Brian Nichols  0:00  
Steve, instead of focusing on winning arguments, we're teaching the basic fundamentals of sales and marketing and how we can use them to win in the world of politics, teaching you how to meet people where they're at on the issues they care about. Welcome to the Brian Nichols show.

Speaker 1  0:18  
Well, hey there, folks. Welcome to today's episode of The Brian Nichols show. I am, as always, your humble host, joining you

Brian Nichols  0:23  
from our lovely cardio miracle Studios here in sunny Eastern Indiana. The Brian Nichols show is powered by the best heart health supplement in the world, cardio miracle. So if you want to learn how to lower your resting heart rate, lower your blood pressure while improving your pump at the gym, just like yours truly did, stick around. We'll talk about that later in today's episode, or just go ahead scan that little QR code over my shoulder, or simply head to cardio miracle. Com, forward slash, tbns, and you can check out all the amazing benefits of cardio miracle yourself. And also you'll know you're in the right spot, because you're going to see a little notice on the top of your screen saying you're shopping with Brian Nichols, and you'll get 15% off your order at check out one more time. Cardio miracle, com forward, slash, tbns, all right, we are going to talk today about small and medium businesses. Because, believe it or not, the small and medium business out there is actually a majority of American businesses, and I work with them every single day, for folks who aren't aware of my day job. I work in the telecommunications, unified communication space. And I'm working with these small and medium sized organizations from, you know, five employees, up to 500 sometimes up to 1000 or so employees, you have the fortune 500 right? We call this the forgotten 5000 and with that being said, the forgotten 5000 is not only forgotten when it comes to different technologies or business solutions out there, but they're also forgotten when it comes to actually building up sales processes. And as I'm going through and I'm working with small and medium businesses helping improve their customer experience, which is part of the day job, that's something I also see is, Hey, your sales motion, that's part of your customer experience. Oh, you don't really have a sales motion. Oh, you have a couple of guys who just, they know some folks and they do some phone calls. Yeah, we need to talk about that. So let's bring in an expert, bring in a consultant, and joining us today here on the show is Bob fibs, Baba. You're, you're apparently an expert. You're a whiz in this space. Give me a little bit more of the details here, but first introduce yourself to the Brian Nichols show audience. He'd be so kind.

Speaker 2  2:19  
If I'd been prepared, I would add a QR code over my shoulder, but I'm not see. It's all about it's all about sales. My friend, what do you want to know about the retail doc?

Brian Nichols  2:27  
Well, give us the overview. Who is the retail doc? Who is Bob fibs, which you said, fibs like the lie. So fill me in.

Speaker 2  2:33  
It's great in sales, by the way. Just so you know, yeah. Well, I have so many stories to tell you. I just don't know where to start. So I will tell you that as far as my brand goes, I had been working, put myself through college, selling shoes, and I quit. That's a whole nother story. And after 14 years, I was working in cowboy clothes, that's another story. And the company CEO said, 100 of us are in the room. What's the company's greatest asset? And I said, it's employees. He goes, wrong. I'm like, wrong. What? And go, the wrong room. Nobody gets it. And he goes, it's customers. Like, Oh, anyone's like,

Speaker 1  3:18  
Oh yes, yes, the folks who pay the bills.

Speaker 2  3:21  
I went down to his office. I was like, we built this company based on employees. Customers go wherever they want, like, it's about the employees. Like, it's always been about the employees, and something's changed. I'm out here in two weeks. Now you're not. Yeah, I am two weeks and two weeks a day I am out. Had paid. Kathy Mattea is walking away. A winner walked out that door at 5pm never looked back last one. And so I licked my wounds for a little bit, and I went through and I went to a Tony Robbins seminar at the University of the in LA in those days, he only did a one day. That's all he did. And I walked away from that, and he said, You better come up with a brand. Nobody else is better than you. And I said, okay, and I filed the trademark for the retail doc. I didn't know whether what that was going to be, but I knew that was going to be my brand. And took me a few months to find my space, and we can talk about that later, but that's how the retail doc got started, and more importantly, that's really what has been my North light all the way through, which is helping brick and mortar retailers compete in a very small space with their people. If you are concerned about growing sales in a retail store, I'm your guy. If you want to use it through your people in a retail store, I'm your guy. You want me to tell you that AI is going to take over the world. I'm not your guy. You want me to tell you it's all about price and promotion. Yeah, I'm not your guy. So if you're just listening and you're an entrepreneur, the idea that you know everyone's our customers, like, no, they're not, you learn who your customer is and isn't, and then you can over deliver. But I think if you're trying to do I'm Jack of all trades, it's really hard to develop traction on that. Does that make sense? Oh, 100%

