The $50M Hardware Queen: 13 Stores Built & Sold on Second Chances | Ep 058

➡️ In this powerful episode, we sit down with Gina Schaefer, the visionary founder who built and democratized a $50 million Ace Hardware empire. From her unconventional start in Washington DC's recovering neighborhoods to her groundbreaking decision to sell to her employees through an ESOP (Employee Stock Ownership Program), Gina shares how hiring individuals in recovery and returning citizens created an unstoppable business model. Her journey from corporate burnout to "Recovery Hardware" showcases how conscious capitalism can transform both bottom lines and lives.

➡️ Chapters
00:00 - 02:09 | Opening Reflections & Introduction
02:09 - 04:20 | The Birth of an Urban Hardware Empire
04:20 - 07:41 | Breaking Into Ace Hardware: "A Layoff and a Lie"
07:41 - 11:54 | The Recovery Hardware Story
11:54 - 15:36 | Partnership in Business and Life
15:36 - 20:39 | Building Trust & Second Chances
20:39 - 25:52 | Employee Ownership Revolution: Selling to the Team
25:52 - 30:40 | The Personal Cost of Leadership
30:40 - 35:38 | Stories of Transformation
35:38 - 40:19 | Legacy & Future Impact


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Stacey: https://www.instagram.com/staceymgrant/
Mark: https://www.instagram.com/mark_lubragge_onair/

➡️ More about the guest:  Gina Schaefer 
Website: https://ginaschaefer.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ginaschaeferdc/
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ginaschaefer-speaker/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/gina.schaefer.50
Book - Recovery Hardware: https://ginaschaefer.com/book

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#EmployeeOwned #RecoveryHardware #SecondChances #BusinessForGood #ESOP #RetailRevolution #CommunityImpact #WomenInBusiness #EntrepreneurshipWithPurpose #businessleadership 

Transcript

00:02 - Stacey (Host)
I am so inspired right now I don't know how you're not yeah. 

00:05 - Mark (Host)
How could you not be after listening to Gina Schaefer? 

00:08 - Stacey (Host)
She is sort of my alter ego, who actually was super successful. 

00:15 - Mark (Host)
I'm not saying that I'm not You're successful, but I see what you're saying. 

00:18 - Stacey (Host)
You do know what I mean. 

00:19 - Mark (Host)
It's something you can aspire to because of all the things. 

00:23 - Stacey (Host)
I feel like I just have so much in common with her. I just didn't take that next leap. I mean she's got. You know, she started off in box retail as an entrepreneur having one store, and now she has 13 stores, and now she's sold it to her people who work for her and I mean just like one story after the next, but she's inspiring. The most inspiring thing is who she hired. 

00:45 - Mark (Host)
Yeah, like one story after the next, but she's inspiring. The most inspiring thing is who she hired. Yeah, along the way she gave back to individuals who were in need of a job for a variety of reasons and, in turn, lifted up in the entire community. And she did it over and over, yeah and over again. It's uh, it's a really cool story. 

00:59 - Stacey (Host)
I'm really cool, lady. What do you think like is the major take home? 

01:04 - Mark (Host)
I think the major take home is you can be wildly successful at what you're trying to do and bring people with you that would otherwise have no opportunity. 

01:14 - Stacey (Host)
Because that's exactly what she did. Has hired people who were homeless until they started working with her, who were on house arrest. 

01:23 - Mark (Host)
Who were on house arrest. People who were addicted who were on house arrest or on house arrest. 

01:26 - Stacey (Host)
people who were addicted that were in recovery she trusted and she hired them and they taught her lessons and they fueled the growth. 

01:33 - Mark (Host)
To how many stores? 14? 13 13, 13 stores yeah they fueled that growth. Her business was built by her, her husband and the people she hired at the end of the day and the. She gave these people a chance and that's all they needed. And here we have a wildly successful entrepreneur who's now retired from that, now speaking and presenting her life lessons for everybody else. 

01:54 - Stacey (Host)
It was, it was a really gosh, I really liked her too, like I just want to hang out with her. She's just amazing. 

02:00 - Mark (Host)
Yeah, you're going to enjoy this one. 

02:02 - Stacey (Host)
Gina Schaefer. 

02:09 - Mark (Host)
Hi, I'm Stacey and I am mark, and this is the gurus of game changers podcast. Everybody, welcome to the show. So before I met today's guest, gina shaffer, she was described to me as I'm gonna quote a badass woman entrepreneur who has a bunch of ace hardware stores and has a great story. Well, since then I learned just how true that statement is. She broke new ground on a chain of new hardware stores when and where nobody thought it would work, and not only did she prove them wrong, she became wildly successful. But the heart of her story lies in what she did with those stores, uplifting individuals and uplifting entire communities in ways that are seldom even attempted, let alone successfully done. So this badass woman's story is indeed a good one, and we're thrilled to have her here. Gina, welcome to the show. 

02:57 - Gina Schaefer (Guest)
Thank you. That's the nicest intro I've ever had, so touched, told you he nails it. 

03:02 - Stacey (Host)
Yes, he nails it Okay. So I need to like show this there it is here's the book that gina wrote, recovery hardware, which I literally read cover to cover. I know I had to get it like quickly and read it, but this is like fantastic. 

