In this episode, we interview the team from PA103. The winning store from our National Karaoke Contest shares with us the inside details of what went into their spoof video of the iconic song from Dirty Dancing that stole the show at our recent annual convention. Make sure to watch the video at: youtu.be/IUTpxZDZR0U
| Episode Air Date |
Guest Name |
Guest Title |
Topic(s) |
| May 3, 2019 |
PA103 |
2019 Karaoke Battle Winners |
The fun of putting together the perfect karaoke video as a team |
Each episode of the Podcast is also available on iTunes and the Google Play store.
Transcription:
Chad Jordan: Hey everybody, this is Chad Jordan, Director of Marketing at Sport Clips. I am in a beautiful Mountain Dew free, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Just kidding, they do have Mountain Dew here, it's just hard to find. And, I've been having a blast today going around visiting a bunch of stores in this area, it's one of the best markets in the country for Sport Clips. But there's one reason that I was drawn to Pittsburgh and this area and it was because the winning store for our national - actually, international because Canada was involved - our international first ever Sport Clips karaoke battle. The winning store is from this area. So, I just had to get out here and meet with the store. We actually had pizza ... Anyways, we'll talk about all the stuff that we did.
But, without further ado what I want to do is introduce, or actually, I'm going to have you guys introduce yourselves, all right, so that way we can hear the microphones get picked up. By the way, we have a very special guest that we'll introduce along the way as well. You may hear him chime in whenever he feels like it, because this is Wesley's podcast today, so we're just gonna roll with it. We have an eleven-month-old bundle of joy with us in the room. But, ladies do me a favor, and AJ, and I guess Wesley if he feels like chiming in, why don't we go around, this is PA103, from, is it Cranberry Township? Is it a township? In Pennsylvania. Why don't we go through, I'll start with, Kayla, why don't we start that way and go all the way back around to Maria, okay? So we'll start with you. Why don't you tell me your name and your role at the store or stores as the case may be?
Kayla Drost: Yeah! My name is Kayla and I'm the Director of Operations here in Western PA for Al and AJ's stores. I also do the ambassador team here.
Chad Jordan: Awesome, okay, next.
Jen Baxter: I'm Jen, I've been managing the Cranberry location for two years now. I've been at that location for ... going on eleven years.
Chad Jordan: Okay, and who is with you? Who are you holding? Who is sitting in your lap? [crosstalk 00:02:16]
Jen Baxter: This is my son, Wesley.
Chad Jordan: You looked around, like, who is with me? (laughs) That's what a mom does, right? You just forget he's a part of you now. (laughs) Who is with you?
Jen Baxter: So this is Wesley, he's eleven months old. And, he's a good boy for the most part. (laughs)
Chad Jordan: He's been a great boy, all day. Yes, he is. And we'll get to what his role in the video is in just a minute. But we'll keep going over here to Robin.
Robin: I am Robin, I am an assistant manager at the Cranberry store. I've been there for two years and I actually am going on two years as being an ambassador for Sport Clips as well.
Chad Jordan: Awesome, but most importantly, auntie to Wesley, right?
Robin: Auntie to Wesley, absolutely.
Chad Jordan: When I walked into the store today, she wouldn't let him go. All right next up, featuring the vocals of this young lady back here is-
Brielle: Hi, I'm Brielle. I work at the Cranberry location, I've been there for about 3 years. I'm also a lead brand ambassador for Sport Clips, and I'm also an area coach.
Chad Jordan: An area coach and I don't know if you're a professional singer or whatever, but she's the one.
Brielle: At the worship team at church and that's about it. Cars and showers, beyond that.
Chad Jordan: She's comfortable behind a microphone, let's put it that way.
Robin: There's not much that Brielle can't do.
Chad Jordan: All right, next.
Heather: I'm Heather, I'm an area manager and also work with the ambassador team.
Chad Jordan: Excellent, yes sir.
AJ Rodriguez: My name is AJ Rodriguez. I'm one of the team leaders here in Pittsburgh. My dad and I have most of the stores here in Western PA.
Chad Jordan: Excellent, we'll get back to AJ later. And last but not least.
