EntreLeadership - How Chick-fil-A Achieves Fantastic Customer Service with Shane Benson

Episode Date: February 28, 2022

Join us as our host, George Kamel, talks to Shane Benson. Shane is the senior vice president of operations at Chick-fil-A corporate and was Chick-fil-A’s vice president of customer experience for 16 years. He shares how the customer service culture at Chick-fil-A has developed over the years and the underlying principles you and your team can put into practice to create repeat customers. Later in the episode, George chats with Luke LeFevre, Ramsey Solutions’ chief creative officer. Luke explains why he repeats certain phrases to his team and why those phrases are important for keeping the team focused on the mission and the vision.   You’ll learn: Chick-fil-A’s simple ingredients for great customer service The secret sauce for creating consistent customer service A simple tool to protect your company culture How to transfer your culture to new hires   Sign up for The EntreLeadership Podcast Takeaways—a weekly email where you’ll get three tangible takeaways and a tactical action step related to each week’s episode: https://bit.ly/podcast-takeaways   Support our sponsors: BELAY: https://bit.ly/33SwBlO Hite Digital: https://bit.ly/HiteDigital NetSuite: https://bit.ly/NetSuiteEntre Exodus 90: https://bit.ly/Exodus90Entre Kyro Digital: https://bit.ly/KyroDigital   Links mentioned in the episode: The EntreLeadership Podcast: https://bit.ly/TheEntreLeadershipPodcast Dave Ramsey’s 7 Baby Steps: https://bit.ly/351RpIi Download the free How to Create Core Values guide: https://bit.ly/3oZE3Tt Schedule a call with Tim, our producer: https://bit.ly/3bJOSmi   Learn more about EntreLeadership Events: EntreLeadership Summit: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipSummit EntreLeadership Master Series: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipMasterSeries   Learn more about EntreLeadership Coaching: Elite: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipElite Advisory Groups: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipAdvisoryGroups Executive Coaching: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipExecutiveCoaching Workshops: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipWorkshops Weekly Report Tool: https://bit.ly/WeeklyReportTool   Listen to all the Ramsey Network podcasts anytime, anywhere in our app. Download the Ramsey Network app: https://apple.co/3eN8jNq Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Former Zappo CEO Tony Shea once said, customer service shouldn't just be a department. It should be the entire company. Great companies know this and live this out every single day. Now, slapping it on the wall is one thing, but how do you be about the business of creating a great customer experience and instilling those values into your team? From the Ramsey Network, this is the Entree Leadership podcast,

where we help business leaders grow themselves, their teams, and their profits. I'm your host, George Camel. in today's episode is all about how to create and maintain a great customer experience. Our first guest today is Shane Benson. He currently serves as Senior Vice President of Operations at Chick-fil-A corporate, and previously he was VP of Customer Experience for 16 years. We'll talk about how the customer service culture at Chick-fil-A has developed over the years and the underlying principles that you and your team can put into practice.

Our second conversation is with Ramsey Leader Luke Lefevre. We'll talk about the repeated phrases that he uses to shape our culture, here at Ramsey and the impact that has on our customers. Up first, my conversation with Shane Benson. Shane, it's so great to have you on the podcast. How you been? I'm grateful to be here and great to see you, George, happy to be here. Well, we've been friends for many years now and we got talking about this idea of customer experience and there's no one I thought of that is better to talk about this than you. And you have quite the resume. Right now, you are senior. vice president of operations at Chick-fil-A corporate. But before that, you were VP of customer experience

for 16 years, and you're an owner-operator of different Chick-fil-A locations before that for many, many years. So over 30 years now, you've been with Chick-fil-A. What is the secret sauce, pun intended, that has kept you with Chick-fil-A for over 30 years? Well, let me first say over the course of that time, you gave me a lot of credit at the beginning. I feel like I can't keep a job so I keep kind of rotating through these experiences that all seem to sum up with Chick-fil-A. But I just quite honestly, early on in my early years, I needed a job. I had a girlfriend who loved to eat. I had no money. I ended up marrying her. And along the way, I got a job at Chick-fil-A, and I just never looked back. I just absolutely loved it. And I think the part that I love most about

