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227: Build a Culture that is Obsessed with Delivering a World-Class Experience · Customer Service Revolution | Customer Experience & Employee Experience for Business Leaders

• 1:04
  Welcome revolutionaries to another episode of the customer service revolution.
• 1:09
  And today I have Ricky Arriola, the founder and CEO of Inktel one of the country's leading customer experience and business process outsourcing
• 1:22
  firms.
• 1:22
  Inktel provides outsourced customer experience solutions to Fortune 500 companies, government agencies, educational institutions, and consumer brands.
• 1:33
  Its services include Omnichannel, Contact Center support, sales, order management, back office processing, government BPO services, and fulfillment.
• 1:45
  The company has been repeatedly recognized
• 1:48
  as a best place to work.
• 1:50
  Welcome, Ricky.
• 1:52
  Thank you, John.
• 1:53
  You're a great hype man.
• 1:55
  I'd like to have you introduce us for all of our client presentations and anything else we're doing.
• 2:01
  We can arrange that.
• 2:02
  We can arrange that.
• 2:04
  I'm excited, Ricky.
• 2:05
  You know, I feel like you're my new best friend.
• 2:07
  The past couple months, I've been working with Inktel, come in, did a presentation, and we just hit it off.
• 2:15
  And I love your energy.
• 2:16
  I love your passion for the customer experience and business.
• 2:21
  And you've given me so many great items just texting back and forth.
• 2:25
  Great articles, just, I mean, just stuff that I try to do for people.
• 2:29
  You're all over it, so I appreciate it.
• 2:31
  Yeah, well, the feelings mutual, John.
• 2:34
  I think I mentioned to you when we first met in person, your first book that I read, I read like probably three or four of your books now, which was the customer service
• 2:44
  revolution.
• 2:46
  just struck a chord with me.
• 2:49
  I'm like, okay, this is like a mind mill.
• 2:51
  This guy thinks exactly how I think.
• 2:54
  then your employee revolution, employee service revolution is...
• 3:01
  the same damn thing.
• 3:02
  It's just like exactly how we've been building our company.
• 3:06
  Same principles, same lingo.
• 3:08
  mean, even the same sort of source documents and, you know, thinkers that I think you follow and that have influenced you.
• 3:18
  We think a lot of like, on top of that, you're an entrepreneur, I'm an entrepreneur.
• 3:22
  So yeah, I think I've met, you know, someone who I'm going to be friends with a very long
• 3:27
  Yeah.
• 3:27
  And other things I have down here to ask you later and want to end with, but like even your passion for fitness, I respect that.
• 3:35
  And parenting, parenting and those things are so hard for busy, for anyone.
• 3:42
  I don't want to discount anyone being a parent, but especially for busy entrepreneurs.
• 3:47
  you know, that have all this on the plate.
• 3:50
  tell our listeners how you got started and all this.
• 3:54
  Yeah, well, I think the organizing principle for myself and my brother Dan, who's my partner and co-founder, just sort of entrepreneurial DNA.
• 4:05
  Our dad was an entrepreneur.
• 4:08
  Our grandfathers, similarly entrepreneurs own their own business.
• 4:11
  I was thinking about this before we started this morning.
• 4:14
  It's like, OK, John's going to ask me very likely this question.
• 4:18
  The other thing is, you we grew up in Miami and Miami is
• 4:22
  never heard of anybody growing up in Miami.
• 4:24
  There are a lot of us, but that's true.
• 4:26
  most people aren't Miami's population.
• 4:31
  50 % of things, better than 50 % of residents in Miami were born in another country.
• 4:38
  OK, so like think about that for a second.
• 4:41
  Like 50 % of your population wasn't even born in the United States.
• 4:45
  OK, and then of the ones that were born in the United States, how many were born in Miami?
• 4:49
  So yeah, we are a minority in terms of homegrown.
• 4:52
  even though there are a lot of us.
• 4:54
  So you think about that and growing up down here, it was and is an entrepreneurial culture, right?
• 5:02
  So part of it, that's the immigrant story, right?
• 5:04
  You come to a country, you're not gonna get the first crack at the big corporate jobs and you're not sort of in the sort of, know, zeitgeist of going to the right schools and
• 5:16
  country clubs and all that.
• 5:18
  Everyone here is an entrepreneur, you know, but when we were growing up it was so like it never For myself, I think I speak for Dan.
• 5:25
  Well, we never thought we were gonna be like corporate executives You know working up the corporate ladder.
• 5:30
  It was you're gonna be an entrepreneur It's a family DNA Then the question is okay.
• 5:35
  When are you gonna become an entrepreneur?
• 5:37
  You're gonna do it your 20s 30s.
• 5:38
  What have you?
• 5:39
  And then you know, what kind of business are you gonna start?
• 5:42
  So like we just knew we're gonna be entrepreneurs and then you know
• 5:46
  We sort of got into our business.
• 5:50
  And when you say we, you and your brother Dan started Inktel?
• 5:56
  OK.
• 5:57
  who actually was the founder.
• 6:00
  And then he went on to go start a bank, a very successful community bank here.
• 6:05
  So I'm talking to the wrong brother.
• 6:07
  You're talking about my brother.
• 6:10
  so, you know, we got into it.
• 6:13
  Like one thing I tell entrepreneurs, you know, besides sort of having a great business plan and money and all this, the best thing you can do is start your business with a
• 6:23
  customer, you know, for a lot of reasons.
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  One is that if you have a customer, your customer is going to pay your bills and your customer is going to help fund your business.
• 6:32
  And also, more importantly, it's going to help you build your business in terms of like
• 6:37
  satisfying your customer needs.
• 6:39
  You're going to make your mistakes, you're going to correct them, and you'll eventually start developing really good processes and systems to service your customers, right?
• 6:48
  A lot of folks start with a business plan, or they raise a bunch of money, and then they go try to find a problem to be solved, or they go try to find clients.
• 6:58
  And in the meantime, they run out of cash, or they just never get out of the ideation phase of, I got a great business plan, but I can't get off home plate.
• 7:06
  In our case, Dan and I were able to have some and my brother Eddie were able to start the business having a client or two to start the business.
• 7:15
  And we actually started in the fulfillment business, which is warehousing and moving stuff around a warehouse.
• 7:20
  uh
• 7:22
  that a three?
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  What's it go?
• 7:24
  Yeah, three.
• 7:25
  Yeah.
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  And so how did how did it come to Inktel and a, you know, a context, a third party contact center?
• 7:36
  Yeah, so the origin started as fulfillment, moving printed material.
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  Our father was a printer.
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  That's how we were able to latch onto clients.
