You Can’t Call It a Fireplace If There Is No Place for Fire | You Can’t Call Your Product Premium or Exclusive If it Is Not Even Average – A Knowledge Bomb

Audio Transcription

Grabbed the duck tape and mentally prepare yourself for yet another mind expanding knowledge bomb from America’s number one business coach, Clay Clark.

All right. Thrive nation. Welcome back to another edition of the thrive time show on your radio. And today’s knowledge bomb is about this concept that you can’t call it a fireplace if there is no place for a fire. Weird. Chuck, can you please explain where the show came from?

All right. And I went to the DMV. Is that what it’s called? Tag Tag. Tag Agency. And uh, we walked in and said, is this where the line is? And she’s The lady nicely said, let’s start by the fireplace and confused. I turned around and don’t know where to go. And I see clay take a seat and we’re sitting there and about 10 minutes later he points and there is a mantle on a wall with no fireplace and just drywall.

They didn’t even picture where you have to put this on the show notes, the photo because it won’t make sense. Listen, listen or see this, but we’re at the local tag agency and the lady says, if you guys will grab a seat by the fireplace. I was so confused. Now, typically when I look for a fireplace, Steve, now Steve, I am not a mortgage professional like you, Steve Currington. I am not a man who used to manage a concrete team like Mr. Org Chart, but I can say this when typically when people say, could you go over there and sit by the fireplace in the ink, there is a fireplace really immediately. Go back to my false assumption that there would be a place of fire nearby. Yeah. Now if she would’ve said, hey, turn to the unneeded mantle that is showcasing sheet rock, I would say, oh, I know where that is because that’s here with the fake flowers.

But. So anyway, it would occur. I, I. This is a hot button for me because I was talking to somebody over the weekend who is a member of the thrive nation who was talking to me about their service and, and this is, I want to help you. This is a helping conversation. They called me, I’ve done them for a long time and they said, hey, I want to raise the prices at my local restaurant, Chubb to kind of more of a premium level. I want to be more exclusive and I, and I’m not exaggerating, this is not a Tulsa business coach, but this is a business in the Dallas area and Steve, I’ve been there one time. Yeah, and I want to make a list of all the things that are not happening in this business coach that if they would fix them, they could then maybe make the jump to premium.

So I’m going to list off the things that are not happening at my friend’s restaurant and I went over this with him. Stream of consciousness. I wrote them down on my little yellow note pad in the car. I went over them and I was like, oh, I got to share this with somebody. I’ve got to share this because he goes through that. So good man. Good. Yes, because he’s struggling to raise his prices in Dallas has a restaurant. He wants to be more premium. He’s Italian restaurant, so I’d say he’s kind of like, that’s a mole currently at the price point of the olive garden and wants to leap frog up to a more of a premium. And he said, hey, how do I do it? And I said, well, mechanically speaking, he’s you want to know how do I tell my customers but my new price increase, how do I go about it?

How do I, how much is too much? And I said, well first let’s just go through a little checklist of things we need to make sure that we’re hitting on before we can call ourselves premium and these are the things that he said he did not currently have in place. And I thought this was a good teaching moment for somebody out there because really, you can’t call it a fireplace if there’s no place for fire. Right. And you can’t call your product premium or exclusive if it’s not even average. Right? So here we go. You, yeah, you can’t charge steak house prices at a Mickey d’s, you know, it’s just not a thing. So one, you have got to have your call recording in place. So what do I mean by that? I mean you have to record your inbound calls that are occurring to your business coach because at my friend’s restaurant, when you call ahead to set her, get a reservation or just to call in about anything.

Nobody ever answers the phone. Steve Wright ever. Yeah. Have you been to a restaurant like this for the phone? Just rang this. No one ever met and no one calls you back and no one checks nothing. Yeah. Second, chuck. You’ve got to have video recording. You’ve got to go back to the call recording. We recommend a program called clarity voice.com. We will put that on the show notes. We also recommend for video recording, we recommend a company called r e o link or the company, uh, the cameras you can buy at Lowe’s called the nest cameras. But I would like to get your wisdom on this chop. And then Steve Currington, call recording American Express records. The calls southwest airlines records the calls, Disney records, the calls, whole foods. Has the video cameras up target? Has the video cameras up? Every big company has video cameras are recorded calls, but most small business owners push back on it and they

question the why do I have to set up call recording isn’t ethical at the call. I don’t want to be intrusive. I don’t want to be. It’s actually unethical. I don’t want to manipulate my customer, American Express. I don’t want to manipulate my customers. I don’t want them to feel like they’re being watched. I don’t want the people to feel like they’re being watched. I want people to feel like there’s Jack Ass. We run a muck and I have no idea what the crap.

