Four months into running The Phoenix, Stef pauses to tell the origin story for newer listeners—and to reconnect longtime listeners with how far she's come.

Chapter 1 was the false start: trying to acquire an existing used bookstore in Marin. Complicated negotiations, emotional turbulence, a few snafu decisions while still learning to be a business person. The turning point came when she walked away and decided to build instead of buy.

Chapter 2 was the building phase: mapping Marin for book deserts, naming the store, tackling the business infrastructure (EIN, LLC, Seller's Permit), and hitting estate sales weekly to stockpile inventory. She'd learned she needed 15,000 books before opening. Her house became a storage unit. She started to concern the concept of "mattering"—adding value and feeling valued—as the foundation for everything. Then came the landlord gauntlet: months of near-misses, being outbid by businesses with deeper pockets. Each rejection, she now sees, cleared space for something better.

Chapter 3 began when she found a space she wanted before even seeing it, just because the landlords were amazing. She filled the tiny store with picture books and board books and middle-grade readers and YA, hired teenagers who understood the trends she didn't, and opened May 13th to immediate, sustained popularity. Four months in: repeat customers are solid and keeping the lights on, but new customer traffic has dropped since two anchor restaurants closed.

So now she's back in full scale marketing mode. School partnerships, growing book clubs into real events, Bannned Book Week activations, a winter reading challenge, preschool story times, books-to-movie events with a local friend, guerrilla postcards, newsletter swaps, and influencer outreach (still solving that mystery)!

One milestone: 5,000 podcast downloads? Maybe that's a lot?

Show Notes:

• Phoenix Noir (mysteries/thrillers): coming October 21st, The Final Problem by Monique King (closed-box mystery)
• Books to Movie Club: Sense and Sensibility October 16th with Soul Sisters (Mill Valley)
• Banned Book Week: October 4-10, 5% of sales to Penn America (fighting book censorship in schools/libraries)
• Winter Reading Challenge: Thanksgiving & winter breaks, signatures from local businesses, free decorated sugar cookie from Madrona Bakery in January
• Preschool story times: launching today!!
• School partnerships available with local private schools
• Hispanic Heritage Month display now up in the store!

Current Book Count: ~25,000+

🐦‍🔥 Follow along as The Phoenix Used Bookshop continues to rise—subscribe to A Bookshop of My Own and get updates at phoenixusedbookshop.com.

Stef said no to the pop-up. Their businesses didn't mesh, and three months of treading water wasn't worth the distraction. She's learned this lesson before: when one opportunity falls through, a better one follows and the right second space will come.

Meanwhile, the Larkspur store is humming despite a closed restaurant and construction on the street—new customer traffic dipped, but repeat customers are solid. She's refocusing on what works: seasonal pivots (Halloween section testing well, holiday store planned for November), guerrilla marketing (postcards to local parents), and something she's been sitting on for months: online sales.

A first-edition Grapes of Wrath with dust jacket landed in her hands. The antiquarian bookstore friends told her it's listable and worth real money. That's when it clicked: she has a year's worth of boxed books—inventory as passive income if she can process it. She found a former bookstore owner (through Nextdoor) interested in listing books for a fair rate. That's revenue stream #3: brick-and-mortar, events (book clubs growing fast), and online!

She's launching Phoenix Noir (mysteries/thrillers) book club alongside expanding Phoenix En Plein Air. Details in the show notes.

Then came the moment. A customer brought in a hardcover copy of "One Morning in Maine" - her favorite childhood book, the one she read her own kids and left it for her. No sale, just a gift. That's when Stef understood why she does this 💛

Current Book Count: ~20,000+

Follow along as The Phoenix Used Bookshop continues to rise—subscribe to A Bookshop of My Own and get updates at phoenixusedbookshop.com.

• All Book Clubs
• The Witching Tide by Margaret Meyer
• Phoenix Noir Book Club
• Submit a book request

Rain again = Waterproof containers and hope needed.

The book club doubled: added a 1 p.m. slot, but the 6:30 meeting is the one that's filling. September 15th, two meetings, one day, Stef is excited! Husbands and Lovers—historical novel set in 1950s Cairo and present-day New England, about sisters and family (maybe a bit more romance than some people expected?)

