Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: If you think that you're going to get away with it, I will tell you that your competitors will not let you get away with.
You're listening to the Preferred Way, a retirement podcast brought to you by Preferred Trust Company, the preferred custodian for all alternative investments.
[00:00:16] Speaker B: Welcome back to the Preferred Way, the Preferred Trust Podcast, where we are going to move on to part two of the Best of Las Vegas. So let's find out, you as a voter, how does the Best of Las Vegas impact you?
Talk to me about the residents like we talked about businesses quite a bit and how businesses participate. But as a resident in these communities, you know, how do they participate? How do they learn about this? What, what does the Las Vegas Review Journal do to promote this for locals to say, hey, get involved and participate in this?
[00:00:51] Speaker A: We run a massive marketing campaign for our readers that includes, you know, print in both Review Journal and Review Journalists in Espanol. We have, you know, special sections that go out. We have digital advertising on our website. We do E Blast. We do a lot of. We do a full marketing campaign of all stages of the contest.
We also use some billboards around town. We do some programmatic advertising to make sure that not just the readers are. But in here. Yeah. And, you know, a lot of the voting is going to be based on the. The nominees. Those nominees are the ones that are help driving some of the traffic to the site.
[00:01:35] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:01:36] Speaker A: Because they're the ones that are asking people to vote for them. So there's a big marketing campaign that goes around it. Additionally, it has been. Because it's something that has been happening every year, people are looking for it. It's not something that, you know, oh, I forgot about this. It really, it's starting. I mean, I just got an email like day before yesterday with somebody who wanted a new category. But, you know, usually right around April, I start getting a lot of emails from people who are very excited about the contest.
[00:02:05] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:02:06] Speaker A: So. But there is no, there is no, you know, incentive for the Valley to vote. This is something that is organic. And again, if we were incentivizing people to vote, then you're not going to get accurate results. You're going to, you know, again, speaks to the integrity of the contest.
[00:02:23] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:02:24] Speaker A: I'm not going to go in there and vote because I'm not getting paid to vote. If I go and vote, you know, it's because I truly believe in that business and I want that business to do well because I really enjoy them.
[00:02:34] Speaker B: Yeah. Can businesses incentivize votes?
[00:02:39] Speaker A: I mean, they Cannot.
[00:02:40] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:02:41] Speaker A: There is no quid pro quo. You cannot say, if you vote for me, I will give you this. When we find those out, we eliminate those votes. And we do tell the business, like, you have to take this down immediately. We won't allow these.
[00:02:57] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:02:57] Speaker A: But if we find that they're doing something along those lines, or in the case of a business that we found was offering to pay per vote.
[00:03:08] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:03:08] Speaker A: Something. We disqualified them from the contest to be able to participate. Yeah.
[00:03:13] Speaker B: That's great.
[00:03:14] Speaker A: It's very. You know, and if you think that you're going to get away with it, I will tell you that your competitors will not let you get away with it.
[00:03:22] Speaker B: They're looking for those things, right?
[00:03:24] Speaker A: They absolutely are.
[00:03:25] Speaker B: It looks like an advantage if you do that.
[00:03:28] Speaker A: Yeah.
Well, you know, I mean, we, too, we do take everything with a little bit of a grain of salt, but we will investigate. You know, if somebody says this person is paying for votes, well, we'll go look and see if they, you know, if that's true or if they're just trying to eliminate their competition.
[00:03:44] Speaker B: Yeah. When you were not using a third party, you may or may not be able to answer this question, but when you were not using a third party to tally votes, what were the most amount of votes that any one company got?
[00:03:58] Speaker A: Oh, I don't know. I don't know. That was. I wasn't involved in the counting of the votes at that point. That was. I was a sales manager for the company at that time. So I don't know. I do know that we had to bring in a lot of extra staff to come and just calculate the votes. And again, we kept them sort of locked away from everybody else because. Yeah, you know, it's not something to know. Every member of the Review Journal that is involved with Best of Las Vegas has to sign an NDA before the contest starts so that they can't release any information that they're not allowed to.
[00:04:35] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:04:36] Speaker A: You know, so it's. We really do want to keep those results and, you know, any. Any details in the. In the client's hands when it comes out, you know.
[00:04:48] Speaker B: Yeah. So that makes sense.
In your experience, what are some of the tangible benefits that businesses have seen from winning one of the three? It's bronze, silver, and gold.
