Why Customers Leave (And How Great Companies Stop It) with Customer Service Expert Joey Coleman

Don't build your business to protect yourself from them. Build your business to honor the masses who will happily take your guarantee and see it as a gesture of kindness and generosity and will reciprocate with that same level of kindness and generosity. The biggest mistake I see is that businesses think the sale is over once the customer has the product or once the service has begun.

Got it.

They think, oh, I'm good, I'm done. No, no, no. That's, that's the beginning of the race.

Hey everybody, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Unemployable Podcast. I'm Jeff Dudan. If you grew up in Fort Dodge, Iowa with 6 siblings, attended Notre Dame and the George Washington University School of Law, have traveled 52 countries and have been employed as a defense attorney, a professor, a White House staffer, held positions with the Secret Service and the CIA, and performed 10 years as the first tenor of the Grammy-nominated Washington Men's Camerata. Your name can only be the incredible Joey Coleman. Welcome, Joey.

Jeff, you are too kind. Thanks for that little walk down memory lane. You got a lot of fun aspects of the bio there that I haven't thought about in a while. Thanks for that.

Well, they're all in there, and— but that, that has nothing to do with why you're on the show. It's because you're an author, Of 2, uh, incredible books, Never Lose a Customer Again and Never Lose an Employee Again. And, and you're a, a world-renowned speaker. Uh, so I'm gonna head us in that direction with the opener, and here it is. What is the connection between a con— how a company treats its employees and how it ultimately treats its customers?

You know, Jeff, it's interesting. In most organizations around the world today, the person who is responsible for customer experience sits over in this silo, and the person who's responsible for employee experience sits over in this silo and nary the two shall ever meet. I'm a big believer that customer experience and employee experience are actually two sides of the same coin.

Right.

If you get one right, if we have customers that absolutely love our businesses, our employees love coming to work and dealing with those customers. If we have employees who absolutely are thrilled to show up every day and to serve and deliver, we get customers that are thrilled to do business with us. So, as we improve one, we improve the other. As one starts go down, the other goes down with it. So I see them as inextricably linked, even though most organizations see them as 2 separate job responsibilities or 2 separate silos.

So when you come into an organization and there's clearly some customer disconnects, where do you start? Do you start in inside? Do you start outside in and start talking to the customers, or do you look first at the employees and see, well, who are the people that are responsible for these experiences the customers are having?

It's a great question, Jeff. You know, most companies bring me in on the customer side first. And the reason they do that is because that feels easier to fix. I think as leaders, we often find ourselves saying, well, if we just got this little piece of the business right, everything would take off. And so they start with the conversation on the customer side. But I usually have to be on the job for somewhere between 5 minutes and 20 minutes before I start to quickly realize that the team they're working with just isn't firing on the same cylinders. And a lot of this stuff we have a tendency as humans to overcomplicate. We think that, oh, well, we've got to be getting everything right. You know, you and I were talking before we started recording about parenting.

We did.

And while I would never want to seem pejorative that we should treat our employees like they're children, the practical reality is, as leaders, we're trying to do everything right. And in some ways, we're micromanaging. In some ways, we're being self-critical too much. I believe that if you create the environment for your people to thrive, to succeed, to be autonomous in their actions, to move towards a general goal without prescribing every step they need to take, if we do that and we sprinkle in a little bit of trust and faith, next thing we know, we're moving in the right direction that we want to go.

All right. So something comes to mind I really want your opinion on. And I know you have opinions because I've listened to some of your podcasts about remote work. And yes, I've got to tell you, I maybe I've— I don't know that I agree with everything there, but I mean, awesome.

Perfect. I love it, Jeff. Let's get into it.

But I want to hear it. I want to hear more and, and we can get there. But, but so Robert, uh, I forget how he pronounced the last name, but from Shark Tank. Yes. And Herjavec, whatever. Okay. Robert from Shark Tank. I saw, uh, he had a clip and he said, he said, I hate it. I cringe when I hear companies say that they're a big family.

Why?

Because I get the, I, I get the sentiment that you're a big family and you want to treat people like family. And what are, what do families do? And, uh, you know, we, we're a franchise business, right? So, you know, we try to have a family feel because we want our franchise owners to feel comfortable coming in to know that they're going to be treated well, that there's going to be grace, that there's going to be empathy. So what do we do? We eat together. like a family. We do things like that. But his point was, I would never tolerate from employees the things that I tolerate from my kids or that I tolerate. You know, we're not a family at work. We're a group of people that have agreed that we're chasing a certain goal or a certain mission, that we're going to have mutual respect, that we're going to have accountability, that we're going to work hard together, and we're going to lift each other up. But at the end of the day, you know, there are things that if you don't do them, you know, you're not gonna kick your kid out of your family because they didn't make their bed or they didn't, you know, you just, you're not gonna do that. Or at least I would hope not.

Sure.

So what's your, what's your view on culture when it comes to employees as, you know, making it feel or treating them like family?

Well, the, I, I, whenever I think about family, Jeff, I think of 2 things, right? I think of Tolstoy's famous quote that all happy families are alike and each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. And I think as we look at most organizations, organizations, the ones that are working really well, we point to a lot of commonalities that they share. The ones that are struggling, there's hundreds, if not thousands, of reasons why you might be struggling as it relates to your people and your people mix. I agree that using the term family inside an organization is, frankly, in, in many ways, it's lazy language.

Mm-hmm.

It's not using the most specific. When we talk about The way it sounds like you've raised your kids and the way I'm trying to raise my kids of, hey, we have shared goals. We work together as a team. Everybody's going to pull their own weight. Everybody's really clear on what the overall goal and mission is. And everybody's very clear on the part they play in that mission. That's how we can describe parenting, but that's also how we can describe leading an organization. The main challenge I have with the use of family in a corporate context or a business context is there is a presumption that we've all defined the word the same way. And I don't know about you, but one only need to go to another household to see that every family operates a little bit differently. Every family's got its own habits, its own quibbles, its own way of operating. And if we don't clearly define the expectations in an organization, whether that be our family or our business, we're presuming that everybody understands what we're saying. And if there's anything I know to be true about communication, we can't overcommunicate enough when it comes to this stuff. We think that we've said it enough. We think that our team understands what we're thinking. But the practical reality and all the research shows that that's just not the case.

Joe, I read something about when you grew up that I think you— well, you had 7 children in the family. You grew up in Iowa. I actually went to school at the University of Northern Iowa for a year.

I love it. I love it. Yeah, I had a brother that went to UNI.

Yeah. So like it was my, and I grew up in Chicago, so I go up to Iowa. I go home with a friend. We're driving 2 miles an hour around the Sonic. I'm like, what are we doing? He goes, this is called cruising. And then we all went, and then from there we all went out into the, we went into the cornfields and we partied in a ditch. And that was like, that was my Iowa experience. Didn't work out for me. I had to leave that school after a year and drop back to junior college. But But like, share with me, the story was, is that I think your dad wanted you to do more math or a little bit more calculus, but your mom encouraged you to pursue your passion in the arts. And, you know, and so you went to Notre Dame and I think you got a bachelor's degree in arts and you pursued this in the arts, but you've had a very technical career in terms of that. So talk about that parenting, talk about how that influenced you, and then how does that translate to how you message to your children today?

Jeff, I so appreciate this question cuz I was really incredibly fortunate to grow up in the household that I did. So the story you allude to at the beginning, when I was coming into my senior year of high school, I, you know, was going through high school. The goal was we do really well in high school, we get into a great college. You know, this is just for context of people to, uh, set the stage. You know, this is the late '80s, early '90s when all of this is happening, and it came time to pick classes. for senior year. And my father, understandably so, was like, we need to have you take calculus because calculus is going to be really useful as you move on into college and you have to take higher-level math.

Sure.

And I was thinking that I wanted to take art class because I was already taking— at my school, there were 7 class periods. And rightly or wrongly, my parents' philosophy was, well, there's 7 class periods, so that means you should take 9 classes. What that meant is I took a class before school started, an independent zero-hour class, and I took an independent study class after school ended. So some might call me a geek, some might call me a book nerd, whatever it may be, but I was involved in a lot of different classes. But I wanted to take independent study art. And in one of the few instances that I saw growing up, Dad was like, I really think it should be calculus. And Mom was, it's going to be independent study art. And it wasn't a statement of what she thought. It was a statement of what was going to happen. And I'm thrilled that she did that because it allowed me to counterbalance the logical, technical aspects of what I was learning with the creative right-brain side of how do we express what we've learned? How do we express what we feel? And that's a gift that has served me incredibly well throughout my life in the sense that Yes, I have worked in a number of very technical positions. Yes, I ran an ad agency. I worked as a criminal defense lawyer. I had all of this left-brain education and thinking, but I always tried to pair it with a running equal commitment to the arts, whether that be theater or music or the visual arts, to kind of balance that view. And I think, to be candid, it's part of the challenge we have in our society today is that we encourage children at a young age to specialize. We see this in sports, you talk to any pro athlete and they will tell you, the ones that have made it to the big show, that they played multiple sports and they weren't just in one sport since they were 5 years old, right?

