Retail Recon Podcast
All things Adventure retail for both retailers and brands alike. We meet with great retailers and share what makes them tick, explore best practices, and have conversations focused on helping any and all who make a living in the outdoor industry.
Retail Recon Podcast
From City Life to Outdoor Passion: A Retail Journey with Marc Sherman
What does it take to build a purpose-driven retail business that lasts? In this episode, Dale chats with Marc Sherman of Outdoor Gear Exchange to unpack the real behind-the-scenes work of sustainable growth. From creating vendor co-op programs and curating products with intention, to building trust with customers through simple but strong recommendations, Marc shares how a clear point of view shapes everything.
They dive into the balance between mission and margin, the importance of weekly financial check-ins, and why operational discipline isn’t just for spreadsheets—it’s the backbone of community impact. Marc also opens up about resisting the allure of top-line growth, the power of saying “no” to participation-trophy partnerships, and how candid conversations keep teams aligned.
Whether you’re a shop owner, brand builder, or just someone who wants to lead with integrity, this conversation is a masterclass in grounded entrepreneurship.
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Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the podcast. Today I've got Mark Sherman from Outdoor Gear Exchange and GearXcom. Hello Mark, hello Dale, how are you? It's good to see you. Yes, I'm really excited to share you with everyone and share your story today. First question if you could, I'd love to understand, kind of how you got here to where you are into retail. So if there are any like stints or things that you did before becoming a retailer that might have been formative. Yeah, absolutely, if you could give us maybe a 90 second overview.
Marc:Oh, 90 seconds. That's going to be tough. But I grew up in the metro New York area in New Jersey and was doing a lot of outdoor things with my family. We camped a lot and I think at the time a lot of that was because we it was an affordable family vacation at the time. Skiing was also affordable. My parents were avid skiers, so we did a lot of that, spent a lot of time canoeing in the Delaware river and just enjoying time outside.
Marc:And as I got out of college and moved into Manhattan for the job that I thought I was supposed to be having, with a suit and a tie on, I realized I was spending more and more time outside the city and going to seek these adventures in places like Vermont, which is where I decided to end up settling because that's where I was enjoying myself more than where I was living. And over time I moved up here and, I think, fell in love with the idea of sharing my love of the outdoors with people, and as friends came to visit, we would go on hikes and camping trips and I would share gear with them and one day, sitting with a friend a few friends actually in the Adirondacks camping, talking about the fact that we all had a lot more gear than we needed and we had friends who didn't have any. And wouldn't there be a way to connect those? And one of the people on the trip had spent his college years in San Francisco and there's a store there at one time called the Wilderness Exchange. Jerry Jordan ran that store and he's often referred to as the godfather of the consignment and closeout gear shop and I'm still in touch with him occasionally. But he more or less helped us write our business plan to get started.
Marc:And then we sat on it for a while and finally decided let's give this a shot. We want to build a gear shop that we'd like to shop in and focus on the consumer and try to sort of harness that energy to make something fun for people to be in and share our love. And that worked. We started out in 800 square feet on Main Street in Burlington in 1995. And at the time very few brands would actually sell to us because another retailer in town had a lot of the dealerships locked up and so we found ourselves selling second tier and third tier and often fourth tier product.
Marc:But we loved what we chose to sell and we were able to sell it because we were able to engage with our customers and talk about it, and I just remember being really shocked at the notion that anyone would be willing to spend what it cost to buy a Dana Design Pack at the time, which was $300 and $400 and more and you know this was 30 years ago, so those are real dollars and it didn't take long to understand that.
Marc:You know you're helping people to invest in a future and invest in enjoying themselves more when they were outside, and it became more of an opportunity to help someone outfit themselves for a lifestyle that I valued and that they obviously valued enough to come in and shop. And it became a lot easier and it helped us find new product and as our name got out there in the industry, locally and throughout the various trade shows and whatnot, I think we were finding ourselves having an easier time getting product and getting brands. And we were talking you and I earlier and I didn't get to say this, but I think part of the reason that these podcasts or trade shows are really valuable is to be part of the conversation, and to be part of a conversation that you're not sure where it's going, but if you can get 20 percent or 30 percent of something out of it or make a contact or a connection or have like a little light bulb moment where you hear something that someone else is doing and think oh yeah.
