You Might Also Like: The Unshakeables

Summary

Podcast Summary: "You Might Also Like: The Unshakeables"

Host: Ben Walter
Guest: Don Haney, Founder of Nerdwax
Release Date: April 8, 2025

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1. Introduction

Ben Walter welcomes listeners to "The Unshakeables," a segment of Chase for Business and Ruby Studio from iHeartMedia, focusing on the pivotal moments small business owners face and how they navigate crises. Today's episode features Don Haney, the founder of Nerdwax, a Nashville-based company specializing in anti-slip wax products for eyeglasses inspired by surf wax.

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2. Don Haney's Background

Don Haney shares his journey prior to founding Nerdwax, highlighting his career as a touring audio engineer. He worked with notable artists and bands, including Miley Cyrus, the Jonas Brothers, and Keith Urban. This extensive touring exposed him to a recurring problem: his glasses would constantly slide down his nose due to sweat during outdoor concerts and festivals.

[02:26] Don Haney: "I wanted something that wouldn't change the look or feel of my glasses. I just realized like, hey, if I could make something that would be hydrophobic, so it would block the sweat on your glasses and would stick to your nose pads."

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3. The Birth of Nerdwax

Frustrated with existing solutions like hooks, bands, and straps, Don sought to create a product that maintained the aesthetic of his glasses while preventing them from slipping. Drawing inspiration from surf wax used to increase friction on surfboards, he experimented with various formulations over three years. His persistence paid off when he developed a cosmetic-grade wax that combined beeswax, coconut oil, and gum rosin.

[05:17] Don Haney: "The first time I actually tried this, I scratched the glasses... I was going to have to actually formulate something with your skin in mind."

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4. Challenges in Manufacturing

After perfecting the formula, Don faced his first major hurdle: packaging. Initially using lip balm tubes proved problematic as the wax would break the tubes, making them unusable.

[08:37] Don Haney: "All 5,000 units come off the line, and they're just broken."

Despite these setbacks, Don and his wife managed to rectify the issue for subsequent orders. However, the financial strain of producing labeled packaging led Don to seek additional funding.

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5. Shark Tank Exposure

In 2014, inspired by his work with Dave Ramsey and researching Kickstarter campaigns, Don launched a Kickstarter for Nerdwax, aiming to raise $5,000 for labels. The campaign exceeded expectations, raising over $60,000 in 30 days. This success paved the way for an appearance on Shark Tank, which significantly boosted Nerdwax's visibility and sales.

[07:35] Ben Walter: "Don set a goal of raising $5,000 to produce the labels of his dreams."

On Shark Tank, Don prepared extensively, even producing a year's worth of inventory in anticipation of a successful pitch. The episode aired, leading to a surge in orders—4,000 units in a single day and 1,000 more the next day.

[13:36] Don Haney: "It was absolutely because of Shark Tank."

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6. Scaling the Business

Pedaling through initial success, Don transitioned Nerdwax from a home-based operation to an industrial space. However, finding a reliable manufacturer remained a challenge until a breakthrough occurred when an expert offered a custom-made filling machine, drastically reducing production time from three days with six people to four hours with just two.

[15:13] Don Haney: "He saw you on Shark Tank. Would you like me to build you a machine?"

This advancement allowed Nerdwax to scale efficiently, solidifying its presence in the market.

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7. Setbacks: Tornado and COVID-19

The business faced severe setbacks when a tornado hit Don's neighborhood in Nashville in March 2020, followed by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. These events disrupted operations and sales, compelling Don to reassess his business model.

[16:32] Ben Walter: "Tornado and Covid aside, the shark tank gods smiled on Don again."

Amidst these challenges, Don innovated by leveraging Nerdwax as a solution for mask-wearing during the pandemic, leading to the creation of Fogblock, an anti-fog product that quickly gained popularity.

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8. Product Expansion: Jinkies

In response to dwindling sales post-mask mandates and the impact of Apple's iOS 14 update on digital marketing, Don diversified Nerdwax's product line. He introduced Jinkies, a line of microfiber cloths with playful designs inspired by nerd culture. Social media's shift to video content in 2022 played a crucial role in the successful relaunch of these products, resulting in a significant uptick in sales and online following.

[21:08] Don Haney: "With video and Instagram reels, you could actually see that... it was just like a weird colored cloth."

Jinkies became a substantial part of Nerdwax's business, showcasing Don's ability to adapt and innovate.

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9. Lessons Learned

Throughout the episode, both Ben Walter and Kathleen Griffith discuss critical lessons from Don's journey:

• Crowdfunding's Dual Role: Kickstarter not only provided necessary funds but also validated product-market fit.

  [11:13] Kathleen Griffith: "I think it's a great way to test the waters and see if it works."

