062 – Crushing It as a Local Retailer with Karl Benson of Cooks of Crocus Hill

Gift biz on wrapped episode 62.

I said,

no. He said,

keep thinking about it.

I said,

no, he's I keep thinking about it.

I said,

no. He said,

okay, I'm going to set up coffee.

Hi, this is Johnny Entrepreneur on fire,

and you're listening to gift to biz unwrapped.

And now it's time to light it up.

Welcome to gift biz,

unwrapped your source for industry specific insights and advice to develop

and grow your business.

And now here's your host,

Sue Monheit.

Hi, I'm Sue and welcome to the unwrapped podcast.

Whether you own a brick and mortar store sell online or

are just getting started,

you'll discover new insight to gain traction and to grow your

business. And today we have joining us.

Carl Benson.

Carl has been the owner of Cook's of Crocus Hill in

St. Paul Minnesota for the last 15 years,

hooks is a brand driven specialty,

culinary retailer and educator focused on the belief that life happens

in the kitchen.

Carl is also the founder and creator of life recipe,

a corporate wellness program,

focusing on changing the way people eat and improving their relationship

with food.

Terrell has a passion for creating and delivering a thoughtful,

stylish and energetic brand experience.

He's worked on a variety of branding projects with domestic and

international clients,

including target health partners and the Mayo clinic.

Thank you so much for joining us today,

Carl, and welcome to the show.

Thank you.

Thanks for having me before we get started.

And as our listeners know,

we like to get a little bit of a different insight

into who you are by having you describe a motivational candle.

So if you could create any type of candle you wanted,

what color would it be and what would the quote be

on your candle?

The color would be white and the quote is I was

born a man.

I died a doctor.

Ooh, what does that mean?

Kind Of funny,

isn't it?

I guess it's kind of a sad quote in some respects

that there was a guy,

his name is Martin Lloyd Jones.

And he wrote in the context of,

as people sort of live their lives,

as they start at one thing,

they get motivated to become something else and they ultimately died

what they achieved.

They didn't die what they were.

And he said that whole cemeteries could be filled with the

same sad tombstone.

And that is that I was born a man and I

died a doctor it's motivating to me,

I suppose,

because I think I'd prefer to be always having lived the

man not having lived the end result or the goal or

the objective that I didn't become something.

Maybe I became a better person or I became more fulfilled

in my pursuit of humanity,

if that's the right word or my soul,

you know,

soul kind of an odd word.

But Yeah,

I know what you're saying because especially as entrepreneurs and when

we have a business,

our whole life seems to be revolving around that.

And it ends up being that you associate yourself with what

your business is,

not with the type of person that you are.

Exactly. That if you become defined by your business,

then you're not defined by the person that you are or

wish to be,

or have become or wish to pursue.

Yeah. It's a deep quote if you really think about it

and it is so easy.

I mean,

what do we do when we're at networking meetings or you're

even you're meeting somebody at a social event.

What's the first thing we usually ask,

Oh, well,

what do you do?

What's your job,

help me understand you.

Exactly. And I think it's important to understand that there is

a whole nother human being,

besides just what you do for your career,

whether you're in your own business or not,

you work for a corporation,

whatever. Wonderful.

All right.

So I want to talk,

I'm so excited because I have known cooks before I even

knew about you,

Carl, because I used to get your brochures when they,

and I shouldn't even call it a brochure.

I think it was a catalog when you used to send

those out via mail.

So I knew about the business.

I love cooking as a hobby.

So now to know you and to hear the story about

how the whole business developed is super exciting to me.

So it's pretty cool.

It's pretty fun business.

Yeah. So I want you to take it away from the

beginning in terms of how you got connected with cooks and

ultimately became an owner.

I live here in St.

Paul, Minnesota,

and I'm from Chicago.

corporate job behind moved to Minnesota.

Ultimately after searching for a new position,

I sort of got the dream position of my life,

working for a multinational packaging company with a very state-of-the-art facility

in Mexico.

And they asked me to be the director of export sales.

So I had every market outside of Mexico,

which included the U S Europe and the far East.

And it was a very specialized item,

big demand globally.

And after all the negotiations,

ultimately they wanted me to move back to Dallas where I

had started beers before and decided I wanted to stay.

I'd moved three times and didn't want to make another move.

So I sort of left the corporate world.

I did a few things here trying to figure out sort

of my next path.

And I always cooked dinner for my next door neighbor.

He had a young family and we didn't have kids at

that point.

