Chris Collins Unleashed: Boom or Bust - Growing Industries & Dying Ones

You ready, G man?

I'm ready.

Okay. It's not a party until you play the song. Play the song.

Do it live. I can.

I'll write it, and we'll do it live. Here we go.

Yeah.

I can't read it.

There's no.

There's no words on it.

That's tomorrow, and that is it for us today. And we will leave you with a. I can't do it. We'll do it live. Okay. We'll do it live.

Welcome to Unleashed.

Oh, man.

The podcast for you. If you are an entrepreneur, business owner, or in a leadership position that has to do with creating revenue and profits. Doing G man.

I'm doing great.

Today we're going to talk about industries that are growing versus industries that are dying. Dying dead.

One of Those is Bill O'Reilly.

I'm gonna tell you how you can fix Sears and J.C. penney's.

Okay, great.

I'm gonna tell everybody that hopefully this makes it to the CEO. Kind of like our Equinox one made it to the CEO of Equinox. The CEO, whoever you are, of Sears and JCPenney's, pay attention, because I'm gonna give you the advice. It's gonna be free. You should pay for it. They should pay for it, but I'm gonna give them the advice because they're stuck.

Weren't you the one that was telling me nobody listens to free advice? I think that was you.

No, I remember, like, I was really young, and I needed work, and so there was a Chevy dealer in, like, south of Portland in Oregon, and they were just caught up on the signup fee, so I waived it. And then I spent three months fighting them. Not even fighting them. Like, it was just like. I was like arm candy. But nobody wanted to do anything, so unless they. Unless they pay something, unless they have some skin in the game, they usually don't move fast enough for us. Yeah, we need people to move fast. We can fix a business fast, but I don't like to sit around and talk about stuff that doesn't matter. Yeah, the older I get, the less patience I have.

That sure.

Nailed it.

I'm glad that we've gone through all the reasons why you're as messed up as you are, but can we get.

To work right now? We know where we're starting from. Let's go.

I'm glad to know all the reasons why we can't succeed, but I took the liberty to make a list of 500 ways we could. So could we work on my list? That's how it feels. You see me do that, right? Where you just sit there and I'm like, nodding. I'm like. So the client will be on one side of the table and I'll be on the other, and they'll be telling me all the reasons it can't work. Thinking in my head, why did you hire me?

I know.

If it won't work, why'd you hire us?

I just remember that time at D.C. you were listening to somebody talk about a pay plan, and you just were like. You just went blank like there was nothing. You're just like. I could see they were talking. You were not like you just shut it off. Nothing was getting in because it was every reason. I can't, I can't, I can't, I can't, I can't.

That's why I think our. Our guys are probably more effective than I would be in the field nowadays, because I. I don't know that I could sit there and listen to it.

Yeah.

It drives me crazy. Yeah.

Whole. Yeah. Again, it's a whole host of reasons why we can't succeed instead of just, sorry, forget it. We are here. Let's just create the list of how we get. We get to where we want to go.

So.

Retail is in a tailspin, right?

Yeah.

And who do they blame it on? Who's the big Amazon, Amazon, Airbnb, and Uber.

Yep. Right. Probably the big three.

I love it that everything's like, everybody who pitches now. They're like, we're the Airbnb of taco trucks.

Or the Uber.

Yeah, Uber of taco trucks.

So I got an email yesterday from a company that's doing.

Their. They have a system for organizing your shuttle rides. If you're in a car dealership, they organize shuttle rides. And they. They said that they're the Uber of shuttle rides.

Wait, they're going to replace the clipboard?

Exactly. That's exactly what the email said.

How much does this thing cost? Because the clipboard usually is. You can find one laying around somewhere.

Yeah.

So they don't cost anything. How much is this thing?

I want to say it was 700amonth.

I can't out of here for shuttles.

Yeah, something like that.

I'll go with the clipboard.

Yeah. I thought it was funny, though.

Were they pitching your endorsement?

Yeah, they wanted us to endorse them. Yeah, they. With the Uber of shuttle rides.

Sorry, there's no commercials on the podcast. We're still waiting for Prilosec or what's your cholesterol?

Yeah, no prob. Sex The Heartburn Lipitor. Thank you, Lucas.

From the way you know, I was watching this interview with Dana Carvey. Remember him from Saturday Night Live? I don't know why he disappeared, but he's funny. Yeah, but he was talking about his stroke that he had. Did you know he had a stroke?

I didn't know that.

So he said he had some rare hereditary. He sounded just like you. He had some rare hereditary thing that makes your cholesterol high. But his cholesterol was in the 400s.

