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

    How to Build a Profitable Retail Store in Less than 4 Months (and Thrive for 20+ Years) | Mary Liz Curtin

    Mary Liz Curtin spent 35 years advising manufacturers, speaking at trade shows around the world, and writing a manual for independent retailers. Then she mortgaged her house, rehabbed a 1941 roller rink in Downtown Clawson, Michigan, named the store after her cat and her dog, and had the whole thing profitable in four months. That store is Leon & Lulu, now one of the most celebrated independent retail destinations in the country, with 15,000 square feet, a disco ball, 300 pairs of vintage skates on the walls, a restaurant next door, and 40,000 people on the email list. And Mary Liz built it without an ad budget. Her first customer acquisition move was hosting a charity fundraiser. In this conversation, she gets into what she actually did right in the opening months, how she thinks about inventory, mistakes, community, and the thing she believes physical retail does that no algorithm ever will. What you'll hear: - How Leon & Lulu was profitable by month four and the financial discipline that made it happen - The "buy it all" decision and how it shaped the store's identity - Why her first move was a charity event when she had no marketing budget - What she says is the most common mistake independent retailers make and why most don't see it coming - The $850K expansion: buying the Clawson Theater and opening Three Cats Restaurant - Why she believes independent retail is one of the most effective cures for the loneliness epidemic in America - What "make every day a party" actually looks like when margins are tight and you're exhausted Subscribe to Beyond the Register on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts with new episodes every week for independent retailers building something worth keeping. 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.

    50 min

  2. Jun 2

    The Hangover Effect: How to Be the Best Part of Your Customer's Entire Day | John DiJulius III

    John DiJulius III started with three nos: no customers, no money, no employees. He and his wife Stacy opened a hair salon in Cleveland in 1993 surrounded by competitors in every direction. They couldn't out-advertise them. Couldn't out-build them. So they out-loved them and turned that obsession into a customer experience framework now used by Chick-fil-A, Starbucks, Ritz-Carlton, and Marriott. But the lessons John shares here aren't from a boardroom. They're from decades of mistakes: watching rapid growth nearly break his standards, losing his wife and business partner, and learning the hard way that if your business depends on you walking the floor, you haven't actually built a business. On this episode of Beyond the Register, John DiJulius III breaks down exactly how small retailers can close the experience gap, remove the word "no" from their vocabulary, and build something that runs without them. What's in this episode: - Why customer satisfaction is at a 20-year low and why that's a wide-open window for small businesses right now - The "hangover effect" and what it actually means to be the best part of your customer's entire day - What "employee roulette" is and the specific systems John uses to reduce it - The Customer Bill of Rights: never point, never say no, never overshare - Why discounting is a tax you pay for average service and how to price with confidence - How a 2003 book accidentally turned a salon owner into a global speaker overnight - The single most important quote for entrepreneurs and why John says you should pull over to hear it 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.

    50 min

  3. May 26

    How This Bookstore Owner Competes With Amazon Without Touching Price | Ally Kirkpatrick

    When Ally Kirkpatrick opened Old Town Books in 2018, every sign pointed the wrong way: the last indie bookstore in Old Town Alexandria had already been killed by Amazon, she had a newborn at home, $7,000 in savings, and zero retail experience. Her own dad refused to help her look at leases. What she had instead was a decade behind the counter of coffee shops and a conviction that what people were actually hungry for wasn't a product. It was a place. This episode is a masterclass in hospitality-first retail. Ally runs her bookstore the way a great restaurant runs a dining room: front of house, hand-selling the menu, training staff like waitstaff, and obsessing over every sensory detail from the smell of the shelves to what her team wears on the floor. The result: a business that competes with Amazon not on price, but on something Amazon can never build. In this episode: - Why Ally frames her bookstore as "Disneyland for books" and how that mindset changes every operational decision - The front-of-house model that turns booksellers into experts who hand-sell a curated "menu" each season - How Old Town Books competes with Amazon on discovery, expertise, and experience when it literally can't compete on price - Why Ally's best management hire came from the restaurant industry (and why you should steal that playbook) - The book club strategy that built a community of regulars who show up in formal wear to a year-end party - What "placemaking" actually means for your bottom line and why local retail drives up residential rents in your neighborhood - The hardest management lesson: letting go, trusting your team, and what finally forced her to do it Follow Beyond the Register on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts for weekly conversations with independent retailers building businesses worth showing up for. 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.