So, and I like to cook and Russ like to pay

for dinner.

So it was awesome.

Every Sunday afternoon,

he'd swing by,

after he came back from church and he'd say,

here's 40 bucks.

I'm thinking lamb tonight.

Can you make up something with lamps?

So I would go to the grocery store and get the

food, cook it at my house and then bring the food

over to and Nancy's house.

And then we'd have dinner with them and their family.

And then Russ would do the dishes.

And sometime during the week,

I'd get my dishes back.

So it was worked out really well.

And at one of these gatherings,

he had a friend of his that he'd invited for dinner.

And I was talking with this other gentleman,

his name was David.

And he was asking me about,

I'd started a software business with some other guys.

And I was at a loggerhead with say the managing partner.

And David said,

well, you like to cook,

so you should go check out.

Cook's a Crocus Hill.

And I didn't really know.

I mean,

I'd forgotten where it was.

And he said,

Alex, that cooking store up on grand Avenue.

I said,

well, I,

man, it's kind of depressing in there.

So I only went there once and I haven't been back

in, I don't know anything about retail and I know less

about a cooking store.

So yeah,

it's probably not something that I'd like to pursue.

Were they looking for somebody at that time?

Is that why he was suggesting it or just because of

your passion for cooking?

David knew the lady who owned it,

her name is Martha Kimmer and Martha had started it in

and this was probably 91.

So they'd gone through some evolutions and changes.

And Martha was pulled in a lot of different directions with

her family and family business.

And she really needed someone that was going to run it

and take it over and just sort of go for it.

So she was actively looking for somebody she was Looking.

Yes. The only time I worked in a retail store was

I worked at the Tom McCann shoe store in high school.

So I That's a name from the past.

I said,

no. He said,

keep thinking about it.

I said,

no, he's like,

keep thinking about it.

I said,

no. He said,

okay, I'm going to set up coffee.

And I was like,

David, I don't really want to do this.

And he said,

well, just do it for me.

When you meet Martha,

you'll fall in love with her and things will go from

there. So I dunno after dessert or something,

I relented and said,

all right,

and you set up coffee and I'll have coffee.

So that was on Sunday.

I got a call that she could meet on Thursday.

So I met with her on Thursday.

I met with her business advisor on Monday.

They made me an offer on Tuesday.

I quit on Wednesday and 10 short days.

My whole life changed.

It was the single most pivotal and possibly the most important

decision in my career anyway,

never in my life,

even my,

my life.

I look back on it now and think it was such

a fast and easy decision that where was my resistance on

their front end.

And so it's been Awesome.

Yeah. So Carl,

that's crazy that you turned things around that fast.

What was it that she said because you were so resistant,

it sounded like you just didn't think that that was something

that you'd be interested in.

What was the trigger that got you interested enough to make

a change so quickly?

I think it was her.

Martha's just lovely,

lovely person.

And yeah,

I mean,

I was really clear.

I had no desire to be a shopkeeper.

There's some,

I suppose,

the romance to the not,

I suppose there's a ton of romance to cooking and food

and all that kind of thing.

But I really wasn't wired to walk around the store and

my corks sold shoes and sell pots and pans for a

living. So I think we aligned on a vision for what

the business could be and that there was so much more

to it than just a transactional side of selling pots and

pans or selling potato peelers,

that if we did something good,

it was about experience and it was about life and it

was about connection and Martha got it.

And for whatever reason at that juncture in my life,

I found that sort of story to be super compelling and

it was easy.

It was ultimately an easy decision.

It changed my whole life.

I had to take a big step back.

I was stepping off the,

a corporate train if you willing stepping onto the independent tricycle.

So there was a huge life change,

but it was awesome,

But kudos to you because you clearly felt that it was

right and you took the opportunity while it was there.

And what was presented to you because who knows if next

week she would have been talking to someone else who would

have been interested.

And if you would have just paused for a while or

thought that you needed to reconsider or just really think about

it too long,

the opportunity could have passed you by It could have passed

me by,

or they could have.

I think ultimately,

because I was so honest in what I was looking for

and, you know,

I, you know,

there were the other people I'm sure.

And I just haven't heard over the years,

you just,

the story as the story gets handed down,

you know,

from generation to generation,

as it were the other people who they talked to were

retail people,

they were store managers and they were shopkeepers and someone who

really connected to the brand and connected to the work.

And ultimately Martha decided that her vision for the business was

that it wasn't about the same thing.

