June 10, 2025 • 40 mins
Join Mike for a behind the scenes look at Punchmark's annual Client Workshop in Charlotte, NC, offering a glimpse into what makes this educational event special for jewelry retailers from across the country.
If you missed the Workshop this year, make sure to mark your calendars for next May to attend our two day educational workshop in person! It's a lot of fun!
Send feedback or learn more about the podcast: punchmark.com/loupe
Learn about Punchmark's website platform: punchmark.com
Inquire about sponsoring In the Loupe and showcase your business on our next episode: podcast@punchmark.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
Welcome to In the Loop blog of this year's client
workshop in Charlotte, NorthCarolina that's put on by
Punchmark.
Every year.
I've actually been documentingthis for the past, I think,
three years, and every singleyear it's a little bit different
, but I think it's like a funway to look behind the curtain
at what goes into putting on oneof these workshop events, and
(00:39):
also it allows me to interviewsome people a little bit more
casually.
Do some man on the streetcontent, and it's also just a
really kind of fun differentepisode, and this is something I
hope to do more of.
I plan to do this when I go toJCK next week actually.
So be on the lookout for thatand please enjoy getting a peek
(00:59):
behind it and see if you madethe cut.
All right, Thanks everybody.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
See you next time.
With decades of experience andlong-lasting industry
relationships, punchmark enablesjewelry businesses to flourish
in any marketplace.
We consider our clients ourfriends, as many of them have
been friends way before becomingclients.
Punchmark's own success comesfrom the fact that we have a
(01:37):
much deeper need and obligationto help our friends succeed.
Whether you're looking forbetter e-commerce performance,
business growth or campaignsthat drive traffic and sales,
punchmark's website andmarketing services were made
just for you.
It's never too late totransform your business and
stitch together your digital andphysical worlds in a way that
achieves tremendous growth andresults.
Schedule a guided demo today atpunchmarkcom.
(02:00):
Slash go.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
And now back to the show.
All right, from sunny Charlotte, north Carolina, we are all set
up for the client workshop forday one Actually, it's day zero,
it's the first one we alwayshave this welcome reception and
we are just at the hotel whereeveryone's staying at and for
(02:26):
this year I actually got a hotelroom, which is super cool and
that way we don't have tocommute out of town or anything
like that or stay with anyfriends.
So, yeah, we got a spot andthis time we always have a
little welcome reception withsome drinks and some
sponsorships.
Everyone gets like a goodie bagwith like a whole bunch of cool
(02:51):
swag in it, like coffee mug anda name tag and all sorts of
different things and likedifferent like tissues and mints
and stuff like that.
I think it's really a nicetouch that the design team
always does and Jason, but yeah,we're just going to have some
welcome drinks.
We're still 30 minutes out, sowe've got everything all set up.
Hardest part of the entirething is setting up this step
and repeat banner.
It's like one that you see likefighters in front of at UFC
(03:12):
events with like all thesponsorships on it.
So we always have to set thatup and it's always like a 37
step process, but we got thatdone, so hopefully the next
thing is just going to be havingeverybody show up and having a
good time done, so hopefully thenext thing is just going to be
having everybody show up andhaving a good time.
The first event that kicks offthe client workshop is the
welcome reception, and we haveplayed around with this a couple
of ways and we've had indifferent rooms and it's
(03:35):
actually relatively new.
But what's really cool is it'sa way for people to get there
and pick up this goodie bag thatwe build out and allow people
to kind of I don't know mingle alittle bit more and sort of
ease themselves into it.
Instead of having the firstlike start of the event be like
right into education, thisallows people to I don't know
(03:56):
chat a little bit more.
There's a lot of drinks.
It's really fun, and this wassponsored by Obaku Watches and
it was really cool.
I loved how people came andjust really just kind of eased
themselves into it and mingledfor the entire time.
We had a you know, a reallynice time, super fun, super cool
.
This is like the openingreception.
(04:16):
It's like everybody came and isbeside the stay, which is
really nice, in years past.
Sometimes we have this andpeople kind of in a rush or the
weather's not nice and they endup kind of moving away and going
doing their own things.
But for this one we actuallygot a slightly smaller room than
we expected and it's made it soit's kind of like a little bit
tighter and more people have tosit next to each other.
(04:38):
There's fewer tables.
It's just one of those things.
That kind of the unexpectedresults of different decisions
makes it so that people you knowhave a different experience.
It's been really cool.
You need to cut the questionsfor me, yo.
Opening reception.
Be cool, don't be weird.
Come on, jason, you need totell me the questions before you
ask.
(04:58):
I'm including all of them.
He's not good.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
He's not behind the scenes.
He's not hard knocks.
Training camp with the punchmark team.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
Opening reception has been great Good turnout.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
Everyone seems to be mingling really well.
I'm really happy.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
You chose really good food, really like it.
You know I have great taste andalso the whiskey of choice is
kind of classy no well drinkshere.
Honestly, that might be thetagline of the entire event.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
That's true.
Thanks, Jay.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
So we just wrapped up the welcome reception.
It was super fun and we changeda lot of things about it and I
really think it paid off.
But now we're just walking overto this other place and we're
going to watch the Yankees playthe Mets and sorry, I meant to
say we're about to watch theYankees beat the Mets.
Jason just showed hisdispleasure about that, but it's
(06:02):
really cool because I think alot of the participants are
going to go meet us there, andthat's always nice because it's
a little bit more casual and alittle bit more um, it's kind of
something that's I don't know alittle bit more extracurricular
and kind of fun.
So we'll go there and thenwe'll be back and we got bright
and early start tomorrow.
This next clip is ouradministrative assistant, d
(06:23):
Diana, telling the story aboutthis crazy dust storm that
rolled in as she was waiting forone of her child to graduate
college.
It's kind of a funny story, soI thought I'd include it.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
Is that like the tornado?
It was a dust storm Like.
Speaker 7 (06:39):
Illinois has not had a dust storm since 1934.
It was like a full out Arizonadust storm.
Illinois has not had a duststorm since 1934.
It was like a full-out Arizonadust storm.
And so we're walking to theassembly hall like the
auditorium, where the wind isjust whipping and whipping, and
so Steve and I went and savedseats.
And then my two daughters wentwith Brian back to his dorm
because he didn't have to lineup, so they were just going to
(07:03):
hang out for a while.
We're like, yeah, they just goget seats.
All of a sudden you lookoutside and the trees are
literally like I'm like what thehell?
And the dust was whippingaround.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
Yeah, it gets in your teeth.
Speaker 7 (07:15):
Yeah by the time we got back in, the girls were like
what is going on?
It was delayed.
The ceremony was delayed forlike 15 minutes.
Speaker 5 (07:24):
Oh, wow.
Speaker 7 (07:24):
Because traffic was all stopped.
The people had to pull over.
I'm like, okay, this is nutty.
We'll never forget this.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
And really quickly.
I want to say a very specialthank you to the sponsors for
this year's client workshop whohelped us put the show on.
We want to say thank you to thefollowing sponsors put the show
on we want to say thank you tothe following sponsors Podium,
obaku, ijo, the Edge forJewelers, jewelcraft, national
Rarities, brightco, brevani Gemsby Pantsys and Ospy.
(08:02):
Thank you so much for yourcontinued support.
And now back to the show.
Okay, it's the morning of dayone and we woke up around 7 am,
got ready and then we had tobring all of our stuff from the
welcome reception all the waydown to the Dubois Center, which
is like this cool building thatwe used last year, but I really
like it.
It's really like modern andlike lots of light.
(08:27):
But yeah, we got home, man,just short of midnight and got
everything all set up andprepped everything.
So it's kind of a late night,but, man, I slept really good.
I was really tired, but I had areally good time after
reception.
It was really fun.
We had a lot of people from theevent come out with us and we
watched the Yanks win.
It was awesome With a BellingerGrand Slam to seal the deal on
(08:52):
the 8th, which was awesome, andthen I got a chance to talk to a
lot of jewelers.
But what I always love aboutjewelers is there's no like fear
of talking only about work ornot talking about work.
Sometimes people are okay with,like you know, talking about
what they're passionate about.
And I talked with uh Vincentfrom Morezzo, talked to him
about like uh, what he does forwatch repair and Cole was from
Wares, was talking about likethe things that uh like watch
(09:14):
batteries and like why dojewelers do watch batteries and
why do jewelers not do watchbatteries sometimes?
And hearing them kind ofexplain like the inner workings
of like how a jewelry businessactually functions was very
interesting.
It was really neat hearing themkind of explain oh, watch
repair can be really dirty andgross, but it's also really good
(09:36):
business and really good streamof revenue.
