Jonathan Breeden: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to another edition of The Best of Johnston County podcast. I’m your host, Jonathan Breeden.
And on today’s episode, we have the owner and founder of Kanston Development, Karriem Kanston. He’s going to talk to us a little bit about his business coaching, his personal coaching that he does to his development company. He owns a couple of Little Caesars. We’re talking about a Little Caesar’s pizza, which I personally love, and the charity- One Blood out of Clayton that he has done some work with.
But before we get to that, I want to ask you to like, follow, subscribe to this podcast, wherever you’re seeing it; whether it be on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, LinkedIn, TikTok, or any of the other pages that have The Best of Johnston County podcasts throughout social media. And that will make you aware of future episodes of The Best of Johnston County podcast.
The Best of Johnston County podcast comes out every single Monday, and we’re up over 50 episodes now, and we’ve had a lot of great guests. And if you love Johnston County as much as I do, this podcast is for you. So go back and listen to some of the previous episodes with County Commissioner [00:01:00] Bush Lawter, County Commissioner Patrick Harris, County Economic Development Director Chris Johnson, Miss Teen America Hanley House, Local Dennis Tim Sims.
We’ve had a lot of great guests that I think you will find fascinating. Their commentary and what they do and why they love Johnson County is evergreen. It doesn’t go out of style. It doesn’t grow old. And so I think you would find any of those previous podcasts extremely interesting and educational.
Welcome Karriem.
Karriem Kanston: No, thank you, Jonathan, for the time today.
Jonathan Breeden: Hey, no problem. We met a few weeks ago at Clayton Chamber of Commerce. Being out here at the Cleveland Drive, I found what you were talking about, you did fast days. I was like, I got to get this guy on the podcast.
So anyway, tell the audience who you are, where you’re from, what you do.
Karriem Kanston: Sure. I was born and raised in Queens, New York, and with the business school in Johnson & Wales University in Rhode Island. And thought I was going to only spend four years there, but spent 26 years in Rhode Island. And right before the pandemic, I used to travel down here to Johnston County because my in-laws moved here 20 years [00:02:00] ago and see them.
So right before the pandemic, I would do a networking every week at the alehouse. And so, I have to move here. This place is beautiful. It’s great. It’s growing. I’ve seen the growth. And when I was in 8th and 9th grade, I used to live in the South in Newport News, Virginia. So I’m like, always loved the South. I got to get back down there.
So 2021, moves here. We say when we moved there, we’re going to buy a business. So that’s how we got it to Little Caesars and stuff like that. But I love doing business coaching, training, and helping business owners trying to figure out how to grow their businesses.
Jonathan Breeden: That’s cool. So I also think you told me before we got on here that your in-laws are from Kinston.
Karriem Kanston: Yes. They’re from Kinston.
Jonathan Breeden: So you married a North Carolinian. So that’s a good reason to come back to North Carolina.
Karriem Kanston: Yeah. And then on my mother’s side of the family from Rocky Mountain area.
Jonathan Breeden: Oh, okay. That’s great. I like Rocky Mountain too. So that’s awesome. So when you came here, did you already have Kanston Development? And this is just a new incarnation of it or was it a new creation?
Karriem Kanston: So I had it already. Doing [00:03:00] business coaching, mostly a lot of economic development.
So helping business owners, find funding, because I used to do business lending before. And then also helping business owners find business grants to grow their business. And when I got into the franchise in the Little Caesars franchise, I put a little bit that on the back burner. Still did some of it until I turned the stores around and put a manager in.
And so, I got to go full force now since I have managers running the business. It’s comfortable. Yes, I still step in sometimes, but I’m idealized, I really need to help out some more small businesses. And then I do some work through Wake Tech Community College. So they have a small business center, and sometimes I meet with some of their clients there.
Jonathan Breeden: That’s cool. So I guess, since you’re in the business, development, and coaching thing, what are maybe the top two or three things somebody looking to start a business or grow a business can do to help themselves here in the next 90-180 days?
Karriem Kanston: Sure. So this is what they could do right now; if you’re looking to start a business, you’re in the industry, so you need to call somebody in that industry right now. [00:04:00] So let’s say for instance, it’s a coffee shop. Someone owns a coffee shop in your community or in this world, call them up and say, Hey, you’re a business owner. How did you start it?
