How to Succeed in Print On Demand with Christopher Heckman | Ep.103

Summary

Podcast Summary: Built Online – Episode 103: How to Succeed in Print On Demand with Christopher Heckman

Introduction

In Episode 103 of Built Online, host Cody McGuffey sits down with seasoned e-commerce entrepreneur Christopher Heckman to delve into the intricacies of succeeding in the Print On Demand (POD) industry. Released on June 2, 2025, this episode offers valuable insights into building sustainable brands, the importance of customer relationships, overcoming entrepreneurial failures, and leveraging AI in modern business practices.

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Chris Heckman’s Entrepreneurial Journey

Chris Heckman shares his extensive experience in the e-commerce landscape, highlighting the evolution of his businesses and the lessons learned along the way. Originating from Pennsylvania, Chris and his wife have lived in various states, including Colorado and Florida, before settling in Austin. Their journey emphasizes resilience and adaptability in the face of challenges.

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The Cornerstones of a Successful Business: Product and Customer Relationships

One of the central themes Chris discusses is the paramount importance of the product and nurturing customer relationships.

Chris Heckman [00:00]: “The product is literally everything. And the product and truly caring about the customers who increase the lifetime value. When you do those things really well, that's a business that can compound. And then when you just sprinkle in a little bit of marketing on top, things just take off.”

Chris emphasizes that focusing solely on short-term profits leads to a transactional business model, whereas prioritizing long-term customer relationships fosters sustainable growth. He explains the concept using the business formula:

Chris Heckman [04:35]: “If you can get a person to buy just one more time, you've literally doubled the business overnight. If you can get them buy two more times, it's triple.”

This approach shifts the focus from immediate sales to enhancing the lifetime value (LTV) of each customer, ensuring more stable and continuous revenue streams.

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Building Skills and Investing in Yourself

Chris elaborates on the significance of personal development over merely accumulating business assets. He argues that the most valuable asset in any business is the entrepreneur’s skill set.

Chris Heckman [07:53]: “The real asset that you're actually building is yourself and the skill set that you're able to transpose to anything you do in the future.”

He outlines key skills essential for entrepreneurs:

1. Identifying Target Audiences: Understanding the specific needs and pain points of a customer base.
2. Effective Communication: Conveying value propositions through the appropriate mediums.
3. Building Relationships: Enhancing LTV by fostering meaningful connections with customers.

By focusing on these areas, entrepreneurs can ensure that their businesses remain adaptable and resilient.

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Building Successful Brands: Yoga Stay and History Tees

Chris recounts his success with brands like Yoga Stay and History Tees, which were eventually acquired by Open Store. He discusses the strategies that led to their growth, emphasizing the transition from POD to private labeling and 3PL (Third-Party Logistics).

Chris Heckman [11:25]: “Yoga Stay was a hybrid where we had started off Print on Demand and then I had the bright idea of adding yoga mats, equipment, that sort of thing and then started working with our own suppliers.”

He highlights the importance of managing inventory and maintaining a streamlined supply chain to prevent cash flow issues, a common pitfall when scaling a business.

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Business Models: Print On Demand vs. 3PL

Chris compares POD with traditional 3PL models, discussing the pros and cons of each:

Chris Heckman [16:37]: “It's a hybrid where we had started off Print on Demand and then I had the bright idea of adding yoga mats, equipment, that sort of thing.”

He explains that while POD offers low upfront costs, it comes with higher per-unit expenses. Transitioning to 3PL can significantly reduce costs but requires substantial capital investment and meticulous inventory management.

Chris Heckman [17:40]: “All of the products are yours now... It's not Print on Demand.”

This transition underscores the necessity of aligning business models with growth stages to maximize profitability and operational efficiency.

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Overcoming Entrepreneurial Failures

Chris is candid about his early struggles, including accumulating $100,000 in credit card debt due to reckless business spending.

Chris Heckman [20:06]: “I ended up in a ton of debt, up to about $100,000 in credit card debt. I just remember sitting at the kitchen table with my parents, just going over all of the debt that I had.”

He attributes his downfall to over-diversification and lack of focus, leading to multiple failed ventures instead of honing a single successful business. This experience taught him the critical importance of concentrating efforts on one venture to foster sustainable growth.

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Advice on Focus and Avoiding Diversification

Both Cody and Chris agree on the pitfalls of spreading resources too thin across multiple projects. Chris advises against starting multiple businesses simultaneously as it dilutes focus and increases the likelihood of failure.

Chris Heckman [25:49]: “It actually becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy by hedging the bets in that you're actually guaranteeing that this thing is not going to work, rather than splitting, you know, and giving some kind of idealistic opportunity that, you know, one of them is certainly going to take off.”

Instead, he advocates for consolidating efforts into a single, well-managed business to maximize success rates and develop a more profound understanding of the market.

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Investing in Yourself: Mindset, Habits, and Personal Growth

Chris underscores the importance of personal well-being and mindset in entrepreneurial success. He highlights that often, perceived business problems stem from underlying personal issues.

Chris Heckman [29:26]: “I would say the first thing to focus on is actually fixing yourself. 95% of the time that I talk to people with their business and they say that they have a business problem. It's not actually a business problem at all. It's something with their mindset or how they're showing up in the business.”

Examples include maintaining consistent sleep patterns, physical fitness, and cultivating a growth mindset. These foundational habits significantly impact an entrepreneur’s ability to navigate the stresses of running a business.

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Marketing and Product Excellence

Chris elaborates on the symbiotic relationship between marketing and product quality. He asserts that while great marketing can drive initial sales, only superior products can sustain and grow a business.

Chris Heckman [35:26]: “Great products can be sold by bad marketing, but great marketing can't sell bad products.”

He advocates for a balanced focus where marketing strategies are designed to highlight and complement the excellence of the products, thereby enhancing customer satisfaction and loyalty.

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Launching and Validating Business Ideas

Chris shares his approach to validating business ideas efficiently before committing substantial resources.

Chris Heckman [35:52]: “Build a landing page. If you're doing E Commerce, Build a Shopify store. Very basic... drive traffic using very basic Facebook ads set aside couple hundred dollar budget. Don't have to be much.”

This method allows entrepreneurs to gauge market interest with minimal investment. Successful campaigns with low cost-per-click (CPC) metrics indicate strong market demand, guiding further development.

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The Future of Print On Demand and AI’s Role

Looking ahead, Chris is optimistic about the continued growth of POD, especially with advancements in AI. He believes AI will enhance design processes and customer connections, making self-expression easier and more accessible.

Chris Heckman [44:07]: “I think there's more opportunity than ever because the data would support this.”

He envisions tools like his own Mystic Pod as pivotal in empowering entrepreneurs to create high-quality designs swiftly, thereby maintaining competitive advantages in an increasingly automated landscape.

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Rapid Fire Segment

Cody and Chris engage in a rapid-fire Q&A, providing personal insights and practical advice:

• Favorite Business Book: Atomic Habits by James Clear

  Chris Heckman [57:08]: “Make good habits visible, make bad habits invisible.”

• Worst Advice Received: Encouragement to overspend to drive growth

  Chris Heckman [58:05]: “That you should spend as much money as you're making so that you constantly feel like you have to make more money and scale faster.”

• Defining a Creator: An individual who transforms unique ideas into valuable products or services, embracing creativity beyond traditional confines.

• Who Should Be Entrepreneurs: Those with high tolerance for stress and a relentless drive to overcome obstacles, irrespective of intelligence or background.

  Chris Heckman [63:55]: “It's the people who have the highest tolerance for pain and stress.”

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Final Thoughts and Where to Connect

Chris emphasizes the profound impact of entrepreneurship on personal growth and the ability to influence others positively. He encourages aspiring entrepreneurs to embrace their creative instincts and take actionable steps toward building their businesses.

For listeners eager to learn more, Chris can be found on his YouTube channel, MysticPod.com, where he offers free courses, a supportive community, and a suite of tools designed to streamline the POD business process.

Chris Heckman [71:34]: “That's where they can find me. Just my name on YouTube.”

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Conclusion

Episode 103 of Built Online offers a comprehensive exploration of the Print On Demand industry through the lens of Christopher Heckman’s experiences. From emphasizing the importance of product quality and customer relationships to the critical necessity of personal development and focused business strategies, this episode serves as an invaluable resource for aspiring and established e-commerce entrepreneurs alike.

Listeners are encouraged to apply these insights to build more resilient, customer-centric businesses that not only achieve financial success but also foster meaningful connections and personal growth.

Transcript

[Chris Heckman]

The product is literally everything. And the product and truly caring about the customers who increase the lifetime value. When you do those things really well, that's a business that can compound. And then when you just sprinkle in a little bit of marketing on top, things just take off.

[Cody McGuffey]

I completely gutted everything and only focused on one thing that we actually did actually achieve success. So it sounds like a very similar story to what you had to go through.

