SPEAKER_03 1:27

Last month, let's say we did a million dollars in sales. That million dollars comes from two places bought and earned. But Ken, how'd you hear of us? I SEO'd you, I saw your billboard, I saw your commercial, wherever I'm spending my advertising. Earned is you've done business with me before, or your friend told you you have to use them.

SPEAKER_00 1:55

You're listening to the Ground Transportation Podcast with Ken Lucci of Driving Transactions and James Blaine of PAX Training. Learn how you can build a thriving transportation business with real profits, repeat clients, and enterprise value. And now for your hosts, Ken and James.

SPEAKER_01 2:14

Well, good afternoon, Ground Transportation Podcast audience. My name is Ken Lucci, a business analyst at Driving Transactions. For those of you on YouTube, you can see my sign behind me. My lovely and talented co-host, James Blaine from PAC Chauffeur Training, is not here today. But I am truly blessed, humbled, and actually a little bit nervous to interview. The guy is a living legend, and I'm going to give you a little bit of a long intro. First thing I'm going to do though, I have to give a shout out to Scott Woodruff from Majestic Limo and Coach from Des Moines, Iowa. John, he's one of your disciples, and he swears by your methods. And the book we're going to talk about today is the reason why he's number one in his market. So without further ado, John R. DeJulius III. I'm excited to have you and welcome.

SPEAKER_03 3:07

Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here.

SPEAKER_01 3:10

So John is a business owner. He's a founder of John Rubber's Hair Studio in Spa. He's also the winner of multiple business awards, including the prestigious Ernst Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award. In addition to his primary business, he's an author and he's the founder of Julius Group, a consulting firm that specializes in customer service and marketing. We're going to focus today on his role as an as a business owner and then as an author of this book, which, by the way, has become my new Bible. This book is called Secret Service, The Hidden Systems That Deliver Unforgettable Customer Experiences. Now, I must confess, those of you who know me know I'm a fan of the Secret Service. I originally thought this book was about the United States Secret Service, but frankly, it's more important to everybody in the space. It teaches you, and we're going to take John through some of the fundamentals, but we're not going to ruin the secret sauce. You guys are going to buy this book, it's going to change your business. So let me go through a little bit. John is the president of John Roberts here studio in Spa. His spa has won one of the top 100 spas in the country several years in a row. John will attest. There's a lot of people that provide really mediocre service. I want to read you one quote. Either you can decide to compete on price alone and pray you can maintain your cost structure. Everybody knows in our space the costs are going through the roof, so that you can eke out a profit or you can provide magical moments and create value for your guest. Throughout Secret Service, DeJulius demonstrates how to transform land customer service standards into a memorable customer experience. And that's from the author of The Disney Way. I'm going to give you another quote that blew me away about John. Trust me, anyone can learn the magic of suppressing customer service expectations from John DeJulius. You know who said that? Guy named Tom Peters. For those of you who don't know who Tom Peters is, first of all, shame on you. You should know his book, The Search of Excellence. Peters transformed the business world by moving corporate focus away from pure financial management and numbers and urging customers to focus on building human connections with the team, customers, and community. So the book he wrote in Search of Excellence, one of the most famous books, and that guy raves about John. So, John, welcome. And I'm so pleased you're here. We started this podcast two years ago. Our industry is the show for transportation industry. I think we're suffering from a little bit of identity crisis. Before we started, you and I talked about the fact that our industry has been disrupted by Uber. They're transactional. We need to find our way. Tell us about your origin story. And how did you start, John Roberts? And tell us about that. And then we'll kind of take it back to what this means to anybody who delivers quality customer service. Tell us about your origin.

SPEAKER_03 6:20

So we were kind of the Uber back in the early 90s when we entered me and my wife, we opened this little four-chair, 900 square foot salon, and we had the three no's no money, no customers, no employees. And in any city where we were at in Cleveland, you go in any direction and you could see 20 competitors, right? And we couldn't outspend, out advertise, outbuild, outmarket.

SPEAKER_01 6:46

A red sea industry wherever you turn, you had a competitor.

SPEAKER_03 6:51

Yep, exactly. And so our biggest differentiator back then, you know, because we didn't, we we didn't have the money, was the I don't know. We probably didn't call it customer experience back then. We called it customer service. And so customer service in all industries wasn't good, certainly wasn't in the hair salon industry. And so we from day one wanted to be the best experience our customers had. We call them guests. And the real important thing here was we didn't want to be the best salon experience you had. Let's say you or your wife came in to John Roberts and you got a haircut, manicure, pedicure, fate, whatever it is. You then don't go across the street down the street to our nearest competitor and compare, right? You don't need a salon for a few weeks, maybe a few months, depending on your cadence. So how good we were compared to our direct competitor was kind of irrelevant. We wanted to be the best experience you had in a day. Meaning, if you went to meet, you know, a friend for lunch or you had a doctor's appointment, you had your errands to run, shopping, we wanted every experience after that to pale in comparison. So that became our obsession. All of a sudden it took off, we started growing. Fast forward 10, 15, 20, 30 years later, when we did have deeper pockets, we found out that we didn't need to advertise. The experience that we were delivering generated more new business than any amazing marketing advertising campaign ever could.

SPEAKER_01 8:22

Just because you cracked the code, and in the book, you call it the concept of secret service, and you've identified the customer experience cycle. When did you come to that realization? Or was it a look back 10 years and say, wow, we've been successful because when did you come up with the concept of secret service?

