← Right About Now - Legendary Business Advice
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- [00:00]
Ryan Reynolds
Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile with a message for everyone paying big wireless way too much. Please, for the love of everything good in this world, stop with Mint. You can get premium wireless for just $15 a month. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying, no judgments. But that's weird. Okay, one judgment anyway. Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment.
- [00:22]
Ryan Alford
Of $45 for 3 month plan equivalent to $15 per month required intro rate first 3 months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See full terms@mintmobile.com hey, guys, Ryan Alford.
- [00:31]
Sean Whalen
Here, host of right About Now. On today's episode, we bring together really a masterclass in entrepreneurship. We've had over 500 episodes at this stage and we really have started to aggregate some of the best business knowledge in the industry. And you know, you can read books, you can listen to shows, but we want to aggregate what we think is some of the best advice. Whether you're an entrepreneur that's just started out or you're in the business for 10 plus years, these are tactics, techniques, actionable advice from some of the best we've got. Five of my favorites here. Jasmine Star, Jeff Duden from Home Front Brands, Sean Whalen from Lion's Not Sheep, Josh Snow from Snow Teeth Whitening, and Devin Klein from Burn Boot Camp. These are some of my favorite entrepreneurs giving the best advice. That's what we do here. We take the BS out of business in this masterclass series on entrepreneurship on right about now.
- [01:35]
Ryan Alford
This is Right about now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network production. We are the number one business show on the planet with over 1 million downloads a month. Taking the BS out of business for over 6 years in over 400 episodes. You ready to start snapping next and cashing checks?
- [01:55]
Ryan Reynolds
Well, it starts right about now.
- [01:58]
Sean Whalen
What's up, guys? Welcome to Right about now. Hey, we're always getting right and it's always about now. What makes you keep pushing forward? What got you? Something impacted you? Something made you that was it nature? Nurture? What was it?
- [02:13]
Ryan Alford
Perhaps mix of both. My father is from Mexico. My mom is from Puerto Rico. My dad came over, was like 13, 14 and then enlisted in the United States Marine Corps and earned his citizenship. So I think that growing up with that perspective, as a first generation Latina, you see your dad being given the golden ticket. And I think that, you know, I won the genetic lottery by being born in this country. But having a father who is drilled into us like, we are so incredibly fortunate to live in a country where you don't have barriers to do the thing that you want. It is on the back end of people who, having the hotspot and the audacity to do something that they are unqualified to do. And, and so having that growing up, but then also realizing you're owed nothing, getting into the country, congrats. Being born into this country, congrats. You're old Jack squat. Everything that you have is on the back of your willingness to do the damn work. And so what has made me gritty? Knowing I'm. I'm owed nothing. I don't. Just because I start a business doesn't mean my business should be successful. Just because I start a business and it's successful doesn't mean I'm going to be the top 1% if I go in. And my, my perspective, just like Simon Sinek says, that this is an infinite game. There's no such thing as winning in business. You can win your own game. But many of us don't even define what the game we're playing is. And so all of a sudden, we play a game in our own mind where we move the goalpost. And so it's just like all this year, you know, it's like, I'm going to do my 10 million, and the minute we get to 9.5, it's like, no, no, no, I see what I need. What I really meant was 11.
- [03:45]
Devin Klein
And.
- [03:45]
Ryan Alford
And then we beat ourselves up into the year because we didn't do the thing that we wanted to do. What game are you actually playing? Because the minute that we define our rubric of success, because sometimes money isn't always the goal. Sometimes the goal is, do I have more time to do the things I want to do with the people I want to do it with. It's like, what is the point of having $11 million a year if on the back of it, you missed the people and the things that were the most important to you. You didn't win, you lost. You just didn't know what game you were playing. So for us to actually have a conversation of, like, what makes you gritty? Well, first and foremost, let's talk about what we're owed. Nothing. Let's talk about how we win. Setting some goals and then working like hell to get them, but not at the cost of compromising the thing that's the most important to you. So what makes me gritty? The fact that I have simply chosen, this is the game I want to play. And every time I get punched in the gut because we Always do. That's the sport. We're literally playing emotional rugby all day, every day. We play rugby in our sleep. I don't know about you. I play rugby in my sleep. I wake up and I'm like, oh, my God. Oh, my God. This is the game we're voluntarily playing. We signed up for it. We can't complain about the thing that we want to do to get us to where we want to go. So I just think, what a privilege. What a privilege that I get to wake up, go on a walk in Newport beach, have breakfast with my daughter, have a conversation with somebody I find intellectually stimulating, where we get to help and empower other people. And then I get to go in and do coaching on the inside of social curator, and then I get to create content. I get to do podcasts. What an honor. And what a luxury. So if I want both sides of it, the lifestyle, the luxury, I better be able to wake up after my teeth have been knocked out and say, okay, this is the game I'm playing. I'm chosen.
- [05:29]
Devin Klein
This.
- [05:29]
Ryan Alford
What an honor, and what a privilege. I better show up that way.
- [05:32]
Sean Whalen
Man, I love it. I like you. Yeah. Why. Why do some people always think they're owed something? Why are we that way? And I'm not saying me, somebody owes me, but, like, what. What makes. Is it just Americans being spoiled? And I'm not saying everybody's that way, but we know if we're being real. A lot of people feel that way, which is why you stand out, like others should stand out, because you don't. You don't. You work for it. You just keep going, no matter what it looks like. But I don't understand what I mean. But what bits people. I don't know what some. A lot of people that way, though, they just think they're owed it.
- [06:11]
Ryan Alford
And I want to be very clear. I don't want to pretend like I haven't struggled with that or I'm above that. There are times, for instance, I look at business a lot. Very similar to parallel lines of working out and going to the gym. There are just some human composition that no matter what I do, I could work equally as hard as somebody else. I might not have the body type, the metabolism. I might not have the genes to ever look or be like somebody else. Right. But we're doing the same work. And so it's natural, it is human condition to say, I'm doing that level of work. Why am I not getting the same results? But the minute you dwell in the land of Unknowns. Like you ask a dead end question, right? Like, why is my business not working? That, that's not really a question that we're really going to quantify right now. But if you ask yourself, how might I get 1% better in this? Now we have a clear path to getting a result. Regardless if it's the result that you want, at least you can take the next step. And so I don't know if it's as much as an entitlement, as in, like, I deserve to be successful as much as I see a lot more in the entrepreneurial realm is I'm doing the work, but I'm not getting the results. But the problem with that, and it is a problem, the pandemic of emotions that we go through is we don't know what's going on behind the scenes. We have no idea. So when we say I'm doing the same work as that person, you know jack squat about that other person's business. Like, let's just take down all the curtains that people use to hide behind. Because I see a lot of people being like, oh, I just did a million dollar launch and, and that's amazing. I clap it up. But what a lot of people don't know is you ran $750,000 in ads to get that number. So it's like, you know, oh, I did 10 million in business. Great. And a lot of your business, the majority of it is done on affiliates and JVs. So your revenue is not what you're posing as. You know, we don't know. We have no idea if somebody's business was inherited. We have no idea how much debt somebody has. We have no idea. The byline of the revenue on their profit and loss statement is taking up 82% of what they're bringing in. What we know nothing about other people's businesses. So again, instead of saying, why don't I have. If I'm doing the same, I want you to, I want you to come back and say, I don't know how they got there. I applaud the work they've done because they're proving that it is possible to get there. But I'm going to continue to run my own race because even if at the end of the day my business is smaller than somebody else's, but my profitability is higher and my working cash, my operating revenue is right where I need it to be. I've won. But the only reason why I could say I've won is because I've already defined it as my personal Win. So I get to play my own damn game. I get to find some deep satisfaction, what is I'm doing, but then also put some benchmarks on myself and the team being how are we going to get to the next level? That's the game for us. We clearly define it. We know we're owed nothing. We don't compare ourselves to somebody else because we don't know what's going on behind the scenes. And we show up and we do the damn work.
