Creating The Best Employee Experience with John DiJulius

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Happy employees aren't likely to produce happy customers. You know, sometimes you're like, I, I'm just focused on the customer. But if you don't focus on your employees, you're going to have a problem. They're the ones ultimately who are taking care of the customer. That's the subject of today's convers. Hey, everybody. Bill Gallagher, scaling coach and host of the Scaling up podcast. Every week we come to you with a couple ideas, couple shows on growing, scaling your business, getting the team right, dialing in the strategy, executing better, optimizing the cash, and surviving the process to maybe even enjoy the growth of your business. That's the world of scaling Up. And you'll find all our 500/ shows at scalingcoach.com scalingcoach.com Also, we've got a free course on the the stages growth. Like how do you get the strategy right? How do you build leadership, team out what happens at each stage of growth, ultimately to the exit of the business, hopefully very profitably, what you need to do, all that. There's a free little mini course there on our website. We also got a newsletter. We've got the shows every week, we've got the 500 back shows. We do a workshop every month on getting started with scaling up and getting your mindset right around, being ready to use the tools or all that and more@scalycoach.com all right, listen, I'm joined now by John De Julius. He is a rock star in the world of customer service. He's got a lot of spas, he consults with companies like Ritz Carlton, Lexus and more. And he's just a fantastic expert. He spoke recently to our Scaling up audience with Vern and I thought it'd be great to have him on the podcast as well to share some of the stories. He's got a, a host of his own show, Customer Service Revolution. And he's got this new book, the Employee Experience Revolution. The Employee Experience Revolution that you can get at his website, thedeguliusgroup.com we'll put those links and more. We'll talk about the book, what goes in it, the ideas of it. John, welcome to the show.

Thanks, Bill. Pleasure to be here.

Yeah, it's really great to have you on. You have so much to share. Talk about your background to get started. How did you come to this world? Like, what made you obsessed with customer experience and ultimately with employee experience and share a little bit of that kind of background for the audience who doesn't know you?

Yeah, all Bizarre accidents. Right. I would bet, yeah. If I were to bet, if I knew you at each stage, that if you would have told me, hey, you don't own salons, I'd say, how much money do you want to bet? You know, it's the same pattern repeating itself, you know, Met my wife, you know, back in the late 80s, and I always wanted to be an entrepreneur. I didn't know what it would be. The only thing I enjoyed was sports and couldn't really see the connection. But she was this fantastic hairdresser. However, you know, where she worked and, you know, at least in Cleveland, the salons weren't professional. They were horrible at customer experience, didn't take care of the employees, you know, all those things. So. And she had a lot of good friends that loved to go, loved hair, but would have to eventually quit to go get real jobs because they didn't make enough. They didn't have benefits, they didn't have vacations, they didn't have education. So me and my wife used to talk about, you know, someday we're going to open a salon and do things differently. And, you know, and we still have these cocktail napkins because we used to go out to bars and, oh, write that down. Take care of the customer really, really well. Take care of the employees really, really well. Give back to the community. We have these. These Napkins that are 30 some years old, still framed. And so we wanted to right a wrong, and we wanted to be the best experience in a. In a guest day. That's what we call our customer. Not the best experience of a salon. Because if you or your wife came in, goes into a salon today, you then don't leave the salon and go to their nearest competitor to compare. Right?

Right.

So it's kind of irrelevant to a certain degree how a lot of us in business, how we compare to our competitors. If I have you in as a business coach today and you do a workshop with my team, I then don't have another business coach in tomorrow and say, man, Bill was so much better. Right. You're probably the only business coach I'm dealing with for now.

But.

But maybe when I call my lawyer, my accountant, other professionals, I'm like, God, why don't they treat me as well as Bill? Why don't they call me back? Why didn't they anticipate my need like Bill did? And that was ours. We wanted to be the best experience in our guest day, wherever they went. Right. Kind of have that hangover. So it took off, it worked, and then people said, but one of my frustrations when we were trying to build the customer experience, because, because we couldn't outspend our competition, we didn't have deeper pockets, we couldn't build nicer places and all that. And we didn't have, you know, the advertising budget. But no one was good at customer experience, so we started doing that. But when I was trying to research customer experience, all the books I read and the speakers I saw on the topic used to give me platitudes. They'd say, you know, take really good care of your customers. Treat your customers, you know, the way you want to be treated. And that was really frustrating to me because what does that mean? Or I'd hear a story about how you went to Nordstrom's, love these pair of shoes, but they didn't have them in your size. And the Nordstrom's clerk ran down to Macy's, got them, bought them, brought back to you and sold them to you. That's a great story. But the frustrating part was you didn't tell me how you got that employee to do that. And would it? Would, would that was Sally, would Judy do it or would you have to get Sally to do it? You know, all those things. So that's where I started, you know, studying customer service and, and the, the great companies in the Southwest and Disney and the Ritz Carltons and all of those, and figuring out there was a, there was a methodology that they all had in common. And then because of the noise and growth we were making, people started asking me to speak on customer experience. And, you know, I didn't think it was going to be a career. And. And then 2003, my first book came out on customer service. And pretty much then it took me from being a salon owner that spoke a few times a year, you know, to a speaker that owns salons. And I really haven't been involved in the salon since then. Still own them, but not involved in the day to day. And then the Julius Group was born and it turned into a consulting company. And, you know, I've written some books and work with some pretty cool companies.

