How I got here Audio
===
[00:00:00] I had two choices. I could either figure it out on my own and spend the time and the energy and all of that to get there. Or the rules of retail are changing one by one. Corporate retailers are closing their doors, and some call it the death of retail. But those rules never apply to independent retailers like us.
[00:00:20] We're riding our own rules. We're here to answer the questions about how to grow your business, stay competitive, and still have a life. I'm Josh, or, and this is the Retail Initiative Podcast. Hey, welcome to today's episode of Retail Initiative. Uh, today's a different one. Today's going to be a little bit different.
[00:00:39] I realize that I share a lot around what I'm, what I'm going through right now, the lessons that I'm learning and all of that, which is cool. But I've never really shared my story in any video, in any podcast episode. I've never shared how I got where I am. And so today I want to share some of my journey with you, uh, how I got into retail, how I got into e-commerce.
[00:00:59] [00:01:00] But also some of the lessons that I've learned that I think can apply to you and my hope is that it can be an encouragement to you. Uh, so I was born to a single mom. She had me when she was 21 years old in college. Not on purpose, grew up without a dad. All of that sad so sob story stuff and grew up really poor.
[00:01:19] And my mom was incredible. She did her best. She absolutely, she worked so hard and a lot of where I am today, I have her to think. So mom, if you're listening to this, I love you. Thank you for all that you did. Anyway, moving on. Uh, and we grew up poor. And I remember, I don't know what your upbringing was like, but all my friends had like Adidas shoes and Nike shoes and all those name brands, and I was wearing Payless sneakers.
[00:01:46] And look, I know that all of us had Payless Dress shoes, but I was wearing Payless sneakers. So all my friends had the name brands and I had the chief stuff, and I remember how much I wanted that. And I think that's where [00:02:00] part of my love of fashion originally came from. And going into school, I really struggled.
[00:02:04] I think some of this was, you know, having a single mom, she didn't have the same time to invest in me, like she probably wishes that she had. And so I went into school really struggling, and I went into kindergarten in first grade, not knowing how to read. And this is big Lesson number one was I took on this identity, this identity that I was dumb, that I was stupid, that I couldn't do school well, and I let this identity dominate who I was.
[00:02:32] I. And there were a few people along the road. I remember this teacher in sixth grade. Uh, it was two teachers actually. One saw a ton of potential in me and they were like, we need to get this kid's bored. That's the problem here. We need to test them for talenting, talented and gifted. And another teacher where I was a pain cause I was a little a d d kid.
[00:02:53] Officially diagnosed all that stuff. Little a d d kid. I was a pain in the butt in the class and they wanted me tested for [00:03:00] special ed. So literally a week apart. I was tested for both, like special or te, talented and gifted, and I was tested for special ed. But all along this journey, I let this identity dominate who I was.
[00:03:14] And so for you, is there an identity that you let dominate, maybe you take on the identity that you're not good at? Technology. You take on the identity that you're not good at leading a team. You take on whatever thing that we say we're not good at, and we let that be an identity of who we are. But what if we could say, but I need, my company needs me to be good at managing a team.
[00:03:36] And, and th that's where the whole like growth mindset versus a limited mindset comes in, is. You know, I may not be good at this right now, but I can grow to that. And so we have to challenge the identities that we take on of what we're good at and what we're bad at, and not let them become an identity, but let them be a starting place and say, yeah, I'm not good at managing a team right now, but I can be, I can [00:04:00] learn how to get there.
[00:04:01] And so I leave, I leave high school, which by the way, talk about being bad in school. My college GPA was double my high school gpa. If that tells you how bad it was, the fact that it could be doubled, I think, says something. Uh, it was atrocious. And I, I, later on, and I'll get to some of this, I did kinda shed that identity and hence the college GPA working out.
[00:04:26] Uh, but as I'm working these retail jobs and I've, I've always loved the retail world. I started working it in high school. I was searching for direction. I didn't really know what I wanted my life to look like, and I discovered a nonprofit. I called them visible children. They had this movie and it, it really hit home for me and I got involved.
[00:04:45] I started showing it to friends. I started, I did at events, and I ended up working for them and touring the West coast, speaking at high schools and colleges and churches. I. And this was lesson number two was where I challenged the [00:05:00] identity that I had. Cuz here's what was crazy, was this kid that graduated with a terrible gpa.
[00:05:05] I was speaking at Stanford in classes, I was speaking at Berkeley in classes. I was doing these events. That I really should never have been doing based on the credentials that I had. I shouldn't have been doing them, but I was, and I was making an impact in the world. I was, I saw a problem and I wanted to speak into it somehow.