Maria Jones: Hi, I'm Maria, the area coach for Western Pennsylvania.
Chad Jordan: And?
Maria Jones: And West Virginia!
Chad Jordan: I mean... and how about an artistic team member?
Maria Jones: Oh hey, I'm the artistic team member! I'm representing my team here right now!
Chad Jordan: Yeah, I know, I know. Don't worry, she's going to have her own podcast, her own dedicated ... she's in the hall of fame as well.
So anyway, what we're doing today if you haven't gathered, is we want to find out a little bit about the experience PA 103 had in the karaoke battle. And the reason we wanted to put it in podcast format is because we will most likely, 99.9% sure, do this again, probably for next year's huddle. Whether we have a themed event, or whatever we do, that stuff has to be decided. But I'm sure PA 103 will again be in the running for the title. So, if you haven't seen their video or heard it yet, I will make sure to put a link to the podcast. Please go do that right now, in fact put 'push pause' on the podcast, go do that because you will not be sorry. In fact, you might not ever come back to the podcast. You might just put this on repeat and want to watch it and listen to it over and over again. We got to find a way to make these downloadable, the tracks, so that people can - make it a ringtone, yeah, exactly.
So, I don't want to give away. Who wants to do ... Jen, do you want to do the talking on what the video is about, what the song is that you chose, just so it's not me carrying this? Can you fill us in a little bit on what song you picked, how it was inspired, all that kind of stuff?
Jen Baxter: I can't really take the credit for it, it was kind of like a group effort.
Chad Jordan: Okay, but you're the manager so, what did your team put together?
Jen Baxter: So, we picked Dirty Dancing ... what was the two that we chose? It was Dirty Dancing and...
Robin: The other one was Michael Jackson.
Jen Baxter: ... Michael Jackson, Thriller. So, this is the one that we picked and, it was a group effort of putting the lyrics together and Brielle-
Chad Jordan: Was there someone who was a big fan of Dirty Dancing and kind of knew, "Alright, we can crush this"?
Jen Baxter: You know, I've never seen the movie.
Chad Jordan: Spoiler alert! It has a happy ending.
Jen Baxter: Yeah, with Brielle, she can sing so, we put some lyrics together and she nailed it.
Chad Jordan: What is the "we put"? I mean, did you guys all come together as a team and write the lyrics yourselves, was it a pep rally?
Jen Baxter: Yeah, we were all texting each other and just kind of changing things and made it perfect.
AJ Rodriguez: It took all of 10 minutes for Shannon, she's not in the room right now but Shannon wrote the lyrics. One of our area managers. You saw her this morning.
Chad Jordan: I'll make sure to go back and give her a shout out.
AJ Rodriguez: She wrote all the lyrics, I think, for most of the scores we had.
Brielle: She's so good, it was 10 minutes later, and it was like. [crosstalk 00:06:57]
Chad Jordan: Okay because yeah, you guys had the most submissions of any.
AJ Rodriguez: I don't know how many exactly we had but Shannon wrote the lyrics for all of them.
Chad Jordan: Oh that's amazing, oh my god, so creative, no kidding.
AJ Rodriguez: She spit out the lyrics in 10 minutes, Heather tweaked them and put all the organization together and Brielle was the featured actress and singer.
Jen Baxter: And then AJ just topped it off. [crosstalk 00:07:18]
Chad Jordan: Oh, so they tricked you into coming and being part.
AJ Rodriguez: Heather told me to be at the store at a certain time.
Brielle: And can you bench 140?
Chad Jordan: Anyways, quickly, there's an iconic moment in the movie and then also in the video where Patrick Swayze... anyways, AJ did his Patrick Swayze impersonation.
AJ Rodriguez: And I also like Jen, have never seen the movie.
Jen Baxter: I've seen enough clips on YouTube.
AJ Rodriguez: They were prepping me with YouTube videos the night before.
Brielle: And we told him to wear a collared black shirt.
Chad Jordan: So, the question I had, obviously when I saw it for the first time it's like, if you go back and watch that clip at end of the movie and all that kind of stuff, it's almost like a shot for shot remake. You had them all strutting in together down the aisle, and kind of all that stuff. Is somebody watching the clip and writing down the choreography, here's what we have to do.
