Hospitality Lessons for Life: How Service, Mindset, and Energy Transform Success

Entrepreneurship is hard, but the process can be simplified. You can achieve success faster, sooner, and easier. I'm Mike Michalowicz, and I'm on a mission to eradicate entrepreneurial poverty. My goal for this episode and every episode is to serve you on your journey. Let's start right now on Entrepreneurship Simplified. So we're back at Entrepreneurship Simplified in our little quasi-studio.

Yeah.

And we're looking at a building.

Yeah, I'm so excited.

I'm excited.

Oh, Mike, you got to see it.

I can't wait. I can't wait. But I also think we should move quickly because you and Kelsey have seen it. We brought in an expert in historic buildings. It's a historic building.

Yeah.

Do you have any sense of the history? Said 1850s on the list.

Yeah, it said it was actually the carriage house for the house across the street at one point, and it was actually the old Packard building. And Packard is a, is a huge historical factory that was in this town. Correct.

I think they worked on automobiles.

I think so. Yeah.

Packard.

Yep.

And they still have buildings here, these brick buildings, which are beautiful but worn.

Yeah. Although that one's been restored. The one, the largest factory, has been restored to some incredible apartments.

That's right.

Yeah, right on the river.

Right on the river. It's a nice location right off 287, and it's beautiful. Those apartments are selling for a ridiculous amount of money.

Yeah.

Kristen and I were curious. We wanted to like look at one and we never got down to it. Have you seen one yet?

No, I haven't seen one. I do love the location, but this property that we're looking at is incredible because if you were on the roof, you would have incredible New York City skyline views, and you have an opportunity to open up some dormers on that and get some views, and it would be great space. Really, really good.

I can't wait to, to see it.

Yeah.

So we're— today we're going to be talking about Unreasonable Hospitality, in part. This is Will Gardner's book. I'm friendly with him. But I think you had an extraordinary experience. It says you went to a restaurant that personalized a dessert to celebrate—

Yes, I—

Overcoming cancer.

Yeah. So, um, well, before we do that, Mike, let me introduce you. You are a business author. Mike Michalowicz, business author of multiple books including Profit First.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

And, uh, you're my high school buddy.

Yeah.

Who had a career in administrative work and then, uh, came to work for us. You've been with us now, I want to say, 7 years.

7 years.

I was right.

You were right.

Okay, yeah, with us 7 years. Yeah, uh, it's been remarkable working with you.

It has been fantastic. And I have to say, so when I started working for you, I had just finished— I wasn't even finished with cancer treatments. I had been diagnosed with breast cancer the year before and had been through the hell of chemotherapy and bilateral mastectomy and radiation. And I was really afraid of how much my brain didn't feel like it worked anymore, especially after chemo and radiation. And, um, you put out on your personal page, hey, look, I'm looking for somebody to help out in the office, uh, let me know if you're interested. And, uh, it was a part-time position, and I thought maybe this is just what I need to like get my brain chugging along again. And who knew that it was going to be what it's been?

You're kicking butt here.

It's, for me, it's been, oh, we can just bring this back home again. You've been incredibly hospitable and it has been such a lovely, lovely experience.

Thank you.

No, thank you.

And you have been such an honor to work with and it almost feels like you're retiring today. You're not leaving. You're not going anywhere.

Oh, no, no.

But I consider you the matriarch for our office. Thank you. Just, you really shower our team with care. Um, and we have such a cohesive group.

We do. We have a— we have a— we have— we call it our whammy, our work family. We have a really great, wonderful group. Very different people, all very different personalities, very different, but work really, really well together.

Yeah, we got a lot of shiitake.

Yeah, we do. Anyway, so back to this story.

Yeah, what happened?

Yeah, we're talking about amazing hospitality, and I've had a few experiences actually. There was one, um, where was it? We were at a restaurant in New York City, um, I think it's called—

not Madison in Madison Park.

It might have been Madison. It's closed now. But anyway, you would do autumn, spring, summer, fall. They would change the entire decor for the restaurant. It was a wonderful experience. Food was great. I was there with my husband and my brother-in-law and my sister-in-law. And as we were talking, uh, I was able to share the good news with them that I had had my last, uh, radiation round and that my last biopsy came back with no cancer in it. And, uh, we continued to enjoy our meal. Ordered dessert, and when my dessert came out, this gorgeous dish, in chocolate sauce written along the white side of the plate, it said, "What cancer?" Question mark. Which made everybody at the table cry. It was such a lovely way for them to eavesdrop and make me feel seen and make me feel celebrated.

Oh my God.

It was really, really well done.

Let me just make sure I understood the story. So you weren't telling the waitstaff about this. No. It was just at your table.