Have any of the companies come back to you and said, oh, my gosh, this has allowed me to grow my business by 20%, 30%. Like, what kind of stories do you hear about this participation and actually winning any of these categories?
What's happened to These businesses.
[00:05:21] Speaker A: So I've heard, I've. I've heard lots of, you know, anecdotes from. From businesses. Say I grew this one segment of my business by 14% this year because I won Silver Invest of Las Vegas in that one segment.
I had another business tell me that they like. I've got some notes here about some of the stuff that I.
Oh, a pet supply company told us they had to increase their staff after the results are announced to handle the people coming in and the phone calls that they were getting for reservations.
And then I also have a Lyft driver told us that people will come in when she picks them up at the airport, and they will go and through the magazine and ask if they can take the magazine. And she doesn't let them. She said, but take a picture with your phone. And so they're taking pictures of the pages with their phone so they know where to go.
[00:06:21] Speaker B: That's awesome.
[00:06:22] Speaker A: It does that. We, you know, obviously there's a link on the website. You can see all of the winners for the last several years on the website. And, you know, it wouldn't be so competitive if people weren't getting results from it. So anecdotally, you know, you have a lot of businesses that are, especially in some of these categories, they say, I have to win gold. I have to win gold. And I think to myself, you know, with 13 million votes and there were, you know, 70 businesses in this one particular category, winning anything coming in fifth is fantastic. But winning gold, silver, and bronze in any of those categories is really an accomplishment. And these businesses should really celebrate how well they are received in this community by those votes.
[00:07:11] Speaker B: Absolutely. I mean, you had just mentioned 13 million votes.
I mean, that is just insane when you talk about it.
[00:07:22] Speaker A: It really is.
[00:07:23] Speaker B: The tangibility of businesses and the competitiveness of this is obvious.
[00:07:30] Speaker A: Right.
[00:07:31] Speaker B: They keep coming back because it's working. It's building their business, it's building their brand, it's building credibility, it's building integrity, it's building trust. Like all of these things that businesses want to have as a. As a standard. Right. And to be known as. So you really can't. I don't even know if you can put a number on it.
So it's, It's. It's really incredible. And there's more and more cities that I'm seeing as I'm traveling around that are doing this that maybe weren't previously. Even some really small cities that I'm traveling in now are starting to take notice of this. You just mentioned Something about where do individuals go to find this information? You didn't say the link, but where are they going? Are they going to the Las Vegas Review Journal? Are they going to Best of Las Vegas? Like, where could they find this information? As the business directory, if you will.
[00:08:25] Speaker A: Sure, absolutely. So best of las vegas.com all spelled out is the website for to look at all of the winners, all those things. We also have the magazine that comes out this year on December 8th. They are it will be included in your Review Journal if you are a subscriber and you can pick it up at newsstands around town if you are not.
We also have, we have a flipbook on the Review Journal website that you can go to. And there is a flip book of the magazine on best of Las Vegas.com's website as well. So if you don't want to, if you want to flip through the magazine virtually or in person, you can do that. The magazine is also for sale at the Review Journal store. So if you go to the Review Journal website, which is just reviewjournal.com and bottom, there is a store link and you can go there. So if you'd like to have one delivered to you and you're not a subscriber of the Review Journal, you can get that. As I said, subscribers get them for free. So, yeah.
And then, you know, there's once, once somebody has won, I encourage them to celebrate that win because all of those people that invested time to vote for you should see the results of that labor, Right? So they want to, you know, make sure you're including your winner's logo. If you've, you know, got it in your advertising, in your marketing, on your billboards. Make sure you mention it in your radio and television spots. Make sure you have signage up in your store, you know, your location that has it. Make sure you've got something on your website that talks about it. It is one of those things that you want to make sure people know about.
For me, I'll tell you one of the things that makes the best of Las Vegas such a comprehensive contest is the number of categories that we have. It's the number of businesses that participate. It's the number of people who take the time to vote.
And, you know, just a little story here. I had to have oral surgery a couple of years ago, and my dentist provided me with three or four candidates for to do the surgery. And I think he was thinking that I was going to pick based on location, what's closest to my house. And I didn't I looked at the four names and I came back and I looked them up on bestoflosvegas.com and I went through and I said, this guy won gold. I'm going to call them first. And I cannot recommend this person high enough. This person, this doctor that did the surgery was maybe the best experience I've ever had. And you never say that during oral surgery, but really fantastic service. And.