Marc:I could modify that to work for what we're doing. That's the value in being part of that conversation, and so we opened in 1995. And we opened on May 1. So we're just starting our 30th year now and we went to the first outdoor retailer in June because we felt we needed to be as part of the industry and we wanted to see what was going on. And at the time, because we felt we needed to be as part of the industry and we wanted to see what was going on, and at the time hydration was beginning to be a thing, camelback was relatively new and at the time everyone was drinking out of an algae bottle and I remember being very skeptical of this new technology because I liked stopping, sitting down on a rock, opening up my bottle and drinking.
Marc:And very quickly it was apparent that you know what I was doing wasn't necessarily what the industry was doing and that you know our job was to sell to people what the technology was that was going to work better and what people wanted. So it was a combination of this is how I've always done it and this is where things are going. But I find it so interesting that that first show that I went to. We hired my now business partner to run the shop while we were out of town because we didn't want to close immediately, but we knew we needed to go. It was in Reno and I'm excited that you know to go back to another trade show that's in Reno. So the first and next trade show that I ever went to were in the same place.
Dale:Yeah, so how I love that. So you started very much from this. You're passionate about outdoor gear, you're passionate about the outdoors. You move from the city to Vermont and there's this idea of a consignment store. How do we share gear? Used gear, consignment gear Do you still have an element of that in your business Consignment or used?
Marc:Yeah, not just an element, it's a critical element. It has been for 30 years and continues to be 10% to 11% of our walk-in business every month. And in fact we recently, in response to some market pressures and foot traffic reductions that we're seeing in Burlington, closed the basement of our store and consolidated everything onto the first floor. And that included moving consignment onto the first floor. And regardless of what we publicized about it, the one thing we got, the one comment we kept seeing, was why are you closing consignment? And we love consignment and we needed to be really clear. We weren't closing it. In fact we're now about to expand it again because of the interest.
Marc:People really liked the deal. We are very careful about what we accept. So people come in and know that they're not going to be walking through a thrift shop rack of crappy pants and jackets. They're looking at branded clothing that our customer is looking to sell easily and not necessarily getting top dollar for it, but getting what we think is reasonable. And for years and years and we're still Outdoor Gear Exchange itself is still not open as a dealer for Patagonia, but for years Patagonia had been our number one brand and it was all consigned products.
Dale:Yeah, I love that. If I were to open up a shop tomorrow, I would have a strong consignment element. Consignment speaks to my soul from reusing, not having something go to waste. There's so much gear in people's closets that should be on trails. Well, the consignment model does so much more than that.
Marc:The consignment model covers everything that we all value.
Marc:One you have a way to take the gear that you once used and put it in someone else's hands instead of putting it in the landfill. You can help somebody else who might be just getting started in their outdoor pursuits buy something more affordably because, let's face it, the gear that we use is expensive. You know it is. You are getting outside and the wilderness is mostly free, but the gear isn't, and that's gone in the wrong direction in some ways, as things have gotten more complicated. So we take the gear that we have and we pass it on to somebody else Gives us an opportunity to turn what we have into some money so that we can buy new gear. And we keep the gear out of the landfill and we get that cycle going and it's repetitive. We'll sell the same item five times. Because one person buys it new, they sell it used from. Someone buys it used, they use it for a while, they realize they actually do really love backpacking and now they want to go buy a brand new backpack. Well, they sell that used backpack because it typically people don't use their gear enough for it to be unsellable even if it starts out used yeah, that's awesome, it's, it's
Marc:a it. That's awesome. It's reuse and recycle and, I guess, in that sense, reduce because you're buying less stuff. Yeah, it really speaks to all of what we love. And when I work on the sales floor at any given time, I continue to be amazed at the amount of consignment product that comes in. To be amazed at the amount of consignment product that comes in to be bought. And, to be clear, when I say we're at 10% to 11% of our sales, that's at 10% to 11% of our sales in dollars and when you consider the lower price for those items, that's the equivalent probably of more like 20% in units.
