Ep. 35 The Stern Truth: Gamifying Your Business with Karyne Bailey

Karnye Bailey started Oceanside Entertainment from $20 and a dream. 20 years later, she has two stores, 5 employees, and is still growing her business.

When Karyne started her journey, she asked herself, "What’s my passion? What do I love to do?" She was inspired to start something out of what brought her joy.

Not only is she an expert in games, but she’s also an expert at gamifying her business. We go over how working towards the goal of winning with the proper steps makes business more fun, just like a game. She’s not shy about saying how much she loves to win! It’s the same in games as it is in business.

We talk about the mindset of when you encounter a stumbling block. Just like in life, they will happen in business. As Karyne says, stumbling blocks are the opening for a breakthrough.

Our conversation reminded me of “The Secret” and how the message of manifesting your dreams can be misconstrued. Manifesting your success leads is important, but that’s only part of it. The steps you take, the work you do, the goals with timelines are what make those goals achievable. Without those steps, it’s harder to win the game.

Karyne gives us her golden nugget for this episode – “Just go for it." If you fail, so what? Our failures are not failures if we learn from them. Game on, Karyne!

Connect with Karyne here:

Instagram: @oceanside__entertainment
Facebook: @oceansideentertainmentbc
Email: oceansidebooksbc@gmail.com

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Marshall Stern: So my question to you is this, do you like to play games? Like board games growing up? Did you like to play games? If the answer is yes, stick around for this upcoming episode, because you are going to find it transformational on how you play games. I piqued your interest, haven't I? Grab your board game, wrap your pad of paper and pen, and let the games begin.

[00:00:26] But before we do that update, ONtrepreneur Growth Academy is coming very, very soon. Don't miss out. If you are finding yourself stuck in your business, you kind of have that employee mindset or even the business operator mindset, and you're drained by all the activities and you're not sure what to do or how to move forward, or how to get people to do what you want them to do.

[00:00:49] Join us in the OGA. Okay. Reach out to me, Marshall@marshallstern.net and we will have a chat about the ONtrepreneur Growth Academy. And if it is for you, enjoy this episode.

[00:01:04] Hi, I'm Marshall Stern and I've spent over 35 years leading and growing multiple small businesses. I know firsthand the struggles of entrepreneurship, feeling isolated, lonely, overwhelmed, and feeling like you have to do it all by yourself. I've been through multiple recessions, and I have felt the highs and the lows. 

[00:01:23] I've been there, and I get it. This podcast is here to change that every week. I will bring you straight talking advice, real world strategies, and honest conversations about what it takes to succeed in business without the fluff, the gimmicks, or the sugar-coated. If you're ready to stop spinning your wheels and start making real progress, then you are in the right place. 

[00:01:46] This is the Stern Truth. 

[00:01:51] All right, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of The Stern Truth Business Unfiltered, and another guest, an amazing guest all the way from Powell River, here in beautiful British Columbia. Karyne Bailey of Oceanside Entertainment. How are you, Karyne? 

[00:02:07] Karyne Bailey: I'm great. How are you? 

[00:02:08] Marshall Stern: Doing well, doing well. It is, as we record this podcast, it is coming to – the summer's coming to a close. 

[00:02:14] Karyne Bailey: Yes, it is. We're going to be sad to lose all of our tourists soon. 

[00:02:19] Marshall Stern: Oh, for sure. For sure. Yes. Yeah. I like to also look at it for our listeners. Obviously we have a lot of business owners who are listening to this, and as they're listening to this, it is the back to business time, right? It is. Things are going, we're a wind down to, by the time when this airs, it's the wind down to 2025. 

[00:02:39] Karyne Bailey: Yes. 

[00:02:40] Marshall Stern: And yeah. 

[00:02:41] Karyne Bailey: This is the start of getting ready for fourth quarter, all your Christmas sales. And then making sure that you get everything ready to survive first quarter for us retail businesses. 

[00:02:54] Marshall Stern: Yes. So speaking of retail, I want to get into all about you, but just a quick rant out there. I'm sure you and many of our listeners will appreciate.

[00:03:01] So I was in Starbucks the other day, so as I record this, it's still August technically, right? It's still the last week of August… Pumpkin Spice Latte. 

[00:03:10] Karyne Bailey: Yeah. Yeah. That is one of those things. In fact, right now we're doing pre-orders for Valentine's Day, if you can believe it. 

