Casey Brooks | Starting Brookside Market, The Impact of Social Media Marketing, & The Key To A Successful Business

Maryland business owner Casey Brooks shares how he built Brookside Market and the key ingredients to success. Casey shares his inspiring story of starting and growing his successful restaurant, offering insights on everything from marketing and social media to building a strong team and staying true to your core values.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction and Background
• 3:14 Getting into the Food Business
• 6:06 Starting Over and Reinventing
• 9:08 Using Social Media for Marketing
• 13:37 Giving Back to the Community
• 14:59 The Importance of Hard Work
• 18:03 Being Topical and Adapting to Current Events
• 20:17 Final Thoughts and Conclusion

Transcript

Direct Mortgage Loans (00: 0:00

00.078) It's been a long ride when you step back and look at it. It always is. Food was the closest place I could ride my bike to to get a job. You're gifted with people. People show up for personal relationships. That's an egg. You're back to zero. What are you going to do this year? What are you going to do different? You can work your fingers to the bone, but you have to work smart too. They're called influencers. Create a voice for yourself. It's be topical. How do we capture our local community? You're gifted, man. Welcome everybody to episode number two of the How They Crushed It podcast presented by Direct Mortgage Loans. My guest today is a good buddy of mine, a friend who I really respect. I respect him as a man, as a business leader, as a marketer. Casey Brooks from Brookside Market. He runs a heck of a business. It's his second business he's run here in Baltimore, totaling about 15 years, six here, nine with his first one. I'm pumped to talk about it. I know his principles. I know what he's all about and he's got so much good to share. Can't wait to get into it. Welcome everybody to episode number two of the How They Crushed It podcast sponsored by Direct Mortgage Loans. You'll see across here is not a mortgage person. It's a good friend of mine, Casey Brooks, owner of Brookside Market, where I have eaten a couple thousand chicken wings, a couple thousand subs and a couple hundred thousand pizzas, I think, in the what case, six years? Almost, March. Six years, almost six years they've been open. So. Casey is a friend, someone I respect a lot as a man, as a business leader, definitely as a marketer. We were joking before we started, you know, he doesn't even think of himself as a marketer, but he is one. So Casey, we have four segments we do. We keep this thing around 30 minutes or less, give or take. We're gonna do a couple quick rapid fire questions, like what's trending on Google? So these will be funny to you and I. But then we talk about your story, life and business, your business story, you know. We talk about your marketing story. And then we end always with what you're doing today. It's right now January, mid January of 2024. What are you doing today? Not in the past, not in the future, but what are you doing today to be successful in your business? And so people can, in any industry, take a little something away from it. So without further ado, we'll jump in. I went on Google this morning. I Googled what are the top questions out there right now. I got a couple of them. The first one, ready for this? So anything that comes to mind, and this one's topical for your business, what is the best meat to order when you're at a deli? For sure, though.

Direct Mortgage Loans (02: 0:05

16.942) I agree with that. Early January guys, what's the best way to lose weight? Go to the gym. Where do babies come from? Oh man. You have what, three kids? Three. Under the age of? Five. Three kids under the age of five, so you need to tell us where babies come from. They come from the womb. Okay, you're right about that. And then here's a good one, and it's a good segue into the rest of it. How do you motivate employees? Be yourself around them. I think that's right. Authentic is something we talk about all the time. So my friend, the first segment we get into is like your story. I mean, I don't want to guide you here. This is your second successful business. Tell us your story, some of the backstory. How did you get into the business world? How did you get into this business? What led you to food? Anything. We're all ears. It's been a long ride when you step back and look at it. It always is. It's been six years here for Brookside Market. It was... Prior to that was Casey's Bar and Restaurant. Nine years and nine months we operated and prior to that I had worked at, you know, at least a dozen other places through the city and the county. Food was the closest place I could ride my bike to to get a job, the charcoal grill over there in Parkville. That's a great story. And by the way, I haven't had thousands of pit beef sandwiches, but I've had hundreds of their pit beef sandwiches. A little plug for the charcoal grill. How I was brought the food was because it was the closest place I could find to ride my bike to and work. Oh, okay. And you're a chef, by the way. Technically certified chef, Baltimore International Culinary School. It's now changed a handful of times. I love your food. You're a trained chef. You worked at Charcoal Grill. I view, as somebody who knows you well and loves you, you're gifted with people, I've always thought. So food is your business, but have you always been somebody that found it easy to connect with people? I'd like to say yes.