Dale:Yeah, that's interesting, I love it. 20% units Hmm, yeah, that's interesting, I love it. Um, what uh has that? Has that influenced a lot of your, your brand, this, this mission of getting gear into people's hands and it happens to happen through consignment was the main vehicle. Has that spilled into your rest of your?
Marc:brand. Yeah, I wouldn't say main vehicle. I mean, when we started we were selling all used, all consignment, and then some accessories that we're buying through at, you know, peregrine Outfitters at the time, now owned by Liberty Mountain Sports. And as we realized that our customers were going to stores like EMS to buy a product that we couldn't sell them used, we started reaching out and deciding well, why would we send someone away after they stopped by us first to buy something used? Let's make sure we have that item for them one way or the other. And that's the challenge in a consignment or a used business is you don't have as much control over what you have to offer your customer.
Marc:So we created this sort of hybrid model and it was really. It was well-received. We always sold full price product next to discounted product and it's always worked, because some people want the newest and the greatest, Some people want the least expensive, some people want something right in the middle and some people just love a deal and love to find something on a rack that they didn't think they were going to find and wow, I'm going to pick this up. I've been looking for this. I actually just picked up a pack on consignment that I saw and said, wow, I haven't seen this anywhere. It's three years old, it's not being made anymore. I'm going to pick this pack up now. I'm going to pick this pack up now and it's usually a pretty quick discussion because they're all one-offs. You know it's not going to be there in a week. And we found that most consignment items either sell within 30 days of getting on the rack or they'll sit around for a year and then they get donated. But the good stuff goes quickly and the other stuff just sits there.
Dale:Hmm, okay, awesome. So you've been doing this since 19. So you're beginning your 30th year May 1st. You started 95. And well, actually one point. And then I've got a question. But I love that you said that you started and then you felt like you needed to be involved in the industry. So you go to Reno, to the trade show, yeah, and I, yeah, I don't know if, I don't know who wouldn't benefit from that kind of just industry involvement. That was a big part of a lot of the major shifts that I made as a retailer came from going to trade shows and meeting people and as a bike retailer, I went to, I went to interbike and I went to Eurobike and I went to Taipei show and I can't really, uh, so many of the major changes we made. The value of leaving the business, being with industry peers and just being out there and going back to the business was super valuable, absolutely. Had you made that a practice for your whole, for the life of outdoor gear exchange, of staying connected to the industry.
Marc:Yeah, and I think that's that. We love our customers. We love the gear that we sell and the activities we engage in, but we also. The outdoor industry is magical. It is filled with passionate souls. Obviously, trade shows are a lot of salespeople, and salespeople are gregarious and fun to hang out with, but making relationships is what all of this is about, whether it's with our customers, with our staff or with our brands. Those relationships are what make what we do more than just a job, and so going to those trade shows twice a year was a piece of what we did.
Marc:I think up until the pandemic, I didn't miss a single OR summer show, and once we started selling snow gear, I didn't miss a single OR snow show. And once we started selling snow snow gear, we are. I didn't miss a single or snow show, um, and so that cycle even though it wasn't always at the most convenient time it wasn't always super cheap to go Um, it was really important because if you're not getting a pulse of the industry, it's kind of hard to know what what's going on Um, and so I found that really valuable and and that's shifted a little to the grassroots outdoor show, but it's still. It's a group of close friends, and I have friends who have left the industry. I was just on the phone with a sales manager from a company that we had been working with and before that he was with another company and it's somebody we met years and years and years ago when he was our salesperson at Liberty Mountain Sports, and he's not in the industry anymore and we still stay in touch. We're still close friends and I think those friendships are not infrequent in this industry and I've tried to explain this to my wife and that the trade show people that we see, they know what's going on in my life, even though I see them six times or every once every six months, and you know when you see them, they they ask how's your son doing what?
