The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show 204 Danny Govberg, CEO of Govberg Watches

Episode Date: May 10, 2018

Danny Govberg, CEO of Govberg Watches

Hi folks, Chris Voss here from The Chris Voss Show. Welcome to the pre-show for the podcast today. We've got a really excellent guest, Danny Govberg of GovbergWatches.com. He took over a 100-year-plus old company and helped bring it into the new age. We're going to talk about some really important principles I think you guys are going to really learn, especially when it comes to owning a business, building a business, etc., etc. We're going to talk about the Omni Channel, pillars of customer care and engagement and the future of retail and some different things that are going on, on top of watches and collecting and investing and all that sort of good stuff. So I think you're

going to learn some really good stuff if you listen in for his pillars of customer care and technology. I think you're going to be very impressed. And I think we learned some new terms that I really like in business, especially the omni-channel approach. So be sure to get a listen, listen to all the way in. I think the show even got better as we went on. So be sure to check it out and let's get in the show. Hi folks, Chris Voss here from thechrisfossshow.com, thechrisfossshow.com dot com hey welcome to another great podcast we certainly appreciate you guys tuning in you guys are the best audience we've ever had like seriously out of all the audience this one is the best audience so we certainly appreciate you guys

tuning in be sure to tell your friends neighbors relatives everybody about the podcast refer it out we certainly appreciate you guys go to itunes.com. You can go to Google Play and subscribe to the show. You can also go to YouTube.com and hit that bell notification button so you get all the notifications of all the new shows we're doing. Plus, we've got great reviews of all the great products from like AT&T, JBL, Harman Kardon,

and we have new puppy videos with the Siberian Husky puppy. So if you hate all that stuff, tune in for the puppy. I mean, who hates puppies, really, when it comes down to it and if you do you might want to see a psychiatrist uh anyway we've got a wonderful show here today uh danny govberg he's the co-founder and ceo of govbergwatches.com danny is a pioneering force of the contemporary watch industry. His vision and insatiable passion for watches and technology enabled the evolution of GovBerg from a Philadelphia-based retail shop to one of the world's premier authorized dealers of both new and pre-owned timepieces. Danny

recognized years ago that selling new watches was only one way to support the life of a watch collector and set in motion a tech forward pre-owned strategy that inspired the evolution of watchbox in fact the chris faulkner show reviewed his app several years ago and we're going to get some updates on where that's at now welcome to the show danny how you doing bud i'm doing well i hope everything's going well with you too excellent excellent well it's glad to have you on. So let's talk about who you are, what we do. We're going to talk about some of the future of what's going on with luxury watches and stuff. So give us a foundation and some plugs, of course, of where people can find you on the interwebs. Well, you guys can find us at govbirdwatches.com or watchbox.com or feel free to download our app, Watchbox, the watch collectors toolbox

at the App Store. So that's basically the three ways to find us the easiest. If I recall rightly on your app, and it's been a long time since I've seen it so correct me if I'm wrong, but they can watch auctions or they can evaluate their watches to find out, they can monitor what the valuations are and stuff like that. It's simple. The app lets you, one, keep up with the news of the brands that you enjoy by 22 different sources. It aggregates it. Number two, the app lets you, of course, buy or sell a timepiece. It lets you also find out the value of your timepiece because it gives you basically what your watch is trading for on the secondary market.

It lets you store your collection and your bill of sale and everything else and values your collection at the same time. So basically, the app allows a watch collector to enjoy collecting watches, keep his watches, search for new watches, and search for the news. So it's like an all-in-one kind of piece of watch technology that seems to be doing pretty well. Yeah, I've got a few friends that are watch collectors. They are really big into watches they love the personnel uh it seems that there's just all these great luxury watches

that are out there um and and they and they buy and manage it like someone would buying and selling and managing a stock portfolio and so and so they can use your app to do that well that's what it is you got to keep in mind a watch is really an asset. A luxury watch is an asset class. So a Rolex, for instance, is worth a certain amount of money anywhere in the world. So if you have a watch on your wrist, that timepiece has a value as if you were traveling in the Middle East or you're traveling in Europe it's really a commodity not it's a luxury commodity with an underlying value when you're risked so we do our best at golf Berg to allow the customer to monetize that watch so that