[00:05:26] And I look back and I was young and naive, but, but I think there's something really magical about those kinds of seasons cuz I didn't let all the, the, the, all of the logical reasons not to get involved. Hold me back. And I was really able to start making an impact in the world. And this identity shifted for me where I realized I can do something.
[00:05:47] Like I'm not this dumb person that I thought I was, that identity's false, and instead, I can make an impact in the world and I can do something. And so I come out of that and I, I [00:06:00] finished college. Funny enough, I, I wanted to get into politics and so I did the whole political science thing. I moved to DC.
[00:06:07] I decided I didn't want to do that. And I come back and I, I have a friend that's working in this like Apple business. They were helping medical offices, like with their software and they wanted to get into retail. And my buddy's like, well, hey, you're good at technology and you are, you know, you've worked in the retail world.
[00:06:27] I think you'd be really good at this and. So I started as a point of sale reseller. And so I would sell the software and I'd go install all the hardware and then I would teach people how to use it. And this is where this next turning point came in was there was some stuff going on in that business, and I don't want to get into how complicated it was.
[00:06:47] Um, but this consultant in this situation pulled me outside one day and he's like, Hey, with all these changes going on, uh, we need to know like, For you to sign and non-compete, what kind of equity do you think you would need? [00:07:00] And up to that point, I just saw everything as a job. Everything was a job to that point, but I didn't really see where my value was in the world.
[00:07:09] And when they were like, Hey, what kind of equity do you need? It clicked. And that moment changed my life forever, where I was like, my work has value. Like I actually am producing something incredibly valuable for the world. And that shifted everything for me and, and go forward a little bit. And I start my own business and I'm still doing the whole point of sale thing at this time.
[00:07:33] And, you know, we're, we're growing. I go from a one man show to a two man show and there something started to click. I looked around and I saw the industry moving and I didn't, I didn't love where it was going. You know, in the past you needed like an IT company for that stuff. And I, I was like, you know what?
[00:07:52] Technology's getting easier. I think some of that's gonna go away. And this is big lesson number three. If you want to [00:08:00] grow, look at what everyone else is doing and add value. Look at what everyone else is doing and add more value than they are. So I started to approach point of sale in a different way. I was like, Hey, I'm not gonna set up your hardware and teach you how to use a software.
[00:08:16] I'm gonna teach you how. How do you operate a retail business successfully? And we're gonna use this point of sale as the means to an end. We're not gonna teach you a software, we're gonna teach you operations. And this mindset allowed my business to take off. And it was an incredible season of growth, but then moved forward.
[00:08:39] And the problem with point of sale is, first off, let's be real. Does anyone like their point of sale? I, I think we all know the answer to that is no, no one loves it. And so people liked me, they liked my company, but they didn't like what they did with me. And it required, you know, doing support at night, doing support on the weekends.
[00:08:57] And I, you know, I get married, I have a kid [00:09:00] at this point, and there was this one moment. And I have shared this part before where it was a Saturday, my kid's doing like a soccer game, but he's like three. So it's not a game, it's like a practice. And I, we get this support ticket, someone's receipt printer was broken, or label printer or whatever.
[00:09:16] Uh, and I, I walk away and I'm talking to a guy that doesn't really even want to be on the phone with me. Understandably, he's trying to run his retail business. He doesn't wanna be fixing a receipt printer, but I'm at my kid's soccer game and at the end of the, the game, they would do this thing where every kid shoots a goal and the everyone around chance their name, and I'm 50 yards away on the phone with someone who doesn't wanna be talking with me, and they're like, Ryan, Ryan, and I'm not there.
[00:09:47] And it was like in that moment, that single moment, I was like, I can't, I'm not, I'm done. This is not what I'm gonna do anymore. And luckily, you know, I had met this guy named Michael. And Michael was an, was a [00:10:00] designer and a developer and he was bringing people to me and saying like, Hey, I have these web web clients, they need a point of sale.
[00:10:07] Can we work together? And we started doing projects together and I was like, Hey dude, we should, we should do this. Like let's, let's do this. So I added an e-commerce side to our business. And I started speaking at events and markets and all this stuff on e-commerce cuz just like I did before, I looked at the market and I saw what they were doing and I said, how can we add more value?
[00:10:28] And so we wanted to be really full stack and when we made this decision of like, okay, let's start to wind down the point of sales stuff and let's just focus on e-commerce, cuz that's what we love, that's what we enjoy. And there's the an impact there that we can make. Where if we can help a brick and mortar retailer really create traction online like that transforms not just the business that helps their team, that helps their community, that helps really.
