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♪♪ It's your business.

With Michael Aikens is brought to you by WCTE, PBS, and the Tennessee Tech Center for Rural Innovation, with funding provided by the Rural Reimagine Grand Challenge and the Tennessee Rural Development Fund.

There are many questions surrounding those thinking about starting their own business, but the one advice seasoned entrepreneurs seem to agree on is how much it helps to be passionate about your product or concept.

In this episode, we meet business owners who have definitely found something that they are passionate about and that passion has helped take their businesses to the next level.

Join us as we visit these entrepreneurs and learn how they have brought their businesses to life.

♪♪ When spring rolls around after a tough, cold winter, the bright colors and fragrances of new flowers and plants have a way of re-energizing us.

Well, Emma Crabtree decided to start a business that brings those bright colors and fragrances right into her customers homes.

And her business has blossomed into so much more, providing house plants, a floral market, as well as floral designs for all types of special events.

So let's take the time to stop and smell the flowers at the glass.

Tangerine.

♪♪ We're here in Cookeville, Tennessee, talking with Emma Crabtree, owner of the Glass Tangerine.

Emma, welcome to the show.

Yeah.

Glad to be here.

Well, we're really glad to have you on.

So let's start out with the basics.

Glass Tangerine.

Yes.

Tell us about your business.

So we are a plant shop.

Was how we started.

I have a love for houseplants.

And I saw an opportunity in the Cookeville area in the Upper Cumberland, where in larger cities were opening these really unique and very cool, stylized boutique plant shops.

And nobody had done that here yet.

And so I thought, well, then I can do it.

I'll try it.

So we started out as a plant shop.

We call ourselves Accidental Florist because one of the parts of my store model from the very beginning was to have a European style floral market where you could come in, build your own bouquet, single stemmed flowers, or have something built for you as like a grab and go option.

And that part of the business has just absolutely exploded to the point that we're doing weddings now and we're taking, you know, bouquet orders and we do deliveries.

So, we have our plants, which is sort of our foundation of the business.

We have our accidental floristry and floral market, and then we do a lot of mercantile items.

Well how exciting.

What a beautiful place you have here.

And obviously it's a labor of love.

So, you know, in thinking about starting this business now, we know each other outside of this interview, and you were doing something completely different than owning a business beforehand.

Tell us a little bit about that.

Yeah.

So I have, I was a mental health therapist for eight years.

Prior to doing this, I got my master's degree from tech and got licensed and I worked at a small private group practice.

And so we were all technically in business for ourselves under the same umbrella.

And so doing that through the Covid experience just kind of highlighted for me that maybe this wasn't something I was wanting to do long term.

I think therapy will always it always has a root in everything that I do.

And even here, it's a huge foundational piece of how my business is built and how I go about running the business.

But being in the chair with clients was not something that I felt I wanted to continue to do anymore.

So I had had this idea for years, and I had almost pulled the trigger on it multiple times, of like having or doing something in the space.

I have no retail experience except for like the three months I worked at the Dollar Tree when I was 16.

And so I had no clue what I was doing, but I just decided my husband and I had a lot of conversations around it, and he was like, this is something you really want to do, and let's just go for it and let's try it.

And worst case scenario doesn't work.

And you can go back to therapy or you can go and you know, extend your education past that and get into teaching or so many options.

So we just decided to go for it.

And it's been a lot of fun and a lot of learning curve.

I can certainly imagine.

And yes, it's pivot a little bit more back into operating the business flowers.

They don't last very long.

How are you managing all of this?

With inventory typically within retail.

I buy, you know, 12 bags and I put them on the floor.

And if they don't sell, then I just mark them down and then eventually they sell or I write them off as a loss or whatever.

Flowers.

It depends on, you know, where they came from, how long they sat at the wholesaler before they came to me.

If they're fresh cut off of a local farm or whatever.

So a lot of it has just been a very expensive learning curve of figuring out how to make it work and what we've come to understand for us, looking at our business trends and our flower trends and looking at, okay, when are we selling the most, when do we sell the most for the week?

When do we sell the most seasonally?

When we can understand those numbers, we've been able to figure out, okay, now we're going to be closed on Sunday.

We're going to get fresh flowers on Monday.

