we're back here hobby jobs coming at you very excited to get into today's conversation as promised we will be bringing special guests individuals who are running businesses in this space specifically retail locations and we've got a fun one today before we get into the reveal i was thinking about the conversation i was thinking about my own experience and i wanted to share in july i took my daughter jolene to indycard exchange for the first time we sat down and opened up squishmallow packs together andy albert the owner gave her a bcw storage box to put her cards in she had a place to spread everything out and look at what she pulled as a dad i noticed how comfortable she felt as somebody who spends his life thinking about collecting businesses i noticed something else they had given us a reason to come back nobody had to explain a parallel to jolene nobody needed to turn our visit into a big receipt they gave her room to enjoy the thing in front of her now that shop is part of a memory we both share if you own a hobby shop work in one or hope to open one i wanna spend today on the decisions that create more moments like that because making the first sale is one job helping somebody become a collector who trusts you enough to return is another this is hobbyjobs i'm brett mcgrath each week we're looking at the people and decisions behind the businesses building the sports car industry this week we'll get into what happens in the first five minutes how shops make the next visit easier and what you can measure to see whether any of this is actually working then i'll bring in a new conversation with john amendola ceo of mint inc john and i spoke earlier this year about what it takes to build a shop around relationships i wanna take that conversation further and ask him how the idea holds up when you have employees inventory multiple channels and a business to run hobbyjobs is supported by my good friends at bcw supplies for forty five years bcw has helped retailers and wholesale partners keep the storage and display supplies collectors use on their shelves if you run a shop and want to learn about their wholesale program visit b c w supplies dot com backslash wholesale in this week's hobby jobs newsletter i wrote that the first sale is not the win the second visit is i wanna take that one step further today if i were running a hobby shop i would ask my team to pay attention to three different handoffs from the doorway to the conversation from that conversation to a good decision and from the first visit to a reason to return those handoffs sound small that's why a shop can miss them while spending a lot of money on everything else start at the door picture a parent walking in with a kid who knows every player in the league the parent knows almost nothing about cards maybe they're willing to spend twenty dollars maybe two hundred neither person knows where to stand cases are full a trade is happening at the counter and the employees are talking to somebody they already know what does the parent learn in the first thirty seconds maybe they learn that this place is for them or maybe they learn that there is an inside group here and they're on the outside an employee doesn't have to deliver a speech a simple sincere greeting just does the job hey glad you stopped by take a look around if you tell me who you collect i can point you toward a great place to start then you can give them space some people want to wander some people want help right away the employee has made themselves available without turning the visit into a test here's the part a shop owner i think should hear greeting the person is a practice not a personality trait if it matters you can train it what should happen when the staff member is occupied who notices that person when does someone follow-up after they have had about a minute or so to browse those are the operating questions the second handoff is the decision this is where i think a lot of businesses confuse product knowledge with helping a collector a new customer doesn't need every checklist explained they need somebody to understand why they came in is there a player or team you follow is opening packs the fun part for you or are you hoping to take home a particular card those answers change the recommendations that come next i've never owned a hobby shop i've never worked in one but i think about the work i have done in my professional career working with customers and asking the right questions and i think some of that applies to this industry if a kid wants a specific player a couple of singles might be a better first purchase than a sealed box that probably won't contain that player if a parent and a kid want twenty minutes opening packs together the experience of the rip might just be the point if a returning collector is overwhelmed by how much product exists now showing them two sensible paths may be more useful than walking them down twenty i would also want the employee to be clear about uncertainty what does the price buy what could be inside the pack and what is unlikely are we selling the fun of opening something or are we letting somebody believe they're likely to pull a card that almost never happens a shop can make money on product and still decide it isn't right for the person standing there that judgment is expensive in the moment it may be one of the most valuable things the business owns over time i also don't wanna romanticize the economics i understand as a business owner myself that payroll is real rent is real cases have to turn a shop cannot give away time and product without thinking about the cost so building an entry point that works for both sides is important a box of accessible singles and affordable pack option supplies that help somebody care for the cards they already own and an employee who can say which choice makes sense for the customer the aim is a purchase the customer is happy to remember next week that's different from asking how high you can get today's receipt and then comes the handoff too many shops have leave to just chance what happens after the first purchase here's a question i would put to every employee before a customer leaves what reason does that person have to come back that relates to what they told us they care about it may be we usually put new cold singles in this case on fridays or bring the card back to trade night next month and we can show you how people think about it from a fair trade perspective it may be if she wants to sort her polls we have a table here that's available on saturdays the invitation should be true a vague come back anytime asks the customer to invent the next visit for you a specific invitation makes it easy to picture with permission you can offer a relevant follow-up would you like me to let you know when more cards from that player come in then actually do it if somebody doesn't want messages respect that a remembered preference only builds trust when the shop uses it to help and i think there's one more thing it's paying attention to the collector who walks out with without buying anything if an employee helps them understand a product gives them a fair answer and invites them to the right event the visit may still have done its job you won't see that in today's sales report you might see it in next month's traffic so how would i know if this were working i think it's all about tests as a marketer i'm a big fan of testing you can start with a small cohort take the customers making their first identified purchase in a given month of those people how many make another purchase within the next sixty days also you can count who comes back to a trade night or browsing visit if you as a owners begin to track this responsibly a visit without a purchase is useful information but don't mix it into the purchase rate use the same window