- [09:02]
Sean Whalen
I think the biggest takeaway right there is you got to play your own game. Like, absolutely. It's like, I like to listen to people talking. Like, clients come to me. They. I'm like a counselor, even though I'm a marketer. You know, I listen to them talk and then that's like, I boil it down for them. Like, okay, here's the. Let's just get the brass tacks. You got to play your own damn game. And you know, it's hard because social. The irony of this. The irony of what I'm going to say is social media amplifies everything that puts everyone else's game full force in your face, whether it's fake or real or, you know, who knows? Like you said, you don't know all the details behind. There's a lot of show business going on. But the irony of it is the social media amplifies it when you really need to tune it out, when it comes down to what you want to do. And I love what you're saying. I have people all the time. Social media is not working. You know, like, I'm not. It's not doing this. And then I go look at it, and I'm like, you've posted four times in four months. What do you mean it's not working? It's like, you know, how many times. I'm sure you see this. You have people come to you. Like, they go, this or that or tactic or these things aren't working. And you just. You don't even have to get under the hood. You, like, you. You like, lifted up one inch and there's like oil spilled everywhere. Like, you know, and it's like, come on, man. You know, are you serious? It's like, but you have to play your own game. But you got to make it. You got to make it tangible. You have to set. Oh, it's not working. Okay, well, what's not working? You know, like, you gotta have seven things that ladder up to one thing, you know, like. But. And you gotta measure the seven things. But I don't know what. It still comes back to the, the reflection of what you have to play your own game and learn and absorb from others. But you just can't get into the comparison game at all times. It's just, it just is a road to nowhere.
- [11:01]
Ryan Alford
You know, I often discuss that the, the thing, the sneaky thing that stops most entrepreneurs from getting their business in front of others is comparison. And once we start understanding comparison, so oftentimes whenever I give a presentation or whenever I do a coaching session or a consulting session, I am literally starting there. Because if I tell you this is on the horizon, when it slaps you across the face, it's not so much a shock. So let me, anybody who's listening right now, let me predict your future. The thing that will stop you from doing the thing that you know you have been called to do is not lack of money, resources or education. It is simply the fact of comparison. But let's break down comparison because the way I see it is it takes on three manifestations. It takes on a mental manifestation. I am not, I am not that person. I am not Ryan. Therefore I can't get that success. I am too old, too young, too fat, too skinny, too black, too white, too old, too young, will say I'm too this, therefore I can't do that. So that's an easy way out. The second one is emotional and this one's very, very hard to identify because most of the time people don't wake up and say I'm not worthy. They don't say I'm not worthy, but it takes on an uglier form. It will say, I'm just not sure I'm capable of that big dream. I don't think that that's really going to happen. So we low key keep a subversive thought in our mind that's actually stopping us from doing that thing. And then the third one is going to be visual, right? I'm not on the Amalfi coast this summer. I don't have a Ferrari. I'm not at that resort. I don't have that perfect house with those perfect kids in that perfect kitchen to do the perfect reel that I need. And so we have these visual, intellectual, emotional things that stop us. But if we were to turn it on its side and simply say, you might be too old and you might be too white and you might be, but there is somebody out there who is just as white and just as old who needs to hear it your way. And in fact, if, even if, even if you were to Say that person does it their own way. Guess what? You might be saying the same message, but you're a different messenger. Beyond that, even if you are sharing the same message and you have a twin brother or a triplet, guess what the mechanism. You might be a great podcast host, writer, speaker. You might be great on social. We all do things different ways, and we need to do it in our own way. So the person who needs what we do the way we do it can get it. And for the other thing is, I think that this dream might be too big, and I am not sure. Listen, you wouldn't have got the dream if it wasn't in you to succeed. You didn't wake up this morning, be like, you want to know what? I'm the next NBA star. No, you're not. Not at the 510 and you're 37. Chances are it's not there, right? So we don't get dreams. We have desires. Like, I love, would love to be an NBA player, but we don't get the dream. You got the dream because something in you deeply believes that you could do it. But if you talk yourself out of it, the only person who's stopping your success is you. And then we go back to the physical things. Well, I don't have that. Guess what? The vast majority of people don't. And just because you're at that resort or you're on that vacation or you drive that car doesn't mean that everybody wants to be coached by a service or by a product from that type of person. So we have to say that your Honda Accord, living in the Midwest with three kids who are just doing the dang thing in your own way, with your $100,000 job and your side hustle of Etsy, somebody's like, that's what I want. So far be it from you to say that the way that you see the desires of the world is how other people do it. And so we can come here and talk all about comparison. So when you're ready to get your business in front of other people, I want you to say, am I in? Am I emotionally comparing? Am I physically comparing? What kind of comparison is it? Stop it in its tracks and tell yourself a different story. You get to choose your story. If you would like to fight for your limitations, go right ahead. But if you would like to fight for empowering statements of why somebody needs what it is you sell, I'll clap you right up.
- [14:54]
Josh Snow
When I talk to entrepreneurs and business owners and people, I'm like, dude, you're a better father when you feel better. You're a better mother when you feel better. You're a better everything when you feel better. Lying doesn't feel good. Lying is scary. It's do they know? Do they know? Do they know where you just tell the truth and you got nothing to worry about. So it's like if this is the recipe for me connecting with people and me feeling better, then I'm just going to keep doing it. And at the time, you know, five years ago, and not that I was the only guy sharing on social media, but very few people are talking about real raw shit. You know, it's just airy fairy political things, reshares of this. And so I just went on a mission like I'm going to share me. And I since then I literally have almost a billion views in my videos, millions of followers, literally hundreds of millions of engagements on my post from Instagram to Facebook. I mean some of my videos have reached 150, 160, 170 million views of one video, which is just mind bending to me, right? But that's, that's what I found is my own little kind of recipe. And I felt better. The marketplace place resonated with it and I just kept fucking running it.
- [16:00]
Sean Whalen
I love it. I want to get into some nuts and bolts on the back half year on the E. Commerce but I do have one follow up because I feel like no matter how lost you may have felt, you know, kind of being what you categorized as a man that everybody wanted you to be and not the real maybe you. Something has shaped Sean Whalen at some point in life. Well, well before you got lost or you got found or anything like that, I, I feel like there has to be these shit, these opinions and these beliefs. They kind of formed all of this. Something shaped that either early whenever I would think.
- [16:42]
Josh Snow
I don't know, nobody's ever asked you that. Thinking back on life, like my parents split up when I was an early teenager. I was actually a really quiet kid. I was really reserved. I was a chubby little kid. I was pretty good baseball player, but I wasn't popular, I wasn't the class valedictorian. I was really, really quiet, really reserved. And I think for me when looking back at it, when I went on a Mormon mission, I went on a two year Mormon mission. That was where I really started to kind of find my voice. I mean, you're out basically selling God. We were going door to door pitching God to people. And it was something I was really passionate about. Was something that I didn't grow up in the Mormon church. I grew up Catholic. And so it was kind of a recent convert to the church. And I just started realizing that people love to connect, people love to talk, and I was really good at it. I was good at just talking to people. And I know it sounds really weird, but, like, there really is an art form to communication. There's an art form being able to not just tile. So, hey, how's your water? Like, why do you like that water? Okay, great. You know, whatever. Like really listening to people and hearing them and knowing what's driving them and something that I've always been fascinated about and with is. Is what's behind it. You know, this is why headlines. And I'm not like bouncing around like every other freaking bozo or like, oh, my God, oh my God. I'm like, you know, let's talk about for a second. I like to critically think. And for me, being able to be in a place where I can ask deeper questions, it's fun for me.
