(lively music) - May I tell you about my bestselling item ever, it's called the Kaywos Cloth.

Cleans anything without streaks.

All you do is water, wring it out, wipe your windows windshield, stainless steel, chrome, glass, mirror, TV screens, computer screens, and it all dries, streak free.

I've sold 14,000 in four years.

That's how good they are.

Welcome to Walker's, the store that has everything.

I grew up mainly in Independence.

There was two things I always wanted to do, I wanted to run for president and I wanted to own a variety store.

And the president thing is, that boat's already sailed.

She's not going to campaign for me, so.

- No.

(laughs) - I'm on my own if I decide to do that.

The opportunity presented itself, and I came down here in 1990, I was single.

Didn't know Paula yet.

I think I met her a year later.

Then we got married a year from then.

But in the meantime, in between meeting and getting married, I convinced her that owning a store was a really good idea.

(Paula laughs) - And it has been.

- I didn't have to convince her too hard.

This is the kind of store that stores were like when I was growing up.

You went to the Dime store.

We are the complete store.

I mean, anything you could possibly want or need, we try to carry.

I've always wanted to keep it that way.

I don't want to get too specialized.

We might only have two of something or might only have one of something, but you know that if you need it, we probably have it.

We're very heavy in toys and we're heavy in housewares and we're heavy in fabric.

And within those heavy areas, we don't focus on stuff that is advertised on television, stuff that you can get anywhere.

We try to focus on things that fit within our categories, but are unique.

I still want people to come in here and be able to buy a bottle of asprin and a zipper and a cheese sticker if they need to.

You want to go into our daily routine?

- No, you're doing great.

(Paula laughs) - I get here anywhere from 10 minutes till opening time till right at opening time.

And she comes in 15, 20 minutes, 30 minutes later.

Usually if she gets here 20 minutes later, she gets here and I'm like going crazy because there's 30 people in the store.

But if she gets here right on time, we don't see anybody for an hour, so just depends.

The easiest way to get people in the store is for me to be by myself.

Actually, we used to have regular employees, but when COVID happened, we sent 'em home and then they just come back once in a while.

Now prior to that, she did all the business work at home and I did all my stuff down here.

And then when we sent 'em home, she just came down and started working with me.

And we both have her own strengths.

She is good with certain things and I'm good at just goofing off and making small talk with customers and telling jokes and whatever.

And she doesn't get mad at me for that and I don't get mad at her for doing whatever she does.

Our store started out across the street in a building, only half the size of this building we're in right now.

As we grew, we had to get into bigger buildings, but this building was an old department store.

Five years after I started, it finally went outta business and they approached me about buying it.

So it was empty and it looked huge, so I went home and I got to Paula and I said, I think we need to over look at that mustard building.

So we came downtown and looked at it and said, just think, this is more building than we'll ever need.

So we bought the building.

In 1999, the Radio Shack Corporation came in and approached me about adding a Radio Shack to our store.

Well, I go home and I said to Paula, I said, we got this thing that I think we should do.

She said, what's that, I said, I think we should buy a Radio Shack and add it to our store.

And that took a little bit of convincing.

- Yes, it was very scary.

- And so then we agreed to it.

We thought, well, heck, where are we gonna put it?

And half of that building was available again, owned by a separate person, which amazing that two different building owners would agree to cutting a hole in their wall.

And then he decided to sell us the building.

So that was another kind of a... No, it wasn't scary, it wasn't scary at all.

Buying the Radio Shack was scary.

Buying the buildings wasn't.

Buying the Radio Shack was scary because I know nothing about electronics.

I look at things in terms of do I think it will sell?

And I've gotten to know my customers over the years that I'm just a pretty good judge yet at deciding, do I think this will help?

A lot of small business owners have a hard time picking out things they like, but you gotta pick out what the customer likes or what you think the customer will like.

In ways, it's easier, in ways, it's harder.

Really it's still a learning process and I don't think I'll ever figure it out.

