Every Leader Has His Own To-Do Lists with Business Owner Jeff Robinson

Welcome to this episode of the Million Dollar Mastermind. I'm Larry Weddell. And before we get started, if you want to know exactly how to win again and again, go to Wydell on winning.com webinar now to watch something I've put together for you. Now let's get going into this episode of Million Dollar Mastermind.

I'm here talking with Jeff Robinson, and we're talking about running a retail business in a ski town. So you're running a seasonal business. You got five months out of the year where, you know, prime season and then you got to shift to something else or you got to rent it out to somebody else and you can't sit on your sit back. You've got to stay out there on the attack dealing because from one year to the next, you never know what's going to come your way with weather and crowds. And, you know, we've had Jeff's had the pandemic to deal with while he's been changing locations here the last two years. But Jeff, excited to be talking with you. And Jeff's the owner of the Ski Locker Ajax in Aspen. And that's where I keep my skis right there near the mountain. And so Jeff, talk about, do you have, you know, people who are looking at running a business area, they're always looking for systems and, you know, easy answers or simple answers. And of course, you know, you're better if you can simplify things. But do you go through and follow every week, every day, every month, just kind of follow? Do you have a system that you follow or is it a matter of dealing with what you know, having a general idea of where you want to go and then dealing with what comes up to make it, make it happen. How do, how would you describe having a system?

Well, I mean, I kind of have my own general idea of how I want my day to go or my system or how I want the month to go. I'm very hands on. I'm the manager, general manager. I do my payroll. I do the scheduling, I do the purchasing. I do it all from my store. Although I've got some help, I do most of it myself. So I just, I'm big on to do lists. I take a lot of notes to keep track of what I need to get done. I love having a notepad of stuff I got to do and I love checking things off. For me, that really works well. So my system on a daily basis is kind of the same thing. I kind of get up, figure out what I got going on that day and then try to tackle it as much as I can. And then if some things pop up throughout the day, you know, dealing with those things, depending on what they are, so. And.

How you deal with problems or how do you, how do you deal with, with things, it's, it's easier if you, you jump on these things and don't let them fester. You say your hands on that gives you a tremendous advantage in terms of always knowing the pulse of what's happening. You know, if you're absentee, things can happen. You come back and they're like, whoa, you know, I just heard of a business. Well, I won't get into that, but it's like overnight, dramatic things can happen. You know, people, people can do some weird stuff. And if you're gone for a week or two, you come back and, you know, you can be shocked with how things have gotten out of control. But there's a lot to keeping your hand on the pulse of what's going on. And the advantage of a small business is you could do so much of it yourself, I guess.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, by hands on, I mean I'm always there, you know, I like to take a little time to go skiing when I can. And my employees are good, but I'm very seldom gone for very long. Out of town for much more than a week. So I'm there from. I'm usually the first guy there, last one to leave, get a little break to go ski during the season, which is nice for a couple hours. That's all I need. On Aspen Mountain you get plenty of vertical feet in a couple hours and get a pretty good workout. So yeah, it's. And if I, you know, I'm a pretty even keeled guy, so if I do have a problem, something arises, I mean, I usually handle it head on, figure it out quickly and be done with it.

I've noticed that about, I've noticed that about you, is that that temperament is, has a lot to do with the stability of the store and the business. It's like you can't be someone who's making mountains out of molehills and really run a happy business, can you?

No, absolutely. Absolutely. Right.

And when you go, I mean, how do you, you say you start the day, you have a pretty good idea of how you want the day to go. Are you thinking in terms of revenue? Are you thinking in terms of any kind of volumes? Do you have numbers you try and hit during the month?

Yeah, more monthly numbers for sure. Sometimes you can have a phenomenal day when you don't think it's going to be a very busy day in a ski town like this, you don't ever know who's going to walk in your door and spend some money, quite a bit of money. Or you can have a day where you think you're going to be busy and, you know, for some reason, people weren't out skiing or weren't out buying skis or weren't doing anything. So my idea, my goal is just be there, take care of my locker members, take care of my customers, make sure my employees are doing the same, and good things will happen. And if you give good service, you know, and good knowledge and good information and what people are looking for, you're going to sell skis, you're going to sell boots, and you just take care of people. And a lot of that stuff falls into place.

Well, you got to have a confidence in what are the main things you want to control. So things like sales will fall into place. I mean, you've got to have a feel for that and know what the most important things are. And, like, you can't control how many people sign up for lockers for the year. You know, things like that. You know, how your membership grows. Like before you went over there and took over the first location, expanded, got a whole new batch of lockers, and pretty soon they were all sold and you had a waiting list, but you didn't know in a given day who's going to walk in and want to, you know, give you a check for the rest of the year or for the year.

Right.

But you do know if you have the right kind of atmosphere, the right location, the right vibe with your employees, and, you know, the mountain. The mountain's got plenty of traffic.

Yeah.

That good things are going to happen. And so at some point, you got to focus on what you can control, not what you can't control. And what can you do with your. What do you do to maintain things going and keep your staff motivated?

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Oh, you know, I just try to keep them, keep their attitudes. Their attitudes good. You know, I like to work with my employees and give them time to go do things. So, you know, if they want to go ski or if they need a day off or something, whatever it may be, to kind of keep their attitudes good. I try to work with them on that. That way when the customer walks in the door, they're in a good mood, therefore, you know, they take care of the customer. What else do I do? You know, I try to compensate them to where they're happy.

