304: Getting Real with Charlie Bailes — ABC Fine Wines

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We're back live once again, talking with Charlie Bales today, hearing an entrepreneur's story about the growth of their business. We've got actually two businesses here and one real human being. Hey again everybody, my name is Bill Gallagher. I'm the Scaling Coach, host of the Scaling Up Business podcast. We bring our show to you every week, talking with entrepreneurs, hearing their stories, their experiences, growing their businesses, the gurus, the authors, the folks that are leading the thinking in the world of business. All things to do with growing your business, making it successful. We've done over 400 shows now, including our mini tip shows, our Getting Real episodes, our deep dives, our panel conversations, all that and more. You'll find them at scalingcoach.com or wherever you get your your, you know, business podcast type content, iTunes, Stitcher, etc. You'll find all our podcasts and more over there. Or go to scalingcoach.com and you'll find that there as well. We're talking today to Charlie Bales. Charlie, welcome to the show.

Thanks so much for having me, Bill. Look forward to getting real with you.

Thanks. So for our listeners, Charlie is a fourth generation business ABC Fine wines in fine wines and spirits, right in Florida. Do you go beyond Florida or is it really Florida centered?

We're, we're only in Florida. The liquor laws in every state are different. It'd be hard for us to go multi state. Right.

He's also a dad, he's a crossfitter health nut and he's got a new business as well that he's been working on. So we're going to hear a lot of that and more in our conversation today. But you know, their business has been really has had a lot of good growth in addition to being in a good growth state. People have really wanted to drink through the last couple of years. I don't know why, but. And of course, everybody's had a little bit of supply chain issues. What sort of supply chain stuff have you had now in your business?

A lot. And it's very brand specific and where it's from because, I mean, we, we buy product from all over the world. So if, if France was shut down for a lot longer than another country. Well, think of every brand that comes out of France. Grey Goose, Vu Kot, Moet, Hennessy. I mean, and we, it was like that, you had to ration that stuff. You know, you'd have to make two cases of Vu Clicquot last for a month when we could sell two cases in about two minutes.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And then do you have people pouring out vodkas of all kinds, whether they're Russian or not?

This week this has been, gosh, what, what a week. I mean, for, for all business. Yeah, we're so, we've, we've taken all the Russian vodkas off of our shelf and we're, we're not selling them. We haven't resorted to the dumping out movement. And we're, we're never really going to be the person that leads first. You know, we're going to see what happens. And, but we, we pulled everything off the shelf on Saturday. So we actually reacted pretty quickly.

You know, I was reading or hearing that people are reacting to some brands that are not in fact, actually Russia.

Smirnoff is not Russian.

It's funny, I never thought of Smirnoff as Russian. I did think of Stoli as Russian and I guess it started Russian, but it's not Russian owned anymore, is it?

No, and it's, it's made in the US for the most part, so. But because it's the brand. Yeah, it's, it's a, it's actually very confusing. You know, we think it's simple. Oh, this brand is Russian kind of. But we live in such a global world that it's really hard. I mean, I, I honestly had no clue. We had to take like 15 brands off of our vodka. We wall set. And I, I mean, first thing I thought, okay, Stoli, I get it. And, and maybe, you know, Russian standard and zero and a couple of these. But we had 15 brands. It was, it was, it's wild really. And unfortunately the losers, we pull all that stuff off. But those companies are employing a ton of people outside of Russia and a lot of people here. And those are the people that are going to get hurt, unfortunately.

Right. Going to be impacted by it. Yeah. Which is, which is kind of a tragedy of ignorance. Right. More than anything else. But it is a reality. And of course, other times look at the people who stop drinking Corona Corona.

Beer.

Connected to the virus.

We live in a strange, funny time that's also amazing at the same time.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the first question is, what's it like to come into a fourth generation business? Were you drafted? Did you have any choice in the matter?

Excellent usage of the word draft. I haven't had that one thrown at me before, but I would say a little bit of both. I mean, of course we want our family members to want to work in the business. Right. But you know, was I, was I pressured? Sure, a little bit. But was I like really, really pressured? No, you know, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're a big family now. There's a lot of members and there's a lot of people who choose not to work in the business. So it's, it's all kind of happened naturally. And I think that when you're 22, 23 years old, I'm 35 now, so I'm certainly not, you know, at the height or I still have a lot of years left. But when you're 23, you don't really know. You don't know how things work, you don't know what you want to do. You just kind of get in and do it. But I think by the time I was 26, 27, 28, I was really happy with the decision and solidified and like, yeah, we're all right, I'm in. Let's go.

