EntreLeadership - #132: Todd Duncan—The New Rules of Customer Service

Episode Date: February 1, 2016

How can you successfully run a business in today’s ever-changing marketplace? Todd Duncan, sales entrepreneur and best-selling author of The $6,000 Egg, says it’s all about creating emotional connections with your customers. And he joins this week’s podcast to tell you how. EntreLeadership Coach John Felkins also stops by to answer some of our listeners’ questions. This episode is business gold. Don’t miss it. entreleadership.com/podcast InfusionSoft Leads Workbook   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

helping business leaders grow themselves, their team, and their profits. This is the Entree Leadership Podcast. Now, here is your host, Ken Coleman. We're broadcasting from the Music City, and we're thankful for the download. Here is what's coming up this episode. Todd Duncan, New York Times bestselling author of a fun little book called The $6,000 egg that we've talked about on this podcast before. This is, I think, one of the most impactful stories on how you, serve your customer, how you serve the marketplace. So that's going to be a lot of fun. I promise

you that. Then we're really excited. I've been teasing this InfusionSoft, a long time partner with us. They've got a brand new tool. It's absolutely free. And it's all about helping you with leads. Leads are your lifeline. Leads are everything in your business. We're going to give you a great tool from InfusionSoft. We'll introduce you to Chad Kirby from their team who really gets this. So that's coming up. And then John Falcons is back. Our head coach, Coach John Falcons, answers three of your questions. We love getting questions from you, the listener.

And so you'll hear those. These are very practical, looking at things like getting people in the right seat, questions about staff meeting, and then a question about how to treat your team like family, but then still get things done. Very interesting questions. These are great questions, and John breaks those down. Hey, real quick favor, for those of you who really, really love this podcast, we'd love for you to subscribe on iTunes. So this helps spread the word.

It's a little bit of that word of mouth viral type thing. We'd love for you to head on over to the Entree Leadership podcast and just subscribe for us. Also put in a comment or a rating. We would appreciate that. It takes just a minute or two. We would be grateful. Well, if you were a regular listener, the name Todd Duncan and the $6,000 egg will probably sound familiar. Episode 105, that was last July, we featured an excerpt of Dave teaching our entire

team, over 525 people in our weekly staff meeting. And in that particular excerpt, Dave actually referenced the book, the $6,000 egg. And basically, Dave, of course, was talking about serving the marketplace. And this is such a great story, and we were reminded of this great little book. So we reached out to Todd Duncan, a longtime friend of mine, the guys who know, New York Times bestselling author, one of the real leaders in the real estate mortgage space as far as a trainer, a training company. So he wrote this book based on a real experience. If you've not heard of this book, I heard of the story, the $6,000, can you imagine? You're going to love this. This is gold. And so I want you to get out something to write with.

If you're working out or you're in the yard or whatever, you need to go back and listen to this and write so much of this down because it is just breakthrough stuff on how to serve your customers. Here it is my conversation with Todd Duncan about the $6,000 egg. Well, Todd, I'm thrilled to have you on here because I learned of this story from Dave who shared it to our entire staff. And so the $6,000 egg, it's an extraordinary metaphor, but a very real story. So before we get into the truth behind all of this, I want you to have a. actually take us back to the day that the $6,000 egg story actually happened with you? Well, it's a great story. And my wife, Deb and I had been regulars at a restaurant in Newport Beach where I live

in California and knew the bartenders and we'd go by every Saturday or Sunday. We'd turn it into kind of our sports date for the week. We'd pull up to the bar and order a meal and watch whatever football or basketball was on. And I would venture to say we would. were probably spending between business events and our personal events about 500 bucks a month at this restaurant. So one of these occasions, Ken, we simply asked for a side order of a fried egg that we could put on top of our cheeseburger. Cheesburger's on their menu. Eggs are on their menu. We asked for a side order of an egg. And the bartender said, yeah, let me see if the kitchen can do it. And that was the first kind of interesting thought that I had. So somebody has to go check and see if they can do it. So he

