Jeremy Weisz 8:15
these businesses, you go into business help them but you also run brick and mortar businesses that talk about some of the the stuff that you employ in in the carpet cleaning business. Or,
Vance Morris 8:24
well, if you think about the carpet cleaning industry on the Home Service totem pole, you know, you got electricians and plumbers, you know, way at the top. And then carpet cleaners are down below just underneath pest control and water treatment companies. So 2020 Did an expose a on us back in the 90s. So we’re not exactly held in high regard. So obviously, I want us I set out to change that. And just for a basis for you and your listeners, my company, my prices are about 35% higher than my closest competitor. So by doing experiences and providing experiences, you get that price elasticity. So one of the mundane things we have to do is get into the client’s home, we can’t get in we can’t do the cleaning. So we’ve created an experience around this entire event. Now notice, there’s two things to unpack there. One is I said we I did not come up with this on my own. I brought the guys in who go out and do this job every day, brought them in for them to help out because I don’t want to just dictate and what I think is a great idea like sack so we don’t do that. So when my guys get to the house, they parking and this is all completely scripted. they park their van in the street we don’t park in the driveway because God forbid I’ve got an oil leak and now I gotta clean something else up. They get out of the car. They’re in a clean, crisp new uniform because they carry extra uniforms in the encase they get dirty on the first job. They walk up to the front door, they got a special mat that they’re going to lay down. They have their tool bag and they have a little gift box. They knock on the door, they don’t ring the bell because friends knock salespeople ring. They take two steps back from the screen because the last thing you want is big six foot three 200 pounds, Stephen, you know, staring in the face when 89 year old Mrs. McGillicuddy answers the door. So he takes a step back waits for the door, says Hi, my name is Steven, I’m here to create your healthy home. May I come in. And then we wait to be invited into the home. I mentioned he has a gift. Now this is something that nobody else does in my area. And you may not have done in your area either. When was the last time a home service company came to your house and presented you with a gift? I’m not talking refrigerator magnet or you know a crappy pen. I’m talking a real gift. Never ever happened ever for me? No, never for you. I’m batting 1000 on that question. So my guys have a gift. That’s not a huge thing. But it is a nice, custom made blue box. And inside the boxes, a bottle of spot remover, a bag of cookies and a little note from me, thanking the client for allowing us to come into their home. If they have any questions. Here’s my personal cell phone number.
Jeremy Weisz 11:24
You have made the mega cookies I’m already Yeah, hey, I’m already loving it. Yeah.
Vance Morris 11:30
So the so it’s a real gift. So it’s not just a little tchotchkes that I you know, give out that’s gonna get thrown away or you know, it’s real, tangible stuff. Gift cost me like five bucks all in. But when you when I did that gift, it started two processes. The first is one, obviously, it’s an experience that somebody is going to talk about, you’ll never guess what happened when the carpet cleaners showed up at my front door today, they gave me a gift. The other thing it starts is a process called reciprocity. So you know, think about you know, if you ever go to a friend’s house for dinner, or you know, you’re going to bring you know, wine or beer or some hors d’oeuvres or something, but I feel the same way we’re going to somebody else. So I’m going to bring a little housewarming, a little gift. When we implemented that gift, remember cost me five bucks. When we implemented that gift, I had a 26% increase in our mid tier package, which translated into an additional $65,000 a year in income just by that gift.
Jeremy Weisz 12:33
I love it. What strikes me Vance, when I did research for this is you’re really big on systems and service and combining those two, like you just said, it’s not like you did you know, it’s not like you are like leave it to chance, right? He’s like, here’s the system. Here’s what you do you I mean, it’s to the tee, you step back, you don’t you know, everything is designed around that experience.
Vance Morris 12:57
Absolutely. And it’s documented. So you know, my guys have a binder in the band, because that’s one of the things you know, when you’re if you have employees, the last thing you want to do is compare them to other employees. Wow, you know, Fred does it this way, Jane Does it that way, you should be more like for energy. That’s the worst thing you could do. We compare to the standards, here’s the standard. Here’s how we approach the door. And we measure you against that, not against somebody else. So having that as a excuse me, you know, as a written standard. Just it’s easy to refer to, and it’s a great training tool for if you have new hires.
Jeremy Weisz 13:40
Yeah. You mentioned the insurance industry. And I know you work with a lot of different types of industries, you know, lawyers, orthodontists. So in the case of lawyers for a second, I love to talk about the phone because like, sometimes, again, in all these offices, the phone is the first impression that people have a lot of times and so talk about maybe some examples of things that you’ve instructed, or you’ve seen things that are do well as far as the phone or the opposite, as far as maybe lawyers, orthodontists. Well, sure,
Vance Morris 14:14
you know, I think first and foremost, the person or persons answering the phone have to have the feeling that they matter. And by just calling them a receptionist or a customer service rep doesn’t do anything for their egos, and it’s certainly not going to boost them up. One of the things I recommend is giving them a real title. Now, you know, there’s variations of we have one it’s director of first impressions. Another one could be, you know, Chief happiness officer. But putting real tangible things behind those titles now, and then you got to give them a card, you know, and put on there, you know, Director first impressions
Jeremy Weisz 15:08
by Oh, that about the advances, it enforces what the purpose of the job is. And so I love it.