it was just customer interactions. It was amazing. I mean, you see all walks of life that come in and out of a restaurant, and you're so blessed to get to serve people. There's just something about serving people. And, you know, we've all experienced that, right? When you go into a restaurant and you're served well, I love the phrase, the taste of the roast is determined by the handshake of the host. And it's so true. And I saw that in very meaningful ways in quick service that just happened to be Chick-fil-A, and we kind of have a saying around Chick-fil-A that we're actually in the people business. We just happen to sell chicken. And we feel like our service model and the things that I learned as a teenager, and then early in my 20s and 30s and now 40s and 50s, are just

remained steadfast. They remain true, and it's just been a joy to be a part of a brand for such a time as this. Yeah, that's incredible. Yeah, like you said, chicken just happens to be the vehicle, but Chick-fil-A always has symbolized so much more than that. It really is a company about people, and if you've ever been to a Chick-fil-A, you know that, right? My pleasure. Everyone knows that saying when you walk in. So I want to talk about how that experience was built.

I don't know what it was like back when you were starting out at Chick-fil-A as far as the customer experience. What was it like then when you were starting versus what you helped build over many decades? I'd love to say that this is a complicated, process that literally no one else could duplicate, but unfortunately, that would not be true. Honestly, when I look back, I think one of the things that we learned really early on was that there is power in consistency. I think we consistently remark about the consistent. And what I mean by that is it's fascinating to me when you have a great experience time after time,

after time. And let me just recall, if you have a good experience consistently, people begin to consistently remark. It's like, you know, every time I go to that dry cleaner, man, they're just super nice. Or every time I go to Chick-fil-A, they just greet me with a, you know, warm-hearted greeting and a smile, and man, they make eye contact. And they say my pleasure. And when that happens time, after time, after time, you begin to remark about it. And you begin to visit you. those places a little bit more frequently. And so what I learned very early on, and I think what attracted me to the brand, was there was power in things like what we would call the core four. You know, when you walk into any environment and somebody makes eye contact and they

smile and they speak enthusiastically and they stay connected, those four things done well over time make you want to remark about it, make you want to come back and visit. And like I said, I'd love to say it's something that hardly anybody else could do. But the reality is, I think what has made us or set us apart at least a little bit is our ability to consistently do those things over time. And so we spend a lot of time with team members teaching them those things and then how to do those things consistently over time. So what were those things that you worked on in your role as VP of customer experience

where we went, okay, we're world class, but how do we make this consistent across the board? How do we improve on the things we've already built? What are those little things or big things that you worked on? Well, I think, you know, first, we did have this mantra and continue to have this mantra about what does it take to create a raving fan? in any business. And for us, raving fans really do three things. They come more often. They happily pay full price, and they tell others about their experience. And so we look for things that would create those dynamics, that they would want to come more often. They would happily pay full price.

Their value is there, and they feel that value. And they feel that value. And then they would want to share that with other people. And so when we talk about those little things, we try to make the transaction frictionless. And what I mean by that is where you come in and because of the process and the drive-through or whether that's on the Chick-fil-A-1 app or that's ordering from the register at the front counter, trying to make those things frictionless. Let me give you an example of something we learned pretty early on. Well, it took us a while, but probably in the early 2000s, we started getting really, really busy. Word of mouth was out there. People were coming more often. And on a Saturday, you may have been in a Chick-fil-A where the dining room was so packed.

It became, I think it was John Acuff that coined the phrase, we were the grace-filled mosh pit. It was like full of grace. lots, but it was a mosh pit of people. And what we realize is this doesn't feel frictionless. Matter of fact, you walk into that, you're a little nervous. You don't know, am I in front of somebody? Not? So we had to come up and we spent a tremendous amount of time on queuing.

Like what does a queuing line look like for one of our customers to where when they walk in, they can now look down at their phone, they're not worried about it. They walk in, they have a frictionless experience. Another example that would be when they ordered, instead of having to stand in that mosh pit and wait on their food, we started, we created what we call a table marker. That's not new to the industry, but it was a way for us to identify, and this was unique, by not using a number system. We didn't want somebody to feel like they were a number. So we used their name, and we used descriptors. and by doing that, we were able to allow them to go out, sit in the dining room, check their phone,

have a drink, and then we would meet them at the table with their food. And it was all around this idea of creating a frictionless experience. So those would be a couple examples. Yeah, a lot of intentionality that goes into that and a lot of studying the way people, you know, even psychologically think and move. And it's amazing to see what you and your team have done. to the headquarters and seen where you guys have a fake Chick-fil-A and you're testing out different ways of queuing and what would make it even go faster.

