Delivering the Perfect Purchase: Sales Success with Bob Negen

In this episode of The Footwear Retailer Podcast, Pete Mohr welcomes retail expert Bob Negen of WhizBang! Retail Training. They discuss how independent retailers can thrive by creating a customer-first culture, mastering sales techniques, and providing exceptional experiences that keep customers coming back. Bob shares his “Perfect Purchase” framework and insights from his decades of retail expertise.

Key Takeaways:
• How to implement a sales-focused culture that prioritizes care and experience.
• The power of empathy and connection in driving retail success.
• Practical tips for creating structured sales training programs.

Guest and Host Information:
→ Connect with Bob Negen:
    LinkedIn: Bob Negen, Retail Expert
   FB: Bob Negen
   Website: Whizbang Retail Training
→ Follow Pete Mohr for updates: @TheFootwearRetailer
→ Access more episodes and resources: TheFootwearRetailer.com

Action Step:
Evaluate your current sales culture and identify one way to make it more customer-focused. Begin training your team to deliver the perfect purchase every time.

Join the Conversation:
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 P.S. Want to create a customer-first culture that drives sales and loyalty? Reply to this email, and I’ll share key strategies to help your store thrive. 

PLUS: Whenever you're ready, here are 3 ways I can help you move from the Operator’s seat to the Owner’s seat in your business:

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3. Listen my other podcast Business Owner Breakthrough podcast as well for quick tools and tips - Click Here

Transcript

0:00

Mr. Bob Nagin, welcome to the show. I'm so excited to have you back here on the footwear retailer podcast this time around. We've done some other ones in the past, but this is a brand new show and excited to have you on as one of the first guests. Well, great. And you know, Pete, I think this is going to be a, an incredibly valuable podcast for shoe retailers. And so I'm honored that you brought me on. And you know, as always, I think we're going to have a good conversation that have a lot of value for your listeners. Absolutely, Bob. Let's dig right into it. I know that, you know, sales, one of the big things that I love about the work that we've done together over the past and everything that Whiz Bang has done for over 25 years now. Bob. Right. I know I started when I was seven. But you know, having a sales focused culture and working through all these things, you know, a lot of times in business we kind of think to ourselves, well, customers don't want to be sold to. Right. What's your take on that? Yeah, well, of course. So let's back it up one step even and just come from in order to be successful. Now I'm going to talk specifically to shoe retailers here because, you know, I mean, I can buy shoes anywhere in my Facebook feed and my Instagram feed is filled with shoe brands and a lot of them look good. You know, they're cool. And so Zappos and Amazon and so, I mean, it could be argued, I don't want to argue this, but it could be argued that shoes can be seen as a commodity. Yeah, right. And so how do you. So, yeah, I mean, an independent shoe store is not going to be able to compete on price. They're not going to be able to compete on breadth of selection. So where does an independent, local, independent brick and mortar retailer compete? You compete on the experience. And the experience starts with caring. And one of the places that that caring shows up is on the floor. So, yes to your question. So often people think of selling as being rude, manipulative, pushy, you know, psychological trickery. And you know, that comes from, that comes from the old stereotypic used car salesman. But, you know, if you care and you get out there and somebody comes in your store and you really care about their experience, you want to make sure that you get them exactly the right thing. You know, when I teach selling, you know, we have, as you know, we have an online sales platform called the Retail Sales Academy. And I teach this thing, this this concept that I developed called the perfect purchase, you know, so the perfect purchase. And the reason that I came up with that concept is because I've been through all the other sales trainers, retail sales trainer, and it's all kind of manipulative, right. And I remember being at a live program and the guy was telling of the story about how he was selling a watch in a jewelry store and the woman didn't need the watch. The one woman didn't want the watch, but he sold it, three watches, and he was really proud of it. And I just felt kind of dirty listening to the story. Right. It was like, no, no, no, that's not how it's done. Yeah. And so most people think of. When they think of selling, they think that they see it from the perspective of the business owner. And I believe that if you want to approach your customers from this experiential, service driven, heart of service perspective, when that happens, what you do is you come at it from them. A business sells a customer purchases. And so when you focus on the customer and you focus on getting them to the perfect purchase, it by its very nature means you have to get out and skillfully engage them. You have to ask good questions, you have to make sure that they understand you're on their team. And so. And it all really does come from caring, right? I care. You come in my store. I care that