[Chris Heckman]

Yeah. And I think it's a fallacy that I see all the time. And I can heavily identify with, like, people who are starting out. I see this too, too often where they talk about the brand or business that they're starting. They're like, this is my first one. Here are my next four that I'm working on. I'm like, no, please, please do not.

[Cody McGuffey]

Welcome to Built online. I'm Cody McGuffey, and this podcast is all about one thing. Building the business of your dreams. Selling art, teaching classes, starting a blog, launching a brand. Whatever your passion is, we show you how to turn it into real income. I created Everbee to help anyone with a dream start start and scale business.

[Chris Heckman]

Ever Be, Ever be Ever be Ever be Ever be Ever be.

[Cody McGuffey]

We now serve over 800,000 creators all across the globe. On this show, we bring on real entrepreneurs who've done it. They share their secrets, they share their failures. The exact steps that you can take to get started. What if you can get one golden nugget out of today's episode? And it's the breakthrough that takes you from just dreaming to actually living a life on your terms. At Ever Be, we believe that every human is a creator, and every creator should own a business. Chris, what's up, man? We're here.

[Chris Heckman]

We're here. Thanks for having me, Cody.

[Cody McGuffey]

Happy to be here, man.

[Chris Heckman]

How are you living the dream? Just day by day. It's all we can do, right?

[Cody McGuffey]

I love it. Super excited and grateful to. To have you come on the podcast finally. We've talked about it for, I don't know, multiple months now at this point, and I. How long we've been friends about. Is it coming up? I'm not on a year yet.

[Chris Heckman]

Yeah, I think we first connected on Phillips podcast online and then we. Yeah, yeah. And then we realized we live like 20 minutes from each other, which is crazy because everybody else is, like, around the world, so it's a beautiful connection.

[Cody McGuffey]

How do you like Austin so far? You came from which city? State again?

[Chris Heckman]

Remind everybody, dude, we've lived all over. Pennsylvania is where I was born and raised. And then in the incubator that I lived in, we lived in Colorado, then Florida and now here.

[Cody McGuffey]

So we've gotten a Pennsylvania for anybody that doesn't know what PA is.

[Chris Heckman]

Correct? Yeah. Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

Okay.

[Chris Heckman]

Philadelphia area.

[Cody McGuffey]

And you have a super cool story which I want to get to like the bottom of today and just kind of open that up for everybody listening to this because I think you, your life that you and your wife are, are building is really special for a lot of reasons from a business aspect, but also from like a spirituality, like just meditation, like being at peace with yourself and growing. You're. You have one of the most awesome growth mindsets of, of anyone I know.

[Chris Heckman]

Appreciate that.

[Cody McGuffey]

And I, and I mean that. And I want to show everybody or kind of reveal that to, to everyone here that's it's hopefully part of the goal at least.

[Chris Heckman]

Let's do it.

[Cody McGuffey]

You said something that was really cool and you. It was in a blog and you said the real money in any business and you said it took you years to learn this is in the lifetime value of your customers. It's about building relationships with them. Why do you say that?

[Chris Heckman]

Yeah, this was something that as I said, took me a long time to learn because starting out in any business I had all the classic limiting beliefs and like self doubt. And so for the first years it felt like I just constantly had my back up against the wall. Which kind of puts you in this weird fight or flight type mindset of like you need to. Everything you do has to be extracting a dollar. And if it's not profitable, not even like within the year or the month, but like this week or today, then you not only does it not feel like it makes sense to do it, but you physically can't because like financially you need to make it work. And so it kind of leads. And I see this with a lot of entrepreneurs start. It kind of puts you in a spot where you're kind of, you know, we all know the classic, you know, delay gratification type story of the marshmallow test. It almost forces your hand to do the exact opposite. And it forces your hand to do things that are much more short term oriented and things like optimizing for the first purchase needs to be profitable and, and it makes sense. But over time as we started scaling the brands, we started to realize that as long as we are optimizing for just the first purchase, one, it always leads. Lends itself to a very transactional business model. And the real money in any business is in the lifetime value. And A exercise that really demonstrated this perfectly was if you take like the business formula of like number of customers, average value per purchase of a customer, and then number of times that customer purchases from you, like for us, it's, you know, say you have 10,000 customers on a brand, average order value is $50. You could get 10,000 and they buy one time, you could get 10,000 more customers and double the business. Or you could take the average order value from 50 to 100, double it, that doubles the business. Or you can just. I get chills thinking about it because it was so, it sounds so simple, but it was a big breakthrough because if you can get a person to buy just one more time, you've literally doubled the business overnight. If you can get them by two more times, it's triple. And then you, you know, double the number of customers. But that's really where, you know, the real enterprise value is. And more importantly, it just feels like a much better business to be running.

[Cody McGuffey]

When you're like, it's more bulletproof. Right. It's more sustainable rather than just like it's trend. It's not just about a transaction anymore. It's about like the relationship, like you said.

[Chris Heckman]

Yeah, exactly. And it puts you, it forces you to put yourself in the shoes of the customer and think, what are they truly. Like, where are they, where are they trying to get to? And then how can I help them do that? And like when you obsess over that, where they are, where they want to get to. And this applies to any business model, when you truly obsess about that and care about it with everything you're putting into the business and then you care about that and nothing else, just good things naturally follow.

[Cody McGuffey]

It's kind of the opposite of like the traditional. In the past, at least, the traditional, like drop shipping model, like when drop shipping got really, really popular. Right. And we've all tried it, I think.

[Chris Heckman]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

Including myself. Where it's like you're just drop shipping from China. You're trying to. Literally trying to get a dollar.

[Chris Heckman]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

You know, you don't really care if this shipping takes six weeks than ever.

[Chris Heckman]

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

[Cody McGuffey]

Never. And they're never going to buy from you again because the experience is so terrible.

[Chris Heckman]

Right.

[Cody McGuffey]

But it's quite the opposite of that.

[Chris Heckman]

Yeah. And I think for anybody who's at that stage, the really valuable thing that you're building, I always thought it was, you know, cash flow, email lists, that kind of thing. The real asset that you're actually building is yourself and the skill set that you're able to transposed to anything you do in the future. And so focusing on that and it's so hard when you know you need to make a dollar in order to put food on the table. It's, you know, completely understandable to focus on that and nothing else. But if you can still do that, still do it, you know, you need, but at the same time take a step back and realize how far you're coming and all the new skills you're building up. Because it took me until, you know, I started talking with friends who are business owners and doing a little bit of consulting to realize like how valuable the skill set was. And it doesn't just have to be marketing or anything E commerce related like you as the individual. As long as you focus on that, then you're always winning. It doesn't matter if sales are up.

[Cody McGuffey]

Or when you say that and that skill set particularly what are you talking, what are you referring to? Like what would you call that? Would you call it anything?

[Chris Heckman]

Yeah, I would call it like the. It can be a lot of different things, but I would say primarily being able to identify a target audience or group of people who have a pain point or a need or something they want and then figure out the best medium for fulfilling on that need and then how to allow the most people possible to learn about that in a sustainable way. And then the final piece is building relationship with them. So you increase lifetime value. That skill set and it varies for everybody, but that skill set doesn't matter what you're doing. If it's E commerce, building a community, software, it's all same thing.

[Cody McGuffey]

Well, we call this at Everbee is one of our core values and it's a pretty common thing in the, in the tech world is customer obsession. Yeah, it's like just being super, super obsessed with your customer, which is your icp, your ideal customer profile. Like how, how often are you thinking about your customer? How often are you putting yourselves in their shoes? How often are you thinking about their family, their, their kids, their spouse, their partners, their, their dog, what kind of sheets they sleep in, what house they live in, what kind of cars do they drive? What are they afraid of? What do they, what do they, what do they. What makes them happy? What makes them wake up in the middle of the night? What are they worried about? Like that's the type of what I think what you're saying is like you should be, you should be, you shouldn't try to understand. Should we always be seeking understanding deeper and deeper into this profile of this customer. Would you agree with that?

[Chris Heckman]

Yeah. And one of the easiest ways to do that is just start a business model where you yourself are like in that group to begin with because then you're basically able to build for yourself and naturally you end up building for like very like deeply intertwined pain points for your ideal customer.

[Cody McGuffey]

Do you think it's required to think of it that way? Like so deep though. Like I was just, I was saying so many detailed things and those are things that I care about. Yeah, I think about for, for our customers forever be but I wonder if there's like, is it all that necessary? You know what I'm saying? Are the energy drinks that are like super successful, are they really thinking about this demographic?

[Chris Heckman]

Ye like this? It's a good question. I would say I think it depends on what the goal is. Like if the goal is to build a business that's able to get to profitability just as quickly as possible, you're able to get away with kind of going surface level. Like we do this a lot with like launching e commerce brands. You can do niche research, see like what groups are most active online, what products are buying, that kind of thing. But if the goal is to build something that like can truly change the lives of your customers and I think it's a prerequisite.

