How We Stopped Underselling Our Shirts and Boosted Revenue

Are you still hesitating about raising your prices? Today, we’re talking about the changes we’ve made after moving into a new shop, why we finally decided to raise our shirt prices, and how small tweaks in scheduling and client management have made a huge difference in revenue and sanity. Through these changes, we’ve uncovered a sharper vision of our mission and discovered how to scale sustainably. If you’re wondering about the shifts you’ll need to take in order to become more profitable, stick around to hear how we finally got out of our own ways and learned to make confident moves that our clients love. 

Highlights

00:00  - Big changes call for big conversations: what's different this season on the podcast and in our business.

05:15 - Our new shop and the impact its had on client experience, workflow, and our mindset.

09:56 - Creating a buying environment that supports clients and sales.

15:24 - Why luxury requires elevated experiences. 

17:39 - The realization that we were underselling our shirts.

20:05 - Simplifying the sales process: more revenue, fewer clients.

22:31 - Six figure up-sells in action and how to implement premium prices confidently.

26:29 - The market we've opted out of in order to target repeat, high-value buyers.

29:53 - The power of small changes and taking action right now. 

36:58 - Have you raised your prices yet? 

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

 Follow
Appointment Only in IG: @appointmentonlypod

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Would you like to know how many people have asked to purchase less expensive shirts? Zero. 100% success rate. Just because we decided to make a change that we knew was a long time coming, we said, okay, we're done making excuses. We're just going to do it. And that's a little bit twofold, where part of it is the confidence in which you approach your presentation and the confidence in which you are offering your recommendations. The other part, and this is this is the part that I think many of you listening are after, is the other part of that is we have the people sitting in the room who it literally doesn't matter if the shirt costs $250 or $550. This is appointment only, the podcast for custom clothiers and entrepreneurs building profitable high-end businesses. If you want control, profitability, and freedom from what feels like an endless hustle, this is for you. We're Kenny and Danny, twin brothers from day one and business partners for more than 15 years. We're sharing insights from our own experiences as luxury custom clothiers who built our own business from nothing. The highs, the lows, and what we've learned along the way that will help you build a high-end business you actually enjoy running and isn't running you. Clothier Coaching's official podcast. Appointment only starts now. Welcome back to Appointment Only. I'm talking to you and I'm talking to me. Welcome back to One and All. It's season two. Season two. That's what we're that's what we're choosing to call it. Season two. And did you know that you were listening to season one? Or did you think you were just going to be listening and it was never going to end? Well, we had always expected to take a break around the holidays. We didn't tell you that, but we had always decided that we were going to take a break. And we did. And boy, did we take a break. We took a break and did we just kind of changed everything about our lives in the break. If you're watching on YouTube, uh, well, I guess my first question would be why are you watching on YouTube? I I never understand that. I'm not a YouTuber as far as uh I mean, I I guess I technically we are YouTubers. Yeah. We're on YouTube. Yeah, what are you talking about? You're not a YouTuber. I when I listen to podcasts, though, I generally listen to them. I do as well. Rather than watch. But if you're watching, thank you so much for watching. And then I guess my second question to you is uh notice anything different? What do you think? Looks a little bit different. We kind of switched things up on you. We're still here. I we're still sitting on the same sides of of the screen, but we're in a different studio. We're in a different spot. The studio here, it's gonna work much better for us. We have our closet right there so we can give you better looks, if you will. Yeah, we're gonna be uh we're gonna be serving the looks. Serve a silver platter. Now we will serve. And uh, but we're right here in the back of our shop. And there's a uh tour for you on our Instagram. If you're not, if you're well, if you're not following us on Instagram, I don't know how on earth you would have found the podcast. But if you'd like, you can please follow us appointment only pod on Instagram. I love how you're looking at me, trying to get me to confirm. You're probably not even signed into it. Let me look. That that's for sure the appointment only pod. Yeah. So some things never change. That's right. Thanks for following along. We are really glad to be back, believe it or not. And uh we're excited to get going. Just a couple of things as we re-enter podcast world. Today's episode is gonna be sharing with you about