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The Customer Xperience Factor - A conversation with Vance Morris
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In this episode of The Entrepreneur Speaks, I sit down with Vance Morris , former Disney employee turned entrepreneur, coach, and customer experience strategist. From creating magical moments at Disney to building his own thriving businesses, Vance has spent decades mastering the art of customer experience, service recovery, and building systems that drive real profit. He’s a bestselling author, sought-after consultant, and a trusted voice in helping entrepreneurs grow with intention.
We explore the highs and lows of his entrepreneurial journey, the Disney principles that still guide him today, and how businesses large or small can deliver exceptional experiences that keep customers coming back.
Whether you’re a founder, marketer, or service professional, this episode is packed with actionable insights you won’t want to miss.
Let’s enjoy this conversation with Vance Morris
Don't forget to like and subscribe !
#CustomerExperience #Entrepreneurship #TheEntrepreneurSpeaks #VanceMorris #DisneyExcellence #BusinessGrowth #Podcast
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Transcript
Advice for Entrepreneurs in Years 5-10
00:00:07
Speaker
So how about an entrepreneur who is in year, let's say, year five to ten, who's faced with a lot of challenges and is on the verge of giving up. What would be your piece of advice to such an entrepreneur? At that point, I would be looking for a mastermind, a group of entrepreneurs that you don't compete with, that you can work through business problems. So one of the parts of my business is is I run a mastermind and this is a Napoleon Hill concept if you have his Secrets to Success a mastermind is where a group of people come together and instead of a single mind the three minds or five minds come together and they are much more powerful mind than if they were just onesies all around and you can really have significant breakthroughs when you are in a mastermind you don't have you can It can be three people you know, ten people you know. You don't have to pay for it. It can be free. You could pay to be in a mastermind.
00:01:08
Speaker
But I strongly recommend that when if you're in starting in about year five and certainly by year 10, that's where the breakthroughs are going to come. Within a mastermind, you're going to have people that have been in your shoes.
00:01:23
Speaker
They've done, they've been in your, they may not be in your industry, but they've been in your, the part of the growth of the company where you are right now and help you avoid mistakes that they made or that they learned about so that you know't waste money or waste time on things that you could avoid so strongly recommend the Welcome to another exciting episode of the Entrepreneur Speaks Podcast.
Introduction to Vance Morris
00:01:48
Speaker
The podcast that brings you insightful conversations with inspiring entrepreneurs from around the globe. I'm your host, Kofi Animedu. My guest today is Vance Morris. From his time at Disney to building his own business, Vance has mastered the art of customer experience, service recovery, and entrepreneurial growth.
00:02:07
Speaker
He's a seasoned coach, consultant, author, and a true champion of systems that drive profit. Get ready to uncover valuable lessons from his journey. the ups their downs and their breakthroughs. Let's dive into this conversation with Vance Morris.
00:02:23
Speaker
Welcome to my show, Vance. Thank you so much, Coffey. I'm looking forward to it. We'll have a little fun today. All right. We certainly have fun. So let's start on by you telling us a bit more about yourself and your childhood. Oh my goodness. We're going go that far back. Okay. um So I was a wee lad growing up in a log cabin. no that's probably a little too far back. No, I grew up on the east coast of the United States, it's bouncing all the way up and down. Okay. I went to school. I actually played in a rock and roll band. Oh, really?
00:02:55
Speaker
I was a security guard in a birth control factory. I don't know how many of your listeners have ever met one of those before. I may be the first. ah Yeah.
00:03:07
Speaker
You know, and that's one of the lessons too, a marketing lesson for everybody is, you know, is finding something that you've done that is unique that you can use to really separate yourself from everybody else in your industry. And okay while being a security guard at a birth control factory has absolutely nothing to do with what I do today,
00:03:28
Speaker
It has everything to do because I now stand out amongst a lot of your guests, if not all of your guests, that I'm probably the first birth control factory security guard you have ever had on your show.
Vance Morris's Career Journey
00:03:41
Speaker
But, you know, so I spent, you know, a bunch of years up in New Jersey. As we talked about, I worked for the Disney company for just a little over a decade. It was a long time to work in one place.
00:03:57
Speaker
I figured there had to be other things out there to look for. So i I left the company. A lot of people ask me, why oh my God, you left Disney? Why would you do that? i was like, well, you know there's got to be other things out there.
00:04:11
Speaker
yeah So I had some other other jobs, some high high, what's the word I'm looking for? High profile jobs. I was catering manager for the Smithsonian Museum System. So that was that was pretty big, at least here in Washington, D.C. and But along the lines, I found out I make a lousy employee.
