By Will Hanke
5
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The podcast currently has 43 episodes available.
Marketing Panes is a monthly podcast of marketing interviews like this one. Click here to subscribe on iTunes.
In this episode of Marketing Panes, host Will Hanke discusses the current state of the window treatment and awning industry with guests Mike Lewis from AAA Awnings and Jessica Harling from Behind the Design. The conversation covers market trends, technology innovations, and hiring challenges in Q4 2024.
Mike Lewis notes a significant change in their customer base:
“We’ve seen a lot of people go extra luxury and cost really wasn’t a factor… Or the opposite has hit and it’s like, hey, you we have this minimum and it seems like we’re getting a lot of minimum jobs too.”
This polarization of the market presents both challenges and opportunities for window treatment businesses.
Election Year Impact
The upcoming election is affecting consumer behavior. Mike explains:
“This happens every four years for us. Honestly, it’s election year and that’s is always a big thing and you know money trickles downhill.”
Opportunities in the Luxury Market
Jessica Harling emphasizes the importance of networking in the luxury market:
“You have to go where they live… Whether that is being on a board or going to a charity event or whatever, you just have to go where they live and literally network with them.”
Smart Home Integration
The podcast highlights the increasing importance of smart home technology in the window treatment industry. Features like motorization, solar panels, and integration with voice assistants are becoming standard expectations for many customers.
Innovations from Sun Shading Expo
Mike shares an interesting innovation he saw at the expo:
“There was a retractable awning company that will still are retractable awning that we have puts lights in there. They’re actually integrated in it’s not an aftermarket thing.”
This kind of integration showcases how the industry is evolving to meet customer demands for both functionality and aesthetics.
Changing Perspective on Hiring
Jessica challenges the common notion that it’s hard to find installers:
“It is not hard to find installers. It is hard to find what is the expectation in your head of a perfect installer. You have to train them.”
Importance of Training
Both guests emphasize the crucial role of ongoing training. Mike shares:
“Training them after, basically we always say after a year is when you should probably stop making mistakes, right? But it takes a long time to really get there.”
As the industry prepares for 2025, both guests are focusing on growth and preparation. Mike is expecting a “good bounce back” and is focusing on SEO to prepare for increased demand. Jessica is planning group workshops across the country to provide training on products, sales, and customer service.
The window treatment and awning industry is evolving rapidly, with shifts in customer demographics, technological advancements, and ongoing challenges in hiring and training. By staying informed about these trends and adapting strategies accordingly, businesses can position themselves for success in the coming year.
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Are you looking to improve your window treatment business’s online presence? At Window Treatment Marketing Pros, we specialize in digital marketing strategies tailored for the industry. Contact us today to learn how we can help you reach more customers and grow your business.
Marketing Panes is a monthly podcast of marketing interviews like this one. Click here to subscribe on iTunes.
LuAnn Nigara is a dynamic media personality, keynote speaker and seasoned entrepreneur, best known as an original founder of Window Works in Livingston, New Jersey, and current co-owner of Exciting Windows. She is the host of the top rated podcast, A Well Designed Business, and the founder of LuAnn Nigara Inc., which supports creative entrepreneurs through live events. Luann University and coaching. Luann’s newest podcast, Window Treatments for Profit, focuses on the custom window treatment industry. She serves on the National Board of the Window Coverings Association of America and regularly contributes to industry publications.
To learn more about LuAnn Nigara visit:
https://luannnigara.com/
pssst…. want to be a guest on the show?
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Will Hanke – WTMP (00:00)
All right, hey everyone, welcome to another episode of Marketing Panes where we dive deep into marketing strategies and tools that drive success in the window treatment and awning industries. Today, I’m excited to have LuAnn Magara with us, a true expert in the window treatment field. So LuAnn, thank you so much for jumping on today. I really do appreciate it.
LuAnn Nigara (00:25)
my goodness, Will, I’m so happy to be here with you. Thank you.
Will Hanke – WTMP (00:27)
Yeah, yeah. So let me read your bio so we know who you are. LuAnn Nigara is a dynamic media personality, keynote speaker and seasoned entrepreneur, best known as an original founder of Window Works in Livingston, New Jersey, and current co -owner of Exciting Windows. She is the host of the top rated podcast, A Well Designed Business, and the founder of LuAnn Nigara Inc., which supports creative entrepreneurs through live events.
Luann University, which we’ll talk a little bit more about later, and coaching. Luann’s newest podcast, Window Treatments for Profit, focuses on the custom window treatment industry. She serves on the National Board of the Window Coverings Association of America and regularly contributes to industry publications. That’s pretty awesome, pretty impressive, quite honestly.
LuAnn Nigara (01:19)
Sounds good, doesn’t it?
Will Hanke – WTMP (01:22)
Yeah, that sounds great. Yeah. So thanks so much for being on. Right, right. Yeah. Yeah, we can always make something that sounds really good about ourselves. So give me a little background about how you got into the window treatment world.
LuAnn Nigara (01:24)
We all sound better in print, don’t we?
Well, I met a man that I fell in love with. His name was Vin Nigara. And he had just opened Window Works about six months prior. And I actually had met him when we were dating. And at one point during our dating, he opened Window Works. And about six months after him opening Window Works, I found myself in a job that I hated.
Will Hanke – WTMP (01:42)
Yeah.
LuAnn Nigara (02:03)
And of course we’re going out for our dinner dates and so forth and I’m complaining, blah, blah, blah. And he’s like, what do you want to do? And I’m like, I got to get back into sales. I have to get back into sales. This is driving me crazy, know, blah, blah, blah. And he’s like, well, I started this window treatment company. Like if you want to do that for a little bit until you find something else, you could do that. And I’m like, what are window treatments? You know? And so he said, well, you know, back then in 1982, was
Will Hanke – WTMP (02:27)
you
LuAnn Nigara (02:32)
Verisols, Levolor mini -blinds, and Luverdrape verticals. And I said to him, sure, you know what? I mean, I could sell water to a fish, let’s go. And so that was, like I said, in 1982. if I met him and he was selling IBM computers, I would probably have a podcast now that services IBM computer industry. But that’s how it was. I I joined the company and
Will Hanke – WTMP (02:53)
You
That’s great.
LuAnn Nigara (03:01)
really, really enjoyed it. And of course, together, Vinnie and myself and our cousin Bill grew the company up to four plus million dollars over the four decades. And that’s the start of it, though.
Will Hanke – WTMP (03:13)
Wow, congratulations. That’s pretty impressive though. I love that. I love that you stumbled into it as of a lot of people do in the industry, right?
LuAnn Nigara (03:20)
Right, it’s so true. I don’t know anybody that grew up saying, I can’t wait to grow up and sell blinds. We all just get here some crazy way, right? Lots of people like, they have a passion for sewing and they were selling window treatments for their friends and their neighbors or others like this, their husband, wife, mother, brother, sister was doing it or they started out installing it when they were in high school. You know, it’s crazy, but.
Will Hanke – WTMP (03:22)
Yeah.
Right.
LuAnn Nigara (03:48)
It sure is a mishmash of ways that we all get here, but it’s fun, right?
Will Hanke – WTMP (03:52)
It is a lot of fun. Yeah, a lot different. And I still get the same kind of questions. You do what for who? Right? That’s a thing.
LuAnn Nigara (03:59)
It’s a very tight niche, right?
Will Hanke – WTMP (04:04)
Yeah, yeah, it is. So thank you. Thank you for that. You’ve got quite a resume. I’d like to just jump in a couple different main topics today while I’ve got your time, if that’s OK. Leadership and training, I know you know a lot about that. Talk a little bit about sales, since that’s really what your bread and butter is. And then if we have time, scaling window treatment business, I’d love to hear kind of your overview thoughts on that.
and then any trends. I’d like to get into anything that you’re seeing in the world. But let’s start out with leadership. What kind of qualities do you believe are essential for somebody who wants to run a window treatment business? What kind of qualities do they really need to have?
LuAnn Nigara (04:36)
Okay. Sure.
You know, it’s funny because most of us start out as the chief cook, bottle maker, and all the things, right? So I think that to actually run a window treatment company, you obviously need your core skill set. You need to know your product. You need to know how to install it, possibly if you’re going to be the installer. You need to know how to sell it if you’re going to be the salesperson. But I think what happens is
the leadership that’s necessary to run a owner -operator type company, right? So owner -operator is I’m the owner, I’m also the salesperson, or I’m the owner, I’m also the installer, I’m the owner, I’m the admin, and maybe I’ve got a salesperson installer, but the owner is a true operator in the business. I think that is a little bit more of grit, not taking no for an answer.
Will Hanke – WTMP (05:35)
Yeah.
LuAnn Nigara (05:47)
willing to do whatever it takes to get it done. And I think most of us that start a business have that. But what happens is, as we grow our business a little bit, and we are managing somebody other than our one or two employees or our partner or a family member or whatever it might be, now that’s when leadership needs to really…
That’s when you have to be a self -aware person. You have to, as a leader, think you have to know yourself very well and know what your strengths are. But more importantly, you need to know your gaps. You need to know your weaknesses because a strong leader is going to hire for their gaps and not be intimidated that the other person has superpowers different than yours. A leader needs to appreciate that the leader’s job is to put…
Will Hanke – WTMP (06:34)
Right.
LuAnn Nigara (06:39)
all of the right people in each of the needed seats and not get hung up on the names of who those people are in the seats, but the right personalities, the right skill sets in those seats. And then with grace and humility, lead that team to success. And that then becomes the juggling act of managing and communicating and having
a thorough training process and a support process and really taking the time to understand the different people that work for you and understanding that, you know, one person might be motivated by sales and reward of money. Another person might be motivated by recognition and a pat on the back. Another person might be motivated by perks and days off. And I think leaders who forget that, that just remember what it took
Will Hanke – WTMP (07:18)
you
Mm
LuAnn Nigara (07:36)
for them to get out of bed in the morning, which was a carrot at the end of a stick, and I’m gonna go get it. The mistake that the emerging leader can make is not really, number one, finding the right people to compliment them, but then number two, understanding the fact that they are different, they’ll have different motivators, and if you ignore that and don’t delve into it, you’ll constantly struggle to find a team that marches in harmony, because you’re not really,
speaking to them as individuals. You need to run the team as a unit, but it runs as a unit when everybody individually knows their goal and feels invested in the goal and feels rewarded for their part in getting to the goal. I mean, there’s 16 ,000 books on it, but that’s like a synopsis in my mind, I think.
Will Hanke – WTMP (08:20)
Right. Right.
Yeah, you know, for the first 15, 17 years of my business, I knew somebody who was a John Maxwell expert and they’re the certified coach and they did the disc profiles and all that kind of stuff, right? But I didn’t get it. And one day I was like, personalities, different personalities, you treat them different ways. And it really just opens up the world like I’m horrible at follow through.
LuAnn Nigara (08:36)
cool.
Yes.
Yes.
Will Hanke – WTMP (08:53)
very low on that scale, but I’m a quick start. I can get stuff going and push it down the line and then I don’t know what happens. But understanding that there are other people that have that follow through that can help me pull up that slack and complete the job.
LuAnn Nigara (08:56)
Yes. Yes.
You’re so right. And so many of us that start companies, we are more that person. Quick start, let’s go. We got it. We’ll get it done. And then it’s all of a sudden, like, who’s doing all the details? And I remember in the beginning of our career, in my 20s, when I would interview people for the role of, say, office administrator, I remember so often making the mistake of, in the interview process,
tossing back the people who were more quiet, that weren’t as gregarious, that were more thoughtful, that it took them longer to respond because it’s not my groove. Like I walk fast, talk fast, do things fast. And when you then hire somebody who’s like you, I was learning, I got somebody like me. And the thing is, that’s the mistake of the beginning mistakes of leadership. It wasn’t like I had the
Will Hanke – WTMP (09:55)
you
LuAnn Nigara (10:04)
wherewithal as a young leader to be saying to myself, you hired somebody very much like yourself, LuAnn. This is a sales personality. This is an outgoing personality. No wonder they’re not doing the details in the office. I would just be like, I don’t understand why you don’t do the details. I don’t understand why you don’t get the orders done. I don’t understand why you’re not checking confirmations. And then as you said, you get exposed through different things. You’re like, I actually want that quiet contemplative person that takes their time, that reads through things.
Will Hanke – WTMP (10:30)
Right.
LuAnn Nigara (10:34)
and we give them the question slow and easy and we wait for the answer, but when we leave the room, they get all the work done that we don’t have the skill set to do. So that’s a perfect example, Will, that you brought up of that, totally.
Will Hanke – WTMP (10:42)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, I couldn’t believe all the years I went through being a business owner and not getting that, you know, especially when I would see presentations by this lady and all that stuff. yeah, that’s real nice. You know, but eventually it clicked. So the other thing you mentioned is right person, right seat. I don’t know if you’re familiar with EOS, but that’s a big that’s a big EOS thing is right person, right seat. It’s more about the seat than it is the name, as you mentioned.
LuAnn Nigara (11:03)
It’s true.
Yeah. yeah. yeah. Yeah.
That’s right. That’s right. That’s right. That’s right. And that’s also a tough thing to break as an emerging leader. You have a person that’s a great person, reliable person. You’re like, well, of course they can do that. It’s like, that’s not really what they’re good at. What do we need done then find the person to do that, right? So these are all the things we learn the hard way. But maybe younger leaders will listen to us, Will, and they don’t have to make these mistakes.
Will Hanke – WTMP (11:17)
in hiring.
It is. Maybe, maybe, maybe. Yeah. So let’s talk a little bit about training. You mentioned training. How important is continuous training and development for the staff once you’ve kind of come to that point where you’ve got people under your leadership and they need to continually be doing stuff for you?
LuAnn Nigara (11:42)
You
Yeah, I think it’s critical. mean, it’s so funny because everything I know about this I’ve learned from my cousin Eileen Hahn, who is a leadership expert and organizational behavioral expert and also our very own window treatment, Jessica Harling from Behind the Design. These two ladies, yeah, these two ladies are absolutely brilliant at helping us out here develop the training programs that
Will Hanke – WTMP (12:17)
yeah.
LuAnn Nigara (12:31)
truly enable the people who work for us to be their best, to show up as their best, and to be supported in doing that. And I know that both Jessica and Eileen are consistently stressing that we need to do weekly stand -up meetings with each person, and the 90 -day meetings, and the yearly meetings. And I also know from experience that many of us small business owners skip this step.
And I can tell you over the years we’ve been good and bad at it. I know Vinny from the very beginning always had team meetings with us, so he built that in. But the individual employee meetings when we started to grow beyond our core, you me, Vin, and Bill, they, you know, it’s a slippery slope. You get busy and it goes by the wayside. But when we intentionally have brought them back over, you know, many years at this point, they pay dividends.
And so you can invest in your team by sending them to the Sunshade Expo or the IWCE or a lot of times people will join exciting windows, art organization and they are salespeople. train them every month. I do trainings with the salespeople and stuff. And you can do it that way, but you also can invest in your team and training them as individuals just by having half hour weekly conversations with them.
You have so much knowledge in your head of the things that you’ve done that a simple conversation about their last sales appointment or their last installation actually impacts them in both an educational way, but also in that personal pouring into them way that they feel like they are on the same team as you and working towards the same goal. So constant training and development and then training and development for you as a leader.
Will Hanke – WTMP (14:22)
Yeah. Yeah.
LuAnn Nigara (14:27)
I mean, come on, it gets harder. The more years you’re in business, the bigger your business grows, the more complicated it gets. And you know, the stakes are higher. So you really do need to always be investing in yourself as well.
Will Hanke – WTMP (14:30)
You
Yeah, great. That was my next question was what about as an owner? What kind of coaching should you seek out? I think it’s one of the best things I ever did was realize that I don’t know at all and that I need somebody to help guide me down the path, hopefully to success, right?
LuAnn Nigara (14:58)
Yes, yeah. I mean, that’s our whole mission at Exciting Windows is helping window treatment professionals build a better business. you know, we have businesses in there that are doing $200 ,000 a year gross revenue to 10, 15, 20, $30 million a year. there’s we have workrooms, we have retailers, we have, you know, you know, all the things, it’s all the different business models. And it is
It is so enlightening when you get to spend quality time with someone that is two steps ahead of you on the path. So if your business is doing $500 ,000 a year and you’ll have a goal to hit $750 ,000, to be able to spend quality time with somebody that’s at $750 or a million, or I remember when we joined Exciting Windows, we were doing $1 .8, and the conversations that we were having with the businesses that were already involved, I think of Galaxy Drive.
Draperies and Rick Baker who was hitting three at that point and it was like wow everything he’s going through we’re about to hit and So that you don’t know at you don’t know what you don’t know that take that to the bank you don’t know what you don’t know and Why invent the wheel when you can invest in yourself with coaching or through the different? Things that are available in the industry to like, you
cut the line and go to the head of the class. You know I’m saying?
Will Hanke – WTMP (16:22)
Yeah, for sure. And a lot of times they’ll have resources for you and things. I’ve done that. I know how to do that. Just go do this. So it saves on the research side too of how in the world do I solve this problem? You’ve got a coach or somebody to help you through it.
LuAnn Nigara (16:36)
Exactly.
Exactly. 100%.
Will Hanke – WTMP (16:37)
I love that. That’s awesome. Yeah. What are your thoughts on weekly meetings with like your sales team around like going through the leads? Hey, let’s look at these different leads. Why did we get this one? Why did we lose this one? What do you think about that?
LuAnn Nigara (16:56)
100%. yeah, we have standing Monday meetings. First is the team meeting. I’m no longer an owner of Window Works, but Vin and I kind of hover as chairmen of the board. And so I still continue to attend the Monday morning team meeting and then the Monday morning sales meeting that follows that immediately after the team meeting. And it’s exactly what it is. It’s we are going back two weeks and we’re every single lead you’ve been on, sold, problem, issue.
Will Hanke – WTMP (17:20)
you
LuAnn Nigara (17:25)
something that went good, something you need help with. We’re looking ahead at the next week, what’s on the plate, what do you’ve got. Every single Monday, we are reviewing our company sales to date versus last year. At that point, we are reviewing our company month to date sales versus the goal for that month versus where we were last year at that point. And we are personally reviewing each salesperson’s
sales to date versus their goal for the year and versus where they were last year at the same point. And so it’s a constant reset and re -evaluation. And I have to tell you, we’ve had on more than one occasion remarkable things by our salespeople that have happened just because of this meeting. So I can recall
It was, don’t know, I’m so bad at numbers, but let’s just see if I can try it. So let’s say it was probably in May and we were at a sales meeting. It was the last Monday of the month. So whatever month it was, it was the last Monday of the month and we had five selling days left because we don’t work on Saturday and Sunday. And the following Monday, whatever it was, started a new month. And we were…
something like 160 ,000 under goal with five selling days left. And we’re all like, whoa. Right? Like the whole sales team is like, what you talking about? Well, it’s like, right? And so I know how we’ve overcome this in past years. And I said, okay, okay, time out, time out. Let’s just take five into 160 ,000. And of course there’s a number. You don’t think I know it, right?
Will Hanke – WTMP (18:52)
Okay.
LuAnn Nigara (19:14)
And then I said, now take that number and divide it by the four of you. There’s four of you. And when it came down to it, it was something like each salesperson had to do like $7 ,300 a day for five days in a row to get to that goal. And if you’re trying to add that math up, I made it all up in my head. It’s not going to work. But I’m just saying, ultimately what worked was it was like $7 ,300, $7 ,800 a day. And then…
Will Hanke – WTMP (19:30)
Right.
Thank you.
LuAnn Nigara (19:44)
I didn’t even have to say it. They all were like, that’s like one great sale a day, right? And I’m like, guys, you should be able to go back through your unclosed deals and dig that out of the hat without even a big shovel up the hill, right? And do you know the following Monday we sat there and they killed the goal.
Will Hanke – WTMP (19:50)
Right.
Yeah.
LuAnn Nigara (20:06)
But if you were just like, my God, there’s five days left in the month, we have to hit on your 60 ,000 in sales, we’re never gonna do it. Everybody cry river, call your mama, I don’t know what we’re gonna do, and just go about your day. But now every day, like I’m walking through the building the next day, I’m like, okay, where you at? Did you hit your 73? Then one person like, I hit it. I’m like, that’s great. I did 16, five yesterday, great. Okay, do it again today, blah, blah. And so tracking data, monitoring data, having conversations about data, taking the,
Will Hanke – WTMP (20:28)
you
LuAnn Nigara (20:36)
the boohoo skills about the data out of the room and putting it into a manageable bite -sized chunk that you can handle is all the difference in the world in like going down with the ship or succeeding, right?
Will Hanke – WTMP (20:53)
Yeah, yeah, and you can do this whether you have one salesperson or ten, right? I mean, it doesn’t matter the size of the company. You should still do it.
LuAnn Nigara (21:03)
For many years, I was the primary salesperson at Window Works. We had, in the beginning, three showrooms, and I was the salesperson for one showroom, then I became the salesperson for two showrooms. And when I tell you, literally, just about every morning at breakfast, my beloved husband would say, your sales goal for today is… And almost every night at dinner, he’d say, did you hit your goal, sweetie? You know what I’m saying? I mean, it was just like there was no world.
Will Hanke – WTMP (21:28)
That’s funny.
LuAnn Nigara (21:32)
where we weren’t aware on a daily, weekly, monthly basis what we were going after. Because if you don’t set a sales goal,
You’re not going to get a sales goal. what do you, you know what I mean? Every day is just up for grabs and this was a hard day. I think I’ll pack it in at four. But if your goal is 7 ,300 and you are at zero, you’re not packing it in at four. You’re like, I got two hours left on the day. I got to get stuff done. Right?
Will Hanke – WTMP (21:45)
Yeah.
I love that, yeah. Talking about sales, you’ve kind of transitioned us a little bit into the sales side of things. So what are the key steps in your sale process at Window Works that are the most important?
LuAnn Nigara (22:15)
Well, at Window Works, we follow the Make a Friend seven -step sales process developed by Steve Burston. And that class is now available through Luann University. We also run the class live the day before our CEO conference every fall. And so that is open to any window treatment professional. They can take it through Luann University by Zoom, or they can take it in person when we have our annual CEO conference.
And the whole basis of it, I mean, it’s called the make a friend, you know, seven step sales process. It’s you need to in sales, make a relationship. If you are just getting up and thinking about what’s in it for me, and I’ve got to close this, you know, it’s no, it’s like, you got to figure out what’s the solution for this person. What’s the thing that they really need. And consumers have varying degrees of skill at being able to communicate what their actual needs are. You know, I mean, somebody could tell you,
Will Hanke – WTMP (23:12)
Right?
LuAnn Nigara (23:14)
I need, you all know, you’ve all been there. I need it to be completely room darkening. And then you start having a conversation like, well, I don’t mean it to be that dark. And you’re like, okay, sweetie, room darkening means a thing. Okay. But I mean, you’ve been there when you get to the end of the conversation, you’re like, so you don’t want it to be like I call it Las Vegas dark. You don’t want it to be when you wake up in the morning, you don’t know if it’s two o ‘clock in the morning or two o ‘clock in the afternoon.
no, I like to wake up with the sun. Okay. So then we need like control and we need like dimming, but we don’t need room darkening. And the whole thing about approaching sales from a relationship standpoint is you’re not just coming in the door to sell a product. Somebody asks for room darkening, you bring a room darkening product out of your car, you put it on the table, you measure it, you pick a color and you leave. No, the salesperson that’s going to be effective
and is going to actually drive big numbers and have a good body of work with repeat and referral clients is the salesperson who is what I call not an order taker. It’s, you know what? I appreciate you’ve told me. I don’t say these things out loud to people, but in my brain, I appreciate you told me what you want, but I’m actually here to discover what you want. I’m here. My role is to ask you enough questions, to present enough scenarios to you that
Will Hanke – WTMP (24:35)
Yes.
LuAnn Nigara (24:41)
I ultimately understand your needs so well that now I’m only presenting the options that will meet those needs, that function, design, and price investment need. so sales is a process. It takes time. And if you are phoning it in or trying to be an order taker, you’re going to have a modicum of success, but you’re not going to…
transcend and really build a sales book for yourself with repeat and referral clients that call you for decades.
Will Hanke – WTMP (25:14)
Yeah, what you said is hugely important. I can’t tell you how many years I went through sales. First of all, dreading the idea of being a salesperson in the first place, right? Because I thought I had to be an order taker. If I get on the call with somebody, they have to say yes at the end of it. And that was definitely not the right way to go about it. But it’s the way that I thought sales were for so many years.
LuAnn Nigara (25:26)
You
Yeah, now it’s a discovery process. The best salesperson is a curious, inquisitive person that is trying to truly understand the objectives of their consumer and find the product at the right price point with the right decor aesthetic to fit that need. And when you do that, you write deals. You write business.
Will Hanke – WTMP (26:02)
Yeah, yeah. I love the idea of the make a friend. I did know Steve and he was a dynamic personality in the first place, right? It’s hard for him not to make a friend, I guess.
LuAnn Nigara (26:09)
Yeah.
Ugh. Gosh, right?
Yeah, it’s the truth. It’s the truth. And Jessica Harling, who I mentioned a few moments before, she, I had spent time teaching this Make a Friend seven step course, but now Jessica teaches it for us. And she actually wildly and coincidentally spent the last three to four months right up to Steve’s death last year in 2023 revising
the Make a Friend program. The core is there. The core is exactly what it was, but updating the numbers, making sure that it was appropriate numbers and estimates that we’re using now. And then also, Jessica has expanded and broadened the content to make it appropriate to the interdesign industry as well. But she did it hand in hand and side by side with Steve, which was really very special.
Will Hanke – WTMP (27:11)
Love that Jessica’s been on our show, and we’re actually going to have her back on again to talk about some stuff. So yeah, I love that you guys use her for some of your stuff. She works with a lot of our clients. So let’s talk about objections. What kind of objections do you tend to encounter, and how do you address them and move the sale forward?
LuAnn Nigara (27:17)
good! Yeah…
Yeah. yeah.
So that’s a big question, right? I would say that I think my biggest point of view on objections is that you have to, no matter what the objection is, think the intentional, the professional salesperson understands that the objection is simply indicating to you, you have not finished your job yet.
If you take it under that perspective, then you take all the sting out of it. If you literally, if you have an objection, whether I have to ask my husband or I don’t think the price is right or I don’t care what it is, if your brain says, I haven’t completed my job, I haven’t finished, something is undone here, then you move from
Holy cow, what am I gonna do? This is crazy, I’m pissed and blah, blah to, okay, what’s my step back? Where do I have to go back and regroup? Okay, and the thing is, there’ll be times when you have a clue yourself where you’re like, you know, I feel like we didn’t button it up when we were talking about, you know, the price. Like she agreed to it, but I could kind of see she was a little waffly on it. And so maybe that’s the thing. You know, I always tell salespeople is ask the question.
What exact, you know, people say whatever, you know, it’s, we’re in a conversation. And if we have started it from our very first interaction with the phone call to spending anywhere from the half hour to an hour and a half in their home, you’re entitled to ask a question. So if somebody says,
my goodness, that’s ridiculous. I can’t believe it. That’s so much money. I never thought it was going to be that much money. First of all, in seven step class, we teach you to never hear that sentence. Okay. We teach you how to mitigate and avoid that. But if you do hear it, you’re, know, my always things tell salespeople is just say, that’s interesting. Based on what? Like I didn’t think it was going to be that much money. Okay. Why? Based on what? Well, I mean, I just didn’t.
Okay, so this is just, this is not a real conversation, right? Or, you know, somebody else was out here and they gave me an estimate. Okay, now we’re getting somewhere, right? was that an estimate on the same product and you know, all the things? It absolutely was. Well, I’m gonna, I don’t know, you know, Will, I sold window treatments for 40 years. I’m gonna tell you what, if 20 times somebody told me they had an estimate for the exact same products, exact same things that was lower,
Will Hanke – WTMP (29:47)
you
LuAnn Nigara (30:17)
I’m gonna tell you maybe two times at a 20, it actually was an apples and apples quote and lower 98 % of the time. It is not, it is, I had somebody recently, I actually had to come out and do some window treatment sales two winters ago, Kimberly our number one inside sales person at Window Works was on maternity leave. And I was like, my God, I gotta like dust off and go do this again, right?
Will Hanke – WTMP (30:24)
Right. Yeah.
Ha
LuAnn Nigara (30:42)
And I had given an entire quote to, for a townhouse locally here, for a designer who then presented it to his client. And he comes back with this crazy email. my goodness, I can’t believe it. I’m so embarrassed. My client’s got a quote. Your quote is $24 ,000. Their quote is more than $5 ,000 less. How could you put me in this position? And I’m like, you know what? Take a chill pill here. Why don’t we just relax for a moment?
Will Hanke – WTMP (31:11)
Yeah.
LuAnn Nigara (31:12)
And so I don’t respond in the email when somebody’s upset. I’m not coming back in an email. So when we talk about objections, this is a huge objection. So I’m picking up the telephone and I’m saying, hey, this doesn’t happen. I’m around the bush a couple of times. We are fair and we’re competitive. You need to get me that quote. And because now I can talk level with him. I’m not talking direct to the consumer, but even to the consumer, I would have said, hey, I understand.
However, we need to verify that it’s apples and apples. The long story short of it is, it was like, you know, how many windows, 16 windows, 10 windows, whatever it was, PowerView. Well, I had quoted Arcatella, PowerView, and all of the windows, now everybody that does window treatment is gonna know what this means. I would tell you 70 % of the windows were the same size and they were 49 inches by 73 inches.
Will Hanke – WTMP (32:11)
Okay.
LuAnn Nigara (32:11)
We all know that that is one inch wider than the inside break and two, you know, one inch longer than the outside break, right? Like the length break. And the other quote was applause. And every window was like 46 by 70 because the homeowner had measured it themselves and given the dimensions to someone over the phone to get the quote. And I just, now,
Will Hanke – WTMP (32:35)
yeah.
LuAnn Nigara (32:41)
That doesn’t mean a lot to people outside of our industry, but everybody listening knows, Architella motorized, to applause, motorized with a width and a length differential on 60 or 70 % of the windows. This is no wonder. So it’s like, my thing is, take your objections, whatever they are, as the opportunity to do more digging. Just stay calm, stay in the moment, stay relaxed.
Stay non -confrontational, stay curious, right? And just say, that’s interesting, help me understand. How could that possibly be? That’s not normal. We’re in business many years. We’re fairly priced. And then ask for the quote. And most people are making it up. They’re making it up. well, I mean, I just did. okay. Well, did you really then? That’s awesome.
Will Hanke – WTMP (33:35)
I remember years ago when I was getting into sales, and of course I was scared to death, right? So somebody had a set of flashcards. And basically it was, the customer says this, reply with this, right? And it was great. At first, I thought this was the greatest thing ever. But what I quickly realized was I was missing the piece about making the friend. And it became more of just a robotic thing.
Most times it just made it worse, right? It wasn’t making the sale any better. Yeah. It was just, this guy’s, this guy’s a robot.
LuAnn Nigara (34:05)
That’s right.
No, you have to listen. You have to listen. Yes, you have to listen. And the thing is, when you’re listening, you’re getting the cues for what the actual pain points are and what their motivators and drivers are. And if you’re too busy getting ready with your next question or your next answer without truly listening to what they’re saying, you’re missing every opportunity that would enable you
to get to a resolution and get to a good sale for that person.
Will Hanke – WTMP (34:42)
Right. Yeah. Yeah. Any good tips on kind of closing the deal, negotiating techniques that maybe have worked well for you?
LuAnn Nigara (34:53)
You know, here’s the biggest one, ask for the money. So many people get up to the point and they don’t ask for the money. Like, how would you like to pay for this? You know, do you want, let’s get this started today. Are you ready to go? I mean, that it sounds simple, but that is, I would tell you, if anybody is, if they are not closing at about 60 % of their leads,
the projects they go on, they probably can raise their closing ratio by eight or 10 points if they just pay attention to how many times they’re like, okay, well, you know, I guess you’ll call me, you’ll let me know, or, you know, if you this or I’ll email you, it’s like, just ask for the check. So, and then negotiation, negotiation is.
Will Hanke – WTMP (35:30)
you
you
LuAnn Nigara (35:49)
Again, that is a listening process. I have a presentation that I do on successful negotiation. It’s based on my dialogue framework and there’s eight steps to it. You can’t skip any of the steps, but the steps are easy to learn when you think of them as a human. Like to your point, it’s not flashcards, right? You’ve got to at each step engage as a human. And when you’re negotiating with somebody, you’ve got to first hear what they’re saying.
