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DTC Podcast
Ep 537: How Dugout Mugs Scaled to $55M with Authentic Branding and Smart Partnerships
00:39:07
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- [00:00]
A
DTC and E Comm. It's ready, fire, aim. You don't have to get it right. You have to get it going. And then you measure and you pivot. You measure and you pivot, adjust, move, stay fluid. What matters, it's not your top line sales, it's your bottom line profit. You know, I'd rather have 5000 people that follow us on social media and 2500 of them are buying than 3 million and you got 500 that are buying. Authenticity, man. That's a magic word. I don't think enough people use it, understand it, integrate it in everything they're doing. Authenticity and transpar are massive. Life is so short. Stop wasting it doing stuff that truly doesn't matter. That is a misstep by most people. I know I did it. And I got lucky enough to get that time back.
- [00:52]
B
Welcome to the DTC Podcast. I'm Eric Dick, and today I'm here with Chris Dennard, founder and CEO of Dugout Mugs. Chris, welcome to the DTC podcast. How are you doing today?
- [01:00]
A
Thanks. What's up, man? Glad to be here.
- [01:02]
B
Why don't we start with the hero's journey? I know you've been at this for a long time, you've been mining the Internet for a long time, but give.
- [01:10]
A
Us a walkthrough back to the beginning of time. Okay? So, yeah, man, like I was in. I was in high school and, you know, I've been really outside the box. Everything I do, it's, you know, I'm pretty unemployable. I found over the years as many, many of us are in the DTC world. But I came out of school and I started opening Gold's gyms, right? That's where I got my start. I was really good at sales, really good at people, and I found this new website called Facebook that I was leveraging and being one to many. Communication really worked well for me. So, you know, I did that for a few years and I, you know, crushed it. You know, we taught, you know, top sales in the region, top sales in the southeastern United States. Like, we were really getting after it, but. But it was. That's as high as I could go, right? And then I bounced out and I got into real estate in 2008, which was just chaos. 2008, real estate, but I was flipping short sales, right? So I was in the. I was at least in the right vertical of the real estate business. But you know what, what I really started doing is understanding algorithms and how to leverage websites and how to be so Like I'm in my 40s, right? Like we grew up belly to belly, shaking hands, like this is how we do things. And I kind of was. I was kind of on that bridge, that little generation, that little window that knew how to be real people, but also could do it digitally. And I feel like that was a really sweet spot for me because then what I did is I just did what I did best. Sales and people and communication and engagement, and I just did it online so I could do it from a one to many format. And naturally that brought me into social media. You know, some of the very early. The myspaces, the, you know, the. The real estate investor.com, like some of these weird little things. And that just kind of steamrolled. And eventually I had about, you know, I had probably 7 million fans at the peak of it. And then I just went to him. It was the biggest pages in the world for like Tim Tebow and Duck Dynasty and you know, just some of these really cool, like the in thing at the time. But because I.
- [03:12]
B
Back when Facebook hadn't gated these organic audiences, so you had a lot more access to them.
- [03:17]
A
Yeah, it was push button, make money, right? So I went out to these folks, I was like, hey, well, what do y' all want? And they're like, oh, I wish I had a shirt that said this. I'm like, hold on. And I went over there and you know, the very. You know, one of the first, like real notable companies was Teespring. I'll give them a shout out. Even though they. They got over on me on some money. But, you know, that's. That's between them and God. But I got them to Teespring and I really got after it with that. And some of these, some of these pages, we crushed it, man. We did over $20 million in sales of T shirts. And that's when I really, when I had those big fan pages, that's when I really started getting my head wrapped around E comm and direct to consumer through social media and paid ads and stuff like that. And like you mentioned back then, it wasn't even really paid ads. It was just push a button, make the money that everybody wasn't being throttled. Right? But things change. And you learn how to pivot. That's the biggest thing in DTC anyway. Pivot.
- [04:13]
B
That's funny. I started my affiliate career back in the day selling Donnie Darko T shirts to Donnie Darko fans. We talked about Shine on as well. Did a small jewelry store with Eric Tosco. But what was it that shifted your mindset from, you know, sort of like servicing these fan groups with Print on Demand to like trying to build a brand, trying to build a bit more legacy with a, with a product yourself.
