[00:00:00] Cheryl Broom: So, hi Vance. I'm so happy to have you here on the podcast today.
[00:00:03] Vance Morris: I appreciate it, Cheryl. Hopefully we'll drop some golden nuggets for everybody today.
[00:00:07] Cheryl Broom: Oh, I know we're going to, I know it. So you have one of the most interesting career paths that I've seen Disney to owning three home service businesses to consulting. Why don't you start by walking us through that journey.
[00:00:21] Vance Morris: Oh my sha, how much time do we have? I'm just kidding.
[00:00:25] Cheryl Broom: I'll time you five minutes.
[00:00:26] Vance Morris: me, time me, time me. no. So I, I did, luckily I started my career at Disney. So I spent a little over a decade working in Orlando in the resorts division. So I was able to be on the opening team of a number of their properties design team for a number of their restaurants.
[00:00:42] Vance Morris: And yeah, it was a a great place to start. I think 10 years, anywhere is a long time for me. So, made the decision to move on and I was a consultant for a number of different restaurant companies rainforest Cafe, legal Seafood, just to name a couple. Along the way, I realized I make a lousy employee.
[00:01:02] Vance Morris: I just don't like to be told what to do. So I decided to open my own businesses and did what every small boy dreams of doing, which is opening a carpet cleaning business. I mean, like Right. Why, why not? But I took all of my Disney knowledge on systems, processes, marketing, customer experience, and I knew that we were, that I wanted to be for a affluent clientele.
[00:01:24] Vance Morris: It was gonna be a premium service. So we installed all the Disney stuff in that business really grew. Along the way, we added a oriental rug washing facility and an old remediation company. And the result of all that Mickey Mouse business is, well, one, we charge about 35% more than our closest competitor.
[00:01:43] Vance Morris: And I only work about 90 minutes a week in those three businesses, so that gives me plenty of time to drink beer and eat bon bonds by the beach. I'm just kidding. I, I don't think I've ever had a bon
[00:01:56] Cheryl Broom: Those two things don't sound like they go well together either.
[00:01:59] Vance Morris: Well, probably not, but, no. I spend my time now consulting with other companies on, primarily on customer retention and how to use extraordinary wow customer experiences to really drive what I call raving fans for life.
[00:02:15] Cheryl Broom: Yeah, and that is exactly why I thought you were just the absolute perfect guest for the audience listening to this podcast because colleges and universities have more. Competition than ever before. And they're all going after the same students. And really they have to learn how to create that amazing customer experience that, that, that wows you and keeps you coming back.
[00:02:41] Cheryl Broom: So I'd love to start our conversation by talking a little bit about your experience with Disney and, and what they do and what you did while you were there. That most organizations miss.
[00:02:53] Vance Morris: Sure. Well, a lot of it is, is attention to detail. I don't care what, what industry you're in colleges, universities. A tire rotation, whatever it is. Attention to detail is really something that a lot of people miss. And. Creating an emotional connection right from the get go is also something, I mean, you know, Disney, you know, you are emotionally connected to them.
[00:03:16] Vance Morris: They are masters at extracting money from your wallet and leaving you feel happy about it. And I really think that, and, and only because I have four children and we've, I've gone through the college search four times now. So. I've seen a lot of good, and I've seen a lot of, oh my I'm really going to spend money with you.
[00:03:36] Vance Morris: I don't think so. So yeah, there's a lot to be taken from Disney. I think the, you know. The initial impression certainly is one. You only get one chance at making a first impression when you arrive at Disney. You know you're there, you're going under the big Walt Disney World Arch, and you got Cinderella Castle and Epcot Spaceship Earth and you know, tower terror.
[00:03:58] Vance Morris: All these things are drawing you in and you know you have arrived. And I think that that is a place where a lot of folks can. Really improve is the arrival sequence. I took my daughter last year to a campus and we pulled up to the security booth and the gentleman poked his head in and said, you must be Emma. And, you know, my, my daughter and I were freaked out. We're like, you know, who, how does this, how does the security guy know my name without even like, and, and I said, okay, what, you know, what's the, what's the shtick here? How did, how did you do that? He goes, oh no, I'm just intuitive. I said, no, no, no, no. Come on.
