When Steve Berry swapped the familiarity of Boston for Miami's melting pot, his world turned upside down, and so did his approach to business and life.
Steve's transformation from being rooted in uniformity to thriving amidst diversity led to a personal leap across cultural lines, led to love, and also to the creation of multi-million dollar ventures that blend unique ideas with varied people, showing us that embracing change can be the cornerstone of success.
Retail is a playground for innovation, and we've got an insider's take on revitalizing a family legacy in today's fast-paced market. One encounter with Amazon buyers at a trade show catapulted satin pillowcases and shower caps to the top of online sales charts, demonstrating the power of modern consumer behavior.
Steve's entrepreneurial spirit led to adding to traditional distribution channels and embracing social media marketing, celebrating the unique connections between barbers and clients with professional athletes through personal tales.
Steve embraces differences and builds bridges to connect new ideas and worlds.
When Steve Berry swapped the familiarity of Boston for Miami's melting pot, his world turned upside down, and so did his approach to business and life.
Steve's transformation from being rooted in uniformity to thriving amidst diversity led to a personal leap across cultural lines, led to love, and also to the creation of multi-million dollar ventures that blend unique ideas with varied people, showing us that embracing change can be the cornerstone of success.
Retail is a playground for innovation, and we've got an insider's take on revitalizing a family legacy in today's fast-paced market. One encounter with Amazon buyers at a trade show catapulted satin pillowcases and shower caps to the top of online sales charts, demonstrating the power of modern consumer behavior.
Steve's entrepreneurial spirit led to adding to traditional distribution channels and embracing social media marketing, celebrating the unique connections between barbers and clients with professional athletes through personal tales.
Steve embraces differences and builds bridges to connect new ideas and worlds.
Welcome to the third growth option podcast, where we talk with business leaders and innovators hungry to drive growth that can be faster than internal organic growth and less risky than acquisition. Your moderator is Bernal Duncan-Spuller, chief Sherpa and CEO at Realign, who has led private equity owned distributors through turnarounds and growth. With battle proven leaders from all frontiers, we want to provoke thinking about business growth beyond conventional wisdom and binary choices.
Speaker 2:Hey, I'm Beno, your host, talking today with Steve Berry, brand and creative and sales dynamo, also a Boston transplant living in Miami. First a very reluctant transplant who would never date a Latina before he married one. Steve, welcome to third growth option podcast.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much, Beno. Thank you for having me. It's fun to be here. I'm looking forward to it.
Speaker 2:I love your background. I think it's interesting how the story, how you moved from Boston to Miami and then also how you ended up in product design and commercializing kind of wacky ideas into multi-million dollar businesses and based on that conversation we had many months ago, I kind of think about your persona, personality, background, approach to life and business as bridge building between ideas and people, and I think that bridge building is really interesting. Let's just kind of kick it off with how did you end up moving from what you call the Wonder Bread Town to Miami and then why'd you end up staying?
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know, I think my journey has really been a journey of constant learning and self-improvement. You know, like I mentioned, I came from a Wonder Bread town. I mean, there was no diversity, I think. In my high school class I think there was two Jewish kids, there was one Latino kid and most of the African American kids that came were from the city that were bused in, you know. So diversity was not really a part of my life.
Speaker 3:I went to the University of Massachusetts. I graduated in 2000 and in 2001 I started my sales career. Really, if I could go back and do it all over again, I would be more focused in college and in a specific channel, you know, or education. I was very broad. I was like, okay, I know, I'm going to be a sales guy, just give me the piece of paper so they'll pay me more money and let me get out of here and start making some money. So I took a job as a tele sales. I had a college buddy who had called me up.
Speaker 3:I was actually back visiting some friends at UMass and I had had a couple beers and he said hey, you know you had come visit me in Miami before. I know you liked it and the guy whose room you stayed in he's moving out rents 350 bucks a month. You want to move down? I was like, man, it's a sweet house, got a cool yard. It's Miami. I was paying 600 bucks a month to live in this tiny box of an apartment just outside Boston and right next to the town I grew up in, and it was. I had gone to college and had this eye-opening experience of diversity, meeting friends of all walks of life and all different countries. It was a really eye-opening experience. It's something that when I moved back to the area that I grew up in, I didn't realize how boring it would be.