some of the changes that have been going on, not only physically. Yeah, like not like puberty. Not only puberty. I noticed a few hairs the other day in a couple places. And uh no, we're talking about physical changes, of course, with where we're at and the neighborhood and the shop and when we moved and all that. We're gonna tell you a little bit about that. What's more interesting though, and probably what you're gonna be getting out of the episode throughout the course of listening, is we've actually implemented some business changes precipitated by the move. These business changes are some that if you follow the uh the clothier coaching stuff in your in million dollar manual or mastering the wedding suit game or six-figure upsells, all of those courses are relevant. All of those things work, they're proven strategies and they've worked for us, but they've also worked for many, many people who've who've gone through them and who've implemented the changes. We're in a process now, though, of of making another round of changes. We've kind of we're at like the master's level now of what we're been what we've been doing, and we've been unapologetically leaning even more into luxury in this new location. And we've implemented some changes that are not represented in the clothier coaching materials. Clothier Kingdom, that's the other one. There we go. I was I knew there were four million dollar manual, mastering the wedding suit game, six-figure upsells, and the clothier kingdom. Those trainings, link in the Instagram, are all relevant, but we've implemented some new things. And we're gonna tell you a little bit about some of those things in today's episode. One new thing, specifically about this podcast, is that it is still for those of you business owners who want to run high-end luxury businesses. It absolutely is still for you. One thing we're gonna do a better job of in season two and beyond is speaking unapologetically about our business, the custom clothing business, and speaking specifically to you custom clothiers who listen and watch and follow along on this podcast, because that is the majority of the listeners, as we've as we've heard feedback from people, are people who are in the same industry as us. And that makes sense, of course. So we are going to do a better job of speaking directly to you. That being said, small business ownership principles all still apply for people who want similar things, where you're running a business that is catered to a certain clientele, where you're being unapologetic about who you are, who you're for, who you're not, who you're not for, and running a lifestyle business that can give you an amazing life, where you're not worried about the fact that you're not on a track to a billion. You're not, you're not worried about the fact that you're not- You're not gonna speak for yourself. You're not worried about the fact that you're not gonna go public. Business owners who want the same things. This is still for you. Custom clothiers, we're gonna speak more unapologetically to you as we move forward with this pod. We're yes, we're leaning into the custom clothing thing, and you know, we're gonna give the people what they want. That's right. We've been hearing from you. We we we've been hearing you say, we want more. Give me more. And uh, and the the limit does not exist. Yeah, and you will gobble it up. Don't like that. You look very comfortable. I'm gonna go ahead and lean back a little bit. Another thing you'll notice if you're watching on YouTube is that in our new shop, we have all sorts of amazing skylights. What that means for the lighting for our episodes is oh, here comes the sun. Perfect example. Here it comes. You saw the cloud cover, and then you saw the sun come out. And that's just gonna be a fun thing for you to watch for. So even though the set looks like you're in a basement, a dungeon, really, it really looks, it kind of looks like my parents' basement with the wood paneling, the the rug. Uh, but it we're we're not, we're I'm looking at the street right now. Uh, we're we're in our shop and there's just some natural light, which is good. You know, keeps the seasonal depression away. That's right. Where on where where the hell do you want to start here? Is this this is kind of feeling like when I ran when I run into someone that I went to high school with at the state fair and they say, What's new? And I'm just like, well, I'm 38 years old. So uh where do I begin? That's kind of how it's feeling here. There have been a lot of changes that we've made. So I guess we'll just kind of start with chronology around the holidays, which is when we took a little breather from episodes. Well, shortly after the holidays, we started to move into our new shop. We've been talking about it in season one. Yeah, we'd been talking about it. It was pending. Uh, construction was taking longer than anticipated, no surprise there. But shortly after the holidays, we actually moved in to the new shop. And it was a long time coming, but it felt really great. And it still feels great. There's still things we're actively working on on in the back room. But if you follow us on Instagram, you've seen kind of what the client-facing area looks