We do flower happy hour on the bar because even though I'm a sober person now, I do believe every bar should have a happy hour.

And so we do half off stems of all our fresh flowers on Saturdays from two to close, and that helps us move that inventory out without too much of a loss to the business.

But also we really want people.

If you're going to buy flowers from us, we want them to last as long as possible.

And that means not keeping them in a cooler for a really long time and not keeping them out on the floor for a really long time.

So I gotta ask, yeah.

You're farming.

Yes.

You're running a business.

Yes.

At the time of filming you're expecting?

Yes.

How are you balancing all of this between work and life?

I don't know, I told my husband last night we we didn't end up eating dinner until 9:00.

And I told him, I said, you know, I'm really tired and I want to go to bed, but I know that that means that as soon as I wake up, I have to go back to work.

Right.

This has just been a very busy season.

And I there's a part of me that loves that, but, yeah, that self-care aspect of taking time and, you know, kind of partitioning off just hasn't really been a part of my forte.

And then, yes, with the baby on the way, that was a very unexpected surprise for us.

And so part of what me and him and the business where our goals right now are like, we have this very runway, we have this very, you know, hard set timeline when I know I'm going to have to be out and then my life is going to change pretty drastically.

And so let's get as much done now as we possibly can to prepare for that.

So I have the best team behind me.

Like theres incredible these girls that I've hired.

I just can't speak highly enough about them They're so invested in what we're doing.

They're so engaged and what's going on, they're just wonderful.

And so I'm not doing it alone by any means.

And I couldn't do it alone.

You just kind of make your to do list every day and get as much done as you can and not judge yourself and try again the next day.

And that's that's where we're at.

That's that's business ownership 101.

Yeah.

Now, you said team a little while ago.

Yeah, I like that.

What's your approach to leadership?

I really try to approach my team here as like we are all working on the same level.

Obviously I have final decision making right when it comes to everything, but there are a lot of things that I outsource to the girls.

Like Aspen is my manager, she's Elsa's mom.

And so there's so many things that she does that I'm like, I have no idea what you're doing.

And that's perfect, because if I have to know everything that you're doing, then we're not that something is not working correctly.

And I give the girls a lot of leeway when it comes to, like, styling the store or setting up table scapes, doing things like that.

There are certain things only I can do, but I can't do everything.

We all are coming up with ideas and we're all working together, and they understand the vision and they understand the goal and they have ownership of it.

And I think them having ownership of it makes a massive difference in this.

Speaking to other Emmas that are out there thinking about starting that business.

Yeah, and haven't crossed that fence yet what advice would you give to them?

I would have a really solid plan.

And you have to have your finances in order or like, you got to have your house in order, and that's a big thing.

You know, nobody everybody wants to talk about the fluffy part of owning the business, like, oh, it's beautiful and it's so curated and it's so creative and it's so, like happy and joyful and those are all wonderful things.

But you got to have financing to get it started.

You know, this was not a cheap endeavor to do by any means.

And so figuring out your financing, get an accountant, you're probably good at the fun things.

You're probably not good at these other things.

And if you're not good at something or get somebody that is good at it to help you with it, whether that's social media, whether that's branding, whether that's finances, whatever it is, know where your weak points are and employ other people.

Fill those holes for you.

Great advice.

So last question for you what does the future hold?

I don't know, that's a great question.

I think the baby is going to shake things up a little bit in that department.

I did tell my husband this morning, we were talking.

We talked about business, about like 98% of the time we're together, which is fun.

And he was talking about like, growth and things like that.

And he's like, I'm so tired of growing.

Like, I just want to run a boring business.

And I was like, yeah, I think we're done with like the massive expansion.

You know, we just moved the shop two doors down was a huge undertaking, and I think my next step is just to kind of settle in to the things that we've done, perfect those things.

And then maybe in a couple of years, once I've settled into motherhood and the farm and everything, then maybe we'll ratch it up a notch again.

I think that sounds like a great plan.

Yeah.

Emma, Thank you.

So much for being on the show.

Yeah, yeah, it's been awesome.

Thanks for having me.

The smell of good barbecue just has a way of making a person's mouth water.

And Brazen Que in Livingston, Tennessee definitely has their customers mouths watering.

