John T. Hewitt talks with Jason Barnard about how to create raving fans for your business.

John T. Hewitt is the founder of Liberty Tax Service and CEO of Loyalty Brands, an innovative umbrella franchise organization that oversees multiple franchise concepts. Drawing from his 55 years of experience building billion-dollar companies, John reveals why traditional customer satisfaction isn't enough and how to transform customers into raving fans.

He emphasizes the importance of creating "raving fans" over just satisfied customers. Hewitt talks about his unique approach to measuring customer satisfaction and the practical steps his companies take, such as personally calling clients for feedback and referrals.

He also shares strategies behind retaining customers and ensuring they refer others, ultimately emphasizing the personal touch and customization in client interactions. This episode shows business leaders how to build sustainable growth through outstanding service and strategic customer engagement.

What you’ll learn from John T. Hewitt

00:00 John T. Hewitt and Jason Barnard

01:29 John T. Hewitt’s Brand SERP

02:08 How Does John T. Hewitt Pay Attention to How He Appears on Google and AI?

02:25 What Is One of John T. Hewitt’s Major Weaknesses?

03:23 How Many Billion-Dollar Companies is John T. Hewitt on Now?

03:38 Why Does John T. Hewitt Value the Journey and Fun in His Entrepreneurial Approach?

04:02 How Long Did It Take John to Build His First Company, Which Was Sold for Half a Billion Dollars?

04:20 What is John T. Hewitt’s Philosophy?

05:20 How Do Raving Fans Work?

05:50 Why is it More Impactful to Create Raving Fans Than Satisfied Customers?

06:26 How Do You Determine the Success of Your Business?

07:21 How Does John T. Hewitt Measure Success in Meeting Customer Expectations?

08:04 What Does John T. Hewitt Realize About His Two Biggest Companies?

09:48 What are the Key Steps You Can Take With Your Clients to Ensure You Exceed Their Expectations?

10:28 Why Does John Emphasize Businesses That Deal With Public or Consumers Often Get Taken Advantage of?

11:00 What Initiative Did John T. Hewitt Implement When He Founded Jackson Hewitt?

11:53 How Did Sam Walton’s Customer-First Philosophy Create a Legacy of Exceptional Service?

13:19 How Do Successful Businesses Factor Customer Service Costs into Their Pricing Models?

13:31 How Can Tax Firms Balance Money-Back Guarantees with Profitable Pricing Strategies?

13:49 What is a Spoilage?

15:26 Why Do Some Customers Don't Get a Refund?

16:59 What Criteria Does John Use to Evaluate the Difference Between a Satisfied Customer & a Raving Fan?

18:08 What Are the Strategies You Can Use to Turn Retained Clients Into Getting Them to Refer You?

This episode was recorded live on video January 7th 2025

https://youtube.com/live/fZnaTwCPWoQ

Links to pieces of content relevant to this topic: https://www.youtube.com/@loyaltybrandsJohn T. Hewitt

Transcript from How to Create Raving Fans for Your Business - Fastlane Founders with John T. Hewitt

[00:00:00] Narrator: Fastlane Founders and Legacy with Jason Barnard. Each week, Jason sits down with successful entrepreneurs, CEOs and executives and get them to share how they mastered the delicate balance between rapid growth and enduring success in the business world. How can we quickly build a profitable business that stands the test of time and becomes our legacy. A legacy we're proud of.

Fastlane Founders and Legacy with Jason Barnard.

[00:00:31] Jason Barnard: Hi everybody and welcome to another Fastlane Founders and Legacy with me, Jason Barnard. And a quick hello and we're good to go. Welcome to the show, John Hewitt.

[00:00:44] John Hewitt: Thank you. I didn't know I had to sing to be on the show.

[00:00:47] Jason Barnard: You can sing if you want to, but it's not an obligation.

[00:00:51] John Hewitt: I have just never sang a note on key. Probably is not going to happen.

[00:00:56] Jason Barnard: Well, sometimes people singing out of key is actually delightfully pleasant to listen to. My daughter had a friend who sang perfectly out of key and out of time. It was brilliant.

[00:01:08] John Hewitt: That takes a lot of skill, I guess.

[00:01:10] Jason Barnard: I think it does. One well, my ex wife played the role of a yellow koala in a cartoon. I was a blue dog in the cartoon and she mastered singing out of key and out of time just the right amount.

[00:01:22] John Hewitt: Sounds fun.