like. And it's working very, very well. Our inspiration design-wise for the front was we were intentional this past, well, I guess it was the last summer, right? When we were in our summer designer forum. We came in a day early, uh, earlier than we usually do, and we said we're gonna just bop around to different boutiques. We're gonna get our design in spoke for our new shop here in New York. So, really, the aesthetic is kind of inspired by the Laurel Piana up uh on the Upper East Side in New York City. And I mean, it's it's actually it just so happens to also kind of be the exact opposite of the way our old shop looked. That shop was great, but it was a much warmer. It was warmer tones of wood, it was dark, like black cabinets, uh, very I think it was like a honey wood floor. This shop is much more open, bright, cool tones, cool wood, concrete floor. So the exact opposite, which I love. It's it's cool, it's different. It's different. We're changing it up and we are loving it, and our clients are loving it. And as we moved in, we uh started trying to figure out how to run our meetings from here. You know, if you know us or have been listening to the pod or have gone through any of our clothing or coaching uh courses, you know that we are rhythmic, that we have scripts that we follow, that we do things in in a very similar way every single time because we're doing it that way so that X result is the result that is is the end is the end one. And uh well said. It was one of those things where you don't know how you're gonna end the sentence. I could tell everyone could tell. So it took us a while to get our bearings and figure things out. We we shortly after we moved in, we ended up back in New York for uh the designer forum again. And it was there that we sat down with a higher-end shirt company, Thomas Mason. For those of you custom clothers out there, you know what we're talking about. We've always historically used shirts in our business as kind of a bonus. Well, and if you are in Clothier Kingdom, there's a training, which by the again, this that training is very relevant and will help you. But sort of the the vibe of the training was that shirts kind of a bonus, kind of an afterthought. There's not a ton of money to make. Yeah. Don't shirts the way we were selling them back in the day. Yeah, we'd rather I'd rather spend my time selling an additional suiting piece than really talking about shirts in any real capacity. But when we sat down with Thomas Mason and we we looked at the colorations and we heard the story of the mill, and we we were kind of kicking ourselves a little bit for the attitude that we'd historically had in our appointments uh about our shirts. And one of the things that we did when we when we moved here was we just started allotting more time for everybody, whether they are a groom, whether they're buying clothes for work, whether they're doing something else. We had some bad habits that we had implemented in 2021, where it was the wedding boom and we were reacting and we were also experiencing this business boom for the first time. And we scheduled our days very back to back, which worked really well. And that really never stopped. Even as we shifted our business exclusively to speaking the language of our target demo and focusing on this is the type of client we're after. We still were in that bad habit of scheduling people with too close to one another. Well, and it wasn't even because our days were just jam-packed. That's just how we scheduled. So there was never a buffer. We would schedule an hour and a half for a fitting, which is there is a built-in buffer in that hour and a half. Right. But that's it, so but there's that doesn't leave any room for anyone to be early or late or for someone to have a meeting that goes a little bit long. So there was an hour and a half, and then as soon as the very next minute, someone's final fitting starts. So, yes, there's a little bit of a buffer, but not much. And we changed that when we came here. We just said, you know what, we want to just give ourselves the time that we need to take a breather. And also, we don't know what how people are gonna feel about parking. We're not really sure. So let's just give a little bit more time in between stuff. So now, you know, it's still scheduled for 90 minutes, client-facing. They see their start and end time, but we aren't gonna schedule. Which is helpful for the meeting we just got out of. Exactly. I saw dad, it was this it was a groom who brought brought his parents. Dad was like looking at his his watch the whole time. Yeah, I'm like, Which is great. Yeah. Thanks, Dad. But all that to say, we are sitting right now in our in our new studio that we when we moved in here, we thought would be our waiting room. Yes, it was very important. We we initially the nobody's waiting around. The original plans of the the shop was we were gonna have a waiting room in the front. We thought it was gonna be just the the hot spot, all sorts of people coming and going. Uh, but we don't need it. We don't need a waiting room anymore because we're scheduling our days smarter and it doesn't really impact us in a negative way at all. All it does is give us more time to spend