Legends in Leadership Episode 29: Adam Alfia

Intro: Welcome to Legends in Leadership, brought to you by ISF and the Carrington Group. Legends in Leadership is an inspirational podcast featuring the stories of leaders who are making a difference. Our goal is to inspire you with the stories of leaders who come from humble beginnings, overcome challenges, and ultimately rise up to make a difference in people’s lives.

Jason Smith: Hello, welcome to Legends in Leadership. This is Jason Smith, your host today and family officer with the Carrington Group, joined by my co-host, Carl Watkins, also a family officer and partner with me at the Carrington Group. How’s it going?

Well, each week we kick off our show with our leadership trivia question. And for this week, Carl is going to take the helm and tell us about a famous leader. Carl, what do you have for us today?

Carl Watkins: Yeah, it’s a good one. So today’s legendary leader started out as a child of Cherokee Nation, wandered his way through Argentina, South Africa, and Australia before launching a career in America that ranged from the Ziegfeld Follies stage in New York to becoming an iconic star of Hollywood’s big screen. His wit and wisdom captivated people from all walks of life with commentary on politics and American culture that made him the most quotable cowboy that Oklahoma ever produced. He was a friend and frequent critic of several presidents, and H.L. Mencken called him the most dangerous man alive because of the power his comments had on his adoring public. Who is this legendary leader? I’ll be back at the close of today’s show.

Jason Smith: Yeah. All right. I’m excited to have our guest today, Adam Alfia.

On this episode, we are continuing to interview the honorees of the Dallas Business Journal Top 100 Entrepreneurs. Adam is managing director of MyStar, Maestro, Avenue Entertainment Group, and most recently, the founder of the Feedback app.

The majority of his business ventures are in either the hospitality industry or involve the enhancement of the customer experience, from allowing you to leave discrete real-time feedback to business owners and managers with the Feedback app to MyStar, which offers personal assistance programs for automotive companies such as Infiniti, Nissan, Subaru, and Mitsubishi. Maestro also offers concierge services to AARP vacation programs and the medical industry.

He is 1 of the founding owners of several successful concepts that include Shell Shack, Playground Theory Nightclub, TXR, Landmark, and The Yard.

So welcome to the show, Adam. Thanks for joining us.

Adam Alfia: Thanks for having me. Good morning.

Jason Smith: So, a lot of experience in the hospitality space. We kind of like to start each show by rewinding the tape a little bit. Tell us how you became interested in the hospitality industry.

Adam Alfia: Well, when I was still at SMU, I was very interested in cars. I opened up a mechanic repair shop while I was still in school and slowly grew that into 4 locations. If you’re going to be in any consumer-driven business, auto repair is 1 of the worst ones. I mean, if you ask people who the least trusted professionals are, auto mechanics are probably way up there.

So we decided to do things a little differently, where we were honest with the customer, and we built a huge following. We had 4 locations here in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. I sold those in 2005 and wanted to get into something new.

At the time, I was finding myself going from store to store and needing a personal assistant to help me out. When I looked for a fractional-type personal assistant service, somebody I could just call and say, “Hey, I need XYZ,” I found that most of them were overseas. You couldn’t really hire a company or person here that would just say, “I’ll charge you by the hour for whatever it is you need.”

So when I sold the shops, I looked for something else to do and decided to open up a call center that catered to high-end individuals who needed a personal assistant but not full time.

Once we started getting a lot of attorneys, financial planners, and people who were always on the go to hire us, we started giving our services to companies that wanted to offer that service to their employees as a benefit. Then it migrated into, “Can you give this to our customers?”

That was kind of the lightbulb moment, where it occurred to me that if a company gave their customers an elevated type of personal assistant or concierge service to help them with anything they needed, not just what that business was interested in, and branded it to that company, it would have a huge loyalty play.

So we started marketing the service, which we called MyStar, to local car dealerships. A lot of dealerships began giving away their dealership-branded personal assistant and concierge service every time a customer bought a car.

It was a really cool service, and we caught the eye of Infiniti. In 2009, they called us and said, “Hey, a bunch of our dealerships are talking about this really cool product that customers love.” So in 2010, Infiniti launched Infiniti Personal Assistant, and we’ve been with them ever since. We’re in every Infiniti. If you push a button in the car, you reach our call center here in Dallas.

