Daniel: So, Charles, tell us a little bit about your background, where did you grow up, your family, etc.

Charles: Well, I was born in Brooklyn in 1942, a completely different age, but a regular family, Ozzie and Harriet kind of growing up with a older sister, three years older than me, an older half-brother who wasn't around. He was in the army. And he came home when I was, like, five years old, I guess. And went to school like normal kids, didn't play sports. I was very small, still am, I guess. And so, I went to school, went to high school, started college when I was 16 because it's...

Daniel: Yeah, that's interesting. You mentioned that before we turned on the mic. So, how did you wind up going to college at such a young age?

Charles: Well, they skipped me ahead. It used to be a special progressive class. I went from seventh to ninth, and because I was so smart, they said. And my mother objected and she said, "Don't do it because, you know, he may be academically okay with that, but socially, he's just not ready for it." And they prevailed upon her. She finally gave in, skipped me ahead, and I ended up at 16 in college where I was harassed every day about being, you know, young and being...looking like I was in the wrong school. And, "Hey, don't you belong in, you know, grade school or something? What are you doing here?" And I come home crying most nights and flunking out of all the classes. As smart as I was, I just...emotionally, it was a bad experience. And so, I went from there. I went to work for about a year and then I joined the army for six months.

Daniel: So, you left school. You had mentioned you left school, right?

Charles: I left school, yeah. And I joined the army, the Army Reserve, really, and they had a program where you do six months active duty and then seven and a half years reserved duty. But they had the Berlin crisis and they held my unit in. So, I ended up doing 15 months in...of the Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and then 9 months in Fort Bragg, North Carolina. So, it's protecting Berlin from Fort Bragg, never figured that out. But I got some time off of my reserve duty for it. And then, I went back into the company that I had been with, which was the textile company. And I was then trying to get into sales, and that didn't work out. I went to another textile company. Eventually, I went into the jewelry business working for an uncle and...

Daniel: How old were you at this time?

Charles: I must have been right around 20, 21. I got married at 20, had my first kid at 22, and the next one at 25.

Daniel: Pretty young.

Charles: Yes, too young. But it worked out well in the long run because I was a young father and a young grandfather, and that's been nice. And I worked in the jewelry business, then, worked in New York City selling ads in the Bluebook yellow pages, a small book. They had a sales contest and the big prize was a 19-inch color Zenith television.

Daniel: With the CRT...with the cathode-ray tube, you mentioned?

Charles: Probably, yeah. And I won the contest because I figured I had a game in the system as you got points for ads that you sold. If you sold a full page, maybe you got some amount of points, half page, less, and so on. But if you got an ad paid for a year in advance, you got extra bonus points. So, I figured out that if I could sell a quarter-page ad paid for, I get more points than selling a full-page ad. So, I would dissuade people from taking a full-page on to take a quarter and pay for it in advance. They get a discount, I get the points, and I won the TV.

Daniel: I gotta say, it's so clever, huh?

Charles: Well, yeah. And I took it home. I don't have it anymore, but...

Daniel: Well, I would imagine that. It's a different time. But you're what we might call a serial entrepreneur. As we're talking before we turned on the recording, you've done a myriad of different things.

Charles: I have, yeah. Well, I've been a serial employee, too, because I've had a lot of jobs from textiles to jewelry, to ads, yellow page sales, to working with a company on the island where we sold space in the malls when they do a show. They have the common space. And we would rent the whole common space and then go to different people, a swimming pool company, a fence company, whatever it was, and sell them that, you know, segment of space, a 10 by 10, in the mall. So, we did that. I did that for a couple of years.

Daniel: You were a chauffeur?

Charles: I was a chauffeur when I came out to New Jersey to work for my brother-in-law in his hobby shop. I came out here, had custody of my daughter, and he fired me three months later. And he was just sort of a wacky guy. But he just came in to give me occasional work here anymore, and that was it. So...

Daniel: So, what did you do?