you have an amazing experience and that when you leave, you feel really good about what you bought about, maybe what you didn't buy about the person you talked to, the experience you had. And that's the opportunity for local brick and mortar retailers, like your listeners, you know, it just showing up and throwing some shoes on the shelves and having a rack of socks next to. I'd like you to talk about this for a second. But this idea of expectations are up, loyalty is down. If you give somebody a great experience, they might come back. If you give somebody a lousy experience, they won't come back. I mean, do you see that in your stores, Pete? Absolutely. I mean, you. You have one chance. And that, that one chance is the chance that they're there now, even if they've been in your store before. Happen to screw that one chance up the next time they're in because they were loyal. Wow. Not gonna be after that. No. Right. They used to say, oh, well, give like something was wrong or whatever the case is. They don't anymore. Right. No. That's exactly easy to go elsewhere. You know, when you think about value, you know, people value different things. Convenience Is absolutely that some. Something that people value. And you know, I'm sorry, but Shootopia is never going to be as con. Well, it could be argued as convenient because they walk in and they get the thing and they walk out. But, you know, I mean, I could sit here on a computer and order all the shoes I ever need. So convenience is a value, price is a value, but experience is also a value. And so to your point, the experiential value has to far outweigh price and convenience if you are to do this thing. Yeah. You know, I work with a lot of my clients in the footwear industry and outside, and I came up. I have this model that I like, like you, I like to come up with models. Right. So this model that. That I've had for quite a while for our stores, and I help other people with. It's called the Heart of. And you pluck. I remember that. But I do remember that. Yeah. So I've got this one for Shootopia, and it's called the Heart of Shootopia. And it looks three circles, you know, and. And you like the three circles too. I know. You know, and it works. Right at the heart of that is what our promise. And the promise is what we're promising our clients and the client. And we're promising our clients that we're going to help them look great and feel fantastic. Yeah. That's the feeling we want to give them when they leave the store. Right. So. And then around those three circles is how we actually bring them to the center of the heart. And that's all their process, our sales process, our questioning, all the things that you're talking about. But the feelings that I'm trying to drive through, that is what I call ooh, ooh, ah, and aha. And ooh is ooh, I look pretty good. Like, when you get them on, right. The ah is ah. Those feel fantastic, look good, feel fantastic. That gives them the aha moment where you finally say, I finally found the perfect pair. Right. And when you do that, you go to the till happy, Right. And they walk out and they look back at this utopia sign and like, you know what Shootopia is? My favorite shoe store. Yeah, no, that's exactly right. Can I add one other thing to this? Yeah. Is this idea of empathy. So, yes, if they walk out, you know, like you said, if they walk out looking good, feeling good, and all those things, that's great. But, you know, what you implied was it's about the product. And don't get me wrong, it Is always about the product. If you sell them a shoe that doesn't fit, it's not a perfect purchase. Or if you sell them a shoe that makes them look awful, it's not a perfect purchase. But there's also, how do they feel about the experience? You know, so when, you know, when we teach. So there's a couple of quotes to think about. One is this idea, you know, the more, you know, the better you serve, the better you serve, the more you'll sell. There's this thought of, you know, you want to hire people and build a culture where there's deep empathy. So when somebody comes in, you know, you're really listening, you know, you're on their team. And, you know, this is the, this is the beautiful thing that independent brick and mortar retailers like you and your listeners, you know, this is the beautiful thing that you have. Independent retail is the most human of businesses. I'm sure, you know, fast food, you're running through, but there's not, you know, fast food, it's like, hey, you want a Big Mac? And you know, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. They're face to face, but they're transactional. Yep. You know, if you go into a great brick and mortar retail store, but you know, and it doesn't happen in big box stores because they just don't think that way. But they go into shoe topia or the stores of any of your listeners, you have as an independent shoe store owner and your employees have the ability to change someone's day. Right. When we teach the six steps to the perfect purchase, the first step is greetings. Right. And the greeting is not, can I help you? Because that's about, that's about product. Right. It's not what can I sell you? No, no, no. It's, you know, we. Warm words of welcome. Hi. You know, the weather's great. You know, I mean, just all we're trying to do in this first part of the transaction is establish the fact that we're two human beings. And I am here to help you get what you want. I am here for you. And, you