The Dream Client Blueprint: Boundaries That Create Respect, Higher Profit, and Referrals

Scope creep. No-shows. "Quick questions." If any of that just triggered you, press play. In this episode, we're talking about how to "train" your clients so they actually respect your time and follow your process. We share the real boundaries we've built, why we're obsessed with clarity (and paper trails), and the small, subtle tweaks that make people take you seriously without you having to be a jerk about it. Expect some laughs, a few strong opinions, and a whole lot of "we learned this the hard way" moments, because nothing inspires a better system like getting burned once and deciding, yeah… never again.

Highlights

00:00 Have you watched the Jonas Brothers Christmas movie?

03:15 Our yearly trip to NYC, holiday traditions, and 

06:45 How have you trained your clients to treat you?

11:00 Lessons learned the hard way that have led to the boundaries we've set.

15:00 How we fixed the problem in our business of having no shows.

18:00 Are you qualifying your clients to make sure they're the right fit for you?

21:15 Why it's important to set expectations for your clients.

26:45 The first training we implemented early on in business.

31:30 Post-purchase expectation emails: how to cut down follow-ups and constant check-ins.

35:15 Speaking in ranges: how to communicate timelines and pricing to prevent conflict.

39:00 Why repeating the same language (in-person + email) protects you and builds trust.

42:00 Bad business advice: "If you're busy, you're successful" (and what to aim for instead.)

46:30 How training clients creates a better experience for them and for you.

Resources + Links
Apply for Luxury Clothier Collective Mastermind  HERE
More resources for custom clothiers HERE
Watch on Youtube

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Appointment Only in IG: @appointmentonlypod