Charles: Well, I had to scramble because I didn't have any...I didn't own a car. I didn't have a job. I didn't have friends or contacts out in New Jersey. So, I looked in the newspapers and I saw an ad for a chauffeur for a local businessman in Rumson to drive him to New York and Parsippany. So, I went. His wife interviewed me. She said, "You're overqualified for this job." And I said, "I know. But I need the job and I'll be a good chauffeur." And I was a good chauffeur and I had a great time. And he would let me take the Cadillac home on the weekends, had me bring the girls over to the house. I had both daughters by that time, bring the girls over to the house in Rumson, use the jet skis, use the Jacuzzi. We had a nice relationship, turning almost like friends. But then, my sister divorced her husband and she said, you know, "Come on back and run the hobby shop," because she wasn't a business person. She was a housewife at the time and three kids to take care of, so...

Daniel: So, this is where really the entrepreneurial, the business ownership first started.

Charles: Started developing there, yeah. While I was there, some young kids rented some space upstairs to use as a rehearsal hall, a rehearsal room for their band. And I ended up managing them and driving them up pretty big. We had a big following. We had busloads of people commit to see us at the bitter end in New York and all the way, you know, all around the shore. But then, they got stolen away by some other entrepreneur, I guess.

Daniel: So, a more experienced, probably a little bit larger...

Charles: Yeah, it was fun, too, you know. So, they had partying a lot at nights. And then, I started my own side business besides working sometimes 7 days a week, 10, 12 hours a day in the hobby store, which we did from Thanksgiving to Christmas every year. That was the big time. But I started a wholesale business on the side, which developed from renting a room upstairs in the hobby store to eventually my own 1,200, 1,600-square-foot warehouse in Red Bank. And I developed a line of pine with derby cars and accessories, my own brand. And I also developed some wood birdhouse and bird feeder kits, and started wholesaling them out of the warehouse, and then, eventually, outgrew the warehouse and moved to a bigger one in Manasquan.

Daniel: And that's what you're still involved with to this day?

Charles: That's what I do today. It's all I do. I left the hobby store, like, four years ago. And now, I do this. I don't have any other business, although I dabble here and there. I always look for a niche market maybe, where I could develop a product. I've had some spectacular failures over the last few years of products that, you know, I have gathering dust in the garage or the warehouse, just not going anywhere. But, you know, it's not...you know, I don't pet the rent money kind of thing.

Daniel: Once you're an entrepreneur and you're looking for opportunities, that never leaves you, right?

Charles: No.

Daniel: You're always looking for some other opportunity or, you know, your mind is open.

Charles: Yeah. I'm more of a product-oriented person. So, when somebody says they have an idea for a product, my ears perk up. And, you know, "Can I make it for you? Can I resource it? Can I market it for you?"

Daniel: Yeah, because sales is obviously an area that you're strong in as well. You've got a big background in that.

Charles: Yes, yeah.

Daniel: Right. You've been successful.

Charles: I've been moderately successful, yeah, yeah.

Daniel: So, one of the questions that I like to ask is what you did to succeed in your field. Is there anyone or anything that come to mind?

Charles: Well, I don't know if you say in my field because, you know, it's been so many fields. The main thing was...

Daniel: Multiple fields.

Charles: Yeah, was not being laser-focused on. It has to be this field or that field. If something wasn't working out or is flexible, to move into another field, to accept change, you know, to give 110% of effort in whatever I was in.

Daniel: Right. So, you've done any number of different things. What is your one overarching sort of skill or thing that you think has led to the success or the growth of what you've done, or any lessons learned from...

Charles: I don't know. I think of myself as a generalist, if there is such a thing. I'm not a specialist. So, it doesn't matter if I was in the jewelry business, or if I was in the food business, or if I'm in the hobby business. I just work intensely, honestly. And, again, I started the East Coast hobby show when I was in the hobby business back then, you know, in the '90s, I guess. And, again, it was a spectacular failure. But it was a great experience. I became very well known in the hobby industry. All the manufacturers knew me. It just isn't the kind of industry...it wasn't even then the kind of industry that would support an East Coast hobby show. They have the big one in Chicago every year. But I felt it needed an East Coast one and just couldn't develop. I mean, we had the show for three years and lost money every year, and then sold it to some poor guy who thought it was a good idea. And no, and he didn't even last two years.

Daniel: Okay. But that's actually an interesting history, an interesting story because failure, especially as an entrepreneur, isn't really always a failure as long as you learn something from it or you ever leverage it in some way, right?