[Cody McGuffey]

That's interesting. What are some of the, the brands that you've built? I want to talk, talk a little bit about your, your history of success with building brands. You have a couple that I come to my mind. What are the, what are the biggest wins for you, if you can recall?

[Chris Heckman]

Yeah, well, there were certainly a lot of losses in the beginning, but the ones that are easily searchable online is Yoga Stay was one of them that was a yoga brand. Then History Tees was another one. Same type of business model but targeting like the history buffs of the world, giving them a platform or medium for expressing their, their interest in, in the topic. But across the board we've done eight different brands that have grown to seven figures, about 25 million in total sales over that time. But like I said, there was tons of losses. I could rattle off a dozen failed brands as well that nobody just hearing the name, you're like, yeah, I don't think that had much legs to it.

[Cody McGuffey]

But specifically, let's talk about Yoga Ste or Yoga Stay. How did you say it?

[Chris Heckman]

Yoga Stay.

[Cody McGuffey]

Yoga Stay, yeah. Yoga Stay and History Te's both of those I'm familiar with. I've looked at their site many, many times. Like we Actually use it as reference point a lot of times for forever be customers and stuff, which is really cool. Both of those were acquired.

[Chris Heckman]

Yep. By a company called Open Store.

[Cody McGuffey]

Awesome. What does an acquisition look like for a brand like this? Also before you answer that, just to confirm the business model of this is Print on Demand.

[Chris Heckman]

Yeah, it's Print on demand. We've done everything from drop shipping like you mentioned to 3PL to now print on Demand. Yoga State was actually a hybrid where we had started off Print on Demand and then I had the bright idea of this is going so well. Why don't we shake it up a little bit and add in like yoga mats, equipment, that sort of thing and then started, you know, working with our own suppliers.

[Cody McGuffey]

Okay, private labeling.

[Chris Heckman]

Yeah, working with suppliers and like customizing the products. So like we came up with all the designs, we chose the specs and so at that point kind of like white labeling, but more like actually creating products. Yeah. And then shipping it in to 3 PL facility in the US like ShipMonk or any of those. And then they fulfill to the, to the customer. But to your question about the acquisition, I've actually done both sides. One through Open Store and then another like going direct to a buyer like Classic acquisition. And for a company like Open Store, it's kind of an outlier. It's. They're a business that is made for these acquisitions like well funded. So they have it streamlined down to a science. You basically click a button and they pull in all your data and then they run it through some kind of algorithm, puts a valuation within 24 hours. You have a, you know, estimated value and obviously you go through due diligence on the other side. I've gone through marketplaces like listing on, you know, all the classic business exchanges and Flippa Acquired. Yeah, yeah, we were on that one. Biz, buy, sell, all those kind of things. And what I would say something that I didn't realize about selling a business in the beginning is that just because the business is profitable and you know, you have a good track record, it doesn't mean that it's sellable by any stretch. And it needs to be like the right mindset to view it now is putting yourself in the shoes of a buyer. And if you were looking at this business, would you be excited about the possible investment? Would you see a future where 24, 36, five years down the road you're, you know, making a positive ROI on your, your investment and if the answer is no to that, then nobody's going to buy it because the people who are buying the businesses are. That's exactly how they're framing it.

[Cody McGuffey]

And they're even thinking about it in more depth because they're actually buying this investment. So Yoga Stay and History Tease, can you give us a ballpark of what the values of those things were? Anything like that? Public?

[Chris Heckman]

Yeah, it's, it's calculated based on TTM, EBITDA. So trailing 12 month earning before interest, taxes, depreciation, amortization, it's basically net profit. And I in the NDA, I can't say the number but it's based on a multiple of that.

[Cody McGuffey]

And what's a multiple typically look like for something like that? For Print on Demand specifically?

[Chris Heckman]

Yeah, Commerce Store, it very heavily depends on the growth. Like if you're at, if you're at flatline, you're looking at like if you're at 0% growth from the previous year, you're looking low ones like 1 1/2 ish.

[Cody McGuffey]

Even if you profit $100,000, you're probably can get $100,000 for that.

[Chris Heckman]

Exactly. And then if you're growing at 20 to 30% then you're looking at 2 to 3 range. Then if you're 20 to 30% plus you're at like 2 million in EBITDA then you can get in like the 4 or 5 range. And then like for we learned with Yoga State, inventory is normally just added on as like a 1x multiplier on top of that.

[Cody McGuffey]

A 1x multiplier on top of like the cost of goods sold?

[Chris Heckman]

Like actually yeah, it's basically liquidated.

[Cody McGuffey]

Yeah, so basically they'll buy back, buy your inventory. That's what yeah described me as. Is there any difference between this business model, like Print on Demand for example, it's a 1x multiplier on you know, flat growth and let's call it like a 3 PL right. Where you actually hold inventory. Is there any difference in the multiplier in that case?

[Chris Heckman]

Yeah, it was honestly really similar because actually when somebody looks at a print on demand business, like any investor they're looking at what are the ways that I can possibly save or like just increase margin either because of scale that I have or additional capital that I'm able to quickly deploy to lower the cost of goods. So when somebody sees print on demand as the business, obviously the pros are there's no upfront capital but it's much more expensive on a per unit basis. So as a potential investor they see that as you know, that's a quick win for them. They can bring that in house. So you're looking at either you can sell to somebody who already has a print facility or somebody who has extra capital they can deploy opposed to if you're three pl, there's a little bit less of that margin they're able to play with. But in general, like the two, three transactions that we had, they were all around similar multipliers.

[Cody McGuffey]

You living in the print on demand world for seven plus years, what you studied print on demand, other print on demand brands, I imagine, right?

[Chris Heckman]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

Is there any like notable brands that people listening to this be like, oh yeah, like we didn't know that it was print on demand, but it actually is print on demand. Is there any, any out there that, that you can think of?

[Chris Heckman]

I would say there's a lot of brands that augment their catalog with print on demand that you may not be aware of. Like a lot of like Fortune 500 companies actually in like movie companies and studios. You can see this by like looking at brands that are integrated with like Printify and Printful and stuff. But there's not many that are strictly print on demand. Because once you get to a certain point for anybody watching, like as a baseline for fulfillment on a print on demand brand, you're paying about $455 per print. This is DTG, not to get into the the weeds, but when you bring it in house, you're able to switch over to screen printing, which requires a lot more upfront capital. But the cost per print alone is down to depending on the number of colors and the quantity. You can get it down to like a dollar.

[Cody McGuffey]

Your gross margins increase $50.

[Chris Heckman]

Yeah, dramatically. Plus then you can start buying the blanks, which brings down the cost. So as soon as you achieve any kind of scale, I would say even a couple million a year, that's what we started doing at Yoga State. We started screen printing. Everything you, you bring down the cost dramatically. But then the fun learning that I didn't have until after we had already gone down that path and we had a warehouse filled with tens of thousands of units of yoga apparel is that it's not like you just outlay the cash up front. When you're running an apparel brand, you have tons of SKUs because the sizes times the colors times the design. That's just one product. You, it's not enough for you to just outlay, you know, however much in inventory and then you just let it dwindle down, stock up the bank account, then you reinvest on a new run. It's A constant game because you have Your best selling SKUs are dwindling down and if your best sellers on the site are all out of stock, your conversion rate is going to plummet. Then your ad performance drops and so you end up in this weird spot where yes, you lowered your costs on a per unit basis, but you're constantly have to have a really close eye on your supply chain because your cash flow is just always being reinvested back into restocking the inventory. And for. If you're somebody you know with a relatively small team, like we were at the time that becomes your life, because that's where the majority of your cash is going to. It naturally requires your attention. And so that draws your focus away from all the things you were doing that got you there in the first place. So if I were to do it over again, I would not have moved over to that model until I was rock solid with our systems and internal processes for maintaining everything that we were doing. And then just viewing that as simply a growth mechanism that we could use when we were ready. But not jumping into it too soon.

[Cody McGuffey]

I want to take a step back now that we kind of talked about some of the, I guess past recent, recent past achievements. You've. You've done over $25 million in, in sales. Right. In the past seven years you've hinted at some failures that you've encountered and obviously overcome because you're here today. What was like your biggest learning failure that you've kind of felt like you had to overcome in order to get you where you are today?

[Chris Heckman]

Yeah, it was, let's say the moment that to. To jump to the moment that it felt like the biggest failure was. It was a couple of years after I graduated from college and I decided nine to fives was not the path that I wanted to go. So I jumped in headfirst to the entrepreneurial world and fully bought into the idea that you got to spend money to make money. And so as I was spending, I thought this is the path that this means I'm doing. Right. Like contractors, like ad spend. What was the business it was at the time it was like a marketing agency.

[Cody McGuffey]

Okay, so you were, you're working a full time job, kind of typical normal American thing to do, right. It's like go get a job first and then you're kind of starting a business on the side. Or did you like abandon the job and then go all in on your business?