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Remember, your clients are being trained. Whether you're doing it on purpose or not, they're learning from your behavior. They're picking up what you're throwing down. So if you're not using this to your benefit, they're learning that. And you are teaching them that you don't have any rules worth following. You don't have any processes you take seriously. You don't have any boundaries you're passionate about. That's what you're training them. So if that's not what you want to communicate to them, it's important to start making this training intentional and work for you. This is Appointment Only, the podcast for entrepreneurs building profitable high-end businesses. If you want control, profit, and freedom from the endless hustle, this is for you. We're Kenny and Danny, twin brothers from day one and business partners for 15 years. We're sharing insights from our own experiences running a high-end small business, the highs, the lows, and what we've learned along the way that will help you build businesses you enjoy running that aren't running you. We're here to help you continue creating businesses that support the life you actually want to live. Your appointment starts now. Have you watched any Christmas shows or movies or anything? You know. Jonas Brothers Christmas Time? What was that movie called? It's the new one with the Joe Bros. Yeah. Like have you watched it? No. It's pretty good. I actually have heard there were some LOL moments, honestly. Wow. A very Jonas Christmas movie. It's amazing to me that the Jonas Brothers have remained like relevant, I guess, or continue to do things. It is pretty amazing to watch. And it's also crazy, like knowing the the background of the Jonas brothers. I listened to the Amy Polar podcast, Good Hang with them. It was a really good episode. It was a good hang, would you say? It was a good hang, yeah. But that's the extent of the Christmas watching. We're not much of a I wouldn't say we're not much of a Christmas house. Because obviously the kids love Christmas time. Well, what's there not to love? But we don't have the tree up yet. We're gonna wait, we're gonna wait to do that. For what? What are you waiting for? It's December. I know. We're just we just don't have it up yet. Wow. Um, no Christmas music plays in the house. So just a bunch of Grinches. I guess so. Yeah. Grinch Grinchville. Hooville. Well, Hooville's loved Christmas, so no. We do like Christmas, but it's not like a we're not like a Christmas house. Like I don't have any lights on the house and just stale Christmas. We like to keep the cranks over here. We like to keep it. That's a Christmas movie. Both are crank over here. We will watch someone skipping Christmas. We will watch Christmas with the cranks for sure. That's a good one. That's what we watched when we set up all of our stuff. We set our stuff up like mid-November, it's early November. Yeah. But we've been watching Holiday Baking Championship. And there was this one person on it who I think it was must have been an old season, but every episode have you seen Holiday Baking Championship? Not holiday, no. Okay. I've seen Baking Championship. Okay. So this person on Holiday Baking Championship, it's uh so I like Christmas, but she loved Christmas. The girl. The girl in the show. Because each episode there's like, oh, you know, do this dessert that's inspired by this hot by the holiday. And every single episode, she would say, like, oh, well, this is for this tradition. And oh, well, every every year my family wakes up at the you know, this time for this brunch. And this dessert is inspired by the tradition that my nieces and nephews have and that we do every year. I'm like, I can't imagine anything worse than being in her house and having to go through all these traditions every single year. That's a lot. I like you know, I like tradition like anyone else, but I like to have like a tradition, not oh, don't forget, we have to make sure that we do this because we do this every year. That's that turns into a part-time job. Exactly. And there are some traditions I like, but like name one. Oh, here's one that I haven't done yet. I traditionally will watch the documentary tree man like the night before we go to New York for Christmas. We because that's a tough you have to rent it now, right? Well, I think I bought it last year. I've been renting it every year, and I was like, you know what? I think I'm just gonna buy it on Apple. So I do think I still have it. But we one of the traditions that I like is that we Danny and his wife and kids, and my wife and I, we go to New York at some point in December to sort of kick off the holiday season. So we're headed there at the end of the week, which will be great. And my tradition is that I watched this documentary called Tree Man, which is about a guy who sells Christmas trees in New York the night before we go to New York. So and we did the first time we were ever in New York in December, we did actually go try to find the tree man. And we found his stand, but he was not there, he was not there for Francois was gone. He was not he was not there, but I I think he still is part of it. I think so, yeah. So that's mine. Do you have any traditions you like? Probably not, huh? Stealing all the presents from all the whose houses? I mean, I do enjoy like the family Christmas stuff. I enjoy it with our family, I enjoy it with Anna's family, and I also love our, you know, small family Christmas when, but we don't have like a set date and we don't have a set menu. And it's we just like to let the spirit lead. I love that. That's the reason for the season. Growing up, growing up in the King House, our tradition for food was green mill pizza. And I mean, that slaps. What's there not to love about Green Mill Pizza with the spinach dip, the bread spinach, the bread bowl? And Green Mill Pizza is this episode brought to you by Green Mill Pizza. If only. When was the last time you had Green Mill? Probably Family Christmas ever. Yeah. I don't remember the last time I had a Green Mill Pizza. They also had, when we were in college, Green Mill was one of the spots where you they actually did like half-price apps as well as Applebee's. But the half-price apps at Green Mill, of course, were way better than Applebee's. I don't know if they were. Well, I think they were. Green Mill might be something that is uh regional. Or is it world or is it worldwide? Well, for our worldwide listeners, they may be a little, they're like, Green Mill, what's that? Well, let's just say it's not worth coming to America for. Well, I will tell you that. I'm a little bit sore, a little bit sore because uh we we've been back in the gym, as you're well aware. As you can tell if you're watching on YouTube. Your eyes are not deceiving you. We have been to the gym twice. Here's the deal. We took, we when we first got like got sober, we got really healthy and we we went to the gym every single day and we worked with a trainer for years, and we were just religious gym people. We would lift five days a week, six days a week sometimes. And the last like year and a half or so, we've been taking it a little bit easier. When it's colder outside, we are going into the gym more. But then when it's warm out, we'll go for long walks. Like, I mean long walks, like 10 plus miles, which feels great. My body responds well to it. I also really enjoy the feeling of not being sore all the time. And it's it's a fine line too with like the amount of lifting because we're in our late 30s at this point. And when we were so religious about lifting five times a week, I, you know, my shoulder was bothered. I was having all sorts of wrist issues. Like there was always not just being sore, but there was always like an injury I was kind of nursing. And then, like, you know, you'd have to be taking it easy or changing up the workouts on some days, and it just was not great. But, anyways, we're easing back into the workouts. We're training, which lines up with what we're talking about today's episode. Training your clients, your segue. Thank you so much. That's why I'm the number one host. You are. There's no you keep bringing that up as if I'm gonna argue with it, like no, I'm not bringing it up. It's not up for debate. I'm just reminding you. I'm just making I'm just pulling rank. Sometimes it's good to know that it's not good to know where you fall on the totem pole. Well, and that's something that you can train your clients. True. Nice, nicely done. We're talking about training your clients today because that's how it goes. You you train people how to treat you. And I don't want the topic to sound what's the word, disrespectful, maybe. Like we're not training people like dogs, right? We're not like spanking our customers unless they're really good. But we're I don't mean it to be disrespectful, but the it's true. You do sort of train people how to treat you. And the best metaphor is like dog training, really. You know, if you have a dog, as we both do, who isn't doing something that you want it to do, you have to train them. Otherwise, they're just gonna go to the bathroom in the house. You need to tell them that that's not what they're supposed to do. They need to learn how to do it. The same is true of the way people behave. If you let them get away with stuff and you just do whatever, you take their lead all the time, they're not gonna see anything wrong with it. They're gonna keep peeing all over your floor. And we've said a number of times in other episodes and that people are dumb. A lot of people are really dumb. But where that is true, people are also smart and people can learn, and people can be trained on things, and they do learn whether you're trying to train them or not. And they're learning. And we as business owners can be trained too. There are things that we do now that had to be trained in us because of the way that clients respond or the way that people are. We've had to retrain behaviors in ourselves as we run our business too. So it's training all around, but in setting expectations, we are responsible as business owners to train our customers on things. Can you think of any times where we had something happen to us and we said to ourselves, oh, we're never doing that again? Letting somebody go through the process and not pay. Yeah. Being in that sort of, I don't know if I'm gonna make any money in this situation. I know everybody's businesses are different, and there are industries that you are offering proposals and trying to bid jobs. Our business is not one of those businesses. And when you are appointment only, as you know we are, you have to value your time. I don't wanna, I don't want to give too much away with what's coming in the episode, but when you're appointment only and you only make money if you're swiping a card, it gets pretty old pretty quick when you're working with people who don't actually want to pay you for what they've done. So you got to train your muscles if you want to look like this. This doesn't happen naturally. Kenny's on gear.

