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Pivoting From a Walmart Corporate Employee to Online Entrepreneur

Garrett Peters is the Co-founder and CEO of Duncan & Stone Paper Co., a stationery company that combines timeless design with effortless journaling. In his role, he is a jack-of-all-trades for the company, handling fulfillment, sales, online channel management, and customer service, to name a few. Before Duncan & Stone, he spent over 10 years working with brands at Walmart and Sam’s Club. Throughout his career, Garrett has managed a wide range of brands across multiple categories and is deeply committed to helping brands flourish.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

[03:01] Garrett Peters shares his background working with brands at Walmart and Sam’s Club
[08:26] The genesis of Duncan & Stone Paper Co.
[10:29] The challenges of being an entrepreneur
[15:49] Garrett explains why he went into the paper goods and gifts business
[20:49] Why entrepreneurs should focus on slow and sustainable growth and self-care
[26:21] Tips for getting excellent customer reviews and ratings
[27:35] The future of Duncan & Stone
[29:14] Garrett’s advice for young entrepreneurs

In this episode…

Are you tired of the corporate grind and dreaming of becoming a full-time online entrepreneur? What can you learn from a corporate employee turned successful entrepreneur?

Working with brands at Walmart and Sam’s Club, Garrett Peters felt it was time for him to venture into entrepreneurship. He says that the leap can be challenging, but with determination and the right mindset, you can achieve success. However, it can also be tempting to do too much too quickly, but that approach can lead to burnout and mistakes. He recommends slow and sustainable growth — building a solid foundation for your business, focusing on providing value to your customers, and taking time for self-care. He shares his journey transitioning from the corporate world to building a company that offers products so people can easily capture their life stories through the art of journaling.

In this episode of the Quiet Light Podcast, Pat Yates sits down with Garrett Peters, Co-founder and CEO of Duncan & Stone Paper Co., to share his insights for becoming a successful entrepreneur. Garrett shares his background working with brands at Walmart and Sam’s Club, the genesis of Duncan & Stone, the challenges he faced, and advice for young entrepreneurs.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Sponsor for this episode

This episode brought to you by Quiet Light, a brokerage firm that wants to help you successfully sell your online business.

There is no wrong reason for selling your business. However, there is a right time and a right way. The team of leading entrepreneurs at Quiet Light wants to help you discover the right time and strategy for selling your business. They provide trustworthy advice, effective strategies, and honest valuations. So, your Quiet Light advisors aren’t your everyday brokers — they’re your partner and friend through every phase of the exit planning process.

If you’re new to the prospect of buying and selling, Quiet Light is here to support you. Their plethora of top-notch resources will provide everything you need to know about when and how to buy or sell an online business. Quiet Light offers high-quality videos, articles, podcasts, and guides to help you make the best decision for your online business.

Not sure what your business is really worth? No worries. Quiet Light offers a free valuation and marketplace-ready assessment on its website. That’s right—this quick, easy, and free valuation has no strings attached. Knowing the true value of your business has never been easier!

What are you waiting for? Quiet Light offers the best experience, strategies, and advice to make your exit successful. To learn more, go to quietlight.com, email [email protected], or call 800.746.5034 today.

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:07

Hey folks, it’s the Quiet Light Podcast where we share relentlessly honest insights, actionable tips and entrepreneurial stories that will help founders identify and reach their goals

Pat Yates 0:32

Hello, everyone, welcome to the Quiet Light Podcast. I’m Pat Yates sitting in for Joe Valley. We have a really exciting conversation to you today. It’s Garrett Peters. We actually want to open this up to entrepreneurial spotlights so Garrett has a company that just does really amazing work and Duncan & Stone he talks passionately about emotions and mental health inside owning a business, which is really incredible. And he’s turned it into a business where he actually has journals, whether you’re someone that is trying to talk about things you’ve done in the teaching industry, whether you’re doing a travel thing for one of your trips you took childhood books, recipe journals, things like that, that you can write on paper or remember. In day one, everybody wants everything on their iPhone, and they want stuff to all be digital, this gives you an opportunity to really think about the things that you’re doing in your business, and then be able to, hopefully, in your business and your personal life and hopefully helping those things. So Garrett spent over 10 years in the corporate world working for Walmart and Sam’s Club. He talks about jumping into the deep end in retail. He got the buzz to start his own business in 2019. And together with his wife and friends, they started Duncan & Stone Paper Company. Duncan & Stone officially launched in the spring of 2020. And he left his full-time job in 2021 to become the CEO of this business. As one of my mentors originally said he moved from a meal ticket to a soup line. But he’s definitely trying to forge through and be able to grow things. Garrett’s been married for 14 years has three sons 11, nine and six and lives in Fayetteville, Arkansas. He’s just a dynamic entrepreneur and a guy who really takes a lot of focus on making sure that customers are taken care of and giving a product that he thinks will be amazing. So I’m anxious to talk to Garrett and be sure again that you go to quietlight.com. Look at our listings. And if you need to reach out and talk to me, you can always email me at [email protected]. So I’m anxious to talk to Garrett. Let’s get right to it. Garrett, welcome to the Quiet Light Podcast. How are we doing today?