00:04:34
Speaker
yeah I don't like to be told what to do. And I think that that's where most entrepreneurs, most business owners, they they get into, if they don't start like when they're 17 or 18 and stay an entrepreneur, if you've been in the working world and you get into your own business, it's probably because you don't like to be told what to do, especially by people that are dumber than you, for lack of a better word.
00:05:03
Speaker
Or that you just don't respect. And so we make bad employees. And so we go and we find our thing and we go and we do it. And that has served me well for the last almost 20 years that I've been on my own. It you know still puts food on the table.
00:05:19
Speaker
yeah i you know I still have clothes on my back. And you know I think you know you mentioned growing up. I think that my my background, what really grounded me was that I had a job when I was 14 years old.
00:05:32
Speaker
Okay. And here in the States, we used to have boys and sometimes girls would deliver newspapers. We had a newspaper route. We would go around. Okay. These days, adults have this job.
00:05:44
Speaker
You won't find a kid doing it. Adults, this is like a career for adults, which I don't get. So this taught me everything. It taught me customer service. Because Mrs. Smith wanted her newspaper between the screen door and the storm door. And Mr. Jones, you know, wanted his newspaper underneath the mat so it didn't blow away. you know and And everybody had their own little quirk about where they wanted the newspaper.
00:06:10
Speaker
And I remembered all that because I knew that if I did what they asked, I would make more in tips. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I learned customer service.
00:06:21
Speaker
I learned to be on time. punctuality was something. learned this at a very young age. And I think that that's one of the big problems today is that there are not jobs for young people to learn those basics of having a job, you know, being on time, showing up well dressed, you know being nice to people. i mean, these are all things that are hard to teach, but yeah as a young person, you just kind of absorb them in one of your first jobs and they're just not there anymore. So I'm very thankful that I had that opportunity.
00:06:58
Speaker
to be able And I did it for a number of years and it served me well. All right. So thank you for giving us this broader overview of your experience and life over the years. And from your submission, you've had about 20 years experience as
Entrepreneurial Ventures and Lessons
00:07:12
Speaker
an entrepreneur. Before then, you did almost a decade or more than a decade at Disney. You've done so many other things.
00:07:18
Speaker
I want us to unpack all that you've talked about in this overview. So really go back, try and unpack and pick useful lessons from all these experiences you've gathered over the period.
00:07:29
Speaker
So can you take us back to the very beginning? Let's go way back to the beginning. What really sparked your interest in entrepreneurship? Well, I had been fired twice. I'm So, like I said, I make a lousy employee. I didn't want to get fired again. So I was like, well, I should probably do something on my own, which was probably the spark for me. And I looked at all sorts of different concepts. You know I came from a food and beverage and hotel background. And so I was looking at restaurant concepts and things. And, well, they all wanted, you know, large sums of money to be able to invest in this. And, well, I didn't have $2 million dollars liquid cash. So I looked at businesses that I could afford to go into. And I started a carpet cleaning company about 18 years ago.
00:08:16
Speaker
so Okay. Who knew, right? But what I knew, though, was that this was going to be a premium service. In my area where I live, there are a lot of pockets of affluence, higher education, higher income, and nobody was serving them.
00:08:30
Speaker
So I said, we're going to take this business and we're going to serve the affluent people in our area. And that's exactly what we did. So I took all of my knowledge that I had from Disney, all of my customer experience, knowledge, my knowledge about processes and systems, and I packed it into a carpet cleaning business. We grew that because we knew who our target was. We were able to price it as a premium service, so we were able to do nice things for people. We weren't, you know, we didn't show up and cut off jeans and t-shirts, and we didn't look like slobs and smell like cigarette smoke. I mean we looked like professionals. You know, we were dressed well. Everybody's hair was combed.
00:09:13
Speaker
yeah you know We spoke clearly. We were able to diagnose problems as opposed to just come in and treat everybody the same. And people appreciated the level of service that we were able to provide, and they were willing to pay for it. And so I used this model as we grew, and we were able to add another business to it, which was an oriental rug washing facility.
00:09:36
Speaker
And then a number of years later, we added a mold remediation company to it. So now I have a three... home service businesses running. Okay. And the key thing was that I had systems and processes. I had marketing systems, I had customer experience systems, operations systems, and systems give you freedom, Coffey.
00:10:00
Speaker
When you have systems in place, they give you freedom to go as a business owner. All you have to do is manage the system. You no longer manage the people, you're not putting out fires, you're not running around.
00:10:11
Speaker
You manage the systems. And for me, that gave me freedom to go out and do other things like the coaching and the consulting. so For my general manager, so I put a general manager in place of those three businesses. no okay For him, all he had to do was manage the systems.