unknown 11:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:26

This is a result of steroids. This is absolutely what happens when you take your thyroid supplement every night. Yeah, if if by gear you mean my hair loss pills, then yeah, I am on gear. Dreamboat alert. My neutrophil. I have to say though, it's worked pretty well, I think, over the years. I've been able to hang on to my hair. I'm on all the hair loss stuff. I mean, I take a bunch of stuff that I don't even know what it is. It's just what the that can be healthy. The natural, no, it is. It's that's the whole point, is it's healthy and it's stuff that you're missing in your in your life. Okay. There's only so many nutritions in the pickles and Chick-fil-A. Those you got to get your greens in though. You gotta prioritize those greens. I'm gonna leave my pickles on my sandwich. Training is one of those things, though, where it's it's always, for the most part, isn't it always uncomfortable? Whether you're training in the gym or you're training at a new job, or you're training your clients or your customers, or you're training yourself to learn something new. There's not nothing comfortable about that, right? That's why I don't do new things. I don't like training. Training to play the guitar. Ooh, my fingers hurt from all these cases. You gotta push through. You gotta push through if you want to be a rock star. That's right. Training is crucial. It's why we send emails because that's how we want to communicate with people. And that was trained in us. We've both been in too many situations where we've been on the phone with a client who needs information, and that information we don't have access to in that moment. And we're put in a position where we have to scramble and spitball things, and the client ultimately is not happy to hear the news because we aren't giving them any real information. And then there's no paper trail, there's no proof of what was talked about, what was discussed, what was said, what wasn't said. Training is important. And that training of our clients communicate to us in email came from a result of us being trained by our clients that guess what? Me being on the phone with you is not gonna give you the experience that you should get. Right. When someone blitz you and they call you and they ask you a specific question about specific information that you don't have at the ready, and then they're upset with you that you don't have the answer, that is a lose-lose for everyone. That was a lesson we learned once. We had to be trained on that one time, and we never made that mistake again. The same is true for speaking of getting blitzed on the phone with our appointment only business. Everything requires an appointment. You can't just wander and work with us. So we need to have appointments scheduled. When someone's on the phone with us, you're not getting scheduled on the phone. That is something we had to learn. We used to go ahead and say, Oh, yeah, give me your email address. Okay, what's that? Again, assuming you're getting all the info right. I remember being on the phone with somebody trying, this is when we were in the in the process of training, if you will. We were training ourselves, or being trained rather, that this was a terrible idea. I remember we were in the Florida Keys, we were doing some sort of a bike excursion. I think to call it an excursion makes it sound a lot different than it was. We rented bikes. We rented bikes and we were riding around the streets, the sidewalks. But the an excursion. You make it sound like we were like biking up the dunes. Getting dropped. We were dropped from a helicopter on a deserted island on our bikes. I was just about to hit this massive jump. We were literally, I think we're literally in a cul-de-sac. Anyway, we might have continued. I was trying to get this guy's information, and his email address was confusing. I don't even remember what it was. Something like Akrami or something like that. And I was trying to bike and listen and write down his email in my notes. And it would have been so easy for me to say, hey, guess what? I can't take this information right now. Why don't you send me an email and we'll take it from there? And that's something that we learned. The other thing, the other reason we learned this lesson is when we were in the business of scheduling people on the phone, it happened like two or three times in a row where they just no-showed, just canceled. They got scheduled on the phone and then out of sight, out of mind. It was probably their response to trying, it was it was easier for them to go ahead and go through the process of saying, Yeah, why don't you put me down for that day? Yeah, that works, just to get off the phone. Like they may as well have just said, oh, I wrong number, gotta go, or too expensive, gotta go. But instead of doing that, they went through the process. That was a lesson we learned. We were trained at that point that scheduling people on the phone, not only is it way more difficult, but they're probably gonna know show. The other reason why we learned this lesson is because we've now set ourselves up for a track record of the potential client following a process and taking that initiation step to get in the calendar. They've got to wanna come in. It's not gonna be an accident that they're here. And if they can't follow simple instructions of please fill out your contact information on our website and we'll go ahead and get you scheduled, if they can't follow that instruction, they're probably not gonna be an instruction follower. They're probably not gonna follow the instruction of and also be ready to buy when you come in for your appointment. And also after you've bought, please don't reach out following up. And also please don't make changes and also please don't bring extra people. And how you're getting scheduled is the first request that we have. And if you can't be bothered to follow the process for that, then things probably aren't going to go very well. But that's something we had to learn. We had to get trained in on that because we had enough experiences where things didn't go very well. Those are just a couple of things that come to mind off the top of our heads. Let's talk about some specific things that work for our business that I think will work for other businesses too, especially appointment-only ones. This doesn't have anything to do with what we sell. The fact that we sell custom