Inside the Scheels Culture ft. Steve Scheel

Whether you shop at Scheels for the clothing, the sports equipment, or the Ferris wheel, you can expect a great experience driven by the company's people-first culture. Hear from former CEO Steve Scheel as he shares the history and legacy of his family's longstanding sporting goods business.

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Transcript

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- When you grow up, you're thinking, "What do I want to do?" And you don't think about,"Who do I want to do it with?" And it was the who I got to do it with that made it so enjoyable.[bright upbeat music]- Welcome to "Common Cents on the Prairie™," a podcast dedicated to helping you demystify the sometimes complex topic of money. I'm Adam Cox, head of wealth management for The First National Bank in Sioux Falls. We're a community bank based out of South Dakota. In this podcast, we share expert insights from around the country and stories from our local community to arm you with the tools you need to make better financial decisions. Because the truth is, the more we talk about this stuff the better off we're all going to be.[bright upbeat music] Steve Scheel recently retired from his 35 year career with Scheels All Sports, and spent the last half of his career there serving as a company president and then CEO. During his career with Scheels, the company grew from a small upper Midwest hardware and sporting goods retailer into one of the largest sporting goods stores in the nation, with 34 stores in 16 states and over 12,000 associates. One of the primary focuses of the company over this time, and Steve's passion as one of its leaders, has been its continued focus on developing leaders, creating a strong team environment, giving back to their communities, and being the best in the USA in the eyes of its customers and its associates. Steve lives in Fargo with his wife Tiffany, and they have three children whom they love spending time with, especially in the lakes in the summer and hunting in the fall. While Steve has been enjoying more free time with his recent retirement, he is still involved with the boards of several organizations, as well as being an officiating instructor for USA Curling and a scuba instructor with Mixed Scuba. I hope you enjoy my conversation with Steve Scheel. Steve Scheel, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for joining me.- Hey, it's a pleasure to be here and to see you again, Adam.- All right, it's a pleasure to see you as well. All right, I like to start these off with icebreakers whenever I can. So for you, let's go with what is one thing about you that people might find surprising?- You know, one of the things that people kind of laugh at is two of my hobbies. You know, I ran a sporting goods store for years, we're part of a great company, and two of my hobbies, curling and scuba diving, are like two of the only sports that Scheels does not carry. So it's a little bit surprising to people and a little bit funny.- Yeah. [both laughs] You had to go outside the store for your activities.- Yeah, I already had all that stuff so I had to go find something else to do, I guess.- Yes, I guess. Okay. Well, I thought today we'll break this up into two parts. First, let's start with some business kind of corporate stuff, and then we'll finish with some personal questions, we'll put you on the hot seat. Does that sound okay?- Wonderful.- Okay. So you recently retired as CEO of Scheels but obviously that wasn't your first job coming out of school, right? So tell me a little bit about your career journey at Scheels.- Well, I mean, growing up I had all those other little part-time jobs that we all have, and then when I went to college, I said,"Well, I might as well work part-time at Scheels until I figure out what I really want to do when I grow up." And so I started working part-time, was a part-time cashier, part-time freight, part-time sales, and just kind of fell in love with what I was doing and the people I was working with. And so when I graduated I decided,"Hey, let's give this a full-time thing a shot." I was a full-time salesperson, eventually I was an assistant manager, I was a buyer for our camping lines, got into the store management training program, worked and ran stores in Moorhead, Rapid City, South Dakota, then back in Fargo. And then in 2003, or 2006 I moved into the corporate office as the company president. Did that for about seven years, and then the last eight years of my career was the CEO. So kind of made that transition from part-time whatever, to, you know, CEO, which is the way everybody pretty much at our company grows up. We hire very few people outside the company, so I basically followed the same path that anybody would who comes to Scheels with that dream of running the company.- Oh, that's cool. Well, you know, that's one of many interesting attributes about Scheels, I'm sure we'll talk about today, but it also has a really interesting history. It wasn't always the sporting goods giant that we know of today, so tell me a little bit about how did the business start and how did it evolve over the years?