The Art of Scaling Up and Scaling Out

Megan Comfort, Small Business Manager at Nevada State Bank, sits down with Lisa Sutton Gunderson—Entrepreneur, Real Estate Investor, and Venture Capitalist—for an in-depth conversation about building and scaling businesses across multiple industries. Sutton Gunderson shares her journey from attorney to multi-business owner, starting with an alcohol-infused cupcake company that grew into a national brand, and later expanding into real estate, e-commerce, and shipping retail. She discusses lessons learned from partnerships, diversification, and selling a business, as well as the importance of mindset, outsourcing expertise, and leveraging social media as a powerful marketing tool. Sutton Gunderson also highlights her work with The Veteran Fund and her commitment to fostering community and collaboration among entrepreneurs nationwide. 

All price references and market forecasts correspond to the date of this recording. This podcast should not be copied, distributed, published or reproduced in whole or in part. The information contained in this podcast does not constitute research, recommendations, representations or warranties as to the accuracy or completeness of the statements of any information contained in this podcast and any liability from Zions Bancorporation, N.A or its divisions (including direct, indirect, or consequential loss or damage) is expressly disclaimed. The views expressed in this podcast may not be those of Zions Bancorporation, N.A. or any of its divisions. Zions Bancorporation, N.A. is not providing any financial, economic, legal, accounting or tax advice or recommendations in this podcast. In addition, the receipt of this podcast by any listener is not to be taken as constituting the giving of advice, investment or otherwise, by Zions Bancorporation, N.A. to that listener, nor to constitute such person a client of Zions Bancorporation, N.A. Copyright reserved by Zions Bancorporation, N.A. Nevada State Bank is a division of Zions Bancorporation, N.A. Member FDIC

Transcript

Hi I’m Megan Comfort, Small Business Manager at Nevada State Bank. And this is a podcast where we interview business leaders and business owners in the state of Nevada and get their best practices and things that they've picked up along the way running a business here in our great state.(...) So with that, I want to say thank you so much to our next guest. Her name is Lisa Sutton Gunderson. She has had many different roles actually, starting from an attorney and being in the real estate business to then venturing off into her own entrepreneurial realm and starting a cupcake business,

(...)

then eventually kind of moving into the mailbox industry and then realizing somewhere along the way, which we'll hear more of, that she wanted to actually create a community of support for other business owners or individuals wanting to go into business for themselves. And so she's working on that and scaling that and kind of creating such a cool community throughout the nation.(...) On top of that, she was also a former Miss Nevada. So I am very appreciative of having her here today. Thank you, Lisa. Thank you, thank you so much for having me. So we always start these podcasts off by hearing in your own words a little bit about your origin story. So tell us how you decided to go from, honestly, a professional job where you can make a great living being an attorney to venturing off and wanting to do something for yourself.(...) Well, so I was working at the firm and we were doing business litigation and business bankruptcy and it was a great job. I really enjoyed the work I did. I enjoyed the people that I worked with. While I was there, started my first venture and that was just an accidental,

(...)

basically phone conversation that turned into a company.(...) I was working at the firm and I was catching up with a girlfriend of mine and she told me she had been making these alcohol cupcakes and I'm like, "That is a genius idea. That's such a great idea. You should move to Vegas and I'll help you start the company." And so she did and so she moved from Florida to Las Vegas(...) and we started the company together. I still kept my day job at the time because businesses are expensive and startup money,

(...)

that's what it requires, right? So I basically just used my high paying W-2 job to fund the company while it was getting off the ground(...) and then we eventually reached a point where the revenue was well in excess of my salary and you just have to kind of look at the journey and say, "Okay, well, what's next?" And realizing, at least for me, that even though I did have a high paying W-2 job, at the end of the day, the salary was still a cap for me and with entrepreneurship and running your own business,(...) the revenue is exponential. So that was my first kind of taste and lesson of, "Wow, I can have my own company as long as I team up with an operations partner." And so I kept replicating that model across various industries to today. I love that you talk about teaming up with an operational person. So you obviously kind of understood once you started seeing this business grow, you're like, "I can't be the person that does everything." So tell me a little bit about how that partnership worked. Did you guys have a discussion around who is gonna be doing what and at what point on scaling that business, did you have brick and mortars? Were you just doing crazy amount of events? What did that look like for you as far as growth?

(...)

So again, kept my day job for the first 18 months, almost two years, that the cupcake business was alive because you have to fund it. So that was part of my roles and responsibilities was I funded the company. And so during the kind of daytime working hours, like Monday through Friday, while I was working my day job at the firm, my co-founder was baking, running deliveries, setting up events, and then at nights, nights and weekends, I was also helping her.(...) So I was working seven days a week between my day job and the business, but it was so much fun and we just had a blast doing it. Did you learn anything like just being an attorney and kind of doing, it sounds like litigation and things like that, that you applied in setting up your businesses or kind of going forward that you take with you? Of course, yeah. There was just so much to learn

(...)

not only from the business side of things and just kind of the scenarios that you would see walking through the door.