We shared the vision and that mine was different than anybody

else's. And she took a huge risk on me.

And I took a huge risk with her,

but it was the connection point was that as much higher

level. And that's probably why we're still doing what we're doing.

There's a couple of things here I want to highlight for

our listeners.

The first thing is,

and this is something that's just become a realization to me

recently. And Carl,

this is what you experienced is sometimes people who are close

to us,

whether it's family or friends recognize things in us that we

don't recognize in ourselves,

your friend David kept saying to you over and over again,

no, you got to look at this opportunity.

I see this possibly for you.

You've got to consider this opportunity and had he not done

that? I think like you are going to owe him dinners

for the rest of your life,

probably because had he not pushed you and pushed you,

you would have never had coffee and ultimately gone the direction

that you did.

So that's the first thing you guys is.

If you have friends who keep pulling out to you,

some trait that you have some skill and you just aren't

seeing it,

at least rethink it and pay attention to what they're saying

and consider what they're focusing and emphasizing about who you are.

So I wouldn't even add,

if you don't mind,

I'll add to that.

I'll say that I have a friend who is an organizational

development coach,

and he's also a hippie,

bought in Minnesota to Southern California to be in his life

work was to be a hippie.

And now fast forward to today,

he does development work for both individuals and companies.

And Patrick has a,

his sort of belief is that if you're open to everything

around you,

I think what happens is we tend to get so zeroed

in on our intentions and desires that we lose sight of

other opportunities.

So the serendipity of just David coming after me and me,

ultimately, whatever the motivation was,

if I was just to get him off my back,

or I thought,

well, it doesn't matter if it's this good,

I'll at least have a cup of coffee.

That being open to that,

because you never know where it's going to come from.

In the case of your friends telling you this is something

you should pursue,

or you're reading an article in the paper and something strikes

you or your place of worship and somebody in your congregation

says, Hey,

you should consider this,

that or the other.

It's just being open to the opportunities that life might present

itself. And if we're closed,

then those things we just miss them altogether.

We don't even have the chance to say yes or no

because they just sort of pass us by Well stated.

Thank you for adding on that's fabulous.

The second thing that I wanted to focus on was you

talking about the fact that no,

you weren't good.

You weren't interested in being in aisles and selling pots and

pans for the rest of your life.

And one thing all of us need to remember is that

being an employee in a shop,

whether you do the books or you do an inventory,

or you're on the sales floor is very different than being

the owner of the business.

There's a whole,

whole different ball game when you own something,

when you're an entrepreneur.

So those of you who are thinking of considering a business,

if you are working in a retail shop and you're like,

Oh, I could do this so much better.

They're just seeing the tip of the iceberg of what a

business owner has to go through.

If you like business,

you like directing,

steering the ship.

If you will,

you were hearing Carl say that he really didn't like cooks

in the beginning.

It looked stale or dark or not an exciting environment.

We're going to get into how that's changed now,

but think a little differently than just owning versus experiencing being

in a shopper,

working for a shop,

two very different things.

Would you say anything else about that,

Carl? Well,

I think it's come up both inside and outside of my

business that identifying what your connection to the business is and

how you get inspired and how you wish to grow based

on your desire.

So in my case,

I didn't want to be a shopkeeper.

So we made a lot of decisions over the last 17

years that aligned with I wasn't going to work the cash

register. And I mean,

not that I can't,

but I always felt like if we were going to get

to where we wanted to go,

that I needed to be looking,

you know,

maybe at a higher level.

And in the,

in our time in business,

I've met many,

many people who have very successful small businesses,

cooking stores around the country,

where the owner has a completely different perspective.

They want to be the shopkeeper.

Their goal is to be on the floor and talking with

customers every day,

they might do all the buying and be the shopkeeper and

do the payroll.

And that's their connection point to their business.

And that's where they find inspiration.

So in the environment,

when that person who finds success at the detail side of

their business starts looking to expand.

Then it becomes important to say,

where are your skillsets,

desires and intentions,

because what often happens?

And I think this is any small business.

When you go from one location that achieves a level of

success, whatever that is.

And then you start to look at a second location,

your relationship with your business changes.

It's not as easy to continue to be the happy,

inspired shopkeeper.

When you have two shops or your shop gets big,

or you add a restaurant component to your shop,

or you are taken away by the internet side of things,

holding your vision for your relationship with the business is paramount.

And without that vision,

it's hard to make really consistent sustainable decisions because you're sorta

like a boat in the water.

