Here is the transcript page for episode #9.
Please visit the full episode page #9 – Mitche Graf – Business – Delivering 6-Star Service In A 1-Star World For complete show information.
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Rick Mazur: One of the reasons I wanted to have you on is the business understanding and all the things you’ve done. We get many business people who come in, and I think when people want to start a business, they know the basic things. I need a website inventory. I need to name my business.
What licenses do I need and all that? They’re all important things. Businesses are faced with an onslaught of all these things. Like failure, and what if I start this thing and it doesn’t work? How am I going to handle my customers and personnel, uncertainty, and branding?
So I wanted to touch on—those issues. And maybe we can talk about failure if you have any thoughts about that?
Mitche Graf: I’ve been very fortunate in my career where I’ve been able to build my businesses. And scale them and sell them in many cases because I’m passionate about what industry I’m in, whether it be food or manufacturing, a barbecue, Q, a pair of meat, shredder, claws, whatever it is I’ve been.
I love what I do, but other people out there are more about the opportunity. If an opportunity comes in front, they identify it as an opportunity they may want to pursue. It has nothing to do with the fact that, oh, I don’t like blue women’s purses. Right. It’s an opportunity that drops in their lap, and they also believe that opportunities present themselves to people who work hard.
They say, oh, he’s so lucky. Well, I don’t believe there’s such thing as luck, maybe a little bit, but most of it is because you put yourself in a position. To see those opportunities and to have them present themselves way back in the day. In the mid-eighties, the late eighties. I wanted to go fishing Wednesday afternoon in north Idaho.
Right? Take the afternoon off. And I was self-employed then. And I went to a convenience store to get some worms. They were sold out. I went to a sporting goods store. They were sold out over the process of about two hours. I went to about six or seven different places that either didn’t carry them or were sold out of worms.
So I found out the guy’s name. His name was Mr. Bait. And I called him. I said, Mr. Bait, it’s Wednesday. I’m trying to find worms. And he had this little gruff attitude, like, well, we service that area on Friday, and you’re just going to wait until Friday. So I got upset. I went home, got on the phone, started calling people, and found a person in forest Grove, Oregon, that sold worms by the thousands.
I designed a beautiful colored label. Because most worms are just black and white, right? So instead of a 12 pack, I designed an 18 pack. I called it jumbo, sheer strike, nightcrawlers, and jumbo, not meaning that the worms are bigger, referring to the container’s size because 12 is never enough.
24 is too many. 18 is that sweet spot. So, and I hired the best salesman that I knew. We went around Western Montana, north, Idaho, and Eastern Washington. And throughout a couple of months, we picked up about 600 accounts and were servicing them weekly. And I’ve always believed in the six-star mentality where we need to go above and beyond to service the client’s needs, not just meet expectations, but figure out ways to exceed expectations.
And that’s where the magic happens in any kind of business. Anyway, I get a phone call from him. You can’t do this. These are my accounts. And I said, well, I actually did it, and they’re not your accounts anymore. They’re mine. But tell you what, I don’t want to be in the word business. It was just an opportunity that presented itself.
I’ll sell it back to you. And I gave a price, and he hung up. Well, over the next two or three months, we went out and continued just to hammer it. We are just like 30, $40,000 a week in worms, right? Wow. So he called me back, and the bottom line was he cut me a check, but I said, you know what, it’s going to be a bigger check now because it’s now more profitable, and he got mad, but he ended up cutting me a check, and I got out of the worm business, but I didn’t have a passion for worms.
I love to fish. But it wasn’t the worms that got me excited. It was an opportunity. And so that’s just one of only a handful of examples. I can think of where I’ve jumped into an opportunity because I saw it as a chance to make some money and build that lifestyle. Right. Because the more money you can make, the more time you can take off to reinvest it in a bit.
Or invest in your kids or invest in yourself with self-exploration or self-education, and that’s just important. Still, I always believe you find something you’re passionate about that you’re in love with that you enjoy spending time with, and that becomes what your side hustle is, or that becomes how you build your business.
Rick Mazur: Yeah, that’s interesting because once you have all these businesses going and everything like that, everybody talks about work-life balance burn out and all that kind of stuff. What is the meaning of work-life balance and how important is it, and how do you put family first while you’re trying to run all these things?
Mitche Graf: I work on the principle of the 24 7 mentalities. And to me, 24 7 means 24 hours a week. Seven months a year. And I know that sounds weird, but after I explained to people that go, that makes sense. So every day I wake up, I look at everything that I’m going to do. How can I be more efficient in everything I do?
