Latest / The Inspired Stories Podcast / From Politics to Candles: An Entrepreneur's Inspired Journey, with Steve Weaver | Finance Series

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From Politics to Candles: An Entrepreneur's Inspired Journey, with Steve Weaver | Finance Series · The Inspired Stories Podcast

0:04
Welcome to another edition of Inspired Stories, where leaders
0:07
share their experiences so we can learn from their successes
0:10
how they've overcome adversity and explore current challenges
0:13
they're facing. Welcome to another edition of
0:18
the Inspired Stories podcast, where leaders share their
0:20
experiences so we can learn from their successes how they've
0:23
overcome adversity and explore current challenges they're
0:26
facing. My name is Anthony Cotispoti and
0:29
today's guest is Steve Weaver, Co founder of the Candle Lab
0:33
with his wife. Katisha is a chain of retail
0:36
candle stores that they exited a few years ago.
0:39
And while their stores were amazing themselves, I'm also
0:42
excited to dive into some details about a different
0:45
business model that they used there at the Candle Lab that
0:48
allow them to leverage their expertise in a different way.
0:51
And after successfully exiting the Candle Lab, they are now
0:55
coaching other couples and how to run a business together.
0:59
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1:33
Now on to our guest Steve Weaver, Co Founder Co founder of
1:36
the Candle Lab. I appreciate you making your
1:38
time to Share your story today. Thank you for having me.
1:41
I'm excited for this conversation.
1:44
So tell me, how was it that you and your wife came to be the
1:48
proud owners of a chain of candle stores?
1:51
How did that come about? Well, I had been an entrepreneur
1:54
my whole life. At that point I had had several
1:57
companies of kind of mixed success and my the latest one
2:01
that I was working on was a political consulting company
2:04
where I was running campaigns for for people and I I really
2:07
loved politics. That was my that was my first
2:09
love. But longer I was in politics,
2:12
the more I just realized it was going to be.
2:14
That was not a place where I could stay.
2:16
There are a lot of people of ill repute, and it's hard, hard to
2:19
stay clean in the business of politics.
2:21
And I was getting harder and harder to do.
2:23
So I shut down my political company and I was trying to
2:25
figure out what I wanted to do next.
2:27
And I just started dating my wife at the time, and she was
2:31
really into scented candles. I don't, I don't think I'd even
2:33
purchased to send a candle up to that point.
2:36
But she would always buy Yankee Candles.
2:38
They were burning in every room for apartment all the time.
2:41
And I couldn't believe how much money she was spending on these
2:43
candles and what a part of her life experience this was.
2:48
And so when I was trying to figure out what we're going to
2:50
do next, we just started to talk about, like, just her love of
2:54
candles and about the candle market.
2:56
And like, if, you know, these were the, these are the candles
2:59
she was spending so much money on.
3:00
They never seemed true to scent to me.
3:01
They never seemed to burn all the way down.
3:03
And so just slowly, by watching her consume these candles, this
3:07
idea kind of bubbled up that we could find a different way, give
3:12
people a chance to blend scents together and create their own
3:14
candles, their own scented candles that match their nose
3:17
perfectly. And then we were lucky to have
3:19
to stumble upon a candle shop that was in business but kind of
3:22
getting ready to go out of business.
3:23
And so we bought that, that equipment and started to work
3:27
from there. And very quickly we went from 1
3:29
store up to six stores and then just kind of continued to grow
3:33
from there. We did manufacturing for other
3:36
other companies. We started to do production for
3:39
brands and do scent design for for brands to to teach them how
3:42
to use scent as a marketing tool.
3:44
And then we started kind of a franchise licensing program that
3:47
we grew across the country. So it was a 15 year run of
3:51
scented candles and it's quite an adventure and I'm really
3:55
grateful for the time that we had to do with my wife.
3:58
So there's a few interesting things there to unpack.
4:02
You sort of glossed over the the first one, which is sort of this
4:07
different approach that you guys took to the whole candle making
4:10
experience. Talk a little bit about that and
4:13
how that idea came about. Yeah.
4:15
I I'm, I'm always looking for the the the business that I love
4:20
to run are creating experiences for people where you're taking
4:22
something that is just a kind of a normal experience and trying
4:25
to elevate it. And but at that point you know
4:28
walking into a candle store and picking up an apple pie candle
4:32
and you're smelling you're like well this doesn't smell like
4:34
what apple pie smells like to me.
4:35
Like you know my grandmother's recipe had more cinnamon more
4:38
nutmeg in there. I like it to be spicy and not
4:40
quite so caramel and sweet. And so it just just became
4:44
apparent as we got deeper into this world of scent and candles
4:47
that coming up with a perfect candle scent was going to be
4:49
nearly impossible because it was based on so many, like memories
4:52
from your past and formative experiences growing up.
4:55
And and so we wanted to come up with a way for people to leave
4:58
with a candle that is uniquely theirs.
5:00
So we had a we had about 108 candles different candle sense
5:04
up on the wall that reach individual sense we had we
5:07
didn't have apple pie. We had apple and cinnamon and
5:10
caramel and brown sugar and whipped cream and and so you
5:13
could pick out the elements that you wanted to mix your candle.
