Ep. 42 Barber Vs. Dale’s: Business Personality Dual

Barber Vs. Dale’s: Business Personality Dual

Does a business have to be fancy to be successful? Of course, not, there are hole-in-the-wall restaurants and mom and pop shops that give big business a run for their money. But mom and pop need to learn a few things from corporate to pull it off.

Torie Mathis and her cohost Sean talk about 2 famous motorcycle museums that are as different as could be and both pull off their individual branding perfectly. From pizza and books to motorcycles and classic cars we contrast brand personalities and what that means to your business success.

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION –

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SAF 42

[00:00:00] Torie: And she’s like, man, I don’t even know where that was. Like nothing was in order. Like how do you have a bookstore with the books? Not in order.

Hey, Hey, welcome to Smart AF I’m your host Torie Mathis. We have got a great show for you today. So let’s get started since Sean started Miles Through Time, we decided that we were going to try to go to every car museum in the whole entire world.

[00:00:31] Sean: And the whole world. 

[00:00:34] Torie: Well, We’re kind of starting with the United States because that’s where we’re at.

Like, yeah. I plan on traveling. Let’s go, let’s go to.

[00:00:43] Sean: In Europe. 

[00:00:44] Torie: So we have hit quite a few on the east coast week, but there’s a lot and we actually have Automotive Museum Guide.com that we create. It has every single automotive museum in the United States and north America in north America. I knew Puerto Rico was in there. I just didn’t remember how you actually worked that into it. 

[00:01:04] Sean: There’s one in Puerto Rico. I think there was like eight in Canada, even Alaska has two. 

[00:01:09] Torie: Wow. Really? Is there a state that doesn’t have any there’s? 

[00:01:12] Sean: Three states Hawaii doesn’t have one Louisiana and there’s another state, but I can’t remember it.

[00:01:22] Torie: I want to go to Cuba. I want to see the cars there. Like after seeing a few of the hopeless that somebody showed me a bunch of pictures that they went down there and actually seeing like somebody such as, like, that looks really neat. So we want to see all of the car and museums and something. We were talking about the other day.

We we’ve gone to a lot of motorcycle museums as well. And. I love the barber museum. The barring museum is a motorcycle museum. It’s the largest in the world. 

[00:01:49] Sean: Guinness world record for the largest motorcycle museum. 

[00:01:52] Torie: We’ve been, I’ve been to a shit ton of museums, art museums, all over the world. Sean and I have been to lots of art museums in the United States and the barber museum.

What’s so beautiful. It is just, it is clean lines and beautiful use of like metal and like just the exhibits. I was really blown away that a motorcycle museum could be that pretty. Like it was just like the lights and the contrast, and it really was very, very neat. I enjoyed our trip there. We got our really nice private tour and got to see some behind the scenes stuff, which is part of our museum tour thing has been it’s been really fun to be able to see these kinds of things.

And we’ve been to other ones and a one that comes to mind is Wheels Through Time by Dale. What’s Dale’s last name? What is Dale’s last name? 

[00:02:46] Sean: Or why would you ask me that last name? I don’t know. 

[00:02:49] Torie: Dale’s last name, Dale. Right? So deals museum is quite a lot different than Barbour. Dale has been collecting this for how many.

[00:03:01] Sean: I would, I would probably say it a lifetime only because his very first car from when he was a kid motorcycle or something is on display in there. 

[00:03:11] Torie: So his collection, I guess he used to, if I remember correctly and he’s had a show on, like, when we went there, we didn’t even know that he had a show. 

[00:03:19] Sean: I had no Idea who he was.

[00:03:20] Torie: No. So, but you know, we thought Mo you know, Sean, like motorcycles, we’re driving through, going to Tennessee and we ended up stopping. It is like a hodgepodge of just every type of motorcycle. It is gritty. It is a warehouse kind of style that just has the, the neatest exhibits. It is not barber. Barber is clean and polished and perfect.

It is very corporate. It is very like high end art gallery Dales. Dale’s is it’s more passionate. It’s more personal. Like I said, it’s gritty. It’s what, what, how would you describe that? 