Yeah, you have. Yeah. Talk to us about that.

Bill Gallagher's podcast that's now.

You find made it.

I've arrived, I've arrived. Everything else is a footnote.

Yeah, that's what I keep telling my wife and kids. It's funny how, you know, I fly around the world, I meet with people in different cities, that kind of thing.

And I'm listening to you. You're the gospel guy, right?

And then the people in my neighborhood are like, oh, there's Bill again.

Right? Yeah. Listen, if you could tell me how to, you know, get my kids to take out the garbage on Tuesday nights. I mean, you know, like you said, we teach complicated stuff that, you know, they might have 15,000 employees that have to figure out how to do this. I can't get my son to take out the garbage regularly.

Yeah. So what leads to this book?

Well, so the first five were all on customer experience, and we would dabble with employee experience, but we've really realized that you can't get anyone to do anything unless they're feeling it on the inside. And you really have to, you know. You know, I think that was one of the silver linings of the pandemic. Listen, at least in the US and we're still kind of experiencing it, but from 2000 and the end of 2009, you know, until recently, we've had the longest stretch of a booming economy. And there's good things, but there's bad things. You know, when the busy bus is out front and it's a great time. As entrepreneurs and leaders, we take the eye off the important things. And one of the important things is culture. It's who we're hiring. I think the two biggest mistakes we've all been guilty of. I've been guilty of it, too, in my companies, you know, since, like, the pandemic, the great resignation. Quiet. Quitting is hiring just anyone to replace the ones we lost. But even worse, keeping the bad performers. Because I need 10 people. If I get rid of Bill and. And Jeremy, and so. And so now I'll need 13. And I had a leadership epiphany. Bill, have you ever heard the quote, you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with? We've all heard that, right? Love that quote. I've said it at nauseam to my children, at nauseam to my new employees. You know, and then who do we blame? If you, I, or one of our kids is hanging around undesirables, who do we blame? You, right, Bill? If you're hanging around undesirables who are getting you to go out after work and have too many cocktails and not getting home when you should, and, you know, all the other things we're saying, Bill, that's on you. You need to choose better who you hang around with. Well, here's my leadership epiphany that I literally lost sleep at when. When it hit me. Our employees don't get to choose the five. They hang around with at work. We do.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And now we got a rock star who we've surrounded with C minus players because you know, we, we, we, we did the wrong things. And then that rock star, you know, one of two things gonna happen. That rock star is going to gravitate to them and we're gonna say, what the hell happened to, you know, Sally? Or their rock star is going to get the hell out of here. Because they don't like working with C minus players. So that really bothered me that my employees don't get to choose their five. I do for them. And we gotta be careful with that.

Well, if you've worked for someone else or observed it closely before, the team knows the person that is insufferable or the couple of people that just like, oh my God, they take the time, they don't deliver, They're a drag on us. And very often we see, in my world, I talk with a leader who's got a concern about someone, they finally let them go. And after some reserve and everybody else is like, thank God. And some people say like really directly like that. And everybody else is like, thank you. You saw it like, we all knew they were a pain in the ass.

Yeah. One of my, my favorite quotes. Well, it's not my favorite, it's kind of my least favorite quote, but it's true. And it's the hardest thing to do as leaders. You know, it's better to lose the sale than the reputation. Right. And you know, you know, God, I could, I could take three more clients if I just had a few more consultants or I could, you know, so we just hire consultants. They're not the ideal ones. But now we, we could take you on as a client and it's nothing like you heard, it's nothing like you expected. And you know, we lose you. And not only do we lose you and the future sale, but we. What are you saying about us? You know, you're doing brand terrorism about our. And we're talking about any company. Any company. But that's so hard to say is because I want sales. You know, everyone wants sales, but sometimes it's better to lose the sales because, you know, if I can't take care of you today, it'll actually make you want to do business with me more because we're so hard to get in with versus just give you anyone and disappoint you. You'll. I'll never recover from that.

Yeah. You know, a couple of things I think are really useful around that worth pointing out. One of them is, why do we hang on to people that we shouldn't hang on to? Right. We live in hope. We feel like it's going to be hard on them. We want them to be better. We see something good in them. I had a coach once who told me, listen, you don't have to, like, work against them. You just have to decide how much time and energy you're going to give that person. I had some people in my life at the time, both professionally and otherwise, who were like, sucking up my time and with weird dramas and stuff. She's like, do you really want to spend all your time on that? Maybe you wish them well, but you make a lot less time and energy available for them. And then you're essentially moving because you're going to be surrounded by five people. Those people move out of the five or the 10 or the 15.

Yeah.