I don't think it's possible to ever figure it out.

I still get nervous when I buy because I think, gosh, what if I bought too much of the wrong thing?

But after all these years, I realized that eventually everything sells so I haven't made too many mistakes in the past, I don't think I'll make too many mistakes going forward.

- We have one thing.

- I have one thing that's from my original store and I won't sell it now just because it's been here for so long.

It's a cookbook for a barbecue grill, and it's copyrighted like 1985 or something like that.

It's been here too long, it's going out with me.

I'm probably my own worst critic.

I see all the things that are, in my view, wrong, but I have customers tell me that, no, they don't see those things that I see that are wrong.

So I guess I just need to be stop being so critical of myself.

For me, we've been here long enough now that we've made a difference in people's lives.

I mean, if this store didn't exist, the whole business dynamic of Holden would be different because then anytime you needed something like what we sell, they'd have to go out town.

And it also draws a lot of people from other towns in here, because as my son says, people from out of town come because it's something different than what's in the city.

The fun thing for me is we've had people from all over the world in this store.

I've had people from Vietnam, from Somalia, from Ethiopia, from England, from Russia, who would think those people would come to Holden?

So a while ago, I was talking to a mom and her son, he was eight years old and he said to me, he said, are you closing, I said, no.

He said, it's all over that you're closing.

And she said, you're selling some racks and people think you're closing.

And I said, no, we're not closing and the boy gave me a big hug.

She said he was devastated when he thought you were closing.

And so, to me, and I think Paula would agree, it's that we've made a difference in people's lives, that people will long remember us.

After we're not here anymore, people will still remember us.

No, it's just been a heck of a fun ride.

It truly is, not to say it doesn't get frustrating 'cause everything does get frustrating, but it's been a real joy in my life to have been able to do this and to have her by my side.

(bright music) - My name is Eron Harding.

I'm the owner of Backwoods Guitar here in Sedalia, Missouri.

We do everything from buy, sell, rent and trade, everything from guitars, bases, amps, all the way we actually even custom make guitars from the ground up.

They're all hand-carved, we do it all.

I oversee everything that goes on.

Also the head luthier, which is fancy word for a guy that fixes guitars.

- My name is Mason Harding and my dad and I own Backwoods Guitar here in Sedalia, Missouri.

My dad and I sort of operate it almost as co-owners so to speak, so him and I kind of make a lot of decisions together.

He likes to involve me in a lot of stuff just because he knows that this is something that eventually I'd like to take over someday so he wants to make sure that my voice is included and heard as well, which is really rare for somebody my age to be able to be making some sort of executive type decisions.

And he's the owner of the final say, comes down to him, but he likes to take my opinion and we talk about a lot of things together so our working relationship is very, very close.

- As I let Mason and Jeanette downstairs do a lot of the management and that type of thing, shipping and et cetera, et cetera, but yeah, so I do the owner thing and concentrate mainly on the repairs and builds.

- My day-to-day stuff is gonna be doing inventory counts, ordering products, stuff like that.

I'll help some customers out in store and I answer a lot of online stuff as well.

I also take professional photography of all of our new guitars and items and stuff like that.

One of our biggest challenges right now is trying to maintain all of our inventory.

Because we have so much stuff and so few employees, there's about three of us that are doing everything that you see, so from just having the amount of time to be able to manage all of that has been rather difficult as well as just managing online competition because there's so many other people out there that are selling the same types of products.

You have to find a way to stand out.

- None of us have formal training in running a business.

We're all guitar players and musicians so you get to learn QuickBooks real fast, stuff like that.

It blows your mind, it's fantastic.

- Our store will be able to offer, we've got a whole ton of instruments, we've got acoustic guitars, electric guitars, we've got bass guitars, we have amplifiers for all of the above.

We've got folk instruments, so that'll be mandolins, banjos, ukuleles, violins, all sorts of stuff like that.

