INTRO MUSIC: Are you looking for a way to help your brick-and-mortar business drive more traffic and increase your sales? Look no further than the Receipt Paper Podcast. In this podcast, Joann and Kyle provide their sage advice on how to make your brick and mortar store the hottest spot in town. Whether you're just launching a new business or trying to grow an existing one, these informative episodes will leave you inspired. In each episode, Joanne and Kyle take on a different topic related to running a successful business. They offer practical tips based on their own experience as owners of multiple brick and mortar locations. So whatever challenges you are facing, they have actionable advice for you from finding a location and executing your buildout to merchandising and customer experience to sales and marketing. Joann and Kyle, have you covered with helpful advice from these experienced entrepreneurs? You are sure to learn how to increase your sales and have your business running out of receipt paper in no time. Let's dive right in.
KYLE STRUEBING: Welcome, welcome, friends. Welcome everybody. My name is Kyle Struebing, and welcome to episode number one of the Receipt Paper Podcast. My name is Kyle Struebing.
I am coming to you live and local from Coppel, Texas. I am here with my partner in life, my partner in crime, and my partner in business, miss Joann Mester, soon to be Joann Struebing. Jojo, how are we doing today?
JOANN MESTER: I am good. That was quite the intro. I'm really excited about episode one.
We've been talking about this for a while. I am pumped. We have been talking about this for quite some time now, and I'm so excited that we're finally sitting down to do this, to bring some value to people out there.
KYLE STRUEBING: Bringing that value. Alright. Alright. So why don't you tell us a little bit about what it is, what you, what we're trying to do today, and get into a little bit about our origin story. So why don't we get started?
JOANN MESTER: Yeah. So today we are going to dive into the five things that we wish we knew before we open a brick-and-mortar business. So super excited to share that with you. But before we dive into that, I wanted to share a little bit about our origin story.
How the heck did we get into the world of brick-and-mortar business? Why are we here? Why are we on this podcast? So about five years ago, Kyle and I dove into this world of brick-and-mortar business. We were looking for a way to just bring in some secondary income, right? We were both working in the corporate world full-time, but we wanted to start a little side gig and, and we weren't sure what that would look like, but our friend actually opened a franchise and so we watched him go through that process and we fell in love with those products, and we were like, what, what is he doing? So we went, met with him a couple times, fell in love with the idea, and we, we just went all in. Next thing we knew, I think we were opening the doors to our store less than three months later, which is pretty crazy to think about now. Yeah, it was a pretty quick turnaround. Yeah. So, we, we opened our first store in 2018. We quickly grew to three stores; I think within a year. It was a pretty wild time. We fell in love with the process of, you know, opening stores and, and seeing what we could do generating profit wise. Three wound up being a bit too much for us to handle. We were in a little over our heads. We were both still working full-time. So, we brought two of those stores to a profitable status and wound up selling them to people that we still communicate to and help out today.
We sold one of them twice. Yeah. Actually, it's a story to be told later, but Story for another day. Yeah, for sure. So then we, we went back and focused on, on our one store. The first store that we ever opened was kind of our baby, and we wanted to see how we could grow that business. And the wild thing is is once we went back to focus on just that one store, we were really able to double our revenue there. And it continues to grow, you know, month over months a day. And it's been an amazing process. Kyle wound up leaving his job in the corporate world, going full-time into, you know, owning and operating the store.
KYLE STRUEBING: And I think that's been a blessing and a curse. Yeah. Obviously, I don't know if I'll ever be able to work for anybody ever against us, so, so it's better work, right. You know, but yeah, no, she's a hundred percent on, on board there and it was, it was good to kind of get back into the ones to focus on the one store as opposed to the three we were able to really dig in and we were a lot more proactive than we were re reactive Yeah.
When you had the three, but it, you know, it can be done certainly. Yeah. It's definitely a different mentality, but yeah, for sure.