- [18:13]
Sean Whalen
Yeah.
- [18:13]
Josh Snow
And I found, you know, on my mission is always talking about God. I mean, God's such a crazy topic for so many people because you have people that are way over here and then people away over here. People have no clue. And so it. It kind of forced me to really, number one, find my foundation, like what I really believed and how I really felt about life and who I was and purpose and the entire thing. But I found out, like, people just love to connect. And so it's just become almost a. A skill set, an art form that I've just gotten better and better and better at is communicating with human beings. But, you know, it definitely doesn't come from my youth. I mean, I was a quiet freaking kid, man.
- [18:51]
Sean Whalen
Well, it's just, I've shared some of your stuff with people and they go, oh, man, he's pretty hardcore on this, that and the other. And you know, they care. They. He's a great community. I. I said it as a. I thought you're a great communicator, period. I mean, that's talking.
- [19:05]
Josh Snow
I mean, when you. When you really give a. About people, like, when you really care, like, I think it's. It's a something that, I mean, we're not. We're just so busy trying to get. Believe me, hear me, this is me. And it's like, I really. It sounds funny, but if it can't be explained on a whiteboard or like with crayons, it's too complicated. We should not have a Tax policy in America that can't be explained on a whiteboard, right? We should not have foreign policies and that. Take 30,000 page freaking manuals to fucking explain. Right? No one's interested in that, really. And so we tie this into the marketing and the business and the whole thing. Like, copy is really important. You know what I mean? Like, what are you telling me? Everybody knows they're being sold something, so we've already got that out of the way. But what are you trying to tell me? What are you trying to communicate with me? Yay. Yay. Nay, nay. Like, if the answer is a simple no, then just say no, right? But I love being able to look at complex things and I break it down in my brain to just like coloring book kind of conversations. Like, yeah, this is what this really is. And it's just more, to me, it's more fun that way. I have more connection to stuff that way. You know what I mean?
- [20:15]
Sean Whalen
Well, absolutely. And so let's talk about lions, not sheep dot com. I mean, you know, we work, you know, we're at digital agency here and we work a lot of brands and, you know, they come to us and they have great products, but they have no story, right? And yeah, I will take a company that has a purpose and a story all day because that's, it's organic. You know, again, it just becomes about blocking and tackling. It's real hard to figure out the Hail Mary, you know, the message, you know, the blocking and tackling you can do. But let's get to some of that blocking and tackling. What have been some of those mechanics of, you know, because I've heard you talk about it, you're like, you know, you started the company, you were selling T shirts, you had a message, you had a plan, but something poured gas on the fire. You, you know, for the, for, for, for the tactics and the, in the, and some of the ways with which you've seen growth. Can you talk about some of that?
- [21:07]
Josh Snow
Yeah, for sure. I, I, first of all, you know, there's two philosophies, in my opinion, like you, anybody who's a really, really, really good ad guy or copy guy or whatever, I mean, you can take any product and figure out a way to sell it, right? And there's a lot of people that do that. They take, you know, products from China. They're really good. They figured out the game, the algorithm, so they can do that. And then there's people that have passion behind something. They live it, they breathe it, they sleep in it. It's big to them because their kid has cancer. And they want this product out there, and they want this thing or that thing, and there's a story and a connection behind it, and either one of those is phenomenal. Right. But I think the people that struggle the most are the ones that they feel like they have that passion, and they feel like everybody's supposed to have that passion. I do. This shirt is so badass. And the saying. Everybody's going to buy the saying and this entire thing. But, like, I found for me that I embodied lions, not sheep. It literally was for me, you know what I mean? Like, when I wrote my book, which is sold over half a million copies completely organically, I mean, I didn't even put page numbers in there. We forgot it. It was so basic. And just put out there the marketplace. I wrote a book that I wanted to read, like, that I would want to read. And I think a lot of people need to realize, like, what do you want to wear? Right? It's easy to come up with slick marketing and slick products and whatever, Whatever. But if there's no marketplace for it, and it doesn't fucking matter how great your landing page is, how this. That, the other. So when you're trying to tie in that story, you know, like, why is this relevant to you? Like, why do you believe in this? And I've literally, for the last couple years, have been talking about lies on sheep. It's become me. And people have watched my journey as a father, as a business owner, as a man, as a divorced guy, as a dating guy. Like, all of these things have been really transparent. And I think people vibe with that. They resonate with it, right? And so for me, lion's not a sheep.
- [22:59]
Ryan Reynolds
It.
- [22:59]
Josh Snow
Everybody's been telling me, dude, you're in the perfect storm now with the whole political climate, because it's like we're all. You're one or the other, right? You're picking up hydra the light, or you're the sheep, which is great, you.
- [23:09]
Sean Whalen
Know, but, yeah, there's 175 million people on your side. We're right down the million.
- [23:14]
Josh Snow
Here's what's cool, is everybody now wants to jump on that, right? And they ought to plug into that emotion. They want to plug into the.
- [23:20]
Sean Whalen
The.
- [23:20]
Josh Snow
The political climate. Whatever, whatever. And. And you really don't have a track record. You don't have a tribe. You don't have any of that. I didn't set out to do that. And I think that's what really makes lions, not sheep, unique. And I think a lot of people need to wrap their head around this, and it's really difficult to do is having the consistency of delivering content and messaging for the long game. Because now we're in the perfect fucking storm. Now we're crushing. Because so much content has been put out there over the last couple years, and it wasn't with the objective of selling T shirts or selling hats or selling any of that shit. My mom, literally, she retired last year and she was bored of shit. I said, mom, come help me make T shirts. And so we had one heat transfer, she was in the office, and we'd sell 20 shirts a month, just people stumbling on the website. And she'd run down, she'd get the shirts and she'd make them, and she'd write a little note, package them all out. And that was really what the apparel brand was until the beginning of this year. But being able to, like, sit in a story and deliver that to people that they believe without trying to sell them anything is massive.
- [24:24]
Sean Whalen
And.
- [24:24]
Josh Snow
And that's a huge tactic that I don't think very many people understand is I believe that the very best salespeople on planet Earth are never selling anything. Like, you go to my. You go to my. My Instagram or my Facebook, you will never see me selling anything. Yet I'm literally able to make millions of dollars through coaching and consulting and. And other companies that I have, but I'm not selling anything. So how does that work? It's unlimited. I'm breathing it, I'm exuding it, right? And that's. You know, if you're a Jeep guy, you want to start a brand around Jeeps, right? If you're driving a fucking Honda Accord, good luck, right? You better know the clicks in the algorithms. But it's like some of those dudes are like hardcore Jeep guys. They get it. They know what Jeep guys talk about. They know what Jeep guys want to. And they're able to exude that message, right? And people instantly resonate with it. So I really do believe that it's. You're in a day and age where we're completely bombarded and flooded with products and things and ads and messages. And if you want the short game, you better freaking figure out how to become a really good marketer, a really good copywriter, and buy ads better than anybody else. But if you want to build a real brand, like something that has legs, that will be around for a long fucking time, that resonate with people, like, why is it important to you? And you better be fucking living It. If you're living it and talking about it, everybody's like, my personal page or my this page or that.