Charles: Yeah. And you can't think of yourself as a failure, you know. It was an effort that didn't work out and you move on to the next. But you can't become depressed because the hobby show didn't work out or because this product doesn't sell. You know that there's gonna be...I guess it's being optimistic, a positive mental attitude. You know that something else is coming along.

Daniel: There would be another opportunity or something you'll learn from that. And you mentioned that you did. You got all these contacts that helped you grow your hobby business.

Charles: It helped with my wholesale hobby business.

Daniel: Right.

Charles: Yeah. So, they knew who I was. It was easier to get a foot in the door. And I got the two biggest distributors in the hobby industry buying my products because they knew me and they would a take chance. And then, once they were buying some products, they buy more products. And it grew very, very nicely until one of them went out of business, and then the other one out of business just a few years ago. And I thought, "That was gonna put the kibosh on me." But I just managed to keep going with a new customer who was even bigger than the old customers were.

Daniel: In an industry that you mentioned before is really served on the wane [SP].

Charles: It is. Yeah, with the internet, it's killing it a lot. People used to do hobbies. They would buy a rocket kit and they would assemble a rocket. And then, it became nobody...not nobody, but most people didn't want to buy a rocket kit. They wanted it pre-assembled, instant gratification. Go out, plug it in, shoot it up. Then, they did the radio-controlled cars. We used to sell tons of them, but they were kits. They had to be assembled, nuts and bolts. And the kids used to get such satisfaction when they would finish. And they'd look up and they'd have a working car that they built. But then, they started providing them pre-buil, and everybody went for that. Now, you hardly ever sell one that's a kit. Nobody... "What? You mean I have to spend eight hours building that? That's crazy. I can take it out of the box and charge it, and play with it." So, it just took a lot away. And you could buy these ready-made kits of all kinds. You could buy them online. Of course, you didn't have anybody to help you. Like, when you buy a kit in a hobby store, somebody can help you. If you have a problem with it or if something breaks, they could replace a part. You know, there's some hands-on knowledge there. But they're almost disposable now. "Oh, it broke, I'll buy a new one."

Daniel: I had to tell you I look back. Did you do Estes rockets?

Charles: Oh, sure, yeah.

Daniel: When I was a kid, I was very much into that type of thing. So, I built the rockets in what was like the C engine or the D engine. I remember all of that. Everybody wants them. A new parachute will come out. So, I didn't know that about your background and it's really not all that relevant to our conversation from the lessons learned. But you're bringing back memories, which are very fond memories I did with my father and my [crosstalk 00:14:53]...

Charles: And that's the thing that's been lost in the hobby industry when it's not a father-son project. The same thing, even playing with derby is supposed to a father-son project, but...

Daniel: Absolutely.

Charles: ...they come in with cars that are just magnificent. And there's no way an 8 or 10-year-old kid was really a significant part of the building of it. Dad took it to the lab at work, you know, and had his engineers put it together.

Daniel: Right. Well, it's a loss that...I suppose it's a loss in some ways and other ways you're doing things electronically, right?

Charles: Yeah. Yes. Yeah.

Daniel: So, it may not be the physical cars or the rockets, but doing things online together.

Charles: Hopefully, yeah.

Daniel: Hopefully, right. So, what was your worst business moment? Can you tell us a story about that?

Charles: Probably the worst business moment was a few years ago when my last one big customer sent me notification they're not buying my products anymore because they're going out of business. And I thought, "I couldn't possibly survive that because I had an overhead of running the business." And it was...didn't have enough people to sell stuff to and couldn't do it in the garage out of my house because it was still physically too big for that. So, I thought, "It wasn't gonna work out." But it did. In fact, somebody called me up and they wanted to know about buying 30,000 plastic wheels for wooden cars that they have. And I said to him, "Why just the wheels? Why not the cars?" And he said, "Can you do that?" I said, "Sure." I always say sure. If you ask me now can I fly, I'd probably say, "Yeah," because I can.

Daniel: You'll figure it out.

Charles: I'll figure it out. I always say yes. And I said, "Send me a couple of samples." He sent to me. I sent him to a contact in China that I had made because I have most of my stuff made in China. And I said, "Can you duplicate this and send me three back?" Because they do it so good that I had to make sure they sent me back more than the quantity I sent them, so I know they didn't send me my own sample back.

Daniel: That's interesting.

