Both Own Liquor Stores. One Makes $300K. The Other Makes $2.1M. What Went Wrong?

24:42Ashley Kehr:But whenever he hires someone and they've replaced somebody else that already had the SOP, he will ask the person to create the SOP as to how they would do it and then send it to him. And then he kind of compares it to see if maybe there's a more efficient method or, no, I want you to go back to using this way or kind of blend the things. But I had forgotten about that idea. But I think that's probably something I should do, too, is have our full-time employee go back and look through all that stuff and say, you know, how would you update this now or do different? I love having the employee that's in that role working on that document because they're the one that touches it the most.

25:19Recently, I had to open up on a Saturday morning for the first time in a while, and I asked my manager to leave the opening SOP out on the counter for me the night before so that when I went in, I could go through it step by step as I was doing it in real time to see if it still applied, if things needed to change, because we hadn't hired anybody new in such a long time. But we were about to hire somebody new, so I wanted to make sure it was somewhat up to date, and then they can continue to update it as they transition into the new role as well. So one quick tip about this Google Doc that you said was shared with everybody, make a duplicate of every single one of those documents and put it into a folder that only you have access to or you and your partner so you don't get a disgruntled employee.

26:04Not saying your current employees are disgruntled, but you don't get a disgruntled employee who just comes in and wipes everything out. Great tip. I'm actually in the process of backing some stuff up for another ad to see right now.

26:14Ashley Kehr:Actually, here's another pinpoint that I had is another example of something not to do is when we just let our manager run with the liquor store, she set up a lot of things, including like Google Maps or like, you know, when you Google something and it comes up on the side, I can't think of what it's called, but your Google account for your business. She had ownership with her personal email to that. And then like Yelp on Yelp, it was her personal email that was linked to that. So like there was a lot of those things that took so long to change. Even the Facebook, she had created our Facebook page.

26:44Ashley Kehr:She created it. So she was an owner and I was an admin of it. So I had access. I had full access, but I couldn't remove her because she created it unless she allowed herself to be removed, which took a long time for her to finally push the button to do it. But those are just things that were honestly our fault because we never should have had that happen in the first place. Gmail accounts are free. So your company's main Gmail account should be whatever the name of your company is at gmail.com or close enough. You don't have to give that out to anybody, but then that is the account making the Facebook page.

27:23So that account still owns the Facebook page and the Yelp and all of these things that, yeah, you don't think about this. I'm thinking of past jobs where, yeah, I started the thing and I had to give ownership to somebody else because it's no longer mine. I don't work there anymore. so I have to give it to somebody else. And I wasn't a disgruntled employee so I was happily giving it away. But yeah, if you have a problem with an employee, you don't want them to be the one that has all this information. Ashley, you said she was holding cash in the safe for up to three weeks at a time before depositing it?

28:00Ashley Kehr:Yeah, so it would be very random when deposits were made and we found out from the full-time employee that it was because she was never there. She never came into the store. So just when it was convenient for her, she would come and she would get it and then she would go and deposit it. Tim, how frequently should somebody be depositing the cash from the day's sales? It depends on the amount of cash you're dealing with. But for my store, it's two to three times a week. So it's not an everyday thing, but it's not an once every three weeks thing. A lot of businesses do it every day. It just depends.

28:33Ashley, one of the things in your Instagram post that really intrigued me is that you said you are testing out stocking rare bourbons, that it's a grind to get them, but we have so many people interested. I have a friend in the Louisville, Kentucky area on the bourbon trail, and we went to a couple of different distilleries when we were down there the last time. There's a lot of really big interest in these rare whiskeys and bourbons. How long have you been doing that?

29:07Ashley Kehr:Just for probably two months, I would say it started like the end of June, I think we got our first order of bourbon. Until that point, I had no idea the process that you actually go through with our distributor to do that. So I connected with him and he got me all set up. So what the process is, is basically it's a limited availability release. They release it at a certain day at a certain time. I felt like a teenager trying to buy concert tickets again when they're released on Monday at 9 a.m. you got to hit the bottom to buy of it. It basically tells you what's going to be available and you just have to be ready to submit your order right when they go available before they're actually sold out.

29:46And how has that been? Like how has your experience been with these rare bourbons? Are people in your area buying them or is this like a, are you shipping these? Can you ship alcohol?