Garrett Peters 2:28

Hey, Pat, thanks for having me on, man. I’m doing great. How are you doing?

Pat Yates 2:31

I’m great. I’m really excited about this. And we’re gonna open up the podcast a lot to a lot of entrepreneurs. We talk to a lot of sellers. We talk a lot of vendors, but I like to get down to be able to let the listeners kind of get actionable tips with entrepreneur. So I’m super excited to talk to you about your business Duncan & Stone Paper Company as well as your journey. Because it’s kind of interesting because you decided to go the corporate route, then go the business route of owning it. And I want to jump into that. So maybe tell me where you’re from and maybe a little bit about your background and just intro yourself.

Garrett Peters 3:01

That sounds great, man. That sounds great. We live in Fayetteville, Arkansas. We’ve been here my wife and I for coming up on 15 years. I’m an Arkansas guy grew up not far from here. But when we got married, we moved to Fayetteville and kind of started our life. And so we’ve lived here ever since. And when we moved to Fayetteville I got plugged into the, there’s kind of a retail community in Northwest Arkansas because of Walmart Sam’s Club, home office is based here. And so I got connected with a couple different companies early on here to learn about what it looks like to work with Walmart Sam’s Club, and that’s really where I spent most of my career is working with vendors and brands selling to Walmart, Sam’s Club and so had a background working with brands and things like that, but we can get into some of the career happenings for sure. But we got three kiddos at home. We have three boys at the house. We have an 11-year-old, a nine-year-old, and a six-year-old, complete zoo at our house. I mean it’s just comical. But we have a lot of fun man so we got young boys and you know now we’re just working on growing our business and rocking and rolling man.

Pat Yates 4:13

You know what’s really amazing about that I don’t think you know this. I’m also a three-son guy, are you 30, 28, and 24. Amazing the house.

Garrett Peters 4:23

Listen, we’ll have to call later. We’ll have to talk later about tips and tricks.

Pat Yates 4:27

Wives should talk later about testosterone, you’re probably more apt than in that situation. So tell me a little bit Garrett. I think what’s really cool about this story when you and I talked is you started off in the corporate world. Maybe tell everybody a little bit about how it is to work for Sam’s Club and Walmart. You’re talking about huge conglomerate. Sometimes maybe get lost. Don’t feel like you’re valued. Is there anything you can give them and maybe they’re great things about it? To work in that environment.

Garrett Peters 4:53

Man there is. I valued my time working with Walmart Sam’s brands, and so I never worked directly at those big companies at Walmart Sam’s Club that work really closely with them got very familiar working with them in the buyers and merchandisers there. It’s amazing. I mean, literally transformative especially for startup brands I worked a lot with, with startups and, you know, kind of early-stage brands, amazing, man. I mean, what they can do for a business is pretty remarkable. But you’re talking about playing with the big dogs, you know what I’m saying? So there’s the expectation around delivering with Walmart, Sam’s Club, because we saw a lot of people come and they weren’t ready for it. And so, I think you’re gonna hear different stories about working with Walmart, but good and bad, I’m sure. But if you’re ready, I would say just have that expectation, like, yeah, I’m ready to go scale with Walmart, if you’ve never done it before. Just keeping that in mind.

Pat Yates 5:56

It’s really interesting story, because it kind of parallels with Quiet Light, probably 90% of the people that come in to sell their companies aren’t ready, not only from a preparation standpoint, but maybe a number standpoint, all kinds of different things. So it’s really interesting that you mentioned a lot of times probably what you were doing, they were managing expectations of companies that were trying to grow maybe too quickly, or not prepared in the right segment, how did you get them in a position to where they understood they’d have to put more time in? And maybe still, because I’m looking at it from a business standpoint, how does someone get all excited about that, and then find out from an expert, they’re not quite ready, and then they have to pivot? I mean, I’m sure that was tough.

