#51 : How do you start a convenience store business?

 

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I always love chatting to fellow tech people who are finding creative ways to fit entrepreneurship into their lives. Today’s guest is balancing a full-time position in tech while also running two convenience stores, an industry I am always excited to learn more about.

Sarok Shareef is an IT Sales Executive who has always had an interest in entrepreneurship. He purchased an existing convenience store and learned so much during his first year about operations and team management. About a year later, he took all those lessons and developed a second retail concept leveraging the lessons from his first store to jump-start success with his second location.

Sarok and I talk about why he wanted to get into owning convenience stores specifically and what it was like buying an existing business. He shares some of the challenges he’s encountered with inventory, personnel, and finding the deal in the first place. And we also discuss what he would do differently if he were to do it all again as well as what he loves about his new, second convenience store + smoke shop in a different part of town.

In this episode, we’re discussing…

  • Why convenience stores can be a great wealth-building side business outside your day job.

  • Why Sarok has avoided putting gasoline in at his convenience store and why he has opted for exclusively non-perishable goods as inventory.

  • The challenges he’s faced with finding and keeping good employees.

  • How Sarok found his convenience stores and what he was looking for in his first store versus his second.

  • What he learned from owning and operating his first convenience store that has made opening the second one a lot smoother process.

Sarok’s Top Tips:

  • If you want to operate a convenience store more passively, you need good employees – it is especially important to have trustworthy management. Good employees can be hard to find and hang onto, so do your research and don’t ever hire your local, regular customers.

  • Owning a convenience store is a great way to see the immediate impact of your decisions – you can often see how certain products or choices are affecting your business in a matter of days or weeks, so you’ll learn a lot quickly.

  • Make sure your equipment works before buying an existing business – pay someone to test out any equipment you are purchasing and keep in touch with a great maintenance team. Your equipment is critical for making money in this business, so pay extra attention to it at the outset.

Resources:

 

+ Read the transcript

What if you could be doing something smarter with your money that creates income right now? If you're an IT professional who's wanting to get ahead financially and enjoy greater freedom of choice, and if you wondered who else in tech is creating ways to make their money work for them? You want actionable ideas with honest pros and cons and no fluff. Welcome to The Richer Geek Podcast. We're helping IT professionals find creative ways to build wealth and financial freedom. I'm your host, Nicole Stohler and in this podcast, you'll hear from others who are already doing these things and learn how you can too.

Hey everyone, welcome back to The Richer Geek Podcast. I am so glad that you have tuned into today's episode. A few months ago, one of my peers in tech reached out for some real estate investing advice, and we met at a local coffee shop. And then he brought along his friend who also works in tech, and they apparently the two of them have been brainstorming ideas around different types of properties and they wanted to kind of pick my brain and get some ideas. Well turns out that this friend owns a convenience store and he was working on a second location. So while I went to help them talk about real estate, my ears perked up because I wanted to know all about his retail business, and I couldn't wait to have him share his story with all of you. So Roque Sharaf is an IT sales executive who's always had an interest in entrepreneurship. He purchased an existing convenience store and he learned so much during his first year about operations and team management. You'll hear him talk about that in today's episode. About a year later, he took all those lessons and he developed a second retail concept that built upon the things he wanted and didn't want from his first store. that enabled him to jumpstart success with this second location. Let's go ahead and get into the show. Sir broke Welcome to the show.

Hi, Nichole, how are you? Thank you for having me.

I'm really excited about the opportunity to hear more about your story because we met several months ago, and I was hearing about the first convenience store and your experience there. And I immediately said, You've got to come on the show. So I'm excited to be able to record today, but it's been busy because you open another shop. So we'll, we'll talk all about that. Tell us just a little bit about your background.

Well, background being actually born and raised in the Middle East, moved here, back in 97. You know, kind of, you know, started in the workforce pretty early, you know, started as kind of a lead generator, kind of figured that I wanted to be in sales, but wasn't exactly sure what I wanted to hone in on and eventually I kind of stumbled upon tech. And for about the last decade now 11 years actually, I've been full time in tech.

