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The world's first happy moving company, with Ron Holt
45 Plays6 months ago
Some industries have conditioned us to have almost unreasonably high expectations, and some industries have conditioned us to have unusually low expectations. The moving industry sits firmly in the latter category.
Ron Holt thinks that's not good enough, and he's doing something about it. Ron is one of America’s most interesting and successful entrepreneurs. He scaled his first business, ‘Two Maids & A Mop’ from a single location to nearly 100 locations, and then sold it.
He is now CEO of Pink Zebra Moving, a disruptive and customer-focused removals company that is completely reshaping the moving experience, around the customer. Their mission is to be the world’s first happy moving company.
Get in touch with Acquis Cortico-X here.
Follow Acquis Cortico-X on LinkedIn here.
Learn more about Pink Zebra Moving here.
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Transcript
Introduction to Aquas Cortico X
00:00:00
Speaker
Aquas Cortico X is an experience-led transformation business that partners with clients and technology companies to drive digital acceleration. We are experience activists passionate about elevating everyday human experiences through the belief that what's best for people is what's best for an organization. Reach out to us for a chat. A link is in the show notes.
Ron Holt's Revolution in Moving Industry
00:00:35
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Speaking from Experience from Aquas Cortico X, where we speak to the people with experience of experience. I'm Will Kingston. Customer expectations are a funny thing. Some industries have conditioned us to have almost unreasonably high expectations. We now expect to have our pizza delivered in 15 minutes, a feat that in my eyes defies the laws of cooking, if not the laws of physics.
00:01:01
Speaker
We expect a car to turn up within two minutes at the tap of an iPhone. We expect to be able to watch literally any movie at any time of day. There are also industries that have conditioned us to have unusually low expectations. We expect the airport experience will be a nightmare. We expect tradesmen to be late. And we expect the process of moving home to be immensely painful.
00:01:28
Speaker
There's no reason for these industries to deliver poor customer experiences. They just do because that's the way it's always been done. My guest today thinks that's not good enough and he's doing something about it.
00:01:41
Speaker
Ron Holt is one of America's most interesting and successful entrepreneurs. He scaled his first business to maids and a mop from a single location to nearly 100 and then sold it. He is now CEO of Pink Zebra Moving, a disruptive and customer focused removals company that is completely reshaping the moving experience around the customer.
Journey from Two Maids and a Mop to Pink Zebra Moving
00:02:01
Speaker
Their mission is to be the world's first happy moving company. Ron, welcome to Speaking from Experience.
00:02:06
Speaker
Oh, thank you, Will. I cannot wait to tell the story and talk CX with you. It's my passion. We can nerd out together. I just gave the highlights in my words, but I'd love to hear your story and your words.
00:02:19
Speaker
Yeah, well, you know, it goes 20 plus years now. It's been a heck of a journey. Entrepreneurial roller coaster is the best way to put it. Started in my 20s just with the itch to be an entrepreneur. Finally, scratched that itch and started a cleaning business of all things and built two maids in a mob, the residential cleaning business I was referring to, into one location too.
00:02:39
Speaker
more than a hundred locations before selling that a couple of years ago about two and a half years ago can i can i pause you because some entrepreneurs are looking at fancy apps so they're looking at kinda sexy industries say cleaning isn't as sexy in industry why did you choose that.
00:02:55
Speaker
for that reason. So I think that all things trade related, home service related are extremely sexy because number one, the demand is stronger than ever before. But even in 2024,
00:03:13
Speaker
tradespeople continue to performing the trade. You don't have a lot of entrepreneurs entering the trade spaces. Because of that, you have a really poor customer experience for a lot of the customers who absolutely need you. That's why demand is so strong. I love home services. I love everything about it. It's hard work. No doubt about it. It is blue collar by nature. I've always been such a big fan of the contrarian type of approach to business.
00:03:39
Speaker
that's always been my tactic it's worked well you know demand has continued to grow and grow over the years across really all home services spaces but again when you look across those for the most part if you just look in your home community who's the best painter who's the best hvac company who's the best cleaning company or moving company more than likely what you're going to find behind the scenes
00:04:01
Speaker
That's an ex mover who runs that moving company. That's an ex plumber who owns that plumbing company. And I think that tends to give people like me an advantage. So you sell that business. You could have put your feet up at that stage. You didn't. What did you do next?