And they move way down. And it's not, you said, you're my enemy. I never can speak to you. You're dead to me. It's just you said, you're not getting so much of my time anymore. And I, I've had people that, like, I could appreciate their whole world. Like, you're a great person, you're a great parent. You're like, there's a lot of redeeming qualities and you can't work here anymore. And I know this time is going to be hard for you, but it's time for you to move on because you're never going to win here or you've done something wrong and we just can't move forward. But you're not evil. Like, I wish you well.

We may be holding them back from a career and a job somewhere else. And, you know, here's my, my rule of thumb first, you know, high maintenance employees, whatever that looks like, whatever deal our time from patting the, the rock stars on the back saying, bill, Brandon, you are crushing it. I am so lucky to have you. I don't get to do that. I don't say that because I'm chasing the fires of the ones that. But here's my, here's my rule of thumb. If it's time to go separate ways, if I hire a new employee, and I hope they don't sit with at lunch or go out for coffee or beers with a couple of, you know, certain employees because I know they're going to, you know, their negativity is going to, you know, impoison them. That's, that's when I know it's time to move on. If I'M afraid to new employees will be, you know, we'll hang out with.

Those employees if I have to warn you about somebody.

Right.

Well, welcome here. But he'd be careful of Carol.

Right, right, right.

That John man. Maybe let's steer clear of him.

But listen, the real impetus for the book is the vast majority of the world's population can't avoid working in their lifetime. Right. You know, most people have to and, and, and people say oh you're not what you do. But, but I disagree. Work is such a important part in, in such a amount of, of time. I mean when we meet people within a, you know, if we met socially, you know, our wives brought us together. Bill, it's going to be within the first 30 seconds. What do you do? What do you do? And we're going to talk about that. And it's so important as leaders that we create environments where people can live, you know, extraordinary lives and, and find meaning and purpose. And I really believe we need to build those types of jobs.

Be proud of it. Be proud of the place, you know, in our world, my friend. And the, the overall leader of our coaching organization is a guy named John Ratliff who's a started a call center business and one of his insights that led to extraordinary growth and profit is that happy employees create profitable call centers. And he's like this whole industry doesn't treat people well and has super high turnover and low results. Maybe we should take care of people. And they went to work on taking care of people. Letting call center employees feel valued, appreciate, seen and heard related and their turnover, their customer set, everything improved when they put the focus on the employee and he went through a big roll up and then a very profitable exit as a result of that. Right. Like that's fantastic. When we see that you've worked with many companies, I don't maybe talk why.

You know, do we pay people the least, invest in them the least and wonder why we have high turnover and then we bitch about them.

Well, I'm giving them, damn it, they should be grateful.

Right? Right. I don't think our employees owe us anything. I, I don't think they owe us anything if they're doing the job. You know, listen, I've had people I've written checks for and helped them get through, you know, crisises but if tomorrow they decide they have a better opportunity, you know, they didn't owe me anything.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think you, if you come from a place of generosity and abundance, right. You're grate your employees time even Though you're paying for them, you don't feel entitled to their best effort. You are grateful for what they do, even though you're paying for them. Right. Like, and then you're getting their heart and soul because you're finding ways to engage them and connect what you care about, the business cares about, with what they actually care about and help them find the connection between those things. Right, Yeah.

I mean, you know, we all want to grow, and the only way to grow is, is to have people that stay with us now. And not everyone's going to retire in 30 years and get a gold watch. But so many times, you know, I tell people, all right, you know, you're a restaurant or, you know, frontline employee that, you know isn't normally going to retire. It's a temporary transitional job, if you will. And I say, you know, what's, what's the average, you know, tenure of your frontline employee, whatever that may be? And they may say eight months. I said, what if we can get to 1.1, 1.2, one year, two months, you know, just moving that needle. And then I also, I just spoke in Vegas to fat brands and, and you know, they have 18 quick casual, fast casual restaurants under their different brands, 18 different brands under their, their, their, their, their parent company. And so there was, There was like 1500 people in there and GMS and, and the franchisees. And I asked him to bring up the house lights. I say, I want to ask you this. How many people got in this, the restaurant industry, 10, 15, 30 years ago thinking this was going to be a temporary transitional job until something better came along and you'd have to count the hands that didn't go up of the 1500 people. Are we painting that picture to young Brandon when he's interviewing or when orientation, saying, brandon, I know you're just answering phones today, or you're just, you know, whatever the, the front line, entry level position. But let me tell you something, Brandon. You see Bill over there, he was doing your job 16 years ago. Today he's a partner. Today he's the VP, today he's the COO. And, and making sure that people realize this doesn't have to be a temporary transition job, you know, and if it is, great, you know, work your tail off and, and we'll help you and we'll build your resume and let me know what you want to be doing in five years. I know a lot of people. Oh, you want to get, oh, let me make an introduction. Right. But, but, yeah, yeah, we got it. We got to paint the picture and show the opportunities.

