Vance Morris [00:00:00]:

Use your personality in your marketing. Use your life if you feel comfortable with it. I shamelessly use my children in all of my marketing. You know, I've had customers that have watched my kids grow up. This stuff matters because if you can create an emotional connection with your customer, you have got them for life.

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Angelo Esposito [00:00:32]:

Welcome to another episode of WISKing It All. We're here today with Vance Morris. Vance helps business owners get, serve and keep clients for life through creating experiences and response required marketing. He's a former birth control factory security guard turned Disney leader, turned bankrupt, out of work executive, turns carpet cleaner, turned successful entrepreneur. So we're going to get all into that. Vance, thanks for joining us today.

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Vance Morris [00:01:01]:

Angelo, appreciate you having me. And this, this should be fun. Looking forward to it.

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Angelo Esposito [00:01:06]:

Absolutely. I mean, I, I got so many questions about obviously Disney because that's always exciting and knowing the, the stuff you've done there. But you know, I always like to hear people's stories of how they got where they got and you've had quite an interesting career. So I love start off, you know, I'm all here is just kind of walking us through your career path and how it led you to what you do today, which is deliver service now.

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Vance Morris [00:01:27]:

Sure. So it all started back when I was 10 years old. No, really. And I had a newspaper route. And this is my theory on the downfall of American society is the elimination of paper routes held by little children or, you know, teenagers. Right now it's all adults do it. You know, they drive in their cars and they zing. And it's actually like a job for people, which I don't get.

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Vance Morris [00:01:54]:

So when I had the newspaper route, I was learning. I didn't realize this, but I was learning customer service because they told you, you know, please don't walk on the lawn. Fine, great. I use the driveway. Please put the paper between the screen door and the storm door. Fine. That's where I put it. Please make sure that you use a rubber band around the paper.

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Vance Morris [00:02:14]:

Okay, fine. You know, some people didn't want plastic. So I really, it's really kind of when I started learning, you know, customer peeves, you know, customer requests. And if I followed their directions, I got paid. So that was really, really the opening. I haven't used that opening in a long actually in forever. I just thought about it the other day. I was like, oh, crap.

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Vance Morris [00:02:39]:

This goes all the way back to when I was 10 and had a paper route.

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Angelo Esposito [00:02:42]:

Amazing.

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Vance Morris [00:02:44]:

I worked for a franchise restaurant company up in Massachusetts for a couple of years. I will never Work for a family owned business ever again. You know, I mean it was good, but. So a buddy of mine who I went to college with was a recruiter for Walt Disney World. I called him up and I said, hey, I'm look thinking of making a change. He says, come on down. And honestly that was the extent of the interview. They don't do that anymore.

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Vance Morris [00:03:13]:

But.

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Angelo Esposito [00:03:16]:

That'S awesome though.

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Vance Morris [00:03:17]:

Yeah. You know, it is all in who, you know. So I spent a little over a decade at Disney mostly in actually all in food and beverage. So I was on the opening team of the yacht and beach club resort over there near Epcot Center. I was the all island duty manager for Pleasure island, if you remember Disney's failed attempts at booze, debauchery and scantily clad women. And I was on the design team and operations team for a little restaurant called Chef Mickey's over at the Contemporary Resort, which to this day is doing almost $80 million a year. One restaurant. One restaurant.

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Angelo Esposito [00:04:06]:

That must be one of the. One of, if not the highest grossing individual restaurant. No, in the States. It must be up there as like top five or something.

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Vance Morris [00:04:13]:

I, I don't, I mean it's, I mean it's got 450 seats. Breakfast we turned it four times. Dinner we turned it three times.

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Angelo Esposito [00:04:22]:

Wow.

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Vance Morris [00:04:23]:

A few years ago they added lunch. But it is, it was just, I mean it's just amazing how much money goes through that thing. But people do leave Disney. I was starting to feel like, you know, I need to go do something different. Ten years is a long time. Yeah. So I had a couple more corporate jobs. I was food service director for a retirement community.

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Vance Morris [00:04:47]:

Had three hundred and fifty fourteen to seventeen year olds working for me. Okay. Yeah, shoot. We herding cats, right? Well, we had over 3,000 residents there. We had four dining rooms, three cafes. I mean it was, it was a pretty big operation.

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Angelo Esposito [00:05:05]:

Wow.