We were just having conversation with my brother-in-law and sister-in-law and sharing our And someone overheard it. Somebody overheard it and took off with it.

Oh my God. I bet you that was Madison Park. And I'm embarrassed here because that is Will Gardner's restaurant.

Oh, really?

Yeah. Yeah.

Oh my gosh. I love— I saw his TED Talk, Mike, and it was so good. So good. So can I share the one story that I think kind of highlights the same kind of thing? He had 4 foodies in the restaurant one night, and he had overheard them talking about how this weekend they they'd had in New York City was absolutely amazing. They'd hit this restaurant and that restaurant and this restaurant, and, um, the only thing they missed was they never got to their New York City dirty water dog.

And, uh, you gotta get one of those.

And he like sped out the back door to the nearest dirty water hot dog cart, grabbed one, brought it back to the chef, and then had to beg him to please present it and serve it. And that was first— he said the major problem was convincing the chef to serve a dirty water dog in his restaurant. But they brought that out there to like the absolute delight of these 4 customers. Yeah. I mean, what an experience. Like, what a memory to be made to feel so incredibly like you're the only guest in that whole restaurant.

Yeah.

It's just an amazing experience.

He, he references it in his book, and they included ketchup and mustard in packets, I dare say, which is a Dirty Water Dog— yeah, the epitome of it.

Right, right, right.

Um, what I learned from Will, and I'll talk about how I met him in a minute, was unreasonable hospitality is not unreasonable quality necessarily. It can be a hot dog. It's unreasonable care and consideration of the individual's experience and what's important to them. It's just recognition of what's important to them. What cancer and hot dogs are all very significant to those individuals. But if everyone got a cake or a hot dog, it doesn't connect, right? They connected to your story, right?

Right.

And you don't see that. I was at a McDonald's. I'm going to give you some unreasonable hospitality. McDonald's does not have, uh, that built into their system, right? Chris and I were driving back from Virginia Tech. We went to see a game because my college buddies got together with our spouses.

Yeah.

On the way back, we stopped for like an Egg McMuffin. There was this one kid who was just hustling. He— you, you had to do the kiosk to put in the order.

Yeah.

But then the receipt didn't come out, and he waved over to me and said, oh, "We're having problems with receipts. I see yours didn't come out. Please come here. I'll give you a receipt." So first he's recognizing things. He smiled the entire time. A vanload or busload of people came in and did not throw him off. He's like, "Let's go. Let's do this." Then one table didn't get what they wanted. They flagged him over. He served a table. He brought a tray out to them. So I pulled him aside and I gave him a little gift. But I said, "Man, I don't see this often." And I think it can be built into a culture. I think it's inherent to certain people. And if you match the right people with the right culture, my gosh, my gosh. Kind of like what we're talking about here. We have a culture that is extraordinary and caring.

Yes. It's amazing.

And if you build it into your systems too.

Do you remember when we read The Power of Moments by Chip and Dan Heath? Yes. Yes. Okay. So they wrote about this one experience of a hotel in Los Angeles called the Magic Castle Hotel. And it was, at the time of the writing of that book, was among like the top 3 hotels in the area.

Yes.

But interestingly enough, it's a budget hotel.

Right.

But they're doing amazing hospitable things. Like they have a phone by the pool where you call up and you order like the flavor popsicle you want. And a guy brings it out on a tray with white gloves. They have like an incredibly expansive snack menu. They're making these like memorable moments. There was another one. Oh, board game and DVD menus for free, magicians perform tricks at breakfast, and free laundry service at a budget hotel. At a budget hotel. And which makes them competitive with— yeah, oh gosh, uh, Four Seasons Beverly Hills. They're, they're rated that high.

When you go home, uh, like Krista, I bet you Chris will say to you, hey, how was your day? Right? It's a common question, right? I've never been in a situation where I recount the entire day. Well, I arrived and it was in the morning, there was a cup of coffee and then there was this and then there was that. But there's certain moments that stand out. So to come in and all you guys yell happy birthday on my birthday, that's remarkable. It's a 5-second thing. But when I go home tonight and Krista says, how was your day? I'll say, oh my God, the whole office screamed happy birthday. Jenna came in singing happy birthday. And that is a remarkable moment.

Yeah.

I think what we need to understand as business owners is you don't have to have an entire suite of perfection. You don't have to be extraordinary in all areas. You have to select the area that you're going to crush it in.

Yeah.

And then excel there. Right. The customer will notice that one thing and it becomes remarkable. It gets stuck in their mind.

Right.

And that's a story that they'll repeat over and over.

Can I ask you a question? Do you think that has to be something that you enjoy doing? Or something you just build into your offering. I mean, you love gift giving. You really do love, and you're very good at thinking of meaningful and thoughtful things. I get the impression that you actually love to do it, which makes it more fluid.