SPEAKER_03 8:45

And tell us yeah, it was building the plane as we're flying it. When we first started in '93, we were really our company, if you want to call it that, was really good at customer service because 50% of the staff was me and my wife. So whether you got it or you didn't, and you can control it. We can control it, right? Through osmosis, you're working next to you, modeling the behavior. We wanted you to do it. But then all of a sudden, our customer experience went backwards when we started growing and we started opening new locations. And all of a sudden, we realized that everyone didn't think this way, and it wasn't innate, it wasn't common sense. And so that's when I started studying the Disneys and the Ritz-Carlton's of the world and figure out how they do it. And what we suffered from, and every business suffers from, it's what I like to call employee roulette. An employee roulette is, you know, if you get Sandy today, oh I I don't have to worry about that. Sandy is a rock star. But if you get Suzanne, I'm holding my breath. She might be new, right? Which you know shouldn't matter to you, right? Unless I'm going to give you a discount, you should get the same experience. Or she just might not be up to par and she's been fighting with her significant other or whatever. She has highs and lows.

SPEAKER_01 10:04

Inconsistency.

SPEAKER_03 10:05

Right. The enemy of a brand's customer experience is inconsistency. Employee roulette, location roulette, driver roulette, whatever you want to call it, and that's what you have to attack. And that's what we had to learn the hard way is how to remove employee roulette. So you get the same experience, whether you know, we were there, we weren't there, we were on vacation, we're, you know, in a coma, whatever it was, you know, that's why you can go to a Chick-fil-a in any city. That's why you can go to a Starbucks in any city or a Ritz-Carlson in any city and have a pretty similar experience from Cleveland, Baltimore, or Seattle.

SPEAKER_01 11:46

So that is extraordinarily prevalent in our industry, where I'll go into companies and look, my business is all about analyzing businesses to improve profits, and we do complete financial management for them as well as assist them grow with really good sales data harvesting. But I'll walk into a company and the guy will say, Oh, you see that guy, he's my most requested chauffeur. And I'm like, I I get that, but tell me something. Why aren't all of your chauffeurs exactly like that guy, cookie cutter? And he's like, Yeah, that is the challenge, isn't it? You're only as good as your weakest link. 100%. And let's face it, yes, you can do you're you master differentiation and you master the customer relationship, but your competitors are irrelevant to you at this point in your career.

SPEAKER_03 12:50

I mean, you know, Jeff Bezos said it first. He said, if I have to choose between focusing, obsessing on my competition or obsessing on the customer, I'm just gonna obsess on the customer, you know, and the rest will follow. And it's just so important that so you know step back a second.

SPEAKER_01 13:08

Yep. How long were you did you own the salon? And and and my for my operators out there, they're listening to the podcast saying Kent's got this guy on that that was cutting hair and hairstyle.

SPEAKER_03 13:19

So how can I learn from a hairdresser?

SPEAKER_01 13:22

Okay, the same thing that you and I learned from I went to the Ritz Carlton Leadership Center, I've read the gold standard, went to the Disney Institute, read the Disney Way. When did you start saying to yourself, you know what, I need to really get educated on creating the ultimate customer experience? How long did you own the business when you came to that realization?

SPEAKER_03 13:47

You know, I we made uh the the uh customer experience our priority day one, uh, but we didn't realize that we had to create the systems uh until we had multiple employees, until again, me and my wife, one of us, both of us, weren't standing next to you. And we started getting complaints and the inconsistencies, or I only want to go to this person. I don't, you know, I don't want to go back to that person. And so then I realized, all right, this isn't common sense. We need systems. And one of the funny things you're talking about my first book, Secret Service, which sometimes I I cringe because I'm like, what could I have known back then? You know, but the the the um the the title of Secret Service, the the draft title was Mastering the Norm Factor. Now, I'm gonna guess you're old enough to remember what I'm referring to.

SPEAKER_01 14:41

Norm from cheers. You also put them in the book, absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 14:45

Yes, and I'm glad I changed it, or I, you know, I couldn't get the rights to it from uh Universal Studios, but that became our our our uh obsession is how can we make everyone feel like norm? Now, it's easy to make the regular that you see twice a week, every you know, schedule. Yes, you know, I know, you know, hey, how's your kids? You know, how's the job at progressive insurance? That's easy. But we wanted to make the person that came, you know, only came in twice a month, you know, feel like Norm. And that's harder. We also didn't want the experience to be dependent on who you got, that you have less of experience because she just started last week. So the first thing that we did was the best example of Secret Service I can give you is still today. So if you walk into any of our salons, you're gonna see, let's say you're gonna see 10, 12 people getting a haircut. Eight or nine will be in a black John Roberts Harriken and cape. One or two will be in a white John Robert Terrick and cape. To you, our customer, we have black and white capes. To us, we know that anyone in white has never been there before. Black, you're an old friend. You don't get treated better or worse, you get treated differently. So, you know, if I'm a massage therapist, if I'm a nail technician, I'm walking through the salon and I see you in a white cape, I might come over and say, Hey, welcome to John Roberts. I'm Tim. I work in the spa. Here's 20% off, you know, whatever. If you're in a black cape, welcome back. Great to see you again, right? So now restaurants use a different color napkin or menu for that. So whoever's coming to your table, the busboy, the server, the manager, they know how to personalize that greeting. You know, it's the same, you know, in your world. Uh, you know, I I've had some great limo experiences where I'm a repeat customer and they know when I get in, they have the MLB network playing on the radio station because they have the way it should be. That's secret service, right? I don't have to tell them, you know, why why are we listening to jazz music that puts me to sleep? Or why, you know, they they you know, it's I don't, it's not, you know, what they want, it's what I want.