• Balancing Inventory: Don's experiences highlight the delicate balance between having enough inventory to meet demand without overcommitting resources.

  [23:48] Kathleen Griffith: "There's really no rulebook around it."

• Diversifying Revenue Streams: Dependence on a single product or marketing channel can be risky. Building a loyal customer base and investing in brand equity are essential for long-term sustainability.

  [27:16] Ben Walter: "You have to nurture that funnel and you have to plant the seeds to finish the analogy on your own ground."

• Adapting to Market Changes: Technological shifts, such as changes in social media algorithms, can dramatically impact sales. Flexibility and diversification are key to navigating such changes.

  [18:46] Don Haney: "We go from a 3 to 5 ROAS to a 0.8 ROAS."

Don emphasizes the importance of both working hard and working smart, likening them to pedals on a bicycle that drive business growth.

[30:38] Don Haney: "Work harder. Work smarter. And I see those two things as like pedals on your bicycle."

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10. Conclusion

Don Haney's story is a testament to resilience, innovation, and the importance of adaptability in entrepreneurship. From overcoming manufacturing challenges to navigating unexpected crises, Don's journey with Nerdwax and Jinkies exemplifies the essence of being "Unshakeable." His focus on building a brand that resonates with a passionate niche while maintaining operational flexibility has ensured sustained success despite numerous obstacles.

[28:46] Don Haney: "Nerdwax has gone up in relation to all of the other products that we've launched. But it's what I intended for it to be initially, which was just a good core product that you put on the market and just sells itself."

Ben Walter and Kathleen Griffith commend Don's ability to balance business ambitions with personal fulfillment, highlighting the importance of knowing one's "why" in entrepreneurial endeavors.

[34:16] Kathleen Griffith: "It's holding steady. He's got a hero product that's doing consistently well... he's so lovable."

Key Takeaways:

• Persistence is crucial in overcoming product development and manufacturing hurdles.
• Crowdfunding can serve as both a financial tool and a market validation method.
• Diversification in product offerings and marketing strategies can mitigate risks associated with market fluctuations.
• Building a loyal customer base and investing in brand equity fosters long-term sustainability.
• Adaptability to technological and market changes is essential for continued growth.

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Notable Quotes:

• Don Haney [03:33]: "Surfers use wax on their boards in the water to give them extra friction. I wonder if I could make the same thing but make a cosmetic grade so that your glasses wouldn't slide in your nose."
• Ben Walter [10:48]: "Crowdfunding... gives you essentially not free but discounted marketing and it gives you advanced cash flow for your manufacturing process."
• Don Haney [30:38]: "Work harder. Work smarter. And I see those two things as like pedals on your bicycle."

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Closing Remarks: Ben Walter wraps up the episode by celebrating Don Haney's achievements and the vibrant, positive culture within Nerdwax's operations. He encourages listeners to reflect on their own business journeys and the importance of maintaining balance between ambition and personal fulfillment.

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For Listeners: If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and review it. Stay tuned for next week's "Unshakeables," where we'll hear from another inspiring entrepreneur navigating the challenges of building a resilient business.

Transcript

[Don Haney]

Ruby.

[Ben Walter]

Don Haney was just an average guy with an average problem. His glasses kept sliding down his nose, and he was determined to find a solution. Three long years of product testing later, he finally had his surf wax inspired anti slip glasses wax nailed down.

[Don Haney]

I'd raised $60,000. I now had our first production run of Nerdwax. I was like, this is amazing. Every. Everything's going great.

[Ben Walter]

Don got that first shipment in, and it was so exciting, finally seeing all of his hard work pay off.

[Don Haney]

And I open up the box and every tube is breaking. Like, you go to twist the Nerdwax out of the tube, and every single tube is just breaking. The Nerdwax doesn't protract out of the tube. The little turning mechanism breaks in your hands. And I was like, how many of these do we have? I think our first initial order was.

[Ben Walter]

5,000 units, and there was nothing Don could do with them. Welcome to the Unshakeables from Chase for Business and Ruby Studio from Iheartmedia. I'm Ben Walter, CEO of Chase for Business. On the Unshakeables, we're sharing the daring moments of small business owners facing their crisis points and telling the stories of how they got through it. Today, we're talking to nerds, which makes me feel very comfortable, but I'm also talking to Kathleen Griffith. Definitely not a nerd. Kathleen, welcome back.

[Kathleen Griffith]

Ben, before you say anything else, I want to say how great of a name is Nerdwax for a company? It's fun.

[Ben Walter]

Don's a fun guy, and I'm excited for this story. I love this small business. And I also have to say, I'm a not so secret Star Trek fan.

[Kathleen Griffith]

Yes, I do know that about you. Does that mean there will be a Star Trek mention today?

[Ben Walter]

Absolutely. The company we're talking about today is very invested in, quote, unquote, nerd culture.

