3: Twas the Night Before Christmas: A Break-In, Resilience, and the Reality of Small Business Ownership

In this episode of Small Business, Big Life: Inside Fort Orange General Store, Joe Slichko and Erica Cubello share one of the most difficult stories they’ve faced as small business owners—one they didn’t know if they were ready to tell.

On Christmas morning, just minutes after midnight, Fort Orange General Store was broken into. What followed was a surreal, emotional, and exhausting chain of events that unfolded while their four kids slept upstairs waiting for Santa.

Joe and Erica walk listeners through the night in real time: discovering the alarm alert, watching the break-in footage, calling 911, coordinating with police, and heading to the store in the snow while the rest of the city slept. They share what it felt like to see their business—something they’ve poured their hearts into—violated, and how quickly they had to shift into problem-solving mode despite exhaustion and shock.

The episode explores:

• What happens when the unexpected hits during peak retail season
• How small business owners respond in crisis mode
• The emotional impact of a break-in beyond the financial loss
• Navigating gratitude, anger, empathy, and resilience all at once
• Deciding what to share publicly—and what to keep private
• Talking to children about hard things without taking away joy

Joe and Erica also reflect on the ripple effect events like this have—not just on business owners, but on families, landlords, neighbors, and first responders. They discuss why they chose not to post about the incident publicly, how their community showed up behind the scenes, and what it means to carry compassion even when someone’s actions directly affect your livelihood.

Despite running on almost no sleep, they still found a way to protect Christmas morning for their kids—opening presents, creating joy, and holding space for both gratitude and grief in the same day.

This episode is an honest, vulnerable look at the realities of small business ownership, especially during the holidays. It’s about resilience, responsibility, emotional labor, and the moments no one prepares you for—but many business owners quietly face.

Keywords: small business podcast, retail entrepreneurship, Christmas break-in, business resilience, brick and mortar retail, family business, holiday stress small business, entrepreneurship reality, Fort Orange General Store, Albany NY small business

