Flip Normal- The School Bin Episode

Episode 11 April 13, 2023 00:43:36
Flip Normal- The School Bin Episode
Small Business Hustle
Flip Normal- The School Bin Episode

Apr 13 2023 | 00:43:36

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Hosted By

Molly Jolee Blair

Show Notes

How can you flip a normal process and make
 it better for your customers, your business and other businesses? Can you inspire change in others by leading a new path? What will you do when another business copies your unique idea?

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Small Business Hustle is produced and hosted by Molly Blair. Music by "Rafael Krux - Inspiring Advertising - Upbeat Summer Corporate (cc-by) (filmmusic)" by Rafael Krux is licensed under CC BY 4.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/?ref=openverse.
Cover art by Molly Blair.

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Episode Transcript

[00:00:02] All right, today we are going to be talking about how we can take something that is totally normal, totally everyday thing, and we can solve a problem within that and make it work for our small business. How can we flip it and make it so that it is something that makes us stand out, makes us fantastic, and helps our business through thrive? [00:00:27] Thank you so much for joining me today. Let's get to it. [00:00:40] Welcome. Welcome to the Small Business Hustle. And hello. Hello. I'm Molly B. Your host and owner of MJ's Market, a small general store in South Dakota. This is a weekly podcast where we discuss operating a small business. [00:01:05] Okay, so before we dive in and talk about how we can do this weird flip thing and we can make something different, we are going to have a quote. I know if you've listened, you're surprised. All right, here it goes. The things that make me different are the things that make me Winnie the Pooh. [00:01:30] I love this. I absolutely love this. [00:01:35] So I'm gonna repeat it one more time. The things that make me different are the things that make me. [00:01:43] Man, that Pooh bear. I feel like I have a lot in common with him. His love of honey, his really great quotes about being different. [00:01:53] The list might end there. [00:01:55] Okay, so what we're going to be talking about today is how can we take something that's totally normal and take the sucky part out of it and then give it a little spin to be this special service that only our business offers. [00:02:11] Now, down the road, there might be copycats, but if you're always at the front of it, you're going to always be the one leading and innovating first. So if there's a change or an update that needs done and you're paying attention to that and you're reviewing and doing a really good job in that review process at the end, you are going to be able to keep ahead of that curve. [00:02:38] All right, so what is it that I'm talking about? What am I alluding to? [00:02:43] It's back to school shopping. [00:02:46] So I worked in retail for many years and I hated the process of people doing back to school shopping. All right, so I'm going to take you to, for a second to. To how kind of the. The norm was. [00:03:01] Okay, so, you know, each school has a list, and the list is in this order that the teachers made, but it's not in the list of how the store is laid out and nor should it be. Every store is laid out differently. Every list is. Is compiled differently. [00:03:19] Being a corporate store, they base all of this off of a national list. [00:03:24] They don't specialize based on local needs. And I mean, it would be really hard for a corporate store to base it off of local needs. So that's where my small business can come in and really specialize in my local area. [00:03:42] What would happen is customers would want help finding something and they would end up going to three separate aisles in this former place I worked for. [00:03:51] But not just once, because as we diligently follow the list, we end up returning to the previous aisles over and over again. [00:04:01] And this was just, you know, even when, when I'd have to set up the aisle in the, you know, they'd have like a promotional aisle, a seasonal aisle, they would have us put all of the back to school items in that aisle. And you know, every year I would think, like, this is, I've never seen this on a school list. [00:04:21] And it wasn't until I had done that a few years that I really realized that, you know, each local area kind of takes on a life of its own. It kind of has its own school supply favorites and lists. And similarly, school districts in the area kind of all take on that, that flow. And the thing is, is that nationally, that aggregate level maybe doesn't look like what your local level looks like. So I used to always just be like, man, why do they have us put this in the aisle? Like, this is not, this is dumb. You know, and then as I, as I got older and I saw different areas and I learned about different back to school lists, I realized that really some of those things are really prevalent in areas that were not the area I was from. And so basically it was just super annoying. Okay, back to school shopping was super annoying. The