came back and said they couldn't they could not give me a side order for an egg and I said why not he said they're just not prepared to do it and I said this is interesting I'm here regularly and I'm asking for a side order of an egg and so I waited just a couple minutes and asked the other bartender who I thought I'd do an end around on and she went back to the kitchen and it was the same thing and we were very perplexed because on their menu for the day they had a special egg and waffle dish it was 1595 and they were offering that up so they had the egg, but the request for a side order of an egg to simply put on top of our cheeseburger fell on deaf ears and there was this resistance I had never really felt in a service environment to this point with this restaurant. So the end result was I just simply asked if I could

speak to the manager and her name was Natalie and she came over Ken and she approached us with the kind of body language where you know this is not going to turn out well. Yeah, right. And her arms were cross, you know, and she didn't have a smile on her face. I mean, these are like customer service basics, right? And her first words were, so I understand you have a problem. And it was like, okay, no, I don't have a problem really. I think the problem is on you. I didn't say that. But I said, you know, it was real simple, Natalie. We just wanted a side order for an egg for the top of our burger. And she said, we can't do that? And I said, can I ask why? I mean, you have this waffle special. You're throwing eggs on top of the waffles and we're simply asking for a side order for an egg. And here's here was her response. She said,

if I gave you a side order of an egg, we wouldn't have enough eggs to sell the waffle dishes that are part of the plan today. And it dawned to me that she, here's what she's doing. She's a business manager. You know, the, the restaurant is a small business. And she basically is saying that the rules are going to rule your outcome. Right. I said to her, I said, so, you know, we probably spend 500 bucks a month here. You would rather not give me an egg that costs you maybe 50 cents to buy so that you have that egg for a waffle dish that you're going to sell for 1595 and potentially lose a customer over this.

And she said, that's all I can do. And that's right. That's exactly right. We cannot change our inventory for our specials. I said to her, I said, man, that's weird. And she said, you know what? I'm sorry for your inconvenience. allow me to pay your bill. And I looked at her, Ken, and I said, I looked her right in the eyes.

And I said, that is the stupidest thing I have ever heard a business do in my life. And she looked at me confused. And I said, so, and I opened the tab, it's like 71 bucks. So I say, you're going to pay my bill for $71. Okay. Instead of giving me an egg that costs you 25 cents. And I'm already at the point where I'm never coming back anyway. Right. And she said it's the best I can do. So she grabs the bill. We check out. We're out of there. We get out of the restaurant and a hundred feet to the right of the restaurant is Whole Foods. And I said to Deb, I said, let's just go go down there and see how much eggs are. And we walked down to Whole Foods and walked to the Egg aisle and they were 33 cents apiece. And I reflected back on just the restaurant experience, a 33 cent egg in the back of this Whole Food

restaurant is a restaurant called Back Bay Tavern. So we go back and Sandy's the waitress and she said hi and I said, Sandy, you're not going to believe what just happened. And she said what? And I told her and she said, you know what? John Mackey has taught us all, founder of Whole Foods, to say yes, to be in the yes world. If we can do it, we will do it. So Deb goes, Sandy, here's the deal. I want a garlic pizza with Parmesan. I want it with a fried egg on top. Now, Ken, what was the last time? What was the last time you ordered a pizza with a fried egg on top? We're just going for it. They've never had the order before. It's not on the menu. She goes, I believe we can do that. And she comes back in a minute and says,

pizza's in the oven. And then listen to this, right before the pizza's ready, the chef's confused, because he doesn't know, this is the kind of detail to service. He doesn't know whether or not they should fry the egg and put it on top and then cut the pizza or cut the pizza first and then put the egg because if you cut the egg first, the yolk's going to go everywhere. Right. They had enough wherewithal to ask a simple question. How would the customer like the egg on the pizza cut or cut the pizza? Anyway, so it unleashes this kind of within a hundred feet customers have choices. And one place says no can do over an egg, which now costs them $6,000 a year. and one provider says we can do, and now, listen to this, the book is in Whole Foods.