- [25:48]
Ryan Reynolds
I got.
- [25:49]
Josh Snow
I don't even know how many hundreds of thousands of followers on my personal page. I have way less than my business page because I just, I'm always living this, talking about it, breathing, eating it, and be surprised how many people could plug into that. And now that we're turning on ads and running ads and doing shit like that, where I have almost a billion views in my videos, I can now target some of those. Those videos, and you know what I'm saying? So. But I've been playing the long game and consistently doing the content, consistently talking about it. People just know, like, some people will see the shirts. I get messages where they're like, dude, that's the. That's the bearded guy. Like, that's the bearded guy. They don't know my name because they recognize my video or a post. They're like, I know that guy. That's his thing. Right? And it's, it's really cool.
- [26:32]
Sean Whalen
What's the vision? I mean, where are we going? You know, I know you're, you're, you're knee deep in a lot of things. I know this has open doors and yeah, that, you know, your coaching. How to make happen is the book. Everyone listening. Go check it out on Amazon. Is it Amazon or just your personal site?
- [26:48]
Ryan Reynolds
Yeah, Amazon.
- [26:49]
Sean Whalen
But what's. Where we headed? Where are you going?
- [26:53]
Josh Snow
Well, right now we're trying to put the wheels back on the, on the bus. We, we got our asses kicked in production. We grew so fast. I turned everything on back in March. What I mean by that is I hired a team. We come in, we started running ads. I'd never run an ad before. I'd never put ads out there. And we went from that to, you know, we were doing two to $3,000 a month of just apparel sales. We did $463,000 last month of apparel sales in basically 90 days.
- [27:20]
Sean Whalen
A lot of damn T shirts.
- [27:22]
Josh Snow
And it. Some things up. And I learned some very valuable, expensive lessons on production and being able to keep up. And it's kind of a funny story. I mean, everybody thinks it's. It's just sunshine and roses, but all my kids, my kids and their friends worked for me. And they were all part of our production team. And so we were doing heat transfers and the whole thing, and I'd run all the numbers, and I got all the production companies and all the big promotional companies. They were hitting me up Let us do your shit. Let us do your shit. Long story short, we had 10 of them employed as we were just crushing. We went from literally like picking up one box of shirts and screen prints to getting pallets delivered. One of the kids apparently got Covid and because they're all like my daughter's friends, nine out of the 10 kids, their parents made them quit. Their parents made them literally self quarantine. And so we were doing 350 orders a day, which represents about six to 700 shirts. And so we're like, ah, no problem. Get a, you know, a temp agency and bring all these people. Well, they takes forever for them to learn and speed and well they. Anyways, we got, we got really far behind. We got about 6,000 shirts behind. Wow. And team came in and they're like, bro, we got a problem. And I'm over here like, go, go, go.
- [28:34]
Ryan Reynolds
Let's go, let's go.
- [28:35]
Josh Snow
And they're like, hang on bro, we got a problem. Because even if we work 24 hours a day, we can't get the numbers that we need.
- [28:42]
Sean Whalen
So if that wheel on the bike isn't working, you can't.
- [28:46]
Josh Snow
Because I've got some guys, some dear friends of mine, they're big in the E comm space, they do millions of dollars a month. And I've told them this and they all laugh and chuckle because they're like, yeah, dude, like, you know what I'm saying? Like every single person has this happen to them.
- [28:59]
Devin Klein
We have so many of our business owners that we put in business through Advanticlean that I'm still connected with, that are just doing incredible things out there. But the fundamental of what they are doing was all of the things that they learned by being an operator within our system.
- [29:12]
Sean Whalen
I love that. I want to pivot here shortly to some personal things, some experiences you've had, the podcast, a little TV show maybe a few people have heard of. But let's last kind of question. You mentioned the trademark thing. It made me think like, would you ever. If, would you ever start a friend? Can you start a franchise if you don't have a trademark on your name? Like, is that just like, is that like rule one, like let's say you're someone that's, you've, you've built one or two locations and they're super successful and like, oh, I'm ready to franchise, but you just happen to have a name that you didn't trademark or can't trademark. Do you need it lead to trade? Get a different name yeah.
- [29:54]
Devin Klein
So those are two different things. So didn't trademark. Yes, you can start. You would disclose that in your disclosure documents that say we have a trademark applied for. Here is the application number. Here's the date that we filed for it. And now if you get discovered denied on that, then that requires an additional disclosure immediately. So you've got to do that. Now if you went to a trademark attorney and they said, you know, no.
- [30:20]
Sean Whalen
Way, yeah, you're Smith Fitness, like Smith Fitness. And you know, and it's wonderful. You're making millions. You know that it's a. Everything can be, you know, transition to a successful franchise. But Smith Fitness, what you started out with, what you built with just happens to be a non trademark. It's like, well, do I need to change my name? I don't know. It made me think of that. When you start, I'm like, damn, how many people probably start down this path and they've got an amazing business, but maybe they didn't either think about it or they just pick something too common.
- [30:52]
Devin Klein
Look, Ryan, I learned a long time ago that if I'm going to be broke, I don't want to be tired too. Can you imagine, like, if I'm going to be broke, like I'm going to be comfortably laid up on, you know, catfishing somewhere in a really, in a garbage pick lawn chair. No, but like, look, I mean, you build this whole brand and then the equity is in the name. I mean, when you go to sell your franchise system, a lot of it has to do with what's the equity in the brand. People know the brand. So if you don't own it, I mean, it just, you've just kind of built. I'm not going to say you built it for nothing, but it would, that would be a non starter. If you can't get a trademark, I don't think anyone would do that. So yes, you would have to go through a rebrand. And you know, you would think that in this day and age that every good name's taken, but it's not true. There's all variations of things you can get, you can make up words. You know, there's. Get a little creative. Yeah, Google.
- [31:46]
Sean Whalen
Google didn't mean anything. You have 30 years ago or 25 that long ago. But Jeff, I know you've had some incredible experiences, you know, through your success and what you've done. Let's, let's go right at Undercover Boss. I know our audience has probably heard of that, maybe even seen you. They may have gone, I recognize that guy. He had to goatee. And they were trying to put it together, talk about how that came about and just the overall experience.
- [32:15]
Devin Klein
Yeah, it's still, you know, we had a really good episode. It still plays a lot. It plays overseas. I'll know when it plays in Australia or in Europe somewhere because I'll get a bunch of weird Facebook messages.
- [32:29]
Jeff Duden
So.
- [32:30]
Devin Klein
No. So in 2016, they were filming season eight, and they had somebody drop out at the last minute. So one of the things in life is if there's no reason to say no, then you say yes. So they came to us and said, we've got two weeks to do this. We've got seven or eight people that we're talking to. We'd have to fly out from California tomorrow, shoot a sizzle reel, put it together, pitch it to NBC, and they would. Or was it cbs?
- [32:58]
Sean Whalen
Who?
- [32:58]
Devin Klein
See, I think it was cbs. Pitch it to the net.
- [33:00]
Sean Whalen
Yep.
- [33:01]
Devin Klein
Yeah, pitch it to cbs. And they would have to decide. So we did that. And really quick, it came back that they were interested in having us on. So then we went through the reams and reams and reams of paperwork, and it was. We went out on the show. I mean, we went out on the road maybe like a month later, and it was a surreal experience for those people that haven't been. Been behind the scenes in a. In a production like that. It was really cool. I know I signed a bunch of confidentiality stuff, and I really don't want to do anything to, you know, I don't want to say anything that makes it harder for them to do the show. But it. It just. It seems to me, Ryan, like, every year the show is canceled.