[00:03:18] Marshall Stern: It's like it's earlier and earlier every year.

[00:03:22] Karyne Bailey: It really is, and it drives me a little insane because you just don't really know what's going to happen between now and then. So.

[00:03:30] Marshall Stern: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Why don't you tell us a little bit about your journey and how you got, what, what your business is and how you get into it? 

[00:03:38] Karyne Bailey: Sure. So my business is called Oceanside Entertainment, and my first location is called the second location we just acquired, started that one February 1st, and that one's called High Tide Games.

[00:03:50] So they're located about literally five minutes from each other, but they're completely different in terms of the types of things we do at each location. Oceanside Entertainment is all your licensed items, your board games, your books, everything to literally entertain people from all ages.

[00:04:11] Where High Tide games is like a community hub, so it's where you can come, you can sit down at tables, play board games, learn them. You can game on video game consoles. We have 16 different consoles that people can choose from, and there's over 300 different games in stock at any one time that they can choose to play.

[00:04:31] So they're slightly different in terms of the nature of the businesses, but they're all part of Oceanside Entertainment. And we started just over 20 years ago. I actually started as an online only business. I was on disability. I was raising my two girls on my own, and that's not how I wanted things to be.

[00:04:52] I didn't want to be sitting at home on disability. I wanted to actually get free of the system, and I wanted to create something that would allow my girls to be free of the system. So, a hard to believe story sometimes. I was watching an Oprah program, believe it or not, and it was about how to turn your passion to work so that your work wouldn't feel like trudging along work.

[00:05:20] It would – there'd be more passion to it, more excitement, and it would be a fun thing to do. So I sat down that night and kind of went, well, what do I love? It's like, I love to read love books. Had a huge collection of books. I love thrift store hunting. That's another thing, I'm always looking for a bargain and I knew how to do eBay.

[00:05:43] I'd done that, you know, just selling a thing here and a thing there. So I kind of went, well, you know, Jeff Bezos, he started a book business sitting at a kitchen table with his wife. And I'm like, if he can do it, why can't I do something like that? Why can't I just go and find some books and sell them online?

[00:06:04] And maybe someday I'll get free of the system. It took me eight years and I started with $20 and with the thumbs up approval of my disability worker to go for it. If I thought I could do it, go for it and do it. And yeah, it, like I say, it took eight years, but I got free of the disability system, got independent of it.

[00:06:26] And now here we are, 20 years later, have two stores. Have five employees. We're in the process of hiring our sixth employee, and sometimes I still find myself looking around the store with like deer in headlights, a look on my face. I'm sure kind of going like, how did this happen from $20? So it's, yeah, it's been a big game and it's still not ending.

[00:06:53] We just keep on making new goals and new games to try to achieve and I'm already having fun saying, what, there's going to be a third store? Not sure exactly when it's going to happen. I figure three years from now and I'm not sure what it's going to look like, but there's going to be another store. So, yeah. 

[00:07:12] Marshall Stern: I love that. And that's a vision and that's what leaders do. 

[00:07:16] Karyne Bailey: Exactly. 

[00:07:18] Marshall Stern: Yeah, and that's what I talk to my clients about all the time. You need to be become the entrepreneur, not just the entrepreneur, but the entrepreneur of your business and have the vision, and you might not know how. But you know the what. 

[00:07:30] Karyne Bailey: Exactly? So the way I've looked at it with all the training that I've done is I always have a five-year plan.

[00:07:38] Every year I re-look at my five-year plan and I reassess it to make it bigger and better. It's not always necessarily about winning the game. But it's like the game then drives you within, what you're doing in your business because you kind of, you're always projecting forward and you're figuring out what are the steps I need to do to get there.

[00:08:01] And then within that, it's like you tap the timeline. That's the part that most entrepreneurs that I work with, they miss that part. They're just kind of like, oh, I want to get to $500 of sales per month. I'm like, okay. By when you need to actually have a goal of a date within all those steps to get to your big game.

[00:08:24] Otherwise, the big game just seems unachievable if you don't have the steps along the way. 

[00:08:31] Marshall Stern: So you use the word game a lot, obviously being the business you're in, but it's almost like you get your gamifying business. 