- [04:38]
A
Well, it was, it was really more long term thinking. Right. You know, like I said all the business and I've had several businesses along the way. So I just treated my, my E Com and my DTC brand as a business. You know, even my T shirt. I mean you remember the Print on demand. I know, I know Eric, I know Eric very well and actually had a little part of when Shine on first got started. Right. So that's nice, little blast from the past there. But you know, I, at the beginning I looked at this, you know, I think we may even have talked about it at one point where we sat in a room at a meeting table. We had design meetings, we had customer service meetings, we treated it, we had roles, we had responsibilities, we had checks and balances, we had things. It was a business. Whereas a lot of DTC people, it's just like a moonlight thing. It's a side hustle, which is fine, but it's not going to be as scalable in my opinion. Right. Because it didn't have the infrastructure and it's more of like a bottle rocket than it is, you know, the grand finale kind of thing where you could do this sort of the spin offs and pulling this off and this off and really create an infrastructure that is more stable and self sustaining. Like that's how I looked at it, you know, when I was growing that brand.
- [05:50]
B
And then so what brought Dugout together? How did that come to be?
- [05:54]
A
There's a lot of story between where we just left off and that we'll skip through a lot of it, which is fine. But we did well, we made money. I was very naive and investing and blew it on all kinds of things that just, I might as well let that on fire.
- [06:11]
B
What was the worst?
- [06:14]
A
The worst? Cannabis. The being in the cannabis space that lit money on fire. The restaurant lit money on fire.
- [06:21]
B
Lessons, expensive lessons.
- [06:23]
A
Invest out there, understand your core competency. Because now I only put money in things that I understand and I can positively impact, right. Because I have a pretty powerful network and a pretty powerful skill set. So if I can impact the investment, not only do I get my money in at the right time, but then I can help it grow, right? So that's kind of one of the pieces that I, one of the boxes I check when I'm doing investing now. But anyway, so I was just Burning money, burning money, burning money, trying to make it, you know, make it multiply. Cause I was chasing legacy and I was chasing money and I was chasing all these things and I got sick. I ruptured my appendix. It's nothing abnormal, right? But I ruptured my appendix and I was so busy with meetings, I didn't go to the hospital for a week, which is not advisable for anybody out there that thinks that shit was smart. It was not smart. And it nearly killed me. And I had a six month old little kid at home that I had barely met, honestly, because I was busy running around and flying here and going to this conference and that conference and just trying to, you know, make it happen, right? And then while I was laying there, I was like, you know what? Get me out of this. Because I had some prayers going up there and it's like, get me out of this and send me somebody that needs my skill set. And. And a guy named Randall reached out to me, invented a mug. So we take baseball bat barrels and we hollow them out and turn them into really cool mugs. And Randall hit me up and, you know, it was divine intervention. I'll never deny that. That's my take on it. You know, I had a prayer get answered in a weird, very weird way. But I mean, I know people, I know scalability, I know branding, I know sales, I know E commerce. And he created a cool thing, you know, and like I had all the things he didn't. And I was like, you know what, dude, let's, let's give this a run. And that was back in 2017. And you know, $55 million and counting later, you know, we're still selling the hell out of Batmugs. You know, we're on Good Morning America here in like a week and a half. You know, we just keep getting the love and we're going to keep telling.
- [08:28]
B
The story we talked a little bit about. I brought up, I put my foot in my mouth because I mentioned a brand that I had seen in the early days of TikTok that, that I thought was you guys. But you ended up telling a pretty instructional tale about Lumberland about when businesses maybe don't have that business acumen, maybe they have the audience building skill, but not the business acumen. Talk about it.