JOANN MESTER: Yeah, we know a lot of people that successfully run multiple brick and mortar businesses. I think for us, it just didn't meet our needs and goals at the time. While I was, while we were on this journey, I had the opportunity to be on the board of the franchise where I spent two years helping franchise owners that were just beginning in the franchise, just starting out, helping them open their doors as well as the ones that were already there helping them grow. And through that process and a lot of long late-night chats with Kyle, we realized there was a lot of people that just didn't know what they were doing or what they were getting themselves into.
KYLE STRUEBING: And, well, I'd like to say the franchise had a lot of resources. They, they didn't always have the right resources to help. And The passion was there, the, the, the direction or, or the guidance just, it, it was, it was to be desired.
JOANN MESTER: Yeah. And there's just, there's so many resources out there for online businesses, right? Like how to use social media, right? How to create courses, how to drive more traffic with s e o. But as far as resources for brick-and-mortar businesses there, it's really lacking out there. You know, it's really hard to find. So, we really wanted to dedicate some time and energy into how we can get out there and reach people that want to open or are already opening a brick-and-mortar business to bring them some value.
KYLE STRUEBING: You know, we wanna share with you what we learned to do and, and what we learned not to do, mostly what not to do. Any, I feel like any lesson I've ever learned in my life has been through failure or something like that. All right. You gotta learn the hard way. So, right. So, our hopes for you with this podcast is really that, that you can learn from us so that you don't have to make the same mistakes that we did, you know, we'll, we'll be out there as your Guinea pigs trying things and sharing with you what works and, and what didn't work. And that's part of it. We want to get the interaction up, we're here to help. And, you know, if you have an experience one way or the other, it's good to hear that that helps. You know, what, you know, some, some things that you did that you made a mistake, someone else can totally learn from that. And that's, that's, you know, there's, there's power in that for sure.
JOANN MESTER: So, so Kyle, tell us what people, those listening, what can they expect from this podcast? This is the first episode, what's to come? Well, we hope to get better and better at it, but no, definitely what we wanna do is get with you guys once a week here. You know, I, I'd like to see that we're gonna do a couple staples throughout the podcast as, as it grows, one of which is, is to take some of y'all's questions. That is one thing that we will do later. And I will answer, we will answer questions at least one a week. Try to do that. We'll be getting some guests on as well, other people that we respect, people that we've learned from, and maybe some controversial people. I, you know, I don't know. We'll, we'll see where it goes from there. We'll see where it goes from every too controversial. Yeah, we wanna keep it, but we do want to keep it entertaining, but we also wanna keep it, you know, something that you guys get out of it for sure.So, we'll be delving into a lot of things. And one of the things too, I know Joanne says that there's, you know, you will be able, there are show notes and all of this stuff will be backed up online. We'll be sharing a lot of that. So, if you are taking notes, especially in some of these, you know, these sessions or some of the time coming up here in a little bit where Joanne's gonna go over a few different things, you know, definitely you can note that. But we'll also be releasing a lot of that and, and some of that, you know, the protocols and whatnot for, for what you guys need to do. Yeah. Yeah. Jojo. So, if you wanna get that going. Yeah. Start with the first one, kind of our, our first lesson opening lesson. I think she's got some, some pretty, pretty excellent things to share right off. Joanne, take it away with the, with what you Got.
JOANN MESTER: So, diving into the meat and potatoes of today's podcast, we're focusing on the five things that we wish we knew someone would've told us before we opened our brick-and-mortar business. These are things that we've learned along the way, but hopefully for those of you who maybe haven't opened or are in the very beginning, you can still learn from, from these things. So, the first one is location is everything. And this might seem simple and obvious, but I can tell you, as you start your brick-and-mortar business journey and start going down those rabbit holes of evaluating different locations, it's really easy to start looking at that cheaper location and making it look pretty in your mind and not taking maybe the more expensive location, you know, because of cost or just because you're going down and evaluating so many locations. But I can tell you from experience that going with the ultimate best location, we're talking front and center location is going to help you out in the long run.
You know, I always say imagine your location as a giant billboard because, you know, guess what? It, it, it's, it's, it's a giant billboard and the more people that see it, the more people it, it's just, you know, the name of the game, the more people are gonna come through your doors. Right. Certainly.