29:56Ashley Kehr:We don't ship anything. We've had like DoorDash approach us to like do DoorDash, but I just feel like I can't handle anything else right now. Let me at least get like brick and mortar complete before I handle anything else. But we've actually had some bourbon collectors come out of the woodwork in our area that, you know, when we've got that first shipment and come in and now we're getting people that are making special requests, but it's like you only know a week in advance, really not even a week in advance of what's going to be available the following week to order. We've been putting it on our social.

30:30Ashley Kehr:We've probably done maybe five different kinds since that first order in June. Yeah, it's definitely like bringing, you know, some bourbon collectors our way. I would say that, you know, I didn't know that we had before as our customer base. Tim, what kind of promotions have you done along the same vein or completely different that have been really successful for your store? Our bourbon program has probably been the biggest stability factor the last couple years as alcohol sales have declined nationally. I generally shy away from promotions in the sense of this is on sale, this deal on this product.

31:08Partially because I saw some stores early on in my time go out of business trying to run competitive sales with the big, giant warehouse type stores. they'll occasionally do things where you buy a case of something and you get it basically at cost and you know it's in theory a loss leader where somebody comes in buys a case of that and then they buy a couple bottles of something else at a higher margin i didn't see people doing that early on when i tried a couple sales they would get the sale item and that was it so i never really got into the promotion sales game but what we did do is really and this is going back about 10 years now really refine our bourbon program so to ashley's point i started having people come in ask about certain bourbons.

31:49I educated myself on them, learned more about them, started buying whatever I could get my hands on. And then we have a whole system of how we distribute those to our customers in a fair way, where they're only going to people that shop at our store somewhat regularly. They don't need, you know, we can't tie our sales specifically to somebody spending money at our store. That's against the law. But we also don't sell it to the random person that just drove 100 miles and is hitting every single store in the area trying to get their hands on these bourbons and then we'll never see them again. Or they're trying to resell them because there's a huge resale market on them and we sell them at fair prices so that our regular customers will be happy with the opportunity to get them.

32:32The other aspect of that and one of the ways we've cultivated that clientele is we do a lot of single barrel bourbons. So not to get too deep into it, but as bourbon ages, every single barrel of bourbon in the Rickhouse, which is hundreds of thousands of different barrels for some of the big suppliers, tastes a little bit different. So if you go taste a barrel of Jim Beam and you taste five different barrels, you will get a slightly different taste out of each one. And some of those barrels are exceptionally good taste, and we will buy that entire barrel and they will bottle it just for our store, and then we will sell it to our customers.

33:08And so if they like that particular bottle, there is only 100 to 300 of those bottles that will ever be made. And if they want them, they got to get them from us. And so we do a lot of those. Do you go down to Jim Beam and taste it or do they send it up to you or how do you get into that? They do both. When we first did it, we relied on them sending us samples. Like when they're bottling something like Jim Beam, they're taking thousands of barrels and dumping them into the big vat and then bottling it because then they get a sort of a consistent flavor profile in the bottle every time. As the master distiller, like somebody in the distillery is tasting all of those barrels before they dump them.

33:47And so when they find like a really good one, they put it aside. And so then they'll send kits. So they'll pick three and they'll send them up to us and we can taste them. And if we like one a lot, we'll order that whole barrel, but we find it more enjoyable. We'll go down to Kentucky at least once a year and then to Nashville to Jim Beam once in a while, and we'll bring some customers and we make a thing out of it. So our customers are involved in the process as well, which they love because then they share that experience with more of their friends and they buy more bottles. And it's a fun experience, as you might imagine, going to a distillery and tasting samples of bourbon might be.

34:20Yeah. Put me on your list for the next time you go down there. That sounds like a lot of fun.

34:24Ashley Kehr:I was going to say that too, except I don't really like bourbon. I don't go just to learn. So that's really interesting. Ashley, have you heard of that? Only from Tim talking about it before, but other than that, no. Okay. Would that be something that you'd be interested in? Yeah. That's why Tim's going to take me next time so I can buy a barrel ticket. I don't know if we mentioned this, but me and Tim are both from Buffalo. I don't know if we had said that at all during the thing. We're in the same area. Oh, wow. Okay. But are you competitors? No. Not really. Okay. Is there any other alcohol that has the following that the bourbons do?