All right. So we were just talking about getting drafted into your business, about being encouraged to join the business, and then at some point deciding that you liked it, that you wanted to be in the business and that you have been at it. So how long have you been working in it and how long did you dabble around it as a kid?

So I've been actively working in it for, I'll say 13 years. And I was pretty much straight out of college and. But I was, I was within the business as a kid, like following dad to the office and I mean, not being involved in the business, but just being around. So I sometimes tell people, well, it depends on who you ask. I've either been here for 35 years. For 13 years, yeah.

And now you manage what, your VP of distribution or.

It's a really good question. I normally just tell people I'm a vice president and just leave it at that. Because I'm as a family member, you're involved in so many different things. But my day to day, what I oversee, it's a lot of the back end operations. So it, finance and accounting, hr, risk, supply chain, a number of things. And all of those areas are so interconnected, but they all feed our store operations. So I'm the guy behind the curtains.

And how many stores do you have now?

125, we'll call it. We open up, we're opening up another one in about three weeks in Fort Lauderdale. So yeah, that's pretty 126 then.

And then. And I'm sure the employee count is a moving number, but about how many team members now?

About 1700. Yeah. Give or take.

Yeah. Not a, not a small number of folks. And so you probably have at least 125 store managers.

We do. Oh yeah. And a team of probably 50 in the middle management supporting all of those stores.

What do you think has been like, including your term and going back over generations, what do you think has been sort of the luckiest break? Where's the business benefited from the most over time?

Being privately held? Because being privately held, you can, you, you're, you're given the opportunity to look way beyond the next quarter. You're looking years down the road. And we've, I would say in the four generations, 85 years, we've probably rebuilt the business five or six times. So you're able to do that. You're also able to have the strategic plan to then go do the four or five year goal. And that's, that's really how we benefited through Covid, is we were, we had a plan in place and we were in year three of that strategic plan and then Covid hit and it just fast forward everything. But we were already doing everything to kind of get us there. So just being privately held and being able to look way into the future.

That'S one of the things that I think we've heard from a lot of companies now, both on the show and separately is that more than anything else, Covid accelerated things that were already contemplated. It moved them up a whole bunch. But the moves were kind of there.

In process, at least for the companies that are still around. Yeah, I mean, I'll give you a quick example. We got delivery and the ability to buy online and pick it up, not even in our store, but curbside or we deliver it to your house. That was part of the plan. And you know, kind of a two year IT project. We got it done in two months. So by. By April of 2020, we've got curbside and delivered to your house as an option.

Yeah. And that's a unique thing of what? You know, not every state will have that kind of thing, but every business is thinking about unique new ways of delivering things and interacting with their customers. Right. Whether it's Starbucks or abc.

Right. Luckily, we don't have to worry about temperature control for our stuff.

Yeah. So what would you say has been a mistake? That you've either been directly involved in a mistake, regret a setback, or. Or something that is like, really alive, vivid for you, you could share with us.

Yeah. One of. I. I would say the personal mistake is wanting to control too much and, and also just taking things personal. Those two things really run together. Like, you know, I want to control this because I want to do it my way. Well, okay, you got to play. You got to play nice in the sandbox. And then also, if you have that mentality, if someone goes against you, you take it personally. And I most certainly did that in my younger days. And it ends up hurting you like it ended up hurting me the most. I mean, the worst thing in the world is for executives to. They can disagree, but as Jeff Bezos says, like, okay, I get it, let's disagree. But like, let's go at it together. Like, just join me on this journey. It's fine that we disagree, but let's continue forward where I probably sabotaged myself earlier in my career, but was able to turn that around through. As funny as it is, a lot of help and asking people for help and giving up control and not taking things personally and allowing people to help me, I say that that's probably the one thing that I would tell an up and coming entrepreneur. Ask for help. We live in this individual, do it yourself, you're a winner society. And I tried to do that. And I almost, you know, probably almost got fired from my own company and maybe should have. And if it weren't my company, I probably would have my family's company, not mine. So, you know, asking for help and then accepting it and receiving it is a cheat code, I think for sure.

Right. It takes a certain amount of humility to say, look, I could use some help right now. And it's not right. Celebrated in our culture to act like you don't have your shit together.

You might need a hand. Yeah. And I think that that's what I got over, and I still struggle with it. Because you want to help, you want to contribute, and if you Ask for help people. There are people that are gonna think, oh, he doesn't have it together. He doesn't know what he's doing. And you just gotta get over that. Easier said than done though, right?