- Yeah. Well, the business started in Sabin, Minnesota, a little town about 10 minutes from where I'm sitting today in Fargo. It was a dry goods, hardware, homewares type shop, you know, literally would fit into most of our living rooms today. That's how small the store was. Had dynamite in the shed out back, so if you had to remove some stubborn rocks from your field, you could do that too.- [Adam] Oh man.- Yeah. And it grew up, you know, we were pretty much a hardware business for the first 60, 70 years. You know, 1902 is when we were founded, up until the 1970s we were essentially a hardware, dry goods business. In the 1970s, we started bringing in more and more sporting goods. And in 1977, I believe it was, we had our first store that was half sporting goods and half hardware, actually, in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.- All right, there you go.- Yeah, my father came down to run the store on Empire Scheels, and that was the first store that we went half and half.- Okay.- And 12 years later, 1989, we basically decided to try a full line sporting goods store that was in Grand Forks, North Dakota, the store I worked at part-time while I went to college. At that point, it was our biggest store, 33,000 square feet, which, to give you an idea, that would be our smallest store today. So we've evolved quite a way. So from there obviously things took off, in 1998 we opened our Iowa City store which was 105,000 square feet, two levels, and we thought, "How are we ever going to fill this thing?" And about a year and a half later, it's too small. And so now all of our more recent stores have been in that 200 to 350,000 square feet. You know, sporting goods, you're talking about the outdoors, the hunting, fishing, camping, your team sports and individual sports like golf or basketball, and then, of course, all the clothing and shoes that let you take part in all those activities and live your daily life.- Yeah. Oh, wow, what an evolution. As you think about your time there, what were some of the big changes that you either led or things that stand out to you as you sit here today?- Well, from a store standpoint, you know, really, I was involved from the very first sporting goods store, Grand Forks, at 33,000 square feet to where we are today, and the leases we're signing for these new stores or the new stores that we're building. And so that evolution of becoming, I'm going to say, an almost nationwide sporting goods brand certainly happened there in the last, you know, 35 years. The other evolution that I think is very important, that isn't so noticeable for people on the outside, is our evolution from a management company to a leadership company. You know, we made a conscious decision to stop using the words managers, and we did that because we were no longer going to manage stuff, we were going to lead and develop people. And that really started with my father when he was CEO. I like to think I picked up that bucket and I carried it forward from when he dropped it off when he was done as CEO. And that's really what we focus on today, is, you know, taking great people and developing them, because the one thing that nobody can replicate is your people. Anybody can build a big store, anybody can fill it with stuff. You know, that just takes financing. The hard thing to replicate is people and culture. And so we've really, as a company, I think over the last, you know, 15, 16 years, when I was president and CEO, had that focus on, "Let's focus on leadership, let's focus on developing people, let's focus on making people have the best opportunity they can if they choose to make a career with us."- Hmm, that's awesome. So from a high level, let's talk about the business for a minute, what does Scheels look like today?[Steve sighing]- Well, that's a good question. You know, from a high level, we are one of the largest sporting goods retailers now in the United States. We have, I think, over 14,000 people now. 34 stores, with three more in the works. You know, we're still, I'm going to say, a fairly well kept secret because we're just kind of in the central United States. The people on the East Coast, the people on the West Coast, you know, still don't know who this Scheels company is.[both laughing] And you know what, we're okay with that, we're okay being a quiet private company doing things basically on a store by store, one store a year type basis. And, you know, from a high level that's who we are.- Yeah. I know as a company you have three main goals. Can you walk me through those?- Our three goals really are what do we want to accomplish, how do we want to accomplish it, and why are we doing it? And so our what is our company goal. Our goal is to be the best retailer in the USA, in the eyes of our customers, our business partners, and our associates. You know, that's what we want to do. How are we going to do that? That's our leadership goal, we're going to take great people, immerse them in our culture and help them become great at what they do while they enjoy their career at Scheels. And if we do those two things well, then the question is why, why do that? And our why is very simple, it's our mission statement, it's to do good in our communities. And so, you know, as we focus on those three things, again, our goal is to be the best retailer in the USA, to our associates and our customers and our business partners. And so to us, it comes down to,"How do we treat those three groups of people? You know, do they love shopping with us if they're our customer? Do they love working with us if they're a business partner? Do they love working with us if they're one of our associates? And if not, how can we develop a culture that helps them do that?" Which, of course, goes right to your leadership goal of taking great people and developing them, and helping them become great at what they do while they work with us. And so, you know, really it's about a people first focus when we talk about all three parts of our leadership goals.