And then you have to reframe and qualify for them. This is what I understood you to say. This is what I understood you to want. Is that correct? And sometimes you’re right. And sometimes you’re like, whoa, I missed it. And then they tell you again. And then you reframe again. And then you’re looking for the meeting ground. You’re looking for the thing that you can both agree on. Sometimes it’s a negotiation of money. A lot of times it’s offering more services.
If I add this to the pot, are we good to go today? If I can also provide this, would you do the project with me today? That sort of thing. We have so many things at our disposal. Offering to do free paper shades. All kinds of that. Offering a free install. Offering an extended warranty. If I put this in. But the thing is, if you’re offering the person
know, free paper shades who just said to you, after we’re done this sales appointment, I’m going to my beach house for a month. Will the shades be ready when I get back? What do they care about paper shades? They don’t care about paper shades. So, but that’s the thing. That’s what’s the one of the places that salespeople will make a mistake is A, not asking directly for the sale, but B, not paying attention.
to what actually is the motivator and the thing that a person wants. So when it comes time to negotiate, you either offer that or you take it away. You say, well, at this price, I was willing to give you that. But if you want me to go to that price, I got to pull that off the table. And if you’re pulling off something off the table that they don’t need, well, then you just gave your price away. But if you’ve been listening and paying attention and you know what they need and you pull it back,
Well, I want that. That’s great. Then let’s go ahead with this agreed upon price. You know what I mean? Look, we negotiate all day long. We negotiate with our kids. We negotiate with our spouses. know, all you got to do is do it with your consumer, with your eaters engaged, and it’s so much easier.
Will Hanke – WTMP (38:18)
Yeah. Yeah. The one thing that I didn’t hear you mention was defaulting straight to discount or a percent off. Right? It sounds like we can add these things on as an additional value add for you if you’re willing to close today versus just defaulting to the passive position of, OK, would you like 10 % off, please? Please take my deal.
LuAnn Nigara (38:28)
forget that. Let’s go.
Yes.
Right. No, yeah. You can count on two hands a number of times, I have taken money off a deal in four decades. And if and when I do, I’m getting something else. I’m getting something else. I’m never just like, you asked for 10 off, okay, you can have it. It’s like, no, we gotta have a conversation about this. have to, even if I’m not getting something else, I have to be able to justify it to them in a way that…
Will Hanke – WTMP (38:54)
Right.
LuAnn Nigara (39:14)
They understand it wasn’t just an arbitrary, I took $1 ,000 off or $100 off or $10 ,000 off because that just leaves such a bad taste. Anytime I’m on the other end of a sales process and somebody easily, quickly will just lower the price, I’m like, wait a minute. So if I didn’t say, but I overpaid, that, I can not stand that. And so it’s, am against
Will Hanke – WTMP (39:34)
Right. Yeah.
LuAnn Nigara (39:43)
discounting in a negotiation as a first level, second level, third level thing because of both things. I’m inherently competitive and I want my dollar, but I also know it just cheapens our reputation and our company for no reason whatsoever and you lose the respect of that consumer. And so those are both very powerful motivators for me to continue to my
Will Hanke – WTMP (40:01)
Thanks.
LuAnn Nigara (40:14)
skill set as a salesperson to do better.
Will Hanke – WTMP (40:17)
Yeah, yeah, I love that. Never devalue yourself for no reason at all, right? That’s silly to do that.
LuAnn Nigara (40:25)
No, because it doesn’t feel good to the other person either. That’s the thing.
Will Hanke – WTMP (40:29)
Right. Yeah. Yeah, definitely they’re going to immediately have a slightly different thought about the service that they’re getting even weeks later at the install. They’re like, well.
LuAnn Nigara (40:38)
Yeah. Yeah. They’re happy about saving the money, but that you’ve just got to ding to your reputation with them. That’s the truth of it.
Will Hanke – WTMP (40:44)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, cool. So I wanna switch gears a little bit and talk about scaling real quick. What advice do you have to owner, business owners that are looking to scale their businesses up? What pitfalls should they be aware of?
LuAnn Nigara (41:02)
Well, here’s the thing. It is an absolute non -negotiable that if you and, first of all, I believe every business should have documented SOPs, but it is a non -negotiable if you expect to scale your business. You must absolutely determine how you do all the things in your business because you don’t think you have a way, but you do.
You do, even if you have been a solo entrepreneur with one person answering your phone and one person installing for you, you have a way that you do it. And the second that you mistake that you’re gonna hire one other salesperson or one other installer to come in and do work with your company and you have not documented your way, you are going to consistently like have these trips and stumbles where
Will Hanke – WTMP (41:38)
All
LuAnn Nigara (41:56)
the other people on your behalf are not going out and behaving and delivering to your consumer what you have set as your standard. We can have 1 ,000 window treatment companies. We can all do it a different way. But within the company, if I have a deliverable of my sales experience or my installation experience, and every installer and every salesperson that works for me has to deliver it the same way. Because if
Sally Smith calls, you know, Bill’s Blinds and they have one experience and then she refers her sister, know, Karen, Sal, whoever, to Bill’s Blinds and she has a different experience. The two sisters are like, what company did you work with? Like, they did great by me. Well, they did horrible. never called me back. You know, and that just messes with your brand. It messes with your profitability. And what happens is,
Will Hanke – WTMP (42:39)
you
LuAnn Nigara (42:52)
Internally, you’re just looking around going, what’s going on? Why is the business not growing? And it’s because you haven’t set the stage for growth with a very thoughtful look at how do you do it. I mean, as simple as how do you answer the phone? Like, that is like the silliest example, but it is so true. Everyone should answer the phone the same way.
Will Hanke – WTMP (43:14)
Yeah.
LuAnn Nigara (43:18)
And I don’t care if you say, hi, it’s Bill’s Blinds. Can I help you? I don’t say it’s Bill’s Blinds, it’s a great day. I don’t care what you say. But if you all answered a different way, that automatically tells me you have no way of doing anything. Because you haven’t sat and figured out what you stand for, how you do it, and how you will deliver your client experience. And so if you want to scale, you got to lock that down.
Will Hanke – WTMP (43:41)
Great example, we had a client who’s one of the salespeople was answering, hello, hello. And that was it. And they’re like, my god.
LuAnn Nigara (43:47)
my God. my God, it’s my pet peeve. my God, that’s my pet peeve. My thing is your name and the company name. You have to say both of them somehow, some way. I can’t stand when I call a company and A, they don’t say their name. So I’m not like, did I dial right? Is this right? And then B, they don’t say their name. I don’t want to say what’s your name because you know what happens when you say what’s your name to somebody?
It sometimes feels aggressive, right? Like when you’re dealing with somebody on the phone and they are like, okay, I’m gonna have Will call you back or whatever like this. If they haven’t shared their name already with me and I go, okay, that’s great, what’s your name? It almost feels like I’m getting your name so if Will doesn’t call me back, I’m telling him you didn’t tell me, right? And it’s like, and that’s not what you want. You just really wanna know who the person is so you can say, I spoke to Sally earlier, Will, she’s great, right?
Will Hanke – WTMP (44:34)
yeah, yeah.
LuAnn Nigara (44:44)
So it’s got it, like it’s such a simple thing, but it is, you can just hit on one of my pet peeves, it makes me crazy.
Will Hanke – WTMP (44:51)
We’ve got a fast food place here in town that does that. pull up and they say, welcome to, I think it’s Culver’s, welcome to Culver’s. This is Sally. How can I help you? You know, something like that. And of course my response is, hey, Sally, I’d like your triple cheese, you know, whatever. But it feels a lot more fruitful just because of that.
LuAnn Nigara (45:03)
Right. Right.
Exactly.
Right. Exactly.
Will Hanke – WTMP (45:14)
Yeah. So how can window treatment companies leverage technology? My favorite thing in the world, right? How can they kind of leverage technology to build those SOPs and some of those things that they now realize they need to do?
LuAnn Nigara (45:29)
Yeah, well, I mean, there’s so much out there, right? So whether, first of all, I think every window treatment company, no matter what size they are, should have some vehicle for capturing their consumer data, right? Some sort of CRM. So whatever you use, I don’t care if you use an Excel spreadsheet, honest to God, I don’t care where your level of tech is.
Of course, I love it better if it is some sort of level of tech that you’re capturing all of the information about your existing consumers, the leads that you didn’t sell, all of that stuff. And then you can then tag and do email marketing through it. All of the things that I know are your superpower because, you need a record. We just had a customer at Window Works today. I walked through to get my lunch out of the refrigerator and Kim says to me, Lou, Patty Ahmad.
Will Hanke – WTMP (45:54)
you
LuAnn Nigara (46:23)
What did you sell her the last time? And I just looked at her, I was like, wait, what? And she said, yeah, she’s on the phone. And she goes, she moved to Colorado and she’s working with one of your exciting Windows members out there. And she just realized they’re coming to see her tomorrow and she wants to know what did you sell her? Now, I’m gonna tell you what, the first time I sold to Patty Ahmaud, she built a house in 1989. Okay, I remember it because my daughter was six months old and her daughter was one month old.
Will Hanke – WTMP (46:46)
OK.
LuAnn Nigara (46:52)
And they ended up, we lived in different towns and 10 years later, we all ended up moving to another town and moving to the same town. And when we moved to that town, she built in that town and we did window treatments there. So she has been my customer since 1989. And the thing was, I said to her, I said, listen, most of the work that she did was sell shades. I said, I think in a family room we did woven woods. I said, we did exterior roller shades.
Will Hanke – WTMP (47:02)
the world.
LuAnn Nigara (47:21)
probably maybe 10 years ago and Kim goes, you know what, let me look it up. And there she goes. She goes into our CRM and she pulls all the orders up. Now, we didn’t have the orders from 1989, not quite as savvy in 1989, but we did have the orders going back as far as like 2005. And so, you know, like your CRM is…
Will Hanke – WTMP (47:32)
All
LuAnn Nigara (47:44)
Look, if you use Solitech to quote and place your orders, I love Ray, love it all day long. These are things that can increase your efficiency. If you’re using ClickUp or monday .com or Airtable, all things that can increase your efficiency. But for me, if you’re not tech savvy, the non -negotiable is some form of a CRM to capture your consumer data and enable you to
continually email and stay in front of them throughout the years.
Will Hanke – WTMP (48:17)
Yeah, yeah, totally agree. One of the big things that helped my business grow was we built a system called lead boomerang and it is a CRM on steroids. It handles the lead, whether they come from a Google My Business or they come from your website or they just used your chat widget, whatever it is, you know, everything goes into this one place. You have one central location to do all that. It’s by far the biggest, most important tool that our clients have.
LuAnn Nigara (48:27)
Mm.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s 2024, folks. It’s non -negotiable.
Will Hanke – WTMP (48:49)
Right? Fair enough. Fair enough.
LuAnn Nigara (48:52)
You know, I’m older than dirt and even I know that.
Will Hanke – WTMP (48:55)
Yeah, yeah. So as we wrap up, thank you again for all of your time that you spent. I really do appreciate it. Wanted to ask you about emerging trends. What are you seeing specifically for our industry? And how can business owners kind of take advantage of these trends?
LuAnn Nigara (49:12)
Well, I have to say, feel like it’s, look, the outdoor space, it’s been on fire since COVID, okay? So I don’t know that I would actually call it so much an emerging trend. mean, Window Works, Vin started selling exterior awnings in like 84. He, 1984, he was like, we, our mission is to filter light at the window, he said. And he’s like, what’s the difference if we do it from inside or outside? But.
Will Hanke – WTMP (49:32)
Okay.
LuAnn Nigara (49:41)
absolutely since COVID. And the thing about it is, is the reason I use that as an emerging trend is because I think anybody that reads window fashion vision that is in the industry goes to the events, the sunshade expo and all that. You probably all went, okay, snooze. But my question is how many of you are actually leaning into it and selling exterior products? We have a member at Exciting Windows that at the beginning of the year,
we were all having a conversation about exterior products and Vinny has just been hammering, guys, guys, guys, it’s been a thing, it’s a thing, if you don’t get on it now, you’re behind the thing, like you gotta do it. And this one business went from averaging $200 ,000 a year in gross sales to this year is projecting at 800 ,000. And the difference in the gross sales is exterior products.
and it’s a woman -owned business. And so she just looked at Vinny and she said, okay, I’m gonna do exterior shades where I’m gonna do exterior awnings. And we have at our conferences are sponsored by companies that do exterior shades and exterior awnings. And so our members get a chance to meet these companies, see the products in person. But so my thing is, is, you know, my daughter, I used to always say the cliches, you know, the thing, whatever it is. And she’d be like, mom, that’s what you call shade. And I’m like, you know,
It’s a cliche because it’s true. when everybody’s like, snooze exterior products, my next question is, and how many have you sold this year? So if you’re selling hundreds of thousands, great, go ahead snooze and you pick a different trend. But if you are still just listening that this is the trend you’re not doing, then I say, how about you do it and you tell me what the next trend is going to be.
Will Hanke – WTMP (51:34)
Yeah, yeah, that’s I love that you said that. I’d say two years ago, five to seven percent of our clients did exterior. And right now that number is probably closer to twenty five to thirty. It’s definitely something that our clients are adding on.
LuAnn Nigara (51:49)
See? And until it’s 100%, it’s, yeah, yeah. And it’s an untapped market. And it is a great place to add a revenue stream, a profitable revenue stream to your business. Is there a learning curve? Yeah. But I mean, there was a point when you didn’t have a measure and sell a drape either. You’re a smart person. You’ll figure it out.
Will Hanke – WTMP (51:57)
It is.
That’s 100 % true. And that is an argument I hear is, I have to hire installers or train installers to do something totally different. OK, well, then do it. I mean, you did that. Yeah.
LuAnn Nigara (52:18)
Aw, you’re right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you know what? There are products that require a different learning curve for an installer, but you know what? A good technician is a good technician. They’ll figure it out. They will. Yeah.
Will Hanke – WTMP (52:38)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think if we start talking about margins on the exterior stuff, that might get some of their attentions too. From what I understand, they’re a little bit higher. So that’s a motivation technique as well.
LuAnn Nigara (52:51)
Well, and also too at this point, right? And when you talk about it as being an emerging trend, there is an opportunity to not have 15 quotes in the project.
Will Hanke – WTMP (53:06)
Yep, yeah, agree. Thank you. I really am glad that you said that. It’s something I’ve been watching for a while now and it’s interesting how many more clients are adding that on. So LuAnn, thank you. Thank you so much for sharing your insights today. I appreciate your time. For those listeners that want to learn more about you, LuAnn University, all the different things you’re up to, your podcasts, where can they go to find you?
LuAnn Nigara (53:18)
Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Thank you, Will. I really did appreciate this conversation. Such great questions. So much fun. know, everything lives on luannigara .com. So on luannigara .com, you can find the Well Designed Business podcast, which we’ve hit over thousand episodes at this point. And that is business conversations pretty much centered on the interior design industry and the struggles a designer goes through. We also have Window Treatments for Profit, where we talk with our homies.
over there about all the things that we do and how we run our window treatments, our window treatment businesses. LuAnn University is where we teach you what they don’t teach you. First of all, the window treatment industry doesn’t have a college or a university. And the design industry, even if you are university taught or certified, they’re not teaching you the business side. So we are taking on over there the marketing, the sales classes, all of the things.
at Luann University that it’s just hard to go learn anywhere. And we are doing them facing the design and the window treatment industry. So the information comes at you relevant to where you are. And that’s luannuniversity.com. And I would say to you, Will, we are going to open registration for the next semester of Luann University in right around the time this show is airing. And the next session will run in 2025, the new year.
And if they go to luannuniversity.com, if they select any five week course and they use the code WILL, W -I -L -L, they can get $250 off of a course. So that’s for your listeners. And then finally, I would just say, we would love to have you also check us out at ExcitingWindows. And that’s excitingwindows .biz, all right? B -I -Z, not com. So excitingwindows .biz, where we, you know, we…
help you build a better business.
Will Hanke – WTMP (55:27)
Awesome. Thank you. And thank you for the promo code. I love that. And especially that they have to put in my name. That’s the best part of that, I think. But thank you. Thank you again for your expertise. It’s been fantastic. Good. Good. As a listener, you’ve enjoyed today’s episode, don’t forget to subscribe to Marketing Pains for more engaging discussions on window treatments and awnings, businesses.
LuAnn Nigara (55:32)
Yeah.
That’s it, right? That’s fun.
This was great. Yeah, this has been a lot of fun. I appreciate you.
Will Hanke – WTMP (55:55)
the marketing, all the different things that we have to do every day. And until next time, stay inspired and keep enhancing your spaces. LuAnn, thank you so much for being on today. I really do appreciate it.
LuAnn Nigara (56:08)
Thank you, Will.
Will Hanke – WTMP (56:08)
Awesome. Hey, that was fantastic. Let me hit the stop button here.
LuAnn Nigara (56:13)
Great, great, thank you.
Marketing Panes is a monthly podcast of marketing interviews like this one. Click here to subscribe on iTunes.
LuAnn Nigara is a dynamic media personality, keynote speaker and seasoned entrepreneur, best known as an original founder of Window Works in Livingston, New Jersey, and current co-owner of Exciting Windows. She is the host of the top rated podcast, A Well Designed Business, and the founder of LuAnn Nigara Inc., which supports creative entrepreneurs through live events. Luann University and coaching. Luann’s newest podcast, Window Treatments for Profit, focuses on the custom window treatment industry. She serves on the National Board of the Window Coverings Association of America and regularly contributes to industry publications.
To learn more about LuAnn Nigara visit:
https://luannnigara.com/
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Listen to other episodes
Will Hanke – WTMP (00:00)
All right, hey everyone, welcome to another episode of Marketing Panes where we dive deep into marketing strategies and tools that drive success in the window treatment and awning industries. Today, I’m excited to have LuAnn Magara with us, a true expert in the window treatment field. So LuAnn, thank you so much for jumping on today. I really do appreciate it.
LuAnn Nigara (00:25)
my goodness, Will, I’m so happy to be here with you. Thank you.
Will Hanke – WTMP (00:27)
Yeah, yeah. So let me read your bio so we know who you are. LuAnn Nigara is a dynamic media personality, keynote speaker and seasoned entrepreneur, best known as an original founder of Window Works in Livingston, New Jersey, and current co -owner of Exciting Windows. She is the host of the top rated podcast, A Well Designed Business, and the founder of LuAnn Nigara Inc., which supports creative entrepreneurs through live events.
Luann University, which we’ll talk a little bit more about later, and coaching. Luann’s newest podcast, Window Treatments for Profit, focuses on the custom window treatment industry. She serves on the National Board of the Window Coverings Association of America and regularly contributes to industry publications. That’s pretty awesome, pretty impressive, quite honestly.
LuAnn Nigara (01:19)
Sounds good, doesn’t it?
Will Hanke – WTMP (01:22)
Yeah, that sounds great. Yeah. So thanks so much for being on. Right, right. Yeah. Yeah, we can always make something that sounds really good about ourselves. So give me a little background about how you got into the window treatment world.
LuAnn Nigara (01:24)
We all sound better in print, don’t we?
Well, I met a man that I fell in love with. His name was Vin Nigara. And he had just opened Window Works about six months prior. And I actually had met him when we were dating. And at one point during our dating, he opened Window Works. And about six months after him opening Window Works, I found myself in a job that I hated.
Will Hanke – WTMP (01:42)
Yeah.
LuAnn Nigara (02:03)
And of course we’re going out for our dinner dates and so forth and I’m complaining, blah, blah, blah. And he’s like, what do you want to do? And I’m like, I got to get back into sales. I have to get back into sales. This is driving me crazy, know, blah, blah, blah. And he’s like, well, I started this window treatment company. Like if you want to do that for a little bit until you find something else, you could do that. And I’m like, what are window treatments? You know? And so he said, well, you know, back then in 1982, was
Will Hanke – WTMP (02:27)
you
LuAnn Nigara (02:32)
Verisols, Levolor mini -blinds, and Luverdrape verticals. And I said to him, sure, you know what? I mean, I could sell water to a fish, let’s go. And so that was, like I said, in 1982. if I met him and he was selling IBM computers, I would probably have a podcast now that services IBM computer industry. But that’s how it was. I I joined the company and
Will Hanke – WTMP (02:53)
You
That’s great.
LuAnn Nigara (03:01)
really, really enjoyed it. And of course, together, Vinnie and myself and our cousin Bill grew the company up to four plus million dollars over the four decades. And that’s the start of it, though.
Will Hanke – WTMP (03:13)
Wow, congratulations. That’s pretty impressive though. I love that. I love that you stumbled into it as of a lot of people do in the industry, right?
LuAnn Nigara (03:20)
Right, it’s so true. I don’t know anybody that grew up saying, I can’t wait to grow up and sell blinds. We all just get here some crazy way, right? Lots of people like, they have a passion for sewing and they were selling window treatments for their friends and their neighbors or others like this, their husband, wife, mother, brother, sister was doing it or they started out installing it when they were in high school. You know, it’s crazy, but.
Will Hanke – WTMP (03:22)
Yeah.
Right.
LuAnn Nigara (03:48)
It sure is a mishmash of ways that we all get here, but it’s fun, right?
Will Hanke – WTMP (03:52)
It is a lot of fun. Yeah, a lot different. And I still get the same kind of questions. You do what for who? Right? That’s a thing.
LuAnn Nigara (03:59)
It’s a very tight niche, right?
Will Hanke – WTMP (04:04)
Yeah, yeah, it is. So thank you. Thank you for that. You’ve got quite a resume. I’d like to just jump in a couple different main topics today while I’ve got your time, if that’s OK. Leadership and training, I know you know a lot about that. Talk a little bit about sales, since that’s really what your bread and butter is. And then if we have time, scaling window treatment business, I’d love to hear kind of your overview thoughts on that.
and then any trends. I’d like to get into anything that you’re seeing in the world. But let’s start out with leadership. What kind of qualities do you believe are essential for somebody who wants to run a window treatment business? What kind of qualities do they really need to have?
LuAnn Nigara (04:36)
Okay. Sure.
You know, it’s funny because most of us start out as the chief cook, bottle maker, and all the things, right? So I think that to actually run a window treatment company, you obviously need your core skill set. You need to know your product. You need to know how to install it, possibly if you’re going to be the installer. You need to know how to sell it if you’re going to be the salesperson. But I think what happens is
the leadership that’s necessary to run a owner -operator type company, right? So owner -operator is I’m the owner, I’m also the salesperson, or I’m the owner, I’m also the installer, I’m the owner, I’m the admin, and maybe I’ve got a salesperson installer, but the owner is a true operator in the business. I think that is a little bit more of grit, not taking no for an answer.
Will Hanke – WTMP (05:35)
Yeah.
LuAnn Nigara (05:47)
willing to do whatever it takes to get it done. And I think most of us that start a business have that. But what happens is, as we grow our business a little bit, and we are managing somebody other than our one or two employees or our partner or a family member or whatever it might be, now that’s when leadership needs to really…
That’s when you have to be a self -aware person. You have to, as a leader, think you have to know yourself very well and know what your strengths are. But more importantly, you need to know your gaps. You need to know your weaknesses because a strong leader is going to hire for their gaps and not be intimidated that the other person has superpowers different than yours. A leader needs to appreciate that the leader’s job is to put…
Will Hanke – WTMP (06:34)
Right.
LuAnn Nigara (06:39)
all of the right people in each of the needed seats and not get hung up on the names of who those people are in the seats, but the right personalities, the right skill sets in those seats. And then with grace and humility, lead that team to success. And that then becomes the juggling act of managing and communicating and having
a thorough training process and a support process and really taking the time to understand the different people that work for you and understanding that, you know, one person might be motivated by sales and reward of money. Another person might be motivated by recognition and a pat on the back. Another person might be motivated by perks and days off. And I think leaders who forget that, that just remember what it took
Will Hanke – WTMP (07:18)
you
Mm
LuAnn Nigara (07:36)
for them to get out of bed in the morning, which was a carrot at the end of a stick, and I’m gonna go get it. The mistake that the emerging leader can make is not really, number one, finding the right people to compliment them, but then number two, understanding the fact that they are different, they’ll have different motivators, and if you ignore that and don’t delve into it, you’ll constantly struggle to find a team that marches in harmony, because you’re not really,
speaking to them as individuals. You need to run the team as a unit, but it runs as a unit when everybody individually knows their goal and feels invested in the goal and feels rewarded for their part in getting to the goal. I mean, there’s 16 ,000 books on it, but that’s like a synopsis in my mind, I think.
Will Hanke – WTMP (08:20)
Right. Right.
Yeah, you know, for the first 15, 17 years of my business, I knew somebody who was a John Maxwell expert and they’re the certified coach and they did the disc profiles and all that kind of stuff, right? But I didn’t get it. And one day I was like, personalities, different personalities, you treat them different ways. And it really just opens up the world like I’m horrible at follow through.
LuAnn Nigara (08:36)
cool.
Yes.
Yes.
Will Hanke – WTMP (08:53)
very low on that scale, but I’m a quick start. I can get stuff going and push it down the line and then I don’t know what happens. But understanding that there are other people that have that follow through that can help me pull up that slack and complete the job.
LuAnn Nigara (08:56)
Yes. Yes.
You’re so right. And so many of us that start companies, we are more that person. Quick start, let’s go. We got it. We’ll get it done. And then it’s all of a sudden, like, who’s doing all the details? And I remember in the beginning of our career, in my 20s, when I would interview people for the role of, say, office administrator, I remember so often making the mistake of, in the interview process,
tossing back the people who were more quiet, that weren’t as gregarious, that were more thoughtful, that it took them longer to respond because it’s not my groove. Like I walk fast, talk fast, do things fast. And when you then hire somebody who’s like you, I was learning, I got somebody like me. And the thing is, that’s the mistake of the beginning mistakes of leadership. It wasn’t like I had the
Will Hanke – WTMP (09:55)
you
LuAnn Nigara (10:04)
wherewithal as a young leader to be saying to myself, you hired somebody very much like yourself, LuAnn. This is a sales personality. This is an outgoing personality. No wonder they’re not doing the details in the office. I would just be like, I don’t understand why you don’t do the details. I don’t understand why you don’t get the orders done. I don’t understand why you’re not checking confirmations. And then as you said, you get exposed through different things. You’re like, I actually want that quiet contemplative person that takes their time, that reads through things.
Will Hanke – WTMP (10:30)
Right.
LuAnn Nigara (10:34)
and we give them the question slow and easy and we wait for the answer, but when we leave the room, they get all the work done that we don’t have the skill set to do. So that’s a perfect example, Will, that you brought up of that, totally.
Will Hanke – WTMP (10:42)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, I couldn’t believe all the years I went through being a business owner and not getting that, you know, especially when I would see presentations by this lady and all that stuff. yeah, that’s real nice. You know, but eventually it clicked. So the other thing you mentioned is right person, right seat. I don’t know if you’re familiar with EOS, but that’s a big that’s a big EOS thing is right person, right seat. It’s more about the seat than it is the name, as you mentioned.
LuAnn Nigara (11:03)
It’s true.
Yeah. yeah. yeah. Yeah.
That’s right. That’s right. That’s right. That’s right. And that’s also a tough thing to break as an emerging leader. You have a person that’s a great person, reliable person. You’re like, well, of course they can do that. It’s like, that’s not really what they’re good at. What do we need done then find the person to do that, right? So these are all the things we learn the hard way. But maybe younger leaders will listen to us, Will, and they don’t have to make these mistakes.
Will Hanke – WTMP (11:17)
in hiring.
It is. Maybe, maybe, maybe. Yeah. So let’s talk a little bit about training. You mentioned training. How important is continuous training and development for the staff once you’ve kind of come to that point where you’ve got people under your leadership and they need to continually be doing stuff for you?
LuAnn Nigara (11:42)
You
Yeah, I think it’s critical. mean, it’s so funny because everything I know about this I’ve learned from my cousin Eileen Hahn, who is a leadership expert and organizational behavioral expert and also our very own window treatment, Jessica Harling from Behind the Design. These two ladies, yeah, these two ladies are absolutely brilliant at helping us out here develop the training programs that
Will Hanke – WTMP (12:17)
yeah.
LuAnn Nigara (12:31)
truly enable the people who work for us to be their best, to show up as their best, and to be supported in doing that. And I know that both Jessica and Eileen are consistently stressing that we need to do weekly stand -up meetings with each person, and the 90 -day meetings, and the yearly meetings. And I also know from experience that many of us small business owners skip this step.
And I can tell you over the years we’ve been good and bad at it. I know Vinny from the very beginning always had team meetings with us, so he built that in. But the individual employee meetings when we started to grow beyond our core, you me, Vin, and Bill, they, you know, it’s a slippery slope. You get busy and it goes by the wayside. But when we intentionally have brought them back over, you know, many years at this point, they pay dividends.
And so you can invest in your team by sending them to the Sunshade Expo or the IWCE or a lot of times people will join exciting windows, art organization and they are salespeople. train them every month. I do trainings with the salespeople and stuff. And you can do it that way, but you also can invest in your team and training them as individuals just by having half hour weekly conversations with them.
You have so much knowledge in your head of the things that you’ve done that a simple conversation about their last sales appointment or their last installation actually impacts them in both an educational way, but also in that personal pouring into them way that they feel like they are on the same team as you and working towards the same goal. So constant training and development and then training and development for you as a leader.
Will Hanke – WTMP (14:22)
Yeah. Yeah.
LuAnn Nigara (14:27)
I mean, come on, it gets harder. The more years you’re in business, the bigger your business grows, the more complicated it gets. And you know, the stakes are higher. So you really do need to always be investing in yourself as well.
Will Hanke – WTMP (14:30)
You
Yeah, great. That was my next question was what about as an owner? What kind of coaching should you seek out? I think it’s one of the best things I ever did was realize that I don’t know at all and that I need somebody to help guide me down the path, hopefully to success, right?
LuAnn Nigara (14:58)
Yes, yeah. I mean, that’s our whole mission at Exciting Windows is helping window treatment professionals build a better business. you know, we have businesses in there that are doing $200 ,000 a year gross revenue to 10, 15, 20, $30 million a year. there’s we have workrooms, we have retailers, we have, you know, you know, all the things, it’s all the different business models. And it is
It is so enlightening when you get to spend quality time with someone that is two steps ahead of you on the path. So if your business is doing $500 ,000 a year and you’ll have a goal to hit $750 ,000, to be able to spend quality time with somebody that’s at $750 or a million, or I remember when we joined Exciting Windows, we were doing $1 .8, and the conversations that we were having with the businesses that were already involved, I think of Galaxy Drive.
Draperies and Rick Baker who was hitting three at that point and it was like wow everything he’s going through we’re about to hit and So that you don’t know at you don’t know what you don’t know that take that to the bank you don’t know what you don’t know and Why invent the wheel when you can invest in yourself with coaching or through the different? Things that are available in the industry to like, you
cut the line and go to the head of the class. You know I’m saying?
Will Hanke – WTMP (16:22)
Yeah, for sure. And a lot of times they’ll have resources for you and things. I’ve done that. I know how to do that. Just go do this. So it saves on the research side too of how in the world do I solve this problem? You’ve got a coach or somebody to help you through it.
LuAnn Nigara (16:36)
Exactly.
Exactly. 100%.
Will Hanke – WTMP (16:37)
I love that. That’s awesome. Yeah. What are your thoughts on weekly meetings with like your sales team around like going through the leads? Hey, let’s look at these different leads. Why did we get this one? Why did we lose this one? What do you think about that?
LuAnn Nigara (16:56)
100%. yeah, we have standing Monday meetings. First is the team meeting. I’m no longer an owner of Window Works, but Vin and I kind of hover as chairmen of the board. And so I still continue to attend the Monday morning team meeting and then the Monday morning sales meeting that follows that immediately after the team meeting. And it’s exactly what it is. It’s we are going back two weeks and we’re every single lead you’ve been on, sold, problem, issue.
Will Hanke – WTMP (17:20)
you
LuAnn Nigara (17:25)
something that went good, something you need help with. We’re looking ahead at the next week, what’s on the plate, what do you’ve got. Every single Monday, we are reviewing our company sales to date versus last year. At that point, we are reviewing our company month to date sales versus the goal for that month versus where we were last year at that point. And we are personally reviewing each salesperson’s
sales to date versus their goal for the year and versus where they were last year at the same point. And so it’s a constant reset and re -evaluation. And I have to tell you, we’ve had on more than one occasion remarkable things by our salespeople that have happened just because of this meeting. So I can recall
It was, don’t know, I’m so bad at numbers, but let’s just see if I can try it. So let’s say it was probably in May and we were at a sales meeting. It was the last Monday of the month. So whatever month it was, it was the last Monday of the month and we had five selling days left because we don’t work on Saturday and Sunday. And the following Monday, whatever it was, started a new month. And we were…
something like 160 ,000 under goal with five selling days left. And we’re all like, whoa. Right? Like the whole sales team is like, what you talking about? Well, it’s like, right? And so I know how we’ve overcome this in past years. And I said, okay, okay, time out, time out. Let’s just take five into 160 ,000. And of course there’s a number. You don’t think I know it, right?
