Consistency Is Key | Ep. #14

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Today we’re drinking Greenflash Passionfruit Ale and consistency with your business. Not being consistent can be detrimental to your business but not to worry. We have got plenty of info to help you out on your journey.

Time Stamped Show Notes

• 0:00 – Review Greenflash Passionfruit Ale, story time, and chit-chat.
• 6:32 – Jumping into the topic of the episode and BGC’s favorite point when it comes to consistency
• 9:53 – Consistency of your products and services
• 11:12 – Consistency of being a small business owner and a leader
• 12:57 – Basic uniform?
• 16:14 – Consistency on the phone
• 18:17 – Consistency on the line #DontSueUs
• 22:50 – Your mission statement, your business plan, your promise with your company

The question of the episode!

What has a business done that turned you off to their products or services?

Beer Review

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Greenfruit Passionfruit Ale

 (apintofhoppiness.com)

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Transcription of the episode

Automated so excuse the errors!

00:08 thanks for listening. This is craft thinking episode 14. Consistency is key. Hey guys, I am Nealey and I am BGC and let’s just start off by drinking some delicious beer as usual. What are we drinking? A branded, uh, this is by green flash brewing there out of A. I moved there at San Diego, California. Not to be confused with dcs Flash. No knock to diffuse that at all. Uh, yeah, this is, um, yeah. You know, San Diego scholar, we got a lot of really good beer. I agree. Especially I went to a few times as a brewer, phenomenal ratings. I decided not to go with what I assumed everyone would go with. I thought everyone would go with like an IPA or something like that. So we went with this, uh, this passion fruit ticker, which is a wheat ale with passion fruit. I’m excited about this. I’m a little nervous, but it’s got a picture of a guy on a skateboard, so that’s already here. Tug at my heartstrings. This is exhilarating Ale. Super exhilarating. And they let you know if this is a green, flat, flat green flash can talk today. Put their website on theirs. Very cool. Yeah, let’s go check it out.

01:25 Yeah.

01:31 How does got some passion fruit taste that kind of reminds me of like a soda. Never had a passion. Fruit. Soda. The thing. I mean I don’t know about the passion fruit, but like soda versus beer. Very sweet. Say it’s on a. The description on there says luscious and Tart goes on very smooth though. There’s like no bitterness at all. Super Sweet. Yeah. I could definitely see like, um, like friend wise have very similar flavor. Yeah. Not definitely not a normal beer flavor, which is good. We’re trying some new stuff. I was about five Ibu I’d be use. Are the international better units? That’s how you know how it is. It’s only five, so a scientist, so I don’t even, I don’t even want to know us. A really horrible IPA that’s highest gross. Kill the fire. But uh, yeah, I mean it’s a beer I’d probably have. Again, a girlfriend would probably like it. We were at total wine and more and it took us forever to figure out what beers would want. There’s so many beers. It’s insane. We’re going down those aisles. We were looking for one in particular. We couldn’t find someday we’ll have it on the show. Then we were like, well, let’s just choose something at random. And even that was difficult. I struggled just finding some random beer, some interesting ones coming up in our next couple podcasts. We’re gonna have some good ones for sure. Um, yeah. You know, while we’re, while we’re having this beer, let’s talk about some interesting. Uh, what do you have for us about, uh, something interesting about you? Justin de, De, de, De, de.

03:09 I, uh, I’ve lived in hold on one, two, three, seven different states. Wow. A, not an army brat. Just parents like to move a lot. And then my parents were going to move again when I was 18, the middle of high school. I told him no, no. I stayed here and easy. And I’ve been here ever since. I don’t plan on moving anywhere. They moved to California, right. Born in California. But when you were a team, they moved to Florida. Opposite. Okay. So my journey started in California. San Diego represent what? This beer, uh, went to Vegas. Then you, Hampshire and Massachusetts, Florida. A couple places around there. Then that might only be six. Sorry. Six. I live guys.

03:54 I’m actually gonna Change What my fun fact is yours. It always changes because most people move. Most people move to different state or a city. I grew up. I grew up in the same house my entire life. That’s incredible. Yeah. Like my entire life. But like from right. But uh, yeah, my parents didn’t move at all once they had a, you know, three kids. I was in middle after me. They didn’t move at all. Jonah, same house. Uh, when, when I was in college I still stayed there rather than paying for the dorms and stuff like that. Smart. Just save so much money. I just went to community college first and uh, I went to Asu and sit at the house, saved a ton of money and I moved away from my parents. I moved a whopping a mile and a half away apartment complex. It was a phenomenal luxury apartment complex.