Brian Nichols  4:58  
the riches are in the niches. But. Folks who have been playing along the home game and listening to the show for a while, they're familiar with my my history. I was an outbound sales leader, and I do go to market teams and such like, and in that world, right? I used to have this one guy named David, and David became a wizard at cold calls because David would, he would start to focus on these specific verticals where he almost, it was like he was speaking a different language, right? So for example, if you're calling into credit unions and you start talking about their customers, they're gonna be like, get off the phone, bozo. Because we don't have customers, we have members, right? And we don't have a CRM, we have a core banking software, right? So it's all these little nuances that as you get familiar with a specific niche, you're going to be able to start to talk about things that no other sales person is talking about. But I guess I'm curious, Bob, are you approaching this more from a one to one perspective, or is this more one to many, leveraging the tools of marketing?

Speaker 2  5:57  
I need a little clarification on this. You mean, like me working in a store, one to one or so.

Brian Nichols  6:05  
So let's say, for example, you're talking to a customer. Are they going out? Are they like, having a sales team, or is this going to be like, how do I get, I guess, more of a B to C type of environment?

Speaker 2  6:15  
So for me, I have clients. They'll hire me to either do keynote speeches or to do in person. I used to a lot of in person training, but now it's a learning manager they hire, they'll hire me, maybe do a kickoff, and then my online training takes on from there. But it's all about, how do I give a how do I get a Dave in retail store to be able to open his heart and be comfortable with that game of retail. You know, that's what a lot of people miss, the game of retail. If I'm selling shirts, right, I'm selling men's clothing, your goal is to get me half naked in a fitting room. Because if you do that, you did the job, which was to make me trust you enough to go in there and now you start throwing over other things, or I'm willing to trust you, right? Your goal. If you're selling footwear, your goals. See my sock. You see my sock like you have me, but they don't. They're playing the wrong game. It's like, these are on sale for 20% off. Let me I don't have I had a guy. I couldn't believe it. I was in New York, and I said, Yeah, do you have this in an eight? And the kid comes back, we have an 11. You want to

Speaker 1  7:18  
try? What the hell game are you playing?

Speaker 2  7:21  
Like, yes, let me try on a shoe for a clown. I'm sure that'll be perfect. But we aren't training them. And so they're, you know, nobody wants to do a bad job. Brian, they're, they just, they just don't have any software to drive them. So without it, it is either going to be the Wild Wild West, right? Hey, come over here. I'll give you an extra 20% off if you buy from me, right? Or it's the invisible zone where, yeah, I'm busy. Can you help that guy you want? And I think retail has been kicked around an awful lot. We've had all kinds of surveys saying, oh, everyone's shopping online, and no one's got a store. Well, actually, 80% still want to go in a brick and mortar store and Gen Z is the ones leading the trend back to the malls. So if we just start off with So, what are we missing? It comes down to the human connection, and we are. We have raised a bunch of people with saying it's okay to stay in your room and communicate by text, then get your butt out there at 17. I don't care. Don't come back till 10, you know, go figure something else out. But we've so allowed this cocooning to happen that now you hire someone, and you've got to take them from that cocooning to the real world, right? Isn't that kind of it? Brian, 100%

Brian Nichols  8:38  
and I would go back to my original question with the you know, is it one to one? One to many? I guess it really is both right, because to the point that you get them to show their sock right, if they're buying shoes, you hopefully have had some type of one to one interaction with a sales person in that retail environment where they're talking to the customer. But I guess the first part that we didn't even talk about is getting the person in the store to begin with, right? And I guess that goes to the one to many. So have you found that there are particular narratives or messaging or communication tactics or what have you that are specifically more advantageous to retail types of environments to go to that one to many message and to start bringing people in,