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  He had needs that, his clients had needs, someone had warehoused all the printing material that was being printed and created.
• 7:51
  So then that started fulfillment business.
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  Pre-internet, early days of the internet, if you needed something, you had to call, really even before emails.
• 8:00
  or fax, there was a lot of faxes back then.
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  So we actually started a little back office with fax machines.
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  We'd take in orders and then fulfill it, ship out printed material.
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  That led to phones.
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  And then that was the genesis of a call center.
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  We're basically just answering phone calls from people who needed catalogs and printed material shipped to them.
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  And then one thing led to another saying, OK, the call center's grown.
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  We've got a bunch of people answering phones and receiving faxes.
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  let's try to offer this to new clients who don't necessarily have maybe fulfillment needs, but they have the need to have somebody answering their phones.
• 8:38
  One thing led to another and the timing back in the late 90s was good because the call center business was booming, particularly outbound telemarketing.
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  Remember the telemarketing days?
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  So we got in the telemarketing business for many years until that kind of just fell off a cliff with the...
• 8:52
  you know, do not call legislation.
• 8:54
  And then we sort of started morphing into a customer service organization.
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  And then eventually, you know, we sold out of the 3PL fulfillment business and we've been, you know, for the past 25, 26 years, you know, a call center oriented business,
• 9:11
  omnichannel.
• 9:12
  So whether it's phone, whether it's email, chat,
• 9:15
  what have you, we'll do it all for our client, primarily centered around the customer experience, customer service.
• 9:22
  We also do other back office type services, logistics, helping with billing, things like that, but primarily geared around customer service and holding ourselves out as the
• 9:33
  experts and delivering world-class customer care.
• 9:36
  So this might have been the reason why, but you chose a very tough industry, a very tough business model, right?
• 9:46
  The saying goes, why would you outsource your phones to a third party when it's hard enough to get your own employees under your own roof bought into your...
• 9:58
  Do you think a third party is going to be more bought in?
• 10:02
  But you guys have done something, I mean, your growth, but I got to see it firsthand after working with you, but then coming in and speaking to your leadership team.
• 10:11
  I was so pleasantly surprised.
• 10:14
  I could tell immediately they got it, which allowed me to move faster.
• 10:19
  and it went from customer service 1.0 to within five minutes, this could be, this is master class stuff and the energy and the obsession.
• 10:30
  How is Inktel different than the traditional outsource third party contact center?
• 10:35
  Yeah, I think you said it in your phrasing there.
• 10:38
  Our industry, benefit, Inktel benefits from an industry in which the sort of the bar of excellence is very low.
• 10:48
  OK, so our competition, you know, just as a very low bar for what they consider satisfactory customer service.
• 10:55
  A lot of companies that outsource
• 10:59
  have made the decision they can't do it themselves, otherwise they'd be doing it.
• 11:03
  And so they need to partner.
• 11:05
  so, you know, the market for folks that are doing this well, it's very small.
• 11:16
  mean, because a lot of people, they all have the slogans on their website and their presentations, but they actually suck at doing it.
• 11:22
  Because it's, I don't want to say it's hard because I think we do it.
• 11:29
  extremely well and it's not hard for us, but it's easier said than done because you have to day in and day out be committed to excellence and you have to have the right people,
• 11:40
  find them, train them, keep them motivated, keep them focused.
• 11:43
  You have to have the right processes and systems in place and then the right monitoring on top of that and then constantly be calibrating and retraining and using technology to
• 11:54
  drive these results.
• 11:56
  For us, it's, I'm not gonna,
• 11:59
  say it's easy, but it is easy.
• 12:01
  We're good at it.
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  For a lot of companies, that's just not how they look at this.
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  They just look at butts in seats, how much can they bill, and the best price they can get.
• 12:12
  And that's how they run their organizations.
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  We're a culture first company.
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  We spend a lot of time in selecting our team, training them, keeping them motivated, keeping them focused.
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  And that's a lot of efforts.
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  It's a ton of my time.
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  It's just spent on employee stuff.
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  And the philosophy is take care of employees, they're gonna take care of your clients and your clients' customers.
• 12:38
  it's why we spend so much on training and reaching out to leaders like yourself to keep the team refreshed with the best ideas, cutting edge thoughts and training, as well as
• 12:51
  technology.
• 12:52
  So was it, how old is inktel?
• 12:55
  We started in the very late 90s, so what are we, you know, they had 26, 27 years, you know, how,
• 13:00
  Yeah, yeah.
• 13:01
  so, you know, day one prior, was it you and your three, it's two brothers, obsession back then, the customer experience, or did that start evolving, realizing if we don't, you
• 13:12
  know, make that our competitive differentiate, we're going to be like everyone else in the outsourcing business?
• 13:19
  We were a culture obsessed company from the get go.
• 13:24
  I think watching the kind of business, my father was a printer and he had a really great organization, great culture.
• 13:33
  So sort of that was the blueprint of like a really great culture.
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  People loved working for him.
• 13:40
  Is he?
• 13:40
  Yeah, he is, yeah.
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  So cool.
• 13:43
  You mean, you know, you stereotype that generation and you don't think that, you know, they cared as much about or saw the value.
• 13:53
  And, but that just probably was who he was.
• 13:56
  Yeah, that is who he was and is.
• 13:59
  Then also, don't know, at least for me, and I think I speak for my brothers too, just companies we admire.
• 14:05
  And then it's like, what's the commonality, whether you're at Disney or Starbucks or Ritz-Carlton, they're in different businesses, but they're actually organized around the
• 14:15
  same principles, which is the customer experience, dedication to excellence.
• 14:20
  And so like,
• 14:22
  When you, know, so success leaves clues, right?
• 14:25
  So if you're studying, whether it's athletes or companies, regardless of industry or sport, they all have sort of common threads.
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  Athletes obviously train really hard.
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  They're dedicated to their craft.
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  They take care of their bodies, you know, and companies, they take care of their employees.
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  They're dedicated to their customers.
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  They have values like, okay, so let's,
• 14:48
  build our company based on those fundamental building blocks.
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  And regardless of whatever industry or business we started or start, we've had a number of other endeavors, it's always with those building blocks.
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  And that's the recipe for success.
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  You're not always gonna make it, but you wanna tilt the odds heavily in your favor.
• 15:07
  So if you're taking care of your employees, you're taking care of your clients, you're organizing around good, strong corporate values,
• 15:15
  And you you don't pick a horrible industry and you don't over lever.
• 15:19
  You're gonna be in a good spot.
• 15:22
  Yeah, yeah.
