Beyond The Register, with Keenan Kok-Carlson

Beyond The Register
  • 5.0 (1)
  • Management
  • Updated Weekly

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

    The Former Teacher Who Built a Profitable Store the Size of a Parking Space | Chaya Cohen Tamir

    Chaya Cohen Tamir spent 20 years as a teacher and school administrator before she opened a stationery store on Vanderbilt Avenue in Brooklyn with $12 in the bank and furniture from Facebook Marketplace. The space is about 170 square feet and seven feet wide, roughly the footprint of a parking space. She gave herself one calendar year to make it work before going back to teaching. Not even two years in, the store is profitable, with a full-time staff and a manager. Her approach breaks most of the rules retail owners get taught. She'll spend 20 minutes helping someone choose a $4 pen, lets customers test almost everything on the shelves, prices within a dollar or two of what you'd pay online, and throws community nights where nobody has to buy a thing. In this episode she explains why those choices are the business model, and how small purchases add up to 80 to 90% of her sales. In this episode: - Why a 20-minute conversation over a $4 pen pays for itself - How she stays within a dollar or two of big box prices and still turns a profit - Her open pen-testing policy, and why damaged product barely registers next to the traffic it brings in - Splitting class tickets 50/50 with neighboring businesses to fill their slow nights - How she decides what earns a spot on the shelf in a store this small - Why she refuses to upsell, and the customers she's happy to send somewhere else - Whether to move into a bigger space or stay the neighborhood shopkeeper Subscribe to Beyond the Register for conversations with the people who actually run stores. Watch on YouTube, or listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 01:00 The customer who tried a dozen pens 02:28 A teacher with no business background 03:37 Missing the neighborhood stores she grew up with 04:59 "No one told me that's not how money is made" 06:20 Profitable before year two 07:42 Classes, events, and building community 09:06 Splitting classes 50/50 with neighboring businesses 11:05 What buying shoes used to feel like 12:36 Kids paying with allowance money 13:33 Pricing within a dollar of big box stores 15:02 The real cost of letting customers test everything 20:06 One year to make it work or go back to teaching 21:33 Why pen and paper calms the mind 22:38 80 to 90% of sales from small purchases 23:51 Curating a store seven feet wide 33:34 Why you hate writing 37:24 What's next: a bigger space or staying small 43:20 Where to find her 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. Sep 29

    How She Got a Brooklyn Storefront With No Capital | Lior Donskoy

    In 2018 Lior Donskoy walked past an empty burger shop in Brooklyn, found the owner, and talked him into handing over the keys. She cleared out the old signage, put up posters, and ran a pop-up with a group of designers days before leaving for Burning Man. There was no name on it and no plan for what it would become. That was not luck. For years her method was the same: photograph the license number on an empty storefront, call the landlord, and ask why they were happy to let the space sit there making nothing. She did it over and over, through one-day markets, weekend pop-ups, and three months running another brand's Williamsburg store, until she signed her own lease at 86 Dobbin and opened with 13 brands on the floor. Today that store is Original Story, a permanent home for small designers who mostly cannot afford one alone. Lior talks with Keenan about the economics of pop-ups versus a lease, how she decides which brands come in and where they sit, and why she thinks a one-day show is usually a waste of everyone's time. It is a practical episode for anyone looking at a small space and assuming it is out of reach. In this episode: - The cold-call script she used on landlords with empty storefronts - Why a one-day pop-up costs the same work as a week and returns less - What three months in someone else's store taught her that pop-ups never could - The Covid shutdown that turned into the idea for Original Story - How a brand actually gets accepted, and why too many jewelry lines means no - Placing brands so 13 labels read as one store instead of a market - Made-to-order pricing, and the bride who came back for a wedding dress - Why her sewers are on the front page of her website instead of her - What she is building next: a November market, a site, and a shared studio 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 01:44 The empty burger shop in 2018 02:28 Photographing license numbers and calling landlords 04:03 Realizing she did not want to do it alone 05:01 How long a pop-up should actually run 06:40 Taking over the Designer Collab store 07:11 The holiday market and the frozen balloons 08:35 Pitching the owner on a collaboration 10:34 What a permanent space teaches that a pop-up cannot 13:12 Knowing she needed her own home 14:23 The Covid shutdown that became Original Story 16:12 Why it did not end up in Soho 18:48 Sending a customer home with a memory 19:58 Luxury flagships and the Louis Vuitton café 23:42 How a brand gets into the store 26:29 Thirteen brands and one very large family 30:39 Pricing, made to order, and the wedding dress 33:27 Burning Man at 21 34:34 Why her sewers are on the website instead of her 39:52 Fashion Week, the November market, and the website 42:16 The shared studio she is building next 44:44 Listen to your gut 45:42 Where to find Original Story

