Beyond The Register, with Keenan Kok-Carlson

Beyond The Register
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I’m Keenan Kok-Carlson, a lifelong retail operator turned Senior Product Manager at Global Payments. I’ve lived every part of running a store, from opening the doors to fixing the systems that keep it alive. Beyond the Register shares the real stories behind small retail: inventory chaos, hiring struggles, vendor issues, burnout, and the wins that keep owners going. No fluff, just the truth about what it takes to run a shop today. This is Beyond the Register.

  1. 2d ago

    8 Years In, She's Still Behind the Counter. On Purpose. With Bookstore Owner Christina Rosso-Schneider

    Christina Rosso-Schneider and her husband Alex got married six weeks before opening A Novel Idea in Philadelphia's East Passyunk neighborhood. Almost eight years later, the store still runs on just the two of them and a rotating pair of part-timers, and that's mostly by design. When your name and your face are the reason customers walk in, Christina says, hiring around that doesn't lighten the load. It hands someone else the weight of a job they can't actually do for you. That community has carried the store through two crises eight years apart. A 2020 GoFundMe raised $3,750 to get through a shutdown that classified bookstores as nonessential. A second campaign in 2023, aimed at $10,000, brought in $25,700 in a single weekend. Christina says she still gets chills talking about it. She's also a published writer with two small-press books and a debut novel, The Last Sheaf, coming from Blackstone Publishing in 2027, and she talks openly here about running a retail business with chronic illness and being colorblind, something she says has never come up on a podcast before. Her answer to the question every small business owner eventually asks, what actually happens when the owners are the product, is the most useful part of this conversation. In this episode: - Why closing up shop for a planned summer break felt like both a win and a surrender - The one steady employee Christina and Alex ever hired, and the lesson about mixing friendship and payroll that came out of it - What happens when the owners are the product: what can get handed off, and what can't - The $3,750 GoFundMe that got them through 2020, and the $25,700 one that came in over a single weekend in 2023 - Eight years married and still working the same small space together, and the line they use to check in with each other: "where are you on the page?" - Running a queer, disabled, woman-owned bookstore, and the accessibility conversation Christina says no one has asked her to have before - Why success, for Christina, was never about the money Subscribe to Beyond the Register for real conversations with the people keeping small retail alive. Listen on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. Beyond the Register is brought to you by Genius™ (Link globalpayments.com/genius) from Global Payments, the retail point of sale system designed to help busy store owners track inventory, manage customers and take payments.

  2. Aug 4

    The Chef Who Turned a Dying Polish Deli Into Brooklyn's Zestiest Lebanese Grocery | Edy Massih

    Early May 2020. Edy Massih's catering business had gone to zero: weddings canceled, events gone, income at nothing. So he called the woman who'd run the Polish deli around the corner for 43 years and asked to take over her shop. She said no. Three weeks later, on Memorial Day, she called back: she'd talked to her family, and she was ready. That corner store became Edy's Grocer, North Brooklyn's first Lebanese market and deli. Edy became a Forbes 30 Under 30 chef, cookbook author, and TV regular. But strip away the food-celebrity story and you get one of the purest small-business operators we've had on the show: no investors, one tiny kitchen, and a founder who reinvented the place almost every year until it worked. This is the operator's conversation nobody else has with him: the P&L, not the personality. How to buy a business, when to pivot, what to kill, and how to build a team that actually stays. Highlights: - The exact deal that let him buy a 43-year-old business with his own savings - His three-strikes rule for killing a menu item that isn't selling - Why national TV barely moves the register the next morning - The software he says finally earned its keep and the time-vs-money math behind it - How he keeps a food team for six years in an industry where nobody stays - Why he closes for two paid weeks every August and what it buys him back - What tells him it's time to change the store versus ride out a slow month Subscribe to Beyond the Register for real, tactical conversations with small-business operators. Watch on YouTube, listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Beyond the Register is brought to you by Genius™ (Link globalpayments.com/genius) from Global Payments, the retail point of sale system designed to help busy store owners track inventory, manage customers and take payments.