• 15:22
  And I, you know, I heard a quote recently, now I'm forgetting if it's Alex Hermosy or Tim Grover, but they say, think it's Tim Grover.
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  He, said people are constantly studying the top, you know, 2 % in whatever sports business, blah, blah, blah.
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  Trying to figure out what they have that the rest don't.
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  And he said, that's not it.
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  It's not what they have.
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  It's what they don't have that the rest don't.
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  And it's an off button.
• 15:50
  And, and, know, I get that with you and I'm like that, you know, I'm always thinking and like something, you know, I'm texting people, you know, and I'm getting texts from you,
• 15:58
  you know, and it could be, Hey, another thing about when you come in, I just thought of this, or you're, you know, you know, in a great way, love this, blowing up my, my, you
• 16:08
  know, text, text box, with just great gems and articles and videos.
• 16:13
  And, you know, I could just tell you eat, sleep and drink this.
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  and you love it.
• 16:18
  mean, you love it.
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  And you could tell that's why your people do.
• 16:21
  There's something I want to ask you.
• 16:22
  I bombarded by me all hours of the night.
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  And I curate everything I send out to people.
• 16:29
  Not everyone's on a blast.
• 16:30
  It's like, John will like this, and Dan will like this, Jason will like that.
• 16:37
  Well, and that's what, you know, in a little bit when I ask you about how you consume information, right?
• 16:41
  And that's so important.
• 16:43
  I think that's a key differentiator is, you know, what do you feed in your brain?
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  How, what roles?
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  It's drastically shifting from long form reading to podcasts and audio books and videos.
• 16:56
  But some of I ask you, trying to stay in order of this, you've had incredible growth.
• 17:05
  but as we all know, and every entrepreneur wants growth, I want 10 times growth, it's, it, it growth comes with problems.
• 17:13
  And I always say nothing will ruin, a brand's customer experience and culture faster than rapid growth.
• 17:20
  Right.
• 17:21
  I I remember when we started the salons 30 some years ago and we needed another receptionist.
• 17:27
  Oh, I'd hire, I'd interview 15, 20 people to find that perfect receptionist.
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  And we probably got pretty close.
• 17:34
  Now you fast forward 10, 15 years and we need 25 people.
• 17:40
  Well, we're interviewing 27.
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  The only reason why we interviewed 27 was two of them didn't want the job.
• 17:45
  it's just, you start, it's so hard not to compromise.
• 17:50
  Cause we're losing so much money by not having those 25 people.
• 17:54
  If we just could take,
• 17:56
  have those, we'd be doubling our sales again.
• 17:59
  And that's so intoxicating.
• 18:02
  But I think every entrepreneur has found out the hard way.
• 18:05
  Sometimes it's better to lose the sales than the reputation.
• 18:10
  If you call and say, want to hire you guys as consultants.
• 18:16
  And I'm like, shit, we're fully, but I got someone in training.
• 18:19
  I think he's good enough.
• 18:21
  And I give him to you because I want to take advantage of this.
• 18:25
  six figure contract.
• 18:27
  We're never going to recover from, the, the, what, what, you the, what you expected and what you got.
• 18:34
  And not only that, now you're telling every YPO or and every CEO, but you know, we all struggle with it.
• 18:42
  How did you, did you fall into that trap and how did you avoid it?
• 18:46
  Cause cause while growth is intoxicating, man, there's a lot of landmines.
• 18:51
  I mean, so the adage, know, it's important to sort of know, you know, adages, right?
• 18:57
  Good organizing principle.
• 18:59
  Few companies die from starvation.
• 19:02
  More companies die from indigestion.
• 19:06
  You bite off more than you can chew, right?
• 19:08
  A lot of trouble happens when you take on more than you can chew, either, you know, too many projects or you're
• 19:15
  taking your organization in a different direction.
• 19:18
  trying to be disciplined in who you are and what your goals are really important.
• 19:23
  And it applies very much to growth and scaling.
• 19:27
  Scaling culture is really hard to do.
• 19:32
  Maybe the hardest thing to do in business, if that's your focus.
• 19:37
  I mean, we could hire 100 people tomorrow to answer phones, but it won't be the right 100.
• 19:44
  Yeah, 100%.
• 19:46
  mean, yeah, not to get too off topic.
• 19:49
  You look at some companies, Inktel, the chip manufacturer, was one of America's most revered companies through the 90s and going into early 2000s.
• 19:58
  they had some great leadership, leadership retired or passed.
• 20:04
  then I think the leadership was ultimately the problem.
• 20:06
  But their manufacturing prowess was what
• 20:10
  they were known for, know, great innovation, great manufacturing prowess.
• 20:14
  They somehow lost their leadership and the culture was secondary.
• 20:20
  And then, you know, I think when they started getting a lot of competition, they struggled because they didn't have the culture to reinvent themselves and to bring back the
• 20:29
  innovation that had made
• 20:30
  it's the Blockbuster, Kodak, Circuit City, you know.
• 20:34
  uh What worked yesterday isn't working today.
• 20:38
  Another adage for you, culture eats strategy for breakfast.
• 20:43
  Same thing.
• 20:44
  for me and my brother, culture is a great strategy.
• 20:47
  Just focus on the culture and the other stuff will come and go.
• 20:51
  anyway, growth is not linear.
• 20:53
  It just go like this.
• 20:54
  It's very choppy.
• 20:55
  Sometimes two steps forward, one step back.
• 20:58
  And that's been our case as well.
• 20:59
  mean, we've had a lot of success.
• 21:00
  then
• 21:01
  something happens and then you move forward a little back, whether it's external like a recession or our own indigestion.
• 21:08
  So our focus has been and remains culture, culture, culture, people, people, people, and then just training and training and training because you never know when you're to get
• 21:17
  that really huge contract that's sort of like, you know, we don't have all the people we need.
• 21:22
  We don't have all the things we need.
• 21:23
  We've got to scramble and build it.
• 21:25
  you don't want to make a mistake.
• 21:27
  And so that's, really got to rely on your foundational elements, the people you have and their ability to train sort of the next generation, duplicate all of our processes and
• 21:37
  systems so that we can continue to service our clients the way we have for the past 30 years.
• 21:43
  So, you know, like even, you know, whenever there's a slow period, train, train, train, train, train.
• 21:50
  Like you were here in August, you know, that's a typical
• 21:53
  know, summer lull where people on vacation, bring in John, let's train the team, like be smart.
• 21:59
  Right now we're super busy heading into the fourth quarter, no time to breathe.
• 22:04
  That's fine, everyone's trained, rested, ready.
• 22:07
  And so that's how we view, you know, whenever we're in a growth spurt, you know, everyone's gotta be ready to execute, everyone's well-trained and, you know, just go
• 22:19
  execute.