00:04:15
Speaker
Well, my wife would have preferred that I sell the world, but instead I decided to jump right back into the world of home service franchising and started a moving company called Pink Zebra Movie. A whole lot of reasons for that we'll get into, but I'm an entrepreneur. That's what drives me, you know? So I have a lot more fun building a business than riding on a boat. And so that's the choice I've made.
00:04:43
Speaker
We'll get into what makes Pink Zebra different in a moment. Before we do, those home services industries or sub industries that you mentioned, they have had substandard experience for a long time with obviously your businesses as an exception. Why do you think they have generally had relatively low customer experience standards?
Challenges in Trades and Home Services
00:05:03
Speaker
Yeah, so there's a lot of symptoms of the root issue, but the root issue is probably the same issue in a bakery or a restaurant, you know, a normal restaurant. If you're really good at baking, you know, there's actually a book called The E-Myth written many, many years ago, almost, I guess, 30 plus years ago now.
00:05:22
Speaker
And it talks about this bakery in New York City who, you know, someone's really good at baking these cakes and the neighborhood friends say, you need to go start a bakery. And she does. And the cakes are really good, but so good that people line up, they want to order more and more cakes. And now all of a sudden she's so busy, she's got to hire people and everything implodes, the business closes. And that's the recipe for most small business failures. And so that analogy is never more accurate than in the home services trade because
00:05:52
Speaker
A lot of tradespeople, again, operate these trades-related businesses, and they're really good at carpentry or they're really good at moving, but then they got to start hiring people. They got to start managing these folks. They got to start figuring out marketing decisions and figuring out, you know, should they spend money on this versus that or their time over here versus over there. And then all of a sudden, what they were good at is not what they're doing, and the business is affected because of that.
00:06:17
Speaker
Or perhaps it's something that they were good at as an individual, but they're not good at communicating their ethos to other people. So you have customer experience in your bones. How do you go about communicating the importance of that to the people you work with and the people around you?
Shared Purpose in Business
00:06:35
Speaker
So for me, everything's all a part of a big dream. The buzzword is vision, if you want to call it that. Back in my day, it was called mission statements, you know, but I have big dreams and that's what fuels me. That's what drives me is what reason I'm here. Those dreams create passion for the work that you're doing.
00:06:53
Speaker
And when you have passion for the work, along with that dream, other people want to follow along. So whether it's a mover locally in Dallas, Texas, or someone here in a corporate office managing a marketing department, both of those folks are part of this story that we're trying to live together and build together. And when you have shared purpose, then good stuff happens usually. Let's talk about the shared purpose that Pink Zebra has.
Unique Experiences at Pink Zebra
00:07:17
Speaker
Tell me about Pink Zebra and what makes it different.
00:07:19
Speaker
Yeah, so our tagline is we make moving fun. We absolutely believe that moving can be and should be fun when you hire Pink Zebra Moving. This was all born from a personal negative experience. So as I was building Two Maids in a Mop into this really national brand across the country,
00:07:38
Speaker
something kind of weird happened. I started having some self-reflective moments of, should I stay in this business or not? And once I accepted that I had reached the mountaintop and wasn't as fulfilled as I thought, then I said, well, what's next? And I couldn't find that next, because again, I love home services. I wanted to stay in that world, but everything felt sort of done. You know, it's
00:07:59
Speaker
2024, what else could there be to do to change something, especially without some type of technology involved? And so about that time, thankfully, I don't know if my mother-in-law says thankfully, but thankfully my mother-in-law hired a moving company in our hometown here in Birmingham, Alabama.
00:08:15
Speaker
And it was horrible. It was terrible. Everything went south and all the bad things that a lot of you may can relate to happen to her. The ticket was higher than what she thought it was going to be. Damages, rude, unprofessional behavior. They weren't timely. It was just a mess. And then on top of all of that, when she reached out to the owner with a complaint, he laughed at her. It was an emotional experience for her. She shared that story with
00:08:40
Speaker
my wife and I and I my wife's response was you need to go write a one-star review which I'm sure she did but my response as an entrepreneur was we need to start a business to fix that and so I did not know if that was happening across the country so that's what I did I went to
00:08:59
Speaker
my really, really high technology research tool called Yup. And I went to Seattle, Omaha, and Miami, Florida to get sort of a survey of the country. And I went straight to the One Star Reviews, and they all matched her experience. And so that was the genesis of this idea of starting a moving company that could make the moving experience more fun, more positive for customers.
