This Is Not How This Ends

[Music] hello everyone welcome to the 21 hats podcast I'm your host Lauren Feldman this week we bring you what we're calling an entrepreneurial Fishbowl with Chris Hutchinson as you may remember we recorded one of these at our 21 hats live event in Fort Worth where I shared some of my challenges trying to build 21 hats and I got feedback from the group we recorded that conversation and turned it into a podcast this time we're doing the same thing except will be Jamie e founder and CEO of the Crafters Workshop who is going to explain her challenges to a virtual group of 21 hats entrepreneurs as you'll hear Jam's challenges are real her sales are down her customers are aging her lease is up and she's not sure what she should do next we're going to see if a group of 21 hats founding members can offer some support and advice even in Good Times owning and running a business can be a lonely Pur suit our hope is that these weekly conversations will let owners know they are not alone in facing challenges same thing with our daily newsletter the 21 hats Morning Report which Jak magazine named the best newsletter for business owners and which you can subscribe to for free at 21h hats.com we can also find transcripts of our podcast episodes and lots of other articles and interviews joining me this week on the podcast are Chris Hutchinson of trevet group along with his colleague Katie Huey plus David bilstrom of flashing red light Chris Campbell of ritzer Tony castaldi of profit mindset Harry ston of Midwest chemical safety Jay goz of the gos group Trisha gra executive adviser and Coach Shannon Kennedy of kiwi Vision Chris Maynard of essential ingredients Michael Raphael of indiv vets Lauren Ralph of Posh Jackie Russo of brand Russo Porsche Mystique steel of Mystique Rose publishing Joe Tibet of expro Partners Mike Wolf of Delgado stone distributors and Michelle Wyatt of St John's rivership the episode is titled this is not How This Ends before we get started I want to play part of an interview I did with Steve Baker who is a vice president with our sponsor of the great game of business in the segment of our conversation I asked Steve how the great game especially in these crazy times helps businesses plan a year 3 years 5 years even 10 years out the technical part the nuts and bolts of planning for us are to literally do that say what will the economy do in the next uh one three five years we're even looking 10 years out to say what's possible we know the world breaks every 10 years we just don't know exactly when or exactly how but if we don't plan for it we're probably going to be a victim not a person position or an organization position to take advantage of it um uh what what I'm getting at here is we've got to look out far enough to say what's possible how would we attack that how would we get that market what do we do if there's a problem and then we are asking for people's buy into our plan rather than just dumping it on them you actually at the great game of business encourage owners to get their employees involved in the actual planning and participating in coming up with the numbers and goals that the company then shoots for yeah good question the in the early days for anyone you're going to have to teach them there's no doubt about it but you don't have to teach them everything they don't have to become accountants or uh CFOs or even operations managers or anything like that to understand some of the things we've just got to start somewhere and with the ultimate goal of yes I do want High involvement cu the higher the involvement the much more likely we are to hit our goals and Frankly Speaking we see some incredible forecast accuracy not necessarily in what products or services are offered over time but our 5-year forecasts are 97% accurate yeah Lauren the capturing the wisdom of your team is so important the first story I heard at SRC all those years ago was the story about uh Jack was getting pressed in the early days for turning around this dying division of International Harvester and uh you know when he tells me this story I I just I can picture him you know cruising through the factory with his loafers and his Blazer you know and he's feeling good and U you know yeah good job everybody let's go imagine you're doing that you're cruising through the factory saying hi to people checking on things you're just doing great and uh he sees the janitor pushing his broom he says yeah all this debt to equity equals job security stuff is crap and Jack stops in his tracks he's like Dave what's wrong with you what are you talking about he goes well I happen to be looking at our financials and uh it looks like about 76% of our receivables are in the truck Market well I happen to know there's a there's a recession in the truck Market every seven years so it really doesn't matter if we do our jobs or not you're still going to lay us off and he kept pushing his broom you know and Jack is like wow what are you talking about and and think about it they had bought a dying division of International Harvester they had one customer inter National Harvester who was a financial disaster and they were so busy saving jobs that they hadn't looked out and so this was the first time where Jack like a captain of industry got his managers together and said did you know there's a a recession in the truck Market every seven years and we have 76% of our business tied up in one organiz you know and the point of the story is this they said well wait a minute the whole idea of of this business was to save jobs that's the what it was and and what are we talking talking about we're going to have to lay them off if if we hadit a recession they said we are not Diversified so what they did is