The Grit Blueprint

American-Made Products & Marketing Budgets, Randy's Hardware | Sponsored by Do it Best Group

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Randy's Hardware CEO, Christian Herrick, shares how his family business transformed from a single location to four thriving stores while successfully competing against retail giants like Walmart. His journey from part-time employee to chief executive reveals valuable lessons in brand building, marketing innovation, and quality differentiation.

• Growing a generational business that can be passed down to future family members
• Investing in marketing when others in the industry remain skeptical
• Building a successful YouTube channel that brings in customers daily
• Surviving and thriving after a Walmart opened nearby through strategic differentiation
• Focusing on American-made, premium products with clear quality differences
• Leveraging community connections and solving problems beyond just selling products
• Working with co-ops like Do it Best to compete effectively against larger retailers
• The surprising quality differences between identical model numbers at big box stores versus independent retailers
• Advice for industry newcomers: "Think like a manager" and become the person with answers

If you're ready to turn visibility into growth, head to gritblueprint.com to learn more and book a call to talk about your growth strategy.


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Christian Herrick:

We had a guy bring in a drill. He said it stopped working. We asked him where he got it. He got it at a big box store. We took it apart and we opened up one of ours. There were plastic internals in the one from the big boxing store and brass in ours had the same model number and everything. Chainsaws are the same way. It was so crazy and we were like and they were selling it for you know 30% cheaper than ours. But it looked exactly the same from the outside and he couldn't believe it.

Stefanie Couch:

You get what you pay for. In this day and age, how often do you have people come in the store and talk to you about the YouTube?

Christian Herrick:

Almost every day. It's really cool, it's really fun.

Stefanie Couch:

I see and talk to a lot of leaders that don't really believe in marketing in our industry. I don't understand it, because it's the thing that brings business in, but they somehow don't see that.

Christian Herrick:

That's a big problem, you know. Look at all the biggest businesses in the world. They're all spending a ton of fortune on marketing.

Stefanie Couch:

In a business where you are planning on being there in a generation, that's worth it.

Christian Herrick:

You still have to be investing in it, both in building your brand, maintaining your brand and growing your brand. You know, getting new customers to come in. You can't ever sacrifice either one.

Stefanie Couch:

Welcome to the Grit Blueprint Podcast, the playbook for building unmistakable brands that grow, lead and last in the built world. I'm Stefanie Couch, the founder of Grit Blueprint, and I'm a lifelong building industry insider. I was raised here, built my career here, and now my team and I help others win here. The truth is, you can be the best option in your space and still lose to someone else who simply shows up better and more consistently Each week. On the Grit Blueprint, I'm going to show you how to stand out, earn trust and turn your brand into a competitive advantage that lasts. If you're ready to be seen, known, chosen and become unmistakable, you're in the right place. Let's get started. Welcome to the GRIP Blueprint Podcast.

Stefanie Couch:

I am your host, Stefanie Couch, and I'm here today in Orlando and I'm really excited. So I have the CEO of Randy's Hardware here, Christian. Welcome to the show. Thank you, Stefanie, and we have met a few times in passing, but I'm really excited to get to talk to you because your story is intriguing. A lot of what you guys are doing is pretty cutting edge and you are really making some ripples, and you are in the beautiful location in Virginia. You have four stores, and so I want to talk a little bit today about some of the cool stuff you're doing and figure out what people need to know about running a hardware store and going up against some retail giants. So you started out in Randy's Hardware as a part-timer and now you're the CEO, so quite a progression. What changes happened in you as going from part-time? How did you get started? Tell me, just tell me the whole story. I want to know.

Christian Herrick:

Well, it's a family business, so I had that leg up, of course, but I started out, you know, managing other businesses as a career Okay, and just took some time off of school and managing businesses to get started in hardware and um, working part-time in the family business, and found out I really enjoyed it and liked helping people, especially um, and solving problems and that sort of thing and and so part-time turned into full-time, turned into management, turned into executive position and then turned into chief executive position.

Stefanie Couch:

Yeah, what other businesses, what other industries were you in? Were you in a totally different industry before?