Charles: And I did. And the guy bought 30,000 car kits. And the next year, they bought 50,000, then 70,000, and 40,000. So, they've been a big plus over the last five years.

Daniel: Wow. And this is a domestic customer, not a...

Charles: It's a domestic customer, yes. And then, this other customer came along, who is now my biggest customer. So, I really have two main customers and then small guys here and there, which is fine. I'm happy to get any order, but yeah. So, I mean, I thought I was done five years ago.

Daniel: So, the way that you came and made that potential devastating loss of the biggest customer is you worked with some new customer.

Charles: I kept my eyes and ears open to options. When he said, "Can you make 30,000 wheels?" I could have left it at that, you know, his 30,000 wheels. But I pushed it to get the whole car business also.

Daniel: Right. So, to you, as you said before, when he said, "Can you do this?" you're like, "Sure."

Charles: Absolutely.

Daniel: All right, always say yes. I can do that.

Charles: Always say yes, yeah. And then, you know, if I can't, I say, "Oh, well, sorry, I couldn't." But sometimes I can. In this case, I was, yeah.

Daniel: But your feeling is if you say, "No," then it's automatically no 100%, whereas, at least give yourself the optionality.

Charles: Right, and there's communication there between myself and that person that if not this, maybe something else will come up.

Daniel: Right.

Charles: And he knows I tried. He knows I was positive. And who knows? Yeah, it's just an open door.

Daniel: Yeah. And you're becoming an advocate for what their needs are. You'll learn and you'll communicate with them. And hopefully, it works out for both of you.

Charles: Yes, hopefully.

Daniel: And if not, you're upfront with that as well.

Charles: I am.

Daniel: So, looking back over, I don't know, your lifetime, which is respectable, long, what specifically would you say is your motivation or how you stay refreshed? Is there anything you wanna point to? Any...

Charles: Well, I mean, a positive mental attitude is surely a very important thing to staying refreshed and can to keep going on to believe that, you know, it's not the end here. You're gonna keep going on. You're gonna do something new. And, you know, what motivates me is paying the bills. I drive a nice car and I've been driving a nice car for a while. And, you know, people stop me...every week somebody stops me and, "Wow, what a car. That's a gorgeous car." And it is. And I'm proud of it. And, yeah, I like it. I like that feeling, yeah. And I was able to do things, go on cruises and go on some tours, and, you know, been around a little bit. But only in the last 10 years, I also started a meet-up group. It's a social networking group that had, at one point, 3,000 members.

Daniel: Really?

Charles: Yeah. I was the mayor of the meet-up groups. I was the fastest-growing, the most active. We have Halloween and New Year's Eve parties with 250 people.

Daniel: For over...what was the meet-up? What was the theme?

Charles: Social networking.

Daniel: Just social networking?

Charles: Yeah, yeah, as a lot of them are specific themes, German shepherd owners.

Daniel: Yeah. That's what I'm familiar with.

Charles: Yeah. Well, that kind. But there were some that's just social networking. We'd do dancing. We would go to a bar, so happy hour. We did the New Year's Eve party, the Halloween party, St. Patrick's Day party, Super Bowl get-togethers, just on and on. I was doing...and I also was raising money for charity at every event. So, I raised, like, $17,000 for little local charities. I didn't do any of the national ones in the five years that I was doing it. Now, I pretty much have stopped. But in 5 years, like, you know, $17,000 is, you know, good. They loved it. I would go there...

Daniel: Of donations?

Charles: Oh yeah, donations.

Daniel: That's wonderful.

Charles: Well, they were required donations. They would attend something, they have to pay $5 to attend. But that $5 went to work opportunity center... I can't think of the names of the charities now.

Daniel: What was your motivation for doing that? Because as we're talking, the more we're talking, the more I get the sense that you just like people and you like being around people. And you like challenge. You like thinking of new ideas. You like staying fresh, you know. Is that...

Charles: Yeah, I do. I mean, I really like being around people. I like being upfront, upfront with people. I was a comedian for a while, too, like...

Daniel: Okay.

Charles: I was. My biggest audience is, like, 800 people and I just relished it.

Daniel: That's interesting.

Charles: Yeah. So, you know, being on stage was great. I have no stage fear at all, stage fright. And doing the meet-up groups, I walk into a restaurant or a bar and the crowd could be, "Red Bank Charlie? Hey, it's Red Bank Charlie, yay," and do everything but put me on their shoulders and walk me around the room. And, yeah, I did like that.