Wow.

So you're tipping 300. He was over 400. I think it was like 450 or so.

That's crazy. Yeah. He's not a heavy guy. I mean, it's chubby or anything. Wow.

Just like his body turns everything into cholesterol. Geez. He eats an apple and it turns into cholesterol. Evidently. I don't know. It's crazy. So let's talk about how you can fix Sears in JCPenney.

So I'm interested.

Let's go back in time a little bit. We know what. What J.C. penney's tried to do years ago to turn everything around. And back when they still weren't in a total free fall, but they could see on the horizon things were changing. They hired the guy from Apple that was in charge of the Genius or the Apple stores, which had the Genius bar, and then he proceeded to come in and try to make it an Apple Store. And it didn't work because I think he never took the time to understand who their customer was. So the. The pattern that they were in at Penny's was that they were doing sales constantly, and the sales drove traffic, and he cut out sales. He didn't believe in sales because it came from Apple, and it was just a huge disaster of message to market. Like he was trying to change pennies into the Apple store, which you would think he. You would think that he would understand that it isn't. Like, there's just no way that's gonna happen. But he tried and failed, and he put him further in the ditch. And so they, you know, he remodeled the stores, he spent money, he did a bunch of stuff that their sales just kept going down and down and down because they weren't chasing the sale thing and the value propositions that they were throwing out there and understanding that the, you know, the thing he should have gone after is designers at a cheaper price. Kind of like Target.

Yep.

So Targets was growing, and they were declining. And the thing with Sears and J.C. penney's that surprises me is they're in this free fall and they're not doing anything that. That counters that. So we know when we go in to fix a business that how big the free fall is, is how big the counter needs to be. They're not doing anything dramatic.

Right.

And so I'm going to tell you pennies, and I'm going to tell you Sears, because you've messed it up. And Sears was.

The place for electronics and they had the best catalog business there ever was.

Yeah.

And how they didn't transfer the catalog business into online is beyond me. Beyond me. Do you understand how they didn't do that? They already had the infrastructure. They had the SKUs, they had the systems, all of it.

And they had it all set up.

Amazon just snuck in right behind them.

That's weird.

And so Amazon isn't even in the business of selling clothes and appliances. They're not. They don't. You wouldn't even know what business Amazon is in except for total world domination.

Right? Everything. They're.

They're spending more on content for their TV and movies.

Yeah.

Then, you know, I don't know. Than Sears is making probably in sales. Like, it's crazy. And so.

And a lot of that stuff they're using, they're. They're the third party. So they're, you know, like, if you're buying, let's say, Nike from them, you're not buying it from Amazon, you're buying it through Amazon. Am I? Oh, whoops.

So this is what you want to do. CEO can some. Lindsay, can you look up and tell me what the name of the CEO is from Sears? Because I'm going to save you right now. And I hope you're listening.

You want to name them.

So this is what you're going to do. Where are they based out of Sears? Shoot.

This Midwest.

Isn't it somewhere in the Midwest?

I think so.

Of course.

This is what you're gonna do. You're gonna get yourself online and you're gonna buy yourself an airplane ticket. Eddie Lampert, you're gonna get yourself online. I don't care what airline you use or I doubt Sears has a private jet at this point. They sold that off. I would hope it'd be funny if he's flying around in a private jet.

He kept that. Yeah.

We're more profitable than Sears.

He's selling off Kmarts.

We're more profitable than Sears as a business. Is that funny?

So, Eddie, this is what you're gonna do. Get your ass online and buy yourself an airplane ticket to Seattle. You're going to, once you get off the plane, you're going to catch an Uber taxi, I don't know, maybe they'll hire you. Limo. You're going to go to Amazon's corporate office and you're going to make a deal with them to open a store and then you're going to go back in the catalog business, which you were before, but your storefront is going to be Amazon because I have. Obviously they know how to do it and you don't, but you can use your infrastructure. You can use them as the front.

Right.

And start doing that and start releasing like you were when I was a kid and making cool online catalogs and use Amazon as the front because obviously they have the bandwidth.

Right.

And you don't need all the bricks and mortar that you have. Yeah, you're going to end up closing more than half your stores, but you could survive and then start focusing on the client. Like the last five times I've been in a Sears, I can't find anybody to help me. And when I do, it's like they took the terrible employees from Radio Shack and hired them a Sears. It's like you're talking to a wall.

Is there a link there between.

I'm sure there's great people at Sears and nice people. And this isn't an attack on anything or anybody personally. It's an attack on the culture. Yeah, they don't have enough people to help. The amount of people coming through.