Speaker 2  9:24  
the best thing you can do is have an exceptional experience, because if you get that, I'll get on your list. You'll tell your friends, etc. But that's true of any business. You know, I'm always shocked when I work with pool may pool dealers, and they're like, oh, what can we use for marketing and this and this? And it's like the best marketing you can do is buy a get a caterer and cater a $500 opening the pool party for someone and have invite their friends. Because people who have money, who own pools, tend to know other people that have money. Like, that's a lot of time and money. It's like, I know, and what you want to do is just write a check for $1,000 to the local paper and say, Well, we took out an ad. And it's like, yeah, I think the whole idea is you really have to understand your customer, and there's a lot of ways to reach them, right? So I mean, like, if I have a luxury I don't know, I sell luxury women's handbags, maybe I can do an event with the local Mercedes Benz Dealer, and I'm going to figure some way out that we could do something really cool, because generally, people who have money are going to be in those same two buckets, so I just have to figure how do I connect them in such a way that'd be interesting. So events are always popular, but I think more often than not, what we see is people going after people who have no interest and just as wide a gun as you can use, wide a net, whatever metaphor you want to use, and we forget that. No, the most important thing is you have to hold on to me, because after I had a good experience with you, two months later, I've kind of forgotten three months later, six months later, I don't even need pencils, let's say, until the day I do, and then it's kind of like, what was that place? And somebody else, you know, AI, has been listening to my phone. I'll probably get an ad for pencils when I get off of this podcast, and it'll suddenly pop up, and I'll be like, Oh yeah, I should get them from Amazon. And in that moment, you lost but you didn't hold on to me. So I think that's the two sides of it. Is, yes, it because it is so personality driven, it is a matter of one to one that spending all of your time to get more and more people in is not good. Because you can get an awful lot of people in. They have a horrible experience. You trash your neighborhood. You see this with retail, with restaurants all the time, two for one and they have, like, two for one pizza. And you go, and you try, and you're like, This is crap. I don't care what it tastes but they think it's all about volume. And rarely is anything about volume unless you're, you know, Amazon, that'll make you it's, it's funny.

Brian Nichols  11:56  
I have another podcast I do called CX without the BS. And CX is shorthand for customer experience, and this is more or less a parallel conversation to that, because if, and we talk about this a lot in my day job is, if you're not creating avenues for a positive customer experience, right, you're creating potential for detractors. And you go on to any Google page, right? It's the one star reviews that are usually the most vocal, because they're the ones who had the negative experience. It's not somebody who has, you know, an okay experience. I go and give you a four star review. I mean, you might get a four star review, but I can guarantee it's going to be a lot more ones and fives and allow that two to threes and fours, right? So I guess you know, with that in mind, if you're not paying attention to the customer experience, and you just kind of have this, and I almost call it like chasing a number. It's this death by KPI, where there's no context to a KPI. So to your point, right? Like, if the CC's pizza, comparison of pizza, like, yes, you can call it pizza. Is it actually pizza? I guess it's food, but is it pizza by name only, right? But they're like, Hey, you can go to a buffet and get 40 different types of pizza. And it's like, okay, great. But I went once, I had an experience of getting possibly 40 pizzas, and also, like, a really bad evening in the bathroom, so I'm not going to go back. It's I'm good. So they've lost a customer, and they've lost someone because I didn't have a good experience, not just from the customer experience, but in this case, it's the actual quality of this service, or, in this case, the product that I'm eating.