KYLE STRUEBING: Yeah. Yeah. And it's, you know, a lot of, a lot of this I think kind of boils down to, you know, almost taking a step back and remo removing the motion a little bit from this, would you say? Yeah. I mean, I know with us we had looked at a million places and it was like, we just at, at some point you just want to get in and it's nice to kind of take a step back and say, okay, are we prioritizing these things that are eventually gonna make us money? You know, cause that's sure we what it is all about. Yes. Following passion, but you do want this to be profitable, right?
JOANN MESTER:I think in the beginning we were, you know, we had a budget and we wanted to follow that budget. And I'm certainly not telling you to go out there and exceed your budget on your rent cost, but just know that whatever you save on your rent costs, you are likely going to have to double in your marketing Costs. A hundred percent. I mean, I, I see time and time again store owners that have this brilliant, amazing idea of a brick and mortar business, but they go with that unit that it's at the very back, you can't see it, it's impossible to get to. And unfortunately, many times they fail and it's so hard to watch and see and then you see someone that maybe doesn't even have the greatest man I idea,but they're, they're really successful, right? Cause everybody sees them. They, they wanna go check 'em out. You know, maybe they're cut, their store experience is awful, right? They're getting a lot of people through their doors. Right. I like to think some of the, you know, it's like, it's dumb luck. I'll go into some location. Obviously you're not gonna say anything, but you're just like, how in the world are you guys still open at this point? And it is, its location.
KYLE STRUEBING: It, it just is that, that foot traffic or that vehicle traffic, you just can't, I mean, you can't outsell a bad location. It's just, it, it's something about it.
I mean, it's so true. There are ways to mitigate that certainly. But I mean, I just, every time I drive sometimes I'm like, whoa. Yeah.
JOANN MESTER: But Yeah, from our experience, you know, our first business was a bit of a controversial business that was, sure. We had some legalities. A lot of people weren't wanting to let us rent.
KYLE STRUEBING: We were ahead of our time.
JOANN MESTER: Yes. Let's put it that way. Yes. Let's put it that Way. So, you know, we wound up having restrictions on what types of location we could get. So our first store wasn't, you know, an ideal location. It was the best one we could find and get a sure four, but it was towards the back of the unit. And when we opened the second and third, they were much more prime spots. You could see them from the highway, see them from the road, right? And in the beginning it was just those other locations, there were so many more people naturally, organically walking in. And, you know, with our first location, it took us some time to get there. So I think, you know, as you go through those beginning stages of vetting out location, really take the time to find the location that's going to be the best. Don't get too eager and excited to open your doors and just take a location just because it's a location, because you're, I mean, you're, you're married to that thing then from three to five or however long of a lease it you time 10.
KYLE STRUEBING: Yeah. I mean that's, that's huge. So it does, you know, I, I know a lot of times timing does play into it, but you just gotta not be emotional on it. I know that that was, you know, I don't know, I don't, don't feel like we rushed on the first one, but it was, there was what the conversation was had like,
look, hey, you kind of do or die here. And it, and I'm glad that it happened that way, but it's, I mean, that really happened with the location.
JOANN MESTER: But it was definitely, it was definitely a process for sure. Yeah. So number one, location is everything. Let's, let's move on to number two, Kyle.
Cool. Number two, start simple. Get fancy later. So talking about that second location we had seen everything kind of done. Everything. And a thing that I noticed, when you do your first build out, right? It's, everything has to be absolutely perfect. Everything has to be on point all the way to, you know, I mean obviously I, you want everything to look nice, but customers do not give a about if the baseboard in the corner that is be, that you can barely see has a little scuff on it, they do not care. You need to think, you know, what, what is gonna get us, for us it was product and being able to run a card. That's what we wanted in open our doors. We did, I believe us and who we did it with, what was it, 72 hours or something like that to complete the buildout. Yeah, I mean it was, it, it was, it was insanity. And we were doing these things at two, three in the morning. But, and I'm not saying that that's what you should do,but that was priority. It wasn't, you know, does this, that and the other have all of the correct paint color. People don't like, your customers don't care about that. Like, they just don't, they wanna see all types of other things as, as opposed to that also, like that cool fountain that's $1,200 or whatever, like get that shit later, pardon my French. But get that stuff later. Like you can still work that goal first impressions are great, but they wanna know more about the customer experience or are you providing the knowledge necessary to bring them back? Are they getting that top level customer service? And, and you know, the, I don't even know what are some smaller things that checks don't, I mean, it it, it matters, but it just, yeah. Dollars and cents. It doesn't.