more time. And then what ends up happening is we we've been selling more. Another thing that has changed, and I will get I will get back to the shirts because I know all of you custom clothiers listening are like finished that what you were saying. I'm curious about that. But before I do, little cliffhanger for you there, that's gonna keep you on the line. I'm just gonna have to stay tuned. Another thing that we did, I I remember talking explicitly about this in one of the Clothier Kingdom trainings was we don't have a client-facing clock anymore. That was one of the things that we did when we were in that back-to-back habit of, you know, people's appointments are happening, and then there's a next one coming in next, and then we got another one later, is we put a really cool client-facing clock to kind of underscore the idea that this meeting's end time is coming up. We don't need to have that anymore. We still it's still a cool clock. We and we still got it, but it's it's in the it's next to the fridge, I think. Yeah. Um, speaking of clocks, one thing that's new, have you noticed Danny's new business? Danny's a watch trader now. I am. Is that the official term? Yeah, I guess so. Watch trader? Yeah, yeah. I've uh you you know we've we've always been into watches, and that's just something I've started dipping my toe in the water of lately. I've sold a couple. Uh I am profitable. Congratulations. It's more than I can say for a lot of custom clothier out there. That's actually how we knew it was time to bring the podcast back. Was Danny was Danny was doing the watch trading, and I was, I was like hanging lights and I was trying to, I was getting the podcast studio ready. And we thought, okay, I think we're at the point finally now where we have the bandwidth mentally to think about something other than the stress of a transition. Yeah, we're we're like we're literally thinking about other things now. We're not so all consumed with some of the frustrations and and challenges that we had with our move and with getting used to new customs regulations and and and we we finally have the ability to literally think about other things sometimes. So let's do the podcast again. It's time for season two. But that's a change that we made in our business. We're we are huge advocates for all of you listening. Uh, if you're new, we are advocates of catering to a luxury clientele, charging what you're worth, but you have to elevate elements of what you're doing in order to justify some of those increases of price. Which brings us back to the shirts. Shirts. So we are sitting down with Thomas Mason, we're hearing the story, we're looking at the fabrics. We have we have carried Thomas Mason forever. Oh, we've had it for a year. We've moved four times with that. Every time we brought a Thomas Mason box out, it was like and all the dust blew everywhere. We never touched it. We we just we we never had a good uh a good presentation for showing it. The books were did feel clunkier than the other books we had. And here's the downside of being us and having your process locked and loaded and your scripts is we didn't have a script and we didn't have a process for Thomas Mason. And admittedly, showing Thomas Mason is a hell of a lot more difficult than showing the less expensive shirts. You got to figure it out. And we hadn't figured it out. So every time we're reaching for it, it's like, I don't like this. I don't like, we're not, I'm not gonna do this. And somewhere along the line, we we had we had actively with some frequency had conversations about Thomas Mason. And we just kind of got to the point where we decided we just don't have enough time to get into it at the end of these meetings. At the end of these meetings, these clients are fatigued with decisions. They just want us to present them with shirts. Sometimes the custom clothier is fatigued. Yeah, that's right. After working with certain people. And we just don't have we don't have room in what we're doing for Thomas Mason. And we don't have the time either. But when we're in New York and we're in our new shop and we have a little bit more of a not necessarily an understanding, but a little bit more of a tuned-in perspective to what it is that we're trying to do. We're looking at each other and and we're like, what are we doing with shirts? Why is it that we have capped ourselves at these $250 shirts to go along with these five, six thousand dollar suits? Doesn't make any sense. It it our our ties cost $250. Why would a shirt also cost $250? If you think about it, it actually logically doesn't make any sense. So we were confronted with this stupid bad habit that we just continued to bring with us to every iteration of our business. And we decided that this change physically was a good opportunity to force ourselves out of our own comfort zones and elevate what we were doing with shirts. And now we have more time, and that's one of the best things about being a business owner is when you decide something is going to change in your business, you can change it today. You can change it tomorrow. We love doing this with Luxury Clothier Collective, which is our mastermind group of custom clothiers who want to run businesses that are