Start A Retail Business and Be A Lifestyle Builder w Ariana Sylvester

A retail business is a great business you can create to serve your customers and design your own lifestyle the way you want. Since you are the boss, you can make sure your business fits around you. Ariana shares how to start your own retail business.

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How Ariana Sylvester Makes Money

Ariana and her husband Tom are a team. They help people figure out what business they want to start, grow and make the lifestyle that fits their family through courses and programs. Not to mention they have multiple businesses they run together.

Dustin has interviewed Ariana and her husband separately. He appreciates that they both have different personalities, perspectives, upbringings and backgrounds.

It makes for interesting conversation because they both approach and see things differently.

What Ariana Did Before Being Successfully Unemployed

Once a zoologist major, Ariana followed a traditional path. She went to high school, went to college and did what everyone says you should do which was follow your passion. At the time Ariana’s passion was animals.

She had passion about working with them and was interested in all things animals. During this time, she felt like it was a really cool and great idea.

Ariana planned to do an internship at a zoo and work behind the scenes. Looking back on her senior year, she remembers she had a moment and freaked out and wondered what her life was going to look like and had no idea what to do with her zoology major.

She always thought she would be a zookeeper at the local zoo. In retrospect, she realized it was not actually a great plan. Zoo Keeping jobs are few and far between.

Most of the time you have to travel somewhere else to find a job. People had been working part-time for years waiting for full-time jobs at the local zoo.

This realization dashed Ariana’s dreams a little bit. She thought about the other possible research side of zoology, but that didn’t really excite her or fill her with joy.

So Ariana worked at an animal shelter for minimum wage. She was doing hard labor tasks on the farm at the animal shelter. Soon she realized it was not what she wanted to do.

During her freshman year in college, Ariana met her sweetheart, Tom, and they decided they were getting married.

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How Ariana Made It To Where She Is Now

Ariana enjoyed working at the animal shelter, however, she ended up getting injured. She realized she couldn’t do the work forever as it was a possible recurring injury. That’s when Ariana moved into an office position as an administrative assistant.

She recalls that she didn’t have a lot of experience but she picked up on it quickly. From there she hopped through 3-4 admin jobs over about three years. Ariana felt like she was floating and wasn’t sure what she wanted to be doing.

Ariana thinks she would probably still be floating had she and Tom not decided to start a family at the time.

They had to start thinking about when they have children. Deciding on things like if their children will go to daycare or if Ariana would be a stay at home mom.

The options were there, they just needed to make the choice. In the meantime, Tom was in the process of starting a business. Ariana wanted nothing to do with it.

She didn’t have the entrepreneurial outlook but she wanted to be supportive of Tom. They would just do their own things.

Ariana didn’t get involved until she started to see Tom struggle with the backend administrative tasks in the real estate business.

He was still working his full-time job at the time so she wanted to offer help and be supportive but didn’t intend it to extend further. With all of that going on, they also launched a wine and liquor store business.

Ariana’s tasks grew with this endeavor. She was more involved in the planning as well as managing administrative tasks. This is where the evolution of entrepreneurial support came, through helping Tom in the businesses he was running.

It was her realization that this was proof there was a different path and that they can design the lives they want to live, not what other people think it should be.

The First Step in Starting a Retail Business

Ariana says the first step is to dive in and do your research. Consider what type of business you want such as brick and mortar. She also says to consider community interests and locational needs.

A lot of the decisions depend on where you are. Once you have that done, really look at how is it possible for that business to run. Ariana says a lot of small business owners with brick and mortar setup are in the store a lot of the time.

Ariana and Tom did not want to be working there all the time. So if they couldn’t make it work without being there so frequently, they wouldn’t start it. They built that idea into their business plan.

Dustin once had a convenience store but it didn’t have wine and liquor. He had everything else, even a pizza oven. Dustin agrees that there is so much you need to do, especially if you don’t want to be there a lot.