[00:08:40] Karyne Bailey: Absolutely. That was something that I learned with. It was actually a training program that I took many years ago, and it's not just about business, but it was training that you could apply to any aspect of your life.

[00:08:55] And with that, they talked about the, you know, some people talk about like a 20 year goal, 10 year goal. I always keep it to five years because sometimes 20 years just seems like, wow, it's so far away. It's, I don’t know, I don’t know. It's for me, 20 years is just too long. Like, so I like to keep it to a five year.

[00:09:18] And yeah, it's, they put it in terms of a game. And that, for me, I guess I'm a bit of a, I'm a gamer at heart. I always have been. I've entered a lot of tournaments, a lot of contests, a lot of things along the way. I, in fact, I ran a business one time when I lived up in Terrace, BC. This fellow, he hired me to run a business.

[00:09:42] He just gave me a bunch of photocopiers and a bunch of things to do and said, hey, here, run a business of doing photocopying, right. And I'm like, okay. I am like, can I get a T-shirt press? He's like, sure, you can do that. You can do anything you want to do. He just gave me a bank account to work with. Well, by darned if within a year I made him a whole ton of money and then he closed down the business because what he didn't tell me was that he was looking for a loss.

[00:10:11] Right off against his other businesses, and I was like, hey, well you should have told me that I could have done that for you, but I am always out to make money and to turn a profit. It was just kind of like I had this one year plan that I was going to make X amount of money for this fellow to prove that this is a great business, and went out and did all the work to do it, and then it was like, oh, that wasn't exactly what I wanted.

[00:10:40] So, but yeah, a game. Makes it so it's not necessarily so serious. Yeah, and I think that's why it works for a lot of people and certainly not for everybody. Because every human being is slightly different. And how we process things in our brains are slightly different. But for anybody who really loves to win, having a game that you're living into with your business is the best way to just have motivation every day from the day you wake up to the day, to the minute you go to bed, you're in your game. So, yeah. 

[00:11:16] Marshall Stern: I like that. It’s a different perspective and, yeah, you're absolutely right. You know, one game doesn't fit all one way of playing or one, just like, you know, with what I do, you know, there are a lot of people out there who do what I do, and not one coach fits all.

[00:11:34] Not one business, fits all. Not one strategy fits all. But little bits of this. And if the gamifying works for you, do that. Make it your own. Make it your own game. 

[00:11:47] Karyne Bailey: Exactly. 

[00:11:48] Marshall Stern: So many metaphors we can use with this. It's awesome. I love it. It's the game within the game.

[00:11:55] Karyne Bailey: Exactly. Yes. It really is. The overall game for me, like the primary game when I began, was to get off the system. Like I said, once that happened, the next game that I added on top of that one was to build something that I could have my daughters, one of them, or both of them, take over one day and would have them free of the traditional work system.

[00:12:22] And so we've now built that, which is amazing in and of itself. And so I'm actually at this point right now, to be quite honest, where I am reassessing and trying to decide what the next big game is going to be. Because I just achieved kind of, well, I achieved those two games. I achieved the second location game.

[00:12:46] So now it's like I say like I am, I'm saying there's going to be a third business. I haven't nailed down the actual game plan per se of that yet, but it's in the works, so. 

[00:12:59] Marshall Stern: I love it. Okay. That's all. Nice. And that's all like warm and fuzzy and that's great. And the gamifying. Let's talk about the game.

[00:13:08] Within the game. Within the game. Let's talk about some of the roadblocks you've faced along the way playing the game. Playing the game. So what are some of the challenges that you have faced? 

[00:13:19] Karyne Bailey: One of the big challenges as I was building the initial game, being on disability.

[00:13:27] When you earn a certain amount of money, they take that money away from you. And then that's how most people say it is, that they're going to claw back part of my check. And for a long time it did feel that way for me and I got some coaching, from somebody very much like yourself, and they said, well, can we reframe the narrative?

[00:13:53] And it took a little while. It probably took me about two weeks, but I finally got it to, oh, they're not clawing back my money. They're not having to top me up as much. And the minute I started saying that, instead of that, they're taking something away and reframed it into, oh, they're not having to help me as much.

[00:14:15] All of a sudden, that even drove me further and faster because it was like, oh. Wow. Yeah, it's like this is exciting. There's been a lot of times where it's the narrative. A lot of times the roadblocks that I've had in life have all come down to what I'm saying. When I was living check to check at one point in my life, I always said, well.

