Ep 57: Dominating the Customer Service Vertical with John DiJulius | Recap Episode
RV: (00:00) Hey brand builder, welcome to the special recap edition of the influential personal brand podcast. John DiJulius is somebody that I love that I trust, that I know that I have watched build an amazing business. And there’s people who have very public reputations, right? And some of our clients, some of our friends have very public figures, very high profiles. And you know, there’s something to be said about that, right? That’s very valuable. But I think what’s even more valuable is the private reputation of, of what do people say about someone behind their back. What do people say when nobody is around, you know, and it’s just the one on one conversations and everybody that I know that knows John de Julius fellow speakers industry, you know, Bureau’s agents, his customers, his team, they all say amazing things about him. And I love that. I love that about him because that is what reputation I think is, is really, really all about. RV: (01:05) So, you know, first and foremost, I just wanted to say that and make sure that, you know, and if you’re, you know, if you’re looking to improve your customer experience in any way, man, he’s, he is one of the guys. There’s a, you know, one of the, one of the people, there’s, there’s a handful of people who do that really well. But he’s, he’s certainly the top or one of the top. So so I thought it was cool to get a little behind the scenes look at how he became that way. And, and these were my three biggest takeaways two of which he didn’t even say. So one of which he did say, but two of them that he did not even really talk about. So my number one takeaway from John D Julius is practice what you preach, practice what you preach. RV: (01:54) See one of the things that I think is most compelling about him and it’s most amazing about him, it’s also something that a J and I aspire to and have always aspired to, is this idea that we’re not teaching, we’re not teaching people ideas that we’ve learned as much as we’re teaching people principles that we practice. We’re not teaching people ideas that we’ve learned. We’re teaching people principles that we practice. We’re teaching people to do the things that we actually do. Right. And I think that’s why in the personal brand community, brand builders group has grown so fast because so many of the people who advise brands haven’t actually built one that for themselves. And that’s not a, I’m not, that’s not a strike necessarily against them. I think it’s, it’s hard. It’s extremely hard to teach people how to do something and do it yourself at the same time. RV: (02:56) Like it’s extremely difficult. And, and so I think, you know, in many ways it is, it’s, it’s, it’s okay and it’s right for an agency to go, well, don’t look at me, look at my clients. But I think what John has done, which is unique and this is something that we aspire to, is to actually, in addition to teaching people to do it, to, to do it and to continue doing it ourselves because it also keeps you relevant, right? Like the fact that you are building a company yourself gives you ideas and lessons and struggles and stories and pain that you’re experiencing every day that you pull into your personal brand. I think where the risk of becoming irrelevant happens is where it’s like, okay, I’m teaching all the stuff that I used to do or that used to work, but because I’m not actively in it anymore [inaudible] nobody, nobody knows, including me, nobody, nobody knows if these things actually work. RV: (03:56) So [inaudible] I love that about him and that is something that we, you know, always aspire to bring to you. And, and everybody that we bring on our show, we look at them in some way. They’re a practitioner of, of what they’re teaching. And that’s, you know, if you, if you want a little interview tip about how I do the interviews is I’m always asking myself, what does this person, I don’t even really care about what the person teaches. I really ask, what does this person actually do in their real life that I want to learn? I want to understand the behind the scenes truth, not of what they teach or how they present themselves, but of the things that I look at their life. And I go, man, I really admire this specific piece of, of their life. And I think I think it was Mark Twain who said, every man is my superior in some way. RV: (04:54) And so I’m always, I’m not asking myself ever, can I learn from this person about anybody, about every single person I meet? I’m never asking myself can I learn something from this person. I’m always asking myself, what can I learn from this person? And there are people who I think I have despicable personal track records or polarized opposite philosophies on things that I have that I still go, Oh, I can learn a lot about something from this person. To me it’s not, it’s not an all or none, but anyways, I say all that to say, practice what you preach and maybe a better way of saying this is preach what you practice. That’s probably that, that’s, that’s actually as I’m talking this out, that’s what the big, the big idea is, is preach what you practice, teach what you do and then you will know there’s always substance and support and evidence and and data and real experience behind what you’re doing and I think John does that as good as anyone preach what you practice. RV: (06:04) The second thing is, I mean, gosh, I’ve heard John say this a hundred times. It’s like one of his signature things is making price irrelevant, but specifically the thing that he said in this interview, which I’ve never heard him clarify or it never sunk in with me until just now was he said, making price irrelevant. Does it mean you can double your fees and not lose your customers. So he’s not saying, Oh, you can just charge whatever you want. What he’s saying is you’re so good and your, your, your prices are fair enough for what people are getting