And so I wouldn't have known to go to that person if he hadn't won Best of Las Vegas, because I would have done what most people, or what I assume most people would do, which is to choose somebody that's close to their house.
[00:11:13] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:11:14] Speaker A: And, you know, whether it's something that you're going to do one time, like, how often are you going to have oral surgery probably once in your life, or something that you're going to do every week, you know, go to a car wash or, you know, hire a landscaper or, you know, go out to dinner. Those things that can be affected on there at multiple times in the year. And so it's really something for every business of every level and then are for their consumer. This is something that your neighbors and your friends and the people in Las Vegas really think is the best of. And you can go out there and. And partake.
[00:11:53] Speaker B: You know, you. You make a very valid point there. And I'm going to use preferred trust as an example. You know, preferred trust. And any company that puts their nomination in, they do that because they stand behind themselves.
[00:12:10] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:12:11] Speaker B: They know they have good customer service. They know they take care of their clients. So those nominees that are willing to stand up and say we are the best even if we don't win, that we are the best, those are the businesses that all of us want to go to. Just like you said, that business, that nomination either occurred by the business or somebody they know closely related to the business or somebody who had a great experience wanted them nominated. And from a preferred trust perspective, when we first entered the Best of Las Vegas, it was to get our brand out there. And for years, we did the Best of Las Vegas. And then last year, we're like, you know what? We're going to take a break from this.
And what do you know, somebody organically nominated us and we won.
What does that say? That just says that all of those years that we put forth, all of those efforts, still knowing that we're the same great business we were a year ago, two years ago, three years ago, five years ago, has really pulled us through this Best of Las Vegas, even when we are not putting forth as much effort as we had the prior year, really, we just had a lot going on and didn't have the time to. But it didn't matter because we won organically now, you know, so there really is. There's benefit from both sides. It's getting your name out there. It's brand awareness. And the biggest honor is when you don't have to try and people are voting for you just because you have become such a staple business in the community. There is no better honor. And that's why it kind of set me back this year a little bit. And I said, I've got to find out more about how this whole thing works, because how in the heck could this have happened? You know, and it's. It truly does become and is an honor to be. To be nominated. It's an honor to win any, you know, bronze, silver or gold. It's a tremendous honor. I'm going to tell you a quick funny story, too, because I happen to run two businesses and I remember the first year that Ignite Funding did the Best of Las Vegas, and we were in a competitive category and we won silver and we were so excited. And I'll have to send you a picture, Deidre, because you will literally laugh your ass off.
It's that kind of podcast. You will laugh your ass off. Because I told my. I was so excited that we won. And I told my employees that, you know, we're going to do a photo shoot. And they're like, we're going to do a photo shoot. And I said, well, of course we're going to do a photo shoot. It wouldn't be a Carrie Cook way if we didn't. Right? We need to celebrate this. So I went out and I purchased onesie silver suits. Zip up, you know, they all look like they were aliens. And we went to Lake Las Vegas out the golf course, and I had them form themselves, their bodies into the word silver. And I had to take enough employees to get the word silver. And we have this drone that took a photo shoot, a shoot of it as they were forming these bodies into silver. And then we put it on our website to promote the fact that we had won silver because I wanted to do something different, you know, because, you know, winning is a standout, you know, recognition. And you have to. You have to say thank you to those that. That helped you get that honor. And so although we didn't do much effort on the preferred trust side this year, to just organically, when I think that Might have been even more of an honor, you know, And I know that sounds crazy, but.
[00:15:53] Speaker A: No, it's a. It's an amazing honor to win Best of Las Vegas. Regardless of how you get there.
The, you know, depending on the types of categories that you have, there are categories where you are known now in the marketplace. So for the years that you worked and everything to get to where you are, that people know you now, it's. It's become brand awareness. Right? They.
[00:16:17] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:16:18] Speaker A: And they're going to vote for you. And now you've done enough business in the market that you have a client base that's voting for you. And when you get nominated like that, it's really every business that gets nominated, whether it's an employee that does it or whether, you know, one of your former customers have done it. Yeah, that's a real.
That should be very exciting for you as a business. It should be very exciting. Absolutely. The time to say, you know what? I think they're Best of Las Vegas. I want to see if they can win. And, you know, for the people who compete and maybe didn't win in the category, keep in mind, it's. It's one year, the next year, things are going to, you know, change. Absolutely. Who's going to vote for you? You don't know if, you know, the work that you're doing right now is going to contribute to the. To the benefit of winning Best later in the year. And, you know, even just being nominated is a real.