he can buy a new watch he can sell the watch he can buy a pre-owned watch. Basically, we let our customers today do whatever they want with luxury timepieces to suit their desires. That's awesome. So that's the app. What is govbergwatches.com or is it govberg.com? It's govbergwatches.com. It's watchbox.com. Watchbox.com is one of the preeminent pre-owned platforms in the world today. So what do you guys do at govbergwatches.com? Govbergwatches is our traditional business. So that's primary meets secondary, whereby like a Mercedes dealer sells new cars which would be primary and they also sell pre-owned cars which would be secondary so Doveburg is like the Mercedes dealer of today

watch box go ahead so you guys sell new watches there on the website we with some brands yes but with most brands we're not allowed to. What we're allowed to do is just show them. And then if you call us, of course, or find us, we can sell you a new timepiece. But we don't do e-commerce with primary. With secondary, we do do e-commerce with secondary. Would you also say you're also a broker? So if I'm looking for a specific watch

and look, I can call you guys. You guys might hunt it down for me? As long as it's a watch that we're an authorized retailer new to. We don't sell new watches that we're not an authorized dealer. But we do sell pre-owned watches across the entire watch collecting

universe. Cool. So, people use the app, manage their inventory, know where their watches are, and of course, I know some people that are collectors, they have a vast inventory they have to manage to go, where's that watch and how much is it worth and what are we doing with it? Correct. It's a crazy business. So, you got into that, how many years ago did you start your watch business?

So I came, so to start off we're a 102 year old startup. So we're not, we weren't born yesterday but the mentality of how the company runs is like it was born as a startup. So I came into the business, my grandfather founded as a startup so i came into the business and my grandfather founded in 1916 but i came into business around 1982 and it was very small 600 square feet and it was myself and my father and my grandmother and my brother and one or two others. And what happened was they were just doing jewelry. We weren't in the watch business at all. So I decided I wanted to stake my claim in the watch business

to have something I could call my own. So around 1983, we were in a wholesale district. So we weren't even allowed to sell new watches from the brands direct back in 1983. So I went into pre-owned and I started to learn pre-owned watches and vintage watches. And I did that for a number of years. And then it hit me that more people were going to want to buy new watches than buy pre-owned watches. So I decided, okay, I have to try to at least be in that business, so I moved. I left the store with my dad. He basically turned the company over to me at 27,

and my brother Jeffrey, and we moved to the suburbs. My brother Jeffrey did, and we opened up a store that allowed us to get all of the primary brands, Breitling and Patek Philippe and Omega and on and on, direct from the manufacturer as new. Nice. So then we stayed in that business for a long time. We did very well. We were the largest in our city. And then around 2000, when eBay came out,, even sooner I had a 1-800 number

in 1993 but to move forward quicker on your show. In 2000 eBay came around, the internet started to take hold and I realized that I had to get in the game and I was one of the first to begin with eBay. Speed up to 2010, technology really took off in a way that we could do a lot more. And that's when I started to realize around 2010, 2011, that the journey where you used to learn about anything at a store level, began to move to the internet or online. So the journey was no longer to learn about timepieces by coming into a shop. The journey to begin to learn about timepieces began online. So I started to realize if that journey was going to take hold, which it now has, and it looks easy today compared to even back in 2009, 2010. What I've realized is I had to be there for the customer when they began their journey.

So that's what I call today learning commerce for companies. So our general thesis is number one, the number one luxury that anybody has in life is time, because we don't have any. So we better figure out how to save people time in our business model, because people don't have time as it is. So we're going to save people time. And two, we have to figure out as quickly as we can how to develop trust. So we save people time. We develop trust. And then as the Internet or the technologies have improved,

I realize that we can be a local company and think globally, and we can be a global company and think locally. That's definitely awesome. And I like the pillars that you're building on. You know, a lot of people don't think about the environment they're trying to build or what their principles are when they build a business. And those are so important to set down in the beginning

and go, you know, why are we here and what is this about? I like what you're doing, especially with the community part. A lot of businesses, like I recently saw a thing where a lot of the camera store chains and camera stores have been going out of business with the proliferation of Amazon, eBay, etc. And what a lot of successful entrepreneurs are doing nowadays, they're building community around their retail outlets or their products, and they're helping people like you say learn How to use the products they appreciate them better