[Kathleen Griffith]

Ah, yes. Okay. Well, I'm excited to see how we get from surf wax to Star Trek.

[Ben Walter]

All will be made clear in a moment. On today's episode, Nerdwax from Nashville, Tennessee, Don, officially. Welcome to the Unshakables.

[Don Haney]

Thanks, Ben.

[Ben Walter]

Don grew up using surf wax. He's from California and he's a nerd. But it took a while to put those two together.

[Don Haney]

I used to be a touring audio engineer. I did the Miley Cyrus Best of Both Worlds tour. I did a bunch of Radio Disney stuff for a while. So I toured with Everlife. We did a run with the Jonas Brothers. I worked for Keith Urban for a bit. I did Julianne Hough for a bit.

[Ben Walter]

He moved through the Nashville touring circuit and week after week he was out on the road. And week after week he had the same issue, namely sweat.

[Don Haney]

So we would do these outdoor concerts and festivals in the summer and my glasses were always all over the place. I had tried different solutions like hooks or bands and straps and none of those worked for me because I wanted something that wouldn't change the look or feel of my glasses. So I wanted to be able to wear my glasses as normal, but then also not have them slide. I just realized like, hey, if I could make something that would be hydrophobic, so it would block the sweat on your glasses and would stick to your nose pads. I kind of thought surfers use wax on their boards in the water to give them extra friction. I wonder if I could make the same thing but make a cosmetic grade so that your glasses wouldn't slide in your nose.

[Ben Walter]

Surf wax for the non surfers in the room is a super sticky wax that comes in bar form. You put it on the surfboard to help you get a better grip on the board and crucially, it's made for surfboards, not glasses.

[Don Haney]

The first time I actually tried this, I scratched the glasses and then I tried a different surf wax and it made my skin break out and I was like, I'm going to have to actually formulate something with your skin in mind.

[Ben Walter]

While Don was trying to find the perfect formula for cosmetic grade surf wax that wasn't really surf wax, he was still a full time audio engineer. He'd be out on the road during the week and come home on the weekends.

[Don Haney]

I would like make a batch in our kitchen and then I would take it out on the road. I would see if it worked or if it didn't work. If I had had like a little touring kitchen with me on the road, it probably wouldn't have taken three years. But it was really just a side hustle. I wanted to make it for my like, I wanted to use it and because I wanted to use it, I was willing to just do whatever it took to make it.

[Ben Walter]

That was three years of touring and wax that was too sticky or not sticky enough. A lot of people would have given up by now. But Don approached Nerdwax the same way he approached his career in music.

[Don Haney]

My kind of North Star has always been to be creative. The creative process, that's what I love. Taking the seed of an idea, then making that and then seeing it happen in reality. It's magic. There's no other word for it, other Than it feels like alchemy. It feels like, oh, I thought of this thing and now here it is in real life, right in front of me. And it is the coolest thing. It's just magic.

[Ben Walter]

The magic. It paid off.

[Don Haney]

I arrived at the formula that is still the formula for Nerdwax today. And so that's beeswax, coconut oil and gum rosin. It's a really simple, all natural formulation.

[Ben Walter]

But by the time he had his formula down, ironically enough, he didn't really need it anymore. He had his wife and three kids and he was ready to leave life on the road and be with his family.

[Don Haney]

I get Nerdwacks to the place where I feel like, okay, I have a product here, I've given it out to friends and family and I've established that it works. People like it, they're asking me for it. But I have this problem, which is I don't have labels for Nerdwax and it stops me from handing them out.

[Ben Walter]

Don's worry about packaging was understandable. It's hard to scale a product only available in unmarked tubes.

[Don Haney]

I needed five grand to do a first run of labels and I didn't have the cash. I also didn't want to keep spreading it around without it looking like something I wanted the world to see.

[Ben Walter]

What happened next? It's straight out of a country song, right?

[Don Haney]

At the same time is when I kind of had this two week period where both of our cars broke down, my wife broke her ankle, I lost my job, our landlord called and he wouldn't renew our lease. That was the moment that I had to decide if I was going to stay on the road and keep on that course or if I was going to make a change in do something different.

[Ben Walter]

Don decided to make a change. He needed a way to provide for his family, even if it meant putting his creative projects away for a while.

[Don Haney]

I got a job working for Dave Ramsey in Nashville.

[Ben Walter]

Dave Ramsey, for those of you who don't know, is a financial advisor based out of Nashville, Tennessee. He's best known for his no nonsense advice on his radio show and podcast and his cash focused debt payoff methods.

[Don Haney]

When I was at Dave Ramsey and I was producing the Entre leadership podcast and my job was like to read through these business books and I was doing a case study on how to start a business with no debt. I had researched a bunch of Kickstarters and I thought, man, what if I just did a kickstarter for one of my ideas like just see if there's product market fit. So 2014 is when I launched my Kickstarter for Nerdwax.