other thing is, as I'm trying to help these parents find things on this list that they are struggling to find, the kids are screaming, mom, can I have this? Mom, can I have that? Mom, can I have this? It's very distracting. It was hard to concentrate a lot of times. These particular lists, I was just seeing them for the first time. So the parent and I are interpreting what, you know, thing they actually want as we read it. And so then we have to, okay, this is what they're after. And then we would have to go find the thing. And we have the kids yelling in the background. I have other things coming up, like maybe I'm getting paged to the front, I need to go help, you know, ring up because we're busy, because it's back to school season, whatever that may be. [00:05:54] And so overall, terrible, terrible. Time of year, really hated it. [00:06:00] So when I opened my own store, I really wanted to solve this problem and I had a couple ideas about how maybe I could do that that I had thought of. And so that's whenever you say the phrase gee, I wish and then you fill in that blank. So I wish this was the way it was. I wish this was the thing. I wish there was a thing like this that is likely a good idea to solve that problem. To say, you know what, that should be a thing. It's not just a wish. I should make that come true. Because you might be really solving a problem for a lot of people. [00:06:37] Okay, so what we're going to talk about right now, we're going to take a quick pivot and we're just going to talk about consumer behavior and the psychology of pricing. [00:06:45] So back to school is a really good example of this and to learn about some strategies that are used for back to school shopping. So all of eternity and eternity being my lifetime, I have noticed these like door buster bargain deals on some school supplies. It didn't matter what store was doing it, what office supply shop was doing it. They'd have these like dirt cheap prices on stuff. And I used to think like, why are they even bothering? Like if they're selling this thing, whatever the thing might be for 9 cents. I remember that was like a big deal for several years. [00:07:24] That was before inflation has kind of swept us up and 9 cents means nothing. But you know, it wasn't a lot then either. [00:07:33] But the thing was is it was like, what are they gaining if they're selling this thing for nine cents? Okay, that was my consumer mindset. That's how I looked at that as a consumer evaluating why the store would do this. It didn't make any sense to me, but now I know that there's a lot of psychology that goes into that pricing. So what those stores know is that if you can keep track as a person, you can keep track of a certain number of things. You can keep track of some key items and the price of those items. There's just certain ones you can keep track of. Of you don't know the price of everything. [00:08:09] You know, the price is right may make it seem like we can, but no, that is not the case. Okay, so you can keep track of a few things, maybe how much are crayons, how much are folders, Some really basic things. So what these stores will do is they will price a few of those key items really cheap. And then they know that you have the screaming children in the background that you have to interpret this list. It's challenging. This is super frustrating. You do not want to drag kids in and out of every store to go get all the sales at all the stores. And equally, even if you don't have your children come with you, it still might not really be an option for you to go chase down all these sales. There's a lot of challenges to that. Like, the store could be sold out by the time you get there. And even if they offer a rain check, do you really want to make another trip? And there could be a problem with it not being really the great. The right thing. You know, you get there and you're like, oh, my gosh, this is so cheap. I could break it before I even. Like, I'm scared to touch it. It's so cheap, you know, so there's a lot of pieces to that. [00:09:14] So they know that, like advertisers, they understand that. And so what they do is they show you a few things that are just dirt cheap. And maybe they're losing money, maybe they're not. [00:09:27] But what is going to happen is you're going to go there and then you're going to spend a bulk of the money there at that place. [00:09:37] And so the whole of your list is worth a lot to them. So even if they lose money on a couple items, they're banking on the fact that most people are going to spend more and get their whole list in this one location. [00:09:53] So because of that, they know that this is going to be a valuable strategy for them to advertise with. [00:10:01] Okay. The other thing is we kind of allow, as consumers, we allow ourselves to think that if this one item is such a good price, that everything is a good price. Like, I don't. I don't know why we do that. We just kind of. We kind of sweep into that. We don't. We. I guess maybe it's. It's a lack of thinking. We don't even think as consumers, other stuff could be kind of jacked up to make up for this cheap price. Like, we just don't even have