Certainly with probably your business. There's a lot of stuff people need to learn To you know how to buy watches properly how to invest on it's really good stuff how to store them how to you know Yeah, I know there's giant cases you can buy to protect the watches probably insurance saves and different things and so people have to learn through that upscale and what some of the camera shops I saw doing was they started holding camera classes so if you go in and buy a camera they actually give you like a free class that teaches you how to use the camera and really get you familiar but what it also does is it bonds you and almost bind you because of the way that you you know by having that community uh to that retailer and so they find more people come back

and buy from them as opposed to buying from amazon because they know they have someone they can use as an information resource and i see a lot of retail people doing that building a community now around their their retail stuff so i commend you for that. I think that's a really great, awesome idea. Yeah, so our platform begins, like I said, I call it learning commerce. That's everything that we do to educate the customer before they get to our website. So that's our app, which has hundreds and hundreds of thousands of downloads. That's our YouTube channel, Watch watch box studios we actually call it I'm sitting in watch box studios right now as we do this and that gets 2 million unique

views a month nice nice we have thousands of reviews as you said on timepieces of course your Instagram your. So anything that you can do to educate the customer when their journey begins. And that's what I call the first pillar of trust because you're starting to educate. That usually leads to a pay-per-click or a click over to our website. And a website, which everybody believes is just e-commerce, which it isn't necessarily in luxury because our average sale is $10,000 and we sell a watch every eight minutes.

So what's happening is people are coming from the education to our website where we further educate. It's the second pillar of trust. You can click and buy a pre-owned watch on our websites. You can get educated further. But what we really look to do is take you from our website and drive a phone call. When you get the phone call, I call that personal commerce. Personal commerce sits between e-commerce and brick-and-mortar what I call personal touch. So personal commerce is you call us on the phone and you

instantly get somebody who can help you buy a watch, sell a watch, trade a watch, buy a pre-owned watch, educate you about watches, but they're super highly educated watch technicians that can take you through your purchase and it's very little friction it's seamless you can transact within minutes you can get educated and that at that level of trust because people have already seen your website they sort of researched you a little they now know you're real now 90 of the time you can conduct business at that level over the telephone and youtube youtube's such a great proponent for that for helping community like you say i love the pillars that you built around your business the you know we were talking

pre-show and you showed me your studio there and you're sitting in like this YouTube studio you guys have built you got the nice cameras the nice lights and that sort of education is so important and so valuable me as a reviewer for analysis 2011 so many of my videos even ones that were back in 2011, 2012, people are still buying the products on a secondary market and they're still watching, they're still making buying decisions on the videos. Sometimes they're validating, like I'll have people that will make a comment that like, I just bought this, came home from the store and wanted to make sure it was good products.

They're validating that their purchase was a smart idea sometimes they're trying to figure out how to learn to use the product like instruction wise like or sometimes they just want to see what's in the box when we do an unboxing they're like what's in that box what do I get how does this come out they want to see what the experience is before they put their money in and so having a YouTube channel like you guys do and investing in that community education is so important because a lot of people are looking for that before they buy.

They want that education because they're worried that they don't, you know, they might make that first purchase mistake and they don't, you know, they have a fear of making that, crossing that threshold, ignorant. Look, it's 100% correct. And also for us, we've got thousands of reviews, close to 3,000 reviews of watches that people

watch, like you said, from two years ago. And that library is probably the largest review library of wristwatches in the world today. And it grows by a few thousand watches a year. At the same time, media, everybody talks about advertising, but media has never been this inexpensive. It's crazy. When you really think about it, we can televise to the world for practically free. We can be on this podcast and millions of listeners can listen in where you used to have to go through a radio station. YouTube, you can have millions and millions of people following where you used to have to own a network.

