J: Welcome everybody. My name is Jennifer Bennett with me is always the lovely Zachary Bennett. How are you Zachary?

 

Z: I’m good. How are you?

 

J: Are you ready to do the Straight Shot today. It’s the beginning of the year.

 

Z: It is. Happy New Year.

 

J: In this episode of Straight Shot, we’re going to discuss the tendencies that young business owners have when they wing it. People that say we’ll just figure it out as we go. We are also going to talk about strategic planning, tracking your activity, and course correction. We’re going to do that all by discussing the second half of Harley and the Davidsons’ biopic on the Discovery Channel.

 

Z: This is the last episode that we’ll do in that series. There will be quite a lot of stuff that we will cover today.

 

J: If you guys haven’t checked it out, go onto the Discovery Channel and you can actually see Harley and the Davidsons featured there. You will see clips throughout this podcast as we talk through it today. Speaking of Harley and the Davidsons, we are going to talk about the early business owner. How do you feel about winging it, Zachary?

 

Z: Unfortunately the biggest issue I find with smaller businesses is centered around a lack of planning and being reactionary in their communications. Doing things that way leads to lack of focus and a general chaos in your office by being inefficient in your time and your finances. We here at Reformation believe in being proactive. For me that means being in control of your own business, setting goals for every effort that you’re doing, and not winging it.

 

J: The film series here shows that same initial thinking. Before they had completed the product, Art Davidson had this opportunity fall into his lap. The leaders of Indian Motorcycles were coming to town. He had an opportunity to impress him with his product. This reactionary event caused him to cut corners on his bike and almost blew up the bike. Let’s take a look at that clip.

 

5:05: First Scene Explained

 

Z: Failures aside, they pressed on. They proactively decided to participate in this Indian Expo event. At that event, Mr. Lang calls out Art for being immature in business. He asked him if he was ready to take the business seriously because he wanted to partner with him. With that, he invested in the business and they began their efforts to take the business forward with purpose.

 

J: Mr. Lang was a new addition to the company as a marketing consultant. He was someone with experience with a new company.

 

Z: Yeah, he brought a lot of business savvy to the company. Before every event from this point forward, they laid out goals of what they proactively wanted to achieve. They had some sort of strategy involved in each one. Before competing in the Catskills Enduro Race which is the next clip we will see, Mr. Lang laid out three goals. One was to increase sales by impressing dealerships because dealerships were invited to the event. He wanted to increase awareness by getting more press coverage at the race. He wanted to beat the competition by proving that they had a better bike. Let’s take a look at the Catskills clip.

 

8:16: Second Scene Explained (Strategic Planning)

 

Z: You can see even then, Art still showed that he was not going to back down even if the guy he was up against looked like he was a gangster.

 

J: It’s more than just bravado. It’s more than just showing up for the crowd. It’s strategic planning. It was Art’s ability to bring it back towards the main goal. It was that kind of strategic planning that led Harley Davidson to the extreme devotion and legendary status that they have.

 

Z: This move over to being strategic is very prominently showcased in the film. In another part of the movie, there’s a section where it goes to World War I. As one of the top two motorcycle manufacturers at the time, they were invited to make war machines for the military. In that meeting, you can tell that they know their consumer target extremely well. Because they know their target well, they can accurately predict what is going to happen once the war is over. Let’s watch a clip on that because it’s super smart. The other motorcycle manufacturer is Indian. The guy that you saw in the other clip, Merkel, he’s gone because he was a shady guy. He looks like Mario. Let’s watch that clip on them being strategic for the war effort.

 

14:58: Third Scene Explained

 

J: That loyalty that everybody is talking about in the beginning once they know their machines, they come home and that’s what they’re familiar with. That’s just long term thinking and after the war, things were good again. Harley Davidson was back on top which was nice. Art really fought his way into the hearts and minds of the men coming back from the war.

 

Z: If you remember from the scene we just watched, the two men from Indian are leaving. There’s the big wig, the executive and then the sales guy with him. The sales guy is trying to lessen the burden by saying “they just cut their sales in half.” The executive says “No, they just won.” He realized that immediate sales aren’t everything.

 

J: You have to risk something.

 

Z: You have to have the foresight to see down the road. Loyalty is more important because you’ll sell more bikes in the long run than a few bikes right now.