- So you used the word there a few times that I'd like to talk about. You used the word best, you didn't use the word biggest.- Yes.- Which is interesting. And I remember hearing you say that before, and I'm guessing some of your competitors and other people in the retail space, their goal is to be the biggest. Why do you say best and not biggest?- Yeah, our goal is to be the best and not the biggest because we don't want to put the focus on numbers. You know, we've been very intentional about that when you think about all three of our goals. We want to be the best in each market we're in, we want to be the best in Sioux Falls, we want to be the best in Fargo, we want to be the best in Dallas, Texas. We've never worried about being the biggest and, quite honestly, we've made decisions over the years where we've said no to growing faster just because we wanted to grow the right way, to make sure we had the culture in each one of our stores that does make us different. And so, again, if your focus is on people, being the biggest by a numerical measurement tends to be contradictory to trying to be a people first business. And so if you take the focus off of,"Let's have sales at X, let's have profit at Y, let's have X number of stores or we want to grow this fast," and you put it on, "Let's make sure that each person who comes into Scheels, whether an associate, a business partner, or a customer, is treated the way we'd want to be treated." And we make that happen in every community we're in, we feel like that's the best way to develop our company, our brand, and our culture going forward for years to come.- If the goal... I love that, first of all, but so you didn't talk a lot about profitability. How do you view the pursuit of profitability as a business like yours in light of those goals?- Yeah, you know, sometimes you hear that profitability or profit, you know, is an evil word. And I disagree with that. I think any organization that wants to make a long-term impact in their community has to be profitable, has to be financially rock solid. If you can't pay your bills, you won't survive long enough to make a difference. And so profitability in and of itself is not a bad word, but doing it for more sake, just wanting to be more profitable and more and more and more, and chasing the almighty dollar, that's where I think a lot of companies and a lot of organizations develop that feeling in their communities that, you know, profit is an evil word because that's all they're pursuing. You know, we're not bashful about those numbers at Scheels, we're measuring 'em all the time. It's just not our number one goal, but we still have to hit those numbers. And if we want to do good in our communities, you have to be profitable. So profit isn't a bad word, but the pursuit of profit for more profit's sake is where I think people maybe cross that line a little bit.- Yeah, I agree. I've heard you say that Scheels isn't for everyone. What do you mean by that?- Well, you know, there's a couple different parts of that. Part of it is the products we carry, part of it is our culture and our stores, and part of it is simply retail. You know, there are people who, from an employee standpoint, evenings and weekends and long retail hours and only three holidays that you're closed a year, you know, that's not for everybody. And we understand that and I've had worked with some great people at Scheels, people I would have loved to have made a career with us, who just simply wanted the Monday through Friday, nine to five, that type of job. And, you know, God bless 'em, let 'em move on and find something that makes them happy because they're a good person and I want them to enjoy whatever they do for their career. The other side of that, of course, is who we are and what we carry. And, you know, we're not bashful about the fact that we support the Second Amendment. You know, if you come into our stores you're going to see a firearm department, and if that makes you uncomfortable as a customer, Scheels might not be the place for you. Again, nothing against you, we just have a different value system and there's another place that maybe can help you that fits your value system better. And the same, of course, goes with our Christian faith and what you see us doing around the holidays, the music you'll hear in the background. We are not bashful about saying Merry Christmas, we aren't bashful about having some Christian music playing in the background in our stores because it's a family friendly atmosphere, and it's the only type of music I know that I don't have to usually worry about any of the lyrics.