As soon as they enter the door.

Nick and Kendra Jones decided to bring their passion for Texas inspired barbecue to the Upper Cumberland, and their culinary masterpieces have become so popular that they have to work extra hard just to keep up with the demand.

♪♪ We're here in Livingston talking with Nick and Kendra Jones, owners of Brazen Que.

Nick, Kendra, welcome to the show.

Thank you.

Let's start out with the basics.

Brazen Que, great barbecue joint.

Tell us about your business.

We focus mainly on Texas craft barbecue, central Texas style.

So a lot of our focus is on beef.

Like, our brisket is our number one seller.

But we also have pulled pork.

We have spare ribs.

We have our sausage that we make in-house.

We have our smoked turkey breast.

And then you can tell them what sides we have.

Yeah.

So then our sides are all homemade.

So we do everything in-house.

Everything is has been either his recipe or my recipe that we've kind of come together and we've got a great crew that does all that now.

So here you are running a barbecue restaurant, We're filming on a day that is your prep day.

So walk me through what does a week look like for you all?

Typically Tuesdays are a prep day, so we have a team of people come in, kind of depending, you know, we do have some that come in on Monday too, 237 00:12:00,453 --> 00:12:02,521 We have one guy who does all of our sausages.

His name is Brock.

And so on Tuesdays he'll be in grinding meat, you know, mixing the sausage together and putting in the casings.

We also have a crew that chops our onions, poblano, everything that goes into our stuff.

Nick is actually smoking today.

I'll cook on a Tuesday for Wednesday.

For, like, the briskets, the pork butts, things of that nature.

Then the shorter cooks we cook day of.

So that would be like the ribs, the turkey, the sausages, things like that.

Smoking.

I don't have to explain to you it takes a long time.

You just talked about, you know, your day of, your day before, How do you manage that?

How do you know how long to do this?

How do you how do you do it?

They say in order to make good barbecue, you have to first make bad barbecue.

And I've made a lot of bad barbecue.

We can remember my first brisket like it was yesterday, and it was absolutely terrible.

So it's a lot of trial and error.

We were house parents for seven years, and so I had teenage girls as my critics for seven years.

And they do not hold back, what they think or feel about it.

So I was able to kind of get good at doing that, because we would cook all the time for them.

And with like that.

So that's what's hard is because a brisket could take eight hours, you know, and so it's not something that he's not back there, you know, every eight hours just trying to pump out brisket, you know.

And so that's been kind of interesting to educate people on the whole sold out, kind of depending on what's going on during the day in our town or whatever.

270 00:13:29,041 --> 00:13:31,944 We could sell out by 3:30.

We could sell out by five.

And there are days where we make it all the way until 7:00, you know?

So it just depends on your crowd, which is really hard.

You've invited a bunch of people to a party, and you have no RSVP.

You know, it's just people either show up or they know they're going to show up or not.

Yeah, yeah.

Now, before the interview, you took me to look at your pits.

Right.

I'm willing to bet a lot of people are really interested in that.

Could you walk us through what the pit is, how you use it?

The craft style is the offset smokers.

So you have the firebox on one end, then you have the actual chamber on the other end, and then there's a chimney on this end.

And what it does is the fire and the wood smoke gets pulled across the meat, and it has a spiral effect that goes around the meat in the cooker.

And then you have a damper on that end, which you can open and close on how much smoke you want to pull across.

We do it old school.

As far as like just we don't use electric, we don't use propane or anything like that.

It's just wood.

What kind of wood do you use?

We use white oak because we want to be as close to Central Texas as we can.

We know we're in Tennessee, so Hickory is pretty popular.

And we've had a few hickory salesmen come here, but we've told them, hey, we just we stick with white oak.

And we feel that's the best flavor.

When it comes to the Central Texas style, different woods have different notes of things.

White oak typically has, like, a vanilla note to it.

So that's just me being a barbecue nerd.

So, you know.

So you started out smoking things, made some bad briskets, made some great briskets.

Now you're here in Livingston, you all started the restaurant.

Walk me through that journey.

How did you get here?

How did you start?

And most importantly, why did you start a restaurant?

This is originally, honestly Nick's dream.

