We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Denise Phillips. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Denise below.
: Hi Denise, so excited to have you with us today and we are really interested in hearing your thoughts about how folks can develop their empathy? In our experience, most folks want to be empathic towards others, but in a world where we are often only surrounded by people who are very similar to us, it can sometimes be a challenge to develop empathy for others who might not be as similar to us. Any thoughts or advice?
This is such a great question. I have always been a total book nerd and I can remember my parents dropping me off at the library and allowing me to stay all day and read in its beautiful atrium. I would then take many books home with me to read during the week. There have been many articles, including in Psychology Today and Scientific American detailing studies that have found that reading fiction builds empathy. I remember reading about a study where they asked participants how many fiction author names they recognized and those that knew more scored higher on an empathy test. I think it said that they assumed that those who recognized more names read more. I remember thinking that I could knock that test out of the park then. I am sure there are many other conditions that allowed me to develop my empathy, I had wonderful parents, teachers, friends and I am sure they all contributed to my emotional intelligence, but I also like to think that all the authors that helped put me in the shoes of wonderful characters also had a lot to do with it.
I spent 20 years in Information Technology. I ended that part of my career as a Project Manager. I needed a change and I desperately wished for a community bookstore and I decided to make both happen at once. While being an entrepreneur had never been a career change I thought I would make, it was very exciting to plan the bookstore, design the sections, order the books, all the book related work was so much fun. I was lucky to have the IT background as well to help with evaluating the best software, hardware requirements, and technology necessary for the store, but it wasn’t nearly as much fun as everything book related. I soon found also that the book selling world was a much more fun or at least a much more friendly world as well. I learned quickly that the book selling world, at least the independent book selling world was very different than the corporate worlds I had begun my career in. Every single person I spoke to, from publisher representatives to other bookstore owners actually seemed to want me to succeed and were willing to help. Gathering Volumes has now been selling books for over 7 years and I try to share that same excitement, positivity, and help to other business owners. I believe this is another testament to the increased level of empathy in readers, we all can put ourselves in each other’s shoes and we wish to make everyone’s paths easier and more enjoyable.
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
What I do is, basically, everything. I am a salesperson, a bookkeeper, a manager, a marketer, a cleaner, and a book buyer. Some days it is very excited to do each and every one of these tasks. Other days I have to give myself a pep talk to get going with many of these roles. However, running a report that lets me know we made it another year in the black, a store full of people learning about a new author’s work, and especially the times a customer returns telling me that I was spot on with my last book recommendation gets me excited once again for the next day’s work.
We are in the process of looking for a second store location. We won’t be expanding too far or too wide. One more store, less than an hour away, but it is very exciting to think about reaching new customers that maybe miss or have never experienced a real live bookseller and have been dependent on boring algorithms to recommend books to them.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
Obviously book knowledge is my most important quality in creating a unique bookstore and providing the best service to my customers. My project management skills also come in very handy in many ways, in the initial plan for creating and opening, but also in managing author events, adding new services (i.e. adding used books 2 years in, adding new sales and delivery methods during COVID, and implementing a book subscription service), and in our current expansion plan. My third quality that has been impactful in my journey is the empathy that I believe reading has helped me cultivate. Not only does it make me better at customer service and understanding what a customer wants and needs, but it also helps me be a better mentor to others and to help myself grow and challenge my own biases. My best advice to those early in their journey is to know that you don’t know as much as you think you do. To expect to make mistakes and to expect others to make mistakes and let you down as well, but when this happens to give yourself and others grace and know that there will be other opportunities to succeed and to fail. At the same time, know that you know more than you do as well and to take the opportunities that come to you that you find interesting and exciting and remember that whether you succeed brilliantly, or barely cross the finish line, that you will have gained experience and knowledge and may have a great story to tell in the end.
All the wisdom you’ve shared today is sincerely appreciated. Before we go, can you tell us about the main challenge you are currently facing?
We are currently looking to expand and to open a second store. Rent for storefronts has increased to a point of unsustainability for a small bookstore so we are trying to find real estate to purchase, which has been much more challenging than I expected. We have had locations we are interested sell before we could get everything in order, we had a location that was voted on by a city committee and a decision was made to demolish it before we got an official offer submitted, and we have had locations we thought were perfect only to hear horror stories about city leadership that made us back out from the transaction. However, I am learning from each of these attempts, not only what I need to change in future attempts, but also to seek out more information and especially more knowledgable associates.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://gatheringvolumes.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gatheringvolumes/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/gatheringvolumes/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/gvbooks