5:15
You could blend the sense together, drop a time and you'd
5:18
leave with a candle that was perfectly set up for your nose.
5:21
So that that way when somebody comes over to your house like,
5:23
oh, it smells so good in here, oh, it's the candle that I made
5:26
at the candle if I mix the scent together.
5:28
So there's a pride of ownership and a connection there to this
5:31
commodity product you don't normally get if you're just
5:33
grabbing one off the shelf. And then as people, as people
5:37
learn to make candles that way, that they wanted more products.
5:40
So then we would slowly expand the bath and body products and
5:42
room sprays and read diffusers and body scrubs and body mist
5:46
and soap. It eventually came pretty much
5:49
any scented thing in your house. You can come and blend those
5:51
things together, but it created this really hands on high
5:55
customer engagement experience. It was like a spa experience.
5:58
You'd walk in, we'd walk you through this process of finding
6:00
your favorite sense, helping come up with a blend, mix them a
6:03
drop at a time to get exactly the way you want it, and then
6:05
you're leaving with a product that is uniquely yours.
6:08
It seems like you stumbled upon a way that you had sort of this
6:12
built in viral component to it, right?
6:14
Because you everybody's got a candle in their house somewhere,
6:18
right? But who has a candle in their
6:20
house that they've made? That's something that when
6:22
you've got a guest over, that's something that you talk about.
6:25
Oh, look at this thing that I did I put together.
6:28
Yes, and and not only do they talk about it, but they it's
6:32
such an experience. Accounts take about an hour to
6:34
set up. So you'd come into our store,
6:36
you'd sit down to the bar, you'd blend sense together, stir the
6:39
candle together, and then you'd have to wait an hour for that
6:41
product to set up. So then you go out.
6:43
We would put our stores in the middle of very dense
6:45
neighborhoods with lots of shopping and dining options so
6:48
that you could pour a candle, then go grab some dinner.
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And just as your meal is ending, you can either come back and
6:54
pick up your candle or we'll even deliver it to your table.
6:56
So just as your meal is ending and dessert's arriving, we bring
6:59
your bag to your table. And and so it creates this
7:01
really beautiful night out. So it became like a great date
7:04
night. It became very girls night out,
7:06
kids, birthday parties, like anytime people were gathering.
7:09
It was just a unique way of spending the evening.
7:12
And so it did take on this very viral aspect of once people did
7:14
it, they would start texting. Friends say next time you come
7:16
to town and bring you here, we're going to make a candle
7:18
together because it's mine's. I'm really excited about the one
7:21
I just made. And I think this this really
7:23
neat hands on experience is probably what opened the door to
7:29
something. I'm also very interested to talk
7:31
about the licensing model that you guys stumbled upon.
7:34
Tell me more about that. Yeah, we we realized early on
7:39
that our business is well set up to franchise that it had a lot
7:41
of the key elements that have their franchisal business will
7:44
have. It's fairly easy to learn how to
7:46
make the product good margins and systems that you could train
7:51
fairly easily and get somebody to do so.
7:53
So we went through the process of franchising company.
7:55
We we did all of the the federal documents and the disclosure
7:58
documents, all of the the legal agreements and we sold our first
8:02
franchise and it just went so poorly.
8:05
We had the, the the people who bought it really battled us on
8:09
every single detail as we were getting that first store open.
8:12
And it just became clear that they just wanted to do it their
8:15
way and they did not want to be told how to do it, which is the
8:18
key hallmark of a franchise. You got it, you got these have
8:21
to be executed consistently. And so we ended up giving them
8:25
back their money, buying them out of their lease and just
8:27
basically giving up on that and saying I I did not want as an
8:31
owner want to spend my time flying around the country spying
8:35
on people and saying like hope you're using the wrong shade of
8:37
orange here on the sign or open up you used.
8:40
It's not this price, it's a different price.
8:41
I didn't want to be micromanaging people that way.
8:44
And I from a from an entrepreneur standpoint, if I
8:47
open a business, I don't want to be told what I can and can't do.
8:50
I want to be able to bring my own spin to it.
8:52
So we we've kind of abandoned it and given up on it.
8:55
And then we were lucky to to run into the to the folks from
8:59
Crimson Cup Coffee, which is a local coffee roasting company
9:02
here in town. They have a couple of their own
9:05
can of their own coffee shops but they're mostly a coffee
9:09
roaster. And so if you want to open up
9:10
your own coffee shop, you can come here to coffee college.
9:13
You spend three or four days at their training facility and
9:15
you're learning how to make the drinks, how to set up the
9:17
kitchen and negotiate a lease, everything you need to know to
9:21
open up your own business. Then you go back and you open up
9:23
your own independently owned, independently branded coffee
9:26
shop, but you're using Crimson Cups coffee and their model.
9:30
So there's at the at the time that we met with them, there was
9:33
400 some coffee shops around the country that are all
9:37
independently owned, independently branded.
9:39
But Crimson Cup is supplying the coffee and the other supplies
9:43
and coaching, mentoring them from behind the scenes.