Garrett Peters 6:34

It is. I mean, I think that setting the right expectation, you hit the nail on the head, like, I worked with a handful of brands that had this idea of, hey, I want to go get on the shelf at Walmart, or whatever it may be. And the reality is, sometimes it’s like, hey, you’re not ready for that. And I think that it’s really understanding the entire piece of where that brand may be. And Walmart and Sam’s might not be, you might not be ready for that. And that’s okay. Like, it’s really full and understanding like, what’s the vision where we’re going, kind of what is that play? And that’s what I love doing, especially with kind of younger startup brands was, was helping them through that journey of, hey, this is time, or hey, maybe just a test, or maybe you start out small with Walmart and scale and grow from there, which they were big fans of as well, especially for regional types of products and things like that. So it’s amazing. I mean, I feel like an MBA in business working with those buyers at Walmart, because I just learned so much about ins and outs of scaling a business, how to grow with a retailer, like Walmart is amazing. So gave me such, I had a really good time working with them.

Pat Yates 7:56

That’s amazing. What’s funny about that is, you actually are doing a service to these companies. If they go in and they fail in the wrong position, it actually could affect them even bigger, long term. So it’s really amazing that you took the time to do that. So in the world, nothing was happening in 2020 and 2021. News about any pandemic, but you decided to add some stress to it by saying, you know what, see Walmart thing? When do you wake up and just decide that, and how did you do it?

Garrett Peters 8:26

What a great question, man. So in 2019, actually, so my wife, her name, Stephanie, Stephanie and I had been good friends with Sarah and Garland are business partners, and just kind of, we’re doing life with them. They live close to us. And we’re just kind of processing through what’s going on. Well, long story short, Sarah, was running an Etsy business at the time. And so she was selling cards and things like that. And Stephanie and I got more and more interested in like, what she was doing, and just we’re dreaming and just talking about what this could be, what a potential product could be to sell online. And so in 2019, Stephanie and I and Sarah and Garland went into business together to start Duncan & Stone. And so when we started the business, we decided, hey, we want to create prompted keepsake journals and giftable items cards. And then we went and went down the path of trying to figure that out in 2019. I mean, obviously, like, we had no idea what was about to transpire in the years to come. But we went and sourced our first round of products and 2019 and started selling in February 2020. Literally, like we turned our website on and started selling products in 2020. And it was wild man wild time to start an online business. That’s for sure.

Pat Yates 9:54

That’s really amazing. So you took your knowledge that you had from Walmart, getting an MBA from businesses every single day. He basically, and then decided, you know what, I have all the knowledge, I want to go forward and move do it. It’s really an incredible leap for anyone to be able to do that. So I’m sure that in your entrepreneurial journey over three or four years, and really still working for Walmart’s common entrepreneurial journey, you’re working with entrepreneurs all time, I’m sure there have been highs and lows. I mean, I’m sure there were times when you doubted the decision, and you were confident in it, maybe give some idea of what it was like, and the emotions you had to go through when you decided to pull that string and actually do it?

Garrett Peters 10:29

That’s a great question. It was interesting, like, the process of starting, it was very exciting for us. And for me, because I have a full-time job, working for a corporate environment. But we have this new side hustle, basically, that we had started with some good friends. And we had no idea what the future look like for the business. But it was fun for us. Like, for me, the first like 2020 was, it was exciting. It’s like we’ve created products we’re selling, we’re, I’m shipping products out of my house, like it was just full-on startup mode for us in 2020. So there was this high of like, oh, this is really fun. This is exciting. Well, fast forward to the end of 2020 to 2021. I was beyond stress, Pat, I was like, the business was going I have a full-time job. Our kids were they’re young. And we got kids at the house. They’re doing school from home, it’s all this chaos of life. And I walked out in our house one day, I walked out at lunch to talk to Stephanie about something and she’s like, I was super stressed. And I was like, I don’t know what I’m going to do. Like there’s this new side hustle business that’s now going this demanding time and attention. I don’t know what’s about to happen. And she looked at me and she was like, you need to quit your job. And I was not expecting that. And I was like, well, I don’t know if that makes any sense. Because we as business hadn’t been going for a year. And so it took us on a path man, I left my job in January 2021. And started doing the business full-time. And I say all that to say what I thought was going to be an exciting kind of journey and ride turned out to be an extremely difficult year for me just the process of leaving a corporate job and all the resources available with that, to I’m the only one doing this now. It was just kind of like, what is going on. And it was very tough man, I think that I was not, I’d never run on business before or been in that sort of environment. So there was just tons of learnings for myself that I had to like, man, I had to figure out like what this new reality look like as a business owner, and trying to grow this, at the time a very small online brand. And so, man, it was a very long process for me to kind of figure out that new reality a new normal for me as a, what does my day look like? How do you manage? Like, what am I supposed to even work on? Like, I don’t know what’s happening with this thing. To over time getting some wins and getting some stability and beginning to grow the business in a way that was like, okay, this might be a fun thing, you know, so I’ve been doing it for two and a half years now. And it’s been a blast.

