What If I Get the Contract?

Introduction:

This week, Liz Picarazzi tells Jay Goltz that she’s pursuing multiple sales opportunities—and ponders what would happen if those opportunities actually came to fruition. Would her company, Citibin, be able to handle the additional volume? “In my fantasy world, where I am a lot,” Liz says, “I look at where this could go. And just like you, Jay, I go to, ‘How in the world would I produce all of these?’” Liz and Jay also talk about the pros and cons of pricing transparency: Do you volunteer your premium price up front? On your website even? Or do you wait until you’ve made your sales pitch and gotten your customer excited? Plus: we indulge a little further discussion on the merits of the 21 Hats brand.

— Loren Feldman

Guests:

Jay Goltz is founder and CEO of Artists Frame Service and Jayson Home.

Liz Picarazzi is founder and CEO of Citibin.

Producer:

Jess Thoubboron is founder of Blank Word Productions.

Full Episode Transcript:

Loren Feldman:
Welcome, Jay and Liz. Thanks for joining me today. There’s a lot I want to talk to you guys about. Let’s start—what’s going on with you, Liz?

Liz Picarazzi:
So I’ve got a couple of really exciting things going on. I’ll just mention two. So the first one is that the New York City Department of Sanitation has an initiative to keep trash off the sidewalk. And it has Citibin’s name all over it. So the RFP—we got it, we replied, or submitted a proposal to the RFP, and we should be finding out in the next couple of weeks. So it’s really exciting. We’ve been actually watching this program for a couple of years. It was kind of temporarily shut down during the pandemic and now it’s being resuscitated.

Loren Feldman:
What is it looking for somebody to do? What are they asking for?

Liz Picarazzi:
So they’re looking to containerize trash. That’s it.

Loren Feldman:
Nice.

Liz Picarazzi:
It was Times Square. The business-improvement district in Times Square is going to be using Citibin trash enclosures to keep trash off of the sidewalk.

Jay Goltz:
Well, I’m a little confused. It’s not really keeping it off the sidewalk. Isn’t it just putting your bins there, and then the trash is inside your bins? So there’s still something on the sidewalk, it seems, right?

Liz Picarazzi:
There will be a very good looking outdoor container.

Loren Feldman:
As opposed to a plastic bag with trash in it, right?

Jay Goltz:
Well, except my argument to that is, sometimes the plastic bag’s just not there. And I don’t know how often it is there, but I’ve certainly been in New York a lot. I’m always taken aback as to the bags of garbage on the street. But so now the question is: How often are the bags sitting on the street? Are they there every single day? Or are they just there for a day or two, and now you’re gonna have a bin there for seven days a week?

Liz Picarazzi:
Well, trash is on the sidewalk all the time in New York everywhere, whether it’s commercial trash or residential or business-improvement district. There’s a lot of different types of trash, but it’s just pervasive—even if you walk by a school. I was always amazed when I picked my daughter up from school how many hundreds of bags after one day they put out there for the Department of Sanitation to haul away.

Jay Goltz:
I mean, for a Chicagoan, we’re taken aback, because Chicago has alleys because of the fire of 1871. They rebuilt the city with alleys. And nowhere in the city of Chicago do you ever go where you see bags of trash on the sidewalk.

Liz Picarazzi:
Well, the other exciting thing is that trash has been in the news a lot because the new mayor has been criticized for not taking action on a lot of the sanitation initiatives. And just yesterday, there was a big exposé on New York trash that, I have to say, I’m glad to see. Because it points to the need for the product that I sell and that I care so much about. I mean, I live in the city as well, so I can’t stand seeing the trash everywhere. So that sort of pressure on the mayor can only help my business.

Jay Goltz:
Which begs the question, New York’s so big. I haven’t even done the math—I assume you have. Isn’t this hundreds of millions of dollars worth of trash containers?

Liz Picarazzi:
Yeah, I haven’t done the math, but I know that it is.

Jay Goltz:
So how will you even begin? It’s not like you’re General Motors. How would you begin to address that if they flick the switch and go, “Okay, everybody’s got to have bins out front”?