04:51 The economy had gone to hell and uh, they were just offering thousand dollar a month apartment for $600 a month. I’m like, I can’t turn that down. He was amazing. I mean, it’s one of the departments had like a steam sauna had like a resort style pool had these amazing grills. Like you have to take your trash out, you just put them outside the door. They just take it down for you. Um, for 600 bucks a month. So. Yeah. Right. That sounds phenomenal. Sounds amazing. I got my own trash. I know I have to do that now. I moved into the house, uh, for about four years ago. Finally I moved a total of seven miles away from my parents house. So yeah, I’ve, uh, I’ve really, I’ve stayed in the same state for, you know, talk to a 22, 23 years of my life living in the same as house. Although you have traveled probably more than anyone. I know it’s true, but that’s another, another fun fact, I think. I think that’s its own. It is tuned for the next episode. Maybe it’ll probably change you

05:56 go first next time with the, uh, the last time with the bullets. You said you had a mole. That was. And I said I had them all and they got. That was it. It’s true. That is true. So, speaking of changing all the time, let’s talk about consistency. We can’t because we should’ve kept them all. It was just, it should have been consistent.

06:14 It should have been consistent. But uh, you know, I don’t think society is ready for us to keep those mullets they’re not a, there’s just kind of come and go. I don’t think we would’ve been able to get. One of our professions were that we’re in with the mullet.

06:31 Yeah, it would have been tough. But guys, today again talking about like consistency with your business, whether you’re a solopreneur, you have a couple of employees, consistency, a 100 percent matters. What is probably your most important point about being consistent? Brandon,

06:50 the customer experience has to be consistent all the way across you where they’re dealing with your employees, whether they’re dealing with an automated phone system or your facebook page or website, no matter how they’re interacting with you, it has to be consistent in that goes. It’s a very broad term that goes across a bunch of different spectrums so to speak. So we’ll start with the basics. How you treat your customers. You need to treat your customers the same. You need to show integrity with each of your customers, right? That’s why you know it’s, it’s good to have some type of a policy set. So you can say, in this situation, this fits my brand statement because that’s what consistency is about, your promise that you make with your branding. Uh, with these policies, I, I, it’ll fit with how I wanted you to my customers. They’re going to all get the same experience. That consistent experience.

07:44 Yeah. For the most part guys, you’re, you’re 20 percent of your customers will make up eighty percent of your profits. Even still with those customers, you have to be consistent with what you do. Like you can go above and beyond with someone and then go kind of mediocre with the other, um, because either word will get around that you’re treating other customers with a, with a lot more effort and then they’ll feel left out and there’ll be pissed off or you might just not deliver all the time of that super high level. You might give them that regular service and then they’re pissed off because they’re used to a certain caliber of what they’re supposed to get. Well,

08:19 and it kind of like think of the restaurant, right? If you give a certain type of complaint about the meal, there are certain restaurants that will always just refund the meal. That’s their policy. If the person comes in who the next day has the same complaint, they refund the meal. They don’t focus on how much that person has or hasn’t spent. They take care of that customer. That’s why it’s again, important to, to really set that set that policy in place. If you can’t afford those restaurants than you need, you need to make sure that you have in place of at what point are you to make a concession and when it comes down to it. I’ve had plenty of time for a conversation with customers where they said, but I spend so much money per year with you. I should be able to have this exception.

09:06 I’ve had to have that conversation before you not. I treat the person that my the first time customer spend $10 a person who spent 10,000 because as much as you spend 10,000, there’s some. There’s someone that spent 50,000. Do you want me to treat them better than you just have more money than you. It’s a tough conversation to have, but I’ve actually had it where I’ve actually just small business owners that would. Would your customers appreciate it if the ones that just happened to have more money got treated better? So you need to. You need to say you need to set that up. What that looks like for your business. Now once you have that, the policies in place on how you take care of situations with concessions or um, or just in general customer service standards, then there’s also the consistency of your products and your services man.

09:56 Gone to a restaurant where it’s probably like your sixth or seventh time and then you just get that burger you always get. And it’s just awful. Like it’s the worst thing. It makes it so bad to where you question coming. Yeah. Um, we’ve probably all been there and there. There’s, I know for me there’s a, uh, a large, a large chain. So I’m not, I’m not going to say the names. I don’t want to seem like I’m disparaging the company, but they do wings and I, we used to go there at least once a month and then I went this one time and they, I like getting a one set of dry rub and then one set of their barbecue barbecue sauce wings, you know, the place. And I went this one time that you didn’t like shake up the wings and the charter. So they, they were like mountains of dry rub on the weight and so on the other side, nothing on one way too much dry rub and it was just absolutely horrible and yeah, I didn’t go back for months after that and went back again and the wings were a little bit better.