And it's that kind of stuff and that intentionality that makes it feel frictionless that keeps us coming back. And one thing that's amazing about Chick-fil-A is if I show up to the one right here down the road in Franklin, Tennessee from Ramsey Solutions, or if I go to the one of my hometown in Dedham, Massachusetts, I have the same experience. How do you do that when it comes to customer experience? How do you make it consistent all the way across the country? It's the same answer I would give anybody that asked the question, and it really comes down to what we call our franchisees as operators.

Our owner-operators, traditionally our franchisee, each store is independently owned and operated, and that is unique to our business model. And what that creates is you have an owner-operator that is in their business on a daily basis, and they genuinely care about the customer interactions, and most importantly, those team members that are serving those guests, and that gets translated into that overall guest experience. And so I want you to imagine that you were one of our franchisees. If you walked in your restaurant every day and you started seeing your drive-thru back up into the road, as the franchisee, you'd want to do something about that. And so some of our best ideas out in the field, almost all of them have come from our operators.

And so, for example, if you're a customer and you've been through any one of our drive-thus in the last two years, you probably saw somebody outside, maybe in the rain, taking your order with appropriate gear on. They've got all the warm clothes on. They've got the umbrellas. They got everything. They're covered. We put canopies out there. And the reason we did that is because there was an operator that saw the need to create less friction in the drive-ththune. By doing that, what he wanted to do is speed it up.

So he put team members outside so that we could take those orders faster. And so that created a less friction-filled experience. And those are the type of things that happen when we have our franchisee or our operator engaged in that business, engaged in their community. They don't want to show up to the ballpark or their small group at church and one of their friends says, what the heck's going on through drive-through? You know, they are intent in fixing any of those situations

in and around the restaurant. And so I think it comes back to our ownership model or our operating model and really comes down to that operator. That's fascinating because Chick-fil-A is this giant corporate entity and you would think, well, we have very strict ways that each owner-operator has to run the business. Even as a small business owner listening,

there's ways that you say, hey, if you're a leader on my team, you've got to do things this way. But it sounds like Chick-fil-A has empowered all of those owner-operators, all of those leaders to fix problems in creative ways that make sense for their location and their communities. Yeah, you hit it right on the head. We say a phrase quite a bit that an operator is in business for themselves, but not by themselves.

And, you know, part of that is they are in business for themselves, but they've got a support system behind them. that allows them autonomy and freedom to make decisions. Don't get me wrong. I mean, there's one way to make a chicken sandwich. And everybody's got to make it that. Don't mess it up. You know, we understand the importance of those recipes and those menu items.

We also understand and have some expectations around saying, my pleasure, you know, having the right time of guest experience in that restaurant. And we all agree to those things. And that's how we do business. But outside of those core fundamental. things. We do offer a lot of autonomy, which attracts some very, very entrepreneurial-minded thinkers to come into our business and elevate the experience more and more of the time. Yeah. So as you create this amazing customer experience, how do you gauge this as far as its success?

How do you evaluate what's working and what's not? Is it just, do you guys have any feedback loops? Is it surveys? Is it owner-operators reporting back to you? What does that look like? You know, we do have some traditional ways to do that, all of the above. I mean, from our, you know, what we would call an operator survey, team member survey, we do a tremendous amount of customer intercept surveys. You may have found one even on a receipt that you've received, and if you fill out the survey, get a free sandwich.

Those are great ways for us to get feedback at an individual location on how we're doing, and then holistically, how are we doing? But I would tell you, it's fascinating. We just, it's not that we don't care about revenue and profit. Don't get me wrong. I mean, we're in business, and part of that is to make money. But more of the time, we find ourselves reflecting back on, you know, our corporate purpose. And, you know, our corporate purpose, which a lot of people have heard before is to glorify God by being a faithful steward of all that he's entrusted to us and to have a positive influence on all those we come in contact with.

And so that in and of itself, we measure, are we being a good steward and are we having a positive influence? And if we do those things well, our theory is that business will grow. And it has. When you treat people with honor, dignity, and respect, and their food's hot, it's accurate, it's quick, it's done with a smile, that typically translates into success. Higher revenues, more profit. but the spirit of that and the goal of that is to have a positive influence. And my favorite, my favorite experience for a guest is when, you know, a child or a teenager or even an adult just says, why is Chick-fil-A different?

