Do you want to make the Christmas season a “mattress holiday”? Mark Kinsley and I brainstorm 10 ideas on how to connect Santa to great sleep which will produce great sales, so don’t miss this episode of the Dos Marcos Podcast.

Speaking of Kinsley, he introduced me to a man named Roy H. Williams several years ago. Roy is a best selling author and marketing visionary who runs a business school called the Wizard Academy in Austin, Texas. Kinsley and I attended one of his week-long sessions and I have been a fan ever since. (As a result of that trip, Kinsley and I are both featured in their promo video on the front page of their website which for me is pretty dang cool, so go check it out and if you can attend the academy, we HIGHLY RECOMMEND IT!) Roy has a Monday Morning Memo that he puts out weekly and I read every single one of them because there is always something to inspire me, and today I want to share his post from December 16, 2019, and tie it back to our industry.

The post is titled “The Way Things Ought To Be Versus The Way Things Really Are.”   The jist of his message is that you may not like where things are and if you don’t then you get to choose. Accept your reality, or resolve to change it, but complaining about it will likely get you nothing.

If you look at the way things REALLY ARE and learn to maneuver in that world you can go anywhere you want to go. Here is an excerpt from the post:

I’m not saying that you have to make peace with the status quo.
I’m not saying that you have to accept things as they are.
I’m not saying that you are powerless to change things.
I’m saying that unproductive whining is pointless.

Take action or shut up. Don’t spend your life believing you are a victim and trying to convince everyone else of it.

Here are some questions to

• Are e-commerce companies taking business from you and if they are, do you have a solid strategy that is working to combat their approach? Do you have an in-store experience that is so good you offer something the on-line guys don’t and if so are you clearly telling that story?
• If I were to ask the consumers in your market will they tell me that they would prefer to shop with you over other retailers? If not….why not?
• Do you have a good mix of products that include some traffic generating names along with some special products that are totally unique that will delight consumers compared to what your competitors carry?
• Is your traffic down and if so, how many things are you testing at one time to fix that problem? Have you given up and accepted that this is a new norm?
• If you are a bedding producer, are you out there just selling products to your retail base OR are you bringing total solutions that can help them grow the overall pie, not just your share of the business? How is your product going to give them an advantage over the competition they have to face every day?
• What is the REAL impact of your supplier selling directly to your consumer?

In the post from Roy he quotes George Benard Shaw who says, “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends upon the unreasonable man.”  

Easy to say right? So where are the answers? I encourage you to listen to some of the past episodes of the Dos Marcos podcast where we interview top industry leaders like Harry Roberts, co-founder of Mattress Firm, Rick Anderson, past President of Tempur-Pedic North America, Derek Miller and Melanie Huet both top executives at Serta/Simmons Bedding, and you can even learn from our favorite Navy Seal and Astronaut Chris Cassidy. Check out Sleep-Geek.com which is a website purpose-built for the mattress industry. Our podcast sponsor Nationwide Marketing Group is also a great resource because they are out there helping retailers get better every single day. One of my favorite things about being one of their members is the Primetime event they put on where you can go and sit in on educational sessions, but most importantly, talk to other retailers dealing with the same issues you are.  What can you learn from them or how could you help someone else?

Another great quote from Roy’s website is from Ralph Waldo Emerson…”People only see what they are prepared to see.” Are you seeing things as they are these days, or how you want them to be?

Today is a gift. What will you do with it?