How can I take all the systems that exist in my businesses? Break them down to the fewest number of moving pieces and then rebuild. With fewer moving pieces, therefore freeing up resources and time. Right. And so I’m always thinking about how can I be more efficient with my time? And so 24 7:00 AM I successful sometimes?
Yes. Sometimes. No, but that’s my shiny beacon on the hill. Every day, I wake up trying to strive for that because I would love to work 24 hours a week and only seven months a year. And to be honest with you, I get pretty close to that 75% of the time. And the way I’ve done, that is. Like I mentioned in number two, look at the systems, make sure that the people around you are smarter than you are, hire good people, tell them the guidelines, tell them what you want, and then stay out of the way, let them do so their job.
Don’t micromanage them. Give your employees the power to solve problems on their own and to make decisions on their own. And that’s how you keep good people by not dictating, not micromanaging, but letting them spread their way. And so, It’s a combination of ingredients that I use for my recipe of success.
And delegate, automate, offload things that aren’t that important. Spend your time doing the things that help you build your business, not the management stuff. I don’t like sending emails. I don’t like doing social media. Social media is a big black hole. You can spend 10 hours a day on social.
I got someone that does all that for me. You could spend 24 hours a day. You can. Some people do because it is it’s that dopamine release in your brain. You want that, that, that recognition of somebody giving you a thumbs up because you posted a picture of your cat. And we want it. We want to see, oh, I got 19 likes in the first hour.
That makes me feel good. And it is a chemical thing that happens. Your brain releases dopamine. And it’s an incredible phenomenon, but I have someone that does all that. So even if it looks like me posting, it’s not most of the time. That’s okay. There’s nothing wrong with that.
As long, it is the people that are working for you. Like I said, there’s, they’re very smart. Smarter than me. And you give them the guidelines on how they can be successful and then give them those tools to be successful.
Rick Mazur: So you’re obviously at a point where you can hire people to do that. I think automation is very important, but many people don’t know how to do that or don’t have the budget to do it. Still, then they end up just in this consistent cycle of you’re doing your daily tasks, and then you’re doing, as you said, you’re doing your social media.
Time’s up. It’s time for bed. And then I got to go around it, and it’s like the cat chasing the dog’s tail or the dog chasing the cat’s tail. So we get a lot of questions about that as well.
Are there any specific automation areas you would think about starting with if somebody had to pick if they didn’t have a budget for many things?
Mitche Graf: Absolutely. And I’ll highlight it with a short story. I spent about 15 years in the professional photography industry. I had studios, and I traveled around the world, teaching photographers and videographers how to have a business, not how to take better pictures, but how to make money and make their phone ring.
Well, most professional photographers will shoot a wedding on Saturday. And they’ll spend all day Sunday retouching the files, putting Photoshop strokes on them, making sure that everything on the skin is blended, making sure they look beautiful. And then you ask a photographer. How much would you pay a digital guy to come into your studio?
That just saves 15, 20, 25 hours a week. And the average is 15 to 20 bucks. That’s what they would pay somebody. And then when you ask them, would you be willing to work for 15 or $20 an hour? They look at you like, are you? I’m a professional photographer. I would never work for that. Well, if you’re doing your digital workflow, you are working for that.
So there are companies now around the world that for $5 an hour. Do better jobs for professional photographers than people that are based right here in the United States. And you can find some for five bucks an hour. So that’s an example, and I know people who have completely revolutionized their studios and lives because they have offloaded that.
VA is just a virtual assistant to take care of emails, social media, take care of some basic paperwork, and help schedule your appointments, both inbound and outbound. You can find somebody, whether it be domestically based, or you can go to upwork.com. You can go to fiverr.com.
And F and you, if you search hard, you can find incredibly talented and available people that can make your life incredibly much better. And we’ve revolutionized everything. If you can, if you’re a 60-hour week guy, and through this automation that we’re talking about, you get down to 56 hours a week.
It doesn’t sound like much, but hallelujah, you just freed up four hours, week. That you can reinvest back into your business, into yourself, into your kids, into running, into playing cribbage, whatever you want to do with it. That becomes the magic secret sauce right there. And then that 56 becomes 53 and a half and then 49.
And before it, you’re on that road to the 24 7 lifestyles. And I always preach that everyone has a definition of what, 24 7. To me, it’s literal 24 hours a week, seven months a year. But to someone else, it might be 52 hours a week. And I just say amen to you and keep working at it.