• 22:20
  Yeah, and you don't train when you need it, you don't hire when you need it, you do it always.
• 22:25
  And it'll take care of itself.
• 22:27
  All right, let's get to the Brax tax.
• 22:29
  This is what people want to know.
• 22:30
  Two things, I want you to give me specific examples.
• 22:35
  We've teased them with how great your customer experience is, and we've teased them with how your commitment to the culture, the employee experience is.
• 22:46
  Can you give some examples of both of what Inktel does to be world-class consistently at customer service and get people, companies to keep working with you and refer and why
• 23:00
  you've grown so fast?
• 23:01
  Thank goodness, when we sign on a client, we keep them a very long time, and very long time for life is a good goal.
• 23:10
  And a lot of that's because, again, we have a lot of organizing principles.
• 23:16
  For our clients, one of the things we want to make sure is ease of doing business.
• 23:21
  You hire and engage Inktel.
• 23:23
  We're going to make it very easy to deal with us, meaning
• 23:26
  The answer is yes.
• 23:28
  What's the question?
• 23:29
  That's a phrase you use and we've lifted.
• 23:32
  The advantage of being in this a very, very long time and then dedicating ourselves to best practices gleaned from world-class organizations, like all the blue chips that I've
• 23:44
  previously mentioned, we will develop for any client a program
• 23:49
  that is dedicated to best practices around training, around recruiting, around the deliverables that our clients want, whether it's one call resolution, average handle time,
• 23:59
  call abandonment, all the things that are important to our clients.
• 24:02
  And then build a great team, great leadership team that's interviewed by me, trained, refreshed training all the time, real-time reporting.
• 24:13
  great technology so their clients know in real time what's happening with their program, do lots of calibrations, no surprises.
• 24:20
  And then just a dedication to world-class customer care.
• 24:24
  We've got internal systems so that the focus on world-class is constant, whether it's around incentives, competition, recognition, refresher training, throughout the day, week,
• 24:38
  month, quarter.
• 24:40
  And that goes to the thing we've been talking a lot about, developing a culture so that it's in our DNA to deliver world-class customer care.
• 24:47
  So a lot of times when clients are coming to us, they've had bad experiences from other BPO's.
• 24:56
  We love that because their expectation, the bar's low and we just blow them away.
• 25:02
  They're like, we didn't know that a company like yours existed.
• 25:06
  We didn't know.
• 25:08
  It could be this good.
• 25:09
  didn't know that it would be so sort of easy to do business with a third party that it's not our culture.
• 25:16
  They're outsourcing, right?
• 25:17
  So they worry about, you going to understand what we're about?
• 25:20
  Are you going to understand our corporate values?
• 25:22
  Listen, they're handing over their baby to you.
• 25:26
  you know, every entrepreneur has worked their life to get their brand to what it is today.
• 25:33
  And, you know, in essence, have at least, you have additional layer of customer, right?
• 25:37
  You are, whoever calling you, the call center, contact center is your customer, which is your clients.
• 25:44
  customer, but you also have to please the client that hired you to do this.
• 25:50
  And that's a lot of moving parts.
• 25:51
  Yep, yep.
• 25:52
  You know, we have one thing that we do with, everyone hears it.
• 25:56
  One of the things in life that people, in terms of like Maslow's hierarchy of needs, as you sort of move up the pyramid, people want to connect to a purpose, right?
• 26:06
  It's part of what makes life enriching and rewarding.
• 26:11
  If you're not connected to a purpose, your life is not as fulfilling as it might otherwise be.
• 26:16
  What we tell our team here is that you've got a gift.
• 26:21
  that you get the opportunity to make someone's day.
• 26:27
  OK, what does that mean, Ricky?
• 26:28
  Well, it means this.
• 26:29
  In any given day, one of our customer service representative, brand ambassadors, they're taking 40, 50, 60 interactions, whether it's email and chat and phone or whatever.
• 26:42
  Typically, when these inputs are coming in,
• 26:45
  More often than not, the expectation is low from the person making the inquiry because the customer service bar in general is so low, it's not always pleasant.
• 26:55
  I know that when I call, even for reservations at a restaurant, I'm not really expecting to be overwhelmed.
• 27:01
  I'm expecting to get somebody who's busy and really doesn't want to be answering calls.
• 27:05
  So you got an advantage where whatever's coming in, the expectation is going to be low.
• 27:10
  It's also the case that person's probably stressed, confused, angry, and you don't know what's happening to that person's life.
• 27:17
  They're stuck in traffic, they're panicked that an order is lost and their spouse is gonna be pissed or their kid's gonna be upset or it's someone whose car's broken down on side of
• 27:27
  the road and they're scared or in really need of help.
• 27:31
  You know, we work with a lot of emergency management agencies at the state and federal level.
• 27:36
  People are in really, you know, bad state.
• 27:40
  You've got the opportunity to turn around that person's day just by, you know, A, being pleasant, but solving their problem, you know, and making their stress go away.
• 27:51
  That's a heck of a purpose that someone has.
• 27:54
  And you've got 30, 40, 60 interactions, opportunities a day.
• 28:01
  to really turn someone's day around.
• 28:03
  I think every single person has known, you know, or had a situation where they're in a funk and someone smiles at them or just says hi or thank you.
• 28:15
  And you're like, it snaps you out of that funk.
• 28:18
  So what we tell our folks is like, look, you you've got this gift that, you know, you can make someone's day just by being excellent at your job.
• 28:26
  You know, and excellence in this space,
• 28:29
  because the bar is so low, it's not like you have to like do something Herculean.
• 28:33
  It's just like stick to the basics that we train you on and you rest your head at night knowing that you you turned someone's life around for that day.
• 28:43
  And that's a great gift that we have and great opportunity that we have.
• 28:47
  I love that.
• 28:48
  love that.
• 28:49
  think we as a business culture today, we're void of purpose.
• 28:55
  And, you know, the currency for the younger generation is purpose.
• 28:59
  And they're not willing to trade hours for dollars, but they'll walk through a fire if they feel like, you know, they are genuinely impacting, you know, the results of their
• 29:09
  job, you know, is so important.
• 29:12
  And you talked about employee morale, culture, and constantly training them, doing a great job of the selection process.
• 29:20
  What else allows Inktel to have such low turnover compared to everyone else in their industry?
• 29:27
  We do a lot of things, like culturally, a lot of teamwork, team building, sharing, learning.
• 29:34
  Our workforce now is very much work from home.
• 29:38
  Our management team is all on premise.
• 29:40
  We're all together.