clothing has no bearing on any of these things. So if you're in a business and you're either appointment only or your appointment requested or preferred, these are things that you could do starting today that might help you start to train your clients. Because remember, your clients are being trained. Whether you're doing it on purpose or not, they're learning from your behavior. They're picking up what you're throwing down. So if you're not using this to your benefit, they're learning that. And you are teaching them that you don't have any rules worth following. You don't have any processes you take seriously, you don't have any boundaries you're passionate about. That's what you're training them. So if that's not what you want to communicate to them, it's important to start making this training intentional and work for you. One way that works really, really well in training clients to not only do what you need them to do, but also to understand that there's value to be had in what you're going to offer is requiring some sort of an order minimum. This does a couple of things. First of all, it prepares clients to understand that I'm going to be buying. This isn't just an exploratory, let's see what you have. This is a requirement to buy and a requirement to buy a certain amount. It's also communicating that what you provide is valuable and that your time itself is valuable because nobody is going to value your time unless you train them to value your time. What we found in requiring an order minimum is it allows us to put people in our calendar who are going to move the needle, but it also prepares people to spend a meaningful dollar amount. And speaking of scheduling, this is another thing that we trained, that we train our clients on every day that we had to learn ourselves that we had to train ourselves for was with the scheduling, not only does it have to happen through email, which we already talked about. We're not going to schedule you on the on the phone, but you also can't go in and schedule yourself. So when we say go to our website and fill out the form, you're not opening a calendar and choosing your own time slot and scheduling yourself, like a restaurant reservation, right? We have to have a conversation because there's a there's a number of conversations that we have to have with you to make sure that you're the right fit for us. It's in line with qualifying your clients, right? As business owners, we understand that there is a qualification process that is oftentimes required in order to make sure that the people are right for you. Just like your client thinks oftentimes they're qualifying you to feel if you're right for the job. And they are. They are. We're doing that too. High-end businesses qualify their clients. So that's why we don't just allow anybody to plunk themselves into our calendar and come in or not, because the the same, the same issue arises when we booked you on the phone, where you're not taking it very seriously because it's just it's seeming like there's a low commitment. It feels like it's a restaurant reservation. The same is true when you schedule yourself, is it just doesn't, for some reason, it doesn't feel as personal. You don't think the business owner is as checked in. But when we're having a conversation with you, we're going back and forth. We've had conversations about what's expected, what's required, you know, what your needs are. Now all of a sudden we're having a real conversation and we're getting you in our calendar personally in a time that works for us both. It's not so impersonal as, oh, I'm just gonna plot myself into this time slot. And if I need to cancel, I will. Yeah, or if something better comes up or something cheaper comes. Because that's the mindset. It's like, oh, I can always cancel, but let me just schedule this just in case. Yeah, let me pencil it into my calendar and then it'll be penned in. That's my favorite. When we're going back with a client, they're like, Oh, yeah, I can pencil that in. We always follow up and say, Well, well, we're not penciling it in. So if this is feeling Are you gonna sharpie it in or are you gonna pencil? So we need some commitment from you that you're willing to move forward with this and not cancel at the last. Minute. These days, though, most people don't understand that there's a real person on the other end of the fill in the blank. They're talking or with technology. They don't assume that there's a real person, a live one on at the end of the line, whether that be the phone line or the email or whatever. They're used to booking restaurant reservations and then, oh, actually, I want to go here. So let me cancel that one, let me do this, or let me just even no-show. You know, there's what am I out? Nothing. That's how consumer behavior is these days. So we have trained this with ourselves and with our clients so that they understand like, hey, we're both making a commitment. Yeah, there's real people involved here. It's not just a matter of you communicating with a robot. And if you if you cancel, then I guess the robots get to just stay turned off for now. Like we're real people here. This is our job. This is our livelihood. We've come to work, we've put on our suits, we're here ready and waiting for you. If you know show, that that matters to me. Uh so speaking of scheduling, the other thing that is worth just thinking about as it relates to training your clients is when we schedule an appointment with a client. We don't just say, here's when your appointment time starts. We say, here's your appointment, start and stop. So then they have information on how long the appointment is scheduled for. So they know, okay, I have 90 minutes. I think the same principle is true of a haircut or a doctor's appointment or an appointment with like a therapist or a chiropractor. You know what the time slot is. The same is true of our business. And it might sound simple and it might sound elementary, but it is something that's important to do. Because it's something that's familiar, it's not going to feel weird to the person seeing this email come through or the calendar invite. But what it does is it subconsciously informs them that there is an end time. Because if they didn't know there was an end time, what we've experienced is things can go on and on and on and on. We're in a business that has an element of like excitement and enjoyment, not dissimilar from like a restaurant or a show or something