similar to ours, where it's more luxury focused, uh not wedding focused, although that will still happen, but that's not the primary target. And it's just overall bigger and better business, not necessarily larger as far as like more locations, necessarily, more profitable, a lifestyle business. And not necessarily more clients either. In fact, better clients, when you turn that, when you when you turn that page and you make that subtle shift into, I want to be a more profitable business, what it often looks like is you're working with fewer clients who are spending significantly more. And there's a way to do that. There's a way to do it smart, and there's a way to do it in a strategic way that keeps the health of your business. But as we've been talking to our clothiers in Luxury Clothier Collective this year, they are all up year to date. And I believe they are all, maybe maybe there's an one exception, but I I believe they are all year-to-date down in number of people. Number of transactions, I I I think you're right, is down for almost everyone. And their average transaction is significantly up, and their year-to-date revenue is also up. But these people in Luxury Clothier Collective are making the changes in real time. They're hearing something. We've we got we got a few of them onto Thomas Mason as well from just sharing this experience with them. Uh feel free to give it a try. Uh, you know, please, that's why you're listening. But uh it's making the changes. It's not about, it's not about having the information and doing nothing with it. It's actually taking that next step, getting out of your own way, and being willing to feel a little bit uh out of sorts to potentially make a big impact in a big change. I can't even, I don't, I don't know. I wish we would have done the math on how many tens of thousands of dollars additional we've made this year simply from shifting the way that we show shirts. Uh and I do want to share we haven't actually created a whole presentation where you have all of the that's that's what we were freaked out about with the Thomas Mason stuff was how are we gonna have now a shirt presentation after we've done all of the stuff for all the suits? It doesn't have to be a presentation. You just do it, you just show it. That's what you sell now. And that's what we did is we tried a few meetings where we were explaining, oh, here's our three different levels of shirt. shirts and too much and we are watching we're we're watching the client's reaction just the eyes just we're watching them just shut down where where they they don't they're not here to hear the sh to hear the spiel they don't care they don't care they just want us to tell them what to do so we tried the shirt presentation with a few people it never felt good and then we said okay what if we just only show these and we just charge what we're gonna charge for them and if somebody really wants to go back and see the less expensive shirts we absolutely can because we have enough time and to this date would you like to know how many people have asked to purchase less expensive shirts zero 100% success rate just because we decided to make a change that we knew was a long time coming we said okay we're gonna we're done making excuses we're just gonna do it and that's a little bit twofold where part of it is the confidence in which you approach your presentation and the confidence in which you are offering your recommendations. The other part and this is this is the part that I think many of you listening are after is the other part of that is we have the people sitting in the room who it literally doesn't matter if the shirt costs 250 or 550. Right that that's you can't undersell that fact. Yeah when you have the right people in front of you which is not easy but we teach you how to do it in our clothier coaching especially million dollar manual. And many of you do though already and that's the thing that I think when you present confidently and you offer recommendations, you will find quickly which clients of yours are going with your recommendations. It's the same thing that we talk about when we in our uh six figure upsells course where it's our job to to give feedback and offer recommendation recommendations. And it is always surprising to us the the number of people who take our recommendations. So it it's not just about well we have all these luxury buyers and and to all of our clients a few hundred bucks here or there doesn't make any difference. Like yes, that's true. But you're working with those people too and if you're spending so much time A only showing them your $150 shirt oh then of course that's what they're buying because that's what you're showing them. They can't buy it if they've never seen it. If you're only selling or only showing people $1500 suits well of course that's what you're selling. You're not showing them anything else you're not recommending anything else. You don't have any language in which to communicate why they would ever spend more God forbid you're wearing a $1500 suit when you're doing this. Don't even get me started. So I'm glad you brought up six figure upsells and spending more because that's another thing that we've noticed a very evident