And as the smart TVs prolificate, if I said that word right, as the smart TVs, you're going to start to see smart TV apps where many, many people are going to download their own channel. So you're going to have YouTube, Netflix and Watchbox right on your smart TVs. And that's all coming within. It's here now, but it's really going to be here within a year or two. You're going to have just like you have on your phone, thousands of options to download apps. You're going to have thousands of channels that you're going to be able to download onto your smart TV and watch certain people's really good content. So we do a show every single night. Well, now we do three shows and we're going to start to go into other directions. But we do shows for people that we bring our traders on, we bring celebrities on, we bring watch aficionados on our channel, and we conduct real one-hour shows every night on our Watchbox network.

Now we're opening in Switzerland. We've opened in Hong Kong. So we're going to connect this community around the world together. And the last piece of our puzzle, I talked about personal commerce. The last piece is what I call personal touch today. Personal touch is brick and mortar, but you can touch people on a trip. You can take people away. You can touch people at the golf course.

Nowadays, as long as you get the one-on-one time with somebody even if it's a few minutes even if it's with me over the air with you that's the last piece of trust that's the highest degree because you've met the person they don't necessarily have to meet you in your store because now they can call you they can come online they can learn about you, they can come online, they can learn about you anytime, they can watch your reviews. So the complete circle of learning commerce, the e-commerce, the personal commerce, the personal touch, which saves money and builds trust is I see as the number one omni-channel solution today for particularly luxury sales.

I think you had a book there, The Omni-Channel Solution, and then put down your pillars. I love these pillars you're putting down. These are great for any sort of business because, you know, building that community around it. Some people are just like, oh, open a shop, and I'll sell stuff and make money. And you really have to sit down. Any business that I sat down with and built, the first thing I took a look at is what sort of environment I was building with myself,

my employees, my management styles that I wanted to have, the kind of the mantras of the business, what I wanted to take and have. But having a core set of principles, the foundation, that mission to work for uh any entrepreneur is super important and then you you've touched on a lot of different things about about really interacting with the clients and everything else i remember when i first started in social media um and it was interesting to me because i would put my phone

number out and i'd say if anyone wants to call me, you can call me. And people call me just to see if I was full of crap or not because so many of the people that I was, you know, my competitors would never put their phone numbers on websites. They'd just be like, you know, just email me, you know, whatever. And one of my favorite things to do is get on the phone. And like I say, it builds better rapport. It builds trust. It builds a relationship. You know, you have to look at your customers as a relationship as opposed to, you know, just making a transaction, a single transaction. It sounds like that's a lot of what you guys incorporate in your business and what a lot of our listeners can incorporate in their business if there really is these cues.

Is building that trust, building that long-term relationship is really key I mean some of what our phone of our first companies that we built we had the same original clients for almost 13 years I've in social media I've had the same client for up to eight years now and having that long-term relationship trust people buy from who they trust they do business with who they trust and in today's world where it's very disconnected you know and it's like we'll just deal with our app or deal with that like you say having to have that personal either brick-and-mortar come in the office trust or meet people in person even this sort of exchange we're having this is

probably almost there in real life experience for me where I'm gonna have a deeper connection to you and get to know-life experience for me where I'm going to have a deeper connection to you and get to know you better. Like I said, I'm probably going to refer you to some of my friends that collect watches after this call. This is what we exactly do with our clients. Keep in mind that's the personal commerce. It sits between e-commerce, which I said to you, you're on my website, or you've come

into the store, you've met me somewhere but me meeting you right now what we're doing right now goes on every day at our offices with our with our kids that are trading so if you come to our office you're more in a tech company with with we could be trading bonds on the floor of our exchange than than selling wrist watches because it is a you know 25 person traders sitting behind computers on the phone trading and buying and selling uh luxury timepieces daily. I mean, by the minute. And they're talking to their clients like I'm talking to you. Sometimes face to face as we're doing

and sometimes just over the phone. The Wall Street trading of watches, it's pretty awesome. That's what we are. We're like a bond trading desk. We're a watch trading organization. There you go. There you go. The prices of watches are up five points a day. We're like a bond trading desk. We're a watch trading organization. There you go.

The prices of watches are up five points a day. By the way, you're laughing, but absolutely. That's exactly how we're running it. Is there an index for watch values? If you download our app and you type in your model number, you'll see a graph charting the value of your watch. Oh, wow. Okay. It's really cool.

