Slow and Steady Build to A Million with Gretchen Grove

Serial entrepreneur, chocolatier and artist – Gretchen Grove

Gretchen has been a listener to the show for a long while and has over a million net worth. She has had a few amazing businesses (like creating the first ever Chocolate Sushi Candy!) and a gallery in Hawaii. One thing that separates her though is that her businesses weren’t these crazy growth stories. She was able to slowly build her network by saving a lot and making smart investing decisions. I was so excited to highlight her story! We don’t all need to become millionaires overnight! Gretchen gives us some amazing tactics for slowly growing your net worth to a million!

Thanks so much for listening!

In the comments below tell me one thing you are struggling with in business right now. Two winners will be chosen and you’ll get to connect with Gretchen to chat about it. Contest ends Friday 8/1 @ 12PM CST. All winners will be notified via email.

CONTEST UPDATE: Thanks for all the amazing entries for the coaching sessions with Gretchen! The winners were Alex and Jenna! We have reached out via email to connect you with Gretchen for your free sessions!

Transcript:

Announcer: Welcome to the Eventual Millionaire podcast - with your host, Jaime Tardy. Real talk and real advice from real millionaires, with a sharp focus on you - the Eventual Millionaire.

Jaime: Welcome to Eventual Millionaire. I'm Jaime Tardy and I'm super excited to have Gretchen Grove on the show today. We've emailed back and forth, she's actually listened to this show quite often and even read the book - you had no idea how excited that makes me! She's a serial entrepreneur - she's owned a candy company called The Chocolate Bar, she's owned a gallery called The Grove Gallery. She's doing amazing things and I'm so excited to talk to her. She's coming all the way from Hawaii also, so it's super early in the morning. Thanks so much for coming on the show today, Gretchen.

Gretchen: I'm glad to be here - and by the way it's raining here.

Jaime: Good!

Gretchen: Not what you expected.

Jaime: I know, it's sunny here in Austin, I feel really cool. No, I'm kidding. So I was reading your bio and we've exchanged e-mails quite a few times but I didn't realize that your chocolate company was one of the first to make chocolate sushi, which I thought was super cool. How did you even start that and come up with that?

Gretchen: Well we had purchased the store from someone else who had run it for only six months and realized that it was a lot more work than they wanted and she said to me "I always thought it would be great if I could come up with a candy sushi," so once I had gotten my feet wet and began making chocolate I did my research, this was before the internet so of course it was all book research, and I came up with a recipe. We were making one batch a week, which was the equivalent of nine sushi rolls, and I took it to Honolulu Magazine and just dropped off some for them and they put it in the magazine. The day it hit the newsstands the TV stations picked it up. It was covered on Good Morning America and on 300 radio stations across the country and then magazines all around the world. We went from one batch per week to having to hire someone to do nothing but the sushi and that was nine batches a day.

Jaime: Wow.

Gretchen: So it was a big deal. That was 81 sushi rolls a day.

Jaime: And you were just doing mail order sushi rolls to everybody because there was no internet.

Gretchen: Yeah.

Jaime: What do you think would have happened if you hadn't done sushi? How would that business have done? How long into it did you see success with that?

Gretchen: I think it might have been a year into it, but a lot of our candies, and I've never seen anything like it since, because I have a degree in art we did a lot of molded candies and I would paint them to be very detailed so it was very unique and I think the store would have done quite well without that. This was in the '80s and in 1986 or 1987 two men approached me from the mainland and they wanted to buy the business and take it national. I was kind of reluctant, I wasn't really ready to give it up at that point, but they convinced me and they were going to pay me a salary of $1,000 a month just to be a creative consultant and I loved the idea of that so we signed all of the papers and then the stock market fell and they weren't able to do.

Jaime: How long had you owned the company for before they approached you and can you give me numbers on how much they were going to give you?

Gretchen: I honestly don't remember because it was so long ago but I think it was four or five years into the business and I was really gung-ho on it - I wanted to take it further because it was my baby. Anyhow, I made that mind shift of "Okay, I'm going to give it up and move on to other things," so when that fell through I was a very unhappy camper because it was hard to shift back. So now I had two stores, a manufacturing kitchen and my husband, who had had to give up his job to work for me, had gone back to work for somebody else so now I was on my own. I'm sad to say that I woke up every morning crying and went to bed every night crying because I was so overwhelmed. But I did finally find someone who purchased it.