Oh, I love it. One employee who said yes to a garlic and Parmesan pizza with a fried egg on top has now shifted the entire culture of Whole Foods. That's so fantastic. All right, so I love the story. So we're going to break this down and talk about what you share in the book. But I may get ahead of the questioning here, but you know what? I have to. What did you learn and what can we learn as leaders about that particular manager who in the moment has come to you before she's ever said a word to you? And here's what jumped out to me.

And she bowed up. She had her arms crossed. I understand you have a problem. And the fact remains that she had already decided, I'm not going to give this dude the fried egg. And so I'm just wondering what's going on there to take that posture versus, you know what, if we're short two eggs, we can go next door and get a dozen eggs for a buck 50 or whatever it is. So what's happening there that she's bowed up? Well, so I think she's following old rules. And the old customer service rules are, you know, let's build a trap and then sell it. And this is how we do it, this, that, and the other thing.

And the new rules are so different. We're in a yes economy. You know, people have options. and I think that from my vantage point, the culture there was missing, you know, whoever's running that store and obviously the CEO that owns all the restaurants, you know, whatever he or she is doing to create culture, what they're not doing is they're not empowering employees that care about the brand to make smart decisions about optimizing the customer's experience. That's what it comes down to. And with small business owners and large businesses, there has to be boundaries on what the employees do to run the company the right way. But when it comes to, to the customer experience and the customer encounter, employees need to be empowered to make decisions that when that transaction is over, that customer goes, holy cow, I'm coming back again. So we're in a yes economy. We have to empower employees to say yes, not give away the farm, but make intelligent decisions. We're going to build a business around intelligent yeses.

You can't be competitive. It's not enough anymore. You have to connect. I mean, Gallup just through this number out that said that if you have the ability to create emotional connection with the customer, which the egg girl did not, you know, in the first place and the second place did, emotional connection increases margins by as much as 26 percent and actually can, you know, impact sales by their number last year is as high as 85 percent. Wow. So that's what was missing. It's just, it's a very simple plug and play cultural shift in the way. that we say yes to customers and make sure their experience is off the charts. Okay, so I love this. So this moment in history for Todd Duncan and his wife turns into this

little book, and it is a little book, but it's just absolutely chock full of unbelievable wisdom. And you talk about these new rules of customer service. So here's what's interesting. I want to get behind the psychology of this because I love what you just said. I think we all agree that's what we should be doing. We're in a yes economy. We need to understand how to take care. of the customer. We're going to dive into that in a minute. But I want to stay on this idea of rules, because my personality, I'm the kind of guy, Todd, and you know these people well, you know me well. Rules have always been guidelines for me. That's just the way I'm wired. There's millions of people in the world that are that way as well. We're not rebels per se, but we just kind of look at rules

as guidelines. And nothing makes me bristle anymore than when I read or see or experience a situation where a rule is so nonsensical, but it becomes a battle line. And I think that's what was happening in this situation. So I want to get back to, okay, I understand culture and I understand the training part, but there is a humanness in the moment. And so how do we teach our team? How do we as leaders exist within rules, but also know that rules sometimes are an enemy to what we're trying to do?

I think that what we actually have to do is we have to create a, if I'm in their chair, philosophy. And the, if I'm in their chair philosophy is in that moment, if the tables were reversed, what would you as a consumer like to have happen? You can do that in a nanosecond. You can visually, physically, emotionally go there and just say, okay, what would I like to have happen? And whatever your answer is, that generally. is the way you should handle a service situation because we all have it. I mean, everybody listening to this has had great experiences and they've had negative experiences. But if you don't do things

from your customer's side of the business and you play by the rule book only, you're going to lose customers over simple split decisions. Like in this case, if I'm a general manager of the store, I send my bellman, okay? I send my bus boy. I send my dishwasher. I send my dishwasher. I send my, you know, kitchen cleanup guy, hey, run down to Whole Foods, buy a dozen eggs, let's take care of this guy and say, no problem. That's, I mean, think about it. That's the wise thing to do. And now, you know, nearly 30,000 people have read a story about this restaurant that is negatively

impacting them because they did not have that. What should I do if I'm sitting in the customer's chair? And it's a very, very simple idea. The other is top down. So this may or may not surprise you can. But how this book got written is I wrote a blog on this experience. It got shared with 411,000 people. We actually got a call from the publisher to write the book.