Because what happens, some people’s, I’m gonna do it on my own. There’s people that would tell you the story. They’ll tell you the great things about them, the pitfalls. So I would say, Hey, whatever business you’re looking to start, call someone right now, you might not know them, walk into their business, and say, Hey, I’m doing research, right? You have to say everything; I’ll do research on your business. So that would be number one.
And then two; I also have a connection with the Johnston Community College, small business center, in which I meet with some startup business owners. I would say, join those organizations and get free counseling also.
Jonathan Breeden: Yeah. And they do a great job at the Johnston County small business center, which is at the Workforce Development Center, which is off of Powhatan Road near the new Novo Nortis plant there on Powhatan Road in Clayton.
It is free. Your tax dollars pay for it. It is free of community college. They’re there. They have a new director. They got there a couple of years ago. She’s doing a great [00:05:00] job and they’ll help you. And then there’s also Launch JoCo, which is out there done by the Chamber of Commerce.
The applications ended end of September. By the time this podcast runs, it’ll be past that. But definitely look at it starting next summer into September. If you want to get into a more formal business development coaching thing, where you have mentors come in and work with you, the Launch JoCo program is great.
If you happen to be around Garner, LaunchGarner, I’ve been involved with them as a mentor for many years. And LaunchGarner is also a great program. One thing I would say, I think you’re right. If anybody called me and said, how do you start a law firm? I’d be glad to help them. Know what I mean?
There’s enough work out here for everybody. I think people think, they’re going to not want to help me because I’m going to compete. There’s enough business for everybody if people are doing it the right way.
Karriem Kanston: That’s right. And you brought up something that was interesting because if you see a McDonald’s, you see a Burger King. On the same corner, you’re like, what are they doing? They’re in competition, but like you said, there’s enough business out there for everybody, and everybody could help each other sometimes.
Jonathan Breeden: And if you see right here in the Cleveland [00:06:00] community, CVS and Walgreens across the street from each other, it’s the same thing in Clayton.
There’s a reason for that. They like to be together. And so that’s important.
Okay, I know you do personal coaching as well. What are two or three things that people can do better themselves individually right now, in the next 90 to 180 days?
Karriem Kanston: I would say, and you brought it up a mentor, right?
Mentoring businesses, people also should have a mentor personally. And I’m gonna tell you, I’m an introvert. You’re probably like, what?
Jonathan Breeden: I am surprised that you’re an introvert.
Karriem Kanston: I don’t like to reach out to people, but I had to figure out, I can’t do everything myself. And sometimes, I’m not the best at it.
So I would say, reach out to somebody that you might respect, or you might get a referral from someone that maybe might be at your church or your community organization, or your religious organization and say, Hey, I need some help in this area. And so all the best people, Michael Jordan, Serena Williams, Tom Brady, all had coaches. And why can’t we get a mentor or coach? And so I [00:07:00] would just open up. So get a coach, get a mentor.
And then the other thing I would say, read information that’s important to you. If you’re looking to up-level your skill on AI, AI is big now, all over the place. Then read a book about AI, even though you could go online. And you have ChatGPT could tell you a lot of stuff. But I would say, those are the quick things I would tell people to do.
Jonathan Breeden: And I’ve done those things. Back in 2020, during COVID, I got a business coach. Got a guy named Richard James, and got into his program. And that is one of the reasons I’ve been able to scale my business so successfully over the last four years, despite COVID and everything else is, I got a coach in the end. And within that program, there are other members like me, like-minded members that became my mentors that had built successful family law firms with several lawyers and lots of employees, and the systems to provide the high level of service that we try to provide so we can get the five-star reviews, cause I didn’t know any of that stuff.
I didn’t practice law 20 years before I got the coach. But a lot of the stuff about how to structure the business, and how to [00:08:00] provides that five-star level of service, I did not know. But between coaching and mentorship, I learned it. And that’s one of the reasons we’ve been able to be so successful over the last three or four years. So you’re absolutely right about getting a coach and a mentor.
Also think that it’s not bad to have, it’s also a good idea to have a counselor. A lot of us have anxiety and then other things in our past we need to deal with. And there’s tons of counselors out there.
On a previous episode, we had the founder of One-Eighty Counseling, so Coates on here. There’s also better health out there, which is fairly affordable. And they have lots of counselors there too, and it’s all virtual. And so if you’re stressed, got anxiety, things aren’t quite right, get a counselor.