like that. But it it is important that people understand that there isn't an end time. Even even restaurants were doing that when they first opened after 2020. And I, you know, this might be an unpopular opinion, but I think it would be fine if they brought this back, where you give them their reservation time. And you say, you know, you have some restaurants still do it where they'll say, you know, you have a 90-minute reservation, and the more people you add to the reservation, the longer you get. Yeah. Because they're just basically guaranteeing they're making a certain dollar amount. But I respect it. And usually I respect it if the service is good and you're not waiting around for your server to get back to the table. In 2021, Madeline and I, it was we went out for uh Valentine's Day. Oh, exciting. And we had like a it was like a 90 minute, or no, it was, I think it was 60. It was it was still like very quick. It was still everyone was still wearing the mask. You know, it was very like it was unless you're eating. Yes, then you can, or yes, exactly or talking at the table. But it was very much like, oh, if you spend any more than 60 minutes in the room now that you're gonna give everyone COVID. It was so stupid. But we got this 60-minute reservation, and you know how bad COVID was for restaurants. So everyone was understaffed, and we we got there and nobody came to our table for like 40 minutes. And by the time our server came, we were almost we were almost all the way through our reservation. And I was thinking, this is absolutely crazy. But I understand why restaurants do it. The reason restaurants do it is to prevent people from sitting. You don't want sitters in your section who are just visiting, getting their waters refilled when you could be good for a while. When you could get them out of here, seat another table, you know, do you want to do that? They don't want sitters, they want spenders. That is the truth. No business wants sitters. You know what my favorite thing is though, which it's really annoying, but I super respect it, is businesses that don't have free Wi-Fi. Because then they don't get people sitting there with their laptops, drinking black coffee, having meetings. Black coffee with free refills, free refills, hosting meetings there or like having their Zoom workday while they sit there because they're the people can't log on. They can't log online, so they're not gonna sit around. I I definitely respect that. They're training their customers not to sit there all day, you know, spending five dollars and taking up an entire table. So we have the start time, we have the end time. The other thing that we did within the last few years is we put a client-facing clock. Just a little bit of training. This is uh, this is a very subtle, and we we don't ever reference it. I actually always forget that it's because it ends up being kind of right behind my head. I can't see it. But what that does is it's a subtle reminder to the client that they're on the clock and that decisions need to be made. And they don't have all day. We don't have all day. Neither they nor we want this to take any longer than it has to take. But it's kind of a subtle way for them to be reminded of the time. And in case they're tempted to lose track of time, we got a really easy way for them to keep track of. You might not be able to see the clock, but boy, can you point to it. By the way, the clock that we have at our shop is a big, giant faux Rolex. It's a folex. It's a folex. We bought it for what, it's a couple hundred bucks online a few years ago. But it makes me nervous because you can see it from our windows. And I'm always afraid someone's gonna like break into the shop to try to steal the what they fancy Rolex. And it's gonna be like they they're gonna pick it up and it's basically gonna float out of their hands because it's so light, it's made of such cheap stuff. The GMT hand on the Rolex is literally painted on. Yeah, it doesn't move. It's uh it's not Swiss made. We'll have we'll say that. One of the first training things that we implemented with our clients was the email that they get after their order is placed. And this was a result of us being trained by our clients that clients of a certain situation, which is wedding clients in our experience, follow up constantly. And it's usually because they're curious. Oh, I'm just curious. They're just curious. What's the update? Is there an update? Do you have an update? Curious to know how's everything going? Wanting status, wanting to make sure everything's on track. It's my wedding month. Yeah, exactly. But that was looks like my wedding's just, you know, a few short months out. Want to make sure everything's on track for my suit. That was a an explicit, not so subtle reminder that, hey, we probably should train these clients to expect something different. So they get a follow-up email after the order's been placed, and the the email itself says don't follow up a couple of times, but it comes from someone other than us. The email itself comes from Amy, who is a real employee of ours. However, if you don't have a real employee of yours, I would recommend you create one. Get yourself a Scott. Scott. We have a Scott who works at King Brothers, and Scott is if one of us picks up the phone and decides that that's our name for the day. Scott is he's both the employee of the month and the scapegoat of the month. If something goes wrong, oh, that must have been Scott. What was that show Flipping Hot Flipping Out with Jeff Lewis? What was their employee? Jenny. No, but Jenny was real. But what was the employee that Jenny created? She created, but that's where we got the idea was Jenny had uh an alter ego who would make like difficult phone calls on the the company's behalf. They were a little bit of a bigger team, so it made more sense. But we're like, hey, I think we need one of those. So we created Scott. But what this does when you have the follow-up email that's being sent from someone else is it puts a little bit of space between that client or that customer and you. It communicates subtly that you, the business owner, are not accessible 24-7 for any question or any follow-up that the client may want, have, or need. It just communicates a little bit of a distance where you're not on call for them all the time because they have now received communication from somebody who is not you. And it communicates in a very gentle, subtle way that