Pat Yates 13:37

I think it’s really amazing. Again, we’re talking with Garrett Stone with Duncan & Stone Paper Company. And I think, Garrett, when you get into this, I think that everybody can be great in the positive time. So when you’re doing sales, and you’re launching products, when everything seems positive, it’s great. You find that day when you lose money, or you get five returns, you get a bad call from a customer, it always resets you to a point where you sort of doubt where you’re at. I mean, were there times when you went through this, you say, what am I doing?

Garrett Peters 14:02

Oh, dude, so many times so many times, I’ll tell you a big one early on for us was the second product that we created. We sell prompted keepsake journals and giftable items. So, paper goods that we were sourcing, the second product, I should say that we created and brought over. We brought in which review in the product we’re looking at as a team and Sarah, one of our partners was looking at it and she was like, hmm, this doesn’t look right. The spine of the journal was misprinted. Okay, so finished goods already came, we missed it through the process for creating it. And basically we got it in and it was unusable. I mean, we decided as a team like listen, we can’t sell this. And so this was like, six or seven months into the business and as a team, we’re like, we can’t, we don’t want to tarnish the brand immediately, we just started. And so it was a major blow for us as a small business of like, what in the world? Like, how are we going to get past this? Very challenging season for us, just because we’re trying to grow this small little thing we’ve created. So every dollar we counted and made, it was really it was really tough.

Pat Yates 15:30

Yeah, I mean, I think that that’s what’s interesting, no matter if you run it, like my business, I’m over 20 years, I still have visions every single day that you have to deal with entrepreneurs have to be quick on their feet. So you made the decision to go well, what I’m kind of interested in how did you end up in a paper business? And what made you decide where you were gonna go? Was there a background in that?

Garrett Peters 15:49

Not really honest, the short answer is not really like, as we were kicking around the idea of starting a business with our partners, Sarah was already selling a set of cards on Etsy, actually, that was doing really well. And so we had a base of like, we think we can sell types of cards like this, and then create, really, the vision was from Sarah and Stephanie, as we’re discussing this as young moms, with thinking about baby books, and thinking about other sort of giftable types of items, there seemed to be a big gap in the marketplace, from what we could see around, really meaningful, but like, lifetime, heirloom quality type of stuff, just basically stuff that didn’t look cheesy, that you’d want to take to a baby shower, and things like that. So the more research we did out there, it was like, hey, I think there’s an opportunity here. So that’s kind of what sent us down that path of creating journals, I had no background in paper goods, or stationery, or anything like that. So we’ve learned all of those things along the way. But for me, I was always intrigued by the thought of running your own business was intriguing to me, I knew other entrepreneurs that are running different businesses and friends of mine, and I’m like, I’m intrigued by the idea. So it was less about the product for me personally, it was more about this could be a business opportunity for us to pursue. And so that’s kind of what led us down that path.

Pat Yates 17:27

It’s really incredible. When I was looking at the site, I was struck by something, it’s all stuff that you become passionate about. It’s not like a transactional item. It’s not like you buy it, and you just give it away you have to put your heart and soul into and it sometimes becomes something you decide. So tell us a little bit about Duncan & Stone and what your focus is on the journals. I see so many different things on here. They’re so cool. And I never really even thought about them. So I’m curious how you decided where you were going?

