Stand Out or Fade Out: Simplified Approach to Business Differentiation with Patty Civalleri

Do you ever find yourself wondering why some businesses have a cult-like following while others struggle to get noticed? How do iconic brands like Trader Joe's seem to create their own category in an overcrowded marketplace? Well, today you're in the right place because that's what we're talking about next on Experience Leadership.

Welcome to Experience Leadership, a podcast That challenges small business owners and entrepreneurs just like you to dare to be the exception. Join our host, customer experience expert Marc Haine, as he uncovers relevant and timely content to help you script and direct your business and teams to create jaw-dropping experiences your customers and staff deserve. Here is the host of Experience Experience Leadership, author of Lights! Camera! Action!, customer experience expert Marc Haine.

Thank you for joining me today. I love that you're here with me. My guest for this episode is author, histoarchaeologist, serial entrepreneur Patty Cervellari. And today, we are diving deep into the art and science of competitive Differentiation. How do you make your business stand out in a crowded marketplace? My one ask for you today is if you know somebody who could use this information, please share the link to this episode with them. And while you're at it, why don't you go ahead and subscribe to this podcast? Before we dive in, let's tackle the elephant in the room. Look, you've got A quality product, a solid business plan, and yet you're struggling to break through the noise. You're not alone. The marketplace is more crowded than ever before, and just being good isn't good enough anymore. So that brings us to our Question of the Day. How do you go from being one of many to being the one? How do you create not just customers but raving fans who choose you over the competition every single time? I'd love for you to be part of this conversation. Why don't you go ahead, share this episode on your favorite social media platform, hashtag it #ExperienceLeadership so that I can see what we're talking about.

#ExperienceLeadership.

And we'll get into the conversation together and with our community. I have to say, if those kind of questions are the ones keeping you up at night, then stick around because today's episode could very well be the game changer you've been waiting for. Today, prepare to be truly inspired because I have a very special guest today. She is a true Renaissance woman whose journey is nothing short of extraordinary. I was having Such joy talking to her before we went live. My goodness. I mean, the level of experience that our, our guest today has is amazing. Imagine for a second spending 2 decades exploring the world through the lens of archaeology, becoming a master in both history and in travel. Now blend that with the skills of a professional photographer and a writer, and what do you get? You get an author and an entrepreneur who's created a whole line of travel books, And accessories and stuff that she talks about all the time. But then came the curveball, of course, nobody saw coming. That was COVID. The global travel industry worth $13 trillion shut down for 2 years. And like so many, Patty Savaleri found herself at crossroads needing to pivot and redefine her path. And pivot she did when the opportunity came to work with Joe Colomb. The founder of Trader Joe's came knocking on her door. So, if you think she's just a one-trick pony, think again. We will uncover Patty because she is a National Geographically trained photographer, a classic pianist, a Renaissance art historian, a former professional singer, and a serial entrepreneur all in one package. Talk about wearing many hats and mastering them all. Patty, welcome to the show! I am so thrilled you're here.

Wow.

Wow.

I'm looking around trying to see who you're talking about. Thank you so much. It is such a pleasure to be here with you today, Marc.

Likewise. Hey, I am so curious with your background, being an archaeologist, writing a bunch of travel books, what led you to working with Trader Joe's?

Well, I knew Joe for a couple of decades socially. It wasn't that we were best friends, but we— our social circles crossed over and a couple times a year, We would attend the same events and over time we got familiar and eventually had conversations and over the years, you know, got really friendly. And when I was— when COVID hit and I was thinking, gee whiz, I'm out of business completely since I was in the travel industry, I was really lucky because I was asked— I was kind of given Joe's writings and, you know, kind of a big stack of paper and they said, Can you do something with this? Can you help us push this in the direction of getting it published? So we did just that. We whipped it into shape. We made it pretty. We did all the editing and sold it. And HarperCollins is our publisher, signed a contract with HarperCollins. And right after that, right after that, within weeks, Joe passed away. And I thought, wow, we had just spent all these months on this project.

Mm-hmm.

How am I going to do this without Joe? And because I wasn't on the inside track, I never worked for Trader Joe's, but I had been through that book and had so many conversations and participated in so much where Trader Joe's was concerned, at least from the outside, that— and had so many friends on the inside that after I was, you know, past the fact that he had passed away and gotten over that, it occurred to me that nobody else is going to carry this legacy forward. his story, his book, except me. There was nobody else that we had. And so, this has been my journey and I've been really enjoying it.

