43 Analogies For Jewelers

Episode 43 is just Brad & Dusty this week… because apparently our schedules have decided to become our biggest haters. It’s another short episode, but we packed it with plenty of jewelry nerdiness and the usual nonsense.

This week we’re talking about one of the greatest tools in every jeweler’s toolbox: the analogy.

You know the ones… the comparisons we use to explain to customers why prongs wear out, why jewelry isn’t indestructible , or why you can select a diamond by just the report. We share some of our go-to analogies, plus several hilarious and surprisingly brilliant ones sent in by fellow jewelers.

Naturally, we also wander completely off the rails a few times because staying on topic has never really been our thing.

So grab your coffee, your torch, or your favorite burr, and come hang out with us for another episode filled with shop talk, customer stories, laughs, and enough jewelry humor to make your coworkers roll their eyes.

If you’re a bench jeweler, goldsmith, stone setter, apprentice, or anyone who survives life behind the bench, this one’s for you.

Follow us on Instagram & YouTube @benchjewelermemes

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:09

Well, good morning, Brad. Good morning, but how is it? Oh, everything's great. Yeah, everything's happy. How are you? It's been a fantastic, normal. I feel like I have to look backwards now. We're just trying to know. There's a reason that it looks this way. And it I don't it's just we there's gonna be all kinds of different versions of this that you see, and sometimes it has nothing to do with the amount of time I have to edit. Definitely not that. Definitely not that he's going to the lake. I'm also I'm I'm very every episode, um, sometimes it just feels like like we're just doing we're doing we're doing our best. When you when you really say like we're committing to once a week episodes, this is what you get. Anyway, we have some uh a fun little summer topic, but we have to start every show, Brad, with kind of who we are while we're doing it. And um, I think about this all the time when I'm driving here before we record. When have we started with that? I'm saying we need to. Oh, we need to. There's so many first time, first-time listeners. No, is it longtime listener, first time caller? Yes. I don't know. Yes. We need callers. Um, I always think about saying that reminding everyone that we are a uh podcast for jewelers by jewelers. Of jewelers. And what and what that means is in every sense of the word jeweler, that is us. We both are bench jewelers. We we don't we both do sales. We don't string beads. We don't string beads. Uh we are Brad's at his bench. We got the laser right here, my bench is over there. We both are doing actual benchwork every single day, but we're also both changing batteries every day. We're both helping customers every day, we're both answering the phones every day, we're both running a retail jewelry store every day. So yeah. That's horrible. That's who we are. That's what we are, and we just thought that it would be fun to do a podcast. And now that we have such limited time, I just thought I would really Oh, also the other way, pretty much the only way to support what we're doing is a link in the description wherever you're watching or listening. Uh could it be up here, down here? I'm not gonna edit it, it's just gonna be it's gonna be there. We're all adults here, we're all jewelers, we're smart enough to figure it out. There is a link somewhere that says buy me a coffee. Click that. Click it, buy us a coffee. You can send us five bucks. I'm actually drinking water today because nobody's bought you a coffee. Because I have prioritized making sure this happens over making a shorter episode while I go brew coffee. Have you checked buy me a coffee lately? Because we're supposed to be reading. Now I can't check it because my phone is recording us. But yes, I think we have a couple, but we're gonna have to keep pushing them off. I know there was only like a couple and it's been two or three weeks. So that's like that's fun. Yeah, I know. It's fun reading what people have to say. I know. Um, also when you click that link and send us five bucks, twenty bucks, a thousand bucks, we will read it all. Even if you send us five dollars and make Brad sing or sing, read meow. He will. I'll sing meow. That's a throwback.

SPEAKER_02 3:09

He'll sing it for how much uh I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 3:13

He'll let us know when we reach it. 500. For 500, you'll sing. I'll sing meow. How would it sound if you sung it? I can't. Good try. All right, we free samples. This ain't Sam's call. I have we have a shop, a shop? Oh, a shopic. Dude.

SPEAKER_00 3:31

Right.

