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It's Never the What, It's the Who: How Great Businesses Win on Service

17 June 2026 · 58 min

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What Makes Great Customer Service? It's Never the What, It's the Who

What makes great customer service is rarely luxury. It's the people: their care, competence and attention to detail. Randy Lorensen, Dr. John Oberg and Anthony Marino compare their best experiences, from whale watching in Panama to Buc-ee's bathrooms, Disney cruises and buying a Tesla. They explain how a real service culture is built and why it can't just be written on a wall.

What makes a business unforgettable?

In this episode of Tales of Abundance, Randy Lorensen, Dr. John Oberg, and Anthony Marino explore a simple idea that most companies miss: it’s never just the product, the meal, the hotel, or the service itself. It’s the people behind it. The conversation breaks down why the best customer experiences are rarely about luxury alone and almost always about care, culture, kindness, competence, and attention to detail.

From whale watching in Panama to restaurants, hotels, Disney cruises, Buc-ee’s, Tesla, and home improvement businesses, the guys unpack what actually makes an experience feel exceptional. They talk about how great businesses create trust, remove friction, ask better questions, and build cultures that put the customer first without becoming fake or transactional. They also explore the difference between a real relationship and a shallow interaction, why leadership has to live the culture instead of just writing it on a wall, and how even simple kindness can dramatically change the way customers feel.

In the Abundance Briefing, the conversation shifts to some of the biggest abundance stories in the world right now: the SpaceX IPO and the thousands of employees who became millionaires, new battery technologies using salt and stone, and what a major global flourishing study reveals about happiness, loneliness, faith, and why so many young people are struggling.

If you care about business, leadership, customer experience, culture, service, happiness, and building something people truly remember, this episode is for you.

Great Customer Service Examples, Service Culture and Customer Experience vs. Customer Service

What you'll discover:

  • "You make people think you care by actually caring": service as a business strategy
  • Great customer service examples from Panama, Sonoma, Buc-ee's, Disney cruises and Tesla
  • Why the customer isn't always right, but still comes first
  • Transactions vs. relationships, incentives and culture, and why culture must be lived, not laminated
  • Match and mirror: how kindness and attitude come back to you
  • In the Abundance Briefing: the SpaceX IPO and employee millionaires, Finland's sand battery, and a global study on flourishing

Timestamps

  • [00:05] What are your best consumer experiences?
  • [00:47] Why Randy feels awkward with “luxury” service
  • [01:39] Anthony on Sonoma and why pleasant people change everything
  • [03:43] Randy on whale watching in Panama and unforgettable hospitality
  • [06:47] “You make people think you care by actually caring”
  • [07:21] How great service can become a business strategy
  • [09:25] Serving first, fixing problems fast, and why it pays long term
  • [11:16] The customer is not always right, but customers still come first
  • [12:25] Competence vs over-the-top service in business
  • [14:01] Buc-ee’s, clean bathrooms, and why little things matter
  • [15:30] What Europe thinks when they see Buc-ee’s for the first time
  • [16:46] Incentives, culture, and why people act the way they do
  • [18:54] The difference between a transaction and a relationship
  • [19:00] Even government workers can create a great experience
  • [21:06] Vegas, loyalty, and how incentives shape treatment
  • [22:18] Kindness, attitude, and creating a better experience for everyone
  • [24:08] Match and mirror: how people reflect your energy back to you
  • [26:32] Disney cruises and what it means to make people feel special
  • [28:01] Disney’s mission: make people happy
  • [29:29] Why culture must be lived, not laminated
  • [30:56] Tesla and how removing friction improves the buying experience
  • [33:43] Customer empathy plus process engineering
  • [36:28] Final takeaways: kindness, questions, and creating abundance for others
  • [39:29] SpaceX IPO: Elon becomes the first trillionaire
  • [40:48] Why the bigger story is what it did for employees and suppliers
  • [43:27] Is this really about SpaceX, or a referendum on Elon?
  • [45:29] Finland’s “sand battery” and a new path for energy storage
  • [49:48] Flourishing, happiness, faith, and what really matters
  • [53:43] Why young adults are now reporting lower wellbeing than older people
  • [54:34] What people can still control in a changing world
  • [57:28] Comparison, capability, and why some people are happier with less
  • [58:00] Final thoughts on abundance and happiness

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About the hosts

This is a hosts-only episode with no guest: Randy Lorensen, Dr. John Oberg and Anthony Marino. (Host bios are on the host pages linked below.)

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Meet the hosts: Randy Lorensen · Dr. John Oberg · Anthony Marino

Transcript

A full transcript is below. It was generated automatically from the episode audio, so expect some spelling errors in names and terms.

[00:07] today to talk about your best experiences. You know, I was thinking over the weekend about I went to the World Cup and we saw this really a experience. We walked the family in, saw this really cool stadium, looked totally different than the last time I was there for a music concert and it was a cool experience. Like we walked in and we were treated in a way that I was like, "Wow, this is a great like consumer experience." And there's some times in my career where I've not had the best consumer experience, you know, personally or professionally. I thought it'd be really fun to talk about like what are some of your best consumer experiences for services, you know, days like yesterday, products. Like what have been your favorite consumer experiences? — By the way, this was a hard one for me because as I think about it, I am a guy that like if I go to a hotel and somebody wants to carry my bags, I kind of feel guilty. Like I'm like, "I don't need anybody to carry my bags." And I'm uncomfortable with all that. So, some of this stuff that I got a feeling, I don't know exactly where you guys are going to go, but I got a feeling a lot of that is not what I'd lean into. In fact, I almost lean away from, but I I you know, I think it's a good topic and it might just be good for me to just, you know, think through getting more comfortable and another thing to work on. Just like — You don't buy Apple products. So, you you don't have like the opening of the Apple product magic that they have.