Many years ago, I worked for a restaurant company. I had a number of restaurant jobs, super valuable experience. And this company was very clear. Like, the vast majority of people who come here are. It's a stepping stone to something else. And we're proud of that. We'll prepare you for the next thing. But it could be here. You could advance here. You could become, you know, a crew lead. You could become a manager. You could become a head of the kitchen. You could become a gm. Like, you could become a regional. There is a career track here, and some people went and worked there. And I remember going back to that restaurant 20 years later, and. And some of the same people were still working there in different capacities. And this is awesome. And some of them actually made a career of that. Other people, it was. But they saw. They didn't reject it. Like, if you're. If you're not with us, you're against us, and you can't leave. And so it was like, yes, this is a place that. That some people make a career of. Other people transition. And it could be both in and out. Like, it was very, like, eyes, all of that, which is pretty cool.

You know, Bill, Something that. That in my. You've heard me speak, and in my past books, we talk about how to make a connection. You know, the key is focusing on the other person and not me. And so we. We teach. You may have heard me say this is focus on the other person's Ford. Okay. F O, R, D, family, occupation, recreation and dreams and a casual conversation. This gets me off of me. And find it out about you. Well, we bring this back to work, too. So when we're for leaders, when we do leadership workshops or whatever, we will, you know, pre. Populate the people that you directly report to you. The people that directly report to. To Brandon, the people that. And then we'll say, all right, Bill, you got, you know, 10 direct reports. Fill out the Ford on them. And it's harder than you think. I've been humbled that my assistant, an executive assistant that I could, you know, I knew she had two kids. I think one was a girl, one was a boy. Shame on me that, you know, she has pictures on her desk. Like, that was really humbling that I couldn't remember. Now I know it's. It's. It's mackenzie and Brandon and Landon. I said it wrong. But anyway, the O, which stands for occupation. Now everyone thinks, oh, that's easy. They work for me. No, no, no, no, no. What you have to know on there is what's their five year goal? Where do they want to be in five years and exactly what we're talking about. Oh, I'd love to be in Bill's position. Or, or I've always wanted to work in the media, you know, or this or this. And that's what I always say is help people get there if that means somewhere else. Hey, I got a friend, Bill Gallagher. He does this. He could probably make it. You can intern with him or he might know connections and whether they work for you for six months or six years, they're going to be a great employee. But I will tell you that they will be a brand evangelist and you'll get more clients and more future employees. Those are the stories you want to go viral. Not just the rags to riches that stayed, but the ones you help get to where they wanted to go.

I learned everything in this company and I got what and I recommend to you. And yeah, that's so, so brilliant. I had a client like this a few years ago that was like, I just can't get my people to do anymore, Bill. And I was getting ready to lead a session with his team and one of our quarterly planning and learning sessions. And he's like, I just like, I can't wait. And we have the session the next day. And I'm like, well, what have you tried? And he's like, oh, we've tried spiffs and things like that. And I'm like, great. They don't seem to make any difference. I'm like, well, what do your people really want and care about? It's like, I don't really know. Well, tell me about them. And he like, well, this one does that job and that one does that. I'm like, okay, you, you're missing something with your people. So I had some time and I said, let me go around and talk to people. So I just popped around people's offices. I said, hey, could I talk to you for a minute and tell me a little bit more about you and tell me about your family relationship, right? What do you do and how long you been here and where will you go from here and that kind of thing. And then I went back to the CEO after a handful of conversations, and I'm like, okay. Who has never traveled outside the country? Like, I don't know. Who is getting ready to buy or would like to buy a house, who's ready to start a family, who'd like to go back to college. He had no idea the answer to Any of these questions, I'm like, all those are your people. And when you can connect your spiffs or whatever you want to do, your performance goals, even if you're not paying them anything extra for it, but you connect how working on that will lead them to the other thing or enable them and give them skills that they can transfer when you could do that. And they'll not only you'll be speaking to them and they'll experience that you know them and care and are connected to them. And then even the little things you say will have more power. He did that and the company went through a pretty significant growth period, more than 50% growth. We ended up with three times growth over the next couple of years because they were more connected and related. There's a struggle though, for each of us, and that is that we get very like, I know and love people, but I'm also obsessed with what I want and what I'm working on. And I forget to stop and take care of and connect to people. I have to remember to do it because just like taking care of and being related to people, I tend to take for granted. And I think a lot of our listeners, a lot of our CEOs are in the same position. Right?