Marc:Why are you going on a trip? How did that turn out? And and yes, again, we're talking about salespeople and this is what we all do is keep track of what the people we talk to are doing, so that we can connect. But that feels like a separate community and I think one of the things that's cool about it is it's a separate community, really separate, like I see people. I see you once every six months, yet I know you know what your last family adventure was on your bikes and you know what you're doing and when we connect it's not without some awareness of who we are and that's really helpful and it's warm and welcoming. And I'll say, you know I've been to trade shows and obviously you know we've talked.
Marc:Last November went to a trade show Things were really struggling with with my business and and some of the relationships we had and it was so welcoming and and warmly welcoming to be at that show and be amongst friends who understood and were in a position and interest of helping make sure that we continue those relationships and and that's so invaluable and has really, you know, I've had people look at that and say, wow, you guys, you have an amazing thing going on the industry and whatnot.
Marc:You have an amazing thing going on the industry and whatnot. And we have a friend who used to be the commissioner of Forest Parks and Recreation in Vermont and he came out make a difference and make sure that things continued positively in the outdoors and with our retail positions and came back and we started the Vermont Outdoor Recreation Economic Collaborative, which was one of the many state-based outdoor economic groups that was sort of built on understanding the economic vitality in the outdoor industry and you know, in Utah you had Tom Adams doing that for a while and there was I forget who the Colorado guy was. But you know the states that have a big investment in the outdoors saw that value and so did the commissioner of forest parks and recreation and that was a. You know it was a pleasure to be part of forming that organization and being involved in that and seeing it to the next step and moving on, and now I'm in a different, similar but non-governmental based organization for it.
Dale:Yeah, awesome. So the connection and the camaraderie that comes from it. And then, yeah, I always found that I had so many good ideas coming back from a trade show for my business that I didn't have sitting, you know, sitting at HQ Right Things. I wasn't thinking of meeting people like you that you know might be doing something different or better that I hadn't considered so awesome.
Marc:I love that, well, I think you know, we've been doing business with Grand Trunks since, I think, the first year that your company was in business.
Marc:Okay, Long before you bought it. And that's because of the relationships we have with our sales reps. And you know sales reps are really important in this industry and we've seen brands presence in our store go up and down as sales reps change and you know the relationship building that goes with one person versus another and how they see the business and what their view of partnership is, and it's incredibly valuable and it makes a really big difference. But but those things happen in a trade show Cause, like you said, you get out of HQ, you're not, the phone's not ringing, you're not getting texts or emails or or staff coming in and asking questions about some urgent matter that's urgent in their mind, whether it is or it isn't, and you need to step in and do that. And so you get to be around other people who are focused on the industry and become thought partners.
Marc:And I've got an ADD mind and I find that if I can sit, I get the most ideas when I'm sitting in a board meeting, not around necessarily what the board meeting is being talked about, but my mind, when it gets focused on something like that, starts drilling down ideas. And I think the same thing happens to trade shows. You're in there you're focused on the trade show and lots of ideas start pouring in and you just have to write them down and go back and sort through them and even if only 10% of them are useful, that 10% might not have come up without that environment to be in 100%.
Dale:I love that. So one question, and this has to do, I guess, me as a brand kind of putting my brand hat on and then thinking about it to better understand your perspective as a retailer. But in talking internally at Grand Trunk, sometimes I ask the question if these retailers were owned by our favorite uncle and we're the favorite nephew, or if I'm your high school friend and you're the best friend and you want everything good in the world for me and I'm the brand, how do you as a retailer partner with me? So kind of? I'd love to explore both sides a little bit how do you deeply connect with and work with a brand and how would a brand deeply with and work with a brand? And how would a brand deeply connect and work with with you? Cause you have a few sorry to Elke before you've been pretty creative in working with brands and having ways.