Christian Herrick:

I was in construction management and then before that, my family has a pool business in Las Vegas.

Stefanie Couch:

So yeah, managing that OK so you've got some breadth of industry, but you know kind of all in something in the industry. What makes you keep coming back to that? Is it the family ties? Is it just the people here? Because it is a different thing. I feel like once you get in, you can't get out.

Christian Herrick:

Yeah, yeah. For me, it is the family ties. I was always looking for a generational business that I could be a part of, you know, and not only for me, but for my kids and for their kids, and so I wanted something I could pass on and build for them that's such a beautiful thing.

Stefanie Couch:

You know, my family was in the industry and I love I'm doing something a little different. So I'm like sort of third generation, but obviously a different flair. Sure, but very, Stefanie, yeah. However, it is so special to know that you were doing something very similar what your dad did, your mom mom did, your granddad did. I have a lot of aunts and uncles that were in the industry. What does it mean? You mentioned your kids and their kids. Are they already in the business at all? Are they helping? What's that role look like?

Christian Herrick:

Yeah, so they're still young my oldest is just heading off to college, but they all still work in the business, you know, and we're still trying to figure out if that means they're going to come back or anything like that. But we're letting them, you know, sow their wild oats, so to speak, and figure out what they're going to do with their life, and just hoping that it'll mean coming back home.

Stefanie Couch:

Yeah, I think it'll be cool to see how that works out. Hopefully they will. Fingers crossed. They'll come back to the business?

Christian Herrick:

Yeah, I hope so.

Stefanie Couch:

Well, tell me a little bit about you. Started in this role part-time and then within a year you had pitched another location and now you guys have four locations in Timberville, virginia and the surrounding areas. So tell me a little bit about that. What gave you confidence to actually get in there and say like let's go do this and we can open a new place?

Christian Herrick:

Well, I was confident in myself and my management abilities, probably a little overconfident, as a lot of us are when we're young, you know. But I also saw that what my father-in-law had built was duplicable, you know it was. It was something that we could grow and that it had a really wide audience around our county that people were excited about it and wanted to support us. Audience around our county that people were excited about it and wanted to support us. And so I saw that there was just an opening in a community not too far from us and something we could build on there.

Stefanie Couch:

What did you think was the biggest opportunity? Because you mentioned the customers kind of buying in and loving it. What did you hear? What were people saying that made you think people love this? Because I think there's something about an independent home hardware store. It's so special and I don't think people understand the difference between you know there's big box, there's all those things. They have a lot of the same products, sometimes the exact same products. What makes an independent hardware store so special?

Christian Herrick:

There's so many things I think you know not only are we a solution for the products we offer, but more than that, we're a solution in fixing things. You know we have a trademark for we fix stuff, yeah, and we like to think of that organically in that we don't just fix your toilet or your sink or whatever we're. You know there to help solve problems in the community. Whatever we're, you know there to help solve problems in the community. You know, at large, everything, and so that's, I think, what the difference is between us and some big corporate, big box that's there that we're really rooted in the community.

Christian Herrick:

We want to make a difference in the community, and that's the solutions we're looking for every day.

Stefanie Couch:

Yeah, and people that work there, people that come in. Some of these people are generational. You know their mom, their dad, their granddad shop there. Maybe still does. Do you have things that you do with the community? I know you're very involved that maybe in your store. And then what do you do outside of your store in the community?

Christian Herrick:

Yeah, so I'm on several nonprofit boards and you know, try to volunteer as much as I can. I'm on the NHPA board as well just recently joined that. Try to give back to the industry that's given so much to me and my family. And also, yeah, we support as many local causes as we possibly can. You know, we have to have a budget because you can go. You can go broke supporting them as you know.

Christian Herrick:

But yeah, we just try to support as many causes as we can. We don't do a great job as independent businesses, as promoting ourselves. We feel kind of awkward about that, which is, you know, not necessarily a great thing, but we support a ton of local causes and we feel good about that.