9:46
And what was beautiful about this model is you don't have to
9:48
be enforcing consistency. You're coaching the best
9:51
practices and then those businesses can choose to follow
9:54
them or they can choose to make their own mistakes.
9:57
And so you don't have any of these kind of control and
10:00
quality standards concerns that you get with a with a typical
10:04
franchise model. So we adopted a version of this.
10:06
And if anybody that wanted to open up a version of our store,
10:09
they would come, they would spend some time with our staff.
10:11
We would go and train them in their place, help them set up
10:14
their store up and find the right retail location and then
10:17
hire the initial staff, train them.
10:19
We'd work their grand opening for them and they're off and
10:21
running. So we had 38 of these of these
10:24
licensed stores around the country that if you're, if
10:27
you're a customer of ours and you traveled to, let's say,
10:30
Saint Louis and you visited the Candle Fusion Studio, they're
10:33
like, boy, this feels a lot like a candle lab because we've
10:35
trained them in the system and given them the business plan,
10:37
the marketing plan. But because they're
10:40
independently owned, that person can charge what they want.
10:42
They could be open whatever hours they want and if they get
10:45
a bad review it doesn't blow back on the corporate brand.
10:49
It's just their concern. So I'm I'm insulated from some
10:53
of the mistakes that they're making but able to be coaching
10:56
and mentoring them from a from a distance.
10:57
And this was I have always considered myself a coach.
11:00
I love to coach. And so this was I I much
11:03
preferred being in this Coach cheerleader role versus like
11:08
micromanaging every detail that you'd have to be if you want to
11:11
be a good franchise or. Now in a traditional franchise
11:15
franchise model, you, you get the advantage of charging a fee
11:19
upfront and then you get traditionally some percentage of
11:21
sales on an ongoing basis. In a licensing model, how did
11:25
that revenue work for you? Is it the same kind of
11:29
structure? No.
11:31
So we we didn't charge, we didn't charge.
11:32
Rd. is most of what we most of what we got paid on was there's
11:37
a training fee upfront where we're walking through the
11:40
process of like I'd like to open up my own store to open for
11:42
business. So there was a training fee to
11:45
to get all of that process and then then they were they were
11:50
permitted to order supplies from us but they weren't required.
11:53
You can't, you can't require somebody to buy something from
11:55
you if you don't have a franchise.
11:58
So if they got, they got to choose if they wanted to
12:01
purchase our supplies from us and what that allowed us to do,
12:05
most of them ended up doing that.
12:07
It basically created a buying Co-op where instead of buying a
12:09
pallet of wax, I could now buy a truckload of wax because I had
12:13
my six stores plus the 38 partner stores all pulling from
12:17
this same truckload so I could cycle through better.
12:20
So by buying in bigger bulk, it allowed everybody's marginal or
12:25
candles both for our stores and for the partner stores did the
12:29
margins just kept getting better as we added more stores and were
12:31
able to buy in bigger bulk. As soon as we went from buying
12:33
our fragrance oil in one gallon size up to a 55 gallon drum, the
12:38
price dropped significantly. So each of those, as the network
12:42
grew, our margins got better and it was easier for everybody to
12:45
make money. So it was kind of a rising tide
12:47
lifting all boats and we could pull the best practices.
12:51
When somebody would try something that would work in one
12:53
of the stores, we would capture that and spread it out to all
12:55
the stores. So everybody is innovating
12:59
around the business and then sharing information back because
13:02
the more candles that everybody sells, the more supplies we can
13:05
buy in bigger bulk and the better everybody's margins get
13:08
to create this really beautiful tribe that was sharing
13:10
information and and helping one another, sharing supplies,
13:14
sharing ideas. And it was just, it was it was
13:18
just a beautiful way that matched the way we wanted to
13:20
allocate our time. There's no question we made less
13:22
money by not franchising because we didn't get the royalties.
13:25
We don't get the all the revenue streams you normally get, but it
13:27
was significantly less hassle and we just enjoyed.
13:31
It was how we wanted to spend our day was helping these people
13:35
not make the same mistakes we've made.
13:37
But then if they wanted to do something that we didn't agree
13:39
with, they were free to do that. Which is, you know, that's how
13:42
I'd want to be treated as a business owner.
13:44
And it was it was fun to be able to do that for them.
13:47
Let's talk about some of the mistakes that you made along the
13:49
way. I mean we've the way that we've
13:51
talked so far, it just sounds like this up and to the right
13:54
kind of journey. We've started with one store, we
13:56
went to six, then everybody loved the concept and we had
13:59
these 38 partner stores. But clearly there's a lot of
14:02
junk in between there. Yes, yeah.
14:05
I mean most of most of the pitch when we were talking to those
14:09
potential partner store owner is you are paying us so that we can
14:14
stop you from making all the dumb mistakes that we have
14:16
made-up to this point. You're welcome to make new ones.
14:18
You can invent new ways to to screw this up.
14:21
But but you're going to learn from our experience.
14:24
You know, we ended up with six of our own stores, but I
14:26
actually opened up 9 stores, I closed three of them.
