An AmEx Open Forum contributor interviewed Lindsay Gaskins, CEO of Marbles: The Brain Store, discussing how to build a successful brick-and-mortar business.

Read an excerpt from the interview below:

Q: Could you tell me about your background?

A: I grew up all over the country, went to high school in Massachusetts and graduated from Wesleyan University in Connecticut. After college, I went into consulting and worked with the Boston Consulting Group. Then I decided to do something different and got a high school teaching degree and moved to Austin, Texas, where I worked as a teacher and basketball coach for two years.

After that, I moved to Chicago and worked in corporate strategy at Sears Holdings for five years. By the end, I wanted to try something different—something I had control over. So I went to Sandbox Industries, a business incubator, in Chicago and joined them as an entrepreneur in residence. One day during a group meeting a bunch of us came up with the idea for Marbles.

Q: What was the genesis for Marbles?

A: We were trying to find something different, so we focused on the baby boomer generation and researched pain points for that group. Someone’s mother told us that she wished she could go to a brain gym because her fitness gym didn’t exercise her brain. The idea resonated with us, and we decided to work with a concept for a place that would provide mentally challenging products for adults.

Q: What challenges did you face starting out?

A: Our original thought was to operate as a mall kiosk. We opened out first kiosk in May 2008 at the Woodfield Mall in Schaumburg (30 miles west of Chicago), and it failed. We realized a kiosk was just the wrong format. We almost scratched the idea altogether, but then decided to try physical stores.

Read the full interview here.