    47 min

  4. May 19

    Most Makers Don't Know the Difference Between a Hobby and a Business | Katrina Parris @ NiLu

    Katrina Parris, founder of Nilu Goods in Harlem, joined Keenan Kok-Carlson on Beyond the Register to share how she built an 11-year retail institution out of a simple belief: when you support a maker, you support a community. Nilu is a gift shop on Lenox Avenue in Harlem that has quietly functioned as something closer to a startup incubator. Over the past decade, Katrina has taken makers from kitchen-table batches to retail shelves, including her mailman, who mentioned in passing that he made natural deodorant and eight months later had product in the store with regulars coming back for it. She does this without charging rent, without taking equity, and without a formal program. Just a framework, a set of honest questions, and a willingness to tell founders what most retailers won't. In this conversation, Katrina and Keenan get into: - Why a great product and a great business are not the same thing and the three-tier test she uses to show makers the difference - The homework assignments she gives every maker before she buys a single unit from them - How she pivoted through the 2008 financial crisis, Covid, and near-closure in 2023 using the same core instinct each time - Why she stopped buying wholesale inventory after a decade and moved to an 85% consignment model - The GoFundMe that forced her to go public about struggling, and the brands-in-residency program she built out of that moment - What she learned from 15 years in the floral business about the difference between passion and a viable operation If you run an independent retail store, if you're a maker trying to understand what a retailer actually needs from you, or if you want to see what community-rooted business looks like in practice, this one is worth your time. 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.

    42 min

  5. May 12

    What a 20-year Retail Exec Would Tell Every Retail Owner About AI in 2026 (with Sabrina Valdez)

    Most retail and CPG leaders are still asking whether they should use AI. Sabrina Valdez answered that question three years ago, before Super Bowl commercials, before the hype cycle, before most people knew what ChatGPT even was. Today, she helps retail and CPG organizations move from aimless experimentation into scalable, repeatable AI systems, as the Founder of The Next Move Consulting. Her background spans 20+ years on the operator side: buying at PetSmart, running replenishment at Sprouts, making decisions that hit the P&L by Friday. She knows what it's like to stare down a wall of skewed data and make the call. Now she's helping other leaders do the same thing, with AI as the force multiplier. In this episode, Keenan and Sabrina go deep on what it actually looks like to build AI into the fabric of a retail or CPG organization, and why the person most afraid of falling behind might already have the biggest advantage. In this episode, you'll learn: - Why curiosity isn't what actually drives AI adoption (and what does) - The reason the oldest person in your organization has the most potential to be your best AI user - The five levels of using generative AI and why most people are stuck at level one - How to move from "endless pilot phase" to AI that's woven into your daily operations - Sabrina's four-step process for building a 3-to-6-month AI roadmap for retail and CPG teams - What OpenClaw is, why 25% of it is malicious, and why even some AI practitioners avoid it - Why AI is like yoga: you're only competing with you and your mat - Why every business, from dermatologists to C-stores to salons, can start seeing returns quicklyWhether you're a retail owner trying to figure out where to begin, a CPG leader stuck in AI pilot purgatory, or an operator who thinks this isn't for you because you're not "tech-savvy," this one's for you.Sabrina’s website: The Next Move ConsultingThe Next Move Consulting | AI Strategy for Leaders & TeamsdSabrina’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sabrina-e-valdezBeyond 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.

    51 min

  6. May 5

    How a Black-Owned Beauty Brand Got Into Ulta, Nordstrom & JCPenney With No VC (with Kim Roxie)

    Kim Roxie, Founder and CEO of LAMIK Beauty, joined Keenan Kok-Carlson on Beyond the Register this week to share how she built a national clean beauty brand from a $500 loan, zero investor money, and a willingness to do the work most founders won't. LAMIK Beauty (which stands for Love And Makeup In Kindness) is a clean, vegan cosmetics line made in America for women of color. Kim started with a brick-and-mortar makeup boutique in Houston, ran it for 14 years, closed it in 2018 to go direct-to-consumer, and relaunched it right as COVID hit. Then she did something almost no brand does: she personally drove store-to-store inside JCPenney locations, doing trunk shows for two years straight until they gave her a real shelf. The result: 978% in-store sales growth. Placement in 20+ JCPenney stores, Nordstrom, and Ulta, including as the first Black-owned clean makeup brand on Ulta's platform. A live shopping channel converting at 30%, in an industry where 2-3% online is considered a win. In this conversation, Kim and Keenan get into: The trunk show strategy she used to earn her way into JCPenney without a traditional buyer pitch Why women of color spend 80% more on cosmetics than any other group, yet receive roughly 10% of shelf space, and the $2 billion sitting inside that gap The most expensive packaging mistake she made as a product founder and exactly how to avoid it How she thinks about multi-channel distribution as separate income streams rather than a single bet Why her live shopping conversion rate is 10x higher than her website, and how she built that channel from the ground up The decision to walk away from a working 14-year business because she saw something bigger that the market neededIf you run an independent retail brand, if you're a beauty founder trying to figure out how to get on national shelves, or if you want to understand how a scrappy, mission-driven company competes without the big-budget advantage, this episode has what you're looking for. Find Kim Roxie on LinkedIn and Instagram at @thekimroxie. Shop LAMIK Beauty at lamikbeauty.com and in JCPenney, Nordstrom, Ulta, and more. And subscribe to the ‘Beyond the Register’ podcast, so you can get every episode the moment it goes live. 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.