Yeah, I think it needs to complement you. This is the irony. I would think you're really great at gift giving and I think you get joy out of it.

I do.

And I think that's why it's a good partnership. Here's where I get my joy. It's not in giving the gift, it's in finding something that uniquely speaks to someone. Do you ever read The Five Love Languages? I think we've talked about it.

Yes.

What's your love language?

Time.

Time.

Quality time.

Quality time. Mine's words of affirmation. So my natural language is to identify something unique about that person, but affirm it verbally. I think I'm pretty good at that. And then to translate to a gift becomes kind of easy. The thing is, when I receive gifts, I don't get necessarily joy from receiving or even, or necessarily giving, but that it speaks to something that's unique and shows that I was listening and caring for them.

Yeah.

Then I get joy out of it.

It highlights the connection.

Yeah.

It comes to remembering the most meaningful experiences and the ones with the most heightened emotions. So yeah, that ties into that, that heightening of emotion that you have when you do connect with somebody.

Yeah. So let's talk about Will Gardera, back to him. So I host an annual author event at Don Miller's place in Nashville. Don's been so kind to offer his facility. And among other authors, Will attended last and spent time with him. He really listens deeply too. And so after the event, we were talking about, we both have interest in bike riding and I didn't get a bike gift, but he was just speaking to an interest of mine. What I noticed is Will, just like every other author there, spoke to the 40 or so people in attendance, kind of ping-ponging around. I don't know how he stored it, if he actually writes this down or he's just listening so intently, but he knew that was important to me and that's why he put emphasis on it. So it's how he's wired. And I think he designed his restaurant around that. I know if I speak to things of significance about you, Will, John Henry, Chris, I know they're significant to you. Talk about your mother. Talk about the town of Boonton you grew up in. If I talk about overcoming cancer, I know there's certain elements in your life, your sister and her travels, the house up, the trips to Maine, how important they are to you. If I maintain a registry of what's important to you, not to be manipulative, but because I know it's important to you, therefore it needs to be important to me, and then I emphasize those, it will put you, I believe, into a heightened state of awareness. And because I'm showing appreciation. But if I came back and said, "Hey, I went to the Virginia Tech game and I got you a Virginia Tech mug," you'd be Okay, thanks. Thanks. Nice, but not thoughtful.

Right.

John Ruhlen, who was a great friend to so many, he sadly passed away now as of this recording about a month and a half ago, 2 months ago. He said famously, "That's not the thought that matters. It's the thoughtful thought that matters." What a genius line. And I think any of us can elevate our business if we simply put individual concern into each client, meaning, or each customer, what is important to them and recognizing that importance. That'll put them in a heightened state, appreciative state. You'll be delivering happiness as Zappos says. You'll be giving unreasonable hospitality as Will says. You'll be the master of thought or thoughtful thoughts.

I love it.

All right. So I do want to tell you about Will's story because it's something he shared with me personally, but it's also something he included in his book. And it was when his mother was ill and I can't remember what the circumstances were exactly, but he was home as a child with his mom alone and his mother fell down the steps, was unable to move. They didn't have access or he didn't know how to call 911 or whatever.

Right.

So the only thing he said he could think of was care for my mother. So he held her so she was comfortable and they sat there, as far as I remember, like 10 hours just caring for his mother until help arrived.

Right.

And as Will was sharing that story, he said that that was the moment I realized that we are all at times in circumstances where we just need someone to shower us with care for whatever reasons. And I think that became a moment for him to find purpose and to express it in his business. There's an exercise that everyone can do. So if you're a listener right now, do this. Reflect on your life. Look for the moments of extraordinary impact. And that doesn't necessarily mean highlights, but it can be. It can be lowlights, but these extraordinary moments and say, what does it mean to me? And what lesson or mission has it put me on? Unfortunately, you're not the only person that has been diagnosed and survived cancer. But some people go into a very depressive state after that and almost give up on life. But some people, and I believe you're one, look at that and say, what can this provide me? I'm not saying I ever wish that happened again. Thank you. It was an ugly package. It was a very difficult circumstance. But what is the value? Maybe, and this is just conjecture, but maybe you value life and how short it is and how fragile it is. Maybe you value, and I know you do, family at such a high level that those moments together are better than any vacation, any building, any property. And like, you lean into it. I wish I was at a at a Cartelli Thanksgiving. It sounds like it's just pure love.

It is.

And I wonder if in some perverted way that that traumatic experience you had with cancer elevated that purpose and mission.

I'm sure it did. I'm sure it did. There's such more of a spotlight on the purpose and the beauty of it all.

Right?

Yeah.

I think so.