[Chris Heckman]

Yeah, I started at like a 9 to 5 job to pay the bills. The business started doing fairly well, well enough that it had well surpassed my income at the job. So that seemed like a logical point, like, all right, let's take the leap. And then things. It felt like this and then just a steep decline because fast forward a couple of months. Racking up expenses grew a team that was overly complex for what I needed. Overhead, you know, was not where it should have been. Long story short, I ended up in a ton of debt, up to about $100,000 in credit card debt. And I just remember. I was, like, young twenties at this point. I just remember sitting at the kitchen table with my parents, just going over all of the debt that I had. We pulled up a spreadsheet, and it was so bad that we were finding debt that, like, I didn't even realize I had, like, credit cards that were just racking up interest. And it just felt like looking at that, One, it was massive bloated up, like, pride doesn't even exist at that point.

[Cody McGuffey]

Yeah.

[Chris Heckman]

And two, it was like, how the hell I had all these dreams and goals. How the hell did I get to this point? And it's just like that creeping. I don't know if you know what I mean, but, like, that sense that, like the back of your neck where it's just, like, building tension, and it just feels like you're looking at a doomed future and there's absolutely no path out. But then, you know, somehow you. You push through and you realize that you have to. What are the options? I'm either going to continue down this route, which feels a lot like death. Not to be melodramatic, but that's what it feels like, or I can choose a different path and view this as something that I'm going to look back on and be really glad that it happened, because it's going to be a really defining moment. And it turned out to be. Be that way.

[Cody McGuffey]

Do you feel like you were reckless with money at this point?

[Chris Heckman]

Oh, yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

Do you feel like. Okay, and when you say reckless, when was it, like, reckless in the business or reckless? Were you just spending, like, on consumer debt and like, these other things?

[Chris Heckman]

Oh, no, all the spending was on the business. Reckless business spending.

[Cody McGuffey]

Okay, so it wasn't reckless in a sense of I'm buying the cars early, I'm buying my shoes, or no, like, you know, the fancy clothes and all this. I'm partying too crazy. It wasn't like that. No, it was mostly like, you believe that spending money would make you more money, and so this is what you're going to spend money on. In the business. But it just didn't turn out the way that you were expecting.

[Chris Heckman]

Exactly. Because around the same time I started I heard a podcast that talked about seven streams of income. That's how most wealthy people get there. I'm like, well, I only have one llc, so I, I gotta fix something. So started launching. Yeah, exactly. Like I was a, you know, some kind of incubator or accelerator that had no basis or reason to be one. And so I ended up with, you know, instead of one. Okay. Business. Ended up with six really crappy businesses that then once the focus is split like that. And I also didn't have like talking about the skill set from earlier. Didn't have any skills. I was learning everything on the fly. Had promise. But with split focus plus like rampant spending, things just can get out of hand really, really fast.

[Cody McGuffey]

I completely agree with that. And I think it's really valuable for people to listen to this because they may be in the middle of this. It's depending on where they are in the journey. It's really common thing to go through. Right. At our early stage I did the exact same thing. And I remember having this conversation with my wife and I'm just like at this point working full time, full time job. Also we have this real estate investment company and also we have an Amazon FBA brand. And then all of a sudden I'm just like, I think we should probably start this like this drop shipping brand too. You know, unrelated completely to my other.

[Chris Heckman]

You're diversifying. Right.

[Cody McGuffey]

Well this was like reasonable. And she actually with. And she wasn't doing like reading all the entrepreneurship books and all this stuff, but she just had the wisdom to be like, I don't think that's probably doesn't really make sense to do that. And I'm like pride or maybe it's an ego creeps in. I'm just like, I can do everything. Yeah, I can do it. And it turns out like, absolutely not. I had a similar financial which I shared with you privately. Same thing. It was like we were focused on five things and we were below average on everything.

[Chris Heckman]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

And we looked like we owned a whole bunch of businesses and LLCs and all this stuff. We looked kind of successful, I guess you could say. But the reality was we were crumbling.

[Chris Heckman]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

And it wasn't until we. I completely gutted everything and only focused on one thing that we actually did actually achieve success. So it sounds like a very similar story to what you had to go through.

[Chris Heckman]

Yeah. And I think it's a fallacy that I see all the time. And I can heavily identify with like people who are starting out. I, I see this too often where they talk about the brand or business that they're starting. They're like, this is my first one. Here are my next four that I'm working on. And I'm like, no, please, please do not. Because it makes sense, like when you think about it.

[Cody McGuffey]

But then it's very logical.

[Chris Heckman]

Yeah. It feels like hedging your bets. It feels like the safe thing to do. Like if this one doesn't work out, then I'll have these backups. But it actually becomes a self fulfilling prophecy by hedging the bets in that you're actually guaranteeing that this thing is not going to work, rather than splitting, you know, and giving some kind of idealistic opportunity that, you know, one of them is certainly going to take off.

[Cody McGuffey]

What's a better way to frame it for them? Because also this person who is very ambitious is very excited about what they're doing, but they actually, they actually don't know what their end game is yet. But they just know that like, oh, well, first I'm going to start this business and then I'm going to probably sell that business. I'm going to move on to this business and I'll probably sell that business. I'm going to. Then I'm going to actually do this. Yeah, I was there. You were there. Now we cringe when we hear somebody talk like this because like, first of all, like first of all, none of that is easy.

[Chris Heckman]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

One business is extremely challenging.

[Chris Heckman]

Right.

[Cody McGuffey]

So the fact that you're already moving on from the business that you're currently trying to build.

[Chris Heckman]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

Is almost guaranteeing that you're gonna fail.

[Chris Heckman]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

But they're not wrong for thinking that. So is there a better way for them to be thinking about this and explaining it to themselves?

[Chris Heckman]

I can share the way that I reframe it for myself now is that by like the concept of, the concept of like diversifying into different businesses. It comes from fear. Right. It comes from fear of like, if this thing doesn't work out, then at least I'll have these as backups. And where that fear comes from is like the fear of failure. And I would say that, I would say that the reason that it's scary, the idea of failure is that, you know, leading into starting a business, everything else that we've been taught in our life, like everything from being in grade school to college to your job afterwards, failure is not really acceptable. People pay lip service to like Failures, how you learn and stuff like that. But like you fail on a test, you get in a lot of trouble. You fail in college, you get in a lot of trouble. Fail at your job, you might lose your job. And entrepreneurship is the first time, at least in my life, where fundamentally failure is actually rewarded because you are the boss again for the first time in your life. In school you have a teacher, in work, you have a boss or manager. In entrepreneurship, it's the first time that failure is rewarded. And also you are the, the manager, you are the person dictating what you should be doing. And so the diversifying comes from like out of fear of failure. What I say now is like, I can guarantee you're going to fail, but failing in the short term is infinitely better than failing in the long term. And I can guarantee that if you split focus now, it's going to be mean failure for the long term. And if you opposed to, if you focus on one thing, you're able to compound those failures like over your lifetime until it turns into a win. When you diversify it, you just have these micro failures that they compound against you, but they don't start compounding in your favor at all. So it's consolidate the learning around one thing and reframing it. Instead of the asset being the business, the asset is yourself being built. And after I realized it that way, then it, it's allowed me the, I guess the freedom to openly fail on one thing for a long enough period of time until it starts working out. Opposed to diversifying focus. I think that's, that's the final thing that I see too often is people see the business is the asset opposed to themselves.

[Cody McGuffey]

How does somebody invest in themselves? Like what are the things they need to be investing in themselves right now if they actually want to start their first successful business? Maybe they've had one or two failures and drop shipping print on demand. Maybe it's a local service. Like, how do they know what to focus on next?

[Chris Heckman]

I would say the first thing to focus on is actually fixing yourself. 95% of the time that I talk to people with their business and they say that they have a business problem. It's not actually a business problem at all. It's something with their mindset or how they're showing up in the business. And the cool thing is that it's very, it's micro things that they're able to improve that yield.

[Cody McGuffey]

What's an example?

[Chris Heckman]

Like just fixing your sleep like if you are and people like it gets a lot of lip Service, and people almost brush it off. Like, yeah, yeah, I need to. I need to sleep, obviously. Like, I'm an adult. I know that. But it's like, no, you. You don't get that. Like, if you like. An example I give is, I played ice hockey growing up, and when one game I forgot I was a goalie, and it says a lot. And one game I forgot my goalie stick, and so I had to use normal player stick, which is massive difference. You're screwed, pretty much. And that game, I lit up a ton of goals, obviously. And I came off the ice and I was hard on myself, and I started ranting about how I should have saved that, should have saved this. And my parents were like, well, Chris, you didn't have your stiff. Like, obviously it didn't work out. I'm like, I know, but, like, I've spent all this time practicing and like, I, you know, I know how to save that. Like, I should have. It's like, no, you didn't have the right equipment. And when people talk about, like, how they're showing up in their business and they're like, yeah, I'm not sleeping, but, like, anyway, it's like, no, you're. You are fundamentally screwing yourself from the outset if you don't get started with that. And so whenever you hear somebody ask a question or. Basically, the people that I've seen have the most success the fastest are the ones who have the strongest mindsets, and they're the ones who are able to be the most objective and focus on taking the feedback from the market, from coaches, from whoever, and take it as not criticism in any way. It's your only path to growth. And when they embrace that and they combine that with doing the small things consistently right, and they're able to show up every day, focus on it, gets set a lot, but 1% better a day, that's truly the place to get started.