Stefanie Couch:

Yeah, I remember as a young girl, you know I was a Girl Scout and there's just lots of cool things and it really was a lot of those small businesses that paid for us to do things or like softball team or whatever. There wouldn't have been those trips or wouldn't have been those opportunities without businesses like yours. So it's really important. I'm curious to hear your thoughts because you know branding is something I talk about a lot. We are very operations minded as an industry. We're not showy, we're humble and sometimes that is our own worst enemy. You know, I talked to this morning a little bit about being the best kept secret. It's a liability now, especially in an online world. How are you guys addressing that? Because I know you're on YouTube, so tell me a little bit about what you're doing on YouTube, how that gets started and what's it look like today.

Christian Herrick:

That's kind of a long story, but we we are active in marketing in general. It have been for several years. Really, I saw that as an opportunity when I became an executive to just invest in marketing, to actually have a budget and do marketing in general, and we analyze it pretty regularly. Is it working? You know, what should we be doing differently? We used to do a lot of traditional marketing on radio and print and have steered away from that because we just didn't see the results anymore, and so we've gone a lot more digitally because we see a lot better results and we realized that Digitally we were skewing a lot older, with Facebook especially. We were doing a ton on Facebook because it was working really well for us, but it was skewing older, sure, and we wanted to attract customers that weren't already shopping with us the Gen Zs and younger millennials and we found that they were watching a lot of YouTube, listening to Spotify, those sorts of things not listening to the radio, of course, and not, you know, looking at a newspaper, of all things and so we had to change our tactics. We launched a YouTube channel and we had been doing it for years, but we had been focusing on, like, how to fix your sink, you know, and things that you could look at a thousand other videos and do on YouTube. And so what we decided to do?

Christian Herrick:

My COO came up with the idea, austin, and he said why don't we do something like Orange County Choppers Remember those guys? And he was like why don't we do like a reality TV kind of series and just like life behind the scenes in a hardware store, see how it goes? And it's been great, it's been fun to shoot. It takes very little time from us, you know, we we have a company come in and do the filming for us. Yeah, um, and it's been great, it's been very well received. It's attracting the younger audiences, even down to kids, which is awesome for us, you know and we get a lot of positive feedback from our customers and new people coming in.

Stefanie Couch:

It's amazing, I think, when you start to look at what could happen if you stop thinking about it the way you've always thought about it, that first principle is thinking of what if we didn't do it that way? What if we turn it on its head? And it is kind of scary, though, because people judge you and the industry. You know other stores that are other people like well, what are you trying to? Be an influencer? You know the Kardashians or something, but at the end of the day, if you look at, I mean, the Kardashians are a good example, because it's the furthest thing from the hardware industry I can think of, probably, but they have built billions of dollars worth of empire off of that show. That just showed what they were doing.

Stefanie Couch:

People want to see behind the scenes and they want to see the boring stuff. It doesn't have to be something crazy that's happening for them to want to watch it. Human nature, I think we're so intrigued by other humans, and I also think that it does help to see somebody like you. That's the CEO leading that charge. So you mentioned marketing being one of your things you wanted to put in the budget. I see and talk to a lot of leaders that don't really believe in marketing in our industry. Tell me your thoughts on that just a little bit deeper, because I don't understand it, because it's the thing that brings business in, but they somehow don't see that. Why do you think that is?

Christian Herrick:

Well, I think it's because it's so hard to measure most of the time. You know the ROI is just frustratingly difficult to measure and a lot of times you feel like you're just throwing money into nothing. You know, and the problem is when you take it away you slowly and almost imperceptibly are dying.

Christian Herrick:

You know you're not getting new customers to come in yep, you're just relying on what you have and possibly word of mouth, which does grow your business a little bit, but you're not attracting the new customers, the new generations, and that's a big problem you know, look at all the biggest businesses in the world, they're all spending. You know, look at all the biggest businesses in the world, they're all spending a ton a fortune on marketing, I know, and we have to emulate that and at least do a fraction of what they're doing. Sure, you know, and some emulation.