Well, it's because they're, they're falling apart. They don't have the revenue to support it and they don't, they don't really know how to fix it. And so they're trimming back on staff and having skeleton. But then meanwhile you're coming in, they're losing sales constantly.

Okay, so close half your stores and then take all your people and put them in the half to help your, your sales per store will go up. But in a retail environment where people need help, they can't scan themselves out and there's nobody to check you out.

What.

How are you going to make sales?

That would have been a good option.

Self check, something.

Yeah, but I can't tell you. I. The two. I mean I've been in Pennies and Sears a couple months ago, maybe, maybe a little longer. But I couldn't tell you which store was more screwed up than the other, to be honest with you. They're both pretty bad. And then the pennies that I had back up where I was from, they had two stores, they had a home store and a regular store, which I couldn't figure out for the life of me because it was a ghost town in both of them. And I couldn't figure out how they were supporting both ends of the mall that way. It didn't make any sense to me at all. But you could tell, you could tell right away they were screwed up. Yeah.

And okay, so now that you made your deal with Jeff and Amazon and you have them as the front now we're going to go find some designers.

Yeah.

And we're gonna go make some deals with LG and all the electronics companies like you used to, that you have special products that are only created for you and clothes with some high end designers. Go get Kanye to design jeans for you or something. But get some names like Target does where people want to come in and buy the stuff.

Yeah.

And I don't, like, I don't get the Kathy Ireland and all that. That's 30 years ago.

Yeah.

Like, let's, let's come into modern times. Right. You'd be better having Kevin Durant design your kitchenware than Martha Stewart at this point, wouldn't you?

Yeah, sure.

Like, let's get somebody exciting. Like everybody's perception of a great housewife is Kim Kardashian. Let's have her make pots and pans or something. But do something, something to get attention and draw people in. Because you've lost the millennials. They're not going in there if you paid them. And so you got to turn that around. Meanwhile, you go down here to Target and it's packed, right?

Yeah, exactly.

And it's because it's high design at a great price and it's still more than you would buy stuff at JC Penney's.

And the service is better. So you get more help over there. Yeah, it's definitely.

And so you need to, you need to change how you're doing it online. Because online is the only thing that's going to save you. If you can't beat Amazon, then join them. And then the second thing is you need to go out and make some big acquisitions of designs from some influential people that millennials care about that are going to create products that people want.

Yeah.

And that's it. Don't do anything else. Nothing else. You messed up the Sears, messed up the car thing. They had a great independent service. Part of the cars, they, they led in battery sales for cars for a while. Yeah, they've messed it all up. Craftsman tools, they sold off. I mean, they're just dying.

That was a big to Me, put.

Me in charge of Sears. I'll fix it in six months.

I mean, I understand, like, they, I think they need to strip away some of that stuff. The Craftsman tools, the lawnmowers, the, you know, all the stuff that they had, the heavy equipment. You could buy a rot tiller from, from Sears and go upstairs and buy a dress. Like, they're, they're mixing too many things. And I think Target is doing that as well, but they're doing it more efficiently. Like, they don't have a whole department devoted to, you know, tools, let's say. Like they were taking up a lot of squares to sell, you know, wrenches to guys that, and that that industry was dying. It was scaling back. You got Home Depot that came on. You got low.

They were selling Craftsman in Home Depot for a while.

If you want though, they sold those to Orchard and then Orchard bought. Trying to remember now how that worked, but I don't think Home Depot had those.

I'm pretty sure they did.

Hope people get Home Depot bought Orchard. That's right. So.

But yeah, I remember seeing them and going, what?

Yeah, so that's the thing. It's like they, that, that, that business model started to shift when Home Depot, you know, started selling. Because you, where would you go get a lawnmower or edge trimmer or rototiller? Like, really, you know, 20 years ago you were going to Sears to buy that. There just wasn't a place really. And now, you know, you got all these big places with construction equipment. Like that's where you go to get it. And they missed that, that started to shift that. They missed that part of it. Same thing with the tools. And I think that drug them down.

They would have been better off hiring LeBron James to design lawnmowers than the guy from Apple to do it.

Right.

I'm telling you, like, pennies and Sears both are in the same free fall and they don't know what they're doing.

Yeah.

And they're, they're in every mall in middle America that's going under. You got to go online and note Walmart hasn't been able to beat Amazon online. Costco, really, I don't think is really taking a swing at it. And so Amazon's it. So join them.

Yeah.