SPEAKER_01 3:32

That's great. We have a topics. We have a topic, a little fun summer topic for today. Um, but before you get into that, Brad, you said you had a story. I do have a story. Hold on, it's on my my Insta. Okay. So you know Rob. Is it Rob or Robert? His official his full n full uh government name is on his Oh wow. So I don't know if he goes by Robert or Rob or Robbie or Roberto. I think we call him as his show name is Dog's Body Rob. Dog's Body, yes. Um, so I had posted over. No. Because I I want you to get some of this. I'm back. Okay. So I'll do that about four or five times. Alright, so I had posted some video, and uh let's see, he said, I've spent some time in your state. He he mentioned our state. Why are you telling the story, Brad? Go ahead. In years gone by, not that I'm saying that's where you guys are based or anything, but one of my and he gave the eye emoji. But one of my favorite things about the potty is how you've doxxed yourselves in slow-mo. Oh. So so that's not the I'm I'm I'm just trying to get that's not the full story. Just gonna stop it there. Do you think we've doxed ourselves in slow mo? I don't want to talk about this. Okay. That's fine. We'll skip that part. It seems like everybody knows. If I start laughing too hard, I start coughing. Uh let's see. I said we are really bad at anonymity. That sounds like a uh I mean, should we address Sea Life? I know we've vaguely addressed it. Should we just before we how much of the story do you want to tell before we address kind of the level of anonymity? Anonymity? Anomaly. I don't know. I had it right the first time. Um let me just finish the story and we'll we'll get to it. Um So I said, what part of our state did you visit? Um he said, my li my wife lived near a big city. I don't know how you're gonna get the story through without. Go ahead. I'm not I'm not going to access us, even though everybody knows. My wife lived near a big city uh for a year when we were younger. The big city's part of whatever. So I visited two states quite a lot, uh, went to the coast, visited friends and another another town, another town, went to some other place. It's all he said, that's a stunning part of the country. Loved it honestly. So I said, Awesome, we're in the town we're in. Um he said he said that was one of his guesses of where we were, and he said, How did you guess that? He said, My memory is terrible. I've just been reliably informed that the city we are in is exactly where my wife lived for the whole year she was there. So I have spent much time in your city. Does she also if he visited or was living with her? Okay. But so Rob, let us know. Give us all the the juicy details. Yep. He said there was a high school being built when he was there, so that kind of gives you a time warm. Um so that's pretty cool that old dog's buddy. I love that this is a jewelers podcast for jewelers, and that's what we led with. Yep. You're welcome. Could have saved that for the I mean we talked about bourbon for 20 minutes last episode. Yeah, but how it took 45 minutes to get there. Now, can I get to our real show topic? Our shop egg. Our shopic. We're not doing shop talk today. I'm sorry. We're not doing it because I don't feel like editing in there. We'll save it for next week. Sing it. What if I just put I just inserted it in there? I'm not gonna do it. But we're not gonna do it.

SPEAKER_03 7:55

Stop, stop, stop, stop, where we talk, stop, stop, stop, let's talk, stop.

unknown 8:00

Woo!