35:01Like, I know some people really get into scotch. Whiskies have a bit of a different group of people that follow them. But like whiskey and bourbon, they're like pretty much the same, especially to somebody like me who appreciates it, but doesn't really, really, really get into it. Tequila is probably the next closest thing to bourbon. There hasn't been as much of a big following or big surge in scotch as there has been in bourbon. There are scotch aficionados and lovers, but not to the level that bourbon has gotten in the last decade. Okay. Ashley, do you have any plans to expand from your rare bourbons into rare tequilas?

35:38Ashley Kehr:There actually is a rare tequila being released this week. So I did do some Claude input asking about tequila collectors and all of this stuff. But it's a very specific people. It's not as large of a group of people as a bourbon collector. So I'm not going to order it unless, you know, maybe in the future I would if we already know we have somebody that's interested in tequila. It was like a pretty expensive bottle, too. I don't remember how much, but not something I want sitting on the shelf. And I don't really drink liquor, so not something I would enjoy myself. You don't drink liquor and you own a liquor store.

36:15That's fascinating.

36:16Ashley Kehr:I mean, Tim's given me a glass of, what was it, Pat Van Winkle one time, and I did enjoy that. But other than that, I really don't drink liquor that much. Okay. So, Tim, knowing Ashley's story and hearing the issues that she has had, what advice would you give to her for her to turn her liquor store around and make it a really successful venture for her? I think she's on the right path right now. the attention to it again, you know, stepping in, really learning it from the inside and getting to know it and your customers. Like I think one of the big advantages that I had buying an existing store versus starting from scratch is I already had a history, even though it wasn't computerized or there wasn't any records of it, I had the knowledge of what customers were already drinking.

37:05So like when you're starting, especially a store like a liquor store from scratch, you have to make decisions on like what kind of vodka you're going to buy big deals on so that you can be an affordable price. And since you have no data to go on, you don't know whether to choose Absolute or Svedka or Grey Goose or whichever one, because you can't afford to buy all of them at such a deep level. When I came in, I had all that, you know, I knew which ones were already selling. I knew which ones the previous owners were buying big deals on so I could continue that. So I think with Ashley getting to know the customers and hearing from them, what kind of bourbon, what kind of vodka, what kind of tequila they like, that she'll be able to figure out which ones she can improve her margins on by buying a little bit deeper on the ones that make sense that will continue to move more quickly.

37:50Ashley Kehr:That's an excellent thing that I should be doing because I'm really not doing that. I'm not involved with the customer interface like at all. I'm relying on the full-time employee to tell me what people are wanting and then, you know, we'd make the order together. But what I should be doing is I should be tracking every time she tells me that. And one thing I'm building out right now is a Monday board because all of our communication is through text. So she'll text me, here's a new UPC code. I need you to enter it into the POS system. Here's the price I think it should be. Here's what we paid for it.

38:23Ashley Kehr:If I'm at my kid's soccer game, I'm not looking at it. I leave it unread so that I remember to look at it later and then I forget and then it's the next day. So that's like one thing I'm working on building out now is So she can go and put it into the Monday board. She can look, see what the status is at, if I've received it, if I've updated, if there isn't a problem or whatever, instead of the constant back and forth text messaging. And I think that's like one of the boards I could create as to here's like customer wishlist, here's like customer feedback, you know, things like that, that we could collect it all instead of just her telling me when she just happens to text me about something else saying this person wants that or whatever.

39:03So the way I did it very early on, I had just slips of paper at the register. And every time somebody asked about something, I would write down the name of the product. If they were willing, I would take their phone number and their name. And then I would call them back within a day with what the price would be if I ordered one bottle for them. Because sometimes that price is pretty astronomically high. I would let them know what I thought a big store in the area might sell that product for if they found it on the shelf. and then I would kind of feel them out to see if it was something they would buy regularly or if they just wanted a one-off bottle and then what that price would be if I was going to stock it on the shelf and that helped me kind of start picking and choosing what products to bring in in the future.

39:47Now we've set it up in a system where it's a Google form so we have an extra iPad. The customer usually doesn't do this part. It's usually the employee at the counter is still writing it down by hand but then later on they'll go into the Google form and then it creates a spreadsheet for my manager to see so he can call people back or just order products and bring them in if we feel like it's a good buy, that helps a lot. So Monday board might do the same thing.