you're not always available. So I would definitely encourage you to do that if you don't do it already. If you're sending a follow-up or you need to communicate something, either have someone else do it who works for you or with you, or if you don't have someone who works for or with you, create someone because that will be helpful for you. Even if it's just one extra step removed from that client or that customer to communicate the fact that you've got other things going on, you have other priorities, you have other clients and customers who demand your attention. It has been helpful and it was helpful. The last thing we'll talk about is as it relates to specific things that we do. There are so many things we could talk about specifically that we do that train our clients and our customers in different things. And wedding customers are different than our target demo, are different than our business partners. Are we ever gonna do an entire episode on wedding clients? Hell yeah. Okay. We're absolutely. I actually, the reason we haven't done one or I haven't recommended it yet, is I think we're gonna have to do a series. There's so many things we could talk about, and with weddings specifically, there's so many things. And I know we have a lot of people that listen to the podcast, a lot of regulars who are in the wedding business, whether you're a wedding vendor or not. And that's kind of where we fall. That's why it's difficult, is we're actually not wedding vendors, but we are by default in the wedding business. The same is true of you know, photographers, florists, event coordinators, hairstyles, hairstylists, makeup artist, all of this stuff. Like you're maybe you are basically exclusively in the wedding business, but chances are good your best clients, your favorite kinds, the best inquiries you get are something other than wedding. That's been the story for us. But weddings, generally speaking, disproportionately create most of the problems. And I know you require and require the most training. People who are not working with us for weddings don't require hardly any training at all. They're just gonna fall in line with whatever we say. They're not gonna follow up, they're not gonna need this or that. They don't require the training. On the very rare occasion where you're needing to say, Oh, well, actually, that's not how we're gonna do it, or that's not what I do, or my process actually is like this. They say, Oh, okay, that makes sense. You don't get pushback from them. But a lot of times wedding clients are like, well, but it's what works best is my wedding for us, and this is my wedding, and it's my big day, and it's my deadline. So it just ends up for whatever reason, and we know the reasons, which we'll we'll talk about in the in the episodes, but it just ends up being more complicated and more work. So we'll we'll talk about that in another episode. But we could go on and on and on about specific things that are psychological that we've trained clients and customers and that we do every single day as it relates to wedding customers, business builders, target demographic, which is really how we separate our three client groups, our buckets. Anyone we work with is either going to be a wedding client, they're gonna be a business builder or a business buyer, or they're gonna be a target demo client. But that's all very custom clothing specific. This one here is really, really crucial, but it doesn't really relate to custom clothing necessarily. Speaking in ranges. So, what we mean here is you're not saying for us, it is about clothing, your suit is gonna be complete in eight weeks. What we say is it's gonna be about eight weeks or so. So I've qualified it by using the word about, I've followed it up by saying or so. So I very much and then I say, and that's a range. It could be more, could be a little bit quicker, could be a little bit longer. I say this to every single person I work with. It's part of the training process, is the things that you say over and over and over, your scripts that you use and should have in your business, the things that you want to make sure that you say every time you're talking to a client. That's training. And then in our follow-up email that remember is sent from Amy, it reiterates it in the exact same language that we communicated in the actual meeting, where your start time on your order is now. Reminder, the timeline is around eight weeks or so. So it's the this range communication, not giving hard dates or hard, you know, things that are rigid. And as soon as something doesn't go exactly in that scenario, then all of a sudden you have all sorts of things that you have to overcome. And that's about timing. The same is true. That's how we communicate our prices as well. Everything on our website is listed as a starting point. And when we're communicating in the appointments, everything is arranged. It's kind of like if you were to call up, you know, Joe Schmok contractor, and say, Hey, Joe, what's a new kitchen gonna cost me? He's gonna say, Um, that's not how it works. It depends, dude. It depends on literally every single thing. There are a number of good parallels that you can find in other industries. We often will revert to either elements of homes, like construction, or cars. Those are really great parallel industries. I mean, the same question. Hey, excuse me, car salesman, what's a new car gonna cost? What do you mean? Are you talking about a car? Are you talking about an SUV, a truck? How many seats? How new? Used, pre-owned, certified, pre-owned, brand new, AMG standard. Like, what's the deal? You can't, it's not a it's not as simple as saying what does a new car cost? The same is true of what we do. So we speak in ranges. What this does, whether you're speaking in ranges about price or about timelines, is you're training the client to be flexible. You're training them to be accommodating. Flexibility and accommodation are really important. You do not want to be in situations where the client is pointing the finger and saying, Well, you said, and again, that's one of the reasons why we email so we can prove what was said and what wasn't said. But flexibility is important in any relationship, whether it's a personal relationship or a business relationship. The time that we learned, I remember when we learned this lesson, when we were trained that, oh, not it's not just good enough to say the timeline. We actually need to follow it up