that thought. We go, okay, this has some stuff on my list. It's really cheap. I'm going to go there and then you're going to buy everything there, and you're not even going to question the other prices because you started with these things that are lower. [00:10:43] So then we're going to kind of just talk a little bit about the other things that happen when parents are back to school shopping. So remember how I Told you that in order to get everything on the list, they end up having to go from aisle to aisle. And, and this part I don't really believe is truly as much of a strategy by the, by the businesses. Maybe it is, but that one goes to conspiracy theorists for me to even buy into. [00:11:14] I think it's more that it's just really impossible to like relocate everything that would be commonly purchased on a back to school list in one place. It's just, it's, it's so challenging. Even with my own business, when I try to like kind of put it all in one place, it's, it's very challenging to get it all to kind of fit without rearranging your store just for that season. Like, it just, it just doesn't work. And so as hard as you may try, you just, it ends up being in multiple aisles. You can have a nice selection in one aisle, but there's always going to be one offs that have to be in another space, another display, something of that nature. [00:11:54] What will happen to parents is as they are shopping in these stores that they have gone to because they have advertised this really dirt cheap item, is that they're going to go back and forth from aisle to aisle. [00:12:07] I know one of the big W's uses kind of like some short aisles in their seasonal area and it works nicely. Like they'll have all their notebooks in one space, all their coloring books, but you have to go back and forth from aisle to aisle. And as the list, as I have already mentioned, doesn't go in order of any of these stores. And so what you're going to end up doing is you're going to pass by these end caps and these special displays on these end caps. And special displays are going to be a variety, just a myriad of things. [00:12:41] We're going to talk about pencil boxes that have, you know, licensed characters on them, lunch pails that have that, backpacks that have special pens and pencils that have licensed characters on them. [00:12:57] The cool zipper, color changing, iridescent, you name it thing is on these displays and some of it is weaved into the aisles as well. But they'll usually have like maybe an entire marvel display set up with all things marvel on this display that are related to back to school. [00:13:17] And so what happens is as the parents walk back the back and forth past these displays, as they're diligently looking along this list, they'll say, no, no, you can't have that. No, you can't have that. No, you can't have that. And pretty soon they've upgraded for a $10 pencil box, when a normal pencil box is like two, three bucks, if you're not getting, you know, the dirt cheap ones that'll break, you know, a day after they get it. So now you've overspent on one item on that list by $7. [00:13:49] And so I want you to kind of think about how many things are on the list that you can then overspend on. [00:13:57] Granted it's fine to have these upgrades, that is fine. But what happens inevitably is that people are not planning on having these upsells and these splurges. [00:14:08] And so now all of a sudden we've added to that cost. And then, you know, even though we got these crayons really, really cheap, do we really keep track of the cost of the binder? How many people listening know the cost? [00:14:24] That is a mid price, a low price and a high price for the cost of a one inch binder. [00:14:33] Okay, now a two inch binder and a three inch binder. Do you realize the one and a half inch binder might actually cost more than the two or three inch binder? Because that half size is not as standard as the 1 inch or the 2 inch. So now if you have a teacher asking for one and a half inch binder, you might actually be paying more than a larger binder. But, but what parent wants to buy things that are not exact on the list? Because parents really want their children to fit in to this system that they're putting them in school system. And so they're going to get them exactly what's on the list if they can affordably do so. [00:15:15] So now we have this extra expense of this binder, we have this extra expense for this pencil box we picked up. [00:15:23] You know, do you know how much some of these other things are? Like what's the difference for the cost of a composition notebook versus a spiral notebook? [00:15:32] You know, can you buy single subject notebooks cheaper than you can buy a five subject notebook? And does your child want single subject versus five subject? [00:15:42] So now these more expensive items are places where stores are going to make up their pricing on these low priced items. [00:15:51] So anything that they had a really good sale on, anything that they were low, they're making up. When they sell you a $10 pencil box, an $8 binder, those are the places where they're going to make up that sale. [00:16:02] Okay, so what I decided