Dale:A lot of people will say, hey, let me know if there's anything we can do to deep more. It's almost like it's a. It's the right thing to say. Let me know if there's anything that we can do to support you. Where you have actually come up with legitimate programs. Oh well, great, we have this store for you can sponsor the storefront. You have these programs in place, but I'd love to just explore that, this question, with you.
Marc:Yeah, no, that's a great point. I mean, first of all, um, I think the one thing that we've taken as our focus from the beginning is you can do business with people who are easy to do business with. You can do business with people who are hard to do business with, and if you have to choose, you're always going to choose the one that's easy to do business with. Obviously, dollars matter, but same playing ground. We try to be easy to do business with, we try to place our orders on time, we try to follow through, we try to look at what's new and try to sell some of that. And really larger, larger players in the field who have a profit center on chargebacks, you know, did the pallet come in with the right kind of strapping? Was it two days late? Was it 10%? Too few items? And you know we're going to charge you a percentage on that, and their orders volume is big enough to justify that, and you as a brand are like well, we need this order, we're going to suffer through these charges. Yet at the same time, we've been told by industry partners that we don't ask for enough of that. But that's a whole different discussion and I've certainly asked for a lot from people this year and found the support to be incredible. And when I look at what you're talking about, you know, with co-op programs, a lot of brands like Grand Trunk have a co-op program or at least a co-op concept. We'd like to support you to advertise Grand Trunk in your store, but we need to tell you what we're going to do.
Marc:And I found that I was going to trade shows and I wasn't doing any buying anymore. We had a buying team and so I would sit in on some of those meetings but my mind would wander and people would joke yeah, if Duck's going to sit in the meeting, there's going to be a lot of jokes and distractions. That's my ADD mind operating, but I think that my nickname is Duck. I realize that might not have been clear, but I started sort of thinking okay, how this is valuable time. I've got a family, I've got a home I like to care for. I've got friends at home. I'm busy. How do I make this trip to the trade show meaningful beyond just sitting through meetings that are on the calendar? And I started thinking about my work with the marketing that we do. And, okay, how do we work with our brands to give them value with the co-op dollars that we can spend.
Marc:And we started. We came up with, essentially, a co-op program, very formalized and printed out in Google form in a slideshow presentation that had real dollars on it, so that we can say, yeah, we can do this, this is what it costs, this is what you get, and we'd love to get you involved. And we very quickly found that, thanks to an incredibly creative woman that worked for us doing our windows, that the windows that we have on Church Street which, for those who don't know Burlington, windows that we have on church street which, for those who don't know burlington but might know boulder better, it's similar to pearl street and boulder um, we have windows that we needed to set up and have as displays, and so we basically started selling those windows and the creativity of liza, who was doing them, was so good and now lindsey's doing them and she's stepped in really well that those windows became a cornerstone to our marketing program. And I would come to a trade show and people would want to do one and I'd be telling them well, you can't, we're pretty much they're all taken for the next 15 months and it became such a demand and you know it's brand building.
Marc:It's not just about Outdoor Gear Exchange. If you're walking down Church Street and you see a window with Grand Trunk product in it, with mannequins hanging around and a nice tailgate scene or a hammocking scene, you're seeing the brand. You're not just seeing the brand in Outdoor Gear Exchange's window and you may or may not stop in at OGE, but when you walk by that brand is imprinted and the next time you see an ad in Outside Magazine or a Facebook posting from Grand Trunk, that imprint is magnified and amplified and that's incredibly valuable and it's also made those trade shows really fun and enjoyable because I get to talk to lots of different people. It's not just about buying things. It's about talking about our businesses and how we can collaborate and yes, there's money involved, but it's business and that's how it works.
Marc:But it's still been rewarding to see how that's helped us develop our program and we're revising that this year based on a lot of what's going on, but especially the challenges in having monobranded windows and where that puts us in terms of logistics.