40:11Ashley Kehr:You have social media, right, for your liquor store? Yeah. Have you ever like put that form on social media as to like, hey, you know, we'd love to hear what you are looking for as our customer and then like have them fill it out there just to like see? No, I haven't, but I will now. That was like just the first thing I thought of is like putting it out there. I mean, not to like call every single person if you get a lot of feedback, but just for like general knowledge of, you know, what people are looking for that follow you would pull some weight. Yeah. And maybe enough people would want Svedka vodka that you're not selling or whatever.

40:49Like, oh, there's actually a bit of a market for this. Okay. And then the next social media post is, hey, now we stock this vodka that everybody was looking for. The most interesting data point out of that would probably be the amount of things that people ask for that we already have in the store that they didn't realize we had for one reason or another. There you go. You can post what you already have. Especially if they give you an email address or a phone number. Hey, good news. We have this in stock right now. Yep. That's how fast we are. Ashley, what are your annual sales expected to be this year now that you've taken, you took over in January, right?

41:27Ashley Kehr:Yeah. What are you expecting sales to be this year? So last year we did 220 ,000 and I'm trying to get us closer to 300 ,000 this year. I'm more focused, I guess, on the bottom line than actual sales, I would say right now at this point. But we've already seen an increase in sales, especially like probably would say not until maybe like May or so. Definitely a big increase in sales, but it's more the bottom line that I'm really focused on is to not losing money this year. And so far, we're on a good track. I mean, just cutting our manager, like that was, you know, a big expense every month that we let go.

42:10Ashley Kehr:I'm not paying myself for anything I'm doing for the store. But then there's just been a little things here and there that they would spend money on that we don't need. But yeah, so we did 220 ,000 in sales last year and our loss was around that 40 ,000 of what we had to put into the company. Do you have any plans to promote your current employee? Because it sounds like she's doing a lot of either manager or assistant manager jobs. Yeah. So the day we fired the other girl, we gave her a raise and told her that we would want her to help me with stuff. So me and her do the inventory ordering every week together.

42:47Ashley Kehr:We started it where I would physically go there every week. We would sit down. She'd make me actually click all the buttons and stuff and physically do it. And she would tell me, this is what I think we should get. Here's where we're low and everything. And so every week, she writes down a list of what she wants to order, like her wish list of what we should get, what's low, things like that. And then her and I go over it together, and we get to a total amount that we're both comfortable with. And then she goes ahead and inputs everything and orders it. I'm still doing the payroll. I'm doing all of the bookkeeping, keeping track of the banking.

43:21Ashley Kehr:But she manages, we only have one other employee right now. So the other employee, she manages her, does everything for that. So we did give her a raise and ask her to basically do what she was already doing, unfortunately. Just for more money now. Wow. How did you convince her to say yes? One thing you said, she will ask you to input in the POS system. Why can she not do that herself? You know what? That was something I was thinking of today because she got a text saying, I didn't put in UPC codes that I was supposed to yesterday and reminding me that I needed to do it. The other manager never set her up into our POS system besides just her cashier login.

44:00Ashley Kehr:So that's something, once again, me the bottleneck as in I have to go in and add her as a user and set her up to use the dashboard that we have on our actual computer and not just the cash register or whatever. and then figure out which access to give her for what different things as a user so she can input the UPC codes. Because yes, that is 100 % something I shouldn't be doing anymore. At first, when I took over, I wanted to literally do every little tiny thing to experience and to learn. But I am just becoming more of a bottleneck for some of those tedious little things where I think, oh, I can just do that later.

44:39Ashley Kehr:I'll do that later. And it's not something I can currently do from my phone right now. I have to actually do it on my computer. So a little more time consuming for me. Yeah. Tim, what are your annual sales expected to be this year? We will probably be at about 2.1 million. Okay. On just doubling the size of the store and focus, I mean, you've got those special bourbons that are coming in. How many of these special bourbons do you sell? Like how many barrels do you buy a year? We did about 15 barrels last year. Some of them are tequila. So we've done a couple of tequila barrels as well, mostly bourbon, a couple of rise.

45:16We're probably on track for about 15 this year. The other thing we added this year is we have our own private label bourbon as well now, which has helped with margins quite a bit. So we worked with a company on developing our own product that is, we can only sell in our store, but that's fine. It's just, just ours. It's called the Alma forge because of our store name and our town name and people have been loving it. So it's a good value that also gets us a little extra margin. Wins on both fronts.