So I thought it was really neat.
But today is just the first day.
Our first session is sitemanager, new features.
So all about our new pagebuilder tool that just released
and I'm really excited aboutthat.
Jason spent a lot of timeworking on it and we just
released it last week, so it'slike should be really fresh and
(09:58):
I'm thinking everyone's going tobe really engaged, and then I
have to conduct a whole bunch ofone-on-one interviews for these
testimonial videos we made lastyear that we're going to do
again this year, and that's kindof my big project for the day.
And then I'm hosting a vendorroundtable, which will be at the
end of the day, and that's newthis year.
But I'm also going to be doinga retailer roundtable the next
(10:20):
day, but the vendor roundtableis going to be tonight and I'm
interviewing Jordan from Bravaniand Craig from OSPI, and I
think that that'll be reallysuccessful and they're really
easy to talk to.
So I'm just going to go andfind a cup of coffee After
Jason's big presentation aboutPage Builder 3 and like a big
(10:41):
demonstration about it all.
The following one was about AIand about how you can leverage
it to market and also boost yourown website and also some of
the borderline scarycapabilities of it currently.
What's cool is we actually didthis conversation last year and
it was completely different,because AI is progressing at a
(11:01):
very alarming rate.
This was put on by our CEO,ross Cockrum, and his brother,
our CTO, brian Cockrum, and itwas a really cool conversation.
They, of course, bounce offeach other really well and I
thought it was one of the betterpresentations.
It was very fun.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
California, all over the place, and I just want to
say we are very honored that youguys would come all this way
just to see us in little oldCharlotte.
We, years ago, really wanted to.
You know, we have a lot ofclients who've been supporting
us for 17 years and we werethinking what can we do to give
(11:40):
back?
So this workshop is our attemptto give you back some value in
some form.
So I really, really hope we allhope that you guys get a lot
from this, that you can takesomething home tangible to apply
to your business and really,really grow, whether it's things
that are technical, like sitemanager, venue things, or
(12:01):
whether it's marketing or somefun AI stuff that we're going to
get into today.
Speaker 4 (12:06):
Some things that we've been building and then
we'll try to inspire somequestions out of you guys,
because any ideas that you have,anything custom, I'll show you
something custom that we're inthe middle of building for
someone.
But that's where we get to havefun, roll up our sleeves and
also help you and make yourwebsite shockingly cool to
customers at the same time.
So we'll get into an AI-statedunion.
(12:28):
What's changed over the lasteight months?
That's your first question.
So that has now gone up thisyear to one million tokens.
So what is that?
That's about a 500-page book.
So the implications of that areinsane.
You can upload an entire coursecurriculum from GIA and just
have ChatGPT be your teacher andhave it not only teach you
(12:52):
stuff but answer questions foryour staff.
So if you have a question aboutanything have them go to that
same ChatGPT session ask aquestion and get an answer from
somebody who's effectively agraduate gemologist, because
they know everything that's inthe whole body of text.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
I'm with Savannah designer at Punchmark.
Speaker 6 (13:11):
Hello.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
Running our Instagram content.
Pretty cool.
I like that you're sharing it.
If I didn't come to this, Iwould definitely be following
along.
Speaker 6 (13:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
Yeah, so you've been running our Instagram for a
while.
What have you learned along theway?
Speaker 6 (13:25):
I've learned that videos are really taking off.
I didn't believe people until Isaw the analytics and stuff.
So trying to utilize a balanceof static posts and then the
dynamic video posts and justkind of evolving your style as
you go along, I've made somechanges and then, even with the
(13:45):
aspect ratio on Instagramchanging, just kind of make sure
you stay like present andyou're keeping track of all that
stuff.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
Yeah, honestly, the posting on Instagram it
definitely makes you also learnfor a business, makes you also
learn how to post for yourselfbetter too, which I always think
is so funny, kind of rubs off alittle bit oh yeah but the
reels, uh, I always tell all myfriends and like, as I'm trying
to like teach some of my fellowartists, I'm always like you
(14:15):
know the videos, man, that's theonly way to reach new audiences
right now.
And they're always like and thenI show them, like a little bit
of metrics on, like you know, alive or a reel.
I'm like, yeah, you get, youknow, 10 times as many
interactions or views off a reelthan you do off just a static
post.
Then you show it to them andthey're kind of their jaws hit
(14:35):
the ground.
Speaker 6 (14:36):
Oh yeah, I've started to like pick up on video
content and like my personalstuff now Not so much on
Instagram, but really on TikTok,like whenever I go on a trip,
I'll do like a little travelvlog.
So I'm really kind of learningabout my own personal socials as
well from all this.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
Definitely, Nope, so we're just having lunch.
It's presented, or I guess it'ssponsored by IJL.
So I think that there's like alittle presentation here in a
second, but we're just kind ofhanging out.
We'll break Everyone's millingaround.
It's cool that.
I like that it's a smaller roomthan it used to be, because it
kind of forces people to sitnext to each other and chat.
(15:13):
Yeah, it's been cool.
Well, savannah, thank you somuch.
Appreciate it, thank you.
One of the longtime sponsors ofthe client workshop is the Edge
, and Lenny from the Edge comesevery year and he really brings
a great presentation.
He's a really awesome presenterand here he is talking about
(15:33):
ways that you can leverage theedge point of sale system.
I thought his presentation wasreally interesting and data
driven, so here's a littlesnippet.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
Postcards to each of these 701.
My budget is just under $3,500.
Okay, just math, prettystraightforward.
The results that we see fromvariable printed postcards that
are oversized are what we'reseeing here.
Speaker 5 (15:57):
So we take those 701 times by five we sent out 3,505
postcards.
Speaker 3 (16:03):
Our return on these type of postcards, based on all
the people that are using, is10%, and that's low.
I use the lowest end of thataverage.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
Punchbox Digital Marketing Program is one of the
areas we've really shown themost innovation and growth in
the past year or so.
I think a lot of that creditgoes to Hope Belair, our digital
marketing team manager, andwhat's really cool is she went
into this presentation to reallykind of get people onto the
ground floor and get people tokind of start to understand how
(16:36):
they can start marketing whetherwith us, or why, and how they
can start doing it themselves.
And a lot of people took thispresentation really kind of felt
like it set them up to startmaking strategic decisions in
the future.
I thought this one was reallygreat.
So if you haven't yet, I'dreach out and see if she can do
an audit on your website.
(16:56):
It's definitely worth it.
Speaker 8 (16:59):
Google and Meta both love to spend your money, so we
want to make sure that they'rebeing advantageous with it right
.
We want to be sure that we'regetting the right customers in
front of your ads so that we canbring them into the store and
ultimately make that firstsentimental purchase, oftentimes
between a customer and hisfiance.
Speaker 5 (17:22):
In addition, if you let Google run wild, they will
show your ad all day every daywith $5 cost per click keywords
and all of a sudden you're up toa hundred dollars a day on
certain marketing efforts whichwe don't really need.
Speaker 8 (17:41):
So first let's go over some of the basics.
These are going to be the admetrics that you're going to be
looking for when creating acampaign.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
that is going to signify whether your campaign is
doing very well, how muchyou're spending and where you're
spending it on years of theworkshop, but this one is the
vendor roundtable and I wantedto get a chance to sit down with
(18:12):
some of these leaders of thejewelry vendor kind of facet of
the industry and talk to themabout what's important to them.
Their needs and kind of sightsare set on something slightly
different than what retailersare focused on, as well as what
tech companies like Punchmarkare focused on, and getting a
chance to speak with them prettyopenly was a really
illuminating and interestingconversation.
This is a standalone episode soI'm only going to share a small
(18:35):
snippet of it If you'reinterested in listening to it.
It'll be two episodes previousto this one, so this is with
Craig McBean from OSPI andJordan Peck from Bravani.
I definitely highly recommendthat you go and listen to the
full episode, so enjoy thissnippet here.
Speaker 10 (18:54):
Well, good question.
So my father retired in 2007and he did a sabbatical where he
was going to leave for a fewmonths and then come back in a
different role, so it was goingto allow me to kind of take over
the leadership of the company.
But I knew when he left that hewasn't coming back because he
was pretty checked out at thetime.
(19:14):
So when he retired in 2007,.
He's been gone.
He comes in for copy paper onoccasion and we still charge him
for that, but what's scary isthat I'm now getting to the
point where I need to startthinking about the next
generation.
And I've got a 24-year-olddaughter who I don't think we
could work together.
Speaker 4 (19:34):
I've got a 22-year-old son who's going into
cybersecurity and I've got a17-year-old son, so I'm still a
ways from anyone from, say, afifth generation being ready.