that even if they are premium prices, your customers never stop to check what your competitors are charging. So be so good that your competitors never stopped to check. Well who your competitors are like they never stopped to to ask that could someone else because you’re servicing them so well. RV: (07:03) You’re over-delivering, you’re, you’re exceeding their expectations, you’re giving them what you said and more and, and that’s, it’s been, it’s hard to do that. It’s hard to do that. Like one of the reasons that we have gotten into the agency side of the business at PR, at brand builders group and started helping people build websites and build funnels and write copies and do video editing and manage their social media is because we have found it so incredibly difficult to find reliable vendors and agencies who will over deliver. And I’ll tell you now that we’re in the business, it’s really hard. Like it’s really hard. It’s a thin margin business. Yeah, people have high expectations and you know, if they want to spend the least amount of money and get the best product, it’s, it’s just like the nature of it is really, really challenging, but you have to aspire and push and, and, and even if you can’t do it on day one, you want to always be going, how can we make price irrelevant? RV: (08:02) How can we over deliver so that our customers never even stopped to go, ‘You know, I wonder if somebody else could do this better. I wonder if someone else could do this cheaper. I wonder if someone else could do this faster.’ That’s making price irrelevant. And really what it’s like making competitors irrelevant and it’s just keeping people locked in. So you’ve got to be that good. You have to be that good and always be, be striving in that direction. So that’s super, I think powerful and just a good reinforcement. The third takeaway for me from John is also something he did not say explicitly. And the way I’m going to summarize this as this follows one message, multiple modality modalities, one message, multiple modalities. Yeah. John has one expertise, one focus, customer experience that his entire career is built upon as an entrepreneur and the spas that he runs and owns and operates. RV: (09:08) It’s about customer experience. And then you know, as a personal brand, as a speaker, author, influencer, whatever term you want to use, it’s all about customer experience. It’s one message. And yet he has built this multimillion dollar business based upon multiple modalities, right? So he’s doing consulting, he’s doing keynote speaking. He is also has his own conference that people are buying tickets to come to. And then he has, you know, the customer experience executive Academy. So he’s got these four different like verticals, if you will, but all on the same, all on the same message, in the same market. It’s just, it’s a great example of what we call the services spectrum. And those of you that are members of ours, you know that we, when we talk about, I’m like phase three and phase four, we look at the services spectrum, which is exactly that. RV: (10:07) It’s, it’s one message, one market, multiple modalities. And that is what I think John has done really well. It’s going, I’m providing the same information but in multiple mediums and our event, you know, our, we have an event specifically captivating content where we talk about this, where we help somebody create their body of work for their, for their next book or their next course or their next thing. And it’s all the same thing. It is, you know, the way we design our content both internally at brand builders group as we teach personal brands to build and monetize their personal brand. And as the Rory Vaden personal brand, which is all about helping people, helping leaders overcome procrastination and move people to action. Those are, you know, how I designed my personal content is all around this thing we call the modular content method. And when you build it out this way, the book is, the co is a video course. RV: (11:09) It is a two day event. It can’t, it’s a half day training. It’s a keynote, it’s a coaching curriculum. It’s, it’s, you know, it’s a consulting program and you just build a body of work, a body of knowledge that then gets subdivided and broken a ProCon apart into a Ted talk, a keynote, a half day training, a full day training, a two day training, a public event, a coach, a six month coaching, yeah. Program. And it’s organizing your content. It’s one message, one market, multiple modalities. And John is just a really great example of doing that. It’s not creating a different product for a different business model for every different market. It’s kind of dominating one vertical and then servicing them and multiple, which is, you know, a simple idea. It’s just vertical integration. But it’s something that I think most personal brands don’t do very well. RV: (12:00) And I think we’re quick to launch different types of business models that serve different audiences instead of going, how can I serve this one audience fully? Which is a lot of what we [inaudible], you know, we talk about here and every, you know, you hear the guests come on and talk about that so consistently. Cause it’s like that is the discipline and that is what works. And that’s part of why we bring you all these different guests from different backgrounds is because you can see how these people have built, you know, high six-figure, multi seven-figure. Occasionally we get the eight-figure entrepreneurs on here that have just built [inaudible] deeply in one vertical. And that’s what we want you to do, is to go, you know, who can I serve most powerfully? Who can I help in the most profound [inaudible] in meaningful and impactful way? Because that is like the foundation and the heart of a mission driven messenger, which is who we’re honored to serve. And so I’m honored that you’re here. Thanks for tuning in. We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand.