Karriem Kanston: That’s right. And counseling is important. I grew up with two parents that had mental illness and wrote a book about that. And one of the things I tell people, I said, we need help. And sometimes, we need help outside of our family and friends.
But I want to put a plug for you; if you are looking for great customer service, just walk into Jonathan’s office. I was like, hello, can I give you a water? I’m like, I need to bring all my employees and just say, just walk [00:09:00] into his office to see how people treat you. Your group of your team have a great welcome atmosphere.
You walk in your office and I’m just blown away because you don’t see that every day.
Jonathan Breeden: You have to work hard at it, right? You have to work hard at it. You got to make principles and train people to do things the right way and try to make people feel comfortable and stuff like that.
So let’s pivot a little bit to you own Two Little Caesars franchises. I find that absolutely fascinating. I like Little Caesars hot and ready. What a slogan, right? It beats a pizza. I don’t know who came up with those, but those are two of the great good copywriting ads of the last 10 years right there. Why buy a Little Caesars? Where are they?
Karriem Kanston: Yeah. So we have one in North of Crabtree, all on Route 1 Road in New Oxford, North Carolina. And when we were moving down here full time, he said, we’re going to buy a business. So we started like putting offers on all types of businesses, retail, their shoe stores.
We were like, Hey, we’re in Little Caesars all the time, let me research about their franchise. And so we were like, Oh, all right. We start talking to them. Maybe we could get [00:10:00] into the business. It’s not intensive. People are not sitting down at a table, so you have to turn tables. And so he’s like, all right, let’s do a new one.
And then we were like, Ooh, it’s going to cost us half a million for a new one. So we like, I don’t know if we want to do that. And then we saw one for sale for less than 200,000. So we’d like, Hey, can we turn this low-performance store around? If we can, great. If not, we can sell it and flip it, baby.
And so we bought our first one in 2021, December in COVID. What our second one in 2022 June. And so the first one, we’ve been able to triple the sales in three years. The second one, we’ve grown a sales, but not as much as we like. And we like the product. I love to eat pizza every day.
I can eat pizza every day, right? And it’s people forget about the quality of Little Caesars, even though it’s a lower price, but the quality is very high and the value.
Jonathan Breeden: So how did you turn the store around and triple the sales?
Karriem Kanston: We did one thing that people don’t do today. You answer the telephone.
Just think about it, you go to a McDonald’s or Starbucks, they probably not gonna call you. Or if you call them, they probably not gonna pick up the phone and you can make an [00:11:00] order. So first day I get in there, and I picked up the phone, and I kept some of the older employees. It’s like, they scream at me. What are you doing? What are you doing, sir? I’m like, what are y’all talking about? I’m looking at him. Who do you scream at? And he was like, why are you picking up the telephone? And I said, because someone is trying to call us to provide a product and they’re going to pay us for the product.
And they said the last owner told us, if you ever touch the phone, I’m gonna fire you. I’m like, what? So I already knew. I said, one thing we can grow sales, answer the phone, and you see that a lot of times with certain types of businesses, they don’t answer the phone. They don’t get back to you to customer service, we increase the customer service, we do things that nobody else has done before. People came in late and they order was late, and I had a telephone number so I gave them a call the next day and said, listen, next time you come in, we’re going to give you something free. Free, crazy bread.
We’re sorry. And people said to me. What are you doing, sir? I’m like, I’m calling you to say, I’m sorry. He said, we already knew it was busy. We just thank you very much for even acknowledging us. So customer service and then [00:12:00] consistency. Give the people a consistent product that they’re asking for.
Jonathan Breeden: So how did you make the product more consistent? Was that through better training, better monitoring of making sure they were following the recipe?
The hardest part in the restaurant business is to get the cooks to follow the recipe. Everybody wants to do it their own separate way, but you really just need to follow the recipe. So is that what you did? You just insisted that they follow the recipe, you inspected the dough before as it was being made, what did you do to increase the quality?
Karriem Kanston: So with a franchise, you have all those SOPs, Standard Operating Procedures, they have videos. And so the first thing I do when I have new people come in, they watch your orientation video, they watch videos about making pizza. And then we show them how to make the pizza. And then you got to inspect it also. So you inspect the product, inspect things. So I tell people, when food comes out of the oven and you look at it and you wouldn’t eat it, why would you serve it to somebody?