  3. Jul 28

    The $300K Hood Hurdle: Why Scaling a Donut Business Is So Hard

    Liz Sperman had the idea for a gluten-free donut company in 2013 and didn't sell her first donut until 2022. In between, she worked nearly every job in the kitchen: barista, cake decorator, production supervisor at a gluten-free startup, and supervisor on a donut food truck. A mentor told her you don't earn the right to run a kitchen you've never worked in, so she did the work first. Then she built Hayley's Donut for her niece Hayley, who was diagnosed with celiac at age two, and picked the single hardest thing to make without gluten: a real, fried, chewy donut. In this conversation, Liz and Keenan get into the parts of the business most people never see. The fryer-and-hood wall that can turn a $10K piece of equipment into a $300K buildout. Why a shared kitchen works for some products and fights against a fresh-daily one. How she holds allergen standards strict enough that a stray flake of peanut dough is a life-or-death problem. And the pricing tension she lives in every day, building a premium product for customers who already pay a tax on everything they can safely eat. If you're a maker stuck between selling out at pop-ups and opening a real space, this one is for you. It's a candid look at the 1-to-growth phase from someone living it right now, with a real lesson underneath it all: at the end of the day, people remember how you made them feel. Listen to the full episode and subscribe to Beyond the Register for more conversations with the operators building retail from the ground up. Timestamps: - 0:00 - How a gluten-free donut brand got its name - 3:14 - Why Liz worked every job in the kitchen before selling a single donut - 7:06 - What celiac actually is, and why good gluten-free was so hard to find - 19:23 - The fryer-and-hood wall that makes scaling a fried product brutal - 28:24 - Allergen safety and the shared-kitchen reality - 35:42 - Pricing a premium allergen-safe product without pricing people out - 47:27 - Why hospitality, not donuts, is the real product - 54:01 - Where to find Hayley's Donut Beyond the Register is brought to you by Genius™ (Link globalpayments.com/genius) from Global Payments, the retail point of sale system designed to help busy store owners track inventory, manage customers and take payments.

  4. Jul 21

    Why 1 in 3 Customers Leave Your Convenience Store and Buy From Your Competitor | Jeff Lenard

    Half of America walks into a convenience store every day, and almost nobody remembers doing it. Jeff Lenard has spent his career explaining why that matters. As VP at NACS and the most-quoted voice on convenience stores anywhere (6,700+ interviews across CNN, Fox, and the BBC), he has watched the industry evolve from mini marts and gas station sushi jokes into destinations people drive 40 minutes out of their way to visit. Jeff joins Keenan to break down what separates stores customers never quit from stores they leak away from, and why the answer has less to do with your product mix and more to do with bathrooms, bananas, and the dog photo behind your register. In this episode: - Why there are more convenience stores than every dollar store, grocery store, drugstore, Starbucks, and McDonald's in America combined - The "customer leakage" problem: a third of your customers buy from a competitor within 30 minutes - How Kwik Trip built a culture that sells a banana every 66 seconds - The Buc-ee's bathroom rule, and what a dirty restroom signals about your food - Why your real front door is the gas pump, and what belongs outside the bathroom door - The Iowa owner who watched her store for a week instead of asking customers questions - How freedom stickers in restroom stalls turned c-stores into a lifeline against human trafficking Follow Beyond the Register for more conversations with the people shaping convenience retail. Listen on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. Beyond the Register is brought to you by Genius™ (Link globalpayments.com/genius) from Global Payments, the retail point of sale system designed to help busy store owners track inventory, manage customers and take payments.

  5. Jul 14

    How to Build a Garden Center that the Big Box Stores Could NEVER Copy | Randall and Carol Isherwood

    Randall Isherwood spent his career running nurseries with hundreds of acres of inventory. So when he finally decided to open his own garden center, his instinct was to go big. His wife and business partner, Carol, said no: start small. They opened Gardener's Outpost in 1,200 square feet, built around a concept nobody else in Columbia, South Carolina was running: organic, sustainable, no chemical aisle, no compromises. Fourteen years later, Carol and Randall run two boutique garden centers, source almost all of their plants from two states, and have built a customer base that treats their stores less like a retailer and more like a third place. In this episode, they break down the operational decisions that got them there: why their second location started as a glorified storage unit, how they kept shelves stocked when COVID gutted their vendors, why they still refuse to raise prices despite rising freight costs, and the hiring rule that keeps seasonal turnover at almost zero. It's a conversation about staying small on purpose, and what that discipline actually buys a brick-and-mortar retailer that will never out-price Home Depot. Highlights: - Why Randall wanted to go big and Carol insisted on 1,200 square feet - The real reason their second store opened as a warehouse, not a destination - How they kept inventory moving during COVID when vendors dumped stock - Why 90% of their plants come from two states, and what that buys them - The hiring philosophy that keeps seasonal turnover at almost zero - What changes when customers start treating your stores like family - The advice they'd put on a billboard for every small retailer in America Subscribe to Beyond the Register for more conversations with independent retailers figuring out how to win without out-spending the big guys. New episodes every week on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. Beyond the Register is brought to you by Genius™ (Link globalpayments.com/genius) from Global Payments, the retail point of sale system designed to help busy store owners track inventory, manage customers and take payments.