Liz Picarazzi:
It’s a pilot. It’s for one year. And so learning from that pilot—and I didn’t get the contract. I’ve just applied for it. But in my fantasy world, where I am a lot, I look at where this could go. And just like you, Jay, I go to, “How in the world would I produce all of these?” But I have at least a year to figure it out, and that’s if I get the contract.

Jay Goltz:
Do you have any clue how many people put in for that contract?

Liz Picarazzi:
I don’t, but I have an idea that it was not a lot.

Jay Goltz:
Meaning less than 10?

Liz Picarazzi:
Yes, far less than 10. Which also is very encouraging.

Jay Goltz:
When you say “pilot,” does that mean it’s a restricted thing. They’ve taken eight blocks or 10 blocks or whatever?

Liz Picarazzi:
It’s actually just one block.

Jay Goltz:
Well, that makes perfect sense. Okay, so that’s easy. You can certainly handle one block or 10 blocks. Okay.

Loren Feldman:
But you could still get to that point that Jay was describing where suddenly—

Jay Goltz:
Except there are people looking at these contracts, and they’re going to know. They’re going to ask her, “What is your sales volume?” They’re not going to go give a contract for $50 million to a tiny company. So the question is: Do you know if you’re against some big players out there that are putting in for this contract?

Liz Picarazzi:
I don’t. This is my first time ever going in on a contract, so I’m really feeling in the dark. And that’s also part of the reason I wanted to bring it up on the show, because as an entrepreneur, sometimes when you’re going through something you’ve never done before, you just want to talk to a couple of people who can say, “This is what you can expect here. These are the questions you want to ask,” or, “Make sure that the city pays you within X days.” Like, I’m going to learn it if I get the contract and I move forward, but I definitely feel, I guess I could say, a little bit vulnerable right now that I don’t know how it’s gonna go. I can just be hopeful that I get it. And I’m gonna stay in that place for now.

Jay Goltz:
No, for sure. And being in the dark is where most of us are all the time. So yeah, I can relate to that. But yeah, that’s interesting.

Loren Feldman:
Liz, you said you had two pieces of news, I think.

Liz Picarazzi:
Yes, so the second is a little bit of intrigue, or at least I’m feeling that it’s a little bit of intrigue. So I’ve had a competitor call me twice in the last year. It’s an online retailer of trash cans and trash enclosures, so it’s exactly what I do. And he called me and said that he wants to start selling my trash enclosures in his store.

Loren Feldman:
His online store?

Liz Picarazzi:
It’s an online store, and it’s very specialized. And again, I’ve never done this before, so I’m feeling a little bit not at ease. But there’s a few things I really like about the way it would work, and there’s a few things that I don’t seem to like about how they work.

So the first thing is, I mean, if he’s got search traffic coming in for bear-proof enclosures—and I don’t yet because I haven’t even launched that product yet—that means everyone’s gonna go to him. So to place my product there would be actually a very good thing. The other thing I like is that they do sell trash enclosures for a living. So they have a whole customer service team that can talk about shipping and installation, some of the things that I really dislike, but we do.

And those were a couple of the things I liked. They’re definitely in some channels in government and higher ed that I have my eye on and have for a couple of years. So I guess I’m viewing them in a much more favorable light. When he first called me a year ago, I was not at all interested, because I just viewed him as a competitor, not as a collaborator. And now that’s how I’m starting to look at him.

Now the cons: This is the big one, and it’s that he would be rebranding my product as his. So instead of the Citibin brand plate being on the side and on the box and on everything, it would have his brand name. And he says that he does that with all of his manufacturers so everything can be uniformly branded. I guess I don’t like the idea of that. I’ll just be honest. I mean, it’s my brand. It’s my product. I have trademarks and patents on it. So I don’t like that. But I look on the other side at what I could achieve by selling through a retailer that is already so established in the space that I want to get further into.

Loren Feldman:
Does this competitor manufacture any product or is it all selling other people’s products?