Maria Jones: When he got there, we already had clips like pulled up and we were like, okay, botch this, no do that.
Brielle: It's kind of like little clips at a time and then we just put them all together in the full video. So it was nice because then we just kind of like, pick and chose which things we could easily recreate in a Sports Clip setting and then just kind of went from there. It was fun, it was really creative.
Chad Jordan: Here's my question. Here's what I'm thinking because most of the clips, if you actually go back and watch them, most of them you can tell it's night time. Like the store has recorded them after hours, like logical people would have done and yet, yours, you can tell it was day time so it meant you had to be open, right, because its daylight hours. How were you able to film all this in the midst and by the way, I've been to your store, I've seen your performance board, we talked about all that kind of stuff. You guys rock and roll, like there's never a dull moment and even when I was there, right before lunch, it was crazy busy. How are you able to squeeze in the recording of all this stuff, around clients, around people working.
AJ Rodriguez: Got to get the clients involved.
Chad Jordan: And that's true and you guys did.
Kayla Drost: The clients loved it, they were really into it.
im not sure: They walked into the door and be like "What is happening back there". And then they got into it
AJ Rodriguez: They know it's not a normal thing, they look around and question what's going on and all of us sitting in the chair.
im not sure: He was cheezin' the whole time, waiting for somebody to offer him to see if..
Chad Jordan: This is his big break guys, now he's waiting by his phone, Hollywood is going to call.
AJ Rodriguez: It's not a very big store, over 700 clients a week, so its not like its, we didn't know what the client flow was going to be like.
Chad Jordan: Right, the reason we're doing this podcast because I want to get out, obviously you guys won, we'll talk about you won and that whole process so that people that weren't at huddle can be in on it. But what I want people to get out of this, especially stylists and team members that are going to try to do this again next year. You don't have to give away your secrets, one of the things you all did well was you introduced clients into the video, you got them participating, you had a team leader involved which again was rare. Wesley's on a tear. Wesley, we're gonna get to you in a minute buddy, you're the star of the show obviously.
What do you think are some of the other key elements that you guys are able to introduce besides great vocals and all that kind of stuff, what do you think really showed through your video that really resonated with people that watch it?
im not sure: I feel like Danny did the editing and that made a big difference too, in just how well put together it was.
Chad Jordan: Do you know how, was it Imovie? Or what did they use?
im not sure: Danny, she's not here either [crosstalk 00:11:21] she's another manager.
Chad Jordan: Did she do all the four or five videos for you guys? All right so obviously the secret here, get people in their lanes and have people do what they do best.
im not sure: Yeah
Chad Jordan: So you guys actually in the editing, yeah it was really well done. Not that things have to look like Hollywood actually produced them, but it does make it easier to watch, to share, makes people want to share it on Facebook and social media; Stuff like that. All right, so you had people do that. You had somebody help with the lyrics. So, here's the question, was it overwhelming? Did anybody feel like this is too much?
All: No. We were relaxed.
im not sure: We were cracking up the whole time.
Chad Jordan: Yeah, I mean, that is really what I'm trying to get across here. [group laughs together] There are some podcasts that are important. I'm talking to people that are dealing with illness or addiction, and it's emotional right? We have a kleenex ready during the podcast. I didn't bring Kleenex, because this podcast that we are recording today you guys had a ton of fun doing this thing with your team, and it shows that I think one of the reasons that you guys won because you like being together and you like having fun. This is a reinforcing kind of experience for your team. It's really captured the mood of the store. So, can you guys... let's see, today we came out and you had... I don't know how many team members were actually on? 3 or 4?
AJ Rodriguez: 3
Chad Jordan: There were 3, but you had I mean it was amazing because... so I walk in the door, by the way the grand prize was $500. Have we talked about how do you guys know how you're gonna spend that $500 yet?
AJ Rodriguez: We are gonna do a team pep rally, for the store.
Chad Jordan: Okay, it's not on diapers?
AJ Rodriguez: No [group laughs] We can't, I mean...