[00:04:37] Vance Morris: I'm in this business. Tell me what you did. He goes, well, I have the list of all the students that are coming today. There was only one student coming from Maryland. You have Maryland tags on your car, so. I just kind of took a wild guess and thought that it blew, just that simple thing blew us away as to, oh my God, they're like waiting for us.
[00:04:58] Vance Morris: They know we're coming. It's not like an afterthought. And then he, he said, I said, well, is it gonna be hard to find the parking? And he says, oh God no. Your name is already in the sign over top of your parking space. So they have the digital signs for the visitor parking. And by golly, Emma's name was right there over a spot and we pulled in.
[00:05:19] Cheryl Broom: Made her feel like important and special and that she was welcome there.
[00:05:23] Vance Morris: yeah, exactly. And you know, I mean, I can't tell you the number of, I mean, we went to one campus with my son. One, it was just a ton of construction. And we, so we couldn't find the parking lot. And I asked the security person, security, now you think they would know where stuff is on campus? And the guy was like, yeah, you go down there, you make a right and then you make your first right and you go up into the thing.
[00:05:47] Vance Morris: So I took my first, right? I, I follow directions. Well, took my first right. Took the next first, right. Ended up in the in in like this gravel thing. And I got out and there were six nuns and a priest walking towards me.
[00:06:02] Cheryl Broom: This sounds like the beginning of a joke, by the way.
[00:06:05] Vance Morris: yeah, no, no. I know. I wish I had a better ending to it, but I said, where do we park for the campus tours?
[00:06:12] Vance Morris: And we're like, I don't know. We've been under construction a year. They move stuff. So the two experiences are vastly different. The price tag is the same. They're both asking 70, $80,000 a year, and one is ready for us. The other one, okay, yeah, they have construction, but you would think security would know where to go.
[00:06:32] Vance Morris: So that didn't really sit well with me.
[00:06:35] Cheryl Broom: yeah, of course. That is such a great example. We, we at our company do secret shoppers where we send in secret shoppers to look at the experience, and one of my. Favorite stories to tell is we had a secret shopper park in the visitor parking space and get a parking ticket.
[00:06:53] Vance Morris: Oh good.
[00:06:54] Cheryl Broom: I was like, that's like the worst start to a student experience.
[00:06:59] Vance Morris: Yeah, I would, I would not disagree with that.
[00:07:02] Cheryl Broom: Yeah. There's some other really neat attention to detail things that Disney does as well. I know like when I go to a Disney park, like it is so clean, like it's, and I, I know that's not. By mistake, so well, what are some other things that they do that's, that are kind of unexpected?
[00:07:20] Vance Morris: Well even that can be engineered on a campus. I mean, this all started with Walt Disney. And you know, he would sit in the parks and other places and he would watch how many steps people would take before they threw trash on the ground. They just tired of carrying it around. And the, the rumor is it was somewhere between 22 and 26 steps.
[00:07:41] Vance Morris: So he dictated that there would be a trash can every 22 steps throughout his parks. Now that's somewhat true. I mean, if you go there now, if you go to a food court or something, there's probably like 20 trash cans within two steps, and then they kind of spread out. You, you kind of get the picture. And so he set the tone that he wanted this to be a clean park.
[00:08:05] Vance Morris: It didn't matter what position you were in as a cast member Disney calls their employees, cast members. You, if you saw trash, you picked it up. Didn't matter who you were or what the trash was, you, you got it. And so I've carried that through. I mean, it's embarrassing. I mean, I'll be walking through the shopping mall.
[00:08:22] Vance Morris: I'll see a piece of paper on the floor and I'm ready to swoop down and pick it up. It's still ingrained in me. But you have to, that has to be ingrained in the, in the campus culture. If you want that level of, and you can get professors, students, faculty, whoever, to buy into this because you know, one, it's.
