Vance Morris 3:58
All right. You know, you never know what happens with technology. So I appreciate it, Brian, having me on this is it’s been a while since I’ve spoken to, actually, it’s been a little while since I’ve been here. I’m embarrassed to say. But for those who don’t know me, I used to work for the mouse. I worked for Disney for 10 years in their resorts division, so I had the opportunity of having Mickey sign my paycheck. And yes, by the way, people do leave Disney. It’s a long story for me, but I just want to give you a few highlights of my time at Disney and then. So this is a picture of the yacht and beach club resort when it was under construction. This was my first job. I was on the opening team of this resort. It has got a drop-dead gorgeous pool, and it’s actually a five-acre sand bottom pool is the pool. I mean, you could go to this resort, never leave the resort and you’d never know you were at Disney. I mean, you spent a whole weekend there. It’s fantastic. I use this as an illustration that Disney makes mistakes, just like we all do. However, theirs usually have a few more commas and zeros in it than our mistakes. This particular one, somebody thought it would be a great idea to have live fish swimming with the guests. Unfortunately, they couldn’t balance the chemicals so that it was safe for people to swim and it didn’t kill the fish. So our job every day was to pick up dead fish until they were no more. So if you think you’re making mistakes in your business, Disney makes them all the time, and if you caught any of the Disney news lately, they’re half a billion dollar resort for their Star Wars hotel has been shuttered. So they make mistakes. I just always like to point that out. My next job, I worked aboard the Empress Lily as a service trainer here. This was my first exposure to something called character dining. And character dining, if you go to the parks and you stand in line with your kid to get an autograph, you’re in the hot sun, you know, it could be raining. I mean, you could be standing there for a half hour. It could be miserable. Character dining, you actually sit down for a meal, and the characters come to you. So my first introduction to pay to skip the line, pay to get to the front of the line. Disney has been doing this for decades. Interesting note, it was a breakfast at this time was $9.95 a person that was in the early 90s. Now, breakfast is right around $58 so serious, serious price increases over time. Another one at Disney’s, I call it a failure, but it took a long time to fail was Pleasure Island. I don’t know if any of you have ever been there, it’s not there anymore, but this was Disney’s attempt at booze, debauchery, scantily clad women, etc, etc. It was New Year’s Eve every night of the year. So one of the big things Disney is about is they are a storytelling company. So if you Google Pleasure Island, don’t do it now, do it later. If you Google Pleasure Island, there is like a three or four page story of a guy named Merriweather Pleasure who crashed his boat or plane on this island, etc, etc. Disney has a story about everything there. The interesting thing about Pleasure Island, and I understand why they created it, was that they were missing a key demographic. Now, remember, this is before Disney+ and Marvel movies, and they hadn’t bought Star Wars yet, so they were still in kid ride mode. So if you were up to the age of, you know, 14 or 15, you still enjoyed going to the parks. If you’re over the age of 30, well, you probably had kids and you were taking them to the parks, they were missing that key demographic between the ages of 18 and 30, and they just kind of figured, well, what do 18 to 30 year olds like to do, oh, they like to drink. Great, we’ll give them a place to drink. So we had seven nightclubs on this island, and they were a rock and roll club, we had a country western comedy warehouse, but Pleasure Island also drew bad things. So we had a gang problem at Disney, if you can believe it, we actually had to put up a sign that says no colors. And it was the first time that Orange County Sheriffs, the real police, actually had a station in our parking lot. And most weekends, you could see Orange County Sheriffs on horseback there. Where is the only place you see police on horseback? It’s either a parade or a riot, and we weren’t having parades, so enter them. My last job at Disney, I was on the design team and operations team of a little place called Chef Mickey’s. It’s a 400 seat restaurant. To give you an idea of its size and scope, your average McDonald’s does about $2.6 million a year. Your average Chick-fil-A is probably $4.5-4.8 million. Chef Mickey’s, with its 400 seats, today, is at $68 million a year just for one restaurant. So, I mean, it is an amazing cash cow, and it is, again, it’s the pay to play. You pay the premium to sit and have Mickey and everybody come sit with you. So after I like to say I got laid off, and I’ve stopped saying that, I just started saying I’ve been fired twice, which is just a lot simpler, and it usually shuts people up because nobody wants to hear