00:10:27
Speaker
I said, don't mess with anything. Don't screw with the systems. Just manage the systems. If you get a great idea and you want to improve the systems, fine. We meet every Friday for 90 minutes. We'll go over your ideas and we'll try to implement um but other than that, don't change anything.
00:10:44
Speaker
And so that process has served me well over the last almost 20 years. I mean, we've had a couple of hiccups here and there, but for the most part, that kind of approach to business has served us well. and We've been able to continually increase our pricing.
00:11:01
Speaker
We've been able to increase our services and improve our experiences. We don't just, we're and certainly not doing the same thing today as we did 17, 18 years ago. It's a completely different look and feel to the business. So really pulling all that together and knowing at the beginning that I was going to be a premium service because if you if you're going to go for cheap, you're not going to make a lot of money yourself. You're going to attract cheap clients. And those kinds of clients, they complain a lot.
00:11:33
Speaker
They're always asking for discounts. They're really no fun to work with. You want people that to appreciate the work that you do. And I've found that premium people or people that really understand and want an experience with a business are willing to pay for it.
00:11:49
Speaker
Just like when you go to Disney. you're willing to pay for that experience. And so I just took that model and I plugged it in everywhere I went. All right. So you've underscored the importance of systems, having in place systems. And from what you've shared so far, application of systems, whether from Disney or from the other places you gathered the experience, what is helping you today?
00:12:10
Speaker
So if, okay, let me reposition, let me recraft this question. So how can a baddened entrepreneur, how can, what be your piece of advice for somebody who is starting off? how should the person go about putting in place a system a system that can work for the person and the system that over time can be grown or be your piece of advice for such yeah and definitely well one is obviously if you're if you're by yourself um you know solopreneur you know you're going to come up with ways that you're going to do your business whether you're e-commerce whether you're
00:12:45
Speaker
you know, you're repairman, whatever, you're going to come up with ways that you're going to do your job. whether you How you're gonna do your marketing, how you're going to do your operations. And after some time, wanna start just recording yourself doing these things.
00:13:02
Speaker
It doesn't have to be anything official. um You don't even have to write it down. Just get your phone out and use the little recorder app on there and record what you're doing. You've now just recorded a system. And when you have time or if you have ah v a VA and you can or even Fiverr or one of these inexpensive online things, as you upload the recording, have them transcribe it, or you could give it to AI and have them do it. And now...
00:13:27
Speaker
you've got your system in place. And now when you hire your first employee, now they follow your system and your training becomes that much easier. The reason you want this stuff written down, or if not written down, at least in a computer, on a spreadsheet, or you know, a video or something is when you go to sell your business, and I know a lot of people, they're they're just getting into business, they're thinking, well, I'm not ready to sell.
00:13:55
Speaker
That's fine. But you need to, you need to begin with the end in mind your business is one and a half to two times more valuable when you go to sell, if you have documented systems on how the business runs. So if you want, just by documenting your systems, you are now two times more valuable to a buyer than if you did not document.
00:14:17
Speaker
Doesn't even matter if the systems are bad, you know, it just matters that you have the systems documented. And so, and they don't have to be fancy. I mean, when I first started with the carpet cleaning, I mean, you know, I'm driving around, I'm doing the cleaning myself and I'm just recording myself.
00:14:31
Speaker
You know, here's how I enter a home. You know, I park in in the street, I don't park in the driveway. You know, I noticed that, you know, people don't like people to smell. So, you know, I've been smoking and you're not allowed to wear cologne when you're working. And I noticed that people liked it when we knocked on the door, not ringing the bell.
00:14:50
Speaker
Okay, so I recorded that and that became a system. So oh it's just a little thing. So you don't have to have a lot. But just find all of the things that you have to do day in and day out in your business.
00:15:01
Speaker
Record them. Put them somewhere, like I said, online or on paper. Use that for your employees. Use that for your managers. And then, of course, have it ready for when you're ready to
Financial Struggles and Resilience
00:15:11
Speaker
sell. All right. So my guest once again is Vance Morris.
00:15:15
Speaker
So Vance, tell me, you've been on this journey for quite some time. And like any journey, there ups and downs. I want us to spend some time talking about your challenges over the years. Can you share some of the challenges you've gone through and what you put in place to overcome some of these challenges? Oh, my goodness. Yes, some of them you will not believe. Let's see.
00:15:37
Speaker
I had an employee steal one of my vehicles and drove it to Baltimore, which is a city here in the U.S. and Maryland, to buy drugs. but The only way I knew that he stole the van was that he wrecked the van in downtown Baltimore.