00:09:23
Speaker
And you know, it's been a heck of a journey. I can't wait to tell you all the things that we've went through to get to where we are today. But the root of what we do, the reason we exist, is so that we can not just disrupt this industry. You said it earlier, but we think we're going to actually create a whole new category in this space called happy moving. We call ourselves the world's first.
00:09:43
Speaker
happy moving company and for us it just rolls off the tongue we all get it in our little world this family that we're a part of it is even moving but for the outsiders that are hearing this for the first time that may seem a little weird but our job as a brand as a business is to.
00:09:59
Speaker
Create that category so that it just sort of rolls off everyone's tongue years and years from now and that's what that's what our goal is I talk about big dreams. That's my big dream Not just to build another nation national brand but to build a national brand that leaves a legacy within its industry That's our goal. And that's why we do what we do here Yeah, I love that and then the Genesis story is great. I was speaking to another entrepreneur Magatway the other day and she talked about a
00:10:25
Speaker
criticizing through creation. There are some people who go about criticizing through the one-star reviews. There are some people who go and say, right, my form of criticism is to build something new. And that's the mentality of every great entrepreneur. I was thinking about how we can try and tell or explain to listeners what exactly does make Happy Zebra different.
Elevating Customer Expectations
00:10:45
Speaker
And perhaps the easiest way is just to go through the customer journey of happy zebra customer and pick out some of those wow moments that you think differentiate your business from from the old school traditional moving company.
00:10:56
Speaker
Yeah, so we've got a few trademarks. I'll talk about those, but I want to preface and say that our trademarks are very scripted. They're fine. I love them. That's what we're known for. But the thing that really separates us is the culture, the CX-based culture that we have, that moments that are unscripted that just sort of happen because that's who you are. That's really what separates us.
00:11:20
Speaker
to get to the fun stuff, the scripted stuff that everybody receives, probably the one that we're most well known for is our free dinner offer, the night before a move. I don't know if you've ever been in this position before, but the night before a move is actually somewhat stressful because everything's packed. You're in your home, but you're not really living in your home. And so you don't want to make a big mess. You know, there's probably some last minute things you're preparing for as well, and you're just not going to cook. And so it's usually order pizza, right? And so we said, why don't we fix that? And so
00:11:50
Speaker
before every single move the night before that move day at least we call the customer we talk shop you know we talk a little bit about the movie but we end the conversation with an offer of free food and so our free food is not pizza it can be if the customer is really dying for some dominoes then we'll we'll send over some some pepperoni but usually it's really strong meals you know and usually we source that from a local vendor that is in that community
00:12:15
Speaker
And it always when i say always 100% of the time creates a happy emotion it always starts the customer process of the customer journey off of the right way we've had people cry we've had people. Just be totally shocked when they hear about it as we've grown the funny thing is.
00:12:34
Speaker
We are having more and more people say, hey, when do you send the free food? Which is so funny because it wasn't long ago where this was a complete new thing to this world that we're in now. And now we have people expecting it. So it's kind of fun to see that. There's something interesting in that as well, in that a wow moment has just become an expectation. You've changed the standard that the customer expects. It's a good thing, but it's also makes it tougher for you because you're raising the bar continuously.
00:13:04
Speaker
Yeah. Well, I'll give you a good example slash bad example. We had a return customer. There are return customers in the moving industry. The industry says everyone moves every six to seven years. Some people move every six to seven months. So we've had one particular customer who hired us a couple of times and the first time, it was a fantastic experience.
00:13:26
Speaker
obviously started with the free food. Well, the second time, I don't know what we did. This is a bad thing for us, but something happened. We did not offer the free food. And she actually gave that business a one-star review. So the one-star review is the move was fine, but there was no food the night before.
00:13:45
Speaker
which is a good thing for us, because obviously we've elevated the expectations from our customers. And so shame on us for not doing it, because that's what we're supposed to do every single time, but kind of cool also to see that that is such a high expectation from our customers. So that's probably the one thing that people, when they think Pink Z were moving, they think free food, but there's a bunch of other things too. And so one of the cool things that kind of happens are probably our second most well-known wow moment occurs toward the end of the move experience.