 

J: Running a business and managing a brand can be very different. You can say how can I get through this year or you can say how do I get through this decade. I think that long term thinking about how you can solidify yourself in the hearts and minds of people that’s the way to go.

 

Z: In this case, it worked. It paid off after the war. The United States was only in it for a short amount of time and we won. Afterwards, his strategy paid off and things started going really well for them.

 

J: It’s not without their opponents though. In the film, Harley Davidson is also confronted with the idea that motorcycles are dangerous to society. Murder cycles if you will. This next clip we are about to look at will show an example of that before we go on.

 

18:26: Fourth Scene Explained

 

Z: A little bit of PR mentioned here.

 

J: Yeah, no press is bad press.

 

Z: Here you can see them staying true to their brand even in the face of adversity. The whole idea of fun and freedom was prominent, so they didn’t forget that. When people would come up and say “your motorcycles are dangerous,” Harley Davidson would say “yes, they are.” They began to embrace what made them different from cars or horses.

 

J: Often times in business, there are several opportunities that come along that challenge us as business owners to stay on target with our brand. There are publicity problems, product problems, or someone posting a bad review. It’s really easy for us to just throw in the towel or lock up the door. Or, you can change the brand to make somebody happy when we forget that we can’t make everybody happy all the time.

 

Z: We get contacted a lot. Sometimes our initial contact of somebody is somebody that has a bad situation going on and asks if we can come in and help them fix it. One of the things that we always have to look at is number one: who are you? How can we frame this based on who you are? Are you somebody that apologetic or are you like Harley Davidson? It’s a different angle depending on who you are. Knowing how to handle that is important.

 

J: Part of the problem people have with that is that they don’t know who they are.

 

Z: It all starts with that.

 

J: When businesses don’t have an idea of who their brand personality is, they have a really hard time responding to negative situations or positive situations. When you’re not sure of who you are as a person, as a brand or as a business, you don’t know what you stand for. When you don’t know what you stand for, you’re fall for anything. That’s why you see businesses that change who they are all the time. They keep adding to their menus if they’re a restaurant. Even though they’re a Mexican restaurant, now they have cheeseburgers. It’s one thing to respond to your public. It’s another thing to waffle on who you are. If you don’t have a good brand identity, it’s just harder for you to stay the course because you don’t know what the course is.

 

Z: You have to know who you are and be confident in who you are. To do that, it requires the necessary research up front. Once you know who you are, then you can push forward. There is always going to be nay-sayers. People can’t stand to see somebody else succeed.

 

J: Or, they like to have their voice heard, so they’ll post a negative review because it makes them feel like they’re being heard. They may not even believe that about your product. They just want their point of view to matter so much.

 

Z: Sometimes, they’re your competition as far as reviews go.

 

J: They might even by scorned employees or friends of scorned employees. You can’t make everybody happy all the time. If you know who you are, you know how to move forward. Moving forward in business is not without consequence. It is also imperative that even though you’re moving forward in one direction, there might be times when you have to change direction a little bit. As long as you’re moving forward, it just needs a little course correction. There is nothing wrong with taking a step back for a second and figuring out to get through it. This is a good time for us to be talking about course correction, but before we do that, we need to hear from our sponsors a little bit. I think we should take a quick break and hear from our sponsors and then we can dive in to course correction.

 

23:55: Course Correction

 

J: Welcome back. I hope you enjoyed those messages from our sponsors. Let’s talk a little bit about that course correction that we mentioned right before the break. In Harley and the Davidsons film series, Harley Davidson showcases a stand that they made against motorcycle racing.

 

Z: The industry had moved on from traditional flat track racing to board racing which was motordrone racing. They made a stadium. They had boards of wood that was all the way around in a circle. It made it like what a motorcycle track is today. The problem with it is that there are walls instead of fences. It was a harder surface and you could go faster. It was more dangerous. The reason why they included this in the movie is because Harley Davidson has been criticized for not being involved in the crotch-rocket market. That market was born from that type of racing. If you look at motorcycle racing now, that’s the type of motorcycles they used. For those of you that don’t know what I mean when I say crotch-rocket, I understand that is a slang term and it may be a little off-collared.

 

J: I don’t know what else they would call it: a racing bike?

 

Z: That’s what everybody calls them. It’s like the ninja that you’ve seen. It’s the one you have to lay down on.