Right.

They cross-trained in a lot of different things. You talk to anybody who's had a successful career, and we can define successful as reached the pinnacle within their area of practice or area of expertise. We can define successful as financial. We can define successful as impact. And they will tell you that they did lots of different things. I think our overall commitment societally to hyper-specialization at a young age is costing us that arts and literature background that allows us to say, well, wait a minute, I'd like to connect this piece over here to this piece over here that no one's ever connected before. And that's where we get unique offerings in the marketplace. That's where we get the kind of remarkable experiences that make people say, wait a second, This is unlike anything I've ever seen before. I want more of this. That's what attracts people. Not that you can do it with the technical proficiency of your 7 biggest competitors who are also striving to do it with the same technical proficiency. All right.

I'm sitting here trying to pick where you were in the birth order. My gut tells, my gut tells me second, but I'm gonna say third.

You know, you were close. That would be oldest. Right. I, so I grew up first. I grew up though. Yes, sir. So I grew up the oldest and, uh, it's, it's been an interesting experience. Do you need context? My youngest brother was born my senior year of college, so we've got a wide gap between all of us. Uh, but yeah.

Well, you're demonstrating firstborn tendencies, but I thought that was too easy. I, I'm like, well, you know, you never pick first or last. So I went to second. Right.

I, I, I try to hide it a little, make it not as obvious sometimes.

Yeah. Well, it, you know, fascinating. And then, so we were talking about family before we hit the button. So how does that relate to, you've got a 10-year-old and a 13-year-old?

I do.

What has, how has that informed how you parent today? I, and you know, sometimes executives like yourself, successful people, I've seen it, surgeons, friends of the family who are hyper-successful, They, it, it, to me, it is almost like they overparent and they get very, I mean, they're very driven and that just flows down through, uh, to their parent. Now, yes, you've had a driven career, but it's also been a diverse career. You've not, you've not been afraid to leave.

Correct.

Correct.

You know, you know, and, and that's, that's an interesting, uh, in many ways differential between the way I grew up and the way I've lived my life and the way I'm parenting. So when I was growing up, we had a rule in our house that you never quit. And if you were to ask my dad or my mom or any of my siblings growing up, what's the first family rule?

Never quit.

The answer that you were expected to give is never quit. And Jeff, I imagine even though we haven't had a, a ton of time to hang out together, that you've had a pseudo-similar philosophy to life of we keep going, we keep going, we push forward. But the reality is there are times where stopping The progress on the path you're on and going a different way is actually the wiser choice. It's the more fulfilled choice. It's the more astute choice. And so what I've tried to do is balance the difference between I'm quitting because this is hard, which is very, very common, especially when we're younger, with I'm quitting because this approach no longer logically makes sense. I have evidence that it's not working. I've tried repeatedly to make it work and it's still not working. And now I'm going to pivot. You know, we came up with this word pivot when it comes to business, which is another way of saying we're gonna quit doing the thing we were doing and start doing something else. Or it's a different approach. Right, exactly. And, and I would, 100%. And I would sense, uh, you know, based just on our conversation that, and I know lots of times when we connect with successful leaders, successful people, and we say, you know, tell me about some of the key inflection points in your life. Rarely do they talk about their successes. Rarely do they say, well, it was going really well, and then we, we did some more of it and it continued to go well, and then we did some more of that and it continued to go well, and here we are today. No, they talk about, oh, here's where I filed for bankruptcy, here's where the IRS came after me, here's where my top client left and went off with my wife's company, and, and I was just like left standing, not only having lost the client but having lost my marriage. You know, there's so many different moments in life that contribute to who we are. I think one of the hardest things about being a parent is it is the one job we have that the feedback loop on whether we did a good job or not is decades out.

Hmm.

You're in that zone right now. Your kids are in their 20s to, you know, early 20s to late 20s. You're in the zone right now where you're starting to get a little bit of the feedback loop on, boy, Did, did what we put down as parents catch? Did it work? How's it going? The real feedback is probably another decade out, maybe 2 for you. I'm looking at 30 years from now before I'll really be able to know, yeah, this worked or this didn't work. And in that sense, I think parenting is one of the hardest jobs on the planet. I have had no job, no position, no role in life where the feedback loop on whether I'm doing— what I'm doing is working or not has been so long. And so I think at the end of the day, we try to live by first principles. We try to do our best. And my governing philosophy with my boys is I try to be the remover of obstacles as much as possible.

Sure.

So what I mean by that is I don't try to make their lives easy, but I try to put them in a position where they have the tools, they're in the environment, they have the mindset that is gonna allow them to excel. But we also very proudly and loudly Celebrate failures in this family. I'm married to an entrepreneur, and one of the questions we will ask on probably almost a weekly basis, if not a biweekly basis, is what's an example of a place where you absolutely failed today? And then we just let the person share, and I share, and my wife shares, and we don't come in with corrective well what you could have done. We just let. The failure sit. I think so often as leaders, we're quick to say, okay, well, here's how we made the mistake. Here's how we'll never make that again. Instead of just letting us sit in the uncomfortable feeling that we made a mistake. That's human, right? To err is human. And so, it's like, let's allow for the space for mistakes. Because when you do that, I think what you do is you empower your people to try something new. You empower them to go in a direction they might not have presumed. And lots of times those happy accidents are the things that result in our greatest achievement. Yeah.

All right. One more question on family and then we'll, we'll move on to it. I know we're trying to get into the material, but do you have a set of written family values or principles? Uh, like you grew up and it was never quit. Um, do you, do you, do you have a set of those? We had a set of those and it was, it really translated from my business life to say, okay, Start every organization with a set of core values and not aspirational ones, but core values that actually reflect who you are and what you believe. And we had 'em up on the refrigerator and doggone it if they didn't start falling outta their mouth some 5 years later.

Absolutely.

And even to this day. So it's, it's so important to get the programming right. And I think as a company builder, I think when I look, and you're right, I look back, all I think about is where I've screwed up. I wake up every morning and I say, oh, I didn't get that done. Or we, we're not doing good enough at this, or we're doing good enough at that. And we don't take enough time to celebrate our successes internally. And when I look back and I think about the things that I've started that didn't go, didn't start well, we have a saying here, if it's, it has to start well to go well. Okay. When have you ever been in a relationship or done anything that didn't start well where it ended up well? So, pretty rare. It's pretty rare.

Yeah, absolutely.

So if you're gonna start well, you have to start with clarity and purpose and understanding what we're about and what, what we're gonna mean to the customers and, and the world and to the employees and all of that. And when I look at it, um, and I started things that didn't go well, it's because they were mushy and they weren't clear enough.

Sure.

And I, and I, and it, and it doesn't have to be like, it's, it's better if it's short. It's better if it's—

Absolutely.

A paragraph or 4 bullet points.

Absolutely. Uh, moral of the story, Jeff, and this, this may, uh, rub some people the wrong way, but a couple thoughts. Number one, we have 2. It's, it's pretty straightforward. And I'll tell you what the 2 were a month ago, and I'll tell you how they're changing. Okay? So if you were to ask me this question a month ago, I would've said 2 things we always ask of our boys when they go out: be kind, do your best. That's it. Because my thought was, if you go through life doing your best to be kind and doing your best to show up the best version of yourself, everything else takes care of itself. If we boil it down to just those 2 things, in my belief, everything else takes care of itself. We have the wonderful pleasure of getting to travel regularly as a family, and I have friends and clients and, you know, readers that live all over the world that we end up in their homes. We were in a home a few weeks ago. with a good friend of mine who I've known since I was in college. He's a client. He's a case study in both of my books. He's one of the few companies that was a case study in both the book on how to create great customer experiences and great employee experiences. And we were sitting at his house and my boys were there, my wife, and he was there with his wife. We're having conversations. And he was asking my sons about school. And one of my sons shared, well, you know, mom and dad always say, That our job is to do our best, but sometimes that creates some pressure that leads to perfectionism. Now, Jeff, I'm sitting here with my wife at the table. This is the first I'm hearing of this, right?

Yeah.