We've been trying to evolve trying to offer better and better deals for our customers so that they tend to prefer to come to us first so that has been a big thing and I think that a big thing that helps us stand out would be the repair shop aspect of that because a lot of people aren't gonna find a full in-house repair shop.

You can't just go to Guitar Center and get a neck reset done.

Like they'll just do very basic kind of stuff so that's been the big challenge for us.

- One year, I'd just finished with a band that we were in and I was burnt out, I didn't really want to play anymore 'cause I've been playing for years and years.

Just wanted some time off.

But I knew I still wanted to be around the industry and I knew that the guys around here, all the gig musicians, they needed somebody to do legit repairs.

Like the stuff that they usually have to send off to Nashville or Kansas City and pay a whole ton of money.

So I started dabbling in my garage.

As word got out, guys started bringing me their stuff.

More word got out, more guys started bringing me my stuff.

A friend of mine and former band mate, Steve Cox, he was actually going out and flipping guitars.

He'd go out and yard sales or whatever, chase 'em down and he'd bring 'em to me if they were broken, get 'em all going so he could reflip 'em.

And then one day, we got to talking where he came up with the idea and he was like, well you've already got the repair thing going with the shop name.

He goes, I've got nothing to do during the day so I could run the store during the day.

Alright, fine, we'll give it a shot so we were kind of man, what are we gonna name it?

If I live in the middle of 30 wooded acres in the middle of nowhere and I think we had a pack of the old Backwood cigars.

Somebody's like, dude, that's what we oughta need.

You oughta name the shop man, you're back here in the middle of nowhere, the backwoods of Missouri.

So, alright, why not, we'll go with that.

- The first time I was working, I would've been about 16 years old and the shop would've been still fairly new.

That would've been probably six years or so into them getting into the business and so my dad would just have me work over the summer a little bit.

I would learn some of the repair stuff at the beginning.

And over time, I just started working more and more.

And by the time I was about 18, this became my main gig and this is what I was doing full time.

It was almost like an apprenticeship in the beginning.

He was teaching me how to fix stuff and he also builds custom guitars from scratch.

So he had me build a couple as well so that I understood the process and I understood how guitars work and how the electronics work and everything top to bottom.

So now that I kind of understood that, it helps with a lot of the answering questions and understanding what people need when they come in.

If somebody comes in and brings a guitar that needs repaired, I need to be able to diagnose it and let him know what needs to happen with it.

And as I got further and further into it, it kind of transitioned into more of a managerial and taking care of like the other stuff that I stated earlier, that kind of stuff.

I would say my favorite part of working here is honestly just being around instruments and being around music all day every day because that's my passion, that's my hobby.

So being able to do stuff that I enjoy and that I care about all day is definitely the most important part of it.

Another thing that I really enjoy is obviously the fact that I'm able to make a lot of the decisions and that I feel like my voice is heard and that I'm very involved in the business.

It's not like I'm just coming in and working for the big man so to speak.

You kind of come in and you get to do your own thing, get to have fun and just enjoy everyday work.

- It's fun, it's the best job ever.

You get to do what you love and this is what we were put on earth for, man, is to play and gig and help other musicians.

I mean, it's never a day at work when you love what you do, we love what we do.

I think we all share the same thing.

So we all love it here, it's great.

(bright music) - So my mom and my stepdad are the ones that originally opened Altered Visions and I think I first came over here in the year of 2023 and then I became an owner by buying out my mom and my stepdad.

So it's not in a bad way, they all have a lot of side jobs going on themselves 'cause they used to remodel or flip houses and things like that.

So we would just take some extra things off their plate and we bought Spill and Ink and Altered Visions and then we opened up a new shop in November.

- Here at Altered Vision specifically, we want to make sure that everyone knows that we are welcoming any type of person.

We understand that this is a therapy session for a lot of people and that it's not just a business, we're here to make people feel better about themselves and have a good time and be somewhere they can be safe and hang out at.