[00:14:41] I can't do those kind of things. I'm too broke. And that's a very book thing that a lot of people say, and a lot of entrepreneurs say it as well because everything they have goes into their business. And it was actually probably a few years of struggling with the money narrative before I saw something and it just totally clicked with me and it said, I'm not broke.

[00:15:07] I'm pre-rich. Just that, again, that slightly different narrative. I'd never, ever, even in my worst days on disability, I was never broke. I always still had money when I got my next check, so I could believe that my brain was like, that's true. I've never been broke, and I'm not rich. I'm just pre-rich, which in the last six months.

[00:15:33] I've been having fun twisting around with that narrative going, well, if I'm pre-rich, that means I'm going to get rich. Right? So, haven't put the date on it yet, but again, it's the narrative of how you're saying things. The stumbling block that we had when we acquired our newest location, well, I'm going to say that Oceanside Entertainment has been in two locations.

[00:16:00] We had to move because our building sold. That was a stumbling block, but we overcame that. We actually found a great location right across the street from our original location and we had plans. There was an upstairs in that building and we wanted to have a gaming room. We wanted to host DD night, all that kind of stuff.

[00:16:22] And then found out we couldn't have the general public upstairs, so that was really disappointing and felt like a huge stumbling block to what it was I wanted to create for the community. But then when High Tide games, when this started happening as a possibility, it was like, ha, I can now solve that stumbling block.

[00:16:43] I can get a second location and we can do all of that in our new location. So we do now, we host Magic The Gathering evenings, D& D, all sorts of stuff. So. Yeah, stumbling blocks. It's one thing I do want to add. Stumbling blocks are just, it's something to overcome. It's a breakdown and with every breakdown, as long as you stay on it and not just kind of give into it, it is the opening for a breakthrough.

[00:17:14] Marshall Stern: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I agree. I mean, everything, everything you're talking about is mindset. Everything you're talking about is the way we think, the words we say, the words we think, because that determines our actions. 

[00:17:26] Karyne Bailey: Exactly. 

[00:17:27] Marshall Stern: And a lot of people, I think, some people forget that. It's funny, I was at the gym the other day and just scrolling on YouTube and The Secret, I don’t know if you ever watched The Secret.

[00:17:37] Karyne Bailey: Yes, I have a few times. Yeah. 

[00:17:39] Marshall Stern: And all it came out like the whole full, I didn't watch – I mean, I've seen it many times – and it just reminded me, you know, when I, when people watch The Secret, which is back from like, I think it was the nineties. Sometime in the nineties, right? 

[00:17:52] Karyne Bailey: Yeah. 

[00:17:52] Marshall Stern: With all these experts out there manifest your destiny, law of attraction, it's all good stuff, right?

[00:17:58] Karyne Bailey: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, absolutely.

[00:18:00] Marshall Stern: But what'll happen is a lot of people – I might have even said this on previous episodes here of the Stern Truth – but a lot of people listen to that. And because they listen to the woo side of it. It's like, okay, so if we can just manifest in our destiny, we could sit and they even showed this, right?

[00:18:16] You can just sort of sit on the curb and close your eyes and you can just imagine the big castle behind you and the yachts and the car, expensive cars, and the traveling and all this stuff, and it'll happen. 

[00:18:29] Karyne Bailey: Yes. Vision board, absolutely. 

[00:18:31] Marshall Stern: It'll happen. It'll just happen. Poof. Yes. That's what they didn't say that in the secret.

[00:18:34] That's what a lot of people took from it. Because that's the easy way. Oh, I, oh well, of course. Law of Attraction. Just put my thoughts out there, put it all out there and it's going to happen. That's not the case. Our thoughts determine, help determine our actions. 

[00:18:46] But we have to be, we're the ones who have to take those actions, and if we're thinking negatively, we'll take no action or negative actions to help pull away from what we want. You know, it's, that's where it's also, it's that game within the game. 

[00:18:59] Karyne Bailey: Exactly, and you have to have your narrative of what you're saying. Aligned to it. Because sitting on the curb, woo woo, a million dollars is coming my way. A million dollars is coming way. That's not going to happen.