Daniel: Right. I'm sure.

Charles: Yeah, yeah, but yeah...

Daniel: It's satisfying. It's acceptance [crosstalk 00:22:13]...

Charles: Yeah. So, with that, with the meet-up group and then I combine giving back to charities, so it gave me, you know, a good, warm, fuzzy feeling to be able to do that, to walk into these different places with a check for $100 or $300. Oh, mostly cash, actually, $300 or whatever it was each time.

Daniel: Right, right.

Charles: And they were so appreciative. And it was for battered women and handicapped people, whatever the charity was. But a little local charity says they're so happy when somebody walked in with $200 as, you know, a lot of satisfaction.

Daniel: Oh, yes. So was that the initial reason or one of the two primary reasons you did that social networking? Was...

Charles: No. That came after. I did it because I was in between relationships and sort of a little depressed. And a friend of mine said, "Why don't you come to a meet-up group?" And I said, "What's a meet-up group?" And she took me down to some bar and the people were so friendly and so nice. And I went to a couple of other events and I joined one of the groups. And after maybe less than a year, I guess, the organizers, what they call the head of the group, said that she was stepping down. And when the organizer steps down, the group shuts down unless, within three weeks, someone else steps up and says they'll do it, which means pay the dues and run the group.

Daniel: Interesting.

Charles: So, I was watching. Nobody was stepping up. And finally, I reluctantly raised my hand and said, "Okay, I'll do it." And it just became a thing where I was doing four, five events a month.

Daniel: Wow, that's a lot.

Charles: Yeah.

Daniel: On top of the hobby business?

Charles: Yeah.

Daniel: On top of the wholesale...

Charles: Yeah.

Daniel: And that wasn't, in any way, helping the hobby business. They were two completely separate things.

Charles: No. And I kept them separate. And I didn't make any money. In fact, it cost me money to...because you had to pay dues to meetup.com, to the organization. And any money I took in was always for charity.

Daniel: But you found it satisfying, gratifying.

Charles: Yeah. I mean, it wasn't a lot of money for dues.

Daniel: Right. But you are helping socially and you are helping these charities.

Charles: Right. And actually, I met my wife there.

Daniel: Okay. Story gets more and more interesting. So, you recently married?

Charles: Yeah, 16 months ago.

Daniel: Congratulations.

Charles: Thank you.

Daniel: That's very nice.

Charles: Yeah.

Daniel: But you're still in business. You're still...

Charles: Still in business, still...in fact, I'm gonna leave here, go home, change, go to work for a few hours because I have some orders I have to pack up, and then my account, just coming over to do the year-end, then taxes and bank rec, and all that stuff tonight.

Daniel: So, what is the best advice you've ever received?

Charles: I can't say that there's specific advice from anybody that really has carried me through my life. Just seeing successful people doing successful things and modeling what I could. I mean, I went to a couple of Tony Robbins seminars. And I guess one thing there was we did the barefoot fire walk across hot coals. And it just was clear that it's only fear that keeps you from doing things. And if you're not afraid, there's a lot you can do. And in my case, I wasn't afraid to walk across the hot coals, but I wouldn't be the first one. As long as...I knew. You know, as long as other people did it ahead of me, I knew it was a thing that could be done.

Daniel: It could be done.

Charles: No, it wasn't magic or anything. And I did it. And I really want to go back again to enjoy it more or to experience it more. But they don't let you go back a second time. Because the first time, I was doing, you know, by the book, the way he said to do it. Keep your eyes up. Walk briskly across. Think, you know, cool moss. Yeah, and it had nothing to do with it. It just works.

Daniel: It works.

Charles: Yeah. And I did it. That fine, yeah. So, maybe that's part of what I learned from Tony, yeah.

Daniel: Is don't let fear...don't be afraid?

Charles: Right.

Daniel: Don't be afraid.

Charles: Don't let fear hold you back. And don't worry about things because the things are going to happen. And if you spend time worrying about them, you've spent time worrying about them, and then they happened anyway. So, just don't worry about them.

Daniel: Don't worry about things. Just let life go and deal with it as it comes.