shift in our business as we have been in this new location and as we have been intentional about giving ourselves the time we need is six figure upsells for those of you who are unfamiliar is is a is a video course where we show you exactly how to make these upsells within your fitting appointments to recommend more things and get the people that you're working with to purchase more than the thing that they know they need you're really meeting more of their needs. You're helping them understand their needs in a way that maybe they haven't thought of before that's six figure upsells and uh it's called six figure upsells because the first the first year we decided we were going to give it a try, we made over $100,000 just from saying hey have you ever thought about this one thing that we've changed though here is of course we still do the six figure upsell practices within our appointments but because we've been giving ourselves a little more time in the final fittings as well as the initial fittings we have found that by making some of these additional recommendations on the back end as well, we just did this today with our final fitting. We're selling additional pieces a lot of times it's an extra pair of pants or two sometimes it's an extra shirt sometimes it's another suit which that we did a suit yesterday. A guy came in to pick up a jacket and a pants separate and he ended up buying a three-piece suit and an additional shirt. That's in a half hour. That's pretty good hourly rate if you ask me. So that's one thing that we've changed too and those are the types of things that we're helping luxury clothier collective with is we're helping them understand how to take advantage and capitalize on the luxury buyers that they do have. It is about having the right people because the wrong type of customer for your business growth is not going to be receptive to that. And our track record for this is not 100%. It's not 100% of times when people come in to pick up, they're also buying more but I've actually been really surprised at the frequency at which it's happening. I mean it's it's I don't know exactly it's not it's more than a third of the time yes it happens. So let's just let's riff on this a little bit because you mention it's it's a certain type of client who is is able to do this. I'll tell you right now 90% of grooms are not going to do this. They're not there. This is not for the businesses that are catering to weddings that's another thing that we that we shifted when we moved here you know that we haven't actually catered our business to wedding clients for years. But what we did when we moved here is we got a new website and we took all of our wedding language off and all of our wedding photos off. If you comb through Kingbrosclothiers dot com you will not see a mention of wedding you will not see a single picture of a groom and that was purposeful. And it was terrifying oh yeah when we were working through our branding uh strategy with the company that we hired we were talking about things we were talking about revenue we were talking about frustrations and uh the the guy who we were working with said guys we are not putting anything wedding related on your website I'm hearing what you're saying I'm understanding the revenue that they bring in but let's do your own math on your target demo makes up how many wedding clients? Exactly and it was still scary knowing that our business wasn't geared towards weddings, knowing the number of what a target demographic makes up you know five or so wedding appointments, knowing that it was still scary because it's the low hanging fruit and it's the low hanging fruit that every custom clotier gears their business towards because it's easy and it felt scary to make that change. Even though it was our idea I mean yeah it was our idea. It was our idea to do it. We've been working our business towards this forever but when it push comes to shove it is hard to take that next step and to to really make that decision to say yeah I'm I'm gonna do it. Yeah I'm gonna stop showing my cheap shirts and I'm gonna just start showing Thomas Mason. It's scary when you don't have it all figured out and you don't have a track record and you're unsure how it's gonna look it's freaky but it's always worth it. It's freaky when you decide to triple your rent payment and move to a new place and spend six figures on renovating the whole thing. That's freaky but it's worth it. When you stop just receiving information and data and you start to implement and make decisions based on the information you have that's when things change. And by the way isn't that your expectation of all of your clients exactly that they that they enter into their relationship with you and their past information gathering mode and they're in action mode like we we don't take consultations. You know this why the hell would I spend my time wearing a suit talking about your hypothetical wedding suit and you leave and you're no fur you're no closer to having that suit in your possession than you were when you walked in doesn't make sense it's a horrible use of everybody's time the only person whose time that is worth is somebody who doesn't value their time and that