Stef's consolidating storage, closing the second unit (her old art studio) by October 1st. That's 50 boxes of books moving from studio to garage to house—10 boxes a week. Cutting expenses, creating space.

Today: contract negotiations on the pop-up. She asked for first right of refusal on the concept maybe a ballsy move, but definitely strategic.

But the real work is in the back end—what she calls "the book problem." In affluent areas, people buy books, support authors, support indie bookstores, then end up with too many books at home. After sorting into online, nonprofit, and in-store channels, what happens to the remnants? The school textbooks no one wants. The woodworking guides. The niche books someone spent energy writing that still hold value.

That's the business, figuring out what no one else has figured out.

On the front end, she's launching a community review system—readers writing two-sentence reviews, inserted in books before shelves. Keeping books from being treated as commodities and adding provenance bookmarks upon contribution (where did this book come from?). Building human touch into self-checkout pop-up inventory.

Current Book Count: ~20,000+

Follow along as The Phoenix Used Bookshop continues to rise—subscribe to A Bookshop of My Own and get updates at phoenixusedbookshop.com.

Links mentioned:

• Community book reviews: stef@phoenixusebookshop.com
• Phoenix En Plein Air Book Club - still room!
• Submit a book request.

School's back. Stef's store rhythm has shifted—daytime foot traffic of grandparents and gift-hunters, energy surge when kids arrive after 3 p.m. Her new employee (former kindergarten teacher) is already generating ideas and enhancing displays. The Larkspur store is humming.

Then a pop-up opportunity arrives—unexpected, unconventional, three months in a shared space. Details are coming, but it's testing ground for things she'll need at the second location. Building the plane as you're flying it so to speak...

But here's what she notices: her body is tightening. Chest pains threatening. Her mind says keep going. Her body says stop.

She's juggling: book club, nonprofit sales, book processing, an October event with another local biz, summer reading challenge wrap-up, Pacific Sun article idea, Reuse Alliance book swaps, Instagram (first to go), podcast (second to go), weekly newsletter, hiring paperwork, Wednesday volunteers, the wine stroll Saturday -- and the store.

What suffers when you're doing too many things? Marketing. But maybe that's a sign you're doing too many things.

She has to write a timeline. She has to listen to her body. She has to figure out what stays and what goes.

Current Book Count: ~18,000+

Follow along as The Phoenix Used Bookshop continues to rise—subscribe to A Bookshop of My Own and get updates at phoenixusedbookshop.com.

Links mentioned:

• Phoenix En Plein Air: Our Outdoor BookClub
• Submit a book request

August rain in Marin isn't normal. Stef wakes up worried about books stored in the unfinished back room of the new store. Meanwhile, the sleepy strip mall space she manifested during the eclipse—the one with coffee shop potential—just got leased to someone else. Same day.

But social media is finally clicking. Psychology-based hooks are working. The reel on Phoenix En Plein Air got 3,500 views! The book club's first meeting at Marin Art and Garden Center had exactly the right number of people for perfect group dynamics.

Sometimes the location doesn't work out an the community does anyway.

Current Book Count: ~15,000+

Follow along as The Phoenix Used Bookshop continues to rise—subscribe to A Bookshop of My Own and get updates at phoenixusedbookshop.com.

Links mentioned:

• Phoenix En Plein Air: The Outdoor Book Club
• Submit a book request here.

Balance is a myth. There's only what you're saying yes to today and what gets the no. Stef says yes to her kids, her cats, and the business. Everything else—the yard with vines, the water-filled pots—gets the no for now.

But something shifted this week. Writing crept back in. She woke up on Sunday and felt it: I need to write. So she committed to 15 minutes daily, and in just a few days, she cracked open the parenting book she's been working on for five years. The time spent not writing was productive—she reworked the entire structure. The book now focuses on the underlying factors that keep parents thriving or struggling, accessing resilience or not. It feels solid.

Meanwhile, she interviewed eight people this week (all qualified, all future hires for expansion). One hire landed: someone to list books on Biblio (not Amazon), a self-starter type A who's already performing.

The 2nd Location Decision: Two options, both complicated. Option 1: quieter strip mall, 700 square feet, 3-year lease, higher rent—but there's a wall that could divide space for a coffee shop sublease, lowering her effective rent to 75%. Option 2: busier strip mall, closer to Larkspur, stricter signage rules, easier to overlook. Both have trade-offs; both are cheaper than regular retail for a reason.