Will Hanke – WTMP (18:52)
Okay.
LuAnn Nigara (19:14)
And then I said, now take that number and divide it by the four of you. There’s four of you. And when it came down to it, it was something like each salesperson had to do like $7 ,300 a day for five days in a row to get to that goal. And if you’re trying to add that math up, I made it all up in my head. It’s not going to work. But I’m just saying, ultimately what worked was it was like $7 ,300, $7 ,800 a day. And then…
Will Hanke – WTMP (19:30)
Right.
Thank you.
LuAnn Nigara (19:44)
I didn’t even have to say it. They all were like, that’s like one great sale a day, right? And I’m like, guys, you should be able to go back through your unclosed deals and dig that out of the hat without even a big shovel up the hill, right? And do you know the following Monday we sat there and they killed the goal.
Will Hanke – WTMP (19:50)
Right.
Yeah.
LuAnn Nigara (20:06)
But if you were just like, my God, there’s five days left in the month, we have to hit on your 60 ,000 in sales, we’re never gonna do it. Everybody cry river, call your mama, I don’t know what we’re gonna do, and just go about your day. But now every day, like I’m walking through the building the next day, I’m like, okay, where you at? Did you hit your 73? Then one person like, I hit it. I’m like, that’s great. I did 16, five yesterday, great. Okay, do it again today, blah, blah. And so tracking data, monitoring data, having conversations about data, taking the,
Will Hanke – WTMP (20:28)
you
LuAnn Nigara (20:36)
the boohoo skills about the data out of the room and putting it into a manageable bite -sized chunk that you can handle is all the difference in the world in like going down with the ship or succeeding, right?
Will Hanke – WTMP (20:53)
Yeah, yeah, and you can do this whether you have one salesperson or ten, right? I mean, it doesn’t matter the size of the company. You should still do it.
LuAnn Nigara (21:03)
For many years, I was the primary salesperson at Window Works. We had, in the beginning, three showrooms, and I was the salesperson for one showroom, then I became the salesperson for two showrooms. And when I tell you, literally, just about every morning at breakfast, my beloved husband would say, your sales goal for today is… And almost every night at dinner, he’d say, did you hit your goal, sweetie? You know what I’m saying? I mean, it was just like there was no world.
Will Hanke – WTMP (21:28)
That’s funny.
LuAnn Nigara (21:32)
where we weren’t aware on a daily, weekly, monthly basis what we were going after. Because if you don’t set a sales goal,
You’re not going to get a sales goal. what do you, you know what I mean? Every day is just up for grabs and this was a hard day. I think I’ll pack it in at four. But if your goal is 7 ,300 and you are at zero, you’re not packing it in at four. You’re like, I got two hours left on the day. I got to get stuff done. Right?
Will Hanke – WTMP (21:45)
Yeah.
I love that, yeah. Talking about sales, you’ve kind of transitioned us a little bit into the sales side of things. So what are the key steps in your sale process at Window Works that are the most important?
LuAnn Nigara (22:15)
Well, at Window Works, we follow the Make a Friend seven -step sales process developed by Steve Burston. And that class is now available through Luann University. We also run the class live the day before our CEO conference every fall. And so that is open to any window treatment professional. They can take it through Luann University by Zoom, or they can take it in person when we have our annual CEO conference.
And the whole basis of it, I mean, it’s called the make a friend, you know, seven step sales process. It’s you need to in sales, make a relationship. If you are just getting up and thinking about what’s in it for me, and I’ve got to close this, you know, it’s no, it’s like, you got to figure out what’s the solution for this person. What’s the thing that they really need. And consumers have varying degrees of skill at being able to communicate what their actual needs are. You know, I mean, somebody could tell you,
Will Hanke – WTMP (23:12)
Right?
LuAnn Nigara (23:14)
I need, you all know, you’ve all been there. I need it to be completely room darkening. And then you start having a conversation like, well, I don’t mean it to be that dark. And you’re like, okay, sweetie, room darkening means a thing. Okay. But I mean, you’ve been there when you get to the end of the conversation, you’re like, so you don’t want it to be like I call it Las Vegas dark. You don’t want it to be when you wake up in the morning, you don’t know if it’s two o ‘clock in the morning or two o ‘clock in the afternoon.
no, I like to wake up with the sun. Okay. So then we need like control and we need like dimming, but we don’t need room darkening. And the whole thing about approaching sales from a relationship standpoint is you’re not just coming in the door to sell a product. Somebody asks for room darkening, you bring a room darkening product out of your car, you put it on the table, you measure it, you pick a color and you leave. No, the salesperson that’s going to be effective
and is going to actually drive big numbers and have a good body of work with repeat and referral clients is the salesperson who is what I call not an order taker. It’s, you know what? I appreciate you’ve told me. I don’t say these things out loud to people, but in my brain, I appreciate you told me what you want, but I’m actually here to discover what you want. I’m here. My role is to ask you enough questions, to present enough scenarios to you that
Will Hanke – WTMP (24:35)
Yes.
LuAnn Nigara (24:41)
I ultimately understand your needs so well that now I’m only presenting the options that will meet those needs, that function, design, and price investment need. so sales is a process. It takes time. And if you are phoning it in or trying to be an order taker, you’re going to have a modicum of success, but you’re not going to…
transcend and really build a sales book for yourself with repeat and referral clients that call you for decades.
Will Hanke – WTMP (25:14)
Yeah, what you said is hugely important. I can’t tell you how many years I went through sales. First of all, dreading the idea of being a salesperson in the first place, right? Because I thought I had to be an order taker. If I get on the call with somebody, they have to say yes at the end of it. And that was definitely not the right way to go about it. But it’s the way that I thought sales were for so many years.
LuAnn Nigara (25:26)
You
Yeah, now it’s a discovery process. The best salesperson is a curious, inquisitive person that is trying to truly understand the objectives of their consumer and find the product at the right price point with the right decor aesthetic to fit that need. And when you do that, you write deals. You write business.
Will Hanke – WTMP (26:02)
Yeah, yeah. I love the idea of the make a friend. I did know Steve and he was a dynamic personality in the first place, right? It’s hard for him not to make a friend, I guess.
LuAnn Nigara (26:09)
Yeah.
Ugh. Gosh, right?
Yeah, it’s the truth. It’s the truth. And Jessica Harling, who I mentioned a few moments before, she, I had spent time teaching this Make a Friend seven step course, but now Jessica teaches it for us. And she actually wildly and coincidentally spent the last three to four months right up to Steve’s death last year in 2023 revising
the Make a Friend program. The core is there. The core is exactly what it was, but updating the numbers, making sure that it was appropriate numbers and estimates that we’re using now. And then also, Jessica has expanded and broadened the content to make it appropriate to the interdesign industry as well. But she did it hand in hand and side by side with Steve, which was really very special.
Will Hanke – WTMP (27:11)
Love that Jessica’s been on our show, and we’re actually going to have her back on again to talk about some stuff. So yeah, I love that you guys use her for some of your stuff. She works with a lot of our clients. So let’s talk about objections. What kind of objections do you tend to encounter, and how do you address them and move the sale forward?
LuAnn Nigara (27:17)
good! Yeah…
Yeah. yeah.
So that’s a big question, right? I would say that I think my biggest point of view on objections is that you have to, no matter what the objection is, think the intentional, the professional salesperson understands that the objection is simply indicating to you, you have not finished your job yet.
If you take it under that perspective, then you take all the sting out of it. If you literally, if you have an objection, whether I have to ask my husband or I don’t think the price is right or I don’t care what it is, if your brain says, I haven’t completed my job, I haven’t finished, something is undone here, then you move from
Holy cow, what am I gonna do? This is crazy, I’m pissed and blah, blah to, okay, what’s my step back? Where do I have to go back and regroup? Okay, and the thing is, there’ll be times when you have a clue yourself where you’re like, you know, I feel like we didn’t button it up when we were talking about, you know, the price. Like she agreed to it, but I could kind of see she was a little waffly on it. And so maybe that’s the thing. You know, I always tell salespeople is ask the question.
What exact, you know, people say whatever, you know, it’s, we’re in a conversation. And if we have started it from our very first interaction with the phone call to spending anywhere from the half hour to an hour and a half in their home, you’re entitled to ask a question. So if somebody says,
my goodness, that’s ridiculous. I can’t believe it. That’s so much money. I never thought it was going to be that much money. First of all, in seven step class, we teach you to never hear that sentence. Okay. We teach you how to mitigate and avoid that. But if you do hear it, you’re, know, my always things tell salespeople is just say, that’s interesting. Based on what? Like I didn’t think it was going to be that much money. Okay. Why? Based on what? Well, I mean, I just didn’t.
Okay, so this is just, this is not a real conversation, right? Or, you know, somebody else was out here and they gave me an estimate. Okay, now we’re getting somewhere, right? was that an estimate on the same product and you know, all the things? It absolutely was. Well, I’m gonna, I don’t know, you know, Will, I sold window treatments for 40 years. I’m gonna tell you what, if 20 times somebody told me they had an estimate for the exact same products, exact same things that was lower,
Will Hanke – WTMP (29:47)
you
LuAnn Nigara (30:17)
I’m gonna tell you maybe two times at a 20, it actually was an apples and apples quote and lower 98 % of the time. It is not, it is, I had somebody recently, I actually had to come out and do some window treatment sales two winters ago, Kimberly our number one inside sales person at Window Works was on maternity leave. And I was like, my God, I gotta like dust off and go do this again, right?
Will Hanke – WTMP (30:24)
Right. Yeah.
Ha
LuAnn Nigara (30:42)
And I had given an entire quote to, for a townhouse locally here, for a designer who then presented it to his client. And he comes back with this crazy email. my goodness, I can’t believe it. I’m so embarrassed. My client’s got a quote. Your quote is $24 ,000. Their quote is more than $5 ,000 less. How could you put me in this position? And I’m like, you know what? Take a chill pill here. Why don’t we just relax for a moment?
Will Hanke – WTMP (31:11)
Yeah.
LuAnn Nigara (31:12)
And so I don’t respond in the email when somebody’s upset. I’m not coming back in an email. So when we talk about objections, this is a huge objection. So I’m picking up the telephone and I’m saying, hey, this doesn’t happen. I’m around the bush a couple of times. We are fair and we’re competitive. You need to get me that quote. And because now I can talk level with him. I’m not talking direct to the consumer, but even to the consumer, I would have said, hey, I understand.
However, we need to verify that it’s apples and apples. The long story short of it is, it was like, you know, how many windows, 16 windows, 10 windows, whatever it was, PowerView. Well, I had quoted Arcatella, PowerView, and all of the windows, now everybody that does window treatment is gonna know what this means. I would tell you 70 % of the windows were the same size and they were 49 inches by 73 inches.
Will Hanke – WTMP (32:11)
Okay.
LuAnn Nigara (32:11)
We all know that that is one inch wider than the inside break and two, you know, one inch longer than the outside break, right? Like the length break. And the other quote was applause. And every window was like 46 by 70 because the homeowner had measured it themselves and given the dimensions to someone over the phone to get the quote. And I just, now,
Will Hanke – WTMP (32:35)
yeah.
LuAnn Nigara (32:41)
That doesn’t mean a lot to people outside of our industry, but everybody listening knows, Architella motorized, to applause, motorized with a width and a length differential on 60 or 70 % of the windows. This is no wonder. So it’s like, my thing is, take your objections, whatever they are, as the opportunity to do more digging. Just stay calm, stay in the moment, stay relaxed.
Stay non -confrontational, stay curious, right? And just say, that’s interesting, help me understand. How could that possibly be? That’s not normal. We’re in business many years. We’re fairly priced. And then ask for the quote. And most people are making it up. They’re making it up. well, I mean, I just did. okay. Well, did you really then? That’s awesome.
Will Hanke – WTMP (33:35)
I remember years ago when I was getting into sales, and of course I was scared to death, right? So somebody had a set of flashcards. And basically it was, the customer says this, reply with this, right? And it was great. At first, I thought this was the greatest thing ever. But what I quickly realized was I was missing the piece about making the friend. And it became more of just a robotic thing.
Most times it just made it worse, right? It wasn’t making the sale any better. Yeah. It was just, this guy’s, this guy’s a robot.
LuAnn Nigara (34:05)
That’s right.
No, you have to listen. You have to listen. Yes, you have to listen. And the thing is, when you’re listening, you’re getting the cues for what the actual pain points are and what their motivators and drivers are. And if you’re too busy getting ready with your next question or your next answer without truly listening to what they’re saying, you’re missing every opportunity that would enable you
to get to a resolution and get to a good sale for that person.
Will Hanke – WTMP (34:42)
Right. Yeah. Yeah. Any good tips on kind of closing the deal, negotiating techniques that maybe have worked well for you?
LuAnn Nigara (34:53)
You know, here’s the biggest one, ask for the money. So many people get up to the point and they don’t ask for the money. Like, how would you like to pay for this? You know, do you want, let’s get this started today. Are you ready to go? I mean, that it sounds simple, but that is, I would tell you, if anybody is, if they are not closing at about 60 % of their leads,
the projects they go on, they probably can raise their closing ratio by eight or 10 points if they just pay attention to how many times they’re like, okay, well, you know, I guess you’ll call me, you’ll let me know, or, you know, if you this or I’ll email you, it’s like, just ask for the check. So, and then negotiation, negotiation is.
Will Hanke – WTMP (35:30)
you
you
LuAnn Nigara (35:49)
Again, that is a listening process. I have a presentation that I do on successful negotiation. It’s based on my dialogue framework and there’s eight steps to it. You can’t skip any of the steps, but the steps are easy to learn when you think of them as a human. Like to your point, it’s not flashcards, right? You’ve got to at each step engage as a human. And when you’re negotiating with somebody, you’ve got to first hear what they’re saying.
And then you have to reframe and qualify for them. This is what I understood you to say. This is what I understood you to want. Is that correct? And sometimes you’re right. And sometimes you’re like, whoa, I missed it. And then they tell you again. And then you reframe again. And then you’re looking for the meeting ground. You’re looking for the thing that you can both agree on. Sometimes it’s a negotiation of money. A lot of times it’s offering more services.
If I add this to the pot, are we good to go today? If I can also provide this, would you do the project with me today? That sort of thing. We have so many things at our disposal. Offering to do free paper shades. All kinds of that. Offering a free install. Offering an extended warranty. If I put this in. But the thing is, if you’re offering the person
know, free paper shades who just said to you, after we’re done this sales appointment, I’m going to my beach house for a month. Will the shades be ready when I get back? What do they care about paper shades? They don’t care about paper shades. So, but that’s the thing. That’s what’s the one of the places that salespeople will make a mistake is A, not asking directly for the sale, but B, not paying attention.
to what actually is the motivator and the thing that a person wants. So when it comes time to negotiate, you either offer that or you take it away. You say, well, at this price, I was willing to give you that. But if you want me to go to that price, I got to pull that off the table. And if you’re pulling off something off the table that they don’t need, well, then you just gave your price away. But if you’ve been listening and paying attention and you know what they need and you pull it back,
Well, I want that. That’s great. Then let’s go ahead with this agreed upon price. You know what I mean? Look, we negotiate all day long. We negotiate with our kids. We negotiate with our spouses. know, all you got to do is do it with your consumer, with your eaters engaged, and it’s so much easier.
Will Hanke – WTMP (38:18)
Yeah. Yeah. The one thing that I didn’t hear you mention was defaulting straight to discount or a percent off. Right? It sounds like we can add these things on as an additional value add for you if you’re willing to close today versus just defaulting to the passive position of, OK, would you like 10 % off, please? Please take my deal.
LuAnn Nigara (38:28)
forget that. Let’s go.
Yes.
Right. No, yeah. You can count on two hands a number of times, I have taken money off a deal in four decades. And if and when I do, I’m getting something else. I’m getting something else. I’m never just like, you asked for 10 off, okay, you can have it. It’s like, no, we gotta have a conversation about this. have to, even if I’m not getting something else, I have to be able to justify it to them in a way that…
Will Hanke – WTMP (38:54)
Right.
LuAnn Nigara (39:14)
They understand it wasn’t just an arbitrary, I took $1 ,000 off or $100 off or $10 ,000 off because that just leaves such a bad taste. Anytime I’m on the other end of a sales process and somebody easily, quickly will just lower the price, I’m like, wait a minute. So if I didn’t say, but I overpaid, that, I can not stand that. And so it’s, am against
Will Hanke – WTMP (39:34)
Right. Yeah.
LuAnn Nigara (39:43)
discounting in a negotiation as a first level, second level, third level thing because of both things. I’m inherently competitive and I want my dollar, but I also know it just cheapens our reputation and our company for no reason whatsoever and you lose the respect of that consumer. And so those are both very powerful motivators for me to continue to my
Will Hanke – WTMP (40:01)
Thanks.
LuAnn Nigara (40:14)
skill set as a salesperson to do better.
Will Hanke – WTMP (40:17)
Yeah, yeah, I love that. Never devalue yourself for no reason at all, right? That’s silly to do that.
LuAnn Nigara (40:25)
No, because it doesn’t feel good to the other person either. That’s the thing.
Will Hanke – WTMP (40:29)
Right. Yeah. Yeah, definitely they’re going to immediately have a slightly different thought about the service that they’re getting even weeks later at the install. They’re like, well.
LuAnn Nigara (40:38)
Yeah. Yeah. They’re happy about saving the money, but that you’ve just got to ding to your reputation with them. That’s the truth of it.
Will Hanke – WTMP (40:44)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, cool. So I wanna switch gears a little bit and talk about scaling real quick. What advice do you have to owner, business owners that are looking to scale their businesses up? What pitfalls should they be aware of?
LuAnn Nigara (41:02)
Well, here’s the thing. It is an absolute non -negotiable that if you and, first of all, I believe every business should have documented SOPs, but it is a non -negotiable if you expect to scale your business. You must absolutely determine how you do all the things in your business because you don’t think you have a way, but you do.
You do, even if you have been a solo entrepreneur with one person answering your phone and one person installing for you, you have a way that you do it. And the second that you mistake that you’re gonna hire one other salesperson or one other installer to come in and do work with your company and you have not documented your way, you are going to consistently like have these trips and stumbles where
Will Hanke – WTMP (41:38)
All
LuAnn Nigara (41:56)
the other people on your behalf are not going out and behaving and delivering to your consumer what you have set as your standard. We can have 1 ,000 window treatment companies. We can all do it a different way. But within the company, if I have a deliverable of my sales experience or my installation experience, and every installer and every salesperson that works for me has to deliver it the same way. Because if
Sally Smith calls, you know, Bill’s Blinds and they have one experience and then she refers her sister, know, Karen, Sal, whoever, to Bill’s Blinds and she has a different experience. The two sisters are like, what company did you work with? Like, they did great by me. Well, they did horrible. never called me back. You know, and that just messes with your brand. It messes with your profitability. And what happens is,
Will Hanke – WTMP (42:39)
you
LuAnn Nigara (42:52)
Internally, you’re just looking around going, what’s going on? Why is the business not growing? And it’s because you haven’t set the stage for growth with a very thoughtful look at how do you do it. I mean, as simple as how do you answer the phone? Like, that is like the silliest example, but it is so true. Everyone should answer the phone the same way.
Will Hanke – WTMP (43:14)
Yeah.
LuAnn Nigara (43:18)
And I don’t care if you say, hi, it’s Bill’s Blinds. Can I help you? I don’t say it’s Bill’s Blinds, it’s a great day. I don’t care what you say. But if you all answered a different way, that automatically tells me you have no way of doing anything. Because you haven’t sat and figured out what you stand for, how you do it, and how you will deliver your client experience. And so if you want to scale, you got to lock that down.
Will Hanke – WTMP (43:41)
Great example, we had a client who’s one of the salespeople was answering, hello, hello. And that was it. And they’re like, my god.
LuAnn Nigara (43:47)
my God. my God, it’s my pet peeve. my God, that’s my pet peeve. My thing is your name and the company name. You have to say both of them somehow, some way. I can’t stand when I call a company and A, they don’t say their name. So I’m not like, did I dial right? Is this right? And then B, they don’t say their name. I don’t want to say what’s your name because you know what happens when you say what’s your name to somebody?
It sometimes feels aggressive, right? Like when you’re dealing with somebody on the phone and they are like, okay, I’m gonna have Will call you back or whatever like this. If they haven’t shared their name already with me and I go, okay, that’s great, what’s your name? It almost feels like I’m getting your name so if Will doesn’t call me back, I’m telling him you didn’t tell me, right? And it’s like, and that’s not what you want. You just really wanna know who the person is so you can say, I spoke to Sally earlier, Will, she’s great, right?
Will Hanke – WTMP (44:34)
yeah, yeah.
LuAnn Nigara (44:44)
So it’s got it, like it’s such a simple thing, but it is, you can just hit on one of my pet peeves, it makes me crazy.
Will Hanke – WTMP (44:51)
We’ve got a fast food place here in town that does that. pull up and they say, welcome to, I think it’s Culver’s, welcome to Culver’s. This is Sally. How can I help you? You know, something like that. And of course my response is, hey, Sally, I’d like your triple cheese, you know, whatever. But it feels a lot more fruitful just because of that.
LuAnn Nigara (45:03)
Right. Right.
Exactly.
Right. Exactly.
Will Hanke – WTMP (45:14)
Yeah. So how can window treatment companies leverage technology? My favorite thing in the world, right? How can they kind of leverage technology to build those SOPs and some of those things that they now realize they need to do?
LuAnn Nigara (45:29)
Yeah, well, I mean, there’s so much out there, right? So whether, first of all, I think every window treatment company, no matter what size they are, should have some vehicle for capturing their consumer data, right? Some sort of CRM. So whatever you use, I don’t care if you use an Excel spreadsheet, honest to God, I don’t care where your level of tech is.
Of course, I love it better if it is some sort of level of tech that you’re capturing all of the information about your existing consumers, the leads that you didn’t sell, all of that stuff. And then you can then tag and do email marketing through it. All of the things that I know are your superpower because, you need a record. We just had a customer at Window Works today. I walked through to get my lunch out of the refrigerator and Kim says to me, Lou, Patty Ahmad.
Will Hanke – WTMP (45:54)
you
LuAnn Nigara (46:23)
What did you sell her the last time? And I just looked at her, I was like, wait, what? And she said, yeah, she’s on the phone. And she goes, she moved to Colorado and she’s working with one of your exciting Windows members out there. And she just realized they’re coming to see her tomorrow and she wants to know what did you sell her? Now, I’m gonna tell you what, the first time I sold to Patty Ahmaud, she built a house in 1989. Okay, I remember it because my daughter was six months old and her daughter was one month old.
Will Hanke – WTMP (46:46)
OK.
LuAnn Nigara (46:52)
And they ended up, we lived in different towns and 10 years later, we all ended up moving to another town and moving to the same town. And when we moved to that town, she built in that town and we did window treatments there. So she has been my customer since 1989. And the thing was, I said to her, I said, listen, most of the work that she did was sell shades. I said, I think in a family room we did woven woods. I said, we did exterior roller shades.
Will Hanke – WTMP (47:02)
the world.
LuAnn Nigara (47:21)
probably maybe 10 years ago and Kim goes, you know what, let me look it up. And there she goes. She goes into our CRM and she pulls all the orders up. Now, we didn’t have the orders from 1989, not quite as savvy in 1989, but we did have the orders going back as far as like 2005. And so, you know, like your CRM is…
Will Hanke – WTMP (47:32)
All
LuAnn Nigara (47:44)
Look, if you use Solitech to quote and place your orders, I love Ray, love it all day long. These are things that can increase your efficiency. If you’re using ClickUp or monday .com or Airtable, all things that can increase your efficiency. But for me, if you’re not tech savvy, the non -negotiable is some form of a CRM to capture your consumer data and enable you to
continually email and stay in front of them throughout the years.
Will Hanke – WTMP (48:17)
Yeah, yeah, totally agree. One of the big things that helped my business grow was we built a system called lead boomerang and it is a CRM on steroids. It handles the lead, whether they come from a Google My Business or they come from your website or they just used your chat widget, whatever it is, you know, everything goes into this one place. You have one central location to do all that. It’s by far the biggest, most important tool that our clients have.
LuAnn Nigara (48:27)
Mm.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s 2024, folks. It’s non -negotiable.
Will Hanke – WTMP (48:49)
Right? Fair enough. Fair enough.
LuAnn Nigara (48:52)
You know, I’m older than dirt and even I know that.
Will Hanke – WTMP (48:55)
Yeah, yeah. So as we wrap up, thank you again for all of your time that you spent. I really do appreciate it. Wanted to ask you about emerging trends. What are you seeing specifically for our industry? And how can business owners kind of take advantage of these trends?
LuAnn Nigara (49:12)
Well, I have to say, feel like it’s, look, the outdoor space, it’s been on fire since COVID, okay? So I don’t know that I would actually call it so much an emerging trend. mean, Window Works, Vin started selling exterior awnings in like 84. He, 1984, he was like, we, our mission is to filter light at the window, he said. And he’s like, what’s the difference if we do it from inside or outside? But.
Will Hanke – WTMP (49:32)
Okay.
LuAnn Nigara (49:41)
absolutely since COVID. And the thing about it is, is the reason I use that as an emerging trend is because I think anybody that reads window fashion vision that is in the industry goes to the events, the sunshade expo and all that. You probably all went, okay, snooze. But my question is how many of you are actually leaning into it and selling exterior products? We have a member at Exciting Windows that at the beginning of the year,
we were all having a conversation about exterior products and Vinny has just been hammering, guys, guys, guys, it’s been a thing, it’s a thing, if you don’t get on it now, you’re behind the thing, like you gotta do it. And this one business went from averaging $200 ,000 a year in gross sales to this year is projecting at 800 ,000. And the difference in the gross sales is exterior products.
and it’s a woman -owned business. And so she just looked at Vinny and she said, okay, I’m gonna do exterior shades where I’m gonna do exterior awnings. And we have at our conferences are sponsored by companies that do exterior shades and exterior awnings. And so our members get a chance to meet these companies, see the products in person. But so my thing is, is, you know, my daughter, I used to always say the cliches, you know, the thing, whatever it is. And she’d be like, mom, that’s what you call shade. And I’m like, you know,
It’s a cliche because it’s true. when everybody’s like, snooze exterior products, my next question is, and how many have you sold this year? So if you’re selling hundreds of thousands, great, go ahead snooze and you pick a different trend. But if you are still just listening that this is the trend you’re not doing, then I say, how about you do it and you tell me what the next trend is going to be.
Will Hanke – WTMP (51:34)
Yeah, yeah, that’s I love that you said that. I’d say two years ago, five to seven percent of our clients did exterior. And right now that number is probably closer to twenty five to thirty. It’s definitely something that our clients are adding on.
LuAnn Nigara (51:49)
See? And until it’s 100%, it’s, yeah, yeah. And it’s an untapped market. And it is a great place to add a revenue stream, a profitable revenue stream to your business. Is there a learning curve? Yeah. But I mean, there was a point when you didn’t have a measure and sell a drape either. You’re a smart person. You’ll figure it out.
Will Hanke – WTMP (51:57)
It is.
That’s 100 % true. And that is an argument I hear is, I have to hire installers or train installers to do something totally different. OK, well, then do it. I mean, you did that. Yeah.
LuAnn Nigara (52:18)
Aw, you’re right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you know what? There are products that require a different learning curve for an installer, but you know what? A good technician is a good technician. They’ll figure it out. They will. Yeah.
Will Hanke – WTMP (52:38)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think if we start talking about margins on the exterior stuff, that might get some of their attentions too. From what I understand, they’re a little bit higher. So that’s a motivation technique as well.
LuAnn Nigara (52:51)
Well, and also too at this point, right? And when you talk about it as being an emerging trend, there is an opportunity to not have 15 quotes in the project.
Will Hanke – WTMP (53:06)
Yep, yeah, agree. Thank you. I really am glad that you said that. It’s something I’ve been watching for a while now and it’s interesting how many more clients are adding that on. So LuAnn, thank you. Thank you so much for sharing your insights today. I appreciate your time. For those listeners that want to learn more about you, LuAnn University, all the different things you’re up to, your podcasts, where can they go to find you?
LuAnn Nigara (53:18)
Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Thank you, Will. I really did appreciate this conversation. Such great questions. So much fun. know, everything lives on luannigara .com. So on luannigara .com, you can find the Well Designed Business podcast, which we’ve hit over thousand episodes at this point. And that is business conversations pretty much centered on the interior design industry and the struggles a designer goes through. We also have Window Treatments for Profit, where we talk with our homies.
over there about all the things that we do and how we run our window treatments, our window treatment businesses. LuAnn University is where we teach you what they don’t teach you. First of all, the window treatment industry doesn’t have a college or a university. And the design industry, even if you are university taught or certified, they’re not teaching you the business side. So we are taking on over there the marketing, the sales classes, all of the things.
at Luann University that it’s just hard to go learn anywhere. And we are doing them facing the design and the window treatment industry. So the information comes at you relevant to where you are. And that’s luannuniversity.com. And I would say to you, Will, we are going to open registration for the next semester of Luann University in right around the time this show is airing. And the next session will run in 2025, the new year.
And if they go to luannuniversity.com, if they select any five week course and they use the code WILL, W -I -L -L, they can get $250 off of a course. So that’s for your listeners. And then finally, I would just say, we would love to have you also check us out at ExcitingWindows. And that’s excitingwindows .biz, all right? B -I -Z, not com. So excitingwindows .biz, where we, you know, we…
help you build a better business.
Will Hanke – WTMP (55:27)
Awesome. Thank you. And thank you for the promo code. I love that. And especially that they have to put in my name. That’s the best part of that, I think. But thank you. Thank you again for your expertise. It’s been fantastic. Good. Good. As a listener, you’ve enjoyed today’s episode, don’t forget to subscribe to Marketing Pains for more engaging discussions on window treatments and awnings, businesses.
LuAnn Nigara (55:32)
Yeah.
That’s it, right? That’s fun.
This was great. Yeah, this has been a lot of fun. I appreciate you.
Will Hanke – WTMP (55:55)
the marketing, all the different things that we have to do every day. And until next time, stay inspired and keep enhancing your spaces. LuAnn, thank you so much for being on today. I really do appreciate it.
LuAnn Nigara (56:08)
Thank you, Will.
Will Hanke – WTMP (56:08)
Awesome. Hey, that was fantastic. Let me hit the stop button here.
LuAnn Nigara (56:13)
Great, great, thank you.
Marketing Panes is a monthly podcast of marketing interviews like this one. Click here to subscribe on iTunes.
Sandra VanSickle is a respected figure in the window coverings industry, known for her extensive expertise spanning over three decades in custom window treatments. She owns and operates Sew What’s New, LLC, a prominent wholesale studio and training center based in Apex, NC. Sandra excels in creating high-quality window treatments and shares her wealth of knowledge through online courses, hands-on workshops, articles, and speaking engagements.
In addition to her studio work, Sandra co-owns the Craft Your Creative Life Retreat, a unique event that blends sewing skills, business strategy, and wellness for industry professionals. She also serves as Director of IWCE’s Artisan Atelier, where she organizes and facilitates two days of training sessions in the exhibit hall, helping attendees enhance their skills and stay ahead of industry trends. Sandra also produces the “Live With Sandra V” show, where she offers training and insights to a broader audience.
Sandra’s dedication to education and leadership continues to inspire and shape the window coverings community.
To learn more about Sandra Vansickle visit:
Sandravansickle.com
pssst…. want to be a guest on the show?
Listen to other episodes
Will Hanke – WTMP (00:00)
All right. Hey, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Marketing Panes. My name is Will Hanke. This is the go -to podcast for window treatment and awning business marketing. Each month, we bring you insights from industry experts and fellow business owners sharing tips, tools and strategies to boost your online presence and drive growth. My guest today is Sandra Van Sickle. She’s a respected figure in the window coverings industry.
known for her extensive expertise spanning over three decades in custom window treatments. She owns and operates So What’s New, LLC, I love that, a prominent wholesale studio and training center based in Apex, North Carolina. Sandra excels in creating high quality window treatments and shares her wealth of knowledge through online courses, hands -on workshops, articles, and speaking engagements. Sandra, you’re quite busy.