[Cody McGuffey]

I agree. Yeah, it's like, get up, make your bed in the morning, get your. Get your 8 hours of sleep would be ideal. I feel like fitness would be another thing that's always been pretty core to, like, my life as far as, like, if I'm. If I'm typically having a hard time mentally or maybe even in the business, like, we're just struggling financially with the business in the past. It's like, if you actually just look back 90 days, what have I been doing in the last 90 days? Like, what are the habits?

[Chris Heckman]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

Oh, well, I've only worked out probably, like one day a week on average. Maybe Less, you know. Okay, Well, I meditated zero times the last 90 days. No wonder you're a little bit screwed up mentally. Right. It's like if you're not even doing these things that you know are the right things to do for you, then how could you expect the results to be any different?

[Chris Heckman]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

And, and also like I think people struggle a little bit too with just understanding what skill sets they need to focus on. Like, is it marketing? Is it, is it, is it, like, is it, is it product? Is it understanding, like the market? Even better. But really it comes down to it's. You are the biggest asset.

[Chris Heckman]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

I think that's, that's a challenging thing for someone to grasp because it's the first time they've heard that or thought about it.

[Chris Heckman]

Yeah. And especially as a solo founder, you are the business. So that's why these things like sleep, doing all the little things. Right. It's a non negotiable. And I would say like a big evolution that I've had when I was starting out compared to now is when I would have download times in the business or I was getting frustrated or having emotional responses. The, the response or like the circumstance, it was directly coupled with how I was showing up. But I just didn't realize it at all. Now whenever things start, you know, not going the way I want, we're not growing as fast. The very first thing that I check is exactly what you said. It's bring it back to like, what have I actually been doing recently? And it's like, am I showing up with the wrong stick? Then what the hell did I expect to happen? And then, you know, not taking as a, just taking as a data point and then it's an opportunity for improvement and getting excited about that.

[Cody McGuffey]

Sometimes it's like your limiting beliefs kind of creep in naturally. Right. Like we have these. Oh, I've been thinking a little bit negative the past 90 days.

[Chris Heckman]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

So it's going to manifest into your, into your personal life and also your business life. It, it 100 will.

[Chris Heckman]

Right.

[Cody McGuffey]

You have to check it.

[Chris Heckman]

And that's also not you. Right. I think a lot of times we couple our thoughts and like our emotional responses with ourselves and think that that's like who we are, but it's really not. Any behavior or output is very trainable and it can be corrected. Like choose who you like, you know who you are. That's step one. Step two is deciding who you want to become. And then step three is coming up with a plan for that. And then step four is Realizing the plan. The plan is going to go to shit a thousand different ways and that's okay. The important thing is that you keep.

[Cody McGuffey]

Trying to execute the plan.

[Chris Heckman]

Yeah. And then back to your other question. Like make things even more tangible. Like I would say the number one skill, at least from my experience that helped me the most was learning the marketing because it lends itself to the product side. Because when you have a fundamental understanding of like marketing and like how to choose a market of people that you want to serve with, how to get a message in front of them what that looks like in terms of scalability and basically what's possible, it almost leads you naturally to realize that the products and what you're actually putting out there is everything. One of my favorite quotes is that great products can be sold by bad marketing, but great marketing can't sell bad products. And from that evolution of like focusing on just like it was all marketing through all the different stores we ran and brands, like everything was about the marketing. And that skill set was ultimately what led us to realize like the product is literally everything and the product and truly caring about the customers increase the lifetime value. When you do those things really well, that's a business that can compound. And then when you just sprinkle in a little bit of marketing on top, things just take off.

[Cody McGuffey]

When you launched your brands in the past, specifically like Yoga Stay and History Tees, what was the approach that helped you identify those are. Those are the businesses I'm going to start. Like, did you take an analytical approach? Is more of a gut feeling. Did you, did you actually, were you identifying with those, those groups? How do you, how does somebody start those, a business like that, considering they don't have any of those skills that you've had yet or that you have?

[Chris Heckman]

Yeah, yeah. It's one of my favorite ways to validate any business idea. Those brands are no different. It's build a landing page. If you're doing E Commerce. Build a Shopify store. Very basic. Don't even have the products or any of the fulfillment.

[Cody McGuffey]

Ever be store.

[Chris Heckman]

Yeah, ever be store. There you go. Any landing page, click Funnels. If it's software, it doesn't matter. And then drive traffic just using like very basic Facebook ads set aside couple hundred dollar budget. Doesn't have to be much. And then see what the response is on the page. And that's the complete opposite from what we used to do. We used to have an idea. Build out this big beautiful brand, spend weeks if not months invested into it and then we go to Market, we're like, all right, now let's hope people like this. Instead. You can just reverse that equation.

[Cody McGuffey]

What does this page have on it, for example? So it's a landing page that, let's say, I want to test out. I mean, would you run multiple at one time? So one is a yoga brand, one is a history tease.

[Chris Heckman]

One at a time brand.

[Cody McGuffey]

One at a time.

[Chris Heckman]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

And then how long would you give it until you kill it?

[Chris Heckman]

Three, four days. Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

And what would this page have on it?

[Chris Heckman]

It's just a landing page with the products. If we're talking about E Commerce specifically.

[Cody McGuffey]

Yeah. So E Commerce specifically. So what kind of products would it be? Let's say shirts, for example.

[Chris Heckman]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

So you actually connect, like backend, printify, something like this and actually have the product slot.

[Chris Heckman]

You can. The way that we move the fastest is we would take a look at the market and see what people are buying, what are the design styles, what are the types of quotes, and all that kind of good stuff. All the classic research. And then we would. At the time, we would quickly work with designers. Now you can just use AI and take your best stab at, you know, coming up with something the market would like. And then you just put them all up in a shop, everybody, store. And then you launch Facebook ads.

[Cody McGuffey]

Cool.

[Chris Heckman]

And then within, you know, literally a weekend, because you don't even need to see the sales data. We were just looking at the cost per click because if cost per click is low, it means that people are interested.

[Cody McGuffey]

And when you say low, like in today's world, what would that be?

[Chris Heckman]

Like 50 to 75 cents.

[Cody McGuffey]

And then that would tell you that, okay, people actually are responding well to the specific products. Yep. And we know that we are. It's an indicator that you have a good business here.

[Chris Heckman]

Yeah. And we did the same thing for validating, like, different product types. Like, we. We did a Sox brand where we weren't sure if, you know, graphic designs on socks was going to be a thing if people are interested in it. So rather than going to a manufacturer, sourcing all of it, you know, stocking shelves with, you know, tens of thousands, if not more in inventory, we just did. Exactly. We talked about. We threw up a quick landing PA page, filled it with some products that a designer made. None of the products actually existed yet, and drove traffic to see what the cost per click was. And it. It worked.

[Cody McGuffey]

I like this. I've always loved, like, the validation first, like through, especially with paid media, too. Everybody. I don't know if I ever told you but ever be was started that way too.

[Chris Heckman]

Oh really? No, I didn't know that.

[Cody McGuffey]

Yeah, I mean, I had this like hunch that like this is obviously a problem that, that specifically Etsy sellers had for ever be research, be particular, particularly that product. But I threw up a landing page while the product was being built.

[Chris Heckman]

Because.

[Cody McGuffey]

I just didn't want to like waste too much time and I threw up a landing page and then the, the call to action was basically like get a free download of a bunch of researched products that I manually did on a Google sheet.

[Chris Heckman]

I love that.

[Cody McGuffey]

And I just like gave it away. But I just figured if I can, if I can get people to actually click on this thing, actually take this download and actually like it, man. Imagine if I make it like the experience like literally 100 times better with a piece of software.

[Chris Heckman]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

And then you kind of just, you have to take some, some leaps of faith, which is like, will somebody pay monthly for this? And all that other stuff. But it was a big validator for me for sure.

[Chris Heckman]

And that gets back to what we were talking about before with, you know, people when they're starting out. The most terrifying moment in the world when you're starting a business is going to market and seeing if this your baby essentially that you've invested all this time and money and energy. Yeah. If people actually like it or not. If people like your kid. And I in the beginning, people drag that process out a lot because it's, you know, they tell themselves. And I did the same thing. I told myself that this is me caring about the brand. This is me being a good business owner. This brand is going to be different. And in reality, none of that was true. What was true is that I was just trying to put off the inevitable which was going to market and getting normally the tough feedback that there's a lot of work still to be done. And I think over time, reverse that equation, get to the hard part right away. Because you know that once you do that, then the easy part becomes so much more worth it.