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Vance Morris [00:05:06]:

And then I worked for a corporate food service. So my introduction to corporate cafeterias. Okay, baby. It was interesting because you're trying to make, you're literally in the middle. I'm trying to make the client happy by giving them what they want while at the same time balancing the needs of my boss and the company who want something completely different than what the client wants. So anyway, I ended up getting fired from that job. I realized I make a lousy employee. I just don't like to be told what to do.

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Vance Morris [00:05:45]:

So I started my own carpet cleaning business. Never cleaned a carpet in my life. I know. It's every small boy's dream. To grow up, own a carpet cleaning business. But I was looking, obviously looking for something that was me and I was doing it. So I took all my Disney knowledge, marketing customer experience, put it into that, turned it into a premium service, grew it, added a couple new lines of business, actually added a mold remediation company and a oriental rug washing facility. Again, both very high ticket.

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Vance Morris [00:06:25]:

And here's the key thing though, is that I mentioned I put in all of the Disney systems. So I also had marketing systems, operation systems, and what that did was free me up. I now have a general manager in place and I might work 90 minutes a week in that business.

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Angelo Esposito [00:06:45]:

It's still going today?

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Vance Morris [00:06:46]:

Oh, yeah.

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Angelo Esposito [00:06:47]:

Oh, wow, that's awesome.

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Vance Morris [00:06:48]:

Oh yeah. No, it's kicking off cash. I have no real reason to get rid of it.

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Angelo Esposito [00:06:52]:

It's awesome.

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Vance Morris [00:06:53]:

But yeah. And it's to me, I knew it was going to be a lifestyle business eventually. The first five years was certainly not. That was just miserable. They gave me some time. People started asking me, how the heck did you do that? And I started coaching and consulting with other companies.

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Angelo Esposito [00:07:11]:

Wow. Wow.

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Vance Morris [00:07:12]:

Here I am.

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Angelo Esposito [00:07:13]:

What a journey I got. I gotta ask, just out of curiosity, what got you into the, you know, I know you, you joked about it's everybody's dream, but like, what got you into the carpet space? You know, it's super random, I guess, but like, cool. But what attracted you to that?

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Vance Morris [00:07:27]:

Yeah. So I knew that I was probably going to do some kind of franchise because, you know, needed a proven proof of concept and it was going to, you know, that it was going to work. I quickly learned that restaurants were not going to happen because Everybody's looking for one or $2 million liquid cash, which didn't have that laying around. And so I was working with a franchise headhunter at the time and he was bringing all kinds of concepts in front of me. Dry cleaning, fruit smoothie bars, mobile ice, slushy things.

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Angelo Esposito [00:08:03]:

Car washes.

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Vance Morris [00:08:04]:

Car washes, yep. And carpet cleaning. And I dismissed the carpet cleaning immediately. I'm like, you know, I don't even vacuum and you want me to go out and clean carpet? So I. But he kept bringing it up because, look, this company's got a product that everything works as advertised. You can look any customer in the eye and say, all our stuff works. They give you the freedom to do marketing as you see fit in your marketing, in your space, in your market. Which was huge because I didn't want to be beholden to 2 or 3% every month paid into a national marketing fund.

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Vance Morris [00:08:45]:

And it just was just like a big, giant black hole where.

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Angelo Esposito [00:08:49]:

Right.

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Vance Morris [00:08:49]:

All the money went.

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Angelo Esposito [00:08:50]:

That's really cool, though. Wow. Okay. And so I'm curious, right? Like, you, You. You alluded to some processes, right? And things and systems you put in place. Like, we have a lot of restaurateur listeners, I mean, food and beverage, in general listeners, and our goal is always to help them. So sometimes you have a guest that's talk about loyalty, talk about operations, talk about inventory, talking about anything. I'd love to maybe dive in a bit, a bit of that.

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Angelo Esposito [00:09:13]:

Are there any. You know, I'm sure people listening are like, I want to know what are some of these systems? Are there any you can. The short answer is, hey, go to. Go. Go to your website and you can do the consulting. But maybe just to tease them a bit, can you share some maybe systems that you put in place as an example in the. In the carpet cleaning company.

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Vance Morris [00:09:29]:

Yeah, there. And these are simple systems. I want to make sure everybody understands that. And Disney actually runs on just three words. Because if you think about it, there's just. In Orlando, there's 75, 80,000 employees. Most of them there are minimum, not minimum wage, but hourly workers. And so they're not always thinking strategically, shall we say? The systems have to be simple, otherwise they'll just fall apart.