We got to build it in. Exactly, exactly. I mean I'm so, I could be so tunnel focused that, you know, the house on fire next door to me could be on fire and I wouldn't know it because I get so tunnel focused. So we got to build that in. And one of the things we talk about in the book and, and you know, you know, I think our employees really like working for us. We've had a lot, you know, in our three different companies that have worked, you know, a lot. Nearing 30 years, 27, 23. So, so, so, you know, that, that, that tells us something. But one of the biggest benefits they brag about is we talk about training the whole person, not just the professional side. That'll make you more productive and profitable for me. And so here's how we train it. And it really doesn't cost us anything. But we train in the 5F's and the 5s usually what are the most common New Year's resolutions. So it's things that people care about. Right? So it's finance, it's family, it's fitness, faith and fun. Okay. And the faith is, isn't religious as much as it's positivity. That's what we mean by, you know, not getting sucked into the doom scrolling and you know, the all that stuff. So what we do is, it's not, it's not mandatory, it's, it's optional if you want it. We'll have a, a mortgage letter come in or zoom in next Friday. Anyone that wants to buy a house and send them your information and what he'll do. And we have a lot of young workers and he'll say, all right, young bill, 25 year old bill, based on what you make, here's, here's what you can afford, here's what your mortgage would be, here's what you're going to need to save. Now the last time we did this was probably 20, 22, 19 people bought their first house as a result. Mortgage lender, we don't have to pay because he just got 19 new customers. But people say, you know, you know, number one question I get, you probably get this, two bills. How do I get this generation to come to work? Have them get a mortgage. That'll help. But, but we have that, you know, people who want to be better parents will use irony's better book club. And hey, here's a great book, here's a great podcast you should listen to. And then you guys get together and meet and we'll, you know, some things in house we can do like, like a time management or, you know, things like that. But this, the people love that we're helping them be a whole person and that we're just not. What can you do for me? You know, from a, from an efficiency.

Standpoint, that those five Fs are really central to our personal planning process that we recommend people do between late November and early January. Work with your people. Give them an opportunity to do personal planning the way you do business planning. Start to think long term about what you want to do and then what are the habits that you would change in the next 90 days to get started on that? Really central to that and letting people explore all of that. You know, like, I bought my first house at the age of 25 and it was a powerful, important step in my life, right? Like, and many people today don't even think about it. Like it's just a little bridge too far and stuff. But you're right, it does. It encourages growth, it brings stability, it anchors people. There's a little more commitment involved than just renting another place and disposing of it and moving on and really powerful. Before we get too far afield, let's talk about a couple of these things. You mentioned the wrong order test and tell us about that story and how that's important to fit and.

Yeah, so that's in the chapter of recruitment experience. And first off, we have to do BE people are like, recruitment experience. Well, you know, it's different than it was 5, 10, 25 years ago. If I'm a young person, which I'm not, but if I am, and I hear you're hiring, I'm going to apply and hope I get the job. Right. My buddy works for you. My, My. My mom was a customer. Whatever it is today, most people know it's. It's an employee market, and they're going to interview at the five different companies, five different industries, and see who gives them the best deal, whatever that is to them. So our recruitment experience, we want, you know, if you're going to interview with us and then go somewhere else after, we want that next interview to pale in comparison. Right. So there's a lot of great things, but one of the things is we also want to filter and see if, you know, we call it making the interview process ungamable. And what I mean by that is most people can wing it for a half an hour. I know, Bill, that you're probably going to ask me on an interview what my. My two biggest challenges are, and I'm a pause and think and say I'm a workaholic and a perfectionist.

Right?

Bam. I nailed that one. So we like to build in things that people don't know what they're actually being observed on. So, you know, there's a lot of great practice. But my favorite one, the wrong order test. Charles Schwab, their CEO, Walter Benningen Jr. Who's like one of my favorite CEOs today, just so many great things he does. When it's a C level candidate, internal or external, and he's involved in an interview process, he'll have that candidate meet him at his favorite diner. Okay, so you show up and. And we sit down, and he. And he. You sit down with him and you have breakfast. The diner knows that anything that the candidate orders other. Anyone other than Walt, you screw, that gets screwed up. You order French toast, you're getting, you know, scrambled eggs. You ordered. You asked for a ketchup, you're getting Tabasco sauce. And it's to see how you handle yourself. That person handles themselves in a stressful situation when things aren't going right, how they treat the server, and if they could stay calm and in place. So I love it. You know, it's just different ways to make the interview process ungamable. Do you remember Colombo? Are you Old enough to remember Columbo.

There's just one thing that's bothering me here, like you said.

Yeah, right. And that's how I interview. When I interview, I'm like, just disheveled. I can't find your resume. You know, Bill, before we get the interview, I see that you grew up in, you know, and, and I see that you ran track. You know, what was that like? You know, and we just go down rabbit holes. And you don't think the interview has started yet? Well, the interview started. I'm just trying to gauge if you're always a victim and the coach played favorites and this and that, you know, and just really picking up on your vibe. I don't care what the resume says. So I'm, I'm so. I'm like Colombo, you know, just, just totally try to take it, let your guard down. Think we're just being two guys just talking. The interview's hot.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think there are many different versions of this that get past the veneer. So many people can ace an interview and then screw up the job. So practical tests, assessment tools, unusual situations, personal asides, changing the environment, all these kinds of things are helpful in sort of cracking that polish, that veneer of. I'm a perfectionist who just works too hard. Right. Because when you look at 60, if I was looking for a job and you were interviewing me, and then you're like, I really think you should be my coo. I'd be like, oh, my God, I should never be anybody's coo. That would be a terrible job for me. If you need me to launch a new division or upgrade your strategy or. Those are things I could do.

But.

I like designing operations. I don't like running operations.

You're the visionary.

Right. So that, that self awareness and self acceptance, like, I'm not beating myself up anymore for being who I am. But that's 60, right? That's right.

25 year old, you know. Oh, I could be, you know.