- [08:47]
A
Yeah, I mean, so you know, a little insight to that story because that book has been closed now. Randall and this other guy created the company Lumberland. And Randall actually came up with the idea for the mug. Came up with the idea, the name for the company, the whole thing. This other guy had a, you know, whatever he was bringing to the table, I don't know, I wasn't around then. And they linked up and they started rolling, and it was just one of those things was like fire and ice, you know, I don't think they meshed well together. It was obvious that they didn't because they broke up really quick. And Randall let him keep the name, and he launched Thompson Mug company right over here. And then there were two horses in the race. This one kind of already had the momentum. And Randall was really big analytical guy, so I think he kind of like simmered a little more than he. Then he probably needed to, wanted to, because sometimes with. With DTC and E Comm, you know, I'm going to try to drop tips too, right? It's ready, fire, aim. Like, you don't have to get it right. You have to get it going. And then you measure and you pivot. You measure and you pivot, adjust, move, you know, stay fluid. And I think that's kind of what delayed him on the. On the get go. But then we got together really quick after that end of 2016, and he told me about this other guy, and I was like, well, listen, man, you know. You know, I love the saying, do you want to be right or do you want to be rich? And it's like, it's one of those things where it's like, we can choose to fight this dude. We should have just extinguished him at the beginning. Hindsight's 20 20, right? But we ran side by side with this dude for maybe a year, and then I said, look, we can either play to win or we can play to not lose. And those are two very, very, very different things. Things. And playing to win is just those blinders and then just go, you. You can't be beat. You can't be stopped. You grind when others sleep. Like, you know, there's a lot of versions of it, but. But, like, that's what we decided to do is we decided to just go harder, play harder, beat him, you know, and. And then eventually, you know, about a year, two years in, he started feeling that heat, man, that pressure, and. And they started caving and caving and caving. And then they're like, we can't beat these guys, us at the batmug game. So they just like, were curling over, and then they launched a media side of their business and they had a big following, you know, millions of followers on, like, TikTok and all this stuff. And they had all these just goofy videos going on and I feel like it was more of like vanity metrics right to me. And vanity metrics are irrelevant. So again, another tip out there. What matters, it's not your top line sales, it's your bottom line profit. What matters isn't how many. You know, I'd rather have 5,000 people that follow us on social media and 2,500 of them are buying then 3 million and you got 500 that are buying.
- [11:40]
B
And bridging to the purchase is not automatic. Right. Just because you have an audience doesn't mean they're going to buy what you're putting out there. And it was even just like I remember looking at content, it was just sort of like slice of life office stuff. And I thought it was funny and I followed them but just I barely made the connection that they were selling this product. So it's just kind of a miss there.
- [11:59]
A
Well, it was a miss and, and it was a miss and, and I think they could have done better. They didn't have, I didn't, they didn't have the acumen like you said. In my opinion, do I think they're bad guys? No, I never really did. I think some of the shit they did was a little crooked and sideways, but that's, you know, that's desperation. That's what it smells like. And to me, I just don't think they had the right leadership in place to scale their core business. But you guys have, we're still here and they're not. So I mean, obviously Maybe I'm right.
- [12:33]
B
55 million in Batmug sales would indicate.
- [12:36]
A
Would indicate that for sure. And when it came down to it, you know, we gave them, I mean, kind of a burned up olive branch. It wasn't much of a branch left when we offered it. But I said, look man, you got, you know, it's time for you to leave and it will either you'll be dead on the street in six months when we're done leaning or you can sum of the business right now. And you, you know, it was Friday, you got till Monday. And at that point it was right before Q4, going into like Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas, all that goody. And yeah, they, they pulled the trigger, sold me the business and we probably recouped 60 to 80% of what we paid for the business by that end, by the end of that year.
- [13:21]
B
Nice to hear.
- [13:21]
A
Just because we knew what to do with it, right? We knew what to do with the email list, we knew what to do with the social we knew what to do with everything.
- [13:28]
B
I want to dive deeper on some of your philosophies around partnerships, but before we go there, I just want to talk touch a little bit about what, you know, where these guys maybe failed to create content that actually connected through to sales. How have you thought about both audience building and content marketing in a way that has effectively driven to the sale?