to do in my store is try something a little different and there could be a worry that it's too different, right? Like, it could be a worry that I'm coming up with something so different, people aren't even going to understand it. They're not even going to know what it is. I did a school bin list, okay? So what you do, you come in, you say, I've got a first grader. I will hand you a bin with all the supplies that the first grade class has requested on their list. We put everything in the bin and we follow the list to a T. We pick the best value priced items for that list and put them in the bin, and then we hand you the bin. And now a lot of people have tried to make this more complicated than it is and say this bin costs $35, okay? That doesn't work. That is way too complex. You have like 30 items in the bin and they all can have different pricing. And, you know, so to say exactly how much something for the bin is, can get changed significantly if you just swap out three items. And now all of a sudden it's a different price. [00:17:16] So it's not that complicated. There is not a price for the bin, okay? It is just all the stuff in one bin. It's like walking in and your shopping basket is already filled up for you. Now what you can do is you can make some decisions. And I give them the list in there as well. And I actually laminate the list and I give them a dry erase marker. And so parents can go through the list and they can cross off things that are on this laminated list and they can go, okay, do I like this binder? [00:17:47] I want, my kid wants a green binder, whatever the case may be. [00:17:51] Oh, I don't need a pencil box. I got suckered into buying a $10 pencil box when we were over at this other store. So I'm not going to get the pencil box. I'm going to leave that here. [00:18:00] So it's a complete pick and choose process. [00:18:04] They can just pull out the six items they think they need. They can walk up to the counter with it and buy it immediately, or they can use it. [00:18:14] What some people do. And we'll dive into this a little bit deeper on how people use the. [00:18:19] But what some people do is use it as, okay, we need a binder. So let's look at all the binder choices. We need one like this. This is the size. Go figure out which binder out of these you want. [00:18:30] And so now instead of having to read the thing and go, okay, what is a bind? You know, whatever the thing is. The thing I find fun is like Parents will get stuck on with certain phrases. Maybe they call the little index dividers in the binder a different word than tabbed dividers. And so they don't realize what is a tabbed divider, you know, or an index divider. And they're like, what's an index divider? And that, that is the confusing part that makes the shopping so difficult is you have to do this interpreting at the same time that you're picking the product and that you're putting it into the bin. And I mean, obviously some parents might look at the list before they go out shopping, but nonetheless, you're still doing that interpretation while you're shopping. And so that's what kind of makes these lists so hard to shop from. [00:19:22] What we do is in our town, again, I've got a town of about 5,600 people. We just have like one school district. And they have really standard lists across the grades. [00:19:35] So what that means is these, like all the first grade teachers have to agree on one list. [00:19:43] So it's not a separate list for each teacher. [00:19:46] Same thing with the other grades. So there's not, you know, there's not an individual list for each. We end up having. So we've got kindergarten through eighth grade, all have their own bins. High school is just one broad list. [00:20:05] And so it's. It's just suggestive items for all high school grades. It doesn't break it down by grade. And then there's a couple special classroom requests, There's a couple special classrooms. And so those particular classrooms have a separate list. So we make a separate bin for them because they are different. And so what we end up with is actually 12 bins, even though we don't have one specific for each grade, because like I said, freshmen, sophomore, juniors and seniors, high school grades there, they all use the same list in our town. [00:20:39] So that's why this is so great for our store is because we do have this kind of standard list across grades. We have one school district, one school system in our close area that we're working with. And then, so what we do is we take the list and actually, so this is something that I spend a little bit of time on, right? As soon as the list gets launched, I take the list and I make. I take and I make a list just for each grade. I actually. So kindergarten through fourth grade is all on one side of one page. So an eight and a half by 11 has the entire list for all children kindergarten through fourth grade. So what I do instead is I blow up each grade and I put it large on a sheet of paper with some helpful tips on the side. And. And then usually what also happens is there'll be like this subsection at the end. So, like you're looking at your second grade stuff over here on the left hand