about it, at least in polite circles around here. But I think, like most of everybody on this call, I make a lousy employee. I just don’t like to be told what to do. Probably also why I have two ex-wives. I just don’t like to be told what to do. So I started my own business. I did what everybody, every small boy dreams of becoming when he grows up, and I started a carpet cleaning business. And that was back in 2007. So I was looking for something that I could turn into a premium service, take all of my customer experience knowledge, put it into a service business, and create a premium service with premium pricing. Because if you think about it, carpet cleaners, you know, on that totem pole of home service businesses, you got electricians and plumbers at the top, and you know, like your lawn care guys in the middle, and somewhere near the bottom are carpet cleaners. I don’t know if any of you ever guys ever caught the Joe Polish 2020 interview on Carpet Cleaners, but they had that hidden camera thing, and there’s a huge expose on how we steal the change from your seat cushions and drink milk from the container and put it back in the fridge, which is not held in high regard. So I built that, and built it with the systems, the experience systems, that I learned at Disney, and I put it into a carpet cleaning business. And so I figure, if I can do it with carpet cleaning, there isn’t a business in the world that can’t implement high extraordinary experiences and then be able to charge the appropriate pricing. This is where price elasticity just comes into play, because the better the experience, the more you can charge. So I took it to the world, and this is kind of a slide of the different companies that I’ve worked with, some of these folks, you’ll recognize. Bill, I’m going to have to change out your logo, because you’re not Bill Goff Insurance anymore. So if you want to send me a new logo, I’ll certainly update the slide. But I’ve worked with government agencies, I’ve worked with utilities, orthodontics, lawyers, you name it, and every single one of these companies benefits from an improved experience. Whether you’re online or offline, it doesn’t matter. So if you’re looking at your in-office experience, yep, that can be worked on. If you have an online business strictly in ecommerce or something like that, there’s still a lot that can be done in the ecommerce world that affects the customer experience. So let’s get into the meat of this thing. That’s who I am, and I want to talk to you about what I call the progression of economic value. This has been around for a while, and it shows this graphically, will show you the reason that you want to get to providing experiences for your customers, because we are all in a commodity business. Okay, doesn’t matter what you sell, what your services. I mean, a dentist is a dentist. As a dentist, there’s only so many ways to clean teeth. I think there’s like two or three. So what separates one dentist from another? Carpet cleaners, the same thing, retail, whatever we are all in commodity businesses. And if you think about the basic materials like iron ore or sugar or wheat, those are all on commodity markets, and the market controls the pricing for commodities, so we do not want to be viewed as a commodity, and we want to get out of the commodity business. Next step up are goods. Goods are made from the commodities. Think about that iron ore. We turn it into a steel beam or something that goes on a railroad. It’s now been transformed. It now has a higher value, and there is a leeway in its pricing. Um goods can be put to immediate use. So this is the product that is derived from the commodity it gives you. Depending on your good, you’re gonna get a higher price. And it’s also depending on your service and the product, you’re going to have a higher competitive position. The next step up is services. And these are the intangible activities. Essentially, services are using your goods and delivering them either through your process or through your system. So I know I think Jeff’s on the call a mattress is a commodity. He sells it in his store, but the way he sells it, his service is an extraordinary experience. And so he can price a mattress that you could probably get it. Well, he probably doesn’t sell mattresses from Matt mattress discounter, but you get the point. You can take a mattress and put it into his sales environment, and he’s getting multiples of what the discounters and the commodity folks are getting. Hopefully, I’m not talking for you, Jeff, but hopefully we’re good there. And then finally, we want to be providing experiences. Okay, this is where you create memories, and you see no two people can have the same experience. For instance, if I go to a restaurant with my girlfriend and I’m going to propose to her that night, and she says yes, and the table next to us is a couple, and he’s telling her that they are getting divorced if we both had the same meal, the same chicken, mashed potatoes and peas, mine is going to taste a hell of a lot better than hers, just based on the experience. And so we want