Direct Mortgage Loans (04: 0:10

11.566) Yeah, and so, you know, like in your businesses, has that always been a priority for you, your staff? I mean, I've observed that it is, but talk to me about that. I think it just takes a while to understand that that portion is just as important as serving someone the best chicken wings in your case, you know. You can go get chicken wings, drive to my place from here and go. You can get chicken wings at every place you pass, you know. I think people show up for personal relationships way more than they used to. Does everybody hear that? It's... deliver a great product and deliver an authentic experience where people know that they have a great experience as a customer. I go there, I view that. It's something you should be proud of. Do you view that as important, the delivery of a great product as a delivery of great experience? I mean, how do you weigh those as the business owner? I would almost put it at 50 % for the style of place that I run. We've always been owner operated. We've always tried to employ the neighborhood. We've always tried to employ family, friends, close circle people. If you went into my place and the renne's and such were not there, and Maria and Luke and me, your wings don't taste as good. That's a great way to put it, the wings do not taste as good. Case, I got a prop that I'm gonna surprise you with here today. It's something, a little inside joke, but just hand me one, Joss, and we'll take a break. Do you know what I'm about to show you? Sure. She was supposed to bring one from home and forgot, so she got an egg door dash. We'll take a break here. Case, you and I have had a joke for the last number of years. Here's a prop, everybody. Does everybody, can we see that? That's an egg. It's not an actual goose egg. It's an egg from the grocery store. But Casey and I have always talked about what, Case? It's January 1st. You're back to zero. People in business might not understand that. But, you know, the way we look at it is the reason why Dean's here in front of this podcast, trying something new for his company. You're back to zero. What are you going to do this year? What are you going to do different? What can you do better? you're constantly reminded of yourself that you're back to zero. What worked last year may not work this year, what worked five years ago might not work this year, but this has turned into a tradition of just a simple reminder that you gotta, you know, if you were looking at things one way, you should probably look at them through a different scope.

Direct Mortgage Loans (06: 0:15

23.31) That is brilliant business advice for anybody watching or listening. You gotta constantly be reinventing yourself and leaning into the things that work and trying to find new things that work. So Casey and I remind ourselves at the beginning of each year that we're starting over and we're trying to, you know, the goose egg, on the second day of January, we don't want it to be a goose egg anymore. We wanna have some business rolling that's going well, but. He actually cracks this into a beer and chugs it as a January 1st early morning. He has young kids, so he's not out late the night before. But he said it was a little, was it a little tough this year? It was tough. I sent you a video doing it, so the kids were a little curious to what I was doing. Exactly, his kids were watching in the video. It's worth sharing. If somebody DMs me or reaches out, and I know you well enough, I could show you the video, but Goose Egg this year, it's still January. We'll check back in December. So, Kay, so a lot of the people who end up, hopefully, who end up watching this, we love talking about marketing, and I'm in a much different industry than you are. We talked a little earlier, you're a business leader, you prioritize a great product, you prioritize your people being authentic and delivering a great experience. I view you also as a marketer, a gifted marketer, as somebody who consumes your marketing and consumes your food, by the way. I mean, do you think of yourself that way, as a marketer? Personally, I don't, but... Well, for anybody that follows that... know that I am, but personally, I just don't... Well, let's use COVID as an example, because we were talking about it a little before we started. COVID threw big curveballs at people in restaurants. Is that an understatement? Yeah. So, COVID threw a curveball at you guys and you had to figure out a way to, I think, observing, you guys had to figure out a way to out market it and pivot and, you know, talk a little bit about what went into at least the marketing journey when COVID came. COVID, I think, knocked everyone on the floor a little bit with the big question mark of what if, or worst case scenario. No one really understood it. So when you're told that you have to stay home, you're probably going to design your room different. You're going to move your TV from the window. You're going to change your space. And what they told us is that we had to stay home. And what they told the community around us was that you had to stay home. You can't go out. You can't do this. You can't do that. So.

Direct Mortgage Loans (08: 0:20

40.366) when you pull back and look at where our restaurant is, there's not many. So we were a little early, we were probably three years into our journey up there before when COVID hit. So it was rather new, you know, we pulled back and looked at it from how do we capture our local community? And at that point, we knew them, we knew who they were, but we didn't really realize the full potential of that community and what they have, they have. big they were, how populated they were, how great they were. Social media was just, social media is, I don't wanna say it's easy, it's just easy, you know? They've come far, the TikToks, the Instagrams, the Reels, they've made it easier to edit, they've, you go in there and you're a joker, you know? You don't have a marketing director. 26 years, almost six years here, nine years there, 17 years a year off. No one's ever posted other than myself for our places. Does everybody hear that? He said marketing is easy. And what he means by that is not that it's easy, it's that the platforms are easier now for somebody to teach themselves. So for those that are sitting on the sideline, take that lesson away. Teach yourself. Use it. But Casey doesn't have a marketing director, but yet people talk all the time about how great his marketing is. I mean, let's use a couple of the fun COVID examples that I remember. You had Pete. Pull up the TikTok. Yeah, pull it All overlay. Yeah, we will. You want to see any of them? Alright folks, I was seriously contemplating on taking today off but after endless requests I have chosen to reflect from my stoop on my front porch.

