I started working when I was about 15 years old. My parents would drive me or I would ride my bike to China Harbor Restaurant in Virginia Beach, Va., where I worked as a busboy on the weekends during the school year. In the summer months, I was able to put in more hours.
I was paid $2.12/hour, which was the legal minimum wage in Virginia at the time for anyone working for tips. So my check for my wages was pretty much nothing.
All the money I made came from tips, and my tips were based on how well I supported the servers. They took orders and brought food and beverages to the guests, and it was my job to clean up the tables and make sure the customers had refills of their drinks. When the customers were happy, that led to higher tips for the servers and, therefore, more money for me.
The servers liked making more money so they always wanted me to work in their section. After working the Sunday buffet shift, I would sometimes walk away with $30-$40 in my pocket. That was quite a bit of money back in 1985!
Lessons learned
Although that busboy job would never be my ticket to financial security and independence, working there provided me with some great lessons about the sales and customer service aspects of the business world.
In fact, after my stint at China Harbor, I had lots of other jobs at restaurants and hotels in Virginia Beach over the next several years, during the summers while I was in college — as a valet or a bellman, parking cars and carrying luggage to hotel rooms. I always worked in tip-based environments, where making a connection with people in a very short period of time and providing great service impacted how much money I made.
I got immediate gratification from receiving tips, and during those years I was able to make more money than my friends who all worked hourly wage jobs. The experience made me appreciate the fact that I had some measure of control over my earnings.
Back then I realized that paying attention to the little things was key to earning more at every place that I worked. As a valet, my colleague and I coined the phrase “The 5 Dollar Service.” We opened the door for guests, and on rainy days we used umbrellas to walk all of the ladies, one by one, out to their cars to make sure they didn’t get wet. As a bellman I made sure the hotel guests had nothing more to do after check-in than hand me their keys and walk to their rooms. I’d make sure that all of their luggage was delivered to their suites, and I made a point to open the curtains so they could walk out to the balcony and look at the ocean while I was putting away their suitcases. Their vacation would start off on a high note, which made them happy. And happy customers tend to tip well.
The little things
It’s those little things that make such a big difference in my business life today. Pool Scouts service technicians don’t just clean customers’ pools. They bring in their newspapers and put them on the porch. We clean off their decks and pool areas, we put away the kids’ pool toys in the backyard, we bring in their trash cans from the street.
When customers come home and find a clean, swim-ready pool that they can immediately dive into, it means that they have one less thing on their plates to deal with — and that generally makes them very happy. But when they find that the little extras have been done as well, that makes them even happier.
We receive immediate gratification for a job well done in the form of customer loyalty. We have lots of customers who trust our techs and request specific ones to work on their pools due to that trust and satisfaction. And that’s thanks, in part, to the little extras.