Oh, sure. It was interesting. So I take a copy of the blog. I fold it in half. I do a nice little handwritten note. And I mail it to the CEO of the food group that owns this restaurant as well as three other brands nationally. You would think that I would get a call from the

CEO apologizing. I wasn't looking for it. Just wanted him to know my experience in his restaurant. Do you know to this day, no reply, no response? So, you know, for the entree leader, it's culture, man, and it starts with you. And you have to create a culture where your people feel empowered to make choices, you know? Oh, absolutely. That's exactly right. It's interesting that post this story, you send the blog post to the CEO. And, you, you know, and it's a lot, you send, He doesn't take the initiative to correct it. There's two opportunities here. When a company blows it, that's going to happen.

But you can always come back and make up for it. And there was no effort to do that, too. It's very interesting. So that really drives this whole culture thing all the way of the top. I want you to very quickly, this is a short little book, and I don't want to give it all the way. But give us a summary of the new rules of customer service that you kind of outlined in this book as a result of this experience. I'll just give you a few of my favorites. It's one of the rules is go beyond and beyond and beyond.

And when you're done, go beyond again. And I gave a shoe shine guy in Denver International Airport a $30 payment for a shoe shine. And the reason I did it is because he took 20 minutes instead of eight minutes to do my shoes. And he got clippers out and clipped off loose stitches. He unlaced the shoes and lift the flaps up and got Q-tips and literally took the dust out from underneath the leather flaps on my shoes. It was stunning. He went beyond and then I looked at him and he went beyond again. And then I looked at him and he went beyond again.

And when I got done, Ken, I asked him. He's a business owner. People don't sit down for a shoe shines. He's out of business. I asked him, I said, how much? He said, pay me whatever you think the shine is worth. Oh, that's rich. It's so rich.

The guy is straight commission, you know? And he says, pay me what it's worth. So he ends up going over beyond, beyond, beyond, and instead of getting eight bucks, it gets 30 bucks. That's a favorite story. Another one is the montage resort. It's a fairly high-end hotel chain, and we went there for dinner one night, and we came out of dinner and went up the elevator where the valet is, and our car was waiting for us, and we get in the car. And in the car, our two montage hats on our dashboard with a happy birthday note right on top of the kind of the video display.

And the happy birthday card is from everybody on the valet team to my wife for her birthday. And they give us a couple hats in this. And so the rule is that you have to have interactive communication between departments. Here's what happened. When we were done with our check in the hotel restaurant, the restaurant calls Valet, says, Dunkin's are paying their bill, probably should be up within 10 to 15 minutes. Valet gets that message. They bring the car around.

by the way it's mrs duncan's birthday two hats birthday card you know that is i think a phenomenal example of interdepartmental communication that's a rule that i love business karma is a rule we have an experience where we went to a burger joint in and out burger in it's always crowded here and so uh deb parked her car in the red just ran in for french fries comes back out and uh there's a cop giving her a ticket she knows she did something wrong she know she parked in the red she was only there three or four minutes the manager comes out because she goes there so often comes up pays her ticket pulls a ticket gives her a check for the ticket for a dollar pack of french fries now years later years later we spent nearly five thousand dollars with uh in an out burger

to cater part of our wedding that's business karma what you do returns what you give comes back what you offer, you know, that's the kind of stuff that we need to do today. Then you have to do that. Yeah. But, you know, it's like all that dude had to do at R&D is say, or let's go back to Natalie with the closed arms. Approach us with your arms open. Have a smile on your face and simply say this. I understand you're having less than a brilliant experience. What can I do to help? That's it. Yeah, I'm listening to this, Todd. You just laid out three great examples for us, Okay. So I want to tee you up on this because what I heard in each example, specifically with the montage, they work more concerned about results instead of rules, right?

They're communicating in an department. Hey, it may take a little extra effort for the valet guys to put hats together and get everybody to sign a card. And that's not super productive. The shoe shine guy, he has literally covered every square speck of your shoe. And to me, it's about results versus rules, whereas Natalie is so hung up on rules, she can't deliver a result that's a win for the company. Is that a good way of looking at it? I think that empowered cultures allow result-oriented focus.