03:18 - Gina Schaefer (Guest)
So I would love to hear from you why you wrote this book I specifically wrote it because in 2014, one of my teammates came to me and he said you know, the community started calling us recovery hardware. And I sobbed, I'm sure of it. One of the chapters is called there Are no Tears in Hardware. And we, I cry all the time in the hardware store. But he said we, you know, we hire a lot of people from the recovery community. There's an amazing recovery center attached to the Whitman Walker Health Services Clinic down the street, and so it was very serendipitous. But we started hiring people from that recovery clinic when we opened the first location, and Mark was one of those people, the gentleman who came and told me that we had gotten that new nickname, and so when he said the neighborhoods called us recovery hardware, I thought that is a really good name for a book. 

04:01 - Stacey (Host)
You tell the story about how you came home after leaving corporate America a few different times. 

04:07 - Gina Schaefer (Guest)
Yeah. 

04:08 - Stacey (Host)
And you told your husband I have an idea. I'm going to open up a hardware store. Why not? 

04:13 - Mark (Host)
Sure. 

04:13 - Stacey (Host)
And I, just I. How did you think of that? Like coming from where you're coming from? 

04:20 - Gina Schaefer (Guest)
Well, it wasn't a hard stretch because I was in a neighborhood that we got involved in the community association and everybody in the neighborhood wished we had a hardware store. So Logan Circle was an up and coming neighborhood in Washington. 

04:30
It had been destroyed by the riots when Martin Luther King was assassinated and so for decades what was once this beautiful, diverse neighborhood really fell apart and you know, I tell the story tried and paint the picture about the boarded up windows and the empty storefronts and the trash filled streets. And the community association was really strong, and so when I moved there as a young woman, I would go to these meetings and meet all the neighbors and everyone would say I wish we had a grocery store, a pharmacy and a hardware store, and it was almost always in that order. Well, fortunately, a Freshfields opened, so I didn't. I, I don't have to sell bananas and CVS open, I didn't have to sell toothpaste. Uh, and that left a hardware store and I really liked how practical it was. 

05:10
And everybody was fixing up their houses, everybody was taking boards off windows and painting their, their, painting their walls, and and so it. It really was an absolute necessity. 

05:21 - Mark (Host)
Were you, were you supported immediately by the community? 

05:24 - Gina Schaefer (Guest)
Absolute necessity. Were you supported immediately by the community? Yes, that community was so incredible, and so my glass is always three quarters full. If you haven't figured that out and I always joke that the day we opened there was a line around the block and the cash register like and I always do this like the cash register never stopped running, which is not true at all. 

05:40
But the people from that community association were wonderful. I mean they. Every time we opened in the morning there were people waiting because they were fixing up their houses. And I lived in that neighborhood for several years. Mark bought a condo there too, before we got married, and then we stayed in the neighborhood, married until it got to the point where I would joke that I had to walk to work a half an hour early because people would come out of their houses to ask me hardware questions. 

06:07
And so I couldn't get to the store on time, and so finally, I was like I need to move to a different neighborhood so that my walk is like a different walk and nobody knows the hardware lady, um, but I love the story too, like how, how you actually got into this hardware, the ace hardware system, yeah, which is always also cool. 

06:19 - Stacey (Host)
It was almost by accident, not accident but how would you describe, like how that actually happened? 

06:26 - Gina Schaefer (Guest)
Cause yeah, well, I I always say that my story started with a layoff and a lie. So I was laid off from the tech job it was my third layoff in four years and then the the new business development guy. So Ace Harder was a cooperative and amazing. They've been an amazing partner, although we had a rocky start. The new business director told me to sign my lease before I was approved to be part of the co-op and I think he knew they weren't going to approve me. They didn't like Logan Circle. You know the demographics in Logan Circle weren't good because nobody lived there and there was no good census data to say that there were people making a good living who were living in this neighborhood with fancy houses. 

07:04 - Stacey (Host)
So Ace Hardware probably would not have opened a hardware store there, no, and so that guy lied to me. 

07:09 - Gina Schaefer (Guest)
He told me to sign a lease and I signed a lease. How? 

07:11 - Stacey (Host)
does that help him? 

07:11 - Gina Schaefer (Guest)
They're legally binding agreements. I don't know. I think I've never seen him, since I don't remember what he looks like and I owe so much of my story to him. 

07:18 - Mark (Host)
Yeah. 

07:25 - Gina Schaefer (Guest)
Sometimes, when I'm giving speech, I wish that somebody in the back of the room would be like that's me, hey, come on out. Yeah, come see us. But I think the new business development guys were probably getting commissions at the time, okay, and I think he assumed that if I signed a lease they would automatically let me join, which is what happened, but not until after they fired him. 

07:41 - Mark (Host)
So they fired him. 

07:42 - Gina Schaefer (Guest)
Yeah, he lost his job, which is why I don't remember what he looks like I never saw him again. 

07:45 - Mark (Host)
What happened, Well? 

07:46 - Gina Schaefer (Guest)
they said you've signed a legally binding agreement. And I went to my first trade show and there are a couple of retired executives who are so awesome and huge fans of mine now mutual. But one of them I showed up at this trade show and he said well, said, we'll figure out how to pick up the pieces when you fail in six months. 

08:04 - Stacey (Host)
That's what he said. 

08:05 - Mark (Host)
And I was like okay, that's a heck of a challenge, we're on. Oh yeah, we're on. You say that to the wrong person, you're guaranteeing their success. 