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Vance Morris [00:10:02]:

And Disney runs on three words. What to do, how to do it. And the most important one is why we do it that way. So, for example, you know, answering the telephone. I worked with some insurance companies a while back, and I was doing a presentation at this conference, and we were talking about, you know, how do we separate ourselves from the competition? How do we, you know, stand out because we're all commoditized. You know, I mean, a dentist is a dentist, is a dentist. They're commodities. I mean, there's only so many ways to clean teeth.

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Angelo Esposito [00:10:41]:

Right?

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Vance Morris [00:10:42]:

You know, what separates one dentist from another? Right. Really, it's the experience that they provide in their office. So one of the things. So this insurance guy, I mean, it's really boring business insurance. No offense to anybody who's in the insurance industry, but he was one of probably 30 insurance agents in his town. What I discovered in working with him was he loved rock and roll. I mean, this guy had autographed guitars on his walls in the office, the who Led Zeppelin posters. I mean, just.

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Vance Morris [00:11:14]:

And so I was working with his team, and we were doing the whole, what, how, why? And we do it based on the guest or the customer timeline or journey or whatever. You Want to call it? So every point on there where there's an interaction between the customer and your business, that's a point where you can create an experience. So we decided, all right, well, let's. What can we do? Let's. Let's talk about answering the phone. Great.

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Angelo Esposito [00:11:43]:

Yeah.

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Vance Morris [00:11:44]:

Most places you call, there's something along the lines of, thank you for calling Dave's Insurance. How can I help you? We get that everywhere. Right. I mean, it's actually one of his employees came up with this, and so now they answer the phone. Thank you for calling Dave's All State, the agency that rocks. Now, it sounds a little hokey, but, you know, if you say it enough times, you just get used to it. And so just answering the phone that way, it separates them from everybody else. I mean, probably separates them from all the other businesses in his city.

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Vance Morris [00:12:20]:

But also, answering the phone that way sift sorts and screens out customers who would just not be good customers because people would be like, what? Huh? That makes no sense. I don't want to work with this guy. Fine. And then it attracts the people. So you remember, your marketing is designed to do two things. Attract the people you do want and repel the people you don't want, because not everybody's going to be a good customer for you.

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Angelo Esposito [00:12:44]:

Right.

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Vance Morris [00:12:45]:

And so just by answering the phone that way, did those two things, and it was fun, you know, I mean, if you can't have fun in your business, gee whiz, you know, have a little personality in it. But I mean, that's just one of the processes is answer the phone. I think another big process. And this is where I see so many companies really dropping the ball is on customer retention.

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Angelo Esposito [00:13:15]:

Okay.

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Vance Morris [00:13:15]:

And having a robust, and I do mean robust customer loyalty customer retention system in place. And I'm not talking just, you know, a birthday club or, you know, you send them an email once, you know, or whatever. Yeah. I'm talking like robust. Because you got to remember, it is ridiculously expensive to get a new customer, you know, in order to, you know, advertise to get a new client. It ain't cheap.

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Angelo Esposito [00:13:46]:

Yeah.

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Vance Morris [00:13:47]:

But it is exponentially cheaper to market to the customers you already have. Right.

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Angelo Esposito [00:13:54]:

Versus getting a new customer. Yeah.

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Vance Morris [00:13:56]:

Yeah. So, like, right now, for me to get a new customer in the carpet biz cost me about $105. Only cost me $15 to keep them every year. So I'm a firm believer in using the mail like the US Postal Service. Okay. Mailboxes are empty these days. I mean, except for today. When all the Christmas catalogs came.

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Vance Morris [00:14:20]:

But restaurants especially can really latch onto this loyalty program or customer retention program with newsletters and offers and send out chef's recipes and birthday cards and the birthday club. And there's just so much stuff that they can do to keep their, you know, they're the keep the doors open. But even to fill off peak times, you know, we all know between 4 and 5 o'clock most restaurants are, you know, the dinner staff is coming in and you know, they're kind of getting geared up and I mean, but wouldn't it be nice to have like a early dinner rush between three and five, you know, because, you know, so I mean using, using your marketing like that is just to me is a no brainer.

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Angelo Esposito [00:15:10]:

No, I love that, I love that. And I'm curious to know, like the phone example is great. So just to reiterate, you say so the what would be okay, the, the phone, you know, how would be how we answered, maybe the tone, whatever. And then the third one is why we do it. And I guess in this case it's to, to stand out and attract the right type of customer. So that's a good take for people listening. Really cool. And out of curiosity, like you briefly gave an example of, you know, for your business specifically 105 to get a new customer and then 15 to keep it.