Jaime: Really? So was the business declining?

Gretchen: No, the business was doing great. In fact the woman who bought it allowed it to decline and I'm really sad about that.

Jaime: Wow, so that mindset shift of you planning on getting out really affected you, though?

Gretchen: It did, because I had visions of growing it and that was before the internet - had the internet been there it would have been a million dollar business. But it provided a very good income for a long time.

Jaime: That's awesome. So tell me about how you went from that, you sold it, you were happy with selling it, and you went into something else. Because you said it was your baby - you sell your baby, what do you do then?

Gretchen: Oh, that's easy.

Jaime: "Here, take it. For enough money I'll totally sell my baby."

Gretchen: Well at that time our kids were probably 15, 13 and 8 so it was time to stay home with them. I really thought those teen years were pretty critical to be home for, so much more even than the baby years because they get into all sorts of mischief. So it was a good time - I went back to school and got my degree in art, which I had kind of lapsed on, and that was fun, and I worked for other people locally and helped them build up their businesses.

Jaime: Like what?

Gretchen: Well I do bookkeeping because I believe my best ability in a business situation is my ability to manage money.

Jaime: Really? You're an art major and money manager - go you!

Gretchen: Left brain and right brain. So I worked with other people, helping them to manage money, and building their businesses and that was great until one of them ticked me off and I thought "Why am I doing this for them when I could be doing this for me?" So 2002 was when I opened my art gallery and it was a high end, real art gallery when I started out. People would say "This is beautiful, this is so wonderful," and I would think "If I had a dollar for every person that walked in and said that I would be doing well," but it's not easy to sell art.

Jaime: Well that's what I was going to ask - how did you do your due diligence? Thankfully you're in Hawaii where there are tourists and they might want to buy local stuff. Was that the extent of what you did for your due diligence? How did you know whether or not it was going to be a success? What made you think it was a good idea?

Gretchen: We had just gone to New Zealand and art was alive and well in New Zealand and we live in a town of 40,000 people, it's a pretty small town, in Hawaii and on the main street that faces the ocean, the touristy street, so to speak, there was this one store that was in a prime location and it was a day-old bread store.

Jaime: Okay?

Gretchen: Yeah, that's where one of bread companies sold all of their stale and moldy bread and stuff like that.

Jaime: Go tourists!

Gretchen: "Just what I came to Hawaii for." It was the prime location, it really was, and I always thought "If they ever give that up I'm going to start something there." So we went to New Zealand, art was alive and well in New Zealand, and I came back still angry at my boss and I thought "I want to do something for myself," I opened the newspaper and there was that space available and I jumped on it. It turned out they hadn't paid their rent in three years.

Jaime: Were they able to give you a good deal?

Gretchen: Yeah, I got a very good deal.

Jaime: Nice. Back then, how much was rent for a prime space in Hawaii?

Gretchen: This is Hilo, Hawaii so it's on the big island but it was about $1 per square foot then.

Jaime: How big was it?

Gretchen: It was 1,200 square feet.

Jaime: Okay, so that's not super crazy numbers to try to sell art. So how did that go?

Gretchen: I went into it and my joke was always "Well if it has to be an auto parts store to survive then it's going to be an auto parts store, but it's starting out as an art gallery." That's my thing in business - you do what is necessary to make it successful. So I got in there, opened the art gallery, and it was paying the rent but it wasn't doing anything for me or putting anything in my pocket and I was working the whole store by myself so I began to put in a few handmade gift items from local artists and those sold really well so I started adding more and more and more. It continued to have art but the art set the tone for a high end gift store and it morphed into a very beautiful high end gift store that focused on local artists, their products and a few things from outside.

Jaime: So tell me about how that transition happened. You were like "Okay, we put some things in, they sold well," - what was the growth like?