Yeah, anything. Right. But of course you can't. But you, you, you both don't really know yourself and you haven't accepted yourself. You're still trying to be ways that you're never going to be at 25. Most of us. Right.

Yeah. Our interview process, you know, we, we talk about, you know, there's certain questions, we just ask it. We can care less about the answer, but they get you talking.

Yeah.

You know, like one of our questions is, Bill, when you don't work, what's your favorite thing to do? And, and Bill, I could care a lot. You don't get extra points if it's what I like to do or if it's fly fishing or, you know, any. I'm looking. We're looking to see if you show enthusiasm for when you talk about something you love to do. If you don't show enthusiasm for that, you're not gonna have enthusiasm for anything.

Yeah.

So it's like that.

Sad sack. You know, though, I made a mistake with this once, and I'm like, I checked all the things. I have a good process. They have the right experience. I enjoy talking to them. We have a similar hobby, and we got down a rabbit hole of enjoying that. And I'm. And then I hired the person, and they were not well suited to the job, and they made some fundamental mistakes, and I skewed too much on the fact that, well, I could talk to them. I like them. Right. Like, we bonded over a common hobby. Not always good. Yeah. Skewed too much.

One more I want to share with you. I love that we've learned from great companies is instead of, like, let's say we're interviewing, you know, we have eight candidates. Instead of spending an hour on each. On the first interview, these companies bring them all in for the first round of interview. But here's where the ungamable goes. So they'll ask, Ollie, hey, tell me a time when you went above and beyond for a customer. You know, whatever the question is. Again, we don't care about the. Yeah, what's that?

Lululemon does that one.

Yes.

Famous.

Yes. And so the candidate thinks they're being judged on who has the best answer. So Bill's, you know, saying this. I'm like, oh, I'm gonna crush his story. I. I'm gonna one up him. Right. But what the interviewer is really looking for is what the candidates are doing when they're not answering. So Bill's answering, and I'm looking at my Apple watch, and I'm checked out. Or I'm focused on what I'm gonna say. Or. Or someone else is looking at Bill. Bill says something funny. So the other candidate smiles, nods, is making Bill feel good. And that's what they're looking for. Right. But the candidates think it's who has the best answer. So that's the ungameable part. That's really good.

Yeah, I love that. That's. That's not normal. Not typical. Right? Really useful. Talk to us about then bringing people in, the reorientation, the Ritz Carlton, like, how there's so much we can learn from that company.

Love this, love this. Learned it like, 25 years ago. We started doing it. The reorientation is so. So we will have employees that, you know, let's say we have a new group of employees, six or eight, starting this month. Well, that means if we have six, six or eight, we'll have probably orientation, class of 15. And what that is is you reorientate as an existing employee every other year. So if you were hired in 21, 23, 25, 27, you're going to retake orientation. And there's several reasons for it. Number one, hopefully our orientation has improved since the last time you took it. Number two, the existing employees take over the class and they start saying, oh, dude, you have no idea how lucky you are. When I was hired, you know, we had a chisel and slate. Now you got a computer. We had to walk to work barefoot, uphill, in the snow, both ways, you know, but it's good. But they. They get really protective. But the other thing, there's so many benefits. The new employees meet the cool kids on the team. And so now when I start work next Monday, I know Bill because I just went through orientation, and Bill has, you know, gravitas. And Bill's like, john, come over here and meet everyone, right? And the existing employees always get re. Energized. They have a bounce in their step. They forgot about the story, where we came from, and what it took to get here. And so it's just really, really cool. It's one of the best things we've ever gotten.

I love that. Participating and reviewing it. It's really unusual and not normal, and it's not as necessarily a new employee. You might have a different role, a different voice, different things to share and stuff, but you're kind of going back through it, and then you're getting old and new together, learning the things. I used to lead parts of the new hire orientation for Sprint employees, and my boss did another part of it on the regular, and he would kind of do some big picture things and I would talk about some other things. It was a really great experience to connect with people and. And it was a pretty robust process. But. But this is like the idea of going back through it and coming back through and sitting alongside people just coming in is. Is novel and unique. I think there's so much we can learn. You were speaking earlier about empowering people to. To fix things and so on, and the Ritz Carlton is really famous for that. Like, how do you know they're going to do it. Well, they've hired people who care, who fit the values, who know the values. Right. But they've also empowered them to actually do something. You have something wrong with your room or your food or whatever, anybody can fix it. Right. They don't have to go get approval because it's going to cost some money.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's kind of like the ask once promise. And this is great for call centers. You know, they do this study and everyone will cringe because they'll know, you know, we're all guilty of this. But you know, how many channels I have to switch from? Meaning I might be on your website and I couldn't get. So I had to call. I call, I get, you know, you know, your customer service rep, and she can't handle it. She has to escalate it. And. And then every time it gets transferred and I have to retell my story again, it's like, oh, oh, sorry, wrong. She shouldn't have transferred to me. And by the fifth time, I'm like, you know, embellishing the story and angry and screaming. So, so it's. It's called the ask once promise, where the. The first person that gets it, owns it and they may have to go to other channel, but they're not going to make you, Bill. I got that. Here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna call you back within 30 minutes. Is that okay? Bill? Is that a good time? Great. And then they do all the stuff that they were gonna throw you through the channel or they stay on the call with you at, you know, and do the. What's called the hot transfer, where, you know, warm transfers, when they. Capacity hot transfers, they stay with you, Bill. I'm still here. I'm not going anywhere. You know, and they explain the situation to the person that they're. So you don't ever have to re. Explain it again.