What is it that they're doing? I love that question because it gets them to think about what is it that we're doing in the business that makes them feel valued. And if we do that well, they'll come more often. They'll pay full price. They'll tell others about us, right? And so that's really the spirit and how we measure it is, are we having influence? I love that. We call it rare air around here, Ramsey.

We're breathing rare air. When you walk into our headquarters, we want people to feel this level of, man, this place is different. People are happy to be here. They've got smiles on their faces. There's warm cookies. There's fresh coffee. And there's that spirit of hope and positivity. and wanting to influence in that positive way that is really powerful,

especially in today's culture. And if you've been to any other fast food restaurant, you know that it is not Chick-fil-A, right? The food's not there, the experience isn't there. You said something really fascinating, and I bet that's not easy. Nobody said it was going to be easy. It's simple, right?

Warm cookies, a smile, positivity. Those things sound really simple, but it doesn't mean they're easy to do. And one example of that is, we're known for saying my pleasure. The backstory to that is Truitt enjoyed going to the Ritz Carlton. You know, when he was on a nice vacation, our founder, Truitt Kathy, would go to the Ritz Carlton. What he loved was when he would say thank you, they would say, my pleasure.

And he thought that was a really unique and kind thing to do. Do you realize he talked about that for almost 10 years? He wanted every team member to do that. And he talked about that for 10 years straight before we really got behind it. So I want you to think about the patience that took, you know, the training that it took. I'll be honest with you. When I tried to start saying it, I found myself always saying, you're welcome, my pleasure. You know, somebody say thank you.

I'd say, you're welcome. I couldn't get out of the habit. And I had to add my pleasure to it. It took me time to learn that. So it's simple. It's a simple phrase. it doesn't mean it's easy to do. And I think it's important to recognize if you're in business for yourself

or whoever you're working for, kindness can be really simple. It doesn't mean it's always easy. It just takes perseverance and patience. You just got to keep working it, working it, and working it. And over time, I think people realize, oh, gosh, Chick-fil-A really is a good place to go. And part of that was because we were saying, my pleasure.

and it took us 10 years to do it. Wow. Some great reminders there. Simple but not easy. It kind of reminds me of the Ramsey plan, right? Getting out of debt, our plan is real simple, but it's not easy. It takes a lot of intentionality and consistency over time. I love that.

So we talked about a lot of things here, and obviously Chick-fil-A is a master at so many things we could be here all day. But I want you to speak to the small business owner listening, the leader who's going, all right, this is all great, Shane. I'm not Chick-fil-A, man. All right, I run a small H-FAT crew. and I can't do the things at scale like you're talking about. How can they implement the same customer experience principles

that you're talking about with their team and their business? Oh, such a good question. It does make me reflect on, you know, most people that hear this go, oh, Chick-fil-A, you're, you know, ultra-successful and you've got, you know, franchises all over the place. As a reminder, I mean, we really got started back in the late 60s, 70s, 80s, those were some difficult times. I mean, when you talk to those early franchisees,

you know, they would do $256,000 in a year with zero profit. But what they did do, they focused on the simple things, and they just executed them every single day. So what is it in your business that people are counting on and how do you focus on those little things, those simple things, and execute them on our everyday basis. So if you're in the HVAC business, do really good work.

Don't leave the job unless the job is done and teach your people how to do that. Smile. Go the second mile with your customer. If they need something, figure out a way to take it one level up. Those simple things, those remind you, be friendly, give a nice handshake when you're done, thank them for their business and ask them to return. Those little things, those simple things done over time, I think add tremendous value to the experience.

And I think it's the things that people remark about. And especially in today's environment, I hate to say it, but you see it less and less of the time. And so as a business owner, you've got to be really intentional about making sure that the people that represent you are truly representing you. In order to do that, it does take some time and intentionality just to make sure that those little things are done on a regular, everyday basis. And I'm pretty confident when you do that.