[00:19:13] But you can have a narrative that you will have a million dollars by such and such a date, but then you got to do the work. To manifest it. It's not just like, poof, magic, it's going to happen. It's – you have to do the work in order to manifest it for yourself. 

[00:19:35] Marshall Stern: So you have, you have to play the game.

[00:19:37] Karyne Bailey: Exactly. You have to play the game. 

[00:19:39] Marshall Stern: You have to roll the dice. I'm getting into this - I'm gamifying this now. 

[00:19:42] Karyne Bailey: Hey, I got D one hundreds, never mind a six sided dice. I've got a 100 sided dice that's at my store that you can roll to do all sorts of wonderful things. Yeah. 

[00:19:53] Marshall Stern: But yeah, you got to play. You got to play the game.

[00:19:55] You've already done it. I know. But if, if you could, One golden –  I'm all about golden nuggets. I say that all the time, right? It's about like one takeaway for our listeners, right? 

[00:20:04] Karyne Bailey: Yeah. 

[00:20:05] Marshall Stern: Maybe they're at a point, their business has been flat for a while and the sales revenue profits, maybe they have no profits and they're just frustrated, overwhelmed.

[00:20:15] They're not sure the next game, or maybe they're not sure what their next game – I'm having fun with that – They're not sure what their next move should be. Should they buy Park Place? Okay. Or should they be safe and buy Vermont? And those three, I think those were the blue ones, right? They're not sure what the next move should be.

[00:20:35] What would your golden nugget be to them? 

[00:20:39] Karyne Bailey: You know what? Honestly, I – so you're going to laugh, probably. I'm a Sagittarius. Sagittarius are well known for jumping in the deep end of the pool without the fins, without the goggles, without anything, and just boom, we just go for it, right? So I'd be a Park Place girl, that's like, I'm going to do everything I can do, play that game.

[00:21:04] I might have to mortgage against it with the bank, but, by golly, I'm going to make sure that everybody lands on that and pays the mortgage for me. So yeah, I'm a bit of a risk taker. I, oh, probably always have been, I've always been an entrepreneur at heart ever since I was probably 12 years old.

[00:21:25] So, you know, we'd have raffles at the school. My game wants to sell the most tickets because goddamnit I was winning that doll. So, but golden nugget, I would say, you know, it never hurts to just jump in full force and give it your best. I mean, what's really going to happen? I mean, I've known entrepreneurs who have gone bankrupt.

[00:21:50] You know what, it's five years. It's on your record, and then you can start again. What the hell? Because if it works, it's amazing, but if it doesn't, there's learning to be had for that and you'll do it better the next time around. Just because you fail in business once doesn't mean you're going to fail in business the second, third, or even fourth time.

[00:22:13] You just got to give it your all. And I would say the one thing that I know of that other people have struggled with is you really got to know who you're trying to get your product to, your service, to whatever it is that you're doing. You can be passionate about it all. You want to be passionate about it, but you have to know who you're catering to because without that, you're doomed.

[00:22:39] Like quite honestly, and you have to like, it's not just knowing who they are. It's knowing how to reach them to, because every type of customer, whether it be a service or a product. You're going to reach them slightly differently. Not everybody's on Facebook, not everybody's on Pinterest, not everybody's on Etsy.

[00:23:01] So you got to know where to actually take your product in order to reach the right person. So that would be what I would say. But you know what? If you've got a passion and you love doing something, go for it. What the hell, right? Like, yeah. Yeah. 

[00:23:20] Marshall Stern: I love it. I love that. Yeah. That's, that's huge, right? I only ask, Karyne, I only ask for one gold nugget.

[00:23:24] There was a few in there. So you, you're not playing, you're not playing the game by my rules. You're playing the game by your rules. 

[00:23:30] Karyne Bailey: I'm amending the rules. What can I say? 

[00:23:33] Marshall Stern: This has been awesome. Really. Okay. If you could go back – this is that famous question, right? And yeah, so 20 years ago, and tell yourself, tell the young 20 years younger version of Karyne, which you know now, if you could warn them or tell them something that would help them in their journey.

[00:23:52] What do you think that could be? Or would there be something? 

[00:23:55] Karyne Bailey: Oh, that's a darn good question. Do you know what? Honestly, I wouldn't be where I am today if it weren't for every good, bad, and indifferent decision that I ever made in my business. I won't say they've all been positive. I've had a few that I've regretted.