they looked out there and said okay uh at that point it was all the game was all about hours in the shop how many other products do we need to produce to offset these diesel engines that we would lose if there's a recession and they said well what goes up in a recession if everything else is down and they're like well car parts CU people hang onto their cars longer okay let's do Automotive engines we're going to need four engines for every one of these it's turns out Dave Skidmore the janitor was a burnout Merl Lynch broker you can read a text version of my entire interview with Steve at 21h hats.com and now on to Today's [Music] Show welcome everybody thank you so much for coming to this without having any idea what you were coming to I really appreciate it and um I think this is going to be really interesting and something that we're going to want to do again but uh but we'll see what happens this is a little bit of a trial for us although Chris Hutchinson has done this many times before we saw him do it in Fort Worth and I'm really confident we're all going to get something special out of this Chris why don't you give us again just a a real quick overview of how you're going to do this so this is a simple process of us getting to Clarity together as entrepreneurs in behalf of an entrepreneur who's going to share her story story about what's happening in the business and sort of asking us for some support so we're going to first have a process where we listen to our entrepreneur you're going to do the interview we're going to capture some of that context and then each of us all of us will be invited to step up to the microphone as it were say their name and business and offer a question an open-ended question not one like don't you want to try X it's more understanding what's happening together I get to moderate that and then once we those answers um the entrepreneur will look at those and say I want advice around this this piece it's come out that this is kind of an important part it's the Nugget and then we're going to go into breakouts uh so that we can in small groups come up with a Next Step a cautionary step or a success tip those will all be collected we'll do some magic behind the scenes and then each of those folks that have the most like or question will come up to the mic again share those and that'll help our entrepreneur at the end hopefully one to three pieces of that advice is just stellar and they'll we'll help them commit to that and support them all right so let's get going I'm delighted to introduce our guest of honor Jamie e Jamie uh tell us uh where you are and what you do I am in Elmsford New York which is just North of New York City I own the crafter's workshop we've been in business 27 years I am the founder and CEO we manufacture design distribute arts and craft Supply specifically stencils and mixed media products and you've been in business for a while uh take us back how did you come to start the business the fashion industry led me into doing crafts selling crafts teaching crafts so I opened a store in 1997 and the only thing missing was stencils I mean there were stencils out there but there weren't stencils that the more sophis icated fashion trend oriented person was looking for so I drew my own had them made stuck them up on my peg board in my store and they sold really well I mean well enough that they actually when I was a destination store so people came from all over on their way uh on a business trip or on a family trip and then my stencils would end up in Florida California the UK Canada and I'd get calls from other stores asking if I could sell them my stencils which I thought sure I can do that and little by little that's how my wholesale business grew to the point that I made the decision to close my retail store in 2005 and just focus 100% on wholesale for those of us like me who are not all that familiar with crafts can you tell us a little bit more about stencils why did they connect how do people use them what's this about yeah because I know the first thing you might be thinking is oh this is a kids product well actually my customer tends to be older an older woman um and by older like over 50 55 60 65 she is very into um card making scrapbooking we call it paper Arts uh journaling uh she might be dabbling in mixed media um I have crossed over into the Fine Arts area where artists are using stencils to add uh texture background designs these are very pretty stencils that help people who aren't necessarily artistic feel creative you know even for myself if I want to draw a lovely tree it's going to take me eight or nine tries and if I already have this beautiful background and I don't want to ruin it I want to be able to put a stencil on top and go oh that's right where I want that tree and I can trace it I can put some of our modeling pastes we have our own particular paste called stencil butter we have 43 colors now and these are dimensional colors that don't leak underneath the stencil so it's definitely a um a finer craft if you want to call it that and it's definitely geared currently for um a more mature audience um somebody who has time and a little bit of money she might be a nurse a nursing assistant a teacher a teachers assistant so big chunks of time off um and um some extra spending money to spend on herself you told us that you um initially had a a retail store but you closed that after a while correct I did I did it was well in New York you know it's very competitive and we were open seven days a week I opened with a two and a half-year-old and soon after that I had a newborn after that so doing a 7-Day a week gig with two little kids who were with me the entire time I was in a marriage that wasn't the uh the most uh supportive