08:13 - Gina Schaefer (Guest)
I gave a speech to a group of female auto mechanics a couple of years ago and you want to talk about badasses? 3% of the auto mechanics in the United States are female. And I decided you know how everyone names their cars. I decided I was going to finally name the chip on my shoulder and I made that part of the presentation and fortunately it landed well, because I don't I shouldn't admit that I had a chip on my shoulder for so long, but, man, I did. But, that probably helped you. 

08:37 - Mark (Host)
Yeah, what was her name. 

08:39 - Gina Schaefer (Guest)
June. I named her June, I don't know why I wasn't giving the speech in June, but and I've never talked about her since in that way. But I thought I'm speaking to a bunch of people who work on cars. My cars have always had a name, so June is alive and kicking. 

08:52 - Mark (Host)
Is she still there? She's gone, she's gone. I think she's gone Really. 

08:56 - Gina Schaefer (Guest)
Yeah, or maybe she's a friend now, more than a chip your book. 

08:58 - Stacey (Host)
What I love is each kind of chapter is sort of a love story for a different employee who came in, and what you always talk about is what they taught you. 

09:08 - Gina Schaefer (Guest)
Yeah. 

09:08 - Stacey (Host)
And I really, really love that. But you also hired people that maybe other people potentially might not want to hire and you just had this trust. You know, like, can you tell us the story? I mean, I know Shane's probably the one you tell the most, yeah, because he kind of started it all off. 

09:23 - Gina Schaefer (Guest)
I celebrated 21 years clean on Saturday Like talk about my heart. 

09:26
Yeah, so Shane and I have a great story. So the Whitman Walker Addiction Services Clinic was down the street. It was one of the only businesses that was in Logan Circle after the riots and we didn't have a huge population of people coming in and applying for a job. My very first employee, who I think I wrote about I know I wrote about in the book was Tommy. Tommy was in prison for 17 years and talk about teaching me how to take care of customers. I mean, Tommy worked on the second floor in the nuts and bolts department and we could hear him talking upstairs to a customer and that customer would come down with a bag of like screws and it'd be worth 20 cents, and they would have been upstairs half an hour talking to Tommy. 

10:02
Don't think Tommy could read, but man, he could talk your ear off and love you in five minutes. 

10:08 - Stacey (Host)
Wow. 

10:08 - Gina Schaefer (Guest)
And then Shane came in from the clinic. But he walked in and he said I'm six weeks clean from a crystal meth addiction. Will you hire me? And I actually did not need any employees at the time and so I said no, it had nothing to do with the fact that he said that he was six weeks clean, and we laugh about this to this day. He just kept coming back and one day I said if you can help us unload a truck and still smile by the end of it because it was a pain in the butt to unload those trucks we'll give you a job. And he was great. 

10:41
My husband nicknamed him Lift because Shane's not a very large man and he just like, went to work on jet fuel. We called it not a very large man and he just like, went to work on jet fuel. We called it. And you know, when you're in recovery, and particularly early in recovery, you want to be busy, and when you have boxes to unload and things to move and shelves to stock, you're busy. It's really good, healthy, busy work. And so Shane just kept coming in every week and one day we didn't finish putting away the truck and we needed to do it. The next day. We tried to do it the same day because that store was so small it would make a mess. So we came back the next day and I walked in I said what are you doing? He goes. Well. I didn't finish yesterday. I'm like, oh my gosh, give me your social security number. And then I started paying him that day. 

11:15 - Mark (Host)
How many people did you hire from the clinic? 

11:17 - Gina Schaefer (Guest)
I have no idea. 

11:18 - Mark (Host)
You know, we've never. 

11:19 - Gina Schaefer (Guest)
Yeah, we've never kept track. We have had lots of jokes. Oh, you could have an AA meeting in the plumbing aisle. 

11:25 - Stacey (Host)
Or, oh, you know, the NA meeting is in the paint department today, but yeah, no idea, but the other? Hero in your story is your husband. 

11:32 - Mark (Host)
Yeah, he is. 

11:32 - Gina Schaefer (Guest)
Right and. 

11:41 - Stacey (Host)
I say this because you know we're very different and it works well and I can't imagine not not working with him. I don't think I'd ever see him if I didn't. So tell me about Mark and how that works, cause I know he wasn't like Eric, he wasn't working with you right from the get go, but he supported it. 

11:54 - Gina Schaefer (Guest)
He, um, he was super supportive and I was. I think I was open for about three months and he came home one day and he said you're having way too much fun, can I join you? And I was like, yes, he is very financially savvy and once we got past the fact that we had to be the cashier and the stocker and the customer service helper, the paint maker, he could move more into a finance role. But I love the fact that you picked up on that because, honestly, when I was writing the book I didn't really think about it and somebody one of my very first beautiful reviews said that this was a love letter to Gina's husband. 

12:27
And I thought that was so sweet, and I think he really did too. 

12:30 - Mark (Host)
I love it. I can't identify with that, but I did work with my wife prior to marrying her, but not in a business Like it's a different animal. It is your business together, it is your her. 

12:40 - Gina Schaefer (Guest)
but not in a business, Like it's a different animal. It is your business together. It is your. It was your business together. He was also working in technology. So, yeah, he, he, he. He resigned from the tech company that he was working for. He started out as a programmer and then did project management kind of stuff. 