In addition to her studio work, Sandra co -owns the Craft Your Creative Life Retreat, a unique event that blends sewing skills, business strategy, and wellness for industry professionals. She also serves as director of IWCE’s Artisan Atelier, where she organizes and facilitates two days of training sessions on the exhibit hall, helping attendees enhance their skills and stay ahead of industry trends.
If you’ve ever been to IWCE, they’re right in the middle and they’re always busy. Sandra also produces the Live with Sandra V show where she offers training and insights to a broader audience. Sandra’s dedication to education and leadership continues to inspire and shape the window coverings community. Sandra, thank you so much for being on today.
Sandra VanSickle (01:45)
It’s great to be here. Thanks for having me.
Will Hanke – WTMP (01:47)
Yeah. So I’ve seen you many times at, like I said, at IWCE. There’s always a busy little section there and people learning stuff. And I love all the different things that you teach. Tell me a little bit about your background. And I know that you kind of transitioned from corporate America to running a successful custom drapery
Sandra VanSickle (02:06)
Yes, again, well, thank you for having me here. It’s really exciting. I’m usually the one doing the interviews and like you, I said, where is Will? I need to meet him in person. So it’s wonderful. But yes, first let me start off real quick by saying that sewing has always been a true passion of mine. I started at the age of five. I have a grandmother who was a master seamstress and I bucked the crap out of her until she taught me how to sew. And that’s all it took. Off I went.
Will Hanke – WTMP (02:16)
yeah.
Sandra VanSickle (02:33)
I always wanted to be a fashion designer. But however, sometimes life takes you on a different path. And so I got a degree in human resource management as a single mother of two daughters. I entered corporate America more out of necessity at the time. I always sewed. Every spare moment I had, I was sewing. And even my colleagues in corporate America, that’s how they…
They knew me as the seamstress, you know? But I think to answer your question, the transition really came probably in the late 90s whenever I faced some downsizing at work. And I will tell you that if you’ve ever had to face something like that, that it’s a bittersweet event, but mine happened to turn out to be the catalyst that I needed to make a significant change that has led me to what I do today, which
I say it’s all my dream jobs. And after leaving the corporate world, I took sew -what’s -new to a full -time capacity back then. But it was mainly sewing garments. And the window treatments was kind of a side gig to that. Then I remarried my husband and I. You may know him, Ken Vansigal. He’s an installer in the industry. We moved to Raleigh, the Raleigh area. And he was hoping I would go back into HR.
a lot more money in that than window team at the time, you know, but it was again something that just fell into place. I got here and was looking in the paper for HR and I don’t really want to do that anymore. And there was an ad in the paper for a workroom manager for a high end workroom. And I thought that is my job. And so I took the job, know, I,
accepted the position and after a few years in that role, I realized it was time to pivot and I wanted to run my own business. That was ultimately my goal all my life. I fell in love with window treatments and I took all my skills that I had as a general manager. I was a recruiter, a trainer, know, all the HR things, open and closed stores, along with my passion.
and my experience in window treatments and finally pulled the trigger and took, so it’s new, full -time and only window treatments. So yeah, was, you know, it’s where my joy passion is.
Will Hanke – WTMP (04:40)
Okay.
That’s awesome. You chose a niche and went after it,
Sandra VanSickle (04:46)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.
Will Hanke – WTMP (04:47)
That’s great. So who is your target audience? I know you’re doing a lot of different things. You probably got a lot of different audiences ultimately. But how could you define
Sandra VanSickle (04:55)
I do.
Well, I know I would say mainly if we know we keep on the window treatment business side or the workroom side. My ideal client was the interior designer. I wanted to be wholesale to the trade. And it really, with the different designers, the press are different beginners, they’re different stages themselves. it really, that didn’t really matter to me at the time because I felt like as long as
that they were respectful, open to suggestions. And with my background of running businesses, that I could definitely work with them. And early on, I ruled out retail work because it became clear to me quickly that my true strengths and passions lay in the studio, not working directly with homeowners. And by
sticking to what my skills were, where my passion was. know, it really allowed me to focus on what I do best and really ultimately, like I said, brings me joy.
Will Hanke – WTMP (05:56)
Yeah, yeah. As the as like a workroom owner, how did you position yourselves in the eyes of your of the designers?
Sandra VanSickle (06:05)
Well, think that, of course, when you’re good at what you do and they find out about you, they start to reach out. I think it was, I want to say it was kind of, it always starts off with that passion. And I stuck to the customer treatments. And I consider myself a very creative person. to have that,
behind you is great because you can be a little bit more flexible and and whatever they can where their creativity may stop your start and you can collaborate with them, you know a lot more. And then on top of it, you know, I had a staff. I don’t have the staff any longer. I’m rewired and not not retired. But, you know, we always delivered
know, high quality treatments. We’ve really paid attention to the details. We, you know, to ensure that every project would meet the high standards. I think that my, you know, my training, you know, in corporate has taught me great communication skills where I can work with others to make sure we have clear expectations, defining the parameters and outcome of each job, you’re transparent.
And you can say, yes, I can do this. But here are my parameters. So they know exactly where you’re coming from. not saying, yeah, I can do that job. And in the back of your mind, you hear a lot of times, fake it till you make it. Well, we kind of did that. But we would say, here are our parameters. So you’re clear to them. You’re not saying, yeah, I can do that. And then you can’t. But I think, again, with my
background in HR and working with people, my passion and expertise within the fabrication realm really helped a lot of that. it was important that we met deadlines, of course. again, having a team at the time that was enthusiastic, I’ll say that word, along behind me.
And they were ready to, you know, embrace challenges whenever they came along. I mean, you we don’t want to be bored just making panels all the time. And there are jobs that can come along that you do need to be out of the box for. And if you’re up for it, you know, having that, you know, that kind of reputation gets around and they go, my God, go to her, she can do anything, you know. Now, there are some jobs that we probably…
could have said no to and today if we would have had it to do over because we’ve already done it we’ve said we don’t want to do it anymore then they’re done that but because we were willing to do that and and good communication skills so yeah.
Will Hanke – WTMP (08:42)
Yeah, the other side of that is also true. Having a workroom that wants to think outside of the box gives the designers a lot more freedom to say, let me find out, but we can probably make that happen, or get some more information, and have a workroom to then bounce that idea off of.
Sandra VanSickle (08:53)
Yes.
Yeah, exactly. Because they are very creative folks too. And a lot of times they have a vision of what they want and what they want. Or their client may have a vision and they’re like, yeah. And they’re not 110 % on board because in their mind they don’t know how to take that fat piece of fabric and manipulate it into what that client wants. And we can. So the whole,
collaboration and, you know, brainstorming, you know, is, really comes in handy.
Will Hanke – WTMP (09:35)
Yeah. So let’s take a step back. If someone is interested in maybe finding out if they want to work with a workroom, or they want to add that into the business, before they even reach out, what are some things that they need to probably have in place, things prepared before they even reach out to a
Sandra VanSickle (09:54)
That’s good question, Will, because I believe if this is done right, it can enhance your business. I’m a big component of don’t leave money on the table unless you have to because the more that you can offer, the bigger package that you can offer can be beneficial to you and your client. But sometimes it’s not beneficial.
So because there can be a learning curve in all of it. And this is what I have to say is that you have to be in the right position for it. first, I highly recommend that you first consider or assess the benefits. Whether adding customer treatment to your curtain offering will benefit your business. You need to evaluate.
how this addition could align with your business goals and your clients needs or is it going to be something that is going to pull you away from your strength and you’re ultimately not gonna it’s gonna fail or it’s not gonna go the way that it should and you’ll be frustrated. That goes back to what I said before about how I determined early on that retail work is not where I need it to be. That’s not where my strength
And so sticking within my lane is where I have produced a better company. And so first consider that. And if you decide, yeah, this is going to, if I can make this work, I’m in the position and I can do this. so you need to think about your mind. If you just can’t say, okay, I’m gonna call work from, they’re gonna do all the work for me. You need to just look at your own business and identify who in your company or where you have
hire someone to manage this partnership with the work room. And I think that if you can begin to think about having a dedicated person to handle the communication, the coordination and streamline the process, that is going to help the process immensely and help you be more successful. And you can say, yep, we can do that. We’re at a position. We can do this. Then you can take the next step. And the next step is, you know, to
Really like you would any goal setting start to outline your offerings, you know create a list of the custom treatments that you Want to offer your clients or and sometimes if you’re you’ve been in business for a while and Your clients are already asking for certain they’re asking for panels or Roman chains And no, we don’t offer them. this is the fifth person this week that one so maybe we should
You know, so, you know, start, that’s number one, you’re gonna say panels and Roman shades, but make that list down because there’s more I’ll suggest to this list in a moment, but the benefits is that this list will help you find the workroom that can fit your needs. And when you begin the interview process with the workroom, this will also help the workroom understand what your needs are and to make sure
they can meet your expectations, all right? Because sometimes, and you might determine that it’s not something that you want to bring totally into your organization. It might be such a distraction at this moment that you say, let me just partner with a workroom and say, look, I can give you this name. If you, you know, we switch referrals.
You know, and that’s a whole nother, that’s a whole nother conversation, but it might be a route that you want to take versus what we’re going to probably talk about today. So, I’m going go to my list real quick. And you know, things like panels, moment shades, you’re going to offer cornices, remakes, pillows, upholstery, light upholstery, heavy upholstery. You know, just some or all of it, you know, make that list. And then,
Will Hanke – WTMP (13:13)
Okay.
Sandra VanSickle (13:37)
Also add on to that list, try to define the required services that you might need from a workroom. Of course, you’re gonna need fabrication. Who’s gonna measure? Who’s gonna provide installation? Who’s gonna provide the lining and the interlining? And fabric, where’s the fabric gonna come from? Is that something that the workroom has sample books or is it gonna be customer?
own fabric, how’s that going to work? Hardware. What about hardware? Who’s going to carry that? Motorization. That’s really, and you, I’m sure you know that how big that is right now. And I know within our realm, there are a lot of workrooms that do work with it often. Some of them are scared to death of it. And like, I don’t know where to order it. I don’t know what to order. I don’t know how to assemble. I don’t feel comfortable with it. And so, and what about your team?
You know who’s comfortable with it if you know if you came to my work well, I said yeah, let me handle it I’ve got it. You know I’ll even go on and program it for you, but so many mouths I said no you’ve got to handle it Pick up drop off so you know having those kinds of list It’s gonna get your mind ticking and again. It’s gonna help the process
Will Hanke – WTMP (14:45)
Yeah. So thinking through the entire thing from before the project starts all the way through to delivery. And then, yeah, that’s that’s pretty smart to figure out who’s going to do what right along the way. You don’t want any surprises.
Sandra VanSickle (14:55)
Right. Yeah. Well, you don’t and you don’t want to, you know, you don’t assume anything and you don’t want to start a project and think, I forgot how we’re to get the fabric to them. They’re half an hour away and I don’t have that kind of manpower today because I’m out on five installations and I’m so behind here entering the phone and someone called out sick, you know, you know.
Will Hanke – WTMP (15:17)
Yeah. Yeah. So what kind of questions should people ask if they well, let me back up. Should should somebody look at more than one workroom if if there’s more than one available in their area?
Sandra VanSickle (15:30)
Yeah, yes. And again, the starting stages, write those two lists so you’re clear on what you want to ask and what you need. And then there are different size and different types of workrooms, not one size fits all. And I’ve broken them down to like three different types. one is like the large commercial workrooms.
And then some and I’m going to put into that category there are a lot of fabric companies that have their own workrooms as well and the large commercial ones are great and they will usually do a large range of treatments. So that’s the positive of them. But there’s not a lot of hand holding with them. If you’re someone and say that you’ve said okay we’re going to only offer panels.
and there’s no fancy dancy, there’s only panels, three -pronged pinched pleat lined, maybe blackout lining, and you’re get your finished length, no trim or whatever, well, they may be the ones for you, okay? Of course, they will offer, they will do some of that, but it depends on how much you want to simplify. But basically, with them, they may or may not be in your area. They’re gonna give you a form that you’re gonna have to learn how to fill out.
You’re going to ship the fabric to them. you know, you, I haven’t worked with one in a long time, but I know what I have. You don’t have, you’ll have limited access or none to that person fabricate, actually fabricating your treatment. And you won’t have the opportunity to say, can I drop by tomorrow and talk to you about where that trim should go? Or can you stop production?
and get the panels going. I’m going to send the trim in about three weeks. Then you can apply it. Before you do, give me a picture of how does it look with three inches in or two inches in? That’s not going to happen. I doubt it. And I think they, of course, they have set hours. They will cater to mostly wholesale to the trade. I don’t know that any will.
do outside retail. I think most of them are wholesale to the trade. Some may carry, like I said, the large companies will have their own. have the fabric. Some may or may not carry hardware. And I don’t know that they really have any design services. You’re probably not going to call and say, what’s going to look better on my client’s wall, one and a half width or two? So anyway, that’s.
That’s that and then Then we have what I would call someone that has a workroom with it has a retail space Mainly it’s outside of their home It might not be you just walk in any time It might be a design center retail space or maybe just a workroom Space in a little strip kind of mall industrial type strip mall that just fabricates now I think
With those, they will cater to probably wholesale to the trade. They may cater to some retail as well. They will probably have a staff. And like I said, they may or may not have a design center up front or out back that you could go in. They may provide fabric books that you can choose from, the different fabrics, they’ll order them for you, hardware, and they may
Okay. And I would say with some of those, they may be your competition. You know, they, some of them have moved up to blind shades and shutters. And if that’s something that you offer, but you want to use that work room, well, just have a conversation and be transparent with them. With me transitioning out of fabrication, I have mentored in a few gals in our area.
And because Ken is still installing and he sounds like he’s in shelters and hardware. And I said, you know, if we could have this agreement, this client came from my work room. Ken does X, Y, Z. That may be something you are moving in. But if can you remember that that’s his client too. And can we have that kind of agreement? And it’s up to them if they want to.
Will Hanke – WTMP (19:27)
Okay.
Sandra VanSickle (19:29)
honor that. Hopefully they will. I think they will. you know, you can, you know, just trust that they will. And so if you have that kind of a work room, you can have that discussion with them. And then, then there’s the home based work rooms. And some of them are in their home, it could be in a bonus room, it could be in the basement, it could be out in the she shed, you know, but, you know, but you’re going to have, I think with that type,
And with the other ones, you can have a more personal interaction with it. You can collaborate with the retail as well as I think the home base went more, a lot of more troubleshooting. And the location on both of them could be closer to you than a larger scale commercial work room. And again, you can just find out what services they offer.
You know, I think you did ask me the question about, you know, reaching out to them to find out what their needs are. And again, you know, once you look at the different types, you’ve already have your list of what you want to offer. You already have that. And so think about these three, you know, variations of work rooms. And then you can just start to reach out to them and schedule a call or email, however they want to do business.
Always be upfront, you know So many times we have people working coming into the area. I’m new to the area Can you do my house first because I want to see how well you are. No If you can establish long -term relationship, let’s be upfront and transparent here, know, just just go for it but This way with your list and again looking at the variation you can begin to find the right fit to just to establish that relationship and the first question
You’re going to ask, are you taking your clients? I had someone reach out to me last week. it was honestly, was kind of scenario we’re talking. It was help. I need help. I need to work for them. I need help. And I’m like, OK, are you spam? Are you real? I’ll take the chance and call you. And you have your list ready. Go over that list. Ask if they have other services.
what their specialty is. And you’re going to know it, right? Because if I asked you what yours is and you start to tell me, you’re going to light up. You’re going have that passion in your voice. And truly, it’s important, too, to ask them, how long have they been in business? Because this will give you what? An idea of their experience? And again, make sure you’ve had is it.
Some of you may not know if it’s in home or retail space, but you can ask that. Because this way, it will tell you how they conduct their business. And then also, you want to respect their time as well. But you want to know how they do their business. And this is going to align with the way you want to do business. Location is convenient for you. Hours of operation.
seasonal hours of operation. Do they have employees? Because employees are going to give you an indication of their workroom workload capabilities, effective timeframes that you might could expect. know, they could stay on if they have heavier workloads at different times. Typical turnaround time. That’s one of the biggest questions I think we get. And they answer various on the time of year.
you know, smoke and pet free environment. That’s important to clients. And the number one thing though is do they have a terms and condition agreement? You know, well, I can’t tell you how important this is and that you should not go in business with a work one without having that. And they should have it to present to you. And if not asked for one,
I think it’s an uncomfortable thing to have a client sign because it’s your terms and conditions, right? But you’ve got to do it and they need it because something will go wrong along the lines and you need something to fall back on. you ask them too, do they supply a price list? I don’t. I have a basic one, but I want to quote every
Because if you say, I want panels, 72 inches long, line, three prong. And I quote that. And then you give it to me, and it has trim and binding. And you’ve already quoted your client. So again, do they source fabric? Can you borrow their books? And so again, this is really going to give you a good list
questions to ask them and it will spark you know other questions.
Will Hanke – WTMP (23:49)
I like that. I love that you have kind of like an interview checklist, almost of things that you should go through when it comes to prioritizing them. Any one in particular besides obviously terms, I think is probably a really big one. What other what other things should you prioritize?
Sandra VanSickle (23:53)
Mm -hmm.
Yeah, that is important, know, for when once you get those other questions answered and then to move on to, you know, ask what information. let me go back and say now you can ask how do they like to do business? You if you’ve established this is the workroom, you get to answer these questions. Now, how do they like to do business?
Now, what information do they need for an estimate? Who supplies the work order? Do they? Or do you have one? How do you send that work order? How does that work order get? Who has it? Who fills it out? And what information do they need on it? The drop off in shipping of the materials. I just say, you don’t have to come out here to me.
Will Hanke – WTMP (24:40)
Right?
Sandra VanSickle (24:50)
During the quilt process, you’ve given me all the information. And so when the fabric comes in here, I have my labeling system. I’m going to check it off and make sure I have this fabric for this job, yada, yada, yada. If I have questions, I’ll send you photos. But how’s that going to transpire? Who picks up the treatments when it’s complete? what’s the time frame around that? And how does it get to the homeowner?
Because if there’s any kind of delay, the next question is, how long does the workroom have to store it? What’s their guidelines around that? Who installs it? Again, the turnaround time. The payment method. What do they accept for payment? Do they require a deposit? What about the final payment?
What’s your best form of communication? Some people it’s email, some people it’s text, some people it’s electronic. And then holiday deadlines. When does your work need to be in there? When does your work order and your fabric need to be in there?
Do they adhere to child safety guidelines? You know, really big. Some people are like, no. And if it’s a no, you know what? Then you might not want to do business with them because it can put you at risk too. Okay, and we won’t go into that whole thing, but that should tell you where I stand on it. You don’t want to go in business with them. know, it’s important.
Will Hanke – WTMP (26:06)
Yeah.
Sandra VanSickle (26:14)
It’s important. And someone may not even be aware of it. You know, sometimes you might be aware of it in the industry, but some folks may not. And you can educate them on that and tell them that that’s important to you. And again, what goes along with that too is do they, they train, do they, you know, attend training classes and that doesn’t have to be a, you know, big no or stop sign for you, but it just tells you where they are.
with their business, okay? Again, and going back, how confident are they with modernization? And confidentiality too, it’s really big if you are someone that works with a lot of celebrities, or you work with a lot of folks that have said, you know, over the years, we didn’t put a lot of our work out there on social media because our designers just said, we’re high end.
and our client does not want what’s inside their home out there on social media. And so, you know, is the workroom aware of that? You know, will they adhere to that? So those are just, you know, some of the things that you can be thinking about.
Will Hanke – WTMP (27:19)
I love that. I mean, that’s quite a list. Thank you for all the things that we, you you kind of don’t think about a lot of these things,
Sandra VanSickle (27:22)
Mm -hmm.
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.
Will Hanke – WTMP (27:28)
So what are some common misunderstandings that occur between the window treatment dealers, workrooms, and then maybe obviously how can they be avoided in the future?
Sandra VanSickle (27:38)
I think that some of the, you know, the main miscommunications are probably, first of all, if you have the terms and conditions, that’s going to cover just so much. But I think a lot of it is, you know, just being clear, you know, on your specifications, you
Find out how the worker wants to receive their information. And then you make sure that you follow up on your end and provide all the details, the specifications for each project, know, the fabric, the measuring, everything that goes into that project. Give it to them upfront and communicate. However the two of you form your relationship, is it by a phone call or is it, well, it should
where it can be documented really when it comes down to it. That’s the best way. But sometimes I’ve had clients to say, okay Sandra, I’ve sent you everything. Can we schedule a FaceTime so we can go over it one more time? Because can you hold up the fabric? Can you do this? I said, yes, just for you. But don’t tell anybody. I’m teasing. And then establish timelines as well. Make sure that you’ve set clear deadlines for the project and the final delivery.
Will Hanke – WTMP (28:44)
Right.
Sandra VanSickle (28:54)
and communicate that to them. You know, sometimes you might put three jobs in at one time and you might say, you know, can I have this one first because it’s going to go first, that one second, whatever. You know, and you know, lot of miscommunication has come with check work order changes. You know, there are a lot of workrooms that we’ve said that we won’t start a job until
everything in hand. But over the years, you know, we’ve worked with designers for years and you just establish that relationship and the trust and they say, Sandra, I know what your guidelines are. However, we’ve got to get this going and we’ve the build is going to be done and we’ve got to get it in there because they’re going to move in. Can you do everything? Can you put the panels together and put the and wait for the trim or?
You know, and it depends on and then we can communicate. No, I got to put that trim on first, you know, so communicate. And if there’s any changes, work order changes, then make sure that number one is documented and number one that it goes to between the parties or parties that need to be made aware of it so that
on the same page when it comes there. Or if somebody misses that page by accident or forgets that page, it’s like, hmm, here it is. So I think that, again, a lot of feedback along the way, speaking the same language. A lot of times we’ve had designers say, I want those panels. And give me a europlete. Well.
your europlete might be different than Sally’s europlete or Jane’s europlete. So if you have to, you know, talk to the workroom and say, I’m going to, for me and my workroom, I’ve decided
I want to know is it three -pronged or two -pronged and where you want it tacked and how far down. know, sometimes taking it down to you want to stay within industry terms so you’re speaking the same language but also you need get down sometimes to simpler terms. know, yeah, keeping records, positive feedback, trust, respect.
Will Hanke – WTMP (30:56)
Yeah, I love the idea of the feedback back and forth. And I guess that’s probably easier with the people working in the she shed than it is with the corporate model, right? So that’s a trade off. Which one do you want? Which one do you need?
Sandra VanSickle (31:07)
Yeah, it is.
Exactly. It is a big trade off and it is not something that is a trade off. It’s not a fault of theirs because they have a business to run. That’s their business model. the trade off for a lot of that is if sometimes workrooms will use these larger, we use the larger companies sometimes because they can catch our overflow.
Will Hanke – WTMP (31:20)
Sure.
Sandra VanSickle (31:35)
They can pound out these panels faster than we can. depends. But they can get them done for us while we’re working on the more detailed treatments. There’s no way that they can produce. They can produce, but our client knows what they want from us. And so they can catch our overflow. And the price is great. But yeah, they’re
they’re not they’re not going to hold your hand and
Will Hanke – WTMP (32:03)
Yeah. You mentioned FaceTime earlier. Technology. How can technology like design software, project management tools, how can those help enhance the efficiency of working with a
Sandra VanSickle (32:19)
Yeah, quite a bit. can. You know, the yeah, just like, you know, the FaceTime alone, you know, we’ve used it quite a bit. And, you know, God, I used it with my husband today, as a matter of fact, he goes, can you listen to this motor? There’s something wrong with it, you know? And I think, OK, perfect point here, you know, but also it the management tools, too. I mean, my gosh.
If we had what we have today back 20 years ago, it would make our life so much easier. But one thing I can think of too is a lot of people use Airtable. And there’s a lot of other programs out there. And I know one gal who uses it. I mean, my gosh, it’s just amazing because you can log everything in there. And she has someone in her.
whatever on her staff that just really manages it. all the swatches of the fabrics go in and it sends an automatic email to your client that said, poop, we’ve got it in this. you can, it just can really simplify the lines of communication in an accurate way.
And it just saves time. And then again, like we said, the face time and even some of these sketch ups, even minutes matters has been out there a long time and I cannot draw. I cannot draw. I can look at something and cut it out of fabric and make it. But if you had to rely on me to draw something to you, probably you could probably going to give me a treatment that I didn’t ask for. So there are a lot of sketching type.
programs out there that if you can’t draw but you need to give the workroom an idea of what you need, you can do that. And even the measuring apps, you know, a lot of people will use measure up and some of the other ones to go out there, take a photo. And so yeah, it’s there are so many out there and you know, I can’t recommend using them whenever possible. Yeah.
Will Hanke – WTMP (34:15)
Yeah, yeah, I think it’d make the whole process a little bit quicker if nothing else, right?
Sandra VanSickle (34:17)
So some of my quick, that’s right.
Will Hanke – WTMP (34:19)
Cool. So you’ve recently kind of moved into teaching and online training, those kinds of things. What inspired this shift and how has it influenced your approach to the window treatment industry?
Sandra VanSickle (34:20)
So you’ve recently kind of moved into teaching me how to train.
Well, I have another really big passion and it’s called technology. And I love it. I love technology so much and began using it a lot back in 2011, 2012. And, you know,
Will Hanke – WTMP (34:38)
Okay.
Sandra VanSickle (34:51)
discovered how much training and how much, you know, we’re visual and how we can use it to train others and just have taken off with it. I don’t know if you know that I was one of the co -founders of the WCA virtual chapter and kicked it off and, you know, because I love the technology. And then even today with my live show, being able to, you know,
help others learn in a visual way. so I guess, you know, because I love technology and I’m fascinated by it and my deep seated passion for sharing my knowledge, it just has pushed me forward, you know, to do training online. You know, again, because I realized that, you know, I could make a broader
by educating others in the industry and it’s so important. And if you’ve ever listened to one of my broadcasts, I always start off by saying, you know, my goal is to educate, inspire and promote others within our industry because I love it so much. And, you know, not only has moving, you know, teaching and online training, you know, online, hopefully makes an impact in others lives.
But it has really broadened my, well, made an impact on the industry, hopefully, but it’s also enriched my own personal journey. It’s important for me to leave some kind of a legacy. I recently sent out an email about the retreat, about she’s not just chasing her dream, she’s creating a legacy. And that, on a personal level, is very important to me. And as I’m, again, transitioning,
Well, I’ve transitioned out of fabricating. I’m no longer accepting clients, but as you mentioned before, I’m still doing other things that I love too. I’m going anybody in my age, I am. I need to tell you my age, but retirement, let’s put it that way. And it is really, I have found that it’s I can’t go cold turkey. I mean, it’s it’s harder to leave this industry than it is to get in it. And and
I have a 90 -year -old mother and she’s like, I you said you were going to quit. And I said, can’t. I’m not ready. So yeah.
Will Hanke – WTMP (36:52)
Hahaha!
A lot of business owners say that every day also, right?
Sandra VanSickle (36:59)
Yeah, yeah, exactly. You know, exactly.
Will Hanke – WTMP (37:03)
Yeah. Well, thank you so much for all the different things related to workroom and quite eye opening to me all the different questions to have kind of ready. there’s a lot of stuff. There’s a lot of different moving parts to make it successful. So thank you for kind of sharing all those pieces. So I know you’re doing a couple of different things. You mentioned the show. You mentioned the IWCE.
Sandra VanSickle (37:19)
Are you well?
Will Hanke – WTMP (37:26)
Tell me how people can get a hold of you, learn more about what you’re up to.
Sandra VanSickle (37:30)
Yeah, definitely. We have the, of course we said the Craft Your Creative Life retreat coming up. If I can say it’s going to be in Lake Leroy, North Carolina. It’s a sewing business and wellness retreat. great. Sewing business and wellness retreat. So it’s quite unique, you know, event for our industry. And we would love to have folks, you know, join us.
And you can follow me online for that. have an online page, Live of Sandra V. I post it there. Instagram, I’m Sandra Van Sickle on Instagram. And also for the artists in Atelier, yeah, we would love you to come see us at the next IWCE. We’re getting ready to have the call for speakers for that. that’s quite a…
event too. So yeah, just reach out. That’s the best way to reach out to me. And
Will Hanke – WTMP (38:18)
Very cool. Well, thank you for sharing with us. We will put all of the links down below in the show notes, of course, and make sure that if somebody wants to reach out, that they have all the different ways to do so, and especially through the technology that you love, right? Well, cool. Thank you again, Sandra. I do appreciate your time.
Sandra VanSickle (38:35)
Yes, I do.
Will Hanke – WTMP (38:42)
As a listener, if you enjoyed today’s episode, we’d love for you to subscribe to the Marketing Panes podcast. Watch for more engaging discussions with window treatment and awning businesses, providers, and experts like Sandra. Thank you so much. Appreciate your time and have a fantastic rest of your
Sandra VanSickle (39:02)
Okay, thank you.
Marketing Panes is a monthly podcast of marketing interviews like this one. Click here to subscribe on iTunes.
In the ever-evolving landscape of digital marketing, staying abreast of Google’s algorithm updates is crucial for maintaining and improving your website’s visibility. This September, we delve into the implications of the recent Google Core Update and how it impacts businesses, particularly in the realm of window treatment marketing.
Understanding the Google Core Update
The Google Core Update that began rolling out in mid-August is a significant event for SEO professionals and website owners alike. This update focuses on enhancing the quality of search results by prioritizing websites that offer valuable content, effective solutions, and a positive user experience. According to insights shared by Will Hanke, a notable figure in the SEO community, the update is designed to reward websites that consistently provide high-quality, relevant information to users.
Impact on Website Rankings
Despite the widespread anticipation surrounding core updates, Hanke notes that many of his clients have not experienced drastic changes in their search engine rankings. This stability can be attributed to their ongoing efforts in maintaining robust website content and adhering to best SEO practices. It underscores the importance of a proactive approach to SEO, rather than reactive adjustments after an update is implemented.
Reddit: A Case Study in Success
One of the standout beneficiaries of the recent Google Core Update has been Reddit. Known for its community-driven content and problem-solving discussions, Reddit’s platform aligns perfectly with Google’s updated criteria. This success story highlights the effectiveness of focusing on content that resonates with users and fosters meaningful engagement—a strategy that businesses can emulate to enhance their own online presence.
Emphasizing Quality Content
To thrive in the post-update SEO landscape, prioritize creating content that addresses your audience’s pain points and provides actionable solutions. This not only improves user engagement but also signals to search engines that your website offers authoritative information.
Prompt Response to Team Requests
Hanke stresses the importance of responsiveness when your SEO team reaches out for additional information. This collaboration ensures that your strategies remain adaptive and aligned with current SEO trends, enhancing your chances of maintaining or improving your search rankings.
City Blitz Program
Introduced by Window Treatment Marketing Pros, the City Blitz program aims to boost visibility across multiple locations and services. This hyper-localized SEO strategy is ideal for businesses looking to expand their reach and attract local clientele effectively.
Commercial Outreach Initiative
Another exciting development is the Commercial Outreach program, designed to automate outreach efforts to commercial entities such as interior designers and senior centers. This initiative streamlines client acquisition strategies, offering a scalable approach to business growth.
Enhancing Authenticity Through Visual Storytelling
As part of the call to action for September, Hanke urges businesses to submit real project photos for their websites. Replacing generic stock images with authentic visuals not only enhances the credibility of your brand but also improves your SEO performance. Original project photos are more likely to receive favorable recognition from Google, thereby boosting your website’s visibility and authority.
In conclusion, the September insights into the Google Core Update underscore the importance of quality content, proactive SEO strategies, and visual authenticity. By aligning your digital marketing efforts with these principles, you can navigate algorithm updates effectively and position your window treatment business for sustained growth in the competitive online landscape.
Marketing Panes is a monthly podcast of marketing interviews like this one. Click here to subscribe on iTunes.
Kathy Cragg Pace is a megawatt beacon of growth, expertly guiding window treatment sales professionals into the world of thriving they deserve. In a sea of sales sameness, Kathy helps design sales pros fearlessly find their success with her Modern Sales Way, encouraging them to throw out everything we’ve all been taught about “closing a sale,” replacing it with the brightness of human connection and learning how to deliver an irresistible selling experience.
Her specialty is helping businesses look at their existing sales process and implement her Modern Sales methods quickly and painlessly, so they can finally move beyond the most common objections without any of the “salesyness” so often taught in traditional training. You’ll learn the art of “the stretch to connect” so you can thrive in design sales.