Direct Mortgage Loans (10: 0:24

25.614) It's only one weekend and y 'all are trippin'. But you guys, you know, you guys aren't a pit beef restaurant. You did pit beef in the parking lot. You are a pizza restaurant, but you put your mobile pizza truck in the parking lot. You had Orange Crush Days in the parking lot. Just, you had people, like you said, your local community who knew you, talking about you. It's the attention. You have to grab the attention of the people. Give them a reason why. Everybody just wants a reason, like, to, you know, host a party. So people want the reason to go. And... We had to do it through food. Everyone wants to eat, everyone wants to hang out, everyone wanted to get out of the house. We just had to drive in our direction. That's In case though, back to you saying it's easy, have you ever been trained on anything marketing? No. I love the giggle. It's a cell phone. Yeah. Does everybody hear that? It's the old Nike slogan, I'll give them credit if you hear it, just do it. I truly give credit to... Companies that run great social media platforms, because I know it's not as easy as I'm sounding, right? I make a post, I send it, link it to an item or things like that, but companies that excel on that platform, I truly believe grab a market that others do not. In your world, who knows? DML doesn't do marketing, doesn't try this podcast, doesn't have a strong team behind them. I don't know if you grab somebody that's not on social media or vice versa. No, it's just a way to gain attention. We agree. We agree. Let me ask you a question, Casey. I mean, this is one I don't know the answer to, but like when you're doing something, there's momentum around it, whatever it is, like the, you know, pit beef in the parking lot. Are you asking your employees to post and are you asking your customers to post? Never. Never. But yet, meanwhile, you're great. I've always noticed when your customers post, you're constantly resharing, which everybody, I'm not a social media expert, but if your customer takes the time to post about you, Reshare it acknowledge them. It's it's like rule number one of the early the rule 101 or rule 102 of social media maximization But this was a big part of the conversation we had about the social media was stuff like this, you know cross collaborating with people I mean Instagram and other feeds make it easy to put the ML and Brookside up on in collaboration form and

Direct Mortgage Loans (12: 0:29

40.91) Things have changed in our direction. There's a lot of social media people out there that have hundreds of thousands of followers that, you know, they're all food driven and food oriented to grab more traffic. They're called influencers. Yeah. And you might be the the influencer of Phoenix and Jacksonville. Is that a fair way to put it? I'm an influencer, the influencer for our brand. Yes, but others, no. But geographically, there's not a lot of marketing going on in Phoenix and Jacksonville, Maryland. You are correct. So you are the influencer of that. So, Case, recently I saw some things you've done. There was a shooting incident which stinks and is terrible to talk about, but you provided free meals to first responders. You've done some of those over the years. Talk about some of that. I know, because I know you well, you're doing it for the right reasons, but again, people respond to it. Look, we have the easy job. Are we stressed sometimes that things not go our way? Yes, but... In comparison to what they do on a daily basis, no thank you. So when you have a chance and opportunity to show a kind, small offering of like thank you, whether food, monetary, you know, just a simple wave, hello, how are you, thank you, you have to. And we feel the same way at DML, anything we do, plenty charitable that we don't market, nobody knows about it except for the people we're doing it for and I'm not advocating anybody for. charitable endeavors as a part of your marketing plan. The charitable endeavors should be to show gratitude and help your community. But understand that people respond to it. The reward comes. You don't ask for it, but it does. Right. And I've seen a lot of that you've been doing. It's wonderful, wonderful stuff. You know, just stepping back a little bit, Case, from marketing, you know, if you had to sit here six years into this journey on the Brookside part, and I know Casey's was almost 10, What would you attribute most of your success to? We've talked about some different things over the last number of minutes, but as you're sitting here now in a mature business, when you're reflecting on yourself, where do you kind of go to? Again, it's got to wake up and go to work first. You have to lead by example. We spoke when we had a small meeting. Our company's having meetings now, so you know something's Oh my goodness gracious.