Speaker 2  13:35  
Well, that's a great point. And I just did a keynote in China, brag, brag a couple weeks ago in Shanghai, and it was, it was great, but the point that I talked about is how many sales it should have been yours walked out your front doors empty handed to a competitor, yep. And did your crew care that happened? Because that's what doesn't show up on a profit loss statement. It shows up when you notice the number of bags walking out of the store, and when that suddenly hits, and you're like, Wow, we had 100 people walk in here. And industry average is about 13% it's it's low, right? But if it's down in like, the sevens and eights, you have two choices. It's the economy Bob, you know, this economy, everybody's pulling back. Oh, right. Everybody's pulling back. Why doesn't that sound right? Or it's going to go to the other side, which is, well, you know, we're, we're, we're launching a new marketing campaign. And you're like, yeah, there's a third alternative here. Kids like, we suck at selling our merchandise, and what's happened is we've made our stores into a website, basically, where we're expecting the customers to walk in and go buy now, and that's never worked. And you know, I got the highest increase of sales South Coast Plaza, number one mall in the world. And when the owner came down to give me a word, he said. Said, Hey, what the hell are you doing here? You're beating the pants off of Nordstrom and Tiffany's everybody else, and you're selling cowboy clothes. And I said, doesn't matter what I sell, it matters how I sell. Oh, and Those all sound like, you know, I got them off of AI, but it's true, because it's really that simple, you know, I think guys like us always are gonna have a sales ability to talk about sales, because it's never ending topic. If you really understand it, all you can talk about is one sale, right? That one sale. So a quick story that I tell? Can I tell you a quick story? Of course, you can tell it is, it's the I teach this whole process of how we communicate with you're still there, right? Oh yeah, I'm letting you tell your story, because suddenly I lost you. So how we communicate with people is how we have to build rapport to earn the right to sell the merchandise. So week before Christmas, cowboy clothes, South Coast Plaza, and I'm turning the key to open this giant gate, and really beautiful store. And there's a guy waiting all the way on the other end, and he's in a nice goat skin jacket. And if you sell clothes, you know what leathers look like, and goat skin looks like plastic at first. Gets older, gets these little cool wrinkles. It's amazing. And so it's like, Aha, I know what I'm going to talk to talk to this guy about. So I go to open I go, good morning. Feel free to look around while I get the lights on. I'll be right back. It was great. And I come out, and he's looking at a pair of toying 54 I don't know why I remember this after 40 years, but I do, and about 150 bucks, and he's looking at the boots. And I just go, that's a nice go skin jacket you got on. Was that a gift? Did you buy it for yourself? I said. He said, Oh, I bought it for myself. I said, it's always nice. Treat yourself. I just hit gold. True story 10 years in a row. I bought this Scully but I still had it on. I bought the Scully jacket yesterday. What are you celebrating? And he said, Well, the book that I wrote just got optioned for a movie. Have you ever heard of The Hunt for Red October? My name is Tom Clancy. It's like, okay, I'm familiar. And he bought $1,000 pair of ostrich boots for me. He paid cash. You think I would have had any idea this guy was standing for me? No. And he came back several times. He was pretty big in the 80s. He came back several times to celebrate because I was his store. So that little moment, that little moment that I said, I got to get this guy, I've got to find a way in is applicable in that store. Now, yes, I can say, well, this also shows up other places, but each sale is individual, and so, yeah, it's nice to have celebrities, and there's other times it goes seriously wrong with Chris Christofferson and other people, but in that moment, we try to connect those dots. And I think that's what makes people who've been in sales a while valuable, because they see the patterns. It's like, Oh, I see what I didn't do there. They aren't trying to nitpick. They understand, yeah, I was in too much a hurry. I didn't listen to her. I didn't do this. Instead of blaming the customer. Well, right

Brian Nichols  18:12  
your timing, mentioning pattern recognition is actually right on, right on cue, because we just had last week. He's a businessman, Todd Hagopian, and he suffers from bipolar disorder, and he just wrote a book about how, in the world of business, neuro divergence can actually become a super weapon. And in the neuro divergent space, pattern recognition is predominantly one of those areas where folks with bipolar disorder or ADHD, they tend to have more success because they can see those patterns more more easily and more effectively. So it's, it's funny, you say that because I've had undiagnosed ADHD for years, and I always had this knack for sales. Because, to your point, I kind of noticed I was, I was noticing patterns, but I never put that into words. So then when I kind of, I realized all that, and then I hear you say, it's like, yep, there it all is that. That's the bow coming together.

Speaker 2  19:12  
That's it. I'm a conductor. I interviewed John Robison with Robeson motor. She's the number one Rolls Royce service shop in probably the United States, and he is ADHD, and he one of his New York Times best selling books is called look me in the eye. That's they told him when he was a kid. It's the worst thing you say to someone who is like that, because they don't want to look you in the eye. And he said, We gave up on this whole group of people, and said, You're other, you're nothing. And he said, and yet, the people Manhattan Project, yeah, on the spectrum, he said, The fact, the way I see in pictures is like conductors. I said, Well, I'm a conductor. And he goes, Oh, well, you listen to music different. I said, I do. He goes, Yeah, that's why you're a conductor. And so that whole, I love the idea that we are talking about neuro do. Version, because all of them are necessary, and that crap that we were told about people different than us, and you know, there are good and bad people, and you realize we just gave up on so much learning out there and so much compassion, and more importantly, we could be so much farther along and go like, Oh, that's your gift. That's not my gift. But great. How do I learn that? To your point?