And my son is, he's expressing this not in a smart aleck way or in a challenging way, but just as a very matter of fact. Well, when you're constantly saying, did I do my best? Did I, I could make that better. I could make that better. I can make, he said it can lead to perfectionism. And I'm not exactly sure that that gets the end results that mom and dad were looking for. And I looked at my wife and I said, goodness, 2 things. Number one, they're listening. Thank God we have a proof point that some of what we're saying is sinking in. But number two, we might need to change our messaging.

Hmm.

And I think one of the hardest things as a parent, at least that I've experienced thus far, is you think you're doing it right and then you wake up and you're like, ooh, I'm getting some unintended consequences.

Yeah.

And even if you're not a parent, we've all experienced this as leaders, as friends. We think we're going down a path, we think we're being really clear, we're thinking everybody's on the same page, and all of a sudden we start to see some of the ripple effect, the unintended consequence, and we're like, ooh, no, no, but I, I want some nuance there.

I—

this isn't about best, this is about effort. And then my initial thought was, oh, did you give your best effort? Wait a second, Joe, you just modified effort with the same word that you're trying to get away from is best. Well, And what dawned on me is I think it's often better to lead with questions than to lead with statements. So while my statement has historically been, do your best, I'm playing with a new statement around what level of effort did you give?

Hmm.

And let's just be aware, I don't expect, and it is not sustainable as a human being to give 110% effort in every area of your life all the time. And yet I think for a lot of high achievers, for a lot of successful people, for a lot of goal-oriented individuals, they have that belief. I need to be crushing it at work. I need to be crushing it with my family. I need to be crushing it with my friends. I need to be crushing it in my self-care. I need to be crushing it in my hobby, my sport. And it's just like at some point after decades, that becomes not only unsustainable, but it actually starts to destroy and break down the system. And so now we're playing around and this is fresh, so I'll, I'll have to come back and 20 years and tell you whether it worked or not. But what we're playing around with now is what level of effort did you give? And are we accurate in assessing our own level of effort and then matching that with the desired outcome? If the desired outcome is, hey, I wanna make a sandwich because I'm hungry, do— does this need to be the best sandwich in the history of the world? Absolutely not. Just get the sandwich made, have something to eat, and get back in the game. If this is, hey, I really want to go to school for X, and in order to do that, I need to do really well on this entrance exam, well, then you better really overachieve and give a ton of effort because the stakes are higher. So we're, we're playing around.

We have a family value that addresses that.

Fabulous. Teach me, Jeff. What is the family value?

Always do more than is expected.

How does— expected by whom?

Good question.

That's a good question. That's where— and again, this is new awareness for me coming off the conversation that I had with my son a few weeks ago. I will admit, and I say this from a place of love, I love my parents, but I realize now as an adult that while I might have at the time felt that the expectation was you need to get straight A's, and in fact, more than expected means an A+, and anything less than that is a failure.

Yeah.

That has some negative consequences later in life when I show up in law school, for example, that has a forced curve. And for anybody who's never been to a school that has a forced curve, here's how it works. Let's pretend there's 50 kids in the class and everybody takes the final and everybody gets 99% on the final. The professor's gonna come along and force in a curve that half the class gets a C.

Yes.

Regardless of what actually happened on the exam. Whoa, that's a sobering reality. It's like, wait a minute, you said if I did the test and I did the test well, I got the— no, no, no. There's an arbitrary and capricious guide that is saying, oh, guess what? I'm just going to force these based on who I liked or how I'm feeling, or was that sandwich I ate good? And am I hungry and I want to get back to another meal or something like that? So I think it's an And it's an interesting— I like that concept of let's be aware of it. And I certainly, and I'm sure you have as well, Jeff, have benefited from doing more than was expected. But it's a— I don't know. I continue to dance with it. I continue to dance with it.

I mean, let's say you go into a— I mean, if you want to look at performance and when you hear about the people that performed at the top of their career, the Jerry Rices and People like that. He would, after, you know, everybody would practice and people would go to the locker room and then he would run his, his own personal—

His cone drills.

Right, right.

And the greats all did this. Kobe Bryant is famous for showing up, you know, hours before everybody else began practice. Absolutely. And, and I, and I agree with you that going above and beyond and doing more than is expected is a great way to live your life. I just wonder, at least in the stage I'm at currently with my boys, let's, let's dial in on whose expectations are we talking about? Yours, mom's, dad's. Now, I don't know about you, you know, as I shared earlier from that story of calculus and art, mom and dad had different expectations. Sure. So who am I supposed to do better than? Uh, you know, I, who, who am I supposed to follow? And, and that's the dance. Sometimes it was about, hey, let's do this thing that mom is gonna say, yeah, that was great. Other times it was, let's do this thing that Dad is going to say, yeah, that's great. And I think that's the, the model that growing up in a family or in a household can give us that potentially serves us well later is being aware of whose expectations— and at least for me in my early 50s, I'm increasingly asking myself, what are my expectations?

Yeah.

Not what's the marketplaces or my clients or my audiences, although those matter and I pay attention to those. I'm increasingly asking, well, what are my expectations for this situation?

Yeah. If I look retrospectively and, you know, sitting where I am right now, I think what it led to for us was a habit of finishing, you know, because it's like, if you, like, if you, you're, you're doing something, it's like, is this good enough? Is this, you know, this is probably going to get me by, you know, I've got to move on to other things. And it's like, oh, let's do, okay, well, this isn't, this is, I know it's not complete. I know it's not, my best. I know it's not, you know, expectations, you know, 80% of the class is going to probably turn in something like this, but my expectation is to really finish impeccably here. So, you know, it's interesting. My daughter just sat for the bar. Oh, fabulous.

Good for her.

She just sat for the bar in New York and I said, well, I, and she was, and she was a really Great student and all the way through undergrad and law school. And, and I said, well, how, how'd you do? And she was, you know, a little nonplussed because there was a couple of the essay questions that she felt like she wasn't really prepared for, you know, and, you know, that's another thing is we don't, you know, the, the person who, who can most accurately describe reality without laying blame shall emerge as the leader. And, uh, so she didn't blame, she didn't, she, she fell short of blaming her prep course or whatever it was, not for preparing her or whatever. She's just like, I didn't really have the answer on that. And I said, well, what's the pass rate? She goes, regardless of how people do, they're gonna pass 60 to 70, 65% of the people. So it's, it's a forced curve and they're gonna fail. They're going to fail a certain amount of people. So you're really not competing against the test. You're also competing against everybody else.

100%, Jeff. And as somebody who has taken multiple state bar exams in different states, I will tell you that New York is considered by anyone's imagining absolutely in the top 5 hardest bar exams in the country. Certainly, I would posit in the top 3, and a lot of people consider it to be the number 1 hardest bar exam in the country. So, your daughters, uh, decided to jump right into the pool of the hardest level of competition. But here's the interesting thing. You know what they call someone who doesn't pass the bar exam the first time, but they pass it the second time?

A lawyer.

A lawyer. Yeah. And here's the thing, it's so hard to remember that when you're in it. I'll be the first to admit I did not pass the first bar exam I took. I took the Virginia bar exam and I started studying for the exam. I'm not making this up and I'm not trying to say this from a place of ego. The exam started on Monday. I started studying on Thursday. And the reason I started studying on Thursday is because I was involved with a group at the law school that had this big project that we were doing that a bunch of my compatriots, contemporaries, didn't complete their sections. And it was due the week before the bar exam. So I did their work. Because I was the chairperson of the committee, I was like, I'm going to do everybody else's work. And I put together this huge report and I got everything done. And as a result, I did not put the time towards studying. That I could have put towards studying to pass, and I did not pass. And that was a rude awakening. That was one of the early awakenings in my life where I kind of recognized, well, I did really, really well and went above and beyond and exceeded expectations over here, but that cost me a consequence over here.

Yeah.

At the time, it was pretty devastating. Looking back on it 30 years later, okay, whatever. I, I, I've, I failed and let's use the F word. Right? The F word that most people freak out about is not the F word I think they should freak about. The one I think they think they should freak out about is this concept of getting comfortable with saying, I failed. And to your point and your daughter, and it sounds like she, she listened to what the household message was early on. Let's not blame this failure on someone else. Sometimes other people contribute, but at the end of the day, the only person we can control is ourself and how we show up. All right. I failed. Guess what? Next time it came time to take a bar exam, not only did I pass, but I passed with flying colors because of the consequence of failing. I never would have done that before. I think I would— most bar exams, they actually teach you just do enough to be on the winning side of the curve. Don't, don't try to be the— write the best bar exam ever. No one cares. How do we do that? So I wish your daughter good luck when she gets her results back.