[00:04:00] Sean: It’s what I strive to be is what Dale’s wheels through time is for Miles Through Time. It’s just, there’s no, like, like Barbara comes off as a Smithsonian type of museum. It’s what you would go and see if you were anywhere in Washington, DC, I get to fits inside of all those types of museums and Dales looks like you went into a shop. 

[00:04:30] Torie: In his personal garage, like there’s little garages set up. There’s like a dirt track set up with all these. 

[00:04:38] Sean: It’s like the ultimate man-cave like, if you saw man-cave pictures that, you know, the cliche type stuff, right? Like you’ve got to have this sign and this motorcycle and this stuff. That’s what it is. Just everywhere. 

[00:04:55] Torie: It’s so visually stimulating, like there’s still, like, you have all the different signs of like, what’s there, but like there’s such passion in it. I don’t know. Like it’s. 

[00:05:05] Sean: Well, and there’s a, there’s a balance. Cause I get this at miles time all the time. They’re like, what is museum quality? Well, in, in barber, there’s definitely a museum quality. They’re all perfect. There’s nothing that’s on display in there. That’s not. But a Wheel Through Time and Miles Through Time there there’s all kinds of vehicles, conditions on display. You’ve got, I mean, I think there was an Excalibur in wheelchair time. Fantastic looking motorcycle. But then there was also some Indians and Harley is that. 

[00:05:44] Torie: Well, they had a really nice military area. And so it was like genuine military. It wasn’t all shined up a brand new. No, it looked like it had been through shit. And this whole entire display that you kind of walked through it, like you were walking through your grandma’s garage or somebody, you gotta kinda move over around this. And so interesting. 

[00:06:03] Sean: But in doing that too, he’s got it. Where if he’s in there, you know, Fire them up and ride them around in there. If you wanted to, or some of the other guys that work in there, they can do the same thing, which again, adds a whole nother aspect to it. That is more appealing for me than just look cause Barbara, I mean, ultimate and Bart. Barber is a, is a fantastic museum. It’s motorcycle art museum I mean that, that is what it is.

They took motorcycles, the motorcycles themselves, or pieces of art. And then they created pieces of art with the motorcycles, which then made really neat exhibits as well. And it’s fantastic, but it’s at a completely different. 

[00:06:48] Torie: I wouldn’t even call it level though, because there’s intent with Dale and there’s intent with Barber. And you can’t say that Dale’s collection is worth the same. That barbers is like, he’s got so much stuff and so much history and so much story there that I wouldn’t even say like that it’s a level thing. I think it’s an intentional brand personality that is on purpose just like Miles Through Time. You’re not going to be barber.

You’re not going to beat the Smithsonian. It’s more of a, a telling a story and capturing a time in history, not shining stuff up, but making it as pretty as possible. There’s a time and place for that. But that’s not the personality you’re going for, you know, and I think that the fact that there’s like so much intention behind Dales, I think is awesome.

Like, I love it. And I’ll tell you I’ve been to barber. I don’t need to go again. I’ve been to Dale’s twice and it would go again. Because I know I would find something else. Like I didn’t see that, like, I don’t know how much has changed. It did change. The two times that we were there because they had some really nice art exhibits out in the downstairs area.

One of the times that we’re there, that they had somebody’s art on display. But because it’s not so perfect and overly done by committee, like he can move stuff around just like you can, you know, that’s the personality of the museum as you can move it around and, and do what you want with it. However, like, I don’t think that always works like, like the, the being loosey goosey and passionate and stuff like that.

Like you have to do it right. I think about the bookstores, right. Like, I love going to a bookstore and I have made it that my kids love going to a bookstore. And so we do it all the time and we buy books all the time. And I was really excited to go to the small downtown main street bookstore. They had kombucha on tap.

And I had a couple of specific books that I was like, I’ll go down there, I’ll grab some kombucha and I’ll see if they have these books and I’ll support my local little books. And so I went down there and it definitely was I don’t wanna say homie, like it was like, there, it wasn’t corporate by any means.

[00:09:10] Sean: Should’ve been really cool. 

[00:09:11] Torie: It really could have, like, it could have been very welcoming, very cozy, very, but like there’s books all over books on the floor books everywhere. The girl kind of yelled to me like, Hey, what’s up? And I’m like, Hey, like I’m getting came here to get kombucha. And I’m looking for this book in this book and she’s like, man, I don’t even know where that would be.

