WHAT BECAME A providential partnership began when Jimmy DeGroot called the wrong jeweler to invite him to appear as a guest on a video seminar for his business, Train Retail.
The guy he reached was Kyle Bullock, owner of Bullock Jewelry in Rosell, NM, a 100-year-old, fourth-generation family jewelry business.
In retrospect, he describes that mistake as miraculous.
“I learned he had been considering doing consulting, having been invited to do talks at shows for buying groups. I said, ‘Hey! Let’s do this together!’ And voila!”
Bullock, in DeGroot’s estimation, had the perfect experience for the gig. He had earned an undergraduate degree in psychology and was intrigued by the psychology of business. That morphed into graduate study in leadership.
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“We complement each other nicely because he’s a numbers geek with psychology training, and my experience as a store manager has always embraced psychology,” DeGroot says. “When you know what makes people tick, you can be a great leader.”
Working with consulting firms as part of his education, Bullock became addicted to watching people find the spark of inspiration that would enable them to go beyond what they thought they were capable of. “That spark in their eyes would light up when we would go do a workshop. I thought that one of the coolest things in the world was to allow somebody to see their potential and to be valued,” Bullock says. “I’ve been doing some form of consulting, training, speaking, workshopping since graduate school.”
That expertise proved essential to his success in retail, too, with a focus on hiring and development. He hires team members with strengths that complement his own. “I tell them I’m going to train you to do this skill, and I want you to be able to do it better than I do it,” he says. “Once you start figuring out how to find people whose strengths complement your weaknesses, and you encourage them to grow those strengths, and you give them the training to do that, most people will rise to that occasion because it’s in their zone.”
Bullock describes himself as an absentee owner now because he spends about 10 hours in his retail business and the bulk of his work week as a trainer and coach in partnership with DeGroot, who founded the Train Retail platform a decade ago. Store owners often include the short training videos — there’s a sales track and a management track — in their staff meetings.
Kyle Bullock, left, and Jimmy DeGroot lead a seminar at the INSTORE Show in Rosemont, IL.
Recently, their collaboration led to a free podcast called Slow Growth Retail, now available at instoremag.com, in which they address issues affecting independent retailers and offer practical solutions. One recent, multi-part theme is “How Do You Deal With Inflation?” Another is “Retail Predictions for 2025: Opportunities and Challenges Ahead.”
Whether he’s coaching via video or in person, Bullock doesn’t try to be someone he isn’t. “I never wear a suit and tie,” he says. “We are very much down-to-earth people; that’s what sets us apart. We don’t want anything to be stuffy. Individuality and personality are what make independent retail great.”
Bullock says his primary role in his store is consultant and coach. “My passion is to see people grow,” he says. “I get to do that in my business. And I also get to do that through Train Retail with our clients.”
Bullock says store owners interested in stepping away from the daily management of their stores should set a goal and determine how much time they want to put into the business. “I didn’t become an absentee owner to put my feet up on a couch five or six days a week,” he says.
“Once you know your why and you can really define how you want it to look, it’ll be much easier to arrive at the steps to get there. If you just wake up tomorrow and say, yeah, I just don’t want to work as much anymore, the business probably will not be as successful, and you really won’t know where you’re going.”
For more information about Train Retail, visit trainretail.com.
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