- So my name's Jasmine.

I'm not only a tattoo artist, I am a piercer here, but I manage this shop and then I help oversee our two other sister shops.

So on top of tattooing or piercing, kind of just depending on what I have going for the day, I do all of our paperwork.

So like when we have apprentices startup, I get their paperwork rolling, I help train them and help make sure they get licensed fully and then I keep in touch with state to make sure all of our state forms comply for what they need to keep the shop open and then do our weekly payout.

That way, all of our artists here can get paid easily and quickly.

So I like to stick to, if I can, the neo-traditional, but with that more very like unique and twisted look.

So I use bright, bold colors, but in a very abstract way.

So like, my lions are blue and teal with orange hair.

But I do try to make sure like all of my clients, their stuff is unique to their personality, 'cause that's what's more important.

And then we try to keep everybody comfortable and distracted 'cause we know tattoos aren't always the most comfortable feeling so most of our booths also have TVs.

That way, our clients can watch anything from, we've had Bluey going to horror movies depending on what they're in the mood for.

- I think we have now 20 artists all together at all three shops.

So just trying to keep track of everybody and the supplies itself in the shop just to make sure that we don't run low at the worst point in time.

That is a little bit hard in itself, but not too bad.

- I'm Halee, I'm a tattoo artist.

I draw on people for a living.

There's really a lot that goes into becoming an artist a lot more than people would think.

Like I've spent the past four years like figuring out being an artist.

And it's a learning progress like every day.

Like you never stop learning in this industry.

And I think that's why I like my job so much because I like to see progression and I like to learn new things and I'm very outgoing and extra.

- I've actually only been tattooing for about a year now.

I think it's actually like a week past a year.

I was just the apprentice.

So I cleaned, I got to break down, I drew, but that was really all I did for the first six months.

So the apprenticeship program here is really nice because it's technically free, but what you do is it's free, but you basically pay it back over the course of your time here.

So essentially, like most places, instead of like paying right off the bat, like $10,000 or whatever they want for the apprenticeship, it's actually accessible here because it's free and you pay it back over time and you never have to technically like pay out of pocket so it's not affecting anything, which makes it a lot easier for people to actually make it through the apprenticeship and get it done.

And like it does just allow like a lot of people to come in here and be able to follow through with what they want to do.

And we've actually got quite a few, like decent, pretty good artists like out of here and then they've left to go learn more.

This is kind of like a good starting spot and it helps you really like get your foot in the door and learn and meet all these new people and it's definitely a fun thing.

- I love watching people grow and excel and to be happy in their own aspect.

And the fact that I get to watch them come in and do something that they love every day, it makes me happy as an owner.

And the fact that we get to reach out to other small businesses in the local community itself, like when we do flash sales, we make them major events and bring in vendors so other small businesses can get their name out there like we have ourselves.

So it makes me feel good with the impact that we're making in the community itself.

- You want your customers to trust who you are as a person as well as an artist and you can't get anything better than that by word of mouth.

So that's why we try to have the big events and make it happy when they come in.

- [Emma] So our shop hours vary.

It's typically 11 in the morning to 10:00 PM just depending on the day.

(bright music) - I am Brandon Butler, I'm the CEO of Retrieving Freedom.

Retrieving Freedom was founded in 2012 with our first service dogs placed in 2013.

We have placed 152 dogs, about 50/50 with veterans and children with autism.

Between our two facilities, we have about 80 dogs at some level of training currently.

These dogs have tens of thousands of dollars worth of training and that is covered by generous donors and supporters of Retrieving Freedom.

There's absolutely no cost to the veteran or the family for these service dogs.

So we have our own breeding program and we work specifically with Labrador retrievers and golden retrievers.

We like to breed our own puppies so we can control the quality of the dogs that have shown genetic histories of being susceptible to success in service dog work.

- My name is Ashlyn Snyder and I am the program coordinator for Retraining Freedom.