- Yeah, that's right.- And so, you know, again, if those things make you comfortable, if Merry Christmas or Christian music playing in the background is not your cup of tea, we might not be the retailer for you. And, again, we're okay with that, we might not be the best fit for everybody. We want everybody, we're going to do everything we can to treat you right even if you have a different value system, but that's who we are and we are not going to change our values.- Yeah. You and I shared a stage not too long ago at a Faith and Business conference, and during our time together I learned that you've always been really intentional about incorporating faith into your business. Why and where did that start?- You know, I think I joked at the conference, and I'll say it again. You know, my great-great-grandfather started Scheels, and he was a German sailor. And so I don't know that there was a whole lot of faith involved at that point but my grandfather and my grandmother, who I spent a lot of time with growing up, lived very close to, were both very faith-based people, and they were very intentional about making that a part of the business. And, you know, retail in the '50s, '60s, the '70s is not what it was today. You know, people worked long hours. I mean, I worked 60, 70 hours some weeks but that was the average for people in leadership back then. And it wasn't always a family-friendly culture, but it was always a faith-based culture at Scheels where we were going to say,"Hey, this is what our family holds as a value, as a family business this is what we want our company to hold for a value." And the thing about living that faith in your business is you, you treat people the way you want to be treated, right, something we're taught several different times in many, many different verses throughout the Bible is,"Treat others as you want to be treated." The golden rule. And so it kind of just became part from my grandfather, my grandmother, through my father, and then into myself and the leaders that I worked with at our company that, "You know what? Faith is a part of who we are. It's a part of how we treat people, it's a part of how we want to interact in our communities, and so we are going to incorporate that into our business model."- Yeah. I assume that that made its way into your leadership style as well.- Yes. And I, again, going back to the manager versus leadership thing we talked about earlier. Developing people and treating people the way you want to be treated, or the way you want them to be treated, too. That's definitely part of that faith-based component.- Yeah. So, no business is perfect and every company at some point has some challenges or some missteps. As you reflect back on your time at Scheels, what are some of those times that stand out and what lessons did you learn from 'em?- Yeah, there's a lot, right. I mean, you've been around for 123 years you're going to make some mistakes. And also, you know, part of our culture is helping people become great at what they do, and if you're going to do that you got to give 'em the freedom to make some mistakes. And so, you know, you can think of it from some products, we have brought in some products that just failed miserably. And one that I always joke about with people is, you know, we thought back in the early 2000s we were smarter than we were, and so we went out and we made a shoe with one of our shoe manufacturers, and I've told people it failed miserably. It didn't fit well. I mean, we ended up donating probably half the container load we brought back over to the United States. And I feel bad for the people who had to wear that shoe that got donated to, because it was such a bad shoe. But we learned, and we learned that,"Hey, you know what, there's some places that just you're not going to make the right choices, and so we learned. I, as CEO, I made mistakes in leases or in negotiations for purchases where in hindsight you go,"Oh, I left 10s of 1,000s of dollars on the table." I mean, that's a mistake and we got to learn from it. And then I think probably the big one that, you know, is kind of recent for all of us is COVID. You know, we've always been a very financially conservative company, but, like most retailers, we want to use any cash we have. We don't want money sitting in the bank because your interest rate is just terrible. The problem with that, of course, is that we learned in COVID is when you get into a crisis where a third of your stores are closed, you still have all your bills to pay, your inventory, your rent. We did not have enough cash and we were- I mean, part of the reason I'm retired today is because of what we learned during that time and the stress I went through trying to figure out,"Okay, if this goes on for 90 days or 120, or 180 or a full year, what are we going to do? Our 120-year-old company, is it going to be around a year from now?" And so we really changed the way we looked at leveraging our cash and saying, "You know what, let's take a break from opening new stores. Let's put some more cash in the bank so we never have to worry about a 30, 60, or 90-day shutdown again." And that sounds silly, but if you're not worried about growth for growth's sake, if you're not worried about having the most stores, if you're not worried about having the largest- why go through that stress when you can make a simple decision and not have to do that? And so we did. Huge lesson learned, and it's a mistake we made, but I think that's a mistake that a lot of small businesses make too, which is we never expect something like that to happen. And you've got to think outside the normal so that you are prepared for those rainy days, and you can weather them.