Love it. For the people who might not be in the United States, who've never heard maybe of Trader Joe's, can you talk a little bit about what Trader Joe's is and kind of the challenge that Trader Joe's kind of realized that they had and how they— and we'll talk about how they propelled themselves out of that problem.

Sure. Trader Joe's is a, I guess, a boutique grocery store. I believe there's over 550 locations nationwide now in the continental United States. That's Googleable, so you can find out the exact number on any given date. But the way Joe— there really is a Joe— Joe set it up because he was a different quirky kind of guy and he wanted to set up a store that wasn't regulated, that wasn't the same basic footprint as all the other grocery stores that were out there at the time. And once he got started, he found that it was a really different— it was a really difficult path to create. But he identified his market as being the overworked and underpaid market, which is what he called that market segment back then. And he created an organization with unique high-quality goods at a fair price. And that was always his goal.

I love it. And so that in itself was probably— I'm sure that people in the grocery industry and the retail industry were looking at him going, what kind of crack are you smoking?

For some—

for the way that he was doing it. But at the same token, I was talking to my wife when I, when I was saying that I'm going to be interviewing you today and that you had a connection to Trader Joe's. She was like, I love Trader Joe's. I remember when I went to Florida and we went to— and she has a whole story in her her own rite about Trader Joe's, even though that we don't have it where I live here. So, it's brilliant that he's created that kind of a connection. Today, we're talking about this idea of differentiation. I mean, you're a world traveler. Why is this such an important topic for businesses today?

Because the noise, the competitive noise out there is so loud. We have to find a way to separate ourselves from the pack. We can't do that by being just like everybody else. So, we have to find ways to differentiate. And I know that everybody, you know, in your— as an entrepreneur, I know that many times in my journey as an entrepreneur, people have said, yeah, you've got to find a way to differentiate, to separate yourself from the pack. And that's all well and good, but nobody really tells you, okay, that's fine, but how do you do that? So, I think that's what I, you know, we'd like to talk about today is how did Joe do that? pull away from the pack and how did he make it such a strong— why was his vision so strong and how did he pull away from the pack and differentiate himself? And then how can we take Joe's principles and strategies and migrate them over to whatever product or service that you have, whatever your business is? So, that's kind of what we're going to talk about today. So, I'll give you a little bit to think about.

I love it. So, I know that a lot of my audience is their small businesses. There are businesses with maybe 50 employees. Definitely businesses that are under 100 employees typically. When you're thinking about this idea of differentiation, what would you say are some key factors to succeeding in that idea of differentiation?

Well, okay, you're gonna go right to the heart of it.

Let's go right to the heart of it.

Here we go. Okay. So basically, Joe defined what he called his pillars of differentiation, and he had 4 pillars, and he stuck to these pillars very carefully. So I'll give them to you, and then we're going to go back to each one of them, explain them, give you some examples of each of those, and then we'll figure out how we can then turn those into yours. So his 4 pillars of differentiation, and these are just Joe's, they're not necessarily yours because your business is going to be different. But Joe's pillars were price, packaging, ingredients, and uniqueness. So now let's break those down. So let's start with price. That's a pillar that everybody faces, that pillar, right? So in order to differentiate ourselves based on price, what do we do? We will try to get attention by cutting price, right? Well, we all know what a tough path that is because there's always going to be somebody cheaper and louder than we are. Joe knew that. He also did not want to get the reputation of being the cheap store, right? He didn't want to be that 99-cent store, the 50-cent store on the block. He wanted to provide value and uniqueness and give you a very fair price for what you're getting. So price wasn't necessarily cutting price, but what can he give you that somebody else isn't giving you? Now, to give you an idea of what Joe was up against back then, now we're looking at the '60s and the '70s, right? And so many things were regulated. Most all of the dairy industry was regulated, milks, cheeses, right? These were regulated, which meant you could only sell a certain size, a certain quantity, a certain quality, a certain price, a certain packaging. These were government regulated. Now, back then, Joe was trying to find ways to be unique. And his customers would say, hey, Joe, you got to carry eggs. And Joe's like, I can't carry eggs. Everybody else carries eggs. Nobody's going to come into my store to buy an egg when you can buy an egg everywhere else. And, but he still got, Joe, you got to carry eggs. You got to carry eggs. So Joe being Joe, he did his homework. He was a research guy. He found a farmer who had eggs that were different. And he says to the farmer, he says, hey, Do you have a lot of these eggs? And the farmer says, I got plenty of these eggs. Now, I don't have enough eggs to supply the whole grocery industry, but I certainly have enough eggs to supply your stores, Joe. Oh, of course, Joe lit up like a light bulb because that's what he was looking for. He was looking for a different product that he could carry that the other big grocery stores could not carry. So what do you suppose was different about these eggs? Any idea?