45:44Ashley Kehr:We got to do a bigger pockets bourbon and sell it at BP Com. Yes. Florida is one of the states where I'm allowed to ship to. So I can't say actually yes to that, but I sure would like a bottle. If I make it to Orlando, I will try to bring a couple of bottles. That'd be awesome. Thanks. I have invested in a distillery in my town called Dryland. You were supposed to bring me a sample. Yeah, I will absolutely bring a sample. They have like a sampler pack that I can bring and they also have like larger bottles. So let me know which sampler you like and then I'll send you a larger bottle because I mean, I would never ship alcohol outside of my state.

46:22Never, ever. You're a very good law abiding citizen. I sure am. When I was CEO of BiggerPockets, Upwork was the number one place that we went to hire freelancers to power our business. One of the biggest growth hacks is realizing that you don't have to do it all yourself. Upwork made it easy to bring in the right freelancer when we needed them so that we could stay focused on what we do best. Upwork is a one-stop platform to find, hire, and pay expert freelancers across web and software development, data and analytics, marketing, business operations, and more. It's free to sign up and posting a job is easy.

46:58Thousands of growing businesses already trust Upwork to hire flexible, high-quality freelance talent for everything from one-off projects to ongoing support. Visit upwork.com right now and post your job for free. That's upwork.com to connect with top talent ready to help your business grow. That's U-P-W-O-R-K.com, upwork.com. When you're ready to start your business, Northwest Registered Agent helps you do more than just file paperwork. You get all the tools to build a real business identity from day one. A business address, website, phone number, operating agreement, free guides, and more at no extra cost.

47:38Northwest Registered Agent has been helping small business owners and entrepreneurs launch and grow businesses for nearly 30 years. They are the largest registered agent and LLC service in the US with over 1 ,500 corporate guides. These are real people who know your local laws and can help you in your business every step of the way. With Northwest, your business is set up to stand on its own from day one. That means your home address, personal email, and phone number stay private. Don't pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for what you can get from Northwest for free. Visit northwestregisteredagent.com slash moneyfree and start using free resources to build something amazing.

48:16Get more with Northwest Registered Agent at northwestregisteredagent.com slash moneyfree. If you've been putting off life insurance, I get it. The old process was miserable. Phone calls with an agent, a nurse coming to your house for a blood draw, then waiting weeks to find out what you'd pay for. That friction is exactly why so many people who should have coverage don't. Here's what I believe. Most BP money listeners need term life, and the right move is to build a ladder. A few term policies of different lengths stack together so your coverage steps down as your mortgage shrinks and your kids get closer to being financially independent or you get closer to hitting your financial independence number.

48:51The thing that makes that practical now is Ethos, a platform that helps you find life insurance all 100 % online. Same day coverage, no medical exam. You just answer a few health questions online. Up to$3 million in coverage, some policies as low as$30 a month. So building a two or three layer ladder that used to take a month of appointments is something you can knock out before your coffee gets cold. Get your free quote at ethos.com slash bpmoney. That is E-T-H-O-S dot com slash bpmoney. Application times may vary and rates may vary. So Ashley is focused on the bottom line, not so much on sales right now.

49:30And she's coming at this from a different place. But what is your main focus when you're thinking about running your liquor store? Bottom line as well. It's always, you know, the top line is doesn't matter if you're not making a profit at the end of the day. So protecting the gross margins. So we are very careful that we're raising prices accordingly when our distributors raise prices. We're not discounting stuff too much. As I said earlier, we always try to protect our margins. And then we're always looking for opportunities to make a slightly better margin on certain products, which is why we introduced our own private label that, again, if people want it, they have to come to us.

50:08and we can make slightly more than we would competing against another store for Jim Beam or Jack Daniels or any other regular product like that. I would like to circle back to what Ashley was talking about with seeing the liquor store owner as the cash cow kind of thing and connecting that to like people that see me now and how I live my life now versus 13 years ago may miss the point of how much work goes into it. The same way that people might see the way Ashley lives now versus when she bought her first$10 ,000 house or however cheap she gets real estate for. So close to me, but I can't get it that cheap.