00:15:53
Speaker
He actually crashed it into somebody and the police called and said, is this your van? And I said, well, i would say what's it doing in Baltimore? So that was that was a down. But I think the biggest challenge, the biggest down I had was when we were starting the business.
00:16:09
Speaker
So as you know, I got fired. So I had some severance that we were living on and my wife, she was a senior manager with Starbucks. So we were going to live on her salary while I got the business up and running.
00:16:23
Speaker
And about a week before I was starting the business, she had a major health issue. She had a cerebral aneurysm um and she was hospitalized for 11 days in the ICU. And when she got out, she was unable to work.
00:16:36
Speaker
So we had... you know, we had a nice six-figure salary. All of a sudden, it was zero overnight. We're like, oh, crap. what What do we do now? and So I had no choice but to make this business work.
00:16:50
Speaker
I had to. And I was at zero, you know. so And this was like 2007, 2008, when the whole world was blowing up financially anyway. But I never knew any different because I was already at zero. I had nowhere to go but up. Everybody else was going down, but I was going up because, well, I had no other direction to go. And so I really bootstrapped it. I mean, a lot of, you know, boots on the ground, walking around, putting stuff in mailboxes, knocking on people's doors, going door to door with businesses and really, you know,
00:17:20
Speaker
That was my drive was, you know I didn't want to lose my home. i you know, I had a business I had to make. I had young kids. um This had to succeed. It had to. And, you know, so by doing the marketing that I was doing, you know, when I was going door to door and great, we got some money in the bank.
00:17:38
Speaker
Then I was able to afford a little bit better marketing so that I didn't have to spend all my time walking. I could now actually mail stuff or, you know, put an ad in the paper. And then once that started working, then I was able to do, you know, postcards and other things. So it was constantly reinvesting my money.
00:17:57
Speaker
Some I would put at home, you know, in the bank and the rest I would reinvest in the business. And I think when you're starting out, and this is important for people that are starting out, is that when you make money, you got to pay yourself first. And sometimes that's tough because you got people that want to get bills and vendors and everything.
00:18:16
Speaker
But you take some of the money and you put it in your piggy bank. And then you take the rest of the money and you reinvest it in the business. And then as the business grows, you put more in your little piggy bank.
00:18:29
Speaker
and then you reinvest more in the business and you keep this cycle going. That cycle for me after 20 years is still going to this day. We're continually reinvesting in the business with services, with systems, with new products, better products, and consequently my bank account is growing. So it's really important to set that up at the beginning is, you know, if you only have $1,
00:18:54
Speaker
for marketing send that dollar out however you can, but buy whatever you can buy And hopefully you'll get a few more dollars coming back with one job or you sell a product. Now you have $2. Great.
00:19:08
Speaker
Now we send the $2 out. And hopefully that $2 in marketing will bring some more. And so you just, you don't have to start big. Start small. You know, call your grandmother. Hey, grandma, can you buy some of this shampoo that I'm creating? Sure. You know, i mean, you start where you have to start.
00:19:25
Speaker
All right. So thank you. In your submission, you've highlighted a number of lessons, but I still want us to spend some time talking about lessons. Lessons you've picked up on this journey so far. What are the major lessons you've picked up on your entrepreneurial journey so far?
00:19:39
Speaker
and certainly Well, obviously systems. and that That would be the big one, but we I'm not going to rehash that. and You know, the... yeah Everybody says the customer is always right.
00:19:52
Speaker
um i would disagree with that. um However, the customer is always the customer. um So they're not always right, but they are always the customer and should always be treated that way.
00:20:04
Speaker
And I've found that if you use the golden rule, treat others as you wish to be treated, you can't go wrong. You really can't. And is business that simple?
00:20:15
Speaker
I'd like to think it is when you're dealing with people. You know, I mean, people don't want to be yelled at. People don't want, you know, they don't want foul language. They don't want to be ripped off. They want value. And so by just following that simple rule, that covers a lot of bases there.
00:20:32
Speaker
um And then I think one of the other things is admitting when you're wrong and immediately fixing it. Because when you make a mistake as a business person and you impact one of your customers negatively, you have got to be fast.
00:20:48
Speaker
I mean, fast. to fix it because the longer amount of time goes on, the worse the problem is going to get and the more money you're going to spend to fix the problem.
00:21:02
Speaker
So if you think about a problem like a cut on your finger, like if I cut my finger and I put some ointment on it and I put a band-aid on it, couple of days it's going to be fine. So I was quick, I fixed it, I was fast and I was good.
00:21:15
Speaker
But if I cut my finger and I rub some dirt in it and then I just kind of let it go, well, it's going to get infected. And then, you know, I'm going to have to, you know, maybe I'm going to have to, you know, do something else. And and oh, well, it's really infected. Now we've got to amputate.