[00:10:54] I mean, if you think, oh gosh, I could get into how much I love retail and talk about it for days, [00:11:00] but it, the impact that was made through e-commerce was massive and we loved it. And even in our, even in our work, you know, we were doing these beautiful sites. And all of that. And it was incredible. And I, I look back at that season with gratitude, but there we realized something needs to be different.
[00:11:20] Here, there needs to be something different. We need to be doing more for people. Cuz if we're giving a site but they don't know how to drive traffic or we're giving a site and they don't know how to increase retention, did we really set them up for success? And I was like, we've gotta figure, figure this out.
[00:11:36] We need to take our business to the next level. And here I had two choices. I could either figure it out on my own and spend the time and the energy and all of that to get there, or I could get help. I could get help from someone who's further along from me than I was, and I could get them to teach me like, what would it look like?
[00:11:57] And so that's the route that I [00:12:00] went and that's the the next big lesson. Is sometimes the way to level up is not to figure out everything on your own, but to seek out coaches, to seek out people who can help you get to the next level. Cuz if they've gotten there, they can help you get there. And we built out this program.
[00:12:17] And we did this at the very end of 2019, going into 2020, uh, we built this program called Momentum that was centered on how helping brick and mortar retailers gain traction online by having a site that bottles up their in-store experience, creating a plan to drive traffic, getting customers to not just make the first purchase, but the second, the third and the fourth.
[00:12:39] And then putting all the operations in place around it. We looked at what the market was doing and said, how can we add more value? And then covid hit, and as you can imagine, things started to take off and we got busy and that was great. And I. Our business grew a ton in that [00:13:00] season, and our team grew and we refined our process and we had to figure all those things out and along the way, I look back and I realized at every step, I've almost like stumbled into what's next.
[00:13:13] And I've been blessed that those things have worked out, but I never really had a clear vision of five years from now, where do I want this to be? What impact is it making? The vision wasn't there. And when we started to really uncover what those things were, we realized that even our brand hadn't caught up.
[00:13:34] Our, our brand streamlined retail wasn't, didn't really fit who we were. And that's when we rebranded to Capital Commerce as a way of us doubling down on helping brick and mortar retailers gain traction online. And primarily doing this through that momentum program. And we've since added stuff to help people that have decent sites that need to level it up.
[00:13:56] And, you know, we're doing a little more than that now, but we [00:14:00] needed to let our brand catch up. And there's where I started to build a real vision for where I want the company to go. And that's the last takeaway I wanna leave you with is thinking about like, have you let your business happen to you, which isn't always bad.
[00:14:16] Like sometimes you just do what you need to do to provide for your family. You do what you need to do to reach that next level. But at some point we have to quit looking one foot in front of us. And we need to look down the road and we need to set a path and a journey of where do we want to go. So for you, what is that thing?
[00:14:36] And it not even thing, but what is that place there? I would start to look at what impact are you making in the world? Why are you making that impact and who are you making that impact for? And start to answer those questions and then start to look at, okay, for you, why. What is it that you really want as a person?
[00:14:55] I think a lot of us chase these money goals, but deeper than [00:15:00] that, like what do you want your life to look like? What do you want your life to feel like? And then you can start to say, okay, where do I want? Where does my life look like in the best case scenario? You know, one of my coaches named Taylor Welch, one of the best questions he's ever asked me was, you wake up on a Thursday morning, how do you feel?
[00:15:19] Do you feel reactive? Do you feel proactive? Does it feel peaceful? Does it feel exciting? How do you want to just feel on a random Thursday morning? And from there you can start to set a vision of, okay, I know how I want my life to look and feel. I know what I want my business to do. And you can marry those and reverse engineer it into, okay, if that's where we're going, we need this and we need this and we need this.
[00:15:45] Like these things have to be in place. So that would be the big lessons that I wanna leave you with, that my journey hopefully can encourage you. Um, don't let an identity hold you back. Don't take on negative identities and say, I'm not [00:16:00] this, or I'm not good at this. That doesn't have to hold you back. And so when that happens, challenge your identities.
[00:16:07] And then if you want to grow, look at what the market is doing and add more value, add more value than what they do. And then if you can, if you want to get to the next level and you really wanna level up, you can either spend the time and figure it out on your own and trial and error, or look outside of yourself.
[00:16:25] Get help, get someone who has grown, get someone who's further along. And, and get a coach, get help. That's one of the common traits you'll see among some of the most successful people you know, is they all work with coaches, including myself. I will never not have a coach. That is a like core piece of who I am now, is I love having that outside person that can speak in and even say the hard things that I need to hear.
[00:16:52] Uh, so thanks for tuning in. We'll get back to normal episodes, uh, next week, but this one I hope is encouraging and I hope my story resonates [00:17:00] some. So thanks for tuning in and I'll see you next time.