12:51 - Mark (Host)
So it is liberating, though, when you leave corporate America and go to retail and it's your, or you leave wherever and you start your own thing, Like we've all started our own thing. It's a whole different animal. It's a. I always say it's a grind, but it's our grind. 

13:04 - Gina Schaefer (Guest)
There's no boredom, because nothing is ever the same right. I mean, today I have to figure out HR and tomorrow I'm writing a handbook and the next day. I'm figuring out how to market and you know, when people say how do you compete in a male dominated world, I jokingly say, aren't they all? And then I say it doesn't matter what the industry is, if you can handle people and the numbers and the products that you're selling, you can just take that to any kind of business. 

13:29 - Stacey (Host)
And I think another part of it is just this like optimism that we all have. I know we all we all have it Like, and it's almost like you have to just not think about the negative things that could potentially come up. And I and I, in reading the book, I felt that optimism from you constantly throughout the book. But I'm wondering too like, was there ever a time when someone came in, you know, in recovery, and you were nervous and you, like, you wanted to hire them but you weren't sure? 

13:55 - Gina Schaefer (Guest)
I always assumed that. So Mark had said to me one day you can't judge everyone by the best or worst thing they ever did, which I thought that was a super powerful statement. And you know, we were very well, not very young. We were around 30 at the time. That's young, yeah, I call us really young and I realize. 

14:13
I should give us a little more credit, but that's true and so there was just so much that I had to learn, which is why, you know, the book is really these moments of empathy all along the way where I was like, oh, I can't unsee that now, I can't unknow that now, and that was super helpful and I think that I trusted everybody as much as I trusted everybody. 

14:34 - Stacey (Host)
Like I didn't distrust. 

14:35 - Gina Schaefer (Guest)
you because you were in recovery versus somebody else, you because you were in recovery versus somebody else. I'm sure I tell the story in the book, but the first person that stole from us was not in recovery and had a college education and had parents that owned a business. Anybody is capable of doing something, but you just kind of intrinsic was it your parents? 

14:52 - Stacey (Host)
How come you just trusted like that? 

14:54 - Gina Schaefer (Guest)
I don't know I had a guy once who I love. I did do his radio show Everything Co-op, and Vernon said you lead by chirocracy and I'd never heard that word before and I was like I don't like me, yeah, yeah. 

15:05
I mean, you innately know what that means, right? I think I've probably just always been this way, and Mark is in this way too, he is. He is. He is. He's a little more discerning than I am, and I. That sounds like a negative for me, but but yeah, I think one of the things that made it work is that he has a lot of the same values in that trust bucket. 

15:29 - Stacey (Host)
So how did you choose these stores? Was there something in your brain? The store locations or the communities, or like what Well? 

15:36 - Gina Schaefer (Guest)
in the very beginning, people, when we opened Logan Hardware, people came in from all over the city to ask us to open in their neighborhood which is really terrifying, and exciting. 

15:44
So we were open. We opened in 2003. And then around 2004, early 2004, I was working at the cash register and a guy named Paul London came in. He said I own a building two miles away. Would you look at it for a hardware store? And I think at that point we obviously were comfortable enough to go look, because people had been asking us prior to that. So when we opened in 2003, the Washington Post ran an article that said something like there were 50, I think, hardware stores in Washington DC in 1975. Probably all very small, but this was before Hechinger Hardware. This was before any of the big box competition, and when we opened in 2003, I think, there were six of us. So there were very few hardware stores in the district and so getting what you needed was really hard. There's lots of traffic you don't want to get in your car to go to the suburbs. 

16:32
Big cities are divided into neighborhoods that act like small towns, so even to go like a mile away to get to the next closest hardware store was a pain in the butt. We didn't want to do it, so we went, we opened that store, and then we opened one a year for the next 10 years, and we did it based on where people were asking us to go. So we started looking there. We wanted to be in the district. We didn't think we were going to go outside yet, which we eventually did and we wanted to go to neighborhoods that had a really strong identity. You know, logan Circle didn't have any businesses, but there was this. Well, for example, we voted five to one against letting a Starbucks open in 2002 because we wanted everything to be really, really local and homegrown, and so we wanted to open in neighborhoods that had that kind of feel. 

17:15 - Stacey (Host)
Can you tell a story about the dog, the hardware? 

17:19 - Gina Schaefer (Guest)
dog. I love the story. Mark calls it my one bad mistake, which is really great my one, my one bad decision. 

17:27 - Stacey (Host)
I don't think it was, though at the. 

17:28 - Gina Schaefer (Guest)
You know when you hear the end of the story so I decided that every well, I mean I think every good hardware store has a good hardware store dog. Uh, and so I got a wild hair one night and I decide I can't even tell the story without being embarrassed. 

17:41 - Stacey (Host)
I decided it needed to be a great dane which is also fine. 

17:45 - Gina Schaefer (Guest)
But you know, I described my store and it was this big and we adopted jay from the great dane rescue league and he weighed 175 pounds. He had never been. You know, when you get a dog that big, you train them from birth to just be caught. Well, they are calm dogs. But he couldn't be at the store because he scared the customers, because he would jump, he would jump on them. 