JOANN MESTER: We're certainly not saying, you know, throw up a fold out table and open your doors. You know, you want, you can a mild grid first impression. But I always says, you know, whenever we're buying something, cuz I love the decorating side. I love, I love that. But he's always asking me, you know, what, what's the ROI on this man? And you know, when I'm looking at, you know, some $2,000 furniture upgrade that we want, you know, ROI on that. So, you know, I think our first store,
we had a budget of 28,000 to open our doors, including the franchise fee, right? And so we had to cut a lot of costs and there were a lot of things that I was like, oh man, I really want this to look better. I wanted to replace the tile, I wanted to replace the ceiling tiles. I wanted to do so much. But we wound up scrapping a lot of that in the beginning. We continued to scrap too. Yeah.
KYLE STRUEBING: Yeah. Cause it's like our customers don't walk through the door and say, oh my gosh, that ceiling tile has a stain on it. You know, there's just so many things like, so, you know, start simples and, and get fancy later. I love this saying so much. You know, you can add things as as you go down the road, but the one thing you don't wanna do when you open your doors is be in debt, right? Of hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars. Like, and, and you're going, so much is going to change as you open the, you're gonna figure out the customer flow. Exactly. The products that are selling right Into your, your your store. You're gonna grow into that unit. So it's, you don't even, and that's kinda what I was gonna say, but like, you don't even know what you don't know. Like it's, it, it business might go totally different or the customers,you might find customers attention is drawn somewhere else or the experiences off based off of some other product that you have. It's just, it's, you'll grow into, it's like buying a new house, right? And, and you're changing outlets. You're, I wish this was there, I wish this was there. So just be fluid with it and, and focus more on that roi.
JOANN MESTER: Yeah. Focus on that dollar. You're spending money, you know, on product and marketing, product and marketing for the first, however long till you get to what you need that threshold. And then make that, you know, then make that decision. Right? I think, you know, as you take action, you grow clarity in your business and just opening your doors,
starting to take that action, you're going to learn so much. So, you know, don't think you have to open your doors and everything needs to be perfect from K one. I mean, cleaning the floors and stuff, you know, but don't, you know. Yeah. Make sure that the Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don't Start dirty, get fancy.
Yeah.
KYLE STRUEBING: Start simple. Start simple. Yeah. So that's, that's the number, that's number two. Start simple, fancy later. Number three. Jojo. You wanna get into that one?
JOANN MESTER: Yeah. So this is a really interesting one. Number three is diversify your offerings. So this one that I think took us a while to learn, but it really made such a huge impact on our revenue. So what do I mean by diversify your offerings? So essentially if you are starting off as a product-based business, consider adding in some services or if you're starting off as a service-based businesses, what products can compliment your services? Or is there another product line into the, in addition to the one you already have that can compliment your core business. So looking at those ways that can drive traffic to your store that might, you know, cross promote and cross sell those products can make a huge impact. Tap into different markets and things like that. The, you know, we look at, I think the shift in mindset for us was when we sat there and looked and we're like, Hey, what are people coming in for?
KYLE STRUEBING: What is, what is the solution that we provide? And then we said, okay, well people have, you know, for us, anxiety, pain, stress, stuff like that, right? That's typically our, that that's what we solve in, in those, in our, in specific different businesses that we have. Where else can we help that? What else, what else can we get into that would also help,
like JoJo said, compliment or accentuate their recovery process or their stress, things of that nature. And that, that's really taking that step back and, and looking at where you're at as opposed to just adding something that you think is cool. Or you may ask the customers like, why did you come in here today? Like what's, you know, down to customer experience,
but like, yes, you want this, but like, what are we really talking about? And that really opens up a can of worms for you to kind of use your expertise and then pivot your customer experience and your offerings to that.
