So as some you may know, I pretty much do this on my own. I have an employee (Ally) that is one that needs to be motivated, but man put a list in front of her and she has put some ppl i have worked with at my real job to shame. No list, not so much. She is young, 18, and is shy but she likes to talk to ppl when they talk to her and she has missed very few days.
My step son that I call my son (Tayshaun) loves to interact with ppl, play games, and is a huge Flash fan. He just turned 13 and even with a few things that hold him back in alot of stuff with life he does his best. Track and field discuss and shot are his sports and baseball. When he hits he hits hard. I on the other hand...I have with my wonderful wife 0 kids as of now, but together we have 5, a small team if they ever work together. I work at the largest surface coal mine in the world. And am an avid nerd of comics, toys and board games. Though i tend to be a bit behind on current comics I do read comics every single day. A small perk where i work waiting to fill my truck with the raw power of the earth. I read between 6-20 comics a shift, our shifts are 12 hours with a 1 hour commute to get to the job. Its a dangerous job. long hours and not much sleep.
I tell you this because I have been asked why I dont have much more on our website. Well when you work from 5am/pm to 815pm/am each day, its hard to get ahead on this site. As well as I am social and when customers or friends come into the store I as the owner talk to them if no one else is working with me that day. 15 hours a day with the bus ride and then no service at the job site I am limited to what i can do and when. Since putting in the web site thanks to my friend Beau. We have generated facebook sales, I wont lie thats cool, and we have even had a few more out of towners come into the shop. But I can not compete with other big comic shops in the big apple or even in the mile high city since they have had their pages for years. I am having to build each page up with a slow effort and then I am also adding characters that are in each comic that I think some ppl will look for. Take into acount, when we have multiple covers for a issue those fly by, a copy and paste and change what we need to to make it unique for its own. But where as of now a comic takes me 10-15 minutes to put into the system, when I started a few weeks ago at the writing of this, it would take me 30+ minutes to put one in. I research values, I scan covers, I also put them into the POS we have and then put them off to the side to be sorted into our storage area or to be placed on the shelf for others to see. It isnt a fast process at all. And maybe with a few more ppl hired I could make it efficient but in a town of 4 thousand (Not 18 or so like a certain podcast elludes to LOL you know who you are) we make enough to keep our doors open, and buy new product to move the old out.
We donate to our towns sports, events, and police and firemen all the time. We support our ppl bc when it comes down to it in a town this size we are all family. There are the brothers and sisters you love, you hate, and you only see at holidays. There is the creepy uncles, and super loving grandparents. The cousins you miss all the time. And the neices and nephews you want to spoil. We may not have the best team, hell we may not even have a team we are excited to talk about, but we support our players, we support our coaches (for the most part) and we back our teachers. We like most of our cops, and the ones we dont like we learn to avoid or accept that they are who they are. Our firefighters are almost all volunteers and don’t get enough credit. And then the life blood of our town is our nurses and Dr's who with this whole covid thing they don’t get enough credit or pats on the back. I guess what I am saying is I love this place. Do I wish I lived somewhere else, yes at times, do I want to live somewhere else, no I don't.
My goal for Nerds is to build this up over the next few years. Make enough so I can make it my full time job. And set it up for my kids to have something they are proud to own when I leave this world. It will be slow, it will be filled with great moments and some awful moments. Will I ever be on the level with a certain Mile High store, I don't think so. But will we be the best comic shop in northeast Wyoming with the goal of being the best one day, hell yeah we will.
I leave this small rant on my town and my store so you anyone who reads this will know some of the things we struggle and excell with. Family (My wife Kristen, My Daughters Ary and Arrianna, my sons Tayzen, Gauge, and Tayshaun, Grandma Sandy, Sister and brother Jenny and Mike, and their daughters Syd and Kaia) all my friends who support me and my store. Both old and new. The online friends I have made with the store. And those that I have yet to get to know. I love you all and thank you for having my back!
Comments