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Angelo Esposito [00:15:41]:

What are some ways you work on the keeping the customer. I know you mentioned direct mail, but I'd love to maybe get some tangible ideas, you know.

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Vance Morris [00:15:49]:

So within direct mail, all of my clients get a monthly newsletter. So it's a four page full color monthly newsletter that goes out. It's kind of like Reader's Digest light. You know, there's fluff stories. There is no, there is nothing about carpet cleaning in there because nobody will find that interesting. You know, don't talk about your new, you know, suck O Matic 3000 because nobody cares. But what I will tell you is to use your personality in your marketing. Use your life if you feel comfortable with it.

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Vance Morris [00:16:28]:

I shamelessly use my children in all of my marketing. You know, I've had customers that have watched my kids grow up, you know, from the time my daughter was 4 years old in her little Tutu ballet school. And you know, all the time I'm constantly updating pictures in the newsletter. And you know, last month we did, she was, she got mentioned all conference for field hockey. So I had a nice field hockey picture in there of her. And this stuff matters because if you can create an emotional connection with your Customer, you have got them for life. So I mean, literally my daughter, I would go to the grocery store when she was young. She doesn't go with me anymore.

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Vance Morris [00:17:16]:

She would go to grocery store with me and we had a lady walk up to us and went right to Emma and said, oh my God, how was your recital? And I'm looking at her like we're ready to go hide in the frozen food section. Think about it. Oh, she must be one of my clients. That lady is never leaving me.

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Angelo Esposito [00:17:35]:

That's awesome.

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Vance Morris [00:17:35]:

Never.

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Angelo Esposito [00:17:36]:

That's awesome. That's really cool. And so when we think about, let's say, the restaurant world, let's say, what are some ways. And I'm sure, you know, Disney probably had a ton of these. Right. But what are some ways that you think, you think restaurants could stand out? You know, so I think about, you know, our listeners. They're, I always say they're like the entrepreneurs of entrepreneurs because any, any entrepreneur is, is, you know, I got a ton of respect for you're building a business from scratch. You gotta wear many hats.

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Angelo Esposito [00:18:02]:

But I find restaurants are that. But even harder because it's like, you know, long hours, labor intensive, perishable products. It's just like, it's like the, the, the master class of entrepreneurs almost, you know, thin margins, you name it. So just to maybe give some ideas to people listening, some inspiration, what are things you've seen either at Disney or on your own or things that you'd recommend when it comes to restaurants thinking about how to stand out. Right. It's crowded market. What are things they can do from your perspective?

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Vance Morris [00:18:32]:

Well, you know, this is really basic. And McDonald's used to use this for their marketing. Clean restrooms. And I'm dead serious. Restroom cleaning used to be in the McDonald's marketing budget. That's disappeared a long time ago. But real. And that old adage is true.

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Vance Morris [00:18:58]:

I mean, if a restaurant's bathroom is dirty.

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Angelo Esposito [00:19:00]:

Yeah.

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Vance Morris [00:19:01]:

You immediately go to what does the kitchen look like?

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Angelo Esposito [00:19:03]:

Yeah.

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Vance Morris [00:19:04]:

And so I had, I run a mastermind group and we were at the Ritz Carlton in Washington D.C. a couple of weeks ago and it was a lunch break and I had the general manager of the resort was going to come do a presentation to my group. So I, you know, made a little pit stop before I was going in there. And there was another guy in there, you know, all dressed up and he was wiping the counter down in the bathroom. And when we started up, he came in and that was the general manager of the Ritz Carlton had just Been wiping down the counters. And one of my guys asked him, he goes, you know, we know that you were in there wiping the counters. You know, don't you feel weird that, you know, you've got employees using the public restrooms? He goes, no, I encourage my employees to use the public restrooms because that gives me extra sets of eyes other than the two or three times a day, you know, a custodian will go in there, right, which makes perfect sense. But then on top of it, not that he expects them to clean the toilets, but is pick up the paper, wipe down the water that's on the countertops.

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Vance Morris [00:20:10]:

You know, if the bathroom is dirty, alert somebody. So it's not just, you know, go in, wash your hands and leave. You know, it's go in, do your business and tidy up or make a phone call, wash your hands and leave. So smart.