column and over on the right hand column. After they get done with fourth grade, they'll say, oh, and if your kid's in music class, you need this one extra thing. [00:21:53] If your kid is in library or computer science, they need this extra thing. So I take those little sub notes and I put them underneath. So it's just one list per grade. It's large font, it's easy to read. And then we laminate that and we put it in the bin. [00:22:12] What we've also done so with the laminated list, as I said earlier, we put a dry erase marker in there. [00:22:18] And we have learned from the years, the two years we've done this, we create two bins for each grade. [00:22:26] The very first time I ran into trouble with this was when I had a parent walk in and I said, you know, what grades do we have? They had two children with them. They looked very close in age. And she said, fifth grade. And I was like, okay. And what about the other one? [00:22:40] Fifth grade? They're twins. Oh, biscuits. [00:22:45] So we only had one bin. So they were fine with it. They were used to kind of having these problems when they went places, but I was not okay with that. That wasn't something I was willing to accept. [00:22:54] The other thing that started happening is because it was so popular, we would have maybe several children come in of a similar grade, really close back to back. And so from the time that we would get the empty bin and have a chance to refill it for the next person, sometimes we wouldn't have it refilled yet. So we learned right away that we should create two bins for each grade at least, especially the grades that tend to have more bins sold. It's interesting. Some grades kind of don't need as much because they were in a big transitional year the year before. [00:23:33] So what I mean by a big transitional year is that when you're in middle school and you go from elementary school into middle school, you need a lot of new things. You need a ton of stuff. Just that transition going from elementary school to middle school means that the list is bigger. There's a lot of things you don't have, especially if you are the first child, for whatever reason, second and third children, there tends to be more things in the home. And you don't need as much off that list. [00:24:04] And then so once you get into sixth grade, a lot of the things that you bought in fifth grade can get reused. For example, if in our town, middle school starts in fifth grade. [00:24:14] So very confusing for anybody who's just listening to that because it was confusing to me and I still struggle getting used to it. So our town considers fifth graders to be middle school students. [00:24:23] So from fifth to sixth grade, they use a lot of the same things. So like they buy a Trapper Keeper in fifth grade, they don't need it again in sixth grade. Some do, of course, but not all children do. And so there it's. It's less difficult of a grade for parents to buy supplies for where fifth grade they are. We sell way more fifth grade bins in our town because of the fact there's so much they need in such a large list. [00:24:49] So we learned right away, we created two bins for each grade so that we could do a quick swap for the grade. What would happen is people will come in and we'll greet them if we have a chance to. We don't always. And so we have it set up to be self serve. But if we get a chance to greet them, we'll say, okay, what grade is your child? And then we'll hand them the bin, we'll give them the instructions. Many of them kind of already understand it, especially if this is already their second year. [00:25:15] And what we would do then is grab our spare bin out of the back and refill that bin right away so that if someone else walks in the door right after them and is in the same grade, they already have a bin ready and waiting for them. [00:25:27] And so then from there we would be able to start thinking about, okay, how many bins do we have open? [00:25:36] If I had a lot of people shopping in that moment, but nobody ringing up, what I would do is I would kind of go gather the supplies for one of the grades that I knew was gonna check out first so that I could just quickly fill in their bins. I'd almost like pre get the bin refilled. So it just depended on how busy the store was, but. [00:25:56] Okay, so what I want to share with you now is what did I learn? What did I learn from this? Okay, so I wasn't prepared for some of the things that I learned. [00:26:08] So one of them being the amazing autonomy this created for the kids. In the past, lists were hard for kids to follow because kids, like a second grade child, doesn't always understand all of the different types of school supplies that they could potentially need. [00:26:31] So they tend to not, you know, be able to read the list and then understand what they need to get. Not. Not all the time, but it's a lot harder. I mean, I guess, basically what I'm saying is you watch adults struggle with filling, fulfilling a school supply list. And. And how can we expect kids to read the list, interpret it, and then go find the product in a store? So what we did is now we've handed them a bin with everything they need, and