Well, hey, everybody.
Happy holidays. I hope you’re out there just having an amazing holiday season, but I thought I would kind of come back into the spirit of the holiday and talk about one underappreciated, you know, usually overlooked ingredient in your success. And this is a particularly apropos during the holiday season. And that ingredient is caring.
So this has come up several times recently in conversational personal conversations.
Someone, shared on our whiz bang retailers Facebook group, which if you’re not a member, I would encourage you to go join. But she said, you know, I’ve been shopping and I am so spoiled now because Bob Negen thanks, Bob Negen. You showed me how little most people care.
So this word caring is so important. Recently, I was having a conversation with a family member about the same restaurant that changed ownership and they kept the same menu, but the food wasn’t the same.
Why?
And it’s this idea of caring.
The first owner cared deeply about everything that went into that restaurant. And when he sold it, the new owner, the menu was the same, but the care and the love that went into the entire customer experience was not the same. So let’s think about this for a moment. Please think about your own life and your own experience.
When you care for something, that emotion translates into action.
If you care for yourself, you take care of yourself.
If you are unhealthy and you start to care about your health, you change your actions.
If you care about someone you love when whether it’s a spouse or a child or a friend, when you care about that person, you the actions you take reflect the love that you have.
So this idea of you care, it does something. It changes the way that you interact in the world is really important when you think about the way that you run your business.
When you care about your team, they know it. How do they know it? They know it because your actions reflect the care. Your actions reflect the fact that you care by things like you give them the training they need so that they’re successful on the floor.
You work with them. You listen to them. You encourage their feedback. You do this thing that we call ADD, ask, discuss, decide.
You ask them for their opinion.
You make them feel valued.
When you care about them and they know that you care about them, first of all, your actions go out to them, but it comes back to you. When you care about your team and your caring shows up in the way that you train them, the way that you treat them, the way that you work with them, they are going to reciprocate, they are going to give back, and they are going to help you build a better business, mostly by caring about your customers as much as you care about your customers.
When you care about your customers, it shows up in the way that you do business. Now this is interesting because Michael Labouf wrote a book years ago. It’s called Customers for Life. And the statistic in it the book is a law it was written a long time ago.
The statistic may not be exact anymore. I mean, it’s sort of lost in in my mind, but it’s close enough. And the statistic, even if it may not be totally accurate, still is true. And the statistic was sixty seven percent of people leave a business because of perceived indifference.
Meaning, they think the owner doesn’t care. Now you as the owner can care intensely, but if that caring does not translate into you becoming a better business person, you, making sure that your business runs well, you making sure that you train your team so that you have a great culture. You caring enough so that you manage your inventory so you’re not out of huge swaths of stock all the time. So your caring, if it’s done correctly, translates into action, translates into you doing the things that you need to do to build a better business.
And then finally, your customers. Do you care about your customers?
Customer shows up in your philosophy. W w m c w. What would my customer want? And that caring shows up in things like your store hours.
Do you have customer friendly store hours? Because if you don’t, your customers are not going to feel the love. And when they don’t feel the love, what do they do? They go somewhere else.
Expectations are up. Loyalty is down. If you don’t show your Nobody needs you.
They want to do business in as much as you meet their needs. And a lot of the needs, a lot of what people are looking for in an independent local brick and mortar store like yours is they want to feel valued.
Your family members, the people you love wanna be fit feel valued. Your team members wanna feel valued. Your customers wanna feel valued. So store hours is one policy that makes your customers understand that you care, that you want them as customers.
Do you charge people for credit cards to use credit cards? If you do, that is saying to your customers that you care more about your profits than you care about their experience. It is a customer unfriendly policy.
Your return policies say something about the depth of which you care and how that caring translates into the actions and the policies and all of the things that you do in your business.
So the first thing is to ask yourself, do you care?
Because some people don’t care very much. They’re only only focused on the bottom line, and that sort of mercenary business attitude shows up in the way that they do business. And they judge their success by if there is a big profit at the end of the year.
Nothing wrong with that. That is your right as an entrepreneur. But there is another way to do business, and that is coming from a place of caring. And most independent local independent brick and mortar retailers I know come from a place of caring.
And so if you truly do care about your business, how you present in the world, the kind of team you have, the kind of relationship that you have with your customers, you’re going to go out and you’re going to take that caring and it is going to translate into the kind of actions that will help you build a better business, build a better team, and it will all translate into the way that your customers perceive your business. And when your customers feel that love and they feel the competence that comes from the caring, they will reward you with money. Love your customers, the money will follow.
When you are a caring business person, a caring competent business person, you will engender the kind of loyalty that allows you to build a big, robust business. Loyal customers have a tremendous lifetime value. Loyal customers tell their friends and family about your store and your business.
Loyal customers will help you become the kind of business you will yeah. I mean, you aspire to become.
So your action items, should you choose to accept it today, I know you’re busy, I know it’s the holiday season, is to ask yourself, do I care? And my guess is ninety percent or ninety five percent of the people who have watched this real retail TV up until this point say, yes. I care. Then the action item is what are you doing about it? What skills do you need to learn?
What mindsets do you need to adopt?
What do you have to do so that everybody who is associated with your business understands that caring and buys into that caring and reciprocates that caring. This is how you build a beautiful, beautiful, long term, highly successful business. And if you’re not that kind of business yet, I want to encourage you to think about twenty twenty five as the year of caring, the year of growth, and make it a great one. Okay?
So you’ve got just a little bit. What you have, four or five days till till Christmas depending on when you watch this. Then we’ve got the clearance week, but, go get them. I’m I’m jealous that I’m not out on the floor with you.
I love the holidays. Go get them. Good luck, and we’ll talk next week.