What a 20-year Retail Exec Would Tell Every Retail Owner About AI in 2026 (with Sabrina Valdez)

How to Build a Profitable Retail Store in Less than 4 Months (and Thrive for 20+ Years) | Mary Liz Curtin

Mary Liz Curtin spent 35 years advising manufacturers, speaking at trade shows around the world, and writing a manual for independent retailers. Then she mortgaged her house, rehabbed a 1941 roller rink in Downtown Clawson, Michigan, named the store after her cat and her dog, and had the whole thing profitable in four months. That store is Leon & Lulu, now one of the most celebrated independent retail destinations in the country, with 15,000 square feet, a disco ball, 300 pairs of vintage skates on the walls, a restaurant next door, and 40,000 people on the email list. And Mary Liz built it without an ad budget. Her first customer acquisition move was hosting a charity fundraiser. In this conversation, she gets into what she actually did right in the opening months, how she thinks about inventory, mistakes, community, and the thing she believes physical retail does that no algorithm ever will. What you'll hear: - How Leon & Lulu was profitable by month four and the financial discipline that made it happen - The "buy it all" decision and how it shaped the store's identity - Why her first move was a charity event when she had no marketing budget - What she says is the most common mistake independent retailers make and why most don't see it coming - The $850K expansion: buying the Clawson Theater and opening Three Cats Restaurant - Why she believes independent retail is one of the most effective cures for the loneliness epidemic in America - What "make every day a party" actually looks like when margins are tight and you're exhausted Subscribe to Beyond the Register on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts with new episodes every week for independent retailers building something worth keeping. Beyond the Register is brought to you by Genius™ (Link globalpayments.com/genius [http://globalpayments.com/genius]) from Global Payments, the retail point of sale system designed to help busy store owners track inventory, manage customers and take payments.

The Hangover Effect: How to Be the Best Part of Your Customer's Entire Day | John DiJulius III

John DiJulius III started with three nos: no customers, no money, no employees. He and his wife Stacy opened a hair salon in Cleveland in 1993 surrounded by competitors in every direction. They couldn't out-advertise them. Couldn't out-build them. So they out-loved them and turned that obsession into a customer experience framework now used by Chick-fil-A, Starbucks, Ritz-Carlton, and Marriott. But the lessons John shares here aren't from a boardroom. They're from decades of mistakes: watching rapid growth nearly break his standards, losing his wife and business partner, and learning the hard way that if your business depends on you walking the floor, you haven't actually built a business. On this episode of Beyond the Register, John DiJulius III breaks down exactly how small retailers can close the experience gap, remove the word "no" from their vocabulary, and build something that runs without them. What's in this episode: - Why customer satisfaction is at a 20-year low and why that's a wide-open window for small businesses right now - The "hangover effect" and what it actually means to be the best part of your customer's entire day - What "employee roulette" is and the specific systems John uses to reduce it - The Customer Bill of Rights: never point, never say no, never overshare - Why discounting is a tax you pay for average service and how to price with confidence - How a 2003 book accidentally turned a salon owner into a global speaker overnight - The single most important quote for entrepreneurs and why John says you should pull over to hear it Beyond the Register is brought to you by Genius™ (Link globalpayments.com/genius [http://globalpayments.com/genius]) from Global Payments, the retail point of sale system designed to help busy store owners track inventory, manage customers and take payments.

How This Bookstore Owner Competes With Amazon Without Touching Price | Ally Kirkpatrick

When Ally Kirkpatrick opened Old Town Books in 2018, every sign pointed the wrong way: the last indie bookstore in Old Town Alexandria had already been killed by Amazon, she had a newborn at home, $7,000 in savings, and zero retail experience. Her own dad refused to help her look at leases. What she had instead was a decade behind the counter of coffee shops and a conviction that what people were actually hungry for wasn't a product. It was a place. This episode is a masterclass in hospitality-first retail. Ally runs her bookstore the way a great restaurant runs a dining room: front of house, hand-selling the menu, training staff like waitstaff, and obsessing over every sensory detail from the smell of the shelves to what her team wears on the floor. The result: a business that competes with Amazon not on price, but on something Amazon can never build. In this episode: - Why Ally frames her bookstore as "Disneyland for books" and how that mindset changes every operational decision - The front-of-house model that turns booksellers into experts who hand-sell a curated "menu" each season - How Old Town Books competes with Amazon on discovery, expertise, and experience when it literally can't compete on price - Why Ally's best management hire came from the restaurant industry (and why you should steal that playbook) - The book club strategy that built a community of regulars who show up in formal wear to a year-end party - What "placemaking" actually means for your bottom line and why local retail drives up residential rents in your neighborhood - The hardest management lesson: letting go, trusting your team, and what finally forced her to do it Follow Beyond the Register on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts for weekly conversations with independent retailers building businesses worth showing up for. Beyond the Register is brought to you by Genius™ (Link globalpayments.com/genius [http://globalpayments.com/genius]) from Global Payments, the retail point of sale system designed to help busy store owners track inventory, manage customers and take payments.