Perfect. And so that's a great segue because you have a hectic schedule, work full time and tag me A little bit of travel, what prompted you to look in to buying a convenience store?

Well, it's a very dynamic business, but I think it's a it's a profitable business for sure if you know how to do it. And, you know, the one good thing is about convenience stores is that you always have customers, so you're not, you know, you, you really are not too concerned about having foot traffic or customers is just more or less trying to figure out the right combination on a lot per se, just to be able to bring people in and be able to capitalize on that. So I figured that C store, I've I've always been an aspiring entrepreneur. So I figured it was a great way to kind of just break the ice, you know, jump into it and see what I can accomplish. I also have a lot of family obviously, being in the Middle East. They're in the industry, and you know, they all do pretty well. And you know, they usually go from one store to three to four to five, and it just kind of grows from there. So I figured that, you know, somewhat of a good support system that I can fall back on and at least had some experience that I can go to directly. So it's just kind of basically combinate have like wanting to be a business owner and just seeing what's kind of a low risk business that I can kind of get into and and actually enjoy doing so so the C store was kind of a good opportunity I had a partner at the time that we discussed that it we kind of tossed around a few ideas you know, we thought about like a subscription model like a haircut place for you know, like a barber shop subscription model. You know, we kind of tossed around with that in a business plan didn't make all the sense in the world and you know, we had a figured you know, let's let's kind of focus and see what we can figure out and then a C store something a little bit different story a little dynamic, different dynamic. So we ended up kind of landing on a C store that has a smoke shop in it. So it's a little combination of the two will actually kind of built it out more from from just a C store into like a C store slash smoke shop but here we are. So two and a half, three years later here we are two stores later.

So you when you went and you purchase the first store, which is just completely convenience store, it does not have gas? Or no?

No, it did not actually, it did not. We, we, you know, we looked into having something with gas, obviously, you know, with the cash in hand, and just the way that the financing works and that kind of industry, it was a little bit, almost not worth it to go with the gas just because there's so many different requirements. And you know, so many different regulations that you got to deal with the location that I'm actually in right now. used to have gas, but the previous owner actually removed it just because there was just it was too much to keep up with and the margins are not really there. It's kind of like you're using it as a bargaining chip. And there's there's other ways you can kind of go about it to drum up the foot traffic into the store. But gas is definitely not one of the options and actually, believe it or not, a lot of people are stepping away from gas if they have the option to especially in the small mom and pop shops just because you know so many regulations and whatnot in the cost.

Yeah, I could see that being in the visits by the inspectors and Then dealing with credit card fraud, and all of those is just, I can see that being challenging.

Yeah, we get reached out to by them sometimes but, you know, by, I guess certain suppliers or whatnot that they'd like to put it in and maybe even give you an incentive to actually put gas in, but definitely not a road you want to go down honestly. If you value your sanity, that's not a road you want to go down.

Well, and especially when you're working full time in tech, so you don't, you know, you don't have these cycles to spend a lot of dealing with the regulations and all of that.

Absolutely. And that's the other side of the story, right? is making sure that, you know, I still am able to fully do my job to the full extent, and also being able to, you know, run my own business without too many headaches, right. So I think if you are a dedicated full time owner who's going to be in the shop and running them, it might be a little bit of a different story, but for somebody who wants to be absentee run and kind of, you know, just generated a little bit of income on the side. It's a different story that way as well.

What's that process been like? Finding employees and a manager so that you can, you know, still have a little bit more of a passive.