- Yeah. Oh, that's great, thanks for sharing. I know one of the things that you are probably most proud of with Scheels is the way it gives back to its communities. What does that look like for your business?- We look at giving back to our communities, I'm going to say kind of as the church looks at tithing, the true biblical fashion of give first not last, right. And so basically in January every year, each of our stores has a formula that they calculate exactly how many dollars they're going to give this year. And that's not optional, it's not-- Oh, really.- If we can we'll give it away. It's a, "No, we're going to give away that number of dollars." And so, you know, we do it first as part of our budget at, like I said, in January. And by December 31st, we expect that to be zero left in that pot. And sometimes in December our stores are going out and they're trying to find someone, and what a great thing to do, right. Trying to find someone to give some extra money to, because there's still some dollars left in that budget. So that's how we look at it as a company, and then we have a handful of ways that we actually do it. Our stores have a budget every month, every year, to give away and support those organizations in their community that are doing a fundraiser, right. Whether it be dollars to help support it, or more often it's merchandise to give away to an auction, something like that. We have a program called"Scheels Gives Back", where we give all of our full-time employees $500 to use to help somebody in their community however they want to. And it might be as simple as going to the grocery store and helping someone who's struggling to pay for their groceries. It might be helping a neighbor who's going through a medical crisis, it might be donating to a nonprofit organization. But they can use those$500 however they want to. And then we have something called "The Scheels Foundation", which is an internal foundation where, when our stores or our associates find something they want to support at a level that they can't afford to, our foundation can step in and help the stores and the associates support that organization at a higher level than they would typically be able to do. And so through those three things, you know, we look to find ways to support anything from helping my neighbor to large projects that are going to benefit, you know, a youth sports organization or something like that in our communities.- Hmm. Very cool. What do you think Scheels looks like 10 years from now?- Honestly, I tell people it's going to keep evolving but we're a slow-evolution company. I don't think you're going to see any major changes between now and 10 years from now. We will probably add about 10 more stores, one store a year. We'll probably continue to expand our footprint from where we are today and get a little bit further east and a little bit further west. But when you're only doing one store a year, that's a real slow process, and we're intentional about that. But I feel like we are on a great path, I feel like the leaders who are at the company today, who've replaced me, have kind of that same vision. And so let's just continue to evolve as opportunity presents itself and grow as we can.- Hmm. Very cool. You ready to talk about some personal finance questions?- Sure. [laughs]- Okay. One question I'm always curious about is what's one of the earliest money memories that you can recall?- You know, I think we all have those allowance memories when we were growing up. But mine, I'm going to go to when I was 13 years old and I went down to Darwin, Minnesota, to de-tassel corn for the summer. And you got up every morning, you rode into town, because I was staying at my cousin's place, we got on the school bus that took us out to the fields and you literally walked through the corn field and tore the tassels off the top of the corn, and walked down the row tearing the tassels off the top. And I don't remember what I got paid. I mean, it was child labor at its finest, [laughs] but my whole goal that summer, and I still to this day, was to buy myself a Browning BPS shotgun. 13 years old, that gun is still in my safe today.- Awesome.- It doesn't get used much anymore being over 40 years old, but, you know, that was the first time where I made a decision that I want to earn the money for a specific item, and that's what I did with it that summer.- Oh, that's funny. My oldest brother, Jason, has a very similar story. His first job was back on the farm, he wanted to earn enough to buy a shotgun. Apparently, my dad just didn't pay him because he still had to borrow money at the end of the summer to get the gun, so...- Yeah. I never would've made it there on allowance, so I had to go get a job, right.- Yeah. Absolutely, absolutely. Are there money lessons you learned either when you were young or from family members that stick out to you at this point?