Author John R. DiJulius III of The DiJulius Group: Why The Relationship Economy Is The Primary Economy
“Today’s illiterate are those who have an inability to truly make a deep connection with others.”
As part of my interview series on the five things you need to know to become a great author, I had the pleasure of interviewing John R. DiJulius III. John is president of The DiJulius Group, a customer service consulting firm that has worked with companies such as The Ritz-Carlton, Lexus, Starbucks, Nestle, Marriott Hotel, PWC, Celebrity Cruises, Progressive Insurance, Chick-fil-A, and many more. He has written five books on customer service, the most recent The Relationship Economy, Building Stronger Customer Connections In The Digital Age (October 2019 Greenleaf).
Thank you so much for joining us John! Can you share a story about what brought you to this particular career path?
My first business, John Robert’s Spa opened in 1993 and due to its rapid growth and success, primarily around customer service, people started asking me to speak on the topic. Every time I spoke led to 2–3 more speeches. I eventually found myself at some big conferences and saw the big name speakers on mainstage and decided I wanted to explore how I could become them. When I approached them, they all told me I had to write a book to be considered an expert. My first book came out in 2002 and it immediately took me out of the salon/spa industry and into the speaking/consulting industry full time. Today I have written five books, all on customer service and have a growing customer service consulting firm.
Can you share the most interesting story that occurred to you in the course of your career?
When I wrote the first draft of my first book Secret Service. It took me about three months and I thought wow, this was easy, I could write a few books a year. Then I sent my manuscript off to business leaders and asked for their feedback. They told me that it was too much about my salons and didn’t apply to anyone outside of the salon spa industry. So I had to go to work and do research outside of just what was in my brain. This took several more months. I thought I was done. Then when I finally got a publisher to buy it, they told me I didn’t have enough examples of other industries and all my examples were from Cleveland, Ohio were I lived. They told me Ohio was a fly over state. That I needed examples from the west coast, east coast, from all over. Now I really had to do research, interview people. What started off as a three month easy project became a two year full time job. If I would have known, I would have never done it. It also was the best thing for my book, because it became a book that appealed to anyone in business in any industry.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
One of my journeys took me to the Disney institute where for four days they took us behind the scenes to learn how Disney did it. I learned the most important lesson the day after the class.
My family still had a few days left at Disney. Johnni was 6 and Cal was one. I asked Johnni, “Which park do you want to go to, Epcot, MGM, Magic Kingdom?” He said, “Daddy I just want to stay hotel and swim.” If you have ever been to Port Orleans Hotel, it has this dragon slide where you climb up the dragon’s tail and slide out of the dragons mouth.
While I was getting Cal acclimated to the water, splashing and having a good time, Johnni swims over to us and says, “My favorite colors yellow.” That is our family code that “I need to go pee.” I think “Johnni couldn’t you have done this 10 minutes ago?” I just got Cal settled and I didn’t want to take him out fo the water to go look for a public restroom. So instead I told Johnni to do something very very bad. “Johnn just go in the pool”. He says, “Are you kidding?” “No we all do it.”
Johnni swims away while I keep playing with Cal. A few moments later everyone at the pool is laughing or screaming. I turn to my horror, I see Johnni climbing out of the pool, standing at the edge, pulls down his swim trunks and he pees in the pool.
I swim over to him and I asked, “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” He says, “You told me…” (as I cover his mouth).
The lesson, Johnni did exactly what I told him to do, not how I meant for him to do it. That is exactly what is wrong with Customer Service in our businesses today. What is world-class to us (as leaders) is not the same to 19–24 year olds, who have never flown first class or stayed at a Ritz-Carlton.
What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now?
The country of Qatar has hired us to help them prepare their entire country for the FIFA World-Cup 2020. We are helping to train their customs/immigration, taxi drivers, tourism, hotels, etc. It is exciting.
What is the one habit you believe contributed the most to you becoming a great writer? (i.e. perseverance, discipline, play, craft study) Can you share a story or example?
Being focused on one subject, in my case customer service. I only write, speak and consult on customer service. Nothing else. My favorite quote that applies to this way of thinking is, “You do not merely want to be considered just the best of the best. You want to be considered the only one who does what you do.” I eat, sleep, drink customer service. I read dozens and dozens of articles a day on customer service. I read every book on customer service. This allows me to make sure that my clients will never meet anyone smarter than me at what I do.
Can you share the most interesting story that you shared in your book?
It is human nature to be preoccupied with what is happening in our world. However, in order to build a connection with another person, we need to put our focus on them, particularly on making that person feel better for hav- ing interacted with us. When we are totally present with someone, that’s when the magic happens. Above all, this depends on forgoing a desire to focus on ourselves and our own story.
