Business Spot Light Interview: Ryan Schoel

Video Transcript

Good afternoon, welcome back. I love it. Ketbabe, my business group at Elevate Your Business Spot interview.

We have Ryan today. Ryan, welcome. And Ryan’s with, I believe, the Costume Shop.

Ryan, please introduce yourself. More importantly, tell us about the Costume Shop and what makes you guys unique and different. Wow, that’s a big one.

So, like you said, my name is Ryan or a.k.a. Ry, the Costume Shop guy. You might enjoy some photos that we have on Instagram and TikTok. You can see a lot about us there.

The Costume Shop, what makes us unique? Aside from the fact that we have the widest selection of for-sale costumes in Canada and the widest selection still available for rental on top of our for-sale costumes and then our thousands and thousands of accessories. But really what makes us different is our staff and our ability to create more and unique looks out of existing looks. So, like, you could take a packaged costume of a ninja and say, I want to be, you know, an 80s ninja or 90s.

And what does that really mean to you? Or what sort of twist do you want? You want to make it a rocker ninja so you have the good flowing hair, like Patrick Swayze or something? So, you just laugh. Just the vision makes you laugh. So, that’s one of the big things that makes us really different, which is our staff and the fact that we’re a year-round bricks-and-mortar business that also has our online.

So, we have three different businesses that are operating under one roof, under one name, under one big team, and that’s our bricks-and-mortar, The Costume Shop, the rentals at The Costume Shop, and then our for-sale at thecostumeshop.com. Amazing. How long have you been doing it? So, I bought the company in 2016. I took over August 1st, 2016.

I did that because I was selling costumes. I was a manufacturer’s agent. I moved out from Montreal to Canada about 26 years ago.

Did that land? I moved from Montreal to Canada 26 years ago. So, I moved here with a company out of Montreal, sent me out here to work, and I quickly realized I needed to be a manufacturer’s agent. So, I represented them as CanSew, which is the last manufacturer of sewing thread in Canada and pushing North America right now.

I worked with them for many years, and when I peaked, I kept them and added the largest Halloween costume manufacturer in the world at the time, which was Ruby’s Costume Company, based in Ruby’s, one headquarters on Ruby’s Ave in Long Island, who had, what was it, a 100,000-square-foot office in Markham, and I took over Western Canada, well, a hunk of Western Canada, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and that meant for a lot of driving, a lot of driving, and I opened up and grew that business, and then as my sons were getting older, I realized I was traveling way too much, and every year with all my customers, I would label the year, and in 2016, I labeled the year, the year of change, what are we going to do differently that didn’t work, you know, things that didn’t work in 2015, are we going to repeat them again and expect a different result in 2016, and the owner of the costume shop flipped it on me and said, what does different mean for you? I said, I don’t know, I’m open to anything, and the dialogue became, do you want to be a partner, maybe you want to take over, and my brain went, my son’s going to grade 10, and I need to be around more for him, I want to be around more for him, and made the deal, bought the store, and just in time to lose my life savings for the pandemic, so yay. Well, we’re still here, so congratulations. Thank you, I don’t know how, but I’m here.

So what was the toughest thing to learn going from employee to owner? Probably 89% of my clients kind of start and build their own business, 20% buy an existing business in transition, you’re probably one of the five or 10% that become an employee and own it, so there has to be assumptions, some assumptions you made in that transition that now in the ownership it’s like, oh shit, I thought, what were some of those top lessons that kind of like just got you in the ass that you weren’t expecting? Well, let’s clear one thing up. So I was an employee of a thread company, and then I bought the agency, and I built an agency, and then I basically bought the costume shop, so I wasn’t an employee, I was the vendor to the costume shop. So what changed in the brain set was when I was selling to all of my customers across Canada, which are now my competitors, which is kind of interesting, and most of them all remain good friends of mine, that just shows how I work.

I would approach the customer with not just, these are the things I think you need to buy, you need to buy, you need to buy, these are the reasons why I think you should add this to your store or this sort of tweak, and maybe it doesn’t come from me, you should get it from somebody else, but you need this in your business. And I would do that, I had books every year at the beginning of the year I would make for key counts, and the costume shop was one of them, as a matter of fact, I have all those key books behind me, and I’d say, here’s some pictures, these are suggestions I would make, and when I took over the store, it’s funny you mentioned that comment, my friend who owned the party stuff in Winnipeg reached out to me, congratulated me for now going onto his side of the desk because he had three stores in Winnipeg, and I bought this one, he goes, you know why you’re gonna succeed? And he said, because you’re gonna implement all those ideas you approached us with.