Figure out a way to leverage it. And they say that brands don't matter, but I still believe that if you're on Amazon and you go to buy a wrench and it's a Craftsman versus a no name, you're going to buy the Craftsman. If it's the same price.

Yeah.

So there is value to that, but they're not leveraging it.

Mm.

And then if you had Kanye design your tools, I mean, I don't know. I know. I know that's gonna sound crazy to everybody, but there's somebody out there. Jeff Gordon. I don't know a name. You need celebrities and names. That's how it works. We're talking about a world of instant gratification and twitch, you know, mindset, where it's Instagram and in popularity and lifestyle. Then, you know, I was telling you when we. When we were walking back to the gym that it's amazing to me, all these guys that are selling, you know, fix your business, entrepreneur, lifestyle stuff, they're all standing in front of a Ferrari or Rolls Royce, right?

Yeah.

And they're on Instagram. And it's just funny to me. I know one of them that rented those Lambos and Ferraris that they were in front of, and to me, I just can't believe people buy that.

Yeah.

Can you?

Well, it's like. I mean, they're just buying the image, you know, that's what they want. They lust after that. So. Yeah.

So it works and it sells. So why wouldn't Sears and J.C. penney's learn from that?

You.

You need to get some of these celebrities that are selling that lifestyle. You're selling lifestyle. It's the only thing that's going to differentiate you from everybody else.

Yeah.

And that's kind of what Target does. They're selling brands, and I'm sorry, Kathy Ireland and Martha Stewart. It isn't connecting with the younger generation. Your. Your customers are dying every day, and you're losing all your sales to online. You need to. You need to do something dramatic, very dramatic, in order to turn it around. And, I mean, when I say I could go in there and fix it in six months, The. The reason why I could fix it in six months is because I'm not connected to any of their old ideas.

Right.

I'm just there to fix it. And if I'm just there to fix it, you'd make a lot different decisions. They're not going to get it on me. Oh, this is how it has to be. Or this is. You're in a free fall. You're going to hit the ground in, like, you know, I don't know, six months. They're running out of cash. Yeah.

They're running out of money.

What is it? They've been profitable four of the last 29 months. Or it's something Insane. And I think a couple of those months are because they sold craf and they sold off a bunch of land or something. Yeah, they're not profitable because their sales are up. They're in a free fall.

The other thing too, they got is those Kenmore appliances. So they had the whole appliance section where you could go buy, you know, a dishwasher and a dryer and a. But I'm telling you, like refrigerator.

There was a time not that long ago I wanted a TV and I went in there and I couldn't get anybody to help me. Yeah, it was like a ghost town.

Yeah.

And, and their electronics had shrink down to the point of there was nothing exciting. They have better stuff at Costco.

Yeah, yeah, they, they, that's the thing. I think they just had their, their hand in too many cookie jars. There's just too much going on because if you look to Kohl's, like Kohl's are popping up everywhere. And you got Target, that's, that's there. You know, you've got Walmart, that's positioned as the low price leader. And then you got Kohl's coming in. But the thing about Kohl's is they're, I think they're more efficient with their square foot. So if you look at their square footage, they have a smaller footprint in the mall and they, they really just kind of focus on the clothing. They got some other stuff, some accessories and stuff like that, but for the most part it's clothing, you know, inexpensive clothing. So they're just not, they don't seem to be positioned well.

They're not nimble. No, they just, they're like a big ship and they can't turn it. And they have, they gotta get, they gotta get small and nimble and then grow.

Those places are mammoth too. Those Sears stores are giant, some of those.

I mean, I'm telling you, I think if we looked at a list of all their stores, we'd close half of them.

Oh yeah, for sure. But I think it's interesting, that idea about having a catalog store in, you know, some of those smaller towns across the country and having that be part of their business. They provide the infrastructure and delivery system to the client and they just put the, slap the brand on the front of it and become a, you know, an affiliate partner essentially. But the, that was a big deal when I was in Wyoming going to school was. We had a catalog store in the town and that's all that was there.

It's still like that in places. But Amazon will Get there now.

Right. And that people want that. They want to go there. Even though you can buy it online, there's still something about going there. And they would have some samples that you could look at before you bought something. So it's. It's kind of a cross between online and the actual brick and mortar. But, yeah, I think that's. That would work across middle America for sure.

Yeah. I don't think. See, I think the thing with. So, like, for example, I forwarded you an article that I read that Amazon is going into the parts and.

The. Like. What is the company called that sells like the mops and the buckets and all that? Granger.

Oh, yeah, Granger.

So they're going into that, and so they're going into B2B.

Yep.