Says something about your business. It says something about your business. And. And the fact that people are going to vote for you because we want. We. I don't. Like I said, I don't get the votes. But I can't imagine that there are businesses out there that don't get any votes.
No. Now, they may not get all the votes in. In a particular category, but there's a lot out of business out there that.
[00:17:37] Speaker B: Really.
[00:17:39] Speaker A: Does really good work, and they should be stimulated.
[00:17:43] Speaker B: Absolutely. So I'll kind of end with this. Like, where do you see the best of Las Vegas evolving to? Like, do you see a thousand categories next year? Do you see, like, where do you see it going? What. What changes do you see coming? Is there any. I don't want insider secrets, but something that you're like, you know, if you. If you had to set Las Vegas on a platform with every other city in the country, you know, what sets us apart, what's going to make us different? What's going to make this continue for another 43 years?
[00:18:20] Speaker A: So you know, I do have some ideas. You know, a couple of things that I'm looking at is, you know, we have a segment of the contest called Living Local and it's sort of broken out by neighborhood and it's.
I feel kind of like we've gotten a little bit away from that and I would like to work a little bit harder on some of those Living Local categories to get those more in tune with what is going on around the valley. You know, if you live in Centennial, you're probably not going to Henderson every day. Right. So what are the things that we can do to make the people in Centennial a little bit more heard in their particular neighborhood? Yeah, and so we have things like that. Additionally, I'm looking at some things that we can do to reach all of these voters outside of the contest for the businesses. So. So a one to one. Yeah, the voters, these are the businesses and put them together in. In one place. So, you know, maybe some event type of strategy. I've got.
[00:19:27] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:19:27] Speaker A: Thinking about there are, you know, ways that, you know, obviously we have the magazine which highlights who won and it's basically all about the results. But yeah, could be looking at doing another publication that goes out to the voters that are maybe offers from those custom from those winners. Okay. And so that they can engage with some of the winners that maybe they didn't know, you know, and have a. Have a hand in that. So some things maybe outside of the contest as well. And then again, continue to look at those categories. Now, a thousand categories sounds like a very heavy lift to me.
But I, you know, I, I do look at those categories. I think probably for 20, 25, we'll probably be looking closer to like 550 categories. I think, you know, as the categories come in, we sort of look at shifting. Do these categories still make sense? Like they didn't five years ago or 10 years ago? And so. Yes, absolutely. There's still high demand for that. But some categories may, you know, shift away. During the pandemic, we saw a lot of the categories being, you know, like curbside pickup and. Yeah, things like that. And, you know, I'm not sure that those are quite as important as they used to be. They might be. You know, I have to look at them to figure it out. But, but, you know, we look at those categories every year and try to figure it out. And you know, there's. We added a main category, you know, for financial last year, and instead of having it all just in services, sometimes we break those out and put those in their Own separate category. Yeah, we do some innovation we have. Customer service was one category across every business in the. In the country. In the state. Yeah. And so, you know, there was, there was hundreds of nominees in customer service because everybody wants to be known for their customer service.
[00:21:20] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:21:21] Speaker A: Last year in 2024, we broke that out and there is one in every main category. So it's the best customer service in dining. It's the best customer service in health and beauty. It's the very best in services. So, you know, because there are. There's a difference in the level of customer service. Maybe not level, but the type of customer service you're going to get. An automotive customer versus a dining customer.
[00:21:47] Speaker B: Yeah, it can vary.
[00:21:49] Speaker A: Yes. We upgraded our custom voting pages to include a QR code. So if you want to add that to your other marketing and everything, people are now more familiar with QR codes, I think.
[00:22:01] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:22:02] Speaker A: Even though they've been around for a long, long time, I think the pandemic really made them much more absolutely efficient. People know how to use them, so.
[00:22:11] Speaker B: And cost effective.
[00:22:12] Speaker A: And cost effective. Very much so. And, you know, it's. It's a lot easier to tell somebody, take a picture of this with your phone. Oh, yeah, it is. To say, okay, type in.
[00:22:23] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:22:23] Speaker A: WWW dot. Yeah.
[00:22:25] Speaker B: So as soon as you scan the QR code, you're ready to vote. Like, there's no reason not to at that point. So, you know, it's definitely, you know, it's definitely more economical, but the speed to vote is far greater than it ever was before.