ain't me. And that is not the clients I want to be working with I do not want to work with anybody who doesn't see their time as valuable. Isn't that your expectation of people who you work with that they're not just in information gathering mode that they're not just consuming data certainly not you know free data free information isn't that the expectation so why would it not be important as a business owner to be in that mode to enter at some point in time after you've weighed pros and cons, after you've done the research after you've done the math into decision making mode and this whole soapbox is nothing new. No. That is not a new perspective since we've moved or in the last however many months since you've been waiting at the edge of your seat for our next episode. Yeah. This is just the way it goes this is the way we run our business this is what appointment only is all about this is why we started appointment only was to talk about this specifically and also to give you the tools to do it yourself. And hopefully as you're listening, you're not hearing us pat ourselves on the back. You're hearing us say, here are the times where we realized we had been doing it wrong. Here are the times where we were terrified to make a choice but did it anyway and here we are looking back on being terrified and understanding that we had a broken process, tried things, fixed it and now we're looking at it saying I'm so glad we made that choice. This is not just an opportunity for us to say, oh look how great we are and look how great our business is and our clients look how high end they are it's there are terrifying experiences or maybe terrifying is the wrong word. There are tough decisions that you have to make when your business is on the line and your business could go one of two ways. That's a scary place because deep down you want the easy thing, you want the low hanging fruit but long term you know what's really going to help you and why you really got into this business in the first place is to go after the thing that's more difficult to get. And so you operate in a way where you try to have it both ways. And we're saying we've never been able to figure out a way to have it both ways. So we decided to go after the thing that's harder to get clients who repeat by, who buy more than one thing at a time who purchase orders when they're picking up their previous one. They make comma decisions. Who make comma decisions like that who don't think it's salesy when we're giving them advice who don't feel thrown off and annoyed when we say you know what you could really use next whoa whoa whoa I just but let me get some use out of this who don't say that who say oh that's a really good idea. That's a lot harder. And ultimately that's what allows you to run a high-end business for the right types of clients who energize you. They don't suck all your energy from you. That's what we've been working on lately and that's what we're working on in luxury clothier collective I'm very excited because we have our first luxury clotier collective retreat coming up the end of this month. And uh that's part of the reason why we were trying to get all of our stuff figured out figured out here. We're hosting it here at the shop and uh you know it's the we admittedly we didn't really pay as much attention to the back area as the front area, the client facing area. So it was it was time to finish everything up. So we're having them come uh and we're gonna spend a weekend it's actually happening midweek that was what we voted on but we're gonna spend a few days together going through uh our trainings having a lot of great food and uh some drinks and just having a great time together I cannot wait for this I'm very very excited about it. Like we said the people in Luxury Clothier Collective are seeing huge financial results and they are experiencing big changes. And sometimes it's not so big it's little things that they're tweaking and they're they're figuring out oh yeah this works pretty good. But that's what we're working on in real time. We do calls every single week with everyone so they're not just listening to the podcast trying to pull snippets out. We're we're in their business with them helping them work through through things in real time. And we'll of course fill you in uh listening on how the retreat goes and all of that and and what we're working on with people in luxury clothier collective as things come up. But we just wanted to use this first episode as an opportunity to reacquaint ourselves with you and to fill you in on what's been going on behind the scenes, where we're at now uh and just kind of catch you up because it does feel in some ways when somebody runs into me, I haven't seen them in a while they say what's new? Literally nothing. You know, I'm I'm still just showing up and selling suits. Yeah that that's that's exactly what I was thinking when you were talking about that is in some ways everything is different about our business that we're running today. We're in a different location where it it feels like a totally unrecognizable business but in other ways and really a real a more realistic way, we're still doing the exact same things we were doing last time we