Throughout her extensive career, she’s led her own award-winning design franchise, real-estate and custom home-building companies, a North American network of large and small window-covering business owners, and a nationwide sales team of in-home design professionals. She’s worked with the biggest names in the industry, and influenced $450 Million dollars in sales. This pro knows!
Kathy’s Modern Sales Way includes a course, sales tools, and coaching, available for the first time to entrepreneurial businesses. She guarantees results, and she generously shares thought-provoking insights, memorable selling stories, and free downloadable guides.
To learn more about Kathy Pace visit:
KathyPace.com
pssst…. want to be a guest on the show?
Listen to other episodes
Will Hanke – WTMP (00:00)
Welcome to the next episode of Marketing Panes. My name is Will Hanke. This is your go -to podcast when it comes to window treatment and awning marketing. Each month we bring you insights from industry experts and fellow business owners sharing tips, tools, and strategies to boost your online presence and drive growth. Excited about my guest today, we’re going to be talking about sales.
And in today’s environment, that’s probably something we need to be paying attention to a little bit more than we have maybe in the past couple of years. My guest is Kathy Cragg Pace. She is a megawatt beacon of growth, expertly guiding window treatment sales professionals into the world of thriving they deserve. that sounds really good. I like that. a sea of… Yeah, not surviving. You’re right. Thriving. Great. In a sea of sales sameness,
Kathy Pace (00:45)
Not surviving. Thriving.
Will Hanke – WTMP (00:52)
Cathy helps design sales pros fearlessly find their success with a modern sales way, encouraging them to throw out everything they’ve been taught about closing a sale, replacing it with the brightness of human connection, and learning how to deliver an irresistible selling experience. That sounds fantastic so far. Cathy’s specialty is helping businesses.
Look at their existing sales process and implement her modern sales methods quickly and painlessly so they can finally move beyond the most common objections without any sales enos so often taught in traditional training. You’ll learn the art of the stretch to connect so you can thrive in design sales. So we’ve got some things to dissect here, Kathy. Thanks for being on today.
Kathy Pace (01:43)
You are so welcome. I’ve been so excited to share with you and your audience
Will Hanke – WTMP (01:49)
Awesome. Well, it’s great having you on. I’m curious about some of the things that were in your intro. And I guess we’re going to get into those as we go on. So tell me with the audience how you got started in the sales industry and what led you to design or led you to focus specifically on in -home design services.
Kathy Pace (02:10)
Right? Because who would choose to be a salesperson or a sales specialist? know, everybody avoids a salesperson unless we absolutely have to talk to them. But early in my career, it wasn’t design sales. was actually mortgage sales. And yeah, mortgage sales. And I. Caught what the bug that
Will Hanke – WTMP (02:13)
Hahaha.
okay.
Kathy Pace (02:34)
was actually, my gosh, unlimited opportunity. If you can stomach it, know, commission sales is what really caught my eye. And I had a fantastic mentor, person that I worked for. I literally was his assistant. And he, like all the other assistants, sat outside in the bullpen, let’s call it, but he moved my desk into his office so that I heard everything he said.
everything he did. And I was like, wow, this guy really connects with people. And because he wasn’t afraid to share his secrets, the things that had been made him successful, I learned and between the two of us, we became a powerhouse. I was able to put a down payment on our first home in California, mind you, from one commission check. So that’s when the bug
Will Hanke – WTMP (03:29)
wow.
Kathy Pace (03:31)
having your income related to what you can sell and how well you can sell it really sunk in. But mortgages was not exactly all that sexy. It wasn’t really what I wanted to do. I’d always loved and studied design. And so, but now I really needed to earn money at it. So anyway, I bought a design franchise.
which was a significant investment, which meant I needed to earn money. I didn’t want to just design for fun. I needed to have a profitable business. And so that’s kind of how the two came together. bought a, actually I bought a decorating den franchise and that is taking all your samples, come to their door, sell.
Will Hanke – WTMP (04:18)
Okay.
Kathy Pace (04:23)
in the home because that’s where people make decisions about those kinds of things in their home. And so I made in -home design sales my specialty. That’s how came to
Will Hanke – WTMP (04:37)
Okay, wow, okay. And that world is still pretty much the same from the standpoint of getting an appointment, getting into the home and making the sale. But I think over the years, the sales environment has probably changed drastically in our business. Tell me what you think about
Kathy Pace (04:54)
I think as anything, the environment goes up. When you’ve been around for a while, you have seen the sales environment go up and down and sideways and forwards. The thing that I think has most drastically changed, I’m just going to say in the last year or
is the motivation behind what is making people purchase and how to get people to buy. But before we launch in on that, I think we have to kind of talk a little bit about why people don’t buy. Because why people don’t buy, those reasons that people don’t buy, they’ve been the same.
forever and ever. Your listeners hear them all day, every day. They know them. They could listen. There’s really maybe four. They could list them off on their finger just like me. You know, okay, let me think about it. I got to talk to somebody else about it. It was more than I thought it was going to cost. I’m getting other estimates. I’m comparing. Those reasons why people don’t buy, but the one, the thing that just
breaks the heart of the every person, every, no matter how strong a salesperson you are, is when your client closes the door and says, okay, I’ll get back to you. And that’s really the beginning of, I’m gonna say the road to my sales success.
Will Hanke – WTMP (06:26)
yeah.
Kathy Pace (06:36)
You know, I have mentioned to you, I think before we did a little back of napkin calculating and $450 million in sales track record, not me personally, but the teams that I lead and the methodology. But the road to $450 million was not paved in glamour. It was paved, I’m going to call it
I’ve told the story so many times and I think everyone listening will hear a little bit of themselves and the selling situation that we’re in right now in this story, even though I’m going to start with August 1990.
leaving my client’s house after they’ve just closed the door and said, I’ll think about it and get back to you. And I’m walking down the driveway, that client, I’d been in her home, it was summer, it was hot, she didn’t have air conditioning. I was wearing my lucky sales outfit, which wasn’t very lucky that day, by the way. So I was sweaty and sticky and mad.
And I was lugging my samples back to the van and I put them in and I went around on the driver’s side where she couldn’t see me through the window and literally I just lost it to some extent and I took my bag. I can remember this. I just slammed it down in the street in this fit of frustration and I’m like, fork.
this, fork this. I cannot do this anymore. I am so tired of proposals that don’t go anywhere and quotes that people say they’ll get back. I’m just so tired of this. And literally I got in the van and I drove away and I did I’m not happy to
it didn’t get much better. You know, I’m getting more frosted and more mad at myself and I’m angry and I’m irritated and I’ve got chapped lips because when I threw my bag on the street, literally, I can remember watching my chapstick roll out of the bag and under the van and end up in this muddy puddle and it was just like perfect. So that kind of, I’ve had it.
Will Hanke – WTMP (09:15)
Course.
Kathy Pace (09:20)
I’ve had it is so challenging when you’re in a market when people are hesitating or when you don’t know how to get people to just say yes. Just say yes. So, you know, I drove away. The air conditioning, thank goodness, is on in the van.
The van, which was my everyday ride now because I had mortgaged my house to buy my franchise. I’d sold my nice car. I was now driving the colorful store that comes to your door. This great big, very large signed wrapped business vehicle. Our second car, we’d sold the other one because it had
Car payment too. So our second car was one we could afford. It was so embarrassing to drive. It was this Toyota Tercel and we called it the Turd and I’m gonna never was a name more fitting. so anyway, I just was thinking I gave up my career. I gave up my benefits. I gave up my car. I gave up all of that for this. This was
living the dream. This was living the frustration and the, you know, it just was really challenging. And so by now the air conditioning is blowing and I’m cooling down a little bit. Salespeople can’t stay, you know, mad forever. We got to be able to pick ourselves back up again. So I kind of started to feel maybe a little bit of a sliver of hope with the cool air. And I made a vow to myself, essentially, I said,
one year. I’m not quitting now. One year. Figure it out or get out because I am not going to live with this. Maybe I’m not good enough. Maybe I’m not cut out for this. Maybe this I just did not like all of that. Figure it out or get out. And so I started to look and I would say if you’re listening to this story now you can do this exact same thing. I started to look at every single
like I was solving a puzzle because I was like I was there was a mystery to be solved what will it take for my client to be able to say yes and it was a mystery I needed to solve like my life depended on it because at that point it pretty much did and I kind of broke it down you know one
The good news is I’ve been in business for a year, I’d survived for a year, I knew the problems, I knew the four main things people said. And when you know the problem, you can find the solution. And that’s the hope in it for people in these market conditions, whatever market conditions we’re in. When you know the problem, you can absolutely find the solution. So I had to take it one objection or one…
thing that people said to get me out of their house without giving me their money, one at a time, and break it down, like, what will it take? What can I proactively do to make it so that that thing doesn’t catch me at the end of the appointment, that I can handle
early on and get it out of the way. But in order to find out the information that I needed, I really needed a client who wasn’t resisting me. Like people resist a salesperson, like people resist a designer that they’re afraid of, this natural resistance shield. And so that really is how I came
to come up with what I now call 30 years later, I call it the modern sales way, but it’s the way that I developed a selling experience that no matter the business environment really cuts through the natural resistance that everybody has towards a salesperson and creates receptive clients.
who will take action, who will actually get over their fear of making a mistake, get over their fear of it’s gonna be expensive, get over all those fears that hold them back from saying yes and help them because only when they buy can they enjoy the transformation in their home and only when they buy can I enjoy the fruits of my efforts.
Will Hanke – WTMP (14:02)
Yeah, for sure.
Kathy Pace (14:04)
So getting over that hesitation, whether it’s in the environment today, really any, it’s a universal problem. But today’s environment, to get back to your original question, today’s environment is, we’re not gonna lie, this is challenging. We came out of a situation a couple of years ago, people were throwing money at us.
They had nothing else to spend on except for making their home better because they couldn’t do anything else. And probably if we’re honest with ourselves, we developed some bad habits. I’m gonna talk about we sales people, sales professionals, we developed some bad habits. Some we had to, we had to get in and get out, we had to stay far away, we couldn’t have long extended appointments, people were kind of afraid. You just had to get down to business and get her done.
And getting down to business and getting it done quickly in today’s environment is not what will break down resistance. We’ve changed. We’ve changed as a society. First of all, we’ve changed because our money is going less far. I mean, you, me.
Every single one of us were a little more guarded of our discretionary dollars. And I don’t know about you, but I have a few less than I used to have. also, I think
If COVID did anything for us, it really made us figure out what’s important. That’s why there’s been the great change in career, like what’s important and what I’m gonna say as it relates to our industry, what we’re over collectively, our selling environment, we’re over transactions, over
We want, we have lots of likes and follows and transactionally this is and that’s, but we have very little connection. And when sales people offer connection, that in a meaningful way, it resonates. It is something different that other
sales pros or other salespeople are not taking the time. That’s why I say in the intro you heard mastering the art of the stretch to connect because it takes more skill, it takes more time, it takes more effort, but if you don’t do that you’re gonna get let me think about it and get back to
Will Hanke – WTMP (16:46)
Yeah, yeah, definitely. I love the idea of the relationship, right? Making those connections with people instead of just trying to get the sale. And when I started in sales, that’s what I thought sales was, was just getting somebody on a phone and getting them to say yes, right?
Kathy Pace (16:51)
huh.
And you know, everybody talks to, I get asked all the time, how can I sell more? And they think the number one thing they want to learn, you know, the number one thing they ask for, how do I overcome objections? And I’m going to say, throw that out the window. First of all, nobody wants to be overcome. Nobody wants to be closed. The number one thing.
Will Hanke – WTMP (17:29)
Right.
Kathy Pace (17:32)
to learn in sales is how to lower the resistance shield because that thing is up. It is 100 % up and walking into somebody’s house and just saying, know, you have a lovely home, Mrs. Smith. I really like your neighborhood. That’s not enough. That is not enough to build a relationship, to set somebody at ease.
When you are good at that, you really are offering something now that is very different than, let me come in, give you a quote, find three different products, which one do you like best? Here’s how much it costs. Okay, thanks, I’m getting more estimates, here we go.
Will Hanke – WTMP (18:16)
Yeah, I know you called that client hesitation, right? Client hesitation is the killer there, I guess. So what are some? Yeah, yeah. What are some strategies that businesses can use or salespeople can use to kind of overcome
Kathy Pace (18:20)
Mm -hmm.
Yeah, that let me think about it and get back to you.
Love that. Excellent question. So I’m going to say it really two things right off the bat. can come immediately to my mind. First thing TMI equals hesitation. We have a tendency as pros. We have a lot of products, a lot of different customizations that do a lot of different things and we go in and we spend
a lot of the appointment talking about our products and our options and our upgrades and our this’s and our that’s and we don’t make it easy to buy from us when we give we overwhelm the client if you confuse you lose you’ve heard that before probably but TMI equals hesitation what what that does
the person’s in their analytical brain, the analytical brain is slow. It has to process all that information, process all that data. It has to think about it. So when you give them so much to think about, they’re not going to make a decision. The decision they’re going to make is, got to think about this. So we have to make it exactly, we have to make it really easy to buy from us. And the thing is, if you spend a
Will Hanke – WTMP (19:40)
Yeah, analysis paralysis, right?
Kathy Pace (19:50)
of the same amount of time that you spent talking about all of your products and options and upgrades and do you like this one and do you want that one and what about this and we could do this we could do that. If you spent that much time investing in the connection in the relationship in the commonality and getting the client relaxed creating a personalized experience for them then when you go to make your recommendation
First of all, you don’t have to talk about everything under the sun. You talk about one or two things based on everything you said. This is what I recommend. And the resistance shield is down. The connection is up. That’s where trust happens. Trust happens in the limbic brain. That’s what makes people act. Trust is a feeling. It’s not something you analyze and go, I don’t know. Let me think about it. Let me think about whether I like this person or think about whether I trust them.
really making it easy to buy and not spending so much time talking about products, spend more time creating. I actually made an acronym that will end hesitation because we have to let down the resistance shield, right? We don’t want the resistance, we want receptive clients. So let’s use RECEPT as the acronym.
So we need to create experiences that are relaxed. That’s the RE. Connected, engaging, personalized, and transformational. That’s RE, CPT, RECEPT. We need receptive clients. We need to create sales experiences that are relaxed, connected, engaged, personalized, and transformational. And if we master that, then we’re not going to get
hesitation like we have been getting. So that’s one thing. We just got to get that resistance shield down. And then the other thing is probably when you go to present your price.
In my journey, after I stopped doing all this myself, I started training and leading very, very large sales teams and was responsible for hundreds of salespeople across the United States. So I spent a lot of time in ride alongs and observing designers in the home selling. And what I found is when they would go to present the price, especially on
high -end product, luxury, it’s expensive. They would maybe in an effort to justify the price, because they were nervous to tell the client how much it was going to cost, they would tell them all the details. This is going to be this and that. So many what I call pesky details. You need to have all those details captured because that’s the difference between a right order and a mistake and a remake. So we have to have all that.
But for the client at that moment, pesky details, too much information, they check out. So I would watch these people go into their closing process. The client would check out. The designer would just give more and more information. And what I really found was when you could get the client not so much involved in the pesky details.
but involved in how the room was going to change, how their life was going to change, how the world was going to be transformed. Once these beautiful things were up in the window, then people will pay more for that. They’ll pay more for a transformed life or a transformed room or the pride and self -esteem from being able to host the book club and have their friends over and remove the barriers
have comfortable inviting home, then they will for something that is a product. Product price, know, transformation, value. And so if you don’t want hesitation, those are two kind of two things that can help with
Will Hanke – WTMP (23:52)
I love it.
That’s awesome. yeah, so you’re sitting there watching these guys going into their sales, closed, closing process, right? You mentioned earlier that you were responsible for around 450 million in sales, right? So you watch these guys, you made some, yeah, you made, you made some changes along the way, obviously. What are some of those key lessons besides the one you just shared?
Kathy Pace (24:14)
I was. I am. I have been.
Okay, so I would say
super common mistakes that I observed really early on and changes that I made for the teams that I manage. And these are big name teams. are names, Hunter Douglas and Smith and Noble and three days. These are large sales teams. And one of the things really, I’m gonna say one of the big changes
not so much. It was what what we did or what the designers did when they went in the home, but it was also what they did before they went in the home because I have a little prompt. I’m not going to turn it on because it’s obnoxious, but I’ve used this in so many sales training. Okay, have you ever seen this monkey with the symbols and if I were to
turn it on literally it would clang and it would be loud and it would be obnoxious and I call this guy the monkey of self -doubt and this is gonna make sense to your listeners but they probably haven’t thought about it like this before when the client makes an appointment with you they have about 30 seconds of elation
I’ve been thinking about this forever. I’m finally gonna get started on my project. But about 30 seconds into it, they go, holy crap, what have I just done? I just invited a salesperson and a designer to my home. They’re gonna judge me, they’re gonna make me expensive, designers are expensive, they’re gonna be, that’s gonna look like them, they’re gonna have their nose in there, what am I, who, I don’t, I have no idea, is it gonna be a salesy person who shows up? This monkey starts clinging in their ear.
Will Hanke – WTMP (25:57)
Yeah.
Kathy Pace (26:16)
And the longer you let that monkey clang and be loud, if you wait the two or three days until your appointment, that monkey just gets louder and their self -doubt grows. And if you’re having a problem with clients canceling appointments, it’s that. That’s what’s happening. Self -doubt from our clients is a real thing.
It’s not just because the, anyway, self, the monkey kind of takes over. So the faster you can connect with that client, there’s that word again, stretch to connect. You can connect with that client in a relaxed way and start to talk about their project and let them see you’re just a regular person like them who really wants to help them, whose desire is to help, not to sell. Then.
The monkey will quiet down, your cancellation rate will go down, and when you get to the door, you’ll be opening the door to friends, not strangers. Strangers have a resistance shield, friends don’t. So I would say one common mistake is to go to the door of stranger. Don’t do that. There are some businesses who have appointment setters.
A couple of large companies that I worked with have that or had that. And the appointment setter was the one who made sure the right time, the right place. confirmed the appointment. The designer got there. The designer was a complete and total stranger. And what that meant was that monkey had been going for however long it had been. So that’s a big mistake. Quiet the monkey. Quiet the monkey. The second…
Big mistake, big, big, big, big, big mistake is when you email your proposal and you don’t present that price in person. And that’s sometimes difficult to do because if you have large projects, they’re complex, they’re all of those things. But if you don’t have a easy way,
to at least get the client in the ballpark price wise and you leave without telling them the price. Guess who starts to talk again? Same old monkey, same monkey. my God, how much is it gonna be? It’s gonna be so much. And self doubt starts to creep in and then they open the email with, they don’t remember.
all the fantastic reasons why you chose what you chose. They don’t remember how the room was going to be transformed, how their life was going to be changed, how they were going to have a comfortable inviting home. They don’t think about that. They’re standing in line at Trader Joe’s, you know, and they pop open the email and scroll to the very bottom and they go, holy cow, $6 ,548. Are you kidding me? That’s, and you have, you have no ability
Will Hanke – WTMP (29:12)
Hahaha
Kathy Pace (29:23)
counter that, to frame that, to… So if you’re wondering why you send a quote or a proposal and then you get ghosted…
That’s part of the reason as well. So two big mistakes and they both have to do with the monkey because our clients are human beings and they are afraid of making a mistake. This is a somewhat complex purchase window treatments. There’s a lot having to do with them. They are expensive in case you haven’t noticed. So letting that monkey of
Will Hanke – WTMP (29:56)
Hahaha
Kathy Pace (30:03)
control the sales situation is.
change that you got to change right now if you want to end hesitation, if you want to hear yes, especially in the environment that we’re in right now. People are fearful. They don’t know what tomorrow is going to bring. They are afraid of what tomorrow will bring in many, many ways. Anything that you can do to remove that fear and
guide the client with empathy, you know what they’re up against. You know that they’re embarrassed about their home. You know that they can’t invite their friends in and that there’s things related to their windows that are keeping them from having the people that they love in their home. And you can solve that. You have got to get really good at what you do because if you aren’t really good at what you do, you’re not solving problems.
Presenting a quote is not that helpful, especially presenting a quote for something somebody can’t afford to buy. Not helpful. And have you ever noticed this? Clients don’t get mad at themselves for not having enough money to buy something when you price something they can’t afford. They don’t get mad at themselves. They get mad at you. So we’ve got to figure out how to have money conversations
Will Hanke – WTMP (31:21)
Yeah.
Kathy Pace (31:29)
you know, get past the fear, get really, really good at lowering the resistance shield. And that’s what I’ve dedicated my career to, really.
Will Hanke – WTMP (31:41)
Yeah, yeah. Thank you. For a lot of the pretty much our entire audience is small businesses, small business owners that are trying to succeed, right? What are some of immediate steps they can take to really improve their sales process?
Kathy Pace (31:49)
Mm -hmm.
Mm -hmm, absolutely.
Okay,
I’m gonna
I’ll to keep, I’ll practice what I preach, simple, keep it simple. Two things, what is convenient for you is not going to get you the success that you need. You need to create everything that you do. Saw, open, get out of your heads.
Cut open the client’s head, walk around inside there for a minute, view the world through their eyes, and create and do a selling experience that’s convenient for them. So for example, we’ve all been guilty of this. You can’t get appointments all day every day. Clients will change appointments all the time when it’s convenient for the client. We can’t change appointments.
times or said just because it’s more convenient for us because we’re already be going to be on that side of town because you know it turns out that’s the only day we can get our i’m going to be i’m going to be flipping here but it’s the only day we can get our hair done or whatever we can’t do things that are convenient for us it’s not fast efficiency get in get out move on to the next appointment get in get out that’s more convenient for us believe me
That isn’t what’s going to lead to success. So what’s convenient for the client generally is not convenient for you. It just isn’t. So we have to do that. And then I’m gonna really say this. Like I did when I was solving my puzzle back in way back in the day, I took…
to in that one year, figure it out or get out, took invested into really expensive courses that involved me getting on an airplane and staying in a hotel. So it was significant. And I learned from the experts, I read books, I got this whole tower of sales books back behind me. I read the expert, what all the experts said, I listened to podcasts like yours.
Will Hanke – WTMP (33:42)
Okay.
Kathy Pace (33:57)
or listen to tapes back in the day in the turd mobile when I was grabbing groceries or going from appointment to appointment. And what those so -called experts told me many times when I tried them, they were tactics. So I’m going to say throw that out the window, throw out all those things that we have been taught.
seven ways to overcome objections. Use the puppy dog clothes. Use the reduce it to the ridiculous. Use the half Nelson clothes. You know, my favorite just twist their arm until you’ve got them trapped. Yeah, no, those things. That’s get rid of those. Get rid of those in favor of human connection and relationship sales.
Will Hanke – WTMP (34:43)
Yeah. Yeah. And for somebody maybe who’s 20 or 30 years into it, that might be a challenge, right?
Kathy Pace (34:51)
yes, however, yeah now
Can I just tell, I want to tell you about one, because this is so poignant, one person who did take, one of many people who learned modern sales mastery and his name is Rich. He’s here in California down in San Diego, little way down the freeway from me. And I have, I use his testimonial.
one of many, but one of the things he said is, I was my own worst enemy. I kept doing the same thing in the same way, partly because I didn’t know any better, but partly because that’s how I’d always done it. And when I had kind of a, when he had kind of an interrupter like, I hadn’t thought of it that way before, or I just didn’t know.
there was a different way to do it. Doing it the way we’ve always done it is if we’re either growing or we’re dying. Doing it the way we’ve always done it, that’s dying in my opinion. We need to thrive. We want thriving sales. We need growth. We want sales growth. Then I, and probably you too.
And people listening to this podcast are like this as well. They wouldn’t be listening if they weren’t people who want to grow, want to learn, have a growth learning mindset. So there is a different way to do it than the way you’ve always done it, even if you’ve been in this forever and a
Will Hanke – WTMP (36:30)
Yeah, I like that. That’s very smart, right? I I spend time every morning just on YouTube or somewhere trying to learn something. And I think the smart business owners do the same.
Kathy Pace (36:40)
huh.
You’re investing in yourself. You’re investing in your skill. There is nothing else. There is no other investment you can make. I’ll say this, you and I talked about this before. You can invest in your marketing all you want, but if you can’t sell, then all the leads in the world are not going to help you very much. You’re going to be very, very good at capitalizing
Will Hanke – WTMP (37:02)
Right.
Kathy Pace (37:09)
every single opportunity that comes your way. Leeds are a little less plentiful these days. They’re much more expensive these days, and so capitalizing on every single one of those, getting the maximum, like squeezing every bit of juiciness out of the pomegranate, which is hard to get juice from right now, it’s hard to get juice from, is super
Will Hanke – WTMP (37:29)
Good.
Yeah, very much so. So that was kind of my next question for you. With the leads getting more expensive, you know, and maybe a little bit harder to come by, what are some effective strategies that people can use to maximize the lead conversion that they are getting?
Kathy Pace (37:36)
Okay.
You know, I would say you
I would say, again, go back to your sales process because whether it’s written down in a nice little binder on a shelf or a PDF document that says, you know, our sales playbook, or whether it’s just that thing that you always do, and you have to really kind of look at it kind of step by step. That’s really the, that’s what I do. I help.
people look at the process that they have now. But you can do this yourself. Look at it kind of step by step. Where am I getting resistance? Where does my client relax and become receptive? When you learn something new, a new way to do something, don’t just try it once and go, well, that didn’t work.
Sales is a practice. It’s like yoga. I don’t know about you if you’re a forever yogin, but you don’t get into those pretzel poses the first time or the second time or the tenth time you try it. But it doesn’t mean that you just go, forget it. This is not for me. If it’s important for you to get into the pretzel pose or get to yes, which I think it is for all of our listeners, if it’s important to get to yes, then you need practice. And so
being able to look at your process, practice different ways of doing things rather than being stuck. if the way that you’ve always been doing it isn’t getting you the results that you want right now, then why would you keep doing it the exact same way? That doesn’t make sense. So.
I would say if I’m being flippant again, because sometimes that’s my humor, it’s like, stop doing what doesn’t work and start doing what does. But that’s probably easier said than done. And really, we don’t need…
If I really think about this, we don’t need more information. We don’t need more sales tactics. don’t need more. We don’t, truthfully, we don’t even need another course. There is plenty of information out there about how to do it. It’s like losing weight. We all know there’s plenty of ways to lose weight, but when you really get down to doing it, what you sometimes need is a friend to link arms with you, come alongside, show you, encourage you, motivate you, inspire you, teach you, help you.
understand what’s really going to get to success. So you can learn it through the School of Hard Knocks 100%. Absolutely. That’s what I feel like. If there has been a change in our business environment right now, we’ve gone back. Even for those of us who have been around for a long, long time, we’ve gone back to the School of Hard Knocks because the stuff we have been doing isn’t working.
because the environment and the client is different. So traditional sales training taught a lot of people how to close a lot of sales. We’re now in an environment where no one wants to be closed and everyone’s resistant to a salesperson and they have less money. So we’re back to the school of hard knocks and what were the way that we’re doing it isn’t isn’t working as well. So we need
kind of search our heart and figure out, we got to figure this out. Like our life depends on it. You want to know why? Because it does.
Will Hanke – WTMP (41:28)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s great. So I know that you have some resources for our listeners. Before we talk a little bit about that, how do you stay motivated in this industry? What keeps you going?
Kathy Pace (41:42)
I think curiosity is the superpower of thriving. And so I am always, huh, I wonder how that works or how can I make that or what can I learn or how does Will make his business go around or how does, I think that when we really truly want
to see what makes somebody tick when we really want to get somebody, then we have a lot more motivation to change how we do things maybe because as a rule in case you haven’t noticed we’re kind of resistant to change. We don’t like it. Change feels risky. So change feels risky. But when you really want to help. So I would say
If your motivation is not just to sell more… Now believe me, there’s nothing wrong with that. The end result of everything I do is to help everybody listening sell more. There’s nothing wrong with the motivation being to sell more. But if that’s the driving force… But if we’re curious
How can I really help this person? Do I have what they need? Am I the best person for them to buy for? Is my product or solution the best solution for them? Because that kind of authenticity, that kind of curiosity, that is different. Everybody else isn’t doing that right now. They’re trying to go on more appointments and buy more leads and get in and get out and being frustrated because more people are saying, let me think about it and get
And so, you know, I would say, start there. Start with a genuine curiosity and a real desire to help people, not to sell them something, but to help them. And that will keep you motivated every single day. And that is what makes me get up. Literally, I have been hard at work creating a mastery course, which means I’m like
I’m a people person, but I have been head down, taking all this stuff and putting it in a way that I can serve it up. I have been on my computer all day every day, but what motivates me to do that when I thrive, when I’m interacting with people, when I’m face to face or screen to screen helping people, that’s what makes me come alive.
But I’ve been working on this and motivated to work on this because I really genuinely know how needed upping people’s sales game now is. so it’s motivating. And it is genuinely needed for your listeners. When someone calls you to their home, their home right now doesn’t feel good.
It’s not their haven like it should be. That’s what a home should be, but it’s not. There’s something wrong. It’s not comfortable. It’s not inviting. It’s all those things. And if you genuinely care enough for the person in front of you and say, I can change that. I have products and solutions that can change that. You have such a valuable.
service that you are providing. You change people’s lives. don’t just, you don’t sell window treatments, you change lives. And that sounds Pollyanna and it sounds all whatever, but I absolutely know it’s true. And you know it, your listeners know it. They’ve had the client who cries when they see the solution up in their window and said, my God, I never thought I could have something this beautiful. It is amazing. I never could have done this without you.
That is motivating. But right now when everybody’s hesitating, we aren’t hearing as much of that. And so it’s harder to keep our motivation. So we have to get better at getting people to actually be able to say yes, because only when they say yes can their life be transformed.
Will Hanke – WTMP (45:53)
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, definitely less less at bats, right for our audience right now.
Kathy Pace (46:07)
Mm -hmm. Yes. So that’s that squeeze every bit out of the pomegranate. You know, there’s not as many seeds as there were before. And so your interactions have to be fruitful. They just they know it’s not you’re not going to close. I hate that word close, by the way. You’re not going to confirm every sale. You’re not. But you’ll be shocked.
When you really change your why, your focus to helping people, to creating this receptive experience that lets the client feel like you really get them, how much more often people will say yes, how less resistant they will be to your solutions, how they will, especially when you learn to talk about money, which is the elephant in the
You’ve got to crack that code. When you learn to talk about money in a way that lets people lower their resistance shield. And that’s not common in our society. We’ve been taught from the time we were young, don’t talk about money. know, money is power. Guard your purse, guard your wallet. So learning how
handle that super important, especially now when you have fewer opportunities. It is more important than
Will Hanke – WTMP (47:39)
Yeah, yeah. So tell me about the course you’re working on. I know that you’ve been putting that together for a while now and a new version of it, I guess,
Kathy Pace (47:47)
a new version. is 2 .0 or 5 .0. I don’t know what because I and I call it the modern sales way even though it’s very much the relationship based style of selling that I started working on 30 years ago and I call it the modern sales way because I want to contrast it really with almost everything we’ve learned in traditional sales
because sales and even sales training has not been very innovative. There’s really been nothing new under the sun for quite a long time. We’ve been learning the same things in just different ways over and over again, how to overcome objections, know, all those things. We’ve been how to price condition, how to how to all those kinds of things
haven’t really changed for a very long time.
I call it the modern sales way because I think now the innovation, if there is innovation in this and let this sink in, the innovation is that we’ve changed as a society, we’ve changed as people, we want genuine connected human interactions. We don’t want transactions. so modern sales mastery is a eight week, it’s not just a course. Like I said, we don’t need more information. We don’t need a bunch
videos and videos and videos you just watch more videos until you can’t watch another video. It is a way of in kind of bite size over the course of eight weeks it is a personalized experience working directly with me in a super small group environment and yes there is learning there are lessons in every module there are lessons and guides and tools and all of those kinds of things but there’s also
Will Hanke – WTMP (49:22)
You
Kathy Pace (49:47)
group coaching weekly for that entire eight weeks so that you can take what you learned that week, information in the bite -sized piece that you learned, go practice it in your appointments like yoga, go practice it. It’s probably not going to go well the first time around. Come back, have some questions, get them answered, listen to what other people try and experiment. Learning together in a small
Will Hanke – WTMP (50:05)
Hahaha
Kathy Pace (50:17)
less than 10, 10 or less. What happens is that the collective group moves forward so much faster because of that interaction with each other and because of that direct interaction with a coach who has been there, who’s done what you’ve done, has taught hundreds of thousands, if
thousands literally I have interviewed I cannot tell you how many people I’ve interviewed hired and trained over the course of my career and Been responsible literally responsible at the executive level in very large corporations for their success And if they aren’t successful, I’m out So
Being able to learn in that kind of environment, I think that is the delicious difference of this particular, I’ll call it a course, but I’d really rather call it a experience. Learning the modern sales way with me is a small group learning environment. It is intense, it is focused, but in about two hours a week, over eight weeks, it is the fastest.
most efficient, most effective way, I’m going to just say to get off the sales roller coaster because that’s what we’re on right now. I get yes, I get no, I get hesitation, I get enough, I get to have enough to pay off all the and then I don’t have enough and then I have enough and then I don’t have enough. That’s not thriving, that’s surviving. So that’s the Modern Sales Mastery is the name of the course.