Yeah, it is easier. Well, with time, right. What you can do now is different than what you could do before. So what have you learned in the last. Well, what have you learned about yourself and the company during the pandemic?

That we got a lot of really good people. I mean, man, and when you do the right things, people respond. You know, it's one thing to read about it in a textbook. You know, we hear empower people, take care of them, and they'll end up trusting you. Well, I could tell you the first thing that we did when Covid hit is we cut our store hours. I mean, we're a liquor store. Think of when most shopping is done, it's done after work. So we, we decide to close our stores at 7 or 8 o' clock every night now, including weekends. We just cut. We just turned the faucet off, you know, the money faucet. But we did that because it was the right thing to do for our team members so that they could clean the store so they could go home sooner. And we were rewarded by our team members stepping up their level of service and engaging with the guests. And it's a very fruitful relationship the employer and the employee have. When you do the right thing for the employee, it sounds cliche, but they will reciprocate. And we saw that. And I think during COVID just the amount of loyalty that was earned from people, it's hard to imagine what we would be without our team members now. It's incredible.

Did you have any things that in the middle of COVID that really surprised you? That, oh, this product went short, but others didn't, or people asked for something weird that we didn't expect or surprises.

During COVID from the product side? Not really, because everything just kind of went through the roof. Honestly, you know, people. People didn't know what was going to happen. And when you shut down bars and restaurants, well, where are you going to buy everything? You got to go to retail. So we were, we were fortunate to be in that position. But I would say that the most surprising thing, but again, as I look back at it, it's like, well, of course it's not surprising. So we have great partners, but our wholesalers and suppliers and everybody that we buy from that we partner with and that we represent and they represent us. Everybody came together, Everybody Worked together. Even competitors. Some of our biggest competitors in the state, we got closer to and we have great relationships with and share information because really, at the end of the day, you're in competition with yourself. You're just trying to get better every day.

And.

I was delightfully surprised to see the level of partnership.

Now in Florida in particular. You guys are kind of like Covid never happened. Everything's open, everybody's out doing whatever. Right. We'll set aside any thoughts. Some folks have thoughts about that one.

Way or the other.

Some are, thank God. Some are, oh my God. Um, but whatever your thought about that, when as that opened back up, did that turn. Dip your sales at all or did it continue to grow even with like, if, if, if it went up because restaurants and bars closed, then what happened when they reopened?

Actually, they, they just continued. You know, it's. And, and I think that there's a lot of reasons why. But we. Florida, like you said, love it or hate it as a state, there's a lot of people moving here. We're over a thousand people a day. And when you think about over a year and two years of it, we added a city the size of Orlando both years. So I mean, that's a huge benefit. The consumer base has gotten bigger, but also because we did so many of the right things during COVID You know, we're a very middle of the road organization. We're not going to jump on a political issue left and right. We're just going to do the right thing. So that means, I mean, we just took our masks off at ABC last week.

Yeah.

So we never led that we were a business. Yeah, we're in Florida, but it's as if we're operating in every state because we service everyone. And I think that our customer base has remained solid because it's grown, because they recognize that our brand offered a really good service and we continue to do so.

Interesting. And so through this and before, what would you say is your, like, personal strength? What do you personally. What's your core skill or superpower?

Well, I love the question. And you know, part of me never wants to answer a question like that because I want to stay humble and not brag. But since we're talking about it and I need to answer the question, I will. I'm the energetic, creative thinker, you know, so I'm. I'm looking to the future and I'm looking to. All right, how can we innovate? How can we get better? What can we do? And my energy levels are high. Um, some would call that charismatic. Um, so I. I can. I'm. I'm going to sell people on the vision. I'm going to bring them with me. Um, and it's not so much me, because it's really the business. It's the whole business. And I was. I've always. I haven't been like this always. Like I told you about the failures, you know, I was probably the selfish, egotistical, you know, what, a couple years ago. So I'm sure somebody who knows me is listening to this. They're like, oh, that's not the Charlie I remember. Well, this is kind of who I've become, you know, where, like, I. I am. We're. We're marching forward to the future. We're going to do it with high energy. We're going to get super creative and innovative, and if that scares you, don't get on the bus. It's totally fine. So that's. I would. I would say that's. Those are some of my strengths. I'm always looking long term, not short term anymore. Looking. Where are we going to be? And. Yeah, 10 years, sure. I mean, the iPhone wasn't anything 10 years ago. It's hard to look that far. But two, three, four years, yes, I'm always looking. Playing the long game.