Brian Nichols  20:24  
And I think the other part too, is not, it's like not taking things that we don't necessarily view as gifts immediately and just being like, bad, go into your closet, don't come out, like, that's not, that's not by that's not a sexual reference. That's like, a true thing, right? Like, we're not talking about that, that closet, but like in general, when you're when you're going through and you're trying to almost hide what you've like, what your superpower is, because you feel uncomfortable, right? I have found that when I know somebody else kind of has that hidden superpower, I don't want in the closet. I want it front, like full like out there. I want them to leverage that, because that is what makes them unique. That's what makes them special. Like, don't, don't hide that. Like, bring that forward, leverage that in your every single day life, wherever you can. And there's going to be areas where you're not strong. And I guess that's the other part, is having that, that awareness of this is where I'm good. This is my superpower. But also I understand that with with this power comes great responsibility, and that is, I'm not good in these other areas. I'm not good at keeping, like, organization. Thank God, my wife is right. But like, that's, that's an area where I've always struggled. And to know, though, that like, it's okay, don't try to necessarily get really good at something. I'm not outsource where I can to areas and others that they can do better than I'm going to be able to do.

Speaker 2  21:49  
Yeah, no, I'm right with you. And that's, I think, the key to all of it, which is you're always trying to get better. Who, no matter what your skill sets or whatever, you're always trying to think of what can I be doing differently better? And I think that's the difference with sales people that we look at cause and effect, then we try to infer what happened, but we never really know. I mean, even if you were interviews, you know, if I was to have you in my store, let's say, and you didn't buy, and somebody walked outside and said, So tell me why didn't you buy? Like, Oh, I the price was too high or something. It's like, was that the real reason? Like, they don't really know. Even when you ask people in surveys, like, I would never have a guy who wore a floral shirt wait on me and in in Nordstrom, and then they're in the store and they're working with a guy in floral shirts and, like, you know, shirt? No. So I think we're always trying to find what that we infer those reasons are both for the customer and sales people. But that's the game. Is your is your at least trying to do that instead of just saying, Nope, all their fault. They're all losers. I'm wonderful. Like, that's how you get out of relationships quick. That's how you get out of learning. That's how you get fired pretty quick, because you got to learn in life, it's about making somebody else's date before they're going to make yours, right? Preach.

Brian Nichols  23:07  
Now, Bob, I know we're getting short on time here, but I do want to go back to one thing you brought up earlier, and that is really, you said laser focusing, right? Like finding that specific type of buyer we taught. We call this in the business world our IP our ideal customer persona, right? I have, I have my model of finding who that is, and I call it building your gym, and that is like, who like? Imagine Jim just walking to your store. He is the perfect customer. What does Jim think? What does Jim look like? What does like? What does Jim do for work like, all those kind of demographics, psychographics, all those kind of things. Who is Jim? That's how whenever I would work with businesses, we would map out who their ideal customer personas were. But what have you found to be the most effective way to figure out who that hyper specific niche group of target customers should be?

Speaker 2  23:56  
Well, that's actually easy. People who've given me money in the past, I tried to find more of them like that. That's my first but you know, as you're saying that, all I keep thinking about is you sound like you're doing the homework as an actor and actress, because that's what they have to do, is understand who this, this person is. And then once you

Brian Nichols  24:12  
understand that, by the way, that's where it came from, because I used to do theater back in the day, and