Yeah. So it's honestly Nichole, of all the things that I thought when I was getting into this, all the things I thought was going to, we're going to be easy, like personnel management, are actually proving to be the hardest and most challenging part of this role. And all the stuff that I thought was going to be hard is actually the easiest part of this job. So I kind of had a little bit of a skewed idea of how things were going into it. But you know, finding good employees is very, very difficult. I think for somebody in my position, it's key that you have a manager, a trustworthy manager. So for me, it's actually a distant relative of mine who's been in industry for about 15 years. He enjoys it, you know, he has a decent paycheck and you know, he runs the day to day he does a lot of the shopping and we kind of hire and fire together but, you know, these kind of jobs, the employees don't really stick around very long, right? So they'll come in and they'll work for a couple of months and then all of a sudden, when They just don't show up, you know. So that's definitely something you got to be prepared for. So I would say always have somebody on the bench, at least one or two people on the bench as a backup or as like a limited part time, so that they can absolutely, you know, they fly in at a moment's notice. And, you know, you could find people like that it's just, you know, it takes a little bit of digging a lot of research and just, you know, actually coming across quite a few people. And I would highly advise anybody who's actually even thinking about doing something like this, never hire any of your customers. Never. It's a double edged sword that just never ends up going, right. You get an employee that comes, that's a regular shopper in your store. They come in, you know, they want a job, you give them a job, and then a month or two later, they're gone. They're still local to you in that neighborhood. So in one aspect, you actually kind of life things don't work out. You kind of lose that business of that customer coming in and everybody that they were bringing in and at the same time, if there's any opportunity for them to say anything negative about the shop, you know, it's still local, it's still in your area, and You know, it never comes back in a good way for you, they're never gonna go out and talk good about, you know, how you did things or how things are run and it usually just never works out. Right. So definitely stay away from the local customers.

I would not have even thought of that. Okay, that's an excellent tip. I'm curious, something that you said, you said things that you thought would be easy, like personnel and managing people were actually very hard and things that you thought would be hard, were easy. What are some of those things?

Ah, you know, honestly, just, you know, some of the inventory tracking management, you know, I never really had any experience with that. So I figured it'd be really challenging to find things at a good price and be able to actually sell them with enough margin into it. You know, a lot of the administrative stuff, I figured that there would be tons of, you know, licensing and regulations and stuff, and there's a good fair amount of that, but it's pretty, you know, straightforward, it's pretty clear cut. So, you know, it's usually like a quarterly thing or like a, like an annual thing that you're paying for. So about a month or two period throughout the year that you're kind of going back and redoing some of these licenses and establishing some of the certifications of stuff that you need. But other than that, it's it's actually pretty steady. But I thought it was the other way around, I figured that that would be a bulk of the bulk of the job. And you know, the easier part was going to be the management and it's not so much managing people, it's just actually getting people to just stick around who enjoy the job and you know, that actually, do the things are supposed to when an owner;s not around, so.

Definitely a challenge and I absolutely can relate. Tell us how did you find this particular convenience store?

So we realized a couple of business brokers, um... Oh, and also that's another thing I you know, being in tech Nichole, you know, we deal with, you know, some very professional individuals and we're just in a completely different environment and in a different industry and things are a little bit different. I figured that you know, things from this world can translate over into that world pretty easily, but it's not it's actually kind of a disorganized kind of like, like a mess. So you got to find yourself a business for And you got to find a good one who actually has a portfolio that they can sell to you because they don't want to sell you something that's not part of that portfolio kind of thing. But, you know, it was we worked with a couple of different Business Brokers and we actually ended up going to a shop about a mile or two away from where I'm at now, and I wasn't too crazy about the shop I was I didn't like the location there was another convenience store opening right across the street and that happened to happen to be a big name brand I think it was a circle okay. So I said you know what, let's let's just keep looking he goes Hey, man, there's there's another shop down the street about a couple of miles you know, it's in a good location doesn't have gas or anything like that. So you know, it's kind of right up your alley. says okay, let's go check it out. And honestly, I walked into it, Nicole, and the place was a mess. It was disgusting. You know, nothing was where it was. But you know, that's exactly what I was looking for. I was looking for something that I couldn't fix. And in my mind, something you have is actually making you money. You're not really looking to sell it right. So for me when I looked into it, I was like, Okay, this place is messy. That owners probably overpriced. By just either worn out by being here for too long or just overwhelmed by the amount of work that there is, so figured it was a good investment for me right? In a good location, right on the intersection, very busy corner. And so I mean, I walked out like, this is the shop for me. And it was just as simple as is actually even easier than buying a car because you're just pretty much signing paperwork. And, you know, there's just a couple of little tiny forms that you sign in. There's a servicing company that does a loan if you do a carry back. And that's about it. It's actually a pretty simple buying process.