know, so they come in, you know, everybody's got a story. Everybody's got problems, Everybody's got issues. You know, somebody comes into the store, they gotta buy shoes for their kids, and you know, the kids are in a bad mood. All these things you just have. There's so many opportunities for independent retailers and their team members to be really good human beings. And so I guess what I wanted to do with that long, that log little ramble There was to say, I agree with you 100%, but if you can layer on that, really, really, we're on the same team. My job right here is to help you, Help you feel good about yourself and all these things. It just takes the whole thing to another level. I love that. And that's part of the outer ring structure. So we have these three circles. The outer ring structure is the process. Right. And the process is the questioning and all those things, understanding and empathy. And so, yeah, absolutely. It's such a big thing that we actually are good humans. It's our competitive advantage. I've been thinking about this a lot, and, you know, you and I, this is what we do. Yeah, yeah. And for the people who are listening to, you know, for your listeners. So I know Pete's business not really well, but kind of well. Pete was in our platinum Mastermind group for a while, so I know his business. And, you know, this whole idea of you just have such an. It's a competitive advantage. Right? It really is. So I created a model. Actually, it's not a model, it's an acronym. But what would ww, mcw, what would my customer want? And so when we start to think about. And it really. It's tied in. I mean, it's. It's really similar to. To your model, only your model is more specific. Is, you know, if you look at your business and make your strategic decisions based on that question, what would my customer want? And then start building your business around the answers to those questions. All of a sudden, you'll do things like hire the right people, because you need the right people to have a great culture. You're going to train them so that they're comfortable on the floo. You're going to train them how to sell to the rest of your model. You're going to have, you know, the right models in stock, in all sizes, in all colors, so that people don't come in and go, ah, they don't have my size. Again, all of these things. So when you start getting focused on wwmcw, the fact that you care so much starts to drive you to becoming a better merchant. And that's really, you know, I started to go on that a little earlier. Right now, the world is changing so much. You know, AI has made it so easy for online brands, like shoe brands, to target the right people in the right side. You like red, they're gonna serve up red. You like red heels, they're gonna serve up red heels to you. It gives other brands a lot of competitive Advantages, but in that, competitive advantage needs to be offset with our caring. You know, and that caring shows up not just as an emotional thing, but that caring shows up in skills. You know, one of the things that I love about you is you're a good merchant, you know, and if you're not good anymore, you're just not going to survive. So it's. No, you know, I had this quote. Your passion for your product is not enough to make you profitable, and it's never more true than it is right now. So, you know, if you're not serious about being a good retailer. Yeah. Might as well leave now because you might have another year in you, but it's going to be a problem. It's interesting. You know, I talked to a lot of different business owners outside of the footwear industry, too, and I've talked to a few recently where they've said, well, I've done it this way, and I'm getting back to your framework a little bit here. But I've done it this way all my. I've been doing this for 25 years, like. And so I've got the framework that I wrote my little book on called the five Ps, right, which is your promise. And you align your promise to your product, your process and your people so that you can have the right amount of profit. The promise is the same as wwmc. Right, Right. And so the promise is, what are you promising them? So, first of all, you have to know what they want. Right, Right. And then you develop your. All of your systems around what they want. Right. And absolutely. What. What I've seen so often lately, Bob, and tell me if. If you're seeing it too, is that people say, well, this is the way we've always done it. And. But it's not working. And that's exactly right. And so. And I'll just share, you know, so now I'm not speaking to you, I'm speaking to your listeners. You know, I'm going to encourage everyone to. Not just you as the business owner, but to get all of your team members. And I used to do this when I was in retail. You know, for 19 years, I had the kite store. Nobody needs a. Right, nobody needs a kite. And so, you know, I would walk our downtowns and I would always, at the beginning of the season, I would send out our team members. I'd give them$10 and say, if somebody sells you something, you can spend this, you know, meaning that they get out from behind the counter and they engage you and they're cool about it. And, you know, nobody. Nobody. And so, you know, what I do, Pete, is, you know, I mean, this is what. I mean, this is what I do. This is what you do. So whenever I go to a town, I shop. Right. You know, I mean, I love shopping, you know, independent retailers and, you know, it drives me