with an email reminder that reiterates it so we have a paper trail that we can point to. We had worked with a client and he sent us a very, very angry email. Long story short, we ended up saying, you know what, we don't want to work with you. And we refunded his money. It was for a very below average sale anyway. So it didn't really matter. And then he followed up and he's like, Oh, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to offend you. Do you think uh do you think you could just give me my stuff anyway? And we said, No, we already refunded you and we donated everything, which wasn't exactly true. But he emailed us and what he said in his angry email was, you said it would be three weeks, and I've been waiting, and three weeks have come and gone, and I haven't heard anything from you. And I'm like, uh, dude, no, I absolutely 1000% never would have said this is gonna be three weeks. I would never in a million years say three weeks. That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. But that's what he wanted to hear, and so that's what he decided the truth was. And that was a lesson I learned one time. And then from that point on, we just said, okay, not only are we gonna continue to say in every single appointment, eight weeks or so. I think at that point we were probably saying six. We were not saying three. I wasn't saying three, I know that, but uh, we also weren't saying eight. Uh, but then we said, okay, every client, I don't care who you are, I don't care what we talk about. I don't care if you even have a rush order. Even if you have a rush order, they get the eight-week email. And I just, you know, it is what it is. But every single client now gets reminded of the timeline that we say in person because I cannot be in the position where I have someone saying that I said three weeks. So it's it's training. And if you're a client of ours and you've received way too many emails, so you think, you have some of these clients who trained us to blame for that. Sorry. My favorite though is when somebody comes in because we have a series of auto-generated expectation emails that get sent before our appointments. And they're direct. They are not rude. They're not rude at all. But they're direct. And if you're they are rude to the people who don't like the information inside. The only times they turn people off is be if when the person isn't committed to the process and wanted to come in to do something that we weren't prepared to do, then they get insulted by the email because that was that's by design. I can't believe you would expect that. But my favorite thing is when somebody comes in and they say, Okay, before we get started, I can't wait to hear the story of why you send these emails. Yeah, why you have to send these emails. That always just makes me happy because it tells me that they're in the right spot. They don't need to be trained. They're already in shape. They're already plenty in shape, and they're really excited to work with us in our process because they know we have one because they can tell because of the training emails that we send. Like we mentioned, there are so many specific things we could talk about as it relates to our custom clothing business, but we're not gonna do that. Not today, anyway. This was really for broader business. If you run an appointment only business or an appointment preferred business, these are the types of things that you can implement today, you know, the start and end time on an appointment, the way you schedule an appointment, got to be through email or got to be through my portal, or you've got to do it through this dupe sotto link or the whatever it is that you want to do. The disconnection in a follow-up where it may feel like, well, I don't have an employee that can send an email. That's okay. Hey, maybe Scott schedules your emails for you. You have an employee named Scott now. Just to create Scott is your favorite employee, just to create a little bit of separation and to gently communicate that you, as the business owner, are not on call for the client 24-7. Anytime they have a question, it's not as simple as getting back in touch with you. These little things, like training is one of those things that is so important. And whether you like it or not, you are training people in how to communicate with you, how to expect things from you, how to be a part of your business, whether you like it or not. We didn't just come up with these things being super proactive and oh, you know, what we should do is this, this, well, and it wasn't because we wanted to be sticklers. No. Or because we wanted to have rules and regulations. I love rules and regulations. I love being a stickler. Well, and sometimes we'll say, is this something we need to have a rule about now? Or is this just maybe an off, you know, an offshoe? Is this maybe a crack slipper? Yeah. I mean, sometimes people do slip through the cracks, and it doesn't matter how strict you are, how awesome your policies are, every once in a while someone's gonna slip through the cracks. But you know, it's we didn't create this because we love rules. Follow my rules. I love having rules. I'm the ruler. I'm your ruler. So uh that's not why we did it. But it's it's important. If you if you're running a business, you're trying to make a living, you're also trying to get a good night's sleep. These are the types of things that can help. All right. It's that time of the podcast where we provide a generally understood sort of misconception about business. We call it bad business advice. And once we've shared it with you, we kind of just give our two cents on why we think it's bad advice. We like to riff, if you will. We like to keep it casual. Some of you are like, I wish you'd keep it less casual. I wish you'd have uh some more rules for yourself in the podcast. By the way, regulars, I listen to these podcasts too. It's not just you. So I listen to them as well. And I'm taking notes. And if you're if you're saying to yourself, man, I wish they'd stop saying like, trust me, I've already talked to my co-host about that. Here's some bad business advice for you. Let's hear it. Well, you tell me if you think it's bad or not. If you're busy, you're successful. Of course I think that's bad business advice. I would love to hear more. Well, okay. Well, first of all, I do think that there are people out there, I know some of them, whose goal is to be busy. It's all about priorities. If