Speaker 10 (19:44):
But thankfully we've got a good team in-house that
can run the the business, andI've got to figure some things
out.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
Hopefully you got some time with that.
And, jordan, we actually did anepisode relatively recently a
couple of months ago and youwere talking about working with
your sister, but also navigatingwhat it's like working with
your parents Just an estimation.
You guys can go back and listento the episode, but what is it
like having to navigate, dealingwith family and sibling matters
(20:14):
as well as, you know, businessmatters?
Speaker 9 (20:17):
Yeah, we were just sitting and talking about work.
So, we had to kind of find thatbalance, I think my sister in my
case it's good because thingsI'm good at she's not
necessarily as good at, and viceversa I'm good at she's not
necessarily as good at, and viceversa.
She's great at design,marketing and brand direction,
whereas I'm much more of aback-end at sales operations,
(20:37):
things like that.
So we have a really goodbalance and we're well together
in that respect.
And then we share thecommonality of trying to
convince my father to take astep back and let go of the
reins a little bit.
But you know just the type ofperson he is.
I don't know if he's ever goingto be pulled out and just come
in for paper.
He's someone who's probablygoing to be there for the long
(21:01):
haul.
We are just kind of adapting tohow that looks, and you know
how we're going to go abouttaking over and stepping into
his role while he stillmaintains some sort of
involvement there.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
Yeah, so this is one of the topics that I've been
covering quite often is familydynamics and kind of you know,
business relationships, becauseyou know, businesses aren't like
this cold, heartless sort ofcorporate being.
For all of you, as independentjewelers, there's a lot more at
play.
Okay, so we just finished theday at the workshop first day,
(21:39):
and it was a really good andbusy day.
I'm pretty cooked.
I'm definitely a little bit ofan introvert pretending to be an
extrovert, podcast hostingnotwithstanding, and whenever I
finish having to be in a crowdand being really extroverted, I
always feel really tiredafterwards.
But we just walked back to ourhotel room to just drop off some
(22:02):
of our stuff and then we haveto go over to Fahrenheit, which
is a rooftop bar in downtownCharlotte, and it's super cool.
It's right on top of thisbeautiful rooftop and luckily
it's going to be incredibleweather again.
It's like 87 degrees outside,so it's pretty warm and everyone
(22:23):
has a really good time.
So I'm looking forward to that.
The live vendor retailer episodewent super well.
I'm just really pleased, andCraig uh, craig and Jordan were
so kind and they did such a goodjob that I'm just really happy
with how it all turned out.
Tomorrow is going to be alittle bit easier.
I had to schedule a lot ofone-on-one interviews and I
(22:47):
think that took up a lot of mytime and handling with the um,
with the photographer and thevideographer, and tomorrow
should be a little bit easier,which will be nice.
But you know, I think samething with when you go to
jewelry trade shows a lot of thetimes.
You know the point isn't justto sleep, you know you gotta
just be out there a lot and,yeah, today went really well.
(23:08):
So I'm really pleased, reallyproud of the team.
Like I said, we always havethis cocktail hour on Fahrenheit
Rooftop Bar and it is just sucha highlight of the show we
can't change it becauseeverybody looks forward to it
and kind of expects it at thispoint and who would we be to
change things that are just sucha hit?
(23:28):
But one thing we added lastyear and we continued this year
is this series of little awardsthat we give.
This year is this series oflittle awards that we give.
We give a couple to Punchmarkemployees and it's important to
us to highlight our employees infront of our clients and I
think that this is a really coolopportunity to do it, and we
also highlight some of ourclients who attend and we shut
(23:49):
them out for things like, youknow, being loyal or traveling
there Not so much as to you knowhow big of a store they're a
part of, but this is just a coolway to kind of highlight some
of the really interestingretailers that are part of the
Punchmark crew.
So I hope you listen to alittle bit of the transcript,
but it's a little loud up there,so I hope you understand.
(24:11):
Go ahead.
The first one I want torecognize.
This person is for Punchmark.
Sorry, this one's withPunchmark.
Go ahead For the person who'sgrown our Instagram by a whole
(24:34):
bunch and done a really greatjob.
This is Savannah Kell with theInstagram.
Shout out to Savannah hey, ifyou don't follow us, make sure
you do.
It's Punchmark Websites.
If you're not following andyou're here, you guys are fake.
Come on.
Okay, we've grown through thisthing.
All right.
(24:55):
Our second Punchmark GrowthAward.
This one is someone who took onan entire department.
It was really impressive.
She did an incredible job andwe're really proud of her.
This one is for Hope and thedigital marketing program.
Speaker 9 (25:05):
So congratulations Hope.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
And this one.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
My last Punchmark one is our Rising Star Award.
This is just a shout out tosomeone that has really stepped
in and built a whole bunch, bothfiguratively and very literally
.
This one is for Tom Moore, ourfront-end developer.
He built all the websites.
You probably never got a chanceto meet him, but he does an
(25:37):
incredible job.
That's what I found All.
Right.
Now to the client ones.
You guys can start payingattention to these.
All right, this one we did thislast year, but this is for the
longest-standing client inattendance and they've been a
client for I can't do math thisfast 12 years, just short of 12
(25:59):
years.
And this is for Holiday Jewelry.
Thank you so much.
Sticking with us throughout theyears don't go anywhere.
This one is also our second one.
This is very important to us.
This is our.
(26:20):
Whenever you guys close a ticketor open a ticket and then it
gets closed, you get an optionto leave a review for us, and
it's very important to the CSteam.
It's part of judging how wellwe're able to service you, and
we want to say thank you towho's left the most reviews,
most reviews left, and this isalso for Holiday Jewelry Nine
(26:42):
reviews, thank you so much, ofcourse.
Of course Also, we're inbeautiful Charlotte, north
Carolina, right now and we knowthat not everybody lives in this
proximity, but you guys are allhere.
We really appreciate it.
So we wanted to recognizesomeone who traveled the
(27:02):
farthest distance and that goesout to Holly McCone Jewelry in
Astoria, oregon, and that is, bymy calculations by CatchyPT's
calculations 2,753 miles rightthis year.
Shout out to them.
(27:25):
We always appreciate when youguys go to bat for us.
We know how hard it issometimes.
We know that.
You know the internet can bevery easy to be anonymous on.
We understand that and we wantto say thank you to all the
people.
Whenever someone JHJ or IJOexclusive or RJ exclusive or all
the different, variousexclusive Facebook groups,
(27:46):
whenever someone says, hey, whoshould I go for a website and
believe me, I have lots ofalerts that whenever the word
website is mentioned, it getspinged to me and whenever I go
in there, this person is alwaysin there recommending Punchmark
and I really want to say thankyou so much for our Punchmark
Champion Award, and this goesout to Vincent Spillaccio and
(28:07):
Arezzo Jewelers.
Thank you so much, vincent.
Speaker 5 (28:13):
Thank you for battling out for us man.
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
Okay, last one, but this one I asked the CS members
here.
I asked them hey, who is theclient that really is down to
learn anything and is down totry anything you recommend and
is down to learn the new toolsand take on new roles and better
(28:37):
their website the best they can?
And this is our, the first onethat we've ever done.
The Innovation and TerminationAward, as picked by the our CS
team, goes out to Wears Jewelers.
Congratulations.
Thanks so much, paul.
All right, everybody, that'sthe end.
Enjoy your drinks.
Enjoy the cocktails.
See you again next year.
(28:59):
All right, it is pretty late andwe are walking back to the
hotel room, but we're at the endof the Fahrenheit um happy hour
.
We always go to this other uhrooftop bar, which is novelty
house.
It's just cool spot and it'slike a seven or 10 minute walk
(29:20):
or so and we actually had a tonof people come out for it.
It was super fun.
And now me, jason and Diana arejust walking back to the hotel
and yeah, it was a reallysuccessful day, really long.
But now we got one more day ofeducation fun.
Hopefully everyone makes it outfor it and then we can.
(29:40):
Yeah, we'll wrap it up fromthere, but so far it's been a
really good one.
It's a really good group of areally good group of uh jewelers
.
Everyone seems to be reallyenthusiastic and fond clicks, so
it's been a good time of clicks.
So it's been a good time allright dawn of day two or day
(30:02):
three overall, but day two forlessons and sadly last night
lost my lavalier mic, so nowrecording it right out of my
phone, but no, it was good time.
Had some breakfast downstairsat the uh the hotel restaurant.
So I think that this one, dan'sgoing to do a talk all about AI,
which I think, or building yourown GPT, which I think will be
really cool.