(...)

I met a lot of smart people who were in bad financial situations,

(...)

filing business BKs and that sort of thing. When you were a reverse engineer, how did you get here? What happened?(...) Sometimes it's a bad operating agreement or lack of one or just in attention to what is gonna be required of just even having a conversation of roles and responsibilities.

(...)

If you don't have that conversation

(...)

and miscommunication occurs, then you have issues where on the back end, people are pointing fingers at each other and they're saying, "Hey, I'm pulling my weight, "but you're not, that's what it feels like."

(...)

I just realized through seeing all of that that I wanna make sure I set up my subsequent business partnerships

(...)

study upfront in relation to who's doing what, let's have a conversation about it and make sure it's in writing.(...) Yeah, that's something that I've noticed interviewing many different business owners and even being in the role that I'm in where I get to talk to so many different business clients.(...) The ones that truly are successful or the partnerships that they put together, even when they end, it's such a nicer ending to something if you've actually had that discussion upfront. It's something that I think so many business owners that get into something, they sometimes forget to do those things or they just tell themselves stories like, "Hey, this person knows me. "I've known them for a long time. "We have an understanding of what this is gonna look like "and how this is expected to play out." And they never really wanna memorialize it in a document. So they always look at those things as more of a chore that they have to do or something that's optional. And I try to really advocate for, no, if you have a partner, please do it while you guys are happy, not when it's falling apart and now you actually have to figure out how to play in the sandbox together. Then it's in dispute over who's doing what. Yeah, so the fact that you already have that experience and looking into that, that's really cool. So tell me about that cupcake business then. So it kind of grew to the point where when did you start, decide, I guess, after being in that business or maybe you guys, I don't know if you guys separated or how that ended,(...) that you decided to go into like mailbox business companies, like what you currently do today? Yeah, so yeah, we had the bakery business for 11 years and then we sold it to a national bakery brand.

(...)

So yeah, it was an incredible experience, so much fun. What did you learn in that? Like selling a business, yeah. Oh my gosh, so many different things.

(...)

With the bakery business,(...) one of the key things I realized just on the back end was that you get to a point where if you scale something, especially if you scale it past seven figures, you're pretty removed from the day to day. Like you're still overseeing things, you're still making the big decisions, but you're removed from day to day. So there was a period of time where I hadn't baked in like four years or something, which is better for everyone, because I'm not actually that good of a baker, but--(...) They notice, customers are like, hey, what's wrong with these? Like is everybody sick today because these don't taste that great, Lisa must have baked them. They sound like Lisa's cooking. Yeah, sounds like Lisa was baking.

(...)

So you get to a point where you scale, right? And you're hiring people who are better at the day to day than you are.(...) And then there's a point where you're just kind of like up and out of the business. Like that was always my goal, was to scale up and scale out. And then that frees up your time to turn your attention to other things. So I had a real estate brokerage that I still own,

(...)

real estate investments,(...) e-commerce brand, like all these different other businesses that I had partnered with people to start. And I realized that I just wasn't excited about the bakery anymore.(...) Both myself and my co-founder, we were so far removed from the day today, we would show up at like the big events and we'd help execute like the fun ones, like the Derek Jeter tournament or something, we'd like show up. But we were just so far removed from day to day and we just kind of realized like, there's just not another opportunity for us to, hey, like are we gonna buckle down and do this for another 10 years? No.

(...)

So what is that gonna look like if we exit?

(...)

So you guys kind of had a sit down at that point where you're like, hey, what do we wanna do with this business? What was it a conscious effort to actually look at selling it? Or was it like an unsolicited offer? Because that happens sometimes too. Yeah, it was actually kind of fell into our laps.

(...)

We didn't initially start the business and build it to sell it. That was never like in the back of our minds.

(...)

Again, probably just because it was our first business too. So we just didn't even think that far down the road.

(...)

And in 2020,

(...)

so we'd already had a relationship with this national bakery brand and they had a presence here. They still do. They have a presence here in Las Vegas, as well as of course nationwide. And the reason why we ended up working very closely together was they called me in 2020 because their retail store was getting closed down by MGM because of COVID.(...) So MGM leases, retail leases, they give you like a 60 day notice basically. And that's what happened to them. And they were freaking out and they were like, hey, what are you guys doing for production?

(...)