And I’ve been checking them off one by one, trying to do one of the things is networking with you, with others, and I look at business, even though it’s a retail store, where I hang my shingle outside, I don’t just sit and wait for the customer to come in, I’m engaging with the different groups, and I hire everybody around me to be smarter than me, at whatever it is they’re doing.

So the leader of my rental department builds costumes from fabric through, draws it on a piece of paper, and builds a costume. You gotta see it, they made me Barbie, they made me Barbie, they made me Ken from the Oscars with all the rhinestones and the whole nine yards, and I wore that to the last event. My online people know computers and the online much better than I do.

And all my real regular staff, regular staff, we’re all irregular, but all of our regular staff, they know much more about different things, from anime to makeup to wigs, they all bring something unique to the offer, to the customer. And I just spoke to a customer when I asked, how’s your experience so far? They’ve been shopping here for the last half hour or so. They said, amazing.

I mean, I’m getting all this information, building my look, I’m excited. And that’s really what we’re after. We want people to leave here understanding this is the beginning of fun.

I like to say fun starts at the costume shop. Great slogan. So in eight years you’ve had the shop, what is the biggest business lesson you have learned that you would like to go back and tell Ryan from eight years ago, make sure you learn this thing faster or sooner? Well, the sarcastic thing would say is don’t buy business before pandemic.

That’s probably the most bing, bing, bing light. And what other advice would I give myself?

Probably to find a way to take a beat before reacting. The pandemic, and I’ve had a huge big beef that’s going on with the CBSA, Canadian Border Service Agency, which is mind blowing to get down, go down that rabbit hole.

But what’s really interesting is, is that I’m an emotional guy. I’m excitable. I like to say, I like to kind of go with the flow, but realistically is I am excitable.

And I get, and if I really believe in something, I’m very passionate about it. I need, as a business owner, to be able to not just bite my tongue, take a beat, go for a walk, really sit back. I mean, I’ve learned a lot.

I have coaches. I’ve got life coach. I’ve got, I’m part of Tech Canada.

We’re a mentor group. I know what I need to do. And sometimes, you know, going and having a coach and going and having somebody else to talk to and say, hello, Ryan, you know what to do.

You need to do it. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Stop feeling whatever you’re feeling and do what you have to do.

And really being open to reacting. Like as a business owner, it’s really easy to cut yourself a million reasons for why you didn’t do something that you said you were gonna do. That’s gonna better the business.

You won’t, I, you know, if I told my kid I was gonna do something, I’m hella high water, I wouldn’t go against it. If I told my wife I’m gonna do something, I’m hella high water, I’m gonna do something. If I tell a customer I’m gonna do that. For some reason, when I tell myself I’m gonna do something, whether it’s lose weight or go to the gym or finish whatever it is for the business, I give myself more latitude. And I think finding the coaches and finding the people that hold me more accountable sounds childish, but, you know, every business owner I speak to seems to have the same thing. They’ll let themselves off the hook much faster when it’s related to them personally.

I love it. That’s a great insight. I think there’s a lot in there.

Like the most honest, integral people are some of my clients or business owners. The amount they go to work for others and our willingness, myself included at times, to make promises to myself. Like it’s uncanny.

Great insight. Thank you. When, I’m gonna ask this question.

If there was a pirate or a thief in your business, what would they be stealing from you? It’s funny you mentioned that. I actually had to re-put up our stanchions. When you walk in the door, I put up what we had put up for the pandemic.

We had to put an area up where you have to hand sanitizer, make sure you have the mask, all that stuff. Remember those terrible days? It’s like the more apocalypse time. Now we put that, we had to put it back up because where our business is situated, people would park at the front door and they would come in, grab a bunch of things, and I’ll tell you what they’d grab, and they’d run out.

And we couldn’t get to them fast enough. So we just put these fabric stanchions and a stanchion is something like you would use, if you go to the airport and they make you go through the maze and they keep over, that’s a stanchion. And so we just put one of those up.