Most Makers Don't Know the Difference Between a Hobby and a Business | Katrina Parris @ NiLu

Katrina Parris, founder of Nilu Goods in Harlem, joined Keenan Kok-Carlson on Beyond the Register to share how she built an 11-year retail institution out of a simple belief: when you support a maker, you support a community. Nilu is a gift shop on Lenox Avenue in Harlem that has quietly functioned as something closer to a startup incubator. Over the past decade, Katrina has taken makers from kitchen-table batches to retail shelves, including her mailman, who mentioned in passing that he made natural deodorant and eight months later had product in the store with regulars coming back for it. She does this without charging rent, without taking equity, and without a formal program. Just a framework, a set of honest questions, and a willingness to tell founders what most retailers won't. In this conversation, Katrina and Keenan get into: - Why a great product and a great business are not the same thing and the three-tier test she uses to show makers the difference - The homework assignments she gives every maker before she buys a single unit from them - How she pivoted through the 2008 financial crisis, Covid, and near-closure in 2023 using the same core instinct each time - Why she stopped buying wholesale inventory after a decade and moved to an 85% consignment model - The GoFundMe that forced her to go public about struggling, and the brands-in-residency program she built out of that moment - What she learned from 15 years in the floral business about the difference between passion and a viable operation If you run an independent retail store, if you're a maker trying to understand what a retailer actually needs from you, or if you want to see what community-rooted business looks like in practice, this one is worth your time. Beyond the Register is brought to you by Genius™ (Link globalpayments.com/genius [http://globalpayments.com/genius]) from Global Payments, the retail point of sale system designed to help busy store owners track inventory, manage customers and take payments.

What a 20-year Retail Exec Would Tell Every Retail Owner About AI in 2026 (with Sabrina Valdez)

Most retail and CPG leaders are still asking whether they should use AI. Sabrina Valdez answered that question three years ago, before Super Bowl commercials, before the hype cycle, before most people knew what ChatGPT even was. Today, she helps retail and CPG organizations move from aimless experimentation into scalable, repeatable AI systems, as the Founder of The Next Move Consulting. Her background spans 20+ years on the operator side: buying at PetSmart, running replenishment at Sprouts, making decisions that hit the P&L by Friday. She knows what it's like to stare down a wall of skewed data and make the call. Now she's helping other leaders do the same thing, with AI as the force multiplier. In this episode, Keenan and Sabrina go deep on what it actually looks like to build AI into the fabric of a retail or CPG organization, and why the person most afraid of falling behind might already have the biggest advantage. In this episode, you'll learn: - Why curiosity isn't what actually drives AI adoption (and what does) - The reason the oldest person in your organization has the most potential to be your best AI user - The five levels of using generative AI and why most people are stuck at level one - How to move from "endless pilot phase" to AI that's woven into your daily operations - Sabrina's four-step process for building a 3-to-6-month AI roadmap for retail and CPG teams - What OpenClaw is, why 25% of it is malicious, and why even some AI practitioners avoid it - Why AI is like yoga: you're only competing with you and your mat - Why every business, from dermatologists to C-stores to salons, can start seeing returns quicklyWhether you're a retail owner trying to figure out where to begin, a CPG leader stuck in AI pilot purgatory, or an operator who thinks this isn't for you because you're not "tech-savvy," this one's for you.Sabrina’s website: The Next Move ConsultingThe Next Move Consulting | AI Strategy for Leaders & Teams [https://thenextmoveconsulting.com/]dSabrina’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sabrina-e-valdez [https://www.linkedin.com/in/sabrina-e-valdez]Beyond the Register is brought to you by Genius™ (Link globalpayments.com/genius [http://globalpayments.com/genius]) from Global Payments, the retail point of sale system designed to help busy store owners track inventory, manage customers and take payments.