Rick Mazur: And for the folks that are listening, I will have links to all those. Fiverr and those different things. So we’ll put some links to some good automation ideas and companies out there that can help you in that regard.
Mitche Graf: So graphic design, many people feel they have to do their designing unless you are classically trained, the bells and whistles and the color combinations and the graphics, and how to do you.
You should not be doing that. Absolutely. Should not be doing that. There are people that this is all they do, and they can do it for a, it’s less expensive. If you can free up one hour of your time, pay somebody a little bit of money, your hour, especially the owner. You should be valuing your time and your activities at 500 bucks an hour.
Just absolutely. If you’re a manager working for someone. 50 bucks an hour. You should not be spending most of your time doing the 50 or the $15 an hour activities. You should be doing the visionary stuff, the forward-thinking. How am I scale my business? How will I make my business more efficient so that we can be more profitable to have that time freedom and financial freedom to do the things in life that I want?
I lost my dad last year, right in the middle of COVID, and I already had a very. Take each day, one at a time mentality, but after we lost him and I was there for his last breath, and I got to spend it with him, then it’s funny in the back. Completely irrelevant. But remember the song you and I go fishing in the day.
Yeah, nitty gritty dirt band. That song was playing in the background. My dad’s favorite thing in the whole world was to fish, and that was just such an appropriate way, but it just made me realize that our lives are so fleeting and so precious that work is not what it’s all about. It’s about being present and available to your kids and family, friends, employees, and things.
Rick Mazur: Did he pass from COVID or something else?
Mitche Graf: No, it just, he was, he just had several complications, but it made it more difficult. Cause he was in the hospital for several days that we couldn’t see. And I finally negotiated with the doctor and the nurses to let him be released home so that everyone could say goodbye, including my kids.
Even though he was sleeping, I thought it was important that everybody got to say goodbye in their way. And I’ll remember that image for the rest of my life. But I also remember when he took me fishing when I was a little kid, and I know that your parents were divorced when you were very young.
Okay. And it changes the way that that you look at your relationship with your mom. My mom and dad were divorced when I was about 11. My mom worked three jobs, right? To put food on our tables. And I was a terrible junior high kid. I was smoking cigarettes and drinking. I was a terrible kid until she took my eighth-grade basketball.
And I said, oh, you can’t do that. I’m the star; I’m the captain. Oh yeah, watch this. And she took it away. And by golly, I straightened up, cut my hair shorter, and stopped doing all those bad things that 13, 14-year-olds sometimes do. And I thank her to this day for being the person that gave me that tough love.
Rick Mazur: Wow. Your story sounds a lot like mine. I had some long hair in my day, a little bit of a rebel. And
Mitche Graf: well, hopefully, we have some that rebel still inside of us. Rick
Rick Mazur: my parents divorced when I was eight, and yeah, my mom, same thing, three jobs, no car, and you appreciate you only get one mom and dad.
Mitche Graf: That’s right. It makes you appreciate that you don’t have to be rich when you get to a place in life. That’s just a that’s a, an arbitrary term. Rich could be that you have a job and kids that adore you and that you adore. That’s rich. The best riches you can ever have on this earth is to have those kinds of riches.
Yeah, business is secondary to me. And I know it sounds counterintuitive because of everything I have done and everything I’m doing right now, but it allows me. It’s a means to an end, being an entrepreneur, launching new products, and creating new ideas. I love the build. I love that challenge of obscene, something that I give birth to grow, and they also believe in collaborations.
Right. I know that I can’t do this on my own, so I always try to bring in partners, and yeah. I call them thought thinkers people into the loop and say, okay, give me your ideas. Cause I believe that one plus one equals three, you get the power of group things together—it ten folds, 50 folds, a hundred folds as far as what it returns to you.
So just, I recommend getting other people involved in your thought processes. Don’t just do this on your own. Get other people’s ideas. Concepts, thoughts, maybe they can think of something you haven’t thought of in building a new business. Maybe it’s a, Hey, have you thought about your branding?
Well no. Cause I don’t like branding. All I care about is building well, finding someone who knows how to sell and finding someone who knows how to do graphic design. Find someone that can do your social media, build this team around you, and good things will happen.
You don’t have to do it all yourself.
Rick Mazur: Yeah, I was going to go into that next as far as sales cause that’s the next biggest thing. We always get people to talk about. Okay, I started now, and you open the door and expect the customers.