That's the gift.

So I think every one of our listeners right now, reflect on your life. There's a technique called the Lifeline or Life Pulse where you kind of go decade by decade of your life.

And yeah, we've done that, that exercise before.

Yeah, we have a group.

It's wonderful.

We have. And as a result, we found things about each other. We learned stories. Maybe we should do it again this retreat because it's a good way to reconnect.

Yeah.

But also you can find purpose in it. One final thing I want to share about this is when we share those stories with others is also the greatest form of connection. I believe the creator of the know, like, and trust concept was John Jantz, the author of Duck Keep Marketing. But basically he says we want to do business with people that we know, that we like, we trust. But there is a foundational component, which is relatability. We mostly want to do business with people that get us and we get them. That's the foundation. You get me, let's do business together or let's have a relationship. Well, where that connection comes from is that story. That the stories of challenge or maybe inspirational, great highlights, right? But those stories where connection builds because I have a better understanding of who Amy is. Ironically, it's not this Facebook and social media stuff that is not building connection, right? That's often chest pounding. Not all the time. It's like, look at the great food I had. Look at the great life I live. It's in the dark periods where we really learn what a human's about, and that's where connection comes. So I ask people, share your stories.

Yeah.

You know, I, I write about the piggy bank situation, my daughter, and I know you know it very well, put in my books. Individual after individual comes up, when they hear that story, most will say, now I get why you do what you do. And by the way, Mike, I've been there too. Maybe not in that capacity financially exactly, but they get those lowlights.

Yeah.

And they say, wow, you're awfully human. My God, let's, let's kill the bro-y stuff. Let's stop the like, hey, look at the big muscles I built lifting weights today, and I worked 20 24 hours a day, and if you don't, you're weak, right? So let's cut that out and let's just say I'm human too.

Yeah, that's where the connection happens.

Yeah, yeah, I have a story to share, and you have a story to share too. Let's, let's connect.

Love it. I love it. So with Will, can you share some of the tenets that he, he incorporated into running the restaurant?

Yeah, yeah, and he put it all in his book, by the way. If you listening right now don't have Unreasonable Hospitality, it is a must-read.

And would you say that for Any kind of service?

Great question.

So yeah, like I'm thinking of like, okay, the, the, the window washer guy, the guy who has a small window washing company.

Yeah, any service, any product. I had to call, um, uh, I'm not gonna say the company's name, Experian. And Experian is a credit card monitoring service. Yeah, that's a credit score. I'd call them because we, and everyone listening, freeze your credit reporting. Because this way, if there's identity theft, people can't steal it without you reactivating it. You'll be notified. So we freeze all our accounts. I had to open it because my credit card, I decided to cancel credit card and get a different one. I can't get the credit card unless I open these accounts. Experian, literally 4 hours of on the phone, automated. And it always leads off the same thing. Your call's important to us. Therefore, we're going to put you in the death spiral of hell and you will never speak to anyone. And the automated system's like, what's your problem? Like, I, my account, I can't log in. And it's like, what is it? And I'm like, I can't log in. Like, give me a representative. I— and then automated thing comes back and says, we can't give you a representative. What's your problem?

You have to tell us. Oh my gosh.

Yeah, I'm pulling out my thinning hair. This is the worst thing I can do for myself.

I literally just saw a meme that said, you are who you really are when you're yelling representative into the telephone, right? That's who you really are.

Oh, I was laughing. Live it. So Experian could use unreasonable hospitality, and so could the window washer. Winder? That's dude in New Jersey. So could the window washer.

So you added an R like we do in Jersey.

The window washer could use it. Any business can use it. Yeah, all of us interface with our customers and clients in some capacity, and, and, and knowing this and deploying it gives you an advantage. It gives you a connection. It gives you so much. So one of the key tenets was to prioritize customers To realize that their experience for themselves is the most important thing. There's no customer comes in to a vendor and says, "All your other clients need to be treated equally." I come in with the bias of saying, "I am the most important person in the situation." We're getting some work done at the house and I'm sure this vendor has a lot of other things they're dealing with, but in our relationship, all that matters to me is me. I sent you money, I expect you to do certain things. So with the realize from the customer, they are number one. The core element to maintaining a reasonable to exceptional service level is simply communication. Even if you don't have what they want.

What they want. You got to tell them what they want.

Even if you're not delivering this amazing cake because you overheard something, if you simply say, "I have no news to report, but I just want to report nothing," that's a big deal.

It is. It really is. That makes all the difference.