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Angelo Esposito [00:20:26]:

Smart. It's kind of almost like distributing simple concept. But I mean we can extrapolate that and say, okay, it's like distributing the, the failure points. You know, instead of having one or two failure points because you have the spot checks twice a day, you now kind of, you know, decentralize it and any employee can alert or just, you know, do slight tidy ups. I love that. And that could be applied to other areas of the business for sure.

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Vance Morris [00:20:49]:

Yeah, I, I think educating the team. I hate using the word staff. I know I said it earlier. If you call your team staff, I encourage you to stop because staff is an infection. You put an ointment on it. You know, it's not, it's not pretty. So like both of my kids work in restaurants right now. My, I've got a 18.

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Vance Morris [00:21:13]:

Well, I've got four kids, but my 18 year old, my 17 year old both work at a crab house here in Maryland. And when my daughter, she's a hostess, was going to work the first week doing the training, I said, oh, you know, are you learning the menu? Because no, I don't have to. I said, yes, you do. What are you going to talk to people about while you're going from the host stand to the table? Oh, I don't talk to them. This is not how she goes, nobody else does it. I said, exactly. You should be doing it to stand out and you can talk about your favorite item on the menu. Because look, this is what I get for lunch every day that I work and it's great and blah, blah, blah.

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Vance Morris [00:21:52]:

And she started doing that and she found that people were nicer to her. People were. And she was getting tips from, she's not in a tip position, but she was getting tips from some of the waiters because she had already suggestively sold pre. Sold the table on an appetizer or on a, you know, on a dessert or something. And so, I mean, they're, you know, the hostess is increasing the value of the. Of the ticket. So educating everybody. Now, do they need to know the wine list intimately and that, you know, who's got odors of this and.

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Vance Morris [00:22:34]:

No, I get that, but your wait staff should be definitely. I mean, I can't stand going in and saying, you know, you know, what do you have for IPAs on tap?

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Angelo Esposito [00:22:48]:

Yeah.

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Vance Morris [00:22:50]:

And then they gotta look over their shoulder at the taps. You know, I'm like, I had a.

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Angelo Esposito [00:22:55]:

Funny one yesterday, actually. I went out. My sister's visiting in town, so we went out together. And we're at a restaurant, kind of just a casual spot, you know. And so she orders a drink, and it was basically a Tequila Old Fashioned. But I guess branding purposes, they probably have a deal with the company. Was a Casamigos Old Fashioned. So when she ordered, she's like, oh.

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Angelo Esposito [00:23:17]:

So on the menu it said Casamigos Old Fashioned. Oh, I'll take the Casamigos Old Fashioned. And she came back and she's like, I don't think we. We have that. And I'm like, what do you mean? It's like a menu? It's not. It's not like she's ordering something off the menu. It's on the menu. So I found it weird.

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Angelo Esposito [00:23:31]:

So I'm like, let me ask you, is it because you were looking for like a Tequila Old Fashioned button? She's like, yeah. I'm like, oh, it's because it's probably under Casamigos Old Fashioned. So I guess she was new. She didn't know that, you know, Casamigos is tequila, like, connecting the dots. So she was searching for a Tequila Old Fashioned button. Anyways, long story short, it just goes to show you, like, it's little things like that where it's like, you expect this, like. And that's what the difference between, you know, an awesome experience and maybe a subpar experience. I mean, for us, it wasn't the end of the world.

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Angelo Esposito [00:24:01]:

But for people, when you go out, it is an important part. When you have that waiter or waitress who, like, knows their menu, suggests something, asks you about your preferences, and then works with that to suggest something else, it feels so much more personal and like, I don't know, I find the experience becomes just that much more enjoyable for that Server.

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Vance Morris [00:24:20]:

You know, I would, I would say retraining should be required, but I would never have allowed them on the floor without basic knowledge of the menu. And Disney would do that. And I did that in all my restaurants that I worked in. You know, if you didn't know the menu well, go study, bubba.

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Angelo Esposito [00:24:39]:

There you go. Yeah.

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Vance Morris [00:24:40]:

We are in a detail oriented business. You know, the difference between medium and medium rare is a very fine line.

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Angelo Esposito [00:24:49]:

Right.

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Vance Morris [00:24:51]:

So if you think about this, that every detail in your business is either enhancing or detracting from the experience. There is no middle ground.

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Angelo Esposito [00:25:03]:

Yeah.

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Vance Morris [00:25:03]:

So if you get, you know, if you ask for medium rare and you get medium, that's a detraction. You know, if you ask for a drink and they look at you like you got three heads. But like, you know, I'll tell you, I had. Have you ever been to the Flying Fish restaurant in Disney?