He didn’t want to be there all the time and wanted to hire people to run for him. Dustin wanted to be a business owner, not a business worker.

What Ariana Did Next

A fair amount of what Ariana and Tom built was done so over time and they learned as they went along. Anything that would come up or was tough to tackle, they would figure out a system to alleviate the issue and train staff to take care of it instead of having to call.

Ariana says it is important to hire good people and set expectations for them. It is also important to hire the right type of people for the job, such as those who want to grow within the business and those who want to support the business.

For example, Ariana and Tom have an employee who went from a regular position to growing into the purchasing manager position. He now handles ordering, scheduling and takes care of things throughout the day that do no longer require Ariana and Tom’s approval.

They have created a standard operating procedure binder for training new employees about communication, technology and the like.

The team uses Slack, a digital headquarters where everyone is aware of what is going on, announcements, questions they may have, and more. Over time they evaluated and improved processes as needed.

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Some of Ariana’s initial tasks included ordering wine and liquor for the store as well as the administrative side for the real estate business.

Ariana says looking over inventory and the ordering process took hours to complete. She was approached by an employee who seemed interested in this process and she imagined he could probably do it better than her.

He took over that process and does really well with it.

Ariana thinks initially some business owners think they have to be doing all of this stuff themselves. However, she believes if you hire the right people, put the systems in place, and delegate tasks to them, it gives you space to be doing what you really want to be doing.

That could be spending more time with family, traveling, or anything else besides being inside the building at all times.

At a time when technology is booming, Dustin thinks it’s a great way to integrate it with owning a brick and mortar business. Before all of this technology, business owners would not be able to do a lot of the stuff that they can do now.

Back then it was so much more work to automate systems.

Dustin feels that he and Tom Sylvester are not happy unless they are building something. Dustin is now at a time with Master Passive Income and investing in real estate that everything is already built.

He has some things he can be doing but loves when there is something to be built or created.

How to Find the Right Employees for a Retail Business

Thankfully, Ariana and Tom Sylvester believe that everything is trainable and no one really needs prior knowledge. They wanted their employees to be a part of the WWS (Warsaw Wine and Spirits) family.

They believe it is important to create the vibe for a collection of people who want to work at a fun job, get along and jive with each other.

The Sylvesters believe in cultivating culture. Ariana and Tom went through different people but have had two people working with them since nearly the beginning. Their matriarch, Mary, has been there since a week after they opened.

Mary pays attention to detail and ensures things are running things well. She is always aware of what is happening, and facilitates training. The purchase manager, also named Tom, was a well timed opportunity according to Ariana.

New Tom and his wife came in for a tasting and were interested in the store. Tom and Tom hit it off right away but there wasn’t an available position right at that moment.

They knew that they wanted him in the future so they kept him in mind. As fate would have it, a week or so later a position opened up and they hired him.

Ariana and Tom wanted to create the opportunity to hire the right people by putting it out there and share their mission and values. Ariana thinks it’s important to make sure you are pulling the right people for that and not focusing so much about them being qualified or skilled right off the bat.

Dustin fully agrees that people need to fit into the family and the community that is being built. He thinks it is important to work hard to find the right person and just a warm body you have to babysit.

Choosing employees who can function with the owner and take responsibility is best because then they have buy-in into the business.

Successfully Unemployed Pro Tip: Hire slow and fire fast

One of Dustin’s employees at the convenience store, Jimmy, was a gem like this. He had a lot of ideas that Dustin agreed with and Jimmy took initiative. When Dustin would ask him to take over a task, he would train him and let him get to it.

Dustin believes that personality is also something that is important that jives well. A rule Dustin follows is that he doesn’t get into business with someone he does not get along with because he knows they will not work well together.

What Ariana Took Over on the Backend of the Retail Business

Ariana took care of a lot of paperwork. Tom had to go through an exclusive, deep background check because New York is really strict with liquor laws.

While they were doing that, they were not sure whether or not they would be approved or what the timeline would be. They made sure to have the paperwork done and ready assuming it would be approved so they could get started as soon as possible.