Speaker 2:Hence the Wonder Bread Town.
Speaker 3:right the name Wonder Bread Town, yes yeah, exactly Just nothing, but a piece of white bread. It doesn't have any flavors, not like rye bread where you get a lot of spice and different flavor. It's just Wonder Bread. And so that was an opportunity and I said you know what, let's do it. I just packed up all my stuff, I quit my job, backpacked around Europe with my cousin for a month and then I moved down, took all my stuff in my car, moved down here, down to Miami, yeah, and at first it was major culture shock.
Speaker 3:I moved into an area that everybody speaks Spanish. People were walking up to me at the grocery store and talking to me in Spanish. I couldn't believe it. I couldn't be more Caucasian looking, I guess, and it was just challenging and uncomfortable for me. In Massachusetts there wasn't really a lot of homosexuality that was more out in the open here in Miami, so that was different to be a part of. Even the majority of my Caucasian friends in Miami were Jewish, not that that's really different, but it was a different family dynamic and I learned pretty quickly that these things that I didn't really understand or that made me uncomfortable. I didn't know if Miami was for me, but probably my biggest strength and my biggest weakness is my pride, and I was too prideful to pack it up and go home.
Speaker 2:With the tail between your legs.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly, I couldn't do it and I started looking at the things that made me uncomfortable. I looked up to friends around me and I said, well, why do these things make me uncomfortable? That they don't make anybody else? And it was Challenging myself to get over myself, basically, and the environment that I grew up and that I knew After having my college experience that I didn't like that one to bread environment. I wanted the spice alive, you know. I wanted people that were open and honest with themselves and that were out there, being being themselves, and I wanted to be able to accept that like everybody else could. That was a metamorphosis of who I am as a person today and it was one of the greatest decisions I ever made my life, to the point where I could never move back To Boston just because it's not. There's not enough diversity for me there.
Speaker 3:You know, miami is a vibrant city. Like I said, people express themselves in all sorts of different ways. It's a huge international community People from like South America big presence here Cuba, huge European presence, russian friends, ukrainian friends, asian friends, african American friends, latino friends. Like you said, when I first moved to Miami, I couldn't see myself even dating a Latina. I just saw myself with the white girl. Now I'm married to a Colombian. I have two beautiful kids, you know. So no, again challenging myself to get over these hangouts from growing up in a town that that didn't have this type of diversity and you know that could be you as a kid, you learn, or you you're around some in a maybe adults that don't speak the right way About other people and you learn how to separate. You don't fall into that trap. You grow as a person. You elevate yourself above Everybody else. So, yeah, that was, that was kind of my first leap of faith. It was kind of the first time that I said to myself you know what, if I'm ever, if I'm a gambler, I'm putting all my cards on, I'm putting all my chips on me. You know, I would bet on me verse betting on anybody else. And I've challenged myself in my career.
Speaker 3:I didn't always have the biggest cheerleaders around me, you know. Sometimes it seemed like some the people I work for is like in the past. I was trying to make money and they were fighting me tooth and nail. I was making a lot of money, you know, and I just didn't understand why. Why try to keep me down and if you, if you, try to support me, I can, we can really do something amazing. And it took me a while but eventually I found again. I just I kept plotting away. I never, never, took no for an answer, never let you know disparaging remarks get to me or anything. I just always, always had that will to succeed. You know, I didn't.
Speaker 3:In Miami I, when I first moved here, I was real selective about the type of job I was going to take, until the money started to get a little tight and then I took a job as a recruiter, which was challenging, you know, trying to sell. First I had to make two sales. To make one sale, you know, I had to sell the. I was recruiting radiologists. Selling the hospital on using me to fill their job position, then selling the candidate on the position is like I had to sell them both. I had to make them like each other.