18:05
Oh, he was like as tall as wow he would put his paws right here and he would look at you. His face was as big as oh my god, I love that dog so much we couldn't let him come to the store anymore. And then he had a lot of separation anxiety, as danes do, and so he would how? And I had a neighbor who was a real estate agent In your house. 

18:20
Yes, and the neighbor would call me, cursing at me, to come get the dog. And so Tommy, who I talked about earlier, had a lot of wanderlust. I think it's because he had been locked up for so many years and he would walk for hours every day and he loved dogs, and so I gave him a key to my house and he would come over at five in the morning and he would take Jay and he would walk him until the store opened and then he would come back after his shift to the house and take Jay for like three or four more hours. And finally he said when are you going to give me my dog? Yeah, that had to be sad, but also happy. 

18:51
Yes, it was very bittersweet, but it also meant that Jay Tommy lived with his elderly mother, who adored him, and so she had company all day. She would sit on her sofa with curlers in her hair and a warm beer this is always how I remember Mrs Carter and Jay would sit on the sofa next to her and they would watch TV, and so she had a companion. It's great he had a companion. Now we have cats. Yeah, I love the story of Jay. I love that. 

19:15 - Mark (Host)
So what? Let me ask you the question. So I'm like big on moments and you and we talked about the moment you decided to open and we definitely want to talk about the moment you decided you're going to sell to your employees. That's a huge moment and it's sort of what I was alluding to in the beginning. But that moment of reinvention, was it just out of necessity, was it just like I need, or is it just like I'm not fulfilled? I need to be something else yeah from software to hardware to use. 

19:43
I think, or just software to anything software to anything. 

19:47 - Gina Schaefer (Guest)
So I I had been laid off several times. I wasn't cut out for the corporate world. I mean I really wasn't, I didn't, I didn't, I didn't like wearing pantyhose. I mean that was still a thing I'm trying to think of, like I. Just I was not. I remember getting my hair dyed one day I had. I went through this phase where I wanted to have red hair, but not like shocking red, just like Auburn, and I showed up and my boss, who's about my age, said you need to go back to the hairdressers. And I was working at MCI. It was a telephone company, so my heart was really in community-based nonprofit work, development. That's really where I cut my chops at asking for money, becoming a fundraiser, which served me really well. Later on, I like to think that I would have gotten to business ownership anyway somehow at some point, but I don't know if it would have been a hardware business or as successful or as fulfilling. 

20:39 - Mark (Host)
Hey guys, thanks for listening. If you like what you're hearing, please leave us a review, give us a follow, subscribe, all those things. We love it because we read each and every comment and it helps shape the show, so we would appreciate it. 

20:52 - Stacey (Host)
Please. And back to the show. I was also going to ask about being a woman in a male dominated industry. I feel like selling the business is sort of like the end of the story almost. 

21:01 - Gina Schaefer (Guest)
Let me combine the two, maybe in an interesting way. 

21:03
I mean, right now we're at a point in our country's history where the baby boomers the youngest one will be 65 by 2030, which is really just the start of everybody legitimately retiring right. 

21:20
Retiring right Point is is all of these businesses across the country hundreds of thousands of them literally that employ millions of people are potentially going to be lost if they don't somehow transition or succeed to something next? There is a lot of research that's been done about family-owned businesses in particular stopping because there's not a daughter, that there's only a daughter and the daughter doesn't want to take over, or it's not passed down through the um, the female generations of the family. And then there's also just it's not been a lot of, it's not been talked about a lot throughout um, women entrepreneurial programs, women business ownership programs, how and why we succeed, or how we plan for our exit strategies, how we plan to succeed in our businesses have a succession exit. One of the things that I really hope to do, now that we have created a strong exit strategy, is to be able to talk about it, particularly to other women business owners, because I don't think it's talked about a lot. 

22:16 - Stacey (Host)
So this is your exit strategy to sell the business to your employees, correct? And then are you going to completely step out of the business at some point? 

22:22 - Gina Schaefer (Guest)
Yeah, so right now we've sold 30%. So we chose. The reason that I think the program, that we chose, the process is so important, is that I mean, we evaluated lots of things selling to a private equity company, selling to another private buyer, selling it to one of our managers Ace has first right of refusal because of some loans that we took out with Ace, and so, you know, would Ace want to buy the business from us? And we ultimately decided to sell it to our employees because in 2020, when the protests happened across the United States, those protests took the same path as the riots had when Martin Luther King was assassinated, which was right in front of my office, and so I wasn't alive when Dr King was assassinated, but I lived in a neighborhood where I saw the remnants of what had happened and I saw that come back. 

23:15
And then all of a sudden, you know, during COVID, businesses were being boarded up again and my neighbors were closing and all of these protests started and it wasn't hard to imagine like, oh my gosh, what if we go back there? And so my friends one of my friends in the office used to joke because I would hang out the windows when these protests were happening with like cowbells and signs and just like in solidarity, basically, and everybody wanted the same sorts of things that I think we were trying to build. We wanted generational equity and racial equality and gender equality, and we were always, you know, I started fighting for higher minimum wages in 2011. And so Mark said to me one day let's go out into the street with the protesters. He said, let's walk around the store and invite all of our customers and team to go march. We both cried that day damn tears again, because we had a lot of young people of color on our team and it meant a lot for them to work for a company that had those kinds of feelings, and it meant a lot for me to be included Like solution to what the protesters wanted and what we really, in our hearts, believed small businesses can do. 