Mitche Graf: There’s no business.
Rick Mazur: I hate to use the old cliche about you just having to go and hit the ground and hustle and grind and all that, especially now with this online world. But, do you have any suggestions to people concerning sales when you’re starting a business were to start
Mitche Graf: sales, more than any other element in your business, is important. So if you like to do it, that’s great. Learn how to do it to the best of your ability and do it. And if you don’t, if you’re just not a salesman, you don’t enjoy the process.
Absolutely. There’s no hesitation when I give that advice to find someone who knows how to sell understands the dynamic of interpersonal relationships. Find someone that does. And so much stuff is online now, which means that you have to make sure your website and your internet presence.
Is there for conversions because for every a hundred people you talk to, you’re going to get 99 nos and one, yes? A good salesman knows that they know that you got to get to those 99. Nope. I’m sorry. It’s not for me. Sorry. I got checked. My wife. Nope. It’s not good for me. No, it’s too expensive. 99. No’s to get to the one.
Yes. Well, on the internet, it’s about the same thing. If you drive people to a funnel, for example, and you got a hundred people, you drive on the top end, and one person drops out. It’s a pretty good day. That’s not bad, but you had to get 99 people that never came to the bottom of your funnel. So you hire someone who knows how to sell. Or invest some money and put some time and resources into learning how to do it and communicate.
The best advice for sales is to learn to be a good listener. I don’t think a lot of salespeople just think they have to talk. Here are my features and benefits. And here’s why she picked me no, listen to what the customer has to say, listen to their needs. And through that conversation, the answer will come.
And a lot of times, they will talk themselves into it. Because you just showed that you’re a good person and sincerely care about that customer, part of the six-star experience is just being a good listener and checking their needs. And
Rick Mazur: I want to get into that next because I think it’s super important.
The book that you have out. I like it because it focuses on the fact that if you’re going to succeed, it talks about being very customer-focused on your personnel, your business, and why those things are important.
Mitche Graf: Yeah. And to start, I think you have to go with the premise that customer service is not what it is today. Back in the olden days, I remember going to service stations because the guy would come up and say, hello there, how are you doing today? Can I check your oil, wash your windshield, check the pressure in your tires, do all that.
And oh yeah, you’d get gases. Well, we’ll tell you the calm gas stations, and you got to pump your gas. Back in the day, they serviced you, Carrie, and I can remember going. I lived in Ridgecrest, California. My dad was a civilian Navy in China. And I remember going to the gas station at the corner, going to my high school.
And I went there just to watch these guys work. And they would like Les Schwab’s today, up here in the Northwest; it’s a tire company. You drive up; they run out from the office. They greet you right there before you get out of the car. That’s part of their six-star service. And I would go just to watch it to this day.
I buy the same brand of gasoline at Chevron, but now they’re just gas stations, and you in Oregon, we’re not allowed to pump our gas. I think we’re one of the only states left you, probably. Yeah we if we get out, we get in trouble. It’s like a law. It gives more people jobs. I think that’s why the state of Oregon does it, which is great. But those people are holding the brand. Of multi-billion dollar companies in their hands, and there are no smiles. There’s no. Hello, sir. How’s your day going? There’s none of that anymore. So I wrote this book because I had several experiences in the last several years.
It’s like, oh, come on, you must be kidding me. Customers are not getting treated well now. So I came up with a book, customer service is dead, delivering six stars. In a one-star world and it’s based on six different star points because traditional world five-star restaurant, five-star hotel, we go to the internet.
We look at Yelp, and we look at travel or whatever. We look for companies that have five stars. I want to create a movie. That companies and customers expect more from the people that they do business with people that do business with me. I want them to know before they pick up the phone or pick before they go to a website.
I want them to know that we’re going to take better care than a typical business. If that happens, I’m going to get a lot more sales because of it. So, people who pronounced this kind of philosophy will be the differentiator between them and their competitors because of their ability to deliver a six-star experience.
So the six points of the star number. Th this is a promise. We have to make our customer’s first promise, do our best to exceed expectations, not just meet them, but exceed star number two and promise. Number two, treat customers like gold with every single interaction. All it takes is one bad interaction to lose a customer for life.
Star. Number three is to correct our mistakes. And efficiently, this is a hard one because people make mistakes. They don’t own up to it. They let it fester, and they let it get infected. After a while, we just lose the customer. We never hear from them again; they don’t call and say, Hey, we’re not going to buy from you.