[00:08:44] Vance Morris: You're showing that you're proud of your workplace. Two, you don't wanna live in a trash pit. But you know, so certainly I think that's one area that Disney, you know, you can teach others what to do. And it is literally the attention to detail. I mean, the I'll give you a quick example. So Disney, as you know, is a storytelling company, and.
[00:09:03] Vance Morris: Everything at Disney on property has a backstory to it. So if you go to Epcot, next time you go to Epcot, you go to China and before you walk into the China pavilion, look up at the restaurant and at the end of one of the peaks is a little rooster with a man riding on top of the rooster. Now the thing is all of maybe 12 inches long.
[00:09:24] Vance Morris: But I'll tell you that is emperor men. And he was hung by his people because he was a cruel emperor. And now in Chinese culture they put that effigy of him up to ward off evil spirits. It's a 12 inch little statue that you won't even notice 'cause most people don't look up. But it's that. So everything has that backstory to it.
[00:09:48] Vance Morris: So, and most Disney people know it, the guests don't, but the employees do. So how do you take that level of, okay, what is the, you know, why is this statue here? You know, I mean, some campuses will have a statue, you know, it's been there since 1492 and everybody's forgotten who the guy is and why it's there.
[00:10:08] Vance Morris: So you know, what is the backstory of, you know, how things came to be.
[00:10:11] Cheryl Broom: People do love that. I was, I, I just had a memory that I haven't thought about in a long time when I was a marketing director. At a community college, I had to fill in on tours sometimes when we didn't have student ambassadors, so I would do them. And I, once we had a water tower and I told the story about, like on one tour I told the story about how a professor had pranked the campus and had painted a lifelike crack all down the water tower in like the seventies.
[00:10:43] Cheryl Broom: And it, and it like. It was a huge deal. People thought the water tower was actually gonna burst, and I got a request for that story, like every other tour. I like it. People loved the story of the crack in the water tower, so people love stories. They want more than just like, oh, this is the building where we X, Y, and Z, You 
[00:11:04] Vance Morris: You know, and you mentioned tours, I mean. These days there are all sorts of little mechanisms you can use so that the tour guy doesn't have to yell and walk backwards at the same time. You know, the, we went to a place in Florida last week and, you know, they had the little fanny pack with a speaker on it and microphone, so he could walk looking straight ahead and talk, and we could hear 'em.
[00:11:26] Vance Morris: You know, or you get the little, you know, ear pieces that, you know, they transmit and things like that. That's all part of the show. I mean, you know, if you're. Haphazard about how you do your tours. If they don't look professional, I mean, you want them to be real. I mean, so that they don't feel scripted, but at the same time, you gotta be able to hear them.
[00:11:47] Cheryl Broom: Well, and these are the small, I think, attention to detail that are simple to do, that maybe colleges don't think about, and that's just making that experience as good as it can be in every possible way.
[00:12:01] Vance Morris: Right.
[00:12:02] Cheryl Broom: Do you see any other gaps in the student experience? I know as a dad you've gone through a lot of tours, but as a professional that teaching this, like what other advice would you give?
[00:12:12] Vance Morris: Well, you know, I, I, I don't want to get too disgusting but restrooms are a bone of contention with me in just about any business I go into especially the men's restrooms. Notoriously we have, evidently we have bad aim. And well, what happens is, one, it smells right, and so if you go to Disney, you go into the bathroom, it typically doesn't smell because it's clean.
[00:12:38] Vance Morris: And clean has its own smell to it, which is pretty much nothing. But you know, all these people want to throw those little, you know, scented hockey pucks in the urinals, and now it smells like eucalyptus and urine. I mean, it's just. It, it, it's gross. So, I mean, clean, the darn thing is, you know where to start.
[00:12:57] Vance Morris: And, you know, I mean, physical, if you're gonna charge $80,000 a year, I, I expect the toilet to flush. 