I couldn’t agree more with the following statement by Stephen Covey: People don’t listen with the intent of understanding; they listen with the intent of replying.
Scientists have studied the human brain and found it takes a minimum of 0.6 seconds to formulate a response to something said. Then they researched hundreds of conversations and found the aver- age gap between people talking was 0.2 seconds. How is it that people can respond in 1/3 the time that the human brain allows? Obviously people have their responses ready long before the other person has finished talking.
We have to change that habit. The great Jim Rohn, an entrepreneur and motivational speaker, once said, “The greatest gift you can give someone is the gift of your attention.”
How does this translate to our professional life? In business we need to focus on collecting customer intelligence. This doesn’t mean how smart our customers are, but rather how smart we are about our customers. Customer intelligence is customer data (for example, personal information, purchasing history, referrals, personal preferences, home address, and workplace) that fuels rapport building.
I love asking audiences, “How many people feel that you are pretty good at building rapport with others?” A majority of hands always go up. Then I tell them, “I don’t believe you; just because you had a conversation with someone for the last 15–20 minutes doesn’t mean you built a rapport. You might have been talking about your- self the entire time.”
In order to prove that you made a connection with someone after a conversation you need to walk away knowing two or more facts about their FORD (Family, Occupation, Recreation, & Dreams). If you can find out about two of these subjects, you not only have a relationship, you own that relation- ship. FORD represents people’s hot buttons, what each individual cares about the most. FORD is what they are passionate about. It is the topics that make them light up, that they talk about in detail. Constantly referring to FORD keeps the focus of the conversation on the other person. Here are some examples of the type of information you can casually collect about FORD.
What is the main empowering lesson you want your readers to take away after finishing your book?
“Today’s illiterate are those who have an inability to truly make a deep connection with others.”
Of all the skills that can be mastered, the one that will have the biggest impact on each us personally and professionally is the ability to build an instant connection with others. Whether it be an acquaintance, friend, customer, co-worker, or a total stranger. This skill should be taught at home, in school from pre-kindergarten to graduate school, and, of course, in business. Unfortunately it is rarely taught in any formal way.
Today we are living in the “digital disruption era.” Technology has provided us with unprecedented advances, information, knowledge, instant access, and entertainment. As convenient as technological advances make our lives, they also have changed the way we communicate, behave, and think and have led to a dramatic decline in our people skills. As a society we are now relationship disadvantaged.
Make no mistake about it — The lack of social skills our society has is the problem of businesses leaders to solve.
For anyone and any business to thrive in the future, they will have to master the art of relationship building. Since technological advancements have come at the expense of human connections, organizations now need to reinvent their business model to marry digital and human experiences in the best way possible.
The 3 Strategic ways to dominate The Relationship Economy
- Use technology to perform basic tasks, alternative convenience for customers, enabling employees to focus on what is most important: Building relationships that result in higher customer loyalty, retention, lifetime value, and job satisfaction.
- Build a culture that creates emotional connections with your employees.
- Incorporate relationship building training for new and existing employees
What Is the Relationship Economy?
In a Relationship Economy the primary currency is Is where the primary currency is the emotional connections made with customers, employees, and vendors that results in your organization becoming the brand customers cannot live without. Which ultimately makes price irrelevant.
What was the biggest challenge you faced in your journey to becoming a bestselling author? How did you overcome it? Can you share a story about that that other aspiring writers can learn from?
Finding a way to write & read consistently every week regardless of how busy I am with my fulltime job. Write every week no matter what. Schedule the same time every week. For some reason I do early Sunday mornings, that became my habit and I do it religiously. Read and highlight content and put in a word document so you can always go to when you are writing. You will have content ready to incorporate in your weekly blog. Weekly blogs over time turn into your next book. Weekly blogs builds followers that buy your next book.
Which literature do you draw inspiration from? Why?
I love business books, biographies of business leaders and business articles. This ensures I have a pulse on what is happening in business and my customer service niche.
What advice would you give to someone considering becoming an author like you?
Read and write religiously. Consistency over intensity. Write a minimum 1000 words a week. It will force you to read more on your subject to truly become a subject matter expert.
What are your “5 things I wish someone told me when I first started” and why. Please share a story or example for each.
- It is a lot of work, more than you think if you want your end product to be the best it can be
- Pick a lane, become the smartest person at that subject.
- Write an article every week, create content for your future book
- Create a following
- Get away, every year I take the entire moth of august off that I call a creative retreat. Where I do nothing else but write & read.
You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)
The Relationship Economy. In a Relationship Economy the primary currency is Is where the primary currency is the emotional connections made with customers, employees, and vendors that results in your organization becoming the brand customers cannot live without. Which ultimately makes price irrelevant.
How can our readers follow you on social media?
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dijulius/
Thank you so much for this. This was very inspiring!
