“My GIA”

I try to brush up on my knowledge of the industry whenever I can—I’m so obsessed with trade magazines that there’s one in every bathroom of my house.

As jewelry store owners you have to keep abreast of everything, one reason being, is so you can pass your knowledge onto the staff. Most my staff reads trade magazines as well and some have even attended JCK with me but I find it hard to digest all the expenses of taking them to Vegas—being a new second store and all…so I train them in store. Some of them participate in online sales courses, we have special training sessions for new employees, and we do the usual sales meetings.

All of these kinds of training are great, but I know they get tired and bored of the same old thing. I try to make it exciting and even let them run the meetings but change is what our store needs when it comes to training.

Subsequently, I read JCK’s article about GIA offering free video and audio content to help jewelers and gemologists continue their education—I was ecstatic. I figured this would be another great way to educate my staff. After reading about “My GIA” here and here—I couldn’t help but stop for a sec to reminisce of my days at GIA in Carlsbad, CA. I learned a tremendous amount and came home with more energy than ever before, though I do remember a few classes where we watched videos that were so boring I couldn’t help but feel my eyes start to close—the reason being is that the videos were outdated like those safety videos you saw when you were in high school chemistry class. The one where the person talking had a monotonous voice, he was so old you had trouble even relating to whatever he was saying and to watch those kinds of videos today or even only a few years ago is like torture (I can’t help to be annoyed by the quality too—worse than VHS).

2007—Podcasts from the Institute we trust. I have yet to register and plan to but I’m wondering if any of you have registered and tested them out? Do you feel they are something you can use to educate your staff? If you have seen them and showed them to your staff, what did they think? Did they say that was the longest 5 minutes of their life or those 5 minutes helped to close a diamond deal? Would you link to them on your website for your customers to see? Interested in your thoughts.