Speaker 2  24:16  
that's exactly what I would do. So yeah, but that, but it is the right way. Because, you know, invariably, I'll do a business consultation, and I'll say, so tell me your customers, like our customers, everyone. They're young, they're older men. They're gay, straight, old, young, tall, short, black, brown, you name it. There's like, No, they aren't look in your parking lot. They're Volvos and they're Audi's. They are not everyone dude, like, really and you, and once you open their eyes to it's like, oh, and yet, you're marketing to them, like they're Volvos and Pintos, like it's not that customer. So I think a lot of times that reality check of who's giving you money. And again, in retail, I think it's the easiest thing is look at your parking lot. Up. You know, it was interesting when this might be a sideboard, but I don't think so. So I was sharing a plane ride with a guy who is the lead man for the real estate for McDonald's. And I said, So what's the secret to getting a great location? He goes, Oh, it's not a secret. It's pretty easy. I go, what's that? He goes, I drive around the neighborhood on trash day. I'm like, and you want to finish that thought? And he says, I want to see how many homes there are actually people living there, because if they aren't, they're probably not going to be a full neighborhood for us. Like, wow. So he's looking at behavior from a different way as well, but it's still trying to figure that out. So for me, you know, my I built my whole brand that I wanted to be the brand that people came to for the solution, right? So it fits in really, fit in really well for SEO. And I got to be, I got to tell you, I was gratified today. One of my number one sales are actually my online retail sales training clients. She just sent me a text like, I don't know, a half hour ago. And she said, You won't believe what just showed up. When I asked AI about my 2620 26 marketing program. And she showed me the screenshot, and you should be speaking to Bob fibs, the retail doctor number one in retail sales and marketing, I'm like, and it just went on like, he talked about this. This is what you're looking for. This is the guy. And the guy I should send, I should send her a bill and say, like, So how much are you going to pay me for this?

Brian Nichols  26:31  
Yeah, no. Kid, well, that's a cool thing though, getting into the AIS, but

Speaker 2  26:35  
it's still that idea of being that resource. No matter what you're selling. You want to be that resource that people come to and say, like, can you help me figure this out, even if you may not be the guy or gal that trust level is that he's not going to steer me wrong, she's not going to steer me wrong. That's what we're that's really all you have in a business. I think,

Brian Nichols  26:52  
yeah, no, I do really quick want to go back to the line you said about like, looking in your parking lot. I remember this being posted, and I had to quickly find it. Here. Let me share this screen. I saw this when Lamborghini said we don't do commercials because our target audience isn't sitting around watching TV. That hit me, right? I remember reading that, and I just It struck me funny, because that is exactly it like. Stop chasing who you think your customer is, and start looking at who your actual customer is not to make this political, but I've worked with some political organizations in the past, and I hear this quite a bit, where they have, I call it when I'm working with political organizations, their IP their ideal voter persona, and I'll hear them, they'll articulate like, you know, I see my voter persona being like this, you Know, hoity toity, person with thick, grim glasses in New York City, drinking like, their $32 latte, you know, in a Starbucks. And like, This is who they think that is. And then I'm like, your actual voter is, like, Bill The Cable Guy, like, that's who it is. And when you see that, and you kind of see like the Oh no, that's not who I want to vote for me. It's like, no. That's who is, though, and you have to address that. That's who your actual voter is, that you need to be talking to go ahead

Speaker 2  28:08  
and something you're saying is resonating with those people. So isn't that great, right? Because for whatever weird interpretation you have, you've got your ego wrapped up in this instead of in the reality. Because that's a very good point. Sometimes we think we know what our customers are and are like, and it can be a bit of a chainsaw to your ego, but you just start from there and go, Thank gosh I have that information. Isn't that nice right at home?

Brian Nichols  28:36  
Like I started my show being much more political in nature, and then as I started to look at the numbers, I was having lots of entrepreneurs and business folks in my audience, and they were asking a lot more business oriented questions. So that's why we ended up changing the show much more focused on taking some of the business tools and then the strategies and the approaches we see work in that space, and bring it to the world of politics, and then say, how do we we help solve the problems we see through the political process, or even outside the political process, by building solutions in the free market, in the private sector, that help answer the call, right? They help solve those problems by just inherently being a solution that was built by some somebody who said, Hey, I think we could do x better. And then they work with the team to help promote that. It's funny. I'm right now. I'm actually listening to the the audio book of Steve Jobs is biography, and that's kind of the manifestation of the Apple Computer, right? And the Macintosh, and I think it was called a Oh goodness. Is named after his daughter. Was like, Lucy, I think was the other name of the computer. But, like that was the idea was, every single time was saying, this could be done better. Let's try to do X. And that's where Apple turned into the apple that we all know and love for the most part today. But anyways, Bob, I looked at the time. I know we're already getting hard pressed for time, so I would be remiss if I did not give you the final words. So here's what I'd love. Just selfishly, is if you could give any small business owners out there who are listening today just kind of a quick 32nd elevator pitch like, Hey, here's what I would say to do just today, right? Kind of like a temperature check, and if you see this, give me the retail Docker call.