- [13:46]
A
I mean, simply put, I think you got to be somebody that somebody wants to do business with if you're the face of the brand. Like, I'm very much face forward with my brand with dugout. I'm at the events, I'm, you know, with the players and celebs we're doing, you know, all these guys back here, you know, like I'm very forward facing with that. And I believe that transparency from a brand is really important, at least for me. So creating that type of content and staying on brand and that's something that we didn't. We had a lot of disconnect early on and we still struggle with it a bit today, I'm not gonna lie. And it's just being consistent and having a disconnect like what is your brand and your marketing strategy. Spend more time building that and put the people in place to execute that, if that makes sense. I think that's. It really does, you know, just, just involvement and engagement. One of the things I probably do best is networking and one of my core beliefs with networking is it's not somebody's job to remember you, it's your job to be unforgettable, right? And the premise of that is kind of what we're trying to do with dugout. People see these and like, oh, yo, there's a dugout muck, right? Like, you know, you see him on TV behind Kevin Millar. You see him on our governor here in Florida's desk when he's doing an interview. Like you see things, right? And I feel like we're making a brand that is cool, fun and memorable. And that's what I think, creating content that does more of that. Like today, like last night, Pete Alonso hit his 253rd home run. Now he's all time home run leader for New York Mets. Justin Verlander like a week ago through 3,500 strikeouts, only 10th guy to ever do it. So today I posted me with Justin Verlander and Pete Alonso with our mug and a video testimonial of him saying how great we are, right? I did that because I didn't. There was no pitch, but it's memorable. So somebody saw that because they're searching Pete Alonso or Verlander. What it does is you're everywhere. You're everywhere. You're all the things you're never you. We're becoming somebody that other people. We're a brand that other people are proud to be associated with and to.
- [16:14]
B
Keep around in their lives to get two or three impressions, one before they go to bed and two in the morning kind of thing. Right. And then you just become a fixture in their scroll kind of thing, right?
- [16:24]
A
Yeah. And it'd be, it'd be cool. Like, there's certain industries that. It's just not possible and I don't want to be in those industries. Insurance, it's like, oh, how exciting. Real, you know, real estate, it's not really that sexy. Plumbing. And these are all great industries, right. Don't get me wrong. Very lucrative. But from social media, I don't think so, man. Like, like, what do you do? What do you even talk about? So for me, I want to be a part of these brands and these, these verticals in these industries that are cool, fun, exciting.
- [16:57]
B
Sports are going to be a massive growth industry. I heard a really great take on how as automation filters into all these different aspects of our life, like, we're never going to want to watch a robot Tiger Woods. We're going to watch, we're going to want to watch the pinnacle of what we can do as humanity in these sports. And that's probably going to get bigger and bigger and bigger in people's minds because it's so authentic.
- [17:17]
A
Authenticity, man, that's a magic word. I don't think enough people use it, understand it, integrate it in everything they're doing. Authenticity and transparency are massive. In my personal opinion. All my companies, all my ventures, what you see is what you get. Because I would rather somebody not like me right now up front than to play around and then be let down by the brand. You know, transparency and authenticity. So I have a saying, unapologetically authentic. Like, that's me and I sleep very well.
- [17:52]
B
How does that work? So you've, you've had a lot of growth through strategic partnerships, through, sounds like semi hostile takeovers, through other. Talk a little bit about your partnership philosophy and how it's helped you grow your businesses.
- [18:04]
A
My partnership philosophy, I've been, I've had some good partners and I've had some bad partners because I've had several companies. I think Dugout's number nine, right. Like, like a real company. Randall was a tremendous partner and I know he knows that and I hope he always remembers that. He was tremendous. Colby was another tremendous partner of mine. There's a few others that weren't that were. I think with partnerships it's really important to understand the other person's strengths and more importantly their weaknesses to me, because if two people are in the same lane, one's not needed. Is a very good like, rule of thumb when I'm looking into partnerships like Randall and I fit really well together when, you know, because I bought, I bought him out about a year and a half ago. So this, the company's mine now. But, but when we did work together, I'm very forward facing, I'm very promotional sales personable. Put me on a stage, put me in a room, put me with celebrities, no problem. I got it right. Randall is introverted, so he wanted to be off in the cut. It really wore him out being out in public and things like that. He just wanted to be at the house and like, you know, to each his own. Right. That just, that that is sounds like hell to me. But that was a dream come true to him. So it's like, okay, well, that. What are our weaknesses? Right? That, and that was a good fit and, and understanding that we could. Had a very similar. And another one is have similar mentalities for like grit, grind, hustle, you know, pick your, you know, you know, pick your term. But we both looked at each other and said, we're going to, I'm going to run hard. You better run hard. Don't let me down. I'm running harder than you, you're running harder than me. Like we would just go. And then we were in two different lanes and we did make mistakes. Sometimes we cross lanes, went crazy. That happens, right? It's, it's. And it's going to happen. And a lot of the people are listening to this. Get the hell back out of that lane. Right? You have to understand what you're good at and more importantly, what you're not good at and then just kind of get out of the way and find the people that are good at it, in my opinion.