Stefanie Couch:

Yeah, I mean some big companies. I talk a lot about brand. You look at what they're doing and they're marketing so much brand awareness work which is almost impossible to track because it's a long game.

Stefanie Couch:

But in a business where you are planning on being there in a generation, another generation. You know some of these people are fourth, fifth generations. What does it matter if it takes three months, six months, 10 months a year. If you're planning on being here in 20 years, that's worth it. But I think people get short-sighted on it. So that's the thing is that they do.

Stefanie Couch:

When you do something like operations and you say, okay, well, we, I'll take a lumber truck, for example, or you know you remodel the store or something very tactical, you can see that physically, you know what it's going to cost, you know when the end date is, you know when it's going to, you know be paid off, whatever, and then you also can see the person in that store or the truck going to that job site. It is so much easier to measure. So I think that's a wonderful point. How do you get? As you said, you do a lot of data tracking. What part of it do you say hey, that's more brand awareness and that is going to be almost impossible to track. The real value versus this brings us in this cost per click or this.

Christian Herrick:

This actual dollar came from this marketing. Yeah, that's. I mean again, that's not something we don't have a great way of doing, that sometimes it's still a shot in the dark for us. Um, and I, you know we're not a great I we're not, I mean, I'm by no means an expert on marketing, but I think you still have to be investing in it either way both ways, you know both in building your brand, maintaining your brand, building the awareness of your brand and growing your brand.

Christian Herrick:

You know getting new customers to come in and I think you can't, you can't ever sacrifice either one. It's like it's, it's just crucial to who you are, you know. Yeah.

Stefanie Couch:

Talking about the YouTube. So there's obviously metrics on YouTube. You can see how many people are watching it. But how often do you have people come in the store and talk to you about the YouTube?

Christian Herrick:

Almost every day.

Stefanie Couch:

It's really cool, yeah, it's really fun.

Christian Herrick:

Yeah, it's super fun.

Stefanie Couch:

Do you have kind of like characters that we?

Christian Herrick:

do Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Stefanie Couch:

So people, they know people from the YouTube that they don't really know because they've been watching it right, yeah, yeah, exactly, that's so awesome, yeah, and we try to highlight a lot of our staff.

Christian Herrick:

We go to each store so they see the different stores, but it's super fun.

Stefanie Couch:

Yeah, that's so cool and I wish more people would do that, because we have some really awesome people in our industry.

Stefanie Couch:

Great stories we do, and some of them are funny. Some of them are not funny. They're very serious, you know, and that's even funnier when they're super dry and they don't really want to talk about it on camera. I love that. I feel like if we could all just be a little less serious with ourselves, that we would have a lot more fun doing some of this marketing stuff, because I do think we get to the point where we have to make it perfect and it's just not going to be that way, no, no.

Christian Herrick:

Marketing, I think, in general, is an imperfect science, you know, and that's part of why it's so frustrating a lot of times, you know. But just set your budget In my case it was take it off my plate and hire somebody right and um, that's just been a game changer for us and it's really worked. Well, you know, give, give them a budget and make sure they stay on budget, which is our measurable, yeah, and then just make sure that they're giving, getting results and and we measure that through the feedback we get and you know, new customers coming in and it's been great.

Stefanie Couch:

Well, and Gen Z and millennials I mean I am a millennial, but especially Gen Z they're doing so much research and purchasing online and a lot of that starts on a YouTube video. You know, I, I think my husband and I have learned more from podcasts and YouTube videos than anything else. I mean, I do read a lot of books, but I mean we listen to podcasts at the gym. We watch YouTube videos on Saturday night instead of watching movies or TV shows, because a lot of it's business related and Gen Z is doing that and millennials are doing that. So if you're not thinking about this in your hardware business, you are missing out on a whole, not another. Like you said, half of the population that's purchasing wax rings for their toilets or a sink, you know, for their house. What do you see as the most common when you think about products and things that people misunderstand or like want to know more about? What are those products that you think people come in and ask about in the store or won help with?

Christian Herrick:

I think our plumbing department is probably the most asked about, yeah, yeah, and probably um most misunderstood and probably the easiest department for us to, you know, upsell and make an extra dime there and make a little extra profit, so that's probably our easiest one, yeah.