SPEAKER_01 8:03

There's nothing better. That is the highlight of my editing is having to insert the shop talk theme music. I'm sorry, but it's just my this phone, if it I swear it wants to cut off. Alright, so what we're doing today is we're moving on. What we're doing today is um analogies for jewelers. Oh, we're gonna be able to do that. Analogies to that that only jewelers would love. Okay. And I think some of these are gonna be able to, we can splice them up and post them because then people can share them to their to their stores. Because we're gonna get into some good ones today. Yes, I like this. Um, but my every time I lay my phone down for five seconds, it turns off. So give us an example of an analogy. So my favorite one because I'm not sure what I what those are. Okay, I see what you did there. All right. I think we should start with my with our favorite one. Okay. And this is prongs. Prongs. Prongs on stones. Um, we don't have any. I was gonna say, I can grab a ring and show everybody, but uh, if you're listening to this, you know what a prong is. We like to top them off. That's a saying that we develop. Yeah, topping off the prongs. That's it's not this is we're never sitting beside each other again. It's just never happening. So, what is the analogy that we use for when customers come in and their prongs are just worn out and they're thin, maybe they're broken off, maybe they're just super thin. They typically they're gonna come in because they're like, oh, it's catching, and then we we pulled, we loop it or throw it up on the screen for them to see, which is what we like to do. Yep. And it's because it's so paper thin, worn so thin that it's starting to catch and pull up a little bit. And so we're trying to, you know, we say, hey, you know, to re-tip these four prongs or six prongs, it's one hundred and whatever dollars. I don't have I don't have the gala sheet and four. Whatever David tells us to charge, that's what we charge. We are uh, yes, we are uh uh I'm not gonna say all the things that popped into my head. We are disciple that's yes, yes, disciple. I was definitely not gonna say slave, but um anyway, instead of just quoting the price, we have to explain to people, and and they'll be like, Well, I mean, I've only had the ring, you know, 15 years, is you know, and so we have to explain prongs like what, Brad? Tire tread. Tire tread. So how how do you how would you go about explaining that? I think you should because you're the one that does this. I'm usually the one that will just put on the screen and be like, see, this should be like way up here. Yeah, I mean it's flat. I'm sure so many jewelers do this. Um I love the analogy of prongs and tire tread because just like I we all drove a car to get here, or you're driving, you're maybe listening to this in your car, who knows? But we all know somehow, it does it make sense to us that if if we buy a car and put some tires on there after, you know, four or five, ten years, I don't I don't know how long tires last anymore. About fifty thousand fifty thousand miles. And yeah, if you're putting fifteen thousand miles on it, yeah, four or five years, whatever. We understand that the the tire tread over time, because it's just you know on the road, spinning, making contact with the with the environment, the asphalt, if you will, um, it just slowly wears out. And every client I think understands that. It's like, hey, your prongs are just like tires on your car. You drive it every single day, you're wearing your ring every single day, and life happens. And eventually, just like your tire tread, your prongs get thinner and thinner and thinner. And, you know, thankfully, we don't have to well, sometimes I guess you have to replace the whole tire if the whole prong breaks off. You have to kind of rebuild the whole thing. But we have the awesome, you know, laser right here, put it on the screen and say, hey, we can actually go and like you said, Brad, just top it off. Just top it off. Take the little look what we got here. This is rose gold, I think, right? Yeah, I don't know where the white gold one is, but we'll take this white gold um laser speed wire stuff from our good friends over at Stellar. This is not an ad or a promotion. It's where we order it, but you could order it from Guess Wine. Guess Wine. I need to know officially how they pronounce it. Sometimes I just say guess one. I I like guess one. But I'm sure there's other places to it. You can buy some laser wire, order it, and um and we go and rebuild those prongs. And so now it's like you have new tire tread, and now you can safely drive, aka safely wear your ring again. Now your stone is protected. What's weird to me, and I still don't understand it, is so a tire made of rubber. So yeah, obviously that wears down. It's weird that gold wears down just by wearing. I can't tell if you're baiting me right now. No, I I just I don't know. Like, like I can see like us polishing it, it wears down. But like life happens, Brad. That I mean that but luckily the prongs usually last 10 years and not three. I get it. I just like metal to I know it's I don't know. I mean, it's like okay, imagine. I mean, I like if if I bite my nails, which I do, they get all jagged. Right. But then I don't smooth them out, but a couple days later they're all smooth. Oh, that's true. Because, you know, your hands, your pockets, your shirt, you're probably beating your beating your coworker. You know, there's all kinds of things that I thought you were gonna say wife. I was like, you can't say that, Dusty. Can't we're trying to be serious here. No, we're not. Are we? Yes. So if you're not using that uh in