They just go away because we did not quickly correct our mistakes. Star number four is to create an unparalleled culture of customer service. Excellent. And that starts from the top-down and the bottom up, it has to be owned that kind of plants this culture, and it starts with hiring the right people. A lot of people say, well, how do I change the culture? Well, you may have to change some employees. You need to hire customer-centric people who understand what it’s like to go above and beyond. And it might be time to let one or two people go that don’t understand that dynamic and hire people that have that mentality, but B that are trainable because I can teach anyone to do 90% of the jobs that I have. I could teach somebody how to manufacture on this line. I can teach somebody how to ship that box. I can teach somebody how to design a nice flyer. I can just; I can teach someone how to construct an email for 10,000 people.
I can teach that skill. I can’t teach you to be nice. So I always tell people. The best people first and then train them the skill. Star number five is we promise to build a relationship with you based on mutual respect. I think that’s an important element that’s been lost, and star number six is never forgotten that the customer’s the most important part of your business, and that’s why your doors are open.
So each channel. Talks about each one of those six points of the star. And it gets into actionable techniques and tips on ways to get this mentality in this mindset because it is a mindset on how you take care of customers. And I was just like to think of how I want to be taken care of when I go to a store; I want someone to at least look in my eyes and say, good afternoon, sir.
I don’t expect man. I don’t expect you to ask how the kids are. I just, I want some basic level of acceptance that, Hey, I’m your customer. I’m giving you some money here. Smile, be happy, make eye contact. That’s all I ask. And so many people nowadays just don’t do it. And I have no problem, Rick, if they don’t say hello.
Paper plastic, for example, the grocery store. And I always say, hello first, how are you doing? And then I answered their question. And we, this book, think it’s going to revolutionize how companies take care of their customers. In the first three weeks, we sold about 7,500 copies. So it’s getting some legs out there.
But it’s got a long way to go. We self-published, so we don’t have the advantage of having one of the big threes back in New York, taking this and blasting it everywhere. So we’re doing this gorilla marketing grill sales. Okay.
Rick Mazur: So to that point, like when I grew up if you were more in a career type of business, you stayed with the company for 30 years and earned your gold star. It seems like there’s no loyalty anymore. And that goes to the way the business owners are running the business and not providing the six-star service and everything else.
But the employees, especially those on the front line, because I hear many times from people say, oh, I talked to a customer service representative the other day. And she’s just like they don’t care about me. They treat me like I’m the low end of the totem pole.
So are we not getting the customer service experience as customers because the employees are not valued enough.
Mitche Graf: That’s part of it. The other part of it is that this hat has happened so quickly going from the human element, the human interaction to the internet just exploded in the last 20 years.
And then COVID comes around, and there’s even less human contact. So every business in the world. We had to get away from it, okay. Instead of our staff interacting with customers and sitting down and going over the proposal or whatever you do, whatever industry you’re in, that went away.
And it was replaced with phones, internet, email, and zoom. Right. None of those can do a handshake and sit down and pat someone on the shoulder; as you walk out of a restaurant, that whole thing went away. Well, I think businesses did it so quickly because they had to be sustainable and continue to be viable; they did so quickly that those frontline employees, God, forgot.
And to me, those are the most important people in the pyramid. It’s not that to the top down. It is. The customers are king. The employees work for the customers, and ownership needs to work for and support from the bottom up, support those employees. It is a cultural thing. And it does have to be from a to Z.
It can’t just be one guy in there saying, okay, I will take care of my customer base. And everyone else has to do it on their own. It needs to be a cultural thing. It needs to be in-service training. It needs to. No, maybe monthly meetings, just 30 minutes once a month with your staff, whether on zoom or in-person about here, are six stars each month.
We’re going to talk about one-star things that we can specifically do to make sure our customers feel valued, taken care of so that you mentioned loyalty. We want them to be loyal to us. They’re loyal to us only as long as we’re loyal. And that’s what we have to figure out ways of doing.
And every business has to find its way with that. Still, it does start with making sure those frontline employees, the person answers that phone, the person that for the brick and mortars, the person that takes that customer, when they walk in the front door and greets them with a smile and a hello, those people have to be given the tools to be successful.
And if they’re not, they get burned out, and they don’t give a crap. They’re not going to want to serve the customer because, yeah, as you said, they don’t care about me. Why should I care about my customer?