Liz Picarazzi:
So that’s not clear to me. And honestly, I asked that question, and he wouldn’t answer, which is another thing that kind of gives me pause. I get the sense that he’s probably at least 75 percent reseller, but I I didn’t understand why he wouldn’t answer that question.

Jay Goltz:
There’s only one explanation I can come up with: He doesn’t want to admit he doesn’t make anything, because he thinks it makes him look better if he pretends like he makes the stuff and he’s putting his own brand on everything. He doesn’t want to give you a competitive advantage of being able to tell people, “Oh, we make our own products. You’re cutting out the middleman.” He is the proverbial middleman, it sounds like—not that there’s anything wrong with that. He just doesn’t want to necessarily broadcast that to everybody. The question is, you left out the biggest piece, I think: What’s the markup?

Liz Picarazzi:
It would be 25 percent.

Jay Goltz:
Margin, meaning off the top. Different than markup.

Liz Picarazzi:
Yeah.

Jay Goltz:
Okay.

Liz Picarazzi 10:44
So his markup, I think that he actually would be marking up so his price would be more than mine by a certain amount, so he can feel like he’s recovering a bit. But we are moving ahead with a pilot.

Loren Feldman:
You’re moving ahead with a pilot with this online retailer?

Liz Picarazzi:
I am. Yes, I guess I’m burying the lede, Loren, but I am. We’re going to take two products. We’re gonna run them on his site. I’m working with his team. I figure I haven’t signed anything, nothing’s agreed. But we can see how it works. You know, how is the relationship? How do I feel about working with him? How is their marketing? There’s a lot of things that could come up that I could see I wouldn’t like, but I’ve decided just for now to get over the branding thing.

Jay Goltz:
Well, are you giving him a product that you already use yourself and in your own name? So you’re giving them the identical product you’re already marketing under your name?

Liz Picarazzi:
Yes. Totally identical.

Jay Goltz:
Do you have any patents on anything?

Liz Picarazzi:
I do. Yeah, I have a design patent. I have my trademark.

Jay Goltz:
Have you talked to your lawyer?

Liz Picarazzi:
I haven’t.

Jay Goltz:
You might have violated your own patent. I mean, you just might have made your own patent worthless. Maybe. I’m not a lawyer. I’m just saying I think you need to talk to your attorney to see if you give someone else your exact same product, they put their name on it—it seems to me you just violated your own patent.

Liz Picarazzi:
That’s the way I feel about it, as well. That’s where I’m really taking pause and trying to look at the pros that I really like around selling, servicing, shipping. Those are big, valuable things, in my mind. Is that valuable enough to give up my brand plate?

Jay Goltz:
I just want to clarify, those are two completely separate things. That’s certainly something you need to think about. But I’m talking about just a legal thing of protecting your patent. Are you destroying your own patent or violating—or whatever the word is—by giving it to him? So now all of a sudden, for whatever reason, you had the patent, you no longer can enforce your patent because you just gave the design to somebody else to put his own name on it. But I’m not a lawyer. I don’t know maybe there’s a way to do that.

Liz Picarazzi:
I think there probably is a way to do it if the product is different in some way. And that might be what I need to do is create a separate—almost like a private label. Let’s say the siding color is different, or some sort of difference in it.

Jay Goltz:
But that’s the legal question. The practical question also is: Do you just lose your entire thing of, “Look, we make our own stuff. It’s all patented,” and now they find: Oh, they can get the exact same thing in a different color from this guy.

Liz Picarazzi:
Yeah, I think it would be confusing to the consumer also.

Loren Feldman:
How big an operation is this? Are you tempted to do this because you think you’re going to sell a whole lot of enclosures through it?

Liz Picarazzi:
Yeah, I think that there’s potential for really high volume. And I do need to kind of find out from him, maybe not his level of sales, but at least traffic to his site. But the other thing that’s really attractive to me is that they have a lot of government contracts. So like GSA, where they’re specified within like the government purchasing portal, and I’m not in those channels yet. And I’ve really wanted to get in those channels. Same thing with higher ed. So if they could give me access to that, that also would be quite valuable.