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Angelo Esposito [00:25:22]:

No, but it rings the bell. No, no, I haven't been though.

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Vance Morris [00:25:24]:

Oh my God. Amazing. So I took a couple of clients there. It's pretty high end restaurant. And you know, I was looking over the wine list and you know, I asked the guy, I said, look, you know, we're gonna have a bottle of white with our appetizers and then we're probably gonna get something. We'll have red with, with dinner. You know, can you recommend something? And he, you know, pointed out a couple. I said, fine, we'll take this one and that one.

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Vance Morris [00:25:46]:

And he came back with the bottle of white and presented it to me and I said, oh, all right. I mean, if you, I'll take your word for it. If you say this is good, we'll go with it. He goes, yeah, this is good, but if you want, great. And literally from behind his back, he pulls out another bottle of wine and he says, this one is amazing. Now I got to get the amazing wine. You're not going to say no, good wine, you know. But he was ready.

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Vance Morris [00:26:11]:

See, he read me. He knew that. I mean, I'm not going to say price wasn't an object, but it was obviously some kind of business meeting. I was obviously doing the entertaining and taking care of the check. Just through my words. When I was asking about the wine, I wasn't asking about pricing on the bottles. I just wanted a good bottle, you know, he came back with the good bottle and the amazing bottle. So.

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Angelo Esposito [00:26:36]:

That's awesome. That's awesome. It's funny because I always talk about that how in the restaurant world it's like, I mean, any business you could you have this. But in the restaurant world, there's so many moments of truths and. And you kind of, you know, named a few. But, like, how the host, you know, I mean, you can go all the way from parking. Was it easy to find parking? Like, even though that's not the restaurant's fault if it was hard, you're already in a bad mood. Was the hostess nice? Are you waiting for your table? When you sit down, you have to wait to just get water.

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Angelo Esposito [00:26:59]:

Like, little things, you know, like, do they bring you bread or not? Whatever. But the point is, what's crazy is there's like, I'd say, like, 50 moments of truth. And sometimes the difference between that amazing experience and a bad experience, because just be like you said, a couple of detractors, just four out of the 50 were bad. But those are the four you're going to remember. You're going to remember that you waited long to pay the bill. You're going to remember that parking was horrible, and you're going to remember that, I don't know, the dessert was expensive, whatever it was, but you ended up remembering the detractors. And so that's why I always say it's like restaurateurs. There's so many things that have to go right.

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Angelo Esposito [00:27:30]:

And so part of this podcast is how can we just help them in general? Which is perfect segue, because one thing I wanted to ask you is, you know, it seems like that's what you're doing. You're helping, I mean, business entrepreneurs in general. But I'd love to kind of just touch on that. Like, what was the inspiration to kind of start deliver service now? Like, tell me a bit about the inspo behind that.

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Vance Morris [00:27:51]:

Yeah, it's a great question, Angelo. Thank you. One, I'm kind of on a mission to eradicate the insidious decline of poor service in the world. I mean, it is. It's just gotten worse and worse and worse. And they say AI is going to make it better, and it's not. I mean, it's still the human element that's got to be there. And so, you know, I mean, unless you're going to McDonald's and you want to just order at the kiosk, and then sooner or later, they're going to have robots that just spit the food down a chute to you, and you don't even have to talk to anybody that's coming, you know, but for people that want a real experience, I've seen it, you know, the people that have this genuine heart for service, and all they need is A little bit of training, making, you know, 1.

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Vance Morris [00:28:48]:

Making money tips the way that they would. They would love to, but the actual business owner, the restaurant owner, being just head over heels thrilled at the Google reviews, at the Yelp reviews, at the repeat business, getting to see Mr. And Mrs. McGillicuddy every other Wednesday, you know, because that's when they come in and they love you so much and they. Oh, they just order the one Manhattan and you know, you know, you know exactly what they're going to order. But those are the people that really pay the bills, you know, I mean, it's the consistent return of guests to your restaurant that is going to maintain a steady income for you. Yeah, I can't stand bad service. I.

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Vance Morris [00:29:37]:

I just. It drives me bad. I actually can't go out. There's only like two or three restaurants I can go to where I'll enjoy myself. One we have, actually. So my town, I live in, we have 1700 people in town. Really small town. We have three traffic lights.