Were they ostrich or quail eggs or—

No, they were square. Just kidding, kidding, kidding, kidding. Not square. They were not ostrich or quail. They were chicken. But they were extra-large eggs. Now, remember, there's not enough extra-large eggs anywhere to be, you know, to be supplied to the whole grocery industry in the United States. So the eggs that were being regulated were the eggs that were in supply And those were what we would now call medium eggs. And Joe found these extra-large eggs, made a deal with the farmer who provided— happily provided Joe with these extra-large eggs that Joe was then able to package and sell for the same price that the grocery stores were selling the medium-sized eggs for. That was a price-value option. And that was where Joe was coming from. He wanted to give you more than what you were going to get from a grocery store or from his competition at a fair price. And that's what he was looking for. So eggs, you know, cheese was another one. Cheese was one of those things that, again, very regulated. And back in the '70s, everybody had those little pots where you'd put a fork in and you'd dip it into cheese, a fondue pot.

Mm-hmm.

And fondue pots were just all the rage in the '70s. And people are saying, Joe, you got to carry Swiss cheese. And Joe says, I can't carry— you can buy Swiss cheese everywhere. Why should I carry it? Joe sends his guy, Leroy Watson, back to a cheese factory. And Leroy works with the cheese guy back there and learns that when they cook the cheese, the cheese that bubbles up in the middle is the cheese they scoop out and put it in something cold really quickly so that the bubbles don't have a chance to escape before the cheese hardens. You know, and then when they slice it, all the bubbles, that's why there's holes in your Swiss cheese. But there was the other part. There was the cheese that was around the edge of the pots that the guy would scoop it out and he'd put it in, you know, another large vat. And Leroy would ask, well, what are you going to do with that cheese? And the guy says, well, you know, we're going to put it in, in B markets like schools and, you know, large organizations. And Leroy said, is there something wrong with the cheese? And the guy says, no, you saw for yourself. It's the same exact cheese. It just doesn't have holes in it. And Leroy thought, perfect, high-quality cheese. Can we buy it? So out comes the train to California to Trader Joe's and filled with Swiss cheese without any holes in it. Trader Joe's packages it in little packages that they called Closed Eye Baby Swiss, and it sold like hotcakes. And again, they were able to sell it inexpensively. And, you know, less expensively than grocery stores. Remember, there's no middleman here, right? There's no distribution middleman here. So Joe can do this. He can get a higher quality product and sell it less expensively and give you a lot of value for your money.

It does seem that one of the ingredients then to this idea of differentiation is creativity, is thinking—

Oh boy, you really bet.

Is thinking, thinking about your products, but looking at it from a different lens. And then seeing what you can do with it because he could have just put it out there and called it Swiss cheese. But he created its own brand around this closed-eye baby Swiss.

Exactly. And Joe did, he felt he did see the world differently because he was left-handed. Now, back in the day, you know, it wasn't proper to be left-handed. You were, even if you were born left-handed, you were kind of trained to be right-handed. And today I guess that's all disappeared. But back in the day, he was left-handed and he knew he saw the world differently and he would hire people that were left-handed. Because he didn't want people that saw the world the same way everybody else did. But back to your comment, and packaging those and calling them, giving them a new name goes to the second pillar. So the first pillar was price. The second pillar is packaging. Now, packaging could mean a couple of different things. Packaging could mean private labeling, which of course we know that Trader Joe's does and has done.

Mm-hmm.