Let me tell you. If you want those people to feel like they’re not being watched, that’s an invitation to Jack assery. Okay, so you have to let them know. No, you’re not putting up cameras and hiding them. There’s nothing unethical about it. Alright. Welcome to work. We’re going to be recording your blood on this camera. We’re not actually are, but we’re going to be recording you guys on this camera here. That way you know what your team is doing. Back to call recording, there is no telling what the people you put the phones they’re going to say

to your ideal and likely buyers when they interact with them, if you do not record those calls and have a script for them to follow. We do know that according to the United States Chamber of Commerce at 75 percent of employees, according to the, according to the United States Chamber of small business, sorry, according to the United States chamber and the CBS News, according to the CMS news and us chamber, we’ll put the link on the show notes. Seventy five percent of employees report to stealing from the workplace and according to ink magazine, over 80 percent of employees lie on their resume. So the track record is not good and all I can say is that you have to set up call recording and video recording. Steve, what kind of Jack asked me will you catch on video when you install video cameras for the first time in your business, restaurant, et Cetera? Well, I just wanted to say

Jack Theory, so I started with that. The kind of jackass or that you’ll find is one, people not working to people like, well, first part of not working would be not being there when they’re supposed to be there. The second part all. No, not even there. The second part would be they’re there but they’re not working, so like maybe they’re doing the water cooler thing and the movie watching a movie. They’re inviting their friends over Syria and especially if you have, you know, if you’re, if you can’t be there every minute that the place is open in order to watch it, there’s a certain amount of accountable. We’re first of all, people forget that your video recording, they just do and so over time, yeah, they’ll just not be paying any attention and next thing you know, there’ll be filling out a job resume or there’ll be like selling some other company’s goods.

L, m call system, a call script, starting their own multilevel marketing company out of your call center. Not Marketing Your company, but marketing their company. Right? Yeah. I remember we used to have a guy in the web development team. This guy was hilarious. I’d see him on cameras walk out from his desk and began to walk around and kind of look around like a and he would talk kind of quietly like, yeah, I’m like, this isn’t a good time, but what he got and he would talk and you remember this guy and I won’t mention his name, but you remember him, Steve. We had to let him go. Finally. You remember how like just gradually he became less and less when we first started working with you, you’d see them in meetings. You’d see the guy, he’d be around overtime. It was like, where did that guy go?

Yeah. Where is he? Because he was out back on his phone trying to get aside deals. Not a good deal right now. The next thing I talked to my buddy about it. Listen Dude, you’ve got to have your branding in place like you cannot have. You cannot be the only fine Italian restaurant in America with a website. That’s horrible. I mean it has to at least be presentable. Yeah. Good. So you’ve got a branding menus. Got To have the logo, got to have a website. Steve, have you been to a local restaurant before where the prices are talking about an item that they don’t carry? Have you seen this before or the prices aren’t accurate or there’s just massive spelling errors everywhere. Have you seen this before, Steve? I was at a restaurant and then week with Marshall just the other day we commented about the fact that they took like a pin and they put a star like at the, at we’re all the like the sections are and then they highlighted it in like a different colors and I was like, this is your, this is your menu.

They call it is Yankee. Yeah. And you can charge a premium if that’s what your menu looks like. My wife and I went to a restaurant one time and this is a true story. We were in San Diego and this restaurant was, it looked like it was kind of struggling with is on the beach and we go in and and I just liked to visit kind of local restaurants. Got To support the local companies if I can. And I go in there and I said, oh, I would love the lobster bisque spot. You’re right by the ocean, must be fresh, you know, and I, and she says, we don’t carry that anymore. And I said, okay, okay. Okay. No big deal. Because we had a glass of wine wanting to date the weather, the water. You can hear the, would the water have ruined the new here that you can get the bird, the sun’s going down at west coast immediately. It was more of a pleasant thing goes. It was good. I’m curiously California. It’s awesome. Set. Awesome. Yep. Whether seventies or whatever. We’re going there. I’m having a great time. And so I walk in order. You mean Vanessa did.