14:29
And so along the way, you know, the first couple ones we opened
14:32
were very successful and we opened up a couple that just we
14:36
were not as thoughtful about where to put them.
14:39
And so every time we'd open up a store, run it for a year and a
14:41
half and then close it, you're getting smarter at what does a
14:44
neighborhood look like that can support this concept?
14:47
What do we need to have around us?
14:48
What are the pieces to have in place?
14:49
What are the demographics of the people that were that we're
14:51
looking to serve? And so every one of those store
14:54
Closings made us smarter so that we could then fly to one of the,
14:58
you know, the city where one of these are going to open.
15:00
We could walk a neighborhood with them and say you don't want
15:02
to put it right here, you want to put it right here.
15:04
And here's why. Like we used to have a store in
15:06
a similar spot like this. Nobody goes down the alley to
15:09
find it. We need the frontage on the main
15:12
drag. And so we just sharing all of
15:13
those experiences. And so a lot of it was around
15:18
around real estate, like picking up, picking the best
15:20
neighborhoods, picking the best flow and then just a lot of
15:23
marketing mistakes. You know, we, we did a big
15:26
Mother's Day sale and well, Mother's Day is one of our
15:28
biggest days anyway. So we just buried our staff in
15:31
this Mother's Day sale. And so then we learned like our
15:34
sales and promotions need to happen on our slow times and our
15:37
biggest days, we need to just just be open for business people
15:41
come anyway. And so that way when somebody
15:43
call and say, hey, I'm thinking about you think I'll say, well
15:47
we we ran one. We stressing our staff and
15:51
overwhelmed our stores. Here's why we don't do Mother's
15:54
Day sales, but you're welcome to try whatever you want.
15:55
So it just gave us a chance to say, you know, just check with
16:00
us before you launch a new thing because chances are we've done
16:02
some bad version of that in the past, learn from it and now
16:06
doing something a little bit better.
16:07
So everything from employee hiring and benefits packages to
16:11
customer attention, customer appreciation in store
16:14
experience, parties, getting referrals, getting reviews, all
16:18
of those things. We try a lot of different things
16:20
that didn't always work. And then we'd eventually settle
16:22
on a winning thing so that when you were a partner store owner,
16:25
you would just say, here's the marketing plan, the business
16:27
plan. It has been hard won with a lot
16:31
of mistakes and a lot of wasted money to get to this.
16:33
So you don't have to do. That I imagine with a business
16:36
like yours, with multiple locations, that you and your
16:39
wife can't be at all the time every day, that personnel issues
16:44
have got to come to the forefront in a pretty big way.
16:47
Hiring good people, finding good people, keeping good people,
16:50
Keeping an eye on the people who are maybe a little bit, you
16:53
know, on on the edge of being good.
16:56
Talk to me about some of the challenges that you face there
16:59
and how you overcame them. Yeah, that was, I would say when
17:04
we first started, it was trying to hire people on the cheap and
17:07
then realizing, you know, when you hire minimum wage workers,
17:11
you're going to get minimum wage results.
17:13
And when we looked at the successful business around as it
17:16
seemed to be thriving, the thing that seemed to separate them
17:18
more than anything else was just the people just can can your
17:23
staff deliver consistently remarkable experiences to
17:26
customers in order to do that, That costs money.
17:29
And so we set about trying to find the best customer service
17:33
people we we can, we could train anybody to make a candle, but
17:37
that like desire to be the best part of somebody's day, that is
17:41
a thing that is innate in somebody.
17:43
And so you know we would we hire a lot of servers from
17:47
restaurants when we were eating out at a nice restaurant and the
17:49
server would deliver an over the top experience.
17:51
We would go back a second time, request that same server and if
17:54
we got the same level experience then time #3 would go and say
17:58
hey, if you're ready to, if you're ready for a different
18:01
career, a different way of doing this.
18:02
We would love to have you come and and work on our staff.
18:05
And so you could see these people delivering over the top
18:08
customer service and it was just innately wired and so.
18:14
So we once we started to retain those people, we had to pay them
18:17
at the very top end of of the of the pay scale.
18:20
But that meant that we could step out of the stores and grow
18:24
the other parts of business. We could be working on these
18:25
partner stores and some of these other big corporate contracts we
18:28
got and we never had to worry about the stores.
18:31
It was just consistent 5 star reviews because we had hired a
18:35
staff that we knew could take care of our customers when we
18:37
weren't there. And that was probably the
18:38
biggest, you know, talking about up and to the right.
18:41
That was probably the biggest shift was as soon as we started
18:44
to hire a higher quality person and deliver higher quality
18:48
experience. That's when the business really
18:50
scaled up up to that point we're kind of working out the kinks
18:53
but that was that was the key that made everything else
18:56
possible was just fantastic people that really cared and the
19:03
customers felt that and that was part of the experience.
19:05
So you know if there's if there's any piece of business
19:10
advice I have to do, any business that's like dealing
19:13
with customers, front facing you know retail restaurant, any kind
19:17
of in person customer experience, it's pay a little
19:20
bit more for your staff and get people who just get it.