Jonathan Breeden: That’s a good point.
Karriem Kanston: Plain and simple. So that’s one of the things I tell people. And sometimes, if I get a customer complaint, sometimes I might go back and [00:13:00] review the video and say, yeah, that pizza came out dark, you shouldn’t have served it.
So it’s continuous training, especially in this industry where you have a lot of people turning over, you have to do continuous training. And also, you have to show them like, Hey, all right, this is bad. This is not good. And we have pictures on the wall. So people can say, I didn’t know that pizza didn’t look good. The pizzas on the wall should look like that.
Jonathan Breeden: Yeah. And that is key. But I think, one of the things that I try to get through when I’m talking to businesses and stuff is, you need to inspect what you expect.
And if you’re not doing that, then you’re not going to be able to produce a quick, consistent product. Whether we’re doing your family law case, whether I’m buying a pizza from you or whatever, you’ve got to be inspecting what you expect and making sure that the Standard Operating Procedures, or in my case, I’m always, I’ve got those, but I also have KPIs that we’re trying to do and how quick we get cases filed. I’m always constantly tracking how long before we can close a case out because we need people to be able to [00:14:00] move on with their lives. We need them to move the cases through. So it’s all the same thing. My business is no different than yours. Whether it’s a quick-serve restaurant or providing professional services like an attorney, it’s the same thing.
It is about the customer. And I think it’s interesting. You talk about answering the phone. That is the number one thing that other law firms don’t do and don’t do well.
My office has trained phone people whose only job it is to answer the phone and to call people back. And I think that is key. And if you call here, we have an answering service 24 hours a day, seven days a week, live operators, America, it’s good. They’ll take your information, and if it needs to get to one of us, they can get it to us. I think that’s important too. So I think it’s interesting.
One of the things I did was, I did a better job of answering the phones. You’re right.
Karriem Kanston: Somebody’s calling for your service, and you’re not offering the opportunity to engage. I’m like, I don’t get it. I know the tradespeople, and I try to help people, especially in this area, Johnston County, a part of the chamber.
I’m like, man, answer the phone, man. Like somebody is asking you for a service or a quote or [00:15:00] something, that means that they’re trying to give you business. So if you’re saying you’re looking for business and somebody’s trying to give it to you, like I went to a networking event and I said to the electrician, I have these things to fix in my house. He told me to call him back next week.
Dude, I’m trying to give you business, right? So those are the things like trying to help people out. So when I see people like that, I’m like, hey, here’s a tip for you. No, maybe he’s like, you say getting an answering service, maybe it’s getting a remote.
Nowadays, you can have somebody else answer the phone, you don’t have to answer it. And now it’s chatbots. You can set up with ChatGPT that can answer our customer’s questions when they call in. I didn’t even know that until two weeks ago.
Jonathan Breeden: Yeah. And if you’re a business owner and you’re listening to this or whatever, the time to respond to a lead.
If you don’t call somebody back on an inbound call in the next five or 10 minutes, the odds you’re going to convert that lead go way down. If I was calling to order a pizza from you and you didn’t answer, I might just call the next pizza place. If I’m looking at a screen listing 10 divorce lawyers in Raleigh, if the first one doesn’t answer, [00:16:00] I’m in crisis. I’m going to call the next one.
Karriem Kanston: That’s right.
Jonathan Breeden: And so I think that’s the key. What I always tell people is the bar for customer service, particularly in the legal industry and in the quick-serve restaurant business, some as well, anybody outside of Chick-fil-A is lying on the ground. So if you do anything to try to raise that bar, you’re going to stand out. And you should try because you should try to provide a good service.
Because as I tell the attorneys here, a lot of times, we do what we do as good a job as we can, but the facts are going to determine the outcome. And we’re not changing the facts.
Karriem Kanston: That’s right.
Jonathan Breeden: We’re presenting facts, but we don’t get to change the facts. But we can provide a good service. We can’t communicate with the clients. We can offer them reasonable expectations as to what we think would be reasonable. We could be advocates and stuff like that. The one thing we can’t do is change the facts, but we can provide a good service. And it sounds like that’s what you did to triple the sales at your Little Caesars.
Karriem Kanston: That’s right. Cause I already knew, there’s an opportunity.