Rick Mazur: And hopefully, through the book, the business owners who are reading it will say, Hey, I do have to increase my customer service.
I will realize this by making sure all phases are covered, and the employees are trained better. And I don’t want to use the word value more. I hear people talk, and they’re yeah, I’ll hire this employee.
That’s an $8 an hour job. But the $8 an hour job is the one who’s on the front line, answering the phones, talking to the customer. That’s the first impression somebody has of your business. And. To get them to think differently about that starts. I think with letting them know they have to be doing better, which the book outlines, hopefully, as you said, you’re gorilla marketing it hopefully it’ll get some traction.
Mitche Graf: Well, and I also believe you use $8 as an example. In Oregon, our minimum wage is 12 bucks an hour or something like that instead of hiring a lawyer. Possible dollar person, you can, it’s less expensive for you as a business owner to pay somebody 15, 20, 22 bucks an hour in the beginning, because you will retain your customers longer.
Your profitability will be higher, with less turnover. And you’re going to save money in the long run, as opposed to paying somebody eight or 10, 12 bucks an hour to start, and you’re going to attract a certain type of worker for that rate. They’re going to be happy to stay with you because they feel valued.
That’s just how it is. The more you make, the more value you bring to your business. So I’d say pay the employees a little bit more, and you’ll save money in the long run for sure. And a lot of headaches.
Rick Mazur: Well, because I think when you talk about profitability and that’s what every business start in their life.
Hey, what do I have to do? I gotta, here’s my income. Here are my expenses. I want to be profitable. They’re looking at the dollar an hour spent on that employee expense line and not looking at the bigger picture of it. Well, Hey, first of all, if I don’t hire the right people to keep my customers, I’m not going to have a business.
Mitche Graf: Exactly.
Rick Mazur: Nobody’s trying to neglect their business. Nobody’s going to put; I don’t think they’re trying to do that. With all this overwhelming stuff and everything like that, people have to deal with, they’re just, there’s just too many decisions to make, and they need some clarity. Cause I know I ran a couple of businesses and man retaining employees; I’m down in Southwest Florida.
And they can’t hire workers. They can’t find anybody. I don’t know how it is in Oregon.
Mitche Graf: Oh, it’s the same thing you’ve got to pay people almost double. I’m looking for some good workers for my catering company. And normally, we start at 15, 18 bucks an hour.
I’m starting at 25 just to try to get anyone to re to respond to ads. Because to be honest with you, many people are making—more money than they were making before because of the available assistance. And I have to tell you the government being available with money with PPP loans and SBA loans and stuff was a godsend to millions of businesses in the country.
But we have millions of people now staying home because they’re making 300 bucks a week in extra benefits. Plus, whatever their state pays them, you make 800,000 bucks. Staying home and not having to work. That is a demon motivator. And unfortunately, it’s, it wasn’t something that they thought of before the whole thing was created.
They were trying to do a good thing by helping struggling families. Before I wrote this book last year, I came out with the ultimate crash course’s business basics boot camp. For anyone getting into a business, this book covers the seven pillars of success, lifestyle design.
A third. It is about lifestyle design, a whole third of the book effective time management. High-voltage branding blue ocean marketing, sales, magic pricing for profit, and mastering social media. And so ease. Each of those seven pillars is broken down into great. It’s a 300-page book. It is a boot camp.
It goes through everything a to Z. If you’re looking to refine some of your sales skills or you want to work on your branding concepts and how to make sure your brand is alive and well in the world and make sure your brand is building value instead of taking value away the boot camp will help.
This book is a good starting point. I’d say anyone within five years of starting a business or. This book is perfect for you, and you can just get that on Amazon. You can just search my name or go to business basics boot camp. It’s available as an audiobook, the hardback paperback.
And we’ll put those links down in the show notes and on the website as well.
Talk to me a little bit about your syndicated radio show. Ah,
business edge radio. Yeah, because it’s interesting, but I couldn’t; you’re in what? 30
months? Almost 40 now. Yeah. Yeah. It’s another funny. For ten years, I’ve had people say, Mitch, start a podcast. And at first, I said, what’s a podcast and life happened.
Other things happen. We’ll ask you with COVID. I finally had time. I sat down and said I’m going to launch this concept. I contacted a local radio station. I said, Hey, I’m going to start this thing called business ed radio. I’m going to do interviews. I’m going to do book reviews. At the end of each episode, I’m going to do a recipe.