50:45Or like seeing her lay the tile and paint the ceilings and all that kind of stuff. Like, you know, it's very easy to point at somebody else's life and say, oh yeah, they're a business owner. They're a real estate investor. They got, it's just, things are easy for them. Ashley, you are known as a real estate investor. You host the Real Estate Rookie Podcast. You own real estate all around the Buffalo area. How has a retail business compared to your real estate business?

51:10Ashley Kehr:Yeah, so very different in a sense of when I first started the liquor store, I knew nothing about inventory or management of employees or doing payroll, things like that. So those were all new things to me that I had to learn. And with real estate, I didn't have to be physically anywhere. And that's one of the mistakes that I made with having the retail store as I should have been there in the beginning. Like Tim had mentioned that he was for the first five years is working in the store. And with real estate, there's so many automations and tools and things that even if you're buying your first rental property today, like you don't have to physically be there.

51:55Ashley Kehr:You can use the software. You can collect a rent online. You can sign a lease agreement online. Like you can hire a handyman to go and do the maintenance. Like I think that it's very different and it's more different than I thought. You know, back in the day when they had the Bigger Pockets business podcast, there is an episode of me probably in like 2021 bragging about how this is my most passive business, this wine and liquor store. I had to hands off. I don't want to do anything for it. It's great. It's awesome. Everyone should do this. and I and you know it just obviously tanked as we have learned but I think my biggest lesson was that it's not a hands-off business it's not passive and you really do need to put work into it and if I look back at my real estate career when I did start it was definitely less passive than it is now like I was the one actually swinging the hammer doing you know the renovations the rehabs on the project.

52:58Ashley Kehr:So that's, I think, what I didn't realize and also to like the time commitment of something. I'm very good at starting things like the investor that I worked for. I started an insurance company. I started, you know, I built him all of these buildings and I was a project manager and I'd get everything set up and ready to go, a laundromat, a dry cleaning, all these things. But then it was always handed off to somebody else to do the day-to-day operations. And that's what I realized I really enjoy is starting something and building something. So the wine and liquor store was exciting at first while I'm doing the renovation.

53:34Ashley Kehr:We're getting our liquor license. I'm hiring people, like getting it set. And then I just hand it off. So that's something I've really learned that I have to work on is, no, things are not passive. Things shouldn't be hands off. I still have to do at least asset management to some extent. And do you plan on keeping the liquor store? So we did go back and forth about selling it. Just let's get rid of it. Let's basically sell it for the inventory. We have no debt or anything on the store. We own all of our inventory. So we don't have a line of credit or anything. So we just thought, you know, well, let's just cash out.

54:06Ashley Kehr:But then I didn't like the feeling of failure. So I'm like, you know what, just I keep telling my partner, let me buy you out. I'm taking this thing. I'm going to do something with it. Let me buy you out. And he's like, okay, I'll get you a number. I'll get you a number. And he sits at hasn't. But for now, I want to see how it goes a little bit. As long as I'm not dumping money into it, I can, I'm fine with sustaining it a little bit longer, just riding it out. And Tim, your experience was a little different. You were an overnight success in just five short years. And you clearly run a cash cow business, the cash cow business that Ashley was looking for.

54:41Golden Goose, it just keeps laying eggs with my involvement. You know, something to that point of when Ashley was talking about watching somebody else and just looking at it as, oh wow, there's just a cash cow machine there. If somebody is looking at me now, that's what they might assume about the liquor store as well versus what went into it 13 years ago, 10 years ago. Like there was a lot of work, you know, night and days. Just like Ashley mentioned with her real estate, like early on, she's laying tiles, she's painting ceilings, she's swinging the hammer. People are very quick to look at the overnight success version, the end result of what an investor or business owner does, it's easy to skip all of the work that went into creating that quote unquote passive opportunity.

55:25Yes. What is it? Luck is when preparation meets opportunity. Tim and Ashley, thank you so much for joining me today and talking about the great ways you can be an overnight success in just five short years, as well as some of the things that maybe you shouldn't do if you want to run a small business and own a small business. I think it was really helpful for people who are thinking about running a business. Tim, where can people find out more about you? The best place is probably my podcast, Business Buying for Financial Independence. In particular, your audience might really appreciate episode 16, which features a guy named Tim Kolb, who heard me on episode 325 of BiggerPocketsMoney and went out and bought a business last year.