I want to write a book called No News Is Still News as the title because that is— That's right. It's about customer service and just communication. So that's one of the core tenets is understanding that the customer sees themselves as number one and you have an opportunity to do it. The personalization, you just talked about this. This was another tenet. A generic gift is of very little significance, but a thoughtful gift, and a gift doesn't have to be a thing, it can be words said, is extraordinary. There is an old world kind of resort called Skytop built in the early 1900s, late 1800s. Stone building, beautiful. We went there with my children and my son Jake at the time had little Matchbox cars and he left it in the room somewhere. The housekeeping service clearly found it. What they did was they knew the next thing we were going to was dinner because we had dinner reservations. It was sitting at Jake's spot.

Oh, wow. And Jake's like, "Mommy, Santa." And we're looking around and say, "This place is extraordinary." Yeah, they're on their game. That's great.

One little thing. But it wasn't like, "Oh, we found your car and we put it on top of the credenza." It wasn't like, "We put it on the pillow," which would've been all nice. They were anticipating where will this kid next likely see it and put it there. It was just a little extra something and personalized. And they knew that was important to them. So I thought that was extraordinary. Anticipating needs, Will talks about it. We just did an Airbnb rental for this trip with my college buddies. No toilet paper. They had toilet paper on the— the wall, but there was no spare toilet paper.

There's one square each. That's it. That's all everybody gets.

There was 10 of us for 4 days and there was 3 bathrooms with one roll. And so someone at some point you hear, ah, and it's like, oh my gosh, we got—

time has come.

We got a situation that's going down. Those things you can anticipate customers' needs and there are some consistent needs. Now here's the tip. When a problem presents itself, a customer says, you know, landlord, where do we find spare toilet paper? Make a note that, oh my gosh, this is something that will come up as a need.

Right.

Have preparation for that.

Yeah.

That little anticipatory stuff is amazing.

Yeah.

Now, on the flip side, the same Airbnb had toiletry there, so they had extra soap, extra toothbrushes. One person forgot their toothbrush and there it was like, oh my God. Yeah, this place is remarkable, right? So just a little bit of anticipatory stuff, right? Makes you different, makes you remarkable, right?

Absolutely.

Vulnerability is another tenet he spoke about. And I think the biggest mistake business owners can make is this cloud of perfection, this, this smoke and mirrors of perfection. Like, we got everything going and never tell customers the bad thing, just keep those plates spinning.

Yeah.

The thing is, customers ain't stupid. They'll sniff those things out. And if a problem does present itself and you had been kind of cloaking it, things can get worse by an amplitude.

Yeah, because I also— it feels like you're not being integral if you're not being upfront. And then back to your other point about, you know, somebody you like, somebody you know, you don't feel like you know that person if they're not being honest with you. It creates a disconnect.

Yeah, that's 100% right. Businesses will do this. They'll miss something and then they'll try to hide it. I've been very impressed when a company has some difficulty that they could have cloaked, but then they told me about it. Here's an example. We had our deck redone by Ron Scalise, which is Mike Scalise's father. He does construction. And the moment I said, "Oh, I trust this guy fully," was about halfway through the project. I felt I trusted him. Yeah, they're building on the deck and I see him come back and they're dismantling stuff and I just go, oh, Ron, what's going on? He's like, there was a piece of wood that was rotting and just in the process we built over it and then we noticed like, oh my gosh. And we were pulling back the deck to put in the proper piece of wood. Sorry about that. That's on us.

Oh, wow.

Well, you could have kept them going. I would have not known because it's covered up.

Right.

Secondly is you could have made a story by why you're doing this and you could have charged me and I wouldn't have known. Like, there's always opportunities that you could have gotten one over me, right? But he chose not to.

Yeah, I was like, trust a customer for life.

Trust this dude.

Yeah.

And I spent another like million dollars. So he got, he got his money, he got his money.

So he knew what he was doing. It's smart. Yeah, you're, you're continuing your business relationships, totally ensuring more business in the future. What about empowering your team? I know on our team you encourage us to also take into our own hands things that we could do that would make the customer experience better.

Yeah.

For example, you're not the only one who will say, hey, let's do a gift for so-and-so. I've had Jenna come up to me who's done a lot with our customers. She has a lot of customer interface time, and she's, you know, said like, this reader was so appreciative of, you know, Mike's input with regard to this, and, and can we do something for him just to, you know, appreciate him? And I love that we have ability to do that, that we can like kind of run on our own and make things happen. Um, it brings a cohesion to us in the way we present, and I love that.

Me too. I'll ask you a couple questions. Okay, answer truthfully. I know what the answer is, but I'm going to ask you. Um, at work, do you want to do your best?

Yes.

Okay. In your relationship with your husband, do you want to do your best?

Yes.

And with your kids and family, do you want to do your best?

Yes.