Stefanie Couch:

I remember when shark bite plumbing fixtures came out, there was like when I was selling at my dad's lumber yard and hardware store and they were pretty expensive but they're so easy right, and so it was easy to change that dollar 19, 90 degree angle into a SharkBite. That was like 15 bucks at the time. They're probably like 30 bucks now, but I did think that that's a really cool thing and I always like the plumbing aisle because it is like puzzle solving and, unlike other places, it's a little bit more of a metric. You can go back there and try to figure out how to get from A to B and, yeah, I love that. What cool innovations or products have you seen come out that excite you? Anything that you guys are selling that you're like that's a great thing.

Christian Herrick:

Product wise. You know, we we recently implemented, uh, battery operated steel equipment okay in our, in our main store, um, and I'm just a big believer in that category. Yeah, they're going hard after it, you know they're. They're a little late to the game compared to people like ego, um, but they are doing really fantastic things in that category and I think battery operated ope outdoor power equipment in general is is just a game changer. You know, it's like. It's like AI is now. It's just it's been fantastic and selling for us, it's.

Stefanie Couch:

It's done really well for us that way and but it's also it's just so much easier for customers it's so much easier to maintain you don't have to go get gas and then keep it in your garage and what do you do? You know how do you get it back if you don't have a truck, and it's a whole thing. Yeah, I got to drive one of the steel battery powered zero turns at the do it best show last year. It was the highlight of my whole show, so I'm hoping in September that they'll have me back. I only hit one cone.

Christian Herrick:

Okay, I felt pretty good about that did you hit full throttle, because those things go fast.

Stefanie Couch:

I did kind of run over it, but I hit it from the side.

Christian Herrick:

I don't even know if it counted Christian.

Stefanie Couch:

It was kind of like no one got on camera that they they're like nope, you didn't get any cones and then they posted it on social and I was hitting the course. So I got set up, but I'm hoping to have an adventure at the do it best market. Yeah, let's talk a little bit about Do it Best and your partnership with them. Having a partner in this business, especially as a smaller independent that's going up against giants like Home Depot, lowe's and Walmart, what does it mean to have someone who is also a very large company that can support you like Do it Best?

Christian Herrick:

It's everything. Having the support of somebody like Do it Best and I'll point out the NHPA as well as our industry, you know it's a game changer. My brother and I launched another independent business it's a game store a few years ago and it's doing well. But they have no industry backing at all and so they just get hammered and dictated what they can do and what they can't do by their distributor. And we have a partner in do it best, you know, and and the support in hpa, and they help us to see where our flaws are. They help us to figure out what we can do about it, and then they support us with products, you know, and negotiating the best deals and things like that. And you know we're not just a dinky little store and in rural Virginia we're, we're a part of a big organization and it means the world to us. You know it's.

Stefanie Couch:

It's why we're successful yeah, they help you punch above your weight class as an independent and I think, going from my dad's store to I worked for a larger two-step distributor. You do see the difference that that negotiating power and all of those things they give you a lot of leverage and there's just no way that you could ever have it as a small business by yourself. So they're, they're amazing. What is one of your favorite things about going to the market? Because I know September's coming up soon. We're going to be at the market in Indianapolis, so what's one of your favorite things there?

Christian Herrick:

I love seeing all my friends and networking. You know I never consider it networking. I just seeing friends and meeting new people. That's my favorite part of market every time. And coming to things like this conference, yeah, but you know, seeing the new stuff coming out is really fun. Going to my favorite restaurants I love Harry and Izzy's. Harry and Izzy's is good. Indy is awesome. So yeah, I just I love the market, I love conferences in general.

Stefanie Couch:

Yeah, and this show is going to be cool because it's the 80th anniversary of Do it Best, yep. I didn't actually realize that until recently, so I'm excited about that. It's an 80s party, do you?

Christian Herrick:

have like a mullet ready, or uh, no, you probably do. Yeah, probably should get ready for that okay, I'll grow it out in three weeks, yeah no, no pressure, but your 80s outfit should be on point.