 

J: It’s the one you ride with your belly on the gas tank horizontal to the pavement. For those of you that don’t know a lot about motorcycles, there are two types. There’s the crotch-rocket and then there’s the cruising bikes. The cruising bikes are what Harley Davidson specializes in. They are the ones you sit upright and your hands are right in front of you.

 

Z: There are also dirt bikes of course. Then, there are trail bikes which is a mix between. There are touring bikes which look like a car on two wheels. Either way, the racing bike started in this motordrone. You can see them now when you watch motorcycle racing. When they lay down, that is the bike they are laying down on which is why people don’t think they should be on the road because they weren’t made for modern day travel. They were made for racing.

J: They are made for speed and being aerodynamic.

 

Z: In this film, this is how they address that stand on this type of racing. This is an example of how you would take something that negative in the marketplace and turning it into a positive thing. It was a very smart marketing decision to put that stance in the film to support the decision that they had already made.

 

J: It’s also because it’s defined in who they are as a brand. They stay in those guidelines instead of letting themselves stay in the gray area. They said, “Nope this is who we are as a company and I can stand behind our decisions.” Let’s jump right back into the movie. This was a disastrous decision that could have bankrupted the entire business. They publicly attacked the motordrone racing and they withdrew from any future racing. It actually cost them.

 

Z: It was a very unpopular decision at the time because people liked this new racing style. It was fast. It was exciting, but they did participate in the first one and their guy got hurt. That is when they decided they weren’t going to be in it anymore because it is too dangerous. They could have decided to embrace it as part of their brand, but instead they decided it moves away from the freedom and crosses that line a little too far into being irresponsible. Let’s watch that and we can see the impact that the decision had.

 

31:43: Fifth Scene Explained

 

Z: They felt the hurt of that decision. It was a decision they made based on them getting older. They felt more responsible. Putting this in the film was a good way to showcase that Harley Davidson, as wicked as they are, still has a moral compass.

 

J: You don’t have constituency if you kill them all off in motordrone racing.

 

Z: Knowing that this hurt them forced them to develop new strategies that would help sustain the company long term. This is when they started getting into civic-oriented motorcycles for the police and postal system. If you’ve ever looked at Harley Davidsons’ history, you can see they did that.

 

J: I believe that the Gwinnett County Police are all Harley Davidsons.

 

Z: This was when they first started getting into that. They also established H.O.G. which stands for Harley Owners Group. This was one of the first clubs that they made to retain customers and to increase loyalty. It would make people passionate. People like to belong to things. It’s also an example of how measuring your results, both positive and negative can help push you to course correction. It can help you to become a creative and innovative in your solutions. Let’s take a moment and jump back into the movie. Let’s look at them exploring these different ideas.

 

36:11: Sixth Scene Explained

 

Z:  There are some good ideas that came out of that situation. When they noticed that they were in a down storm, they looked at it as an opportunity to expand.

 

J: Life does that sometimes. It gives us opportunities for us to learn and to grow when we’re too comfortable where we’re at.

 

Z: Sometimes, the best strategy is to go back to where you came from and to look at it in a new way. Walter Davidson wanted to go back to where he came from. He wanted to go back to flat track racing. He understood the heart of the Harley Davidson customer. He knew that those desires are still there. He just needed to find a new way to stoke those desires by going back to dirt track racing with a new bike that was too powerful for the motordrone. The motordrone had these curves that they would fly up with G force as they were going around. If you had a bike that was too powerful, you would just fly right up into the stands. He knew that it was more exciting and that they can’t use it in motordrone. You can see Walter had his eye on doing this for a while. He finally found a way to force his partner’s hand because his brother’s friend had died in motordrone. He found to basically force his brother into doing it. He did that by using company pride in the face of their competition. Walter took a risk in doing that, but it worked. We’ll play that clip here in just a minute. By measuring the results of those efforts, they were able to see a 6% increase with one single flat track race because they measured what they were doing. When that happened, they jumped all in. Art Davidson was on board and he was in charge of their sales. He had a brand new strategy to what he was going to do. They set goals. They gave away free beer at every event. They built a new racing team. They brought cheerleading into racing.

 

J: Not all of them are great ideas.

 

Z: We’ll see all of that in the next clip.