Chad Jordan: Okay, all right, so a really nice...
Jen Baxter: A nice juice box.
Chad Jordan: A really nice pep rally. He's gonna, I know he's gonna take that microphone, so we might as well. It's fine. So, you got $500. You were supposed to get Krispy Kreme doughnuts. But, there is no Krispy Kreme around here, so we got... what was is called?
Jen Baxter: Peace, Love, and Little Doughnuts.
Chad Jordan: All right, so shout out to Peace, Love, and Little Doughnuts. They're little, but they pack a punch. They are dense, and they are really good. We did pizza, we did doughnuts. They are great, they had a table. They brought out a table. So, we all got to kind of hang out there. Your whole team... was anybody missing?
Jen Baxter: There was a few missing.
Chad Jordan: There were?
im not sure: Yeah, we have a big team.
Chad Jordan: No kidding! Yeah. So I felt like you girls were coming out of the woodwork. But, we had a full team there. Oh, behind... if you're listening to the podcast you can't see this big check that came all the way from California wink wink. By the way I don't know, is there a Wells Fargo around here? Or, how are you gonna cash that? But, we'll figure out how you're supposed to cash that. So, the store won $500. Anyway, an amazing experience for the store to come together. What I really wanted to get out of today's podcast is, you know, I want to make sure you guys had fun doing it. The experience of today, it was electric when I came in there today. I could feel the energy of your store, it feels like you're crushing it. Do you feel like this experience brought you together? Is it gonna be in the highlight reel of your year-end-parties or whatever you're gonna do?
im not sure: Oh, Yeah.
Jen Baxter: One-hundred-percent.
Chad Jordan: Wesley got sick of hearing me, so he just left but for those of you that are watching on YouTube you got to see a bunch of him. You know what? We'll get him for the photo op that we put with the podcast if he is still awake. But, Wesley is... so there's that famous line, somebody quote me the line from Dirty Dancing...
Jen Baxter: No one puts baby in a corner.
Chad Jordan: All right, so no one puts baby in a corner. So, their video starts off... and to be honest that's the very beginning of the video. I didn't hear it, the first time I saw your video I just saw the baby in the corner. But, doesn't somebody speak over it? "Nobody puts baby in the corner," is that you? So I had to go back and listen because I just thought you did it like as a sly little whatever. And then realized that you guys actually put him in the corner. So, today he showed up, he was wearing the same thing that he wore in the video. Close to it? He probably messed up though at the first. He would have outgrown it by now.
All: Ew, gross.
Jen Baxter: He was already outgrown. [group laughing] We forced him into it.
Chad Jordan: Hey here's another breaking news if you want your video to win, get a baby in it. [group laughs] Everybody loves a baby. So, who was that huddle in here? We had quite a few people that were at huddle.
im not sure: Yeah.
AJ Rodriguez: I think everybody, but Robin.
Robin: Yeah, not me.
Chad Jordan: Okay, it's gonna happen Robin.
im not sure: It will.
Chad Jordan: So now let's talk about huddle. So here's how the process works. We had 50 stores do a karaoke video and by the way the karaoke contest was you gotta pick any song... literally any song in the world. We had people picking Full House Theme Song and Whitney Houston songs and country songs and a bunch of stuff. Pick any song and Sport Clip-ify it and change up the lyrics and make it relevant to Sport Clips somehow, someway. So obviously this store PA103 in Cranberry, they picked the Dirty Dancing song, but we had the huddle team reduce the 50 down to the top 5. By the way, if there had been a top 6... should I just say it? Should I say it Maria?
Maria: Sure
Chad Jordan: PA121 was the 6th one.
im not sure: Oh man, that's awesome.
Chad Jordan: They did the Spice Girl's Song, Tell Me What You Want. But, there challenge was it came in so late it was really towards the end of the... and we had already kind of streaming it down and for us to bump one of the top 5 for a late entry was rough. Newsflash, next year, get your submissions in as early as you can to give the team time enough to find the finalists.
im not sure: That was half the thing too...once we got one of them out I think...