24:36
You know, I do this piece in my speech about saying I'm just a small business, I just sell hardware Like I'm using, just like a curse word, and in that moment we knew that we're not just a small business, like we could actually make an impact. And so the cool thing about an employee stock ownership program is the employees don't put any money in, so it didn't matter. So you can walk into my store now and a cashier who's been there for a year can tell you that she is an owner or he is an owner, and that's a huge source of pride and there are tremendous benefits for the company. There's tax benefits for the company, there's tax benefits for the seller, there's tax benefits for the business, and I'm not giving it away. Mark and I got paid a very healthy dollar amount for our business. It's not like oh, gina and the generosity of her heart is giving her business to her team Absolutely not, and so it's really a win-win for everybody. How long ago was that? It was a year in July. 

25:30
And how do you feel about it now? I'm really glad, yeah, To be free, To be free. I was ready. I mean, I was ready a couple of years prior for a lot of reasons, and so I think you know you start a business and generationally or hardware stores are generational businesses, multi-generational, and most people they don't leave, and so a lot of my peers thought I was crazy. Like what do you mean? 

25:52 - Stacey (Host)
you're retiring? 

25:52 - Gina Schaefer (Guest)
What do you mean? You're only doing this for 20 years. I'm like I've given it 20 years. Isn't that enough? Yes, there's just so many things that I'm interested in and want to do that I felt like. I also felt like the company deserved a CEO who still had big growth aspirations. And it's not that I didn't, but my heart wasn't in it. 

26:10 - Stacey (Host)
I was just going to say it's kind of exhausting. It was exhausting. 

26:14 - Gina Schaefer (Guest)
The day that I quit. Honestly, this is how I described it I feel like I lost a low-grade fever and I never knew I had that fever until I didn't have that fever. 

26:23 - Mark (Host)
You know what I mean, but you know I talk about it. You live with it. 

26:26 - Gina Schaefer (Guest)
I talk about it like everything was always great and my life was perfect and no one ever made me mad. And that's not the case. That's not true, and so I realized that I probably internalized a lot of it. I wanted to make sure that the people on my team, particularly those who were coming from a rough background, knew that they had a safe, supportive place to work, and that meant that I was always going to be safe and supportive. 

26:49 - Mark (Host)
Always, always. 

26:50 - Gina Schaefer (Guest)
Always, I do have this terrible habit of bursting out curse words from my office and there was a new associate with a manager one day and I must have just let out a string of profanity and Tim was the manager at the time and he looked at her and he goes she's not talking to us, don't worry about it. 

27:09 - Mark (Host)
That's funny. Sounds like not talking to us. Don't worry about it. That's funny. Sounds like me earlier today, earlier today. Um, that's really fascinating though the notion of it's a low-grade fever, because it is, there's something that's always there despite the outward. Yes, we're doing great, things are great, the business is great, and that's not a lie but it's like it's great because of this low-grade fever that I'm always worried about that. 

27:30 - Stacey (Host)
Do you think there was one great lesson that you learned that you could tell people who are trying to get into business at this point? 

27:38 - Gina Schaefer (Guest)
Well, Stacey, I mean, I didn't know anything. 

27:40 - Stacey (Host)
I know me neither. I still don't. 

27:43 - Gina Schaefer (Guest)
So I don't know, I think. No, I don't think I could pinpoint one, although I will say that we can do hard things. People have the capability of doing hard things and sometimes that sucks and it's gonna make us uncomfortable or you're gonna cry, but we can do it, and so I think that was probably the biggest lesson for me. It's like I can get through this, do you? 

28:04 - Stacey (Host)
kind of feel like at this point you can do anything. 

28:08 - Mark (Host)
Yeah, maybe, yeah. So that's that positive spin right there you can do anything. 

28:10 - Stacey (Host)
Yeah, maybe, yeah, so that's that positive spin right there. 

28:12 - Mark (Host)
Yeah, exactly, you still have a low grade fever. 

28:15 - Gina Schaefer (Guest)
It's still there, darn it, it's still there. I have some aspirin in my bag. It's not contagious. 

28:19 - Mark (Host)
I'm going to go back to my hardware store days, Because I used to say and I think you can identify with this more than most people- the one thing I always used to say at the hardware store is nobody cares like the owner. Yeah, I said that over and over and over again because I own two stores. 

28:34 - Gina Schaefer (Guest)
We talked about this right Yep and nobody. 

28:35 - Mark (Host)
Even when I was an employee, I didn't care like I was. 

28:38 - Gina Schaefer (Guest)
It's a different care, yep. 

28:40 - Mark (Host)
So now your employees are now owners. They're a level of commitment, the fact that a cashier can just say I am an owner. 

28:47 - Gina Schaefer (Guest)
And when she wakes up in the morning it looks in the mirror that changes everything. 

28:50 - Mark (Host)
For how? 

28:51 - Gina Schaefer (Guest)
she approaches her work, yep I love that idea. 

28:54 - Stacey (Host)
I love it, thank you. 

28:59 - Mark (Host)
It's fantastic You've empowered so many people to feel, to have a level of pride that they never would achieve without you. 

29:02 - Gina Schaefer (Guest)
Thank you, there's a lot there. 