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Vance Morris [00:29:53]:

Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. But we have a brewery here, and the brewery's got a little tasting room, and it's all mismatched furniture that they got from the outlets, you know, or the Goodwill or whatever. But the bartender guy is always nice. He knows my name, he knows my dog's name. He's smart, and he pours the dog's beer first before he pours mine. Actually, he says hi to the dog before he says hi to me. So I know what I'm getting when I go there, you know, and then there's, you know, there's a great play, actually place. I had dinner in D.C.

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Vance Morris [00:30:30]:

a couple of weeks ago. I. I just know that it's going to be a great experience. And some people just say that, you know, let's go to this restaurant. Just like, oh, God, do we have to? You know, there's.

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Angelo Esposito [00:30:44]:

There's something about predictability. I'm the same way. It's like, do I enjoy trying new places? Of course. But like, I think in general, when you think about the market and, you know, people are more cash constraint and, you know, as consumers, you. Your dollar only goes so far. It's like you don't want to risk it, you know, so when you do find that place, which is an opportunity for restaurants, because when you do find that place, that's consistent. For me, it's a place really close to my house. It's Italian restaurant.

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Vance Morris [00:31:05]:

But.

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Angelo Esposito [00:31:06]:

But obviously I'm not always in the mood for Italian, but when I am, it's close. The service is always top notch. You know, once in a while, they free dessert on the house, whatever. But it's one of those places where it's like, I always get served well. I always have a good time. It's consistent. I know what I'm getting. Of course I'll try new places.

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Angelo Esposito [00:31:22]:

But in terms of, like, my go to, that's an example of like, hey, I'm going to go back because I know what I get and I'm happy with what I get. And it's consistent, which. Which is a key part because I'm like you. It drives me crazy. If you go to restaurant and it's one time it's amazing, the other time it's not. It's like you lose trust. You're like, I can't bring people here. What if.

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Angelo Esposito [00:31:39]:

What if this happens to them? You know, I mean, we've only got.

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Vance Morris [00:31:43]:

Well, we've got five restaurants in town, which for 1700 people is a lot of restaurants. But there's two we just won't go to.

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Angelo Esposito [00:31:51]:

That's fun.

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Vance Morris [00:31:51]:

I mean, it's just garbage service.

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Angelo Esposito [00:31:54]:

Horrible. Which has a lot. I think that's a lesson for people listening, right? Five restaurants, and he's eliminating two. So that's 40%. You're eliminating 40% of your options just based on service. There's something to be said about that. And I think to our listeners, it's like, really the importance of service, especially in the space of hospitality. Right?

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Vance Morris [00:32:15]:

Yeah. And I think a lot of the smaller restaurants, and when I say small, I'm saying, you know, maybe you have, you know, three to four servers on the floor, you know, for a dinner rush, maybe you have a hostess and a bartender. And those are the ones that tend to overlook the training. I mean, they'll like, here's the map of the dining room, here's the menu, your train, and just set them loose. And that's when problems happen. They just don't take the time to train them properly. And I get it, trust me. I mean, in a small restaurant like that, the owner may be the general manager, the chef, and, you know, the bottle washer.

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Vance Morris [00:33:01]:

Every other, you know, Thursday, whatever it is, I get it. But you're not doing yourself any favors by putting untrained people right out on the floor.

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Angelo Esposito [00:33:14]:

And I'm curious to know, you know, for people listening in, they're like, okay, I like this fan, Sky. He's got a good sense of humor. It seems like he knows what he's talking about. Tell them a bit about Your number one, your services. So what type of services, deliver service, now offers. And then I'd also love to, you know, as we get closer at them, I want to also plug, plug away. So like, you know, where they can find you, your website, your. I know you got newsletters, you got all kinds of stuff, so we could talk about all that.

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Angelo Esposito [00:33:38]:

But first off, let's just talk about maybe some of the key services you offer and how you can help the.

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Vance Morris [00:33:43]:

Main part of the business. I have a group coaching program that is designed kind of like a done with you in improving your experiences, improving your marketing. And it's, it's got weekly coaching. So I mean, you just bring your questions and they get answered. I have a library of about 70 masterclasses on all things marketing and customer experience, which you get access to. Actually, I have a roadmap and it starts with what I call the Right Next Thing Finder. So a lot of coaches will just say, yeah, here's all the crap, good luck. I'll.