19:26
You can train customer service to a certain degree, but I'd
19:29
much rather get somebody. I'd much rather find somebody
19:32
that innately has that appetite in them and then train about all
19:35
the other parts of the job, I think.
19:36
They're already friendly, enthusiastic.
19:38
They love engaging with people and helping people and going out
19:41
of their way. Yeah, those are things that can
19:43
be a little bit more difficult to train up.
19:45
Yes. Exactly.
19:47
So you started this business with your wife.
19:52
You guys were Co founders of the business.
19:54
You built this together. Talk to me a little bit about
19:58
that experience. How did you guys decide who was
20:01
going to do what? How did the dynamics of that
20:04
work? Is it always rainbows and
20:07
sunshine? Are there days with some storm
20:10
clouds? How do you guys paint a picture
20:13
for me? Yeah, I mean, I will say that I
20:17
love the experience. My wife would give you a
20:20
different answer. She would.
20:22
She would tell you that that that probably she wouldn't.
20:25
Probably not recommend doing it with your with your spouse.
20:29
You know the the hardest part is also the best part, which is on
20:33
the on the days when you get a big win, you are both in
20:37
celebrating, you both can take ownership of that.
20:40
You both can like really feel like you had a great day.
20:43
But then the inverse is true. Like when things go in the ditch
20:46
and you're having a bad day and things are getting rough,
20:49
normally you can just come home and share about, you know what
20:52
happened at work today with your partner and they can, you know,
20:54
hold space for that and listen to you, to you talk and vent.
20:57
But like there's nobody to vent to because she's also in the
21:00
same, she's in the same spot spot that I am in.
21:02
So that's probably the hardest thing is that when it gets
21:05
tough, it's tough for both of you and you're both in the
21:08
stress, you're both in the grind.
21:12
Certainly in the beginning we did not work it out very well.
21:14
She and I are wired very differently, which is one of our
21:16
strengths. I am always into expansion and
21:20
growth and taking on new things and everything seems like
21:22
$1,000,000 opportunity to me. And Katisha is very conservative
21:27
and she like she is engineered for safety and slowness and
21:30
stillness. And let's make sure we get this
21:33
perfect before we do the next thing.
21:35
And we anchor really the two ends of that spectrum.
21:37
And so you know we talk, we say all the time like if I if I
21:40
would been running that company alone without Katisha, I would
21:43
have had 100 locations and we would have been bankrupt.
21:46
And if she was running a company without me, she would have one
21:49
perfectly executed store and it never had gone beyond that.
21:53
So we really needed each other me to be nudging us down the
21:56
path of growth and her to be slowing me down so that I wasn't
21:59
reckless with their growth. So in many ways it was, it was
22:03
super important to our success. We care about different things.
22:07
We see with with different eyes, different perspectives.
22:10
So that really helped us but unfortunately you just start
22:15
don't have, you're not really trained in how to manage all the
22:18
stress you know of both the marriage and then we had two
22:22
kids and just as the company was growing quickly.
22:25
So we're trying to balance parents and keeping our
22:27
relationship connected while also giving the business what
22:29
it's what it needs. And those were some stressful
22:34
years I would say we made a lot of mistakes there.
22:36
And when we we we finally implemented like traction, you
22:42
know EOS as an as a as an operating system.
22:45
And that really was it both saved our company and saved our
22:48
marriage because it just gave us a structure, it gave us roles.
22:51
I now had things that I could do and then I had parts of the
22:55
business that I had to stay out of and then she had parts of the
22:57
business she was responsible for.
22:59
We had a way of working together.
23:00
We had a language that we could use.
23:02
We had a system and that our whole team was in involved in in
23:06
in our weekly meetings. So I would say that was the
23:09
piece where once that clicked into place everything got much
23:11
easier. And that was a lesson of like
23:14
every problem can be solved with a good system, good people and
23:17
good system. You have those two things you
23:19
can overcome anything if you have bad systems and or bad
23:22
people nothing else you're going to invent.
23:25
Doesn't matter how quality your product is or how great your
23:27
your services you are likely set up for some for failure there.
23:31
So that making that switch and getting that new way of working
23:35
together really did save us and allowed us to scale and work
23:39
together in a way. And so now you know a lot of
23:41
what we're doing now that we've exited the company is turning
23:44
around and coaching couples on the same thing.
23:47
It's it's a little bit of life coaching, it's a little bit of
23:49
relationship coaching, it's a little bit of business coaching
23:51
because those three things are all blurred together when you're
23:54
a when you're a couple that owns a business together.
23:57
So so. Talk a little bit about that
24:01
decision to exit in the candle lab and start on something
24:06
completely new. What was sort of the driving
24:08
force behind that? Yeah, we've been doing it.
24:11
We've owned the business for 15 years and up to that point like
24:15
you know about six or seven years is about the longest of
24:18
any of the companies I'd had up to that point.
24:20
So there's partly just intention span thing of like OK we've
24:23
we've done all we can do here. We had a very successful front,
24:27
one of our licensees that had been growing quickly and they
24:31
were looking to expand and it was just perfect timing.