Yeah, that's, that's True for all humans. I rarely see someone come in and say, "I really want to screw my family." It happens. Yes, it happens. Or come to work and say, "I just want to be a deviant here." Usually when this happens, there's a trigger, a reason why, because they got burned at home in a relationship, or the office is taking advantage of them in some way, and then it's payback time. But the default for you and for me and basically all of humanity is we want to do our best. And what we have to understand as employers is we have to give our colleagues the opportunity to do their best and to to express it. If we constrain and say, "Well, you can only do exactly what I say and fall within these guidelines," we're not going to allow people to express themselves the best way that they can. So we have to hand over the reins and say, "Do what you think is right." Now, there's some organizational constraints. We can't spend a million dollars on a gift or something. But here's the thing, you wouldn't anyway. It's like, you know the constraints. So I think many business owners put these constraints in place that actually hamper the ability for colleagues to do their best, and they feel it's the opposite. So let people give— give people free rein and it just naturally plays out. The best way to do this is to remove yourself from the business. Will, as he shared, wasn't— he was at the restaurant a lot, but he started removing himself more and more, and the restaurant started to excel more and more because he was hands-off. He wasn't interfering with people doing their best.

Right. And not taking over every little job. Like in the example of giving your employees, you know, some room to, to do these kinds of things. He had a, um, somebody who was not hired for this job. He was just regular, I think, kitchen staff, but he was really into beer. And since the sommelier didn't have any more bandwidth to deal with a beer menu, he let this guy run and do the beer and create the beer and create this incredible beer menu. And it really became a thing. And You know, and he didn't— he could have taken that over. He could have been the controlling type and taken that over and made sure that he was aware of what that was.

It could have killed the business.

Yes, exactly.

Yeah, everyone has their talents. I, I think, uh, the mistake a business owner will make— I know I've made this mistake— is when I start a business, by necessity, I have to do everything, right? There was a day of this business, it was just me, and then the wrong belief sets in that, oh, because it's just me, I am good at everything, and I'm better than my colleagues because they don't know as well as I do. Therefore, I'm the best. So whatever you're doing, I can do it better. And that ain't true. That ain't true. Uh, you are far better than me in many facets of this business, and Kelsey is far better than anyone else in many facets, and I'm better in certain areas. Everyone has their talents. Yeah, we need to move people's talents to the tasks that they're doing and allow, uh, people to excel in those areas, but also to make mistakes, to recover, you know, to live the human experience, right?

So I love it.

That's, that's empowerment. And the best way to do that is just get the hell out of the way. Like, literally, physically, I'm leaving again tomorrow. I can't wait, um, because I know you guys got this thing running.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, Kelsey— Kelsey has this thing running.

That's her job. Her job is to keep the machine rolling.

Yeah.

But also everyone's job is to keep their thing going. And it's—

yeah, we manage. We do it.

We do it more than manage.

That's true.

So I'll go through a couple other bullet points, um, He talks about creating systems. Systems are necessary because everything will be a one-off otherwise. So you do want to build repeated systems. And what you need to do is observe your client's experience along the journey, the client journey from prospect to end, and then notice where the opportunities are to reduce friction and to bring consistency.

Yeah. I think you're so good at this. And I know that you sort of have eagle eyes on the company when it comes to this. I feel like you're very, very adept at seeing like that is a struggle for, um, you know, for our, our people. We don't want to create a barrier to the help that they need. So don't, don't prolong, you know, uh, application processes. Don't do anything.

Remove that friction.

Remove that friction.

Yeah. And, and have that process be, uh, repeatable.

Yeah.

Probably the best example is an email. We do a lot of email communication. You're involved, and there's just from individual readers, 20 to 50 a day. Does that sound fair? Okay, that's fair. Of just individual communication, if we had to answer each one personally, that would be perhaps a full-time person just for that one component of all of our different customer interfaces. So what we did is we realized, oh, when people are reaching out, 80% of the time It's these one or two questions they have or comments. And so we can have a standard response to it, but we're also integral. We say, hey, this is not— Mike wrote these words because it's a common thing we get, but this isn't Mike clicking on the send button, right? Um, we're building systems to better serve you.

Yeah.

So there's transparency, there's repeatability, and there's help.

And there's help because that email contains a lot of helpful source information.

Totally.

Yeah.

It's interesting. I remember someone saying, you know, when someone calls the boss to get something done, it's not that they want to talk to the boss. They just want something done.

Yeah.

And I think business owners struggle when they say, oh, I, the boss, have to address this. Then you're going into this individual personalization.

Yeah.

It's the quick, proper answer. I don't want to sit for 4 hours on Experian waiting to talk to the CEO to bitch and moan. I want my problem solved in 4 minutes.

Right. By any Joe.

By any Joe.

By any Joe at all. I just want that.

Amy Joe.