And that at the end of the day, I mean, we have to be profitable, right? But we've got to be able to have our team, the people that represent our brand, the people that are helping us start a company. We have to understand that the rules are black and white. And today's service world, it's not only multi, it's technicolor, it's kaleidoscope. Textures, it's everything. Yeah, it's everything. And you have to be able to produce results.

Listen to this. Alex has had over 300 people. Track him down at Denver International Airport. because of the story. Right. That's exactly. All he had to do is produce one great result for one customer that had a platform, and now he's got over 300 people coming through.

The montage is private labeling the book for their business clients that come in and sleep. Instead of giving their business clients chocolates, they want to give their business clients a book that can help their client build a business. They're interested in results. And by the way, Ken, just on that, they do have rules. Absolutely. restaurants do communicate to valet, what is the occasion? We've had champagne put in the car for anniversaries. We've had birthday cards put in. It's not like, let's just one off this. It's a rule that

blows the customer's mind. If there's a special experience, if they're celebrating a date, we want to honor that. So I think that today, Tony Shea from Zappos says it beautifully. He says every single call and every single contact is perceived as a way to make a positive emotional connection with a customer today's customer right now real time can today's customer must be positively emotionally and memorably impacted at every level of their commercial experience from start to finish that's right that's the job we have and today's culture is especially with social media man if you don't deliver the goods and produce the results you'll get lamb blasted on social social network so fast it'll make your head spin. So one of the things, you know, the egg sets up is

how you're how you're actually delivering and what are the stars and what are the thumbs up and what are the ratings people are giving you because we are in a very fast, organic, nimble economy today where one decision can impact thousands, tens of thousands of people with one negative post on Facebook or, you know. Right. You know, I'm taking notes here, people. Todd, I do. this all the time. I talk to the listener while I'm learning because I'm learning. But, you know, the rules that you're discussing are about what we can and should do, not what we can't and won't do. Exactly. That's what I'm learning. And I just had to share that because I think that's huge. It's a shift in attitude. Yeah. And you're either in the yes economy or you're not. You're left behind

pretty dramatically. If you're not, if you don't have some great service rules. Yep. And again, not just rules. Great service empowerment guidelines. Well, I agree. I don't even know. I said rules. I honestly hate the word, but it's a great, but, but to your credit, it's, it's beautiful for your listeners to understand that the, the, the sword that will kill a great service experience is if you have too many rules that are not in face. So the rule, I hate the word too, but it's, it's the right analogy. That is. Oh, no, it works beautifully. All right. So as the guy who wrote this little book, I'm going to give you the final word here to our listeners, how would you, Todd Duncan, recommend that they take this book and weave it into their culture and make it come

alive in their specific marketplace. I'm going to say to everybody in Entry leadership, you know, as an entrepreneur, bottom line is you have the people on your team to execute a world-class service strategy. So what we are finding people are doing is they're taking the little book and taking each of the stories and they're creating a 10-week job. journey where each week the teams and the company work on one of the rules. And they come up with their enhancements. They come up with their breakthroughs. You know, they got their idea paint walls and they're painting this and writing this and beginning to implement one thing out of each of the week's experience. So over the course of a year, we rinse and repeat those 10 things. Rinse and

repeat, rinse and repeat. And at the end of one year, you can transform a culture. But it takes your team. You know, you can't from the top down say, here's how we're going to take care of the customer. The top down is, I want a vision to be executed in our company where every single person that does business with us, not 90%, not 95%, not 98%, every single person ends their, their experience with us just, wow, you know, memorable, emotional, positive. And you guys are going to help me, help us, help each other create the culture. So that's what in terms of just taking the book, putting some traction on it, and getting lift stories sell, Ken. And everybody for every one of your listeners that has customers is telling stories about your listeners' business after the fact. And the