- [20:10]
B
And then when it comes to dealmaking, you said earlier, do you want to be rich or do you want to be right? Which I think is an important philosophy when it comes to making deals. Give me, can you give me an example of a deal that you've made that sort of had that mentality you had to overcome maybe some disagreement in order to make money together?
- [20:27]
A
I think the deal making happens on the front, the negotiation and your ability to communicate with People happens in the midst of it, right? So deal making on the front is understanding the other person's core metric. Like you know, to create, I always love saying to create a win win situation, you don't have to use the same currency. So if, if time with my two little girls and my wife and time to travel and you know, enough time and availability to travel three or four times a year, you know, if that's what's really important to me, then I need to find somebody who, they understand that that's really important to me. And then they have similar things, but different that are important to them. And then like you kind of find that, that lock, you know, I think conversations and reflection on the front side are very important because then you under it, it's all of it like what do I stand for? What do I not stand for? Because these blueprints, if these blueprints are not similar, it's going to result almost a hundred percent of the time. It's going to result in friction and then friction becomes animosity, animosity becomes, it just, just goes right downhill. So what do I stand for? What do I not stand for? What do I believe in? What do I not believe in? What am I good at? What am I not good at? Just really deep reflection, you know, what is a win? You know, if you ask the me from 15 years ago, I needed to be making $10 million a year, whatever asinine number you could come up with. But reality is, you know, a buddy of mine, Jason said it, he said, you know, it's not what it makes you, it's what it costs you. And if you really think about that, like to me, well, what's most important to me, it's not money, you know, money. I'm not an idiot, right? Like need money to do all the things but, but to me it's like how, how do I do all the things that are really important to me, truly important to me and how much do I need to make to do that? And what am I willing to give up to get to that point? It. So I think not enough people really go down those paths enough at the beginning. And it can, it can cause problems if you're, if you're on a different page than somebody 100%.
- [22:47]
B
In the pre interview you, you mentioned something about your approach to deals being shut up and listen or that's what AI is telling me. I actually don't remember you saying that. Do you remember, do you remember saying that? And what is, what does that refer to?
- [22:59]
A
I'VE said that to people's faces before, but how did it play out?
- [23:04]
B
Because it's an aggressive position to come from. But if you. But again, it relates to the do you want to be right or do you want to be rich? Kind of Thing.
- [23:10]
A
What I will say is, too many times, people won't shut up and listen, because if you do that, you're gonna learn a lot about what the other person. What lights them up, what they want, what scares them, and asking better questions. Back to reflection. You gotta ask better questions on the front side. How long do you want to do this? Oh, I'll do this forever. Well, I kind of want to be done in, like, four years. So let's make a plan for that, right? And it's just all the questions on the front side. And now with AI, you can probably get a lot of this stuff, you know, almost have a script, you know, until. Until it becomes, like, second nature. But all the time, people are just talking, you know, when they're at a networking event. Like, my favorite thing to do is networking. I love it because I. God, I love people, and my relationship capital is really high, you know, because of those who I know, and more importantly, who knows? It's not who you know, it's who knows you. And I find that you can really get some genuine, good relationships if you shut up and just listen to the other person. Because a lot of times they'll ask a question and. And then the whole time the other person's talking, they're just waiting for their chance to talk and, like, piecing together something in their head, you know, it's. It's a. It's. It's wild. It really is. But I think the more you pay attention and listen, you'll. You'll learn a lot. And then it's just. I don't want to call it ammunition, but it kind of is. It's all the things you need to. To craft the perfect deal, to craft the perfect conversation, you know, can you.