[Cody McGuffey]

Completely agree with this. When you, when you think about marketplaces versus owning your own site, which is if I, if I were to look at like Chris Heckman, his YouTube channel, right. And, and your community and school and your courses that are for free, which we can talk about, all that stuff, it seems like you're the opposite of, hey, go launch on Amazon, go launch on Etsy. You're like, hey, freedom, ownership, control, scalability, like you're thinking from that approach first versus the other way. You know, eventually Coming here. Why do you think that is?

[Chris Heckman]

Well, I can say the reason that I continue to do it, the reason I started with that, is that that's what everybody in the incubator that I was a part of for years, everybody started there. And so I kind of got lucky in a lot of ways. But I'm at a point now where I certainly don't have to continue doing it. I continue doing it because I truly believe it's the best and most sustainable way to build a long term brand. Because when you're on a marketplace, not to say there's no opportunity there, but in all reality it's not building a real business. A business is a sellable asset, something that you could hire other people to run and eventually, you know, investors would be interested in acquiring. Where you own the customers, you own the transactions you like, everything is yours. When you're on a marketplace, the easiest way to tell is where does the cash flow flow through? Who owns that? It's Etsy, it's Amazon. Whoever owns the cash flow owns the business. And aside from that, also who owns all the customer data? Again, the marketplaces. And if we're building, I think it's a great way to build some cash flow if you're trying to make an extra couple hundred bucks a month. But the other thing is you're beholden to those companies. They can choose to kick you off at any time because they care about their cost, their customer center too. If they think for whatever reason, and doesn't have to be a reason you agree with at all, you're gone. And I've seen too many stories of people that work, you know, pour their heart and soul into a business for two or three years just to get, you know, snapped away overnight and then they're left with nothing. Opposed to building your own standalone, you own all the customer data, you own like all the marketing data, you own like the future of the companies essentially in your hands. And it's yes, there's a learning curve, but the way I would frame it is like if you take Etsy or Merch by Amazon, like what do they have there? They have a sellable, a high converting site, they have a traffic source and they have like a customer base that comes back again and again. All of those things you're able to recreate building your own standalone. And then once you do that, which learning curve people think is a bad thing, but it's really a competitive advantage because learning curve means that it's more challenging to get started as soon as the barrier to entry is on the floor, then that means naturally the market becomes flooded, supply surpasses demand, and then the opportunity goes away. And we're seeing those trends already. And the final thing is when somebody buys from your brand you want and you know they're wearing your product or using it and their friend sees it and their friend says, oh, I like that. Where'd you get that from? Do you want them to say the name of your brand or do you want them to say, oh, I got this from Etsy. Where do you want them going back to? Because that conversation right there as nuanced or, you know, minute it might seem as a detail, that's the thing that compounds. And it can either be compounding for you or it can be compounding for a marketplace.

[Cody McGuffey]

In 2025, do you feel like there is more opportunity or less opportunity for print on demand standalone site for that brand owner? You think it's more or less is it trending up or down?

[Chris Heckman]

Yeah, I've looked into this a lot. I think there's more opportunity than ever because the data would support this. And the reason that that's the case is like for any business model, look at, you have to go to the very end point, look at the consumer and what is the person who's buying from these print on demand shops? Are they buying more, less or the same than they were yesterday or a year ago? The trend is like that.

[Cody McGuffey]

It's so for to break it down to one person who give me, give me a buyer name of Persona. Let's call her him or her Cody. Cody. What am I buying more now than I would in the past. Am I buying that like funny shirts?

[Chris Heckman]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

My dad for his, for his father for Father's Day.

[Chris Heckman]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

I'm buying also one for my mom for Mother's Day. I'm doing that more often now.

[Chris Heckman]

Yeah. So it's, it's fast fashion and it's graphics or like the two, like graphic themed apparel. Those are the two major trends. So fast fashion is that a decade ago, people, you know, you would buy a really nice shirt that was expensive and it would last for years and years and years. Nowadays, fast fashion people are buying higher quantities of cheaper quality that they're turning through more than ever. Then at the same time, people are buying not, not the shirts that we're, you and I are both wearing. They're buying things that are like an expression of themselves. And my personal anecdote or theory on this is that I think around Covid, like we, you hear about like the Loneliness epidemic. I think people now more than ever are looking for alternate route. They feel lonely or more isolated and they're looking for more routes for expressing themselves. And so the experience from the consumer side is when they get hit with an ad for something from history tease and it has like a joke and a historical reference that is like pretty niche that only, you know them, it feels like only they get it and they see that when somebody buys your shirt, they are not just. They're not buying the shirt at all. What they are buying is how it's going to make them feel when they put it on. They're buying the reaction from their friends and family when they see it. They're buying the community that makes them feel more connected to. That's what they're actually buying. And so the question of, like, is there a future for Print on Demand? And like, how's the opportunity look? It's like, start with those consumer behaviors and do you see that trend declining, flatlining or increasing over time? And I think it's just at the very beginning, I think especially with AI, it's going to become. People feel more and more isolated, unfortunately. And I think Print on demand can be a fantastic way to mend some of those wounds.

[Cody McGuffey]

Not to mention just the. And we're just talking about T shirts right now. Right. But Print on demand is extending. It has extended actually past. Way past T shirts.

[Chris Heckman]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

Mugs, shirts, pants, like shower curtains and all that stuff will probably just continue, continue to, to increase also. So it's not just going to be the traditional print on demand shirts.

[Chris Heckman]

Yeah. And also like Print on demand is just the fulfillment model. It's not actually a business or anything. It like you could have like yoga, say started off as print on demand connected to printify, the classic thing. And then as we grew, it switched to 3 PL, which at that point anybody would call like a real business. It's not Print on demand.

[Cody McGuffey]

Sure.

[Chris Heckman]

And it looked exactly the same. Consumers come to the site identical to what it looked like a week ago. The only difference is on the back end now the orders is getting sent to a warehouse instead of.

[Cody McGuffey]

I think people are afraid when I, when I ask that question. They're like, well, it seems like Print on demand is, is opening the gates, lowering the barrier to entry for, you know, a whole bunch of other competitors. They would say, right, It's a very limiting mindset.

[Chris Heckman]

Yeah, it's kind of the point.

[Cody McGuffey]

Right. But they're also like, well, yeah, I want to do a yoga brand, but like probably a whole bunch of other people want to do yoga brand too. And they have access to the exact same products that I do and for my inventory. So then they kind of like they're trying, they're trying to make sense of that in their head. And what would you say to them?

[Chris Heckman]

Yeah, it's a great question. I would say that a shop is only differentiated by the products. A brand is differentiated by you. And there's a big misconception about brand. Whenever people hear the word brand, they immediately picture Nike, Apple and they think brand equals multi billion dollar corporation. And between where I am and the word brand, it's billions of dollars in enterprise value. When in fact the exact opposite is true. For history tees, for example, the branding started the moment that we changed the order confirmation email from the standard. Your order's on its way. Congrats to we rewrote it using like old 18th century English to be like it sounds corny and cheesy but the history buffs love it. So it's things like your shirt the town crier is espousing like the exciting news of your garments preparation, it's being carried on horse drawn carriage, on a velvet pillow, like that kind of stuff. And that's just one example that took 20 minutes to write. And that's the start. Like when somebody receives that email, that's the start of a brand and that starts with you, the individual. You don't have to do, you know old English. But for yoga say we sent emails that no sales, no nothing, not even a product attached. Just here's your daily reminder to just breathe or here's your daily reminder that you matter and you know, take a moment for yourself today. Those little moments, those are the ways that like back to the lifetime value, those are the things that take that number from a 1 to a 2 and build into something that can really compound in your favor but also feels much better running a brand like that.

[Cody McGuffey]

I want to switch gears a little bit to what you're working on now and to understand like what is the, what's the thing that most excites you for you and your business in 2025? You have a lot of interesting things happening. One I can think of is your YouTube channel, if you don't know. Chris has a amazing channel full of free information all about building brands.

[Chris Heckman]

Thank you.

[Cody McGuffey]

Like one of the best. And I, and I mean that. And also like a free community and a free course and it's like all this amazing stuff for free. Is that the thing that you're most excited about or Is it like your, your software platform that you're building also serving print on demand, folks?

[Chris Heckman]

Yeah, I would say both. I would say the most fulfilling thing that I've worked on in my career has been everything on the community side is I actually started out making content about seven, eight years ago because I love teaching, I love, you know, helping people go from point A to point B. And I just had no idea what I was talking about. So I was like, should probably call this quits, actually learn this stuff. So took a hiatus for seven or eight years, racked up some sales, made a bunch of mistakes, and then came back. And the, the reason that it's the most fulfilling thing I've ever done is after I sold the first business, I ex. Those were the goal posts for years. I was like, this is going to be it. Once I've reached that point, I expected to feel bliss, you know, ecstasy, whatever. And instead I opened up the Chase app, saw the wire, hit the account and felt absolutely nothing. And that was. That sent me for a real tailspin for a little while. Yeah. So I was like, what is this all about? And then reverse engineering it. Realized like, what I was actually after. My biggest why was to help people, like the people closest to me, my friends, family. And I realized that the thing that motivates me the most is being able to play even a tiny, the tiniest of roles in somebody achieving something for themselves that, that they themselves didn't see as possible. And having all the experience now to actually help people do that and making it all for free. And then, you know, that that's been. That's been amazing.