let's say so they were always with me I ran 30 classes a month out of my store some of them I even taught and um and then running this wholesale business on top of it and I had an 82-year-old father-in-law who lived with us who was in a wheelchair and on dialysis so I kind of had a look at my life and see what was working and what wasn't had to stick with the marriage for a little while but um the retail business I think was taking the most out of me and I learned a lot from it that I could apply to my wholesale business more than you as for no no not at all um when would you say the business was at its peak uh what was what were the best days yeah I would say um 2012 13 14 it was amazing and I would say looking back the reason is that we owned the stencil Arena we were the only ones making very unique stencils and and that was still what we predominantly do and we were known for that but little by little um other people would add stencils onto they made rubber stamps oh and we do stencils too let's say we make papers beautiful printed papers oh and we make stencils too I do make stencils for some of those people so I do OEM and therefore I get a little piece of that pie which is great um but little by little all the meos coming in and and also making stencils uh started nibbling away at the piece of a pie that we had even though the pie was probably big and getting bigger can you give us a sense of how big the business was at it at its peak um under two million but close and how many employees did you have at that point at least a dozen we manufacture in the United States and we assemble right in Elmsford so um all the assembly the shipping the billing everything happens out of our our warehouse office so now if you would bring us up to date where do things stand now how's it going so I track my sales in 12-month increments so that kind of takes out seasonality we had some some really really positive um months years during the pandemic and I mean I know a lot of people suffered but people were home and they were kind of getting in touch with the things that brought them peace and made them happy and crafting was one of those things so we did well I was I mean I totally understood that this was you know it was it was going to be here and then it could be gone but I was hoping we wouldn't lose ground but unfortunately I I feel like we've lost more ground as people travel more and aren't going back as much to their Hobbies but I'm also hearing that people are feeling very very concerned about the money they're spending at the gas pump and the money they're spending at the supermarket so I've seen a a real dip I was hoping that our trade show the art trade show um in April was going to give us the shot in the arm that it normally gives us it's it's always been a good place to kind of get that boost you see a little dip before trade show as people save up money waiting for those those great deals and then the trade show comes and people are like here I am but it wasn't that same flurry of orders or the kind of orders that we're used to my Distributors numbers one and numbers to uh customers also I'm not seeing as much from them and they too are now getting into the the space that I'm in if they don't manufacture their own products they're buying companies that do so now I'm kind of competing with my numbers one and two customers numbers three and four are direct mail companies and they also have their own lines that I compete with so the marketplace is definitely it's changing um and I'm not getting those nice bumps that I used to get you mentioned uh that the age of your customers might be a little higher than we anticipated is that a cause for concern on your part I feel like that's more of a long-term concern but it's it's still I used to say that my customers maybe 55 to 70 and now she's definitely mid-60s getting close to 80 and and you know I mean God willing they all live to be a hundred but the the reality is I'm thinking of the basic things like arthritis arthritis could be a big killer of doing handcrafts you know being able to have that dexterity I do come out with products that make um holding things a little bit easier um I have a line of brushes that are nice and chunky and easy to hold have good balance so I'm I'm addressing that but I'll jump ahead with what people are probably thinking is currently my customers are like Linda Susan Barbara Debbie and I need to get in touch with Nicole Danielle Emma I need to find my younger my younger consumers I need to figure out what she wants and how how my needs and my abilities can can fill those needs before I turn this over to Chris and we open it up one last question I think you have some concerns about your uh location where you do all all of uh the magic tell us about that well my 5-year lease is coming to a close and I you know this is New York we have something called triple net leases that maybe some of you lovingly know as well I mean I I pay for everything everything except like if the roof caved in and uh so it's all on me and I even pay the property taxes um the insurance everything so it's a hefty lease which I moved here in the pandemic and things were looking good and I thought this is this is where we're going to be I'm rethinking that I've got 5500 square feet we came from a very small area and um so we can do a lot with very little I have you know an amazing bay door that allows us to bring in pallets which we often do so I'm at that kind of Crossroads of do I stay here do you know how much can I renegotiate On My Le what does the market look like out there oh I'm also talking with somebody about subletting but subletting you know they're they're only as good as the month they're there maybe maybe the subletter