Vance Morris 15:15
Yeah. You know, and so, you know, what do we want this person to do? So at Disney, and this is one of the things that I teach is the five and 10 rule. So this would be for a live office, if you were to walk into an office at 10 feet away, your employee does x. So when the customer, the client is walking towards you at 10, feet, you whatever you want to do, I usually say at least acknowledge the person look up from what you’re doing, you know, wave if you’re on the phone or something. And then at five feet, so when they’re five feet away from you, then you do why, okay, maybe that’s a stand up, walk around the desk, shake a hand, greet them by name, hopefully, you know that they’ve got an appointment, you say, Oh, Mr. Smith, you know, welcome to the office, great to see you. And then offer a beverage or what have you. So I mean, there’s all sorts of ways that and once you give this title, and you and you annoy annoying this person, let them come up with ways how can we make the best first impression? You know, maybe they’re in charge of the physical plant of your reception area. So, you know, carpets are clean plants aren’t dusty. The windows look good. I mean, give them real responsibilities around that title, and watch them take ownership of that. And ownership. Disney tried this back in the 90s to give us managers ownership. And we all fought back. We’re like, Are you kidding me? You know, we don’t have enough, you know, shares in our 401k plan even remotely consider ourselves owners. Why should we try and do that, but when they changed the title to proprietor now, you know, now you’re not blowing smoke. Now you are now. Alright, I have full operational control over this area. I am its proprietor, and I will treat it as such. So yeah, I
Jeremy Weisz 17:27
noticed that with Disney, there’s titles even for I mean, I don’t know there’s other ones like people who, you know, pick up the trash. That’s not their their title. There’s a variety, it would be a cast member, a cast member? Exactly. Right. So there’s a variety from any of the positions seem like they have those type of titles to them.
Vance Morris 17:47
Yep. And you got to remember, is is going to go off like squirrel, we’re going to go off. And, you know, everybody at Disney is called a cast member. The frontline employees are called hosts and hostesses. Again, Walt wanted it to feel like he was welcoming you into your home. And that’s what a host or hostess did, they welcomed you. But you have to have a mission that is greater than your job. And what I mean by that is, is not a mission statement. So I mean, we’ve all seen these gobbledygook, you know, three inch big binders with mission statements they made on a poster hanging on the wall in the hallway. Yeah. never ceases to amaze me when I go into an office for the first time. And I’ll ask, so what’s your mission, and then there and there’s Marge at the desk, trying to look around me, you know, at the mission statement on the wall behind me to read it. And I’m like, this is a mission is a simple explanation that any minimum wage employee can wrap their head around. So at Disney, the mission is to make people happy. Oh, that’s it? Oh, geez, I can wrap my head around that. So my job is to sweep the streets. But my mission is to make people happy. So how do we how do we do that? You know, are in my carpet cleaning business. Our mission is to create healthy homes. How do we achieve that by cleaning? So your mission always needs to be bigger than your, your actual.
Jeremy Weisz 19:27
So I love that and someone comes in and in the from the phone answering piece. Then I saw that insurance person kind of does it a unique way. What are some good ways whether it’s an orthodontist office or law office that they can you’ve seen put their installed their personality into it or their company’s personality into it in a in a good way?
Vance Morris 19:50
Sure. You know, I you know, one one orthodontist I work with was you know, you know, so thank you for calling Dr. Dr. Smith’s off. This the home of a million smiles. That was the mission of that office. Yeah, was to create a million smiles, all the employees were able to wrap their heads around. And so a lot of times, you know that
Jeremy Weisz 20:13
embedding their mission into how they’re answering the phone is critical. And then everyone who calls understands the mission to the member state talking. Basically, it’d be impossible for them to forget that mission. They’re saying it 20 times a day.
Vance Morris 20:29
Yeah. And you don’t want it to be hokey or insincere. Yeah, I mean, there’s some you answer the phone and you know that they are being forced to say something that just is very insincere. You know, thank you for calling the happiest customer service department in the world. Yeah. All right. Tell me another one.
Jeremy Weisz 20:49
In the opposite respect, bands. And I remember I think I don’t know if you have any yet, but you should have grocery store clients. But there’s a story that you talk about where the opposite happened, you are in line at a retail store. And there is a huge opportunity for them. And we see this online, but what did Yeah. What did you see?