[Ben Walter]

Don set a goal of raising $5,000 to produce the labels of his dreams.

[Don Haney]

By noon on the first day of the campaign, we'd reached our $5,000 goal. And then by the end of the 30 day campaign, we had raised over $60,000.

[Ben Walter]

Don had split his campaign into two timelines. The first round of backers would get theirs in September. The others later that fall. He decided on doing the first run in his house and partnering with the manufacturer for the second.

[Don Haney]

When we first started, we were filling into lip balm tubes, and lip balm tubes were a great medium at the time because they were really easy to find. Lip balm tubes are made for lip balm. They're made for a greasy substance. And I was putting this hard, tacky substance inside. And so what would happen is the mechanism that you twist at the bottom of the tube to get the lip balm to come out, that mechanism would break.

[Ben Walter]

Don and his wife managed to get the first batch fixed and sent out for the next order. Don found a manufacturer who could solve the broken lip balm tube issue.

[Don Haney]

We did some tests with them. Everything looked great. They sent me a batch of Nerdwax to test out, and they said, hey, we noticed there's like a few issues with some of these tubes. Can you try them out? And so they sent me a box of them, and I opened up the box, and every tube is breaking. All 5,000 units come off the line, and they're just broken.

[Ben Walter]

Same issue as before, but this time on a much larger scale.

[Don Haney]

I was asking the manufacturing partner what they could do to fix it, and they were like, this is your thing. We're just filling it for you.

[Ben Walter]

Wow. And did you ever get money back for the bad run?

[Don Haney]

They made us eat that one.

[Ben Walter]

Oof, that's brutal.

[Don Haney]

Yeah, it was brutal.

[Ben Walter]

Kathleen, what a terrific story that is, isn't it?

[Kathleen Griffith]

Nerds rule the world.

[Ben Walter]

Nerds do rule the world. He even put it in the name.

[Kathleen Griffith]

Of his business, Revenge of the Nerds.

[Ben Walter]

I mean, that was one of my favorites back in the. I have to say that was one of my favorites because we have lots of different types of businesses on the unshakables. I have a real affinity for people who make stuff. Partly is my patriotic streak of wanting to manufacture in America, but part of it is also I have a personal proclivity for that. I think it's super interesting when people create a physical good that didn't exist before. But on the flip side, the manufacturing businesses are typically capital intensive businesses. Right. Like, it's not like consulting, where if your cost is you or the people and like you can flex them, you're talking about equipment, you're talking about research and design. This is a different animal. Right.

[Kathleen Griffith]

Ain't that the truth? Yeah, it really is. It's not for the faint of heart. You know, he was talking about being left with 5,000 units. I mean, it's. The stakes are real. The stakes are really real.

[Ben Walter]

It's never efficient to manufacture in small quantities or rarely efficient, I should say. It means you're always taking that inventory risk when you try something new. And how do you feel about things like crowdfunding in terms of getting something started? It's a brilliant platform because it really does two things. It gives you essentially not free but discounted marketing and it gives you advanced cash flow for your manufacturing process. Right. Because people pay now and get later.

[Kathleen Griffith]

Yeah. I think a lot of times people forget about Kickstarter or it's not really top of mind, but it makes so much sense because you're also seeing what is the real legitimate market appetite for your product. I think a lot of founders don't want that negative feedback. There's a part of them that doesn't want to be told there's no there there. But I think it's a great way to test the waters and see if it works.

[Ben Walter]

Yeah, I'd rather find out I don't have product market fit before I spend the money than after I spend the money. Are there any lessons you've seen people learn with regard to negotiating with manufacturers, sourcing manufacturers? I mean, you must see your clients go through this all the time.

[Kathleen Griffith]

Yeah. The biggest issue is seeing people moving from home manufacturing, doing it themself, you know, or with friends and family in this very labor intensive way to then figuring out how to get a manufacturer on board. So there was an entrepreneur that I was advising. She has a skincare business. She's doing it at home, had a bad experience like Don did with a manufacturer and so went back home. So you see this kind of advance retreat, advance retreat and the business shrinks or expands as a result of that. Finding the right manufacturer is tough and it's a long process. I think people get very overwhelmed by everything you need to do. Once you have an idea and to break it down really simply, it's you got an idea, right? Step one. Step two is you've got to do your customer research, which is easier now than ever because you can do it in social media and all these other places. Step three is to create a prototype, a minimally viable product. Step four is to validate that with the market. So product, market fit. And step five is then to place your orders. And I think that's the piece we can't underscore enough in hearing this, too. It can take years. And it doesn't mean your product isn't scalable. It just means it's going to take time to find the right partner.