[01:24] That's not something you really appreciate as much. — Apple, I would just appreciate if they had good technology. It would — Oh man, I love Apple. We just lost him as a sponsor. Thanks, Randy. Anthony, what's the last cool experience you had where you really were just blown away by the experience? — Um I'll go just recently. You know, we spent a week up on the Sonoma and the the northern coast of California and like I told you guys, it's a it's a completely different world than what you think of in terms of San Francisco and LA and San Diego. Um still expensive for even the littlest things. And we we were very modest in the way we went about traveling out there and where we with the restaurants we went to and so forth, but everyone without exception was pleasant. It was this very pleasant light-hearted experience with no stress. You know, when we we were sightseeing, we went up to to see the redwoods and out to the Bodega Bay and went all over the place. And when we put the directions into the Google Map, you know, it gave us the typical California highways to get there really quick or these jagged, you know, spider web type routes that took us, you know, through the back back roads, 20 mph, 25 mph, or even less in some cases.

[02:46] And for the extra 15 minutes, it was just joyous, you know, we found these little markets, you know, you walk in, what is this guy sell? He makes sandwiches and he's got wine and he's got some fresh fruit and you know, gas, you know, and so on. It was just like the every dollar went uh to something pleasant. And, you know, going thinking back on many, many experiences, not sure I you got to I know I don't think I ever had 100% on something. Even at places like the Four Seasons or the Ritz and so forth. Um so that was the that most recently. And so it left me we were a little anxious about it cuz we hadn't been there in many years. And uh so there was a little anxiety leading up to it, but it's it it's still resonating positively with me right now. — That's great. Randy, you ever had an experience where you just kind of blown away like this was amazing? — Yeah, I mean I I think the easy ones are are the service and the travel that Anthony's talking about. I mean, even a few weeks ago when we had dinner, right, in a at a nice steak place here in town.

[03:54] You know, I remember Anthony, you commented on the server about how fantastic he was, right? And and just you know, anywhere you go where the server really cares and really goes above and beyond with you know, and then they have to know some of them go too far above and beyond, right? They have that right balance where they're there when you need them, but they're not constantly there pestering you. So, I think of some of those. I'm thinking a few years ago we went to Panama and we wanted to go whale watching. And like basically all the whales on this part of the world, the ones from the northern hemisphere come there and give babies part of the year. The ones from the southern hemisphere come and I guess there's way more whales in the south. So, we were there when the whales in the south, but we took this ferry to the Pearl Islands like hour and a half from Panama City and that was great. But then we had the guide for this whale watching and they literally met us at a dock. We took our suitcases off of cuz we were staying on this island for a few days. We took our suitcases onto this old rickety dock. They loaded us in their boat. We went out and it was this old guy and this old woman and they were just they were so good at what they did and they took us right up next, you know, where we got dolphin swimming next to us. At one point I've got like eight whales around me. It and I thought we'd see them at hundreds of yards. Some of these whales were seeing it three feet, five feet away from the boat and they're bigger than the boat, by the way, by a lot. You know, it wasn't that big of a boat. And so but just that whole service and then dropping us off where we're going and just like really anybody that takes it, but for the for me it was more that you could just tell they loved it and they cared and the passion that went into it.

[05:33] I think is, you know, really the key. So, I wrote down a few things, but that's that's one of the things is just I I think of that experience. On that same trip, on that same island we went there was this Italian guy who had ran away from home when he was young, lived in somewhere in South America, then he lived off this island in Panama that's only full of this one tribe of Indians, married a woman from there, ended up on this other not Indians with his son running this Italian restaurant that's his house by the way. You just show up and it's a house and you you don't even really know where to go unless you know and we had to ask somebody and you go around back and on his back deck which is surrounded by the jungle with monkeys around you and parrots. He just cooks. You don't order. He just cooks whatever he wants and he just told jokes and he laughed and he was funny you know, it was so I would say, you know, those are a couple things on the one little experience, one little deal that just anybody that guy really loved cooking and you know, I I could spend 20 minutes telling stories that he told me that just, you know, I almost fell out of my chair laughing while we ate this amazing meal, you know, in a in a cool setting.

[06:44] So, those are a couple things that come to mind. somebody asked me once they said, "How how do you get someone like how do you make someone think you care?" I was like, "You actually care." Like like it's it's like and and I think that's the the the wrapping paper sometimes is as important as the thing that that people are buying. So, that's and and you guys think about that in terms of like not just like the you've talked about restaurant and travel, but do you think in terms of that type of experience in your business? Do you think about that in when you buy a product or when you buy a service in your business? Those are both personal examples. Can that happen at work, too? — Oh, I think absolutely. It has it's all part of your culture. Think about big companies and small companies and you know, you know, as John, you remember when we started up the the window business, we you know, we did our strategic planning we tried to decide how we were going to go to market. We figured out very quickly that we couldn't go because of price cuz we were more expensive. You You couldn't go on quality even though we had great products because you can't really see You can't really out sell someone on quality.

[07:54] So, we decided to go to business based on service. Imagine that. It It was probably the most lunat- lunatic decision we made to go to serv- service in the home improvement business. Those two things don't go together. But, we managed to do that and we we modeled our business after Starbucks. We said, "What did Starbucks do differently in the coffee business that made them so And they took a 99-cent cup of coffee and they changed one thing. They just changed the atmosphere and the culture of where you bought that that and they they provided the best service, the best people, the cleanest environment. And instead of buying a 99-cent cup of coffee in the 7-Eleven, you pay five bucks for it in a really nice place with tables and chairs and music and and people. And you know, as Randy was talking about, you know, the whale thing, it's amazing how contingent your happiness and joy is on who you're interacting with.

[08:59] It's not the what so much. You know, the whales are great, awesome, but you had probably had a great skipper who was educational, knew where to go, took his time or her time. It really comes down to the the human interactions we have. You know, so I I really I have a whale story I can get to later, but yeah, it isn't the what, it's the who that you interact with. And that includes your companion that you're with or companions that you're with. — Anthony, like your business, I've heard stories of like like you answered the phone 24/7, right? Like when you called the business, it said, "If you want to talk to the owner, press one. that is a level of really taking that seriously. And I also have heard the stories where something had to be run to a customer's house and you had an 8-ft, you know, I don't know, a door trim or something in the back of your BMW sticking out the window like personally running it to the house. So, — Yeah, it was it it was, you know, there there are a lot of businesses successful and if you I always say this, you think of the most successful businesses, they're all consumer first, customer first. They they um they they know that profits follow.