- [25:04]
B
Talk about a deal that you've made that was very successful, maybe for both parties?
- [25:09]
A
Well, I mean, Dugout, without a doubt would be probably the apex of that. You know, Randall came up with a great idea. He proved the concept on a very, very, very small scale. Brought it to me, and I said, look, man, this thing's pretty cool. I didn't like it at first, you know, honestly. But he's like, carry it around. You'll see what I'm talking about. And he was really confident. And I was like, I appreciate this dude's. Confidence. And I did. I walked around people like it. I said, okay. I crafted a deal where I got 8% equity for every hundred thousand dollars that I generated in the deal because he wanted an investment. I was like, dude, I just got done being sick. I got no investable cash right now. But what I do have is a skill set, and I can take this thing for a ride. So if you're serious about it, quit your job, call me tomorrow. We're going to take this thing for a ride. And he did. And I was like, this dude's serious. And I put together a deal because I needed to understand. A perfect example. I needed to understand what mattered to him. He didn't want somebody running away with his baby. Understood, okay. He didn't want somebody sliding in on what he believed at the time to be a lot of money coming in every month, no problem. And he needed to grow the company, but he didn't have the money to do it. And we needed to get licensing, but he didn't know who to call, right? So I understood where this thing needed to go, and I knew. And I took like. I was listening. Go figure. And I was checking these boxes in my head. It's like, okay, well, I could call so and so I could call, you know, so and so I could do this. We could launch that. And I did the math. I was like, okay, so you've done like 70,000 in sales over seven months. Let's say that's 10 grand a month. I'm going to take a 10% commission on every dollar over 10 grand. So he's like, okay, well, I can't lose there. You guys not taking any of what I'm already doing. Okay, great. And, you know, let's just round it up to 100. Say it was 100. I said, so we 5x this company in six months or less, you know, every. Every $100,000 in sales, I get 8% until I cap at 40. And he's like, well, I can't lose there either. So over the course of like, five or six months, I earned out 40% equity in the company while getting 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, $10,000 commission checks.
- [27:20]
B
Only growing his end, too.
- [27:23]
A
So. So what he owned got significantly more momentum. And in the scheme of things, that momentum and that spike in the early days might have been what just catapulted us past our competition, if you will. And just. And that was. That was the beginning of the end. And so you never know. I mean, the ripples of what we did. But I know where we are now, and the boat's still floating. But I think that deal in particular, I got 40% equity of something. That could be something. He retained 60. We 5x the company. We did. We shoot. We shoestringed it. Imagine somebody. You're an introvert, right? I learned that about him. You're an introvert that doesn't want to go out and do sales and talk to people. People. I'm like, well, that's what I do absolutely best. So now there's two of us. You can stay in your core like. Like your superpower, and I can stay in my superpower and run parallel. All the things kind of clicked, and we put together a deal that kind of nobody could lose. Right? Which is. Which is if you can create a deal like that, it's a good thing.
- [28:31]
B
One last topic I want to hit on, which is we're in the early stages of the stock, the pond. Well, we're sorry, in the later stages of the stock, the pond time heading towards Q4. And I'm wondering, how seasonal is your business and what do you do to sort of even out seasonality or to account for seasonality in dugout?