SPEAKER_01 16:49

There's no question about that. And a couple of things. I moved from I lived in Florida for a long time. I hadn't been down back to Florida in maybe four or five years. I go down and to have dinner with a friend of mine, and I go into the restaurant, and the receptionist out front seats me, and she's first thing she says, Mr. Lucci, we haven't seen you in such a long time. How are you doing? She didn't know me from Adam. She was 12 when I moved. They seat me, and it says reserved for Ken Lucci. And the manager comes over and says, Ken, how's everything going? I understand. I remember that you moved. How's everything going? What brings you back? And he remembered exactly what drink I wanted. And I didn't really want to pry and say, Do you have index cards? That's not the point. He had developed the system. Yeah, he had obviously looked at the reservation and seen Can Lucci. And he said to the young lady up front, you need to greet him by say, Welcome, Mr. Lucci. It's been a while since we've seen you. And I was so impressed by that. But he nailed it. And when you say Secret Service, there was no index card on the table. It was absolutely seamless. So tell me how did you start writing this down? Did you start training? How did you train your existing staff to when it was more than you tell me the the time frame? You've opened multiple. How many mul studios do you have?

SPEAKER_03 18:31

So I've been, I still own them, but when my speaking consulting business took off in 2003, it kind of took me out of the salon spa industry. We have four locations in Cleveland, Ohio.

SPEAKER_01 18:44

So how did you go from, oh my God, it's me and my wife, but now I'm going to open up a second location. How did you transfer that knowledge? What was the most effective way?

SPEAKER_03 18:57

That was the, you know, systematizing, writing down everything, making it part of the new employee onboarding. You know, we created what we call, most people know it as journey mapping. We call it creating the signature experience. And that's looking at every touch point you have, from when the potential customer calls to get rates and availability and schedule, you know, my my car service or uh hair appointment to, you know, walk in, you know, every touch point, you know, to they they leave, depending on the business model. And now we do this for companies. We break each stage down into three components. The first stage was what we call it service defects. What can we do wrong? What are we and our industry guilty of here that ruins this experience? Not answering the phone, rushing the person on the phone, you know, all those things. Then the middle stage is that signature experience. It's it's what, you know, operational, experiential combined that we have to do the service delivery, yeah. And then the third part of each stage is what are the above and beyond opportunities that may present themselves that a green younger employee wouldn't necessarily mean you would be watching a video of this happening, saying, Oh my God, how did they not, you know, open the door for the elderly woman walking in or the woman with a stroller? But that it doesn't come natural. So we build in what are the most common above and beyond opportunities that may present themselves on the call at you know, at the pickup, at the drop-off, you know, all those things. And then with that that kind of created the whole thing that removed the you know variation, if you will.

SPEAKER_01 20:43

Well, I want to talk about a few things, but to me, the most important thing is you you're focused on every possible touch point from the phone call to the final farewell. And in addition to that, you've mastered the small details. So tell us about that. Tell us about how do you go from ordinary, hey, you did a great job, to wow, you overwhelmed me.

SPEAKER_03 21:12

Yeah. So when we look at that middle part of what we like to call the signature experience, you have two parts in there. You have the operational, standard operating procedures. Okay. So again, whether we're talking about a dinner reservations, a hotel room, a salon spa appointment, or a limo service. When you call up to schedule it, okay, the person on uh schedule it has to get your name, has to get the time, date, you know, day, all that. That's what we call, you know, operational, okay? Standard stuff. Yep. Everyone else does it too. And operational standard SOPs aren't memorable unless they're done wrong. But if you call up and make a haircut for next Tuesday at our Chagrin Falls location, and you show up next Tuesday at five o'clock and you check in and we have you down, you're not calling your friends and your wife saying, Oh my God, they had me down. The only time that's memorable is if we say, Oh, sorry, you're a day early, you're at the wrong location, you're an hour late, hour early. That's the only time it's memorable. Now, it's important to be brilliant at the basics, but that by itself, you're no different than your best competition. So that's where we want to add the experiential of recognizing that you're a VIP, that you've been here before, what your favorite drink is, what your radio station you're preferred to listen to, black coffee or I like Celsius. That's in the cup holder, right? Right. Because you've had that from my past experience. Now that's a wow. That's I can't get that anywhere else I'm going. So it's starting to sprinkle those in. You don't have to have a ton. You don't have to take it from five things to 25 things. That's not realistic. Ken, have you heard um in my newer books? I don't know if you've got to the uh acronym Ford, F-O-R-D?

SPEAKER_01 23:09

Tell me about it.

SPEAKER_03 23:10

All right, this is probably the most popular thing that my clients use today. So on any conversation, in any interaction, we want to learn two or more things of your Ford, F O R D. If I learn two or more things of your Ford, I not only have built a relationship, I now own the relationship because to each and every one of us, our Ford is what we geek out about. It's what we get excited about. Okay. Family, right? Is he married? Does he have kids? How old is his kids? Occupation, right? What's he do for a living, right? What's his title? What's his company? R stands for recreation. What does Ken like to do with his free time, nights, pickleball, marathon runner, yoga, whatever? And then D stands for dreams. You know, what's on his bucket list? So we collect that. That's in our database, and that's where it goes to when someone picks me up, they can say, Hey, how's your three boys? You know, I, you know, I know you travel for a living. You know, have you been anywhere exciting? You love baseball, right? Oh, that's my for. You talk to me about any of those things, you own me, right? And the other beauty of Ford is it keeps us off talking about ourselves, right? We're all genetically coded to you know what's going on in my life. So if you ask me, hey, John, how are you? My instinct is saying, Oh, Ken, you wouldn't believe my flight got delayed last night. My youngest son, Bo, got in trouble. Again, but I'm not building a relationship with you if I'm talking about myself. So Ford helps it keep it off me and focused on you.

SPEAKER_01 24:42

So, you know, when one of the things we all struggle with is the people we try to hire. And you have a chapter in the book called The Front Line. Your front line is your bottom line. Tell me what you mean by that. And then I have a follow-up.