Packaging could mean size. package size or package quantity, right? And, you know, that was, as an example, back then people were coming out of the big cities, people were getting into apartments in the '60s and '70s, apartment living was getting extremely popular. And so young people were coming out of college for the first time after the Second World War, and they were moving into the cities into apartments. And apartments have small storage spaces in their kitchen compared to mom's farmhouse. And by the way, I grew up in mom's farmhouse, so I understand the difference. So packaging, as an example, my mom used to buy the 50-pound bags of rice, 50-pound bags of flour from the grocery store, right? Well, Joe saw that people were coming out of college and they were moving into smaller quarters and felt that a lot of things that were huge needed to be packaged down for people living in apartments. So he would repackage them, give them a new name, put his label on them, but he always loved the funny names. Remember, his market is that market that he defined, which was, again, post-World War, because of the VA bill, people were getting educated. More people were getting educated in the United States than ever before in our history, and they were now what he called the overeducated and underpaid because As people were pouring out of these universities, there weren't enough jobs yet to support all these people. So that was the market he wanted. He wanted people that had discerning taste and weren't going to settle for just the plain old everyday stuff. That was the market he wanted to define and talk to. And he gave his packaging really fun names like Closed Eye Baby Swiss or, you know, I don't know, Shakespeare something or other or You know, Beethoven's Fifth. And for Joe, these fun names were sort of like his way of secretly communicating to his customers through his packaging. And it was something that he took great pleasure in doing.

It also doesn't sound like he took himself so seriously that he had to be ultra corporate and ultra, you know, this is what everybody else is doing, so I better do it too. And—

That's exactly what he was fighting against.

Yeah.

Yeah.

This is fantastic.

Yeah.

So that's exactly what he didn't want, right? Okay, so we have price and we have packaging. Those are the first 2 pillars.

Could we get into the next 2 pillars right after our break?

You bet.

So, we'll get to it right after this.

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I warned you. I told you that this would be a great episode.

I love that commercial.

This—

I told you. I love that commercial.

This is fantastic. So, we've touched on Trader Joe's. First pillar, price. Second pillar, packaging. We have the third and fourth pillar to go.

Yes, we do.

And by the way, Anna, one of my viewers, came up with a comment, says, I love your hair, Patty.