If we borrow that analogy and the waves keep bashing against

you in the way that you're going to be successful is

to be clear and where you're going to be the rudder.

And that rudder is first and foremost,

what your contribution yourself is to your business.

So working on the business versus in the business.

Yeah, exactly.

And you know,

when you're small and when you're starting and when your inspiration

is to improve upon the people before you are to have

a better buying program or whatever,

whatever your stake in the game as it works great,

because the context is perfect and the scale and the size

is perfect for your engagement.

It's when you start to grow that the opportunity for re-evaluating

your connection to it becomes important.

Really good point.

Thank you.

Wonderful. Okay.

So let's talk now.

How has everything evolved?

Take us through a little bit over the course of time

you jumped in.

Now you're working in cooks and we described at the top

of the show,

what cooks is today?

How did all of that start to grow and change with

your influence?

Well, we got stronger and we added better systems at the

main store.

The main location is in St.

Paul, but systems are expensive and team is expensive.

And point of sale system is expensive and all that stuff.

So at some point we had to make the decision,

you know,

am I ready to go back to being the shopkeeper or

have I reassessed my relationship with cooks?

Because the scale is such that I can take some of

the roles that other people have and we'll stay this size

and, you know,

think about putting the kids through college and all that stuff.

And at just about every turn,

we decided that the brand opportunity was significant enough in our

relationship with the community was robust enough that we needed an,

you know,

another location that instead of scaling back,

we wanted to scale up.

And then once we start in the scale up progression,

then it's always easier to say,

let's add another one.

Or where's the opportunity here.

Where's the growth.

I always tell our team that retail is like being a

shark. If you're not growing,

you're dying.

The minute you stop being aware of your competition or stop

being aware of trying to end food or stop being inspired

to go find the new design of the potato peeler and

stop engaging your customers because everybody sort of knows,

and they're complacent than they're comfortable.

Then that's when everything starts to decline.

So you have to be prepared for that.

So in our case,

we work with my old friend,

we set systems in place.

We're constantly assessing and reassessing and growing and changing and evolving,

and it works for us.

And maybe that's more motivated by me than life,

but so we just are constantly trying to better ourselves Solid

piece of advice.

Carl, thank you very much.

Hopefully all of you were really listening intently,

if not rewind that last piece,

once again,

a couple of questions for you,

Carl, and I don't know the answers to these.

So I'll be very curious.

Would you say that as you talk about systems and all

of that,

when you start adding a second store,

is the second store the hardest versus then three,

four, five,

like just getting everything in place to have a second location.

And then is it more repetitive because it's a similar concept.

Does that make sense?

It does.

Totally. I would say that the growth from one to two

is exponential.

It's goes from 100 to 300 because you run into questions

of how do you supply what's the inventory look like if

you're ordering in our case.

At first,

when we set up the second location,

we had to set a second delivery spot,

which from all of our vendors meant we had to meet

minimums for a second delivery location.

So each location had its own delivery minimums.

And after probably three or four years of that,

we did some assessments decided that we were better served by

paying the expense of a warehousing space.

So we could buy and send everything off of one,

but then off of one purchase order,

so to speak.

But then to achieve that we needed to upgrade our POS,

our inventory management and our ordering system,

because our original system was set up.

You know,

you could do a series of ones,

but when you did the first two,

it wasn't robust enough to consider everything with that centralized delivery

piece. So it took us a,

I would say probably five or six years to figure out

the second location,

just how to run it and run it efficiently.

And then four years ago,

we bought a competitor in town.

They had gone out of business and we bought all their

assets and signed a new lease in the same space.

And in that case,

we spent three months getting everything ready.

We took over the space and we closed it down,

did an inventory.

And we were up and running in four days.

And after 10 days,

it was like,

we'd been running it for 10 years.

So, but we Integrate into all your systems.

You already had it.

By that point,

we had a system that is robust enough to accommodate three.

And now we're going to open a fourth,

but that's not a modest undertaking.

Again, if I go back to an earlier comment,

it's at that point,

that you're as the owner,

your relationship with your business changes.

If you want it to be a shopkeeper,

you are no longer a shopkeeper.

You need to be the it guy.

You need to be the team motivator.

You need to build systems where,

of communication and consistency across multiple locations.

So your whole relationship with your business changes.

So how well prepared are you for that change is always

the big question.

Okay. Another question for you and give biz listeners.

You know,

we talk about this a lot too,

is when you're opening a business,

how are you going to be different from other people out

there who are selling somewhat of a similar product?