SPEAKER_03 24:58

Yeah, I mean, it's everything. The people you hire are customer-facing position people on the phones, the drivers, the hairdressers, the consultants, you know, they're all customer-facing. One of my favorite quotes to being an entrepreneur, to be in a business owner, is the entrepreneur should be the least valuable short-term asset a company has. And what that means is, and I, you know, I'd like to think I'm there. If if I'm, you know, get hit by a bus and I'm in a coma for you know the next six months, the first three or four, you should not notice anything in my business. It can now, over the course of time, yes, I'm the visionary, I'm looking around curves where, you know, preventing the Ubers. Sure. But in the short term, it should not be dependent on the entrepreneur. And that's really a key. So it should be dependent on the people coming in contact. And the other disconnect in almost every business we've ever worked with is the customer-facing employee is usually not the customer. So let me give you an example. The kid parking cars valet at the Ritz-Carleton has never stayed at a Ritz-Carleton. Agreed. He doesn't drive a Lamborghini, a Maserati, right? That he's parking, right?

SPEAKER_01 26:18

Our chauffeurs don't use chauffeured service for 100%.

SPEAKER_03 26:23

They can't, you know, and I remember the first time I ever worked with the Starbucks, their challenge was their baristas felt guilty about selling you a $5 cup of coffee because they would never pay that themselves. That was, you know, an hour's, you know, or a half, you know, half an hour's worth of work. You're you know, they couldn't understand it. So they had to reframe it for the baristas that you're not selling a cup of coffee. You're selling a living room, a place, a community, a customizable drink that you can order over 170,000 different ways. So that's really important. It doesn't mean we change who we hire, but we got to get them to understand that yes, the person you're picking up and taking to the airport that appears to live a pretty extravagant life that you could be jealous of or whatever you can think of has stuff going on in his life, right?

SPEAKER_01 27:16

No question. They've got more pressure. And what what I try to tell this is the this is where we are, we are at an inflection point in our industry. Now, I'm a finance guy, and we make our money by consulting for large companies, helping buyers, helping sellers. We make our money when we sell businesses, but I am extremely concerned about our industry because we are self-defeating, John. We are not being defeated by Uber. We're being defeated by ourselves, okay, because we think the most important thing is the shiny vehicle, the newest vehicle, and get them as quickly as possible from point A to point B. We are actually the experience is much more important. It is carrying the luggage from the house, literally to the front door of the airport. If they'll let you go in, you go in. It's giving the businessman a quiet environment as a respite. You give them chilled spring water and you present it. We're not selling the ride from A to B. Selling that anywhere, cheaper.

SPEAKER_03 28:28

Cheaper. Anywhere, anywhere. And you want to make price irrelevant. How do you do it? Making price irrelevant, I have a definition for it. It doesn't mean you can double your fees or even charge 30, 40% more than you are today and not lose existing potential customers. Making price irrelevant means based on the experience your brand consistently delivers. I should have no idea what your competition charges. And listen, I'm cheap. I've been the idiot that's driven three extra miles, say 50 cents and something, not realizing I just lost in that exchange. But I do have personally as a consumer, professionally as a business owner, I do have a few businesses that have made me so loyal with the relationship they've built, the empathy they've shown, the peace of mind that they've delivered, and this is important, the brilliant comeback they've made when they have dropped the ball. We're all guilty of that, right? The brilliant comeback they've made that I am so loyal that I have no idea what their competition charge, because I'm not out price checking them.

SPEAKER_01 29:32

So take me back to you're doing interviewing, you and your wife have just moved from a scenario of honey, it's just you and me, kid, and now you are trusting your most important assets, not the business, but the customers, because you're gonna take some time off and you've got to also expand. How do you know when you're interviewing that you've got that you are interviewing somebody that can deliver the kind of experience? Or is it a crapshoot?

SPEAKER_03 30:03

So so it's funny today. Uh we teach this and train this. There's 10 service aptitude skills, aka soft skills. Okay, I'll try to remember empathy, curiosity, ability to make a connection, genuinely like others, friendly, kind, and caring, enthusiastic, energy. I'm missing a couple. Okay, so there's 10. Six of them can be trained. Say that again. Six of them can be trained, can be trained. Yes. Four of them, 10,000 hours isn't gonna move the needle. Okay, so that's why we say the the your interview process has to recognize and catch those four because an example is genuinely like people. Okay, I can't give you 10,000 hours of that. If you don't like people, right? It doesn't mean you're wrong, it doesn't mean you're bad, it does it means you shouldn't be in a customer-facing position. It means you should be in a cubicle doing research, crunching numbers, you know, right? Great, great, but you should not be in a customer-facing position. Now, empathy is something that could be trained. Now, if I find you that you have empathy, great, we're gonna get there faster, right? It's kind of like having experience in your industry, great, that'll be less of a learning curve, but as long as you're willing to learn the way we want to do it. Curiosity that can be trained. I don't know, but you can, but I'm embarrassed of the lack of empathy I had when I was 19, 21, or 25. Yeah. You know, it came from life experiences. To me, at 21, if I met someone that was overweight, that was struggling with depression or addiction, I was like, dude, what's wrong with you? I didn't understand. Now I understand, right? You can train that and same thing with curiosity. Ford helps with curiosity. If I focus on your Ford, it's making me curious versus just talking about myself the whole time.

SPEAKER_01 32:08

Yeah. Or telling me, telling you about the last client I had and how bad the traffic was. Oversharing.

SPEAKER_03 32:14

Oh, we're really short staff. I'm working a lot more because we can't keep any driver. Yeah, right, right, right, right.

SPEAKER_01 32:22

So I gotta tell you a real story. I'm in the back of a car in New York, in black cars. I insist that they didn't tell anybody who I was, and I use a different name. And I'm on my way to the Regency Hotel, and I said to the chauffeur, you know, how's it going? How's it going? Right? And I just want to see, is it well, the fucking president's in town? It's a mess. I'm like, wait a minute, am I in a yellow cab? I couldn't get over that, right? Right. So, but it's also about you're hiring somebody. Yep. What was your process to let them know you were coming in to not only a customer-centric environment, but a customer obsessed. Obsessed.