Stefanie Couch:

Okay, I'm gonna be patiently waiting. So let's talk about walmart, because you have a story um going head to head with walmart. So tell me how that came about. And you know a lot of people would panic if a super Walmart was moving in next door, but you guys didn't, you did the opposite. Tell me about that.

Christian Herrick:

Well, we did panic at first. Yeah, I mean, I did yeah, and they. When we heard they were coming to town, we fought it as much, as much as we could. Of course, it's a tiny little town and we were getting a super walmart. It made no sense to us. We didn't understand why they would want to come, why the, why the people in town would want them.

Christian Herrick:

I did a ton of research and that's where it started. I read all the books I could find, all the studies I could find, and tried to present information to the town that you know they weren't good for little towns. It's been shown over and over again that crime goes up, unemployment goes up, they kill small businesses all over the board and all that stuff. So, yeah, so anyway. When that didn't work and the town approved it, we said, well, gonna coexist, I guess, and and and we came up with a battle plan to go against them. Yeah, and it. It involved, you know, getting rid of a lot of the products that didn't set us apart, that they sold to, totally phasing those out. A lot of like cheap imported stuff like that, yep, focusing on american made stuff. Focusing on products that are like real high quality, focusing on our services that they just don't offer, and our service, you know, like what? What sets us apart is people can come in, we talk to them and we know them and that's actually know what you're talking about.

Stefanie Couch:

We do, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I can't imagine going to get help on plumbing. I know they don't really sell like true plumbing but that would be an adventure. You know any big box trying to ask questions. I mean because that person probably was working in a different department like two days ago.

Christian Herrick:

You know, yeah yeah, so yeah, and they opened we typically from my research I think we saw like typically, we saw a 30% decrease in your sales most stores did and we saw a 30% decrease in your sales Most stores did. And we saw a 3% decrease in sales and it was only for a few months and then all of our customers came back. They started sending customers to us and the increase in traffic to town helped us. It was after three months. We saw an increase. Wow, so it became a growth opportunity for us after all. That's awesome.

Stefanie Couch:

Tell me about the Made in America piece, because I love that. I think it's obviously something that most independent businesses would love to do more of. But then you also mentioned having premium type products. That set you apart, because everyone doesn't want cheap junk. Yeah, they don't want something that's going to break after one use or is the cheapest thing. So how does that premium and made in America really work for you and your customer base?

Christian Herrick:

Yeah, it's, you have to have a conversation with people about it because, like we would, when we switched I remember switching our galvanized fittings from Chinese to American made it went up in price by, like you know, 30, 40%, and I remember some people just complaining about the price and then we'd point out and we actually put little American flag stickers on everything, yeah, and they were like, oh, okay, you know they were just as soon as you pointed out why the price was that way, they're like, oh, that's, that's fine. Then okay, yeah, and that was a key differentiator is having a conversation with people and telling them why we did it and you know why. That was a key differentiator is having a conversation with people and telling them why we did it and you know why it was a little more expensive and you know why we're going through the whole process in general is, you know, make sure our people still have jobs here. We didn't want to close and all that stuff, and that was a big deal for us and it worked out well.

Stefanie Couch:

That's awesome. What premium products do you see that your consumers come in and they're really willing to pay for the higher end thing?

Christian Herrick:

In our case we have a few niches, like I sell high-end knives, hunting knives and camping knives, high-end axes, those are super cool, they're really cool, I mean.

Stefanie Couch:

I love. I think it's because maybe my dad sold like case knives when we were growing up. But those axes are so cool and I would never use it because I don't camp, but I just feel like I need to buy it every time I see one. I don't know, it's really fun.

Christian Herrick:

You and me both, I've got a few.

Stefanie Couch:

You're like, this one's just a little too nice to leave on the shelf. I love it.

Christian Herrick:

Yeah, and let's see, I mean, like I said, our plumbing fittings. A lot of those have just switched to American made.