[Ben Walter]

Okay, let's get back to Don. After the broken tube debacle, Don still worked for Dave Ramsey, and Nerdwax was still in the lip balm tubes, for better or worse. But now Nerdwax was out in the world and people noticed.

[Don Haney]

We got a message from the casting director for Shark Tank.

[Ben Walter]

Don applied to the show, thinking he'd never get called. He also filmed his episode, not knowing if it would air. Some don't, but on the chance that it did, they were ready.

[Don Haney]

So my wife and I and our kids and we hired friends and family to come and help make all of the tubes for our Shark Tank airing. I think I made what I thought would be a year's worth of inventory, and we sold all of it in a single month. And I was like, oh, boy, we're in way over our heads here.

[Ben Walter]

And do you think that's because of Shark Tank?

[Don Haney]

It was absolutely because of Shark Tank. So that was the trick is it's like, I don't want to have more inventory than I need because I don't want to get stuck with, you know, two or three years worth of inventory. But I also want to have enough that we can handle the wave and ride that wave of publicity and ride.

[Ben Walter]

The wave they did.

[Don Haney]

I remember the weekend our episode aired. I think we shipped 4,000 units in a single day. The next day, I wake up and we have another thousand orders. We were just laugh crying on the couch in the living room thinking about how crazy this was that this thing took off on us. So that was really the beginning of the journey. From there, we ran our business out of the house for a few years. And then it got to the point where the business was busting at the seams of that house. And so we moved it out of the house, sold that house, and moved into an industrial space.

[Ben Walter]

Around that time, Don decided to finally commit to Nerdwax full time. So he once again went hunting for a manufacturer that wouldn't break all of his tubes.

[Don Haney]

We had manufacturers that knew how to work with material and Then we had manufacturers that knew how to work with a container, but the ones that knew how to work with a container didn't know how to work with material. And so what we realized in that process is like, we have to actually be the manufacturers for a lot longer if we're going to actually scale this. And we have to find a scalable manufacturing process in order to do that.

[Ben Walter]

Okay, and how did you do that? How did you go about finding that process?

[Don Haney]

A lot of messing up.

[Ben Walter]

Then Don was blessed by the shark tank gods. He got an email from someone who had seen his episode that said, hey.

[Don Haney]

I made all these filling machines for Burt's Bees. I saw you on Shark Tank. Would you like me to build you a machine? I was like, where have you been for the last five years? I've been looking like everywhere for you. He already understands all of the hard parts about what we're doing. And he's got this semi automated machine. We bought that machine from him, custom made. And then it only took two people and basically four hours to do what it took us six people in three days to do.

[Ben Walter]

And just like that, after three years of R&D for the wax and five years of looking for a filling machine, Nordwax was scalable. Life was good mostly.

[Don Haney]

A tornado rips through Nashville. Right by our house. Like a block away from our house, this tornado rips through.

[Ben Walter]

This tornado touched down an easy east Nashville in March of 2020.

[Don Haney]

I hear the tornado ripping through our neighborhood. There's a church two blocks away. I look down the street and the steeple from the church is sitting in the middle of the road. Two weeks later, Covid happens. So we go from tornado to Covid. I am like sending my people home and not knowing if we're going to have a business in the next six months.

[Ben Walter]

Tornado and Covid aside, the shark tank gods smiled on Don again. He got a message from a customer who was using Nerdwax to seal his mask. He made a video about it and sales exploded. Don had also been kicking around the idea of an anti fog product. Foggy mask glasses sent them into hyperdrive, where Nerdwax took him three years. Fog block, as it came to be called, was out in just three months.

[Don Haney]

And Fogblock just like took off on us. We came out of 2020 riding real high. So we expanded our warehouse space. We hired a bunch of people, and we're really just like humming along. And then in spring of 2021, the mask mandates lift. And simultaneous to that, iOS 14 comes out and our Business just tanks.

[Ben Walter]

Okay, let's talk about iOS 14. Don's right when it's mentioned. Even today, I've seen entrepreneurs just wince. So for D2C brands like Nerdwax, online and social media advertisements are a great way to reach your customers. Some of that is just organic traffic to your social media profiles. But for a lot of folks, that includes paid ads and performance marketing. IOS 14 changed the way that almost everyone did performance marketing, which is why it was such a big deal. If you have an iPhone, you've probably seen a pop up about allowing apps to track your data usage. For advertisers, this was crucial information. When that became optional rather than automatic, a lot of folks opted out and it tanked a ton of digital marketing conversions for folks all over the place.

[Don Haney]

We're spending money on all of the digital platforms, social media, Google search, and that digital ad spend is actually very efficient. So we're spending a dollar, we're making three to five dollars every time, and we're just focused on top line revenue. It's like, how many of these things can we sell? The iOS update comes out. We go from a 3 to 5 ROAS to a 0.8 ROAS.