You know, Nick loves to smoke meat.

I mean, for years and years and years.

It's a bunch of YouTube.

It's a bunch of reading.

Every time I would walk in the room, it'd be a YouTube video.

313 00:15:25,424 --> 00:15:29,995 watching on his phone or on the TV and just constantly talking about barbecue and probably for about the last, I don't know, 3 to 4 years.

That desire just kept burning inside of him and me knowing that, like he wouldn't be able to do it all, you know, he couldn't do like the pitmaster thing and the business and all of that stuff because there's just so much involved.

Barbecue is so labor intensive.

I was pretty hesitant, you know, I was very much like, well, I'm going to have to be the one that's doing a lot of the back work, you know, probably leading the team more.

And, you know, that's totally out of I feel like it's more out of my comfort zone than anything.

And so it took me a whole lot longer.

Well, it all got started because we were working in group homes and the budgets there aren't great.

Yeah.

And so how do you feed a lot of people on the cheap pork but goes a long way.

And if you can make it taste good, all the better.

So that's how it got started.

And then once I started really getting into it, there was here we are, you know, so it kind of took off from there.

So clearly you were able to smoke the meat, but now you're running a business.

How did you get into it?

How did you learn running a business, especially going from group home into a business setting?

It doesn't seem like it's parallel.

Yeah, but there's something here I'm willing to bet.

For us.

Like, you know, that does transition.

Like the house parenting thing.

It's a high stress environment.

And so he and I were able to, you know, learn each other in that situation of like, what do you do?

And that's high stress.

And so it does parallel and that.

But then the business portion of it, we've had a lot of really good guidance.

My stepdad and my mom have been pretty like predominant in that.

And so what I was very strategic about is surrounding myself with people who had way more knowledge than what I ever did, which is the team that I feel like we've created.

So here we are a little over a year later.

One of my favorite questions to ask, thinking back to when it all started, what do you know right now that you wish you knew then.

It's always hard in a business to have to hire and to have to fire.

Unfortunately.

And so those aren't the fun parts, you know, and I kind of knew that.

But you don't know until you experience it.

And so for me, I wish I would have known maybe how to navigate that a little bit more.

I always knew there'd be really hard days that we would struggle some days where we would question is anybody going to walk through the door today?

Sometimes it's going to be slow because people are going out of town.

You know a lot of this town they kind of follow in with the schools.

So like the high school, they kind of follow that calendar.

And so like I said, kind of like hoping that we could have moved here beforehand just to kind of know it a little bit more.

You know, we kind of follow what we call a rule of two.

If we notice a trend over two weeks, then we change something.

Whereas initially we'd go 'Man!

we sold a lot of whatever we should bump it up to, like, double that next week!

', you know, and so stuck with it.

And then we're stuck with a ton of leftovers.

That we would take down to the mission.

Yeah, yeah.

So, which we would have no problem doing.

Yeah.

And we were, we were glad we could do that, but just kind of following that rule of two, like our smash burgers.

We ran that one Saturday.

We sold a bunch like around 30 of them.

Then the next Saturday we ran it like we did And we sold like 48.

That's going to go on the menu.

So last question for you.

Opposite direction.

Moving forward, what does the future hold for Brazen Que?

We are excited that we're going to have a food trailer.

And we are going to be at trackside in Cookeville, and we're going to really try to have more food on Fridays and Saturdays when there's entertainment and stuff like that there.

We'll have some stuff that's at the trailer that's not here and vice versa.

We're excited to do that.

We're hiring for people for that right now.

And, so that's kind of the next step, as to what we're doing.

Well, Kendra, Nick, thank you so much for being on the show.

Thank you for having us.

♪♪ I'm Megan Choate, director of economic development at the Upper Cumberland Development District.

Our team's mission is to serve the needs of the region's businesses to help ensure the Upper Cumberland economy continues to grow and thrive.

We strive to accomplish this by providing community development, technical support, and financial support for our small businesses.

Finding the right funding partner for your company is a critical component in the success of your small business, whether it be the startup expenses, cash flow needs, or financing an expansion project, you need the right funding partner.

One of our objectives at the Upper Cumberland Development District is to help you connect with that partner.