Transcript

Hello, and welcome to Small Business, Big Life inside Fort Orange General Store, where
 entrepreneurship meets marriage, kids, and controlled chaos.
 I'm Joe Slichko, and with me, as always, is my wife, business partner, and owner of Fort
 Orange General Store, Erica Cubello.
 Hey Joe, how are you today?
 I'm doing very well today, how are you?
 I'm pretty good, thanks.
 In today's episode, we are going to discuss the highs and the lows of Small Business
 Ownership, or, as Erica and I were calling it earlier today, twas the night before Christmas.
 Twas the night before Christmas.
 But before we get into that, as always, don't forget to please like or subscribe wherever
 you listen.
 It really helps us grow the show, reach more people, and make sure you all care about what
 we have to say.
 Now we are kind of winging it with this one this week, something happened that we're going
 to talk about, and this is really the first time we're kind of processing it all from
 start to finish aside from being right in it.
 So bear with us.
 It's very emotional, and it might hit us differently when we're talking about it, because it is like
 Joe said the first time that both of us are dissecting it verbally with each other.
 We've gone through the motions of living through it, but now like to go back and talk about
 it is a different thing.
 And it's taken us a little bit to decide whether or not we should talk about it or not.
 But like Joe said, we feel like we owe it to everybody to be transparent and honest.
 So here we go.
 Buckle up, right?
 As they say.
 Buckle up, buttercup.
 So we're going to set the stage.
 It is Christmas Eve.
 Mm-hmm.
 Very fun one.
 It was a great Christmas Eve.
 We hosted here at the house.
 We had the whole family over.
 All the kids were here, which is great, and not always the case, because of our diverse situations,
 as we will call them.
 But it was great.
 And we had a great time, and just lots of fun, lots of fun.
 We made it fun with the headbands, the decorations, and also celebrating my sister
 is extended 30th birthday with some fun, crazy hats.
 It was just, everybody was, everybody was very merry.
 Let's say that.
 And then everyone ended up leaving, you know, not too late by any means, but, you know,
 probably eat 30-ish somewhere around there if I'm remembering correctly.
 Yeah, 8.39 o'clock, because we have Santa coming, and the kids have to wind down, and
 we have to all be in bed and ready for him to show up.
 We can't be awake.
 Nobody can be awake.
 That's how it works.
 Right.
 Um, so family ended up leaving eventually, and we got all four kids up in bed, and eventually
 they all fell asleep.
 Mm-hmm.
 Despite all the excitement, everybody was asleep, including myself.
 So, I wake up, and it is about 12.45 a.m.
 Yep, Santa had just come, and thankfully, um, all went well.
 We'll just leave that there.
 Yep, we were all asleep, he could come.
 Yep.
 And then?
 And then I realized, like, I don't have my cell phone on me, so I had left it, and
 our youngest bed, uh, putting him to sleep, and I went back upstairs, retrieved it, came
 down, looked at it, and noticed that there was an alarm sounding at the store.
 Um, and I don't know if this is lucky or not, but it wasn't alarming with sound.
 It was just alerting, because I had the phone silenced, and it wasn't properly set up.
 So in the moment, I go into it, check the cameras, and I see that people had broken in to the
 store.
 They, um, kicked the window out, and came into the store, and it looked like we were being
 burglarized, in the moment, right?
 Yes, we did not know that it was not happening alive when we clicked on it, because of just
 waking up, or the fun that we had that dined, if you will, um, plus it was, you know, 12, 30,
 12, 45 in the morning, um, it was disorientating.
 It was very disorientating.
 So Joe, luckily, went into, you know, serious drive, and told me to get on the phone with 9-1-1.
 I did, and I kind of snapped into it, and was able to describe to the 9-1-1 responder
 what was happening, and what the people looked like, and was able to give a fairly accurate
 description of what was happening.
 But mind you, I still thought this was in the moment, so I'm, you know, trying to hold
 back tears, like, trying to keep my emotions in check, and get it all out there without
 being too lengthy, and getting them there, right, responding to it.
 So we get off the phone, and, um, Joe gets ready to go down to the store to meet the police,
 and, um, I had to snap into, like, business mode at 115 in the morning, you know, Christmas
 morning, and break out the laptop, get out in the cameras, figure out whatever Joe was
 going to need me to figure out in the moment, so we could deal with this quickly.
 Yep.
 So I'm driving down to the store at this point, what, 15 minutes away.
 Um, it's snowing, you know, beautiful Christmas snow to set the stage for Christmas morning, um,