And just how do you look at that? Is that on a. You pay the position or you pay the person?

Yeah, kind of the person. And depending on their ability and their, their experience is how I pay them. You know, in this, in the ski business, you get a lot of people that are part time, that are maybe only here for a year. Some are full time, some have been doing it and they've lived in Aspen for 25 years. So you get all kinds of different abilities and experience with being in a ski town, in a tourist type atmosphere.

What do you know as you move through the town and as you see people, you know, you see you have a, you know, pretty high end clientele and you see a lot of successful people. What are traits that you notice that you learn from, from some of your, your clients, you know, the present and then, and then in the past people are successful. What things do you pick up about them?

You know, all kinds of different things. I am, I am very fortunate that I, that I am in this town and my locker members and my customers are a lot of very successful, a lot of great people. And I really enjoy it. And it doesn't matter, like, we're all friends, we're all having a good time, we all love to ski, we love Aspen. So it doesn't matter how successful they are. We're all just friends and having a great time and enjoying this industry and skiing and being an Aspen. So I learn a lot from a lot of successful people and kind of listen and they give me and I ask and I ask for feedback from a lot of my locker members and customers because they are successful and got a lot of good advice for me. So I'm very fortunate in that sense.

And what are some of the things that you have learned? In particular.

Just to make sure you kind of do what you say. So if, you know, if you've got a locker member and they want their skis tuned or they need something done, just make sure you do it. Don't forget, don't. You know, that's one thing that drives me crazy. It's a pet peeve. If my employee, if I'm not handling that situation, employee says he's going to do something and he doesn't do it and then that locker member, that customer comes back in. That is probably my biggest pet peeve. And then I've got to deal with it and figure out and make sure this person's not upset with us in the shop. And you lose business over something because somebody didn't follow through.

Yeah. A lot of it has to do with just doing what you said you were going to do and not dropping the ball because you're really not paying attention. And when I noticed that with your team, they're very serious about what their job is and that makes it easier for you to stay focused on keeping the, you know, you're not putting out fires all the time. You can kind of focus on the relationships and the friendships and the conversation and rather than if you've got people that are creating problems for you every day.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I believe in giving your employees the tools to do it, have the ability to do it right the first time and like you said, you know, do it right and do what you say you're going to do and follow through.

How did you figure out the.

Funding.

For these, all of these things, you know, your new spot, your new location, your new lockers and you know, it's really a high end place and had to be very expensive and cost a lot of money and so how do you figure out those things? You had a lot of time to plan, didn't you?

I did, I did, yeah. I mean from the design part to figuring out where we're going to go, that I was kind of fortunate that we had that year off to really design what I wanted to do and go into the pop up. But as far as funding, I was fortunate that my next door neighbor that wanted my spaces was willing to pay enough money and I said, I'll move, but you're going to make it worth my while and it's not going to be cheap for me to move and it's going to be a lot of headache. I got a very successful little shop here that does really well and everything's dialed in. I know exactly what to do, what to order, who my employees are. And so I. So fortunately my neighbor made it worth my while. So a lot of the funding for the new store, that's where that came from. So I basically just parlayed that into the new location and all the design, build new locker room, the new equipment and everything. So I was fortunate that a lot of that funding, that's where it came from.

And you, I mean, that. Was that a gut check to sign the 10 year lease? Yeah.

I'll be honest with you, before I even ever signed this lease, when I started looking at it with my broker, I didn't, honestly, I didn't really want to do it because it was such a big number until I really sat down and penciled it and designed it and figured out, you know, the lot with the lock of revenue could be and certain things, and that we could probably do triple or quadruple our retail business out of there. But I could be honest with you, I lost sleep over that lease and the new rent factor number on a nightly basis for weeks before, and I hadn't even signed the lease. I was just thinking about it. I'd wake up at night going, that's a big number. And it made me nervous and scared me a little bit. But I went for it anyway and I'm glad I did. And there again, just put my nose to the grindstone and said, I can make this work and we can be better than we were before. It'll be a cooler location, a better locker room, more lockers so I can accommodate more locker members, you know, have a fantastic patio and so many, so many more amenities to this new shop than the old one and just such better visibility and all those things.

So in other words, you had to sell yourself before you can sell anybody else.

Yeah, you know, I did. I, I could have just taken the money and walked away and, you know, left Aspen probably because I, you know, I wasn't going to stay in the ski business. But I'll tell you what kept me in it is all my locker members. Great people, enjoy them, being around them, all the people that come in my store. I wasn't ready to walk away from the business. You know, my friends in the business, the town of Aspen and the ski business and skiing and just being in that business, I just, I wasn't prepared to leave it. So that, that was kind of what motivated me to move into a bigger store and really, you know, take some risks and go for it and, and start over. I mean, I feel like I almost. This new store is. Even though we got a lot of business, a lot of locker members, it was almost like starting over again. Um, and it has been, but it's been a fun process and I'm I'm grateful I stayed in it and still having a great time. And I've got so many great friendships and people that I know because of my shop and people all over the country and successful, wonderful people that I deal with all the time.

Yeah, Jeff. And you couldn't have got them any other way. And, you know, that's. That's the priceless reward for doing what you've done.

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