- [33:43]
Sean Whalen
Yeah.
- [33:44]
Devin Klein
And then somehow it comes back for another.
- [33:48]
Sean Whalen
So.
- [33:49]
Devin Klein
But I mean, to pull this. It's such a well known show. But I will tell you, the way that this is done. It has done so well and so over the top that you would not think, like people do, like, is this Undercover Boss? And then as this is going on, they're like, no, it's not. It's clearly not, but it really is. So, yeah, it was great. We ended up being on the road for. We had a couple of little hiccups with a couple of things that were going on politically where they. We shot some stuff in North Carolina, and then they're like, oh, well, we don't want to shoot in North. We had to reshoot stuff, so I had to fly my family. We did all the family stuff. Right.
- [34:27]
Jeff Duden
We went.
- [34:28]
Devin Klein
We did the office stuff. We did the B roll at the office. And then we went to the house and you know, I'm cooking hot dogs on the grill, dogs are swimming in the pool, all that. And they're like, we can't use any of that because there was some political thing going on. So. And it was one of those things. And so then they. We go out on the road for a week, we film two or three segments. We fly my family to this wonderful resort somewhere in Georgia and we reshoot all of the family stuff and then we go on the road. So I was on the road for a total of like 16 days. And it was a great experience. And I will tell you that we had five. The producer said we had five episodes that we had to cut one that many shows would have killed to have. I mean our franchisees were absolutely amazing. They lived the values of our company. They were out there trying to do the best thing for the customer. They were highly empathetic. I mean, you know, I could have picked at a few things here and there, but at the end of the day we had, we ended up with four great segments. I got busted twice. They showed one of them and. But it was really. I think, I think what's interesting about the process is so, you know, we have a. You haven't been here yet. I think you're coming, but I don't. You've been here yet. But you know, we have 22,000 square foot building on a five acre campus. It's kind of got broad shoulders and you know, we would, I would, I coached over 30 seasons of my kids sports and we would do, you know, the. My daughter's basketball team would practice in our warehouse. We, I lined the side yard as a football field and that's where I coached our peewee football teams is when the kids, kids were great growing up and people didn't even know I owned the business. Like that's kind of how we rolled. Like we were, we never, we didn't, you know, people had no idea really what we did, the scale of the enterprise. They didn't know that, oh, it's nice they let you practice here type stuff. And so like we were pretty under the radar. And I sat my kids down on the couch in our, in our bonus room and above it is a quote on the wall we put. And it has kids pictures of them doing whatever it is they did that we wanted them to think we were proud of them for. And then it had this quote from Jerry Moore, the football coach at Appalachian State. It said always do more than is expected. And then we had our family values up on our little plaque there and stuff. And one of the family values is trust yourself to take chances, fail fast and move forward. Always do more than is expected and all of that. And it's like. And I said, well, I said, guys, this is going to change things. And this is. I mean, it might change things at your school. I mean, we're given. We're going to be giving away a quarter million dollars worth of stuff. I mean, people are clearly going to know that, you know, that, you know, whatever it is that makes the show. But when you looked at our values, it's like we couldn't say no. And they're just like, okay, well, we're willing to take the consequences of it. And, and, and we did, and we ended up having a great show. And they all got a little bit of time on it, you know, so that was cool. They got, they got like a flash across the screen.
- [37:31]
Sean Whalen
Yeah, they're, they're, they're 15 seconds of fame.
- [37:33]
Devin Klein
Yeah, they're 15 seconds of fame. And then we had, when it, when it showed, the night that it showed In January of 17, we rented out an entire bar. There was 250. Oh, and I had my little football. The little football team was coaching at the time, like, they were on it. So that was cool. So we had about 250 people came, kids that I've coached, their families, all the employees, their families, the local news. And we saw it for the first time along with 7.1 million other people. And I'm telling you, it was a great show and it did so much for the, for the business and the brand and the franchisees, really just confirming, like, you know, really living the values that we had that we knew that we lived within the four walls of the brand business. But, you know, being able to display it to the world and put the franchisees front and center was just incredible opportunity. So I always encourage people to say yes, and there's risk because if you watch that show, some of them go very poorly and you have no control. And I will tell you, man, they tried to wear me out, like, early, late, three times a day, an hour in front of the camera, asking me probing, you know, you know, kind of questions that would be incendiary, you know, trying to get me to break. And I just said, I took the whole position that said if I don't, they can't, they can't use anything that I don't say.
- [38:54]
Sean Whalen
Yeah, that's smart. I hope you got media training before that. Sounds like you did.
- [38:59]
Devin Klein
No, I didn't. But I knew. I knew that I had a irresponsibly quick mouth and I needed to put a, you know, clap. A clap a lock on it. But we did good. We did good.
- [39:11]
Sean Whalen
Two questions on that for transition. Like, first, and you mentioned was good for the business. I. I tell people that they don't completely recognize, like when things like Shark Tank and things like these things where you can get your company, like out there, like the monetary and brand impact of that awareness that you can't buy, by the way, or you can and it' way more than you'd ever spend. I'm assuming there was some. Some rebound. I mean, I'm like some upshot from that on some level.
- [39:48]
Devin Klein
It was immediate. You know, we ran a call center. We answered 250,000 inbound phone calls for our franchisees, and we did it very well. And I mean, there was many, many jobs that said, I saw. I saw your company on Undercover Boss and I'm giving you this job for, you know, like, they were touched by the episode and franchisees directly got work attributed to it. There was a spike in franchise sales.
- [40:15]
Jeff Duden
So.
- [40:15]
Devin Klein
But it wasn't. I mean, it wasn't massive. It was. But also. But being able to use that episode kind of as a piece of content during the process to really exemplify what we stood for. You know, how we rolled it tells. I mean, my gosh, it tells the story of our brand. They did obviously a great job with it and little graphics and little trucks and a map and like, so you could watch the first four or five minutes of that thing and get our whole company history and in a high production quality. So just that was worth $250,000.
- [40:54]
Jeff Duden
The first hundred million in sales that we generated were entirely bootstrapped. So the first. The first tranche of our lifetime sales came from a big chunk of. It was Facebook advertising. So 26, 2017, 2018, even 2019.
- [41:15]
Sean Whalen
When it was working. When it worked.
- [41:19]
Josh Snow
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
- [41:21]
Jeff Duden
And even before then, right? If so it started even earlier. There were Moise Ali from Native. He talks about generating A$1.50 subscription signups for $12 a month deodorant. And just like INF demand. And he sold that business for 100 million cash in like two years. He started very successful. It's still very around everywhere. And so in the beginning, it was, I need to create a product that is different enough that would capture the attention to create a Shopify. Chose Shopify. I knew Shopify was going to be the platform we were going to build on. I started developing the product by talking to my dentist, my orthodontist, my oral surgeon. What do you sell in office?
- [41:59]
Devin Klein
What do you.