24:34
They were looking to expand to a new city just the time when we
24:36
were starting to consider getting out.
24:38
So we sold our stores to them, they rebranded under their brand
24:41
and so it's the stores that kept going and it was a perfect, it's
24:44
perfect alignment because we didn't have to stick around and
24:46
train them. They'd already been doing this
24:47
business for years. But also was it was our kids
24:51
were getting a little older and we wanted to be more present
24:55
with them. They're kind of in these
24:56
preteen. You know we've got two preteen
24:58
daughters here that are they're trying to spend as much time
25:00
with him as he can and be as present as they can to play in
25:03
sports really active in school and school plays and things like
25:06
that. So so partly it was a these are
25:08
the these are the prime most important years.
25:10
Soon they're going to be teenagers and be off doing their
25:12
own thing and then then they'll be off to college and out on
25:15
their own. So this is kind of the last
25:17
window we have to really spend some quality time with them and
25:20
it had been 15 years of some pretty hard work.
25:23
There's a lot of lot of grinding lot of like and making things
25:27
happen. You know we're we're we're a
25:28
seasonal business so November and December was really busy.
25:32
So right when everybody's having holiday parties and spending
25:35
time we're at our busiest time and so we're just ready for it
25:39
to slow down a little bit and for us to be more connected to
25:42
family. But also we both love coaching
25:45
and so the chance to like we spent so much money trying to
25:49
figure our own company out in our own relationship out and
25:51
spend a lot of you know like therapy and business coaching
25:54
and and relationship coaching Just trying to get the skills we
25:58
need in order to the business was was successful as long as we
26:01
didn't get in the way of it. And so we had to do a lot of
26:03
healing and a lot of work on our relationship so that our dynamic
26:07
there did not get in the way of the business.
26:09
And so now to be able to turn around and working with couples
26:12
and helping them chart that same path feels like OK, we went
26:17
through all that for a reason. We made all the mistakes so that
26:19
we could turn around and help other people and we invested all
26:22
that money in the all of that growth and learning, and it
26:26
would be a waste to have it just die with us.
26:28
So to turn around and just be able to let those teachings get
26:31
a little bit more mileage by helping other couples has been a
26:34
lot of lot of fun. You mentioned that finding Gina
26:38
Wickman's EOS traction and implementing that in your own
26:41
business was pretty key to kind of riding the ship and allowing
26:46
you guys to scale and work together sort of in a more
26:50
cohesive way. Did you find that you drew a lot
26:54
from the EOS traction framework as you started to build your
26:58
coaching business and helping other couples to sort of find
27:02
their way? Yeah, it's it's one of the first
27:04
recommendations we make it if you're, if you're if you're not
27:06
working with either this, I mean there's a couple systems that
27:08
that work here, but if you don't have some kind of structure in
27:13
place, then you're just at the whims of whatever your
27:16
personality was. Like I'm, you know I like to
27:17
control everything. So I wanted to.
27:19
I wanted to be in every corner of the business.
27:21
That just meant that my inbox was the place where all good
27:24
ideas went to die. I was the bottleneck and nothing
27:27
ever got going because I had to. I felt like I had to control
27:29
everything. And so to to to come in and put
27:33
a structure in place that meant everybody's got a role, they
27:37
know what they're doing. Then I am not required to make
27:40
everything happen. That was just, it just freed up
27:43
because we'd had we hired a fantastic team.
27:46
But then I I handicap that team by making them have to keep
27:51
roping me into every decision, but having me involved in every
27:53
meeting, every conversation. And so the switch to say this
27:58
business can run whether I am in it or not, was such a weight
28:02
lifted for me and such a weight lifted for them.
28:06
Now I could get out of the way and let our good people do that.
28:08
So that made such a big difference.
28:09
And you know, my wife, Katisha is probably the top of that
28:12
list. She is.
28:13
She's an incredibly competent person at doing the things she
28:16
was doing for the business as long as I could stay out of her
28:19
way as long as I got out of, you know didn't go into her office
28:22
and start to micromanage stuff that did not need micromanage.
28:25
And so I will forever be grateful that that just gave us
28:28
a system to be able to have those conversations and you know
28:33
solve conflicts, figure out what the top priorities are and how
28:37
to allocate our time and attention to that rather than
28:38
getting distracted and other things.
28:40
And so when we're, when we're working with couple, that's the
28:42
first thing to say like do you have, do you have EOS or do you
28:46
have something similar to that where everybody knows their role
28:49
and the systems work and if you if you get God forbid into an
28:53
accident you're in a body cast for a month and you can't go in
28:56
the office. Can your business still continue
28:58
to operate? Are your customers still going
28:59
to be taken care of? Do your do your systems work if
29:03
you are not in the office and the moment that that was our
29:05
metric made such a big difference in the business?
29:10
Are there any other resources like that, whether they were
29:13
books, training sessions, specific mentors that you've
29:18
found particularly helpful in not only sort of navigating the
29:24
working relationship with your own wife, but taking into your
29:28
now coaching business as you're helping other folks?