Oh, Anna, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Nobody ever says that. Thank you. What a sweetie. Okay, the next pillar is ingredients. Now, if you picture back in the '70s, food in the United States was a very different event than it is today. Back in the '70s, we were very proud of our processed foods. We were very proud of the fact that we had canned foods and we were coming up— the microwave was coming out. And so we were coming up with frozen foods and we had packaged foods and we had canned foods and The really neat thing, and we look back on that now and we're horrified because we actually ate that stuff, but at the time, I know today people want to get very opinionated about it, but at the time, the goal in the United States was to come up with ways through the laboratory to preserve food so that it can survive to feed the world. That was the goal. So when you have food in cans and boxes and frozen, these are things that can transport all over the world into places where people have been hungry forever. Well, it did create other problems that we didn't know about at the time, and that is other healthy issues. A lot of the food that was being created had hormones and steroids and were GMO'd from whatever source. Also, at that time, the hippie movement had taken a real serious hold and everybody was flower children, back to nature and back to farming and planting their own. All this stuff was sort of colliding at the same time back in the '70s. And Joe looked at all this and said, you know what? I'm a little old for this, but I kind of like what these hippie people are saying. I like the idea of going back to fresh. So as the supermarkets were stocking up in canned foods and boxed foods and frozen foods, Joe was actually going back to the farm. He was trying to change ingredients. He would take a can of corn and he would have it redone by the manufacturer without all the stuff in it. And they would formulate ways to save things or to produce things and provide things in the store one item at a time where they were healthier. And then he worked a lot with local farmers. He worked a lot with California farmers back then and was— he sort of was bringing that farm-to-table concept Decades before that ever became a concept. And so fresh ingredients, fresh foods. So at the time, the East Coast and other people, Canada, were all looking at us in California because Trader Joe's had a reputation back then. They had gained a reputation of like providing all this hippie food. They're like, what are you guys smoking out there? You guys, you guys don't do anything. You're all a bunch of hippies. You hang out on the beach. You eat corn off the cob and beans out of the field. You guys can't be taken seriously. But a lot of this did have to do with Joe's influence. And so at the time, Joe was not being taken seriously. And there was a lot of flak from other parts of the country about, you know, what a hippie he was. Believe me, he wasn't a hippie. Now, before we get into the 4th pillar, I wanted to tell you that in the background of all this, Joe He identifies in the book very clearly 3 separate phases of his business. And the first phase of the business was, he called it Good Time Charlie. And that's when he originally thought his stores were going to be like a place where a guy can go, right? Because women always did the grocery shopping back then. But he wanted a place where a guy can go. And so, he'd carry things like girly magazines and bullets and— You know, and all kinds of things that were, you know, that he had tried out to see what would work. Well, of course, over time, he learned that many of these items didn't work. He found out that many of his shoppers were still going to be women, whether they were educated or not, but he still wanted to come up with some interesting ideas. After he grew out of his good old boy phase, he grew into what was called his Whole Earth Harry phase. And that's this phase in the '70s Where his ingredients started to become healthy, where his products became healthier. He was working with farmers. And he got this reputation of being a hippie. And that was his Whole Earth Harry phase. And he was kind of in his, you know, in his 30s. After he got through his Whole Earth Harry phase and he had converted his stores and his customer base into people that really were appreciating and wanting healthier foods and healthier products, He sort of got into his next phase, and this was his business phase. And this was what he called his Max the Knife phase. And he talks about— this is where he's a little bit older now. He sharpens his pencil, and now he's going to— he lives by a balance sheet. Okay. So now we're going to go into the 4th pillar. So we have all these things happening in the background, right? We've got the hippie movement going in the background. We have all these educated people coming out of school and just growing this new customer base that, you know, we today we call that customer base the middle class, but back then it wasn't so much. Then he was aging, right? He was going from his 20s to his 30s to his 40s. And he was growing to growing out of his hippie years and getting into his serious business years. At the same time, we move right into his 4th pillar, Which is his pillar of uniqueness. Uniqueness, uniqueness, uniqueness. Now, from the very beginning, remember, he had started Trader Joe's with that sort of tropical island. I'm going to be sort of like a trading ship going around the South Pacific and bringing back exotic foods and spices and ingredients. And everybody in the store, all the workers are going to wear Hawaiian shirts and— We're going to have tiki stuff all over the place. So unique was visible to the eye when you walked in the store, but he was thinking in terms of uniqueness of product. In other words, he didn't want to carry the same products that everybody else carried in the world. Now, another good example of this, and he's got a million cheese stories because Trader Joe's has done so much with cheese, but one of my favorites is when, you know, people just kept pushing him hard to carry cheeses. And again, cheeses were regulated back then. And by the way, cut me off if I run over time. But cheese was regulated back then. The dairy industry was regulated back then. And so, you know, he couldn't really select a cheese that was sold in the United States because he'd end up having to have the same product that everybody else had. So he sent his guy over to Europe to go find a new cheese. And Leroy found some new cheese, brings it back. It became a total favorite. And at some point, Trader Joe's was the largest distributor of this cheese in the United States. I don't know if that's true today or not, but that cheese is a cheese we've all grown to love. It's from France. It's called Brie. And when Joe brought it back to the United States, he was able to package it and sell it for less than the grocery stores were selling Velveeta cheese. And Velveeta cheese, as you know, can't even be called a cheese. It can only be called a cheese product because it's a fake cheese. I don't know. So again, giving you something better at a very fair price was, you know, was this sense of value that he had that he wanted to give. So bringing back spices, bringing back ingredients, bringing back finished products and foods that were made from unique ingredients. Joe was really big in this department, going all over the world. And you could still see it today. Anytime you walk in the store, there's food from all over the store, all over the world. But you can see all 4 of these pillars. Now, so we have price, we have packaging, we have ingredients, we have uniqueness. So you can see when he was choosing products, his products had to meet at least 3 of those pillars in order To be on the shelf. Now, there was also another pillar that I hate to call it the fifth wheel because to me, and as a business person, it's one of the most important. And that's something that was kind of a unique concept in the grocery industry. And that is that every product on the shelf had to be profitable. I'm going to say it again, and then I'm going to explain what I mean. Every product on the shelf had to carry its own weight. It had to be profitable.

Mm-hmm.