You found a great location. And then you described, you saw that there was value you could add to this convenience store. It's very similar to real estate, right? You go look at a house and it's perfect, and it's beautiful, and it's already been remodeled. You're not going to make any money if you try to, you know, do anything creative, real estate wise with that. But if you find the house that is totally destroyed, and needs, no needs to be gutted. I mean, that's a lot of opportunity there. So I admire that you walked in and saw that I knew that that was a good chance.

If you know me, you know, that's what I look for, I have a little bit of a different background, I guess for some of the people that I spend time around, you know, they're always looking for like the cleanest and shiny thing that they can buy, or the biggest bite they can take, that's going to give them the biggest return. For me, it's quite the opposite. Actually, I look for things that like you said, I can add value, I can walk into it and say, Okay, I can change this, this and this. And I can improve that. And of course, we all shop at convenience stores, right? So all of us walk into a chevron, all of those go in a circle case and even some of the mom and pops you walk into it, you know, what you like, you know, you know, you like the layout or you know, you know, the selection of product that you like and the variety. So, when you kind of take a look at a shot that your you know, your I guess your prospecting to buy. It's kind of one of those things are like okay, so you don't have any of these components of the business. And I can add those, right, so this is the way that you kind of generate the business and create the loyal customer base. So you know, it's where it's found out pretty well. Because the shop I walked into, like he just said it was, it was it wasn't even in any anything remotely close to being in good shape. I mean, there was probably an inch thick with just dust on the shelves that I had to take off. You know, it was kind of a mess, but I'm glad it worked out the way it did.

And I knew you had a hectic first year just kind of working through cleaning things up and maybe adding the inventory and working through the personnel tell us what have been the positive outcomes of just this particular store.

You know, the positive outcomes of that is is a constant changes that you make and that you can see that you're actually making a positive impact, right? It's fairly simple, you you're adding products, you're adding different components to the business. It's not something that you have to wait a long time on to see a return or to see if it works or it doesn't, right. So you know you try something you put it out you buy it you know you buy a few cases or this or that and you put it in the front of the store. you advertise it a little bit and you know if it takes off then you kind of add it to the you know to the variety of product that you have And it's just something that you create a regular following for. So it's been a phenomenal learning experience for me. Like, I honestly wasn't expecting to become a multi millionaire off of this, it was just more for me to just learn what entrepreneurship is like, what are some of the challenges that you're going to face and kind of how you overcome them. And for me, it's just really been the day to day, you know, the changes that we're making, the things that we see, that are not necessarily working, whether it's operationally or personnel wise, and you know, just making the changes and seeing that positive, you know, that positive return on it or just that, that whatever change or whatever it is that you're looking for that you're getting out of it. And it's almost instant, you can almost see something working within a couple of days or sometimes a couple of weeks, you know.

Yeah, I imagine that's pretty cool to see. Because when you're working in larger corporate, those things take time, right? We're, we're dealing with much longer lead times around things to be able to have something passed. Yeah.

Yeah. And that's kind of why I made that point is that it's just that instant gratification, I guess, per se or you know, whether something Working out or not? In our world, you kind of have to wait a few months or sometimes even a year or two to really see the return or see, okay, this is the impact that this change is having. It's a little bit of a different world out there.

So in this particular business, which was existing, you went in, you said, Gosh, I can add value, what were some things that you feel like you would change? Or you would do differently? If something like if for someone listening says, I want to buy an existing convenience store? What would you do differently?