your store, this make make your salespeople watch some of this because and I'm sure a lot of experienced salespeople already know this. But um, these are all there's a there's a ton of good analogies we're gonna we're gonna get through here. Tons. Um, this one is a fun one we use when um comparing custom ring or custom jewelry to a custom house, like having a custom house built. This is a good one. You you get pretty passionate about this one, so you wanna you wanna take it? Yep. Just um what'd you say I have? Passion? You get passionate about it because people are like, hey, I'm just thinking about doing a custom ring, like, how much does that cost? Right. That's essentially how this conversation starts, this analogy. Right. Is they come in and like, hey, I you know, I I have a bunch of jewelry and I want to just take it and make something new. Like, how much does that cost? And and there's always the gap between, you know, I got all hands of you there. Hey, uh there's always I told you he gets passionate about that too. Y'all never stand. Look, ma'am. The gap between us just finding something from Stollar, setting the stone, versus a complete custom build, that's a big price gap. Um, and people are constantly trying to to move us from oh well, you know, I I like this setting that's in Stoller for a thousand dollars, but I just want it to be like this, and and they don't understand that that's like a whole different process, but that's the beauty of custom, yeah. You get to customize everything. So instead of just having a cookie cutter house that looks the same as everybody else's, um do the custom route. Yeah, it's the same conversation. If if I went to some custom house building firm, I don't know, I've obviously never had a custom house built. We're always getting custom houses built. If this show takes off, we might. The way it's going. But let's just say I set up an appointment with a custom house builder or a contract or whatever, and it it would be silly, and it makes sense, I think it makes sense to the public to go, hey, and really think about having a custom house built. So, like, how much does that cost? Oh, I see where you're going. Yeah, that too. Yeah, so that's the example is like it that's a silly way to start the conversation. Yeah. Because the custom house builder would say what kind of house you want. How much you want to spend? Like we want you want to do this for a quarter million or like five million? Is it a one bedroom or is it a few years ago? And so I kind of when customers come in and they're you know, they're they're talking about custom jewelry, I just wish they would come in with I wish they would think through just like they would. I have a feeling nobody's going showing up to a custom house builder appointment without any like, hey, so I want to get this custom house built. Here's some kind of ideas that I have, and we really got to keep this under 400,000 or a half a million or whatever it is. I would imagine that that's how they would show up to the appointment. And maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm overestimating the general. You think people are just coming in? I just want some ideas. What you got? Look, and then it's not money. Also, it's like, you know, well, let me see all the houses you've built before, as if that's gonna because then it's like, well, that's not a custom house, that's just the house I've built before. There is someone outside of our store just waving and it's very distracting. Big wave, not to be. Or waving at the person outside, not not at you guys. Hey guys, if you're listening. Um, but I it's the same. We can when people start that, I can say it's kind of like building a custom house. I don't know, I don't know how many bedrooms you want, I don't know how many square foot you want, I don't know what kind of upgrade you want, I don't know what your budget is. And it kind of, I think it dis it it it does it disarm? I don't know if it disarms, but it kind of brings everybody back to reality of like, okay, so I so the the consumer, the person getting a custom ring has to most likely leave the store and think about those things because it's it's always just weird to me when somebody comes in for a custom questions and you can tell they haven't thought about what they want, how much they want to spend, when does it need to be done, do they have any jewelry to work with? Do they have any pictures that of anything that they've seen? I don't know. That just it kind of blows my mind to be honest. Yep, yeah, it does, which that's why we have a checklist now. We send them a form and they get to fill it out and they get to think about things first before they come in and mess with us. I don't know why I wrote this one down. You might have to, but it's the whole like buying like gold versus buying an item from the showcase. Okay. I don't know why I wrote that one down. Oh, I do. I think I think it was one of your ideas. So um, let's see how I want to go about this. So we we do this a lot with chains. Somebody will bring in an old worn out chain, and they'll ask, you know, what what will you give me for this? And you know, make a a hundred bucks. Um, but then they look at a new new uh chain um that's very similar, and it might be three or four hundred dollars. Yeah, probably more. Yeah. And so I just didn't want people to think we're greedy, we're not. It's like a thousand. Um, and so they're like, well, you know, you're you're why are you buying mine for a hundred and you're selling mine for four or you're selling me a new one for four hundred? Yep. And so I've always used, I did not come up with this, but the analogy of, and