ANDY KOEHN WILL tell you that life is pretty damn short to spend it being someone you’re not — in your store, with your team, or with your clients. Here are some favorite takeaways from his conversation with Trace Shelton on episode two of “Supernatural Cheer”.
Tip 1: Be a Band
Most jewelry stores think of themselves as, well, jewelry stores. Andy Koehn thinks of his as a band.
This isn’t a branding exercise. It’s a genuinely different way of organizing a business. In a band, everyone has a distinct part to play — not a job description, but a *role* in creating something together. The goal isn’t efficiency. It’s a great song. “Each one of us has our role to play, our part to play in creating a great song,” Andy says. “And of course our audience is clients.”
When you walk into Koehn and Koehn Jewelers, you can email the staff at [email protected]. That’s not a cute detail. It’s the whole philosophy made visible.
Tip 2: Let the Store Reflect Who You Are
Here’s a thing that sounds obvious but apparently isn’t: if you spend your whole workday pretending to be someone you’re not, you will be tired and miserable, and your customers will sense something is off even if they can’t say why.
Andy figured this out early. He and Jenn dropped the suits and ties. They built the store around their actual personalities. “We wanted our store to feel like who we were,” he says. “And we think we perform better that way.”
The word Andy uses for the alternative is “unsustainable” — a word he says he didn’t really understand until a couple of years ago. “You can’t keep it up. It’s a farce. And then it’s exhausting.”
Tip 3: Hire for Fit, Not Just Skill
Andy has a test he applies during job interviews, and it’s a pretty simple one: does this person feel like they belong in the band?
If the answer is no — even if they’re talented, even if they could theoretically take the store to the “next level” — he passes. “We’re putting our best foot forward,” he says of the interview process. “If we’re not meshing even during this interview… I don’t know if I want you in the band.”
What he’s actually hiring for is something harder to define than skill. He wants Lindsay to show up as Lindsay. “We hired you for you and who you are,” he says. “We don’t need another Andy, we don’t need another Jenn.”
Tip 4: Be Open to Being Wrong
Andy is surprisingly unbothered by the possibility that he might not be right. Not because he doesn’t have opinions — he clearly does — but because he’s learned to let his pride settle before he responds to a challenge.
“Once your pride sort of relaxes a little bit,” he says, “then you can actually consider it. And sometimes it’s like, yeah, you know what, they had a point.”
He’s also clear that this isn’t a blank check. Sometimes he hears someone out and still says no. “You gotta know what you believe in the end,” he says. “Life is pretty damn short.” But the willingness to actually consider it — to sit with discomfort instead of getting defensive — seems to take a lot of pressure off everyone in the building.
Tip 5: Don’t Chase the Wrong Clients
Andy has made peace with the fact that some people walk into Koehn and Koehn Jewelers, look around, and decide it’s not for them. He used to try to win those people over. He doesn’t anymore.
“To chase those people was always futile,” he says. “It required us to change the way we were behaving, which is super artificial.” The exhaustion of performing for people who don’t want what you actually offer, he found, was quietly corrosive. And there’s a flip side: when you stop chasing the wrong clients, the right ones — the ones who like your vibe, who tell their friends, who keep coming back — find you more easily. “They come, they find, they stay, they tell others like them.”
Tip 6: Don’t Treat Men Like Idiots
Andy built an entire podcast and a book around a single observation: the jewelry industry largely ignores male customers, or worse, treats them like they’re a little bit stupid. “Guys aren’t stupid,” he says. “They just don’t care about this until they do — and then when they do, it’s a very short window.”
His podcast, “How to Buy Like a Guy”, and his book, “The Inappropriate Guide to Buying an Engagement Ring”, are both attempts to meet that customer where he actually is. The lesson for any jeweler isn’t necessarily to copy Andy’s approach — it’s to ask who might be walking into your store and feeling like they don’t quite belong there, and what it would look like to speak more directly to that group.
Tip 7: Crowdsource Your Playlist
Years ago, Andy put out a call to his customers: send us your favorite songs and we’ll add them to the Koehn and Koehn playlist. He got a ton of submissions. Now when customers walk in, there’s a chance their music is playing.
It’s a small thing. But it’s the kind of small thing that makes people feel like a place belongs to them a little bit.
Tip 8: Have a Reset Routine
Andy is deliberate about managing his own mood before he walks into the store. He sings in the car. He talks to himself. When he’s in a genuinely bad spot, he puts on headphones and finds something motivational — he’s particularly drawn to self-help writing from the 1920s, when life was harder and the advice was blunter.
His key insight is that willing yourself out of a bad mood isn’t really a strategy. “It’s not good enough just to say stop it,” he says. “It’s like, stop it — but do this instead. Consume this instead. That makes a world of difference.”
Tip 9: Get a Food Truck
Jenn Koehn noticed early in COVID that their town had a limited number of food truck licenses available for businesses to host. She got one. Now every Thursday — weather permitting — there’s a food truck in the Koehn and Koehn parking lot. It started with tacos. There’s now a cupcake truck in the rotation. A lobster po’boy truck is in the works.
“It’s more for [the customers], really,” Andy says. “But it’s just a cool little touch.” Andy thought Jenn was crazy at first. He does not think that anymore.