- Yeah, you know, there are many but there's two that really do stick out to me. You know, number one is so many of us at that early age when we first start working full time, don't think about the long term. We don't think about,"What's it going to look like when I'm 60, 65, and what am I doing today to help myself when I get to that time?" And, you know, I've tried with all three of my kids to instill that, "Just put a little bit away every paycheck. Because if you do it when you're 20 and you're 21 and you're 22, the difference that makes when you're go at that retirement age, it's unbelievable." And most of us just don't think about that growth, that compound interest. And, again, we're 21, 22 years old, we want to have a new car. Or we've got a baby on the way and we got to afford food and diapers, or whatever it might be. And so I always tell my kids, you know,"If it's giving up one Mountain Dew a day, if it's giving up one, you know, designer coffee a week, and take that money and just put it aside, it's such a great investment in your own future to do that." So that's lesson number one. And lesson number two, which is one I think we all learn the hard way, which is credit cards are great tools if you use 'em correctly, and they're a terrible anchor if you don't. And, you know, if today with all the reward systems that are on credit cards, I think sometimes people make bad mistakes in how they use a credit card. And if you can use it and pay it off every month and earn those rewards, it's a great system. But if you can't, don't use it because you just get yourselves into trouble. And, again, I learned that the hard way when I was a young man and fortunately, I'm hoping, you know, we can teach some other people to use 'em the right way now as they're going through that same time in their life.- Well, if you're bored in retirement, I think you've got a future as a financial planner.[Steve laughing] Just let me know.- You know what, I try to teach it as best you can because, of course, hindsight's always 2020, right. And what I know now versus what I thought I knew then, boy, yeah, I'd love to change what I really knew back then.- Yeah, exactly. As you think back to starting your career, I know you started at Scheels and did part-time stuff. Did you always want to work for the family business or was it just assumed that you would?- No and no.- [Adam] No and no, okay.- Yeah, it was never assumed that I would, and there was never any pressure, at least none that I was aware of, for me to do so. You know, all three of my kids are off doing other things, and it was kind of the same thing. It's your choice, it's your life, you can do what you want to do. I actually originally went to school to be a pilot, and I thought it would be great to fly an F-18 off the deck of a carrier for the Marine Corps. Unfortunately, there's a lot of military cutbacks going on back then, and even though I graduated second in my officer school, the flight slot was still several years away. And so I said, "Well, what's plan B?" And Scheels was plan B. And so switch kind of my plans in college, obviously, from flying to getting a business or going after a business degree. And from there on just kind of fell in love with what I was doing. So, nope, never any pressure to do it, wasn't what I wanted to do and, in fact, I grew up never wanting to work at Scheels.- Oh, interesting.- Yeah. It all was part of a part-time job to get me through college and all of a sudden it's like, "This is kind of fun, and I love what I'm doing, and I love the people I'm working with." And it went from being a job to being something you enjoyed most days. And boy, what a difference that makes.- Yeah. Well, I guess it probably leads into my next question, which is, I know leading a family business comes with a lot of pressure and can be really demanding. Did you always view that as a privilege that you got to lead the family business, or was that more of a burden at times?- Well, my father was the president, CEO, and chairman all through my career. And so there were always challenges, right. I mean, as much as, and he and I were as good as we could be about separating the family from the work relationship, but it comes into play. And that certainly both is good and bad, right. You've got that support but, boy, when dad tells you,"Hey, you're screwing up," you take it differently than when your boss says you're screwing up. And so there was definitely some extra pressure because of that but, as I said earlier, I loved what I got to do. I didn't grow up wanting to do it, I fell in love with it and the people I worked with, and the things I got to do. You know, the last 15 years of my career at Scheels, I basically traveled 100 to 120 days a year, going and visiting the stores, going to shows, doing those kinds of things, and going and working with those people regularly in their stores, in their communities, having meetings after we close the store at night where all the full-timers are coming and they're asking you questions, and you get to interact with them. You know these people, you know, we had lots of people who'd been there 20, 30 years who I got to speak with every time I come to the store, and you know a little bit about them and about their families. It's something that I don't think I ever thought I would find, or never thought about finding in a workplace environment, right. When you grow up, you're thinking, "What do I want to do?" And you don't think about,"Who do I want to do it with?" And it was the who I got to do it with that made it so enjoyable.