All right, we'll come back to the goals in just a minute. But if we talked about what you're awesome at, then. What's your weakness? Bad habits. What are the things you suck at?

Well, man, that's a long list. I can be impatient, which is funny because I'm playing the long game. However, I like the wins. I like the immediate. Like, we won this. We did this.

Yeah.

I think that passion can actually be to a detriment that. That if you're just going so hard that you're running people over, which I've done, that. That can be a bad thing. So I try to temper that. I'm. I'm. I'm certainly emotional and still fight with the I tell. You know, you can tell yourself all you want. It says nothing. It's not personal. No one's going against you. But it's still. I mean, I'm human. Like, we're not perfect, so I can fall back on that. And, I mean, I would say that another strength is discipline. I would. I keep a very tight, rigorous schedule. But that could also be a detriment that I'm not flexible and I'm not, you know, the going with the flow type of. And if I'm thrown off on that, that could be bad. But if you ask my dad, he'd probably just say I'm impatient.

Impatience is a real thing that really impacts people, right? Like it makes people uncomfortable and anxious and gets in the way of your enjoying things and can rob some people of their initiative and like that. So I get it. If you could give your younger self some advice, what would you say if you could do it all over again?

So I've, I've become a voracious reader and, and that, that I would say that started in my late 20s and just the hundreds of books, I mean, I'm even looking at them right now. I wish I would have read a lot of those when I was 20, not 29. But that's, you know, I, on the side, I teach at a local college here in Orlando. And So I'm teaching 20 year olds. So it's like, well, are they, are they even going to listen? I don't, I don't know. Because when you're 20, you're not thinking about many things outside of a few. What do you think? Because it's a, it's a strategic leadership class. So we're talking, you know, leadership and the principles around it and it's, I mean there's, it's a great class. I think I'm learning as much as they are of just how to actually teach. But I'd love to tell my 20 year old self, just be more patient, play the long game. I know my 20 year old self wouldn't listen. All right, go read. Go invest in yourself. I think that the things that turned my career around and went from, you know, the selfish, arrogant, overconfident, stubborn person and I'm still all those things. I'm not perfect, but I'm working on them is I hired an executive coach, I got my MBA and I took over our HR department at abc and, and I also started having my own kids. So real responsibility, not myself. So if you can learn what I learned in those things through the knowledge that's in books and on the Internet right now, which you can, that would be my biggest advice. Go invest in yourself. Go buy a hundred books and read them.

So let's talk about that. And I think it's a great segue into kind of the balance, right? Family, work, personal talk about kind of your approach to balancing that what matters to you, what you think others don't pay enough attention to.

So I heard a, I heard a metaphor a couple years ago. Someone, they compared everything that you want to do. Think of a stove Top and like, you know, you. You turn the left burner on, then you turn the back burner. If you're cooking six things at once, it gets really stressful. Right. It's a lot easier to just cook rice. So you can only turn on stress by cooking rice.

They worry about burning it.

I mean, you're right, there's fire. So even turning one of them on is stressful, but you can't turn too many of those burners on. So I actively try to not. Like, I've got my things that are important to me, you know, first is my wife. Second is my kids. Third is my own health. Fourth are my jobs. And I said jobs, you know, ABC and then the entrepreneurial side. So that doesn't leave a whole lot of time for watching Netflix or hanging out with friends or doing other things that people might say. I really. 168 hours a week, I'm going to spend my hours doing those few things, which means I'm not going to travel as much. I'm not going to go play poker with the guys at night. I'm not going to do certain things. And I have to be okay with that. So that's how I balance it. I am okay with that now. I think the younger that I was, the less okay. You try to do so many things. You just can't. You just have to pick your priorities, schedule your priorities, and then, like, do it.

Yeah, it's interesting. I had a. Had a meeting with a couple friends recently and work friends, and one of them was having a birthday, and we were like, oh, we're going to. We've got a special dinner down the street for you, and we're going to do this. And he actually took off and flew home and spent time with his family instead. And, you know, you have to give some respect. I would have enjoyed helping him celebrate his birthday, but really, it's like, he's got younger kids. My kids are grown and, you know, we don't see him every day. And it's not the same kind of thing. So I have to respect, like, his choice to make time in that way and to prioritize that, which you don't have for forever for very long.