Chad Jordan: Yeah
im not sure: 126 or 111 was the first one and then people wanted to know how to do them. So we kept going with it, we made like six of them.
Chad Jordan: I love that. I love the competitive nature of the whole thing too. I mean this is Sport Clips, it's supposed to be competitive. So, the top 5... what we did at huddle was we revealed which the top 5 were and brought up the manager. Jen, did you come up? You didn't come up, did you?
Jen Baxter: No
Chad Jordan: Brielle, did you come up both times?
Brielle: I did.
Chad Jordan: You did? Oh well the 2nd day wouldn't be you.
Brielle: Well you came to me, but yeah.
Chad Jordan: Right. I tried to get AJ Al Rodriguez to come up, but he didn't want to either. Anyways... that's a inside joke which I don't need to repeat. Basically, I called AJ "Al" in front of 3500 people and nobody corrected me because I was in the moment.
AJ Rodriguez: In his defense, my name on Facebook it's all under Rodriguez.
Chad Jordan: So, when I look at people I see their social media name. That's what goes through my mind. But, we called each manager up and we showed the clip. Do you remember what number clip you guys were? The one when I showed up?
im not sure: We were in the last one.
Chad Jordan: You guys were the 5th one. We were only supposed to show the 1st minute of every clip because we had, like a, you should see the running clock that is up there reminding me how much time we had left.
AJ Rodriguez: David pointed it out.
Chad Jordan: Yes. [group laughing] We'll get to that in a minute. We get to your clip and I bring Brielle up and they queue the lights to come to me around the 45 second mark to talk, but I knew there is a scene in the movie and there is a scene in their clip where Patrick Swayze, AKA AJ [group laughs] lifts up and... is it Jennifer Cona... What's her name? I can't remember the actress, it's not Jennifer.
im not sure: In the move it's Baby. But... I don't remember her real name. [group laughs]
Chad Jordan: Okay, let's call her Baby. Anyways... lifts her up, well that in your video at like at the 1.5 minute mark. So, I had to give the looping, just keep going, signal to the production team because that was what I felt was the highlight of your video. Since we started it right on time so we could see Wesley, that was our dilemma. Do we cut him out and just kind of go into the song already or..? We wanted that to be the trigger, everybody seeing Wesley. You guys knew it would be your video. So we went all the way to the end and the reaction up until then had been great, people were clapping and everything. But when the jump happened, that was like next level. Robin I'm sorry, they know what it was like.
Robin: That's okay.
Chad Jordan: If the roof could have come off it would have gone all over the place, because it was so priceless.
AJ Rodriguez: You should have texted me right after you said you guys just broke the huddle.
All: Everybody laughing
Chad Jordan: The funny thing is, that was before huddle officially kicked off. That was the half hour entertainment portion, if you will. Again, here's my tip for next year for anybody. Get your really eye dropping thing in a minute before, instead of a minute and a half. You guys didn't know that, no one knew that we were only gonna cut it to a minute. We didn't know it until we got there and realized we gotta show all these clips. How are we gonna do it? But, that was the highlight. We have at huddles, our national convention, we have an MC David Wilk who does an amazing job year-after-year and AJ tell me how quickly after that whole video happens does he get to you... walk me through that.
AJ Rodriguez: Walk him off the stage and then two minutes later he's on the stage doing his thing and that was not planned out at all.
All: [Group laughs]
AJ Rodriguez: I didn't know he was gonna call me on stage and we were sitting close to the front so it was pretty quick to walk up on stage. Then he made me to the job. I thought I was gonna fall over the and throw him into the stands.
Chad Jordan: The way he did it... I mean you guys, how many times did you have to practice the jump?
im not sure: What like 4 or 5? 3 or 4?
Chad Jordan: You never dropped her or broke anything?
im not sure: No.
Robin: I have short-term disability, just in case.
All: [Group laughs]
Robin: It takes them like a whole summer to get that jump down.
im not sure: Yeah a whole summer. And she did it in like 3 tries! That's talent! Both of them.
Chad Jordan: David Wilk, he sells it the comedy. How hard is it for you to balance him and everything without...
AJ Rodriguez: He's a lot shorter than people think.