00:21:29
Speaker
You know, it's the same thing with a with a problem. If I address a problem immediately, one, the customer feels a lot better that we're taking it seriously, and two, it's not going to cost me as much to fix the problem as if it I waited a week or two to finally getting around to calling the customer back and they're completely
Customer Experience Insights
00:21:49
Speaker
irate.
00:21:49
Speaker
and the only thing that's going to fix it is for me to send them a big fat check or something like that. customer Service recovery is a skill that every business owner needs to really understand, and that if you think about the value of one of your customers, and this is a number a lot of business owners don't look at, is what is the lifetime value of your customer? So if A customer stays with you for 10 years.
00:22:15
Speaker
but what What is the dollar amount that they would spend with you for over 10 years? So that's to say for argument, it's $5,000, right? They spend $500 a year with you over 10 years.
00:22:25
Speaker
Just for easy math. So if you screwed something up in year two or three, right? And you made a mistake and something went wrong, would you spend $200 to fix the problem knowing that if they stay with you, you're going to make $5,000?
00:22:42
Speaker
See, people go go and they think they want to spend the least amount to get the most result. And that's completely backwards. You need to spend what you need to spend to ensure that that customer is going to come back.
00:22:56
Speaker
And even if they don't come back, are they at least going out in the world saying, you know what, they made a mistake. I'm really am not going to do business with them, but boy, did they care and do everything possible to make it right for me.
00:23:08
Speaker
So you got to think of how much money is on the line when you're doing service recovery. I mean, and it's the same for it doesn't matter what you do. i mean, you could be shampoo salesman, you could be e-commerce, you know, plumber, it doesn't matter.
00:23:22
Speaker
If you look at the lifetime value of your client, it's multiple thousands of dollars. Would you spend 50, 100, 200, 500?
00:23:31
Speaker
To keep them? Yeah. All right. So let let's spend time talking about your life as a coach and consultant. um So what really what really inspired you to become a coach and a consultant?
00:23:42
Speaker
Well, you know, I work primarily in the customer experience, customer service, and customer retention industry. areas. And I don't know about you, but usually when I go out to dinner or I go to a store, it sucks for lack of a better word. It's miserable. You know, the employees are just going through the motion.
00:24:03
Speaker
There's no excitement. There's no experience. It's just, I order food, they bring food and that's it. There's really nothing. um And when you do that, you become a commodity.
00:24:15
Speaker
You are viewed like everybody else in your industry. And we're all commodities. I hate to, but you know, an insurance person, they are a commodity with all the other insurance people. Dentist, you know, dentist is a dentist is a dentist. There is nothing that separates one from the other except for the experience they provide in their office. and So I know that if a restaurant or a store or whoever can elevate their experience even a little bit, they are going to separate themselves and no longer be viewed as that commodity. They're not going to be in that sea of sameness and they're going to be to be viewed up here and not down here with everybody else. So to me, it's my mission, really, to affect as many businesses as I possibly can, because one, I don't know where I'm going to end up next week, and I might end up in your store or your restaurant.
00:25:09
Speaker
And well, hopefully you've heard me somewhere, and you fixed whatever it is was wrong in your place, and now I can have a good experience. I'm very selfish when it comes to these things. Yeah. But we all deserve, i mean, nobody deserves just garbage for service or adequate or average food or average product. I mean, we deserve better. And it's really just, it's my mission to get the best out of people so that they can deliver their best, whether it's service or product.
00:25:39
Speaker
to the people that they serve. All right. So your submission, you've touched on three major concepts, if I can use that expression or word. You've touched on customer experience. You've touched on customer retention. You've touched on customer recovery.
00:25:54
Speaker
Now, I want us to really break this concept that understand. These three concepts so when we talk about customer experience, what do we mean when we talk about customer retention? What do we mean when we talk about customer? With recovery, what do you mean? So let's start off with customer experience when you talk about customer experience What exactly referring to?
00:26:13
Speaker
So if you look at the customer journey So from the very first point where the customer meets your business, so whether that's a telephone call, a website, they walk into your store, whatever, that is the first point of the experience, how they are interacting with your business. And you look at every point along the journey of where they interact with you. So if they're coming into your store, how are they greeted? How ah do the salespeople point out you know, or work with them on choices within the store. How does the cash register person interact with them in the store? How, when they're getting ready to leave, what is the script used when then they're leaving? And then anything else where the customer would interact with the business. And we look for ways to create experiences out of all those things. So like answering the telephone, that would be a point on the journey.
00:27:08
Speaker
So most businesses will answer it, you know, thank you for calling, you know, Dave's store. How can I help you? It's boring. There's no experience there. It's just the phone got answered. So how do you create an experience out of that?