I don't always use it because I don't you probably have never even heard me use it. So I was about to say it's always in my head. I can't wait to hear this. Let's hear this analogy that you always use. You know, I've never saying it. Um but it's like a painting. So, you know, when you're when we're buying scrap, it's basically we're we're buying a canvas and and use paint. Yeah. And when we're selling, we're selling a finished painting. By an artist. By an artiste. And we don't make chains, so we're not the artists, so we don't get offended if you don't like it. So that's you know, that's the difference of buying, like I mean, it would be the same as like you had a uh table built, a custom table built for your house. Who's getting man? It would be like, you know, there's there's wood and and screws, but there then there's the table at the end. You would pay more for the table than just the the wood materials. Yeah. And yeah, it's that constant explanation of like, hey, you're you're about to sell me all this old gold that you don't want. Well, guess what? Nobody else wants it either. Uh and that's fine. But think thankfully you bought gold at some point in time, and we're gonna, yes, you might have spent you know 2,000 on this gold bracelet and you wore it for 20 years, and now we're gonna give you 700. Seems what I don't understand what well, like well, if a new bracelet like this would be like 4,000. Well, yes, but this is not a new bracelet. Yeah, and it's out of style, and nobody wants it, and I'll never sell it for that, or close to that, or what you paid for it. But what I can do is melt it and get paid for the gold, and then I can pay you for the gold. And that's important to understand as well. Like when we're talking, we're we're always scrapping things out, so we're not reselling or or anything else. That's a little different. Yeah, there's places I'm sure that will we'll buy because it's a nice piece and they're gonna resell it. That's a different conversation. We're talking about you know, buying scrap gold. Yep. Um, what about the uh watches putting a a new engine in your car, like replacing the movement? You like that one? Yeah. As a former watchmaker and part-time because there's so many. Oh god. There's so many uh like like we don't do a lot of watch repairs anymore, so it's just batteries, and we'll throw some movements in occasionally. Um, and it a lot of times people are like, Well, what's a movement? And then sometimes you'll say, Well, it needs a new mechanism, and they're like, What's a new, what's a mechanism? Um, and so yeah, we just say, Yeah, it's like a new New engine in your car. And that is a very important distinction because let's just say my old Jeep out there, let's say the engine died. Let's say I go and I'm like, I just need a new battery, a new alternator, and they're like, actually, it needs a new engine. Um, when I when I go to pick up my Jeep when the engine's been replaced, when I go to pick it up, is it safe for me to assume that why didn't they detail the inside of the car and wash the outside and fix all the scratches and kind of tidy up the soft top? Right. Is that a is that a fair No, no, you would not expect that to be done. But what do our what do watch clients expect, Brad? Well, it's not that they necessarily expect it, but they will They'll throw it in there. Like, oh, you can clean it up and make it look brand new again, right? That's a whole other service. We get that with batteries. Oh, and just cleaned up a little bit. Like, what does that mean? Just I don't know what that means. Your old watch is gross and disgusting and scratched and the crystals all worn out. And no, we're just yeah. I mean, sure, I'll I'll give it a wipe down with with the microfiber cloth, I guess. I don't know. Yep. I mean, I used to back when I was in the the game. The watch repair game, take it apart and put in the ultrasonic and you know, and then I would refinish the case. Yeah, yeah. Oh, okay. So yeah, I mean, and it's ridiculous because it takes like all day to do a watch. Yeah, so it's like I'll replace this movement for a hundred dollars. Yeah. But then it's gonna be, you know, four hundred. Yeah, four hundred if you want me to do all this other stuff. We don't have time to do that anymore, so we don't do it. No. But then they're like, oh wow, I went from a hundred to four hundred real fast. It's like, yeah, because all the other the the movement it takes the least amount of time. Yep. It's like two weeks after we do a movement, they're like, Oh, well, this uh the class doesn't close anymore. Like, what? Well, yeah, we we didn't do anything to that. Yeah, oh yeah, people love to that's in jewelry too. They they love to Oh, once you have a repair. It's like, hey, you gotta size my ring and um the a year ago and now one of the prongs broke off. What you gonna do about that? Maybe you got it caught on something. Maybe. But I can promise you, when I was down there sizing the ring, I didn't go, let me just bend this prong back and forth just to loosen it, just back and forth, create a little spot that's just waiting to be broken. That's what I didn't do because for one, we should why uh residuals. I think people also uh overestimate like how interested we are in their stuff when we're just doing like a sizing or a battery. It's like I'm just nope, sized it. Here you go. Enjoy. Yep. Um I'm I'm not like checking out all I mean, I'm checking it out to make sure there's not other problems, but we're not like setting up future problems so that they have to come back. Like I hope when we do a repair, like the I guess the idea would be like we don't we don't want you to