[00:01:24] Jason Barnard: Brilliant. So we'll start off with your Brand SERP, as we always do. Looking here, we have, when we search your name with entrepreneur in brackets in order to get you to pop up, we have that beautiful Knowledge Panel, the thing in blue on the right hand side. Looking good with those two questions. Who started Jackson Hewitt Tax Service? And who started Liberty Tax? Google has obviously got a really good grip of you potentially thanks to the books, but also the Wikipedia page, which is hugely powerful but interestingly enough, no longer necessary. It used to be necessary to get a great Knowledge Panel to have a Wikipedia page and it isn't anymore. Do you actually pay attention to how you appear on Google and in AI?

[00:02:09] John Hewitt: I have people that do that, yes.

[00:02:11] Jason Barnard: Right. Okay.

[00:02:12] John Hewitt: Yeah.

[00:02:13] Jason Barnard: It's intentional.

[00:02:14] John Hewitt: Yeah. They say people with great strengths have great weaknesses. Peter Drucker, my favorite business author, says people with huge strengths have huge weaknesses and I have a bunch of huge strengths. That one of my huge weaknesses is lack of detail. So I hire people to do detail.

[00:02:34] Jason Barnard: Right. That's actually kind of very interesting because managing a Brand SERP, managing that Knowledge Panel, managing how Google and AI understand you, is all about joining the dots and that means incredible attention to detail. And luckily we found Allyssa who runs the Kalicube Pro team. She is super, super, super detail focused and she gets it right every single time. So your team presumably the same. And I get you. When you're dealing with billions of dollars, the individual dollars, I would assume, are details and don't really matter. Is that a reasonable analogy?

[00:03:09] John Hewitt: Absolutely. It's big picture. It's all big picture with me.

[00:03:13] Jason Barnard: Oh, right. You can teach me lots about that. Because you've had multiple companies with billion dollars, and I've had one company that hasn't hit a billion dollars yet.

[00:03:22] John Hewitt: Good. I'm on my third one, so they say third time's the charm.

[00:03:28] Jason Barnard: Oh, brilliant. So this is your third one, and so far you were saying on one of your podcast appearances that you're in it for the journey and the fun. Can you give me a quick rundown of that?

[00:03:38] John Hewitt: Yeah. When I was a kid, when I was in high school, I was cocky. I was just as confident as I am now, except where I didn't have it. I hadn't proven it. When you're a teenager in high school, you haven't proven it. And now I've proven it. But somehow I knew even though I was poor, I was going to be rich. And I thought I was naive and I thought I'd make a few million dollars and retire.

Well, the first company that I built that sold for half a billion dollars, it was a 15 year journey. And the treasure at the end of the rainbow is anticlimactic. And then what do you do? So I realized that the journey is the joy. And also my philosophy is, find something you love to do. Work hard, persevere. I believe that on Monday morning, if you're not looking forward to where you're going, you're going to the wrong place. So with me, it's thank God it's Monday, not thank God it's Friday. If you live in a thank God it's Friday life, you're living the wrong life.

[00:04:41] Jason Barnard: Right. Okay, super. Well, I'm living in the same life you are, which is, thank God it's Monday. And every day for me is a delightful Monday where I'm kicking off with lots of exciting things to do. I love the idea. You wake up in the morning and you think, I'm ready to do it. In fact, even better than that, like a child, I go to bed and I can't wait to wake up in the morning to get started.

[00:05:02] John Hewitt: It's a Christmas morning, 52 weeks a year.

[00:05:07] Jason Barnard: How delightful. So we're gonna talk about raving fans rather than just satisfied customers. Can you give me an overview of how that works and how it's helped your career so far?

[00:05:20] John Hewitt: Yes. Stan Phelps one of my, another one of my famous favorite business authors wrote in one of his books, he said people don't arrive at a meeting exactly on time. If the meeting is nine o'clock they arrive after nine or before nine Almost no one arrives exactly at nine o'clock And he said, and that's the same way with customer satisfaction. He said, that you either exceed a customer's expectation or you fail to meet it. Very seldom, it's rare that you exactly meet a customer's expectation. So we have a novel way of evaluating our organizations.

Our success is we know we can't exceed a hundred percent of customers expectation, but we know that we can. If we do a great job, we can exceed most of their expectations. So we measure our success by creating raving fans exceeding people's expectations. The percentage of people that we exceed expectations tells us what kind of job we're doing.

[00:06:38] Jason Barnard: And how do you measure it?

[00:06:40] John Hewitt: There's only one way you can measure it and almost no one does it. Everyone that I mean, often I'll go on a podcast or I'll buy something from Amazon or American Airlines or what I'll get a survey and how do we do for you? And blah blah, blah. So some of it,