I mean, there's nothing else like it in our industry. Yeah, yeah. We should probably update the review on your app. I know we did it years and years ago. I actually looked it up because I was like, that name, GovBerg Watches, sounds very familiar. It has augmented reality now. You can try on hundreds of watches with the app.

So you just put a sticker or something you print out from your computer on your wrist and it allows you to try on hundreds of watches right off of our app. That's pretty interesting because that's what everyone wants when you're trying on a watch. You're like, how is it going to look on me? Is it going to be too gaudy? Is it going to be too small? We have it perfectly figured out that you can download the app start trying on watches yeah i mean i get a lot of fitbit watches sent to me and these smart watches and sometimes they send them to me and i'm just like was this the girls version so seeing how it looks on your wrist is really important i'm sure in your buying decision and i've looked at some watches and they look really cool on the thing but then you put them on your wrist and you're like it looks like I'm wearing a

car so you know finding that personal thing that appeals to you is really important but I love these pillars you built for your business and the principles you're operating under and of course like I said you guys got a great YouTube channel and education putting videos up there you know it really is about building a community for a long time, even I made the mistake in social media where I was focused on building an audience, but I really didn't build a community for that audience to give them support and everything else,

give them plans, forms to take and work from and everything else. So I'm great you guys are, it's great you guys are doing that. So you want to talk too about the future of retail, luxury retail, where it's going, what the future is. Let's talk about that and what's going on there. Well, a little bit, I come back to the pillars that we just spoke about, because that is the future. You're going to be able to learn when you want. You're going to be

able to click and buy when you want. You're going to be able to talk to the customer when you want, talk to a client when you want, or call the place when you want. And you're going to be able to talk to the customer when you want, talk to a client when you want, or call the place when you want, and you're going to be able to go into stores. I also think what's happening is experiences are also beginning to trump product, where it used to be product trumped experiences. And I think what you're going to find is is for instance people as an example are flocking to Napa for the experience of tasting wine and enjoying wine and learning about wine and then of course they buy wine but then after they've been to Napa they enjoy wine more we're going to

be taking more and more clients who love watches to the manufacturers in Switzerland. We're going to be running trips called watch box tours to Switzerland so that the clients can actually see where they're built, how they're built. And by going to Switzerland and going to some of the manufacturers, that will give them an experience which will lead to a greater appreciation of timepieces. Also, what's happened in the world of watches is a lot of people think that a watch is like an old-school instrument because you don't need it with the new technology today with like the iWatch and two things have happened with the iWatch as an example one it's put millions and millions of watches onto

millennials' wrists. So at least the millennials today are getting used to wearing a watch because they didn't need one before that. They had their phones. Two, people don't realize that an Apple Watch is not really the greatest in technology. It's the greatest chip that you can have. It's basically a chip on the wrist. Where a wristwatch that's highly complicated or made out of Switzerland today, they are actually super complicated. They've got oils in them that are lubricating parts going to Mars. They've got little hairs, main springs, that are lubricating parts going to Mars. They've got little hairs,

main springs that are so thin, but they're stronger than steel that are now going into other instruments. The screws in timepieces today are going into people's jaws as far as screws for implants. So there is so much technology that is in these timepieces today that people don't realize that they're the greatest piece of micro engineering in the world today.

There's wristwatches that tell time to the half second. They tell you the time for 20 years in a row without setting them. They take account for leap years. So a wristwatch is actually complicated. An Apple Watch is actually simple to today's, because it's software. And I think what you're going to find is as the millennials get a little older

and they make a little bit more money, they're going to like a timepiece as their instrument to show off who they are. It's the fact that they still like microengineering, like guys like cars still like the engineering of it. Sometimes you want it just for the aesthetics. It's sort of like why does a woman, why does a young lady like a diamond pair of studs? You think about it, they're just two rocks.

But they like them for how it makes them feel. It's an ornament. It's something that was given to them as a gift from a loved one, but they don't need two rocks in their ear. They just happen to enjoy them. A guy doesn't need a wristwatch, but he's going to enjoy it for how that watch makes him feel. And I think in retail today, the main thing I can also say is there's a big human capital change taking place that I don't think a lot of retailers realize. And what's happening is if you graduate from college, let's say you graduate from NYU and you've spent $70,000 a year to go there. So you spent $280,000 to go get your education and you happen to love sneakers.