each next month if somebody buys for the first time on the last day of september don't call them right when october begins give every customer time and if you sell online and in store decide whether you are measuring the whole business or just the store alone you can track percentages you can begin to test this part i believe is really important i think about this from the perspective of being an individual who walks in stores i'm someone who likes to say hello then i like to be left to my own devices i probably analyze or overanalyze the experience as someone who lives and breathes the consumer experience but in my experience i love the dialogue and i love the dialogue with the people working behind the counter and i don't like it when it's being pushy or being forceful who does but i really like questions questions lead to better experiences for the business and for the customer you begin to understand each person individually you begin to understand their motivations desires why they're here what they're looking to accomplish and again it doesn't need to be a sale right then and there but understanding the individual walking in your store and why they're there and being able to play back what you learned in future visits leads to not only more visits those visits and those people telling their friends but it leads to a better experience for everyone and that is how you build a community and it's not easy and i don't stand up here and try to make it sound like it's easy and that there's some blueprint that you can put down it's case by case and it's what works best for the operations behind the business but at the end of the day delivering customized experiences for each individual that walks in the store is a great goal to have over time in this week's operator spotlight i wrote about my conversation with jameson long at port city sports collectibles what stayed with me after talking with jameson wasn't a clever campaign it was how many ordinary shop decisions pointed in the same direction at port city somebody spending five dollars gets attention someone spending five thousand dollars does too people get greeted the team asks what brought them in then gives them the space the first exchange means a customer can come back to the counter with a question without feeling like they're interrupting jameson watches return customer percentage that's an important choice if a store celebrates only today's revenue the employee who takes time with a new collector can look less productive than the employee who moves an expensive box a different measure changes what the owner notices who gets coached and eventually what staff believes their job is jamieson's team also learns what people collect when a collection comes in they can think of a customer who might care about one of those cards and let that person know i love the human side of that but from an operator's point of view there's a system hiding inside the gesture notice the interest remember it accurately match it to incoming inventory and reach out with a relevant reason there are limits of course i wouldn't want every employee texting every customer about every card that becomes noise fast i would rather get one message about a card i've been looking for than ten messages about products a shop wants to clear out then think about the inventory itself port city keeps new arrivals case new cards and other collectibles give familiar customers something different to discover if the cases look exactly the same three saturdays in a row a store is asking people to visit out of habit alone fresh inventory gives the habit something to attach to and the shop had to make a larger decision when its trade nights became so overcrowded that people were outside jamieson moved roughly moved from a fifth roughly fifteen hundred square foot space to one nearly four times larger that sounds like a real estate story to me it also is an experience story when the room cannot serve the people who want to be there growth can start to damage the thing that made the shop valuable more space brings higher costs of course i would ask any owner considering expansion what customer behavior tells you the existent existing experience is breaking what portion of that added space will help and what will it cost every month would a better event schedule solve the problem first jamieson made the larger choice for his business the lesson for the rest of us is to see the constraint clearly before copying the solution if i were working the floor at a shop i would look at port city and ask what i can control today did i acknowledge the person who entered while i was busy with the regular did i learn why a new collector came in when i found the right card for somebody did i make it easy for the team to remember that interest later did the event leave a first time guest wanting to join the next one those are little decisions that turn an owner's philosophy into a shop somebody can actually experience i had a great time chatting with jamieson if you want to hear that conversation you can find it on the feed it was this week on passion to profession i want to use the jobs part of hobby jobs to make this bigger than the shop floor in this week's issue i highlighted the director of retention marketing over at trove the specific job may change or close so check that link in the newsletter for its current status the reason i wanna talk about it here is what the work represents imagine somebody opens up their first digital pack now what they understand what they own do they know what action to take next do they feel good about the experience after the initial excitement fades does anything bring them back because it serves the way they collect a retention leader would have to connect those questions to actual behavior who comes back when they come back what helps them stay and which messages are useful enough to earn attention you could have a beautiful first time experience and still lose people if the next step is confusing you could drive a short burst of transactions with discounts and teach people to wait for the next discount the same questions apply to a card shop a marketplace a breaking business and a show this is a real career path inside the hobby if you're aspiring professional learning how to understand a collector's behavior run an honest experiment improve the experience across visits can make you valuable far beyond a traditional marketing job the job title says retention the human question is simpler did we earn a place in how somebody collects this takes me to the conversation i had with john amendola founder and ceo at mint inc john and i spoke in june and something he said stayed with me he tells his staff that the first sale is the easiest he pays close attention to what happens by the third or fourth sale he talked about serving somebody buying a dollar card with the same care as somebody buying a much more expensive one and he talked about creating a place where collectors can spend time together with trade nights and kids collector days those are john's descriptions of the business today i want to get underneath them how does a shop owner train that standard how do you protect it when you're busy how do you measure return behavior without reducing people to a number and what happens when the experience costs real money here's my conversation with john amendola at mint inc