crazy. I have this thing, this model. You know how in the old cartoons they would have the. I call it the engagement O meter. Right. It's a. It's got the arm. And, you know, if I were to shop a town, like, if I were to go into downtown, Grand Haven right now. Lovely downtown, you know, it's only four blocks long. But if I were to go in, 80% of the experiences I would have would be basically nothing. Yeah, right. I mean, no engagement, you know, 10%. There would be some engagement. Somebody would look up and say something. But aside from my old business, there's like four. There's about four stores, including my old store, which I'm proud of, the Mackinac Kite Company that would actually get out on the floor, engage you, try to. Try to get you to a perfect purchase. So, yes, this whole idea of doing things the way that they've always been done is no longer going to work. And it drives me crazy when I go into a store that somebody clearly has spent a lot of time and money and thought into branding. You know, you ever go into these stores, it's like, man, this store is beautiful. Somebody spent a lot of money and then they don't. There's no service like, come on, somebody come sell me something. You know, and, you know, and. And to your point, so. And we'll sort of go backwards again. But, you know, there's these events that happen that call the herd. And I hate to say that it sounds so mercenary, but, you know, when the malls came, independence got hurt. But guess what? A lot of them survived, you know, Walmart. You know, there were towns saying, we won't let Walmart in our town because it's going to kill our downtown. My feeling has always been, if you can't compete, you should not be in the game. Right? So I've never been sympathetic to that. So then there was Walmart, then there was Amazon, then there was Covid. And I really think that right now we're at another one of those inflection points that AI is creating another kind of sort of extinction event for an independent retailer. And so the people who are talking the way that you're talking are not willing to change, are not willing to, you Know, really get focused on the customer experience. They're not going to make it. But this is the cool thing and this is what, you know, you and I agree on. But the people who get serious about your model, about wwmcw, the people who get really serious about that are gonna kill it. I mean, I mean, in a good way. I'll just share something. So I'm not gonna say the industry, but on our Whiz Bang retailers Facebook group, somebody came on and they said, I mean, they just went on this screen, talk about Karen's and you know, I mean, how terrible the season was, how terrible their. And somebody else from the same industry came on and said the same thing. I mean, you know, so it was kind of a, I had to kind of, hey guys, easy, right? Now, having said that, two people in our platinum Mastermind group are in the same industry. When they came in after the holidays, they were like, we have never had a better season. I mean, and so it's the difference between somebody doing business the way that we're talking about doing, doing it, and somebody who's doing business hoping, you know, opening the doors and hoping that things happen the right way. So do you find, Bob, you know, getting back to what will my customers want and understand the promise. And this is one of the things, like people have done what I call guiding principles work. Right, Right. They've done it, you know, but they may have done it a long time ago and they think they've done it recently, but they haven't. And we're recording this here at the turn of the calendar here into the year. And it's like this is the kind of time where we're starting to think about stuff and looking at stuff. And how often do you suggest going through. Because I have my feelings, but I'm interested to know how often do you suggest really digging down, not just looking at your guiding principles, your mission, your statement, your promise, that kind of stuff, but you know, how often would you suggest actually diving down into it? Well, so the first thing is, as I would say, Pete, is that most people don't. Right. Most independent, most of the retailers that we work with and even successful ones. Right. Even multi store operators, multimillion dollar operators, you know, they're just doing business. That's crazy, right? They're just doing business. And you can do business successfully that way, you know, I mean, if you, if you're a really tight merchant, you know, if you order correctly and you've got a good assortment and all those things. But that's different than what you're talking about. Who are we? So now there's a. There's a couple of different parts to that answer, but the first thing is, you know, at least once a year. So we just got done here for our company whiz bang retail training. We just got done with two sets of two full days of planning. The first was our EOS planning with our EOS implementer, and the second was with our whole team. And so this is one of the things that we love about EOS is it keeps bringing you back to your core values, your mission. It keeps bringing you back to. So to your question, the first thing that I would say is at least once a year, I mean, everybody should have an annual planning meeting with their team. Hey, what are we thinking about this year? Ask some questions. Another model that I created is called add. Talked about it on your other podcast and it's a