Finally Vanessa says, well, what do you carry? And they said, oh, we have the seafood sampler and it’s a, it’s a seafood, like a soup sampler kind of a thing. And I ordered that thing and nothing has rocked. My body was like a Justin Timberlake, your body cover. Um, I have, I told you about. Then I got to go. I began eating through the soup, this stew, whatever. And I look and I’m like, I don’t know if this is normal, but the fish seems to still have an eyeball in it. I’m not kidding. There was like a fish head floating around in there. Oh Gosh. And I’m going, oh, sorry. Pick it out and move it over. And there’s like octopus or, or some kind of. What else can you put in? What are some normal. It wasn’t like a, it was like a local restaurant from China.

Maybe it was like, like the tentacles of like an octopus or something. Calamari. Uh, it was, it was all in there. And I’m going, Whoa, Whoa, whoa. There. Whoa. All I’m saying is that the branding of that restaurant, they weren’t helping themselves. They had great decor. They had a great location. They had the whole thing going for it. But there was no branding. No, no menus. Nope. Now the website was a disaster. I couldn’t find the restaurant. I didn’t even know the restaurant existed except we were walking by that beach area. You’ve got to have an optimized website. Chips. Want to make sure you put it on the show notes. You have to have an optimized website. Now, the signage, the signage, you can’t call yourself a fireplace if there is no place for you to put this on the show notes. You can see a picture of the local tag agency where the lady said to me, hey, go sit by the fireplace, but there was no place for the fire. You can’t call it. Please. Now really warm over here. Signage. Chuck, why do you have to have signage if you’re a restaurant or any other kind of business coach? Yeah,

you want to. You’ve got to get that walk by traffic. You’ve got to let people know where you are. And back to that branding. It’s got to match. If you wanted to make it a money with me at a restaurant, you can’t have like a cardboard sign with an uplight shining on it from a maglite flashlight. You got to have a real sign. And, uh, that’s just what you have to do.

Now the next move is marketing materials. One sheets, brochures, video, anything that your consumer can see or touch has to be world class. And I’m just going to list them out here for you. Your business cards have to be awesome. Your one sheet needs to be great. Your menu boards take a flat screen, right? Put the menu board on it that we don’t have to print out a 400 and $500 menu every single time. Just keep putting them on the flat screens. Those all need to be world class. And when you sit down in a restaurant, they have the little Steve, what do you call those things where you sit down and it’s like the menu. It’s standing up. It’s like the drake come in, you and the appetizer menu, but it’s sitting there. Oh, it’s like a topper tent table to table to table tennis table, top 10, whatever.

You have everything. Everything has to look awesome. And my buddy’s restaurant just doesn’t look good, doesn’t look good. But I karen that the next thing this is, this is the real abomination with my buddies restaurant, the cites his family, his famous guys, famous like people in Dallas. I would say one out of 10 people know their name. Really no place in their business. Is there any reference to the name of the family? Well, that doesn’t seem spine, nor is there photos of the family. If you, if you’re a family is famous. If your family has been successful in this case, in movies and that kind of thing, you want to put pictures of your family like in the movie. It’s not the time to be modest. Seriously. No. Like, uh. Have you ever been to Billy Sims barbecue? Billy Sim’s for a reason because Billy Sims was at a high heisman trophy award winning athlete. He also played for the lions. He played for the sooners and there’s pictures of Billy Sims everywhere, which makes it feel like it’s not just a normal restaurant. It’s Billy Sims, right? Because they charge a premium because of it. Billy Sampson, it’s billy sibs. You couldn’t call it Billy Sims barbecue. Wasn’t Billy Sims on it, nor can you call it a fireplace if chapter isn’t a fire

place of buyer. Okay. Is this thing on now? This is important once the site’s okay, the sites, the visuals all have to say up goes to value, right? All the sites have to say goes, the value up goes, the price up goes to credibility, up, up, up, chip. Why do the sites all have to point in the upward direction instead of the downward direction it’s got.