Jay Goltz:
Have you looked into GSA? Because I happen to have some experience with that because we’re doing it. There are companies you hire and they get you in. They get you in a GSA contract. It’s not that hard.

Liz Picarazzi:
Yeah, I had a company, actually, that I worked with for three months that was not worth it at all.

Jay Goltz:
What do you mean it wasn’t worth it?

Liz Picarazzi:
They charged too much for what they delivered. I had certain search terms, such as “trash enclosure,” which is the most obvious one for what I produce. We were not getting returns on actual government contracts that were procuring those.

Jay Goltz:
But you did in fact get into their system?

Liz Picarazzi:
Yes.

Jay Goltz:
You were authorized—whatever it’s called?

Liz Picarazzi:
Yeah.

Jay Goltz:
So you did in fact get into the GSA contract world, but then it just didn’t drive you any business.

Liz Picarazzi:
I would say I just didn’t actively pursue it, because I had a lot of other local government things come up that I knew I would be better at tackling. I kind of dipped my toe in, but I also don’t like bureaucracy.

Loren Feldman:
Are you sure this is the path to those contracts? Because GSA or whatever government entity you’re talking about is going to be dealing with your competitor and not directly with you.

Liz Picarazzi:
Yeah, I have thought about that, Loren. That’s another reason. So if they say to me, “Oh, we have access to all these customers that you want,” and those are customers that I’ve never tried to get, why wouldn’t I go try to get them before I go through them?

Loren Feldman:
The other thing that occurs to me is you’ve talked a lot about, with all of the supply chain chaos, having enough supply of your product. Do you need this outlet, when you’re, I assume, still fighting to have enough product available in your existing channels?

Liz Picarazzi:
Loren, you know where to poke those holes. Yeah, no, it’s a really good thought. Because at this point, when things are really tight, it’s almost like there’s a bit of rationing that needs to happen. Not so overt, but if one customer can get it, that means another customer can’t. And would I rather sell to the federal government or the city of New York? I would actually rather sell to the city of New York if I had to choose.

Loren Feldman:
I assume you’d be relying on the service provided by this company. Do you know that they do as good a job of dealing with customers and setting up the product and making sure that everything works the way it’s supposed to?

Liz Picarazzi:
So they do have a very helpful website with a lot of FAQs, a lot of videos and assembly manuals. I should probably test drive. When I was at American Express, we used to call that “mystery shopping,” where you would shop at a competitor and take note of every little thing that happened. I should probably mystery shop them or have someone else do it to see how that process goes.

Jay Goltz:
Well, I assume there’s some online ratings for them like there is for everything to just see what Google says.

Liz Picarazzi:
They’re really highly rated. They have very high ratings.

Jay Goltz:
That’s probably accurate.

Loren Feldman:
Do they sell everywhere?

Liz Picarazzi:
They do.

Loren Feldman:
I’m sure that’s attractive.

Liz Picarazzi:
Yeah. Well, it’s also attractive because this recent trek out to Aspen, as fun as it was and how interesting it was, it was really a schlep. And everything dealing with installation that’s not in New York City, we can do, but it is a lot of effort. So if this company is able to walk people more through the assembly, especially as we expand nationwide. Anytime there’s a sale outside of the tri-state area, there’s an extra level of support that we need to provide to make sure that the assembly goes well on the other side.

Jay Goltz:
Do you have any idea how big this company is?

Liz Picarazzi:
I don’t. But I’m a little bit concerned, Jay, that because he wouldn’t answer my question about how much he manufacturers that he might not also want to provide his revenue.

Jay Goltz:
Well, he might not want to, I agree. But I’d be interested if he wouldn’t. And one way around that is to simply say, “Oh, how many employees do you have?” Because I’ve found that people will give that up pretty easily. You could guess, fairly close. I just think it would be kind of interesting to know what his resources are.

Liz Picarazzi:
Yeah, for sure. I’ve got a lot of research to do.

Loren Feldman:
You’re right there in New York. That’s your main geographic target market. Have you ever thought about opening a pop-up store where people could just walk in and see your product and touch it? I know people can walk around the city and they see them, but having a place where someone could ask questions and find out what’s involved with setup and all that—is that something that you would try?

