The most satisfying thing to me about this business is bringing a new product or concept, large or small, to the market and doing it well. It’s crafting a plan, working it through...changing where necessary but ending up making that product the new benchmark, the item that everyone has to now have to compete. Once the right operators have adopted either a product or idea there seems to be a tipping point where the sales come from all directions as a new normal is achieved. We’ve done it from hot cups to hamburger buns and it takes the right product but also demands a plan that gets worked to completion. Now that’s fun...

There are lots of ways to get a customer to buy an item, I draw on my retail experience for approaches. An example of this was working with a customer that was looking for a new hamburger bun. We had talked previously and steadily narrowed down what the customer was looking for, wanted to accomplish and was willing to spend. With those parameters in mind I brought in an assortment of buns, presented them in order of least likely to most likely and let the customer talk their way through them. By asking the right questions and presenting this way the customer was happy, sold and is still using the bun to this day. In my free time you will find me on the sideline of a soccer field coaching one of my teams, getting outdoors with my big golden retriever Timber, and spending time with my family.