  3. Sep 22

    → She Bought the Store She Shopped At and Tripled Its Sales | Beth Rich

    Beth Rich was a customer at Mix It Up when the associates started asking why she didn't just buy the place. She told them she hadn't moved to Coeur d'Alene to work retail on the weekends. Six weeks after she finally texted the owner to ask what the store cost, she owned it. She was in her late 50s and had never run a cash register. This week Keenan sits down with Beth, owner of Mix It Up and Mix It Up Home in downtown Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, a certified Main Street district with no chains on it. Eight years in, she has tripled sales, opened a second store, hosts around 125 events a year, and sells more gurgle pots than any retailer in the country. She came to it with 35 years of sales and marketing behind her and no retail experience at all. She is blunt about how she got in, and she says outright not to copy her. On her first day the previous owner sharpened a pencil, pulled out a printout of a blank Excel grid, and showed her how to handwrite a purchase order and fax it. Beth has spent the eight years since getting the paper out of the business, and she is just as direct about the number she'd inspect if she were buying a store today, which is not revenue. In this episode: - What she watched her mother do after being widowed at 47 with five kids, and why she calls it the kind of optimism that changes outcomes - The emotional trap of buying product you fell in love with, and where she draws the line between feeling and data - Standing at a stoplight asking Shopify why handbag sales were down, and what the answer turned out to be - Why profit margin, not sales volume, is the number she'd inspect before buying any store - The shopping bag conversation that cut a deeply unglamorous line item - Handwriting purchase orders and faxing them in 2018, and what replaced that - Why she refuses to fight Amazon on price, and the one thing big box can't copy - The three things she says make an independent store work - Hiring associates who don't need the paycheck, and the culture that came out of it - "Can I start a pile?", the five favorite words in her store Subscribe to Beyond the Register for conversations with the owners and operators actually running independent retail. Listen on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 01:27 What her mother taught her about optimism 02:38 The yellow rotary phone, and who took charge 04:40 Buying her first store in her late 50s 04:55 The emotion built into buying retail product 06:07 Knowledge is power, and the analytics retailers never used to have 06:48 Asking Shopify at a stoplight why handbag sales dropped 09:36 The accidental retailer 10:47 "Why don't you just buy Mix It Up?" 11:42 Money, money, and money 12:23 Six weeks from a text to closing on the business 13:09 What she'd inspect now: profit margin over revenue 13:51 The shopping bag call that cut her costs 17:21 The handwritten purchase order, in 2018 19:06 The plastic tub of paper under the desk 19:47 Getting the paper out of the business 22:44 Time is money 27:15 Competing with Target, Walmart, and Amazon 28:26 Why she won't fight a price war 28:45 The three things that make an independent store 33:00 Hiring people who don't need the job 42:34 Training storytellers instead of salespeople 44:18 The gurgle pot 47:23 "Can I start a pile?" 56:16 Where to find Mix It Up 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. Sep 9

    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

  5. 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

  6. 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.

  7. 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.

  8. 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.

See All (32)

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.

Information