Gretchen: Totally organic. "That did well. Okay, well let's try this. Let's add a little jewelry and see how that does and pretty soon the gifts took over. Then I began to travel to gift shows on the mainland, looking for products that lent themselves to the Hawaii market, and that's where we ended up. I really believe it was a beautiful store.

Jaime: Can you tell me how you picked things that would sell well? Because if somebody has a store, they have to know their market really, really well, but going in and looking at all of these gifts that you could possibly buy and not knowing what people would want, do you have any tips on how to tell whether or not someone would buy it?

Gretchen: I've always considered myself someone who is very average so I sort of feel like I know what the average person wants or would like and I also love beautiful things but I am not willing to pay uber amounts for them so that was always my criteria - "Is this something that I would want?" It wasn't always things that I would want but as I really began to see what did sell and learn my clientele, the repeat customers in particular, I just began to get a sense of it. Again, it was pretty organic; it just came easily. Of course, if things didn't sell, I'd put them on sale.

Jaime: So you had that store for seven or eight years - what was the growth like? You said it was organic but can you tell me numbers on how well you did for the first few years versus the last bit or was it steady?

Gretchen: I think for the first couple of years I was making $20-30,000 a year, not a lot, and by the end only about $50-60,000 a year, which  wasn't always things that I would want but as I really begaisn't a lot, to have gotten to a point of having accrued over $1 million in equity now but it worked. I'm so good with money that in three years I saved $50,000 to throw on our mortgage.

Jaime: This is what we were talking about before - you've done it so slowly and we need more stories like yours. Don't get me wrong, I just interviewed a 24 year old whose business is now worth eight figures and I'm n to see what did sell and learn my clientele, the repeat customers in particular, I just began to get a sense of it. Again, it was pretty organic; it just came easily. Of course, if things didn't sell, I'd like "Seriously? I mean you're really cool but do people relate to you?" That's ridiculous. He's built it in three years and that's not an anomaly but it's not always like that. Most people are doing things like you, which is slow and steady, and if your business was doing $60,000 at its peak how were you able to amass such a net worth?

Gretchen: Well, number one, my husband worked in a government job and he's a wildlife photographer so he has a photography business, so there was that, and of course investing in real estate in Hawaii. I've lived here over 50 years and I've owned all this time so it just happens that you buy property and you keep buying it up and buying it up. A good portion of our net worth now is in our property - we have seven acres out here, outside of Hilo, and that land is worth a lot of money.

Jaime: Really? How long ago did you buy that and what made you decide to get it? Is that the land that your house is on?

Gretchen: Yeah, it is. We had lived in Hilo when the kids were growing up because you have to ferry them to this event, the soccer and that, you know how that goes - or maybe you don't yet, but you will.

Jaime: Not as much as you do - you had three kids that were older.

Gretchen: But once the kids were out of the house we thought we'd like to live in the country so now we're ten miles out of town and we thought this was the prettiest part of the island and now celebrities and suchlike have also discovered it and they also think it's quite pretty so they've driven the prices up. At the time we paid around $165,000 for these seven acres and now it's worth close to $1 million.

Jaime: That's so crazy. You probably couldn't have predicted that - you just thought "I like this, this is great," and it amassed a ton of value.

Gretchen: I wasn't thinking about the money, I was thinking about lifestyle and I've always made lifestyle choices.

Jaime: Really? Tell me more about that. So you don't go after the money, you go after the lifestyle?

Gretchen: Yeah - if I was going after the money I wouldn't be living in Hawaii. It's a beautiful place and I chose it because of the lifestyle but it's very difficult to make an income that's comparable with Silicone Valley.

Jaime: I bet.

Gretchen: In the 1990s when I was not working I wanted to move to the mainland and use my creative brain where all the creativity was taking place in California but my husband's pretty much tied to his job here because he's a wildlife biologist specializing in Hawaii birds. It's hard to do that from the mainland so we stayed here and that was another deciding factor. If you're going to be here, own your own business because it's just a way to increase your income a little bit.

Jaime: Do you ever regret not making different choices way back when?

Gretchen: No, I don't.

Jaime: That's awesome. Why?

Gretchen: Because unlike you, who grew up in Maine, ever since I was 19, I have gone out for a walk every day, three miles a day. You can't do that in Maine in the snow.