[00:24:16] And every time I take a risk on a product and then we have to put it outside on the bargain bin where people get to name their own price. And sometimes I don't even make back the wholesale cost on something. It's like it hurts my heart sometimes. I'm like, I really thought that was going to be a good product, but it wasn't.

[00:24:36] So, and I think all I would warn myself about is to. Be ready for that a little bit more. That not everything you pick is going to be a winner and just be okay with that. 

[00:24:49] Marshall Stern: Yeah, that's a good one. You know, it’s –

[00:24:51] Karyne Bailey: Yeah 

[00:24:52] Marshall Stern: That's a, I know it's a tough question. Putting those there, because you weren't prepared, I didn't prepare you with any of these questions really, and – 

[00:24:57] Karyne Bailey: No, 

[00:24:58] Marshall Stern: But that's really good answer.

[00:25:00] They're all good answers, but that's a really, really deep answer. And I think if people really think about - and I'm going to watch this again. I want people to rewind the video or the audio and listen to that part again - listen to the question, listen to your answer. I think it's really important what you just said because we judge ourselves so much by our successes and our failures.

[00:25:21] Karyne Bailey: Oh, absolutely. 

[00:25:23] Marshall Stern: Our failures aren't our failures if we learn from them. 

[00:25:25] Karyne Bailey: That's true. 

[00:25:26] Marshall Stern: You wouldn't be where you –  

[00:25:27] Karyne Bailey: But there's – yeah, there's always learning to be had. 

[00:25:30] Marshall Stern: Right, right. Sometimes you buy Park Place and Boardwalk too early in the game, or maybe, right. I don't know. Yeah. I don't know if that's a thing.

[00:25:37] Karyne Bailey: Maybe, maybe it would've been better to get the railroads, right. 

[00:25:40] Marshall Stern: Railroads. Yeah. 

[00:25:41] Karyne Bailey: Yeah. 

[00:25:41] Marshall Stern:  I always wanted the railroad and I could only get like two of them. 

[00:25:45] Karyne Bailey: And I always wanted Waterworks and I like, I don't think I've ever played a game where I've gotten Waterworks. 

[00:25:51] Marshall Stern: Yeah. 

[00:25:52] Karyne Bailey: Isn't that crazy? 

[00:25:53] Marshall Stern: That is. 

[00:25:54] Karyne Bailey: 40 some odd years of playing Monopoly and I've never been able to buy Waterworks yet.

[00:26:00] Marshall Stern: Our young, I hope our young listeners know what we're talking about. because it's still 

[00:26:03] Karyne Bailey: Yeah, me too. 

[00:26:04] Marshall Stern: It's still, I mean, they've come up with like millions of versions of it, but. 

[00:26:07] Karyne Bailey: Oh, don't even get me started on that. Oh my God. That would be one of those ones of what I could tell myself. Do not buy as many copies of Monopoly as I have in my store.

[00:26:22] Marshall Stern: That's, there you go. The sequels are not - sequels are rarely as good as the original. The OGs the best. 

[00:26:28] Karyne Bailey: Exactly. 

[00:26:29] Marshall Stern: Except for Star Wars. Star Wars. 

[00:26:31] Karyne Bailey: Or Carcassonne, Carcassonne. The, some of the expansions are, I think, better than the original, so, okay. That's my opinion. 

[00:26:41] Marshall Stern: I don’t know what that is, but that's okay. 

[00:26:42] Karyne Bailey: Oh, it's like a number one board game.

[00:26:45] You have to go and check out Carcassonne. 

[00:26:47] Marshall Stern: Carcassonne. Okay. Well, having seen that, I know you're in Powell River. If people are in Powell River, how do they, like, how do they find you? I'll put your info in the show notes as well, but, or if people are visiting Powell River. 

[00:27:01] Karyne Bailey: Absolutely. So Oceanside Entertainment, the original store, is down on Marine Avenue, which is the main road that goes through like the downtown core.

[00:27:11] We're right next door to the Bank of Montreal. Okay, so we're pretty easy to find that way. And High Tide games is up on Joyce Avenue and Duncan Street right at the corner, and you'd look for the big dragon that's on the window, and that's how you find us there. So, yeah.

[00:27:28] Marshall Stern: Nice, nice. And eventually people could, well, obviously not High Tide games, but Oceanside maybe online at some point.