- [28:49]
A
Well, what we do. And again, I don't know, because a lot of DTC people, I mean, now with the tariffs and everything hitting like, we'll see how that goes. You know, all the epacket and drop ship and the pod and now Alpha's gone up with their shirts and apparel, like, it's just chaos, man. We're in a pretty good place because we control a lot more of the. The supply chain, the manufacturing, the decorating, fulfillment, customer service. We do it all right? So we're not as impacted by that. But. But some people's businesses are different. What we do, because we have a component of dugout that is brick and mortar, you know, the Dick's Sporting Goods, the rally house, Hallmark. Groups like that that sell our product, they spike in the same months that we spike, obviously. Mother's Day, Father's day, opening day, Q2, and then in Q4, you got with us. It's a. Yeah, I kind of have a little extra spike because I have playoffs. So I have in October, I got playoffs and World Series, then traditionally, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, holiday buying. We did what we could do to maximize those. Those chunks. Like, because we're doing things internally, we can sell all the way up to like, December 18th, 19th, and still get it there for Christmas. So, you know, when you're doing 100, 150,000, $200,000 a day. Going an extra five days matters, right? And I think this year of all years, this year is going to. We're going to see the biggest impact of that. When people are going everywhere wanting to get something last minute because they procrastinate, because that's just what people do. They're like, nobody can get anything to them. They're like, what can I get now that I know is going to get here? And we'll be over here waving our hand. We're in stock, don't worry. So first we identified 2 and 4. Then we went back to Q1 and 3, which are historically slower except when you're doing trade show or fair or these other B2B sites. So we're doing sales there and spiking sales there. 50, $60,000, you know, every couple weeks for retailers because they're loading up for Q2 and Q4. So we kind of leveled it by segmenting the business into B2B, B2C. And that's how we filled Q1 and Q3. Also understanding different use cases for what we're doing. Groomsmen gifts, you know, wedding season is not Q2 and Q4 typically. So you're gonna get, you're gonna get a little bit more activity with groomsmen and wedding. Fifth anniversary is wood. The other one that we're really getting some traction is corporate gifting. So dugout, you know, corporate gifting. You know, we make mugs for Bud, Miller, Coors, Hard Rock, Celsius, Fox T Mobile, Capital One. Like, we're making some cool products. And these things are evergreen. They're always, they're always popping. So when we're not hitting hard in Q2 and Q4, our sales efforts and internal inbound as well as outbound with AI are targeting corporate gifting, wedding, groomsmen, and retail.
- [32:10]
B
What are some ways you're using AI in the business right now that are sort of impressing you?
- [32:15]
A
Customer service is an interesting one. There's no feelings involved. Right. And I think that's important because people can have a bad day and then they take it out on a customer. Customer gets pissed, tells 10 more people. Right? And there's some real negative impact to that. And I mean, I think to date we have over 60,000 reviews online, which is wild, right? Like that there's aren't, there aren't too many brands that can say that. And we want to protect that, that image. We want to protect that image. So we're leaning into AI because it's, it's infinitely scalable through Holiday and things like that when, when all the traffic picks up. The other is content creation and a B testing with ads. You know, I, I saw, you know, Meta was talking about, you know, in their vision of the future, it's going to be you just put up your budget and then their AI is going to write the stuff and test the stuff and this and that and scale and like, and have it all automated, which is kind of wild, but I think that's where it's going to be. I use it for contracts.
- [33:18]
B
Nice. Oh yeah, me too.
- [33:20]
A
Yeah, like, I'm, like I'm a. Hey, I say I get an affiliate. So, hey, I need a two page affiliate contract between this and this. Dish it. And I got in like 20 seconds, it's just kicked out and it's perfect every time. It's perfect. We use it for that image. Image creation. We definitely do it for image creation. Yeah, I mean, it's just like, it's just like, it's like Google on crack, man. You know, ask it anything, it's, it's.
- [33:46]
B
Going to run and it frees you up for more things that it can't do. Right. Whether it's deal making or, you know.
- [33:52]
A
Networking, hanging with the kids, going swimming in the pool.
- [33:55]
B
That's one of the reasons that we're building this company agency, which is sort of, you know, newsletters. We think people are always going to be listening to podcasts to some degree. There's always going to be like email newsletters aren't going anywhere anytime soon except for maybe when Google summarizes them fully. But that human connection piece is a growth industry for sure.
- [34:12]
A
Things come and go. Trends come and go. AI is not a trend. I'm not saying that, but I'm saying the way we communicate with people like, and again, back to the very first thing I said was we hopped on here. You have to be fluid, you know, I mean, look, look what happens when you're not fluid. Ask Blockbuster or Circuit City or Kmart, you know, Kodak. Kodak. Yeah. Ask them how it's going when you're not fluid.