Well, thank you. Question about customers.

Yes.

What is the biggest customer experience mistake that you see repeat, that you see repeated most often?

I would say the biggest mistake I see is that businesses think the sale is over once the customer has the product or once the service has begun.

Got it.

They think, oh, I'm good, I'm done. No, no, no. That's, that's the beginning of the race, right? We, and, and I, trust me when I say I understand the frustration that might come up for someone hearing me, you know, present this philosophy because we work so hard to market, we work so hard to sell, and then we get to the point where, oh my gosh, they signed on the dotted line. Great. Now all we need to do is deliver. And in so many organizations, it becomes an afterthought.

Yeah.

And we race out and we find a new customer, and that customer flounders. You know, somewhere between 20% and 70% of new customers will quit being a customer before the 100-day anniversary. 20% to 70%. The number of people running out the back door as quickly as you bring them in the front door is staggering. And yet most businesses aren't even paying attention to this.

When I think about looking at our customer journey and our customer experience, should we be the ones that are trying to figure out what that customer experience should be? Or do we really just need to ask the customers? But if you look, it's what Jobs did is he's like, our customer, they don't even know what to ask for.

Right. Right. Exactly.

So you think about these incredible businesses that are renowned for having, you know, Zappos having a great customer experience or who's the people that give away the pair of shoes for everyone you buy?

TOMS Shoes. Yeah.

Yeah. TOMS Shoes. You know, some of it has to do with ease of, you know, the ability to buy access. Right. You know, I know that when I go there, I'm going to find what I want. It's going to be easy. I'm going to click it. It's going to get in a cart. I'm going to buy it. So there's certainly a convenience aspect to it. Um, but then there's this, when something goes wrong, or maybe they're, you know, that, that's one area of it. Or, uh, how easy do they make it to compare, understand why I should buy them versus another product?

Totally. Totally.

Versus, with versus a competitor. So, you know, as I, as I sit here and I say, you know, we're a franchise organization, we got about 285 business owners out there operating across 6 different brands. You know, where do I start? evaluating our customers' experience so that I can work with our franchisees to determine what are the vital few things that we can do to become great in the eyes of our customers.

Well, Jeff, to pull a phrase from the world of improv theater, it's a yes and, right? Yes. So yes, it is listening to the customers and what they say, and it's looking at your own customer journey and saying, I know we can do better than that. I know that we can improve on this. In most organizations, an exercise that I do with organizations sometimes when I come in and we work on the client or customer experience is I'll come in and I'll say, all right, everybody's got some note cards in front of them. We'll get the whole company. Whenever I consult with a company, the first rule is I need to spend an hour and a half with the entire organization at the beginning of the consulting project. Because I want to do 2 things. Number one, I want to establish a nomenclature, some terminology, some core values, some philosophical bent, so that when we start to use phrases and concepts later, everybody's heard it. They're familiar with it. They understand what we're doing. But number two, before we get into it, before my own opinions get colored or influenced, I want to get the raw data from the room as quickly as possible. So one of the things I'll say is, What is the number one thing our customers complain about? The number one thing. That's it. Just write it on the note card and hand it in. And then we go through and we put all the things up on the board. And regardless of how many people there are in the room, we usually end up with less than half a dozen. And when we really dive deep into those half a dozen, we can usually fix half of those. In less than 3 months. Hmm. And then I have leaders being like, Joey, you've worked miracles. I'm like, no, I just actually asked your people what's broken. And then because of my status as an outsider, I could push for the resources that we needed to address it. Sometimes it's as simple as we need to spend an hour fixing a button on the shopping cart. Sometimes it's easy as we know that this thing is broken in our email sequence, but no one has taken responsibility for fixing it because it's one's job, right? And so, what do we— I think every organization that is going to make an impact and is really going to succeed has at least one person who wakes up every morning while they're brushing their teeth at home, looking in the mirror, they're thinking, how can I make our customers love us even more today? And in a different house, there's someone wake up, look in the mirror brushing their teeth going, how can I make our employees love coming to work even more today?

Right.

than they did yesterday. And if you have those 2 things happening, everything else has a tendency to sort itself out. Quick story about Zappos, since you mentioned Zappos. So I had the pleasure of working with Zappos for many years and got to know Tony Hsieh, the CEO.

Mm-hmm.

Incredible leader. And one day I was at a party at Tony's house, and we were— he and I were sitting on the couch talking. Tony was fabulous. He would throw these huge parties at his house, but he was a complete introvert. And so he would throw the party and then he would kind of sit in his office or he'd sit in a room where the party wasn't going on and interact with 2 or 3 people, but not more. So I found myself in this great conversation and I was like, Tony, you are known for having one of the greatest customer experiences around. What, what was the thing? What was the thing that, you know, if— can you point to one single thing that you changed? And he was quiet for a second and he said, you know, when we first started selling shoes online, no one else sold shoes online. And all of us grew up learning that if you needed shoes, you went to a shoe store, you tried 'em on, you walked along, your mom or dad stuck their finger on the phone and said, well, where's your big toe? You know, it was an interactive experience with an expert. Either your parents or the shoe salesperson, but you had to try them on to know if they were going to work. He said, and we're selling online. He said, so we came up with this idea of, well, what if we were willing to mail them the shoes, they could try them on, and the ones that didn't fit, they could mail them back? And he was like, that was pretty different. And he said, where we went the extra mile and became extraordinary is when we said, hey, by the way, we'll pay for you to send them back. So now there's no cost. And then they went one step further and they said, how long do you get to try on the shoes? Do you get a day after you get 'em? Do you get a week? He said, I wanted to make it forever, but our accountants only would allow us to do 364 days 'cause we had to realize the revenue within one year. He said, so our return policy was 364 days. I said, Tony, that's great, but what happens if somebody puts on the shoes, they wear them around, and on day 360, they've gotten a year's wear, they say, well, guess what, they didn't fit, and they put them in the box and send it back? He started laughing. He goes, Joey, it happens. I said, doesn't that infuriate you? He said, no. He said, I expected it to happen. When it happens, We mark that account. And the next time they order shoes, if it happens again, we mark that account. And the next time it happens— and he proceeded to tell me exactly how many times they would let it happen before that person would get an email that said, hey, thanks so much for your business. We're just not a good fit. The shoes don't fit. Neither does this relationship. Thanks so much. We have now shut down your account and you will not be able to order from our online store again. It wasn't about the number of times. It was about that he acknowledged that, yes, there are a certain number of humans that are going to take advantage of your kindness and your generosity.

Sure.

Don't build your business to protect yourself from them. Build your business to honor the masses who will happily take your guarantee and see it as a gesture of kindness and generosity and will reciprocate with that same level of kindness and generosity.

Look, that is a, that is such a huge point. I'm sitting here, you know, knowing I worked this weekend to catch up and So much of it was managing the exceptions that, that, that may happen because we're trying to get every little exception out of our business, right? And we're focusing all of our time and energy on these exceptions when we've got 98% of our community that we're serving every day as a franchisor out there that's just trying to build a great business. But, you know, we, we've got 2 or 3% of 'em that are, that are not. And we spend 80% of our time thinking about, you know, oh, these people have gotten over on us and And this, that, and the other thing. And, you know, you just kind of have to move on with those things.

Yeah, exactly.

Make them, make them a non-customer and don't lose sleep over it and just work it into the, work it into the budget.

Jeff, 100%. People ask me all the time, they're like, Joey, why do you think it's so important to keep all your customers? I said, oh, whoa, whoa, hang on a second, friends. That's not the title of the book. The title is, of the book isn't Keep All Your Customers. The title of the book is Never Lose a customer again. I actually believe that the best companies in the world actively fire customers. They fire customers that aren't in alignment with where we are today. You may have customers that are 10, 20 years old that made sense in the beginning. They just don't make sense now. You may have folks that no matter how great your systems and your processes are, folks slip through the cracks. They get into the funnel. They become a customer when they never should have been a customer. And then we spend all of this time because we have this belief that we got to do our best. We got to go above and beyond. That we got to serve every single one. I am absolutely fine when I take the stage knowing that at least 5% of the audience is going to be annoyed by me. 5% of the audience is going to be like, this guy is just too much. I want nothing to deal with him. I disagree with what he said about remote work. I disagree with what he said about core values. Great. Awesome. Go find somebody who you do agree with. I'm not going to lose sleep that you don't agree with me, and I'm also not going to disrespect you by telling you what I think you want to hear when my research, my data, my evidence shows that what I'm putting out there is not just my opinion—it's backed by data and research. And if that works for you, great. If that doesn't work for you, great. Welcome to life. There are billions of people on the planet. Go find someone else who's more in alignment with you, and I'm really fine with that. I'm a big fan of Kevin Kelly's thousand. true fans theory. You just need 1,000 people to believe that what you say is gospel. And if you've got those 1,000, you will have an incredibly successful business. Yeah. You don't need to keep 'em all. Let 'em go.