I would do a lot of things differently. But I guess if you're looking for a convenience store, you're looking for a convenience store. And the one thing that I would absolutely say is a must in this business, and obviously any business is the margins of product, right? So just finding stuff that you can buy if you can buy bulk, go ahead and buy bulk. Obviously it makes sense regularly, even though you might be sitting on it for a while. If it's not perishable, it's good buy it because it's all a matter of you know, it's a volume business transaction, right? So you, you're not going to be making tons of you know, tons of money on a single item, you know, there's few items that are very profitable. Everything else is really just putting together nickels and dimes, you know, maybe quarters here and there. By and large, it's just making sure that you buy low and sell at a reasonable price, because there's definitely a lot of competition around you. And you need to compete with them, and you're not really selling anything different than them. So either you got to find something at a good buyer, you really got to differentiate yourself on an extreme level in order to be able to get those customers to come in because you will have customers that will walk an extra mile for you know, 10 cents or 15 cents off of a pack of cigarettes or, or any item that they're looking at in the store. That's a real struggle, believe it or not, that's a daily thing.

Well, I wouldn't I wouldn't have thought about about that. But that is your differentiator that you can offer. If it's a special or something, you know, some kind of lower priced item that's really, really interesting.

Yeah, absolutely. And that's where the Money that really you just got to buy in bulk. And there's quite a bit of conventions and stuff. You know, they have as the market show in Vegas twice a year, that's a great place to go to. There's, I think somewhere around like 3000 vendors for convenience and smoke shops. And you can basically find anything that you're looking for you can establish good relationships. And one of the biggest and most challenging things I was talking to you about earlier is just, you know, the vendor relationships. It's just different, right for us, when we say we're going to show up, we have a call at three o'clock. We're there at three o'clock nickel, but you know, these vendors, they're not there at three o'clock date. Most of these guys either work for themselves or just, they're just buying stuff from China and they're coming to you and selling it. So they show up when it's convenient for them. And even though they'll tell you, they'll be there on Monday and you expect them there on a Monday. They don't show up until probably Thursday or Friday or if ever again. So be prepared to always be changing and always have alternatives. And that's about it really. And oh by the way, make sure you have good working equipment, especially if you're in Arizona like us. Our coolers are obviously a little bit dated the shop been there since 2001. And I believe it's still the same, you know, think stuff that's, that's been there since day one. And just make sure that whenever you're buying is, you know, pay somebody to really dissect the heck out of what the actual functioning parts of that business are. So making sure your coolers are up and running all the time and making sure that they're well maintained, is key. That's one thing I did not think was important. I didn't put too much emphasis on that, you know, work. There are some maintenance records when we were buying it, there wasn't much but you know, I figured the coolers cold is holding pressure. Obviously, I had like a three or four week observation period where you know, everything was running really smoothly, but it was almost like as soon as the owner walked out of the store, just it started breaking, you know, and those things are not cheap to fix. Every every call is a multiple. It's a multi thousand dollar call that you're making to the guy and these guys know they can charge for it. They know your business's success or failure hinges on that. So, so they'll definitely charge you for it. So make sure You have a good maintenance guy on hand and make sure that you got a good working equipment but you can.

I'm laughing because I think it's like that in anything right like the minute that you bought the multifamily property, all the air conditioning unit suddenly start going out even though there was an inspection right, you know, there's my husband was literally getting on top of roofs. He's like, nope, too old not I'm not. I don't care what anyone says. Either somebody that before I purchased this, but yeah, I mean, you just said but but let's just say you did that it would be something else, right? It's literally any kind of business.

It really is Nichole, if it's not one thing, it's the other. If it's not one thing is the other. So you just need to make sure that that you really have those those eyes dotted and T's crossed when you're buying just because I think that first year was tough for us and we were like deer in the headlights. We didn't have I personally didn't have the experience of running my own business like this or or even being in the industry, right. So it was very hard to actually To find trustworthy people, like, I had to go through like three or four different, you know, AC guys just to find an honest guy that says, Yeah, okay, your problem is actually here. You don't need to buy $12,000 worth of AC product or equipment. In order for this thing for it. Maybe it's only two or three grand right, but definitely got to find the right people to actually back you up when you need them. Because when you will need them.

Yeah, I agree. Same thing in real estate. Okay, let's shift gears because so this was an existing convenience store. And then now you added a smoke shop slash selling some other really cool things that you built from the ground up, or you basically you built the whole store from the ground up. Tell us a little bit about that process.