The reason why I'm bringing that up is because back in the day when Joe was there competing with other grocers, I don't know if you remember, you would walk into a grocery store and then we'll pick the cereal aisle just for fun, but there's entire aisles of just cereals and there's how many brands? General Mills, there's 2 or 3 brands and there's hundreds and hundreds of SKUs, right? Are all of those profitable? The answer is no. No. Very few of those are profitable. But what the brands can do, because they were the biggest advertisers, the big brands were the big advertisers in the grocery stores, they could dictate to the stores how much shelf space, how many SKUs, all of it, price, everything. Joe said, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no manufacturer is going to dictate to me that I have to carry products that are not profitable. They're not going to dictate to me where I choose to put those on my shelves. So we have no advertising. We are not going to advertise because we cannot allow those people to own us. So kind of an interesting thing. So we have price, packaging, ingredients, uniqueness, and of course, profitability. Big deal. That one kind of ran through everything. How'd we do?

I think you did absolutely amazing. What I'd love is I, I believe that, you know, people tuning into this will think, well, that's okay for Trader Joe's because it's such a big company. But to your point, when he was starting off, he was already looking for points of differentiation. And you started off by saying that, you know, what Trader Joe's did might not work for the audience. So I wonder if you could share some keys on how businesses can start looking at themselves and finding points of differentiation, finding their own pillars. And we'll get to that right after this.

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Welcome back! I am speaking with Patti Silveri and we are talking about Trader Joe's and kind of their uniqueness. I mean, it's obviously Trader Joe's didn't play by the book when it came to retail. And I think there's this idea that to your point, businesses had to play by the rules. But Joe figured out different rules that he was able to look at. So, even though cheese and dairy were regulated, he was able to look at different aspects of that. And say, well, why don't I go and jump outside of the rules and figure out what I can do? And so, is there any kind of magical thing about this idea about breaking rules? And do you think that they effectively can break them within each niche? Or what can ultimately— what can we learn from this?

First of all, like you said earlier, creativity is absolutely mandatory. Joe also had a partner. So Joe was the idea guy, right? And he partnered with another young— you know, Joe got into this when he got out of college, and he partnered with another guy that got out of college, his first employee, a gentleman by the name of Leroy Watson. And the reason why that relationship worked really well for building the company is that typically entrepreneurs, we tend to want to do everything. We tend to want to have our finger in every pie, which really limits growth, right? Right? Because there's only so much we can do. There's only so much time in the day. Joe partnered with Leroy Watson because they were sort of opposite. First of all, Leroy was right-handed, one of Joe's few right-handed executives. But as Joe was this concept idea guy, Leroy was the executioner. Joe would say, hey, Leroy, I've got this idea. Leroy would, boom, he would be the guy that would go off to France and find that cheese. He would be the guy— that would go off to here and there and figure it out. He made things happen. They needed to open new buildings and facilities. Leroy was the one that reached out and searched for the real estate. Leroy was the guy that made it happen. And as entrepreneurs, if we can find somebody that's not like ourself, and that's kind of key because I think a lot of times we want to just duplicate ourselves.

Yes.

We still need somebody opposite ourselves, especially if you're the idea person. But see, where was I going with that? Back in the day, talking about breaking rules, creativity is really important in breaking rules and staying legal is kind of a big deal. And that was really big to Joe because, well, for obvious reasons, you know, he didn't want anybody knocking on his door and closing his business. So a really good example was wine. He got this idea in his head that as while the grocery stores were carrying 3 or 4 or 5 or 6 labels of wine in their stores, And then there were liquor stores down on the corner. Joe wanted to be the grocer that carried 100 wine labels because he had this new cool audience that he was nurturing, right? This overworked and overeducated and underpaid crowd of people. So he got this idea that he wanted to bring in all these wines. Well, at the time, wine in California was regulated. Wine in the United States was regulated. There were only so many labels in Napa that he felt were drinkable. How could he have 100? Where is he going to find 100 labels? So he went to Oregon, he went to Washington. Again, he could find a couple labels here and a couple labels there, but bringing those wines in created another problem because regulation told him that he had to pay import duties to bring them in from Oregon or Washington, even though we're all still in the United States, right? This was all part of the Fair Trade thing going on back then. So he didn't feel that having wines outside California was going to be good enough. He ended up nurturing many wineries in Northern California, but then he sends Leroy out. He finds— let me just back this up a little bit. He takes a look at the Fair Trade Act. He takes a look at the rules that regulate the bringing of wine and distributing of wine in the state of California. What did he do? He sent his lawyers. He put his lawyers onto the task and said, hey, take a look at this stuff. Tell me, can we get away with anything? What can we do here? And it really wasn't a getting away with thing as much as it was finding a loophole. And they found one. They found— in the book, what are his words? He says, we found a loophole in the law, and by God, we drove a truck through it. He sends Leroy to Europe and said, bring us back some of that fine European wine. Remember, products from Europe, from any other country, cannot be regulated by the United States. We can regulate our own products, but we can't regulate other people's products. Wine was not regulated. Guess what they did? They brought in Château Lafite from France. They brought in wines from Germany and from Italy and from Spain. They brought in, you know, the New World wines, you know, Australia, Africa, South America. Those had not been developed yet. But European wines, he brought them in. California wines, he was developing and bringing those in. And eventually, those import duties bringing them in from Oregon and Washington went away, and he was able to bring those in as well. They worked— Trader Joe's worked with Australia, with Chile, Argentina, South Africa to produce wines that work for the American palate because wines are different all over the world and everybody's palate is different all over the world. So, when it comes to finding a way to sort of break the rules, you can break the rules, but you need to really do your homework. And Joe was the homework guy. So, hopefully that answers your question.

