227: Relationships drive the economy in small business with John DiJulius

John DiJulius, author of The Relationship Economy

John DiJulius and Bill Ringle discuss The Relationship Economy.

>>> Visit MyQuestforTheBest.com for complete show notes with more expert advice and inspiring stories to propel your small business growth.

Top 3 Takeaways from this Interview

• Use technology to form basic tasks, enabling employees to focus on what’s more important.
• Build a culture internally that creates an emotional connection with your employees with each other.
• Create a relationship built-in training for new and existing employees because they don’t just have it, and it can be taught, and if you don’t teach it, it can be translated into actions, and it’s gonna be cold transactions instead of warm interactions that build loyalty.
• The art of building relationships has five keys: authenticity, insatiable curiosity, incredible empathy, one must love people, and must be a great listener.
• We create certain nevers that we would never do or always do if the opportunity presents itself.

Interview Insights

Read the Show Notes from this Episode

Q: When you are growing up who’s someone who you think of who inspired you?

A: I have a long list, but let me start with my mom; and it may sound stereotypical, but she raised six kids, all under the age of 20…she had this unbelievable energy…she never made excuses nor complained, and just had this unbelievable faith and belief in all her kids…[1:29] Q: And as a result of your mom’s strong faith and belief in all of you and you, in particular, John, how do you draw on that lesson that encouragement, that role model, that she shared with you back then? How does come through today in a decision today, or the way you treat people?

A: I think it’s believing in people even when it’s not easy to…you know when someone failing…one of my kids…one of my employees…[02:40] Q: What makes it possible for you to continue to believe when people are in a tough situation?

A: Drawin’ in my experience growin’ up, it wasn’t easy to believe in. I was ADD LD, requested to repeat a lot of grades…and my mom always stuck it up for me and told me I was to do a great thing. And whenever we’re faced with that situation, I always say and ask my leaders to do the same thing; when someone’s failing, “let’s look in the mirror first,” no one came here to fail. No one wants to be making mistakes; we give them all the support, encouragement, and confidence we can. And it’s usually something we could’ve done better, you know when we do that most of the time we get rewarded, it’s kind of the same thing, and no ones ever gonna give them second or third chances…as I told you, I like words, and another favorite word of mine now is ‘Encourage’…look at the word, split it up, ‘In-courage,’ and the new meaning is to put courage in someone else… [03:15] Q: This isn’t your first book, Relationship Economy, what is it that inspired you to say all of these things that I’ve learned, all of this list that I’ve put together, all of these processes need to be shared and put it into book form? What was the point when you realized that Relationship Economy needs to be a book, John?

A: We’re in the midst of the digital age, the digital revolution, and I love technology…and technology is not the enemy; we weren’t using it to eliminate customer experience, the human interaction face to face, and just seeing how the pendulum is swinging so far over that high tech note touch and seeing the ramifications in the digital age is having on us personally and professionally…you know, today’s illiterate are those who cannot make a deep connection with others truly and you know when you think about that we can all point the finger in us older people like to think that these are the millennial…we are the one who raised them, and we’re judging them. And number two, make no mistake about it, the lack of people skills that is happening in our society is the responsibility of the business leaders to fix…and that’s where it all comes, that’s where the best companies I have found are leading the relationship economy by building, marrying digital and human experience to the best outcome. [05:50]Q: Where do you see that evidence of the fix occurring where businesses have taken responsibility and said we want our employees to have great communication skills and people skills because that’s one of our values, it’s something we care about?