Luckily, they had already found a building thanks to the real estate business. They wanted the space to get up and running to begin paying rent to the real estate company.

During the approval process, Ariana checked out insurance, vendors and picked out shop shelves. They had employees in mind but did not have an opening date so held off on hiring. They wanted someone in mind when they were ready to get started and hire.

Tom and Ariana decided how the business would run without being there, that Ariana would be home and other logistics. At the beginning they used Dropbox to make it easy to scan in documents that were needed and easily shared.

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Ariana would have easy access to the information and it was all in one place. They had to start figuring out payroll since they had never had employees with the other business.

Ariana started thinking about the appearance of the store, the set up and the customer experience they wanted to create for their customers.

She also created the store policies and how to do things like bank deposits. Ariana and Tom spent a lot of time considering little details that they believe some business owners overlook in the beginning.

Dustin is so excited to hear Ariana’s perspective. Getting to hear hers after he has heard Tom’s is very interesting to him and is just how they wrote their book, Lifestyle Builders.

Having both of their perspectives throughout the book is important to understand all of the sides of building a business, problem solving, and working together to figure things out.

Dustin knows his wife if really good with small details and he focuses more on the bigger picture. They complement each other that way and he believes that is important to a partnership.

Successfully Unemployed Rapid Fire Round

How Ariana Gives Back

One of Ariana’s favorite ways to give back to her community is through her voice. She is a part of a women’s community chorus and she uses her voice to create joy in others.

The group performs at different events locally and holds concerts. Contributing her voice makes her feel joyful and gives her some space from the business aspects of her life.

Ariana’s Tip To Get Started in A Retail Business

Ariana encourages people to step back from perceived assumptions about what someone else is thinking or going through. She believes it is important to understand why this is so important to them and why they are starting out.

Starting a business can be scary and for some seems very risky. She also thinks people should put their own perceptions on hold, ask questions and seek to understand.

Dustin agrees and he feels like that this is something that he needs to implement more into his life, to understand.

The App That Ariana Swears By

Ariana’s all time favorite is Google Calendar. It’s free and she feels like it is one of Google’s best products. Ariana and Tom use it for a lot of clarity and tracking their priorities.

If it is not on the calendar it doesn’t happen in the Sylvester household. This is especially important with multiple businesses and having kids or just for life in general. Ariana and her family prioritize family time over business and the calendar helps keep them on track with that.

Dustin’s wife uses a paper calendar. He uses his phone and cannot get her onboard with the digital one!

Ariana’s Advice to Her Younger Self

Even though it didn’t work out, she would not have told herself not to go into zoology because that is where she met her husband. But she would tell herself to be less afraid of failure and stop worrying about other people’s expectations of herself.

Ariana was one of the kids who was well behaved, excelled, musical, athletic and got straight A’s. She not only had high expectations from her family but also for herself.

Back then, Ariana doesn’t feel she failed often which she believes may have set her up for hard times.

Without being able to fail small, Ariana believes some of the bigger failures later in life were harder for her. Ariana wishes she had someone who would have pushed her to do more things that she wasn’t great at in order to learn more lessons about failure. Without the little failures, there was no lesson learned.

Dustin believes when you fail, you learn a lot. When you win, you learn a little. When you fail, it sticks in your brain and you learn more lessons from it.

The Non Fiction Book Ariana Sylvester Suggests

Even though Ariana doesn’t read too many business books, she does read for pleasure. Ariana she fell in love with Brene Brown. Brown talks about perfection and expectations like what Ariana dealt with growing up.

She also talks about mind; overcoming and reframing it. Ariana believes doing the inner work is hard. She thinks Brown makes a lot of sense, it’s simple and it’s factual.

One of the books she likes is Dare to Lead. Reading more Brene Brown’s books is on Ariana’s to-do list. Additionally, she loves Brown’s Netflix documentary, Call to Courage.