Vance Morris 21:16
They blow it? Well, here’s the frightening thing. I’ll tell the story. The frightening thing is, though, that it’s happening more often than you would expect. So the story goes, and I will fully admit I am not handy with tools. I don’t I hang a picture. That’s it. No electricity, no plumbing, nothing. So I was at my local retail hardware store. But the you know, the big box one, can I say their
Jeremy Weisz 21:46
name? If you want to you? It doesn’t matter to me.
Vance Morris 21:49
Hi, good. So anyway, I was at the blue guys blows. Which by the way, their stock price is lower than the orange guys Home Depot. And you’ll see from this example why that is. So I had my stuff in my cart. And I was standing in line at the checkout. And there were two guys ahead of me. And I noticed that the cashier was not saying anything to anybody. No, good morning. No, did you find everything okay? Nothing. She was having wordless transactions with the customers. Now. That’s just bothers me. I shouldn’t bother everybody. But when I got up there, I thought to myself, You know what, I’m going to make a game out of this. I’m not going to say anything. And I’m going to make her say the first thing. So I get up there if you ever played that game, where you know, like team building things where they make you sit in a circle and be silent for 60 seconds and how to awkward word, Becca. I hate that. Well imagine being you know, a foot two feet away from another human being and having absolute silence for to silence for two and a half minutes as she brings up my items. I mean, she didn’t say good morning. She didn’t say to define everything. Okay, she didn’t say my that’s a nice shovel and bag of dirt. He got there. Nothing. And I even tried to get her to say stuff. I mean, I did the whole eyeball thing, you know, you know, staring right at her trying to get her to say nothing. The criminal thing was that her manager was not two registers away leaning on a pole, thumbing on his on his doodad on his phone. So he should be fired, she needs to be retrained. I mean, it’s just criminal. So I said, you know, I got other stops I need to make. Today, I’m going to do an unscientific survey. And I’m going to see how many companies will talk to me first or acknowledge me before I have to say something. And this was, you know, big box stores, franchises mom and pops the gamut. Six out of nine companies did not say one thing to me. We had wordless transactions, six out of nine, they would have been seven out of nine except that I had to order the hamburger at the McDonald’s. They would have been seven. But I had to order now McDonald’s of course has now taken the humans out of it. And you can just go and punch your your order in on a screen. So okay, fine. But I don’t think we all in our worlds want to do that or can do that. So six out of nine companies. Is that happening in your business? I mean, when was the last time you Secret Shop your business? Yeah.
Jeremy Weisz 24:34
Totally. I mean, you, um, I was a secret shopper for a restaurant chain. And they had me go in my wife and I go in and they they had specific things. Exactly. You know, first of all, if you’re investing money in secret shoppers, you know that you care about customer service in the experience in the first place, but they had the same thing. If the person has to acknowledge you and say Certain things and you check those off not just acknowledging but what they say. So right, those are the people that care and those are the, you know, the places that people go back to time and time again.
Vance Morris 25:10
Now doctors though, doctors for summary, it doesn’t matter which what niche of doctor, dentist, medical, you know, Orthodontist, pediatrician, whatever. They never walk through their front doors. I don’t know why. But all the doctors have a little secret door in the back, that they parked their car, they walk in the little back door, I never go out to the lobby, they never go out front. Everybody, this is the only thing you do from this call. If you’ve never been in your lobby and walk through it in the footsteps of one of your guests or patients. Go do that. And think about what do you see? You know, you’ll be amazed. I really, if you’ve never done it, do it. You’ll be like, when did that plant die? When did the paint get chipped? When did the window get dirty? When did Marge shrink and all we can see is the top of her head over the desk.
Jeremy Weisz 26:04
You know, even better Vance is have your significant other do it because they will then rag on you. I’m not saying this from experience. This is a friend, hey will come through the front door and be like, rag on you on what they’re saying. So yeah, so could be you or throwing one of your significant V’s, they will hold you to the fire to fix Oh,
Vance Morris 26:27
yeah. Yeah, it’s amazing. You know, it’s all about changing your perspective and changing your point of view. And I tell people put that on your calendar, you know, once a month, once a week, whatever. change up your routine, so that you see something different in your business now, whether that’s physically in your business, you know, if you’re an online retailer, dude, was the last time you went through your sales funnel, your online purchasing funnel? You know, that’s what Disney is so good at is removing the barriers to the sale or removing barriers to service. Yeah, today. I mean, they’re masters at extracting money from your wallet and making you feel good about it.