JOANN MESTER: Yeah. Yeah. So we started out primarily drug product-based businesses. Yeah. A hundred percent for selling health and wellness products, right? And a lot of people didn't have a lot of information about these products. It wasn't super well known at the time. And so we were like, okay, what, what do people do that have stress and anxiety? And so we found some services that people are already naturally drawn to, you know, massage therapy, sauna, right? Gloat therapy, that's, they were already using these services for anxiety, sleep pain. So by, by opening those services at our store, we were getting our target demographic coming into our store to use those services, which at that time then we could cross sell our products some about our products, right? So it really just offering those services not only grew another revenue stream of those services, but we saw our product sales increase a ton by diversifying Well and our value per customer is, is through the roof. You know, a regular customer of our ours spends more with us than, than anybody else. And not, I'm not saying that is braggadocious cause we're the greatest seller, but we have these different products and services to use at our disposal to help these people essentially.
And, and that's, I mean, I know you wanna help people, but you have to be able to provide value, even look at it like that, you know, provide a solution or provide value to these people in multiple different ways. And it just, it just works out. Yeah. I think another example of this is we used to havea smoothie factory next to us and they actually had a meal prep service that they partnered with Right? To offer meal prep and people would basically just come to their smoothie factory to pick up their meals. And I thought this was genius, you know, cuz now they're offering this meal prep service, but people are coming to pick up that meal prep and what are they doing? They're buying a smoothie on their, while they're there for sure. So, you know, finding those ways to offer, you know, something, another service, another product, something that's going to draw traffic to your store that's not your core business Right? But draws people to your business. So, you know, if you start thinking about those things from the beginning,I think it can just make a, a big difference in the long run. Right? For sure. For sure. Yeah.
KYLE STRUEBING: Number four, Numeral Quatro customer data is gold. I mean, do I have to say anymore? It's, it is data capture is the number one. I mean, it it, your net worth is your network, right?Is that's what they say. And, and the more data we capture, email addresses, texts, things like that, the, the better our months are, you know, it is, it's key. Those reward systems. I mean, I, I can't, I can't tell you that is the number one thing for us, I would say. Yeah. I mean this is one thing that I don't think we realized the value of from day one, right? You know, there was a lot of people coming to our store. We were just so caught up in making sure there had a positive experience that making Su we rang the products up correctly, Could be overwhelming, but we weren't capturing a lot of customer data,right? What we mean by customer data is their emails, their phone number, how are you going to reach back out to them? You know, how do we get them back into your doors? So, you know, and one of the best things that we do consistently to this day is email our customers weekly. Bringing them some sort of value or telling them about events and promotions.
JOANN MESTER: And you know, when we, when we have a slower day, we are able to send out a text blast and say, you know, hey, free gift with purchase or whatever it is to get them back through the door. And, and one of the best ways to do that is by collecting customer data. And how we do that in our store is by far our rewards program,right? Like Kyle said. Yeah. So having a rewards program is key because, you know, when you ask a customers that are checking out, Hey, what's your email? That's not very enticing. But when you say, Hey, we've got a rewards program, the more points you earn, Let's get you your points in, let's get you these discounts. Hey, discounts you can, I mean, we have customers that are obsessed with those rewards program, right? They're always like, how many points do I have? How many points do I have? But it's a very enticing way to give people to give you, or email and phone number. The rewards program that we love is called Tap Mango for sure.
KYLE STRUEBING: We swear by it. We've used it for what, five years now? Five years now? Yeah. Yeah. It's by far number one. We think we get the biggest ROI from a hundred percent. Yeah. We've actually got a free resource for you on this. It shares a little bit more with you about Tap Mango. You can set up a free demo,right? If you go to master brick and mortar.com/tap mango, that's T A P M A N G O. You can check that out more. We'll get you set up with a demo there. But this product is phenomenal. They, that name actually does a lot more than just rewards. They Exactly. You can. I, they even have like a mobile online app that you can sell to products.