 

J: We’ll see if it all pays off.

 

47:02: Seventh Scene Explained

 

Z:  We got a little bonus in that last clip. Did you notice how Art took a negative and made it a positive? The guys were fighting on the ground and he turned it into a positive thing, same way that he did with the female journalist that was anti-motorcycle. Fun fact: they eventually named their racing team, the Wrecking Crew.

 

J: I think we’ve come to that point in the show when you, Zachary, give us your straight shot.

 

Z:  There are two major takeaways from today’s straight shot episode. Being proactive in business gives you the opportunity to make smart, strategic decisions without being impacted by emotion or outside factors. If you’re proactive and you know what you’re doing, then you don’t get side tracked easily. We believe in making solid business decisions that are backed by tangible research data. We know what we’re doing is correct. We can be confident in what we’re doing based on that data that we’ve gathered.

 

J: -Not winging it.

 

Z: We don’t believe in winging it at all. Doing the homework upfront allows us to be confident that we are going to be as efficient as possible and our communications are going to be as effective as possible. Proactivity is also a byproduct of being passion-filled and grounded at the same time. It gives you the opportunity to push forward in whatever it is that you believe, but you’re still steady and confident in what you’ve done. It also shows you are in control of your business as opposed to your business controlling you. That’s the whole cart before the horse thing.

 

J: Finding ways to be proactive and strategic in your marketing is absolutely paramount to success.

 

Z: It is. The second takeaway is in measuring your activity. Our marketing agency’s measure is the final stage of Straight Line Marketing. It’s often overlooked by a lot of clients. Perhaps that’s because proper measurement starts simultaneously with the other stages of the process. It finishes in its own timeline, but it has to start with everything else. In order to take full advantage of the measure stage, you have to take care to establish benchmarks at the very beginning of the entire process. Then, you have to track your experience along the way, so you can analyze them in the final measure stage. It allows us at the end to then celebrate what you’ve done right. I’m a firm believer in patting yourself on the back as a company and your employees. If your company has done well, tell your employees because they are the ones that got you there. It’s important to celebrate what you’ve done right.

 

J: I completely agree.

 

Z: The other thing after that is whatever didn’t work, fix it. We should tweak it so that it does this.

 

J: As long as you stay within your brand.

 

Z: It gives you the opportunity to look back on what did and didn’t work and why. The final piece is expansion. When you’re at the end of that, you can say, “We’ve grown the marketplace this amount from where we started because of benchmarking which gives us addition resources to expand the business.” Unless you have the measure stage done, you can’t effectively do those things from an analytical, strategic standpoint.

 

J: Sometimes, success isn’t just about the bottom line and the profit. Sometimes, it’s about meeting certain goals. Unless you are benchmarking, you don’t know if you are succeeding.

 

Z: Strategy is important because it does reach more than just sales. Sales are an important goal, but depending on where you are in your business, you may have other goals. You may want to make the business strong enough to be able to leave it to your son or to sell it to somebody else. You have different goals. Those goals are just as important as sales. Sales are important because that’s what keeps the food on the table, but it’s not the end-all, be-all.

 

J: Sometimes, sales are temporary. You can have a great year, but you don’t know what next year is going to bring. You can make plans for growth by adding new positions or positioning yourself out of the local and into the regional. In the movie, Harley Davidson did that and they continued over and over by expanding with new products. Through strategic planning, they have become the global cult brand that they are today.

 

Z: We’ll leave you with this today. There is one clip in the movie that really showcases something I want to talk about. It’s something that in reality would not have happened in the time and place of the movie. Harley Davidson has made a move to embrace female riders as a new demographic. Back in 1940s, that would not have happened. The whole film is a marketing piece. They began to market to female riders. We will leave you with that clip.

 

J: As a woman, I would love to end with that clip. I hope you guys have enjoyed the Harley and the Davidsons series. I think that is going to close out the Harley and the Davidsons thing. It’s been fun picking apart their decision making and the beginning processes of their business. As you know, it’s not going anywhere. Harley Davidson has come through motorcycles being dangerous and through their competition. They consistently have new competition coming out all the time. We’re going to leave you with this last clip. I hope you enjoy it. Until next time, thank you for joining us here on the Straight Shot.

 

Z: Thank you guys.

 

 

 

Episode One: Introductions