to create those memories. So let me give you an example here. Let’s bake a cake. All right, so those of us of a certain age, we know, we remember when Mama or grandma baked our cake for us. They actually touched the commodities, the flour, the sugar, the eggs, etc, the forsake argument. I mean, how much did these ingredients actually cost? I mean, two, three bucks for a cup of flour and sugar. So let’s just say $3. Then, in the 70s, cake came along in a box. Okay, the commodities had been turned into a good and we have the invention of the pre-packaged cakes and fake frosting. Now, how much do these things cost? You’re probably looking at $10 to $12 for the combo, same commodities in the box but now we are at like, four or 5x the price because you have now bought convenience and you have bought time back. All you gotta do is throw in some crappy vegetable oil, and voila, you got a cake. Then in the 70s and 80s, parents pretty much stopped baking cakes all together. Instead, they went to the local grocery store and you can order a half-sheet cake. It’ll be nice and decorated and pretty. It’s going to have a nice inscription on it, and you’re going to probably pay $45 or $50 at a minimum for a half-sheet cake. Same commodities at 10x the price or 15x the price, where we were. So this is where we’re going. So this is services. Now let’s think about experiences. What do families do now? They outsource. The birthday parties are completely outsourced. Say what you will about Chuck E Cheese’s, I won’t eat there, but the place is always packed, okay. For adults, Dave and Busters, Bonkers, you know, these places everybody goes, you drop a couple 100 bucks and then you leave. You don’t have to clean up. You don’t have to, you know, send out invitations, I mean, nothing. How about American Girl? How many of you have purchased an American Girl in your lifetime? Okay, raise your hand. Okay, so I only see four people on the screen, and all four raise their hands. You actually need, like a second mortgage in order to purchase an American Girl, because you’re not just buying one doll for those of the uninitiated, American Girls are dolls. So you can go to Walmart and get a doll for 10 bucks. You go to American Girl, and that American Girl doll starts at 50 but American Girl actually has the longest amount of time that a customer will spend in the store, and it’s anywhere between two and three hours, one visit average time two to three hours. Wouldn’t we like that kind of attention from our customers and prospects? I mean, it’s amazing. So how do they do it? Well, if you get your doll, I mean, the doll can’t just have one outfit, right? You got to have multiple outfits. So you got to buy a couple of those. Those are 25-30 bucks a pop, right? They even have an outfit called Student Council vote taker, comes with a little clipboard, so cute. So let’s say we bought two outfits and they were 25 bucks each. Now we’re up to 100 bucks for the same $10 doll, but wait, you want to get your picture taken with your doll, because, you know, you take it home, it’s going to get scuffed up. Great. There’s another $25-$30 because you go to the American Girl photo studio. Oh, wait, you can’t go to the photo studio yet. You actually have to get your hair done first. So you and your doll go to the American Doll beauty salon and you both get your hair done, dang. Another 30-40 bucks. Now you’ve been there a couple hours and you’re hungry. Well, if it’s in a mall, you could go to the food court, but no child is going to take their new American Girl to the food court. They’re going to take it to the American Girl restaurant, and you’re going to drop another 50-60 bucks on lunch. Now we’re up to like, a 200-ish dollar doll, because we’ve now gone from commodity to experience. And it doesn’t end there. You can actually have your birthday party at American Girl stores, you and 9 of your friends for the low, low price of like, $200 a pop, can go to American Girl and have a birthday party. And of course, it doesn’t end there, because that would be a really anticlimactic ending to my story. You can actually have a birthday sleepover at American Girl stores starting at $500 a person. Now it’s gotten so popular that if you go to the American Girl store in Manhattan, there’s a hoity toity hotel right across the street. I can’t remember which one of them it’s, you know, it’s either a high end Marriott or, I don’t think it’s a Ritz, but they now have the American Girl suite at that hotel where you can go and bring your friends and have a $500 a person sleepover party, all surrounded by American Girl. So if you can be Walmarted, you will be Walmarted, or Amazoned, or whatever company sells really cheap crap and sells it as a commodity. But once you get to the level of experiences, you cannot be copied. You can’t. So like my customers in my carpet, so I still own the home service businesses. I have a carpet cleaning business, I have a oriental rug washing facility, and I have a mold remediation company. So all running on marketing systems, running on service systems so I don’t have to do it. But we