JOANN MESTER: They a ton of functionality there. But, but being able to collect that customer data is huge. So you can retarget your customers. It's, you work so hard in the beginning to get people through your doors and the last thing you want them to do is walk outta your door and never see them again. You know, you want to be able to retarget them, get them back in the door. Tap Mango has this cool future where if a customer hasn't been in your door, you can set, you can set it to, you can set 90 days. But I think ours is set to 60 days if a customer hasn't been in, in 60 days. Cause normally we see customers once a month, they, they shoot them a promotion and try to get them back in the door and it's automatically sending that to the customers, automatically reaching out to them behind the scenes. No, we don't have to worry about it. So it's just a fabulous feature. I love being able to, you know, email customers anytime we have an event or promotion. It's, it's huge. Huge, huge, huge. And I look back and I think if we would've been collecting customer data from day one,
how much bigger would our email and right. And phone list be? But We launched new products with it. We launched new services with it. Everything. The tracking on the back end is fantastic. I mean, I, and we'll, as we dig in, I'll show you guys kind of how it's a, you know, I know you could walk into a Panera bread and people are like,oh, you know, they're asking for your email and your name and you're like, what is this? Why do you have this information? I can go over some different tips and tricks on how to kind of get them to make it a little bit softer of a cell to get their information in. But a hundred percent you ask everybody, I mean everybody gets put through it for sure.
KYLE STRUEBING: Yeah. And I think, you know, it's, it hands down, it's the best way. So de definitely go check out Tap Mango for sure. That's t a p M as in Mary, a n as in Nancy, g o tap, mango. Yeah. Key. Huge for your growth. I think that's a big one.
JOANN MESTER: So customer data is gold.Number four. Moving on to number five, the art of customer service. This is an area that I think Kyle really mastered so well and has taught me so much about just being able to master that experience that customers and clients get when they walk into your doors. And it's such a big reason as to why we still have customers five years later that still come that, you know, what do you say, Kyle? We don't have customers, we have fans. We have fans, right? Yeah. So they, they come continue to come back to our store. They are out there advocating for us, telling everybody how amazing we are. And you know, we're not tooting our own horn. We're telling you that this is possible for you and it's an area that you want to focus on.
KYLE STRUEBING: You have to, yeah. I mean, it, it's your store. You, you, you need to be passionate about it and you need to value the people that come in. There's, there's different methodologies on, you know, and different ways to, to do customer service and things like that, you know, but there's, I mean, it's everything.Why else? Why are people gonna drive past three of the same, your three of your competitors to get to your store? It, it's because of your customer service. Right. It just is. You wanna do right by your customers. You have to know your product. I mean, it, you just, it it, it's tough.
JOANN MESTERIt, it really is. Yeah. And, you know, we're competing against online. Let's, you know, I'm going to be a hundred percent, I'll be honest about that. And, and the whole reason that I go shop in stores over online is because of the experience I'm going to have in that store. You know, some ways that we provide that experience. Like get to know your customers. Do you know their names? Do you know their little dog mitzy? You know, You forget. So I do, after five years, it gets to be a little much, but I still act like I still know that, you know what I mean? I still act like, you Know, you know, something about their like, hey, You know, something about hundred percent. And it's, it's, you know, I know that that's, that's probably, I should be better about that. Certainly something to work for. But like, just if you look at 'em like they've been there before or that they're just give them that openness and, and comfort and it, it is a like an extension of your house. Yeah. You know, I mean, it, it's just, they're your guest. Yeah. I I, you know, I I I truly believe in that. You know, Kyle took kind of the front of operating the store for quite a few years and I would get jealous when I'd come in on the weekends and, and people are like, where's Kyle? Where's Kyle? We wanna talk to Kyle and like, you know, why talk to Kyle? But it's because of the experience that he provides and offers and they've built a relationship with. That's It. It's a Relationship. Yeah. And, and it's great. And it's so possible. And it's really neat to see, you know, I think some other ways that you can provide an incredible experiences with sampling and talking about new products. You know, taking that time to say, Hey, here's this new cool thing I just wanted to tell you about. Or Hey, here's a, here's a sample. Yeah, I've been seeing you coming around for a little bit. You've been coming in here for 10 for what, five, six months here. Try some of this. Get back to me and let me know about it.