alright we are back hobby jobs sponsored by bcw supplies i talked with today's guest on passion and profession i think it was in june and really enjoyed the conversation enjoyed the passion enjoyed learning more about how he thinks about building his business and now in this new series i wanted to get a little bit in the weeds and talk tactically about that and we're gonna be focusing on kinda customers and how to earn repeat customers and when i was thinking about this series the first person i thought of based on our previous history was john amendola he is the founder and ceo at mint inc which is the fastest growing the biggest the baddest the best hobby shop in canada so i'm really fired up for this conversation john welcome back man how are you i'm great man brett thanks so much for having me back it's so exciting i had a great time last time i i love what you have going on and i'm a big i have a big fan so yeah it's great thanks for having me i'm excited i'm gonna get fired up i can't talk too italian today because the blur is messing my background up but otherwise we're good to go and it's funny because you know i had a senior leadership meeting earlier this week and we talked about customer retention and a bunch of stuff we're doing for that and and i said oh by the way i'm i'm on this podcast friday and this just happens to be the topic so i'm actually right primed and ready for this one buddy let's go before we get into the subject at hand i'd be curious just based on the last time we spoke i know you were working on just expansion and just future plans i felt like you were looking like two to three years down the road even since then like what's been going on with mint inc what's been going on with your business so okay well yeah it's been crazy and and we really are like looking that far ahead one of the challenges i've been faced with over the last six years is is we keep going through these five year plans in a year so you know i'm almost that you know i try to look ahead as far as i can and and and and we just kinda stick to that and fortunately you know even though slowly is the fastest way to get anywhere fortunately that's that's you know not the case i'm gonna turn i'm sorry i'm gonna turn this blur off and i apologize brett all good it's just i'm gonna too much it's gonna just look bad i'll just live with the pokemon and everything in the back so i'll just give you like a one second edit there so it's been super exciting when we spoke last in in june we had a few stores we were i think i was like signing leases in real time when i was talking to you so we have a store in oakville which is which is west toronto and it is million people in the west a million people in the east so we've kinda blanketed the core so west toronto opens mid october we've finally started construction west coast here we come vancouver really excited about that i know that our partners at tops and upper deck are very excited that the mint ink experience is gonna be heading to the west coast there's something else i got cooking i really wanted to be able to tell you about it on here today but i can't i might tell you after but it's gonna be more reason i guess get me back on here sometime but we're working on something really cool in the core you know for for the listeners that really don't know toronto is the third largest metropolitan area in north america so after new york and la it's toronto we've passed chicago now and it's extremely robust urban you know modern city in the making and you know the amount of cranes in the air is crazy so it's very important that we're at the in the epicenter of canada but like in new york and la it's very expensive in toronto so we've been cooking for a while there you talk about looking ahead i've been working on this deal for about a year and i'm about to close it so that's super exciting and then the last thing when we spoke last week just closed the deal a three year deal leading up to the twenty twenty eight olympics with canada basketball so we are the official hobby partner and you know card provider of canada basketball we had rj barrett great big vip event here the other day we we actually when we talk about customer retention we actually built the speakeasy in one of the stores so we kind of unveiled the first just it's soft launch it's not all done yet but for this event yeah so we're we're the mandate is in twenty twenty i said there's a a video of me floating out there somewhere that says i wanna create an experience in canada that when you think of the hobby in canada it's synonymous with mint inc and that's all i keep looking ahead and you know full circle to today the ultimate customer experience is what i've been preaching since we started six and a half years ago that's all it is it's not easy but that's what it is i love it i love the ambition i think you you're working on this expansion you're when you're working on expansion you're building awareness you're also trying to service the customers that enter your existing locations and i think the last time we spoke you you made mention like you you don't win a customer after kind of the first time they visit and buy something it kinda takes the third or fourth visit yep has that mindset for you shifted at all since you are working on building more stores showing up in more spaces or is it kinda business as usual yeah i know it's it's actually not either it's more important than ever you know if you go to mcdonald's or you go to dunkin' donuts the coffee is always the same the french fries are always the same the play area is always the same the drive through setup is always the same so so the consumer's expectation is they walk into one of my doors and they're gonna experience i like to call it hobby shop three point o you win the customer like again i was talking about this the other day and you know we can we can get a little bit more into it if you'd like but the first sale is easy even the second sale is easy like we're in an uber uber competitive space but it's also all predicated off supply and demand and as soon as i have supply that the next person doesn't have i mean you can hate me but if you want the box you're still gonna buy it from my website so you have to get past that how do i get past the fact like so they come back a third time and a fourth time because they you know they need the box or they want the box where you really win is when the customers are talking about you when the customer leaves and he's telling his friends and and whatever have you like this is where i buy my cards i don't need five star google reviews i don't need the instagram posts all that it's like we're chilling at home or you're at work the next day and somebody's like oh yeah you know like i hit this card last night and oh yeah i minted ink i go in that store they're open seven days a week the staff know what's up the guy that runs it's crazy but it doesn't matter because the experience is awesome and i go in and they're always open and they always have what i want and yeah they're great so it's like the the five stars all that like you know we have fifty thousand customers we have eight hundred five stars and a bunch of one stars like where are the other forty nine thousand people talking about that that's where i wanna focus my energy i want you come into one of my stores and you spend so much money and you know the staff are like hey here's some supplies and here's a hoodie like i want you know you you must be proud to shop here and you're spending that kind of money like you know here you go or loyalty programs same idea the the other thing we did really well this summer you may or may not have seen it on social is we were running panini world cup trade sticker trade events weekly at both stores and the one store the flagship there's eighty kids in here every week and we did that completely free we would like pack it in we had the domino's of ontario pizza pizzaville spots i try to always find these i know your audience is us based that guy's from up north he's got an accent so i tried to i tried to make some of the correlations for you but you know we're free pizza we're giving packs away we'll we'll reduce pricing for that event for those people and and it's it's really like