    56 min

  7. Apr 28

    How a Retail Tech Founder Cloned Himself with AI and Got 50x More Done, with Greg Buzek

    What if you could put a million-dollar consultant on your team for $20 a month? For 30 years, Greg Buzek has been the person retail calls when it needs the unvarnished truth about technology. As founder of IHL Group, he's watched every tech wave hit the industry: barcodes, POS, self-checkout, RFID, e-commerce. He's been cited in the Wall Street Journal. He's appeared on NBC, CBS, and CNBC. He's been named a "Top 10 Influential in Retail." And for three decades, his job has been to separate signal from noise, to tell retailers what actually works and what's vaporware. So when Greg added "Chief AI Orchestrator" to his title, built an AI clone of himself at JustAskGreg.ai, and started telling small retailers that this moment is fundamentally different, Keenan wanted to know why. In this episode, Greg joins Keenan Kok-Carlson on Beyond the Register to share what he's learned about AI's real superpower for small business, why "building your second brain" is the unlock he wishes every shop owner knew about, and the 30-minute starter plan any independent retailer can execute this week. In this episode, you'll learn: - Why Greg, one of retail's most respected tech skeptics, believes this AI moment is fundamentally different - The "second brain" framework: how creating one folder on your computer unlocks near-consultant-level output - How to "clone" the smartest person in your business (usually the owner) so employees stop asking the same 10 questions - Greg's 3-tier AI playbook: when to vibe code, when to build skills, when to brainstorm with the base model - The $20 subscription that's making his team 50x more productive (and why "penny wise, pound foolish" is the single biggest trap small retailers fall into) - The $1.73 trillion inventory distortion crisis, and the practical first AI move small retailers can make to stop the bleeding - Greg's mindset for why creativity + knowledge + AI = superpower, and why the human is still the most important part of the equation Whether you're running a single-location boutique, managing a growing retail brand, or just curious about what AI actually looks like inside a working business, this episode is the practical starting point you've been looking for.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.

    49 min

  8. Mar 3

    From DTC to Multi-City Retail: The Exact Playbook HART Jewelry Used (with Curry Hagerty)

    What does it actually take to scale an experience that can't be replicated online? Curry Hagerty, Partner & CEO of HART Jewelry, joins Jeramey Watts on Beyond the Register to answer that question and a whole lot more. HART is a custom charm jewelry brand built around a deceptively simple idea: help a woman choose the symbols that tell her story, then assemble her piece on the spot. It sounds intimate. It sounds hard to scale. And Curry has spent the last five years proving that with the right systems, values, and discipline. You can grow something deeply human without losing what makes it special. Since joining her founder sister Hart in 2020, Curry has helped take the brand from a DTC operation to a multi-city retail business with flagship stores in Charleston, Nashville, and New York… plus wholesale distribution across 200+ boutiques and a partnership with The Gap. In this episode, Jeramey and Curry go deep on what it actually looks like to build, operationalize, and scale a retail brand that leads with meaning over margin. In this episode, you’ll learn - Why HART defines its product as "connection" (not jewelry) and how that changes everything about how they sell - The visionary + integrator partnership model that keeps HART soulful and sharp - How they operationalized a guided, assembled-on-the-spot store experience that holds up at 40-50 customers during peak hours - The pop-up ladder: from suitcase-and-a-table to short-term leases to flagship stores and beyond - Why they said no to rings and what that decision teaches every founder about complexity debt - The Gap partnership: what HART learned about translating premium storytelling onto a mass-market shelf - How EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating System) gave them the structure to finally stop working in the business and start working on it - Why their marketing team is required to do store floor shifts every month and what that unlocks - The zip code data strategy that helped them understand the physical-to-digital halo effect - "Leap and the net will appear" mantraWhether you're running a retail store, thinking about opening your first location, or building a brand that means something… this episode of ‘Beyond the Register’ is for you.

    41 min
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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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