It is super brand new. As a matter of fact, have not quite even launched the founding member version of it. I’m about ready to do that. And in this, that group of 10 will get even more up close and personal interaction with me because I have lots of testimonials and great…
results from people who have taken from me in the past, but this is a little bit different platform, a little bit different learning environment and so it’s a win -win. I’m going to get great results from the people who take this course with me. I’ll put in extra time, extra effort. They’ll
fantastic results, all get fantastic testimonials, and that will allow me to get this course out into the world to even more people who need it. So it’s win -win all the way
Will Hanke – WTMP (52:58)
That’s awesome. So a little sneak peek inside the course, the not course that you’re putting together. Are there any? Yeah. Yeah. Are there any? Right.
Kathy Pace (53:04)
The NOT course. The NOT sales training sales training. We should hashtag that. Unlearning. Un -sales training. That’s what I’m going to call it. Un -sales training. Huh. There we go. You heard it here, folks, for the very first time. Modern Sales Mastery, the un -sales training. That will get you to ass.
Will Hanke – WTMP (53:17)
There you go.
Good, great. On sales training. So inside the inside your system, are there any tools or resources that you found particularly useful that you could recommend to the listeners?
Kathy Pace (53:39)
Well, 100%, remember I told you we’ve got to master the money conversation. Money is the elephant in the room. Like literally picture this, when you walk into a client’s home and you’re designing in their family room and there’s you and your client, between the two of you is a giant elephant’s rear end. That is is separate, that is money.
Will Hanke – WTMP (54:05)
Okay.
Kathy Pace (54:08)
When they say, let me think about it, what are they thinking about? Yeah, did they give me the right product for the right price, the right value? When they need to talk to Frank about it, guess what they need to talk about? Money. When they’re getting other quotes, it’s about money. When they haven’t seen what they like, it’s because what means I haven’t seen what I like for the money that you proposed. It’s all about money. And so being able to have the right tools, the selling,
the money the elephant in the room it’s module three by the way the third weekend because we got to start practicing that early on because that’s hard to learn and there is tools for budget estimating and all that kind of
Will Hanke – WTMP (54:51)
Wow, OK. So a whole bunch of different resources, tools, things to grow. That’s great. That’s
Kathy Pace (54:55)
Mm -hmm. Yes. Pre -appointment communication. There’s a whole communication handbook with it all spelled out for you. Here’s some great ways that you can quiet that monkey in multiple different ways. Because truthfully, trust is not developed like that. Like when you decide to enter a relationship for life with somebody, you don’t just do it like that. You do it because…
They’ve shown you in multiple different ways that they show up and they can be trusted and that you want the same things. And so your pre -appointment communication and the multiple different ways that you can go about that quickly and easily and efficiently, if you’re a business owner or a salesperson, you need an efficient process for that. There’s a whole communication guidebook. So there’s a lot of great tools.
Will Hanke – WTMP (55:46)
I love it. Yeah, sounds like a great resource. So tell me how people can find out more about the course, about you, how can they get in touch with you, that sort of
Kathy Pace (55:56)
Okay, fantastic. So I created, so I have a website, kathypace .com, but I created a special landing page for your marketing panes listeners, just for you. It’s kathypace .com forward slash marketing panes. And there’ll be a picture of me anyway to welcome you. And I have a couple of things there. The first thing is,
Will Hanke – WTMP (56:20)
Yeah.
Kathy Pace (56:25)
guide. I redid it for marketing panes a little bit specifically. It’s called Thriving Modern Sales and it literally helps… remember I say I help people look at their processes and compare how modern, how traditional, what are you doing that you might not even know that you’re doing. It’s all about this
comparing traditional sales with modern sales and how modern is your practice. And it’s free, it’s just a guide, literally has a little self -check quiz or self -check at the end of it and nobody’s looking over your shoulder so you can be honest with yourself and really kind of see, I might wanna pay attention to this, I might wanna pay attention to that. So it has that guide in it. And then
Will Hanke – WTMP (57:02)
that’s great.
Right?
Kathy Pace (57:16)
you request that guide and I send it to you, I will also give you a link to join the interest list. It’s not a sale. Yes, I want to buy it. I’m interested in this course. And then here’s something else that I have for your listeners. So anyway, there’s an interest list to join the course, especially this founding member’s initial course.
is super value packed. But for your listeners who take any of the modern sales mastery between now and the end of the year, and there will be multiple, it’s a small group environment, but there will be multiple releases of the course. 2024, yes, we better say that. I will add something again at the end of
eight weeks together, I will add a one -on -one, just you and me strategy session that will take the things that you learned about modern sales and experience, a selling experience that gets to yes, and help you personalize it and customize it even more to your business, your brand.
Will Hanke – WTMP (58:38)
if you hear the dog barking.
Kathy Pace (58:39)
dog
Will Hanke – WTMP (58:41)
sorry. Yeah.
Kathy Pace (58:42)
That’s no problem, no problem whatsoever. Can you cut out dog in the background? just a dog?
Will Hanke – WTMP (58:45)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, she’s taking a minute. Yeah, no, well, yeah, we’ll just do it again. Just start over with, and for your listeners, I’ll also throw in that kind of
Kathy Pace (58:50)
no, so, yeah, okay. Okay.
Okay. Okay, yes. Okay, and for your listeners, Will, when they come through that kathypaste .com slash marketing panes, between now and the end of the year, 2024, at the end of the course, I will also include a one -on -one individual, just you and me, just them and
strategy session and what that does is take the things, the methodology, the signature experience that you learned with for our industry but personalize it even more for your business, for your strengths, for your selling process, for the way that you do things already. Now you don’t have to throw out everything and start over. Nobody wants to do that. So that strategy session I sell those for
$500 those one -on -one. I will include that as
Will Hanke – WTMP (59:56)
Wow, thank you. That’s really nice. That’s really kind. Thank you so much.
Kathy Pace (1:00:00)
You’re welcome. I want this course in the hands of more people because I know how much it will help them and that’s why I want to do
Will Hanke – WTMP (1:00:06)
Yeah. Yeah. It sounds like it’s going to be fantastic. Kathy, thank you so much for all the things that you’ve shared today. I think that if somebody didn’t pick something up from this, they’re crazy. There’s so many things, you know, just doing something different and realizing, I think that sales is it’s a test, right? There’s no just one formula, but getting things in the right direction, testing different things, making connections and relationships.
Kathy Pace (1:00:26)
Right.
Will Hanke – WTMP (1:00:34)
Thank you for all the things that you’ve shared today.
Kathy Pace (1:00:37)
you are so welcome. It’s been my pleasure and I’m really, really appreciative. I love what you’re doing for the industry as well because if you can sell more, once you sell more, you’re gonna wanna get in front of more people. And when you get in front of more people, that’s where you come in. So I think we go hand in hand, Will, you and I, it’s a good partnership. And that’s why I’m really appreciative that you invited me
Will Hanke – WTMP (1:00:56)
yeah. Yeah. Great stuff. Thanks again. Thank you. If this is your first time listening to the podcast or if you’ve been listening for 30 plus episodes, thank you for being a listener. And if you haven’t subscribed to us, you know, make sure you do that so you know when the next episode comes out. Make sure to look for our YouTube channel. We put all kinds of stuff out there on the YouTube channel.
Kathy Pace (1:01:02)
Thank
Will Hanke – WTMP (1:01:24)
Just look up Window Treatment Marketing Pros, were easy to find on there. Kathy, thank you so much. We’re gonna go now and hopefully that everybody was able to pick something up and really grow their business.
Kathy Pace (1:01:39)
I hope so. Let’s go sell something today. That would be fantastic. Let’s thrive.
Will Hanke – WTMP (1:01:43)
Awesome. Thank you so much.
Kathy Pace (1:01:45)
Bye
Marketing Panes is a monthly podcast of marketing interviews like this one. Click here to subscribe on iTunes.
In this conversation, Will Hanke provides updates on the industry trends and offers tips to offset the decrease in leads. He discusses the current trend of leads being down and attributes it to factors like the economy and the election. He mentions that paid ad costs, particularly on Google ads, are increasing. Will suggests exploring other platforms like Nextdoor and Yelp for advertising. He also talks about the importance of utilizing social media platforms, building a YouTube channel, optimizing Google Business Profile, and sending out monthly newsletters. Additionally, he mentions the benefits of content marketing, purchasing additional content credits, and using the City Blitz system to improve local rankings.
Marketing Panes is a monthly podcast of marketing interviews like this one. Click here to subscribe on iTunes.
Jonathan Mast – Pioneering AI Prompting Mastery for Business and Marketing Excellence
Since his digital debut in 1995, Jonathan Mast has been a visionary in integrating marketing and business operations with AI. Founder of the seven-figure digital marketing agency Valorous Circle, he has collaborated with over 400 clients, demonstrating his ability to scale businesses online through proven marketing strategies. Now at White Beard Strategies, Jonathan focuses on AI prompting mastery, helping professionals save time, increase profits, and deliver exceptional value. A dynamic speaker, he demystifies AI concepts and offers practical strategies that drive immediate results. Committed to community growth, Jonathan’s contributions extend beyond the digital realm, fostering innovation and mentorship. Dive deeper into his journey and AI-driven strategies at Jonathan’s Linktree and White Beard Strategies Linktree.
To learn more about Johnson Mast visit:
Whitebeardstrategies.com
pssst…. want to be a guest on the show?
Listen to other episodes
Episode 35 Jonathan Mast
Will Hanke (00:00)
All right. Hello everyone. Welcome to episode 35 of marketing panes. This is the podcast where we talk to professionals, window treatment owners, and we just talk about different things related to the industry, how we can help you grow in different ways, what other people are experiencing. Today, I’ve got a fantastic guest that I think you’re going to be very excited to hear. And because our topic today is all around AI
Probably the biggest buzz of the last 12 months at least has been AI and how it’s going to maybe replace people or is there ways to use it. So we’re going to talk to a lot of those things today. But Jonathan Mast has been a visionary in integrating marketing and business operations with AI. Founder of the seven -figure digital marketing agency, Valorous Circle He has collaborated with over 400 clients
demonstrating his ability to scale businesses online through proven marketing strategies. Now at Whitebeard Strategies, Jonathan focuses on AI prompting mastery, helping professionals save time, increase profits, and deliver exceptional value. A dynamic speaker, he demystifies AI concepts and offers practical strategies that drive immediate results. Committed to community growth,
Jonathan’s contributions extend beyond the digital realm, fostering innovation and mentorship. Jonathan, thank you for being on today.
Jonathan Mast (01:28)
Well, thank you for the invitation, Will. I’m excited to be here and as you know, I’m excited to talk AI.
Will Hanke (01:32)
Yeah, yeah, we’re excited about this because it’s everybody’s talking about it. Everybody’s worried about it. Everybody’s, you know, thinks the thing certain things are going to happen. So we’ll kind of talk about some of those today. But before we kind of like jump into everything, just give me the 10 ,000 foot view of what whitebeard strategies is and what you
Jonathan Mast (01:53)
Well, we’d be happy to. So essentially, we’re an AI strategist. We work with businesses to help them figure out how to bring AI into the business and leverage it. And as you said, kind of in the workup, by the way, thank you for that. That was very nice of you. But I think we really try to help people figure out how do we save time because AI can save a tremendous amount of time. And I don’t know any business owner that has more time on their hands than they want. So that’s a big deal. Can also help with the teams.
That leads to better profits and better margins, which is super important. And ultimately, it even delivers and or I should say moves on to deliver better value to our clients. And we all know as business owners, especially with the economy the way it is today, if we went to the grocery store, everything’s more expensive. If we can figure out how to deliver more value without having to charge more money, that really can set us apart from our competition and really helps us keep that business and grow our business.
Will Hanke (02:47)
Yeah, I love that. So can you go ahead and share an experience where integrating AI into a business process has
Jonathan Mast (02:54)
Absolutely. One of the things that I think probably has proven to be most effective for many businesses is just learning how to use it from a basic communication standpoint as business owners, as team members. And by the way, we really are big proponents of teaching the team how to use AI as well, Will, because it’s one thing for the owner to know it as we were talking, Kevin, the pre -call, but the team needs to understand it as well. And one of the best examples is just in writing emails to clients. So often.
We’ve got an email we need to write to a client. We know we need to say something. Maybe we can’t agree with the client or they’ve made a request and we want to say, well, you can’t do that, but we want to do so in a way we’re not putting them off too bad and be professional. Those emails, at least for me, they take not just minutes, but sometimes tens of minutes to write or even a half hour sometimes. And I don’t have that kind of time. And then they don’t always sound right or I said something I didn’t mean to.
AI is a great tool for that because we literally can take that request email from the client. We can paste it in and say, here’s what I want to say, please rewrite this to make it sound more professional, to make it easier to read, easier to comprehend. And literally often in less than 10 seconds, AI will write an email that’ll get us 95 to 98 % of the way to completion. And then we just have to edit it real quick and press send. It’s now off our mind as a business owner, so we’re not thinking about
We’ve dealt with it and it always can do so in a way that, again, especially when you proof it, is very professional and makes the right points because it’s got like the perfect words for everything we want to say. So that’s one of many. Another big one, and I’m sure your audience runs into this, standard operating procedures. We know how important it is to give our team standard operating procedures and checklists so that when they’re worth a client, everything gets done the same way, the same.
for every client and we have that consistency. But it’s hard to keep those up to date. Even if we wrote one a year ago, things have changed, maybe we don’t have a checklist with it. With AI, I literally can take existing SOPs or in my case, I can take brand new ones, give it an outline and say, here’s the things I want to cover, here’s the task we’re doing, I want you to create a standard operating procedure. And again, in about 10 to 20 seconds, we’ve got a really well thought out standard operating procedure that’s probably 95 % of the way there.
And then one of my favorite features, and my team loves this, instead of just giving them the SOP to follow, we then can have AI create a checklist that corresponds to that, that now our team can go out and go on site and go, okay, did we do these steps in the right order? And then that checklist gets returned back to your operations manager, your office manager, whomever, and you can validate, hey, know, yeah, we did do everything the right way, we covered everything. And if not, we can identify what happened and make sure that we’re prepared.
So in the future, let’s say that customer comes in and says, why did this happen with my window coverings? Now you’ve got your checklist to go, well, we didn’t do this because of the following reasons or because you requested we didn’t. So those are just two areas that I think AI can be hugely beneficial
Will Hanke (05:50)
I love that. saw an example of AI for somebody had received a one -star review and what they did is their van, their installer had backed up the van into a car. And so they got a one -star review. So they went to AI and said, here’s the situation, help me write a really nice reply to this review. And it was anything, it was better than anything I could have come up with for sure, right?
Jonathan Mast (06:10)
Mm -hmm.
Exactly, exactly. And it’s not emotional. We know when we’re emotional, that’s not the time for us to be writing them. Let’s say maybe a customer gives us a negative review, like you mentioned, may or may not be deserved. But how can we respond to that? And maybe more importantly, how do we reach out to the client to address that? We recently had a scenario with one of our clients, very similar, where the crew went on site. When they went in, didn’t clean their shoes off well, and they tracked all over the carpet.
And the homeowner understandably was ticked off. they gave them a one, while the job got done right and everything was happy, they were, they gave them a one -star review because they ended up tracking mud onto the carpet. Good news is, is they found out about it and we actually used AI to write the email back to the client and then it followed up with a phone call. And the nice thing there is that the owner is like, I’m not sure what to say. We used AI to help give them some bullet points, hear the things.
Essentially, they reached out, they said, wow, we’re so sorry, that’s not what’s supposed to happen. What I’d like to do today, if it’s okay with you, is I’d like to send my carpet cleaning crew over and have them clean your carpets at my expense. And would that be okay with you? And the client was like, yeah. By the end of the day, that was all done. And guess what? That one star review now turned into a five star review and not just the five stars, but a long explanation, all very positive that told the story of, hey, you know
were human, things happened, but this company stands behind it, they fixed it, and I would never use anybody else
Will Hanke (07:39)
Love it. Yeah, that’s great. And it’s the what is it called the Pareto principle, I think 80 20, we’re using using a tool to get your 80 % of the way right off the bat, you know, and all you got to do is a little bit of tweaking and you’re done.
Jonathan Mast (07:52)
Exactly. It’s like having an advisor that’s sitting next to you in your office or in your truck or wherever you are. And that when you have that problem, you can go, what do I do? And that can be as simple as, geez, I forgot to publish a social media post today. I told my office manager I was going to do that or I know I need to be doing that. Or it could be much more elaborate and what I find again far more common
I need to respond to this email or I need to do this or, you know, one of your team members calls and there’s a problem. And like you said, you’re trying to figure out what are my options? What should I do? You know, you get that phone call and somebody crashed the van and okay, they’re safe, you know that, but what steps do you need to take? That doesn’t happen every day. AI can help them say, here are the things you should be doing if your employee just smacked your van up and at least give you next steps. And as somebody that owns a business, I find that really helpful because
Will Hanke (08:24)
All
Right?
Jonathan Mast (08:40)
A lot of those things we don’t deal with every
Will Hanke (08:41)
Yeah. Yeah. I love it. I love it. That’s great. So how do you see AI benefit benefiting the small and medium businesses in the window treatment and awning industry?
Jonathan Mast (08:51)
I think there’s a couple different areas. Probably most important to me is just general communications like we talked about. But a secondary part is really helping them brainstorm. And when I say brainstorm, I don’t just mean new business ideas, but brainstorm about the best ways to handle situations that come up. Again, whether it’s an employee that crashed the van, or maybe it’s just getting a better understanding.
of your audience. Maybe it’s doing some data analysis. For example, imagine being able to upload all of the jobs data that I’ve done for the last year and take a look and I have AI. I go through and analyze that and determine what products are selling the best and have the most profit. What products do we have the least amount of complaints about? Which install crews are doing the best jobs? Which maybe install crews are not doing the best job?
Can we identify any trends that are happening? Maybe we find out that we have a consistent complaint that’s coming up that maybe as the owner you just didn’t think about. But AI can analyze all of that data and in seconds it can give us that. It’s imagine we could essentially upload all of our job data for the last year and then have a conversation with a data analyst asking you questions about all of that data and knowing that it was going out and not giving us stuff it made
but giving us context right from that data that we uploaded. I think for any business owner, that’s probably one of the superpowers it can get because it can, even though we know we’re supposed to do that, at least maybe, I don’t think I’m alone well, we get too busy. And so at the end of the day, when the end of the day rolls around and it’s now after dinner and we’re full and we’re dealing with the kids or the family or whatever, the last thing we want to do is pull out these major reports and start digging through the reports and looking for trend analysis and all that.
because it’s candidly probably not what we enjoy doing. And now we can use AI to do that for us and give us those insights. And then when it identifies them, we can even take it a step further and we can say, okay, now I want you to act as my business consultant and I want you to give me advice on what things should I be considering in order to rectify that or what steps could I take in order to minimize this from happening in the future.
Or how can we better capitalize if we know that this particular type of blind or awning that we’re installing is always getting five star reviews and the clients are loving it? What are those? Are there commonalities amongst those clients that we can identify and go, hey, this type of customer tends to spend and upgrade and buy that product and buy those. How do we better reach them? What are their pain points? How can we make sure that in all of our communication?
whether that’s your email newsletter, whether it’s your social media, whether that’s your phone calls, that everything they get is focused on addressing those particular pain points that cause them to spend more
Will Hanke (11:38)
that’s awesome. So one thing people maybe don’t realize is, and maybe if you’ve not been exposed a ton to chat, GPT or some of these other services, it’s not, you just put something in and get something out. You can actually then ask follow -up questions, clarifications, ask, can you please rewrite this in a different way? It’s a conversation,
Jonathan Mast (11:56)
Absolutely. And I think that’s probably one of the things so many people miss, Will, it is absolutely a conversation. Most people think, OK, this is my magic box. I’m going to hold my phone up here and I’m going to ask it my question. And I didn’t like that response. It’d be like hiring a new employee, having him sit down in your office and walking up and asking them one question and then turn around and walking to leave. when they go, hey, Will, Will, can I ask you? No, you can’t ask me any questions. But no, no, no, never mind. Figure it out.
We were not going to get good results out of that. And then deciding, well, I’m going to fire them because I gave them a task tutor today and I didn’t like what they did because we never gave them any information. So yes, we need to have that conversation with AI. We need to ask follow up questions. Just like an employee, they may sometimes give us something that’s not exactly what we wanted. This morning, I ran into that. I asked it to help me out with some things I was doing as far as checklists and it didn’t give me what I wanted. And I said, that’s not what I was thinking.
Will Hanke (12:31)
Bye.
Jonathan Mast (12:51)
What I meant was this, and it’s like, okay, now I understand it had misunderstood, just like you and I can misunderstand if we’re collaborating on a project. So that follow -up is super important, having that conversation and not expecting it to be a magic box that if I give it three words is going to understand everything I’ve been thinking about since I left the house this morning and all of that context. I need to give that to the AI model as well, just like I would a fellow team member if I was working with them.
Will Hanke (13:18)
And all these platforms or at least most of these platforms remember things that you said. So if you come back a week later and ask it something, it’s going to take into consideration past conversations,
Jonathan Mast (13:28)
Each model handles that a little bit differently, but yes, ultimately you can maintain. The best way I think to explain it is it’s like a text conversation. If you and I are texting each other about having lunch next week Wednesday, and I text you today and you’re busy and so you don’t get back to me until tomorrow, when you respond to me tomorrow, it’s still going to be in that text thread. as soon as I see it, I’m going to go, yeah, Will and I are talking about lunch next week Wednesday. I’m going to remember that.
And all of the models have that capability. So if we stay within a particular conversation, they’re going to remember that. Some of the models have the ability to actually give it information that it’s going to remember across all of our conversations if we want it to. And you can turn that on and off. you know, so that every time I do it, I want you to know, for example, this is my personality type and here’s the way I like to respond to things. And it will remember that across all of them. And both Claude and ChatGPT
two of the major components, they both give you that capability.
Will Hanke (14:25)
Yeah, I’m the owner of a window treatment company. So every time I ask you, that’s that’s what I’m asking because of that.
Jonathan Mast (14:31)
even things like your phone number, your web address, the email address you want to use and things like that. So if you’re writing an email, it knows how to do your signature. All of that information can be put into place so that next time you ask it to write that email, it’s going to finish it with, well, Hanky, and all of your information, the right phone number, the right email address. And that makes it easy because you can just copy and paste. And again, it makes the amount of editing you have to do much, much faster. Like you said, if you tell it I’m in the window treatment business or I’m in the awning business,
it now will understand that so when it’s writing things for you, it’s going to know that and it’s going to use that as context. And again, just makes your life much, much easier.
Will Hanke (15:07)
That’s fantastic. What are some of the other misconceptions or concerns that business owners have about AI and how do you address those?
Jonathan Mast (15:15)
think one of the biggest ones that I run into is they’re concerned as business owners that it’s they’re going to have to let, it’s going to cause so much benefit, they’re going to let some of their team go. And as we know, our team becomes part of our work family. We don’t want to do that as owners. We don’t want to see these people that we’ve built lives with and see that happening. And we just don’t see in the reality, we don’t see that happening.
What we do see happening is that when we teach our teams how to leverage AI and give them permission and give them the room to start using it, all of a sudden they start finding new ways to provide value to our clients, new ways to provide value to the company, new ways that they can add value in their position. And then we’re like, wow, not only were we saving time, but now we’re getting more value. And as a result of that, our profits are better because sometimes it just allows us to be more efficient.
Imagine instead of your team being able to do, and I’ll pick a number, four installs a day. Imagine with AI and optimizations that you could move that to an average of four and a half. That extra half is pure profit that comes into you at that point in time because you’re not paying extra labor to do that extra job. You’re just finding efficiencies that allow you three days a week to get an extra job done.
Will Hanke (16:25)
that’s pretty awesome. I like that. That’s good. We talked a little bit about reviews, mostly negative reviews, but there’s other ways that AI can help with responding to reviews, even positive reviews, right? And we should, as a digital marketing company, we very much encourage our clients to respond to every review, but there’s only so many ways to say thank you, right?
Jonathan Mast (16:44)
Mm -hmm.
yes, absolutely. Well, you’re right. That’s one of the great things. One of things we recommend is the simple tip. When you get a review from a client, copy and paste it into ChatGPT or Claude or Gemini, doesn’t matter which one, and basically say, help me write a response to this. And again, especially with what we were just talking about, if it knows this is your business, this is who you serve, and that it’s going to then do that and it’s going to come up
unique ways to do that so that you don’t just say thank you, we value you too on every single response that you give. Yeah, so yeah, it’s very, very effective. And again, it’s not a matter of minutes to do it, it’s literally a matter of seconds to do this now. And that’s so much better than going, oh, I’ve got seven reviews, I wanna respond, I wanna tell them how thankful I am. But man, I’ve said thank you, we love having you as a client 27 times in the last two months, I need to come up with something new.
Will Hanke (17:15)
Right.
Yeah. And the other thing is by by varying every reply, the people that are looking at those reviews are going to kind of that personality is going to start to come out that this company really does care. And they were a little bit more they went a little deeper on, you know, beyond just thank you.
Jonathan Mast (17:53)
Absolutely, and that helps again create those relationships and strengthen those relationships, ultimately bringing more value and hopefully in that case, as you mentioned, bringing in new clients who go, wow, I want to work with you because I like the way that you communicate. I like the way you do it. And that can be on both good and bad. Sometimes, know, business owners, I know I do, I fret if I get a bad review, I’ve only had a couple, but, you know, one of them, for example, it came from a company in Brazil that we’ve never worked with before. I don’t even know who they are.
Will Hanke (18:18)
out.
Jonathan Mast (18:19)
but I can’t get Google to remove it. so now I probably should talk to you about that. Well, you might be able to help me, but I can’t get Google to remove it. So instead we responded to it. And now I’ve had clients that have reached out and go, man, I can’t believe that company in Brazil that you’ve never worked with gave you a one -star review. Why? Because they read our response that wasn’t calling them names, wasn’t being mean, basically just very nicely said, wow, we’re so sorry you had a bad experience. Unfortunately, we don’t show we’ve ever worked with you.
or any company in Brazil before, but if there’s a mistake, let us know. And it was simple and effective, and now when people read that, again, that helped instill credibility in our company because of how we handled the negative situation and that we didn’t blow it up. We didn’t act like we were all better than them or anything else. It was handled professionally, and that also can bring new clients in because they see that and they go, that’s reasonable.
Will Hanke (19:14)
Yeah, that’s great. Can you share any success stories, case study, something like that of maybe a business that has really implemented AI effectively?
Jonathan Mast (19:25)
Like there’s a lot of different things I can share. think probably one of the most impactful to me is one of our clients that they’re utilizing it to make sure that they’re communicating best with their clients. Not everybody on their staff. This happens, I won’t say the industry they’re in, but this happens to be an industry where the people that are on the phone are really smart think technicians and engineers.
but they don’t necessarily have a customer service bone in their body. And it’s not that they’re trying to be rude, they just don’t communicate with smiles. That’s not what they do. You know, they fix problems all day long. And they’ve implemented AI for their help desk and their customer support team to help make sure that not only do they now have an expert who’s answering the question, because it’s one thing to have a customer service person, but if they don’t understand how that awning’s installed or how that awning works, it doesn’t necessarily help them. Now we can have that expert involved
And we can use AI to help them say and respond in a way that’s just a little bit more friendly with a little bit of a smile and that helps the customer service so much because they’re getting the experience they want without the, shall we say, the attitude of dealing with a technician or an engineer who’s brilliant but just doesn’t possess some of those traditional tactful skills that we want a customer service person to have.
Will Hanke (20:39)
that’s fantastic. I love that example.
Jonathan Mast (20:41)
Yeah, and so that’s been in a real world. We literally, in this case, we’ve empowered their customer service team. Their customer service team, they’re good at that. But we’ve given the tools to the technicians to be able to use to put their responses in because it’s almost always via email. They don’t get on the phone in this case. The other thing we’ve done, and it just reminded me as we’re talking about it, well, we’ve taken all of the basic recommended customer service policies.
Will Hanke (20:57)
Okay.
Jonathan Mast (21:05)
all of the company’s policies and we’ve uploaded those to what we call a custom GPT that now their customer service team has access to. So when their customer service team says, well, I don’t remember what is our policy for return in this case, or what’s our policy for going back out, or how much do we charge because this, all of that is now stored in a custom GPT. And instead of going to the boss and putting a client on hold, go hang on, let me check and they, hey, what do we do for this?
Now they literally can go into that custom GPT, that AI model, and it has all of your company’s information, your policies, and it will give them the answers that they need so they can do that essentially in real time with the customer.
Will Hanke (21:44)
wow. That’s awesome. Now you mentioned leveraging personal branding alongside AI. How do you see those two things kind of working
Jonathan Mast (21:52)
Well, the reality is, is that, you know, at the end of the day, as business owners, we need to make sure we’re seen as an expert in the industry that we’re in, in the locale that we serve. So basically within our territory or location, we want to be seen as that expert. If I need to buy new window treatments, I want my customers to be thinking of me first, not third. I want them to go, I’ve got to call Jonathan because I know he’s the expert. The reality is, though, sometimes creating the content
keeps you in front of those people to be that expert can be arduous. Because again, you’ve got other things to do all day long. So you don’t, for example, you may not know, but I mean, the recommendation in the industry right now and the marketing side is if you want to be seen as that expert, you should have three unique social media posts going out every single day. That’s your minimum, your minimum. Most business owners, if you’re like me, you struggle to get one out.
Maybe a week, let alone three a day. Well, now now we can use it for your personal brand and I can go, OK, I’m Jonathan and I run Jonathan’s, you know, awning company and I need help coming up with 21 social media topics that I can post this week. And I need an outline so that I can put them together real quick. And oh, by the way, it’d be really cool if you could give me a related graphic that I could post. AI can do
Now, we need to take a look at it, we need to make sure it’s relevant, but if we do 21 of them, 19 are gonna be almost perfect. One’s gonna be okay and one we’re gonna throw away and try again. And now at least I can do things like that from a personal branding. That’s so important because again, we’re not talking now just about the company, we’re actually talking about maybe you as an owner going out and being seen as that expert. And that’s something that I think a lot of us as business owners are not doing.
And that personal branding side is really an area where AI can help you strategize and plan because it’s kind of like videos. You know, I’m a huge fan of doing daily videos, answering a question that your clients are asking. And by the way, you know, how do we do those videos? On our mobile phone, we just hold it up and we answer the question. We don’t worry about being in a studio. We don’t worry about proper lighting. We literally from our van or our truck are going to hold our phone up and answer that question.
Most business owners I know can do that, but the problem is they don’t know what question to answer. But if I start off at the beginning of the month and I go, need 30 questions this month that I’m going to answer that relate to my industry, AI can give you those 30 questions. And now when you get to a job site 15 minutes early, you pull your phone out and you go, I’m going to record two or three short videos. And now for the next couple of days, I’ve got the videos that I need. Or, know, Saturday morning when, you know, if you’re anything like me, you take the family somewhere and
They’re doing something, they’re running around in the market or at the flea market or at the farmer’s stand or wherever you’re at, and you are sitting there going, okay, I’m just watching everybody’s stuff. Well, pull your phone out, look at your list and go, okay, I’ll record a couple videos. Those are the types of things that build personal brands that you really can’t outsource that. You really need to do that as the owner of the business, and now we can make that very easy and attainable, and it’s not a heavy lift to get done anymore.
Will Hanke (25:02)
Yeah, I love that. And I’m guilty of the same thing. I’ll be at the park or something. My wife likes to run. I don’t like to run, but I’ll walk, you know, and it’s like, gosh, I should take out my phone and shoot some videos, but I’m just like, what could I talk about? And I just can’t think of anything. So that’s a great example of having, just have a list on your phone of here’s the 21 things you need to do this week or this month and knock them out when you have
Jonathan Mast (25:26)
Yeah. Yeah, and again, it doesn’t have to be professional. Literally just grabbing your phone while you’re walking around the park and your wife’s lapping you and laughing as she goes by because she’s lapping you. You can record that whole thing because that makes you personable to your audience. And if you’re in a locale, they’re going to go, wow, I know where Will’s at. That’s a park in our city. Guess what? Now you’re local and that matters and you’re relatable. So all of those things are much more attainable with AI now.