The Small Business Development Center arm of our operation has a network of lending institutions across the state and nation that can provide a variety of funding supports, including accounts receivable, financing federally guaranteed loans, economic injury loans, traditional loans, and more.

When none of these sources fit your needs, the Upper Cumberland Development District is here to step in and fill the gap in financing your project.

We operate a revolving loan fund in-house to provide gap financing for small businesses in the Upper Cumberland.

We are able to lend to almost any type of business.

From the pet groomers to the large manufacturers, our loans typically range in size up to around $300,000, and can be combined with loans from other financing institutions.

These loans can be applied for through the Upper Cumberland Development District, where our staff will walk with you through the application process and partner you with the Small Business Development Center team for support documents such as business plans, financial statements and projections.

Several years ago, we identified a need among startup businesses for a micro loan program.

This program is designed to allow us to take on more risk and make less secured loans for businesses just starting, or in their first year of operation, when traditional financing is most challenging.

Our micro loan program has a separate and dedicated committee, comprised of regional representatives who advocate for small businesses and their success.

To be eligible for the micro loan program, a business must work with the small Business Development Center or the BIZ Foundry, our entrepreneurial partners, for technical support.

By pairing financial support and technical support, our goal is to create the strongest position for your business to succeed.

The Upper Cumberland Development District also manages a small farm loan program funded by the State of Tennessee Department of Agriculture.

These loans, up to $25,000, can be used for a variety of farm equipment and facilities.

No matter your need, we will work with you in a holistic approach to find your financing solutions through our programs, as well as programs across the state and nation.

Business development is our passion and we want to help you start or grow your small business.

Contact us and let us be a part of your businesses development.

My name is David Allen and I'm the president of the Tennessee Rural Development Fund.

Our purpose in life primarily is just to serve as a a vehicle or a conduit for financial resources, products and services in support of community and economic development across the state, as well as helping small businesses.

The way we do this is twofold.

First of all, a lot of folks that call into our office talk to us about, what their needs are, financially for their businesses or for their projects.

And if we're able to help them directly, we do.

But if not, a lot of times what we do is we just we pair them up with other resources that are available.

A lot of folks don't have the knowledge of what's available with SBA or with HUD, or what is a business and industry loan guarantee through USDA or or what is a Tiff or how can we structure this?

We try to put in with the folks that are the professionals that that have access to these resources, that can help them with their projects.

The second area that we add value is as a community development financial institution.

We're certified by the United State's Treasury Department as a CDF, our community development financial institution.

And what that does is that allows us to bring additional incentives and resources to partner with other financial institutions, like your bank's, to further support economic and community development.

It helps our, our banks for their Community Reinvestment Act points and credits, as well as some tax incentives and other credits that they're able to take advantage of to reward them for, for investing in our local communities and our economies.

They already do this, but this helps us even more so with projects that might need a little bit more help or projects that, that may need a little help with the cash flow.

Or it can be any number of things, but it allows the banks to participate even more than they're able to normally, through the use of some of these incentives that are only available, through CDFI, so we work with them to provide financing to industries across the spectrum.

We deal in health care, we deal in manufacturing, distribution, we've dealt in retail.

There's really no project necessarily that's too large.

No project that is too small.

Really.

and truly it's just finding unique ways to take, the resources that we have to try to, provide, attractive financing measures and to make things happen within companies within our region or within our state, to help them to be more successful so that they can reinvest more back into our community and our state, reinvest more back into the people that are working for them.

And again, at the end of the day, it's just to improve the overall quality of life in our communities across our state, and we believe that it's a great tool to be able to do that.

And we're very fortunate to be able to just, participate.

Thank you so much for joining us.

And we hope that you've learned that entrepreneurship doesn't have to be a scary venture when you have the necessary resources for success at your fingertips.

If you would like to know more information on today's topics, please visit the WCTE website and to learn more about free small business resources and expert assistance, visit the Business Resource Collective website.

Until next time, I'm Michael Aikens.

♪♪ It's Your Business with Michael Aikens is brought to you by WCTE, PBS, and the Tennessee Tech Center for Rural Innovation, with funding provided by the Rural Reimagine Grand Challenge and the Tennessee Rural Development Fund.

This program was made possible by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you.

Thank you.