meta. It's an acronym for Ask, Discuss, decide. So you don't want to have your team decide everything with you, but you certainly want their input on things. So, you know, ADD could be say, hey, what do you think we stand for? And if they don't know, that's a good answer, right? It's an answer that says something. If they say, wow, we're all about the customer, good, you can build on that. So if you just Google that sort of thing, they can come up with exercises. But I think that when you have that guiding principle, that guiding statement, those core values, it allows people, it A, attracts the right people to you, and B, it keeps people focusing on doing things the way that you want them done. For us, you know, those guiding principles are part of everything we do. Yeah, it's how we built our entire culture, our entire team. It's how we, you know, everything we do in product alignment and people alignment. And I mean, and that's what I like about the. What would your customers want? Because you do need to reach out to your customers, you do need to ask your team, you do need to ask your suppliers, you do need to ask the people that are in your sphere of influence so that you make sure that those kind of things are honed in. Right. And that's what I find so often, like you said, there's a lot of people that don't even have these sort of documents. But the next step is, when was the last time you even looked at. Right. And how are we taking that into our culture so that we can create the culture that we want and give the clients, the customers what they want or Else, without that, we don't have a business. You know, we're talking to leaders here on this podcast for this. Right, exactly. And I'm saying to the leaders here, listening, this is your job. You need to communicate with clarity everything around this. And if you don't even have it for yourself, how can you expect your team to do this? So this is perfect. So, Pete, can I make a pitch here, please? Our company, Whiz Bang Training, we created a new online educational platform called Brilliance retailbrilliance.com and one of the things that we're most excited about for retailers is the ability to create a video based, or, you know, it could be video based, it could be text based, but video is really the most powerful medium. A video based training program that is assignable and trackable. Because to your point. So you've got two stores, Pete. But in the. I know that in the shoe wear industry there's lots of people who have multiple stores. And so the story that I always tell in Mackinaw City, Michigan, you know, Mackinaw City is a party town. I mean, it's a summertown party town. And so I give the example of closing the store. So to me, one of the signs of operational excellence is the open and closing checklists are done to standard, done perfectly every day, no matter what. Right. And then what I found was that when some people closed that they didn't learn it correctly. And you know why is because the assistant manager wasn't teaching people how to close the way that I wanted them to close. He was teaching them how to close so they could get out of there as quickly as possible to get to the bar. Right. So it was like, okay, so what is trading? Trading is establishing your standards and communicating them clearly in the same way with the same passion, your passion. So that everybody in the organization is getting the same information the same way. So that there's that consistency because that's what people want. They don't want to come into your store and have a great experience one time and a lousy experience the next time. They want to come into Shootopia and know that they're going to leave feeling right. And so. And so that, you know, and that's really one of the things that we were very, very intentional about building into Brilliance. Because if you're going to have a great culture, you have to have a great training program. That game of telephone, word of mouth is not a training process. Well, it is, but it's not a good training process. Yeah. And I love brilliant. The brilliance package as well. Bob and I know right now we're back and we've been in and out of the whiz bang sales training methodologies over the years. And, you know, you're in the training business and when people have heard things over and over again, it gets a little bit tired, but then we move out and then we come back in and redo it again in a couple of years. So every couple of years we roll it back through for anybody who hasn't heard it. Because repetition is the mother of skills. Feel Right? Right. And to hear things over and over again, all of a sudden now it's just an understanding of this is how we do things. Well, and there's this thing called a forgetting curve, too. I mean, this is a, this is a psychological truth, right? This has been studied. But when you're. When information is reinforced. So think of it as this way, right? So the, the forgetting curve is very shallow when the information is reinforced. That's why part of what we do with our retail sales academy, which is housed on Brilliant. So I don't want to confuse all these things, but, you know, we have a whole library of videos that can be sent out every week, right? 