And we at the time had a processing facility right off the strip. And so I said, well, I was like, they've already told us that we're not essential. I said, but beg to differ. So what I did was I put in mini fridges into my shipping stores. And then we sold to ourselves(...) so that way we could run DoorDash and Grubhub out of the shipping stores. Nice. Yeah, so that way we were still open because then we weren't retail.

(...)

So I told them that and I said, you guys should be running DoorDash and Grubhub then. And they were like, we'd love to just stay afloat. They were like, we'd love to, but we don't have a place to produce because they were getting kicked out of their space. And I said, well, I said, if you guys want, just temporarily come produce at our facility when we're not producing. It's like we didn't work through the middle of the night, for example.

(...)

So we said, if you want, I mean, obviously we have everything set up, right? We have ovens, we have all this stuff. So I was like, if you want, just come produce there

(...)

when we're not in there. And then we'll just figure it out from there. And so that's basically what we did. And then fast forward several years later when Danielle and I were trying to figure out, hey, what do next steps look like for the company? Do we go back all in on this and focus our attention on this again? Or are we good on it?

(...)

That's when there was an opportunity to approach them and just say, hey,(...) what do you guys think? You guys have always joked about merging with us.(...) What does that look like? And so that was how that conversation started. Oh, wow, nice. So it was really just building connections within your own industry here to where the opportunity kind of presented itself. I love hearing about those stories because a lot of small businesses, they do start things off where it's, they start it because they want to make a living for themselves. They don't want to necessarily work for someone else. And they end up really being successful, which is fantastic, but not necessarily thinking about, in my opinion,(...) building value outside of it being value to you, right? Building value in your company to where it has proprietary processes and it has some structure to it to where you could potentially sell this and go through that due diligence period, right? When you sell a business and they're looking behind the curtain and trying to understand how you're operating it and what they're really buying, that you have something attractive enough to where you can do that. Because so many business owners, they don't have the diversification that you had. So that brings me to my next question about how did you realize that diversification was important? Or was that something that you just kind of stumbled upon?

(...)

Well, again, in just starting the cupcake business, I had that kind of light bulb moment where I realized, oh my gosh, I can have my own company as long as I team up with an operations partner.(...) So after that, every opportunity that I found interesting, I just immediately thought, well, who in my sphere of influence do I know that I could potentially team up with to actually execute this and like get this off the ground and get it going?

(...)

And so I just kept replicating that.

(...)

How did you find those operations people? Like you make it sound so easy, but in reality, like that is a very challenging thing to find good partners and the right partners for different businesses, but it seems like you're so, you're naturally apt to say, hey, I should be partnering with people that have a different skill set than me. So, I mean, obviously the litigation background that you have and kind of understanding how agreements are put together and how to put together a good agreement sounds very valuable, but how did you find those characteristics or those people?

(...)

Just again, like sphere of influence, right? So for example, with the ship stores,(...) I started those in 2018. And again, I was excited about the business model,(...) but I was like, I don't have the bandwidth to like be running a store by myself.

(...)

Who do I know that I can partner with to make my operations partner?

(...)

And with the ship stores, what I thought of was, hey, like what's our key differentiator? It's customer service. So I don't need to know someone who has a background of like working at the post office, right? Or working at a UPS store. I need someone who is gonna be really good at customer service and is gonna be able to like train other people in relation to good customer service.

(...)

And so a girlfriend of mine, Sarah,

(...)

actually her background's in teaching, but she realized she could make more money bartending on a strip. And so that's what she was doing at the time. And I remember that she had, as we were catching up like frequently,

(...)

I remember her telling me that she was just like kind of over it because she was working to the wee hours of the morning, dealing with drunk people on their credit cards. It was just working on holidays.(...) And I was like, oh my gosh, like maybe she might be interested in partnering with me on this. It's definitely not as like fun and fast paced and exciting as like bartending on the strip, but that's the point, right? It's open Monday through Saturday nine to six. Stability. It's closed on Sundays, closed on major holidays. Yeah, exactly.(...) And let's face it, right? If she can deal with like drunk guys in their credit cards, like she can easily deal with whatever's gonna come into the ship store, you know?

(...)

And so I approached her with it and I was like, hey, I'm gonna open up these mailbox stores.

(...)

Would you wanna partner with me on it? And help me get it going off the ground. We'll hire staff so it's not like you're there forever.(...) But help me get it going. And she said yes.(...) And so that's like seven years. That is so cool. I love the bartending kind of job, the aspect of it or the way that you look at it. Honestly, every job that I can think of, even with Steve Wynn when he was hiring his dealers, I heard, and this is just like through the rumor mill, that he said, I don't necessarily need someone that is a great dealer. I need someone that can talk to clients and can get them staying at the table and have a good time. So client experience and that customer service, to me, just seems like if you have that, that personality that can do that and can figure out how to make somebody happy and just brighten up their day. And even if it's at the post office, if it's at the bank, right? Just being able to do something like that for someone, it kind of changes the trajectory of how they feel about the day and then also how they feel about your business and they continuously come back just for that experience. Like, it's not something that you should underestimate. So it sounds like she was your operations person, didn't necessarily have direct knowledge in operations. So how did you guys put together maybe those processes to make it like a consistent repeatable process? Cause that's typically how you scale something. So I didn't know anything about running a shipping retail store either, right?