Stefanie Couch:

But our tools, you know, we brought in steel, yeah, that makes a big difference and I think a lot of people don't realize the line that they sell at the big box is not the same line as the line you sell at an independent.

Christian Herrick:

It's not the same thing. It's not. It could have the same model number and it's not the same.

Stefanie Couch:

It's not the same at all, and and it will not be the same in five years oh no one will run and one will probably exactly yeah I had to learn that the hard way.

Christian Herrick:

We had a guy bring in a drill to us and, uh, we he said it stopped working. We asked him where he got it. He got it at a big box store and we took it apart and we opened up one of ours. There were plastic internals in the one from the big boxing store and brass in ours. Yeah, had the same model number and everything. Chainsaws are the same way. It was so crazy and we were like and they were selling it for, you know, 30% cheaper than ours. But it looked exactly the same from the outside and he couldn't believe it. Yeah, we're like this is what you get. You get what you pay for in this day and age.

Stefanie Couch:

You know it was just a gimmick they use I think the education around that, though it's tough because people don't. They see one thing on the price tag, they see the model numbers, the same. It is kind of a little bit of a ruse, but it also is where your, your expertise and your selling power. Now you can tell people that and, again, I do think that people understand once they see why they're like, okay, yeah. So it's important, I think, for us to remember that as a, as an independent retailer, that you can educate your customers and I like to talk a lot about, you know, consultative. How do you tell them what they need when they don't really know what they need? In a kind way, but helping guide them and being the guide for our customers, I think it's really important.

Stefanie Couch:

Well, you're doing amazing things in the industry and I love what you guys are doing with the YouTube and pushing the boundaries and all the things. But if you were going back to part-time helper where you didn't know what you know now and someone was in and all the things, but if you were going back to part-time helper where you didn't know what you know now and someone was in the store, what advice would you give a young person coming into our industry that maybe has no experience, if they were gonna start here today, yeah, it's the same advice I give my kids, and that is think like a manager, and what I mean by that is to think outside of yourself and your position and to think about the problems that other people are facing around you you know whether that's the customers or your coworkers or your boss even and see if you can address any of those.

Christian Herrick:

Even and see if you can address any of those, because a lot of us are flying by the seat of our pants, a lot of us. You know, and you'll find, as you become a manager or become an executive, that a lot of it is just becoming the person who has answers or becoming the person who can give an answer Not necessarily the right answer just an answer.

Stefanie Couch:

None of us have it figured out, right? None of us have it figured out right.

Christian Herrick:

None of us have it figured out, but they just want an answer.

Stefanie Couch:

I remember when I first realized that when I was at a very large company and I kept thinking, like the person at the very top had like they know, like there's something behind that curtain that they have it all figured out. They're just not telling us. And now that I have my own company and realize it's like, oh yeah, we're all just trying to figure it out every day. Yeah, some of us have a little more experience, we have more figured out, but things change so rapidly in our businesses that it is your job to just try to be the one with the answers. That's such great advice. Yeah, and with your, your kids, do you find it to be uh interesting to watch them with their different styles and their different personalities?

Christian Herrick:

Oh, I love that. Yeah, yeah, and seeing them, they're now, my youngest is nine, my oldest is 18. And so, yeah, I just they're such great little people you know not little necessarily, but they're, they're so interesting and I just love them. They're, they're great, yeah.

Stefanie Couch:

Well, I'm fingers crossed that they're going to come back to the family business. I think that they will, and they definitely have a great role model in you, so it's exciting. Well, thank you for all you're doing to push the industry and I can't wait to keep watching your story and I'm going to get up to see those axes and it sounds like I've got to come check them out.

Christian Herrick:

Yeah.

Stefanie Couch:

All right. Well, thank you for joining me on the Grit Blueprint podcast and we will catch you next time. Thank you for listening to the Grit Blueprint podcast. If this episode helped you think a little differently about how to show up, share it with someone in your building world who needs it. If you're ready to turn visibility into growth, then head to gritblueprintcom to learn more and book a call to talk to us about your growth strategy. Until next time, stay unmistakable.

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Stefanie Couch

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