[Ben Walter]

It's an acronym I should mention, is an industry term that means return on ad spend. It's a key metric for anyone in performance marketing, and it was a headache for don.

[Don Haney]

We're losing 20 cents on every dollar that we sell. I'm at this point spending about $70,000 a month on ads. I am bleeding money and I'm watching the sales just Decline.

[Ben Walter]

After losing $70,000 a month, Don decided to pull the ripcord on ad spend.

[Don Haney]

We go to $0 in ad spend. I should have been nurturing the customer base that we had and not just focused on going out and finding new customers. It was bleak. It was one of the hardest times in our business.

[Ben Walter]

The drastic drop in organic sales led Don to a startling realization.

[Don Haney]

We hadn't truly built a business. We had just had some fun products that we were selling and we were doing well, but we didn't have an actual business.

[Ben Walter]

Once you pulled it back to the bare bones organic sales, how much had been chopped off?

[Don Haney]

Yeah, so I think we did 1.7 million in sales in 2020. Then it went to 1.2 in 2021. Then we went to 800,000 in sales in 2022. So it's a 50% decrease in sales. And we at the same time that we had just started expanding and increasing all of our overhead, it was Bad. We had basically had to let everybody go. We had just moved into a 5,000 square foot warehouse. It's literally me and my brother in law in this giant warehouse. I think we were making two grand a month.

[Ben Walter]

Don and his brother in law tighten their belts and were desperately looking for anything that would help them survive.

[Don Haney]

So back in 2017, I launched these microfiber cloths to clean your glasses with. We had a pizza, a taco and a unicorn. I had done them thinking like, these will be great. And so we launched that and it was just, it was cricket.

[Ben Walter]

Don originally tried to push them on social media, and the social media of 2017 was very different than the social media of today. In 2017, social media was prioritizing photos, not videos.

[Don Haney]

When I was trying to sell these pizza glasses cloths, they looked like a slice of pizza. And so you take a picture of it and you couldn't really tell what it was. When you're scrolling through Instagram and you see a slice of pizza, you're just like, oh, it's a slice of pizza. You didn't realize that it was a cloth. And if you're showing it wiping the glasses, you couldn't tell that it was a slice of pizza. It was just like a weird colored cloth.

[Ben Walter]

By the time Don rediscovered the pizza taco cloth In 2022, social media was firmly in the land of video.

[Don Haney]

With video and Instagram reels, you could actually see that, hey, this is what looks like a slice of pizza becomes a cleaning cloth. And then it cleans glasses. And it's like, it takes five seconds to show that. And you go, oh, wow, I know exactly what that is.

[Ben Walter]

The cloths, they were a hit.

[Don Haney]

We have 300 of them and we sold all of them in a couple days. And I was like, wait a second. That was unexpected. So then I put the pizza cloths up. Those sell in a couple days. So I thought maybe it was something about the time that I launched this and not necessarily the product that I launched.

[Ben Walter]

Don had recently bought a van, but he sold it in favor of buying equipment to make more cloths.

[Don Haney]

And if people want them, then we'll sell them. And if people don't want them, we're only out one unit. We're not out 5,000 units. So we standardized our packaging and we just started making these cloths. And pretty soon we went from our little prototyping rig to six rigs. And so it was like the business became a new business.

[Ben Walter]

Don called this new cloth business Jinkies, which you may remember from Scooby Doo.

[Don Haney]

All of a sudden people are asking us for different things, right? So a guy asked us for a slab wagyu, then another guy asked us for a tortilla. We did about 50 different designs in that year. We took our Instagram channel from 9,000 users to 70,000 users. In our sales we did 100,000 jinkies in that first year.

[D]

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[Ben Walter]

Is going to be stuck in my head for days.

[Kathleen Griffith]

But before we talk about that, we have to discuss the shark in the room. His anecdote about inventory management was so interesting. You don't want to purchase too much, so you're sitting on all this excess inventory and at the same time you want to be able to fulfill orders that come in because you might have this deluge from all this massive exposure. And so what's the right mix there? And who would you even go to to ask how much should I have? There's really no, there's no rulebook around it.

[Ben Walter]

Yeah, I mean on a more toned down basis, that's what many of our both retailers and manufacturers go through every holiday season. How big should I bet on Q4? That's right, because I've got to order and or manufacture for Q4 and I, you know, I'm going to have a marketing plan and I'm going to push, but I don't know, I might not be able to sell it all and have to go on steep discount. I might run out early and disappoint customers. And it's a really delicate balance between those two things. Right. Leaving money on the table or getting stuck in a bind. I think that's really interesting. I think there are two other things that are important themes that come out of it. One is different products that have different shelf lives. You know, he talked about his is about 2 years for Nerdwax. The Jinkies are much longer, obviously, because they're just fabric. But, you know, the rate at which the fruit rots matters a lot.