00:14:13
Speaker
We leave behind what we call a surprise box, and it sounds just what it is. There's a logoed box. Of course, it's pink with zebras striped all over it. And there's a pink bow around it. Inside of it, there's so many fun things. There's some normal generic things like candy and chocolates and chips. But the personalization that we put inside that box is really what the home run is. And so we try to learn as much about a customer as we can possibly learn about them. We ask questions of them. They actually fill out a form.
00:14:42
Speaker
to tell us who their favorite sports team is and what their favorite hobbies are and what their anniversary date is and so on and we try to use that information in some way to create a personalized gift and so I'm a sports guy so always go to this example but if someone's living in Dallas, Texas
00:15:00
Speaker
If they were a Cowboys fan, that would be that big a deal, because I guess everyone in Dallas is a Cowboys fan. But if there was a Jets fan living in Dallas, that would be somewhat unique. And so we would use that uniqueness to our advantage. And so whether it's a koozie or a cap or a t-shirt, something that says, Jets to this Dallas, Texas person, we would use that. And then we would have some personalization with a handwritten letter to say, Go Jets or something like that.
00:15:27
Speaker
That Jets fan probably has 24 Jets hats. And so ours is number 25, but a moving company has never done that. And so we're trying to stick out. We recognize that the things that we offer in these surprise boxes, everyone can buy. But it's truly the thought that counts. And so we put this together to just sort of say one last touch point to engage
00:15:50
Speaker
and with our customers to build a relationship ultimately with our customers. Again, some of those things have made people cry. Sports usually doesn't make people cry, but there's been a lot of things that we've done over the years now where it's been a really emotional experience. We had one couple who really loved to go to those places where you kind of
00:16:10
Speaker
drink wine and paint you know and so we we put together a whole room like night out for that couple and packaged it together in a tangible way so that they would open it say oh my gosh we just made a date night for you guys and so it's it's really that's probably one of the more funner experiences that our managers and our movers get to participate in because they get to they get to help they get to help figure out what this personalization is going to be every single time we we serve a customer.
00:16:37
Speaker
Yeah, most of the time when I'm talking about personalization, I'm talking about banks using enormous amounts of data and then trying to deliver via algorithms, particular preferences for customers. This is so much more real and human. It's wonderful. How do you go about maintaining that level of personalization as your business grows and grows and you have more customers and it perhaps gets harder to be able to deliver that really personal
Maintaining Personal Touch through Growth
00:17:02
Speaker
touch?
00:17:02
Speaker
That's a great question. It's actually a challenge that we encountered early on as we started growing the brand because the personalization
00:17:11
Speaker
is the hard part. You know, the chips and candies are the easy part. And so what we saw as we started growing really quickly is that sometimes people would bypass the personalization, which is the whole reason for the box, right? And so we had to sort of pass that and figure out how to do it. So we went through a retraining program, but more importantly, we have a storytelling process here across the brand. And so
00:17:34
Speaker
When something happens in the field, when a wow moment is created or happens, then that moment is shared, hopefully illustrated with a photo or a video with the customer. But even if it's not, the movers share that story across our entire network. And we feel like, or at least I feel like, the more stories that are heard,
00:17:55
Speaker
the more people are inspired to do some similar things across our network. And so that's how we've chosen to sort of push it. You know, when it comes to CX, there are certain rules that our franchisees have to follow. That's one of them. You gotta leave a surprise box behind every time. You can totally check that box.
00:18:12
Speaker
and just sort of not put your heart into it and still earn the check mark. So we want people to understand that the heart of what we do is not about rules, it's about the culture behind it. And so we feel like by sharing those stories, that sort of just transfers all of that good stuff across the network and then people want to outdo somebody. Like if your neighbor is in Houston and you're in Dallas, you want to outdo Houston. And so that's kind of the,
00:18:42
Speaker
the tech that we've taken to sort of make this spread. Anytime you're building something from the ground up, you do have to have rules. You have to have technology, but the heart of what you're selling, what you're doing is really what pushes you to the next level.
00:18:59
Speaker
Yeah, I'm interested in understanding some of the nuances of that franchise model a bit more. But before we do, I'm not done with, let's call them the automated wow moments. I know there is one more automated wow moments that the movers all do as a team right before the start of the move. Tell me about that one. Yeah. So I'm going to tell you too, I'll be quick with both of them. So what you're referring to is one of the more fun moments.