29:31
Yeah, I mean I'm a big proponent in therapy and and and personal
29:36
growth, professional growth like we all have a lot of things that
29:41
we have picked up over the years of patterns and habits and you
29:44
know things from our childhood and some of those things are not
29:46
ideal in being in a relationship or running a business or being a
29:50
father or any of these other things.
29:52
So the kind of the relentless commitment to seeing where my
29:57
blind spots are, where my feelings are, what where am I
29:59
holding up the process, where am I sabotaging myself.
30:02
All of those pieces, I think we're essential in kind of
30:07
getting, getting the worst, getting the worst parts of
30:09
ourselves out of the way to allow the successful business to
30:12
grow and allow these these people that we hired to to help
30:15
us to create it. So you know, we worked with a,
30:17
we worked with a psychiatrist for seven years.
30:20
It was he was one part marriage counselor, one part business
30:23
coach. And so he could, he could really
30:26
understand how to translate, you know, Katisha's need for safety
30:30
and security and my need for expansion and growth, these
30:33
things. We were constantly banging,
30:35
butting heads on this. Like I just wanted to open up.
30:37
I knew this concept was successful and I wanted to open
30:39
up fifty of these stores. I wanted to go out and raise
30:42
money and just start to sign leases.
30:45
And Katisha's like we have such a successful thing happening
30:47
here. We don't know what's going to
30:49
happen if you do all make all those moves.
30:51
And so we were just stuck in this battle of like I wanted to
30:53
grow and she wanted to protect success we are having.
30:57
And we just really had no ability to have that
30:59
conversation in a productive way until we got somebody that could
31:02
help us translate that and say here is what Katisha needs in
31:06
order to feel safe moving forward.
31:07
Here's what Steve needs in order to feel like there's a thing to
31:10
get up in the morning and and show up to the office.
31:13
Like I don't love. I don't.
31:15
I can't work in stagnation. I need to feel like we are like
31:18
we're accomplishing and growing and achieving.
31:21
But I have to do that at a pace that my wife's central nervous
31:25
system can handle and that my employee's central nervous
31:28
system can handle. And I was so focused on growth
31:30
and achievement that I didn't, I wasn't tuned into how are the
31:36
people around me, how was their mental health, how was their,
31:39
how was their stress level because they're on, they're on
31:42
the Steve Weaver roller coaster of big ideas and new launches
31:45
and new stores. And and once I could recognize
31:49
that and slow down and bring them along with me, then
31:52
everything got a little bit easier.
31:54
Everybody got a little bit happier, a little bit more
31:56
grounded. So, and I would say in investing
31:59
in your own growth, in your own healing and in your
32:02
relationships, growth and healing helps to make sure that
32:05
those those shortcomings don't undermine what's an otherwise
32:09
very successful business. Sounds like this particular
32:12
therapist that you mentioned played a pretty big role in all
32:15
of that. Is it somebody's name that you
32:17
are comfortable? Mentioning Hello Doug Brackman
32:19
Dr. Doug Brackman I will forever be grateful for for his help in
32:23
the space. He wrote a book called Driven
32:26
that really does. Like if you got this, you got
32:28
that entrepreneur mindset word. Nothing's ever good enough.
32:31
You always have to be growing and creating and scaling.
32:34
I cannot recommend that book more more completely.
32:38
It just gives you a picture of why you're wired that way and
32:41
what to do about it and also how to protect those around you and
32:45
your business from those, you know, those feelings like I just
32:48
we had a very successful business and I it was very hard
32:51
for me to just leave it alone and let it just be successful.
32:54
I wanted to keep tinkering with. I wanted to keep iterating and
32:57
inventing and spinning off new things and my whole team was
33:01
saying, hey, we've got a winning formula here.
33:04
If you would just for two months not change anything, we'd have a
33:08
chance to make some money and and do good things here.
33:11
And so I didn't think of that as fiddling.
33:13
I thought of it as just, you know, I'm just helping the
33:15
business grow and create the new thing that's next.
33:17
And so you really needed somebody to go in and help you
33:20
unpack what part of that is helpful and adding to the
33:24
process and what part is just it's just reliably sabotaging
33:28
the success you're having in all these other parts of your
33:30
business? Yeah, I've had the chance to
33:33
meet Doug Brackman and I've read his book Driven as well and I
33:37
would recommend both resources to people you it.
33:40
Also we've talked about traction for a bit and we implemented
33:43
that in one of my businesses and I'll I'll give two thumbs up to
33:45
that experience as well. I think those are some really
33:48
great resources that you shared. Curious to hear from you, Steve.
33:52
Where do you kind of see your professional path going in the
33:55
next few years? Is it whatever comes my way kind
33:59
of a thing? Is there a, you know, a goal in
34:02
mind? Where do you see yourself
34:04
heading? Yeah, that's a great question
34:06
and very timely. It's it's the one I'm wrestling
34:08
with right now. You know we we've we've enjoyed
34:11
the couple's coaching because these are people who are on who
34:15
are on the same journey we're on just a few steps behind us.
34:18
And so the chance to kind of reach back and help them learn
34:22
from some of the stakes we made and bring some of the resources
34:24
that we learned to bear on what they're doing.