[00:27:34] Karyne Bailey: Absolutely. We did start online. Our online is on pause right now just because of some circumstances that are going on. But, we will be back online hopefully soon, so, yeah. 

[00:27:48] Marshall Stern: Perfect. This has been awesome. Is there anything you wanted to add last, another golden nugget or just something? 

[00:27:55] Karyne Bailey: Again, I would just really reiterate that if anybody's sitting on the fence and they're not sure if they should try a business and they're worried that they don't have enough money to do it properly, if I can start a business that is this successful with $20.

[00:28:13] You know what? You can do it too. It's kind of almost like the paperclip. You know, story where you just trade up and trade up. Sometimes it takes a long time. It's been a 20 year journey for me, so, wasn't quick, but you can do it. It's just believe in yourself and go for it. 

[00:28:33] Marshall Stern: I love that and, and my father started his business with his brothers long in the sixties, actually.

[00:28:38] In the fifties, right? In the fifties with the paperclip like so. 

[00:28:41] Karyne Bailey: Oh, wow. 

[00:28:33] Marshall Stern: Not, not with a paperclip, but a paperclip was the first thing he purchased, and so he always had a paperclip in his pocket. 

[00:28:49] Karyne Bailey: Very nice. Yes. 

[00:28:50] Marshall Stern: Right. Just to remind him of where, where he started. Because that was an exciting purchase for him.

[00:28:55] So you started with this, this paper clop. It's the symbol, right? Yeah. 

[00:28:59] Karyne Bailey: I always have a $20 bill. Yeah. In my wallet at all times, because that's what I started with was a $20 bill. 

[00:29:07] Marshall Stern: Yeah. Yeah. That's not, I would say that's, I'm going to throw that in there. Let's not forget to – for our listeners. Let's not forget where we started, because that's another thing I think a lot of entrepreneurs and business owners, and they're not necessarily the same.

[00:29:19] Not every business owner is an entrepreneur. Not every entrepreneur ends up being a business owner. 

[00:29:25] Karyne Bailey: Yes, very true. 

[00:29:26] Marshall Stern: But for those like entrepreneurs and business owners who are doing both, a lot of them tend to – lot of us tend to forget about our why. We forget about how it started. And we always need to go back.

[00:29:43] And remember, because there's a game within that game. And it's interesting - before we go – the Oprah story. I want to share a story with you while we're on the call because it totally resonated with me. So I saw Oprah,  my wife wanted to go to Chicago forever to see Oprah, to see the Oprah show.

[00:29:58] And we never did it. We just never got around to young kids, whatever, all that stuff. We finally went to Chicago last year, well after she was done, but anyways, about 10 years ago, she came to Vancouver and she spoke,  and we went to see her at Rogers Arena. It was about, yeah, about 10 years ago. I just started my coaching business about 10 years ago, 12 years ago.

[00:30:18] She was like this big fuss because we were like way up high, but there was the monitor or whatever, but we were still in the same building. We were in the building. She said exactly like what you said about your passion and what she said, I'll never forget, she said, you know, and some people,  they could take Oprah or they could leave her, but one thing she said to me that resonated that night was she walked around.

[00:30:39] I remember she was walking back and forth and she said, she believes that God has put us on this earth. It doesn't matter what your religious beliefs are. She believes that each of us have been put on this earth for a purpose. She said you could have a job as a nurse, you could have a job as a doctor, you could have a job teaching, you could, whatever.

[00:30:57] You could have business. It doesn't matter what your day job is. Your real job is to find out what that purpose is. 

[00:31:04] Karyne Bailey: Absolutely. 

[00:31:05] Marshall Stern: And if you can do that, that's great. If you can monetize it, what your purpose is, if you can even monetize it and do that as a business or as a whatever it is even better. And that was like, you know, she talks about aha moments and it's like, that's it, right?

[00:31:23] If you could do, and whatever our purpose is, and I think that's what a lot of people kind of forget about. 

[00:31:29] Karyne Bailey: Absolutely. 

[00:31:30] Marshall Stern: Yeah, I agree. They search for that passion, they search for that, the next game to play, and they sometimes are looking too hard. 

[00:31:37] Karyne Bailey: Sometimes they focus on the really elusive ones instead of the, like, the real passion. They're so busy thinking about, oh, I want a fancy car. I want a fancy house. I want a fancy yacht, rather than just really actually getting what they're passionate about, because are you really passionate about a yacht? There might be few people out here and there that are for sure, but I'm not sure that that is really something.