(30:22):
Yesterday morning Ross andBrian did a really awesome talk
about the powers of AI and whatit can be used for in the near
future.
So I think that the GPT one isgoing to go really well.
And then I think I have aretailer roundtable and I'm
still kind of dialing in who I'mgoing to have for that one, but
(30:45):
I think it'll be really good.
And then I fly home, so we havea busy one.
Day two was kicked off with Rosstalking about marketing and
standing out, but one of thethings I really enjoyed was he
actually pulled up everybody'sInstagram accounts, including
Punchmarks, and kind of did likea little flip through on it,
(31:06):
and I think that a lot of peoplehad.
It was sort of like kind ofilluminating.
It really allowed you to seewhere you stand and also maybe
you should put in a little bitof effort or maybe your stands
out really well and looks betterthan average.
I always really enjoy theseconversations and like getting a
chance to look at how tocapitalize on what makes you
different, and Ross kicked itoff at nine in the morning with
(31:29):
some really good presentations,so I thought that was really fun
.
Just be yourself.
Speaker 2 (31:34):
Okay, it's those.
It's that personality, theidentity that you have and that
even your quirks, right, theweird part of your business
those things are what peopleremember, Like do you have a?
Dog in your store.
Do you have right and do youhave like?
Speaker 5 (31:50):
a section over here for kids to hang out and play Um
do you like what?
Speaker 2 (31:55):
what kind of things do you do you bring to the
office?
Do you?
Are you a guitarist and do youhave a guitar hanging up on the
wall in your store?
Those things actually make youunique and make you memorable.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
One of my favorite presentations from day two was
actually by our CPO Danceroy.
He's my boss, but he actuallyisn't kind of presenting very
often.
He doesn't go to as many shows.
He's usually the man behind thecurtain sort of building things
that clients get to enjoy, buthe doesn't usually take credit
for it, and he's one of theco-founders of Punchmark.
(32:29):
But today he was talking allabout GPTs and how to build a
bot model, you might say, andwhat these are is kind of like a
super hyper-tailored AI versionof ChatGPT and you can go in
and train it on these and giveit guardrails on these questions
(32:49):
, and he also kind of leveragesit to show how you could use it
around your store.
It was a really interestingpresentation.
It's something I had never donebefore and I was taking notes
right alongside of him, but itwas super interesting to have
someone so hyper-intuned withthe development of AI kind of
show something that is very muchon the on the bleeding edge of
(33:11):
of AI.
Speaker 5 (33:12):
So I would highly recommend asking him about it
next time you see him, you guyswhat are the solutions we're
coming up with, and then we'llget into actual custom GPT
methodology.
One thing to note is last yearwe had this conference where we
were talking about AI and a lotof people were just you know,
(33:34):
how much of adoption is actuallygoing to happen?
Are people going to use?
Speaker 7 (33:37):
AI.
Speaker 5 (33:37):
Are you going to lose your job?
It was a lot of that kind ofconversation.
Fast forward one year later.
Everybody has AI in theirpockets all day long.
Every single thing has AI.
Speaker 1 (33:47):
The final segment of the last part of the client
workshop is a leadershiproundtable and I host this, but
the three guests are theleadership team at Punchmark.
So this is Dan Ross and Brianand they talk about kind of the
roadmap and we've kind oflearned from our mistakes in the
(34:07):
past.
We don't say anything aboutwhen things are coming out, and
we used to do that and no longer, because sometimes things arise
and also sometimes things areso pressing that we have to fast
track them and then it throwseverything off and as soon as we
come out and announce a datefor something, a lot of times
that date is no longer accurate.
(34:29):
So what we've learned is thatit's better for us to talk about
what we're working on and whatwe've released recently and what
we're proud of, and then peoplecan kind of follow along with
those.
But it's pretty interestingbecause there's a lot of things
that are released that we buildfor one or two or three
customers that everybody canbenefit from.
(34:50):
And that's part of like what thewhole SaaS software as a
service model is about is you'renot paying for these updates,
you just pay a monthly serviceplan and then you get all
updates in perpetuity andthere's a lot of these updates
that we don't even publicizethat much because they don't
sound that sexy.
In a press release, you know,when we say, oh, we made it so
(35:12):
that your products load wayfaster, it just doesn't really
kind of ring through as much andwe've never really kind of been
able to jump that gap to makeit so that some of these less
sexy releases are kind ofreceived as such.
But when we go in these guysthey could talk about anything
and I think a lot of our clientswould be really excited.
(35:34):
So that's how we end this oneup.
And here's Ross talking aboutwhat he's most proud of
releasing this past year.
Speaker 2 (35:42):
I am actually most proud of the seamless loop that
we create between your websiteand the store.
I've personally been talking agood game about a lot of these
things since 2018.
A good friend and mentor ofmine, dick Abbott, the owner of
the Edge, we share a commonvision on what the industry
needs for the new era ofretailing.
(36:04):
One of those things thatreleased on May 22nd, just after
last year's workshop, which Italked about sitting in this
exact seat was customerinvitations.
As soon as someone makes apurchase in your store, they're
invited then to go to yourwebsite, claim their account and
there's a big claim, my accountlink and then, the minute we
launched it, we had like 87accounts being claimed like
(36:26):
within five minutes, and it waspretty awesome that the proof of
concept was out there.
So we want to engage customersand get them 24 seven right.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
Man.
We just finished the second dayand, oh my gosh, that was a
long day, but I think everythingwent well.
Just grabbing a drink in thehotel lobby and then I'm going
to take an Uber to the airportand we'll call it right there,
but everybody else goes todinner, which I unfortunately
skip.
I have to get home.
I'm painting a mural onThursday and I have to get home
(36:58):
in time for that.
So it was a really fun day.
I think we get better everysingle time we do it.
I'm really proud of how itturned out.
So I think overall we get 10%better every year, but it's
compounding.
So who knows Next year will 10%better every year, but it's
compounding.
So who knows, next year will beeven better.
I thought it was a good time.
Thanks everybody who came out,though I seem to miss the final
(37:20):
event of the client workshop.
Every year it's this beautifuldinner at Finanfino that the
Punchmark team puts on and itsort of kind of wraps things up,
and I had to get home.
I was painting a mural in myhometown and construction was
set to start in just a day and ahalf, so I needed to get by,
but someone recorded this finaltoast that Ross did at the
(37:42):
dinner and it sort ofencapsulates the vibe and energy
of this year's client workshop.
This year's group was soexcellent.
They really were open-mindeddown to learn new techniques and
tips and talk about AI, even ifthey weren't currently using it
or familiar with it.
I'd really hope to see you atthe next client workshop.
(38:03):
We have it every year in May inCharlotte, north Carolina.
Clients, I believe it'sincluded for you to go with your
first employee, with your firstmember, and it's such a great
opportunity and it kind of getsyou jazzed up for the next rest
of the year.
So I hope that we see you atthe next one and get a chance to
(38:23):
shake your hand, have a drinkwith you.
All right, cheers.
Speaker 2 (38:27):
Success happens when you go outside your comfort zone
.
It wasn't the people who weresuper comfortable that were
successful.
The fact that you guys jumpedon a plane, booked airfare,
jumped in a hotel just to cometo Little Old Charlotte, get to
learn on, mingle with us, thatmeans a lot and it says a lot to
(38:49):
your success and the type ofpeople that you are.
There's a lot of stuff.
I hope you go home andimplement things that you
learned.
More importantly than that, Iwas talking to Oscar about this
and Anna was on camera talkingabout this.
We do business with the peoplethat we would hang with.
We just love hanging with youguys.
(39:09):
You guys are awesome, awesome.
You guys are fun to be with and, like craig said today.
Craig said a lot of thingsabout values and it seems like
your values are aligning withour values, right?
So in the sense of that, theysay family and business doesn't
mix, but just like ijo says,yeah, we're all family here
(39:29):
right, let's sing the song.
Let's sing the song.
Here's to you guys.
Speaker 3 (39:36):
We are family Come on , let's hear it.
Speaker 8 (39:38):
Look at all my viewers and me.
Speaker 2 (39:42):
Anyway, here's to you guys Letting family succeed and
to your success.
Thank you guys.
Yeah, yeah, all right guys,cheers, cheers.
Speaker 1 (39:51):
Cheers.
All right, everybody.
That's the end of the show.
Thanks so much for listening.
This episode was a bigcompilation episode, so a very
special thank you goes out toour editor, Paul Suarez, for
looking through my GarageBandrecording layout and making it
make sense.
Thanks, Paul.
This episode was brought to youby Punchmark and produced and
(40:13):
hosted by me, Michael Burpo.
This episode was edited by PaulSuarez with music by Roz
Cockrum.