A: So, as we probably know, there is a rapid decline in people’s skills and we’re in the midst of the touch screen age and that’s not a generational thing, right? We have little kids on iPad, and we have grandparents all over social media, so across the board, our people skills are eroding, and lack of interaction is causing us to be relationship disadvantaged. They say the length of social relationships is equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes per day, and it’s not an isolated problem for just the millennial, every generation is a little weaker than the one previous…our digital intelligence is up, but our emotional intelligence is down. Leaders are getting younger because of our reliance on digital intelligence…Over 40% of our employees have bosses younger than them…younger leaders who didn’t have the decades to formulate the relationship skills that must have to have and might microwave emotional intelligence….No greater skill can be taught or worked on than the ability to build an instant rapport with others, whether that be an acquaintance, customer, coworker, friend or a total stranger. That should be taught in every school level, at home, and in business. Unfortunately, it’s not. And so that’s where businesses have to focus on that if they want to be successful. Because the easiest thing to copy today is technology. Innovation used to give us 12 to 18 months to give our company a competitive advantage. Well, today’s innovation is all technology, and I’m sure though you and your listeners have used the Uber app, I’m sure they’ve used the Rift app. And when I’ve made those apps black and white, you can’t tell which one is which, and like I said, it’s the easiest thing to copy if your competitive mind and you come out with some gadgets…that’s the easiest thing I can copy. So by itself, technology is not the differentiating. So we gotta create three things that I find that companies are dominating the relationship economy are doing. They’re using technology to form basic tasks enabling their employees to focus on what’s more important. Building relationships result in higher customer loyalty, lifetime value, and job satisfaction. The second thing is to build a culture internally that creates an emotional connection with your employees with each other. Right now, in history, we have the highest turnover business I’ve ever had, and there’s more job available than people looking, and too many businesses are throwin’ up their hands…business leaders throwin’ up their hands…that’s why we have more turnover…great companies don’t have high turnover even in today’s time. The cheap play has the high customer satisfaction of all, anyone in their industry. They also have, they also don’t pay any better than their competitors. And thirdly they have the lowest turnover of their competitors. Same for American Express, same for all world-class businesses. And finally, the third piece to that strategy is to create a relationship built-in training for new and existing employees because they don’t just have it and it can be taught, and if you don’t teach it, it can be translated into actions, and it’s gonna be cold transactions instead of warm interactions that build loyalty. [07:56] Q: Where do you draw the line? what kinds of questions do you use to evaluate the line as to where technology should have a role in taking over transactions or activities, and where should it stop because now it’s starting to erode the fundamental relationship that we have of each other?

A: I’m all for technology that makes companies faster, freein’ up the time, their agents on the phone, their advisers can focus on where the expertise lives, so that could be chat box, and frequently asked questions and scheduling appointment, and all of those things…I said earlier that technology is not the enemy using it to eliminate the human experience. So there’s Fido, a wireless company in Canada kinda like Verizon Wireless, and they are forcing their customers to use their self-service kiosks to a point where if you don’t and you call anyone, and you talk to someone, they charge 10 dollars in your accounts, right? Same thing with Spirit Airlines; if you don’t check in online and you checked in at the airport with their kiosk, they would say there’s a fee you would have to pay. So there’s a significant percentage of the population that wants to speak with someone, and for those that don’t, when they reach a point that can’t be rectified, they should be penalized when they need help from a human being. So that’s where it’s too much and removing the face-to-face, and I don’t engage with that. I’m not loyal to an app; I’m loyal to a human being, and that’s what makes price irrelevant; that is what makes a brand, an organization I can’t live without, not their technology. [12:52] Q: What are some of the things that you teach, maybe two or three ideas, you teach in your customer service training that is unique, that they wouldn’t get anywhere else because it helps them understand the kind of relationship you wanna have with your customers?

A: So everyone has to walk away from most important is how good any company is at customer service, any department, it comes down to their average level of service aptitude – CEO, to the mechanic warehouse, janitor, to the newest employee that’s starting next week – and service aptitude is not innate, its not something we’re born with, and think of every customer-facing new employee between the ages of 19 to 25, they don’t have high service aptitude. You and I didn’t grow up flying first class, staying in a five-star resort, or getting a Mercedes Benz when we turned 16, yet we are expected and we were expected that our employees to give that experience to that kind of clients, guests, patients, whatever…it’s not fair…so understand that no one comes to work with high service aptitude. It is not the employees’ responsibility to have high service aptitude, it is the company’s to train it them, and that’s the soft skills when most the companies train them for technical skills. [19:36] Q: So do you look for people, particularly who are dealing with customers in the spa business, who had experience in other related industries, or would you…take someone who had three times as much experience or they have six years experience working at another spa because then you would have to un-teach them, all of the bad habits they’ve learned?

A: Correct…we don’t look for industry experience because we…wanna think totally like a different organization…we don’t want anyone with an industry experience, very rarely do we want anyone with industry experience, we don’t expect, its a bonus, but we don’t expect employees to come with high service aptitude, right? We wanna train them what that is, what that looks like, how you build a rapport, how you make a brilliant come back when we dropped the ball, how you show compassion and empathy, and that is all a part of our training, and building instant rapport, that is huge…The art of building relationships has five keys to it. And I believe 4 of the five can be trained…so the first one must be authentic, the second one has an insatiable curiosity, the third key to the art of building relationships is having incredible empathy, and the fourth one must love people, and the fifth one must be a great listener. Of those five, I believe number four, must love people, must the only one, the greatest training can’t help. [21:30] Q: How do you find that out in an interview?… How do you find indirect ways to identify whether that’s something present in them so that makes it the better fit?