(...)

So what I did was I went up the street from my house in Summerlin at the time to Postal Pro's, which is at like Desert Foothills in Charleston.

(...)

And, cause I was just a patron of the store. And so I knew the owner, Andrew, and I said, "Hey, do you want to expand?" And he was like, "No." And I was like, "Well, I think I'm gonna open up one of these down near like Russell on 215. So it's far enough away, it's not competition.

(...)

I don't know anything about running a shipping retail store. I'll pay you $10,000 if you let me follow you around for two weeks and I'll capture all your processes and like create a handbook for you." And he was like, "Really?" He was like, "Okay." And so that's what we did. That was easy, yes. Yeah, so that's what we did. Wow, so what did you learn through that two week process? Were there like light bulbs that went off or like things that you were like, "Oh, wait a minute, that's gonna be a challenge for me." Or, "I wouldn't expect that to actually be something that I would have to even think about." Yeah, so it literally,(...) like when we got started, like the first thing he did was unlock the front door, right? So that's like the first thing in how to open for the day. It's literally like-- You're like checklist, unlock. Unlock the front door. Yeah, it sounds like so silly, but again, if you're building a solid SOP for other people to follow, you have to literally just make it dummy proof, right? Make it foolproof.(...) So it's literally open the front door and then it was unlock the folding gate. And then it was, you know what I mean? Like so it was just step by step, literally what you have to do. And so I just essentially like created SOPs based off how he runs the store and then tweaked them for my store. So just little things like his counters were at like a kind of like a kitchen counter height. So they were a good height if you were seated on a stool, but every time a customer walks in, you stand up to greet them, right? And if you're dealing with packages and stuff, you're standing up. And so even when you're running the register, you're still standing.

(...)

So just little things like I brought up my counter height so that they were more at like a waist level because you're gonna be standing the entire time you're interacting. So just little things like that that I tweaked,

(...)

but that was really it. It was just more of like, okay, I need a crash course and how the stores actually run. What's the software that's used? What are the processes, right? What's processes for mail sorting? What's the processes to open up a mailbox for a new customer?(...) What's the phone script for when packages are received or whatever it is, right? It's just literally like the nuances of running the day to day.

(...)

Just captured all those processes and then turned them into all, into like how tos to how to run the store. So you mentioned that you really liked the business model. What about a mailbox store kind of attracted you to say, okay, this is a business that I want to get behind and actually start doing too.(...) So in 2018, I'd had a real estate exit. And so I was looking at maybe buying a UPS franchise. And at the time it was gonna be about $250,000 for just the franchise fee for the territory. That's not your build out. That's not your lease. That's not your startup costs. It's not anything else. And I was talking to a friend of mine who has three UPS stores in San Diego. And I said, tell me about this business model. And he was like, the mailboxes are the steady recurring revenue. That's what keeps the lights on. That's a piece of stuff. And at the time I actually had a mailbox that I was renting from a local UPS store for like seven years or something, right? And so I would get the email to auto renew the box every summer and they would auto charge my credit card. And I would get the email and I was like, oh, like I should probably cancel it. I never would. And so I was like, what is this business model? Like if I'm not canceling this, like other people are not canceling this.

(...)

And so when he said, hey, the mailboxes are like the steady recurring revenue, again, just looking at it from a real estate lens, like mailboxes are like mini storage units, right? It's this item you buy once and then you keep renting it out over and over. There's no like maintenance on it. There's no damage to it. There's no, you know, it's not like a rental house.

(...)

And I was like, love that. That's great. And so my friend Greg, he was saying that if you called any of his stores right now and said, hey, I want to rent a box. He said, I don't even have one to give you because I'm maxed out. And I was like, well, that's great. Can you just put in more mailboxes? And he was like, no, because I'm a franchise. And they dictate my layout. You know, there's certain things like I just, I just can't put in more mailboxes if I want to. So I thought that was really interesting. And so as an independent store, what's nice is(...) obviously you do the layout however you want. And then you can still service all the major carriers. You can service UPS, FedEx, postal service, DHL if you want.

(...)

But then you aren't paying royalty fees to anybody. You don't have mandatory marking fees. You don't have franchise fees.

(...)