[00:13:04] Cheryl Broom: Yeah, 
[00:13:05] Vance Morris: you know, and that's a conversation I've had with, you know, the administration at one college saying, look, you know, every weekend, by Friday afternoon, three of the toilets are inoperable in my son's dorm.
[00:13:16] Vance Morris: Why is that? We didn't have hot water for a month. Why is that? You know, and they think, well, it's the, they're kids. They'll just deal with it and suck it up. I said, well, yeah, yeah. No kids', parents aren't too happy about it.
[00:13:30] Cheryl Broom: yeah, exactly. It's my husband always comes out of a men's bathroom, like at a sporting event, and he's like, man, I thought we would've taught the men better.
[00:13:38] Vance Morris: Yeah. You
[00:13:40] Cheryl Broom: What's going on with these men?
[00:13:42] Vance Morris: well, it's silly stuff and then, you know, like it's just. If you're gonna put a dividing wall between your urinals, clean the dividing wall, otherwise it rusts and now it looks like garbage. So I'll stop talking about bathrooms.
[00:13:56] Cheryl Broom: This is a first for the podcast is
[00:13:59] Cheryl Broom: talking about men's bathrooms. No, but it's true. I mean, what you're talking about is your first impression, and that's what Disney does so well. It's like, how's your parking experience? How's the way fairing? How are the bathrooms? How is the campus kept up?
[00:14:15] Cheryl Broom: Is that somewhere you could imagine yourself being like, you know, you don't wanna go somewhere that has a horrible experience right off the bat.
[00:14:23] Vance Morris: You know, and if you take first impressions and you go even before you leave your house, you know, what do, what Do the brochures and the booklets and all that stuff, what do they say? What do they look like? You know. I got one that was, I didn't understand. I mean, I got it. They got a little personal information about us.
[00:14:43] Vance Morris: They got my dog's name, and so they sent a postcard to the dog saying, Lola, we think your master would have a great time here at this college.
[00:14:52] Cheryl Broom: really, that
[00:14:53] Vance Morris: Yeah. Oh, I'm not kidding. I've got it. I don't want to dig it out now, but I've got it here. And I'm like, okay. You know that, that's cute, but. It's a waste of a postcard, in my opinion.
[00:15:03] Vance Morris: Whereas another university sent an entire, I mean, this thing was like a magazine and it was, it was like the old Playboy magazines. Not, not rated R, but it had a centerfold and you opened up the centerfold and it was directed just to the parents, and that's it. And it had a little lift note on it.
[00:15:23] Vance Morris: Had a little sticky note on the front. I got it around here somewhere and you know, it said, you know, this is for the people that are actually paying for the school. And I mean, the thing was probably quarter of an inch, half inch thick of parent testimonials you know, parent thoughts and things and everything that the school does for parents.
[00:15:43] Vance Morris: I thought it was a brilliant thing.
[00:15:44] Cheryl Broom: This is a great example of knowing your audience because I have a 18-year-old that's going through the college process, and I read every one of those view books. I read I, if we get them, I look at them, he does not look at any of them like it's me reading all of them. They really are geared toward the parent, like, you know, they've got the tuition information, all the information, and with the questions I have, he wants to look at the pictures.
[00:16:12] Vance Morris: Right. 
[00:16:12] Vance Morris: Well, yeah. I been there, done that. I
[00:16:16] Cheryl Broom: Yeah.
[00:16:17] Vance Morris: Yeah.
[00:16:18] Cheryl Broom: So, well, I think this is so fascinating and I'm really interested in talking to you more about how you particularly help organizations move from these ideas into execution. But before we talk about that, let's take a quick break and hear from our sponsor. Alright, we're back. So we were talking all things experienced before the break.