It pays off over the long run. Be faithful in those little things over a long, long period of time. And all of a sudden, you're an overnight success. And all of a sudden, you're an overnight success. Couldn't have said it better. Well, Shane, I've loved talking with you. I love your heart for serving others and your passion for this mission. It's no wonder you have been so successful. And I'm glad there's amazing, good-hearted people like you at the top, and leadership spills down. And all the owner-operators that, you know, you serve alongside, it's amazing to see the consistency of what you have accomplished on the customer experience side. And we're just so proud to have you on the podcast

today. Well, I appreciate the time, George, and thank you. And thank you for your business and all the listeners out there. Thank you for your business. Don't hesitate. introduce yourself to one of our operators in a Chick-fil-A near you. I'm sure they'd like to get to know you. I love it. Well, I've given you guys plenty of money over the year, Shane. Don't worry. I'm keeping you guys in business. Thank you. Thanks so much. Thanks so much, Shane. Lots of great nuggets of wisdom in there, pun intended. The only thing that would have made those nuggets better, a little bit of Chick-fil-A sauce. So there you go. Those are the principles that you can apply with your team this week to take your customer experience to the next level.

Now, Shane mentioned a couple of slogans they use at Chick-fil-A that are born out of their values. So you may be asking yourself, do I need a snappy slogan or phrase for my team? Will it actually help or will it be incredibly cheesy? We'll have a conversation about that right after this. All right, coming up, I Talk with Luke Lefevre, our chief creative officer here at Ramsey Solutions. We're going to talk about why he repeats certain phrases on his team and why those phrases are important for keeping the team focused on the mission and the vision. He'll also talk about how all of that translates into a customer-focused culture.

Here's our conversation. Luke, great to have you on the podcast. Thanks. Thanks for having me. Love being here. So we have an interesting conversation today. As great as you are at leading the creative team, which is your day job, chief creative officer, you also lead a committee.

And it's got a real fun title, The Internal Communication and Culture Committee. What is that? And why did it start? I wasn't a part of starting it, but they asked me to teach me. chair it, it started because we need to wrangle all this stuff. We have so many different things that we do as far of a culture, but how can we do it better? How can we have people paying attention to it all the time? And that's why they have been chairing it for a couple of years now. So we use a lot of phrases here at Ramsey, and we repeat them very often. And it's interesting

how those phrases that we use for our internal culture are really about our fans. It's kind of a reminder of why we do this stuff. Could you share some of those that you find yourself saying often, or our leadership team says often. Yeah. Well, one of the things a few years ago, like, specifically on the creative team, and then I'll talk about Ramsey as a whole, we have a bunch of different companies in companies, businesses, within our company. And for years, those things, you'd have the VP and you'd have a designer and a marketing person,

and they would go make what they thought was great. And they'd drive it, and they ran it, and it was successful. So take Financial Peace University. You have a leader, you have a creative team, you have market, you have this crew that is building this thing, and they're kind of going off to the left. And then you've got the radio show, and that crew who's making all their stuff,

and they're kind of going off to the right, visually anyway. And then you have our old ELP program, and they go this other direction. And I just started to be, guys, I just want this to go together better. Like, it wasn't, it was somewhat subconsciously and somewhat consciously, like, I'm going to come up with a phrase that inspires people to do what is asked. It was more like, out of frustration, it was just like, guys, I just want this to go better together. And it was one of the many things that helped us slowly over the last few years get our brand to be more connected.

More cohesive and aligned. I want it all to go better together. And unexpectedly, it's become a thing. And people bought me a shirt about it, you know. And so it's funny. So to be clear, if you're not watching, the shirt says better together on either side. It's like a Western-looking shirt with curly, scripty, fond song. You can tell a designer made it.

Very thoughtful. looks great. Yeah. That's cool. So that's one of them. And then there's some others, like a couple years ago, we just started thinking, what does the team really need to hear this year?

Like, if we're going to be who we need to be for the people outside of these walls, what do we need to be focused on here? We're expanding, we're growing. We're going to hire a bunch of people over the next few years. And if we're not careful, we can go hire double the amount of people and go from a 600-person company to a thousand-person company

and all those new folks could come in and they influence our culture in a way that we don't want to. it to go. We need to tell them who we are and make sure they are one of us. And so a few years ago, it was like, well, let's start thinking about how we do that. And so it sounds really simple. And usually those are the simplest answers. It's not very complicated. I started to just put together a story, be like, hey, if first time was why we work, like, why do we work? That was 2018 or 19 or something. So we put a big emphasis on, here's why we work. And why we work is for the people outside of these walls.