What is your unique selling proposition?

So let me ask you that,

how are you different than from anybody else,

either in your area or also all over,

because you do mail order as well.

How are you different?

Our differences that we don't talk,

the idea of experiential.

We actually live it and plan for it and define it

and train to it.

And so that when we have consistency in all the three

locations, we are small.

Our footprint is very small.

We have 2,800

or 3,200

square feet of retail versus our competitors.

The big guys,

the national can be up to 10,000

square feet of retail.

They tend to be the,

you know,

they're buying is we're going to purchase everything.

And we're going to let you decide which set of cookware

you want,

or which knife you want by looking at our display.

And in our case,

we do all the legwork.

We test everything.

Nothing that we sell in the store has ever,

I should say,

everything we sell in this store has been run through the

school or tasted by multiple people on our team so that

we know where the olive oil comes from.

And in many cases,

we've met the vendor that sells that or not the vendor,

even the producer,

the farm.

So we do that curating,

if you say ours is a curator,

not like a museum,

but then everything we sell,

we know works.

Our team has all tried it and tested it.

It's easy to say,

I'm just going to buy product out of a catalog and

offer it up.

And if people like it great,

and if they don't want to get rid of it,

but in our case,

because we have we're limited on space,

then we make sure that what we're offering is true to

our values and true to our vision for our business and

that we can stand behind it because we all use it.

That is the key driver for us.

And so,

you know,

for example,

we talk about the web bar challenges.

We're not just going to offer 6,000

products up on the web.

We have to figure out exactly what our position on the

web is and how we're going to offer it.

And how can we bring some level of the Cook's experience

to the web experience?

Because, you know,

Amazon has the Amazon experience and which in my opinion is

not much of an experience it's super transactional.

You just,

everybody there buys on price.

Well, we don't have the marketing reach.

We don't have the horsepower.

We don't have the name recognition to attract people.

So we got to go the other direction.

And that is we have to find a way to bring

the Cook's experience alive in a virtual environment.

And we're probably 5% of the way towards that end result

right now,

But on your way.

And I think it's really important,

whether it's an experience in store or online,

that's what separates you so much from other people.

Because, and I talk about this a lot too.

You can have a similar product,

but who you are as a personality.

And when I say who I am,

meaning your business,

as well as you,

how do you treat people when they come in the store?

How's your web interaction?

Do your pages load well,

is it easy to navigate through your site?

What types of products do you have?

What kind of services and all of that is not as

easy to copy.

If someone's trying to outdo you,

they can buy the same products that you can,

but they can't provide a similar experience because that goes back

to you and your personality and what you're able to do

in your company for your customers,

who I think is About,

again, doing the legwork,

doing the groundwork,

saying who are we comes up all the time and maybe

not so much in the last couple of years as it

did in the beginning.

And it's easy to get lured into the siren song of

what we think people want today.

We think people want red pots with black handles.

So we go out and we buy everything that we're anticipating

that the customer wants,

which is fine if you guess,

right? But the minute it transitions to blue pots with yellow

handles and your eyeballs deep in red pots with black handles.

Now you're scrambling to try and shift and change directions.

So for us years and years,

and years ago is we decided that it was extremely important

for us to define who we are.

If we're going to offer the red pot with the black

handle, here's why we're going to offer it.

And here's why we believe it's a more compelling story to

you. And here's how it fits in the context of our

vision for our business and sort of the brand of our

business. And if then the secondary challenge becomes how effectively can

you communicate that?

And for us,

it became more heartfelt if you will,

or more soulful,

more legitimate that we wanted our environments to be a reflection

of the brand.

And the brand is not me.

Our brand is not Carl Benson,

or it's not my wife,

Marie Dwyer,

or it's not Susie,

our events,

marketing person.

It's not Lindsay our business manager.

We sit down and say,

this is the brand.

We are all stewards where the current stewards of the Cook's

brand. So the brand has its own life.

And the vision that happens is inclusive and it's expansive.

And it's about everyone's experience with everyone on our team and

everyone who comes into the store.

So capturing that and building a system around,

you know,

in essence,

an entity that we like to say has its own life

and its own soul.

And if we're just captaining it at this moment,

then what is it?

And how are we delivering it and how are we defining

it and how are we connecting to it?

And how are we making that experience come alive?

And that's it.

And even more difficult tasks,

but if you can find a way to bring it together,

it's even that much more rewarding.