• 29:41
  But the customer service reps and brand ambassadors, the market is mostly just work from home.
• 29:46
  So the significant drawback to that
• 29:49
  is we don't get to spend physical time together like we used to.
• 29:53
  We used to have centers all over the country pre-pandemic.
• 29:56
  And there you could do birthday celebrations and call-outs and stuff like that.
• 30:01
  So a lot of that now is being done virtually.
• 30:03
  So it just presents a different challenge.
• 30:05
  But it's the same fundamental principles we did physically in our offices.
• 30:11
  We now do virtually in terms of recognition and competitions.
• 30:16
  and birthday celebrations, anniversary celebrations.
• 30:20
  So we do a lot of that to bring people together.
• 30:23
  Training and investment in their wellbeing and obviously corporate level stuff in terms of good benefits, retirement plans, promotions, salaries, bonuses, all of those things are
• 30:35
  obviously very important.
• 30:37
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 30:39
  And listen, the number one topic these days is AI.
• 30:44
  How is Inktel incorporating AI?
• 30:47
  And what's the next five years look like, as well as your crystal ball can see it, of how contact centers will evolve with AI?
• 30:56
  Yeah.
• 30:57
  So we use AI in every facet of our business, meaning in every single department, whether it's finance and accounting, HR, training, recruiting, like myself, mean, the business
• 31:08
  development team, we're using the tools just to increase productivity.
• 31:12
  So productivity skyrockets here at Inktel in everything that we do.
• 31:18
  For service delivery,
• 31:20
  you know, since the three years now that a has been on the scene, just enhancing the customer service experience.
• 31:27
  you know, getting resolution, for customer inquiries, you know, faster, more thoroughly.
• 31:35
  So is it like AI is listening to our call, you the customer throw something at me that I don't know off the top of my head, and instead of having this long pregnant pause while I
• 31:48
  look it up, AI can make it appear much quicker.
• 31:51
  Is that kind of what you're
• 31:53
  I mean, you name it, we're using AI.
• 31:55
  We're experimenting with like, we've got near shore and teams.
• 32:00
  So accent neutralization, helping our brand ambassadors understand what an inquiry, whether it's chat or email, more thorough in the response that
• 32:14
  one would typically get with links, with sources, whatever.
• 32:18
  Obviously, we can record a call.
• 32:20
  We do record calls and then run that through an AI filter to evaluate, critique how a call went and then share that with the agents so that they can learn and get better for the
• 32:29
  next time.
• 32:30
  like AI tools are just like fast and furious coming down the pike and we're trying to take advantage of all those opportunities to make ourselves better.
• 32:38
  in our service delivery.
• 32:39
  What's the minutiae that it could take off that, you know, frees up the agent A to, you know, doesn't want to do that minutiae.
• 32:48
  It's not the fun part of the job, but frees them up for the critical part that the human is needed.
• 32:55
  Putting out a fire, coming to the rescue, building a rapport.
• 32:59
  What's the minutiae that's getting taken off their plate?
• 33:01
  All of the admin stuff that technology should be able to eliminate.
• 33:09
  So for example, when you call your bank or your insurance company, they should know that you're John DeJulius in Cleveland.
• 33:18
  Why are you giving them all of your data?
• 33:21
  What AI should and can do are those kinds of things so that we can get to the core of what your
• 33:28
  issue is.
• 33:30
  But you're spending all this time going through minutia and administrative work that technology should be handling.
• 33:37
  So that's what AI at a minimum should be doing.
• 33:40
  Now, if you ask me, how's AI in our industry?
• 33:44
  would tell you shockingly three years into this, it ain't good.
• 33:48
  just in your own experience, ask yourself.
• 33:50
  You call your bank, you call
• 33:52
  Chat box.
• 33:53
  Yeah.
• 33:54
  It sucks.
• 33:54
  they still, like myself, when I have to deal with, you know, anybody I do business with, like, they have not automated the things that need to be automated.
• 34:06
  And then like passing the handoff from, you know, one department to the other, it's still, it's still not there.
• 34:13
  And then you gotta answer the same questions all over again.
• 34:15
  Yeah.
• 34:16
  It's so, you like you would think that AI has made more headway than it has.
• 34:22
  And the truth is, the dirty little secret is it hasn't.
• 34:26
  It hasn't disrupted our industry the way one would think.
• 34:32
  So you got leaders, CEOs on listening, and they don't wanna just talk about building a world-class customer experience organization.
• 34:40
  They wanna do it.
• 34:41
  What's your three-point plan?
• 34:45
  Where do they start?
• 34:47
  Hire Inktel.
• 34:48
  yeah, engage Inktel, the first.
• 34:51
  What number is one, two, and three?
• 34:54
  But yeah, I think if I'm a CEO and I need to take my customer service experience to the next level, one is the executive buying.
• 35:04
  You have to be committed to a standard and have a view towards excellence at customer care.
• 35:10
  that commitment, you sort of define it, and then everything will roll from there.
• 35:15
  What I think you see a lot of happening in corporate America, it's lip service, right?
• 35:20
  So, you know, like you and
• 35:21
  Labor of the Month, Program of the Year, Management by Best Seller.
• 35:27
  Let's read Fish and let's do that.
• 35:29
  It's so prevalent in corporate America.
• 35:31
  You see companies, publicly traded companies, stating their quarterly results and it's literally flavor of the month.
• 35:38
  It's been AI for the past three years and back in the beginning of the second quarter, was all the tariffs and stuff like, they don't see through everything, Companies that are
• 35:48
  well-run have certain fundamentals.
• 35:51
  Among those are being
• 35:53
  dedicated to your employees, dedicated to your clients, dedicated to corporate values.
• 35:58
  But no, it's flavor of the month with a lot of.
• 36:01
  But to answer your question, if a CEO or executive leadership, if they're truly committed to customer care, world-class customer care, that's a really good strategy.
• 36:11
  That's almost foolproof to put your company in a good position vis-a-vis their competitors.
• 36:17
  If they're dedicated to that, then everything will flow through there, whether they want to try to do it internally or engage consultants or BPO's like Inktel.
• 36:25
  You you hire us because we're really good at what we do and we'll put the program together.
• 36:30
  We'll put the leadership team together.
• 36:32
  You know, we'll put the structure together so that we can deliver that excellence.
• 36:37
  But I think what you find is, you know, there's a lot of lip service out there.
• 36:40
  Right.
• 36:41
  They say something, they
• 36:44
  you know, they won't put the resources behind it.
• 36:47
  They don't really know or have a high standard of world-class customer care, looks like.
• 36:55
  And then that's why a lot of companies just sort of fall off eventually from, you know, having a great reputation for customer service.