those moments that we wanna create for people that's how i feel at least anyway we're gonna hold on to them for and i'm not after like your car journey i'm after like i'm in this space sports live entertainment collectibles retail like i'll come with you for your whole journey so like my whole focus the ultimate customer experience really just talks to the the lifetime value of the customer journey so i try to create something that i can hold your hand from start to finish literally we can cover it all and and you know you can enjoy every moment of the hobby experience with us in a bunch of different ways but that's for me it's yeah when they're talking about you in those quiet rooms nonchalant water cooler at the office i went into midthink last night that that's winning for me so i'm thinking about like being very relevant and topical i'm thinking about last night there was a cooper flag card that sold for north of eight million dollars which is insane right which i saw this i couldn't believe it i fell asleep before it ended same i woke up this morning and i was like oh my god so that card right everyone who's in it will see it on instagram everyone knows but it's about like the people who maybe aren't in the weeds as much as we are like that story's gonna get picked up by all the outlets oh it's a we're mainstream now yeah nerd culture is cool it's mainstream gq's writing articles about the hobby mainstream you're gonna see some more i'm gonna tell you right now you're gonna see some huge sales coming up i i think we're gonna see some you know historical movement that's gonna happen in the next six months i think you're seeing art collectors are coming into the space and you know whatever like we drown out all the noise i get so much noise i wake up every day to the noise i love the noise it fuels me all they do is make me want it more it's it's it's like funds are coming into the space like it's it's it's really become you know there's a lot of validity behind the fact that it's an asset class now but but furthermore it's fun the camaraderie is there so yeah you're it's crazy that mainstream all of a sudden my phone rings from execs and and corporate guys and and people that i haven't spoke with in forever forever and they're like how do you know how did you know like or what's going on or it's hey okay i got so funny what am i you know sell me some jordan rookies no doubt the the the flag sale so i wanna like walk through like maybe a a practical example from your seat so that story gets out non collectors get that story put in their algorithm they go through those same rigmarole so many people do and say wow this card's worth eight million dollars i used to collect cards when i'm a kid let me go call my binder yeah let me call my mom and see what i have and then someone in your area might go to google and say you know card shops in toronto and find mint inc and then they go into your store and they're revisiting their childhood passion by entering your store for the first time that individual who goes through kind of that journey and they're walking into your store like how do you think about those people that are entering for the first time in like the moments during that visit that increase their chances of coming back to maintain for more visits so that's important and you know although these days obviously i'm not in the stores i'm not involved in the day to day which makes it even more important that we're adding the right people and the right leadership and that they really understand you know the vision so like we're big our stores you're you're greeted when you come through the door i mean we have crazy security so everything's buzzing and out and there's people anyway so that that's a you know one of the silver linings to that is there's some extra bodies so we welcome people i i think we might have talked about this before there's a lot of people the word loitering gets them worked up and and for me it's like if i give you a place to come and congregate and hang out with like minded individuals with no pressure you don't have to spend money you're sitting in this card shop and there's ten thousand dollar flawless boxes and then there's the twenty five cent bin and if you spend a quarter or you spend ten thousand or you just come and shoot the shit because you had a good time and you leave happy and saying wow what a cool store and i think you know what i'm ready to make my first purchase so we really try to like make sure that that's the case now listen on a saturday there's sometimes it's crazy you can't move in there and i can't you know we're not gonna staff ten people on a saturday for the once a month you know it's so you know of course a hundred percent of i have to address this because then people you know it's it is what it is a hundred percent of the time it's obviously not feasible and we're not for everyone but the mandate of mint inc i built mint inc with a hundred percent community focused mandate so that's how approachable we wanna be when you're walking in what is a very overwhelming space and i don't mean mint dink i mean the hobby space twenty releases a week ten different parallels like it's overwhelming i got comics behind me and cards i got m and m you see the m and m over there by the way it's over there somewhere but it that's what we want i wanna make them feel welcome and it doesn't matter what you're into what you're collect and i really feel strongly like i said earlier like if you if you're just that welcoming for people i think biosmosis human nature like people that's what people want and i'll argue today in this world more than ever people wanna feel like they mean something and then we're in a super competitive space the customers are the ones winning right now yeah the i think about that in creating an experience and creating a space for people that you have talked to to feel talked about to feel comfortable i'm curious just in terms of like with each new store opening comes new hires new people new staff new training like how do you train your people up on giving people the space to feel comfortable before trying to sell them something yeah yeah yeah so we're we're you're right it's it's crazy training is hard processes and as we scale and we're growing so fast it's not like the employee in the manual just isn't done so i've invested heavily into senior leadership and we've brought in some some some great experts one of which is a is a director of retail so we could really double down on things like staff education merchandising which all goes back to you know the customers making sure that like you said the training is there and then also making sure that if if a staff isn't available or you're in line or something you know you can see and make your way around the store and you know what's going on and whatever but we we have a a flagship store and wherever we open in canada the the management team from said store would fly in central and spend a few weeks and it's it's rigorous the store our flagship location north toronto is it's it's insane it's like i'm gonna be super like i mean this in the most flattering way possible even though it's gonna sound weird i think but it's like people tell me it's like the burbank of canada it's not quite as big as rob's store but rob is a guy that i followed for decades and his experience is sort of one of the experience or definitely a lot of those points big open clean tons of selection so our flagship it's you know over four thousand square feet and and that's what it is it's very welcoming so we do all of our training there and you know on a saturday sometimes four five six hundred people will come through the store which is mind blowing to me so it's and it's very rigorous so you learn it and then we have of course you know your first day