Marc:And so we're not going to, we're not doing away with our windows, but we're changing how we're doing it and you know that gets to what you and I talked about a little earlier, which is, you know, tomorrow may not look like today, and it's our job to keep a focus. One of our partners I think the owner of Darn Tough Vermont has said what got us here will not take us to the next level, but we can't forget what's got us here, and so it really is a blending of looking backwards and looking forwards and knowing that the future is not going to look like the past, but we got here for a reason and we need to focus on those core things, and that's sort of what we talked about earlier in terms of making sure we're outfitting people for the outdoors and being respectful of their financial constraints, and the need to move gear around and get new people involved, as well as outfit the people who've been doing it for two decades.
Dale:Yeah, so that. So you've got ways for brands to deeply part, to partner in a big, in a meaningful way with you guys through your co-op program. So you've kind of created that. And when people say, hey, let us know how we can, you know, be more involved, you have a sheet that you can hand over. Well, here's the way that you can be. If you really want to be engaged, then do that. I think a lot of shops can learn from that.
Marc:Yep, summit Hut out of Arizona does the same thing and they've got a great program and I think it's there are a few shops that do it and it takes work and it takes focus. And if you've got a shop that's only got one person going to the trade show, it's kind of hard to get that done. And so we're in a unique position where we have the staff to do it and our business has definitely gotten a little bit smaller in terms of headcount, but we're still going to the trade show with the full team and I think that's really important because it is you know, that those are investments in the future and investment in those relationships. But, to your point, how many times does someone say, well, what can I do for you? And you don't have an answer?
Marc:When we go back to our customer base, when we started, we began setting up these gift lists for Christmas and they would be organized on one side by price and another side by activity and we'd hand them out to our customers. We put them in shopping baskets, they would be in a display as you walked in and I would ask my staff to just say you know what are your go-tos and you know if someone comes in and says I'm, I'm going to a graduation. I have no idea what to get this person. What would you suggest? And you know I'll say that for graduation my number one suggestion is a hammock, and and at Christmas it's often a headlamp.
Marc:But to have something, so that when a friend said friend said when I started the business, I said just have an opinion. If someone's coming into your store to ask you a question and to shop, they want to know what you think. And so if someone says to you do you have any ideas on what I could get this person who likes to be outside for this event coming up? Well, you need to have an answer ready and the answer can start with a question Well, what are they into? But if you're in a time sensitive moment, it's great to have a couple go-tos and I don't pick, they're not picked up in air.
Marc:I can honestly say that I don't go anywhere without a hammock in my bag, because I just I like setting up between two trees and hanging out, even if I just have a half an hour to do it, and and it doesn't take up a lot of space. But so for me, making that recommendation is really easy because it's what I believe in program.
Dale:It's so smart. When I saw you present it four years ago at GOA I'm like, well, he's got it together. That is a pretty you know. Yeah, I was really impressed by that For a if you had, if I'm your, if I am a brand owner and in this case I am at Grand Trunk and you were, and we were best friends growing up and you wanted everything. Um, you wanted to do everything possible for my success as a store owner and and I had that, as there were certain reps that I really liked I'm a relationship guy and people that I like I want to help. So, um, if, if somebody, if a rep comes in that I really care about and they bring a new product in, I'm going to go out on a limb to try to make them successful. But what kinds of things? As a shop, if you need to like turn up the effort or turn up the heat for a brand, what kinds of things do you do?
Marc:I mean, I think we can lean into the marketing program and add things to it. I think we can talk about displays in the store which are incredibly valuable and make sure that our offering is fresh. So you know, it's a give and a take. So we might sort of suggest hey, we've got a product, I think you've got some new items coming out. Can we swap this out so that what we have on the shelf is what you're interested in our customers seeing is what you're interested in our customers seeing? We're also really honest.