[Kathleen Griffith]

Yeah, yeah, it does. And how quickly also is a customer cycling through the product? I would imagine is going to take a year, year and a half to get through one tube. Right. So you don't have that repeat purchase to also have that, you know, churn that you're looking for in your business necessarily built in.

[Ben Walter]

Yeah, that's fair enough. There's a really interesting angle on the Jinkies business that he's built because he has something where he can constantly test product market fit before he invests in manufacturing. You know, he'll crowdsource a new design from customers, he'll make a few, see how they sell, and then he'll ramp up production of them. And so he's constantly testing new designs and he only manufactures what sells quickly.

[Kathleen Griffith]

Yeah, this is so good. And with social media too, you really have no reason not to test in this way. You really can get that feedback quick, fast. It's inexpensive. It's not doing consumer focus groups like we used to do. You know, that cost a fortune. You can get it now through social in such a powerful way.

[Ben Walter]

Let's talk a little bit about how he sells his product and how he distributes it. Because some of this has been a recurring theme on the show, like dependence on one customer or one channel. But what I thought was really interesting was, I mean, I remember when the iPhone algorithm changed. Search engines have done the same with their algorithms over time. So that can happen from time to time. But the lesson for me in there, which I have learned in my career a number of times, is that paid search marketing is a drug and it is very easy to get addicted to that drug. You can use it, but if you are not at the same time investing in and monitoring the health of your organic brand, when the dealer stops selling, you're in trouble.

[Kathleen Griffith]

It's where most small business owners spend their money, right as in digital marketing and paid advertising more specifically. And so many of them in our conversations are thinking more intensely about building something on borrowed land. You look at Instagram, you look at Facebook, you look at what we're seeing now with TikTok. So what do you make of that? Building something on a house of cards that could kind of go away tomorrow versus having your own real estate?

[Ben Walter]

Well, I think you have to build a mobile home on someone else's land if you want to take the analogy really far. And what I mean by that is that doesn't mean that paid advertising and digital advertising doesn't have a role. It does. And when you're an unknown brand, it is how you get discovered. But what I've seen is because you can tie that sale directly to that investment, it's easy to, just as I said before, get hooked on it. And you just keep doubling down and tripling down and quadrupling down on that. When you do that, you are attracting lots of one time buyers. You are not investing in your database of loyal customers and you're not building the brand equity that makes people have an emotional attachment to your product as opposed to a transactional attachment to your product. So my advice is always, it's fine to use that as a way to sort of feed the top of the funnel, but you have to nurture that funnel and you have to plant the seeds to finish the analogy on your own ground. And it's hard to do that a lot of times because the investment in the brand equity kind of marketing is not as immediately gratifying. I spent X, I got Y. It's no, I have to spend X and I have to spend X again. And maybe I have to spend 2x and I have to keep doing that over time and over time. But I am building a loyal brand audience that has an emotional attachment to my product and is willing to pay for it. It's harder work, but it's stickier. Okay, let's finish up here with Don. Just like the perfect wax blend Don had discovered, he also discovered his buyers were pretty sticky too.

[Don Haney]

I've always wondered how much life is there to this business. Like, are people going to really use something called Nerdwax forever? And it's been 10 years and our sales have just been consistent over time. And so I go, look, there's obviously a market here and people are using this year over year. So Nerdwax has gone up in relation to all of the other products that we've launched. But it's what I intended for it to be initially, which was just a good core product that you put on the market and just sells itself.

[Ben Walter]

Right. But Jinkies are now the other half of your business, essentially. Or most of it.

[Don Haney]

Yeah. And so now Jinkies is taking up all of our time. We're going to be a US based manufacturer of microfiber. That's what we've been working into.

[Ben Walter]

So I went to visit your factory and you've recently launched a higher end form of Jinkies, right?

[Don Haney]

Yeah. Yeah. So we actually launched a line called Secretly Nerdy. And Those are like 12 by 12 inch pocket squares that are also microfiber material from Far Away. It'll look like a houndstooth pattern, but then if you look close, it's actually the Star Trek Enterprise. We have one that looks like the TARDIS from Doctor who. We have some that look like Rebel Fighters. They look like a classic pattern from Far Away. I love the Secretly Nerdy collection.

[Ben Walter]

Well, so I have to confess that I am a not so closeted Star Trek fan. And when I came to visit you, I did walk away with a beautiful Star Trek Enterprise Jinky, which I love.

[Don Haney]

Yeah.

[Ben Walter]

So what's next for Nerdwax? You're growing the Jinky business. You're going to be a manufacturer. What else is on the horizon?

[Don Haney]

We're currently building out our manufacturing. I see that being this year. And I have no shortage of ideas for things that we can add to our product lineup.