you're reading manuals all day and policies and this and that and we we we're my mantra is the answer to entitlement is accountability so i really firmly believe in if you create disciplined process and you hire disciplined people you don't have to micromanage and it's not for everybody and and you try your best hiring and and firing sucks to to onboard people with the expectation that says hey like the bar here is set so high you know i had an employee once tell me that the bar was too high here and all i did i said to him well first of all i'm probably the wrong guy you should say that to me he was like whatever second i was like you should probably find a job where the bar isn't too high we had someone else leave because the retail environment was too crazy they needed to be able to sit down k well so you know our stores aren't a place you're gonna come in and you're gonna see the the the representatives chill and watching the masters you're gonna see them hey brett welcome to midthink hope i can help you do your thing when you're ready let me know like i'm a sales guy from birth the other thing i don't want is attacking you when you come in the store i wanna be like hey welcome whatever you need let us know otherwise enjoy yourself because people come in and they're like it's not just cards mint inc we're full cards toys collectibles so you got lego and transformers and gi joe and you know all this cool stuff and and and the little kids too they have all like the mashems and everything else so we are the coolest thing for me i'm sorry like i i i'm getting excited now i know you know that the coolest thing for me is when i see three or four generations of a family come in the store on a saturday and they're all and it's not just men it's a mix that there's we have lots of women collectors and young girls that are getting in the space now too so it's so cool when you can see like a family can actually now enjoy something like you think a few things like this forget about the eight million dollar cooper sale that that's great to fuel it but if shops like burbank and aa mint and you know there's some great shops in canada if we don't give that mainstream experience like sally's not buying eight million dollar cooper flag and flag and probably sally's dad's not buying eight million dollar flag but sally thinks it's cool to collect cards and let's go to the store daddy because you know i wanna buy some hockey cards or i wanna buy some my little pony or star wars whatever for me that's winning i don't need to open like sell cooper flags that way and that's not attainable or there every day it's but we have to capitalize on these moments when they happen to really bring a bigger experience forward because i think the bar for operators is set higher and higher and higher every time that happens too right i think there's a interesting thing to dig into when it's based on all that you're talking about i'm not sure i've ever heard anyone talk about it but i i know you're gonna have an opinion on this but i think about just like people coming into your shop and they're not all people who can get behind the wheel of a car and end up at your shop or take an uber right there's probably a lot of kids and those kids are driven to your store by parents like when you think about that knowing that like the ultimate decision maker within that house is the mom or the dad and they're spending time out of their day to take their son or daughter intimate think like how do you think about the parent involved in that situation and making sure that not they might not know anything about cars but they know their their kid loves it like how do you make sure that that space is comfortable for the parent that they are going to want it to bring their kid back and maybe next time they are more active and maybe they're interested in buying something for themselves so it's it's that's a great question because a lot of like when i was envisioning what we were gonna build a lot of it and i would i would tell my team like you know oh shit right that's the car one second all good i'll put on pause so john i'm curious the individuals coming into your store right it is not always someone who can get behind the wheel of a car or jump in an uber a lot of the times i would imagine your primary customers are kids who can't drive and they come in with their parents and so their their parents are experiencing mint inc in the hobby maybe for the first time through a visit that their son or daughter is bringing them to i'm curious because i haven't really heard anyone talk about it how you think about the parent involved in that relationship like is there is there a mindset you have in making sure that the parents feel comfortable when their son or daughter is entering mint inc for the first time absolutely so so when we were starting like our original expansion a couple years ago and and we really started to dial down and say okay we're more than just car dealers like we're gonna build a boutique specialty retail experience is what i guess you would call it if we were in an mba class and and i'm in a marketing meeting and i'm saying okay like it's time to talk to moms now like we need to make sure the parents know what's up we need to make sure that they know that you know you don't just have to go to walmart or target to buy some cards and we more importantly wanna make sure they understand their kids are safe and it's a great environment so we really doubled down on kid collector days so every time in all of our stores wherever region we're in we'll do all the like sponsor the local teams and all that and our stores of course security is the absolute number one focus i joke around with the parents i'm like we have free wi fi we have a liquor license we don't but it's kind of a joke but so i'm like you know we've had trade nights moms at the coffee bar with the laptop kids are having a blast i've had moms come up to me and say can i talk to you for a minute and i'm thinking oh no what do we do and i'll never forget this lady she she rolls in with her kid they're on a on motorcycle and great time and i i'm thinking motorcycle lovely lady kids' mom's riding around in a ducati i'm like this is a pretty cool kid like he must go to school and be like whatever turns out that wasn't the case at all turns out that you know he was bullied and whatever he's a big pokemon kid and he wanted to play pokemon and he wanted to do you know cosplay and so she brought him to some of our events and all of a sudden he's in a room with people his age and with like minded interests and you know she basically said that all of a sudden he can he can make friends he found a space that was welcoming for him so it's very important and you're right about about the fact that you know i'll tell you when i see bikes lined up outside that's the best and our our smaller stores not the flagship stores they'll be that's more of the focus we'll strip mall high traffic you know gifts lots of kids and and when we when we launched the east toronto store i sat through a few of these trade nights and i talked to the parents and it was really really really good feedback in how much they they love it so what we do is on top of all that every time there's a what we call it here in canada professional development day they give the teachers a day a month off the students off so the teachers can catch up on their paperwork i know this isn't a political show so we'll just leave it at that so professional development days so we give the parents a place and our staff we've even had like pce stuff like early childhood educators and they'll come in and it's like learn to play and trivia and if you go on our socials and you see the content like it's so good and i'm so blessed some of these some of the staff we have and the way they