10:56 And then one time after that again, problems with how they distributed the dry rub and the barbecue sauce, I rarely go anymore because they lost that consistency. Consistency is 100 percent important. And I, we, uh, we had uh, later on the list, but I want to kind of talk about it now as a small business owner, as a leader, you have to be the one to kind of drive that consistency. Like everything comes down to your message, how you speak with your employees, the standards you have with yourself, the business, everything has to come down. You have to be consistent with what you do, a leader that is as wishy washy or is this or is that you’re not going to get your, your employees to kind of follow your message and they’re not going to be consistently lady because they kind of don’t care.

11:39 There’s no one can really follow them up with it what they do or reflect your leadership and if you’re not consistent in your leadership, they’re not going to be consistent in taking care of your customers and we’ve seen that so many times. Understanding consistency is actually a type of influence. How you can influence people and look at, look at the election, but not at not this last section. All the elections that you can think of. The first thing a candidate does is it tries to paint the other candidate as inconsistent, inconsistent voting record. They do that for a reason because if they can paint them as someone who is flaky, wishy washy, that alone can lose the entire election. Nobody wants to follow

12:20 someone that that can’t really stand behind what they say or steam because there’s this one day and then this, this, they think of any relationship you’ve had. If, if this person has always been like this, and then as soon as you guys have committed for whatever and then they turn out to be completely different, that consistent is gone right

12:40 for you. Use it at the beginning of the relationship. They seem fun and then there are serious and they’re fine. They’re serious. Eventually the person who is tired right away, very quickly, right? So when it comes down to it where some some, some specifics as far as running your business to be consistent. One thing I want to talk about is having some type of basic uniform. I know that you’re, you’re starting a small business. You don’t want to be corporate. Ahh, I want my employees to or even myself to just people coming to work wherever they want to. Now, if you’re running a call center who like who really cares, but if you’re not customer facing, it doesn’t really matter some standard, but yeah, exactly right. You need to have a dress code in that situation when it comes to, for example, and I’ve seen a lot of this with a lot of very new restaurants through small time restaurants, is you walk in and you have no idea who the weight of the waitresses are. Knowing who the bartenders really are. You don’t know who the managers are, you don’t know anyone really is because everyone’s wearing something completely different. Have you ever gone to those restaurants and then started talking to someone that you thought that worked there, that didn’t to be wearing a black shirt. So they got it in black pants working here by the way, never wear a red shirt to target or horribly.

13:59 That’s great if people come up to you and like, Hey, where is this? Um, I try my best, like I throw me off, but I tried to get them. I was like, by the way, I don’t work here.

14:11 They’ll sue me. That’s funny to have this right. You know, it’s, it needs to at least be very similar. Do you need to have at least a dress code in that situation? You’re customer facing black shirt, right? Yeah. Something that is. If you don’t want to go super corporate, that’s fine, but it needs to be consistent. At least. I’ll give you an example of something that I really was surprised about is I actually recently had manifest infested infestation, uh, and I had no idea what the hell it was and everything and I’m, I’m just trying to rush to fill out. They’re excited. They can do a lot of damage. Quick referred by this friend and I called this person was very professional on the phone. He really knew a lot about, a lot about termites and everything. I called him out. He was working on my house while I was at work.

15:05 I get home, he’s there. I see his truck there. His truck has got the logo on it. It looks very professional and I see him in there and this is Arizona. It’s like 9,800 or a hundred degrees out and he’s got a black slacks. He’s got nice shoes on and he’s got this blue long sleeve shirt on with the logo on the shirt. He’s the owner of the company and he’s out there representing his company, being consistent with his brand as the owner of the company. He could’ve just came out and shorts and a tee shirt and all that work. He spent four or five hours in the afternoon and his, his uniform would looked nice and clean. It just made an impact. I’m like, I expected just some guy to come out and look a home out here, you know, that I wouldn’t have judged him for it because you’re working outside of my house. You to be comfortable. And that’s huge. Exactly right. So finding ways to be consistent with your brand, your logo, your colors that go, that goes along way as well. And it just goes into some type of basic dress code. So say for that example, being consistent on the phone. So let’s kind of run through this branding company. Use that for fun fact. I later on more details on that one. I got some good stuff around that. So, um, I remember when I was calling a certified, actually there’s three shops that I was going to call a. we’ll go over the, the first one, the first one. This is how it kind of went here. I dial the number. Hit dial.