00:19:22
Speaker
With a moving company, most moving companies, when I say most, every moving company does this. There's a walkthrough that occurs before the move and it's a five minute deal. Most people don't even think about it because it's such a trivial task, right? And it's over. Well,
00:19:37
Speaker
We think that like anything if you go to the theater or if you go to a sporting event there's always some type of build up you don't just sit down watch the show there's something that lead you in that sort of pipes you up almost magic when a concert and then your favorite guy or singer.
00:19:55
Speaker
just boom immediately starts playing it's kind of different weird well in moving that's how it's always been you know trucks show up do a walkthrough five minutes later you're moving stuff and it's just whoa what just happened here and so we feel like we should start the moment to hype it up a little bit and so we have a fun routine
00:20:13
Speaker
Some of the videos are hilarious because not everybody can dance, including me, but some people dance. Some people do exercise routines, whether it's jumping jacks or pushups. You had people running in place, you know, and so that also only lasts about five minutes, sometimes less than that because
00:20:28
Speaker
People are paying us by the hour so we don't want to abuse that privilege but that's how we get started and most people are a little shocked like what's happening here but by the end of that three four five minute routine they're usually laughing especially kids you know once the kids get involved usually they do it with us. It's kind of a cool thing.
00:20:48
Speaker
One of the more subtle things that we do that I think is really cool is we play music throughout every room in the hall. And so we cater the music to who we are. And so if it's an older couple, we have a playlist that sets that genre. If it's a younger couple, the same goes there. They're all songs everyone knows. It doesn't really have to be based on generations. But we play music throughout the house because we recognized early on, we weren't doing this early on,
00:21:14
Speaker
And you know the traditional moving company puts your buds and maybe puts a hoodie on and gets to work and it's just manual labor all day for hours and hours and hours and meanwhile the homeowners there and their home in this quiet space with these strangers with hoodies and earbuds on and it's awkward you know and you should feel awkward in your own home and so we.
00:21:37
Speaker
Again, subtle cost us nothing to do it, but we play music throughout the house. That creates so much bonding for our customers that sometimes they actually sing along with our guys. And it also forces conversation because music, you go to a restaurant, you probably don't think about the music in the background, but go to a restaurant without music in the background and feel the difference. And so again, super easy, free way to make this happen. But I'm surprised other movie companies aren't doing it.
00:22:04
Speaker
But that's what we do play music throughout the house and it's fun. Yeah, you just said it yourself. Both of those things cost absolutely nothing. They're about attitude. But the one thing that you do need to do is to get your employees to buy into this. And this is where I'm curious because
00:22:23
Speaker
Most removalists, it's a pretty macho business traditionally. As you said, it's blue collar. There may be some removalists who would have a hesitation wearing pink on their clothes or doing a dance routine. How do you go about that sort of cultural part to get them bought into this?
00:22:42
Speaker
So when we first came up with the idea, I started researching the industry and I started talking to moving companies in different parts of the country. 100% of the time, they said I was crazy that the guys would not wear pink. They certainly would not work for a company called Pink Zebra. And there was no way they were going to dance and do push-ups and all the other fun things that we do. And so I took that as a challenge as an entrepreneur.
00:23:10
Speaker
There was a part of me that was a bit worried. Maybe they're right. They're the ones that have been a part of this industry for a long time. But I'm so crazy that I just plowed ahead anyway. What I have seen and heard and observed, that's not the case. They love me. They want more pink, number one. We've got some very conservative
00:23:30
Speaker
Pink uniforms and we have some very loud pink as you would imagine zebra stripe uniforms and of a mover can pick whichever one they want the majority pick the louder ones so interesting there's been no resistance there there's been some
00:23:48
Speaker
weird looks you know early on especially like wait what but the culture is set inside our brand now that that's just you know not everyone but most people who apply now kind of know what they're getting themselves into if we're brand new to a market they don't know you know because we're new to the market but if it's an existing location the word is out you know the crazy folks are here so if i'm going to work for them i gotta be crazy too
00:24:11
Speaker
earlier, you framed different ways that you deliver great experiences as more scripted wow moments, and then building a culture where people are empowered to go off script and deliver things on their own bat. And I thought that was a really interesting way of framing it. Let's think about that second category.
Empowering Movers for Wow Moments
00:24:30
Speaker
How do you empower and encourage removalists to deliver those wow moments that aren't scripted?