interact with the kids is incredible and they're all free events so we're really letting the parents come and experience an experience that doesn't necessarily have to have them open up their wallet which is a huge you know that's the elephant in the room right like we're talking about eight million dollar cards and thousand dollar boxes that are all there's shit and there's no hits and the breakers get all the thing and my fucking life every day the reality is i invested millions and millions of my money that i poof came out of thin air to create this incredible experience and that's what it's about for me it's about the families i don't need a the the the to sell kobe bryant cards in the store like that's that's not what we are we are a we are a live experience brand that's what mint inc is so everything you're asking me is actually the ultimate customer experience and i had a i've had people that work for me and say they'll get all frustrated the ultimate customer experience is impossible and i'll be like bro nothing is impossible the word possible is in the word impossible like the oldest metaphor in the world right and it's like it's like we are in a world right now we are in an industry that is absolutely exploding everybody and their mother wants a piece of the action everyday new brands everyday new ideas everyday hostile takeovers of course i'm gonna create an environment i have to win customers so i can let fifty people and growing still put food on their table so like that's at the forefront of everything that we do the customers and staff and you know here's the thing i can tell you a secret because people are like oh oh yeah righties listen if customers are happy and staff are happy i'm happy because i'm gonna make money that's just inevitable at at that point in time but we can't be remiss like you're saying of how much thought time and energy actually goes into building that experience i'm good buddies with ryan johnson cc two like you know he's running around the country you know media media like when you go in his store in ohio it has to be somewhat representative of his personal brand and style like you know he might not be there just like i'm not gonna be there but you know like okay yeah he touched this place like this is what he preaches in his content this is what they advertise this is what they say they are here's the receipts i'm sensing a theme in some of these conversations that i've had with business owners who i respect and who i think are doing it right i was just having a conversation last week with jamieson long who owns port city sports collectibles and he was talking about being a connector and how customers in his store have become friends with each other and go out and golf together right yep yep that would never have happened without them providing the space for those relationships to take place like i'm sure you see that type of activity you mentioned the pokemon story and new friends formed like how important is the ability to facilitate those types of connections and relationships with customers to your growth as a owner and your growth in the business so it's it's i mean it's huge and it's one of those things that like often goes you know at the masses sort of unnoticed but i'll give you a great example there's a great community of people and a few of them even worked through here before in the tcg community locally and one of the couples just got married and i i i bet you there was an extra a few dozen extra people these are italians we we have these great big weddings already you know crazy italians and there was a whole bunch more people there from you know their tcg community their dealer network and you know a lot of these a lot of businesses too like we've i've had the great opportunity of helping people start their you know dealers get off and supply them with with stuff and and whatever but we had a golf tournament we do an annual golf tournament we raise a whole bunch of money for mental health it's very important going back to this whole conversation like youth mental health is we have a one hundred thousand dollar commitment to the local foundation over five years i think we're about to hit eighty thousand over three years so my goal is if we can pull it off and the way we're going and giving back is so important i think that we actually might be able to do double by the time the five years are over but we started with forty golfers and now we sell out at a hundred and forty four golfers and a lot of it is just that it's groups of people and friends that have met through here when i first started mint inc you know it didn't end the way it should've but there was a whole group we had this whole vip network and we would run events and you know thirty forty and you would have thought it was like high school you know you had that click for a couple years and then it sort of dissipates and a few of them have gone off and they do business together and here and there so i mean it happens it's great it's important for the whole ecosystem and and i love to see it and even if it means that they build a big enough network that they don't need me anymore but we were still part of that journey like i i sleep great at night knowing that kind of stuff i think about the the golf tournament that you're talking about i think about the sticker trade nights during world cup and the hosting of these events that's probably it takes lift right it takes staff it takes resources it's yes not like anyone's paying you to do that right now but you're doing that to create an experience and make people feel good that they'll likely come back like how do you think about investing in those types of activities knowing that they might not net you new revenue right then and there but you're betting on the future like like how as an owner do you think about that so yeah well that's exactly what it is right so i'm looking at my marketing budget and i'm saying okay like this allocation of funds isn't going to show me an instant roi but it goes back to what i said at the beginning of our chat and it's like the lifetime value they have to enter the ecosystem somewhere and and the amount of people that still don't know about us is is incredible it's a large number so we we really wanna make sure that that they do so i don't budget for or plan any of these events for roi even big great big trade shows like the toronto expo sure okay we we sell a lot of stuff but how many people are leaving my booth with that flyer or a new customer that realize oh wow these guys have stores everywhere or online and you know whatever have you we did last quarter we did a we do a bunch of shows nationally and we did a just a flyer at the booth with a coupon code for ten percent off i checked it yesterday because i was gonna just throw this out there and i think it was a hundred and twenty four new customers and the coupon code had generated eleven thousand in discounts so let's call that a hundred and twenty thousand in revenue incremental hundred and thirteen new customers that's my roi that cost me sending people on planes doing this listening to my finance team tell me where are we gonna see the lip blah blah blah and then you're like okay here you go so it's like okay this is i i'm gonna say this and and you know people could take it how they want but i give you an analogy like i you plant seeds and they grow right i don't like to plant gardens i plant rainforests so like i am sprinkling the seeds and then the miracle grow and then like doing the prayers and the rain dances and all of a sudden instead of like little sprouts i have you know trees are are coming up but like it's like another way i can give it to you is you're driving past and i i this anywhere you are so it's not a canadian or an american thing it's just a thing so you