will leave or do I move which we are in a an old densely populated area north of New York City it's there's no sprawl so what what is is what is nothing new is is building up so I've got to work with what is in the marketplace which of course I'm going to be looking um yeah so those are that's my challenge for the next probably three months is should I stay or should I go RIS okay well I'm sure many of you already have a complete business plan and all the things that Jamie has to do just sketched out on you know a piece of paper next to you this is actually a time when I want you to hold off on that entrepreneurial action button and what we need to do ideally together you know people will raise their hand they can do it formally informally and I'll call on folks you'll see your name and your business and then share an open-ended question open-ended questions don't start laugh with like well what about doing X that is not an opening question you know shouldn't you try X or Y that that is not a question either you know those are all Solutions in Disguise so push the solutions off this is the what do we need to know so those questions usually start with they're not answerable by yes and no that's one thing so if a yes no answer I'm probably going to ask you to shift the question why doesn't really help because asking you know it's kind of a blame you know when my parents would say why did you drop the milk if I said gravity they would not have been happy right that technically is the correct answer but uh you know it's slippery so try not to ask a why question really great questions start with how how much or what how much is this an issue what's this thing about here so remember this is not answering the question this is trying to figure out how to help Jamie so I have a couple people in line that's great and I'm looking forward to it so I'll go ahead and call on you remember name and your business organization and then share your questions Michelle would you start us off can you describe the customization for sedil that you currently offer the marketplace please customization are you talking about when I do OEM sure so for example can you take a logo and convert it to a stencil or what type of customization can you do for the marketplace current there you go what type of customization great question Michelle okay so I can do I can do anything I can take the thought in your brain and turn it into a stencil but because I I cut stencils um in the thousands so somebody called yesterday and she has this idea for her art project and can I cut um these stencils for her and I said if you'd like me to cut any of those each design I have a minimum order quantity of 300 so she was like no I just want one I said well from the time it takes for me to set everything up and to run it 300 is is my my break even point I I as I said I cut about a th per design so yes I can do all of that but we're talking super big machines my stencils I can cut one 12in stencil in 3 seconds so setting up gigantic machines with with you know tons and tons of plastic to cut one is is not where my capabilities lie is that that kind of answer the question yes thank you all right perfect thanks Jamie so I think Harry was next and then we'll have David Harry Alon Midwest chemical safety I'm uh one of the smallest of the small businesses here I don't know if this is an allow question Chris but uh but Jamie you have identified a lot of risk to your business okay are those the only risks that you are seeing right now or do you have much more to look at what other the risks are me perfect thanks Terry I would say my risks are um a in myself that I do much of the things that are required although I do have a um a book that tells everybody what I do and how I do it but that's still a risk um another risk is that I have two very big Distributors who make up a large portion of my overall sales something happens to them for instance one went through um a sale a couple of years ago that nobody knew about and they fell off the face of the Earth for a while that was scary so that's definitely a risk another risk I would say is stencils can be made in China people I find my stencils made by Chinese manufacturers all the time so there's a very uh low entry to this and uh people Ste designs all the time so that's easy enough to do that's another risk um let me think what other I'm sure I have plenty um feel free to add to it that's good Jamie and and no surprise that Harry's business is actually risk reduction love it awesome business risk reduction mine's chemical safety but do talk about risk in all kinds of fashion absolutely thank you so David we'll go to you next and then we'll go to Mike thanks I'm David bstr with flashing red light so um can you educate us can you teach us about your margins relative to the Distributors the the DTC that you might have um and the kissing cousin the the the pricing of the relative stuff I'm particularly interested in the OEM pricing good questions um my profit margin is good so I have I have my retail price my B Toc which is actually when I sell on my shop if I site it's a little bit higher and my thought is that I don't want to be competing head-to-head with the retailers who are my bread and butter so if something sells for $10 MSRP I might have it on my Shopify site for 11 and I don't typically do free shipping like many of my um customers my independent store owners do so that's my BC which is very nice I also didn't mention I sell into Amazon and I did a look at what my Amazon because Amazon takes a lot when I distill it down what I take from Amazon is the equivalent of what I take home when I sell to one of my Distributors and my Distributors where if MSRP is up here wholesale is half of that