have put in place experiences, because at the end of the day, at the end of an interaction with you, what you want your customers to be saying is, oh my god, you’ll never guess what happened when, insert your profession here. I mean, when was the last time you went home, sat down at the dinner table with the family and said, Oh my god, you’ll never guess what happened at the oil change today? That conversation just doesn’t happen unless you’ve been to one of my clients who owns five service stations in Ohio, and he still has the guys look like they’re from the 50s and 60s, all in the white shirts and the bow ties, little white gloves on, and they run out surround your car and open it up and put the little condom on the on the seat so it doesn’t get dirty, and everything. He is providing an experience at the end of it, people are going to be going, Holy crap. You can’t help but to be referable at that point. You want your business to be tellable in Disney terms. What is the story that you want people talking about? My carpet cleaning business, we’ve created an experience out of getting in the front door. All right. One of the boring, mundane things we have to do is get in the front door. So we have created an experience out of that first and this is all scripted and documented, so if anybody messes up, we can go right back to the standards book and say, Hey, you missed a page. So we park in the street. We don’t park in the driveway, because, God forbid I got an oil leak, now I get something else I gotta clean up. Technician gets out of the van, and he’s in a clean, crisp, new uniform, because he carries extra uniforms on the van with him. He gets out of the van, he gets his tool bag, he gets his carpet, and he gets a little gift, and he goes to the front door, lays down his little gift, and then knocks on the door and takes three steps back. Now we’ve been taking three steps back long before covid. The reason being, because my guys are big, so you don’t want 250-pound Josh nose to nose with Mrs. McGillicuddy, who’s 89 years old on the other side of the screen. Just not, you’re gonna scare the crap out of her. So we take our steps back and we knock, because friends knock. Sales people ring the bell. Mrs. McGillicuddy opens the door and we say, Hi, my name is Josh. I’m here to create your healthy home. May I come in? So we don’t just barge in. We ask to be invited in. We go in, or excuse me, we lay down the carpet and we do an exaggeration of wiping our feet on the carpet. We’re putting on a show. Okay? We’re providing the experience we want her to see it, and then we put booties on our clean shoes. Then we enter the home. That doesn’t end there. We then give Mrs. McGillicuddy a gift. Now, how many of you have received a gift? I mean, a real gift, not not a tchotchke, you know, logoed pen, or some crap like that or, you know, a cheap clip. I mean, a real gift before the plumber, electrician, carpet cleaner, did any work in your house? Anybody? Raise your hands. I only see one screen, and I’m going to guess that all the other screens are blank as well, because there ain’t nobody that does it. Now, my competitors know that I do this because I’ve seen them hiding in the bushes outside of my customers home. They’re actually watching my guys do all this. They have yet to copy it. I can only think of a couple of reasons. A, they’re dumb, which you know, that would be a good Dan Kennedy-ism, they’re just too stupid to do it. Or B, they can’t afford to do it because they are not charging premium prices that allows us to put on that experience. So let’s go back to this gift. So what does giving a gift do? It creates and starts a process called reciprocity. I give something to you. You feel compelled to give something back to me. Now, the gift isn’t extravagant. Cost me under $5 but it’s a customized little blue box, and in the box is a bottle of spot remover, a bag of cookies and a little note from me, saying, Thank you very much for allowing us into your home. If you have any questions, here’s my personal cell phone number. That’s it. Boom, done. When we implemented that gift, we saw a 26% increase in our mid tier package, which equated to $65,000 of additional sales every year by implementing that little $5 gift box. So can you guys come up with, and I know you can, can you come up with a small gift that you give to your customer before they even buy anything, before they say yes, before they sign the contract. Is there something that you can send them? Not a cheap clip, please, not a notepad with your logo on it. But what could you send them? And the reciprocity you will get is going to be absolutely amazing. So that is kind of the end of my spiel.
Outro 30:14
Thanks for listening to the Timeless Marketing Podcast with Brian Kurtz. Visit BrianKurtz.net and click Podcast at the top of the page for a full transcript and show notes. If you are interested in working with Brian personally inside of Titans Xcelerator, go to briankurtz.net/help to see how Titans can help you grow and scale your business. That’s B-R-I-A-N-K-U-R-T-Z [dot] net [forward slash] help.