 and I'm pretty much the only car, you know, on the road at this time for all the reasons
 we just mentioned, and I find myself a block and a half away from the store, and I'm sitting
 at a red light, and there's no cars around me, and I'm feeling ridiculous.
 Like I'm responding to a police call.
 So I say, I'm doing it, and I just drive through the red light again.
 There's nobody around.
 As soon as I go through the red light, a police car passes me on the left, and I'm like,
 oh my god, are you kidding me?
 Luckily they didn't stop me.
 Um, they were delivering a Christmas miracle for you.
 They were, I think, they were just coming from the store, actually, after I processed it
 all.
 So I get to the store and it's a scene, you know, it's something to walk into and see something
 that yours, your baby, and violated.
 So the two individuals that broke into the store picked up a brick and attempted to smash
 one of the glass panes and one of our two front doors in, um, amazingly, we have really
 good glass.
 Yeah, although the glass, you know, broke, it never actually gave way, and then I'm having
 to kick it in, and again, the glass never broke.
 The door frame holding the glass in was the thing that actually broke.
 Not that any of our listeners really care about that, but I just thought that was kind of
 cool.
 Um, so I get there, I go inside and the police are there, and I have to say the Albany Police
 Department were amazing.
 Even when we looked back before I got down there, but on camera, you can see them respond
 they came full force ready to go as soon as we called.
 That was insane to watch, because I saw that happen in real time.
 What we realized was the burglary happened at literally 12 on the dot Christmas morning.
 We didn't catch it until about 45, 50 minutes later.
 But by the time we called it in, I was already on the camera system watching things happen
 real time, and to see them respond and go and it was like, they were, they were on their
 game, like yelling, show yourself, flashlight, it's like, it was, it was like, you see in the
 movies, it was crazy, very strange.
 And so I get there, and they're there to meet me, and we start talking through everything,
 and they're showing me, I'm showing them, I open up the cameras for them, we download everything,
 we got thumb drives right there, so I was able to give that to them very quickly, and because
 of that, because we pulled up the cameras, they immediately got on their radios, got the
 description out, and I want to say within minutes, I heard through their radio chatter that
 they had one of the guys in custody already, which was awesome.
 So we decided that one of the police officers was going to stay there at the store because
 you know, it's unsecure at this point, and I was going to go with one of the other officers
 down to the station to fill out the report, identify the items that were stolen that they
 had just recovered and so on.
 So we do that, I go down to the south station, and again, they're just phenomenal.
 It's Christmas morning at this point.
 I feel horrible that I'm inconveniencing all these people and all they're doing is apologizing
 to me about what happened and how bad they feel for us, and I'm doing the same thing back
 to them, you know, and they were just great, but luckily they came out, they had the majority
 of our items right there, I was able to identify them, and pretty quickly I was out of there,
 go back to the store, then we had to wait for the emergency maintenance crew to come in
 and board up the door for us.
 That took them, you know, a little while to get there, understandably, it's Christmas
 morning.
 So kind of cleaned up the mess that was, noticed that some of the missing items were
 left in a garbage bag behind, so they weren't missing after all, which was really cool.
 Yeah, we got really lucky that not only they were able to capture both of, capture is the
 wrong word, but get into custody, find the two men that burglarized the store, but we're
 also probably going to get the majority of what was taken that night back.
 So in the long run, it's just a giant inconvenience for a lot of people.
 For many people, I mean, down to our landlord that has to take emergency calls, she had to pick
 up the phone at 1 o'clock in the morning when I called and she wasn't feeling well.
 And to our own kids, who, and our family, that we had to talk it through the next day and
 day after, like, this was a trickle effect.
 It wasn't just, you know, us, there are a lot of people that this was not okay for.
 Right.
 So I end up getting home at what, 330-ish, and it was about 330 in the morning somewhere
 around there, Eric and I are on the phone this whole time, either texting or talking, depending
 on where I was and what was around.
 But this gave us, you know, a little bit of time to, you know, I say fully recap what just
 happened, but not really fully because it's 330 in the morning and we're exhausted.
 I mean, mind you, we're coming off of the holiday season, we're pulling crazy hours, working