Amy Joe.

Hey, Amy Jo. That would've been a good name for you.

Oh, don't do that.

There wasn't many kids in our school that had the— there was a Bobby Sue.

There was a Bobby Sue?

Yeah, she was a year older.

Oh, okay.

But there was no Amy Joes.

No.

You've been a good Amy Jo. Can I call you Amy Jo now? I like that.

The nickname is Biggie Snacks. Mm-hmm.

That's such bullshit. I didn't mean to swear, but I had to.

There was one more that I liked, which was change rules to increase interaction.

Yeah, yeah. To improve the experience. Yeah. So why do you change rules? Because what got you to a certain point won't get you further along. I'm a, as you know, massive football fan.

Yeah.

My wife got me a book called Why We Love Football just for my birthday. I can't wait to read it. They changed the rules for kickoffs in the NFL this year because of the quantity of injuries. They've improved the game. Now, the first time I saw it, or anyone that's into football sees it, it is very peculiar because it's not what we've experienced in the past. Within a few years, it's the standard, and the old way, we're going to say, why do we ever do that? People were getting violently hurt, concussions, unnecessarily hurt. We have to change the rules, but also be aware that any change is often resistance. But if it's for the better, we have to do it. We're afraid to do it because we're going to get that resistance. So just be prepared to explain why you're changing the rules if it's even necessary. But make sure that you're advancing so that your clients aren't getting proverbially hurt or physically hurt. But always be improving the business. And there's the environment around us. 20 years ago, we weren't worried about TikTok, not even 10 years ago, probably not even 5 years ago. But now TikTok is such a prevalent thing in the space that we're in, it's very relevant. So we've changed the rules of how we communicate. So let's wrap on this. So Don Miller, I think, is the person I'm closest to that constantly demonstrates unreasonable hospitality. And he's built appropriately a fandom, not just of readers, but of influencers who love on Don. So I'll give you unreasonable hospitality. When we were doing this author event, I called Don and he's like, "I'm hosting because I don't like to fly. I like to host." But then we're doing this final celebration at his house before we're leaving, all authors, and there's this food truck pulling up the street and I'm like, oh, some dude's lost his driveway. He's like, no, no, no, surprise, food truck, everybody. And we're eating delicious meals out of this food truck. It was so much fun and it was a great community celebration. And Don just loving on us further. He didn't have to do that and no one would have noticed. He did it, I don't even think for people to notice. He just said, "I just love to love on people." One other example, he has a guest house on his property and he and I were walking around. He was showing me some stuff. They're building and doing cool things. And he goes, "I want to show you my favorite space in this whole property." And I'm thinking, where in his house is it going to be? And he walks me to the guest house and he says, "This view is the greatest view of the entire property." And he gave it to his guests. Yeah. He said, "I decided not to build a house here because my friends need to see this." Oh, that is huge.

Yeah, that's a huge-hearted move.

It's the essence of who he is. Yeah, you know, he's invited our team down and we've taken up on his offer to learn everything on how he operates his business. Yeah, and use it and share.

And we've all been generous with this, with this information. Yeah, yeah.

Let's do some news topics. Anything in the news?

Yeah, I think there is stuff in there.

Do we have time?

Yeah, I think we have a minute. We have a minute. Let's do some of these.

We have a good minute.

Um, okay, this is This is really weird. There's— I don't know if you've heard about this, Mike. Um, in the news, they—

I love your face. I wish people— I hope they're seeing—

they're seeing it, trust me. Unfortunately, they're scratching it. Um, there's this new technology that they have to engineer living skin tissue on fake foundations, basically. So like, you're a robot skinning up a robot, basically.

Yeah.

And, um, Oh my gosh. Okay, so in this study, we managed to replicate human appearance to some extent by creating a face with the same surface material and structure as humans.

Wow.

In the process, he added, we identified new challenges such as necessity for surface wrinkles and a thicker epidermis to achieve a more human-like experience. But there were some pictures associated with this. Oh my gosh, it's a little creepy.

Meaning, could you distinguish between a human and the robot?

Oh, it was so— it was like a small experimental thing, like just basically this tissue over this like metal base, basically. But you kind of see like this this face forming on, on the top.

Did it look real, like the skin?

Kind of, sort of, but like they said, they need to improve it with some more. Yeah, but they will. That's the crazy part. They will eventually get it down to just the wrinkles and all that.

Everything, everything, you'll be indistinguishable. I hate— I got them on my hand.

I hate them too.

I hate them. One of my favorite movies is Terminator 2, and so they have a— I don't know what they— epidural— epidural's not the word. A echo skeleton. I don't know, they have this terminology. I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton. But it's a robot with flesh over it. And so it— the robot actually bleeds a little bit when it gets cut because it's the skin, but under it is in all these robots, all the mechanics. So what's interesting is these movies have predicted our current situation. Like, these movies were 20, 30, 40 years old.