• 37:04
  And it's just so fundamental, whether you're a restaurant or retailer, you know, a government, I mean, like,
• 37:09
  Why wouldn't you want to be really good at this?
• 37:11
  It's actually not expensive.
• 37:14
  It's more expensive to be bad at customer service.
• 37:16
  Right.
• 37:18
  Go in a restaurant tonight.
• 37:19
  You know whether they're dedicated to it or not.
• 37:23
  And most are not.
• 37:24
  Walk into a retailer.
• 37:26
  How do they greet you?
• 37:27
  How do they take care of you?
• 37:28
  How do they follow up?
• 37:30
  Rick, Ricky, you're cursed when you get to the level of customer experience and the obsession.
• 37:37
  It's a curse because you could never go and just have dinner or have, you know, get your tires replaced.
• 37:46
  know, and I say that's a good problem.
• 37:47
  It's like, you know, but that's when you know, like, why did he say that to me?
• 37:52
  Like he didn't have to overshare that they didn't have me down for an appointment.
• 37:56
  They're dead.
• 37:57
  Right?
• 37:58
  They say, great, just let's confirm what you're here for instead of saying, you know, we have you next week.
• 38:04
  Well, do you have availabilities?
• 38:06
  Yeah, we're okay.
• 38:07
  You know, it's like oversharing, but all right.
• 38:10
  you know you could put me or you and any company in any industry and we may not know how to manufacture scientific R &D but I think we would make improvements in that company just
• 38:21
  by like focusing on the employees and focusing on like the customer service aspect like we'll move the needle.
• 38:27
  Yes.
• 38:28
  Yeah.
• 38:29
  The other stuff you can figure out are hire people how to like be better at manufacturing or, you know, scientific research.
• 38:34
  But like, if you can't get the core of like taking care of your employees and building a great culture and taking care of customers, you're not going to get very far or as far as
• 38:43
  you otherwise would.
• 38:44
  Is it Francine that you're sending to the customer experience executive academy?
• 38:49
  Francis.
• 38:50
  And I say that.
• 38:51
  I say, it's going to be a curse going through this.
• 38:54
  go, but here's what I want.
• 38:55
  When you go and you have a great experience, right?
• 38:59
  Capture what they do right.
• 39:00
  Can we do that?
• 39:01
  But when you have a horrible experience or you read or see a video of a horrible experience, the knee jerk reaction, I think most people is like, that company sucks.
• 39:14
  What I do is I always say, can we be guilty of that?
• 39:18
  And in some ways we can if we're not careful, maybe not to that extreme, then not at that extraneous, but we can make a customer wrong when we didn't need to, you know, to prove a
• 39:29
  point or whatever.
• 39:30
  Everything I've asked you was stuff altruistically that I wanted my audience to gain from.
• 39:36
  Now I want to be selfish.
• 39:38
  and talk about things that I'm really more curious about.
• 39:42
  Life balance, what you do for professional development, how do you squeeze it in, where are you consuming it, is it reels, is it reading, is it listening, is it podcasts, your
• 39:55
  exercise routine, which I think is really important.
• 39:59
  And then, you know, I've never had a conversation where you haven't talked about your kids and I know that's important to you.
• 40:05
  you know, let's talk about it.
• 40:06
  Let's start with professional development.
• 40:08
  How, I know you consume, I say I consume education, professional development, like Joey Chestnuts.
• 40:15
  The greatest athlete of all time.
• 40:18
  consumes hot dogs on the fourth of july like every every opportunity every break every workout every car ride airplane i'm listening to something how do you how do you do it and
• 40:28
  what's what vehicles do you use
• 40:31
  Yeah, great question.
• 40:33
  I'm like a sponge.
• 40:34
  I mean, like, yeah, my appetite for knowledge is unquenchable.
• 40:38
  You can't quench it.
• 40:41
  And it's broad.
• 40:42
  It's broad, whether it's...
• 40:44
  business, which is a huge part of my consumption.
• 40:48
  I love politics.
• 40:49
  I love history.
• 40:50
  I love sports.
• 40:51
  love nutrition and exercise.
• 40:55
  As a parent, I consume a lot of parental stuff.
• 41:00
  So it's very broad and very deep.
• 41:04
  So my brain is always going.
• 41:08
  I take it in all forms.
• 41:12
  So I do a lot of reading.
• 41:14
  Books are uh
• 41:16
  do the traditional reading.
• 41:18
  Yeah.
• 41:19
  Yeah.
• 41:20
  Yeah.
• 41:21
  books for sure.
• 41:22
  And there is a discipline to reading a paper book that you don't match on a digital, even if you're reading on your Kindle or whatever.
• 41:30
  But I read a lot on Kindle.
• 41:31
  Yeah, do consume a lot of articles.
• 41:33
  I read the physical paper every day, several of them.
• 41:36
  Newspapers, digitally as well.
• 41:38
  I get physical magazines as well as digital magazines.
• 41:42
  I'm old school.
• 41:43
  56 so raised, you know reading newspapers and magazines.
• 41:46
  It's hard to let go that And then podcasts have really become a big thing for me in the last five six years So a lot of podcasts I do audiobooks and then the way I sort of do it.
• 41:57
  I mean from the moment I wake up.
• 41:59
  consuming
• 42:01
  My head hits the pillow.
• 42:02
  And then the other thing is, I try to do double up.
• 42:05
  Obviously, when I'm driving, if I'm not talking on the phone, I'm listening to a podcast or a book.
• 42:10
  When I'm exercising, running whatever podcast or a book.
• 42:14
  And then try to keep it broad.
• 42:16
  And then try to talk to smart people, get their opinions.
• 42:19
  That's what texting's all about, sending stuff to you.
• 42:22
  Hopefully get some feedback.
• 42:24
  sharpen my thinking.
• 42:25
  And then lots of seminars, I'm a member of YPO as well as other organizations.
• 42:31
  So formal seminars and events where you get thought leaders coming in and talking.
• 42:36
  Is that where we cross paths originally?
• 42:39
  So I don't think you and I cross paths there, but I think you got on my radar possibly through YPO.
• 42:47
  decade when you got on my radar and then just.
• 42:51
  I sent some of my people to your seminar a decade ago there in Cleveland and then actually we were, I was hoping to get together with you right around 2019 so pre-pandemic screwed
• 43:05
  up a lot of things and then I just had the opportunity just this summer to finally meet you in person.
• 43:10
  Yeah, yeah, All right, exercise.
• 43:13
  I could tell that's obviously important to you.
• 43:17
  You know, how do you fit it in?