Speaker 2  30:20  
Oh my gosh. Well, I would start off by with your political background there. I would say the way to success is we're more alike than different, and I don't give a crap what side you're on. We got to get over this, and it starts in the small conversations on the sales floor. Unless you're willing to open your heart to another human being, you're going to be in trouble, and we're going to be in trouble as a country if we don't solve this. And retail is a great way to bring people together. I would say, if you were noticing that your KPIs are down, the number of items going out the the average sale, if your average sale is going down, I would say, if you were freaked out about the economy, and you're getting on your chat bots and talking to people in your industry, and say how it sucks to you become the Lamborghini and stop listening to it because there's a trite little comment, oh, there's a recession. We decide we're not going to participate at No, it's not like that. It's much harder. It's like, get your butt up at five o'clock and go to the gym and meditate and get your head every day in a better place than picking up the news and who's not ready for me more, because we used to say sex sells, but it's rage that sells more now. And the problem is, you bring all that baggage into your business. It makes it really hard to say we're just alike. So that's my thing. Is mindset is going to be the determining factor of how well you succeed in life. Because either you know the thing that we forget we were in high school, she could have said yes, and she could have said no, but we made these judgments of what right and wrong was going to happen. We thought we were omniscient. That never was true. You never know what the best thing that could happen for you unless you start planning for it. So that's my point, is get your head in the right game, and every day just try to do something better. But never forget, the customer is the one who ultimately decides how relevant you are, and if you fail with one, the good news is we got another one to start with retail doc.com, R, E, B, A, R, L, D, O, c.com, and check me out, check out my blog, check out my two podcasts. Tell me something great about retail, and you can follow me on LinkedIn with my 400,000 other followers, and hopefully you'll find some you'll find something there to keep you going and to kick you in the butt, because too many people are looking for easy answers and it's all gray. You just got to work at it.

Brian Nichols  32:32  
There you go. Well, I am really looking forward to airing this conversation, so Bob, by the way, heads up, I'm going to co air this on both the Brian Nichols show as well as CX without the BS. I know what we talked about, like customer experience for how. No, that's a good thing. I like that because people forget, like people in the world of politics and such, they also forget that your customer is like, in this case, your voter, right? And you have to understand who that customer is, who that voter is, and make sure that you're actually answering what they need. So, you know, it goes into the customer experience. It goes into that customer journey. So, yeah, I'm glad we talked about it, because it all, it all kind of, you know, it rhymes at same church, different pew, but Bob, thank you for joining us today. I really enjoyed the conversation, folks. If you enjoyed the conversation, please do me a favor. Go ahead and give it a share. When you do, please go ahead and tag. Yours truly. You can find me at B Nichols liberty, on X, on Facebook, on Instagram. As for the show, you can find the Brian Nichols show over on your favorite podcasting platforms and video platforms like YouTube, Rumble Apple podcast, Spotify, YouTube, music and more. Just do me a favor. Hit subscribe. Hit that little notification bell. And by the way, every Monday, Thursday and Friday nights, 9pm Eastern, we have a brand new show hitting your your new or I guess, your news feed, your podcast feed, your RSS feed, everywhere it hits. So make sure you hit that subscribe button so you miss a brand new episode when they go live. Bob, any final words before we say goodbye today,

Unknown Speaker  33:54  
go to retail doc.com and buy my stuff.

Brian Nichols  33:57  
There you go. Retail doc.com, we'll include those links in the show notes. But that being said, Brian Nichols, signing off here on the Brian Nichols show. Nichols show for Bob fibs, we'll see you next time.

Disembodied Voice of Matt Ultan, Vocal Artist Extraordinaire  34:06  
Thanks for listening to the Brian Nichols show. Find more episodes at Brian Nichols show.com. You.

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