00:24:36
Speaker
Well, we tell the story a lot. Every single day, I send a message to our network, a video message in this room, and it's a CX-based message. It's anywhere from five to 15 minutes. That message is shared every morning across every one of our locations. So every single morning before they ever get on a truck, they hear Ron talk about customer experience. We have, once a month, we have a group
00:25:02
Speaker
a meeting with everyone on a happy hour event and it's nothing but CX, we call it CX Jeopardy. And so there's a winner and there's a loser. Winners get fun stuff, some pink zebra swag, but we have CX Jeopardy and some stuff's related to us.
00:25:17
Speaker
Some are not related to us at all, you know, there are other industries that we're trying to steal from and copy and paste into our model. And so we just tell the story a lot. Every single day at noon, there is a customer experience tip that we send out across the network. And sometimes they're generic things, you know, like make eye contact when you're engaging with a customer. In other cases, they're
00:25:40
Speaker
They're kind of crazy, like talking about how to improve your debt skills. And so we just tell the story as much as we can possibly tell it. And then we rely on our franchisees to do that at the local level as well. Everyone who joins our network, when I say network, our franchise network, our franchise owners, they own that business independently.
00:25:58
Speaker
But they are connected to this brand and there are some things they got to do just because the contract says they got to do them. But there are some things they want to do because they signed up for this. That's everyone who signs up for this knows that they're part of a movement and they're not just owning another moving company. Anybody can start a moving company. Go get a truck, some guys, you got a moving company.
00:26:17
Speaker
People are paying us for the right to call themselves Pink Seabird Moving because they want to be a part of this disruption. So truthfully, that part hasn't been real hard. If we talk about CX so much here, there's no confusion. People know who we are. The back of our shirts, every mover, the back of every single shirt says, I make moving fun. And so you can't wear that and wonder, what do I do to make moving fun? You got to own that. Yeah.
00:26:46
Speaker
worked for some of the most well-known customer centric companies in the world. And I don't think I've come across that level of commitment to beating the drum around experience and that level of consistency. It really is remarkable. You also have, I guess, a mechanism around incentives to ensure that people are, or your, your employees are delivering great experiences. The pay enhancement plan. Tell me about how that works. Yeah. So the pay enhancement plan is very straightforward, easy to understand.
00:27:17
Speaker
Everything we do is based on the customer's journey, right? And so we wanted to figure out a way to incentivize this and the pay enhancement plan seemed like the most straightforward way to do it. It is super simple. Anybody can copy it and take it from us. So basically we ask our customers every single time
00:27:37
Speaker
what their level of satisfaction is. It's a one to 10 rating. 10's good, one's bad. And that number, that scale, one through 10 determines the actual hourly rate that that mover makes with that franchise's business. And so we get feedback most of the time. And so it's in the old, one of the things we were worried about is what if we don't get feedback? That hasn't been the case. You know, my previous business was two maids and a mob. We serve so many customers on a daily basis.
00:28:06
Speaker
that we weren't able to get as much feedback as I really wanted. Here, a busy day for us can be for customers. And so they're spending a lot of money with us, thousands of dollars every time they hire us usually. For whatever reason, I guess maybe because of the size of the ticket, we get a lot more feedback here. And so we get feedback almost every single time and that one to 10 rating ultimately determines what our employees make.
00:28:31
Speaker
Yeah, it's so simple, but it's clever. And when I've seen CX metrics used for say corporate executive incentive programs, they're generally an add-on, you know, 5% of your total remuneration, their token, whereas this is,
Franchise Model and Legacy Vision
00:28:47
Speaker
it matters. It's very significant. And then, you know, we got to meet minimum labor, you know, requirements. So we can't pay them zero obviously, but there's a minimum wage to 20 plus dollars an hour in most locations.
00:28:59
Speaker
Yeah, I want to go to the franchise model and specifically how, you know, whenever you are in a franchise or franchisee relationship, you are seeding some of the ability to be able to deliver the end experience to the customer. You're, you're trusting and an intermediary, your franchisee to do that. How do you go about ensuring that your vision is delivered consistently across franchisees?
00:29:23
Speaker
Well, number one, every new franchisee goes through a six-week customer experience certification program. They cannot open their location without graduating from that. Part of that is more cerebral. Just there's some books that I really, some authors I really respect in the CX field that they're required to read. And so that's sort of the starts, the building blocks of the CX. Can you give us one or two of those books for people who may be listening that they should that you would recommend?
