By:Angel Tuccy Issue: Collaborative Leadership Section: Advisory Board
Experience Pros
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When Angel Tuccy was in high school, she participated in a radio show vocal tryout. Her public speaking teacher told her that she would never have a career in radio. For that matter, Tuccy never imagined that she would have a career speaking in public, period. But today this business-owning, best-selling author, professional public speaker, and yes, radio show host, is not only gaining attention for what she does, but also for how she brings business people together.
Tuccy is on a mission to start a revolution in the way people treat each other in business. Her inspiration came as a result of what she perceived as an obvious gap in the way traditional business is accomplished, and how it could be done in an experience-based, relational manner. For ten years she was the accommodations coordinator for the players and their families at the PGA’s International Golf Tournament at Castle Pines, where she learned “extreme customer service.” She believes that this kind of service is accomplished when parties work toward a common goal—doing what is best for the customer.
She is leading the extreme service revolution by bringing businesses from across the country together on her Denver-based call-in radio show. The Experience Pros Radio Show airs live every weekday morning on AM 560 KLZ Radio and offers listeners an opportunity to connect with industry leaders from every conceivable background. “The synergy that is created when we bring people together on a common topic is dynamic,” says Tuccy. “People connecting with other people is what we’re all about—and to see it happen in real time, with guests who come from coast to coast, is very exciting.” By using radio, Tuccy has established a central location where experts of every discipline connect with each other, share insights and information, and offer advice to listeners. The common thread of every conversation—extreme customer service. She says, “No matter what business you’re in, you’re in the relationship business. If you don’t learn to put your customers first and foremost, you don’t have a business; you have an expensive hobby.”
Business people from around the country agree. Microsoft Senior Vice President Toby Richards sought out The Experience Pros Radio Show to discuss how his company, despite mistakes made during the early phases of the social media revolution, has embraced a customer-led forum of service and support. “Like it or not, there’s a conversation going on about service, and it’s being led by our customers. It wasn’t difficult for us to realize that in order for Microsoft to ever hope to affect the conversation, we had to join it and we had to listen,” said Richards.
Through her company’s yearlong business development course called Experience Pros University (EPU), Tuccy trains groups of business owners, managers and sales people, encouraging them to work together in the spirit of “coopetition.” Students enrolled in EPU learn right out of the gate that, as they help other students succeed, they too succeed because corporately they become greater than the sum of their parts. Tuccy refers to this collaborative effort as “creating a grass fire” among participants. “As we learn to leverage our FRANC Circle (Friends, Relatives, Associates, Networks/Neighbors and Customers), we discover that – even better than the six degrees of separation – there are literally three degrees of connection,” says Tuccy. “Right now, I believe that you are connected to everyone you ever need to know in order to not only develop your own business to whatever level you desire, but to help others develop theirs as well."
To further develop the concepts that she teaches her clients, Tuccy co-authored her second best-selling book, Lists That Saved My Business. In the book, she lauds the benefits of developing solid relationships with others in business, and discourages what she refers to as the “transaction mentality.” She encourages readers to develop their personal brand by connecting with like-minded people in business. In this manner, genuine relationships are developed and there is no pretense to the growth of commerce. Furthermore, once those relationships are established, Tuccy argues that an exponential element enters into the equation as independent spheres of influence converge. She is also the founder of Ladies Who Lunch, a group of over 250 professional women in Denver who gather once a month to encourage each other professionally as well as personally. “Bringing people together, in this case women, is what truly energizes me,” says Tuccy. And she is obviously very good at doing just that.