10 minute video. Keep your head in the game. Keep your head in the game. Keep your head in the game. So that's what the purpose of that is, to shallow out that forgetting curve. Because the problem that, you know, so many people have called me, hey, I want to bring you in for sales training. Training. It's like, well, great, it's going to be$10,000 a day. But I don't recommend it, right? Save your money, because if I come in, everyone will be excited for a couple of weeks and you'll see a bump in sales and if your team's big enough, you'll pay for my fee. But really, that's not what you want. What you want to. Your point is you want a culture where everybody understands what to do every. So do you know Cam White? I don't. So Cam White, he's now a rep in the shoe business, but he had a comfort shoe store in Austin. And this is a long time ago, it was many, many years ago, but Cam came to me. You know, he was a client and, you know, I mean, I got to know him and he came to me at some shoe event and he said, Bob, you know, he says, I gotta tell you this. And so he hired somebody and his team came to him and said, they're not a good fit. He was so happy because what did that mean? It Meant that he had created the culture. And the culture was self reinforcing in that when he tried to inject somebody who wasn't culturally compatible, his team gave him the boot. And I just, he was, he was thrilled, I was thrilled for him. So. And, and I think that's, that's one of the things most small business owners want, Bob, is this idea around I shouldn't have to make every decision. And when you start building that culture, you know, I like to use the phrase decisions should be made at the lowest possible level of the organization. And that time it happened, right? It was Cam. Cam didn't make that decision. People down the accountability chart made that decision. Right. It was made at the lowest possible level because they knew what had to happen at that level. And that's what we want for our businesses. And I think that's the idea here behind creating a business where you, you move from making those decisions to the owner's box. Right. Putting it into EOS terminology. Right. So we're moving from the operational box to the owner's box and letting some of the other people handle that. And whether it's a cultural fix like that or whether it's an operational fix like turning the lights off and closing the store properly, things need to be done without your involvement as the. Right. So, so, and this is kind of fun. So one of our clients, Misha Seto, she's got her training on brilliance and she's got, I think 13 stores. But. And she was in the mastermind and she told the story, she said, oh, I'm just making videos. And so, you know, I mean, a video could be made like this. But she was in every store. This is how you turn on the stereo, this is where the alarms are. All of these things that all, you know, when people don't know how to do it, it detracts from the customer experience. And it's all the things that if they don't know how to do it, they send a text to the manager, to the owner. And so when all of that stuff gets taken care of, your team members have the mental capacity to get out on the floor and serve your customers. And you get the opportunity to have that mind freedom to do the higher level stuff. That's really important, Bob. You know, I'm a certified exit planner and I help people get. Yes, exactly. Right. So when you were telling me this story, I'm thinking, this is exactly one of the things for all of you who are thinking down the road of exiting in the next two to five years, this is the stuff you need to do. Because when you can say, listen, this store runs without me, everything's on video, everything's documented, the process is done. When the processes is done, then it adds so much more value to the business from an outside person's perspective. It's like, oh, I don't have to know what's in this person's head. It's already out of their head onto video, into documentation. And there's so many great things. We talked a little bit about AI earlier. You know, there's so many great ways. Once that video's created a transcription done, pop it into ChatGPT or one of the different versions of AI that's going to produce the catalog of information, house it on some sort of format, whether it's Google Drive or Dropbox or any of the different ways that it can be brilliance or brilliance that it can be accessible, right? And now we've got this whole platform that whoever's in the owner's box has underneath them. That's the operational structure. And when you have that in front of you and available to whomever may take your store over down the road, think of how much more valuable that is. A hundred percent. So let's go back to another way that I teach this whole thing. Mindset, skill set structure. Yeah. So if you don't have the right mindset, if you don't have a growth mindset, you're dead in the water. I mean, it's almost impossible for you to become successful if you think that your customers are the enemy, if you think you're not good enough. I mean, we don't need to go into all the mindset. But a growth mindset naturally leads to skill acquisition. Right? And so that becomes, you know, this idea of becoming a retail professional. You're good, right? It's no longer about, I love interior design, I love shoes. It's now about, I love being a hot shit retailer. Right? I love being good. I remember when Susan came to work for us. Susan's my wife and partner. She was a department store executive. When she started showing us this stuff, all these skills that she learned at department stores, it was like, oh, I was just eating it. I was like, oh, this is what I needed. Right? I