You’ve got to match your brand and if you want to be upscale, if you want to be high class than than this. Everything that people see when they come in, that has to be the emotion that they get whenever they see what’s going on in your place.

I know this, that if you walk into a restaurant and the bathrooms are gross. Oh, usually people don’t want to go there. So I put this on [inaudible] the notes for today and I’m going to make sure I’ll put a link to it here. Chip there. I’ll put it in a record over here. This is Michael Levine and Michael Levine is the PR consultant of choice for Nike for a Pizza Hut for Nancy Kerrigan, for the bushes for the Clintons. Michael Jackson. Michael Jackson couldn’t read the notable quotable from Michael Levine. He says, if you give someone a present here real quick, I feel like we need to get that echo music in there. Oh, real quick. Now, Steve, you nailed it. This last time. I need your echo to be, to be kind of like a like that’s what you’re doing. See practice real quick and then I’ll kind of say the words afternoon between the two of us. That’d be awesome. Alright, I gotcha. Here we go.

If you give someone a presence and you give it to them in a tiffany box, it’s likely that they’ll believe that the gift has a higher perceived value than if you gave it to them in no box or a box of less prestige. That’s not because of the receiver of the gift is a fool, but instead, because we live in a culture and where we gift wrap everything, our politicians, our corporate heads, our movie and TV stars and even our toilet paper. Good Job Steve.

Oh, that’s impressive. Very good. New Joe. Okay, so again, why do you have to make sure that the branding is on point? If you’re going to start to charge premium

prices in your choice, here’s what you gotta know. Like clay said, they walk into the bathroom and they see that it is disgusting. Well, they’re going to think what else is disgusting in this place? How are they handling the food? Or they cleaning the kitchen or they actually washing the dishes, so you have to have those sites looking right.

I would just encourage you, if you’re out there today and you say, I don’t know what to do, just listen to this podcast. Make a list, go to the show notes and make sure every aspect of your business coach is great. Now again, talking to my buddy, I’m just firing through these and he was asking me for feedback. I’m not calling him to criticize. He’s calling me. A very well known person in Dallas is saying, hey dude, I’m, I’m, I’m wanting to raise my prices. I want to become premium and I go through this and every time he goes, I don’t have that in place. Now the smell factor in the sound factor sounds, why do you absolutely have to have a really nice ambiance and sound for your restaurant chop if you’re going to charge a premium price, because if you don’t, man, that crap is just weird.

You know what I mean? That awkward, silent or, or if the music doesn’t match the theme or the Motif, if you will. You’ve got hard rock, heavy metal rock playing in your upscale Italian restaurant. People aren’t. It’s, it’s a cognitive dissonance, a dissonance. People aren’t going to put those two together. So it’s super important that you put people at ease and you make it a comfortable place with a sound. Cue Up. The music real quick that I think best is the atmosphere for my buddy’s restaurant, kind of the vibe, but it’s Kinda like he almost needs that kind of vibe where it’s kind of like a tempo to it and it’s got a nice, you know, it’s not that loud. They want to pull it down a little bit, you know, let’s do an airway. There we go. Let’s do it. Kind of right there. You know, if you were at this restaurant, I mean, Steve, you don’t want to be having a restaurant where it’s totally quiet.

I mean, you’re already saying no. So Jeff, what do you want? What do you mean? What do you. What are you, how was your weekend? It’s weird. It’s weird if I said you just hear that tariff chip. How was your weekend, man? It’s just a little bit weirder. Break it up. It’s like you guys want some Calamari. Oh yeah, for me. Calamari. Okay. Yeah, baby, something like that. Music creates that right? Atmosphere and rhythm. Now, well, if you have an Italian restaurant, you might want to go with a Italian music, but it’s got to be uptempo. So let me just kind of cue up something here real quick. Kind of a blue moon hits up. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. I mean, when that makes you want to have Italian. This is great. I want spaghetti right now. I feel like we’re in Italy to, to my job, but what would you like it to have?