[00:22:42] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:22:42] Speaker B: Have you ever, like, is there a best of the best of?
I know this sounds a little crazy, but I don't know unless I ask. Is there. I mean, of all the best of in the country, how many are there?
[00:22:56] Speaker A: Oh, there's probably around 50 at this point. I would say, okay, maybe more than that.
[00:23:03] Speaker B: Do you guys get together and decide, like, who's the best of the best of?
[00:23:07] Speaker A: Oh, we don't have to because we are the best of the best. Yeah. We are held up as the poster child for best of contests around the country. I have public publishers of other newspapers and things like that reach out to me and ask me for how, you know, how do we do it? What are we doing? You know, people come from other markets and they go, wow, ours is. Is so much smaller than this.
[00:23:30] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:23:30] Speaker A: And I do look at some of the other ones and other states and everything. One of them has a different type of publication than we do for their results magazine. And it's very Interesting. I.
It's a little chaotic, but there are some good ideas in there. So I. I'm gonna. You look at that, you know, and I'll try to incorporate the things that I think are. Are, you know, welcome here because we live in a very chaotic city. I think sometimes people just want straight information. Yeah, the chaos.
[00:23:59] Speaker B: Yep. Cut the crap. Just tell us. Tell us where we should be going.
[00:24:02] Speaker A: Right, Exactly. I just wanted something. I just want to know this one thing. Please don't make me go through all that. Yeah.
[00:24:08] Speaker B: Just give it to me straight. Is, Deidre. Is there anything that. I didn't ask you that either a voter or a nominee or a business or anybody should know about that? I did not ask you today. That is maybe a myth.
[00:24:26] Speaker A: Maybe it's.
[00:24:26] Speaker B: You know, I don't know. You've heard a lot of hearsay about things that you just want to clear so that everybody knows about the best of Las Vegas.
[00:24:36] Speaker A: You know, there's. There's constantly.
And I don't want to make it seem like there's sour grapes, but there are people who contact me and say, there's no way that I didn't win because I had this many people voting for me. Well, in a very competitive contest, that may not mean as much as you think it means. Right. And so absolutely, just knowing that we take the integrity of the contest very, very seriously, we make sure that the votes that get cast are actual votes from people who are, you know, users of your services or business. We don't want, you know, now we. We get some votes from California. We get some people. Now, those are feeder markets to Las Vegas. Those are people who are going to come here, and they do partake in business, and their voices deserve to be heard as well, especially in the categories where maybe they're aimed at tourists, not necessarily aimed at the locals. Right. So, yeah, we want to recognize those, too, because they are a part of Las Vegas. They are a part of our community and, you know, provide jobs and, you know, benefits to the. To the community. We want to reward that as well. But, you know, we're aware if somebody hires a, you know, call center in another country and wants to place those votes, we do not count those votes. We are very cognizant of those. And if you want to report those, we're happy to have those. Just know that we are keeping an eye on the store.
[00:26:09] Speaker B: Good.
[00:26:09] Speaker A: So. And, you know, if you have a Best of Las Vegas Magazine, it's good for a couple of years, you're going to know that those Businesses are still going to be in business. Those businesses are still going to be providing good customer service because they want to win again next year. And you know, they don't. Not everybody's going to be a winner every single year, but it's a good indicator if you have somebody who has won multiple years in a row.
[00:26:36] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely.
All right. I think we've covered it all. Thank you so much. I really, really, really am honored to have you guys on our podcast and talk to us about Best of Las Vegas. I think you've answered a lot of questions that if businesses have not participated in the past, now they know they should. Now they know how, now they know, you know, costs associated, those sorts of things, so they can, they can figure out if it's right for them. If you're a business and you have good customer service, good quality product, there's no reason you shouldn't get involved with the Best of Las Vegas. It's been tremendous for both of my businesses. I'm sure it will be for others in the future. 43 years running, I don't see this going anywhere except for up. So thank you so much for leading the charge of Beth of Las Vegas.
[00:27:29] Speaker A: And I want to thank you for.
[00:27:30] Speaker B: Joining us for the Preferred Trust Way, where next time we'll bring you more education where see no hear no and speak no doesn't happen here. We want to talk about it. So thank you so much for joining us and we'll see you next time.
[00:27:47] Speaker A: Thanks for joining us for another episode where retirement savers meet alternative investments. Can't wait for the next episode. To learn more, visit our website at Preferred TrustCompany.
[00:28:02] Speaker B: Combat.