mean, that's what took us from, you know, from being just some guys who are grinding to, you know, a really, really great business. But then once you have the skill set, then you can start to build the structure, right? You can't build a training program if you don't know what a standard is you can't build a training program if you, you know, haven't figured out what your culture is, you know, what your mission is, what your core values are. You can't build a marketing plan if you don't know anything about marketing. You can't build an open to buy if you don't know what open to buy is. But so, you know, so you have to have the skill set to be able to build the structure. But once you build the structure, that's where freedom comes from, right? That's where you get to. Why? You know, Maureen, somebody who's in the Mastermind, she joined the Mastermind and she was a hot mess. And after just one year of sort of applying all these things, she went to Italy for a month and basically, don't call me unless there's blood or smoke. And that's the growth that is possible from what you teach, from what we teach. It's a path. So many people want the results, but they don't want to do the work that leads to the results. Am I right? And it takes time. It doesn't happen overnight. No, it's hard work. If it was easy, everybody would do it, Right? Exactly. Here's another thing I've given some thought over the years on that, on why people don't do it. It's because they're habituated, you know, created over time, right? And that startup phase, that first one to three years, you're like doing everything. You're making every decision or you're close adrenaline, you're hiring every person you're in every sales call and meeting every rep. And you know, one, because you probably have to, because your pockets weren't that deep, and you just have to. It's part of it. Two, because you actually want to build that information and knowledge so that you have it. But once you get to that point, you have a few people working with you and part of the aligning and assigning of authority to others, it's hard to do because we are habituated into making all the decisions and every habit doesn't matter which habit you have. It's hard to break habits. Yeah, well, and I think it's also ego. You know, it feels good in the beginning. You know, it's your business and, you know, and we've both been there, right? It feels so good, you know, I mean, everybody's coming to you and you feel important and you're figuring it out, and it feels really good. But then you get sort of become addicted to that little ego, that dopamine Hit and you don't get past it. And then what I see happen. And you can reflect on this if you don't mind, but then what happens is that you become burned out. So you're habituated. It feels good, but then after a while, it's no longer good. And then you get to this place where you're burned out, where you resent when your people are texting you all hours of the night and day, even though you've empowered them to do that. And then that becomes that moment. So, so another model. I mean, we're the model guys, right? So, you know, I created this model shot. It goes, you know, you, when you start, you're a shopkeeper, and then the next phase is you're a retail pro. And then after that you become entrepreneurs, artists. But really what we're talking about here is in between shopkeeper, where you know what you were talking about. You're new, it's exciting, it's, you know, adrenaline. You think about it day and night, all those things. And then Retail Pro is when you start to have the skills so that you're not doing it all the time. But in between shopkeeper and retail pro, there's this, there's this danger zone. And the danger zone usually comes at about two years. Came at two years with me. I've had this conversation countless times. Two years is when you have the oh, crap moment. I didn't call it crap, but it. You have that moment where you realize that this fantasy of owning this super cool shoe store and everybody's going to come in and love me and they're never going to shop online is not true. Right. And so when you get to that danger zone, you have a choice. And one of the choices is victimhood. And you see it all the time. I know you see it. I know I see it. You know, people don't want to shop local. Local. You know, the people who are blaming their customers for not show shopping local. That's a victimhood mentality. Blaming their vendors, blaming the economy, blaming politicians. Their lack of success is always somebody else's fault. And then on the flip side are the people who are going to make it to Retail Pro. And they say, well, wait a second, this was Bob and Steve Nagin. It was like, like, okay, clearly we don't know what we're doing, but we better figure this thing out in a hurry because, well, so we had. We were $12,000 in debt and it was like, should we just quit and then just, you know, take out, you know, pay everybody back Every month it was like, oh, no, it'll be a lot quicker to pay off$12,000. You know, I mean, it'd be a lot quicker to learn how to be a good retailer than it would be to pay off 12, $12,000. Of course, that was a lie we were telling ourselves too. You see that happen all the time, don't you? I absolutely do. Yeah. So, you know, you get to that place, you're like, oh man, I unconscious incompetence. And then you have conscious incompetence when you know in the beginning you don't know what you don't