It’s just a little rope. It’s amazing how they all, and we all follow it like good little sheep at the airport. The customers, it stopped the grab and goes like that.

I haven’t stopped theft, don’t get me wrong, but I did stop the grab and goes and they were the bigger things. And what would people steal? Literally everything. We had an exclusive with some leather jackets here that were $500 a jacket.

Those grew legs quickly. Some different collectibles, some different costumes. I think the saddest thing that we had on a grab and go was a dad who came in.

I’m gonna make the assumption they were going through a really hard time, a kid’s birthday, and they sent us one of my staff to go get stuff from the basement and they were still upstairs and they took everything they were looking at and left through the front door. Everything superhero. But that ends with an interesting twist.

Just before Christmas, that dad came back in the store with cash and said, I need to give you this. He was pretty embarrassed about what he did and I guess it stayed in his head because he came back and he gave us 300 bucks cash. He says, I’m hoping it covers that and more.

And I’m sorry I did what I did. But your question was, what do they steal? Everything and anything under the roof in the store. We do our very best to not let that happen.

Thank you for sharing that. I mean, we’ve been doing dozens of these interviews throughout the last couple months and there aren’t a lot of those heartfelt, genuine stories where there’s some integrity involved. So thank you for sharing that.

That’s pretty cool. You had called in your previous job, you were an account rep, for lack of a better word. You worked with business owners.

You went into business in 2016. In those eight years, 10 years, 20 years, has your definition of success changed? Yeah. As a matter of fact, my wife and I were busy talking about it last night.

What does success mean now? I mean, I had the dream of buying my own house when I was in my apartment when I first got married, right? So we’d get the house and then the cars and then raising your kids healthy and having a good life, taking kids on vacation and preparing them for life. And then selling whatever business I had or the assets and living off of that. To me, that was the success.

The pandemic hit. And just prior to the pandemic hit, I lost my kid brother at age, he was 42.
And my whole world kind of went like, first he went, my mom got sick, she’s thankfully better.

Then the pandemic hit, my wife got sick, she’s thankfully better. And so it really is, what is success? You know, I’m breathing, I’m relatively healthy. I have a business that I can still push forward as my friends keep reminding me, I still have an asset.

Although all my cash that I had saved for the first better part of 50 years is gone. I have an opportunity to earn it back. I’m healthy enough to do that.

Maybe that is success. I have two grown boys. I want them to be successful in their own right.

And I guess the proof will be in the pudding. The definition of success, I guess, is really one that’s really has, is still an evolving picture in my own mind because I really wanted to be getting ready to wind down in these next four or five years. I’m not sure I can.

So being able to still be healthy enough to work and contribute to society, partner with the people I care about, still give fun and provide, do fun things. Maybe I won’t do things that really make me miserable. That is great.

What is, on the marketing side, I would imagine a good chunk of your marketing comes from social media, online as a business to consumer type of thing. Can you share two or three nuggets that you’ve learned over the years that you’d like to give other entrepreneurs who are in the space of business to consumer to maybe accelerate their growth or their ability to succeed faster based on what you’ve learned, whatever those two or three lessons might be. This one lesson is actually probably the most important.

Recognize the fact that you don’t know everything. Every entrepreneur thinks they can run every aspect of the business. If you’re not the bookkeeper, unless you’re the actual bookkeeper accountant, hire that out.

When it comes to social media in particular, if people are getting into it, if you’re creating a social media business, you better be involved in social media and have a good presence because when I’m looking to hire somebody and they say, yeah, I’m great in social media, and I look that they have no following, their legs are cut off from underneath them. And then their answer is, whoa, that’s my this persona. But if you look under this persona, I guess really understanding that the market is really shifting quickly and surround yourself with people that know more than you.

And really, I’m a big advocate of peer mentoring groups and coaching. I’m a big advocate of those two aspects to help business growth. It doesn’t matter what stage you’re in.

More so, I would say at the beginning, because if somebody who’s good at their coaching job can help you, make sure you don’t miss those I’s and don’t miss crossing those T’s. Thank you for the plug. We appreciate it.