So our puppies start in the program right at eight weeks old.

In that time, they're in stage one between eight weeks old and about one year of age.

And they will be learning their obedience, their home manners, but the biggest emphasis is on their public exposure.

Getting 'em out to see the world is very important to prepare our dogs for everything they might see in the world before they are charged with working in that environment.

The handler, the client learns how to handle the dogs and the dogs will work on matching them to that handler.

So we usually start them off with a dog who's actually already pre-matched with someone else and they help teach them how to learn how to drive the car with the easy to drive car.

So they learn their handling skills on that dog and then once they are ready, we'll start introducing 'em to different dogs in the program that they might be matched with.

Our fosters usually come to us from events from the community.

What they do is they'll come to us, they'll submit an application, we will go over our manuals with them just to kind of teach them what we are about, what we do, how we work with our puppies.

From there, we'll do a couple of training sessions.

The first one is just an intro to learn how to handle the dogs and then the second one is to learn how to take them out in public and apply those skills.

The role of a foster is incredibly important in the success of a service dog.

And I know a lot of people hear that and they're like, I could never do that.

My dog would turn out unruly as my dogs at home.

It's a guided process.

We give that support, we help them out.

We want their success as much as they want that success.

It's a highly rewarding thing to do for the organization, a highly rewarding way to give back to the world and to the community.

I actually started out as a puppy raiser myself.

I was looking for opportunities to figure out what I wanted to do in life and this opportunity fell into my lap to raise a service dog puppy.

And through that experience, I found a love for training, a love for working with dogs, and a love for giving back to the world in that way.

Our puppy raisers are our most needed role in the organization right now for anyone who wants to give their time to help support our mission of changing lives of veterans and children with autism.

- Hi, my name's Mike Watson, I was in the Army.

I spent eight years there.

My experience with Retrieving Freedom was awesome.

The people here are great, where you could tell that they really have a heart for the veterans.

They go out of the way to make you comfortable.

Everybody I meet, I tell 'em about it and people are just blown away with this dog.

This is a service dog.

There's too many people out there that can go online and buy a vest and get a license and they go in places and it gives a bad reputation for service dogs.

And the thing is this place puts out service dogs, they're great.

And my life is so much better since I've had Dusty.

He's always there for me, he always checks on me, he's always makes sure I'm okay.

In the morning, he crashes on my chest.

At nighttime, he's right here, and we sit and we hold each other and we talk.

I think my wife gets kind of jealous sometimes, so I gotta fit her into this equation too.

But if you are a veteran and you're out there, man, don't wait.

What do you got to lose?

When you're down and it's getting dark, there's some light.

The way it's impacted me is I used to have this scene in the back of my mind.

If something happened to my wife, what do I do?

I used to worry, I used to be there and since I've got him, Dusty has 39 commands.

He can open doors, he can pick up a credit card off of the floor.

He can brace when I go to get up, he pulls me in my wheelchair.

He's basically trained himself to pick up my laundry and go put it in the laundry basket so I think I'm pretty cool with that.

If he could only cook me dinner, I'm there.

And he's extremely helpful, he's my buddy.

I've had him for two years and we have really started bonding here this last year and a half and it's just going stronger.

And he's to the point where he's starting to know what I need before I say it.

A dog ain't gonna replace God, but I'll tell you what, he made them and he sent them for us, so I would say jump on it, let's get it done.

And they're great dogs, they're fantastic dogs.

You'll fall in love with them.

- So we service veterans and children from across the country.

If they feel Retrieving Freedom is the organization they want to work with for their service dog, we welcome applicants from across the country.

They'll just have to be able to afford to come to Missouri or Iowa for their training.

So anybody that meets that criteria can go on the Retrieving Freedom website, simply RetrievingFreedom.org and fill out the application process.

I'm personally not a veteran.

This is my mission, this is my opportunity to give back to our veterans and hope that they can live a more quality life for the rest of their years.

(light music) (bright music)