May I tell you about my best selling item ever?

It's called the Chaos Card claims anything without streaks.

All you do is what is watering it out.

Wipe your windows, windshield slate, still chrome glass mirrors, TV screen, speakers, screens, and it all dies.

Streak free.

I saw 14,000 and for years.

That's how good they are.

Welcome to our system.

It has everything.

I grew up mainly in Independence.

There are two things I always wanted to do.

I wanted to run for president and I wanted to own a variety store.

And the president thing is that votes are a sale.

She's not going to campaign for me.

So I.

Know.

I'm on my own if I if I decide to do that.

The opportunity presented itself and I came down here in 1990, I was single and no polling yet.

I think I met her a year later.

Then we got married a year from then.

But in the meantime, in between meeting and getting married, I convinced her that owning a store was a really good idea.

And it has been a. I didn't have to convince her too hard.

Yeah.

This is the kind of store that stores were like when I was growing up.

You know, you went to the dime store.

We are the complete store.

I mean, anything you could possibly want or need, we try to carry.

I've always wanted to keep it that way.

I don't want to get too specialized.

We might only have to have something or might only have one or something.

But you know that if you need it, we probably have it.

We're very heavy in toys and we're heavy in housewares or heavy in fabric.

And within those heavy areas we don't focus on stuff is advertised on television, stuff that you can get anywhere.

We try to focus on things that fit within our categories but are unique.

I still want people to come in here and be able to buy a bottle of aspirin and a zipper and she's sick.

Or if they need to go into our daily routine.

You know, you can.

You're doing great.

I get here anywhere from 10 minutes till opening time to right at opening time.

And she comes in 15, 20 minutes, 30 minutes later.

Usually as she gets here, 20 minutes later, she gets here and I'm like, going crazy because there's 30 people in the store.

But if she gets here right on time, you know, we don't have to wait for an hour.

So just this depends of these people in the store for me to be by myself.

Actually, we used to have regular employees, but when COVID happened, we sent them home and then they just come back once in a while now.

Prior to that, she did all the business work at home and I did all my stuff down here.

And then when we sent them home, she just controls our workflows and we both have our own strengths.

She's she is good with certain things and I'm good at just goofing off and making small talk for customers and telling jokes and whatever.

And she doesn't get mad at me for that.

I don't get mad at her for doing whatever she does.

Our store started out across the street in a building only half the size of this building we're in right now.

As we grew, we had to get into bigger buildings.

But this was it.

This building was an old department store.

Five years after I started, it finally went out of business and they approached me about buying it.

So it was empty and huge.

So I went home and I got a call and I said, I think we need to overlook that muster building.

So we came downtown, looked, and I said, Just think this is more building than we'll ever need.

So we bought the building in 1999.

The RadioShack Corporation came in and approached me about adding RadioShack to our store.

I go home and I said to Paul, I said, I got this thing that I think we should do.

She said, What's that?

I said, I think we should buy a RadioShack and added to our store and that took that took a little bit convincing.

Yes, it was very scary.

And so we agreed to it.

We thought, well, where are we going to put it?

And half of that building was available, again, owned by a separate person.

It's amazing that two different building owners would agree to cutting a hole in their wall, but and then he decided to sell us the building.

So that was another kind of a no, it wasn't scary.

It wasn't scary at all.

Buying the RadioShack was scary.

Buying the buildings wasn't buying the radios.

I got scared because I know nothing about electronics.

Electronics?

Yeah.

I look at things in terms of do I think it will sell?

And I've gotten to know my customers over the years.

I'm just a pretty good judge yet at deciding do I think this will sell?

A lot of small business owners have a hard time picking out things they like, but you got to pick out what the customer likes or what you think the customer like and ways it's easier.

Ways it's harder, really.

It's still a learning process and I don't think I'll ever figure it out.

I don't think it's possible to ever figure it out.

I still get nervous when I buy because I think, Gosh, what if what if I bought too much of the wrong thing, you know?

But after all these years, I realize that eventually everything sells.

So I haven't made too many mistakes in the past.

And I think I'll make to make the 6.4.

But we have one.

I have one thing.

It's from my original store and I won't sell it now just because it's been here for so it's a cookbook for a barbecue girl.

Yeah.

And it's copyrighted like 1985 or something like that.

It's like it's been here too long.

I think it's going out with me.

I'm probably my own worst critic.

You know, I see all the things that are, in my view, wrong.

But if customers tell me that, no, they don't see those things that I see that are wrong.

So I guess I just need to stop being so critical of myself.

For me, we've been here long enough now that we've made a difference in people's lives.

I mean, if this store didn't exist, the whole business dynamic of holding would be different because then any time you needed something like what we sell, you'd have to go out, they'd have to go out of town.

And it also draws a lot of people from other towns in here because as my son says, people come from out.

People from out of town come because it's something different than what's in the city.

A funny thing for me is we've had people from all over the world in the store.

I've had people from Vietnam, from Somalia, from Ethiopia, from England, from Russia who would take those people come to hold it.

So a while ago I was talking to a mom and her son.

He was about eight years old.

And he said to me, he said, Are you closing?

I said, no.

He said, It's all over this year closing.

And she said, You're selling some racks and people think you're closing.

And I said, No, we're not closing.

And the boy gave me a big hug.

She said he was devastated when he thought you were closing.

And so to me and I think Paula would agree, it's that we've we've made a difference in people's lives that, you know, people will long remember us after, you know, after we're not here anymore, people will still remember us.

You know, it's just it's been a heck of a fun ride.

Yeah, it's it's it truly is not to it doesn't get frustrating because everything does get frustrating, but it's been a real joy in my life to have been able to do this and to have her by my side.

Yeah, Yeah.