So that's when I decided I wanted to go independent. Yeah, quarter of a million in just a franchise fee alone. I mean, I understand the power of a brand. That's a lot of times why people do open up franchises, right? Because it is a successful or proven concept. So the likelihood that there will be success, I understand the concept behind that and getting behind a franchise. I love when I see independent small businesses. I just, I don't know, there's something about that. And you get to put your own little twist and flair on it. It's just really cool. It's scarier because you don't have like this, I don't know, perceived support or backing of like this large corporation or brand that's already recognizable. But to me, it just seems, I don't know, more fun and kind of like an interesting flair to it. So when you started the mailbox business, at what point did you, a light bulb go off and say, you know what, I could actually create curriculum and start teaching other people how to do this because this is a very rewarding industry and business to actually operate if you're wanting to open up your own business.(...) So two years ago now, I was just talking about the mailbox business on like various podcasts or on social media and for whatever reason, it just resonated with people. They were just so intrigued and like curious about the business and I started getting DMs from people or they would like find me on the internet and send me an email or a cold DM.

(...)

And they said, hey, you know, I heard you on so and so podcasts talking about your mailbox stores. I wanna open up a store in San Diego or wherever they lived. And so I was getting these one off emails

(...)

and I was answering these one off emails. And then it got like inundating and I was just like, oh my gosh, how am I gonna do this? And I had a friend who was like, hey, like you should like create a curriculum around it, like put it on a platform so it's like one to many. And I fought it for a while because I was like, no, no, no, like I make my money from real business. You know, I was just like, I'm not like a course, I'm not gonna be a consultant. Yeah, I'm not like a course person, you know.

(...)

And so essentially I ended up creating this like program where you have access to all my SOPs, you have these modules that I put on to a course platform,(...) all using the same stuff that we literally use in our stores today. And then we created a community around it where we have like a private Facebook group for it. And I host a weekly call with the community. And now two years in, it's so crazy. We have over a hundred, it's like 107 now, we have over a hundred stores nationwide that have been opened by someone in our student community, either open from scratch or acquired. Oh my God, silent clap. I know, it's so awesome. That's really amazing. What I find so unique about that is just the community aspect of, one thing that business owners sometimes struggle with is how much information is too much information to divulge to someone that they perceive as like a competitor or in the same business to where maybe they might take that information. And there's almost like this, keep your stuff close to your chest type of mentality a little bit in certain industries or among business owners.

(...)

And I love how you've actually allowed a community to flourish by sharing all of that stuff, which isn't normal, like that's not something that I've seen actually ever. So it's very unique.

(...)

What, how has that really helped foster like growth or success for all of those other operators that you've helped? I think it's just having an abundance mentality. And also, with this particular business model as well, I mean, you serve a very hyper local community. You serve the folks that live right around your store.

(...)

And I find, certainly like,(...) I just think there's kind of strength in numbers where,

(...)

we all have an opportunity to increase the revenue in each of our stores because of the information that's being shared through the group, right? So folks are sharing what works for them on marketing side or what doesn't work. Folks are sharing, you know, how they're finding great employees or you know, whatever best practices are.(...) And it's incredibly helpful because then you can implement it in your store and your store is also winning.(...) Tell me a little bit about the curriculum that you kind of developed because you touched on this the first time I met you and I just thought it was so fascinating how you start actually with like your mindset.

(...)

And for someone going into business and just thinking, oh, I just need the capital and then just open it up and kind of figure it out along the way.

(...)

But understanding like, the level of resilience, consistency and all the things that you actually have to kind of mentally prepare for, if you will, when you go into business ownership is very different. And sometimes people have a hard time adjusting to that and they've already delved out all the money and done everything. So can you share a little bit about how you developed it, really from the foundation of like internally yourself, your own mindset going into now, if you still wanna do it, this is what it's gonna take.

(...)

Well, when I first started the materials, initially the first module just jumped right into deciding what business entity you wanna utilize, is it an LLC, is it a corporation, whatever, and it just kind of jumps right into it. And I had hired a course consultant to help me because I definitely am a believer in paying for knowledge that you don't have.

(...)

And so I hired a course consultant to just kind of like help me get it together and give me a finalized product. And she was like, hey, she was like, not everyone's like you. She was like, I highly recommend having the first module actually be around the mindset. And I was like, well, what do you mean? And she was like,(...) you already have the mindset, so it's like no brainer to you. She was like, not everyone does or recognizes that they have it. She was like, so you should like explain that. You should explain like what kind of mindset it takes to be successful, what kind of mindset it takes to like be in business.

(...)

And I was like, hmm, like there's a part of me and maybe it's just from my background, right? Like I'm generally not a big fan of like, like, you know, just like ideas or theories, right? Like I love like highly relatable execution type of material.(...) And so I thought about it and I said, okay, but what she's saying makes sense. So how do I communicate that in an effective way? And you're exactly right. So the first module is really in relation to,

(...)

you know, just thinking bigger, right? Like, why are you looking at this in the first place? And like really what is it that you're trying to build? Why are you trying to build it? Drilling down on the why, because the why is what's going to keep it going on the days that it gets tough.