Direct Mortgage Loans (14: 0:34

59.63) And it was a little bit about that. The people that were in front of me at the meeting, we looked around the table and they were the ones that led by example. That's why we were all there. That will first and foremost be the way of your first restaurant or first location or first business. It's gotta come from you. And you touched on something else. You said something else a second ago that's always been near and dear to my heart. I always joked with my parents that the best and worst thing they gave me was a hard work ethic. You know, I mean... It was... I know you work. Talk about that. That's it. I mean, things change though, you know. Casey's nine years. I thought running a business was how many hours you could put into the business, how long I could be there, how many people I could see, how long, you know, I got a new shot at life out here and I surrounded myself with some great employees, staff, partners, things like that. And there's hopefully they'll be looking back on it. And then... take a couple good people along for the ride with us. So work hard everybody, work hard and work smart. I think it's a combo of the two if I'm listening to Casey. You can work your fingers to the bone, but you have to work smart too. You know, leaning into hard work is important and finding people that are willing to work hard along with you. I love that you lead from the front, but finding people and identifying people as willing to work as hard as you has been something I've learned over the years. It's hard. But as you get older and you go through so many of them, you can kind of tell at the front door sometimes. if someone's gonna be around in a few months. I agree, I agree. Totally, totally, totally agree with that. I mean, last question, I guess, around the business. You know, what is the future of Brookside? Where do you see the business going? What, you know, what's your... We'll be there for a while, if we have our way. We look to expand here and there. Right now, we just focus on what we have and what we have is Brookside and we do the outside. is catering and the food truck and things like that. So everything we're doing right now stems from just that brick and mortar restaurant in on Jeritsville Pike. As far as the business and the plan for this year is to pull back and go back to the fundamentals and the basics.

Direct Mortgage Loans (17: 0:39

09.038) and try to remember the first year that when we opened the restaurant, when Dean walked in, did we give him the love? Did Dean get his love? And we need to make sure that we're not missing that portion of it six years later. And that was our goal for the beginning of this year. Yeah, I love that. I mean, always remember where you came from. Always remember what the fundamentals are. It's something we talk about all the time with our crew. You know, lean into the fundamentals. They don't change everybody. this medium, podcasts, social media, all that the web offers us, it's important, but the fundamentals don't change. The fundamentals are the same. As I'm looking behind the camera, it's someone much younger than me. So. The last segment we typically do is talk about like, we've talked about the past, we've talked about the future, we've talked about things that change, but like right now, winter of 2024, it's kind of cold outside the day we're filming here and it's gonna be really cold next week. What's going on right now that you think is topical, that is important for your business? The Ravens? We got a little taste of the Orioles, which was great. People were energized and hungry, thirsty. We'll see what the Ravens bring this year. But right now, we're looking at the Ravens season. You get a few extra weeks of business out of it. So we look at that. We look at, you have to pay attention to the weather, because the weather drives business, some for the better and some for the worse. But... Yeah. What I hear to everybody, what I hear is be topical. Lean into what's topical. I know I think the social media term is trending, but like in Casey's case with a restaurant, the Ravens are trending. The Ravens are what everybody's talking about. And by the way, when you see or hear this podcast, hopefully we're like in the Super Bowl if it takes a couple of weeks to put this out, but be topical. Pay attention to what's going on. Don't do that. I don't know. You got young kids. I have one kid that is one flight. He lives in California, one flight away from Vegas. So he's talking about going. We'll figure that one out. We'll figure that one out. Shake your hand on the other. Gotcha. Everybody, that's a big one. Be topical. Lean into what's going on. Keep yourself, you know, aware of current events that affect your business or current events that you can reframe your business through. So this isn't just, hey, in our case, our interest rates up or down. It's...

Direct Mortgage Loans (19: 0:44

25.262) What's happening in the economy that might make changes later that we can talk about that's important for our customers, important for us to, you know, it's much different for you, whether weather's important with a restaurant, what's going on that people are talking about that they want to celebrate around, you know. Let's hope the Orioles give you another summer, by the way, coming up here. But, you know, look everybody, I love talking to people like Casey. He's a dear friend. I think there's a lot of great nuggets in here today that no matter what your business is, it's be authentic. It's lean into your people, that's your customers and your employees. It's create a voice for yourself, it's be topical and outwork everybody. I mean, that one goes across all industries. Be a hard worker, find people around you that you can surround yourself with that are hard workers. But any parting thoughts, Case? Anything else? You summed it up, but I'm here. I'm here for you, man. Check out Brookside Market, everybody. Check them out on Instagram. You can check them out on Facebook, too. I'm on it. I go on Instagram more for them because I enjoy Casey's marketing. Don't go on the TikTok. He said he could have had a million people if he'd stayed with TikTok. But people aren't buying pizzas from China and far off locations for a business like his. That's a good one. That was some of our conversation for social media was that we don't have a product that we can ship or, you know, so we have to stick to our. population of people. When you get on some of those apps, when you're reaching someone in China, like you said, I can't send them a cold cut. So that's why we scaled back on that TikTok portion. That's funny. Well, that's knowing your audience, knowing your mediums. But, you know, I love you. I appreciate you being here. We love Brookside Market. We support them. Great stuff, Casey. You're gifted, man. I know that you always remind yourself of that, because you get your head down working, but you're gifted, and it's wonderful to watch you succeed. Back at you. So that's how Casey crushed it. We'll check back with our next episode at some point in the future. But thanks for listening, everybody. And reach out if you want more info from Casey, myself, or anybody in between. Look forward to talking to you soon.