Liz Picarazzi:
We haven’t. Some of that stuff is really expensive. One idea that I’ve explored, but we haven’t done, is to actually do kind of like info sessions on the day of installation with a client, provided they actually agreed to it, where they could invite their neighbors over to see the end of the trash enclosure installation. And then actually, on the spot—especially if they’re a neighbor—get an instant estimate visit at their house to see what sort of model would work best for them.

That’s just a little fantasy I have. It hasn’t happened yet. But I think that could be a good idea to get the word out with the public because you’ve got the trust of your neighbor, or let’s say your block association—some sort of an event where someone on the block invites everybody to swing by.

Loren Feldman:
Sort of like a Tupperware party. A Citibin party.

Liz Picarazzi:
Yes.

Jay Goltz:
It’s a, “Bring your garbage by and we’ll see how it fits.” So, the rent thing: First of all, I did have a pop-up in New York. And thank God I only did it for nine months because I was paying a ton of money in rent. But I needed to try it out because my Jayson Home—we sell nationally, we have a lot of customers in New York—and I learned a lot of things from it.

In this particular case, I don’t even know if you need a pop-up as much as finding a landlord that’s willing to do month-to-month rent, which I’ve gotta think there’s plenty of empty space in New York at the moment, and see whether the expense of the rent is efficient. It might be a cheap form of advertising, though you do have to put a human being in there to stand there, which is where it gets more expensive. I would certainly leave that as a potential though.

Liz Picarazzi:
I would definitely keep it as a potential. My office is actually within a kind of a design district where they have, you know, ABC Carpet and Home. There’s a Design Within Reach on the campus where I am.

Loren Feldman:
Jay, did you really learn interesting stuff, having the pop-up for nine months? Did that change how you do anything?

Jay Goltz:
Umm I learned that I really don’t want a pop-up anywhere.

Loren Feldman:
You learned you don’t want one, okay.

Jay Goltz:
No, and I learned that this is part of my hypomania. Yeah, I did that, got it out of my system, and I really don’t need to be sending people in trucks around the country and working that hard. I just don’t. So the sales were okay. I mean, we did okay, there. This is how I’ve always had to learn. I only learn by putting my hand on the hot stove. I needed to find out that, yeah, I really don’t need stores around the country. So that’s what I learned.

Was it worth the significant amount of money I lost? Maybe, because I always say, “I’m not going to be that guy on his deathbed going, ‘I wish, I coulda shoulda.’” I tried everything. I tried it. I learned my thing from it and I moved on. So yeah, I would have always maybe wondered, “I wonder what would happen if we opened a store in New York.” And now I know.

Loren Feldman:
It’d be a lot cheaper today.

Jay Goltz:
Well, and I wasn’t stupid enough. I’ve got my hypomania under control. I didn’t sign a lease for 10 years. I think it was six or nine months. I did it for long enough to get a feel for things. So it was controlled. You know, I don’t bet the ranch. That’s kind of the point. And there are people who do, and I’ve gotten smarter than that, or more controlled, or less delusional, or whatever you want to call it.

Loren Feldman:
All right, I want to talk about pricing—specifically, how quick you are to reveal your prices to your customers. But let’s take a quick break to hear from our sponsor.

[Message from our sponsor, Work Better Now]

Loren Feldman:
And we’re back. So I recently had a webinar where I invited Marcus Sheridan, a marketing guru, who I first heard about because I attended a conference where he talked about how he saved his pool business by answering questions that his customers always asked but that he had kind of been taught not to answer.

And he claims to have saved his pool business by blogging constantly—just answering the questions that he always got from his customers. He started by talking about the price, even though the sales theory often is you put off that discussion as long as possible, hoping that they’ll go for as many bells and whistles as possible. But he started telling people what it would actually cost to get a pool. You guys were both kind enough to show up at the webinar. I’m curious, did that have an impact on you?