The Bulk Pick Up: A widow with 3-4 bookshelves "just has a couple hundred books." Spoiler: it's thousands. Stef's learned to probe before showing up. Today: packing and assessing at a 2-floor condo. Tomorrow: logistics oftpostpartm getting boxes out. Not really a day off, but when else would it happen?

The Nonprofit Partnership: Touring the Postpartum Support Center in San Rafael today to discuss a fundraising book sale. Maternal health, peer support, the Marin diaper bank—exactly what she's supported her whole career. Logistical questions remain about space, but it's happening.

Current Book Count: ~15,000+

Multiple calls coming in simultaneously. That's how you know something's working.

Follow along as The Phoenix Used Bookshop continues to rise—subscribe to A Bookshop of My Own and get updates at phoenixusedbookshop.com.

Links mentioned:

• Biblio book listings
• Postpartum Support Center San Rafael
• Submit a book request

Stef has three second-location options in motion: one nonprofit-dependent (long-term), one with owners on vacation (on hold), and one in a shopping center (actively pursuing). The shopping center spot is 500 square feet—small, but workable because of a design concept she discovered visiting River Bend Books in West Hartford, Connecticut.

At River Bend, she noticed their genius: a room within a room. They created an intimate event space inside their small bookstore. Stef is applying this to her floor plan using double-sided bookshelves as walls—doubling capacity, creating specialty zones (history, nonfiction) around the perimeter, and leaving the inner room for fiction and high-demand titles with moveable tables for events.

The foot traffic at this shopping center location is solid, which matters more than she realized. Walk-by customers create a baseline of curious shoppers. The numbers work, but it's a 2-year lease—more risk than her Larkspur space.

On hiring: she found a high school senior taking community college classes for afternoon shifts. Still recruiting for mornings. Plus, she needs someone for 2-3 days/week to do backend book processing—sorting donations, prepping inventory for nonprofit book sales, different skill set than retail.

Storage is full. Books are in her garage. The second location can't come soon enough.

Current Book Count: ~15,000+

Follow along as The Phoenix Used Bookshop continues to rise—subscribe to A Bookshop of My Own and get updates at phoenixusedbookshop.com.

Links mentioned:

• Submit a book request
• Ethan Joella - fiction author, new book: The Top of the World
• River Bend Bookshop West Hartford CT

Opening a used bookstore: Stef's Instagram is plateaued at 1,000 followers despite press coverage, and she realizes the problem isn't the plateau—it's that she's underplaying her wins and not talking about half of what she's actually doing.

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I have strong podcast downloads, but Instagram is stuck at 1,000 followers. Press coverage didn't move the needle. What actually works? Collabs and influencers.

But the real issue: I've been underplaying everything. I set marketing on the back burner, thinking podcast and newsletter are running, then forget it needs constant care. I'm doing things—community review bookmarks (Penn-funded!), events, strategy—but I barely talk about them.

What I'm Doing:

• Reuse Fair book swap (August)
• Phoenix En Plein Air book club (August 11)
• Typewriter event with Social Club (September—parents writing love letters on typewriters + books)
• Haters Club for teens (pick a book you'd hate, read it, discuss)
• Miller Nights tabling (maybe, building email list with a voting activation)

The Bags Mistake: I ordered custom bags and they arrived 22 inches tall—perfect for picture books, terrible for the store. First real mess-up. Moving on.

The Insight: I run multiple businesses, got a master's in Applied Positive Psychology, have 20 years of experience, and I'm breaking even in months 1-3. But I underplay it all. A typical business takes one win and markets it for 6 months. I do five things and mention none of them.

The Fix: Longer-format social videos—2 minutes instead of 10 seconds. Tell the story of why things matter. Stop underplaying. The real message: little things every day push the business forward.

Current Book Count: ~15,000+

It's not the plateau. It's the story I forgot to tell.

Follow along as The Phoenix Used Bookshop continues to rise—subscribe to A Bookshop of My Own and get updates at phoenixusedbookshop.com.

Links mentioned:

• Miller Nights event
• Phoenix En Plein Air
• Submit a book request