00:29:50
Speaker
Yeah, so Joey Coleman, Never Lose a Customer, again, that's one that probably will stand the test of time. I'm a huge fan of Jesse Cole with the Savannah Bananas. And so any book he's ever written talks about CX throughout the entire book, even though it's a book about a baseball team. And so there's several more, but those are the two that we kind of lead with.
00:30:12
Speaker
there's so many nuggets to pull away pull out of those books as well and so we can talk about what those some of those actual examples are you know we kind of sort of see ourselves as the bananas of the moving business you know the bananas are trying to change the game of baseball they're doing it they're making baseball fun and so we use the bananas as sort of a north star when we're we're trying to chase our our own dreams to to change this part of our industry
00:30:39
Speaker
Well, I think a lot of businesses listening to this will look at Pink Zebra as their North Star going forward. What's next on the roadmap for you guys? What's your, what are your priorities moving forward? You know, you've achieved a lot, but you would, you would, I imagine, say you're closer to the start of the journey than the end. What do you envision as his next for your business?
00:30:55
Speaker
Yeah, so it's the same vision that we're gonna have forever. Our dream is there's different phases, a part of that recognition of the dream. But we wanna build a national brand that leaves a legacy with this industry. We wanna make moving fun. We wanna be the world's first happy moving company. To do that, to be a national brand, obviously we have to open a new location. We sell franchises, we train them, we support them, we coach them as they grow.
00:31:22
Speaker
So we're trying to selectively find these folks who have the same passion that we do. It is unbelievable, honestly, the amount of
00:31:31
Speaker
just excitement and interest in this brand. That is one of the harder things for us to navigate because everybody seems excited that talks to us. Our job is to make sure that they're going to do more than just be emotional about this decision, that they're going to actually go execute the model. And so that's a huge part of my job is to just qualify every franchise candidate to make sure
00:31:53
Speaker
that not just do they have the money but do they really have the desire to have the time to do what we need them to do because if we have a weekly yes.
00:32:02
Speaker
Phoenix, Arizona is not participating in customer experience. That affects everyone. We cannot have, like any brand, if one of those locations is not following that model, it's a big problem. And for us, it's even harder because it's not just about using this set of technology or using these products or these types of trucks or wearing these uniforms. Do you have that CX-based culture?
00:32:29
Speaker
Because it's got to happen everywhere for this door for the whole brand to work. And so that's my job right now. We're growing like crazy. We only really want to open 10 to 15 new locations a year. I say only because we could open 50. It's that overwhelming in some cases. But we're trying to find 10 to 15
00:32:48
Speaker
great markets with great people to partner with. And it's fun, you know, but it is a little challenging because we're, you don't know until someone's on the ground in the field doing the work, if they're truly going to be able to be
00:33:03
Speaker
is in love with customer experience as much as I am. But that's what we're, that's what our next phase is. And ultimately what we wanted, what we want to graduate to, where we want to end is one day this is, I say this all the time and I really, I can't wait for it to come true. One day there's going to be a conversation at the water cooler in the office and someone's going to say, hey, you guys moved last week. Did you hire one of those old school guys or one of those
00:33:29
Speaker
happy movers and we started that we started that movement that's what i hope for all the growth and honestly wealth that comes from the growth is fantastic but that's my end goal i want to i want to leave a legacy i want to create a whole new category
00:33:45
Speaker
Well, you know, I for one will be speaking around at least the virtual water cooler about Pink Zebra.
Conclusion and Praise for Pink Zebra
00:33:50
Speaker
And if anyone who is listening who wants a happy moving experience, all the details for Happy Zebra are in the show notes. Ron, I promise you, I don't say this to every guest on this podcast. In fact, this is the first time I've said it. Pink Zebra is my new favorite customer experience case study. I think you've just absolutely nailed it. It's really fantastic what you've done. Congratulations on all your success and long may it continue. Thank you for coming on Speaking from Experience.
00:34:14
Speaker
Oh man, I appreciate it. Well, thank you for your time. I had fun talking about it. Thank you very much for listening to this episode of speaking from experience. If you enjoyed the show, please leave us a rating and a review. And if you really enjoyed the show, reach out to us for a chat. A link is in the show notes.