Garrett Peters 17:53

Yeah, I love that question, man. And early on when we were starting and 2020 2021 it was around, we’re in a life stage with young kiddos of weird, baby books and pregnancy journals and things like that. So we started in that space, pat of, you know, creating keepsakes for moms. And that’s kind of where we started. Well, we quickly found early on that customers were giving us great feedback and asking us to create different things. And so we started going, what are also we’re in a stage of life where we’re getting gifts for our parents and grandparents and who the heck knows what to get them most of the time. And so we’re like, what if we made items that were great giftable keepsakes for moms and dads to give to your parents and things like that. So we created our legacy journal, which is one of our top items that that is a family keepsake kind of generational story journal, which is awesome. We knew that we wanted to give something like create stuff that was a prompted item. And so that guides the customer through, you know, telling your story or keeping recipe family recipes and things like that. It was all under the umbrella of like generational keepsake type of items. And so what we’ve done over the years is just look for different kinds of opportunities out there. So I tell you, like, we spend a lot of time as a team talking through different journals, different sorts of things, customer feedback that we’ve gotten, all sorts of stuff, but it’s all under that umbrella of like, giving someone a meaningful gift, whether they’re engaged or they’re married or they had their first kiddo, like for us, as the as the brand owner means so much that it’s such a special time right now to your point about, you know, the types of stuff that we’ve created. It’s something about those special seasons, you know, in somebody’s life that we want to kind of be a part of. So that’s fun.

Pat Yates 20:07

It’s incredible. I think that when some people look at this, I mean, when you create memories and things like that, it really resonates. And it makes a company actually seem a little even more valuable that you can provide that kind of service to a person. So let’s pivot a little bit, we talked a little bit when I was prepping, of things that you thought might be important throughout your journey, you gave me a couple of points. One is, let’s go with the first one, take it slow growth steady is important and key and actually really agree with that. But tell me your thoughts on that. And why an entrepreneur, if they’re going into it should, because I think everyone goes in with this youthful exuberance, I’m gonna kill it, I’m gonna do this, that I’m gonna do this. And sometimes it’s too much. So tell me what you mean by take it slow. And slow growth?

Garrett Peters 20:49

That’s a good question, man. It’s really, for me come out of the first few years of doing it full time. So rewind to 2021 when I left my job to do full time, go do our business. Man, I just was so obsessed, and just like a maniac about the growth of the business. Like I thought that I was just obsessed with it. Like, we got to do this, we got to do this. I was just a madman. And for whatever reason, I just thought that like we had to grow, we had to get more sales, we had to get more customers, we had to do all this stuff. We had to launch more products. And it was out of a place of like, I wasn’t like I just thought that’s what you had to do. I’m like, we have to grow fast. We got to get to this number. And it was all arbitrary numbers. It was like no one on our teams, like, hey, we need to be doing this much in sales. It wasn’t that it was just like, that’s kind of what my mindset was going in, is like, if we’re going to have a successful brand, we need to just be hitting these milestones. Well, what happened was dude, I burned out in 2021. I was like, just completely running too hard in a way that was very unsustainable. And so through over the years, I’m looking like through that period of time, I’m going, whoa, like, I would rather have sustainable, healthy, ongoing growth that you’re not killing yourself along the way to get that, right. I’m just go in pay, I’d rather us be pushing the ball forward every month, every year. In a way that’s like, to me, it’s just kind of redefining, like, what your expectations are, you know, what are we trying to go for? For us, we run the businesses for two is two families. We have four owners and two families. And so we’re going, hey, what is this need to look like for us? And where I’ve landed is like sustainable, like, slow growth is pretty key. Now it doesn’t maybe fit every person situation or business, obviously. But that’s kind of for us, like been a key part.

Pat Yates 23:05

I think that’s a great point. And actually, your second one is the one that struck me the most, because I think one thing that entrepreneurs only think about they focus solely on business and not themselves. They think I’m an entrepreneur, I can take on anything. And your second one was take care of yourself very simply said, which I’m a big believer in and I think that I’ve been a victim of not doing that for myself probably putting more pressure on myself more anticipation of things, I got to do more things I want to put on my plate and then somehow miserable right after that’s the case. So talk a little bit about your view of that. Because I think mental health and things like that is so important in anything you’re doing in business, especially when you own the business. So tell us your thoughts.