Where does the role of trust play into our relationship with customers? Where do comp— where do you see companies erode it and where do you see 'em gain it? Or, you know, how much does it matter? I mean, is it, are they trusting us to be consistent with the customer experience? Is that as far as it goes?

No, I think it goes much farther than that. And I think in this day and age, Jeff, the concept of trust is permeating almost every interaction we have. You or I go on social media, we're scrolling along, we see a video and what's running in the back of our head, is this real or did AI make this? Did this really happen? Like, I'm seeing this video and it's shocking. It's stunning. What's going on? But, but is somebody manipulating this? I think the challenge with being alive today is we are coming to the table as humans with such skepticism. And I understand the skepticism. I'm not judging it, but I think what it's making us do is be skeptical of everything. And I don't know about you, Jeff, but for me, that's not a way I want to live. I don't want to go through life thinking everybody's trying to get one over on me. I want to go— I don't want to go through life thinking everything I see online or everything I read or everything has been manipulated and positioned to drive me one step closer to an end goal. It's just, why are we living? Like, that just doesn't make sense. I think the biggest mistake most organizations make when it comes to trust as it relates to customers is they expect the customer to trust them before they trust the customer. And that, that's just backwards. I mean, talk about going above and beyond and doing more than is expected. What if you just led with trust with, hey, here's what we're going to do. Oh my God, there's not a deposit? No, no, I trust you. Like, do you— should I, should I collect a deposit? Are you planning to do something inappropriate with the rental car? I'll happily collect it if you, if you think that you have a plan that's more nefarious. But I trust you. In my experience, it's like when we send kids out the front door and we say, hey, I trust that you make good choices. I haven't seen— That's a lot better than saying, hey, don't do this, don't do that, don't do this, don't do that. Also, don't do this and this and this. It just becomes too much.

No, I think it's bad in any relationship. It's interesting. So I mentioned I was fishing in the Florida Keys last week and we had a big, we had a big time and I decided to, they said, hey, there's this local business called Ship Your Catch. And if you, if you take the fish over there, they will cut it into individual pieces. They will shrink wrap it, they will freeze it to 40 below, and you will have it the next day shipped to wherever you want it shipped. And, you know, and it's okay, well, there's a price to it and, but there's—

Sure.

It's your fresh fish. It's your fish. You've got it. You know, so we took 16 pounds of fish over there to this, this lady. And the first interesting thing was when I got to this, it was a retail location. When I got there, there was nobody there. Hmm. And she said, and she says, you go in and you're in their place of business and there's a scale and there's coolers and there's all these things. They say, just follow the instructions on the board. So we took it and we, we, we had it bagged. So we, we labeled it with our name. I made a, I, she had a very simple form that I filled out my information. She did not ask for credit card information on the form. She just said your address, that kind of stuff. How many bags are you leaving of what kind of fish and that kind of thing. And we, and you put it in the cooler, you cover it with ice, and that's, there's a little camera, right? And, and that's it. And you just followed it. And she said, okay. Well, this was on a Monday and I wanted them to ship it. They only shipped out on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. So I wanted her to ship it Wednesday because I was going to be home Thursday to get it. And she said, well, I'll send you, I'll email you the link and you can make the payment. And it went to spam. I could never find it. So I'm texting her. I said, hey, and I'm, it's Wednesday. And I'm like, hey, you need to, you need to send me the link. Can you text it to me? Because I need to pay you. Because in my mind, What am I thinking?

You're probably thinking, well, if I don't pay, you're not gonna send the fish and then the fish are gonna go bad and this isn't gonna work. I need to get this paid if I want to get the outcome I want.

Right? I mean, they could have shipped it the next week. It still would've been frozen. But, but she said, she said, don't worry about the payment. It's getting shipped. I said, oh. And of course it was like 5 o'clock after the stuff had shipped out. She finally got around to texting me the payment link. You know how fast I paid that? I paid the minute it came in. I, I went in and I, and I sent her paid exclamation point. Thank you. But like, she shipped it and like, who does that anymore today? Nobody does.

100%. And here's the great thing, Jeff. How many times have you told that story? You're telling it right now to your podcast audience and all the tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people that are gonna hear this episode. And on top of that, I imagine you're gonna tell that story next time you go fishing and the next time you go fishing and anybody who says I'm going fishing in the Keys, you're going to say, oh, let me tell you, I got a place for you to go. You want to ship your fish home? This is where you go to. These are the people you talk to. That is the word-of-mouth marketing that can be purchased by investing trust before trust is given reciprocally. It's that simple. But everybody wants to make it so complex, Jeff. That's, that's not a 17-point step prompt that I can put into ChatGPT that'll tell me how to run my business. No, it's It's like, just be a decent human being. It's, it's that simple. Now, here's the thing. If we were to go interview the person that owns that business, if we were to interview that woman and we were to say, how often has it happened that you shipped and someone didn't pay? I would be willing to bet that annually we could count the number of people that do that on one hand.

Right.

Great cost to do in business. Yeah. Who cares? Like some of it is gonna fall through. You're not gonna make money on every single project. If some of 'em break even, if some of them lose money, not the end of the world. Keep your eyes on the prize. Keep moving forward. Show up in business the way you want to be remembered.

Joe, you've got 8 phases of the customer journey, uh, in your book. And you also, I believe, have 8 phases in your book around employees, correct? What's, what's the, how, how similar are they? What's the difference? And, and for employees in particular, what is the, if, if they're, if they're only gonna focus on 2 or 3 of these, what are the most important ones that they can do to help their employee, I guess, acquisition and retention right away?

Absolutely. Well, the 8 phases are exactly the same. Okay. Whether they're external for your customers or they're internal for your employees. And the reason they're exactly the same, Jeff, is humans are humans. Humans are humans. When we start a new relationship with someone, we go through these 8 phases. And frankly, that's whether it's a customer relationship, an employee relationship. I've had readers message me and say, Joey, I applied this to my dating life and it works. I mean, these principles are foundational to our human desires. Let's go through the 8 phases that, as it relates to the employee experience, just to give everybody a context, and then I'll talk about which ones most employers are struggling with. The first phase, the first step in the employee journey is the assess phase. In the assess phase, a prospective employee is assessing whether or not they want to come work for you. And we, as the employer, are assessing whether or not we want to have them work for us.

Mm-hmm.

Right? This is the job posting process. This is the submission of resumes or a job application. This is going through the job interview. This is all the, how about you? How about me? Is this going to work? What do we think about each We then come to phase 2, the accept phase. In the accept phase, the employer accepts that this is indeed the candidate they want, and they extend a job offer to that candidate. If they're lucky, that candidate accepts the job offer. They transition from being a candidate to being an employee. We then go to phase 3, the affirm phase. Now, we've all probably heard of the phrase buyer's remorse. Allow me to introduce you to a phrase that maybe is unfamiliar to your listeners, which is new hire's remorse. It's the exact same thing as buyer's remorse, But it's felt by the employee who says, I just accepted this offer. Should I have negotiated for more? Should I have tried to get a better vacation package? I accepted the offer because I was interviewing for a couple places and they were the ones that made the offer, and I wanted to last it out a little longer to see if I'd get an offer from somebody else so I could get them to bid against each other, but it didn't work. I'm not sure. I mean, you know, now that I think about it, I accepted this offer and I met the recruiting person, but I never actually met the team I'm going to be working with. Geez, what is the dress code there? Where do they go for lunch? What's going on? All these fears and doubts and uncertainties. uncertainties that come into their mind, the typical employer is doing nothing to address those. They're just saying, we'll see you on Monday the 15th at 9:00 AM. They're not addressing all the fear, doubt, and uncertainty, the new hire's remorse that that new employee is feeling. That all happens in phase 3, the affirm phase, where we need to affirm their decision for accepting the job offer. Number 4, the activate phase. This is the only phase in the 8-phase process that lasts but 1 day. It is the first official day on the job. And what do we know to be true, Jeff? We know that when that new hire, that new employee, goes home that night to their significant other, their kids, their parents, their loved ones, their roommate, whoever it is, the very first question that loved one is going to ask them is what?

How was your day?