Since then, now we’ve launched Nissan, Subaru, and Mitsubishi. We’ve got another 2 or 3 manufacturers that will use our services in the next 2 or 3 years.

So that was really my foray into hospitality and customer experience. Then in 2011, I opened up a bar and nightclub, my first one here in Uptown on McKinney, with my cousin. I was single at the time, and it seemed like a cool thing to do.

Jason Smith: It’s funny. It feels like you get to a certain point in life and, almost inevitably, somebody says, “Hey, we should open a bar.”

Adam Alfia: Yeah, exactly. We talked about it all the time when we’d go out, especially in Dallas where there weren’t a lot of nightclubs. If you didn’t know anybody, you were standing in line. We used to joke, “If we had our own place, that’d be really cool.” Then 1 came available for sale, and we looked at each other and said, “I’ll put up the money, you run the deal, and we’ll do it.”

Now we’ve got 5 concepts here in Dallas and Fort Worth. Part of buying the nightclub also came with a restaurant, and I met 2 great guys in Dallas, Matt and Dallas, who learned how to boil crab. We got together and said, “Hey, why don’t we open a crab restaurant?” I had the space right there on McKinney Avenue. So we opened the first Shell Shack, and now we have 8 locations. It’s kind of weird how life takes you down certain paths. I would have never thought in a million years that I’d be known for or involved in a crab restaurant, but here we are.

Carl Watkins: So your entrepreneurial journey started back in college. I’m curious, what was the mentorship or motivation? Who did you look up to in order to learn what it means to be a business owner and have that entrepreneurial effort?

Adam Alfia: It’s funny because I took business at SMU, and looking back, there were a lot of things I had to unlearn that they teach you in school. If you did business exactly the way they teach it, you’d miss a lot. They didn’t teach us about negotiating, property taxes, lawsuits, rights as a business owner, how to file certain things. A lot of things I had to learn on my own.

When I opened my first location that I actually built from the ground up, I got a property tax bill and had no idea what it was. I had never paid property taxes before. I thought, “I’ll pay it later.” It turned out property taxes were 1 of the few taxes you can negotiate, and it ended up costing me way more than it should have because I didn’t know that.

So school didn’t teach you those practical things.

As far as who I looked up to, people like Elon Musk, those kinds of people who wake up in the morning and say, “I have an idea,” and then they just go do it. A lot of people have good ideas. I hear ideas all the time, and sometimes I say, “That’s a great idea.” But the difference is they don’t actually execute. They keep doing what they’re used to doing, and they don’t take the leap of faith forward. That’s a shame because we’d have a lot more great products if people pursued their dreams a little more aggressively.

Jason Smith: Yeah, actually execute on the vision.

Adam Alfia: Exactly. For example, when I was starting my auto repair shops, I actually went to the head of the entrepreneurship program. I already had my first auto repair shop open, and I wanted to build a huge facility that could compete with the dealerships.

I said, “Here’s my idea. Here’s my business plan.” And he told me, “Nobody will ever lend you money on that.” I needed about $1.5 million to buy the land and build the place.

Coincidentally, I was sitting with my cousin 1 day, and he said, “I’ve got a buddy that works for an SBA-approved lending company.” I didn’t even know what the SBA was. My professor didn’t tell me. So I went and applied, and within 3 or 4 days I had an approval for $1.4 million.

Jason Smith: Where was that guy when you needed him?

Adam Alfia: Exactly. I’m sitting there thinking, “You’re supposed to be the entrepreneurship guy.” I was really disheartened after I spoke to him. But the SBA came through. Back then, in 1998, they were giving larger loans than they do now. They had more flexibility if you had a good idea and real collateral behind it.

But a lot of people don’t know all the avenues that are out there to help you start a business. And I think people are afraid to take that leap because it is hard. There are a lot of roadblocks when it comes to opening a new venture, especially something nobody has done before, because then you’re building an industry from the ground up.

Carl Watkins: So how do you decide which ideas that come to mind, or come across your desk, are worth pursuing? Do you have a process or is it more of a feel approach?

Adam Alfia: I’m very hands-on, so my first consideration is always how much bandwidth I’m going to have to put into the project to make it work.