 non-stop, busy, busy, busy, which was amazing.
 We had an excellent season, but we're exhausted and we just hosted and cleaned up and, you know,
 we want to be ready for the kids in three hours when they wake up.
 So let's back up and talk about that for a second.
 So we have four kids ranging in age from 16 all the way down to three.
 So we had the conversation of what time is appropriate to wake up Christmas morning.
 And I think this is where I did one of my over-planning rituals and in all of our conversations,
 we agreed that we were going to hold off until about seven to seven-fifteen, which is when
 our youngest usually gets up anyway.
 Yes.
 So everyone agreed that that would be the time, but it would be contingent on when he woke
 up.
 So seven at the earliest.
 So if he's up before then, we're all sitting tight.
 But when he gets up after seven, we can all do it.
 One agrees to it.
 Everybody's happy.
 Well, you can imagine that Erica and I weren't waking right up at seven o'clock.
 We didn't get to bed until about 4.30, just from all the nerves and then closing our eyes
 and thinking about it all.
 It took us an hour to really fall asleep.
 So 4.30 we fall asleep, we're just out.
 And unbeknownst to us, our little one also, was exhausted.
 Wait a fun night, the night prior.
 He was birdying.
 So he, what was it, 8, 15, somewhere around there.
 I rolled over and I went, oh my god, it's after 8 o'clock.
 It was like, home alone, when they miss the flight, like we're hitting our alarm clocks.
 Because we have a schedule the next day, we have to meet the other families for the kids
 to have Christmas on the other side.
 So I think it was 806 that I looked at my clock and I was like, Joe, are you kidding me?
 And he's like, what?
 What?
 Oh my god.
 It was like the home alone morning.
 And so we scrambled to get up out of bed.
 Our youngest is still asleep.
 We had to go up and wake him up.
 We find out that the two middle boys are awake and being really, really good, distracting
 themselves and not waking anybody up.
 We have about 40 minutes to do Christmas, not even because you were to leave by 8, 45.
 Right.
 And we decided that we weren't going to say anything to the kids.
 It's Christmas morning.
 It's not appropriate.
 It's not the time.
 It's not their problem.
 We're not going to take anything away from the magic.
 So we had an awesome Christmas morning and 40 minutes, 45 minutes.
 It really was.
 Wasn't it?
 It was the best.
 It really was.
 Yeah, we had a lot of fun.
 And the kids had a great Christmas morning opening presents, playing with them and enjoying
 each other's company.
 Absolutely.
 So then we drop everybody off where they need to go.
 We get back and we have a couple hours to kill before we go to Erica's parents for Christmas
 day after new nish, late after dinner, right, Christmas dinner.
 And we're still riding the high of no sleep.
 I don't think the high is the right word.
 The adrenaline of no sleep and what actually happened.
 So we decide that we're going to go down to the store on our way and just make sure it's
 all cleaned up, make sure it's, you know, ready to open and do.
 We had an inventory.
 Yeah.
 As thorough of an inventory as we could, given where the men were.
 What we could see on the camera is like, we had a pretty good idea of where they went
 because it literally took 45 seconds.
 It was less than a minute that they kicked through the door, took the things and left.
 And so watching the videos, we knew, okay, one went this way, one went that way.
 So then we just kind of counted that area.
 It took us like an hour and a half to go down in the store and do the inventory of what
 we thought got taken.
 But, you know, luckily we were able to have that time that day to do that, that we weren't
 hosting, that our children were safe with their other families and we were able to go down
 to the store and fix it.
 Absolutely.
 And then we had a decision to make of what do we say to the family?
 Do we say anything?
 It is Christmas, but it's weighing on us.
 How do we have that conversation?
 So we talked about it in the car and like everything in life, then we just got there and it just
 started happening.
 So we kind of made a joke about it because my sister and her husband had come in the
 night prior and said, we have big news and it's like, you can't say that without thinking
 about somebody's pregnant and they were not.
 It was something, I don't even remember what it was, but it wasn't that, but we thought
 it was funny.
 So we made a joke about it.
 The Christmas song.
 Oh.
 The holiday song, excuse me.
 Yes, they love writing little parodies, tunes, whatever you call it.
 And they had written one for a blend of Christmas and Hanukkah because my brother-in-law is Jewish,
 my sister is Catholic, converted to Judaism.
 So we always celebrate both.
 We do a little bit of both.
 And they were so excited to say that they had written a new Christmas Hanukkah song and