KYLE STRUEBING: Give them a sense of ownership almost. Yeah. In the store that they have, like they, they kind of get a buy-in and they're like, Hey. And they'll come back in a couple weeks or by their regular products and be like, Hey, that tea that you gave me, it was horrible. And, but they just appreciated an opportunity to give their feedback and they know that you value them and you,you do, you Know, right?
JOANN MESTER: Yeah. I think offering people education or insight on the industry, talking to them about that, they start looking at you as like an expert. That's another way to give them just a great overall experience That's Huge. And giving, I'm, I'm, you know, we probably do it too much, but giving away freebies,
you know, gifts with purchase, like people value that. They see that as, you know, Yeah. Don't give away your highest margin product or anything like that. But like a little, little something, something goes, it goes a long way. Or with our searches, you know, well if they buy a huge dollar package, hey, you know,
why don't you jump in this sauna for free on you just bought a 10 pack of X, Y, Z. Yeah. You know, the, there's just so many ways and we could probably do a whole podcast episode on Sure. We probably will. Yeah. On, you know, just the customer experience. But this is an area that you really wanna start with from day one.
That how can you incorporate something into your customer experience that you do on a daily basis that sets you apart from what others are doing out there. And one thing we really, that helped us master this is we went to our competition and saw what they were doing and it was very, very transactional. And it was very uneducational. We felt like we left more confused about the products, right. And so we decided that we wanted to look at our experience and give something totally different than, than what they were getting out there. We Saw opportunity. Yeah. I mean we really did. We saw opportunity to be, you know, be the chick-fil-A of, of your, of your, you know, of your niche. I mean,
do it, just do what everybody else does, but do it better. Yeah. Just do it better. Or find a gap that's out there that right, that's, that's not there. And, and go take that on in your own business. So I think, I think we dove into a lot here today. The good first. Good first crack.
KYLE STRUEBING: Yeah. So let's recap. So, so we dove into the five things that Kyle and I wish we knew before we opened. Number one was location is everything. Don't skimp on that location. Absolutely. Two was start simple, get fancy later. Three, diversify your offerings, that's product services. See what other product lines or services you can utilize to draw people back in and cross sell your promotions.
Number four, with customer data is gold. Start collecting that customer data from day one. You will thank us later And use tap mango. Use tap mango to do it. And number five was the art of customer service that we just dove in now. Really, really looking at your customer experience and how you can provide value there. I think that was a lot for today. I think that's a lot. Yeah. There will be no test on that. But also Joanne, why don't you tell them where they can find the show notes and stuff. Cause it was like you said, it was a lot. I'm sure I can write that fast if I was taking notes. Yeah, tell, why don't you tell 'em where they can find us and where all this stuff will be.
JOANN MESTER: Yeah. So we've got all of our show notes where you can go over these five principles that we went over today. You can get a guide to that at masterbricknmortar.com/one. That's the number one master brick and mortar.com/one. You can find the show notes, get some additional resources. We've also got a link on our show notes to our Facebook group.
This is a private group that we offer for free for people that are getting started in brick and mortar or already have a brick and mortar business. We like to share all of our resources, step-by-step guides. We do some challenges in the groups. It's really fun. So if you're looking to get involved and get even more resources, go check out the show notes. You can find a link to that. There's some gold in there for sure. Thanks for sure. Some gold in There. So Kyle, you Mentioned Question From, you did have a question.