So why wasn’t this person doing a [00:17:00] great job? It’s answer the phone consistent customer service. One, you can look at the reviews. Nowadays, if you’re buying a business and they have reviews, that’s something that tips also for you all. Number one thing, get Google reviews, bad or good. But you want more, more great reviews, but get a lot of reviews. And that will put you up a little bit to the top of when people are searching for your product or service.
Jonathan Breeden: Yes. And we like Google reviews ’cause that tells me we’re doing things the right way.
Karriem Kanston: That’s right.
Jonathan Breeden: And sometimes, we get ones that are not as good, and that’s a learning process for us, as well.
Karriem Kanston: Yes. That’s great you said that. ‘Cause usually, I talk to business owners, they say, man, I wanna get that bad one off my review. And I said, here’s an opportunity to respond to somebody, invite them back for a service. And especially in Little Caesars, people might put a review on your Little Caesars, but they didn’t go to your store. They just saw a Little Caesars. And so what I do is I always offer people to come back in and for a free product. You know why? Because if I could get them back, come into the business, it says that if you get someone every single week to spend money [00:18:00] in your Little Caesars, they’re going to be a customer for maybe six, seven years, if they live in that community.
Jonathan Breeden: Oh, that’s awesome.
Let’s talk about the charity, One Blood. I’ve not heard of that. You told me about it before we started recording this. What is it? Where is it? What are they doing?
Karriem Kanston: Yeah. So One Blood Movement of Unity and Clayton, they have an office downtown Clayton, and it’s run by a gentleman named Coach Fred.
And I love helping people out in the community. And so the goal is, we started hopefully work more with them, but they do a Thanksgiving drive. And I think they fed around like 5,000 people or something close to 5,000 people last year. And so they have an annual fundraiser, but they also coach youth in the community. And so that’s a huge thing.
Some youth that need some help, they need coaching, they need to get some direction, they do some stuff sometimes, mostly in the schools and in their office. So they’re trying to grow. And so people could check them out, they’re trying to do some great things in Johnston County.
Jonathan Breeden: You said, they’re offices in Downtown Clayton, and where Chef Fellows is, right there on Main Street.
Karriem Kanston: That’s right there on Main Street.
Jonathan Breeden: Yeah. Right there on Main Street, Chef Fellow’s great catering. That’s awesome, right down the Clayton Chamber of Commerce.
Karriem Kanston: That’s [00:19:00] right.
Jonathan Breeden: And around the corner from the whole cut library. It’s all right there in Clayton. That’s awesome.
Last question we ask everybody on The Best of Johnston County podcast is what do you love most about Johnston County? You’ve been here for a couple of years. You came before that. What do you love most about it?
Karriem Kanston: You know what I like about it? It’s not the city, but it’s close to the city. On top of what I like about Johnston County, I get to meet great people. The Rhode Island was a million people. So that small community fails and it’s a growing community that people are always trying to help each other.
I went to a networking event this morning and the networking people there are talking about other networking events or helping other business owners. And people are looking to help each other and develop relationships.
With you, I say, can I be your podcast? Sure. I didn’t see all the emails quickly, but I didn’t win my spam. And so you’re looking to help. And this podcast is showing The Best of Johnston County in which I truly love that it’s an opportunity to share about the county and how everybody can help each other out.
Jonathan Breeden: [00:20:00] Cool. Yeah. And it’s the people, almost everybody says it’s the people. And the small town feels and everybody likes being next to the big city without having to deal with the big city traffic and some of the big city prices, and definitely the big city taxes, for sure.
So how can people reach out to Kanston Development? And how would they reach out to you?
Karriem Kanston: Yeah. So you go to K A N S T O N. com. So Kanston.com. Or you can search me on Google. I think I’m the only Karriem Kanston out there. And you know what? Looking to help some more people out.
Jonathan Breeden: Oh, that’s awesome. We’d like to thank Karriem Kanston for being our guest on The Best of Johnston County podcast today. Show him some love down at the bottom. Leave a five-star review. Tell him and us what you liked about what he said. Some of the things you could get from some of the good advice he gave for how to quickly start your business, how to be a better person.
We’d love to hear what you have to say about what he had to say or anything that we’ve been talking about here on The Best of Johnston County podcast. Make sure you like, follow, and subscribe to the podcast, so as you’ll be aware of future episodes.
Until next time, I’m your [00:21:00] host, Jonathan Breeden.
