Rande Vick
Los Angeles
As seen in:
LinkedIn,
Medium,
Substack,
That Was The Week (Podcast),
Brandingmag,
Music Inc. Magazine,
Business of Story
Covers:
Neuroscience & Branding
Consumer Memory & Emotional Value
Music Industry Trends & Retail Strategy
Storytelling in Business
Trust, Identity, and Cultural Influence
Articles by Rande Vick
Establishing Training Goals
Any repair shop with just one skilled technician can help solve the repair tech shortage by taking on an apprentice as long as you provide a plan. In a previous article, I discussed how to establish compensation that drives production as the first part of this plan. The second part is establishing training goals that set the course for the apprentice to become profitable to your team while they learn. CULTURE FIRST I train apprentices so they can be hired by you.
Are We Building Brands for a World That No Longer Exists?
Summary Global culture has moved from the modern era (certainty) into postmodernism (critique and deconstruction) and now into the metamodern world, which holds both at once. Yet most marketing still behaves like it did in the 1990s, when the primary challenge was capturing attention and the wider context could be safely treated as background noise. The playbook is airtight, but it wasn’t designed for a world in rapid flux. Are we building brands for a world that no longer exists?
The 3Ns: A Seasonal Playbook
Each December, families walk into your store for the first time, excited, nervous and filled with anticipation. They’re looking for an instrument, sure. But subconsciously? They’re looking for something they haven’t yet named: their child’s first guitar or the keyboard that becomes the center of attention on Christmas morning. Independent dealers who are in the know aren’t just selling gear. They’re selling memories.
Highlight Repair Techs Your Social Platforms
The marketing pyramid of influence framework categorizes your audience into hierarchical tiers based on their level of engagement with your market and their ability to sway purchasing decisions. It suggests the local band director has influence, and the college professor has even more. At the top of the pyramid is the nationally recognized professional musician.
Confessions of a Music Retail AI Addict
In a recent column, I tackled “contextual inertia,” or the trap of letting AI polish your bad ideas rather than helping you build better ones. As promised, I would like to move to “level four” — the workflow automator. But in order to do that, I have a confession to make: I’m an AI addict. My gateway drug was a YouTube video by creator Nate Herk. He demonstrated how a PDF invoice could automatically download from Gmail, be read by AI and populate a database without any human hands required.
5 Tips for Summertime Production
Repair shops are bursting with instruments this time of year, and they were all due yesterday. To have all your rentals ready, and to make customers happy come August, you need to find ways to increase shop production. Here are five tips to improve your repair shop’s output this time of year. 1. Reduce the number of rental returns your techs have to process. Not every return needs a repair. Assign sales staff to play test every rental return to determine if a repair is needed.
Don’t Let AI Help You Fail
In my last column, I promised we’d dive into “level four: the workflow automator,” moving beyond chatting with AI to connecting it with systems like Google Apps Script. I have built these systems, and, trust me when I say, they’re gamechangers. But the learning curve was brutal. I realize now that if you attempt “level four” without understanding how LLMs “think,” you don’t get automation. You get a Rube Goldberg machine of code.
4 KPIs to Drive Repair Output
You need a highly productive staff to manage the flood of rental returns and school repairs that pile up over the summer. As I’ve mentioned in previous articles, crafting financial incentives to ensure your rental fleet is ready is one critical step toward a productive shop. Effective KPIs are another. Using key performance indicators (KPIs) as a daily measuring tool of your repair staff’s effectiveness will increase your bottom line — and theirs.
Why Logic Is the Last Thing Your Customer Uses (And What Works Instead)
We like to think we’re rational creatures who also have feelings. But the truth is we’re feeling creatures who occasionally think. As a founder, you’ve probably spent months perfecting your “Why.” Features. Pricing. Logical arguments. A perfectly crafted ladder to the sale. Uncannily is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
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