[10:10] Repeat customers, referrals, reviews, all of those things. And, you know, it it was hard. I mean, I could regale you with stories of, you know, people that we hired that didn't fit the culture, you know, that you know, it just didn't it didn't they weren't going to work. And, you know, I was determined, John helped me a lot on to stay the course. I mean, there were some times, you know, would have been a lot easier to tell that customer, "Nah, we're not going to do that for you." But instead, you know, we we spent the 10 grand and swallowed hard. And, you know, whether it's the universe giving back to us or that person doing a referral, um it it really really worked for us. And you know, and I have to tell you, just like the the every single person we dealt with in in the in California, it was a lot easier to be kind and pleasant than to be tough and, you know, traditional in the way you run a business and heavy-handed and so forth. It's so much nicer. I mean, it's so much nicer, so.

[11:16] — And there were a couple customers where you couldn't like like it's not the the customer is always right, period. But broadly speaking, customer's first. And then, there but there were some customers you have to say no to because they're beyond reasonable. And when I say beyond reasonable, I mean, like way beyond reasonable. But that's But I think that customer first really And you can I can feel it when I'm a — 99.9% of people aren't getting up in the morning trying to get one over on somebody. And And whatever it is, you know, I'm sure there's some number that is every morning wakes up scheming. But the vast vast vast majority of people are nice and they just trying to get to work and get through the day and you know, do their thing without disruption. Uh if you take that attitude, you know, it's like the road rage thing. It doesn't sound like it's related to this, but you see it all the time, you know, when you're driving, people hustling and cutting you off and they don't like it when you, you know, get two car lengths in front of them and it's just like they're they're in a in a bad mind space. And it's not it's not helping their cause and they're in fact they're not getting anywhere any faster either, so it's not accomplishing — Yeah, make It makes me think when I started my business, I took a slightly, you know, you know, current business. I took a slightly different route and I also in a in a really messy home improvement where generally it was full of incompetence, I doubled down on just being super competent, right? And if people ordered things, actually delivering the right order and delivering on time and and and not that we didn't have mistakes because they're unavoidable at some point, but we did deal with them, kind of do whatever it takes to go and deal with them as much as possible, but you know, I doubled down on value and offering the best value. And now I watch I've got a dealer in in Phoenix and he really went deep on the quality, right? And just taking care of things on the back end and providing over-the-top service. I tried to minimize my work on the back end and just avoid the mistakes and he did both.

[13:21] And I'm looking at it's a different way of building the business. Like I built much faster because I really just I could bring marketing, I could bring eyeballs and bring people and and I got lots of five-star reviews, but I'm watching what he's doing and the difference is he gets way more high-end clients. His average sale is double what mine is and he sells to a different class of people at higher margins than I sold, right? And so it really like if from a business standpoint, it really does pay off and I think a lot of it is even the margins you can get and the people that you attract, the type of you attract. how clean things are. Like I you know I I walked into a restaurant getting gas, I walked into a restroom yesterday at a big-name, you know, gas station nationally and the gas station was a mess. Like the the bathroom was like hard to get to. I had to walk through a storage area. It was not kept clean. You know, Buc-ee's has made their entire brand around like clean bathrooms and it makes a difference. You know, or I I think it — Buc-ee's is what I thought of right away when you said that, right, John? Like it's That is an experience I hadn't even considered. Like when we get in the car and we go anywhere that's very far, the first thing Julie asks is where's our Buc-ee's on the way? And we 100% plan to go to the bathroom cuz there's for people outside of the South or Texas that have never been to one, it's a gigantic, it's pretty much a Walmart with hundreds of gas pumps and Tesla chargers and then everything inside of it and the bathrooms, there's a full-time attendant in the men's room, a full-time attendant in the women's room.

[14:59] There's almost unlimited urinals and stalls and whatever else. But on a quick tangent, during the World Cup, have you have you seen the videos of people from Europe going into a Buc-ee's and being like, "What the hell is this?" and like blowing their mind? It's worth I don't want to take us too far off topic, but it's worth doing. And the one the first one I saw was a German guy who is just like, "This is a gas station. This is unbelievable." And he just goes It's like a 30-second clip. So, it it's worth taking your time to just go look at one of these. They're They're blown away. They've never seen anything like — We went into a a separate one that had a clean bathroom. It was It was a It was about the size of half of a Buc-ee's. Super clean bathroom. Clearly, they had used a similar model. And they had an 8-ft diameter aquarium with fish that were like, you know, bigger than any fish I've ever caught uh inside this aquarium. It was like, you know, floor-to-ceiling. It might have been 9-ft wide. It was And they had a different brand than Buc-ee's. They had, you know, outdoor equipment and all kinds of They They had a $2,000 patio set on the way in to this this gas station. And so, you know, I I it it does remind me though. It's like there are people like when where I was trained professionally, it was like, "What is the customer looking for? What's their need? What's their want?" And then I meet other people who are like, "Well, I I want to do this." I I met a CPA once who He wanted to build my whole business to make my tax return for him easier.

[16:24] And I had to talk to him. I was like, "Hey, man. Like, just so we're clear, that's not That's not going to happen." Like like I build my business to measure it every single day. One day a year, we do taxes. Three days a year, we do reports for taxes. Like Like And it was like this, you know, lightbulb moment for him. And And so, is this as simple as put the customer first? — Maybe. Probably. — that's what you control, right? So, what what we say in the last in the last session, you know, you control your thoughts and your actions, right? You don't control other people's thoughts and actions. I consult for a number of home improvement companies, and we've been having real difficulty with a couple of the the companies that support those companies in terms of the products and services that they deliver. And what you can see with the the common thread is they're revenue-focused. They're driven by selling us more stuff or more of the same stuff and trying to trying to and they're not interested in looking at the entire picture of this these particular businesses and what we would be taking away from to have them increase their revenue. Most of them are all commission based.

[17:38] Uh the two or three that I'm talking about they'll go nameless. So it all starts with their incentives. So you know when the you know as Charlie Munger says if your incentives are not aligned you're not going to get great So back to the Sonoma experience. The incentive of the people that we dealt with in the restaurants on the the wineries on the street corners they were they have a good time. They were there to have you know they're their incentive was to get through the day pleasantly. So they spread that pleasantness around. So you just got to that's why I say it it comes back to individual people. Um you know last night Jan and I went out to a a dinner early bird special in a in a really nice and we had a waitress that was very attentive and you know got to us quickly and so forth but she was she was shallow. It what she didn't mean what she was saying. You know you could just feel it. It was it was it was um it was a prescription. Now she didn't make it unpleasant. Don't get me wrong.