Don't forget to rate thepodcast on Spotify and Apple
Podcasts and leave us feedbackon punchmarkcom slash loop.
That's L-O-U-P-E.
Thanks and hopefully I see youat the next client workshop,
Same time, same place next year.
Cheers, Bye.
Welcome to In the Loop blog of this year's client
workshop in Charlotte, NorthCarolina that's put on by
Punchmark.
Every year.
I've actually been documentingthis for the past, I think,
three years, and every singleyear it's a little bit different
, but I think it's like a funway to look behind the curtain
at what goes into putting on oneof these workshop events, and
(00:39):
also it allows me to interviewsome people a little bit more
casually.
Do some man on the streetcontent, and it's also just a
really kind of fun differentepisode, and this is something I
hope to do more of.
I plan to do this when I go toJCK next week actually.
So be on the lookout for thatand please enjoy getting a peek
(00:59):
behind it and see if you madethe cut.
All right, Thanks everybody.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
See you next time.
With decades of experience andlong-lasting industry
relationships, punchmark enablesjewelry businesses to flourish
in any marketplace.
We consider our clients ourfriends, as many of them have
been friends way before becomingclients.
Punchmark's own success comesfrom the fact that we have a
(01:37):
much deeper need and obligationto help our friends succeed.
Whether you're looking forbetter e-commerce performance,
business growth or campaignsthat drive traffic and sales,
punchmark's website andmarketing services were made
just for you.
It's never too late totransform your business and
stitch together your digital andphysical worlds in a way that
achieves tremendous growth andresults.
Schedule a guided demo today atpunchmarkcom.
(02:00):
Slash go.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
And now back to the show.
All right, from sunny Charlotte, north Carolina, we are all set
up for the client workshop forday one Actually, it's day zero,
it's the first one we alwayshave this welcome reception and
we are just at the hotel whereeveryone's staying at and for
(02:26):
this year I actually got a hotelroom, which is super cool and
that way we don't have tocommute out of town or anything
like that or stay with anyfriends.
So, yeah, we got a spot andthis time we always have a
little welcome reception withsome drinks and some
sponsorships.
Everyone gets like a goodie bagwith like a whole bunch of cool
(02:51):
swag in it, like coffee mug anda name tag and all sorts of
different things and likedifferent like tissues and mints
and stuff like that.
I think it's really a nicetouch that the design team
always does and Jason, but yeah,we're just going to have some
welcome drinks.
We're still 30 minutes out, sowe've got everything all set up.
Hardest part of the entirething is setting up this step
and repeat banner.
It's like one that you see likefighters in front of at UFC
(03:12):
events with like all thesponsorships on it.
So we always have to set thatup and it's always like a 37
step process, but we got thatdone, so hopefully the next
thing is just going to be havingeverybody show up and having a
good time done, so hopefully thenext thing is just going to be
having everybody show up andhaving a good time.
The first event that kicks offthe client workshop is the
welcome reception, and we haveplayed around with this a couple
of ways and we've had indifferent rooms and it's
(03:35):
actually relatively new.
But what's really cool is it'sa way for people to get there
and pick up this goodie bag thatwe build out and allow people
to kind of I don't know mingle alittle bit more and sort of
ease themselves into it.
Instead of having the firstlike start of the event be like
right into education, thisallows people to I don't know
(03:56):
chat a little bit more.
There's a lot of drinks.
It's really fun, and this wassponsored by Obaku Watches and
it was really cool.
I loved how people came andjust really just kind of eased
themselves into it and mingledfor the entire time.
We had a you know, a reallynice time, super fun, super cool
.
This is like the openingreception.
(04:16):
It's like everybody came and isbeside the stay, which is
really nice, in years past.
Sometimes we have this andpeople kind of in a rush or the
weather's not nice and they endup kind of moving away and going
doing their own things.
But for this one we actuallygot a slightly smaller room than
we expected and it's made it soit's kind of like a little bit
tighter and more people have tosit next to each other.
(04:38):
There's fewer tables.
It's just one of those things.
That kind of the unexpectedresults of different decisions
makes it so that people you knowhave a different experience.
It's been really cool.
You need to cut the questionsfor me, yo.
Opening reception.
Be cool, don't be weird.
Come on, jason, you need totell me the questions before you
ask.
(04:58):
I'm including all of them.
He's not good.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
He's not behind the scenes.
He's not hard knocks.
Training camp with the punchmark team.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
Opening reception has been great Good turnout.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
Everyone seems to be mingling really well.
I'm really happy.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
You chose really good food, really like it.
You know I have great taste andalso the whiskey of choice is
kind of classy no well drinkshere.
Honestly, that might be thetagline of the entire event.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
That's true.
Thanks, Jay.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
So we just wrapped up the welcome reception.
It was super fun and we changeda lot of things about it and I
really think it paid off.
But now we're just walking overto this other place and we're
going to watch the Yankees playthe Mets and sorry, I meant to
say we're about to watch theYankees beat the Mets.
Jason just showed hisdispleasure about that, but it's
(06:02):
really cool because I think alot of the participants are
going to go meet us there, andthat's always nice because it's
a little bit more casual and alittle bit more um, it's kind of
something that's I don't know alittle bit more extracurricular
and kind of fun.
So we'll go there and thenwe'll be back and we got bright
and early start tomorrow.
This next clip is ouradministrative assistant, d
(06:23):
Diana, telling the story aboutthis crazy dust storm that
rolled in as she was waiting forone of her child to graduate
college.
It's kind of a funny story, soI thought I'd include it.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
Is that like the tornado?
It was a dust storm Like.
Speaker 7 (06:39):
Illinois has not had a dust storm since 1934.
It was like a full out Arizonadust storm.
Illinois has not had a duststorm since 1934.
It was like a full-out Arizonadust storm.
And so we're walking to theassembly hall like the
auditorium, where the wind isjust whipping and whipping, and
so Steve and I went and savedseats.
And then my two daughters wentwith Brian back to his dorm
because he didn't have to lineup, so they were just going to
(07:03):
hang out for a while.
We're like, yeah, they just goget seats.
All of a sudden you lookoutside and the trees are
literally like I'm like what thehell?
And the dust was whippingaround.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
Yeah, it gets in your teeth.
Speaker 7 (07:15):
Yeah by the time we got back in, the girls were like
what is going on?
It was delayed.
The ceremony was delayed forlike 15 minutes.
Speaker 5 (07:24):
Oh, wow.
Speaker 7 (07:24):
Because traffic was all stopped.
The people had to pull over.
I'm like, okay, this is nutty.
We'll never forget this.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
And really quickly.
I want to say a very specialthank you to the sponsors for
this year's client workshop whohelped us put the show on.
We want to say thank you to thefollowing sponsors put the show
on we want to say thank you tothe following sponsors Podium,
obaku, ijo, the Edge forJewelers, jewelcraft, national
Rarities, brightco, brevani Gemsby Pantsys and Ospy.
(08:02):
Thank you so much for yourcontinued support.
And now back to the show.
Okay, it's the morning of dayone and we woke up around 7 am,
got ready and then we had tobring all of our stuff from the
welcome reception all the waydown to the Dubois Center, which
is like this cool building thatwe used last year, but I really
like it.
It's really like modern andlike lots of light.
(08:27):
But yeah, we got home, man,just short of midnight and got
everything all set up andprepped everything.
So it's kind of a late night,but, man, I slept really good.
I was really tired, but I had areally good time after
reception.
It was really fun.
We had a lot of people from theevent come out with us and we
watched the Yanks win.
It was awesome With a BellingerGrand Slam to seal the deal on
(08:52):
the 8th, which was awesome, andthen I got a chance to talk to a
lot of jewelers.
But what I always love aboutjewelers is there's no like fear
of talking only about work ornot talking about work.
Sometimes people are okay with,like you know, talking about
what they're passionate about.
And I talked with uh Vincentfrom Morezzo, talked to him
about like uh, what he does forwatch repair and Cole was from
Wares, was talking about likethe things that uh like watch
(09:14):
batteries and like why dojewelers do watch batteries and
why do jewelers not do watchbatteries sometimes?
And hearing them kind ofexplain like the inner workings
of like how a jewelry businessactually functions was very
interesting.
It was really neat hearing themkind of explain oh, watch
repair can be really dirty andgross, but it's also really good
(09:36):
business and really good streamof revenue.
So I thought it was really neat.
But today is just the first day.
Our first session is sitemanager, new features.
So all about our new pagebuilder tool that just released
and I'm really excited aboutthat.