16:54 Uh, hello.

16:59 Hey is, is this a desert scuba? Uh, yeah. How can I help you? Okay. I find it to the wrong number for a second there right now. And seeing like when you look at that, do you want your customers thinking that they dialed the wrong number and they call any reputable company. They have some way of answering the phone now. It wasn’t desert scuba scuba that I call it. I don’t know if that’s actually a scuba diving company. I actually made that name up. But um, there was a very similar interaction to start out. So horrible. And I really, my first impression is they don’t care. Like when we call any legitimate company, there are some dumps. Some they say they usually thank you. Hey, thank you for calling. This is blank something, right? And it starts a

17:50 good impression. Again, that consistency of that brand promise you are making the early jude legitimate professional companies get the, get the job done right. If you can’t answer the phone right, can you do your job right? It’s so basic guys, but it’s so overlooked here. You have to be consistent with even the littlest things is answering the phone, let people know kind of who you are and that they’ve gotten the right place because you want to make it as easy as possible for them to kind of get going and if they have to question what they’re doing is right. If you’ve already lost him. Uh, but can I go into basically what we talk about a lot is the on the line on social media, on the web. Say I’m alive on the line. We’re going to put this episode on the line. We’re going to put it on the line to us, man.

18:44 But yeah guys, so you guys had to make sure that you’re consistent everywhere. We’ve talked about being consistent and with, with you as a leader, talked about being consistent on the phone within the store itself. If you guys are a store a you, I also have to be consistent online. That’s usually where most people are going to find out about you. Especially nowadays where the mouth is social media these days is it’s your website, it’s your social media counseling to be consistent. If I go from your twitter profile to Instagram, for the most part, it should be the same. It should be have a consistent message, consistent voice. I should know that things are pretty much the same. They’re different platforms. Yes, but your guys’ profile photos, the exact same uniform uniform. It’s you’re on the line uniform, uniform.

19:35 When it comes down to it, it needs to be the same company. If I go to someone’s twitter and their facebook, like two different companies starting to have questioned that business, I go to their website that looks completely different. I’m going to look at three different companies itself or I’m thinking, wow, they just don’t have their stuff together. The caves, the same images, the same look, the same feel, same verbage. This does not seem like they have what they need to have together to then provide good product, good service, good. Anything. Also guys too, if you end up do hiring a social media marketer or someone to build your website, you have to make sure that they really represent your voice in your brain itself, uh, because if they’re speaking in their, their tone of voice and their verbiage and their, their demeanor, and then you guys end up letting them go and then you kinda go jump in. That brand that you’ve built is now lost because you’re going to be completely different. So make sure they’re following what, who you are as a person and you really have to interview them and make sure that they are doing what they, they kind of represent you as that consistent brand itself. So our second to last topic is going to be

20:49 consistent in your products, consistency in your products. Um, you know, it’s one of those things like say I was going to sell iphone cases. I sell iphone cases for three months. I built up a customer base and then I just stopped selling iphone cases. So android cases keep. It would be so alienated my entire customer base. Anything that you add to your company as far as your product line needs to go back to that core of what you’re doing. Not saying that you can add a new products. You can’t add new services, but it needs to make sense. It needs to be consistent with your mission statement or with that, um, on road so to speak.

21:36 We’ll just be the, the flavor of the month, like whatever hots right now, I’m going to jump in and I’m going to do it. You’ll never have a consistent message. You will ever have a brand you, you’ll ever following, anyone being loyal to who you are or what you do, you’re just hoping you grasp it. That new fad. And guess what? There are a million other people trying to do the same thing, so don’t just don’t.

21:57 It’s kind of like the old fidget spinners, spinners, but that doesn’t go along with your business model. Don’t sell it. You know what I mean? Like if I’m selling iphone cases, maybe going selling, fidget spinners might help. It might not. But if really, I’m all about cell phone accessories and I now introduce fidget spinners. I don’t really see much of my base buying from you directly. They want to the why behind that. They’ll probably buy them but from somebody else and you’ve wasted a lot of money on inventory.

22:24 Yeah, and we’re going to go across that, uh, in a later episode. I’m really going into that pretty in depth, but yeah, brands, right? Like you guys have to be consistent in what you do. You can’t flip flop. Again, it goes back to that wishy washy, same thing as you being a leader with your products itself. You have to have a consistent like focus, like what is it that you do and that you do well, kind of just drive that home, like that’s your thing and then add onto it and keep adding onto it and build upon that initial brand itself.