An accountant. This is. What would you like to see like a juice water yet be intentional about the background music. You Do, don’t you do, and you’ve got it. You’ve got to make it into a system. If this is your restaurant, your employees are going to try and change the music so it go workout a job site. Your employees though, your employees are going to want to change it to whatever they like. And the problem with that is it’s usually not what customers like. Danzig. One day I walked into the DJ connection offices. True Story. And uh, we, we met with barely brides and we’re meeting with most of the bride to book their wedding for Dj and wedding entertainment services. Oh yeah. And I walk in and it’s going to decline.

We go, here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Children to eat. Spaghetti sticks as well. Come on. Oh, come on now.

Okay. Nobody. Nobody wants to buy for a wedding entertainment company. I don’t know why they got in a fight. I walked in to the DJ connection offices where we’re meeting with brides and their mothers to book weddings. I don’t understand what’s wrong and we have the music we’ve chosen is very much. It’s like Michael Blue is kind of the idea of the vibe we went with and say Michael Bublé come fly with me. He’s probably the best and so the music we’re playing is kinda like a, some exotic dancing and. Well we walk in, we walk in and I’m not to walk into the offices just to check on the guys and it just jamming.

Well, children not to worry about where he thinks she was meeting with her children. What they mean. It’s crazy. I’m out of breath and no, it’s not going to work. I could show you on it.

He just, he, he says I can show you what it’s to your bleeding. Oh my God. I don’t know the context of describing that. So, uh, are you playing with do hushed? Do Hoshman? Yeah. You already know what you’re talking about. It’s like the, the German songs. This is a song that was playing. I walked into the call center one day and I’m not gonna

no, what

the crap. I don’t want to hear that in my office. So you’ve got to be brand digital, but the sound specifically in a restaurant, I’m telling you, it’s a problem now. The smells big time. People do not want to smell you. The previous customer. Exactly. No. It’s like, Hey, welcome to the title. And uh, and what about an India especially that we have at analyse. We harnessed that smell. We captured the smell of the pbs cost. It’s a mario. Recently we had a mario and then we had Amanda over there. We had a Maori over there. What got into, you can smell it. They behind that spaghetti. It goes right through, you know, no one. Nobody wants to smell that. So you gotta make sure you’re intentional about the sounds, the smells, the decor. Yeah. Told my buddy. I said, dude, make sure you have of your family like infinities recipes.

They’re well known. They’re known in Hollywood. Get the black and white photos up. Is this pill Ragu? No, he’s talking about old bill ragged. I cannot mention. Knew this. No, but you gotta get you gotTa. Get the black and white photos. Show the history. Who made the rest? Who made the recipes? Who started it? You’ve got to do it and he’s the match, right? If you’re serving Italian food, don’t have like classic cars all over the place. Can I rip in a general way? All my buddy here? Yeah. Generally the music that’s playing is pop music and it’s an Italian restaurant. All of the decor is either absent or it not any point connected to the Italian thing. Now be customer interaction. When you walk in there, there’s nobody who greets you in a systematic way. Every time it’s different. That’s an issue. That’s a big issue.

People want consistency and people don’t even look at you and you walk in and you’re kind of looking at, okay, so let’s pretend you got hired tomorrow to work at subway. What do you ask the customer first thing when you walk in white or wheat, welcome to subway. You know what kind of bread would you like? Right? A, if you’re feeling sarcastic, you’d say, well, come to subway. What kind of colored Brett? Dr Wu because they’re all the same. Really? But anyway, that’s what kind of bread. And then you’d ask what kind of meat meat? We’ve never worked there, but we know this. Then you’d ask, do you want me to tow? You want to tell, right? These are all things we ask because subway has a pass test. I can assist them and if you don’t have a process and system in place, then people don’t want to come back. It’s not consistent. It’s not a good move. So you’ve got a script. All of these things that we put all in the show notes, but you can’t call yourself a premium restaurant if you’re not premium and you can’t call it a fireplace. If there is no place for fire, go to the show notes. It’s at the top. You’ve got to see what he’s talking about. Here we go, three, two, one. Boom.