That people can try at home that week. And would you be my flagship station? And the guy said it would absolutely. I’d be honored. So we started with one, it was an hour. At the same time, I launched what’s called the business edge minute. It’s 60 seconds. It could be anything from why it’s important for business people to stay hydrated, how to make sure you’re maximizing your commute time to and from work, how to deal with conflict resolution at work, just little 60 actions, 52 seconds of content.
Cause my voiceover guy says for the business edge minute now, here’s Mitch crap. So 52 seconds of content is five days a week, but it’s available on Android. On apple, but I got a call from a syndicator after about six, seven weeks. And they said, Hey, this thing needs to be on the radio. So you fast forward, we’re coming up on our, on one year, we’ve done 105 episodes of the business edge minute.
And yeah, I think we’re at 38. We’ve got one more this morning, 39 affiliates all across the country, plus as a podcast. And it’s just something simple and easy. There’s an app. You can download it on your phone. So every day, you get this little sixty-second, this little nugget, this little jewel, and you can listen.
It’s not going to take hardly any time at all. And I’m fortunate that we’ve gotten to the point where yeah, we’re available all across the county. I got little red pins all over my U S map here in my office. It’s kind of fun.
Rick Mazur: If somebody’s not, if it’s not in the market that they’re in, so you can’t stream it or anything like
Mitche Graf: that, it’s a podcast as well.
So you can just go to whatever your podcast provider is, whether it be iTunes or Spotify, whoever, and you can get the podcast there. And also the one-hour shows as well. And I’ve interviewed people like Steve Garvey, ten-time, major league. All-star. Howard Schultz, the founder of Starbucks coffee, and a bunch of other great people.
But the business edge minute is what I’m spending. Most of my focus is on the hour show. It takes some time to put these things together, and mine was scripted. I didn’t just, this is a great way of doing an open format, but in radio, I got to talk in a soundbite. Right. You got eight minutes, and then you got a heart out.
It makes it a little more challenging. I don’t like that. I don’t like being in a cage. So I much preferred this kind of interview.
Rick Mazur: The thing about you that I want people to understand is that you tell a story, and it might be like, well, I started this radio thing, and after seven weeks I got syndicated, it’s not that you’re trying to make it sound easy, but the point I want to make is that you put yourself out there. You have an idea; you do it. I don’t want to say throw caution to the wind either, but you got to be there. You have to be there. Otherwise, you can’t succeed. Suppose you’re not in the game.
Mitche Graf: Identifying opportunities is a skill set that you can develop as you go through life.
And I love opportunities, but I say no to most because I’m pretty refined. Now what I’m looking for, if anything my every time I get a new idea for something, I tell my wife, Hey honey, I got an idea. She just puts her head down and shakes her head like, oh geez, here we go again. You never know what it’s going to be, but my mind is like that.
I’m having fun with it. I can spend a couple of hours a week researching my topics in my interviews. And there’s that time freedom also. So yes, podcasting and the radio show allow me time, freedom, and the financial freedom to pick and choose what projects I get involved in.
And when I started that, it wasn’t my intention. It was just another way for me to repurpose my content, right. Similar to what you’re doing. You want to repurpose content so that people can learn from our mistakes and learn from guests’ knowledge and things like that. And it’s turned into a beautiful animal, and I’m having a ball.
Rick Mazur: What can you tell people about having a passion for whatever they decide to do?
Mitche Graf: I have a passion, first of all, one of my dear friends, his name is Jim beach. He has a school for startups, and his philosophy is passion has nothing to do with what business you choose to go into. And his philosophy makes sense to a certain point, and I’m probably the wrong person to ask because I’ve been fortunate. Everything I’ve done I’ve loved before I started it. I loved it. I started a cribbage board company back 25 years ago. It’s just a piece of wood with holes. There’s nothing fancy about it. You play with a deck of cards.
I learned when I was five years old, but I started because I loved it. I made a prototype; I took it to the local target in the core lane, Idaho. I showed it to them, and there are four different designs. And I said they come in cases of 48. He said, God, these are great. I’ll take 48 of each. Well, I had to scramble because I didn’t have a business.
I didn’t have a product. I just had a prototype. So I went and found a cabinet shop that would make these things for me. I had to go scrambling to make everything hired an office space. Delivered the 48 times for eight months later, nine months later, I was in every regional target a year later, I was in every target in the United States, and it started with my love for a plan, a silly game with a deck of cards and a piece of wood with holes in it.