[18:43] But it wasn't the same thing. Like what I what she wasn't a person I'd want to have a conversation with or share anything personal with. It was it was a — I felt cold. — That that that's that's it. It's a transaction not a relationship right? Like that's the thing. — You know and this has changed you know I moved from Austin a couple of years ago to Bastrop which is growing fast but it still kind of fancy itself a little farm town even though that's not really the case. And I just noticed working with government workers. Like I had a thing from the county last week. And every time I work with a government worker here, they're so pleasant, they're so nice, they care, they're competent. You know, like I I argued my property taxes last year and I remember I had a 10:00 a.m. appointment. I got there at like 9:50. They called on me at 9:55 and by 9:58 I was out the front door. Like literally in 3 minutes she looked at it, goes, "Oh, I bet you want this." I said, "Yes." "Great, done." And just this woman the other day with something with our septic system and I guess got to tell you, like she just cared, right?

[19:49] And she was so nice, so pleasant. Like you don't think about govern you know, government workers, but even that thing that most people dread, they weren't they cared, right? I mean, that that really is what it comes down to. — Make such a difference. — Well, I think maybe maybe this goes back to incentives, right? And what people what people think about their job and what they think about their incentives. You know, I I think there I see a lot of check-the-box at times versus do the do what's right or do what someone needs. You know, someone told me once they said, "You know, you're really smart and you probably think you know the answer to the question and you might even know the answer to the question. So, why don't you just turn those smarts into questions of your own. Ask people knowing they're going to say what you already know, but then you can look really smart by asking the right question." I was like, "Oh, this is genius." I started turning all what I thought I knew into questions and I was mortified at how little I knew about what drove other people. And so now when I'm in rooms with managers and and boards, I'm really sensitive to like this is what I think that person probably wants or should want, but then I don't get a vote about they should want. So, how about if I instead ask what they really do want and why?

[21:01] And let me just learn and accept that they have a different point of view and it's been life-changing. — You're you're talking about incentives, John, and I'm thinking back to my gambling days and I used to go to Caesars and I had diamond or whatever status they called it and I'm just thinking how easy they made it. I would pull up, I had my own valet that I didn't have to go to the main valet. I then went into a a different check-in place than everybody else went. It was full of drinks and food and desserts and refreshments and everything It was just a really nice lounge and you would check in. There was You know, they had so many people working that there was never a line and it was just they would take your bags. It was super easy, right? But the incentives, that's when I was playing a lot and then as I started gambling less and the last couple times I went back to Vegas, I didn't have that status anymore and I had to go like literally their incentive is, well, if you're not going to gamble and waste a bunch of money with us, we're not going to do this. Um it's one of the things I actually appreciate about Vegas is they're really straightforward and honest. Like you get treated based on how much money you lose, right? I mean, the people that get a plane sent is are getting a plane sent for a reason, right? And the next level sends a limo and you know, so you know, their incentives were to take care of the people that played the most, right? And when that stopped being me, a lot of that stuff went away and I I I respect that cuz at least they're honest about it.

[22:25] — Yeah, that There's a famous story about a guy they gave a Harley Davidson to him and everyone's like, he got a Harley. It's like, dude lost a million dollars last weekend. Like 15, 20 grand or whatever it was for the 100 grand for Harley. Who cares? Doesn't matter. It's like That was And that's I think that's easy to think about in terms of very high ticket items and experiences. But back to your point, Anthony, it doesn't take money just to be kind and and just make give some give somebody a pleasant frictionless frictionless experience, right? — You know, later in life I've found and believe me, this was not me going through living in the corporate world and hustling and even the way I behaved in social settings, but I find now just just being leading leading by example. You know, being kind to assuming the person's going to reciprocate with kindness and pleasantness, just leading that way um Randy's joked about you know, the way I've you know, treated some people we know and the way I treated that waiter that that night in in the restaurant. It just it seems to work. Now, it doesn't work all the time, but you know, it's it's hard to be unpleasant to someone who's being pleasant to you.

[23:37] You know, it seems almost like you you you'd have to be mean-spirited to do that. You while you can't necessarily pick the people you're going to interact with, you can start the relationship on the right foot and give you some better odds to use the gambling analogy of having an experience that's going to end in happiness and enrichment. Could have an effect on the one of your five F's. May not. But the starting place is always, you know, think good and then see what happens. — John, how much of this is like what percentage of people, do you have any idea your psychiatry background, are match the energy that comes to them? I got to think it's a high percentage. I I shared this recently that, you know, I've realized that I tend to match people's and it it serves me really well in sales, but sometimes if there's conflict and if somebody comes at me aggressively, I just automatically want to mirror that, which is great for sales rapport, but not great always in personal situations. But isn't that what most people do is they just match? So, if you come in hot and angry, the other person gets angry. If you come in like, "The world's the best and sunshine and rainbows." There's more sunshine and rainbows. Do you have any idea on that?

[24:49] — I don't know the science behind it. Um psychiatry wouldn't be psychology, yes. Psychiatry, no. But I I don't The answer is I don't know, but here's what I have taught people for years about communication is that you can help people move their attitude by matching and mirroring and then people like if you match and mirror them they will start matching and mirror you and you can slowly move someone to a better you point of view but but you got to be careful that too like what one of the things that happens is when someone has high level of emotion and high intensity about that emotion if you match that emotion things can go really badly. If you don't match the intensity things can go really badly but if you match the intensity and you don't match the emotion things can go pretty well and you can de-escalate pretty quickly. And so I think there there is and you can learn that as a skill right like that's a skill set you can learn but I I would say that you know I don't know if you call it kindness a skill but you can practice kindness as a habit in the same and I think that people who generally focus on kindness and gratitude for reasons that I don't fully understand seem to have just more happiness in their lives and people who don't focus on that and I heard a mentor tell me one time he said like if if 97% of the things in your business are going well and you only ever talk about the 3% that's not going well pretty soon that 3% becomes 10% and so you have to be able to talk even-handedly about both.