(...)

And just also kind of embracing the fact that like, you deserve to be here. You deserve to be starting this. So like embrace that and then jump into it and execute.

(...)

I love that you start with the mindset thing. It's funny because I also agree. I'm like, oh, that's, I wouldn't think to start there, but then I realized how valuable and important it is for people that maybe wouldn't ever consider owning their own business, but it's always been a dream for them. And so they eventually get to a point where I think COVID did this actually for a lot of people where they lost that cushy job, right? They lost that W2 like steady job that they honestly weren't in love with, but it was consistent and it was safe. And so they had to pivot and determine what they wanted to do and they wanted to have more control over that. And so the mindset thing is to me, such a foundation. It's interesting when you actually think about it. And I had a light bulb go off when you actually said it to me the first time that we spoke where I was like, wow, I wouldn't think to actually start there, but that makes complete sense. I even do that now with my employees in my husband's businesses where I want to make sure that they have the right mindset, understanding that they're working for a small business and what that means, right? Like you want to give your employees as much structure as you possibly can and direction, but oftentimes in a small business, you wear so many different hats and you kind of need to be fluid and pivot. And it might be out of your like job description, depending on how small that business is, that you just need to take care of something that maybe you wouldn't otherwise take care of. Right.(...) What about the employee aspect of things? Just because being in a business like that, I'm assuming that the goal sometimes is to maybe have more than one or scale. Maybe some people are just like, no, I just want one. But as you continue to grow, you need more employees to be able to foster that growth and reliable employees. So how do you, do you have a special interviewing process or like a process around that?(...) So one of the things I love about the business model is that you really can have as little as one person at a time on shift, unlike all the other businesses I have.(...) So that's really nice.

(...)

And then, yeah, we basically do kind of a two part interview process and really like there are kind of two buckets I love hiring from. One is military spouses. We have a location up by the base and military spouses are just so great. They're just so great. So I love hiring from that bucket. And then also I love hiring folks who actually have food service background.

(...)

Again, because they are resourceful, quick on their feet. They have dealt with someone who's just totally upset about their food order. And really it's not a big deal, right? And so as a result, they absolutely are equipped to handle anyone who walks in and maybe they're upset that UPS lost their package. Not us, but the carrier lost their package, right?(...) They're able to talk them down, you know? And that's important. That's what we need in the store. Yeah. Do you typically see it being highly competitive on wages and what you have to kind of pay those employees to actually be in a role like that? Or is it fairly easy? Is it more part time kind of individuals? Yeah, exactly. So basically you can stack your store with like two or three part timers and just kind of split up the hours that way. And so it works great for those military spouses who have to pick up their kiddos in the afternoon, right? So they drop off their kid on the way in, open the store, and they're out by one or two.

(...)

And then same thing, we have like one of our other stores. We have some girls who they still kept like hosting jobs and stuff like that. So they're like, great. So if they work late into the night, they don't come in until like their ship starts at noon with us and they're out by six. So it's super flexible and easy.

(...)

And on the wage side, we keep it competitive with like general retail stores. So if you look at like what the UPS store offers or just somewhere in there,(...) we keep it competitive with that and people love it because it's a generally like easy enough job. Yeah, easy, flexible, and decent pay that's competitive, which I mean, where can you go wrong with that?(...) You talked about really kind of you trust consultants or just people that are experts in their field.

(...)

Tell me a little bit more about that, specifically with maybe other aspects of running a business like finance or accounting or all of those. Is that something that you have specialty in and you take on or is that something that you outsource as well?

(...)

Yes, definitely pay for good accountants, good tax preparer, good EA.

(...)

Those are all things that like technically, like could you do them yourself? Probably.

(...)

I just think it's so valuable in paying someone who already has expertise in it because one, it's efficient. Two,(...) if someone else is putting their name on it, then like there shouldn't be any mistakes. And so as a result, if there is anything, then like you have someone who's accountable for it.

(...)

I just think that's so important with those types of filings and just making sure everything's right.

(...)

There's so much to worry about on the operational side. So why try to figure it out yourself, right?(...) And Google ads is a perfect example.

(...)

In my first business with the bakery,

(...)