Yeah, I think that's just genius. And you think about it. We recognize it in other companies, right? But we don't necessarily look in the mirror and go, I don't do that one. But what do I do that's like that, right? Where are my systems designed to thwart and not empower people to actually fix anything? Where there's so many checks and balances and barriers to actually fixing something for someone, resolving it and maybe even making up for the inconvenience and the displeasure of the breakdown in the first place. So we call any major company today, temporary call volume calls are very high right now. No, they're Always high with you. You just don't staff enough. It's BS and you're making people wait because you don't actually want to staff or pay people to resolve it. And then when you put people on the phone in whatever country is the cheapest possible place to get somebody to answer the phone, right. With, with second language English proficiency. And, and then those people have no ability to fix anything. They read scripts at you and stuff like that and you just want to reach through the phone and choke them. But it's not their fault. The whole system is designed to thwart them. Right. And it doesn't even matter. Some of your highest level customers will get treated like this. I used to fly a whole bunch with United Airlines. Unfortunately, United Airlines has so many million mile flyers that I was still chumped to them even flying a bunch. And I found myself with a canceled flight overseas. And they're like, oh well great, we're going to reroute you through Istanbul and it's great. You'll be on Turkish Airlines. And they're one of our partners and that kind of thing. And we made the reservation and I got taken care of really quickly. Except the systems didn't talk to each other. The systems didn't talk to each other. And so Turkish Airlines is standing there going, well, we see this here, but there's no ticket. There's no, like, we can't put you on because we're not getting paid for this thing. So the guy walks up to the counter next to me and he's that like ultimate, ultimate level. He's their global, what is it? Global Assist or whatever. It's the global services. So he's a global travel. He gets in the global services. That person actually fix it. I, with a jillion miles get no fix. And I languish there for six hours at the counter while they go back and forth and try and redo it and try and redo it. Incompetent people with systems that don't actually talk to each other and, and nobody fixing anything with any authorization to work around the system.

Yeah.

Until they finally close the flight and send it off. And then at midnight they find me a hotel and send me off in a car and I have to come back the next day and make another flight. Almost got a one stop easy kind of thing with a, with a. Turkish Airlines is lovely airline to fly in, actually better experience than United generally speaking. And totally screwed up. Right. But only the like bleeding edge of something. Right. You could spend 60,000 a year with United Airlines. And not get that global services kind of experience. Right, right. What is that? And why do we have that again and again? Your call is important to us. We are experiencing unusual call volumes. It's total lie, Right? But it's easy to see. With a company like United States, it's not so easy to see. And I'll be flying United in it. They'll probably make it. How long me now? Yeah, in a couple of weeks. What. What do you. What does your company do that's like that, where you've tied the hands of your employees? You haven't just said, look, fix whatever it is, make it right. Be smart. You know, you care about the business, but care about the people too. Don't give away nothing for somebody who's just being difficult. But if they've been harmed, if they've been inconvenienced, take care of them.

Well, there's something called the service recovery paradox, and you've experienced it on both sides of a business owner. And as a client, everyone watching, listening, has. And the service recovery paradox says, you know, if you come in, you know, to do business with any company, and your expectations are this, and they give it to you, right? You may or may not be loyal, right? I mean, you're not like, oh, my God. Right? But if they strap the ball, screw up, oh, my God. But they make it right, you're gonna be ten times more loyal. And so I always joke around, let's screw up first, right? Because. And I have a story about this. So when I was involved in the salons 25 plus years ago, I used to say, if it gets to me, it's free. Meaning if you had to call me, I'm not going to argue with you. Whatever you want. And my. My salon coordinators, whatever I give Bill or his wife for, it's going to come out of your quarterly bonus. And the whole message I was saying, is, take care of it at the salon level. No one wants to call the owner, the. The GM up. I mean, when they're. When they. And when they need. When they do, they're pissed. And they've told 20 people in the meantime.

So.

So. So I had a story where. Where someone called me up and said it wasn't hard to get my number. My number was plastered all over the place. But she called me up and says, Mr. D. Julius, I'm a client of your Solon location. And I was just in recently, and they got color on my hair, color on my suit jacket. And I was like, God, you know, you know, it's horrible. Why didn't we have. Yeah, whatever. I'm like, I like, we'll take care of it. We'll get it clean. Can't try. Oh, yeah. And she goes, the jacket's worthless without the suit's worthless without the jacket. I said, all right, you know, how much was it? And she's like, you know, this is a long time ago. But she had like 250, $275. Can I send you a check? And she's like, you don't want a whole, you know, you don't want to know how old it is. I'm like, no. She goes, you don't want to see it. I said, no, not necessary. She was shocked, hung up, look up her address to send her a $275 check. And I send her a. A half hour massage for her inconvenience. And as I'm on her screen, I see she's been coming for three years. She comes about six or seven times a year. She's not like, amazing, but, you know, good client, and she's never referred anyone. So I sent her the check, the gift card. I'm telling the story, like a year, year and a half later, someone says, well, did you retain her? I'm like, good question. So I look her up. She came in another seven times. I'm like, oh, yeah. Then I clicked on referrals. She referred 18 new clients in that. Since I. I'm like, oh, my God, like, where could I spend $275 and get 18 new clients? So I tell my hairdressers get color on everyone's clothes. Right. But that's the service recovery paradox. Like, like if, you know, she's now so much more loyal than if nothing ever went wrong.