[26:07] You can't ignore what's going wrong you have to address it and maybe even with more than 3% of the energy but if you give it 50% of the energy then you start to have some problems too so I'm not sure if that answers your question or not. you would one of the first things we talked about this was an experience like you had at Disney. You want to share that and what made it so good like what that service level was and tell us more. — Yeah I mean you we walked onto a Disney cruise and I I just remember them you know learning everything they possibly could about you and and in future we went on a second Disney cruise later and I realized all that stuff had gone into their CRM because they knew who we were they had our preferences but we walked into the ship and they had a lineup of employees and they announced us coming in. Welcome to you know and and they used our names and cried it out. No one was listening, but it was like, "Wow, that felt amazing." And so, they have this and and you know, I've never worked for Disney, but allegedly they tell people like you they remind people regularly like like there are people that will only have one experience with Disney in their whole life and they've been saving for years for this. And so, we are the cast, not the employees, but the cast that puts on a show for them.

[27:16] And you know, you see this in hospitality a lot. I was at a hotel about an hour and a half away from home and we the check-in experience was really long, difficult check-in experience just because it was a holiday weekend. It was crazy busy at the hotel, tons of families there, but when we got to the front desk, it was this total kindness, amazing connection. And then, you know, the next morning we woke up to a handwritten notes under our door that talked about our check-in experience to make sure that we had everything we needed. Clearly, that person had written a thank you note by hand after we checked in, given it to somebody who's in the night shift. That note came under the door whatever time they came by, 2:00, 3:00, 4:00 in the morning, whatever. Like, that is an attention to detail and kindness that was like, I'm still talking about it 10 years later. — That's amazing. — go back to Disney real quick. Sorry to interrupt, Randy. Um You know what their mission statement Make people happy. — That's it. That's the whole mission statement. It's not this long drawn-out strategic you know, it's make people happy. Now, if that isn't kindness, if that isn't the right place to start.

[28:23] And then, okay, so it's great to have but then, what makes it powerful is the of people that have to live that. Right? So, you have a swarm of people everybody from the check-in person to the person that's in the attraction to the person that's got an entry-level job emptying the trash that you Oh, by By way, you'll never see that happen in a Disney park. You will never see it actually occur. They swap them out so fast that you'll never see the trash. But, the swarm and that whether you're in a giant company like Disney, which proves you can do it. Our giant company like Starbucks, which proves you can do it. Our little home improvement company that Joan and I had here in Austin, Texas. You can do it with a swarm of people, whether it's 6,000 or in our case 60. You can do that. — And But, it starts with one person at the top, Anthony. That's the key. Like you you make that choice. — Yeah. You They made that You know, Walt Disney made that choice some number of years ago.

[29:28] That was it. — What were — And um So, it So, it could be done at any scale. — What we're skipping around on What we're skipping around is culture. Somebody has to create that culture, that belief system within the company, right? I mean, that's that's where it has to come — But, we can call it create. I would call it live. You can put up You know, I would Growing up in corporate America, I can't tell you how many meetings I was in where we we set our mission statement and we set our values and we spent we word smith it to death for days on end and everybody had an opinion and blah blah blah blah blah and then we got a beautiful poster and we stuck it on the And I work with financial institutions. I would love the audience to tell me how many times they've had a great talking to a giant financial institution where they had a problem with their credit card or their phone bill or you know, whatever and it was awesome. They You called someone and immediately got someone on the phone and that person knew exactly what to do and the opposite of you know, your your experience Randy with the the government worker. It's the complete opposite. But, behind that person in the call center, there's a It says, customers are important and be nice to people and blah blah blah blah Living it is what it's all about.

[30:50] — have any poster you want, but you've got to live it every day. And it it ain't It isn't easy. — It's interesting, Anthony, you're thinking you're saying that I recently for Father's Day, early Father's Day and birthday got a pellet grill that replaced the old old old one that I had. And anyway, got it, there's a broken part, and I started dealing with them on their little app on a chat, dealing with an AI, and it was great. I spent a few minutes, it didn't waste my time, it's sending me a new part. At first, it said take it back. I didn't want to take it back cuz it was easier to get the new part and replace it. Anyway, it's sending me a new part. It was really a pleasant experience because the AI was efficient, it didn't waste my time. And I was thinking about as I was doing it a couple weeks ago, I had a similar experience with Chase. And I had to go through their stupid phone tree that's probably from 1990, and it took 5 minutes to get to a human. And the questions that it had already asked me so that I wouldn't have to repeat them to the human, I then have to repeat them to the human. Then the human couldn't help me, and then I had to go back. And then another time I went, all the people were busy.

[31:56] And it took me three or four calls and 10-15 minutes each to get to somebody that was far less helpful. And and so yeah, I mean, these days it could be an AI that's just getting rid of all this, but I I am eternally amazed to your point about big financial institutions that they're running systems that are that old and you're repeating yourself. And it's just it's not a pleasant experience at all. talking about AI and it what the real impacts are going to be. and it really their mind was around yeah, there's probably a a of use cases for cost savings and efficiencies and so forth, but there's probably more use cases in expanding your revenue base, expanding your sales, reaching more customers, satisfying more customers. Because of the engineering you can do to you know, find them, if you will, and market to them more effectively. So, you know, we spent our careers, John and I, sa- saving money. You know, all How do you How do you have the machine avoid sending the call to a person?

[33:08] I mean, we wake up every single morning and try to figure out, all right, how can we sit this person self-serve And Ben, so I'm Listen, I'm the guy, one of the guys who opened one of the first call centers in India. Back in, Jesus, '84 or something. Thank you very Yeah, the thank you very little is right. So, yeah, but it but it I I Listen, let's go move to the positive side of things. There are plenty of good companies out there that are doing an amazing job both with technology and without. Because, like you said, leadership demands it of them. You know, this whole This whole Sorry, John. This whole thing was, how do we make it better for the — But and that's the other piece of this, right? So, customer kindness, like that's that's one piece of it, is how you interact with the customer. There's another piece of it where I I I've I've never been inside Amazon, I don't have any inside baseball here, but I have to imagine they've got some people that are really great at going through and thinking about process engineering and how you fix the kindness, but what goes on behind it. So, I was I You guys have heard me tell the story about the conversation where that I had with a mortgage banker who was trying to fix that problem with the mortgage application, and there was some number of fields you had to fill out, 253 jumps to mind, although I don't know if it's right. And they were like, how many of these are necessary? At the end of the day, what they ended up with was one.