Speaker 3:I was on like a relationship counselor and then yeah, exactly, and you had to take two people that had to get on the same page and it was like and this is tough, but I placed a few and I realize it wasn't really for me and I found a job in in for a branding company called brand institute. It was really cool. We are creating brand names for consumer products and mostly for pharmaceuticals. We specialize in name safety research testing so pharmaceutical companies could gain FDA approval for their brand name. It's a it's quite an arduous process where you know a company invests millions and millions of dollars in developing a drug. They have to go through a series of name testing because If any name sounds like or looks like another drug name or pharmaceutical name, that can cause a medication error. You know. So if the doctor scribbles it down on a piece of paper, if it's a new, you know it's a new anti anxiety medication called Niagara. He scribbles it down on a piece of paper and the pharmacist reads Viagra he gives it to we got, we got problems.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, exactly, and they that person has a heart heart condition, you know like that person could could have a have a fatal case. So that was a high paced job. It was really challenging. It was fun to an extent, but you know it was a. It's a very intense environment and very, very cutthroat and eventually I saw myself getting into. You know, I kind of wanted to take a break.
Speaker 3:I worked there for about five years, took a break and start worked with my cousin. He had started a, an advertising agency focusing on. We sold, we were wrapping airplanes in advertisements. We had a big account, bode. They were an online casino, which ended up being kind of a funny situation. The owner of a Bodog wanted Bodog dot com to be the airplane wrap, no matter how many times we consult them, because at the time the whole online gambling thing was was relatively new and the feds didn't really want that. You know they didn't want a commercial gambling site online. So he pushed through and wanted dot com. Well, it ended up kind of blowing up.
Speaker 3:There was a big issue and that kind of led me to say, ok, I got, I got to find something new. I put my resume out there. I got a bunch of calls, I had an interview for a job in six years, and so I just said you know what one of the hardest things to do is start talking about yourself without sounding conceded or or fully yourself. You got to be able to talk confidently but but also hit the touch points where you can make an impact. So I just took any interview that came my way. I didn't care. I said I just need to practice. I'm probably not going to take this job, I'm just going to go in there and practice and this job that I'm at now.
Speaker 3:This woman she was office manager. She happened to be my future boss's wife. She called me, she invited me to come in for an interview and it was for a job in the beauty industry, and I said listen, ma'am, I can tell you right now, if this involves me walking door to door trying to sell somebody a can of hairspray, this is probably for me. She says no, no, no, it's not that I can't really tell you much about it. If you want to come in for an interview, the guys would like to talk to you. I said, okay, sure, so I come in, and I met the owners, donald and Richard Lebo, and my boss, dale Hill, and they were great guys. I really appreciated the fact that they had. You know, it's a fourth generation. Now it's a fourth generation family on business. Their grandfather had started the business, passed it on to their dad, who passed it on to them, who are eventually going to pass it on to their children, and my boss had been in the industry for, I think at the time, like three decades.
Speaker 3:So it was an opportunity to learn from people who had a lot of experience. Most of my sales experience up to that date was me talking over the phone and closing people over the phone. You know it's a different skill and you're working over the phone. I mean you can. The people can't see your face. You know you could be doing other things while you're talking to them. You could skirt around issues, you know, because these are you just going to hang up the phone. You know you go run and hide.
Speaker 3:But this was an opportunity. I was going to be meeting face to face with people. It was a chance to add to my resume and the guys were really into sports. I mean that helped. I'm from Boston, so obviously big sports fan. So they were like oh, you can try, you can follow the Red Sox all around the country if you want, you know, plan your sales trips that way, and it was. It just seemed like a cool opportunity and I got into this industry. It was the complete opposite of my former jobs, which were more high stress and, you know the constant need to make quotas and push and work long hours. I mean I used to go in at seven and come home at seven and these guys were throwing me out at five o'clock. I'd never been to a happy hour. You know, like that was fun.