SPEAKER_03 33:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:07

How do you let them know that?

SPEAKER_03 33:09

So, first off, we do multiple interviews. And listen, at times and back then, we were like everyone else. We needed people yesterday. Yep. But my one of my favorite quotes to this is it's better to lose the sales than the reputation. And what I mean by that is, you know, if demand is more than we can handle right now, great problem, but it's still a problem. And I want 10 times growth every year in all my businesses. But I hire just anyone to take care of you. Well, I'm never, you know, the reputation you now have, the bad taste in your mouth that you now have, you calling up your buddy who recommended us and saying thanks, but no thanks, we'll never recover. I'd rather, rather say, hey, we're at full capacity right now. You know, that'll almost make you want to do business with us more than turning you over to just anyone. So we, you know, we've since day one, and it's from studying at the Disney Institute where I got this, we'd string it out. It'd be two, three weeks, four interviews, and we would, you know, and one of the most important questions is, you know, Ken, what do you know about us? And if you don't know about our reputation, you don't know about our obsession, if you uh you're just you're just interviewing with anyone looking for the best deal. But if you could say, well, I've been a customer, my mother's back up, my sister, my cousin's back up, and I know you know your attention to detail, you're the chick-fil-a, you're the Ritz Carlton of your business. Well, that already helps. One of my favorite questions, you know, another service aptitude skill of the four that you can't train is enthusiasm, right? And so I like to ask this question hey, Ken, on your weekends, holidays, uh days off, evenings, what's your most favorite thing to do? Now, provided it's legal, I do not care what your answer is. Sure, it could be playing Dungeons and Dragons in the weekends for 48 hours. I don't care what it is, fly fishing, whatever it is. What I'm looking for, or what we're looking for, is do you get excited when you talk about your most favorite thing to do? Because if you don't, you're not gonna be excited about anything else. It only goes down from there. So there's a lot of things that we like to call making the interview process ungameable, where you think we're looking for something, but that's not what we're really looking for.

SPEAKER_01 35:39

Right. In other words, they're trying to say quickly, hmm, what does he want to hear? Right. Right, right, exactly. You know, we our industry went through the same thing, and I honestly think it's fundamentally at the core of what our problem was. The pandemic decimated us. We lost 40% of the experienced operators in the pandemic. When we came out of it, all of the older chauffeurs didn't come back. So it would literally be like your best stylist, boom, just decided to retire and move to Florida. Yeah. So we needed a pulse, we needed someone that had a safe driving record, and I'll train you the rest. But what you're hitting upon is what I like to call service DNA. If you're not a nice person who likes to take care of people, if you think providing service is beneath you, this is not for you. Or smiling is an above and beyond. I know, right, right. Culture has got to be fit into this. I can only imagine you got a busy salon like us. We're dealing with hundreds of trips a day. Every chair is filled, someone might be a little slow, there's a little bit of pressure, somebody doesn't like their cut, or something happened. How do you build a concrete culture to really support everything you're doing? How do you keep it positive? How do you make sure your culture is over and above, and they just don't think, well, this is just you know one of John's fans. How did you make it a cultural thing?

SPEAKER_03 37:16

Well, you know, Jim Collins, the great author, uh said the author of Good to Great. Absolutely. He said, say a few things often. Right. And instead of like most entrepreneurs, we chase new shiny objects and say, Oh my God, oh my God, this is what we need. Oh, wait, wait, no, no, not that anymore. This is what right, right, exactly, exactly. And, you know, one of my most proudest things, let's say we're having a company meeting next week or whatever kind of meeting. You go to my staff and say, you know, John's speaking at the meeting next week. They will roll their eyes and say, I could tell you what he's gonna say. And that's that's the best compliment I could have. I come in, I say the same message. North doesn't change. North is north. This is our North Star. We are gonna be the best experience in their day. How, you know, we're gonna know more, care more, give more. No more is no one's gonna be smarter than us at our job. And we're gonna make it obvious. We're gonna remind you how educated we are, because that's where our conversation is gonna be around. Care more is you're not my 1030, you're not my third appointment of the day, you are Ken, and I'm gonna know you're Ford. And then give more is the above and beyond components. Let's remember how Ken takes his coffee. Let's remember, you know, if Ken likes to be called Kenneth, Ken, Kenny, those little things, you know, about it. So we're just constantly reinforcing it. And then when you go to this service recovery that you alluded to, some things is first, don't punish 98% of your customers for what you're afraid 2% are gonna try to get away with. Okay. I'm fine with getting taken advantage of 2% at a time. Not sure I even get that, but because what I get back from the 98%, if you call me up, whatever business you say, John, you know, I ordered a case of books and I only got 15 instead of 20. I don't know how many are in there, but we're gonna send you the five. You don't have to prove it, you don't have to take pictures. Can you know it's the first time you've been doing business with us for years, you've never called and complained. I'm not gonna make you approve anything. We're gonna send them another case of books for the inconvenience. There's something called the service recovery paradox, and you've had this happen on both sides of the fence as a customer and as a business owner. And what it means is if you have expectations, not unreal, just expectations of what it's like to deal with us, and we meet those, you it doesn't mean you're gonna be loyal. If you get a better deal, a coupon, an incentive, you meet someone at a golfing, you'll switch tomorrow. Yep. The the service recovery paradox is if we drop the ball and we make it right, you're gonna be 10 times more loyal as a result. So I joke around, hey, screw up first. It's it's the best customer loyalty uh strategy you can have. Screw up first, make it right.