and then my Distributors get between 25 and 30% or some deal close to that um off of that and when I do that I still have a decent margin um 30% of a margin when I'm selling to my Distributors 40 um when I'm selling to um an independent and obviously B Toc is lovely and I really need to perhaps focus more on that because the other thing independent stores are having a very tough go and they don't necessarily run the kind of businesses that I can depend on and and pay my rent on some of them their idea of budgeting is when their credit card doesn't work anymore that's when they they stop purchasing or they put in orders that I fill and then we go to ship it and their credit card doesn't work and they say oh that's right can you hold it for another week and that week turns to a month turns to three months until their credit card works again and then sometimes they don't want it because you know it's old so those are some of my challenges but yeah I I do keep a um an eye on my on my margin thank you great question great answer Mike Wolf what are you next and then we've got another Michael here thank you yep Mike Wolf from Delgado stone distributors uh just up the road in Brookfield Connecticut nice to meet someone local Jamie I had a question not being familiar with the industry what type of material do you use to make the stencils and where does that material come from it's um polyethyl Tri like uh it's p it's a hazy polyester and It ultimately it comes from China but it goes through a lot of iterations it has to go to a fabricator and a something else to be cut down to the sizes that eventually um can be used and put through a machine okay thanks Michael go ahead hi hey Jamie I'm Michael rafhael um Indie vets company I'm at um my question is around kind of like brand and competitors and how do you differentiate yourself from the rest of the groups out there that's a really good question um let's see well our tagline used to be where the nice guys not that there were not nice guys but um because we are I say recovering retailers we get the whole lifestyle of a retailer and how it's you're putting in orders at 2: a.m and you're juggling family life and and you've got customers in and out all day long kind of like cheers so we do understand what what the retailer goes through we try to make our minimums easy for them to place orders frequently we also turn around our our orders very quickly that's super important to us where other companies May sit on them for a while um what else we are thoughtful both in the way that we we work with our partners but we're also thoughtful in that we if we think of something that might help one of our partners we will be proactive and say hey we threw this in for you I saw you were doing this and we had a sample hope this helps um or hey did you happen to see this on YouTube you know I see you bought this and this here's a link so I guess it's it's relationship building but the flip side the more tangible side is we have really great designs and I feel that those I produce things that I know that I would want to carry in a store it's not just what I think you should carry I really get into the mindset of who our consumer is and what she wants um and I think that's one of my strengths okay we have um Chris quick question and then Lauren and then we need to shift to having people think about how to support Jamie in the situation Christopher hey guys yeah curious Jamie uh you talked about potentially a move um I'm just curious if that's just strictly limited to a local move or are you open to a kind of a big uh Move Like You geographically the business geographically uh what's that box look like very good question and I've I've thought it over and over I mean we are in a super expensive part of the world no no joke um and I've I have run the numbers like what would it look like to move to Missouri what would it look like to move way up state New York and um the dollars would be cheaper and some parts of the Midwest would be great for a lot of my customers shipping wise shipping times but the truth is I have amazing amazing employees here and it's been 27 years of finding people who play well together who care um we all bought some lottery tickets uh a few months back and um they all on their own there were somebody asked in the family like what will you do you know what so you going to quit mom and she said you know I don't think I wouldn't quit I just I think I'll take Monday off and that that's and the other employee was like yeah that's what I was thinking I would take Monday off if we won the the billion dooll Lottery those are my folks so I am going to stick right here in expense of New York um someplace safe I I also didn't we moved only five years ago after being in the same place 23 years and that was because um an illicit massage parlor moved upstairs which made it a little bit difficult so uh safety is super important and keeping my my amazing employees um comfortable and safe is very important so we will be sticking in this 10 15 mile radius of very expensive rentals and may or maybe buy something I'm going to go to Lauren and then we need to shift to the groups Jimmy I just want to ask you you've told us you've been doing this for a while now you've obviously had some ups and downs could you just give us a sense of where your heads at are you excited are you eager to try to rethink aspects of the business are you feeling burned out what are you feeling oh that's that's a very good question so I'm in my mid-50s and I am not burnt out I certainly know what that feels like this is not that I feel like I am baffled and perplexed when I'm kept up at night it's because I'm trying to think my way through this and I probably didn't to say forcefully