drive past the development say there's a couple old houses the developer bought it and they throw a sign up that says hey we're gonna convince your local government that we should build a condo here and for the next two years it's signs and graffiti and boards and the grass is overgrown and and you see the the sticker changes because they went from fifty floors to twenty floors to forty floors to okay we'll give you thirty floors and you're gonna donate to the hospital and blah blah blah two years later they say approved then another year passes and they're building the hole and then all of a sudden two and a half three years later everything's done you have this great big beautiful hole you blink next week the condo's done that's how it goes think about that next time you're driving by a construction site the minute the foundation's there the floors are so fast it's the fastest thing you'll ever see in your life years and years and years to get it to a point where it's like that and these guys go in and they just crush it any project you watch building like that's the process and it's a crazy analogy i spent some time in the construction space through my agency work and like i learned about this and i i treat it the same way it goes back to me telling you it's okay for people to loiter in my stores and mhmm and people can judge us how they want i do prefer i that's that's i i like to think we live in a world that you wanna come for yourself and experience the experience whether somebody told you it was the best experience or the worst experience like come check it out for yourself and i make myself super accessible i wanna know fuck i wanna know right away if there's a problem it's the only way that we can get better i i wanna talk about the problems because you create this incredible experience you host these events you train your staff all the things we talk about you do all the right things to try to make individuals feel as comfortable as possible but in retail it's nearly impossible to please everyone and i'm sure there's always some sort of issue or something someone's pissed off at like when there is an issue i know you're you you can't be there all the time so you gotta have your people like trained up on this like yeah how do you how do you train people in like how does the mint inc inc brand think about like handling those situations in a way that's not going to continue to bubble up but actually might in turn win that customer over and get that customer back in the door that's sort of very important so first i'll i'll we go back to the staff and you talk about the events real quick like and to your point we put a lot out of it if i told my staff tomorrow we were doing any more events they'd be like a couple of them be like you know yes but at the same time they would be like no way johnny that's not happening like we crushed these events and you know we have a fast forward now we have a team in place that does that but and it's the same thing here so we're now building out because exactly that i need to know that as we scale we don't lose sight of the fact that i was very hands on when i was the day to day operator so we have a customer service team in place now we're actually in the midst of a a meeting actually this afternoon just with respect to crm and alerts and controls and you can write all the manuals in the world it really comes back to though like trying to instill the fundamentals into these employees when they come in and i still do get involved in the culture i am the face of the company whether i wanna be or not or i like it or not like i'm the one that's out there and doing this so i try my best to make sure especially obviously with our management the senior leadership that they really understand like the culture and the vision sort of that i wanna put out there but you're right so at the same time you know there's all kinds it's you're never gonna appease everybody there was a a list a couple of weeks ago the best card shop in canada whatever of course we're number one in the comments just like they suck they're this they're that and some of these people like i don't bother with it you know i i was telling you earlier i got really thick skin so and i mean i understand you know seinfeld's quote is great the best way to show the haters is just to live a really good life but at the same time it bugs me because these fucking people these keyboard warriors have no clue like i don't sleep i have streamers leave here at one in the morning i watch them leave on the camera to make sure some thugs not out there waiting for them i'm like the payroll we've never bounced a check these free events they aren't fucking free so it's like i'm not for everybody i get that mint think is not for everybody but like we're for a lot of people and how do you hate on people and it happens everywhere like how do you hate on people that that do that so for me i take it as fuel all these guys do is make me wanna crush them even more but the reality is it's like it's like nobody cares what you think nobody cares what i think like invest your time into into somewhere else but it doesn't phase me what i what i recognize is though and this is the sad part is some of that it's the same you know once upon a time i'll give you another great analogy i used to be a huge green day fan love green day growing up and they went from this indie band to this mainstream band you know they sold out so i get it we sold out no i'm not for everybody but you i and i have an open invitation to all these people so this is the other side of the answer i am extremely accessible still probably way too accessible my team and my leadership team they address every negative concern we make sure we revisit it with the staff we don't want you're allowed to make a mistake absolutely you can even make the same mistake twice after that when you're making the same mistake over and over again you're just making bad choices so as a as a leadership team we have to make sure that we can control that and when you can't control that you know then you have to look at the bigger picture but it's it's important and i'll tell you i use that post as an example to your question because going through it all you know the the the trolls are the trolls and then i'd see like the odd comment and this gentleman wrote about this experience that his son had and it pissed me off and i immediately wrote this guy a message hey i'm so sorry about this like give me an opportunity to personally reintroduce your son to me and you know he was super gracious likes the comment writes back and i'm like like it's important to me that's what i care about let me weed through these hundred bullshit comments forget the ten thousand great ones i don't like the flowers are great i want the bricks because that's the only way to get better and i wanna find in the bricks and say okay this is eighty percent bullshit get out of here there there is a hint of truth behind every joke there is a hint of truth behind every complaint so i try to like narrow down to that like this gentleman ryan and his son why did ryan's son have a bad experience at my store you know what i mean if you're a card bro and you're a dealer or this and that you have a bad experience because i don't wanna buy your shit at ninety percent or i can't sell you tops product for wholesale that's a whole different thing that that's that's business that's not the day to day retail experience that's business and i have a fiduciary duty of fifty plus almost gonna be a hundred employees by the second quarter of next year i need to be ruthless in that context to make sure that these people can take care of their kids and their families etcetera but i wanna know why ryan's kid had a bad experience because that bugs me not the same thing and i think that's