And you say to mom, I'm going to work in the mall at the sneaker store. She sort of looks at you and thinks, are you crazy? Like I didn't spend $280,000 to have you over at the mall working in a sneaker store. She sort of looks at you and thinks, are you crazy? Like I didn't spend $280,000 to have you over at the mall working in a sneaker store. But if you tell her I'm working at sneakers.com in New York, a startup, all of a sudden it's like, I am so proud of my boy. He is at sneakers.com. In the meantime, he's sitting behind the screen. He doesn't get to touch too many sneakers. He's got another hundred kids in there that all love sneakers. Don't get me wrong, but they're behind screens. They're playing ping pong. They're having fun. It's the new way of

getting a kid into retail, basically, but it's called e-commerce. But if you told the same kid to go stand on the floor at the mall, he doesn't want to do it. So what's happening in retail today is three things. One, people, when they do come into retail, have to continue your education. So when they come in the door, you better realize that they're already educated and you're going to continue that education. Whoever talks to the customer today better be educated about what they're being able to explain to a customer who's already educated. Two, we got to find a way to entertain customers when they come into a store. For us, we bring them on our set, we take pictures of them behind the studio,

we try to have different cool events. So when a customer comes into our store, we try to make it entertaining. Three, we try to data mine. We try to get the small things from a customer that can make our relationship more personal with them in the future. For instance, what watches do you own already? If you're looking to buy an expensive watch, it's probably not your first. So that in the future, we know more about them. We can engage with them.

We can invite them to events. We can call them on the phone. We can become their friend. Because I think the key also in retail is simple. What GovBerg does is sell watches. We're very good at selling watches. We're probably one of the best in the world at what we do. But today we got to educate the kids. And I call kids because I'm 57. I don't have kids that are 30, so I still call my 30-year-old a kid. But what we

have to realize is they need a purpose of why do they do what they do so we're actually in the happy business what we do is sell watches but if we start to explain to the customer and understand that when that guy calls it's his passion he might have had a win with a good with a good a good exit of a business he might have gotten a job it might be a 40th birthday, 30th birthday, graduation gift. Most people buy watches because they feel good. So what I try to teach the kids is you're in the happy business. So why we do what we do? We do what we do to make people happy. We do what we do to be part of their happiest moments of their lives.

So that if we can get our brain into that fact, that, wow, you're giving a gift for your kids, you know, graduation of college, send me a picture. Can you send me a picture of how he liked it? Put yourself in his moment. Then the what we do is easy because we know how to do what we do. But if you can talk to a customer and feel so good and say for your engagement, tell me how she liked it and put yourself in their happy moment. Put yourself in their happy passion. Then you're going to form a bond with a customer. if you're just on the phone doing what we do like get the watch in get the watch out not care about the guy at all you're missing it so i think also in retail today too many people are operating in the world of what we do they're not operating

at all in the world of why they do it that's a real important factor I mean like you say people buy for identity they buy for something that tells the world this is Who I am or what I like you know whether it's a car with so watch whether it's a home whether it's a marriage sometimes they buy for identity and so they can go this is Who I am this is my identity this is what's important to me you know I recently watched one of my friends who collects watches I see I always see them on Instagram that's how I know and recently was over in Singapore visiting one of the watchmakers that's a favorite of his and he was out to dinner and getting to know him and and I think he went down to

their factory and got to know their processes and how it works and I think what you're doing where you're building experiences like that where people can really get to know the product more all through my life whenever I've gotten into different adventures and different projects or hobbies you know for a long time I really got deep into photography and really being able to learn it very deeply get into training and lessons and different things and Aspects really helped me enjoy the product and value it all whole lot more than just owning Camera, you know, well, I agree if you think about it today The basic camera business is going out of business because the. But if you look at a company like Leica,