they can look in this bin and go, ooh, I don't like blue. I just cannot be writing in a blue notebook. So their parents will say, okay, so this is the things you need. So if you don't like something in here, you can go swap it. And these children would go then, and they would find those notebooks, and they'd say, okay, I have to have a purple notebook. Like, I can write in a purple notebook. I can be happy learning with a purple notebook. Cannot do any other color. So they get the purple notebook. Okay? So now all of a sudden, this autonomy that these kids have been given at this much younger age. I mean, I had. I had kindergarten gardeners doing it. It's like this is their first year in school. It's. It's a very big deal to them. Like, they are such big kids going into kindergarten, and they feel really important, and this makes them feel so empowered to be able to take this bin. And they get to look at it, and they get to pick their color for their pencil pouch. And, you know, and. And a lot of the things on some of the lists are so specific, there is no room for interpretation. But the things that are able to be interpreted, they feel really empowered, and it's a really good thing. And even if they don't need to change them out, they can just talk about it with their parents and say, you know, their parents will say, okay, you need it. You know, you need 12 pencils. So these are 12 pencils, okay? And then they get to see that, they get to process it, and they put it in their basket. Now, one of the other lessons I learned is parents now could handle their entire school shopping list for their children in the span of a lunch break from work. [00:28:29] We were giving them back their time. [00:28:32] So instead of going to the store and ending up spending 3, 4, 5, I even had somebody tell me they spent six hours school supply shopping before. [00:28:41] I can't even imagine how stressful it would be to be in a store for six hours trying to Buy school supplies. [00:28:48] And so now I have taken that and given it back to them. I've given them that, given them that time. [00:28:55] Now maybe they're going to spend that time getting, you know, getting clothes or getting shoes or something like that, but either way, they've gotten so much of their time back. I had, I had moms bragging on social media when I would put up posts about it. And they would be bragging on social media about how they were able to get their school supplies in 15 minutes and I was out the door. And now granted, some people could do it even faster than that, but these moms were like, they actually like picked through the bin and changed out some colors and made a few different changes and then got rang up and were in their car within 15 minutes. And they were ecstatic. I mean, this was like bragging rights territory for them where they won momming that day. [00:29:43] I had several situations with dads who came in with their, you know, child and said, okay, this is the bin. You're gonna just get everything in the bin and let's just buy, be done five minutes. [00:29:55] I mean, as long as it takes for you to ring up the stuff. They were done. [00:30:00] So it was really fascinating to kind of see how those things changed. And another thing that I learned that is by far the most shocking to me as a small business owner, something that I constantly compete with the big W's on is price. [00:30:17] And people told me they saved money, not only did they save time, not only was this easier for them, but they said it cost them less to come here and do this very simple process with me. [00:30:33] And you know, is it any wonder if you have fair prices across the board and you have less options for these unnecessary upsells, all of a sudden you're going to just save money inherently. [00:30:49] You know, when I am a small business owner and I am sourcing things for my store in the stationary, in the office, school supply type things, would it make sense for me to buy things that aren't on this local school list that I don't necessarily think is going to be a hot selling item outside, outside of that school list? [00:31:13] And the answer is no. I mean, I'm not going to buy a ton. I mean, I love you Spider man, but I'm not going to buy a ton of Spider man pencil cases that are going to cost people, you know, $10. It doesn't make any sense for my small business to invest in that inventory because I have to then hope that I'm going to have a, a bunch of spider man enthusiast children who also need pencil boxes to come in with parents who are willing to spend. So those are three strikes on that product. [00:31:45] Now, maybe just a spiderman toy, I'm all over it. But when it comes to something like a pencil box in a town of 5,600, it doesn't make sense for me in my business to do something like that. [00:31:58] Okay? So I was really worried when I did this process that I would cannibalize sales because of the fact the people would come in, they would just buy the stuff on the list and they would leave. [00:32:12] And what actually happened is that people, you know, there were some people, like I told you, we've got the moms on the lunch breaks, they're grabbing the