• 43:18
  It's just, you know, what do you like to do and how do you make sure when you're traveling and crazy busy that that doesn't slip?
• 43:28
  Yeah, I mean, for me, I've been into exercise since I was a teenager and never gave it up.
• 43:36
  Basically, it's just part of who I am the same way being a reader is who I am.
• 43:42
  And so, developed good habits around exercise and nutrition when I was young and just never gave it up.
• 43:48
  So, exercise for me is not a fad.
• 43:50
  It's not something I do for two or three months and eating well and being on a good nutritious diet.
• 43:56
  It's not something that just, you know, like I think too many people, it's a fad.
• 44:00
  I'm gonna do it for a month, 90 days, and then drop off.
• 44:03
  So it's just like part of like, I sleep at night the same way I exercise, you know, like it's just part of my non-negotiable is part of my daily routine.
• 44:14
  For the most part, I do it in the morning, start the day.
• 44:17
  I find that to be a really good habit.
• 44:20
  I call it a cascade habit.
• 44:22
  If I start,
• 44:23
  with exercise in the morning, not only has it gotten out of the way and I don't have to worry about it, but then I'm more likely to eat a good breakfast and then therefore a good
• 44:32
  lunch and a good dinner.
• 44:33
  And then it gives me energy in the morning so I can attack work and problems with energy.
• 44:39
  It's something more than typical of my workout routine is in the morning.
• 44:44
  There have been times when I did it
• 44:46
  at the end of the day and it worked fine, but I'd find for me it works better in the morning.
• 44:50
  And then, yeah, I mean, you want to take care of your health sort of really three main things put you in the category of more likely to succeed than not is exercise, sleep and
• 45:02
  diet.
• 45:03
  You you can, the sleep you just got to get seven or eight hours ideally, but you know, the diet and the exercise you can pick your poison, whether it's yoga or weights or cardio
• 45:12
  running, whatever.
• 45:13
  and diet, whether you're vegan or whatever, just have a healthy diet and an exercise routine and then get your sleep.
• 45:20
  It's going to take care of so many health problems that you don't need medication and lots of stuff.
• 45:27
  In the same way you're building a company, take care of your clients, take care of your employees and have good foundational values, you're more likely than not going to succeed
• 45:36
  as a business.
• 45:37
  don't get too fancy.
• 45:38
  You know, and then, you know, when you want to take it to that upper, upper level, 1%, then you can start getting fancy, you know, around dieting techniques and exercise
• 45:46
  techniques, know, all supplements and, you know, other, things that you get psychotic about.
• 45:52
  But yeah, just basically, you know, as an executive, you know, you have to be the energy of your organization.
• 45:59
  So be energized, right?
• 46:01
  Have, have good energy.
• 46:03
  around the things that I mentioned, a good diet, exercise and sleep.
• 46:06
  So you show up to work fully engaged, your mind is right, your attitude's right, energy flows from the leader.
• 46:13
  And I try to push it down as much as I can to the team.
• 46:17
  We talk a lot about exercise, diet, A lot of the team has under their desks, the little treadmills so they can be on and walking.
• 46:29
  You know, in the building we're at, when we signed the lease, we said, you know, if you want us as a tenant, you got to build a gym in the building.
• 46:35
  So we've got a gym in the building.
• 46:38
  So no excuses, you know, for being fit in this company.
• 46:43
  Love it.
• 46:44
  Love Why aren't you healthy?
• 46:45
  Because you're healthy.
• 46:47
  You're going to be happy.
• 46:49
  We want you to live a long life.
• 46:51
  We want you to be there for your family.
• 46:54
  So, you know, we.
• 46:56
  We don't just talk, we want people to be healthy and we do community events centered around fitness, whether it's 5K charity runs and other things that we do to have fun
• 47:09
  together, build a corporate culture, but promote health and wellness.
• 47:14
  My four very similar to yours, my four motivating factors for a healthy lifestyle, exercise, eating, all that, sleeping, is vanity, sanity, longevity, and legacy.
• 47:27
  Vanity, how I look is important to me, right?
• 47:30
  I I don't apologize for that.
• 47:32
  If I feel that I'm closer to my 10,
• 47:35
  I'm gonna have a bounce in my step, I'm gonna have confidence, all those things.
• 47:39
  Sanity, yeah, I I could tell when I'm off if I haven't gotten a good workout or a workout in two days because of traveling and excuses.
• 47:48
  Longevity, whether I live 10 more years or 30 more years, it's the quality, not necessarily the quantity.
• 47:54
  And legacy is what you're talking about is...
• 47:58
  You know, to be the best version of myself is not about me as much as it's about the people that depend on me, right?
• 48:09
  My three boys, if I'm the best version of myself and all the things we're talking about, my three boys are gonna have a you know, and a role model.
• 48:22
  My 150 employees, my, you know,
• 48:26
  tens of thousands of clients, I'm not cheating them versus, mind your own business.
• 48:31
  If I want to have donuts for lunch, that's none of your business.
• 48:35
  Well, it is.
• 48:35
  If we're in any kind of relationship, employee to employer, spouse, whatever, you are dependent on me in some way.
• 48:44
  And if I'm being sloppy with all that, so I love that, I love that.
• 48:49
  And then parenting, tell me about parenting, because this is, I'm raising three boys, and that's very important to me.
• 48:57
  I know you're very passionate about that.
• 48:59
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, I love learning about your sons.
• 49:04
  They sound extremely successful and not only just extremely successful and I know at least one of your sons is very extreme.
• 49:12
  Yeah, and sort of some of his activities, is pretty.
• 49:18
  Yeah, I've seen his Instagram.
• 49:21
  mean, it's.
• 49:24
  Yeah, yeah, so I mean.
• 49:26
  Before I had my son who's eight, I was a little bit like that, in extreme, and then I just sort of dialed it all back, because now as a father of an eight-year-old, I got to worry
• 49:38
  about my legacy and longevity.
• 49:40
  So I got to do less risky stuff than I used to.
• 49:45
  But yeah, it's become the most important part of my life, is being a parent.
• 49:53
  And everything I do now is through the lens of being a father and being an example and role model.
• 50:01
  And it's great fun.
• 50:02
  He's eight, so it's fun watching their awakening as they're starting becoming more more cognizant of what life's about.
• 50:09
  then you start seeing them copy your habits.
• 50:12
  So I want to make sure I leave good habits for him to copy.
• 50:16
  So, he is already into exercise.
• 50:19
  As an eight year old, he's into jujitsu, but we go running together and he's starting to pick up other habits of mine.
• 50:25
  Soon we'll start doing other training together.
• 50:28
  So I look forward to all that.