A: You have to make the interview process un-gameable…there are several techniques…when there’s a key candidate, probably the executive level, he takes them, that person for a meeting to a diner that they use all the time…and they purposely have the dinner screw up on the candidates’ order repeatedly…just to see how the person handles stressful situations. there’s another great technique we’ve learned…instead of spending six hours with six people, we’ll spend one hour with six people, and we’ll go around the room and tell us a time where you were above and beyond a customer and so what the candidates are thinking is whoever has the best answer score the most point, and that’s the opposite. We’re paying attention to what the others are doing when the other five candidates are speaking…is he nodding, smiling, or laughing at what the other candidate said, making them feel comfortable cause that’s what we were looking for, and the last example I’d share with you, we call it the five E’s, we call this the Engagement indicator on the interview…do that in 3 seconds, 30 minutes…and the five E’s are eye contact, enthusiastic greet, ear to your smile, engage and educate. So we keep track of that o the interview process to see someone who makes eye contact with us, how often they smile…now, I can’t stress this enough; I almost don’t like giving this example for an interview process because you cannot expect the candidate to be doing these things if the interviewer isn’t doing these things. [24:10] Q: So another thing that you do is you take some of the ambiguity out were people working for you as you’ve pointed out in the book because you don’t say these are recommendations, you have never and always lists. Talk about how you came up with that.

A: Yeah, so we create certain nevers that we would never do or always do if the opportunity presents itself. Never point, always show them…why are we making our customers do the work, “yeah, absolutely, let me send you the attachment, let me send you a link.” That’s pointing. Never say no. You can’t say no in any of my companies. They always don’t mean you say “Yes,” many things you can say yes to. Always say yes, “let’s work out what we can do,” right? It’s never a “no.” But while we may not be able to make that happen today, here’s what we can do. Never say “any problem,” its a double negative, it means it’s not inconvenient for me to do that for you, or certainly not about my convenience but yours. So always say, “my pleasure” or “absolutely, I’d be happy to.” [29:43] Q: What are energy givers and energy suckers?

A: Energy suckers are vampires…there are people I limit my time be around…the energy givers raise the confidence of everyone they get in contact with, they’re constantly showing gratitude and thanks, give everyone else the credit, they believe in others…they are there for others when they struggle or going through hard times…[33:05] Q: Are these behaviors can be taught or somebody just this way or not this way?

A: I believe everything can be taught. I was not an energy giver…I have a carpe memento statement…and its what I wanna bring to every interaction I have…five years ago I created my carpe memento statement; it was to “create an energizing moment”…I have it on my phone, I have it on my mirror, in my bathroom, everywhere, my visor…create an energizing moment…and that was almost too easy…but here’s the problem my energy was always positive…the harder part was making, what kind of energy I’m bringing. [34:07] My Quest for the Best Lighting Round [36:48]

Expert Bio

Known as the Authority on world-class Customer Service, John is an international consultant, keynote speaker, and best-selling author of three Customer service books. His newest book, The Relationship Economy (Greenleaf Books), will launch in fall 2019. John utilizes his proven methodology with world-class companies like The Ritz-Carlton, Lexus, Starbucks, Nordstrom, Nestlé, Marriott Hotels, PwC, Celebrity Cruises, Anytime Fitness, Progressive Insurance, and Harley Davidson, Chick-fil-A, and many more.

John isn’t just talking about it; he lives it as a successful entrepreneur of three businesses. John Robert’s Spa started in 1993, has grown into a chain of upscale salons throughout Northeast Ohio and has repeatedly been named one of the top 20 salons in America. John’s primary business, The DiJulius Group, is an international consulting firm focused on changing the world by creating a Customer Service Revolution. His third business, Believe in Dreams, is a nonprofit that helps make dreams come true for deserving children. John will demonstrate how you can make Customer Service your single biggest competitive advantage, become the brand Customers cannot live without, and make price irrelevant!

Contact Info for John DiJulius

Web address: https://thedijuliusgroup.com/

Travels from: OH Westerville

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​Books Authored by the Guest