Jaime: Well you can, you just don't want to.

Gretchen: And you can't just go and jump in the ocean when you feel like it. We've had some wonderful experiences with whales, swimming with the manta rays. Things that you could as a tourist but because you live here it just makes it that much more special.

Jaime: That's awesome. It's so neat to hear from someone who lives in Hawaii. I've talked to a few of my friends who have talked about moving to Hawaii but it's so hard, with the time difference and all of that other stuff, to deal with.You have to be completely committed and it sounds like you are; it's an amazing place for you to be. How do you manage everything - the kids and the business? We were talking about this before, being a mom in general, and trying to manage everything can be a little bit insane, especially trying to have the lifestyle that you want where you go for walks every day and swimming with the whales and all of that fun stuff - how did you manage that?

Gretchen: Well I have a good husband, that's part of it - and, by the way, my kids all came to me from other mothers.

Jaime: Oh, really?

Gretchen: Yeah, I adopted as a single parent before I met my husband.

Jaime: Really?

Gretchen: Yeah, and when I met him, he had two, so we combined the families and raised them together. When we had the candy store some of the stuff that was really crazy was that during the holidays we would sometimes have to be there until midnight or later so one of us would go home, usually him, and take care of the kids and I would stay there because it was my business. I would stay there and supervise the candy makers. A funny story - one particular Easter I stayed over and spent the whole night there with the candy makers, because we have round-the-clock candy makers - it was a tiny kitchen so we had to do it that way - and then I was helping customers and I said "I have to go take a bathroom break," went off and half an hour later, when it had slowed down a little bit, they said "Where's Gretchen?" and I had fallen asleep in the bathroom. So that happens.

Jaime: Did you ever feel guilty? The mommy guilt of working too much. I mean you want to be able to show them that you're doing what you love and you can build something and it's awesome but there's also this "Oh, shoot, I had to work until midnight, even during the holidays when you're supposed to be with your family." How did you manage that?

Gretchen: It was only during the holidays that that happened, and of course there are a lot of candy holidays, but we had Family Sunday where we closed the store, which I firmly believed in, and that was our day to go to the beach with the kids or go up a stream with the kids or do something with the kids. We also sold ice cream at the store so every Sunday, after our play day, we would stop by the store and all of us would have an ice cream.

Jaime: While it was closed? That's so cute.

Gretchen: They would love it. They look back on it with fond memories.

Jaime: That's awesome. So what you're trying to do is build these experiences so that way they understand when you're working because you're building something you love but then you have these really hardcore family experiences that make up for it.

Gretchen: Right, and most nights we were home well in time for dinner. We also had the kids, because I believe in training kids to be fairly sufficient, so one night a week each child would have to prepare dinner.

Jaime: When did you start that? Mine are only seven and five right now, I don't know if I can do that.

Gretchen: Our son, who was about seven at the time, came up with some great dinners.

Jaime: Alright, I'm starting that tonight.

Gretchen: It was usually a sandwich or something but it was always good. It was great - at least they learned to cook at least one thing before they moved out of the house.

Jaime: So tell me where you are now - you stopped Grove Gallery in 2010 and you've been sort of retired and working on stuff on the side and doing your art. Is it what you expected? Because a lot of people are like "I work really hard, I try to amass wealth so that I don't have to work," but there's boredom and all that other stuff that goes along with it. So tell me where you are now.

Gretchen: I'm ready to start another business. I'm going out of my brain, not with boredom, because there are ways to fill up your day every day, but it doesn't engage my mind or my creativity in the way that business does. Although I'm an art person, I don't find art nearly as exciting as business.

Jaime: Really? That's awesome.

Gretchen: I just love business. I love just flying by the seat of your pants and putting out flyers - ideally you don't have to do that but it does happen - and pivoting and doing whatever needs to be done. I just love the excitement. I think it's made me something similar to an adrenaline junkie - I think I'm a business junkie.

Jaime: Do you think you were born like that or was it a learned skill? Because people come to me all the time asking questions like that.