So the first one was for me to kind of get my feet wet. And you know, it was really really tough. And honestly, towards the end of the first year, I already started thinking about a second location. I don't know if that's a crazy and we are the entrepreneur and each one or the other. But, you know, for me, it was like Okay, so I've learned a lot There's a lot of things that I want to do, but that I don't necessarily have the customer base for. And I want to refine this business, I'm in a different aspect. And I want to bring something different to the table. So take everything that I've learned from here, polish it up, clean it up and move into something else. So I decided to do a smoke shop and I even hate calling in a smoke shop, I need to figure something else out for it. But, you know, we don't even really do any tobacco or anything like that we're more geared towards like the CBD, you know, the topicals the health, you know, we're more geared towards health and supplements or a few doors down from the gym. But I wanted to put something in here. That was the if I had to sell inventory, it didn't expire. So I didn't have to constantly go through the shelves every week or every month and just get rid of hundreds and thousands of dollars worth of inventory that's expired, you know. And also, I didn't want to deal with the hassle of maintaining this or that, you know, hey, kind of headaches, like especially with the coolers and stuff like that, but I didn't want to go down that path. So I figured what do I do so it's a lot more have anything perishable in the store at all. It's just a lot of supplements, a lot of CBD, a lot of kratom, lots of disposables and whatnot and obviously comes with glass. And it's a much more refined business and also the profit margins are significantly higher. So when you're talking about, you know, in a convenience store you're talking about, and I don't know if I'm allowed to say numbers or not, but you could basically bank on anywhere between 35 maybe 33, to about 39%. You're relevant in a convenience store, but you just have a lot of overhead a lot to maintain, versus something that's a little bit more tapered down, more cleaned up and polished. You're talking somewhere between 55 and almost 75%, margins, net margins. So you know, it's a significant difference. It's a very different business, for sure. And it's much more of a well oiled machine for sure, I would say.

And a different clientele, different area of town, you know, everything about it is way, way different.

Yes, it is. But you know, honestly, everything I learned in the first one, as applied in the second one, so I didn't really want to be around the clientele that didn't have money to spend, you know, I did not want to play the volume game anymore because I wanted to be able to have a customer that walks in. And within one or two customers I walk in and they they can potentially make your entire day. And at the same time, I didn't really want to worry about high overhead. I didn't want to have a high electricity bill. I didn't want to worry about maintenance bills and so many different things. So all that stuff that I didn't want, I made sure I didn't have here. And this worked out great. So I'm doing less for more money. I think we're getting smarter.

Well, I love that I think that you needed to have that first one to be able to refine your approach for the second one.

Yes, definitely. And cigars are a huge thing. That's I mean, that's probably one of the few tobacco lighters that we saw there. You can get cigars and that those have good margin. They have a book good clientele, good, good. You know everything about it is good.

What have been some of the challenges in getting this new store up and running?

Um, honestly, considering all the stuff that we went through in the first one, the second one has been a breeze, Nicole, so I'm going to knock on wood for this one. But I would say honestly, you know, the difference between the two, the two biggest differences is I went into the first business and it wasn't existing business, right. It was something that was already running, working and had established clientele, which is what I wanted. But it wasn't a business that I can absolutely just, you know, mash up and do something different with it, it was existing, and the best I could do is just add on to it, and slowly change it as time went on into what I ultimately want it to be. This one is different, because it's a little bit more of a challenge, but the challenge is up front, right? It's just building it out. I literally walked into an empty box. The rent was reasonable. And I said, Okay, great. I'll take it so empty room. It used to be a salon in the past. So I gutted the whole thing. I built the whole thing from the ground up into exactly what I wanted it to be was exactly the layout that I want to do everything that I wanted. But obviously with that, it's just, you know, dealing with the contractors and managing it. And obviously the day to day that obviously having a full time job, that was the biggest and most challenging part of it, the part of town that we're in, it's actually a really good part of town. So finding decent employees is not as much of a challenge. still managing them is kind of a pain when you're not around as much, you know, so it's kind of hard to get employees to do what they need to be doing if you're kind of not there, and they don't know that the boss is watching. But otherwise, honestly, it's it's been pretty simple. I would say that.