Speaker 2:So you've been with this beauty company for for how many years?
Speaker 3:17.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was seven, 17 years right.
Speaker 3:I just completed my 17th year.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's awesome and it started out kind of old school sales, you know face to face sales, sort of you know old school sales, reps, appointments, and you guys have gone through a transition into, you know, digital marketing and you know you're working with Brian Beck and you know with stuff. Talk a little bit about that transition from old school to, or how hard was it to move into, the digital transformation, digital marketing.
Speaker 3:I think the challenge is, you know, when you work for a generational family on business, you know they're used to doing things a certain way and that way has been successful. I mean this company is, I believe, 77 years old, started in the 40s I believe, and that was the first hurdle. I came in young. You know a lot of ideas, I saw potential. You know. I saw that we had a lot of items that we sold, that our main customer is the professional beauty distributor. So in order to purchase products you have to have a cosmetology license or a barbering license or a makeup license. But many of our products at the time or that were in our catalog, were more retail focused. I mean you don't need a license to put a satin pill case on your pillow or put on a shower cap. It's not like your hair is going to fall out if you do it wrong. So I started to look at the opportunity to get us into retail and the first step was almost kind of by dumb luck. I just talked to the right person my first year in the business, our first major trade show, b2b trade show, cosmoprof is in Las Vegas, and there was two girls walking by the booth and I remember I invited them to come in and they said, oh no, we're just looking. I said, you know, if you step on the carpet in the booth, I promise I won't call the cops. And they looked at me and kind of laughed, as you just did, and they said well, actually, you know, you have a lot of these products that we're looking to launch. We're buyers for Amazon, we're about to launch beauty. And I was like cha-ching, you know. So I was an Amazon fan. I had Amazon Prime, I was an early adopter of that. So we worked out a deal where I became a vendor for them. They were buying products from me and all of a sudden, you know, we had these items like satin pillowcases and shower caps that all of a sudden just blew up. I mean, we had never seen volume on these items like we were seeing from Amazon. And then it was like other, you know, hair clips and things that kind of like bridged the gap between a professional and a normal consumer, you know. So that was the first eye open. Or it's like hey, this works. And if it works for Amazon in an online level, what if we got into Walmart? What if we got into Walgreens, cvs. What if we got into, you know, grocery stores, h-e-b, stop and shop?
Speaker 3:So I had had the fortunate chance encounter with a guy named Stephen Estrin. He had a lot of experience. His family owned a business and he took it over from his father and actually bought out his father and his uncle took it over and turned it into like a $200 million powerhouse. They did cocoa butter and shea butter and moisturizer and all sorts of Queen Haleen was their brand and one of their brands. And I had happened to be at a buying conference and I had breakfast at a table.
Speaker 3:I was standing up just eating breakfast before the show began and he sidled up and said, hey, do you mind if I have breakfast with you here?
Speaker 3:I said sure, and we started talking and because of his brands and his experience he started a consultancy and he was a straight shooter and we got along really well right off the bat because he was like, look, I'm not going to charge you all this money to pitch you on how I can help you, because I don't even know if I can help you.
Speaker 3:Give me 500 bucks, buy me a plane ticket down in Miami, I'll come down, tell me about your business, tell me about your products, tell me about what you want to do at Mass Retail and I'll tell you if you have the capabilities of doing it, because I've been doing it for a long time and that was his expertise and he knew everybody. I mean when I say this guy is a legend, any retail buyer, retail president, ceo they know Steven Astron. So he came down and we had a nice chat. He saw that one of our biggest strengths at Betty Dane Creation so the company that I've been employed at for 17 years is our operational capabilities. I mean we run a really tight ship here. We are really great at keeping items in stock and that's big at retail. You can't be on the dance floor if you don't have the shoes.
Speaker 2:A lot of people claim to be great at it at very few are Right.