 that was their big news.
 So we went into Christmas day as a joke on a little spoof on what they did.
 We have big news, which was we got robbed.
 I said, I spent the night at the South Station.
 It's how we led with it.
 So yeah, we told the story, probably two, three times in a row.
 Yeah, that sucks.
 And then, yeah.
 It was not fun.
 Yeah.
 I didn't want to say it again.
 Right.
 I tried to avoid any further talk.
 I said it and moved on.
 But again, you know, everybody was upset and concerned, but we wanted to keep it very light
 because there are so many worse things that could have happened.
 We got lucky in it all, right?
 We, nothing, nobody got hurt.
 It was a window when it comes down to it.
 We're getting all of our stuff back.
 And the people who helped us were incredible.
 It could have been so much worse.
 We were very lucky.
 They're absolutely right.
 And I don't know if this is the point to say it, but I'm going to.
 Um, even the two men, I mean, there's a reason why I'm Christmas day because it was at midnight,
 you know, something brings you to do something like this and then be picked up not too far away
 with no place to go.
 So I'm not condoning what they did by any means, but there's obviously a reason for it in their
 own lives and something they're struggling with and I feel for that too.
 And that makes me sad at the same time.
 So it's a lot of emotions and, you know, being pulled in different ways because I'm angry.
 I'm angry that it happened.
 I'm angry that of all the things that could have happened, you know, what would have happened
 if the kids woke up and I wasn't back yet.
 You know, all the things that you can play it out in your head, um, but at the same time,
 your heart goes out too because these are members of our community that made a really poor decision
 that directly affected us and a ton of other people, obviously, it happened for a reason
 for them.
 So, you know, I feel for them and I hope that whatever happens as this whole thing plays
 out for them, there is help for them and whatever help that is, you know, that they need, they're
 able to get.
 Yeah, I agree with that.
 It's funny you say anger as your emotion because I never felt angry in it all, which is
 very straight and there was never a point that I was angry.
 It was more like disconnection I felt like, um, it was hard for you to go back to the store.
 I didn't want to go, I didn't want to be there and walking in there, I just felt extremely
 detached, which this is, it was an emotion I hadn't felt in a long time because this is
 my baby.
 I love this.
 This is what excites me.
 It inspires me, it ignites me like all my creative juices and activity happens here.
 It's where I go to become revitalized and re-energized and walking through those
 doors.
 It was like, I feel nothing right now.
 I don't want to be here.
 And it took me a really long time, um, well, okay, like two weeks, right?
 Two weeks after this very exciting, very joyous, amazing season.
 And then to have that happen, I didn't go into the store for a while and that's not me.
 Like, I want to be there every day, I don't, it's not work for me, it's what I love.
 So it took, it took a while for me to get back into it.
 But I agree that, um, you know, the holidays are a beautiful time, but they're also a really
 hard time for a lot of people and, um, you know, the worst of people can come out in the holidays.
 And I'm sure that, like Joe said, they were struggling and this might have been their way to ask
 for some help.
 So all of that happens and we're still struggling with what do we tell the kids if anything.
 We kind of landed on just organic conversations that happen to be different for all of them.
 Based on where they were, when they were and how they were.
 So we kept it up to beat, right?
 Like, it wasn't anything super serious, it was just something unfortunate that happened.
 We tried to keep it positive for both all of them.
 Um, and I mean, my experience was that I told my oldest of police officers coming to the
 house.
 And paperwork, the natural progression of questions and why and what happened and that's how that
 story got told.
 He was really angry and he, you know, but we tried to reel it back with what we explained
 to you all with more of like the, we feel bad that this happened for these people and why
 do we think it happened and that's so sad.
 And then for you and.
 Yep, I pretty much just told the two that, you know, I was exhausted because the alarm went
 off at the store and I had to go down and deal with some things.
 And they didn't really push from that point and knowing them that was my cue to not keep
 going with the story.
 Um, I kind of know what they can and can't handle based on how they react to things.
 And that was my cue that they were okay with knowing that at that moment.
 Maybe more to come.
 Maybe more to come.
 Yeah.
 Absolutely.
 It was just such a shock, right?