come back for a long time. Yeah, unless you unless you're buying something else, yeah. Or having a custom rebuild. Yeah, on a different thing. All right. Um oh, somebody sent me this one actually. Some of these were sent in, but I didn't uh attach them to anybody. So uh picking a stone, I guess they're talking about a diamond. Picking a stone from the the report or the or the cert, what people call it inaccurately, is like selecting your wife from her driver's license picture. Man, I that's a lot to go with there. That's that's do you agree? Um because the the driver's license is gonna have your wife's it's a still image of your wife, it's gonna have her height, hair color, eye color, weight, and just a generic picture. Yep. But we get a lot of times clients come in, they're like, you know, granted, now that we're doing live grown, this feels like it's less and less, but um, you know, back when you only sold naturals, it was everybody was like, I want to see, you know, the the GIA number, I want to see the color, the clarity. I think those are all important, you know. Obviously, from the driver's license, you could tell, like, oh, I I don't want my wife to be six foot tall, or I don't want her to be five foot tall. So that gives you some of the information that you can kind of cross out. But I think the heart of it was like, hey, just get the diamond in. Like, look at the diamond in person in real life, move it around, put it on your fingers. Nothing, I'm just saying. I'm just saying people have preferences. You hate them. People have preferences. Just like with diamonds, it's like, hey, well, and it has to be, you know, 1.25 carat. Well, what if you get a 1.17 carat? Yes. Yeah and it looks a little it looks a little bigger. And maybe there's just something about the light and the cut that just look a little bit better than the 1.25. Yep. But people get really caught up on on the stats and they want to see the the the report. And I I think that's that was a good one. If you're set if you're selling diamonds, we're not I feel like we're not selling diamonds like that that much anymore. Uh, but if that's if you're working in a store that does that, I guess it's a good analogy. It's like, hey, please don't don't worry about this. I think when I did do it, I would intentionally like, hey, let me get the diamonds out. Just look at them. Compare, just find the one you like, the one that looks the best, and then I will bring out the stats. I'll bring out the driver's license picture for you. So that's how you would pick a wife? You just bring out a few of them, look at them. Yep. That's all I did. They didn't they didn't have just look bring we're gonna bring in three three women for you, just look around. There's like a whole reality TV shows and game shows that are basically what I just described. Correct. That's not how we did it back in, you know, the early 2000s. Like in the 1900s. Yeah, more early 2000s, yeah. Yeah, but anyway, that's a good one. I like that one actually. That's a really good one. Um, let's see here. A ring is like an expensive car, aka a Ferrari. You aren't taking it off-road just because it was expensive. We have dived into a similar topic, but I do like the analogy when people come in, it's like, man, I paid I had this custom ring built for you know six thousand dollars, and I just thought it would, you know, last longer than this, and it's like, well, you stepped on it. Yeah. Or I go out and garden with this and lift weights and do all the things because I spent all this money, it should be able to. It should just withstand my entire life. And you know, some people's lives it does withstand their entire life. But yeah, I I I think that is like the one of the biggest things I'm most passionate about as far as like consumer versus jeweler like expectations. Is that well, and the crazy thing is, and I get it, because to whomever's walking in the door, a lot of money to them is different than what is a lot of money to someone else. Sure. So when someone comes in and they are like, hey, I spent $300 on this, you know, on this silver necklace with this pendant, and I just thought it would last longer than that. Is that is a big deal to them, but then for other people, it's like, hey, I just spent $7,000 on this custom ring, I just thought it would last longer than that. And in both of those situations, it's a lot of money for that person, but also in both of those situations, like life happened. Yeah, your your dog climbed up you and pulled the chain and it broke. Yep. That's that's not a that's not a $300 chain problem, that's just a physics problem. I don't know. Right. Right. But I really I wish we could I wish all jewelry stores, and I'm speaking to us and to everyone who watches this, we've got to get better in this industry about teaching proper expectations and maintenance of jewelry. Yes. And what I don't mean is just like bring it in and get it cleaned occasionally, I mean just Okay, you're you're buying this nice, you know, four thousand dollar necklace. Don't just like never take it off, sleep in it, shower in it, roll in it. You have you have, you know, uh a pair of a pair, a set of twins that are under the age of four and two dogs at home. Yep. It's wear the nice necklace and enjoy it. And then when you get home, take it off and put it somewhere safe. Like that is I don't understand why that it seems like it seems offensive to customers to be like, you have to actually take care of nice stuff. Just because it's nice doesn't mean it's indestructible. It would be like buying really expensive shoes. Like you wouldn't take them to go, yummy, you wouldn't mow with them.