It's amazing because I have a theory, and this is something I used to challenge because I was a change catalyst in hospitality. An idea came to the forefront that really looked good on the surface, and then you had all the naysayers saying, oh no, we can't do it. We can't do it. We can't do it. I used to challenge them by saying, if it's not impossible, what will it take? And it seems like this was at the core of Joe's DNA.

Yes. You know what? You nailed it. That's exactly right. You hit the nail on the head. That's exactly right. So now we have to ask ourselves what you asked a minute ago, and that is how can people take Joe's pillars and turn it into their business? So, you know, maybe ingredients, maybe they're not in the food business. So, you know, ingredients is not gonna be one of their pillars. Maybe uniqueness can't be one of their pillars because maybe they're in a service business instead of a product business. And maybe they're doing something like selling real estate or selling insurance or things like that. Those you have to think about a little bit differently. Obviously, if you break down your levels of service and the levels of service possibilities, those can become levels of uniqueness for you if you're in the service business, right? Obviously, you might be a little limited on price, but what about packaging? And again, it depends on the industry. Can you package things a little bit differently? Can you provide things? You're selling homes wherever you're selling homes. What are people asking you for? What are your customers telling you? What are you hearing over and over again that are sort of pain points for your customers? If you're hearing the same thing over and over again, To me, those are giant bells to say, wait a minute, that's an area that you can become unique. Listening to your customers is huge because they know what they have to go through to buy a house or buy insurance or buy whatever it is that you're selling, right? If you're selling a product or you're manufacturing shoes, whatever it is, if you think in terms of, is your clientele distributors and retailers, or are you direct-to-consumer, if you think in those terms, who's your customer? What are their biggest pain points? What do they hate doing every morning when they get up and have to go to their computer and order products similar to yours? What do they hate most about their day and their process of buying products like yours? That's what you want to solve. Those are how you can define— listen to their voice, talk to them, they will tell you. People love to tell you their complaints, right? Everybody loves to voice their complaints. They're going to tell you.

And each one of your customers know what's wrong with your business.

Absolutely.

From their perspective, right?

Yes, absolutely. Not just your business, but buying products like yours, right? Buying from your competitors. Why did they come to you? Why are they going away from you? They all know why. They all know. I mean, everybody Finds a new vendor or changes products because it's hitting a new pleasure point for them, right, in their psyche. It's a little bit easier to acquire. You know, it tastes better, it fits better, it's better quality, it's got a better value. Whatever it is, it's a pleasure point in their psyche. So why are people changing products or services? That's kind of what you need to unpeel in your business to find this price, Maybe you're in a price— you're in a business where you're not selling a commodity and you have very little competition. I've taken a lot of this in my travel business, and I'm applying a lot of this in my own business now. As an example, I take a look at pain points for people that are traveling, and I think, what are their big pain points? Well, from the time they get on a plane, it's noisy. They get off the plane, they're exhausted. They've got no idea where they are. They're totally lost. You know, being a travel author, I'm trying to— I'm thinking in ways of I'm not just a travel author, I'm somebody in the travel industry trying to provide solutions for people that should be buying my products. But how can I do this differently? And so I am doing that differently. I'm finding ways where people can actually have total independence in every city that they travel in, just simply because I came up with this indexing method. That fits in your pocket, and now you'll never get lost anywhere you ever go in the whole wide world. And you'll know all the cool sites that are nearby. So now you can plan your day instead of trying to figure out how to accommodate your vacation day by figuring out transportation and zipping around strange cities where you don't even speak the language. So these are kind of things that I'm looking for in my business. These are things that you can look for in your business. What are the pain points? And so, trying to put all these together for me and still providing a value, I want to provide a level of quality that my competitors don't know how to do.