Well, it's a winning task based on what's going on with

you guys,

for sure.

Some days I wonder,

alright, let's go.

That's a great segue,

Carl, let's go to one of those days when the clouds

are hanging over some projects,

something's not going well,

you're having a struggle.

Give us a point in time when there was a really

big challenge that you had to deal with and how you

overcame that issue.

We had a store and I guess it was the original

enclosed mall in the United States,

any Dinah,

Minnesota, and our concept is more main street.

So everything is really in your neighborhood at the corner of

Oak and main or whatever you want.

And main in first,

that kind of thing.

And we were growing and there was an opportunity to go

into the complete redevelopment of this sort of landmark,

enclosed shopping mall.

We had a lot of consternation and conversation and decided when

we were going to take a run at it.

And it was,

you know,

within three months of our signing a lease,

they signed an Apple store.

They had a mini store,

they had all the hot buzz,

buzz, retail.

We're going to be our neighbors.

And we signed the lease.

And then 45 days later,

the mall sold and the new owners stopped everything.

So the entire mall went back into a tailspin.

And within a year we were saying,

we can't stay in business here another six months because we'll

be out of business at that point.

So we had to figure out a creative way to get

out of that.

Very, very trying situation.

There were plenty of times in that four months where I

didn't sleep and I thought,

Oh my God,

we've worked so hard for everything.

And one bad decision or one change.

You know,

one great decision set my life on a new course,

you know,

eight years prior.

And one decision that we have no control over that they

sold them all is going to be the acts that sort

of brings it all to a close.

And that was really,

I mean,

we, that was a very,

very difficult time.

So, and in that case,

we just put our head down and negotiated the best we

could and slashed costs and reorganized and decided that we were

going to do whatever we needed to do to keep it

alive. And we did,

and it took about four years to recover from that experience.

And we learned from it.

So I get lots of calls from malls and I don't

return any of it.

Is there any overriding learning that you would give our listeners

about that whole experience?

It's probably the back to the same sort of life philosophy

that we have and have to be open and creative and

create possibilities and opportunities.

If you have possibilities,

you can still move.

And it's when you lose all possibilities and you get channeled

into one path and one ends that creativity starts to flounder.

And if you can't be creative,

then you can't find your way out of it.

And you sort of lose hope.

I myself would lose hope in that environment.

So successful because we were just,

I refuse to let it all sort of go away.

Sheer will and creativity,

having a really great team and a really good support.

And that culture that's still is still strong today.

Sometimes you got to just bust your backside to make a

really difficult time,

you know,

to get past a really difficult time.

And it's nothing more than hard work and perseverance and Driving

through the problem.

One way That I'm not so Pollyanna to say that there

aren't times where are no more auctions and there are no

more choices.

And the really hard decision has to be made.

We've been able to sort of get around those crossroads in

our business,

but they're there and they're lurking in there.

You know,

I don't want to step in them.

Yeah. You know,

I think this is a good example though,

that your business is always evolving and changing.

And sometimes it's the environment around you,

not necessarily your business,

but you have to react.

So just because you have a winning business model and you're

making money today does not mean that it's going to be

the same thing next year.

Things happen.

What's going to happen online with Instagram and Facebook.

And are they going to start stealing sales versus in store

experiences? And you have to always continually be analyzing,

looking and recreating your business to continue to get better and

stay up with the times.

The other thing I think really important for everyone to remember

is what Carl went through was not failure.

Okay. Always think,

you know,

Oh, if I,

you know,

everything has to be absolutely perfect.

When you come to a challenging time,

they took a risk of going to a different type,

you know,

more of a strip mall type thing or indoor mall,

I guess I'd say versus the main street,

single location.

Maybe it would have worked out great in this case.

It didn't,

but it's not as necessarily a failure.

It's a learning and you work through it.

You just,

that's something that all of us as business owners have to

realize. There are some things that just aren't going to work.

It doesn't mean that we're a failure.

It's part of your journey.

It's a bump along the road for you guys.

It sounded like it took her a few years because it

was a big event,

but still you just drive through,

recover and carry on and tell us where you are today.

What's the most exciting thing with cooks today,

before we move on,

We are opening where maybe some of the only wacky people

in the country that are actually opening another bricks and mortar.

There's a neighborhood here in Minneapolis called the North loop.

It's every town in America has its version,

whether it's Brooklyn or the meat packing district in Chicago,

or down along the Embarcadero in San Francisco,

it's the old warehouse space that is coming alive,

being re gentrified,

turning into multiunit housing and high density traffic.