Jeremy Weisz 27:08
Now, I want to talk about Disney and some of the things that you did there so we can learn from from your lessons. I do want to give a shout out to Austin Clark of the Multiply You Podcast. He actually owns a chain of pest control business. He mentioned pest control. So I love this episode. Austin, if you’re listening, listen to this. And people can check out his podcast as well. You may even be a great guest. I’ll mention you Vance to Austin, but I’m talking about Disney some of the things that you did there and lessons at Disney. Sure,
Vance Morris 27:41
holy cow where to start? Well, I can tell you what not to do. Okay. One of the things is, know who your target demographic is. Now what about direct response here? I was doing direct response and didn’t know it at the time. See, Disney’s had massive failures. I mean, you know, we all make mistakes, but when Disney makes a mistake, I mean they go all in. I mean, we’re talking millions of dollars if not hundreds of millions of dollars. I mean, just think Grand Floridian Lake no barrier to Lake small child walks into Lake alligator each child, you know that that’s the kind of mistakes that Disney makes. And they made this with Pleasure Island. I don’t know if you were ever there. This was Disney’s attempt at nighttime entertainment, booze, debauchery, scantily clad women, etc. It’s gone now it’s now part of Disney marketplace. kind of changed the name of it so many times I forget Disney Springs. So the retail and shopping district when I was there, I was a nightclub manager for four years and a duty manager there for three and a half the theme of Pleasure Island one it was literally an island so it was a five acre island was seven nightclubs on it. Now we’re thinking nightclubs Disney. Hmm. How does how does this go together? Not very well. They had nightclubs. One night club was called the cage. I’m not kidding the cage and what was inside the cage cages. What were in the cages, scantily clad Disney cast members gyrating to the music I’m not making this real.
Jeremy Weisz 29:30
I was just add Disney, you know, as I was saying a couple weeks ago, and so I can’t even picture that compared to my experience.
Vance Morris 29:39
Yeah, so that that did this was actually the only part this is pre 911 the only Disney park that had Orange County Sheriff’s parked out front. From the minute we opened in a minute we closed and they were on horseback. Where do you see police on horseback? That riots We had signs out front that said, no colors. Now, I don’t know about you if you’ve ever been to a bar or a club or a restaurant, and the sign up front says no colors. That means no gang colors. So we had gangs, this is not good. Now, let’s think about Pleasure Island and demographics. This was back in the 80s. When they were designing it, they realized that at the parks, at the resorts, you know, Disneyland and Disney World, that they were missing a demographic of the ages of like 18 to 30. Because they were too old, to enjoy the parks, the rides and the stuff themselves, and they weren’t old enough to have kids to bring to the park. So they said, What can we do for this age demographic? 18 to 30? Ah, let’s open a bar that’s open all bunch of them. Great, in theory, not so great in implementation. I mean, think about where the guests have been all day long, right? They’ve been in the theme parks, they are probably now nourished, dehydrated, and you know, sunburned. And we’re gonna bring them to a place at seven o’clock at night and shove a couple of beers in them. Now let’s see what happens. I mean, think about this, this is not good. I actually was the manager of the rock and roller dome. Okay, now, just from the title of the name of the club. It’s rock and roll. But it had roller in it. So what do we do? We’re gonna take those dehydrated, now nourished and sunburn tourists shove a couple of beers on them put wheels on their feet and see what the heck happens. That it was a roller skating rink. I mean, every night we just parked the ambulance out back every night. So maybe it was falling over breaking an arm. That didn’t last long. I think it was like about a year and a half before they finally got rid of it. So the the demographic was correct. The implementation was horrible. So there’s other things they could do to get around it. So when Disney makes mistakes, they make big ones. I think the biggest lesson that that anybody could take from Disney, and you’ve already alluded to it is systems. Disney has a system for everything. You want to change a bus tire, you want to wait on a table, you wanna you know, make a movie. Disney has a system. And there’s simple systems. And when you think about it, if you go to a theme park, I mean, Disney’s got in Orlando alone, they got 85,000 employees, right. And one, one resort. If they had complex systems, the place would fall apart. Nobody will do anything. I mean, you remember, I mean, the average age of the theme park worker is you know, like 90. So how do we get 19 year olds who trust me operating? It’s a small world is not in the forefront of their mind. As a 19 year old kid, you’re thinking, Where can I get beer when I’m underage? And you’re thinking about girls, and you’re thinking about going to the beach, you’re not thinking about pushing a button to get people on? It’s a small world. So if the systems were difficult, they weren’t able to get it done. So there’s simple. And that’s when we when I created chef, Mickey’s with the entertainment folks, which was my my big hoo ha, if you’ve ever been the chef, Mickey’s in the contemporary resort, that was my creation, and actually operated that for for four years. So a lot of fun. But
Jeremy Weisz 33:52
the cage, Cage nightclub
Vance Morris 33:54
decay, which was not my not my thing. You know, I was it’s funny. I was the duty manager for Pleasure Island for for three years, which means I was in charge of the island every night, five nights a week. Which by the way, the theme for the island was New Year’s Eve every night. And so I don’t do New Year’s Eve anymore, because I have 11 126 of them under my belt right now. So I’m not touching it. Nine O’Clock out. Ryan Seacrest, whoever. No, don’t care.
Jeremy Weisz 34:30
What you come up with Chef Mickey’s?