 Like, that's not what our community feels like down there.
 Right.
 Like, I never feel unsafe down there.
 Community is always good to us.
 We have great neighbors, businesses, a great customer base that people who work in the area
 of walk around, like, it's not, this was very unusual happening.
 It really was.
 I don't know if we were planning on talking about this part, but a lot of people asked
 us why we didn't publicize this, why we didn't put this on social media when it happened
 and so on and so forth.
 And it never really crossed my mind too.
 And I don't think it ever crossed your mind too in that, like, I didn't want to cry for help
 sort of way because it wasn't that sort of thing.
 No, we didn't need help.
 No.
 We got all the help we needed that night, like Joe explained and, you know, we just felt
 like it should be more of a private thing because it's not our community and we didn't want
 to make it feel a certain way.
 Right.
 We didn't want to sensationalize it either.
 No.
 Because it wasn't necessary too.
 Not at all.
 We weren't out, you know, tons of money or anything like that.
 Like we said, we recouped or are recouping the vast majority if not all of it.
 So it wasn't a thing to make a thing just.
 Not at all.
 But we feel like it's important to discuss on here because it's part of owning a business
 and the things that can happen, right, that you don't expect.
 And I feel like there are probably a lot of stories that go untold that business owners
 deal with that, you know, it's just part of what happens.
 You have to be very prepared for the unexpected.
 Absolutely.
 And I don't think Erica or I are sitting here saying this was the right way to do it.
 And here's your blueprint by any means.
 This is more of a we fought through it, not knowing what was happening literally at moments
 in time.
 So we're just sharing the thought process that we went through that led us to the decisions
 right wrong or indifferent.
 And that doesn't mean God forbid something like this ever happens again.
 We do it the same way or we do it a different way.
 It's just the way it kind of played out in the moment.
 So I wanted to share that and share the conversations both during and after, especially with
 kids and the family.
 Because it weighs on you.
 And you know, every little conversation, you know, you're thinking about the other persons
 emotions as well.
 And how are they going to take the news and how do you support them before you even tell
 them?
 So there's just a lot going on.
 Yeah.
 But I think the overall theme of this incident was that we're okay.
 We don't want to worry anybody unnecessarily or like ask for help.
 We don't need like we were very lucky in the situation where we were able to kind of handle
 it mostly internally, you know, with the help of the professionals that we needed.
 So, you know, we didn't feel like it needed to be anybody else's story until here when we're
 talking about what it's like to own a business and behind the scenes, if you will.
 So thank you to our listeners.
 I almost had viewers.
 We're not there yet.
 Hopefully someday soon.
 Thank you to our listeners for giving us the platform to be able to talk about this and
 you know, share it and you know, kind of put ourselves out there and really process it
 for the first time in a structured way if that makes any sense.
 I think it does.
 Yeah.
 Thank you for letting us tell you our story of "Twas the Night Before Christmas."
 I don't know how to do like a natural transition out of that into our closing segment.
 So why don't we just do it and pretend like it's not awkward?
 Or, you know, since this was a hard story for us to kind of come to terms with telling
 and how do we describe it all, put it out there, we would love to hear any other stories
 from anybody who owns a business about, you know, things that you didn't feel comfortable
 talking about that maybe weren't necessary to tell everybody that you handled internally.
 I'm sure that I'm sure there's a lot out there and we'd love to hear yours.
 Absolutely.
 And you can do that any way that you feel comfortable whatever your favorite podcast listening app
 is. You can leave a comment right there whether it's Spotify, Apple Podcast, wherever.
 You can send us a text using the link right in the episode description if you're using
 a mobile device.
 Feel free to do that.
 That comes right to us as well.
 But we would love to hear from you.
 And thank you.
 Thank you so much for listening today.
 And it would be amazing if after this episode you like or subscribe, you could share this
 with a friend, if you know somebody who owns a business, share this with them.
 Any way you can means a lot to our emerging podcast.
 So thank you so much and we can't wait to talk to you next time.
 Thank you all from the bottom of our hearts.
 We really appreciate you more than you guys know.
 Thank you so much for listening to Small Business, Big Life, Inside, Fort Orange General
 Store.