Marc:One of the things we did when we started was, instead of selling everything that the brand wanted us to sell, and becoming essentially a concept shop for that brand, we picked and we chose from each different offering to make sure that we were looking at what the customer needed. But being honest with our brands and giving feedback is really important. We had a now former footwear buyer who was brought out to multiple of our footwear brands for focus groups to look at new lines and sort of give feedback on colors and design and features, because we are able to talk about that and we're willing to and that's a partnership. So, yeah, I want to support you as my best friend from high school, but I don't want to give you a participation trophy by having a spot in the shop. I want to help you help me while helping you get your product out there, but it doesn't do any of us any good for me to fill a rack full of stuff that's not going to sell.
Dale:Yeah, 100%.
Marc:So, as you can tell, even in this podcast, I'm not doing it disingenuously, but I know you sell hammocks. Focus on that. I know what's important to you and I think that's part of that conversation.
Dale:And I think that's part of that conversation yes, me compared to other, randomized or not. It was all anonymous data that compared me to other shops and online outfits that were like me, and it blew my mind the different ratios and things that he was telling me about. So how do you look at your financial accounting for a company like yours?
Marc:Well, I think for years we were in a massive growth mode. So I mentioned, we started in 800 square feet in 1995. And I think at one point we, as I said, closed our basement but at one point we had 30,000 square feet of retail space a year or so ago. And so that growth funded a lot of ignorance and we focused entirely on top line sales and not gross profit margin and not necessarily terms and not necessarily inventory health. And I think it's really easy as an entrepreneur to focus on sales, and we're sales people. We want to see sales.
Marc:Someone just bought this, that's great, but in the end, what did it cost to sell it and what does your balance sheet look like? That's to me, balance sheet and cashflow have become far more important than profit and loss. Not to say that profit and loss isn't important, but making sure that the traditional metrics that are used in the financial industry to analyze a loan are things that you look at for your business. There's a reason why the banks are looking at those and asking for those figures and it's because those are the quickest way to assess the health of your business. And so if you eschew those kinds of metrics because they get in the way, or they're not comfortable or they're not fun. You're kind of saying you don't want to focus on the things that really do matter in terms of the financial health of the business.
Marc:One of the messages that we talked about last November at GOA and I talked about with a lot of our brands and you know how things had changed a little for us is't talk about that yet. But you know, og has always been supporting nonprofits and trying to figure out how to get funds into nonprofits that we support and give opportunities and be part of events and and create that community and be part of the community. Um, but if we aren't operationally successful, then all of that's for not because we won't be here in a year. So I think that that's the piece is to really remember that it's not one or the other. It's got to be both. You know, running a business that's just about profit is boring. It's not. You know it's not engaging. It may be for some.
Marc:I mean, there are, there are plenty of people who who start a business or buy a business so that they can turn it into something a little bit more and sell it, and that's the end goal. That's not my end goal it never has been is a means to a lifestyle. The business itself is a means to connection and a way to support other people getting there and bringing people into the industry. We've got folks all over our partner industry brands that started at OGE decades ago. Our contact at gregory mountain is a former um administration and salesperson here at oge, um, the I think he's the ceo or our vice president or something of expert voice used to work at oge and you he. These are careers that began here and we introduce people to the industry.
Marc:And that's also important for me because it is something that I love, and I do want people to be part of it and see the magic in it.
Dale:Yeah, I love that. What kind of and kind of to close up and staying on that on the financial topic, and I like that idea of like, hey, margin mission, both important, but you can't have a mission without a margin, without any margin. Well, you can, but then you're a nonprofit.
Dale:Yeah, yeah, and even nonprofits have to keep money coming in and and focus on finances and where. What kind of regular discipline, um, did you maybe not have at the beginning, that you that you developed, that helped you a lot in terms of, uh, financial accountability, um.
Marc:I'm not known for my discipline Uh, in fact, I've. I've often thought that I've built my life around not having to need any. That just isn't true, and so I think, as our business scaled, that became more on cashflow forecasts and making sure we're checking in on things every week and modifying and adjusting what's going on to what we're seeing, so weekly accounting check-ins where the truth is hitting you every week.