Ep 56: Dominating the Customer Service Vertical with John DiJulius
Speaker 1: (00:06) RV: (00:06) Hey, brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for tuning in to listen to this interview. We are so excited to bring you this information and wanted to let you know that Hey, there’s no sales pitch coming from anything that we do with. This is all our value add to you and the community. However, if you are somebody who is looking for specific strategies on how to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and we offer a free call to everyone that’s interested in getting to know us and is willing to give us a chance to get to know them and share a little bit about what we do. So if you’re interested in taking us up on a free strategy call, you can do that@brandbuildersgroupdotcomslashsummitcallbrandbuildersgroup.com slash summit call. Hope to talk to you soon on with the show. RV: (01:03) It is my honor and distinct pleasure and privilege to introduce you to somebody who is really interesting. I admire this guy as a mentor. Also value his friendship. But in addition to all that, this is someone that I have actually learned so much from in terms of how to run a great business. So John DiJulius is his name and it’s hard to refer. It’s hard for me to refer anyone else in the customer service or customer experience space that’s like, this is the man that I learned it from that I follow. He’s written all the books on the subject. Several books customer service customers, [inaudible] secret service. What’s the secret customer service rep revolution. He ha hosts every year. The customer service revolution conference. I’ve spoken there twice. AGA has spoken there. And John is just an amazing guy who has totally dominated a vertical, is a real expert. And I asked him to just come and share the true story of how he built his personal brand in such a dedicated, consistent way. And so here he is. John de Julius, welcome to the show. JD: (02:15) Thanks Rory. It is such an honor to be here and the best and only piece that I care about in that introduction is that our friendship, that that means the world to me. RV: (02:25) Yeah. I you really do live that, you know, brother and the relationships and, and I, I’ve always admired that about you and I’ve looked up to you and I think, you know, when I think about your business you’re a great example of one of the things that we talk about brand builders group. It’s just, you know, breaking through the wall by becoming known for one thing and in your space it’s just like you’re one of only a few people really that are even at that top tier, top caliber. Tell us a little bit about how you got started. You know, cause you used to be a truly like a, you know, tell us about spas and then tell us like, how did you, how did you move into where you were teaching customer service? JD: (03:12) Yeah. you know, all on accident. I wish I could tell you I had this great plan. And and you know, I like sharing this even with kids, you know, kids be in, you know, college age, just cause, you know, I feel like kids of today have so much pressure on them to figure out what they have to be. And I think it’s crazy for a 21 year old nobody wants to do for the next you know, 50 years. And so when I graduated from college, first I was a horrible student all the way through, really bad, you know flunked out of college, but eventually went back and finished. I was working at UPS and I was driving a truck. And only because it was a significantly better pay than anything I can get back in the late eighties. JD: (04:01) I was making $45,000 as a driver, which might’ve been wet, might as well been $1 million to me. And, and coming out with the marketing degree, it was like 18 to 22,000. So my plan was, you know, I always wanted to be an entrepreneur and, and I was gonna own my own business, so I wanted to put as much weight as I can for the next five years as a ups driver, then quit and open my, and I couldn’t think of anything what that would look like. There was only, you know, two things. I was passionate about owning my own business and sports. And so the only thing I could put two and two together was I was gonna open a sporting goods store. Like that’s really, you know, the only logic I can come up with. And thank God I didn’t end up doing that, but meet my future wife. JD: (04:49) We get married, she’s just fantastic hairdresser. And you know, the, the challenge with, you know, in the late eighties, early nineties was the hair salons and, and, and hair dressers weren’t thought of as a professional place. A lot of great hairdressers quit. While they loved it, they had to get real jobs, right? Jobs that paid vacation and benefits and 401ks and all that training. And so, you know, good hairdressers should be equipment or friends and at work would be quitting. And so, you know, that’s where we got the idea, let’s, let’s open a salon at, offered something different to customers. Unlike not, we didn’t want to be known as the best customer service hair salon. We want to be, you know, anywhere, you know, you went that day paled in comparison, right? I’m kind of like, you know, when you take your kids to Disney you know, every business you visit after that is just disappointing because Disney just blew your mind in the way they take care of it. JD: (05:52) So I’m taking care of employees and then give back to the community, and so my initial plan was if if that took off, I get quit this golden handcuff job that I had at UPS and start my own business. Well, you know, as, as luck, fate would have it, we we almost went out of business the first four weeks. It was my wife and three of her closest friends from cosmetology school you know, for several years earlier. And you know, our, our, our business plan was really a sophisticated back then. It was made of a three or four cocktail napkins. That’s when we’d be out at a bar and talking about opening this Lao, we’d say, Oh yeah, write that down. And we lived there. I have them framed you know, treat customers really well and treat employees really well. JD: (06:42) But we were passionate about it, but the, the three others didn’t want anything to do with that. So it was back to my wife. We’re open a month. I really thought we were going to go out of