[00:16:41] Cheryl Broom: Including parking and trash cans and men's restrooms and all sorts of fun things. And now I wanna talk a little bit about what you do now as a consultant. 'cause I think what you are doing to help organizations is really unique and special. So tell me a little bit about your consultancy now and how you help 
[00:16:58] Vance Morris: Sure. it doesn't start out very sexy. 'cause one of the first things we have to do is map out the customer journey or the student journey in this case. And you want to enter. Identify each point where there is an interaction between your organization and the customer, but you wanna do it from the customer's point of view, not from yours as the business owner.
[00:17:22] Vance Morris: And once you've done that, now you can look at it and see where the gaps are. Immediately identify and prioritize. Okay, well if we focus here, we'll get X return on that. If we focus here, we'll get y return on that. And really look at those periods. Yeah, and what I mean by looking at it from a customer's point of view, so let's say I work with a number of financial advisors and so, you go and you have your first meeting with the financial advisor, they collect a whole bunch of, you know, numbers from you and they say, okay, it's gonna be two or three weeks.
[00:17:55] Vance Morris: I'll get back to you with a financial plan for you. Great. So 0.1 on the journey is the first meeting, 0.2 on the journey is the second meeting. Right. But it's really not. If you think about it from the customer's point of view, what is the customer doing between meeting one and meeting two? Nothing.
[00:18:15] Vance Morris: They're waiting. Right? And what happens when you wait? You start to have buyer's remorse. You second guess your purchase decision. All sorts of, does this person care? I'm all sorts of things that. You know, we'll not further the sale along. So we have to do what Disney does. Disney came up with line entertainment where they entertain you while you're in line.
[00:18:38] Vance Morris: You know, we are, you know, you do that at Disney. It's, you know, you wait in line for the bus, the transportation, the food, the ride. We do a lot of waiting. But part of waiting is part of the experience there. 'cause they entertain you, whether it's interactive stuff or characters walking around. So we need to do the same thing.
[00:18:56] Vance Morris: We need to entertain between our points. And whether that's. Sending video messages, a phone call, a handwritten note. I mean, all sorts of things you can do to fill in that gap. And so you wanna look at your entire journey and really the journey doesn't end. I mean, you can pick an end spot if you want.
[00:19:16] Vance Morris: But once they graduate, now they're in a whole nother section of the journey. They're now an alumni. And how do we, you know, communicate to our alumni? Sadly, most schools, the only time they communicate with the alumni is when they want money,
[00:19:32] Cheryl Broom: exactly.
[00:19:33] Vance Morris: and that's not a relationship. You know nothing worse than the only time you ever hear from a company is when they want money.
[00:19:39] Cheryl Broom: yeah,
[00:19:40] Vance Morris: You know, and so where's the value? You know, I mean, could you send us some kind of directory or a, you know hey, we've got a new you know, new vice chairman of something and, you know, just some announcements and activities that school's doing. Give us the baseball score. I don't care. But every time the, you know, I get a piece of mail they want, they want me to send a check.
[00:20:04] Cheryl Broom: Yeah, we did this massive alumni survey in Orange County, California where Disneyland is located and thousands of alumni and. Everybody. We asked how if they wanted to still be involved with the college and almost like 90% said yes. And we listed how do you wanna be involved? And we put all these things and they were clicking everything.
[00:20:24] Cheryl Broom: And they even clicked like, we'll even give money. We'll, like, we'll be on advisory boards. We want social media, but like, they just want to be connected. But we do, we forget about them. Disney doesn't forget about you when you
[00:20:35] Vance Morris: Yeah, no, no. Disney does not forget about you. I mean, you know, I mean, I'm there four or five times a year, so I mean, I'm getting stuff all the time, but, you know, you still, and, and you, you, you, you're only as good as your top of mind, so.
[00:20:51] Cheryl Broom: Yeah.
[00:20:52] Vance Morris: You know, if you're only mailing once a quarter or once every six months, or worse once a year you're not top of mind anymore.
[00:20:59] Vance Morris: So there has to be a frequency. And, you know, I tell my business clients it is not your, you know, your customer's job to remember you. It's your job as the business owner to remind the customers you exist and not always be selling to them.