[Cody McGuffey]

Tell us about Mystic Pod. What is Mystic Pod? For someone who has no idea what.

[Chris Heckman]

This is, what you're building, very simply, it's the tool that I wish I had all the years that I was building brands is the, you know, everything is about the product at the end of the day and the product in print on demand, it's all designs. And that design process used to take us weeks of research back and forth with designers, massive trello boards that would give you a headache and all of that. To get 50 designs on your store and then you launch 49 of those do terrible. One of them does well, then you're right back to where you were. More weeks. Thousands and thousands of dollars. And the barrier to start that business and all really be successful with it was pretty high. Now with Mystic Pod, we're basically taking all the lessons that we've learned about print on demand and applying it to a tool that Is allowing anybody to go from getting started just with a niche in mind to creating your first hundred high quality, extremely sellable designs in a matter of minutes. And it costs an absolute fraction of whatever you're used to.

[Cody McGuffey]

So if I sell, if I target real estate agents, right, for my brand, and I just sell like merch, and I sell, or maybe not merch, but like designs that are like funny for real estate agents, like inside jokes, right? I could go into Mystic Pod, what would I type in the search bar?

[Chris Heckman]

Real estate agents.

[Cody McGuffey]

Real estate agents, yeah. And then what would I expect when after I push that button, you would.

[Chris Heckman]

Expect results that are taking the top design styles for your niche as well as coming up the concepts like the slogans, the inside jokes terminology that they use, and then overlaying it with the design styles that it sees as the best, you know, medium for that. And then that's just the very beginning. Then it's, it starts with that as like your canvas and then you're able to start iterating on the designs which, that's what we do is, you know, you start with your initial base, your best shots, essentially you see what actually sticks and then you go back and you say, this one did well, what else can I do with it? And that was the process that used to involve trello boards, all that kind of stuff. Now it's click a button, explain what you'd like to scale about it, how many designs you want to do, and within literally 30 seconds you have a whole new collection.

[Cody McGuffey]

I love that. What's the long term vision for Mystic Beauty? Like you guys have been building it for how long now?

[Chris Heckman]

About 18, about year and a half, two years.

[Cody McGuffey]

What's the long term plan there?

[Chris Heckman]

Yeah, the long term plan is like, you know how Amazon, they started, their ultimate goal was building a massive supply chain network and they started with books. The reason we, we start with T shirts specifically within print, on demand is the future of the world is AI. And I think there's a massive opportunity to be creating AI models that back to the consumer piece, bridge the gap and the loneliness epidemic and help people feel like there's another avenue of self expression for them out there. Just the way that we get there or the vehicle is through the sellers and empowering those sellers to serve those consumers. And at the same time it's empowering sellers who want to change their lives, who want to impact their family, their friends and really build something for themselves. We're the tool that allows that to happen and makes it readily available for anybody. And not just talking about shops, but building real brands.

[Cody McGuffey]

I love that. What do you think about the person who right now is like, oh, AI is so cool. And I love it that it helps me, but I'm also like, in the back of my head, I'm like, again, is this, is this just like lowering the barrier for everybody to compete me, compete with me? For example, in real estate, like, all these designs, I just created these super quickly. But what about my competitor who's also in real estate too? Like, aren't they going to do the same thing and aren't they going to do the same thing and times 100? And is it going to just quote, unquote, saturate the market to where I am meaningless brand?

[Chris Heckman]

Yeah. Well, I would, I would say it depends on where you're trying to sell. Like, if you're talking about marketplaces, that's where you're always kind of fighting a commoditized game and it's just a matter of time. But when you're building a real brand, that's where again, goes back to the brand. Exactly.

[Cody McGuffey]

Touch points and different things that actually make it unique.

[Chris Heckman]

Spot on. And AI is coming whether if we like it or not. So it doesn't. Like, years ago, everybody made designs by sketch and paper. Then, you know, Photoshop came along, and then Canva came along, and now AI has come along and so it's just going to continue. But the true differentiator, like the barrier to entry is definitely lowering, but the true differentiator is you. And even having tools that makes it feel like you're infinitely powerful and you can make whatever you want, there's still, you know, you can still make really bad designs with AI. It's definitely possible, as good as they are. And making great designs is just the, the seed for a great brand. And so it's not the, the complete picture. So I think there will always be space for, like, human innovation in the brand, and that's what really stands out.

[Cody McGuffey]

Yeah, I love that. I think it's a good time to switch over to Rapid Fire questions. Are you ready?

[Chris Heckman]

Let's do it.

[Cody McGuffey]

What's your favorite business book?

[Chris Heckman]

Atomic Habits.

[Cody McGuffey]

James Clear.

[Chris Heckman]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

Why?

[Chris Heckman]

Because that was really the, the most fundamental shift that I've had in my development has been in how I show up and just making life easy for myself. The one line that stands out in my mind and I play it over and over, is make good habits visible, make bad habits invisible. And I think when you do that consistently, it makes, you know, the discipline that's necessity for being successful in business. It makes it very, very sustainable. I think when a lot of people struggle, it's because they're constantly surrounded by an environment that is always fighting against them. And anybody doesn't matter who they are. Nobody's Superman or Superwoman. If you're in that kind of environment, you're always gonna be fighting an uphill battle.

[Cody McGuffey]

What's the worst advice you've ever received?

[Chris Heckman]

That you should spend all the. You should spend as much money as you're making so that you constantly feel like you have to make more money and scale faster. Horrible.

[Cody McGuffey]

I've heard that advice too, actually.

[Chris Heckman]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

I remember having this conversation with actually a number of people, to be honest. And then they'd be like, so you guys like profitable or like you're not profitable, etc. You know, typical business conversation.

[Chris Heckman]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

And like, oh, yeah, we're profitable. You know, and they're like, then goes into like, what margin? How much? All this stuff. And it was like, be a hot. It would be a high amount. And they'd be like, why though? You have to be investing more into, you know, into growth. And I'm like, I feel like we are, but like, I'm not willing to sacrifice. But the reaction is like, almost like a habit because you kind of. What you're saying, people feel like for some reason in our world, we feel like profit is like you're almost being complacent.

[Chris Heckman]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

But it's actually the opposite in my, in my head. Like you're. You're bulletproofing the business so you can play the very, very long term game.

[Chris Heckman]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

And I think that's important. I think it's important to do both, but just. Yeah, that makes sense.

[Chris Heckman]

Yeah. And it's the. I think it depends on the individual, definitely. But the. A really, really good business. It should be extremely profitable. The businesses I had early on, it felt like an incremental game. It felt like there was peanuts to scrape together on the first handful of brands. But now having really rock solid businesses that really get the customer and really deliver a ton of value and has a high lifetime value there. It's. You should be making so much profit that you're not really sure what to do with it.

[Cody McGuffey]

We, we feel like, I feel like we've normalized this as a, as a business culture a little bit to like always bet the farm. Always. Over and over again. It's like, oh, you made 30. Oh, you need to invest 30 this month. You know, like roll rack into the business, baby. You know, and it's like, no, actually you don't always do that.

[Chris Heckman]

Right.

[Cody McGuffey]

There's a time where you need to do that for sure. But there's actually most times you should not be doing that. Like, you shouldn't bet the farm more than like you do at the beginning when you first started the business.

[Chris Heckman]

Yep.

[Cody McGuffey]

Don't stop betting the farm. You know, like, if you just make one mistake, you're gonna, like, lose everything you built. So, yeah, I kind of want to change that stigma a little bit.

[Chris Heckman]

Yeah, let's do it.

[Cody McGuffey]

Let's do it. Rent profitable businesses. If your family and your friends and co workers in this case, or your employees had to get together and they had to write an honest article about Chris, about Chris Heckman, and they weren't. And you weren't allowed to be in the room or around them when they, when they got together to do this, what kind of characteristics would they describe in that article about you? Go down bad.

[Chris Heckman]

He's got a head so big. No, no hat will fit him. Like physically physical head. Head size is hard. Circumference is crazy.

[Cody McGuffey]

I wouldn't write that. I didn't know that. Yeah, right here. And I don't. I can't see that.

[Chris Heckman]

I would say, hopefully they would say that he cares a lot and is extremely driven, but on the bad side, driven almost to a fault where there's no breaks, there's no downtime, and it probably seems like there's no point that he's able to like, take a step back and kind of enjoy what's being built. Think that would be the, the number one thing. And, and also they would say good and bad side, that there's nothing that if he pictures it in his mind and like, once he sets his mind to it, there's absolutely nothing that he doesn't fully believe that he can actually get to for good. Good and absolutely for bad. Like, once his mind is set to something, he's just all in on it. But also hopefully that the reason he does everything is for those people who are writing the article right now.