simple question is, if you're the leader, if you're the owner, if you're the entreepreneur, what do you want them to be saying? And you want people shouting from the rooftops. You want people running around town. You want people at a sales meeting at their company to say, guys, I don't even know if you'll ever need this, but if you do, XYZ is the company to call on. Referability, retention can. A retained client is worth a lot. There's no downside to building world-class service and making that a cultural experience. Oh, I love that. By the way, I do want to ask, the Shushine guy, what's his name again? His name is Alex. Is he still at the Denver International Airport? As we do this conversation, you think he's still there? Terminal B. Last time I checked with him, Terminal B, United Airlines. Terminal B, United Airlines, Denver, Denver. I don't fly United, but next time I'm in Denver, I'm going to get my shoes polished and I'm going to periscope it or something and then send you the video. Because I do think that's a wonderful story. I love it. He is Todd Duncan. The book is the $6,000 egg. I think, Todd, it probably takes. What do you think it takes to read it, just on a natural, easy pace?

Well, I was talking with Darren Hardy from Success Magazine recently, and he read it on his kitchen counter with a glass of water in 33 minutes. Yeah, yeah, it's a super easy read, but just jam-packed with goodness. Hey, man, we're so grateful that you hung out with us today. We appreciate it. Nah, no problem, Ken. Always a pleasure and continue to success to you guys. Okay, I hope you enjoyed that. And listen, I hate to rehash interview, so I don't do it. But I want to give you one thing that I took away. And I took away so. much. But one thing that just fired my soul is I was listening to Todd, and I think it's so relevant, is simply this. The rules are about what we can and should do, not what we can and won't do. And it drives me nuts when we let rules drive us to decisions that make absolutely no sense. At the end of the day, think about the rule, how it should be applied, but what can you do?

What should you do? Those are the questions that I wrote down that I think should always guide us. Oh, love that stuff. And I hate rules, by the way. I guess I should give full disclosure. I hate rules, but rules are important, and I do follow the rules. If I didn't follow the rules, I wouldn't be here. Be in jail somewhere.

Todd Duncan.com is the website. If you like to go get more about the book, get the book, read his blog, etc. Connect with Todd at toddunkin.com. Hey, we've been telling you about InfusionSoft. Boy, I love these people. Longtime partners with Entree leadership. They power this podcast, and we're grateful for that. But I got to tell you, going out there to meet the folks and Chad Kirby, specifically, who you're going to hear from here momentarily.

What a great culture. What great people. You've heard me say this before. You can't really get to know somebody fully until you go hang out in their house with them. And their place of business is their house for the business. And, boy, I really enjoyed it. Great people. And so they're creating a tool each month to aid you in growing your business.

There's so much that you face. So the first one, it's all about leads. So this is really practical stuff. Listen to me and Chad talk about how to gain greater traction with getting leads. Chad, one of the biggest issues for any business is leads. And you talk about the fact all the time that many businesses overlook leads. They don't see the true value. you in all the leads. What does that look like? Well, you know, Ken, you talk to an entrepreneur and you

ask them, what is your greatest challenge? And in almost all cases, they'll say, oh, if I could just have more leads. If I could just have more leads. So we quickly go out and try, find ways to generate those additional leads. But reality is, there are leads. We're overlooking. And what I mean by that is this. Imagine for a moment that your business is a strawberry field. And you go out there and you see the strawberries that are ready and you pick those strawberries. We would never go out the next week and pull out the plant and plant another strawberry plant and wait for those strawberries to come in. We would look at those strawberries and say, okay, these are ready today. Those won't be, but they'll be ready tomorrow. And we approach the field that way. Well, in business, we sometimes fall into the

trap of selling to the hot leads and then saying, okay, where can I get more of these hot leads. And in reality, we're overlooking some of our best leads. Oh, I love that. So efficiently, we need to be looking below those visible strawberries, waiting, knowing that some of those folks just aren't ready to close yet, but they certainly might close. And he actually closed much bigger than the ones right in front of you. Is that what we need to know? Absolutely. I love that. And, you know, Ken, people that are listening are going, yeah, I know, Chad, I get that. I know that's a problem. But what do I do? And so what we've done is we've talked to thousands of small businesses and entrepreneurs that are doing this successfully. And we've taken all of what