enough I mean I'm at the point where I am using my savings my line of credit I I am no longer bringing in the dollars that support my monthly nut and we are very very Scrappy there's not a whole lot of fat here so for me to get to that point is is very worrisome when I talked to my employees about this and I said you know this is where we are and I said tell me how you feel about this and they were like we're not ready to see this go that would be sad after all these years of working towards us so they are also energized to to make this happen so I'm a planner and I I believe in playing the long game so this is not how this ends I I like we've been through 911 we've been through 2008 I've been through a divorce um cancer scare with my daughter I mean a lot of lot of stuff through all with my business and all with the people here this is not How This Ends but I do need some help thinking my way through it perfect that is a perfect segue thank you Jamie so what we'd really like for from you is to narrow the scope on what the advice you'd like is so you've got all these experts here what's the thing that you'd really like them to focus on to give you a Next Step a caution or a success tip around well I don't you tell me if I have to go in a little little finer but where do we put our energy where would our energy be best spent you know the two rules of thumb are um spend less make more money other than really my overhead my rent is my biggest expense so I know that that's that's a no-brainer so how do I make more money where do I find it okay Katie's typing those into the chat so that should persist that's the question to go answer we're only going to give you eight minutes together we're having you in groups of three so you can share ideas um in fact we'll probably make it so you can like them immediately if you like that idea you can like it and the most liked ideas will be the way order we'll go through these in any questions before we send you out to the rooms okay so uh we'll see you in about eight minutes and we'll see all your ideas as they come up thanks okay so at this point Chris splits everyone up into virtual breakout groups of three and four and he gives them about 10 minutes to brainstorm ideas which they can then enter on a virtual whiteboard then all of the participants like the ideas they find most promising for Jamie once that's done we go through those ideas starting with the ones that have been liked the most all right so thank you all for your brilliant ideas the idea here is go into the ideas you only can like them once if you like them twice it unlikes it like the ones that you think based on what you heard of Jam's situation and what her request is what would help her most what would really help her in her in her search for where should her energy be best spent and how does she make more money and where does she find it if there's a duplicate in there I think people are pretty good about e duplicating but you know you can like both that's fine or the one that's most effective and you can like your own idea so we'll take about a minute here not a lot of time this is a quick B group and then we'll sort them by likes and I'll ask you to share that idea one at a time from the top down we'll see how far we get and then Jamie will commit to doing something okay are we ready to go through these this is a horse race if somebody starts liking when and it moves up you know we'll we'll get to it right but um it looks like the first one is branded ambassadors on Tik Tok if you could just say your name and your company and just share that idea and if there's a little bit more information great and we're just going to go through these one by one so who's brand ambassador um so that was me Shannon and Henry we kind of came up with that so hi guys pora Mystique steel H owner of Mystique RS publishing uh publish books for business owners and what we were talking about was how this particular product the stencil sounds like it has the potential to be a viral product so I don't know if you guys know but many of us purchase products from Tik Tok so if you were to get brand ambassadors to utilize these stencils on Tik Tok it will become a viral product I'm a huge fan of arts and crafts parties and I follow different people on Tik Tok who do that so they go out to these different spaces and they host these arts and crafts parties people sign up they have the kits and they just sit down and have fun kind of like a Paint and Sip right but if your stencil was part of those packages because the brand ambassadors are using them the product becomes viral and now everybody wants to use it now I understand that brand ambassadors usually want a pretty penny upfront it could be costly but if you do not have the uh Capital to make that initial investment for brand ambassadors you consider brokering a deal for commissions so if they were to you know get those stencils into the hands of consumers they would earn a commission for each package or S they sell awesome thank you so much much let's go to the number two this is and there's a there's a contrasting comment says no I think you should go with the market you have but who wrote perhaps energy should be spent did you share that your name your company and that one marcha that was me my name is marcha I'm a career coach for women who are in a season of career confusion um I was wondering uh what kind of marketing you are doing right now and I wrote also the the one below that which is the same on the Tik Tok with the brand ambassadors um I feel like this has so much potential to be amazing for a younger generation of Crafters who love to watch a process on a video so these reels where you see the stencil being made or you see the stencil being used