Your store exists for one reason: you had a Shopkeeper Dream.

Desire met vision and passion, and combined with time and place. The moment to say YES to the calling was now, not later or one day. Your store’s “Open” sign would be hung and nothing stood in your way.

The Shopkeeper Dream is a desire to share what you’re passionate about by creating a physical place where these passions can delight others. This shared physical place benefits your customers and community, and personally fulfills you creatively and professionally. The dream is built from scratch, or purchased from another dreamer and continued in your own light.

Excitement. Passion. Adrenaline. These and other high-energy feelings can fuel the launch of a Shopkeeper Dream. You jump into an existing Commercial + Community Ecosystem eager to make an impression and contribution with your eye-catching storefront. You give many s***s about the neighborhood you’re investing in by setting up shop. You care deeply about connecting people to the objects on display. Your vision creates an experience.

As a Shopkeeper you become an integral part of the community … a local personality of sorts. You’re recognized by your customers and community members when you’re out buying groceries or taking the kids to school. You might join local organizations if not support them through in-kind donations and sponsorships. You’ll develop a camaraderie with peers across retail, hospitality and services — it’s a club and you become a proud card carrying member.

We go all in with our businesses, hoping and praying that our vision, creation, and relentless labour gets seen and supported.

We want the business — The Dream — to work. We want it to make an impact. To add value. To offer delight. Most important, because it’s a business, we need it to make a profit so we can make a living doing what we love to do. But even with the best intentions, we can unknowingly sabotage our own dream.

I was fortunate to live my Shopkeeper Dream for five years after a lifetime of passing empty storefronts and imagining what I’d create within their four walls. I loved it, mostly, but I know now that I would have enjoyed living my Shopkeeper Dream more — and grown the business to its true potential — had I known myself better. I now see just how personal business can be and I’m determined to push conversations around entrepreneurship and personal development being two sides of the same coin. Getting personal is essential.

Owning and operating a retail store was not my ultimate calling, but it was my greatest lesson and catalyst for personal growth. I’m grateful for that brick and mortar chapter of my adventures in retail entrepreneurship — I got to open, operate, and evolve.

Every Shopkeeper’s journey is different yet similar, and I believe that all points across opening, operating, and evolving, must include Taking Personal Inventory. The Shopkeeper Dream, and journey, requires it.

Like a retail store's ever-changing inventory, we, too, are ever-changing. We require frequent and thorough check-ins to keep things in order and operating at a healthy and sustainable capacity. We must check in with ourselves, learn to tune into our energies, and be willing to dig through the darkest corner in our Personal Backroom to search for the circumstances, beliefs or habits that may be throwing us off.

It's easy to present a neatly organized store (or self) that looks like it has its s**t together. But the backroom, the stockroom, the storage room, whatever you call it ... that's where things get real and messy, and a closer look is required. This is the space inside of us where we pull up our sleeves, take a big breath, and go deeper.

Why do we need to go so deep? Because as a Shopkeeper, there will be slow days and moments when you will feel like you’re in a glass fish tank surrounded by the things you think are worth sharing. Just you in your fish tank, hoping that someone comes in and likes something enough to buy it so that you can pay rent. Just you in your fish tank, wearing your creative heart on your sleeve for all to see and critique by way of your taste, decor, and how the entire store looks at any given moment (big arrival and unboxing days make it that tough!). It can feel vulnerable. The more clarity you have about why you’re in this fish tank — why you started the store in the first place — the better and more enjoyable the swim will be.

This vulnerability makes it easy to focus outside of ourselves when starting out. I unknowingly focused on the externalities of my business idea and let my work resume full of prior retail experiences and skill sets take the lead. I used external data points and pragmatic operational checklists to fuel my vision. What I didn’t do as well, or perhaps at all because it’s not easy to do, is take a journey inward to determine how to best operate and enjoy my Shopkeeper Dream. I confused knowing my skill sets and present mindset with knowing my heartset, the part of me that intimately understands my fears and desires, my blocks and clear runways, my optimal conditions versus my kryptonite. Letting your heartset take the lead when launching, operating, and evolving the Shopkeeper Dream will yield vastly more positive results. For you, your business, and your community.

Whether you’re looking at your first location or considering your third, it’s key that you’re honest with yourself about your goals, hopes, fears, and what your life will be like considering your season of life. If you want to paint a picture, it’s best to know what you’re painting and the tools and materials that are available to you.

Too many how-to books and retail experts focus on utilitarian checklists while matters of the heart are cliff-noted or left out altogether. That’s why I wrote OPEN: Big Lessons In Small Retail And Living The Shopkeeper Dream. I want to help retail entrepreneurs paint a better picture, wherever they may be in the process. OPEN is the book that I wish I’d read before opening my dream store and reread while operating and closing it. The intention is less how-to build and more how-to be because being true to your truest self can be the hardest this to do.

I was given then Shopkeeper Dream for a reason, and so were you.

From the soul to the sales floor, honor and celebrate your Shopkeeper role because it’s bound to bring you experiences you could never anticipate. And isn’t that beautiful? To be drawn to something so intensely that you’re willing to take the chance to figure it out as you go? Living the Shopkeeper Dream is an act of vulnerability and empowerment. Insanity and clarity. A manifestation of the world you wish to see. And perhaps, subconsciously, the person you wish to become.

You hang your store’s Open sign to let people know you’re open for business, but it says so much more than “come on in” — it’s a reflection back to you: you’re OPEN for personal growth. Growth can be fun and it can be painful, and it’s certain that you’ll experience the full range of emotions across joy and struggle on any given day. Entrepreneurship can look like risk wrapped up in play and passion, so let each sign flip be a reminder of the life you’re living: A Shopkeeper lifestyle that was once a vision of your mind and pull of the heart. Give yourself a high-five for going for it, and grace for growing with it.

Stay OPEN,

AMM

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My book:

OPEN: Big Lessons in Small Retail and Living the Shopkeeper Dream

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