And I sold the business after about a year and a half. And the new owner lasted for about another ten years after that. But passion, I think, has to be part of your recipe. Otherwise, you’re not going to want to get up and go to work. You’re not going to want to do that trade show on Saturday. You’re not going to want to have a six 30 business meeting when you’re missing family with your kids and your spouse. So you have to have that desire to get up and want to do it. Not like you have to do it because it’s part of a job. I think you and I are in the same boat. We love what we’re doing so much it’s not a job to us. We have fun with it. We love it. And I recommend before you start, make sure that you love what you do. Don’t just look at it as an opportunity. Because usually, when people start because of that without a business background, it will end in failure, which isn’t necessarily bad. Sometimes failures, the best step to success. Still, you want to make sure that you’re in love with what you’re doing. That way, you look forward to doing it.
Rick Mazur: I can’t stress enough because just with the friends I talked to who want to start businesses, especially with trading and day trading, you must want it bad.
Because it can’t be just about the money, it should be something you want to do, but you have to want it. Otherwise, don’t even waste your time.
Mitche Graf: Well, the emotional rollercoaster that you got to go through. One minute you just doubled, and that dopamine is released in your brain, right.
That release keeps you coming back for more, coming back to the trough. But the next minute, you can go down by 50. Right. And so you got to deal with those emotions too, to try to level it out. Otherwise, it can eat you alive. I’m sure I’m not a couple of guys that tried it, and they failed miserably.
Rick Mazur: I read a lot in researching the show. And I have to say by far one line that stood out to me the most. I’m assuming somebody wrote about you or you said. Mitch says he firmly believed that life is meant to be lived, not endured, and we can each make a profound difference in the world. And for some reason, it’s fascinating to me. It’s simple. It is but fascinating. So something to think about for people. The interview has been great, Mitch. I want to thank you for being on the show. If anybody wants to know more about Mitch and what he’s got going on, I’m going to put all the links to everything in the show notes, the book customer services, dead delivering a six-star service in a one-star world.
You have that new project; you said the six-star service.
Mitche Graf: Absolutely. Yeah, it’s still in development, but what the book describes. I believe that there needs to be a way for every business. Not just the United States, but around the world to be six-star certified.
Now what that means, that’s what we’re putting together, but it’s going to be a questionnaire. It’s going to be a test. If you are terrible at taking care of customers, it’s going to be hard for you to get six are certified, but you have to show that you aren’t going to commit.
To taking care of your customers and take and doing those six promises that I described earlier. And so we’re going to have an online course that employees can log onto the back end and do the training on their own independently. And if a certain percentage of a company’s employees go through the train.
And they passed all the other things as far as averages reviews, and what they do in critical situations, then they will become six-star certified. There’ll be crystals available and window decals and things for the website and awards and all kinds of other things. And that becomes part of your branding.
It’s going to become part of your marketing. Like I said before, if people know that you are a six-star service, Before a word is spoken before a business card is exchanged, it’s just unspoken without a doubt that this company will take better care of you. It’s an unspoken promise. And so, we’re working hard now to put this association together.
And initially, we’re going to be going through the local chamber of commerce. There are thousands across the United States because that’s the epitome of businesses trying to make a difference. People that belong to chambers. Right. They do the greeters. They do the monthly meetings.
They do the luncheons. They’re trying to build networks, those people more than anybody. I would love to be six-star certified. So as time goes, you’ll hear about this. But right now, it’s not available anywhere. It’s under wraps. I got a lot of great partners it’s. It is a think tank of smart people that are much smarter than I am that are helping me develop this.
But eventually, I like to think that you can go to whatever. And find out who’s six-star certified in your town. What? Restaurants are six-star surf. Not five-star, forget that. That’s so old hat. Who cares about five-star old school, new school. The new school is six stars. Who are they? Where can I go? Why are they special?
And then we’re going to hold them to a higher level of expectations. And I think that’s a good thing I do.
Rick Mazur: Of course it is. And I’m sure it will be on your site. You’ll eventually you’ll have it linked and stuff like that once it’s available.
All right, Mitch. We’ll look, it was great. I was speaking with you.
Mitche Graf: It’s an honor, Rick. Being on the show is a lot of fun. Yeah.
Rick Mazur: Have a great day. And we’ll be in touch, and hopefully, we’ll have you on again soon.
Mitche Graf: Sounds great. Good luck to you, Rick.
Rick Mazur: All right, Mitch.