[00:21:14] Cheryl Broom: Well, and I think a lot of our colleges. Have the right intention, but then they come up against overwhelm. So they maybe they don't know where to start. Or we work with a lot of colleges who love ideas but have a hard time with execution. So what are your advice? Like where, where do you start? Like maybe you map something out and you're like, oh my gosh, there's so many touch points.
[00:21:38] Cheryl Broom: I don't know what, where to even start.
[00:21:39] Vance Morris: What I like to tell people is look at what everybody else in your industry is doing and do the opposite.
[00:21:45] Cheryl Broom: Hmm.
[00:21:46] Vance Morris: Quite literally look outside of your industry for the ideas on how to make yourself better. You know, you know, the idea for the drive through at McDonald's, you know, came from a McDonald's guy waiting in line at the bank and he had his mu his deposit going in that little tube that goes up to shoot.
[00:22:06] Vance Morris: And, you know, he's thinking to himself, how do I get a milkshake into that thing? Right. So the drive-through came from the banking industry. And, and so you can, you look outside and see what other companies are doing and you know, how do you, how can you replicate that in what you're doing? And then start is, for me, it's simple.
[00:22:26] Vance Morris: And I don't mean to be overly simplistic, but pick one thing, just one, and do it. And then you pick the next thing, and then. It's like a flywheel. It starts going, but people just, they overcomplicate things. They, you know, there's 16 people that have to approve it. You know, it's gotta fit in a certain envelope, yada, yada.
[00:22:50] Vance Morris: Oh, for Lord, he's sake. Just mail the thing. You know, version one is better than version none. You know, just, it doesn't have to be perfect. Everybody wants perfect. No, just get it out.
[00:23:02] Cheryl Broom: Oh, I cannot tell you, like I'm gonna highlight this part of the podcast. 'cause this is what I tell my clients too, is you don't have to do everything. You just do something really, really well and keep doing it. And that's another problem I see is, is colleges will perfect something and they get bored with it and they stop doing it, but it's been working.
[00:23:23] Cheryl Broom: He'll keep doing it.
[00:23:24] Vance Morris: That's why we stopped. 'cause of working, we get bored with our stuff faster than our, our customers get bored with it, no doubt about it. And so, yeah, I mean, I've got one ad for one of my businesses. It's the same a's been running 12 years having changed a thing on it and I'm not going to 'cause it works.
[00:23:43] Vance Morris: You know? Why mess with it.
[00:23:44] Cheryl Broom: And like Disney, like they don't say, well, people have come through our entrance, so let's not pay attention to it anymore. No, there's. That entrance is important and there's new people coming in every day that haven't experienced it, so you gotta keep it up. You gotta keep it looking great.
[00:24:01] Vance Morris: Yep. And, and I think the other thing is, and you can tell the campuses where there's a genuine feeling of, comradery is not the right word, but friendliness.
[00:24:12] Cheryl Broom: Yeah.
[00:24:13] Vance Morris: so we were on a campus last week. And I would say nine outta 10 employees. I don't know what they did. Nine outta 10 at least acknowledged us with a good morning. Now that, to me, that's a lot of people. Right. You know, I've been to on tours where, I mean, we're with the tour guide and the tour guide doesn't recog, he doesn't even say hello to anybody as we're walking by and I'm like, this is not good. So, you know, it's just nice to be in a place where you're, you're recognized.
[00:24:43] Cheryl Broom: Yeah, we were on a a one college campus where we were admiring a building. It was a beautiful old building, really small, and it looked like a little old church, and we're like, I wonder what this. Building is, and a man walked by and he said, oh, you're looking at the building. You wanna come take a look inside?
[00:24:59] Cheryl Broom: And he brought us in. He explained like it was an old church and now it's an administration building. Turned out he was the provost. Like he'd taken a, and we were all like amazed, like, wow, he just took all this time to just talk about a building to us. It really left an impression.