How was your day? How was it? We know that question is going to be asked, and yet so few employers spend any time I'm thinking strategically about how do I want this new employee to answer that question. Well, you know, I showed up and they got— they kind of didn't even know it was my first day. You know, my manager was out on vacation, so they put me in this conference room, and then somebody from HR came in and gave me a binder and said, here, read through this and sign all these documents. I had to elect what I wanted to do for my health insurance. I had to elect what I wanted to do for my 401. Then I had to watch these old videotapes. Yeah, they were videotapes. I thought it was weird too, about sexual harassment in the workplace. And I was wondering, gosh, do they have sexual harassment here so bad that they got to show these videotapes all the time? What's going on? And then by the time it came for lunch, I was like, am I even in the right place? What am I doing? And then I didn't know where anybody went to lunch, so I went to lunch by myself. I came back after lunch and they were like, guess what? Sorry, we haven't had a chance to set up your computer and your phone yet, but why don't you just like go home and we'll see you tomorrow morning? We'll be a little more ready for you then. Now here's the crazy thing. Most people hear that story and they're like, oh my God, Joey, you interviewed one of the places that I worked in the past? It's like, no, I didn't. But this is so common that these types of stories We laugh at them. We're embarrassed by them. And yet a lot of employers, this is the level of thoughtfulness they're putting into their new hire onboarding on the first day. We then come to phase 5, the acclimate phase. The acclimate phase starts on the second day of the job and it runs for weeks, maybe even months, while that new employee gets acclimated to your way of doing business. The 4 Rs: their role, the requirements of the job, the responsibilities they have, and the relationships they're going to need to maintain within the organization in order to be successful. This one mileage varies depending on the role, depending on the position, depending on your organization as to how long this phase is going to last. But we know this phase ends and transitions to the sixth phase, the accomplish phase, which is when the employee achieves the goal they originally had when they decided to accept the job offer. Pro tip here: it's not to get a paycheck. They have a vision of what this new role is going to be. It's going to be more responsibility. It's going to be growth and learning. It's going to be getting new skill sets. It's going to be setting them up for the. job they eventually want to have. It's going to be creating a level of consistency where they know they're safe going to work and they know that they're not going to be bothered and they know they're going to be encouraged and they know they're going to be supported and they know they're going to be able to grow. Whatever it is, that's unique for every person. And the reality is most employers aren't paying attention to what a new employee is hoping to accomplish while working there. They just write it off as, well, they want a paycheck and a steady We then come to phase 7, the adopt phase. This is when the employee becomes loyal to you and only you. They're not answering the call from a headhunter. You have a competitor that opens up down the street. They're not going to be stolen away to go work for them. They are committed. Big fear we have here as employers, and the big thing that I see employers making a mistake on, is most employers take their adopters for granted. The people who have been with you the longest, you don't appreciate the way you should. You don't acknowledge them. You don't reward them. You don't celebrate them because you're busy putting out all the little fires with the other folks. You take them for granted, which brings us to the 8th and the final phase, the advocate phase. This is when your employee becomes a raving fan singing your praises far and wide. You're looking to hire a new salesperson. This employee's coming to you and saying, hey, my best friend from college could sell white suits to people with ketchup popsicles. Like, this is the guy you need to get. Go get him. You know whether you have advocates in your organization by how long you have to wait to hire someone when you're looking to fill a new role. Because the majority of your candidates should be coming from your existing employees. If they're not, you don't actually have advocates. You might have adopters, but you don't have advocates. So those are the 8 phases. And the question becomes, well, Joey, which phases are leaders struggling the most with?

Hmm.

You could probably tell by the way I described them, there's a couple. The affirm phase, after they accept the job, are you doing anything between the moment they accept the job offer and they show up for the first day on the job? The activate phase, what is that first day all about? And then the last one I'll say is the adopt phase. Look at your existing team members. And when I say, give me a list of all of your team members, now circle the one you're taking for granted. You've answered the question of where you need to put your focus and intention in terms of your adopters.

Yeah. What a great model and what a great reminder. Um, guilty. I mean, we're, we're guilty. We've, we've had people show up and, uh, I know who they report to and I'll, I'll show up and I'll be like, okay, what do you got set up for so-and-so? Uh, and I'll be like, you can't have that first day like that. I mean, it's, you've, you've gotta, you've gotta make a first impression where Um, yeah, so much stuff that, and then I think also too, one of the things we talk about here is outcomes, you know, working backwards from the future. And that's kind of the accomplished phase, right? We do that with our franchise owners.

Totally.

But do we do it, do we do it with our employees? Probably not as much. So, you know, working backwards, you make a different set of decisions working backwards from a, uh, an ambitious, bold, powerful future than you would if you, if you're just incremental. What's the next thing that I do incrementally? Versus actually working towards a goal. You know, probably that type of thinking is what led you to have such a varied career. You're like, okay, well, if I stay here incrementally, my next step is going to be A, B, and C. Or if I want to create a bigger, more robust, or different, more varied future, whatever you were after, then I'm going to have to think differently and probably move somewhere else and work back. You know, what can that add to repertoire to my life.

Absolutely. And Jeff, to build on that, I think at the end of the day, what do you actually want the employee to do? And are you teaching, training, showing them that path? You know, so many leaders, if you look at their day 1, week 1 onboarding materials, it's stuff like, and here's how the copier works. Okay, that's great if their job is to make copies. If their job isn't to make copies, don't have that be week 1 training. Yes, it's important to learn how to run the copier, right? Don't— I'm not trying to diminish that role or that function in an organization. But what I am saying is when I come in to consult with companies on their employee experience, one of the first things I ask them to do is I want a copy of your employee handbook. I want a copy of all materials you give employees before they show up for their first day on the job.

Right.

I want a separate binder or box of everything you give them on day 1, and I want a separate binder or box for everything you give them in week 1 and month 1. Let's see what all these different things are. And invariably what I get is nothing is sent to them before the first day on the job. The box that is given to them on day 1 takes 3 men and a boy to lift. The thing that comes in week 1 is Well, we follow up on the day one stuff.

Yeah.

Like, it's like a handwritten Post-it note. Do more of that. And then month one, it's like, well, we're ready to have your review and see if you're hitting your quota yet. And I'm like, how did we just jump from, you know nothing about us, to we are tracking your outcomes based on things that we haven't even explained how to do to you 30 days in? It just It's just, this stuff isn't rocket science. I was in a conversation with a top 50 brand the other day that's considering having me come in to speak. And they were like, Joey, you know, with all due respect, what you share is, it's not rocket science. It's pretty straightforward. I'm like, yeah, you're absolutely right. I'm under no false illusions that I've come up with something magical and wonderful. This is basic chips to sit down at the table and play the game. And they're like, well, why do you think more organizations don't do it then? And I was like, oh, I actually— it comes down to one thing. And I watched as everybody leaned in and I said, humans, people, humans are humans are humans. We all know that we should get at least 8 hours of sleep a night. We all know that we should be drinking more water than we are. We all know that we should be eating the color green more than we And yet, do we do these things? Absolutely not. Why? Because we're human. Not because we're bad. Not because we don't know what to do. It's because the temptation to do things that feel good in the moment but hurt us long-term is exponentially greater than the desire to do something that, if we compound the interest over time and do it day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, will give us another 8 to 10 years of longevity on the back end. Most of us, we're living in a world that is measured in days and minutes and hours instead of one that is measured in decades or centuries. The problem is we're all trying to live for decades, if not a century. So we need to shift our thinking accordingly.

Joey, COVID changed so many things in this country, really impacted education, Healthcare laws, all social media, all kinds of things, but it impacted the workplace maybe the greatest of all. What's your view of the future of the workplace and how have we ingested all of the change that we had to incorporate during COVID Yeah, well, let me issue a disclaimer and a warning.

Buckle up, folks, because I'm not holding back on this question. I so appreciate the question. Here's the thing. We haven't ingested hardly any of it. We haven't metabolized hardly any of it. There has not been a single event that has occurred in the history of the world that has impacted the entire planet at exactly the same time before COVID COVID impacted every country in the world in the exact same time period. World Wars— World War I, World War II— there were places in the world that weren't barely even touched by World War I and World War II, right? Global wars haven't touched it as much as that pandemic. Here's where I see a lot of businesses have missed The story. Number one, they blame COVID for their problems. I go back to your daughter and taking the bar exam. They're like, well, you know, kids these days, you know, they just don't work as hard as they used to work because of COVID They're lazy, they're idiots, they're used to sitting on their couches. We have all these judgments instead of saying, but I'm asking them to operate in a way that aligns with how I grew up, and I didn't have to deal with that when I was coming fresh out of school. I didn't have a 2-year gap. gap in socialization. I didn't have a loss of learning. You know, I, I've got my, uh, my 13-year-old son. They talk something about the, the reading gap, right? And what happens is the average kid falls back a grade level between the end of school in May or June and the start of school in August or September. Over the course of the summer, they slip back here. Why? Because they don't read as much in the summer as they do during the school year.