Vance Morris 34:33
Sure, well, Chef, Mickey’s was a restaurant and the Disney village marketplace, which is now Disney Springs. And we at the contemporary I was brought on for a revitalization of the resorts. One of the things that Disney did really well was theme parks. One of the things they didn’t do so well was hotels and restaurants and resorts. And they realized that a lot of people would Come to Disney. If they could have an expense, they’re not theme park people. But if we gave them a great experience at a resort, they would come. Because before the resorts were just, well, we got theme parks, we need some place for him to sleep. Alright, well build a hotel. Yeah, that was the extent of it. So they knew. And this was, again, early 90s. They knew that they needed to put their best foot forward. And one because they were going to start building a lot of them. They needed to get their act together. So I was on the revitalization team and the contemporary and we shut down. We had a character dining experience there Chip and Dale and a couple of the other be characters, you know, Goofy, and somebody. And we said, you know, how can we? How can we really make this at same time I would just stars aligned. They were shutting down. Chef, Mickey’s in the village, and for renovation, and they needed a home for Chef, Mickey’s are like, hey, we’ll take him. So we created a better home for for the mouse than the village marketplace. Good. Now, this is where systems come in. And your mission. So our mission for Chef Mickey’s was we needed to get 400 people through the restaurant in 43 minutes. And have it be a great experience. Now, you could look at it and say, Oh, crap, that just sounds like you know, cattle rustling for crying out loud. 400 people 43 minutes and have it be a great experience. But if you break it down, so the reason we do while 400 seats as easy as 400 seats in the restaurant, 43 minutes is the amount of time a table for two took to dine in the restaurant. And of course, we had Mickey Mouse in the restaurant. So in order for it to be a great experience, everybody had to have a chance to see Mickey. You know, because if you go to a theme park, you wait in line to see the character.
Jeremy Weisz 37:11
Oh, my God, we are on Disney Cruise Vance. And I’m glad I could have read three novels in waiting in line for the princesses. It was, I’m like seriously, and by the way, it wasn’t just kids there were like, couples, like older couples there and like waiting for their kids to come. But the couple they wanted to be in line, meet the princesses. I was like, wow, this is added. It’s amazing. You know,
Vance Morris 37:37
if you ever want to mortify your 11 year old daughter, after she gets a picture with the Princess, you sit down and yet I got 20 pictures of Snow White Ariel and all of them. And my daughter was just freaking out that I
Jeremy Weisz 37:51
did. So I totally can empathize and sympathize with how is Mickey going to get around to like every single Yes. So keep going. So,
Vance Morris 38:01
so in. And so we did table for two, because as the table size grew the length of time that they dined extended as well. So we went to the entire team, and we say look, 400 seats, 43 minutes, great experience. How do we do it? So this is where the processes and systems came in place and going to the individual departments and employees. So for example, the busboys. Now, those are the guys that clean up the tables. After the guests leave, they said, Well, look, it takes us three minutes to turn over a table, get the dirty stuff off, put the clean stuff down and have it ready for the next guest. We could probably shave some time off, if we could just come up with some way to capture the salt and pepper shaker and the sugar boats and the little signs all the crap we got on the table that we have to move to clean put back. We just had that in a in a box or a basket that would really speed up the time. Right? We made a basket and inside of that was all peppers, sugar, sweeteners, all that stuff, shaved 20 seconds off of the time. And we did that with each and every department. How do we you know the entertainment department because everybody wants their you know, their picture with the mouse for the birthday. You know, the anniversary, the bar mitzvah, the divorce whatever they’re celebrating they need so instead of trying to capture the mouse for those individual pictures, we came up with a celebration song. And guess how often that celebration song went out every 42 minutes. So everybody gets up, they twirl their napkins, characters dancing, people get up and dance, and then they all sit back down. So now we’ve recognized the birthdays without slowing down the characters because we had to get the characters Matt Neal the mouse had to see all 400 seats. No way to do that is if we had stuff in place that allowed them to do that. So Oh, you’ll love this one. I don’t know, if you’ve worked in, you know, corporate places where you’ve got peers, you know, we were I was, I was a director at the resort reported to a general manager, and there was like in the housekeeping director, executive, housekeeper, etc. And one of the things, you know, this is how strong our mission was, Oh, before I go too far, let me just give you an idea how big this restaurant is. All right, when I was there, okay, this is back in the 90s. Those 400 seats generated $28 million a year, one restaurant, now with all the price increases, and they’ve added, like 50 seats to it, it’s approaching $65 million a year, one restaurant. So this is just to give you the scope and the size of what we’re talking about. So we’re sitting at the, this is what gave me a little bit of confidence when I approached the executive housekeeper on this, that we’re sitting at our team meeting. And I said, you know, we’re great at entertaining, we’re great at cooking food, we’re great at serving food, but you know, we are not experts in cleaning. And you know, and I look at the housekeeper, and he’s like, all right, I said, Look, when somebody barfs in the restaurant, we have to take our time to clean it up. through either a busboy a server or a manager, somebody’s got to stop their duties. And if we do that, we’re not gonna be able to get the mouse through 400 seats in 43 minutes and have it be a great time. Since you mister executive housekeeper are the expert in cleaning, could we just have a hotline to your department, and anytime some kid barfs in the restaurant, we just call you. Of course, he’s turned in nine shades of purple because he’s, you know, irritated with me. But I had already cleared it with my boss who thought it was a great idea. And reason. The other reason that the it’s not that we started bad food that kids were getting sick, it’s that it was an all you can eat buffet, which included an all you can eat dessert buffet. And since they’re on vacation, the kids usually started with the soft serve ice cream. And you know, I mean, they just had the mountainous sundae started there. So anyway, that those were the systems processes and things that we did to, to
Jeremy Weisz 42:25
make Yeah, like to, to kind of go around any big hiccups that would put a big wrench in the whole process and system. So Exactly. Let’s talk about you know, with what you do now, um, and I’m balling Gonzo, does that pronounce eleganza eleganza? What talk about so so I can understand a little bit more about your process and your thinking your thought process in what you do. Sure. Talk about that.
