thanks for having me. I'll let you know when my book comes out.

Freddy D: 00:43:34

Our conversation with Russell was a powerful reminder that breakthroughs, whether in learning or in business, come from clarity, not conformity.

When you understand context, identify the real problem and commit to meaningful solutions, you stop chasing transactions and start building trust for service based business owners. That's how superfans are created and by showing customers you truly care.

Communicate clearly and stay focused on long term relationships, not short term wins. If you enjoyed today's conversation, make sure to hit subscribe so you don't miss future episodes.

And don't forget, join the Entrepreneur Prosperity Hub on School. It's free to join and get your free Service Provider Prosperity Playbook at school. S K-O-O-L.com eProsperityHub.

You'll find tools, weekly growth plays, and live networking to help build a business that runs smoothly, predictably and profitably. Thanks for tuning in today. I'm grateful you're part of the Business Superfans movement. Be sure to subscribe. We've got another great guest coming up.

Focus on what really moves the needle and I'll talk to you in the next episode. Remember, one action, one stakeholder, one super fan Closer to Lasting Prosperity.

Intro: 00:44:52

We hope you took away some useful knowledge from today's episode of the Business Super Fans Podcast. Join us on the next episode as we continue guiding you on your journey to achieve flourishing success in business.