KYLE STRUEBING: We had a question. This was submitted to me on, on the Facebook group. So definitely get in there and check that out. This is from Dan.Dan says, Kyle, Joanne was curious of your thoughts on the, on the commercial real estate market now. Where do you think it's going and do you see any opportunity? Right, great question Dan. Love that. Yes. I read an article about this earlier this week. There is a ton of commercial real estate available. A lot of it I think has to do with the office,
with like the general office complexes and office space, the bigger corporations. But there is definitely some retail space out there as well. So, I mean, my thoughts a hundred percent, right? I, you have to kind of make that decision for yourself. But I've always been told by, you know, smart man, a k a Joanne's dad,
he always tells me when everybody is selling, you need to be buying. And when everyone is buying, you need to be selling. So I think that there is opportunity out there a hundred percent. I think the people are down, they're ready to negotiate. We are looking at elites now. So there's a lot of different things that they're willing to be a little bit more offered,
some more incentives. I think there can be, you know, some opportunity to get some larger tea. You know, t and i bonuses. I think, you know, there is opportunity there. I think if you are, if you have the right niche, nothing can stop you. I do, don't get me wrong, and you follow certain things for sure.
But I, you know, speaking to contacts within things that I've read, I think they are aggressively looking to fill these, you know, kind of fill these spots. Right. You know, it, it wouldn't dissuade me as much. It just really wouldn't. Yeah. Well the pandemic did, you know, unfortunately bring a lot of businesses to closure. I think at the same time it brought a lot of opportunity for Still These units. Those units. And, and I can tell you, you know, our business is booming better than it was before the pandemic. Right. You know, people are back out shopping. We all know that. But, you know, we really haven't seen, you know,
any, You know, and, and is, but that's something to be learned, right? Like, is your business built to sustain a freaking pandemic like ours is? Cause because we did it. But like, you need to be as confident in that, that that's not gonna, you know, that, that that's not gonna dissuade you, I think. But, but also, do you have a solution for that? You know, are you, is it something that people, you know, is it not dispensable income? Is this something that people truly need? Is this something that people are truly gonna value and, and you'll continue to hold your worth, you know? Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of ways to kind of validate your business idea that,that we can dive into another day. But for sure, you know, as far as the commercial real estate market, it's, I think it's a great time to be author looking at units. I think you can get a primetime unit like we talked about earlier, location being everything. Now's probably the time to get one of those amazing locations that could really bring you a lot of success.
More than, you know, there's Certainly more availability than there was five years ago when we first started getting into this. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you have more options now. Maybe the cost might be, I think relatively it's probably a little higher, but I just, it it's still there. The, the availability is there and everybody would so tight five years ago. Now it's there. I just, I think people be more, will, you know, other landlords would be willing to take chances on some not as well known businesses or maybe something a little counterculture or whatever. I think it, it's exciting. I think it's exciting. But yeah, that was a great question by Dan. Make sure you guys submit those.
We'll try to go over those as much as possible. And it doesn't need to be business related. If you guys wanna know anything about us, whatever, anything about the dogs, you know, they're both doing great. But no, if you guys wanna learn anything, please submit those. You can do that via the Facebook group or where else Do you mind? Where’s our Instagram page? Brick and mortar. Instagram's at Master Brick and Mortar. You can always shoot us some email at info master. Brick and mortar, anywhere you can find us. Reach out. That's brick. B R i C k N as in Nancy mortar. We had to get trendy With com. Yeah. Trendy with no dashes, no dashes, brick and mortar. So, no, I think episode one in the books, Jojo, what do you think? We did it. I'm excited. I'm, I'm super excited for what's to come on this podcast. We're gonna come up with some great topics for you each week. If you have any topic recommendations, feel free to shoot us please our way.But great. Yeah, I'm, I'm scared to listen to it back, but I'm excited that it's first one in the books. But no, good job. Good job All. Thanks everyone. Thanks Guys. See you in the Facebook group. We'll see you next week.
OUTRO MUSIC: Thanks for tuning in to the Receipt Paper Podcast. Your go-to source of information for starting and growing a successful brick and mortar business. Subscribe to hear future episodes and share this content so that more people can access these valuable insights. If you're looking for more resources to help you with your brick-and-mortar business, visit master brick and mortar.com or follow us on Instagram at master brick and mortar. Thanks again for listening to the Receipt Paper Podcast. We'll see you in the next episode.