they've said and we've created a workbook with five key areas that they can work on to make sure they don't overlook any of these leads. I love this. So folks, this is the whole point of this. This is something that is going to be in your face if it's not already. If you want to get help on this, very simple. It's a five-step process in a very neat, short, easy to read, easy to consume and more importantly, easy to apply workbook from Infusionsoft. Thanks, Chad. Okay, you heard Chad talking about the workbook, so here's how you get it. Infusionsoft.com slash leads. Infusionsoft.com slash leads. That's it. You'll get the workbook that you heard Chad and I just talk about, and I really believe you'll see some growth in your leads. So jump on it. Infusionsoft.com

slash leads. I love when we get your emails. And so I got a new email address for you, for you for your questions. Now, of course, podcast at entreleadership.com is still a great place to email us. But we want to drive your questions to this specific email address. For questions that you want to get answers to, ask the coach at entreleadership.com. Ask the coach at entreleadership.com. We love when you get your questions, and we love when Coach John Felkins comes in the studio to answer them. We say that all the time, and I have some fun with it, but you really are our head coach.

but give me 30 seconds for folks who may not know about your role. Maybe they haven't heard you on the Entree Leadership podcast. What do I mean when I say head coach? First of all, Ken, I'd just like to thank you for having me here. I appreciate the contract extension after this year's season. Well, you've got a lot of wins. And it's all about winning. I don't care what anybody says.

That's right. That's right. This is the real world. We don't care if you feel good. No, this is about the W is on a scoreboard. You don't get a trophy for showing up at Entree leadership. We don't do participation trophies. No, we do not.

Absolutely. Yeah, so the best way to learn more about what we're doing in Entree Leadership, and what I get to work in is just connect with us at Entreeleadership.com. Make sure that you sign up for the newsletter, and then just on a real regular basis, you're going to hear everything that is going on about how we help people run their business, grow their teams, grow themselves, and grow their profits. John and his amazing team are leading the efforts with all access. This is an exclusive. There's nothing like it in America, and you're being very, yeah, I expect coaches to do that. This was like a classic. I threw you the softball and you threw it back to everybody else. But John leads our efforts there with All Access and you'll see

him and hear him many times if you're part of All Access. So call the team, check it out. It will take you to the next level. So here's what we'd like to do when we bring John into the studio. We take your questions, the listeners questions. These are real questions for real problems. And John knows the Entry Leadership Playbook as well as anybody. And so here we go. You're Ready? Bring it. All right. First question from Chrissy. She says, I've placed someone into a position and it's not the right fit. I've shared this info with them and now I'm working to try out another position but they're mad, defensive and not taking this well. I'm working hard to keep them as part of the team but trying to keep my emotions in check also. This is the best part of the question

in caps. H-E-L-P-exclamation point, help. Well, Chrissy, I feel for you. I know that's a tough spot to be in. And you need to be patient because actually you're the one that made the mistake in the hiring process. I imagine this person is kind of causing some drama. And if you feel like, you know, this is a distraction, I got to slow down and deal with this. But part of the reason why we stress so heavily the hiring steps that we take is to avoid this very situation. It is really tough to turn that ship once you've got somebody's expectations set around this is what you're going to be doing. So be as patient as you can with this person, do everything you can to get them in that new fit, own the problem.

That's one of the things as a leadership lesson here is just to say, hey, I messed up. I apologize. I understand that you're upset. I'm going to do everything I can to fix this. I should have done a better job in communicating in the hiring process. That usually goes a long way. If we make the person feel like they're the problem, then you get a lot more of this defensiveness and angst around the change and role. But what you've got to do is own the problem with this person.

You've got to do everything you can to get them into the new role. And if it just doesn't work, if you just can't pull this shift off, then you need to do everything you can to help this person down the road, land on their feet and find a role, even if it's outside your organization, that's a good fit for them. All right, next question from Erica. How can I change how my team feels about staff meetings? People are bored, distracted, watching the clock, knock, making, eye contact, etc. Yikes. This is kind of like two tough questions in a row. Tough because.