Right.

My background is in history and archaeology. I can write about ancient cultures like none of my compa— I don't care how big they are. None of them can write about them like I can, and they haven't. So, that's a nice big gap in my In my market. So yeah, so I mean, so if people want to go a little deeper than just seeing the surface of like Italy, I'm your girl.

Get your book. They have to get your book on Italy. You know, it's interesting, Patty, that you're talking about because we're talking about Trader Joe's. But you know, as you're talking about this, I'm thinking of other, like if you Google the Huggable Car Dealer, we have the Huggable Car Dealer, which is a used car lot. And he, but he found a niche of being able to serve families in such a way. And if you Google him, he talks differently from used car salesmen. His whole team acts differently around it. He's created his own pillars around this. So, I challenge anybody who's tuning into this saying, well, that's good for him. It won't work for me. I think if you can get creative, if you can bring your team in on it and say, how can we differentiate from what other people are doing? And then have a little bit of fun with it. My goodness, things can happen like crazy. Yeah.

So, it's just really listening to your customers and understanding their mindset. Be your customer. Go somewhere and buy. Buy products that are similar to yours but buy them from your competitors. Why are you saying, no, I wouldn't buy this product? Why are you saying, no, I wouldn't buy that product. I'd buy my own product. Why? If you go into a store, be your customer.

Yeah. And that's a huge secret. That's something that I wish more people would do is just go out and be your own customer even in your own stores. Patty, this has been a fabulous conversation. Do you have any last thoughts about what we're talking about today? Maybe A couple of cautionaries?

Yeah. Don't give up. If you know deep in your gut you're on the right track, don't give up. Pretty much everybody around you is going to do what you just said, and that is they're all going to say, nope, can't happen. It's not possible. Understand that the fact that you're an entrepreneur means that you have a way of seeing things and doing things differently than other people. So, that separates you from the pack right off. So, the fact that you're not— you didn't want to go and stand in an assembly line and do the job you were supposed to do when you got out of college makes you unique because most people think you got to have a lot of guts to do that. You're seeing things differently. Use that. You're unique. You have an amazing resource right there. Use that. Use your heart. Listen. Use your ears. Listen to your customers. Be your own customer and don't give up.

I love it. Patty, thank you so much for sharing your passion and your expertise with us today. Could you just let everybody know how they can get a hold of you if they're interested in crossing paths with you or having you speak at their conference?

Oh, wink wink! I love that. Thank you. I speak everywhere. Okay, so my email is pscivilleri@gmail. And I don't— okay, you could see the spelling on the screen. pscivilleri@gmail is my email address. pattycivilleri.com is my website. I'm all over Amazon and I'm building a new Amazon store. So that'll be stuffed with products before the end of the year. And hopefully you will call me and say, hey, Patty, I want you to come and speak to my group. I will do that. will come to you. So, Marc, it has been an absolute pleasure. I love today. Thank you so much.

Well, thank you. And this has been absolutely stellar for me as well. I think I said at the very beginning that we were going to really enjoy our time together, and I really feel that I've just loved every minute of it. So thank you so much for being such a great guest.

Did you learn something?

Always. And I absolutely— like, I love the I love the pillar idea. I love how people can figure out what their own pillar is. And, you know, I would even take it one step a little further. Yeah, you have your creativity, but you surround yourself also with people who have creativity. So tap into those people as well.

Oh, absolutely.

Patty, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. This has been brilliant.

Thank you. This has been wonderful. Thank you so much.

Why don't you let me know if this was of value to you? As always, my offer stands. If you would like 30 minutes of my time to help you brainstorm your business with you and your team, feel free to book a time on my calendar. The link is in the show notes. It's the one that's marked meetwith.marchaine.com. It would be my absolute honor for me to be of service. And while you're at it, why don't you go ahead, leave a comment or review about this episode? I'd love to get your feedback. Was this of value I'd love to see your comments. My name is Marc Haine. Thank you so much for joining me today. I hope you stay safe, stay healthy, and I hope you dare to be the exception.

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