Okay.

Okay, I'm thank— I'm thrilled. My boys, they're voracious readers. They love reading. That's not something I have to worry about. But as a member of society, I'm concerned about that. And the assignment isn't, well, let's give them more to read, let's give them more homework. The answer is to say, well, why are we doing these things? Well, because they're not allowed to play outside during the school year because they've got so much homework. Then when we get to the summer, all they want to do is play outside. We got to have more Some of the other things I see leaders doing, and I'm on a rant, so forgive me, Jeff, but the other thing I see a lot of people doing, oh, we need to do this return to work. Originally it was called return to work. Hey, forgive me, but I'm not going to use explicatives, but just imagine the language, right? They've been working the whole damn time. Okay? This isn't a return to work. This is a return to office. This is a return to working here. You were working from home. And in fact, across the board, I have not found a study that didn't show that productivity amongst workers went up when they were working from home. Now, I understand there are other metrics by which we might measure success other than productivity. But what is often used is the excuse of, well, people just aren't as productive. Send me your studies, folks. I haven't seen one that is an accurate study that isn't anecdotal or like, well, it just seems like people aren't as committed as they used to be. No, show me the data that says they're less productive. We then say, fine, we're going to have it be returned to office. Why is the— what has changed in the office that makes it worth returning to? Because the office wasn't that great before COVID Everybody's like, oh, well, we have so much more collaboration. Did you? Did you? You did not. You were inviting people to 30 meetings a day. They never could get stuff done. They were behind on their inboxes. They hated their lives. Don't tell me you're going to be more collaborative when you haven't changed the structure of your business or your operations. since before COVID All right, if you want more collaboration— collaboration, I believe, does work better in person— but don't tell me we're going to bring everybody back to the office to have collaboration and then have everybody still working in cubicles. Kind of defeats the purpose. And here's the thing, last piece of my rant: what we see with young people today is what we've seen with young people throughout history. We've seen the older gray hairs saying kids these days just don't know how to work. And the practical reality is kids these days work circles around the folks that are more seasoned or tenured in the organization because they're AI native, they're digital native, they're— they think about the world in a different way. They have a better understanding of balance. I say this from a place of respect, Jeff. When you talked about being fishing with your son this weekend and having a great time, but then later in the conversation you mentioned you were doing a little bit of work. Work, right? This is not me being critical. The fact of the matter is your time with your son was slightly diminished because of your doing work. I'm not saying you're bad. I do the same thing, right? But here's the thing. We have a generation that's starting to say, yeah, no, I'm not interested in that. I'm not interested in playing that game. I'm not interested in giving all of my faith and trust and commitment to you when you might decide to fire me for no reason, and you have protection in the law that allows you to do that, I can't put all of my trust and faith in you because all I have to do is look at the headlines or look at what happened to my parents who were fired when they were 58 and then were trying to find a job thinking they were going to retire at that company, and now they're going to find a job for the last 6, 8 years of their work life. I'm not going to play this The practical reality is corporate America in particular made the bed we are now being asked to sleep in. If your business metabolizes what happened with COVID if your business builds on the change that has occurred in the workforce, you will be able to have world-class employees who are uber productive, who allow you to achieve all your wildest dreams. If you continue to do business as usual, you will continue to get less than exciting results.

Well, I could see remote work being a force multiplier. If you've got an actively disengaged employee, which some studies would say up to 70% of your employees are actively disengaged some of the time, they're going to be actively disengaged equally on the cube and in the cube and on the couch. at their house. So if you have actively, positively engaged employees who are curious, proactive, engaged, and all of that, then they're going to be as engaged and as excited. So really it doesn't, it doesn't matter as much where they sit. Now we've, I'm old school and, but we built a company in the last 3 and a half years. That grew from 6 people to 80 employees, from 15 franchise owners to 285 franchise owners with probably 2,000 employees out there and several hundred million dollars in revenue. And we, we've built it that fast and we were expecting to have anywhere between 60 and 70 people in office every day. And we were building kind of hot seats for another 35. We were, we were remodeling our, our office for 100. And we now have 9 people that work in the office. So it's—

Yeah. And here's the thing, I understand. And what I love— thank you so much for sharing the reality of what your business has experienced, Jeff, because I think a lot of leaders are unwilling to share, right? But here's the thing, what I sense, and correct me if I'm wrong, and what you just shared is, hey, we were building one way and now that vision that we doesn't match the reality we're living. But the reality we're living is much better than we would have expected in terms of our growth, our success, the number of people who are on board, what we've been able to accomplish, our reach, etc. I'm not saying that remote work is the answer. I'm not saying that in-office is the answer or is bad or any of that. What I'm saying is be intentional about how you're building your business. Be intentional about your values. Be intentional about your operations. Be intentional about the kind of people you bring into the fold and what you do to keep them in the fold. And I agree with you. One of the things that I found when I was writing Never Lose an Employee Again, I interviewed leaders on all 7 continents. And there was a common theme amongst leaders. And the common theme was they would say to me, Joey, I wish my employees cared as much about the business as I do. Okay. When I would interview the employees, there was a universal response from the employees on all 7 continents. I wish our CEO cared as much about us people as they do about the business. If you want your employees to be more engaged, it's real simple. Be more engaged in your employees. Care what they're doing this weekend. You know how I can tell the difference in one question about whether a leader is engaged with their team or not? On Monday morning, when you see that new employee, whether it's on a Zoom call or in the cubicle next to you or wherever they are, and you see that new employee, there's 2 different questions. Question number one is, How was your grandma's birthday party? Question number 2 is, how was your weekend? Now see, if you asked on Friday, what are you doing this weekend? And the employee said, oh, I'm going to my grandma's birthday party. And you remembered that until Monday and you asked them on Monday, that employee knows that they matter as a human being, not just as an employee. If you ask them on Friday, What are you doing this weekend? And they tell you. And on Monday you say generically, how was your weekend? You send a message that the answer you gave me on Friday didn't matter. Now, for some of the leaders listening, you might be saying, my God, I haven't asked anyone on my team what they were doing this weekend in a long time. Well, maybe that's a fun place to start. The employers of choice who are going to have their pick of top talent in the world going forward are the ones who pay as much attention to what happens in their employees' lives between 5:00 PM and 9:00 AM as they do paying attention to what happens in their employees' lives between 9:00 AM and 5:00 PM.

Accept the reality for what it is. Some of the, um, and, and I'm, I've heard you say that a lot of it, employers wanting people back in the, in the office is ego. Because you want to make sure that you have everybody there and you're foisting over them. And to be fair, and I have people in the office, and if it's a busy week for me, we're in one office, there's 9 of us here, I might not even talk to them.

Totally.

So what's the point? So what is the point in them being there? So the things that I struggle a little bit with are this, you know, I have children that are now entering the workforce. Or in the workforce. And I'm sensitive to making sure that they're getting mentorship. And for me to, as an executive, if I'm going to be disengaged with all of the employees and it's going to be convenient for me and my ego, then I have to be sitting and looking at my computer all the time, which is not where, you know, I, I make my hay, right? I'm sure, sure, I'm on my computer doing the things, but I also need to be, you know, being able to, to talk with somebody or to sit down for 15 minutes and answer their questions. And yes, you can do that online. I think it's just a different discipline that you have to set.

100%. 100%. I agree with you totally.

Discipline. Or you've got to, you know, take some of that office lease money, like you said on the podcast, and reallocate that towards bringing people in and having events, but extended events where you get to You get to share, you get to collaborate. I've, when we started this business, we did this great little exercise where, you know, we got everybody together and it's like, okay, what, what, who would you be if you were going to be a Hollywood actor? We did icebreakers and we did all that when we were starting. We haven't done that with our, with our people. So we've, we've kind of, we did the new things when we were new, but I don't think we've carried some of those things forward. So I think, you know, I think it's just again, And again, you know, a lot of us that are building businesses now, we're old dogs and we have the way our preferred method of operating and the way that we do it. And if you really want to engage this younger workforce in today's, in the current situation and reality of today, then, you know, we're going to have to make adjustments to it. So I appreciate the conversation. I just know that like for my kids, I know that when they tell me stories stories. It's about they ran into the CEO and they talked to him for 15 or 20 minutes at an office gathering, and they got to know each other about each other. And, you know, their daughter rides horses and I rode horses and, you know, that thing. And you make that personal, that personal connection.