Vance Morris 42:58
Sure. So eleganza was was the first talk about a commodity business, the first shampoo company to create shampoos without silicone. Evidently, I’m not a hairdresser, but evidently silicones not good for you, regardless of where it is on your body. And they had they were literally the hairdresser’s to the stars, they had a and b list movie people. They had testimonials out the hoo ha from movie stars and things like that. But obviously, they needed to have a broader appeal. And so we looked at their processes, we looked at the experience. And we started to you know, Walt Disney called it plussing, which is constant process improvement. And we said, one, you’ll, you’ll like this and probably agree, the one thing they were not doing was a print newsletter. Now, there is no competition in the mailbox anymore. Start a print newsletter. Doesn’t have to be anything fancy. But started, get it out there. So you know, you you support your clients, you put their people’s names and lights, etc. But one of the things that they were doing was when they ship the product, this is going on a plain brown box that you could get from Uline. If you’re familiar with the Box Company, I said well, how can we make this better? And they said, Well, you know, maybe we could do some tissue paper and make the packaging look a little better. Okay, great. iteration number one. What else can we do? Well, you know, they’re ordering. You know, a special shampoo that’s supposed to help hair growth. Maybe we could put in a little brochure or postcard that says, you know, here’s some success stories in the best way to use the product. Okay, great, but why don’t we can we put in a sample conditioner. Okay, great. What else? Why don’t we design a custom box, and then have you know the foot because this is really expensive shampoo is is not your $2 bottle to go to the drugstore at the grocery store and get I mean, this is like, you know, $76 for eight ounces. I said at that price point, you know, we should present this a little bit better. So we had a custom box made, we had the inserts made, you know that foam stuff where you can, you know, that’s perfectly cut out for the thing that you put in there, we had that done. And then this is the key thing is you got to test stuff. So we mailed this box to ourselves. Postal Service is not very dainty when it comes to handling packages. So we found that the box got the living crap beat out of it between, you know, our house, the post office and coming back. So we got one of those playing Uline boxes, and we dropped the gift box looking thing inside that box. Now Disney does this, because you know, think about if you did this around the holidays, I mean, you know, there’s all sorts of people stealing packages off of porches, you know, Christmas gifts and things like that. So Disney actually does when you buy something from Disney, if you go to Disney Store or back when they used to send sell you the magic bands, it came in a plain brown box. Now when you open the box, then the surprises in it’s all full of colors and just nice presentation of the band, etc, etc. So we did, everything’s done in iterations, don’t try and do things. You know, oh, my God, it’s got to be a perfect package before go that now just add one thing. Get it out the door. All right, two months later, six months later. Next thing, get it out the door. What are the other big things that he did not have and this is where revenue comes into play? Is he did not have a membership program? Nothing. I mean, he had reminders, you know, people would say or auto ship, you know, every 60 days, you’d send out a new bottle of shampoo, but didn’t have any kind of membership or reoccurring revenue. You know, you’re in that kind of business where you could create membership similar to Amazon Prime, can you give free shipping for $19 a month? Yeah, I can certainly do that. So now, we just I just did a mastermind meeting last week with him. He implemented his membership program at $9 a month. He’s going to have levels so we started at nine. And he immediately if we annualize it, he’s gonna bring in $100,000 this year just on $9 memberships. Amazing,
Jeremy Weisz 47:52
man. Um, I love those ideas. You also did some work with Burleson and Bros and some Yeah. And I want to give a shout out to In Your Face Podcast, which has orthodontic leaders. But yeah, let’s talk about that.