- [41:59]
Jeff Duden
What products? I went and bought as many products as I could. I analyzed all of the Amazon reviews, negative reviews, focusing on that area so that you can find some pockets. Then you. Then I saw that your sensitivity is important. You know, the whitening formula had some opportunity to be improved upon. The delivery method of being able to plug it into their phone, which we invented that ability to power it by the phone because the very first vision version of snow was 95 bucks and it was a battery powered light. I did not like it very much. But we needed some delivery system for the serum to be able to test it out on the customers. So I started running ads and it was pretty quickly a success. I set up the first version of the website and I had an agency come in and publish it. So we got it up on Shopify very quickly. And then that was after about six to nine months of talking to my dentist, reaching out to suppliers, searching who makes toothpaste, who makes this, who makes gel, and then getting samples and then tweaking those formulas and then getting some testing. So that took, you know, six to nine months at least of going back and forth, maybe 50 to 100,000 bucks to buy the first order of the system that I had created for Snow 1.0, I guess that was 95 bucks. So we started running ads on there, gave free shipping, and the focus was professional level whitening at home without the sensitivity of other systems. So, you know, really designing around the sensitive tooth customer, but also the one who wants to max out whitening. So it's like you watch a cake and you want to eat it too. You want to preserve your enamel.
- [43:49]
Devin Klein
But.
- [43:49]
Jeff Duden
But you also have a wedding next week and it's like boom, boom, boom, boom. So we just kept tweaking that formula, percentages, whitening agents, what can we do to help with sensitivity? And so continuing to tweak that. Then it became a device business as well with our LED technology, which we now have multiple versions of. We have a wireless version, colors Lilac Special Edition. We have a black one limited at Best Buy. I mean, just all kinds of colors and types. And so the very beginning it was one product, which is really a couple products in one. And that's what we now have sold nearly 2 million times of, of that system, which has evolved now to wireless. Our current wired system today, which is the number one made in America. Teeth whitening system in the world. And so that's still our most known product was that original teeth whitening kit all in one at home. We invented the verbiage teeth whitening wands, the teeth whitening system. Just a lot of these verbiage is that were a little more seen and professional, but that people could buy free shipping two days, three days. It's in your hands. So that was a very, very start. And the goal was if that works out, then if you walk down the oral care aisle, couldn't snow have a version of everything in their flossers, toothpaste, mouthwash, a toothbrush, a water, flosser aligners, all kinds of these products. Mints, gums, breath sprays, all those products couldn't snow. I have a version of that if this is successful. And now today our product portfolio represents an oral care and personal care portfolio of 30 plus individual SKUs. Multiple award winners with multiple of them winning multiple awards across the board. We have the best, best whitening strips, best toothbrush, all of these awards that are decorated on the site. And so now that has expanded, but that's about seven years later. So in the very beginning, it was Facebook ads $95 system that we put together or that I put together with help and then pushed that out once that sold upgraded. Every single time that we reordered. The goal was how do we upgrade the formula? Take the feedback. I was calling customers myself and now I had built and sol sold many companies beforehand. I was independently wealthy. I could have poured a lot more money into the business, but I was still ruminating on is this something that has legs? Is this something that I think it is? Like, am I crazy? And once I started to see that, then it became hiring more products, different versions of the products, more channels to acquire customers. Now we're in cvs, Walgreens, Best Buy, Neiman Marcus, Saks, Macy's. So now we're in about a dozen premier top retail partners today. From the very beginning, it's Facebook ads. Shopify one system, one person or two to help on customer support and shipping it out. And I shipped it from my spare bedroom of the house because the inventory, I didn't want to get an office yet. I wasn't sure, right. And I was investing at the time. I had just sold a couple companies. So I said I want to see kind of if this could be my. My next thing, you know, and sure enough, it.
- [47:17]
Sean Whalen
It certainly did is, you know, as you expanded past Facebook and started to get the broader. I mean, it's Facebook has People I don't think realize how many billion people are on Facebook and how broad, you know, the awareness is. But was it, what was the, the percentage of like us versus non us and was we talking pretty much 95, I mean majorly us based. And what were the channels that kind of, what were the awareness channels that they kind of flowed after Facebook other than just distribution itself?
- [47:49]
Jeff Duden
Yeah, so it was, you know, Google, YouTube, so the whole Google suite, the whole meta suite, Amazon advertising, that whole suite actually retail media networks. So also Spotify audio.
- [48:07]
Josh Snow
Right.
- [48:07]
Jeff Duden
So there's every. So retail media is. If we're in Best Buy, we want to buy web banner ads and we want to be the sponsored on Best Buy for anything teeth related. And so we're, we're spending inside of the trade marketing to push those things. But they drive awareness top of funnels while on those platforms. And then we're doing everything from YouTube, we're doing a relaunch of TikTok. We've been hiring, we still are hiring like crazy for TikTok on the snow side. So TikTok is top of funnel. We're really excited about relaunching that. Instagram, Facebook are still very heavy on the front end. We do a lot of affiliate marketing as well. I actually acquired the affiliate marketing.com domain name about a year ago to build more reach in that space because it's a, it's a big portion across all of our brand, all the brands in my portfolio and all the brands that I've invested in. Affiliate marketing is a very profitable channel across the board. So affiliate marketing is another area because a lot of these bloggers, vloggers, Amazon editorial affiliates, they're putting us in front of an audience for the very first time. Listicles, things like that. So you know, about maybe 15% of our sales online come from our online affiliates and that's 100% non Facebook and Instagram because we don't allow it in the program since we run that internally. So it diversifies, it forces the diversification of that traffic. So that's kind of the stack from the top level. And then that of course as you mentioned, to distribution funnels to Marketplace first Marketplace, then to retail actual locations. Then we also sell to professional dermatology, dentists, kind of local clinic kind of style stuff. So that kind of whittles all the way down. Then it repeats from the top.
- [49:53]
Sean Whalen
But let's say before you went into retail, what was your mix like? You know, because everybody hears Amazon, they get scared like margins and all that stuff. How did you tackle, I mean you obviously started D2C, which is the smartest place, best margins, all that. What was your balance with taking on Amazon and what's your perspective there with just overall mix and things? A lot of people get scared of that, but it's such a behemoth, it's hard to ignore.
- [50:19]
Jeff Duden
I was the same way, man. I, I like 10 years ago, told two of my best friends at Tuft and Needle, the mattress company, they have the number one most loved and most popular on, on Amazon mattress and, and they had a very successful exit and huge success. They bootstrapped it. But they leaned into Amazon and back then I was anti Amazon. You don't know the data. You got to pay them 15, 20%. You know, everyone gets refunds.
- [50:49]
Sean Whalen
No, no, no, no, no, no.
- [50:50]
Jeff Duden
You got to lean into Amazon. Over 50% of retail searches online start on Amazon and they end there because people go straight there to search for shoes, white sneakers, like they're going directly to search, they're buying there. The conversion rate is always going to be higher than your website. It is what it is. I mean they've invested tens of billions of dollars into infrastructure because Jeff's a genius. And they know that if they can outsmart logistics and get the customers hooked on two hour delivery, that that's going to put a lot of pressure on merchants. But I know that Amazon's a public company and because they're a public company in the US there are antitrust laws, which means that Amazon cannot get more than 51% of its revenue or 50% of its revenue from its own products. So all the private label, they do all the kind of things that they're doing, they cannot, I think it's like 47%, 40, you can Google it. It's like somewhere around 46, 47.
- [51:50]
Ryan Alford
There.
- [51:51]
Jeff Duden
They just keep it going. They got to keep that 51% marketplace revenue which allows people like us to, to take advantage of what Amazon built. If it weren't for antitrust, they kick us all off. So like that'd be my guess, right? Like if you own Amazon, why would.