Yes.

I remember watching the movie Airplane, that is like a comedy.

Yeah, the spoof.

And one of the big funny jokes is the head of the airport is racing back to the airport because this plane's in jeopardy and he makes a phone call from his car. He picks up a corded phone and says, "Are you there?" That didn't exist.

Oh, really?

Yeah. So you see this thing and no one— I've seen it played over and people don't react. It's like, "Oh, he's just on the phone." You couldn't be on the phone in a car and that was, "Haha, what a funny spoof." It kind of predicted the future. So my thought is if you want to know who Nostradamus is, it's movie makers. Just pay attention to that. And then the question is we as entrepreneurs have to determine how can this be of service to us? There's a lot of potential negative, but there's a lot of potential positive too. Could we heal people who are injured using this technology? Are there ways to use it to our advantage? But we have to be really stewards of caring for human species effectively as these new technologies come about, as opposed to abusers.

Yeah. And moneymakers and seeing them as—

Yeah, to exploit it.

Exploiting it.

Come from a base of caring for your community. And ironically, that's the best way to run a business is to care for others in a good way. But also this stuff is unstoppable. If someone says, yeah, we're not going to do it, Someone else now has this technology too. They're going to do it.

They're going to do it. Somebody's going to do it.

So why not the good guys? That's New Jersey talk. The good people. Why don't the good people take advantage of these things to be of greater service?

There's one more.

Oh, another one.

Okay. Another one. Apple AirPods being used as hearing aids.

I love it.

I know. And I do wish this had been out for my mom a couple years ago when we finally got her her hearing aids. And we went top of the line and they're so-so, but I'm thinking, oh my gosh, to have you know, just gone with the Apple AirPods and improved things for her that way.

It's Occam's razor, Amy. If you're not familiar with that—

I am not.

Okay, Occam's razor, I think I pronounced it correctly, is a theorem that the simpler the solution, it's likely far more effective. And yet it's human nature to bring complexity to situations. My father too had hearing aids and they were very advanced. He got them through the veterinary The veterans, through the veterans. Yeah, that's why it didn't work. It was actually for cows. It was a cow's hearing aid. It was so big, it was so big.

It was silly, just fell around to the veterans clinic.

And they were high-end. There was all this complexity of ciphering out voice versus background noise and so forth, and it sucked. It didn't work well, right? One day he had to send these hearing aids back in for repair. And they sent him a cheapo headset with a microphone. And they said, "In the absence of these, you have to communicate with him just speaking in this microphone." It was just hardwired in. We had the best conversation ever with him as a family. We just passed the microphone around. My dad heard everything. He fully participated. He was light again. Because these hearing aids, when not done right, and most of them sadly are not, it's exclusionary. They just hear noise and they fade out. It's a social disconnect.

Yeah.

So this Apple hearing pods, AirPods, whatever.

AirPods.

It's genius. That's all it is. It's a microphone. My thought, and I wish I took action on this, was whenever someone that has hearing loss is in a community at a restaurant or whatever, put a microphone on each person, just clip it on their shirt for each person. So that person then can hear every person, but doesn't hear the background noise of other people.

Yeah, because my mom always says that too. The hardest thing is being in group settings. It also exhausts them because they are spending so much energy trying to focus.

Differentiate.

Initiate, focus on who's speaking, try to drown out who's not.

Yeah, yeah. You know what's interesting is, uh, uh, Judy Hutch is a friend of mine. She has a hearing company. Yeah, in Arizona. And if you're looking for the best, I can guarantee you she is the best.

And she's all heart.

She's all heart. And what Judy said to me, which was profound, when it came to hearing aids, she said over time our brain's trying to adjust for our losing hearing, and then we have a hearing aid it brings back clarity that we're not familiar with, and therefore it confuses our brain. We are used to hearing the bird chirping in the background, the fan blowing, but our mind filters it out. As our hearing decreases, we only hear the highest level volume stuff. So when these come back in, we hear everything again. We're like, there's so much noise. There always was there. Our brain needs to retrain.

Gotcha. Also interesting.

All right, Amy, we got to get out of here.

Yeah, we do.

This is Entrepreneurship Simplified. We want to thank you for joining us. We hope you enjoyed today's episode, got some ideas that you're going to deploy in your business. We'll see you next week. Subscribe, please subscribe. Selfishly, it serves us. So if you hit that subscribe button, it gets the word out. I know it takes a minute or two, but please do that. Give us a true and honest rating and review. We'd appreciate that too. And now officially, goodbye.

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