[34:26] Like, if you put someone's social security number, they could literally find everything else online if as was you were committed to making it the very best possible consumer experience, you need a social security number and a signature. And I don't know if they ended up executing that or not, but they figured that out. And so it's like and and you can't just it takes it takes some experience to be a process engineer to go in and figure that stuff out, but I think there's the one side which is being super thoughtful about the empathy of the customer experience, but then also being willing to go back and, you know, break down problems and say, "Okay, if we start with the whiteboard, what would have to be true?" But you have to know you can't do that every day all the time. Like you just can't. It's too expensive. It takes too much. So you have to be really thoughtful about how and when you do that. So there's some discipline around that. The other great example that I think of is I I'd be remiss is is Tesla. I got to tell you, buying that car was so much easier than any other car I've ever bought, right? Usually you have to go in, you you have to dicker with a salesperson, he or she wants to go talk to the manager, and they go back and forth, and then trying to sell you the undercoat protection and the extended warranty, and they're the floor mats, and everything else. Tesla, you can order the whole thing online with the app if you want. Now, I preferred to go in, but I went in, the people are nice, it's literally like a 5- or 10-minute process. You just buy the car. And then when you pick it up, they have a time, you show up to pick up the car, and it's just sitting there waiting for you.

[35:57] And you just get in and drive away, right? I mean, it's it's even even the insurance is easier. Everything about it is easier. And this is one of the things I appreciate about Elon is that he gets down to first principles and down to, you know, like how even the customer experience. I think people think more about the products, right? Having fewer moving parts and less stuff to break and more efficient and all that, but the customer experience has been well thought out, too. And it's just much no flash, nothing extra, but just very simple, straight to the point, easy easy to navigate. — Guys, let's wrap this up and just talk just in in a sentence or two. If you had one big thing that you would hope a listener would take away from this about you know, joyful experiences and how you create abundance for other people in in what you do day-to-day. Anthony, what would you what would you say about that? — I would repeat myself and say you can do a lot by your attitude to creating a good experience. And then I would add revisit the things that you've done in the past that were really good, that we really enjoyed. You know, double down on those.

[37:07] I think that that's how I would sum it — I I would agree. That was the first thing that came to my mind is that if you come if you go around being generally positive, generally upbeat, and happy, and giving people the benefit of the doubt, they will probably do that to you. And the other thing is I think what something you said, John, is asking the right questions. I think it's critical as far as if you are asking the right questions, you'll be solving the right problems and giving people, you know, the present they want, not the present you want, which we didn't say specifically, but that's where that — Yeah, and it's for me, I'm just going to always I'm always going to wave the person when they're trying to get in when I'm on the road, right? It's like when someone's trying to get over, I'm just always going to make room and wave them in. I think just philosophically, I want to always wave people in, try to always help in that way. And I find that's You know, I'll leave with a story. I was at the World Cup yesterday and it was Japan and Netherlands. And the Japanese carry these blue trash bags with them. And they wave [clears throat] like flags, but they're there because at the end of the game, they all clean up after themselves and they leave their area just beautiful by taking all the trash with them. And so, it's such a great way of kind of leaving leaving it behind in the way that they would want to. And so, you know, I want to I want to carry a trash bag and clean up after myself and then wave people in.

[38:23] So, all right guys, here's a break. We're going to come back with Randy after the break for the Abundance Briefing. If you're still with us, we know you love us. So, feel free to like it, save it, you know, share it with your friends right this very second and then sit tight. We'll be back right after the — For our Tales of Abundance, we know that fitness is just as important as money and milestones. It's one of our key five steps. We want to go through this. Taking care of my body while I build my life is one of the more time-consuming and difficult goals to chase. That's why we're partnering with AG1. It's a daily drinkable habit. Less than a minute, this formula with 75 plus vitamins and nutrients and designed to support energy, digestion, and immune It even has a few grams of protein that we're all chasing these days. If you want to try it with our affiliate link, you'll also receive a free AG1 flavor sampler plus vitamin D free plus K2 with your welcome kit when you first subscribe, a $72 value. Go to the Briefing. John, Anthony, there was just a little IPO on Friday. And what everybody's focusing on is Elon Musk has become the world's first trillionaire and we can circle back to that. But the part that I think is interesting that I don't hear the media talking about hardly at all is what it did for the workers at that company. You know, one of the things some of the things that jumped out to me that 4,400 employees and I think they only have like 20,000 employees total if I'm not mistaken. You have to fact-check me on the total number, but 4,400 people at SpaceX became millionaires Friday.

[40:05] Which is pretty damn cool. You know, the IPO went out and they're talking about it's worth 1.75 trillion and all that. But also, this really blew me away more than the 48 4,400. Over 400, I think the exact number is 433 employees are expected to hold stakes of a hundred million dollars or more. And a lot of these are blue-collar workers. They're welders, they're cafeteria staff, they're launchpad technicians, they're, you know, some of them are engineers, You know, they I think that's awesome, right? And you know, there you you just there's stories, like I said, welders and electricians that all of a sudden are millionaires and multi-millionaires. So, what are you guys' takeaway on this? — Well, I think I think that's great for those people. I mean, they put in the time and the effort, and on paper, they're doing really, really well. I think the bigger story is long-term. The abundance that this company and assorted and sundry other ones attached to it, vendors, suppliers, support, the number of great jobs that are being created, um, obviously in his in the community that he's built building down there, but across the United States and across the world. He's got suppliers from every corner of the world that are going to have to, you know, support him in each of those companies has some number of employees that are going to be better off because of the investment. I mean, what he did was he raised money.

[41:32] And you raise money to spend money. And the money's going to be spent on goods and services that are going to enrich the world many, many places. It's just a It's just a tremendous thing. And it I'm not sure there's going to be another example this big that's going to do that in terms of the physical sciences and the physical product and the manufacturing that it's going to take to make this company great. Cuz this this company does It's not It's not a black box. It's a I'm tr- I'm struggling for that word. Very excited about it. It's material. It's physical things. It's rockets. It's parts. It's — They're already putting satellites like data centers in space. They sent a rocket up last week with 27 satellites on it to be the beginning of that constellation or whatever. Right? I mean, that's pretty cool. They're already that — Yeah, however long it takes, it doesn't matter. It's just that it's it's going to It's creating abundance in every corner of the world.