know. But then there comes that moment where you go, oh, I know what I don't know and I don't know a lot, so I better get to work and figure this out or I'm in trouble. I love when, when we start getting this wrapped around and we start building that structure that we're talking about and aligning and assigning accountabilities and having other people make the decision. I mean, I haven't made a hire in my shoe stores in probably seven years. I don't. Yeah. So, you know, the only people I would hire are the two people that basically run the thing for me because we have a good culture and stuff. They've stayed and that's great, you know, all of that kind of thing. But when they leave, because one day they probably will, I'm gonna have to jump back in and be on, on board there. But the idea that, that, you know, I think we've been talking about here is, and I mentioned it earlier around the exit planning thing is creating this value in your business. Because it's one thing to create revenue and it's another thing to create profit. But, but when we look at creating the value, and for most small business owners, their business is one of the biggest things of value in their portfolio. And if all we're doing is getting one times profit, then okay. But if we don't put these sort of structures in place, Bob, if all of the stuff's in your head, if you're making every decision, then that's all you're going to get. But if you have these things running on rails, if you have it so that it's running on its own and you're involved where you want to be and when you want to be and when you need to be, because you're still the business owner and you still need to be involved. But ultimately think of the different multiples. So you take that profit. First of all, your business is going to be more profitable. Secondarily, you can add more multiples, which means you're going to get a lot more come the day you go to sell this business because it is running the way it should be. Right. Here's the other thing. Getting back to that idea of being burnt out. Now that you've relieved yourself from all the reasons that you're burnt out and you're actually working in what I call your love it zone in your business, do you actually even want to sell this business? Right. Because it might be a good investment and you might just want to keep it. Right, right, right. You know, that's what I call it. Entre. That third stage after a retail pro is, you know, entrepreneur is artists. And it's not a very good term, but this idea that you've got it all dialed in and now all of the things that you've learned, all of the wisdom that you've acquired, you know, skills and wisdom, they're different things for sure, but all of a sudden you can apply them so many different places and ways with local non profits. You know, one of the things that, you know, I mean, brilliance is just getting going and we're just starting to build it, but when we get that, when we get brilliance going to where it's sort of running the way that you're talking about. One of the things that I want to do is I want to, you know, start buying retail stores, to have a portfolio of retail stores. Because to your point, we know how to run retail businesses. And if you, if I were to drop you into any retail business in the United States, Canada, anywhere in the world, you would be able to probably make it successful, right? Taking what you, the skills you have. And this is why it frustrates me, not, not me personally, but I get frustrated for people who want to have success but then get stuck in that danger zone. Takes so much of that good stuff in a person. Resilience and heart and courage. Takes so much to, to get that going that it's so sad to see somebody have so much of whatever it takes to get into business and then to see it lose momentum and then they don't acquire what it takes to make their business successful. And you know, it's just, it's just such a shame because as we talked about, I really think that right now independent retail is ready for a renaissance. We have access to technology like we've never had before. Right? I mean, technology, technology has been commoditized and democratized. You can open a Shopify store, you know, we were talking about our friend Nick McHenry at one shop. You know, I mean, Mat Management One can help you manage your inventory. You know, there are so many people around to support you. Brilliance is an educational platform. So there's no reason for an independent retailer to fail right now. If you fail as an independent retailer right now, it's because you're, to your point, stuck where you were. And you know that that's a hard truth for some people to hear. Some people would rather be the victims. But I believe that in the bottom of my heart. And I believe that as somebody who cares so much about the success of independent retailers and the success of our community independent retail store owners, and all of us. So there's my little rant. That's a great place to end our episode here today. Okay, good, good. Wonderful. We, we. We share the love for the end. We do. And that's why I was so honored when you said, I'm starting this. Would you? I was. I don't know if you saw it, but, like, in 10 minutes, I was like, heck, yeah, Pete, I'll be on your podcast. Awesome. Well, I look forward to our next time together. Bob, thanks again for being a part of the footwear retailer, and we'll look forward to chatting with you soon. Well, thank you, Pete. I'm honored.