business, but that’s where I jumped in at full time, a little bit more kicking and screaming cause I didn’t want to be in the industry initially. And then between her artistic and my customer service we just started blowing the doors off. And so we had a 900 square foot salon and, , and it knocked down you know, the doors and expanded at 1200 to 2000. And then we vacated, built, you know, one of the largest in the countries. And then you know, they have open evermore, so 27 years later still have them. But it’s, it’s not what I do. I, you know, I, I don’t have anything to do with it. [inaudible] RV: (07:27) How many are there? How many, how many? You still have JD: (07:31) Four. RV: (07:31) Okay. so you still have these and then at some point you, you go, Kay, I want to move and I want to start teaching this. Did somebody ask you or did you say, was it like a definitive, like I want to go teach customer experience? JD: (07:47) I wish I could say, you know, Rory, I had this plan and it just like going into the salon and distribute, kicking and screaming. I didn’t want to, at first I was so glad I did because we saw the opportunity. You know, while there was a salon at every corner, none of them operated at a high level. Today is a different story. But back then you know, professionalism, all that customer service. So, so we started growing really, really fast and making a lot of noise in Cleveland and they’re all in Cleveland and in the salon industry. So now it’s the mid nineties. We’ve opened up three, four years and people in Cleveland and the salon industry would ask if I’d speak because they were like, you know, what do you guys do here? You’re growing really fast. Your reputation’s X off for customer service. So at first you know, it probably like you, like a lot of people, a total accident. JD: (08:37) I was flattered, you know, that someone wanted to hear my story when I did it locally. I was like, this is cool cause that now I can promote the salons to the local chamber of commerce or whoever at the time when it was asking me. And then what happened was it never thought it would, you know, materialize to you know, two or three people, two or three people come up to me after speak and say, you know, you do this for companies. And I kind of like yeah, what do you charge and I’m like, know charge for what? Like, you know, I didn’t know that there was, you know, you could do this all, you know, on the fly, I’m like, shoot $150. And, you know, they were, you know, shocked. But that, that’s all I’m like, Oh God, I should have asked her more. JD: (09:21) So, but every time I spoke, two or three leads came from that. And so it, you know, and so I was a salon owner that, that spoke a little bit. And then in 2002 I wrote my first book, Secret Service. So you know, again, I know you, you went through this when I started getting a bigger conventions, I was a, the breakout speaker in the basement. They had the map and a flashlight defined and that’s where I belonged. But yeah, the world beaters, you know, Michael Gerber, Tom Peters, Jim Gilmore on main stage, and I watched them, I’d be like, Holy cow. So I’d wait in line without all the 500 attendees when I finally get up there and say, hi, I’m John, I’m a speaker too, and get it. And you know, they, they, they were all so generous and slow down and they gave me their number and, or you know, it may have email, but they said, you know, Hey, I, I’d be happy to help you. JD: (10:17) I couldn’t believe how generous they were. So, you know, I reach out, they said, here’s what you gotta do. You know how to create a website, you got to get demo, you got to write a book. And you know, so I, I listened to them and you know, so my first book comes out and a 2002 secret service and overnight basically that in the next 12 months it took me from a salon and it spoke to a speaker that owned salons. And then since you know, 2003 I haven’t been active in the salons. And then, you know, the salon, the speaking consulting business just exploded from that. RV: (10:53) So then So that’s interesting. So you started as a speaker. Now today, your primary business model, like if you have to go like w you, you know, you’ve got, you’ve got customer service revolution, the conference, you’ve got keynote fees, you’ve got book sales, you’ve got consulting, you’ve got other trainers. What is like, where does most of the revenue come from today? JD: (11:19) Those streams, number one, probably at 50, a little bit more than 50 is customer service consulting. You know, working with Starbucks and Lexus and Pricewaterhouse and you know, all those great companies, the Chick-Filet A’s of the world. And, and we have our consultants and that’s just ongoing in there every month, every quarter. The, the second revenue stream is, you know, keynotes and I primarily do that, but that’s where we get our leads from for our consulting. And then, you know, the, the customer service revolution conference. And then we also have the customer experience executive Academy, which is something that people come to Cleveland for a, for a whole year. They come four times a year. And, and you know, it’s like a, a master’s degree in customer experience. RV: (12:08) Interesting. So they come for four times a year. Like, like how long do they come? JD: (12:13) Three days. January, April, July, October. So next week literally is to 20, 20 class start. So it’s sold out. And so now the, you know, if you want to take the next one, you have to wait until January 20, 21, because you can’t come midstream. It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it builds a pipe. We do have an online version, but, but the, the physical class, it’s, you know, 20 to 25 of the tops chief experience officers from all over. You know, they get together and learn our methodology. RV: (12:46) Man. So that is awesome. So then so
Ep 13: Change the World by Finding Your Voice with Les Brown and Dr. Ona Brown | Recap Episode
On today’s show, we dive in to recap the life-changing conversation we had with Les Brown and his daughter Dr. Ona Brown in our previous episode. There were three major themes to take away from our interview with them that we will elaborate on today: Possibility Heart Comparison For ‘possibility’, what Les said about how […]