Marc:Yep, and we've gone to having a weekly open to buy meeting with our buying director, our senior director of sales strategy and my business partner to just make sure that we're buying the right things and we're buying at a level that the business can support. And that means adjusting next week's open to buy based on last week's sales and trying to avoid making an excuse for why you had a bad weekend or why you had a bad month or why you had a bad week and accepting well, there isn't an excuse, it's just that's what happened and it doesn't matter why. We just need to react to it.
Dale:Yeah Cool.
Marc:Because it's very easy to get caught up in believing in what you want to believe and not paying attention to the signs around you that suggest that your belief may be flawed, and I think that's really hard to do. And that's where having a meeting with four people instead of sitting in a desk alone doing it, is helpful, because you get those other inputs and you get an idea of where your logic makes sense and where it doesn't, and you have to be open to that. There's no sense in asking for feedback if you're just going to tell people that's not. There's a reason why what you just said doesn't make sense.
Marc:There may be you know there may be a reason why it doesn't make sense, but if you say that you stop getting feedback and you know the expression that there are, if you've ever gone to a brainstorming discussion or you talk to your kids about questions in school there's no such thing as a dumb question or a dumb idea. There are some pretty dumb questions and some pretty dumb ideas, but the idea in that statement is don't be afraid to ask, Don't be afraid to say something, because there's probably some value in it and there's probably somebody else who's thinking the same thing. Yeah, how many times have you been in a place where someone's asked a question or made a comment and you've said oh, I was thinking the same thing, but I wasn't really comfortable saying it. Well, there's probably 10 other people in the room.
Dale:And sometimes the dumb question opens up and gives permission and leads to the good question you know, building on that, you're. You're talking about just transparency and and candor and being immersed in the reality of where you are instead of, you know, dealing with it on your own, but bringing the partners in and that's cool.
Marc:Yeah, and at the same time, I've recently read that one of the biggest complaints about the modern workplace is the amount of collaboration that's required, and so I think, with everything, it's all about moderation and threading the needle between too much and too little, but if you can't make a decision without getting a sign off from six people, you stop wanting to make decisions. So there's there's somewhere in the middle, and so I do. I do think getting feedback and input is important, but only if you're going to be able to take it, and only if it's done when needed and not when not needed.
Dale:Man if we had 20 more minutes to discuss that. Yeah, I agree 100%. I very much disagreed with this sentiment when I heard it. But one of my good friends, he sold six businesses and he's been very successful. He's had hundreds of employees in certain businesses and he's very successful in terms of executing, getting stuff done and making stuff happen.
Dale:It may not always be in the best you know ways, but and his he said a dictatorship beats a democracy every day and for me, I'm like, well, short term, and now this or that or the other, but this, his sentiment is make the decision. You know, and he's very decisive and I think that you know speed, I've heard speed is the currency of business, you know, and a lot of times indecision is slow, where, when you have to counsel, when you have to engage too much with other people, I think that kills a lot of us. You know me included in different projects I'm in I have to. Really, I love collaboration. Naturally, I love it. I love collaborating and getting other people's perspectives, but I think I err too much on some of that when I was running my own stuff. I just make the decision and move on.
Marc:I mean, in a sense, the government that most people want is a benevolent dictatorship. The problem is there isn't a lot of benevolency in dictators, and so then you want, you want to say, and if your say isn't heard, then it feels like you really have a malevolent dictator. Oh, you asked me my opinion, but you're not doing it. That's worse than not asking an opinion.
Dale:Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, that's interesting. Well, I'm going to keep on thinking about that element. Too much or too much collaboration, a common complaint? Now, I can see that for sure. Mark, it's really great to have time with you.
Marc:Yeah, great, and I look forward to seeing you in Reno shortly.
Dale:Yes, yeah, we'll see you in a few weeks.
Marc:Yes, okay, thanks for taking the time, see you. Yeah, have a great afternoon. Okay, thank you.