you actually, when they came out or they still have a camera called the Q, which you may be familiar with, it's a wait list. So here's a $5,000 camera that's German made, that's a beautiful piece of engineering that you literally have to be on a wait list in order to get one. So here's an example of even cameras that everybody thinks the camera business is finished, at the luxury side of cameras, it's actually thriving. And because of YouTube,

and because of being able to get educated Online you can actually learn more about cameras and how to use cameras Easier today than you ever have. Mm-hmm Yeah, and getting a relationship with With you know, you're with the different products or things that you're interesting is more than just buying a product it's about that whole community behind it so it's it's cool that you have these pillars and and you understand the principles in your business and building the community around them giving people support because they're going to keep buying from people they trust they're going to keep um they're going to try and keep buying in products they in they understand i'm

sure my friend who went to singapore after relationship, he's probably going to buy more of that vendor's watch. I remember when I went to Robert Mondavi's winery in Napa Valley, did the tour, got to see how the sausage was made. Is that the appropriate thing for wine? But getting to see how it was made and getting to see how I was made getting to see the grapes that I would end up drinking on the vine and them showing us the process of how Robert and I made the thing and of course sampling the wines and that

that whole experience lives with me to this day when I drink wine. It makes you appreciate wine so the experience at the time trumped wine. And now you don't need necessarily the experience again, but you have a lifetime memory. So every time you drink wine, you have an understanding of it. So, yeah, I mean, it's very similar to what we're trying to accomplish in our field. Yeah. And just education about products. I mean, on my YouTube channel, I've always been amazed at the comments that get made

that are, you know, semi-positive. I get my share of trolls. But, you know, I'll get people that will make comments about something that is, like, to me, they all start to bleed together sometimes where I'm like, oh, another Bluetooth headset, whatever. You know, I know how to turn on, I know how to pair it and how to work it. You know, I'm really focused on the sound and the quality and everything else. But to me, it's just, it's just, it's, you know, one today and one tomorrow.

But I'll see people and, and sometimes even the price of what they're buying. Like one of my, one of my YouTube videos that gets a ton of comments um is some cheap I think it's like a $15 or $30 freaking bluetooth headset and and there's some issues with the maker and and the they made a bad product but there's people that are constantly using my my youtube comment section is kind of a customer service in a forum where they're comparing notes as to how did you get this fixed and how did you get that fixed? But it's interesting to me that how in-depth and community-based they're looking for support for these sort of systems. In fact, some companies I've yelled at and said, you might want to get

some better support integrations with people because people are trying to use me as support mechanism and they're saying that you're failing your company as customer support and that's why they're going to YouTube in fact a lot of times I just had a product the other day I won't knock it it's a good product but I I sent them a customer service request to for an issue I was having with the thing and end up getting dirty on some of the contacts, and so I wasn't contacting, so I had to go in and clean it. But I didn't know what to do. I contacted the customer service.

It actually took five days to get back to me. In the meantime, after I sent them an email, I went to YouTube, and within five minutes on YouTube, I was told how to fix the product. What's even interesting is the return from the customer service They told me that the product was definitely broken and I needed to mail it in and return it and I actually just saved Them a ton of money on a return and shipping and all that sort of nightmarish stuff of course me being out of the product for two weeks because I went to YouTube and So it's great that you guys have those things set up. You guys have realized what you call the omni-channel of-

And when I started, it wasn't even omni-channel. I coined it luxury commerce. So I've only turned omni-channel in the last year. Four years ago, the terminology omni-channel really didn't even exist. I named it luxury commerce with the four pillars so every investment we make every investment we make falls into one of those four pillars so our luxury our learning commerce budget our e-commerce budget our personal commerce budget and our personal touch budget yeah and and having you know there's there's so many these platforms that

people consume uh content on and so i'll meet people. I remember years ago, I got yelled at by a LinkedIn expert. She's like, you know, you're this top of the chart, Forbes 40 social media person. I think this was before that though. But you know, it is top echelon, whatever reputation, social media person, but you suck on LinkedIn you have almost very little or no presence on LinkedIn and how do you call yourself this and so I was like you know what you're right I need to be taking advantage of all these different channels because there are some people that just consume on LinkedIn and so I started building my LinkedIn now I'm maxed out at 30,000