29:03 - Stacey (Host)
Thanks. That has to feel pretty good. And one of my questions was you know you, you probably always had this social impact quality about you. How did you see that change Like through the years? Is it still the same? Is it different now? Are you going to do something different in order to impact? I don't know the world. 

29:20 - Gina Schaefer (Guest)
I don't think. I don't think that it. Well, I think the change was that it got stronger. You know my, my, my voice in the some of the advocacy work that I've done got stronger over the years. I might have wanted to do it when I was 25, but I had the opportunity and knew how to do it when I was 35. And so that got stronger. The ability to raise money through the stores and through our community outreach and have more outreach partners was enormous. And then I will not. None of the folks that we hired was a charity hire that's not what I mean at all, but we had the ability to impact a lot of lives that might not have had that positive. Well, I mean, you know, skippy was on house arrest when we hired him and people don't think about this, but if someone is waiting on a court date and they're on house arrest or they've just come home from prison, the recidivism rate is like 70%. 

30:07 - Mark (Host)
It's so high. 

30:12 - Gina Schaefer (Guest)
And I would go back to jail too if I couldn't pay my rent because I wouldn't want to sleep on the street. And so you know we've created this cyclical problem in the United States by not allowing I mean, it was, it was it's still legal in, I think 12 states have not banned the box, and so it's still legal to not hire somebody if they're a felon or to ask them. You know, you're allowed to ask them if they're a felon, which automatically puts most people in the trash. Can their resume? I don't know if it was. 

30:36 - Stacey (Host)
Skippy or another one of your employees who you actually kept out of jail. 

30:40 - Gina Schaefer (Guest)
He had a mandatory 11-year sentence. So I mean there was some sort of privilege going on here. But my husband, mark, spoke to the judge and said this man has waited two years for this court date and in two years he has brought millions of dollars in revenue to my business. He's managed 35 to 40 employees. I trust him with my life. My wife will have a nervous breakdown if you put him in jail, and we don't think that it's. And he had at that point been clean and sober for two years. So he was a very healthy man. And the judge said, ok, but it was supposed to be an 11-year sentence. 

31:18 - Stacey (Host)
I thought that was a fantastic story, too, that you guys both stood up for him. But I think what's amazing, you heading into the speaking career which I'd love for you to talk about too is how you can speak to diversity and how important it is for a company to be diverse. 

31:33 - Gina Schaefer (Guest)
Well, lots of studies have been done that prove that boards and companies with a diverse management team leadership team outperform those that don't. So the statistics are in our favor, but just also a diversity of thought, I mean. When I think about the team, I tell the story of Mike, who's on my team, who was homeless right prior to me hiring him. He brought a very interesting perspective to our team and he also he was much older when we hired him and his interactions with the younger guys on the team made a big difference in some of their lives because he had been there, done that and wanted to teach them how to not go there and do that, and they listened to him like a grandpa. And so, and Marcus and oh. 

32:17
Marcus, I'm telling you I love this book. Marcus, I love the fact that you so Marcus is awesome. You read about the bearded dragon, so Marcus has, gabe is still alive and kicking, this darn bearded dragon. 

32:27 - Stacey (Host)
We had one too. We're literally the same person, I'm just not as successful. 

32:33 - Gina Schaefer (Guest)
That is not true, marcus. I did an intervention and it was during COVID, so it was the only intervention I've ever done, and it was on Zoom, and I did not know what to expect and somebody that Marcus and I both knew, who was also in recovery, said will you please participate? We need to get Marcus into recovery. But Marcus wasn't always Marcus. No, marcus was Mary. Yeah, so when, I hired Marcus. 

32:55
Marcus was Mary and she worked. She was you know, I love the visual. Marcus is African-American and Mary at the time had green dreadlocks and we always thought that was so fun because she started working. You know, she'd grown up in foster care and had a really rough life, but she started working in our plant department and just turned into this absolute plant fanatic. I mean fanatic. No one would have ever expected it from this. You know, young African-American woman with dreadlocks I'm being very stereotypical, but she would agree with me and then she got fired. She was like coming to work late all the time and probably had already started drinking by that point. And she loved her job so much that she called every week and asked for it back. And finally the HR director said I am so tired of you calling me Report to duty on Monday at 7 o'clock. And she worked with us again. And then she hadn't quite started to transition yet, but eventually she realized that she was born to be a man and also needed to go to rehab. 

33:58
But, she tried to use the bearded dragon as an excuse, and so she said I can't go to rehab because I don't want to lose my job. And I said, marcus, I'm your boss, I'll keep your job for you. And then he said I can't go to rehab because I have bills to pay. Marcus, I'll pay your bills for you. And then he said I can't go to rehab because what am I going to do with Gabe? And I was like duh. 

34:23 - Mark (Host)
I was like all right. 

34:26 - Gina Schaefer (Guest)
Of all three of the things, that was the hardest one for me to admit to, and I thought to myself my husband's going to love this dragon. He's going to take care of this dragon. 

34:32 - Mark (Host)
That's great. You knew it had a home. 

34:36 - Gina Schaefer (Guest)
Oh my gosh. Yeah, so we were fortunate there was a local recovery program in Maryland that gave him a 30-day scholarship. And I mean, recovery is very, very expensive. I think it was 30 grand. Yeah, I think it was 30 grand a month. And fortunately they called. I guess he told them to call me, because it's not like I'm a parent, but they said we would like him to stay for another 60 days and we'll pay for it. Are you OK with that? Well, hell yeah, I'm OK with that. And so he stayed for another 60 days. 