stuff, they're out the door, we've got some, you know, and then the dad's grabbing their kid. This is what you're getting. We're going. But there were enough people also who went through the whole list. They really looked at everything. They made sure they got exactly what they wanted. They loved the bin. But they did go through each item and, and they got done so fast. [00:32:45] And they had left all this time, they said, okay, school supply shopping is going to take us two hours. And they got done in like 20 minutes maybe even if the kids were really picky, 30 minutes. And now all of a sudden they're, they're done and they have tons of extra time. [00:33:02] And so now they shopped around and they were enjoying the process. They enjoyed shopping around as they had accomplished this giant task and they had time to kill after that. [00:33:15] So it was a really interesting process for me. I've done this now for two back to school seasons. [00:33:23] And as always, we make improvements based on our review of the season. So we do a reflection of what went well and especially what did not go well. [00:33:38] And when we do that, we are able to do a couple things. First of all, we make shifts and changes in our process so we can make it better. We can, you know, like I said, we had two bins now. We changed a few layout things. [00:33:52] We scolded and chastised me for not ordering enough pencils. My God, if I run out of pencils again this year, I'm just closing up shop. [00:34:02] And it really comes from this deep seated worry and confidence in your own guessing. You know, like, I've never been a gambler until I opened a small business. And now I am making orders in January for back to school, you know, seven, eight months later, hoping that it all shakes out for me and so the gambling level is high. [00:34:26] And so anyway, so what we do is we take those improvements and make the process and the flow go better. [00:34:32] It really. It's amazing that it isn't as. It isn't as labor intensive as you would think. Because what we do is now instead of having to, like, restock the shelves constantly, a lot of times we're pulling from the back stock first when we're refilling these bins. [00:34:49] So all of a sudden we don't have to do as much fluffing in the aisles and like, making the aisles prettier. [00:34:57] And. And because we're doing that at the same time as filling bins. So it's actually amazing how it doesn take way more time as you would think it would. Although I can see if we had a lot more employees, it could be more of a process. [00:35:14] It would be more of an education process. And that upfront part might take a little bit more labor hours and be more labor intensive into getting everyone to understand and get how to make this process flow really well. [00:35:27] All right, so the other thing you want to do is you want to take all of this review, this reflection, and you want to unpack that and make a plan for your marketing strategy and your planning process. [00:35:38] And what I mean by that is, you know, customers told me they saved money. They told me they saved time. They told me this was so easy. They said a lot of really amazing things about it. [00:35:49] And so what message am I going to share next year when I do my marketing? How am I going to let that affect what I'm buying? How much am I buying? [00:35:59] And also, if this is going really well, I also need to be thinking about the fact that it will likely do better next year. [00:36:08] And again, that comes into the gambling, and there could be a shift, a change, whatever that may be. But. But in this particular situation, I believe more word of mouth will get across to more parents. This year, I'm also going to be doing some different advertising and marketing. I'm not going to share what those are because it hasn't passed yet. [00:36:28] But when I do those different marketing strategies, I do expect it to increase my sales and increase the success of it, which means I need more pencils. [00:36:37] Lesson learned. [00:36:39] Okay. And then also, what pricing is important and what messages are we going to share about our pricing? Because we did discuss how pricing can be a huge impact on this process and on this. [00:36:52] So those are all really important things that you know. [00:36:56] I'm not suggesting everybody do a school bin, although if you'd like to, you know, I'd be happy to do some mentorship and some teaching, but I'm not saying that everybody, every business is going to be right for this. But what I'm saying is how can you take something totally ordinary, totally run of the mill, and make it even easier and fix that problem and solve that problem and really be able to show how you can add value for your customers and how you can compete against these really big businesses that are going deep into psychology of pricing in order to get consumers to respond. So what can you do that's different? If you don't have a lot of that research and that marketing behind you, how can you do something different that actually just lends more value to your customers? [00:37:43] Something else I'd like to share that I'm very excited about is that I got