SPEAKER_02 30:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:32

Right? Like your wife just got a a brand new uh Tesla. State state of the art. Brand new to us. Not state-of-the-art Tesla because money over here. But y'all have never said, hey, do you want to go off-roading? Right. Hey, you get your Jeep, we'll take our Tesla, and we're just gonna go off-roading. Yeah, because it's a Tesla it should be able to. It's I mean it costs it costs more than my Jeep. It should be able to do it. Like that, like it sounds so stupid because a Tesla wasn't meant for that. Right. And I could buy a really cheap old Jeep and it would perform way better because it was built for that. And so, yes, this is fine jewelry, and it is meant to be worn and enjoyed as a memory, as a keepsake, as a gift from a loved one. It's not just meant to be worn 24-7 under all life conditions. Yep. It's just not. It's just not. Because and we we joke, we say I don't know if we actually say this to people because I think they have we have to make sure they understand we're joking. But all of our jewelry in the showcase has never broke. The stones never got loose, the chain's never broken, nothing's ever like the class quit working because You know what does happen though? Occasionally earring backs fall off, and that's weird. That is weird. But that's probably because we're it because it's it's actually probably we're m There you go. End of podcast. I'm just we solved everything, y'all. Yes. Uh but yeah, if if I pull up a display and drop it, then then there's a chance something might happen. Or if I'm piling a bunch of you know earrings on it on it, you know, pulling out of the showcase, then there's a chance something will happen. But if we just, you know, I'll use this clothespin, if I just lay the ring right here, it'll never break. It'll never wear down. And we don't expect people to never wear their jewelry. But it's an analogy and illustration of like, hey, if you if you wear it when it's appropriate and enjoy it as it was meant to be enjoyed, it will actually last you a lifetime. Yep. So yes, it will last a lifetime. Yep. If you take care of it. Yes. Just like a uh, you know, Honda Accord from 1999 would last forever if you had properly taken care of it, got the oil changed, got everything fixed, and didn't just abuse it. It'll actually last a long time even if you abuse it, but it won't last forever. Hondas are great. Probably, probably obviously, probably the best we ever. Um there was a side topic I was gonna get to because I knew we would get through these analogies um pretty fast. And now I was gonna write it down, and I might have written it down in the phone that is being used to record us right now. Um, but I mean we have a few minutes left because we do gotta we gotta do gotta unpack it. We do do got a few minutes. We do do gotta unpack this thing. But um, yeah, that's a shorter episode. And if you have if you can think of any more analogies or stories or illustrations that will help the jewelry industry better interact with clients and set expectations, drop those in the comments right below. If you're listening to this on Spotify and Apple Podcast, it's hard to leave a comment. So go to YouTube, subscribe. I know we are like button. Yeah, we we are pushing the YouTube quite a bit now that we're doing these video podcasting. And I think we're on the verge of hitting 300 subscribers. Have I told you that? No, that's great. Our goal was to to 500. Um I and I don't know if I set I just that's the next goal. I mean, I guess I guess our goal is uh 300, but our goal is uh you two million send us a check every month. So we open up a lot of perks when we get more subscribers. Um if you're if you're listening to this on the audio version, you should flip over to switch over to YouTube and uh click subscribe and then go back to listening to it on Spotify. We just get those numbers. It's all about the algorithms and the numbers. Yeah, I'll know. But if you are on YouTube, um we do not always, I don't think I don't I don't think we can do it this week um with the holiday coming up. Uh, but we do a live chat sometimes, and that's always fun. Um but um but also like definitely leave comments. Um Yeah. Because we will answer them. We will we will read. The things that we prioritize are buy me a coffee comments, yes, YouTube comments, yes, and um we're very active on our Instagram page. So those are the three ways to interact with us most. Facebook, I get there when I get there, Spotify and Apple Podcasts commenting. We we as we we appreciate it, we love it. That's where I listen to podcasts too, but you know, it's harder, it's you know sweet. I don't know what I'm saying. Yeah, I mean do you listen to any podcast where you have where you can just talk to uh the person, the the the famous broadcast legends? Just one, just one. Well, not a podcast, though, but just like a YouTube channel. Yep. I can text. People can just reach us. The legends that we are, the amaz we we make time for them. Because you know what's gonna happen. This is gonna blow up, right? We're gonna get so big that nobody and they're gonna be like Brad never responds to my DMs anymore. That's because he's getting a hundred a day. Yep. Every hour. Yep. I'll have a person do it for me. You really want to get in while while the price is low and the interaction is high. So then you can be really mad later on when I don't respond to him. Remember when Brad was cool? I'm wondering if we're gonna get somebody coming up to the door. It is five minutes still. We gotta we gotta we gotta shut this thing down. Sorry for a short episode. Life has been happening. The month of July is life insane. But more like Dusty's taking many vacations. No, that's not true. I did well that's what we were gonna talk about. I just got back from vacation. And you're about to go on vacation. No, that's not true. No, we're we're the stores closed for the 4th of July. And you will also be on vacation. But you'll be at a lake. Yeah, but that's just I'll be in my house. Yeah, I'll be in the lake with at the lake with about 30 other people. Not a vacation. But I did get back from vacation. I remember I was gonna talk about that. I know I have to wrap it up now. Is when I came back from my little vacation, um the jobs were not overwhelming. It's it's the time of year. Um, but I think I wanted to to say this um to jewelry store salespeople and managers. Oh, I thought you were gonna say thank you. No. Oh. You have to protect your bench jewelers. Yes. Because I posted in that Discord, which I've mentioned before. Um, if you need that link for the for the bench jewelers discord, let me know. It's not mine, it belongs to someone else started it, but it I think it's a really cool thing. But I posted about like, oh, I actually have you know paying the price for me on vacation, which it really wasn't that bad. I was being sarcastic. But a lot of people are like, oh my gosh, because it's vacation season. Yep. And they're like, Oh, I just got back or I'm about to go and I'm dreading it. Like, okay, managers and salespeople, protect your bench tooler. Yep. Just say, hey, this repair takes three weeks. Oh, if the customer's gonna get so mad, who cares? Why are you trying to appease the customer who you see once every 10 years or maybe have never seen versus the bench dueler who is like legit carrying the weight and the stress of trying to always stay on top of things? Yep. There. Boom. Take it. I would drop this mic, but it was expensive. So on that note, uh, thank you guys for watching. Uh anything else we got before we close off? Close out, close off. We didn't say stepdaddy studio. I said close off. Go ahead, Brad. Stay tuned after the little outro song. Brad's gonna take the close off. Yeah, thanks for thanks for uh joining us here in Stepdaddy Ron Studios. And um we'll see you in the uh the post or pre it's the it's the pre-show banter that we post at the end. It's the post in the post team. Wait, we should come with the name. Is it the the post pre-show banter? Or is it the pre-post show banter? Banter. Okay. That's it. All right, thanks, guys. Bye. Bye. All right, Brad. We have no hold on. We have to freeze. We have to make a silly face for for the thumbnail. Okay. Or do something. We have to do something.