[00:32:05] That is what your purpose in life is, is to get a yacht. I mean, for me it's, I've, I know in my heart there's been a few things that are my purpose, and one of them is to be an entrepreneur and to serve my community. I was brought up in a school, their motto was not for ourselves alone, and I really took that to heart, that motto, and I've lived it in everything that I've done, so.

[00:32:37] Marshall Stern: Right. And talk about, what did you call it? Pre-rich? 

[00:32:41] Karyne Bailey: Mm-hmm. 

[00:32:43] Marshall Stern: Okay. But that's – you are already rich. 

[00:32:48] Karyne Bailey: Yes, I am. I am rich in, I will say I'm rich in everything other than money. But yes, I have an extremely rich life. I have an amazing family, birth family that I was reunited with many, many years ago. I have an amazing work family.

[00:33:06] I'm called Boss Mom. At my, both my businesses, because they are my family. All of my employees are my family. They're my extra daughters and sons, and that's how they're treated. So it's, that's…

[00:33:20] Marshall Stern:  You're – to me, everything we talked about here today is what leadership is all about.

[00:33:28] So, I want to thank you because a lot of people don't see that, and they don't think that they need to be that for their team. They're looking too much. They're looking at too much about not the vision about, let's say, winning the game or serving the community. Whatever, because winning the game could be serving the community.

[00:33:45] It could be this, it could be that they're thinking about, I'm going back to the Monopoly metaphor. They're thinking about how are they going to get Park Place? 

[00:33:53] Karyne Bailey: Yeah. Right. 

[00:33:54] Marshall Stern: Exactly. How are they going to get out of jail? Whatever. Maybe not a good example, but you know what I'm trying to say. 

[00:34:00] Karyne Bailey: How are they going to get all the money from the bank?

[00:34:03] Marshall Stern: How will they get all the money from the bank? 

[00:34:05] Karyne Bailey: Yeah. 

[00:34:05] Marshall Stern: Take down the other player. 

[00:34:09] Karyne, this has been awesome. Thank you. Thank you. 

[00:34:11] Karyne Bailey: It was a pleasure to be online with you today, 

[00:34:16] Marshall Stern: So I will get your contact info in there. If people want to take a trip to Powell River, they want to reach out, that sort of thing.

[00:34:22] I also, for our listeners, I want you to – don't be shy. I know you listen, and that's great. If you love this episode, I want to hear your takeaways, your golden nuggets from what Karyne has shared with us today. So if you're watching us on YouTube, obviously subscribe to my channel, do all that, but I want you to comment, at least watch one golden nugget.

[00:34:43] One thing you've really enjoyed in taking away from this, if it's on a podcast, if it's a Spotify, apple, Amazon, whatever else there is, or directly on Buzzsprout on my page. Comment as well, subscribe, like all that stuff. Share it with people because I think there are a lot of business owners out there and, and for all of you watching and listening, you might have a friend who is thinking about becoming a business owner.

[00:35:04] They might have that entrepreneurial spirit thinking about rolling the dice, taking the plunge, playing the game. This is the episode they should listen to. 

[00:35:13] Karyne Bailey: And can, if you're good with it, I'd like to extend an invitation if there's anybody who really enjoyed this podcast and would like to reach out to me through Facebook or email.

[00:35:25] I am pretty easy to find. I don't hide from social media at all. Just drop me a line. I'm totally good with talking to anybody and sharing and answering questions. 

[00:35:37] Marshall Stern: I love that. Thank you. Thank you. I will definitely include that in the show notes so people can do that as well. So thank you Karyne, and thank you for everyone else and we'll see you again next week in another episode of The Stern Truth Business Unfiltered. Bye everyone.

[00:35:53] Thank you so much for tuning in to the Stern Truth. If you found today's episode helpful, we would love to hear from you. Please like, share and leave us a review. Also, if you'd like to be a guest in the upcoming episode or join us in one of our Moment Accountability Group sessions, simply email me to marshall@marshallstern.net.

[00:36:12] That's marshall@marshallstern.net. And don't forget to hit the subscribe button, so never miss an episode. Until next time, keep pushing forward and leading with confidence.