Gretchen: My dad owned his own business and didn't do well at it. I'm the youngest so those are the years I remember, my dad struggling. However, when we bought that chocolate business, I just jumped right in and I seemed to have a knack for it. My brother and sister both say "Wow, you are definitely the business person in the family." They just marvel at my ability to do business.

Jaime: How old were you when you bought that candy store and what were you doing before?

Gretchen: I was 35 and prior to that I had been a waitress at a swanky hotel on the other side of the island.

Jaime: Wow, so buying this business was so out of your comfort zone, I'm assuming, right?

Gretchen: Well I had just met my husband and moved to this side and the way it happened was it Christmas and I went into this new candy store that we had in town to see if they had any goodies for the stockings and I bought just a few and then, in January, it was, again in the newspaper, it was for sale. My husband hadn't been in there so he said "You're bored - let's go take a look at it," and we walked in, he's got a sweet tooth, and he looked around and he said "We'll take it."

Jaime: It wasn't even you! He looked and it and he was like "We'll take it. I want some of this chocolate. I want all of it."

Gretchen: Exactly.

Jaime: It's funny because I have friends that are starting a chocolate business. I think it's less than a year old right now. They have amazing chocolate. I haven't had sugar in I don't know how long so I haven't actually tried it but they have amazing chocolate. They're out in Vermont and hand making it all. Now, of course, it's different with the internet, but what ideas would you have or what advice would you give to them? A brand new candy shop, especially with distribution and trying to set themselves apart, because there are so many things out there now that are similar. We're in this local movement, everyone is gung-ho and making their own stuff in their kitchen. How do you build that?

Gretchen: You know, I don't really think I have a good answer for that because, like children, I think business is kind of an entity unto itself. Of course you go for quality. One of the things that I did that was really very lucrative for me was that I traveled around the state and taught candy making.

Jaime: Really?

Gretchen: Yeah, and sold all the supplies. That's one of the things I'm thinking of getting back into on the internet, because the supply business was very lucrative.

Jaime: I didn't think of that. With all the Pinterest and everything and everyone is trying to make their own cute chocolate everything. That's really interesting, I never would have thought of that at all. So you're thinking about getting into that side of things now?

Gretchen: I am, I want something. You asked, to go back a little bit, since 2010, when I closed the store, we've done a lot of travelling and because my husband is a wildlife photographer we go to Africa a lot.

Jaime: Really?

Gretchen: Yeah, and that's where my interest in social entrepreneurship comes from, so I'd like to be able to help women around the world who struggle.

Jaime: Tell me more about your experience with that. I have not been to Africa but I have been to a couple of amazing places and it changes you in general so tell me what the travelling has been like for you.

Gretchen: It has totally changed me. It's no longer about me and wanting to do something for me, it's wanting to do something for other people. It's just a question of how best to do that and that's where I get a little bogged down and that's why I'm toying with the idea of a podcast on social entrepreneurship, to learn how other people have done it.

Jaime: For people who haven't been to Africa, can you give us the lay of the land on what it's like over there and why it changed you like that?

Gretchen: What it reminds me of, every time I'm there, I think "I bet this is what the United States was like in 1850, in the pioneer days when people lived with a lot less and very often struggled to survive and yet you would go to the cities and the cities were thriving and very high tech." So it's the people in the world who are struggling and yet they are the most generous, lovely people and, of course, very colorful and just physically beautiful. Then, of course, the wildlife. It's just a simpler life and I really like it when you're not in the cities. I'm not a city girl anyhow. It's pretty crazy in the cities. I don't know, it's the spirit of the people. What they say about Africa is you go for the wildlife and you come back for the people.

Jaime: That's awesome. You're planning on going back, I'm sure, for the people.

Gretchen: Yeah, well we lead tours, or my husband leads tours over there. Photo tours.

Jaime: So you're living the example. Everybody says "I want to retire, I want to travel, I want to do all of this stuff," and you're living it right now.

Gretchen: I am and I'm happy about it.

Jaime: That's awesome.

Gretchen: But it's the times that I'm not travelling that I need something to do.

Jaime: Which is easy - you've done this before, you just have to pick something.

Gretchen: Well it won't be retail, that's all. Because retail ties you down to a store.