So we have found a really funny,

interesting little spot and the very hipster neighborhood.

And we're going to take a run to see if we

can tweak our product assortment and sort of tweak our vision

for that space to become a little more food centric and

a little less pots and pan centric.

And see if we can make a run at a fourth

location. That sounds very exciting,

you know,

and I don't give up on brick and mortar.

I got to tell you,

I think it was Gary Vaynerchuk,

not within the last 60 days or so was talking about

the fact that still only between 15 and 19% of dollars

are actually going through online sales.

There is still a ton of opportunity in brick and mortar.

So don't get discouraged.

Yes. A lot of people come in,

they comparison shop.

Then they buy online.

They're not your customer longterm.

And they're certainly not the ones who are looking for the

buyer experience as Carl's been talking about before.

Well, and I think that some of that is all those

statistics affect.

I read not the same author,

but another article saying that in our channel,

it's still in the seven or 8%,

total, it's one level to define it.

And it's another level to sort of practicality live it.

People are going to shop online and people are going to

look for products in that sort of Cook's experience.

Our vendors are recognizing it.

We see increasingly the folks that we buy product from are

holding a mat pricing line.

They're cutting off Amazon.

They're cutting off,

you know,

some of the big violators of pricing structure.

And it depends on your,

you know,

the environment and the sort of business category that your listeners

are pursuing.

And so the ultimate answer is to work with your vendors

and ask what they're doing to support what it is that

you're trying to do.

And I think ultimately if Amazon is holding the same pricing

guidelines as coaxes,

or as Williams-Sonoma is,

then we can compete.

It's when you know,

people who are price shoppers are going to buy based on

price and Amazon is going to be attractive to them,

but you can't call Amazon and say,

I'm making a castle lay.

What would the best pot be for me to purchase?

Because I have 10 people calling for dinner on Saturday night,

you're not going to get an answer to that.

You can stop into your independent place.

And they'll say,

well, show me the recipe and I'll help you find ingredients

and we'll source it.

And here's the best pot.

And here's how you serve it.

And here's some candles that go along with your idea,

et cetera,

et cetera,

Amazon can't compete in that environment.

So as long as the vendors are aligned behind what each

of their clients are trying to achieve,

then if there's parody,

then independence can compete.

They just have to compete in a different way.

Relationships. It goes back to relationships.

They're trusting you because as you were talking about before,

you've already tested and you know,

that you've hand selected products,

you're just not going to stock everything.

And then being able that one-on-one,

you know,

being able to come in and ask,

come in or call and ask for recommendations and comments.

So, yeah,

absolutely. All right,

Carl, we're going to swing now into the reflection section.

This is a look at you.

You've shared a bunch of things already in terms of how

you've been successful along the way,

but I have a couple of specific questions for you.

If you think back to being a young boy,

what would you say you call upon to remain successful and

motivated and just driven for your business?

What's your,

It's just persistence and perseverance.

I don't give up easy and I've never given up easy.

I just,

you know,

I just keep my family,

you know,

you know,

you have that question around the dinner table of,

of if you were a dog,

what kind of dog would you be?

And in my case with our entire family and all the

kids and,

you know,

we have a bunch of kids and they always referred to

me as a terrier.

I'm just,

I'm relentless and that's good and bad.

You know,

there are times where I should let go and just move

on, but I can't,

I'm wired like a terrier.

I'm just going to keep digging to try and find that

Fox in the hole.

And I'm not going to give up until I'm either chewed

my legs off or I get it.

And so there's,

that's for me is my that's a good into bed.

Yeah. And if you believe strongly enough in what you're doing,

that's what makes you successful because you drive through,

you find the solution.

If one thing doesn't work,

you go for something else until you've gotten the result that

you need.

Exactly. All right.

When you think of your day-to-day work environment,

is there some tool or something that you call upon every

day that is like the,

like you could not do without Yes.

It's called the Mobius.

It's a communication model that we we've built our entire business

around it.

So the question that,

whether it's in a moment of challenge or a moment of

opportunity, a vision opportunity,

or we're trying to figure out how to solve a particular

problem. The Mobius model is written by a guy named bill

Stockton, and he's a cultural anthropologist.

And he started studying how primitive societies communicate.

And then he took his learnings and applied it to modern

day people.

And then ultimately how to build a communication model for an

organization. So when you have a challenge,

it's not a who's at fault who's to blame.