[Ben Walter]

All right, so, Don, I want to finish with something that I ask all the guests who come on the Unshakeables, which is, you know, running a business is really hard. If you had one piece of advice for either aspiring or current business owners out there, what would it be?

[Don Haney]

Work harder. Work smarter. And I see those two things as like pedals on your bicycle. And so working hard is where you start. You just go out and you do it and you don't know how to do it. You just go out and you work hard and you make it happen. But that will only get you so far. Right. Like, you get to the end of the crank and then you got to work smarter and you get more efficient and you learn as you go and you make less mistakes and then that only gets you so far. You get to the end of that crank and then you have to work harder.

[Ben Walter]

Again, Don, it's been an absolute pleasure hearing your story. Thank you so much for being on the show.

[Don Haney]

I appreciate it, Ben. Thanks for having me.

[Kathleen Griffith]

I just find it so encouraging to see someone like Don who had this crushing realization in 2022 that he hadn't actually built a business, he just had a product line to fast forward. Someone who now has a brand and his business, this brand of nerds, you know, the celebration of nerds and nerds uniting and coming together. Brand marketing increasingly has fallen more and more by the wayside, where people are really focused on brand and they're more focused on performance marketing. What's my immediate roi? How am I driving my bottom line? It's this churn and burn and it's really important not to lose sight of how important brand is because it helps you weather those storms too.

[Ben Walter]

I think the other thing that I took away, he went into it with a product that really wasn't going to build the business ultimately. Right. He said it himself, it was an anchor product. I think he picked a niche product, but not a niche segment because you know what percent of the population wears some form of eyeglasses, it's quite high. So I think he picked a segment as opposed to a product. I think Nerdwax is a niche product. I don't think eyewear accessories are a niche segment. But I would say, you know, when you are looking at what you want to do, you need to look at the addressable market that is in front of you and decide if that addressable market fits with your business goals. And I say that because if you talk to venture capitalists who are investing in high growth tech companies, the first thing they want to see is a gigantic addressable market. But they're looking for home runs only. That's the business model. Right. They're not looking for singles up the middle. But if your goal isn't to build something that you can sell for, you know, a huge amount of money, but your goal is to be able to generate a business of X size, there might be plenty in the market for you. So understanding the addressable market relative to your ambitions for the business and the competitive space around that is.

[Kathleen Griffith]

Yeah. And it feels like he has a really healthy business. It's holding steady. He's got a hero product that's doing consistently well. He's got great margins on the business. There's not a whole lot of competition.

[Ben Walter]

What you didn't hear though is when I went to visit him, I mean, I walked in and I said, this might be the happiest place I've been to in a long time. His giant 120 pound Rottweiler came lumbering over to me and nuzzled up against me to be pet. Everyone in the factory looked Entirely happy to be there. It was like a chill space. He said, yeah, our first priority running this business is to just enjoy ourselves. He didn't say, my first priority is to sell this for a gajillion dollars. Now I think he needs to make a good living on it. He's got a family and so it's not that he doesn't care about that, but there were clearly lots of things they were trying to balance. And so I always encourage people in your life, whether you work for someone else or you start your own business or anything in between, I encourage you to know what your why is and why you're doing it and what you want to get out of it. Because, you know, his wife and brother in law work in the business and they've clearly found something that works for them and their family.

[Kathleen Griffith]

That's why I love this business, because it like, he's so lovable.

[Ben Walter]

Yeah, he's great.

[Kathleen Griffith]

I also love that the business has really lived and breathed what is so emblematic of most small businesses, which is it's this roller coaster ride and you think you're down and out, the businesses leveling up year over year over year, and then all of a sudden it tanks and you're on your knees wondering what you're going to do, and then you find a new product and that has life to it, and then you have this kind of great resurgence and you're up for air again and you're making big bets. And I just, I love everything about it. I love everything about the spirit of this business and what he's done and how courageously he's done it too, while keeping a sense of humor about it all.

[Ben Walter]

Yeah, he's got a terrific thing going.

[Kathleen Griffith]

Yeah, he was a good pick.

[Ben Walter]

Awesome. Kathleen, thanks for being here today.

[Kathleen Griffith]

Thanks for having me.

[Ben Walter]

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Unshakables. If you liked this episode, please rate and review it next week. Our guest is one of the most energetic people I've ever met. Not only did she start a company and run a foundation, that's not even her day job, she's a professional athlete.

[Kathleen Griffith]

You keep going.

[Don Haney]

Like you bet on yourself, you keep.

[Kathleen Griffith]

Going, you keep fighting, you keep competing until eventually you get to where you want to be.

[Ben Walter]

I'm Ben Walter and this is the Unshakeables from Chase for Business and Ruby Studio from Iheartmedia. We'll see you back here soon.