Liz Picarazzi:
Yes, and it actually reminded me that I have his book, and I’ve picked it up a couple times. I had an employee read it. I think that his advice is really worthwhile on several fronts. With regard to pricing, I don’t have it flash, say, on the homepage of my website or on the front of my brochure, but I do make it easy to find. And I make sure that on my website, on my selling pages, that it’s very clear where you can see the differentiation between my product and, let’s say, a Rubbermaid shed. So the distinction of premium, which then drives premium price, is visually shown. And then if you put that next to a Rubbermaid trash shed, people instantly understand why there’s a big difference.

Loren Feldman:
But you’re showing on your website that there’s a competing product that costs less.

Liz Picarazzi:
I am. Yes.

Loren Feldman:
Interesting.

Liz Picarazzi:
It’s not direct. It’s kind of indirect. So we have this PDF that’s called, “What can go wrong with a trash enclosure,” and we have a picture of a really just gross trash enclosure, and then we have arrows pointing to everything that’s wrong with it. So rusty screws, broken hydraulic arms, poor craftsmanship,

Loren Feldman:
Not a Citibin trash enclosure, I’m guessing.

Liz Picarazzi:
No, it’s a competitor but that’s attempting to do ours. It’s actually a copycat, and we don’t get into that this person tried to knock us off. But what we say is, “In the execution of a trash enclosure, there are so many things that could go wrong. We’ve done all of those over the years, and that’s why we’ve perfected this one. And that’s why it costs more.”

So I don’t have any problem talking about my premium value, which is tied to price. I think it would be harder to do if I was less differentiated. Like if, let’s say, I just had kind of a mid-price product to compare with a Rubbermaid. That might be a lot more difficult.

Loren Feldman:
How about you, Jay? You’ve talked from time to time on this podcast about getting pushback on the price of picture framing. How quick are you to volunteer what it costs?

Jay Goltz:
As far as complete pricing transparency, in Jayson Home, the prices are right there. So there’s really nothing. The prices are there. It is what it is. In custom picture framing, we talk about price, but I can’t really get into specifics. Because, literally, if somebody bought a 24-by-36-inch picture in, and they wanted it framed, that could cost anywhere from, I don’t know, $140 to $3,000 if they ordered a gold-leaf-finished corner frame with museum matting. I mean, there’s just a gigantic range there.

So I just don’t know what I could do to go ahead and give people more an idea of… And then on top of which, it’s a computer screen. To go show someone a magnificent gold-leaf frame on the screen looks just like some piece of garbage. You can’t tell the difference looking at the computer screen what the difference is.

So I don’t know that it would be serving my customers any better or myself to go ahead and show two pictures of, “Here’s a $3,000 version and here’s the $150 version.” Yeah, they’ll look different, but you certainly couldn’t appreciate the difference between looking at a computer screen where the image is broken down to now the frame is about an eighth of an inch wide or something. So the part that I found most compelling or interesting about his thing was that he actually went on there and talked about five other competitors that do a good job. And I just find that just remarkable.

Loren Feldman:
He wrote a blog post in which he said, “Here are the other pool builders in my area that you should consider.” And he listed the other builders that he most frequently loses deals to, and he said nothing but positive things about them. But he posted it on his website, knowing that anybody who read that blog post would be on his website, and he hoped that that would lead them to check him out as well. That resonated with you, Jay? Would you consider doing that?

Jay Goltz:
Not in a million years.

Loren Feldman:
Then why did you bring it up?

Jay Goltz:
No, I brought it up, because I’m trying to tell people who didn’t listen—

Loren Feldman:
By the way, I am going to publish that podcast at some point.

Jay Goltz:
No, it’s fine. I’m just trying to tell people what his story is and what he’s saying. And I’m not arguing with him. It clearly worked for him. I’m just saying, you know, what does the average pool cost? $40,000, I would think. It’s not five. Right?

Loren Feldman:
Well, you know, he would say your objection to giving out the prices is something that he hears all the time and that he doesn’t buy—that the same is true of pools, that there is a very broad range. But in his case, he said it was enough to give a range.