Garrett Peters 23:45

Yeah, man, I’m definitely no expert in this space, because I’m right there with you. But along those same lines is what I was kind of describing and 2021 and into 2022. I just found myself being I just wasn’t taking care of myself when taking care of my body, had no space for decompression. For us we were running the business out of our house and still do but I woke up every day and went to bed every day looking at this is like this thing was all-encompassing. And I didn’t create any boundaries for me to have that space. And man, through my wife with good friends of just going hey, people around you saying you need to take care of yourself. I think that what I’ve learned over the years is really that’s so key. Like, I’m not going to be the best husband, leader, father, that I can be business owner unless I take care of myself. Same for everybody. It’s like we have to prioritize that. I believe it’s so key. It’s going to be key for not just the president but for the future, your future health. And so, I tell you what it looked like it just looked like me scheduling that time, whether that be going to play tennis with a friend going on a bike ride, taking off an afternoon, like, giving yourself freedom in that space to do it and to go, my business isn’t going to crumble, if I take off a few days, like, I need to do that, for the sake of my own sanity, and like just establishing some of those, like, key kind of habits are key, because it just gives you so much more balance and health and clarity. I think.

Pat Yates 25:32

I think it’s amazing that you say that, because I think that people in their lives, if they get big, older and start running businesses have families, they think there’s no limit to what I can take on the problem is they don’t see what they don’t see. And eventually that’s going to catch up with you. Again, we’re talking about Duncan & Stone, and I had a chance to go into your Amazon store and look around and first of all your imagery and photography stuff’s amazing. And one thing that struck me is you had products that may not have had a ton of reviews, but all five stars, like your products are so welcomed by customers. I mean, how does that feel when you can actually help someone? Because I think what’s interesting is your whole mindset of mental health or stability ties into the products you have, because it allows you to vent that allows you to write things down, that you’re challenging yourself on, how does that tie into it? And how do you get such good reviews from your customers,

Garrett Peters 26:21

We love our customers, man, we set out from day one to make great products. I mean, honestly, like, we weren’t trying to sell anything that was like, some piece of crap type of stuff. So we made it we set out early on to make really high-quality meaningful gifts. And thankfully, like our customers love them, and like that’s for us. Like, that’s huge. We value that feedback, we look at it all the time. And it’s a big deal. It’s helped us grow. And we love it. We love getting great feedback from customers, for sure. So it means a lot like I’m very proud of that like to use for you to say that, like we celebrate as a team, when we’re getting great feedback or see posts on Instagram or wherever it may be about people using our journals is huge. We love it.

Pat Yates 27:20

That’s incredible. So what’s the next thing for Duncan & Stone? If obviously, you manage your growth, you try to stay within your lane, you don’t want to get too far. But are there things going on? You don’t have to divulge what it is. There are things that you’re thinking of working on in the future for people.

Garrett Peters 27:35

Yeah, we have spent a lot of time the last year. So really starting to dissect the business, like what roles everyone’s playing. What does it look like for us as we’re continuing to grow? And I’ll tell you, we’re really focused right now on trying to set the business up in a way that continues to grow for years to come without us being like the primary one doing it. And so I’ve learned a lot from you guys with Quiet Light you, Joe, all the guys like, I want to create a business that somebody can look into it and go, okay, like it’s not all built on the founder, you know what I’m saying? And so for the first few years, I feel like our business was and we’re kind of now just taking our hands off slowly certain pieces of the business that we’re outsourcing more, we’re finding great partners to help us grow. That’s the focus, man. I mean, like, we’re not necessarily looking to go into retail, you know, go into big retailers or anything like that right now we’re focused on growing our, our business online.

Pat Yates 28:47

I see you as the guys I would normally term it that likes to hit singles. He’s not a guy that likes hit triples, and home runs all the time, because sometimes those don’t work out as easy.

Garrett Peters 28:55

Yeah. Yeah. That’s right, man.

Pat Yates 28:57

So we also talked about advice you might give other entrepreneurs. So if you had the 30 seconds to tell them and your journey from being a corporate with Walmart, which isn’t a small deal, and then going into entrepreneurship, I mean, what advice do you have for people about a current business or making that transition?