Charles: Yeah. I didn't plan my life. My life came along. You know, this happened. That happened. You know, this one called me to do that. You know, it's this ad or that ad. I mean, [inaudible 00:26:50] just things that, to me, seems happened to me, not that I orchestrated the whole thing.

Daniel: Right. But it's worked out.

Charles: It's worked out.

Daniel: And the smile on your face, you're happy with the way things are.

Charles: Look, I have five beautiful grandchildren, two beautiful daughters. Life couldn't get much better.

Daniel: Life is good.

Charles: I just turned 77, healthy. You know, I run.

Daniel: It's clearly a lot of energy, upbeat.

Charles: Yeah. It's good. Life is good.

Daniel: Life is good. That's great.

Charles: Yeah.

Daniel: So, if people wanted to reach out and find out more about the hobby shop, this is not something, I guess, you do to individuals. It's only to stores. You're on the wholesale side.

Charles: Right. Well, I sell to stores. I sell to church groups or camp groups. They call up and they want 20 of this or 50 of that or something. I don't sell one at a time as a rule. I usually refer them to my sister's hobby store, which she just sold. She sold the building. So, he's gonna tear the building down. There will be no more hobby store there. So, I'm not sure what I'm gonna do as far individuals. I sell some stuff on eBay, but it's not significant at all.

Daniel: What if a business wants to contact you for the wholesale side of things? How would they reach you?

Charles: The easiest way would be email me at pinepro@pinepro.com.

Daniel: And ask for you, Charles?

Charles: Yes.

Daniel: Okay. Is there a phone number that would work or it's best to email?

Charles: Best to email.

Daniel: Okay, good. So, I just wanna go back and I took some notes as you were talking, and we were communicating about some key lessons. Let me know if I got these correct. But you said some of the keys things that drove you and that you think you would recommend for others is to be flexible.

Charles: Absolutely.

Daniel: And if you're gonna do something, do it 110%.

Charles: Yes.

Daniel: All right. You said, failure, you can't be depressed about it. Be positive and try and look for the message and leverage that failure in some way.

Charles: Correct, because there's always another door opening, always.

Daniel: Always somewhere, right?

Charles: Yes.

Daniel: Another great one you said, always say sure or yes, right?

Charles: Yes.

Daniel: And communicate with the person you're saying that to. So, keep the open lines of...but give yourself the optionality to deliver on that product.

Charles: Yeah. Don't close...don't burn bridges or close doors.

Daniel: Right. Have a positive mental attitude and to keep going on, right, because you...yeah, and you said also along those same lines, "Don't be afraid. Don't worry about things," because some things negative are gonna happen regardless.

Charles: Right.

Daniel: But don't spend your time in advance worrying about those. Just keep going.

Charles: Deal with them when they happen. Don't worry about them before they happen.

Daniel: Not always easy to do.

Charles: No, it isn't. And I'm not 100% effective at it either.

Daniel: But it is a good...something to strive for, right?

Charles: Yes. Two lessons. I guess one is from "Think and Grow Rich" by Napoleon Hill, the book, "Anything the mind of man can conceive and believe it can achieve," which is also something I believe in. And whatever we said to my daughters and my grandkids is, "What is it you want? What does it cost? And are you willing to pay the price?" So, it means hard work or whatever it means. If you want it and you're willing to pay the price, go ahead and do it.

Daniel: Then, do it. Then, do it.

Charles: Yeah. But just know that there's that price attached to it.

Daniel: Exactly. You just kinda make that judgment call if it's worth it to you for that effort or price.

Charles: What do you want? What is the cost? And are you willing to pay the price?

Daniel: Excellent. Well, Charles, I appreciate this, you sharing your life, your background, your various experiences...

Charles: My pleasure.

Daniel: ...and all of these lessons. I really enjoyed listening to this. And I am grateful that we've gotten a chance to meet. Thank you very much.

Charles: Same here. You're welcome.

Daniel: This episode was recorded by Daniel Kramer, managing director of the Constantine Wealth Management Group of Raymond James, 401 Hackensack Avenue, Suite 803, Hackensack, New Jersey, 07601. Raymond James and Associates, Incorporated, member, New York Stock Exchange, SIPC. Companies mentioned are not affiliated with Raymond James. Opinions expressed are those of the speaker and not necessarily those of Raymond James. Any information provided is for informational purposes only.