Speaker 3:So he told me about this buying conference called ECRM, which was basically speed dating with retail buyers and you have 20 minutes and at 18 minutes they're knocking on the door to pull the buyer out and send another one in Three. It was like two and a half days, two or three and a half days, I don't remember and he was like we got to do this. So I said okay and he came in with me because he was the warm glove, he knew everybody, he gave the introduction, he was my validity. Being blessed by Steve Astron was like hey, these guys can do this and hey, they have interesting products. We think we can make some money on these things. So all of a sudden he saw me pitch and really took a liking to me and really mentored me into landing these accounts and challenging myself and understanding that business again like educating myself.
Speaker 2:And selling in different ways. Right, because the company had basically sold two distributors who sold to barbershops and beauty salons, et cetera, and now, as you called it earlier, you're lucked into Amazon and then you're building bridges into different retail channels. But there was another part of the business evolution maybe I could call it that you told me about, which is commercializing wacky ideas, right, like you have a great creative team and you guys sort of like how do you do that? How do you come up with wacky ideas and turn them into multi-million dollar?
Speaker 3:I think the first funny ideas are, you know, just being on Amazon and the power of Amazon. I had a wife who was pregnant at the time and the owner, son Alex he had, his wife was pregnant as well. And you have those big c-shaped pillowcases and his wife complained that the pillowcase was scratchy. We have a full cut and so operation here. We make a lot of our products. It's crazy when people come visit they don't know that American manufacturing still exists. And we have a hundred and thirty thousand square foot warehouse and about About half of it is is manufacturing employee, about a hundred, mostly women and men that cut so buttons, you know, package the whole nine. So he was like man, we have this jersey material out the warehouse. Do you think if we Need a pillowcase for this pillow, we could throw it on Amazon and like see what happens. And it was like boom, all sudden, like Work, doing lots of sales on this item. That was the first kind of wacky idea, that which led to, you know, expanding in that kind of thing, in that kind of Ball field, I guess.
Speaker 3:Then you know, there was a meeting Same guy. He was big into fishing and it was you just started with. The company is pretty shy, didn't really talk much in the meetings and and at one meeting he said you know we sold these nylon barber jackets and poly cotton. And he said you know we call it nylon barber jacket or we call it Floyd barber jacket. How can we don't call it Like I wear salt armor when I'm out fishing and it's you pf, you know sun shirts. He says why don't we call it barber armor? And everyone kind of laughs because of the idea kind of came out of nowhere. Again. He was kind of quiet in the meetings and, coming from a branding background, I was like you know what? That just sounds great. I really like the way barber armor sounds. I started thinking about like how can I apply what we do and apply that? Okay?
Speaker 3:Well, I was big into direct to consumer brands and how my cousin who had had the ad agency, got built it up, sold it and then launched his own women's fashion line and because he was good at Facebook and Instagram advertising when it was first being popularized, we went on. My bachelor party was just he and I going around New York and have a good time and everywhere we went, his phone was just going to change, change, change, change. I was like what is that? He's like? I have this jumpsuit. It's part of my line that I've had in its blowing up. He was doing twenty five K a day In sales on this one item.
Speaker 3:So I was like man, these are the things that make me think. You know, like Tommy John underwear revolutionized underwear, you know just made, took a simple product and made it better. Bomb is socks did the same thing. Dollar shave club and Harry's that direct consumer shave.
Speaker 3:So I looked at what we did and I said, hey, you know, I could modernize the barber uniform. I could make Barbara like under armor for barbers, so it would be moisture, working fabrics, hair repellent, with vents on the side so you get airflow. You know we'd have, we'd have a polo that again would be comfortable suit, doing different things and really modernizing the traditional barber uniform, which had never been done and still hasn't been done. I mean we still own the space with the unique product and that's been over a million dollar brand, didn't take long to get there which it also opened the doors for us into our first direct to consumer brand. I mean I remember when I pitched the guys here, I gave him this great idea and I explained to them how it was going to work and at the end I was like here's the catch, we're not gonna have any distributors, we're going direct to consumer. And they were like you're out of your mind. And I said listen, we have distributors that we sell to. Now they buy, they sell our barber jackets for twenty, twenty five, maybe twenty seven dollars. They're gonna be selling this for fifty bucks. So you know, if it doesn't sell right off the bat, what are they gonna do? Market down to forty, cause all it's gonna do is sit on the shelf at their store. So, doesn't sell the next month. Mark down the thirty, don't sell the next month. Mark down twenty five, maybe race to the bottom, yeah, and then. And then your fifty dollar. You know value is now twenty five and you've lost all your brand equity. So we started direct to consumer and we did Facebook and Instagram at advertising and we attended trade shows and where we sold directly to professionals, barbers and even even cosmetologists.