The Feedback app, for example, is more of a labor of love because I’m a huge customer service nut and I think customer service in the U.S. is dwindling. People don’t care anymore. The generation growing up now, and especially the way they communicate by text instead of face to face, I think that’s really hurt a lot of customer interaction.

I see it all the time in the hospitality industry. We have this newer breed of waiter or service employee who doesn’t read facial expressions or body language very well. I can clearly look unhappy, and they won’t approach and ask if anything is wrong. Those cues that people used to have just aren’t there the same way anymore.

So when I see a real pain point like that, and it’s something I care deeply about, that’s when I lean in.

Jason Smith: So how does the Feedback app look to help improve some of the deficiencies that you’re seeing growing in the market?

Adam Alfia: Whenever I’m in a retail store, my antennas are always up. I’m always looking around. I see employees on their phones. I see lack of customer attention. I’ll go to Home Depot, for example, and be walking around for 10 minutes thinking, “Can somebody just help me?” Then you walk up to an employee and instead of saying, “Yeah, let me show you where that is,” they point and say, “It’s 3 aisles over.”

So I believe customer attention and customer experience are dying. I actually had my lightbulb moment for Feedback in a Walmart. My son and I had just bought a puppy, and it was late at night, maybe 11:00. We realized we needed a kennel, so we went to Walmart.

We bought a huge kennel because it was going to be a big dog. The only thing open was self-checkout. We had a few other items too, and the kennel was hard to scan. I asked the girl there for help, and she said, “We can’t help you because you’ve got more than 5 items,” which didn’t even make sense in that moment.

We struggled through it, got everything scanned, and as we were leaving, I saw another employee there. I asked her, “The girl before said I could only scan 5 items and she couldn’t help me. Is that true?” And she said, “No, that’s not true. She’s lazy.”

As we were walking out, I saw the original girl on her phone. I walked up and said, “I’m going to tell your manager about the experience I had,” and I took a picture of her badge.

The next day, I had my personal assistant service call the store, get the manager on the phone, and explain what happened. When I finally got him on the phone and told him the situation, he said, “Do you have her name?” I said, “Not only do I have her name, I have her picture.”

And he said something that stuck with me. He said, “If it were only this easy for me to get information from customers about what’s happening in my store.”

I thought, if only there were an app where, no matter what business I was in, I could immediately tell management what I was seeing and it would go to the manager or designated employee in real time. I think that would go a long way.

Carl Watkins: So with client experience so important to a lot of the things you’re involved with, how do you create that culture internally? From the top down, how do you instill that culture?

Adam Alfia: We have a very rigorous hiring and training process in our call center. We probably turn away 90% of applicants. A lot of people apply because they have call center experience, but we don’t necessarily want traditional call center experience. We want life experience. We want people who know how to deal with customers.

You can usually tell within the first few seconds of a phone call what kind of experience you’re about to have just by how someone says hello. You can tell if they want to help you or if they hate their job. We have quality control that listens specifically for that. Does that employee want to be there today? And can the customer tell?

Because when the customer gets off the phone with us, I want them to say, “Wow, that was a really nice experience.”

Jason Smith: Now do you find that the market’s expectations have changed as well? Are people still hungry for that experience, or are they just becoming numb to the idea that bad service is normal?

Adam Alfia: I think customers still want a great experience. But the problem is a lot of them don’t tell you when something goes wrong. I’m in the hospitality industry, and when I read negative Yelp reviews about 1 of our restaurants, I’ll call the manager or my business partner and ask what happened. And the answer is often, “The customer didn’t tell us.”

That’s the problem. A customer can have a bad experience, but people are so opposed to face-to-face confrontation now that they don’t raise their hand and say, “Can I speak to the manager?” They just leave. They don’t come back. Maybe they tell some friends. Worse, they put something online.

If I have an app that tells the customer, “If there’s anything less than perfect about your experience, let us know and we’ll respond in real time,” then now they have a voice without needing to do that face-to-face confrontation.

Carl Watkins: So how do you manage employees in those moments? Obviously the first time something happens is a chance to coach them and help them get better. What does that look like for you?

Adam Alfia: I think 1 of the problems is that employees, especially in hospitality, know that customers usually don’t know their name and often won’t complain directly about them. It doesn’t really affect their paycheck at the end of the day.