- [34:35]
B
Fluid, but unrelenting also. I guess that's what fluid is. That's why, that's why the water wears away the rocks.
- [34:41]
A
Yeah, it's just relentless.
- [34:43]
B
Yeah. Beautiful. Chris, I want to thank you for coming on the D.C. podcast. People want to follow your journey. Where do you recommend they go?
- [34:51]
A
Probably LinkedIn. I do most of my business there. All my, all my other social is pretty much private. I don't, I don't, I don't do it because I don't. You know, I will say this life is so short. Stop wasting it doing stuff that truly doesn't matter. If anybody heard anything. Hear that? Because that's why I'm not that easy to find. Because I'm busy being alive elsewhere, outside with the kids, swimming in the pool, traveling, my wife, visiting my parents, you know, and that's not the answer you normally get there, I bet. But if y' all gonna. If you need something, you can find me on LinkedIn. I still have my consulting company. I do a lot of sales, branding, marketing, little 90 day things here and there. That's about it. But that's why I keep that open, you know, because people need to have access to me. But other than that, I mean, dugout mugs, dugoutmugs.com is, is, you know, our, our main company. And then I have a golf company as well. Big Golf. Bigg Big Golf, where we do golf ball bottle openers and cigar holders and I print custom logos on golf balls and stuff like that. So you'll find me in my happy place. Beer, baseball, golf, cigars.
- [36:06]
B
Lovely. Nice. Well, I'm, I am a huge Blue Jays fan, so. I am. What's your tea? Are you. Are you a Miami fan?
- [36:14]
A
I'm whoever's buying my mugs fan. No, in all seriousness, I'm closer to Tampa, so I'm a Rays fan. Oh, good.
- [36:23]
B
Well, then you're head to head with the Jays here.
- [36:24]
A
Yeah, no, nobody said to have. The Jays are killing it. Yeah, but like, for me, if you look behind me, I don't know if you can see those, but I'm a people fan. I love the players. I, I love.
- [36:36]
B
Those are all signatures, right?
- [36:37]
A
Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, that's. Let's see, that's Nolan Ryan and Frank Thomas and I'm reading backwards. Pedro Martinez and Griffey Miggy. Big Poppy, like, you name it, man. Like Vladdy Juniors over there. That right there is Roberto Alomar. He's. He's a J. Verlander's right there. Lou Pinella. I mean, yeah, you name it, man. It's crazy. It really is crazy. But, but like, that's what I'm doing. I'm out living life, man. Just. That's, that's, that's a something. It took me a little while to figure out. Thank God I didn't die when I got sick, right? Or I'd have missed out on all the right lessons.
- [37:14]
B
It's super important because it's so easy to live via your screen.
- [37:19]
A
Now.
- [37:19]
B
It's so easy to get that constant. You know what I mean? To feel like you're living life in a way and you're getting. Because you're getting that dopamine. But I think it's a great constant reminder to be aggressively living life, getting what you want, thinking about what you want, executing. Having agency, having high agency, I think is such an important thing.
- [37:37]
A
Absolutely. I mean, everybody's like, well, I can't afford it. That may be true, but you better get to that point quick because you can't not afford it either. You can't afford to not have it, because time, Time is without a doubt the most rare asset out there. You don't know how much of it you have. You don't know when it's over. Right. Like any chance. That's the difference between rich people and poor people. Rich people buy time, poor people buy things, you know, and when you realize that asset is the time, you're going to quickly start building a business and building a lifestyle by design that. That aggressively protects your time. And I think that is a misstep by most people. I know I did it and I got lucky enough to get that time back, at least a big chunk of it. So, yeah, I mean, I always wrap up interviews and talks like that because I don't want anybody to miss that. Miss that part.
- [38:51]
B
Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. If you're not a subscriber to our newsletter, you can do that right now at directtoconsumeralloneword. Co. I'm Eric Dick and this has been the D to C podcast. We'll see you next time.