35:08 - Mark (Host)
And did he stay clean? 

35:11 - Gina Schaefer (Guest)
He, you know it's a process it's a process. So he's had some relapses, but in fact one recently and he called me and he basically told on himself and went back to an AA meeting the next day. So you know, that's to me a sign when it's really working, because it's so likely that you're going to have a relapse, but it's how quick you get back up from it. I remember when Skippy started working with us, his drug of choice was crystal meth and there's something like a 3% recovery rate. 

35:38 - Stacey (Host)
I mean the odds are so stacked against you. That, yeah, but this is what I mean about being able to speak to diversity, and how much diversity has actually, like, enhanced? Yeah, every single one of your stores, well, yes, yes, I mean, and you know, and it well. 

35:57 - Gina Schaefer (Guest)
first of all, addiction touches everybody, regardless of your where you're from or your ethnicity. I mean, it's just six. Something like 60% of us have some tentacle in in recovery somewhere. In fact, you know I always tell a story from the book when I'm on stage in recovery somewhere. In fact, you know I always tell a story from the book when I'm on stage. 

36:16
Without fail, the very first person to come talk to me when I get off the stage is always somebody in recovery or someone who has been in prison, even if that's not the topic of my speech, but I like to tell Skippy's story because I did this once in a. Really I thought it was an interesting way. I told it to a group of women, many of whom were coming back into the workforce, and Skippy was good with people. Moms put up with cranky kids all day long, and so you learn how to deal with difficult people. Skippy was really good with money. Moms deal with budgets. Skippy was really good at working 24 hours a day because that's when his clients wanted him to be available when he was a drug dealer. Moms deal with kids, especially crying babies, 24 hours a day, and if I tell the story from a drug dealer's perspective, people say oh, you're nuts. 

36:58 - Stacey (Host)
Why would? 

36:58 - Gina Schaefer (Guest)
you hire him or her. But if I talked about those skill sets as they relate to a mom coming back into the workforce, they're like oh, isn't it? 

37:08
I mean just that reframe is incredible. Mike got a pair of shoes and started running and became an employee at my company because he was curious about a meeting someone sent him to. And when he said that to me, I was curious and I thought when am I curious or am I not curious enough? And how am I learning this lesson from a guy who's lived on a park bench for eight years? Wow, I can't make it up. I mean, this is why I cry all the time in the flipping hardware store. 

37:39 - Mark (Host)
You strike me as somebody who has like guiding principles that you go by Values, yeah. Yeah just certain things that you lean into. Maybe what would be some of those? 

37:48 - Gina Schaefer (Guest)
Just be nice. I mean, it's actually one of our company core values. I didn't say, let's make it be nice, but I mean I think genuinely people just people want to be treated fairly, they want to be respected, and I want people to be nice to me, so why wouldn't I be nice back? 

38:04 - Stacey (Host)
So what is next for you, Gina Schaefer? 

38:07 - Mark (Host)
I know you're speaking lots of stage, I know you have a gorgeous website that will send everybody to. 

38:13 - Gina Schaefer (Guest)
I have had so much fun this year. Well, first of all, I took a public speaking class that I really loved that was heard. 

38:18 - Stacey (Host)
So much about this class. 

38:19 - Gina Schaefer (Guest)
Yeah, just life changing, truly the group of people that I met, the skills that I learned, the skills that I still have to practice, so that was really fantastic. And then I started working with I call her my branding guru just this woman who's really, really on top of her game when it comes to branding. 

38:37 - Stacey (Host)
She's doing a good job. 

38:37 - Gina Schaefer (Guest)
Yeah, and she came out of the construction world. Her dad owned a lumber yard when she was growing up, so she worked in the lumber industry and then worked for Boise Cascade and so she, I think, was the perfect person for me to choose to work with, just because we speak a lot of the same language. So that's been really fun. And that engagement is going to end. We're going to put it on pause for the next couple months and just see like what I managed to do on my own without her goading me and helping me, just to see what that looks like, and then work on building some speaking engagements for next year. 

39:09 - Stacey (Host)
So how can people reach you and what kind of speaking engagements do you want? 

39:13 - Gina Schaefer (Guest)
Well, so I speak to women in non-traditional fields, non-traditional female fields or just female entrepreneurs in general. I would like to do more speaking in the succession planning exit strategy world because right now particularly, there's a lot of roll up, there are a lot of PE buyouts and I want small businesses to stay small and local, and so the more business owners know that an ESOP is an option. There's only 7,000 of us in the country. Most people don't know that it exists and they don't know, how it works. 

39:43
Yeah, and it's kind of net zero now because a lot of them have gotten so big that they are then selling to private equity and so, um, interesting. I'd like to speak more in in the exit strategy succession planning world. So I am on LinkedIn at Gina Schaefer. My website is Gina Schaefercom. 

40:05 - Mark (Host)
It's. It's kind of an annoying last name to spell, but I assume there'll be some show notes that'll show. 

40:07 - Gina Schaefer (Guest)
And then I'm also on Instagram at Gina Schaefer DC. Awesome Alright. 

40:11 - Mark (Host)
Well, thank you so much, Thank you. Thank you, gina. 

40:19 - Stacey (Host)
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