And what. What is. I mean, if you're sitting in a meeting in Amazon and you're like, hey, what. What could we do with our infrastructure? They can get it there as quick as Granger. Yeah, their infrastructure is there. And that's what Sears had, was infrastructure. And they're. They're not leveraging the things that they do have, and they're losing on every front besides that, you know, and so it's crazy. Okay, so let's talk about some industries that are actually growing. You want to know what the. Do you have the list of the industries growing? Don't look at it. Don't look at it.

Don't look at.

You cheated. Okay. The number one industry that is growing is meditation and mindfulness. So this is a Ink magazine list. Best industries for starting a business. Meditation and mindfulness. Number two is ready to drink coffee and tea. Oh, yeah, makes sense. Number three is mobility tech, which is mostly here it says the autonomous vehicles, but creating technology that performs for itself.

Electric skateboard.

Number four is pets. The pet thing.

Oh, yeah, pets.

Geez, it's huge. Number five is construction management. Yeah, I mean, we see down here, downtown la, there's like everywhere you look, there's a crane and a building going up.

It's ridiculous.

Number six is synthetic biology. And I was reading today that they. They're closer and closer to cloning org, you know, more organs, curing cancer. They can make a human now.

That's great news for a guy like me. That's fantastic news.

You're gonna live forever.

I don't have to worry about my cholesterol. They can just put a new heart in.

Number seven is AI. And here's the thing, bro, like we have a rule around here, and you don't do a very Good job of new employee orientation with the emoji thing. Because they still send me emo. I get them all the time. And I don't know how many times.

I go the opposite way.

I don't know how many times I've told you that people are sending me emojis.

I just love to tell people Chris loves emojis. Send them as many as possible.

No, they need to sign something that they won't send an emoji. I'm an adult and I don't need like a smiley face.

But the. This computer AI thing that's coming out on the new iPhone and all that, it looks like just emojis in a video.

Interesting.

It's ridiculous. This is going to be even more annoying. Have you seen it? Well, all of a sudden you're like looking through your camera and then there's like a cake or whatever, but it's a fake cake and you can move it around.

It's all visual.

Like, are we that bored?

I think so.

We must be that we want like a little miniature dragon in our video that we drag around that does nothing, basically.

Yeah. I don't know, man. People like the cartoon.

Dumber is a society, gifts, you name it. And then the last one is brick and mortar retail technology, which must be like point of sale and information and analysis and all that. Because, you know, these online, they have great tools to analyze their customer, their habits, all that, but they're more and more. The focus is on retail.

Yeah. I've noticed especially here in la, there's a ton of stores that have gone to the small tablets and, you know, you email your receipt and so there's a. Yeah.

The technology, there's always somebody at the front counting.

Yeah.

How many people came in. And there's always a manager going, he. He left and came back. Take that one off, you're gonna hurt my.

Minus conversion, minus one up.

So funny. So that's. That's what is working. And then, you know, the things that are declining, hotels because of Airbnb, travel agents, that sort of thing, which is taxis with Uber, all that. But yeah, I don't know, I just feel like the. The business is like.

We'Ve done stuff where you. Where you open a store on Amazon or ebay. And I think that businesses more and more need to learn how to leverage their brand on the sites that are working and join them. Stop fighting them, stop talking about Amazon's killing you and use their infrastructure as leverage.

Right. Like the taxis. Yeah. Jump on board.

Oh, yeah. I don't know how many times a taxi picked me up and they were an Uber?

Yeah, right?

And then how many times you get in a taxi and it smells like curry and it's broken down and the shocks don't work, and the guy's bitching about Uber, and I'm like, I'd rather be in an Uber. Right now.

He's doing 700 miles an hour in it. In a.

With no brakes and no suspension.

Oh, man, I get scared every time.

I was like, garlic and curry. It's so funny. So, to recap, I fixed Sears and pennies for everybody. Hopefully they listen.

They won't, but I hope you know I did my part right. Yeah, that's all I can do. They didn't pay for it, so they won't listen. If you want to fly down to LA on your way to Seattle and write me a big check, then you'd probably take our advice, right? Otherwise, you just think I'm some guy that doesn't know what he's talking about.

But join them. I think that's the lesson, is there's always a way to turn it around. But you gotta. You gotta think about what your strengths are and leverage those. And stop thinking about the past and how it used to be and what it was, and start thinking about the future. And how you can provide your service or brand in a different way is really the key. And new streams of income, there's new ways to do it, which is good. That's it. I hope you guys have a great week and that inspired you, and we'll see you again real soon.