I tried to learn Google ads, right? Because I was like, oh, like how hard can they be? And all it ended up doing was just wasting hundreds and thousands of dollars of testing and trying different things. And then meanwhile, all we had to do was hire someone who specializes in doing Google ads. And then guess what? We were getting customers from Google ads and we were paying not very much for them. So that was just such a valuable lesson for me that like literally ever since then, like we've always just hired a Google ads consultant and paid them because are we capable of figuring it out? Probably, I'm sure there's enough YouTube videos out there that like I could figure it out, right? But am I gonna be the best at it? No. Am I gonna be even like top tier at it? No. And like, it just makes sense to hire someone who has more expertise than you to do it right. Like I feel like I'm going to school right now because I'm going through that right now with one of my businesses where we're trying to learn how to do the ad buying specifically on Google. And we are also students of YouTube University trying to understand and figure out how to do that because we're like, how hard can it really be? Come to find out it's pretty challenging to actually understand and do and make sure that your dollars are going in the right area. So I completely agree with you there. I guess that's the hard part about running a business is understanding like, when do you actually say, you know what, I need to just outsource and find an expert for this because yes, it might initially feel expensive, but it's gonna save me so much time and money in the long run versus no, this is something that I really should try to take on. Do you have any type of recipe or like rule for that on how you look at it?

(...)

My advice is that really every business owner should be focused on selling their business. No one is gonna sell your business to new customers better than you can.

(...)

They just won't, they just can't. And so what are you doing to be selling the business and bringing in new business? What are you doing to drive that forward? Is it social, you know, is it being visible on social media? Is it attending events? Is it being out and about in the community?(...) What is it?(...) It's definitely not sitting at your laptop trying to figure out Google ads.

(...)

Yeah, I agree with you there. I mean, you bring up social media too. That's a topic that I think is really either uncomfortable or something that is foreign to a lot of businesses, especially businesses that have been around for a long time and maybe haven't necessarily had to put themselves out there and actually try to do any of the social media stuff.(...) What, I guess, when did you decide to actually take your business ideas and kind of your understanding of what you're doing and sharing it across the podcast platforms and things? Because it sounded like it ended up venturing into a completely different part of your business that you now have, which is that community. But what made the decision behind that, by doing that? So with social, so Facebook came out when I was in college. So I had a Facebook account like everyone else, you know, with the .edu email address.

(...)

I never did MySpace, but I did Facebook when it first came out and added all my friends on there and you just had your friends on Facebook.

(...)

Then Instagram came out and by then I was in law school and I was also, I modeled during school too. So I was modeling and Instagram was a place where people were obviously sharing photos, so it was static photos. But I realized that even the agency is like, they wanted to know what your Instagram handle was because they wanted to see past work or whatever it was. And I realized just really quickly, social media is a marketing tool.

(...)

So then I immediately created a public Facebook page because I had a private one for my friends or that I had started in college.

(...)

Immediately created a public Facebook page because I was like, wait, this is a marketing tool. And it literally just grew from there.

(...)

I think maybe that's the mindset piece that especially business owners need to realize. Social media is a free marketing tool that you can use that you have total control over the content, right? You have a lot of people out there that are like, oh, well, I'm very private, so I don't wanna post anything on social media. So don't, like don't post anything that's-- Don't post the family. Yeah, don't post the family. Don't post private stuff, right?

(...)

You could totally document what you're doing in business. You can,(...) if you look at it as documenting versus like content creation, if you just share literally what you're doing in the day or how you're helping a customer or whatever it is, that is content.

(...)

And again, that's the beauty of social media is that you have total control over what is actually posted. So you can completely decide how much is shared or what is shared. And I think if used correctly, it absolutely is one of the best lead gen tools out there because 100% hands down my social media platforms bring us business in real estate, shipping,(...) in the VC fund, everything. It literally is a great lead gen tool for all the businesses that I have. Yeah, I never thought I would see real estate listings on Facebook Marketplace, but here we are. And I've been told that it actually works really well. There's like 92 cheap old houses that I wanna buy on an Instagram account that I actually follow where me and my husband have almost executed on a couple of those. I'm like, "Oh, hi-oh, do we know where that is? Like let's do that." But it is, it's a very powerful tool. I love that you talk about it more as like a documenting thing rather than a content thing. Because I do think that people get hung up on, "Oh my God, how am I putting myself out there?" And I'm embarrassed and I'm not good at speaking to a camera or speaking in public, but I focus more on and just like my husband, we do both do quite a bit of content. And it's more about, I love what I do. I love how much I learn from other people. I love sharing what we're learning and what we're doing. And if I mess up on a video and it's embarrassing for about two seconds, like it's not the end of the world. It's just, we're sharing things that we think are exciting and fun in business that a light bulb might go off for another person. And that's what's so cool about social media and what it can actually do. If you look at it as a tool, it's very hard to separate yourself from, "This is actually a tool that I wanna use." Versus like, "Oh, I'm falling down the rabbit hole of like doom scrolling or like doing something very negative and I've lost like an hour of my time when I was just supposed to go on there and like post something really quick or like comment on something.(...) And so I think that's probably the difficult part about it for a lot of people is having the discipline to actually leverage it in the format that you leveraged it in, which is really cool. Yeah, it's been such a powerful transformative tool literally for all the businesses.