Will Hanke (25:53)
Yeah, yeah. So if you’re new to personal branding, or maybe you’ve never heard of this before, this kind of concept, Jonathan, what do you think some steps are that people could take to start to establish their presence effectively in that
Jonathan Mast (26:06)
I think the first thing I want to hit on is that personal branding is different than company branding. It’s similar, but it’s different. You are now trying to make a personal connection with that end user. Now, that doesn’t mean that they’re going to have to call up and they’re going to expect to talk to you on the phone. But if they know that you’re the face of the company and you’re the face of what you do, it’s establishing yourself as an expert. And that means, yes, necessarily like me, I’m going to talk about whitebeard strategy sometimes. That’s my company.
But I also talk about what I do and I don’t always talk about it. Probably the biggest change for business owners is it’s not about selling. Personal branding is about adding value to your audience and adding value to that potential customer, not telling them that you’re running a promo on this brand of blinds this month because they don’t care about that. It’s talking about, again, problems. How do I make sure that I get blinds that fit?
I want to put blinds in my child’s bedroom or in my bedroom and I don’t like the sun shining through. What type of blind should I get? Now know everybody listening to podcast is going, well, everybody knows that. No, they don’t all know that. You need a blackout shader and I’m not even sure I’m using the right terminology because I’m not in that. But there are different things that you can use on your window treatments in order to achieve those objectives. And if you can talk about them without
constantly saying, and don’t forget, call Jonathan’s Blind Shop because we’re here to serve you. No, no, and it’s hard. We want to do that as business owners, but this is about personal branding, personal connections. You want to be known, liked, and trusted by that audience, and that’s a personal connection more than it is a business connection. You know, the best example I can give is I think of, I live in a small town and we’ve got multiple grocery stores, and we’ve got the big chains that are here.
but we’ve also got some local places. And I don’t know the owner of the local place, but I know who he is because of the things that he does and he posted. He’s done a really good job with personal branding. And so what that means is that we go to the local market first to do our shopping and we only go to the big box store for the stuff that he doesn’t have. And think about that. Now we’ve actually, we could go to the big box store and buy everything because they have it all. And it might even be slightly less money.
But we go by from the local guy because guess what? He works in the community, he lives in the community, he goes to church in the community, his kids are in school in the community. And I feel like I know him, even though I don’t personally know him, because of the content that he shares. And I therefore feel an affinity to work with him. And the really cool thing is if I’m in the store and he’s walking through, I can go, hey Bill, Bill has no idea who I probably am. But it doesn’t matter because
He’s friendly and he’s built that personal brand and the name of his market doesn’t even matter because we shop there because of
Will Hanke (28:51)
Yeah, yeah, I love that. That’s very impactful, I think, for people that take that advice and try to start implementing
Jonathan Mast (29:00)
Yeah, it can really make a world of difference. And the other thing is it helps, let’s face it, for our businesses, we do do marketing, and we do do advertising. When the owner has a strong personal brand, it amplifies all of those dollars that we’re spending on other marketing so that those dollars do even more work for us as opposed to not having that personal
Will Hanke (29:20)
Yeah, yeah, that’s great. So you mentioned earlier on about having these, in nerd speak, global parameters, right? There’s these things that it always remembers, no matter where you’re engaging it with. How can AI maintain that personal touch, especially in customer interactions, and particularly in the window treatment and awning industry?
Jonathan Mast (29:29)
Mm -hmm.
Mm -hmm.
Well, I think the key there is again that we’re going to train AI on the basics of our business. We’re going to tell them that. Once we’ve told AI that this is the tone and style that we want, or this is the type of thing that we, the way that we want to communicate, it will then remember that so that we can use that in the future. So that when your customer service team is going out and responding, they’re going to respond as you want them to, not necessarily respond with, let’s say,
and I’m going to date myself, I’m 55, not respond like a 21 year old that’s just getting in college and smacking their gum. They’re going to be literally now responding as you who’s got 30 plus years of experience in the industry. They’re not going to say they’re you. It’s not that they’re going to go, oh, I’m Jonathan, but they’re going to have that knowledge and that experience that’s going to come through in their responses. And that’s going to do wonders for your customer service. It’s going to do wonders for your image and your brand as well, all tying that together.
So I think just training it to do that, and even in models like Gemini that don’t have memory outside of that, it’s a matter of what we call creating a little snippet. And basically imagine if you could for a moment, well, that we’re going to have AI interview you with the goal of creating a little bit of text that it puts in some brackets that you then save on your clipboard or in a document or something so that every time you’re writing a response, you just paste that in and now it knows,
I now know all this information about how I’m supposed to respond and maintain that tone and structure. So it’s responding as a well -trained and experienced staff member, not as a brand new person that just stepped out of college or high school or wherever and is trying, but maybe misses the mark because they don’t know what words to use.
Will Hanke (31:23)
that’s fantastic. Something that just came to my mind was recording those first customer interactions when somebody’s calling to maybe set up an appointment, something like that. And then putting those transcripts into AI and teaching it, here are the way these conversations always go. What questions should we, you know, it could probably take all those different conversations and build us a list of questions that we should always ask our new customer.
Jonathan Mast (31:46)
Yeah, and that’s actually a really good point. Like we talked about other data analysis, we can upload customer calls, recordings, we can upload videos, we can upload things that we’ve written, we could upload letters, policy manuals, you name it, marketing pieces we’ve done. And AI can learn from all of that. Just before our call today, I actually was working on my website, which is something that I’m terrible at because I do stuff for other people.
but I realized I needed to update it and I wasn’t sure the best way to do it. So I literally grabbed a screenshot and I uploaded it and I said, I want to change this to reflect this updated service that we’re doing. What should I do? And the AI literally read all the content, the pictures, everything that was in that screenshot and came back with recommendations for me of things that I could do. So again, it’s so important to remember there’s all kinds of content that can be uploaded.
I love the idea of taking some customer service interactions and calls, uploading the MP3 file or the transcript of that call and learning from that and using that to train. Very, very effective.
Will Hanke (32:47)
Yeah, yeah. So I want to talk about one last thing. And it’s something I’m a little addicted to right now. And that’s mid journey. So up to this point, you and I have kind of been talking about you have to put some sort of a text or a MP3 or something into the system, get something back out, right? In our world, some of the big dealers like Hunter Douglas and Greybird, they give us just mounds and mounds of gorgeous pictures to use on websites.
Jonathan Mast (32:55)
Mmm.
Will Hanke (33:14)
So I have personally become kind of addicted to mid journey and the idea of giving AI a picture and say, do this differently. The other thing I’ll just toss in here and you probably cover this is what comes back is a hundred percent original,
Jonathan Mast (33:16)
Exactly.
Mm -hmm.
right. Well, yes, yes and no. 100 % I don’t. It’s going to use what you gave it as influence. So yes, you’re right. It’s absolutely unique. Absolutely. But it will use that as influence. So if you’ve got some of those beautiful pictures from one of the distributors or manufacturers and you upload that, yeah, you can now create something that’s entirely unique to you that still looks very similar. And now, like you said, the real benefit
Will Hanke (33:39)
Yes.
Yeah.
Jonathan Mast (33:57)
there’s never going to be another dealer that’s using that same image. It’s just, so you’re going to have that. I’ve run into that by using stock photography, which is really what you’re talking about when you get it from a manufacturer. You know, and in my case, I’ve done it before with my marketing experience where I’ve used it maybe in a campaign. And then a month later I’m driving down the road and I see an entirely different business in an entirely different industry with a billboard with that exact same photo. And I’m going, man, cause it’s
Will Hanke (34:01)
Yes.
It is.
Jonathan Mast (34:24)
So you can avoid all of that. And mid -journey, by the way, is the right choice if you’re going to do that. It can create photorealistic images and they are absolutely amazing. Except the fact that you may not keep every image it creates. So sometimes it’s just like when we’re coming up with ideas. Not every idea I have is great, even though I try to convince my wife they are. Not every one of them is really great. And that’s OK. Mid -journey and all of these are going to occasionally come up with things and you go, no, that was a miss.
Then you try again, not a big deal, because 80 % of them probably will work out well. And I love your idea of, again, giving it something to follow and say, all right, here’s some sample images. I’d now like you to create some that are unique that now you can use through your dealership and your business. And again, never have to worry about somebody having the same image.
Will Hanke (35:12)
Right. And you can even be a little bit specific. You can have conversations with it. You can ask it for variations of a word or of a picture. You can say, do this living room, but with green couches. Right. You can do some really cool stuff with
Jonathan Mast (35:18)
Absolutely.
Yes.
Yeah, yeah, I mean, you could change the environment. Maybe you’ve got a picture of an inside of a house looking out. I’m thinking of one I saw for Pella Windows not too long ago, and it was an inside of the house looking out. Maybe you want to change what’s outside so that it’s a different type of back lawn. AI can help you do that. There’s so much that you can utilize it for. And again, now you’ve created unique images, and I love what you were saying, that every dealer in the country is not using.
Will Hanke (35:49)
I love that idea. Take this picture, but we’re in the mountains instead of in Florida or something. know, could, that’s awesome. That’s great. I love it. So thank you, Jonathan, for all the expertise that you’ve shared. just, I love the AI stuff. I think there’s some great advantages that we can use in our industry. Can you tell me a little bit about the prompting course that you have and how our listeners could benefit from that? And I think you have an offer as
Jonathan Mast (35:54)
Exactly.
I certainly can. I believe at the end of the day, the best way to use AI is to learn prompting. It’s not just and for those wondering, that doesn’t mean anything. It’s just learning how to communicate with it. So just like Will and I are talking, it’s learning how to talk to the AI. I do have a course that we put out there and we’re going to we’ve got a code set up for your listeners actually. And by the way, Will was
super generous. offered to pay well for the course for a referral. He goes, no, just give the discount to the listeners. So we’re going to go ahead and do that. And we’re actually going to sell you the course at fifty dollars off. Normally the course is hundred and ninety seven dollars. You guys, I’ll give you that code here in just a second. You can put that in. I’ll give you the links. You can put it in the show notes or whatever. You can go out and get that. The neat thing about the course is I have talked for.
almost a year about how you shouldn’t buy AI courses because they’re outdated the moment you buy it. My wife corrected me and said, yes, but you could update them every month. And so that’s what we do with this course. It literally gets updated every single month as new things come out. Well, you know, we’ve got new AI news coming out every single day. And we’re updating that into the course so that when you buy this, it includes all the updates for the rest of the year. That’s all included. And yeah, again, I’ll give you the link on
is really easy. It’s just save 50 and then will your name. W -I -L -L. So save 50 will. That way we know it’s there and again we’ll give you link if you need to find that. You can also go to my website at JonathanMast .com. We talked about personal branding. JonathanMast .com slash Linktree and there’s a link right on there. You click that. You put the coupon code in. Save 50 will and you’ll save $50 on that if you’re interested.
Will Hanke (37:53)
Awesome, awesome. Thank you so much. So for those that are listening on audio, maybe don’t understand why your business is called Whitebeard Strategies. I think those on video will get it, but those that are not might question it a little bit, but to get to your website, I guess it’s
Jonathan Mast (38:09)
You can go to my company website is whitebeardstrategies .com and if you’re listening and not watching it’s because I have a ever growing white beard. I’m old enough that it’s white and it’s it continues to get a little bit longer every year. Although this is about seven years in and it’s not getting a lot longer. But yeah, that white beard strategies or if it’s easier to remember my name, Jonathan Mast, -A -S -T, you can go either place. And then if you’ve just put Linktree at the end, it gives you all the ways to contact me to reach out to get the course.
join some free resources we’ve got and all that type of stuff.
Will Hanke (38:40)
Well, fantastic. I love that. So, Jonathan, thank you so much for your time today. This has been eye opening even to me. You know, I’m kind of in that world a little bit, but there’s some really cool stuff I didn’t even think about as well. So thank you for your time
Jonathan Mast (38:54)
Thank you for having me on, Will. I really appreciate the opportunity and love being able to share with everybody. So thank you very much.
Will Hanke (38:59)
Awesome. For those of you that are listening, thank you for listening through and please, if you have not subscribed, go ahead and subscribe to the podcast. We’ll bring you more experts just like Jonathan here and want to really set you guys up for success and we’ll see you all on the next episode.
Marketing Panes is a monthly podcast of marketing interviews like this one. Click here to subscribe on iTunes.
In the latest episode of Marketing Panes, host Will Hanke sits down with Elsa Johnson, a mindset expert and CEO, to explore the crucial role of mindset in achieving business success. Johnson’s journey from the financial world to running a thriving window covering business offers valuable insights for entrepreneurs looking to overcome self-sabotage and unlock their full potential.
Elsa Johnson brings a unique perspective to the world of business and mindset coaching. Her background includes:
Johnson’s diverse background allows her to understand the challenges faced by business owners from various angles. As she explains, “What I do, what a lot of other coaches do in my space, we all come from the same philosophy, right? It started out with Socrates and Plato and all these great ancient philosophers, but with all of our individual experiences, we all of a sudden see new connections, new ways of opening up, new ways of seeing it.”
Her personal journey as an entrepreneur with an immigrant family history adds depth to her insights, particularly in “understanding what it takes for an immigrant with an immigrant family history to create a business in the US.”
To learn more about Else Johnson visit:
Morethanjustfine.com
pssst…. want to be a guest on the show?
Listen to other episodes
Johnson emphasizes that mindset is the cornerstone of business success. It’s not just about having the right skills or strategies; it’s about cultivating a mental approach that aligns with your goals and strengths. As she puts it, “Mindset is what we’re going to talk about. And that’s something that has drastically changed my business.”
One of the key topics discussed in the episode is self-sabotage, which Johnson defines as “putting up barriers to getting what you want.” Common manifestations of self-sabotage include:
To combat these issues, Johnson recommends a multi-step approach:
Johnson emphasizes the importance of daily practices in cultivating a positive mindset. She suggests:
For those looking to dive deeper into habit formation, Johnson recommends books like “Atomic Habits” and “Tiny Habits.”
Perhaps the most important takeaway from the conversation is the need for action. As Johnson states, “The biggest thing about building a new habit is the reminder, right? To help yourself do better.” She encourages listeners to move beyond self-sabotage and take concrete steps towards their goals.
In conclusion, Elsa Johnson’s insights offer a roadmap for entrepreneurs looking to harness the power of mindset. By addressing self-sabotage, building positive habits, managing stress, and embracing networking opportunities, business owners can set themselves up for long-term success.
Remember, as Johnson reminds us, success is not just about what you know, but how you apply that knowledge. So, take a moment to reflect on your own mindset and consider how you can implement these strategies in your own business journey.
Chapters
00:00 – Introduction: The Power of Mindset
04:41 – Chapter 1: Overcoming Self-Sabotage
11:22 – Chapter 2: Common Barriers to Business Growth
14:17 – Chapter 3: Steps to Reverse Self-Sabotage
17:55 – Chapter 4: Cultivating a Positive Mindset
24:23 – Building Effective Habits: Reminders and Self-Awareness
25:16 – Overcoming Self-Sabotage: Awareness and Mindset Shifts
29:54 – Taking Action: From Self-Sabotage to Success
31:38 – Stress Management: Five Easy Stress Busters
42:27 – Understanding the Window Coverings Industry: Networking and Learning
Will Hanke (00:00)
Hey everyone, Will Hanke here from Window Treatment Marketing Pros. We’re here with another exciting episode of Marketing Panes. I’m very excited about today’s guest. The big reason that I’m excited to talk to Else today is really because mindset is what we’re going to talk about. And that’s something that has drastically changed my business. I was in business for 20 years before I decided to give myself permission to succeed.
And just the last seven years have really exploded for my own business. And it was purely because of mindset. So I know a lot of you are probably struggling with very similar things, self -sabotage, all that kind of stuff. So we’re going to dig into some of that today with Else Johnson. Else, how are you today?
Else Johnson, Mindset Expert And CEO (00:45)
I fantastic, I’m so grateful to be here with you today.
Will Hanke (00:48)
Cool, thank you. So let me read your quick bio here and then we’ll jump into some questions if that’s all right. So Else Johnson is a mindset expert who successfully transitioned from the financial world to running a thriving high -end window covering business. Her experience in this industry has exposed her to the personal sacrifices and challenges of achieving success while maintaining well -being and happiness.
Now she empowers others like you to find alignment and genuine happiness through her coaching practice, leveraging her extensive knowledge and skills. I’m so excited to have you on today.
Else Johnson, Mindset Expert And CEO (01:25)
I said, I’m so excited. I can talk about this all day and with somebody as big as a witness as you, it’s even more thrilling to me. And to share it with your listeners is just a treat. Thank
Will Hanke (01:26)
Yeah.
Cool, cool, I’m excited. So let’s jump in. Tell me a little bit about your background, what led you into kind of focus on the mindset coaching piece of it, especially for business owners.
Else Johnson, Mindset Expert And CEO (01:48)
Sure. So from my name and probably also people would recognize from my accent, I am an import to the US. I’m born and raised in Denmark. When I came to the US, I worked for a lot of small entrepreneurial companies, know, one to up till 35 employees. And I was always on the operational side of that running the business because as you mentioned before, I come from a financial.
Then in the late 90s, I fell into a window coverings business. I’ve sewn since I was a little girl and you you start sewing and people say, can you make this for me? Can you make this for me? And before you knew it, I woke up one day and had a window coverings business. And then I just went from there. And you know, I knew the financials. I was smart, I’ve had sales training. I had all these things.
yet there was something that just fell off in my business. My husband and I also, because he was in a corporate career, we were relocated a couple of times. And the last time was in 2014 when I ended up in Scottsdale, Arizona. Thought like always, hey, I’m just gonna do this, I’m gonna start. But something in me was saying, this isn’t right. And I started focusing in on saying, where is it that things are off for me?
and I started understanding a couple of things happening in my personal life that really woke me up and saying also.
This is up to you and everything you, you are smart. You can do all these things, but you’re not thinking about it, right? You are just not thinking about it, right? And it was a really wake up lesson to me or wake up call because I had my whole life, my whole life decided, thought that I could handle myself. You know, not only had I moved on my own when I was 17, took and taking care of myself.
But I had moved 6 ,000 miles away from family and was thriving, but I wasn’t really thriving, I was just
Will Hanke (03:43)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It really resonates with me because I was in a very similar situation, still in the same business, digital marketing, but it was 20 years for me. It 20 years of kind of just wandering around and wondering what am I missing? So what were some of the personal challenges that you faced? You know, it kind of helped you understand your approach to mindset.
Else Johnson, Mindset Expert And CEO (04:06)
Well, I think the first one that I faced, and I think many in the design, not only in window coverings, but in design industry, know, graphics design, architectural design, any kind of design is the big comparison trap. my God, they do so much better than me. They can do all these things. I could never do this. I would never be as good as the, you know, the person that costs from me.
That was the first one. That was like the biggest one for me. You that was a huge imposter syndrome in me. And that, know, imposter syndrome is not always bad. Let me put it that way. It’s always good to have healthy competition. But first and foremost, the competition has to be against yourself saying, how can I do better than I did yesterday? Not always look at somebody else’s outside versus your inside.
Will Hanke (04:57)
Right. Yeah. I like that. It’s very good. Yeah. So what, why do you think that mindset is so crucial to business success?
Else Johnson, Mindset Expert And CEO (05:06)
Well, first of all, because we’re all different. We all need things presented to us in a little different way. We all have to have our organizational just a little bit different for us. So it’s optimal for us. And the only way we can do that is when we think it through and saying, does this work for
You know, you can learn accounting, there’s 10 million ways that you can do accounting, but in the end, it’s all about profit and loss and your balance statement, right? But there’s so much to be done in between that. The same thing with graphics design and marketing like you are in, right? There’s so many ways to approach that, but if you don’t think about it and think, is this really only working for somebody else or will this work for me in the way that I am as a
You really have to trust yourself and that’s where the self -sabotage come in because 99 % of the time it’s because we do not trust ourselves to make the right decision.
Will Hanke (06:06)
Definitely. Yeah, and then there’s that little voice in the back your head,
Else Johnson, Mindset Expert And CEO (06:09)
Yeah, the good little one and the bad little one, they’re sitting there making a competition.
Will Hanke (06:14)
So you mentioned the kind of like that you were struggling with some different things, especially around imposter syndrome. What are some of the common barriers that people struggle with?
Else Johnson, Mindset Expert And CEO (06:26)
There’s a couple of them. First of all, it’s hiring too slow because I’m afraid to show either I’m afraid that somebody else is coming in to prove they’re better than me. You know, it sounds really strange, but in reality that can’t be. That wasn’t actually a thing for myself. When we talked at an earlier time, I think I mentioned to you me sitting in my basement at two o ‘clock in the morning crying, having to make long panels.
and wasn’t willing to actually hire that out. Had I hired that out, it would have cost less, it would be done better, and I would have had my mental sanity. And the client would have had their end product faster. That’s important too, right? So there was a whole bunch of things that I wasn’t really thinking through. So that’s one. The other thing
Will Hanke (07:02)
for sure.
Else Johnson, Mindset Expert And CEO (07:13)
is not understanding that it’s your business. You have to make the decisions. We all say the customer is always right. Yes, but they’re only right if you have laid out the terms and conditions for how you do business so you can measure it against it. Because otherwise, you have no rules. have no, you have
bumpers for which within you can run your business.
Will Hanke (07:38)
like that. I ran my business pretty passively, I think during that time. And kind of it’s kind of like, well, you know, if it’s supposed to happen, it’ll happen. And not not maybe taking the action, being the aggressive person, you know, and part of that probably speaks to the self sabotage as well, which we’ll talk about here in a second. But but boy, that really resonates with me too.
Else Johnson, Mindset Expert And CEO (08:01)
Yeah, and I think a lot of people that get into business like I did, right? I woke up and, my God, I have a business. And then you’re just, you’re already so deep into it, it’s like, how can I stop? How can I actually start thinking about this in a way that is really going to serve myself and serve my clients at a higher level? Because that’s the only way you can grow, right? When you can every day say,
Will Hanke (08:09)
Right.
Yeah.
Else Johnson, Mindset Expert And CEO (08:27)
I am serving my clients just a little bit better. I raising my level of standards for myself and for my clients.
Will Hanke (08:35)
Yep. Yeah, I like that. I’ve heard of the phrase building the airplane while you’re in the air. You know, that’s that’s that’s the typical business owner. my gosh.
Else Johnson, Mindset Expert And CEO (08:44)
Yeah. And how many design firms, especially in the construction side, they say, they call their design built. What does that mean? It means that you’re just like starting to slam up some walls and then go from there. I think part of it is we are so afraid of committing because we’ve all been raised to, you’re not a quitter. You’re not a quitter. You’re not a quitter, right?
I don’t think I’ve ever heard, not heard it, you know, an entrepreneur say that. I don’t quit, you know, I don’t quit. The problem with that is it can pull you away from decision -making because if you have to make a decision, then you have to think about if this doesn’t work out, I have to
Will Hanke (09:20)
Yeah. Yeah. One of the things that came out of me learning about mindset was exactly what you said. Permission to succeed. I finally gave myself permission that it’s OK to make more than whatever number I was cutting myself off at. That was huge for me. And we’ve mentioned self -sabotage a couple of times today. Tell me what that concept kind of means and how it manifests in a business.
Else Johnson, Mindset Expert And CEO (09:43)
So in its rawest form, right? It is basically you putting up barriers in order to get what you want. That is as simple as you can explain it. It is like wanting to cook a dish, but failing to go to the grocery store, right? You can’t do it, right? So there’s a component missing and you’re not willing to look at that component.
So that is in its rawest form a self -sabotage. You know what’s good for you, you’re just not doing
Will Hanke (10:11)
Yeah. For me, it was a physical revenue number, $10 ,000. If I got to the point where I was making 10 grand a month and some, new client came along, I did whatever I could to either not get that client or lose another one to keep me at, you know, keep me at that level. If I got to 12, I was like, oh my gosh, you know, this is crazy. But it is those barriers that are just crazy and there’s no reason for them, right?
Else Johnson, Mindset Expert And CEO (10:15)
Mm -hmm.
What you’re just describing is so, so, common because in our mind, we are starting to judge ourselves. How am I going to handle that extra work? What is that customer? You know, I can’t do this. And that’s why I mentioned before, like the hiring, right? Start with a contract worker that can maybe help you out a couple of hours a week instead of going full blown. But instead of saying, I can’t do that,
Stop and think what am I really telling myself
Will Hanke (11:04)
I love that tip of hiring somebody just for maybe just one off one project. See how they do and hire somebody else to do the next one, compare that kind of stuff is great.
Else Johnson, Mindset Expert And CEO (11:10)
Yeah.
You know, for me, as I mentioned before, sitting in the basement, right? There are a lot of people out there, all they do is make long panels all day long, and that’s what they love to do. So for me, it would have been so easy to just say, hey, here it is, you know, put your repeat here so I can match it with the top treatment if there was top treatments, right? But I wasn’t thinking that, I was just thinking,
Will Hanke (11:15)
So what are some…
Else Johnson, Mindset Expert And CEO (11:37)
This is a high end customer. How can I hire it out? And that was my self
Will Hanke (11:41)
Right. Yeah. Yeah. It’s a…
Else Johnson, Mindset Expert And CEO (11:43)
And I only have 24 hours in a day like you do. So if I had had taken on another client like you with your $10 ,000, right, for me I’ll say I could never make 20 panels in two weeks.
plus everything else.
Will Hanke (11:59)
Yeah, and the hiring thing might come across your mind, but you immediately dismiss it as not a viable option. I can definitely resonate with that as well. So all right, so we talked a little bit about what these things are that are kind of messing us up. Talk to me a little bit about some steps somebody could take to maybe kind of start reversing that and growing their business.
Else Johnson, Mindset Expert And CEO (12:20)
Yeah. All mindset work starts with self -awareness. Start with recognizing where is it that I always get myself in trouble? Like you started recognizing it as a revenue number. I get in trouble when I get
And that’s step one, just recognizing when is this happening? What is it really that I am doing? And then start telling yourself, listening to yourself and say, what stories am I telling myself about this thing? You shared about, I can’t do this. Maybe worthiness is big for a lot of people. that’s not me. I can’t make that kind of money. I’m not that rich person, right?
And all those stories we tell ourselves, they come from somewhere. We’ve been programmed since childhood to listen to those. know, money doesn’t grow on trees, know, a hard, know, a penny saved is a penny earned and all these kinds of things that we’ve been told our whole life. They sit in there and tell, you know, inform us saying, you can’t do this. You shouldn’t be doing this. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Right? But once we start opening ourselves up to saying, me in my basement, why do I tell myself that I have to sew those panels?
What is it about me that’s so special that you make those panels? And then I realized, you know, for me in that particular incident when I got over that one, because, you know, let’s face it, we all have a million ways we do this. It’s not just one and you’re fixed, it’s fixed, but with the panel, I started telling myself my number one goal, and that’s the next step. What is your number one goal that you want to achieve?
You have to have that clarity.
Because once you know exactly what you want to achieve and you say to yourself, hmm, I’m never getting there because I’m telling myself this story. Now we can get somewhere because we can start looking at saying, what other story do you need to start writing? And what was it that actually made you write, tell yourself this story on a continuous basis? What is it? What fear is behind
Is it imposter? Is it worthiness? Is it trust? Is it confidence? What is it that really is inside of you that is telling you that no, no, no, no, just this is not for
Will Hanke (14:37)
of that. Yeah, it’s really good. What are some things we can do? Maybe you can’t just like all of a sudden change, right? You can’t just all of sudden change direction, but there are probably some things you could do daily that would help you move in that direction.
Else Johnson, Mindset Expert And CEO (14:48)
tons of things you can do daily. Actually, the best advice is that I have ever gotten and that I also use myself is start your day off with saying, or you can do it the night before depending on your routines and saying, what are three major things I want to accomplish today? Just three, because let’s face it, we can only have one first priority. A lot of people say, I have priorities.
Priority is in itself just one. But three major things that you want to get done today or three things you want to get done today. And then at the end of the day saying, did I get them done? And if you didn’t get them done, don’t beat yourself up over it. Make a record of it saying, just saying, hmm, also, why didn’t you do those three things today? you know, my son fell off the bike and broke his arm. Good reason, right?
Will Hanke (15:36)
Right.
Else Johnson, Mindset Expert And CEO (15:37)
or, no, you know, I was scared. Be honest with yourself. I was scared that I couldn’t get this
The more honest you are with yourself in this work, the faster you get to a new
but just start off by keeping record.
Will Hanke (15:50)
Yeah, you brought up another thing that I fell prey to, which was action by inaction. By just not doing something, I was still making a consciously to not do it.
Else Johnson, Mindset Expert And CEO (16:00)
Mm -hmm.
Yeah, a decision not taking is still a decision. A decision not made, You are handing over that decision and the result to somebody else.
Will Hanke (16:04)
It is.
Yeah.
Else Johnson, Mindset Expert And CEO (16:14)
And that brings up something that’s really important to understand about mindset work. It is all mindset work is sorry my quiet time went off on my computer. No, good, This is anyway.
Will Hanke (16:27)
We didn’t hear
Else Johnson, Mindset Expert And CEO (16:30)
Everything with mindset is in your head. So see, like right now, I got distracted, right? I got distracted from something outside my control. And that’s what happened. When we let those things outside our control interfere with our thought process, that is the biggest way we can self -sabotage. Not allowing ourselves the space to think things
We get distracted by cults, we get distracted by social media, we get distracted by family. We do need to allow ourselves some focused time. We would say, I just need to think for a minute.
Will Hanke (17:05)
like that. You said that was your quiet time alarm. How much time is that typically?
Else Johnson, Mindset Expert And CEO (17:10)
For me, it’s typically like 45 minutes. I set out 45 minutes depending on the week. Sometimes you look at the week and say, this week I can only allow myself 30 minutes per day that I think about what is really necessary. And some weeks you can allow yourself more time and depending on what project you have going. I don’t believe in one size fits all for these hacks.
You take them as guidelines. know, some people say get up at five in the morning, do your stretching, do your yoga, do your journaling, do your meditation, do, but for some people that doesn’t
They need to get up and they need to put themselves, they need to get the engine going right away. And they may need quiet time later.
But if you just get up, start your day moving around without any kind of direction.
then you go to bed without any kind of direction.
It is like putting yourself in the car and tell it, take me
And the GPS doesn’t work that way. We know
Will Hanke (18:06)
I think this. Yeah. Yeah. And your advice about, you know, writing down the three things. I think that that definitely includes some sort of practice, right? You got to get used to doing that. For me, my my daughter works with me and we talk every Monday on what are we going to do to win the day and what are we going to do to win the week? Right.
Else Johnson, Mindset Expert And CEO (18:13)
Mm -hmm.
Mm -hmm.
Will Hanke (18:28)
understanding that we’re not going to win the day every day for five days. But if we can win three out of five, we consider that we won the week, right? So some sort of practice around, like you said, just being cognizant of these are the goals. These are the rocks that I need to work on today, you know, and just start start doing. If you do all five, that’s fantastic. But most people can’t honestly do all five.
Else Johnson, Mindset Expert And CEO (18:51)
No, and you mentioned it just sort of on the side and say, how do you actually start this, right? Because if you’ve been in, our behaviors are habitual. If you’ve never really done this, how do you actually start it? There’s a really good book, there’s Atomic Habits and there’s Tiny
I like Tiny Habits better than Atomic Habits. It’s two habit -forming books. Tiny Habits talks about just make one step. Just have the first little baby step. So if you want to get up in the morning, the night before, put out your pencil and the book so you have it right there when you wake up or on your kitchen table. when you sit down and have your morning coffee, the pencil and the table is already
put it in my eyes so you can, actually get reminded of it. And that’s the biggest thing about building a new habit, the reminder, right? To help yourself do better.
Will Hanke (19:46)
Yeah. I like that. I sent the book Atomic Habits to all of my Mastermind members because I think it’s fantastic. I haven’t heard of Tiny. What is it? Tiny? Habits?
Else Johnson, Mindset Expert And CEO (19:56)
Tiny Habits, yeah, as I said, I actually personally like that book better. And again, it’s just because the way he talks about the habits, the ideas are more or less the same. It’s just the way that he has put them into, you know, his practice. And as I said again before, we have to look at a lot of different things and allow ourselves to make the decision that works for us.