00:27:21
Speaker
You know, do you have a fun, fancy way that you can, Hey, thank you for calling Dave's store. How can I help you you? know, really animate it and be excited. um So the experience is everything when the customer is interacting with you. The customer retention is really a continuation of the experience.
00:27:42
Speaker
Because now they have purchased your product or experienced your service or used your service. Now we want them to come back again and do it again or buy it again.
00:27:52
Speaker
So we can't just assume that they're going to come back because they liked us or that the product was good. because it is not the customer's job to remember us.
00:28:03
Speaker
It's our job to remind the customer why we exist. And so many business owners get this wrong. Doing a good job is just the entry into the market.
00:28:13
Speaker
That's it. We expect you to do a good job. Otherwise, you shouldn't be in the market. But if you want to be remembered, you have got to do the reminding. So are you sending out postcards to your customers?
00:28:27
Speaker
Are you sending a weekly email? And not always a sale. I mean, are you so when you send a postcard, literally, are you sending a postcard from your vacation saying, hey, you know, here's a picture of me on the cruise ship down in Mexico. I was just thinking about all my customers, you know, customers signed Dave.
00:28:44
Speaker
And there's a, you know, looks like you, you know, a vacation postcard. You want to create emotional connections with your customers. Because once you do that, they're not going to leave you.
00:28:56
Speaker
So I use a newsletter with all of my businesses. So it's a four-page printed newsletter that gets mailed. And I shamelessly use my children in all of my marketing. Now, most of them have grown, so they're not cute anymore. But my daughter was, you know, seven or eight.
00:29:15
Speaker
She was cute, and she did ballet. And I would take a picture of her in her tutu every year for the recital. And I would put her in my newsletter. And my, you know, and then it would get sent out.
00:29:26
Speaker
i think she was like 10 or 11 years old, and we're in the grocery store. And this lady comes running up to my daughter and she goes, oh my God, Emma, how was your recital? My daughter and I looked at each other like who the hell is this lady? We're ready to run and hide.
00:29:39
Speaker
And i had to think, she's got to be one of my customers. She has watched my daughter grow up. by reading my newsletters. I have created an emotional connection with this person and thousands of people like her.
00:29:54
Speaker
She's never leaving my company. She's not going anywhere because I've created that connection. So am I saying you have to use your children? No. You know, maybe you like fishing. You know, maybe you like Auto racing, whatever it is, find something where you can create those connections with your customers and they're not going to leave you.
00:30:13
Speaker
But you have to be consistent. You have to be intentional about this. So you can't just send a newsletter, you know, twice a year and expect people. No, you have to do it monthly.
00:30:24
Speaker
and the emails send them weekly. And then, yes, can you offer promotions and things like that? Yes, but mix it in with stuff that is not always salesy. Because the worst thing that can happen is that the only time your customers hear from you is when you want to sell them something.
00:30:39
Speaker
I mean, that's not a relationship. That's just transactional. So you send them the newsletter. There's nothing really salesy in there. But maybe you send them a postcard that's got a monthly promotion in it.
00:30:50
Speaker
So if you do that, you're really you're putting this this fence around your customers that's keeping them in and it's keeping your competitors out. Doing that also increases your referrals and your word-of-mouth marketing because you're always top of mind. You're always sending something to them. And people are going to say, hey, you know, the cat threw up on the carpet the other night. Who do you use to clean carpets? And you'll remember, oh, I just got an email from my carpet cleaner yesterday. And you should call these guys.
00:31:20
Speaker
But if I hadn't sent the email, they might like, well, you know, had these guys out there six months ago. i really can't remember their name. They did a good job, but I don't even remember who they are. Well, now what happens? They go to Google.
00:31:31
Speaker
Well, we're sure they go Google. You know, it's just a roulette wheel. We don't know what's going to happen. Yeah. What was the other one? So you've talked about... Yeah, exactly. Yes. So, you know, service recovery, I like to head off problems before they happen. So, you know, a lot of my businesses, we have vehicles and the guys have to drive from one location to another. And we can end up being late sometimes. You know, there's traffic or...
00:31:56
Speaker
You know, the job beforehand is a little bigger and we have to stay someplace a little longer. So that can be irritating to a customer. We get it. So, but we know that that could be a problem.
00:32:07
Speaker
So my guys know that if you're going to be late, one, you call way ahead of time and say, hey, look, Mrs. Smith, the job that I'm on right now is a lot bigger than I thought. I'm going to be here a little longer. I'm really sorry, but I'll be there as soon as I can.
