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Welcome to the GiltTrips podcast. I'm your host, Kendra Lockhart. As a goldsmith and

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gemologist, I'll be speaking 24 carat on all things jewelry, metals, and gems. Join

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me plus a few friends to demystify both materials and designs as your private jeweler. Let's

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tune in on these topics and get golden. In today's episode, I'm offering a companion

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talk as far as becoming the mentor. The first thing that I want to address as a myth is

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that you have to get to somewhere in order to have enough to mentor somebody. That is

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not necessarily true. Never undersell what your experience is or what you have experienced

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because it doesn't feel like expertise. Jewelry is one of those strange industries, much like

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the arts, dance, music, painting, I could go on, where it's a strange axis of expansion

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of your skills and the deepening of your knowledge and wisdom. At any given time, you may have

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exactly the right key to somebody else's lock, regardless of your tenure in your career,

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or dues in the industry, or the hours logged into mastery. Like the last episode, I'm

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going to break the sound into five areas. And the first one is training, which is a

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mixed bag. It can seem like both heaven and hell, depending on your strengths and limitations,

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as well as those of the people that you are trying to develop. But some of my greatest

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stories on passing the torch or paying it forward come from training. The two examples

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I'd like to share involve the training of a team and that of an individual. At my job

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with the estate collection, where eventually I became some unofficial operations manager,

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it became obvious to me that we had the right people in the wrong positions. The extrovert

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couldn't focus or complete tasks in the back of house, such as inventory, which is pretty

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critical. The introvert was on the sales floor. And if she did engage in conversation, it

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quickly derailed into her comfort zones of topics and never ended up converting the

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interest in a piece or clientelling or even capturing the lead. At some point, I pitched

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the owner and said, Hey, this sounds creative. It sounds a little nuts. Maybe it'll come

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across as too playful. But why not swap Annie and Lisa as far as responsibilities for just

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five days? Let's see what Lisa can do on the floor with customers. And let's see what Annie

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does with administrative responsibilities. Wouldn't you know that both of them ended

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up being in their own personal heavens and absolutely thriving at their new opportunities?

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It wasn't too long after that they were given each other's jobs permanently. The second

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example is an individual. When I was working in manufacturing, we had a retail showroom.

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It was the president, me, a field representative and a project manager. We were starting to

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grow and obviously needed, for lack of better words, a receptionist. The budget for the

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role, which means the pay wasn't great. We got ourselves a pretty young girl with zero

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background in jewelry and very little experience outside of hosting at a restaurant. While the

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president thought this would possibly convert, it was a disaster. She ended up interrupting

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$20,000 diamond engagement ring design appointments and sales for a $10 jewelry repair question.

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To the point where it was clogging business so much that I turned to Larry, the president,

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and said, I'm going to make you a deal. Let me bootcamp her as far as training for a week.

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At the end of the week, we genuinely test her, like a written exam. If she passes, let's

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give her a better title and a raise. And if she can't, please eliminate the position I

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will take on the repair department without even absorbing her paycheck because it is

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that detrimental to what we're trying to do as far as a business. It's one of my favorite

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stories because she worked really hard to crash course a lot of these terms and to learn to

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critically think and creatively solve and learn strategy. And when you take a phone

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call, how you vet that, and when somebody wants to interrupt her bosses, what is the

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best possible response? I could see her sweat a little bit, but she was also really going

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for it. And when I gave her the exam, which she finished, I turned it over to the president

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and said, he's going to grade your answers, and I'm going to step away. I've got an errand

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to do. I knew what I paid forward to her was fail proof. And I went down the street and

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I bought her a congratulatory gift. I came back, the exam was graded, and I approached

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her in a very somber and sober mode. Your score speaks volumes. And she got very nervous.

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And I said, you have one last question to answer. Will you accept the role and responsibility

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of repair manager? And she started to cry a little bit. And it was so heartwarming because

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what she said next was beautiful. I've never been proud of my work before. And I handed

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her her personalized executive planner. She went on for five more years with that company

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after I left. The next thing that you should consider cultivating in others is leadership.

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It can be lonely at the top. So why not replicate and give it to others? Because the more the

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merrier. One of the challenges in something as structured as any industry, but especially

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jewelry because it's often tenure and talent based as far as advancements is the idea of

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permission of all the careers that I've worked in, because some of them have been outside

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jewelry, it takes an extra level of grit to ask for more in jewelry. Is it correlated

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to the fact that the stakes are a little higher as far as luxury and value and psychology and

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emotional sentiments of our clients and our products? I don't know that speculation, but

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finding ways to impart self generated competence, confidence, certainty and charisma in your

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employees, your peers, your colleagues, if you're an advisor, like I am, your clients,

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your accounts, your contractors, the list goes on. But seeing that crawl to walk to run

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in somebody's relationship with themselves and who they show up as to themself, their

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colleagues, their peers, their accounts and their clients. For me, it's both precious

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and priceless. The next thing I want to speak about is profit. Now, it may seem unorthodox

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or counterintuitive to suggest to someone else how to make a little bit of money. I'm

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not saying do a TED talk or create a mastermind on how you want to go and become successful.

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Many will think that it's dog eat dog and every man for himself. But there's a long

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game is the strong game beauty in showing someone who is so close on their own idea

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how to turn that in to monetization, profit, sales, you name it. My favorite example is

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the owner of a showroom out in Crown Point, Indiana. And he was churning and burning

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and chugging up that mountain. Then we had an easy chat about expenses. And I said you're

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going to get a lot closer towards your annual goal. If you can trim the fat and build the

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muscle. You're in Indiana. Why are you shipping goods out two days to New York, paying New

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York prices and getting it shipped two days back to you. That is time and money not well

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spent. Lo and behold, the year he found local vendors, he increased his profit margin by

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29%. While I have a background in marketing communications, I promise I'm not giving a

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TED talk on branding. But that is the subject I'd like to discuss as far as my fourth way

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to pay it forward and mentor. Let's substitute the word branding for identity cohesion. And

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if you've got something that you can help someone who's trying to be everything to everyone,

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which spoiler alert, if you're everything, you're nothing. If you're everybody, you're

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nobody because there's no relatability. You're not identifiable. Cohesion could be explained

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in a power of three. Who are you? How are you doing it? And what is it about? And last

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thing, events. It's one of the easiest ways that someone's grabbed my hand. And it's how

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I grab the hand of others and pull them up the hill. Events blend easy invitation, possible

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socialization, introduction of new product and a fostering of community, or at worst,

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reestablishing yourself as a venue. Events have done wonderful things. Even when they

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didn't yield the sales that we wanted. Our upside was exposure, connection, referral,

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character and reputation, implanted seeds for future collaborations as a standalone

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address or as part of a quote unquote neighborhood crawl. My wish is that this sparked some creativity

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as far as your generosity of what you know, what you think you know, and what you don't

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know that you actually know that could benefit your peer, your partner, your employees, your

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colleagues and my personal favorite, the next generation of jewelers.

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Thank you for listening and learning with me. I would love you to share this project

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with people finding rare beauty in today's world and throughout our times. Until the

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next episode, keep your own story sparkling.