  6. Jul 7

    How to Out-Sell Amazon Without Ever Dropping Your Price with The Retail Doctor | Bob Phibbs

    A second Starbucks was about to open 75 feet from a dying Long Beach coffee shop. The staff were robbing the owner through the tip jar, the lights were half burnt out, and the place was losing money every month. A year later, sales were up 50%, and Bob Phibbs had a New York Times headline and a new name: The Retail Doctor. Bob has spent 30 years proving the thing most shop owners refuse to believe: the little guy can beat the big box and the algorithm, and you do it without ever touching your price. He's trained more than 250,000 retail associates for brands from LEGO to Omega, written You Can Compete: Double Sales Without Discounting, and built a following near half a million people who come for his blunt, no-hedging takes on what actually sells. In this episode he makes the case that discounting is lazy, your best sale is secretly a trap, and "Can I help you?" should be banned from your sales floor. He breaks down why customers buy the person before the product, how a single line sold a hesitant shopper $850 boots, and the one mistake quietly killing conversion in stores everywhere. In this episode: - How a dying coffee shop out-sold an incoming Starbucks 75 feet away - Why Bob calls discounting "lazy" and what to do when sales are slow instead - The hidden damage your most successful sale does that you never see - Why "Can I help you?" kills the sale, and the two words to say instead - How he turned a hesitant browser into an $850 purchase with one joke - Why your staff can't sell an $85 shirt they think is worth $20 - What separates the retailers who are thriving from the ones blaming Amazon Subscribe to Beyond the Register for conversations with the people who actually run stores. Watch on YouTube, or listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Beyond the Register is brought to you by Genius™ (Link globalpayments.com/genius) from Global Payments, the retail point of sale system designed to help busy store owners track inventory, manage customers and take payments.

  7. Jun 30

    How This Brewery CEO Scaled from a Garage to a $67M Brand and 6 Locations

    In 2006, three guys met at a church Bible study in Atlanta, discovered they all loved homebrewing, and started getting together every Monday night after work to make beer. They called it Monday Night Brewing. Twenty years later, it's a $67 million operation across six locations and four states, and Joel Iverson, the operations brain who built the original pilot system by hand, recently took over as CEO. He did it in a craft beer market that's contracting 4 to 5% a year, where closures outpace openings and entire blocks of breweries are shutting down. On this episode of Beyond the Register, Joel walks Keenan through what it actually takes to keep a retail business alive when the whole category is shrinking, from going a full year without a paycheck to turning a COVID pizza experiment into a permanent revenue stream. It's a retail story that doesn't look like one, and a rare, honest look at building a company so durable the founders can step away and it keeps running. In this episode: - Why Joel left a $100M consulting career and the "10% rule" that kept him from quitting too soon - The blind taste test that told three friends they actually had a business - What really breaks when you scale from one taproom to six locations - How a sourdough starter in the fermentation room became a wood-fired pizza program - Why "just brew beer" stopped being enough, and how diversifying changed who walks in - Building a brewery that fights loneliness, not just sells pints - The succession philosophy where every employee builds their own replacement Subscribe to Beyond the Register for honest conversations with the people running real retail and hospitality businesses. Listen on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. Beyond the Register is brought to you by Genius™ (Link globalpayments.com/genius) from Global Payments, the retail point of sale system designed to help busy store owners track inventory, manage customers and take payments.

  8. Jun 23

    How to Turn an Accidental Hire Into a Team Member Who Never Leaves with Ron Thurston

    For 30 years, Ron Thurston sat in the strategy meetings at some of the most iconic names in retail (Apple, Gap, West Elm, Tory Burch, Saint Laurent) and noticed the same thing every time: the conversation started with the customer, the product, or the technology. The people on the floor, the ones who actually determined whether any of it landed, were the last agenda item. If they made it on at all. In 2021, Ron bought an Airstream and drove across 30 states to interview the people nobody in those meetings was talking to. What he found became Retail Pride, a #1 bestseller and a quiet movement for an industry that's never been told it should be proud. His follow-up, Human Pride, takes on what comes next: what it means to stay human in a job market being reshaped by AI and why the companies that treated their frontline as a cost center are about to find out what that decision actually cost them. What you'll hear in this episode: - Why Ron believes "made by a human" is about to become one of the most powerful things on a product label and what that means for small retail right now - The Manager Amplifier: why 86% of frontline satisfaction runs through the direct manager, not the brand, and what to do the first week after you promote your best salesperson - The real cost of turnover ($6–10k per employee) and the math that makes paying people more the obvious financial decision - How to take a job someone took "by accident" and turn it into a career they're actually proud of without a big-company budget - What the 30-state Airstream tour revealed about small business owners that no boardroom conversation ever captured Subscribe to Beyond the Register on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. Beyond the Register is brought to you by Genius™ (Link globalpayments.com/genius) from Global Payments, the retail point of sale system designed to help busy store owners track inventory, manage customers and take payments.

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About

I’m Keenan Kok-Carlson, a lifelong retail operator turned Senior Product Manager at Global Payments. I’ve lived every part of running a store, from opening the doors to fixing the systems that keep it alive. Beyond the Register shares the real stories behind small retail: inventory chaos, hiring struggles, vendor issues, burnout, and the wins that keep owners going. No fluff, just the truth about what it takes to run a shop today. This is Beyond the Register.

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