But if I’m an employee and I know there’s a way for the customer to communicate directly with the manager at any moment, I’m probably going to do a better job. If I know somebody at table 12 can instantly say, “Service is horrible,” that creates accountability.

Most people don’t complain in the moment. They just go online later. And by the time the restaurant sees it, 2 or 3 days have passed. Now they’re trying to throw everything at the customer to get them back, but the damage is already done.

Jason Smith: So there’s not really a public-facing piece to the Feedback app then. It’s more internal, meant to create an opportunity to resolve things rather than publicly shame.

Adam Alfia: Exactly. Our slogan is actually, Give them help before they Yelp. You want to take care of the problem before it becomes a public situation on Google, Yelp, Facebook, or somewhere else.

And 1 of the great things is that after somebody’s situation is resolved, the manager can send them a link to leave a positive review. So not only are you hopefully diverting a bad review, but once you’ve made things right, you can actually turn it into a positive one.

Carl Watkins: So what’s your vision for the Feedback app? We’ve talked a bit about restaurants, but what’s the grand vision for where this can help improve the industry as a whole?

Adam Alfia: It’s not just restaurants. We’re going to utilize our call center as part of this too. If you walk into a Walmart or Home Depot, or really any business, and you have an issue and you open up the app, it can show where you are. If that business is on Feedback, then their designated managers receive the message directly.

If they’re not on the platform, our call center actually gets a real-time pop-up on their screen. Then an agent will pick up the phone, call that business, get a manager on the phone, and say, “We’ve got a customer on site right now having an issue. Can I conference them in?”

So no matter what store or business I’m in, I can now have a direct feedback loop to that business.

Jason Smith: That’s great. And so do users of the Feedback app pay a monthly fee, or is it mostly monetized through the business side?

Adam Alfia: Users never pay. Right now we’re placing it into businesses, and then the business side monetization is about $50 a month for a business to have it in their store. It’s very inexpensive. 1 customer experience saved is going to pay for that.

Jason Smith: Fantastic. Well, we like to wrap up the show by asking our guests for a leadership nugget of information. Maybe it came from a book, another podcast, or a conference, but just some leadership nugget that’s helped you find the success you’ve experienced.

Adam Alfia: Not to quote Nike, but 1 of the things I really believe is: Just do it. If you have an idea that you’re passionate about, just do it.

You’ve got nights. You’ve got weekends. If you work 40 hours a week, there are still a bunch of hours left to start the project. The first thing you need is a customer. Nothing happens without a customer. So go out and test it on friends and family and see if it’s viable. If they’re willing to pay for it, then pursue it.

Nobody really wants to work for a company their whole life and just retire with a pension. People want to pursue their dreams. If you have a good idea, run after it as hard as you can.

Jason Smith: Yeah. Well, Adam, thanks again for joining us on the show today. Really appreciate your insights. How can folks check out the Feedback app?

Adam Alfia: FeedbackApp.com.

Jason Smith: Okay, perfect. Awesome.

Well, Carl, we’re going to turn it back over to you for our leadership trivia answer.

Carl Watkins: Yes. He never met a man he didn’t like. I don’t know if either of you have a guess or not, but he’s probably the second favorite son of Oklahoma. Obviously, Will Rogers.

Jason Smith: Oh wow. I did not realize he had a Cherokee background.

Well folks, that’s a wrap for our podcast today. On behalf of our guest and my co-host Carl, I want to remind you that if your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more, then you are a leader.

Outro: Legends in Leadership is brought to you by the Carrington Group. The Carrington Group is a family office with a passion for helping business leaders and their families make smart choices and fulfill their highest aspirations. To learn more about the Carrington Group, visit their website at www.CarringtonFO.com, or Google Carrington Group Dallas, Texas.

ISF is committed to leadership development for aged-out foster care and orphaned youth. ISF’s mission is to transform these youth into tomorrow’s leaders with scholarships, mentoring, and leadership training. To learn more about ISF, visit their website at isfsite.org, or Google International Student Foundation to learn more.

Securities offered through Regulus Advisors LLC, member FINRA/SIPC. Investment advisory services offered through Regal Investment Advisors, LLC, an SEC-registered investment advisor. Regulus Advisors and Regal Investment Advisors are affiliated entities. Carrington Group and this broadcast are independent of Regulus Advisors and Regal Investment Advisors.