[42:37] — I think that's right. I think there's a lot of people that are thinking through this being not really about SpaceX the company. It's It's more a referendum on Elon to some extent. And then, I mean, look, at the end of the day, he's had a couple of really big bets with Anthropic and Google recently that are billions of dollars in revenue that have nothing to do with the spaceship itself in terms of manufacturing. But, the cool thing about Elon, love him or hate him, is he's got a plan, right? And so, and and it's a complicated plan. It's and it seems like a lot of it's coming together. And, you know, the there was a joke on I heard on a podcast recently. It was like, "Step one, you know, get chips. Step two, {question mark}. Step three, profit." And you kind of have to wonder if he always knew what the question mark was. Was that a question mark to him? Probably not. That was just a question mark to other people. I mean, guy's really smart. And so, I think um I don't know. I'm I'm excited for the people that have been along for the ride that are millionaires on paper. I hope that they get a chance to diversify out in ways that are, you know, good for their future and they they realize that abundance. And I think it's awesome. — Well, it's Think about Brownsville.

[43:42] Brownsville is not a rich place. And a lot of Some of these people are Bastrop. I mean, some of them are my neighbors. A lot of the executives Like, a lot of the people that got rich weren't the executives. But, you know, the offices are here a few miles from my house. But, most of these employees are down in Brownsville over by the coast where the launch site is. And as they diversify — 350 So, 350 people in Brownsville there permanently out of 22,000. So, you asked for the fact check, there it is. Um out of 22. So I mean, you think about this though, how much wealth like somebody that walks away with 10 million or 100 million. I mean, they're going to be building houses, buying cars, stimulating that local economy. It's not just them, but the home builder benefits, right? The employees of the home builder benefit, the grocery store they go to, the gas station, the the restaurant. Everybody benefits. I mean, this really does trickle through and I get super irritated with these people. They want to take it away and there's lots of problem like, hey, he doesn't have all that cash, his trillion dollars. But my my real problem is the government spent 8 trillion dollars or so last year and they're like, oh, if we just took Elon's trillion, we could solve all these problems. Well, if they can't solve it with 8 trillion a year, his trillion isn't going to matter either. And they tax if if you really start calculating the tax revenue this creates from all these people and the ongoing business to them, their suppliers that it's it's probably more than a trillion long-term anyway, right? I'm sure it is if you if you do the math. So I I think it's unbelievable for society.

[45:15] All right, let's let's move to the second thing. This is sort of Last week we talked about the batteries that instead of using rare earth, they were using in essence seawater. Well, now in a year ago did what they're calling a sand battery. As you read into it, it's not really sand, but they took 2,000 tons of crushed soapstone, which is anyway, the thermodynamic properties. And what they do is they take this energy, they pump it in through pipes. The pipes heat up the soapstone and create the heat and it can it can hold the heat for a long period of time and then come back and use it when they want. It comes out as steam energy and creates power. I mean, some of the cool things a 70% reduction in climate emissions. They said it's working better than they ever expected. 100% reduction in oil. It's 85% as efficient as regular heat. There's way less wood chips and biomass, etc., etc. But, it's been working for over a year.

[46:23] I mean, I just think this is pretty cool again for abundance in the world. We're getting like a new battery technology that's just made out of rocks. I like seawater last week. I just think it's cool that new options and humans are figuring this stuff out. — Well, when you unleash if left alone man will solve every problem. Right? And when I say left alone, that means no government interference, no regulatory interference. Enough guardrails to make sure that it's a legal, ethical uh process and so forth. But, left alone, we can solve these problems. You capital will chase Right? So, there's a there's you can read about it. Um Bill Gates has spent untold billions of dollars investing in battery technology. All of which has Well, some will say that all those are mistakes. No. No, he knows now what things don't work.

[47:27] You know, so you keep investing until you find something that gives you a result. Now, this might be not scalable in the sense of being able to power the entire United States or entire country. But, if you can lop off 10% of a country's power needs, great. Then, you go to get, you know, someday go to these little nuclear things, whatever else someone's going to come up with. I just think it's fantastic that human engineering still And uh you can come up with Who would have Who would thought You know, what this makes me think of Have you guys ever been in a house or warehouse that has the heated floor? You know, they pump the they pump the water through the floor. This This kind of what reminds me of that, where they heat the water and that heats the concrete. It's very low-cost thing to do. Very high-cost to fix it, unfortunately. So, um So, that that's what this reminded me of. I think it's great. I love it. Create abundance any way you can. — Now, these are the things I don't think we can center enough. When everybody starts projecting like job loss and where things are going, we tend to really underestimate human ingenuity and our ability to solve problems, right? And we talk about how much energy is going to be used and how much battery power. And nobody Nobody thought we were going to be building batteries out of seawater and stone, right? That we're going to be super efficient. By the way, I In the article, I think I believe if it said that it the town the battery could store enough for an entire month during most of the year. In the harshest part of winter, it could store enough energy for 1 week during the harshest part of winter. So, that's pretty good and, you know, pretty darn efficient. And that's They're They're already planning the the next one.

[49:14] John, you got to — Yeah, the article says that they're going to they're going to a sports arena is going to be completely heated by this technology. That's not That's not trivial. — Well, it's fantastic. — I love it. All kinds of cool things happening. Geo thermal's coming. Like, we have all these different ways of figuring things out. Like, pretty exciting. — So, John, there's there was a big study, switching gears here, 200,000 of participants across 22 countries talking about thriving. Um and you had mentioned you had had a conversation with your son about this over the weekend. Do you want to fill us in? — Yeah, I mean, what one of the things we talked about was like where Like, we were talking about incentives, incentives of people, incentives of politicians. And so, that led us to a conversation about gross domestic product. And I said, you know, there are some countries that measure the happiness of the country. Right? And and I wonder if sometimes we're we do we just need to pick the right measure. Like like are we measuring the right things? And measuring happiness, not as something that needs to be pursued directly maybe, but something that's a byproduct of how things are being done. I just wonder if that, you know, the national or domestic happiness is something that is a potentially meaningful metric. And I don't know the answer to that question, but I think it's, you know, for me when I go into companies and and you know, very large organizations, what you measure matters. And I've never really thought about that at the national scale, but now I'm starting to kind of think about like what like what should we be measuring at the highest level?

