Exploring Life & Business with Bob Negen of WhizBang! Retail Training

Today we’d like to introduce you to Bob Negen

Bob, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I started the Mackinaw Kite Co. in Mackinaw City just out of college. I didn’t want to get a “real” job and I had a new hobby, kite flying. Since I didn’t want to get a real job and I loved flying kites, the logical choice was to open a kite shop. My thinking was “how hard can it be to run a successful store?” Well, of course, it is very hard.

I hired my younger brother Steve that first year and for 19 years we built it together, opening stores in Grand Haven, Mackinaw Island, Grand Rapids and Lansing.

In 1999 Steve approached me about selling him my portion of the company and I agreed.

My wife Susan, who worked with us for several years, had extensive retail experience as a department store executive and taught us a lot about how to run a store properly, and I left the Mackinaw Kite Co. and started WhizBang! Retail Training.

Our mission is to give local, brick and mortar retailers they skills they need to build better businesses, have better lives and have a bigger impact on their communities.

We do this through a combination of products, services, events and I am a successful professional speaker.

We have just launched an educational platform for independent retailers called Brilliance (www.retailbrilliance.com), which we believe will have a huge impact on the world of independents by giving them access to all the information they need to be successful.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Well, we almost went broke twice, and I don’t mean we were experiencing cash flow problems, I mean closing our doors was the only sane and logical thing to do. Fortunately we were used to being poor, we were stubborn and we believed in what we were doing so we stuck with it. Our mantra during those days was “we’re never going to be successful in business, if we are not in business,” so the challenge was to stay open for that day, because if we could make it through that day we were one step closer to getting out the holes we were in.

At WhizBang! Retail Training we had a very rough stretch for a couple of years because we had a product (what we knew about retail) but we didn’t know how to sell that product. Being in the business of selling our expertise was something new to us that we needed to figure out.

Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
We specialize in giving local, independent, brick-and-mortar retailers the skills they need to run successful businesses, build better lives for themselves, and have a deep and lasting impact on their community. We do this with products, programs, events and services. Our flagship product is the Retail Mastery System, the most comprehensive training program for independent retailers anywhere. The Retail Sales Academy is our online, front-line sales training program developed specifically to give sales associates the skills and confidence they need to give customers an amazing (not pushy, rude, or manipulative!) experience. The Retail Success Summit is our live, in-person conference held every year in Grand Rapids. Every year hundreds of retailers attend from all over the world. And finally, our newest and most exciting project ever is Brilliance (www.retailbrilliance.com), an online education and training platform that makes it easy for retailers and their teams to learn from recognized retail experts, get product training from vendors and create their own custom company training. We are confident it will enormously impact the world of independent retail by closing the skills gap between big retailers and independents.

Any big plans?
We are deep into making Brilliance a game-changing platform for our community of independent retailers.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.whizbangtraining.com and www.retailbrilliance.com
• Instagram: @whizbangtraining @retailbrilliance
• Facebook: whizbang retail training retail brilliance
• LinkedIn: bob negen, retail expert
• Youtube: whizbang retail training