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Vance Morris [00:34:24]:

Well, you know, they do. And then you got to go hunt and peck and try and find stuff. So what I'll do is what's called the Right Next Thing finder. And it's 10 questions to determine what is the right next thing for you to be focusing on. Is it marketing? Is it customer retention? Is it, you know, in restaurant experience? And then that way I can direct you to those particular masterclasses. And when we're on our coaching sessions, I know kind of what the direction that we need to go. I do consulting usually for a larger restaurant that's doing, you know, north of three and a half, $4 million. Although these days that could describe a lot of places.

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Vance Morris [00:35:09]:

Chick fil A doing 6 million. So, you know, certainly we'll come in and do a complete mystery shop and audit of the service and come up with a plan. I primarily only work with the owner because if they are not bought in, you know, if they're an absentee owner, then the general manager has to have the authority to be able to implement what we're talking about. The one cool thing I do, which a lot of people enjoy, is I do three and four day boot camps, full intensive boot camps at Walt Disney World. So we'll spend half the day in the classroom, half the day in the resorts or in the parks. And you really get to see how Disney makes the sausage, so to speak. And at the end of it, you've got a blueprint on how you're going to what I say, Disney, your business. And for all the foodies out there, we start off the whole event with a nine course wine pairing dinner outside overlooking Cinderella's castle at sunset.

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Vance Morris [00:36:18]:

That's awesome. That sets the pace for you.

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Angelo Esposito [00:36:21]:

That's awesome. That's really cool. And I love the thing you mentioned about, you know, finding the next thing to work on because I think it's true for all businesses, even at risk. Right. Like we're a software company, we work with hospitality, but it's, you know, we do inventory and all that good stuff. But even for us, it's like super important. There's, I always say, like as a product company, there's, there's, there's no end. Right.

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Angelo Esposito [00:36:41]:

Like it's not like Apple just stops developing or Google. Like it'll never end. So you have to prioritizing stuff. And it's the same for restaurants. It's not like one day you wake up and you're like, oh, I'm finished my checklist of things I wanted to do. It's like you're always going to be hiring new techs coming out, renovations, whatever, checklist, clean, like you name it. Marketing. Things change.

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Angelo Esposito [00:37:00]:

Facebook's not as popular, but now this is like whatever it may be. And so once you realize it's a never ending thing, you realize, okay, I got to get good at picking the right next thing to work on because it's never ending. Even if things are good and the business growing, it's still just never ending. There's always going to be something to.

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Vance Morris [00:37:14]:

Do and you know, and as you get bigger, you know, the problems don't go away. You still have problems, they're just different problems.

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Angelo Esposito [00:37:23]:

Exactly.

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Vance Morris [00:37:24]:

You know, do I open a second location? You know, do I, you know, expand over here? Do I buy a new oven? I mean, yeah, you know, it's just different problems.

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Angelo Esposito [00:37:33]:

Exactly. It's never ending thing. And then for, and just to wrap up. Right. I think, I think this is awesome. So like I could talk to you all day. I'm so curious to learn so much about like the Disney stuff and what you're doing these days. But for people who are interested, we'll definitely plug away.

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Angelo Esposito [00:37:47]:

So even after you say this, we'll put it in the actual podcast, we upload it also on YouTube, so I'll put it in the description and we do a monthly newsletter as well. So I'm sure in one of those we'll highlight you. So we'll put some links there. But for people who are listening or watching this, how can they find you your website and stay connected.

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Vance Morris [00:38:05]:

Sure. Best place to go is the website, which is deliverservicenow.com a whole bunch of free resources on there that you can download and start using. I mean right away. Actually I've uploaded, I've written a few books and my flagship book, Systematic Magic is a. You can download it as a PDF and free. And if you actually want the book book to hold in your hands, it's still free. I just ask you pay a little bit of shipping and handling to get the book to you. But yeah, deliverServicenow.com is the best place.

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Angelo Esposito [00:38:41]:

Perfect. And I noticed, yeah, on the website like you said, you have all kinds of resources and you even have courses that I was checking out. For example, how to raise your prices without losing a client, the zero customer defection blueprint. So yeah, definitely for real estate. Once again, deliver servicenow.com and you're listening to Advanced. Morris Vance, thank you for joining us. This was fun. We're going to make sure to plug away so people can connect with you.

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Angelo Esposito [00:39:08]:

I think you have a lot to share and I could tell you're passionate about it, which I love. So thanks for joining us today on the WISKing It All podcast.

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Vance Morris [00:39:15]:

No, man, I appreciate it, Angelo. Thanks so much.

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Angelo Esposito [00:39:18]:

If you want to learn more about WISK, head to WISK AI and book a demo.

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