SPEAKER_01 40:07

It's all about the recovery. And you know, I I back in the day, and you're younger than me. I'm 61. How old are you? I'm a year older. Get the hell out of you. You wear it, you wear it well. But back in the day, you remember when they said a company, a customer that you provide really good service to may tell one or two people, but someone that you do something wrong and don't fix it is going to tell 10. Now that's magnified. Oh my god. Because of bad reviews, social media, etc. And people read bad reviews the same way that they look at a slow-moving car crash. They can't take their eyes off of it. Right. So the recovery, there's two things that I found. The make sure the problem never happens again and go above and beyond. And it's not that the problem occurred, it's go above and beyond. Because again, you you're you're in a business that's highly personal. You're touching me, you're affecting the way I look. And you better, if you want me to come back, you better do it more than right.

SPEAKER_03 41:18

Ken, if I can share a story. My favorite story, it might be in Secret Service. I I don't know what if it happened before. It might be. I have a policy. If it gets to me, it's free. You know, because no one wants to call the owner, GM, vice president up. That's the last thing you want to do. And if you're calling me, you're pissed. And you've taught you've told 20 people about it. And so, so I tell my managers, don't let it get to me because I'm gonna give him whatever he wants, and whatever I give him is gonna come out of your quarterly bonus. Handle it, handle it. So I had a a woman 25, 30, you know, whatever years ago. She called me up and said, Mr. De Julius, I'm a client of your, you know, ex location, and your hairdresser got hair color on my suit. And I'm like, I'm so sorry. Can we clean it? She goes, tried, can't, couldn't get it out. I go, can we replace it? She goes, they no longer sell it. And obviously, the suit. I'm like, can I send you a check for it? And she goes, Well, it's $275. I mean, this is back in the mid-90s. That's a lot of money back then. It's a lot of money. And I said, Can I send you a check again? And she goes, You don't want to see it? I said, No. She goes, You don't want to know how old it is? No. So she says, sure. So hang up. I look up her in her database to see her address. And I see that she's been coming for a couple years. She comes about seven times a year. Good client, never referred anybody. So I send her a check for $275. And I send her a gift certificate for a massage or facial for her inconvenience. So I tell the story, and someone says to me about a year later, Hey, did she come back? Did you retain her? I look her up and she came in seven times more the next year. I'm like, I was so happy. Until I clicked on her referrals. She referred 18 new people in that year. Ken, for $275, where can I spend to get 18 new customers? I tell my employees, get color on everyone's clothes now.

SPEAKER_01 43:24

I know you were kidding. John, you didn't do that. Kind of, kind of not. So one of the things that I the few, first of all, I love the book, and I mean that. And I do reread the Ritz Carlton Gold Standard every once in a while. And I do sometimes, believe it or not, you know, but I really do want to come back to my roots on that. But what I love about this book is you tell stories about other great industries, other great companies in other industries that deliver fantastic service. And obviously, we talk about the Ritz Carlton. You talk in the book about one specific restaurant. You went with a friend, and when the friend went in, they knew his name, everybody said his name, and they delivered him a bottle of wine with a label on it that had his name.

SPEAKER_02 44:11

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 44:12

I looked that restaurant up. It's an independent restaurant.

SPEAKER_02 44:15

Yeah. Right?

SPEAKER_01 44:16

How do you keep that kind of exceptional customer service when you become a chain? How do you do that?

SPEAKER_03 44:25

Well, I mean, again, there's you know, 13,000 Chick-fil-As around the world. Yep, and they figured out how to do it. It's being obsessed at every, you know, the leader, right, has to model the behavior. And if you don't have the right leader, then nothing else is gonna follow. I always say this when you know, I get two types of questions after I speak. You know, people come up to me. The one question, which is easier to answer, is how do I get 50, 500 employees to do what you're saying? I say, all right, get them the you know, blah, blah, blah. You know, I give them the methodology, the conversation we're having. The second question, type of question I get is the harder one. When they say, How do I get my boss, my CEO, to buy into this? And I say, I'll get her the book, well, have her come to my night. But I'm really thinking is you're screwed, right? It's not gonna be a value of the kids if it's not a value of the parent. And if you if I ask you and we ask anyone, name the top 10 companies at customer service, you're gonna get the same answers, Nat. Disney, Ritz Carlton, Chick-fil-A, Zappos, Amazon, all Virgin, all the same, right? Nordstrom, Nordstrom, yes, no question. Now, the thing they have in common is you could never find an interview or a video of Walt Disney, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Tony Shea, Howard Schultz, all those where it could be on any topic and they bring it back to the customer experience. And that's the difference is that these people are obsessed. They will bring it back how it affects the customer experience.

SPEAKER_01 46:05

I don't disagree with you because to me, it's almost like if it's not coming from the top, it's like trying to teach religion to the agnostic. Okay. And that's a favorite phrase of mine because I'm the financial prophet evangelist in this industry, and I won't work with certain people because I say I don't try to convert the agnostic. Okay. If you're telling me you don't look at your financials, you just give your bank statements. To the accountant at the end of the year, and you wonder why you're not profitable, I can't help you. Okay. So my podcast partner he came up with a chauffeur training program called PAX. And he tells the story of a business owner from the transportation space coming to his spooth saying, I got 95 idiot chauffeurs that screw up all the time. How are you going to train them? And what he wanted to say was, I can't because you treat them like that. Right. So, so to make this a full cultural thing, number one, you recognize you couldn't scale without doing it. That's probably the primary thing that you recognize that most people don't realize. When I was a chauffeur, I loved it, by the way. The first year and a half to two years I was in the business, I was in the car. Okay. I had a command car with a laptop, and and but I was still doing rides. I loved it because I nailed it. I didn't go to the Ritz Colton school. Okay. A friend of mine got me into the business. He sent me to the Regency Hotel to work behind the concierge desk for 30 days in New York. It almost talked me out of the business because New York is so hectic. But I understood what that concierge was there. At the end of the 30 days, the concierge said to me, in one sentence, what did you learn? I said, simple. The answer to every question is yes, of course. He said, kid, you got it. And this guy was an older guy. He had been a concierge for 30, 40 years. The guy went home to like a four or five-bedroom co-op. I mean, he just was that kind of a service guy. Yeah. You hit the nail on the head when you said age. I was an ass when I was 25. Well, some people will tell you I was a 35. Anyway, I own businesses, but I was always about do more, put in more security systems. That, you know, do more, get more customers, get more customers. At the end of the day, the referred client, the client that loves you to death, will bring you more business than any Google ad or any PPC. Talk to me about how you fostered referrals.