Will Hanke (20:23)
Yeah, yeah, that’s great. I’ll check that book out for sure. I’ll link it in the show notes below too, in case anybody wants to grab it. And you know, it’s great to have a couple different things, because sometimes different books resonate with us different ways, even though they’re about the same topic.
Else Johnson, Mindset Expert And CEO (20:28)
Yes. Yeah.
Yes, and let’s face it, what I do, what a lot of other coaches do in my space, we all come from the same philosophy, right? It started out with Socrates and Plato and all these great ancient philosophers, but with all of our individual experiences, we all of a sudden see new connections, new ways of opening up, new ways of seeing it.
One of the things that I know people always talk to me about is, well, how do you know about this? How do you know about that? And it’s simply because I’ve had the luxury not only to be working in a lot of different industries, but I’ve also worked in different cultures. And just understanding what does it take for an immigrant with an immigrant family history to create a business in the US.
Will Hanke (21:24)
Nice.
Else Johnson, Mindset Expert And CEO (21:25)
know, work traditions, family, history, everything is different, right? So that’s what I bring in. I bring in a very broad knowledge of the world into a small scale. So you don’t have to think about all these things because even if it’s not for me, it might be the client who, one of my clients to have a very difficult client themselves because that client comes from another culture and another ritual.
And they say, well, I don’t understand why they keep doing this. And just to understand and meet the client saying, now I understand. Now I understand why you can’t make this decision. You have to go through X, Y, and Z.
Will Hanke (22:01)
Sure. Yeah. So tell me about one of your clients that maybe struggled with this a little bit and kind of, you know, how did they get through it? What were the steps? What did they
Else Johnson, Mindset Expert And CEO (22:10)
Well, I had a client who was negotiating contracts, a talented designer who was negotiating contract with a manufacturer to have her own design line within this
And the way she was self -sabotaging was a little bit like you. Who am I to be in this room? I cannot ask for X amount of money in this contract. I cannot ask for X amount of money upfront.
You know, it is for her, it was really about that understanding that saying they’re looking to you for the expertise. They don’t have it. You are sitting with the expertise. Don’t let them tell you what your value is on that expertise. They’re coming to you because you have what they want.
And so I successfully worked with her in order for her to get to the point where she felt she could negotiate these contracts because this wasn’t just a one -off. This was at the beginning of something very big for
And so she landed the contract and she has landed several more since then. So I’m very, very happy for
Will Hanke (23:18)
Yeah. Yeah. That’s interesting. Once you kind of start making that change and taking that action, helps. It happens over and over again. And of course, then you’re like, oh, that was easy. Why didn’t I do this 10 years ago, or in my case, 20 years ago?
Else Johnson, Mindset Expert And CEO (23:26)
Yes.
Yeah, it’s like anything is easy when you know how to do
Will Hanke (23:35)
Yeah, right. Very true. Yeah. So you mentioned things around stress management. I know that you have a download available. Tell me more about
Else Johnson, Mindset Expert And CEO (23:43)
Well, the thing about, we talked about self -sabotage, right? And 99 % of my clients don’t know that that’s what they’re doing. They don’t realize that that’s what, because they all, I’m sure you yourself too, felt like you were working really hard and you were doing your best. You were doing everything that you knew how to do best, right? You couldn’t see that it was actually yourself standing in your
Will Hanke (24:03)
Sure, of course.
Else Johnson, Mindset Expert And CEO (24:07)
But what does happen is we see the effects of
Just like we go to the doctor, we don’t know why we have a stomach pain. We have to have the doctor to help us figure out what it is, And some of the symptoms of, or strongest symptoms of self -sabotage is stress. Stress and burnout, maybe poor health, overeating, not exercising. And the last category is for me, which is very sad, is relationship.
you know, personal relationships, which can be absolutely crushed by our self -sabotage. But stress is an easy one for us to identify. When we can’t go to sleep at night, when we just feel like we are just running on empty and there’s just no more time in the day. And there’s a couple of different ways that we can actually help ourselves sort
become that valve to take away the stress, the buildup of that big stress factor. And my five easy stress busters, which will be in the show note as a download, it’s just an easy way for people to say, again, there’s not one that fits all, so that’s why there’s five different ways that you can do it. But the one that universally my clients have always loved is just take a
Because when you’re stressed, you’re out here. You’re everywhere but in your own body.
And just by open or closed eyes, doesn’t really matter. Take a nice deep breath in through your nose, hold it at the top and just let it
It is the best and simplest way that we can all try to at least eliminate a little bit of that edge of the stress.
Will Hanke (25:45)
Yeah, and back to tiny habits. One little thing, it’s not like you have to do all five of these immediately today, right?
Else Johnson, Mindset Expert And CEO (25:45)
takes such little time. Exactly.
No. I literally have clients that I’ve asked them to put a timer on their phone every hour.
to take a breath, to take a conscious
And the reason is that we talked about time before that we only have 24 hours in the day, right? But I bet you, like myself and many of my clients have come to the end of many days and say, what the heck did I do today? I’ve been busy all day. I don’t know what I’ve been doing.
And that’s because we have lived, we have gone through the day outside ourselves.
We have been focused on everything out here without actually taking it in and absorbing what we do. But if we can just stop, take that breath and say, what am I really doing right
then we remember what we’ve been doing.
And that starts helping us not only see, no wonder I’m exhausted today.
Will Hanke (26:39)
Yeah. Very true. Yeah. I love that. So we’ll link to the five stress busters. And that’s a free download. I love that you’re offering that. Thank you. Thank you for doing that. Another thing that you and I had talked about is you’re putting together like a little mini course on self -sabotage. So tell me a little bit more about
Else Johnson, Mindset Expert And CEO (26:47)
Yes. Yeah.
absolutely.
Well, as we talked about before, it all starts with awareness, right? And that’s really what the mini course is about. Opening up that channel for that awareness. Really helping you start saying that, well, how do I actually even do that? Because as I also mentioned before, we don’t see it ourselves. We often don’t see it. But because I’ve talked to so many, you know, thousands of people and just study shows that
There are patterns that you can start seeing for yourself. There’s ways that you can start observing yourself a little bit and saying, oh, this is what I do every time. Like, as you mentioned before, again, because you’re here and you have already shared it, is like that $10 ,000 mark. Ooh. And then just start, you know.
Through my positive intelligence certification as a coach, one of the things we talk about is becoming an anthropologist on your own life.
Start studying your life. What is it that I’m actually doing that is not getting the results that I
and what are the stories that I’m telling myself.
And we all have a certain amount of stories that we constantly have on repeat in our head that was planted there so long ago that we don’t even remember when, or we don’t even remember how 95 % of the time, because even though we can say, oh, this happened to me and this happened to me, it’s typically deeper than
We only remember the certain times in our lives where that came up. Again, so the mini course is about helping you to start raise that awareness so you actually know now what am I dealing with? How much work is really involved here? Sometimes it’s minor tweaks, sometimes it takes a little more deep.
I think you and I in a previous conversation talked about, and I think this is really important to note is that I used to never believe in this
I used to tell myself, I know how to take care of myself. I used to say, counseling, know, coaches, all that stuff. You know, I’ve been on my own since I was 17. I don’t need this help. I know how to take care of myself. But that was a big fat lie for me. We are just too close to
And the thing about it is, we deserve so much better, you deserve much better, the listeners deserve so much better, their families, their communities. Because once we do this work, we are able to generate so much more energy for ourselves, for the people that we love. And that’s why I do it. And that’s
I never answered your question early on in our conversation is this is why I love, love, love, love working with business owners. Because I know the pain they’re going through. I know all the stories they are hiding inside themselves, all the insecurities. And because they do that, they’re not giving it the gift of their full presence in their lives of their families, their communities. And they’re never able to actually give back in the big way that they want
Will Hanke (30:08)
awesome. Yeah. So thank you for offering the mini course as well. I think it’s gonna be huge. I wish I would have had it, you know. And the other thing I wish I would have had was a business coach. You mentioned that, that you know I thought I could do it. And hiring a business coach and someone to be accountable to, someone to give you some focus and direction, it’s totally changed everything for me.
Else Johnson, Mindset Expert And CEO (30:31)
Yeah,
I think it’s very interesting, right? When we look at our lives, from the day we were born, we have coaches and mentors. They teach us how to tie our shoes, they teach us how to go to the bathroom, they teach us how to play soccer, football, baseball. They teach us to read and write and do all these things, right?
Now, all of a sudden we’re in business for ourselves and we say, no, I can do it all by
What makes us do
We have never done it
It is like winning it is not really a good business strategy.
Will Hanke (31:07)
Yeah, I love
Else Johnson, Mindset Expert And CEO (31:07)
And my opinion is it starts with how you think about running your business.
because many of the other things are skill sets that you can learn or hire out.
Will Hanke (31:17)
sure yeah yeah thank you again for offering these these things we’ll definitely link to these in the show notes what other resources I know you mentioned tiny habits atomic habits what other resources tools things can we point the listeners in a direction to kind of check
Else Johnson, Mindset Expert And CEO (31:33)
It, so I could talk about books all day long. There are some of the very fundamentals that people talk about. Think and Grow Rich, by Earl Nightingale. It has a very specific message. There’s a shorter version that also gives sort of that message. It’s called Acres of Diamonds.
John Maxwell’s book on leadership is amazing. You know, the five levels of leadership, just understanding how you have to grow as a leader. And those are really great books. There are some great resources. I’m trying to think what his name is right now. It escaped me and I should have remembered it, but there is on Facebook, if you Google train tracks in cities.
There is a pastor from Florida who has a seven part series where he is presenting about how do you actually think about building a business? He’s a pastor, but he has a very good You know way of Thinking about because part of him is also saying you need to take time out to think about where you is your business going Because you have so many roles as a business There
Will Hanke (32:14)
Okay.
Else Johnson, Mindset Expert And CEO (32:37)
like you mentioned before, tons of resources on YouTube, on Google, networking. One of the most important things that we have to remember is we got to get in the rooms where the people are that are smarter than us.
It is not for us to get into the imposter side of it, but it’s for us to ask questions. It is for us to say, well, how did he really do
And again, listen and learn and then decide what works for me. And make sure that the people that we ask have actually done what they’re saying they’re going to do, the way they did it. Because a lot of people, unfortunately, out there in the industry have never run a business. They’ve never actually put it into practice themselves. They’ve learned it and they say, is how it works. This is how the formula goes.
I think it’s really important, especially for a small business owner, it’s somebody who’s been in their shoes.
Will Hanke (33:28)
So you’ve been in the window covering business for a while.
Else Johnson, Mindset Expert And CEO (33:31)
I had my business for about two decades, yes.
Will Hanke (33:34)
Yeah, yeah. So along the way, what was one of the biggest lessons that you learned that you wish more business owners knew?
Else Johnson, Mindset Expert And CEO (33:41)
First of all, the window coverings industry is a pretty amazing industry. I don’t think I’ve had any other industry I’ve been involved in where people were so ready to give you advice, so ready to share and just go on. You and I have been on a couple of Facebook groups, The outpour of support and teaching and it’s amazing. It’s absolutely amazing.
wonderful to see this camaraderie knowing that all well that at the end of the day we have to provide for our own business and for our own family but that doesn’t preclude us from lifting somebody else up because the better I do the better you do the better standards that we have in the industry the more we rise it
Will Hanke (34:25)
it. Yeah. So thank you. Thank you for that. Future plans. What you know, and now that you’ve kind of moved into the coaching piece of your life story, you know, what are some projects that you’re working
Else Johnson, Mindset Expert And CEO (34:39)
Some of the projects that I’m working on is to expand my group program. And also I’m really excited because I just launched a very new, it’s called a thinking partnership. And that’s more for the CEOs in those early stages of scaling or when they’re sitting in that vacuum of saying, what are I really doing?
came to the point and said, I can’t really figure out why I am not going higher. To help them really dig down and deeply see where is the clarity, where’s the piece that I’m missing. Because I feel so many of us are in that space and saying, I am so tired of banging my head against the
And because of the way that I coach, I know I am really good at helping them sort it through. Extract all the pieces and pull away what’s not needed and put it back together again to something that looked very cohesive and very usable. From that mindset, from that clarity perspective that they then can go and say to the business coach,
What do I do now? How do we make this
It’s like going on vacation.
and know that every piece of clothing you have in your suitcase is the right piece of clothing for that vacation.
Will Hanke (35:53)
You
I love that. I love that. Thank you. So that’s exciting. I love that you’re building some new things and being able to help more people. So we’ll link to the stress busters download. We’ll link to the mini course. We’ll link to the new one that you just launched. All of this will be in the show notes. If someone wants to get a hold of you, what are the best ways for them to do
Else Johnson, Mindset Expert And CEO (36:13)
The very best way to get hold of me is send me an email. Simply send me an email, Else at morethanjustfine .com.
Will Hanke (36:22)
thank you so much for being on the show today. I really do appreciate it.
I definitely appreciate you and your time and I think we’ve covered some fantastic topics today. So if you want to as a listener subscribe to the Marketing Panes podcast. We’d love to have you on as a subscriber. We’d love to have you know more episodes like this that can really help you grow your business.
and just expand beyond where you’re at now and quit that self -sabotage. We would love to be able to do that for you. So thank you again for listening. Hope you all have a fantastic day.
Take care, everyone. We’ll talk to you in the next episode.
Marketing Panes is a monthly podcast of marketing interviews like this one. Click here to subscribe on iTunes.
Georgiana (Georgi) Giese Schwandt, founder of Incredible Windows, hails from central Illinois where she imbibed the values of hard work, compassion, and dedication. A former educator with 28 years of experience across four school districts, Georgi now leads her team in covering thousands of windows in the greater Madison, WI area. Her commitment to serving clients with kindness and respect remains unwavering.
Other Notes/LinksTo learn more about Georgiana Schwandt visit: https://www.incrediblewindows.com/
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Transcript[0:02] Alright.
[0:02] Hello everyone.
[0:03] Welcome to another episode of marketing pains.
[0:05] My name is Will hanky.
[0:08] This is the podcast where we talked with real window treatment and Awning business owners about their successes and struggles related to marketing their business today.
[0:18] We’re on covering success.
[0:20] This is episode 33 and I’m excited to have Georgiana Schwandt who we called Georgie with us from Madison, Wisconsin.
[0:30] She has been a client of ours for probably around I think nine or ten months now and we’re excited to have Georgie with us today.
[0:38] And let’s Jump Right In Georgie.
[0:40] How are you?
[0:41] I’m good.
[0:42] Well and you doing fantastic so excited to have you on today?
[0:47] Thank you.
[0:47] I appreciate the opportunity.
[0:48] Well, yeah.
[0:50] Well, let’s Jump Right In tell me a little bit about your business.
[0:53] It’s called incredible Windows.
[0:55] You’re in the Madison Wisconsin area.
[0:58] Tell us a little bit more.
[1:00] Well, so my story would I give him a very abbreviated version when I meet with a customer is this simply this is my retirement business.
[1:11] So I had a real job for 28 years as a high school educator and I retired relatively young in as far as Retirement term door speaking and I needed something to do and look around for about two years trying to figure that out.
[1:27] Try different things including real estate appraisal.
[1:30] I hated it took the courses got certified and I don’t like this.
[1:34] So I thought well, let’s look for something else and I went out for lunch or someone who is selling window treatments in Northern Illinois.
[1:42] And she said you had to do what I do.
[1:43] I said I think you’re right and it was about that quick.
[1:47] So that was in 2006 and here I am almost 18 years later selling window treatments on a part-time basis as I shop at home.
[1:56] I’ve never had a storefront.
[1:57] I never will and I I’m enjoy great success.
[2:03] Wow, okay, so you don’t like the storefront idea tell me more about that.
[2:09] Well, there are a couple reasons I decided that first of all, I was a high school principal in Madison for eight years managing lots and lots of people including students and staff and parents and you know legislators and being involved and I wanted a simple business model that was manageable.
[2:31] I didn’t want to have the expense of the storefront and I have no regrets.
[2:36] I know it took me a while to get started.
[2:39] Of course, it wasn’t easy, but I feel like I’ve done it and I was still learning and I still when I do grow.
[2:48] Good good.
[2:49] So your business model is get the lead go to the home pitch the pitch the installer.
[2:57] Whatever the product do you get the payment right then or do you go back and do a proposal and then of course do the install later?
[3:08] Well, it works in different ways.
[3:11] Ideally what actually the ideal situation happened yesterday where indeed I meant with a customer.
[3:19] She did a remodel over 30 year old home and was when a new window treatments.
[3:24] I we went in and talked about her needs and what she wanted and if it’s a she’s doing it in two parts.
[3:30] So we did the bedrooms and baths first and if it’s a relatively small project meaning 10 12 15 blinds, I can do a quote pretty easily in the home and then I can present it to her and discuss it and I said, are you ready to move forward you want to think about?
[3:48] Thought she said I’ll get my credit card.
[3:51] Okay that one place in the home if it’s a more involved proposal.
[4:00] Like I just did one actually a Monday just 38 hardwired roller Shades why I wanted to think about that a little bit.
[4:08] I got to sign proposal this morning.
[4:10] So, you know, it just differs on mature situation.
[4:14] Sure Okay, it definitely makes sense.
[4:17] Yeah.
[4:18] Another one has to address throw that into where I’m at with it.
[4:21] Mmm and no customer who’s building a new home and it’s you know, they’ve done the groundbreaking and all that.
[4:28] So we just with a fine-tooth comb and through every room and discuss needs so it’s a process for some others.
[4:36] It’s quick and easy.
[4:37] Yeah.
[4:37] Yeah.
[4:38] So tell me about that mix new home construction versus people that are already, you know embedded in their home.
[4:48] I Yes, well, I would encourage people if they’re building or remodeling a new home to contact a window treatment providers quickly as possible because too often they don’t think about things that we can help them with for example a popular door in Wisconsin today and that perhaps is Nationwide is a full glass or a partial glass on the as a window on the door.
[5:16] Well people don’t often.
[5:18] Think about the fact that that might need some privacy.
[5:22] So if indeed a blind is needed they need to think about the door handle.
[5:26] So can I get a blind behind that door handle and if it’s one of the you know, the lever door handles very popular today at new construction and remodels that’s more difficult.
[5:38] It can be done but it’s more difficult.
[5:40] So this I can point out simple things or another window treatment person can’t find those things out or simply the molding and the placement of the windows.
[5:48] And do you really want that high window?
[5:50] There’s a octagon, you know it just you know, as people are beginning to think about a remodel or build.
[5:57] It’s important to bring in that window treatment person.
[6:01] Sure.
[6:02] The other thing we can help them with in that situation is talking about if they want to do power house that blank going to operate.
[6:09] Is it going to be a hard wire?
[6:10] Is it going to be batteries?
[6:11] Can you reach it plus the whole budget issue?
[6:17] If they wait till the very end, it’s often like oh my gosh.
[6:20] I didn’t realize custom window treatments were so much money.
[6:24] But if we can help them with that to understand the value and the class upfront it behooves all of us.
[6:33] Yeah.
[6:34] Yeah makes that conversation a little easier than he does.
[6:37] Yeah, I mean fortunately I’m going to be able to offer financing shortly to which will help them those bigger projects.
[6:44] Yeah, yeah, that’s going to be a big game changer 24.
[6:48] Yeah.
[6:48] I’m looking forward to having that option for customers.
[6:51] That’s awesome.
[6:52] That’s great.
[6:53] So we’ve been talking kind of about your ideal customer.
[6:56] What about commercial?
[6:58] Do you guys do any commercial work or is it mostly all residential we do some commercial work the one I just told you about the 38 hardwired rollers is a commercial project.
[7:08] But the way I get the commercial projects is typically because I’ve done the customers home.
[7:15] and they’ve you know, we’ve had the camps to work together and this one I mean they they didn’t do any shopping that I mean, I’ve helped them multiple times in multiple projects and they just fortunately like to work with me and I gave him a fair price and I’ll forego so I only do small commercial projects and then a lot of Culver’s in the Madison area some smaller instruments offices and not a couple of wineries, but not the big not the big High-rise residential Halls on campus and I’m not doing that kind of work.
[7:51] Very good.
[7:52] Okay, very good.
[7:53] Cool.
[7:54] All right, so we talked about your story a little bit or who you are talked about kind of who your target market is.
[8:03] Let’s let’s talk about the part that I really like, which is a marketing piece.
[8:09] So tell me about your marketing mix.
[8:11] I mentioned that you are one of our clients.
[8:14] So you’ve got a digital marketing piece kind of tell us about the mix of what you’re up to.
[8:19] Well, let me back up a little bit.
[8:22] Well, you know as being in business 18 years the marketing has evolved significantly over the years, you know, I started long ago spending too much money on paper advertising.
[8:34] Okay, you know I had some result now I’m talking like between 2006 2010-11 whatever peel that away because I wasn’t getting any well not any but the results I was looking for.
[8:49] You’re talking about Direct Mail type stuff.
[8:51] So I’m talking about this is really going to date me yellow pages.
[8:56] Okay paper newspaper ads, you know those kinds of things.
[9:01] I don’t even think there’s a yellow page book out there anymore.
[9:04] I don’t know for sure.
[9:05] I don’t have one.
[9:06] That’s for sure.
[9:07] But anyway, so that brings me no through the course of time to working with you.
[9:13] Well, I’ve learned the value of the internet and Google my business and having a great website and consequently when we reached out to you you’ve helped me with all of that just yesterday somebody calls that hey week.
[9:31] I called you because you’ve got a great website and I saw what I was looking for and when can we get together?
[9:36] So and it’s going to be a great job great Polly told me over the phone so that Google My Business Connection the SEO that has been able to boost my business has has been tremendous.
[9:50] So that’s what I’m relying on mostly today.
[9:53] Okay, as far as As I’m getting the name out there about incredible windows.
[10:01] I was doing I was doing social media for several years spent a lot of money on it.
[10:11] I stuffed in it.
[10:12] Okay, and that was in September and I don’t feel like it’s been a big negative impact and its busiest I want to be so I you know, it’s the Google my business.
[10:25] My website it’s the reviews.
[10:27] Yeah having said that that’s only really a third of my business which I need because those are my new customers the other third are repeat customers.
[10:37] In fact, I have an installation going on today that they said.
[10:40] Oh we’ve added the sunroom.
[10:42] I need to do more Mentos 04.
[10:44] I moved.
[10:45] I have a new home that’s going in next week that afternoon.
[10:48] I was Old Flames five years ago.
[10:52] Another one is are they could buy a second home?
[10:55] And so, you know, I’ve helped people a second homes in Florida, Arizona just because of the installation services opportunities Hunter Douglas offers.
[11:03] And so that’s been great.
[11:05] And then the third way I get customers and marketing my referrals.
[11:11] I mean, so I try to nurture my existing customers.
[11:17] So they remember me when they have a friend who needs a project.
[11:20] So yeah.
[11:22] But yeah, there’s social media media hasn’t been something that me lying on Google my business and a great website as well.
[11:30] I rely on for new customers.
[11:32] Yeah.
[11:33] Yeah.
[11:33] That’s a good marketing mix though.
[11:35] I think the word of mouth and the referrals when I talk to a potential customer for our business.
[11:43] Those are the two things that they’ve they’ve relied on up to that point and it’s there’s a missing piece and I think that is that obviously the digital Marketing piece you can only go so far on referrals and word Ralph, right?
[11:57] So so no, no things like Valpak more I get Valpak and I thought the recycling bin right away.
[12:09] It’s okay and look through it and it’s just not something I would use and so that’s not been something that I feel shame has been my money.
[12:18] Sure.
[12:19] Okay.
[12:19] Do you do any old working or home show?
[12:22] Anything like that?
[12:24] Nope.
[12:25] Nope.
[12:26] I’m pretty protective of my time.
[12:28] Yeah, and you know, I have to think about the time involved in a home show and the expense and I know I just don’t feel like it’s worth my time.
[12:39] Sure.
[12:39] Okay.
[12:40] Now that does he doesn’t work for some but it’s not an area I choose to spend any time or money on sure sure.
[12:48] I do have a question here.
[12:49] What marketing efforts have you stopped using in the past years?
[12:52] You mentioned the social media thing and tell me a little bit more about what you were doing on the social side.
[13:00] I was doing Facebook and Instagram just you were just posting on those channels.
[13:07] Okay?
[13:08] Okay.
[13:08] Yeah, so I’ve heard in the past the phrase likes don’t pay the bills.
[13:14] Yeah, right.
[13:15] Exactly.
[13:16] Yeah, I think there’s I think there’s some some credibility in brand awareness sure for social media people people being aware and staying top of mind.
[13:30] I definitely don’t think social media pays the bills, right?
[13:33] It doesn’t.
[13:35] Yeah.
[13:35] Well there was one other thing that I do but it helps me stay in touch with customers is a monthly newsletter.
[13:42] So, okay.
[13:43] I do send that out once a month.
[13:46] Yeah, I think that’s that’s a great way to stay top of mind as well.
[13:50] Right?
[13:50] And you know, I’ve asked, you know, there’s a note at the top of my newsletter self.
[13:54] Please forward to anyone you met Thing Cody of Interest so you know it.
[14:00] Okay, no helps in the bar 1500 subscribers.
[14:04] Okay.
[14:05] Okay.
[14:07] Do you have any other incentives?
[14:09] Do you offer any special incentives to attract all my reviews things of that sort?
[14:15] No, I need to go.
[14:16] I need to do better about that.
[14:17] Typically we ask people to do it.
[14:21] I said typically sometimes I forget so but you know When I’ve asked most times people have been good about ready a nice review and then very pleased and he did yeah work on getting that systematize so I can get it done easier.
[14:38] And I know that we’ve been wearing has a way to do that.
[14:40] I need to utilize that yeah.
[14:43] Well, we we can jump on a training session and I’ll show you how I usually do it verbally because I always follow up if I can get there.
[14:54] That’s great.
[14:55] But if I’m big jobs.
[14:58] I always go back now if it’s one or two, I mean I go back by always follow up on the phone.
[15:02] Okay?
[15:03] Yeah, we’re checking.
[15:04] So yeah, so in the home at the end of the install you ask them really just would you leave us a review?
[15:11] Sure.
[15:11] Okay.
[15:12] Yeah and they’ll say yes, and then you need to follow up to get them at link or whatever.
[15:17] Yeah.
[15:17] Okay, very good.
[15:20] Some of our clients have a little business cards with the with the QR code on it that they can hand them a 10.
[15:27] Yeah, yeah.
[15:28] Okay.
[15:30] Did that will help me figure that one out, please.
[15:32] Yeah, we can do that.
[15:33] I depend upon people like you to help me in those areas.
[15:38] I know what my areas of expertise are.
[15:40] Yeah.
[15:41] Yeah sure.
[15:41] You aren’t just so that’s why we have helped and even write my shop at home and I’m a sole proprietor.
[15:48] I’m an escort back play tonight.
[15:50] Subcontract all my help.
[15:53] I can’t do it all yeah.
[15:55] Yeah.
[15:57] Right, right.
[15:58] Okay follow up marketing.
[16:00] You mentioned the newsletter you doing anything else on the follow-up side after the fact so my I have an assistant that I it’s a subchapter and she works maybe about six or eight hours a month.
[16:17] Not a lot.
[16:18] She’s a teacher but just as help me for five or six years.
[16:21] She does follow up calls at the 3-month in the 10 month Mark just to make sure everybody’s Happy and things are working.
[16:28] Well the subtract in and that’s been good.
[16:32] Because if there’s a problem I’m going to taken care of right away.
[16:34] Usually they would reach out to me, but sometimes it forgets or they just don’t part of the reason I want to do that at that 10 month Mark is because I use in a hundred Douglas installation services and they pay for service calls within the first year.
[16:50] So I went okay within the first year versus at month or teen when when it’s
done.
[16:56] This morning for yeah.
[16:59] Okay, that’s great.
[17:00] And it’s it gives you an excuse to follow up with the customer.
[17:03] Yeah, and maybe oh we’ve been meaning to call you right or another room or something like that.
[17:11] Oh, that’s fantastic.
[17:12] That’s good.
[17:14] Are you are there any Services now that you see that are becoming more and more profitable?
[17:21] Well, the only service is I really offer are selling hundred I was blind so I’m not sure what you can meaning Based Services will you know, we re yeah industry Will services things that you’re offering to your car to your clients.
[17:36] No, not really.
[17:38] We try to service our clients while so for example, if you know, there’s a repair that needs to be done and you know my hands.
[17:45] My husband is my right arm with the repairs situation.
[17:47] So he we pick up.
[17:49] And take them back pick them up,pick them up the blinds up pack them up send them in for repair and then take them back to the customer.
[17:59] So that’s that’s his area Okay, so so I mean this is service of people like I’m excited.
[18:05] No other dealers they here’s the place to ship it to and here you go, you know, so we try to provide that service for them.
[18:13] No try it we do.
[18:15] Okay and on the repairs, is that for only?
[18:19] Past clients.
[18:21] Yes.
[18:22] Yeah getting into the repair side of things can start to get pretty crazy if you’re it is and it’s not profitable, right if right.
[18:32] Yeah and my opinion so yeah, most of our clients do they want to stay very far away from repairs, right?
[18:41] The one exception I found is I interviewed Kelsey Stewart from Bloom and blinds which is a franchise and they Usually prefer to do the repairs with the mindset of that gets them in the door sure and they kind of use it as a loss leader.
[18:58] So I found that interesting that 95% of our clients don’t want anything to do with the repairs, but they do so any interesting.
[19:10] So, all right.
[19:12] So sounds like you need to work on the reviews.
[19:16] The reviews can really help the The the Google my business side of things, right?
[19:22] And you said that’s that’s a big driver for for New Leads as well as though I love that you guys are getting good leads from that as well.
[19:33] So what would you say to somebody who’s just getting started in the window treatment business that you know, they’re they’re struggling to get moving.
[19:43] What is something that they could do that would help Point them in the right direction.
[19:50] Well something that I would suggest when first of all find somebody to talk to who can mentor you know, like I said, I had a friend in Northern Illinois.
[20:01] It was my go-to because I knew nothing and I was an educator and I didn’t know anything about sales.
[20:12] I didn’t know anything about where the payments so you have to jump in and Learn Somehow.
[20:15] So having a mentor really helps but then I would also say not try to do it all at once.
[20:23] You know, I decided to keep my business model very simplistic.
[20:28] I started selling 100 Douglas and another brand and soft treatments within two or three years peeled away the other brand and soft treatments.
[20:38] First of all, there’s too many guards.
[20:40] I’m samples have to deal with and second goal too many products in to figure out and systems and I just want to simplify my business.
[20:49] So I would suggest rather than starting out with lots of offerings start with one will learn it figure out what you want to do and where you want to take your business and then if you choose to decide to add more do it one at a time and learn that product line.
[21:05] Yeah, so I think that’s pretty wise to yeah to not take advantage of the systems that are in place with a vendor seems foolish to me.
[21:20] I mean hundred Douglas has great systems that worked for me for all these years.
[21:24] I’ve learned them.
[21:25] I know how to use them.
[21:26] I know how to find information on how to get information they need it because I sure don’t know what all so learn the product line as well and I’m still learning.
[21:37] I mean somebody asked me about A pot recess Pocket Roller shade power yesterday was like mmm.
[21:44] I’ve never done that one.
[21:45] So sure enough.
[21:46] I was on the phone yesterday 13 all I could about it.
[21:49] So just be willing to roll your sleeves up and learn.
[21:55] Fantastic advice and if you don’t know the answer just tell I mean I always tell people I’ll find it and get back to them because and then be sure to get back to them.
[22:06] You know, we’ve all had people say I’ll get back to you and we never hear from them again.
[22:10] So right right follow-ups a big piece of that in it is yeah.
[22:16] Yeah, and if you’re not strong in that area, some people don’t have that that personality trait find somebody that you can add to your team that does that Yeah, so I mean certainly as a shop at home.
[22:29] I’m I’m a part-time business and they asked why not ask for fun.
[22:34] I wanted the flexibility of a shop at home and that was short front and that’s provided.
[22:39] I mean the shop at home has done that so I’m not know I guess.
[22:44] Yeah hell of it.
[22:45] Thank you so much for being on today.
[22:47] I really appreciate your time.
[22:49] If somebody wants to learn more about your business.
[22:52] Where can they go incredible and Those that come from the windows.com easy enough easy to find.
[23:00] Yeah again Georgie.
[23:01] Thank you so much for being on today.
[23:03] I really enjoyed your time.
[23:05] I appreciate you as a guest appreciate you as a person and thank you again.
[23:10] I hope you have a great great rest of your day you hope so too, but I appreciate your help and growing my business will.
[23:17] All right.
[23:18] Thank you very much very much.
[23:19] Thank you everybody for listening.
[23:21] We’ll see you on the next episode
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