Chad Jordan: He is. [Group laughs]
AJ Rodriguez: Sorry David, if you ever see this..
Chad Jordan: He's got that Tom Cruise thing going on, right? He wears lifts and all that.
AJ Rodriguez: He wears it all on stage, but he wasn't overly heavy. I didn't know what to expect, I didn't ever try it with a guy. [Group laughs]
Chad Jordan: Just putting that on record so... AJ's right, that for me broke huddle. I'll always remember that part, you know, both the reaction, the actual video, then you actually doing it with David Wilk.
AJ Rodriguez: I thought he was gonna make me do it with Brielle because we were both sick.
Brielle: We were both stretching. We were gonna be forced to do this.
AJ Rodriguez: He did it himself, he wanted it.
Chad Jordan: Definitely funnier with him.
Brielle: It was great.
Chad Jordan: Didn't he pop a button off.
Brielle: Yeah! [Group laughs]
Chad Jordan: His coat... anyways, it was great. Let's talk about the other star Wesley. Who's idea was it to feature him, Jen, in this video?
Jen Baxter: It was Heather's idea. She was like, you have to get Wesley and put him in the corner.
All: [Group laughs]
Chad Jordan: Can we bring him in on cue?
im not sure: [Laughing] Awe, come here! Here he is!
Jen Baxter: Like I said, I'd never seen the movie. So I was like, "What do you mean, put him in the corner?"
Chad Jordan: Wait, there's no Baby in the corner! So, Wesley immediately sees some food to eat.
im not sure: We were actually in between the idea of getting Sporty... and putting Sporty in the corner. Mixing and changing it to be Sport Clips and say, "Nobody puts Sporty in the corner." But, then he's just too cute, so we went with the baby. And he had the Sport Clips shirt and he was just too cute not to use.
Chad Jordan: Yeah, he's a handful but he was their secret weapon. [Group laughs]
im not sure: Yes, to that.
Chad Jordan: I'm hoping that everybody has gotten a taste of what it takes to win, to compete, to put a good video together. Do you guys have anymore hints? I know you don't want to give the whole farm away here. Anything else that you'd recommend? We had 50 stores, that's great... out of 1800! So, I don't know why the 1750 didn't do it. Maybe they thought it would take too much time, or they didn't want to come in after hours or whatever.
AJ Rodriguez: A lot of the people, the feedback that I see from afar was... they were either scared, or didn't want to do it, or were like, "No, no I'm too shy to do that." Right Kayla?
Kayla Drost: Yeah, I would say a lot of the team members were scared to do it. They didn't want to be on camera, but once we started taping and doing it, literally every store just had a blast. It was so fun, they were cracking up. They loved it. So...
Chad Jordan: I feel like next year... maybe y'all can give me a hint here. What do you think? What if we literally threw it out as a challenge. It's kind of like the ice bucket challenge or one of those things, where one store does it and then they challenge another store.
im not sure: Yeah, that would be fun.
Chad Jordan: Maybe that's it. Or, maybe one market does it. A store is in a market and they challenge another market or something. We'll keep refining all this kind of stuff. But, thank you! I mean, I'd be home stuck in my house in California right now if it wasn't for you guys doing the contest and winning and bringing me out here. We've had a blast so far and we are gonna visit a bunch more stores. Actually a bunch of AJ and Al stores are in the Pittsburgh market, one of the best countries like I said. The best markets in the country and just happened to do a lot of Karaoke videos. What a coincidence.
If you're a team leader out there and you're looking for your store's to skyrocket... do a karaoke video. It obviously works! But, we appreciate them, you guys, you're literally hall-of-famers right now. So, you're in the hall-of-fame. You have the grand Chad. I don't know if you can frame that thing or what you can do with it. But, the check in the background and what an experience. So thank you all for being on here, carving some time out for me.
im not sure: Thank you for coming.
Chad Jordan: Yeah, our pleasure.
im not sure: Thank you.
Chad Jordan: Hey, maybe we'll do it again next year.
All: Ah, Yes!
Chad Jordan: All right, thanks everybody for listening. Until next week... see you then. Bye.