We recently connected with Robert GODLASKY and have shared our conversation below.

Robert, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Everyone has crazy stuff happen to them, but often small business owners and creatives, artists and others who are doing something off the beaten path are hit with things (positive or negative) that are so out there, so unpredictable and unexpected. Can you share a crazy story from your journey?

I’ve not been unemployed since age nine until my retirement at age sixty. All through my grade school, high school and college, I constantly worked — sometimes holding as many as three part time jobs. I got the entrepreneurship bug very early and my
passion for financial freedom only grew stronger.

After college I joined a retail corporation as an entry level mgr. I climbed the ranks. As a very young store general mgr, I was given several shares of Company stock. The CEO told me the reason for the gift was that he expected me “To think like an owner!” Man, that did it for me. I could be an entrepreneur again! Unless something was illegal, or violated our company policies, I was open to new ideas!

Years later as a district mgr in Los Angles I was supervising about twentyfive busy stores. Our company bought a property in a high crime, gang infested neighborhood. Prior to that store opening I was on site giving guidance to our ‘store setup’ crew. I met
a patrolling L.A.P.D. officer in the parking lot. He asked if I was crazy for opening a drugstore there. He went on to inform me about the terribly high crime statistics. He gave me a printout of recent crimes in that zip code. I was shocked and I told him that I would inform our executive decision makers. I was later informed by my boss that we were past the point of no return — contracts had been signed and we must open that store. I reconnected with the cop. and asked fro extra police protection. He laughed! I asked him if his team would be interested in having a private, key-locked, fully furnished office inside our store. He said , “YES!!!” So I opened that store on time, under budget — with a 3 ft. decal on our front window that read “Official L.A.P.D. Substation”. A police car was parked out in front at random most days/nights. Customers were delighted. (we took market share from our competitors). Employee morale was among the highest in LA. And… our local police men and women had a comfortable, private, a/c’d office to write reports; take breaks and phone home! A Win, Win Win situation! …. I thought like an owner!

Robert, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Like Warren Buffet and Meredith Whitney, I began my business career at age 9 on a newspaper route. My professional career spanned 40+ years in retail with national chain stores including Alpha Beta, Albertsons, Sav-On Drugs, Longs . I worked in various roles beginning as janitor in high school. Over those 40 years, I held a variety of leadership positions. One of the most interesting roles was Senior VP of Marketing for the Intermountain Division of the holding company, American Stores. We operated 254 stores in 57 markets. From town to town, our major competitors tended to be local chains or independents; so our business model was extremely entrepreneurial. In my retirement I’ve been a small business counselor at SCORE. As part of that responsibility I am Director of Academic Mentoring; coaching students at the CSUF Myhalo Entrepreneurship Center, The Chapman University Leatherby School Entrepreneurship, and the University of La Verne. Since 2013 I mentor Marines at CampPendleton. The Marine Corp sponsors a Transition Assistance Program for veterans wanting to start their own business. I’ve been recognized for my ‘Lean Start Up Business’ approach. Many of my students like my willingness to help them with career counseling My mantra is ‘I Empower Entrepreneurs’. I am passionate about teaching. The best part of what I do is working with students, learning from them and sharing new ideas from the talented SCORE mentors and university professors.

Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?

Treat every team member as a VIP! Start with your communication. Be certain you convey your sincere interest in their wellbeing at the job. You must be a focused listener. (take written notes to help remember important things in their lives like names of souses, kids or favorite pets. Show appreciation or concern. Make it clear that you care.
Find a way to allocate 10-15 minutes per employee per week for ‘chat’. I used to spend 30 min. to an hour a week per employee to help them do their job. I found that to be a good opportunity to have our “weekly chat”. Part of that time was observing and influencing their work, passing along compliments often. In doing that, I was in fact teaching, mentoring; and sometimes learning from them!
High morale starts with a very caring boss. One who rolls up their sleeves, pitches in; and makes work interesting because of their sincere interest in each individual. …. If you can’t do that, because of the individual, you must get them off your team..
Do the employee and yourself a favor…. Drive them over to your competitor and drop them off for their next job interview.

Alright – let’s talk about marketing or sales – do you have any fun stories about a risk you’ve taken or something else exciting on the sales and marketing side?

I was once promoted as Store Director of our company’s newest, largest food/drugstore in Las Vegas, Nv.
Our business was awful. We were missing our sales budget by $10’s of thousands each week. The store had
lost nearly $1 million in the nine months prior to my arrival. I had visited a new ‘talk of the town’ store on a recent vacation to San Diego. The store was called Costco. It was amazing. They did not advertise weekly specials in the newspaper as most
grocery stores did at that time. They made huge displays of everyday items at cheap prices.

I decided to add that “Costco merchandising” technique to my marketing plan. I contacted our suppliers and asked for ‘deals’.
I was able to procure off-brand staples at very low cost. Things like paper plates, jars of jam, make remover, nail polish, French
bread, etc. We made large displays with huge signs touting super low prices. It worked! Slowly we got busier. The word spread among the product vendors…. they began calling me with deals and ideas! Sales continued to grow.

One a stranger came into my store giving me his business card. He was a beef broker from Utah. He was in town selling boneless prime rib beef filets to the large casino/hotels. He said that his freezers were over following with beef bones since the casinos all wanted ‘boneless filets. He offered to sell me the meaty bones for 50 cents per lb. I consulted my meat mgr, and we
placed what we thought was a large order. We sold those bones for 99 cents per lb. and sold hundreds in just 3-4 days! Soon
we were selling $100’s per day! Customers loved us. A year later I was promoted to Regional Director of Marketing. I had proven that I could make a corporate grocery chainstore entrepreneurial.