Vance Morris 48:07
Yeah, sure. So, you know, Orthodontist, you know, similar. You know, the in office experience is something that really needs to be, you know, looked at and digested and rethought. I mean, what is when you go to a dentist or an orthodontist? What are the senses that are activated when you walk into that office? Number one is sound. You know, all you hear is that drill going in the back and like, oh, god that’s coming for me. The other thing is smell. Now smell is the number one sense when it comes to memories. So if you walk into a dentist office, a new smell, antiseptic, that gritty toothpaste that they use, and you’re hearing you’re automatically put in a state of fear of oh my god, what am I gonna do to me? So how do we get rid of all that? Well, one, you should have a door. Okay, have a door put a door in so that the back office and the and the reception area are separated and you don’t hear that noise? Then start cooking something chicken soup, cookies. The smell of fresh baked cookies in the office is absolutely amazing. And how many dentists office when you walk in orthodontist have that aroma of freshmen any office can do this fresh baked cookies. There’s so much better than you know we and you know,
Jeremy Weisz 49:44
I still remember I stayed I went to a Colts game in Indianapolis. And the hotel we stayed at would cook Otis Spunkmeyer cookies. And not only would it smell but they would give you one. I don’t think of any other hotel do that. I still remember that and I would go back hotel just for the threshing. Yeah. Hilton.
Vance Morris 50:03
Does that. Does that go?
Jeremy Weisz 50:05
Oh, yeah, no. Yes, I’m with you.
Vance Morris 50:08
But it triggers. Like I said, memory. Smell is the number one sense when it comes to memory. So very smart to trigger that. The other thing that they were really lacking in was retail sales, you know, teeth, whiteners, and toothbrushes and whatever other stuff, you know, you can buy. They’re like, Well, where is it? Because I didn’t see it. That’s all it’s behind the counter. What’s it doing there? You can’t sell it from back there. Nobody sees it. So we literally just took the glass the case that the stuff was in from behind the desk to the front of the desk, right where you got to check out to make your next appointment. I mean, 500% increase in retail sales in our orthodontists office, just by moving the case. You know, they started ordering and their suppliers, like something go bad or something go wrong. You never order this much. Because Oh, no, we just figured out how to sell it.
Jeremy Weisz 51:07
No, I love it. Yeah. And then also talk about work with Ben Glass and some of the lessons Yeah, there.
Vance Morris 51:17
Yeah. So Ben and I have done, we’ve been working together for a number of years, I come speak at his masterminds and his events, we are actually going on a trip to Disney, I do these four or five times a year, go to and we do three day boot camps at Disney. So it’s half in the parks halfing classroom. One of the things that Ben loves about working, I think he loves working with me, I’m putting words in his mouth here. But is the fact that we build processes, we build a plan, we build a blueprint, because I get I don’t maybe attorneys are just analytical that way, or maybe they’re not, and they need a plan. But he loves the fact that we are able to systemize and and codify an actual plan and measure its ROI when we implement that plan. Because remember, direct response marketing, if you can’t measure it, you shouldn’t be doing it. And so we do that with the experience as well. So you know, implementing, one of the big things we implemented was the, the winning the case party, you know, so if you were injured in an auto accident, and, you know, you just got a million dollar, any settlement or won the case, you know, one attorney friend of mine in Wichita threw like, literally throw a huge party, you know, balloons cake, you know, everybody from the offices came out to congratulate, you know, that person used to do that. And they never do this anymore. Do you remember the car company Saturn, back in the 90s, they’ll make Saturn’s anymore, but they would have what they called a lunch. And you literally got in your Saturn in the showroom, everybody gathered around all the salespeople. And they opened the big doors in the front of the showroom, and you drove your new car out. Now, for them do that Buick doesn’t do that. But I remember I bought like three Saturn’s back in the 90s. And I remember because all three times I get the drive out of
Jeremy Weisz 53:21
the show for a minute. If van someone’s listening to this, and this and they’re like, this sounds amazing. I want to take my group or company and you say you do this once a quarter or whatever it is, how does it work if someone wants to do that, but
Vance Morris 53:35
yeah, sure. So um, that I mean, the real quick detail is minimum 12 people, because that way we can get a room block, we get great rates on the hotels, usually I can get 65 70% off rack rate, which is a lot at Disney. But, you know, certainly, we can put a group together. It can be maybe just your office, if you’ve got a large team and you want to do this. Maybe you’re in a mastermind or in a business group. And you get a number of people together. It’s a turnkey event. I do everything. You know, all the emails are written, all my webinars are done for you, et cetera, et cetera. There’s really nothing you got to do except marketing. And I give you all those materials. And I also do JV shares on it. You know, you pay me my cost plus, I like Yeah, and I do all the legwork with Disney. And then you get to charge whatever price point you want based on your your niche and what your members or clients can can bear. Typically, that a one person tickets going for anywhere between four and $5,000 but it’s all inclusive park tickets are included rooms included, all your food is included. All the training is included in materials, the blueprints etc. People
Jeremy Weisz 54:57
have time to go to the parks as well as the art Yeah, we
Vance Morris 55:00
do it, I call them I call it a walking classroom. So we’ll spend half the day, you know, in our, you know, in a conference room or a ballroom, and then we’ll spend half the day in the partners.