Garrett Peters 29:14

Man, the one big piece of advice that I would give is, be curious, be curious about your own sort of like wirings around what makes me Pat, what’s exciting to me what gets me fired up? Just personally like understanding yourself and being curious about yourself and then be curious about other people man, I think that that’s so key, like, find people that are successful or that have done something that you’re interested in and go ask them questions, go buy them lunch, get coffee, do something like engage with other people that are also entrepreneurs if that’s somebody’s like, kind of interest man, and just go spend time with them being around other people and truly being curious about how do they take what they did? What can you learn? I think there’s so much value in that. And I didn’t do that well, I would say like early on in my career, not to the level I would have liked, probably. But what I’ve learned over the years, especially starting our businesses, people love to talk about themselves and their business, right? Like, it’s easy to do. And there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s like, why not go spend time with people that are doing it, be curious about it, and ask a ton of questions, and then learn and do your own thing or figure it out?

Pat Yates 29:37

I agree with that. And it’s funny, because I think what you’re talking about Garrett is like people out there, find either peers that you have in your city, or masterminds or something like that, where people can teach you things like I’m involved in a shark tank speaking group, as well as Shark Tank pals group, I go to reunion every year with Shark Tank people. And all we do is exchange ideas of how to be able to improve yourself and your business. I think that’s incredibly key. So I think the last point you had was commit to developing emotional health. That’s a little different than what we said before of taking care of yourself. And I’m curious why you’ve worded it that way.

Garrett Peters 31:16

Yeah, the way I’ve worded it is, is on purpose. And it’s mainly because the older I’ve gotten, the more I’ve realized there’s certain gaps I have emotionally that I’ve really not developed like, and I’m not expert in this area, either. So don’t say that I am for sure. But as I’ve gotten a little older and more mature and gone through different seasons of like, you know, emotionally being unaware of how I was doing, what was going on with my life and things like that. I look back over it and go, I just didn’t spend any time developing that aspect of who I was. So I felt a little more like, as I looked back, I’m like, I’m kind of emotionally immature. You know what I’m saying I’m like, well, that’s not good. I’m looking at my eight nine 10 year old and the way they’re acting, I’m like, I actually kind of act like that a lot. So that’s not good. What’s going on? And it comes with self-awareness. I think it’s not something that’s like an overnight deal. But just committing to, it could look like a lot of different things. But for me, it was asking my wife and close friends like, hey, I want to grow in these areas like, you have freedom and rain to speak into that area of my life, or call me out if I’m acting a certain way. And then you go, what’s going on with that? I got to figure that out. And I think it applies to in every aspect of someone’s life, for sure. But especially for entrepreneurs or people starting their own business or running a business like man, knowing who you are is so key. So that would be another piece of advice that I would encourage anyone regardless or life stage, but for sure, like younger folks, like learn about yourself.

Pat Yates 33:17

Yeah, that’s great. I mean, I’ve been married 33 years, and my wife is the temperature control on me all the time. I think it’s really amazing. And folks, if you out there do us a favor and go to duncanandstone.com or go to Amazon they have some unbelievable all these journals that can help you think through things, write them down, improve your mental health. So what you’ve done is actually turned a goal into something.

Garrett Peters 33:44

I love it.

Pat Yates 33:45

Garrett, it’s been amazing. It’s been amazing having you on the podcast today, folks, please do go to Garrett Stone, check this out. It might be something that you would really enjoy. And honestly, Garrett, we’d love to hear updates about where the business is going. Is there anything else you want to let everybody know before you go?

Garrett Peters 33:59

Absolutely. No, it’s been a pleasure, Pat. It’s been fun to connect with you love what you guys are doing and glad to be a part man.

Pat Yates 34:06

Do me a favor, though. Tell everyone how they can get in touch with your site. Just getting that quick information.

Garrett Peters 34:10

Yeah, go to duncanandstone.com. That’s the easiest place to check us out for sure you can connect with us that way. Always. I’m on LinkedIn quite a bit, sharing our journey and posting craziness along the way I try to make it fun. And I’m light hearted man. So like, I’m just having a good time out there. But connect with me on LinkedIn. I’d love to hear from you.

Pat Yates 34:33

Well, man, this has been an amazing conversation. I so much enjoyed having you on today.

Garrett Peters 34:38

It’s been really fun. I appreciate it, Pat. Thanks so much.

Pat Yates 34:41

Thanks for joining us on the Quiet Light Podcast Garrett.

Garrett Peters 34:43

Thanks, buddy.

Outro 34:46

Today’s podcast was produced by Rise25 and the Quiet Light content team. If you have a suggestion for a future podcast subject or guest, email us at [email protected] Be sure to follow us on YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn Twitter and Instagram, and subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening. We’ll see you next week.