- [52:08]
Sean Whalen
They just make all the products? They copy everybody and you know, you be, they'd be in a lot of patent trademark lawsuits, but they'd manage those with, you know, all the lawyers, but they'd get it done right.
- [52:18]
Jeff Duden
And I think it's like, look at it, it goes, you know, I, I, Last year was our biggest year on Amazon. Every year is a big year on Amazon. But last year was a significantly good year for Amazon. So we go, wow, we need to really hire in that direction. We need to really double down our partnerships in that direction. We need to really tweak our affiliate marketing efforts net direction. So we went through it and said we want to double down on Amazon and utilize our strengths, utilize our thousands of reviews, utilize our millions on our email and SMS list like utilize our assets and our retail placements that are very unique to us in our industry to be able to show off on Amazon and build that business. So we have a goal for Amazon on its own to be a nine figure business for us in the next three years from an Amazon variant focused scale plan, hiring plan, partnership plan that allows us to take advantage of the Amazon platform and marketplaces, walmart.com, et cetera. Because what happens in a recession, and this is fact proven, I read this, they said during COVID people went back to what they felt most comfortable and safe and secure with. So they went back to Walmart store or Walmart, they went back to Target, they stopped venturing out so much onto all these DTC websites and all these unknown things, all these unknown subscriptions, recession hits or money gets tight inflation, people are more likely to just. I'm just going to go to Target and get everything, I'm going to go to Walmart and get everything. I'm going to go to this website, Amazon. Let me just, it's convenient, it's cheaper. I'm just going to do on Amazon. So you got to now play in that direction. Five, ten years ago you could get away without having to lean into it. Although I wish I could go back five and 10 years and I would have built an army of team members and partners on our Amazon channel and we would have been totally dominating that channel. So I love it. You do get access to email, your customers now they've got some new things, there's all kinds of stuff, but it's the only platform that's driven by sales. So you can become the number one in your category even above the big companies by sales volume. So you can drive you direct your sales. Like if Snow directed all of our sales to Amazon today, which is maybe 15 to 20% of our US digital revenue. So let's say we, we put all of our US digital revenue into Amazon, we would be the number one in every single category, above all of the incumbent brands just because of Velocity. But we would give up 15% at least margin based off versus our own. You give up some data. But I got to tell you there are days where I go that's not the worst idea, but you know, there's a better way to go about it. You know, build up the Amazon presence and build up the traffic and build up the list. So, long story short, anyone listening, I would like triple down and look up a company called Hero Cosmetics. Look up company called Zesty Paws by, by one of my good friends and they're a half a billion dollar pet supplement brand. 100% of their sales pretty much were from Amazon. Look up Hero Cosmetics. They have a miracle patch for acne. 20 bucks. They sold for 630 million. I think the beginning of this year in January. 40 million in profit. Just do Amazon. It was an Amazon driven business. So these Amazon businesses are getting very strong multiples, they're raising money, they're TikTok friendly. So I would say lean into Amazon harder than you ever have and really figure out how to dominate that platform in your category because it's the only place you can see sales as well. You can literally see an estimate of what everyone's selling. You can go look at snow stuff and be like, oh, they're selling an estimate of this much from this sku. It's a great platform to build on.
- [56:15]
Ryan Reynolds
You take pitching specifically and there's a lot of recovery nuances, a lot of longevity nuances, a lot of we really care about that stuff, right? Because we couldn't be, we couldn't have our product be our differentiator if we weren't focused on longevity, right? We tell people like, this is going to be long, hard and difficult and it's going to take consistency and discipline and dedication. You're not going to do it in 30, 60, 90 days. You know, likely you're not going to like, you know, wake up one day and like, you know, be strong as an ox. It's going to take five years. And are you in for this ride or do you believe that you're worth it? Right? And so we have that recovery element built in because what we're telling people is that it's the opposite of what everyone else is saying really in the macro sense of like, hey, come do this fast. Like, oh, you're not. Okay, that's okay, let's come in anyway. Do it fast. Join the membership. You can lose 30 pounds real quick. And it's like, okay, well that's flat. You know, you get companies that say one day it says they're signed on their building, the next day it says for lease. And you're like, why is that happening? So, yeah, I think that's, yeah, That's a combination of sounds like sprinkle a little bit of bigger. You do sprinkle a little bit of bigger, faster, stronger in there from my high school days too, if anybody's ever heard of that program.
- [57:33]
Sean Whalen
Oh yeah, I remember. I, I was sitting here thinking as you were talking. ICR intensity, Community recovery.
- [57:43]
Ryan Reynolds
That is right. That's, that's it in a nutshell. My, my answer was real long winded.
- [57:47]
Sean Whalen
I, I simplify for my, for a bit in marketing. Geologs. I like acronyms and simplicity. Yeah, but, but it's, it's great.
- [57:55]
Ryan Reynolds
I mean, but that sounds like the.
- [57:58]
Sean Whalen
Building blocks of a long term program and not, like you said, a gimmick. Because everybody gets that fire, you know, when they're ready to, okay, I need to lose some weight. I've got an event coming up. Whatever. I, they get fired in their belly, but then it dies. If you don't have the building blocks of something broader, you need the community to kind of keep you in it. You need the recovery. Because if you're killing yourself and you're not recovering at all, then they get down and out, like you said. So I can see and all I know is the periphery. You know, I've heard, I've had people many times need to burn. Whatever, whatever. So I'm, I'm gonna make a promise to you. I'll go, I'm gonna go hit burn up here at Greenville eventually. But what's it been like growing the business, man? I mean, going, I mean, just that kind of scale, you know, is, is incredible. What's, what's that roller coaster been like?
- [59:00]
Ryan Reynolds
Definitely one, right? You went in 2015, when we announced that we are going to franchise in all 50 states. You know, we thought hitting, hitting a home run might be awarding 10 units in our first year and really getting those stood up. And we were always concerned with unit economics. I'll talk about that in a minute. But I had no idea that we would do 200 in the first 18 months. And, you know, Fran Dead did this article out of Franchise Times magazine. It was like one of our first, it was one of our first like earned media pieces that was talking about business that I was super proud of. And it said that we're in the 99th percent of all growth from all franchises of any franchise that entered the market since 2010. And this was like 18 months in. And I'm like, okay, well, we better not screw this up then. So how do we get all of these gyms open? Right? We got to focus on we call it ULE's unit level economics. It's. You had a guest on Jeff Duden, who's from this area, he taught me this actually he's been a good friend and mentor of mine throughout the years. He taught me validation and franchising. And that's invalidation really in any business. It's not a franchise particular concept, but it's the stakeholders of your business being happy, it's your debt promoter score. How likely are they to recommend this business or doing business with you to somebody else? And number one, number one thing is to number one box the check, if you will is are they making money and what type of money are they making? So I'm always looking for a, this might be, this might be something people want to write down because I'll give you like a strategy. What I'm looking for in any business I grow is an investment. Let's say the investment is at $500,000. I need to make $1 million in year one in order for that investment to be considered an A plus investment for me. Right. So it's a two to one investment, cash to year one revenue ratio. And that's how we, that's the how we want to get every location out of the gate. Do all of them do that? No. But what that's really done, having that expectation is we've aligned clearly and early with our franchise partners who are really driving the unit level economics. We've learned that when we have that expectation they start higher, you know, they start with more members, they start better off and you know, getting, getting to that place of having world class economics and boutique fitness was a long road, but definitely a doable one because that was our focus the whole time from the very beginning. So the big what the hell are we going to do Moment was when we had 200 and we had like 10 open. You know, like in franchising it's the similar, it's kind of similar to fitness. What we were just talking about, like everyone wants to just go fast, fast, scale, scale, scale. It is a vehicle for scale. Right. I love the vehicle for scale. But you can also scale yourself right into the ground. And you see that happen all the time in this industry, particularly the industry that I'm in, the boutique fitness franchising industry. So yeah, it's a, I mean think about it, it's logical. Right? Right. I mean like I care about my people so much. Like this isn't about money for me. This is about my franchise partners who invested their 401k, who invested their life savings, who, you know, liquidated their stocks 10 years before they wanted to sold their house and moved across the state, who left their family in North Carolina and moved to Missouri and stayed in a hotel room for three months away from their children so they could go chase their dream. This is all about returning an ROI for them. And so, you know, with that type of mindset that real people first, core value, you know, we're able to take what's in the gym, translate that up to a franchise partner, network, translate out into an HQ culture, you know, now we're on the east coast, so we're on the west coast, bicoastal headquarters, operating the business that way. And where economics are better than they've ever been. We use annual unit volumes as a measure in franchising, how much each individual gym makes on average. And we'll be up near the 6002 at the end of the year, which is, you know, top three in our space. So people first, like, people first. And that's. I'm gonna preach that to the. To the day that Morgan and I hang them up, which we're in the big leagues now. So I'm stay as long as we can.