Jeremy Weisz 55:11
Many days. Is that usually? Three, three days? Okay, cool. Awesome. Um, first of all, this has been amazing. And I want to circle back to the beginning of our conversation. And where I mentioned Ben subtle, and some of the lessons you learned with working alongside Ben. Oh, my
Vance Morris 55:32
where to start. Ben has been very generous, he, he realized, you know, that having an experience for his members, and having his own world Ben’s very big on world building. And I think that’s probably why you’re not building literal planets, but building your world and how you operate and what you stand for and how you let your personality out. And I think that’s been an eye, you know, really clicked there. And he, we did a program together actually, last year. It’s called The Ultimate client experience for coaches, copywriters, and info marketers. So we took everything that I teach Disney wise, and taught it to copywriters, and info marketers. And really, that Ben and I were on the call the same time, I probably did 98% of the talking. But his 2% was just incredible. He goes, Oh, my God, I’m implementing that now. And so the feedback on it was, was fantastic. But you know, one of the successes we had with Ben was, this was a, we did it over a course of five weeks, was his members coming back saying they actually implemented something, which is the whole point, by the way, you know, don’t just take all this great information, sit on it, don’t do anything with it. And I actually there’s a video on my website, testimonial, where this lady I mean, she went on for like, five minutes. She unboxed my shock and awe box. She did an unboxing video, and just became like this Tuesday. So you open up my shock and awe box and oh my god, there’s you know, all these different layers and discovery and gifts and things like that. And that’s one of the things you know, Ben, Ben said, Vance, you had me at hello, after he got my my shotgun all box. So there’s ways to make impressions and not feel overly salesy and kind of, you know, slimy used car kind of guy. And, you know, the thing I like about Ben too, is he’s genuine, you know, what you see is what
Jeremy Weisz 57:43
He’s beyond genuine. He’s, he is, to the point, and he’ll tell you what he’s thinking. So that’s what I love about him. And then I have a note, I’m also lessons learned or stories regarding Mike Crow.
Vance Morris 57:57
Oh, sure. Yeah, Mike’s great he, he was actually my, he was the first one to do a Disney trip with me. And so I took, like, 20 home inspectors that were in his home inspector mastermind, we did the Disney event. So I love him because he he took a chance because I had never done one. Actually, the the idea came up in a mastermind, I was with Dan Kennedy and a few other of his high level mastermind groups. And I got to talk and you know, I’m doing this plant experience thing. I used to work for Disney. And actually Dustin Burlison raised his hand and said, I’d pay you to take me around Disney. Great. And you know, and then Mike said, Well, yeah, Can I Can I take a group? And I look over at Dan and Dan’s like, Yes, good idea. Go do it, you know, make it happen. And so Mike was the first and I still work with Mike actually, he was at my mastermind meeting last week in Dallas. And, you know, through this, yeah, I really found that one being genuine, you know, because, I mean, nobody wants anybody just blowing smoke, you know, puffing their chests out and saying we do this, we do that and I’m making a million dollars and here’s my Lamborghini. Yeah, it’s funny. I was at an event last fall in Orlando. And it was big was like 2000 people there but it was all internet marketers, you know a lot of people’s supplements and nutrition and things like that. And there were like nine Lamborghinis or some version thereof parked outside and at midnight one night all these idiots are out there revving their engine you know around on the run and I’m on like the 20th floor and it sounds like they’re right outside go out the next day talk to the valet I said, I these these guys really own these things. Because now all but one is a rental show I feel better now. Oh, but Mike is real people. Um, yeah. He took a chance on me. I, you know, and you. You mentioned Ben’s very nice comments about me earlier. Mike’s comments were pretty close to the same. So great guy to work
Jeremy Weisz 1:00:12
with Vance. First of all, I just want to thank you, thank you for sharing your lessons and the stories and it’s anything all this is is everything people can put into action today, whether it’s an online business or brick and mortar businesses don’t matter. I want to point people towards DeliverServiceNow.com You also you can go there and actually sign up seven easy secrets strategies and get my Disney secrets are revealed blueprint, you can check that out. He also has a book. Are there any other places we should point people online besides DeliverServiceNow.com? Or is that really
Vance Morris 1:00:49
the best place to start? You know, because you get my I call it the cliffnotes version of my flagship book, which is systematic magic. And once you see that, you’re like, oh, yeah, that sounds good. Let me order his book. There’s actually I will actually send the book for free you just pay shipping and handling. So no need to go give Amazon any more of your money. Because it’s 20 bucks on Amazon and I’ll send it to you for free plus, you know, six or seven bucks shipping. So love it.
Jeremy Weisz 1:01:15
I love it. Check it out, and I’ll be the first one to thank you. Thanks, Vance.
Vance Morris 1:01:19
Hi, my pleasure is great being with you.