Correct. I mean, my, my kids are 2, 6 and 8, so our house is very busy. And, you know, maybe when they're in a couple years, maybe I'll have more time to substitute this and turn this burner off and turn that one on. But, yeah, I'm the guy where, if I do hang out with my friends, I'm leaving by 8.

So let's talk about in a fourth generation business with 125 stores and 1700 employees and 700 million. So in sales, what sort of goals are you setting for yourself? What are you trying to do? Where are you going with that? How do you set that and what kind of goals are you working on now?

Well, our mission statement at ABC is to make every everyday celebrations better for our team members and guests. And the word team members is first. So I think what, what we're working on at ABC is, is just being the employer of choice, being the employer that, that our employees, our team members are proud of investing in them. Whether that's through wages or incentives or training or benefits or any of that. And constantly looking at it and also, you know, diversifying what we offer them, whether that's things they can do on the job or a different business. I mean we're, we're looking at other businesses to invest in and to get our footprint in and kind of spread the spider web. So from a business standpoint, we're really just looking to service the people who take care of us, our team members.

So getting. So it's about honing and refining it. It's not about buying up other state operations or opening 100 more stores and that kind of thing.

We're certainly in growth mode. We're going to open up four stores in Florida this year. The idea of going to another state is, is very intriguing, but we have a lot of really good partners who are in other states that we, we just wouldn't want to infringe on them. And there's enough to do in Florida. Trust me, if there weren't, there weren't a thousand people moving to Florida every day, I might have a different opinion. But I think that what we're looking at is diversifying our business offerings inside of the state of Florida. And because we, we, we own, we own real estate. So if we own the real estate, we have an ABC store and we own property right next to it. Well, maybe we should put another business on it and diversify everything because we know how to do finance, accounting and IT and operations. Let's just sell something else instead of liquor.

So it's really about local distribution and retail as you're kind of like the business core competency.

Yeah, I would say so, yes sir. That's a, that's a very good, very good pinpoint.

So what's the challenge then for the business more broadly? What's the gap or the thing that you've got to get better at or build.

Well, it's hard to predict what the customers, the guests of our stores, what do they want? Why are they shopping with us? And better yet, what do our team members want? Yeah, you can ask your team members, but are they gonna. What. What kind of answer are they gonna give you? And then whether or not you're going to do anything about it. So I think that's our biggest challenge, is we're trying to predict the future. We're trying to predict what the customer wants, what our team members want, and what if we're wrong. And I don't think we necessarily have that fear because, again, a great thing is we'll just turn the Titanic. We can turn it quickly if we need to, but that's what we're looking to do. Meet the customer where they want to be met, which means you got to have a beautiful retail establishment and also you have to have a beautiful website because a lot of people never want to step foot in your building. And same thing with team members. Some people want to work eight hours, five days a week. Other days they want to work two hours, three days a week. So you have to have a bunch of different offerings, too. So it's. It's a. It's. And it changes. Changes so quickly. So it's. It's fun. You know, it's fun to react. Well.

There's always. When you're reaching for something, there's a gap, something in the gap. Forecasting, figuring out how to serve them better, Being in the right place, the right product at the right time, and doing all that with human beings, I hear, as being a continual challenge. I want to thank you for any final things, anything you'd like to direct our listeners to or anything like that. In. In closing, as we wrap up here, just.

I appreciate the opportunity. I'm grateful to have this conversation with you. And if anybody comes to Florida, you know, check us out. Come, come and get some sunshine and maybe grab a. Grab a beer or. Or a bottle of. Bottle of whiskey. We. We've. We've got it all. We've got a lot of locations, so.

We'Ll put email, website, that kind of thing in the show notes. But I want to thank Charlie Bales for coming on the show and remind our listeners to get all these shows and more. You'll go to scalingcoach.com or wherever you get your. So we're on YouTube, iTunes, et cetera, stitcher and so on most of the places. If we're not somewhere that you'd soundcloud I think, or even that you'd like to find your content. Let us know and we'll work on putting it there. Like it subscribe so you get the updates every week if you go to our website. Got lots of additional resources and things there as well. For folks, I want to give big thanks to the author and creator of the Scaling up framework that we use to help our clients grow Pro, Vern Harnish, and to Wanda Mitchell producing our show in the background there. Our audio is edited by Albert Burge at podfly Productions. Our show notes are edited and compiled by Ayn Kadina and Tim McGowan. Thanks again everyone for listening. Keep Scaling Up. We'll talk to you again next time. Bye bye.

Now.

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