SPEAKER_03 48:44

Yeah, every customer has survey fatigue today. Right now, sitting in my inbox, I got uh a dozen surveys from Delta and the hotel. I just, you know, and Uber and whoever. And the only people filling out surveys today are the ones really bored or really pissed off. And that's not necessarily an accurate description of your clientele and what they're thinking. And so I think the number one KPI for any business like the ones you know your your audience owns is earned sales growth. And earned sales growth is so last week, last month, let's say we did a million dollars in sales. That million dollars comes from two places bought and earned. But Ken, how'd you hear of us? I SEO'd you, I saw your billboard, I saw your commercial, wherever I'm spending my advertising. Earned is you've done business with me before, or your friend told you you have to use them. Now you have to be obsessed with growing earned sales growth. We're not only obsessed as a company, but individually, I could tell you in the salons the earned sales growth of every service provider we have. In the consulting business, I can tell you the earned sales growth of every consultant I have. We're able to pay people better if they have a higher earned sales growth because we don't have to advertise. Like our advertising budgets and the sales cycle. Let's say you're calling the DeJulius group about hired us for consulting and say, hey, you know, Ken, where'd you hear of us from? Well, I typed in customer service consulting. Well, that's mean you're calling five other companies too, and you're looking for the best deal. But if you call and say, John, I've done business with you five years ago and we need you again, or my buddy, yes, Scott Gudriff. Scott told me I had to meet you. Then you're not you're not calling anyone else, you know, and the sales cycle is going to be smaller. The pricing is, you know, is is is necessarily irrelevant. So yeah, how do you create more earned sales growth? A phenomenal, consistent experience and asking and rewarding for referrals, right? And rewarding the employee who gets the most, rewarding the client. I can't tell you how many times I have referred someone to a business, and it might have been a six-figure contract that they got. And I'm so shocked that they never reached out to thank me. But this is the funny thing. I'll call them up and say, hey, Ken, out of curiosity, aren't you working with ABC? Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're a good client of mine. I recommend. No, I didn't know that. People don't even ask. They even ask. So guess what? I don't want to send you more clients. I'm not looking for anything other than John. That meant the world to me, the confidence that you displayed in recommending someone to me. Now I want to go out and I'm asking other people if they need what you do.

SPEAKER_01 51:40

There's no question about that. And that's one of the fundamental problems we have in our space. Is the first question should be out of their mouth is have you traveled with us before? Yes or no? Okay. Yes, takes you down a completely different road. No. Oh, wonderful. Mr. Lucci, can I call you Ken or do you prefer Mr. Lucci? Mr. Lucci. Mr. Lucci, how did you hear about us, by the way? No one asks or even collects that data. What you're talking about is creating a flywheel, right? Because you can either just keep shelling out money for billboard ads or PPC or going between seven different website companies, and you'll still, your advertising bill will still be 2% of your total income. Or you can do what you've done and you've created a completely different category. It's the earned sale, it's communication with your existing client, and it creates a flywheel effect where now your cost of lead, cost of sale goes way down. And pretty and the time, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 52:47

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 52:49

Because they'll convert faster.

SPEAKER_03 52:51

So you don't have to do a dog and pony show, you know, if you're earned. You're coming to me because of my reputation versus Google sent you me and six other companies. We have to put out a dog and pony show. We have to justify why you know we're different from the other five versus if I'm the only one you're calling.

SPEAKER_01 53:14

Right. And it's the concept of creating not only brand ambassadors, but true disciples, right? Yeah. Your employees have to be your disciples. Okay. And the brand ambassador is going to tell you about the story about oh my God, you have to use these guys. Kevin Harrington from Shark Tank, he was a client for a long time. And he would write into his contracts, I have to use Ken Lucci. He's got to be my driver. He's Ambassador Limousine. You know how that happened? He had a broken piece of luggage. Okay. Broken, beautiful piece of luggage, leather, but the strap got broken. He was, he had happened in wherever I was traveling. So I said to his housekeeper, When's Kevin's next trip? Yeah, it's you know, two weeks from now. I said, I'm gonna be by tomorrow morning to pick up that luggage. I was so afraid, okay, that I couldn't get it back. I waited for the guy to fix the luggage. Waited, and I brought it back. Okay. He still tells that story. Okay, but at the end of the day, that's what it's all about. It's making those memories. I'm 61. That happened when I was 42 years old. But yeah, and he still does that, he still tells the story, and he was my number one referral source. He was the reason why we got home shopping network because of him.

SPEAKER_03 54:32

No, because I can get it cheaper somewhere else.

SPEAKER_01 54:35

No, so I want you to talk about your premise that you never discount, and I want you to clarify that. You don't discount.