you're listening to appointment only, my guess would be your priorities are a little bit more in line with ours, which is successful. Well, I mean some again, successful would be busy in some people's definition. For me, it means profitable and it means an easy pace. I personally don't love to be, I like to be well, we call it is manageable. I was just gonna say, maybe let's say a manageable pace. We like to be what we call manageably busy, which ebbs and flows depending on the time of year. I like to have, you know, something every day at work, whether it's a, you know, a fitting, a final fitting, or something, what we call a CEO job, which would be uh interview or a media thing or meeting with a contractor or going to the bank, going to the bank, or doing our uh coaching calls in the morning. You know, those types of things are all kind of the CEO jobs. And then we have the custom clothier jobs. So manageably busy. I like to have a thing or two. Every day, but I don't like to be in appointments for five hours a day. A couple hours in an appointment every day is totally fine. And then I personally really wish we could schedule a sweats day every day. I mean that would be great. Which just does not happen. But sweats day would be like errands, miscellaneous stuff, figuring things out at the shop. I mean, we're we're coming into a season now where fortunately we're a little bit slower selling suits, but we're also in the process of renovating this new building for our shop, and we're gonna be moving, and there have been so many we rebranded and we're we're doing a lot of the different appointments and stuff for those types of things. So it's been like a weird season for us where I'm feeling a lot busier than I like to feel. I mean, this podcast adds something to our plates that we do every week or almost every week. But to be busy is not to be successful. To be busy is to be busy. To be busy is to be busy. And I and and I would say there's there's an element of busyness where for some reason I think entrepreneurs have a tendency to enter these seasons where they're willing to like work themselves to the bone and not see any sort of a positive result from that, aside from the fact that you were just really busy. And I don't associate busyness with feeling accomplished. In fact, sometimes if I'm really busy, it's because I didn't set the groundwork correctly so I can feel accomplished. Exactly. I mean, and that's because your priority is not to be slammed. Right. Your priority is to feel manageably busy. So when you're way too busy, that doesn't feel like a win. That feels like you've maybe done something wrong. Right. And then there are some days where we, you know, we have a meeting or two meetings and we leave, and I'm like, man, I feel really good about that. That felt really productive. I felt really engaged mentally. I felt really checked in. You know, if I get to the end of a long day where we've had a bunch of meetings more than I personally like, and I can't really remember what we were saying. I feel like I zoned out. I was kind of like tripping over my words because I was mentally tired. I don't like feeling like that. Some people do, not me. So I guess it's it's a priorities thing. It's not necessarily blanket bad business advice per se. But in our definition of what it means to feel accomplished and be successful, busyness doesn't translate into that. It would be, I guess, the same type of idea where if somebody told me if your business is profitable, then it's a successful business, I would be more in line to agree with that advice. Yeah. But I bet there are people out there who would say, well, I disagree and here's why. And I guess we're all entitled to our own opinion because the definition of success is personal to everybody. So I suppose if if your definition of success is just having a slammed calendar, then busyness equates to that. And some people cannot sit still. Some people have to be busy. They have to be doing stuff, they have to be working. I know many people like this. That's just that's not me. I've never wanted to do that. That's not how I am now. And so, no, I disagree with that, although I'm sure people would argue with me about it. Thanks so much for coming to your appointment. Hope some of this was helpful. Hope we've given you something to think about it as it relates to training your clients. If you have any questions about training your dogs, uh, I'm probably not your guy to help with that. I always thought I would be the uh the iron fist on our dogs, and I'm definitely you always keep a rolled up newspaper in your back pocket. That's what I thought. Bad boys. Yeah, that's what I thought I would be such a disciplinarian. And I'm like, oh, that's okay that you went to the bathroom in the basement. It's okay. It's cold out. I get it. It's okay that you pooped on my pillow. It smells good, kind of actually. Yeah, actually. I'm sure you're happy about it. It's soft. You're right. It is cozy in here. Yeah. So don't ask me about that. But uh training your clients, crucial. We hope you gave you something to chew on. We hope you got something out of the episode. If you didn't get anything out of this episode, why are we still doing this? Why are we still talking? Why are you still listening? Oh, we better come up with something that they can gather from it. If you didn't learn anything from this, or if you're not going to implement anything, you shouldn't be listening to this body. Bad boy. Time for your spanking, bad boy. Training is important. And we as business owners get trained all the time from things that go well and things that don't go well in our business. And it is important that we return the favor to our clients and our customers and train them in the way that works best for us and the way that ultimately will work best for them. This appointment is over. We will see you at your next one. And that's that. Today's appointment is over. This has been appointment only. Your time is valuable, and we're very appreciative of you spending some of it with us. Thanks for showing up. Thanks for being on time. Thanks for being receptive to what we have to say. And if you have a question you'd like us to answer here on appointment only, please shoot us a DM. We would love to hear from you. We would also appreciate a five star review. We'd love if you'd follow along. Follow us here however you're hearing this, and follow us on Instagram at Appointment OnlyPod.