Jason spent a lot of timeworking on it and we just
released it last week, so it'slike should be really fresh and
(09:58):
I'm thinking everyone's going tobe really engaged, and then I
have to conduct a whole bunch ofone-on-one interviews for these
testimonial videos we made lastyear that we're going to do
again this year, and that's kindof my big project for the day.
And then I'm hosting a vendorroundtable, which will be at the
end of the day, and that's newthis year.
But I'm also going to be doinga retailer roundtable the next
(10:20):
day, but the vendor roundtableis going to be tonight and I'm
interviewing Jordan from Bravaniand Craig from OSPI, and I
think that that'll be reallysuccessful and they're really
easy to talk to.
So I'm just going to go andfind a cup of coffee After
Jason's big presentation aboutPage Builder 3 and like a big
(10:41):
demonstration about it all.
The following one was about AIand about how you can leverage
it to market and also boost yourown website and also some of
the borderline scarycapabilities of it currently.
What's cool is we actually didthis conversation last year and
it was completely different,because AI is progressing at a
(11:01):
very alarming rate.
This was put on by our CEO,ross Cockrum, and his brother,
our CTO, brian Cockrum, and itwas a really cool conversation.
They, of course, bounce offeach other really well and I
thought it was one of the betterpresentations.
It was very fun.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
California, all over the place, and I just want to
say we are very honored that youguys would come all this way
just to see us in little oldCharlotte.
We, years ago, really wanted to.
You know, we have a lot ofclients who've been supporting
us for 17 years and we werethinking what can we do to give
(11:40):
back?
So this workshop is our attemptto give you back some value in
some form.
So I really, really hope we allhope that you guys get a lot
from this, that you can takesomething home tangible to apply
to your business and really,really grow, whether it's things
that are technical, like sitemanager, venue things, or
(12:01):
whether it's marketing or somefun AI stuff that we're going to
get into today.
Speaker 4 (12:06):
Some things that we've been building and then
we'll try to inspire somequestions out of you guys,
because any ideas that you have,anything custom, I'll show you
something custom that we're inthe middle of building for
someone.
But that's where we get to havefun, roll up our sleeves and
also help you and make yourwebsite shockingly cool to
customers at the same time.
So we'll get into an AI-statedunion.
(12:28):
What's changed over the lasteight months?
That's your first question.
So that has now gone up thisyear to one million tokens.
So what is that?
That's about a 500-page book.
So the implications of that areinsane.
You can upload an entire coursecurriculum from GIA and just
have ChatGPT be your teacher andhave it not only teach you
(12:52):
stuff but answer questions foryour staff.
So if you have a question aboutanything have them go to that
same ChatGPT session ask aquestion and get an answer from
somebody who's effectively agraduate gemologist, because
they know everything that's inthe whole body of text.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
I'm with Savannah designer at Punchmark.
Speaker 6 (13:11):
Hello.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
Running our Instagram content.
Pretty cool.
I like that you're sharing it.
If I didn't come to this, Iwould definitely be following
along.
Speaker 6 (13:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
Yeah, so you've been running our Instagram for a
while.
What have you learned along theway?
Speaker 6 (13:25):
I've learned that videos are really taking off.
I didn't believe people until Isaw the analytics and stuff.
So trying to utilize a balanceof static posts and then the
dynamic video posts and justkind of evolving your style as
you go along, I've made somechanges and then, even with the
(13:45):
aspect ratio on Instagramchanging, just kind of make sure
you stay like present andyou're keeping track of all that
stuff.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
Yeah, honestly, the posting on Instagram it
definitely makes you also learnfor a business, makes you also
learn how to post for yourselfbetter too, which I always think
is so funny, kind of rubs off alittle bit oh yeah but the
reels, uh, I always tell all myfriends and like, as I'm trying
to like teach some of my fellowartists, I'm always like you
(14:15):
know the videos, man, that's theonly way to reach new audiences
right now.
And they're always like and thenI show them, like a little bit
of metrics on, like you know, alive or a reel.
I'm like, yeah, you get, youknow, 10 times as many
interactions or views off a reelthan you do off just a static
post.
Then you show it to them andthey're kind of their jaws hit
(14:35):
the ground.
Speaker 6 (14:36):
Oh yeah, I've started to like pick up on video
content and like my personalstuff now Not so much on
Instagram, but really on TikTok,like whenever I go on a trip,
I'll do like a little travelvlog.
So I'm really kind of learningabout my own personal socials as
well from all this.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
Definitely, Nope, so we're just having lunch.
It's presented, or I guess it'ssponsored by IJL.
So I think that there's like alittle presentation here in a
second, but we're just kind ofhanging out.
We'll break Everyone's millingaround.
It's cool that.
I like that it's a smaller roomthan it used to be, because it
kind of forces people to sitnext to each other and chat.
(15:13):
Yeah, it's been cool.
Well, savannah, thank you somuch.
Appreciate it, thank you.
One of the longtime sponsors ofthe client workshop is the Edge
, and Lenny from the Edge comesevery year and he really brings
a great presentation.
He's a really awesome presenterand here he is talking about
(15:33):
ways that you can leverage theedge point of sale system.
I thought his presentation wasreally interesting and data
driven, so here's a littlesnippet.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
Postcards to each of these 701.
My budget is just under $3,500.
Okay, just math, prettystraightforward.
The results that we see fromvariable printed postcards that
are oversized are what we'reseeing here.
Speaker 5 (15:57):
So we take those 701 times by five we sent out 3,505
postcards.
Speaker 3 (16:03):
Our return on these type of postcards, based on all
the people that are using, is10%, and that's low.
I use the lowest end of thataverage.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
Punchbox Digital Marketing Program is one of the
areas we've really shown themost innovation and growth in
the past year or so.
I think a lot of that creditgoes to Hope Belair, our digital
marketing team manager, andwhat's really cool is she went
into this presentation to reallykind of get people onto the
ground floor and get people tokind of start to understand how
(16:36):
they can start marketing whetherwith us, or why, and how they
can start doing it themselves.
And a lot of people took thispresentation really kind of felt
like it set them up to startmaking strategic decisions in
the future.
I thought this one was reallygreat.
So if you haven't yet, I'dreach out and see if she can do
an audit on your website.
(16:56):
It's definitely worth it.
Speaker 8 (16:59):
Google and Meta both love to spend your money, so we
want to make sure that they'rebeing advantageous with it right
.
We want to be sure that we'regetting the right customers in
front of your ads so that we canbring them into the store and
ultimately make that firstsentimental purchase, oftentimes
between a customer and hisfiance.
Speaker 5 (17:22):
In addition, if you let Google run wild, they will
show your ad all day every daywith $5 cost per click keywords
and all of a sudden you're up toa hundred dollars a day on
certain marketing efforts whichwe don't really need.
Speaker 8 (17:41):
So first let's go over some of the basics.
These are going to be the admetrics that you're going to be
looking for when creating acampaign.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
that is going to signify whether your campaign is
doing very well, how muchyou're spending and where you're
spending it on years of theworkshop, but this one is the
vendor roundtable and I wantedto get a chance to sit down with
(18:12):
some of these leaders of thejewelry vendor kind of facet of
the industry and talk to themabout what's important to them.
Their needs and kind of sightsare set on something slightly
different than what retailersare focused on, as well as what
tech companies like Punchmarkare focused on, and getting a
chance to speak with them prettyopenly was a really
illuminating and interestingconversation.
This is a standalone episode soI'm only going to share a small
(18:35):
snippet of it If you'reinterested in listening to it.
It'll be two episodes previousto this one, so this is with
Craig McBean from OSPI andJordan Peck from Bravani.
I definitely highly recommendthat you go and listen to the
full episode, so enjoy thissnippet here.
Speaker 10 (18:54):
Well, good question.
So my father retired in 2007and he did a sabbatical where he
was going to leave for a fewmonths and then come back in a
different role, so it was goingto allow me to kind of take over
the leadership of the company.
But I knew when he left that hewasn't coming back because he
was pretty checked out at thetime.
(19:14):
So when he retired in 2007,.
He's been gone.
He comes in for copy paper onoccasion and we still charge him
for that, but what's scary isthat I'm now getting to the
point where I need to startthinking about the next
generation.
And I've got a 24-year-olddaughter who I don't think we
could work together.
Speaker 4 (19:34):
I've got a 22-year-old son who's going into
cybersecurity and I've got a17-year-old son, so I'm still a
ways from anyone from, say, afifth generation being ready.
Speaker 10 (19:44):
But thankfully we've got a good team in-house that
can run the the business, andI've got to figure some things
out.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
Hopefully you got some time with that.
And, jordan, we actually did anepisode relatively recently a
couple of months ago and youwere talking about working with
your sister, but also navigatingwhat it's like working with
your parents Just an estimation.