Like nothing was in order. Like how do you have a bookstore with the books? Not anymore. I wasn’t in order. And then she made some comments about the girl that runs the place. I got kombucha. They ran out, I got like half a bottle, but you know, I will go to Barnes and Noble any day of the week. I know they are going to have what I want.

There’s that consistency. You know, and they do move some stuff around. And so that it’s not like stale, but man, like there was such a missed opportunity with the with the bookstore little main street bookstore that could have been cool. It wasn’t they couldn’t. 

[00:10:04] Sean: They still could have made it kind of looks like how it looked. And then it had some sort of hidden organization behind it, you know, like, ah, that’s in. 

[00:10:17] Torie: Right. And there was none of that. And you always feel, you’ve talked about the coffee shops. Like I love a little town coffee shop. And we used to go to a coffee shop and not that long ago, that was in a little town that we would go through and they were always running out of stuff.

They would show up late. They would like, I wanted to support them and I wanted to do it, but it was a passion business. And so to them, it was like, they didn’t have to take it seriously. And us self bond on that. 

[00:10:41] Sean: Always disappointing. 

[00:10:42] Torie: Like, I don’t want to go to Starbucks, but man, I know they’re going to be consistent. I know they’re going to be open. I know I’m going to, I know what I’m getting. So I think if you, if you want to do your brand in more of that, like passion business, It can’t mean that you don’t take it seriously because you can be messy and gritty. And, but, and, and have that be your intent without not being professional, because that’s a huge difference.

[00:11:10] Sean: Right. 

[00:11:13] Torie: You know what it makes me think of there was this hole in the wall Mexican restaurant that we used to go to in North Carolina, the one that had the really good avocado sauce. Now, this place packed every single lunch, they ended up moving. And I don’t know if that was the best decision for them. But like they were hole the wall and it seemed like intentional the hole in the wall.

Like some of those places stayed that way. And I think that that’s cool. If that’s going to be your brand, then make your brand, the hole in the wall, the kind of funky place. Nowhere else is holding the wall intentionally messy, intentionally small, but it totally worked. Golden Boy Pizza. 

[00:11:54] Sean: Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

[00:11:57] Torie: So there’s this place in San Francisco, in the Italian district that has the greatest pizza. And I don’t even like, like a thick crust pizza. We went to Chicago and had pizza. 

[00:12:11] Sean: Like, I don’t know what it is about this pizza. 

[00:12:14] Torie: It’s a bread style, deep dish. 

[00:12:17] Sean: It’s absolutely fantastic. You buy it by the slice. And you can order it at the window or you can go in and it’s, it’s like a row of bar seating up against the wall and there’s stickers and pictures and all kinds of crap all over the place.

[00:12:35] Torie: It’s tiny. It’s not fancy. It’s not, it’s like hole in the wall. Intentional. It’s so good. It’s so good. Like that’s kind of San Francisco. 

[00:12:46] Sean: Really, because it’s that way, like, it would be almost weird if it was large. 

[00:12:52] Torie: You sat down like, someone’s like, can I take you to your seat? Like it wouldn’t work, you know?

[00:12:56] Sean: And I mean, there’s nothing else. I mean, you order the pizza and beer or some other drinks, that’s it. There’s no salad or cheese sticks or anything else. It’s just straight up pizza. 

[00:13:13] Torie: But it’s that it’s intentionally stayed that way because I know they’re making a shit ton of money. Again, there’s always people in there. You got to wait to get in, but intentionally like that’s their brand and that’s cool. 

[00:13:27] Sean: Because you can change. It doesn’t mean you should. 

[00:13:29] Torie: Yeah. You gotta stick with, like, with, with what works for you and don’t feel like you have to go into some type of box because it’s not necessarily. But you still have to be consistent and you still have to be professional.

Cause that just man, I really want to support like these small little indie mom and pop. But man, when I go into these places and it’s like a hot mess like I don’t want to come back. You gotta make me want to come back and bums me out when I don’t want it. So, if you liked this episode, Hey, why don’t you share it with somebody that you know, would like it, or you could subscribe, leave us a review, like the video.

We’d appreciate that. And we’ll see you on the next episode. You want to get smart tools to build your business, go to getsmartaf.com