friends or whatever LinkedIn I have to constantly find room to put new people in I have a huge group on LinkedIn that's like 128,000 people and it grows it at a pretty steep rate and of course YouTube you know I'll meet people that are social media rock stars and be like how's your YouTube channel they're like oh I'm not on YouTube you're just like really you're you're not taking advantage and so I like your guys it's all night channel approach and people that are listening out there especially they're on the businesses you definitely want to take advantage of all these different

platforms because you know I've for me TV is YouTube anytime I sit down with a meal and want to watch some little TV I call it I go right to YouTube everybody I know nowadays does that. Today, the millennials are used to, what's nice is they're social. They're used to Instagram, they're used to YouTube, they're used to filming themselves, they're used to posting pictures of their family.

So, you know, putting social into your business plan in all aspects is really putting your employees at ease because it makes it fun for them. They enjoy it. So people that come on our YouTube channel are our traders. People that are running our Instagram are our traders. So everybody in the company is being pushed to being pushed to be social and um which gives them a more enjoyment and more satisfaction with what they do every day so you know i think it's uh

i think it's come a long way i like i like youtube a lot because the content's different and my other suggestion to uh what i mean by different is it's not as easy to get into, but if you do get into it, it's very worthwhile. And the other suggestion I have today for most businesses is you have to try to figure out what you're number one at or what you can be number one at, because you may be doing 15 things, but one you're really good at. And my suggestion is really double down, even triple down on what you're really good at. Put your YouTube and your social and your muscle behind

what you would say is your number one stroke. Of course you may be selling other things, but at least in the world of the community that you become number one at it could be we're watches somebody else might be cameras but even if you were even if you're a restaurant and you know you make the finest steak of course you sell french fries and some other things but if you advertise and put your youtube channel on all about steaks you have a much better chance at gaining an audience because at least you're focusing on what you're the best at

today focusing on multiple things that you're good at is very very difficult because there's too many people focusing very narrow on what they're great at so when people are searching they don't want to search the average they want to search for the best so my my advice to many many businesses is to really dig down deep to start to promote what you're the best at not across your platform of everything that your company does it's definitely important I mean focus on the number one thing and do across your platform of everything that your company does. It's definitely important.

I mean, focus on the number one thing and do that well. And, you know, sometimes finding it, sometimes realigning it's important. I'm sure as you guys' business, like you said, grew over the years and changed and technology changed and the world changed, you know, you had to adapt. I've had some businesses where we do the number one thing and then all of a sudden the number one thing is very different and we got to go find the new number one thing and pivot before we end up going out of business because the old number one thing is dying so yeah some really great lessons in business there Danny I really like it thanks Thanks. Yeah, yeah.

It's been fun. So, Danny, give us your plugs again so people can look you up on the web, download the app, and all that good stuff. So, basically, you can go to govbergwatches.com. You can go to watchbox.com, which is one of the best pre-owned luxury timepiece sites in the world. You can also go and download our app, which is Watchbox Toolbox for Collectors.

You'll see it on Android and iOS. Sounds good. And if you love watches, there's probably not many institutions in the world as good as what we do, but we also know why we're doing it. We're doing it to make you happy, doing your happy moments of your life. That's really what we're trying to achieve. Most definitely.

Man, you had some really great stories and really great principles to put up with the Omni Channel and the pillars of business. And I think some really important aspects with what businesses need to do, especially when they're dealing with like the Amazons, the world that just they really just sell a product. And even the reviews are fake most of the times on Amazon. So having either an app resource like yours or a business they can turn to where they can develop relationships, I think is more premium now than ever before.

Yeah, I'd agree with you. Yep. All right. Well, thanks for tuning in. Thanks for Danny for coming by the show. Be sure to check out his website and his app and all that good stuff.

Get to know him better, especially if you like watches or if you don't, you may want to look at it and find you do. Thanks for tuning in. Be sure to refer our podcast to your family, friends, neighbors, relatives.

I go to Google play. neighbors relatives go to google play you can go to itunes.com you can also go to youtube.com forward slash chris vaughn subscribe hit that bell notification button so you get all the notifications of all the new cool stuff on the channel as always we'll see you next time