You guys can go back and listento the episode, but what is it
like having to navigate, dealingwith family and sibling matters
(20:14):
as well as, you know, businessmatters?
Speaker 9 (20:17):
Yeah, we were just sitting and talking about work.
So, we had to kind of find thatbalance, I think my sister in my
case it's good because thingsI'm good at she's not
necessarily as good at, and viceversa I'm good at she's not
necessarily as good at, and viceversa.
She's great at design,marketing and brand direction,
whereas I'm much more of aback-end at sales operations,
(20:37):
things like that.
So we have a really goodbalance and we're well together
in that respect.
And then we share thecommonality of trying to
convince my father to take astep back and let go of the
reins a little bit.
But you know just the type ofperson he is.
I don't know if he's ever goingto be pulled out and just come
in for paper.
He's someone who's probablygoing to be there for the long
(21:01):
haul.
We are just kind of adapting tohow that looks, and you know
how we're going to go abouttaking over and stepping into
his role while he stillmaintains some sort of
involvement there.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
Yeah, so this is one of the topics that I've been
covering quite often is familydynamics and kind of you know,
business relationships, becauseyou know, businesses aren't like
this cold, heartless sort ofcorporate being.
For all of you, as independentjewelers, there's a lot more at
play.
Okay, so we just finished theday at the workshop first day,
(21:39):
and it was a really good andbusy day.
I'm pretty cooked.
I'm definitely a little bit ofan introvert pretending to be an
extrovert, podcast hostingnotwithstanding, and whenever I
finish having to be in a crowdand being really extroverted, I
always feel really tiredafterwards.
But we just walked back to ourhotel room to just drop off some
(22:02):
of our stuff and then we haveto go over to Fahrenheit, which
is a rooftop bar in downtownCharlotte, and it's super cool.
It's right on top of thisbeautiful rooftop and luckily
it's going to be incredibleweather again.
It's like 87 degrees outside,so it's pretty warm and everyone
(22:23):
has a really good time.
So I'm looking forward to that.
The live vendor retailer episodewent super well.
I'm just really pleased, andCraig uh, craig and Jordan were
so kind and they did such a goodjob that I'm just really happy
with how it all turned out.
Tomorrow is going to be alittle bit easier.
I had to schedule a lot ofone-on-one interviews and I
(22:47):
think that took up a lot of mytime and handling with the um,
with the photographer and thevideographer, and tomorrow
should be a little bit easier,which will be nice.
But you know, I think samething with when you go to
jewelry trade shows a lot of thetimes.
You know the point isn't justto sleep, you know you gotta
just be out there a lot and,yeah, today went really well.
(23:08):
So I'm really pleased, reallyproud of the team.
Like I said, we always havethis cocktail hour on Fahrenheit
Rooftop Bar and it is just sucha highlight of the show we
can't change it becauseeverybody looks forward to it
and kind of expects it at thispoint and who would we be to
change things that are just sucha hit?
(23:28):
But one thing we added lastyear and we continued this year
is this series of little awardsthat we give.
This year is this series oflittle awards that we give.
We give a couple to Punchmarkemployees and it's important to
us to highlight our employees infront of our clients and I
think that this is a really coolopportunity to do it, and we
also highlight some of ourclients who attend and we shut
(23:49):
them out for things like, youknow, being loyal or traveling
there Not so much as to you knowhow big of a store they're a
part of, but this is just a coolway to kind of highlight some
of the really interestingretailers that are part of the
Punchmark crew.
So I hope you listen to alittle bit of the transcript,
but it's a little loud up there,so I hope you understand.
(24:11):
Go ahead.
The first one I want torecognize.
This person is for Punchmark.
Sorry, this one's withPunchmark.
Go ahead For the person who'sgrown our Instagram by a whole
(24:34):
bunch and done a really greatjob.
This is Savannah Kell with theInstagram.
Shout out to Savannah hey, ifyou don't follow us, make sure
you do.
It's Punchmark Websites.
If you're not following andyou're here, you guys are fake.
Come on.
Okay, we've grown through thisthing.
All right.
(24:55):
Our second Punchmark GrowthAward.
This one is someone who took onan entire department.
It was really impressive.
She did an incredible job andwe're really proud of her.
This one is for Hope and thedigital marketing program.
Speaker 9 (25:05):
So congratulations Hope.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
And this one.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
My last Punchmark one is our Rising Star Award.
This is just a shout out tosomeone that has really stepped
in and built a whole bunch, bothfiguratively and very literally
.
This one is for Tom Moore, ourfront-end developer.
He built all the websites.
You probably never got a chanceto meet him, but he does an
(25:37):
incredible job.
That's what I found All.
Right.
Now to the client ones.
You guys can start payingattention to these.
All right, this one we did thislast year, but this is for the
longest-standing client inattendance and they've been a
client for I can't do math thisfast 12 years, just short of 12
(25:59):
years.
And this is for Holiday Jewelry.
Thank you so much.
Sticking with us throughout theyears don't go anywhere.
This one is also our second one.
This is very important to us.
This is our.
(26:20):
Whenever you guys close a ticketor open a ticket and then it
gets closed, you get an optionto leave a review for us, and
it's very important to the CSteam.
It's part of judging how wellwe're able to service you, and
we want to say thank you towho's left the most reviews,
most reviews left, and this isalso for Holiday Jewelry Nine
(26:42):
reviews, thank you so much, ofcourse.
Of course Also, we're inbeautiful Charlotte, north
Carolina, right now and we knowthat not everybody lives in this
proximity, but you guys are allhere.
We really appreciate it.
So we wanted to recognizesomeone who traveled the
(27:02):
farthest distance and that goesout to Holly McCone Jewelry in
Astoria, oregon, and that is, bymy calculations by CatchyPT's
calculations 2,753 miles rightthis year.
Shout out to them.
(27:25):
We always appreciate when youguys go to bat for us.
We know how hard it issometimes.
We know that.
You know the internet can bevery easy to be anonymous on.
We understand that and we wantto say thank you to all the
people.
Whenever someone JHJ or IJOexclusive or RJ exclusive or all
the different, variousexclusive Facebook groups,
(27:46):
whenever someone says, hey, whoshould I go for a website and
believe me, I have lots ofalerts that whenever the word
website is mentioned, it getspinged to me and whenever I go
in there, this person is alwaysin there recommending Punchmark
and I really want to say thankyou so much for our Punchmark
Champion Award, and this goesout to Vincent Spillaccio and
(28:07):
Arezzo Jewelers.
Thank you so much, vincent.
Speaker 5 (28:13):
Thank you for battling out for us man.
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
Okay, last one, but this one I asked the CS members
here.
I asked them hey, who is theclient that really is down to
learn anything and is down totry anything you recommend and
is down to learn the new toolsand take on new roles and better
(28:37):
their website the best they can?
And this is our, the first onethat we've ever done.
The Innovation and TerminationAward, as picked by the our CS
team, goes out to Wears Jewelers.
Congratulations.
Thanks so much, paul.
All right, everybody, that'sthe end.
Enjoy your drinks.
Enjoy the cocktails.
See you again next year.
(28:59):
All right, it is pretty late andwe are walking back to the
hotel room, but we're at the endof the Fahrenheit um happy hour
.
We always go to this other uhrooftop bar, which is novelty
house.
It's just cool spot and it'slike a seven or 10 minute walk
(29:20):
or so and we actually had a tonof people come out for it.
It was super fun.
And now me, jason and Diana arejust walking back to the hotel
and yeah, it was a reallysuccessful day, really long.
But now we got one more day ofeducation fun.
Hopefully everyone makes it outfor it and then we can.
(29:40):
Yeah, we'll wrap it up fromthere, but so far it's been a
really good one.
It's a really good group of areally good group of uh jewelers
.
Everyone seems to be reallyenthusiastic and fond clicks, so
it's been a good time of clicks.
So it's been a good time allright dawn of day two or day
(30:02):
three overall, but day two forlessons and sadly last night
lost my lavalier mic, so nowrecording it right out of my
phone, but no, it was good time.
Had some breakfast downstairsat the uh the hotel restaurant.
So I think that this one, dan'sgoing to do a talk all about AI,
which I think, or building yourown GPT, which I think will be
really cool.
(30:22):
Yesterday morning Ross andBrian did a really awesome talk
about the powers of AI and whatit can be used for in the near
future.
So I think that the GPT one isgoing to go really well.
And then I think I have aretailer roundtable and I'm
still kind of dialing in who I'mgoing to have for that one, but
(30:45):
I think it'll be really good.