[50:42] And so, I leave that question to the two of you. Like what should we be measuring? Does Does per capita GDP matter? Does total GDP matter? Or should it be something else that we're measuring that would be a better a better indicator of success as our country based on, you know, what we set out to do and how we treat people and and what culture we want to have internally. And then, how much of that is being driven by propaganda external to the country? That's a whole another question that probably doesn't have much to do with abundance, but — It's interesting. — I mean, isn't happiness the thing? To me, it's fairly obvious that it's happiness. And I don't think that's what we're necessarily focused on, but that seems like we've been having conversations recently about what's important. We talked about last week, you know, kids and like kids feel, you know, the the rules have changed and it's tougher and you know, all of these things come back. You know, we we recently talked about people where they wanted to be in 10 years. And it was all things that would make them happier through family time, personal time, travel. Yet, that's not what we're focused on because we are so focused on GDP, right? We've kind of lost track of the goal.

[51:50] — This is a huge study. This is a huge huge longitudinal study and I I'm I'm really stunned by some of the um some of the findings. To answer your question, John, though, focusing on GDP is 100% the wrong thing, right? Cuz it it focuses on getting bigger and as we talked about last week, the bigger house, the bigger lot, the best car, the best vacation, that isn't — not drivers to happiness. Those are, you know, quick hits and feel-goods, but they they don't drive long-term happiness. What I find really jumps out at me is that, to quote this article, "Faith communities showing up among the strongest flourishing predict predictors of happiness." And what that tells me, it may or may not be the whatever faith the group this is, but the social connections people are making within those groups that are helping to drive happiness. They're are not alone. You know, loneliness, I'm not saying, is a precursor to unhappiness, but I think what this is telling me is that there's a higher probability of happiness if you're involved in a community, a social — That's well known. That yeah, that that science is pretty well documented, Anthony. There's nothing like loneliness is absolutely something that can lead to mental health problems. The one thing it doesn't talk about here, which is mildly concerning to me, is that you know, the biology of species evolution sometimes is not cleanly resolved with these things here. And so, when you look at like the sociology of evolution, sometimes they're well aligned, but my very, you know, limited understanding is sometimes they conflict as well. And that was really made clear to me when I read Sapiens and talked about how the species takes care of itself to make sure the species thrived, but a species as a whole is very different than an individual who's thriving.

[53:43] — The other thing and in the study that stood out, historically young people have been happier than old people, right? Life's ahead of them, they're excited. And 18-24 year olds now report lower well-being than older populations. This is exactly what we talked about last week, right? Like I I and I think if people are concerned about that, they should go back and listen to that episode cuz I think there's some good advice for that group, but this is something we need to switch, like abundance. We need young people creating things, inspiring, and going out and taking chances, and you know, we we need the next great entrepreneurs and teachers and leaders and whatever else. so I think this is a is a concerning thing, but I think we're in the process of it flipping. I think we are in the fourth turning, but that's the other big thing jumped to me. — Well, you know, my conversation with my son this morning was, you know, [clears throat] and it's the same conversation we have with patients in our medical practice. Like, the system is hard right now. And and and for my son's age of people, it may be the hardest for a group of people over a five-year period that has been in 200 years. Like, that might be true. I don't know if it is or not, but it might be.

[54:51] But, what that doesn't stop someone from doing is finding their space inside the the macro environment, inside the meso environment, and taking control of what they can do to move themselves forward. And I still believe everyone has an opportunity in the US better than any place else. Like, we really have an environment to do that. And so we go back to what we said earlier in the show about what you focus on. Like, do you focus on how hard it is? Then you're going to get a really hard deal. Do you focus on how you're going to move yourself forward? Still going to be hard, but it's going to be hopeful, and you're going to find traction and and move yourself forward. So, anyway, I think I think this is a a good reason, this flourishing study, for people to have hope and to find a path forward, but it is times a changing, and that means the narrative's going to shift for some people. And there is a group of people that that are going to have it harder than others. I accept that. I I we should be supporting them as a — All right. — Yeah, I wish this study uh had talked about education, you know, the level of happiness based on your capabilities, if you will. If you're, you know, reading and writing and doing math above and beyond grade level and so forth. You know, is do you have a higher propensity to be in a good mood? You know, I just wonder.

[55:58] I know in I know in several parts of the country we have significant issues with uh getting people ready for the real world, I'll call it that. — I don't have an answer to that, Anthony, from a science perspective, but I will say traveling the world, I have not found that those two things to be correlated in my narrow experiences. I've found people of all walks of life in terms of intellect, in terms of economics, being happy with no seeming correlation to those things specifically. I think education leads to opportunity in the US in particular, at least for the last 60 years it did, but even that I think is changing. I think we're seeing just like we're seeing changes about — made you successful in an in an agricultural society, in an industrial revolution being shifted and upset, or the internet age, I think we're going to see that type of shift again, and I think people that are getting ahead of it are going to have the easiest of the hard times with it. And so that I think that again, that's — I I would — Let me reframe, let me reframe it away from education and call it capability. People who don't have the capability to contribute because for whatever reason, they they they can't add, subtract, multiply, and divide. They don't speak fluent language in a country where it's required to do a job.

[57:15] Um that's what I That's what I mean by education. I should have should have done a better job of framing it around that. It's not, you know, the one plus one stuff. It's Now, am I now capable to go out in the real world and contribute in some way? — Yeah, I think so much of it's just the environment, the expectations, the comparison. You know, I love the saying comparison is the thief of joy, right? And you know, we've talked about before just traveling I've traveled to a lot of third world type countries and I just think people tend to be happy. And you know, it's it's around them. They kind of don't know what they're they don't know what they don't know and what they're missing and in some ways I think they're a lot happier than we are because they aren't trying to keep up with the Joneses all the time. I agree with that. — All right, let's wrap this up. Everybody, the it's been another great conversation and go out and spread a little abundance. Take care. — Listen and subscribe to the podcast wherever you get your podcast. Click follow for more content like this or go to talesofabundance.com to join our community and get free tools.