Yeah, that's really, really powerful and simple. That, that idea that when you take care of people, they. And fix a problem versus a no event, non event kind of thing, that. That actually makes them really care. Because you've now dealt something and you've built a connection with someone. There's trust there. There's an expectation of something. And they want all their friends to be similarly taken care of. Right.

Bill, to your point, forget the customer. Well, that's important. You know, feels the best, the employee, because they weren't a punching bag. They weren't. Sorry, that's our policy. There's nothing I can do about it. Here's headquarters. Call them. Here's an email. They were allowed to fix it without the fear of getting in trouble.

Yeah.

And they got, you know, that they had job, you know, satisfaction. They got to go home at night and say, honey, guess what I got to do for a client today? Right? And that's. That's the cool thing about it, I.

Think the thing that people struggle with and it's worth acknowledging, look, there are badly behaved people out there. There are people that are trying to take advantage of the situation and do that kind of thing. And you will come across that. And that's a different kind of situation. We. I sold to Nordstrom for over 20 years, and there were things about it as a customer and as a. As a vendor that were at odds with each other. I had problems with a suit once. My cleaners lost. I forget the pants of the jacket. I went into Nordstrom. I'm like, can I. Is there some way that I could buy the. Whatever. I really love this suit. And they're like, they went to the back, they found the same suit. They're like, here you go. And they gave me other part of it. And then. But I know what they did is they took the pants or the jacket and they sent it back to. I think it was the pants that were lost. Then they sent the jacket back to the vendor, and instead of just selling the jacket as a standalone, then they sent the pants back and they said, oh, this one's missing something.

Wow.

We knew that some Nordstrom employees would actually damage goods to send them back to us when they didn't want. When they wanted to balance. So there can be excesses in it.

No, there can be. There can be.

I remember Nordstrom called us once from their loss prevention team, and they're like, yeah, we've got a suspicious pattern with an individual showing up at multiple stores with goods. And then we looked at the goods that were turned. Like, those goods, not only were they never sold at Nordstrom, but they weren't really sold anywhere. And then we figured out that we had a problem with a leak with a disgruntled employee who was leaking them to a counterpart who was selling them back and doing a return at Nordstrom. So things can get out of hand, and you have to watch for that. And it course we dismissed that person. And. And we said that this lapse is inexcusable. And it came clear that there was a profound hardship and a reason for the thing, but there was a fundamental character flaw. Right. That's a different conversation.

My whole thing is for employees and customers. Don't punish 98% for what you're afraid. 2%. And I will. I will trust all hundreds yeah, and, and, and, and live with the 2% to take advantage of me. Because what I get back from the 98% that can't believe how we handled it. Now read this is in my book. Reed Hastings from Netflix. He said exact same story. He said, you know, when his first company, I forget what it was before Netflix, he said it was built on policies and restrictions and it was, he said it was a horrible place to work. And he said it was his fault, he said, because, because a couple people took advantage employees. Oh, we need a policy for that. Oh, we need a policy for that. And it was all about policies and restrictions that no one liked working there. And then, you know, when he started Netflix, he says, listen, if we find a pattern, we'll get rid of that employee or address it. But we're not going to punish everyone and say, you know, if you come in five minutes early, you have to work five minutes later. You know, we trust that you're going to get your work done, you know, and you'll, you'll know if you need to work a little later today or if you get it done, you know, and, you know, God bless you.

Well, all this great customer service starts with great, happy, engaged employees. And that is the subject of the book, the Employee Experience Revolution. Get your employees right and it'll lead to it. Go get the book@thedejuliusgroup.com that's the place to get it. John, thank you so much for talking with us today, for sharing your stories and client experiences, that kind of thing. It's been super valuable. I've enjoyed it. We've run long now. I want to thank our listeners and viewers for joining us once again. I hope it's been helpful to you. If you dug it, share it with somebody else who could use it. Pass it along, spread. Spread the wisdom that John has to share with us with somebody else. I want to give a big shout out and thanks to my friend and mentor, Verne Harnish, who created the whole scaling up framework that we use. It's the cornerstone of our business. And to the folks at Storion who got our show produced and ready, Cameron, Seth, Christelle, each week. So thanks again, everyone for watching. For listening, go find us@scalingcoach.com along with all the back catalog of shows. We'll talk to you again next time. Until then, keep scaling.