Jay Goltz:
No, I fully accept that. I just don’t know that selling $40,000 pools is—whatever lessons were learned there—I don’t know that I can take that exact experience of him selling a $40,000 pool and go, “Oh, it’s the same as selling a picture frame.” I don’t know that those two things are even close.

Liz Picarazzi:
I think there’s another thing at play here that he may not have mentioned specifically. And that’s that content like that ranks really well on Google. So for SEO, even though he’s giving away the names of five of his competitors, by being so generous with the information, Google will recognize that and will send more people that way. So he’s kind of taking a risk, but I bet if we Googled that article or something like it, it would totally pop up.

Jay Goltz:
I have to tell you, that makes perfect sense. What he’s saying is, “Yes, you will lose some business to your competitors, but you will more than make up for it because everybody, or most people, are going to end up looking at your site. So at least you’re in the game.” Maybe right now you bid out jobs and you end up getting a third of them. Okay, you’ll still only get a third of them, except it’ll be a third of a bigger number because more people are coming to your website. Okay, that makes perfect sense.

Loren Feldman:
I also think the pricing thing makes sense for you, Jay. There is an intimidation factor, I know, for people walking into a framing store concerned about what it’s going to cost. And if you gave a little more information …

Jay Goltz:
Like what? Give me an example.

Loren Feldman:
A range, a range.

Jay Goltz:
I just told you, the ranges can be anywhere between $150 and $3,000. Is that helping anybody?

Liz Picarazzi:
No.

Jay Goltz:
No.

Loren Feldman:
Well, I think you could do better than that.

Jay Goltz:
Maybe I put pictures of people up. “Here’s Loren Feldman. He came in, and here’s what he was wearing. And here’s the kind of car he was driving. And here’s where he went to school, and he spent $493. And then there’s Liz, who came in driving a Range Rover and went to Northwestern. And she spent $914.” Is that helpful? I just don’t see how to do it.

Liz Picarazzi:
I have a way. I have a suggestion.

Jay Goltz:
Okay, excellent.

Liz Picarazzi:
So if you could photograph some of the work that you do—the framing that you do—and without mentioning any customers, but certainly getting their permission, showcasing those in, let’s say your website or your Instagram, and on that, you could somehow put in what the price is.

Jay Goltz:
There’s the problem though. Even a trash container, you could show a beautiful trash container sitting on a street in New York. And I’ll get it: “Oh, that’s nice.” And, “Oh, it’s made well.” Forget the $3,000 frame job. The $800 frame job probably doesn’t look a whole lot different than the $300 frame job on a computer screen.

But if you saw it in person, it’s like buying a men’s suit. You know, there’s nothing like putting on an $800 beautiful wool suit that’s tailored well, and you think, “Wow, this is an $800 suit.” And then when you go put the $200 suit on, you can tell the difference, I think. At least I can. I don’t believe I’m going to be able to translate that onto a computer screen where literally the frame ends up being an eighth of an inch thick.

People who are online doing framing—I’ve heard this from numerous people—they all learned to keep it simple. The people who are doing online framing are really selling basic—they call it “custom framing.” For those of us in the industry, it’s not really custom framing. It’s bare bones. “Oh, here’s 40 selections.” Most frame shops have a thousand corner samples, because that’s what it takes to really find the perfect frame, that when you put it on the piece, and the customer picks it up, they gasp because it’s so beautiful. That’s what custom picture framing is. They always say, “Oh, framing is so expensive.” And my new answer is, “Okay, framing is not cheap. I’m not going to argue that. A frame is expensive. The question is: Why do so many people do it?” And they do it because the framing you get is magnificent. And you look at it every day on your wall, and you feel great about it. I can’t translate that to a picture on a computer screen.

Loren Feldman:
I just wonder if you might pull some people who are a little bit intimidated into a store if they just have some sense of what the range is going to be.

Jay Goltz:
There’s certainly something to that. I could say, for instance, in a beautifully hand-finished line, and give an idea. The real life business issue is when they see it, and they’re in the store, and they really understand how beautiful it’s going to look, they might close their eyes and go, “Okay.” And they’ll spend the whatever.