talked with you. Nothing's different. When we started the podcast we're still doing the exact same things and that's that's the thing about running a business catering towards a certain client and and being unapologetic about it is it it's just active. Well and all these changes we've been telling you about that especially when it comes to in our appointments they feel big to us because we're so locked and loaded on stuff but they're small things. It's little tiny tweaks in the way we do things that have proven to make a huge difference and never once have we implemented something that we've known we need to implement and said, you know what? I I am going to go back to my old prices. I am going to charge less moving forward for this. Have you ever done that? Have you ever raised your prices and then six months later said ah I really liked the old ones more well because we do you I'm sure you do this too when you raise your prices is everybody's always freaked. I mean anytime there's ever like an opportunity for a QA with us we always get this question when should I raise my prices? And we you know in clotier coaching resources we are constantly saying today now do it now why why are you asking me? You should have done it already. Yeah I'm not your boss there's not you're the boss and don't we always do this thing when we you know make a big change like raising prices well I can always go back well I can always I can always go back to to my old prices if it doesn't work out. Well do you do you ever do that? No you don't need to because it works. It works and it feels scary and it feels weird and you don't know if it's gonna work but at this point don't you know it's gonna work at this point we we could tell you we can tell you with our business is this going to work or no I'm gonna say this just because we're talking about it and I know it's gonna continue to come up. Ten years ago we were selling thousand dollar suits if you're selling thousand dollar suits today in 2026 you are way too low. Suit Supply Indochino Joey Banks men's warehouse let them sell thousand dollar custom suits I mean even I feel like I think even men's warehouses is higher than that. Maybe but I'm telling you if you're listening to this and the idea is I want to run a better business than I'm running today that is your step number one and you don't even have to change anything. That's not that price jump where you better be ex providing something different or more unique or elevate the experience you're you're giving your clients you can justify raising out of $1,000 today with the exact same product it's just too low. We are in 2026 inflation it's a think of I paid five dollars and thirty cents per gallon for gas yesterday. Yeah I couldn't believe it. What else in your life if you're selling thousand dollar suits what else costs the same today as it did 10 years ago I can't think of anything. So why would suits be the one thing that stays the same through the test of time it's just too low. You can't make any money selling thousand dollar suits you can sell a lot of suits but you can't make any money doing it. Just want to throw it out there. So I guess if you're feeling a little tingly in your tummy about that. If your tumor hurts that's your homework think about that. And you know what think about it. Well that's what I was going to say and you know what? Think about it and then stop thinking about it and do something about it. Stop noodling on it. Just do it. It's time to do not just time to think we are glad to be back. We hope you stick with us uh as we continue to put episodes out as frequently as we were which is every week and we're gonna be talking about things that are timely we're gonna be talking about things that are really happening in our business in some of your businesses but we don't just want this to be us talking about ourselves. If there's something you need to hear if there's something you want us to talk through if there's something that you're hoping we'll get to at some point in an episode please reach out. You know how to contact us you have you know how to send DMs people understand how to do that now. So you can always please feel free to send us a DM if there's something you want us to talk through here on appointment only. But for now we're gonna leave it there. Your appointment's over we'll see you for your next one. If you're a custom clothier and you want to be more profitable, less stressed and work with more of your target demographic client who spends more and buys more often, we share our exact strategies on how to do that and our resources available now on clothiercoaching.com, including Million Dollar Manual, a playbook for turning your six-figure business into a custom clothing business that makes more than a million dollars every year. For higher touch, more direct access to us, we have a small mentorship group called Luxury Clothier Collective where we're actively helping clothiers around the country become their markets leader. If you're serious about finally building that profitable luxury custom clothing business you've always wanted, this is your next move. Join the wait list and we'll let you know when enrollment opens again. Thanks for listening