- Hmm. That's a great answer. As you approached retirement, did you ever consider selling the company?- Well, no.- No.- No. In a word, no. We are an employee-owned company now. You know, my family owns a very, very small share of it anymore, and it's only those of us who have worked at Scheels who own any of the share anymore. We're employee-owned.- Okay.- So at that point, you know, selling it would've been selling it from out underneath 3,000 full-time employee owners, or whatever it might be. And quite honestly, we don't think it would be a good long-term decision for our company. We watch what happens to many retailers when they sell and they go public, and the reason they do it is cash.- Sure.- Right. The reason they do it is cash. Whether that's to finance the business, whether it's to finance someone's retirement. That's the reason you sell the company. And because we're employee-owned, our people already have that opportunity as our company grows, that they have a retirement plan based in our company growth. So we don't have that advantage to it. And the disadvantage of now having to answer to stock or shareholders who aren't Scheels people or, you know, having to report to the Security and Exchange Commission every quarter about X, Y, and Z, which we read those reports and we go,"Oh my goodness, what a waste of time."- Yeah. [laughs]- God bless those companies that want to do that, but we said, "No, we want to stay a private company. We want to do what we do for the long-term success of our company and our employee shareholders." And so going public or selling the company to us was never even a discussion.- Okay. So you're still young and got plenty of energy. Why did you retire when you did?- COVID. I mean, in a single word, COVID. I loved my job for 34 of the 35 years I worked for Scheels. And that one year was incredibly unhealthy. You know, was it March 16th, if I remember right, our first store closed. By mid-April, we had 10 of our 30 stores, or 29 stores at that time, closed. So a third of our stores were closed. I'm up every night, I'm flipping through news channels trying to find out what's going to happen tomorrow in this state or in that city. I've got people who've been out of work for at that point six weeks, and I've been trying to pay them but there's no income coming in. I wasn't sleeping at night, you know, and my wife would tell you I wasn't eating, I wasn't healthy, my stress level was, you know, 110 on a scale of 100. And it sucked every bit of joy I'd had in 30 years at that point, I mean, just was gone. And so the thought crept into my mind, you know, and as things got better and things ramped back up, that thought about,"There's more to life than just work," stuck with me.- Yeah.- And so it was probably a year or a year and a half later that I finally made the decision. My wife said, "You know, when that was all going on you were talking about doing this and you were talking about doing that. Maybe it's time that we do that." And so the door got opened in COVID, and about a year and a half later I just made the decision that,"Yeah, you know what, there's other things I want to do in life, things that have are, you know, number 99 on the to-do list that you'll never get to while you're working and doing what you're doing," so just made the decision. But it all stemmed from COVID. Otherwise, I'd probably be working another 10 years.- Yeah.- Yeah.- Yeah, your story is a lot alike a lot of business owners that I know. And, you know, it's either they retired or they ended up selling the company that they had planned to sell five or 10 years later, but they ended up just saying,"You know what, that was a tough period and I'm done."- Absolutely. I mean, no matter how much you enjoy your job, when all of a sudden you're not sure if you can keep the lights on anymore... Boy, it changes your focus, it changes your mindset. And for me, that was it. I mean, that just made me think about what else is there in life that maybe I hadn't spent enough time thinking about up to that point.- Yeah. So this is an expression that I always loved, which is, it's important to retire to something rather than from something. But it sounds like maybe you did a little bit of both, so what did you retire to?