(...)

And I just think there's something really special about the power of its reach.

(...)

I definitely like, I have people in my life that like I wouldn't have met them if it wasn't for the fact that there was some sort of social media interaction that led to meeting at a conference or some sort of like business interaction where now you've got them in person and it's become a thing.(...) And really, it's how the world works now in relation to validation of social proof of deciding whether that business is legitimate, whether that person actually knows what they're talking about, whatever it is, it is a place that people will look to to say, hey, like, can I find this person on social media? And what does our content look like? Is it congruent with what I think or what the initial solicitation was or what the initial interaction was?(...) And I think more often than not, people are a bit suspicious that they can't find someone on social

(...)

just because that's how the world is now. It is a form of currency almost,(...) from the perspective of your expertise or your understanding of something or what you're doing. So I would agree with you there. I could see how,(...) I've noticed that when I hire people, I do immediately try to find them on something, right? Like on the internet, period. Like, are they there? How have they shown up on the internet so that I have an understanding of that? There have been numerous stories, even like small businesses, that don't do any checks on employees. And it's like, man, one Google could have showed you that that person was probably not the best fit for your business per se, because they had some things that were out there that maybe you wouldn't necessarily want in your business.(...) And so just kind of doing some of those checks, how much that can actually do for you if you just do one quick search on somebody. Yes, yeah, exactly.(...) Let's go back really quick to the community aspect, because I love that you talked about doing a weekly call with that community, and just the idea of sharing across(...) that many different people in a similar industry.(...) What are some of the things that they're talking about, I guess right now in this current stage of the economy with it somewhat being a little bit uncertain and slow? Is that kind of a source of support that people are talking about and how they're kind of dealing with certain challenges? Yeah, it's a huge source of support. And also just a place where, yeah, if folks are like, hey, I've had a really slow month today, what are other people seeing? And whether it's people being like, yeah, same here, or if they're like, no, but here's what we did, right? Or, hey, we had an uptick in U-Hauls, or whatever it was. And so people are kind of jumping in and sharing what's going on with them.

(...)

It's incredibly helpful. Like I think that's arguably one of the best additions that we made to the program,

(...)

simply because it not only provides in real time that kind of feedback that people are looking for, but it also provides motivation for people who are maybe just starting their search of like looking for location criteria, or like they're just getting started,

(...)

because everyone's in kind of different stages in the journey.

(...)

It's really helpful for them to hear from other student store owners who are like in the trenches right now.(...) Yeah, I could see, I mean, I almost feel like that's something that small business owners should do regularly, is like find people. It's so hard to go physically to a place. I've seen a lot of that with other organizations, and I think it's so cool when you can actually get together physically and be able to have conversations about what's going on and what you've learned and talk to other business owners. I mean, I know just in my regular job, how much I've learned just naturally talking to people and getting fired up over ideas and things that I've had a discussion with someone, and I'm like, oh my God, that's such a great idea. Like I love how they view that thing,(...) and it's so hard to do in person. So the virtual aspect is kind of, I wouldn't say a new concept, but it's something I think post COVID, people are definitely getting more used to, and seeing the value in that because they don't have to leave or go anywhere. It's like you can have that meeting, have that call, get that information, and you didn't lose like an extra two hours out of your day traveling or doing whatever to get to a destination. Yeah, exactly. And a lot of our student store owners, they do it from the store. So again, it just makes it really convenient, really easy. And we record all of our sessions, so that way they're always available for people who either miss it, they came in late or had to leave earlier, whatever.(...) And we will do like a breakdown of kind of topics that were covered during that, so that way people can just quickly find what they're looking for.(...) Wow, is it searchable? Like could they actually go in and-- Within the community. Oh wow, that's even cooler. Because then you could just be like, I'm looking for this, and like go to that video and be able to see it. Yeah, we're talking Google ads, right? Then like they can search that. I need to join that community and search Google ads. So this is actually one of my last questions for you, but what would you say is a guiding principle that you have either in business or in life that you would like to share with our listeners? There's a quote that my parents have told me since I was young, and it's rang true in every part of my life. Hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard.

(...)

Oh my God, I love that. It's similar to what I say. I say talent, consistency trumps talent 100% of the time. So very similar. Your parents are smart people, and so are you. Thank you so much, Lisa, for being on the podcast today. If you haven't subscribed to Through the Door, the insider's perspective on running a business, please do so. We are available on nsbank.com slash podcast, or anywhere where you listen to podcasts. So don't forget to subscribe.