[00:25:14] Vance Morris: Yep. Well, that's the thing, is that there's no job too small for anybody in the organization to do. I mean, you know, and back in the day at Disney, if Michael Eisner, who was the CEO at the time was walking through, he was picking up trash, you know? So I don't know that he'd give a tour of a, of a building, but you know, he was at least picking up trash.
[00:25:35] Cheryl Broom: And it that starts at the top for sure. So, well, I've loved our conversation and as we wrap up I do wanna shift it from the student experience. So if you could describe like, what would a raving fan, if we could create, if we could make our students fans like Disney fans, what would that look like? 
[00:25:54] Vance Morris: Well first you'd have to start with the reaction that you want and the reaction you want after any interaction with the school is, oh my God, you'll never guess what happened at a b, c University. That just, you know, unless you flunk or they just won the national title, that that statement doesn't come out very often.
[00:26:15] Vance Morris: So you have to do those things that are out of the ordinary. And again, looking outside of your industry for things that you can do. And, you know, it's, it's the genuine little surprises that you can do, you can put in, I mean, you know. And maybe you take one dorm a month and you put a little valet in the bathroom and he's there with little towels and soaps and you know, things for you.
[00:26:42] Vance Morris: well, I mean, it, it's, it's, it's, it's that kind of stuff, you know, that will work. Maybe you have a, a. You know, one night you in one of the dining halls or dining rooms you get a nice fancy menu and, you can give students the opportunity to choose between six bottles of still and six bottles of sparkling water.
[00:27:01] Vance Morris: Which one would you like delivered to your table? Oh my God, you'll never guess what I mean. Food is one of the things they all complain about in most campuses, I should say. Yeah, so I think it's just those little touches that. Get people talking. You need to be tellable and you need to be able to, and you want to tell people what to tell.
[00:27:20] Vance Morris: So you gotta direct these things. But yeah, if you can get somebody to say, oh my God, you'll never guess what happened at the college today. You've, you've hit a home run.
[00:27:28] Cheryl Broom: And these are the moments we always hear. We wanna do something viral, and it can be as easy as the, the two examples you gave are fantastic. I could see students taking pictures of these and sharing them and saying like, how cool was this?
[00:27:41] Vance Morris: That's the wrong mindset. I want to come up with something viral that's a, like a marketing person. Trying to think no, create the experience. And the experience will, if it's good enough, will become viral on its own. Don't set out to make something viral, set out to make something that's got value is entertaining has got wow factor to it, and the rest will take care of itself.
[00:28:07] Cheryl Broom: Yeah. And that gets back to authenticity. Like do something that's like authentically yours that that's fun and that gets students excited.
[00:28:14] Vance Morris: Yeah, I mean, and these days with AI floating around, I mean, authenticity is the new currency. And if you can master authenticity. You know, don't put up AI generated this, that, or the other thing. You have a live person answering your telephone, not the voicemail. Tree of 14 options. You know, people that answer their phones live right now, especially in business.
[00:28:38] Vance Morris: They have the competitive advantage over people that don't.
[00:28:41] Cheryl Broom: A hundred, I cannot agree more. A hundred percent. So if people wanna get in touch with you or learn more about what you do, how do we, how do we do that? 
[00:28:51] Vance Morris: Sure thing. I've actually got a, a gift for everybody if they want it. It's 52 ways to Wow your customer without breaking the bank. So, 52 low or no cost ways. One wow for every week of the year in case you're not feeling overly creative. And you can find that at wow, 52 ways.com.
[00:29:08] Cheryl Broom: Oh, I'm going there right after we're done recording.
[00:29:11] Vance Morris: All righty.
[00:29:12] Cheryl Broom: I'm gonna use it for GradComm for my
[00:29:15] Cheryl Broom: business. Well, Vance, it's been great talking to you. Thank you so much for your time. I love your perspective and excited. Potentially some colleges will be listening and putting these ideas to. To use.
[00:29:29] Vance Morris: Awesome. Thank you so much for having me