And then I fly home, so we havea busy one.
Day two was kicked off with Rosstalking about marketing and
standing out, but one of thethings I really enjoyed was he
actually pulled up everybody'sInstagram accounts, including
Punchmarks, and kind of did likea little flip through on it,
(31:06):
and I think that a lot of peoplehad.
It was sort of like kind ofilluminating.
It really allowed you to seewhere you stand and also maybe
you should put in a little bitof effort or maybe your stands
out really well and looks betterthan average.
I always really enjoy theseconversations and like getting a
chance to look at how tocapitalize on what makes you
different, and Ross kicked itoff at nine in the morning with
(31:29):
some really good presentations,so I thought that was really fun
.
Just be yourself.
Speaker 2 (31:34):
Okay, it's those.
It's that personality, theidentity that you have and that
even your quirks, right, theweird part of your business
those things are what peopleremember, Like do you have a?
Dog in your store.
Do you have right and do youhave like?
Speaker 5 (31:50):
a section over here for kids to hang out and play Um
do you like what?
Speaker 2 (31:55):
what kind of things do you do you bring to the
office?
Do you?
Are you a guitarist and do youhave a guitar hanging up on the
wall in your store?
Those things actually make youunique and make you memorable.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
One of my favorite presentations from day two was
actually by our CPO Danceroy.
He's my boss, but he actuallyisn't kind of presenting very
often.
He doesn't go to as many shows.
He's usually the man behind thecurtain sort of building things
that clients get to enjoy, buthe doesn't usually take credit
for it, and he's one of theco-founders of Punchmark.
(32:29):
But today he was talking allabout GPTs and how to build a
bot model, you might say, andwhat these are is kind of like a
super hyper-tailored AI versionof ChatGPT and you can go in
and train it on these and giveit guardrails on these questions
(32:49):
, and he also kind of leveragesit to show how you could use it
around your store.
It was a really interestingpresentation.
It's something I had never donebefore and I was taking notes
right alongside of him, but itwas super interesting to have
someone so hyper-intuned withthe development of AI kind of
show something that is very muchon the on the bleeding edge of
(33:11):
of AI.
Speaker 5 (33:12):
So I would highly recommend asking him about it
next time you see him, you guyswhat are the solutions we're
coming up with, and then we'llget into actual custom GPT
methodology.
One thing to note is last yearwe had this conference where we
were talking about AI and a lotof people were just you know,
(33:34):
how much of adoption is actuallygoing to happen?
Are people going to use?
Speaker 7 (33:37):
AI.
Speaker 5 (33:37):
Are you going to lose your job?
It was a lot of that kind ofconversation.
Fast forward one year later.
Everybody has AI in theirpockets all day long.
Every single thing has AI.
Speaker 1 (33:47):
The final segment of the last part of the client
workshop is a leadershiproundtable and I host this, but
the three guests are theleadership team at Punchmark.
So this is Dan Ross and Brianand they talk about kind of the
roadmap and we've kind oflearned from our mistakes in the
(34:07):
past.
We don't say anything aboutwhen things are coming out, and
we used to do that and no longer, because sometimes things arise
and also sometimes things areso pressing that we have to fast
track them and then it throwseverything off and as soon as we
come out and announce a datefor something, a lot of times
that date is no longer accurate.
(34:29):
So what we've learned is thatit's better for us to talk about
what we're working on and whatwe've released recently and what
we're proud of, and then peoplecan kind of follow along with
those.
But it's pretty interestingbecause there's a lot of things
that are released that we buildfor one or two or three
customers that everybody canbenefit from.
(34:50):
And that's part of like what thewhole SaaS software as a
service model is about is you'renot paying for these updates,
you just pay a monthly serviceplan and then you get all
updates in perpetuity andthere's a lot of these updates
that we don't even publicizethat much because they don't
sound that sexy.
In a press release, you know,when we say, oh, we made it so
(35:12):
that your products load wayfaster, it just doesn't really
kind of ring through as much andwe've never really kind of been
able to jump that gap to makeit so that some of these less
sexy releases are kind ofreceived as such.
But when we go in these guysthey could talk about anything
and I think a lot of our clientswould be really excited.
(35:34):
So that's how we end this oneup.
And here's Ross talking aboutwhat he's most proud of
releasing this past year.
Speaker 2 (35:42):
I am actually most proud of the seamless loop that
we create between your websiteand the store.
I've personally been talking agood game about a lot of these
things since 2018.
A good friend and mentor ofmine, dick Abbott, the owner of
the Edge, we share a commonvision on what the industry
needs for the new era ofretailing.
(36:04):
One of those things thatreleased on May 22nd, just after
last year's workshop, which Italked about sitting in this
exact seat was customerinvitations.
As soon as someone makes apurchase in your store, they're
invited then to go to yourwebsite, claim their account and
there's a big claim, my accountlink and then, the minute we
launched it, we had like 87accounts being claimed like
(36:26):
within five minutes, and it waspretty awesome that the proof of
concept was out there.
So we want to engage customersand get them 24 seven right.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
Man.
We just finished the second dayand, oh my gosh, that was a
long day, but I think everythingwent well.
Just grabbing a drink in thehotel lobby and then I'm going
to take an Uber to the airportand we'll call it right there,
but everybody else goes todinner, which I unfortunately
skip.
I have to get home.
I'm painting a mural onThursday and I have to get home
(36:58):
in time for that.
So it was a really fun day.
I think we get better everysingle time we do it.
I'm really proud of how itturned out.
So I think overall we get 10%better every year, but it's
compounding.
So who knows Next year will 10%better every year, but it's
compounding.
So who knows, next year will beeven better.
I thought it was a good time.
Thanks everybody who came out,though I seem to miss the final
(37:20):
event of the client workshop.
Every year it's this beautifuldinner at Finanfino that the
Punchmark team puts on and itsort of kind of wraps things up,
and I had to get home.
I was painting a mural in myhometown and construction was
set to start in just a day and ahalf, so I needed to get by,
but someone recorded this finaltoast that Ross did at the
(37:42):
dinner and it sort ofencapsulates the vibe and energy
of this year's client workshop.
This year's group was soexcellent.
They really were open-mindeddown to learn new techniques and
tips and talk about AI, even ifthey weren't currently using it
or familiar with it.
I'd really hope to see you atthe next client workshop.
(38:03):
We have it every year in May inCharlotte, north Carolina.
Clients, I believe it'sincluded for you to go with your
first employee, with your firstmember, and it's such a great
opportunity and it kind of getsyou jazzed up for the next rest
of the year.
So I hope that we see you atthe next one and get a chance to
(38:23):
shake your hand, have a drinkwith you.
All right, cheers.
Speaker 2 (38:27):
Success happens when you go outside your comfort zone
.
It wasn't the people who weresuper comfortable that were
successful.
The fact that you guys jumpedon a plane, booked airfare,
jumped in a hotel just to cometo Little Old Charlotte, get to
learn on, mingle with us, thatmeans a lot and it says a lot to
(38:49):
your success and the type ofpeople that you are.
There's a lot of stuff.
I hope you go home andimplement things that you
learned.
More importantly than that, Iwas talking to Oscar about this
and Anna was on camera talkingabout this.
We do business with the peoplethat we would hang with.
We just love hanging with youguys.
(39:09):
You guys are awesome, awesome.
You guys are fun to be with and, like craig said today.
Craig said a lot of thingsabout values and it seems like
your values are aligning withour values, right?
So in the sense of that, theysay family and business doesn't
mix, but just like ijo says,yeah, we're all family here
(39:29):
right, let's sing the song.
Let's sing the song.
Here's to you guys.
Speaker 3 (39:36):
We are family Come on , let's hear it.
Speaker 8 (39:38):
Look at all my viewers and me.
Speaker 2 (39:42):
Anyway, here's to you guys Letting family succeed and
to your success.
Thank you guys.
Yeah, yeah, all right guys,cheers, cheers.
Speaker 1 (39:51):
Cheers.
All right, everybody.
That's the end of the show.
Thanks so much for listening.
This episode was a bigcompilation episode, so a very
special thank you goes out toour editor, Paul Suarez, for
looking through my GarageBandrecording layout and making it
make sense.
Thanks, Paul.
This episode was brought to youby Punchmark and produced and
(40:13):
hosted by me, Michael Burpo.
This episode was edited by PaulSuarez with music by Roz
Cockrum.
Don't forget to rate thepodcast on Spotify and Apple
Podcasts and leave us feedbackon punchmarkcom slash loop.
That's L-O-U-P-E.
Thanks and hopefully I see youat the next client workshop,
Same time, same place next year.
Cheers, Bye.
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