How are we going to find out someone that we can

point our fingers at and say that this person,

or this situation really is responsible for where we find ourselves

and send it in a more holistic way.

It's to say,

where are we?

What's the challenge what's present in our business currently that is

contributing to this challenge,

being a challenge.

And what's missing that if it were present would enable us

to overcome or work our way around this challenge.

So the missings that you define then become the steps and

the action items that the organization uses to get around the

challenge that works equally well with what's our vision.

We're going to open a new store in North loop.

What do we want it to be?

What's present to contributes to that new vision.

What's missing that if it were present,

would enable that vision to be that much stronger.

We follow this Mobius path.

I mean,

we're carrier,

like if I borrowed from before and how we follow it,

we don't waiver.

We use that tool and we use that model and our

whole business is built around it.

And it is incredibly powerful if you can work it and

stick with it and be consistent in how you execute on

it. All right.

So a hundred percent hands down on the Mobius method,

The path that we went down with understanding the Mobius was

like so many other things.

It's probably an eight year.

Well, we we've actually,

we use it for our annual planning thing and I took

a picture of the other day and I can send it

to you,

but this is our 12th year that we followed the same

annual planning program.

And I still have all the charts that we've done.

And I put them all up on a wall and took

a photo and sent it to a friend of mine.

It's almost like dedicating your life to a yoga practice.

It's not superficial.

It's either jump in and go with it and stick with

it. Or there are certainly pieces in there that you can

pull out and use and,

you know,

sort of move forward.

But I think if you really understand it and study it

and do the heavy lifting,

it's there for the long haul,

it's that sustainable model that we're looking for.

You have piqued my curiosity for sure.

Okay, great.

All right.

So in the end here,

Carl, I would like to invite you to dare to dream.

I would like to present you with a virtual gift.

It's a magical box containing unlimited possibilities for your future.

This is your dream or your goal of almost unreachable Heights

that you would wish to obtain.

Please accept this gift and open it in our presence.

What is inside your box?

It's a great gift.

And I appreciate that.

It's actually kind of easy for me to answer,

and that is that I used to think for a long

time that I wanted to be widely considered to be sort

of the best in our category.

And two years ago,

we won the global innovators award for the housewares association.

So we were the winner from the United States.

It's, you know,

it's a,

a juried submission with,

and all kinds of descriptors of our business.

And it's kind of funny and Williams-Sonoma one,

it, you know,

say seven or eight years ago.

So we were selected three years ago at the end of

2013. So we won the U S innovators award.

And then we went to the sort of global championship and

there were 25 retail operations from around the world,

Germany and England.

And we were picked as the,

they told us we were the first unanimous decision in the

12 years.

They've had the award between the judging panel voted us first.

Their first round was,

Hey, who do you think is the best one this year?

And everyone said,

cooks, cooks coast cooks says that was the first time ever

that there was a consensus first balloting winner.

And it was pretty cool.

There were four winners the year that we won of the

28 submissions or 23.

So after that,

I thought,

I guess I have to pick a different vision.

So I no longer felt like,

well, I want to be widely considered to be the best

in our category.

Now, I think I'd like to be considered as the best

in a category of one that if we are living our

vision and we're creating something that is truly us and unique

to us,

then we will be unique.

And at that point we can say where the best in

the category of one.

And I think that would be for me,

the ultimate sort of gift or vision for what cooks could

become, Which means you will have created your very own category.

Exactly. Period.

The only one in it.

Well, Carl such interesting information.

I am so glad I knew that this interview was going

to prove exactly that if someone wanted to get in touch

with you and cooks,

what's the single place that someone should go.

If they want to see and learn about cooks of Crocus

Hill, It would be our website that's www.cooksofcrocushill.com.

Wonderful. All right.

Give biz listeners,

you know,

on the show notes page,

I will also have that website repeated one more time,

also social media site and any other links that make sense

for our interview today,

as well as some of the other information in terms of

some of the detail that we've talked about during the show

here, Carl,

thank you so much.

I really appreciate your taking the time to be with us.

You've shared some really,

really interesting points and it's so cool.

Not you just at the very end,

just land this global innovators award on us.

So that was super awesome.

I wish we could take it on longer and talk a

little bit more about that.

But congratulations on that.

There is not a doubt in my mind that you,

at some point are going to be the winner of a

category of one,

and may your candle always burn bright.

You learn how to work smarter while developing and growing your

business. Download our guide called 25 free tools to enhance your

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