I might just have the person online say, “Oh, that’s too much money.” And that’s the risk. And that’s the challenge. I don’t know that it’s going to help, and I can see it hurting as much as I can see it helping. And then there’s different kinds of customers.

I have customers who you show them the beautiful framing and they get it. They hand over the card, and they don’t blink. And I get people who take a little gasp, and they go, “Wow that’s more than I thought.” And then they do it. And then there’s people who are struggling with it. I think the difference between me and many framers, I don’t have a lot of people who walk out, at all.

Loren Feldman:
All right, next topic. Last week in the podcast, I announced that I’ve sold 21 Hats and that we’re figuring out what exactly that’s going to mean going forward. I’m going to continue to run it, but there will be some changes. Happily, I’ll have some more resources and be able to do some things I haven’t been able to do.

But one of the questions that we mentioned is: Will we keep the name? The entrepreneur who has bought 21 Hats, his theory is kind of: Let’s not assume that the things that I’ve been doing on a shoestring are necessarily the best path forward, and we should rethink everything. So we talked about that a little last week, and I just want to read one comment we got from a listener, Harry Elston, who wrote me:

“I just finished Tuesday’s podcast and I’d like to chime in on 21 Hats as a name/brand. When I came across the podcast in a general search for something businessy to listen to during commutes and dog walks, I came across the name 21 Hats and I immediately knew that the podcast was designed for small businesses without even looking at the podcast description. The name sang and was immediately recognizable as a small business resource. Of course, you can’t tell the quality of the podcast until you hear it. So after about a half episode, I subscribed and then went and binge listened to everything from the beginning. So if your new corporate overlord wants to change the name, I would consider that kind of a jerk move on his part. But that’s just me.”

Any thoughts, guys?

Jay Goltz:
I want to send him a big box of cookies. I couldn’t agree more. What can I tell you? I’m thrilled to hear that it resonates like I thought it would resonate—though what do I know? I could be wrong. And he’s just one person, but I am glad at least one person got it. We know that now, so that’s good.

Liz Picarazzi:
Well, I’ve got a couple thoughts on this. The first is that if you are going to rebrand, now would be the time to do it.

Loren Feldman:
Definitely.

Liz Picarazzi:
And then the second thing is, as much as I do like 21 Hats, and I feel like in your various platforms—the podcast, the Morning Report, the site, anything eventually you have—there has to be something, maybe like a tagline or something explains what it is. Because I know when I refer other entrepreneurs, I guess I don’t feel like they grasp onto it in a way [like] if the podcast name was a little more intuitive. But then like Harry said, as an entrepreneur, you do know if someone says “21 Hats,” you kind of know what that’s about. And that’s a really unique thing to entrepreneurs.

Loren Feldman:
We do have a tagline. I don’t think I’ve done enough to emphasize it. It’s “21 Hats: What It Takes to Run a Business,”

Liz Picarazzi:
Oh, yeah.

Loren Feldman:
Which obviously connects the dots, as you’re describing, but I haven’t made enough of it, I don’t think.

Jay Goltz:
Hey, if someone can do better, more power to them. All ears. What are you gonna call it?

Liz Picarazzi:
I’m kind of like that, too. I would say, you should consider it, but see what people put on the table.

Loren Feldman:
The arguably better option is a name that refers to the mothership. I have been bought by an entrepreneur who is building his main business as a business that serves other small businesses. And 21 Hats has no relationship to the name of the rebranded business that they will eventually have. So a new name might reflect that other business.

Jay Goltz:
Okay, there’s an argument to be made. Be consistent and have it match. Okay, I’d have to see what that name is. Besides which, it’s a question of doing some analysis, which I don’t know. How are you getting new business? Is 21 Hats better bait to get new business? Or he has so many subscribers or customers that the first thing is to make sure that they get it, and I can’t argue with that. If he says, “No, we need it to match, because I’ve got millions of people, and I’ve got to make sure they understand this is us.” Okay, I can’t argue with that.

Loren Feldman:
My thanks to Jay Goltz and Liz Picarazzi. As always, thanks for sharing guys.