Hey, these are great questions. Well, they're great questions. But what I mean when I say that they're tough is probably the reason why your team is struggling with narcolepsy here in the staff meeting is because you're doing a poor job of putting on a good staff meeting. You're very nice. I'm going to go ahead and say your meetings suck. Well, you're on the podcast more than I am, Kent. You've got the report to say that, but yeah, it's probably a really bad staff meeting. And so, you know, we've got 500 and however many people in our staff meetings, and I can tell you at that scale, we've got a whole team dedicated to making

the staff meetings good. That's right. There's a lot of forethought that goes into, a lot of tensionality. We're very deliberate with what we're doing there, and they're good meetings. Even when you're not at that scale. You need to be that intentional. You need to engage people. You need to give people a role in the staff meeting, so maybe they're the ones speaking into different areas and really engage them in the process. But, you know, you can do a lot of things. Everything from a little bit of background bump music when everybody's filing into the meeting, to having some good slides, to doing something fun once in a while, to engaging different members of the team. But basically, can you set it, if they're that checked out, it's probably

because the meetings are that bad, and you need to just turn up the volume on what you're doing and get more intentional. I love that. Let me give a couple things here. This is really quick. I'm listening to you, and I'm taking notes. I would look at how you're communicating it. That's what you addressed.

Make sure it's interesting, exciting. But more important, what and why? Yeah. What are you communicating? They are so much that we could talk about in our staff meetings. Yeah. But I'm going to tell you, think about the what you're communicating and why you're communicating it and then make it interesting.

Right. What, why, how? Put that through the old filter. Yep. There you go. All right, very good. Next question. You're doing great, by the way.

Well, thank you, kids. Yeah, fantastic. Appreciate it. All right, next question from Mike. You guys constantly talk about treating your employees like family. My question is, how do you separate that so that work still gets done? Wow. Great question.

I thought the first two were hard. No, this is an easy question. Oh, really? Yeah. That's why you're the coach, and I'm just the guy on the mic. Here's the answer. You don't. You don't try and separate.

You know, people, we get this question all the time, can I be friends with people at work? You know, should I try and create this separation? And the fact of the matter is, no, we need to have this mental shift here. What you need to do is not lose objectivity with people that you work with, regardless of whether your friends or family or whatever it is. You've got to maintain that professional objectivity, whatever it is. Let's say you're the one running the company, and the last question was from somebody on your team and the meeting sucked, well, just because your family or friends with the person

that's running the meetings, you don't just say, well, you know, we're friends. We're not going, I don't really want to talk about this with them. It's just uncomfortable. No, you talk about it with them, but you maintain that objectivity. Say, guess what? The meetings suck. We're going to do something about this. Love you.

You're awesome. Yeah. The meetings suck. Yeah. We got to fix it. Yeah. Looking forward to bowling Friday night, but not looking forward to your announcements anymore. Right.

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So be friends with the people. that you work with, but don't lose objectivity. Yeah, that's good. I like that. All right, thank you, John Falcons.

Always good when we have you in studio to answer questions. And remember, folks, ask the coach at entreleadership.com. Ask the coach at entreleadership.com is the email address to get your questions answered. So send them in. We love it. Don't forget, the final countdown is on until Entree Master Series, March 13 through 17, 2016, seen here at the world headquarters of Ramsey Solutions. New format, four days of great teaching from Dave Ramsey, Chris Hogan and Christy Wright,

and then day four is when we apply it. So three days of drinking from a fire hose, if you will. Day four, we break it down, distill it, and allow you to go, oh, this is how I practically apply this in my environment. It's going to be great. Don't miss it to register. Find out anything you need to know about the event, entreeleadership.com slash e.m. M.S. Entreeleadership.com slash EMS. I want to thank Todd Duncan, Chad Kirby, and John Falcons

for being on the podcast this week. Folks, we're going to have a great episode coming up with a massive giveaway next week. You don't want to miss that. So until then, on behalf of our producer Eric Anthony and our entire Entree leadership team, thank you for listening. We'll talk with you again very soon.