And that's when we had a phrase come around called foof, and that's being fans of our fans. If we are just a fan of our fans, we're going to do all right. Like, we work for the people outside these walls. So, like, last night we had a big event, and we haven't had a big event like that in a while because of the pandemic and all the stuff, and it just felt so good to talk to people out in the lobby again

and see what they were doing. Like, they are why we work. Staying connected to the customers. Staying connected to them. So that year was all about, why we work. Here's why we work. It's for the people outside these walls.

We are fans of our fans. Here's why we work. It's for the people outside these walls. We are fans of our fans. And it just over and over again. And so now Dave from stage, we're blessed to be a blessing. Phrases come out of that stuff.

But for a little while there, this is why we work. We're fans of our fans. And when any fan enters our headquarters, which we've made it very fan-friendly, we've made it a whole experience. It's amazing to see their reaction. They go, this place is different.

There's a different air here. We've used the term rare air. That's one of our phrases because of the work we get to do is so special and the people we get to help. So it's really cool to see that experience turn into the fan experience. And I want to ask you this. As we get new team members, one of the things, and Suzanne Sims says this all the time, I just wish they would get the memo.

How do you get those new team members to get it so that they can be effective in their role and on the team and be a part of the culture and be a part of that fan experience? Yeah, well, that is what we're trying to figure out. all the time. Like, how do we help them get the memo? As part of that committee we talked about earlier, we just finished a stratop, is what we call it, where we just take a few hours, and we just kind of get out of the business to work on the business. And in this case, it was the culture. And so we were like, okay, what components make up a culture? Like, how do we help people

get the memo? And so we came up with mission, vision, values, behaviors, rituals, and cues. So what are those things? How do we help people get the memo? We're talking about our mission all the time. We're talking about our vision now all the time. We talk about our values all the time. Then we started looking at, okay, what are the behaviors that we have? We started to split those up. Okay, our beliefs are this, our values are this, and our core behaviors are, hey, we're excellent in the ordinary. Like we started to just break these up into different things. So then we can look at how we're doing in each of those areas.

How are we talking about the mission on a regular basis? How are we talking about the vision? How are we talking about our values? How are we talking about our behaviors? What rituals are we doing to emphasize these and what cues? And the rituals are things like staff and divo meetings, battle the bands, cigar nights, happy hours, team lunches, onboarding. These are rituals that we do on a regular basis to,

talk about who we are and why we work. And so onboarding's a big deal. Those rituals. And then you have what we called cues, which were stuff that's on the wall, wall wraps, video screens, outside the elevators, coffee screens, the timeline wall, Dave doing core value talks, board members, senior leaders doing that,

these one-liners, like those are cues that people hear to be like, oh, yeah, yeah, they're not just saying that. That's something that's ingrained in here. And so I think if we do those things right, mission, vision, values, behaviors, rituals, and cues, that's how people start to get the memo. Oh, that's who we are. Yeah. And it all comes back to intentionality.

A hundred percent. And you can't just plaster it on a wall one time and go, well, I mean, there's our values. Yeah. You got to live it out. And that you said, hey, when people come in the building and they feel something different, that is not only because of the timeline wall and the cool, cool building. It's probably 25% that, but mostly it's the people. Yeah.

And a lot of times- It's Janelle at the front desk who greeted them with such warmth and joy Every single piece along the way. It is the people, most definitely. And so we want to show the new people who we are so that they become one of those, and we try to hire people who are like that already. Yeah.

And part of that, we have a great onboarding experience, which, I mean, when I came on board, it was, you know, sad nine years ago. It was like, here's a stack of papers, we're going to read the room, call it a day. Now it's like a week-long event. There's games. I mean, it's exaggerating.

It's incredible. Slight exaggerating. But it's come a long way in a decade from where it was. And that's a huge part of it. I'll give you a little context on that a couple years ago. A few of us just went and sat through onboarding as if we were a new person. And we just took notes. Like it wasn't like, let's beat it up in real time.

It was, why are we talking about this? I don't even know if they're going to do this. Because you have a group that gets in their ways or whatever. And so that's where we were like, hey, let's reset this thing. But we had to go through it, experience it, take notes, and try to fix it. Yeah. And we do have a high standard for excellence here across the board. And, of course, a lot of that stems from Dave.