[Cody McGuffey]

I see that I see in you is like, you're a great servant leader. Like, you lead from example. You're here to serve people while you're on this earth. Your customers and also your. Your team members, friends. That's kind of what I see in you. I imagine they'll say the same thing.

[Chris Heckman]

Well, thank you. I appreciate that.

[Cody McGuffey]

How would you define a creator? What is a creator in 2025? Is it only in content? Is it in business?

[Chris Heckman]

What is It I would say that a creator is somebody who has a idea or concept or something in their life that can be unique to them or valuable to them. It can take a lot of different shapes and sizes and they put it out into the world and they're not afraid of breaking the traditional mold of like there's creating and then there's duplicating very different things. I think a creator, it's fine to build on, obviously stand on the shoulders of giants. That makes sense. But a creator is somebody who takes that and then they take it a step further in their own way and they're not afraid for maybe they are afraid, but they do it anyway. They're not afraid to put it out there into the world and see the response and then that response then fuels them to create even more and to build further. And they know that it's a never ending game and they could build for their entire lives and still not be done.

[Cody McGuffey]

And so what I didn't hear is it's not specifically around anything particularly. Like it's not an art, it's not an artist as a creator only or a content creator, which is. I know the common thing now. It's literally could be across any vertical.

[Chris Heckman]

Yeah, I'd say that's accurate.

[Cody McGuffey]

Awesome. Do you think that who do you think should be a business owner and be an entrepreneur?

[Chris Heckman]

I would. The common trait that I've seen amongst people who have been the most successful as entrepreneurs, they're not. They don't have to be the smartest, they don't have to have the best background or come from a wealthy or successful family. It quite simply comes down to the people who have the highest tolerance for pain and stress. The people who are able to get up each day when it feels like the world is falling down around them and everything that they've been creating is falling to crap and still do it anyway. And a lot of times still do it with a smile on their face because they have to for their team that's looking at them or their family that they're supporting while they're building this. Those are, they're just, they're just built different. And I think it's something that you can grow into. But, but it's definitely like I've seen extremely intelligent people fail at it. I've seen people that are average intelligence. So it's really not the, the traits that everybody would normally associate with it. I think it's mostly that piece right there.

[Cody McGuffey]

Is there a world where everybody could be a business owner?

[Chris Heckman]

Depends on the Business. I don't know about everybody. I think there are some people, and I don't think everybody should. I think everybody should do what makes them happy, as, you know, commonly said as that is. But truly, like, the reason that I build a business, and I'd imagine why you do, is that it makes me happy. And I feel like I'm growing every single day and that I'm becoming the best version of myself. And I can see a future where I'm able to have impact that I want to have and I'm able to support the people I want to support. And building a business is just the medium for that. I think it's one of the best mediums for people who really care about personal growth. But then there's people on the far end of the spectrum that are just thrilled to, you know, read a book and just spend time with family. And I think that's great. And so for that kind of person, it's seeing basically look at how they feel about their life. And if that person is happy with how things like genuinely and truly and not lying to themselves and like, I'm. I'm just fine just. But they're just pushing stuff deep down, not that kind of thing, but somebody who's truly happy don't. Definitely don't start a business.

[Cody McGuffey]

I would. I would argue that people listening to this right now, if you're listening to this, God sakes, an hour and a half in you 100 should be a business owner.

[Chris Heckman]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

At this point, if you're fascinated by these conversations, then you. It is. It is clear that you have something inside of you that says, okay, I want more for my life, I want more for my family, I want more for my future, and I want to make an impact of some degree. Uh, I remember thinking about this once in a while when I was first starting out. Like, am I really built for that? It's like, you know, people would talk about. Right. Like, you gotta be built for this. You gotta, like, think this way. I think this way. And. But the reality is you. You question it a lot.

[Chris Heckman]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

In hindsight, it's very clear. Oh, yeah, you're definitely built for it because of xyz, but in that moment, you're. You don't know. And so I guess I would encourage. If anybody's listening to podcasts like this, 99.9%, you built for it. You do. But you do need to take the steps now. Like, you need to walk the path. And the path is. Is rocky, it's windy, it's dark. It's unclear, but 99 point, 99% of the time it's, it's worth it as long as you just don't stop. Essentially, yeah, I do feel like everyone should be a business owner that wants to be like that has some sort of calling to it. And I'm not saying that you need to be a full time entrepreneur, a full time business owner, and today you don't need to be full time. You can have that. If you're really passionate about this job that you have and you love your company, that's awesome. But I do think that you should have a business, whether it's print, on demand, digital, whatever it is, because you're just, if you're not, you're probably sacrificing some of your potential that you could be growing into because you, you grow quick, you grow faster than anyone else. When you're, when it's, when it's all you on the line.

[Chris Heckman]

Yeah, it's like stepping outside of your. As long as you're in your comfort zone, you're not growing. As soon as you step out, that's the day that like you start, like the growth process happens and either you're growing or you're dying, essentially. So anybody who feels stagnant or basically if you're somebody who's had the idea or the notion, normally that's like the truest part of yourself that has that idea, that thinks even for a split second, maybe I could do this, maybe, maybe I should start a business. But then normally it's our grown up or adult self that's like, no, like we have bills, we have responsibilities, they.

[Cody McGuffey]

Kill it so quickly.

[Chris Heckman]

Exactly. And it's like, where did the, the childhood, like dreaming and creativity, where did that go? Why did that get beaten out of us at some point?

[Cody McGuffey]

I completely agree. I think it's, it's a, I think it's a problem personally because I see so many people, so many people with so much potential and dreams and creativity that they could be bringing to this world. They actually want to bring this world, but they, they let fear knock a couple times and say, oh, well, you have kids now, so like you can't, like, hey, like, don't, don't take that risk. You know, you've already passed, that window's closed for you. You have kids, you have a wife, you have a family, you have a mortgage, you have car payments. And I would challenge that completely and say that's exactly why you need to do it. Yeah, like that's literally the reason why you need to do it now because your kids are looking at you and, and what kind of parents do you want to show up for them as? Do you want to be the parent who, yeah, I had dreams, dad had dreams, mom had dreams, but she sacrificed them all for me. That's a scapegoat, I think, and putting that on your kids is not. It's not a good thing. I think you need to say. You want your kids to say, yeah, mom and dad, they, like, they had us, they had responsibilities, but they did it anyway. And they were scared. They still did it anyway. They take action even when they're not scared. So that way, when they have a problem in their future, they have a question. They. They would answer the call the same way. Yeah, that's my view.

[Chris Heckman]

I completely agree. And it's the nicest or the best unexpected benefit of starting a business is the, over the long term, the impact. Not even financial or any of that. The impact that it has on the people around you that you care the most about. Like, when I got into this, I was thinking just financial impact on the people around you. But now what I've realized is that the real benefit is on the emotional. You're. You're essentially able to be a beacon or, you know, a. If nothing else, you're able to be an example for other people of a different way, a way that is not normally a way that the exact opposite is taught to them their entire lives. And just that alone is extremely powerful.

[Cody McGuffey]

I completely agree with this because so many people do not have any examples in their life.

[Chris Heckman]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

And if you can be that one example, even if you're not even quote, unquote, like successful millionaire, multi millionaire, like, yeah, it. That's just the number that's. That's the point is like being that, I guess beacon of hope is where you're kind of going with that. Of, yeah, hey, Chris did it a different way. Uncle Chris did a different way. Right?

[Chris Heckman]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

Because that's super cool.

[Chris Heckman]

Yeah. And it. That's what it's all about, at least for me, at the end of the day, is like the people that you're able to impact. And when you care about that, nothing else. LTV goes up, business value goes up.

[Cody McGuffey]

And finances go up too. You eventually have more cash in the bank and you can actually help more people and give back to more things.

[Chris Heckman]

Absolutely.

[Cody McGuffey]

It's the cool thing about it. It's a lagging indicator that works really well. Chris, where can people find you, learn more about you, get closer to. To all the things you talk about?

[Chris Heckman]

Yeah. So just on my YouTube channel, if they're interested at all about Print on Demand, there's a. If they're up for it, there's a 31 hour course completely for free. It's not just me talking the whole time. My lovely wife and business partners in there, as well as some coaches that we have. But, yeah, that's where they can find me. Just my name on YouTube.

[Cody McGuffey]

Awesome. And then mysticpod also.

[Chris Heckman]

Yep. Mysticpod.com.

[Cody McGuffey]

Perfect. I'll drop links for all those things for anyone listening or watching this in the show notes or the description. But, Chris, thank you so much for coming on, brother. I appreciate you.

[Chris Heckman]

Oh, thank you, Cody. It's been a lot of fun.

[Cody McGuffey]

Awesome. We'll do it again soon.

[Chris Heckman]

Hell, yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

Cool.