22:53 So, so what’s your, at your litmus test here, you need to go back to your mission statement. You need to go back to your business plan. You can go back to the promise that you made for your brand where you created the company. Now that can change and evolve, but it’s not going to be something that changes evolves over night. You need to look at what your current mission statement is. You’re currently your current brand promises and understand that the reason why this can destroy your business so quickly is because if you are not consistent, you are breaking that promise with your customers because that’s what your brand is a promise to your customer. So always go back to that mission statement. Always go back to you, to your marketing plan. Always go back to what you want to see your brand seen as. Then figure out what portion of place for consistency, uh, how am, how am I to answer the phone? How can I please get to answer the phone? What does my guarantees or warranties look like? Go. He started the foundation and build your way up. And I think a lot of small businesses don’t do that. They just, ah, this sounds good, so I’m going to go with it. And they don’t realize they’re being inconsistent. Even though the idea itself isn’t bad, it would be a better. It would only be a good idea under a different business model though,

24:10 like Brian and hit the nail on the head there. Um, foundations is kind of what we’re all about. We, we preach the foundations because it’s the only thing that’s going to support the rest of your business. You have to be consistent, you have to be, um, you have to follow basically the basic principles before you’re ready to evolve into the next step.

24:32 Now that you say, well, apple only sold computers and now they sell a iphone. Then went to ipods and iphones and Apple TV. It’s like, well they didn’t ever alienate their core. When they did that, they started out with that would that computer. Right. And then after that they found a way to that, that ipod was going to connect into that computer. And then they came over to the iphone to then kind of replaced the ipod and continue that full experience. And then the apple tv to integrates with everything they do. And if you’ll notice in anything apple sells, sells, it always integrates to what they already do, their computer company that can sell cell phones. And MP three players and whatever the hell apple TV is, um, and wireless routers and all type of thing and it has always worked because they always focused on what does our current mission statement and how can we be consistent with it

25:30 so and we’re going to be consistent with what we do to guys for or getting it consistently drink beer and the first probably five minutes of the episode that we’re going to talk about business and the foundations and marketing or a slowly build onto that. Once we’ve really tackled that foundation, but we’re not going to flip flop and start talking about real estate investing. That’s not what we’re doing. It’s going to be an addition to what we’re doing that really represents who we are and we’re going to be consistent behind it. Always ask yourselves, why is this important to solopreneurs or even small business owners? Have a few employees.

26:06 You always have to look at how is this important to who were actually trying to reach her yet. And we’ve talked about the future. We’ve talked about like, wow, this really somehow takes off what we might go towards, but it’s one of those things where it’s, well, we first had to go through stages and when we do this we need to make sure that we’re always looking at our base. When we move forward and we expand. It’s something that doesn’t alienate, alienate them and allows them to continue. Allows you to continue to get something from this.

26:36 Yeah, we’re. We’re taking you guys on our journey 100 percent of the way. We’re trying to be as real as possible and just kind of have a conversation ourselves and

26:44 hopefully help you guys out along the way, but I think that’s a pretty solid episode about consistency and why it’s why it’s key. Yeah. We could talk about this for hours. There’s so many things about the business. I can be consistent. You need to look at. The main thing is you look at every tiny part of your business and see if it’s consistent. That’s uniforms, how you’re answering your phone to your products, to you wearing some type of uniform. If you’re in a service industry, you’re going to people’s house. You need to look at every tiny part of your business. Is it consistent? Does it work with your mission statement? So I know it’s kind of vague. I mean covered some ranch. What a scene is random, but understand one of those small pieces you don’t. You forget and they completely topples over because consistency is your foundation. You have a bad foundation. We’re very quickly going to crumble and fall. So BGC the question of the day, everyone’s been waiting. What are we talking about? What’s the question? So what’s, what’s a business done? Whether it’s big or small that has turned you off to that business.

27:50 Easy as pie. Like it’s. It’s simple guys. What’s it doesn’t turn you off, can be consistency or it can be something else added on the website. Go to craft thinking dot search, consistency. It’ll pull up, add your comment or leave us a review on itunes. If you guys listen to itunes or Google play, subscribe, we’re on stitcher. Should tell us what you guys think. Let us know what you guys love, which they let us know what you hate. We want to make sure that this is helping you as much as possible, but as always, we appreciate your ear. This is Nealey and this is BGC. Can you guys. You’re listening to craft thinking.