SPEAKER_03 54:42

No, no, no, no. Um tell me what you do. I say discounting is a tax you pay for delivering an average experience. We'll give it away, we'll disguise it, and we'll say, hey, Ken, your top 50 customers, they could do a lot of damage in my salon. If they're spending Buku bucks with you, and vice versa, 100%. Hey, Ken, can I give you $50-50 gift certificates for you to give to your top clients as a holiday gift, as a with a VIP gift. And now it's a win-win situation. They get value, they're more appreciative and loyal to you. And I get an opportunity, if they walk in my salon, they're more likely to get turned on to the experience and be a repeat customer and all those great things. And vice versa, you know, and so that you know, we do disguised discounting. It's gift certificates. I love it. Yes, because you know, if we attract the type of customer that comes because there was a 20% off coupon or half off or whatever, no, they're gonna leave us for that same deal.

SPEAKER_01 55:45

Agreed. They're back in the day, there was a platform that did all that. They just discounted, discounted, discounted. And we tried it in the limousine space to get it, it was a headache. But we did exactly what you said with the top shelf restaurants in Tampa, Burn Steakhouse, Eddie V's. We did the same thing because to me it was selfish. I wanted an ambassador-labeled vehicle in front of those restaurants every Saturday night. And we cultivated the relationships with the managers the same way. You know, they I get some calls and I would say, you know, Ken, I need a gift certificate. Something happened. I'm like, no problem. $100 gift certificate. Can we work it out in trade? I said, pay me all in trade. I don't care. We're gonna do a package together. You know, I said the other day, I was talking to a customer, and I said, your people are not selling round trips. I'm their finance guy. Your people, I walk past your reservationist. She's taken an order, first thing out of her mouth is price, doesn't ask, and she's not asking for the round trip. I think we ought to do a gift certificate in the wealthiest zip codes, $50 off a round trip. And he's like, Ken, I'm not discounted by $50. You're not. That's you're spending $3,500 a month on Google ads, and this is what you're ending up with. Cost of lead. The cost of Google leads is more than that $50. It's brilliant. This book has, I could take every page and get what I call the golden nugget from it. So talk to me about DeJulius Group. And not only did you get to be the top in the hair studios and spas, the top 100, you know, there's a quote by the guy from Avita, you know, that shows you product, et cetera. But tell me about DeJulius Group. Tell me why did you start it and what can companies benefit from DeJulius Group?

SPEAKER_03 57:36

Yeah, it was uh, you know, more of an accident. I wish I could tell you I was smart and it was all a plan, but in the 90s when the salons took off and growth and our reputation for customer service, people just started asking me to speak locally at first. And I just did it from a marketing standpoint that you'd hear about the salon and buy your wife a gift certificate. And then every time I spoke, two or three business leaders, owners would come up and say, Hey, can we hire you to bring you into our business? And I didn't know that was a thing. And then it kept on, you know, growing, growing, growing. And then when Secret Service, my first book came out in 2003, I went from a salon owner that spoke to a speaker that owned salons. And it just exploded. And then I started working with Chick-fil-A, Starbucks, the Ritz Carlton, Price Waterhouse, you know, whoever. And then we evolved into a consulting company. We have a customer experience executive academy. We have online tools that just you know focuses just on the employee and customer experience.

SPEAKER_01 58:37

And the beauty is even these business owners, they have plenty of time to read a book. Which book do you recommend that they do? I love Secret Service, that's where I started. My next one is What's the Secret? And then I'm looking behind you, and obviously this is really wacky. If you ask me, you know, what are you doing on the weekends? I'm either walking with my walking stick, listening to podcasts like the Founders podcast, I'm in love with it. Or I'm reading a book, and it could be on any kind of business, and I'm writing notes on it.

SPEAKER_02 59:09

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 59:10

If someone wants to come start on this journey, what's your recommendation? They're a smaller company. What do you recommend they buy for the first book? What should it be?

SPEAKER_03 59:19

The Customer Service Revolution is the most popular book I've ever written, and it is updated for Secret Service came out in 2003. And again, I hadn't left my four walls or Ohio by that time, but I think that has a lot of uh uh uh updated information and then it lands back in every parking lot.

SPEAKER_01 59:40

The customer service revolution. Yeah, exceptional. John, I could literally sit with you go through this stuff with you.

SPEAKER_03 59:48

I love your passion, Ken. You get me excited.

SPEAKER_01 59:52

I'm not good at much, but I'm good at business and I'm good. First of all, we are cracker jack on numbers. We help companies get profitable, we help them prepare to exit, we help founders manage their financials, but I'm concerned from an industry perspective that we are way off our game. And when I found your book, you know, when I found Scott, and I wanted to have him on the podcast, I said, this guy gets it. And he's in Des Moines, Iowa. It's a third-tier market. The demographics are great for the chauffeur space, by the way. They're really good. But this guy, he's got a background as an insurance salesman, as a cop. And I'm like, and as soon as five minutes into the podcast, I'm like, wait a minute, Scott, how did you get so hospitality focused? And he said, every one of my new hires is given John's book, and we take them through our process. So he's being very kind. Thank you. You're doing fantastic work. I am so happy that you uh you decided to to acquiesce. Give us your website and tell us how we can get in touch with you. We are going to recommend the customer service revolution, right? That's your latest. Yep. But how do they how do the bigger companies that I deal with get in touch with the Julius Group?

SPEAKER_03 1:01:14

the dejuliusgroup.com. Thedejuliusgroup.com, and my email is John at the Djuliusgroup.com.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:22

Thank you so much. I got to tell you again, I was very nervous about having you because you're a big name. And I'm so blessed and honored that you'd spend the time. Thank you, Ken. I appreciate that. This weekend I'm going to get into what's the secret, and I'm going to order the customer service revolution. So really thank you so much for spending time with us this afternoon. And everybody in the Ground Transportation Podcast, Lynn, have a great weekend and keep those cars on the road.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:49

Thank you for listening to the Ground Transportation Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please remember to subscribe to the show on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. For more information about PAX training and to contact James, go to PAX and for more information about driving transactions and to contact Ken, go to drivingtransactions.com. We'll see you next time on the Ground Transportation Podcast.