00:32:21
Speaker
Great. Then, when he's leaving that job, he stops by the local grocery store and he buys some flowers for the next job that he's going to. And he shows up at the next job with flowers in his hands.
00:32:35
Speaker
Now, who's gonna yell at a guy who's holding a bouquet of flowers and, you know, got the puppy dog eyes, I'm so sorry I'm late. Here's some flowers to make you feel better. Nobody's going to yell at them. And it looks like, well, it is. We are showing that we're truly sorry that we're running behind.
00:32:52
Speaker
So if you can anticipate a problem and fix it before it becomes an issue, you're much better off. And then, of course, going back to what I said earlier on service recovery, is when you have a problem, fix it immediately.
00:33:07
Speaker
Don't let time go by.
Empowering Employees and Business Systems
00:33:09
Speaker
empower your employees. If you have employees, empower them to fix the problem. The worst thing you can tell a customer is, I've got to get my manager.
00:33:18
Speaker
That's horrible. Well, you know, one, it shows that, well, you know, I'm not important enough to fix your problem. yeah Two, there's that time thing that I've talked about. Now we've got to have time to go find the manager and get the manager and have the manager come out and fix it.
00:33:34
Speaker
So we have now some time elapsed and now the manager's going to have to shell out a little bit more than probably the frontline employee if they were able to fix it. don't know if you know this, Ritz Carlton, the hotel chain, they give every employee $2,000 two thousand dollars of money to solve any guest issue that they run into.
00:33:55
Speaker
No questions asked. You need to fix a guest problem. You have up to $2,000 to solve that problem. And that's, mean, that's, they treat them like adults. They treat their employees like adults, you know, and they know that, you know, look, don't be stupid. I mean, if we burnt the steak, we don't give them $2,000 for the burnt steak.
00:34:13
Speaker
You know, OK, we'll go and we'll recook the steak and then maybe we'll buy them a bottle of wine and and some dessert to make up for it. You know, we're smart about it, but and they know that if they need to, they've got it. So I'm not suggesting you give your employees $2,000.
00:34:27
Speaker
a But you do you give them 50? You know, how much latitude do you give your employees to fix a problem so that it doesn't grow? Okay. right. So you've authored some impactful books. I want us to talk about your books.
00:34:41
Speaker
um Can you tell us about these books you've written so far? Sure. Well, the big one is Systematic Magic, a Seven Magic Keys to Disneyfying Your Business. It's really my flagship book. It is my system crammed into 110 pages. And it's really designed, if you follow it, to really elevate your business from being a commodity to being an experience. It has...
00:35:03
Speaker
The seven keys that I picked up from Disney. Okay. You know, it's all of my Disney experience packed into them. There is the, you know, the wow, how to create wows for your customers. That's the, that's the sexy one. Everybody likes to talk about the wow. But so that's in there. Attention to detail is certainly a big key. you know, all of our businesses are detail businesses. And that's what makes Disney so successful is that they do pay attention to every single detail. You know, you never find a dusty plant in a hotel lobby at Disney.
00:35:38
Speaker
You know, but I mean, I went to the dentist a couple of weeks ago and I'm sitting there and reading a magazine. I look over and darn it, the plants are dusty in the dentist's office. like, well, geez, what does that say about you know the instruments in the back? Are they clean?
00:35:53
Speaker
You know, we talk a lot about the environment. and That's one of the magic keys. And I'm not talking about, you know, global warming or that kind of environment. i'm talking about the service environment or the sales environment. Are you making it so that people want to give you money? Are you making it conducive for you to be able to give a sales presentation and people feel comfortable like, oh yeah, that makes perfect sense.
00:36:17
Speaker
You're here's your Here's your money. Let's go. so it's real And it's really designed as a how-to. There's questions in there. There's workbooks. And it's really just set up to take you from a to Z and take you from being a commodity to providing experiences.
00:36:31
Speaker
So I still want us to talk about what you just highlighted. You talked about the s seven keys and you touched on, I think, two. So what are the other
Systematic Magic and Key Business Strategies
00:36:40
Speaker
keys? If you can quickly mention the other keys. Sure. So I gave you three. i yeah There's the wow. Yes. There's the detail. There's environment. Certainly there's employee magic, and I firmly believe that if your employees are not having a great experience, that there's no way they can deliver a great experience. So you have to start with them, actually. So when you hire your first employee, know that if they are not
00:37:05
Speaker
having a good experience, know that the customers that they are serving probably are not either. So I'm not saying that you bend over backwards and, you know, you completely do everything that they want, but are you taking care of them? Are you saying good morning or please and thank you? Do you, you know, ask about their family? I'm not saying you coddle them, but I'm saying, do you treat them like a person? Again, going back to the golden rule. Then one of the other magic keys is all about systems and process. And we talked about that earlier when, you know, i was talking about Disney and then all the things that I use in my businesses. And then I outline how Disney uses processes and actually how to put them into your business. Your process needs to be simple.