people just eat that up and then they want to do it themselves so then they want to order it so I thought for that first question maybe your energy could be spent trying to reach that younger audience maybe on Pinterest or Tik Tok maybe through band ambassadors which could increase your sales and it could already set you up to um solve that problem that you are inevitably going to run into as you said you see that as a problem that's coming up where people are getting older you might be losing your current audience so you're setting yourself up for having a smoother transition into that younger audience so um that was um my thought okay great so the Online Marketplace people design and sell who whose comment was that looking at ways that uh they could spend less and make more having other people do the work for you they design it uh you host it as the expert and it seems like it's a pretty Niche category so you get everyone in there and um and they're going to design it they're going to order them basically and and you would be able to produce and take a percent uh it would also tie in with some of the influencer stuff that was mentioned previously where uh if influencers designed their own thing they would promote that as well so it it work works as a a marketing and revenue generating tool great thank you the next one we have Tik Tok again creating videos on how to use them just share that idea and then any like maybe a sentence or two after that would be really great this was a uh what I already shared a little bit about so showing the process Mara you're like up at the top top set here you know this is really great okay um and then the we have the consider becoming a virtual store who shared that I do have a Shopify store if that's what so I do have B Toc how much of your business is going through that is a percentage of sales oh gosh um is a percentage of sales 1% wow I am not tapping that wow maybe one clarifying question when I did Google your company I found a website but it said you can't purchase on this website unless you're a retailer people get very confused I'm I'm fixing that next month I will have one website One landing page where there is actually a place to go where if you're wholesale or retail but it's confusing and I get people who are frustrated and you know why can't I order from you and then I say oh here here it is so TCW stencils.com is our retail BDC site nice confusing next month hopefully not so wait there's two different names you have two different names or is it two different websites the landing page is the Crafters workshop.com and then from there you have uh three choices retail wholesale and our defunct blog so definitely do for a a facelift awesome well there's lots and lots of ideas there's a lot of resonance between some of them and actually Jamie the most important thing is not that it's voted highly is that you look at that and go I want to do that I want to do that maybe maybe one or two or three of these when you look at them and you certainly if we haven't talked about them you can ask the person hey who said this and tell me more but the idea being that this is the point where we look at you and say so how would you like to capitalize on this advice what would you like to commit to and maybe we can follow up on later so the one offs are not they're not I can't do that I can't just do one at a time it's a great idea um maybe with different Machinery it's not a no it's just a not right now but Tik Tok has certainly been something that we have thought about my only question is does the group feel that Tik Tok is here to stay you know with all of the odd media that it's had and by the way we are on Instagram and we have about 27,000 followers so we're not new to the social media space our ladies are too old for tiktock but obviously there's some some people here who are ready to see it on there and Trisha raise your hand TR I think that video is here to stay and so if you post it on Tik Tok you can keep it and repurpose it into whatever new social media platform exists in the future yeah between the lines which is own my own um don't don't don't film it on Tik Tok don't film it on Instagram film it myself and repurpose it so that I always own it just going to say that crossposting is always a thing that you should do so though I don't think Tik Tok is going to completely disappear it can't it generates too much revenue for everybody involved so I don't think that's going to happen but you can cross poost to both Tik Tok and Instagram same content same strategy same hashtags thank you excellent and chrisopher yeah I'm I'm probably on as much social media as Jay is but um uh you know so I don't think either one of us are experts in this but uh you know if we're trying to find or identify a new market uh you not not the existing Market which could be your Instagram customers you know I think this Tik Tok from what I understand kind of caters to the younger uh you know generation that may open up a brand new market to you yeah thank you and Jay's has his hand up so before it runs was just gonna say these are all good Solutions I just want to emphasize what I believe the problem is because I'm living in the same world she is that it's the Baby Boomers they're getting old and they're dying and the Market shrinking and Baby Boomers framed a lot of pictures and now they're not so the entire picture frame business is 50% of what it was to the local retailer and then you're also selling to stores like I sell and I can tell you the part you left out probably I assume a lot of them are closing right they are right so my whole point is you need to evolve and these these were all good suggestions of figuring out going after this different Market cuz that