the piece that's very lost with owner operators because every there's entire channels of people that hate on jeff wilson i like jeff and he's a great guy and who cares if he's made a lots of money the fucking guy is investing it back in to give everybody a great experience so my message to those people is i actually care about ryan and his kid i don't care about them but i'd love to help them and support them if they'd like to do similar to what we did and invest a whole bunch of money into giving people an experience no problem i love that i love the honesty i just love the your candor and the way you approach building your business before we get out of here john we've talked about this has been a central theme in this conversation you've made mention like there's there's more options than ever before like there's probably an nba player opening up a store or thinking about opening up a store around where one of your stores will be it's just the nature of the way this industry is going but you're very focused on things are gonna happen that you have no control over and i'm gonna focus on creating great experiences and building a business for the people that wanna be here as you think about this continued growth and expansion how do you focus your attention on showing up for the people that are for you you you said maybe not everyone's gonna be for you but how do you how do you laser in and make sure that those people continue to come back that that's what it is right it's it's hyperfocus on the the ultimate customer experience so so i i give people this analogy if you watch horse racing you will see thoroughbred horses have blinders on and the reason that they have blinders on is because as soon as the horse is paying attention to what's going on beside or behind him toast every single time horse is breaking a leg horse is falling back from first to seventh the horse and the jockey that stay a hundred percent focused on just moving forward is all that matters so like i think competition is a great thing i mean i i was i'd hope that if the nba player opened a store in canada it might be with us but competition is great like the cuss like again like i don't know man i'm cut from a different generation like i want you to open a store across the street from me and i want you to be better than me i want you to want to be better than me because i i'm gonna wanna be better than you not because i wanna take your livelihood but because i wanna have what i believe is the best experience and then i'll let the customers figure out what they believe is the best experience and i love i shop at lots of stores you know we we have a a a great culture here there's there's a a great network especially with the recent theft over the last few years we're all working together and it's great to see that too because for the first few years back in the space for me it wasn't the case too many like lone wolves too many you know soldiers trying to do their own thing i'm like like you know if if you're driving three hours to see me and there's a store an hour away great and and maybe i can maybe i can help them or maybe they can help me because you know if you're driving three hours to see me because i have something that you don't want again that's winning i can't do anything about that like obviously i wanna have a competitive advantage to continue to grow and pay all these people you know we're dealing with things like tariffs right now and and we have to just stay strong and stay the course because you know we can't go backwards i'm not sending people home it's not the way it works it doesn't work that way it's war but you know there's lots of peace time in war too if if that makes sense like we're not talking about the wars that happened today like let's go like a you know you you know what i'm trying to say but it's it's it's we're all doing the same thing we're all having the the best interest obviously there's gonna be some bad apples it's like that in any industry and not everybody's gonna get along but i really just don't pay attention i make sure i drill it into my staff don't pay attention like come here have fun work you know shop other stores spread the love all that great stuff but when it's time to focus on minting just you know i don't care what brett's cards and slabs up the street's doing i care what we're doing if the customer you know there's like five stores in a two kilometer radius i'll tell you if i'm coming on a saturday i'm going to all five stores like i'm not just going to mint inc or just going to four zero one games or toy box i'm going to all of them see and i i love i love those stores i have no problem plugging that and the next time you're at mint inc one is a kilometer that way which is point seven of a mile for my american friends and one is point seven of a mile the other way how can you be in a space where a specialty retailer is generally so far and few between and not wanna go to all of them and you decide and maybe you love them all equally maybe you don't but for me that's the attitude and the the the way i was always just trained we're not gonna be for everybody try to you know acquire the market share that makes sense for us and then just i want them you know it goes back to the old adage you know like the best advertising is word-of-mouth absolutely this was a fun conversation about customers growth and being a passionate business owner look out for what is happening at mint inc there is a guy behind the business who's got a lot of energy and i'm excited to watch the continued growth and expansion and how you're building this amazing experience for all your customers john always appreciate the time man hey man listen brett i appreciate you and if you're if you're stateside and you're in you're in canada and ontario we have a bunch of stores vancouver coming soon a whole bunch more next year and yeah we we check us out love it brett you're a great guy love your shows thanks for having me on and yeah super super super passionate i am a lifelong collector i've been in business for a long time i'm gonna be fifty in a few years like i do this because i fucking love it because it's what i wanna do it's not because i have to do it and like in my little closing segment for you like that's something that i wish everybody gets the opportunity to do some point in their life something that they actually love because all those metaphors you hear about it's not work if you love it it's so true i love it so true thanks again john man talk to you soon appreciate that

always love connecting with john so much energy so much passion and so many insights shared in that conversation if you're working in the industry or you aspire to if you run a shop here's the question i'd leave you with this week when somebody visits for the first time what have you done to make their second visit easier take one first time customer follow the experience from the greeting to the choice they make to the reason they might come back ask that person who worked with them what they learned then see whether that customer returns do it enough times and you'll start to see where your shop earns trust and where it asks the collector to do too much work that's the work hobby jobs exist to make visible if you want the weekly operator notes stories from the people building this industry and open roles you can do it by subscribing to the hobbyjobs newsletter it will go out into your inbox from the stacking slab substack on tuesday each and every week link is in the show notes shout out bcw supplies for being an incredible supporter of hobby jobs bcw supplies is the only product i use to protect my cards and collectibles appreciate everyone's support shout out john at mint inc we'll be back with more hobby jobs next week happy building take care talk to you soon