34:27
So I, you know I really enjoy this couples coaching.
34:30
We're going to keep doing it for a while because it allows us to
34:32
just take a look at the the whole thing.
34:33
It's not just such as business coaching like you know what what
34:37
are the problems that you're having in your relationship that
34:39
make running this business together more challenging,
34:41
right. You have to you can't import all
34:44
of your problems from home into the business but those come
34:48
along for the ride every morning and and so so the coaching is
34:53
going is going well like advising these businesses and
34:57
and these couples. So I think we're going to do
34:59
that for a little while. But I, I, you know I am feeling
35:01
the itch to create something. It's been a it's been a nice
35:07
three-year break but in the coaching is fun but there's
35:11
there's nothing like, you know creating on your own and just
35:13
been building something And so I'm I'm starting to get that
35:16
itch. But I'm there's things are
35:18
happening so fast right now with AI changing just about every
35:22
possible industry that it's really hard to like find a spot
35:26
where you can land and be like all right.
35:28
I think I'm going to make this move here in this space because
35:30
I I have a good sense of where this is going.
35:32
So this is just kind of a very interesting time.
35:34
I'm really enjoying just kind of watching everything unfold.
35:38
I'm digesting a lot of books, a lot of podcasts talking to a lot
35:40
of smart friends about what they're excited about and where
35:45
they think things are going. And you know, all the businesses
35:49
are that we've done are largely the same.
35:52
They kind of bubble up out of a out of a need and out of a
35:55
passion, out of a seeing a space in the market.
35:58
There's never a time we just like created something to
36:00
scratch and just wield it. It was usually just listening
36:03
was kind of the main skill there.
36:05
And so we're very much in that mode right now waiting for
36:07
something to to pop up that says, OK, this is, this is where
36:10
I'm going to take the next 10 years of our life is going to be
36:13
this project. And so we're trying not to rush
36:15
into that, but we're also trying to to be as curious as we can so
36:20
that we when when something does present that we can put all of
36:23
our resources behind that. And I do hear you keep using the
36:27
word we is the intent that you and Katisha, your wife, would do
36:31
this together and and maybe I'd get a different answer if I
36:34
asked her. Yeah, I mean we are.
36:38
We're a team in every way that we can be a team.
36:40
I I think I think things would go much better this time around
36:44
now that we've done all of this work and we've had all these
36:46
resources and work with Doug and all these other professionals to
36:49
help. But you know when you're like I
36:54
if I if I if you hire just me as a business coach I'm going to be
36:58
pushing you to grow and expand. And I love having Katisha's
37:01
voice there of saying, hey three more locations may not be the
37:06
best interest of your of the lifestyle you're trying to
37:08
career in. That might be the best for your
37:10
your top line revenue might be the best for you know moving
37:13
your company into positioning for a you know private equity
37:16
buyout or something. There's there's a lot of good
37:19
reasons why growth might be but is it getting you closer to life
37:21
you want to live And that's something I really love about
37:24
petition. Her perspective is she really
37:26
does think of work as something that serves and allows you to
37:29
create the life you want to do outside of work.
37:33
And so I'm I'm hoping that whatever we do next we do
37:37
together because we're just a we're we're a much better team
37:40
than we are separate and I am much more likely to be
37:45
successful. So I've got her by my side
37:49
helping to just helping to slow me down and get me to even.
37:53
You out a little bit. Yeah, just take a deep breath
37:56
and is this does is this really what we need to be doing right
37:58
now. So I'm hoping it's together
38:02
we'll we'll have to wait and see what the idea is or fully sell
38:05
on that yet. All right.
38:08
To be determined. Well, Steve, I want to thank you
38:10
again for taking the time to Share your story with us today.
38:13
Can you tell us, anybody who's interested?
38:16
How can they get in touch with you?
38:19
Yeah, that's a that's a great question.
38:22
So we don't, we don't really even have like a website or a
38:25
you know a social media presence for the coaching.
38:27
A lot of the coaching that really comes to us just by
38:30
friends and referrals. But I will, I'll give, maybe we
38:35
can give my e-mail in the show notes and if anybody has any
38:38
questions about anything that we talked about today or you know
38:41
wants to go deeper on the licensing business model or you
38:45
know talk about coaching, anything like that, just send me
38:48
an e-mail, be happy to reply and you know we can hop on a call
38:52
and just talk about where you are and what you're seeking.
38:54
I I love doing this. I love having talking with
38:56
people who are on this entrepreneurial journey.
38:59
It's such a unique, such a unique journey and can be very
39:04
lonely if you don't, if you're not consciously trying to
39:07
connect with other people and and learn from their
39:10
experiences. And so I'm happy to connect with
39:12
anybody and chat about this stuff.
39:14
It's been a it's been a ride that I'm grateful for and I'm
39:18
grateful for being able to help anybody That's that's on it as
39:22
well. That's terrific.
39:23
Thank you, Steve. Well, that's a wrap on another
39:26
episode of Inspired Stories. Thanks for learning with me
39:29
today.