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. 5d ago

    A Masterclass in Scaling a Brewery to Multiple Locations in NYC | Tara Hankinson and LeAnn Darland @ TALEA

    Tara Hankinson and LeAnn Darland met at a beer e-commerce startup in 2018, filed an LLC three months later after three bottles of wine and a session on Rocket Lawyer, and signed the lease on their Williamsburg brewery in November 2019. Then the pandemic hit, and everything else did too. 5 years later: TALEA Beer Co. runs five taprooms across Brooklyn and Manhattan with a sixth opening on the Upper West Side, and distributes to more than 1,500 bars, restaurants, and retailers across New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. They did it while craft beer had its worst stretch in two decades, and they did it after investors told them, repeatedly, that women don't drink beer. This one goes deep on the operating decisions. The two co-CEOs walk through the actual math on the highest-margin thing they sell, what they got wrong on site selection and startup paperwork, how long it took them to admit they needed a general manager, and what running this has cost them personally. In this episode: - The real ingredient math behind a pint, and what that number leaves out - Why paying more rent for a better corner beats saving 15 grand on a side street - The cheap lawyer decision that took three years and a lot of money to fix - How they decided what to hand to GMs and what they still refuse to release - What they told the investors who pitched them "Skinny Girl for beer" - Running a business through the NICU, a funeral, and a stalled construction site - The tiebreaker rule they use when the two of them can't agree Subscribe for more conversations with the operators actually running the store. Beyond the Register is available 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. Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 02:00 Meeting at a beer startup in 2018 02:56 Filing the LLC after three bottles of wine 04:17 From first meeting to five taprooms 06:27 The bar is the most profitable part of a restaurant 07:08 The real ingredient math on a pint 09:23 Taproom and distribution as two business lines 10:47 Why they keep a tighter footprint on purpose 13:08 The things they still refuse to hand off 16:22 Eighteen months to admit they needed a GM 17:28 The site selection mistake 19:14 The cheap lawyer decision that took three years to fix 21:04 Where the name TALEA came from 23:16 Community events as a cost center or a play 26:32 The data behind their business plan 27:25 The investors who said women don’t drink beer 27:50 “Skinny Girl for beer,” and why they passed 30:35 Why that model breaks financially 36:53 The season that tested everything 39:32 The hardest part of running the business 44:28 What the two of them actually argue about 47:19 Fifty-fifty from day one 51:38 Where to find TALEA

  2. Sep 1

    How to Build a Shop Where the Product Sells Itself | Sarah Maher @ Village & Vessel

    Sarah Maher spent a year selling crystals off picnic tables in her garage with no business plan, then signed a lease before she'd figured out how to run a store. Three years later, she owns Village and Vessel, a crystal and tarot shop in Oak Park, and she's still building through chaos: this year, the village tore up the entire street outside her door for construction that won't wrap until fall. Before crystals, Sarah taught and performed improv at Second City, iO, and ComedySports, then spent years working in tech. She walked away from a corporate job after hearing her boss snore through a client call and realizing that if he could get away with that, she could get away with anything. That belief carried her from garage sales to a storefront, and eventually into a hiring philosophy built entirely on energy over résumés. In this episode, Sarah breaks down how she built a business where the product does the selling, why she refuses to chase market prices even when collectors would happily pay more, and what she's learned about reading a room full of strangers looking for something they can't quite name. Highlights: - How a sleeping boss talked her out of a corporate career for good - Why she believes the crystals sell themselves, and what that means for how she runs her shop - The ethical pricing rule she uses instead of chasing the market - How she hires for energy fit instead of experience, and why that keeps her team from clashing - What she's noticed about which customers show up depending on who's working that day - Why the skeptics who walk in end up becoming her best customers - How grown men end up crying during her tarot readings, and what that says about masculinity today Follow Beyond the Register for more conversations with the owners actually running the register. Watch on YouTube, listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Find Sarah at Village and Vessel in Oak Park, or on Instagram and TikTok @village_and_vessel. 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. Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 01:14 From Second City to selling crystals 02:07 The village tore up the street outside her door 02:37 Was this the hardest year? 05:43 Selling off picnic tables in the garage 06:11 Steward of the crystals, and why selling was the hard part 08:26 Improv is energy exchange, and so are crystals 09:18 Building the tarot cohort on the skeleton of an improv class 14:44 Signing the lease with no business plan 15:29 The year of asking every dumb question 17:23 The Fool's Journey, and the mistakes she'd redo 19:37 Why people are dying for an experience 20:49 The biggest compliment: this is my crystal shop 23:05 The other crystal shop in the back 25:14 Her ethical pricing rule 29:14 Trust your eyes 31:54 Hiring for vibes, not resumes 38:21 The boss who snored through a client call 41:13 How she handles the skeptics 43:05 Why the most resistant customers fall the hardest 45:53 Where to find Sarah and Village and Vessel

  3. Aug 18

    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.

  4. 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.

  5. 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.

  6. 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.

  7. 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.

  8. 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.

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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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