- [63:02]
Sean Whalen
You take care of people, they take care of you. That's how. That's usually.
- [63:07]
Ryan Reynolds
That's right.
- [63:08]
Sean Whalen
Reciprocation is powerful just when you're trying to do the right thing. You said you started, like, I heard licensing in there. I talked to Jeff about this a little bit like licensing versus franchising versus, you know, like the thought process there. And, you know, you. You mentioned it. If you aren't serving your franchisees, you know, then what are you doing, you know, as far as growing the business? Because again, if you're servicing them, they're making money, they're happy, you get more franchisees and you grow. But what's it like? Like, truly, what's been some of the secret sauce to scaling like that? Like, like, now that you've done it, was there stuff that you would have gone, damn, I wish I'd done that sooner, or, you know, like, what are some of those learning lessons?
- [63:56]
Ryan Reynolds
Like, definitely the number one thing is if you're going to scale your business fast, you want to invest ahead of that growth curve, you've got to anticipate that. You know, I heard Tony Robbins once say that anticipation is the ultimate power for any entrepreneur. And if you're able to see over the hill before anyone else can, you can see the horizon when, you know, over the horizon when no one else can or Your, your, your ability to navigate your way there, you know, is geometrically enhanced. And so what I always try to do is set big goals for the system, starting with unit economic goals and then set more broad range targets. So I stepped on the stage at our summit in 2021 and I said, we're going to build 10,000 units to the moon. And, and half my system was like, you know, because we're a competitive culture, they were like, let's go. They're all pumped up. And the other half was like, how the hell are we going to do that? Like, I don't know, I trust you. But you know, that's a lot of units, right. It's like, how are we going to do that? The beauty is like, I don't need to know how we're going to do it. I just need to know that's a big enough, why there's a big enough purpose. Because the people you're impacting in community are also in other countries and they deserve the same thing. They deserve a people first fitness product. And so, you know, but we're only going to do that through you guys, right? How we're going to do that is focus all of our energy on putting more money into your pockets so that as a franchisee you're able to get those auvs up and then reinvest into the brand. So for us, just to give you a lay of the landscape, like Bird Brands is like, that's Burn Boot Camp and that's the running, that's the front runner, that's the spearhead. Franchising really is about distribution. Right. So now we come in and we have a nutrition business underneath, an activewear business underneath, a real estate business underneath, an investment company underneath that takes non passive, non controlling stakes and companies that were partnered with and you know, you start to, you know, think about secular franchises and other opportunities now that you have the infrastructure and the distribution. And it's like that makes the return on investment for the franchisees even more important. Right. And putting more chips in our basket so our opportunities get bigger as we go forward.
- [66:05]
Sean Whalen
Yeah. I mean, because that's what it is like. Just for anybody listening, Bird Boot Camp as a brand or Bird as a brand, the way you grow brand awareness isn't always just advertising. When you have 200, 400, 500, a thousand locations and thus signage and thus in market marketing and word of mouth, it grows the brand, it's reaching frequency at the highest level. With that distribution, there's a lot of way to grow brand recognition and Brand awareness, that's not always just advertising in its truest sense, because every new location that throws up a sign and, you know, community for Bird builds the Bird brand. Right?
- [66:52]
Ryan Reynolds
Yeah. You know, I, I love, I, I love your marketing mind. And, you know, if I had to pick a, if I had to, I'm an entrepreneur, right? But if I had to pick a vertical, that I'm most confident definitely be branding, I think as a, as a more specific term than marketing. And what, and what I say branding, what I really mean is measuring things like brand equity. Pier 1 Imports is a good example here. When imports went out of business and then their logo sold for 50 million and they were, they were, I mean, they were just burning cash, right? If your real estate portfolio is burning cash, unless you have some brand equity is some recognizable logo or something that's going to sustain it, it just crashes. There's nothing, there's no recovery element there. So when I think of being, you know, I think of the people that are listening to this and they're all entrepreneurs. You know, it's obvious, I think that owning your own business, right. Number one, a brand, or number two, real estate portfolio, arguably are the, one of the two best ways to build the wealth initially. And I always put brand equity just slightly ahead because I've got something, I've got a logo that means something to people, even though the brick and mortars aren't there anymore. And, you know, so for me, it's always been about the, you know, and marketers try to, they try to measure this, but I think it's just them trying to be smart. It's like smoke and mirrors that I said trying to measure, like brand lift. It's like, well, okay, yes. What you're talking about, right, is okay, all the impressions from the signage, all the impressions from social media, all the impressions from word of mouth, or one time in the mountains when Aunt Susie said something to Uncle Tim, and Uncle Tim then takes his family in Seattle, Washington. Like, you can't really measure a brand lift unless you isolate variables so, so finutely that it disregards all the things that actually create the brand list up. I don't know if anybody is ever confused by brand left. I'm a branding expert and I still don't get it. But that's what you're talking about is how does the collective touch points or the collective eyeballs on your brand. Gary Vee says attention is currency, right? And he's so right. What he's really saying is that brand awareness is your currency. And once I got, once I got all of the different units up rocking and rolling, you'd be surprised who comes out of the woodwork. My buddies from like my junior high baseball team text me a picture of that logo. It said my wife just joined. So. Yeah. And then you layer the digital paid advertising and organic social media and all the contemporary marketing stuff on top of that like we did. And I think that's the recipe. So you got to have the layer over the top. You've got to have the, the brand list elements and then the hyper local community where you're in the field. Our FPS are in the field with their team, shaking hands, kissing babies, running for mayor, like, just making sure that they're the conversation when it comes to fitness in the town.
- [69:42]
Sean Whalen
Yep. We call it, you gotta drive brand and demand.
- [69:48]
Ryan Reynolds
It's Brandon.
- [69:50]
Sean Whalen
It's those two things. That's what we preach to clients and sometimes all clients, they just want to drive the demand. I'm like, you got to invest in the brand, baby. You know, that's what's going to pay over time. Everybody wants sales overnight, but brands built over time. We're taking the BS out of business, baby. We'll see you next time. Right about now.
- [70:11]
Ryan Alford
This has been Right about now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast network production. Visit ryanisright.com for full audio and video versions of the show or to inquire about sponsorship opportunities. Thanks for listening.