copied. So after my first year of doing this, I learned a lot. I didn't execute very well the first year because I didn't imagine it would be quite as popular as it was. And it really, really was popular and I had a ton of people who did it. And then the next year was even more popular. But what was super fun about it was that I had a business that copied me the second year. [00:38:11] And so when that happened, I kind of, you know, at first you get a little maybe offended, I guess is the right word, or taken aback. I really wasn't offended as much as I was like, wait, what? You're totally copying and ripping me off. [00:38:29] But, you know, I thought about it and I actually, it was really, it was a couple beautiful things that came from that. And that's really why I want to share it. [00:38:38] Number one, I realized I can never be like the OG the original school bin, the home of the original school bin if nobody copies me, right? So now I'm the og. [00:38:50] The other thing is that, you know, I realized that business isn't. It wasn't leading. They're definitely having an identity crisis and asking where do they belong? Because specifically, they have told me that they are. [00:39:08] They're specialized for business customers. [00:39:12] So then to take such a strong consumer strategy and just like completely go after this consumer segment seemed really interesting to me. It would have made more sense to me if they would have done kind of like a fun flip on that and said, like, this is a back to back to the office bin. You know, we're going to get you set up to get your office all straightened back out with back to school season, you know, so that was, that was a really interesting thing. But I think as long as you're doing that review part and you're doing that reflection, you're going to continue to innovate and stay ahead of that curve. But you could also fall behind if you become complacent. So that's why that review is so important, that reflection is so important, to really be analyzing what is good, what isn't good, and how can we shift, how can we adjust. Even minor adjustments can make a huge impact. Maybe it's the marketing message that needs a little bit of tweaking. [00:40:09] Maybe it's the timing of when the strategies are hitting, maybe that's more important. [00:40:15] So just really looking at all of those little pieces and seeing how can you continue to innovate and stay ahead of this curve. Because you know people are going to copy you in business and in life. [00:40:28] It's not something that you, you know, initially it is, right. I think for you to feel, maybe you, you can feel a little bit taken aback or whatever, you know, offended. [00:40:42] But when you really get away from that and you think, you know what, I am trailblazing here and this is what I am doing and I am moving forward, I've got my head up and I'm moving forward and I'm inspiring someone else, and what a beautiful thing is that. And so for me to know that I have inspired this other business, unfortunately, I don't think it went well for them. We'll see if they continue to do it again this year. That was their first year, was last year, so we'll see if they do it again this year, you know, but. But I inspired them in this situation. And so instead of feeling taken advantage of, ripped off, I've now come to terms with the fact that I've inspired somebody to do a change, to make a shift. I do hope that that business gets their marketing message kind of pinned down and really figure out where, where they belong, where is their identity, because I think that will serve them better than following something that I'm doing. [00:41:40] But again, I have inspired them. Maybe I have helped them. [00:41:45] And if I can help you, please reach out. I would love to help serve you. I would love to help people. [00:41:52] Anything that within the time constraints of my life that I can do to help you, whether maybe it be a very specific episode in more detail or, you know, any other pieces, maybe a couple emails back and forth, I would be happy to support and help you in your journey. [00:42:13] So, yeah, basically from all of that, you never know who you might be inspiring, you never know who you might be making a path for. [00:42:22] And so you know it's okay to be different. It is okay to define who you are. And the things that make you different might be the things that make you it can make your small business a success and it can make your customers lives so much better. And what a positive ripple you can put into the marketplace with your small business. [00:42:44] Thanks so much for joining me and have a fantastic week. [00:42:49] Thank you for joining me this week on the Small Business Hustle. I would love to hear your feedback so I can better serve you. And don't forget to subscribe so you can catch me next week where we'll continue to talk about small business. [00:43:04] If you found found value in this podcast, you can show your support by sharing our podcast with your audience and your friends. We appreciate you and please spread some positivity today. I promise it will do you wonders.

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