other Market is it's it's going off into the Horizon and we can't be in denial and I'm in the same spot you are and I'm making adjustments but um and I'm and I also God use the same words I do I'm not going out like this I ain't going out either we're not going anywhere we're gonna be around in 10 years because Lauren needs us to be around and we got to do this for Lauren and there is a way out of this and this is about evolving and and getting into the new market because you clearly have some unique things that people like the difference between my business and your business is's one Stark difference I got my retail business business and I got my wholesale and they've got nothing to do with each other I buy from the same sources but the names are completely separate I think you've got some brand confusion with having two different similar I think you need to separate those two thing because the retailers aren't going to like that you're going to straight to retail or and then some of the customers buying retail aren't going to like the idea they know they're paying twice the price so I think it's worth thinking about separating the two websites thank you J there's there's also some great comments in the chat as well I see yeah so there's also really good advice and I guess what would you like us to hold you accountable to or responsible for Jamie to support you in this and then we'll just turn it back to Lauren before you answer that Jamie Chris is there is there anything you saw in the chat that you think we should surface well uh there was one that Trisha said about it seems like the market it went from being specialty became commodity so how do you want to be specialty again there was a couple people like that and they were some other points around uh I think that was the main point oh there's just a lot of will wishes and and seeing you you know you're in the right place thanks for asking for advice good luck all right then before Jamie you answer Chris's question does does anybody feel like we missed something here is there a an important point that uh was listed that we didn't get to one last chance I'm just married to mine um Jamie like sometimes I see people doing incremental changes or I do it myself versus what's really going to shift the sequence equation and so when you're looking through this that like what what would really be gamechanging for you versus a lot of ideas that might move the needle a little bit but really not flip it so that you have the buffer you need to evolve is there something you see on there that seems like a shiny ball that's not going to do a lot and I should be cautious about sure um that was great thank you for putting me on the spot uh yeah okay earlier in the conversation you mentioned that you you want to keep the um I don't know if it's a shiny ball or not but you mentioned your current rental space and you're like I want to stay here I want to keep my workers and then you were talking it was just a phrase that you said you're like maybe I should buy the property what I don't know is if you reduce those expenses how much does that change the game it might be significant or not I don't have that but you know your numbers exactly and I it's funny that's that's exactly where my head has been in these past couple of weeks and you're 100% correct even if I reduced my rent by a few thousand dollars that's that's not going to make it you know they're it's just like I'm just bleeding a little bit less it's it's got to be bigger changes wait I got one important thing can I say one quickly Jay real quick okay this is painful entrepreneur entrepreneur the question is are you sure you don't need to lay some people off because that's a harsh reality to I I've laid a few people off I haven't done it in years you want to keep your employees and you're a nice person I'm sure and we all want but like your business is off are you dealing with that are you sure you don't have too many people I already have taken that step so we we are all cross trained and and lean so yeah excellent awes good entrepreneuring all right I think I think that's it I'm not sure I get a solid commitment out of Jamie but I'm just gonna hand it to Lauren and let him wrap wait go back to I didn't I interrupted I didn't let her answer your question so okay what would you like to commit to Jamie I'm going to commit to getting my rear end on Tik Tock because I think that is it's a little bit of a shiny Ball but it also is the first step into that Universe awesome thank you so much Jamie for your vulnerability for everybody's thoughts and consideration and a lot of really you you know just people listening to each other some people would offer things and everybody would Shake would nod their heads like yep a lot of love here a lot of love a lot of care a lot of a lot of experience and shared scarred I'm sure as well Lauren back to you to wrap us up I just want to thank everybody especially JB I very much hope you got something out of it and I hope you'll come back and tell us uh you know what you decided to do and how it worked out wait wait don't leave yet if you have a question or a comment that you'd like the 21 hats owners to address send it to me by replying to your Morning Report or by email at lauren2 hats.com that's L ren21 hats.com do it now before you forget and don't be afraid to tell Jay what you really think you can take it and if you got something out of this conversation help us reach more business owners tell a friend subscribe and review us wherever you get your podcasts follow us on Twitter subscribe to the morning report at 21h hats.com this episode was produced by Jess thubron founder of blank word Productions okay now you can leave thanks for listening everyone [Music]