Yes.

In person. And if people don't come into the office but once a year or twice a year, I, I know that there's something missing there. I mean, sometimes, how about this ever happened to you? Shit, I didn't know you were this Totally, totally.

I get that all the time because most people see me on Zoom and I'm 6'2, and I meet in person and they're like, you're taller than I thought you were. I'm like, yeah, the camera does that, you know? Absolutely. And Jeff, here's the thing. I, I think there's 2 pieces of this story, and I appreciate what you're sharing about kind of like the concerns as it relates to your kids and then balancing that into your own team and how it relates as a leader. The biggest fear I have around people entering the workforce now is the complete and abject lack of mentorship.

Hmm.

You're absolutely right. Mentorship via camera, via Zoom, is a lot different than mentorship in person. Many organizations have paid little to no attention to internal mentorship. Okay? I have a whole case study and examples on this in my book of the companies that do internal buddies or mentorship for new hires and get them on board, even though it feels a little forced on your first day of work to like, hey, here's your buddy who's going to sit with you at lunch. It seems a little weird, but guess what? It works. And the data shows it works. I do think as leaders, we need to take some of that benefit we're getting financially of having our employees work remote and use that to create more in-person gatherings that are not work-related. Let me repeat that for those in the cheap They are not work-related. So you bring everybody together. I had a company that I was working with that were like, we're going to do a 2-day onsite and we want to have you come in and present, Joey. I said, great, give me a breakdown of what the agenda is going to look like for the 2 days. And it was pretty much they were going to have everybody listening to speakers from 8 o'clock in the morning till 8 o'clock at night, like longer than a regular workday because we're having this retreat and we're all at this location. I was like, look, here's the thing. You want to have about 2 hours of content and about 12 hours of mingling.

Mm.

And they're like, what? That's a lot of mingling time. I'm like, yeah, but that's what you're actually paying for when you bring them together. Don't be paying for— pay for productivity when they're at home on Zoom. Now pay for connection. Play games, do icebreakers, go on a hike, do something where you sit around and everybody tells a funny story from growing up, you know, maybe even do something like watch a movie together. And people are like, watch a movie together? They're not even going to be talking. But we're going to have a shared experience. Have meals together. Divide up who's going to be on prep, who's going to be on dishes. Create these opportunities for collisions and human interaction because that's what people are thirsting for and missing. That's what people, I think, what makes the difference between somebody being engaged with their coworkers And not. That's the opportunity. And I think as it relates to our kids and our loved ones, I mean, I try, and I imagine you do as well, Jeff, to identify people on my team that I'm like, I can give this person a little mentorship and kind of level them up to the next level. We've reached the point where that's what we need to be giving back. Last thing I'll say on kind of the idea, because I too am more of an old dog kind of going, well, I don't know about all this setup. I remember very vividly when I started working in a law firm fresh out of law school, where the bulk of things were done on paper. And I came in and I was like, can we get computers for everyone? Like, this is going to make this much easier. I mean, there was still a good amount of stuff that was being typed. I know I'm dating myself with this story, right? But it's It's like, what if you or I walked into a business right now and they were like, oh yeah, definitely. Let me fax my salesperson and tell them. We'd be like, oh my God, fax? Really? I'm not sure I want to work with this company. They just haven't gotten with the times.

They didn't have a copier. They had a, they had a printing press.

Exactly. Exactly. And so the moral of the story is, what are you learning from your new hires? I think so many employers are like, we're going to teach With everybody that comes onto my team, I'm like, great, so here are the things I want to teach you in the first 30 days. I would like you to come back tomorrow with the things you're going to teach me in the next 30 days. Because that's how our organization works. We learn from each other. So what are you going to be teaching? Well, Joey, I'm not really sure what I would teach. Well, what are some things you're interested in? Teach me about one of your hobbies. I just want to create an environment where you feel empowered if you know something that the rest of the room doesn't to speak Speak up, even if you're early on in your career, even if you're early on in this organization. I hired you because I saw something in you. I didn't hire you to say yes. I hired you to say yes and, right? Build on it. What can we do?

So good. So good. Joey, this has been incredible. We do need to start, tug on the reins and turn this horse towards the barn a little bit. We've got a few things to do to wrap up. I just, man, thank you. This has been really incredible. And I honestly think we should maybe run it back again at some point in the future because there's a lot more that I'd like to have personally learned from you and have our audience learn from you as well. I'd be happy to. A couple of things. Well, first, tell people where to get in touch with you now. We didn't talk a little bit about what you're doing for clients right now. So you're doing a lot of speaking. You're speaking nationally, internationally, and then your company is called what?

So, the company's called Design Symphony. The best place to find me is my website, joeycoleman.com. That's J-O-E-Y, like a baby kangaroo or a 5-year-old, you know. Coleman, C-O-L-E-M-A-N, like the camping equipment, but no relation. joeycoleman.com. There, you'll find a bunch of resources about creating remarkable customer experiences and remarkable employee experiences. That is the bulk of what I do. The books are called Never Lose a Customer Again and Never Lose an Employee Again. Again, they are available wherever you like to get books in whatever format works for you. If you like the hardcover that you can take notes in the margin, we've got you covered. If you like the ebook you can read on your Kindle, you're all set. If you've liked the sound of my voice on this podcast interview, you can get the audiobooks, which I narrate, right? So it's available wherever you like to get those. And I would just close with saying this, you know, a lot of the work I do is giving speeches at events, annual meetings, conferences, et cetera. And then I also do work consulting one-on-one with organizations. When you hire me to consult with your organization, you're hiring me. You're not hiring consultants that I've trained. You're getting Joey to come into your organization and help you enhance the experiences your customers are having and the experiences your employees are having so that you get to achieve the goals you want to achieve. And I get to do what I do, which is raise the bar on experiences. You mentioned this earlier, Jeff, when you were talking about shipping the fish and you're like, who does that? I want more stories like in our lives. We've all got plenty of stories of, oh, did you hear about the 3,000 people they're laying off? Or, oh, did you hear about this horrible company and how they treated their people? I want to create a groundswell of companies that have raving fans internally and externally that are countering those stories. When somebody says, oh, my boss, blah, blah, blah, they're like, I don't know what you're talking about. My boss is amazing. He asked me how my grandma's birthday was yesterday, and I thought, I didn't even know that he knew I had a grandma. You know, those types of things, because I think those are the stories that propel us all forward, not only individually and organizationally, but as a species as well.

Awesome. All points lead to joecoleman.com. I've got a curveball and a fastball for you to wrap up here. All righty. If you wanna play, here's the curveball. Gun to your head, you've gotta start a business in the next 30 days. It can't be something that you're currently doing. Where do you see the opportunity in the marketplace? What business, if you were forced, would you start today?

In the current market, what business would I start today where I see the greatest opportunity?

Or, or it could just be something you're passionate about. Could be a physical—

could be a bank. Well, I've got a lot of Yeah, no, I've got a lot of things that I'm passionate about. I think if somebody was looking to become an entrepreneur and they wanted to start a business, I would probably look towards businesses that require physical interaction. And here's what I mean by that. I think in a world where everybody's talking about how are you using AI to do this, what are you using to automate this, I think as the pendulum swings more and more towards digital and automated, there's going to be a huge opportunity In the analog bespoke, how are we doing things unique and hands-on world? So I would say whether this is starting a business that involves more hands-on interaction, or even if you're already in business, what are the physical tangible things you can be doing as a business? I think that's the greatest growth opportunity right now.

Awesome. Okay, here we go. Fastball straight down the middle. You have one sentence to make an impact, or phrase, to make an impact in somebody's life. What is it?

Be kind. Be kind. Life is full of limitless opportunities for you to make the choice to be kind. And I have never found a situation in my life where continuing to double down on being kind to the other people I interacted with, first and foremost, the people who live under the same roof as me. Next, the people that live on the same street as me. Next, the people that I'm dealing with as far as customers or employees. The random person I meet in the grocery store, the random person I see driving down the street who's trying to get in, and I stop and I wave them in, and I don't wait for the courtesy thank you wave. I do it for the gesture of being kind, not for the thank you. I think if we all woke up every day and said, How can I consciously try to be kind today? We would go to bed at night feeling better about ourselves, feeling better about our lives, feeling better about our country, our communities, our planet. I would be kind.

Perfectly said. Joey, thank you so much for being on today.

Thanks so much for having me, Jeff. It's been a pleasure.

Yeah, thoroughly enjoyed it. I'm Jeff Dudan here with the incredible Joey Coleman, and we have been on the Unemployable Podcast. Thanks for listening.