56:09It's a fun story. We connected and talked about it. But you can also find me on Instagram and threads at Tim T Delaney or at my website, powerofbiz.com. That's B-I-Z. Awesome. I did not know you had started a podcast. I'm going to have to go back and download some episodes and start listening. I've got several long plane flights ahead of me. So this will be great. Tim, thank you again for your time today. And Ashley, where can people find you?

56:35Ashley Kehr:Mindy, I also have a podcast if you'd like to download some episodes and listen to it. It's Bigger Pockets, a real estate rookie. We teach people on how to get started in real estate. My co-host is Tony J. Robinson. You can find me on the Bigger Pockets forums. Just search my name, Ashley Care. We also have an Instagram at Bigger Pockets Rookie. And then on YouTube, we're at Real Estate Rookie. And do you want to pitch your liquor store? If you are in the south towns of Buffalo, New York, head on over to North Collins Wine and Liquor. And Tim? If you're in the central part of Erie County, it's Elma Wine and Liquor.

57:14All right, guys, thank you so much again for your time. This was a lot of fun, and we will talk to you soon. Thanks for having me, Mindy.

57:20Ashley Kehr:Thank you so much, Tim, for the advice and Mindy for having me. All right. That was an awesome conversation with Ashley and Tim. And frankly, I have had thoughts just like Ashley since about I graduated from college. I saw this really awesome franchise on the East Coast that I knew wasn't on the Midwest where I lived at the time. And I thought, this would be great. I will pay the franchise fee, open up this franchise, install a manager, have them run everything, and I'll just reap all the cash and all the rewards. And I'm really glad I didn't do that because I absolutely would have had a far worse outcome than Ashley because I would have put a friend in as the manager and I would have not checked in very frequently because everything's running great.

58:08And then all of a sudden, I would have gotten a really big surprise. I'm glad that Ashley has had this experience in a position where she can go in and fix it. Putting$40 ,000 into a business is no fun, but being able to turn it around, that's got to be a huge sense of accomplishment for her. So I'm really, really excited for the future of Ashley's Liquor Store. And I don't get out to Buffalo very often, but when I do, I'm going to go and check it out. I'm also going to check out Tim's store because they have their own whiskey. That sounds fun. All right. That is the end of this episode. We have a website.

58:42Hop on over to biggerpocketsmoney.com and check out our newsletter. Check out our calculators and resources, our templates that are all free and all designed to help you on your journey to financial independence. And also check out Tim's podcast, Business Buying for Financial Independence. If buying a small business sounds like something you want to do, Tim has a ton of knowledge and he shares that with you on his podcast every week. All right, that wraps up this episode of the BiggerPocketsMoney podcast. My name is Mindy Jensen and I am saying gotta go, Buffalo. When the change in season hits, some people suddenly just want to declutter the garage, clean out the closets, and get everything all organized, and that's great.

59:22If that's you, or if it's not you, either way, let Monarch do the financial spring cleaning this year for you. One dashboard gets your entire financial life organized. No more clutter, no more mess, no more scattered logins, just accounts, investments, property, and more, all in one place. Another feature I love about Monarch is the weekly AI recap. It catches spending spikes before they become problems and flags big net worth shifts or upcoming expenses. It's like having a quick personal check-in every week so nothing sneaks up on me. Get your first year of Monarch for half off, just 50 bucks, with the promo code POCKETS.

59:55Use the code POCKETS at Monarch.com to get your first year half off at just$50. That's 50 % off your first year at Monarch.com with the code POCKETS, P-O-C-K-E-T-S. When you're ready to start your business, Northwest Registered Agent helps you do more than just file paperwork. You get all the tools to build a real business identity from day one. A business address, website, phone number, operating agreement, free guides, and more at no extra cost. Northwest Registered Agent has been helping small business owners and entrepreneurs launch and grow businesses for nearly 30 years. They are the largest registered agent and LLC service in the U.S.

1:00:32with over 1 ,500 corporate guides. These are real people who know your local laws and can help you in your business every step of the way. With Northwest, your business is set up to stand on its own from day one. That means your home address, personal email, and phone number stay private. Don't pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for what you can get from Northwest for free. Visit northwestregisteredagent.com slash money free and start using free resources to build something amazing. Get more with Northwest Registered Agent at northwestregisteredagent.com slash moneyfree.