Jaime: That's a really good point. A lot of people, when we go over business ideas, we have to go over lifestyle and what they want and you seem extremely clear on lifestyle and what you want so it will be easier for you to pick. Sometimes people are like "I want this offline business with a store," and it's like "Do you know what you're getting into when that happens?"

Gretchen: You know that you have to show up every single day at ten o'clock, or whatever time you set, and that other people are going to dictate your life for you, basically, your customers?

Jaime: And I don't know anybody so far, none of my clients, who are like "Yes, sign me up for that!" They're like "Uh, that's a job and that's not what I want either." I really appreciate this, Gretchen. I always ask the same last question - you knew what it was beforehand, which is awesome. I love it when people listen to my show. What's one action listeners can take this week to help move them forward towards their goal of $1 million?

Gretchen: Well I'm going to say two things, if I may.

Jaime: Of course.

Gretchen: Watch your money and make it your friend and let it work for you. And number two - understand that there is a cost in not something, so don't let fear hold you back.

Jaime: Okay, you need to tell me more about those. I like them both and I want to hear more. What do you mean by ?watch your money?" Tell me more about that.

Gretchen: Well I've said that I think that my greatest strength is my ability to manage money. I'm not one to spend on gadgets - I think we live in a culture right now that's very intent on gadgetry - and I love it too, don't get me wrong, but I would rather see those numbers climbing in my bank account. I like numbers. So that's what I mean. Let the money grow and let it work for you so that you have a comfortable future.

Jaime: Making the choices that you need, that might be a bit sacrificial now while we let it grow and then we can make a decision based on that.

Gretchen: I just love to watch my bank account grow.

Jaime: Who doesn't, right? I mean really.

Gretchen: I don't like to watch credit cards. Start accruing money for yourself.

Jaime: I think the problem is that a lot of people want both and they assume that they can have both at the same time - "I want all my toys and I want my money to accrue," which can happen sometimes but the easiest way for that to happen is to not spend a whole bunch and your money will accrue.

Gretchen: Exactly. Don't buy what you can't afford. If you can't pay for it this week or next month, then save up for it.

Jaime: Which sounds so common sense but it's not for half the people - so make sure everybody is listening.

Gretchen: For a lot of people it's about immediate gratification but you're going to be a lot happier down the road if you put a little bit of that aside for later.

Jaime: Exactly. Now tell me about opportunities. You're right, people miss this. Missed opportunity costs are crazy but how do we use that for our advantage?

Gretchen: If you have an idea and you want to start a business or start something that's important to you, do your research and then jump in and try it out because it's scary beforehand but once you're in it, you're too busy to be scared. You're just going to be working your little you-know-what off.

Jaime: Totally, and that's probably where you are now - "I've got to pick something so that I can jump in head first."

Gretchen: You got it.

Jaime: Advice to you and advice to everybody else. Awesome. Thank you so much, Gretchen, I really appreciate it. Everybody can check out GretchenGrove.com - she's got blog posts and all of that fun stuff. Thanks so much for coming on the show today, Gretchen.

Gretchen: Thank you for having me.

Jaime: I hope you enjoyed everything that Gretchen was talking about and I loved how her story wasn't this crazy $8 million in three years or anything like that. It's really incremental, step by step. One thing that she wanted to do was give away a couple of spots for a free hour of consulting with her and so I'm super excited - I want you to make a comment, so go to EventualMllionaire.com, click on Gretchen's video, you can go to Millionaire Case Studies or into the blog, she'll be right there, so find her face, click on that and then comment and I want you to comment on one thing that you're struggling with in business. Maybe it's just more money, maybe it's not enough time - whatever it is, I want to hear from you. You tell me and we will go ahead and randomly pick a few people to get that free consulting call with Gretchen. So I hope you enjoyed this - check out EventualMillionaire.com and see if you can win.

Announcer: Thanks for listening. You can find out more great information like this on EventualMillionaire.com.

Tags: Business Growth, business strategy, business tactics, business tips, Gretchen Grove, millionaire interview, smart investing, Strategic Decision

Categories: All, Business, Business Model, Entrepreneurship, Millionaire Interviews

Hi I’m Jaime. Each and every week I bring you the top business advice from the people who know best.

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