• 50:30
  Yeah, it's the greatest gift.
• 50:32
  The one parenting thing I gotta question, and maybe you're doing this to toughen them up and have perseverance, but you made them a Dolphins fan.
• 50:41
  know.
• 50:42
  to experience hardship at a young age.
• 50:44
  Yeah, yeah, disappointment and but but being optimistic like every dolphin fan, you know, you're you're sort of a sadist like every training camp where it's like, get my hopes up.
• 50:56
  It's like Charlie Brown when Lucy takes away the ball like at the end of every year, I'm like, I'm not going to fall for this shit again.
• 51:03
  And then they do it to you.
• 51:05
  You know, the great hooting the blowfish song that line of
• 51:10
  The Dolphins make me cry.
• 51:11
  It is one of those teams that just stomp on your hopes.
• 51:17
  When I was young, the Dolphins were really good.
• 51:20
  I learned.
• 51:21
  I remember when the Dolphins were great.
• 51:23
  Reno years, about Greasy years, Don Shula.
• 51:26
  But for the past 25 years, they've been miserable.
• 51:28
  And it's very obvious to any Dolphin fan.
• 51:31
  But I think as a Brown fan,
• 51:32
  Yeah, yeah, I have no place to speak.
• 51:35
  As someone who leads an organization and led organizations, there are building blocks to building a great organization.
• 51:42
  You may not win the Super Bowl, but you want to be in the hunt.
• 51:46
  The Dolphins just had this organizational dysfunction that the average Dolphin fan can call it.
• 51:54
  Somehow the ownership doesn't get it.
• 51:56
  The general manager doesn't get it.
• 51:59
  This team sucks.
• 52:01
  because its culture sucks.
• 52:03
  The team does not want to follow this coach.
• 52:06
  It's well publicized.
• 52:07
  He lost the locker room.
• 52:09
  The New Age coach, he was so out of the norm, the box.
• 52:14
  was like, this might be the future, but yeah, it seemed to run its course.
• 52:19
  As a business leader and CEO, you sort of look at that organization, that coach lost the locker room.
• 52:26
  We've still got 14 games to go.
• 52:28
  The team's not going to get better.
• 52:30
  Once you lose the locker room, you're not going to get it back.
• 52:33
  You basically have to blow up the team and start over with a whole new crop, because all those players are not going to forget how you have a lot of people to disrespect you, how
• 52:43
  many bad decisions you've made.
• 52:45
  As an owner, and he's a very successful man, he needs to say, gotta replace his coach no matter how much I like him.
• 52:53
  This team cannot win with him.
• 52:55
  Part of the reason I like sports, I think a lot of businessmen like sports is that it's sort of a reflection of what you're doing every day in your job.
• 53:03
  It's like you're hoping that organization get there, act together and go win.
• 53:09
  And the cool thing is, like in sports, what we did yesterday matters very little today.
• 53:17
  We got to start out, we got a whole nother set of customers that we got to be the best moment in what could be their worst moment of their day.
• 53:27
  And yesterday is yesterday and we got to show up today and do it all over again.
• 53:32
  Yeah, sports is great as a business leader.
• 53:35
  Among the reasons I love sports and I guess others do too.
• 53:38
  But for me, it's like, it's an organization, it's a team of people.
• 53:41
  How are they preparing?
• 53:43
  So like, same thing we're doing in business.
• 53:45
  Like, who are the players?
• 53:46
  How are you organizing them?
• 53:48
  How are you training them?
• 53:49
  How are you incentivizing them?
• 53:51
  How are you putting together a game plan?
• 53:53
  Same thing we do in business.
• 53:55
  So like, when I'm watching a game,
• 53:58
  regardless of sport, I look at the coach a lot, even more than the players because it's like, did the coach put the right team together?
• 54:06
  The starting lineup, is it the right team vis-a-vis the team they're going to play?
• 54:11
  Did they prep them right?
• 54:12
  Can they make the adjustments?
• 54:14
  It's the same thing we're doing every day in business.
• 54:16
  Obviously, I love seeing great players do their greatness, but great coaches,
• 54:23
  transcend their players, right?
• 54:25
  So like, you know, Phil Knight had great players, obviously, but he was a great coach regardless of who he had.
• 54:31
  He was able to put together winning teams and you know, you see great coaches bring the greatness regardless of the team and you know, the retirement of players, can keep the
• 54:41
  nation moving forward.
• 54:43
  Of course, you need a little bit of luck.
• 54:44
  You got to get a Dan Marino or a Joe Burrow or you know, these guys that you got to land in your lap.
• 54:50
  But a lot of times you don't get those guys and
• 54:52
  you still have to make a winning team.
• 54:55
  But I also believe that if Tom Brady or Josh Allen or maybe any of those guys were drafted by the Browns, they wouldn't we wouldn't know who they are.
• 55:03
  We wouldn't you you'd be like Tom Brady.
• 55:04
  Who's that?
• 55:05
  You know, because on the opposite.
• 55:08
  Yeah.
• 55:08
  As great as there are, yeah, the organization is not right.
• 55:12
  It's not gonna matter.
• 55:13
  They may have their own excellence.
• 55:15
  They'll have great, gaudy stats, but they won't win.
• 55:18
  Yeah, that's what I use of why I'm not a household name.
• 55:21
  It was the coaching.
• 55:22
  was the coaching.
• 55:23
  Ricky, how can people find out more about Inktel and or you?
• 55:29
  Well, www.inktel.com and hopefully we'll have that in the links below.
• 55:36
  And then it's the same, we're on every social media, LinkedIn, IG, Facebook, Twitter.
• 55:43
  So follow us there.
• 55:44
  And then my own name, can just follow me on Facebook and Twitter.
• 55:51
  Okay, I'm gonna put all those links in here.
• 55:54
  We are speaking to Ricky Arriola the founder and CEO of Inktel, one of the country's leading customer experience in business processing outsourcing firms.
• 56:07
  I've got to experience them upfront by working with them.
• 56:11
  Hopefully you sent the final payment, because I don't wanna say this before you did this.
• 56:16
  may have learned more from you and your team than I probably taught you.
• 56:20
  Love the culture, love the energy, it comes from you.
• 56:23
  Ricky, I really appreciate you being on today, sharing all your experiences and just what you bring to the industry.
• 56:33
  Thanks, John.
• 56:34
  It's great catching up to you.
• 56:35
  we'll, I think for the rest of this season anyway, commiserate on the Browns and the Dolphins.
• 56:41
  Yeah, yeah.
• 56:43
  Maybe next year.
• 56:44
  All right, revolutionaries, we'll be right back after this.