SPEAKER_00 39:47

See you next week.

SPEAKER_01 39:50

Melanie just posted a daddy store. We're not doing that anymore, people. We're classy. I can I can be classy. No, you're good. We're good. How do we look, everybody? This will be the um this is pre-show stuff, but this will be the low most low budget edit you guys have ever seen. I'm just gonna warn you now. It's been we'll get into it. We should probably just start because we don't have a bunch of time. The shortest shortest pre-show banter in in history. Unless I put all that me climbing over cords over and over and over again. Hold on, let me see. There we go. We need to go wireless. What the heck?

unknown 40:34

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 40:36

You're fine. You're good. I know. Okay. You're kind of behind me, but I guess you can't really change that, can you? I guess not. But it goes more out. But then I moved that way. That's true. Guess we'll find out if you're happier faces in this entire episode. Alright. Um get that out of my system. Uh I'm gonna. Okay. Alright. Do you know what we're gonna talk about today, Brad? I have one story. Oh, you have stories? No. I have one story. Oh god. Do I need to know what it is before we start? We already talked about it. We already talked about this. Did we? From old dogs, buddy. But you didn't tell me what the story was. No, I didn't tell you what the story was. Okay. Okay. Alright. I don't know. I hate this so much. Let me get I hate how this uh this dims way too fast. It's probably Ari. She probably messed up some kind of settings or something. And the phone's about to die, of course. I swear. Alright, I'm gonna fix this so that it don't cut off every five seconds. Auto lock after 30 seconds? What the heck? I feel like an echo in here now with me. Well, too bad. Because it we ain't it's too bad. Yep. Okay. Cool. Oh gosh, why can't I why can't I turn off the auto lock? That's right. I think Ari messes with I think she just either intentionally or unintentionally. You think she just goes through things and just messes with them? I mean she is I did tell you to do that. I told her to do that. Oh, this is just gonna be a great episode, I can tell. People watching this now, they're like, man, I that was a really good episode. They don't they didn't even know how great this episode's gonna be. It's not let's so pre pre-show. It's 920. We opened in 40 minutes. We still haven't started. I have an echo. Uh well, the echo wasn't there a minute ago, so I'm gonna tell you. No, I'm just saying telling people what we're dealing with here. All right, we ready? Yeah, let's go. All right. Three, two, one. I'm clapping. Don't know if I'm clapping anymore. Yeah, it's fine. But now I gotta clap again. Three, two, one.