Speaker 3:Stylist, love, love. The price of a really high tech cape. You know you go to get your haircut, they put the cape on you. We modernize that had. They have carbon fiber woven into the fabric which rejects static electricity so the hair will slide right off. We had a elasticized neck so you could fit little kids. You could fit NFL size players. I made friends with a lot of barbers that were that cut professional athletes. My good friend, steven Rivera he's the canes barber, he cuts the Miami hurricanes, miami dolphins the first barber to have a barbershop inside a professional NFL and college facility. My buddy, hugo he he's the first barbershop inside a professional baseball stadium is the is the marlins barber. And these guys like that I became friends with through this brand, launching this brand or that. I know Steve before, but these guys became instant friends and it was one of them again like me, constantly educating and evolving myself.
Speaker 2:And that's the key, right? I mean, that's the key to everything that you've. You've done from. You know the decision to leave the wonder bread town and move to Miami and sort of challenge your boundaries, right, or say you know what I'm gonna, I'm gonna look at the world in a different way. I'm gonna get to know new cultures, new ways of thinking. I love how the product successes and commercialization successes for the last 17 years in your current position, you're connecting dots from my first job and my second job and the guy I met at breakfast and the people I saw at the train show, right, you're just sort of like. You're like connecting dots and building bridges between these things and you have an easy way of connecting with people, right, I mean, that's sort of in your DNA.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean I like to say I'm fun for the whole family. You know the friends and coworkers and customers and everybody that I've encountered along this journey. I've always found a way to take a little piece of them, something that I like about them, and add it to my overall persona, you know, and strengthen myself in different ways and challenge myself. I mean I'm a sales guy. I remember in the past I was handed a bonus check and I said thank you. I said you know you don't really seem satisfied and I said well, first of all, I earned this bonus check. You know I had parameters that I had to meet and I met them. So I'm getting paid for based on I earned it.
Speaker 3:This is not a handout. And, second of all, I'm your salesman. The day that you hear me say that I'm satisfied, fire me. That's right, because I'm fat and happy and now I'm a danger to you. Now I'm not giving 150%, maybe I'm down to 70. I don't ever wanna be that person. I always want more Out of myself and for myself. Life is challenging and the more challenges that you stack up for yourself, the more chances you have to overcome and the more times you overcome, the better you feel, the more confident you are and it becomes sort of self perpetuating cycle of good stuff.
Speaker 2:I wanna thank you for you know, taking the time and sharing a little bit about your journey of you, know all the different dots that you've connected and the bridges you've built between these different things, and I have the feeling we will need to do another podcast, you know, a few years from now, because you'll probably have built seven more bridges connecting 82 more dots. I sure hope so, I'm sure. Hey, if folks wanted to reach out to you one-on-one, where might they? What's a good place to find you? You?
Speaker 3:can find me on LinkedIn. My name is Steve Berry. Like straw rasp blue huckle, you can easily find me on LinkedIn. That's probably the best way to get home. Thank you so much, steve. This was great. Thanks, ben, I hopefully I didn't ramble on too much.
Speaker 2:No, no, no, there were some good nuggets there. Thank you, Awesome. I appreciate it. Hey. If folks wanted to explore other growth topics, you can find me on my website, realignforresultscom, or email Beno P-E-N-N-O at realignforresultscom. Thanks and keep growing.
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