Yeah, I guess I would be one for you, right? A disclaimer, you’re not my coach, but it’s great to know you anyway. Well, no, it’s funny because I mean, I’ve been working with entrepreneurs for 20 for two decades now. And when I started my coaching practice in 2007, during that gong show of an economic cycle, which you probably missed.

But I think back to those cycles and I go, man, if I talked to 100 business owners, they’d never heard of the term business coaching. You know, now in today’s world, I mean, part of why I’m doing these interviews is we are talking to probably 30% of the people who’ve had a coach use a coach or in some sort of unstructured mentoring program. But I think more importantly, we’re into that space where people have heard the term, but they don’t truly understand what it means and where that value is.

And I think that’s part of this campaign for me is to help people understand what the value of coaching and what the benefit is. And I think there’s that big difference of taking that step between we hear the word, but now why? And I think, and so, yeah, thank you for that plug.

Now the most important question of the day, who is your ideal client and where do they find you? So there’s, there’s, I guess, two, three answers to that.

And why I say there’s two, three answers to that is there’s different age groups. We sell to everybody up and down the chain. An ideal client is somebody who wants to dress up every single day and into a different look and change your hair, look, even change your teeth color, even change your skin color every day.

That’s a perfect person that wants to come in and just, they don’t want to use their own clothes. They want to use ours. And if we want to go back to reality, we want to have people that want to have a good time, want to come in and understand that the real limitation is only their imagination.

We can help everybody who is interested with a big budget or a smaller budget and understanding that the ultimate goal is that they go to whatever they’re going to or participating in with confidence. And they get to have a really good time so they can have a good story. I got a good example of rentals where I would do this for B2B.

Let’s say you’re having a coaching group and you had three, four people in there and you want to think differently. I would say here a good group pitch would be, I’ll give you all a bunch of fedoras. Okay.

And you all put on the mafioso fedoras. And if your question is the coach of the group was you all have your problem, but this is how you’re going to solve it. Mafia style.

So everybody put on your mafia hat. And if you can enforce any decision on your business, what would it be? So you will buy because I tell you, you’re going to buy. So you can have fun with really anything, understanding that we can play and we sell fun.

You can make business fun. So business meetings, you can make charitable events, themed events. You can make the Christmas party for work.

We rent a lot of Santas. You have kids that are doing a play. You have a church that’s going to do a play.

We can help you. You want to have camp. You want to have Halloween at the lake.

We can help you. We just want to make people understand that there’s one very big difference between us and most of the online businesses. And one of the things and why I had to change one key thing in the store that was really a struggle, which is we made everything final sale.

And the reason for this is as follows. There are many images that either look exactly the same or so similar. It’s hard to tell that that’s not the same costume as the one we’re selling.

And people would buy from us and, Oh, wait, I could get a $20 cheaper from Amazon. And it may well be the exact same costume. And Amazon has a bit better buying power than I do.

Or there’s something slightly different, like it’s a Superman, but it doesn’t have the boot tops.

And then they would buy that and then they would come back with ours and return it because ours was $20 more. And then we’d say, this is not our costume because ours came with boot tops.

And it caused a lot of arguing with customers, which is what we didn’t want to do. Ours has a price. I try and be very competitive. And what I hear from most customers is that we are, but it’s an interesting world in which we live today. It is indeed. Awesome.

And where do they find you? We are a few places you can follow us and find us here at our store, 4307 Blackfoot Trail. You can call us at 403-571-2466. You can email us at WeCare at TheCostumeShop, S-H-O-P-P-E.com, or you can visit us on the web at TheCostumeShop.com.

And that’s two Ps in a name.

Awesome. Thanks, Ryan. Love the passion.

Keep up the great work and keep having fun. I appreciate it. And if you want to laugh, feel free to laugh at me.

I’ll tell you one last story at Expo. You asked about social media. You want to follow us? Follow us on TikTok and Instagram.

And for the very first time I was working at Expo just last week here in Calgary and two kids came up to my staff and said, is that the guy from TikTok? And my staff said, yes. They said, can we get his autograph? Do you think you’d give us an autograph? And I’m thinking, that’s what’s changing in this world. You post a few things and people want it.

I laughed my head off just like what you’re doing now. And it just really, really enforced that we’re just about fun. So you want to have some fun? Come down to The Costume Shop.

We can help you out. Thanks again, Ryan. Love it.

Keep it up. Thanks.