00:37:46
Speaker
Because if they're difficult or they're complex, they won't get done. So you need simple systems in your business. And then the key that I like is the the magic of bringing it all together.
00:37:57
Speaker
It's magic key number seven. And it's really a formula for a profitable future. And it is the extraordinary employee experience. and you add that to an extraordinary customer experience, and you add that with quality business practices, is going to give you a profitable future. and So if you just look at those three things, employee experience, customer experience, and quality business practices, you can't help but succeed. All right.
00:38:26
Speaker
So, Vance, we are just about wrapping up and I would like us to spend a few minutes together asking you to advise three categories of entrepreneurs.
Final Advice for Entrepreneurs
00:38:35
Speaker
So let's start off with an entrepreneur who is just about starting off in business.
00:38:39
Speaker
What be your piece of advice to such an entrepreneur? Don't give up. um Because it's easy to do. You're gonna have rough days when you're gonna say, why the hell am I doing this?
00:38:51
Speaker
um And I've been there, I've done it. And I'm like, there were days I'm like, oh I'm gonna go back and get a job. And then you realize how much freedom you have as an entrepreneur and how miserable you would be if you went and back and got a job. So as as a new one, I would also watch out for people trying to sell you stuff like vendors, trying to sell you media, trying to sell you social media marketing and all that stuff. Be careful. There are a lot of charlatans. There are a lot of underhanded bad people out there that are trying to sell stuff to people that don't understand it. And you can go broke really fast giving them money. So please just think before you put any money out there, ask a lot of questions, get referrals, um be careful. All right.
00:39:42
Speaker
So how about an entrepreneur who is in year, let's say, year five to ten, who is facing whos faced with a lot of challenges and is on the verge of giving up? What be your piece of advice to to to such an entrepreneur? At that point, I would be looking for a mastermind, a group of entrepreneurs that you don't compete with that you can work through business problems. So one of the parts of my ah business is I run a mastermind. And this is a Napoleon Hill concept. If you have his Secrets to Success, a mastermind is where a group of people come together. And instead of a single mind, the three minds or five minds come together and they are much more powerful mind than if they were just onesies all around. And you can really have significant breakthroughs when you are in a mastermind. You don't have, you can, it can be three people you know, ten people you know, you don't have to pay for it, it could be free, you could pay to be in a mastermind.
00:40:44
Speaker
But I strongly recommend that when if you're in starting in about year five and certainly by year 10, that's where the breakthroughs are going to come. Within a mastermind, you're going to have people that have been in your shoes.
00:40:59
Speaker
They've done, they've been in your, they may not be in your industry, but they've been in your, the part of the growth of the company where you are right now and can help you avoid mistakes that they made or that they learned about so that you don't waste money or waste time on things that you could avoid. So strongly recommend a mastermind.
00:41:20
Speaker
All right. So before we sign off, what will be your last words to my audience? Implement. Pick one thing. That's the problem with people. They listen to these podcasts, they get all these great ideas, and then they don't do a darn thing. what i give Instructions I give to all my consulting and coaching clients is you won't profit unless you implement.
00:41:40
Speaker
Pick one idea and implement it and make it work and see the money coming in. Because if you don't do that, well, you know, they probably just listen to us while they're on the treadmill or on their ride home ah from the office. And it's been a nice chat with Vance and coffee. But unless they go out and do something, that's that's where the rubber hits the road. So pick one idea.
00:42:02
Speaker
and go do it. All right. So thank you, Vance, for sharing your your your rich experience with us. And I like the fact that you will not profit if you do not implement. So I think those would be our parting words. You will not profit if you do not implement.
00:42:17
Speaker
So thank you so much for sharing your rich experience with us on the Entrepreneur Speaks podcast. We wish you the very best. Thank you so much. So this has been another exciting episode of the Entrepreneur Speaks podcast.
00:42:29
Speaker
I'll come your way next time with another inspiring and exciting episode. I remain your host, Kofi Animedu. As always, do take good care of yourself and let's continue to keep hope alive.
00:42:40
Speaker
Cheers. Please be sure to subscribe to the Entrepreneur Speaks podcast on all your favorite podcast channels. And if you have any questions or feedback, feel free to reach out to us on social media or in the comments section below.
00:42:59
Speaker
Dreams light up the sky tonight. Builders of tomorrow shining bright. From every land they find their beat.
00:43:10
Speaker
Yeah, it's the entrepreneur speaks.