- Yeah, I definitely did both. You know, I retired to, like I said, some of those things on my list that I knew I was never going to get to. Spending more time with my kids. You know, I have two children who are, they're all adult kids but I two have two who are still fairly competitive, that I didn't make it to many of their events there the last few years. Let me rephrase that, I'd make it to their events but I was in and I was out, right. Show up, watch, leave. And I wasn't spending time with them, I was spending time watching them at their event. And so now this last year, we've gotten to spend a little bit more time. I can go with my wife, rather than flying in, you know, the night before their event and flying home the night of, we will go a couple days early, spend a couple days with the kids, come home a day or two after the event. I've had some boards that I've been able to join that I was looking, you know, some more opportunities to learn something, still, at this point in my life. I joined an insurance company board about a year ago, it was something I'd never even thought of but what a great opportunity to learn something. And so I've done that. And then, you know, USA Curling, I've been involved with now for, what, 15 years as an official. And I had some things that I wanted to work on to make the experience for not just the officials, but for all the competitors at events a little bit better. And so I've had a project that I've been working on the last year and a half to improve our event management, kind of everything behind the scenes from a technology standpoint that now, you know, we're doing every national event with that technology. And so teaching other officials and teaching other people how to use it and do all that type of fun stuff. And then honestly retired to doing some stuff around the house and around our yard that I never got to, right. And I always joke to people that I hated mowing, because for me it was,"When am I going to squeeze this in at night" You know, I get home at six o'clock at night, I'm having dinner, I'm running to a kid's activity, and somehow I got to mow the yard in this, right. And now I get up Monday morning and it's Monday morning, as long as it's not raining, and I get on the mower and I just go drive. And, you know what, things like that I actually enjoy now. We've got some trees around our property that I've been wanting to clean up for years, you know, since we bought it about 10 years ago. And I probably spent $200 on a chainsaw this year, cleaning up trees. So, you know, getting to do things like that and enjoying it, just enjoying those things that were a task before, that now I can get out and I can actually enjoy getting it done.- Love it. Is there anything about retirement that surprised you?[Steve sighing]- How busy I can stay without 60 hours a week of work, right. And my wife told me, she said,"You're not going to sit at home." And I'm like, "Yeah, I don't know. I'm not a golfer, I'm not going to go out for hours every morning." But boy, if you're a busy person, if you're one of those persons in life, it is so easy to stay busy doing anything. To find opportunities to get involved, to give back to your communities, to just do those work tasks that you've always wanted to do. I'm amazed at how busy I am.- Yeah. All right, we'll let you go with this last question. What advice would you have for other family business leaders who are considering either selling or stepping down?- You know, I think every business and every situation is unique. So it's tough to give advice from my experience that was going to apply to everybody. But probably the biggest thing that I think I did that maybe was different from my father and my grandfather is I wanted to make sure that there was a team of people, not just family members, who are ready to step in and keep the business moving forward. Whatever way that that looks for you and for your company, I wanted to make sure that I set them up for success. I wanted to make sure that the company recognized them as the leaders and, by the time I left, it was just, "Here's the keys, thank you very much, and call me if you need me." And I'm also one of those people who I know that if I would've stayed involved, it would've been a problem. And so for me, I literally stepped away and said,"Call me if you have a problem, I'm not coming into the office." And I try to avoid going into the store, and I've been doing that for about a year and a half now, because it's hard to flip that switch. So build that person that you can hand it off to, build that situation, that team, so that when you step away you can do that. Because I'm perfectly comfortable that our company's headed the right direction, even though I'm not in charge of it and even though my family is pretty much at this point stepped away from our company that we've been in charge of for 123 years.- Yeah. Wow, that's great advice. Steve, thank you so much for doing this, this was awesome to catch up with you again. And I hope we're able to do this again.- It was very enjoyable, Adam. I appreciate it. And thank you for, yeah, taking the time to talk a little bit about Scheels.- Absolutely. All right. Thanks, Steve.- Thank you.- [Adam] I hope you found this helpful. If you did, please subscribe and share with your family or friends. If you have a topic you want us to cover in future episodes, send us a note through our website. And if you're at the point where you want an expert opinion on your finances, reach out and we'd be happy to start a conversation. And remember, any comments, insights, or strategies discussed on this podcast are intended to be general in nature and, therefore, may not be suitable for you and your situation, whatever that may be. Before acting on anything we discuss, please consult with your attorney, CPA, and/or your financial advisor.[bright upbeat music]