And he's on the phone with customers three hours a day. I mean, what CEO could say that? So it's incredible that he has his finger on the pulse in that way. And when I first started, I was a designer, and then I became a young creative director. Dave, he was helping me understand what the standard was. I want to know what helping you understand looks like. There was one point, one of my favorite stories now, years later,

is I showed him, I can't remember what there was a video or something for a book or something. And he just goes, I don't want to be too mean to him or whatever. He's probably listening to this. Just know that. He was just like, do you really want to put that on our website? And I was just like, I knew going into the meeting that I wasn't proud of it. I just was worried about not living up to the whatever and we got to do it and we got to, we got to, we got to, blah, blah, blah.

I knew it wasn't good enough. Yeah. And I should have just said, this isn't good enough and we got to figure something out, you know, as a new person. But he's like, he sets a standard as the CEO of what is okay, and that has trickled down over the years, and now we set the standards for the new people and the new people and the new people. So, yeah.

Yeah. Well, we all have had great experience with companies. We've all had bad experiences with companies, and we all want to model the great companies. So as the leaders listening, they want to create this great culture. They want to maintain it. They want to have a great customer experience. How can they take some steps realistically?

They're not maybe at the scale that we are. or maybe a small business, five, 10, 20-person team, how can they take some steps to not only make the culture great, but translate that into a great customer experience? Yeah. I think it comes down to, one, thinking through your actual history of you as the CEO or you as the owner of this thing,

like tell your story repeatedly. If you started the business, most of the time you started a business because you had an inkling to do audio video, or you were an apprentice somewhere and you actually kind of enjoyed the thing and then you saw how it actually helped and you got some internal satisfaction from doing this.

Not everybody's stories the same, but there's usually something that was like, well, I started as the audio guy at my high school thing and then I met a guy and I interned for this other thing and then so I went and worked for this other thing and I really enjoyed it. And then this one place had to shut down so I had to start my own and I figured I could do this

and so I did it And then I kept getting called back. Like, there's a story there that has got a thread through it. And I think the reason they called me back is because I was nice to him every time. I didn't really feel like I did a great job at the beginning, but I was nice. And there are different core values that you can pull out of your story. So one, learn to tell your story of how you started the business, why it's important to you. Don't make up something.

Figure out how to tell the truth because it's there. It's not aspirational. Yeah. There's something that happened. And if you're having some level of success where people call it. call you back to do business, they like something about you and your business. So look through your story and figure out what that is. Then tell the history. Man, when I first started, and say you have a team of five people, when I first started doing this, oh my goodness, here was the

screw up that I did. Tell the stories of failure and then what you did to overcome them over and over again so that the people know, oh, that's how we behave. That's how I should behave. And that's how my leader or boss or CEO learned that stuff. So one of the most important things is tell your history repeatedly. Yeah, that's good. Well, Luke, I always love having you on. Love your passion for this place, the mission, the vision, but also your passion for the people outside of these walls, as we like to say.

So thanks so much for being back on the podcast. Thanks for having me. Anytime. Big thanks to Luke for joining us today. Always great having him on the podcast. As Shane and Luke talked about, the values that you have will come across in your customer experience, but only if you have core values to begin with. Now, if you don't have core values or you need to revisit them,

we've got you covered with our free resource how to create core values. It'll give you the five steps for developing and communicating your company's guiding principles. To get this free download, just use the link in the show notes. Hope you enjoyed today's episode of the show. If you did, tell a friend about it, leave us a review, and subscribe so you don't miss the next one.

And we want to hear what you think of the show, what you like, what you don't like, and what we could do better. You can give us your feedback by using the link in the show notes to schedule a call with Tim, our producer. If you want to keep up with us on social media, you can follow us at Entree Leadership. This episode was produced by Tim Hull, edited by Jacob Harrison, and mixed and mastered by Will Rudder. I'm your host, George Camel, and on behalf of the entire Entree leadership team, thanks for listening.

Until next time, keep learning and keep leading. If you enjoy this podcast, you should check out other great podcasts from the Ramsey Network, like The Ken Coleman Show. Are you doing what you were born to do? I'm Ken Coleman, host of the Ken Coleman Show, where I give you practical. advice to help you discover your purpose and then map out a plan to get you there from accounting to advertising from plumbing to production you were created to fill a unique role and the world needs what you have to offer join me on the ken coleman show wherever you listen to podcasts