Such a great, I love that we are able to talk about both, right? It's just such a great contrast and also that you're able to say well gosh, I wish I could do this. Well, you know what, I'm gonna do that over here. So that's, that's fantastic.

Yeah, and we have you know, we actually, in this one, it's a fun place like honestly, like customers walk in and you know, they're like, Man This one has amazing buys you know it has good energy. It looks and feels nothing like a smoke shop at all. We actually had a funding Hendricks, who is Jimi Hendrix, his second cousin, if I'm not mistaken, he came in and did murals on the wall for us. So it's got a whole Alice in Wonderland theme. But this was like a, I'm gonna say about four weeks worth of work for him every single day. And so so there's a lot of beautiful artwork on the wall. You come in, it's just a different feel and a different vibe. So it's really awesome to see that it is totally different contrast for sure. nickel.

Yeah, well, I'm laughing because so because I know the two areas we're talking about. And health health very, very different. They are so I mean, it's it's almost comical. So tell us what are you looking to do next?

Oh, man, you don't want to open that can of worms. I want to do so many things. And my wife tells me all the time, I'm crazy enough to do it. She goes God forbid you have an idea. You're just praying the end. Up to do it. So, you know, I'm really loving the concept of you know, this, let's just call it smoke shop, I'm really loving it, you know, the margins are good, the management is easy. So I kind of want to pick out a couple parts of town that I can potentially land in for, for another location. But ultimately, I think the key to these businesses are, is in how many different ways can you actually generate revenue? or How can you build equity into this business. So I think on the next one, I want to own the land. So the idea is that I would like to move into a strip mall of some sort, you know, if it has a vacant spot, you know, I'll take it. And I'll probably use that as my little project. You know, put different types of businesses in there just to kind of see you know, how they work out. If I can get businesses to piggyback off of each other just to generate, you know, more foot traffic into or just more traffic period into that Plaza. But ultimately, I'd love to land in a place that's a little bit more on the outskirts of town, but still there's a need for it. And also, I'd love to own land into whatever it is that I'm doing right. So I think ultimately real estate is where I want to end up. It's great to have these projects and have these things going. And you know, we'll add as they come, if that's what's in the cards. But ultimately, I think real estate is one of those businesses that you will deal with ups and downs, but you're definitely going to almost always make your money back, it's going to be very hard for you not to make your money back and for you to lose on. But obviously, it's a little bit more of a long term play. So, but that's kind of what I'm thinking right now. And then also another part of my thought process is I have a lot of connections overseas. I have a lot of family back in the Middle East. I'm also thinking about exploiting, you know, from the US or China, into into Iraq, you know, and the surrounding countries. I think there's a huge need for that. I don't think the right person has come along, to actually do it. At least not that I know of, but there's tons and tons of product, tons and tons of opportunity to actually, you know, send a few containers. every single month and that that is also a very lucrative business as well. So kind of things are up in the air right now I got my hands full. So we'll see how these things stabilized, you know, the new shop is still fairly new and the old shop is still a work in progress for sure. So we'll make sure that you know, these things are stable and working on their own and generating cash on their own. And then from there, we'll we'll make a decision, I'll be calling you on what I should be doing too.

That is awesome. Tell us how listeners can get in touch with you or learn more.

So you can reach out to me directly on LinkedIn. You can find me there. Or you can go to our website madhataz.com. And you can directly email me from there as well.

Awesome, thank you so much.

You're so very welcome. Thank you so much for having me Nichole, it's been a pleasure.

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ABOUT SAROK SHAREEF

Sarok Shareef is an IT Sales Executive who has always had an interest in entrepreneurship. He purchased an existing convenience store and learned so much during his first year about operations and team management. About a year later, he took all those lessons and developed a second retail concept leveraging the lessons from his first store to jump-start success with his second location.

 
 
 
Small BusinessNichole Stohlerpodcast, season 1